10813	----	A VERSAILLES CHRISTMAS-TIDE By Mary Stuart Boyd With Fifty-three Illustrations by A.S. Boyd 1901 Contents I. The Unexpected Happens II. Ogams III. The Town IV. Our Arbre de Noël V. Le Jour de l'Année VI. Ice-bound VII. The Haunted Château VIII. Marie Antoinette IX. The Prisoners Released Illustrations The Summons Storm Warning Treasure Trove The Red Cross in the Window Enter M. le Docteur Perpetual Motion Ursa Major Meal Considerations The Two Colonels The Young and Brave Malcontent The Aristocrat Papa, Mama, et Bébé Juvenile Progress Automoblesse oblige Sable Garb A Football Team Mistress and Maid Sage and Onions Marketing Private Boxes A Foraging Party A Thriving Merchant Chestnuts in the Avenue The Tree Vendor The Tree Bearer Rosine Alms and the Lady Adoration Thankfulness One of the Devout De l'eau Chaude The Mill The Presbytery To the Place of Rest While the Frost Holds The Postman's Wrap A Lapful of Warmth The Daily Round Three Babes and a Bonne Snow in the Park A Veteran of the Château Un, Deux, Trois Bedchamber of Louis XIV Marie Leczinska Madame Adelaide Louis Quatorze Where the Queen Played Marie Antoinette The Secret Stair Madame sans Tête Illumination L'Envoi CHAPTER I THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS [Illustration: The Summons] No project could have been less foreseen than was ours of wintering in France, though it must be confessed that for several months our thoughts had constantly strayed across the Channel. For the Boy was at school at Versailles, banished there by our desire to fulfil a parental duty. The time of separation had dragged tardily past, until one foggy December morning we awoke to the glad consciousness that that very evening the Boy would be with us again. Across the breakfast-table we kept saying to each other, "It seems scarcely possible that the Boy is really coming home to-night," but all the while we hugged the assurance that it was. The Boy is an ordinary snub-nosed, shock-headed urchin of thirteen, with no special claim to distinction save the negative one of being an only child. Yet without his cheerful presence our home seemed empty and dull. Any attempts at merry-making failed to restore its life. Now all was agog for his return. The house was in its most festive trim. Christmas presents were hidden securely away. There was rejoicing downstairs as well as up: the larder shelves were stored with seasonable fare, and every bit of copper and brass sparkled a welcome. Even the kitchen cat sported a ribbon, and had a specially energetic purr ready. Into the midst of our happy preparations the bad news fell with bomb-like suddenness. The messenger who brought the telegram whistled shrilly and shuffled a breakdown on the doorstep while he waited to hear if there was an answer. "He is ill. He can't come. Scarlet fever," one of us said in an odd, flat voice. "Scarlet fever. At school. Oh! when can we go to him? When is there a boat?" cried the other. There was no question of expediency. The Boy lay sick in a foreign land, so we went to him. It was full noon when the news came, and nightfall saw us dashing through the murk of a wild mid-December night towards Dover pier, feeling that only the express speed of the mail train was quick enough for us to breathe in. But even the most apprehensive of journeys may hold its humours. Just at the moment of starting anxious friends assisted a young lady into our carriage. "She was going to Marseilles. Would we kindly see that she got on all right?" We were only going as far as Paris direct. "Well, then, as far as Paris. It would be a great favour." So from Charing Cross to the Gare du Nord, Placidia, as we christened her, became our care. She was a large, handsome girl of about three-and-twenty. What was her reason for journeying unattended to Cairo we know not. Whether she ever reached her destination we are still in doubt, for a more complacently incapable damsel never went a-voyaging. The Saracen maiden who followed her English lover from the Holy Land by crying "London" and "À Becket" was scarce so impotent as Placidia; for any information the Saracen maiden had she retained, while Placidia naively admitted that she had already forgotten by which line of steamers her passage through the Mediterranean had been taken. Placidia had an irrational way of losing her possessions. While yet on her way to the London railway station she had lost her tam-o'-shanter. So perforce, she travelled in a large picture-hat which, although pretty and becoming, was hardly suitable headgear for channel-crossing in mid-winter. [Illustration: Storm Warning] It was a wild night; wet, with a rising north-west gale. Tarpaulined porters swung themselves on to the carriage-steps as we drew up at Dover pier, and warned us not to leave the train, as, owing to the storm, the Calais boat would be an hour late in getting alongside. The Ostend packet, lying beside the quay in full sight of the travellers, lurched giddily at her moorings. The fourth occupant of our compartment, a sallow man with yellow whiskers, turned green with apprehension. Not so Placidia. From amongst her chaotic hand-baggage she extracted walnuts and mandarin oranges, and began eating with an appetite that was a direct challenge to the Channel. Bravery or foolhardiness could go no farther. Providence tempers the wind to the parents who are shorn of their lamb. The tumult of waters left us scatheless, but poor Placidia early paid the penalty of her rashness. She "thought" she was a good sailor--though she acknowledged that this was her first sea-trip--and elected to remain on deck. But before the harbour lights had faded behind us a sympathetic mariner supported her limp form--the feathers of her incongruous hat drooping in unison with their owner--down the swaying cabin staircase and deposited her on a couch. "Oh! I do wish I hadn't eaten that fruit," she groaned when I offered her smelling-salts. "But then, you know, I was so hungry!" In the _train rapide_ a little later, Placidia, when arranging her wraps for the night journey, chanced, among the medley of her belongings, upon a missing boat-ticket whose absence at the proper time had threatened complications. She burst into good-humoured laughter at the discovery. "Why, here's the ticket that man made all the fuss about. I really thought he wasn't going to let me land till I found it. Now, I do wonder how it got among my rugs?" We seemed to be awake all night, staring with wide, unseeing eyes out into the darkness. Yet the chill before dawn found us blinking sleepily at a blue-bloused porter who, throwing open the carriage door, curtly announced that we were in Paris. Then followed a fruitless search for Placidia's luggage, a hunt which was closed by Placidia recovering her registration ticket (with a fragment of candy adhering to it) from one of the multifarious pockets of her ulster, and finding that the luggage had been registered on to Marseilles. "Will they charge duty on tobacco?" she inquired blandly, as she watched the Customs examination of our things. "I've such a lot of cigars in my boxes." There was an Old-Man-of-the-Sea-like tenacity in Placidia's smiling impuissance. She did not know one syllable of French. A new-born babe could not have revealed itself more utterly incompetent. I verily believe that, despite our haste, we would have ended by escorting Placidia across Paris, and ensconcing her in the Marseilles train, had not Providence intervened in the person of a kindly disposed polyglot traveller. So, leaving Placidia standing the picture of complacent fatuosity in the midst of a group consisting of this new champion and three porters, we sneaked away. [Illustration: Treasure Trove] Grey dawn was breaking as we drove towards St. Lazare Station, and the daily life of the city was well begun. Lights were twinkling in the dark interiors of the shops. Through the mysterious atmosphere figures loomed mistily, then vanished into the gloom. But we got no more than a vague impression of our surroundings. Throughout the interminable length of drive across the city, and the subsequent slow train journey, our thoughts were ever in advance. The tardy winter daylight had scarcely come before we were jolting in a _fiacre_ over the stony streets of Versailles. In the gutters, crones were eagerly rummaging among the dust heaps that awaited removal. In France no degradation attaches to open economies. Housewives on their way to fetch Gargantuan loaves or tiny bottles of milk for the matutinal _café-au-lait_ cast searching glances as they passed, to see if among the rubbish something of use to them might not be lurking. And at one alluring mound an old gentleman of absurdly respectable exterior perfunctorily turned over the scraps with the point of his cane. We had heard of a hotel, and the first thing we saw of it we liked. That was a pair of sabots on the mat at the foot of the staircase. Pausing only to remove the dust of travel, we set off to visit our son, walking with timorous haste along the grand old avenue where the school was situated. A little casement window to the left of the wide entrance-door showed a red cross. We looked at it silently, wondering. [Illustration: The Red Cross in the Window] In response to our ring the portal opened mysteriously at touch of the unseen concierge, and we entered. A conference with Monsieur le Directeur, kindly, voluble, tactfully complimentary regarding our halting French, followed. The interview over, we crossed the courtyard our hearts beating quickly. At the top of a little flight of worn stone steps was the door of the school hospital, and under the ivy-twined trellis stood a sweet-faced Franciscan Soeur, waiting to welcome us. [Illustration: Enter M. Le Docteur] Passing through a tiny outer room--an odd combination of dispensary, kitchen, and drawing-room with a red-tiled floor--we reached the sick-chamber, and saw the Boy. A young compatriot, also a victim of the disease, occupied another bed, but for the first moments we were oblivious of his presence. Raising his fever-flushed face from the pillows, the Boy eagerly stretched out his burning hands. "I heard your voices," his hoarse voice murmured contentedly, "and I knew _you_ couldn't be ghosts." Poor child! in the semidarkness of the lonely night-hours phantom voices had haunted him. We of the morning were real. The good Soeur buzzed a mild frenzy of "Il ne faut pas toucher" about our ears, but, all unheeding, we clasped the hot hands and crooned over him. After the dreary months of separation, love overruled wisdom. Mere prudence was not strong enough to keep us apart. Chief amongst the chaos of thoughts that had assailed us on the reception of the bad news, was the necessity of engaging an English medical man. But at the first sight of the French doctor, as, clad in a long overall of white cotton, he entered the sick-room, our insular prejudice vanished, ousted by complete confidence; a confidence that our future experience of his professional skill and personal kindliness only strengthened. It was with sore hearts that, the prescribed _cinq minutes_ ended, we descended the little outside stair. Still, we had seen the Boy; and though we could not nurse him, we were not forbidden to visit him. So we were thankful too. CHAPTER II OGAMS [Illustration: Perpetual Motion] Our hotel was distinctively French, and immensely comfortable, in that it had gleaned, and still retained, the creature comforts of a century or two. Thus it combined the luxuries of hot-air radiators and electric light with the enchantment of open wood fires. Viewed externally, the building presented that airy aspect almost universal in Versailles architecture. It was white-tinted, with many windows shuttered without and heavily lace-draped within. A wide entrance led to the inner courtyard, where orange trees in green tubs, and trelliswork with shrivelled stems and leaves still adhering, suggested that it would be a pleasant summer lounge. Our hotel boasted a _grand salon_, which opened from the courtyard. It was an elaborately ornate room; but on a chilly December day even a plethora of embellishment cannot be trusted to raise by a single degree the temperature of the apartment it adorns, and the soul turns from a cold hearth, however radiant its garnish of artificial blossoms. A private parlour was scarcely necessary, for, with most French bedrooms, ours shared the composite nature of the accommodation known in a certain class of advertisement as "bed-sitting-room." So it was that during these winter days we made ourselves at home in our chamber. The shape of the room was a geometrical problem. The three windows each revealed different views, and the remainder of the walls curved amazingly. At first sight the furniture consisted mainly of draperies and looking-glass; for the room, though of ordinary dimensions, owned three large mirrors and nine pairs of curtains. A stately bed, endowed with a huge square down pillow, which served as quilt, stood in a corner. Two armchairs in brocaded velvet and a centre table were additions to the customary articles. A handsome timepiece and a quartette of begilt candelabra decked the white marble mantelpiece, and were duplicated in the large pier glass. The floor was of well-polished wood, a strip of bright-hued carpet before the bed, a second before the washstand, its only coverings. Need I say that the provision for ablutions was one basin and a liliputian ewer, and that there was not a fixed bath in the establishment? It was a resting-place full of incongruities; but apart from, or perhaps because of, its oddities it had a cosy attractiveness. From the moment of our entrance we felt at home. I think the logs that purred and crackled on the hearth had much to do with its air of welcome. There is a sense of companionship about a wood fire that more enduring coal lacks. Like a delicate child, the very care it demands nurtures your affection. There was something delightfully foreign and picturesque to our town ideas in the heap of logs that Karl carried up in a great _panier_ and piled at the side of the hearth. Even the little faggots of kindling wood, willow-knotted and with the dry copper-tinted leaves still clinging to the twigs, had a rustic charm. These were pleasant moments when, ascending from the chill outer air, we found our chamber aglow with ruddy firelight that glinted in the mirrors and sparkled on the shining surface of the polished floor; when we drew our chairs up to the hearth, and, scorning the electric light, revelled in the beauty of the leaping and darting flames. It was only in the _salle-à-manger_ that we saw the other occupants of the hotel; and when we learned that several of them had lived _en pension_ under the roof of the assiduous proprietor for periods varying from five to seven years, we felt ephemeral, mere creatures of a moment, and wholly unworthy of regard. [Illustration: Ursa Major] At eight o'clock Karl brought the _petit déjeûner_ of coffee and rolls to our room. At eleven, our morning visit to the school hospital over, we breakfasted in the _salle-à-manger_, a large bright room, one or other of whose many south windows had almost daily, even in the depth of winter, to be shaded against the rays of the sun. Three chandeliers of glittering crystal starred with electric lights depended from the ceiling. Half a dozen small tables stood down each side; four larger ones occupied the centre of the floor, and were reserved for transient custom. The first thing that struck us as peculiar was that every table save ours was laid for a single person, with a half bottle of wine, red or white, placed ready, in accordance with the known preference of the expected guest. We soon gathered that several of the regular customers lodged outside and, according to the French fashion, visited the hotel for meals only. After the early days of keen anxiety regarding our invalid had passed, we began to study our fellow guests individually and to note their idiosyncrasies. Sitting at our allotted table during the progress of the leisurely meals, we used to watch as one _habitué_ after another entered, and, hanging coat and hat upon certain pegs, sat silently down in his accustomed place, with an unvarying air of calm deliberation. Then Iorson, the swift-footed _garçon_, would skim over the polished boards to the newcomer, and, tendering the menu, would wait, pencil in hand, until the guest, after careful contemplation, selected his five _plats_ from its comprehensive list. [Illustration: Meal Considerations] The most picturesque man of the company had white moustaches of surprising length. On cold days he appeared enveloped in a fur coat, a garment of shaggy brown which, in conjunction with his hirsute countenance, made his aspect suggest the hero in pantomime renderings of "Beauty and the Beast." But in our hotel there was no Beauty, unless indeed it were Yvette, and Yvette could hardly be termed beautiful. Yvette also lived outside. She did not come to _déjeûner_, but every night precisely at a quarter-past seven the farther door would open, and Yvette, her face expressing disgust with the world and all the things thereof, would enter. Yvette was blonde, with neat little features, a pale complexion, and tiny hands that were always ringless. She rang the changes on half a dozen handsome cloaks of different degrees of warmth. To an intelligent observer their wear might have served as a thermometer. Yvette was _blasée_, and her millinery was in sympathy with her feelings. Her hats had all a fringe of disconsolate feathers, whose melancholy plumage emphasised the downward curve of her mouth. To see Yvette enter from the darkness and, seating herself at her solitary table, droop over her plate as though there were nothing in Versailles worth sitting upright for, was to view _ennui_ personified. Yvette invariably drank white wine, and the food rarely pleased her. She would cast a contemptuous look over the menu offered by the deferential Henri, then turn wearily away, esteeming that no item on its length merited even her most perfunctory consideration. But after one or two despondent glances, Yvette ever made the best of a bad bargain, and ordered quite a comprehensive little dinner, which she ate with the same air of utter disdain. She always concluded by eating an orange dipped in sugar. Even had a special table not been reserved for her, one could have told where Yvette had dined by the bowl of powdered sugar, just as one could have located the man with the fierce moustaches and the fur coat by the presence of his pepper-mill, or the place of "Madame" from her prodigal habit of rending a quarter-yard of the crusty French bread in twain and consuming only the soft inside. From the ignorance of our cursory acquaintance we had judged the French a sociable nation. Our stay at Versailles speedily convinced us of the fallacy of that belief. Nothing could have impressed us so forcibly as did the frigid silence that characterised the company. Many of them had fed there daily for years, yet within the walls of the sunny dining-room none exchanged even a salutation. This unexpected taciturnity in a people whom we had been taught to regard as lively and voluble made us almost ashamed of our own garrulity, and when, in the presence of the silent company, we were tempted to exchange remarks, we found ourselves doing it in hushed voices as though we were in church. A clearer knowledge, however, showed us that though some unspoken convention rendered the hotel guests oblivious of each other's presence while indoors, beyond the hotel walls they might hold communion. Two retired military men, both wearing the red ribbon of the Legion of Honour, as indeed did most of our _habitués_, sat at adjacent tables. One, tall and thin, was a Colonel; the other, little and neat, a Colonel also. To the casual gaze they appeared complete strangers, and we had consumed many meals in their society before observing that whenever the tall Colonel had sucked the last cerise from his glass of _eau-de-vie_, and begun to fold his napkin--a formidable task, for the serviettes fully deserved the designation later bestowed on them by the Boy, of "young table-cloths"--the little Colonel made haste to fold his also. Both rose from their chairs at the same instant, and the twain, having received their hats from the attentive Iorson, vanished, still mute, into the darkness together. [Illustration: The Two Colonels] Once, to our consternation, the little Colonel replaced his napkin in its ring without waiting for the signal from the tall Colonel. But our apprehension that they, in their dealings in that mysterious outer world which twice daily they sought together, might have fallen into a difference of opinion was dispelled by the little Colonel, who had risen, stepping to his friend and holding out his hand. This the tall Colonel without withdrawing his eyes from _Le Journal des Débats_ which he was reading, silently pressed. Then, still without a word spoken or a look exchanged, the little Colonel passed out alone. [Illustration: The Young and Brave] The average age of the Ogams was seventy. True, there was Dunois the Young and Brave, who could not have been more than forty-five. What his name really was we knew not, but something in his comparatively juvenile appearance among the chevaliers suggested the appellation which for lack of a better we retained. Dunois' youth might only be comparative, but his bravery was indubitable; for who among the Ogams but he was daring enough to tackle the _pâté-de-foie-gras_, or the _abattis_, a stew composed of the gizzards and livers of fowls? And who but Dunois would have been so reckless as to follow baked mussels and _crépinettes_ with _rognons frits_? Dunois, too, revealed intrepid leanings toward strange liquors. Sometimes--it was usually at _déjeûner_ when he had dined out on the previous evening--he would demand the wine-list of Iorson, and rejecting the _vin blanc_ or _vin rouge_ which, being _compris_, contented the others, would order himself something of a choice brand. One of his favourite papers was _Le Rire_, and Henri, Iorson's youthful assistant, regarded him with admiration. [Illustration: Malcontent] A less attractive presence in the dining-room was Madame. Madame, who was an elderly dame of elephantine girth, had resided in the hotel for half a dozen years, during which period her sole exercise had been taken in slowly descending from her chamber in the upper regions for her meals, and then, leisurely assimilation completed, in yet more slowly ascending. Madame's allotted seat was placed in close proximity to the hot-air register; and though Madame was usually one of the first to enter the dining-room, she was generally the last to leave. Madame's appetite was as animated as her body was lethargic. She always drank her half-bottle of red wine to the dregs, and she invariably concluded with a greengage in brandy. So it was small marvel that, when at last she left her chair to "tortoise" upstairs, her complexion should be two shades darker than when she descended. Five dishes, irrespective of _hors d'oeuvres_ at luncheon, and _potage_ at dinner, were allowed each guest, and Madame's selection was an affair of time. Our hotel was justly noted for its _cuisine_, yet on infrequent occasions the food supplied to Madame was not to her mind. At these times the whole establishment suffered until the irascible old lady's taste was suited. One night at dinner Iorson had the misfortune to serve Madame with some turkey that failed to meet with her approval. With the air of an insulted empress, Madame ordered its removal. The conciliatory Iorson obediently carried off the dish and speedily returned, bearing what professed to be another portion. But from the glimpse we got as it passed our table we had a shrewd suspicion that Iorson the wily had merely turned over the piece of turkey and re-served it with a little more gravy and an additional dressing of _cressons_. Madame, it transpired, shared our suspicions, for this portion also she declined, with renewed indignation. Then followed a long period of waiting, wherein Madame, fidgeting restlessly on her seat, kept fierce eyes fixed on the door through which the viands entered. Just as her impatience threatened to vent itself in action, Iorson appeared bearing a third helping of turkey. Placing it before the irate lady, he fled as though determined to debar a third repudiation. For a moment an air of triumph pervaded Madame's features. Then she began to gesticulate violently, with the evident intention of again attracting Iorson's notice. But the forbearance even of the diplomatic Iorson was at an end. Re-doubling his attentions to the diners at the farther side of the room, he remained resolutely unconscious of Madame's signals, which were rapidly becoming frantic. The less sophisticated Henri, however, feeling a boyish interest in the little comedy, could not resist a curious glance in Madame's direction. That was sufficient. Waving imperiously, Madame compelled his approach, and, moving reluctantly, fearful of the issue, Henri advanced. "Couteau!" hissed Madame. Henri flew to fetch the desired implement, and, realising that Madame had at last been satisfied, we again breathed freely. A more attractive personage was a typical old aristocrat, officer of the Legion of Honour, who used to enter, walk with great dignity to his table, eat sparingly of one or two dishes, drink a glass of his _vin ordinaire_ and retire. Sometimes he was accompanied by a tiny spaniel, which occupied a chair beside him; and frequently a middle-aged son, whose bourgeois appearance was in amazing contrast to that of his refined old father, attended him. [Illustration: The Aristocrat] There were others, less interesting perhaps, but equally self-absorbed. One afternoon, entering the cable car that runs--for fun, apparently, as it rarely boasted a passenger--to and from the Trianon, we recognised in its sole occupant an Ogam who during the weeks of our stay had eaten, in evident oblivion of his human surroundings, at the table next to ours. Forgetting that we were without the walls of silence, we expected no greeting; but to our amazement he rose, and, placing himself opposite us, conversed affably and in most excellent English for the rest of the journey. To speak with him was to discover a courteous and travelled gentleman. Yet during our stay in Versailles we never knew him exchange even a bow with any of his fellow Ogams, who were men of like qualifications, though, as he told us, he had taken his meals in the hotel for over five years. Early in the year our peace was rudely broken by the advent of a commercial man--a short, grey-haired being of an activity so foreign to our usage that a feeling of unrest was imparted to the _salle-à-manger_ throughout his stay. His movements were distractingly erratic. In his opinion, meals were things to be treated casually, to be consumed haphazard at any hour that chanced to suit. He did not enter the dining-room at the exact moment each day as did the Ogams. He would rush in, throw his hat on a peg, devour some food with unseemly haste, and depart in less time than it took the others to reach the _légumes_. [Illustration: Papa, Mama et Bébé] He was hospitable too, and had a disconcerting way of inviting guests to luncheon or dinner, and then forgetting that he had done so. One morning a stranger entered, and after a brief conference with Iorson, was conducted to the commercial man's table to await his arrival. The regular customers took their wonted places, and began in their leisurely fashion to breakfast, and still the visitor sat alone, starting up expectantly every time a door opened, then despondently resuming his seat. At last Iorson, taking compassion, urged the neglected guest to while away his period of waiting by trifling with the _hors-d'oeuvres_. He was proceeding to allay the pangs of hunger with selections from the tray of anchovies, sardines, pickled beet, and sliced sausage, when his host entered, voluble and irrepressible as ever. The dignified Ogams shuddered inwardly as his strident voice awoke the echoes of the room, and their already stiff limbs became rigid with disapproval. In winter, transient visitors but rarely occupied one or other of the square centre tables, though not infrequently a proud father and mother who had come to visit a soldier son at the barracks, brought him to the hotel for a meal, and for a space the radiance of blue and scarlet and the glint of steel cast a military glamour over the staid company. An amusing little circumstance to us onlookers was that although the supply of cooked food seemed equal to any demand, the arrival of even a trio of unexpected guests to dinner invariably caused a dearth of bread. For on their advent Iorson would dash out bareheaded into the night, to reappear in an incredibly short time carrying a loaf nearly as tall as himself. One morning a stalwart young Briton brought to breakfast a pretty English cousin, on leave of absence from her boarding-school. His knowledge of French was limited. When anything was wanted he shouted "Garçon!" in a lordly voice, but it was the pretty cousin who gave the order. _Déjeûner_ over, they departed in the direction of the Château. And at sunset as we chanced to stroll along the Boulevard de la Reine, we saw the pretty cousin, all the gaiety fled from her face, bidding her escort farewell at the gate of a Pension pour Demoiselles. The ball was over. Poor little Cinderella was perforce returning to the dust and ashes of learning. [Illustration: Juvenile Progress] CHAPTER III THE TOWN The English-speaking traveller finds Versailles vastly more foreign than the Antipodes. He may voyage for many weeks, and at each distant stopping-place find his own tongue spoken around him, and his conventions governing society. But let him leave London one night, cross the Channel at its narrowest--and most turbulent--and sunrise will find him an alien in a land whose denizens differ from him in language, temperament, dress, food, manners, and customs. Of a former visit to Versailles we had retained little more than the usual tourist's recollection of a hurried run through a palace of fatiguing magnificence, a confusing peep at the Trianons, a glance around the gorgeous state equipages, an unsatisfactory meal at one of the open-air _cafés_, and a scamper back to Paris. But our winter residence in the quaint old town revealed to us the existence of a life that is all its own--a life widely variant, in its calm repose, from the bustle and gaiety of the capital, but one that is replete with charm, and abounding in picturesque-interest. [Illustration: Automoblesse Oblige] Versailles is not ancient; it is old, completely old. Since the fall of the Second Empire it has stood still. Most of the clocks have run down, as though they realised the futility of trying to keep pace with the rest of the world. The future merges into the present, the present fades into the past, and still the clocks of Versailles point to the same long eventide. [Illustration: Sable Garb] The proximity of Paris is evinced only by the vividly tinted automobiles that make Versailles their goal. Even they rarely tarry in the old town, but, turning at the Château gates, lose no time in retracing their impetuous flight towards a city whose usages accord better with their creed of feverish hurry-scurry than do the conventions of reposeful Versailles. And these fiery chariots of modernity, with their ghoulish, fur-garbed, and hideously spectacled occupants, once their raucous, cigale-like birr-r-r has died away in the distance, leave infinitely less impression on the placid life of Versailles than do their wheels on the roads they traverse. Under the grand trees of the wide avenues the townsfolk move quietly about, busying themselves with their own affairs and practising their little economies as they have been doing any time during the last century. Perhaps it was the emphatic and demonstrative nature of the mourning worn that gave us the idea that the better-class female population of Versailles consisted chiefly of widows. When walking abroad we seemed incessantly to encounter widows: widows young and old, from the aged to the absurdly immature. It was only after a period of bewilderment that it dawned upon us that the sepulchral garb and heavy crape veils reaching from head to heel were not necessarily the emblems of widowhood, but might signify some state of minor bereavement. In Britain a display of black such as is an everyday sight at Versailles is undreamt of, and one saw more crape veils in a day in Versailles than in London in a week. Little girls, though their legs might be uncovered, had their chubby features shrouded in disfiguring gauze and to our unaccustomed foreign eyes a genuine widow represented nothing more shapely than a more or less stubby pillar festooned with crape. But for an inborn conviction that a frugal race like the French would not invest in a plethora of mourning garb only to cast it aside after a few months' wear, and that therefore the period of wearing the willow must be greatly protracted, we would have been haunted by the idea that the adult male mortality of Versailles was enormous. "Do they wear such deep mourning for all relatives?" I asked our hotel proprietor, who had just told us that during the first month of mourning the disguising veils were worn over the faces. Monsieur shook his sleek head gravely, "But no, Madame, not for all. For a husband, yes; for a father or mother, yes; for a sister or brother, an uncle or aunt, yes; but for a cousin, _no_." He pronounced the _no_ so emphatically as almost to convince us of his belief that in refusing to mourn in the most lugubrious degree for cousins the Versaillese acted with praiseworthy self-denial. There seemed to be no medium between sackcloth and gala-dress. We seldom noted the customary degrees of half-mourning. Plain colours were evidently unpopular and fancy tartans of the most flamboyant hues predominated amongst those who, during a spell of, say, three years had been fortunate enough not to lose a parent, sister, brother, uncle, or aunt. A perfectly natural reaction appeared to urge the _ci-devant_ mourners to robe themselves in lively checks and tartans. It was as though they said--"Here at last is our opportunity for gratifying our natural taste in colours. It will probably be of but short duration. Therefore let us select a combination of all the most brilliant tints and wear them, for who knows how soon that gruesome pall of woe may again enshroud us." Probably it was the vicinity of our hotel to the Church of Notre Dame that, until we discovered its brighter side, led us to esteem Versailles a veritable city of the dead, for on our bi-daily walks to visit the invalids we were almost certain to encounter a funeral procession either approaching or leaving Notre Dame. And on but rare occasions was the great central door undraped with the sepulchral insignia which proclaimed that a Mass for the dead was in prospect or in progress. Sometimes the sable valance and portières were heavily trimmed and fringed with silver; at others there was only the scantiest display of time-worn black cloth. [Illustration: A Football Team] The humblest funeral was affecting and impressive. As the sad little procession moved along the streets--the wayfarers reverently uncovering and soldiers saluting as it passed--the dirge-like chant of the _Miserere_ never failed to fill my eyes with unbidden tears of sympathy for the mourners, who, with bowed heads, walked behind the wreath-laden hearse. Despite the abundant emblems of woe, Versailles can never appear other than bright and attractive. Even in mid-winter the skies were clear, and on the shortest days the sun seldom forgot to cast a warm glow over the gay, white-painted houses. And though the women's dress tends towards depression, the brilliant military uniforms make amends. There are 12,000 soldiers stationed in Versailles; and where a fifth of the population is gorgeous in scarlet and blue and gold, no town can be accused of lacking colour. Next to the redundant manifestations of grief, the thing that most impressed us was the rigid economy practised in even the smallest details of expenditure. Among the lower classes there is none of that aping of fashion so prevalent in prodigal England; the different social grades have each a distinctive dress and are content to wear it. Among the men, blouses of stout blue cotton and sabots are common. Sometimes velveteen trousers, whose original tint years of wear have toned to some exquisite shade of heliotrope, and a russet coat worn with a fur cap and red neckerchief, compose an effect that for harmonious colouring would be hard to beat. The female of his species, as is the case in all natural animals, is content to be less adorned. Her skirt is black, her apron blue. While she is young, her neatly dressed hair, even in the coldest weather, is guiltless of covering. As her years increase she takes her choice of three head-dresses, and to shelter her grey locks selects either a black knitted hood, a checked cotton handkerchief, or a white cap of ridiculously unbecoming design. No French workaday father need fear that his earnings will be squandered on such perishable adornments as feathers, artificial flowers, or ribbons. The purchases of his spouse are certain to be governed by extreme frugality. She selects the family raiment with a view to durability. Flimsy finery that the sun would fade, shoddy materials that a shower of rain would ruin, offer no temptations to her. When she expends a few _sous_ on the cutting of her boy's hair, she has it cropped until his cranium resembles the soft, furry skin of a mole, thus rendering further outlay in this respect unlikely for months. And when she buys a flannel shirt, a six-inch strip of the stuff, for future mending, is always included in the price. But with all this economy there is an air of comfort, a complete absence of squalor. In cold weather the school-girls wear snug hoods, or little fur turbans; and boys have the picturesque and almost indestructible bérets of cloth or corduroy. Cloth boots that will conveniently slip inside sabots for outdoor use are greatly in vogue, and the comfortable Capuchin cloaks--whose peaked hood can be drawn over the head, thus obviating the use of umbrellas--are favoured by both sexes and all ages. [Illustration: Mistress and Maid] As may be imagined, little is spent on luxuries. Vendors of frivolities know better than to waste time tempting those provident people. On one occasion only did I see money parted with lightly, and in that case the bargain appeared astounding. One Sunday morning an enterprising huckster of gimcrack jewellery, venturing out from Paris, had set down his strong box on the verge of the market square, and, displaying to the admiring eyes of the country folks, ladies' and gentlemen's watches with chains complete, in the most dazzling of aureate metal, sold them at six sous apiece as quickly as he could hand them out. Living is comparatively cheap in Versailles; though, as in all places where the cost of existence is low, it must be hard to earn a livelihood there. By far the larger proportion of the community reside in flats, which can be rented at sums that rise in accordance with the accommodation but are in all cases moderate. Housekeeping in a flat, should the owner so will it, is ever conducive to economy, and life in a French provincial town is simple and unconventional. [Illustration: Sage and Onions] Bread, wine, and vegetables, the staple foods of the nation, are good and inexpensive. For 40 centimes one may purchase a bottle of _vin de gard_, a thin tipple, doubtless; but what kind of claret could one buy for fourpence a quart at home? _Graves_ I have seen priced at 50 centimes, _Barsac_ at 60, and _eau de vie_ is plentiful at 1 franc 20! Fish are scarce, and beef is supposed to be dear; but when butter, eggs, and cheese bulk so largely in the diet, the half chicken, the scrap of tripe, the slice of garlic sausage, the tiny cut of beef for the _ragout_, cannot be heavy items. Everything eatable is utilised, and many weird edibles are sold; for the French can contrive tasty dishes out of what in Britain would be thrown aside as offal. On three mornings a week--Sunday, Tuesday, and Friday--the presence of the open-air market rouses Versailles from her dormouse-like slumber and galvanises her into a state of activity that lasts for several hours. Long before dawn, the roads leading townwards are busy with all manner of vehicles, from the great waggon drawn by four white horses driven tandem, and laden with a moving stack of hay, to the ramshackle donkey-cart conveying half a score of cabbages, a heap of dandelions grubbed from the meadows, and the owner. [Illustration: Marketing] By daybreak the market square under the leafless trees presents a lively scene. There are stalls sacred to poultry, to butter, eggs, and cheese; but the vegetable kingdom predominates. Flanked by bulwarks of greens and bundles of leeks of incredible whiteness and thickness of stem, sit the saleswomen, their heads swathed in gay cotton kerchiefs, and the ground before them temptingly spread with little heaps of corn salad, of chicory, and of yellow endive placed in adorable contrast to the scarlet carrots, blood-red beetroot, pinky-fawn onions, and glorious orange-hued pumpkins; while ready to hand are measures of white or mottled haricot beans, of miniature Brussels sprouts, and of pink or yellow potatoes, an esculent that in France occupies a very unimportant place compared with that it holds amongst the lower classes in Britain. [Illustration: Private Boxes] In Versailles Madame does her own marketing, her maid--in sabots and neat but usually hideous cap--accompanying her, basket laden. From stall to stall Madame passes, buying a roll of creamy butter wrapped in fresh leaves here, a fowl there, some eggs from the wrinkled old dame who looks so swart and witch-like in contrast to her stock of milk-white eggs. Madame makes her purchases judiciously--time is not a valuable commodity in Versailles--and finishes, when the huge black basket is getting heavy even for the strong arms of the squat little maid, by buying a mess of cooked spinach from the pretty girl whose red hood makes a happy spot of colour among the surrounding greenery, and a measure of onions from the profound-looking sage who garners a winter livelihood from the summer produce of his fields. [Illustration: A Foraging Party] Relations with uncooked food are, in Versailles, distinguished by an unwonted intimacy. No one, however dignified his station or appearance, is ashamed of purchasing the materials for his dinner in the open market, or of carrying them home exposed to the view of the world through the transpicuous meshes of a string bag. The portly gentleman with the fur coat and waxed moustaches, who looks a general at least, and is probably a tram-car conductor, bears his bunch of turnips with an air that dignifies the office, just as the young sub-lieutenant in the light blue cloak and red cap and trousers carries his mother's apples and lettuces without a thought of shame. And it is easy to guess the nature of the _déjeûner_ of this _simple soldat_ from the long loaf, the bottle of _vin ordinaire_, and the onions that form the contents of his net. In the street it was a common occurrence to encounter some non-commissioned officer who, entrusted with the catering for his mess, did his marketing accompanied by two underlings, who bore between them the great open basket destined to hold his purchases. [Illustration: A Thriving Merchant] A picturesque appearance among the hucksters of the market square is the _boîte de carton_ seller. Blue-bloused, with his stock of lavender or brown bandboxes strapped in a cardboard Tower of Pisa on his back, he parades along, his wares finding ready sale; for his visits are infrequent, and if one does not purchase at the moment, as does Madame, the opportunity is gone. The spirit of camaraderie is strong amongst the good folks of the market. One morning the Artist had paused a moment to make a rough sketch of a plump, affable man who, shadowed by the green cotton awning of his stall, was selling segments of round flat cheeses of goat's milk; vile-smelling compounds that, judged from their outer coating of withered leaves, straw, and dirt, would appear to have been made in a stable and dried on a rubbish heap. The subject of the jotting, busy with his customers, was all unconscious; but an old crone who sat, her feet resting on a tiny charcoal stove, amidst a circle of decadent greens, detecting the Artist's action, became excited, and after eyeing him uneasily for a moment, confided her suspicions as to his ulterior motive to a round-faced young countryman who retailed flowers close by. He, recognising us as customers--even then we were laden with his violets and mimosa--merely smiled at her concern. But his apathy only served to heighten Madame's agitation. She was unwilling to leave her snug seat yet felt that her imperative duty lay in acquainting Monsieur du Fromage with the inexplicable behaviour of the inquisitive foreigner. But the nefarious deed was already accomplished, and as we moved away our last glimpse was of the little stove standing deserted, while Madame hastened across the street in her clattering sabots to warn her friend. The bustle of the market is soon ended. By ten o'clock the piles of vegetables are sensibly diminished. By half-past ten the white-capped maid-servants have carried the heavy baskets home, and are busy preparing lunch. At eleven o'clock the sharp boy whose stock-in-trade consisted of three trays of snails stuffed _à la_ Bourgogne has sold all the large ones at 45 centimes a dozen, all the small at 25, and quite two-thirds of the medium-sized at 35 centimes. The clock points to eleven. The sun is high now. The vendors awaken to the consciousness of hunger, and Madame of the _pommes frites_ stall, whose assistant dexterously cuts the peeled tubers into strips, is fully occupied in draining the crisp golden shreds from the boiling fat and handing them over, well sprinkled with salt and pepper, to avid customers, who devour them smoking hot, direct from their paper cornucopias. Long before the first gloom of the early mid-winter dusk, all has been cleared away. The rickety stalls have been demolished; the unsold remainder of the goods disposed of; the worthy country folks, their pockets heavy with _sous_, are well on their journey homewards, and only a litter of straw, of cabbage leaves and leek tops remains as evidence of the lively market of the morning. [Illustration: Chestnuts in the Avenue] CHAPTER IV OUR ARBRE DE NOËL We bought it on the Sunday morning from old Grand'mere Gomard in the Avenue de St. Cloud. It was not a noble specimen of a Christmas-tree. Looked at with cold, unimaginative eyes, it might have been considered lopsided; undersized it undoubtedly was. Yet a pathetic familiarity in the desolate aspect of the little tree aroused our sympathy as no rare horticultural trophy ever could. Some Christmas fairy must have whispered to Grand'mere to grub up the tiny tree and to include it in the stock she was taking into Versailles on the market morning. For there it was, its roots stuck securely into a big pot, looking like some forlorn forest bantling among the garden plants. [Illustration: The Tree Vendor] Grand'mere Gomard had established herself in a cosy nook at the foot of one of the great leafless trees of the Avenue. Straw hurdles were cunningly arranged to form three sides of a square, in whose midst she was seated on a rush-bottomed chair, like a queen on a humble throne. Her head was bound by a gaily striped kerchief, and her feet rested snugly on a charcoal stove. Her merchandise, which consisted of half a dozen pots of pink and white primulas, a few spotted or crimson cyclamen, sundry lettuce and cauliflower plants, and some roots of pansies and daisies, was grouped around her. [Illustration: The Tree-Bearer] The primulas and cyclamen, though their pots were shrouded in pinafores of white paper skilfully calculated to conceal any undue lankiness of stem, left us unmoved. But the sight of the starveling little fir tree reminded us that in the school hospital lay two sick boys whose roseate dreams of London and holidays had suddenly changed to the knowledge that weeks of isolation and imprisonment behind the window-blind with the red cross lay before them. If we could not give them the longed-for home Christmas, we could at least give them a Christmas-tree. The sight of foreign customers for Grand'mere Gomard speedily collected a small group of interested spectators. A knot of children relinquished their tantalising occupation of hanging round the pan of charcoal over whose glow chestnuts were cracking appetisingly, and the stall of the lady who with amazing celerity fried pancakes on a hot plate, and sold them dotted with butter and sprinkled with sugar to the lucky possessors of a _sou_. Even the sharp urchin who presided over the old red umbrella, which, reversed, with the ferule fixed in a cross-bar of wood, served as a receptacle for sheets of festive note-paper embellished with lace edges and further adorned with coloured scraps, temporarily entrusting a juvenile sister with his responsibilities, added his presence to our court. [Illustration: Rosine] Christmas-trees seemed not to be greatly in demand in Versailles, and many were the whispered communings as to what _les Anglais_ proposed doing with the tree after they had bought it. When the transaction was completed and Grand'mere Gomard had exchanged the tree, with a sheet of _La Patrie_ wrapped round its pot, for a franc and our thanks, the interest increased. We would require some one to carry our purchase, and each of the bright-eyed, short-cropped Jeans and Pierres was eager to offer himself. But our selection was already made. A slender boy in a _béret_ and black pinafore, who had been our earliest spectator, was singled out and entrusted with the conveyance of the _arbre de Noël_ to our hotel. The fact that it had met with approbation appeared to encourage the little tree. The change may have been imaginary, but from the moment it passed into our possession the branches seemed less despondent, the needles more erect. "Will you put toys on it?" the youthful porter asked suddenly. "Yes; it is for a sick boy--a boy who has fever. Have you ever had an _arbre de Noël_?" "_Jamais_," was his conclusive reply: the tone thereof suggesting that that was a felicity quite beyond the range of possibility. The tree secured, there began the comparatively difficult work of finding the customary ornaments of glass and glitter to deck it. A fruitless search had left us almost in despair, when, late on Monday afternoon, we joyed to discover miniature candles of red, yellow, and blue on the open-air stall in front of a toy-store. A rummage in the interior of the shop procured candle clips, and a variety of glittering bagatelles. Laden with treasure, we hurried back to the hotel, and began the work of decoration in preparation for the morning. During its short stay in our room at the hotel, the erstwhile despised little tree met with an adulation that must have warmed the heart within its rough stem. When nothing more than three coloured glass globes, a gilded walnut, and a gorgeous humming-bird with wings and tail of spun glass had been suspended by narrow ribbon from its branches, Rosine, the pretty Swiss chambermaid, chancing to enter the room with letters, was struck with admiration and pronounced it "très belle!" And Karl bringing in a fresh _panier_ of logs when the adorning was complete, and silly little delightful baubles sparkled and twinkled from every spray, putting down his burden, threw up his hands in amazement and declared the _arbre de Noël_ "magnifique!" This alien Christmas-tree had an element all its own. When we were searching for knick-knacks the shops were full of tiny Holy Babes lying cradled in waxen innocence in mangers of yellow corn. One of these little effigies we had bought because they pleased us. And when, the decoration of the tree being nearly finished, the tip of the centre stem standing scraggily naked called for covering, what more fitting than that the dear little Sacred _Bébé_ in his nest of golden straw should have the place of honour? It was late on Christmas Eve before our task was ended. But next morning when Karl, carrying in our _petit déjeûner_, turned on the electric light, and our anxious gaze sought our work, we found it good. Then followed a hurried packing of the loose presents; and, a _fiacre_ having been summoned, the tree which had entered the room in all humility passed out transmogrified beyond knowledge. Rosine, duster in hand, leant over the banisters of the upper landing to watch its descent. Karl saw it coming and flew to open the outer door for its better egress. Even the stout old driver of the red-wheeled cab creaked cumbrously round on his box to look upon its beauties. [Illustration: Alms and the Lady] The Market was busy in the square as we rattled through. From behind their battlemented wares the country mice waged wordy war with the town mice over the price of merchandise. But on this occasion we were too engrossed to notice a scene whose picturesque humour usually fascinated us, for as the carriage jogged over the rough roads the poor little _arbre de Noël_ palpitated convulsively. The gewgaws clattered like castanets, as though in frantic expostulation, and the radiant spun-glass humming-birds quivered until we expected them to break from their elastic fetters and fly away. The green and scarlet one with the gold-flecked wings fell on the floor and rolled under the seat just as the cab drew up at the great door of the school. The two Red-Cross prisoners who, now that the dominating heat of fever had faded, were thinking wistfully of the forbidden joys of home, had no suspicion of our intention, and we wished to surprise them. So, burdened with our treasure, we slipped in quietly. From her lodge window the concierge nodded approval. And at the door of the hospital the good Soeur received us, a flush of pleasure glorifying her tranquil face. Then followed a moment wherein the patients were ordered to shut their eyes, to reopen them upon the vision splendid of the _arbre de Noël_. Perhaps it was the contrast to the meagre background of the tiny school-hospital room, with its two white beds and bare walls, but, placed in full view on the centre table, the tree was almost imposing. Standing apart from Grand'mere's primulas and cyclamen as though, conscious of its own inferiority, it did not wish to obtrude, it had looked dejected, miserable. During its sojourn at the hotel the appreciation of its meanness had troubled us. But now, in the shabby little chamber, where there were no rival attractions to detract from its glory, we felt proud of it. It was just the right size for the surroundings. A two-franc tree, had Grand'mere possessed one, would have been Brobdignagian and pretentious. [Illustration: Adoration] A donor who is handicapped by the knowledge that the gifts he selects must within a few weeks be destroyed by fire, is rarely lavish in his outlay. Yet our presents, wrapped in white paper and tied with blue ribbons, when arranged round the flower-pot made a wonderful show, There were mounted Boers who, when you pressed the ball at the end of the air-tube, galloped in a wobbly, uncertain fashion. The invalids had good fun later trying races with them, and the Boy professed to find that his Boer gained an accelerated speed when he whispered "Bobs" to him. There were tales of adventure and flasks of eau-de-Cologne and smart virile pocket-books, one red morocco, the other blue. We regretted the pocket-books; but their possession made the recipients who, boylike, took no heed for the cleansing fires of the morrow, feel grown-up at once. And they yearned for the advent of the first day of the year, that they might begin writing in their new diaries. For the Sister there was a miniature gold consecrated medal. It was a small tribute of our esteem, but one that pleased the devout recipient. [Illustration: Thankfulness] Suspended among the purely ornamental trinkets of the tree hung tiny net bags of crystallised violets and many large chocolates rolled up in silver paper. The boys, who had subsisted for several days on nothing more exciting than boiled milk, openly rejoiced when they caught sight of the sweets. But to her patients' disgust, the Soeur, who had a pretty wit of her own, promptly frustrated their intentions by counting the dainties. "I count the chocolates. They are good boys, wise boys, honest boys, and I have every confidence in them, but--I count the chocolates!" said the Soeur. [Illustration: One of the Devout] As we passed back along the Rue de la Paroisse, worshippers were flocking in and out of Notre Dame, running the gauntlet of the unsavoury beggars who, loudly importunate, thronged the portals. Before the quiet nook wherein, under a gold-bestarred canopy, was the tableau of the Infant Jesus in the stable, little children stood in wide-eyed adoration, and older people gazed with mute devotion. Some might deem the little spectacle theatrical, and there was a slight irrelevance in the pot-plants that were grouped along the foreground, but none could fail to be impressed by the silent reverence of the congregation. No service was in process, yet many believers knelt at prayer. Here a pretty girl returned thanks for evident blessings received; there an old spinster, the narrowness of whose means forbade her expending a couple of sous on the hire of a chair, knelt on the chilly flags and murmured words of gratitude for benefits whereof her appearance bore no outward indication. We had left the prisoners to the enjoyment of their newly acquired property in the morning. At gloaming we again mounted the time-worn outside stair leading to the chamber whose casement bore the ominous red cross. The warm glow of firelight filled the room, scintillating in the glittering facets of the baubles on the tree; and from their pillows two pale-faced boys--boys who, despite their lengthening limbs were yet happily children at heart--watched eager-eyed while the sweet-faced Soeur, with reverential care, lit the candles that surrounded the Holy _Bébé_. CHAPTER V LE JOUR DE L'ANNÉE The closing days of 1900 had been unusually mild. Versailles townsfolk, watching the clear skies for sign of change, declared that it would be outside all precedent if Christmas week passed without snow. But, defiant of rule, sunshine continued, and the new century opened cloudless and bright. [Illustration: De L'eau Chaude] Karl, entering with hot water, gave us seasonable greeting, and as we descended the stair, pretty Rosine, brushing boots at the open window of the landing, also wished us a smiling _bonne nouvelle année_. But within or without there was little token of gaiety. Sundry booths for the sale of gingerbread and cheap _jouets_, which had been erected in the Avenue de St. Cloud, found business languishing, though a stalwart countryman in blouse and sabots, whose stock-in-trade consisted of whirligigs fashioned in the semblance of _moulins rouges_ and grotesque blue Chinamen which he carried stuck into a straw wreath fixed on a tall pole, had no lack of custom. The great food question never bulks so largely in the public interest as at the close of a year, so perhaps it was but natural that the greatest appreciation of the festive traditions of the season should be evinced by the shops devoted to the sale of provender. Turkeys sported scarlet bows on their toes as though anticipating a dance rather than the oven; and by their sides sausages, their somewhat plethoric waists girdled by pink ribbon sashes, seemed ready to join them in the frolic. In one cookshop window a trio of plaster nymphs who stood ankle-deep in a pool of crimped green paper, upheld a huge garland of cunningly moulded wax roses, dahlias, and lilac, above which perched a pheasant regnant. This trophy met with vast approbation until a rival establishment across the way, not to be outdone, exhibited a centrepiece of unparalleled originality, consisting as it did of a war scene modelled entirely in lard. Entrenched behind the battlements of the fort crowning an eminence, Boers busied themselves with cannon whose aim was carefully directed towards the admiring spectators outside the window, not at the British troops who were essaying to scale the greasy slopes. Half way up the hill, a miniature train appeared from time to time issuing from an absolutely irrelevant tunnel, and, progressing at the rate of quite a mile an hour, crawled into the corresponding tunnel on the other side. At the base of the hill British soldiers, who seemed quite cognisant of the utter futility of the Boer gunnery, were complacently driving off cattle. Captious critics might have taken exception to the fact that the waxen camellias adorning the hill were nearly as big as the battlements, and considerably larger than the engine of the train. But fortunately detractors were absent, and such trifling discrepancies did not lessen the genuine delight afforded the spectators by this unique design which, as a card proudly informed the world, was entirely the work of the employés of the firm. It was in a pâtisserie in the Rue de la Paroisse that we noticed an uninviting compound labelled "Pudding Anglais, 2 fr. 1/2 kilo." A little thought led us to recognise in this amalgamation a travesty of our old friend plum-pudding; but so revolting was its dark, bilious-looking exterior that we felt its claim to be accounted a compatriot almost insulting. And it was with secret gratification that towards the close of January we saw the same stolid, unhappy blocks awaiting purchasers. [Illustration: The Mill] The presence of the customary Tuesday market kept the streets busy till noon. But when the square was again empty of sellers and buyers Versailles relapsed into quietude. I wonder if any other town of its size is as silent as Versailles. There is little horse-traffic. Save for the weird, dirge-like drone of the electric cars, which seems in perfect consonance with the tone of sadness pervading the old town whose glory has departed, the clang of the wooden shoes on the rough pavement, and the infrequent beat of hoofs as a detachment of cavalry moves by, unnatural stillness seems to prevail. Of street music there was none, though once an old couple wailing a plaintive duet passed under our windows. Britain is not esteemed a melodious nation, yet the unclassical piano is ever with us, and even in the smallest provincial towns one is rarely out of hearing of the insistent note of some itinerant musician. And no matter how far one penetrates into the recesses of the country, he is always within reach of some bucolic rendering of the popular music-hall ditty of the year before last. But never during our stay in Versailles, a stay that included what is supposedly the gay time of the year, did we hear the sound of an instrument, or--with the one exception of the old couple, whom it would be rank flattery to term vocalists--the note of a voice raised in song. With us, New Year's Day was a quiet one. A dozen miles distant, Paris was welcoming the advent of the new century in a burst of feverish excitement. But despite temptations, we remained in drowsy Versailles, and spent several of the hours in the little room where two pallid Red-Cross knights, who were celebrating the occasion by sitting up for the first time, waited expectant of our coming as their one link with the outside world. [Illustration: The Presbytery] It was with a sincere thrill of pity that at _déjeûner_ we glanced round the _salle-à-manger_ and found all the Ogams filling their accustomed solitary places. Only Dunois the comparatively young, and presumably brave, was absent. The others occupied their usual seats, eating with their unfailing air of introspective absorption. Nobody had cared enough for these lonely old men to ask them to fill a corner at their tables, even on New Year's Day. To judge by their regular attendance at the hotel meals, these men--all of whom, as shown by their wearing the red ribbon of the Legion of Honour, had merited distinction--had little hospitality offered them. Most probably they offered as little, for, throughout our stay, none ever had a friend to share his breakfast or dinner. The bearing of the hotel guests suggested absolute ignorance of one another's existence. The Colonels, as I have said in a previous chapter, were exceptions, but even they held intercourse only without the hotel walls. Day after day, month after month, year after year as we were told, these men had fed together, yet we never saw them betray even the most cursory interest in one another. They entered and departed without revealing, by word or look, cognisance of another human being's presence. Could one imagine a dozen men of any other nationality thus maintaining the same indifference over even a short period? I hope future experience will prove me wrong, but in the meantime my former conception of the French as a nation overflowing with _bonhomie_ and _camaraderie_ is rudely shaken. The day of the year would have passed without anything to distinguish it from its fellows had not the proprietor, who, by the way, was a Swiss, endeavoured by sundry little attentions to reveal his goodwill. Oysters usurped the place of the customary _hors d'oeuvres_ at breakfast, and the meal ended with _café noir_ and cognac handed round by the deferential Iorson as being "offered by the proprietor," who, entering during the progress of the _déjeûner_, paid his personal respects to his _clientèle_. The afternoon brought us a charming discovery. We had a boy guest with us at luncheon, a lonely boy left at school when his few compatriots--save only the two Red-Cross prisoners--had gone home on holiday. The day was bright and balmy; and while strolling in the park beyond the Petit Trianon, we stumbled by accident upon the _hameau_, the little village of counterfeit rusticity wherein Marie Antoinette loved to play at country life. Following a squirrel that sported among the trees, we had strayed from the beaten track, when, through the leafless branches, we caught sight of roofs and houses and, wandering towards them, found ourselves by the side of a miniature lake, round whose margin were grouped the daintiest rural cottages that monarch could desire or Court architect design. History had told us of the creation of this unique plaything of the capricious Queen, but we had thought of it as a thing of the past, a toy whose fragile beauty had been wrecked by the rude blows of the Revolution. The matter-of-fact and unromantic Baedeker, it is true, gives it half a line. After devoting pages to the Château, its grounds, pictures, and statues, and detailing exhaustively the riches of the Trianons, he blandly mentions the gardens of the Petit Trianon as containing "some fine exotic trees, an artificial lake, a Temple of Love, and a hamlet where the Court ladies played at peasant life." It is doubtful whether ten out of every hundred tourists who, Baedeker in hand, wander conscientiously over the grand Château--Palace, alas! no longer--ever notice the concluding words, or, reading its lukewarm recommendation, deem the hamlet worthy of a visit. The Château is an immense building crammed with artistic achievements, and by the time the sightseer of ordinary capacity has seen a tenth of the pictures, a third of the sculpture, and a half of the fountains, his endurance, if not all his patience, is exhausted. I must acknowledge that we, too, had visited Versailles without discovering that the _hameau_ still existed; so to chance upon it in the sunset glow of that winter evening seemed to carry us back to the time when the storm-cloud of the Revolution was yet no larger than a man's hand; to the day when Louis XVI., making for once a graceful speech, presented the site to his wife, saying: "You love flowers. Ah! well, I have a bouquet for you--the Petit Trianon." And his Queen, weary of the restrictions of Court ceremony--though it must be admitted that the willful Marie Antoinette ever declined to be hampered by convention--experiencing in her residence in the little house freedom from etiquette, pursued the novel pleasure to its furthest by commanding the erection in its grounds of a village wherein she might the better indulge her newly fledged fancy for make-believe rusticity. About the pillars supporting the verandah-roof of the chief cottage and that of the wide balcony above, roses and vines twined lovingly. And though it was the first day of January, the rose foliage was yet green and bunches of shrivelled grapes clung to the vines. It was lovely then; yet a day or two later, when a heavy snowfall had cast a white mantle over the village, and the little lake was frozen hard, the scene seemed still more beautiful in its ghostly purity. At first sight there was no sign of decay about the long-deserted hamlet. The windows were closed, but had it been early morning, one could easily have imagined that the pseudo villagers were asleep behind the shuttered casements, and that soon the Queen, in some charming _déshabillé_, would come out to breathe the sweet morning air and to inhale the perfume of the climbing roses on the balcony overlooking the lake, wherein gold-fish darted to and fro among the water-lilies; or expect to see the King, from the steps of the little mill where he lodged, exchange blithe greetings with the maids of honour as they tripped gaily to the _laiterie_ to play at butter-making, or sauntered across the rustic bridge on their way to gather new-laid eggs at the farm. The sunset glamour had faded and the premature dusk of mid-winter was falling as, approaching nearer, we saw where the roof-thatch had decayed, where the insidious finger of Time had crumbled the stone walls. A chilly wind arising, moaned through the naked trees. The shadow of the guillotine seemed to brood oppressively over the scene, and, shuddering, we hastened away. [Illustration: To the Place of Rest] CHAPTER VI ICE-BOUND Even in the last days of December rosebuds had been trying to open on the standard bushes in the sheltered rose-garden of the Palace. But with the early nights of January a sudden frost seized the town in its icy grip, and, almost before we had time to realise the change of weather, pipes were frozen and hot-water bottles of strange design made their appearance in the upper corridors of the hotel. The naked cherubs in the park basins stood knee-deep in ice, skaters skimmed the smooth surface of the canal beyond the _tapis vert_, and in a twinkling Versailles became a town peopled by gnomes and brownies whose faces peeped quaintly from within conical hoods. Soldiers drew their cloak-hoods over their uniform caps. Postmen went their rounds thus snugly protected from the weather. The doddering old scavengers, plying their brooms among the great trees of the avenues, bore so strong a resemblance to the pixies who lurk in caves and woods, that we almost expected to see them vanish into some crevice in the gnarled roots of the trunks. Even the tiny acolytes trotting gravely in the funeral processions had their heads and shoulders shrouded in the prevailing hooded capes. [Illustration: While the Frost Holds] To us, accustomed though we were to an inclement winter climate, the chill seemed intense. So frigid was the atmosphere that the first step taken from the heated hotel hall into the outer air felt like putting one's face against an iceberg. All wraps of ordinary thickness appeared incapable of excluding the cold, and I sincerely envied the countless wearers of the dominant Capuchin cloaks. [Illustration: The Postman's Wrap] Our room was many-windowed, and no matter how high Karl piled the logs, nor how close we sat to the flames, our backs never felt really warm. It was only when night had fallen and the outside shutters were firmly closed that the thermometer suspended near the chimney-piece grudgingly consented to record temperate heat. [Illustration: A Lapful of Warmth] But there was at least one snug chamber in Versailles, and that was the room of the Red-Cross prisoners. However extravagant the degrees of frost registered without, the boys' sick-room was always pleasantly warm. How the good Soeur, who was on duty all day, managed to regulate the heat throughout the night-watches was her secret. A half-waking boy might catch a glimpse of her, apparently robed as by day, stealing out of the room; but so noiseless were her movements, that neither of the invalids ever saw her stealing in. They had a secret theory that in her own little apartment, which was just beyond theirs, the Soeur, garbed, hooded, and wearing rosary and the knotted rope of her Order, passed her nights in devotion. Certain it was that even the most glacial of weathers did not once avail to prevent her attending the Mass that was held at Notre Dame each morning before daybreak. [Illustration: The Daily Round] Frost-flowers dulled the inner glories of the shop windows with their unwelcome decoration. Even in the square on market mornings business flagged. The country folks, chilled by their cold drive to town, cowered, muffled in thick wraps, over their little charcoal stoves, lacking energy to call attention to their wares. The sage with the onions was absent, but the pretty girl in the red hood held her accustomed place, warming mittened fingers at a chaufferette which she held on her lap. The only person who gave no outward sign of misery was the boulangère who, harnessed to her heavy hand-cart, toiled unflinchingly on her rounds. In the streets the comely little _bourgeoises_ hid their plump shoulders under ugly black knitted capes, and concealed their neat hands in clumsy worsted gloves. But despite the rigour of the atmosphere their heads, with the hair neatly dressed _à la Chinoise_, remained uncovered. It struck our unaccustomed eyes oddly to see these girls thus exposed, standing on the pavement in the teeth of some icy blast, talking to stalwart soldier friends, whose noses were their only visible feature. [Illustration: Three Babes and a Bonne] The ladies of Versailles give a thought to their waists, but they leave their ankles to Providence, and any one having experience of Versailles winter streets can fully sympathise with their trust; for even in dry sunny weather mud seems a spontaneous production that renders goloshes a necessity. And when frost holds the high-standing city in its frigid grasp the extreme cold forbids any idea of coquetry, and thickly lined boots with cloth uppers--a species of foot-gear that in grace of outline is decidedly suggestive of "arctics"--become the only comfortable wear. [Illustration: Snow in the Park] After a few days of thought-congealing cold--a cold so intense that sundry country people who had left their homes before dawn to drive into Paris with farm produce were taken dead from their market-carts at the end of the journey--the weather mercifully changed. A heavy snowfall now tempered the inclement air, and turned the leafless park into a fairy vision. The nights were still cold, but during the day the sun glinted warmly on the frozen waters of the gilded fountains and sparkled on the facets of the crisp snow. The marble benches in the sheltered nooks of the snug Château gardens were occupied by little groups, which usually consisted of a _bonne_ and a baby, or of a chevalier and a hopelessly unclassable dog; for the dogs of Versailles belong to breeds that no man living could classify, the most prevalent type in clumsiness of contour and astonishing shagginess of coat resembling nothing more natural than those human travesties of the canine race familiar to us in pantomime. Along the snow-covered paths under the leafless trees, on whose branches close-wreathed mistletoe hangs like rooks' nests, the statues stood like guardian angels of the scene. They had lost their air of aloofness and were at one with the white earth, just as the forest trees in their autumn dress of brown and russet appear more in unison with their parent soil than when decked in their bravery of summer greenery. CHAPTER VII THE HAUNTED CHATEAU [Illustration: A Veteran of the Chateau] The Château of Versailles, like the town, dozes through the winter, only half awakening on Sunday afternoons when the townsfolk make it their meeting-place. Then conscripts, in clumsy, ill-fitting uniforms, tread noisily over the shining _parqueterie_ floors, and burgesses gossip amicably in the dazzling _Galerie des Glaces_, where each morning courtiers were wont to await the uprising of their king. But on the weekdays visitors are of the rarest. Sometimes a few half-frozen people who have rashly automobiled thither from Paris alight at the Château gates, and take a hurried walk through the empty galleries to restore the circulation to their stiffened limbs before venturing to set forth on the return journey. Every weekday in the Place d'Armes, squads of conscripts are busily drilling, running hither and thither with unflagging energy, and the air resounds with the hoarse staccato cries of "Un! Deux! Trois!" wherewith they accompany their movements, cries that, heard from a short distance, exactly resemble the harsh barking of a legion of dogs. [Illustration: Un--Deux--Trois] Within the gates there is a sense of leisure: even the officials have ceased to anticipate visitors. In the _Cour Royale_ two little girls have cajoled an old guide into playing a game of ball. A custodian dozes by the great log fire in the bedroom of Louis XIV., where the warm firelight playing on the rich trappings lends such an air of occupation to the chamber, that--forgetting how time has turned to grey the once white ostrich plumes adorning the canopy of the bed, and that the priceless lace coverlet would probably fall to pieces at a touch--one almost expects the door to open for the entrance of Louis le Grand himself. To this room he came when he built the Palace wherein to hide from that grim summons with which the tower of the Royal sepulture of St. Denis, visible from his former residence, seemed to threaten him. And here it was that Death, after long seeking, found him. We can see the little great-grandson who was to succeed, lifted on to the bed of the dying monarch. [Illustration: The Bedchamber of Louis XIV] "What is your name, my child?" asks the King. "Louis XV;" replies the infant, taking brevet-rank. And nearly sixty years later we see the child, his wasted life at an end, dying of virulent smallpox under the same roof, deserted by all save his devoted daughters. To me the Palace of Versailles is peopled by the ghosts of many women. A few of them are dowdy and good, but by far the greater number are graceful and wicked. How infinitely easier it is to make a good bad reputation than to achieve even a bad good one! "Tell us stories about naughty children," we used to beseech our nurses. And as our years increase we still yawn over the doings of the righteous, while our interest in the ways of transgressors only strengthens. We all know by heart the romantic lives of the shrinking La Vallière, of Madame de Montespan the impassioned, of sleek Madame de Maintenon--the trio of beauties honoured by the admiration of Louis le Grand; and of the bevy of favourites of Louis XV, the three fair and short-lived sisters de Mailly-Nesle, the frail Pompadour who mingled scheming with debauchery, and the fascinating but irresponsible Du Barry. Even the most minute details of Marie Antoinette's tragic career are fresh in our memories, but which of us can remember the part in the history of France played by Marie Leczinska? Yet, apart from her claim to notability as having been the last queen who ended her days on the French throne, her story is full of romantic interest. Thrusting aside the flimsy veil of Time, we find Marie Leczinska the penniless daughter of an exiled Polish king who is living in retirement in a dilapidated commandatory at a little town in Alsace. It is easy to picture the shabby room wherein the unforeseeing Marie sits content between her mother and grandmother, all three diligently broidering altar cloths. Upon the peaceful scene the father enters, overcome by emotion, trembling. His face announces great news, before he can school his voice to speak. "Why, father! Have you been recalled to the throne of Poland?" asks Marie, and the naïve question reveals that many years of banishment have not quenched in the hearts of the exiles the hope of a return to their beloved Poland. "No, my daughter, but you are to be Queen of France," replies the father. "Let us thank God." [Illustration: Marie Leczinska] Knowing the sequel, one wonders if it was for a blessing or a curse that the refugees, kneeling in that meagre room in the old house at Wissenberg, returned thanks. Certain it is that the ministers of the boy-monarch were actuated more by a craving to further their own ends than either by the desire to please God or to honour their King, in selecting this obscure maiden from the list of ninety-nine marriageable princesses that had been drawn up at Versailles. A dowerless damsel possessed of no influential relatives is not in a position to be exacting, and, whate'er befell, poor outlawed Stanislas Poniatowski could not have taken up arms in defence of his daughter. Having a sincere regard for unaffected Marie Leczinska, I regret being obliged to admit that, even in youth, "comely" was the most effusive adjective that could veraciously be awarded her. And it is only in the lowest of whispers that I will admit that she was seven years older than her handsome husband, whose years did not then number seventeen. Yet is there indubitable charm in the simple grace wherewith Marie accepted her marvellous transformation from pauper to queen. She disarmed criticism by refusing to conceal her former poverty. "This is the first time in my life I have been able to make presents," she frankly told the ladies of the Court, as she distributed among them her newly got trinkets. It is pleasant to remember that the early years of her wedded life passed harmoniously. Louis, though never passionately enamoured of his wife, yet loved her with the warm affection a young man bestows on the first woman he has possessed. And that Marie was wholly content there is little doubt. She was no gadabout. Versailles satisfied her. Three years passed before she visited Paris, and then the visit was more of the nature of a pilgrimage than of a State progress. Twin daughters had blessed the union, and the Queen journeyed to the churches of Notre Dame and Saint Geneviève to crave from Heaven the boon of a Dauphin: a prayer which a year later was answered. But clouds were gathering apace. As he grew into manhood the domestic virtues palled upon Louis. He tired of the needlework which, doubtless, Marie's skilled hands had taught him. We recall how, sitting between her mother and grandmother, the future Queen had broidered altar cloths. Marie Leczinska was an adoring mother; possibly her devotion to their rapidly increasing family wearied him. Being little more than a child himself, the King is scarcely likely to have found the infantile society so engaging as did the mother. Thus began that series of foolish infidelities that, characterised by extreme timidity and secrecy at first, was latterly flaunted in the face of the world. Marie's life was not a smooth one, but it was happier than that of her Royal spouse. To me there is nothing sadder, nothing more sordid in history, than the feeble, useless existence of Louis XV., whose early years promised so well. It is pitiful to look at the magnificent portrait, still hanging in the palace where he reigned, of the child-king seated in his robes of State, the sceptre in his hand, looking with eyes of innocent wonder into the future, then to think upon the depth of degradation reached by the once revered Monarch before his body was dragged in dishonour and darkness to its last resting-place. [Illustration: Madame Adelaide] Pleasanter figures that haunt the Château are those of the six pretty daughters of Louis and Marie Leczinska. There are the ill-starred twins, Elizabeth and Henrietta: Madame Elizabeth, who never lost the love of her old home, and, though married, before entering her teens, to the Infanta of Spain, retired, after a life of disappointment, to her beloved Versailles to die; and the gentle Henrietta who, cherishing an unlucky passion for the young Duc de Chartres, pined quietly away after witnessing her lover wed to another. Then there is Adelaide, whom Nattier loved to paint, portraying her sometimes as a lightly clad goddess, sometimes sitting demurely in a pretty frock. Good Nattier! there is a later portrait of himself in complacent middle age surrounded by his wife and children; but I like to think that, when he spent so many days at the Palace painting the young Princess, some tenderer influence than mere artistic skill lent cunning to his brush. When the daughters of Louis XV. were sent to be educated at a convent, Adelaide it was who, by tearful protest to her royal father, gained permission to remain at the Palace while her sisters meekly endured their banishment. From this instance of childish character one would have anticipated a career for Madame Adelaide, and I hate being obliged to think of her merely developing into one of the three spinster aunts of Louis XVI. who, residing under the same roof, turned coldly disapproving eyes upon the manifold frailties of their niece, Marie Antoinette. The sisters Victoire and Sophie are faint shades leaving no impression on the memory; but there is another spirit, clad in the sombre garb of a Carmelite nun, who, standing aloof, looks with the calm eyes of peace on the motley throng. It is Louise, the youngest sister of all, who, deeply grieved by her father's infatuation for the Du Barry--an infatuation which, beginning within a month of Marie Leczinska's decease, ended only when on his deathbed the dying Monarch prepared to receive absolution by bidding his inamorata farewell--resolved to flee her profligate surroundings and devote her life to holiness. It is affecting to think of the gentle Louise, secretly anticipating the rigours of convent life, torturing her delicate skin by wearing coarse serge, and burning tallow candles in her chamber to accustom herself to their detestable odour. Her father's consent gained, Louise still tarried at Versailles. Perhaps the King's daughter shrank from voluntarily beginning a life of imprisoned drudgery. We know that at this period she passed many hours reading contemporary history, knowing that, once within the convent walls, the study of none but sacred literature would be permitted. Then came an April morning when Louise, who had kept her intention secret from all save her father, left the Palace never to return. France, in a state of joyous excitement, was eagerly anticipating the arrival of Marie Antoinette, who was setting forth on the first stage of that triumphal journey which had so tragic an ending. Already the gay clamour of wedding-bells filled the air; and Louise may have feared that, did she linger at Versailles, the enticing vanities of the world might change the current of her thoughts. Chief among the impalpable throng that people the state galleries is Marie Antoinette, and her spirit shows us many faces. It is charming, haughty, considerate, headstrong, frivolous, thoughtful, degraded, dignified, in quick succession. We see her arrive at the Palace amid the tumultuous adoration of the crowd, and leave amidst its execrations. Sometimes she is richly apparelled, as befits a queen; anon she sports the motley trappings of a mountebank. The courtyard that saw the departure of Madame Louise witnesses Marie Antoinette, returning at daybreak in company with her brother-in-law from some festivity unbecoming a queen, refused admittance by the King's express command. [Illustration: Louis Quatorze] Many of the attendant spirits who haunt Marie Antoinette's ghostly footsteps as they haunted her earthly ones are malefic. Most are women, and all are young and fair. There is Madame Roland, who, taken as a young girl to the Palace to peep at the Royalties, became imbued by that jealous hatred which only the Queen's death could appease. "If I stay here much longer," she told that kindly mother who sought to give her a treat by showing her Court life, "I shall detest these people so much that I shall be unable to hide my hatred." It is easy to fancy the girl's evil face scowling at the unconscious Queen, before she leaves to pen those inflammatory pamphlets which are to prove the Sovereign's undoing and her own. For by some whim of fate Madame Roland was executed on the very scaffold to which her envenomed writings had driven Marie Antoinette. A spectre that impresses as wearing rags under a gorgeous robe, lurks among the foliage of the quiet _bosquet_ beyond the orangerie. It is the infamous Madame de la Motte, chief of adventuresses, and it was in that secluded grove that her tool, Cardinal de Rohan, had his pretended interview with the Queen. Poor, perfidious Contesse! what an existence of alternate beggarly poverty and beggarly riches was hers before that last scene of all when she lay broken and bruised almost beyond human semblance in that dingy London courtyard beneath the window from which, in a mad attempt to escape arrest, she had thrown herself. Through the Royal salons flits a presence whereat the shades of the Royal Princesses look askance: that of the frolicsome, good-natured, irresponsible Du Barry. A soulless ephemera she, with no ambitions or aspirations, save that, having quitted the grub stage, she desires to be as brilliant a butterfly as possible. Close in attendance on her moves an ebon shadow--Zamora, the ingrate foundling who, reared by the Duchesse, swore that he would make his benefactress ascend the scaffold, and kept his oath. For our last sight of the prodigal, warm-hearted Du Barry, plaything of the aged King, is on the guillotine, where in agonies of terror she fruitlessly appeals to her executioner's clemency. But of all the bygone dames who haunt the grand Château, the only one I detest is probably the most irreproachable of all--Madame de Maintenon. There is something so repulsively sanctimonious in her aspect, something so crafty in the method wherewith, under the cloak of religion, she wormed her way into high places, ousting--always in the name of propriety--those who had helped her. Her stepping-stone to Royal favour was handsome, impetuous Madame de Montespan, who, taking compassion on her widowed poverty, appointed Madame Scarron, as she then was, governess of her children, only to find her _protégée_ usurp her place both in the honours of the King and in the affections of their children. The natural heart rebels against the "unco guid," and Madame de Maintenon, with her smooth expression, double chin, sober garments and ever-present symbols of piety, revolts me. I know it is wrong. I know that historians laud her for the wholesome influence she exercised upon the mind of a king who had grown timorous with years; that the dying Queen declared that she owed the King's kindness to her during the last twenty years of her life entirely to Madame de Maintenon. But we know also that six months after the Queen's death an unwonted light showed at midnight in the Chapel Royal, where Madame de Maintenon--the child of a prison cell--was becoming the legal though unacknowledged wife of Louis XIV. The impassioned, uncalculating de Montespan had given the handsome Monarch her all without stipulation. Truly the career of Madame de Maintenon was a triumph of virtue over vice; and yet of all that heedless, wanton throng, my soul detests only her. [Illustration: Where the Queen Played] CHAPTER VIII MARIE ANTOINETTE Stereotyped sights are rarely the most engrossing. At the Palace of Versailles the _petits appartements de la Reine_, those tiny rooms whose grey old-world furniture might have been in use yesterday, to me hold more actuality than all the regal salons in whose vast emptiness footsteps reverberate like echoes from the past. In the pretty sitting-room the coverings to-day are a reproduction of the same pale blue satin that draped the furniture in the days when queens preferred the snug seclusion of those dainty rooms overlooking the dank inner courtyard to the frigid grandeur of their State chambers. Therein it was that Marie Leczinska was wont to instruct her young daughters in the virtues as she had known them in her girlhood's thread-bare home, not as her residence at the profligate French Court had taught her to understand them. [Illustration: Marie Antoinette] The heavy gilt bolts bearing the interlaced initials M.A. remind us that these, too, were the favourite rooms of Marie Antoinette, and that in all probability the cunningly entwined bolts were the handiwork of her honest spouse, who wrought at his blacksmith forge below while his wife flirted above. But in truth the _petits appartements_ are instinct with memories of Marie Antoinette, and it is difficult to think of any save only her occupying them. The beautiful _coffre_ presented to her with the layette of the Dauphin still stands on a table in an adjoining chamber, and the paintings on its white silk casing are scarcely faded yet, though the decorative ruching of green silk leaves has long ago fallen into decay. A step farther is the little white and gold boudoir which still holds the mirror that gave the haughty Queen her first premonition of the catastrophe that awaited her. Viewed casually the triple mirror, lining an alcove wherein stands a couch garlanded with flowers, betrays no sinister qualities. But any visitor who approaches looking at his reflection where at the left the side panels meet the angle of the wall, will be greeted by a sight similar to that whose tragic suggestion made even the haughty Queen pause a moment in her reckless career. For in the innocent appearing mirrors the gazer is reflected without a head. It was through this liliputian suite, this strip of homeliness so artfully introduced into a palace, that Marie Antoinette fled on that fateful August morning when the mob of infuriated women invaded the Château. Knowing this, I was puzzling over the transparent fact that either of the apparent exits would have led her directly into the hands of the enemy, when the idea of a secret staircase suggested itself. A little judicious inquiry elicited the information that one did exist. "But it is not seen. It is locked. To view it, an order from the Commissary--that is necessary," explained the old guide. To know that a secret staircase, and one of such vivid historical importance, was at hand, and not to have seen it would have been too tantalising. The "Commissary" was an unknown quantity, and for a space it seemed as though our desire would be ungratified. Happily the knowledge of our interest awoke a kindly reciprocity in our guide, who, hurrying off, quickly returned with the venerable custodian of the key. A moment later, the unobtrusive panel that concealed the exit flew open at its touch, and the secret staircase, dark, narrow, and hoary with the dust of years, lay before us. [Illustration: The Secret Stair] Many must have been the romantic meetings aided by those diminutive steps, but, peering into their shadows, we saw nothing but a vision of Marie Antoinette, half clad in dishevelled wrappings of petticoat and shawl, flying distracted from the vengeance of the furies through the refuge of the low-roofed stairway. In my ingenuous youth, when studying French history, I evolved a theory which seemed, to myself at least, to account satisfactorily for the radical differences distinguishing Louis XVI. from his brothers and antecedents. Finding that, when a delicate infant, he had been sent to the country to nurse, I rushed to the conclusion that the royal infant had died, and that his foster-mother, fearful of the consequences, had substituted a child of her own in his place. The literature of the nursery is full of instances that seemed to suggest the probability of my conjecture being correct. As a youth, Louis had proved himself both awkward and clumsy. He was loutish, silent in company, ill at ease in his princely surroundings, and in all respects unlike his younger brothers. He was honest, sincere, pious, a faithful husband, a devoted father; amply endowed, indeed, with the middle-class virtues which at that period were but rarely found in palaces. To my childish reasoning the most convincing proof lay in his innate craving for physical labour; a craving that no ridicule could dispel. With the romantic enthusiasm of youth, I used to fancy the peasant mother stealing into the Palace among the spectators who daily were permitted to view the royal couple at dinner, and imagine her, having seen the King, depart glorying secretly in the strategy that had raised her son to so high an estate. There was another picture, in whose dramatic misery I used to revel. It showed the unknown mother, who had discovered that by her own act she had condemned her innocent son to suffer for the sins of past generations of royal profligates, journeying to Paris (in my dreams she always wore sabots and walked the entire distance in a state of extreme physical exhaustion) with the intention of preventing his execution by declaring his lowly parentage to the mob. The final tableau revealed her, footsore and weary, reaching within sight of the guillotine just in time to see the executioner holding up her son's severed head. I think my imaginary heroine died of a broken heart at this juncture, a catastrophe that would naturally account for her secret dying with her. [Illustration: Madame Sans Tête] During our winter stay at Versailles, my childish phantasies recurred to me, and I almost found them feasible. What an amazing irony of fate it would have shown had a son of the soil expired to expiate the crimes of sovereigns! But more pitiful by far than the saddest of illusions is the sordid reality of a scene indelibly imprinted on my mental vision. Memory takes me back to the twilight of a spring Sunday several years ago, when in the wake of a cluster of market folks we wandered into the old Cathedral of St. Denis. Deep in the sombre shadows of the crypt a light gleamed faintly through a narrow slit in the stone wall. Approaching, we looked into a gloomy vault wherein, just visible by the ray of a solitary candle, lay two zinc coffins. Earth holds no more dismal sepulchre than that dark vault, through the crevice in whose wall the blue-bloused marketers cast curious glances. Yet within these grim coffins lie two bodies with their severed heads, all that remains mortal of the haughty Marie Antoinette and other humble spouse. [Illustration: Illumination] CHAPTER IX THE PRISONERS RELEASED The first dread days, when the Boy, heavy with fever, seemed scarcely to realise our presence, were swiftly followed by placid hours when he lay and smiled in blissful content, craving nothing, now that we were all together again. But this state of beatitude was quickly ousted by a period of discontent, when the hunger fiend reigned supreme in the little room. "_Manger, manger, manger, tout le temps!"_ Thus the nurse epitomised the converse of her charges. And indeed she was right, for, from morning till night, the prisoners' solitary topic of conversation was food. During the first ten days their diet consisted solely of boiled milk, and as that time wore to a close the number of quarts consumed increased daily, until Paul, the chief porter, seemed ever ascending the little outside stair carrying full bottles of milk, or descending laden with empty ones. "Milk doesn't count. When shall we be allowed food, _real_ food?" was the constant cry, and their relief was abounding when, on Christmas Day, the doctor withdrew his prohibition, and permitted an approach to the desired solids. But even then the prisoners, to their loudly voiced disappointment, discovered that their only choice lay between vermicelli and tapioca, nursery dishes which at home they would have despised. "_Tapioca!_ Imagine tapioca for a Christmas dinner!" the invalids exclaimed with disgust. But that scorn did not prevent them devouring the mess and eagerly demanding more. And thereafter the saucepan simmering over the gas-jet in the outer room seemed ever full of savoury spoon-meat. I doubt if any zealous mother-bird ever had a busier time feeding her fledglings than had the good Sister in satisfying the appetites of these callow cormorants. To witness the French nun seeking to allay the hunger of these voracious schoolboy aliens was to picture a wren trying to fill the ever-gaping beaks of two young cuckoos whom an adverse fate had dropped into her nest. As the days wore by, the embargo placed upon our desire to cater for the invalids was gradually lifted, and little things such as sponge biscuits and pears crept in to vary the monotony of the milk diet. New Year's Day held a tangible excitement, for that morning saw a modified return to ordinary food, and, in place of bottles of milk, Paul's load consisted of such tempting selections from the school meals as were deemed desirable for the invalids. Poultry not being included in the school menus, we raided a cooked-provision shop and carried off a plump, well-browned chicken. The approbation which met this venture resulted in our supplying a succession of _poulettes_, which, at the invalids' express desire, were smuggled into their room under my cloak. Not that there was the most remote necessity for concealment, but the invalids, whose sole interest centred in food, laboured under the absurd idea that, did the authorities know they were being supplied from without, their regular meals would be curtailed to prevent them over-eating. The point of interest, for the Red-Cross prisoners at least, in our morning visits lay in the unveiling of the eatables we had brought. School food, however well arranged, is necessarily stereotyped, and the element of the unknown ever lurked in our packages. The sugar-sticks, chocolates, fruit, little cakes, or what we had chanced to bring, were carefully examined, criticised, and promptly devoured. A slight refreshment was served them during our short stay, and when we departed we left them eagerly anticipating luncheon. At gloaming, when we returned, it was to find them busy with half-yards of the long crusty loaves, plates of jelly, and tumblers, filled with milk on our Boy's part, and with well diluted wine on that of his fellow sufferer. Fear of starvation being momentarily averted, the Soeur used to light fresh candles around the tiny Holy _Bébé_ on the still green Christmas-tree, and for a space we sat quietly enjoying the radiance. But by the time the last candle had flickered out, and the glow of a commonplace paraffin lamp lighted the gloom, nature again demanded nourishment; and we bade the prisoners farewell for the night, happy in the knowledge that supper, sleep, and breakfast would pleasantly while away the hours till our return. The elder Red-Cross knight was a tall, good-looking lad of sixteen, the age when a boy wears painfully high collars, shaves surreptitiously--and unnecessarily--with his pen-knife, talks to his juniors about the tobacco he smokes in a week, and cherishes an undying passion for a maiden older than himself. He was ever an interesting study, though I do not think I really loved him until he confided his affairs of the heart, and entrusted me with the writing of his love-letters. I know that behind my back he invariably referred to me as "Ma"; but as he openly addressed the unconscious nun as "you giddy old girl," "Ma" might almost be termed respectful, and I think our regard was mutual. All things come to him who waits. There came a night when for the last time we sat together around the little tree, watching the Soeur light the candles that illuminated the Holy _Bébé_. On the morrow the prisoners, carefully disinfected, and bearing the order of their release in the form of a medical certificate, would be set free. It clouded our gladness to know that before the patient Sister stretched another period of isolation. Just that day another pupil had developed scarlet fever, and only awaited our boys' departure to occupy the little room. Hearing that this fresh prisoner lay under sentence of durance vile, we suggested that all the toys--chiefly remnants of shattered armies that, on hearing of the Boy's illness, we had brought from the home playroom he had outgrown--might be left for him instead of being sent away to be burnt. The Boy's bright face dulled. "If it had been anybody else! But, mother, I don't think you know that he is the one French boy we disliked. It was he who always shouted '_à bas les Anglais!_' in the playground." The reflection that for weary weeks this obnoxious boy would be the only inmate of the _boîte_, as the invalids delighted to call their sick-room, overcame his antipathetic feeling, and he softened so far as to indite a polite little French note offering his late enemy his sympathy, and formally bequeathing to him the reversion of his toys, including the _arbre de Noël_ with all its decorations, except the little waxen Jesus nestling in the manger of yellow corn; the Soeur had already declared her intention of preserving that among her treasures. The time that had opened so gloomily had passed, and now that it was over we could look back upon many happy hours spent within the dingy prison walls. And our thoughts were in unison, for the Boy, abruptly breaking the silence, said: "And after all, it hasn't been such a bad time. Do you know, I really think I've rather enjoyed it!" L'ENVOI [Illustration: L'Envoi] Heavy skies lowered above us, the landscape seen through the driving mist-wreaths showed a depressing repetition of drabs and greys as we journeyed towards Calais. But, snugly ensconced in the _train rapide_, our hearts beat high with joy, for at last were we homeward bound. The weeks of exile in the stately old town had ended. For the last time the good Sister had lit us down the worn stone steps. As we sped seawards across the bleak country, our thoughts flew back to her, and to the little room with the red cross on its casement, wherein, although our prisoners were released, another term of nursing had already begun for her. In contrast with her life of cheerful self-abnegation, ours seemed selfish, meaningless, and empty. Dear nameless Sister! She had been an angel of mercy to us in a troublous time, and though our earthly paths may never again cross, our hearts will ever hold her memory sacred. _By the same Author_ OUR STOLEN SUMMER THE RECORD OF A ROUNDABOUT TOUR BY MARY STUART BOYD WITH ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY SKETCHES BY A.S. BOYD _Extracts from Reviews_ THE WORLD.--"To be able to go round the world nowadays, and write a descriptive record of the tour that is vivid and fresh is a positive literary feat. It has been successfully accomplished in _Our Stolen Summer_ by Mrs. Boyd, who with no ulterior object in making a book journeyed over four continents in company with her husband, and picked up _en route_ matter for one of the pleasantest, most humorous, and least pretentious books of travel we have read for many a day. It is admirably illustrated by Mr. A.S. Boyd, whose sense of humour happily matches that of his observant wife, and the reader who can lay aside this picturesque and truly delightful volume without sincere regret must have a dull and dreary mind." PUNCH.--"_Our Stolen Summer_ is calculated to lead to wholesale breakage of the Eighth Commandment. Certainly, my Baronite, reading the fascinating record of a roundabout tour, feels prompted to steal away. Mary Stuart Boyd, who pens the record, has the great advantage of the collaboration of A.S.B., whose signature is familiar in _Mr. Punch's_ Picture Gallery.... A charming book." SPECTATOR.--"The writer, by the help of a ready pen and of the pencil of a skilful illustrator, has given us in this handsome volume a number of attractive pictures of distant places.... It is good to read and pleasant to look at." TRUTH.--"You will find no pleasanter holiday reading than _Our Stolen Summer_." ACADEMY.--"A fresh record, and worth the reading. Of such is Mrs. Boyd's volume, which her husband has illustrated profusely with spirited line drawings." FIELD.--"One of the brightest books of travel that it has been our good fortune to read. The illustrations deserve a notice to themselves. They are far and away better than those which we usually get in books of this kind, and we do not know that we can bestow higher praise on them than to say that they are worthy of the letterpress which they illustrate." LAND AND WATER.--"A delightful sketch of a delightful journey.... _Our Stolen Summer_ is a book which will be read with equal delight on a lazy summer holiday, or in the heart of London when the streets are enveloped in fog and the rain is beating against the window panes. Mr. Boyd's sketches are simply admirable." SPHERE.--"A delightful record of travel. Mrs. Boyd is never dull, and there is plenty of acute observation throughout her pleasant story of travel. My Boyd's illustrations which appear on practically every page, are, it need scarcely be said, up to the high level that is already familiar to students of his black-and-white work." LADIES' FIELD.--"A singularly delightful and unaffected book of travel." MADAME.--"One of the most delightful books of travel it has been our good fortune to read." MORNING POST.--"If the encouragement of globe-trotting be a virtuous action, then certainly Mrs. Stuart Boyd has deserved well of her country. To read her book is to conceive an insensate desire to be off and away on 'the long trail' at all hazards and at all costs.... Mr. Boyd's illustrations add greatly to the interest and charm of the book. There is movement, atmosphere, and sunshine in them." STANDARD.--"Mrs. Boyd went with her husband round the world, and the latter--an artist with a sense of humour--kept his hand in practice by making droll sketches of people encountered by the way, which heighten the charm of his wife's vivacious description of a _Stolen Summer_. Mrs. Boyd has quick eyes and an open mind, and writes with sense and sensibility." DAILY TELEGRAPH.--"It is not so much what Mrs. Boyd has to tell as the invariable good humour and brightness with which she records even the most familiar things that makes the charm of her excellent diary." DAILY CHRONICLE.--"Mrs. Boyd has written the log with sparkle and observation--seeing many things that the mere man-traveller would miss. Mr. Boyd's sketches are, of course, excellent." PALL MALL GAZETTE.--"Mrs. Boyd writes with so much buoyancy, and her humour is so unexpected and unfailing, that it is safe to say that there is not a dull page from first to last in this record of a tour round the world... Mr. A.S. Boyd's numerous illustrations show him at his very best." GLOBE.--"A work to acquire as well as to peruse." WESTMINSTER GAZETTE.--"The narrative from beginning to end does not contain a dull page. Of Mr. Boyd's numerous sketches it is only necessary to say that they are excellent. Altogether _Our Stolen Summer_ will be found to be one of the most fascinating of recent books of travel." SUNDAY TIMES.--"Brilliantly and entertainingly written, and liberally illustrated by an acknowledged master of the art of black and white." SCOTSMAN.--"A beautiful and fascinating book.... Pen and pencil sketches alike have grace, nerve, and humour, and are alive with human interest and observation." GLASGOW HERALD.--"One of the most delightful travel-books of recent times.... Mrs. Boyd's volume must commend itself to people who contemplate visiting the other side of the globe and to all stay-at-home travellers as well." DAILY FREE PRESS.--"Mrs. Boyd is an admirable descriptive writer--observant, humorous, and sympathetic. Without illustrations, _Our Stolen Summer_ would be a notable addition to the literature of travel; with Mr. Boyd's collaboration it is almost unique." LEEDS MERCURY.--"Vivacious and diverting record." YORKSHIRE DAILY POST.--"For such a book there could be nothing but praise if one wrote columns about it." BIRMINGHAM DAILY POST.--"A singularly happy and interesting record of a most enjoyable tour." NORTHERN WHIG.--"Shrewdness of observation, with not a little humour and a real literary gift, mark the story of _Our Stolen Summer_." THE BOOKMAN.--"Mrs. Boyd writes with so much brightness, such vivacity and picturesqueness of style, that although the volume runs to close upon four hundred pages there is not a dull page among them. The success of _Our Stolen Summer_, however, is due as much to the artist as to the author; and praise must be equally divided. Mr. Boyd's sketches are spirited, clever, full of humour and sympathetic observation. Without a word of letter-press they would have formed an excellent travel-book; taken in conjunction with Mrs. Boyd's narrative they are irresistible." LONDON AND EDINBURGH: WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS Illustrated by A.S. Boyd A LOWDEN SABBATH MORN BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON WITH TWENTY-SEVEN PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS BY A.S. BOYD _Extracts from Reviews_ THE TIMES.--"The characters whom Stevenson had in his mind's eye are all cleverly pictured, and the drawings may be truthfully said to illustrate the writer's ideas--a quality that seldom resides in illustrations.... All are faithfully presented as only one who has known them intimately could present them.... Mr. Boyd's talent for black-and-white work has never found happier expression." MORNING POST.--"It is impossible to imagine anything more likely to appeal to the sentiment of the Scottish people throughout the world than this series of pictures, instinct with the spirit of their land." DAILY TELEGRAPH.--"One of the happiest combinations of author and artist which has been seen of late years. Mr. Boyd has entered thoroughly into the spirit of the lines, and his figures are instinct with graceful humour." DAILY CHRONICLE.--"Mr. Boyd is to be congratulated (as R. L. S. would assuredly have granted) upon interpreting so vividly a notable feature in the national life of Scotland." ATHENAEUM.--"The task of illustrating Stevenson's verses was most difficult, because it demands from the artist knowledge of local circumstances and characteristic details. Mr. Boyd's success in making us see so plainly the moods and manners of the 'restin' ploughman' while he 'daundered' in his garden and 'raxed his limbs' is the more to be enjoyed and praised." PALL MALL GAZETTE.--"Followers of the master will appreciate this beautiful book for its accurate interpretation of the poem as well as for its excellent drawing." ST. JAMES'S GAZETTE.--"There is plenty of good Scotch character in the illustrations, and a quiet observation of the humours of a parish, with such annals as those recorded by Gait." ACADEMY.--"An attractive book." SATURDAY REVIEW.--"In saying therefore that Mr. Boyd's illustrations--there is a full page drawing for each verse--are not only worthy of the poem, but actually emphasise and define its merits, we give the book the highest possible praise. It is a volume which should be added to the library of every collector." SPECTATOR.--"These illustrations to Mr. Stevenson's Scots poem are distinctly clever, especially in their characterisation of the various attendants at the village kirk." SPEAKER.--"The book presents very vividly some of the aspects (both humorous and pathetic) of a Scottish rural lowland parish, and will doubtless touch a chord in the heart of Scotsmen throughout the world." OUTLOOK.--"Many of Mr. Stevenson's admirers the world over have long desired that such a classic poem should be faithfully and adequately illustrated, and they will give a hearty welcome to this most handsome quarto." SCOTSMAN.--"One way and another the book is wholly delightful." GLASGOW EVENING NEWS.--"Mr. Boyd's contributions to a volume which ought to be popular with Scots in every part of the world, are full of pawky humour, and their realism is so pronounced that we seem to have known the models in the life." DUNDEE ADVERTISER.--"This is a volume to be treasured alike for the sake of the poet, of the artist, and of that form of Scottish life which is rapidly disappearing before the march of progress." ARBROATH HERALD.--"Mr. Boyd has represented these pictures in line sketches, which are characterised at once by the strength and confidence of a masterful draughtsman and the insight of a keen observer of character, who has long been familiar with the types presented in Stevenson's poem." GOOD WORDS.--"Mr. Boyd has portrayed, with here and there a happy trait of grace or humour beyond the wording of the text, the very scene and people. Each of the illustrations has a charm and freshness of its own." ART JOURNAL.--"Mr. Boyd's knowledge of Lothian peasants and their manners is as complete as Stevenson's. His drawings place in pictorial view the poet's thoughts, while they greatly enhance the descriptions by emphasising what the writer rightly left vague." LONDON: CHATTO & WINDUS, III St. Martin's Lane [Illustration] 
11992	----	A RESIDENCE IN FRANCE, DURING THE YEARS 1792, 1793, 1794, AND 1795; DESCRIBED IN A SERIES OF LETTERS FROM AN ENGLISH LADY; With General And Incidental Remarks On The French Character And Manners. Prepared for the Press By John Gifford, Esq. Author of the History of France, Letter to Lord Lauderdale, Letter to the Hon. T. Erskine, &c. Second Edition. _Plus je vis l'Etranger plus j'aimai ma Patrie._ --Du Belloy. London: Printed for T. N. Longman, Paternoster Row. 1797. 1792 PRELIMINARY REMARKS BY THE EDITOR. The following Letters were submitted to my inspection and judgement by the Author, of whose principles and abilities I had reason to entertain a very high opinion. How far my judgement has been exercised to advantage in enforcing the propriety of introducing them to the public, that public must decide. To me, I confess, it appeared, that a series of important facts, tending to throw a strong light on the internal state of France, during the most important period of the Revolution, could neither prove uninteresting to the general reader, nor indifferent to the future historian of that momentous epoch; and I conceived, that the opposite and judicious reflections of a well-formed and well-cultivated mind, naturally arising out of events within the immediate scope of its own observation, could not in the smallest degree diminish the interest which, in my apprehension, they are calculated to excite. My advice upon this occasion was farther influenced by another consideration. Having traced, with minute attention, the progress of the revolution, and the conduct of its advocates, I had remarked the extreme affiduity employed (as well by translations of the most violent productions of the Gallic press, as by original compositions,) to introduce and propagate, in foreign countries, those pernicious principles which have already sapped the foundation of social order, destroyed the happiness of millions, and spread desolation and ruin over the finest country in Europe. I had particularly observed the incredible efforts exerted in England, and, I am sorry to say, with too much success, for the base purpose of giving a false colour to every action of the persons exercising the powers of government in France; and I had marked, with indignation, the atrocious attempt to strip vice of its deformity, to dress crime in the garb of virtue, to decorate slavery with the symbols of freedom, and give to folly the attributes of wisdom. I had seen, with extreme concern, men, whom the lenity, mistaken lenity, I must call it, of our government had rescued from punishment, if not from ruin, busily engaged in this scandalous traffic, and, availing themselves of their extensive connections to diffuse, by an infinite variety of channels, the poison of democracy over their native land. In short, I had seen the British press, the grand palladium of British liberty, devoted to the cause of Gallic licentiousness, that mortal enemy of all freedom, and even the pure stream of British criticism diverted from its natural course, and polluted by the pestilential vapours of Gallic republicanism. I therefore deemed it essential, by an exhibition of well-authenticated facts, to correct, as far as might be, the evil effects of misrepresentation and error, and to defend the empire of truth, which had been assailed by a host of foes. My opinion of the principles on which the present system of government in France was founded, and the war to which those principles gave rise, have been long since submitted to the public. Subsequent events, far from invalidating, have strongly confirmed it. In all the public declarations of the Directory, in their domestic polity, in their conduct to foreign powers, I plainly trace the prevalence of the same principles, the same contempt for the rights and happiness of the people, the same spirit of aggression and aggrandizement, the same eagerness to overturn the existing institutions of neighbouring states, and the same desire to promote "the universal revolution of Europe," which marked the conduct of BRISSOT, LE BRUN, DESMOULINS, ROBESPIERRE, and their disciples. Indeed, what stronger instance need be adduced of the continued prevalence of these principles, than the promotion to the supreme rank in the state, of two men who took an active part in the most atrocious proceedings of the Convention at the close of 1792, and at the commencement of the following year? In all the various constitutions which have been successively adopted in that devoted country, the welfare of the people has been wholly disregarded, and while they have been amused with the shadow of liberty, they have been cruelly despoiled of the substance. Even on the establishment of the present constitution, the one which bore the nearest resemblance to a rational system, the freedom of election, which had been frequently proclaimed as the very corner-stone of liberty, was shamefully violated by the legislative body, who, in their eagerness to perpetuate their own power, did not scruple to destroy the principle on which it was founded. Nor is this the only violation of their own principles. A French writer has aptly observed, that "En revolution comme en morale, ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute:" thus the executive, in imitation of the legislative body, seem disposed to render their power perpetual. For though it be expressly declared by the 137th article of the 6th title of their present constitutional code, that the "Directory shall be partially renewed by the election of a new member every year," no step towards such election has been taken, although the time prescribed by the law is elapsed.--In a private letter from Paris now before me, written within these few days, is the following observation on this very circumstance: "The constitution has received another blow. The month of Vendemiaire is past, and our Directors still remain the same. Hence we begin to drop the appalation of Directory, and substitute that of the Cinqvir, who are more to be dreaded for their power, and more to be detested for their crimes, than the Decemvir of ancient Rome." The same letter also contains a brief abstract of the state of the metropolis of the French republic, which is wonderfully characteristic of the attention of the government to the welfare and happiness of its inhabitants! "The reign of misery and of crime seems to be perpetuated in this distracted capital: suicides, pillage, and assassinations, are daily committed, and are still suffered to pass unnoticed. But what renders our situation still more deplorable, is the existence of an innumerable band of spies, who infest all public places, and all private societies. More than a hundred thousand of these men are registered on the books of the modern SARTINE; and as the population of Paris, at most, does not exceed six hundred thousand souls, we are sure to find in six individuals one spy. This consideration makes me shudder, and, accordingly, all confidence, and all the sweets of social intercourse, are banished from among us. People salute each other, look at each other, betray mutual suspicions, observe a profound silence, and part. This, in few words, is an exact description of our modern republican parties. It is said, that poverty has compelled many respectable persons, and even state-creditors, to enlist under the standard of COCHON, (the Police Minister,) because such is the honourable conduct of our sovereigns, that they pay their spies in specie--and their soldiers, and the creditors of the state, in paper.--Such is the morality, such the justice, such are the republican virtues, so loudly vaunted by our good and dearest friends, our pensioners--the Gazetteers of England and Germany!" There is not a single abuse, which the modern reformers reprobated so loudly under the ancient system, that is not magnified, in an infinite degree, under the present establishment. For one Lettre de Cachet issued during the mild reign of LOUIS the Sixteenth, a thousand Mandats d'Arret have been granted by the tyrannical demagogues of the revolution; for one Bastile which existed under the Monarchy, a thousand Maisons de Detention have been established by the Republic. In short, crimes of every denomination, and acts of tyranny and injustice, of every kind, have multiplied, since the abolition of royalty, in a proportion which sets all the powers of calculation at defiance. It is scarcely possible to notice the present situation of France, without adverting to the circumstances of the WAR, and to the attempt now making, through the medium of negotiation, to bring it to a speedy conclusion. Since the publication of my Letter to a Noble Earl, now destined to chew the cud of disappointment in the vale of obscurity, I have been astonished to hear the same assertions advance, by the members and advocates of that party whose merit is said to consist in the violence of their opposition to the measures of government, on the origin of the war, which had experienced the most ample confutation, without the assistance of any additional reason, and without the smallest attempt to expose the invalidity of those proofs which, in my conception, amounted nearly to mathematical demonstration, and which I had dared them, in terms the most pointed, to invalidate. The question of aggression before stood on such high ground, that I had not the presumption to suppose it could derive an accession of strength from any arguments which I could supply; but I was confident, that the authentic documents which I offered to the public would remove every intervening object that tended to obstruct the fight of inattentive observers, and reflect on it such an additional light as would flash instant conviction on the minds of all. It seems, I have been deceived; but I must be permitted to suggest, that men who persist in the renewal of assertions, without a single effort to controvert the proofs which have been adduced to demonstrate their fallacy, cannot have for their object the establishment of truth--which ought, exclusively, to influence the conduct of public characters, whether writers or orators. With regard to the negotiation, I can derive not the smallest hopes of success from a contemplation of the past conduct, or of the present principles, of the government of France. When I compare the projects of aggrandizement openly avowed by the French rulers, previous to the declaration of war against this country, with the exorbitant pretensions advanced in the arrogant reply of the Executive Directory to the note presented by the British Envoy at Basil in the month of February, 1796, and with the more recent observations contained in their official note of the 19th of September last, I cannot think it probable that they will accede to any terms of peace that are compatible with the interest and safety of the Allies. Their object is not so much the establishment as the extension of their republic. As to the danger to be incurred by a treaty of peace with the republic of France, though it has been considerably diminished by the events of the war, it is still unquestionably great. This danger principally arises from a pertinacious adherence, on the part of the Directory, to those very principles which were adopted by the original promoters of the abolition of Monarchy in France. No greater proof of such adherence need be required than their refusal to repeal those obnoxious decrees (passed in the months of November and December, 1792,) which created so general and so just an alarm throughout Europe, and which excited the reprobation even of that party in England, which was willing to admit the equivocal interpretation given to them by the Executive Council of the day. I proved, in the Letter to a Noble Earl before alluded to, from the very testimony of the members of that Council themselves, as exhibited in their official instructions to one of their confidential agents, that the interpretation which they had assigned to those decrees, in their communications with the British Ministry, was a base interpretation, and that they really intended to enforce the decrees, to the utmost extent of their possible operation, and, by a literal construction thereof, to encourage rebellion in every state, within the reach of their arms or their principles. Nor have the present government merely forborne to repeal those destructive laws--they have imitated the conduct of their predecessors, have actually put them in execution wherever they had the ability to do so, and have, in all respects, as far as related to those decrees, adopted the precise spirit and principles of the faction which declared war against England. Let any man read the instructions of the Executive Council to PUBLICOLA CHAUSSARD, their Commissary in the Netherlands, in 1792 and 1793, and an account of the proceedings in the Low Countries consequent thereon, and then examine the conduct of the republican General, BOUNAPARTE, in Italy--who must necessarily act from the instructions of the Executive Directory----and he will be compelled to acknowledge the justice of my remark, and to admit that the latter actuated by the same pernicious desire to overturn the settled order of society, which invariably marked the conduct of the former. "It is an acknowledged fact, that every revolution requires a provisional power to regulate its disorganizing movements, and to direct the methodical demolition of every part of the ancient social constitution.-- Such ought to be the revolutionary power. "To whom can such power belong, but to the French, in those countries into which they may carry their arms? Can they with safety suffer it to be exercised by any other persons? It becomes the French republic, then, to assume this kind of guardianship over the people whom she awakens to Liberty!*" * _Considerations Generales fur l'Esprit et les Principes du Decret du 15 Decembre_. Such were the Lacedaemonian principles avowed by the French government in 1792, and such is the Lacedaimonian policy* pursued by the French government in 1796! It cannot then, I conceive, be contended, that a treaty with a government still professing principles which have been repeatedly proved to be subversive of all social order, which have been acknowledged by their parents to have for their object the methodical demolition of existing constitutions, can be concluded without danger or risk. That danger, I admit, is greatly diminished, because the power which was destined to carry into execution those gigantic projects which constituted its object, has, by the operations of the war, been considerably curtailed. They well may exist in equal force, but the ability is no longer the same. MACHIAVEL justly observes, that it was the narrow policy of the Lacedaemonians always to destroy the ancient constitution, and establish their own form of government, in the counties and cities which they subdued. But though I maintain the existence of danger in a Treaty with the Republic of France, unless she previously repeal the decrees to which I have adverted, and abrogate the acts to which they have given birth, I by no means contend that it exists in such a degree as to justify a determination, on the part of the British government, to make its removal the sine qua non of negotiation, or peace. Greatly as I admire the brilliant endowments of Mr. BURKE, and highly as I respect and esteem him for the manly and decisive part which he has taken, in opposition to the destructive anarchy of republican France, and in defence of the constitutional freedom of Britain; I cannot either agree with him on this point, or concur with him in the idea that the restoration of the Monarchy of France was ever the object of the war. That the British Ministers ardently desired that event, and were earnest in their endeavours to promote it, is certain; not because it was the object of the war, but because they considered it as the best means of promoting the object of the war, which was, and is, the establishment of the safety and tranquillity of Europe, on a solid and permanent basis. If that object can be attained, and the republic exist, there is nothing in the past conduct and professions of the British Ministers, that can interpose an obstacle to the conclusion of peace. Indeed, in my apprehension, it would be highly impolitic in any Minister, at the commencement of a war, to advance any specific object, that attainment of which should be declared to be the sine qua non of peace. If mortals could arrogate to themselves the attributes of the Deity, if they could direct the course of events, and controul the chances of war, such conduct would be justifiable; but on no other principle, I think, can its defence be undertaken. It is, I grant, much to be lamented, that the protection offered to the friends of monarchy in France, by the declaration of the 29th of October, 1793, could not be rendered effectual: as far as the offer went it was certainly obligatory on the party who made it; but it was merely conditional--restricted, as all similar offers necessarily must be, by the ability to fulfil the obligation incurred. In paying this tribute to truth, it is not my intention to retract, in the smallest degree, the opinion I have ever professed, that the restoration of the ancient monarchy of France would be the best possible means not only of securing the different states of Europe from the dangers of republican anarchy, but of promoting the real interests, welfare, and happiness of the French people themselves. The reasons on which this opinion is founded I have long since explained; and the intelligence which I have since received from France, at different times, has convinced me that a very great proportion of her inhabitants concur in the sentiment. The miseries resulting from the establishment of a republican system of government have been severely felt, and deeply deplored; and I am fully persuaded, that the subjects and tributaries of France will cordially subscribe to the following observation on republican freedom, advanced by a writer who had deeply studied the genius of republics: _"Di tutte le fervitu dure, quella e durissima, che ti sottomette ad una republica; l'una, perche e la piu durabile, e manco si puo sperarne d'ufare: L'altra perche il fine della republica e enervare ed indebolire, debolire, per accrescere il corpo suo, tutti gli altri corpi._*" JOHN GIFFORD. London, Nov. 12, 1796. * _Discorsi di Nicoli Machiavelli,_ Lib. ii. p. 88. P.S. Since I wrote the preceding remarks, I have been given to understand, that by a decree, subsequent to the completion of the constitutional code, the first partial renewal of the Executive Directory was deferred till the month of March, 1979; and that, therefore, in this instance, the present Directory cannot be accused of having violated the constitution. But the guilt is only to be transferred from the Directory to the Convention, who passed that decree, as well as some others, in contradiction to a positive constitutional law.-----Indeed, the Directory themselves betrayed no greater delicacy with regard to the observance of the constitution, or M. BARRAS would never have taken his seat among them; for the constitution expressly says, (and this positive provision was not even modified by any subsequent mandate of the Convention,) that no man shall be elected a member of the Directory who has not completed his fortieth year--whereas it is notorious that Barras had not this requisite qualification, having been born in the year 1758! - - - - - - - - - - - - I avail myself of the opportunity afforded me by the publication of a Second Edition to notice some insinuations which have been thrown out, tending to question the authenticity of the work. The motives which have induced the author to withhold from these Letters the sanction of her name, relate not to herself, but to some friends still remaining in France, whose safety she justly conceives might be affected by the disclosure. Acceding to the force and propriety of these motives, yet aware of the suspicions to which a recital of important facts, by an anonymous writer, would naturally be exposed, and sensible, also, that a certain description of critics would gladly avail themselves of any opportunity for discouraging the circulation of a work which contained principles hostile to their own; I determined to prefix my name to the publication. By so doing, I conceived that I stood pledged for its authenticity; and the matter has certainly been put in a proper light by an able and respectable critic, who has observed that "Mr. GIFFORD stands between the writer and the public," and that "his name and character are the guarantees for the authenticity of the Letters." This is precisely the situation in which I meant to place myself-- precisely the pledge which I meant to give. The Letters are exactly what they profess to be; the production of a Lady's pen, and written in the very situations which they describe.--The public can have no grounds for suspecting my veracity on a point in which I can have no possible interest in deceiving them; and those who know me will do me the justice to acknowledge, that I have a mind superior to the arts of deception, and that I am incapable of sanctioning an imposition, for any purpose, or from any motives whatever. Thus much I deemed it necessary to say, as well from a regard for my own character, and from a due attention to the public, as from a wish to prevent the circulation of the work from being subjected to the impediments arising from the prevalence of a groundless suspicion. I naturally expected, that some of the preceding remarks would excite the resentment and draw down the vengeance of those persons to whom they evidently applied. The contents of every publication are certainly a fair subject for criticism; and to the fair comments of real critics, however repugnant to the sentiments I entertain, or the doctrine I seek to inculcate, I shall ever submit without murmur or reproach. But, when men, assuming that respectable office, openly violate all the duties attached to it, and, sinking the critic in the partizan, make a wanton attack on my veracity, it becomes proper to repel the injurious imputation; and the same spirit which dictates submission to the candid award of an impartial judge, prescribes indignation and scorn at the cowardly attacks of a secret assassin. April 14, 1797. RESIDENCE IN FRANCE DEDICATION To The RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE. SIR, It is with extreme diffidence that I offer the following pages to Your notice; yet as they describe circumstances which more than justify Your own prophetic reflections, and are submitted to the public eye from no other motive than a love of truth and my country, I may, perhaps, be excused for presuming them to be not altogether unworthy of such a distinction. While Your puny opponents, if opponents they may be called, are either sunk into oblivion, or remembered only as associated with the degrading cause they attempted to support, every true friend of mankind, anticipating the judgement of posterity, views with esteem and veneration the unvarying Moralist, the profound Politician, the indefatigable Servant of the Public, and the warm Promoter of his country's happiness. To this universal testimony of the great and good, permit me, Sir, to join my humble tribute; being, with the utmost respect, SIR, Your obedient Servant, THE AUTHOR. Sept. 12, 1796. PREFACE After having, more than once, in the following Letters, expressed opinions decidedly unfavourable to female authorship, when not justified by superior talents, I may, by now producing them to the public, subject myself to the imputation either of vanity or inconsistency; and I acknowledge that a great share of candour and indulgence must be possessed by readers who attend to the apologies usually made on such occasions: yet I may with the strictest truth alledge, that I should never have ventured to offer any production of mine to the world, had I not conceived it possible that information and reflections collected and made on the spot, during a period when France exhibited a state, of which there is no example in the annals of mankind, might gratify curiosity without the aid of literary embellishment; and an adherence to truth, I flattered myself, might, on a subject of this nature, be more acceptable than brilliancy of thought, or elegance of language. The eruption of a volcano may be more scientifically described and accounted for by the philosopher; but the relation of the illiterate peasant who beheld it, and suffered from its effects, may not be less interesting to the common hearer. Above all, I was actuated by the desire of conveying to my countrymen a just idea of that revolution which they have been incited to imitate, and of that government by which it has been proposed to model our own. Since these pages were written, the Convention has nominally been dissolved, and a new constitution and government have succeeded, but no real change of principle or actors has taken place; and the system, of which I have endeavoured to trace the progress, must still be considered as existing, with no other variations than such as have been necessarily produced by the difference of time and circumstances. The people grew tired of massacres en masse, and executions en detail: even the national fickleness operated in favour of humanity; and it was also discovered, that however a spirit of royalism might be subdued to temporary inaction, it was not to be eradicated, and that the sufferings of its martyrs only tended to propagate and confirm it. Hence the scaffolds flow less frequently with blood, and the barbarous prudence of CAMILLE DESMOULINS' guillotine economique has been adopted. But exaction and oppression are still practised in every shape, and justice is not less violated, nor is property more secure, than when the former was administered by revolutionary tribunals, and the latter was at the disposition of revolutionary armies. The error of supposing that the various parties which have usurped the government of France have differed essentially from each other is pretty general; and it is common enough to hear the revolutionary tyranny exclusively associated with the person of ROBESPIERRE, and the thirty-first of May, 1793, considered as the epoch of its introduction. Yet whoever examines attentively the situation and politics of France, from the subversion of the Monarchy, will be convinced that all the principles of this monstrous government were established during the administration of the Brissotins, and that the factions which succeeded, from Danton and Robespierre to Sieyes and Barras, have only developed them, and reduced them to practice. The revolution of the thirty-first of May, 1793, was not a contest for system but for power--that of July the twenty-eighth, 1794, (9th Thermidor,) was merely a struggle which of two parties should sacrifice the other--that of October the fifth, 1795, (13th Vendemiaire,) a war of the government against the people. But in all these convulsions, the primitive doctrines of tyranny and injustice were watched like the sacred fire, and have never for a moment been suffered to languish. It may appear incredible to those who have not personally witnessed this phoenomenon, that a government detested and despised by an immense majority of the nation, should have been able not only to resist the efforts of so many powers combined against it, but even to proceed from defence to conquest, and to mingle surprize and terror with those sentiments of contempt and abhorrence which it originally excited. That wisdom or talents are not the sources of this success, may be deduced from the situation of France itself. The armies of the republic have, indeed, invaded the territories of its enemies, but the desolation of their own country seems to increase with every triumph--the genius of the French government appears powerful only in destruction, and inventive only in oppression--and, while it is endowed with the faculty of spreading universal ruin, it is incapable of promoting the happiness of the smallest district under its protection. The unrestrained pillage of the conquered countries has not saved France from multiplied bankruptcies, nor her state-creditors from dying through want; and the French, in the midst of their external prosperity, are often distinguished from the people whom their armies have been subjugated, only by a superior degree of wretchedness, and a more irregular despotism. With a power excessive and unlimited, and surpassing what has hitherto been possessed by any Sovereign, it would be difficult to prove that these democratic despots have effected any thing either useful or beneficent. Whatever has the appearance of being so will be found, on examination, to have for its object some purpose of individual interest or personal vanity. They manage the armies, they embellish Paris, they purchase the friendship of some states and the neutrality of others; but if there be any real patriots in France, how little do they appreciate these useless triumphs, these pilfered museums, and these fallacious negotiations, when they behold the population of their country diminished, its commerce annihilated, its wealth dissipated, its morals corrupted, and its liberty destroyed-- "Thus, on deceitful Aetna's Flow'ry side Unfading verdure glads the roving eye, While secret flames with unextinguish'd rage Insatiate on her wafted entrails prey, And melt her treach'rous beauties into ruin." Those efforts which the partizans of republicanism admire, and which even well-disposed persons regard as prodigies, are the simple and natural result of an unprincipled despotism, acting upon, and disposing of, all the resources of a rich, populous, and enslaved nation. _"Il devient aise d'etre habile lorsqu'on s'est delivre des scrupules et des loix, de tout honneur et de toute justice, des droits de ses semblables, et des devoirs de l'autorite--a ce degre d'independence la plupart des obstacles qui modifient l'activite humaine disparaissent; l'on parait avoir du talent lorsqu'on n'a que de l'impudence, et l'abus de la force passe pour energie._*" * "Exertions of ability become easy, when men have released themselves from the scruples of conscience, the restraints of law, the ties of honour, the bonds of justice, the claims of their fellow creatures, and obedience to their superiors:--at this point of independence, most of the obstacles which modify human activity disappear; impudence is mistaken for talents; and the abuse of power passes for energy." The operations of all other governments must, in a great measure, be restrained by the will of the people, and by established laws; with them, physical and political force are necessarily separate considerations: they have not only to calculate what can be borne, but what will be submitted to; and perhaps France is the first country that has been compelled to an exertion of its whole strength, without regard to any obstacle, natural, moral, or divine. It is for want of sufficiently investigating and allowing for this moral and political latitudinarianism of our enemies, that we are apt to be too precipitate in censuring the conduct of the war; and, in our estimation of what has been done, we pay too little regard to the principles by which we have been directed. An honest man could scarcely imagine the means we have had to oppose, and an Englishman still less conceive that they would have been submitted to: for the same reason that the Romans had no law against parricide, till experience had evinced the possibility of the crime. In a war like the present, advantage is not altogether to be appreciated by military superiority. If, as there is just ground for believing, our external hostilities have averted an internal revolution, what we have escaped is of infinitely more importance to us than what we could acquire. Commerce and conquest, compared to this, are secondary objects; and the preservation of our liberties and our constitution is a more solid blessing than the commerce of both the Indies, or the conquest of nations. Should the following pages contribute to impress this salutary truth on my countrymen, my utmost ambition will be gratified; persuaded, that a sense of the miseries they have avoided, and of the happiness they enjoy, will be their best incentive, whether they may have to oppose the arms of the enemy in a continuance of the war, or their more dangerous machinations on the restoration of peace. I cannot conclude without noticing my obligations to the Gentleman whose name is prefixed to these volumes; and I think it at the same time incumbent on me to avow, that, in having assisted the author, he must not be considered as sanctioning the literary imperfections of the work. When the subject was first mentioned to him, he did me the justice of supposing, that I was not likely to have written any thing, the general tendency of which he might disapprove; and when, on perusing the manuscript, he found it contain sentiments dissimilar to his own, he was too liberal to require a sacrifice of them as the condition of his services.--I confess that previous to my arrival in France in 1792, I entertained opinions somewhat more favourable to the principle of the revolution than those which I was led to adopt at a subsequent period. Accustomed to regard with great justice the British constitution as the standard of known political excellence, I hardly conceived it possible that freedom or happiness could exist under any other: and I am not singular in having suffered this prepossession to invalidate even the evidence of my senses. I was, therefore, naturally partial to whatever professed to approach the object of my veneration. I forgot that governments are not to be founded on imitations or theories, and that they are perfect only as adapted to the genius, manners, and disposition of the people who are subject to them. Experience and maturer judgement have corrected my error, and I am perfectly convinced, that the old monarchical constitution of France, with very slight meliorations, was every way better calculated for the national character than a more popular form of government. A critic, though not very severe, will discover many faults of style, even where the matter may not be exceptionable. Besides my other deficiencies, the habit of writing is not easily supplied, and, as I despaired of attaining excellence, and was not solicitous about degrees of mediocrity, I determined on conveying to the public such information as I was possessed of, without alteration or ornament. Most of these Letters were written exactly in the situation they describe, and remain in their original state; the rest were arranged according as opportunities were favourable, from notes and diaries kept when "the times were hot and feverish," and when it would have been dangerous to attempt more method. I forbear to describe how they were concealed either in France or at my departure, because I might give rise to the persecution and oppression of others. But, that I may not attribute to myself courage which I do not possess, nor create doubts of my veracity, I must observe, that I seldom ventured to write till I was assured of some certain means of conveying my papers to a person who could safely dispose of them. As a considerable period has elapsed since my return, it may not be improper to add, that I took some steps for the publication of these Letters so early as July, 1795. Certain difficulties, however, arising, of which I was not aware, I relinquished my design, and should not have been tempted to resume it, but for the kindness of the Gentleman whose name appears as the Editor. Sept. 12, 1796. A RESIDENCE IN FRANCE. May 10, 1792. I am every day more confirmed in the opinion I communicated to you on my arrival, that the first ardour of the revolution is abated.--The bridal days are indeed past, and I think I perceive something like indifference approaching. Perhaps the French themselves are not sensible of this change; but I who have been absent two years, and have made as it were a sudden transition from enthusiasm to coldness, without passing through the intermediate gradations, am forcibly struck with it. When I was here in 1790, parties could be scarcely said to exist--the popular triumph was too complete and too recent for intolerance and persecution, and the Noblesse and Clergy either submitted in silence, or appeared to rejoice in their own defeat. In fact, it was the confusion of a decisive conquest--the victors and the vanquished were mingled together; and the one had not leisure to exercise cruelty, nor the other to meditate revenge. Politics had not yet divided society; nor the weakness and pride of the great, with the malice and insolence of the little, thinned the public places. The politics of the women went no farther than a few couplets in praise of liberty, and the patriotism of the men was confined to an habit de garde nationale, the device of a button, or a nocturnal revel, which they called mounting guard.--Money was yet plenty, at least silver, (for the gold had already begun to disappear,) commerce in its usual train, and, in short, to one who observes no deeper than myself, every thing seemed gay and flourishing--the people were persuaded they were happier; and, amidst such an appearance of content, one must have been a cold politician to have examined too strictly into the future. But all this, my good brother, is in a great measure subsided; and the disparity is so evident, that I almost imagine myself one of the seven sleepers--and, like them too, the coin I offer is become rare, and regarded more as medals than money. The playful distinctions of Aristocrate and Democrate are degenerated into the opprobium and bitterness of Party--political dissensions pervade and chill the common intercourse of life--the people are become gross and arbitrary, and the higher classes (from a pride which those who consider the frailty of human nature will allow for) desert the public amusements, where they cannot appear but at the risk of being the marked objects of insult.--The politics of the women are no longer innoxious--their political principles form the leading trait of their characters; and as you know we are often apt to supply by zeal what we want in power, the ladies are far from being the most tolerant partizans on either side.--The national uniform, which contributed so much to the success of the revolution, and stimulated the patriotism of the young men, is become general; and the task of mounting guard, to which it subjects the wearer, is now a serious and troublesome duty.--To finish my observations, and my contrast, no Specie whatever is to be seen; and the people, if they still idolize their new form of government, do it at present with great sobriety--the Vive la nation! seems now rather the effect of habit than of feeling; and one seldom hears any thing like the spontaneous and enthusiastic sounds I formerly remarked. I have not yet been here long enough to discover the causes of this change; perhaps they may lie too deep for such an observer as myself: but if (as the causes of important effects sometimes do) they lie on the surface, they will be less liable to escape me, than an observer of more pretentions. Whatever my remarks are, I will not fail to communicate them--the employment will at least be agreeable to me, though the result should not be satisfactory to you; and as I shall never venture on any reflection, without relating the occurrence that gave rise to it, your own judgement will enable you to correct the errors of mine. I was present yesterday at a funeral service, performed in honour of General Dillon. This kind of service is common in Catholic countries, and consists in erecting a cenotaph, ornamented with numerous lights, flowers, crosses, &c. The church is hung with black, and the mass is performed the same as if the body were present. On account of General Dillon's profession, the mass yesterday was a military one. It must always, I imagine, sound strange to the ears of a Protestant, to hear nothing but theatrical music on these occasions, and indeed I could never reconcile myself to it; for if we allow any effect to music at all, the train of thought which should inspire us with respect for the dead, and reflections on mortality, is not likely to be produced by the strains in which Dido bewails Eneas, or in which Armida assails the virtue of Rinaldo.--I fear, that in general the air of an opera reminds the belle of the Theatre where she heard it--and, by a natural transition, of the beau who attended her, and the dress of herself and her neighbours. I confess, this was nearly my own case yesterday, on hearing an air from "Sargines;" and had not the funeral oration reminded me, I should have forgotten the unfortunate event we were celebrating, and which, for some days before, when undistracted by this pious ceremony, I had dwelt on with pity and horror.*-- * At the first skirmish between the French and Austrians near Lisle, a general panic seized the former, and they retreated in disorder to Lisle, crying _"Sauve qui peut, & nous fomnes (sic) trahis."_--"Let every one shift for himself--we are betrayed." The General, after in vain endeavouring to rally them, was massacred at his return on the great square.--My pen faulters, and refuses to describe the barbarities committed on the lifeless hero. Let it suffice, perhaps more than suffice, to say, that his mutilated remains were thrown on a fire, which these savages danced round, with yells expressive of their execrable festivity. A young Englishman, who was so unfortunate as to be near the spot, was compelled to join in this outrage to humanity.--The same day a gentleman, the intimate friend of our acquaintance, Mad. _____, was walking (unconscious what had happened) without the gate which leads to Douay, and was met by the flying ruffians on their return; immediately on seeing him they shouted, _"Voila encore un Aristocrate!"_ and massacred him on the spot. --Independent of any regret for the fate of Dillon, who is said to have been a brave and good officer, I am sorry that the first event of this war should be marked by cruelty and licentiousness.--Military discipline has been much relaxed since the revolution, and from the length of time since the French have been engaged in a land war, many of the troops must be without that kind of courage which is the effect of habit. The danger, therefore, of suffering them to alledge that they are betrayed, whenever they do not choose to fight, and to excuse their own cowardice by ascribing treachery to their leaders, is incalculable.--Above all, every infraction of the laws in a country just supposing itself become free, cannot be too severely repressed. The National Assembly have done all that humanity could suggest--they have ordered the punishment of the assassins, and have pensioned and adopted the General's children. The orator expatiated both on the horror of the act and its consequences, as I should have thought, with some ingenuity, had I not been assured by a brother orator that the whole was "execrable." But I frequently remark, that though a Frenchman may suppose the merit of his countrymen to be collectively superior to that of the whole world, he seldom allows any individual of them to have so large a portion as himself.--Adieu: I have already written enough to convince you I have neither acquired the Gallomania, nor forgotten my friends in England; and I conclude with a wish _a propos_ to my subject--that they may long enjoy the rational liberty they possess and so well deserve.--Yours. May, 1792. You, my dear _____, who live in a land of pounds, shillings, and pence, can scarcely form an idea of our embarrassments through the want of them. 'Tis true, these are petty evils; but when you consider that they happen every day, and every hour, and that, if they are not very serious, they are very frequent, you will rejoice in the splendour of your national credit, which procures you all the accommodation of paper currency, without diminishing the circulation of specie. Our only currency here consists of assignats of 5 livres, 50, 100, 200, and upwards: therefore in making purchases, you must accommodate your wants to the value of your assignat, or you must owe the shopkeeper, or the shopkeeper must owe you; and, in short, as an old woman assured me to-day, "C'est de quoi faire perdre la tete," and, if it lasted long, it would be the death of her. Within these few days, however, the municipalities have attempted to remedy the inconvenience, by creating small paper of five, ten, fifteen, and twenty sols, which they give in exchange for assignats of five livres; but the number they are allowed to issue is limited, and the demand for them so great, that the accommodation is inadequate to the difficulty of procuring it. On the days on which this paper (which is called billets de confiance) is issued, the Hotel de Ville is besieged by a host of women collected from all parts of the district--Peasants, small shopkeepers, fervant maids, and though last, not least formidable-- fishwomen. They usually take their stand two or three hours before the time of delivery, and the interval is employed in discussing the news, and execrating paper money. But when once the door is opened, a scene takes place which bids defiance to language, and calls for the pencil of a Hogarth. Babel was, I dare say, comparatively to this, a place of retreat and silence. Clamours, revilings, contentions, tearing of hair, and breaking of heads, generally conclude the business; and, after the loss of half a day's time, some part of their clothes, and the expence of a few bruises, the combatants retire with small bills to the value of five, or perhaps ten livres, as the whole resource to carry on their little commerce for the ensuing week. I doubt not but the paper may have had some share in alienating the minds of the people from the revolution. Whenever I want to purchase any thing, the vender usually answers my question by another, and with a rueful kind of tone inquires, "En papier, madame?"--and the bargain concludes with a melancholy reflection on the hardness of the times. The decrees relative to the priests have likewise occasioned much dissension; and it seems to me impolitic thus to have made religion the standard of party. The high mass, which is celebrated by a priest who has taken the oaths, is frequented by a numerous, but, it must be confessed, an ill-drest and ill-scented congregation; while the low mass, which is later, and which is allowed the nonjuring clergy, has a gayer audience, but is much less crouded.--By the way, I believe many who formerly did not much disturb themselves about religious tenets, have become rigid Papists since an adherence to the holy see has become a criterion of political opinion. But if these separatists are bigoted and obstinate, the conventionalists on their side are ignorant and intolerant. I enquired my way to-day to the Rue de l'Hopital. The woman I spoke to asked me, in a menacing tone, what I wanted there. I replied, which was true, that I merely wanted to pass through the street as my nearest way home; upon which she lowered her voice, and conducted me very civilly.--I mentioned the circumstance on my return, and found that the nuns of the hospital had their mass performed by a priest who had not taken the oaths, and that those who were suspected of going to attend it were insulted, and sometimes ill treated. A poor woman, some little time ago, who conceived perhaps that her salvation might depend on exercising her religion in the way she had been accustomed to, persisted in going, and was used by the populace with such a mixture of barbarity and indecency, that her life was despaired of. Yet this is the age and the country of Philosophers.--Perhaps you will begin to think Swift's sages, who only amused themselves with endeavouring to propagate sheep without wool, not so contemptible. I am almost convinced myself, that when a man once piques himself on being a philosopher, if he does no mischief you ought to be satisfied with him. We passed last Sunday with Mr. de ____'s tenants in the country. Nothing can equal the avidity of these people for news. We sat down after dinner under some trees in the village, and Mr. de _____ began reading the Gazette to the farmers who were about us. In a few minutes every thing that could hear (for I leave understanding the pedantry of a French newspaper out of the question) were his auditors. A party at quoits in one field, and a dancing party in another, quitted their amusements, and listened with undivided attention. I believe in general the farmers are the people most contented with the revolution, and indeed they have reason to be so; for at present they refuse to sell their corn unless for money, while they pay their rent in assignats; and farms being for the most part on leases, the objections of the landlord to this kind of payment are of no avail. Great encouragement is likewise held out to them to purchase national property, which I am informed they do to an extent that may for some time be injurious to agriculture; for in their eagerness to acquire land, the deprive themselves of cultivating it. They do not, like our crusading ancestors, "sell the pasture to buy the horse," but the horse to buy the pasture; so that we may expect to see in many places large farms in the hands of those who are obliged to neglect them. A great change has happened within the last year, with regard to landed property--so much has been sold, that many farmers have had the opportunity of becoming proprietors. The rage of emigration, which the approach of war, pride, timidity, and vanity are daily increasing, has occasioned many of the Noblesse to sell their estates, which, with those of the Crown and the Clergy, form a large mass of property, thrown as it were into general circulation. This may in future be beneficial to the country, but the present generation will perhaps have to purchase (and not cheaply) advantages they cannot enjoy. A philanthropist may not think of this with regret; and yet I know not why one race is preferable to another, or why an evil should be endured by those who exist now, in order that those who succeed may be free from it.--I would willingly plant a million of acorns, that another age might be supplied with oaks; but I confess, I do not think it quite so pleasant for us to want bread, in order that our descendants may have a superfluity. I am half ashamed of these selfish arguments; but really I have been led to them through mere apprehension of what I fear the people may have yet to endure, in consequence of the revolution. I have frequently observed how little taste the French have for the country, and I believe all my companions, except Mr. de _____, who took (as one always does) an interest in surveying his property, were heartily ennuyes with our little excursion.--Mad. De _____, on her arrival, took her post by the farmer's fire-side, and was out of humour the whole day, inasmuch as our fare was homely, and there was nothing but rustics to see or be seen by. That a plain dinner should be a serious affair, you may not wonder; but the last cause of distress, perhaps you will not conclude quite so natural at her years. All that can be said about it is, that she is a French woman, who rouges, and wears lilac ribbons, at seventy-four. I hope, in my zeal to obey you, my reflections will not be too voluminous.--For the present I will be warned by my conscience, and add only, that I am, Yours. June 10, 1792. You observe, with some surprize, that I make no mention of the Jacobins-- the fact is, that until now I have heard very little about them. Your English partizans of the revolution have, by publishing their correspondence with these societies, attributed a consequence to them infinitely beyond what they have had pretensions to:--a prophet, it is said, is not honoured in his own country--I am sure a Jacobin is not. In provincial towns these clubs are generally composed of a few of the lowest tradesmen, who have so disinterested a patriotism, as to bestow more attention on the state than on their own shops; and as a man may be an excellent patriot without the aristocratic talents of reading and writing, they usually provide a secretary or president, who can supply these deficiencies--a country attorney, a _Pere de l'oratoire,_ or a disbanded capuchin, is in most places the candidate for this office. The clubs often assemble only to read the newspapers; but where they are sufficiently in force, they make motions for "fetes," censure the municipalities, and endeavour to influence the elections of the members who compose them.--That of Paris is supposed to consist of about six thousand members; but I am told their number and influence are daily increasing, and that the National Assembly is more subservient to them than it is willing to acknowledge--yet, I believe, the people at large are equally adverse to the Jacobins, who are said to entertain the chimerical project of forming a republic, and to the Aristocrates, who wish to restore the ancient government. The party in opposition to both these, who are called the Feuillans,* have the real voice of the people with them, and knowing this, they employ less art than their opponents, have no point of union, and perhaps may finally be undermined by intrigue, or even subdued by violence. *They derive this appellation, as the Jacobins do theirs, from the convent at which they hold their meetings. You seem not to comprehend why I include vanity among the causes of emigration, and yet I assure you it has had no small share in many of them. The gentry of the provinces, by thus imitating the higher noblesse, imagine they have formed a kind of a common cause, which may hereafter tend to equalize the difference of ranks, and associate them with those they have been accustomed to look up to as their superiors. It is a kind of ton among the women, particularly to talk of their emigrated relations, with an accent more expressive of pride than regret, and which seems to lay claim to distinction rather than pity. I must now leave you to contemplate the boasted misfortunes of these belles, that I may join the card party which forms their alleviation.-- Adieu. June 24, 1792. You have doubtless learned from the public papers the late outrage of the Jacobins, in order to force the King to consent to the formation of an army at Paris, and to sign the decree for banishing the nonjuring Clergy. The newspapers will describe to you the procession of the Sans-Culottes, the indecency of their banners, and the disorders which were the result-- but it is impossible for either them or me to convey an idea of the general indignation excited by these atrocities. Every well-meaning person is grieved for the present, and apprehensive for the future: and I am not without hope, that this open avowal of the designs of the Jacobins, will unite the Constitutionalists and Aristocrates, and that they will join their efforts in defence of the Crown, as the only means of saving both from being overwhelmed by a faction, who are now become too daring to be despised. Many of the municipalities and departments are preparing to address they King, on the fortitude he displayed in this hour of insult and peril.--I know not why, but the people have been taught to entertain a mean opinion of his personal courage; and the late violence will at least have the good effect of undeceiving them. It is certain, that he behaved on this occasion with the utmost coolness; and the Garde Nationale, whose hand he placed on his heart, attested that it had no unusual palpitation. That the King should be unwilling to sanction the raising an army under the immediate auspice of the avowed enemies of himself, and of the constitution he has sworn to protect, cannot be much wondered at; and those who know the Catholic religion, and consider that this Prince is devout, and that he has reason to suspect the fidelity of all who approach him, will wonder still less that he refuses to banish a class of men, whose influence is extensive, and whose interest it is to preserve their attachment to him. These events have thrown a gloom over private societies; and public amusements, as I observed in a former letter, are little frequented; so that, on the whole, time passes heavily with a people who, generally speaking, have few resources in themselves. Before the revolution, France was at this season a scene of much gaiety. Every village had alternately a sort of Fete, which nearly answers to our Wake--but with this difference, that it was numerously attended by all ranks, and the amusement was dancing, instead of wrestling and drinking. Several small fields, or different parts of a large one, were provided with music, distinguished by flags, and appropriated to the several classes of dancers--one for the peasants, another for the bourgeois, and a third for the higher orders. The young people danced beneath the ardour of a July sun, while the old looked on and regaled themselves with beer, cyder, and gingerbread. I was always much pleased with this village festivity: it gratified my mind more than select and expensive amusements, because it was general, and within the power of all who chose to partake of it; and the little distinction of rank which was preserved, far from diminishing the pleasure of any, added, I am certain, to the freedom of all. By mixing with those only of her own class, the Paysanne* was spared the temptation of envying the pink ribbons of the Bourgeoise, who in her turn was not disturbed by an immediate rivalship with the sash and plumes of the provincial belle. But this custom is now much on the decline. The young women avoid occasions where an inebriated soldier may offer himself as her partner in the dance, and her refusal be attended with insult to herself, and danger to those who protect her; and as this licence is nearly as offensive to the decent Bourgeoise as to the female of higher condition, this sort of fete will most probably be entirely abandoned. *The head-dress of the French _Paysanne_ is uniformly a small cap, without ribbon or ornament of any kind, except in that part of Normandy which is called the _Pays de Caux,_ where the Paysannes wear a particular kind of head dress, ornamented with silver. The people here all dance much better than those of the same rank in England; but this national accomplishment is not instinctive: for though few of the laborious class have been taught to read, there are scarcely any so poor as not to bestow three livres for a quarter's instruction from a dancing master; and with this three months' noviciate they become qualified to dance through the rest of their lives. The rage for emigration, and the approach of the Austrians, have occasioned many restrictions on travelling, especially near the seacoast of frontiers. No person can pass through a town without a passport from the municipality he resides in, specifying his age, the place of his birth, his destination, the height of his person, and the features of his face. The Marquis de C____ entered the town yesterday, and at the gate presented his passport as usual; the guard looked at the passport, and in a high tone demanded his name, whence he came, and where he was going. M. de C____ referred him to the passport, and suspecting the man could not read, persisted in refusing to give a verbal account of himself, but with much civility pressed the perusal of the passport; adding, that if it was informal, Monsieur might write to the municipality that granted it. The man, however, did not approve of the jest, and took the Marquis before the municipality, who sentenced him to a month's imprisonment for his pleasantry. The French are becoming very grave, and a bon-mot will not now, as formerly, save a man's life.--I do not remember to have seen in any English print an anecdote on this subject, which at once marks the levity of the Parisians, and the wit and presence of mind of the Abbe Maury.--At the beginning of the revolution, when the people were very much incensed against the Abbe, he was one day, on quitting the Assembly, surrounded by an enraged mob, who seized on him, and were hurrying him away to execution, amidst the universal cry of _a la lanterne! a la lanterne!_ The Abbe, with much coolness and good humour, turned to those nearest him, _"Eh bien mes amis et quand je serois a la lanterne, en verriez vous plus clair?"_ Those who held him were disarmed, the bon-mot flew through the croud, and the Abbe escaped while they were applauding it.--I have nothing to offer after this trait which is worthy of succeeding it, but will add that I am always Yours. July 24, 1792. Our revolution aera has passed tranquilly in the provinces, and with less turbulence at Paris than was expected. I consign to the Gazette-writers those long descriptions that describe nothing, and leave the mind as unsatisfied as the eye. I content myself with observing only, that the ceremony here was gay, impressive, and animating. I indeed have often remarked, that the works of nature are better described than those of art. The scenes of nature, though varied, are uniform; while the productions of art are subject to the caprices of whim, and the vicissitudes of taste. A rock, a wood, or a valley, however the scenery may be diversified, always conveys a perfect and distinct image to the mind; but a temple, an altar, a palace, or a pavilion, requires a detail, minute even to tediousness, and which, after all, gives but an imperfect notion of the object. I have as often read descriptions of the Vatican, as of the Bay of Naples; yet I recollect little of the former, while the latter seems almost familiar to me.--Many are strongly impressed with the scenery of Milton's Paradise, who have but confused ideas of the splendour of Pandemonium. The descriptions, however, are equally minute, and the poetry of both is beautiful. But to return to this country, which is not absolutely a Paradise, and I hope will not become a Pandemonium--the ceremony I have been alluding to, though really interesting, is by no means to be considered as a proof that the ardour for liberty increases: on the contrary, in proportion as these fetes become more frequent, the enthusiasm which they excite seems to diminish. "For ever mark, Lucilius, when Love begins to sicken and decline, it useth an enforced ceremony." When there were no foederations, the people were more united. The planting trees of liberty seems to have damped the spirit of freedom; and since there has been a decree for wearing the national colours, they are more the marks of obedience than proofs of affection.--I cannot pretend to decide whether the leaders of the people find their followers less warm than they were, and think it necessary to stimulate them by these shows, or whether the shows themselves, by too frequent repetition, have rendered the people indifferent about the objects of them.--Perhaps both these suppositions are true. The French are volatile and material; they are not very capable of attachment to principles. External objects are requisite for them, even in a slight degree; and the momentary enthusiasm that is obtained by affecting their senses subsides with the conclusion of a favourite air, or the end of a gaudy procession. The Jacobin party are daily gaining ground; and since they have forced a ministry of their own on the King, their triumph has become still more insolent and decisive.--A storm is said to be hovering over us, which I think of with dread, and cannot communicate with safety--"Heaven square the trial of those who are implicated, to their proportioned strength!"-- Adieu. August 4, 1792. I must repeat to you, that I have no talent for description; and, having seldom been able to profit by the descriptions of others, I am modest enough not willingly to attempt one myself. But, as you observe, the ceremony of a foederation, though familiar to me, is not so to my English friends; I therefore obey your commands, though certain of not succeeding so as to gratify your curiosity in the manner you too partially expect. The temple where the ceremony was performed, was erected in an open space, well chosen both for convenience and effect. In a large circle on this spot, twelve posts, between fifty and sixty feet high, were placed at equal distances, except one larger, opening in front by way of entrance. On each alternate post were fastened ivy, laurel, &c. so as to form a thick body which entirely hid the support. These greens were then shorn (in the manner you see in old fashioned gardens) into the form of Doric columns, of dimensions proportioned to their height. The intervening posts were covered with white cloth, which was so artificially folded, as exactly to resemble fluted pillars--from the bases of which ascended spiral wreaths of flowers. The whole was connected at top by a bold festoon of foliage, and the capital of each column was surmounted by a vase of white lilies. In the middle of this temple was placed an altar, hung round with lilies, and on it was deposed the book of the constitution. The approach to the altar was by a large flight of steps, covered with beautiful tapestry. All this having been arranged and decorated, (a work of several days,) the important aera was ushered in by the firing of cannon, ringing of bells, and an appearance of bustle and hilarity not to be seen on any other occasion. About ten, the members of the district, the municipality, and the judges in their habits of ceremony, met at the great church, and from thence proceeded to the altar of liberty. The troops of the line, the Garde Nationale of the town, and of all the surrounding communes, then arrived, with each their respective music and colours, which (reserving one only of the latter to distinguish them in the ranks) they planted round the altar. This done, they retired, and forming a circle round the temple, left a large intermediate space free. A mass was then celebrated with the most perfect order and decency, and at the conclusion were read the rights of man and the constitution. The troops, Garde Nationale, &c. were then addressed by their respective officers, the oath to be faithful to the nation, the law, and the King, was administered: every sword was drawn, and every hat waved in the air; while all the bands of music joined in the favorite strain of ca ira.-- This was followed by crowning, with the civic wreaths hung round the altar, a number of people, who during the year had been instrumental in saving the lives of their fellow-citizens that had been endangered by drowning or other accidents. This honorary reward was accompanied by a pecuniary one, and a fraternal embrace from all the constituted bodies. But this was not the gravest part of the ceremony. The magistrates, however upright, were not all graceful, and the people, though they understood the value of the money, did not that of the civic wreaths, or the embraces; they therefore looked vacant enough during this part of the business, and grinned most facetiously when they began to examine the appearance of each other in their oaken crowns, and, I dare say, thought the whole comical enough.--This is one trait of national pedantry. Because the Romans awarded a civic wreath for an act of humanity, the French have adopted the custom; and decorate thus a soldier or a sailor, who never heard of the Romans in his life, except in extracts from the New Testament at mass. But to return to our fete, of which I have only to add, that the magistrates departed in the order they observed in coming, and the troops and Garde Nationale filed off with their hats in the air, and with universal acclamations, to the sound of ca ira.--Things of this kind are not susceptible of description. The detail may be uninteresting, while the general effect may have been impressive. The spirit of the scene I have been endeavouring to recall seems to have evaporated under my pen; yet to the spectator it was gay, elegant, and imposing. The day was fine, a brilliant sun glittered on the banners, and a gentle breeze gave them motion; while the satisfied countenances of the people added spirit and animation to the whole. I must remark to you, that devots, and determined aristocrates, ever attend on these occasions. The piety of the one is shocked at a mass by a priest who has taken the oaths, and the pride of the other is not yet reconciled to confusion of ranks and popular festivities. I asked a woman who brings us fruit every day, why she had not come on the fourteenth as usual. She told me she did not come to the town, _"a cause de la foederation"--"Vous etes aristocrate donc?"--"Ah, mon Dieu non--ce n'est pas que je suis aristocrate, ou democrate, mais que je suis Chretienne._*" *"On account of the foederation."--"You are an aristocrate then, I suppose?"--"Lord, no! It is not because I am an aristocrate, or a democrate, but because I am a Christian." This is an instance, among many others I could produce, that our legislators have been wrong, in connecting any change of the national religion with the revolution. I am every day convinced, that this and the assignats are the great causes of the alienation visible in many who were once the warmest patriots.--Adieu: do not envy us our fetes and ceremonies, while you enjoy a constitution which requires no oath to make you cherish it: and a national liberty, which is felt and valued without the aid of extrinsic decoration.--Yours. August 15. The consternation and horror of which I have been partaker, will more than apologize for my silence. It is impossible for any one, however unconnected with the country, not to feel an interest in its present calamities, and to regret them. I have little courage to write even now, and you must pardon me if my letter should bear marks of the general depression. All but the faction are grieved and indignant at the King's deposition; but this grief is without energy, and this indignation silent. The partizans of the old government, and the friends of the new, are equally enraged; but they have no union, are suspicious of each other, and are sinking under the stupor of despair, when they should be preparing for revenge.--It would not be easy to describe our situation during the last week. The ineffectual efforts of La Fayette, and the violences occasioned by them, had prepared us for something still more serious. On the ninth, we had a letter from one of the representatives for this department, strongly expressive of his apprehensions for the morrow, but promising to write if he survived it. The day, on which we expected news, came, but no post, no papers, no diligence, nor any means of information. The succeeding night we sat up, expecting letters by the post: still, however, none arrived; and the courier only passed hastily through, giving no detail, but that Paris was _a feu et a sang_.* * All fire and slaughter. At length, after passing two days and nights in this dreadful suspence, we received certain intelligence which even exceeded our fears.--It is needless to repeat the horrors that have been perpetrated. The accounts must, ere now, have reached you. Our representative, as he seemed to expect, was so ill treated as to be unable to write: he was one of those who had voted the approval of La Fayette's conduct--all of whom were either massacred, wounded, or intimidated; and, by this means, a majority was procured to vote the deposition of the King. The party allow, by their own accounts, eight thousand persons to have perished on this occasion; but the number is supposed to be much more considerable. No papers are published at present except those whose editors, being members of the Assembly, and either agents or instigators of the massacres, are, of course, interested in concealing or palliating them.---Mr. De _____ has just now taken up one of these atrocious journals, and exclaims, with tears starting from his eyes, _"On a abattu la statue d'Henri quatre!*"_ *"They have destroyed the statue of Henry the Fourth." The sacking of Rome by the Goths offers no picture equal to the licentiousness and barbarity committed in a country which calls itself the most enlightened in Europe.--But, instead of recording these horrors, I will fill up my paper with the Choeur Bearnais. _Choeur Bearnais. "Un troubadour Bearnais, "Le yeux inoudes de larmes, "A ses montagnards "Chantoit ce refrein source d'alarmes-- "Louis le fils d'Henri "Est prisonnier dans Paris! "Il a tremble pour les jours "De sa compagne cherie "Qui n'a troube de secours "Que dans sa propre energie; "Elle suit le fils d'Henri "Dans les prisons de Paris. "Quel crime ont ils donc commis "Pour etre enchaines de meme? "Du peuple ils sont les amis, "Le peuple veut il qu'on l'aime, "Quand il met le fils d'Henri "Dans les prisons de Paris? "Le Dauphin, ce fils cheri, "Qui seul fait notre esperance, "De pleurs sera donc nourri; "Les Berceaux qu'on donne en France "Aux enfans de notre Henri "Sont les prisons de Paris. "Il a vu couler le sang "De ce garde fidele, "Qui vient d'offrir en mourant "Aux Francais un beau modele; Mais Louis le fils d'Henri "Est prisonnier dans Paris. "Il n'est si triste appareil "Qui du respect nous degage, "Les feux ardens du Soleil "Savent percer le nuage: "Le prisonnier de Paris "Est toujours le fils d'Henri. "Francais, trop ingrats Francais "Rendez le Roi a sa compagne; "C'est le bien du Bearnais, "C'est l'enfant de la Montagne: "Le bonheur qu' avoit Henri "Nous l'affarons a Louis. "Chez vouz l'homme a de ses droits "Recouvre le noble usage, "Et vous opprimez vos rois, "Ah! quel injuste partage! "Le peuple est libre, et Louis "Est prisonnier dans Paris. "Au pied de ce monument "Ou le bon Henri respire "Pourquoi l'airain foudroyant? "Ah l'on veut qu' Henri conspire "Lui meme contre son fils "Dans les prisons de Paris."_ It was published some time ago in a periodical work, (written with great spirit and talents,) called "The Acts of the Apostles," and, I believe, has not yet appeared in England. The situation of the King gives a peculiar interest to these stanzas, which, merely as a poetical composition, are very beautiful. I have often attempted to translate them, but have always found it impossible to preserve the effect and simplicity of the original. They are set to a little plaintive air, very happily characteristic of the words. Perhaps I shall not write to you again from hence, as we depart for A_____ on Tuesday next. A change of scene will dissipate a little the seriousness we have contracted during the late events. If I were determined to indulge grief or melancholy, I would never remove from the spot where I had formed the resolution. Man is a proud animal even when oppressed by misfortune. He seeks for his tranquility in reason and reflection; whereas, a post-chaise and four, or even a hard-trotting horse, is worth all the philosophy in the world.--But, if, as I observed before, a man be determined to resist consolation, he cannot do better than stay at home, and reason and phosophize. Adieu:--the situation of my friends in this country makes me think of England with pleasure and respect; and I shall conclude with a very homely couplet, which, after all the fashionable liberality of modern travellers, contains a great deal of truth: "Amongst mankind "We ne'er shall find "The worth we left at home." Yours, &c. August 22, 1792. The hour is past, in which, if the King's friends had exerted themselves, they might have procured a movement in his favour. The people were at first amazed, then grieved; but the national philosophy already begins to operate, and they will sink into indifference, till again awakened by some new calamity. The leaders of the faction do not, however, entirely depend either on the supineness of their adversaries, or the submission of the people. Money is distributed amongst the idle and indigent, and agents are nightly employed in the public houses to comment on newspapers, written for the purpose to blacken the King and exalt the patriotism of the party who have dethroned him. Much use has likewise been made of the advances of the Prussians towards Champagne, and the usual mummery of ceremony has not been wanting. Robespierre, in a burst of extemporary energy, previously studied, has declared the country in danger. The declaration has been echoed by all the departments, and proclaimed to the people with much solemnity. We were not behind hand in the ceremonial of the business, though, somehow, the effect was not so serious and imposing as one could have wished on such an occasion. A smart flag, with the words "Citizens, the country is in danger," was prepared; the judges and the municipality were in their costume, the troops and Garde Nationale under arms, and an orator, surrounded by his cortege, harangued in the principal parts of the town on the text of the banner which waved before him. All this was very well; but, unfortunately, in order to distinguish the orator amidst the croud, it was determined he should harangue on horseback. Now here arose a difficulty which all the ardour of patriotism was not able to surmount. The French are in general but indifferent equestrians; and it so happened that, in our municipality, those who could speak could not ride, and those who could ride could not speak. At length, however, after much debating, it was determined that arms should yield to the gown, or rather, the horse to the orator--with this precaution, that the monture should be properly secured, by an attendant to hold the bridle. Under this safeguard, the rhetorician issued forth, and the first part of the speech was performed without accident; but when, by way of relieving the declaimer, the whole military band began to flourish ca ira, the horse, even more patriotic than his rider, curvetted and twisted with so much animation, that however the spectators might be delighted, the orator was far from participating in their satisfaction. After all this, the speech was to be finished, and the silence of the music did not immediately tranquillize the animal. The orator's eye wandered from the paper that contained his speech, with wistful glances toward the mane; the fervor of his indignation against the Austrians was frequently calmed by the involuntary strikings he was obliged to submit to; and at the very crisis of the emphatic declaration, he seemed much less occupied by his country's danger than his own. The people, who were highly amused, I dare say, conceived the whole ceremony to be a rejoicing, and at every repetition that the country was in danger, joined with great glee in the chorus of _ca ira_.* *The oration consisted of several parts, each ending with a kind of burden of _"Citoyens, la patri est en danger;"_ and the arrangers of the ceremony had not selected appropriate music: so that the band, who had been accustomed to play nothing else on public occasions, struck up _ca ira_ at every declaration that the country was in danger! Many of the spectators, I believe, had for some time been convinced of the danger that threatened the country, and did not suppose it much increased by the events of the war; others were pleased with a show, without troubling themselves about the occasion of it; and the mass, except when rouzed to attention by their favourite air, or the exhibitions of the equestrian orator, looked on with vacant stupidity. --This tremendous flag is now suspended from a window of the Hotel de Ville, where it is to remain until the inscription it wears shall no longer be true; and I heartily wish, the distresses of the country may not be more durable than the texture on which they are proclaimed. Our journey is fixed for to-morrow, and all the morning has been passed in attendance for our passports.--This affair is not so quickly dispatched as you may imagine. The French are, indeed, said to be a very lively people, but we mistake their volubility for vivacity; for in their public offices, their shops, and in any transaction of business, no people on earth can be more tedious--they are slow, irregular, and loquacious; and a retail English Quaker, with all his formalities, would dispose of half his stock in less time than you can purchase a three sols stamp from a brisk French Commis. You may therefore conceive, that this official portraiture of so many females was a work of time, and not very pleasant to the originals. The delicacy of an Englishman may be shocked at the idea of examining and registering a lady's features one after another, like the articles of a bill of lading; but the cold and systematic gallantry of a Frenchman is not so scrupulous.--The officer, however, who is employed for this purpose here, is civil, and I suspected the infinity of my nose, and the acuteness of Mad. de ____'s chin, might have disconcerted him; but he extricated himself very decently. My nose is enrolled in the order of aquilines, and the old lady's chin pared off to a _"menton un peu pointu."_--["A longish chin."] The carriages are ordered for seven to-morrow. Recollect, that seven females, with all their appointments, are to occupy them, and then calculate the hour I shall begin increasing my distance from England and my friends. I shall not do it without regret; yet perhaps you will be less inclined to pity me than the unfortunate wights who are to escort us. A journey of an hundred miles, with French horses, French carriages, French harness, and such an unreasonable female charge, is, I confess, in great humility, not to be ventured on without a most determined patience.--I shall write to you on our arrival at Arras; and am, till then, at all times, and in all places, Yours. Hesdin. We arrived here last night, notwithstanding the difficulties of our first setting out, in tolerable time; but I have gained so little in point of repose, that I might as well have continued my journey. We are lodged at an inn which, though large and the best in the town, is so disgustingly filthy, that I could not determine to undress myself, and am now up and scribbling, till my companions shall be ready. Our embarkation will, I foresee, be a work of time and labour; for my friend, Mad. de ____, besides the usual attendants on a French woman, a femme de chambre and a lap-dog, travels with several cages of canary-birds, some pots of curious exotics, and a favourite cat; all of which must be disposed of so as to produce no interstine commotions during the journey. Now if you consider the nature of these fellow-travellers, you will allow it not so easy a matter as may at first be supposed, especially as their fair mistress will not allow any of them to be placed in any other carriage than her own.--A fray happened yesterday between the cat and the dog, during which the birds were overset, and the plants broken. Poor M. de ____, with a sort of rueful good nature, separated the combatants, restored order, and was obliged to purchase peace by charging himself with the care of the aggressor. I should not have dwelt so long on these trifling occurrences, but that they are characteristic. In England, this passion for animals is chiefly confined to old maids, but here it is general. Almost every woman, however numerous her family, has a nursery of birds, an angola, and two or three lap-dogs, who share her cares with her husband and children. The dogs have all romantic names, and are enquired after with so much solicitude when they do not make one in a visit, that it was some time before I discovered that Nina and Rosine were not the young ladies of the family. I do not remember to have seen any husband, however master of his house in other respects, daring enough to displace a favourite animal, even though it occupied the only vacant fauteuil. The entrance into Artois from Picardy, though confounded by the new division, is sufficiently marked by a higher cultivation, and a more fertile soil. The whole country we have passed is agreeable, but uniform; the roads are good, and planted on each side with trees, mostly elms, except here and there some rows of poplar or apple. The land is all open, and sown in divisions of corn, carrots, potatoes, tobacco, and poppies of which last they make a coarse kind of oil for the use of painters. The country is entirely flat, and the view every where bounded by woods interspersed with villages, whose little spires peeping through the trees have a very pleasing effect. The people of Artois are said to be highly superstitious, and we have already passed a number of small chapels and crosses, erected by the road side, and surrounded by tufts of trees. These are the inventions of a mistaken piety; yet they are not entirely without their use, and I cannot help regarding them with more complacence than a rigid Protestant might think allowable. The weary traveller here finds shelter from a mid-day sun, and solaces his mind while he reposes his body. The glittering equipage rolls by--he recalls the painful steps he has past, anticipates those which yet remain, and perhaps is tempted to repine; but when he turns his eye on the cross of Him who has promised a recompence to the sufferers of this world, he checks the sigh of envy, forgets the luxury which excited it, and pursues his way with resignation. The Protestant religion proscribes, and the character of the English renders unnecessary, these sensible objects of devotion; but I have always been of opinion, that the levity of the French in general would make them incapable of persevering in a form of worship equally abstracted and rational. The Spaniards, and even the Italians, might abolish their crosses and images, and yet preserve their Christianity; but if the French ceased to be bigots, they would become atheists. This is a small fortified town, though not of strength to offer any resistance to artillery. Its proximity to the frontier, and the dread of the Austrians, make the inhabitants very patriotic. We were surrounded by a great croud of people on our arrival, who had some suspicion that we were emigrating; however, as soon as our passports were examined and declared legal, they retired very peaceably. The approach of the enemy keeps up the spirit of the people, and, notwithstanding their dissatisfaction at the late events, they have not yet felt the change of their government sufficiently to desire the invasion of an Austrian army.--Every village, every cottage, hailed us with the cry of Vive la nation! The cabaret invites you to drink beer a la nation, and offers you lodging a la nation--the chandler's shop sells you snuff and hair powder a la nation--and there are even patriotic barbers whose signs inform you, that you may be shaved and have your teeth drawn a la nation! These are acts of patriotism one cannot reasonably object to; but the frequent and tedious examination of one's passports by people who can't read, is not quite so inoffensive, and I sometimes lose my patience. A very vigilant _Garde Nationale_ yesterday, after spelling my passport over for ten minutes, objected that it was not a good one. I maintained that it was; and feeling a momentary importance at the recollection of my country, added, in an assuring tone, _"Et d'ailleurs je suis Anglaise et par consequent libre d'aller ou bon me semble._*" The man stared, but admitted my argument, and we passed on. *"Besides, I am a native of England, and, consequently, have a right to go where I please." My room door is half open, and gives me a prospect into that of Mad. de L____, which is on the opposite side of the passage. She has not yet put on her cap, but her grey hair is profusely powdered; and, with no other garments than a short under petticoat and a corset, she stands for the edification of all who pass, putting on her rouge with a stick and a bundle of cotton tied to the end of it.--All travellers agree in describing great indelicacy to the French women; yet I have seen no accounts which exaggerate it, and scarce any that have not been more favourable than a strict adherence to truth might justify. This inattractive part of the female national character is not confined to the lower or middling classes of life; and an English woman is as likely to be put to the blush in the boudoir of a Marquise, as in the shop of the Grisette, which serves also for her dressing-room. If I am not too idle, or too much amused, you will soon be informed of my arrival at Arras; but though I should neglect to write, be persuaded I shall never cease to be, with affection and esteem, Yours, &c. Arras, August, 1792. The appearance of Arras is not busy in proportion to its population, because its population is not equal to its extent; and as it is a large, without being a commercial, town, it rather offers a view of the tranquil enjoyment of wealth, than of the bustle and activity by which it is procured. The streets are mostly narrow and ill paved, and the shops look heavy and mean; but the hotels, which chiefly occupy the low town, are large and numerous. What is called la Petite Place, is really very large, and small only in comparison with the great one, which, I believe, is the largest in France. It is, indeed, an immense quadrangle--the houses are in the Spanish form, and it has an arcade all round it. The Spaniards, by whom it was built, forgot, probably, that this kind of shelter would not be so desirable here as in their own climate. The manufacture of tapestry, which a single line of Shakespeare has immortalized, and associated with the mirthful image of his fat Knight, has fallen into decay. The manufacturers of linen and woollen are but inconsiderable; and one, which existed till lately, of a very durable porcelain, is totally neglected. The principal article of commerce is lace, which is made here in great quantities. The people of all ages, from five years old to seventy, are employed in this delicate fabrick. In fine weather you will see whole streets lined with females, each with her cushion on her lap. The people of Arras are uncommonly dirty, and the lacemakers do not in this matter differ from their fellow-citizens; yet at the door of a house, which, but for the surrounding ones, you would suppose the common receptacle of all the filth in the vicinage, is often seated a female artizan, whose fingers are forming a point of unblemished whiteness. It is inconceivable how fast the bobbins move under their hands; and they seem to bestow so little attention on their work, that it looks more like the amusement of idleness than an effort of industry. I am no judge of the arguments of philosophers and politicians for and against the use of luxury in a state; but if it be allowable at all, much may be said in favour of this pleasing article of it. Children may be taught to make it at a very early age, and they can work at home under the inspection of their parents, which is certainly preferable to crouding them together in manufactories, where their health is injured, and their morals are corrupted. By requiring no more implements than about five shillings will purchase, a lacemaker is not dependent on the shopkeeper, nor the head of a manufactory. All who choose to work have it in their own power, and can dispose of the produce of their labour, without being at the mercy of an avaricious employer; for though a tolerable good workwoman can gain a decent livelihood by selling to the shops, yet the profit of the retailer is so great, that if he rejected a piece of lace, or refused to give a reasonable price for it, a certain sale would be found with the individual consumer: and it is a proof of the independence of this employ, that no one will at present dispose of their work for paper, and it still continues to be paid for in money. Another argument in favour of encouraging lace-making is, that it cannot be usurped by men: you may have men-milliners, men-mantuamakers, and even ladies' valets, but you cannot well fashion the clumsy and inflexible fingers of man to lace-making. We import great quantities of lace from this country, yet I imagine we might, by attention, be enabled to supply other countries, instead of purchasing abroad ourselves. The art of spinning is daily improving in England; and if thread sufficiently fine can be manufactured, there is no reason why we should not equal our neighbours in the beauty of this article. The hands of English women are more delicate than those of the French; and our climate is much the same as that of Brussels, Arras, Lisle, &c. where the finest lace is made. The population of Arras is estimated at about twenty-five thousand souls, though many people tell me it is greater. It has, however, been lately much thinned by emigration, suppression of convents, and the decline of trade, occasioned by the absence of so many rich inhabitants.--The Jacobins are here become very formidable: they have taken possession of a church for their meetings, and, from being the ridicule, are become the terror of all moderate people. Yesterday was appointed for taking the new oath of liberty and equality. I did not see the ceremony, as the town was in much confusion, and it was deemed unsafe to be from home. I understand it was attended only by the very refuse of the people, and that, as a gallanterie analogue, the President of the department gave his arm to Madame Duchene, who sells apples in a cellar, and is Presidente of the Jacobin club. It is, however, reported to-day, that she is in disgrace with the society for her condescension; and her parading the town with a man of forty thousand livres a year is thought to be too great a compliment to the aristocracy of riches; so that Mons. Le President's political gallantry has availed him nothing. He has debased and made himself the ridicule of the Aristocrates and Constitutionalists, without paying his court, as he intended, to the popular faction. I would always wish it to happen so to those who offer up incense to the mob. As human beings, as one's fellow creatures, the poor and uninformed have a claim to our affection and benevolence, but when they become legislators, they are absurd and contemptible tyrants.--_A propos_--we were obliged to acknowledge this new sovereignty by illuminating the house on the occasion; and this was not ordered by nocturnal vociferation as in England, but by a regular command from an officer deputed for that purpose. I am concerned to see the people accustomed to take a number of incompatible oaths with indifference: it neither will nor can come to any good; and I am ready to exclaim with Juliet--"Swear not at all." Or, if ye must swear, quarrel not with the Pope, that your consciences may at least be relieved by dispensations and indulgences. To-morrow we go to Lisle, notwithstanding the report that it has already been summoned to surrender. You will scarcely suppose it possible, yet we find it difficult to learn the certainty of this, at the distance of only thirty miles: but communication is much less frequent and easy here than in England. I am not one of those "unfortunate women who delight in war;" and, perhaps, the sight of this place, so famous for its fortifications, will not be very amusing to me, nor furnish much matter of communication for my friends; but I shall write, if it be only to assure you that I am not made prize of by the Austrians. Yours, &c. Lisle, August, 1792. You restless islanders, who are continually racking imagination to perfect the art of moving from one place to another, and who can drop asleep in a carriage and wake at an hundred mile distance, have no notion of all the difficulties of a day's journey here. In the first place, all the horses of private persons have been taken for the use of the army, and those for hire are constantly employed in going to the camp--hence, there is a difficulty in procuring horses. Then a French carriage is never in order, and in France a job is not to be done just when you want it--so that there is often a difficulty in finding vehicles. Then there is the difficulty of passports, and the difficulty of gates, if you want to depart early. Then the difficulties of patching harness on the road, and, above all, the inflexible _sang froid_ of drivers. All these things considered, you will not wonder that we came here a day after we intended, and arrived at night, when we ought to have arrived at noon. --The carriage wanted a trifling repair, and we could get neither passports nor horses. The horses were gone to the army--the municipality to the club--and the blacksmith was employed at the barracks in making a patriotic harangue to the soldiers.--But we at length surmounted all these obstacles, and reached this place last night. The road between Arras and Lisle is equally rich with that we before passed, but is much more diversified. The plain of Lens is not such a scene of fertility, that one forgets it has once been that of war and carnage. We endeavoured to learn in the town whereabouts the column was erected that commemmorates that famous battle, [1648.] but no one seemed to know any thing of the matter. One who, we flattered ourselves, looked more intelligent than the rest, and whom we supposed might be an attorney, upon being asked for this spot,--(where, added Mr. de ____, by way of assisting his memory, _"le Prince de Conde s'est battu si bien,"_) --replied, _"Pour la bataille je n'en sais rien, mais pour le Prince de Conde il y a deja quelque tems qu'il est emigre--on le dit a Coblentz."_* After this we thought it in vain to make any farther enquiry, and continued our walk about the town. *"Where the Prince of Conde fought so gallantly."--"As to the battle I know nothing about the matter; but for the Prince of Conde he emigrated some time since--they say he is at Coblentz." Mr. P____, who, according to French custom, had not breakfasted, took a fancy to stop at a baker's shop and buy a roll. The man bestowed so much more civility on us than our two sols were worth, that I observed, on quitting the shop, I was sure he must be an Aristocrate. Mr. P____, who is a warm Constitutionalist, disputed the justice of my inference, and we agreed to return, and learn the baker's political principles. After asking for more rolls, we accosted him with the usual phrase, "Et vous, Monsieur, vous etes bon patriote?"--_"Ah, mon Dieu, oui,_ (replied he,) _il faut bien l'etre a present."_* *"And you, Sir, are without doubt, a good patriot?"--"Oh Lord, Sir, yes; one's obliged to be so, now-a-days." Mr. P____ admitted the man's tone of voice and countenance as good evidence, and acknowledged I was right.--It is certain that the French have taken it into their heads, that coarseness of manners is a necessary consequence of liberty, and that there is a kind of leze nation in being too civil; so that, in general, I think I can discover the principles of shopkeepers, even without the indications of a melancholy mien at the assignats, or lamentations on the times. The new doctrine of primeval equality has already made some progress. At a small inn at Carvin, where, upon the assurance that they had every thing in the world, we stopped to dine, on my observing they had laid more covers than were necessary, the woman answered, "Et les domestiques, ne dinent ils pas?"--"And, pray, are the servants to have no dinner?" We told her not with us, and the plates were taken away; but we heard her muttering in the kitchen, that she believed we were aristocrates going to emigrate. She might imagine also that we were difficult to satisfy, for we found it impossible to dine, and left the house hungry, notwithstanding there was "every thing in the world" in it. On the road between Carvin and Lisle we saw Dumouriez, who is going to take the command of the army, and has now been visiting the camp of Maulde. He appears to be under the middle size, about fifty years of age, with a brown complexion, dark eyes, and an animated countenance. He was not originally distinguished either by birth or fortune, and has arrived at his present situation by a concurrence of fortuitous circumstances, by great and various talents, much address, and a spirit of intrigue. He is now supported by the prevailing party; and, I confess, I could not regard with much complacence a man, whom the machinations of the Jacobins had forced into the ministry, and whose hypocritical and affected resignation has contributed to deceive the people, and ruin the King. Lisle has all the air of a great town, and the mixture of commercial industry and military occupation gives it a very gay and populous appearance. The Lillois are highly patriotic, highly incensed against the Austrians, and regard the approaching siege with more contempt than apprehension. I asked the servant who was making my bed this morning, how far the enemy was off. _"Une lieue et demie, ou deux lieues, a moins qu'ils ne soient plus avances depuis hier,"_* repled she, with the utmost indifference.--I own, I did not much approve of such a vicinage, and a view of the fortifications (which did not make the less impression, because I did not understand them,) was absolutely necessary to raise my drooping courage. *"A league and a half, or two leagues; unless, indeed, they have advanced since yesterday." This morning was dedicated to visiting the churches, citadel, and Collisee (a place of amusement in the manner of our Vauxhall); but all these things have been so often described by much abler pens, that I cannot modestly pretend to add any thing on the subject. In the evening we were at the theatre, which is large and handsome; and the constant residence of a numerous garrison enables it to entertain a very good set of performers:--their operas in particular are extremely well got up. I saw Zemire et Azor given better than at Drury Lane.--In the farce, which was called Le Francois a Londres, was introduced a character they called that of an Englishman, (Jack Roastbeef,) who pays his addresses to a nobleman's daughter, in a box coate, a large hat slouched over his eyes, and an oaken trowel in his hand--in short, the whole figure exactly resembling that of a watchman. His conversation is gross and sarcastic, interlarded with oaths, or relieved by fits of sullen taciturnity--such a lover as one may suppose, though rich, and the choice of the lady's father, makes no impression; and the author has flattered the national vanity by making the heroine give the preference to a French marquis. Now there is no doubt but nine-tenths of the audience thought this a good portraiture of the English character, and enjoyed it with all the satisfaction of conscious superiority.--The ignorance that prevails with regard to our manners and customs, among a people so near us, is surprizing. It is true, that the noblesse who have visited England with proper recommendations, and have been introduced to the best society, do us justice: the men of letters also, who, from party motives, extol every thing English, have done us perhaps more than justice. But I speak of the French in general; not the lower classes only, but the gentry of the provinces, and even those who in other respects have pretensions to information. The fact is, living in England is expensive: a Frenchman, whose income here supports him as a gentleman, goes over and finds all his habits of oeconomy insufficient to keep him from exceeding the limits he had prescribed to himself. His decent lodging alone costs him a great part of his revenue, and obliges him to be strictly parsimonious of the rest. This drives him to associate chiefly with his own countrymen, to dine at obscure coffee-houses, and pay his court to opera-dancers. He sees, indeed, our theatres, our public walks, the outside of our palaces, and the inside of churches: but this gives him no idea of the manners of the people in superior life, or even of easy fortune. Thus he goes home, and asserts to his untravelled countrymen, that our King and nobility are ill lodged, our churches mean, and that the English are barbarians, who dine without soup, use no napkin, and eat with their knives.--I have heard a gentleman of some respectability here observe, that our usual dinner was an immense joint of meat half drest, and a dish of vegetables scarcely drest at all.--Upon questioning him, I discovered he had lodged in St. Martin's Lane, had likewise boarded at a country attorney's of the lowest class, and dined at an ordinary at Margate. Some few weeks ago the Marquis de P____ set out from Paris in the diligence, and accompanied by his servant, with a design of emigrating. Their only fellow-traveller was an Englishman, whom they frequently addressed, and endeavoured to enter into conversation with; but he either remained silent, or gave them to understand he was entirely ignorant of the language. Under this persuasion the Marquis and his valet freely discussed their affairs, arranged their plan of emigration, and expressed, with little ceremony, their political opinions.--At the end of their journey they were denounced by their companion, and conducted to prison. The magistrate who took the information mentioned the circumstance when I happened to be present. Indignant at such an act in an Englishman, I enquired his name. You will judge of my surprize, when he assured me it was the English Ambassador. I observed to him, that it was not common for our Ambassadors to travel in stage-coaches: this, he said, he knew; but that having reason to suspect the Marquis, Monsieur l'Ambassadeur had had the goodness to have him watched, and had taken this journey on purpose to detect him. It was not without much reasoning, and the evidence of a lady who had been in England long enough to know the impossibility of such a thing, that I would justify Lord G____ from this piece of complaisance to the Jacobins, and convince the worthy magistrate he had been imposed upon: yet this man is the Professor of Eloquence at a college, is the oracle of the Jacobin society; and may perhaps become a member of the Convention. This seems so almost incredibly absurd, that I should fear to repeat it, were it not known to many besides myself; but I think I may venture to pronounce, from my own observation, and that of others, whose judgement, and occasions of exercising it, give weight to their opinions, that the generality of the French who have read a little are mere pedants, nearly unacquainted with modern nations, their commercial and political relation, their internal laws, characters, or manners. Their studies are chiefly confined to Rollin and Plutarch, the deistical works of Voltaire, and the visionary politics of Jean Jaques. Hence they amuse their hearers with allusions to Caesar and Lycurgus, the Rubicon, and Thermopylae. Hence they pretend to be too enlightened for belief, and despise all governments not founded on the Contrat Social, or the Profession de Foi.--They are an age removed from the useful literature and general information of the middle classes in their own country--they talk familiarly of Sparta and Lacedemon, and have about the same idea of Russia as they have of Caffraria. Yours. Lisle. "Married to another, and that before those shoes were old with which she followed my poor father to the grave."--There is scarcely any circumstance, or situation, in which, if one's memory were good, one should not be mentally quoting Shakespeare. I have just now been whispering the above, as I passed the altar of liberty, which still remains on the Grande Place. But "a month, a little month," ago, on this altar the French swore to maintain the constitution, and to be faithful to the law and the King; yet this constitution is no more, the laws are violated, the King is dethroned, and the altar is now only a monument of levity and perjury, which they have not feeling enough to remove. The Austrians are daily expected to besiege this place, and they may destroy, but they will not take it. I do not, as you may suppose, venture to speak so decisively in a military point of view--I know as little as possible of the excellencies of Vauban, or the adequacy of the garrison; but I draw my inference from the spirit of enthusiasm which prevails among the inhabitants of every class--every individual seems to partake of it: the streets resound with patriotic acclamations, patriotic songs, war, and defiance.--Nothing can be more animating than the theatre. Every allusion to the Austrians, every song or sentence, expressive of determined resistance, is followed by bursts of assent, easily distinguishable not to be the effort of party, but the sentiment of the people in general. There are, doubtless, here, as in all other places, party dissensions; but the threatened siege seems at least to have united all for their common defence: they know that a bomb makes no distinction between Feuillans, Jacobins, or Aristocrates, and neither are so anxious to destroy the other, when it is only to be done at such a risk to themselves. I am even willing to hope that something better than mere selfishness has a share in their uniting to preserve one of the finest, and, in every sense, one of the most interesting, towns in France. Lisle, Saturday. We are just on our departure for Arras, where, I fear, we shall scarcely arrive before the gates are shut. We have been detained here much beyond our time, by a circumstance infinitely shocking, though, in fact, not properly a subject of regret. One of the assassins of General Dillon was this morning guillotined before the hotel where we are lodged.--I did not, as you will conclude, see the operation; but the mere circumstance of knowing the moment it was performed, and being so near it, has much unhinged me. The man, however, deserved his fate, and such an example was particularly necessary at this time, when we are without a government, and the laws are relaxed. The mere privation of life is, perhaps, more quickly effected by this instrument than by any other means; but when we recollect that the preparation for, and apprehension of, death, constitute its greatest terrors; that a human hand must give motion to the Guillotine as well as to the axe; and that either accustoms a people, already sanguinary, to the sight of blood, I think little is gained by the invention. It was imagined by a Mons. Guillotin, a physician of Paris, and member of the Constituent Assembly. The original design seems not so much to spare pain to the criminal, as obloquy to the executioner. I, however, perceive little difference between a man's directing a Guillotine, or tying a rope; and I believe the people are of the same opinion. They will never see any thing but a _bourreau_ [executioner] in the man whose province it is to execute the sentence of the laws, whatever name he may be called by, or whatever instrument he may make use of.--I have concluded this letter with a very unpleasant subject, but my pen is guided by circumstances, and I do not invent, but communicate.--Adieu. Yours, &c. Arras, September 1, 1792. Had I been accompanied by an antiquary this morning, his sensibility would have been severely exercised; for even I, whose respect for antiquity is not scientific, could not help lamenting the modern rage for devastation which has seized the French. They are removing all "the time-honoured figures" of the cathedral, and painting its massive supporters in the style of a ball-room. The elaborate uncouthness of ancient sculpture is not, indeed, very beautiful; yet I have often fancied there was something more simply pathetic in the aukward effigy of an hero kneeling amidst his trophies, or a regal pair with their supplicating hands and surrounding offspring, than in the graceful figures and poetic allegories of the modern artist. The humble intreaty to the reader to "praye for the soule of the departed," is not very elegant--yet it is better calculated to recall the wanderings of morality, than the flattering epitaph, a Fame hovering in the air, or the suspended wreath of the remunerating angel.--But I moralize in vain--the rage of these new Goths is inexorable: they seem solicitous to destroy every vestige of civilization, lest the people should remember they have not always been barbarians. After obtaining an order from the municipality, we went to see the gardens and palace of the Bishop, who has emigrated. The garden has nothing very remarkable, but is large and well laid out, according to the old style. It forms a very agreeable walk, and, when the Bishop possest it, was open for the enjoyment of the inhabitants, but it is now shut up and in disorder. The house is plain, and substantially furnished, and exhibits no appearance of unbecoming luxury. The whole is now the property of the nation, and will soon be disposed of.--I could not help feeling a sensation of melancholy as we walked over the apartments. Every thing is marked in an inventory, just as left; and an air of arrangement and residence leads one to reflect, that the owner did not imagine at his departure he was quitting it perhaps for ever. I am not partial to the original emigrants, yet much may be said for the Bishop of Arras. He was pursued by ingratitude, and marked for persecution. The Robespierres were young men whom he had taken from a mean state, had educated, and patronized. The revolution gave them an opportunity of displaying their talents, and their talents procured them popularity. They became enemies to the clergy, because their patron was a Bishop; and endeavoured to render their benefactor odious, because the world could not forget, nor they forgive, how much they were indebted to him.--Vice is not often passive; nor is there often a medium between gratitude for benefits, and hatred to the author of them. A little mind is hurt by the remembrance of obligation--begins by forgetting, and, not uncommonly, ends by persecuting. We dined and passed the afternoon from home to-day. After dinner our hostess, as usual, proposed cards; and, as usual in French societies, every one assented: we waited, however, some time, and no cards came-- till, at length, conversation-parties were formed, and they were no longer thought of. I have since learned, from one of the young women of the house, that the butler and two footmen had all betaken themselves to clubs and Guinguettes,* and the cards, counters, &c. could not be obtained. * Small public houses in the vicinity of large towns, where the common people go on Sundays and festivals to dance and make merry. This is another evil arising from the circumstances of the times. All people of property have begun to bury their money and plate, and as the servants are often unavoidably privy to it, they are become idle and impertinent--they make a kind of commutation of diligence for fidelity, and imagine that the observance of the one exempts them from the necessity of the other. The clubs are a constant receptacle for idleness; and servants who think proper to frequent them do it with very little ceremony, knowing that few whom they serve would be imprudent enough to discharge them for their patriotism in attending a Jacobin society. Even servants who are not converts to the new principle cannot resist the temptation of abusing a little the power which they acquire from a knowledge of family affairs. Perhaps the effect of the revolution has not, on the whole, been favourable to the morals of the lower class of people; but this shall be the subject of discussion at some future period, when I shall have had farther opportunities of judging. We yesterday visited the Oratoire, a seminary for education, which is now suppressed. The building is immense, and admirably calculated for the purpose, but is already in a state of dilapidation; so that, I fear, by the time the legislature has determined what system of instruction shall be substituted for that which has been abolished, the children (as the French are fond of examples from the ancients) will take their lessons, like the Greeks, in the open air; and, in the mean while, become expert in lying and thieving, like the Spartans. The Superior of the house is an immoderate revolutionist, speaks English very well, and is a great admirer of our party writers. In his room I observed a vast quantity of English books, and on his chimney stood what he called a patriotic clock, the dial of which was placed between two pyramids, on which were inscribed the names of republican authors, and on the top of one was that of our countryman, Mr. Thomas Paine--whom, by the way, I understand you intended to exhibit in a much more conspicuous and less tranquil situation. I assure you, though you are ungrateful on your side of the water, he is in high repute here--his works are translated-- all the Jacobins who can read quote, and all who can't, admire him; and possibly, at the very moment you are sentencing him to an installment in the pillory, we may be awarding him a triumph.--Perhaps we are both right. He deserves the pillory, from you for having endeavoured to destroy a good constitution--and the French may with equal reason grant him a triumph, as their constitution is likely to be so bad, that even Mr. Thomas Paine's writings may make it better! Our house is situated within view of a very pleasant public walk, where I am daily amused with a sight of the recruits at their exercise. This is not quite so regular a business as the drill in the Park. The exercise is often interrupted by disputes between the officer and his eleves--some are for turning to the right, others to the left, and the matter is not unfrequently adjusted by each going the way that seemeth best unto himself. The author of the _"Actes des Apotres"_ [The Acts of the Apostles] cites a Colonel who reprimanded one of his corps for walking ill--_"Eh Dicentre,_ (replied the man,) _comment veux tu que je marche bien quand tu as fait mes souliers trop etroits."_* but this is no longer a pleasantry--such circumstances are very common. A Colonel may often be tailor to his own regiment, and a Captain operated on the heads of his whole company, in his civil capacity, before he commands them in his military one. *"And how the deuce can you expect me to march well, when you have made my shoes too tight?" The walks I have just mentioned have been extremely beautiful, but a great part of the trees have been cut down, and the ornamental parts destroyed, since the revolution--I know not why, as they were open to the poor as well as the rich, and were a great embellishment to the low town. You may think it strange that I should be continually dating some destruction from the aera of the revolution--that I speak of every thing demolished, and of nothing replaced. But it is not my fault--"If freedom grows destructive, I must paint it:" though I should tell you, that in many streets where convents have been sold, houses are building with the materials on the same site.--This is, however, not a work of the nation, but of individuals, who have made their purchases cheap, and are hastening to change the form of their property, lest some new revolution should deprive them of it.--Yours, &c. Arras, September. Nothing more powerfully excites the attention of a stranger on his first arrival, than the number and wretchedness of the poor at Arras. In all places poverty claims compulsion, but here compassion is accompanied by horror--one dares not contemplate the object one commiserates, and charity relieves with an averted eye. Perhaps with Him, who regards equally the forlorn beggar stretched on the threshold, consumed by filth and disease, and the blooming beauty who avoids while she succours him, the offering of humanity scarcely expiates the involuntary disgust; yet such is the weakness of our nature, that there exists a degree of misery against which one's senses are not proof, and benevolence itself revolts at the appearance of the poor of Arras.--These are not the cold and fastidious reflections of an unfeeling mind--they are not made without pain: nor have I often felt the want of riches and consequence so much as in my incapacity to promote some means of permanent and substantial remedy for the evils I have been describing. I have frequently enquired the cause of this singular misery, but can only learn that it always has been so. I fear it is, that the poor are without energy, and the rich without generosity. The decay of manufactures since the last century must have reduced many families to indigence. These have been able to subsist on the refuse of luxury, but, too supine for exertion, they have sought for nothing more; while the great, discharging their consciences with the superfluity of what administered to their pride, fostered the evil, instead of endeavouring to remedy it. But the benevolence of the French is not often active, nor extensive; it is more frequently a religious duty than a sentiment. They content themselves with affording a mere existence to wretchedness; and are almost strangers to those enlightened and generous efforts which act beyond the moment, and seek not only to relieve poverty, but to banish it. Thus, through the frigid and indolent charity of the rich, the misery which was at first accidental is perpetuated, beggary and idleness become habitual, and are transmitted, like more fortunate inheritances, from one generation to another.--This is not a mere conjecture--I have listened to the histories of many of these unhappy outcasts, who were more than thirty years old, and they have all told me, they were born in the state in which I beheld them, and that they did not remember to have heard that their parents were in any other. The National Assembly profess to effectuate an entire regeneration of the country, and to eradicate all evils, moral, physical, and political. I heartily wish the numerous and miserable poor, with which Arras abounds, may become one of the first objects of reform; and that a nation which boasts itself the most polished, the most powerful, and the most philosophic in the world, may not offer to the view so many objects shocking to humanity. The citadel of Arras is very strong, and, as I am told, the chef d'oeuvre of Vauban; but placed with so little judgement, that the military call it _la belle inutile_ [the useless beauty]. It is now uninhabited, and wears an appearance of desolation--the commandant and all the officers of the ancient government having been forced to abandon it; their houses also are much damaged, and the gardens entirely destroyed.--I never heard that this popular commotion had any other motive than the general war of the new doctrines on the old. I am sorry to see that most of the volunteers who go to join the army are either old men or boys, tempted by extraordinary pay and scarcity of employ. A cobler who has been used to rear canary-birds for Mad. de ____, brought us this morning all the birds he was possessed of, and told us he was going to-morrow to the frontiers. We asked him why, at his age, he should think of joining the army. He said, he had already served, and that there were a few months unexpired of the time that would entitle him to his pension.--"Yes; but in the mean while you may get killed; and then of what service will your claim to a pension be?"-- _"N'ayez pas peur, Madame--Je me menagerai bien--on ne se bat pas pour ces gueux la comme pour son Roi."_* * "No fear of that, Madam--I'll take good care of myself: a man does not fight for such beggarly rascals as these as he would for his King." M. de ____ is just returned from the camp of Maulde, where he has been to see his son. He says, there is great disorder and want of discipline, and that by some means or other the common soldiers abound more in money, and game higher, than their officers. There are two young women, inhabitants of the town of St. Amand, who go constantly out on all skirmishing parties, exercise daily with the men, and have killed several of the enemy. They are both pretty--one only sixteen, the other a year or two older. Mr. de ____ saw them as they were just returning from a reconnoitring party. Perhaps I ought to have been ashamed after this recital to decline an invitation from Mr. de R___'s son to dine with him at the camp; but I cannot but feel that I am an extreme coward, and that I should eat with no appetite in sight of an Austrian army. The very idea of these modern Camillas terrifies me--their creation seems an error of nature.* * Their name was Fernig; they were natives of St. Amand, and of no remarkable origin. They followed Dumouriez into Flanders, where they signalized themselves greatly, and became Aides-de-Camp to that General. At the time of his defection, one of them was shot by a soldier, whose regiment she was endeavouring to gain over. Their house having been razed by the Austrians at the beginning of the war, was rebuilt at the expence of the nation; but, upon their participation in Dumouriez' treachery, a second decree of the Assembly again levelled it with the ground. Our host, whose politeness is indefatigable, accompanied us a few days ago to St. Eloy, a large and magnificent abbey, about six miles from Arras. It is built on a terrace, which commands the surrounding country as far as Douay; and I think I counted an hundred and fifty steps from the house to the bottom of the garden, which is on a level with the road. The cloisters are paved with marble, and the church neat and beautiful beyond description. The iron work of the choir imitates flowers and foliage with so much taste and delicacy, that (but for the colour) one would rather suppose it to be soil, than any durable material.--The monks still remain, and although the decree has passed for their suppression, they cannot suppose it will take place. They are mostly old men, and, though I am no friend to these institutions, they were so polite and hospitable that I could not help wishing they were permitted, according to the design of the first Assembly, to die in their habitations-- especially as the situation of St. Eloy renders the building useless for any other purpose.--A friend of Mr. de ____ has a charming country-house near the abbey, which he has been obliged to deny himself the enjoyment of, during the greatest part of the summer; for whenever the family return to Arras, their persons and their carriage are searched at the gate, as strictly as though they were smugglers just arrived from the coast, under the pretence that they may assist the religious of St. Eloy in securing some of their property, previous to the final seizure. I observe, in walking the streets here, that the common people still retain much of the Spanish cast of features: the women are remarkably plain, and appear still more so by wearing faals. The faal is about two ells of black silk or stuff, which is hung, without taste or form, on the head, and is extremely unbecoming: but it is worn only by the lower class, or by the aged and devotees. I am a very voluminous correspondent, but if I tire you, it is a proper punishment for your insincerity in desiring me to continue so. I have heard of a governor of one of our West India islands who was universally detested by its inhabitants, but who, on going to England, found no difficulty in procuring addresses expressive of approbation and esteem. The consequence was, he came back and continued governor for life.--Do you make the application of my anecdote, and I shall persevere in scribbling.--Every Yours. Arras. It is not fashionable at present to frequent any public place; but as we are strangers, and of no party, we often pass our evenings at the theatre. I am fond of it--not so much on account of the representation, as of the opportunity which it affords for observing the dispositions of the people, and the bias intended to be given them. The stage is now become a kind of political school, where the people are taught hatred to Kings, Nobility, and Clergy, according as the persecution of the moment requires; and, I think, one may often judge from new pieces the meditated sacrifice. A year ago, all the sad catalogue of human errors were personified in Counts and Marquisses; they were not represented as individuals whom wealth and power had made something too proud, and much too luxurious, but as an order of monsters, whose existence, independently of their characters, was a crime, and whose hereditary possessions alone implied a guilt, not to be expiated but by the forfeiture of them. This, you will say, was not very judicious; and that by establishing a sort of incompatibility of virtue with titular distinctions, the odium was transferred from the living to the dead--from those who possessed these distinctions to those who instituted them. But, unfortunately, the French were disposed to find their noblesse culpable, and to reject every thing which tended to excuse or favour them. The hauteur of the noblesse acted as a fatal equivalent to every other crime; and many, who did not credit other imputations, rejoiced in the humiliation of their pride. The people, the rich merchants, and even the lesser gentry, all eagerly concurred in the destruction of an order that had disdained or excluded them; and, perhaps, of all the innovations which have taken place, the abolition of rank has excited the least interest. It is now less necessary to blacken the noblesse, and the compositions of the day are directed against the Throne, the Clergy, and Monastic Orders. All the tyrants of past ages are brought from the shelves of faction and pedantry, and assimilated to the mild and circumscribed monarchs of modern Europe. The doctrine of popular sovereignty is artfully instilled, and the people are stimulated to exert a power which they must implicitly delegate to those who have duped and misled them. The frenzy of a mob is represented as the sublimest effort of patriotism; and ambition and revenge, usurping the title of national justice, immolate their victims with applause. The tendency of such pieces is too obvious; and they may, perhaps, succeed in familiarizing the minds of the people to events which, a few months ago, would have filled them with horror. There are also numerous theatrical exhibitions, preparatory to the removal of the nuns from their convents, and to the banishment of the priests. Ancient prejudices are not yet obliterated, and I believe some pains have been taken to justify these persecutions by calumny. The history of our dissolution of the monasteries has been ransacked for scandal, and the bigotry and biases of all countries are reduced into abstracts, and exposed on the stage. The most implacable revenge, the most refined malice, the extremes of avarice and cruelty, are wrought into tragedies, and displayed as acting under the mask of religion and the impunity of a cloister; while operas and farces, with ridicule still more successful, exhibit convents as the abode of licentiousness, intrigue, and superstition. These efforts have been sufficiently successful--not from the merit of the pieces, but from the novelty of the subject. The people in general were strangers to the interior of convents: they beheld them with that kind of respect which is usually produced in uninformed minds by mystery and prohibition. Even the monastic habit was sacred from dramatic uses; so that a representation of cloisters, monks, and nuns, their costumes and manners, never fails to attract the multitude.--But the same cause which renders them curious, makes them credulous. Those who have seen no farther than the Grille, and those who have been educated in convents, are equally unqualified to judge of the lives of the religious; and their minds, having no internal conviction or knowledge of the truth, easily become the converts of slander and falsehood. I cannot help thinking, that there is something mean and cruel in this procedure. If policy demand the sacrifice, it does not require that the victims should be rendered odious; and if it be necessary to dispossess them of their habitations, they ought not, at the moment they are thrown upon the world, to be painted as monsters unworthy of its pity or protection. It is the cowardice of the assassin, who murders before he dares to rob. This custom of making public amusements subservient to party, has, I doubt not, much contributed to the destruction of all against whom it has been employed; and theatrical calumny seems to be always the harbinger of approaching ruin to its object; yet this is not the greatest evil which may arise from these insidious politics--they are equally unfavourable both to the morals and taste of the people; the first are injured beyond calculation, and the latter corrupted beyond amendment. The orders of society, which formerly inspired respect or veneration, are now debased and exploded; and mankind, once taught to see nothing but vice and hypocrisy in those whom they had been accustomed to regard as models of virtue, are easily led to doubt the very existence of virtue itself: they know not where to turn for either instruction or example; no prospect is offered to them but the dreary and uncomfortable view of general depravity; and the individual is no longer encouraged to struggle with vicious propensities, when he concludes them irresistibly inherent in his nature. Perhaps it was not possible to imagine principles at once so seductive and ruinous as those now disseminated. How are the morals of the people to resist a doctrine which teaches them that the rich only can be criminal, and that poverty is a substitute for virtue--that wealth is holden by the sufferance of those who do not possess it--and that he who is the frequenter of a club, or the applauder of a party, is exempt from the duties of his station, and has a right to insult and oppress his fellow citizens? All the weaknesses of humanity are flattered and called to the aid of this pernicious system of revolutionary ethics; and if France yet continue in a state of civilization, it is because Providence has not yet abandoned her to the influence of such a system. Taste is, I repeat it, as little a gainer by the revolution as morals. The pieces which were best calculated to form and refine the minds of the people, all abound with maxims of loyalty, with respect for religion, and the subordinations of civil society. These are all prohibited; and are replaced by fustian declamations, tending to promote anarchy and discord --by vulgar and immoral farces, and insidious and flattering panegyrics on the vices of low life. No drama can succeed that is not supported by the faction; and this support is to be procured only by vilifying the Throne, the Clergy, and Noblesse. This is a succedaneum for literary merit, and those who disapprove are menaced into silence; while the multitude, who do not judge but imitate, applaud with their leaders--and thus all their ideas become vitiated, and imbibe the corruption of their favourite amusement. I have dwelt on this subject longer than I intended; but as I would not be supposed prejudiced nor precipitate in my assertions, I will, by the first occasion, send you some of the most popular farces and tragedies: you may then decide yourself upon the tendency; and, by comparing the dispositions of the French before, and within, the last two years, you may also determine whether or not my conclusions are warranted by fact. Adieu.--Yours. Arras. Our countrymen who visit France for the first time--their imaginations filled with the epithets which the vanity of one nation has appropriated, and the indulgence of the other sanctioned--are astonished to find this "land of elegance," this refined people, extremely inferior to the English in all the arts that minister to the comfort and accommodation of life. They are surprized to feel themselves starved by the intrusion of all the winds of heaven, or smothered by volumes of smoke--that no lock will either open or shut--that the drawers are all immoveable--and that neither chairs nor tables can be preserved in equilibrium. In vain do they inquire for a thousand conveniences which to them seem indispensible; they are not to be procured, or even their use is unknown: till at length, after a residence in a score of houses, in all of which they observe the same deficiencies, they begin to grow sceptical, to doubt the pretended superiority of France, and, perhaps for the first time, do justice to their own unassuming country. It must however, be confessed, that if the chimnies smoke, they are usually surrounded by marble--that the unstable chair is often covered with silk--and that if a room be cold, it is plentifully decked with gilding, pictures, and glasses.--In short, a French house is generally more showy than convenient, and seldom conveys that idea of domestic comfort which constitutes the luxury of an Englishman. I observe, that the most prevailing ornaments here are family portraits: almost every dwelling, even among the lower kind of tradesmen, is peopled with these ensigns of vanity; and the painters employed on these occasions, however deficient in other requisites of their art, seem to have an unfortunate knack at preserving likenesses. Heads powdered even whiter than the originals, laced waistcoats, enormous lappets, and countenances all ingeniously disposed so as to smile at each other, encumber the wainscot, and distress the unlucky visitor, who is obliged to bear testimony to the resemblance. When one sees whole rooms filled with these figures, one cannot help reflecting on the goodness of Providence, which thus distributes self-love, in proportion as it denies those gifts that excite the admiration of others. You must not understand what I have said on the furniture of French houses as applying to those of the nobility or people of extraordinary fortunes, because they are enabled to add the conveniences of other countries to the luxuries of their own. Yet even these, in my opinion, have not the uniform elegance of an English habitation: there is always some disparity between the workmanship and the materials--some mixture of splendour and clumsiness, and a want of what the painters call keeping; but the houses of the gentry, the lesser noblesse, and merchants, are, for the most part, as I have described---abounding in silk, marble, glasses, and pictures; but ill finished, dirty, and deficient in articles of real use.--I should, however, notice, that genteel people are cleaner here than in the interior parts of the kingdom. The floors are in general of oak, or sometimes of brick; but they are always rubbed bright, and have not that filthy appearance which so often disgusts one in French houses. The heads of the lower classes of people are much disturbed by these new principles of universal equality. We enquired of a man we saw near a coach this morning if it was hired. "Monsieur--(quoth he--then checking himself suddenly,)--no, I forgot, I ought not to say Monsieur, for they tell me I am equal to any body in the world: yet, after all, I know not well if this may be true; and as I have drunk out all I am worth, I believe I had better go home and begin work again to-morrow." This new disciple of equality had, indeed, all the appearance of having sacrificed to the success of the cause, and was then recovering from a dream of greatness which he told us had lasted two days. Since the day of taking the new oath we have met many equally elevated, though less civil. Some are undoubtedly paid, but others will distress their families for weeks by this celebration of their new discoveries, and must, after all, like our intoxicated philosopher, be obliged to return "to work again to-morrow." I must now bid you adieu--and, in doing so, naturally turn my thoughts to that country where the rights of the people consist not of sterile and metaphysic declarations, but of real defence and protection. May they for ever remain uninterrupted by the devastating chimeras of their neighbours; and if they seek reform, may it be moderate and permanent, acceded to reason, and not extorted by violence!--Yours, &c. September 2, 1792. We were so much alarmed at the theatre on Thursday, that I believe we shall not venture again to amuse ourselves at the risk of a similar occurrence. About the middle of the piece, a violent outcry began from all parts of the house, and seemed to be directed against our box; and I perceived Madame Duchene, the Presidente of the Jacobins, heading the legions of Paradise with peculiar animation. You may imagine we were not a little terrified. I anxiously examined the dress of myself and my companions, and observing nothing that could offend the affected simplicity of the times, prepared to quit the house. A friendly voice, however, exerting itself above the clamour, informed us that the offensive objects were a cloak and a shawl which hung over the front of the box.--You will scarcely suppose such grossness possible among a civilized people; but the fact is, our friends are of the proscribed class, and we were insulted because in their society.--I have before noticed, that the guards which were stationed in the theatre before the revolution are now removed, and a municipal officer, made conspicuous by his scarf, is placed in the middle front box, and, in case of any tumult, is empowered to call in the military to his assistance. We have this morning been visiting two objects, which exhibit this country in very different points of view--as the seat of wealth, and the abode of poverty. The first is the abbey of St. Vaast, a most superb pile, now inhabited by monks of various orders, but who are preparing to quit it, in obedience to the late decrees. Nothing impresses one with a stronger idea of the influence of the Clergy, than these splendid edifices. We see them reared amidst the solitude of deserts, and in the gaiety and misery of cities; and while they cheer the one and embellish the other, they exhibit, in both, monuments of indefatigable labour and immense wealth.--The facade of St. Vaast is simple and striking, and the cloisters and every other part of the building are extremely handsome. The library is supposed to be the finest in France, except the King's, but is now under the seal of the nation. A young monk, who was our Cicerone, told us he was sorry it was not in his power to show it. _"Et nous, Monsieur, nous sommes faches aussi."_--["And we are not less sorry than yourself, Sir."] Thus, with the aid of significant looks, and gestures of disapprobation, an exchange of sentiments took place, without a single expression of treasonable import: both parties understood perfectly well, that in regretting that the library was inaccessible, each included all the circumstances which attended it.--A new church was building in a style worthy of the convent--I think, near four hundred feet long; but it was discontinued at the suppression of the religious orders, and will now, of course, never be finished. From this abode of learned case and pious indolence Mr. de ____ conducted us to the Mont de Piete, a national institution for lending money to the poor on pledges, (at a moderate interest,) which, if not redeemed within a year, are sold by auction, and the overplus, if there remain any, after deducting the interest, is given to the owner of the pledge. Thousands of small packets are deposited here, which, to the eye of affluence, might seem the very refuse of beggary itself.--I could not reflect without an heart-ache, on the distress of the individual, thus driven to relinquish his last covering, braving cold to satisfy hunger, and accumulating wretchedness by momentary relief. I saw, in a lower room, groupes of unfortunate beings, depriving themselves of different parts of their apparel, and watching with solicitude the arbitrary valuations; others exchanging some article of necessity for one of a still greater-- some in a state of intoxication, uttering execrations of despair; and all exhibiting a picture of human nature depraved and miserable.--While I was viewing this scene, I recalled the magnificent building we had just left, and my first emotions were those of regret and censure. When we only feel, and have not leisure to reflect, we are indignant that vast sums should be expended on sumptuous edifices, and that the poor should live in vice and want; yet the erection of St. Vaast must have maintained great numbers of industrious hands; and perhaps the revenues of the abbey may not, under its new possessors, be so well employed. When the offerings and the tributes to religion are the support of the industrious poor, it is their best appropriation; and he who gives labour for a day, is a more useful benefactor than he who maintains in idleness for two. --I could not help wishing that the poor might no longer be tempted by the facility of a resource, which perhaps, in most instances, only increases their distress.--It is an injudicious expedient to palliate an evil, which great national works, and the encouragement of industry and manufactures, might eradicate.* * In times of public commotion people frequently send their valuable effects to the Mont de Piete, not only as being secure by its strength, but as it is respected by the people, who are interested in its preservation. --With these reflections I concluded mental peace with the monks of St. Vaast, and would, had it depended upon me, have readily comprized the finishing their great church in the treaty. The Primary Assemblies have already taken place in this department. We happened to enter a church while the young Robespierre was haranguing to an audience, very little respectable either in numbers or appearance. They were, however, sufficiently unanimous, and made up in noisy applause what they wanted in other respects. If the electors and elected of other departments be of the same complexion with those of Arras, the new Assembly will not, in any respect, be preferable to the old one. I have reproached many of the people of this place, who, from their education and property, have a right to take an interest in the public affairs, with thus suffering themselves to be represented by the most desperate and worthless individuals of the town. Their defence is, that they are insulted and overpowered if they attend the popular meetings, and by electing _"les gueux et les scelerats pour deputes,"_* they send them to Paris, and secure their own local tranquillity. * The scrubs and scoundrels for deputies. --The first of these assertions is but too true, yet I cannot but think the second a very dangerous experiment. They remove these turbulent and needy adventurers from the direction of a club to that of government, and procure a partial relief by contributing to the general ruin. Paris is said to be in extreme fermentation, and we are in some anxiety for our friend M. P____, who was to go there from Montmorency last week. I shall not close my letter till I have heard from him. September 4. I resume my pen after a sleepless night, and with an oppression of mind not to be described. Paris is the scene of proscription and massacres. The prisoners, the clergy, the noblesse, all that are supposed inimical to public faction, or the objects of private revenge, are sacrificed without mercy. We are here in the utmost terror and consternation--we know not the end nor the extent of these horrors, and every one is anxious for himself or his friends. Our society consists mostly of females, and we do not venture out, but hover together like the fowls of heaven, when warned by a vague yet instinctive dread of the approaching storm. We tremble at the sound of voices in the street, and cry, with the agitation of Macbeth, "there's knocking at the gate." I do not indeed envy, but I most sincerely regret, the peace and safety of England.--I have no courage to add more, but will enclose a hasty translation of the letter we received from M. P____, by last night's post. Humanity cannot comment upon it without shuddering.--Ever Yours, &c. "Rue St. Honore, Sept. 2, 1792. "In a moment like this, I should be easily excused a breach of promise in not writing; yet when I recollect the apprehension which the kindness of my amiable friends will feel on my account, I determine, even amidst the danger and desolation that surround me, to relieve them.--Would to Heaven I had nothing more alarming to communicate than my own situation! I may indeed suffer by accident; but thousands of wretched victims are at this moment marked for sacrifice, and are massacred with an execrable imitation of rule and order: a ferocious and cruel multitude, headed by chosen assassins, are attacking the prisons, forcing the houses of the noblesse and priests, and, after a horrid mockery of judicial condemnation, execute them on the spot. The tocsin is rung, alarm guns are fired, the streets resound with fearful shrieks, and an undefinable sensation of terror seizes on one's heart. I feel that I have committed an imprudence in venturing to Paris; but the barriers are now shut, and I must abide the event. I know not to what these proscriptions tend, or if all who are not their advocates are to be their victims; but an ungovernable rage animates the people: many of them have papers in their hands that seem to direct them to their objects, to whom they hurry in crouds with an eager and savage fury.--I have just been obliged to quit my pen. A cart had stopped near my lodgings, and my ears were assailed by the groans of anguish, and the shouts of frantic exultation. Uncertain whether to descend or remain, I, after a moment's deliberation, concluded it would be better to have shown myself than to have appeared to avoid it, in case the people should enter the house, and therefore went down with the best show of courage I could assume.--I will draw a veil over the scene that presented itself--nature revolts, and my fair friends would shudder at the detail. Suffice it to say, that I saw cars, loaded with the dead and dying, and driven by their yet ensanguined murderers; one of whom, in a tone of exultation, cried, 'Here is a glorious day for France!' I endeavoured to assent, though with a faultering voice, and, as soon as they were passed escaped to my room. You may imagine I shall not easily recover the shock I received.--At this moment they say, the enemy are retreating from Verdun. At any other time this would have been desirable, but at present one knows not what to wish for. Most probably, the report is only spread with the humane hope of appeasing the mob. They have already twice attacked the Temple; and I tremble lest this asylum of fallen majesty should ere morning, be violated. "Adieu--I know not if the courier will be permitted to depart; but, as I believe the streets are not more unsafe than the houses, I shall make an attempt to send this. I will write again in a few days. If to-morrow should prove calm, I shall be engaged in enquiring after the fate of my friends.--I beg my respects to Mons. And Mad. de ____; and entreat you all to be as tranquil as such circumstances will permit.--You may be certain of hearing any news that can give you pleasure immediately. I have the honour to be," &c. &c. Arras, September, 1792. You will in future, I believe, find me but a dull correspondent. The natural timidity of my disposition, added to the dread which a native of England has of any violation of domestic security, renders me unfit for the scenes I am engaged in. I am become stupid and melancholy, and my letters will partake of the oppression of my mind. At Paris, the massacres at the prisons are now over, but those in the streets and in private houses still continue. Scarcely a post arrives that does not inform M. de ____ of some friend or acquaintance being sacrificed. Heaven knows where this is to end! We had, for two days, notice that, pursuant to a decree of the Assembly, commissioners were expected here at night, and that the tocsin would be rung for every body to deliver up their arms. We did not dare go to bed on either of these nights, but merely lay down in our robes de chambre, without attempting to sleep. This dreaded business is, however, past. Parties of the Jacobins paraded the streets yesterday morning, and disarmed all they thought proper. I observed they had lists in their hands, and only went to such houses as have an external appearance of property. Mr. de ____, who has been in the service thirty years, delivered his arms to a boy, who behaved to him with the utmost insolence, whilst we sat trembling and almost senseless with fear the whole time they remained in the house; and could I give you an idea of their appearance, you would think my terror very justifiable. It is, indeed, strange and alarming, that all who have property should be deprived of the means of defending either that or their lives, at a moment when Paris is giving an example of tumult and assassination to every other part of the kingdom. Knowing no good reason for such procedure, it is very natural to suspect a bad one.--I think, on many accounts, we are more exposed here than at ____, and as soon as we can procure horses we shall depart.--The following is the translation of our last letter from Mr. P____. "I promised my kind friends to write as soon as I should have any thing satisfactory to communicate: but, alas! I have no hope of being the harbinger of any thing but circumstances of a very different tendency. I can only give you details of the horrors I have already generally described. Carnage has not yet ceased; and is only become more cool and more discriminating. All the mild characteristics annihilated; and a frantic cruelty, which is dignified with the name of patriotism, has usurped ever faculty, and banished both reason and mercy. "Mons. ____, whom I have hitherto known by reputation, as an upright, and even humane man, had a brother shut up, with a number of other priests, at the Carmes; and, by his situation and connections, he has such influence as might, if exerted, have preserved the latter. The unfortunate brother knowing this, found means, while hourly expecting his fate, to convey a note to Mr. ____, begging he would immediately release, and procure him an asylum. The messenger returned with an answer, that Mons. ____ had no relations in the enemies of his country! "A few hours after, the massacres at the Carmes took place.--One Panis,* who is in the Comite de Surveillance, had, a few days previous to these dreadful events, become, I know not on what occasion, the depositary of a large sum of money belonging to a gentleman of his section. * Panis has since figured on various occasions. He is a member of the Convention, and was openly accused of having been an accomplice in the robbery of the Garde Meuble. "A secret and frivolous denunciation was made the pretext for throwing the owner of the money into prison, where he remained till September, when his friends, recollecting his danger, flew to the Committee and applied for his discharge. Unfortunately, the only member of the Committee present was Panis. He promised to take measures for an immediate release.--Perhaps he kept his word, but the release was cruel and final--the prison was attacked, and the victim heard of no more.--You will not be surprized at such occurrences when I tell you that G____,* whom you must remember to have heard of as a Jacobin at ____, is President of the Committee above mentioned--yes, an assassin is now the protector of the public safety, and the commune of Paris the patron of a criminal who has merited the gibbet. * G____ was afterwards elected (doubtless by a recommendation of the Jacobins) Deputy for the department of Finisterre, to which he was sent Commissioner by the Convention. On account of some unwarrantable proceedings, and of some words that escaped him, which gave rise to a suspicion that he was privy to the robbery of the Garde Meuble, he was arrested by the municipality of Quimper Corentin, of which place he is a native. The Jacobins applied for his discharge, and for the punishment of the municipality; but the Convention, who at that time rarely took any decisive measures, ordered G____ to be liberated, but evaded the other part of the petition which tended to revenge him. The affair of the Garde Meuble, was, however, again brought forward; but, most probably, many of the members had reasons for not discussing too nearly the accusation against G____; and those who were not interested in suppressing it, were too weak or too timid to pursue it farther. "--I know not if we are yet arrived at the climax of woe and iniquity, but Brissot, Condorcet, Rolland, &c. and all those whose principles you have reprobated as violent and dangerous, will now form the moderate side of the Assembly. Perhaps even those who are now the party most dreaded, may one day give place to yet more desperate leaders, and become in their turn our best alternative. What will then be the situation of France? Who can reflect without trembling at the prospect?--It is not yet safe to walk the streets decently dressed; and I have been obliged to supply myself with trowsers, a jacket, coloured neckcloths, and coarse linen, which I take care to soil before I venture out. "The Agrarian law is now the moral of Paris, and I had nearly lost my life yesterday by tearing a placard written in support of it. I did it imprudently, not supposing I was observed; and had not some people, known as Jacobins, come up and interfered in my behalf, the consequence might have been fatal.--It would be difficult, and even impossible, to attempt a description of the manners of the people of Paris at this moment: the licentiousness common to great cities is decency compared with what prevails in this; it has features of a peculiar and striking description, and the general expression is that of a monstrous union of opposite vices. Alternately dissolute and cruel, gay and vindictive, the Parisian vaunts amidst debauchery the triumph of assassination, and enlivens his midnight orgies by recounting the sufferings of the massacred aristocrates: women, whose profession it is to please, assume the _bonnet rouge_ [red cap], and affect, as a means of seduction, an intrepid and ferocious courage.--I cannot yet learn if Mons. S____'s sister be alive; her situation about the Queen makes it too doubtful; but endeavour to give him hope--many may have escaped whose fears still detain them in concealment. People of the first rank now inhabit garrets and cellars, and those who appear are disguised beyond recollection; so that I do not despair of the safety of some, who are now thought to have perished.-- I am, as you may suppose, in haste to leave this place, and I hope to return to Montmorency tomorrow; but every body is soliciting passports. The Hotel de Ville is besieged, and I have already attended two days without success.--I beg my respectful homage to Monsieur and Madame de ____; and I have the honour to be, with esteem, the affectionate servant of my friends in general. "L____." You will read M. L____'s letter with all the grief and indignation we have already felt, and I will make no comment on it, but to give you a slight sketch of the history of Guermeur, whom he mentions as being President of the Committee of Surveillance.--In the absence of a man, whom he called his friend, he seduced his wife, and eloped with her: the husband overtook them, and fell in the dispute which insued; when Guermeur, to avoid being taken by the officers of justice, abandoned his companion to her fate, and escaped alone. After a variety of adventures, he at length enlisted himself as a grenadier in the regiment of Dillon. With much assurance, and talents cultivated above the situation in which he appeared, he became popular amongst his fellow-soldiers, and the military impunity, which is one effect of the revolution, cast a veil over his former guilt, or rather indeed enabled him to defy the punishment annexed to it. When the regiment was quartered at ____, he frequented and harangued at the Jacobin club, perverted the minds of the soldiers by seditious addresses, till at length he was deemed qualified to quit the character of a subordinate incendiary, and figure amongst the assassins at Paris. He had hitherto, I believe, acted without pay, for he was deeply in debt, and without money or clothes; but a few days previous to the tenth of August, a leader of the Jacobins supplied him with both, paid his debts, procured his discharge, and sent him to Paris. What intermediate gradations he may have passed through, I know not; but it is not difficult to imagine the services that have advanced him to his present situation.--It would be unsafe to risk this letter by the post, and I close it hastily to avail myself of a present conveyance.--I remain, Yours, &c. Arras, September 14, 1792. The camp of Maulde is broken up, and we deferred our journey, that we might pass a day at Douay with M. de ____'s son. The road within some miles of that place is covered with corn and forage, the immediate environs are begun to be inundated, and every thing wears the appearance of impending hostility. The town is so full of troops, that without the interest of our military friends we should scarcely have procured a lodging. All was bustle and confusion, the enemy are very near, and the French are preparing to form a camp under the walls. Amidst all this, we found it difficult to satisfy our curiosity in viewing the churches and pictures: some of the former are shut, and the latter concealed; we therefore contented ourselves with seeing the principal ones. The town-house is a very handsome building, where the Parliament was holden previous to the revolution, and where all the business of the department of the North is now transacted.--In the council-chamber, which is very elegantly carved, was also a picture of the present King. They were, at the very moment of our entrance, in the act of displacing it. We asked the reason, and were told it was to be cut in pieces, and portions sent to the different popular societies.--I know not if our features betrayed the indignation we feared to express, but the man who seemed to have directed this disposal of the portrait, told us we were not English if we saw it with regret. I was not much delighted with such a compliment to our country, and was glad to escape without farther comment. The manners of the people seem every where much changed, and are becoming gross and inhuman. While we were walking on the ramparts, I happened to have occasion to take down an address, and with the paper and pencil in my hand turned out of the direct path to observe a chapel on one side of it. In a moment I was alarmed by the cries of my companions, and beheld the musquet of the centinel pointed at me, and M. de ____ expostulating with him. I am not certain if he supposed I was taking a plan of the fortifications, and meant really more than a threat; but I was sufficiently frightened, and shall not again approach a town wall with pencils and paper. M. de ____ is one of the only six officers of his regiment who have not emigrated. With an indignation heated by the works of modern philosophers into an enthusiastic love of republican governments, and irritated by the contempt and opposition he has met with from those of this own class who entertain different principles, he is now become almost a fanatic. What at first was only a political opinion is now a religious tenet; and the moderate sectary has acquired the obstinacy of a martyr, and, perhaps, the spirit of persecution. At the beginning of the revolution, the necessity of deciding, a youthful ardour for liberty, and the desire of preserving his fortune, probably determined him to become a patriot; and pride and resentment have given stability to notions which might otherwise have fluctuated with circumstances, or yielded to time. This is but too general the case: the friends of rational reform, and the supporters of the ancient monarchy, have too deeply offended each other for pardon or confidence; and the country perhaps will be sacrificed by the mutual desertions of those most concerned in its preservation. Actuated only by selfishness and revenge, each party willingly consents to the ruin of its opponents. The Clergy, already divided among themselves, are abandoned by the Noblesse--the Noblesse are persecuted by the commercial interest--and, in short, the only union is amongst the Jacobins; that is, amongst a few weak persons who are deceived, and a banditti who betray and profit by their "patriotism." I was led to these reflections by my conversation with Mr. de L____ and his companions. I believe they do not approve of the present extremes, yet they expressed themselves with the utmost virulence against the aristocrates, and would hear neither of reconcilement nor palliation. On the other hand, these dispositions were not altogether unprovoked--the young men had been persecuted by their relations, and banished the society of their acquaintance; and their political opinions had acted as an universal proscription. There were even some against whom the doors of the parental habitation were shut.--These party violences are terrible; and I was happy to perceive that the reciprocal claims of duty and affection were not diminished by them, either in M. de ____, or his son. He, however, at first refused to come to A____, because he suspected the patriotism of our society. I pleaded, as an inducement, the beauty of Mad. G____, but he told me she was an aristocrate. It was at length, however, determined, that he should dine with us last Sunday, and that all visitors should be excluded. He was prevented coming by being ordered out with a party the day we left him; and he has written to us in high spirits, to say, that, besides fulfilling his object, he had returned with fifty prisoners. We had a very narrow escape in coming home--the Hulans were at the village of ____, an hour after we passed through it, and treated the poor inhabitants, as they usually do, with great inhumanity.--Nothing has alienated the minds of the people so much as the cruelties of these troops--they plunder and ill treat all they encounter; and their avarice is even less insatiable than their barbarity. How hard is it, that the ambition of the Chiefs, and the wickedness of faction, should thus fall upon the innocent cottager, who perhaps is equally a stranger to the names of the one, and the principles of the other! The public papers will now inform you, that the French are at liberty to obtain a divorce on almost any pretext, or even on no pretext at all, except what many may think a very good one--mutual agreement. A lady of our acquaintance here is become a republican in consequence of the decree, and probably will very soon avail herself of it; but this conduct, I conceive, will not be very general. Much has been said of the gallantry of the French ladies, and not entirely without reason; yet, though sometimes inconstant wives, they are, for the most part, faithful friends--they sacrifice the husband without forsaking him, and their common interest is always promoted with as much zeal as the most inviolable attachment could inspire. Mad. de C____, whom we often meet in company, is the wife of an emigrant, and is said not to be absolutely disconsolate at his absence; yet she is indefatigable in her efforts to supply him with money: she even risks her safety by her solicitude, and has just now prevailed on her favourite admirer to hasten his departure for the frontiers, in order to convey a sum she has with much difficulty been raising. Such instances are, I believe, not very rare; and as a Frenchman usually prefers his interest to every thing else, and is not quite so unaccommodating as an Englishman, an amicable arrangement takes place, and one seldom hears of a separation. The inhabitants of Arras, with all their patriotism, are extremely averse from the assignats; and it is with great reluctance that they consent to receive them at two-thirds of their nominal value. This discredit of the paper money has been now two months at a stand, and its rise or fall will be determined by the success of the campaign.--I bid you adieu for the last time from hence. We have already exceeded the proposed length of our visit, and shall set out for St. Omer to-morrow.--Yours. St. Omer, September, 1792. I am confined to my room by a slight indisposition, and, instead of accompanying my friends, have taken up my pen to inform you that we are thus far safe on our journey.--Do not, because you are surrounded by a protecting element, smile at the idea of travelling forty or fifty miles in safety. The light troops of the Austrian army penetrate so far, that none of the roads on the frontier are entirely free from danger. My female companions were alarmed the whole day--the young for their baggage, and the old for themselves. The country between this and Arras has the appearance of a garden cultivated for the common use of its inhabitants, and has all the fertility and beauty of which a flat surface is susceptible. Bethune and Aire I should suppose strongly fortified. I did not fail, in passing through the former, to recollect with veneration the faithful minister of Henry the Fourth. The misfortunes of the descendant of Henry, whom Sully* loved, and the state of the kingdom he so much cherished, made a stronger impression on me than usual, and I mingled with the tribute of respect a sentiment of indignation. * Maximilien de Bethune, Duc de Sully. What perverse and malignant influence can have excited the people either to incur or to suffer their present situation? Were we not well acquainted with the arts of factions, the activity of bad men, and the effect of their union, I should be almost tempted to believe this change in the French supernatural. Less than three years ago, the name of Henri Quatre was not uttered without enthusiasm. The piece that transmitted the slightest anecdotes of his life was certain of success--the air that celebrated him was listened to with delight--and the decorations of beauty, when associated with the idea of this gallant Monarch, became more irresistible.* * At this time it was the prevailing fashion to call any new inventions of female dress after his name, and to decorate the ornamental parts of furniture with his resemblance. Yet Henry the Fourth is now a tyrant--his pictures and statues are destroyed, and his memory is execrated!--Those who have reduced the French to this are, doubtless, base and designing intriguers; yet I cannot acquit the people, who are thus wrought on, of unfeelingness and levity.--England has had its revolutions; but the names of Henry the Fifth and Elizabeth were still revered: and the regal monuments, which still exist, after all the vicissitudes of our political principles, attest the mildness of the English republicans. The last days of our stay at Arras were embittered by the distress of our neighbour and acquaintance, Madame de B____. She has lost two sons under circumstances so affecting, that I think you will be interested in the relation.--The two young men were in the army, and quartered at Perpignan, at a time when some effort of counter-revolution was said to be intended. One of them was arrested as being concerned, and the other surrendered himself prisoner to accompany his brother.--When the High Court at Orleans was instituted for trying state-prisoners, those of Perpignan were ordered to be conducted there, and the two B____'s, chained together, were taken with the rest. On their arrival at Orleans, their gaoler had mislaid the key that unlocked their fetters, and, not finding it immediately, the young men produced one, which answered the purpose, and released themselves. The gaoler looked at them with surprize, and asked why, with such a means in their power, they had not escaped in the night, or on the road. They replied, because they were not culpable, and had no reason for avoiding a trial that would manifest their innocence. Their heroism was fatal. They were brought, by a decree of the Convention, from Orleans to Versailles, (on their way to Paris,) where they were met by the mob, and massacred. Their unfortunate mother is yet ignorant of their fate; but we left her in a state little preferable to that which will be the effect of certainty. She saw the decree for transporting the prisoners from Orleans, and all accounts of the result have been carefully concealed from her; yet her anxious and enquiring looks at all who approach her, indicate but too well her suspicion of the truth.--Mons. de ____'s situation is indescribable. Informed of the death of his sons, he is yet obliged to conceal his sufferings, and wear an appearance of tranquillity in the presence of his wife. Sometimes he escapes, when unable to contain his emotions any longer, and remains at M. de ____'s till he recovers himself. He takes no notice of the subject of his grief, and we respect it too much to attempt to console him. The last time I asked him after Madame de ____, he told me her spirits were something better, and, added he, in a voice almost suffocated, "She is amusing herself with working neckcloths for her sons!"--When you reflect that the massacres at Paris took place on the second and third of September, and that the decree was passed to bring the prisoners from Orleans (where they were in safety) on the tenth, I can say nothing that will add to the horror of this transaction, or to your detestation of its cause. Sixty-two, mostly people of high rank, fell victims to this barbarous policy: they were brought in a fort of covered waggons, and were murdered in heaps without being taken out.* * Perhaps the reader will be pleased at a discovery, which it would have been unsafe to mention when made, or in the course of this correspondence. The two young men here alluded to arrived at Versailles, chained together, with their fellow-prisoners. Surprize, perhaps admiration, had diverted the gaoler's attention from demanding the key that opened their padlock, and it was still in their possession. On entering Versailles, and observing the crowd preparing to attack them, they divested themselves of their fetters, and of every other incumbrance. In a few moments their carriages were surrounded, their companions at one end were already murdered, and themselves slightly wounded; but the confusion increasing, they darted amidst the croud, and were in a moment undistinguishable. They were afterwards taken under the protection of an humane magistrate, who concealed them for some time, and they are now in perfect security. They were the only two of the whole number that escaped. September, 1792. We passed a country so barren and uninteresting yesterday, that even a professional traveller could not have made a single page of it. It was, in every thing, a perfect contrast to the rich plains of Artois-- unfertile, neglected vallies and hills, miserable farms, still more miserable cottages, and scarcely any appearance of population. The only place where we could refresh the horses was a small house, over the door of which was the pompous designation of Hotel d'Angleterre. I know not if this be intended as a ridicule on our country, or as an attraction to our countrymen, but I, however, found something besides the appellation which reminded me of England, and which one does not often find in houses of a better outside; for though the rooms were small, and only two in number, they were very clean, and the hostess was neat and civil. The Hotel d'Angleterre, indeed, was not luxuriously supplied, and the whole of our repast was eggs and tea, which we had brought with us.--In the next room to that we occupied were two prisoners chained, whom the officers were conveying to Arras, for the purpose of better security. The secret history of this business is worth relating, as it marks the character of the moment, and the ascendancy which the Jacobins are daily acquiring. These men were apprehended as smugglers, under circumstances of peculiar atrocity, and committed to the gaol at ____. A few days after, a young girl, of bad character, who has much influence at the club, made a motion, that the people, in a body, should demand the release of the prisoners. The motion was carried, and the Hotel de Ville assailed by a formidable troop of sailors, fish-women, &c.--The municipality refused to comply, the Garde Nationale was called out, and, on the mob persisting, fired over their heads, wounded a few, and the rest dispersed of themselves.--Now you must understand, the latent motive of all this was two thousand livres promised to one of the Jacobin leaders, if he succeeded in procuring the men their liberty.--I do not advance this merely on conjecture. The fact is well known to the municipality; and the decent part of it would willingly have expelled this man, who is one of their members, but that they found themselves too weak to engage in a serious quarrel with the Jacobins.--One cannot reflect, without apprehension, that any society should exist which can oppose the execution of the laws with impunity, or that a people, who are little sensible of realities, should be thus abused by names. They suffer, with unfeeling patience, a thousand enormities--yet blindly risk their liberties and lives to promote the designs of an adventurer, because he harangues at a club, and calls himself a patriot.--I have just received advice that my friends have left Lausanne, and are on their way to Paris. Our first plan of passing the winter there will be imprudent, if not impracticable, and we have concluded to take a house for the winter six months at Amiens, Chantilly, or some place which has the reputation of being quiet. I have already ordered enquiries to be made, and shall set out with Mrs. ____ in a day or two for Amiens. I may, perhaps, not write till our return; but shall not cease to be, with great truth.--Yours, &c. Amiens, 1792. The departement de la Somme has the reputation of being a little aristocratic. I know not how far this be merited, but the people are certainly not enthusiasts. The villages we passed on our road hither were very different from those on the frontiers--we were hailed by no popular sounds, no cries of Vive la nation! except from here and there some ragged boy in a red cap, who, from habit, associated this salutation with the appearance of a carriage. In every place where there are half a dozen houses is planted an unthriving tree of liberty, which seems to wither under the baneful influence of the _bonnet rouge_. [The red cap.] This Jacobin attribute is made of materials to resist the weather, and may last some time; but the trees of liberty, being planted unseasonably, are already dead. I hope this will not prove emblematic, and that the power of the Jacobins may not outlive the freedom of the people. The Convention begin their labours under disagreeable auspices. A general terror seems to have seized on the Parisians, the roads are covered with carriages, and the inns filled with travellers. A new regulation has just taken place, apparently intended to check this restless spirit. At Abbeville, though we arrived late and were fatigued, we were taken to the municipality, our passports collated with our persons, and at the inn we were obliged to insert in a book our names, the place of our birth, from whence we came, and where we were going. This, you will say, has more the features of a mature Inquisition, than a new-born Republic; but the French have different notions of liberty from yours, and take these things very quietly.--At Flixecourt we eat out of pewter spoons, and the people told us, with much inquietude, that they had sold their plate, in expectation of a decree of the Convention to take it from them. This decree, however, has not passed, but the alarm is universal, and does not imply any great confidence in the new government. I have had much difficulty in executing my commission, and have at last fixed upon a house, of which I fear my friends will not approve; but the panic which depopulates Paris, the bombardment of Lisle, and the tranquillity which has hitherto prevailed here, has filled the town, and rendered every kind of habitation scarce, and extravagantly dear: for you must remark, that though the Amienois are all aristocrates, yet when an intimidated sufferer of the same party flies from Paris, and seeks an asylum amongst them, they calculate with much exactitude what they suppose necessity may compel him to give, and will not take a livre less.--The rent of houses and lodgings, like the national funds, rises and falls with the public distresses, and, like them, is an object of speculation: several persons to whom we were addressed were extremely indifferent about letting their houses, alledging as a reason, that if the disorders of Paris should increase, they had no doubt of letting them to much greater advantage. We were at the theatre last night--it was opened for the first time since France has been declared a republic, and the Jacobins vociferated loudly to have the fleur de lys, ad other regal emblems, effaced. Obedience was no sooner promised to this command, than it was succeeded by another not quite so easily complied with--they insisted on having the Marsellois Hymn sung. In vain did the manager, with a ludicrous sort of terror, declare, that there were none of his company who had any voice, or who knew either the words of the music of the hymn in question. _"C'est egal, il faut chanter,"_ ["No matter for that, they must sing."] resounded from all the patriots in the house. At last, finding the thing impossible, they agreed to a compromise; and one of the actors promised to sing it on the morrow, as well as the trifling impediment of having no voice would permit him.--You think your galleries despotic when they call for an epilogue that is forgotten, and the actress who should speak it is undrest; or when they insist upon enlivening the last acts of Jane Shore with Roast Beef! What would you think if they would not dispense with a hornpipe on the tight-rope by Mrs. Webb? Yet, bating the danger, I assure you, the audience of Amiens was equally unreasonable. But liberty at present seems to be in an undefined state; and until our rulers shall have determined what it is, the matter will continue to be settled as it is now--by each man usurping as large a portion of tyranny as his situation will admit of. He who submits without repining to his district, to his municipality, or even to the club, domineers at the theatre, or exercises in the street a manual censure on aristocratic apparel.* *It was common at this time to insult women in the streets if dressed too well, or in colours the people chose to call aristocratic. I was myself nearly thrown down for having on a straw bonnet with green ribbons. Our embarrassment for small change is renewed: many of the communes who had issued bills of five, ten, and fifteen sols, repayable in assignats, are become bankrupts, which circumstance has thrown such a discredit on all this kind of nominal money, that the bills of one town will not pass at another. The original creation of these bills was so limited, that no town had half the number requisite for the circulation of its neighbourhood; and this decrease, with the distrust that arises from the occasion of it, greatly adds to the general inconvenience. The retreat of the Prussian army excites more surprize than interest, and the people talk of it with as much indifference as they would of an event that had happened beyond the Ganges. The siege of Lisle takes off all attention from the relief of Thionville--not on account of its importance, but on account of its novelty.--I remain, Yours, &c. Abbeville, September, 1792. We left Amiens early yesterday morning, but were so much delayed by the number of volunteers on the road, that it was late before we reached Abbeville. I was at first somewhat alarmed at finding ourselves surrounded by so formidable a cortege; they however only exacted a declaration of our political principles, and we purchased our safety by a few smiles, and exclamations of vive la nation! There were some hundreds of these recruits much under twenty; but the poor fellows, exhilarated by their new uniform and large pay, were going gaily to decide their fate by that hazard which puts youth and age on a level, and scatters with indiscriminating hand the cypress and the laurel. At Abbeville all the former precautions were renewed--we underwent another solemn identification of our persons at the Hotel de Ville, and an abstract of our history was again enregistered at the inn. One would really suppose that the town was under apprehensions of a siege, or, at least, of the plague. My "paper face" was examined as suspiciously as though I had had the appearance of a travestied Achilles; and M____'s, which has as little expression as a Chinese painting, was elaborately scrutinized by a Dogberry in spectacles, who, perhaps, fancied she had the features of a female Machiavel. All this was done with an air of importance sufficiently ludicrous, when contrasted with the object; but we met with no incivility, and had nothing to complain of but a little additional fatigue, and the delay of our dinner. We stopped to change horses at Bernay, and I soon perceived our landlady was a very ardent patriot. In a room, to which we waded at great risk of our clothes, was a representation of the siege of the Bastille, and prints of half a dozen American Generals, headed by Mr. Thomas Paine. On descending, we found out hostess exhibiting a still more forcible picture of curiosity than Shakspeare's blacksmith. The half-demolished repast was cooling on the table, whilst our postilion retailed the Gazette, and the pigs and ducks were amicably grazing together on whatever the kitchen produced. The affairs of the Prussians and Austrians were discussed with entire unanimity, but when these politicians, as is often the case, came to adjust their own particular account, the conference was much less harmonious. The postilion offered a ten sols billet, which the landlady refused: one persisted in its validity, the other in rejecting it--till, at last, the patriotism of neither could endure this proof, and peace was concluded by a joint execration of those who invented this fichu papier-- "Sorry paper." At ____ we met our friend, Mad. de ____, with part of her family and an immense quantity of baggage. I was both surprized and alarmed at such an apparition, and found, on enquiry, that they thought themselves unsafe at Arras, and were going to reside near M. de ____'s estate, where they were better known. I really began to doubt the prudence of our establishing ourselves here for the winter. Every one who has it in his power endeavours to emigrate, even those who till now have been zealous supporters of the revolution.--Distrust and apprehension seem to have taken possession of every mind. Those who are in towns fly to the country, while the inhabitant of the isolated chateau takes refuge in the neighbouring town. Flocks of both aristocrates and patriots are trembling and fluttering at the foreboding storm, yet prefer to abide its fury, rather than seek shelter and defence together. I, however, flatter myself, that the new government will not justify this fear; and as I am certain my friends will not return to England at this season, I shall not endeavour to intimidate or discourage them from their present arrangement. We shall, at least, be enabled to form some idea of a republican constitution, and I do not, on reflection, conceive that any possible harm can happen to us. October, 1792. I shall not date from this place again, intending to quit it as soon as possible. It is disturbed by the crouds from the camps, which are broken up, and the soldiers are extremely brutal and insolent. So much are the people already familiarized with the unnatural depravity of manners that begins to prevail, that the wife of the Colonel of a battalion now here walks the streets in a red cap, with pistols at her girdle, boasting of the numbers she has destroyed at the massacres in August and September. The Convention talk of the King's trial as a decided measure; yet no one seems to admit even the possibility that such an act can be ever intended. A few believe him culpable, many think him misled, and many acquit him totally: but all agree, that any violation of his person would be an atrocity disgraceful to the nation at large.--The fate of Princes is often disastrous in proportion to their virtues. The vanity, selfishness, and bigotry of Louis the Fourteenth were flattered while he lived, and procured him the appellation of Great after his death. The greatest military talents that France has given birth to seemed created to earn laurels, not for themselves, but for the brow of that vain-glorious Monarch. Industry and Science toiled but for his gratification, and Genius, forgetting its dignity, willingly received from his award the same it has since bestowed. Louis the Fifteenth, who corrupted the people by his example, and ruined them by his expence, knew no diminution of the loyalty, whatever he might of the affection, of his people, and ended his days in the practice of the same vices, and surrounded by the same luxury, in which he had passed them. Louis the Sixteenth, to whom scarcely his enemies ascribe any vices, for its outrages against whom faction finds no excuse but in the facility of his nature--whose devotion is at once exemplary and tolerant--who, in an age of licentiousness, is remarkable for the simplicity of his manners-- whose amusements were liberal or inoffensive--and whose concessions to his people form a striking contrast with the exactions of his predecessors.--Yes, the Monarch I have been describing, and, I think, not partially, has been overwhelmed with sorrow and indignities--his person has been degraded, that he might be despoiled of his crown, and perhaps the sacrifice of his crown may be followed by that of his life. When we thus see the punishment of guilt accumulated on the head of him who has not participated in it, and vice triumph in the security that should seem the lot of innocence, we can only adduce new motives to fortify ourselves in this great truth of our religion--that the chastisement of the one, and reward of the other, must be looked for beyond the inflictions or enjoyments of our present existence. I do not often moralize on paper, but there are moments when one derives one's best consolation from so moralizing; and this easy and simple justification of Providence, which refers all that appears inconsistent here to the retribution of a future state, is pointed out less as the duty than the happiness of mankind. This single argument of religion solves every difficulty, and leaves the mind in fortitude and peace; whilst the pride of sceptical philosophy traces whole volumes, only to establish the doubts, and nourish the despair, of its disciples. Adieu. I cannot conclude better than with these reflections, at a time when disbelief is something too fashionable even amongst our countrymen.--Yours, &c. Amiens, October, 1792. I arrived here the day on which a ball was given to celebrate the return of the volunteers who had gone to the assistance of Lisle.* *The bombardment of Lisle commenced on the twenty-ninth of September, at three o'clock in the afternoon, and continued, almost without interruption, until the sixth of October. Many of the public buildings, and whole quarters of the town, were so much damaged or destroyed, that the situation of the streets were scarcely distinguishable. The houses which the fire obliged their inhabitants to abandon, were pillaged by barbarians, more merciless than the Austrians themselves. Yet, amidst these accumulated horrors, the Lillois not only preserved their courage, but their presence of mind: the rich incited and encouraged the poor; those who were unable to assist with their labour, rewarded with their wealth: the men were employed in endeavouring to extinguish the fire of the buildings, or in preserving their effects; while women and children snatched the opportunity of extinguishing the fuzes of the bombs as soon as they fell, at which they became very daring and dexterous. During the whole of this dreadful period, not one murmur, not one proposition to surrender, was heard from any party. --The Convention decreed, amidst the wildest enthusiasm of applause, that Lisle had deserved well of the country. --Forty-two thousand five hundred balls were fired, and the damages were estimated at forty millions of livres. The French, indeed, never refuse to rejoice when they are ordered; but as these festivities are not spontaneous effusions, but official ordinances, and regulated with the same method as a tax or recruitment, they are of course languid and uninteresting. The whole of their hilarity seems to consist in the movement of the dance, in which they are by not means animated; and I have seen, even among the common people, a cotillion performed as gravely and as mechanically as the ceremonies of a Chinese court.--I have always thought, with Sterne, that we were mistaken in supposing the French a gay nation. It is true, they laugh much, have great gesticulation, and are extravagantly fond of dancing: but the laugh is the effect of habit, and not of a risible sensation; the gesture is not the agitation of the mind operating upon the body, but constitutional volatility; and their love of dancing is merely the effect of a happy climate, (which, though mild, does not enervate,) and that love of action which usually accompanies mental vacancy, when it is not counteracted by heat, or other physical causes. I know such an opinion, if publicly avowed, would be combated as false and singular; yet I appeal to those who have at all studied the French character, not as travellers, but by a residence amongst them, for the support of my opinion. Every one who understands the language, and has mixed much in society, must have made the same observations.--See two Frenchmen at a distance, and the vehemence of their action, and the expression of their features, shall make you conclude they are discussing some subject, which not only interests, but delights them. Enquire, and you will find they were talking of the weather, or the price of a waistcoat!--In England you would be tempted to call in a peace-officer at the loud tone and menacing attitudes with which two people here very amicably adjust a bargain for five livres.--In short, we mistake that for a mental quality which, in fact, is but a corporeal one; and, though the French may have many good and agreeable points of character, I do not include gaiety among the number. I doubt very much of my friends will approve of their habitation. I confess I am by no means satisfied with it myself; and, with regard to pecuniary consideration, my engagement is not an advantageous one. --Madame Dorval, of whom I have taken the house, is a character very common in France, and over which I was little calculated to have the ascendant. Officiously polite in her manners, and inflexibly attentive to her interest, she seemingly acquiesces in every thing you propose. You would even fancy she was solicitous to serve you; yet, after a thousand gracious sentiments, and as many implied eulogiums on her liberality and generosity, you find her return, with unrelenting perseverance, to some paltry proposition, by which she is to gain a few livres; and all this so civilly, so sentimentally, and so determinedly, that you find yourself obliged to yield, and are duped without being deceived. The lower class have here, as well as on your side of the water, the custom of attributing to Ministers and Governments some connection with, or controul over, the operations of nature. I remarked to a woman who brings me fruit, that the grapes were bad and dear this year--_"Ah! mon Dieu, oui, ils ne murrissent pas. Il me semble que tout va mal depuis qu'on a invente la nation."_ ["Ah! Lord, they don't ripen now.--For my part, I think nothing has gone well since the nation was first invented."] I cannot, like the imitators of Sterne, translate a chapter of sentiment from every incident that occurs, or from every physiognomy I encounter; yet, in circumstances like the present, the mind, not usually observing, is tempted to comment.--I was in a milliner's shop to-day, and took notice on my entering, that its mistress was, whilst at her work, learning the _Marseillois_ Hymn. [A patriotic air, at this time highly popular.] Before I had concluded my purchase, an officer came in to prepare her for the reception of four volunteers, whom she was to lodge the two ensuing nights. She assented, indeed, very graciously, (for a French woman never loses the command of her features,) but a moment after, the Marseillois, which lay on the counter, was thrown aside in a pet, and I dare say she will not resume her patriotic taste, nor be reconciled to the revolution, until some days after the volunteers shall have changed their quarters. This quartering of troops in private houses appears to me the most grievous and impolitic of all taxes; it adds embarrassment to expence, invades domestic comfort, and conveys such an idea of military subjection, that I wonder any people ever submits to it, or any government ever ventures to impose it. I know not if the English are conscious of their own importance at this moment, but it is certain they are the centre of the hopes and fears of all parties, I might say of all Europe. The aristocrates wait with anxiety and solicitude a declaration of war, whilst their opponents regard such an event as pregnant with distress, and even as the signal of their ruin. The body of the people of both parties are averse from increasing the number of their enemies; but as the Convention may be directed by other motives than the public wish, it is impossible to form any conclusion on the subject. I am, of course, desirous of peace, and should be so from selfishness, if I were not from philanthropy, as a cessation of it at this time would disconcert all our plans, and oblige us to seek refuge at ____, which has just all that is necessary for our happiness, except what is most desirable--a mild and dry atmosphere.-- Yours, &c. Amiens, November, 1792. The arrival of my friends has occasioned a short suspension of my correspondence: but though I have been negligent, I assure you, my dear brother, I have not been forgetful; and this temporary preference of the ties of friendship to those of nature, will be excused, when you consider our long separation. My intimacy with Mrs. D____ began when I first came to this country, and at every subsequent visit to the continent it has been renewed and increased into that rational kind of attachment, which your sex seldom allow in ours, though you yourselves do not abound in examples of it. Mrs. D____ is one of those characters which are oftener loved than admired--more agreeable than handsome--good-natured, humane, and unassuming--and with no mental pretensions beyond common sense tolerably well cultivated. The shades of this portraiture are an extreme of delicacy, bordering on fastidiousness--a trifle of hauteur, not in manners, but disposition--and, perhaps, a tincture of affectation. These foibles are, however, in a great degree, constitutional: she is more an invalid than myself; and ill health naturally increases irritability, and renders the mind less disposed to bear with inconveniencies; we avoid company at first, through a sense of our infirmities, till this timidity becomes habitual, and settles almost into aversion.--The valetudinarian, who is obliged to fly the world, in time fancies herself above it, and ends by supposing there is some superiority in differing from other people. Mr. D____ is one of the best men existing--well bred and well informed; yet, without its appearing to the common observer, he is of a very singular and original turn of mind. He is most exceedingly nervous, and this effect of his physical construction has rendered him so susceptible, that he is continually agitated and hurt by circumstances which others pass by unnoticed. In other respects he is a great lover of exercise, fond of domestic life, reads much, and has an aversion from bustle of all kind. The banishment of the Priests, which in many instances was attended with circumstances of peculiar atrocity, has not yet produced those effects which were expected from it, and which the promoters of the measure employed as a pretext for its adoption. There are indeed now no masses said but by the Constitutional Clergy; but as the people are usually as ingenious in evading laws as legislators are in forming them, many persons, instead of attending the churches, which they think profaned by priests who have taken the oaths, flock to church-yards, chapels, or other places, once appropriated to religious worship, but in disuse since the revolution, and of course not violated by constitutional masses. The cemetery of St. Denis, at Amiens, though large, is on Sundays and holidays so crouded, that it is almost difficult to enter it. Here the devotees flock in all weathers, say their mass, and return with the double satisfaction of having preserved their allegiance to the Pope, and risked persecution in a cause they deem meritorious. To say truth, it is not very surprizing that numbers should be prejudiced against the constitutional clergy. Many of them are, I doubt not, liberal and well-meaning men, who have preferred peace and submission to theological warfare, and who might not think themselves justified in opposing their opinion to a national decision: yet are there also many of profligate lives, who were never educated for the profession, and whom the circumstances of the times have tempted to embrace it as a trade, which offered subsistence without labour, and influence without wealth, and which at once supplied a veil for licentiousness, and the means of practising it. Such pastors, it must be confessed, have little claim to the confidence or respect of the people; and that there are such, I do not assert, but on the most credible information. I will only cite two instances out of many within my own knowledge. P____n, bishop of St. Omer, was originally a priest of Arras, of vicious character, and many of his ordinations have been such as might be expected from such a patron.--A man of Arras, who was only known for his vicious pursuits, and who had the reputation of having accelerated the death of his wife by ill treatment, applied to P____n to marry him a second time. The good Bishop, preferring the interest of his friend to the salvation of his flock, advised him to relinquish the project of taking a wife, and offered to give him a cure. The proposal was accepted on the spot, and this pious associate of the Reverend P____n was immediately invested with the direction of the consciences, and the care of the morals, of an extensive parish. Acts of this nature, it is to be imagined, were pursued by censure and ridicule; but the latter was not often more successful than on the following occasion:--Two young men, whose persons were unknown to the bishop, one day procured an audience, and requested he would recommend them to some employment that would procure them the means of subsistence. This was just a time when the numerous vacancies that had taken place were not yet supplied, and many livings were unfilled for want of candidates. The Bishop, who was unwilling that the nonjuring priests should have the triumph of seeing their benefices remain vacant, fell into the snare, and proposed their taking orders. The young men expressed their joy at the offer; but, after looking confusedly on each other, with some difficulty and diffidence, confessed their lives had been such as to preclude them from the profession, which, but for this impediment, would have satisfied them beyond their hopes. The Bishop very complaisantly endeavoured to obviate thesse objections, while they continued to accuse themselves of all the sins in the decalogue; but the Prelate at length observing he had ordained many worse, the young men smiled contemptuously, and, turning on their heels, replied, that if priests were made of worse men than they had described themselves to be, they begged to be excused from associating with such company. Dumouriez, Custine, Biron, Dillon, &c. are doing wonders, in spite of the season; but the laurel is an ever-green, and these heroes gather it equally among the snows of the Alps, and the fogs of Belgium. If we may credit the French papers too, what they call the cause of liberty is not less successfully propagated by the pen than the sword. England is said to be on the eve of a revolution, and all its inhabitants, except the King and Mr. Pitt, become Jacobins. If I did not believe "the wish was father to the thought," I should read these assertions with much inquietude, as I have not yet discovered the excellencies of a republican form of government sufficiently to make me wish it substituted for our own.--It should seem that the Temple of Liberty, as well as the Temple of Virtue, is placed on an ascent, and that as many inflexions and retrogradations occur in endeavouring to attain it. In the ardour of reaching these difficult acclivities, a fall sometimes leaves us lower than the situation we first set out from; or, to speak without a figure, so much power is exercised by our leaders, and so much submission exacted from the people, that the French are in danger of becoming habituated to a despotism which almost sanctifies the errors of their ancient monarchy, while they suppose themselves in the pursuit of a degree of freedom more sublime and more absolute than has been enjoyed by any other nation.-- Attempts at political as well as moral perfection, when carried beyond the limits compatible with a social state, or the weakness of our natures, are likely to end in a depravity which moderate governments and rational ethics would have prevented. The debates of the Convention are violent and acrimonious. Robespierre has been accused of aspiring to the Dictatorship, and his defence was by no means calculated to exonerate him from the charge. All the chiefs reproach each other with being the authors of the late massacres, and each succeeds better in fixing the imputation on his neighbour, than in removing it from himself. General reprobation, personal invectives, and long speeches, are not wanting; but every thing which tends to examination and enquiry is treated with much more delicacy and composure: so that I fear these first legislators of the republic must, for the present, be content with the reputation they have assigned each other, and rank amongst those who have all the guilt, but want the courage, of assassins. I subjoin an extract from a newspaper, which has lately appeared.* *Extract from _The Courier de l'Egalite,_ November, 1792: "There are discontented people who still venture to obtrude their sentiments on the public. One of them, in a public print, thus expresses himself-- 'I assert, that the newspapers are sold and devoted to falsehood. At this price they purchase the liberty of appearing; and the exclusive privilege they enjoy, as well as the contradictory and lying assertions they all contain, prove the truth of what I advance. They are all preachers of liberty, yet never was liberty so shamefully outraged--of respect for property, and property was at no time so little held sacred--of personal security, yet when were there committed so many massacres? and, at the very moment I am writing, new ones are premeditated. They call vehemently for submission, and obedience to the laws, but the laws had never less influence; and while our compliance with such as we are even ignorant of is exacted, it is accounted a crime to execute those in force. Every municipality has its own arbitrary code--every battalion, every private soldier, exercises a sovereignty, a most absolute despotism; and yet the Gazettes do not cease to boast the excellence of such a government. They have, one and all, attributed the massacres of the tenth of August and the second of September, and the days following each, to a popular fermentation. The monsters! they have been careful not to tell us, that each of these horrid scenes (at the prisons, at La Force, at the Abbaye, &c. &c.) was presided by municipal officers in their scarfs, who pointed out the victims, and gave the signal for the assassination. It was (continue the Journals) the error of an irritated people--and yet their magistrates were at the head of it: it was a momentary error; yet this error of a moment continued during six whole days of the coolest reflection--it was only at the close of the seventh that Petion made his appearance, and affected to persuade the people to desist. The assassins left off only from fatigue, and at this moment they are preparing to begin again. The Journals do not tell us that the chief of these _Scelerats_ [We have no term in the English language that conveys an adequate meaning for this word--it seems to express the extreme of human wickedness and atrocity.] employed subordinate assassins, whom they caused to be clandestinely murdered in their turn, as though they hoped to destroy the proof of their crime, and escape the vengeance that awaits them. But the people themselves were accomplices in the deed, for the Garde Nationale gave their assistance,'" &c. &c. In spite of the murder of so many journalists, and the destruction of the printing-offices, it treats the September business so freely, that the editor will doubtless soon be silenced. Admitting these accusations to be unfounded, what ideas must the people have of their magistrates, when they are credited? It is the prepossession of the hearer that gives authenticity to fiction; and such atrocities would neither be imputed to, nor believed of, men not already bad.--Yours, &c. December, 1792. Dear Brother, All the public prints still continue strongly to insinuate, that England is prepared for an insurrection, and Scotland already in actual rebellion: but I know the character of our countrymen too well to be persuaded that they have adopted new principles as easily as they would adopt a new mode, or that the visionary anarchists of the French government can have made many proselytes among an humane and rational people. For many years we were content to let France remain the arbitress of the lighter departments of taste: lately she has ceded this province to us, and England has dictated with uncontested superiority. This I cannot think very strange; for the eye in time becomes fatigued by elaborate finery, and requires only the introduction of simple elegance to be attracted by it. But if, while we export fashions to this country, we should receive in exchange her republican systems, it would be a strange revolution indeed; and I think, in such a commerce, we should be far from finding the balance in our favour. I have, in fact, little solicitude about these diurnal falsehoods, though I am not altogether free from alarm as to their tendency. I cannot help suspecting it is to influence the people to a belief that such dispositions exist in England as preclude the danger of a war, in case it should be thought necessary to sacrifice the King. I am more confirmed in this opinion, from the recent discovery, with the circumstances attending it, of a secret iron chest at the Tuilleries. The man who had been employed to construct this recess, informs the minister, Rolland; who, instead of communicating the matter to the Convention, as it was very natural he should do on an occasion of so much importance, and requiring it to be opened in the presence of proper witnesses, goes privately himself, takes the papers found into his own possession, and then makes an application for a committee to examine them. Under these suspicious and mysterious appearances, we are told that many letters, &c. are found, which inculpate the King; and perhaps the fate of this unfortunate Monarch is to be decided by evidence not admissible with justice in the case of the obscurest malefactor. Yet Rolland is the hero of a party who call him, par excellence, the virtuous Rolland! Perhaps you will think, with me, that this epithet is misapplied to a man who has risen, from an obscure situation to that of first Minister, without being possessed of talents of that brilliant or prominent class which sometimes force themselves into notice, without the aid of wealth or the support of patronage. Rolland was inspector of manufactories in this place, and afterwards at Lyons; and I do not go too far in advancing, that a man of very rigid virtue could not, from such a station, have attained so suddenly the one he now possesses. Virtue is of an unvarying and inflexible nature: it disdains as much to be the flatterer of mobs, as the adulator of Princes: yet how often must he, who rises so far above his equals, have stooped below them? How often must he have sacrificed both his reason and his principles? How often have yielded to the little, and opposed the great, not from conviction, but interest? For in this the meanest of mankind resemble the most exalted; he bestows not his confidence on him who resists his will, nor subscribes to the advancement of one whom he does not hope to influence.--I may almost venture to add, that more dissimulation, meaner concessions, and more tortuous policy, are requisite to become the idol of the people, than are practised to acquire and preserve the favour of the most potent Monarch in Europe. The French, however, do not argue in this manner, and Rolland is at present very popular, and his popularity is said to be greatly supported by the literary talents of his wife. I know not if you rightly understand these party distinctions among a set of men whom you must regard as united in the common cause of establishing a republic in France, but you have sometimes had occasion to remark in England, that many may amicably concur in the accomplishment of a work, who differ extremely about the participation of its advantages; and this is already the case with the Convention. Those who at present possess all the power, and are infinitely the strongest, are wits, moralists, and philosophers by profession, having Brissot, Rolland, Petion, Concorcet, &c. at their head; their opponents are adventurers of a more desperate cast, who make up by violence what they want in numbers, and are led by Robespierre, Danton, Chabot, &c. &c. The only distinction of these parties is, I believe, that the first are vain and systematical hypocrites, who have originally corrupted the minds of the people by visionary and insidious doctrines, and now maintain their superiority by artifice and intrigue: their opponents, equally wicked, and more daring, justify that turpitude which the others seek to disguise, and appear almost as bad as they are. The credulous people are duped by both; while the cunning of the one, and the vehemence of the other, alternately prevail.--But something too much of politics, as my design is in general rather to mark their effect on the people, than to enter on more immediate discussions. Having been at the Criminal Tribunal to-day, I now recollect that I have never yet described to you the costume of the French Judges.--Perhaps when I have before had occasion to speak of it, your imagination may have glided to Westminster Hall, and depicted to you the scarlet robes and voluminous wigs of its respectable magistrates: but if you would form an idea of a magistrate here, you must bring your mind to the abstraction of Crambo, and figure to yourself a Judge without either gown, wig, or any of those venerable appendages. Nothing indeed can be more becoming or gallant, than this judicial accoutrement--it is black, with a silk cloak of the same colour, in the Spanish form, and a round hat, turned up before, with a large plume of black feathers. This, when the magistrate happens to be young, has a very theatrical and romantic appearance; but when it is worn by a figure a little Esopian, or with a large bushy perriwig, as I have sometimes seen it, the effect is still less awful; and a stranger, on seeing such an apparition in the street, is tempted to suppose it a period of jubilee, and that the inhabitants are in masquerade. It is now the custom for all people to address each other by the appellation of Citizen; and whether you are a citizen or not--whether you inhabit Paris, or are a native of Peru--still it is an indication of aristocracy, either to exact, or to use, any other title. This is all congruous with the system of the day: the abuses are real, the reform is imaginary. The people are flattered with sounds, while they are losing in essentials. And the permission to apply the appellation of Citizen to its members, is but a poor compensation for the despotism of a department or a municipality. In vain are the people flattered with a chimerical equality--it cannot exist in a civilized state, and if it could exist any where, it would not be in France. The French are habituated to subordination--they naturally look up to something superior--and when one class is degraded, it is only to give place to another. --The pride of the noblesse is succeeded by the pride of the merchant-- the influence of wealth is again realized by cheap purchases of the national domains--the abandoned abbey becomes the delight of the opulent trader, and replaces the demolished chateau of the feudal institution. Full of the importance which the commercial interest is to acquire under a republic, the wealthy man of business is easily reconciled to the oppression of the superior classes, and enjoys, with great dignity, his new elevation. The counting-house of a manufacturer of woollen cloth is as inaccessible as the boudoir of a Marquis; while the flowered brocade gown and well-powdered curls of the former offer a much more imposing exterior than the chintz robe de chambre and dishevelled locks of the more affable man of fashion. I have read, in some French author, a maxim to this effect:--"Act with your friends as though they should one day be your enemies;" and the existing government seems amply to have profited by the admonition of their country-man: for notwithstanding they affirm, that all France supports, and all England admires them, this does not prevent their exercising a most vigilant inquisition over the inhabitants of both countries.--It is already sagaciously hinted, that Mr. Thomas Paine may be a spy, and every householder who receives a lodger or visitor, and every proprietor who lets a house, is obliged to register the names of those he entertains, or who are his tenants, and to become responsible for their conduct. This is done at the municipality, and all who thus venture to change their residence, of whatever age, sex, or condition, must present themselves, and submit to an examination. The power of the municipalities is indeed very great; and as they are chiefly selected from the lower class of shop-keepers, you may conclude that their authority is not exercised with much politeness or moderation. The timid or indolent inhabitant of London, whose head has been filled with the Bastilles and police of the ancient government, and who would as soon have ventured to Constantinople as to Paris, reads, in the debates of the Convention, that France is now the freeest country in the world, and that strangers from all corners of it flock to offer their adorations in this new Temple of Liberty. Allured by these descriptions, he resolves on the journey, willing, for once in his life, to enjoy a taste of the blessing in sublimate, which he now learns has hitherto been allowed him only in the gross element.--He experiences a thousand impositions on landing with his baggage at Calais, but he submits to them without murmuring, because his countrymen at Dover had, on his embarkation, already kindly initiated him into this science of taxing the inquisitive spirit of travellers. After inscribing his name, and rewarding the custom-house officers for rummaging his portmanteau, he determines to amuse himself with a walk about the town. The first centinel he encounters stops him, because he has no cockade: he purchases one at the next shop, (paying according to the exigency of the case,) and is suffered to pass on. When he has settled his bill at the Auberge "a l'Angloise," and emagines he has nothing to do but to pursue his journey, he finds he has yet to procure himself a passport. He waits an hour and an half for an officer, who at length appears, and with a rule in one hand, and a pen in the other, begins to measure the height, and take an inventory of the features of the astonished stranger. By the time this ceremony is finished, the gates are shut, and he can proceed no farther, till the morrow. He departs early, and is awakened twice on the road to Boulogne to produce his passport: still, however, he keeps his temper, concluding, that the new light has not yet made its way to the frontiers, and that these troublesome precautions may be necessary near a port. He continues his route, and, by degrees, becomes habituated to this regimen of liberty; till, perhaps, on the second day, the validity of his passport is disputed, the municipality who granted it have the reputation of aristocracy, or the whole is informal, and he must be content to wait while a messenger is dispatched to have it rectified, and the officers establish the severity of their patriotism at the expence of the stranger. Our traveller, at length, permitted to depart, feels his patience wonderfully diminished, execrates the regulations of the coast, and the ignorance of small towns, and determines to stop a few days and observe the progress of freedom at Ameins. Being a large commercial place, he here expects to behold all the happy effects of the new constitution; he congratulates himself on travelling at a period when he can procure information, and discuss his political opinions, unannoyed by fears of state prisons, and spies of the police. His landlord, however, acquaints him, that his appearance at the Town House cannot be dispensed with--he attends three or four different hours of appointment, and is each time sent away, (after waiting half an hour with the valets de ville in the antichamber,) and told that the municipal officers are engaged. As an Englishman, he has little relish for these subordinate sovereigns, and difficult audiences--he hints at the next coffee-house that he had imagined a stranger might have rested two days in a free country, without being measured, and questioned, and without detailing his history, as though he were suspected of desertion; and ventures on some implied comparison between the ancient "Monsieur le Commandant," and the modern "Citoyen Maire."--To his utter astonishment he finds, that though there are no longer emissaries of the police, there are Jacobin informers; his discourse is reported to the municipality, his business in the town becomes the subject of conjecture, he is concluded to be _"un homme sans aveu,"_ [One that can't give a good account of himself.] and arrested as "suspect;" and it is not without the interference of the people to whom he may have been recommended at Paris, that he is released, and enabled to continue his journey. At Paris he lives in perpetual alarm. One night he is disturbed by a visite domiciliaire, another by a riot--one day the people are in insurrection for bread, and the next murdering each other at a public festival; and our country-man, even after making every allowance for the confusion of a recent change, thinks himself very fortunate if he reaches England in safety, and will, for the rest of his life, be satisfied with such a degree of liberty as is secured to him by the constitution of his own country. You see I have no design of tempting you to pay us a visit; and, to speak the truth, I think those who are in England will show their wisdom by remaining there. Nothing but the state of Mrs. D____'s health, and her dread of the sea at this time of the year, detains us; for every day subtracts from my courage, and adds to my apprehensions. --Yours, &c. 
10864	----	Proofreaders. This file was produced from images generously made available by gallica (Bibliotheque nationale de France) at http://gallica.bnf.fr. [Illustration: VIEW of the MONASTERY of LA TRAPPE] A VISIT TO THE MONASTERY OF LA TRAPPE IN 1817. WITH NOTES _TAKEN DURING A TOUR THROUGH_ LE PERCHE, NORMANDY, BRETAGNE, POITOU, ANJOU, LE BOCAGE, TOURAINE, ORLEANOIS, AND THE ENVIRONS OF PARIS. BY W.D. FELLOWES, ESQ. ILLUSTRATED WITH NUMEROUS COLOURED ENGRAVINGS, FROM DRAWINGS MADE ON THE SPOT. LIST OF THE PLATES. View of the Monastery of La Trappe Ruins of the Ancient Church of ditto Ruins of the Gateway of the ancient Chartreuse Les Noyades (_vignette_) Grotto of Héloïse at Clisson Tomb of Abélard and Héloïse Ruins of Abélard's House Granite Rock in the Garenne Le Connétable de Clisson (_outline_) Ruins of Clisson Tour des Pélerins Moulin aux chêvres Tour d'Oudon on the River Loire View of St. Florent Tomb (_etching_) PREFACE. In justice to the public and to myself, I must disavow for the following pages any higher literary pretension than what is conveyed by the simple title of "Notes," under which I have ventured to give them to the world. I had no other aim in writing but to occupy as rationally as I could the hours of travel, and no other object in publishing but to impart to others as plainly as I could a portion of the pleasure I myself experienced. It has somewhere been remarked to this effect, that if every man of common understanding were to put down the daily thoughts and occurrences of his life, candidly and unaffectedly as he experienced them, he must necessarily produce something of interest to his fellow men, and make a book, which, though not enlivened by wit, dignified by profundity of reasoning, nor valuable by extent of research, yet no man perhaps should throw aside with either weariness or disgust. Whether I shall prove fortunate enough not to excite these sensations in such readers as may honour my book with a perusal, I fear to conjecture. But it was my good fortune, during a season of uncommon beauty, to make a tour through some of the most interesting parts of France, and to meet with persons who, from situation and talents, were highly calculated to give my journey every charm of society and information. The natural face of the country through which I passed was peculiarly beautiful: I could scarcely move a step without some novelty of picturesque enchantment, and had the most perfect opportunities of contemplating Nature in all her varied poetry, from the grand and terrible graces of savage sublimity, to the soft and playful loveliness of cultivated luxuriance. There was scarcely a town or village where I arrived which romance or history, religion or politics, had not invested and adorned with every interest of mental association. Under such impressions, and with such opportunities, it was scarcely possible to resist recording something of what I saw and felt; and if the publication of my hasty record be an error, it will be deemed by my friends, I hope, a pardonable one. My book can scarcely demand the serious attention of the critic; nor could criticism well expect a better style from one whose profession is seldom supposed to allow much leisure to acquire nicety in the arts of composition. I claim no other merit for my Notes than having followed the advice (of Gray, I believe) that ten words put down at the moment upon the spot, are worth a whole cart load of recollections. I have not sought to add to their attraction (if they should possess any) by the embellishments of my invention, or the graces of my periods--the decorative artifices of execution can never give value to falsehood, and truth needs them not. A simple landscape, simply described from nature, has always a charm above the most high-finished compositions of mere fancy; and, like a moderate painting from the same source, still imparts a feeling of reality. I hope, therefore, I shall be excused for attempting some description, slight and unskilful as it may be, of places and scenery where the human mind has exhibited some of its most curious and powerful features, and which awaken reflections of the deepest interest--I allude particularly to the monastery of _La Trappe_, and to the country of _La Vendée_. The former had dwelt among the earliest impressions of youth, with something like the wild and wonderful force of a romantic tale; and I was anxious to become an eye-witness of what had so long been one of the most powerful objects of my imagination. The gloomy and almost inaccessible situation chosen by this strange fraternity for their convent--their rigid separation from human intercourse--the infringible taciturnity imposed upon themselves--and the terrible severity of their penances, are certainly circumstances more resembling the visionary indulgence of fantasy and fiction, than actual realities to be met with among living men, and in the present day. With regard to the department of _La Vendée_, whatever serves, trivial as it may be, to recall or illustrate the history of its wars and the character of its inhabitants, must ever possess a charm for those who delight to sympathize with the noble struggles of a gallant people, conscientiously devoting themselves to the cause of a fallen and persecuted monarchy, and resisting the cruel and destructive ferocity of a licentious enemy, who had broken down the most sacred fences of society, and trampled upon the dearest ties of human nature. In these Notes, slight as they are, I can truly promise the reader that he will find nothing wilfully misrepresented, nor advanced without just authority; and if the rapid and cursory character of the observations, allusions, and anecdotes, shall enable an hour to pass agreeably that has no better employment, I am content, and gratified with the attainment of all I ever hoped or designed by an unpretending publication, which I cheerfully dedicate to all who love to unbend their minds from a critical attitude, and can lounge goodnaturedly over leaves written by a traveller as idle and careless as themselves, and who assures them that no one can think more humbly of his production than himself. MARCH 1818. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Route from Paris to Mortagne.--Excursion to La Trappe.--State of the Order since the restoration in 1814.--Its foundation and rules under the Abbé de Rancé. CHAP. II. Ruins of the Convent of the Chartreux.--Forests of Le Perche.--Mortagne. CHAP. III. From Mortagne to Rennes.--Soeurs de la Charité.--Alençon.--Laval.--Vitré, the celebrated residence of Mad. de Sévigné. CHAP. IV. Rennes.--Route from Rennes to Nantes.--City of Nantes.--Historical anecdotes. CHAP. V. Country south of the Loire.--Le Bocage.--Clisson.--Historical anecdotes.--The Garenne, and River Sèvres. CHAP. VI. General appearance and limits of Le Bocage.--Nature of the mode of warfare of the Vendeans. CHAP. VII. The River Loire, from Nantes to Angers. CHAP. VIII. Saumur to Tours.--Tours to Blois.--Orléans--and Orléans to Paris. CHAP. IX. Environs of Paris.--Père la Chaise.--Castle of Vincennes, and Château of Saint Germain.--The Forest, and Vicinity.--Conclusion. A VISIT TO THE MONASTERY OF LA TRAPPE CHAP. I. ROUTE FROM PARIS TO MORTAGNE.--EXCURSION TO LA TRAPPE.--STATE OF THE ORDER SINCE THE RESTORATION IN 1814.--ITS FOUNDATION AND RULES UNDER THE ABBE DE RANCE. I performed this journey during the months of June, July, August, and September, a distance of near one thousand miles, and had the singular good fortune to enjoy the finest weather possible. The perusal of Madame de La Roche-Jaquelin's interesting work on the Vendean war, first gave me the idea of visiting the country called le Bocage, the theatre of so many events, and sufferings of the brave royalists; and, as the province of le Perche, in which is situated the ancient convent of La Trappe, was in my route to Bretagne, I resolved to make an excursion there, in order to satisfy myself of the truth of those austerities which I had read of in the Memoirs of the Count de Comminge. The route from Paris to Mortagne, in le Perche, leads through Marly, Versailles, Saint Cyr, Pont Chartrain, La Queue, Houdon, Marrolles, Dreux, Nonancourt, Tillières, Verneuil, and Saint Maurice. The roads are excellent, and the country beautiful. The first post out of Paris is Nanterre. Two leagues and a half from the barriere, the village of Ruel, and the park of Malmaison, form a continuation of neat buildings. At Nanterre, in the campaign of 1815, the Prussians, after a severe engagement with the retreating troops of the French, had one regiment of cavalry cut to pieces. At Ruel, the celebrated Cardinal Richelieu had a palace, which at the Revolution became national property, and was purchased by Massena, Duc de Rivoli, Prince D'Essling, lately deceased. The Duchess still resides there. It was taken possession of by the allies in 1815, and, like Malmaison, plundered by the troops. There are extensive barracks for cavalry at this place, at present occupied by the Swiss guards. A little farther, between Malmaison and Marly, is a beautiful château, formerly belonging to General Count Bertrand, who accompanied Napoleon to Saint Helena; it is now the property of M. Ouverard, the banker: nearly opposite is the residence of the celebrated Abbé Sieyès, who lives in great retirement. Whatever may have been the political transgressions of Bertrand, there is something so noble in his devotion to the fallen fortunes of his master, that it is impossible not to respect his character. At Marly, the water-works and aqueduct for conveying the water from the river Seine to the palace and gardens of Versailles, are very curious. The palace of Marly is destroyed; but the basins, which were constructed by order of Louis XIV. are still to be seen, though in ruins. Delille, the poet, in his description of the château and beautiful grounds of Marly, says: C'est là que tout est grand, que l'art n'est point timide; Là tout est enchanté: c'est le Palais d'Armide; C'est le jardin d'Alcine, ou plutôt d'un Héros, Noble dans sa retraite et grand dans son repos. Qui cherche encore à vaincre, à dompter des obstacles, Et ne marche jamais qu'entouré de miracles. On quitting Paris, I had procured a letter of introduction from Count La Cou to Madame de Bellou, at Mortagne, a charming old lady of an ancient and noble family in that province, who had never quitted the seat of her ancestors, but remained quiet and respected during all the storms of the revolution. She received me with kindness, and politely introduced me to the Sub-Prefect, Monsieur Lamorelie, who gave me a letter of introduction to the Père Don Augustin, Grand Prior of La Trappe. The mayor of the commune of Solignié, who happened to be at the inn, and learned from the _Aubergiste_, that a stranger intended visiting La Trappe, very civilly introduced himself to me, and gave me every necessary direction how to proceed through the forest; at the same time expressing his surprise that an Englishman should take the trouble, and undergo the fatigue of penetrating through such a country, an attempt which few of his own countrymen had ever ventured to make. It was singular enough that only one person in the town could be found to accompany me as a guide, or who knew any thing of the track through the forest, although the abbey is distant only twenty-five miles. I set out with the guide just at day-break, mounted on a small Norman horse, and armed with pistols and a sword-cane, in case of meeting with wolves, which the mayor of Solignié had cautioned me against, as abounding throughout the country. We travelled, after leaving the main road, at the distance of a league, through a country scarcely appearing to be inhabited. Here and there a lone cot, a mere speck, met the eye amidst a landscape composed of nothing but barren wastes and thick forests, nearly impervious to the light. We had penetrated about half a mile through one of the latter, my attention occupied with the romantic wildness of the scene, when we were alarmed by the howling of a wolf. My guide crossed himself, and began cracking his whip with the noise and singular dexterity peculiar to the French postillions; and as we entered a part of the forest, impenetrable but for traces known only to those who are accustomed to them, he related (by way of consolation, I suppose,) several stories of the peasantry having been recently attacked, and some destroyed, by wolves; and one instance of a woman having had her infant torn from her arms, only a short time since, in the neighbourhood. On quitting the forest the track was now and then diversified by the ruins of a solitary cottage, or the mouldering remains of a crucifix, raised by pious hands to mark some event, or to guide the traveller; and after traversing a rocky plain, covered with heath and wild thyme, where some herds of sheep and goats were browsing, attended by the shepherd, we entered the Forest of Bellegarde. This forest spreads over a large extent of country, and is so dark and intricate, that those best acquainted with it frequently lose their way. No vestige of human footsteps or of the track of animals appeared; a mark, here and there, on some of the trees, was the only direction! Pursuing our way through turnings and windings the most perplexing, we found ourselves to be on the overhanging brow of a hill, the descent of which was so precipitous, that we were under the necessity of dismounting; and by a winding path, hollowed out in its side, descended through a sort of labyrinth towards the valley, whose sides were clothed with lofty woods, rising one above the other. The valley itself is interspersed with three lakes, connected with each other, and forming a sort of moat around the ground; in the centre of which appears the venerable abbey of La Trappe, with its dark gray towers, the deep tone of whose bell had previously announced to us, that we had nearly reached our journey's end. The situation of this monastery was well adapted to the founder's views, and to suggest the name it originally received of La Trappe, from the intricacy of the road which descends to it, and the difficulty of access or egress, which exists even to this day, though the woods have been very much thinned since the revolution. Perhaps there never was any thing in the whole universe better calculated to inspire religious awe than the first view of this monastery. It was imposing even to breathlessness. The total solitude--the undisturbed and chilling silence, which seem to have ever slept over the dark and ancient woods--the still lakes, reflecting the deep solemnity of the objects around them--all impress a powerful image of utter seclusion and hopeless separation from living man, and appear formed at once to court and gratify the sternest austerities of devotion--to nurse the fanaticism of diseased imaginations--to humour the wildest fancies--and promote the gloomiest schemes of penance and privation! In descending the steep and intricate path the traveller frequently loses sight of the abbey, until he has actually reached the bottom; then emerging from the wood, the following inscription is seen carved on a wooden cross: C'est ici que la mort et que la vérité Elèvent leurs flambeaux terribles; C'est de cette demeure, au monde inaccessible, Que l'on passe à l'éternité. A venerable grove of oak trees, which formerly surrounded the monastery, was cut down in the revolution. In the gateway of the outer court is a statue of Saint Bernard, which has been mutilated by the republicans: he is holding in one hand a church, and in the other a spade--the emblems of devotion and labour. This gateway leads into a court, which opens into a second enclosure, and around that are the granaries, stables, bakehouse, and other offices necessary to the abbey, which have all been happily preserved. Owing to the fatigue of the journey, the heat of the weather, and having frequently been obliged to retrace our steps, from losing our way in the woods, it was late before we arrived at the abbey. To the west, under the glow of the setting sun, the forests were still tinged with the warmest yet softest colours that faded fast away; and as we descended towards the Convent, quickening our pace to reach it before the last gleams of evening departed, there was a silence around us, which at such a moment, and in such a spot, sunk sorrowfully upon the heart! Just as I reached the gate the bell tolled in so solemn and melancholy a tone that it vibrated through my whole frame, and called strongly to mind the beautiful lines in "Parisina": The Convent bells are ringing, But mournfully and slow; In the gray square turret swinging, With a deep sound, to and fro, Heavily to the heart they go! On entering the gate, a lay-brother received me on his knees; and in a low and whispering voice informed me they were at vespers. The stillness and gloom of the building--the last rays of the sun scarcely penetrating through its windows--the deep tones of the monks chanting the responses, which occasionally broke the silence, filled me with reverential emotions which I felt unwilling to disturb: it was necessary however to present my letter of introduction, and Frère Charle, the secrétaire, soon after came out, and received me with great civility. He appeared a young man about five-and-twenty, with a handsome and prepossessing countenance. He informed me that the Père Abbé was then absent, visiting a convent of Female Trappistes, a few leagues distant, but that he should be happy to show me every attention; and requested that in going over the Convent, I would neither speak nor ask him any questions in those places where I saw him kneel, or in the presence of any of the Monks. I followed him to the chapel, where, as soon as the service was over, the bell rung to summon them to supper. Ranged in double rows, with their heads enveloped in a large cowl, and bent down to the earth, they chanted the grace, and then seated themselves. During the repast one of them, standing, read passages from scripture, reminding them of death, and of the shortness of human existence; another went round the whole community, and on his knees kissed their feet in succession, throwing himself prostrate on the floor at intervals before the image of our Saviour; a third remained on his knees the whole time, and in that attitude took his repast. These penitents had committed some fault, or neglected their religious duties, of which, according to the regulations, they had accused themselves, and were in consequence doomed to the above modes of penance. The refectory was furnished with long wooden tables and benches; each person was provided with a trencher, a jug of water, and a cup, having on it the name of the brother to whom it is appropriated, as Frère Paul, Frère François, &c. which name they assume on taking the vow. Their supper consisted of bread soaked in water, a little salt, and two raw carrots, placed by each; water alone is their beverage. The dinner is varied with a little cabbage or other vegetables: they very rarely have cheese, and never meat, fish, or eggs. The bread is of the coarsest kind possible. Their bed is a small truckle, boarded, with a single covering, generally a blanket, no mattress nor pillow; and, as in the former time, no fire is allowed but one in the great hall, which they never approach. Within these three years a small cabaret has been built near the Convent for the accommodation of those who may occasionally visit it, the buildings that remain being but barely sufficient for their own members, which have been rapidly increasing since its restoration. In this cabaret I took up my abode for the night, in preference to the accommodation very kindly offered me by Frère Charle, and retired to rest, wearied with the day's excursion, and fully satisfied, that all I had heard, all I had imagined of La Trappe, was infinitely short of the reality, and that no adequate description could be given of its awful and dreary solitude; Monsieur Elzéar de Sabran, in a poem called Le Repentir, lately published, describing this Monastery, says very justly; Témoins d'une commune et secrète souffrance, Ces frères de douleur, martyrs de l'espérance, D'une lente torture épuisant les degrés, Constamment réunis, constamment séparés, L'un à l'autre étrangers, à côté l'un de l'autre, Joignent tout ce malheur encore à tout le nôtre, Jamais, dans ses pareils cherchant un tendre appui, Un coeur ne s'ouvre aux coeurs qui souffrent comme lui. The following morning the matin bell summoned me to the Convent, and Frère Charle attended me to the burial ground; here have been deposited the remains of two of the brothers, deceased since the restoration of their order in 1814. Another grave was ready prepared; as soon as an interment takes place, one being always opened for the next that may die. The two graves were marked with simple wooden crosses, bearing the following inscriptions: F. Nicolas. Frère DONNÉ Décédé. le 24 Février 1816. * * * * * On the other: F. AUGUSTINUS. NOVITIUS die 26 mensis novembris ANNO. 1816 DECESSIT. REQUIESCAT IN PACE AMEN. * * * * * In the centre of the cemetery is the grave of M. De Rancé. His monument, with his figure carved at full length in a recumbent posture, was removed when the destruction of the old church took place; it is now a complete ruin, and a few stones alone mark the spot of its ancient founder's grave, which is kept free from weeds with pious reverence and care. The revolution, which like a torrent swept all before it, did not even spare the dead. [Illustration: RUINS of the ANCIENT CHURCH of LA TRAPPE.] While I was contemplating the ruins around me, and watching the motions of a venerable figure in silent prayer at one of the angles, the bell tolled, when both Frère Charle and the Monk dropped instantly on their knees. How forcibly were the following lines of Pope recalled to my mind! Lo, the struck deer, in some sequester'd part, Lies down to die, (the arrow in his heart;) There, hid in shades, and wasting day by day, Inly he bleeds, and pants his soul away. The number of Monks who have taken the vow are not in proportion to the others, who are lay brothers, and _Frères Donnés_; in all there are about one hundred, besides novices, who are principally composed of boys, and who do not wear the same habit. The Trappistes, who compose the first order, are clothed in dark brown, with brown mantle and hood; the others are in white, with brown mantle and hood. I occasionally caught a glimpse of their faces, but it was only momentarily; and I can easily believe, with their perpetual silence, that two people well known to each other, might inhabit the same spot, without ever being aware of it, so completely are their faces hidden by their large cowl. The Trappistes, or first order, are distinguished by the appellation of _Frères Convers_, the others by that of _Religieux de Coeur_. The hardships undergone by these monks appear almost insupportable to human nature, and notwithstanding the immense number of deaths occasioned by their rigorous austerities, the Cénobites of La Trappe, at the suppression of their order, amounted to one hundred monks, sixty-nine lay brothers, and fifty-six _Frères Donnés_. The inmates are classed under these three heads; but the lay brothers, who take the same vows, and follow the same rules, are principally employed as servants, and in transacting the temporal concerns of the abbey. The _Frères Donnés_ are brothers given for a time; these last are not properly belonging to the order, they are rather, religious persons, whose business or connexions prevent their joining the order absolutely, but, who wishing to renew serious impressions, or to retire from the world for a given period, come here and conform strictly to the regulations while they remain, without wishing to join the order for life. Many persons on their first conversion, or after some peculiar dispensations of Providence, retire here for a season. In the refectory I observed a board hung up, with "_Table pour l'Office Divin_," written over it, and under it the regulations or order of service to be performed for that week, which are occasionally varied, but never diminished in their rigour. Frère Charle said, that the whole were strictly observed, and were frequently much more severe; for the Père Abbé had instituted more austere regulations than formerly, with the only one exception, of the sick being allowed medicines; and, in cases of great debility, a small quantity of meat. The Table "_pour l'Office Divin_," was as follows. Dimanche....12 Leçons et Communion. Lundi....... 3 Leçons. Mardi.......12 Leçons--à jeun--Travail. Mercredi....12 Leçons. Jeudi....... 3 Leçons. Vendredi....12 Leçons--à jeun--Travail. Samedi......12 Leçons--à jeun--Travail. Their mode of life and regulations exist nearly in the same state as established by the founder; in reciting them, such horrible perversions of human nature and reason make it almost difficult to believe the existence of so severe an order, and lead us to wonder at the artificial miseries, which the ingenuity of pious but morbid enthusiasm can inflict upon itself. The abstinence practised at La Trappe allows not the use of meat, fish, eggs, or butter; and a very limited quantity of bread and vegetables. They only eat twice a day; which meals consist of a slender repast at about eleven in the morning, and two ounces of bread and two raw carrots in the evening: both together do not at any time exceed twelve ounces. The same spirit of mortification is observable in their cells, which are very small, and have no other furniture than a bed of boards, a human skull, and a few religious books. Silence is at all times rigidly maintained; conversation is never permitted: should two of them even be seen standing near each other, though pursuing their daily labour, and preserving the strictest silence, it is considered as a violation of their vow, and highly criminal; each member is therefore as completely insulated as if he alone existed in the Monastery. None but the Père Abbé knows the name, age, rank, or even the native country of any member of the community: every one, at his first entrance, assumes another name, as I before observed, and with his former appellation, each is supposed to abjure, not only the world, but every recollection and memorial of himself and connexions: no word ever escapes from his lips by which the others can possibly guess who he is, or where he comes from; and persons of the same name, family, and neighbourhood, have often lived together in the Convent for years, unknown to each other, without having suspected their proximity. The abstraction of mind practised at La Trappe, and the prevention of all external communication with the world is such, that few but the superior know any thing of what is passing in it. It has been related, that so little information of the affairs of mankind did these people receive, that the death of Louis XIV. was not known there for years, except by the Father Abbé; and such was their state of seclusion, that a Nobleman having taken a journey of five hundred miles, purposely to see the Monastery, could scarcely find in the neighbouring villages one person who knew where it was situated. Indeed, at the present day, it is quite astonishing how little is known of this place, and how very few, even among those in its immediate vicinity, have ever visited it.[1] On the great festivals they rise at midnight; otherwise they are not called until three quarters past one: at two they assemble in the Chapel, where they perform different services, public and private, until seven in the morning, according to the regulations of the week, as exemplified in the "_Table pour l'Office Divin_". At this hour they go out to labour in the open air. Their work is of the most fatiguing kind, is never intermitted, winter or summer, and admits of no relaxation from the state of the weather. [Footnote 1: Among the most frequent visitors of La Trappe, was the unfortunate James the Second. His first visit was on the 20th November, 1690, where he was received by M. de Rancé, whose account of it is very interesting.] When their labour is over, they go into Chapel for a short time, until eleven o'clock, the hour of repast; at a quarter after eleven they read till noon; and afterwards lie down to rest for an hour: they are then summoned into the garden, where they again work until three; then read again for three quarters of an hour, and retire for another quarter to their private meditations, by way of preparation for vespers, which begin at four, and end at six; at seven they again enter the Chapel, and at eight they leave it, and retire to rest. At the hour of their first repast, I again attended Frère Charle to the eating-room, where nearly the same forms were observed as at their evening-meal; a small basin of boiled cabbage, two raw carrots, and a small piece of black bread, with a jug of water, constituted their solitary meal. A Monk, during the whole time, read sentences from Scripture; and a small hand-bell filled up the intervals of his silence, and proclaimed a cessation from eating, or movement of any sort. Over the door of the Refectory I observed the following inscription in Latin:--"Better is a dinner of herbs, where love is, than a stalled ox, and hatred therewith". Frère Charle invited me to partake of the frugal fare of his order. He said, "You will forgive my laying before you a vegetable repast; it is all that I have in my power to offer you, but you will confer a pleasure by accepting it". It was impossible to refuse, for I felt I should appear ungrateful after the attentions that had been shown me, if I had. Frère Charle conducted me into an apartment, in which I was gratified to observe a well executed portrait of the Abbé de Rancé, which, at the destruction of the Monastery, had been preserved by the surgeon of the ancient fraternity, who continued to reside there until the period of his death, four or five years since. This person was greatly respected by all the people round the country, and resorted to by all who sought relief either from sickness or misery!--Had the other brothers followed his example of remaining, in all probability their Convent might have been spared, for the accumulation of wealth could not be laid to their charge; and as their monastic vows obliged them to remain within the Monastery, they were most unlikely to incur the suspicion of any political intrigues.--How indeed could men, whose whole existence was passed in solitude and penance, and who never conversed even among themselves, have been dangerous to those turbulent spirits who had overturned the government and all the religious institutions of their country! In the portrait, the Abbé is dressed in the habit of the order, a white gown and hood, and sitting with a book before him, in which he appears to be writing; on the same table, before him, are a crucifix and a skull. The following inscription is painted in one corner by the artist: "ARM'D. LE BOUTTHILLIER DE RANCE. S'R SCAUANT. et célèbre Abbé Réformateur De La Trappe. Mort en 1700. à près de 77 ans, et de 40 ans de la plus austère pénitence". The Monastery of La Trappe is one of the most ancient Abbeys of the order of Benedictins: it was established under the pontificate of Innocent the Second, during the reign of Louis VII. in the year 1140, by Rotrou, the second Count of Perche, and is said to have been built to accomplish a vow, made in the peril of shipwreck. In commemoration of this circumstance, the roof was made in the shape of the bottom of a ship inverted. It was founded under the auspices of Saint Bernard, the first Abbot of Clairvaux, the celebrated preacher in favour of the Crusades. Many ages, however, had elapsed, since its first institution, when the Father Abbot de Rancé, the celebrated reformer of his time, determined to become a member, whose singular history and conversion was the subject of a poem by Monsieur Barthe. The Abbé de Rancé became a Monk of the Benedictin order of La Trappe, in 1660, and his conversion was attributed to a lady whom he tenderly loved. They had been separated for some time by her parents; she having written to him to remove her for the purpose of becoming united in marriage, he set off, but, during his journey, she was seized with a fever and died. Totally ignorant of the circumstance, he approached the house under cover of the night, and got into her apartment through the window. The first object he beheld was the coffin which contained the body of his beloved mistress! It had been made of lead, but being found to be too short, they had, with unheard of brutality; severed her head from her body! Horror-struck with the shocking spectacle, he, from that hour, renounced all connexion with the world, and imposed upon himself the most rigid austerities, which he continued until his death, forty years after. When M. de Rancé undertook the superintendance of the Monastery, it exhibited a melancholy picture, of the greatest declension, and it is curious to peruse the steps by which he effected so wonderful a change;[2] and how men could ever feel it either an inclination or a duty to enter upon a mode of life so different from the common ways of thinking or feeling. [Footnote 2: Règlements de L'Abbaye, La Maison-Dieu Notre Dame de La Trappe, par Dom. Armand de Rancé.] The Monks of La Trappe were not only immersed in luxury and sloth, but were abandoned to the most scandalous excesses; most of them lived by robbery, and several had committed assassinations on the travellers who had occasion to traverse the woods. The neighbourhood shrunk with terror from the approach of men who never went abroad unarmed, and whose excursions were marked with bloodshed and violence. The Banditti of La Trappe was the appellation by which they were most generally distinguished. Such were the men amongst whom M. de Rancé resolved to fix his abode; all his friends endeavouring to dissuade him from an undertaking, they deemed alike hopeless and dangerous. "Unarmed, and unassisted," [3] says his historian, "but in the panoply of God, and by his Spirit, he went alone amidst this company of ruffians, every one of whom was bent on his destruction. With undaunted boldness, he began by proposing the strictest reform, and not counting his life dear to him, he described the full intent of his purpose, and left them no choice but obedience or Expulsion". [Footnote 3: The work from which I have taken this, is a translation by Mrs. Schimmelpenninck of Dom. Claude Lancelot's Narrative, published in 1667. The present regulations not differing from the former, I have extracted some of the most important.] "Many were the dangers M. de Rancé underwent; plans were laid, at various times, to poison him, to waylay and assassinate him, and even once one of his monks shot at him; but the pistol, which was applied close to his head, flashed in the pan, and missed fire. By the good providence of God all these plans were frustrated, and M. de Rancé not only brought his reform to bear, but several of his most violent persecutors became his most stedfast adherents; many were, after a short time, won over by his piety--the rest left the Monastery. He especially, who had shot at M. de Rancé, became eminently distinguished for his piety and learning, and was afterwards Sub-Prior of La Trappe". M. de Rancé lived forty years at the head of this singular society, and the same ardor and piety continued to distinguish him to the last. The excess of self-denial and discipline, exercised by this order, which might readily be doubted, became more known, especially to this country, at the time of the French Revolution, when they shared the fate of dissolution with the various religious orders in France. On that occasion many of them sought an asylum in England, and were settled in Dorsetshire, where they received the kind protection and benevolent assistance of Mr. Weld, until the restoration enabled most of them to return; and, surprising as it may appear in the present age, notwithstanding the perpetual violence imposed by their regulations on every human feeling, many are found anxious to enter the establishment. When I was about to take my leave of Frère Charle, he said, "he hoped I was pleased with my humble fare: to such as it was I had been truly welcome". Indeed he had treated me with the kindest, most unaffected hospitality; he had laid the table, spread the dishes before me, stood the whole time by the side of my chair, and pressed me to eat: How could I not be thankful? I requested he would be seated, but he observed that it was not proper for him to be so. His manners and general deportment bespoke him a well-bred gentleman; and when I ventured to ask if I might make a memorandum of his name, he bowed his head with meekness and resignation, and said, "I have now no other but that which was bestowed on me when I took the vow, which severs me from the world for ever!" It was impossible not to be affected at the manner and tone of voice in which he uttered this. When I said that perhaps he would like that I should leave an acknowledgment in writing, expressive of the gratitude I felt at my kind and hospitable reception, he appeared much pleased, and instantly procured me paper. I left with him the following lines: "Convent of La Trappe, July 20, 1817. "I have this day visited the Convent of La Trappe, and in the absence of the Grand Prior, to whom I brought a letter of introduction from Monsieur Lamorelie, Sub-Prefect of Mortagne, I was received and have been entertained by Frère Charle Marie, his Secretary. "It is quite impossible that I can do justice to the kind, polite, and hospitable reception I have met with from him, by any expressions in writing. I can only observe, that it has made an impression on my mind never to be effaced! If these worthy and pious people have abandoned the world for the solitude and austerities of La Trappe, they have not forgotten, in their own self-denial, the benevolence and benignity due to strangers. May their self-devotion meet with its reward!" I now took my leave of the Convent with feelings which I will not pretend to describe, but which, together with the impressions I received when I first entered it, and the whole circumstances of my visit, I am conscious of retaining while "Memory holds her seat". The following lines, by P. Mandard, on quitting La Trappe, convey a very faithful and poetical picture of this extraordinary solitude: --Saint désert, séjour pur et paisible, Solitude profonde, au vice inaccessible; Impétueux torrens, et vous sombres forêts, Recevez mes adieux, comme aussi mes regrets! Toujours épris de vous, respectable retraite, Puissé-je, dans le cours d'une vie inquiète, Dans ce flux éternel de folie et d'erreur, Où flotte tristement notre malheureux coeur; Puissé-je, pour charmer mes ennuis et mes peines, Souvent fuir en esprit au bord de vos fontaines, Egarer ma pensée au milieu de vos bois, Par un doux souvenir rappeler mille fois De vos Saints habitans les touchantes images, Pénétrer, sur leurs pas, dans vos grottes sauvages, Me placer sur vos monts, et là, prennant l'essort, Aller chercher en Dieu ma joie, et mon trésor! CHAP. II. VAL-DIEU.--RUINS OF THE CONVENT OF THE CHARTREUSE.--FORESTS OF LE PERCHE, MORTAGNE. I quitted _La Trappe_ in the afternoon of the third day after my arrival there, for the Val-Dieu, which lies three leagues to the east of Mortagne, taking the villages of Rinrolles and Prepotin in my way; the latter stands in the midst of a forest. By this road, so bad that it scarcely deserves the name, a great distance is saved, but the romantic scenery of the approach to La Trappe is lost. The one we took through the forest of Bellegarde more than doubles the distance; but the Abbey is seen as in the centre of a lake beneath, and the continual beauty and wildness of the landscape render it far preferable. Until the Revolution this was the only road, the other having been made when the lands became national property, and were sold to the peasantry. After passing through the above villages, we came round by Tourouvre, a village on a height, which has a manufactory for glass. I did not stop to view it, having several leagues to go through a wooded country. Soon after crossing the main road leading into Bretagne, we rode by the side of cultivated lands and orchards resembling the western parts of Devonshire, of which the narrow lanes and high hedges reminded me very much, until we entered the forest leading to the Val-Dieu. Between eight and nine in the evening we came to the edge bounding that part of the Vale by which it is approached, in the direction we had taken. It was very considerably out of our way, owing to the guide having mistaken his road and turned to the left instead of the right. After resting a few minutes on the brow of the hill, we began our descent by a steep and narrow pathway. When we were midway down the glen, the ruins of the ancient Chartreuse suddenly burst upon the view! At this moment all the terrors of the declivity, and the momentary expectation of meeting some of the wolves with which the forest abounds, vanished from my mind before the feelings of delight which the enchanting scene called forth. The almost perpendicular view of the Vale beneath, had an effect tremendous yet pleasing: on the left was a lake, seeming to encircle an ancient convent embosomed in a wood; a thick forest covered the surrounding heights, and before me stood the remains of the ancient Priory, with its gateway and lodge so perfect as to create no suspicion of the destruction within. [Illustration: RUINS of the GATEWAY of the ANCIENT CHARTREUSE.] This had been the hottest day and finest weather I had experienced during my journey. It was a sweet evening, and the rich tints of the departing sun-beams among the woods, with the solitary calmness of the scenery around, were circumstances that made a strong impression on my feelings. Those who have never traversed the forests of this country can form but a very imperfect idea of what they are, or of the death-like awful stillness that reigns within them; for many miles together they form a dense shade, which, like a dark awning, completely conceals the sun from the view: even on the brightest day the sun's rays are only visible as from the bottom of a deep well! The forests in Le Perche are reckoned the most extensive in France, and every where abound with vast quantities of game. I was received on alighting from my horse by a M. Boderie, a good humoured hospitable man, who, with his family, are the only inhabitants of this lonesome spot. I found afterwards that he had seen better days: he informed me the Val-Dieu property was purchased at the dissolution of the Monastery by the present proprietor, who resided at Paris, and allowed him, being his friend, to occupy that part of the building which had not been destroyed. He made many apologies for the badness of the accommodations and the homeliness of the fare he had to offer me, which I considered as unnecessary, as what he possessed was tendered with unaffected cheerfulness. The Prussians in 1815 occupied this country, and notwithstanding M. Boderie was absent at that time serving in the body guard of Louis XVIII, whom he had accompanied in his retreat to Ghent, they plundered him of every article, not even leaving his wife a change of linen. The numerous accounts I have heard from people of respectability and loyalty, of the treatment experienced from the Prussians, excites the greatest regret that they were not able to distinguish the innocent from the guilty. Many families have been ruined, or greatly distressed in their circumstances who were devoted to the cause of their Sovereign. Such are the inevitable consequences of war! The Val-Dieu extends upwards of three miles in length, surrounded by almost impenetrable woods, except where paths have been cut. It has three lakes, one communicating with the other, containing great quantities of fish. The Monastery, it is evident from the remains of its ruins, and from the boundary wall, still entire, must have been of prodigious extent. M. Boderie informed me, that the plan, of which he had seen an engraving, showed it to have been one of the most considerable in the kingdom: some idea may be formed of its former celebrity and extent by the remains of six hundred fire-places being still traceable. A colonnade surrounded the whole, forming an oblong square, in the centre of which was a jet d'eau, with several smaller ones, the basins of which are still to be seen; the space within formed a garden, with delicious walks, resembling those in the Palais Royal. The gate-way remains perfect, excepting only that the images over the side doors have been mutilated. The one in the centre (over the great entrance) is still in excellent preservation, and appears to be finely executed: it is the figure of the Virgin Mary in gray marble, the size of life, seated, with the infant Jesus in her arms. On a scroll beneath are these letters:-- ECCE MATER TVA. 1760. Several old chesnut trees and elms still remain, which once formed a fine avenue in front of the building, from whence the prospect is strikingly beautiful. The eye passes over rocks, rugged, broken, and abrupt towards their summits, crowned and darkened with wood; and the narrow road winding between the trees, until it loses itself in the forest, forms a feature very gratifying to the traveller. The solitude of the place, as I viewed it at the close of day, occasioned mingled sensations of pleasure and pain. It was impossible to resist the imposing power of a situation, where every natural object was deeply tinged with the poetical character, and every remnant of architecture associated with the romance of religious feeling. I recalled and dwelt upon various passages of the poets inspired by similar scenes, and thought of the holy and enthusiastic minds which had here devoted themselves to the sublimest duties and severest sacrifices of the altar; and felt, that had I lived in those days, I, perhaps, could have become an inmate of walls which seem to have been erected to exclude the evils of life, and to nurture only the enchanting abstractions of unpolluted virtue and happiness: but the present day has brought with it a general philosophy and knowledge of human nature, which lessen the delight of contemplating the calm repose of such a seclusion, and have taught that these retreats from the world were not always retreats from vice; that the sacrifices of monkish privacy were not always those of selfish feelings; and that the austerities once practised here, as now at La Trappe, might perhaps arise more frequently from disappointed pride and ambition, than from the pure feelings of pious resignation. In the overthrow of the monarchy and that of the priesthood, this venerable pile became the object of popular vengeance; and had the Revolution done no more than effected the dissolution of the different orders of monks and nuns, every reflecting mind must have been pleased: the removal of those abuses, like the division of landed property into smaller portions, (whereby the country in general became more cultivated and productive,) was serviceable to France; and, if any circumstance can restore permanent tranquillity, it will be the interest which the different landholders have in the soil and the representative system, which will serve to check the ambition of its future governors. Already the good effects of these are to be perceived; and the excessive abuses, insolence, and profligacy, of ancient ministerial oppression, which paved the way for the downfall of the monarchy, and, like a pestilence, destroyed that which was good with that which was evil, will be prevented in future. It is, nevertheless, melancholy to observe the traces of devastation visible in all directions: the people themselves appear not to regard it, but this may arise partly from the long and habitual feelings generated by the scenes to which the Revolution daily gave rise, and partly from the constitutional cheerfulness of the natives, who seldom view objects through the same dark medium that ours are supposed to do, and who, though they are not celebrated for patience, are of all mankind the least liable to despondency. When I spoke to M. Boderie of my regret at the destruction of an ancient structure like the one in question, his answer was, immediately, "oui c'est bien malheureux; mais enfin que voulez-vous?" He was "desolé" or had "le coeur très sensible à tout cela;" but finished by "il faut se consoler". With this sort of philosophy they are always ready to view the past, and accept of consolation, and in amusement, seek to bear or dissipate the calamities inseparable from such a state of events, without even appearing to repine. None of them will ever enter into conversation on the subject if it can be avoided. The following day, having taken leave of my hospitable host, who refused any compensation, I returned to Mortagne by another route, through the Forest of Val-Dieu, more dark and difficult to penetrate than the other; but the guide was better acquainted with it, and took the road by Saint Maure and Saint Eloi, through a fine country, highly cultivated, and abounding in beautiful scenery and distant landscapes. It was late at night before I reached Mortagne, greatly fatigued from the excessive heat of the weather. I dined the following day with Madame de Bellou, whose kind attention and elegant hospitality, during the time I remained at Mortagne, I must ever remember with sentiments of sincere gratitude. This lady had invited Monsieur Lamorelie, the Sub-Prefect, one of the most elegant men I had met with in France, with several other gentlemen and ladies, to meet me. Among the party were Madame de Fontenay, Monsieur and Mademoiselle Claire de Vanssay--very agreeable people: the latter possessed, without great beauty, all the charms and vivacity of her countrywomen. In the evening we went to an assembly, where I had an opportunity of seeing, and being presented to, all the respectable families that yet remained in town; for at this season many were at their country-seats. The ease, elegance, and good manners of the company composing this society, I never saw excelled in any country. It is but common justice to observe, that in Mortagne, which is the residence of all the best families in the province, there is to be found all the characteristic good breeding for which the French were so long, and so deservedly celebrated. The town of Mortagne stands on the declivity of a hill, in the province of Le Perche, bordering on Normandy. The high road to Bretagne passes through it. It has only one church remaining out of seven, six having been destroyed at the Revolution. It has some manufactories for serges and coarse cloths, and contains between five and six thousand inhabitants, in the department of L'Orne. From its elevated position and chalky soil, the air is pure and the situation healthy. The inhabitants are under the necessity of supplying themselves with water from the valley, as there are no wells on account of the rocky height it stands on, which is attended with inconvenience and expense; otherwise it would be a desirable residence for those who wish to unite economy with a change of climate. During the Vendean war, this town became, at different periods, the victim of either party as they were successful; and it suffered severely. The hotel kept by Gautier (Les trois Lions), which is likewise la Poste, and le Bureau des Diligences, is the best, and the people are very obliging; but it partakes of the same want of cleanliness, that so invariably distinguishes all similar establishments in this country. CHAP. III. FROM MORTAGNE TO RENNES, SOEURS DE LA CHARITÉ. ALENÇON, LAVAL, VITRÉ, THE RESIDENCE OF THE CELEBRATED MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ. RENNES. I travelled by the diligence from Mortagne to Alençon and Laval: we arrived at the former place to dinner, and at the latter to remain all night. The carriage was filled with _Soeurs de la Charité_, "Qui, pour le malheur seul connoissant la tendresse, Aux besoins du vieil-age immollent leur jeunesse," on their way to different places in Bretagne, on charitable missions, by the order of the Superior at Paris. Four of these were young and beautiful women, none of whom could have attained the age of twenty; yet these females had already devoted themselves to attend on the sick and poor wherever their services might be required, for which purpose they receive a suitable education, in an Hospital at Paris, in such branches of medicine and surgery as may render them useful. They are distributed throughout the kingdom to attend the hospitals and prisons, which they do with the delicacy and attention peculiar to their sex. Of all the classes of females who thus devote themselves to a religious life, and to acts of charity, none are more respected, or more truly serviceable to their fellow-creatures. Their dress consists of a coarse brown jacket and gown, with a high linen cap, sloping down over the shoulders, and a rosary hanging round their waist. Quitting Beauregard we crossed the river Sart: here the Province of Le Perche terminates, and we enter that of Normandy. For many miles, travelling close to the Forest of Bourse, the roads are excellent, though hilly, and the country highly cultivated in all directions. The peasantry were getting in the hay and rye harvest, and large tracts of wheat and barley were nearly ready for cutting. The town of Alençon is the capital of L'Orne-sur-Sart. It stands in the middle of a fertile plain. The lace made here is the most valuable of any manufactured in France. The Hotel of the Prefecture is a fine building. After dinner I went to the theatre, (formerly an old manufactory), to see the _Hotel Garni_ and _Les deux Suisses_: both performances were of a very moderate cast. The audience consisted principally of the military in garrison. On the road from Alençon to Laval, we were guarded the whole day by two troopers of the Gendarmerie, who are quartered along the whole line of road from the capital; they are well armed and mounted, and keep a very vigilant guard. At every place we stopped our passports were examined. The police of this country is observed with greater rigor than at any former period of its history, with regard to passports. The circumstances under which the restoration took place, the political state of France, in regard to other powers, the conflicting interests and opinions of various parties, probably render it highly expedient. On the arrival of a stranger at Paris, his passport must be presented, and inscribed in the police book. The revision of the one under which the person has travelled is indispensably necessary. It is then carried to the British Ambassador, (if the stranger be of that nation), or to the minister of that country to which he belongs, where it must obtain the Ambassador's signature. It is next taken to the office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, where it is deposited until the following day, for which ten livres are charged, and afterwards to the Préfecture of the Police, to be signed there in its turn: and when all this is done no one can quit the capital for the interior without its being again signed at the Préfecture of the police. From Alençon, we passed the Briante, a small river, at Ville Neuve, where the road begins to skirt the Forest of Moultonue. At Mayenne, the river of that name divides the provinces. The whole of this country is singularly beautiful. I observed vast quantities of buck wheat, which the French call _bled noir_ or _sarazin_. The country was very much enclosed, producing a great contrast to the vast tracts of land through which I had passed without a single division. At two leagues from Mayenne we crossed the river Aisne, winding through a beautiful valley, between Martigné and Louverné. On the left the river forms a small lake, surrounded by a wood at the foot of a very long and steep hill. The town of Mayenne is ancient and irregularly built, the river Mayenne running through it. The ruins of an old wall and some decayed towers remain of the fortifications which were taken by assault, after several bloody attempts, during the siege by the English, in 1424. At Laval, where I stopped, after again crossing the Mayenne, I entered the province of Bretagne: it is an old dirty town, completely intersected by the river, and has a manufactory for coarse cloths and cottons. The _Tête Noire_ is one of the worst inns I have met with in the country. The department of the Isle-et-Vilaine commences here. This place is celebrated in the history of the Vendean war by the refuge Madame de Laroche-Jaquelin sought there, after the deplorable defeat of the royalist army at the battle of Mans, where it received its death-blow. The wreck of that army, under M. de Laroche-Jaquelin, were driven from it again on the following day, and from that hour never rallied so as to make any stand against the victorious republicans. Quitting Laval the day after my arrival, I ascended a long and steep hill, travelled by the side of the forest of Petre, and came to Vitré, where I remained all night for the purpose of visiting the château of the celebrated Madame de Sévigné,[4] whose estate has descended to a distant branch of her family, who had the good fortune to save it from destruction during the revolution. The grounds are kept in excellent order. Her picture hangs in the apartment in which she composed her interesting and elegant letters, and every article of furniture carefully preserved is shown to strangers. The distance from Vitré to Rennes is seven leagues, over a road which becomes gradually less and less Interesting. [Footnote 4: Marie de Rabutin, Marchioness de Sevigné, was the daughter of the Baron de Chantal, and born in 1626: she espoused at the age of eighteen the Marquis de Sévigné, who fell in a duel in 1651, leaving her with one son and a daughter, to whose education she paid strict attention: the daughter married in 1669 the Count de Grignan, Commandant in Provence, and it was on a visit to her that the Marchioness caught a fever and died in 1696. Her son Charles, Marquis de Sevigné, was one of the admirers of Ninon de L'Enclos, and had a dispute with Madame Dacier respecting the sense of a passage in Horace. He died in 1713. (Moreri.)] Rennes is the chief city of the Isle-et-Vilaine, and in former times was the capital of Bretagne. It is a large ancient built town, standing on a vast plain, between the rivers Isle and Vilaine. It has a hall of justice, (Cour Royale,) an episcopal palace, and a foundry for cannon. A more dismal dirty looking city, or a more uninteresting one to a stranger, is seldom to be seen. Few traces remain of its ancient splendor; the old rampart, which once encompassed it, now forms a promenade. Its commerce is considerable, being the entrepôt for grain and cattle, with which it supplies Paris and the Southern Provinces, not so abundant in their produce. Jane of Flanders, Countess of Montfort, the most extraordinary woman of her time, resided here, during the imprisonment of her husband in the palace of the Louvre, by Philippe de Valois,[5] when Edward the Third of England invaded France. Hennebon, when attacked by Charles of Blois, was defended by the Countess, and relieved by Sir Walter Manny, whom Edward had sent with a body of 6,000 archers to her succour. The garrison, encouraged by so rare an example of female valour, defended themselves against an immense army, composed of French, Spaniards, Genoese, and Bretons, who frequently assaulted it, and were as vigorously repulsed. On one occasion, Froissart mentions her sallying out at the head of a body of two hundred cavalry, throwing the enemy into great confusion, doing great execution among them, and setting fire to the tents and magazines, which were entirely destroyed. [Footnote 5: Among the brave knights who engaged in so many battles and perilous adventures, and other feats of arms, Froissart mentions Philip, as opposed to those heroes of high renown, Edward of England, the Prince of Wales his son, the Duke of Lancaster, Sir Reginald Lord Cobham, Sir Walter Manny of Hainault, Sir John Chandos, Sir Fulk Harley, and many others recorded in his book for worth and prowess. "In France also was found good chivalry, strong of limb and stout of heart, and in great abundance, for the kingdom of France was never brought so low as to want men ever ready for combat. Such was King Philipe de Valois, a bold and hardy knight, and his son King John, also John king of Bohemia, and Charles Count of Alençon his son".] The population of Rennes is 27,000. It is at present garrisoned by one thousand troops, and people are of opinion that government finds it no easy task to keep down the spirit of the Vendeans, who are said to be, "plus Royalistes que le Roi". There appears every where a strong spirit of dissatisfaction on the part of the Royalists, at the general preference given to those who were employed under the late ruler in places of public trust, and who were avowed enemies to the restoration of Louis XVIII. CHAP. IV. ROUTE FROM RENNES TO NANTES. CITY OF NANTES. HISTORICAL ANECDOTES. Arriving at the first post, we crossed the river Vilaine, and between this and Rondun passed the river Bruck, and ascended a high mountain between Rondun and La Bréharaye. At this place we quitted the department of the Isle-et-Vilaine. Crossing the Cher, we arrived at Derval, and from thence at Nozai, passing several large lakes, and then over the river Don. The whole of this distance, with the exception of the hill already mentioned, is composed of flat sandy plains, mostly uncultivated, and the road is very rough. From Nozai to Ancenis we crossed the river Isac; from thence to Redon, Herié, to La Croix Blanche, along the bank of the river; and after mounting another steep hill, we descended into an extensive plain, leading to Gesvres and Nantes. The whole of this country north of the Loire, from Rennes to Nantes, the triangular point resting upon Angers, is the country of the Chouans, which it is necessary, in reference to the Vendean war, to distinguish from the country south of the Loire, in the department of the Loire Inférieure, called le Bocage, or la Vendée. Although the latter was the scene of the more desperate warfare between the republicans and the royalists, yet the former had its share of bloodshed and misery. The whole country on both banks of the Loire, as far as Angers, is classic ground to those who revere the efforts by which the Vendeans so long resisted the republicans. The city of Nantes is the chief seat of the Préfecture of the department of the Loire Inférieure, standing on the right bank of the river, surrounded by its ancient rampart, of a circular form, and in good preservation: on the opposite bank stand the ruined tower and mouldering bastions of Permil. This spot is interesting to an Englishman, from the memorable events to which the fatal pretensions of Edward the Third gave rise, and which occupy the pages of French and English history, during a period of more than a century[6]. [Footnote 6: In 1343, Edward the Third laid siege to this place. Froissart mentions the English army being drawn out on a hill, in battle array, near the town. The ground rises a little in this direction, but, I should suppose, it must have been on the right bank, as the country there is hilly, and this ancient fortress must have defended the passage of the river. "The king himself," says the Chronicle, "with the rest of his army, advanced towards Rennes, burning and ruining the country on all sides, and was most joyfully received by the whole army who lay before it, and had been there for a considerable time. When he had tarried there five days, he learned that the Lord Charles of Blois was at Nantes, collecting a large force of men at arms. He set out, therefore, leaving those whom he had found at Rennes, and came before Nantes, which he besieged as closely as he could, but was unable to surround it, such was its size and extent. The marshals, therefore, and their people, overran the country and destroyed it. The king of England, one day, drew out his army in battle array on a hill near Nantes, in expectation that the Lord Charles would come forth and offer him an opportunity of fighting with him: but, having waited from morning until noon in vain, they returned to their quarters: the light horse, however, in their retreat, galloped up to the barriers, and set fire to the suburbs". "The king of England, during the siege, made frequent skirmishes, but without success, always losing some of his men; when, therefore, he found he could gain nothing by his assaults, and that the Lord Charles would not come out into the plains to fight him, he established there the Earl of Oxford, Sir Henry Beaumont, the Lord Percy, the Lord Roos, the Lord Mowbray, the Lord Delawar, Sir Reginald Cobham, Sir John Lisle, with six hundred men armed, and two hundred archers". The king himself advanced into the country of Bretagne, wasting it wherever he went, until he came to the town of Dinant, of which Sir Peter Porteboeuf was governor. He immediately laid siege to it all round, and ordered it to be vigorously assaulted. Those within made a valiant resistance. Thus did the king of England in one season, and in one day, make an assault by himself, or those ordered by him, upon three cities in Bretagne, and a good town, viz. Rennes, Vannes, and Nantes. The brave Sir Walter Manny was left before Vannes, with five hundred men at arms, and six thousand archers, while the king with the rest of his army advanced towards Rennes and Nantes. This gallant soldier, at the battle of Calais, had this singular honour conferred on him by his sovereign, who, with his valiant son the Prince of Wales, both served under his banner.--Edward said to Sir Walter Manny, "Sir Walter, I will that you be the chief of this enterprise, and I and my son will fight under your banner". The lively and picturesque historian then gives a very interesting account of the above action, which was fought the last day of December 1348, and of the gallantry of Edward's conduct to his prisoner, Sir Eustace de Ribeaumont. "We will now speak of the King of England, who was there incognito, under Sir Walter Manny's banner. He advanced with his men on foot, to meet the enemy, who were formed in close order, with their pikes shortened to five feet, planted out before them. The first attack was very sharp and severe. The King singled out Sir Eustace de Ribeaumont, who was a strong and hardy knight: he fought a long time marvellously well with the King, so that it was a pleasure to see them; but, by the confusion of the engagement, they were separated; for two large bodies met where they were fighting, and forced them to break off the combat. "On the side of the French there was excellent fighting, by Sir Geoffrey de Chargny, Sir John de Landas, Sir Hector, and Sir Gavin de Ballieul, and others; but they were all surpassed by Sir Eustace de Ribeaumont, who that day struck the King twice down on his knees: at last, however, he was obliged to present his sword to the King, saying, 'Sir Knight, I surrender myself your prisoner, for the honour of the day must fall to the English.' "All that belonged to Sir Geoffry de Chargny were either slain or captured: among the first was Sir Henry du Bois, and Sir Peppin de Werré; Sir Geoffry and the rest were taken prisoners. The last that was taken, and who in that day had excelled all, was Sir Eustace de Ribeaumont. "When the engagement was over, the King returned to the Castle at Calais, and ordered all the prisoners to be brought before him. The French taken, knew for the first time, that the King of England had been there in person, under the banner of Sir Walter de Manny. "The King said he would this evening of the new year entertain them all at supper in the Castle. When the hour for supper was come, the tables spread, and the King and his Knights dressed in new robes, as well as the French, who, notwithstanding they were prisoners, made good cheer (for the King wished it should be so), the King seated himself at table, and made those Knights do the same around him in a most honourable manner. The gallant Prince of Wales, and the Knights of England, served up the first course, and waited on their guests. At the second course, they went and seated themselves at another table, where they were served, and attended on very quietly. "When supper was over, and the tables removed, the King remained in the Hall among the English and French Knights, bare-headed, except a chaplet of fine pearls, which was round his head. He conversed with all of them; but when he came to Sir Geoffry de Chargny, his countenance altered, and looking at him askance, he said, 'Sir Geoffry, I have but little reason to love you, when you wished to seize upon me by stealth last night, what had given me so much trouble to acquire, and cost me such sums of money' (Sir Geoffry had endeavoured to bribe the garrison to put him in possession of it in the night previous to the battle): 'I am, however, rejoiced to have caught you thus in attempting it.'--When he came to Sir Eustace de Ribeaumont, he assumed a cheerful look, and said with a smile, 'Sir Eustace, you are the most valiant knight in Christendom that I ever saw attack his enemy, or defend himself. I never yet found any one in battle, who, body to body, had given me so much to do as you have done this day. I adjudge to you the prize of valour, above all the knights of my Court, as what is justly due to you.'--The King then took off his chaplet, which was very rich and handsome, and placing it on the head of Sir Eustace, said, 'Sir Eustace, I present you with this chaplet, as being the best combatant this day, either within or without doors; and I beg of you to wear it this year for the love of me. I know that you are lively and amorous, and love the company of ladies and damsels; therefore say, wherever you go, that I gave it to you. I also give you your liberty, free of ransom; and you may set out to-morrow, and go whither you will.'"] The river Loire, which is crossed by seven bridges, winds through the town. They are the Pont Rousseau, De Permil, D'Aiguillon, Feydeau, De la Belle Croix, Brisebois, and Toussaint. The houses are regular and handsome, having in some places a very singular appearance, from the ground having sunk, and the foundations given way, causing them to lean in various directions from the perpendicular line. In point of commerce, at one period antecedent to the Revolution, Nantes was the most considerable sea-port in France: since the loss of its West India trade, especially with Saint Domingo, it has been greatly reduced. The rich plains which surround it on three sides, in the form of an amphitheatre, and the river covered with vessels and boats, give it a most lively appearance. It has a large Theatre, a Royal College (lately the Lyceum), a Commercial Tribunal, a handsome Exchange, a Bishop's Palace, Hall of the Préfecture, Public Library, Anatomical and Surgical Academies, Botanical Garden, Museum of Natural History, and a foundry for cannon. The latter is in the old and decaying Château on the bank of the river, called Goulemme. One of its bastions was blown up a few years since by accident, which has shaken and destroyed the whole fabric; but it is still capable of holding a garrison, and is a fine monument of ancient fortification. It was once the residence of Henry IV. of France, at the time he signed the celebrated edict, (1598,) in favour of the reformed religion, afterwards revoked by Louis XIV. in 1685, and which occasioned such deplorable consequences to the French nation. M. de Sainte Foix, in his historical Essays upon Paris, vol. i. p. 113, speaking of the Rue de Grenelle, in the quarter of Saint Eustache, gives the following curious account of the birth of this great King, whose memory is revered in France, beyond that of all the other monarchs who have swayed the Gallic sceptre. "Jeanne d'Albret, being desirous of following her husband to the wars of Picardy, the King her father told her, that in case she proved with child, he wanted her to come and lie-in at his house; and that he would bring up the child himself, whether a boy or a girl. This Princess finding herself pregnant, and in her ninth month, set out from Compiègne, passed through all France as far as the Pyrenees, and arrived in fifteen days at Pau in Béarn. She was very desirous to see her father's will. It was contained in a thick gold box, on which was a gold chain, that would have gone twenty-five or thirty times round her neck. She asked it of him:--'It shall be yours,' said he, 'as soon as you have shown me the child that you now carry; and that you may not bring into the world a crying or a pouting child, I promise you the whole, provided that whilst you are in labour, you sing the Bearnese song _Notre Dame du bout du Pont aidez-moi en cette heure_". No sooner was the Princess safely delivered, than her father, placing the gold chain on her neck, and giving her the gold box wherein was his will, said to her: 'These are for you, daughter, but this is for me;' and took the child in his gown, without waiting for its being dressed in form, and carried it into his chamber. The little Prince was brought up in such a manner as to be able to undergo fatigue and hardship; frequently eating nothing but common bread. The good King his grandfather ordered it thus, and would not let him be delicately pampered, in order that from his infancy he might be inured to privation. He has often been seen, according to the custom of the country, amongst the other children of the Castle and village of Coirazze, bare-footed and bare-headed, as well in winter as in summer. Who was this Prince?--Henry IV. "Being descended from the Kings of France, he became the heir to that Kingdom; but as he was educated a Protestant, his claim was resisted. He early distinguished himself by feats of arms. After the peace of Saint Germain, in 1570, he was taken to the French Court, and two years afterwards married Margaret, sister of Charles IX. (At the rejoicings on this occasion the infamous massacre of _La Saint Barthélémy_ took place.) In 1589 he succeeded to the throne of France; but his religion proving an obstacle to his coronation, he consented to abjure it in 1593. In 1598 he issued the edict of Nantes, granting toleration to the Protestants". Mezeray, speaking of the marriage of the King of Navarre (afterwards Henry IV.) with Margaret de Valois, says, "There were many diversions, tournaments, and ballets at Court; and amongst others, one which seemed to presage the calamity that was so near bursting out upon the Huguenots--the King and his brothers defending Paradise against the King of Navarre and his brothers, who were repulsed and banished to Hell;" and Sainte Foix, in his relation of the horrible massacre, gives a detail, which in the present age appears almost incredible. Catherine of Medicis, whose abominable politics had corrupted the disposition of her son, was at the head of the cabinet council who agreed to the murder of more than one hundred thousand Protestants; and the miserable bigot Charles IX. stationed during the massacre at the window of a house then belonging to the Constable of Bourbon, fired with his own hands upon the Huguenots with a long blunderbuss, whilst they were trying to escape across the river. The River Erdré runs northward of the city, and forms a beautiful feature, winding for many miles among cultivated fields and woodlands, through a country agreeably diversified with villas, to which the wealthier inhabitants retire during the summer months. The river resembles a lake for the greater part of its course, and is called the Barban. The Gothic church of Saint Pierre, built by the English in 1434, is a fine old structure: having been much neglected for many years, and greatly defaced during the Revolution, it was at this time restoring. Among the monuments about to be replaced, was an excellent one of Anne de Bretagne, whose effigy, and that of her husband, are as large as life. The allegorical figures of Justice, Temperance, Prudence, and Fortitude, the twelve Apostles, and the supporters to the Arms (a greyhound and a lion), are all executed in the finest white marble. They were hidden during the Revolution, and have only very lately been discovered, as have also some capital paintings piously preserved for the Church. Anne was first married to Charles VIII. in 1499, and afterwards to Louis XII. She died at the Château de Blois in 1514, and Louis in 1515. The climate of Nantes is mild, and reckoned remarkably healthy: every article of life is cheap, and from its mild temperature it abounds in the finest fruits and most excellent wines. Its population is estimated at 60,000 inhabitants. The numbers that were destroyed during the Revolution, or, as the French emphatically term it, "Le régne de la Terreur," were never ascertained; but the frightful history of that bloody period would probably justify the computation at half the number of its present population, many having fallen victims to the murders that were termed "_Noyades_," independent of those who perished in the Vendean war. The spot where the gallant Charette was shot, with several other leaders of the Vendean army, is shown; and in the cemetery, a large mound of earth marks the place where the bodies were thrown in, at the time of the "_Fuzillades_" when the infamous Carrier presided at the execution of the brave Royalists.[7] The print beneath represents this monster on the banks of the Loire directing the Noyades. [Illustration] [Footnote 7: Chaque nuit on venait en prendre par centaines, pour les mettre sur les bateaux. Là on liait les malheureux deux à deux, et on les poussait dans l'eau à coups de baïonette. On saisissait indistinctement tout ce qui se trouvait à l'entrepôt, tellement qu'on noya un jour l'état major d'une corvette Anglaise, qui était prisonnier de guerre. Une autre fois, Carrier, voulant donner un exemple de l'austérité des moeurs républicaines, fit enfermer trois cent filles publiques de la ville, et les malheureuses créatures furent noyées. Enfin, l'on estime qu'il a péri à l'entrepôt quinze mille personnes en un mois.--_Mémoires de Madame la Marquise de Laroche-Jaquelin_.] At the end of a fine avenue of trees, on the Boulevard, is a large and splendid mansion built by that Deputy, and which is at present inhabited by a merchant. Carrier's mistress (to whom he left it, together with a very considerable fortune, amassed from the spoils of his plunder, and the murder of the innocent inhabitants) was very lately sentenced to two years' hard labour for some crime she had committed: and it is no less remarkable, that, of the remaining inhabitants known to have participated in the atrocities of that frightful period, there is not one but is reduced to poverty, and most of them in the extreme of wretchedness, shunned by all, and suffering the ignominy they have so justly merited! CHAP. V. COUNTRY SOUTH OF THE LOIRE.--LE BOCAGE.--CLISSON.--HISTORICAL ANECDOTES.--THE GARENNE, AND RIVER SÈVRES. The best method of travelling in this country is on horseback: in fact, it is impossible to proceed in any other way, after quitting the main road. Having procured a guide and horses, I set out early in the morning, crossing the Loire by the Pont Rosseau, to Verton, keeping along the banks of the River Sèvres. Verton is a romantic village standing on a hill: most of the houses are in ruins, from the effect of the destructive war of La Vendée. From thence to Le Palet, most intricate narrow roads, or more properly speaking, pathways, darkened by the overhanging branches of trees, and in many parts deep with mire, from the sun's rays not being able to dry the ground, make it difficult to proceed, and we several times lost our way. It was late before we reached Le Palet, and though I had not tasted food for many hours, I could not resist stopping to view so interesting a spot, and making a hasty sketch of the ruins of the house in which Abélard was born, and in which Héloïse resided with him before their final separation. The ruins of the House of Bérenger, the father of Abélard, are close to the church of Palet, on the left of the high road, three miles distant from Clisson. Le Palet is thus described by a French author, in the history of the Province. "Cet homme si célèbre par son savoir, ses amours, et ses infortunes, amena Héloïse au Palet lorsqu'il l'eût enlevée de chez le Chanoine Fulbert, pour la soustraire au ressentiment de cet oncle jaloux et barbare; mais, obligé de quitter cette retraite paisible pour retourner à Paris, où l'appelaient ses nombreux disciples, le soin de sa gloire et de sa fortune, Abélard confia à sa soeur sa chère Héloïse et le gage précieux qu'elle portait dans son sein. Elle accoucha au Palet d'un fils d'une si rare beauté, qu'elle le nomma Astralabe, c'est-à-dire, astre brillant; mais l'absence de celui qu'elle adorait rendait moins vifs pour elle les doux plaisirs de la maternité; son âme expansive et brûlante était livrée sans cesse à une inquiète et sombre mélancholie qu'elle ne parvenait sans doute à dissiper qu'en venant sur les bords de la Sèvres rêver à l'objet de sa tendresse, et soupirer après son retour. Sept siècles se sont écoulés depuis cette époque, et les noms d'Abélard et d'Héloïse embellissent toujours ce délicieux ravage. On interroge avec une curiosité avide ces roches éternelles et ces grottes mystérieuses qui furent les témoins discrets de leurs peines et de leurs plaisirs. On se reporte à ces temps reculés où ces amants venaient dans cette solitude enchanteresse, se confier mutuellement leur vifs inquiétudes; on croit les voir s'égarer sous ces riants ombrages, et s'abandonner à toutes les inspirations de l'éloquence, à toutes les illusions de l'amour". I arrived at Clisson just as the sun was disappearing, and its rays were only sufficiently strong to reflect the ruined towers of the Castle in the river which runs at its foot. It will be much easier to imagine, than for me to convey the sensations I felt when I first caught a glimpse of it, with the story of La Roche-Jaquelin full in my recollection! I alighted at a small cabaret, dignified by the appellation of the Hotel de la Providence, which seemed preferable to another recommended to me by my guide,--such an one, indeed, as might be expected in a remote place like this: part of the roof was off, and, like most of the houses in the place, bore evident marks of the desolating war that had been carried on here: many are still in ruins. The descent into the town is very steep and rugged, the road being formed out of the solid rock. The master of the cabaret was sitting with his family at the door, but the appearance of his mansion was so unpromising, that I thought it best to make some agreement, and a few inquiries before dismounting;--these preliminaries being settled, and having consented to pay him fifty sous for supper and my bed, and thirty for breakfast, I entered the house: and never recollect having a keener relish for a meal, or enjoying one more heartily, for I had been sixteen hours on horseback. Fatigued and exhausted as I was, I rambled after dinner towards the delightful grounds of La Garenne, belonging to Monsieur La Motte, who has embellished them in a most interesting and romantic manner. The river Sèvres runs along the side, and separates them from the fine old Castle of Clisson, whose high and decaying towers and battlements give the beholder a noble idea of its ancient grandeur. The evening was a very fine one,--one of those delightful soft, clear skies usual at this season, the latter end of July. I sat myself down in the grotto of Héloïse,--a spot of the deepest seclusion, formed, by the hand of Nature, of large masses of granite. The nightingales were singing in the lofty trees at the back; on the sides were shrubs of every description intermingled with fruit trees, and the river having several falls and little rocky islets, gave an air of delightful enchantment to this most romantic scene. Héloïse! à ce nom, qui ne doit s'attendrir? Comme elle sut aimer! comme elle sut souffrir! At the entrance of the grotto are engraved these lines, nearly effaced by the hand of time. Héloïse peut-être erra sur ce rivage, Quand, aux yeux des jaloux dérobant son séjour, Dans les murs du Palet elle vint mettre au jour Un fils, cher et malheureux gage De ses plaisirs furtifs et de son tendre amour. Peut-être en ce réduit sauvage, Seule, plus d'une fois, elle vint soupirer, Et goûter librement la douceur de pleurer; Peut-être sur ce roc assise Elle rêvait à son malheur. J'y veux rêver aussi; j'y veux remplir mon coeur Du doux souvenir d'Héloïse. I had but a few weeks before seen the tomb of Abélard and Héloïse in the Cemetery of Père la Chaise at Paris, whither it had been recently removed from the Convent of the Augustins, at which latter place I had formerly made the annexed drawing of it. I had likewise been very lately at Argenteuil, once the place of her asylum described by Pope: In these deep solitudes and awful cells-- and had the same day witnessed the ruins of the house in which Abélard was born, and in which Héloïse resided and became a mother, and from whence she used to make frequent visits to this spot: all these circumstances combined, gave the scene before me a most powerful interest. I rose early the next day, anxious to revisit a place which had afforded me such delight the previous evening. Wandering by the beautiful banks of the river, along its green meadows, in a woody recess, I observed the following lines beneath an urn, cut in the rock on which it rested: Consacrer dans l'obscurité, Ses loisirs à l'étude, à l'amitié sa vie, Sont des plaisirs dignes d'envie; Etre chéri vaut mieux qu'être vanté! [Illustration: RUINS OF ABÉLARD'S HOUSE.] A little further on, is a stone pillar, with a venerable accacia tree spreading its leaves over it. It has the following Latin inscription: VII IM CAESAR AVGVSTVS PONTIFEX MAX VIAM. OLIM A CONIVINCO AD LIMONEM IMP. CAESAR. TRAJ. ADRIANVS AVG PM. TRIB. POT. VIAM AB AVGVSTO STATAM REFICIT.[8] [Footnote 8: Auguste étendit jusqu'à La Loire La Gaule Aquitanique, autrefois bornée par la Garonne, et comprit L'Armorique dans la Province Celtique ou Lyonnaise. L'Empereur Adrian, ayant fait depuis une nouvelle distribution des Gaules, divisa La Lyonnaise en deux, et mit L'Armorique dans la seconde; enfin cette Lyonnaise ou Celtique ayant été encore divisée en deux, Tours devint la Métropole de la troisième, qui comprenait la Touraine, le Maine, l'Anjou, et la Bretagne.--_Histoire de Bret_.] [Illustration: GROTTO of HÉLOÏSE at CLISSON.] [Illustration: TOMB of ABÉLARD and HÉLOÏSE.] Farther on several large blocks of granite are piled together in so strange and curious a manner, that it must have been the work of Nature alone:--one of them has these beautiful lines carved on it: O! Limpide Rivière! O Rivière chérie! Puisse la sotte vanité Ne jamais dédaigner ta rive humble et fleurie! Que ton simple sentier ne soit point fréquenté Par aucun tourment de la vie Tels que l'ambition, l'envie, L'avarice, et la fausseté! Un bocage si frais, un séjour si tranquille, Aux tendres sentiments doit seul servir d'azile. Ces rameaux amoureux entrelassés exprès Aux Muses, aux Amours, offrent leur voile épais; Et ce cristal d'une onde pure A jamais ne doit réfléchir Que les grâces de la nature Et les images du plaisir. Close to the brink of the river stands a prodigiously large granite rock, immediately facing the waterfall called le Bassin de Diane: on it are these words: SA MASSE INDESTRVCTIBLE A FATIGVÉ LE TEMS. a quotation from Delille. [Illustration: GRANITE ROCK in the GARENNE.] The French writers, speaking of this interesting place, observe: "Comment soupçonner en effet qu'au milieu de cette _terrible Vendée_, qu'au centre de cet impénétrable et sombre Bocage, il existe un pays délicieux et fertile, couvert de mines séculaires qui rappelent tous les souvenirs historiques de notre ancienne France, comme le caractère de ses habitans en rappele les moeurs, le courage, et la loyauté". On the opposite side of the river, a little to the right, stands the ancient Château de Clisson, celebrated in the modern as well as the ancient history of Bretagne. Its lofty turrets, and decaying bastions, extend a considerable distance along the shore of the Sèvres, recalling to mind the ancient days of chivalry, when bravery, love, and religion, were so singularly blended together, and gave a romantic half-polished manner to the greatest barbarians. In later times it became the scene of events which no one can contemplate without the deepest interest. In viewing this magnificent ruin, it is impossible not to regret that a place so frequently the theatre of noble achievements, inhabited by one of the greatest men that France has produced, François I. Connétable de Clisson,[9] father to Anne of Bretagne, should have been so recently the scene of such savage horrors and bloodshed! Now, all is silence and solitude: and amidst the noble ruins which were once decorated with banners, and the hard-earned trophies of victory,--where high-born knights and splendid dames mingled in mirth and festivity to the echoes of the minstrels, singing lays of love or battle,--are now only to be seen and heard the birds of prey, hovering over a solitary tree, planted to mark the spot where a deed was committed which has not often its parallel in the darkest histories of the most ferocious nations. [Footnote 9: In the "Histoire Généalogique de France", tom. vi. is an account of the Constable's death. "The Duke of Orleans, brother to the king, was very fond of a Jewess, whom he privately visited. Having some reason to suspect that Peter de Craon, Lord of Sablé and de la Ferté-Bernard, his chamberlain and favourite, had joked with the Duchess of Orleans upon his intrigue, he turned him out of his house with infamy. Craon imputed his disgrace partly to the Constable of Clisson. On the night of the 13th June, having waited for him at the corner of the street _Coulture Ste. Catherine_, and finding he had but little company with him, he fell upon him at the head of a score of ruffians. Clisson defended himself for some time without any other weapon than a small cutlass; but after receiving three wounds, fell from his horse, and pitched against a door, which flew open. The report of this assassination reached the king's ears just as he was stepping into bed. He put on a great coat and his shoes, and repaired to the place where he was informed his constable had been killed. He found him in a baker's shop, wallowing in his blood. After his wounds were examined, "Constable, (said he to him), nothing was or ever will he so severely punished". It was given out that Clisson made his will the next day, and there was a mighty outcry about the sum of 1,700,000 livres, which it amounted to. It should be observed, that during twenty-five years that he was in the service of France, he had sought for and beaten the English every where; that he gained the famous battle of Robeck, and chastised the Flemish; that he enjoyed for twelve years the salary and appointments of Constable; and that, moreover, his landed estate, (which included many castles inherited from his ancestors, in Bretagne and Poitou,) was very considerable."] During the Vendean war, the royalists had been driven out of Clisson by the republicans, under the command of a ferocious jacobin. The town was pillaged and burnt before they quitted it. Twenty-seven females had, during the battle, concealed themselves among the ruins: when information of it was given to the troops, who had already quitted the place, they were ordered to return, and the whole of these unhappy women were thrown alive into a well, where they perished!!! It has since been filled up, and the lonely tree, just mentioned, now records the bloody and inhuman deed. In the account of Clisson, by a late French author, no notice is taken of this circumstance. He merely observes, when mentioning the destruction of the place, after the de la Roche-Jaquelin had quitted it, "Les Rives ombragées de la Sèvres, si séduisante par ses belles cascades et l'ensemble de ce paysage poétique, feroient de cette contrée un séjour délicieux, si de tristes débris, qui heureusement disparoissent tous les jours, ne rappelaient encore le souvenir affligeant de nos discordes civiles. Les armées Révolutionnaires qui combattirent les Vendéens, en 1793 et en 1794, employèrent inutilement pour les réduire le fer et le feu; la flamme atteignit les villes, les villages, les métairies, et jusqu'aux humbles chaumières; et, dans ce vaste et épouvantable incendie, Clisson ne put échapper à une ruine complète. Jamais peut-être cette petite ville ne se seroit entièrement réédifié, sans une circonstance particulière qui contribua puissamment à la faire renoître de ces cendres". In the town of Clisson was born the celebrated Barin de la Galissonniere, Admiral of France, who fought the well-known action off Mahon, in the month of June, 1756, with Admiral Byng, who, in consequence of his conduct on that occasion, was brought to a court martial and shot. The French writers make the following absurd remark, as to the _cause_ of his fate: "Les Anglais, furieux d'avoir été vaincus par un Amiral François, firent fusiller l'Amiral Byng". It is now well known that he was sacrificed to an unprincipled ministerial faction. The ancient Château de Clisson is built on a rock, on the bank of the Sèvres, facing the mouth of the river, called Le Moine, which empties itself into the Sèvres at this place, so that the town of Clisson stands between the two rivers at their junction. An ancient bridge, from whence this view is taken, joins one part of the town to the other, and leads to the castle, which was once considered the barrier of Bretagne. The two rivers run over a bed of granite rock, which, in some places, forming a cataract, adds considerably to the surrounding scenery: large masses of this rock in many parts seem as if piled up by nature for the purpose of giving it a more romantic effect. The whole forms a most picturesque object, when viewed from the opposite shore, from whence the sketch of the temple erected on the ruin of St. Gilles is taken; and the remembrance of its recent fate throws over the scene a strong and melancholy interest. [Illustration: RUINS OF CLISSON.] The castle is supposed to have been first erected by the Romans, as the Province formed a part of the Gaule Aquitanique, under the Emperors Augustus and Adrian. The French repaired it during the reign of Louis VIII. in 1223, under Olivier I. Sire de Clisson, as he is styled; and it was made a regular fortification, and surrounded by a wall a century after, by the Connétable: in 1464 the Duc de Bretagne, Francis II. entirely finished it. The Sire de Clisson, Olivier I. who had served during one of the Crusades in Palestine, was knighted with several others, in 1218. "Un nombre prodigieux de Seigneurs Anglais, Normands, Angevins, Manceaux, Tourangeaux, et Bretons, prirent la Croix; Le Pape, Innocent III. envoya en Bretagne, en 1197, Helvain, Moine de St. Denis, pour y prêcher une croisade. Une grande quantité de Bretons se laissèrent conduire en Syrie par ce Moine; et, en 1218, plusieurs Seigneurs Bretons suivirent leur exemple, entre autres, Hervé de Léon, Morvau, Vicomte du Fou, et le Sire de Clisson". From the construction of the towers and bastions, it is supposed that at his return from the Holy Land, he had copied the Syrian style of building; and one of the towers, which is represented in the sketch of the gateway of the Château de Clisson, is still called La Tour des Pélerins. This tower, which has been used as a dungeon, is the most perfect of any remaining. In it are subterranean galleries, anciently used as a prison, and appropriated by the republicans to the same purpose. It is dreadful to think of the horrors that have been practised within its walls, in our own time. [Illustration: TOUR des PÉLERINS.] From the top of this tower the prospect is very extensive, and, during the year 1793, when the republican army quartered themselves in it, a sentinel was placed there to give notice in case of the approach of an enemy. The historian of that period, speaking of the entrance to this tower, observes, in reference to the cruelties committed there in the Vendean war: "Il existait au milieu de la dernière cour un très beau puits, taillé dans le roc et extrêmement profond: il est actuellement comblé, et ma plume se refuse à tracer les scènes horribles qui ensanglantèrent ce lieu en 1793 et en 1795, tristes et épouvantables effets des guerres civiles!" This passage alludes, I imagine, to the circumstance related in page 90. Within its walls are various inscriptions, many of them in characters so difficult to decypher, that they remain unknown. The following has been rendered into more modern French by Cerutti. J'ai gravi, mesuré ces ruines sublimes; Mon coeur s'en est ému! De nos vaillants aïeux Tout y représentait les tournois magnanimes, Ils semblaient reparôitre et combattre à mes yeux; J'entendois sous leurs coups retentir les abîmes; Juge de leurs combats, idole de leur coeur, Du haut des tours, la dame admiroit le vainqueur. Casques et boucliers, cuirasses gigantesques, Cris d'armes, mot d'amour, devises de l'honneur, Carlets pour l'infidèle ou pour le suborneur, Tout garde sur ces murs vraiment chevaleresques. La mémoire d'un siècle où l'épée, où la foi, Où la galanterie étaient la seule loi. Louis IX. and Blanche of Castille, his queen, retired to Clisson, at the time the English, under Henry III. penetrated into Poitou, and were received by Olivier de Clisson, who then garrisoned it. In the war of the League, which convulsed the kingdom of France, Clisson remained faithful to Henry III. and during the early part of the reign of his successor Henry IV. The Protestants were there protected, and established themselves in the fauxbourg. From the period at which Henry IV. signed the edict at Nantes, 15th April, 1598, until the war of La Vendée, this celebrated fortress is no where mentioned by any of the French historians: it became neglected when the feudal system declined, and the republican army completed its ruin. The sad events of this period, and the destruction and carnage which followed, can never be effaced from the page of history. The ruined towns and villages prove the melancholy truth, that the general corruption of a nation prepares the way for general anarchy, and that the blindness of political rage is always more vindictive than even private hatred. I can never sufficiently lament the absence, at this time, of Madame de La Roche-Jaquelin from the country, as she occasionally resides in the neighbourhood, since the restoration of her property, (although her once noble residence is now in a state of ruin,) occupying a small château at some small distance, which had partly escaped the fire and destruction that had been fatal to most houses in the district. Who can read the interesting memoirs of this Lady, and not sympathize in the sufferings of herself, and of those brave and loyal people whose heroic struggle against their republican oppressors lasted with little intermission from the overthrow of the monarchy until its final restoration? Among the number of heroic females who, like Madame de la Roche-Jaquelin, thus distinguished themselves, was Madame de La Rochefoucault who, like her admirer Charette, was put to death at Nantes. This lady, of an ancient and noble family, and of great beauty, signalized herself on various occasions, but being taken prisoner at the battle of the Moulin aux Chêvres, she was immediately shot! [Illustration: MILL AUX CHÊVRES.] The whole history of this terrible war is filled with the noble devotion of heroic females. The chiefs were attended in the most sanguinary battles by ladies, who had themselves ornamented their standards with loyal and chivalrous emblems of the cause for which they were prepared to sacrifice themselves, and who were frequently seen rallying the broken troops, and falling, covered with wounds, by the hands of their enemies! The annexed view of the Moulin aux Chêvres, which is rendered interesting from the account given by Madame de la Roche-Jaquelin of the battle fought near it, will convey a tolerable idea of the scenery of the country. The prodigious growth of the willow tree in Bretagne, is such as to claim the peculiar notice of travellers: here they attain a gigantic height, no where else to be seen. Batard, in his "_Notices sur les Végétaux_" mentions one in the commune of Pommeraie in the arrondissement de Beaupréau, whose age was supposed to be nearly two thousand years. Within the Château at Clisson are some very old ones, but the finest I observed were at the Moulin aux Chêvres. CHAP. VI. LIMITS AND GENERAL APPEARANCE OF LE BOCAGE. MODE OF WARFARE PRACTISED BY THE VENDEANS. My opportunity of becoming acquainted with that singular district called Le Bocage, will be best understood by very briefly sketching my route through it. I traversed it, and the district called Le Loroux, by the route of Montaigne and Lege, and on my return I passed through Clisson, Vallet, and Loroux, along the banks of the Loire. By pursuing this route, I had every where the interesting opportunity of exploring the scene of that destructive warfare which had ravaged the towns and villages of this part of France. At one period, the war of La Vendée extended to the north of the Loire, as far as Rennes, forming a triangle, the eastern point of which rested on the town of Angers. To the south of the Loire it spread nearly as far as la Rochelle; and as in this part also it extended nearly to Angers, the tract over which it spread its ravages formed nearly a square. The district called Loroux runs parallel with the Loire: Le Bocage, which occupies both districts, and the whole country south of that river, is comprehended under the general appellation of La Vendée. Under the old divisions of France Le Bocage formed part of the province of Poitou, and Le Loroux part of the provinces of Anjou and Bretagne: but when, at the revolution, France was divided into departments, these two districts were denominated La Vendée, Les deux Sèvres, La Loire Inférieure, and Mayenne and Loire. La Vendée is an extremely interesting district, not merely on account of the singular and heroic warfare that was carried on there so long, but also from the appearance of the country, and the manners, opinions, and general character of its inhabitants; and Le Bocage is, in all these respects, the most interesting part of La Vendée. In Le Bocage, the war was carried on with most wonderful vigour and pertinacity, as well as with almost unparalleled destruction and cruelty. Those who are acquainted only with the other parts of France, can form no idea of the aspect of this district, or of the manners of its inhabitants; they differ so widely and essentially, that they seem to belong to another portion of the globe. It has always been regarded as the most fertile country in France; and, before the revolution, it was undoubtedly one of the most populous. There are only two roads in the whole country: one of them runs from Nantes to la Rochelle, and the other from Bordeaux to Tours, through Poitou: all the rest of this district is a complete labyrinth: there are indeed numerous pathways, so very winding and narrow, that they are much more calculated to harass and mislead, than to assist a traveller in his journey: these pathways are flanked by wide and deep ditches, and almost rendered completely dark by lofty hedges on each side of them, the trees of which meet at top, and thus form an arch: hence they are rough and uneven in summer, besides being intolerably hot, and deep and miry in winter. To add to these inconveniences, the bed of a rivulet flowing along them frequently constitutes the only passage. Even when the traveller, after toiling along these dreadful pathways, comes near a town or village, he generally finds that the approach to it is practicable only by ascending irregular steps, cut out of the solid rock, on which they are built. The inhabitants themselves even are frequently puzzled by these pathways; and, after wandering for a considerable length of time, at last find out that they have been travelling in a wrong direction. The whole country bears the appearance of an extensive and thick forest: this arises from the nature of the enclosures; they are extremely small, often not more than fifty or sixty perches, surrounded with strong hedges planted in the banks. These circumstances alone would give the appearance just noticed; but the effect is much increased from other causes. On each side of the banks, on which the trees are planted, there are ditches and drains, and the moisture which they constantly supply to their roots, renders their growth very rapid and luxuriant; so that when we consider the number of the trees and their great size, we shall not be surprised that the country looks like an immense forest. Sometimes the trees are so disposed as to answer the purpose of a palisade; and this purpose they answer most effectually, not only from the great size and strength of the trees themselves, but also from the intervening spaces between them being filled up with strong and impassable underwood [10]. [Footnote 10: A tract of about 150 miles square, at the mouth and on the southern bank of the Loire, comprehends the scene of those deplorable hostilities. The most inland part of the district, and that in which the insurrection first broke out, is called _Le Bocage_; and seems to have been almost as singular in its physical conformation, as in the state and condition of its population. A series of detached eminences, of no great elevation, rose over the whole face of the country, with little rills trickling in the hollows and occasional cliffs by their sides. The whole space was divided into small enclosures, each surrounded with tall wild hedges, and rows of pollard trees; so that though there were few large woods, the whole region had a sylvan and impenetrable appearance. The ground was mostly in pasturage; and the landscape had, for the most part, an aspect of wild verdure, except that in the autumn some patches of yellow corn appeared here and there athwart their green enclosures. Only two great roads traversed this sequestered region, running nearly parallel, at a distance of more than seventy miles from each other. In the intermediate space, there was nothing but a labyrinth of wild and devious paths, crossing each other at the extremity of almost every field--often serving, at the same time, as channels for the winter torrents, and winding so capriciously among the innumerable hillocks, and beneath the meeting hedge-rows, that the natives themselves were always in danger of losing their way when they went a league or two from their own habitations. The country, though rather thickly peopled, contained, as may be supposed, few large towns; and the inhabitants, devoted almost entirely to rural occupations, enjoyed a great deal of leisure. The noblesse or gentry of the country were very generally resident on their estates, where they lived in a style of simplicity and homeliness which had long disappeared from every other part of the kingdom. No grand parks, fine gardens, or ornamented villas; but spacious clumsy chateaux, surrounded with farm offices and cottages for the labourers. Their manners and way of life, too, partook of the same primitive rusticity. There was great cordiality, and even much familiarity, in the intercourse of the seigneurs with their dependants. They were followed by large trains of them in their hunting expeditions, which occupied so great a part of their time. Every man had his fowling-piece, and was a marksman of fame or pretensions. They were posted in various quarters, to intercept or drive back the game; and were thus trained, by anticipation, to that sort of discipline and concert, in which their whole art of war was afterwards found to consist. Nor was their intimacy confined to their sports. The peasants resorted familiarly to their landlords for advice, both legal and medical; and they repaid the visits in their daily rambles, and entered with interest into all the details of their agricultural operations. They came to the weddings of their children, drank with their guests, and made little presents to the young people. On Sundays and holidays, all the retainers of the family assembled at the château, and danced in the barn or the court-yard, according to the season. The ladies of the house joined in the festivity, and that without any airs of condescension or of mockery; for, in their own life, there was little splendour or luxurious refinement. They travelled on horseback, or in heavy carriages drawn by oxen; and had little other amusement than in the care of their dependants, and the familiar intercourse of neighbours among whom there was no rivalry or principle of ostentation. From all this there resulted, as Madame de L. assures us, a certain innocence and kindliness of character, joined with great hardihood and gaiety,--which reminds us of Henry IV. and his Béarnois,--and carries with it, perhaps on account of that association, an idea of something more chivalrous and romantic--more honest and unsophisticated, than any thing we expect to meet with in this modern world of artifice and derision. There was great purity of morals accordingly, Mad. de L. informs us, and general cheerfulness and content in all this district;--crimes were never heard of, and lawsuits almost unknown. Though not very well educated, the population was exceedingly devout;--though theirs was a kind of superstitious and traditional devotion, it must he owned, rather than an enlightened or rational faith. They had the greatest veneration for crucifixes and images of their saints, and had no idea of any duty more imperious than that of attending on all the solemnities of religion. They were singularly attached also to their curés, who were almost all born and bred in the country, spoke their _patois_, and shared in all their pastimes and occupations. When a hunting-match was to take place, the clergyman announced it from the pulpit after prayers,--and then took his fowling-piece, and accompanied his congregation to the thicket. It was on behalf of these curés, in fact, that the first disturbances were excited.--_Edin. Rev. for Feb._ 1816.] This luxuriance of growth does not proceed entirely from the moisture supplied by the ditches and drains; the soil naturally is uncommonly fertile: and whatever springs from it, whether planted by the hand of man, and nourished, while growing, by his attention and skill, or its spontaneous production, bears witness to this uncommon fertility. The country abounds in corn and vineyards; the produce of the latter consists principally in white vines. At the season of the year when I passed through it, the intermixture of the rich and soft yellow of the wheat nearly ripe, with the light green foliage of the vines, produced a most pleasing effect. In Poitou and Anjou, the harvest generally begins about the latter end of June: this year it was late every where, but very abundant. The vineyards had mostly failed. Le Marais, which is also comprehended within the limits of Le Bocage, is that part of Lower Poitou, adjacent to the sea. There the country is open and flat, and the passes are impracticable during the winter, and very difficult at other seasons of the year. The inhabitants of Le Marais formed a division of the army of the celebrated chief Charette. La Vendée was divided into two circuits; each army had its own, until the junction of the whole under La Roche-Jaquelin, &c; that of Charette occupied the district of Chalans, Machecoul, la Roche Sur Yon, les Sables, a part of the districts of St. Florent, Vehiers, Chollet, Châtillon, la Châtaigneraie, a great part of the districts of Clisson, Montaigne, Thouars, Parthenay, and Fontenay-le-peuple. Although the locality of Le Bocage is a perfect contrast to that of le Marais, nature seems to have exerted all her power in forming these two districts into one extensive fortress, capable of opposing every thing to an attack, and presenting so many means of defence, that it was rarely possible for the enemy to lead a column, or to regulate its movements so as to preserve union in its marches or manoeuvres, dispositions for an attack, or retreat. The positions of the Vendeans could never be understood, or their projects foreseen, in a country where the frequent undulations of land, hedges, trees, and bushes, obstructing the surface, would not admit of seeing fifty paces round; and one of the republican generals, writing to the Convention, thus speaks of Charette's movements. "It is no easy matter to find Charette, particularly to bring him to action. To-day at the head of ten thousand men, the next day wandering with a score of horsemen, it is very rare that one can come up with him. When we believed him to be in our front, he was in our rear. Yesterday he threatened such a post, to-day he is ten leagues from it; more able to avoid than fight us, he almost always disconcerts, and often, without knowing it, all our combinations. He endeavours to surprise us, to carry off our patroles, and to kill our stragglers". The inhabitants of le Marais and le Bocage for a long period confined themselves to defensive warfare, for which nature seems to have formed their country. The situation of le Marais enabled the brave royalists to receive succours from the English, and to facilitate and protect the debarkation of such as they wished to procure from the North side of the Loire, the coast being flat and easy of access by sea. The Vendeans, favoured by every natural advantage, had a peculiar tactic which they knew perfectly well how to apply to their position and local circumstances, and adopted a mode of fighting hitherto unknown, and practicable in that country alone. Confident in the superiority which their mode of attack gave them, they never suffered themselves to be anticipated, they never engaged but when and where they pleased. Their dexterity in the use of fire arms was such, that no people, however well skilled in manoeuvring, could make such good use of a gun; the huntsman of Loroux, and the poacher of le Bocage, having been always proverbial as excellent marksmen. It was no unusual thing for the Vendeans when at the plough, to carry with them a musket; and whenever they observed "a blue coat," (as they called the republican soldiers) they stopt their plough, took up their musket, and fired at him; it seldom happened that they missed the object of their vengeance. A melancholy circumstance, connected with this mode of warfare, took place: the son of one of the Vendean farmers, or ploughmen, had been compelled to join the republican army; but having succeeded in escaping, he was hastening, in his republican uniform, to rejoin his relations, when being observed by his father, while at the plough, the latter, unable from the distance to recognize his son, and seeing only the uniform of an enemy, fired and shot him. Their attacks were always dreadful, sudden, and almost unforeseen, because it was very difficult to reconnoitre or obtain information so as to guard against surprise. Their order of battle was generally in the form of a crescent, their wings being composed of the most expert marksmen, who never fired without taking aim, and seldom ever missed. Their retreat was so precipitate that it was difficult to come up with them, as they dispersed themselves through rough fields, hedges, woods, and bushes, knew all the bye-roads, secret escapes and defiles, and were acquainted with all the obstacles which could obstruct their flight, and the means of avoiding them. Their mode of warfare was according to the locality of the country, well calculated to prolong the struggle and waste the strength of the forces sent to oppose them. In the district of les Sables, intersected by canals, rivulets, and salt marshes, where there were scarcely carriage roads, but chiefly bye-ways, and raised paths, a species of natural fortification was every where formed: this rendered any attack against them dangerous, and consequently it was most favourable for defence, particularly to the inhabitants. The canals are in general from thirty to forty feet wide on the upper extremity of the banks. The Vendean, carrying his musket in a bandoleer, and leaning upon a long pole, leaped from one bank to the other with amazing facility. When the pressure of the enemy would not admit of his doing this, without exposing himself to their fire, he threw himself into a niole, (a kind of small boat,) very flat, and light, and crossed the canal with great rapidity, being always sufficiently shut up to hide himself from his pursuers: but he soon appeared again, and firing at his enemy, again disappeared. The republican soldier to whom this mode of fighting was unknown, was obliged to be continually upon his guard, to march along the shores of the canals, and to follow slowly their circuitous track, supporting at the same time frequent skirmishes, while it took him several hours to traverse a space which the Vendean commonly accomplished in a few minutes. Among the difficulties which the execution of all military plans met with in La Vendée, the nature and degree of which may be judged of from the local dispositions and the kind of warfare carried on by the royalists, there was one which was invincible, and which singularly retarded the operations of the republicans. Whenever they were desirous of sending an order from head quarters to a division at the distance of twelve or fifteen leagues, the messenger was often obliged to travel fifty or sixty in order to avoid passing through the revolted country. Hence the impossibility of attempting any expedition, however necessary or desirable, which required to be executed without delay. The Vendeans would appear one day at a certain point to the number of several thousand men; measures were concerted for attacking them the next day, but before that arrived they were eight or ten leagues distant from the place where they had showed themselves the day before. Thus were the republicans exposed to fruitless victories or disastrous checks, which exhausted their men and resources. Masters of the field of battle, they found, says one of their generals, nothing but wooden shoes and some slain, never any arms or ammunition. The Vendean when perceived, would either hide or break his gun, and in surrendering his life, seldom left his weapon. Being well acquainted with the country, and more dexterous than the republicans, they carried scarcely any artillery with them, four or five pieces sufficed for an army of thirty or forty thousand men; these were generally light field pieces. Equally sparing of ammunition, they took but few waggons, one alone served the pieces, as they well knew it was not artillery that would procure them the victory; thence, when the republicans met with any disastrous affair, they lost from twenty to thirty pieces of cannon, and waggons in proportion; whereas when they gained a victory they acquired only two or three pieces of cannon, with scarcely any ammunition. From this slight sketch of the nature of the country, so disadvantageous to the invaders, and of the mode in which the Vendeans carried on this unfortunate war, our surprise will cease at the determined and protracted resistance made to the republicans by this loyal and brave people. For many years they defended their beloved country, and endured privations, and accumulated miseries, such as human nature has seldom been exposed to. To use the words of a republican general, "A girdle of fire enveloped the revolted country; fire, terror, and death, preceded the march". But the principal cause of the long resistance of the Vendeans must be sought for in their moral character; they were most honourably distinguished by an inviolable attachment to their party, and unlimited and unshaken confidence in their chiefs; and an earnest, warm, but steady zeal, which supplied the place of discipline. Their invincible courage, both active and passive, was proof against every kind of danger, fatigue, and want. It has been well observed that "irregular and undisciplined wars are naturally far more prolific of extraordinary incidents, unexpected turns of fortune, and striking displays of individual talent, of vice and virtue, than the more solemn movements of national hostility, where every thing is in a great measure provided and foreseen; and where the inflexible subordination of rank, and the severe exactions of a limited duty not only take away the inducement, but the opportunity for those exaltations of personal feeling and adventure which produce the most lively interest, and lead to the most animating results. In the unconcerted proceedings of an insurgent population, all is experiment and all is passion. The heroic daring of a simple peasant lifts him at once to the rank of a leader, and kindles a general enthusiasm to which all things become possible". From the operation of these causes the Vendeans were enabled to send forth formidable armies: and such was the confidence of the chiefs in the troops, that they never would have been subdued if they had not lost their leaders in the various hard fought actions, or been deprived of their services by their mutual jealousy. Another circumstance proved equally fatal to them; after the fall of the gallant Lescure, they most imprudently quitted the strong country for the open plains on the left bank of the Loire. CHAP. VII. RIVER LOIRE, FROM NANTES TO ANGERS. The Loire is one of the finest rivers in France; and perhaps there is no river in the world, that equals that part of it, which flows from Angers to Nantes: the breadth of the stream; the islands of wood; the boldness, culture, and richness of its banks, all conspire to render it worthy of this character. As a useful river it is equally celebrated: its banks being bordered by rich and populous cities; and the benefits it renders to industry and commerce being incalculable. Its stream is so rapid and strong, that in ascending it is generally necessary from Nantes to Angers, to track the barge: this mode of proceeding, though slow, has its advantages; as it gives greater time and opportunity for observing all the various beauties of scenery which present themselves at every turn of the river. I embarked early in the morning with a favourable breeze from the west: we soon began to be interested, and almost enchanted, with the rich and beautiful scenery, which almost every moment opened to our view in endless variety. This scenery not only pleased the eye and imagination by its beauty, but also excited high and deep interest by the fertility which it displayed. The banks were lined with corn fields, vineyards, or orchards. Occasionally the nature and interest of the prospect were agreeably diversified by the spire of a convent or the turrets of a chateau, rising above gardens or groves, or rich woodlands. At other places there were still more decided marks of population, for villages, country-houses, and farms, caught the eye, and added to the charms by which it was so willingly and powerfully detained. The whole country on each side is well cultivated. But even this part of France, interesting and beautiful as it is, cannot be traversed without the recollection of the horrors of the revolution breaking in upon, and greatly damping the interest and pleasure derived from the view of the scenery. As we approached the ruined tower of Oudon, it was impossible not to feel a melancholy regret at the scenes of unparalleled bloodshed that took place on the rich and delightful banks of this river during the phrenzy of the revolution. These dreadful recollections assailed us most powerfully as we came in view of Ancenis on the left, and of Saint Florent le Viel to the right. At the latter place we stopped for the night. It was a fine serene evening, the wind had left us, and we were forced to track the shore for some distance before we reached it: just as the sun was setting I made a sketch of its ruined convent on the hill. [Illustration: TOUR D'OUDON on the RIVER LOIRE.] [Illustration] After the defeat of the Vendean army, and their retreat across the Loire at this place, says a French writer, "There were seen upon the right bank, following the army, which increased prodigiously, a multitude of bishops, priests, monks, religious persons, old countesses, baronesses, &c. &c. who were carried off by cart-loads, and which did nothing but embarrass the army.[11] There were a great many of them killed at the battle of Mans". [Footnote 11: On gaining the heights of St. Florent, one of the most mournful, and at the same time most magnificent spectacles, burst upon the eye. These heights form a vast semicircle; at the bottom of which a broad bare plain extends to the edge of the water. Near an hundred thousand unhappy souls now blackened over that dreary expanse,--old men, infants and women, mingled, with the half-armed soldiery, caravans, crowded baggage waggons and teams of oxen, all full of despair, impatience, anxiety and terror:--Behind, were the smoke of their burning villages, and the thunder of the hostile artillery;--before, the broad stream of the Loire, divided by a long low island, also covered with the fugitives,--twenty frail barks plying in the stream--and, on the far banks, the disorderly movements of those who had effected the passage, and were waiting there to be rejoined by their companions. Such, Mad. de L. assures us, was the tumult and terror of the scene, and so awful the recollections it inspired, that it can never be effaced from the memory of any of those who beheld it; and that many of its awe-struck spectators have concurred in stating, that it brought forcibly to their imaginations the unspeakable terrors of the great day of judgment.--_Edinb. Rev. No. LI. p. 24._] It is said that when the Prince Talmont, with the royalists, crossed over from Saint Florent, under the fire of the republican troops who had taken possession of the heights, they consisted of thirty thousand individuals, but that there were not twenty thousand warriors; among them were five thousand women: arrived in the open country, without warlike stores, they soon wanted provisions. This multitude created a famine wherever it went, and suffered a famine itself. The first unsuccessful enterprize produced discouragement, and necessarily the desertion of the army: it diminished two-thirds when it was repulsed at Angers; and when the chiefs, despairing (after the battle of Mans) of not being able to recross the Loire at Ancenis, led back the wrecks of the army to Savenay, it consisted only of fifteen thousand men, half dead with hunger and misery: the major part of these were exterminated by the republicans; the rest dispersed themselves, and from that time all efforts ceased. Prince de Talmont was arrested near Erne, tried at Rennes, and executed at Laval: of the fate of Lescure and the other chiefs, a melancholy catalogue is furnished by Madame de la Roche-Jaquelin. The wind favoring us the day following, we sailed at break of day, and arrived at Angers at the close of a beautiful evening. The approach to this town, in sailing up the river Mayenne, is highly picturesque; its ancient castle is situated on a high rock overhanging the river; its walls and antique towers, built by the English, have an imposing effect. The town stands in a plain, which, in the distance, being fringed with wood, together with the corn and meadow ground, give it that richness and beauty that characterizes the whole country between Nantes and Angers. The river Mayenne, and a small branch of the Loire, divide the town. It is the chief seat of the province of Maine-et-Loire, formerly the capital of Anjou. It is a large ancient city, with a fine cathedral, a botanical garden, museum, and several manufactories of cottons; one of them in imitation of India handkerchiefs. Here the last effort was made by the Vendeans, whose flight from it was immediately followed by the bloody and disastrous affair of Mans. I had now passed the provinces of Bretagne and Poitou, as they border the Loire; and, in point of beautiful and romantic scenery, this district can scarcely be surpassed. The left bank of the river, running along the country of Le Bocage, from Nantes to Angers, a distance of seventy-two miles, is a continued range of lofty hills, agreeably diversified with corn lands, and studded with vineyards. The opposite bank is a more flat and variegated country, with pleasant eminences and broad plains, watered by branches of the Loire, which in many parts contains small islands covered with trees. The whole course of this fine river, as the eye sweeps and ranges over its banks, presents at almost every bend the view of villas enriched with gardens, orchards, and vineyards; castles, convents, and villages in ruins! bearing innumerable evidences of the desolating war that has destroyed them. The religious communities, whose love of scenery and retirement in general led them to prefer the most sequestered valleys, have in these provinces chosen the most elevated and picturesque spots for the erection of their monasteries; and these, notwithstanding their deserted and decaying state, prove the good taste of their ancient possessors, and the skill and industry with which they embellished them. No situations could have been selected more abounding in picturesque combinations of magnificent landscapes. The pleasure of the traveller in surveying such scenes, cannot but be frequently interrupted, by the recollection of the various atrocities which the inhabitants of these fine provinces committed against each other, and of the immense number of innocent victims that were driven from their abode to perish by famine or the sword. CHAP. VIII. SAUMUR TO TOURS--TOURS--TOURS TO BLOIS--ORLEANS--AND ORLEANS TO PARIS. I hired a small carriage, called a _patache_, to convey me to Saumur and Tours; it is driven by a postillion with two horses, and is open in front, giving the traveller a better opportunity of viewing the country than in a close vehicle. The town of Saumur is built on both banks of the Loire, with a handsome stone bridge over it; an ancient castle, built on a high rock, commands the whole town. The road from Angers to this place is a high raised causeway, paved, and runs parallel to the river, within a few paces of its banks, the whole distance. Here we entered into Touraine from the province of Anjou. From Saumur to Tours, the road is like the former. The river Loire is on the right hand, and a flat level country on the left, covered with orchards, groves, and meadows. The road is every where raised so high, that it forms a very steep declivity, with narrow pathways down to the entrance of the cottages and villages, which are most romantically situated,--some in orchards, some amidst vineyards, some in gardens, and others in recesses peeping from between the trees. The fences are fantastically interwoven with wreaths of the vines, which frequently creep up the trunk of a pear or a cherry-tree, and cover the slated roofs of the houses, thereby, from the natural luxuriance and wildness of their spreading branches in the fruit season, answering at once the purposes of utility and ornament; for the slates, retaining the heat, ripen the grape sooner than any other mode of training. The corn was now ripe, and added to the interest and beauty of the scenes; in many of the fields the reapers were at work, and the harvest (which happily for France had not been so abundant for many years) was going on with the assistance of the female peasantry, who on all occasions partake and cheer the labours of the field. Approaching nearer to Tours, I had a fine view of the bridge, which is esteemed the handsomest in France. Between the branches of the trees, I now and then caught a glimpse of the spires of the church and buildings, encompassed by extensive orchards and groves, and open vales between, varied by vineyards. It was a _jour de fête_, and as I drove through the town the streets were gay with holyday people, and crowded in some places with groups of women and girls, whose cheerful countenances proved the admiration with which they viewed the performances of some mountebanks.[12] Tours is the chief seat of the préfecture of the Indre-et-Loire, formerly the capital of the province of Touraine, and is built on a plain on the bank of the Loire. The houses are of a white stone, and in the principal streets well built and lofty: it is altogether one of the handsomest towns in France. The main street, the rue Royale, can boast of a foot pavement, which is seldom to be met with in this country. The environs of the town are also very beautiful; the luxuriance of the soil, abounding in vines, fruits, and every article of life, has attracted such numbers of English to its vicinity, that Tours may be almost considered an English colony. [Footnote 12: There is no city in Europe where there are more of these sort of people to be seen than at Paris, on the boulevards and different carrefours. The fondness of the Parisians for shows has existed for ages. In a tariff of Saint Lewis for regulating the duties upon the different articles brought into Paris by the gate of the little Châtelet, it is ordained, (Hist. LVIII. cxxxiii.) that whosoever fetches a monkey into the city for sale, shall pay four deniers; but if the monkey belongs to a merry-andrew, the merry-andrew shall be exempted from paying the duty, as well upon the said monkey as on every thing else he carries along with him, by causing his monkey to play and dance before the collector! Hence is derived the proverb "Payer en monnoie de singe," i.e. to laugh at a man instead of paying him. By another article, it is specified, that jugglers shall likewise be exempt from all imposts, provided they sing a couplet of a song before the toll-gatherer.] Its ancient cathedral is in good preservation, notwithstanding it became a prey to the licentious fanaticism of the republicans. The hotel Saint Julien, where I resided during my stay, stands upon the cloisters of an ancient abbey; and the church, with its fine Gothic pillars, and chapels, remains a monument of those destructive and desolating times! The side aisles are stalls for horses and cattle, and the centre is a _remise_ for carriages and the public diligences which run to this inn! The best hotel is the hotel du Faisan. The vast number of English who keep pouring into all the western provinces of this country, by degrees has affected the markets, and will continue to do so, as long as the rage for emigration lasts. At Tours, every article is one third dearer than at Nantes, and in proportion as the capital is approached every thing becomes more expensive; yet notwithstanding this, living is, and must ever be, infinitely cheaper than in England. It certainly is no exaggeration to say, that France is richer in the production of fruits and vegetables than any country in Europe, for in no other can be found so many productions of the same climates of the earth, or a soil more naturally abundant. With the exception of some of the northern provinces, every part of France has wine, and the culture of that delicious fruit which produces it is mentioned in its earliest records. By a happy distribution, those provinces which do not bear the vine, are abundantly supplied with other productions. Normandy and Bretagne abound in the finest fruits; Picardy, and the adjoining provinces, in corn. The riches of Lorraine are in its woods; Touraine has ever been famous for its plums and its pears. The banks of the Loire, and the valleys of Dauphiné, are celebrated for the richness of their verdure and vegetation; and the more southern provinces of Languedoc and Provence, partake of the climate and productions of Italy and Spain. Between Tours and Amboise, I passed the once celebrated Château of Chanteloup, formerly the property of the Duc de Choiseuil, now the residence of the Comte de Chaptal, who became the purchaser when it was sold as national property. At the distance of six miles from Blois, the road leads near enough to Valençay to have a good view of its magnificent palace and grounds; this place, now belonging to M. de Talleyrand, Prince et Duc de Benevento, (one of the most extraordinary characters who have figured so conspicuously during the present age,) is the more interesting, from having been so long the place of confinement of Ferdinand the present King of Spain; and from whence our government tried to extricate him through the agency of Baron de Kolly, who lost his life in the attempt. This singular transaction has appeared in all the public papers, but having had an opportunity of collecting the particulars through a channel of undoubted authority, I consider it an anecdote of too interesting a nature, as connected with the subject before me, not to insert it here. In 1810, our government laid a plan to liberate King Ferdinand VII. of Spain, similar to the one which had already effected the escape of the Marquis de la Romana. The person entrusted with this commission, assumed the name of Baron de Kolly, and besides the necessary credit and credentials, he was furnished with the original letter, written by Charles IV. to George III. in 1802, notifying the marriage of his son, the Prince of the Asturias, and containing a marginal note from the Marquis W.... in corroboration of his mission. A small squadron was also sent to cruize off that part of the coast most contiguous to Valençay, under the orders of Commodore C.... to be in readiness to receive the royal fugitive. On a sudden the Baron de Kolly was seized, and the plan frustrated, but the real particulars were never known until after the events of the campaign of 1815. In the course of the passage to St. Helena, Admiral C.... (who had been entrusted with the project) expressed a wish to know of Buonaparte, by what means de Kolly had been discovered and arrested, and the true circumstances of the affair so totally unknown in England, adding, that if no motive of state policy intervened, he was anxious to hear the whole disclosure. Buonaparte readily consented, and told him that de Kolly arrived at Paris and lived in the greatest obscurity, dressed shabbily, and eating his meals only at cheap traiteurs in the Fauxbourg St. Antoine. However, he was not satisfied with the common wine served up, and would ask for the best Bordeaux, for which he paid five francs per bottle. This contrast of poverty and luxury excited suspicions in the waiters of the two houses he thus frequented, who being in the pay of the police, immediately sent in a report. De Kolly was watched, and soon afterwards seized with all his papers. Buonaparte said he then procured a person, as nearly resembling de Kolly as could be found, to carry on the English stratagem, under a hope that Ferdinand would have fallen into the trap; and with all the original credentials, this agent of the French police went into the castle of Valençay, under a pretext of selling some trinkets. Ferdinand however, said Buonaparte, was too great a coward to enter into the views proposed to him, but instantly gave information of what had been communicated, to his first chamberlain, Amazada, in a letter written to the governor of the castle!--By this means Ferdinand escaped being placed at the mercy of Buonaparte, whose intention was to intercept him in his flight. Although the conduct of Ferdinand was in this instance pusillanimous and cruel, it was next to an impossibility that he could have effected his escape. He was surrounded by guards and spies of every description, under the superintendence of M. Darberg, Auditor of the Council of State, and without whose leave no admittance could be obtained. Twenty-five horse gendarmes regularly mounted guard about the castle, and every person found in its vicinity without a regular passport, was confined and strictly examined. At a small distance, is the residence of Marshal Victor, Duc de Belluno, whom I met walking in the grounds. I was very civilly permitted to enter, on sending a message desiring permission, as a traveller, to see it. It stands at the entrance of the village of Ménard, and was once the favourite residence of Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of Louis XV. The river Loire winds beautifully beneath the terrace. The grounds are of a vast extent, and tastefully laid out. Over the entrance, the workmen were then placing the arms of the Marshal, finely executed in stone. The country is thickly enclosed on each side of the river, varied with hill and dale, clothed with vineyards. The villages and small towns along the banks, as far as Orléans, are numerous and invariably picturesque. Nothing can be more beautiful than the natural festoons which are formed by the long shoots of the vines as they project over the road. The peasants and the vignerons live in the midst of their vineyards; their dwellings are excavations in chalky strata of the solid rock, which afford them warm and dry habitations; some of them were so covered with the vines that the entrance was scarcely visible, and the comparison of them to so many birds nests is not badly imagined. The hedges were covered with wild thyme and rosemary; and the clematis interwoven with honeysuckles and other fragrant flowers, richly perfumed the air. The grapes in Touraine and Orléanois are not abundant this year, but the wine that is expected to be made, will, it is supposed, from the dryness of the summer, be of an excellent quality. The town of Orléans is memorable for the siege it sustained against the English in 1428, when the maid of Orléans acquired so much renown, and whose barbarous execution at Rouen, cannot be remembered without feelings of horror and indignation, and must ever remain a stain on the memory of that brave soldier the Duke of Bedford. The transactions subsequent to that event, led to the almost entire expulsion of the English from France; and those glittering conquests which were an object of more glory than interest, and had been purchased at such an expense of blood and treasure, were from that time lost to the English nation. During the Revolution, the ancient statue of this celebrated female was taken down and unfortunately destroyed, and one more modern, but less interesting, finely executed in bronze, has been since erected. She is habited in armour, with a lance and shield, supposed to be leading on the victorious troops. At the four angles, are the emblematical figures in relief, of the principal events of her singular career. On a marble pedestal, is inscribed: A JEANNE D'ARC. Orléans is the chief seat of the department of the Loiret, formerly the capital of Orléanais, on the river Loire, over which it has a handsome bridge like the one at Tours, though not of such extent, as the river here is not so wide, and very shallow. The communication by water with Paris is carried on by means of a canal. The church is one of the finest specimens of Gothic architecture I have seen in France. The towers are of open fretwork, and in excellent preservation. More cheerful scenes of exuberant fertility are nowhere to be met with than along the banks of the river, and in the country surrounding the town. From Orléans to Etampes, there is a plain of eighteen leagues in extent, the whole of which was covered with one entire tract of corn and vines; not an intervening hill or hillock; and the scene was doubly interesting from the harvest carrying on in every direction as I traversed it. Leaving Etampes, I passed through the beautiful villages of Sceaux, Bourg-la-Reine, and Fontenay-aux-Roses; the latter still contains the ruins of the Palace of Colbert, the celebrated minister of Louis XIV. The village of Fontenay-aux-Roses, is situated in a valley six miles from Paris, and takes its name from the culture of roses, which cover large tracts of ground. The proprietors sell the flowers to the distillers for making rose water and essences, and the flower market is supplied with the choicest bouquets; it is likewise celebrated for its produce of the finest strawberries and peaches. The beauty of its situation, and the association of its name with the sweetest of flowers, has attracted many of the wealthy inhabitants of the metropolis to reside in its vicinity, where they have summer houses; among them is the Maire de Fontenay, Monsieur Ledru, whose history is singular and interesting. His father, who was very wealthy, and a great miser, sent for him one morning, at the time he had just attained his eighteenth year, and said to him: "I began life at your age with half a crown; there is one for you--go, and be as fortunate as I have been;"--saying which, he turned him out of the house, and shut the door in his face. Undismayed at such unexpected and unnatural conduct on the part of his parent, whom he had never offended, the youth sought the advice and assistance of a friend, by whose opinion he applied himself to the study of medicine. After an indefatigable study at the Hotel Dieu, he became celebrated in his profession, and had the good fortune to be employed by a lady of great wealth, whose life he saved. Out of gratitude, she proposed to become his wife, and to settle upon him an income of fifty thousand livres, that he might give up his medical pursuits; which, having accepted, he rewarded her by an attention and kindness suitable to the noble generosity of her conduct. The revolution soon after occurred, and in the general wreck of property she lost all her fortune, it having been invested, either in the funds, or public securities. It then became the turn of Mons. Ledru to support his wife, by renewing the practice of his profession, which soon placed them again in affluent circumstances. At the death of his father, who left an immense fortune to be divided between Mons. Ledru and his two maiden sisters, he took possession of the estate at Fontenay-aux-Roses, from whence he had been cruelly banished when a boy, and which the unkindness of his parent had never after permitted him to enter. Fortune, which had hitherto played a wayward and capricious game with him, had not yet ceased her freaks. In removing a mirror from over a chimney-piece which required an alteration, he discovered a prodigious treasure that had been concealed there by his father! With that generosity and nobleness of character, which make him esteemed and beloved by all his acquaintance, and adored by the whole commune over which he presides, he instantly sent for his sisters and divided it with them. His wife did not long survive this last event, and since her death he has continued to reside at Fontenay-aux-Roses with his sisters, where he exercises his authority with mildness; and by constant acts of beneficence and charity, is justly styled, "Le Père de Fontenay!" Between Fontenay-aux-Roses and Paris, to the right of the road, is the village of Gentilly, whose numerous guinguettes are much frequented by the Parisians in fine weather. It being a holyday we met crowds of well dressed citizens, in all sorts of vehicles, driving towards it. An interesting circumstance had been related to me of the curé of this village, M. Détruissart; and on asking permission to visit his rural habitation, I found the story to be true. His garden, which is not above half an acre, has been laid out with such art and ingenuity, as to give an idea of considerable extent, and to add to the charms of this little spot, which he calls his "bonheur," there are a variety of inscriptions of his own composition; over an arbour of vines is the following:-- MA SOLITUDE. Loin des méchans, du bruit, des tempêtes du monde, Sous un simple berceau dont la treille est féconde, Sous un modeste toît, dans de rians jardins, Dessinés, élevés, cultivés par mes mains.... C'est dans ces lieux chéris que s'écoule ma vie Dans une paix profonde, une tranquillité Qui sans cesse rappele à mon ame ravie Le temps de l'âge d'or et ma félicité: Mais, quelque doux qu'il soit, mon sort est peu de chose; Car enfin, après tout, je dois mourir bientôt! Ne ressemblons-nous pas à la feuille de rose Qui paroît un instant et qui sèche aussitôt! It was in the practice of the moral conveyed by these lines, and in the pursuit of literature, and constant acts of charity, that Mons. Détruissart passed his life, which was rewarded by the esteem and affection of all his parishioners, of which they gave a remarkable proof on the 4th of July, 1815, when the Prussian troops took post at Gentilly, from whence they had driven the French the preceding evening into Paris. The poor curé, with many other of the inhabitants, sought refuge in the capital, leaving his house at the mercy of the enemy, who commenced plundering in all directions; the humble and modest appearance of M. Détruissart's cottage not attracting their notice, it remained untouched, when a single word from any of the inhabitants would have devoted it to ruin; but such was their esteem for him, that at his return he found every thing as he had left it. I entered Paris, leaving Bicêtre to my right, by the barrière d'Enfer, after one of the most agreeable and interesting journeys I ever performed. CHAP. IX. ENVIRONS OF PARIS--PERE LA CHAISE--CASTLE OF VINCENNES--AND CHATEAU OF ST. GERMAIN--ITS FOREST AND VICINITY. Prior to the revolution, the French, like most other European nations, were in the practice of depositing their dead in churches and cemeteries within the most populous towns, in compliance with those precepts of evangelical doctrine which recommend us unceasingly to reflect on death; and hence originated a custom which cannot but be attended with most pernicious consequences to health, when we reflect that the decomposition of human bodies is productive of putrid exhalations, and consequently pregnant with the causes of contagious disorders. It is indeed surprising that some regulations have not hitherto been adopted in England regarding the interment of the dead, from the example of other countries. In the year 1793, a decree was passed by the National Assembly, to prevent burying in churches, or in church-yards, within the city of Paris. Since which period, there have been three places selected in its immediate neighbourhood for that purpose--Montmartre, called "Le Champ du Repos"--Vaugirard, and Père La Chaise. Quitting the Boulevards, at the extremity of the Boulevards Neufs, eastward of the city, and passing through the Barrière d'Aulnay, I arrived at the Père La Chaise. At the entrance, through large folding gates, is a spacious court-yard, having at one angle the dwelling of the Concierge, or Keeper. The enclosure contains one hundred and twenty acres, on a gently rising ground, in the centre of which stands the ancient mansion constructed by Louis XIV. for his confessor, Père la Chaise, the celebrated Jesuit, who, with Madame de Maintenon, governed France. Rising above the thousands of tombs which surround it, it displays itself a wrecked and mouldering monument of ancient splendour, and the mutability of human affairs! This spot became afterwards a place of public promenade and great resort, from the beauty of its position overlooking all Paris; and though so often the scene of festivity and pleasure, now presents to the eye of the beholder a mournfully interesting sight of tombs and sarcophagi, intermixed with various fruit trees, cypress groves, the choicest flowers, and rarest shrubs. From the rising ground, above the building of Père La Chaise, a most delightful view displays itself. The city of Paris appears to stand in the centre of a vast amphitheatre. The heights of Belleville, Montmartre, and Ménilmontant, in the west. To the east, the beautiful plain of Saint-Mandé, Montreuil, and Vincennes, with the lofty towers of its fortress.--The fertile banks of the river Marne, are on the North, and in the South, the horizon encircles Bicêtre and Meudon. The various tombs are placed without order or regularity: they are mostly enclosed with trellis work of wood, sometimes by iron railing; and consist of a small marble column, a pyramid, a sarcophagus, or a single slab, just as may have suited the fancy or the taste of the friends of the departed.--Some surrounded with cypress, some with roses, myrtles, and the choicest exotics; others with evergreens, and not unfrequently a single weeping willow, with the addition of a rose tree! This intermixture of the sweetest scented flowers and fruit trees, in a burying ground, among the finest pieces of sculptured marble, with evergreens growing over them, in the form of arbours, and furnished with seats, cannot fail to produce in the mind of the person who views it for the first time, peculiar and uncommon feelings of domestic melancholy, mingled with pleasing tenderness. Who could be otherwise than powerfully affected, as I was, by the first objects that presented themselves to me on entering the place?--A mother and her two sons, kneeling in pious devotion at the foot of the husband's and the father's grave! At a short distance, a female of elegant form, watering and dressing the earth around some plants at her lover's tomb!--not a day, and seldom an hour, passes, but some one is seen either weeping over the remains of a departed relative, or watching with pious solicitude the flowers that spring up around it. Among the many interesting objects that presented themselves at my first visit, was the tomb of Abélard and Héloïse, which had not long since been removed from the convent of the Augustins, where I had seen it in 1815. At a little distance, to the left of the former, was the burial place of Labédoyère. The fate of this brave and unfortunate officer is well known; his youth, and misled zeal, have procured him a sympathy which his fellow sufferer Marshal Ney did not find, and did not merit. In the centre of a square plot of ground enclosed with lattice work, is erected a wooden cross, painted black. Neither marble, nor stone, nor letters, indicate his name. Two pots of roses, and a tuft of violets, alone marked the spot, which is carefully weeded. There is something more affecting in all this simplicity, something, in my mind, that goes more directly home to the heart, than in the most splendid monument or the most studied eulogium. As we came suddenly up we saw two females clad in deep mourning, weeping over it; at each arm of the cross was suspended a garland of flowers; we were about to retire again immediately, from the fear of disturbing their melancholy devotions, when the concierge, with a brutality indescribable, rushed forward, and removing the garlands, threw them among the shrubs at a considerable distance. The friend who accompanied me, after searching, recovered one of the garlands, and with more gallantry perhaps than policy, immediately replaced it, and reproaching the keeper with his unmanly conduct, vowed vengeance if he dared to interrupt the ladies, again, when bowing to them we retired. As we were about to quit the place some time after, we were arrested by two gendarmes, and it was not till after a detention of some hours, and a long discussion between the police officers who had been summoned to attend, and being threatened to be sent to the Conciergerie prison, that we were allowed to depart. The following words were engraved on a plain marble slab that covered the remains of Marshal Ney. CI GIT LE MARÉCHAL NEY DUC D'ECHLINGEN PRINCE DE MOSCOWA DÉCÉDÉ le 7, Decembre, 1815. The grave of the Marshal, as well as that of Labédoyère, when I again visited the spot, had been stripped of every thing, and the railing around them removed so as to prevent any one from discovering the place of their interment. The monument of Madame Cottin, the author of Elizabeth and of Mathilde, is, like her writings, simple and affecting!-Surrounded by a trellis work in the form of an arbour, planted with rose trees, stands a pillar of the whitest marble, highly polished, inclining forwards, and engraved with: ICI REPOSE Marie-Sophie Risteav Veuve de J.M. Cottin Décédée le 25 Août. 1815. Near this is the tomb of the esteemed and celebrated poet Delille, the "Songster of the Gardens," as the French term him. The monument is enclosed in a small garden, planted with the choicest flowers and shrubs: it is of white marble, of large dimensions, and approached by an _allée verte_. The door leading to the vault is of brass, with emblematical figures in relief: above the entrance is inscribed in letters of gold. JACQVES-DELILLE. The linden tree, intermixed with various evergreens, form an interesting and beautiful bouquet around it. Beyond this, to the right, are the tombs of Grétry the composer, Fourcroy the great chemist, Fontenelle, Boileau, Racine, and of Mademoiselle Raucourt, the celebrated actress, to whom the bigotry of the clergy refused burial in consecrated ground in 1815! a circumstance which gave rise to much clamour and dissatisfaction. It is surprising, that after such events as have been experienced in France, the folly of denying the right of consecrated ground to a comedian should have been persevered in, _after the restoration_ of Louis XVIII! Close to the tomb of Mad'lle Raucourt, is one, which for its affecting simplicity and modesty, struck me very forcibly: in a little garden of roses and lilies, and amidst some tufts of mignonette which appeared to have been newly watered, stood a plain marble column, with the words as represented in the annexed sketch--an accacia shaded it from the sun's rays. In 1814, when the Allies approached Paris, this height, like the others commanding the capital, was fortified, and occupied by the students of the Polytechnical School, who defended it with great gallantry. The walls were perforated with holes for the musketry: the marks are still visible where they have been since filled up. On the 30th of March, 1814, this position was vigorously attacked, with great slaughter on both sides: the assailants and the assailed fell in heaps, and it was not until the chief part of a Prussian corps, (that afterwards carried it by assault) had been annihilated, that the brave youths gave way. [Illustration] The tomb of my early friend and brother officer, the brave and unfortunate Captain Wright, who was murdered in the Temple, is in the cemetery of Vaugirard. I had searched for it in vain at Père la Chaise, where it was reported he had been buried. It has on it the following inscription, written to his memory by his companion in arms, and in imprisonment, the gallant Sir Sidney Smith: HERE LIES INHUMED JOHN WESLEY WRIGHT, BY BIRTH AN ENGLISHMAN, CAPTAIN IN THE BRITISH NAVY Distinguished both among his own Countrymen and Foreigners For skill and courage; To whom, Of those things which lead to the summit of glory, Nothing was wanting but opportunity: His ancestors, whose virtues he inherited, He honoured by his deeds. Quick in apprehending his orders, Active and bold in the execution of them; In success modest, In adverse circumstances firm, In doubtful enterprises, wise and prudent. Awhile successful in his career; At length assailed by adverse winds, and on an hostile shore, He was captured; And being soon after brought to Paris, Was confined in the prison called the Temple, _Infamous for midnight murders_, And placed in the most rigid custody: But in bonds, And suffering severities still more oppressive, His fortitude of mind and fidelity to his country Remained unshaken. A short time after, He was found in the morning with his throat cut. And dead in his bed: He died the 28th October, 1805, aged 36. To be lamented by his Country, Avenged by his God! THE DONJON, OR CASTLE OF VINCENNES. This ancient fortress is situate at the entrance of the forest of Vincennes, (now reduced to a wood of small trees, the large timber having been cut down during the revolution) and surrounded by a deep ditch of great width, about two miles from the Barrière du Trône. During many ages, it had been the casual residence of the sovereigns of France. Philip de Valois added considerably to its dimensions in 1337. John continued the works, and during his captivity in England, Charles his son, then regent of the kingdom, finished it. During the reign of Charles VII. in 1422, Henry VI. of England died in this castle. From this time Vincennes became a royal residence, until the reign of Louis XIV. when that monarch fixed himself at Versailles, from which period it has never been used but as a prison[13]. [Footnote 13: Monstrelet relates a curious anecdote, during the residence at the Castle of Vincennes of Isabeau de Bavière, strongly illustrative of the barbarous manners of those times. "Lewis de Bourbon, who was handsome and well made, and had signalized himself upon various occasions, and amongst others at the battle of Agincourt, going one night, as was customary, to visit the Queen, Isabeau de Bavière, at the Castle of Vincennes, met the King (Charles VI.); he saluted him, without either stopping or alighting from his horse, but continued galloping on. The King having recollected him, ordered Tangui du Chatel, prévost of Paris, to pursue, and to confine him in prison. At night the _question_ was applied, and he was afterwards tied up in a sack and cast into the Seine, with this inscription upon the sack, 'Let the King's justice take place.'"] Dulaure, a French writer, in speaking of the persons who were confined here, observes, it would be difficult to enumerate the number of individuals that have been shut up in this prison within these few years. "We will merely notice," he says, "the celebrated Count Mirabeau, who was confined from 1777 to 1780; here it was that he translated his Tibulle, and Joannes Secundus, and wrote his 'Lettres originales' to his mistress, Madame Lemonnier, which abound with passages as affecting as the letters of Héloïse". This prison was thrown open during the reign of the unfortunate Louis XVI. by the Baron de Breteuil, Minister of the Department of Paris in 1784. In going over it, every one was penetrated with horror; and feelings of the most melancholy interest were excited by reading the various inscriptions on the walls, indicative of the hopeless misery that had been experienced within them! Many were expressive of piety and resignation at the approach of death!--others complaining of the cruel oppression which had immured them! On one wall was written, "Il faut mourir, mon frere; mon frere il faut mourir, quand il plaira à Dieu". On the door of another prison were, "Beati qui persecutionem patiuntur propter justitiam, quoniam ipsorum est regnum caelorum". On the same spot were, "Carcer Socratis, templum honoris". This Donjon remained unoccupied until 1791. At this period, the prisons of the capital being filled with criminals, Government ordered it to be prepared for the reception of that class of prisoners; but on the massacres that followed, the mob either murdered or released them all, after a bloody contest, and it remained again without prisoners until the Imperial Government under Buonaparte. It was then garrisoned by a detachment of the Imperial Guard, and multitudes of victims were transferred there whose fate remains, and probably ever will remain, unknown. It was to this place that the Duke D'Enghien, who was arrested the 15th March, 1804, at Ettenheim, in the Electorate of Baden, was conducted the 20th of the same month, at five in the evening, and condemned to death the night following, by a military commission, at which Murat presided. He was accordingly shot on the 21st, at half past four in the evening, in the ditch of the castle which looks towards the forest, on the north side, and his body thrown into a grave, ready dug to receive it, where he fell. The details of this cruel and wanton act of barbarity are too well known to need any repetition here. This spot is now marked by a wooden cross, enclosed by an iron railing. The remains of the Prince were dug out on the 20th March, 1816, by order of Louis XVIII. and deposited with solemn funeral ceremony in a coffin which is placed in the same apartment where the council of war condemned him to suffer! since transformed info a chapel. Under a cenotaph, covered with a cloth of gold, is placed the coffin, with a prodigious large stone lying on it, the same that was found lying on his head, and which from its weight had crushed his skull! The apartment is hung with black cloth, and remains continually lighted, with a guard placed over it. Mass is daily performed for the repose of his soul, agreeable to the Catholic religion. On the lid of the coffin is the following inscription: Ici est Le Corps De Très-Haut, Très-Puissant Prince Louis-Antoine-Henri De Bourbon Duc D'Enghien, Prince du Sang Pair de France Mort A Vincennes, Le 21 Mars 1804 A L'age de XXXI Ans VII mois XVIII Jours. A marble bust of the Prince, by Bosio, is placed at the entrance. During the periods of 1814 and 1815, when Paris was in possession of the Allies, Vincennes continued under the command of General Daumesnil, who declared that he held it for his country until the Government was settled, and would not open its gates to a foreign army. It was not attacked either of the times. It is approached by two gates, with drawbridges, and defended by cannon on all sides. The fossé is of great depth, and dry, extending, I should suppose, nearly a quarter of a mile. It has nine towers, of prodigious height and solidity: the largest, at the south western angle, called the Donjon, is considerably more elevated than the others. The principal entrance is fronting the forest, on the north side, in the form of a triumphal arch, with six pillars, ornamented in bas-reliefs, and was decorated with marble statues, which were destroyed when it was seized by the mob. The Donjon is surrounded by a separate ditch, within the other, of forty feet depth, and is approached by two draw-bridges; one for carriages, the other for foot passengers; and the main tower is flanked by four other angular ones, each having a high turret. The windows are treble barred within and without, so as to admit but a faint glimmering light! Three gates of great solidity are to be passed at the entrance; that which communicates with the draw-bridge of the castle is secured both within and without. After passing the three gates, there is a court, in the middle of which stands the Donjon. Three other immense gates guard its entrance! The form of the Donjon is a square. The towers at the four angles are divided into five floors, each having a separate stair-case, and each floor is vaulted, with an apartment in the centre, sustained by pillars, which are chimneys. At each of the four corners of the apartment in the centre is a cell thirteen feet square. The towers are encompassed on the third story by a large gallery on the outside, and on the top of each there is a small circular terrace. Such is the strength and prodigious solidity of this building, that it is said to be capable of resisting the heaviest cannon, and is bomb proof. The hand of time appears not to have made any impression on its outward surface. The first hall is called "La chambre de la question:" its name indicates sufficiently the horrid purposes to which it was appropriated! So late as the year 1790 were to be seen chairs formed of stone, where the unhappy victims were seated, with iron collars fixed to the wall by heavy chains, that confined them to the spot while undergoing the torture! In these prisons, deprived of air and light, were beds of timber, on which they were allowed to repose during the interval of their sufferings. The upper floor, named "La salle du conseil," from the Kings holding their council there, while it was a royal residence, is secured by a door of great solidity, and each prison at the angles had three doors covered with iron plates, with double locks and treble bolts. The doors were so contrived as to open crossways, each serving as a security to the other. The first acted as a bar to the second, and this to the third, so that it was necessary to close one before the other could be opened.--Such was the mode of confinement in this prison, the walls of which are sixteen feet thick, and the arches thirty feet high. The other eight towers were also prisons. The one called "La tour de la surintendance" contains cells six feet square; the bed places are of stone. There is a square hole to descend into the vaults beneath, where, like a tomb, the miserable prisoner was immured for ever!!! Often, alas! for imaginary crimes, or for causes which make us shudder at their wantonness and barbarity, an unfortunate victim has been torn from the bosom of his family, to perish unheard of and unknown! The French Government have, I understand, issued an order to prevent any one from entering this place from motives of curiosity; and let us hope that the humane and enlightened policy of the restored Monarch will close its cells for ever! The following beautiful lines, with which I close an account of the most horribly interesting spot I ever visited, are from the pen of Delille: ".......................... Voyez gémir en proie à sa longue torture, Ce mortel confiné dans sa noire clôture. Pour unique plaisir et pour seul passe-temps, De sa lente journée il compte les instans, Ou de son noir cachot mesure l'étendue, Ou médite en secret sa fuite inattendue; Ou, de ceux qu'avant lui renferma la prison, Lit, sur ces tristes murs, la complainte et le nom: Et lui-même y traçant sa douloureuse histoire, A ceux qui le suivront en transmet la mémoire. C'est peu d'être enchaîné dans ces tristes tombeaux, Combien de souvenirs viennent aigrir ses maux! Hélas! tandis qu'auprès de leurs jeunes compagnes; Dans les riches cités, dans les vastes campagnes; Ses amis d'autrefois errent en liberté, Lorsque l'heure propice à la société, Reconduit chaque soir la jeunesse folâtre Aux entretiens joyeux, à la danse, au théâtre, Ou, d'un plaisir plus doux annonçant le retour, Du moment fortuné vient avertir l'amour, Il est seul; ... en un long et lugubre silence, Pour lui le jour s'achêve, et le jour recommence; Il n'entend point l'accent de la tendre amitié, Il ne voit point les pleurs de la douce pitié: N'ayant de mouvement que pour traîner des chânes, Un coeur que pour l'ennui, des sens que pour les peines, Pour lui, plus de beaux jours, de ruisseau, de gazon; Cette vôute est son ciel, ces murs son horizon, Son regard, élevé vers les flambeaux célestes, Vient mourir dans la nuit de ses cachots funestes; Rien n'égaie à ses yeux leur morne obscurité; Ou si, par des barreaux avares de clarté, Un faible jour se glisse en ces antres funêbres, Il redouble pour lui les horreurs des ténêbres, Et, le coeur consumé d'un regret sans espoir, Il cherche la lumière et gémit de la voir." DELILLE. CHATEAU DE SAINT GERMAIN. This ancient pile of building is now a barrack for the King's Gardes du Corps, containing two troops, one of Luxembourg, and the other of Grammont, which are relieved every three months. It is supposed to have been built in the reign of Robert, but there appears to be no certainty as to the exact period. It is interesting to the English traveller, from having been the last refuge of James the Second of England, and the residence, at various times, of very celebrated and distinguished characters. It was taken, and pillaged, and partly burnt, during the reign of Philip VI, in 1346, by Edward the Third, and again by the English in 1419, and rebuilt by Francis the First. During the war of the League in 1574, Catherine de Medicis retired to this Castle, but from the predictions of an astrologer, that she would die there, quitted it shortly after, and returned to the Tuilleries, which Palace she had founded.[14] Henry the Fourth often frequented Saint Germain. The Château Neuf, and one of the towers, called Le Pavilion de Gabrielle, which is still in good preservation, were erected by him, close to the Castle, for the residence of his favourite, La belle Gabrielle:[15] and the superb terrace was begun in his reign. From this spot the view is very interesting and extensive: nothing can surpass the admirable assemblage of hills, meadows, gardens, and vineyards, which charm the eye, and which as they are viewed from its different points on a clear summer's evening, appear at every turn, in new beauty, and endless variety. [Footnote 14: According to Mezeray, this palace had its name from the spot whereon it is situated, which was called Les Tuilleries, because tiles (des tuiles) were made here. Catherine de Medicis built it 1564. It consisted of nothing but the large square pavilion in the middle, the two wings, and the two pavilions which terminate the wings. Henry IV. Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. afterwards extended, elevated, and embellished it. It is said to be neither so well proportioned, so beautiful, or so regular, as it was at first. The Tuilleries is, nevertheless, a very splendid palace. An astrologer having predicted to Catherine de Medicis, that she would die near St. Germain, she immediately flew, in a most superstitious manner, from all places and churches that bore this name; she no more resorted to St. Germain-en-Laye, and because her palace of the Tuilleries was situated in the parish of Saint Germain l'Auxerrois, she was at the expense of building another, which was the Hotel de Soissons, near the church of St. Eustache. When it was known to be Laurence de Saint Germain, Bishop of Nazareth, who had attended her upon her death-bed, people infatuated with astrology averred that the prediction had been accomplished.] [Footnote 15: Henri IV se plaisait beaucoup à Saint-Germain, et y vint souvent, quand son coeur fut épris des charmes de la belle Gabrielle. Ce prince galant et libéral, qui déjà lui avait prouvé son amour par le don d'une infinité de maisons de campagne, aux environs de Paris, voulut encore lui donner une preuve de sa tendresse, en bâtissant pour elle, à deux cents toises de l'ancien château, une nouvelle et belle habitation, qu'on appela le Château Neuf. Elevé sur les dessins de l'architecte Marchand, il était surtout remarquable par son architecture simple, ses nombreuses devises, les chiffres amoureux et les emblèmes allégoriques qui le décoroient, et qui faisoient une ingénieuse allusion à la passion du monarque pour sa mâitresse. L'une des ailes de ce château s'appelait même le Pavillon de Gabrielle.--_Hist. Topo. des Environs de Paris_.] The City of Paris is seen in the distance. The fine aqueduct of Marly, the mountain de Coeur volant, Mount Calvary,[16] and Malmaison to the right; in front the forest of Vésinet, and beyond it the vale of Saint Denis; on the left the hills which encompass the beautiful vale of Montmorency; the Seine winding at the foot, and extending its course until it loses itself in the distance--all within one sweep of the eye!--Such is the enchanting prospect which presents itself. It was at different times the residence of Louis XIII.[17] of Anne of Austria, Christiana of Sweden, and of Madame La Valière, when Madame de Montespan rivalled her in the affections of Louis XIV. After the former had retired to the Convent of the Carmelites at Paris, it was assigned in 1689 to the unfortunate James the Second, whose bigotry had driven him from the throne of England. Here, together with his Queen, and those of his court who fled with him to seek an asylum in France, and surrounded by those priests and monks, whose pernicious councils had led to his fall, the unhappy James remained until his death, the 16th Sept. 1701. The apartment in which he breathed his last is still preserved; but the whole of the interior has been very much neglected. It served as a quarter for a body of Prussians in 1815, and the following year was a barrack for the English troops quartered at St. Germain. A French poet of his time wrote these lines descriptive of the life he led in his retirement. "C'est ici que Jacques second, Sans Ministres et sans maîtresse, Le matin allait à la Messe, Et le soir allait au sermon". [Footnote 16: On the top of this height is the Pavilion de Lucienne, built by Madame Dubarry, Mistress to Louis XV. afterwards the property of Madame La Princesse de Conti, now the residence of M. de Puy: at the foot is the village of Lucienne, surrounded by numerous villas: among the most remarkable is the residence of General Comte Campon.] [Footnote 17: Lewis XIV. would not reside here, because the steeples of the Abbey of St. Denis, where he was to be interred, could be seen from the Château. The amount of the immense treasure which the consequent erection of the Palace of Versailles cost was never known, the King Mary Stewart, daughter of James, died here in April 1712, and his Queen, in May 1718. These were the last persons of any consequence who inhabited this palace, which in its exterior still preserves all its ancient appearance of grandeur. It is built of stone, with a facing of red brick, the windows are of great height, and the whole is surrounded by a deep ditch, forming a very striking contrast to the buildings of the present age, having destroyed the bills with his own hand. In the neighbourhood of Versailles stands the celebrated Military School of St. Cyr, which was originally an establishment for the gratuitous admission of two hundred and fifty young ladies of rank, who were to receive an education correspondent to their situation in life. Madame de Maintenon is buried in the Chapel of the Convent.] FOREST OF SAINT GERMAIN. This forest is enclosed by a wall of thirty miles in circumference, according to M. Prudhomme. It is now preserved exclusively for the Duc de Berri, who is the Ranger. Of all the ancient forests with which Paris is surrounded, this is the most extensive. It is stocked with prodigious quantities of game, with deer, and wild boar. The pheasants and partridges are reared in an extensive _faisanderie_, in the centre of the forest, enclosed by a high wall, and such vigilance is exercised by the keepers, that no person can possibly destroy the game. It is guarded by a captain and two lieutenants, who have under them a corps of gardes de chasse. The royal chace is, at the commencement of the season, quite a state ceremony, at which all the royal family and the court assemble to be spectators. The dress of the hunt is green and gold, with gold laced cocked hats and swords. The Duke invites his party, and gives them permission to wear the uniform, which is considered a high honour. Nothing can be more delightful than the walks and rides through this forest; the roads are kept in the best possible state. At intervals are large open spaces called Etoiles, from whence branch off sometimes ten and twelve roads with direction posts, each bearing a separate name, either from some memorable event, or remarkable person; as the croix de Poissy, croix de la Pucelle, croix de Montchevreuil, croix de Berri, and croix de Noailles, &c. &c. A story is related of a lamentable occurrence which took place the 7th June 1812, at the Etoile des Marres, and a similar one happened in August this year, near the same spot. The first of these events was occasioned by the parents of a young lady having refused their consent to her being married to her lover, whose want of fortune was the chief obstacle. The lovers, in despair, came to the fatal resolution of putting a period to their lives, and this forest was fixed upon as the spot for the dreadful deed! Having partaken of a repast which they had brought with them, and sworn to love each other (if it were permitted them) after death, they discharged, at the same moment, their pistols at themselves. The unhappy girl fell dead, but the hand of her lover having missed its aim, he was only wounded. Having no other means left of accomplishing his dreadful purpose, he took the handkerchief from her bosom and suspended himself by it to a tree. In this state they were discovered, and their bodies deposited in the same grave! The other circumstance was of the same romantic and melancholy nature.[18] This forest supplies Paris with great quantities of wood. In 1814, and in 1815, the palisades that were made to surround Paris for its defence against the Allied armies, were cut in this wood, and the large timber has consequently been greatly thinned. [Footnote 18: There never was known in this country so many fatal instances of suicide as at the present period; few days pass over without some persons throwing themselves out of their windows, or into the river Seine; and among the disappointed partizans of the late ruler, it has been usual to hurl themselves from the top of the column in the Place Vendôme, which has been shut up in consequence by an order from Government. Among the instances of deliberate self-destruction, the following is a remarkable fact, inasmuch as it serves to prove the pernicious effects of the writings of Voltaire and Rousseau in the minds of youth, when at an age incapable of discriminating between fanaticism and real piety! The person in question was a youth not turned sixteen, who destroyed himself last summer, while at college, and who left the following paper as his last will. The lady who gave it me copied it from the original. "Testament de Villemain. "Samedi. July 6th, 1816. "Je donne mon corps aux Pédants: je lègue mon âme aux manes de Voltaire et de J.J. Rousseau, qui m'ont appris à mépriser toutes les vaines superstitions de ce monde, et tous les vains préjugés qu'a enfantés la grossièreté des hommes, et surtout les subtiles noirceurs des fourbes de Prêtres. "J'ai toujours reconnu un Etre suprême, et ma religion a toujours été la religion naturelle. "Quant à mes biens terrestres, je donne: (Here he mentions various articles to his favorite school-fellows). "A Mondésir, mon dernier soupir. "J'ai toujours connu, je l'ai dit plus haut, reconnu un Etre suprême, j'ai toujours pensé que la seul religion digne de lui, etait la vertu et la probîté! "J'ose dire que je m'en suis rarement écarté malgré la faiblesse, et la fragilité humaine. "Je parois devant l'Etre suprême en disant avec Voltaire: 'Un Bonze, honnête homme, un Dervis, charitable, trouveront plutôt grâce à ses yeux, qu'un Pontife ambitieux.'" Then follows a Latin quotation, "All things are due to death, and without delay, sooner or later, hasten to the same goal: Hither we all tend: This is our last asylum". "De tout les Pédants qui m'ont le plus tourmenté je compte surtout Poir, son Jeannes et Veissier, qui sont la cause du vol que je fais à la nature en tranchant moi même le fil de mes jours; je leur pardonne, l'équité le fait aussi: Je n'ai cessé de répéter avec Rousseau avant de mourir. 'Tu veux cesser de vivre, sais-tu si tu as commencé.' "Adieu!!! Mortels et foiblesses! VILLEMAIN".] Here conclude my notes, and if my reader has condescended to accompany me through my little Tour without feeling fatigue or displeasure at his "Compagnon de Voyage," my aim and ambition as an author are satisfied--so wishing that all the journeys he may ever take, may prove as delightful to him as this has been to me, I sincerely thank him for his attention, and kindly bid him Farewell! FINIS. 
11898	----	Team Note: This is Volume 4 of a 10-volume series, the contents of which are as follows: Volume 1: Great Britain and Ireland, Part 1 Volume 2: Great Britain and Ireland, Part 2 Volume 3: France and the Netherlands, Part 1 Volume 4: France and the Netherlands, Part 2 Volume 5: Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, Part 1 Volume 6: Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, Part 2 Volume 7: Italy and Greece, Part 1 Volume 8: Italy and Greece, Part 2 Volume 9: Spain and Portugal Volume 10: Russia, Scandanavia and the Southeast SEEING EUROPE WITH FAMOUS AUTHORS IN TEN VOLUMES VOL IV: FRANCE AND THE NETHERLANDS, PART TWO SELECTED AND EDITED WITH INTRODUCTIONS ETC BY FRANCIS W. HALSEY Editor of Great Epochs in American History Associate Editor of "The Worlds Famous Orations" and of "The Best of the World's Classics" etc ILLUSTRATED 1914 CONTENTS OF VOLUME IV France and the Netherlands--Part Two IV--CATHEDRALS AND CHATEAUX--(_Continued_) BAYEUX AND THE FAMOUS TAPESTRY--By Thomas Frognall Dibdin THE CHATEAU OF HENRY IV. AT PAU--By H.A. Taine CHATEAUX IN THE VALLEY OF THE LOIRE--By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow AMBOISE--By Theodore Andrea Cook BLOIS--By Francis Miltoun CHAMBORD--By Theodore Andrea Cook CHENONCEAUX--By Francis Miltoun FOIX--By Francis Miltoun * * * * * V--VARIOUS FRENCH SCENES MONT ST. MICHEL--By Anna Bowman Dodd CAEN--By Thomas Frognall Dibdin DOWN THE RIVER TO BORDEAUX--By H.A. Taine THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE--By Thomas Gray CARCASSONNE--By Henry James BIARRITZ--By Francis Miltoun DOWN THE SAÔNE TO LYONS--By Nathaniel Parker Willis LYONS--By Thomas Gray MARSEILLES--By Charles Dickens THE LITTLE REPUBLIC OF ANDORRA--By Francis Miltoun GAVARNIE--By H.A. Taine * * * * * VI--BELGIUM BRUGES--By Grant Allen A PEN PICTURE OF BRUGES--By William Makepeace Thackeray GHENT--By Grant Allen BRUSSELS--By Clive Holland WATERLOO--By Victor Hugo WATERLOO: A VISIT TO THE FIELD--By the Editor ANTWERP--By T. Francis Bumpus * * * * * VII--HOLLAND HOW THE DUTCH OBTAINED THEIR LAND--By Edmondo de Amicis ROTTERDAM AND THE HAGUE--By Edmondo de Amicis HAARLEM--By Augustus J.C. Hare SCHEVENINGEN--By George Wharton Edwards DELFT--By Augustus J.C. Hare LEYDEN--By Edmondo de Amicis DORTRECHT--By Augustus J.C. Hare THE ZUYDER ZEE--By Edmondo de Amicis THE ART OF HOLLAND--By Edmondo de Amicis THE TULIPS OF HOLLAND--By Edmondo de Amicis LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS VOLUME IV THE PEACE PALACE AT THE HAGUE THE OLD PAPAL PALACE AT AVIGNON THE WALLS OF AVIGNON, BUILT BY THE POPES VAUCLUSE: THE "FOUNTAIN," OR THE SOURCE OF THE RIVER SORGUE THE PONT DU GARD, NEAR AVIGNON RHEIMS AMIENS THE FAÇADE OF RHEIMS CATHEDRAL THE BAYEUX CATHEDRAL ROUEN THE ROUEN CATHEDRAL THE CATHEDRAL OF CHARTRES ORLEANS THE CHATEAU OF BLOIS THE CHATEAU OF AMBOISE THE CHATEAU OF LOCHES MOUNT ST. MICHAEL IN CORNWALL, ENGLAND MONT ST. MICHEL IN NORMANDY, FRANCE CARCASSONNE THE LION'S MOUND AND OTHER MONUMENTS, WATERLOO RUINS OF THE CHATEAU HUGOMONT, WATERLOO THE HARBOR OF ROTTERDAM THE MONTALBAANS TOWER, AMSTERDAM CANAL AND HOUSES IN AMSTERDAM SCHEVENINGEN, HOLLAND ON THE PIER AT OSTEND UTRECHT THE EAST GATE OF DELFT LAKE AT THE HAGUE CANAL AT DORTRECHT IV CATHEDRALS AND CHATEAUX (_Continued_) BAYEUX AND ITS FAMOUS TAPESTRIES[A] [Footnote A: From "A Bibliographical Tour in France and Germany."] BY THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN The diligence brought me here from Caen in about two hours and a half. The country, during the whole route, is open, well cultivated, occasionally gently undulating, but generally denuded of trees. Many pretty little churches, with delicate spires, peeped out to the right and left during the journey; but the first view of the cathedral of Bayeux put all the others out of my recollection. There is, in fact, no proper approach to this interesting edifice. The western end is suffocated with houses. Here stands the post-office; and with the most unsuspecting frankness, on the part of the owner, I had permission to examine, with my own hands, within doors, every letter--under the expectation that there were some for myself. Nor was I disappointed. But you must come with me to the cathedral, and of course we must enter together at the western front. There are five porticoes; the central one being rather large, and the two, on either side, comparatively small. Formerly, these were covered with sculptured figures and ornaments, but the Calvinists in the sixteenth, and the Revolutionists in the eighteenth century, have contrived to render their present aspect mutilated and repulsive in the extreme. On entering, I was struck with the two large transverse Norman arches which bestride the area, or square, for the bases of the two towers. It is the boldest and finest piece of masonry in the whole building. The interior disappointed me. It is plain, solid, and divested of ornament. Hard by the cathedral stood formerly a magnificent episcopal palace. Upon this palace the old writers dearly loved to expatiate. There is now, however, nothing but a good large comfortable family mansion; sufficient for the purposes of such hospitality and entertainment as the episcopal revenues will afford. It is high time that you should be introduced in proper form to the famous Bayeux tapestry. Know then, in as few words as possible, that this celebrated piece of tapestry represents chiefly the Invasion of England by William the Conqueror, and the subsequent death of Harold at the battle of Hastings. It measures about 214 English feet in length, by about nineteen inches in width; and is supposed to have been worked under the particular superintendence and direction of Matilda, the wife of the Conqueror. It was formerly exclusively kept and exhibited in the cathedral; but it is now justly retained in the Town Hall, and treasured as the most precious relic among the archives of the city. There is indeed every reason to consider it as one of the most valuable historical monuments which France possesses. It has also given rise to a great deal of archeological discussion. Montfauçon, Ducarel, and De La Rue, have come forward successively--but more especially the first and last; and Montfauçon in particular has favored the world with copper-plate representations of the whole. Montfauçon's plates are generally much too small; and the more enlarged ones are too ornamental. It is right, first of all, that you should have an idea how this piece of tapestry is preserved, or rolled up. You see it here, therefore, precisely as it appears after the person who shows it, takes off the cloth with which it is usually covered. The first portion of the needle-work, representing the embassy of Harold from Edward the Confessor to William Duke of Normandy, is comparatively much defaced--that is to say, the stitches are worn away, and little more than the ground, or fine close linen cloth remains. It is not far from the beginning--and where the color is fresh, and the stitches are, comparatively, preserved--that you observe the portrait of Harold. You are to understand that the stitches, if they may be so called, are threads laid side by side--and bound down at intervals by cross stitches, or fastenings--upon rather a fine linen cloth; and that the parts intended to represent flesh are left untouched by the needle. I obtained a few straggling shreds of the worsted with which it is worked. The colors are generally a faded or bluish green, crimson, and pink. About the last five feet of this extraordinary roll are in a yet more decayed and imperfect state than the first portion. But the designer of the subject, whoever he was, had an eye throughout to Roman art--as it appeared in its later stages. The folds of the draperies, and the proportions of the figures, are executed with this feeling. I must observe that, both at top and at bottom of the principal subject, there is a running allegorical ornament, of which I will not incur the presumption to suppose myself a successful interpreter. The constellations, and the symbols of agriculture and of a rural occupation form the chief subjects of this running ornament. All the inscriptions are executed in capital letters of about an inch in length; and upon the whole, whether this extraordinary and invaluable relic be of the latter end of the eleventh, or the beginning or middle of the twelfth century seems to me a matter of rather a secondary consideration. That it is at once unique and important, must be considered as a position to be neither doubted nor denied. I have learned even here, of what importance this tapestry roll was considered in the time of Bonaparte's threatened invasion of our country: and that, after displaying it at Paris for two or three months, to awaken the curiosity and excite the love of conquest among the citizens, it was conveyed to one or two sea-port towns, and exhibited upon the stage as a most important material in dramatic effect. THE CHATEAU OF HENRI IV. AT PAU[A] [Footnote A: From "A Tour Through the Pyrenees." By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, Henry Holt & Co. Copyright, 1873.] BY HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE Pau is a pretty city, neat, of gay appearance; but the highway is paved with little round stones, the side-walks with small sharp pebbles: so the horses walk on the heads of nails and foot-passengers on the points of them. From Bordeaux to Toulouse such is the usage, such the pavement. At the end of five minutes, your feet tell you in the most intelligible manner that you are two hundred leagues away from Paris.... Here are the true countrymen of Henry IV. As to the pretty ladies in gauzy hats, whose swelling and rustling robes graze the horns of the motionless oxen as they pass, you must not look at them; they would carry your imagination back to the Boulevard de Gand, and you would have gone two hundred leagues only to remain in the same place. I am here on purpose to visit the sixteenth century; one makes a journey for the sake of changing, not place, but ideas.... It was eight o'clock in the morning; not a visitor at the castle, no one in the courts nor on the terrace; I should not have been too much astonished at meeting the Béarnais, "that lusty gallant, that very devil," who was sharp enough to get for himself the name of "the good king." His château is very irregular; it is only when seen from the valley that any graces and harmony can be found in it. Above two rows of pointed roofs and old houses, it stands out alone against the sky and gazes upon the valley in the distance; two bell-turrets project from the front toward the west; the oblong body follows, and two massive brick towers close the line with their esplanades and battlements. It is connected with the city by a narrow old bridge, by a broad modern one with the park, and the foot of its terrace is bathed by a dark but lovely stream. Near at hand, this arrangement disappears; a fifth tower upon the north side deranges the symmetry. The great egg-shaped court is a mosaic of incongruous masonry; above the porch, a wall of pebbles from the Gave, and of red bricks crossed like a tapestry design; opposite, fixt to the wall, a row of medallions in stone; upon the sides, doors of every form and age; dormer windows, windows square, pointed, embattled, with stone mullions garlanded with elaborate reliefs. This masquerade of styles troubles the mind, yet not unpleasantly; it is unpretending and artless; each century has built according to its own fancy, without concerning itself about its neighbor. On the first floor is shown a great tortoise-shell, which was the cradle of Henry IV. Carved chests, dressing-tables, tapestries, clocks of that day, the bed and arm-chair of Jeanne d'Albret, a complete set of furniture in the taste of the Renaissance, striking and somber, painfully labored yet magnificent in style, carrying the mind at once back toward that age of force and effort, of boldness in invention, of unbridled pleasures and terrible toil, of sensuality and of heroism. Jeanne d'Albret, mother of Henry IV., crossed France in order that she might, according to her promise, be confined in this castle. "A princess," says D'Aubigné, "having nothing of the woman about her but the sex, a soul entirely given to manly things, a mind mighty in great affairs, a heart unconquerable by adversity." She sang an old Bearnaise song when she brought him into the world. They say that the aged grandfather rubbed the lips of the new-born child with a clove of garlic, poured into his mouth a few drops of Jurançon wine, and carried him away in his dressing-gown. The child was born in the chamber which opens into the lower tower of Mazères, on the southwest corner. His mother, a warm and severe Calvinist, when he was fifteen years old, led him through the Catholic army to La Rochelle, and gave him to her followers as their general. At sixteen years old, at the combat of Arnay-le-Duc, he led the first charge of cavalry. What an education and what men! Their descendants were just now passing in the streets, going to school to compose Latin verses and recite the pastorals of Massillon. Those old wars are the most poetic in French history; they were made for pleasure rather than interest. It was a chase in which adventures, dangers, emotions were found, in which men lived in the sunlight, on horseback, amidst flashes of fire, and where the body, as well as the soul, had its enjoyment and its exercise. Henry carries it on as briskly as a dance, with a Gascon's fire and a soldier's ardor, with abrupt sallies, and pursuing his point against the enemy as with the ladies. This is no spectacle of great masses of well-disciplined men, coming heavily into collision and falling by thousands on the field, according to the rules of good tactics. The king leaves Pau or Nérac with a little troop, picks up the neighboring garrisons on his way, scales a fortress, intercepts a body of arquebusiers as they pass, extricates himself pistol in hand from the midst of a hostile troop, and returns to the feet of Mlle. de Tignonville. They arrange their plan from day to day; nothing is done unless unexpectedly and by chance. Enterprises are strokes of fortune.... The park is a great wood on a hill, embedded among meadows and harvests. You walk in long solitary alleys, under colonnades of superb oaks, while to the left the lofty stems of the copses mount in close ranks upon the back of the hill. The fog was not yet lifted; there was no motion in the air; not a corner of the blue sky, not a sound in all the country. The song of a bird came for an instant from the midst of the ash-trees, then sadly ceased. Is that then the sky of the south, and was it necessary to come to the happy country of the Béarnais to find such melancholy impressions? A little by-way brought us to a bank of the Gave: in a long pool of water was growing an army of reeds twice the height of a man; their grayish spikes and their trembling leaves bent and whispered under the wind; a wild flower near by shed a vanilla perfume. We gazed on the broad country, the ranges of rounded hills, the silent plain under the dull dome of the sky. Three hundred paces away the Gave rolls between marshaled banks, which it has covered with sand; in the midst of the waters may be seen the moss-grown piles of a ruined bridge. One is at ease here, and yet at the bottom of the heart a vague unrest is felt; the soul is softened and loses itself in melancholy and tender revery. Suddenly the clock strikes, and one is forced to go and prepare himself to eat his soup between two commercial travelers. To-day the sun shines. On my way to the Place Nationale, I remarked a poor, half-ruined church, which had been turned into a coach-house; they have fastened upon it a carrier's sign. The arcades, in small gray stones, still round themselves with an elegant boldness; beneath are stowed away carts and casks and pieces of wood; here and there workmen were handling wheels. A broad ray of light fell upon a pile of straw, and made the somber corners seem yet darker; the pictures that one meets with outweigh those one has come to seek. From the esplanade which is opposite, the whole valley and the mountains beyond may be seen; this first sight of a southern sun, as it breaks from the rainy mists, is admirable; a sheet of white light stretches from one horizon to another without meeting a single cloud. The heart expands in this immense space; the very air is festal; the dazzled eyes close beneath the brightness which deluges them and which runs over, radiated from the burning dome of heaven. The current of the river sparkles like a girdle of jewels; the chains of hills, yesterday veiled and damp, extend at their own sweet will beneath the warming, penetrating rays, and mount range upon range to spread out their green robe to the sun. In the distance, the blue Pyrenees look like a bank of clouds; the air that bathes them shapes them into aërial forms, vapory phantoms, the farthest of which vanish in the canescent horizon--dim contours, that might be taken for a fugitive sketch from the lightest of pencils. In the midst of the serrate chain the peak Midi d' Ossau lifts its abrupt cone; at this distance, forms are softened, colors are blended, the Pyrenees are only the graceful bordering of a smiling landscape and of the magnificent sky. There is nothing imposing about them nor severe; the beauty here is serene, and the pleasure pure. The statue of Henry IV., with an inscription in Latin and in patois, is on the esplanade; the armor is finished so perfectly that it might make an armorer jealous. But why does the king wear so sad an air? His neck is ill at ease on his shoulders; his features are small and full of care; he has lost his gayety, his spirit, his confidence in his fortune, his proud bearing. His air is neither that of a great nor a good man, nor of a man of intellect; his face is discontented, and one would say that he was bored with Pau. I am not sure that he was wrong: and yet the city passes for agreeable, the climate is very mild, and invalids who fear the cold pass the winter in it. CHATEAUX IN THE VALLEY OF THE LOIRE[A] [Footnote A: From "Outre-Mer." Published by Houghton, Mifflin Co.] BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW In the beautiful month of October I made a foot excursion along the banks of the Loire, from Orléans to Tours. This luxuriant region is justly called the garden of France. From Orléans to Blois, the whole valley of the Loire is one continued vineyard. The bright green foliage of the vine spreads, like the undulations of the sea, over the landscape, with here and there a silver flash of the river, a sequestered hamlet, or the towers of an old chateau, to enliven and variegate the scene. The vintage had already commenced. The peasantry were busy in the fields--the song that cheered their labor was on the breeze, and the heavy wagon tottered by, laden with the clusters of the vine. Everything around me wore that happy look which makes the heart glad. In the morning I arose with the lark; and at night I slept where the sunset overtook me.... My first day's journey brought me at evening to a village, whose name I have forgotten, situated about eight leagues from Orléans. It is a small, obscure hamlet, not mentioned in the guide-book, and stands upon the precipitous banks of a deep ravine, through which a noisy brook leaps to turn the ponderous wheel of a thatch-roofed mill. The village inn stands upon the highway; but the village itself is not visible to the traveler as he passes. It is completely hidden in the lap of a wooded valley, and so embowered in trees that not a roof nor a chimney peeps out to betray its hiding-place. When I awoke in the morning, a brilliant autumnal sun was shining in at my window. The merry song of birds mingled sweetly with the sound of rustling leaves and the gurgle of the brook. The vintagers were going forth to their toil; the wine-press was busy in the shade, and the clatter of the mill kept time to the miller's song. I loitered about the village with a feeling of calm delight. I was unwilling to leave the seclusion of this sequestered hamlet; but at length, with reluctant step, I took the cross-road through the vineyard, and in a moment the little village had sunk again, as if by enchantment, into the bosom of the earth. I breakfasted at the town of Mer; and, leaving the high-road to Blois on the right, passed down to the banks of the Loire, through a long, broad avenue of poplars and sycamores. I crossed the river in a boat, and in the after part of the day I found myself before the high and massive walls of the château of Chambord. This château is one of the finest specimens of the ancient Gothic castle to be found in Europe. The little river Cosson fills its deep and ample moat, and above it the huge towers and heavy battlements rise in stern and solemn grandeur, moss-grown with age, and blackened by the storms of three centuries. Within, all is mournful and deserted. The grass has overgrown the pavement of the courtyard, and the rude sculpture upon the walls is broken and defaced.... My third day's journey brought me to the ancient city of Blois, the chief town of the department of Loire-et-Cher. This city is celebrated for the purity with which even the lower classes of its inhabitants speak their native tongue. It rises precipitously from the northern bank of the Loire; and many of its streets are so steep as to be almost impassable for carriages. On the brow of the hill, overlooking the roofs of the city, and commanding a fine view of the Loire and its noble bridge, and the surrounding country, sprinkled with cottages and châteaux, runs an ample terrace, planted with trees, and laid out as a public walk. The view from this terrace is one of the most beautiful in France. But what most strikes the eye of the traveler at Blois is an old, tho still unfinished, castle. Its huge parapets of hewn stone stand upon either side of the street; but they have walled up the wide gateway, from which the colossal drawbridge was to have sprung high in air, connecting together the main towers of the building, and the two hills upon whose slope its foundations stand. The aspect of this vast pile is gloomy and desolate. It seems as if the strong hand of the builder had been arrested in the midst of his task by the stronger hand of death; and the unfinished fabric stands a lasting monument both of the power and weakness of man--of his vast desires, his sanguine hopes, his ambitious purposes--and of the unlooked-for conclusion, where all these desires, and hopes, and purposes are so often arrested. There is also at Blois another ancient château, to which some historic interest is attached as being the scene of the massacre of the Duke of Guise. On the following day, I left Blois for Amboise; and, after walking several leagues along the dusty highway, crossed the river in a boat to the little village of Moines, which lies amid luxuriant vineyards upon the southern bank of the Loire. From Moines to Amboise the road is truly delightful. The rich lowland scenery, by the margin of the river, is verdant even in October; and occasionally the landscape is diversified with the picturesque cottages of the vintagers, cut in the rock along the road-side, and overhung by the thick foliage of the vines above them. At Amboise I took a cross-road, which led me to the romantic borders of the Cher and the château of Chenonceau. This beautiful château, as well as that of Chambord, was built by the gay and munificent Francis the First. One is a specimen of strong and massive architecture--a dwelling for a warrior; but the other is of a lighter and more graceful construction, and was designed for those soft languishments of passion with which the fascinating Diane de Poitiers had filled the bosom of that voluptuous monarch. The château of Chenonceau is built upon arches across the river Cher, whose waters are made to supply the deep moat at each extremity. There is a spacious courtyard in front, from which a drawbridge conducts to the outer hall of the castle. There the armor of Francis the First still hangs upon the wall--his shield, and helm, and lance--as if the chivalrous but dissolute prince had just exchanged them for the silken robes of the drawing-room.... Doubtless the naked walls and the vast solitary chambers of an old and desolate château inspire a feeling of greater solemnity and awe; but when the antique furniture of the olden time remains--the faded tapestry on the walls, and the arm-chair by the fire-side--the effect upon the mind is more magical and delightful. The old inhabitants of the place, long gathered to their fathers, tho living still in history, seem to have left their halls for the chase or the tournament; and as the heavy door swings upon its reluctant hinge, one almost expects to see the gallant princes and courtly dames enter those halls again, and sweep in stately procession along the silent corridors.... A short time after candle-lighting, I reached the little tavern of the Boule d'Or, a few leagues from Tours, where I passed the night. The following morning was lowering and sad. A veil of mist hung over the landscape, and ever and anon a heavy shower burst from the overburdened clouds, that were driving by before a high and piercing wind. This unpropitious state of the weather detained me until noon, when a cabriolet for Tours drove up, and taking a seat within it, I left the hostess of the Boule d'Or in the middle of a long story about a rich countess, who always alighted there when she passed that way. We drove leisurely along through a beautiful country, till at length we came to the brow of a steep hill, which commands a fine view of the city of Tours and its delightful environs. But the scene was shrouded by the heavy drifting mist, through which I could trace but indistinctly the graceful sweep of the Loire, and the spires and roofs of the city far below me. The city of Tours and the delicious plain in which it lies have been too often described by other travelers to render a new description, from so listless a pen as mine, either necessary or desirable. After a sojourn of two cloudy and melancholy days, I set out on my return to Paris, by the way of Vendôme and Chartres. I stopt a few hours at the former place, to examine the ruins of a château built by Jeanne d'Albret, mother of Henry the Fourth. It stands upon the summit of a high and precipitous hill, and almost overhangs the town beneath. The French Revolution has completed the ruin that time had already begun; and nothing now remains, but a broken and crumbling bastion, and here and there a solitary tower dropping slowly to decay. In one of these is the grave of Jeanne d'Albret. A marble entablature in the wall above contains the inscription, which is nearly effaced, tho enough still remains to tell the curious traveler that there lies buried the mother of the "Bon Henri." To this is added a prayer that the repose of the dead may be respected. Here ended my foot excursion. The object of my journey was accomplished; and, delighted with this short ramble through the valley of the Loire, I took my seat in the diligence for Paris, and on the following day was again swallowed up in the crowds of the metropolis, like a drop in the bosom of the sea. AMBOISE[A] [Footnote A: From "Old Touraine." Published by James Pott & Co.] BY THEODORE ANDREA COOK The Castle of Amboise stands high above the town, like another Acropolis above a smaller Athens; it rises upon the only height visible for some distance, and is in a commanding position for holding the level fields of Touraine around it, and securing the passage of the Loire between Tours and Chaumont, which is the next link in the chain that ends at Blois. The river at this point is divided in two by an island, as is so often the case where the first bridge-builders sought to join the wide banks of the Loire, and on this little spot between the waters Clovis is said to have met Alaric before he overthrew the power of the Visigoths in Aquitaine. Amboise gains even more from the river than the other châteaux of the Loire. The magnificent round tower that springs from the end of Charles VIII.'s façade completely commands the approaches of the bridge, and the extraordinary effect of lofty masonry, produced by building on the summit of an elevation and carrying the stone courses upward from the lower ground, is here seen at its best.... But Amboise has a history before the days of Charles VIII. There was without doubt a Roman camp here, but the traditions of the ubiquitous Caesar must be received with caution. The so-called "Greniers de Caesar," strange, unexplained constructions caverned in the soft rock, are proved to be the work of a later age by that same indefatigable Abbé Chevalier to whom we have been already indebted for so much archeological research. A possible explanation of them is contained in an old Latin history of the castle, which goes down to the death of Stephen of England. According to this, the Romans had held Amboise from the days of Caesar till the reign of Diocletian; the Baugaredi or Bagaudee then put them to flight, but let the rest of the inhabitants remain who, "being afraid to live above ground, tunnelled beneath it, and made a great colony of subterranean dwellings in the holes they had dug out," a custom apparently common in Touraine from the earliest times. The Romans at any rate left unmistakable traces of their presence; many of their architectural remains still exist, and their fort is spoken of by Sulpicius Severus; but they can have built no bridge of alone, for in St. Gregory's time there were only boats available for crossing the river. Not till the fifteenth century did the castle become royal property, when it was confiscated by Charles VII. as a punishment for treacherous dealings with the invading English very similar to the treason discovered at Chenonceaux just before. But beyond strengthening the fortification of the place this king did little for his new possession. In a few years the castle is overshadowed by the cruel specter of Louis XI., whose memory has already spoiled several charming views for us. It was to Amboise that the father of this unfilial prince was carried from Chinon on his way north, when wearied out by the annoyance caused by the Dauphin's plots. The castle had become a royal residence, and soon after the whole town turns out to meet the new king with a "morality-play made by Master Étienne for the joyous occasion of his arrival," for Amboise was already famous for those dramatic performances always so dear to the French, and particularly to these citizens, in the old days at any rate. There is no trace of such frivolities now in the sleepy little town.... The two great towers of Amboise with the inclined planes of brickwork, which wind upward in the midst instead of staircases, were the result of the work which Charles set on foot as a distraction of his grief. These strange ascents had been partially restored by the Comte de Paris, the present owner of Amboise, before his exile stopt the work of repairing the chateau, and it is still possible to imagine the "charrettes, mullets, et litières," of which Du Bellay speaks, mounting from the low ground to the chambers above, or the Emperor Charles V., in later years, riding up with his royal host Francis I., always fond of display, amid such a blaze of flambeaux "that a man might see as clearly as at mid-day." These great towers and the exquisite little chapel were the work of the "excellent sculptors and artists from Naples" who, as Commines tells us, were brought back with the spoils of the Italian wars; for the young king "never thought of death" but only of collecting round him "all the beautiful things which he had seen and which had given him pleasure, from France or Italy or Flanders;" but death came upon him suddenly. At the end of a garden walk, fringed with a mossy grove of limes that rises from the river bank, is the little doorway through which Charles VIII. was passing when he hit his head, never a very strong one, against the low stone arch, and died a few hours afterward. The castle had been fortified before his time; he left it beautiful as well, and the traces of his work are those which are most striking at the present day.... Within the shadow of the lime trees on the terraced garden of Amboise is a small bust of Leonardo da Vinci, for it was near here he died. His remains are laid in the beautiful chapel at the corner of the castle court, and the romantic story of his last moments at Fontainebleau becomes the sad reality of a tombstone covering ashes mostly unknown and certainly indistinguishable; "among which" as the epitaph painfully records, "are supposed to be the remains of Leonardo da Vinci." He had been brought to Paris a weak old man, by Francis, in pursuance of a certain fixt artistic policy, to which it may be noticed this forgotten and uncertain grave does but little credit. To Francis I., rightly or wrongly, is given the glory of having naturalized in France the arts of Italy; to him is due the architecture built for ease and charm which turned the fortress into a beautiful habitation, which changed Chambord from a feudal stronghold to a country seat, and which left its traces at Amboise, as it did at Chaumont and at Blois. He found in France the highest and most beautiful expression of the work of "the great unnamed race of master-masons," he found the traditions of a national school of painting, the work of Fouquet and the Clouets, but for these he cared not; for him the only schools were those of Rome and Florence, and tho by encouraging their imitation he weakened the vital sincerity of French art, yet from his first exercise of royal power the consistency always somewhat lacking in his politics was shown clearly and firmly in his taste for art. BLOIS[A] [Footnote A: From "Castles and Chateaux of Old Touraine." By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, L.C. Page & Co. Copyright, 1908.] BY FRANCIS MILTOUN Blois, among all the other cities of the Loire, is the favorite with the tourist. Here one first meets a great château of state; and certainly the Château de Blois lives in one's memory more than any other château in France. Much has been written of Blois, its counts, its château, and its many and famous hôtels of the nobility, by writers of all opinions and abilities, from those old chroniclers who wrote of the plots and intrigues of other days to those critics of art and architecture who have discovered--or think they have discovered--that Da Vinci designed the famous spiral staircase. From this one may well gather that Blois is the foremost château of all the Loire in popularity and theatrical effect. Truly this is so, but it is by no manner of means the most lovable; indeed, it is the least lovable of all that great galaxy which begins at Blois and ends at Nantes. It is a show-place and not much more, and partakes in every form and feature--as one sees it to-day--of the attributes of a museum, and such it really is. All of its former gorgeousness is still there, and all the banalities of the later period when Gaston of Orleans built his ugly wing, for the "personally conducted" to marvel at, and honeymoon couples to envy. The French are quite fond of visiting this shrine themselves, but usually it is the young people and their mammas, and detached couples of American and English birth that one most sees strolling about the courts and apartments where formerly lords and ladies and cavaliers moved and plotted. The great château of the Counts of Blois is built upon an inclined rock which rises above the roof-tops of the lower town quite in fairy-book fashion. Commonly referred to as the Château de Blois, it is really composed of four separate and distinct foundations; the original château of the counts; the later addition of Louis XII.; the palace of Francis I., and the most unsympathetically and dismally disposed pavilion of Gaston of Orleans. The artistic qualities of the greater part of the distinct edifice which go to make up the château as it stands to-day are superb, with the exception of that great wing of Gaston's, before mentioned, which is as cold and unfeeling as the overrated palace at Versailles. The Comtes de Chatillon built that portion just to the right of the present entrance; Louis XII., the edifice through which one enters the inner court and which extends far to the left, including also the chapel immediately to the rear; while François I., who here as elsewhere let his unbounded Italian proclivities have full sway, built the extended wing to the left of the inner court and fronting on the present Place du Château, formerly the Place Royale.... As an architectural monument the château is a picturesque assemblage of edifices belonging to many different epochs, and, as such, shows, as well as any other document of contemporary times, the varying ambitions and emotions of its builders, from the rude and rough manners of the earliest of feudal times through the highly refined Renaissance details of the imaginative brain of François, down to the base concoction of the elder Mansart, produced at the commands of Gaston of Orleans. In the earliest structure were to be seen all the attributes of a feudal fortress, towers and walls pierced with narrow loopholes, and damp, dark dungeons hidden away in the thick walls. Then came a structure which was less of a fortress and more habitable, but still a stronghold, tho having ample and decorative doorways and windows, with curious sculptures and rich framings. Then the pompous Renaissance with "escaliers" and "balcons á jour," balustrades crowning the walls and elaborate cornices here, there, and everywhere--all bespeaking the gallantry and taste of the knightly king. Finally came the cold, classic features of the period of the brother of Louis XIII. In plan the Château de Bois forms an irregular square situated at the apex of a promontory high above the surface of the Loire, and practically behind the town itself. The building has a most picturesque aspect, and, to those who know, gives practically a history of the château architecture of the time. Abandoned, mutilated and dishonored, from time to time, the structure gradually took on new forms until the thick walls underlying the apartment known to-day as the Salle des États--probably the most ancient portion of all--were overshadowed by the great richness of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. From the platform one sees a magnificent panorama of the city and the far-reaching Loire, which unrolls itself southward and northward for many leagues, its banks covered by rich vineyards and crowned by thick forests. The building of Louis XII. presents its brick-faced exterior in black and red lozenge shapes, with sculptured window-frames, squarely upon the little tree-bordered place of to-day, which in other times formed a part of that magnificent terrace which looked down upon the roof of the Église St. Nicholas, and the Jesuit church of the Immaculate Conception, and the silvery bell of the Loire itself. The murders and other acts of violence and treason which took place here are interesting enough, but one can not but feel, when he views the chimney-piece before which the Due de Guise was standing when called to his death in the royal closet, that the men of whom the bloody tales of Blois are told quite deserved their fates. One comes away with the impression of it all stamped only upon the mind, not graven upon the heart. Political intrigue to-day, if quite as vulgar, is less sordid. Bigotry and ambition in those days allowed few of the finer feelings to come to the surface, except with regard to the luxuriance of surroundings. Of this last there can be no question, and Blois is as characteristically luxurious as any of the magnificient edifices which lodged the royalty and nobility of other days throughout the valley of the Loire. The interior court is partly surrounded by a colonnade, quite cloister-like in effect. At the right center of the François I. wing is that wonderful spiral staircase, concerning the invention of which so much speculation has been launched. The apartments of Catherine de Medici were directly beneath the guard-room where the Balafré was murdered, and that event, taking place at the very moment when the queen-mother was dying, can not be said to have been conducive to a peaceful demise. Here, on the first floor of the François I. wing, the queen-mother, held her court, as did the king his. The great gallery over-looked the town on the side of the present Place du Château. It was, and is, a truly grand apartment, with diamond-paned windows, and rich, dark wall decorations on which Catherine's device, a crowned C and her monogram in gold, frequently appears. There was, moreover, a great oval window, opposite which stood her altar, and a doorway led to her writing-closet, with its secret drawers and wall panels, which well served her purpose of intrigue and deceit. A hidden stair-way led to the floor above, and there was a chambre-à-coucher, with a deep recess for the bed, the same to which she called her son Henri, as she lay dying, admonishing him to give up the thought of murdering Guise. "What," said Henri, on this embarrassing occasion, "spare Guise, when he, triumphant in Paris, dared lay his hand on the hilt of his sword. Spare him who drove me a fugitive from the capital. Spare them who never spared me. No, mother, I will not." As the queen-mother drew near her end, and was lying ill at Blois, great events for France were culminating at the château. Henry III. had become King of France, and the Balafré, supported by Rome and Spain, was in open rebellion against the reigning house, and the word had gone forth that the Duc de Guise must die. The States-General were to be immediately assembled, and De Guise, once the poetic lover of Marguerite, through his emissaries canvassed all France to ensure the triumph of the party of the church against Henri de Navarre and his queen--the Marguerite whom De Guise once profest to love--who soon were to come to the throne of France. The uncomfortable Henri III. had been told that he would never be king in reality until De Guise had been made away with. The final act of the drama between the rival houses of Guise and Valois came when the king and his council came to Blois for the assembly. The sunny city of Blois was indeed to be the scene of a momentous affair, and a truly sumptuous setting it was, the roof-tops of its houses sloping downward gently to the Loire, with its chief accessory, the coiffed and turreted chateau itself, high above all else. Details had been arranged with infinite pains, the guard doubled, and a company of Swiss posted around the courtyard and up and down the gorgeous staircase. Every nook and corner has its history in connection with this greatest event in the history of the château of Blois. As Guise entered the council chamber he was told that the king would see him in his closet, to reach which one had to pass through the guard-room below. The door was barred behind him that he might not return, when the trusty guards of the Forty-fifth, under Dalahaide, already hidden behind the wall-tapestry, sprang upon the Balafré and forced him back upon the closed door through which he had just passed. Guise fell stabbed in the breast by Malines, and "lay long uncovered until an old carpet was found in which to wrap his corpse." Below, in her own apartments, lay the queen-mother, dying, but listening eagerly for the rush of footsteps overhead, hoping and praying that Henri--the hitherto effeminate Henri who played with his sword as he would with a battledore, and who painted himself like a woman, and put rings in his ears--would not prejudice himself at this time in the eyes of Rome by slaying the leader of the church party.... It was under the régime of Gaston d'Orléans that the gardens of the Château de Blois came to their greatest excellence and beauty. In 1653, Abel Brunyer, the first physician of Gaston's suite, published a catalog of the fruit and flowers to be found here in these gardens, of which he was also director. More than five hundred varieties were included, three-quarters of which belonged to the flora of France. Among the delicacies and novelties of the time to be found here was the Prunier de Reine Claude, from which those delicious green plums known to all the world to-day as "Reine Claudes" were propagated, also another variety which came from the Prunier de Monsieur, somewhat similar in taste, but of a deep purple color. The potato was tenderly cared for and grown as a great novelty and delicacy long before its introduction to general cultivation by Parmentier. The tomato was imported from Mexico, and even tobacco was grown.... In 1793 all the symbols and emblems of royalty were removed from the château and destroyed. The celebrated bust of Gaston, the chief artistic attribute of that part of the edifice built by him, was decapitated, and the statue of Louis XII. over the entrance gateway was overturned and broken up. Afterward the château became the property of the "domaine" and was turned into a mere barracks. The pavilion of Queen Anne became a military magazine, the Tour de l'Observatoire, a powder-magazine, and all the indignities imaginable were heaped upon the château. In 1814 Blois became the last capital of Napoleon's empire, and the château walls sheltered the prisoners captured by the imperial army. CHAMBORD[A] [Footnote A: From "Old Touraine." Published by James Pott & Co.] BY THEODORE ANDREA COOK The road that leads from Blois to Chambord crosses the Loire by a fine stone bridge, which the inscription sets forth to be the first public work of Louis Philippe. For some distance the rails of a small tramway followed the road by which our carriage was slowly rolling toward the level plains of the Cologne, but we gradually left such uncompromising signs of activity, and came into a flat country of endless vineyards, with here and there a small plaster tower showing its slated roof above the low green clusters of the vines. We passed through several villages, whose inhabitants that day seemed to have but one care upon their minds, like the famous Scilly Islanders, to gain a precarious livelihood by taking each other's washing. On every bush and briar fluttered the household linen and the family apparel, of various textures and in different states of despair; and with that strict observance of utility which is the chief characteristic of the French peasant, the inevitable blouses, of faded blue were blown into shapeless bundles even along the railings of the churchyard tombs. At last we came to an old moss-grown wall, and through a broken gateway entered what is called the Park of Chambord. There is very little of it to be seen now, the trees have been ruthlessly cut down and mutilated, and of the wild boars, which Francis I. was so fond of hunting there is left only the ghostly quarry that Thibault of Champagne chases through the air, while the sound of his ghostly horn echoes down the autumn night as the fantom pack sweeps by to Montfrault. It is impossible for the uninstructed mind to grasp the plan or method of this mass of architecture; yet it is unsatisfactory to give it up, with Mr. Henry James, "as an irresponsible, insoluble labyrinth." M. Viollet-le-Duc, with a sympathetic denial of any extreme and over-technical admiration, gives just that intelligible account of the château which is a compromise between the unmeaning adulation of its contemporary critics and the ignorance of the casual traveler. "Chambord," says he, "must be taken for what it is; for an attempt in which the architect sought to reconcile the methods of two opposite principles, to unite in one building the fortified castle of the Middle Ages and the pleasure-palace of the sixteenth century." Granted that the attempt was an absurd one, it must be remembered that the Renaissance was but just beginning in France; Gothic art seemed out of date, yet none other had established itself to take its place. In literature, in morals, as in architecture, this particular phase in the civilization of the time has already become evident even in the course of these small wanderings in a single province, and if only this transition period is realized in all its meaning, with all the "monstrous and inform" characteristics that were inevitably a part of it, the mystery of this strange sixteenth century in France is half explained, of this "glorious devil, large in heart and brain, that did love beauty only" and would have it somewhere, somehow, at whatever cost. Francis I. had passed his early years at Cognac, at Amboise, or Romorantin, and when he first saw Chambord it was only the old feudal manor-house built by the Counts of Blois. He transformed it, not by the help of Primaticcio, with whose name it is tempting to associate any building of this king's, for the methods of contemporary Italian architecture were totally different; but, as Mr. de la Saussaye proves, by the skill of that fertile school of art particularly of one Maitre Pierre Trinqueau, or Le Nepveu, whose name is connected with more successful buildings at Amboise and Blois. The plan is that of the true French château; in the center is the habitation of the seigneur and his family, flanked by four angle towers; on three sides is a court closed by buildings, also with towers at each angle, and like most feudal dwellings the central donjon has one of its sides on the exterior of the whole ... It may well be imagined that Chambord is the parody of the old castles, just as the Abbey of Thélème parodies the abbeys of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Both heaped a fatal ridicule upon the bygone age, but what Rabelais could only dream Francis could realize, yet not with the unfettered perfection that was granted to the vision of Gargantua; for surely never was the spirit of the time, seized and smitten into incongruous shapes of stone at so unfortunate a moment, just when the old Renaissance was striving to take upon itself the burden which was too heavy for the failing Gothic spirit, just when success was coming, but had not yet come. It is only from within the court, where the great towers fling their shadows over the space, where pinnacles and gables soar into the air, and strange gargoyles and projectures shoot from the darkness into light, that it is possible to realize the admiration which Chambord roused when it was first created. Brantôme waxes enthusiastic over its wonders, and describes how the king had drawn up plans (mercifully never carried out) to divert the waters of the Loire to his new palace, not content with the slender stream of Cosson, from which the place derived its name. Others compare it to a palace put of the Arabian Nights raised at the Prince's bidding by a Genie, or like Lippomano, the Venetian ambassador, to "the abode of Morgana or Alcinous"; but this topheavy barrack is anything rather than a "fairy monument"; it might with as much humor be called a "souvenir of first loves," as M. de la Saussaye has it. Both descriptions fit Chenonceaux admirably; when used of Chambord they are out of place. CHENONCEAUX[A] [Footnote A: From "Castles and Chateaux of Old Touraine." By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, L.C. Page & Co. Copyright, 1906.] BY FRANCIS MILTOUN Chenonceaux is noted chiefly for its château, but the little village itself is charming. The houses of the village are not very new, nor very old, but the one long street is most attractive throughout its length, and the whole atmosphere of the place, from September to December, is odorous with the perfume of red and purple grapes. The vintage is not equal to that of the Bordeaux region, perhaps, nor of Chinon, nor Saumur, but "vin du pays" of the Cher and the Loire, around Tours, is not to be despised. Most tourists come to Chenonceaux by train from Tours; others drive over from Amboise, and yet others come by bicycle or automobile. They are not as yet so numerous as might be expected, and accordingly here, as elsewhere in Touraine, every facility is given for visiting the château and its park. If you do not hurry off at once to worship at the abode of the fascinating Diane, one of the brightest ornaments of the court of François I. and his son Henri, you will enjoy your dinner at the Hôtel du Bon Laboureur, tho most likely it will be a solitary one, and you will be put to bed in a great chamber over-looking the park, through which peep, in the moonlight, the turrets of the château, and you may hear the purling of the waters of the Cher as it flows below the walls. Jean Jacques Rousseau, like François I., called Chenonceaux a beautiful place, and he was right. It is all of that and more. Here one comes into direct contact with an atmosphere which, if not feudal, or even medieval, is at least that of several hundred years ago. Chenonceaux is moored like a ship in the middle of the rapidly running Cher, a dozen miles or more above where that stream enters the Loire. As a matter of fact, the château practically bridges the river, which flows under its foundations and beneath its drawbridge on either side, besides filling the moat with water. The general effect is as if the building were set in the midst of a stream and formed a sort of island château. Round about is a gentle meadow and a great park, which gives to this turreted, architectural gem of Touraine a setting equalled by no other château. What the château was in former days we can readily imagine, for nothing is changed as to the general disposition. Boats came to the water-gate, as they still might do if such boats still existed, in true, pictorial legendary fashion. To-day the present occupant has placed a curiosity on the ornamental waters in the shape of a gondola. It is out of keeping with the grand fabric of the château, and it is a pity that it does not cast itself adrift some night. What has become of the gondolier, who was imported to keep the craft company, nobody seems to know. He is certainly not in evidence, or, if he is, has transformed himself into a groom or a chauffeur. The château of Chenonceaux is not a very ample structure; not so ample as most photographs would make it appear. It is not tiny, but still it has not the magnificent proportions of Blois, of Chambord, or even of Langeais. It was more a habitation than it was a fortress, a country house, as indeed it virtually became when the Connétable de Montmorency took possession of the structure in the name of the king, when its builder, Thomas Bohier, the none too astute minister of finance in Normandy, came to grief in his affairs. Francis I came frequently here to hunt, and his memory is still kept alive by the Chambre François I. François held possession till his death, when his son made it over to the "admired of two generations," Diane de Poitiers. Diane's memory will never leave Chenonceaux. To-day it is perpetuated in the Chambre de Diane de Poitiers; but the portrait by Leonardo da Vinci, which was supposed to best show her charms, has now disappeared from the Long Gallery at the château. This portrait was painted at the command of François, before Diane transferred her affections to his son. No one knows when or how Diane de Poitiers first came to fascinate François, or how or why her power waned. At any rate at the time François pardoned her father, the witless Comte de St. Vallier, for the treacherous part he played in the Bourbon conspiracy, he really believed her to to be the "brightest ornament of a beauty-loving court." Certainly, Diane was a powerful factor in the politics of her time, tho François himself soon tired of her. Undaunted by this, she forthwith set her cap for his son Henri, the Duc d'Orléans, and won him, too. Of her beauty the present generation is able to judge for itself by reason of the three well-known and excellent portraits of contemporary times. Diane's influence over the young Henri was absolute. At his death her power was, of course, at an end and Chenonceaux, and all else possible, was taken from her by the orders of Catherine, the long-suffering wife, who had been put aside for the fascinations of the charming huntress. It must have been some satisfaction, however, to Diane, to know that, in his fatal joust with Montgomery, Henri really broke his lance and met his death in her honor, for the records tell that he bore her colors on his lance, besides her initials set in gold and gems on his shield. Catherine's eagerness to drive Diane from the court was so great, that no sooner had her spouse fallen--even tho he did not actually die for some days--than she sent word to Diane "who sat weeping alone," to quit the court instantly; to give up the crown jewels--which Henri had somewhat inconsiderately given her; and to "give up Chenonceaux in Touraine," Catherine's Naboth's vineyard, which she had so long admired and coveted. She had known it as a girl, when she often visited it in company with her father-in-law, the appreciative but dissolute François, and had ever longed to possess it for her own, before even her husband, now dead, had given it to "that old hag Diane de Poitiers, Duchesse de Valentinois." Diane paid no heed to Catherine's command. She simply asked: "Is the king yet dead?" "No, madame," said the messenger, "but his wound is mortal; he can not live the day." "Tell the queen, then." replied Diane, "that her reign is not yet come; that I am mistress still over her and the kingdom as long as the king breathes the breath of life." The château of Chenonceaux, so greatly coveted by Catherine when she first came to France, and when it was in the possession of Diane, still remains in all the regal splendor of its past. It lies in the lovely valley of the Cher, far from the rush and turmoil of cities and even the continuous traffic of great thoroughfares, for it is on the road to nowhere unless one is journeying crosscountry from the lower to the upper Loire. This very isolation resulted in its being one of the few monuments spared from the furies of the Revolution, and, "half-palace and half-château," it glistens with the purity of its former glory, as picturesque as ever, with turrets, spires, and roof-tops all mellowed with the ages in a most entrancing manner. Even to-day one enters the precincts of the château proper over a drawbridge which spans an arm of the Loire, or rather, a moat which leads directly from the parent stream. On the opposite side are the bridge piers supporting five arches, the work of Diane when she was the fair chatelaine of the domain. This ingenious thought proved to be a most useful and artistic addition to the château. It formed a flagged promenade, lovely in itself, and led to the southern bank of the Cher, whence one got charming vistas of the turrets and roof-tops of the château through the trees and the leafy avenues which converged upon the structure. When Catherine came she did not disdain to make the best use of Diane's innovation that suggested itself to her, which was simply to build the Long Gallery over the arches of this lovely bridge, and so make of it a veritable house over the water. A covering was made quite as beautiful as the rest of the structure, and thus the bridge formed a spacious wing of two stories. The first floor--known as the Long Gallery--was intended as a banqueting-hall, and possest four great full-length windows on either side looking up and down the stream, from which was seen--and is to-day--an outlook as magnificently idyllic as is possible to conceive. Jean Goujon had designed for the ceiling one of those wonder-works for which he was famous, but if the complete plan was ever carried out, it has disappeared, for only a tiny sketch of the whole scheme remains to-day. Catherine came in the early summer to take possession of her long-coveted domain. Being a skilful horsewoman, she came on horseback, accompanied by a little band of feminine charmers destined to wheedle political secrets from friends and enemies alike--a real "flying squadron of the queen," as it was called by a contemporary. It was a gallant company that assembled here at this time--the young King Charles IX., the Duc de Guise, and the "two cardinals mounted on mules"--Lorraine, a true Guise, and D'Este, newly arrived from Italy, and accompanied by the poet Tasso, wearing a "gabardine and a hood of satin." Catherine showed the Italian great favor, as was due a countryman, but there was another poet among them as well, Ronsard, the poet laureate of the time. The Duc de Guise had followed in the wake of Marguerite, unbeknown to Catherine, who frowned down any possibility of an alliance between the houses of Valois and Lorraine. A great fête and water-masque had been arranged by Catherine to take place on the Cher, with a banquet to follow in the Long Gallery in honor of her arrival at Chenonceaux. When twilight had fallen, torches were ignited and myriads of lights blazed forth from the boats on the river and from the windows of the château. Music and song went forth into the night, and all was as gay and lovely as a Venetian night's entertainment. The hunting-horns echoed through the wooded banks, and through the arches above which the château was built passed great highly colored barges, including a fleet of gondolas to remind the queen-mother of her Italian days--the ancestors perhaps of the solitary gondola which to-day floats idly by the river-bank just before the grand entrance to the château. From parterre and balustrade, and from the clipt yews of the ornamental garden, fairy lamps burned forth and dwindled away into dim infinity, as the long lines of soft light gradually lost themselves in the forest. It was a grand affair and idyllic in its unworldliness ... Catherine bequeathed Chenonceaux to the wife of Henry III., Louise de Vaudémont, who died here in 1601. For a hundred years it still belonged to royalty, but in 1730 it was sold to M. Dupin, who, with his wife, enriched and repaired the fabric. They gathered around them a company so famous as to be memorable in the annals of art and literature. This is best shown by the citing of such names as Fontenelle, Montesquieu, Buffon, Bolingbroke, Voltaire, and Rousseau, all of whom were frequenters of the establishment, the latter being charged with the education of the Dupins' only son. Chenonceaux to-day is no whited sepulcher. It is a real living and livable thing, and moreover, when one visits it, he observes that the family burn great logs in their fireplaces, have luxurious bouquets of flowers on their dining-table, and use wax candles instead of the more prosaic oil-lamps, or worse--acetyline gas. FOIX[A] [Footnote A: From "Castles and Châteaux of Old Navarre." By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, L.C. Page & Co. Copyright, 1907.] BY FRANCIS MILTOUN Above the swift flowing Ariège in their superb setting of mountain and forest are the towers and parapets of the old château, in itself enough to make the name and fame of any city.... The actual age of the monument covers many epochs. The two square towers and the main edifice, as seen to-day, are anterior to the thirteenth century, as is proved by the design in the seals of the Comtes de Foix of 1215 and 1241 now in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. In the fourteenth century these towers were strengthened and enlarged with the idea of making them more effective for defense and habitation. The escutcheons of Foix, Beam and Comminges, to be seen in the great central tower, indicate that it, too, goes back at least to the end of the fourteenth century, when Eleanore de Comminges, the mother of Gaston Phoebus, ruled the Comté. The donjon or Tour Ronde arises on the west to a height of forty-two meters; and will be remarked by all familiar with these sermons in stones scattered all over France as one of the most graceful. Legend attributes it to Gaston Phoebus; but all authorities do not agree as to this. The window-and door-openings, the moldings, the accolade over the entrance doorway, and the machicoulis all denote that they belong to the latter half of the fifteenth century. These, however, may be later interpolations. Originally one entered the château from exactly the opposite side from that used to-day. The slope leading up to the rock and swinging around in front of the town is an addition of recent years. Formerly the plateau was gained by a rugged path which finally entered the precincts of the fortress through a rectangular barbican. Finally, to sum it up, the pleasant, smiling, trim little city of Foix, and its château rising romantically above it, form a delightful prospect. Well preserved, well protected and forever free from further desecration, the château de Fois is as nobly impressive and glorious a monument of the Middle Ages as may be found in France, as well as chief record of the gallant days of the Comtes de Foix. Foix' Palais de Justice, built back to back with the rock foundation of the château, is itself a singular piece of architecture containing a small collection of local antiquities. This old Maison des Gouverneurs, now the Palais de Justice, is a banal, unlovely thing, regardless of its high-sounding titles.... It was that great hunter and warrior, Gaston Phoebus, who gave the Château de Foix its greatest lustre. It was here that this most brilliant and most celebrated of the counts passed his youth; and it was from here that he set out on his famous expedition to aid his brother knights of the Teutonic Order in Prussia. At Gaston's orders the Comte d'Armagnac was imprisoned here, to be released after the payment of a heavy ransom. As to the motive for this particular act, authorities differ as to whether it was the fortune of war or mere brigandage. They lived high, the nobles of the old days, and Froissart recounts a banquet at which he had assisted at Foix, in the sixteenth century, as follows: "And this was what I saw in the Comté de Foix: The Comte left his chamber to sup at midnight, the way to the great 'salle' being led by twelve varlets, bearing twelve illumined torches. The great hall was crowded with knights and equerries, and those who would supped, saying nothing meanwhile. Mostly game seemed to be the favorite viand, and the legs and wings only of fowl were eaten. Music and chants were the invariable accompaniment and the company remained at table until after two in the morning. Little or nothing was drunk." V VARIOUS FRENCH SCENES MONT ST. MICHEL[A] [Footnote A: From "In and Out of Three Normandy Inns." By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, Little Brown & Co. Copyright, 1892.] BY ANNA BOWMAN DODD The promised rivers were before us. So was the Mont, spectral no longer, but nearing with every plunge forward of our sturdy young Percheron. Locomotion through any new or untried medium is certain to bring with the experiment a dash of elation. Now, driving through water appears to be no longer the fashion in our fastidious century; someone might get a wetting, possibly, has been the conclusion of the prudent. And thus a very innocent and exciting bit of fun has been gradually relegated among the lost arts of pleasure. We were taking water as we had never taken it before, and liking the method. We were as wet as ducks, but what cared we? We were being deluged with spray; the spume of the sea was spurting in our faces with the force of a strong wet breeze, and still we liked it. Besides, driving thus into the white foam of the waters, over the sand ridges, across the downs, into the wide plains of wet mud, this was the old classical way of going up to the Mont. Surely, what had been found good enough as a pathway for kings, and saints and pilgrims should be good enough for lovers of old-time methods. The dike yonder was built for those who believe in the devil of haste, and for those who also serve him faithfully.... With our first toss upon the downs, a world of new and fresh experiences began. Genets was quite right; the Mont over yonder was another country; even at the very beginning of the journey we learned so much. This breeze blowing in from the sea, that had swept the ramparts of the famous rock, was a double extract of the sea-essence; it had all the salt of the sea and the aroma of firs and wild flowers; its lips had not kissed a garden in high air without the perfume lingering, if only to betray them. Even this strip of meadow marsh had a character peculiar to itself; half of it belonged to earth and half to the sea. You might have thought it an inland pasture, with its herds of cattle, its flocks of sheep, and its colonies of geese patrolled by ragged urchins. But behold somewhere out yonder the pasture was lost in high sea-waves; ships with bulging sails replaced the curve of the cattle's sides and instead of bending necks of sheep, there were sea-gulls swooping down upon the foamy waves. As the incarnation of this dual life of sea and land, the rock stands. It also is both of the sea and the land. Its feet are of the waters--rocks and stones the sea-waves have used as playthings these millions of years. But earth regains possession as the rocks pile themselves into a mountain. Even from this distance, one can see the moving of great trees, the masses of yellow flower-tips that dye the sides of the stony hill, and the strips of green grass here and there. So much has nature done for this wonderful pyramid in the sea. Then man came and fashioned it to his liking. He piled the stones at its base into titanic walls; he carved about its sides the rounded breasts of bastions; he piled higher and higher up the dizzy heights a medley of palaces, convents, abbeys, cloisters, to lay at the very top the fitting crown of all, a jewelled Norman-Gothic cathedral. Earth and man have thrown their gauntlet down to the sea--this rock is theirs, they cry to the waves and the might of the oceans. And the sea laughs--as strong men laugh when boys are angry or insistent. She has let them build and toil, and pray and fight; it is all one to her what is done on the rock--whether men carve its stones into lace, or rot and die in its dungeons; it is all the same to her whether each spring the daffodils creep up within the crevices and the irises nod to them from the gardens. It is all one to her. For twice a day she recaptures the Mont. She encircles it with the strong arm of her tides; with the might of her waters she makes it once more a thing of the sea. The tide was rising now. The fringe of the downs had dabbled in the shoals till they became one. We had left behind the last of the shepherd lads, come out to the edge of the land to search for a wandering kid. We were all at once plunging into high water. Our road was sunk out of sight; we were driving through, waves as high as our cart wheels.... Our cart still pitched and tossed--we were still rocked about in our rough cradle. But the sun, now freed from the banks of clouds, was lighting our way with a great and sudden glory. And for the rest of our watery journey we were conscious only of that lighting. Behind the Mont lay a vast sea of saffron. But it was in the sky; against it the great rock was as black as if the night were upon it. Here and there, through the curve of a flying buttress, or the apertures of a pierced parapet, gay bits of this yellow world were caught and framed. The sea lay beneath like a quiet carpet; and over this carpet ships and sloops swam with easy gliding motion, with sails and cordage dipt in gold. The smaller craft, moored close to the shore, seemed transfigured as in a fog of gold. And nearer still were the brown walls of the Mont making a great shadow, and in the shadow the waters were as black as the skin of an African. In the shoals there were lovely masses of turquoise and palest green; for here and there a cloudlet passed, to mirror its complexion in the translucent pools.... There was a rapid dashing beneath the great walls; a sudden night of darkness as we plunged through an open archway into a narrow village street; a confused impression of houses built into side-walls; of machicolated gateways; of rocks and roof-tops tumbling about our ears; and within the street was sounding the babel of a shrieking troop of men and women. Porters, peasants, and children were clamoring about our cartwheels like so many jackals. The bedlam did not cease as we stopt before a brightly-lit open doorway. Then through the doorway there came a tall, finely featured brunette. She made her way through the yelling crowd as a duchess might cleave a path through a rabble. She was at the side of the cart in an instant. She gave us a bow and smile that were both a welcome and an act of appropriation. She held out a firm, soft, brown hand. When it closed on our own, we knew it to be the grasp of a friend, and the clasp of one who knew how to hold her world. But when she spoke the words were all of velvet, and her voice had the cadence of a caress. "I have been watching you, 'chères dames'--crossing the 'gréve,' but how wet and weary you must be! Come in by the fire, it is ablaze now--I have been feeding it for you!" And once more the beautifully curved lips parted over the fine teeth, and the exceeding brightness of the dark eyes smiled and glittered in our own. The caressing voice still led us forward, into the great gay kitchen; the touch of skilful, discreet fingers undid wet cloaks and wraps; the soft charm of a lovely and gracious woman made even the penetrating warmth of the huge fire-logs a secondary feature of our welcome. To those who have never crossed a "gréve;" who have had no jolting in a Normandy "char-a-banc;" who, for hours, have not known the mixed pleasures and discomfort of being a part of sea-rivers; and who have not been met at the threshold of an Inn on a Rock by the smiling welcome of Madame Poulard[A]--all such have yet a pleasant page to read in the book of traveled experience.... [Footnote A: An innkeeper of international fame. She is now dead, but her name and her omelet still survive at Mont St. Michel.] Altho her people were waiting below, and the dinner was on its way to the cloth, Madame Poulard had plenty of time to give to the beauty about her. How fine was the outlook from the top of the ramparts! What a fresh sensation, this of standing-on a terrace in mid-air and looking down on the sea and across to the level shores. The rose vines--we found them sweet--"Ah"--one of the branches had fallen--she had full time to re-adjust the loosened support. And "Marianne, give these ladies their hot water, and see to their bags"--even this order was given with courtesy. It was only when the supple, agile figure had left us to fly down the steep rock-cut steps; when it shot over the top of the gateway and slid with the grace of a lizard into the street far below us, that we were made sensible of there having been any special need of madame's being in haste ... The Mont proved by its appearance its history in adventure; it had the grim, grave, battered look that comes only to features--whether of rock or of more plastic human mold--that have been carved by the rough handling of experience. It is the common habit of hills and mountains, as we all know, to turn disdainful as they grow skyward; they only too eagerly drop, one by one, the things by which man has marked the earth for his own. To stand on a mountain top and to go down to your grave are alike, at least in this--that you have left everything, except yourself, behind you. But it is both the charm and the triumph of Mont St. Michael, that it carries so much of man's handiwork up into the blue fields of the air; this achievement alone would mark it as unique among hills. It appears as if for once man and nature had agreed to work in concert to produce a masterpiece in stone. The hill and the architectural beauties it carries aloft, are like a taunt flung out to sea and to the upper heights of air; for centuries they appear to have been crying aloud, "See what we can do, against your tempests and your futile tides--when we try" ... Rustic France along this coast still makes pilgrimages to the shrine of the Archangel St. Michael. No marriage is rightly arranged which does not include a wedding-journey across the "gréve"; no nuptial breakfast is aureoled with the true halo of romance which is eaten elsewhere than on these heights in mid-air. The young come to drink deep of wonders; the old, to refresh the depleted fountains of memory; and the tourist, behold he is a plague of locusts let loose upon the defenseless hill! It was impossible, after sojourning a certain time upon the hill, not to concede that there were two equally strong centers of attraction that drew the world hitherward. One remained, indeed, gravely suspended between the doubt and the fear, as to which of these potential units had the greater pull, in point of actual attraction. The impartial historian, given to a just weighing of evidence, would have been startled to find how invariably the scales tipped; how lightly an historical Mont, born of a miracle, crowned by the noblest buildings, a pious Mecca for saints and kings innumerable, shot up like feathers in lightness when overweighted by the modern realities of a perfectly appointed inn, the cooking and eating of an omelet of omelets, and the all-conquering charms of Madame Poulard. The fog of doubt thickened as, day after day, the same scenes were enacted; when one beheld all sorts of conditions of men similarly affected; when, again and again, the potentiality in the human magnet was proved true. Doubt turned to conviction, at the last, that the holy shrine of St. Michael had, in truth, been violated; that the Mont had been desecrated; that the latter exists now solely as a setting for a pearl of an inn; and that within the shrine--it is Madame Poulard herself who fills the niche!... Such a variety of brides as come up to the Mont! You could have your choice, at the midday meal, of almost any nationality, age, or color. The attempt among these bridal couples to maintain the distant air of a finished indifference only made their secret the more open. The British phlegm, on such a journey, did not always serve as a convenient mask; the flattering, timid glance, the ripple of tender whispers, and the furtive touching of fingers beneath the table, made even these English couples a part of the great human marrying family; their superiority to their fellows would return, doubtless, when the honey had dried out of their moon. The best of our adventures into this tender country were with the French bridal tourists; they were certain to be delightfully human. As we had had occasion to remark before, they were off, like ourselves, on a little voyage of discovery; they had come to make acquaintance with the being to whom they were mated for life. Various degrees of progress could be read in the air and manner of the hearty young "bourgeoises" and their paler or even ruddier partners, as they crunched their bread or sipped their thin wine. Some had only entered as yet upon the path of inquiry; others had already passed the mile-stone of criticism; and still others had left the earth and were floating in full azure of intoxication. Of the many wedding parties that sat down to breakfast, we soon made the commonplace discovery that the more plebeian the company, the more certain-orbed appeared to be the promise of happiness.... Madame Poulard's air with this, her world, was as full of tact as with the tourists. Many of the older women would give her the Norman kiss, solemnly, as if the salute were a part of the ceremony attendant on the eating of a wedding breakfast at Mont St. Michel. There would be a three times' clapping of the wrinkled or the ruddy peasant cheeks against the sides of Madame Poulard's daintier, more delicately modeled face. Then all would take their seats noisily at the table. It was Madame Poulard who would then bring us news of the party. At the end of a fortnight Charm and I felt ourselves to be in possession of the hidden and secret reasons for all the marrying that had been done along the coast that year.... One morning, as we looked toward Pontorson, a small black cloud appeared to be advancing across the bay. The day was windy; the sky was crowded with huge white mountains--round, luminous clouds that moved in stately sweeps. And the sea was the color one loves to see in an earnest woman's eye, the dark blue sapphire that turns to blue-gray. This was a setting that made that particular cloud, making such slow progress across from the shore, all the more conspicuous. Gradually, as the black mass neared the dike, it began to break and separate; and we saw plainly enough that the scattering particles were human beings. It was, in point of fact, a band of pilgrims; a peasant pilgrimage was coming up to the Mont. In wagons, in market carts, in "char-á-bancs," in donkey carts, on the backs of monster Percherons--the pilgrimage moved in slow processional dignity across the dike. Some of the younger black gowns and blue blouses attempted to walk across over the sands; we could see the girls sitting down on the edge of the shore, to take off their shoes and stockings and to tuck up their thick skirts. When they finally started they were like unto so many huge cheeses hoisted on stilts. The bare legs plunged boldly forward, keeping ahead of the slower-moving peasant lads; the girls' bravery served them till they reached the fringe of the incoming tide; not until their knees went under water did they forego their venture. A higher wave came in, deluging the ones farthest out; and then ensued a scampering toward the dike and a climbing up of the stone embankment. The old route across the sands, that had been the only one known to kings and barons, was not good enough for a modern Norman peasant. The religion of personal comfort has spread even as far as the fields. Other aspects of the hill, on this day of the pilgrimage, made those older dead-and-gone bands of pilgrims astonishingly real. On the tops of bastions, in the clefts on the rocks, beneath the glorious walls of La Merveille, or perilously lodged on the crumbling cornice of a tourelle, numerous rude altars had been hastily erected. The crude blues and scarlets of banners were fluttering, like so many pennants, in the light breeze. Beneath the improvised altar-roofs--strips of gay cloth stretched across poles stuck into the ground--were groups not often seen in these less fervent centuries. High up, mounted on the natural pulpit, formed of a bit of rock, with the rude altar before him with its bits of scarlet cloth covered with cheap lace, stood or knelt the priest. Against the wide blue of the open heaven his figure took on an imposing splendor of mien and an unmodern impressiveness of action. Beneath him knelt, with bowed heads, the groups of the peasant pilgrims; the women, with murmuring lips and clasped hands, their strong, deeply-seamed faces outlined with the precision of a Francesco painting against the gray background of a giant mass of wall or the amazing breadth of a vast sea-view; children, squat and chubby, with bulging cheeks starting from the close-fitting French "bonnet"; and the peasant-farmers, mostly of the older varieties, whose stiffened or rheumatic knees and knotty hands made their kneeling real acts of devotional zeal. There were a dozen such altars and groups scattered over the perpendicular slant of the hill. The singing of the choir boys, rising like skylark notes into the clear space of heaven, would be floating from one rocky-nested chapel, while below, in the one beneath which we, for a moment, were resting, there would be the groaning murmur of the peasant groups in prayer. Three times did the vision of St. Michael appear to Saint Aubert, in his dream, commanding the latter to erect a church on the heights of Mont St. Michel to his honor. How many a time must the modern pilgrim traverse the stupendous mass that has grown out of that command before he is quite certain that the splendor of Mont St. Michel is real, and not part of a dream! Whether one enters through the dark magnificence of the great portals of the Châtelet; whether one mounts the fortified stairway, passing into the Salle des Gardes, passing onward from dungeon to fortified bridge to gain the abbatial residence; whether one leaves the vaulted splendor of oratories for aërial passageways, only to emerge beneath the majestic roof of the Cathedral--that marvel of the Early Norman, ending in the Gothic choir of the fifteenth century; or, as one penetrates into the gloom of the mighty dungeons where heroes, and brothers of kings, and saints, and scientists have died their long death--as one gropes through the black night of the crypt, where a faint, mysterious glint of light falls aslant the mystical face of the Black Virgin; as one climbs to the light beneath the ogive arches of the Aumônerie, through the wide-lit aisles of the Salle des Chevaliers, past the slender Gothic columns of the Refectory, up at last to the crowning glory of all the glories of La Merveille, to the exquisitely beautiful colonnades of the open Cloister--the impressions and emotions excited by these ecclesiastical and military masterpieces are ever the same, however many times one may pass them in review. A charm indefinable, but replete with subtle attractions, lurks in every one of these dungeons. The great halls have a power to make one retraverse their space I have yet to find under other vaulted chambers. The grass that is set, like a green jewel, in the arabesques of the cloister, is a bit of greensward the feet press with a different tread to that which skips lightly over other strips of turf. And the world, that one looks out upon through prison bars, that is so gloriously arched in the arm of a flying buttress, or that lies prone at your feet from the dizzy heights of the rock clefts, is not the world in which you, daily, do your petty stretch of toil, in which you laugh and ache, sorrow, sigh, and go down to your grave. The secret of this deep attraction may lie in the fact of one's being in a world that is built on a height. Much, doubtless, of the charm lies, also, in the reminders of all the human life that, since the early dawn of history, has peopled this hill. One has the sense of living at a tremendously high mental pressure; of impressions, emotions, sensations crowding upon the mind; of one's whole meager outfit of memory, of poetic equipment, and of imaginative furnishing being unequal to the demand made by even the most hurried tour of the great buildings, or the most flitting review of the noble massing of the clouds and the hilly seas. The very emptiness and desolation of all the buildings on the hill help to accentuate their splendor. The stage is magnificently set; the curtain, even, is lifted. One waits for the coming on of kingly shapes, for the pomp of trumpets, for the pattering of a mighty host. But, behold, all is still. And one sits and sees only a shadowy company pass and repass across that glorious mise-en-scéne. For, in a certain sense, I know no other medieval mass of buildings as peopled as are these. The dead shapes seem to fill the vast halls. The Salle des Chevaliers is crowded, daily, with a brilliant gathering of knights, who sweep the trains of their white damask mantles, edged with ermine, over the dulled marble of the floor; two by two they enter the hall; the golden shells on their mantles make the eyes blink, as the groups gather about the great chimneys, or wander through the column-broken space. Behind this dazzling cortege, up the steep steps of the narrow streets, swarm other groups--the medieval pilgrim host that rushes into cathedral aisles, and that climbs the ramparts to watch the stately procession as it makes its way toward the church portals. There are still other figures that fill every empty niche and deserted watch-tower. Through the lancet windows of the abbatial gateways the yeomanry of the vassal villages are peering; it is the weary time of the Hundred Years' War, and all France is watching, through sentry windows, for the approach of her dread enemy. On the shifting sands below, as on brass, how indelibly fixt are the names of the hundred and twenty-nine knights whose courage drove, step by step, over that treacherous surface, the English invaders back to their island strongholds. CAEN[A] [Footnote A: From "A Bibliographical Tour in France and Germany."] BY THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN Let us begin, therefore, with the Abbey of St. Stephen; for it is the noblest and most interesting on many accounts. It is called by the name of that saint, inasmuch as there stood formerly a chapel, on the same site, dedicated to him. The present building was completed and solemnly dedicated by William the Conqueror, in the presence of his wife, his two sons Robert and William, his favorite, Archbishop Lanfranc; John, Archbishop of Rouen, and Thomas, Archbishop of York--toward the year 1080; but I strongly suspect, from the present prevailing character of the architecture, that nothing more than the west front and the towers upon which the spires rest remain of its ancient structure. The spires, as the Abbé De La Rue conjectures, and as I should also have thought, are about two centuries later than the towers. The outsides of the side aisles appear to be of the thirteenth, rather than of the end of the eleventh, century. The first exterior view of the west front, and of the towers, is extremely interesting from the gray and clear tint, as well as excellent quality, of the stone, which, according to Huet, was brought partly from Vaucelle and partly from Allemagne. One of the corner abutments of one of the towers has fallen down and a great portion of what remains seem to indicate rapid decay. The whole stands indeed greatly in need of reparation. Ducarel, if I remember rightly, has made, of this whole front, a sort of elevation as if it were intended for a wooden model to work by, having all the stiffness and precision of an erection of forty-eight hours' standing only. The central tower is of very stunted dimensions, and overwhelmed by a roof in the form of an extinguisher. This, in fact, was the consequence of the devastations of the Calvinists; who absolutely sapped the foundation of the tower, with the hope of overwhelming the whole choir in ruin--but a part only of their malignant object was accomplished. The component parts of the eastern extremity are strangely and barbarously miscellaneous. However, no good commanding exterior view can be obtained from the place, or confined square, opposite the towers. But let us return to the west front; and, opening the unfastened green baize covered door, enter softly and silently into the venerable interior--sacred even to the feelings of Englishmen. Of this interior, very much is changed from its original character. The side aisles retain their flattened arched roofs and pillars; and in the nave you observe those rounded pilasters--or altorilievo-like pillars--running from bottom to top, which are to be seen in the Abbey of Jumieges. The capitals of these long pillars are comparatively of modern date. To the left on entrance, within a side chapel, is the burial place of Matilda, the wife of the Conqueror. The tombstone attesting her interment is undoubtedly of the time. Generally speaking, the interior is cold, and dull of effect. The side chapels, of which not fewer than sixteen encircle the choir, have the discordant accompaniments of Grecian balustrades to separate them from the choir and nave. To the right of the choir, in the sacristy, I think, is hung the huge portrait, in oil, within a black and gilt frame, of which Ducarel has published an engraving, on the supposition of its being the portrait of William the Conqueror. But nothing can be more ridiculous than such a conclusion. In the first place, the picture itself, which is a palpable copy, can not be older than a century; and in the second place, were it an original performance, it could not be older than the time of Francis I. In fact, it purports to have been executed as a faithful copy of the figure of King William, seen by the Cardinals in 1522, who were seized with a sacred frenzy to take a peep at the body as it might exist at that time. The costume of the oil painting is evidently that of the period of our Henry VIII.; and to suppose that the body of William--even had it remained in so surprisingly perfect a state as Ducarel intimates, after an interment of upward of four hundred years--could have presented such a costume, when, from Ducarel's own statement, another whole-length representation of the same person is totally different--and more decidedly of the character of William's time--is really quite a reproach to any antiquary who plumes himself upon the possession even of common sense. In the middle of the choir, and just before the high altar, the body of the Conqueror was entombed with great pomp; and a monument erected to his memory of the most elaborate and costly description. Nothing now remains but a flat, black marble slab, with a short inscription, of quite a recent date.... You must now attend me to the most interesting public building, perhaps all things considered, which is to be seen at Caen. I mean the Abbey of the Holy Trinity, or L'Abbaye aux Dames. This abbey was founded by the wife of the Conqueror, about the same time that William erected that of St. Stephen. Ducarel's description of it, which I have just seen in a copy of the "Anglo-Norman Antiquities," in a bookseller's shop, is sufficiently meager. His plates are also sufficiently miserable: but things are strangely altered since his time. The nave of the church is occupied by a manufactory for making cordage, or twine: and upward of a hundred lads are now busied in their flaxen occupations, where formerly the nun knelt before the cross, or was occupied in auricular confession. The entrance at the western extremity is entirely stopt up; but the exterior gives manifest proof of an antiquity equal to that of the Abbey of St. Stephen. The upper part of the towers are palpably of the fifteenth or, rather, of the early part of the sixteenth century. I had no opportunity of judging of the neat pavement of the floor of the nave, in white and black marble, as noticed by Ducarel, on account of the occupation of this part of the building by the manufacturing children; but I saw some very ancient tombstones, one, I think, of the twelfth century, which had been removed from the nave or side aisles, and were placed against the sides of the north transept. The nave is entirely walled up from the transepts, but the choir is fortunately preserved; and a more perfect and interesting specimen of its kind, of the same antiquity, is perhaps nowhere to be seen in Normandy. All the monuments as well as the altars, described by Ducarel, are now taken away. Having ascended a stone staircase, we got into the upper part of the choir, above the first row of pillars--and walked along the wall. This was rather adventurous, you will say; but a more adventurous spirit of curiosity had nearly proved fatal to me; for, on quitting daylight, we pursued a winding stone staircase, in our way to the central tower--to enjoy from hence a view of the town. I almost tremble as I relate it. There had been put up a sort of temporary wooden staircase, leading absolutely to nothing; or, rather, to a dark void space. I happened to be foremost in ascending, yet groping in the dark--with the guide luckily close behind me. Having reached the topmost step, I was raising my foot to a supposed higher or succeeding step--but there was none. A depth of eighteen feet at least was below me. The guide caught my coat, as I was about to lose my balance, and roared out, "Wait--Stop!" The least balance or inclination, one way or the other, is sufficient, upon these critical occasions; when luckily, from his catching my coat, and pulling me, in consequence, slightly backward, my fall and my life, were equally saved! I have reason from henceforth to remember the Abbey aux Dames at Caen. I gained the top of the central tower, which is not of equal altitude with those of the western extremity, and from hence surveyed the town, as well as the drizzling rain would permit. I saw enough, however, to convince me that the site of this abbey is fine and commanding. Indeed, it stands nearly upon the highest ground in the town. Ducarel had not the glorious ambition to mount to the top of the tower; nor did he even possess that most commendable of all species of architectural curiosity, a wish to visit the crypt. Thus, in either extremity, I evinced a more laudable spirit of enterprise than did my old-fashioned predecessor. Accordingly, from the summit, you must accompany me to the lowest depth of the building. I descended by the same somewhat intricate route, and I took especial care to avoid all "temporary wooden staircase." The crypt, beneath the choir, is perhaps of yet greater interest and beauty than the choir itself. Within an old, very old, stone coffin--at the further circular end--are the pulverized remains of one of the earliest abbesses. I gazed around with mixed sensations of veneration and awe, and threw myself back into centuries past, fancying that the shrouded figure of Maltilda herself glided by, with a look as if to approve of my antiquarian enthusiasm! Having gratified my curiosity by a careful survey of the subterranean abode, I revisited the regions of daylight, and made toward the large building, now a manufactory, which in Ducarel's time had been a nunnery. The revolution has swept away every human being in the character of a nun; but the director of the manufactory showed me, with great civility, some relics of old crosses, rings, veils, lacrimatories, etc., which had been taken from the crypt I had recently visited. These relics savored of considerable antiquity. Tom Hearne would have set about proving that they must have belonged to Matilda herself; but I will have neither the presumption nor the merit of attempting this proof. They seemed, indeed, to have undergone half a dozen decompositions. Upon the whole, if our Antiquarian Society, after having exhausted the cathedrals of their own country, should ever think of perpetuating the principal ecclesiastical edifices of Normandy, by means of the art of engraving, let them begin their labors with the Abbey aux Dames at Caen. DOWN THE RIVER TO BORDEAUX[A] [Footnote A: From "A Tour Through the Pyrenees." By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, Henry Holt & Co. Copyright, 1873.] BY HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE The river is so fine that, before going to Bayonne, I have come down as far as Royan. Ships heavy with white sails ascend slowly on both sides of the boat. At each gust of wind they incline like idle birds, lifting their long wings and showing their black bellies. They run slantwise, then come back; one would say that they felt the better for being in this great fresh-water harbor; they loiter in it and enjoy its peace after leaving the wrath and inclemency of the ocean. The banks, fringed with pale verdure, glide right and left, far away to the verge of heaven; the river is broad like a sea; at this distance you might think you had seen two hedges; the trees dimly lift their delicate shapes in a robe of bluish gauze; here and there great pines raise their umbrellas on the vapory horizon, where all is confused and vanishing; there is an inexpressible sweetness in these first hues of the timid day, softened still by the fog which exhales from the deep river. As for the river itself, its waters stretch out joyous and splendid; the rising sun pours upon its breast a long streamlet of gold; the breeze covers it with scales; its eddies stretch themselves, and tremble like an awaking serpent, and, when the billow heaves them, you seem to see the striped flanks, the tawny cuirass of a leviathan. Indeed, at such moments it seems that the water must live and feel; it has a strange look, when it comes, transparent and somber, to stretch itself upon a beach of pebbles; it turns about them as if uneasy and irritated; it beats them with its wavelets; it covers them, then retires, then comes back again with a sort of languid writhing and mysterious lovingness; its snaky eddies, its little crests suddenly beaten down or broken, its wave, sloping, shining, then all at once blackened, resembles the flashes of passion in an impatient mother, who hovers incessantly and anxiously about her children, and covers them, not knowing what she wants and what fears. Presently a cloud has covered the heavens, and the wind has risen. In a moment the river has assumed the aspect of a crafty and savage animal. It hollowed itself, and showed its livid belly; it came against the keel with convulsive starts, hugged it, and dashed against it, as if to try its force; as far as one could see, its waves lifted themselves and crowded together, like the muscles upon a chest; over the flank of the waves passed flashes with sinister smiles; the mast groaned, and the trees bent shivering, like a nerveless crowd before the wrath of a fearful beast. Then all was hushed; the sun had burst forth, the waves were smoothed, you now see only a laughing expanse; spun out over this polished back a thousand greenish tresses sported wantonly; the light rested on it, like a diaphanous mantle; it followed the supple movements and the twisting of those liquid arms; it folded around them, behind them, its radiant, azure robe; it took their caprices and their mobile colors; the river meanwhile, slumbrous in its great, peaceful bed, was stretched out at the feet of the hills, which looked down upon it, like it immovable and eternal. The boat is made fast to a boom, under a pile of white houses; it is Royan. Here already are the sea and the dunes; the right of the village is buried under a mass of sand; there are crumbling hills, little dreary valleys, where you are lost as if in the desert; no sound, no movement, no life; scanty, leafless vegetation dots moving soil, and its filaments fall like sickly hairs; small shells, white and empty, cling to these in chaplets, and, wherever the foot is set, they crack with a sound like a cricket's chirp; this place is the ossuary of some wretched maritime tribe. One tree alone can live here, the pine, a wild creature, inhabitant of the forests and sterile coasts; there is a whole colony of them here; they crowd together fraternally, and cover the sand with their brown lamels; the monotonous breeze which sifts through them forever awakes their murmur; thus they chant in a plaintive fashion, but with a far softer and more harmonious voice than the other trees; this voice resembles the grating of the cicadas when in August they sing with all their heart among the stalks of the ripened wheat. At the left of the village, a footpath winds to the summit of a wasted bank, among billows of standing grasses. The river is so broad that the other shore is not distinguishable. The sea, its neighbor, imparts its influence; its long undulations come one after another against the coast, and pour their little cascades of foam upon the sand; then the water retires, running down the slope until it meets a new wave coming up which covers it; these billows are never wearied, and their come and go remind one of the regular breathing of a slumbering child. For night has fallen, the tints of purple grow brown and fade away. The river goes to rest in the soft, vague shadow; scarcely, at long intervals, a remnant glimpse is reflected from a slanting wave; obscurity drowns everything in its vapory dust; the drowsy eye vainly searches in this mist some visible point, and distinguishes at last, like a dim star, the lighthouse of Cordouan. The next evening a fresh sea-breeze has brought us to Bordeaux. The enormous city heaps its monumental houses along the river like bastions; the red sky is embattled by their coping. They on one hand, the bridge on the other, protect, with a double line, the port where the vessels are crowded together like a flock of gulls; those graceful hulls, those tapering masts, those sails swollen or floating, weave the labyrinth of their movements and forms upon the magnificent purple of the sunset. The sun sinks into the river; the black rigging, the round hulls, stand out against its conflagration, and look like jewels of jet set in gold. Around Bordeaux are smiling hills, varied horizons, fresh valleys, a river people by incessant navigation, a succession of cities and villages harmoniously planted upon the declivities or in the plains, everywhere the richest verdure, the luxury of nature and civilization, the earth and man vying with each other to enrich and decorate the happiest valley of France. Below Bordeaux a flat soil, marshes, sand; a land which goes on growing poorer, villages continually less frequent, ere long the desert. I like the desert as well. Pine woods pass to the right and to the left, silent and wan. Each tree bears on its side the scar of wounds where the woodmen have set flowing the resinous blood which chokes it; the powerful liquor still ascends into its limbs with the sap, exhales by its slimy shoots and by its cleft skin; a sharp aromatic odor fills the air. Beyond, the monotonous plain of the ferns, bathed in light, stretches away as far as the eye can reach. Their green fans expand beneath the sun which colors, but does not cause them to fade. Upon the horizon a few scattered trees lift their slender columns. You see now and then the silhouette of a herdsman on his stilts, inert and standing like a sick heron. Wild horses are grazing half hid in the herbage. As the train passes, they abruptly lift their great startled eyes and stand motionless, uneasy at the noise that has troubled their solitude. Man does not fare well here--he dies or degenerates; but it is the country of animals, and especially of plants. They abound in this desert, free, certain of living. Our pretty, cut-up valleys are but poor things alongside of these immense spaces, leagues upon leagues of marshy or dry vegetation, a level country, where nature, elsewhere troubled and tortured by men, still vegetates, as in primeval days, with a calm equal to its grandeur. The sun needs these savannas in order properly to spread out its light; from the rising exhalation, you feel that the whole plain is fermenting under its force; and the eyes, filled by the limitless horizon, divine the secret labor by which this ocean of rank verdure renews and nourishes itself. THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE[A] [Footnote A: From a letter to his mother, written from the monastery in 1739.] BY THOMAS GRAY We took the longest road, which lies through Savoy, on purpose to see a famous monastery, called the Grande Chartreuse, and had no reason to think our time lost. After having traveled seven days very slow (for we did not change horses, it being impossible for a chaise to go fast in these roads), we arrived at a little village, among the mountains of Savoy, called Echelles; from thence we proceeded on horses, who are used to the way, to the mountain of the Chartreuse. It is six miles to the top; the road runs winding up it, commonly not six feet broad; on one hand is the rock, with woods of pine-trees hanging overhead; on the other, a monstrous precipice, almost perpendicular, at the bottom of which rolls a torrent that, sometimes tumbling among the fragments of stone that have fallen from on high, and sometimes precipitating itself down vast descents with a noise like thunder, which is made still greater by the echo from the mountains on each side, concurs to form one of the most solemn, the most romantic, and the most astonishing scenes I ever beheld. Add to this the strange views made by the crags and cliffs on the other hand; the cascades that in many places throw themselves from the very summit down into the vale, and the river below; and many other particulars impossible to describe; you will conclude we had no occasion to repent our plans. This place St. Bruno chose to retire to, and upon its very top founded the aforesaid convent, which is the superior of the whole order. When we came there, the two fathers, who are commissioned to entertain strangers (for the rest must neither speak one to another nor to any one else) received us very kindly; and set before us a repast of dried fish, eggs, butter, and fruits, all excellent in their kind, and extremely neat. They prest us to spend the night there, and to stay some days with them; but this we could not do, so they led us about their house, which is, you must think, like a little city; for there are 100 fathers, besides 300 servants, that make their clothes, grind their corn, press their wine, and do everything among themselves. The whole is quite orderly and simple; nothing of finery; but the wonderful decency, and the strange situation, more than supply the place of it. In the evening we descended by the same way, passing through many clouds that were then forming themselves on the mountain's side. CARCASSONNE[A] [Footnote A: From "A Little Tour in France." By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin Co. Copyright, 1884.] BY HENRY JAMES When I say the town, I mean the towns; there being two at Carcassonne, perfectly distinct, and each with excellent claims to the title. They have settled the matter between them, however, and the elder, the shrine of pilgrimage, to which the other is but a stepping-stone, or even, as I may say, a humble doormat, takes the name of the Cité. You see nothing of the Cité from the station; it is masked by the agglomeration of the "ville-basse," which is relatively (but only relatively) new. A wonderful avenue of acacias leads to it from the station--leads past it, rather, and conducts you to a little high-backed bridge over the Aude, beyond which, detached and erect, a distinct medieval silhouette, the Cité presents itself. Like a rival shop, on the invidious side of a street, it has "no connection" with the establishment across the way, altho the two places are united (if old Carcassonne may be said to be united to anything) by a vague little rustic faubourg. Perched on its solid pedestal, the perfect detachment of the Cité is what first strikes you. To take leave, without delay, of the "ville-basse," I may say that the splendid acacias I have mentioned flung a summerish dusk over the place, in which a few scattered remains of stout walls and big bastions looked venerable and picturesque. A little boulevard winds around the town, planted with trees and garnished with more benches than I ever saw provided by a soft-hearted municipality. This precinct had a warm, lazy, dusty, southern look, as if the people sat out-of-doors a great deal, and wandered about in the stillness of summer nights. The figure of the elder town, at these hours, must be ghostly enough on its neighboring hill. Even by day it has the air of a vignette of Gustave Doré, a couplet of Victor Hugo. It is almost too perfect--as if it were an enormous model, placed on a big green table at a museum. A steep, paved way, grass-grown like all roads where vehicles never pass, stretches up to it in the sun. It has a double enceinte, complete outer walls and complete inner (these, elaborately fortified, are the more curious); and this congregation of ramparts, towers, bastions, battlements, barbicans, is as fantastic and romantic as you please. The approach I mention here leads to the gate that looks toward Toulouse--the Porte de l'Aude. There is a second, on the other side, called, I believe, Porte Narbonnaise, a magnificent gate, flanked with towers thick and tall, defended by elaborate outworks; and these two apertures alone admit you to the place--putting aside a small sally-port, protected by a great bastion, on the quarter that looks toward the Pyrenees.... I should lose no time in saying that restoration is the great mark of the Cité. M. Viollet-le-Duc has worked his will upon it, put it into perfect order, revived the fortifications in every detail. I do not pretend to judge the performance, carried out on a scale and in a spirit which really impose themselves on the imagination. Few architects have had such a chance, and M. Viollet-le-Duc must have been the envy of the whole restoring fraternity. The image of a more crumbling Carcassonne rises in the mind, and there is no doubt that forty years ago the place was more affecting. On the other hand, as we see it to-day, it is a wonderful evocation; and if there is a great deal of new in the old, there is plenty of old in the new. The repaired crenellations, the inserted patches, of the walls of the outer circle sufficiently express this commixture. Carcassonne dates from the Roman occupation of Gaul. The place commanded one of the great roads into Spain, and in the fourth century Romans and Franks ousted each other from such a point of vantage. In the year 436, Theodoric, King of the Visigoths, superseded both these parties; and it is during his occupation that the inner enceinte was raised upon the ruins of the Roman fortifications. Most of the Visigoth towers that are still erect are seated upon Roman substructions which appear to have been formed hastily, probably at the moment of the Frankish invasion. The authors of these solid defenses, tho occasionally disturbed, held Carcassonne and the neighboring country, in which they had established their kingdom of Septimania, till the year 713, when they were expelled by the Moors of Spain, who ushered in an unillumined period of four centuries, of which no traces remain. These facts I derived from a source no more recondite than a pamphlet by M. Viollet-le-Duc--a very luminous description of the fortifications, which you may buy from the accomplished custodian. The writer makes a jump to the year 1209, when Carcassonne, then forming part of the realm of the viscounts of Béziers and infected by the Albigensian heresy, was besieged, in the name of the Pope, by the terrible Simon de Montfort and his army of crusaders. Simon was accustomed to success, and the town succumbed in the course of a fortnight. Thirty-one years later, having passed into the hands of the King of France, it was again besieged by the young Raymond de Trincavel, the last of the viscounts of Béziers; and of this siege M. Viollet-le-Duc gives a long and minute account, which the visitor who has a head for such things may follow, with the brochure in hand, on the fortifications themselves. The young Raymond de Trineavel, baffled and repulsed, retired at the end of twenty-four days. Saint Louis and Philip the Bold, in the thirteenth century, multiplied the defenses of Carcassonne, which was one of the bulwarks of their kingdom on the Spanish quarter; and from this time forth, being regarded as impregnable, the place had nothing to fear. It was not even attacked; and when, in 1355, Edward the Black Prince marched into it, the inhabitants had opened the gates to the conqueror before whom all Languedoc was prostrate. I am not one of those who, as I said just now, have a head for such things, and having extracted these few facts had made all the use of M. Viollet-le-Duc's pamphlet of which I was capable.... My obliging friend the "mad lover" [of la Cité] handed me over to the doorkeeper of the citadel. I should add that I was at first committed to the wife of this functionary, a stout peasant woman, who conducted me to a postern door and ushered me into the presence of her husband. This brilliant, this suggestive warden of Carcassonne marched us about for an hour, haranguing, explaining, illustrating, as he went; it was a complete little lecture, such as might have been delivered at the Lowell Institute, on the manner in which a first-rate "place forte" used to be attacked and defended. Our peregrinations made it very clear that Carcassonne was impregnable; it is impossible to imagine, without having seen them, such refinements of immurement, such ingenuities of resistance. We passed along the battlements and "chemins de ronde," ascended and descended towers, crawled under arches, peered out of loopholes, lowered ourselves into dungeons, halted in all sorts of tight places, while the purpose of something or other was described to us. It was very curious, very interesting; above all, it was very pictorial, and involved perpetual peeps into the little crooked, crumbling, sunny, grassy, empty Cité. In places, as you stand upon it, the great towered and embattled enceinte produces an illusion; it looks as if it were still equipped and defended. One vivid challenge, at any rate, it flings down before you; it calls upon you to make up your mind on the matter of restoration. For myself, I have no hesitation; I prefer in every case the ruined, however ruined, to the reconstructed, however splendid. What is left is more precious than what is added; the one is history, the other is fiction; and I like the former the better of the two--it is so much more romantic. One is positive, so far as it goes; the other fills up the void with things more dead than the void itself, inasmuch as they have never had life. After that I am free to say that the restoration of Carcassonne is a splendid achievement. The little custodian dismissed us at last, after having, as usual, inducted us into the inevitable repository of photographs. After leaving it and passing out of the two circles of walls, I treated myself, in the most infatuated manner, to another walk round the Cité. It is certainly this general impression that is most striking--the impression from outside, where the whole place detaches itself at once from the landscape. In the warm southern dusk it looked more than ever like a city in a fairy-tale. To make the thing perfect, a white young moon, in its first quarter, came out and hung just over the dark silhouette. It was hard to come away--to incommode one's self for anything so vulgar as a railway train; I would gladly have spent the evening in revolving round the walls of Carcassonne. BIARRITZ[A] [Footnote A: From "Castles and Châteaux of Old Navarre." By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, L.C. Page & Co. Copyright, 1907.] BY FRANCIS MILTOUN If Bayonne is the center of commercial affairs for the Basque country, its citizens must, at any rate, go to Biarritz if they want to live "the elegant and worldly life." The prosperity and luxury of Biarritz are very recent; it goes back only to the Second Empire, when it was but a village of a thousand souls or less, mostly fishermen and women. The railway and the automobile omnibus make communication with Bayonne to-day easy, but formerly folk came and went on a donkey side-saddled for two, arranged back to back, like the seats of an Irish jaunting-car. If the weight were unequal, a balance was struck by adding cobblestones on one side or the other, the patient donkey not minding in the least. This astonishing mode of conveyance was known as a "cacolet," and replaced the "voitures" and "fiacres" of other resorts. An occasional example may still be seen, but the "jolies Basquaises" who conducted them have given way to sturdy, barelegged Basque boys--as picturesque, perhaps, but not so entrancing to the view. To voyage "en cacolet" was the necessity of our grandfathers; for us it is an amusement only. Napoleon III., or rather Eugénie, his spouse, was the faithful godfather of Biarritz as a resort. The Villa Eugénie is no more; it was first transformed into a hotel and later destroyed by fire; but it was the first of a great battery of villas and hotels which has made Biarritz so great that the popularity of Monte Carlo is steadily waning. Biarritz threatens to become even more popular; some sixteen thousand visitors came to Biarritz in 1899, but there were thirty-odd thousand in 1903; while the permanent population has risen from 2,700 in the days of the Second Empire to 12,800 in 1901. The tiny railway from Bayonne to Biarritz transported half a million travelers twenty years ago, and a million and a half, or nearly that number, in 1903; the rest, being millionaires, or gypsies, came in automobiles or caravans. These figures tell eloquently of the prosperity of this "villégiature impériale." The great beauty of Biarritz is its setting. At Monte Carlo the setting is also beautiful, ravishingly beautiful, but the architecture, the terrace, Monaco's rock, and all the rest combine to make the pleasing "ensemble." At Biarritz the architecture of its Casino and the great hotels is not of an epoch-making beauty, neither are they so delightfully placed. It is the surrounding stage setting that is so lovely. Here the jagged shore line, the blue waves, the ample horizon seaward, are what make it all so charming. Biarritz as a watering-place has an all-the-year-round clientèle; in summer the Spanish and the French, succeeded in winter by Americans, Germans, and English--with a sprinkling of Russians at all times. Biarritz, like Pau, aside from being a really delightful winter resort, where one may escape the rigors of murky November to March in London, is becoming afflicted with a bad case of "sport fever." There are all kinds of sports, some of them reputable enough in their place, but the comic-opera fox-hunting which takes place at Pau and Biarritz is not one of them.... The picturesque "Plage des Basques" lies to the south of the town, bordered with high cliffs, which in turn are surmounted with terraces of villas. The charm of it all is incomparable. To the northwest stretches the limpid horizon of the Bay of Biscay, and to the south the snowy summits of the Pyrenees, and the adorable bays of Saint-Jean-de-Luz and Fontarabie, while behind, and to the eastward, lies the quaint country of the Basques, and the mountain trails into Spain in all their savage hardiness. The off-shore translucent waters of the Gulf of Gascony were the "Sinus Aquitanicus" of the ancients. A colossal rampart of rocks and sand dunes stretches all the way from the Gironde to the Bidassoa, without a harbor worthy of the name save at Bayonne and Saint-Jean-de-Luz. Here the Atlantic waves pound, in time of storm, with all the fury with which they break upon the rocky coasts of Brittany further north. Perhaps this would not be so, but for the fact that the Iberian coast to the southward runs almost at right angles with that of Gascony. As it is, while the climate is mild, Biarritz and the other cities on the coasts of the Gulf of Gascony have a fair proportion of what sailors, the world over, call "rough weather." The waters of the Gascon Gulf are not always angry; most frequently they are calm and blue, vivid with a translucence worthy of those of Capri, and it is this that makes the beach at Biarritz one of the most popular sea-bathing resorts in France to-day. It is a fashionable watering-place, but it is also, perhaps, the most beautifully disposed city to be found in all the round of the European coast line, its slightly curving slope dominated by a background terrace, decorative in itself, but delightfully set off with its fringe of dwelling-houses, hotels, and casinos. Ostend is superbly laid out, but it is dreary; Monte Carlo is beautiful, but it is ultra; while Trouville is constrained and affected. Biarritz has the best features of all these.... Saint-Jean-de-Luz had a population of ten thousand two centuries ago; to-day it has three thousand, and most of these take in boarders, or in one way or another cater to the hordes of visitors who have made it--or would, if they could have supprest its quiet Basque charm of coloring and character--a little Brighton. Not all is lost, but four hundred houses were razed in the mid-eighteenth century by a tempest, and the stable population began to creep away; only with recent years an influx of strangers has arrived for a week's or a month's stay to take their places--if idling butterflies of fashion or imaginary invalids can really take the place of a hardworking, industrious colony of fishermen, who thought no more of sailing away to the South Antarctic or the banks of Newfoundland in an eighty-ton whaler than they did of seining sardines from a shallop in the Gulf of Gascony at their doors. DOWN THE SAONE TO LYONS[A] [Footnote A: From "Pencillings by the Way." Published by Charles Scribner, 1852.] BY NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS The Saone is about the size of the Mohawk, but not half so beautiful; at least for the greater part of its course. Indeed, you can hardly compare American with European rivers, for the charm is of another description, quite. With us it is nature only, here it is almost all art. Our rivers are lovely, because the outline of the shore is graceful, and particularly because the vegetation is luxuriant. The hills are green, the foliage deep and lavish, the rocks grown over with vines or moss, the mountains in the distance covered with pines and other forest-trees; everything is wild, and nothing looks bare or sterile. The rivers of France are crowned on every height with ruins, and in the bosom of every valley lies a cluster of picturesque stone cottages; but the fields are naked, and there are no trees; the mountains are barren and brown, and everything looks as if the dwellings had been deserted by the people, and nature had at the same time gone to decay. I can conceive nothing more melancholy than the views upon the Saone, seen, as I saw them, tho vegetation is out everywhere, and the banks should be beautiful if ever. As we approached Lyons the river narrowed and grew bolder, and the last ten miles were enchanting. Naturally the shores at this part of the Saone are exceedingly like the highlands of the Hudson above West Point. Abrupt hills rise from the river's edge, and the windings are sharp and constant. But imagine the highlands of the Hudson crowned with antique chateaux, and covered to the very top with terraces and summer-houses and hanging-gardens, gravel-walks and beds of flowers, instead of wild pines and precipices, and you may get a very correct idea of the Saone above Lyons. You emerge from one of the dark passes of the river by a sudden turn, and there before you lies this large city, built on both banks, at the foot and on the sides of mountains. The bridges are fine, and the broad, crowded quays, all along the edges of the river, have a beautiful effect. There is a great deal of magnificence at Lyons, in the way of quays, promenades, and buildings.... I was glad to escape from the lower streets, and climb up the long staircases to the observatory that overhangs the town. From the base of this elevation the descent of the river is almost a precipice. The houses hang on the side of the steep hill, and their doors enter from the long alleys of stone staircases by which you ascend.... It was holy-week, and the church of Notre Dame de Fourvières, which stands on the summit of the hill, was crowded with people. We went in for a moment, and sat down on a bench to rest. My companion was a Swiss captain of artillery, who was a passenger in the boat, a very splendid fellow, with a mustache that he might have tied behind his ears. He had addrest me at the hotel, and proposed that we should visit the curiosities of the town together. He was a model of a manly figure, athletic, and soldier-like, and standing near him was to get the focus of all the dark eyes in the congregation. The new square tower stands at the side of the church, and rises to the height of perhaps sixty feet. The view from it is said to be one of the finest in the world. I have seen more extensive ones, but never one that comprehended more beauty and interest. Lyons lies at the foot, with the Saone winding through its bosom in abrupt curves; the Rhone comes down from the north on the other side of the range of mountains, and meeting the Saone in a broad stream below the town, they stretch off to the south, through a diversified landscape; the Alps rise from the east like the edges of a thunder-cloud, and the mountains of Savoy fill up the interval to the Rhone. All about the foot of the monument lie gardens, of exquisite cultivation; and above and below the city the villas of the rich; giving you altogether as delicious a nucleus for a broad circle of scenery as art and nature could create, and one sufficiently in contrast with the barrenness of the rocky circumference to enhance the charm, and content you with your position. Half way down the hill lies an old monastery, with a lovely garden walled in from the world. The river was covered with boats, the bells were ringing to church, the glorious old cathedral, so famous for its splendor, stood piled up, with its arches and gray towers, in the square below; the day was soft, sunny, and warm, and existence was a blessing. I leaned over the balustrade, I know not how long, looking down upon the scene about me; and I shall ever remember it as one of those few unalloyed moments, when the press of care was taken off my mind, and the chain of circumstances was strong enough to set aside both the past and the future, and leave me to the quiet enjoyment of the present. I have found such hours "few and far between." LYONS[A] [Footnote A: From a letter to his friend West.] BY THOMAS GRAY I take this opportunity to tell you that we are at the ancient and celebrated Lugdunum, a city situated upon the confluence of the Rhone and Saône (Arar, I should say) two people, who tho of tempers extremely unlike, think fit to join hands here, and make a little party to travel to the Mediterranean in company; the lady comes gliding along through the fruitful plains of Burgundy.... the gentleman runs all rough and roaring down from the mountains of Switzerland to meet her; and with all her soft airs she likes him never the worse; she goes through the middle of the city in state, and he passes incog, without the walls, but waits for her a little below. The houses here are so high, and the streets so narrow, as would be sufficient to render Lyons the dismalest place in the world, but the number of people, and the face of commerce diffused about it, are, at least, as sufficient to make it the liveliest: between these two sufficiencies, you will be in doubt what to think of it; so we shall leave the city, and proceed to its environs, which are beautiful beyond expression; it is surrounded with mountains, and those mountains all bedropped and bespeckled with houses, gardens, and plantations of the rich bourgeois, who have from thence a prospect of the city in the vale below on one hand, on the other the rich plains of the Lyonnois, with the rivers winding among them, and the Alps, with the mountains of Dauphiné, to bound the view. All yesterday morning we were busied in climbing up Mount Fourvière, where the ancient city stood perched at such a height, that nothing but the hopes of gain could certainly ever persuade their neighbors to pay them a visit. Here are the ruins of the emperors' palaces, that resided here, that is to say, Augustus and Severus; they consist in nothing but great masses of old wall, that have only their quality to make them respected. In a vineyard of the Minims are remains of a theater; the Fathers, whom they belong to, hold them in no esteem at all, and would have showed us their sacristy and chapel instead of them. The Ursuline Nuns have in their garden some Roman baths, but we having the misfortune to be men, they did not think proper to admit us. Hard by are eight arches of a most magnificent aqueduct, said to be erected by Antony, when his legions were quartered here. There are many other parts of it dispersed up and down the country, for it brought the water from a river many leagues off in La Forez. Here are remains too of Agrippa's seven great roads which met at Lyons; in some places they lie twelve feet deep in the ground. MARSEILLES[A] [Footnote A: From "Pictures from Italy," written in 1844] BY CHARLES DICKENS So we went on, until eleven at night, when we halted at the town of Aix (within two stages of Marseilles) to sleep. The hotel, with all the blinds and shutters closed to keep the light and heat out, was comfortable and airy next morning, and the town was very clean; but so hot, and so intensely light, that when I walked out at noon it was like coming suddenly from the darkened room into crisp blue fire. The air was so very clear, that distant hills and rocky points appeared within an hour's walk; while the town immediately at hand--with a kind of blue wind between me and it--seemed to be white hot, and to be throwing off a fiery air from its surface. We left this town toward evening, and took the road to Marseilles. A dusty road it was; the houses shut up close; and the vines powdered white. At nearly all the cottage doors, women were peeling and slicing onions into earthen bowls for supper. So they had been doing last night all the way from Avignon. We passed one or two shady dark châteaux, surrounded by trees, and embellished with cool basins of water: which were the more refreshing to behold, from the great scarcity of such residences on the road we had traveled. As we approached Marseilles, the road began to be covered with holiday people. Outside the public-houses were parties smoking, drinking, playing draughts and cards, and (once) dancing. But dust, dust, dust, everywhere. We went on, through a long, straggling, dirty suburb, thronged with people; having on our left a dreary slope of land, on which the country-houses of the Marseilles merchants, always staring white, are jumbled and heaped without the slightest order; backs, fronts, sides, and gables toward all points of the compass; until, at last, we entered the town. I was there, twice, or thrice afterward, in fair weather and foul; and I am afraid there is no doubt that it is a dirty and disagreeable place. But the prospect, from the fortified heights, of the beautiful Mediterranean, with, its lovely rocks and islands, is most delightful. These heights are a desirable retreat, for less picturesque reasons--as an escape from a compound of vile smells perpetually arising from a great harbor full of stagnant water, and befouled by the refuse of innumerable ships with all sorts of cargoes, which, in hot weather, is dreadful in the last degree. There were foreign sailors, of all nations, in the streets; with red shirts, blue shirts, buff shirts, tawny shirts, and shirts of orange color; with red caps, blue caps, green caps, great beards, and no beards; in Turkish turbans, glazed English hats, and Neapolitan headdresses. There were the townspeople sitting in clusters on the pavement, or airing themselves on the tops of their houses, or walking up and down the closest and least airy of boulevards; and there were crowds of fierce-looking people of the lower sort, blocking up the way, constantly. In the very heart of all this stir and uproar, was the common madhouse; a low, contracted, miserable building, looking straight upon the street, without the smallest screen or courtyard; where chattering madmen and mad-women were peeping out, through rusty bars, at the staring faces below, while the sun, darting fiercely aslant into their little cells, seemed to dry up their brains, and worry them, as if they were baited by a pack of dogs. We were pretty well accommodated at the Hôtel du Paradis, situated in a narrow street of very high houses, with a hairdresser's shop opposite, exhibiting in one of its windows two full-length waxen ladies, twirling around and around: which so enchanted the hairdresser himself, that he and his family sat in armchairs, and in cool undresses, on the pavement outside, enjoying the gratification of the passers-by, with lazy dignity. The family had retired to rest when we went to bed, at midnight; but the hairdresser (a corpulent man, in drab slippers) was still sitting there, with his legs stretched out before him, and evidently couldn't bear to have the shutters put up. Next day we went down to the harbor, where the sailors of all nations were discharging and taking in cargoes of all kinds: fruits, wines, oils, silks, stuffs, velvets, and every manner of merchandise. Taking one of a great number of lively little boats with gay-striped awnings, we rowed away, under the sterns of great ships, under tow-ropes and cables, against and among other boats, and very much too near the sides of vessels that were faint with oranges, to the "Marie Antoinette," a handsome steamer bound for Genoa, lying near the mouth of the harbor. By and by, the carriage, that unwieldy "trifle from the Pantechnicon," on a flat barge, bumping against everything, and giving occasion for a prodigious quantity of oaths and grimaces, came stupidly alongside; and by five o'clock we were steaming out in the open sea. The vessel was beautifully clean; the meals were served under an awning on deck; the night was calm and clear; the quiet beauty of the sea and sky unspeakable. THE LITTLE REPUBLIC OF ANDORRA[A] [Footnote A: From "Castles and Châteaux of Old Navarre." By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, L.C. Page & Co. Copyright, 1907.] BY FRANCIS MILTOUN The little republic of Andorra, hidden away in the fastnesses of the Pyrenees between France and Spain, its allegiance divided between the bishop of Urgel in Spain and the French government, is a relic of medievalism which will probably never fall before the swift advance of twentieth century ideas of progress. At least it will never be overrun by automobiles. From French or Spanish territory this little unknown land is to be reached by what is called a "wagon-way," but the road is so bad that the sure-footed little donkeys of the Pyrenees are by far the best means of locomotion, unless one would go up on foot, a matter of twenty kilometers or more from Hospitalet in Spanish or Porté in French territory. The political status of Andorra is most peculiar, but since it has endured without interruption (and this in spite of wars and rumors of wars), for six centuries, it seems to be all that is necessary. A relic of the Middle Ages, Andorra-Viella, the city, and its six thousand inhabitants live in their lonesome retirement much as they did in feudal times, except for the fact that an occasional newspaper smuggled in from France or Spain gives a new topic of conversation. This paternal governmental arrangement which cares for the welfare of the people of Andorra, the city and the province, is the outcome of a treaty signed by Pierre d'Urg and Roger-Bernhard, the third Comte de Foix, giving each other reciprocal rights. There's nothing very strange about this; it was common custom in the Middle Ages for lay and ecclesiastical seigneurs to make such compacts, but the marvel is that it has endured so well with governments rising and falling all about, and grafters and pretenders and dictators ruling every bailiwick in which they can get a foot-hold. Feudal government may have had some bad features, but certainly the republics and democracies of to-day, to say nothing of absolute monarchies, have some, too. The ways of access between France and Andorra are numerous enough; but of the eight only two--and those not all the way--are really practicable for wheeled traffic. The others are mere trails, or mule-paths. The people of Andorra, as might be inferred, are all ardent Catholics; and for a tiny country like this to have a religious seminary, as that at Urgel, is remarkable of itself. Public instruction is of late making headway, but half a century ago the shepherd and laboring population--perhaps nine-tenths of the whole--had little learning or indeed need for it. Their manners and customs are simple and severe and little has changed in modern life from that of their great-great-great-grandfathers. Each family has a sort of a chief or official head, and the eldest son always looks for a wife among the families of his own class. Seldom, if ever, does the married son quit the paternal roof, so large households are the rule. In a family where there are only girls, the eldest is the heir, and she may only marry with a cadet of another family by his joining his name with hers. Perhaps it is this that originally set the fashion for hyphenated names. The Andorrans are generally robust and well built; the maladies of more populous regions are practically unknown among them. This speaks much for the simple life! Costumes and dress are rough and simple and of heavy woolens, clipt from the sheep and woven on the spot. Public officers, the few representatives of officialdom who exist, alone make any pretense at following the fashions. The women occupy a very subordinate position in public affairs. They may not be present at receptions and functions and not even at mass when it is said by the bishop. Crime is infrequent, and simple, light punishments alone are inflicted. Things are not so uncivilized in Andorra as one might think! In need all men may be called upon to serve as soldiers, and each head of a family must have a rifle and ball at hand at all times. In other words, he must be able to protect himself against marauders. This does away with the necessity of a large standing police force. Commerce and industry are free of all taxation in Andorra, and customs dues apply on but few articles. For this reason there is not a very heavy tax on a people who are mostly cultivators and graziers. There is little manufacturing industry, as might be supposed, and what is made--save by hand and in single examples--is of the most simple character. "Made in Germany" or "Tabriqué en Belgique" are the marks one sees on most of the common manufactured articles. The Andorrans are a simple, proud, gullible people, who live to-day in the past, of the past and for the past; "Les vallées et souverainetés de l'Andorre" are to them to-day just what they always were--a little world of their own. GAVARNIE[A] [Footnote A: From "A Tour Through the Pyrenees." By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, Henry Holt & Co. Copyright, 1873.] BY HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE From Luz to Gavarnie is eighteen miles. It is enjoined upon every living creature able to mount a horse, a mule, or any quadruped whatever, to visit Gavarnie; in default of other beasts, he should, putting aside all shame, bestride an ass. Ladies and convalescents are there in sedan-chairs. Otherwise, think what a figure you will make on your return. "You come from the Pyrenees; you've seen Gavarnie?" "No." What then did you go to the Pyrenees for? You hang your head, and your friend triumphs, especially if he was bored at Gavarnie. You undergo a description of Gavarnie after the last edition of the guide-book. Gavarnie is a sublime sight; tourists go sixty miles out of their way to see it; the Duchess d'Angouléme had herself carried to the furthest rocks. Lord Bute, when he saw it for the first time, cried: "If I were now at the extremity of India, and suspected the existence of what I see at this moment, I should immediately leave in order to enjoy and admire it!" You are overwhelmed with quotations and supercilious smiles; you are convinced of laziness, of dulness of mind, and, as certain English travelers say, of unesthetic insensibility. There are but two resources: to learn a description by heart, or to make the journey. I have made the journey, and am going to give the description. We leave at six o'clock in the morning, by the road to Scia, in the fog, without seeing at first anything beyond confused forms of trees and rocks. At the end of a quarter of an hour, we hear along the pathway a noise of sharp cries drawing near; it was a funeral procession coming from Scia. Two men bore a small coffin under a white shroud; behind came four herdsmen in long cloaks and brown capuchons, silent, with bent heads; four women followed in black mantles. It was they who uttered those monotonous and piercing lamentations; one knew not if they were wailing or praying. They walked with long steps through the cold mist, without stopping or looking at any one, and were going to bury the poor body in the cemetery at Luz. At Scia the road passes over a small bridge very high up, which commands another bridge, gray and abandoned. The double tier of arches bends gracefully over the blue torrent; meanwhile a pale light already floats in the diaphanous mist; a golden gauze undulates above the Gave; the aërial veil grows thin and will soon vanish. Nothing can convey the idea of this light, so youthful, timid, and smiling, which glitters like the bluish wings of a dragon-fly that is pursued and is taken captive in a net of fog. Beneath, the boiling water is engulfed in a narrow conduit and leaps like a mill-race. The column of foam, thirty feet high, falls with a furious din, and its glaucous waves, heaped together in the deep ravine, dash against each other and are broken upon a line of fallen rocks. Other enormous rocks, débris of the same mountain, hang above the road, their squared heads crowned with brambles for hair; ranged in impregnable line, they seem to watch the torments of the Gave, which their brothers hold beneath themselves crusht and subdued. We turn a second bridge and enter the plain of Gèdrés, verdant and cultivated, where the hay is in cocks; they are harvesting; our horses walk between two hedges of hazel; we go along by orchards; but the mountain is ever near; the guide shows us a rock three times the height of a man, which, two years ago, rolled down and demolished a house. We encounter several singular caravans: a band of young priests in black hats, black gloves, black cassocks tucked up, black stockings, very apparent, novices in horsemanship who bound at every step, like the Gave; a big, jolly, round man, in a sedan-chair, his hands crossed over his belly, who looks on us with a paternal air, and reads his newspaper; three ladies of sufficiently ripe age, very slender, very lean, very stiff, who, for dignity's sake, set their beasts on a trot as we draw near them. The cicisbeo is a bony cartilaginous gentleman, fixt perpendicularly on his saddle like a telegraph-pole. We hear a harsh clucking, as of a choked hen, and we recognize the English tongue. Beyond Gèdres is a wild valley called Chaos, which is well named. After a quarter of an hour's journey there, the trees disappear, then the juniper and the box, and finally the moss. The Gave is no longer seen; all noises are hushed. It is a dead solitude peopled with wrecks. The avalanches of rocks and crusht flint have come down from the summit to the very bottom. The horrid tide, high and a quarter of a league in length, spreads out like waves its myriads of sterile stones, and the inclined sheet seems still to glide toward inundating the gorge. These stones are shattered and pulverized; their living fractures and thin, harsh points wound the eye; they are still bruising and crushing each other. Not a bush, not a spear of grass; the arid grayish train burns beneath a sun of brass; its débris are scorched to a dull hue, as in a furnace. A hundred paces further on, the aspect of the valley becomes formidable. Troops of mammoths and mastadons in stone lie crouching over the eastern declivity, one above another, and heaped up over the whole slope. These colossal ridges shine with a tawny hue like iron rust; the most enormous of them drink the water of the river at their base. They look as if warming their bronzed skin in the sun, and sleep, turned over, stretched out on their side, resting in all attitudes, and always gigantic and frightful. Their deformed paws are curled up; their bodies half buried in the earth; their monstrous backs rest one upon another. When you enter into the midst of the prodigious band, the horizon disappears, the blocks rise fifty feet into the air; the road winds painfully among the overhanging masses; men and horses seem but dwarfs; these rusted edges mount in stages to the very summit, and the dark hanging army seems ready to fall on the human insects which come to trouble its sleep. Once upon a time, the mountain, in a paroxysm of fever, shook its summits like a cathedral that is falling in. A few points resisted, and their embattled turrets are drawn out in line on the crest; but their layers are dislocated, their sides creviced, their points jagged. The whole shattered ridge totters. Beneath them the rock fails suddenly in a living and still bleeding wound. The splinters are lower down, strewn over the declivity. The tumbled rocks are sustained one upon another, and man to-day passes in safety amidst the disaster. But what a day was that of the ruin: It is not very ancient, perhaps of the sixth century, and the year of the terrible earthquake told of by Gregory of Tours. If a man could without perishing have seen the summits split, totter and fall, the two seas of rock come bounding into the gorge, meet one another and grind each other amidst a shower of sparks, he would have looked upon the grandest spectacle ever seen by human eyes. On the west, a perpendicular mole, crannied like an old ruin, lifts itself straight up toward the sky. A leprosy of yellowish moss has incrusted its pores, and has clothed it all over with a sinister livery. This livid robe upon this parched stone has a splendid effect. Nothing is uglier than the chalky flints that are drawn from the quarry; just dug up, they seem cold and damp in their whitish shroud; they are not used to the sun; they make a contrast with the rest. But the rock that has lived in the air for ten thousand years, where the light has every day laid on and melted its metallic tints, is the friend of the sun, and carries its mantle upon its shoulders; it has no need of a garment of verdure; if it suffers from parasitic vegetations, it sticks them to its sides and imprints them with its colors. The threatening tones with which it clothes itself suits the free sky, the naked landscape, the powerful heat that environs it; it is alive like a plant; only it is of another age, one more severe and stronger than that in which we vegetate. Gavarnie is a very ordinary village, commanding a view of the amphitheater we are come to see. After you have left it, it is still necessary to go three miles through a melancholy plain, half buried in sand by the winter inundations; the waters of the Gave are muddy and dull; a cold wind whistles from the amphitheater; the glaciers, strewn with mud and stones, are stuck to the declivity like patches of dirty plaster. The mountains are bald and ravined by cascades; black cones of scattered firs climb them like routed soldiers; a meager and wan turf wretchedly clothes their mutilated heads. The horses ford the Gave stumblingly, chilled by the water coming from the snows. In this wasted solitude you meet, all of a sudden, the most smiling parterre. A throng of the lovely iris crowds itself into the bed of a dried torrent; the sun stripes with rays of gold their velvety petals of tender blue; and the eye follows over the whole plain the folds of the rivulet of flowers. We climb a last eminence, sown with iris and with stones. There is a hut where you breakfast and leave the horses. You arm yourself with a stout stick, and descend upon the glaciers of the amphitheater. These glaciers are very ugly, very dirty, very uneven, very slippery; at every step you run the risk of falling, and if you fall, it is on sharp stones or into deep holes. They look very much like heaps of old plaster-work, and those who have admired them must have a stock of admiration for sale. The water has pierced them so that you walk upon bridges of snow. These bridges have the appearance of kitchen air-holes; the water is swallowed up in a very low archway, and, when you look closely, you get a distinct sight of a black hole. After the glaciers we find a sloping esplanade; we climb for ten minutes bruising our feet upon fragments of sharp rock. Since leaving the hut we have not lifted our eyes, in order to restore for ourselves an unbroken sensation. Here at last we look. A wall of granite crowned with snow hollows itself before us in a gigantic amphitheater. This amphitheater is twelve hundred feet high, nearly three miles in circumference, three tiers of perpendicular walls, and in each tier thousands of steps. The valley ends there; the wall is a single block and impregnable. The other summits might fall, but its massive layers would not be moved. The mind is overwhelmed by the idea of a stability that can not be shaken and an assured eternity. There is the boundary of two countries and two races; this it is that Roland wanted to break, when with a sword-stroke he opened a breach in the summit. But the immense wound disappeared in the immensity of the unconquered wall. Three sheets of snow are spread out over the three tiers of layers. The sun falls with all its force upon this virginal robe without being able to make it shine. It preserves its dead whiteness. All this grandeur is austere; the air is chilled beneath the noonday rays; great, damp shadows creep along the foot of the walls. It is the everlasting winter and the nakedness of the desert. The sole inhabitants are the cascades assembled to form the Gave. The streamlets of water come by thousands from the highest layer, leap from step to step, cross their stripes of foam, unite and fall by a dozen brooks that slide from the last layer in flaky streaks to lose themselves in the glaciers of the bottom. The thirteenth cascade on the left is twelve hundred and sixty-six feet high. It falls slowly, like a dropping cloud, or the unfolding of a muslin veil; the air softens its fall; the eye follows complacently the graceful undulation of the beautiful airy veil. It glides the length of the rock, and seems to float rather than to fall. The sun shines, through its plume, with the softest and loveliest splendor. It reaches the bottom like a bouquet of slender waving feathers, and springs backward in a silver dust; the fresh and transparent mist swings about the rock it bathes, and its rebounding train mounts lightly along the courses. No stir in the air; no noise, no living creature in the solitude. You hear only the monotonous murmur of the cascades, resembling the rustle of the leaves that the wind stirs in the forest. On our return, we seated ourselves at the door of the hut. It is a poor, squat little house, heavily supported upon thick walls; the knotty joists of the ceiling retain their bark. It is indeed necessary that it should be able to stand out alone against the snows of winter. You find everywhere the imprint of the terrible months it has gone through. Two dead fir-trees stand erect at the door. The garden, three feet square, is defended by enormous walls of piled-up slates. The low and black stable leaves neither foot-hold nor entry for the winds. A lean colt was seeking a little grass among the stones. A small bull, with surly air, looked at us out of the sides of his eyes; the animals, the trees and the site, wore a threatening or melancholy aspect. But in the clefts of a rock were growing some admirable buttercups, lustrous and splendid, which looked as if painted by a ray of sunshine. At the village we met our companions of the journey who had sat down there. The good tourists get fatigued, stop ordinarily at the inn, take a substantial dinner, have a chair brought to the door, and digest while looking at the amphitheater, which from there appears about as high as a house. After this they return, praising the sublime sight, and very glad that they have come to the Pyrenees. VI BELGIUM BRUGES[A] [Footnote A: From "Cities of Belgium."] BY GRANT ALLEN The Rhine constituted the great central waterway of medieval Europe; the Flemish towns were its ports and its manufacturing centers. They filled in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries much the same place that Liverpool, Glasgow, Manchester, and Birmingham fill in the nineteenth. Many causes contributed to this result. Flanders, half independent under its own counts, occupied a middle position, geographically and politically, between France and the Empire; it was comparatively free from the disastrous wars which desolated both these countries, and in particular it largely escaped the long smouldering quarrel between French and English, which so long retarded the development of the former. Its commercial towns, again, were not exposed on the open sea to the attacks of pirates or hostile fleets, but were safely ensconced in inland flats, reached by rivers or canals, almost inaccessible to maritime enemies. Similar conditions elsewhere early ensured peace and prosperity for Venice. The canal system of Holland and Belgium began to be developed as early as the twelfth century (at first for drainage), and was one leading cause of the commercial importance of the Flemish cities in the fourteenth. In so flat a country, locks are all but unnecessary. The two towns which earliest rose to greatness in the Belgian area were thus Bruges and Ghent; they possest in the highest degree the combined advantages of easy access to the sea and comparative inland security. Bruges, in particular, was one of the chief stations of the Hanseatic League, which formed an essentially commercial alliance for the mutual protection of the northern trading centers. By the fourteenth century Bruges had thus become in the north what Venice was in the south, the capital of commerce. Trading companies from all the surrounding countries had their "factories" in the town, and every European king or prince of importance kept a resident minister accredited to the merchant republic. Some comprehension of the mercantile condition of Europe in general during the Middle Ages is necessary in order to understand the early importance and wealth of the Flemish cities. Southern Europe, and in particular Italy, was then still the seat of all higher civilization, more especially of the trade in manufactured articles and objects of luxury. Florence, Venice and Genoa ranked as the polished and learned cities of the world. Further east, again, Constantinople still remained in the hands of the Greek emperors, or, during the Crusades, of their Latin rivals. A brisk trade existed via the Mediterranean between Europe and India or the nearer East. This double stream of traffic ran along two main routes--one, by the Rhine, from Lombardy and Rome; the other, by sea, from Venice, Genoa, Florence, Constantinople, the Levant, and India. On the other hand, France was still but a half civilized country, with few manufactures and little external trade; while England was an exporter of raw produce, chiefly wool, like Australia in our own time. The Hanseatic merchants of Cologne held the trade of London; those of Wisby and Lübeck governed that of the Baltic; Bruges, as head of the Hansea, was in close connection with all of these, as well as with Hull, York, Novgorod, and Bergen. The position of the Flemish towns in the fourteenth century was thus not wholly unlike that of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston at the present day; they stood as intermediaries between the older civilized countries, like Italy or the Greek empire, and the newer producers of raw material, like England, North Germany, and the Baltic towns. In a lost corner of the great lowland flat of Flanders, defended from the sea by an artificial dike, and at the point of intersection of an intricate network of canals and waterways, there arose in the early Middle Ages a trading town, known in Flemish as Brugge, in French as Bruges (that is to say, The Bridge), from a primitive structure that here crossed the river. A number of bridges now span the sluggish streams. All of them open in the middle to admit the passage of shipping. Bruges stood originally on a little river, Reye, once navigable, now swallowed by canals; and the Reye flowed into the Zwin, long silted up, but then the safest harbor in the Low Countries. At first the capital of a petty Count, this land-locked internal harbor grew in time to be the Venice of the North, and to gather round its quays or at its haven of Damme, the ships and merchandise of all neighboring peoples. Already in 1200 it ranked as the central mart of the Hanseatic League. It was the port of entry for English wool and Russian furs: the port of departure for Flemish broadcloths, laces, tapestries, and linens. Canals soon connected it with Ghent, Dunkirk, Sluys, Furnes and Ypres. Its nucleus lay in a little knot of buildings about the Grand Place and the Hotel de Ville, stretching out to the Cathedral and the Dyver; thence it spread on all sides till, in 1362, it filled the whole space within the existing ramparts, now largely abandoned or given over to fields and gardens. It was the wealthiest town of Europe, outside Italy. The decline of the town was due partly to the break-up of the Hanseatic system; partly to the rise of English ports and manufacturing towns; but still more, and especially as compared with our Flemish cities, to the silting of the Zwin, and the want of adaption in its waterways to the needs of great ships and modern navigation. The old sea entrance to Bruges was through the Zwin, by way of Sluys and Kadzand; up that channel came the Venetian merchant fleet and the Flemish galleys, to the port of Damme. By 1470, it ceased to be navigable for large vessels. The later canal is still open, but as it passes through what is now Dutch territory, it is little used; nor is it adapted to any save ships of comparatively small burden. Another canal, suitable for craft of 500 tons, leads through Belgian territory to Ostend; but few vessels now navigate it, and those for the most part only for local trade. The town has shrunk to half its former size, and has only a quarter of its medieval population. The commercial decay of Bruges, however, has preserved its charm for the artist, the archeologist, and the tourist; its sleepy streets and unfrequented quays are among the most picturesque sights of bustling and industrial modern Belgium. The great private palaces, indeed, are almost all destroyed; but many public buildings remain, and the domestic architecture is quaint and pretty. Bruges was the mother of arts in Flanders: Jan van Eyck lived here from 1428 to 1440. Memling, probably from 1477 till 1494. Caxton, the first English printer, lived as a merchant at Bruges, in the Domus Anglorum or English factory, from 1446 to 1476, and probably put in the press here the earliest English book printed, tho strong grounds have been adduced in favor of Cologne. Colard Mansion, the great printer of Bruges at that date, was one of the leaders in the art of typography.... The very tall square tower which faces you as you enter the Grand Place is the Belfry, the center and visible embodiment of the town of Bruges. The Grand Place itself was the forum and meeting place of the soldier citizens, who were called to arms by the chimes in the Belfry. The center of the place is therefore appropriately occupied by a colossal statue group, modern, of Pieter de Coninck and Jan Breidel, the leaders of the citizens of Bruges at the Battle of the Spurs before the walls of Courtrai in 1302, a conflict which secured the freedom of Flanders from the interference of the Kings of France. The group is by Devigne. The reliefs on the pedestal represent scenes from the battle and its antecedents. The majestic Belfry itself represents the first beginnings of freedom in Bruges. Leave to erect such a bell-tower, both as a mark of independence and to summon the citizens to arms, was one of the first privileges which every Teutonic trading town desired to wring from its feudal lord. This brick tower, the pledge of municipal rights, was begun in 1291, to replace an earlier one of wood, and finished about a hundred years later; the octagon, in stone at the summit, which holds the bell, having been erected in 1393-96. It consists of three stories, the two lower of which are square and flanked by balconies with turrets; the windows below are of the simple early Gothic style, but show a later type of architecture in the octagon. The niche in the center contains the Virgin and Child, a group restored after being destroyed by the French revolutionists. Below it on either side are smaller figures holding escutcheons. From the balcony between these last, the laws and the rescripts of the counts were read aloud to the people assembled in the square. The Belfry can be ascended by steps. Owing to the force of the wind, it leans slightly to the southeast. The view from the top is very extensive and striking. It embraces the greater part of the Plain of Flanders, with its towns and villages. The country, tho quite flat, looks beautiful when thus seen. In early times, however, the look-out from the summit was of practical use for purposes of observation, military or maritime. It commanded the river, the Zwin, and the sea approach by Sluys and Damme; the course of the various canals; and the roads to Ghent, Antwerp, Tournai, and Courtrai. The Belfry contains a famous set of chimes, the mechanism of which may be inspected by the visitor. He will have frequent opportunities of hearing the beautiful and mellow carillon, perhaps to excess. The existing bells date only from 1680: the mechanism from 1784. A PEN PICTURE OF BRUGES[A] [Footnote A: From "The Paris Sketch Book."] BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY It is the quaintest and prettiest of all the quaint and pretty towns I have seen. A painter might spend months here, and wander from church to church, and admire old towers and pinnacles, tall gables, bright canals, and pretty little patches of green garden and moss-grown wall, that reflect in the clear quiet water. Before the inn-window is a garden, from which in the early morning issues a most wonderful odor of stocks and wallflowers; next comes a road with trees of admirable green; numbers of little children are playing in this road (the place is so clean that they may roll on it all day without soiling their pinafores), and on the other side of the trees are little old-fashioned, dumpy, whitewashed, red-tiled houses. A poorer landscape to draw never was known, nor a pleasanter to see--the children especially, who are inordinately fat and rosy. Let it be remembered, too, that here we are out of the country of ugly women; the expression of the face is almost uniformly gentle and pleasing, and the figures of the women, wrapt in long black monk-like cloaks and hoods, very picturesque. No wonder there are so many children: the "Guide-book" (omniscient Mr. Murray!) says there are fifteen thousand paupers in the town, and we know how such multiply. How the deuce do their children look so fat and rosy? By eating dirt-pies, I suppose. I saw a couple making a very nice savory one, and another employed in gravely sticking strips of stick betwixt the pebbles at the house-door, and so making for herself a stately garden. The men and women don't seem to have much more to do. There are a couple of tall chimneys at either suburb of the town, where no doubt manufactories are at work, but within the walls everybody seems decently idle. We have been, of course, abroad to visit the lions. The tower in the Grand Place is very fine, and the bricks of which it is built do not yield a whit in color to the best stone. The great building round this tower is very like the pictures of the Ducal Palace at Venice; and there is a long market area, with columns down the middle, from which hung shreds of rather lean-looking meat, that would do wonders under the hands of Cattermole or Haghe. In the tower there is a chime of bells that keep ringing perpetually. They not only play tunes of themselves, and every quarter of an hour, but an individual performs selections from popular operas on them at certain periods of the morning, afternoon, and evening. I have heard to-day "Suoni la Tromba," "Son Vergin Vezzosa," from the "Puritani," and other airs, and very badly they were played too; for such a great monster as a tower-bell can not be expected to imitate Madame Grisi or even Signor Lablache. Other churches indulge in the same amusement, so that one may come here and live in melody all day or night, like the young woman in Moore's "Lalla Rookh." In the matter of art, the chief attractions of Bruges are the pictures of Memling, that are to be seen in the churches, the hospital, and the picture-gallery of the place. There are no more pictures of Rubens to be seen, and, indeed, in the course of a fortnight, one has had quite enough of the great man and his magnificent, swaggering canvases. What a difference is here with simple Memling and the extraordinary creations of his pencil! The hospital is particularly rich in them; and the legend there is that the painter, who had served Charles the Bold in his war against the Swiss, and his last battle and defeat, wandered back wounded and penniless to Bruges, and here found cure and shelter. This hospital is a noble and curious sight. The great hall is almost as it was in the twelfth century; it is spanned by Saxon arches, and lighted by a multiplicity of Gothic windows of all sizes; it is very lofty, clean, and perfectly well ventilated; a screen runs across the middle of the room, to divide the male from the female patients, and we were taken to examine each ward, where the poor people seemed happier than possibly they would have been in health and starvation without it. Great yellow blankets were on the iron beds, the linen was scrupulously clean, glittering pewter-jugs and goblets stood by the side of each patient, and they were provided with godly books (to judge from the building), in which several were reading at leisure. Honest old comfortable nuns, in queer dresses of blue, black, white, and flannel, were bustling through the room, attending to the wants of the sick. I saw about a dozen of these kind women's faces; one was young,--all were healthy and cheerful. One came with bare blue arms and a great pile of linen from an out-house--such a grange as Cedric the Saxon might have given to a guest for the night. A couple were in a laboratory, a tall, bright, clean room, 500 years old at least. "We saw you were not very religious," said one of the old ladies, with a red, wrinkled, good-humored face, "by your behavior yesterday in chapel." And yet we did not laugh and talk as we used at college, but were profoundly affected by the scene that we saw there. It was a fête-day; a work of Mozart was sung in the evening--not well sung, and yet so exquisitely tender and melodious, that it brought tears into our eyes. There were not above twenty people in the church; all, save three or four, were women in long black cloaks. I took them for nuns at first. They were, however, the common people of the town, very poor indeed, doubtless, for the priest's box that was brought round was not added to by most of them, and their contributions were but two-cent pieces--five of these go to a penny; but we know the value of such, and can tell the exact worth of a poor woman's mite! The box-bearer did not seem at first willing to accept our donation--we were strangers and heretics; however, I held out my hand, and he came perforce as it were. Indeed it had only a franc in it; but "que voulez vous?" I had been drinking a bottle of Rhine wine that day, and how was I to afford more? The Rhine wine is dear in this country, and costs four francs a bottle. Well, the service proceeded. Twenty poor women, two Englishmen, four ragged beggars, cowering on the steps; and there was the priest at the altar, in a great robe of gold and damask, two little boys in white surplices serving him, holding his robe as he rose and bowed, and the money-gatherer swinging his censer, and filling the little chapel with smoke. The music pealed with wonderful sweetness; you could see the prim white heads of the nuns in their gallery. The evening light streamed down upon old statues of saints and carved brown stalls, and lighted up the head of the golden-haired Magdalen in a picture of the entombment of Christ. Over the gallery, and, as it were, a kind protectress to the poor below, stood the statue of the Virgin. GHENT[A] [Footnote A: From "Cities of Belgium."] BY GRANT ALLEN Flanders owes everything to its water communications. At the junction of the Schelde with the Lys and Lei, there grew up in the very early Middle Ages a trading town, named Gent in Flemish, and Gand in French, but commonly Anglicized as Ghent. It lay on a close network of rivers and canals, formed partly by these two main streams, and partly by the minor channels of the Lieve and the Moere, which together intersect it into several islands. Such a tangle of inland waterways, giving access to the sea and to Bruges, Courtrai, and Tournai, as well as less directly to Antwerp and Brussels, ensured the rising town in early times considerable importance. It formed the center of a radiating commerce. Westward, its main relations were with London and English wool ports; eastward with Cologne, Maastricht, the Rhine towns, and Italy. Ghent was always the capital of East Flanders, as Bruges or Ypres were of the Western province; and after the Counts lost possession of Arras and Artois, it became in the thirteenth century their principal residence and the metropolis of the country.... Early in the fourteenth century, the burghers of Ghent, under their democratic chief, Jacob or Jacques Van Artevelde, attained practical independence. Till 1322, the counts and people of Flanders had been united in their resistance to the claims of France; but with the accession of Count Louis of Nevers, the aspect of affairs changed. Louis was French by education, sympathies, and interests, and artistocratic by nature; he sought to curtail the liberties of the Flemish towns, and to make himself despotic. The wealthy and populous burgher republics resisted and in 1337 Van Artevelde was appointed Captain of Ghent. Louis fled to France and asked the aid of Philip of Valois. Thereupon, Van Artevelde made himself the ally of Edward III. of England, then beginning his war with France; but as the Flemings did not like entirely to cast off their allegiance--a thing repugnant to medieval sentiment--Van Artevelde persuaded Edward to put forward his trumped-up claim to the crown of France, and thus induced the towns to transfer their fealty from Philip to his English rival. It was therefore in his character as King of France that Edward came to Flanders. The alliance thus formed between the great producer of raw wool, England, and the great manufacturer of woolen goods, Ghent, proved of immense importance to both parties. But as Count Louis sided with Philip of Valois, the breach between the democracy of Ghent and its nominal soverign now became impassable. Van Artevelde held supreme power in Ghent and Flanders for nine years--the golden age of Flemish commerce--and was treated on equal terms by Edward, who stopt at Ghent as his guest for considerable periods. But he was opposed by a portion of the citizens, and his suggestion that the Black Prince, son of Edward III., should be elected Count of Flanders, proved so unpopular with his enemies that he was assassinated by one of them, Gerald Denys. The town and states immediately repudiated the murder; and the alliance which Van Artevelde had brought about still continued. It had far-reaching results; the woolen industry was introduced by Edward into the Eastern Counties of England, and Ghent had risen meanwhile to be the chief manufacturing city of Europe. The quarrel between the democratic weavers and their exiled counts was still carried on by Philip van Artevelde, the son of Jacques, and godson of Queen Philippa of England, herself a Hainaulter. Under his rule, the town continued to increase in wealth and population. But the general tendency of later medieval Europe toward centralized despotisms as against urban republics was too strong in the end for free Ghent. In 1381, Philip was appointed dictator by the democratic party, in the war against the Count, son of his father's opponent, whom he repelled with great slaughter in a battle near Bruges. He then made himself Regent of Flanders. But Count Louis obtained the aid of Charles VI. of France, and defeated and killed Philip van Artevelde at the disastrous battle of Roosebeke in 1382. That was practically the end of local freedom in Flanders. Tho the cities continued to revolt against their sovereigns from time to time, they were obliged to submit for the most part to their Count and to the Burgundian princes who inherited from him by marriage. The subsequent history of Ghent is that of the capital of the Burgundian Dukes, and of the House of Austria. Here the German king, Maximilian, afterward Emperor, married Mary of Burgundy, the heiress of the Netherlands; and here Charles V. was born in the palace of the Counts. It was his principal residence, and he was essentially a Fleming.... The real interest of the Cathedral centers, not in St. Bavon, nor in his picture by Rubens, but in the great polyptych of the Adoration of the Lamb, the masterpiece of Jan van Eyck and his brother Hubert, which forms in a certain sense the point of departure for the native art of the Netherlands.... Stand before the west front at a little distance, to examine the simple but massive architecture of the tower and façade. The great portal has been robbed of the statues which once adorned its niches. Three have been "restored"; they represent, center, the Savior; at the left, the patron, St. Bavon, recognizable by his falcon, his sword as duke, and his book as monk; he wears armor, with a ducal robe and cap above it; at the right, St. John the Baptist, the earlier patron. Then, walk to the right, round the south side, to observe the external architecture of the nave, aisles and choir. The latter has the characteristic rounded or apsidal termination of Continental Gothic, whereas English Gothic usually has a square end. Enter by the south portal. The interior, with single aisles and short transepts (Early Gothic) is striking for its simple dignity, its massive pillars, and its high arches, tho the undeniably noble effect of the whole is somewhat marred to English eyes by the unusual appearance of the unadorned brick walls and vaulting. The pulpit, by Delvaux (1745), partly in oak, partly in marble, represents Truth revealing the Christian Faith to astonished Paganism, figured as an old and outworn man. It is a model of all that should be avoided in plastic or religious art. The screen which separates the choir from the transepts is equally unfortunate. The apsidal end of the Choir, however, with its fine modern stained glass, forms a very pleasing feature in the general coup d'oeil.... The sixth chapel (of the Vydts family) contains the famous altar piece of the Adoration of the Lamb, by Hubert and Jan van Eyck, to study which is the chief object of a visit to Ghent. See it more than once, and examine it carefully. Ask the sacristan to let you sit before it for some time in quiet or he will hurry you on. You must observe it in close detail. Taking it in its entirety, then, the altar-piece, when opened, is a great mystical poem of the Eucharist and the Sacrifice of the Lamb, with the Christian folk, both Church and World, adoring. The composition contains over 200 figures. Many of them, which I have not here identified, can be detected by a closer inspection, which, however, I will leave to the reader. Now, ask the sacristan to shut the wings. They are painted on the outer side (all a copy) mainly in grisaille, or in very low tones of color, as is usual in such cases, so as to allow the jewel-like brilliancy of the internal picture to burst upon the observer the moment the altar-piece is opened. Old Ghent occupied for the most part the island which extends from the Palais de Justice on one side to the Botanical Gardens on the other. This island, bounded by the Lys, the Schelde, and an ancient canal, includes almost all the principal buildings of the town, such as the Cathedral, St. Nicholas, the Hôtel-dé-Ville, the Belfry, and St. Jacques, as well as the chief Places, such as the Marché aux Grains, the Marché aux Herbes, and the Marché du Vendredi. It also extends beyond the Lys to the little island on which is situated the church of St. Michael, and again to the islet formed between the Lieve and the Lys, which contains the château of the Counts and the Palace Ste. Pharailde. In the later middle ages, however, the town had spread to nearly its existing extreme dimensions, and was probably more populous than at the present moment. But its ancient fortifications have been destroyed and their place has been taken by boulevards and canals. The line may still be traced on the map, or walked round through a series of shipping suburbs; but it is uninteresting to follow, a great part of its course lying through the more squalid portions of the town. The only remaining gate is that known as the Rabot (1489), a very interesting and picturesque object situated in a particularly slummy quarter. Bruges is full of memories of the Burgundian Princes. At Ghent it is the personality of Charles V., the great emperor who cumulated in his own person the sovereignties of Germany, the Low Countries, Spain and Burgundy, that meets us afresh at every turn. He was born here in 1500 and baptized in a font, otherwise uninteresting, which still stands in the north transept of the Cathedral. Ghent was really, for the greater part of his life, his practical capital, and he never ceased to be at heart a Ghenter. That did not prevent the citizens from unjustly rebelling against him in 1540, after the suppression of which revolt Charles is said to have ascended the cathedral tower, while the executioner was putting to death the ringleaders in the rebellion, in order to choose with his brother Ferdinand the site for the citadel he intended to erect, to overawe the freedom loving city. He chose the Monastery of St. Bavon as its site, and, as we have seen, built there his colossal fortress, now wholly demolished. The palace in which he was born and which he inhabited frequently during life, was known as the Cour du Prince. It stood near the Ancient Grand Béguinage, but only its name now survives in that of a street. BRUSSELS[A] [Footnote A: From "The Belgians at Home." Published by Little, Brown & Co.] BY CLIVE HOLLAND The great commercial and material prosperity of the place dates from the commencement of the rule of the House of Burgundy. It was then, in the fifteenth century, that the most beautiful of its many fine buildings were erected. The Church of St. Michael and St. Gudule has its great nave and towers dating from this period; the Hôtel de Ville, Notre Dame du Sablon, the Nassau Palace, the Palace of the Dukes of Brabant, and many other buildings were commenced then. Manufactures and commerce commenced to flourish, while the liberties of the municipality were extended considerably. It was undoubtedly under the rule of Charles V. that Brussels reached its zenith of ancient prosperity. Then, with the era of Philip II. of Spain, came a long period of bloodshed, persecution, and misery. The religious disputes and troubles afflicting the Netherlands had their effect upon the life, prosperity, and happiness of the Bruxellois. The whole country was running with blood, and ruin stalked through the land. But during this tragic period of Netherlands' history Brussels saw several glorious events, and did as a city more than one noble deed. It was in Brussels that the compromise of the nobles took place, after which those who were rebelling against the cruelties of the Inquisition were given the name of "Gueux," which had been bestowed upon them contemptuously by the Comte de Barlaimont.... It was Brussels which led the revolt against the most bloodthirsty of the rulers sent to the Netherlands by Spain, the Duke of Alva, and successfully resisted the imposition of the notorious "twentieth denier" tax which it was sought to impose upon it, a tax which led ultimately to the revolt of the whole of the Belgian provinces. Certainly this ancient capital of the Province of Brabant, containing nowadays with its suburbs a population of upward of 600,000, which has quadrupled in sixty years, has come to take its place among the most beautiful and charming capital cities of Europe. It is undoubtedly healthy, and there is an engaging air about Brussels which soon impresses itself upon the foreign visitor. Added to all its many attractions of interesting museums--the homes of wonderful and in some cases unrivaled collections of works of art--and of historical associations with the past, it possesses the charm of being modern in the best sense and of being a place where one may find much that is finest in art and music. As a home of fashion it bids fair some day to rival Paris herself, and the shops of the Montagne de la Cour, Boulevard Anspach, and contiguous streets are scarcely less luxurious or exclusive than those of the Rue de la Paix or Boulevard des Italiens in the French capital. Brussels is a city of shady boulevards, open spaces, and pleasant parks as is Paris; and the beautiful Bois de la Cambre on its outskirts compares very favorably with the world-renowned Bois de Boulogne as regards rural charm and picturesqueness. One impression that Brussels is almost certain to make upon the visitor is its compactness. Its population, including the outskirts, is nowadays rather over 600,000; but it is almost impossible to realize that nearly one-eleventh of the whole population of Belgium is concentrated in this one city, or, as might be said, in Greater Brussels. Perhaps the real reason of this apparent lack of size is because there are in reality two cities, Brussels interior and Brussels exterior. The one with a population of about 225,000; the latter with one of about 375,000. It is with the former, of course, that the tourist and casual visitor are chiefly concerned. The outlying suburbs are, however, connected with the city proper by a splendid system of steam, electric, and other trams. In fact, it may be said that Brussels is in a sense surrounded by a group of small towns, which tho forming part of the great city are yet independent, and are governed very much like the various boroughs which make up Greater London, Curhegem, St. Gilles, Ixelles, St. Josse, Ten Noodle, Molenbeek, St. Jean, and Schaerbeek, still further out, are all in a sense separate towns, seldom visited by, and indeed almost unknown to the tourist. The most fashionable quarters for residences of the wealthy classes are the broad and beautiful Avenue Louise and the streets and avenues of the Quartier Leopold. They in a sense correspond to the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, Avenue des Champs Élysées, and Boulevard St. Germain of Paris. There is another feature, too, that modern Brussels has in common with Paris of the immediate past and of to-day. It is being "Haussmannized," and the older and more quaint and interesting portions of the city, as has been and is the case in Paris, are gradually but surely disappearing to make way for the onward march of progress and expansion. Almost on every hand, and especially in the Porte de Namur Quarter, old buildings are constantly falling victims to the house-wrecker, and new, in the shape of handsome mansions and lofty blocks of flats, are arising from their ashes. The last thirty--even twenty--years have seen many changes. During that period the sluggish little River Senne, which once meandered through the city, and upon whose banks stood many fine and picturesque old houses and buildings of past ages, has been arched over, and the fine Boulevard of the same name, and those of Hainaut and Anspach, have been built above its imprisoned waters. The higher portions of the city are undeniably healthy, and the climate of Brussels is less subject to extreme changes than that of Paris. It is not unbearably cold in winter, and tho hot in summer, is not so, we think, airless as either Paris or London, a fact accounted for by reason of its many open spaces, its height above sea-level, and comparative nearness to the North Sea. Of its fine buildings, none excels the Hôtel de Ville, which is certainly one of the most interesting and beautiful buildings of its kind in Belgium. It is well placed on one of the finest medieval squares in Europe, and is surrounded by quaint and historic houses. On this Grande Place many tragedies have from time to time been enacted, and some of the most ferocious acts of the inhuman Alva performed. In the spring of the terrible year, 1568, no less than twenty-five Flemish nobles were executed here, and in the June of the same year the patriots Lamoral, Count Egmont, Philip de Montmorency, and Count Hoorn were put to death. This atrocious deed is commemorated by a fountain with statues of the heroes, placed in front of the Maison du Roi, from a window of which the Duke of Alva watched his orders carried out. This most beautiful Hôtel de Ville, with its late Gothic façade approaching the Renaissance period, nearly 200 feet in length, was commenced, according to a well-known authority, either in 1401 or 1402, the eastern wing, or left-hand portion as one faces it across the Place, having been the first part to be commenced, the western half of the façade not having been begun until 1444. The later additions formed the quadrangle. The Cathedral at Brussels is dedicated jointly to Ste. Gudule and St. Michael. The former is one of the luckiest saints in that respect, as probably but for this dedication, she would have remained among the many rather obscure saints of the early periods of Christianity. It is to this church that most visitors to Brussels first wend their way after visiting the Grande Place and its delightful Flower Market, which is gay with blossoms on most days of the week all the year round. The natural situation of the church is a fine one, which was made the most of by its architects and builders of long ago. Standing, as it does, on the side of a hill reached from the Grande Place by the fine Rue de la Montagne and short, steep Rue Ste. Gudule, it overlooks the city with its two fine twin western towers dominating the neighboring streets. These towers have appeared to us when viewed up the Rue Ste. Gudule and other streets leading up from the lower town to the church, generally to be veiled by a mystic gray or ambient haze, and to gain much in impressiveness and grandeur from the coup d'oeil one obtains of them framed, as it were, in the end of the rising street. WATERLOO[A] [Footnote A: From "Les Miserables." Translated by Lascelles Wraxall.] BY VICTOR HUGO The battle of Waterloo is an enigma as obscure for those who gained it as for him who lost it. To Napoleon it is a panic; Blücher sees nothing in it but fire; Wellington does not understand it at all. Look at the reports; the bulletins are confused; the commentaries are entangled; the latter stammer, the former stutter. Jomini divides the battle of Waterloo into four moments; Muffing cuts it into three acts; Charras, altho we do not entirely agree with him in all his appreciations, has alone caught with his haughty eye the characteristic lineaments of this catastrophe of human genius contending with divine chance. All the other historians suffer from a certain bedazzlement in which they grope about. It was a flashing day, in truth the overthrow of the military monarchy which, to the great stupor of the kings, has dragged down all kingdoms, the downfall of strength and the rout of war.... In this event, which bears the stamp of superhuman necessity, men play but a small part; but if we take Waterloo from Wellington and Blücher, does that deprive England and Germany of anything? No. Neither illustrious England nor august Germany is in question in the problem of Waterloo, for, thank heaven! nations are great without the mournful achievements of the sword. Neither Germany, nor England, nor France is held in a scabbard; at this day when Waterloo is only a clash of sabers, Germany has Goethe above Blücher, and England has Byron above Wellington. A mighty dawn of ideas is peculiar to our age; and in this dawn England and Germany have their own magnificent flash. They are majestic because they think; the high level they bring to civilization is intrinsic to them; it comes from themselves, and not from an accident. Any aggrandizement the nineteenth century may have can not boast of Waterloo as its fountainhead; for only barbarous nations grow suddenly after a victory--it is the transient vanity of torrents swollen by a storm. Civilized nations, especially at the present day, are not elevated or debased by the good or evil fortune of a captain, and their specific weight in the human family results from something more than a battle. Their honor, dignity, enlightenment, and genius are not numbers which those gamblers, heroes and conquerors, can stake in the lottery of battles. Very often a battle lost is progress gained, and less of glory, more of liberty. The drummer is silent and reason speaks; it is the game of who loses wins. Let us, then, speak of Waterloo coldly from both sides, and render to chance the things that belong to chance, and to God what is God's. What is Waterloo--a victory? No; a prize in the lottery, won by Europe, and paid by France; it was hardly worth while erecting a lion for it. Waterloo is the strangest encounter recorded in history; Napoleon and Wellington are not enemies, but contraries. Never did God, who delights in antitheses, produce a more striking contrast, or a more extraordinary confrontation. On one side precision, foresight, geometry, prudence, a retreat assured, reserves prepared, an obstinate coolness, an imperturbable method, strategy profiting by the ground, tactics balancing battalions, carnage measured by a plumb-line, war regulated watch in hand, nothing left voluntarily to accident, old classic courage and absolute correctness. On the other side we have intuition, divination, military strangeness, superhuman instinct, a flashing glance; something that gazes like the eagle and strikes like lightning, all the mysteries of a profound mind, associated with destiny; the river, the plain, the forest, and the hill summoned, and, to some extent, compelled to obey; the despot going so far as even to tyrannize over the battlefield; faith in a star, blended with a strategic science, heightening, but troubling it. Wellington was the Barême of war, Napoleon was its Michelangelo, and this true genius was conquered by calculation. On both sides somebody was expected; and it was the exact calculator who succeeded. Napoleon waited for Grouchy, who did not come; Wellington waited for Blücher, and he came. Wellington is the classical war taking its revenge; Bonaparte, in his dawn, had met it in Italy, and superbly defeated it--the old owl fled before the young vulture. The old tactics had been not only overthrown, but scandalized. Who was this Corsican of six-and-twenty years of age? What meant this splendid ignoramus, who, having everything against him, nothing for him, without provisions, ammunition, guns, shoes, almost without an army, with a handful of men against masses, dashed at allied Europe, and absurdly gained impossible victories? Who was this new comet of war who possest the effrontery of a planet? The academic military school excommunicated him, while bolting, and hence arose an implacable rancor of the old Caesarism against the new, of the old saber against the flashing sword, and of the chessboard against genius. On June 18, 1815, this rancor got the best; and beneath Lodi, Montebello, Montenotte, Mantua, Marengo, and Arcola, it wrote--Waterloo. It was a triumph of mediocrity, sweet to majorities, and destiny consented to this irony. In his decline, Napoleon found a young Suvarov before him--in fact, it is only necessary to blanch Wellington's hair in order to have a Suvarov. Waterloo is a battle of the first class, gained by a captain of the second. What must be admired in the battle of Waterloo is England, the English firmness, the English resolution, the English blood, and what England had really superb in it, is (without offense) herself; it is not her captain, but her army. Wellington, strangely ungrateful, declares in his dispatch to Lord Bathurst that his army, the one which fought on June 18, 1815, was a "detestable army." What does the gloomy pile of bones buried in the trenches of Waterloo think of this? England has been too modest to herself in her treatment of Wellington, for making him so great is making herself small. Wellington is merely a hero, like any other man. The Scots Grays, the Life Guards, Maitland's and Mitchell's regiments, Pack's and Kempt's infantry, Ponsonby's and Somerset's cavalry, the Highlanders playing the bagpipes under the shower of canister, Ryland's battalions, the fresh recruits who could hardly manage a musket, and yet held their ground against the old bands of Essling and Rivoli--all this is grand. Wellington was tenacious; that was his merit, and we do not deny it to him, but the lowest of his privates and his troopers was quite as solid as he, and the iron soldier is as good as the iron duke. For our part, all our glorification is offered to the English soldier, the English army, the English nation; and if there must be a trophy, it is to England that this trophy is owing. The Waterloo column would be more just, if, instead of the figure of a man, it raised to the clouds the statue of a people.... But this great England will be irritated by what we are writing here; for she still has feudal illusions, after her 1688 and the French 1789. This people believes in inheritance and hierarchy, and while no other excels it in power and glory, it esteems itself as a nation and not as a people. As a people, it readily subordinates itself, and takes a lord as its head; the workman lets himself be despised; the soldier puts up with flogging. It will be remembered that, at the battle of Inkerman, a sergeant who, as it appears, saved the British army, could not be mentioned by Lord Raglan, because the military hierarchy does not allow any hero below the rank of officer to be mentioned in dispatches. What we admire before all, in an encounter like Waterloo, is the prodigious skill of chance. The night raid, the wall of Hougoumont, the hollow way of Ohain, Grouchy deaf to the cannon, Napoleon's guide deceiving him, Bulow's guide enlightening him--all this cataclysm is marvelously managed. There is more of a massacre than of a battle in Waterloo. Waterloo, of all pitched battles, is the one which had the smallest front for such a number of combatants. Napoleon's three-quarters of a league. Wellington's half a league, and seventy-two thousand combatants on either side. From this density came the carnage. The following calculation has been made and proportion established: loss of men, at Austerlitz, French, fourteen per cent.; Russian, thirty per cent.; Austrian, forty-four per cent.; at Wagram, French, thirteen per cent.; Austrian, fourteen per cent.; at Moscow, French, thirty-seven per cent.; Russian, forty-four per cent.; at Bautzen, French, thirteen cent.; Russian and Prussian, fourteen per cent.; at Waterloo, French, fifty-six per cent.; allies, thirty-one per cent.--total for Waterloo, forty-one per cent., or out of one hundred and forty-four thousand fighting men, sixty thousand killed. The field of Waterloo has at the present day that calmness which belongs to the earth, and resembles all plains; but at night, a sort of a visionary mist rises from it, and if any traveler walk about it, and listen and dream, like Virgil on the mournful plain of Philippi, the hallucination of the catastrophe seizes upon him. The frightful June 18th lives again, the false monumental hill is leveled, the wondrous lion is dissipated, the battlefield resumes its reality, lines of infantry undulate on the plain; furious galloping crosses the horizon; the startled dreamer sees the flash of sabers, the sparkle of bayonets, the red lights of shells, the monstrous collision of thunderbolts; he hears like a death groan from the tomb, the vague clamor of the fantom battle. These shadows are grenadiers; these flashes are cuirassiers; this skeleton is Napoleon; this skeleton is Wellington: all this is non-existent, and yet still combats, and the ravines are stained purple, and the trees rustle, and there is fury even in the clouds and in the darkness, while all the stern heights, Mont St. Jean, Hougoumont, Frischemont, Papelotte, and Plancenoit, seem confusedly crowned by hosts of specters exterminating one another. WATERLOO: A VISIT TO THE FIELD[A] [Footnote A: From "Two Months Abroad." Privately printed. 1878.] BY THE EDITOR The French wished to call it the battle of Mont St. Jean, but Wellington said "The Battle of Waterloo." The victor's wish prevailed. I know not why, except because he was the victor. The scene of the battle is four miles from the village of Waterloo and, besides Mont St. Jean, several villages from any one of which it might well have been named, are included in the field. Before the battle, however, the village of Waterloo had been the headquarters of the Duke and there he rested for two days after the battle was won. I am now on this memorable spot as the solitary guest of a small hotel at the base of the Lion's Mound, after having made a night of it in crossing from Aix-la-Chapelle to Brussels and thence, through a storm of mist and rain to the little station of Braine-l'Alleud, which is a good mile from the battlefield. The train reached Braine-l'Alleud long before daybreak. When the morn had really dawned, I left the little waiting room, a solitary loiterer, and set out to find the battleground. From the platform of the station the eye surveyed a wide, thickly populated but rural plain, and in one direction afar off, clearly set against the dark rain-dripping sky, rose in solemn majesty a mound of earth, bearing on its lofty summit an indistinct figure of a lion. A small rustic gate from the station led in the direction of the Mound. From necessity, I began a tramp through the rain alone, no conveyance being obtainable. The soil of Belgium here being alluvial, a little rain soon makes a great deal of mud and little rains at this season (January) are frequent. Along a small unpaved mud-deep road, having meanwhile been joined by a peasant with a two wheeled cart drawn by a single mule, I was soon hastening onward toward the Mound which was growing more and more visible on the horizon. The road soon turned away, however, but a path led toward the mound. The peasant took the road and I the path, which led into a little clump of houses, where were boys about their morning duties, and dogs that barked vigorously until one of the boys to whom I had spoken silenced them. Passing onward through streets not more than six feet wide, along neatly trimmed hedges and past small cottage doorways, I soon entered an open plain, but in a crippled state with heavy mud-covered shoes. Mud fairly obliterated all trace of leather. With this burden, and wet to the skin with rain, there rose far ahead of me that historic mound, and at last I stood at its base alone, there in the midst of one of the greatest battlefields history records, soon to forget in the momentary joys of a beefsteak breakfast that man had ever done anything in this world except eat and drink. I must borrow an illustration--Victor Hugo's letter A. The apex is Mount St. Jean, the right hand base La Belle Alliance, the left hand base Hougoumont, the cross bar that sunken road which perhaps changed the future of Europe, the two sides broad Belgian roads, paved with square stones and bordered with graceful and lofty poplar trees, their proud heads waving in every breeze that drifts across this undulating plain. The Lion's Mound is just below the middle of this cross bar. Mont St. Jean, La Belle Alliance and Hougoumont, at the three angles of the triangle, are small villages--scarcely more than hamlets. All were important points in the fortunes of that memorable 18th of June, 1815. Hougoumont, with its château and wall, in some sense was like a fortress. Go with me if you will in imagination to the summit of the Lion's Mound. A flight of 225 stone steps will take us there, a toilsome ascent in this chilling air and this persistent rain. Toward Mont St. Jean, the surface of the ground is rolling, the waves of it high enough to conceal standing men from view. Except the lofty poplars at the road sides, there are no trees. An admirable place for an army on the defensive, you will at once say, since reserves can be concealed behind the convolutions of the rolling plain. These convolutions may also serve in the fight as natural fortifications. Here at Mont St. Jean, Wellington pitched his tent. Hougoumont lay far off in front of his center, and had that morning a small garrison. Napoleon, with his army, was a mile away, his line extending to the right and left beyond La Belle Alliance. We must turn squarely around as we stand alongside the lion if we are to see in the distance the ground he occupied. Our place is nearly in the center of the field. Hougoumont we realize to have been worthy of the prodigious struggle the French made to capture it. Half a fortress then, it provided an admirable stand for artillery. A few men might hold it against superior numbers. At Waterloo the Duke had about 67,000 men--some accounts say 70,000--but many, perhaps 15,000, fled in desertion at an early hour of the day. With these figures correct, the fighting forces of the Allies later in the day, would remain little more than 55,000 men. The Emperor's army has usually been placed at 70,000. His soldiers were probably better trained than the Duke's and combined with long service an abundance of enthusiasm for their old general, now restored to his imperial throne and confident of victory. The night before the battle had been wet and stormy, but the morning gave some promise of clearing; the sky, however, remained overcast and some rain continued to fall. The French were weary after a long march, and the artillery moved with difficulty across this wet and muddy plain. Altogether they were in poor condition for a battle, in which all their fortunes were at stake. It was just such a morning as ours, except that it was then June and is now January. If the battle began at 8 o'clock, as one account reads, we are here on the Lion's Mound at that same hour. Even if this be January, daisies are in blossom at our feet. Jerome Bonaparte, leading the attack, moves on Hougoumont, where the Allies, who have come down from Mont St. Jean, repulse him. He renews the attack "with redoubled fury," and a gallant resistance is made, but he forces a way into the outer enclosure of the chateau that crowns the hill. British howitzers are at once discharged upon the French and compel them to retreat. New assaults are then made. Overwhelming numbers seem to bear down upon the Allies. The stronghold is more than once nearly lost, but it is defended with "prodigies of valor" and firmly held to the last. Had Hougoumont been taken, the result of the battle "would probably have been very different." Meanwhile, the Emperor has ordered a second attack elsewhere--this time against the left wing of Wellington. Marshal Ney sends forward six divisions, who encounter the Netherlandish troops and easily scatter them. Two brigades of British numbering 3,000 men then prepare to check the advancing French. A struggle, brief but fierce, ensues, in which the French are repulsed. They rally again, however, and Scotch Highlanders, their bagpipes sounding the cry, advance against them, along with an English brigade. These make an impetuous assault, while cavalry charge Napoleon's infantry, and force a part of them back on La Belle Alliance. But here the pursuing British meet with a check in a scene of wild carnage that sweeps over the field. We may look down upon the scene of that frightful struggle. It lies just below us. Grass is growing there luxuriantly now. A north wind sweeps over the plain. A mournful requiem seems to whistle through the poplar trees. If we look toward Hougoumont, French gunners are seen to have been slain. Many cannon are silent. With the chateau in flames, confusion reigns. Napoleon, ordering a new cavalry attack, directs Jerome to advance with his infantry. Immediately the Allies discharge grape and canister on the advancing host. But no Frenchman wavers. On the contrary, the French cavalry capture Wellington's outward battalion and press onward toward his hollow squares of infantry. All efforts to break these squares end in failure. For a time the French abandon the attack, but only to renew it and then follows a remarkable scene. The French charge with unprecedented fury, and the squares are partially broken, while friends and enemies, wounded or killed, are mingled in inextricable confusion. Some of the Belgian troops take flight and in mad terror run back to Brussels, causing great consternation there by reporting a defeat for Wellington. The squares maintain their ground to the end admirably, and with severe losses the French retire. Hougoumont near by, all this time was not silent. The attack being continued, the commander is killed and at last its heights are gained. From elsewhere in the field, Wellington learns of his loss, places himself at the head of a brigade, and commands it to charge. Amid the utmost enthusiasm of the Allies the French are driven back from Hougoumont. Napoleon now turns his efforts against La Haye Sainte, a small height forward from Mont St. Jean, occupied by the enemy's left wing. Ney, in a furious cannonade, begins the attack, in which the Allies are overwhelmed and their ammunition is exhausted. Masters of this point, the French again move on Hougoumont. It is seven o'clock in the evening, with Napoleon in fair way to succeed, but his men are already exhausted and their losses are heavy. Some of them plunge into that famous sunken road, unheeded of him and them, and still so great a mystery to historians. It was a charging cavalry column that plunged in, unknowingly, rider and horse together, in indescribable confusion and dismay. We may see that road to-day, for we have walked in a part of it when coming across the plain from the station--a narrow road cut many feet deep, its bed paved with little stones. Hugo's words on that frightful scene are these: "There was the ravine, unlooked for, yawning at the very feet of the horses, two fathoms deep between its double slope. The second rank pushed in the first, the third pushed in the second; the horses reared, threw themselves over, fell upon their backs, and struggled with their feet in the air, piling up and overturning their riders; no power to retreat; the whole column was nothing but a projectile. The force acquired to crush the English crusht the French. The inexorable ravine could not yield until it was filled; riders and horses rolled in together pell-mell, grinding each other, making common flesh in this dreadful gulf, and when this grave was full of living men, the rest marched over them and passed on. Almost a third of the Dubois' brigade sank into this abyss." Two hours before this, Blücher, with his Prussians, had appeared--Blücher who was to turn the tide of battle. He had promised Wellington to be there. His soldiers had complained bitterly on the long march over muddy ground, but he told them his word as a soldier must be kept. From far beyond La Belle Alliance had Blücher come, a cow boy showing him the way--a boy who, if he had not known the way, or had lied, might have saved Napoleon from St. Helena. The ground where Blücher entered the field is just visible to us from the mound as with strained eyes, we peer through the morning mist. During Ney's attack, Blücher opens fire on La Haye Sainte. By six o'clock he has forty-eight guns in action and some of the guns send shot as far as La Belle Alliance. As the conflict deepens, Napoleon's fortunes are seen to be obviously in grave, if not critical, danger, but he strengthens his right wing and again hazards Hougoumont. Eight battalions are sent forward, an outlying stronghold is captured, but more Prussians advance and threaten to regain the point. At seven o'clock while Ney is renewing the attack on Hougoumont other Prussians appear. The real crisis being at hand, Napoleon resolves on a final, concentrated movement against the enemy's center. His soldiers being worn out and discouraged, he gives out a false report that reinforcements are at last coming--that Grouchy has not failed him. A furious cannonade opens this new attack, causing "frightful havoc" among the Allies. The Prince of Orange holds back the French on the very ground where the lion is now elevated, but falls wounded. Napoleon, in an address to the Imperial Guard, rouses them to great enthusiasm. For a half hour longer the French bear down on the enemy, but British gunners make gaps in their ranks. With his horse shot from under him, Ney goes forward on foot. The Duke now takes personal command. He sends a shower of grape and cannister against a column of French veterans, but they never waver. Reserves, suddenly called for, pour a fierce charge against the advancing French, rending them asunder. The attack is closely followed up and the French are driven down the hill. Elsewhere in the field the battle still rages. Blücher continues his attack on Napoleon's right and forces it back. Reduced to despair, Napoleon now gives his final and famous order: "Tout est perdu! Sauve qui peut." But the Young Guard resists Blücher. Wellington, descending from his height, follows the retreating enemy as far as La Belle Alliance. At eight o'clock, after a most sanguinary struggle, the Young Guard yields. The success of Blücher elsewhere completes the victory of the Allies. One man will never surrender--Cambronne. Who was Cambronne? No one can tell you more than this--he was the man at Waterloo who would not surrender. "The Old Guard dies, but never surrenders." "Among those giants then," says Hugo, "there was one Titan--Cambronne. The man who won the battle of Waterloo was not Napoleon, put to rout; not Wellington, giving way at four o'clock, desperate at five; not Blücher, who did not fight. The man who won the battle of Waterloo was Cambronne. To fulminate at the thunderbolt which kills you, is victory." As we look over this field from our height and try to realize what mighty fortunes were here at stake, we note that the mementoes of that day are few. A Corinthian column and an obelisk are seen at the roadside as memorials of the bravery of two officers. This Lion's Mound, two hundred feet high and made from earth piled up by cart loads, commemorates the place where a prince was wounded. Colossal in size, the lion was cast from French cannon captured in the fight. On this broad plain upward of 50,000 men, who had mothers, sisters, and wives at home, gave up their lives. Poplar trees sigh forth perpetually their funeral dirge. Grass grows where their blood was poured out. Modern Europe can show few scenes of more sublime tragedy. Our visiting day, with its chilling air and penetrating rain, has been a fit day for seeing Waterloo. The old woman who served me with breakfast spoke English easily. It was well--doubly well. No other language than English should be spoken on the field of Waterloo. I passed a few French words with the boy who called off the dogs, but was afterward sorry for having done so. ANTWERP[A] [Footnote A: From "The Cathedrals and Churches of Belgium." Published by James Pott & Co.] BY T. FRANCIS BUMPUS Byzantium--Venice--Antwerp, these are the centers around which the modern world has revolved, for we must include its commercial with its social progress, and with those interests which develop with society. Indeed, the development of the arts has always run concurrently with commerce. One could wish to add that the converse were equally true. Antwerp--the city on the wharf--became famous at the beginning of the sixteenth century under the reign of the enterprising Charles V. "Antwerp was then truly a leading city in almost all things, but in commerce it headed all the cities of the world," says an old chronicler. Bruges, the great banking center yielded her position, and the Hanseatic merchants removed to the banks of the Scheldt. "I was astonished, and wondered much when I beheld Antwerp," wrote an envoy of the Italian Republic, "for I saw Venice outdone." In what direction Venice was outdone is not recorded. Not in her architecture, at least; scarcely in her painting. We can not concede a Tintoretto for a Rubens. Yet, as Antwerp was the home of Matsys, of Rubens, Van Dyck, and the Teniers, the home also of Christopher Plantin, the great printer, her glory is not to be sought in trade alone. She is still remembered as a mother of art and letters, while her mercantile preeminence belongs to a buried past. It must, however, be confest that the fortunes of Antwerp as a city, prospering in its connection with the Hanseatic League, were anything but advantageous to the student of architectural history. Alterations and buildings were the order of the day, and so lavish were the means devoted to the work that scarcely a vestige of architecture in the remains is of earlier date than the fourteenth century. The grandly dimensioned churches raised in every parish afford ample evidence of the zeal and skill with which the work of reconstruction was prosecuted, and as specimens of the style of their day can not fail to elicit our admiration by the nobility of their proportions, so that in the monuments the wealthy burghers of Antwerp have left us we have perhaps no reason to regret their zeal. At the same time, one is tempted to wish that they had spared the works of earlier date by raising their new ones on fresh ground, instead of such wholesale demolition of the labors of preceding generations. Nôtre Dame at Antwerp, the most spacious church in the Netherlands, originated in a chapel built for a miraculous image of the Blessed Virgin. This chapel was reconstructed in 1124, when the canons of St. Michel, having ceded their church to the Praemonstratensians, removed hither. Two centuries later, the canons of St. Michel, animated by the prevailing spirit, determined on rebuilding their church on a more magnificent scale, and they commenced the work in 1352 by laying the foundations for a new choir. But slow progress was made with this great undertaking, more than two centuries and a half elapsing before the church assumed that form with which we are familiar to-day. In 1520, the chapter, dissatisfied with its choir, started upon the erection of a new one, the first stone of which was laid in the following year by the Emperor Charles V., accompanied by King Christian II. of Denmark and a numerous retinue. The new plan included a crypt, partly above ground, probably like that we see in St. Paul's in the same town, and the work was progressing when, in 1533, a disastrous fire did such damage to the western parts of the church that the project of enlargement was suspended, and the funds destined for its employment were applied to restoring the damaged portions. Had the design been realized, the eastern limb of the church would have been doubled in size. As regards its dimensions, Nôtre Dame at Antwerp is one of the most remarkable churches in Europe, being nearly 400 feet long by 170 feet in width across the nave, which, inclusive of that covered by the western towers, has seven bays, and three aisles on either side. This multiplication of aisles gives a vast intricacy and picturesqueness to the cross views of the interior; but there is a poverty of detail, and a want of harmony among the parts and of subordination and proportion, sadly destructive of true architectural effect; so that, notwithstanding its size, it looks much smaller internally than many of the French cathedrals of far less dimensions. If there had been ten bays in the nave instead of only seven, and the central division had been at least ten feet wider, which could easily have been spared from the outermost aisles, the apparent size of the church would have been much greater. The outermost south aisle is wider than the nave, and equal in breadth to the two inner aisles; the northernmost aisle is not quite so broad. The transepts have no aisles, but they are continued beyond the line of the nave aisles, so that they are more than usually elongated. The two inner aisles of the nave open into the transepts, but the outer ones, which, it should be remarked, are continuous, and not divided into a series of chapels, are walled up at their eastern extremities. The choir consists of three bays, but has only one aisle on either side. This is continued round the apse, and five pentagonal chapels radiate from it. Three chapels flank the north aisle of the choir, the first two opening, as does the north transept, into one large chapel of the same breadth as the southernmost aisle of the nave.... The façade is flanked by towers equal in width to the two inner aisles of the nave. The northern one has alone been completed, and altho it may seem to a severe judgment to possess some of the defects of the late Flemish style, it is rivaled for beauty of outline only by the flamboyant steeples of Chartres and Vienna. As might be expected from its late age--it was not finished until 1530--this northwestern spire of Notre Dame at Antwerp exhibits some extravagances in design and detail, but the mode in which the octagonal lantern of openwork bisects the faces of the solid square portion with its alternate angles, thus breaking the outline without any harsh or disagreeable transition, is very masterly, while the bold pinnacles, with their flying buttresses, which group around it, produce a most pleasing variety, the whole serving to indicate the appearance the steeple of Malines would have presented had it been completed according to the original design. If size were any real test of beauty, the interior or Notre Dame at Antwerp ought to be one of the finest in Belgium. Unfortunately, altho it was begun at a time when the pointed style had reached the full maturity of perfection, a colder and more unimpressive design than is here carried out it would be difficult to find. Still, notwithstanding the long period that elapsed between its commencement and completion, there is a congruity about the whole building which is eminently pleasing, and to some extent redeems the defects in its details and proportions, while the views afforded in various directions by the triple aisles on either side of the nave are undeniably picturesque. The high altarpiece, placed on the chord of the apse, is a noble and sumptuous example of early Renaissance taste and workmanship, but like the stallwork, its dimensions are such as to diminish the scale of the choir, the five arches opening to the procession path being completely obscured by it. Of the numerous creations of Rubens' pencil none perhaps more thoroughly declares to us his comprehension of religious decorative art than the "Assumption" which fills the arched compartment in the lower portion of this altarpiece. It was finished in 1625, and, of twenty repetitions of the subject, is the only example still preserved at the place it was intended by the painter to occupy. In spirit we are reminded of Titian's "Assumption" in the cathedral at Verona, but Rubens' proves perhaps a higher conception of the subject. The work is seen a considerable way off, and every outline is bathed in light, so that the Virgin is elevated to dazzling glory with a power of accession scarcely, if ever, attained by any master. In the celebrated "Descent from the Cross," which hangs in the south transept, the boldness of the composition, the energy in the characters, the striking attitudes and grouping, the glowing, vigorous coloring, are astonishing proofs of Rubens' power. The circumstances which gave rise to this wondrous effort of art are interesting. It is said that Rubens, in laying the foundations of his villa near Antwerp, had unwittingly infringed on some ground belonging to the Company of Gunsmiths (arquebusiers). A law suit was threatened, and Rubens prepared to defend it, but, being assured by one of the greatest lawyers of the city that the right lay with his opponents, he immediately drew back, and offered to paint a picture by way of recompense. The offer was accepted, and the company required a representation of its patron saint, St. Christopher, to be placed in its chapel in the cathedral, which at that time Notre Dame was. Rubens, with his usual liberality and magnificence, presented to his adversaries, not merely a single representation of the saint, but an elaborate illustration of his name--The Christ-bearer. The arquebusiers were at first disappointed not to have their saint represented in the usual manner, and Rubens was obliged to enter into an explanation of his work. Thus, without knowing it, they had received in exchange for a few feet of land a treasure which neither money nor lands can now purchase. The painting was executed by Rubens soon after his seven years' residence in Italy, and while the impression made by the work of Titian and Paul Veronese were yet fresh in his mind. The great master appeared in the fulness of his glory in this work--it is one of the few which exhibits in combination all that nature had given him of warmth and imagination--with all that he acquired of knowledge, judgment and method, and in which he may be considered fully to have overcome the difficulties of a subject which becomes painful, and almost repulsive, when it ceases to be sublime. VII HOLLAND HOW THE DUTCH OBTAINED THEIR LAND[A] [Footnote A: From "Holland and Its People." Translated by Caroline Tilton. By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, G.P. Putnam's Sons. Copyright, 1880.] BY EDMONDO DE AMICIS The first time that I crossed the old Rhine, I had stopt on the bridge, asking myself whether that small and humble stream of water was really the same river that I had seen rushing in thunder over the rocks at Schaffhausen, spreading majestically before Mayence, passing in triumph under the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, beating in sonorous cadence at the foot of the Seven Mountains; reflecting in its course Gothic cathedrals, princely castles, fertile hills, steep rocks, famous ruins, cities, groves, and gardens; everywhere covered with vessels of all sorts, and saluted with music and song; and thinking of these things, with my gaze fixt upon the little stream shut in between two flat and desert shores, I had repeated, "Is this that Rhine?" The vicissitudes which accompany the agony and death of this great river in Holland, are such as really to excite a sense of pity, such as is felt for the misfortunes and inglorious end of a people once powerful and happy. From the neighborhood of Emmerich, before reaching the Dutch frontier, it has lost all the beauty of its banks, and flows in great curves through vast and ugly flats, which seem to mark the approach to old age. At Millingen it runs entirely in the territory of Holland; a little farther on it divides. The main branch shamefully loses its name, and goes to throw itself into the Meuse: the other branch, insulted by the title of the Dannerden canal, flows nearly to the city of Arnehm, when it once more divides into two branches. One empties into the Gulf of Zuyder-Zee; the other still called, out of compassion, the Lower Rhine, goes as far as the village of Durstede, where it divides for the third time; a humiliation now of old date. One of these branches, changing its name like a coward, throws itself into the Meuse near Rotterdam; the other still called the Rhine, but with the ridiculous surname of "curved," reaches Utrecht with difficulty, where for the fourth time it again divides; capricious as an old man in his dotage. One part, denying its old name, drags itself as far as Muiden, where it falls into the Zuyder-Zee; the other, with the name of Old Rhine, or simply the Old, flows slowly to the city of Leyden, whose streets it crosses almost without giving a sign of movement, and is finally gathered into one canal by which it goes to its miserable death in the North Sea. But it is not many years since this pitiful end was denied it. From the year 839, in which a furious tempest had accumulated mountains of sand at its mouth, until the beginning of the present century, the Old Rhine lost itself in the sand before reaching the sea, and covered a vast tract of country with pools and marshes. Under the reign of Louis Bonaparte the waters were collected into a large canal protected by three enormous sluicegates, and from that time the Rhine flows directly to the sea. These sluices are the greatest monument in Holland and, perhaps, the most admirable hydraulic work in Europe. The dikes which protect the mouth of the canal, the walls, pillars, and gates, present altogether the aspect of a Cyclopian fortress, against which it seems that not only that sea, but the united forces of all seas, must break as against a granite mountain. When the tide rises the gates are closed to prevent the waters from invading the land; when the tide recedes they are opened to give passage to the waters of the Rhine which have accumulated behind them; and then a mass of three thousand cubic feet of water passes through them in one minute. On days when storms prevail, a concession is made to the sea, and the most advanced of the sluicegates is left open; and then the furious billows rush into the canal, like an enemy entering by a breach, but they break upon the formidable barrier of the second gate, behind which Holland stands and cries, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther!" That enormous fortification which, on a desert shore, defends a dying river and a fallen city from the ocean, has something of solemnity which commands respect and admiration.... Napoleon said that it [Holland] was an alluvion of Trench rivers--the Rhine, the Scheldt, and the Meuse--and with this pretext he added it to the empire. One writer has defined it as a sort of transition between land and sea. Another, as an immense crust of earth floating on water. Others, an annex of the old continent, the China of Europe, the end of the earth, and the beginning of the ocean, a measureless raft of mud and sand; and Philip II. called it the country nearest to hell. But they all agreed upon one point, and all exprest it in the same words:--Holland is a conquest made by man over the sea--it is an artificial country--the Hollanders made it--it exists because the Hollanders preserve it--it will vanish whenever the Hollanders shall abandon it. To comprehend this truth, we must imagine Holland as it was when first inhabited by the first German tribes that wandered away in search of a country. It was almost uninhabitable. There were vast tempestuous lakes, like seas, touching one another; morass beside morass; one tract covered with brushwood after another; immense forests of pines, oaks, and alders, traversed by herds of wild horses; and so thick were these forests that tradition says one could travel leagues passing from tree to tree without ever putting foot to the ground. The deep bays and gulfs carried into the heart of the country the fury of the northern tempests. Some provinces disappeared once every year under the waters of the sea, and were nothing but muddy tracts, neither land nor water, where it was impossible either to walk or to sail. The large rivers, without sufficient inclination to descend to the sea, wandered here and there uncertain of their day, and slept in monstrous pools and ponds among the sands of the coasts. It was a sinister place, swept by furious winds, beaten by obstinate rains, veiled in a perpetual fog, where nothing was heard but the roar of the sea, and the voice of wild beasts and birds of the ocean. Now, if we remember that such a region has become one of the most fertile, wealthiest and best regulated of the countries of the world, we shall understand the justice of the saying that Holland is a conquest made by man. But, it must be added, the conquest goes on forever. To drain the lakes of the country the Hollanders prest the air into their service. The lakes, the marshes, were surrounded by dikes, the dikes by canals; and an army of windmills, putting in motion force-pumps, turned the water into the canals, which carried it off to the rivers and the sea. Thus vast tracts of land buried under the water, saw the sun, and were transformed, as if by magic, into fertile fields, covered with villages, and intersected by canals and roads. In the seventeenth century, in less than forty years, twenty-six lakes were drained. At the beginning of the present century, in North Holland alone, more than six thousand hectares, or fifteen thousand acres, were thus redeemed from the waters; in South Holland, before 1844, twenty-nine thousand hectares; in the whole of Holland, from 1500 to 1858, three hundred and fifty-five thousand hectares. Substituting steam-mills for windmills, in thirty-nine months was completed the great undertaking of the draining of the lake of Haarlem, which measured forty-four-kilometers in circumference, and for ever threatened with its tempests the cities of Haarlem, Amsterdam, and Leyden. And they are now meditating the prodigious work of drying up the Zuyder-Zee, which embraces an area of more than seven hundred square kilometers. But the most tremendous struggle was the battle with the ocean. Holland is in great part lower than the level of the sea; consequently, everywhere that the coast is not defended by sand-banks, it has to be protected by dikes. If these interminable bulkwarks of earth, granite, and wood were not there to attest the indomitable courage and perseverance of the Hollanders, it would not be believed that the hand of man could, even in many centuries have accomplished such a work. In Zealand alone the dikes extend to a distance of more than four hundred kilometers. The western coast of the island of Walcheren is defended by a dike, in which it is computed that the expense of construction added to that of preservation, if it were put out at interest, would amount to a sum equal in value to that which the dike itself would be worth were it made of massive copper. Around the city of Helder, at the northern extremity of North Holland, extends a dike ten kilometers long, constructed of masses of Norwegian granite, which descends more than sixty meters into the sea. The whole province of Friesland, for the length of eighty-eight kilometers, is defended by three rows of piles sustained by masses of Norwegian and German granite. Amsterdam, all the cities of the Zuyder Zee, and all the islands--fragments of vanished lands--which are strung like beads between Friesland and North Holland, are protected by dikes. From the mouths of the Ems to those of the Scheldt Holland is an impenetrable fortress, of whose immense bastions the mills are the towers, the cataracts are the gates, the islands the advanced forts; and like a true fortress, it shows to its enemy, the sea, only the tops of its bell-towers and the roofs of its houses, as if in defiance and derision. Holland is a fortress, and her people live as in a fortress on a war-footing with the sea. An army of engineers, directed by the Minister of the Interior, spread over the country, and ordered like an army, continually spy the enemy, watch over the internal waters, foresee the bursting of the dikes, order and direct the defensive works. The expenses of the war are divided; one part to the State, one part to the provinces; every proprietor pays, besides the general imposts, a special impost for the dikes, in proportion to the extent of his lands and their proximity to the water. An accidental rupture, an inadvertence, may cause a flood; the peril is unceasing; the sentinels are at their posts upon the bulwarks at the first assault of the sea; they shout the war-cry, and Holland sends men, material, and money. And even when there is not a great battle, a quiet, silent struggle is for ever going on. The innumerable mills, even in the drained districts, continue to work unresting, to absorb and turn into the canals the water that falls in rain and that which filters in from the sea. But Holland has done more than defend herself against the waters; she has made herself mistress of them, and has used them for her own defense. Should a foreign army invade her territory, she has but to open her dikes and unchain the sea and the rivers, as she did against the Romans, against the Spaniards, against the army of Louis XIV., and defend the land cities with her fleet. Water was the source of her poverty, she has made it the source of wealth. Over the whole country extends an immense net-work of canals which serve both for the irrigation of the land and as a means of communication. The cities, by means of canals, communicate with the sea; canals run from town to town, and from them to villages, which are themselves bound together by these watery ways, and are connected even to the houses scattered over the country; smaller canals surround the fields and orchards, pastures and kitchen-gardens, serving at once as boundary-wall, hedge, and roadway; every house is a little port. Ships, boats, rafts move about in all directions, as in other places carts and carriages. The canals are the arteries of Holland, and the water her life-blood. But even setting aside the canals, the draining of the lakes, and the defensive works, on every side are seen the traces of marvelous undertakings. The soil, which in other countries is a gift of nature, is in Holland a work of men's hands. Holland draws the greater part of her wealth from commerce; but before commerce comes the cultivation of the soil; and the soil had to be created. There were sand-banks, interspersed with layers of peat, broad downs swept by the winds, great tracts of barren land apparently condemned to an external sterility. The first elements of manufacture, iron and coal, were wanting; there was no wood, because the forests had already been destroyed by tempests when agriculture began; there was no stone, there were no metals. Nature, says a Dutch poet, had refused all her gifts to Holland; the Hollanders had to do everything in spite of nature. They began by fertilizing the sand. In some places they formed a productive soil with earth brought from a distance, as a garden is made; they spread the siliceous dust of the downs over the too watery meadows; they mixed with the sandy earth the remains of peat taken from the bottoms; they extracted clay to lend fertility to the surface of their lands; they labored to break up the downs with the plow; and thus in a thousand ways, and continually fighting off the menacing waters, they succeeded in bringing Holland to a state of cultivation not inferior to that of more favored regions. That Holland, the sandy, marshy country that the ancients considered all but uninhabitable, now sends out yearly from her confines agricultural products to the value of a hundred millions of francs, possesses about one million three hundred thousand head of cattle, and, in proportion to the extent of her territory, may be accounted one of the most populous of European states. But however wonderful may be the physical history of Holland, her political history is still more so. This small territory invaded from the beginning by different tribes of the Germanic races, subjugated by the Romans and the Franks, devastated by the Normans and by the Danes, desolated by centuries of civil war with all its horrors, this small people of fisherman and traders, saves its civil liberty and its freedom of conscience by a war of eighty years against the formidable monarchy of Philip II., and founds a republic which becomes the ark of salvation to the liberties of all the world, the adopted country of science, the Exchange of Europe, the station for the commerce of the world; a republic which extends its domination to Java, Sumatra, Hindustan, Ceylon, New Holland, Japan, Brazil, Guiana, the Cape of Good Hope, the West-Indies, and New York; a republic which vanquished England on the sea, which resists the united arms of Charles II. and Louis XIV., and which treats on equal terms with the greatest nations, and is, for a time, one of the three Powers that decide the fate of Europe. ROTTERDAM AND THE HAGUE[A] [Footnote A: From "Holland and Its People." By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, S.P. Putnam's Sons. Copyright, 1880.] BY EDMONDO DE AMICIS It is a singular thing that the great cities of Holland, altho built upon a shifting soil, and amid difficulties of every kind, have all great regularity of form. Amsterdam is a semicircle, the Hague square, Rotterdam an equilateral triangle. The base of the triangle is an immense dike, which defends the city from the Meuse, and is called the Boompjes, signifying, in Dutch, small trees, from a row of little elms, now very tall, that were planted when it was first constructed. The whole city of Rotterdam presents the appearance of a town that has been shaken smartly by an earthquake, and is on the point of the falling ruin. All the houses--in any street one may count the exceptions on their fingers--lean more or less, but the greater part of them so much that at the roof they lean forward at least a foot beyond their neighbors, which may be straight, or not so visibly inclined; one leans forward as if it would fall into the street; another backward, another to the left, another to the right, at some points six or seven contiguous houses all lean forward together, those in the middle most, those at the ends lass, looking like a paling with a crowd pressing against it. At another point, two houses lean together as if supporting one another. In certain streets the houses for a long distance lean all one way, like trees beaten by a prevailing wind; and then another long row will lean in the opposite direction, as if the wind had changed. Sometimes there is a certain regularity of inclination that is scarcely noticeable; and again, at crossings and in the smaller streets, there is an indescribable confusion of lines, a real architectural frolic, a dance of houses, a disorder that seems animated. There are houses that nod forward as if asleep, others that start backward as if frightened, some bending toward each other, their roofs almost touching, as if in secret conference; some falling upon one another as if they were drunk, some leaning backward between others that lean forward, like malefactors dragged onward by their guards; rows of houses that curtsey to a steeple, groups of small houses all inclined toward one in the middle, like conspirators in conclave. Broad and long canals divide the city into so many islands, united by drawbridges, turning bridges, and bridges of stone. On either side of every canal extends a street, flanked by trees on one side and houses on the other. All these canals are deep enough to float large vessels, and all are full of them from one end to the other, except a space in the middle left for passage in and out. An immense fleet imprisoned in a city. When I arrived it was the busiest hour, so I planted myself upon the highest bridge over the principal crossing. From thence were visible four canals, four forests of ships, bordered by eight files of trees; the streets were crammed with people and merchandise; droves of cattle were crossing the bridges; bridges were rising in the air, or opening in the middle, to allow vessels to pass through, and were scarcely replaced or closed before they were inundated by a throng of people, carts, and carriages; ships came and went in the canals, shining like models in a museum, and with the wives and children of the sailors on the decks; boats darted from vessel to vessel; the shops drove a busy trade; servant-women washed the walls and windows; and all this moving life was rendered more gay and cheerful by the reflections in the water, the green of the trees, the red of the houses, the tall windmills, showing their dark tops and white sails against the azure of the sky, and still more by an air of quiet simplicity not seen in any other northern city. From canal to canal, and from bridge to bridge, I finally reached the dike of the Boompjes upon the Meuse, where boils and bubbles all the life of the great commercial city. On the left extends a long row of small many-colored steamboats, which start every hour in the day for Dordrecht, Arnhem, Gonda, Schiedam, Brilla, Zealand, and continually send forth clouds of white smoke and the sound of their cheerful bells. To the right lie the large ships which make the voyage to various European ports, mingled with fine three-masted vessels bound for the East Indies, with names written in golden letters--Java, Sumatra, Borneo, Samarang--carrying the fancy to those distant and savage countries like the echoes of distant voices. In front the Meuse, covered with boats and barks, and the distant shore with a forest of beech trees, windmills, and towers; and over all the unquiet sky, full of gleams of light, and gloomy clouds, fleeting and changing in their constant movement, as if repeating the restless labor on the earth below. Rotterdam, it must be said here, is, in commercial importance, the first city in Holland after Amsterdam. It was already a flourishing town in the thirteenth century. Ludovico Guicciardini, in his work on the Low Countries, adduces a proof of the wealth of the city in the sixteenth century, saying that in one year nine hundred houses that had been destroyed by fire were rebuilt. Bentivoglio, in his history of the war in Flanders, calls it "the largest and most mercantile of the lands of Holland." But its greatest prosperity did not begin until 1830, or after the separation of Holland and Belgium, when Rotterdam seemed to draw to herself everything that was lost by her rival, Antwerp. Her situation is extremely advantageous. She communicates with the sea by the Meuse, which brings to her ports in a few hours the largest merchantmen; and by the same river she communicates with the Rhine, which brings to her from the Swiss mountains and Bavaria immense quantities of timber--entire forests that come to Holland to be transformed into ships, dikes, and villages. More than eighty splendid vessels come and go, in the space of nine months, between Rotterdam and India. Merchandise flows in from all sides in such great abundance that a large part of it has to be distributed through the neighboring towns.... Rotterdam, in short, has a future more splendid than that of Amsterdam, and has long been regarded as a rival by her elder sister. She does not possess the wealth of the capital; but is more industrious in increasing what she has; she dares, risks, undertakes like a young and adventurous city. Amsterdam, like a merchant grown cautious after having made his fortune by hazardous undertakings, begins to doze over her treasures. At Rotterdam fortunes are made; at Amsterdam they are consolidated; at the Hague they are spent.... In the middle of the market-place, surrounded by heaps of vegetables, fruit, and earthenware pots and pans, stands the statue of Desiderius Erasmus, the first literary light of Holland; that Gerrit Gerritz--for he assumed the Latin name himself, according to the custom of writers in his day--that Gerrit Gerritz belonged, by his education, his style, and his ideas, to the family of the humanists and erudite of Italy; a fine writer, profound and indefatigable in letters and science, he filled all Europe with his name between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; he was loaded with favors by the popes, and sought after and entertained by princes; and his "Praise of Folly," written in Latin like the rest of his innumerable works, and dedicated to Sir Thomas More, is still read. The bronze statue, erected in 1622, represents Erasmus drest in a furred gown, with a cap of the same, a little bent forward as if walking, and in the act of reading a large book, held open in the hand; the pedestal bears a double inscription, in Dutch and Latin, calling him, "The Foremost Man of His Century," and "The Most Excellent of All Citizens." In spite of this pompous eulogium, however, poor Erasmus, planted there like a municipal guard in the market-place, makes but a pitiful figure. I do not believe that there is in the world another statue of a man of letters that is, like this, neglected by the passer-by, despised by those about it, commiserated by those who look at it. But who knows whether Erasmus, acute philosopher as he was, and must be still, be not contented with his corner, the more that it is not far from his own house, if the tradition is correct? In a small street near the market-place, in the wall of a little house now occupied as a tavern, there is a niche with a bronze statuette representing the great writer, and under it the inscription: "This is the little house in which the great Erasmus was born." ... Rotterdam in the evening presents an unusual aspect to the stranger's eye. While in other northern cities at a certain hour of the night all the life is concentered in the houses, at Rotterdam at that hour it expands into the streets. The Hoog-straat is filled until far into the night with a dense throng, the shops are open, because the servants make their purchases in the evening, and the cafés crowded. Dutch cafés are peculiar. In general there is one long room, divided in the middle by a green curtain, which is drawn down at evening and conceals the back part, which is the only part lighted; the front part, closed from the street by large glass doors, is in darkness, so that from without only dark shadowy forms can be seen, and the burning points of cigars, like so many fireflies. Among these dark forms the vague profile of a woman who prefers darkness to light may be detected here and there.... Walking through Rotterdam in the evening, it is evident that the city is teeming with life and in process of expansion; a youthful city, still growing, and feeling herself every year more and more prest for room in her streets and houses. In a not far distant future, her hundred and fourteen thousand inhabitants will have increased to two hundred thousand.[A] The smaller streets swarm with children; there is an overflow of life and movement that cheers the eye and heart; a kind of holiday air. The white and rosy faces of the servant-maids, whose white caps gleam on every side; the serene visages of shopkeepers slowly imbibing great glassfuls of beer; the peasants with their monstrous ear-rings; the cleanliness; the flowers in the windows; the tranquil and laborious throng; all give to Rotterdam an aspect of healthful and peaceful content, which brings to the lips the chant of "Te Beata," not with the cry of enthusiasm, but with the smile of sympathy.... [Footnote A: The population now (1914) is 418,000, as stated In the New Standard Dictionary.] The Hague--in Dutch, s'Gravenhage, or s'Hage--the political capital, the Washington of Holland, Amsterdam being the New York--is a city half Dutch and half French, with broad streets and no canals; vast squares full of trees, elegant houses, splendid hotels, and a population mostly made up of the rich, nobles, officials, artists, and literati, the populace being of a more refined order than that of the other Dutch cities. In my first turn about the town what struck me most were the new quarters, where dwells the flower of the wealthy aristocracy. In no other city, not even in the Faubourg St. Germain at Paris, did I feel myself such a very poor devil as in those streets. They are wide and straight, flanked by palaces of elegant form and delicate color, with large shutterless windows, through which can be seen the rich carpets and sumptuous furniture of the first floors. Every door is closed; and there is not a shop, nor a placard, nor a stain, nor a straw to be seen if you were to look for it with a hundred eyes. The silence was profound when I passed by. Only now and then I encountered some aristocratic equipage rolling almost noiselessly over the brick pavement, or the stiffest of lackeys stood before a door, or the blonde head of a lady was visible behind a curtain. Passing close to the windows and beholding my shabby traveling dress ruthlessly reflected in the plate-glass I experienced a certain humiliation at not having been born at least a Cavalière, and imagined I heard low voices whispering disdainfully: "Who is that low person?" Of the older portion of the city, the most considerable part is the Binnenhof, a group of old buildings of different styles of architecture, which looks on two sides upon vast squares, and on the third over a great marsh. In the midst of this group of palaces, towers, and monumental doors, of a medieval and sinister aspect, there is a spacious court, which is entered by three bridges and three gates. In one of these buildings resided the Stadtholders, and it is now the seat of the Second Chamber of the States General; opposite is the First Chamber, with the ministries and various other offices of public administration. The Minister of the Interior has his office in a little low black tower of the most lugubrious aspect, that hangs directly over the waters of the marsh. The Binnenhof, the square to the west, called the Bintenhof, and another square beyond the marsh, called the Plaats, into which you enter by an old gate that once formed part of a prison, were the theaters of the most sanguinary events in the history of Holland. In the Binnenhof was decapitated the venerated Van Olden Barneveldt, the second founder of the republic, the most illustrious victim of that ever-recurring struggle between the burgher aristocracy and the Statholderate, between the republican and the monarchical principle, which worked so miserably in Holland. The scaffold was erected in front of the edifice where the States General sat. Opposite is the tower from which it is said that Maurice of Orange, himself unseen, beheld the last moments of his enemy. The finest ornament of the Hague is its forest; a true wonder of Holland, and one of the most magnificent promenades in the world. It is a wood of alder-trees, oaks, and the largest beeches that are to be found in Europe, on the eastern side of the city, a few paces from the last fringe of houses, and measuring about one French league in circuit; a truly delightful oasis in the midst of the melancholy Dutch plains. As you enter it, little Swiss châlets find kiosks, scattered here and there among the first trees, seem to have strayed and lost themselves in an endless and solitary forest. The trees are as thickly set as a cane-brake, and the alleys vanish in dark perspective. There are lakes and canals almost hidden under the verdure of their banks; rustic bridges, deserted paths, dim recesses, darkness cool and deep, in which one breathes the air of virgin nature, and feels oneself far from the noises of the world. This wood, like that of Haarlem, is said to be the remains of an immense forest that covered, in ancient times, almost all the coast, and is respected by the Dutch people as a monument of their national history. HAARLEM[A] [Footnote A: From "Holland of To-day."] BY AUGUSTUS J.C. HARE A few minutes bring us from Leyden to Haarlem by the railway. It crosses an isthmus between the sea and a lake which covered the whole country between Leyden, Haarlem, and Amsterdam till 1839, when it became troublesome, and the States-General forthwith, after the fashion of Holland, voted its destruction. Enormous engines were at once employed to drain it by pumping the water into canals, which carried it to the sea, and the country was the richer by a new province. Haarlem, on the river Spaarne, stands out distinct in recollection from all other Dutch towns, for it has the most picturesque market-place in Holland--the Groote Markt--surrounded by quaint houses of varied outline, amid which rises the Groote Kerk of S. Bavo, a noble cruciform fifteenth-century building. The interior, however, is as bare and hideous as all other Dutch churches. It contains a monument to the architect Conrad, designer of the famous locks of Katwijk, "the defender of Holland against the fury of the sea and the power of tempests." Behind the choir is the tomb of the poet Bilderijk, who only died in 1831, and near this the grave of Laurenz Janzoom--the Coster or Sacristan--who is asserted in his native town, but never believed outside it, to have been the real inventor of printing, as he is said to have cut out letters in wood, and taken impressions from them in ink, as early as 1423. His partizans also maintain that while he was attending a midnight mass, praying for patience to endure the ill-treatment of his enemies, all his implements were stolen, and that when he found this out on his return he died of grief. It is further declared that the robber was Faust of Mayence, the partner of Gutenburg, and that it was thus that the honor of the invention passed from Holland to Germany where Gutenberg produced his invention of movable type twelve years later. There is a statue of the Coster in front of the church, and, on its north side, his house is preserved and adorned with his bust. Among a crowd of natives with their hats on, talking in church as in the market-place, we waited to hear the famous organ of Christian Muller (1735-38), and grievously were we disappointed with its discordant noises. All the men smoked in church, and this we saw repeatedly; but it would be difficult to say where we ever saw a Dutchman with a pipe out of his mouth. Every man seemed to be systematically smoking away the few wits he possest. Opposite the Groote Kerk is the Stadhuis, an old palace of the Counts of Holland remodeled. It contains a delightful little gallery of the works of Franz Hals, which at once transports the spectator into the Holland of two hundred years ago--such is the marvelous variety of life and vigor imprest into its endless figures of stalwart officers and handsome young archers pledging each other at banquet tables and seeming to welcome the visitor with jovial smiles as he enters the chamber, or of serene old ladies, "regents" of hospitals, seated at their council boards. The immense power of the artist is shown in nothing so much as in the hands, often gloved, dashed in with instantaneous power, yet always having the effect of the most consummate finish at a distance. Behind one of the pictures is the entrance to the famous "secret-room of Haarlem," seldom seen, but containing an inestimable collection of historic relics of the time of the famous siege of Leyden. April and May are the best months for visiting Haarlem, which is the bulb nursery garden of the world. "Oignons à fleurs" are advertised for sale everywhere. Tulips are more cultivated than any other flower, as ministering most of the national craving for color; but times are changed since a single bulb of the tulip "L'Amiral Liefkenshoch" sold for 4,500 florins, one of "Viceroy" for 4,200, and one of "Semper Augustus" for 13,000. SCHEVENINGEN[A] [Footnote A: From "Holland of To-Day." By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the author and of the publishers, Moffat, Yard & Co. Copyright, 1909.] BY GEORGE WHARTON EDWARDS Let us go down to the North Sea and see how the Dutch people enjoy themselves in the summer. Of course the largest of the watering-places in the Netherlands is Scheveningen, and it has a splendid bathing beach which makes it an attractive resort for fashionable Germans and Hollanders, and for summer travelers from all over the world. At the top of the long dyke is a row of hotels and restaurants, and when one reaches this point after passing through the lovely old wood of stately trees one is ushered into the twentieth century, for here all is fashion and gay life, yet with a character all its own. Along the edge of the beach are the bathing machines in scores, and behind them are long lines of covered wicker chairs of peculiar form, each with its foot-stool, where one may sit, shaded, from the sun and sheltered from the wind, and read, chat or doze by the hour. Bath women are seen quaintly clad with their baskets of bathing dresses and labeled with the signs bearing their names, such as Trintje or Netje; everywhere there are sightseers, pedlers calling their wares, children digging in the sand, strolling players performing and the sound of bands of music in the distance. So there is no lack of amusement here during the season. The spacious Kurhaus with its verandas and Kursaal, which is large enough to accommodate 2,500 people, is in the center of the dike. There are concerts every evening, and altho the town is filled with hotels, during the months of June, July, August, and September they are quite monopolized by the Hollanders and the prices are very high. The magnificent pier is 450 yards long. The charges for bathing are very moderate, varying from twenty cents for a small bathing box to fifty cents for a large one, including the towels. Bathing costumes range from five to twenty-five cents. The tickets are numbered, and as soon as a machine is vacant a number is called by the "bath man" and the holder of the corresponding number claims the machine. The basket chairs cost for the whole day twenty cents, Dutch money. One may obtain a subscription to the "Kurhaus" at a surprisingly reasonable rate for the day, week or season. There is a daily orchestra; ballet and operatic concerts once a week; dramatic performances and frequent hops throughout the season. There is a local saying that when good Dutchmen die they go to Scheveningen, and this is certainly their heaven. To stand on the pier on a fine day during the season looking down on these long lines of wicker chairs, turned seaward, is an astonishing sight. They are shaped somewhat like huge snail-shells, and around these the children delight to dig in the sand, throwing up miniature dunes around one. Perhaps no seashore in the world has been painted so much as Scheveningen. Mesdag, Maris, Alfred Stevens, to name only a few of the artists, have found here themes for many paintings, and the scene is a wonderful one when the homing fleet of "Boms," as the fishing-boats are called, appears in the offing to be welcomed by the fisherwomen. There are other smaller watering-places on the coast, but Scheveningen is unique. In the little fishing town itself, the scene on the return of the men is very interesting. Women and children are busily hurrying about from house to house, and everywhere in the little streets are strange signs chalked up on the shutters, such as "water en vuur te koop," that is water and fire for sale; and here are neatly painted buckets of iron, each having a kettle of boiling water over it and a lump of burning turf at the bottom. Fish is being cleaned and the gin shops are well patronized, for it seems a common habit in this moist northern climate frequently to take "Een sneeuw-balletje" of gin and sugar, which does not taste at all badly, be it said. All sorts of strange-looking people are met in the little narrow street, and all doing strange-looking things, but with the air of its being in no wise unusual with them. All in all, Scheveningen is an entertaining spot in which to linger. DELFT[A] [Footnote A: From "Sketches in Holland and Scandinavia."] BY AUGUSTUS J.C. HARE An excursion must be made to Delft, only twenty minutes distant from The Hague by rail. Pepys calls it "a most sweet town, with bridges and a river in every street," and that is a tolerably accurate description. It seems thinly inhabited, and the Dutch themselves look upon it as a place where one will die of ennui. It has scarcely changed with two hundred years. The view of Delft by Van der Meer in the Museum at The Hague might have been painted yesterday. All the trees are dipt, for in artificial Holland every work of Nature is artificialized. At certain seasons, numbers of storks may be seen upon the chimney-tops, for Delft is supposed to be the stork town par excellence. Near the shady canal Oude Delft is a low building, once the Convent of St. Agata, with an ornamental door surmounted by a relief, leading into a courtyard. It is a common barrack now, for Holland, which has no local histories, has no regard whatever for its historic associations or monuments. Yet this is the greatest shrine of Dutch history, for it is here that William the Silent died. Philip II. had promised 25,000 crowns of gold to any one who would murder the Prince of Orange. An attempt had already been made, but had failed, and William refused to take any measures for self-protection, saying, "It is useless: my years are in the hands of God; if there is a wretch who has no fear of death, my life is in his hand, however I may guard it." At length, a young man of seven-and-twenty appeared at Delft, who gave himself out to be one Guyon, a Protestant, son of Pierre Guyon, executed at Besançon for having embraced Calvinism, and declared that he was exiled for his religion. Really he was Balthazar Gerard, a bigoted Catholic, but his conduct in Holland soon procured him the reputation of an evangelical saint. The Prince took him into his service and sent him to accompany a mission from the States of Holland to the Court of France, whence he returned to bring the news of the death of the Duke of Anjou to William. At that time the Prince was living with his court in the convent of St. Agata, where he received Balthazar alone in his chamber. The moment was opportune, but the would-be assassin had no arms ready. William gave him a small sum of money and bade him hold himself in readiness to be sent back to France. With the money Balthazar bought two pistols from a soldier (who afterward killed himself when he heard the use which was made of the purchase). On the next day, June 10, 1584, Balthazar returned to the convent as William was descending the staircase to dinner, with his fourth wife, Louise de Coligny (daughter of the Admiral who fell in the massacre of St. Bartholomew), on his arm. He presented his passport and begged the Prince to sign it, but was told to return later. At dinner the Princess asked William who was the young man who had spoken to him, for his expression was the most terrible she had ever seen. The Prince laughed, said it was Guyon, and was as gay as usual. Dinner being over, the family party were about to remount the staircase. The assassin was waiting in a dark corner at the foot of the stairs, and as William passed he discharged a pistol with three balls and fled. The Prince staggered, saying, "I am wounded; God have mercy upon me and my poor people." His sister Catherine van Schwartz-bourg asked, "Do you trust in Jesus Christ?" He said, "Yes," with a feeble voice, sat down upon the stairs, and died. Balthazar reached the rampart of the town in safety, hoping to swim to the other side of the moat, where a horse awaited him. But he had dropt his hat and his second pistol in his flight, and so he was traced and seized before he could leap from the wall. Amid horrible tortures, he not only confest, but continued to triumph in his crime. His judges believed him to be possest of the devil. The next day he was executed. His right hand was burned off in a tube of red-hot iron; the flesh of his arms and legs was torn off with red-hot pincers; but he never made a cry. It was not till his breast was cut open, and his heart torn out and flung in his face, that he expired. His head was then fixt on a pike, and his body, cut into four quarters, exposed on the four gates of the town. Close to the Prinsenhof is the Oude Kerk with a leaning tower. It is arranged like a very ugly theater inside, but contains, with other tombs of celebrities, the monument of Admiral van Tromp, 1650--"Martinus Harberti Trompius"--whose effigy lies upon his back, with swollen feet. It was this Van Tromp who defeated the English fleet under Blake, and perished, as represented on the monument, in an engagement off Scheveningen. It was he who, after his victory over the English, caused a broom to be hoisted at his mast-head to typify that he had swept the Channel clear of his enemies. LEYDEN[A] [Footnote A: From "Holland and Its People." Translated by Caroline Tilton. By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, G.P. Putnam's Sons. Copyright, 1880.] BY EDMONDO DE AMICIS Leyden, the antique Athens of the north, the Saragossa of the Low Countries, the oldest and most illustrious of the daughters of Holland, is one of those cities which make you thoughtful upon first entering them, and are remembered for a long time afterward with a certain impression of sadness. I had hardly arrived when the chill of a dead city seemed to fall upon me. The old Rhine, which crosses Leyden, dividing it into many islets joined together by one hundred and fifty stone bridges, forms wide canals and basins which contain no ship or boat, and the city seems rather invaded by the waters than merely crossed by them. The principal streets are very broad and flanked by rows of old blockhouses with the usual pointed gables, and the few people seen in the streets and squares are like the survivors of a city depopulated by the plague. In the smaller streets you walk upon long tracts of grass, between houses with closed doors and windows, in a silence as profound as that of those fabled cities where all the inhabitants are sunk in a supernatural sleep. You pass over bridges overgrown with weeds, and long canals covered with a green carpet, through small squares that seem like convent courtyards; and then, suddenly, you reach a broad thoroughfare, like the streets of Paris; from which you again penetrate into a labyrinth of narrow alleys. From bridge to bridge, from canal to canal, from island to island, you wander for hours seeking for the life and movement of the ancient Leyden, and finding only solitude, silence, and the waters which reflect the melancholy majesty of the fallen city. In 1573 the Spaniards, led by Valdez, laid siege to Leyden. In the city there were only some volunteer soldiers. The military command was given to Van der Voes, a valiant man, and a Latin poet of some renown. Van der Werf was burgomaster. In brief time the besiegers had constructed more than sixty forts in all the places where it was possible to penetrate into the city by sea or land, and Leyden was completely isolated. But the people of Leyden did not lose heart. William of Orange had sent them word to hold out for three months, within which time he would succor them, for on the fate of Leyden depended that of Holland; and the men of Leyden had promised to resist to the last extremity.... The Prince of Orange received the news of the safety of the city at Delft, in church, where he was present at divine service. He sent the message at once to the preacher, and the latter announced it to the congregation, who received it with shouts of joy. Altho only just recovered from his illness, and the epidemic still raging at Leyden, William would see at once his dear and valorous city. He went there; his entry was a triumph; his majestic and serene aspect put new heart into the people; his words made them forget all they had suffered. To reward Leyden for her heroic defense, he left her her choice between exemption from certain imposts or the foundation of a university. Leyden chose the university. How this university answered to the hopes of Leyden, it is superfluous to say. Everybody knows how the States of Holland with their liberal offers drew learned men from every country; how philosophy, driven out of France, took refuge there; how Leyden was for a long time the securest citadel for all men who were struggling for the triumph of human reason; how it became at length the most famous school in Europe. The actual university is in an ancient convent. One can not enter without a sentiment of profound respect the great hall of the Academic Senate, where are seen the portraits of all the professors who have succeeded each other from the foundation of the university up to the present day. DORTRECHT[A] [Footnote A: From "Sketches in Holland and Scandinavia."] BY AUGUSTUS J.C. HARE Our morning at Dortrecht was very delightful, and it is a thoroughly charming place. Passing under a dark archway in a picturesque building of Charles V., opposite the hotel, we found ourselves at once on the edge of an immense expanse of shimmering river, with long, rich meadows beyond, between which the wide flood breaks into three different branches. Red and white sails flit down them. Here and there rises a line of pollard willows or clipt elms, and now and then a church spire. On the nearest shore an ancient windmill, colored in delicate tints of gray and yellow, surmounts a group of white buildings. On the left is a broad esplanade of brick, lined with ancient houses, and a canal with a bridge, the long arms of which are ready to open at a touch and give a passage to the great yellow-masted barges, which are already half intercepting the bright red house-fronts ornamented with stone, which belong to some public buildings facing the end of the canal. With what a confusion of merchandise are the boats laden, and how gay is the coloring, between the old weedy posts to which they are moored! It was from hence that Isabella of France, with Sir John de Hainault and many other faithful knights set on their expedition against Edward II. and the government of the Spencers. From the busy port, where nevertheless they are dredging, we cross another bridge and find ourselves in a quietude like that of a cathedral close in England. On one side is a wide pool half covered with floating timber, and, in the other half, reflecting like a mirror the houses on the opposite shore, with their bright gardens of lilies and hollyhocks, and trees of mountain ash, which bend their masses of scarlet berries to the still water. Between the houses are glints of blue river and of inevitable windmills on the opposite shore. And all this we observe standing in the shadow of a huge church, the Groote Kerk, with a nave of the fourteenth century, and a choir of the fifteenth and a gigantic trick tower, in which three long Gothic arches, between octagonal tourelles, enclose several tiers of windows. At the top is a great clock, and below the church a grove of elms, through which fitful sunlight falls on the grass and the dead red of the brick pavement (so grateful to feet sore with the sharp stones of other Dutch cities), where groups of fishermen are collecting in their blue shirts and white trousers. There is little to see inside this or any other church in Holland; travelers will rather seek for the memorials at the Kloveniers Doelen, of the famous Synod of Dort, which was held 1618-19, in the hope of effecting a compromise between the Gomarists, or disciples of Calvin, and the Arminians who followed Zwingli, and who had recently obtained the name of Remonstrants from the "remonstrance" which they had addrest eight years before in defense of their doctrines. The Calvinists held that the greater part of mankind was excluded from grace, which the Arminians denied; but at the Synod of Dort the Calvinists proclaimed themselves as infallible as the Pope, and their resolutions became the law of the Dutch Reformed Church. The Arminians were forthwith outlawed; a hundred ministers who refused to subscribe to the dictates of the Synod were banished; Hugo Grotius and Rombout Hoogerbeets were imprisoned for life at Loevestein; the body of the secretary Ledenberg, was hung; and Van Olden Barneveldt, the friend of William the Silent, was beheaded in his seventy-second year.... Through the street of wine--Wijnstraat--built over stonehouses used for the staple, we went to the museum to see the pictures. There were two schools of Dortrecht. Jacob Geritee Cuyp (1575); Albert Cuyp (1605), Ferdinand Bol (1611), Nicolas Maas (1632), and Schalken (1643) belonged to the former; Arend de Gelder, Arnold Houbraken, Dirk Stoop, and Ary Scheffer are of the latter. Sunshine and glow were the characteristics of the first school, grayness and sobriety of the second. But there are few good pictures at Dort now, and some of the best works of Cuyp are to be found in our National Gallery, [London] executed at his native place and portraying the great brick tower of the church in the golden haze of evening, seen across rich pastures, where the cows are lying deep in the meadow grass. The works of Ary Scheffer are now the most interesting pictures in the Dortrecht Gallery. Of the subject, "Christus Consolator," there are two representations. In the more striking of these the pale Christ is seated among the sick, sorrowful, blind, maimed, and enslaved, who are all stretching their hands to Him. Beneath is the tomb which the artist executed for his mother, Cornelia Scheffer, whose touching figure is represented lying with outstretched hands, in the utmost abandonment of repose. THE ZUYDER ZEE[A] [Footnote A: From "Holland and Its People." Translated by Caroline Tilton. By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, G.P. Putnam's Sons. Copyright, 1880.] BY EDMONDO DE AMICIS This great basin of the North Sea, which bathes five provinces and has an extent of more than seven hundred square kilometers, six hundred years ago was not in existence. North Holland touched Friesland, and where the gulf now extends there was a vast region sprinkled with fresh-water lakes, the largest of which, the Flevo, mentioned by Tacitus, was separated from the sea by a fertile and populous isthmus. Whether the sea by its own force broke through the natural dikes of the region, or whether the sinking of the land left it free to invasion, is not certainly known. The great transformation was completed during the course of the thirteenth century. About the formation of this gulf there has collected a varied and confused history of cities destroyed and people drowned, to which has been added in later times another history, of new cities rising on new shores, becoming powerful and famous, and being in their turn reduced to poor and mean villages, with streets overgrown with grass, and sand-choked ports. Records of great calamities, wonderful traditions, fantastic horrors, strange usages and customs, are found upon the waters and about the shores of this peculiar sea, born but yesterday, and already encircled with ruins and condemned to disappear; and a month's voyage would not suffice to gather up the chief of them; but the thought alone of beholding from a distance those decrepit cities, those mysterious islands, those fatal sand-banks, excited my imagination.... Marken is as famous among the islands of the Zuyder Zee as Broek is among the villages of Holland; but with all its fame, and altho distant but one hour by boat from the coast, few are the strangers, and still fewer the natives who visit it. So said the captain as he pointed out the lighthouse of the little island, and added that in his opinion the reason was, that when a stranger arrived at Marken, even if he were a Dutchman, he was followed by a crowd of boys, watched, and commented upon as if he were a man fallen from the moon. This unusual curiosity is explained by a description of the island. It is a bit of land about three thousand meters in length and one thousand in width, which was detached from the continent in the thirteenth century, and remains to this day, in the manners, and customs of its inhabitants, exactly as it was six centuries ago. The surface of the island is but little higher than the sea, and it is surrounded by a small dike which does not suffice to protect it from inundation. The houses are built upon eight small artificial elevations, and form as many boroughs, one of which--the one which has the church--is the capital, and another the cemetery. When the sea rises above the dike, the spaces between the little hills are changed into canals, and the inhabitants go about in boats. The houses are built of wood, some painted, some only pitched; one only is of stone, that of the pastor, who also has a small garden shaded by four large trees, the only ones on the island. Next to this house are the church, the school, and the municipal offices. The population is about one thousand in number, and lives by fishing. With the exceptions of the doctor, the pastor, and the school-master, all are native to the island; no islander marries on the continent; no one from the mainland comes to live on the island. They all profess the reformed religion, and all know how to read and write. In the schools more than two hundred boys and girls are taught history, geography, and arithmetic. The fashion of dress, which has not been changed for centuries, is the same for all, and extremely curious. The men look like soldiers. They wear a dark gray cloth jacket ornamented with two rows of buttons which are in general medals, or ancient coins, handed down from father to son. This jacket is tucked into the waistband of a pair of breeches of the same color, very wide about the hips and tight around the leg, fastening below the knee; a felt hat or a fur cap, according to the season; a red cravat, black stockings, white wooden shoes, or a sort of slipper, complete the costume. That of the women is still more peculiar. They wear on their heads an enormous white cap in the form of a miter, all ornamented with lace and needlework, and tied under the chin like a helmet. From under the cap, which completely covers the ears, fall two long braided tresses, which hang over the bosom, and a sort of visor of hair comes down upon the forehead, cut square just above the eyebrows. The dress is composed of a waist without sleeves, and a petticoat of two colors. The waist is deep red, embroidered in colors and costing years of labor to make, for which reason it descends from mother to daughter, from generation to generation. The upper part of the petticoat is gray or blue striped with black, and the lower part dark brown. The arms are covered almost to the elbow with sleeves of a white chemise, striped with red. The children are drest in almost the same way, tho there is some slight difference between girls and women, and on holidays the costume is more richly ornamented. THE ART OF HOLLAND[A] [Footnote A: From "Holland and Its People." Translated by Caroline Tilton. By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, G.P. Putnam's Sons. Copyright, 1880.] BY EDMONDO DE AMICIS The Dutch school of painting has one quality which renders it particularly attractive to us Italians; it is of all others the most different from our own, the very antithesis, or the opposite pole of art. The Dutch and Italian schools are the two most original, or, as has been said, the only two to which the title rigorously belongs; the others being only daughters, or younger sisters, more or less resembling them. Thus, even in painting Holland offers that which is most sought after in travel and in books of travel; the new. Dutch painting was born with the liberty and independence of Holland. As long as the northern and southern provinces of the Low Countries remained under the Spanish rule and in the Catholic faith, Dutch painters painted like Belgian painters; they studied in Belgium, Germany, and Italy; Heemskerk imitated Michael Angelo; Bloemart followed Correggio, and "Il Moro" copied Titian, not to indicate others; and they were one and all pedantic imitators, who added to the exaggerations of the Italian style a certain German coarseness, the result of which was a bastard style of painting, still inferior to the first, childish, stiff in design, crude in color, and completely wanting in chiaroscuro, but not, at least, a servile imitation, and becoming, as it were, a faint prelude to the true Dutch art that was to be.... After depicting the house, they turned their attention to the country. The stern climate allowed but a brief time for the admiration of nature, but for this very reason Dutch artists admired her all the more; they saluted the spring with a livelier joy, and permitted that fugitive smile of heaven to stamp itself more deeply on their fancy. The country was not beautiful, but it was twice dear because it had been torn from the sea and from the foreign oppressor. The Dutch artist painted it lovingly; he represented it simply, ingenuously, with a sense of intimacy which at that time was not to be found in Italian or Belgian landscape. The flat, monotonous country had, to the Dutch painter's eyes, a marvelous variety. He caught all the mutations of the sky, and knew the value of the water, with its reflections, its grace and freshness, and its power of illuminating everything. Having no mountains, he took the dikes for background; and with no forests, he imparted to a simple group of trees all the mystery of a forest; and he animated the whole with beautiful animals and white sails. The subjects of their pictures are poor enough--a windmill, a canal, a gray sky;--but how they make one think! A few Dutch painters, not content with nature in their own country, came to Italy in search of hills, luminous skies, and famous ruins; and another band of select artists is the result. Both, Swanevelt, Pynaeker, Breenberg, Van Laer, Asselyn. But the palm remains with the landscapists of Holland, with Wynants the painter of morning, with Van der Neer the painter of night, with Rusydael the painter of melancholy, with Hobbema the illustrator of windmills, cabins, and kitchen gardens, and with others who have restricted themselves to the expression of the enchantment of nature as she is in Holland. Simultaneously with landscape art was born another kind of painting, especially peculiar to Holland--animal painting. Animals are the wealth of the country; and that magnificent race of cattle which has no rival in Europe for fecundity and beauty. The Hollanders, who owe so much to them, treat them, one may say, as part of the population; they wash them, comb them, dress them, and love them dearly. They are to be seen everywhere; they are reflected in all the canals, and dot with points of black and white the immense fields that stretch on every side; giving an air of peace and comfort to every place, and exciting in the spectator's heart a sentiment of patriarchal serenity. The Dutch artists studied these animals in all their varieties, in all their habits, and divined, as one may say, their inner life and sentiments, animating the tranquil beauty of the landscape with their forms. Rubens, Luyders, Paul de Vos, and other Belgian painters, had drawn animals with admirable mastery, but all these are surpassed by the Dutch artists, Van der Velde, Berghum, Karel der Jardin, and by the prince of animal painters, Paul Potter, whose famous "Bull," in the gallery of The Hague, deserves to be placed in the Vatican beside the "Transfiguration" by Rafael. In yet another field are the Dutch painters great--the sea. The sea, their enemy, their power, and their glory, forever threatening their country, and entering in a hundred ways into their lives and fortunes; that turbulent North Sea, full of sinister colors, with a light of infinite melancholy beating forever upon a desolate coast, must subjugate the imagination of the artist. He, indeed, passes long hours on the shore, contemplating its tremendous beauty, ventures upon its waves to study the effects of tempests, buys a vessel and sails with his wife and family, observing and making notes, follows the fleet into battle, and takes part in the fight, and in this way are made marine painters like William Van der Velde the elder, and William the younger, like Backhuysen, Dubbels, and Stork. Another kind of painting was to arise in Holland, as the expression of the character of the people and of republican manners. A people that without greatness had done so many great things, as Michelet says, must have its heroic painters, if we call them so, destined to illustrate men and events. But this school of painting--precisely because the people were without greatness, or, to express it better, without form of greatness, modest, inclined to consider all equal before the country, because all had done their duty, abhorring adulation, and the glorification in one only of the virtues and the triumph of many--this school has to illustrate not a few men who have excelled, and a few extraordinary facts, but all classes of citizenship gathered among the most ordinary and pacific of burgher life. From this come the great pictures which represent five, ten, thirty persons together, arquebusiers, mayors, officers, professors, magistrates, administrators, seated or standing around a table, feasting and conversing, of life size, most faithful likenesses, grave, open faces, expressing that secure serenity of conscience by which may be divined rather than seen the nobleness of a life consecrated to one's country, the character of that strong, laborious epoch, the masculine virtues of that excellent generation; all this set off by the fine costume of the time, so admirably combining grace and dignity; those gorgets, those doublets, those black mantles, those silken scarves and ribbons, those arms and banners. In this field stand preeminent Van der Heist, Hals, Covaert, Flink, and Bol.... Finally, there are still two important excellences to be recorded of this school of painting--its variety, and its importance as the expression, the mirror, so to speak, of the country. If we except Rembrandt with his group of followers and imitators, almost all the other artists differ very much from one another; no other school presents so great a number of original masters. The realism of the Dutch painters is born of their common love of nature; but each one has shown in his work a kind of love peculiarly his own; each one has rendered a different impression which he has received from nature and all, starting from the same point, which was the worship of material truth, have arrived at separate and distinct goals. THE TULIPS OF HOLLAND[A] [Footnote A: From "Holland and Its People." Translated by Caroline Tilton. By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, G.P. Putnam's Sons. Copyright, 1880.] BY EDMONDO DE AMICIS The word "tulip" recalls one of the strangest popular follies that has ever been seen in the world, which showed itself in Holland toward the middle of the seventeenth century. The country at that time had reached the height of prosperity; antique parsimony had given place to luxury; the houses of the wealthy, very modest at the beginning of the century, were transformed into little palaces; velvet, silk, and pearls replaced the patriarchal simplicity of the ancient costume; Holland had become vain, ambitious, and prodigal. After having filled their houses with pictures, hangings, porcelain, and precious objects from all the countries of Europe and Asia, the rich merchants of the large Dutch cities began to spend considerable sums in ornamenting their gardens with tulips--the flower which answers best to that innate avidity for vivid colors which the Dutch people manifest in so many ways. This taste for tulips promoted their rapid cultivation; everywhere gardens were laid out, studies promoted, new varieties of the favorite flower sought for. In a short time the fever became general; on every side there swarmed unknown tulips, of strange forms, and wonderful shades or combinations of colors, full of contrasts, caprices, and surprises. Prices rose in a marvelous way; a new variegation, a new form, obtained in those blest leaves was an event, a fortune. Thousands of persons gave themselves up to the study with the fury of insanity; all over the country nothing was talked of but petals; bulbs, colors, vases, seeds. The mania grew to such a pass that all Europe was laughing at it. Bulbs of the favorite tulips of the rarer varieties rose to fabulous prices; some constituted a fortune; like a house, an orchard, or a mill; one bulb was equivalent to a dowry for the daughter of a rich family; for one bulb were given, in I know not what city, two carts of grain, four carts of barley, four oxen, twelve sheep, two casks of wine, four casks of beer, a thousand pounds of cheese, a complete dress, and silver goblet. Another bulb of a tulip named "Semper Augustus" was bought at the price of thirteen thousand florins. A bulb of the "Admiral Enkhuysen" tulip cost two thousand dollars. One day there were only two bulbs of the "Semper Augustus" left in Holland, one at Amsterdam and the other at Haarlem, and for one of them there were offered, and refused, four thousand six hundred florins, a splendid coach, and a pair of gray horses with beautiful harness. Another offered twelve acres of land, and he also was refused. On the registers of Alkmaar it is recorded that in 1637 there were sold in that city, at public auction, one hundred and twenty tulips for the benefit of the orphanage, and that the sale produced one hundred and eighty thousand francs. Then they began to traffic in tulips, as in State bonds and shares. They sold for enormous sums bulbs which they did not possess, engaging to provide them for a certain day; and in this way a traffic was carried on for a much larger number of tulips than the whole of Holland could furnish. It is related that one Dutch town sold twenty millions of francs' worth of tulips, and that an Amsterdam merchant gained in this trade more than sixty-eight thousand florins in the space of four months. These sold that which they had not, and those that which they never could have; the market passed from hand to hand, the differences were paid, and the flowers for and by which so many people were ruined or enriched, flourished only in the imagination of the traffickers. Finally matters arrived at such a pass that, many buyers having refused to pay the sums agreed upon, and contests and disorders following, the government decreed that these debts should be considered as ordinary obligations, and that payment should be exacted in the usual legal manner; then prices fell suddenly, as low as fifty florins for the "Semper Augustus," and the scandalous traffic ceased. Now the culture of flowers is no longer a mania, but is carried on for love of them, and Haarlem is the principal temple. She still provides a great part of Europe and South America with flowers. The city is encircled by gardens, which, toward the end of April and the beginning of May, are covered with myriads of tulips, hyacinths, carnations, auriculas, anemones, ranunculuses, camelias, primroses, and other flowers, forming an immense wreath about Haarlem, from which travelers from all parts of the world gather a bouquet in passing. Of late years the hyacinth has risen into great honor; but the tulip is still king of the gardens, and Holland's supreme affection. I should have to change my pen for the brush of Van der Huysem or Menedoz, if I were to attempt to describe the pomp of their gorgeous, luxuriant, dazzling colors, which, if the sensation given to the eye may be likened to that of the ear, might be said to resemble a shout of joyous laughter or a cry of love in the green silence of the garden; affecting one like the loud music of a festival. There are to be seen the "Duke of Toll" tulip, the tulips called "simple precocious" in more than six hundred varieties; the "double precocious"; the late tulips, divided into unicolored, fine, superfine, and rectified; the fine, subdivided into violet, rose, and striped; then the monsters or parrots, the hybrids, the thieves; classified into a thousand orders of nobility and elegance; tinted with all the shades of color conceivable to the human mind: spotted, speckled, striped, edged, variegated, with leaves fringed, waved, festooned; decorated with gold and silver medals; distinguished by names of generals, painters, birds, rivers, poets, cities, queens, and a thousand loving and bold adjectives, which recall their metamorphoses, their adventures, and their triumphs, and leave in the mind a sweet confusion of beautiful images and pleasant thoughts. 
11995	----	A RESIDENCE IN FRANCE, DURING THE YEARS 1792, 1793, 1794, AND 1795; DESCRIBED IN A SERIES OF LETTERS FROM AN ENGLISH LADY; With General And Incidental Remarks On The French Character And Manners. Prepared for the Press By John Gifford, Esq. Author of the History of France, Letter to Lord Lauderdale, Letter to the Hon. T. Erskine, &c. Second Edition. _Plus je vis l'Etranger plus j'aimai ma Patrie._ --Du Belloy. London: Printed for T. N. Longman, Paternoster Row. 1797. 1795 Amiens, Jan. 23, 1795. Nothing proves more that the French republican government was originally founded on principles of despotism and injustice, than the weakness and anarchy which seem to accompany every deviation from these principles. It is strong to destroy and weak to protect: because, deriving its support from the power of the bad and the submission of the timid, it is deserted or opposed by the former when it ceases to plunder or oppress-- while the fears and habits of the latter still prevail, and render them as unwilling to defend a better system as they have been to resist the worst possible. The reforms that have taken place since the death of Robespierre, though not sufficient for the demands of justice, are yet enough to relax the strength of the government; and the Jacobins, though excluded from authority, yet influence by the turbulence of their chiefs in the Convention, and the recollection of their past tyranny--against the return of which the fluctuating politics of the Assembly offer no security. The Committees of Public Welfare and General Safety (whose members were intended, according to the original institution, to be removed monthly) were, under Robespierre, perpetual; and the union they preserved in certain points, however unfavourable to liberty, gave a vigour to the government, of which from its conformation it should appear to have been incapable. It is now discovered, that an undefined power, not subject to the restriction of fixed laws, cannot remain long in the same hands without producing tyranny. A fourth part of the Members of these Committees are, therefore, now changed every month; but this regulation, more advantageous to the Convention than the people, keeps alive animosities, stimulates ambition, and retains the country in anxiety and suspense; for no one can guess this month what system may be adopted the next--and the admission of two or three new Jacobin members would be sufficient to excite an universal alarm. We watch these renewals with a solicitude inconceivable to those who study politics as they do a new opera, and have nothing to apprehend from the personal characters of Ministers; and our hopes and fears vary according as the members elected are Moderates, Doubtfuls, or decided Mountaineers.* * For instance, Carnot, whose talents in the military department obliged the Convention (even if they had not been so disposed) to forget his compliances with Robespierre, his friendship for Barrere and Collot, and his eulogiums on Carrier. --This mixture of principles, which intrigue, intimidation, or expediency, occasions in the Committees, is felt daily; and if the languor and versatility of the government be not more apparent, it is that habits of submission still continue, and that the force of terror operates in the branches, though the main spring be relaxed. Were armies to be raised, or means devised to pay them now, it could not be done; though, being once put in motion, they continue to act, and the requisitions still in a certain degree supply them. The Convention, while they have lost much of their real power, have also become more externally contemptible than ever. When they were overawed by the imposing tone of their Committees, they were tolerably decent; but as this restraint has worn off, the scandalous tumult of their debates increases, and they exhibit whatever you can imagine of an assemblage of men, most of whom are probably unacquainted with those salutary forms which correct the passions, and soften the intercourse of polished society. They question each other's veracity with a frankness truly democratic, and come fraternally to "Touchstone's seventh remove" at once, without passing any of the intermediate progressions. It was but lately that one Gaston advanced with a stick in full assembly to thresh Legendre; and Cambon and Duhem are sometimes obliged to be holden by the arms and legs, to prevent their falling on Tallien and Freron. I described scenes of this nature to you at the opening of the Convention; but I assure you, the silent meditations of the members under Robespierre have extremely improved them in that species of eloquence, which is not susceptible of translation or transcription. We may conclude, that these licences are inherent to a perfect democracy; for the greater the number of representatives, and the nearer they approach to the mass of the people, the less they will be influenced by aristocratic ceremonials. We have, however, no interest in disputing the right of the Convention to use violence and lavish abuse amongst themselves; for, perhaps, these scenes form the only part of their journals which does not record or applaud some real mischief. The French, who are obliged to celebrate so many aeras of revolution, who have demolished Bastilles and destroyed tyrants, seem at this moment to be in a political infancy, struggling against despotism, and emerging from ignorance and barbarity. A person unacquainted with the promoters and objects of the revolution, might be apt to enquire for what it had been undertaken, or what had been gained by it, when all the manufactured eloquence of Tallien is vainly exerted to obtain some limitation of arbitrary imprisonment--when Freron harangues with equal labour and as little success in behalf of the liberty of the press; while Gregoire pleads for freedom of worship, Echasseriaux for that of commerce, and all the sections of Paris for that of election.* * It is to be observed, that in these orations all the decrees passed by the Convention for the destruction of commerce and religion, are ascribed to the influence of Mr. Pitt.--"La libertedes cultes existe en Turquie, elle n'existe point en France. Le peuple y est prive d'un droit donc on jouit dans les etats despotiques memes, sous les regences de Maroc et d'Algers. Si cet etat de choses doit perseverer, ne parlons plus de l'inquisition, nous en avons perdu le droit, car la liberte des cultes n'est que dans les decrets, et la persecution tiraille toute la France. "Cette impression intolerante aurait elle ete (suggeree) par le cabinet de St. James?" "In Turkey the liberty of worship is admitted, though it does not exist in France. Here the people are deprived of a right common to the most despotic governments, not even excepting those of Algiers and Morocco.--If things are to continue in this state, let us say no more about the Inquisition, we have no right, for religious liberty is to be found only in our decrees, while, in truth, the whole country is exposed to persecution. "May not these intolerant notions have been suggested by the Cabinet of St. James?" Gregoire's Report on the Liberty of Worship. --Thus, after so many years of suffering, and such a waste of whatever is most valuable, the civil, religious, and political privileges of this country depend on a vote of the Convention. The speech of Gregoire, which tended to restore the Catholic worship, was very ill received by his colleagues, but every where else it is read with avidity and applause; for, exclusive of its merit as a composition, the subject is of general interest, and there are few who do not wish to have the present puerile imitations of Paganism replaced by Christianity. The Assembly listened to this tolerating oration with impatience, passed to the order of the day, and called loudly for Decades, with celebrations in honour of "the liberty of the world, posterity, stoicism, the republic, and the hatred of tyrants!" But the people, who understand nothing of this new worship, languish after the saints of their ancestors, and think St. Francois d'Assise, or St. Francois de Sales, at least as likely to afford them spiritual consolation, as Carmagnoles, political homilies, or pasteboard goddesses of liberty. The failure of Gregoire is far from operating as a discouragement to this mode of thinking; for such has been the intolerance of the last year, that his having even ventured to suggest a declaration in favour of free worship, is deemed a sort of triumph to the pious which has revived their hopes. Nothing is talked of but the restoration of churches, and reinstalment of priests--the shops are already open on the Decade, and the decrees of the Convention, which make a principal part of the republican service, are now read only to a few idle children or bare walls. [When the bell toll'd on the Decade, the people used to say it was for La messe du Diable--The Devil's mass.]--My maid told me this morning, as a secret of too much importance for her to retain, that she had the promise of being introduced to a good priest, (un bon pretre, for so the people entitle those who have never conformed,) to receive her confession at Easter; and the fetes of the new calendar are now jested on publicly with very little reverence. The Convention have very lately decreed themselves an increase of pay, from eighteen to thirty-six livres. This, according to the comparative value of assignats, is very trifling: but the people, who have so long been flattered with the ideas of partition and equality, and are now starving, consider it as a great deal, and much discontent is excited, which however evaporates, as usual, in the national talent for bon mots. The augmentation, though an object of popular jealousy, is most likely valued by the leading members only as it procures them an ostensible means of living; for all who have been on missions, or had any share in the government, have, like Falstaff, "hid their honour in their necessities," and have now resources they desire to profit by, but cannot decently avow. The Jacobin party have in general opposed this additional eighteen livres, with the hope of casting an odium on their adversaries; but the people, though they murmur, still prefer the Moderates, even at the expence of paying the difference. The policy of some Deputies who have acquired too much, or the malice of others who have acquired nothing, has frequently proposed, that every member of the Convention should publish an account of his fortune before and since the revolution. An enthusiastic and acclamatory decree of assent has always insued; but somehow prudence has hitherto cooled this warmth before the subsequent debate, and the resolution has never yet been carried into effect. The crimes of Maignet, though they appear to occasion but little regret in his colleagues, have been the source of considerable embarrassment to them. When he was on mission in the department of Vaucluse, besides numberless other enormities, he caused the whole town of Bedouin to be burnt, a part of its inhabitants to be guillotined, and the rest dispersed, because the tree of liberty was cut down one dark night, while they were asleep.* * Maignet's order for the burning of Bedouin begins thus: "Liberte, egalite, au nom du peuple Francais!" He then states the offence of the inhabitants in suffering the tree of liberty to be cut down, institutes a commission for trying them, and proceeds--"It is hereby ordered, that as soon as the principal criminals are executed, the national agent shall notify to the remaining inhabitants not confined, that they are enjoined to evacuate their dwellings, and take out their effects in twenty-four hours; at the expiration of which he is to commit the town to the flames, and leave no vestige of a building standing. Farther, it is forbidden to erect any building on the spot in future, or to cultivate the soil." "Done at Avignon, the 17th Floreal." The decree of the Convention to the same effect passed about the 1st of Floreal. Merlin de Douai, (Minister of Justice in 1796,) Legendre, and Bourdon de l'Oise, were the zealous defenders of Maignet on this occasion. --Since the Assembly have thought it expedient to disavow these revolutionary measures, the conduct of Maignet has been denounced, and the accusations against him sent to a commission to be examined. For a long time no report was made, till the impatience of Rovere, who is Maignet's personal enemy, rendered a publication of the result dispensable. They declared they found no room for censure or farther proceedings. This decision was at first strongly reprobated by the Moderates; but as it was proved, in the course of the debate, that Maignet was authorized, by an express decree of the Convention, to burn Bedouin, and guillotine its inhabitants, all parties soon agreed to consign the whole to oblivion. Our clothes, &c. are at length entirely released from sequestration, and the seals taken off. We are indebted for this act of justice to the intrigues of Tallien, whose belle Espagnole is considerably interested. Tallien's good fortune is so much envied, that some of the members were little enough to move, that the property of the Spanish Bank of St. Charles (in which Madame T----'s is included) should be excepted from the decree in favour of foreigners. The Convention were weak enough to accede; but the exception will, doubtless, be over-ruled. The weather is severe beyond what it has been in my remembrance. The thermometer was this morning at fourteen and a half. It is, besides, potentially cold, and every particle of air is like a dart.--I suppose you contrive to keep yourselves warm in England, though it is not possible to do so here. The houses are neither furnished nor put together for the climate, and we are fanned by these congealing winds, as though the apertures which admit them were designed to alleviate the ardours of an Italian sun. The satin hangings of my room, framed on canvas, wave with the gales lodged behind them every second. A pair of "silver cupids, nicely poised on their brands," support a wood fire, which it is an occupation to keep from extinguishing; and all the illusion of a gay orange-grove pourtrayed on the tapestry at my feet, is dissipated by a villainous chasm of about half an inch between the floor and the skirting-boards. Then we have so many corresponding windows, supernumerary doors, "and passages that lead to nothing," that all our English ingenuity in comfortable arrangement is baffled.--When the cold first became so insupportable, we attempted to live entirely in the eating-room, which is warmed by a poele, or German stove, but the kind of heat it emits is so depressive and relaxing to those who are not inured to it, that we are again returned to our large chimney and wood-fire.--The French depend more on the warmth of their clothing, than the comfort of their houses. They are all wadded and furred as though they were going on a sledge party, and the men, in this respect, are more delicate than the ladies: but whether it be the consequence of these precautions, or from any other cause, I observe they are, in general, without excepting even the natives of the Southern provinces, less sensible of cold than the English. Amiens, Jan. 30, 1795. Delacroix, author of _"Les Constitutions Politiques de l'Europe,"_ [The Political Constitutions of Europe.] has lately published a work much read, and which has excited the displeasure of the Assembly so highly, that the writer, by way of preliminary criticism, has been arrested. The book is intitled _"Le Spectateur Francais pendant la Revolution."_ [The French Spectator during the Revolution.] It contains many truths, and some speculations very unfavourable both to republicanism and its founders. It ventures to doubt the free acceptance of the democratic constitution, proposes indirectly the restoration of the monarchy, and dilates with great composure on a plan for transporting to America all the Deputies who voted for the King's death. The popularity of the work, still more than its principles, has contributed to exasperate the Assembly; and serious apprehensions are entertained for the fate of Delacroix, who is ordered for trial to the Revolutionary Tribunal. It would astonish a superficial observer to see with what avidity all forbidden doctrines are read. Under the Church and Monarchy, a deistical or republican author might sometimes acquire proselytes, or become the favourite amusement of fashionable or literary people; but the circulation of such works could be only partial, and amongst a particular class of readers: whereas the treason of the day, which comprises whatever favours Kings or religion, is understood by the meanest individual, and the temptation to these prohibited enjoyments is assisted both by affection and prejudice.--An almanack, with a pleasantry on the Convention, or a couplet in behalf of royalism, is handed mysteriously through half a town, and a _brochure_ [A pamphlet.] of higher pretensions, though on the same principles, is the very bonne bouche of our political _gourmands_. [Gluttons.] There is, in fact, no liberty of the press. It is permitted to write against Barrere or the Jacobins, because they are no longer in power; but a single word of disrespect towards the Convention is more certain of being followed by a Lettre de Cachet, than a volume of satire on any of Louis the Fourteenth's ministers would have been formerly. The only period in which a real freedom of the press has existed in France were those years of the late King's reign immediately preceding the revolution; and either through the contempt, supineness, or worse motives, of those who should have checked it, it existed in too great a degree: so that deists and republicans were permitted to corrupt the people, and undermine the government without restraint.* * It is well known that Calonne encouraged libels on the Queen, to obtain credit for his zeal in suppressing them; and the culpable vanity of Necker made made him but too willing to raise his own reputation on the wreck of that of an unsuspecting and unfortunate Monarch. After the fourteenth of July 1789, political literature became more subject to mobs and the lanterne, than ever it had been to Ministers and Bastilles; and at the tenth of August 1792, every vestige of the liberty of the press disappeared.*-- * "What impartial man among us must not be forced to acknowledge, that since the revolution it has become dangerous for any one, I will not say to attack the government, but to emit opinions contrary to those which the government has adopted." Discours de Jean Bon St. Andre sur la Liberte de la Presse, 30th April, 1795. A law was passed on the first of May, 1795, a short time after this letter was written, making it transportation to vilify the National Representation, either by words or writing; and if the offence were committed publicly, or among a certain number of people, it became capital. --Under the Brissotins it was fatal to write, and hazardous to read, any work which tended to exculpate the King, or to censure his despotism, and the massacres that accompanied and followed it.*-- * I appeal for the confirmation of this to every person who resided in France at that period. --During the time of Robespierre the same system was only transmitted to other hands, and would still prevail under the Moderates, if their tyranny were not circumscribed by their weakness. It was some time before I ventured to receive Freron's Orateur du Peuple by the post. Even pamphlets written with the greatest caution are not to be procured without difficulty in the country; and this is not to be wondered at when we recollect how many people have lost their lives through a subscription to a newspaper, or the possession of some work, which, when they purchased it, was not interdicted. As the government has lately assumed a more civilized cast, it was expected that the anniversary of the King's death would not have been celebrated. The Convention, however, determined otherwise; and their musical band was ordered to attend as usual on occasions of festivity. The leader of the band had perhaps sense and decency enough to suppose, that if such an event could possibly be justified, it never could be a subject of rejoicing, and therefore made choice of melodies rather tender than gay. But this Lydian mood, far from having the mollifying effect attributed to it by Scriblerus, threw several Deputies into a rage; and the conductor was reprimanded for daring to insult the ears of the legislature with strains which seemed to lament the tyrant. The affrighted musician begged to be heard in his defence; and declaring he only meant, by the adoption of these gentle airs, to express the tranquillity and happiness enjoyed under the republican constitution, struck off Ca Ira. When the ceremony was over, one Brival proposed, that the young King should be put to death; observing that instead of the many useless crimes which had been committed, this ought to have had the preference. The motion was not seconded; but the Convention, in order to defeat the purposes of the royalists, who, they say, increase in number, have ordered the Committees to consider of some way of sending this poor child out of the country. When I reflect on the event which these men have so indecently commemorated, and the horrors which succeeded it, I feel something more than a detestation for republicanism. The undefined notions of liberty imbibed from poets and historians, fade away--my reverence for names long consecrated in our annals abates--and the sole object of my political attachment is the English constitution, as tried by time and undeformed by the experiments of visionaries and impostors. I begin to doubt either the sense or honesty of most of those men who are celebrated as the promoters of changes of government which have chiefly been adopted rather with a view to indulge a favourite theory, than to relieve a people from any acknowledged oppression. A wise or good man would distrust his judgment on a subject so momentous, and perhaps the best of such reformers were but enthusiasts. Shaftesbury calls enthusiasm an honest passion; yet we have seen it is a very dangerous one: and we may perhaps learn, from the example of France, not to venerate principles which we do not admire in practice.* * I do not imply that the French Revolution was the work of enthusiasts, but that the enthusiasm of Rousseau produced a horde of Brissots, Marats, Robespierres, &c. who speculated on the affectation of it. The Abbe Sieyes, whose views were directed to a change of Monarchs, not a dissolution of the monarchy, and who in promoting a revolution did not mean to found a republic, has ventured to doubt both the political genius of Rousseau, and the honesty of his sectaries. These truths from the Abbe are not the less so for our knowing they would not be avowed if it answered his purpose to conceal them.--_"Helas! un ecrivain justement celebre qui seroit mort de douleur s'il avoit connu ses disciples; un philosophe aussi parfait de sentiment que foible de vues, n'a-t-il pas dans ses pages eloquentes, riches en detail, pauvre au fond, confondu lui-meme les principes de l'art social avec les commencemens de la societe humaine? Que dire si l'on voyait dans un autre genre de mechaniques, entreprendre le radoub ou la construction d'un vaisseau de ligne avec la seule theorie, avec les seules resources des Sauvages dans la construction de leurs Pirogues!"_--"Alas! has not a justly-celebrated writer, who would have died with grief, could he have known what disciples he was destined to have;--a philosopher as perfect in sentiment as feeble in his views,--confounded, in his eloquent pages--pages which are as rich in matter as poor in substance--the principles of the social system with the commencement of human society? What should we say to a mechanic of a different description, who should undertake the repair or construction of a ship of the line, without any practical knowledge of the art, on mere theory, and with no other resources than those which the savage employs in the construction of his canoe?" Notices sur la Vie de Sieyes. What had France, already possessed of a constitution capable of rendering her prosperous and happy, to do with the adoration of Rousseau's speculative systems? Or why are the English encouraged in a traditional respect for the manes of republicans, whom, if living, we might not improbably consider as factious and turbulent fanatics?* * The prejudices of my countrymen on this subject are respectable, and I know I shall be deemed guilty of a species of political sacrilege. I attack not the tombs of the dead, but the want of consideration for the living; and let not those who admire republican principles in their closets, think themselves competent to censure the opinions of one who has been watching their effects amidst the disasters of a revolution. Our slumbers have for some time been patriotically disturbed by the danger of Holland; and the taking of the Maestricht nearly caused me a jaundice: but the French have taught us philosophy--and their conquests appear to afford them so little pleasure, that we ourselves hear of them with less pain. The Convention were indeed, at first, greatly elated by the dispatches from Amsterdam, and imagined they were on the eve of dictating to all Europe: the churches were ordered to toll their only bell, and the gasconades of the bulletin were uncommonly pompous--but the novelty of the event has now subsided, and the conquest of Holland excites less interest than the thaw. Public spirit is absorbed by private necessities or afflictions; people who cannot procure bread or firing, even though they have money to purchase it, are little gratified by reading that a pair of their Deputies lodged in the Stadtholder's palace; and the triumphs of the republic offer no consolation to the families which it has pillaged or dismembered. The mind, narrowed and occupied by the little cares of hunting out the necessaries of life, and evading the restraints of a jealous government, is not susceptible of that lively concern in distant and general events which is the effect of ease and security; and all the recent victories have not been able to sooth the discontents of the Parisians, who are obliged to shiver whole hours at the door of a baker, to buy, at an extravagant price, a trifling portion of bread. * "Chacun se concentre aujourdhui dans sa famille et calcule ses resources."--"The attention of every one now is confined to his family, and to the calculation of his resources." Discours de Lindet. "Accable du soin d'etre, et du travail de vivre."--"Overwhelmed with the care of existence, and the labour of living." St. Lambert --The impression of these successes is, I am persuaded, also diminished by considerations to which the philosopher of the day would allow no influence; yet by their assimilation with the Deputies and Generals whose names are so obscure as to escape the memory, they cease to inspire that mixed sentiment which is the result of national pride and personal affection. The name of a General or an Admiral serves as the epitome of an historical relation, and suffices to recall all his glories, and all his services; but this sort of enthusiasm is entirely repelled by an account that the citizens Gillet and Jourbert, two representatives heard of almost for the first time, have taken possession of Amsterdam. I enquired of a man who was sawing wood for us this morning, what the bells clattered for last night. _"L'on m'a dit_ (answered he) _que c'est pour quelque ville que quelque general de la republique a prise. Ah! ca nous avancera beaucoup; la paix et du pain, je crois, sera mieux notre affaire que toutes ces conquetes."_ ["They say its for some town or other, that some general or other has taken.--Ah! we shall get a vast deal by that--a peace and bread, I think, would answer our purpose better than all these victories."] I told him he ought to speak with more caution. _"Mourir pour mourir,_ [One death's as good as another.] (says he, half gaily,) one may as well die by the Guillotine as be starved. My family have had no bread these two days, and because I went to a neighbouring village to buy a little corn, the peasants, who are jealous that the town's people already get too much of the farmers, beat me so that I am scarce able to work."*-- * _"L'interet et la criminelle avarice ont fomente et entretenu des germes de division entre les citoyens des villes et ceux des campagnes, entre les cultivateurs, les artisans et les commercans, entre les citoyens des departements et districts, et meme des communes voisines. On a voulu s'isoler de toutes parts." Discours de Lindet._ "Self-interest and a criminal avarice have fomented and kept alive the seeds of division between the inhabitants of the towns and those of the country, between the farmer, the mechanic, and the trader-- the like has happened between adjoining towns and districts--an universal selfishness, in short, has prevailed." Lindet's Speech. This picture, drawn by a Jacobin Deputy, is not flattering to republican fraternization. --It is true, the wants of the lower classes are afflicting. The whole town has, for some weeks, been reduced to a nominal half pound of bread a day for each person--I say nominal, for it has repeatedly happened, that none has been distributed for three days together, and the quantity diminished to four ounces; whereas the poor, who are used to eat little else, consume each, in ordinary times, two pounds daily, on the lowest calculation. We have had here a brutal vulgar-looking Deputy, one Florent-Guyot, who has harangued upon the virtues of patience, and the magnanimity of suffering hunger for the good of the republic. This doctrine has, however, made few converts; though we learn, from a letter of Florent-Guyot's to the Assembly, that the Amienois are excellent patriots, and that they starve with the best grace possible. You are to understand, that the Representatives on mission, who describe the inhabitants of all the towns they visit as glowing with republicanism, have, besides the service of the common cause, views of their own, and are often enabled by these fictions to administer both to their interest and their vanity. They ingratiate themselves with the aristocrats, who are pleased at the imputation of principles which may secure them from persecution--they see their names recorded on the journals; and, finally, by ascribing these civic dispositions to the power of their own eloquence, they obtain the renewal of an itinerant delegation--which, it may be presumed, is very profitable. Beauvais, March 13, 1795. I have often, in the course of these letters, experienced how difficult it is to describe the political situation of a country governed by no fixed principles, and subject to all the fluctuations which are produced by the interests and passions of individuals and of parties. In such a state conclusions are necessarily drawn from daily events, minute facts, and an attentive observation of the opinions and dispositions of the people, which, though they leave a perfect impression on the mind of the writer, are not easily conveyed to that of the reader. They are like colours, the various shades of which, though discriminated by the eye, cannot be described but in general terms. Since I last wrote, the government has considerably improved in decency and moderation; and though the French enjoy as little freedom as their almost sole Allies, the Algerines, yet their terror begins to wear off-- and, temporizing with a despotism they want energy to destroy, they rejoice in the suspension of oppressions which a day or an hour may renew. No one pretends to have any faith in the Convention; but we are tranquil, if not secure--and, though subject to a thousand arbitrary details, incompatible with a good government, the political system is doubtless meliorated. Justice and the voice of the people have been attended to in the arrest of Collot, Barrere, and Billaud, though many are of opinion that their punishment will extend no farther; for a trial, particularly that of Barrere, who is in the secret of all factions, would expose so many revolutionary mysteries and patriotic reputations, that there are few members of the Convention who will not wish it evaded; they probably expect, that the seclusion, for some months, of the persons of the delinquents will appease the public vengeance, and that this affair may be forgotten in the bustle of more recent events.--If there had been any doubt of the crimes of these men, the publication of Robespierre's papers would have removed them; and, exclusive of their value when considered as a history of the times, these papers form one of the most curious and humiliating monuments of human debasement, and human depravity, extant.* * The Report of Courtois on Robespierre's papers, though very able, is an instance of the pedantry I have often remarked as so peculiar to the French, even when they are not deficient in talents. It seems to be an abstract of all the learning, ancient and modern, that Courtois was possessed of. I have the book before me, and have selected the following list of persons and allusions; many of which are indeed of so little use or ornament to their stations in this speech, that one would have thought even a republican requisition could not have brought them there: "Sampson, Dalila, Philip, Athens, Sylla, the Greeks and Romans, Brutus, Lycurgus, Persepolis, Sparta, Pulcheria, Cataline, Dagon, Anicius, Nero, Babel, Tiberius, Caligula, Augustus, Antony, Lepidus, the Manicheans, Bayle and Galileo, Anitus, Socrates, Demosthenes, Eschinus, Marius, Busiris, Diogenes, Caesar, Cromwell, Constantine, the Labarum, Domitius, Machiavel, Thraseas, Cicero, Cato, Aristophanes, Riscius, Sophocles, Euripides, Tacitus, Sydney, Wisnou, Possidonius, Julian, Argus, Pompey, the Teutates, Gainas, Areadius, Sinon, Asmodeus, Salamanders, Anicetus, Atreus, Thyestus, Cesonius, Barca and Oreb, Omar and the Koran, Ptolomy Philadelphus, Arimanes, Gengis, Themuginus, Tigellinus, Adrean, Cacus, the Fates, Minos and Rhadamanthus," &c. &c. Rapport de Courtois su les Papiers de Robespierre. After several skirmishes between the Jacobins and Muscadins, the bust of Marat has been expelled from the theatres and public places of Paris, and the Convention have ratified this popular judgment, by removing him also from their Hall and the Pantheon. But reflecting on the frailty of our nature, and the levity of their countrymen, in order to obviate the disorders these premature beatifications give rise to, they have decreed that no patriot shall in future by Pantheonized until ten years after his death. This is no long period; yet revolutionary reputations have hitherto scarcely survived as many months, and the puerile enthusiasm which is adopted, not felt, has been usually succeeded by a violence and revenge equally irrational. It has lately been discovered that Condorcet is dead, and that he perished in a manner singularly awful. Travelling under a mean appearance, he stopped at a public house to refresh himself, and was arrested in consequence of having no passport. He told the people who examined him he was a servant, but a Horace, which they found about him, leading to a suspicion that he was of a superior rank, they determined to take him to the next town. Though already exhausted, he was obliged to walk some miles farther, and, on his arrival, he was deposited in a prison, where he was forgotten, and starved to death. Thus, perhaps at the moment the French were apotheosing an obscure demagogue, the celebrated Condorcet expired, through the neglect of a gaoler; and now, the coarse and ferocious Marat, and the more refined, yet more pernicious, philosopher, are both involved in one common obloquy. What a theme for the moralist!--Perhaps the gaoler, whose brutal carelessness terminated the days of Condorcet, extinguished his own humanity in the torrent of that revolution of which Condorcet himself was one of the authors; and perhaps the death of a sovereign, whom Condorcet assisted in bringing to the scaffold, might have been this man's first lesson in cruelty, and have taught him to set little value on the lives of the rest of mankind.--The French, though they do not analyse seriously, speak of this event as a just retribution, which will be followed by others of a similar nature. _"Quelle mort,"_ ["What an end."] says one--_"Elle est affreuse,_ (says another,) _mais il etoit cause que bien d'autres ont peri aussi."_--_"Ils periront tous, et tant mieux,"_ ["'Twas dreadful--but how many people have perished by his means."-- "They'll all share the same fate, and so much the better."] reply twenty voices; and this is the only epitaph on Condorcet. The pretended revolution of the thirty-first of May, 1792, which has occasioned so much bloodshed, and which I remember it dangerous not to hallow, though you did not understand why, is now formally erased from among the festivals of the republic; but this is only the triumph of party, and a signal that the remains of the Brissotines are gaining ground. A more conspicuous and a more popular victory has been obtained by the royalists, in the trial and acquittal of Delacroix. The jury had been changed after the affair of Carrier, and were now better composed; though the escape of Delacroix is more properly to be attributed to the intimidating favour of the people. The verdict was received with shouts of applause, repeated with transport, and Delacroix, who had so patriotically projected to purify the Convention, by sending more than half its members to America, was borne home on the shoulders of an exulting populace. Again the extinction of the war in La Vendee is officially announced; and it is certain that the chiefs are now in treaty with government. Such a peace only implies, that the country is exhausted, for it suffices to have read the treatment of these unhappy people to know that a reconciliation can neither be sincere nor permanent. But whatever may be the eventual effect of this negotiation, it has been, for the present, the means of wresting some unwilling concessions from the Assembly in favour of a free exercise of religion. No arrangement could ever be proposed to the Vendeans, which did not include a toleration of Christianity; and to refuse that to patriots and republicans, which was granted to rebels and royalists, was deemed at this time neither reasonable nor politic. A decree is therefore passed, authorizing people, if they can overcome all the annexed obstacles, to worship God in they way they have been accustomed to. The public hitherto, far from being assured or encouraged by this decree, appear to have become more timid and suspicious; for it is conceived in so narrow and paltry a spirit, and expressed in such malignant and illusive terms, that it can hardly be said to intend an indulgence. Of twelve articles of an act said to be concessive, eight are prohibitory and restrictive; and a municipal officer, or any other person "in place or office," may controul at his pleasure all religious celebrations. The cathedrals and parish churches yet standing were seized on by the government at the introduction of the Goddesses of Reason, and the decree expressly declares that they shall not be restored or appropriated to their original uses. Individuals, who have purchased chapels or churches, hesitate to sell or let them, lest they should, on a change of politics, be persecuted as the abettors of fanaticism; so that the long-desired restoration of the Catholic worship makes but very slow progress.*-- * This decree prohibits any parish, community, or body of people collectively, from hiring or purchasing a church, or maintaining a clergyman: it also forbids ringing a bell, or giving any other public notice of Divine Service, or even distinguishing any building by external signs of its being dedicated to religion. --A few people, whose zeal overpowers their discretion, have ventured to have masses at their own houses, but they are thinly attended; and on asking any one if they have yet been to this sort of conventicle, the reply is, _"On new sait pas trop ce que le decret veut dire; il faut voir comment cela tournera."_ ["One cannot rightly comprehend the decree--it will be best to wait and see how things go."] Such a distrust is indeed very natural; for there are two subjects on which an inveterate hatred is apparent, and which are equally obnoxious to all systems and all parties in the Assembly--I mean Christianity and Great Britain. Every day produces harangues against the latter; and Boissy d'Anglas has solemnly proclaimed, as the directing principle of the government, that the only negociation for peace shall be a new boundary described by the Northern conquests of the republic; and this modest diplomatic is supported by arguments to prove, that the commerce of England cannot be ruined on any other terms.* * "How (exclaims the sagacious Bourdon de l'Oise) can you hope to ruin England, if you do not keep possession of the three great rivers." (The Rhine, the Meuse, and the Scheldt.) The debates of the Convention increase in variety and amusement. Besides the manual exercises of the members, the accusations and retorts of unguarded choler, disclose to us many curious truths which a politic unanimity might conceal. Saladin, who was a stipendiary of the Duke of Orleans, and whose reputation would not grace any other assembly, is transformed into a Moderate, and talks of virtue and crime; while Andre Dumont, to the great admiration of his private biographists, has been signing a peace with the Duke of Tuscany.--Our republican statesmen require to be viewed in perspective: they appear to no advantage in the foreground. Dumont would have made "a good pantler, he would have chipp'd bread well;" or, like Scrub, he might have "drawn warrants, or drawn beer,"--but I should doubt if, in a transaction of this nature, the Dukedom of Tuscany was ever before so assorted; and if the Duke were obliged to make this peace, he may well say, "necessity doth make us herd with strange companions." Notwithstanding the Convention still detests Christianity, utters anathemas against England, and exhibits daily scenes of indecent discussion and reviling, it is doubtless become more moderate on the whole; and though this moderation be not equal to the people's wishes, it is more than sufficient to exasperate the Jacobins, who call the Convention the Senate of Coblentz, and are perpetually endeavouring to excite commotions. The belief is, indeed, general, that the Assembly contains a strong party of royalists; yet, though this may be true in a degree, I fear the impulse which has been given by the public opinion, is mistaken for a tendency in the Convention itself. But however, this may be, neither the imputations of the Jacobins, nor the hopes of the people, have been able to oppose the progress of a sentiment which, operating on a character like that of the French, is more fatal to a popular body than even hatred or contempt. The long duration of this disastrous legislature has excited an universal weariness; the guilt of particular members is now less discussed than the insignificance of the whole assemblage; and the epithets corrupt, worn out, hackneyed, and everlasting, [Tare, use, banal, and eternel.] have almost superseded those of rogues and villains. The law of the maximum has been repealed some time, and we now procure necessaries with much greater facility; but the assignats, no longer supported by violence, are rapidly diminishing in credit--so that every thing is dear in proportion. We, who are more than indemnified by the rise of exchange in our favour, are not affected by these progressive augmentations in the price of provisions. It would, however, be erroneous and unfeeling to judge of the situation of the French themselves from such a calculation. People who have let their estates on leases, or have annuities on the Hotel de Ville, &c. receive assignats at par, and the wages of the labouring poor are still comparatively low. What was five years ago a handsome fortune, now barely supplies a decent maintenance; and smaller incomes, which were competencies at that period, are now almost insufficient for existence. A workman, who formerly earned twenty-five sols a day, has at present three livres; and you give a sempstress thirty sols, instead of ten: yet meat, which was only five or six sols when wages was twenty-five, is now from fifty sols to three livres the pound, and every other article in the same or a higher proportion. Thus, a man's daily wages, instead of purchasing four or five pounds of meat, as they would have done before the revolution, now only purchase one. It grieves me to see people whom I have known at their ease, obliged to relinquish, in the decline of life, comforts to which they were accustomed at a time when youth rendered indulgence less necessary; yet every day points to the necessity of additional oeconomy, and some little convenience or enjoyment is retrenched--and to those who are not above acknowledging how much we are the creatures of habit, a dish of coffee, or a glass of liqueur, &c. will not seem such trifling privations. It is true, these are, strictly speaking, luxuries; so too are most things by comparison-- "O reason not the need: our basest beggars "Are in the poorest thing superfluous: "Allow not nature more than nature needs, "Man's life is cheap as beast's." If the wants of one class were relieved by these deductions from the enjoyments of another, it might form a sufficient consolation; but the same causes which have banished the splendor of wealth and the comforts of mediocrity, deprive the poor of bread and raiment, and enforced parsimony is not more generally conspicuous than wretchedness. The frugal tables of those who were once rich, have been accompanied by relative and similar changes among the lower classes; and the suppression of gilt equipages is so far from diminishing the number of wooden shoes, that for one pair of sabots which were seen formerly, there are now ten. The only Lucullus's of the day are a swarm of adventurers who have escaped from prisons, or abandoned gaming-houses, to raise fortunes by speculating in the various modes of acquiring wealth which the revolution has engendered.--These, together with the numberless agents of government enriched by more direct pillage, live in coarse luxury, and dissipate with careless profusion those riches which their original situations and habits have disqualified them from converting to a better use. Although the circumstances of the times have necessitated a good deal of domestic oeconomy among people who live on their fortunes, they have lately assumed a gayer style of dress, and are less averse from frequenting public amusements. For three years past, (and very naturally,) the gentry have openly murmured at the revolution; and they now, either convinced of the impolicy of such conduct, terrified by their past sufferings, or, above all, desirous of proclaiming their triumph over the Jacobins, are every where reviving the national taste for modes and finery. The attempt to reconcile these gaieties with prudence, has introduced some contrasts in apparel whimsical enough, though our French belles adopt them with much gravity. In consequence of the disorders in the South of France, and the interruption of commerce by sea, soap is not only dear, but sometimes difficult to purchase at any rate. We have ourselves paid equal to five livres a pound in money. Hence we have white wigs* and grey stockings, medallions and gold chains with coloured handkerchiefs and discoloured tuckers, and chemises de Sappho, which are often worn till they rather remind one of the pious Queen Isabel, than the Greek poetess. * Vilate, in his pamphlet on the secret causes of the revolution of the ninth Thermidor, relates the following anecdote of the origin of the peruques blondes. "The caprice of a revolutionary female who, on the fete in celebration of the Supreme Being, covered her own dark hair with a tete of a lighter colour, having excited the jealousy of La Demahe, one of Barrere's mistresses, she took occasion to complain to him of this coquettry, by which she thought her own charms eclipsed. Barrere instantly sent for Payen, the national agent, and informed him that a new counter-revolutionary sect had started up, and that its partizans distinguished themselves by wearing wigs made of light hair cut from the heads of the guillotined aristocrats. He therefore enjoined Payen to make a speech at the municipality, and to thunder against this new mode. The mandate was, of course, obeyed; and the women of rank, who had never before heard of these wigs, were both surprized and alarmed at an imputation so dangerous. Barrere is said to have been highly amused at having thus solemnly stopped the progress of a fashion, only becuase it displeased one of his female favourites.--I perfectly remember Payen's oration against this coeffure, and every woman in Paris who had light hair, was, I doubt not, intimidated." This pleasantry of Barrere's proves with what inhuman levity the government sported with the feelings of the people. At the fall of Robespierre, the peruque blonde, no longer subject to the empire of Barrere's favourites, became a reigning mode. --Madame Tallien, who is supposed occasionally to dictate decrees to the Convention, presides with a more avowed and certain sway over the realms of fashion; and the Turkish draperies that may float very gracefully on a form like hers, are imitated by rotund sesquipedal Fatimas, who make one regret even the tight lacings and unnatural diminishings of our grandmothers. I came to Beauvais a fortnight ago with the Marquise. Her long confinement has totally ruined her health, and I much fear she will not recover. She has an aunt lives here, and we flattered ourselves she might benefit by change of air--but, on the contrary, she seems worse, and we propose to return in the course of a week to Amiens. I had a good deal of altercation with the municipality about obtaining a passport; and when they at last consented, they gave me to understand I was still a prisoner in the eye of the law, and that I was indebted to them for all the freedom I enjoyed. This is but too true; for the decree constituting the English hostages for the Deputies at Toulon has never been repealed-- "Ah, what avails it that from slavery far, "I drew the breath of life in English air?" Johnson. Yet is it a consolation, that the title by which I was made an object of mean vengeance is the one I most value.* * An English gentleman, who was asked by a republican Commissary, employed in examining the prisons, why he was there, replied, "Because I have not the misfortune to be a Frenchman!" This is a large manufacturing town, and the capital of the department of l'Oise. Its manufactories now owe their chief activity to the requisitions for supplying cloth to the armies. Such commerce is by no means courted; and if people were permitted, as they are in most countries, to trade or let it alone, it would soon decline.--The choir of the cathedral is extremely beautiful, and has luckily escaped republican devastation, though there seems to exist no hope that it will be again restored to the use of public worship. Your books will inform you, that Beauvais was besieged in 1472 by the Duke of Burgundy, with eighty thousand men, and that he failed in the attempt. Its modern history is not so fortunate. It was for some time harassed by a revolutionary army, whose exactions and disorders being opposed by the inhabitants, a decree of the Convention declared the town in a state of rebellion; and this ban, which operates like the Papal excommunications three centuries ago, and authorizes tyranny of all kinds, was not removed until long after the death of Robespierre.--Such a specimen of republican government has made the people cautious, and abundant in the exteriors of patriotism. Where they are sure of their company, they express themselves without reserve, both on the subject of their legislators and the miseries of the country; but intercourse is considerably more timid here than at Amiens. Two gentlemen dined with us yesterday, whom I know to be zealous royalists, and, as they are acquainted, I made no scruple of producing an engraving which commemorates mysteriously the death of the King, and which I had just received from Paris by a private conveyance. They looked alarmed, and affected not to understand it; and, perceiving I had done wrong, I replaced the print without farther explanation: but they both called this evening, and reproached me separately for thus exposing their sentiments to each other.--This is a trifling incident, yet perhaps it may partly explain the great aenigma why no effectual resistance is made to a government which is secretly detested. It has been the policy of all the revolutionists, from the Lameths and La Fayette down to Brissot and Robespierre, to destroy the confidence of society; and the calamities of last year, now aiding the system of spies and informers, occasion an apprehension and distrust which impede union, and check every enterprize that might tend to restore the freedom of the country.--Yours, &c. Amiens, April 12, 1795. Instead of commenting on the late disorders at Paris, I subjoin the translation of a letter just received by Mrs. D-------- from a friend, whose information, we have reason to believe, is as exact as can possibly be obtained in the chaos of little intrigues which now comprise the whole science of French politics. "Paris, April 9. "Though I know, my good friend, you are sufficiently versed in the technicals of our revolution not to form an opinion of occurrences from the language in which they are officially described, yet I cannot resist the favourable opportunity of Mad. --------'s return, to communicate such explanations of the late events as their very ambiguous appearance may render necessary even to you. "I must begin by informing you, that the proposed decree of the Convention to dissolve themselves and call a new Assembly, was a mere coquettry. Harassed by the struggles of the Jacobins, and alarmed at the symptoms of public weariness and disgust, which became every day more visible, they hoped this feint might operate on the fears of the people of Paris, and animate them to a more decided support against the efforts of the common enemy, as well as tend to reconcile them to a farther endurance of a representation from which they did not disguise their wishes to be released. An opportunity was therefore seized on, or created, when our allowance of bread had become unusually short, and the Jacobins unusually turbulent, to bring forward this project of renovating the legislature. But in politics, as well as love, such experiments are dangerous. Far from being received with regret, the proposition excited universal transport; and it required all the diligence of the agents of government to insinuate effectually, that if Paris were abandoned by the Convention at this juncture, it would not only become a prey to famine, but the Jacobins would avail themselves of the momentary disorder to regain their power, and renew their past atrocities. "A conviction that we in reality derive our scanty supplies from exertions which would not be made, were they not necessary to restrain the popular ill humour, added to an habitual apprehension of the Clubs,* assisted this manoeuvre; and a few of the sections were, in consequence, prevailed on to address our Representatives, and to request they would remain at their post.-- * Paris had been long almost entirely dependent on the government for subsistence, so that an insurrection could always be procured by withholding the usual supply. The departments were pillaged by requisitions, and enormous sums sent to the neutral countries to purchase provisions, that the capital might be maintained in dependence and good humour. The provisions obtained by these means were distributed to the shopkeepers, who had instructions to retail them to the idle and disorderly, at about a twentieth part of the original cost, and no one could profit by this regulation, without first receiving a ticket from the Committee of his section. It was lately asserted in the Convention, and not disavowed, that if the government persisted in this sort of traffic, the annual loss attending the article of corn alone would amount to fifty millions sterling. The reduction of the sum in question into English money is made on a presumption that the French government did not mean (were it to be avoided) to commit an act of bankruptcy, and redeem their paper at less than par. Reckoning, however, at the real value of assignats when the calculation was made, and they were then worth perhaps a fifth of their nominal value, the government was actually at the expence of ten millions sterling a year, for supplying Paris with a very scanty portion of bread! The sum must appear enormous, but the peculation under such a government must be incalculable; and when it is recollected that all neutral ships bringing cargoes for the republic must have been insured at an immense premium, or perhaps eventually purchased by the French, and that very few could reach their destination, we may conclude that such as did arrive cost an immoderate sum. --"The insurrection that immediately succeeded was at first the effect of a similar scheme, and it ended in a party contention, in which the people, as usual, were neuter. "The examination into the conduct of Barrere, Collot, &c. had been delayed until it seemed rather a measure destined to protect than to bring them to punishment; and the impatience which was every where expressed on the subject, sufficiently indicated the necessity, or at least the prudence, of hastening their trial. Such a process could not be ventured on but at the risk of involving the whole Convention in a labyrinth of crimes, inconsistencies, and ridicule, and the delinquents already began to exonerate themselves by appealing to the vote of solemn approbation passed in their favour three months after the death of Robespierre had restored the Assembly to entire freedom. "The only means of extrication from this dilemma, appeared to be that of finding some pretext to satisfy the public vengeance, without hazarding the scandal of a judicial exposure. Such a pretext it was not difficult to give rise to: a diminished portion of bread never fails to produce tumultuous assemblages, that are easily directed, though not easily suppressed; and crouds of this description, agitated by real misery, were excited (as we have every reason to suppose) by hired emissaries to assail the Convention with disorderly clamours for bread. This being attributed to the friends of the culprits, decrees were opportunely introduced and passed for transporting them untried out of the republic, and for arresting most of the principal Jacobin members as their partizans. "The subsequent disturbances were less artificial; for the Jacobins, thus rendered desperate, attempted resistance; but, as they were unsuccessful, their efforts only served their adversaries as an excuse for arresting several of the party who had escaped the former decrees. "Nothing, I assure you, can with less truth be denominated popular movements, than many of these scenes, which have, notwithstanding, powerfully influenced the fate of our country. A revolt, or insurrection, is often only an affair of intrigue and arrangement; and the desultory violences of the suburbs of St. Antoine, or of the market women, are regulated by the same Committee and cabals that direct our campaigns and treaties. The common distresses of the people are continually drawing them together; and, when thus collected, their credulity renders them the ready instruments of any prevailing faction. "Our recent disorders afforded a striking proof of this. I was myself the Cicerone of a country friend on the day the Convention was first assailed. The numbers who crouded into the hall were at first considerable, yet they exhibited no signs of hostility, and it was evident they were brought there for some purpose of which they were themselves ignorant. When asked their intentions, they vociferated 'Du pain! Du pain!'--Bread, Bread; and, after occupying the seats of the Deputies for a short time, quietly withdrew. "That this insurrection was originally factitious, and devised for the purpose I have mentioned, is farther corroborated by the sudden appearance of Pichegru and other officers, who seemed brought expressly to protect the departure of the obnoxious trio, in case it should be opposed either by their friends or enemies. It is likewise to be remarked, that Barrere and the rest were stopped at the gates of Paris by the same mob who were alledged to have risen in their favour, and who, instead of endeavouring to rescue them, brought them back to the Committee of General Safety, on a supposition that they had escaped from prison.--The members of the moderate party, who were detained in some of the sections, sustained no ill treatment whatever, and were released on being claimed by their colleagues, which could scarcely have happened, had the mob been under the direction of the Jacobins, or excited by them.--In short, the whole business proved that the populace were mere agents, guided by no impulse of their own, except hunger, and who, when left to themselves, rather impeded than promoted the designs of both factions. "You must have been surprized to see among the list of members arrested, the name of Laurent Lecointre; but he could never be pardoned for having reduced the Convention to the embarrassing necessity of prosecuting Robespierre's associates, and he is now secured, lest his restless Quixotism should remind the public, that the pretended punishment of these criminals is in fact only a scandalous impunity. "We are at present calm, but our distress for bread is intolerable, and the people occasionally assail the pastry-cooks' shops; which act of hostility is called, with more pleasantry than truth or feeling, _'La guerre du pain bis contre la brioche.'_ [The war of brown bread against cakes.]--God knows, it is not the quality of bread, but the scarcity of it which excites these discontents. "The new arithmetic* is more followed, and more interesting, than ever, though our hopes are all vague, and we neither guess how or by whom they are to be fulfilled. * This was a mysterious way of expressing that the royalists were still gaining ground. It alluded to a custom which then prevailed, of people asking each other in the street, and sometimes even assailing the Deputies, with the question of "How much is eight and a half and eight and a half?"--By which was understood Louis the Seventeenth. "I have done every thing that depends on me to obtain your passports without success, and I still advise you to come to Paris and solicit them in person. Your departure, in happier times, would be a subject of regret, at present I shall both envy and congratulate you when you are enabled to quit a country which promises so little security or satisfaction. "We receive, at this moment, the two loaves. My sister joins me in acknowledgments, and expresses her fears that you must suffer by your kindness, though it is truly acceptable--for I have been several days under arms, and have had no time to make my usual excursions in search of bread. "Yours, &c." The proposed dissolution of the Assembly alluded to in the beginning of Mons. --------'s letter, occasioned here a more general rejoicing than even the fall of the Jacobin club, and, not being influenced by the motives suggested to the Parisians, we were sincerely disappointed when we found the measure postponed. The morning this news arrived, we walked about the town till dinner, and in every street people were collected in groupes, and engaged in eager discussion. An acquaintance whom we happened to meet, instead of the usual salutations, exclaimed "_Nous viola quittes, ils s'en vont les brigands_" ["At length we are quit of them--the rogues are going about their business."]; and I observed several recontres of this sort, where people skipped and caracoled, as though unable to contain their satisfaction. Nothing was talked of but _Le Petit_ [An endearing appellation given to the young King by those who would not venture to mention his name.], and the new elections; and I remarked with pleasure, that every one agreed in the total exclusion of all the present Deputies. Two mornings after we had been indulging in these agreeable visions, we learned that the Convention, purely from a patriotic desire of serving their country, had determined not to quit their post. We were at this time in extreme want of bread, the distribution not exceeding a quarter of a pound per day; and numbers who are at their ease in other respects, could not obtain any. This, operating perhaps with the latent ill humour occasioned by so unwelcome a declaration of perseverance on the part of their Representatives, occasioned a violent ferment among the people, and on the second of this month they were in open revolt; the magazine of corn for the use of the army was besieged, the national colours were insulted, and Blaux, a Deputy who is here on mission, was dragged from the Hotel de Ville, and obliged by the enraged populace to cry "Vive le Roi!" These disorders continued till the next day, but were at length appeased by a small distribution of flour from the magazine. In the debates of the Convention the whole is ascribed to the Jacobins, though it is well known they have no influence here; and I wish you to attend to this circumstance more particularly, as it proves what artifices are used to conceal the real sentiments of the people. I, and every inhabitant of Amiens, can attest that this revolt, which was declared in the Assembly to have been instigated by the partizans of the Jacobins, was, as far as it had any decided political character, an effervescence of royalism. At Rouen, Abbeville, and other places, the trees of liberty, (or, rather, the trees of the republic,) have been cut down, the tri-coloured flag torn, and the cry of "Vive le Roi!" was for some time predominant; yet the same misrepresentation was had recourse to, and all these places were asserted to have espoused the cause of that party to which they are most repugnant. I acknowledge that the chief source of these useless excesses is famine, and that it is for the most part the lower classes only who promote them; but the same cause and the same description of people were made the instruments for bringing about the revolution, and the poor seek now, as they did in 1789, a remedy for their accumulated sufferings in a change of government. The mass of mankind are ever more readily deluded by hope than benefited by experience; and the French, being taught by the revolutionists to look for that relief from changes of government which such changes cannot afford, now expect that the restoration of the monarchy will produce plenty, as they were before persuaded that the first efforts to subvert it would banish want. We are now tolerably quiet, and should seriously think of going to Paris, were we not apprehensive that some attempt from the Jacobins to rescue their chiefs, may create new disturbances. The late affair appears to have been only a retaliation of the thirty-first of May, 1792; and the remains of the Girondists have now proscribed the leaders of the Mountaineers, much in the same way as they were then proscribed themselves.--Yours. Amiens, May 9, 1795. Whilst all Europe is probably watching with solicitude the progress of the French arms, and the variations of their government, the French themselves, almost indifferent to war and politics, think only of averting the horrors of famine. The important news of the day is the portion of bread which is to be distributed; and the siege of Mentz, or the treaty with the King of Prussia, are almost forgotten, amidst enquiries about the arrival of corn, and anxiety for the approach of harvest. The same paper that announces the surrender of towns, and the success of battles, tells us that the poor die in the streets of Paris, or are driven to commit suicide, through want. We have no longer to contend with avaricious speculations, but a real scarcity; and detachments of the National Guard, reinforced by cannon, often search the adjacent villages several days successively without finding a single septier of corn. The farmers who have yet been able to conceal any, refuse to dispose of it for assignats; and the poor, who have neither plate nor money, exchange their best clothes or linen for a loaf, or a small quantity of flour. Our gates are sometimes assailed by twenty or thirty people, not to beg money, but bread; and I am frequently accosted in the street by women of decent appearance, who, when I offer them assignats, refuse them, saying, "We have enough of this sorry paper--it is bread we want."--If you are asked to dine, you take your bread with you; and you travel as though you were going a voyage--for there are not many inns on the road where you can expect to find bread, or indeed provisions of any kind. Having procured a few six-livre pieces, we were enabled to purchase a small supply of corn, though by no means enough for our consumption, so that we are obliged to oeconomise very rigidly. Mr. D-------- and the servants eat bread made with three-parts bran to one of flour. The little provision we possess is, however, a great embarrassment to us, for we are not only subject to domiciliary visits, but continually liable to be pillaged by the starving poor around us; and we are often under the necessity of passing several meals without bread, because we dare not send the wheat to be ground, nor bake except at night. While the last operation is performing, the doors are carefully shut, the bell rings in vain, and no guest is admitted till every vestige of it is removed.--All the breweries have seals put upon the doors, and severe penal laws are issued against converting barley to any other purpose than the making of bread. If what is allowed us were composed only of barley, or any other wholesome grain, we should not repine; but the distribution at present is a mixture of grown wheat, peas, rye, &c. which has scarcely the resemblance of bread. I was asked to-day, by some women who had just received their portion, and in an accent of rage and despair that alarmed me, whether I thought such food fit for a human creature.--We cannot alleviate this misery, and are impatient to escape from the sight of it. If we can obtain passports to go from hence to Paris, we hope there to get a final release, and a permission to return to England. My friend Madame de la F-------- has left us, and I fear is only gone home to die. Her health was perfectly good when we were first arrested, though vexation, more than confinement, has contributed to undermine it. The revolution had, in various ways, diminished her property; but this she would have endured with patience, had not the law of successions involved her in difficulties which appeared every day more interminable, and perplexed her mind by the prospect of a life of litigation and uncertainty. By this law, all inheritances, donations, or bequests, since the fourteenth of July 1789, are annulled and subjected to a general partition among the nearest relatives. In consequence, a large estate of the Marquise's, as well as another already sold, are to be accounted for, and divided between a variety of claimants. Two of the number being emigrants, the republic is also to share; and as the live stock, furniture, farming utensils, and arrears, are included in this absurd and iniquitous regulation, the confusion and embarrassment which it has occasioned are indescribable. Though an unlucky combination of circumstances has rendered such a law particularly oppressive to Madame de la F--------, she is only one of an infinite number who are affected by it, and many of whom may perhaps be still greater sufferers than herself. The Constituent Assembly had attempted to form a code that might counteract the spirit of legal disputation, for which the French are so remarkable; but this single decree will give birth to more processes than all the _pandects, canons,_ and _droits feodaux,_ accumulated since the days of Charlemagne; and I doubt, though one half the nation were lawyers, whether they might not find sufficient employment in demalgamating the property of the other half. This mode of partition, in itself ill calculated for a rich and commercial people, and better adapted to the republic of St. Marino than to that of France, was introduced under pretext of favouring the system of equality; and its transition from absurdity to injustice, by giving it a retroactive effect, was promoted to accommodate the "virtuous" Herault de Sechelles, who acquired a considerable addition of fortune by it. The Convention are daily beset with petitions from all parts on this subject; but their followers and themselves being somewhat in the style of Falstaff's regiment--"younger sons of younger brothers," they seem determined, as they usually are, to square their notions of justice by what is most conducive to their own interest. An apprehension of some attempt from the Jacobins, and the discontents which the scarcity of bread give rise to among the people, have produced a private order from the Committees of government for arming and re-organizing the National Guard.* * Though I have often had occasion to use the term National Guard, it is to be understood only as citizens armed for some temporary purpose, whose arms were taken from them as soon as that service was performed. The _Garde Nationale,_ as a regular institution, had been in a great measure suppressed since the summer of 1793, and those who composed it gradually disarmed. The usual service of mounting guard was still continued, but the citizens, with very few exceptions, were armed only with pikes, and even those were not entrusted to their own care, each delivering up his arms when he retired more exactly than if it were an article of capitulation with a successful enemy. --I remember, in 1789 and 1790, when this popular militia was first instituted, every one, either from policy or inclination, appeared eager to promote it; and nothing was discussed but military fetes, balls, exercise, and uniforms. These patriotic levities have now entirely vanished, and the business proceeds with languor and difficulty. One dreads the present expence, another future persecution, and all are solicitous to find cause for exemption. This reluctance, though perhaps to be regretted, is in a great measure justifiable. Where the lives and fortunes of a whole nation are dependent on the changes of party, obscurity becomes the surest protection, and those who are zealous now, may be the first sacrifices hereafter. Nor is it encouraging to arm for the defence of the Convention, which is despised, or to oppose the violence of a populace, who, however misguided, are more objects of compassion than of punishment. Fouquier Tinville, with sixteen revolutionary Judges and Jurymen, have been tried and executed, at the moment when the instigators of their crimes, Billaud-Varennes, Collot, &c. were sentenced by the Convention to a banishment, which is probably the object of their wishes. This Tinville and his accomplices, who condemned thousands with such ferocious gaiety, beheld the approach of death themselves with a mixture of rage and terror, that even cowardice and guilt do not always exhibit. It seems an awful dispensation of Providence, that they who were inhuman enough to wish to deprive their victims of the courage which enabled them to submit to their fate with resignation, should in their last moments want that courage, and die despairing, furious, and uttering imprecations, which were returned by the enraged multitude.* --Yours, &c. * Some of the Jurymen were in the habit of taking caricatures of the prisoners while they condemned them. Among the papers of the Revolutionary Tribunal were found blank sentences, which were occasionally sent to the Committee of Public Safety, to be filled up with the names of those intended to be sacrificed.--The name of one of the Jurymen executed on this occasion was Leroi, but being a very ardent republican, he had changed it for that of Citizen Tenth of August. Amiens, May 26, 1795. Our journey to Paris has been postponed by the insurrection which occurred on the first and second of Prairial, (20th and 21st of May,) and which was not like that of Germinal, fabricated--but a real and violent attempt of the Jacobins to regain their power. Of this event it is to be remarked, that the people of Paris were at first merely spectators, and that the Convention were at length defended by the very classes which they have so long oppressed under the denomination of aristocrats. For several hours the Assembly was surrounded, and in the power of its enemies; the head of Ferraud, a deputy, was borne in triumph to the hall;* and but for the impolitic precipitation of the Jacobins, the present government might have been destroyed. * The head of Ferraud was placed on a pole, and, after being paraded about the Hall, stationed opposite the President. It is impossible to execrate sufficiently this savage triumph; but similar scenes had been applauded on the fourteenth of July and the fifth and sixth of October 1789; and the Parisians had learned, from the example of the Convention themselves, that to rejoice in the daily sacrifice of fifty or sixty people, was an act of patriotism. As to the epithets of Coquin, Scelerats, Voleurs, &c. which were now bestowed on the Assembly, they were only what the members were in the constant habit of applying to each other. The assassin of Ferraud being afterwards taken and sentenced to the Guillotine, was rescued by the mob at the place of execution, and the inhabitants of the Fauxbourg St. Antoine were in revolt for two days on this occasion, nor would they give him up until abandoned by the cannoneers of their party.--It is singular, and does no honour to the revolutionary school, or the people of Paris, that Madame Elizabeth, Malsherbes, Cecile Renaud, and thousands of others, should perish innocently, and that the only effort of this kind should be exerted in favour of a murderer who deserved even a worse death. The contest began, as usual, by an assemblage of females, who forced themselves into the national palace, and loudly clamoured for immediate supplies of bread. They then proceeded to reproach the Convention with having robbed them of their liberty, plundered the public treasure, and finally reduced the country to a state of famine.* * People.--_"Nous vous demandons ce que vous avez fait de nos tresors et de notre liberte?"_--"We want to know what you have done with our treasure and our liberty?" President.--_"Citoyens, vous etes dans le sein de la Convention Nationale."_--"Citizens, I must remind you that you are in the presence of the National Convention." People.--_"Du pain, du pain, Coquin--Qu'as tu fait de notre argent? Pas tant de belles phrases, mais du pain, du pain, il n'y a point ici de conspirateurs--nous demandons du pain parceque nous avons saim."_--"Bread, bread, rogue!--what have you done with our money?-- Fine speeches won't do--'tis bread we want.--There are no conspirators among us--we only ask for bread, because we are hungry." See Debates of the Convention. --It was not easy either to produce bread, or refute these charges, and the Deputies of the moderate party remained silent and overpowered, while the Jacobins encouraged the mob, and began to head them openly. The Parisians, however interested in the result of this struggle, appeared to behold it with indifference, or at least with inactivity. Ferraud had already been massacred in endeavouring to repel the croud, and the Convention was abandoned to outrage and insult; yet no effectual attempt had been made in their defence, until the Deputies of the Mountain prematurely avowed their designs, and moved for a repeal of all the doctrines since the death of Robespierre--for the reincarceration of suspected persons--and, in fine, for an absolute revival of the whole revolutionary system. The avowal of these projects created an immediate alarm among those on whom the massacre of Ferraud, and the dangers to which the Assembly was exposed, had made no impression. The dismay became general; and in a few hours the aristocrats themselves collected together a force sufficient to liberate the Assembly,* and wrest the government from the hands of the Jacobins.-- * This is stated as a ground of reproach by the Jacobins, and is admitted by the Convention. Andre Dumont, who had taken so active a part in supporting Robespierre's government, was yet on this occasion defended and protected the whole day by a young man whose father had been guillotined. --This defeat ended in the arrest of all who had taken a part against the now triumphant majority; and there are, I believe, near fifty of them in custody, besides numbers who contrived to escape.* * Among those implicated in this attempt to revive the revolutionary government was Carnot, and the decree of arrest would have been carried against him, had it not been suggested that his talents were necessary in the military department. All that remained of Robespierre's Committees, Jean Bon St. Andre, Robert Lindet, and Prieur, were arrested. Carnot alone was excepted; and it was not disguised that his utility, more than any supposed integrity, procured him the exemption. That the efforts of this more sanguinary faction have been checked, is doubtless a temporary advantage; yet those who calculate beyond the moment see only the perpetuation of anarchy, in a habit of expelling one part of the legislature to secure the government of the other; nor can it be denied, that the freedom of the representative body has been as much violated by the Moderates in the recent transactions, as by the Jacobins on the thirty-first of May 1793. The Deputies of the Mountain have been proscribed and imprisoned, rather as partizans than criminals; and it is the opinion of many, that these measures, which deprive the Convention of such a portion of its members, attach as much illegality to the proceedings of the rest, as the former violences of Robespierre and his faction.* * The decrees passed by the Jacobin members during their few hours triumph cannot be defended; but the whole Convention had long acquiesced in them, and the precise time when they were to cease was certainly a matter of opinion. The greater part of these members were accused of no active violence, nor could they have been arrested on any principles but that of being rivals to a faction stronger than themselves. --It is true, the reigning party may plead in their justification that they only inflict what they would themselves have suffered, had the Jacobins prevailed; and this is an additional proof of the weakness and instability of a form of government which is incapable of resisting opposition, and which knows no medium between yielding to its adversaries, and destroying them. In a well organized constitution, it is supposed that a liberal spirit of party is salutary. Here they dispute the alternatives of power and emolument, or prisons and guillotines; and the sole result to the people is the certainty of being sacrificed to the fears, and plundered by the rapacity of either faction which may chance to acquire the superiority.-- Had the government any permanent or inherent strength, a party watching its errors, and eager to attack them, might, in time, by these perpetual collisions, give birth to some principles of liberty and order. But, as I have often had occasion to notice, this species of republicanism is in itself so weak, that it cannot exist except by a constant recurrence to the very despotism it professes to exclude. Hence it is jealous and suspicious, and all opposition to it is fatal; so that, to use an argument somewhat similar to Hume's on the liberty of the press in republics, the French possess a sort of freedom which does not admit of enjoyment; and, in order to boast that they have a popular constitution, are obliged to support every kind of tyranny.* * Hume observes, that absolute monarchies and republics nearly approach; for the excess of liberty in the latter renders such restraints necessary as to make them in practice resemble the former. The provinces take much less interest in this event, than in one of a more general and personal effect, though not apparently of equal importance. A very few weeks ago, the Convention asseverated, in the usual acclamatory style, that they would never even listen to a proposal for diminishing the value, or stopping the currency, of any description of assignats. Their oaths are not, indeed, in great repute, yet many people were so far deceived, as to imagine that at least the credit of the paper would not be formally destroyed by those who had forced its circulation. All of a sudden, and without any previous notice, a decree was issued to suppress the corsets, (or assignats of five livres,) bearing the King's image;* and as these were very numerous, and chiefly in the hands of the lower order of people, the consternation produced by this measure was serious and unusual.-- * The opinion that prevailed at this time that a restoration of the monarchy was intended by the Convention, had rendered every one solicitous to amass assignats issued during the late King's reign. Royal assignats of five livres were exchanged for six, seven, and eight livres of the republican paper. --There cannot be a stronger proof of the tyranny of the government, or of the national propensity to submission, than the circumstance of making it penal to refuse one day, what, by the same authority, is rendered valueless the next--and that notwithstanding this, the remaining assignats are still received under all the probability of their experiencing a similar fate. Paris now offers an interval of tranquillity which we mean to avail ourselves of, and shall, in a day or two, leave this place with the hope of procuring passports for England. The Convention affect great moderation and gratitude for their late rescue; and the people, persuaded in general that the victorious party are royalists, wait with impatience some important change, and expect, if not an immediate restoration of the monarchy, at least a free election of new Representatives, which must infallibly lead to it. With this hope, which is the first that has long presented itself to this harassed country, I shall probably bid it adieu; but a visit to the metropolis will be too interesting for me to conclude these papers, without giving you the result of my observations. --Yours. &c. Paris, June 3, 1795. We arrived here early on Saturday, and as no stranger coming to Paris, whether a native of France, or a foreigner, is suffered to remain longer than three days without a particular permission, our first care was to present ourselves to the Committee of the section where we lodge, and, on giving proper security for our good conduct, we have had this permission extended to a Decade. I approached Paris with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension, as though I expected the scenes which had passed in it, and the moral changes it had undergone, would be every where visible; but the gloomy ideas produced by a visit to this metropolis, are rather the effect of mental association than external objects. Palaces and public buildings still remain; but we recollect that they are become the prisons of misfortune, or the rewards of baseness. We see the same hotels, but their owners are wandering over the world, or have expired on the scaffold. Public places are not less numerous, nor less frequented; but, far from inspiring gaiety, we behold them with regret and disgust, as proofs of the national levity and want of feeling. I could almost wish, for the credit of the French character, to have found some indications that the past was not so soon consigned to oblivion. It is true, the reign of Robespierre and his sanguinary tribunal are execrated in studied phrases; yet is it enough to adopt humanity as a mode, to sing the _Revel du Peuple_ in preference to the _Marseillois,_ or to go to a theatre with a well-powdered head, instead of cropped locks a la Jacobin? But the people forget, that while they permitted, and even applauded, the past horrors, they were also accessary to them, and if they rejoice at their termination, their sensibility does not extend to compunction; they cast their sorrows away, and think it sufficient to exhibit their reformation in dressing and dancing-- "Yet hearts refin'd their sadden'd tint retain, "The sigh is pleasure, and the jest is pain." Sheridan. French refinements are not, however, of this poetical kind.* * This too great facility of the Parisians has been commented upon by an anonymous writer in the following terms: "At Paris, where more than fifty victims were dragged daily to the scaffold, the theatres never failed to overflow, and that on the Place de la Revolution was not the least frequented. The public, in their way every evening to the Champs Ellisees, continued uninterruptedly to cross the stream of blood that deluged this fatal spot with the most dreadful indifference; and now, though these days of horror are scarcely passed over our heads, one would suppose them ages removed--so little are we sensible that we are dancing, as it were, on a platform of dead bodies. Well may we say, respecting those events which have not reached ourselves-- _'Le malheur Qui n'est plus, n'a jamais existe.'_ But if we desire earnestly that the same misfortunes should not return, we must keep them always present in our recollection." The practice of the government appears to depart every day more widely from its professions; and the moderate harangues of the tribune are often succeeded by measures as arbitrary as those which are said to be exploded.--Perhaps the Convention begin to perceive their mistake in supposing that they can maintain a government against the inclination of the people, without the aid of tyranny. They expected at the same time that they decried Robespierre, to retain all the power he possessed. Hence, their assumed principles and their conduct are generally at variance; and, divided between despotism and weakness, they arrest the printers of pamphlets and newspapers one day, and are obliged to liberate them the next.--They exclaim publicly against the system of terror, yet secretly court the assistance of its agents.--They affect to respect the liberty of the press, yet every new publication has to defend itself against the whole force of the government, if it happen to censure a single member of the reigning party.--Thus, the _Memoirs of Dumouriez_ had circulated nearly through all Europe, yet it was not without much risk, and after a long warfare, that they were printed in France.* *On this subject the government appears sometimes to have adopted the maxim--that prevention is better than punishment; for, in several instances, they seized on manuscripts, and laid embargoes on the printers' presses, where they only suspected that a work which they might disapprove was intended to be published. I know not if it be attributable to these political inconsistencies that the calm which has succeeded the late disorders is little more than external. The minds of the people are uncommonly agitated, and every one expresses either hope or apprehension of some impending event. The royalists, amidst their ostensible persecutions, are particularly elated; and I have been told, that many conspicuous revolutionists already talk of emigration. I am just returned from a day's ramble, during which I have met with various subjects of unpleasant meditation. About dinner-time I called on an old Chevalier de St. Louis and his lady, who live in the Fauxbourg St. Germain. When I knew them formerly, they had a handsome annuity on the Hotel de Ville, and were in possession of all the comforts necessary to their declining years. To-day the door was opened by a girl of dirty appearance, the house looked miserable, the furniture worn, and I found the old couple over a slender meal of soup maigre and eggs, without wine or bread. Our revolutionary adventures, as is usual on all meetings of this kind, were soon communicated; and I learned, that almost before they knew what was passing around them, Monsieur du G--------'s forty years' service, and his croix, had rendered him suspected, and that he and his wife were taken from their beds at midnight and carried to prison. Here they consumed their stock of ready money, while a guard, placed in their house, pillaged what was moveable, and spoiled what could not be pillaged. Soon after the ninth of Thermidor they were released, but they returned to bare walls, and their annuity, being paid in assignats, now scarcely affords them a subsistence.--Monsieur du G-------- is near seventy, and Madame is become helpless from a nervous complaint, the effect of fear and confinement; and if this depreciation of the paper should continue, these poor people may probably die of absolute want. I dined with a relation of the Marquise's, and in the afternoon we called by appointment on a person who is employed by the Committee of National Domains, and who has long promised my friend to facilitate the adjustment of some of the various claims which the government has on her property. This man was originally a valet to the brother of the Marquise: at the revolution he set up a shop, became a bankrupt, and a furious Jacobin, and, in the end, a member of a Revolutionary Committee. In the last capacity he found means to enrich himself, and intimidate his creditors so as to obtain a discharge of his debts, without the trouble of paying them.* * "It was common for men in debt to procure themselves to be made members of a revolutionary committee, and then force their creditors to give them a receipt in full, under the fear of being imprisoned." Clauzel's Report, Oct. 13, 1794. I am myself acquainted with an old lady, who was confined four months, for having asked one of these patriots for three hundred livres which he owed her. --Since the dissolution of the Committees, he has contrived to obtain the situation I have mentioned, and now occupies superb apartments in an hotel, amply furnished with the proofs of his official dexterity, and the perquisites of patriotism. The humiliating vicissitudes occasioned by the revolution induced Madame de la F-------- to apply to this democratic _parvenu,_ [Upstart.] whose office at present gives him the power, and whose former obligations to her family (by whom he was brought up) she hoped would add the disposition, to serve her.--The gratitude she expected has, however, ended only in delays and disappointments, and the sole object of my commission was to get some papers which she had entrusted to him out of his possession. When we enquired if the Citizen was at home, a servant, not in livery, informed us Monsieur was dressing, but that if we would walk in, he would let Monsieur know we were there. We passed through a dining parlour, where we saw the remains of a dessert, coffee, &c. and were assailed by the odours of a plentiful repast. As we entered the saloon, we heard the servant call at the door of an adjoining parlour, _"Monsieur, voici deux Citoyennes et un Citoyen qui vous demandent."_ ["Sir, here are two female citizens and one male citizen enquiring for you."] When Monsieur appeared, he apologized with an air of graciousness for the impossibility he had been under of getting my friend's affairs arranged--protested he was _accable_ [Oppressed..]--that he had scarcely an instant at his own disposal--that _enfin_ the responsibility of people in office was so terrible, and the fatigue so _assommante,_ [Overpowering.] that nothing but the purest _civism,_ and a heart _penetre de l'amour de la patrie,_ [Penetrated with the love of his country.] could enable him to persevere in the task imposed on him. As for the papers we required, he would endeavour to find them, though his cabinet was really so filled with petitions and certificates of all sorts, _que des malheureux lui avoient addresses,_ [Addressed to him by unfortunate people.] that it would not be very easy to find them at present; and, with this answer, which we should have smiled at from M. de Choiseul or Sartine, we were obliged to be satisfied. We then talked of the news of the day, and he lamented that the aristocrats were still restless and increasing in number, and that notwithstanding the efforts of the Convention to diffuse a spirit of philosophy, it was too evident there was yet much fanaticism among the people. As we rose to depart, Madame entered, dressed for visiting, and decorated with bracelets on her wrists and above her elbows, medallions on her waists and neck, and, indeed, finery wherever it could possibly be bestowed. We observed her primitive condition of a waiting-woman still operated, and that far from affecting the language of her husband, she retained a great deference for rank, and was solicitous to insinuate that she was secretly of a superior way of thinking. As we left the room together, she made advances to an acquaintance with my companions (who were people of condition); and having occasion to speak to a person at the door, as she uttered the word _Citoyen_ she looked at us with an expression which she intended should imply the contempt and reluctance with which she made use of it. I have in general remarked, that the republicans are either of the species I have just been describing, waiters, jockies, gamblers, bankrupts, and low scribblers, living in great splendour, or men taken from laborious professions, more sincere in their principles, more ignorant and brutal--and who dissipate what they have gained in gross luxury, because they have been told that elegance and delicacy are worthy only of Sybarites, and that the Greeks and Romans despised both. These patriots are not, however, so uninformed, nor so disinterested, as to suppose they are to serve their country without serving themselves; and they perfectly understand, that the rich are their legal patrimony, and that it is enjoined them by their mission to pillage royalists and aristocrats.* --Yours. * Garat observes, it was a maxim of Danton, _"Que ceux qui fesaient les affaires de la republique devaient aussi faireles leurs,"_ that who undertook the care of the republic should also take care of themselves. This tenet, however, seems common to the friends of both. Paris, June 6, 1795. I had scarcely concluded my last, when I received advice of the death of Madame de la F--------; and though I have, almost from the time we quitted the Providence, thought she was declining, and that such an event was probable, it has, nevertheless, both shocked and grieved me. Exclusively of her many good and engaging qualities, which were reasonable objects of attachment, Madame de la F-------- was endeared to me by those habits of intimacy that often supply the want of merit, and make us adhere to our early friendships, even when not sanctioned by our maturer judgment. Madame de la F-------- never became entirely divested of the effects of a convent education; but if she retained a love of trifling amusements, and a sort of infantine gaiety, she likewise continued pious, charitable, and strictly attentive not only to the duties, but to the decorum, essential in the female character and merits of this sort are, I believe, now more rare than those in which she might be deemed deficient. I was speaking of her this morning to a lady of our acquaintance, who acquiesced in my friendly eulogiums, but added, in a tone of superiority, _"C'etoit pourtant une petite femme bien minutieuse_--she always put me out of patience with her birds and her flowers, her levees of poor people, and her persevering industry in frivolous projects." My friend was, indeed, the most feminine creature in the world, and this is a flippant literary lady, who talks in raptures of the Greeks and Romans, calls Rousseau familiarly Jean Jaques, frisks through the whole circle of science at the Lyceum, and has an utter contempt both for personal neatness and domestic oeconomy. How would Madame de Sevigne wonder, could she behold one of these modern belles esprits, with which her country, as well as England, abounds? In our zeal for reforming the irregular orthography and housewifely penmanship of the last century, we are all become readers, and authors, and critics. I do not assert, that the female mind is too much cultivated, but that it is too generally so; and that we encourage a taste for attainments not always compatible with the duties and occupations of domestic life. No age has, I believe, produced so many literary ladies as the present;* yet I cannot learn that we are at all improved in morals, or that domestic happiness is more universal than when, instead of writing sonnets to dew-drops or daisies,** we copied prayers and recipes, in spelling similar to that of Stowe or Hollingshed. * Let me not be supposed to undervalue the female authors of the present day. There are some who, uniting great talents with personal worth, are justly entitled to our respect and admiration. The authoress of "Cecilia," or the Miss Lees, cannot be confounded with the proprietors of all the Castles, Forests, Groves, Woods, Cottages, and Caverns, which are so alluring in the catalogue of a circulating library. ** Mrs. Smith's beautiful Sonnets have produced sonnetteers for every object in nature, visible or invisible; and her elegant translations of Petrarch have procured the Italian bard many an English dress that he would have been ashamed to appear in. --We seem industrious to make every branch of education a vehicle for inspiring a premature taste for literary amusements; and our old fashioned moral adages in writing-books are replaced by scraps from "Elegant Extracts," while print-work and embroidery represent scenes from poems or novels. I allow, that the subjects formerly pourtrayed by the needle were not pictoresque, yet, the tendency considered, young ladies might as well employ their silk or pencils in exhibiting Daniel in the lions' den, or Joseph and his brethren, as Sterne's Maria, or Charlotte and Werter. You will forgive this digression, which I have been led into on hearing the character of Madame de la F-------- depreciated, because she was only gentle and amiable, and did not read Plutarch, nor hold literary assemblies. It is, in truth, a little amende I owe her memory, for I may myself have sometimes estimated her too lightly, and concluded my own pursuits more rational than hers, when possibly they were only different. Her death has left an impression on my mind, which the turbulence of Paris is not calculated to soothe; but the short time we have to stay, and the number of people I must see, oblige me to conquer both my regret and my indolence, and to pass a great part of the day in running from place to place. I have been employed all this morning in executing some female commissions, which, of course, led me to milliners, mantua-makers, &c. These people now recommend fashions by saying one thing is invented by Tallien's wife, and another by Merlin de Thionville, or some other Deputy's mistress; and the genius of these elegantes has contrived, by a mode of dressing the hair which lengthens the neck, and by robes with an inch of waist, to give their countrywomen an appearance not much unlike that of a Bar Gander. I saw yesterday a relation of Madame de la F--------, who is in the army, and whom I formerly mentioned as having met when we passed through Dourlens. He was for some months suspended, and in confinement, but is now restored to his rank, and ordered on service. He asked me if I ever intended to visit France again. I told him I had so little reason to be satisfied with my treatment, that I did not imagine I should.--"Yes, (returned he,) but if the republic should conquer Italy, and bring all its treasures to Paris, as has lately been suggested in the Convention, we shall tempt you to return, in spite of yourself."* *The project of pillaging Italy of its most valuable works of art was suggested by the philosophic Abbe Gregoire, a constitutional Bishop, as early as September 1794, because, as he alledged, the chefs d'ouvres of the Greek republic ought not to embellish a country of slaves. --I told him, I neither doubted their intending such a scheme, nor the possibility of its success, though it was not altogether worthy of philosophers and republicans to wage war for Venus's and Appollos, and to sacrifice the lives of one part of their fellow-citizens, that the rest might be amused with pictures and statues.--"That's not our affair (says Monsieur de --------). Soldiers do not reason. And if the Convention should have a fancy to pillage the Emperor of China's palace, I see no remedy but to set sail with the first fair wind,"--"I wish, (said his sister, who was the only person present,) instead of being under such orders, you had escaped from the service." "Yes, (returned the General quickly,) and wander about Europe like Dumouriez, suspected and despised by all parties." I observed, Dumouriez was an adventurer, and that on many accounts it was necessary to guard against him. He said, he did not dispute the necessity or even the justice of the conduct observed towards him, but that nevertheless I might be assured it had operated as an effectual check to those who might, otherwise, have been tempted to follow Dumouriez's example; "And we have now (added he, in a tone between gaiety and despair,) no alternative but obedience or the guillotine."--I have transcribed the substance of this conversation, as it confirms what I have frequently been told, that the fate of Dumouriez, however merited, is one great cause why no desertion of importance has since taken place. I was just now interrupted by a noise and shouting near my window, and could plainly distinguish the words Scipio and Solon uttered in a tone of taunt and reproach. Not immediately comprehending how Solon or Scipio could be introduced in a fray at Paris, I dispatched Angelique to make enquiry; and at her return I learned that a croud of boys were following a shoemaker of the neighbourhood, who, while he was member of a revolutionary Committee, had chosen to unite in his person the glories of both Rome and Greece, of the sword and gown, and had taken unto himself the name of Scipio Solon. A decree of the Convention some weeks since enjoined all such heroes and sages to resume their original appellations, and forbade any person, however ardent his patriotism, to distinguish himself by the name of Brutus, Timoleon, or any other but that which he derived from his Christian parents. The people, it seems, are not so obedient to the decree as those whom it more immediately concerns; and as the above-mentioned Scipio Solon had been detected in various larcenies, he is not allowed to quit his shop without being reproached with his thefts, and his Greek and Roman appellations. --I am, &c. Paris, June 8, 1795. Yesterday being Sunday, and to-day the Decade, we have had two holidays successively, though, since the people have been more at liberty to manifest their opinions, they give a decided preference to the Christian festival over that of the republic.* * This was only at Paris, where the people, from their number, are less manageable, and of course more courageous. In the departments, the same cautious timidity prevailed, and appeared likely to continue. --They observe the former from inclination, and the latter from necessity; so that between the performance of their religious duties, and the sacrifice to their political fears, a larger portion of time will be deducted from industry than was gained by the suppression of the Saints' days. The Parisians, however, seem to acquiesce very readily in this compromise, and the philosophers of the Convention, who have so often declaimed against the idleness occasioned by the numerous fetes of the old calendar, obstinately persist in the adoption of a new one, which increases the evil they pretend to remedy. If the people are to be taken from their labour for such a number of days, it might as well be in the name of St. Genevieve or St. Denis, as of the Decade, and the Saints'-days have at least this advantage, that the forenoons are passed in churches; whereas the republican festivals, dedicated one to love, another to stoicism, and so forth, not conveying any very determinate idea, are interpreted to mean only an obligation to do nothing, or to pass some supernumerary hours at the cabaret. [Alehouse.] I noticed with extreme pleasure yesterday, that as many of the places of public worship as are permitted to be open were much crouded, and that religion appears to have survived the loss of those exterior allurements which might be supposed to have rendered it peculiarly attractive to the Parisians. The churches at present, far from being splendid, are not even decent, the walls and windows still bear traces of the Goths (or, if you will, the philosophers,) and in some places service is celebrated amidst piles of farage, sacks, casks, or lumber appertaining to the government--who, though they have by their own confession the disposal of half the metropolis, choose the churches in preference for such purposes.* * It has frequently been asserted in the Convention, that by emigrations, banishments, and executions, half Paris had become the property of the public. --Yet these unseemly and desolate appearances do not prevent the attendance of congregations more numerous, and, I think, more fervent, than were usual when the altars shone with the offerings of wealth, and the walls were covered with the more interesting decorations of pictures and tapestry. This it is not difficult to account for. Many who used to perform these religious duties with negligence, or indifference, are now become pious, and even enthusiastic--and this not from hypocrisy or political contradiction, but from a real sense of the evils of irreligion, produced by the examples and conduct of those in whom such a tendency has been most remarkable.--It must, indeed, be acknowledged, that did Christianity require an advocate, a more powerful one need not be found, than in a retrospect of the crimes and sufferings of the French since its abolition. Those who have made fortunes by the revolution (for very few have been able to preserve them) now begin to exhibit equipages; and they hope to render the people blind to this departure from their visionary systems of equality, by foregoing the use of arms and liveries--as if the real difference between the rich and the poor was not constituted rather by essential accommodation, than extrinsic embellishments, which perhaps do not gratify the eyes of the possessor a second time, and are, probably of all branches of luxury, the most useful. The livery of servants can be of very little importance, whether morally or politically considered--it is the act of maintaining men in idleness, who might be more profitably employed, that makes the keeping a great number exceptionable; nor is a man more degraded by going behind a carriage with a hat and feather, than with a bonnet de police, or a plain beaver; but he eats just as much, and earns just as little, equipped as a Carmagnole, as though glittering in the most superb gala suit.* * In their zeal to imitate the Roman republicans, the French seem to forget that a political consideration very different from the love of simplicity, or an idea of the dignity of man, made the Romans averse from distinguishing their slaves by any external indication. They were so numerous that it was thought impolitic to furnish them with such means of knowing their own strength in case of a revolt. The marks of service cannot be more degrading than service itself; and it is the mere chicane of philosophy to extend reform only to cuffs and collars, while we do not dispense with the services annexed to them. A valet who walks the street in his powdering jacket, disdains a livery as much as the fiercest republican, and with as much reason--for there is no more difference between domestic occupation performed in one coat or another, than there is between the party-coloured habit and the jacket. If the luxury of carriages be an evil, it must be because the horses employed in them consume the produce of land which might be more beneficially cultivated: but the gilding, fringe, salamanders, and lions, in all their heraldic positions, afford an easy livelihood to manufacturers and artisans, who might not be capable of more laborious occupations. I believe it will generally be found, that most of the republican reforms are of this description--calculated only to impose on the people, and disguising, by frivolous prohibitions, their real inutility. The affectation of simplicity in a nation already familiarized with luxury, only tends to divert the wealth of the rich to purposes which render it more destructive. Vanity and ostentation, when they are excluded from one means of gratification, will always seek another; and those who, having the means, cannot distinguish themselves by ostensible splendour, will often do so by domestic profusion.* * "Sectaries (says Walpole in his Anecdotes of Painting, speaking of the republicans under Cromwell) have no ostensible enjoyments; their pleasures are private, comfortable and gross. The arts of civilized society are not calculated for men who mean to rise on the ruins of established order." Judging by comparison, I am persuaded these observations are yet more applicable to the political, than the religious opinions of the English republicans of that period; for, in these respects, there is no difference between them and the French of the present day, though there is a wide one between an Anabaptist and the disciples of Boulanger and Voltaire. --Nor can it well be disputed, that a gross luxury is more pernicious than an elegant one; for the former consumes the necessaries of life wantonly, while the latter maintains numerous hands in rendering things valuable by the workmanship which are little so in themselves. Every one who has been a reflecting spectator of the revolution will acknowledge the justice of these observations. The agents and retainers of government are the general monopolizers of the markets, and these men, who are enriched by peculation, and are on all occasions retailing the cant phrases of the Convention, on the _purete des moeurs republicains, et la luxe de la ci-devant Noblesse,_ [The purity of republican manners, and the luxury of the ci-devant Noblesse.] exhibit scandalous exceptions to the national habits of oeconomy, at a time too when others more deserving are often compelled to sacrifice even their essential accommodations to a more rigid compliance with them.* * Lindet, in a report on the situation of the republic, declares, that since the revolution the consumption of wines and every article of luxury has been such, that very little has been left for exportation. I have selected the following specimens of republican manners, from many others equally authentic, as they may be of some utility to those who would wish to estimate what the French have gained in this respect by a change of government. "In the name of the French people the Representatives sent to Commune Affranchie (Lyons) to promote the felicity of its inhabitants, order the Committee of Sequestration to send them immediately two hundred bottles of the best wine that can be procured, also five hundred bottles of claret, of prime quality, for their own table. For this purpose the commission are authorized to take of the sequestration, wherever the above wine can be found. Done at Commune Affranchie, thirteenth Nivose, second year. (Signed) "Albitte, "Fouche, "Deputies of the National Convention." Extract of a denunciation of Citizen Boismartin against Citizen Laplanche, member of the National Convention: "The twenty-fourth of Brumaire, in the second year of the republic, the Administrators of the district of St. Lo gave orders to the municipality over which I at that time presided, to lodge the Representative of the people, Laplanche, and General Siphert, in the house of Citizen Lemonnier, who was then under arrest at Thorigni. In introducing one of the founders of the republic, and a French General, into this hospitable mansion, we thought to put the property of our fellow-citizen under the safeguard of all the virtues; but, alas, how were we mistaken! They had no sooner entered the house, than the provisions of every sort, the linen, clothes, furniture, trinkets, books, plate, carriages, and even title-deeds, all disappeared; and, as if they purposely insulted our wretchedness, while we were reduced to the sad necessity of distributing with a parsimonious hand a few ounces of black bread to our fellow-citizens, the best bread, pillaged from Citizen Lemonnier, was lavished by buckets full to the horses of General Siphert, and the Representative Laplanche.--The Citizen Lemonnier, who is seventy years of age, having now recovered his liberty, which he never deserved to lose, finds himself so entirely despoiled, that he is at present obliged to live at an inn; and, of property to the amount of sixty thousand livres, he has nothing left but a single spoon, which he took with him when carried to one of the Bastilles in the department de la Manche." The chief defence of Laplanche consisted in allegations that the said Citizen Lemonnier was rich, and a royalist, and that he had found emblems of royalism and fanaticism about the house. At the house of one of our common friends, I met --------, and so little did I imagine that he had escaped all the revolutionary perils to which he had been exposed, that I could almost have supposed myself in the regions of the dead, or that he had been permitted to quit them, for his being alive scarcely seemed less miraculous or incredible. As I had not seen him since 1792, he gave me a very interesting detail of his adventures, and his testimony corroborates the opinion generally entertained by those who knew the late King, that he had much personal courage, and that he lost his crown and his life by political indecision, and an humane, but ill-judged, unwillingness to reduce his enemies by force. He assured me, the Queen might have been conveyed out of France previous to the tenth of August, if she would have agreed to leave the King and her children behind; that she had twice consulted him on the subject; but, persisting in her resolution not to depart unaccompanied by her family, nothing practicable could be devised, and she determined to share their fate.* * The gentleman here alluded to has great talents, and is particularly well acquainted with some of the most obscure and disastrous periods of the French revolution. I have reason to believe, whenever it is consistent with his own safety, he will, by a genuine relation, expose many of the popular falsehoods by which the public have been misled. This, as well as many other instances of tenderness and heroism, which distinguished the Queen under her misfortunes, accord but ill with the vices imputed to her; and were not such imputations encouraged to serve the cause of faction, rather than that of morality, these inconsistencies would have been interpreted in her favour, and candour have palliated or forgotten the levities of her youth, and remembered only the sorrows and the virtues by which they were succeeded. I had, in compliance with your request on my first arrival in France, made a collection of prints of all the most conspicuous actors in the revolution; but as they could not be secreted so easily as other papers, my fears overcame my desire of obliging you, and I destroyed them successively, as the originals became proscribed or were sacrificed. Desirous of repairing my loss, I persuaded some friends to accompany me to a shop, kept by a man of whom they frequently purchased, and whom, as his principles were known to them, I might safely ask for the articles I wanted. He shook his head, while he ran over my list, and then told me, that having preferred his safety to his property, he had disposed of his prints in the same way I had disposed of mine. "At the accession of a new party, (continued he,) I always prepare for a domiciliary visit, clear my windows and shelves of the exploded heads, and replace them by those of their rivals. Nay, I assure you, since the revolution, our trade is become as precarious as that of a gamester. The Constitutionalists, indeed, held out pretty well, but then I was half ruined by the fall of the Brissotins; and, before I could retrieve a little by the Hebertists and Dantonists, the too were out of fashion."-- "Well, but the Robespierrians--you must have gained by them?"--"Why, true; Robespierre and Marat, and Chalier, answered well enough, because the royalists generally placed them in their houses to give themselves an air of patriotism, yet they are gone after the rest.--Here, however, (says he, taking down an engraving of the Abbe Sieyes,) is a piece of merchandize that I have kept through all parties, religions, and constitutions--_et le voila encore a la mode,_ ["And now you see him in fashion again."] mounted on the wrecks, and supported by the remnants of both his friends and enemies. _Ah! c'est un fin matois."_ ["Ah! He's a knowing one."] This conversation passed in a gay tone, though the man added, very seriously, that the instability of popular factions, and their intolerance towards each other, had obliged him to destroy to the amount of some thousand livres, and that he intended, if affairs did not change, to quit business. Of all the prints I enquired for, I only got Barrere, Sieyes, and a few others of less note. Your last commissions I have executed more successfully, for though the necessaries of life are almost unpurchaseable, articles of taste, books, perfumery, &c. are cheaper than ever. This is unfortunately the reverse of what ought to be the case, but the augmentation in the price of provisions is to be accounted for in various ways, and that things of the description I allude to do not bear a price in proportion is doubtless to be attributed to the present poverty of those who used to be the purchasers of them; while the people who are become rich under the new government are of a description to seek for more substantial luxuries than books and essences.--I should however observe, that the venders of any thing not perishable, and who are not forced to sell for their daily subsistence, are solicitous to evade every demand for any article which is to be paid for in assignats. I was looking at some trinkets in a shop at the Palais Royal, and on my asking the mistress of it if the ornaments were silver, she smiled significantly, and replied, she had nothing silver nor gold in the shop, but if I chose to purchase _en espece,_ she would show me whatever I desired: _"Mais pour le papier nous n'en avons que trop."_ ["In coin, but for paper we have already too much of it."] Many of the old shops are nearly empty, and the little trade which yet exists is carried on by a sort of adventurers who, without being bred to any one trade, set up half a dozen, and perhaps disappear three months afterwards. They are, I believe, chiefly men who have speculated on the assignats, and as soon as they have turned their capital in a mercantile way a short time, become apprehensive of the paper, realize it, and retire; or, becoming bankrupts by some unlucky monopoly, begin a new career of patriotism. There is, properly speaking, no money in circulation, yet a vast quantity is bought and sold. Annuitants, possessors of moderate landed property, &c., finding it impossible to subsist on their incomes, are forced to have recourse to the little specie they have reserved, and exchange it for paper. Immense sums in coin are purchased by the government, to make good the balance of their trade with the neutral countries for provisions, so that I should suppose, if this continue a few months, very little will be left in the country. One might be tempted to fancy there is something in the atmosphere of Paris which adapts the minds of its inhabitants to their political situation. They talk of the day appointed for a revolt a fortnight before, as though it were a fete, and the most timid begin to be inured to a state of agitation and apprehension, and to consider it as a natural vicissitude that their lives should be endangered periodically. A commission has been employed for some time in devising another new constitution, which is to be proposed to the Assembly on the thirteenth of this month; and on that day, it is said, an effort is to be made by the royalists. They are certainly very numerous, and the interest taken in the young King is universal. In vain have the journalists been forbidden to cherish these sentiments, by publishing details concerning him: whatever escapes the walls of his prison is circulated in impatient whispers, and requires neither printing nor gazettes a la main to give it publicity.* * Under the monarchy people disseminated anecdotes or intelligence which they did not think it safe to print, by means of these written gazettes.--I doubt if any one would venture to have recourse to them at present. --The child is reported to be ill, and in a kind of stupefaction, so as to sit whole days without speaking or moving: this is not natural at his age, and must be the consequence of neglect, or barbarous treatment. The Committees of Government, and indeed most of the Convention who have occasionally appeared to give tacit indications of favouring the royalists, in order to secure their support against the Jacobins, having now crushed the latter, begin to be seriously alarmed at the projects of the former.--Sevestre, in the name of the Committee of Public Safety, has announced that a formidable insurrection may be expected on the twenty-fifth of Prairial, (thirteenth June,) the Deputies on mission are ordered to return, and the Assembly propose to die under the ruins of the republic. They have, notwithstanding, judged it expedient to fortify these heroic dispositions by the aid of a military force, and a large number of regular troops are in Paris and the environs. We shall certainly depart before this menacing epoch: the application for our passports was made on our first arrival, and Citizen Liebault, Principal of the Office for Foreign Affairs, who is really very civil, has promised them in a day or two. Our journey here was, in fact, unnecessary; but we have few republican acquaintance, and those who are called aristocrats do not execute commission of this kind zealously, nor without some apprehensions of committing themselves.--You will wonder that I find time to write to you, nor do I pretend to assume much merit from it. We have not often courage to frequent public places in the evening, and, when we do, I continually dread some unlucky accident: either a riot between the Terrorists and Muscadins, within, or a military investment without. The last time we were at the theatre, a French gentleman, who was our escort, entered into a trifling altercation with a rude vulgar-looking man, in the box, who seemed to speak in a very authoritative tone, and I know not how the matter might have ended, had not a friend in the next box silenced our companion, by conveying a penciled card, which informed him the person he was disputing with was a Deputy of the Convention. We took an early opportunity of retreating, not perfectly at ease about the consequences which might ensue from Mr. -------- having ventured to differ in opinion from a Member of the Republican Legislature. Since that time we have passed our evenings in private societies, or at home; and while Mr. D-------- devours new pamphlets, and Mrs. D-------- and the lady we lodge with recount their mutual sufferings at Arras and St. Pelagie, I take the opportunity of writing. --Adieu. Paris, June 12, 1795. The hopes and fears, plots and counterplots, of both royalists and republicans, are now suspended by the death of the young King. This event was announced on Tuesday last, and since that time the minds and conversation of the public have been entirely occupied by it. Latent suspicion, and regret unwillingly suppressed, are every where visible; and, in the fond interest taken in this child's life, it seems to be forgotten that it is the lot of man "to pass through nature to eternity," and that it was possible for him to die without being sacrificed by human malice. All that has been said and written on original equality has not yet persuaded the people that the fate of Kings is regulated only by the ordinary dispensations of Providence; and they seem to persist in believing, that royalty, if it has not a more fortunate pre-eminence, is at least distinguished by an unusual portion of calamities. When we recollect the various and absurd stories which have been propagated and believed at the death of Monarchs or their offspring, without even a single ground either political or physical to justify them, we cannot now wonder, when so many circumstances of every kind tend to excite suspicion, that the public opinion should be influenced, and attribute the death of the King to poison. The child is allowed to have been of a lively disposition, and, even long after his seclusion from his family, to have frequently amused himself by singing at the window of his prison, until the interest he was observed to create in those who listened under it, occasioned an order to prevent him. It is therefore extraordinary, that he should lately have appeared in a state of stupefaction, which is by no means a symptom of the disorder he is alledged to have died of, but a very common one of opiates improperly administered.* * In order to account in some way for the state in which the young King had lately appeared, it was reported that he had been in the habit of drinking strong liquors to excess. Admitting this to be true, they must have been furnished for him, for he could have no means of procuring them.--It is not inapposite to record, that on a petition being formerly presented to the legislature from the Jacobin societies, praying that the "son of the tyrant" might be put to death, an honourable mention in the national bulletin was unanimously decreed!!! Though this presumption, if supported by the evidence of external appearances, may seem but of little weight; when combined with others, of a moral and political nature, it becomes of considerable importance. The people, long amused by a supposed design of the Convention to place the Dauphin on the throne, were now become impatient to see their wishes realized; or, they hoped that a renewal of the representative body, which, if conducted with freedom, must infallibly lead to the accomplishment of this object, would at least deliver them from an Assembly which they considered as exhausted in talents and degraded in reputation.--These dispositions were not attempted to be concealed; they were manifested on all occasions: and a general and successful effort in favour of the Royal Prisoner was expected to take place on the thirteenth.* * That there were such designs, and such expectations on the part of the people, is indubitable. The following extract, written and signed by one of the editors of the _Moniteur,_ is sufficiently expressive of the temper of the public at this period; and I must observe here, that the _Moniteur_ is to be considered as nearly equivalent to an official paper, and is always supposed to express the sense of government, by whom it is supported and paid, whatever party or system may happen to prevail: _"Les esperances les plus folles se manifestent de toutes parts.-- C'est a qui jettera plus promptement le masque--on dirait, a lire les ecrits qui paraissent, a entendre les conversations des gens qui se croient dans les confidences, que c'en est fait de la republique: la Convention, secondee, poussee meme par le zele et l'energie des bons citoyens a remporte une grande victoire sur les Terroristes, sur les successeurs de Robespierre, il semble qu'elle n'ait plus qu'a proclamer la royaute. Ce qui donne lieu a toutes les conjectures plus ou moins absurdes aux quelles chacun se livre, c'est l'approche du 25 Prairial."_ (13th June, the day on which the new constitution was to be presented). "The most extravagant hopes, and a general impatience to throw off the mask are manifested on all sides.--To witness the publications that appear, and to hear what is said by those who believe themselves in the secret, one would suppose that it was all over with the republic.--The Convention seconded, impelled even, by the good citizens, has gained a victory over the Terrorists and the successors of Robespierre, and now it should seem that nothing remained to be done by to proclaim royalty--what particularly gives rise to these absurdities, which exist more or less in the minds of all, is the approach of the 25th Prairial." _Moniteur,_ June 6, 1795. Perhaps the majority of the Convention, under the hope of securing impunity for their past crimes, might have yielded to the popular impulse; but the government is no longer in the hands of those men who, having shared the power of Robespierre before they succeeded him, might, as Rabaut St. Etienne expressed himself, "be wearied of their portion of tyranny."* * -"Je suis las de la portion de tyrannie que j'exerce."---"I am weary of the portion of tyranny which I exercise." Rabaut de St. Etienne --The remains of the Brissotins, with their newly-acquired authority, have vanity, interest, and revenge, to satiate; and there is no reason to suppose that a crime, which should favour these views, would, in their estimation, be considered otherwise than venial. To these are added Sieyes, Louvet, &c. men not only eager to retain their power, but known to have been of the Orleans faction, and who, if they are royalists, are not loyalists, and the last persons to whose care a son of Louis the Sixteenth ought to have been intrusted. At this crisis, then, when the Convention could no longer temporize with the expectations it raised--when the government was divided between one party who had deposed the King to gratify their own ambition, and another who had lent their assistance in order to facilitate the pretensions of an usurper--and when the hopes of the country were anxiously fixed on him, died Louis the Seventeenth. At an age which, in common life, is perhaps the only portion of our existence unalloyed by misery, this innocent child had suffered more than is often the lot of extended years and mature guilt. He lived to see his father sent to the scaffold--to be torn from his mother and family--to drudge in the service of brutality and insolence--and to want those cares and necessaries which are not refused even to the infant mendicant, whose wretchedness contributes to the support of his parents.* * It is unnecessary to remind the reader, that the Dauphin had been under the care of one Simon, a shoemaker, who employed him to clean his (Simon's) shoes, and in any other drudgery of which his close confinement admitted. --When his death was announced to the Convention, Sevestre, the reporter, acknowledged that Dessault, the surgeon, had some time since declared the case to be dangerous; yet, notwithstanding policy as well as humanity required that every appearance of mystery and harshness should, on such an occasion, be avoided, the poor child continued to be secluded with the same barbarous jealousy--nor was the Princess, his sister, whose evidence on the subject would have been so conclusive, ever suffered to approach him. No report of Dessault's opinion had till now been made public; and Dessault himself, who was an honest man, died of an inflammatory disorder four days before the Dauphin.--It is possible, he might have expressed himself too freely, respecting his patient, to those who employed him-- his future discretion might be doubted--or, perhaps, he was only called in at first, that his character might give a sanction to the future operations of those who were more confided in. But whether this event is to be ascribed to natural causes, or to that of opiates, the times and circumstances render it peculiarly liable to suspicions, and the reputation of those who are involved, is not calculated to repel them. Indeed, so conscious are the advocates of government, that the imputation cannot be obviated by pleading the integrity of the parties, that they seem to rest their sole defence on the inutility of a murder, which only transfers whatever rights the House of Bourbon may be supposed to possess, from one branch of it to another. Yet those who make use of this argument are well aware of its fallaciousness: the shades of political opinion in France are extremely diversified, and a considerable part of the Royalists are also Constitutionalists, whom it will require time and necessity to reconcile to the emigrant Princes. But the young King had neither enemies nor errors--and his claims would have united the efforts and affections of all parties, from the friends of the monarchy, as it existed under Louis the Fourteenth, down to the converted Republican, who compromises with his principles, and stipulates for the title of Perpetual President. That the removal of this child has been fortunate for those who govern, is proved by the effect: insurrections are no longer talked of, the royalists are confounded, the point of interest is no more, and a sort of despondency and confusion prevails, which is highly favourable to a continuance of the present system.--There is no doubt, but that when men's minds become more settled, the advantage of having a Prince who is capable of acting, and whose success will not be accompanied by a long minority, will conciliate all the reflecting part of the constitutional royalists, in spite of their political objections. But the people who are more under the influence of their feelings, and yield less to expediency, may not, till urged by distress and anarchy, be brought to take the same interest in the absent claimant of the throne, that they did in their infant Prince. It is to be regretted, that an habitual and unconquerable deference for the law which excludes females from the Crown of France, should have survived monarchy itself; otherwise the tender compassion excited by the youth, beauty and sufferings of the Princess, might yet have been the means of procuring peace to this distracted country. But the French admire, lament, and leave her to her fate-- "O, shame of Gallia, in one sullen tower "She wets with royal tears her daily cell; "She finds keen anguish every rose devour, "They spring, they bloom, then bid the world farewell. "Illustrious mourner! will no gallant mind "The cause of love, the cause of justice own? "Such claims! such charms! And is no life resign'd "To see them sparkle from their parent throne?" How inconsistent do we often become through prejudices! The French are at this moment governed by adventurers and courtezans--by whatever is base, degraded, or mean, in both sexes; yet, perhaps, would they blush to see enrolled among their Sovereigns an innocent and beautiful Princess, the descendant of Henry the Fourth. Nothing since our arrival at Paris has seemed more strange than the eagerness with which every one recounts some atrocity, either committed or suffered by his fellow-citizens; and all seem to conclude, that the guilt or shame of these scenes is so divided by being general, that no share of either attaches to any individual. They are never tired of the details of popular or judicial massacres; and so zealous are they to do the honours of the place, that I might, but for disinclination on my part, pass half my time in visiting the spots where they were perpetrated. It was but to-day I was requested to go and examine a kind of sewer, lately described by Louvet, in the Convention, where the blood of those who suffered at the Guillotine was daily carried in buckets, by men employed for the purpose.* * "At the gate of St. Antoine an immense aqueduct had been constructed for the purpose of carrying off the blood that was shed at the executions, and every day four men were employed in taking it up in buckets, and conveying it to this horrid reservoir of butchery." Louvet's Report, 2d May. --These barbarous propensities have long been the theme of French satyrists; and though I do not pretend to infer that they are national, yet certainly the revolution has produced instances of ferocity not to be paralleled in any country that ever had been civilized, and still less in one that had not.* * It would be too shocking, both to decency and humanity, to recite the more serious enormities alluded to; and I only add, to those I have formerly mentioned, a few examples which particularly describe the manners of the revolution.-- At Metz, the heads of the guillotined were placed on the tops of their own houses. The Guillotine was stationary, fronting the Town-house, for months; and whoever was observed to pass it with looks of disapprobation, was marked as an object of suspicion. A popular Commission, instituted for receiving the revolutionary tax at this place, held their meetings in a room hung with stripes of red and black, lighted only with sepulchral lamps; and on the desk was placed a small Guillotine, surrounded by daggers and swords. In this vault, and amidst this gloomy apparatus, the inhabitants of Metz brought their patriotic gifts, (that is, the arbitrary and exorbitant contributions to which they were condemned,) and laid them on the altar of the Guillotine, like the sacrifice of fear to the infernal deities; and, that the keeping of the whole business might be preserved, the receipts were signed with red ink, avowedly intended as expressive of the reigning system. At Cahors, the deputy, Taillefer, after making a triumphal entry with several waggons full of people whom he had arrested, ordered a Guillotine to be erected in the square, and some of the prisoners to be brought forth and decorated in a mock costume representing Kings, Queens, and Nobility. He then obliged them successively to pay homage to the Guillotine, as though it had been a throne, the executioner manoeuvring the instrument all the while, and exciting the people to call for the heads of those who were forced to act in this horrid farce. The attempt, however, did not succeed, and the spectators retired in silent indignation. At Laval, the head of Laroche, a deputy of the Constituent Assembly, was exhibited (by order of Lavallee, a deputy there on mission) on the house inhabited by his wife.--At Auch, in the department of Gers, d'Artigoyte, another deputy, obliged some of the people under arrest to eat out of a manger.--Borie used to amuse himself, and the inhabitants of Nismes, by dancing what he called a farandole round the Guillotine in his legislative costume.--The representative Lejeune solaced his leisure hours in beheading animals with a miniature Guillotine, the expence of which he had placed to the account of the nation; and so much was he delighted with it, that the poultry served at his table were submitted to its operation, as well as the fruits at his dessert! (Debates, June 1.) But it would be tedious and disgusting to describe all the _menus plaisirs_ of these founders of the French republic. Let it suffice to say, that they comprised whatever is ludicrous, sanguinary, and licentious, and that such examples were but too successful in procuring imitators. At Tours, even the women wore Guillotines in their ears, and it was not unusual for people to seal their letters with a similar representation! We have been once at the theatre since the King's death, and the stanza of the _Reveil du Peuple,_ [The rousing of the people.] which contains a compliment to the Convention, was hissed pretty generally, while those expressing an abhorrence of Jacobinism were sung with enthusiasm. But the sincerity of these musical politics is not always to be relied on: a popular air is caught and echoed with avidity; and whether the words be _"Peuple Francais, peuple de Freres,"_ ["Brethren."]--or _"Dansons la Guillotine,"_ the expression with which it is sung is not very different. How often have the theatres resounded with _"Dieu de clemence et de justice."_ ["God of mercy and justice."] and _"Liberte, Liberte, cherie!"_ ["Liberty, beloved Liberty!"] while the instrument of death was in a state of unceasing activity--and when the auditors, who joined in these invocations to Liberty, returned to their homes trembling, lest they should be arrested in the street, or find a mandate or guard at their own houses.* * An acquaintance of mine told me, that he was one evening in company at Dijon, where, after singing hymns to liberty in the most energetic style, all the party were arrested, and betook themselves as tranquilly to prison, as though the name of liberty had been unknown to them. The municipality of Dijon commonly issued their writs of arrest in this form--"Such and such a person shall be arrested, and his wife, if he has one!" --At present, however, the Parisians really sing the _Reveil_ from principle, and I doubt if even a new and more agreeable air in the Jacobin interest would be able to supplant it. We have had our permission to remain here extended to another Decade; but Mr. D------, who declares, ten times in an hour, that the French are the strangest people on earth, besides being the most barbarous and the most frivolous, is impatient to be gone; and as we now have our passports, I believe we shall depart the middle of next week. --Yours. Paris, June 15, 1795. I am now, after a residence of more than three years, amidst the chaos of a revolution, on the eve of my departure from France. Yet, while I joyfully prepare to revisit my own country, my mind involuntarily traces the rapid succession of calamities which have filled this period, and dwells with painful contemplation on those changes in the morals and condition of the French people that seem hitherto to be the only fruits which they have produced. In this recurrence to the past, and estimation of the present, however we may regret the persecution of wealth, the destruction of commerce, and the general oppression, the most important and irretrievable mischief of the revolution is, doubtless, the corruption of manners introduced among the middle and lower classes of the people. The labouring poor of France have often been described as frugal, thoughtless, and happy, earning, indeed, but little, yet spending still less, and in general able to procure such a subsistence as their habits and climate rendered agreeable and sufficient.* * Mr. Young seems to have been persuaded, that the common people of France worked harder, and were worse fed, than those of the same description in England. Yet, as far as I have had opportunity of observing, and from the information I have been able to procure, I cannot help supposing that this gentleman has drawn his inference partially, and that he has often compared some particular case of distress, with the general situation of the peasantry in the rich counties, which are the scene of his experiments. The peasantry of many distant parts of England fare as coarsely, and labour harder, than was common in France; and taking their habits of frugality, their disposition to be satisfied, and their climate into the account, the situation of the French perhaps was preferable. Mr. Young's Tour has been quoted very triumphantly by a Noble Lord, particularly a passage which laments and ascribes to political causes the appearance of premature old age, observable in French women of the lower classes. Yet, for the satisfaction of his Lordship's benevolence and gallantry, I can assure him, that the female peasants in France have not more laborious occupations than those of England, but they wear no stays, and expose themselves to all weathers without hats; in consequence, lose their shape, tan their complexions, and harden their features so as to look much older than they really are.--Mr. Young's book is translated into French, and I have too high an opinion both of his principles and his talents to doubt that he must regret the ill effects it may have had in France, and the use that has been made of it in England. --They are now become idle, profuse, and gloomy; their poverty is embittered by fanciful claims to riches and a taste for expence. They work with despair and unwillingness, because they can no longer live by their labour; and, alternately the victims of intemperance or want, they are often to be found in a state of intoxication, when they have not been able to satisfy their hunger--for, as bread cannot always be purchased with paper, they procure a temporary support, at the expence of their health and morals, in the destructive substitute of strong liquors. Those of the next class, such as working tradesmen, artizans, and domestic servants, though less wretched, are far more dissolute; and it is not uncommon in great towns to see men of this description unite the ferociousness of savages with all the vices of systematic profligacy. The original principles of the revolution, of themselves, naturally tended to produce such a depravation; but the suspension of religious worship, the conduct of the Deputies on mission, and the universal immorality of the existing government, must have considerably hastened it. When the people were forbidden the exercise of their religion, though they did not cease to be attached to it, yet they lost the good effects which even external forms alone are calculated to produce; and while deism and atheism failed in perverting their faith, they were but too successful in corrupting their morals. As in all countries the restraints which religion imposes are more readily submitted to by the inferior ranks of life, it is these which must be most affected by its abolition; and we cannot wonder, that when men have been once accustomed to neglect the duty they consider as most essential, they should in time become capable of violating every other: for, however it may be among the learned, _qui s'aveuglent a force de lumiere,_ [Who blind themselves by excess of light. Destouchet.] with the ignorant the transition from religious indifference to actual vice is rapid and certain. The Missionaries of the Convention, who for two years extended their destructive depredations over the departments, were every where guilty of the most odious excesses, and those least culpable offered examples of licentiousness and intemperance with which, till then, the people had never been familiar.* * "When the Convention was elected, (says Durand Maillane, see Report of the Committee of Legislation, 13th Prairial, 1st June,) the choice fell upon men who abused the name of patriot, and adopted it as a cloak for their vices.--Vainly do we inculcate justice, and expect the Tribunals will bring thieves and assassins to punishment, if we do not punish those amongst ourselves.--Vainly shall we talk of republican manners and democratic government, while our representatives carry into the departments examples of despotism and corruption." The conduct of these civilized banditti has been sufficiently described. Allard, Lacoste, Mallarme, Milhaud, Laplanche, Monestier, Guyardin, Sergent, and many others, were not only ferocious and extravagant, but known to have been guilty of the meanest thefts. Javoques is alledged to have sacrificed two hundred people of Montibrison, and to have stolen a vast quantity of their effects. It was common for him to say, that he acknowledged as true patriots those only who, like himself, _"etaient capables de boire une verre de sang,"_--("were capable of drinking a glass of blood.") D'Artigoyte distinguished himself by such scandalous violations of morals and decency, that they are not fit to be recited. He often obliged married women, by menaces, to bring their daughters to the Jacobin clubs, for the purpose of insulting them with the grossest obscenities.--Having a project of getting up a play for his amusement, he caused it to be declared, that those who had any talents for acting, and did not present themselves, should be imprisoned as suspects. And it is notorious, that this same Deputy once insulted all the women present at the theatre, and, after using the most obscene language for some time, concluded by stripping himself entirely in presence of the spectators. Report of the Committee of Legislation, 13th Prairial (1st of June). Lacoste and Baudet, when they were on mission at Strasburgh, lived in daily riot and intoxication with the members of the Revolutionary Tribunal, who, after qualifying themselves in these orgies, proceeded to condemn all the prisoners brought before them.--During the debate following the above quoted report, Dentzel accused Lacoste, among other larcenies, of having purloined some shirts belonging to himself; and addressing Lacoste, who was present in the Assembly, with true democratic frankness, adds, _"Je suis sur qu'il en a une sur le corps."_--("I am certain he has one of them on at this moment.") Debate, 1st of June. The following is a translation of a letter from Piorry, Representative of the People, to the popular society of Poitiers:-- "My honest and determined _Sans Culottes,_ as you seemed to desire a Deputy amongst you who has never deviated from the right principles, that is to say, a true Mountaineeer, I fulfil your wishes in sending you the Citizen Ingrand.--Remember, honest and determined _Sans Culottes,_ that with the sanction of the patriot Ingrand, you may do every thing, obtain every thing, destroy every thing--imprison all, try all, transport all, or guillotine all. Don't spare him a moment; and thus, through his means, all may tremble, every thing be swept away, and, finally, be re-established in lasting order. (Signed) "Piorry." The gentleman who translated the above for me, subjoined, that he had omitted various oaths too bad for translation.--This Piorry always attended the executions, and as fast as a head fell, used to wave his hat in the air, and cry, _"Vive la Republique!"_ Such are the founders of the French Republic, and such the means by which it has been supported! --It may be admitted, that the lives of the higher Noblesse were not always edifying; but if their dissipation was public, their vices were less so, and the scenes of both were for the most part confined to Paris. What they did not practise themselves, they at least did not discourage in others; and though they might be too indolent to endeavour at preserving the morals of their dependents, they knew their own interest too well to assist in depraving them. But the Representatives, and their agents, are not to be considered merely as individuals who have corrupted only by example;--they were armed with unlimited authority, and made proselytes through fear, where they failed to produce them from inclination. A contempt for religion or decency has been considered as the test of an attachment to the government; and a gross infraction of any moral or social duty as a proof of civism, and a victory over prejudice. Whoever dreaded an arrest, or courted an office, affected profaneness and profligacy--and, doubtless, many who at first assumed an appearance of vice from timidity, in the end contracted a preference for it. I myself know instances of several who began by deploring that they were no longer able to practise the duties of their religion, and ended by ridiculing or fearing them. Industrious mechanics, who used to go regularly to mass, and bestow their weekly _liard_ on the poor, after a month's revolutionising, in the suite of a Deputy, have danced round the flames which consumed the sacred writings, and become as licentious and dishonest as their leader. The general principles of the Convention have been adapted to sanction and accelerate the labours of their itinerant colleagues. The sentences of felons were often reversed, in consideration of their "patriotism"-- women of scandalous lives have been pensioned, and complimented publicly --and various decrees passed, all tending to promote a national dissoluteness of manners.* * Among others, a decree which gave all illegitimate children a claim to an equal participation in the property of the father to whom they should (at the discretion of the mother) be attributed. --The evil propensities of our nature, which penal laws and moralists vainly contend against, were fostered by praise, and stimulated by reward--all the established distinctions of right and wrong confounded-- and a system of revolutionary ethics adopted, not less incompatible with the happiness of mankind than revolutionary politics. Thus, all the purposes for which this general demoralization was promoted, being at length attained, those who were rich having been pillaged, those who were feared massacred, and a croud of needy and desperate adventurers attached to the fate of the revolution, the expediency of a reform has lately been suggested. But the mischief is already irreparable. Whatever was good in the national character is vitiated; and I do not scruple to assert, that the revolution has both destroyed the morals of the people, and rendered their condition less happy*--that they are not only removed to a greater distance from the possession of rational liberty, but are become more unfit for it than ever. * It has been asserted, with a view to serve the purposes of party, that the condition of the lower classes in France was mended by the revolution. If those who advance this were not either partial or ill-informed, they would observe that the largesses of the Convention are always intended to palliate some misery, the consequence of the revolution, and not to banish what is said to have existed before. For the most part, these philanthropic projects are never carried into effect, and when they are, it is to answer political purposes.--For instance, many idle people are kept in pay to applaud at the debates and executions, and assignats are distributed to those who have sons serving in the army. The tendency of both these donations needs no comment. The last, which is the most specious, only affords a means of temporary profusion to people whose children are no incumbrance to them, while such as have numerous and helpless families, are left without assistance. Even the poorest people now regard the national paper with contempt; and, persuaded it must soon be of no value, they eagerly squander whatever they receive, without care for the future. As I have frequently, in the course of these letters, had occasion to quote from the debates of the Convention, and other recent publications, I ought to observe that the French language, like every thing else in the country, has been a subject of innovation--new words have been invented, the meaning of old ones has been changed, and a sort of jargon, compounded of the appropriate terms of various arts and sciences, introduced, which habit alone can render intelligible. There is scarcely a report read in the Convention that does not exhibit every possible example of the Bathos, together with more conceits than are to be found in a writer of the sixteenth century; and I doubt whether any of their projects of legislation or finance would be understood by Montesquieu or Colbert. But the style most difficult to be comprehended by foreigners, is that of the newspapers; for the dread of offending government so entirely possesses the imagination of those who compose such publications, that it is not often easy to distinguish a victory from a defeat, by the language in which it is conveyed. The common news of the day is worded as cautiously as though it were to be the subject of judicial disquisition; and the real tendency of an article is sometimes so much at variance with its comment, that the whole, to a cursory peruser, may seem destitute of any meaning at all. Time, however, has produced a sort of intelligence between news-writers and their readers--and rejoicings, lamentations, praise, or censure, are, on particular occasions, understood to convey the reverse of what they express. The affected moderation of the government, and the ascendency which some of the Brissotin party are beginning to take in it, seem to flatter the public with the hope of peace. They forget that these men were the authors of the war, and that a few months imprisonment has neither expiated their crimes, nor subdued their ambition. It is the great advantage of the Brissotins, that the revolutionary tyranny which they had contributed to establish, was wrested from them before it had taken its full effect; but those who appreciate their original claims, without regard to their sufferings under the persecution of a party, are disposed to expect they will not be less tenacious of power, nor less arbitrary in the exercise of it than any of the intervening factions. The present government is composed of such discordant elements, that their very union betrays that they are in fact actuated by no principle, except the general one of retaining their authority. Lanjuinais, Louvet, Saladin, Danou, &c. are now leagued with Tallien, Freron, Dubois de Crance, and even Carnot. At the head of this motley assemblage of Brissotins, Orleanists, and Robespierrians, is Sieyes--who, with perhaps less honesty, though more cunning, than either, despises and dupes them all. At a moment when the Convention had fallen into increased contempt, and when the public affairs could no longer be conducted by fabricators of reports and framers of decrees, the talents of this sinister politician became necessary; yet he enjoys neither the confidence of his colleagues nor that of the people--the vanity and duplicity of his conduct disgust and alarm the first, while his reputation of partizan of the Duke of Orleans is a reason for suspicion in the latter. But if Sieyes has never been able to conciliate esteem, nor attain popularity, he has at length possessed himself of power, and will not easily be induced to relinquish it.--Many are of opinion, that he is secretly machinating for the son of his former patron; but whether he means to govern in the name of the Duke of Orleans, or in that of the republic, it is certain, had the French any liberty to lose, it never could have found a more subtle and dangerous enemy.* * The Abbe, in his _"notices sur la Vie de Sieyes,"_ declares that his contempt and detestation of the colleagues "with whom his unfortunate stars had connected him," were so great, that he determined, from his first arrival at the Convention, to take no part in public affairs. As these were his original sentiments of the Assembly, perhaps he may hereafter explain by which of their operations his esteem was so much reconciled, that he has condescended to become their leader. Paris may, without exaggeration, be described as in a state of famine. The markets are scantily supplied, and bread, except the little distributed by order of the government, not to be obtained: yet the inhabitants, for the most part, are not turbulent--they have learned too late, that revolutions are not the source of plenty, and, though they murmur and execrate their rulers, they abstain from violence, and seem rather inclined to yield to despair, than to seek revenge. This is one proof, among a variety of others, that the despotism under which the French have groaned for the last three years, has much subdued the vivacity and impatience of the national character; for I know of no period in their history, when such a combination of personal suffering and political discontent, as exists at present, would not have produced some serious convulsion. Amiens, June 18, 1795. We returned hither yesterday, and on Friday we are to proceed to Havre, accompanied by an order from the Committee of Public Welfare, stating that several English families, and ourselves among the number, have been for some time a burthen on the generosity of the republic, and that for this reason we are permitted to embark as soon as we can find the means. This is neither true, nor very gallant; but we are too happy in quitting the republic, to cavil about terms, and would not exchange our pauper-like passports for a consignment of all the national domains. I have been busy to-day in collecting and disposing of my papers, and though I have taken infinite pains to conceal them, their bulk is so considerable, that the conveyance must be attended with risk. While I was thus employed, the casual perusal of some passages in my letters and notes has led me to consider how much my ideas of the French character and manners differ from those to be found in the generality of modern travels. My opinions are not of importance enough to require a defence; and a consciousness of not having deviated from truth makes me still more averse from an apology. Yet as I have in several instances varied from authorities highly respectable, it may not be improper to endeavour to account for what has almost the appearance of presumption. If you examine most of the publications describing foreign countries, you will find them generally written by authors travelling either with the eclat of birth and riches, or, professionally, as men of science or letters. They scarcely remain in any place longer than suffices to view the churches, and to deliver their letters of recommendation; or, if their stay be protracted at some capital town, it is only to be feted from one house to another, among that class of people who are every where alike. As soon as they appear in society, their reputation as authors sets all the national and personal vanity in it afloat. One is polite, for the honour of his country--another is brilliant, to recommend himself; and the traveller cannot ask a question, the answer to which is not intended for an honourable insertion in his repertory of future fame. In this manner an author is passed from the literati and fashionable people of one metropolis to those of the next. He goes post through small towns and villages, seldom mixes with every-day life, and must in a great degree depend for information on partial enquiries. He sees, as it were, only the two extremes of human condition--the splendour of the rich, and the misery of the poor; but the manners of the intermediate classes, which are less obtrusive, are not within the notice of a temporary resident. It is not therefore extraordinary, that I, who have been domesticated some years in France, who have lived among its inhabitants without pretensions, and seen them without disguise, should not think them quite so polite, elegant, gay, or susceptible, as they endeavour to appear to the visitant of the day. Where objects of curiosity only are to be described, I know that a vast number may be viewed in a very rapid progress; yet national character, I repeat, cannot be properly estimated but by means of long and familiar intercourse. A person who is every where a stranger, must see things in their best dress; being the object of attention, he is naturally disposed to be pleased, and many circumstances both physical and moral are passed over as novelties in this transient communication, which might, on repetition, be found inconvenient or disgusting. When we are stationary, and surrounded by our connections, we are apt to be difficult and splenetic; but a literary traveller never thinks of inconvenience, and still less of being out of humour--curiosity reconciles him to the one, and his fame so smooths all his intercourse, that he has no plea for the other. It is probably for these reasons that we have so many panegyrists of our Gallic neighbours, and there is withal a certain fashion of liberality that has lately prevailed, by which we think ourselves bound to do them more than justice, because they [are] our political enemies. For my own part, I confess I have merely endeavoured to be impartial, and have not scrupled to give a preference to my own country where I believed it was due. I make no pretensions to that sort of cosmopolitanism which is without partialities, and affects to consider the Chicktaw or the Tartars of Thibet, with the same regard as a fellow-countryman. Such universal philanthropists, I have often suspected, are people of very cold hearts, who fancy they love the whole world, because they are incapable of loving any thing in it, and live in a state of "moral vagabondage," (as it is happily termed by Gregoire,) in order to be exempted from the ties of a settled residence. _"Le cosmopolytisme de systeme et de fait n'est qu'un vagabondage physique ou moral: nous devons un amour de preference a la societe politique dont nous sommes membres."_ ["Cosmopolytism, either in theory or in practice, is no better than a moral or physical vagrancy: the political society of which we are members, is entitled to a preference in our affections."] Let it not be imagined, that, in drawing comparisons between France and England, I have been influenced by personal suffering or personal resentment. My opinions on the French characters and manners were formed before the revolution, when, though my judgment might be deficient, my heart was warm, and my mind unprejudiced; yet whatever credit may be allowed to my general opinions, those which particularly apply to the present situation and temper of the French will probably be disputed. When I describe the immense majority of the nation as royalists, hating their government, and at once indignant and submissive, those who have not studied the French character, and the progress of the revolution, may suspect my veracity. I can only appeal to facts. It is not a new event in history for the many to be subdued by the few, and this seems to be the only instance in which such a possibility has been doubted.* * It is admitted by Brissot, who is in this case competent authority, that about twenty factious adventurers had oppressed the Convention and the whole country. A more impartial calculator would have been less moderate in the number, but the fact is the same; and it would be difficult to fix the period when this oppression ceased. --The well-meaning of all classes in France are weak, because they are divided; while the small, but desperate factions that oppress them, are strong in their union, and in the possession of all the resources of the country. Under these circumstances, no successful effort can be made; and I have collected from various sources, that the general idea of the French at present is, to wait till the new constitution appears, and to accept it, though it should be even more anarchical and tyrannic than the last. They then hope that the Convention will resign their power without violence, that a new election of representatives will take place, and that those representatives, who they intend shall be men of honesty and property, will restore them to the blessings of a moderate and permanent government. --Yours. Havre, June 22, 1795. We are now in hourly expectation of sailing for England: we have agreed with the Captain of a neutral vessel, and are only waiting for a propitious wind. This good ally of the French seems to be perfectly sensible of the value of a conveyance out of the republic, and accordingly we are to pay him about ten times more for our passage than he would have asked formerly. We chose this port in preference to Calais or Boulogne, because I wished to see my friend Madame de ------ at Rouen, and leave Angelique with her relations, who live there. I walked this morning to the harbour, and seeing some flat-bottomed boats constructing, asked a French gentleman who accompanied me, perhaps a little triumphantly, if they were intended for a descent on the English coast. He replied, with great composure, that government might deem it expedient (though without any views of succeeding) to sacrifice ten or twenty thousand men in the attempt.--It is no wonder that governments, accountable for the lives and treasure they risk, are scarcely equal to a conflict sustained by such power, and conducted on such principles.--But I am wearied and disgusted with the contemplation of this despotism, and I return to my country deeply and gratefully impressed with a sense of the blessings we enjoy in a free and happy constitution. --I am, &c. FINIS. 
11298	----	Project by Carlo Traverso This file was produced from images generously made available by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) at http://gallica.bnf.fr. [Illustration: A BIT OF OLD FIGEAC. _Frontispiece_.] WANDERINGS BY SOUTHERN WATERS _EASTERN AQUITAINE_ BY EDWARD HARRISON BARKER AUTHOR OF 'WAYFARING IN FRANCE' WITH ILLUSTRATIONS LONDON RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen 1893 CONTENTS THE VALLEY OF THE OUYSSE AND ROC-AMADOUR FROM THE ALZOU TO THE DORDOGNE WAYFARING UNDERGROUND IN THE VALLEY OF THE CÉLÉ IN THE ALBIGEOIS ACROSS THE ROUERGUE THE BLACK CAUSSE THE CAÑON OF THE TARN IN THE VALLEY OF THE LOT [Illustration: OAK CHIMNEY-PIECE AT THE SINECHAUSSÉE (NOW HÔTEL DE VILLE) OF MARTEL.] LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS A BIT OF OLD FIGEAC--_Frontispiece_ OAK CHIMNEY-PIECE AT THE SINECHAUSSÉE (NOW HÔTEL DE VILLE) OF MARTEL THE PONT VALENTRÉ AT CAHORS ROC-AMADOUR PORCH OF THE CATHEDRAL OF ALBI AMBIALET CIGALA, THE SHOEBLACK. [Illustration: THE PONT VALENTRÉ AT CAHORS.] WANDERINGS BY SOUTHERN WATERS THE VALLEY OF THE OUYSSE AND ROC-AMADOUR. From the Old-English town of Martel, in Guyenne, I turned southward towards the Dordogne. For a few miles the road lay over a barren plateau; then it skirted a desolate gorge with barely a trace of vegetation upon its naked sides, save the desert loving box clinging to the white stones. A little stream that flowed here led down into the rich valley of Creysse, blessed with abundance of fruit. Here I found the nightingales and the spring flowers that avoid the wind-blown hills. Patches of wayside took a yellow tinge from the cross-wort galium; others, conquered by ground-ivy or veronica, were purple or blue. Presently the tiled roofs of the village of Creysse were seen through the poplars and walnuts. A delightful spot for a poetical angler is this, for the Dordogne runs close by in the shadow of prodigious rocks and overhanging trees. What a noble and stately river I thought it, as the old ferryman, with white cotton nightcap on his head, punted me across! I took the greater pleasure in its breadth and grandeur here because I had seen it an infant river in the Auvergne mountains, and had watched its growth as it rushed between walls of rock and forest towards the plains. What witchery of romance and spell-bound fancy is in the song of the Dordogne as it breaks over its shallows under high rocky cliffs and ruined castles! Everything that can charm the poet and the artist is here. The grandeur of rugged nature combines with the most enticing beauty of water and meadow, and the voices of the past echo with a sweet sadness from cliff to cliff. It is said that several of these castles were built to prevent the English from coming up the river, but this may be treated as one of the many fanciful legends respecting the British period which are repeated throughout Aquitaine. By cutting off a curve of the Dordogne I soon came to the river-side village of Meyronne, and here I stopped for a meal at a very pleasant little inn, where to my surprise I found that I had been preceded a few days before by another Englishman, who, accompanied by a Frenchman, had come up from Bordeaux in a boat. They must have found it very hard work rowing against the rapids. The hostess here was evidently a woman who treasured her household gods, but who liked also to show them. She gave me my coffee in a china cup that looked as if it had belonged to her great-grandmother; and in the bright little room where she served my lunch was a large walnut buffet elaborately and admirably carved, bearing the date 1676. After Meyronne my road ran for a few miles beside the broad and curving river. The forms of the great cliffs on each side were ever changing. Over a sky intensely blue sailed the fleecy April clouds before the soft west wind, and whenever the sun shone out with unveiled splendour, the rays fell with summer warmth. While the tinkling of sheep-bells from the ledges of the rocks came down to me, the passionate warble of nightingales, that could not wait for the night, must have risen from the leafy valley to the ears of the listless shepherd-boy gathering feather-grass where goats would not dare to venture, or eating his dark bread in the sun on the edge of a precipice. Time flowed gently like the river, and I was surprised to find myself at Lacave so soon. This village is near the spot where the Ouysse falls into the Dordogne. A little beyond the clustering houses, upon the edge of a high rocky promontory overlooking the Ouysse, is the castle of Belcastel, still retaining its feudal keep and outer wall. In this fortress the English are said to have kept many of their prisoners. I now left the Dordogne and ascended the valley of the Ouysse. This stream is one of the most remarkable of the natural phenomena of France. To judge from its breadth near the mouth, one would suppose that it had flowed fifty or a hundred miles, but its entire length is less than ten miles. It is already a river when it rises out of the depths of the earth. The narrow valley that it waters is a gorge 500 or 600 feet deep through the greater part of its distance. The traveller at the bottom supposes, or is ready to suppose, that he is in some ravine of the high mountains; in reality, it is simply a fissure of the plateau that was once the bed of the sea. There is no igneous, no metamorphic rock here; nothing but limestone of the Jurassic formation. The convexities on one side of the fissure correspond with marked regularity to the concavities on the other. For awhile I walked on the lush grass by the brimming river, where in the little creeks and bays the water-ranunculus floated its small white flowers that were to continue the race. Then I left the water and the green ribbon that followed its margin, and, taking a sheep-track, rose upon the arid steeps, where the thinly-scattered aromatic southern-wood was putting forth its dusty leaves. The bare rocks, yellow, white, and gray, towered above me; they were beneath me; they faced me across the valley; wherever I looked they were shutting me off from the outer world. No nightingales were singing here, but I heard the melancholy scream of the hawk and the harsh croak of the raven. And yet, when I looked down into the bottom of this steep desert of stones, what soft and vernal beauty was there! Over the grass of living green was spread the gold of cowslips, just as if that strip of meadow, with its gently-gliding river, had been lifted out of an English dale and dropped into the midst of the sternest scenery of Southern France. As I went on I soon found that the stony wastes had their flowers too. It would seem as if Nature had wished to console the desert by giving to it her loveliest and most enticing blossoms. I came upon colonies of the poet's narcissus, breathing over the rocks so sweet a fragrance that it was as if a miracle had been wrought to draw it out of the earth. I walked knee-deep through blooming asphodels, beautiful and strange, but only noticed here by the wild bee. I gathered sprays of the graceful alpine-tea, densely crowded with delicate white bloom, and marvelled at the wanton splendour of the iris colouring the gray and yellow stones with its gorgeous blue. Still following the Ouysse, I came to a spot where the valley ended in an amphitheatre formed by steep hills more than 600 feet high, and covered for the most part with dwarf oak. In the hollow under the dark cliffs was a little lake or pool forty or fifty yards from shore to shore. The water showed no sign of trouble save where it overflowed its basin on the western side, and formed the river that I had been keeping in sight for hours. The pool filled the Gouffre de St. Sauveur. Until the Ouysse finds this opening in the earth it is a subterranean river, and it must flow at a great depth, probably at the base of the calcareous formation, inasmuch as it continues to rise from the gulf the whole year, although from the month of August until the autumn rains nearly every water-course in the country is marked by a curving line of dry pebbles. The funnel-shaped hole descends vertically to the depth of about ninety feet, but there is no means of knowing how far it descends obliquely. The tourist may occasionally catch sight of a shepherd boy or girl with goats or sheep upon the bare or wooded rocks, but his feeling will be one of deep loneliness. He will see ravens and hawks about the crags, and about the river half covered in summer with floating pond-weed, watercress, and the broad leaves of the yellow lily, he will notice many a water-ouzel bobbing with white breast, water-hens gliding from bank to bank, merry bands of divers, and the brilliant blue gleam of the passing kingfisher, which here is allowed to fish in peace, like the otter. The Gouffre de St. Sauveur has its legend. It is said that when the church of St. Sauveur, on the neighbouring hill, was in imminent danger at the time of the Revolution, the bells were thrown into the pool so that they should not fall into the hands of the enemy. Imaginative people fancy that they can sometimes hear them ringing at the bottom of the water. After leaving the pool--now very sombre in the shadow of the wooded hill--I crossed a ridge separating me from the Gouffre de Cabouy, out of which flows a tributary of the Ouysse. Thence I reached the deep and singularly savage gorge of the Alzou, which brought me to Roc-Amadour, when the after-light of sunset was lingering rosily upon the naked crags. * * * * * Rocks reach far overhead, dazzlingly white where the sunbeams strike them, and below is a green line of narrow valley. A tinkling of bells comes from the stony sides of the gorge, where sheep are browsing the scant herbage and young shoots of southern-wood; and from the curving fillet of meadow, where the grass seems to grow while the eye watches it, rises the shrill little song of the stream hurrying over its yellow bed, which may be dry again to-morrow. This Alzou is no more to be depended upon than a coquette. After a period of drought, a storm that has passed away hours ago will cause it suddenly to come hissing down over the dry stones; but the next day no trace of the flow may be found save a few pools. Or it may grow to a torrent, even a river, that in its wild career scoffs at banks, and spreads devastation through the valley. It is April, and the nightingales, the swallows, the flowers, the bees, and the kids, whose trembling voices are heard all about the rocks, tell me that the spring has come. I cannot rest in my cottage on the side of the gorge, not even on the balcony that seems to hang in the air over the depth; the sounds from the valley, especially those that the imagination hears, are too enticing. Upon a high ledge of rock to which I have climbed, not without some unpleasant qualms, I stretch myself out upon a strip of short turf sprinkled with the flowers of the white rock-rose and bordered with candy-tuft, and try to drive out of mind the only disagreeable thought I have at this moment--that of getting down to the path, where I was safe. The worst part of climbing precipitous places is not the going up, but the coming down. Not a human being or dwelling is in sight, so that I can contemplate the wildness of the scene to my mind's content. But a very hoarse voice not far above tells me that I am not alone. A raven perched upon a jutting piece of rock, that curiously resembles some monstrous animal, is watching me, and he looks a very crafty old bird who could speak either French or English if he liked. Presently he flaps heavily off to the opposite side of the gorge, and fetches his wife. They fly over me almost within gunshot, going round and round, expressing an opinion or sentiment with an occasional croak, but apparently quite willing to make their dinner-hour suit my convenience. Do they suppose that I have really taken the trouble to climb up here to die out of the world's way and the sight of my fellow-creatures, like that very unearthly poet whose story Shelley has written? Do they think that they are going to make a hearty meal upon me this evening or to-morrow morning? I remain quite still, pleased at the thought of cheating the greedy, croaking scavengers of Nature, and hoping that they will grow bold enough to settle at length somewhere near me. But they are too suspicious; perhaps with their superior sight they note the blinking of my eyes as I look upwards at the dazzling sky, or instinct may tell them that I am not lying down after the manner of a dying animal. Their patience is more than a match for mine, and so I come down from my ledge and make my way back to my cottage before the pink blush of evening has faded from the rocks. When the angelus has sounded from the ancient sanctuary, and all the forms of the valley are dim in the dusk, the silence is broken again by a very quiet little bell, which might be called the fairies' angelus if it did not keep ringing all through the spring and summer nights. It is like a treble note of the piano softly touched. It steals up from amongst the flags, hyacinths, and box-bushes of the neglected little garden which I call mine, terraced upon the side of the gorge just beneath the balcony. Now, from all the terraced gardens planted with fruit-trees, comes the same sound of low, clear notes, some a little higher than others, but all in the treble, feebly struck by unseen musicians. How sweetly this tinkling rises from the earth, that trembles with the bursting of seeds and the shooting of stems in the first warm nights of spring! And to think that the musicians should be toads--yes, toads--the most despised and the most unjustly treated of creatures! This cottage is at Roc-Amadour, and before writing about the place I cannot do better than go down to the level of the stream, and look up at the amazing cluster of buildings clinging to the rocks on one side of the gorge, while the old walls are whitened by the pale brilliancy of the moon. Above the roofs of all the houses is a mass of masonry, vast and heavy, pierced by narrow Romanesque windows--a building uncouth and monstrous, like the surrounding crags. It stands upon a ledge of the cliff, partly in the hollow of the rock, which, indeed, forms its innermost wall. Higher still a great cross shows against the sky, and near to it, upon the edge of the precipice, are the ramparts of a mediaeval fortress, now combined with a modern building, which is the residence of the clergy attached to the sanctuary of Notre Dame de Roc-Amadour. [Illustration: ROC-AMADOUR.] The sanctuary--it is inside the massive pile under the beetling rock, and over the roofs of the houses--explains why men in far-distant times had the strange notion of gathering together and constructing dwellings upon a spot where Nature must have offered the harshest opposition to such a project. The chosen site was not only precipitous, but lay in the midst of a calcareous desert, where no stream nor spring of water could be relied upon for six months in the year, and where the only soil that was not absolutely unproductive was covered with dense forest infested by wolves.[*] And yet, in course of time, there grew up upon these forbidding rocks, in the midst of this desert, a little town that obtained a wide celebrity, and was even fortified, as the five ruinous gateways, with towers along the line of the single street, prove even now, notwithstanding the deplorable recklessness with which the structures of the ancient burg have been degraded or demolished during the last half-century. Nothing is more certain than that the origin of Roc-Amadour, and the cause of its development, were religious. It was called into existence by pilgrims; it grew with the growth of pilgrimages, and if it were not for pilgrims at the present day half the houses now occupied would be allowed to fall into ruin. It is impossible to look at it without wonder, either in the daylight or the moonlight. It appears to have been wrenched out of the known order of human works--the result of common motives--and however often Roc-Amadour may suddenly meet the eye upon turning the gorge, the picture never fails to be surprising. It has really the air of a holy place, which many others famed for holiness have not. [*] Robert du Mont, in his supplement to Sigibert's Chronicles, wrote, more than five hundred years ago, of Roc-Amadour: 'Est locus in Cadurcensi pago montaneis et horribile solitudine circumdatus.' The founder of the sanctuary was a hermit, whose contemplative spirit led him to this savage and uninhabited valley, whose name, in the early Christian ages, was _Vallis tenebrosa_, but in which Nature had fashioned numerous caverns, more or less tempting to an anchorite. He is called Amator--_Amator rupis_--by the Latin chroniclers--a name that, with the spread of the Romance language, would easily have become corrupted to Amadour by the people. According to the legend, however, which for an uncertain number of centuries has obtained general credence in the Quercy and the Bas-Limousin, and which in these days is much upheld by the clergy, although a learned Jesuit--the Père Caillau--who sifted all the annals relating to Roc-Amadour felt compelled to treat it as a pious invention, the hermit Amator or Amadour was no other than Zaccheus, who climbed into the sycamore. The legend further says that he was the husband of St. Veronica, and that, after the crucifixion, they left the Holy Land in a vessel which eventually landed them on the western coast of Gaul, not far from the present city of Bordeaux. They became associated with the mission of St. Martial, the first Bishop of Limoges, and at a later period Zaccheus, hearing of a rocky solitude in Aquitania, a little to the south of the Dordogne, abandoned to wild beasts, proceeded thither, and chose a cavern in the escarped side of a cliff for his hermitage. Here, meditating upon the merits of the Mother of Christ, he became one of her most devoted servants in that age, and during his life he caused a small chapel to be raised to her upon the rock near his cavern, which was consecrated by St. Martial. All this is open to controversy, but what is undoubtedly true is that one of the earliest sanctuaries of Europe associated with the name of Mary was at Roc-Amadour. It is recorded that Roland, passing through the Quercy in the year 778 with his uncle, Charlemagne, made a point of stopping at Roc-Amadour for the purpose of 'offering to the most holy Virgin a gift of silver of the same weight as his bracmar, or sword.' After his death, if Duplex and local tradition are to be trusted, this sword was brought to Roc-Amadour, and the curved rusty blade of crushing weight which is now to be seen hanging to a wall is said to be a faithful copy of the famous Durandel, which is supposed to have been stolen by the Huguenots when they pillaged the church and burnt the remains of St. Amadour. That in the twelfth century the fame of Roc-Amadour as a place of pilgrimage was established we have very good evidence in the fact that one of the pilgrims to the sanctuary in 1170 was Henry II. of England. He had fallen seriously ill at Mote-Gercei, and believing that he had been restored to health through the intercession of the Virgin, he set out for the 'Dark Valley' in fulfilment of a vow that he had made to her; but as this journey into the Quercy brought him very near the territory of his enemies, the annalists tell us that he was accompanied by a great multitude of infantry and cavalry, as though he were marching to battle. But he injured no one, and gave abundant alms to the poor. Thirteen years later, the King's rebellious son, Henry, Court Mantel, pillaged the sanctuary of its treasure in order to pay his ruffianly soldiers. This memorable sacrilege had much to do with the insurmountable antipathy of the Quercynois for the English. I have before me an old and now exceedingly rare little book on Roc-Amadour, which was written by the Jesuit Odo de Gissey, and published at Tulle in 1666. In this, Court Mantel's exploit is spoken of as follows: 'Les guerres d'entre nos Rois très Chrétiens et les Anglais en ce Royaume de France guerroyant ruinèrent en quelque façon Roc-Amadour; mais plus que tous Henri III., Roi d'Angleterre, ingrat des grâces que son père Henri II. y avait recues, en dépit de son père qui affectionnait cette Eglise, son avarice le poussant, pilla cet oratoire et enleva les plaques qui couvraient le corps de S. Amadour et emporta ce qui était de la Trésorerie; mais Dieu qui ne laisse rien impuni châtia le sacrilege de cet impie Prince par une mort malheureuse. De quoi lise qui voudra Roger de Houedan, historien Anglais en la 2 partie de ses Annales.' There are early records of miracles wrought at Roc-Amadour. Gauthier de Coinsy, a monk and poet born at Amiens in 1177, has left a poem telling how the troubadour, Pierre de Sygelard, singing the praises of the Virgin in her chapel at Roc-Amadour to the accompaniment of his _vielle_ (hurdy-gurdy), begged of her as a miraculous sign to let one of her candles come down from her altar. According to the poem, the candle came down, and stood upon the musical instrument, to the horror and disgust of a monk who was looking on, and who saw no miracle in the matter, but wicked enchantment. He put the candle back indignantly, but when the minstrel sang and played it came down as before. The movement was repeated again before the monk would believe that the miracle was genuine. The poem, which is in the Northern dialect, and is marked throughout by a charming _naïveté_, commences with a eulogium of the Virgin: 'La douce mère du Créateur À l'église à Rochemadour Fait tants miracles, tants hauts faits, C'uns moultes biax livres en est faits.' The huge, inartistic, but imposing block of masonry that appears from a little distance to be clinging, after the manner of a swallow's nest, to the precipitous face of the rock, and which is reached from below by more than 200 steps in venerable dilapidation[*], contains the church of St. Sauveur, the chapel of the Virgin, called the Miraculous Chapel, and the chapel of St. Amadour, all distinct. The last-named is a little crypt, and the Miraculous Chapel conveys the impression of being likewise one, for it is partly under the overleaning rock, the rugged surface of which, blackened by the smoke of the countless tapers which have been burnt there in the course of ages, is seen without any facing of masonry. [*] Since the foregoing was written the old slabs have been turned round, and the steps been made to look quite new. If by looking at certain details of this composite structure one could shut off the surroundings from the eye, the mind might feed without any hindrance upon the ideas of old piety and the fervour of souls who, when Europe was like a troubled and forlorn sea, sought the quietude and safety of these rocks, lifted far above the raging surf. But the hindrance is found on every side. The sense of artistic fitness is wounded by incongruities of architectural style, of ideas which meet but do not marry. The brazen altar, in the Miraculous Chapel was well enough at the Paris Exhibition of 1889, where it could be admired as a piece of elaborate brass work, but at Roc-Amadour it is a direct challenge to the spirit of the spot. Then again, late Gothic architecture has been grafted upon the early Romanesque. Those who restored the building after it had been reduced to a ruin by the Huguenots in 1562 set the example of bad taste. The revolutionists of 1793 having in their turn wrought their fury upon it, the work of restoration was again undertaken during the last half-century, but the opportunity of correcting the mistake of the previous renovators was lost. The piece of Romanesque architecture whose character has been best preserved is the detached chapel of St. Michael, raised like a pigeon-house against the rock; but even this has been carefully scraped on the outside to make it correspond as nearly as possible to some adjacent work of recent construction. The ancient treasure of Roc-Amadour has been scattered or melted down, but the image of the Virgin and Child, which according to the local tradition was carved out of the trunk of a tree by St. Amadour himself, is still to be seen over the altar in the Miraculous Chapel. It is probably 800 years old, and it may be older. There is no record to help hypothesis with regard to its antiquity, for since the pilgrimage originated it appears to have been an object of veneration, and the commencement of the pilgrimage is lost in the dimness of the past. Like the statue of the Virgin at Le Puy, it is as black as ebony, but this is the effect of age, and the smoke of incense and candles. The antiquity of the image is, moreover, proved by the artistic treatment. The Child is crowned and rests upon the Virgin's knee; she does not touch him with her hands. This is in accordance with the early Christian sentiment, which dwells upon the kingship of the Child as distinguished from the later mediaeval feeling, which rests without fear upon the Virgin's maternal love and makes her clasp the Infant fondly to her breast. The 'miraculous bell' of Roc-Amadour has not rung since 1551, but it may do so any day or night, for it is still suspended to the vault of the Miraculous Chapel. It is of iron, and was beaten into shape with the hammer--facts which, together with its form, are regarded as certain evidence of its antiquity. The first time that it is said to have rung by its own movement was in 1385, and three days afterwards, according to Odo de Gissey, the phenomenon was repeated during the celebration of the Mass. All those who were present bore testimony to the fact upon oath before the apostolic notary. Very early in the Middle Ages the faith spread among mariners, and others exposed to the dangers of the sea, that the Lady of Roc-Amadour had great power to help them when in distress. Hugues Farsit, Canon of Laon, wrote a treatise in 1140, 'De miraculis Beatae Virginis rupis Amatoris,' wherein he speaks of her as the 'Star of the Sea,' and the hymn 'Ave maris stella' is one of those most frequently sung in these days by the pilgrims at Roc-Amadour. A statement, written and signed by a Breton pilgrim in 1534, shows how widely this particular devotion had then spread among those who trusted their lives to the uncertain sea: 'I, Louis Le Baille, merchant of the town of Pontscorf, on the river Ellé, in the diocese of Vannes, declare with truth that, returning from a voyage to Scotland the 13th of the month of February, 1534, at about ten o'clock at night, we were overtaken by such a violent storm that the waves covered the vessel, in which were twenty-six persons, and we went to the bottom. During the voyage somebody said to me: "Let us recommend ourselves to God and to the Virgin Mary of Roc-Amadour. Let us put her name upon this spar and trust ourselves to the care of this good Lady." He who gave me this good counsel and myself fastened ourselves to the spar with a rope. The tempest carried us away, but in so fortunate a manner that the next day we found ourselves on the coast of Bayonne. Half dead, we landed by the grace of God and the aid of His pitiful mother, Notre Dame de Roc-Amadour. I have come here out of gratitude for this blessing, and have accomplished the journey in fulfilment of my vow to her, in proof of which, I have signed here with my hand.--Louis BAILLE.' Such streams of pilgrims crossed the country from various directions, moving towards the sanctuary in the Haut-Quercy, that inns or 'halts' were called into existence on the principal lines of route, and lanterns were set up at night for the guidance of the wanderers. The last halt was close to Roc-Amadour, at a spot still called the _Hospitalet_. Here were religious, who bound up the pilgrims' bleeding feet, and provided them with food before they descended to the burg and completed the last part of their pilgrimage--the ascent of the steps--upon their knees. The _sportelle_, or badge of Notre Dame de Roc-Amadour, ensured the wearer against interference or ill-treatment on his journey. It is acknowledged that the English respected it even in time of war. At the Great Pardon of Roc-Amadour, in 1546, so great was the crowd of pilgrims, who had come from all parts, that many persons were suffocated. The innkeepers' tents gave the surrounding country the appearance of a vast camp. Sixteen years later, when Roc-Amadour fell into the hands of the Huguenots, and the religious buildings were pillaged and partly destroyed, the pilgrimage received a blow from which it never quite recovered. It ceased completely at the Revolution, but has since been revived, and some thousand genuine pilgrims, chiefly of the peasant class, now visit Roc-Amadour every year. For nearly 300 years the history of the Quercy and Roc-Amadour was intimately associated with that of England. Henry II. did not at first claim the Quercy as a part of Eleanor's actual possessions in Aquitaine; but he claimed homage from the Count of Toulouse, who was then suzerain of the Count of Quercy. Homage being refused, Henry invaded the county, captured Cahors, where he left Becket with a garrison, and thence proceeded to reduce the other strongholds. Roc-Amadour appears to have offered little if any resistance. The Quercy was formally made over to the English in 1191 by the treaty signed by Philip Augustus and Richard Coeur-de-Lion; but the aged Raymond V. of Toulouse protested, and the Quercynois still more loudly. These descendants of the Cadurci found it very difficult to submit to English rule. Unlike the Gascons, who became thoroughly English during those three centuries, and were so loath to change their rulers again that they fought for the King of England to the last, the Quercynois were never reconciled to the Plantagenets, but were ever ready to seize an opportunity of rebelling against them. It is well known that Richard Coeur-de-Lion lost his life at the hand of a nobleman of the Quercy. While Guyenne was distracted by the family quarrel of the first Plantagenets, the troubadour Bertrand de Born by his gift of words so stirred up the patriotic and martial ardour of the Aquitanians that a league was formed against the English, which included Talleyrand, Count of Périgord, Guilhem (or Fortanier) de Gourdon, a powerful lord of the Quercy, De Montfort, the Viscounts of Turenne and Ventadour. These nobles swore upon the Gospels to remain united and faithful to the cause of Aquitaine; but Richard, partly by feats of war and partly by diplomacy, in which it is said the argument of money had no inconsiderable share, broke up the league, and Bertrand de Born, being abandoned, fell into the Plantagenet's hands. But he was pardoned, probably because Richard was a troubadour himself in his leisure moments, and had a fellow-feeling for all who loved the 'gai sçavoir.' Meanwhile, the Lord of Gourdon was not to be gained over by fair words or bribes, and Richard besieged his castle, some ruins of which may still be seen on the rock that overhangs the little town of Gourdon in the Quercy. The fortress was taken, and Richard in his fury caused the stern old man who defended it and two of his sons to be put to death. But there was a third son, Bertrand de Gourdon, who, seeking an opportunity of avenging his father and brothers, joined the garrison of the castle of Châlus in the Limousin, which Richard soon afterwards besieged. He aimed the bolt or the arrow which brought Richard's stormy life to a close. Although forgiven by the dying Coeur-de-Lion, Bertrand was flayed alive by the Brabançons who were in the English army. He left no descendants, but his collaterals long afterwards bore the name of Richard in memory of Bertrand's vengeance. A member of a learned society at Cahors has sought to prove that Gourdon in the Quercy is the place where the family of General Gordon of Khartoum fame had its origin. It is true that the name of this town in all old charts is spelt Gordon; but, inasmuch as it is a compound of two Celtic words meaning raven's rock, it might as feasibly have been handed down by the Gaelic Scotch as by the Cadurcians. The Plantagenets came to be termed 'the devil's race' by the people of Guyenne. This may have originated in a saying attributed to Richard himself in Aquitaine: 'It is customary in our family for the sons to hate their father. We come from the devil, and we shall return to the devil.' In 1368 the English, having again to reduce the Quercy, laid siege to Roc-Amadour. The burghers held out only for a short time, and the place being surrendered, Perducas d'Albret was left as governor with a garrison of Gascons. Froissart quaintly describes this brief siege. Shortly before the army showed itself in the narrow valley of the Alzou, the towns of Fons and Gavache had capitulated, the inhabitants having sworn that they would remain English ever afterwards. 'But they lied,' observes Froissart. Arriving under the walls of Roc-Amadour, which were raised upon the lower rocks, the English advanced at once to the assault. 'Là eut je vous dy moult grant assaust et dur.' It lasted a whole day, with loss on both sides; but when the evening came the English entrenched themselves in the valley with the intention of renewing the assault on the morrow. That night, however, the consuls and burghers of Roc-Amadour took council of one another, and it was unanimously agreed that the English had shown great 'force and virtue' during the day. Then the wisest among them urged that the place could not hold out long against such an enemy, and that if it was taken by force they, the burghers, would be all hanged, and the town burnt without mercy. It was, therefore, decided to surrender the town the next day. This was accordingly done, and the burghers solemnly swore that they would be 'good English' ever afterwards. For their penance they undertook to send fifty mules laden with provisions to accompany the English army on its march for fifteen days. The fact that the burghers owned fifty mules in the fourteenth century shows how much richer they were then, for now they can scarcely boast half as many donkeys, although these beasts do most of the carrying, and even the ploughing. It is difficult now to find a trace of the wall which defended the burg on the side of the valley; but here, not far above the bed of the Alzou, are some ruins of the castle where Henry II. stayed, and which the inhabitants still associate with his name. It is improbable that he built it; it is more reasonable to suppose that it existed before his marriage with Eleanor in 1152. His son, 'Short Mantle,' also used it when he came to Roc-Amadour, and behaved, as an old writer expresses it, 'like a ferocious beast.' Some ruined Gothic archways may still be seen from the valley, the upper stones yellow with rampant wallflowers in the early spring. The older inhabitants speak of the high walls, the finely-sculptured details, etc., which they remember; and, indeed, it is not very long ago that the ancient castle was sold for a paltry sum, to be used as building material. The only part of the interior preserved is what was once the chapel. It is vaulted and groined, and the old vats and casks heaped up in it show that it was long used for wine-making, before the phylloxera destroyed the vineyards that once covered the sides of the stony hills. A little below this castle is a well, with an extraordinary circumference, said to have been sunk by the English, and always called by the people 'Le puit des Anglais.' It is 100 feet deep, and those who made it had to work thirty feet through solid rock. * * * * * After wandering and loitering by rivers too well fed by the mountains to dry completely up like the perfidious little Alzou, I have returned to Roc-Amadour, my headquarters, the summer being far advanced. The wallflowers no longer deck the old towers and gateways with their yellow bloom, and scent the morning and evening air with their fragrance; the countless flags upon the rocky shelves no longer flaunt their splendid blue and purple, tempting the flower-gatherer to risk a broken neck; the poet's narcissus and the tall asphodel alike are gone; so are all the flowers of spring. The wild vine that clambers over the blackthorn, the maple and the hazel, all down the valley towards the Dordogne, shows here and there a crimson leaf; and the little path is fringed with high marjoram, whose blossoms revel amidst the hot stones, and seem to drink the wine of their life from the fiery sunbeams. Upon the burning banks of broken rock--gray wastes sprinkled with small spurges and tufts of the fragrant southernwood, now opening its mean little flowers--multitudes of flying grasshoppers flutter, most of them with scarlet wings, and one marvels how they can keep themselves from being baked quite dry where every stone is hot. The lizards, which spend most of their time in the grasshoppers' company, appear equally capable of resisting fire. In the bed of the Alzou a species of brassica has had time since the last flood to grow up from the seed, and to spread its dark verdure in broad patches over the dry sand and pebbles. The ravens are gone--to Auvergne, so it is said, because they do not like hot weather. The hawks are less difficult to please on the score of climate; they remain here all the year round, piercing the air with their melancholy cries. I needed quiet for writing, and could not get it. Of all boons this is the most difficult to find in France. It can be had in Paris, where it is easy to live shut off from the world, hearing nothing save the monotonous rumble of life in the streets; but let no one talk to me about the blessed quietude of the country in France, unless it be that of the bare moor or mountain or desolate seashore. In villages there is no escape from the clatter of tongues until everybody, excepting yourself, is asleep. The houses are so built that wherever you may take refuge you are compelled to hear the conversation that is going on in any part of them. In the South the necessity of listening becomes really terrible. The men roar, and the women shriek, in their ordinary talk. A complete stranger to such ways might easily suppose that they were engaged in a wordy battle of alarming ferocity, when they are merely discussing the pig's measles, or the case of a cow that strayed into a field of lucern, and was found the next morning like a balloon. It is hard for a person who needs to be quiet at times to live with such people without giving the Recording Angel a great deal of disagreeable work. I would not have believed that so small a place as Roc-Amadour, and such a holy one, could have been so noisy if my own experience had not informed me on this subject. Every morning at five the tailor who did duty as policeman and crier came with his drum, and, stationing himself by the town pump, which was just in front of my cottage, awoke the echoes of the gorge with a long and furious _tambourinade_. While the women, in answer to this signal, were coming from all directions, carrying buckets in their hands, or copper water-pots on their heads, he unchained the pump-handle. Now for the next two hours the strident cries of the exasperated pump, and the screaming gabble of many tongues, all refreshed by slumber and eager for exercise, made such a diabolic tumult and discord as to throw even the braying of the donkeys into the minor key. Of course, sleep under such circumstances would have been miraculous; but, then, no one had any right to sleep when the rocks were breaking again into flame, and the mists which filled the gorge by night were folding up their tents. I therefore accepted this noise as if it had been intended for my good, and the crowd in front of the pump was always an amusing picture of human life. It was at its best on Sunday, for then the tailor--who also did a little shaving between whiles--had put on his fine braided official coat, as well as his sword and best _képi_. (On very grand days he wore his cocked hat, and was then quite irresistibly beautiful.) He had to look after the women as well as the water. The latter was precious, and it was necessary to protect it in the interest of the community. Then the pump was parsimonious, and all the women being impatient to get their allowance and go, it was needful that someone in authority should stand by to decide questions of disputed priority, and to nip quarrels in the bud which might otherwise lead to a fight. Poor man! how those women worried him every morning with their _badinage_, and how glad he was to chain up the pump-handle and turn the key! But this was only the opening act of the day's comedy, or rather the _lever de rideau_. The little square by the old gateway, whose immediate neighbourhood lent a mediaeval charm to my cottage, was the centre of gossip and idling. I did not think of this when I pitched my tent, so to speak, in the shadow of the old masonry. Knowing full well that the noise of tongues is one of the chief torments of my life, I am always leaving it out of my calculations, and paying the same bill for my folly over and over again. But then I know also that in provincial France, unless you live in an abandoned ruin upon a rock, it is well-nigh impossible to obtain the quietude which the literary man, when he has it not, imagines to be closely allied to the peace that passeth all understanding. The square served many purposes, except mine. The women used it as a convenient place for steaming their linen. This, fashioned into the shape of a huge sugar-loaf, with a hollow centre, stood in a great open caldron upon a tripod over a wood-fire. At night the lurid flames and the grouped figures, illuminated by the glare, were picturesque; but in the daytime the charm of these gatherings was chiefly conversational. Then the children made the square their playground, or were driven into it because it was the safest place for them, and every Sunday afternoon the young men of Roc-Amadour met there to play at skittles. In quest of peace, I was driven at first into the loft of the inn, of which the cottage was a dependency. Here the vocal music of the inhabitants was somewhat muffled, but the opportunities for studying natural history were rather excessive. A swarm of bees had established themselves in a corner where they could not be dislodged, and they had a way of crawling over the floor that kept my expectations constantly raised. The maize grown upon the small farm having been stored here from time immemorial, the rats had learnt from tradition and experience to consider this loft as their Land of Goshen. When I took up my quarters among them they were annoyed, and also puzzled. They could not understand why I remained there so long and so quiet; but at length they lost patience and gave up the riddle. Then their impudence became unbounded; they helped themselves to the maize whenever they felt disposed to do so, and stared at me with the utmost effrontery as they sat upon their haunches nibbling; they ran races under the tiles and held pitched battles upon the rafters. Talking one day to the proprietor of the house about his rats and other live stock, I tried to excite and distress him by describing the depredation that went on day and night in the loft. But it was with a calm bordering on satisfaction that he listened to my story. Then he told me that the rats ate about two sacks of maize every year. 'And you do not put it elsewhere?' 'Non pas! I leave it here for them.' 'For the rats?' 'Certainly, for the rats. If I did not give them plenty of maize they would eat a hundred francs' worth of linen in a single winter. It is an economy to feed them.' And there were about a dozen string-tailed cats about the place that never ventured into the loft. They must have been either afraid or too lazy to attack the rats in their stronghold. A man who could accept a plague of rodents in this philosophical spirit could not be otherwise than mild in his dealings with all animals, including men. My old friend liked to let every creature live and enjoy existence. He became so fond of his pigs that it grieved him sorely to have one killed. Much domestic diplomacy had to be used before the fatal order could be wrung from him. He would have gone on fattening the beast for ever had he been allowed, soothing his conscience over the waste with the vague hope that this pig of exceptional loveliness and vigour would grow to the size of a donkey if it were permitted to take its time. He never worried his _métayer_ over money matters, or insisted upon seeing that everything was equally divided. Notwithstanding, that he had been made to smart all his life for his trustfulness and indolent good-nature, experience had taught him nothing of this world's wisdom. No beggar, although known to be a worthless rascal, ever asked him for a piece of bread or a night's lodging in his barn without obtaining it. The old man would lock his ragged guest up for the night, and before letting him out in the morning would often carry some soup to him--stealthily, however, so as not to be observed. As he was always ready to give, and hated every harsh measure, it was to his wood that the unscrupulous went in winter, when they wanted fuel. Sometimes an informer would say to him: 'M---- So-and-so is cutting down your wood.' 'Oh, bast! _le pauvre_. It is cold weather!' was the reply that he would be most likely to make. His good qualities would have ruined him had not destiny with great discernment and charity nailed him to his little patrimony, where he was comparatively safe. The bees in the loft were instructive and the rats amusing, but the fleas were neither the one nor the other--they were merely exciting. And so it came to pass that I forsook the place, and by climbing a little staircase cut in the rock, against which the house was built, reached a cavern far above the roof and found at last my ideal writing-place upon the ledge in front of it, where the mallow and the crane's-bill crept over a patch of turf. Here the voices of the noisy little world below were sufficiently toned down by distance. The noisiest creatures up here were the jackdaws, which were constantly flying in and out of the holes in the church wall that rose above me from another and wider ledge of rock. A pair of sooty-looking rock-swallows that had made their nest in the roof of the cavern were much irritated by my presence, but, like the rats, they became reconciled to it. The little martins, always trustful, never hesitated from the first to fly into the cave and drink from the dripping water. When the dusk came on, the bats, which had been hanging by their winged heels all day in dusky holes and corners, fluttered out one after another, and went zigzagging until they were lost to sight over the old stone roofs on which the moss had blackened. A little before the bats came out was the time when to do aught else but let the sight feast upon the beauty of the rocky little world bounded by the walls of the narrow gorge would have been literally to waste the golden moments. Then it was that the naked crags, which caught the almost level rays of the setting sun, grew brighter and more brilliantly coruscating, until they seemed ready to melt from the intensity of their own heat; then this fiery golden colour would slowly fade and wane into misty purple tones, which lingered long when there was no more sun. Why did it linger? All the sky that I could see was blue, and of deepening tone. But the most wonderful sight was yet to come, when, while the valley was fast darkening, and along the banks of the Alzou's dry channel the walnut-trees stood like dark spectres of uncertain form, those rocks began to glow with fire again as if a wind had risen suddenly and had fanned their dying embers, and the luminous bloom that spread over them was not that of the earthly rose, but of the mystical rose of heaven. What I saw was the reflection of the after-glow, but the glow in the sky was hidden. Sometimes, as the rocks were fading again and a star was already glittering like steel against the dark blue, another flush arose in the dusk, and a faint redness still rested upon the high crags, when the owl flew forth with a shriek to hunt along the sides of the gorge. One morning, as I climbed to my eyrie, I was shocked to see my oblong writing-table, which I had hoisted up there with considerable difficulty, in an attitude that my neighbour Decros's donkey endeavoured to strike in his most agitated moments--it was standing upon two legs, with the others in the air. The heavy branch of a large fig-tree that had been flourishing for many years upon the overhanging rock far above had come down upon the very spot where I was accustomed to sit, and thus the strange antics of the table were accounted for. From that day the thought of other things above, such as loose rocks, which might also have conceived an antipathy for the table, and might not be so considerate towards me as the fig-tree, weakened my attachment to my ideal writing-place, for the discovery of which I was indebted to the indefatigable tongues of the women of Roc-Amadour. The mention of my neighbour's donkey recalls to mind an interesting religious ceremony in which that amiable but emotional beast figured with much distinction. Once every year all the animals at Roc-Amadour that are worth blessing are assembled on the plain near the Hospitalet to receive the benediction of the Church. The ceremony is called _La bénédiction des bêtes_. The animals are chiefly goats, sheep, donkeys, and mules. They are sprinkled with holy water, and prayers are said, so that they may increase and multiply or prosper in any other way that their owners may desire. As the meeting of the beasts took place very early in the morning, I reached the scene just as it was breaking up, and the congregation was dispersing in various directions. I met Decros coming down the hill with his donkey, and saw by the expression of his lantern jaws--he never laughed outright--that something had amused him very much. 'So you have been to the Blessing of the Beasts? said I. '_He_ has been,' replied the man, pointing to the ass, and not wishing to be confounded with the _bêtes_ himself. The donkey stuck his long ears forward, which meant, 'Yes, I have,' and there was a deal of humour in the expression. 'And how did he behave?' 'Beautifully; he sang the whole time. The men laughed, but the women said, "Take the beast away!" "No, I won't," said" _Il chante la bénédiction_."' September brought the retreat, and the great pilgrimage, which lasts eight days. The first visitors to arrive were the beggars and small vendors of _objets de piété_. Some came in little carts, which looked as if they had been made at home out of grocers' boxes, and to which dogs were harnessed. At their approach all the Roc-Amadour dogs barked bravely, just as in the old days when the song was written of the 'beggars coming to town.' Others trudged in with their bundles upon their backs, hobbling, hungry and thirsty, but eager for the fray. Some in a larger way of business came in all sorts of vehicles, and a bazaar man arrived in a caravan of his own. Then followed the crowd of genuine pilgrims, nearly all of them peasants, humbly clad, but with money in their pockets which they were determined not to spend foolishly upon meat, drink, and lodging, for the good of their souls was uppermost in their minds, and the length of their stay would depend upon their success in making the money last. By far the greater number were women, and the many bent backs and withered faces among them were a pretty safe sign that they had not all come to implore the aid of the Virgin in that special form of domestic trouble from which so many thousands have sought relief century after century in her sanctuary of Roc-Amadour. The plain white linen coif--very ugly, but delightfully primitive--worn by a large proportion of these peasants showed that they had crossed the Dordogne from the Bas-Limousin. Many had come all the way on foot, taking a couple of days or more for the journey, and a few had trudged over the hot roads and stony _causses_[*] barefoot, just like pilgrims of the Middle Ages. [*] This Languedocian word, which has come to be generally used in describing the limestone uplands, as distinguished from the valleys and gorges of a very extensive district of Southern France, is said to be a corruption of _calx_. Indeed, these people were essentially the same in all social and mental characteristics as their predecessors of five or seven centuries ago; their faith was the same, their daily habits were the same, their language was the same, and their mode of dress, as far as the women were concerned, had scarcely changed. They came down the narrow street and under the old crumbling gateways in a continuous stream, holding their rosaries in their hands, together with their baskets and bundles, and praying aloud, even before they reached the foot of the steps. Arriving there, they dropped down upon their knees, and commenced the arduous ascent, interrupted by two hundred genuflexions, during which they repeated an _Ave Maria_ and a special invocation to Notre Dame de Roc-Amadour. Although the stranger belonging to the outer world--so different in every way from that of these simple people--with his mind coloured by particular prejudices, habits of thought, religious or philosophical reasoning, may feel out of sympathy with such pilgrims, he cannot but recognise their sincerity and the serene fulness of their faith. Above all the pious murmuring rise the harsh voices of those who have come to sell, and who, putting no restraint upon their eagerness to get money, thrust their rosaries and medals almost in the pilgrims' faces. Beggars squatting or lying against the wall on either side of the steps exhibit the bare stump of a leg that wofully needs washing, a withered arm, or the ravages of some incurable and gnawing disease. Yet are they all terribly energetic, wailing forth prayers almost incessantly, or screaming spasmodically an appeal to charity, and adding to the dreadful din by jingling coppers in tin cups. In the immediate precincts of the church, where the hurly-burly of piety, traffic, and mendicity reaches its climax, are the vendors of candles for the chapel and of food for the pilgrims, whose diet is chiefly melon and bread. Creysse, by the Dordogne, produces melons in abundance, which are brought to Roc-Amadour by the cartload, and sold for two or three sous apiece. And to see these pilgrims devour the fragrant fruit in the month of September makes one think that if Notre Dame de Roc-Amadour were not very pitiful the consequences would be disastrous to many. There was a humorous beggar on the steps who amused me much, for I watched him more closely than he supposed. He had something the matter with his legs--paralyzed, perhaps--but the upper part of his body was sound enough. With one hand he shook the tin cup, but the other, which held a short pipe, he kept steadfastly behind his back. Now and again he turned his face to the wall, as if to drop a tear unseen, but really to take a discreet pull at the pipe. I think he must have swallowed the smoke. Then he would face the crowd again, and repeat his doleful cry: 'De la charité! de la charité! Chrétiens, n'oubliez pas le pauvre estropié! Le bon Dieu vous bénira.' After all, why should not a beggar smoke? If tobacco is a blessing, why should a man be debarred from it because his legs are paralyzed, and he is obliged to live on charity? As one of the first thoughts of every genuine pilgrim to this ancient sanctuary is to get shrived, the chaplains, who, with their Superior, are ten in number, have something to do to listen to the story of sins that is poured into their ears almost in a continuous stream during the eight days of the retreat. The rush upon the confessionals begins at five in the morning, and goes on with little intermission all day. The penitents huddle together like sheep in a snowstorm around each confessional, so that the foremost who is telling his sins knows that there is another immediately behind him who, whenever he stops to reflect, would like to give him a nudge m the back. The peasants, whether it be that they have never cultivated the habit of whispering, or whether their zeal be such as to chase from their minds all considerations of worldly shame and human respect, say what they have to say without regard to the rows of ears behind them, and what takes place at these times is almost on a par with the public confessions of the primitive Church. It is at night, however, during the retreat that the visitor to Roc-Amadour will see the strangest sight if he gives himself the trouble, for then the church of St. Sauveur becomes a _hospice_ where the weary may find the sleep that refreshes and restores the faculties after the work of the day, as sung by St. Ambrose. The church is filled with pilgrims lying upon the chairs, upon the bare stones that the feet of other pilgrims have worn into hollows, sitting with their backs against the walls and piers, snoring also in the confessionals--the most comfortable quarters. Some remain awake most of the night praying silently or aloud. This is how the peasantry of the Quercy and the Limousin enter into the spirit of the September pilgrimage to Roc-Amadour. It is not because they need the money to pay for accommodation in the inns that they use the church by night as well as by day, but because they wish to go through their devotional programme thoroughly. And those who go to the inns often make one room serve for a family of three or four grown-up persons. If there vis one person who does not belong to the family, the others see no harm in admitting him or her; indeed, they think that as Christians they are almost bound to do so. On the night following the opening of the retreat, Roc-Amadour is illuminated, and the spectacle is one that renders the grandest illuminations in Paris mean and vulgar by comparison. It is not in the costliness of the display that its splendour lies; it is in what may almost be termed the zeal with which Nature works with art towards the same end. Without the rocks and precipices the spectacle would be commonplace; but the site being what it is, the scene has a strange and wonderful charm that may be called either fairylike or heavenly, as the imagination may prefer. The artistic means employed are simple enough--paper lanterns and little lamps of coloured glass; but what an effect is produced when chains of fire have been stretched across the gorge from the summits of the rocks on either side, when the long succession of zigzags reaching up the cliff, and forming the Way of the Cross, is also marked out with fire, when the ramparts on the brink of the precipice are ablaze with coloured lamps, recalling some old poetical picture of an enchanted castle, and a little to the right, on the summit of the cliff where the Via Crucis ends at Calvary, the great wooden cross which French pilgrims carried through the streets of Jerusalem stands against the calm starlit sky like a cross of blood-red flame! A little below the summit of the cliff, from the large cavern which has been fashioned to represent the Holy Sepulchre, there issues a brilliant light, together with the sound of many voices singing the 'Tantum ergo.' A faint odour of incense wanders here and there among the shrubs, and mingles with the fragrance of flowers upon the terraces. Presently the clergy and the pilgrims come forth, and, forming a long procession, descend the Way of the Cross; and as the burning tapers that they carry shine and flash amongst the foliage, these words, familiar to every pilgrim to Roc-Amadour, sung by hundreds of voices, may be heard afar off in the dark desolate gorge: 'Reine puissante, Mère d'Amour, Sois-nous compatissante, O Vierge d'Amadour!' It is now the vigil of All Souls--the 'Day of the Dead.' No more pilgrims come to Roc-Amadour. A breeze would send the sapless walnut-leaves whirling through the air, but there is no breeze; Nature seems to hold her breath as she thinks of the dead whom she has gathered to her earthy breast. At sundown the people creep out of their houses silently and solemnly; they meet at the bottom of the steps, and when they are joined by the clergy and choirboys, all move slowly upward, praying for the dead and kneeling upon each step. As their forms seen sideways show against the dusky sky, they look like shadows from the ghostly world, and still more so when the rocks on the other side of the gorge brighten again, as with the blood of the pomegranate made luminous, and through the air there spreads a beautiful solemn light that is tenderly yet deeply sad, and which adds something unearthly, something that cannot be named, to the ascending figures. As the dusk deepens to darkness the funereal _glas_ begins to moan from St. Saviour's Church. Two bells are rung together so as to make as nearly as possible one clash of sound. At first it is a moan, but it soon becomes a strident cry with a continuous under-wail. At the Hospitalet on the hill the bell of the mortuary chapel is also tolling. It is the bell of the dead who lie there in the stony burying-ground upon the edge of the wind-blown _causse_, calling upon the bells of Roc-Amadour to move the living to pity for those who have left the earth. As I return to my cottage the dim street is quite deserted, and the arch of the ruined gateway, so often resounding with the voices that come from light hearts, is now as dark and silent as a grave. For two hours the bells continue to cry in the darkness, from the church overhead and from the chapel by the tombs. I can neither read nor write, but sit brooding over the fire on the hearth, piling on wood and sending tall flames and many sparks up the chimney; for that continuous undercry of the iron tongues, 'Pray for the dead! pray for the dead!' fills the valley and seems to fill the world. No fireside feeling can be kindled; it is wasting wood to throw it upon the hearth to-night, for that doleful wail penetrates everywhere: even the demon that lurks at the bottom of Pomoyssin must shudder as he hears it. When at length the bells stop swinging and their vibrations die away, a screech-owl flies close by the open gallery of the house, which we call a balcony, and startles me with its ghostly scream. The day comes again, fair and hopeful. I am waiting for the old truffle-hunter, with whom I made an appointment for this morning. Presently I see him coming up the bed of the stream, plodding over the yellow stones, which have been dry for four months. I recognise him by his pig, which walks by his side. They are both truffle-hunters, and have both an interest in the business, as will be seen. The man is gray and old, with a sharp prominent nose, suggestive of his chief occupation, and with a bent back--the effect, perhaps, of stooping to pull the pig's ear in the nick of time should the beast be tempted to snap up one of the savoury cryptogams. When it is added that he wears a short blouse and a low, broad-brimmed felt hat, I have described the appearance of the truffle-hunter. Now, inasmuch as the pig is about to play the most important part in the morning's work, its portrait should likewise be drawn. The animal is of a dirty-white colour, like all pigs in this part of France, and is utterly devoid of grace and elegance. It is, in fact, an extremely ugly beast, with an arched back and a very long turned-up nose; but it is four years old, and is accounted 'serious.' Like all other pigs used for truffle-hunting, it is of the female sex. The animal has been carefully educated; it wears a leather collar as a mark of distinction, and is allowed the same liberty as a dog. We climb the rocky side of the gorge, which is hot work, for the south wind is blowing, and the sun is blazing in a blue sky. The walnuts by the line of the stream are changing colour, and the maples are already fiery; but otherwise there are few signs of autumn. On reaching the plateau we come at once to the truffle-ground. Here the soil is so thin, so stony, and withal so arid, that, were it not for the scant herbage upon which sheep and goats thrive, it would produce nothing but stunted oak, juniper, and truffles. Even the oaks only grow in patches where the rock is not close to the surface. The truffles are never found except very near these trees, or, in default of them, hazels. This is one of the mysteries of the cryptogamic kingdom, which no one has yet been able to explain. The truffle-hunters believe that it is the shade of the trees which produces the underground fruit, and the opinion is based upon experience. When an oak has been cut down, or even lopped, a spot near it that was rich in truffles year after year is soon scoffed at by the knowing pig. Our work lies amongst the dwarf oaks, for there are no hazels here. At a sign from the old man, the pig sniffs about the roots of a little tree, then proceeds to dig with her nose, tossing up the larger stones which lie in the way as if they were feathers. The animal has smelt a truffle, and the man seizes her by the ear, for her manner is suspicious. This is the first time they have been out together since last season, and the beast has forgotten some of her education. She manages to get a truffle into her mouth; he tugs at her ear with one hand, and uses his stick upon her nose with the other. The brute screams with anger, but will not open her jaws wide enough for him to slip his stick in and hook the truffle out. The prize is swallowed, and the old man, forgetting all decorum, and only thinking of his loss, calls his companion a pig, which in France is always an insult. Our truffle-hunting to-day has opened badly, although one party thinks differently. In a few minutes, however, another truffle is found, and this time the old man delivers a whack on the nose at the right moment, and, seizing the fungus, hands it to me. Now he takes from his pocket a spike of maize, and, picking off a few grains, gives them to the pig to soothe her injured feelings, and encourage her to hunt again. This she is quite ready to do, for a pig has no _amour propre_. We move about in the dry open wood, keeping always near the trees, and truffle after truffle is turned up from the reddish light soil mixed with fragments of calcareous rock. The forgotten training soon comes back to our invaluable auxiliary; a mere twitch of the ear is a sufficient hint for her to retire at the right moment, and wait for the corn that is in variably given in exchange for the cryptogam. Indeed, before we leave the ground, the animal has got so well into work that when she finds a truffle she does not attempt to seize it, but points to it, and grunts for the equivalent in maize. The pig may be a correct emblem of depravity, but its intelligence is certainly of a superior order. FROM THE ALZOU TO THE DORDOGNE. Although the last days of May had come, the Alzou, usually dry at this time, was running with swift, strong current through the vale of Roc-Amadour. There had been so many thunderstorms that the channel was not large enough for the torrent that raced madly over its yellow pebbles. I lingered awhile in the meadow by the stream, looking at the rock-clinging sanctuary before wandering in search of the unknown up the narrow gorge. In a garden terraced upon the lower flank of the rock, the labour of generations having combined to raise a soil there deep enough to support a few plum, almond, and other fruit trees, a figure all in black is hard at work transplanting young lettuces. It is that of a teaching Brother. He is a thin grizzled man of sixty, with an expression of melancholy benevolence in his rugged face. I have watched him sitting upon a bench with his arm round some little village urchin by his side, while the children from the outlying hamlets, sprawling upon a heap of stones in the sun, ate their mid-day meal of bread and cheese or buckwheat pancakes that their mothers had put into their baskets before they trudged off in the early morning. I have noticed by many signs that he is full of sympathy for the young peasants placed in his charge. Yet with all his kindness he is melancholy. So many years in one place, such a dull routine of duty, such a life of abnegation without the honour that sustains and encourages, such impossibility of being understood and appreciated by those for whose sake he has been breaking self upon the wheel of mortification since his youth, have made him old before the time and fixed that look of lurking sadness in his warmly human eyes. There are few problems more profound than that of the courage with which men like him continue their self-imposed penal-servitude until they become too infirm to work and are sent to die in some refuge for aged _frères_. They have accepted celibacy and poverty, that they may the better devote their lives to the instruction of children. They have no sacerdotal state or ideal, no ecclesiastical nor social ambition to help them. They must be always humble; they must not even be learned, for much knowledge in their case would be considered a dangerous thing. Their minds must not rise above their work. They guide dirty little fists in the formation of pot-hooks, and when they have led the boys' intelligence up a few more steps of scholarship the end is achieved. The boy goes out into the world and refreshes his mind with new occupation; but the poor Brother remains chained to his dreary task, which is always the same and is never done. And what are the wages in return for such a life? Food that many a workman would consider insufficiently generous for his condition, a bed to lie upon and clothes which call down upon the wearer the sarcasms of the town-bred youth. What a land of contrast is France! There are three Brothers here, but this one, the eldest, is the head. Others come and go, but he remains. Most of his spare time is given to the garden. When the eight o'clock bell begins to swing he will leave his lettuces and soon perch himself on the little platform behind his shabby old desk in the dingy schoolroom, which even in the holidays cannot get rid of its ancient redolence of boys. The school-house, now so much like a prison, was once a mansion, and the most modern part of it is of the period which we should call in England Tudor. A Gothic doorway leads into a hall arched and groined, the inner wall being the bare rock, as is the case with most of the houses at Roc-Amadour. A gutter cut in the stone floor to carry off the drippings formed by the condensation of the air upon the cold surface shows that these half-rock dwellings have their drawbacks. I leave Roc-Amadour and take my way up the valley. Nature has now reached all that can be attained in vernal pride and beauty here. In a little while she will have put on the careworn look of the Southern summer. Many a plant now in splendid bloom, animated by the spirit of loveliness that presides over the law of reproduction, will soon be casting its seed and bringing its brief destiny to a close. Now all is coquetry, beauty, and ravishment. The rock-hiving bees, unconscious instruments of a great purpose, are yellow with pollen and laden with honey. They find more, infinitely more, nectar than they can carry away. The days are long, and every hour is full of joy. But already the tide is at the turn. The nightingale's rapturous song has become a lazy twitter; the bird has done with courtship; it has a family in immediate prospect, if not one already screaming for food, and the musician has half lost his passion for music. It will come again next year. How swiftly all this life and colour of spring passes away! So much to be looked at and so little time! This narrow strip of meadow that winds along the bottom of the gorge is not the single tinted green ribbon it lately was. The light of its verdure has been dimmed by the light of flowers. The grass mounts high, but not higher than the oxeye daisies, the blue racemes of stachys, the mauve-coloured heads of scabious, the bladder-campions, the yellow buttercups and goat's-beard. The oxeyes are so numberless in one long reach of meadow that a white drapery, which every breeze folds or unfolds, seems to have been cast as light as sea-foam upon the illimitable forest of stems. The white butterflies that flutter above are like flecks of foam on the wing. Elsewhere it is the blue of the stachys and the spiked veronica that rules. Deeper in the herbage other races of flowers shine in the fair groves of this grassy paradise, and every blossom, however small, is a mystery, a miracle. Here is the star of Bethlehem, wide open in the sunshine and showing so purely white amidst the green, and yonder is the purple fringe-like tuft of the weird muscari. Along the banks of the stream tall lilac-purple, stock-like flowers rise proudly above the grasses. They belong to the hesperis or dame's violet, a common wild-flower in this valley. Upon my left is the abrupt stony slope of the gorge. Between it and the meadow are shrubs of yellow jessamine starred with blossom. But the stony steep that dazzles the eyes with the sun's reflected glare has its flowers too. Nature, in her great passion for beauty, even draws it out of the disintegrated fragments of time-worn rock, whose banks would otherwise be as stark and dry as the desert sand. Lightly as flakes of snow the frail blossoms of the white rock-rose lie upon the stones. Then there are patches of candytuft running from white into pink, crimson flowers of the little crane's-bill, and spurges whose floral leaves are now losing their golden green and taking a hue of fiery brown. An open wood, chiefly of dwarf oak, and shrubs such as the wayfaring tree, the guelder-rose, and the fly-honeysuckle, now stretches along the opposite side of the gorge. Here scattered groups of columbine send forth a glow of dark blue from the shadowy places; the lily of the valley and its graceful ever-bowing cousin, the Solomon's seal, show their chaste and wax-like flowers amidst the cool green of their fresh leaves; and the monkey-orchis stands above the green moss and the creeping geraniums like a little rocket of pale purple fire just springing from the earth towards the lingering shreds of storm-cloud that are melting in the warm sky. In a few weeks what will have become of all this greenness and beautiful colour of flowers? The torrid sun and the hot breath of summer will have burnt up the fair garment of spring, and laid bare the arid sternness of the South again. The nightingale still warbles fitfully in the green bushes, but the raven, perched up yonder upon the stark rock, croaks like a misanthrope at the quick passing away of youth and loveliness. What sad undertones, mournful murmurs of the deep that receives the drifted leaves, mingle with the spring's soft flutings and all the voices that proclaim the season of joy! While listening and day-dreaming, I was overtaken by a man and his donkey, both old acquaintances. Every day, except Sundays and the great Church festivals, when the peasants of the Quercy abstain from work, like those of Brittany, this pair were in the habit of trudging together side by side to fetch and bring back wood from the slopes of the gorge. The ass did all the carrying, and his master the chopping and sawing. It was a monotonous life, but both seemed to think they were not worse off than the majority of men and donkeys. The man was contented with his daily soup of bread-and-water, with an onion or a leek thrown in, and a suspicion of bacon, and the beast with such herbage as he could find while his master was getting ready another load of wood. The man was an old soldier, who had seen some rough service, for he was at Sedan, and was afterwards engaged in the ghastly business of shooting down his own countrymen in Paris. But, with all this, he was as quiet a tempered creature as his donkey, which he treated as a friend. The army, he told me, was the best school for learning how to treat a beast with proper consideration. I asked why. 'Because,' replied he, 'when a soldier is caught beating a horse, he has eight days of _salle de police_.' Man and donkey having disappeared into a wood, my next companion was a small blue butterfly that kept a few yards in front of me, now stopping to look at a flower, now fluttering on again. Some insects, as well as certain birds, appear to derive much entertainment from watching the movements of that fantastic animal--man. Arcadian leafiness: rocky desolation befitting the mouth of hell. Grass and flowers on which souls might tread in the paradise of the Florentine poet. Stony forms, monstrous, enigmatic, reared like symbolic tokens of defeated gods, or of the worn-out evil passions that troubled old creation before the coming of man, and the fresh order of spiritual and carnal bewilderment. Why should I go on and seek further amazement, while from the lowest to the highest I can read not one of the mystic figures of the solitude around me? What is my relation to them, and theirs to me? Why should that beetle in the grass, upon whose back all the colours of the prism change and glow like supernatural fire, trouble me with the cause and motive of its beauty? Why should yonder rock, standing like a spar of some ship wrecked in a cataclysm of the awful past, draw me to it as though it were the image of a grand, yet unattainable and blighted, longing of the human soul? The gorge became so narrow and the rocks so high that there was a twilight under the trees, which still dripped with the rain-drops of last night's storm. Hesperis, columbine, and geranium contrasted their floral colours with the deep green of the young grass. Some spots of dark purple were on the ground where the light was most dim. They were the petals and calyxes of that strange flower, lathraea, of the broom-rape family. Each bloom seemed to be carried in the cup of another flower. The plant had no leaves, for it was a thief that drew its nutriment from the root of an honest little tree that had struggled upward in the shade of strong and greedy rivals, and had raised its head at length into the sunshine in spite of them. After some difficulty in working round and over rocks that barred, the passage, I came to a spot where it was impossible to follow the gorge any farther. The walls narrowed to an opening a few yards wide, where the stream fell in a cascade of some thirty feet. I took my mid-day meal like a forester in the midst of this beautiful desolation, and then, having found a spot where I could escape from the gorge of the Alzou, I climbed the steep towards the north. Here there was a blinding glare of sunshine reflected by the naked stones. Goats looked down at me from the upper rocks near the line of the blue sky. When I reached the boy who tended them, I asked him the way to the road that I wished to strike upon the plateau. After staring at me for some time, he screwed up his mouth, and said: '_Je comprenais pas français, you.' You_ did not apply to me, but to himself, for it means _I_ in the Southern dialect. Here was a boy unable to speak French, although all children in France are now supposed to be educated in the official language of the republic. Such cases are uncommon. In the Haut-Quercy, where _patois_ is the language of everybody, even in the towns, one soon learns the advantage of asking the young for the information that one may need. I found the road I wanted, and also the spot marked on the map as the Saut de la Pucelle. It is one of those numerous _gouffres_ to be found in the Quercy, especially in the district of the Dordogne. Here a stream plunges beneath the surface of the earth to join the subterranean Ouysse, or the Dordogne. A ravine, sinking rapidly, becomes a deep, dark, and gloomy gully, at the end of which is a wall of rock. The stream pours down a tunnel-like passage, at the base of the rock, with a melancholy wail. Where the sides are not too steep they are covered with trees and shrubs. As I stood amidst the poisonous dog-mercury, under the hanging ivy and the hart's-tongue ferns, watching the stream glitter on the edge of everlasting darkness, and listening to its death-dirge, I pictured awful shadows issuing from the infernal passage and seizing the terror-stricken ghost of the guilty horseman, of whom I had heard from a local legend. This legend, as it is commonly told, is briefly as follows: Centuries ago a virtuous young woman was persecuted by the lord of a neighbouring castle, who was not at all virtuous. One day, when she was mounted upon a mule, he gave chase to her on horseback. He was rapidly gaining upon her, and she, in agony of soul, had given herself up for lost, when, by one of those miracles which were frequent in those days, especially in the country of Notre Dame de Roc-Amadour, the mule, by giving a vigorous stamp with one of his hind-legs, kicked a yawning gulf in the earth, which he, however, lightly passed over with his burden, while the wicked pursuer, unable to check his steed in time, perished in the abyss. Another legend of the Maiden's Leap is more romantic, but less supernatural. It is a story of the English occupation of Guyenne, and the revolt of the Quercynois in 1368. Before the main body of the British force that subdued Roc-Amadour as related by Froissart arrived in the Haut-Quercy, the castle of Prangères, near Gramat, was entered by a troop of armed men in the English service under Jéhan Péhautier, one of those brigand captains of whom the mediaeval history and legends of Guyenne speak only too eloquently. An orphan, Bertheline de Castelnau, _châtelaine_ of Prangères in her own right, was in the fortress when it was thus taken by surprise. Captivated by her beauty, Jéhan Péhautier essayed to make Bertheline his prisoner; but she made her escape from the castle by night, and endeavoured to reach the sanctuary of Roc-Amadour on foot. Her flight was discovered, and Péhautier and a party of horsemen started in pursuit. She would have been quickly captured had she not met a mounted knight, who was no other than her lover, Bertrand de Terride. She sprang upon his horse, and away they both went through the oak forest which then covered the greater part of the _causse_; but the gleam of the knight's armour in the moonlight kept the pursuers constantly upon his track. Slowly but surely they gained upon the fugitives. Suddenly Bertheline, who knew the country, perceived that Bertrand was spurring his horse directly towards the precipice now called the Saut de la Pucelle. It was too late, however, to avoid the gulf; she had only time to murmur a brief prayer before the horse bounded over the edge of the rock. To the great wonder and joy of the lovers, the animal cleared the ravine, and alighted safely on the other side. But a very different fate awaited the pursuers. On they came, crashing through the wood, shouting exultantly, for they believed that the prey was now almost in their grasp, when suddenly the air was rent with cries of horror, mingled with the sound of crashing armour, and bodies falling upon the rocks and upon the bed of the stream. An awful silence followed. The dead men and horses were lying in the dark water. As Péhautier felt the solid earth leave him, he gave out his favourite oath, 'Mort de sang!' in a frightful shriek, and the words long afterwards rang in the ears of Bertheline and Bertrand. As I returned to this spot some months later in order to explore the cavern, I may as well give an account of the adventure here. I was accompanied by my neighbour Decros, who gave his donkey on this occasion a half-holiday. Decros, although a native of the locality, could not tell me how far the cavern extended, for he had never been tempted to explore its depths himself, nor had he heard of anybody who knew more than himself about it. A story, however, was told of a shepherd-boy who long ago went down the opening, and was never seen again. 'Perhaps,' said I, 'we shall find his skeleton.' This observation brought a peculiar expression to my companion's face, which meant that he had no ambition whatever to share the surprise of such a discovery. Although he had done his duty bravely in the war of 1870, he was by no means free from the awe with which these _gouffres_ inspired the country-people, and his soldiering had still left him a Cadurcian Celt, with much of the superstition that he had drawn in with his native air. One morning he found that his donkey had nearly strangled himself over-night with the halter, and Decros could not shake off the impression that this accident was an omen intended to convey some message from the other world. He was ready to go with me into any cavern; but I am sure he would have much preferred scaling dangerous rocks in the broad sunlight, for there he would have felt at home. There was not too much water to offer any danger, so we stooped down and entered the low vault after lighting candles. The roof soon rose, and we were in a spacious cavern, the sides of which had evidently been washed and worn away into hollows by the sea that rolled here long before the mysterious race raised its dolmens and tumuli upon the surrounding knolls. The passage was wide enough for us to walk on the margin of the stream, or where the water was very shallow; but had much rain fallen, the expedition would have been perilous, for the descending torrent would then have been strong enough to carry a man off his legs. Stalactites hung from the rocks overhead, and as we proceeded they became more numerous, more fantastic, and more beautiful. They were just as the dropping water had slowly fashioned them in the darkness of ages, where day and night were the same, where nothing changed but themselves, save the voice of the stream, which grew louder or softer according to the play of winds and sunshine and clouds upon the upper world. Some tapered to a fine point, others were like pendant bunches of grapes; all were of the whiteness of loaf-sugar. No tourists stricken with that deplorable mania for taking home souvenirs of everything, and ready to spoil any beauty to gratify their vanity or their acquisitiveness, had cast stones into the midst of the fairy handicraft of the wizard water for the sake of a fragment; nor had the village boys amused themselves here at the expense of the stalactites, for happily they had been well trained in the horror of the supernatural. The cavern ran for a certain distance south-west; then the gallery turned at a sharp angle north-north-west, and continued in this direction. We followed the stream some three or four hundred yards, and then it entered a deep pool or lake under low rocks. We tried a side-passage to see if it led round this obstacle, but it soon came to an end. As I stood on the brink of the deep, black, silent pool, I had a great longing to know what lay beyond; but I had to content myself with imagining the unrevealed wonders of the cavern. It would be just possible, by crouching down in a little boat, to pass under the rock, which is probably no insuperable obstacle. The roof is just as likely to form a high vault on one side of it as on the other. The water is the serious obstacle; but it is safe to say, from the character of the formation, that the deep pool does not extend very far. A peculiarity of these underground streams of the _causses_ is that they generally form a chain of pools. If a shepherd-boy really lost his life in this cavern, he must have done so by trying to pass the pool, unless he was washed into it by a sudden rush of water after a heavy storm. It must be confessed that the spot is calculated to fill one with superstitious dread. The calm of the deep water into which the stream glides makes it quite easy to imagine, with the help of the surroundings, that there is an evil spirit lurking in it--perhaps that of the wicked Péhautier whom the demons dragged down here. I had another grim thought: Supposing this water, in obedience to some pressure elsewhere, should rise suddenly and flood the lower part of the cavern! There is no knowing what tricks water may play in this fantastic region, where the tendency of rivers is to flow underground, and where one gallery may be connected with a ramification of water-courses extending over many miles of country, and with reservoirs which empty themselves periodically by means of natural syphons. There is a world full of marvels under the _causses_ of the Lot, the Aveyron, and the Lozère; but although much more will be known about it, a vast deal will remain for ever hidden from man. I will now return to my wayfaring across the Causse de Gramat in the early summer. I had passed through the village of Alvignac--a little watering-place that draws all the profit it can from a ferruginous spring which rises at Miers hard by, but otherwise uninteresting, and had left on my right the village of Thégra, where the troubadour Hugues de St. Cyr was born, when suddenly the landscape struck me with the sentiment of England. For some hours I had been walking chiefly over the stony _causse_, searching for a so-called castle that was not worth the trouble of finding. I had seen spurge and juniper, and ribs of rock rising everywhere above the short turf, until I grew weary of the sameness. Now, the sun, whose ardour was already melting into the tenderness of evening, shone upon a broad valley, where the grass stood high in rich meadows separated from other meadows and green cornfields by hedges, from the midst of which rose many a tall tree. The blackbird's low, flute-like note sounded above the shrilling of the grasshoppers. The little village of Padirac was entered at sundown. The small inn where I chose my quarters for the night had a garden at the back, where vines in new leaf were trained, over a trellis from end to end. There were also broad beans in flower, peas on sticks, currant-bushes, and pear-trees. It was a quiet, green spot, and as I strolled about it in the twilight, vague recollections of other gardens chased one another, but it would have been hard to say whether they were pleasant or sad. My dinner or supper was of sorrel soup and part of a goose that was killed the previous autumn, and, after being slightly salted, was preserved in grease. Lean tortoiseshell cats, with staring eyes and tails like strings, kept near at hand, and seemed ready to commit any crime for the smallest particle of goose. String-tailed, goggle-eyed, meagre cats that seize your dinner if you do not keep watch over it, and when caressed promptly respond by scratching and swearing, appear to be held in high favour throughout this district. They are expected to live upon rats, and it is this that makes them so disagreeable, for although they kill rats for the pleasure of the chase, they do not like the flavour of them. On this subject there is a standing quarrel between them and society, which insists upon their eating the animals that they kill. In order that the cats shall have every facility for the chase, holes are often cut in the bottom of house-doors, so that at night they may go in and come out as the quarry moves them. Should any food have been left about, what with the rats and the cats, not a trace of it will be seen in the morning. This I know from experience. Being within a mile or so of the Puit de Padirac--that gloomy hole in the earth which was supposed to be one of the devil's short-cuts between this world and his own, until M. Martel proved almost conclusively that it was not the way to the infernal city, but to a subterranean river, and a chain of lakes that could be followed for two miles--I set out the next morning to find it. I might have spent hours in vain casting about, but for the help of a peasant, who offered, quite disinterestedly, to be my guide. He was an old man, with a very Irish face, and eyes that laughed at life. But for his language he would have seemed a perfectly natural growth of Cork or Kerry. Here may be the place to remark that the stock of the ancient Cadurci appears to have been much less impaired here in an ethnological sense by the mingling of races than in the country round Cahors. The peasants, generally, have nothing distinctively Southern in their appearance, although they speak a dialect which is in the main a Latin one, the Celtic words that have been retained being in a very small proportion. Gray or blue eyes are almost as frequent among them as they are with the English, and many of the village children have hair the colour of ripening maize. We left the fertile valley and rose upon the stone-scattered _causse_ where hellebore, spurges, and juniper were the only plants not cropped close to the earth by the flocks of sheep which thrive upon these wastes. All the sheep are belled, but the bells they wear are like big iron pots hanging upon their breasts. Each pot has a bone that swings inside of it and serves as a hammer. The chief use of these bells is to prevent the animal from leaving its best wool, that of the breast, upon the thorns of bushes. We have now reached the brink of the pit, which is not bottomless, but looks so until the eye faintly distinguishes something solid at a depth that has been measured at 175 feet. The opening is almost circular, with a diameter at the orifice of 116 feet. This prodigious well, sunk in successive layers of secondary rock, looks as if it had been regularly quarried; but men could never have had the motive for giving themselves so much trouble. Did the rock fall in here? No explanation is satisfactory. How it fills one with awe to look into the depth while lying upon a slab of stone that stretches some distance beyond the side of the pit! Bushes with twisted and fantastic arms, growing, they or their ancestors, from time immemorial in the clefts of the rock, reach towards the light, and the elfish hart's-tongue fern, itself half in darkness, points down with frond that never moves in that eternal stillness which all the winds of heaven pass over, to a thicker darkness whence comes the everlasting wail and groan of hidden water. This horrid gulf being in the open plain, with not even a foot of rough wall round it as a protection for the unwary, I asked the old man if people had never fallen into it. 'Yes,' he answered, 'but only those who have been pushed by evil spirits.' He meant that only self-murderers had fallen into the Puit de Padirac. 'Pushed by evil spirits.' Perhaps this is the best of all explanations of the suicidal impulse. Strong thoughts are sometimes hidden under the simplicity of rustic expression. He told me the story of a man who, having gone by night to throw himself into the Puit de Padirac, came in contact with a tough old bush during his descent which held him up. By this time the would-be suicide disliked the feeling of falling so much that, so far from trying to free himself from the bush and begin again, he held on to it with all his might and shrieked for help. But as people who are not pushed by evil spirits give the Puit de Padirac a wide berth after sundown, the wretched man's cries were lost in the darkness. The next morning the shepherd children, as they led their flocks over the plain, heard a strange noise coming from the pit, but their horror was stronger than their curiosity, and they showed their sheep how to run. They went home and told their fathers what they had heard, and at length some persons were bold enough to look down the hole, from which the dismal sound the children had noticed continued to rise. Thus the cause of the mysterious noise was discovered, and the man was hauled up with a rope. He never allowed the evil spirits to push him into the Puit de Padirac again. The people of these _causses_ have a supernatural explanation for everything that they cannot account for by the light of reason and observation. They have their legend with regard to the Puit de Padirac, and it is as follows: St. Martin, before he became Bishop of Tours, was crossing one day this stony region of the Dordogne to visit a religious community on the banks of the Solane, whither he had been despatched by St. Hilary. He was mounted on a mule, and was ambling along over the desert plunged in pious contemplation, when he heard a little noise behind, and, looking round, he was surprised to see a gentleman close to him, who was also riding a mule. The stranger was richly dressed, and was altogether a very distinguished-looking person, but the excessive brilliancy of his eyes was a disfigurement. They shone in his head like two bits of burning charcoal. 'What do you want, cruel beast?' said St. Martin. This would scarcely have been saintly language had he not known with whom he had to deal. The gentleman thus impolitely addressed returned a soft answer, and forced his company upon the saint, who wished him--at home. Presently Lucifer, for it was he, began to 'dare' St. Martin, after the manner of boys to-day. 'If I kick a hole in the ground I dare you to jump over it,' was the sort of language employed by the gentleman with the too-expressive eyes. 'Done!' said St. Martin, or something equivalent. 'Digging pits is quite in my line of business!' exclaimed the devil, in so disagreeable a voice that the saint's mule would have bolted had the holy rider not kept a tight rein upon her. At the same moment the ground over which the infernal mule had just passed fell in with a mighty rumble and crash, leaving a yawning gulf. 'Now,' said Lucifer, 'let me see you jump over that!' Whereupon, the bold St. Martin drove his spurs into his mule and lightly leapt over the abyss. And this was how the Puit de Padirac was made. The peasants believe that they can still see on a stone the imprint left by the hoof of St. Martin's mule. This adventure did not cause the saint and the devil to part company. They rode on together as far as the valley of Medorium (Miers). 'Now,' said St. Martin, 'you jump over that!' pointing to a little stream that was seen to flow suddenly and miraculously out of the earth. Before challenging the arch enemy he had, however, taken the precaution to lay two small boughs in the form of a cross on the brink of the water. In vain the devil spurred his mule and used the worst language that he could think of to induce the beast to jump. The animal would not; but, as the spurring and swearing were continued, it at length went down on its knees before the cross. But this did not suit the devil's turn. On the contrary, the proximity of that emblem which St. Martin had placed unobserved on the ground made him writhe as though he had fallen into a font. Then with the speed of a lightning flash he returned to his own kingdom--possibly by the Puit de Padirac. A church dedicated to the saint was afterwards built near the scene of his triumph, and the healing spring where it comes out of the earth is still known by the name of _Lou Fount Sen Morti_--St. Martin's Fountain. Having left the pit, we went in the direction of Loubressac, to which village my companion belonged. While still upon the _causse_ a spot was reached where a small iron cross had been raised. The stone pedestal bore this inscription: 'SOUVENIR DE HÉLÈNE BONBÈGRE, MORTE MARTYRE EN CE LIEU EN 1844. VIEILLE-ESCAZE ET LAVAL ONT FAIT CONSTRUIRE CETTE CROIX. PRIEZ POUR CES DEUX BIENFAITEURS.' The old man knew Hélène Bonbègre when he was young, and he told me the tragic story of her death on this spot. She was going home in the evening, and her sweetheart the blacksmith accompanied her a part of the distance. They then separated, and she went on alone. They had been watched by the jealous and unsuccessful lover, whose heart was on fire. Where the cross stands the girl was found lying, a naked corpse. The murderer was soon captured, and most of the people in the district went to St. Céré to see him guillotined. It was a spectacle to be talked over for half a century. The blacksmith never forgave himself for having left the girl to go home alone, and it was he who forged the cross that marks the scene of the crime and sets the wayfarer conjecturing. The peasant changed his ideas by filling his pipe. He smoked tobacco that he grew in a corner of his garden for his own use, and which he enjoyed all the more because it was _tabac de contrebande_. He gave me some, which I likewise smoked without any qualm of conscience, and thought it decidedly better than some tobacco of the régie. He lit his pipe with smuggled matches. Had I been an inspector in disguise, I should never have made matters unpleasant for him; he was such a cheery, good-natured companion. He had brought up his family, and had now just enough land to keep him without breaking his back over it. He was quite satisfied with things as they were. I did not ask him if he was a poacher, but took it for granted that he was whenever he saw a good chance. Almost every peasant in the Haut-Quercy who has something of the spirit of Nimrod in him is more or less a poacher. Those who like hare and partridge can eat it in all seasons by paying for it. Occasionally the gendarmes capture a young and over-zealous offender, but the old men, who have followed the business all their lives, are too wary for them. They are also too respectable to be interfered with. At Loubressac I took leave of my entertaining friend, but not before we had emptied a bottle of white wine together. It was a _vin du pays_, this district having been less tried by the phylloxera than others farther south and west. I was surprised to find white wine there, the purple grape having been almost exclusively cultivated for centuries in what is now the department of the Lot. In the room of the inn where I lunched there were four beds; two at one end and two at the other. There was plenty of space left, however, for the tables. The rafters were hidden by the heads of maize that hung from them. The host sat down at the same table with me, and when he had nearly finished his soup he poured wine into it, and, raising the plate to his lips, drank off the mixture. Objectionable as this manner of drinking wine seems to those who have not learnt to do it in their youth, it is very general throughout Guyenne. Those who have formed the habit would be most unhappy if they could not continue it. _Faire chabron_ is the expression used to describe this sin against good manners. The aubergiste was very friendly, and towards the close of the meal he brought out a bottle of his old red wine that he had treasured up 'behind the faggot.' Before reaching this village I had heard of a retired captain who lived here in a rather dilapidated château, and who was very affable to visitors, whom he immediately invited to look through his telescope, which, although not a very large one, had a local celebrity, such instruments being about as rare as blue foxes in this part of the world. Conducted by the innkeeper, I called upon this gentleman. The house was one of those half-castellated manors which became scattered over France after the Renaissance, and of which the greater number were allowed to fall into complete or partial ruin when the territorial families who were interested in them were extinguished or impoverished by the Revolution. They are frequently to be found in Guyenne, but they are generally occupied by peasants either as tenant-farmers or proprietors; two or three of the better preserved rooms being inhabited by the family, the others being haunted by bats and swallows and used for the storage of farm produce. It suited the captain's humour, however, to live in his old dilapidated mansion, scarcely less cut off from the society that matched with his position in life than if he had exiled himself to some rock in the ocean. The ceremony of knocking or ringing was dispensed with for the sufficient reason that there was neither bell nor knocker. We entered by the open door and walked along a paved passage, which, was evidently not held as sacred as it should have been by the roving fowls; looked in at the great dark kitchen, where beside the Gothic arch of the broad chimney was some ruinous clockwork mechanism for turning the spit, which probably did turn to good purpose when powdered wigs were worn; then ascended the stone staircase, where there was room for four to walk abreast, but which had somewhat lost its dignity by the balusters being used for hanging maize upon. Presently we came to a door, which the aubergiste knocked sharply with his knuckles. There was a sound of footsteps within, and then the door opened. I was standing before a rather florid man of about fifty, with close-cropped hair, a brush moustache, and a chin that seemed undecided on the score of shaving. He wore a flannel shirt open at the throat, and a knitted worsted _tricot_. This was the captain. He evidently did not like Sunday clothes. When he settled down here, it was to live at his ease, like a bachelor who had finished with vanities. But although no one would have supposed from his dress that he was superior to the people around him, his manners were those of a gentleman and an officer who had seen the world elsewhere than at Loubressac. The simple, easy courtesy with which he showed me his rooms, and pointed his telescope for me, was all that is worth attaining, as regards the outward polish of a man. This was so fixed upon him that his long association with peasants had taken none of it away. The few rooms that he inhabited were plainly furnished; in others were heaps of wheat, maize and beans. Passing along a passage I noticed a little altar in a recess, with a statue of the Virgin decked with roses and wild flowers. '_C'est le mois de Marie_,' said the captain. He lived with a sister, and she took care that religion was kept up in the house. It being the _Fête-Dieu_, preparations were being made in the village for the procession that was to take place after vespers. Sheets were spread along the fronts of the houses, with flowers pinned to them, and _reposoirs_ had been raised in the open air. I did not wait for the procession, as I expected to be in time for the one at the next village, Autoire. I took a path that led me up to the barren _causse_, from which the red roofs of Autoire soon became visible under an amphitheatre of high wooded hills. As I approached the little village, the gleam of white sheets mingled with the picture of old houses huddled together, some half-timber, some with turrets and encorbelments, nearly all of them with very high-pitched roofs and small dormer windows. The procession was soon to start. I waited for it at the door of the crowded church, baking in the sun with others who could not get inside, one of whom was a woman with a moustache and beard, black and curly, such as a promising young man might be expected to have. The number of women in Southern France who are bearded like men shocks the feelings of the Northern wanderer, until he grows accustomed to the sight. The curé was preaching about the black bread, and all the other miseries of this life that had to be accepted with thankfulness. Presently the two bells in the tower began to dance, and the rapid ding-dong announced that the procession was forming. First appeared the beadle, extremely gaudy in scarlet and gold, then the cross-bearer, young men as chanters, little boys, most strangely attired in white satin knee-breeches and short lace skirts, scattering rose-leaves from open baskets at their sides; the curé came bearing the monstrance and Host, followed by Sisters with little girls in their charge; lastly was a mixed throng of parishioners. Most of the women held rosaries, and a few of them, bent with age, carried upon their heads the very cap that old Mother Hubbard wore, if tradition and English artists are to be trusted. As the last of the long procession passed out of sight between the walls of white linen, the wind brought the words clearly back: 'Genitori, Genitoque Laus et jubilatio.' Now I entered the little church that was quite empty, and where no sound would have been heard if the two voices in the tower had not continued to ring out over the dovecotes, where the white pigeons rested and wondered, and over the broad fields where the bending grasses and listening flowers stood in the afternoon sunshine, 'Laus et jubilatio,' in the language of the bells. The church was Romanesque, probably of the twelfth century. The nave was flanked by narrow aisles. Upon the very tall bases of the columns were carved, together with foliage, fantastic heads of demons, or satyrs of such expressive ugliness that they held me fascinated. Some were bearded, others were beardless, some were grinning and showing frightful teeth, others had thick-lipped, pouting mouths hideously debased. A few were really _bons diables_, who seemed determined to be gay, and to joke under the most trying circumstances; but the greater number had morose faces, puckered by the long agony of bearing up the church. Such variety of expression in ugliness was a triumph of art in the far-off age, when the chisel of an unremembered man with a teeming imagination made these heads take life from the inanimate stone. The road from Autoire to St. Céré soon led me into the valley of the Bave, a beautiful trout-stream, galloping towards the Dordogne through flowery meadows, on this last day of May, and under leaning trees, whose imaged leaves danced upon the ripples in the green shade. As I had no need to hurry, I loitered to pick ragged-robins upon the banks, flowers dear to me from old associations. Very common in England, they are comparatively rare in France. New pleasures await the wayfarer every hour, almost every minute, in the day, and however long he may continue to wander over this wonderful world of inexhaustible variety, if he will only stop to look at everything, and so learn to feel the charm of little things. I met a beggar, and fell into conversation with him. He asked me for nothing, and was surprised when I gave him two sous. He was a ragged old man, with a canvas bag, half filled with crusts, slung upon his side. I had already met many such beggars in this part of France. They travel about from village to village, filling their bags with pieces of bread that are given them, and selling afterwards what they cannot eat as food for pigs. As they rarely receive charity in the form of money, they do not expect it. This kind of mendicant is distinctly rural, and belongs to old times. The bold front of an early Renaissance castle, with round towers at the angles, capped with pointed roofs, drew me from the highroad. It was the Château de Montal, in connection with which I had already heard the story of one Rose de Montal, a young lady of some three centuries ago, who had given her heart to a nobleman of the country, Roger de Castelnau. By-and-by the charms of another lady caused him to neglect the fair Rose de Montal. She remained almost constantly at a window of one of the towers, scanning the country, and longing to catch sight of the faithless Roger. One day he came down the valley of the Bave, and she sang from the height of her tower a plaintive love-song, hoping that he would stop and make some sign; but he passed on, unmoved by the tender appeal of the noble damsel. As he disappeared, she cried, 'Rose, plus d'espoir!' and threw herself from the window. The _métayer_, now placed in charge of the castle, showed me over it. It was a sad spectacle. The building, one of the best preserved and most elaborately decorated works of the Renaissance in this part of Guyenne until a few years ago, then fell into the hands of a vulgar speculator, who detached all the carvings that could be removed without difficulty, and sold them in Paris. The noble staircase and all its delicate sculpture remain, but these only add to the regret that one feels for what is no longer there. Had the Commission of Historic Monuments placed the Château de Montal upon its list, it would probably have escaped spoliation, although, in the case of private property, the State has no power to prevent destruction, however grievous the national loss. I entered St. Céré at sundown. This bright little town lies in the midst of fertility. It is on the banks of the Bave, and at the foot of a hill that rises abruptly from the plain, and is capped by two towers of a ruined feudal stronghold, which show against the horizon far into the Quercy, the Corrèze, and the Cantal. Some of the old streets have quite a mediaeval air, with their half-wood houses with stories projecting upon the floor-joists, and others of a grander origin with turrets resting on encorbelments. I had the luck to find a good old-fashioned inn here, and to pass the evening in very pleasant company. The next morning I climbed to the top of the neighbouring hill to have a closer view of those towers which had been my landmarks on the previous day, passing through the little village of St. Laurent-les-Tours, which lies immediately under the old fortress after the manner of so many others of feudal origin. The towers are rectangular _donjons_ of the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, one being nearly a hundred and fifty feet high. The castle was raised upon a table of calcareous rock; but only the towers, a portion of the outer wall built of enormous blocks of stone, and a ruined archway marking the spot where the drawbridge once hung, remain to tell the tale of the past. That the Romans had fortified this height there is the strongest evidence in the fact that the substructure of the rampart that once surrounded the castle is of cubic stones laid together according to the method so much practised by the Romans, and known as _opus reticulatum_. Moreover, the coins, pottery, and arms found here seem to afford conclusive proof that this remarkable hill was one of the fortified positions of the Romans in Gaul. The spot has its Christian legend, which is briefly this: In the castle that crowned the height in the time of the Visigoth kings was born St. Espérie, daughter of a Duke of Aquitaine. Being pressed to marry, notwithstanding the vow she had made to consecrate her life to God, she hid herself in a neighbouring forest for three months. She was at length discovered by her enraged brother and lover, who cut off her head. Like St. Denis, St. Espérie picked up her head, to the unspeakable astonishment and dismay of her persecutors. They fled from her, but she followed them as far as a little stream that flows into the Bave at St. Céré. Espérie is a saint much venerated in the Haut-Quercy. The church of St. Céré is dedicated to her, and the name given to the town is supposed to be a corruption of Espérie. From St. Céré I took the road to Castelnau-de-Bretenoux, returning for some distance by the way I came. Inns being now very scarce in the district, I decided to take my chance of lunch in a small village called St. Jean-Lespinasse. Another saint! The map of France is still covered with the names of saints, in spite of all the efforts of revolutionists and pagan reformers to make the people abandon their 'Christian superstitions.' Those who in the 'ages of faith' built up this association of saints and places could have had no conception of the power that these names would have in binding Christianity to the soil in the faithless or doubting ages to come. The only inn at St. Jean-Lespinasse was kept by a blacksmith, and the room where I had my meal was over the forge. Bread and cheese and eggs were, as I expected, the utmost that such a hostelry could offer in the way of food for a wayfarer's entertainment. Before leaving the village I found the church--a curious old structure of the Transition period, with a large open porch covered with mossy tiles, held up by rough pillars. There were stone benches inside, on which generations of villagers had sat and gossiped in their turn. In the interior were columns engaged in the wall of the nave, with the capitals elaborately and heavily foliated with pendent bunches of flowers and fruit, much more in accordance with English than French taste. I crossed the Bave, and followed a road bordered with hedgerows of quince that presently skirted sunny slopes covered with lately-planted vines. Thunder was moaning and growling in the distance when I reached the much-embowered village of Castelnau, upon a height immediately under the reddish walls and towers of the immense feudal stronghold, the fame of which went far and wide in the Middle Ages. Its name in the Southern dialect means 'new castle,' but it dates from the eleventh or twelfth century. Extensive additions were made in subsequent ages, notably a wing in the Renaissance style, which was inhabited until the middle of the present century, when all but the walls was destroyed by fire. The feudal castle was built upon the plan of a triangle, with a tower at each angle, the one at the apex being the _donjon_. The form of this lofty keep is rectangular, and the machicolations and embattlements which were added in the fifteenth century are in a perfect state of preservation. Upon the platform, which I was able to reach by means of ladders and the half-ruinous spiral staircase, viper's bugloss spread its brilliant blue flowers over the dark stones, and enticed the high-soaring bees. The view of the wide and beautiful Dordogne Valley from these old battlements was not less grand because more than one-half of the sky was of a bluish-black--a mysterious canopy that concealed the genius of the storm, but from the turbulent folds of which there darted every minute a dazzling line of light. The tower on which I stood, although the highest of the three, had never been struck by lightning, but one of the others had been repeatedly struck, and the ruined masonry showed abundant signs of the scorching it had undergone in this way. Lightning is capricious and incomprehensible in its preferences. This castle was besieged by Henry Plantagenet in 1159, but without success. Subsequently he made another effort, and then reduced it. His son Henry made it his headquarters for some time after he had revolted. In 1369 Thomas de Walkaffera the English seneschal who held Réalville on behalf of his sovereign, was besieged there by a Lord of Castelnau, assisted by other barons. The garrison was overcome and massacred. Another Lord of Castelnau, John, Bishop of Cahors, convened a meeting of the States of the Quercy in his fortress, at which a rising against the English was decided upon. It resulted in their temporary expulsion from the Quercy. Besides the towers and exterior walls, there are some chambers of the old castle in good preservation. The chapel is still roofed, and the altar-stone is in its place. In an elevated chamber at the lower end, the dead were laid while awaiting burial. Descending to the village, I entered the parish church--a Gothic building of the fourteenth century, containing many interesting details. The oak stalls, each with a quaint human figure carved upon it, are exceedingly curious. Outside the church little girls were playing, in the charge of a Sister who had a beautiful sweet face. She showed me the way to the next village, where I hoped to find shelter from the gathering storm. I have a pleasant picture in the mind of Castelnau--a bowery, ancient, mossy place, with vines climbing about the houses or on trellises in the little steep gardens, and a golden bloom of stonecrop upon the rough walls. I reached the village of Prudhomat just as the storm burst over it, and took shelter in a small inn, which, like most of those in the country, had its room for the public upstairs. Two women who were there made the sign of the cross each time the lightning flashed--a widespread custom of the French peasantry; but a couple of men who were eating salad and bread paid no heed to the furious cannonade that was kept up by the darkened heavens. It was four o'clock, and they were having their _goûter_. The peasants of the Quercy do not live on the fat of the land; but they generally have five meals a day, two more than the middle-class French. They begin with soup at a very early hour in the morning; then they have their dinner about ten, which is chiefly soup; at three or four they have a _goûter_ of bread and cheese, salad or fruit; and at six or seven they have their supper, which is soup again. The old woman who sat near the window worked diligently with her distaff laden with hemp, except when the flashing lightning made her stop to raise her thin hand to her forehead. She was twisting the thread from which the sheets of the country are made. They are coarse, but they last longer than the hands that work the hemp, and descend from mother to daughter. More than two hours I waited in this auberge while the rain fell in torrents, the lightning blazed, and the thunder crashed. The whole sky was the colour of slate. When at length a line of bright light appeared in the western sky, I could curb my impatience no longer, and, hoisting my pack, I was soon on the road to Carennac. A little beyond the village I passed a gipsy encampment ranged along the side of the highway on a strip of waste land. There were no tents; but there were four or five miserable little caravans, roofed over with tattered and dirty canvas. They were tents on wheels. Some thin and ascetic-looking old mules and wizen donkeys had been taken out of the shafts, and were now nibbling the short wayside grass, the young burdocks and mulleins, which, but for the rain, would have filled their mouths with dust. Small portable stoves--alas! not the traditional fire with three stakes set in the ground and tied at the top, with the pot swinging therefrom--had been lighted outside the caravans, and gipsy women were making the evening soup. Bright-eyed, shock-headed, uncombed, unwashed, but exceedingly happy gipsy children were tumbling over one another on the wet turf, showing so much of their brown skin between their rags that they would have been more comfortable and quite as decent had they been naked. A hideous old man, merely skin and bones, sitting nose and knees together upon a sack, did not take my curiosity in good part, but glared at me morosely. The younger men of this interesting community were elsewhere--perhaps mending saucepans, or reassuring ducks alarmed by the thunderstorm. A musician of the party must have been kept in by the bad weather, for from one of the caravans came the diabolic screech of a wheezing concertina that had got rid of all its ideals and dreams of distinction. The bright line in the west moved very slowly upwards, and the rain continued to fall, although less drenchingly than before. The setting sun strove with the cloud-rack and coloured the veil of vapour that its rays could not pierce. The nightingales and thrushes in the shrubs, and the finches amidst the later blossoms of the may, took heart again, and the song rose from so many throats near and far that the whole valley of the Dordogne was filled with warbling. As the birds grew drowsy the frogs came out to spend a happy night on the margins of the pools and the brooks, until their joyful screaming and croaking was a universal chorus. I was by the side of the broad river that flowed calmly through the fairest meadows. The face of the stream, the pools in the road, the grass and the leaves, were brightened with the orange glow of a veiled light as of some sacred fire shining in the dusk through clouds of incense. It grew warmer and warmer until it purpled and died away in grayness and mournful shadow. The beauty of nature at such moments, when the colours brighten and fade like the powers of the mind as the human day is closing, takes a solemnity that is unearthly, and it is good to be alone with the mystery. It was dark when I reached Carennac. I did not realize how wet I was until I sat down in an auberge and tried to make myself comfortable for the night. It is not easy, however, to be happy under such circumstances. When the fire on the hearth was stirred up and fed with fresh wood to cook my dinner of barbel that had just had time to die after being pulled out of the Dordogne, I placed myself in the chimney-corner to dry before the welcome blaze. How cheering is a fire, even in June and in Southern France, on a rainy night, when the sound of sighing trees comes down the chimney and the tired wayfarer's clothes are sticking to his legs and back! How cheering, too, at such a time is a dinner, however modest, in the light and warmth of the fire. A humble barbel has then a more delicate flavour than a salmon-trout cooked with consummate art for people who never know what it is to be hungry. The next morning I was in the cloisters belonging to the Benedictine priory of Carennac, of which Fénélon was the titular prior. Hither he came for quietude, and here he wrote his 'Télémaque,' a historical trace of which is found in a little island of the Dordogne, which is called 'L'Ile de Calypso.' It is recorded that the mother of the great Churchman and writer, when she feared that she would be childless, went on a pilgrimage to Roc-Amadour, and that Fénélon was the consequence of that act of devotion. The cloisters of Carennac, built from plans furnished by that fountain of ecclesiastical art in the Middle Ages, the monastery of Cluny, must, judging from the remnants of tracery in the arcades, and the delicately carved bosses of the vaults, have been once a spot where the spirit of Gothic architecture found delight. Now the spirit of ruin dwells there, leading the bramble and the celandine to conquer, year after year, some fresh territory upon the ancient quadrangle's crumbling wall. Above, where the sunbeam strikes upon the wrinkled stone, the lizard basks and the bee fresh from its hive hums as blithely among the yellow flowers of the celandine as if the blocks raised by men in their reaching towards Heaven were nothing more than the rocks that cast their shadows upon the Dordogne. Upon the ground, man, by using no rein of respect to curb the lower needs of life, has desecrated the spot with pigsties! Some inhabitant of Carennac, into whose hands the cloisters passed in recent times, thought that a place which was good enough for Benedictine monks to walk in might, with a little fresh masonry, be made fit for pigs to feed and sleep in. But an end had come to this idyllic state of things. The cloisters of Carennac had just been placed on the list of historic monuments. The adjoining church had been 'classed' long before. This church, a small Gothic edifice of the twelfth century, has a far-projecting porch enriched with a specimen of mediaeval carving which is a long delight to the few archaeologists who find their way to the almost forgotten village of Carennac. The composition, which fills the tympan of the scarcely-pointed arch, represents Christ surrounded by the twelve Apostles. The influence of Byzantine art is perceptible in the treatment. Very few such masterpieces of twelfth-century carving have been so well preserved as this. The seated figure of Christ in the act of blessing His Apostles, the right hand upraised, the left resting upon a clasped book, impresses the beholder by its majesty and serenity. Very different are the figures of the Apostles: these are men, and of a very common type too, such as the Benedictines were accustomed to see in their own cloisters, or among their dependents at Carennac. But how animated are the forms, and how expressive the faces! The mouldings which serve as a border to the composition are much more Romanesque or Byzantine than Gothic, and the columns that support it have capitals which are purely Romanesque. In the interior of the church is a fifteenth-century group of seven figures, representing the scene of the Holy Sepulchre; an admirable composition, showing to what a high degree of excellence French sculpture had attained even at the dawn of the Renaissance. WAYFARING UNDERGROUND. Upon the stony plateau above Roc-Amadour is a cavern well known in the district as the Gouffre de Révaillon. It had for me a peculiar attraction on account of the gloomy grandeur of the scene at the entrance. When I saw it for the first time I understood at once the supernatural horror in which the peasant has learnt to hold such places. It responds to impressions left on the mind of the 'Stygian cave forlorn,' the entrance to Dante's 'City of Sorrow,' and that other cave where Aeneas witnessed in cold terror the prophetic fury of the Sibyl. This effect of gloom, horror and sublimity is the result of geological conditions and the action of water, which together have produced many similar phenomena in the region of the _causses_, but in no other case, I believe, with such power in composing the picturesque. Imagine an open plain which in the truly Dark Ages whereof man has had no experience, but of whose convulsions he has learnt to read a little from the book whose leaves are the rocks, cracked along a part of its surface as a drying ball of clay might do, the fissure finishing abruptly and where it is deepest in front of a mass of rock that refused to split. This was apparently the beginning of the Gouffre de Révaillon. Then came another submersion which greatly modified the appearance of things. There was evidently a deluge here after the land had dried and cracked, and it must have lasted a very long time for the waves to have hollowed, smoothed and polished the rocks inside the caverns and elsewhere as we now see them. Those who have observed with a little attention a rugged coast will, without being geologists, recognise the distinctly marine character of the greater number of these orifices in the calcareous district of the _causses_. The washing and smoothing action of the sea along the sides of the gorges which cut up the surface of the country in such an astonishing manner is not so easy to distinguish. But the reason is obvious. This limestone rock is by its nature disintegrating wherever it is exposed to the air and frost, and the foundations of the bastions which support the _causses_ are being continually sapped by water which carries away the lime in solution and deposits a part of it elsewhere in the form of stalactite and stalagmite in the deep galleries where subterranean rivers often run, and which probably descend to the lowest part of the formation. Thus by the dislodgment of huge masses of rock which have rolled down from their original positions, and the breaking away of the surfaces of others, the most convincing traces of the sea's action here have nearly disappeared. In the gorge of the Alzou, however, near Roc-Amadour, about 100 feet above the channel of the stream, there is a considerable reach of hard rock approaching marble, the polished and undulating surface of which tells the story of the ocean, just as the sides of the caverns in much more elevated positions tell it. In the rock where the fissure ends at Révaillon is an opening like a vast yawning mouth, the roof of which forms an almost perfect dome. Adown this a stream trickles towards the end of summer, but plunges madly and with a frightful roar in winter and spring. The steep sides of the narrow ravine are densely wooded, and the light is very dim at the bottom when the sun is not overhead. I made my first attempt to descend the dark passage in the early summer, but there was too much water, and I was soon obliged to retreat. One afternoon in October I returned with a companion, and we took with us a rope and plenty of candles. We carried the rope in view of possible difficulties in the shape of rocks inside the cavern, for it should be borne in mind that in _gouffres_ of this character the stream frequently descends by a series of cascades. The weather was very sultry, and the sky towards the west was of a slaty blue. A fierce storm was threatening, but we paid no attention to it--a mistake which others bent on exploring caverns where streams still flow should be warned against. There is probably no force in nature more terrible, or which makes a man's helplessness more miserably felt, than water suddenly rushing towards him when he is underground. The sun was still shining, however, when we reached the Gouffre de Révaillon and descended into the ravine over roots of trees coiling upon the moss like snakes, some arching upward as if about to spring at the throat of those who disturbed the elfish solitude. At our coming there rose from the great rock such a multitude of jackdaws that for some seconds they darkened the air. With harsh screams the birds soared higher and higher above their fortress, which they had possessed for ages in perfect security. We reached the bed of the stream, where scattered threads of water tinkled as they fell over huge blocks into little pools below, and then went whispering on their way towards the darkness. At the botton of a long slant of greenish slimy stone, patched here and there with moss, I stopped a few minutes, feeling that I could not grasp without an effort the deep gloom and grandeur of my surroundings. The jackdaws had all flown away, and there was no sound now but the tinkle and gurgle of the water. Great snails crawled upon the tufts of rank grass wet with the autumnal dews that the sun had failed to dry, and upon the glistening hart's-tongue ferns, and they looked just the kind of snails that witches would collect to make a hell-broth. Dark ivy hung down from the rocks, and under the vaulted entrance of the cavern was a clump of elders, very sinister-looking, and giving forth when touched an evil narcotic odour. Near these forlorn shrubs was a solitary plant of angelica, now woebegone, its fringed leaves drooping, waiting for the rising water to wash it into the darkness. There were willow-herbs still in bloom, but the crane's-bill struggled with the gloom farther than any other flowering plant, and its bright little purple lamps shone in the very mouth of Night. Gnats there were too, spinning in the semi-darkness, now sinking, now rising, keeping together, a merry band of musicians, each with a small flute, piping perhaps to the little goblins that swung on spiders' webs, and slept upon the fronds of the ferns. Candles were now lighted, and we left the glimmer of day behind us. A little beyond the great dome the roof became so low that we had to creep along almost on hands and knees, but it presently rose again, and to a great height. The first obstacle--the one that sent me back a few months before--was a steep rock down which the water then fell in such a cascade that there was no getting a foothold upon it. Now the water scarcely covered it, and there was no difficulty in reaching the bottom. Here, however, was a pool through which we had to wade knee-deep. The cavern continued, and the stalagmite became interesting by its fantastic shapes. Here was a mass like an immense sponge, even to the colour, and there, descending from the roof down the side of the rock, was the waved hair of an undine that had been changed into white and glistening stone. The stalactites were less remarkable. The sound of dropping water told us that another cascade was near. This we left behind by climbing along the side of the gallery, clinging to the rock, and in the same way four more obstacles of precisely the same character were overcome. All the distance the slope was rapid, but at intervals there was a sudden fall of from ten to fifteen feet, with a black-looking pool at the foot of the rock, hollowed out by the action of the tumbling torrent. The last of these falls was the worst to cross. To this point the cavern had been already explored, but no farther apparently, the local impression being that it ended just beyond. It was an ugly place. The rock over which the water fell was almost perpendicular, and the pool at the bottom was larger and deeper than the others. Seen by the light of day, any schoolboy might have scoffed at the difficulty of getting beyond it, but when you are descending into the bowels of the earth, where the light of two candles can only dissolve the darkness a few yards around you, every form becomes fantastic and awful, and the effect of water of unknown depth upon the imagination is peculiarly disturbing. But we made up our minds to go on if it were possible. The passage was very narrow, and the sides offered few salient points to which one could cling. We moved along a very narrow ledge in a sitting posture, and then, when we had gone as far as we could in this way, and there was nothing beyond to sit upon, we made a spring. My companion, being the more agile, nearly cleared the pool, but I went in with a great splash, as I expected, and thought myself lucky in being only wetted to the waist. The water was not very cold, the temperature of the cavern being much higher than that of the outer air. We reckoned that we had by this time travelled underground about half a mile, and as we had been descending rapidly all the way, the distance beneath the surface must have been considerable. My theory with regard to this stream was that it was a tributary of the subterranean Ouysse; but the fact that the cavern ran north-west made me change my opinion, and conclude that this water-course took an independent line towards the Dordogne. A little beyond the last pool the running water suddenly vanished. We looked around to see if it had taken any side passage; but no: it simply disappeared into the earth, although no hole was perceptible in its stony channel. It passed by infiltration into some lower gallery, where the light of a candle had never shone, and is never likely to shine. But we had not reached the end of the cavern, although the passage became so low that we had now really to go down on all-fours in order to proceed. We had not to keep this posture long, for again the roof rose, although to no great height. We walked on about fifty yards or more, and then came to the end. There was no opening anywhere except by the way we entered. We were like flies that had crawled into a bottle, and a very unpleasant bottle it might have proved to us. We noticed--at first with some surprise--that, although there was not a drop of water now in this _cul-de-sac_, our feet sank into damp sand that had evidently been carried there by water. Sticks were also lying about, and the walls up to the roof were covered with a muddy slime. It was evident that this hole had been filled with water, and not very long ago; probably the last thunderstorm accounted for the signs of recent moisture. While we were talking about this, a strange, muffled, moaning sound reached our ears. We looked at one another over the tops of two candles. 'Thunder,' said my companion. In a few minutes the same dismal moan, long drawn out, came down the cavern, which acted like a speaking-tube between us and the outer world, and conveyed a timely warning. Was it in time? We were not quite sure of this, for as we issued from the _cul-de-sac_ we heard the water coming down the rocks with a very different voice from that which it had not many minutes before. It was clear that the storm was beginning to tell upon the stream, and if the rain had been falling for half an hour, as I had already seen it fall in the Quercy, we might find the work of recrossing those pools and climbing up the cascades anything but cheerful. Already where we had been able to walk on dry stones the water was now up to our ankles. The first cascade to surmount was the worst. We decided to try it on the side opposite to the one by which we descended, for we observed a jutting and highly-polished piece of stalagmite, which promised to help the manoeuvre. One went first, and the other waited, holding the candle. I was in the rear. When my companion had reached the top of the cascade, I threw him the coil of rope--a useless encumbrance, as it happened--and in so doing put out the candle. Before I was sure that I had a dry match upon me, I failed to seize the humour, although I felt the novelty of the situation. During those seconds of uncertainty, the sound of the water--really fast increasing--seemed to become a deafening roar. However, we both had dry matches, and were able to relight our candles; but it might have been otherwise, wet as we were. Without light we should have been as helpless beneath those rocks as mice in a pitcher. The first cascade conquered, we felt much more comfortable, for the picture of being washed into that _cul-de-sac_ had flashed upon the mind of each. As the next and the next cascade were passed, our spirits rose still more; and when we saw the gray daylight in the distance, our gaiety was quite genuine, and we no longer 'laughed yellow,' as the French phrase it. The stream was rapidly becoming a frantic torrent, but we were not afraid of it now. On reaching the dome, we saw the water pouring over rocks that were dry when we entered, and the clouds seemed to be emptying their rain in frenzy. An hour later the stream that was lisping so innocently as it threaded its way amongst the stones, and dropped from rock to rock before the storm, sent up a wild roar from the bottom of the valley, and shrieked like a tormented fiend, as it leaped into the black mouth of the Gouffre de Révaillon. Tons of water had probably collected there at the bottom of the gulf. And I, in my shortsightedness, had hoped that the cavern was two or three miles long! I had great reason to be thankful that it ended where it did, for the excitement of adventure would have carried us on, and we might have gone too deep into the earth to hear the thunder. On emerging from the darkness, we made all the haste we could to reach the nearest inn. The storm was still at its height; the thunder was an almost continuous roar; and the quick lightning-flashes lit up the streaming country. We were quite drenched on reaching a little wayside auberge. Water was soon boiling upon the wood-fire, and having set rheumatism at defiance with steaming glasses of grog, we left for Roc-Amadour, where, on our arrival, we found our friends about to start with lanterns to look for us in the Gouffre de Révaillon. * * * * * Noticing one day a low cavern in the rocks beside the Ouysse, I asked if anyone had ever entered it, and was told that a man had done so; that he had found a long, low gallery, which he followed for two or three hundred yards, and then gave up the attempt to reach the end. It was well known that the hole, being on a level with the water, was much used by otters. The desire to explore this cavern becoming strong, I spoke to Decros about the adventure. He was ready to go with me; and so we started, taking with us enough candles to light a ball-room. On our way over the hills from Roc-Amadour, we passed two dolmens, one of which was in good preservation. There are several hundred of them in the Quercy; and the peasants, who call them _pierros levados_ (raised stones), also 'tombs of the giants' and _caïrous_, in which last name the Celtic word _cairn_ has been almost preserved, treat them now with indifference, although it is recorded of one of the early bishops of Cahors that he caused a menhir to be broken to pieces because it was an object of idolatrous worship. Those who have been to the trouble of excavating have almost invariably found in each dolmen a _cella_ containing human bones. In some of them flint implements have been discovered; in others iron implements and turquoise ornaments, showing that the tombs, although all alike, belong to different periods. Tumuli are also numerous, but only a few menhirs and traces of cromlechs are to be seen. Close to the Gouffre de Cabouy, whose outflow forms a tributary of the Ouysse, is a cottage where a man lives whose destiny I have often envied. When he is tired of fishing or shooting, he works in his thriving little vineyard, which he increases every year. The river is as much his own as if it belonged to him; he gets all he wants by giving himself very little trouble, and has no cares. We needed this man's boat for our expedition, and we found it drawn into a little cove beside the ruined mill, long since abandoned. It was a somewhat porous old punt, with small fish swimming about in the bottom; but it was well enough for our purpose. In the warm sunshine of the October afternoon we glided gently down the quiet stream, which is very deep, but so clear that you can see all the water-plants which revel in it, down to the sand and pebbles. Near the banks we passed over masses of watercress, and what might be likened to floating fields of lilies and pond-weed. It needed no little reflection and expenditure of art to insert the prow of the boat into the mouth of the cavern. What an ugly and uninteresting hole I then thought it! Having run the punt as far as we could into the opening, there still remained about six feet of water to cross before reaching the sandy mud beyond. A plank, however, that we brought with us served as a bridge. The story of the otters was no fable, for here were the footprints of the beasts all over the mud. We lighted candles and looked into the hole. The ground rose and the roof descended, so that to enter it was necessary to lie perfectly flat, and to crawl along by a movement very like that of swimming; then the passage became so small that there was only room for one to go at a time. Neither of us was ambitious to go first, for there was just a chance of an otter seizing the invader by the nose; but neither liked to show the white feather. Each in turn went in a few yards, planted a lighted candle in the mud, and then found some pretext for returning. The hot air of the cavern was almost suffocating, and one felt so helpless flattened against the earth, with the rock pressing so tight upon the back that even to wriggle along was difficult. 'Decros is a native,' thought I, 'and he ought to be used to this kind of work. I will let him understand that he is expected now to do his duty.' In he went again, and planted another candle about a yard in front of the last one. Then he stopped and fired a shot from the revolver that we carried in turn for the otters, and the sound of the detonation seemed to echo in a muffled fashion from the bowels of the earth. 'How many otters have you killed?' I shouted. 'None,' he replied. 'I just fired to let them know that we are here.' I then asked him if he was going on, and I fancied that he tried to shrug his shoulders, but found the rock in the way. His practical reply, however, was to slowly back out. When he was able to stand up again, he said he believed he had seen the end of the cavern, and would like me to take another look. I now realized that if the secrets of the fantastic realm which my fancy had pictured were to be revealed to me, there must be no more shirking. When I flattened myself out again upon the mud, it was with the determination to go right through the neck of the bottle, for such the passage figuratively was. At one moment I felt tightly wedged, unable to move forward or backward, in a hot steamy atmosphere that was not made any pleasanter by the smoke of the burnt powder; but, the sight of the now rising roof encouraged me to further efforts, and presently I was able to stand upright--in fact, I was in a cavern where a giant of the first magnitude could have walked about with ease, but where he might have been a prisoner for life. I was resolved, however, that Decros should not escape his share of the adventure, so I called to him to come on, and he quickly joined me. To my great disappointment, the cavern soon came to an end. Where, we asked, could the otters be hiding themselves? Examining the place more carefully, we found a passage going under the rock at the farther extremity, but nearly filled with sand which the river had washed up in time of flood. Here, then, was the continuation of the cavern. The passage had been made by water, for a subterranean stream must at one time have found an exit here into the Ouysse, and now water was reversing the process by filling up the ancient conduit. But for the otters that kept it open, we should probably have seen no trace of it; and it was for this that we had wriggled our way into the hideous hole like serpents! I left with the impression that there was much vanity in searching for the wonders of the subterranean world. Having brought back the boat, we stopped at the cottage by the vineyard and tried the juice of the grapes which three weeks before were basking in the sun. It was now a fragrant wine of a rich purple, with a certain flavour of the soil that made it the more agreeable. The fisherman's wife also placed upon the table a loaf of home-made bread, of an honest brown colour, some of the little Roc-Amadour cheeses made from goat's milk, and a plate of walnuts. The window looked out upon the sunny vines, whose leaves were now flaming gold or ruddy brown; the blue river shone in the hollow below, and through the open door there came the tinkling of bells from the rocky wastes where the small long-tailed sheep were moving slowly homeward, nibbling the stunted herbage as they went. This sound reminded us that the sun would soon drop behind the hill, and that the Pomoyssin, to which we intended to pay a visit on our way home, was not a spot that gained attractiveness from the shades of night. I had heard the country-people speak of it as a peculiarly horrible and treacherous _gouffre_, and its name, which means 'unwholesome hole,' corresponds to the local opinion of it. The shepherd children would suffer torture from thirst rather than descend into the gloomy hollow and dip out a drop of the dark water which is said to draw the gazer towards it, and then into its mysterious depths under the rock, by the spell of some wicked power. Some years ago a woman, supposed to have been drawn there by the evil spirit, was found drowned, and since then the spot has been avoided even more than it was before. It was to this place, then, that we went when the sun was setting. The way led up a deep little valley which was an absolute desert of stones. A dead walnut-tree, struck apparently by lightning, with its old and gnarled branches stretching out on one side like weird arms, was just the object that the imagination would place in a valley blighted by the influence of evil spirits, in proximity to a passage communicating from their world to this one. Presently, as we drew near some high rocks, Decros, pointing to a dark hollow in the shadow of them said, 'There it is.' We went down into the basin to the edge of the water that lay there, black and still, Decros showing evident reluctance and restlessness the while, so strongly was his mind affected by all the stories he had heard about the pool. Moreover, it was rapidly growing dusk. In this half-light the funnel in which we were standing certainly did look a very diabolic and sinister hole. The fancy aiding, everything partook of the supernatural: the dark masses of brambles hanging from the rocks, the wild vines clinging to them with leaves like flakes of deep-glowing crimson fire, and especially the intermittent sound of gurgling water. I was glad to have seen the Pomoyssin under circumstances so favourable, but it was with relief that I left it and began to climb the side of the gorge from this valley of dreadful shadows towards the pure sky that reddened as the brown dusk deepened below. IN THE VALLEY OF THE CÉLÉ. It was a burning afternoon of late summer when I walked across the stony hills which separate the valley of the Lot from that of its tributary the Célé, between Capdenac and Figeac. I did not take the road, but climbed the cliffs, trusting myself to chance and the torrid _causse_. I wished that I had not done so when it was too late to act differently. There was nothing new for me upon the bare hills, where all vegetation was parched up except the juniper bushes and the spurge. At length I found the road that went down with many a flourish into the valley of the Célé, and I reached Figeac in the evening, covered with dust, and as thirsty as a hunted stag. Here I took up my quarters for awhile. Figeac is not a beautiful town from the Haussmannesque point of view--the one that is destined to prevail in all municipal councils; but it is full of charm to the archaeologist and the lover of the picturesque. There are few places even in France which have undergone so little change during the last five or six hundred years. Elsewhere, thirteenth and fourteenth century houses are becoming rare; here they are numerous. There are streets almost entirely composed of them. These streets are in reality narrow crooked lanes paved with pebbles, slanting towards the gutter in the centre. Some are only three or four yards wide, and the walls half shut out the light of day. You look up and see a mere strip of blue sky, but trailing plants reaching far downward from window-sills, one above the other, light up the gloom with many a patch of vivid green. You venture down some dim passage and come suddenly upon a little court where an old Gothic portal with quaint sculptures, or a Renaissance doorway with armorial bearings carved over the lintel, bears testimony to the grandeur and wealth of those who once lived in the now grimy, dilapidated, poverty-stricken mansion. Pretentious dwellings of bygone days have long since been abandoned to the humble. Here is a typical house in the Rue Abel, which is scarcely wide enough for two to walk abreast. The oak door is elaborately carved with heads and leaves, flowers and line ornament, all in strong relief. One grimacing puckered head has a movable tongue that once lifted a latch on being touched. Near the ground the oak has been half devoured by the damp. This door would have been sold long ago to antiquaries or speculators if the house since the Revolution had not become the property of several persons all equally suspicious of one another, and with the Cadurcian bump of obstinacy equally developed. They had no respect for the carving, and they were eager to 'touch' the money; but their interests in the house not being the same, they could never come to an understanding over the door; consequently, in spite of very tempting offers, the piece of massive oak continues to hang upon its rusty hinges. So much the better for the student of antiquities, for, without denying that museums are eminently useful, it is certain that they deprive objects of a great deal of their interest and their power of suggesting ideas by detaching them from their surroundings. Moreover, it is not at all sure that these things, when they have been bought up and carried away, will ever be put in a place where anybody can see them who may have the wish to do so. And then, when a thing has been put into a museum, it becomes such labour and painfulness to look for it; and most of us are so lazy by nature. I will make a frank confession. For my own part, I should scarcely look at this old door if it were in the Cluny or any other museum; but here, in ancient Figeac, I see it where it was many lustres ago, and the pleasure of finding it in the midst of the sordidness and squalor that follow upon the decay of grandeur and the evaporation of human hopes makes me feel much that I should not feel otherwise, and calls up ideas as a February sunbeam calls gnats out of the dead earth and sets them spinning. I venture up the stone staircase, although most of the finely carved balusters are gone, and the arch-stones have so slipped out of place that they seem to cling together by the will of Providence rather than by any physical law. The stairs themselves, although of fine stone that has almost the polish of marble, are cracked as if an earthquake had tormented them, and worn by the tread of innumerable feet into deep hollows. I reach a landing where a long corridor stretches away into semi-darkness. The floor is black with dirt, and so are the doors which once opened into rooms where luxury waited upon some who were born, and upon others (perchance the same) who died. A sound reaches me from the far-end of the corridor that makes me feel like a coward. It is the raving of a madman. How he seems to be contending with all the fiends of hell! Sometimes his voice is so low, and the words crowd one upon another so fast, that the muttering is like the prolonged growl of a wild beast; then the mood changes, and the unseen man seems to be addressing an invisible audience in grand sonorous sentences as though he were a Cicero; and perhaps he may be, but as he speaks in _patois_ his eloquence is lost upon me. What a terrible excitement is in his voice! How it thrills and horrifies! And he is alone, quite alone in this dismal old house with the fiends who harass him. This I learn from a young girl whom I meet at the bottom of the staircase. She tells me that the man is only mad at the time of the new or the full moon (I forget which), and that his raving lasts but two or three days. Then nobody ventures near him; but at other times he is quite rational and harmless. He has left, however, upon me an impression more lasting perhaps than that of the old tottering staircase that threatens to close up every moment like a toy snake that has been stretched out. Most of the old houses are entered by Gothic doorways, and the oak doors are studded with large nail-heads. The locks and bolts are of mediaeval workmanship. Sometimes you see an iron ring hanging to a string that has been passed through a hole in the door. It is just such a string as Little Red Riding-hood (an old French fable, by-the-bye) pulled to lift the latch at the summons of the wicked wolf. And what a variety of ancient knockers have we here! Many are mere bars of iron hanging to a ring; but others are much more artistic, showing heads coifed in the style of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, serpents biting their own tails, and all manner of fanciful ideas wrought into iron. In wandering about the dim old streets, paved with cobble stones, architectural details of singular interest strike one at every turn. Now it is the encorbelment of a turret at the angle of a fifteenth or sixteenth century mansion that has lost all its importance; now a dark archway with fantastic heads grimacing from the wall; now an arcade of Gothic windows, with graceful columns and delicate carvings--a beautiful fragment in the midst of ruin. What helps much to render these dingy streets, passages, and courts of Figeac so delightfully picturesque is the vegetation which, growing with southern luxuriance in places seemingly least favourable to it, clings to the ancient masonry, or brightens it by the strong contrast of its immediate neighbourhood in some little garden or balustraded terrace. Wherever there are a few feet of ground some rough poles support a luxuriant vine-trellis, and grapes ripen where one might suppose scarcely a gleam of sunshine could fall. The vine clambers over everything, and sometimes reaches to the top of a house two stories high. The old walls of Figeac are likewise tapestried with pellitory and ivy-linaria, with here and there a fern pushing its deep-green frond farther into the shadow, or an orpine sedum lifting its head of purple flowers into the sunshine that changes it to a flame. There is much in the life of this place that matches perfectly with the surroundings. Enter by a Gothic doorway, and you will come upon a nail-maker's forge, and see a dog turning the wheel that keeps the bellows continually blowing. The wheel is about a foot broad, and stands some three feet high. The dog jumps into it at a sign from his master, and as the wheel turns the sparks from the forge fall about the animal in showers. Each dog is expected to work five or six hours; then, when his task is done, he is allowed to amuse himself as he pleases, while a comrade takes his turn at the wheel. The nail-makers discovered long ago that dog labour was cheaper than boy labour, and not so troublesome. Nevertheless, these wheels belong to an order of things that has nearly passed away. The crier or _tambourineur_, as he is generally called, because he carries a drum, which he beats most lustily to awaken the curiosity of the inhabitants, is making the round of the town with an ox, which is introduced to the public as 'le boeuf ici présent.' The crier's business is to announce to all whom it may concern that the animal is to be killed this very evening, and that its flesh will be sold to-morrow at 1 franc 25 centimes the kilo. It will all go at a uniform price, for this is the local custom. Those who want the _aloyau_, or sirloin, only have to be quick. The ox, notwithstanding that he has a rope tied round his nose and horns, and is led by the butcher, evidently thinks it a great distinction to be _tambouriné_; his expression indicating that this is the proudest day of his life. Every time the drum begins to rattle he flourishes his tail, and when each little ceremony is over he moves on to a fresh place with a jaunty air, as if he were aware that all this drumming and fuss were especially intended for his entertainment. No condemned wretch ever made his last appearance in public with a better grace. Another day I see this crier going round the town accompanied by a boy every available part of whose person is decked with ribbons, and all kinds of things ordinarily sold by drapers and haberdashers. Over each shoulder is slung a pair of women's boots. The boy is a walking advertisement of an exceptional sale, which a tradesman announces with the help of the crier and his drum. A band of women and girls come up from the riverside, walking in Indian file, and each with a glittering copper water-pot on her head. What beautiful water-pots these are! They have the antique curve that has not changed in the course of ages. They swell out at the bottom and the top, and fall gracefully in towards the middle. As the women quit the sunshine and enter the deep shadow of the street the shine of their water-pots is darkened suddenly, like the sparks of burnt paper which follow one upon another and go out. The sound of solemn music draws me into a church. A requiem Mass is being chanted. In the middle of the nave, nearer the main door than the altar, is a deal coffin with gable-shaped lid, barely covered by a pall. A choir-boy comes out of the sacristy, carrying a pan of live embers, which he places at the head of the coffin. Then he sprinkles incense upon the fire, and immediately the smoke rises like a snow-white cloud towards the vaulting; but, meeting the sunbeams on its way, it moves up their sloping golden path, and seems to pass through the clerestory window into the boundless blue. Now the procession moves towards the cemetery. It is a boy's funeral, and four youths of about the same age as the one who lies in darkness hold the four corners of each pall, two of which are carried in front of the coffin. After the hearse come members of the confraternity of Blue Penitents, one of whom carries a great wooden cross upon his shoulder. Others carry staves with small crosses at the top, or emblems of the trades that they follow. The dead boy's father is a Penitent, and this is why the confraternity has come out to-day. They now wear their _cagoules_ raised; but on Good Friday, when they go in procession to a high spot called the Calvary, the leader walking barefoot and carrying the cross on his shoulder in imitation of Christ, they wear these dreadful-looking flaps over their faces. Their appearance then is terrible enough; but what must that of the Red Penitents, who accompanied condemned wretches to execution, have been? In a few years there will be no Blue Penitents at Figeac. As the old members of the confraternity die, there are no postulants to fill their places. Already they feel, when they put on their 'sacks', that they are masquerading, and that the eye of ridicule is upon them. This state of mind is fatal to the conservation of all old customs. The political spirit of the times is, moreover, opposed to these religious processions in France. That of the _fête-Dieu_ at Figeac would have been suppressed some years ago by the Municipal Council had it not been for the outcry of the tradespeople. All the new dresses, new hats, and new boots that are bought for this occasion cause money to be spent that might otherwise be saved, and those who are interested in the sale of such things wish the procession through the streets to be kept up, although in heart they may be among the scoffers at religion. The religious confraternities in Aquitaine date from the appearance of the _routiers_ at the close of the twelfth century. These _routiers_ were then chiefly Brabançons, Aragonese, and Germans. According to an ecclesiastical author and local historian, the Abbé Debon, the lawless bands spread such terror through the country that they stopped the pilgrims from going to Figeac, Conques, and other places that had obtained a reputation for holiness. A canon of Le Puy in Auvergne, much distressed by the desertion of the sanctuary of Notre Dame de Puy, which rivals that of Roc-Amadour in antiquity, formed the design of instituting a confraternity to wage war against the _routiers_ and destroy them. A 'pious fraud' was adopted. A young man, having been dressed so as to impersonate Notre Dame du Puy, appeared to a carpenter who was in the habit of praying every night in the cathedral, and gave him the mission of revealing that it was the will of the Holy Virgin that a confraternity should be formed to put down the brigands and establish peace in the country. Hundreds of men enrolled themselves at once. The confrères, from the fact that they wore hoods of white linen, obtained the name of Chaperons Blancs. Upon their breasts hung a piece of lead with this inscription: 'Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi dona nobis pacem.' The confraternity spread into Aquitaine, and the _routiers_ were defeated in pitched battles with great slaughter; but the _chaperons_ in course of time became lawless fanatics, and were almost as great a nuisance to society as those whom they had undertaken to exterminate. They were nevertheless the ancestors in a sense of the confraternities of penitents who, at a later period, became so general in Europe. The monthly fair at Figeac offers some curious pictures of rural life. The peasants crowd in from the valleys and the surrounding _causses_. Racial differences, or those produced by the influences of soil and food--especially water--for a long series of generations, are very strongly marked. There is the florid, robust, blue-eyed, sanguine type, and there is the leaden-coloured, black-haired, lantern-jawed, sloping-shouldered, and hollow-chested type. Then there are the intermediates. Considered generally, these peasants of the Haut-Quercy are not fine specimens of the human animal. They are dwarfed, and very often deformed. Their almost exclusively vegetable diet, their excessive toil, and the habit of drinking half-putrid rain-water from cisterns which they very rarely clean, may possibly explain this physical degeneration of the Cadurci. Their character is honest in the main, but distrustful and superficially insincere by nature or the force of circumstance. Their worst qualities are shown at a fair, where they cheat as much as they can, and place no limit to lying. Their canon of morality there is that everyone must look after himself. I have been assured by a priest that they never think of confessing the lies that they tell in bartering, because they maintain that every man who buys ought to understand his business. I much wondered why, at a Figeac fair, when there was a question of buying a bullock, the animal's tail was pulled as though all his virtue were concentrated in this appendage. I learnt that the reason of the tugging was this: Cattle are liable to a disease that causes the tail to drop off, but the people here have discovered a very artful trick of fastening it on again, and it needs a vigorous pull to expose the fraud. Among other tricks of the country is that of drenching an ill-tempered and unmanageable horse with two _litres_ of wine before taking him to the fair. He then becomes as quiet as a lamb. I heard the story of a _curé_, who was thus imposed upon by one of his own parishioners. He wanted a very quiet horse, and he found one at the fair; but the next day, when he went near the animal, it appeared to be possessed of the devil. All this is bad; but there is satisfaction to the student of old manners in knowing that everything takes place as it did centuries ago. The cattle-dealers and peasants here actually transact their business in _pistoles_ and _écus_. A _pistole_ now represents 10 francs, and an _écu_ 3 francs. The summer is glorious here, and as the climate is influenced by that of Auvergne, it is less enervating by the Célé than in the neighbouring valley of the Lot. There, some twenty miles farther south, the grapes ripen two or three weeks sooner than they do upon these hillsides. But the _vent d'autan_--the wind from the south-east--is now blowing, and, although there is too much air, one gasps for breath. The brilliant blue fades out of the sky, and the sun just glimmers through layers of dun-coloured vapour. It is a sky that makes one ill-tempered and restless by its sameness and indecision. But the wind is a worse trial. It blows hot, as if it issued from the infernal cavern. It sets the nerves altogether wrong, and disposes one to commit evil deeds from mere wantonness and the feeling that some violent reaction from this influence is what nature insists upon. It is a wind that does not blow a steady honest gale, but goes to work in a treacherously intermittent fashion--now lulled to a complete calm, now springing at you like a tiger from the jungle. Then your eyes are filled with dust, unless you close them quickly, or turn your back to the enemy in the nick of time. The night comes, and brings other trouble. You try to sleep with closed windows, so that you may hear less of the racket that the wind makes outside, but it is impossible: you stifle. You get up and open a window--perhaps two windows. The wind rushes in, but it is like the hot breath of a panting dog. The noise of swinging _persiennes_ that have got loose, and are banged now against the wall, now against the window-frame, mingles with a woful confusion of sounds within, as though a most unruly troop of ghosts were dancing the _farandole_ all through the house. If any door has been left open, it worries you more by its banging at intervals of a minute than if it went on without stopping to consider. Therefore you are compelled to rise again, and go and look for it--anything but a cheerful expedition if you cannot find the matches. When this south wind falls, the rain generally comes, bringing great refreshment to the parched earth, and all the animals that live upon it. As I have referred to the house in which I live, I may as well say something more with regard to it and the things which it contains. It is not one of the ancient houses of Figeac, but it is old-fashioned and provincial. The rooms are rather large, the floors are venerably black, and the boarded ceilings supported by rafters have never had their structural secrets or the grain of the timber concealed by a layer of plaster. What you see over-head is simply the floor of the room or the loft above. And yet this is not considered a poor-kind of house; it is as good as most good people hereabouts live in. The furniture is simple, but solid; it was made to last, and most of it has long outlasted the first owners. In every room, the kitchen excepted, there is a bed, according to the very general custom of the country. The character of the people is distinctly utilitarian, notwithstanding the blood of the troubadours. There is even a bed in the _salle à manger_. A piece of furniture, however, from which my eye takes more pleasure is one of those old clocks which reach from the ceiling to the floor, and conceal all the mystery and solemnity of pendulum and weights from the vulgar gaze. It has a very loud and self-asserting tick, and a still more arrogant strike, for such an old clock; but, then, everybody here has a voice that is much stronger than is needed, and it is the habit to scream in ordinary conversation. A clock, therefore, could not make itself heard by such people as these Quercynois, unless it had a voice matching in some sort with their own. Another piece of furniture that pleases me, because it is of shining copper, which always throws a homely warmth into a room, is a large basin fixed upon a stand against the wall, with a little cistern above it, also of copper. It is intended for washing the hands by means of a fillet of water that is set running by turning the tap. In this dry part of the world water has to be used sparingly, and, indeed, there is very little wasted upon the body. Everybody who has travelled in Guyenne must be familiar with the article of household furniture just described. Every young wife piously provides herself with one, together with a warming-pan; for the old domestic ideas are religiously handed down here from mother to daughter. But I must shorten this 'journey round my room,' so little in the manner of Le Maistre. Most of the furniture was once the property of a priest, and would be still if he were alive. The good man is gone where even the voices of the Figeacois cannot reach him; but he has left abundant traces of his piety behind him. The walls of these rooms are almost covered by them. I cannot help being edified, for I am unable to look upon anything that approaches the profane. When I grow thoughtful over all these works of art and _objets de piété_--engravings, lithographs, statuettes, crucifixes, crosses worked in wool, stables of Bethlehem, little holy-water stoops, and the faded photographs belonging to the early period of the art (portraits, no doubt, of brothers, sisters, nephews, and nieces, all revealing that air of rusticity in Sunday clothes which is not to be mistaken)--I have before me the whole story of a simple life, surrounding itself year after year with fresh emblems and tokens of the hope that reaches beyond the grave, and the affections of nature that become woven on this side of it, and which mingle joy and sorrow even in the cup of a village priest. It is in these quiet, provincial places, where existence goes on in the old-fashioned, humdrum way, that people take care of their household property, and respect the sentiment that years lay up in it: they hand it down to the next generation as they received it. Little objects of common ornament, of religious or intellectual pleasure, thus preserved, throw in course of time a vivid light on human changes. And it is this vivid light that I am now feeling in these dim rooms. I am aware that nearly everything here is the record of an epoch to which I do not belong--that the world's mind has undergone a great change even in the provinces since the influence that comes forth from these silent traces of past thought were in harmony with it. What interests me more than anything else here is an allegorical or mystical map, designed, drawn, and coloured with all the patience and much of the artistic skill of an illuminating monk of the thirteenth century. I doubt if in any presbytery far out in the marshes or on the mountains a priest could now be found with the motive to undertake such a task. It belongs to the same order of ideas as the 'Pilgrim's Progress.' In this map one sees the 'States of Charity,' the 'Province of Fervour,' the 'Empire of Self-Contempt,' and other countries belonging to a vast continent, of which the centre is the 'Kingdom of the Love of God,' connected to a smaller continent--that of the world--by a narrow neck of land called the 'Isthmus of Charity.' In the continent of the world are shown the 'Mountain of Ingratitude,' the 'Hills of Frivolity,' the territory of 'Ennui,' of 'Vanity,' of 'Melancholy,' and of all the evil moods and vices to which men are liable. Separated from the mainland, and washed by the 'Torrent of Bitterness,' are the 'Rocks of Remorse.' Among the allegorical emblems in various parts of the chart is a very remarkable tree with blue trunk and rose-coloured leaves called the 'Tree of Illusions.' Far above it lies the 'Peninsula of Perfection,' and near to this, under a mediaeval drum-tower, is the gateway of the 'City of Happiness.' There is a little garden at the back of the house, where flowers and vegetables are mixed up in the way I like. The jessamine has become a thicket. Vines ramble over the trellis and the old wall, and from the window I see many other vines showing their lustrous leaves against tiled roofs of every shade, from bright-red to black. In the next garden is my friend the _aumônier_, an octogenarian priest, who is still nearly as sprightly of body as he is of mind. He lives alone, surrounded by books, in the collection of which he has shown the broad judgment, and impartiality of the genuine lover of literature. There is a delicious disorder in his den, because there is no one to interfere with him. He is now much excited against the birds because they will not leave his figs alone, and someone has just lent him a blunderbuss wherewith to slay them. Perhaps he will show them the deadly weapon, and hope that they will take the hint; but there is too much kindness underneath his wrath for him to be capable of murdering even a thievish sparrow. He likes to make others believe, however, that he is desperately in earnest. His keen sense of the comic and the grotesque in human nature makes him one of the raciest of story-tellers; but although he does not put his tongue in traces, he is none the less a worthy priest. There are many such as he in France--men who are really devout, but never sanctimonious, whose candour is a cause of constant astonishment, who are good-natured to excess, and who are more open-hearted than many children. Their friendship goes out readily to meet the stranger, and, speaking from my own experience, I can say that it wears well. In the street, on the other side of the house, six women have perched themselves in a row. They have come out to talk and enjoy the coolness of the evening, and, in order that their tender consciences may not prick them for being idle, they are paring potatoes, and getting ready other vegetables for the morrow. They all scream together in Languedocian, which, by-the-bye, is anything but melodious here when spoken by the common people. It becomes much less twangy and harsh a little farther South. How these six charmers on chairs can all listen and talk at the same time is not easy to understand. The truth is, very little listening is done in this part of the world. The saying _On se grise en parlant_ is quite applicable here. People often get drunk on nothing stronger than the flow of their own words. All the women being now on their way to the land of dreams, and consequently quiet for a few hours, and all the sounds of the earth being hushed save the song of the crickets among the vine-leaves, and in the fruit-trees of the moonlit garden, I will try to see Figeac up the vista of the ages, and if I succeed, perhaps the reader may be helped at the same time to gather interest in this queer old place, whose name, having been made familiar to the English who followed Henry II to France in the twelfth century, is perhaps a reason why their descendants will not 'skip' at first sight these few pages of local history. The early history of Figeac, or what has long passed as such, is based upon an ingenious stratification of fraud, arising out of a very old quarrel between the monks of Figeac and the monks of Conques, and the determination of the former to prove at all costs that their monastery was the more ancient of the two. This would be a matter of indifference to me had I not been myself entrapped by the snares laid by certain abbots of Figeac for their contemporaries and posterity, and been obliged to throw away much that I had written, and which was far more interesting than the truth. If I had only suspected the fraud, I might have been tempted to keep suspicion down in order to spare the picture of the Carlovingian age which I had elaborated; but it is known at the École des Chartres, and the Abbé B. Massabie of Figeac has, moreover, written a book that removes all doubt as to the spuriousness of the charters upon which the abbots of Figeac, when their jealousy of Conques reached its climax in the eleventh century, based their pretensions to priority. The most important of these charters, and the one that has sent various local historians on a voyage into the airy realms of fiction, is attributed to Pepin le Bref, and bears the date 755. Another is a Bull attributed to Pope Stephanus II., also dated 755, in which is described the ceremony of consecrating the church of St. Sauveur, attached to the abbey, which in the first-mentioned document Pepin is said to have founded. Here it is related that when the Pontiff approached the church strains of mysterious music were heard issuing from the edifice, and such a cloud stood before it that the procession waited for hours before entering. Then, when the Pope walked up to the altar-stone, he found that it had been miraculously consecrated, crosses being marked upon it in oil still wet. Now, the charter attributed to Pepin contains many passages copied verbatim from one preserved at Rodez, and signed by Pippinus, or Pepin I., King of Aquitaine. Its date is 838, and it enriches the monastery of Conques, already existing, with certain lands at Fiacus (Figeac), which is thenceforward to be called New Conques; the motive of this gift being to extend to the monks those material advantages which a rich valley is able to afford, but which are not to be found in a stony gorge surrounded by barren hills. There would have been less scandal to Christianity if Pepin had put a curb on his pious generosity, and had left the monks of Conques to contend with the desert. The charter, moreover, sanctions the building of a monastery at Figeac, which is to remain under the rule and governance of the abbots of Conques. In the eleventh century, the discord between the two monasteries had reached such a pass that popes and councils were appealed to to settle the question of priority. In 1096 the Council of Nîmes laid down a _modus vivendi_ without pronouncing upon the principle. It was decreed that the abbots of Figeac should thenceforth be independent of the abbots of Conques. The monks of Conques appear to have followed originally the rule of St. Martin, and to have adopted that of St. Benedict soon after its introduction into France. The abbey of Figeac was therefore always Benedictine. About the year 900 the monks began to cultivate learning, their labour having previously been devoted almost exclusively to the soil. A certain Abbot Adhelard set them to copy manuscripts, and in course of time Figeac possessed a valuable library, of which the religious wars of the sixteenth century and the Revolution have left very few traces. The first half of the eleventh century was full of turmoil, trouble, and torment. The 'blood-rain' that fell all over Aquitaine, and which made people watch in terror for what might come next, was followed by a three years' famine, which drove men in their hunger to prey upon one another. The inns were man-traps; solitary travellers who ventured inside of them were killed and devoured. Those were not good wayfaring days. A man actually offered human flesh for sale in the market of Tournus; but he was burnt alive. During this frightful period, the Abbot of Figeac distinguished himself by his charity, and, in order to find work for the unemployed, built a wall round the burg; but the monastery was much impoverished in consequence. Towards the close of the eleventh century four slender obelisks--called 'needles' in the country--were set up on the hills around Figeac apparently to mark the boundaries of the _sauveté_; for the abbey enjoyed the right of sanctuary. Two of these needles still exist. According to an absurd story, which has been repeated by various writers, misled by the forgeries already mentioned, the monks, when they came to this part of the valley of the Célé, found it an uninhabited wilderness without a name, and somebody exclaimed, 'Fige acus!' ('Set up needles!'), when the question of marking the boundary was being discussed. This ingenious explanation of the word Figeac will not bear examination. Every traveller in Aquitaine must have been struck by the remarkable number of places there whose names end in _ac_. It is commonly supposed that the termination is derived from _aqua_, and refers to the river or stream near which the town or village was built. _Ac_, however, does not at all correspond to the well-known corruptions of _aquae_ still found in the names of places in France where the Romans constructed baths. We are on much surer ground in assuming it to be of Celtic origin, and to have belonged in a special manner to the dialect spoken by the Cadurci, Ruteni and other Southern tribes. It nevertheless occurs at Carnac--that spot of Brittany where is to be seen the most remarkable of all monuments, commonly attributed to the Celts. The word probably meant town. It is unreasonable to suppose that the monks found the valley of the Célé a desert, considering how densely populated was the whole of this part of Gaul at the time of Caesar's invasion. So inhabited was it that the surplus population spread all over the known world, just as the English do to-day. The popular notion with regard to the needles is that they were intended to carry lanterns to guide the pilgrims by night either to Figeac or to Roc-Amadour. Such lanterns were set up in Aquitaine, and some examples may still be seen; but they are very different in character from these obelisks, which in all probability were used to mark the boundary of the _salvamentum_. It is true that in the Middle Ages the right of asylum was, as a rule, confined to the sanctuary itself or its immediate precincts; but there were exceptions, especially in the South of France, where this sacred zone, which in the Romance language was termed the _sauvetat_, often extended a considerable distance beyond the walls of a monastic town. Within these bounds persons fleeing from pursuers had the right of asylum; but, on the other hand, there are documents to show that those who committed crimes inside the limit were held guilty of sacrilege. Early in the Middle Ages the town of Figeac enjoyed the privileges of a royal borough under the protection of the kings of France, who in course of time came to be represented there by their _viguier_ (vicar). The civic administration was in the hands of consuls as early as the year 1001. They rendered justice and even passed sentence of death. The burghers were exempt from all taxation and servitude. The municipality had the right of coining money for the king, and the ruined mint can still be seen. Such was the state of things down to the time when the English appeared in the country. Henry II., having taken Cahors in 1154, left his chancellor, Becket, there as governor. The Figeacois, who at first looked upon Becket as an enemy, after he was murdered at Canterbury, and when the fame of his saintliness began to spread through France, dedicated a church to him. This edifice has disappeared; but the part of the town where it was situated, or where, to speak more correctly, it was afterwards rebuilt, is still called the Quartier St. Thomas. So little were the English loved, however, as a nation by the Quercynois, that, after St. Louis had been canonized, they refused to observe his festival, because they found it impossible to forgive him for having, by the treaty of Abbeville, passed them over to England without their consent. Figeac was less troubled than some other towns in the Quercy by the English, because in different treaties the kings of France managed to keep a grip upon it as a royal borough. The gates of the town were, however, thrown open to the English without a struggle about the middle of the fourteenth century, and to punish the consuls, when they again became French, King John took away their right to coin money; but the privilege was restored in consideration of the ardour they had shown in freeing themselves from the British yoke. The victory of the Black Prince at Poitiers, followed by the treaty of Brétigny, made the King of England absolute master of the Quercy. The Prince of Wales came in person to take possession of Cahors in 1364, and despatched his seneschal, Thomas de Walkaffara, to Figeac to receive from the inhabitants the oath of fealty. They swore obedience, but with much soreness of soul. They afterwards got released from their oath by the Pope, and joined a fresh league formed against the English. After enjoying the sweets of French nationality again for a brief period, they were made English once more by the treaty of Troyes. But the British domination in Guyenne was now approaching its close. The maid of Domrémy was about to change her distaff for an oriflamme. The year 1453 saw the English power completely broken in Aquitaine; a collapse which an old rhymer records with more relish than inspiration: 'Par Charles Septième à grande peine Furent chassés en durs détroits Les Anglais de toute Aquitaine, Mil quatre cent cinquante trois.' Figeac escaped the horrors which were spread through the South of France by the religious wars of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; but it was not similarly spared by those of the sixteenth century. The Huguenots laid siege to the town in 1576, and entered it by the treasonable help of a woman--the wife of one of the consuls. There was the usual massacre that followed victory, whether on the side of Protestants or Catholics, and the people became Calvinists for the same reason that they had centuries before become English. In less than fifty years afterwards they were all Catholics again. During this unsettled period, however, there was great domestic dissension in the town, owing to the circumstance that many women belonging to the old Catholic stock had married Protestants who had come into the place. As they could not agree with their husbands, and as many of these refused to be converted for their sake (they may have been thankful for an opportunity of getting rid of them), a refuge called 'L'hospice des mal-mariées' was built for the unhappy wives. When the need for this very singular institution no longer existed it was pulled down. The Church of St. Sauveur, as we see it to-day, is disappointing. It has been so much rebuilt after different convulsions, and pulled about when there has been less excuse, that many a church in an obscure village gives more pleasure as a whole to the eye that seeks unity of design and inspiration in a work of art. Nevertheless, there are details here that no archaeologist will despise. In the nave are the piers and Romanesque capitals of an early, but not the earliest, church on the spot. They are certainly not later than the twelfth century. Baptismal fonts, now used as holy-water stoups, are probably of anterior workmanship. Cut out of solid blocks of stone, their carving shows all the interlacing lines and exquisite finish of detail, purely ornamental, that marks the pre-Gothic period in the South of France, when the artistic spirit of Christianity was still confined to the close imitation of Roman and Byzantine art. The Church of Notre Dame du Puy, built upon a height, as the word _puy_ implies, is likewise interesting only in respect of details, such as the sculptured archivolts of the portal and the fourteenth-century rose-window. It, however, contains a very remarkable example of sixteenth-century wood-carving in its massive and elaborate reredos, a portion of which, having been destroyed by fire, has been repaired with plaster, but so skilfully that it is very difficult to perceive where the artistic fraud begins and where it ends. The extraordinary interest of Figeac to the archaeologist lies, however, in its civic and domestic architecture. This has been preserved simply because the inhabitants have for centuries played no part in the political history of the country, and their pursuits or interests having remained constantly agricultural, they have been equally cut off from the commercial movement. But every year will diminish the charm of this dirty old town to the antiquary. It will be observed that all the old streets are not accidentally crooked, but that they have been carefully laid out on curved or zigzag lines, which turn now in one direction and now in another. The motive was a defensive one in view of street-fighting, which was often so terrible and so prolonged in the Middle Ages. Each curve of a street formed an obstacle to the onward rush of an enemy, and only allowed those burghers who were actually engaged to be exposed to arrows and bolts. The townsmen could dispute the ground inch by inch and for days, as they did at Cahors when they were surprised by Henry of Navarre, although firearms had then come into use. Wine-growing, until some eight or ten years ago, was the chief source of revenue to the people of Figeac, as well as to those in the neighbouring valley of the Lot. Middle-aged people here can recollect the days when wine was so cheap that the inn-keepers did not take the trouble to measure it out to their customers, but charged them a uniform price of two sous for stopping and drinking as much as they pleased. But all this has been changed by the phylloxera. From being exceptionally prosperous, the people of the district have become poor. Very few have now any money to lay out in replanting their vineyards. Land has so fallen in value that it can be bought at a price that seems scarcely credible. With £100 one might become the proprietor of a large vineyard. Higher up the hills, where the chestnut and juniper thrive, half the money would buy quite a considerable estate. Here and elsewhere in France thousands of acres lie uncultivated and unproductive, except as regards that which nature unaided renders to man. Not all, but a very large portion, of this waste-land would well repay cultivation if the capital needed for clearing and working it were obtainable. That the lands suitable for wine-growing could be rendered remunerative is absolutely certain if those who undertook the task had the money necessary for the first outlay of planting and could afford to wait for the return. The valley of the Celé between Figeac and the junction of the little river with the Lot contains some of the most picturesque scenery to be found in the Quercy. About ten miles below Figeac it becomes a gorge, which until past the middle of the present century was almost cut off from communication with neighbouring towns. All the carrying was done on the backs of mules and donkeys; but since the road was made along the right bank of the Célé, these animals have been used less and less. It is no uncommon thing, however, to see now a heavily-laden pack-mule coming up the valley to the Figeac fair. It was in their rock-fortresses by the Celé that the English companies in Guyenne are said to have made their final resistance. The long and sustained efforts which were needed to dislodge them from their almost inaccessible fastnesses will be understood by anyone who may go wayfaring like myself along the banks of this tributary of the Lot. For the first two hours the walk was unexciting, for the valley was too wide and too cultivated to give much pleasure to the eye that looks for character in nature. At the village of Corn there was a decided change. Here lofty honeycombed rocks rose behind the houses that were built not very far above the stream, whose swiftness is supposed to have been the origin of its name. Not one of the several caverns extends far into the cliff. Their chief interest lies in the traditions with which they are associated. In one of them the inhabitants of the little burg are said to have assembled in the Middle Ages to elect their consuls freely, and to escape possible annoyance from their lord, whose castle was on the opposite hill. Another, still called the Citadel, was that in which they took refuge from the enemy, especially from the roving bands of armed men who made common cause with England. In 1380 Bertrand de Bassoran, captain of an English company, captured Corn, and using this place as his _point d'appui_, he placed garrisons in the neighbouring burgs of Brengues, Sauliac, and Cabrerets. He also compelled the consuls of Cajarc to treat with him. After a hasty meal in a little inn where I had to be satisfied mainly with good intentions, I called upon the schoolmaster. The poor man was spending most of his dinner-hour on the threshold of his small school-house amidst the rocks because some unruly or idle urchins were 'kept in.' How much pleasanter, I thought, it would have been for him to have produced in their case a wholesome cutaneous irritation, and set himself, as well as the young reprobates, free! But the French law does not tolerate the corporal punishment of children nowadays, although the exasperated pedagogue cannot always resist the temptation of applying his ruler upon a bunch of grimy little knuckles. This schoolmaster, although he was past the age of fifty and had grown corpulent, was still tied fast to the village schoolroom that was much too small to hold thirty children comfortably. By the aid of reading, writing, and arithmetic, he had got into a little creek where he was safe from the stormy seas of life, and he had never allowed his ambition to draw him out into the ocean. Nevertheless, he nursed and rocked his little vanity like the rest of mortals. He had written what he termed a 'Monograph of Corn.' He brought out from his desk a copybook wherein he had set it all down with the utmost attention to upstrokes and downstrokes and punctuation. It was a pleasure to him to find somebody to whom he could read what he had written, and he had in me an attentive listener. Wandering on by the winding Célé, the charm of the little river made me sit down upon a bank to look at the pictures that were painted on the water by the sunshine, the clouds, and the poplars. Then, continuing my journey, I saw on the opposite side of the stream a cluster of houses with an ancient church in their midst, and almost detached from this church, and yet a part of it, a tower like a campanile capped by a wooden belfry with pointed roof and far-reaching eaves. A bridge led across the water. I found the village to be Sainte Eulalie d'Espagnac. Here there existed from the early Middle Ages a celebrated convent for women of the order of St. Augustine. The founder, Aymeric d'Hébrard, was the Bishop of a see in Spain, and he brought thence Moorish slaves to cultivate the land with which he had endowed his community of a hundred nuns. Down to the Revolution most of the daughters of the nobility in the Quercy were educated here. Little is now left of the conventual building; but the church contains architectural details of much interest, and the tombs of those irreconcilable enemies of the English, Bertrand de Cardaillac, Bishop of Cahors, and the Marquis de Cardaillac--the most famous warrior of this bellicose and illustrious family. Having reached the village of Brengues, I went immediately in search of the English rock-fortress of which I had already heard. A path led me up the steep hillside to the foot of a long line of high rocks of yellowish limestone, so escarped and so forbidding to vegetable life that I did not see even a wild fig-tree hanging from a crevice. A path ran along at the base of this prodigious wall, from the top of which stretched the arid _causse_. I had only gone a little way when I saw before me a fortified Gothic gateway jutting out from the rock to which it was attached, and extending across the path to where the hill became so steep as to sufficiently protect from assault on that side those who had a motive for defending the ledge under the high cliff. I examined this old piece of masonry with much curiosity. The pointed form of the arch disposes of the hypothesis which has been put forward without much reflection, that this legacy of the old wars in Guyenne is part of the defences raised in the country by the unfortunate Waifré, Duke of Aquitaine, when he was being chased from rock to rock by his relentless enemy. Here we have work that is evidently not anterior to the English occupation, and which in all probability belongs to the fourteenth or the early part of the fifteenth century. Now, as Brengues was undoubtedly one of those places where the English companies firmly established themselves, and to which they clung with great tenacity, there is very small risk of error is coming to the conclusion that it was they who built this fortified gateway. The masonry, composed of carefully-shaped stones, and laid together with an excellent mortar that has become as durable as the rock itself, has been wonderfully preserved. Had it been placed in the valley it would have been pulled down long ago, and the materials would have been used for building houses or pigsties. The upper part of the wall is dilapidated, so that it is impossible to say whether it was originally embattled or not. There is no staircase, but the defenders had doubtless a suspended plank or beam on which they stood when they wished to shoot arrows or bolts over the top of the wall. On the side nearest the rock is a splayed opening ending outwardly in a crosslet large enough for three or four men to use at the same time. This gateway was only an outwork to defend the ledge of rock. About two hundred yards farther is a cavern some twenty or thirty feet above the path, and only accessible by means of a ladder. It has been walled up, openings being left here and there for loopholes. Near the top is a row of three windows without arches, and at the base an opening that served for a door, and which could easily be closed up. Although the stones were shaped for building, they were laid together without mortar; but the wall is so thick, and so protected by its position, that this rough fortification has remained almost unchanged from the date of its construction. It is a much less finished piece of work than the gateway, but there are other rock-fortresses in the district, attributed by general consent to the English, so similar to it in character that there is no reason for doubting that the companies built this one also. It is probable, however, that the gateway already mentioned, and the one that corresponded to it on the other side of the cavern, but of which few vestiges can now be seen, were constructed subsequently, when the science of fortification was better understood by the _routiers_. Such a fortress could never have been used in a military sense by a large number of men, but to a band of brigands and cut-throats it was a stronghold of the first order. As they doubtless laid up in their cavern a large store of the provisions which they obtained by their continual forays in the surrounding region, they were capable of withstanding a long siege even against an enemy many times as numerous as themselves, for the reason that only a few men could attack them at the same time, and the defenders had an enormous advantage in the struggle. It is a very general belief in the district that there was formerly a passage by which this cavern communicated with the _causse_; no trace of it, however, has been discovered. M. Delpon, author of a work published in 1831, and entitled 'Statistique du Département du Lot,' mentions these fortified caverns of the Quercy in the following passage, which gives a vivid picture of the kind of life that the English companies led and made others lead in the fourteenth century: 'They (the English) possessed in the Quercy the forts of Roc-Amadour, Castelnau, Verdale, Vayrac, Lagarennie, Sabadel, Anglars, Frayssinet, Boussac and Assier, and some other castles on escarped hills from which it was difficult to expel them. They also seized upon caverns formed by nature in the flanks of precipitous rocks, and fortified them with walls in which all the character of English structures can still be recognised. The garrisons that occupied these places represented six thousand lances distributed over the Quercy, the Rouergue, and High Auvergne. When they sallied forth, the earth, to use an expression of one or their chiefs, Emérigot, surnamed Black Head, trembled under their feet.[*] They robbed travellers, made citizens prisoners--especially ecclesiastics--in order to extort exorbitant ransoms, they took from the peasants their beasts and their crops, and forced them to work in strengthening the dens of their spoliators with new fortifications. In fine, the Quercy was continually devastated, and the inhabitants only tilled the earth to satisfy the avidity of the English companies. The population could shield themselves from their violence only by concealing themselves in subterranean retreats, where traces of their sojourn are still observable. The English were continually recruited by all the depraved men of the provinces which they laid under contribution.' [*] The entire passage from which these words are taken is to be found in Froissart's chronicles, and it runs as follows, the spelling being modernized: 'Que nous étions rejouis quand nous chevaussions à l'aventure et que nous pouvions trouver sur le champ un riche prieur ou marchand ou des mulets de Montpellier, de Narbonne, de Carcassone, de Limoux, de Béziers, de Toulouse, chargés de draps, de brunelles, de pelleterie, venant de la foire de Landit, d'épiceries venant de Bruges, de draps de soie, de Damas ou d'Alexandrie. Les vilains nous pourvoyaient et apportaient dans nos châteaux le blé, la farine, le pain tout cuit, l'avoine pour les chevaux, le bon vin, les boeufs, les brébis, les moutons tous gras, la poulaille et la volataille. Nous étions servis, gouvernés et étoffés comme rois et princes, et quand nous chevaussions le pays tremblait devant nous.' This last remark is only too well justified by the evidence which those centuries have handed down. Indeed, to such an extent were these companies composed of Aquitanians, that one may well ask if some of them contained a single genuine Englishman. I have found no record in the Quercy of the captain of a company of _routiers_ having borne an Anglo-Saxon name. Two English captains who took Figeac by surprise (a document relating to this event, written in Latin of the fourteenth century, is to be found in the municipal archives) were named Bertrand de Lebret and Bertrand de Lasale. Those who captured Martel had names equally French. There is, of course, the hypothesis that these leaders were Anglicised Normans, but the stronger probability is that they were native adventurers of Aquitaine who found it to their interest to place themselves under the protection of the King of England. Towards the close of the fourteenth century, all those who wished to drive the English out of Guyenne rallied round the chiefs of the house of Armagnac. This great family of the Rouergue, which was ultimately absorbed by the Royal House of France and became extinct, at one time espoused the British cause; but it contributed more than any other to the final dispersion of the English companies in Guyenne. In 1381 the people of the Gévaudan, the Quercy, and High Auvergne, solicited the help of the Count of Armagnac against the companies, and he accepted the leadership of the coalition. He convened a meeting of delegates at Rodez, to which the English chiefs were invited, and the decision that was then come to did not say much for the sagacity or the valour of those who represented the majority. It was agreed that the sum of 250,000 francs--equivalent to about £200,000 to-day--should be paid to the English on condition of their surrendering the fortresses which they occupied. This fact goes far to prove that the companies were virtually independent, and that although all their outrages were ostensibly committed in the British name, they were freebooters in the fullest sense of the word. Of the sum that was to be paid to them, the clergy were to contribute 25,000 francs, the nobles 16,660. The inhabitants of the Quercy agreed to pay 50,833 francs. The captains of the companies took oath that on receiving the money they would quit Guyenne for ever. They may have kept their oath, but their followers were not to be induced to change their habits so easily. The _routiers_, still going by the name of the English companies, continued to hold the least accessible places in Guyenne, fortified in the main by nature, until long after the British sovereigns had abandoned their ambitious designs in France. In the fifteenth century so many of the inhabitants of the Quercy had been killed or ruined by the companies that some districts were almost depopulated. In the town of Gramat there were only seven inhabitants left at the close of the Hundred Years' War. In order that the lands should not remain uncultivated, the nobles enfeoffed them to strangers from the Rouergue and other neighbouring provinces. This circumstance is supposed to account in a large measure for the differences in dialect which are to be observed in adjoining communes. There is no evidence to-day, so far as I have been able to ascertain, of English words having been introduced into the Languedocian of Guyenne. The striking resemblance of many _patois_ words to those of the English language bearing the same meaning--a resemblance that is helped by the Southern pronunciation of vowels and diphthongs--must be referred to linguistic influences far more remote and obscure than the political fact that Guyenne was intimately connected with English history for three hundred years. For example, that familiar animal the cat is called in Guyenne _lou catou_ and even _lou cat_; but the word belongs to the Romance language, and is the same all through Languedoc and Provence. The fact that the English left no mark upon the language in Guyenne is almost a conclusive proof that such of the Anglo-Saxon stock as followed the Norman leaders into Aquitaine, and who remained in the country any length of time, were not sufficiently numerous to impose their idiom upon others. They probably did not preserve it long themselves; but, like the English grooms who find occupation in France today, they quickly adopted the language that was generally spoken around them. Patient investigation might, nevertheless, show that the English did leave some of their words, as well as their blood, in the country. It would, indeed, be astonishing if this were not so. Even the Greek colony at Marseilles and Aries, although far removed, must have influenced the dialect of Guyenne; for the peasants of the Quercy use the word _hermal_ to describe a piece of waste land bordering a cultivated field, the origin of which expression was, doubtless, Hermes, the god of boundaries. This is not the only Greek word that has been corrupted, but nevertheless preserved, in the Quercy _patois_. Wherever the English were long established in their fastnesses amidst the rocks which form the rugged sides of the deep-cut gorges of the Quercy, many of the inhabitants have clung, century after century, to the belief that the terrible freebooters buried a prodigious amount of treasure with the intention of returning and fetching it on the first opportunity. So persistently was this tradition handed down at Brengues that many years ago a cavern, the entrance of which had been covered over with stones and earth, having been accidentally discovered on the plateau just above the Château des Anglais, it was eagerly explored, as well as a similar cavern close by. The excitement was increased by the circumstance that the discovery of these openings appeared to coincide with the indications of a local witch. It was evident that the caverns had at one time been used by men, for they contained masonry put together with mortar. By dint of excavating, hidden galleries were revealed; but although a human skeleton was discovered, no treasure was found. The explorers, however, came upon a vast collection of bones of extinct animals, and of others which, although they are now to be found both in the Arctic and in the tropical regions, have not existed in a state of nature in France during the historic period. The bones of the reindeer, for instance, were found lying with those of the hyena and the rhinoceros, many of them embedded in the calcareous breccia so frequently seen in the valley of the Célé. Here was evidence of a glacial and a torrid period, separated by an aeonic gulf; but how the remains came to be piled one upon another in this way is a secret of the ancient earth. There are prodigious layers of these bones lying at a great depth in the rock, where there is no cavern to suggest that the animals entered by it, or that they were taken there by man. The beds of phosphate which English enterprise has turned to so good an account in this part of France, and which are followed in the earth just like a seam of coal or a vein of metal, are merely layers of bones. While I was at Brengues, the skeleton of a young rhinoceros was discovered in the phosphate mine at Cajarc. On the hill above the Célé, on the side opposite to that where the Château des Anglais is to be seen, are the remains of an entrenched camp, upon the origin of which it is almost idle to speculate. In the same neighbourhood is a cavern situated high up in the face of a perpendicular rock. It is inaccessible by ordinary means; but a beam fixed at the entrance, and worn into a deep groove by a rope, shows that it was used as a refuge. A tradition says that Waifré hid himself there. I passed the night at Brengues, and was awakened in the early morning by the jingle of bells just beneath my window, and a man's voice repeating, 'Tè, Tè, Tè!' A couple of bullocks were being yoked, and presently they followed the man towards the fields of tobacco and maize by the little river, already shining in the sun. Very soon afterwards I, too, had begun my day's work. In a little more than an hour I was at the next village--St. Sulpice. Here above the houses, huddled together like sheep on the lower steep of the right-hand hill, were the ruins of a castle, hanging to the rock that dwarfed it even in the days of its pride. I climbed to it, and found that it was built on terraces one above the other, formed by the rocky shelves. A considerable portion of the strong wall at the base of the structure remains, and on each terrace there is something left of the feudal fortress. Ivy, with gnarled and fantastic stocks, has so overspread the masonry in places that hardly a gray stone shows through the dense matting of sombre leaves and hoary, wrinkled stems. Multitudes of bats cling to the ruinous vaulting where the light is very dim, and lurk in the hollows of the rock. A stone thrown up will bring them fluttering down and whirling about the head of the intruder, noiselessly as if they were the ghosts that haunt the spot, but dare not reveal to the eye of man the human shape that they once wore. This castle belonged, and still belongs, to the D'Hébrard family, which was connected by marriage with the Cardaillacs and most of the ancient aristocracy of the Quercy. Leaving St. Sulpice, another hour's walk down the valley brought me to Marcillac, which, after Figeac, was the most important place on the Célé in the Middle Ages. It is now, however, a mere village. According to local historians, it was here that Palladius, Bishop of Bourges, retired in the fifth century to escape from the persecution of the Arians. Nothing, however, that has been written of its history, prior to the ninth or tenth century, can be accepted with any confidence. What can be safely affirmed is, that here, between the rocky cliffs that border the Célé, arose one of the earliest of the Benedictine abbeys in France. The ruined cloisters of the monastery have all the severe charm of the simple Romanesque style of the early period, but there is no means of knowing whether they date from the tenth, eleventh, or twelfth century. There are several beautiful capitals elaborately embellished with intersecting line ornament still preserved, although no value whatever is placed upon them by the inhabitants. The cloisters are used for stables, and other common farm purposes. The abbey church must have fallen into complete ruin, when a portion of it was restored and rebuilt in the fifteenth century. Then about half the nave--the western end--was cut off, and left open to the weather. It is roofless, and the visitor walking, now in deep shadow, now in brilliant light, as the fragments of masonry may hide or reveal the sun, sees the blue sky through the arches and over the tops of the ivy-covered walls. This part of the old church shows the transition between the Romanesque and the Gothic styles. It would have been a slight upon Marcillac had I left the place without seeing the most famous of its caverns, which goes by the name of the Grotte de Robinet. I might have looked for it in vain all day had I not taken a guide. First, the _causse_ had to be reached by ascending the cliffs on the right bank of the Célé. Then I saw before me the stony undulating land, with the sad sentiment of which I had already grown so familiar. An old woman, nearly doubled up with age and field labour, but who plied her distaff as she led her black goats to browse upon the waste, made me understand that the solitude was not altogether bereft of human life. After walking a mile or so, we descended into a deep hollow wooded with those dwarf oaks which, together with the juniper, hid at one time most of the nakedness of these calcareous tracts that stretch from gorge to gorge. One might have supposed that such a dale would have had a spring at the bottom; but no: everywhere it was parched, arid, and rocky. The rain that falls all around goes to swell some deep subterranean stream that issues no one knows where. This peculiarity of the formation explains why nearly all the _caussenards_ have no water, either for themselves or their animals, except that which they collect from the skies in tanks sunk in the earth. Since the failure of the vines--which formerly flourished upon the _causses_ wherever there was a favourable slope--the peasants have learnt to make a mildly alcoholic liquor by gathering and fermenting the juniper berries, which previously they had never put to any use. We had nearly ascended the opposite side of this wooded hollow, when the guide, pointing through the sunlit trees to a very dark but narrow opening in the rocks, said, 'There it is!' We had reached the cavern. He went first, carrying aloft a wisp of burning straw, which he renewed from time to time from the bundle that he carried under his arm. The practice of burning straw, so that people may have a good flare-up for their money, has, together with the selfish custom of throwing stones at the stalactites, gone far to spoil all the caverns of this region, which have been much visited. The Grotte de Robinet must have been dazzlingly beautiful at one time, but now most of the stalagmite and stalactite has been completely blackened by smoke. Even the rocks, over which one has to climb, and sometimes crawl, are covered with a sooty slime, which gives one the appearance, when daylight returns, of having been smeared with lamp-black. I put on a blouse before entering, and had great reason to be glad that I did so. In spite of all the mischief that has been done to it, the Grotte de Robinet is a very remarkable cavern, and the time spent on the somewhat arduous and slippery task of exploring its depths is not wasted. Its length is about half a mile, and the descent, which is almost continuous, is at times very rapid. The passage connects a succession of vast and lofty spaces, which are not inappropriately termed _salles_. In some of these, the dropping water has raised from the floor of the cavern statuesque and awful forms of colossal grandeur. Some of these have been little changed by the smoke, but stand like white figures of fantastic giants. While looking at them, I thought how little I should like to be in the position of a certain _curé_ of Marcillac, who spent three days and three nights in this weird company. He frequently entered the cavern alone, with a scientific object, and his familiarity with it led him to despise ordinary precautions. One day he was far underground, with only a single candle in his possession, and no matches. A drop of water from the roof put the candle out, and all his efforts to return by the way he came were futile. Meanwhile, his parishioners, hunting high and low for their _curé_, chanced to see his _soutane_, where he had left it, hanging to a bush at the entrance of the Grotte de Robinet, and when they rescued him, there was very little left of his passion for studying nature underground. The most wonderful and the most beautiful object in the cavern is to be seen in the vast hall, which is the last of the series. This hall has a dome-shaped roof that rises to the height of about sixty feet, and it is supported in the centre, with every appearance of an architectural motive, by a single slender column that seems to have been carved with consummate skill out of alabaster. No image that I can think of conveys the picture of this exquisite stalagmite so justly as that of a column formed of the blossoms of lilies, each cup resting within another. Having left Marcillac, I passed under the mediaeval village of Sauliac, built high up on a shelf of naked rock, and then reached Cabrerets, which lies two or three miles above the junction of the Célé and the Lot. The village is at the foot of towering limestone cliffs, and many of the houses are built against the gray and yellow stone. The most interesting structure, however, is the castellated one that clings to the face of the rock far above all inhabited dwellings. It goes by the name of the Château du Diable, and it is the most considerable of all the rock-fortresses in the valleys of the Célé and the Lot which are attributed to the English companies. It possesses towers and embattlements, and it was evidently intended to defend the defile from any force advancing from the wider valley. Here, doubtless, many a desperate struggle occurred before the companies were dispersed and English influence was finally overcome in these wilds of the Quercy. At a little distance from it, the long iron of a mediaeval arrow, having fastened its head in a cleft of the rock, remained sticking there for centuries, and was only recently removed. The Prefect of the Department took a fancy to it, and had not the good judgment to leave it where it had so long been an object of curiosity. There, resting in the place where the arm of the archer had cast it, it told a story of the old wars, and set the imagination working; but in a collection of local antiquities it is as dumb and almost as worthless as any other piece of old iron. IN THE ALBIGEOIS. A long dull road or street, a statue of the navigator La Perouse, a bandstand with a few trees about it, and plain, modern buildings without character, some larger and more pretentious than others, but all uninteresting. Is this Albi? No, but it is what appears to be so to the stranger who enters the place from the railway-station. The ugly sameness is what the improving spirit of our own times has done to make the ancient town decent and fit to be inhabited by folk who have seen something of the world north of Languedoc and who have learnt to talk of _le comfortable_. The improvement is undoubted, but so is the absolute lack of interest and charm; at least, to those who are outside of the _persiennes_ so uniformly closed against the summer sun. Albi, the veritable historic Albi, lies almost hidden upon a slope that leads down to the Tarn. Here is the marvellous cathedral built in the thirteenth century, after the long wars with the Albigenses; here is the Archbishop's fortified palace, still capable of withstanding a siege if there were no artillery; here are the old houses, one of pre-Gothic construction with very broad Romanesque window, slender columns and storied capitals, billet and arabesque mouldings; another of the sixteenth century quite encrusted with carved wood; and here are the dirty little streets like crooked lanes, where old women, who all through the summer months, Sundays excepted, give their feet an air-bath, may be seen sitting on the doorsteps clutching with one bony hand the distaff and drowsily turning the spindle with the other. To live in one of these streets might disgust the unseasoned stranger for ever with Southern life; but to roam through them in the early twilight is the way to find the spirit of the past without searching. Effort spoils the spell. Strange indeed must have been the procession of races, parties and factions that passed along here between these very houses, or others which stood before them. Romans, Romanised Gauls, Visigoths, Saracens and English; the Raymonds with their Albigenses, the Montforts with their Crusaders from the north, the wild and sanguinary _pastoiureux_ and the lawless _routiers_, the religious fanatics, Huguenots and Catholics of the sixteenth century, and the revolutionists of the eighteenth. All passed on their way, and the Tarn is no redder now for the torrents of blood that flowed into it. Notwithstanding that the name Albigenses was given after the council of Lombers to the new Manichaeans, Albi was less identified with the great religious and political struggle of Southern Gaul in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries than were Castres and other neighbouring towns. If, however, it was comparatively fortunate as regards the horrors of that ferocious war, it was severely scourged by the most appalling epidemics of the Middle Ages. Leprosy and the pest had terrors greater even than those of battle. The cruelty of those feudal ages finds one of its innumerable records in the treatment of the miserable lepers at Albi. Having taken the disease which the Crusaders brought back from the East, they were favoured with a religious ceremony distressingly similar to the office for the dead. A black pall was thrown over them while they knelt at the altar steps. At the close of the service a priest sprinkled some earth on the condemned wretches, and then they were led to the leper-house, where each was shut up in a cell from which he never came out alive. The black pall and the sprinkled earth were symbols which every patient understood but too well. [Illustration: PORCH OF THE CATHEDRAL OF ALBI.] In nothing is the stern spirit of those ages expressed more forcibly than in the religious buildings of Languedoc. The cathedral of St. Cecilia at Albi is the grandest of all the fortified churches of Southern France, although in many others the defensive purpose has made less concession to beauty. Looking at it for the first time, the eye is wonder-struck by its originality, the nobleness of its design, and the grandeur of its mass. The plan being that of a vast vaulted basilica without aisles, the walls of the nave, rise sheer from the ground to above the roof, and are pierced at intervals with lofty but very narrow windows, the arches slightly pointed and containing simple tracery. The buttresses which help the walls to support the vaulting of the nave and choir are the most remarkable feature of the design, and, together with the tower, which rises in diminishing stages to the height of 260 feet and there ends in an embattled platform, account for the singularly feudal and fortress-like character of the building. The outline of the buttresses being that of a semi-ellipse, they look like turrets carried up the entire face of the wall. The floor of the church is many feet above the ground, and the entrance was originally protected by a drawbridge and portcullis; but these military works were removed in the sixteenth century, and in their place was raised, upon a _perron_ reached by a double flight of steps, a baldachino-like porch as airily graceful and delicately florid as the body to which it is so lightly attached is majestically stern and scornful of ornament. The meeting here of those two great forces, the Renaissance and feudalism, is like that of Psyche and Mars. But in expression the porch is Gothic, for although the arches are round-headed, they are surmounted by an embroidery of foliated gables and soaring pinnacles. It can scarcely be said that the style has been broken, but the contrast in feeling is strong. Enter the church and observe the same contrast there. Gothic art within the protecting walls and under the strong tower puts forth its most delicate leaves and blossoms. Across the broad nave, nearly in the centre, is drawn a rood-screen--a piece of stonework that has often been compared to lace, but which gains nothing by the comparison. The screen, together with the enclosure of the choir, with which it is connected, is quite bewildering by the multiplicity of arches, gables, tabernacles, pinnacles, statues, leaves, and flowers. The tracery is flamboyant, and the work dates from the beginning of the sixteenth century. The artificers are said to have been a company of wandering masons from Strasburg. Two vast drum-shaped piers, serving to support the tower, are exposed to view at the west end of the nave; but, for the bad effect thus produced, compensation is offered by the very curious paintings, supposed to be of the fifteenth century, with which the surfaces of these piers are covered. They represent the Last Judgment and the torments of the damned. Each of the seven capital sins has its compartment, wherein the kind of punishment reserved for sinners under this head is set forth in a manner as quaint as are the inscriptions in old French beneath. The compartment, illustrating the eternal trouble of the envious has this inscription: '_La peine des envieux et envieuses_. Les envieus et envieuses sont en ung fleuve congelé plongés jusques au nombril et par dessus les frappe un vent moult froid et quant veulent icelluy vent éviter se plongent dedans ladite glace.' All the wall-surfaces, the vaulting included, are covered with paintings. The effect clashes with Northern taste, but the absence of a columnar system affords a plausible reason for relieving the sameness of these large surfaces with colour. The Gothic style of the North, holding in itself such decorative resources, gains nothing from mural paintings, but always loses something of its true character when they are added. Apart from such considerations, the wall-paintings in the cathedral of Albi have accumulated such interest from time that no reason would excuse their removal. This unique church was mainly built at the close of the thirteenth century, together with the Archbishop's palace, with which it was connected in a military sense by outworks. These have disappeared, but the fortress called a palace remains, and is still occupied by the Archbishop. It is a gloomy rectangular mass of brick, absolutely devoid of elegance, but one of the most precious legacies of the Middle Ages in France. It is not so vast as the papal palace at Avignon, but its feudal and defensive character has been better preserved, for, unlike the fortress by the Rhône, it has not been adapted to the requirements of soldiers' barracks. At each of the angles is a round tower, pierced with loopholes, and upon the intervening walls are far-descending machicolations. The building is still defended on the side of the Tarn by a wall of great height and strength, the base of which is washed by the river in time of flood. This rampart, with its row of semi-elliptical buttresses corresponding to those of the church and its pepper-box tower at one end, the fortress a little above, and the cathedral on still higher ground, but in immediate neighbourhood, make up an assemblage of mediaeval structures that seems as strange in this nineteenth century as some old dream rising in the midst of day-thoughts. And the rapid Tarn, an image of perpetual youth, rushes on as it ever did since the face of Europe took its present form. As I write, other impressions come to mind of this ancient town on the edge of the great plain of Languedoc. A little garden in the outskirts became familiar to me by daily use, and I see it still with its almond and pear trees, its trellised vines, the blue stars of its borage, and the pure whiteness of its lilies. A bird seizes a noisy cicada from a sunny leaf, and as it flies away the captive draws out one long scream of despair. Then comes the golden evening, and its light stays long upon the trailing vines, while the great lilies gleam whiter and their breath floods the air with unearthly fragrance. A murmur from across the plain is growing louder and louder as the trees lose their edges in the dusk, for those noisy revellers of the midsummer night, the jocund frogs, have roused themselves, and they welcome the darkness with no less joy than the swallows some hours later will greet the breaking dawn. I left Albi to ascend the valley of the Tarn in the last week of June. I started when the sun was only a little above the plain; but the line of white rocks towards the north, from which Albi is supposed to take its name, had caught the rays and were already burning. The straight road, bordered with plane-trees, on which I was walking would have had no charm but for certain wayside flowers. There was a strange-looking plant with large heart-shaped leaves and curved yellow blossoms ending in a long upper lip that puzzled me much, and it was afterwards that I found its name to be _aristolochia clematitis_. It grows abundantly on the banks of the Tarn. Another plant that I now noticed for the first time was a galium with crimson flowers. I soon came to the cornfields for which the Albigeois plain is noted. Here the poppy showed its scarlet in the midst of the stalks of wheat still green, and along the borders were purple patches of that sun-loving campanula, Venus's looking-glass. Countrywomen passed me with baskets on their heads, all going into Albi to sell their vegetables. Those who were young wore white caps with frills, which, when there is nothing on the head to keep them down, rise and fall like the crest of a cockatoo; but the old women were steadfast in their attachment to the bag-like, close-fitting cap, crossed with bands of black velvet, and having a lace front that covers most of the forehead. When upon this coif is placed a great straw hat with drooping brim, we have all that remains now of an Albigeois costume. As these women passed me, I looked into their baskets. Some carried strawberries, some cherries, others mushrooms (_boleti_), or broad beans. The last-named vegetable is much cultivated throughout this region, where it is largely used for making soup. When very young, the beans are frequently eaten raw with salt. Almost every taste is a matter of education. The heat of the day had commenced when I reached the village of Lescure. This place is of very ancient origin. Looking at it now, and its agricultural population numbering little more than a thousand, it is difficult to realize its importance in the Middle Ages. The castle and the adjacent land were given in the year 1003 by King Robert to his old preceptor, the learned Gerbert, who became known to posterity as Pope Sylvester II. In the eleventh century, Lescure was, therefore, a fief of the Holy See; and in the time of Simon de Montfort the inhabitants were still vassals of the Pope. In the fourteenth century they were frequently at war with the people of Albi, who eventually got the upper hand. Then Sicard, the Baron of Lescure, was so completely humiliated that he not only consented to pay eighty gold _livres_ to the consuls of Albi, but went before them bareheaded to ask pardon for himself and his vassals. Already the feudal system was receiving hard blows in the South of France from the growth of the communes and the authority vested in their consuls. What is left of the feudal grandeur of Lescure? The castle was sold in the second year of the Republic, and entirely demolished, with the exception of the chapel, which is now the parish church. Of the outer fortifications there remains a brick gateway, with Gothic arch carrying a high machicolated tower, connected to which is a fragment of the wall. To this old houses, half brick, half wood, still cling, like those little wasps' nests that one sees sometimes upon the sides of the rocks. On entering the small fourteenth-century church, I found that it had been decorated for a funeral. A broad band of black drapery, upon which had been sewn at intervals Death's heads and tears, cut out of white calico, was hung against the wall of the apse, and carried far down each side of the nave. To me all those grinning white masks were needless torture to the mourners; but here again we are brought to recognise that taste is a matter of education. More interesting than anything else in this church is the Romanesque holy-water stoup, with heads and crosses carved upon it, and possibly belonging to the original chapel of the castle. The chief archaeological treasure, however, of Lescure is a church on a little hill above the village, and overlooking the Tarn. It is dedicated to St. Michael, in accordance with the mediaeval custom of considering the highest ground most appropriate to the veneration of the archangel. It is Romanesque of the eleventh century, and belonged to a priory of which no other trace is left. The building stands in the midst of an abandoned cemetery; and at the time of my visit the tall June grasses, the poppies and white campions hid every mound and almost every wooden cross. Over the gateway, carved in the stone, is the following quaint inscription, the spelling being similar to that frequently used in the sixteenth century: 'Sur la terre autrefois nous fûmes comme vous. Mortels pensés y bien et priés Dieu pour nous.' Beneath these lines are a skull and cross-bones, with a tear on each side. Facing the forgotten graves, upon this spot removed from all habitations, is the most beautiful Romanesque doorway of the Albigeois. The round-headed arch widening outwards, its numerous archivolts and mouldings, the slender columns of the deeply-recessed jambs, the storied capitals with their rudely-proportioned but expressive little figures, and the row of uncouth bracket-heads over the crowning archivolt, represent the best art of the eleventh century. They show that Romanesque architecture and sculpture had already reached their perfect expression in Languedoc. The figures in the capitals tell the story of Adam and Eve, Abraham and Isaac, and of fiends busily engaged in tormenting mortals who must have been in their clutches now eight hundred years. The nave has two aisles, and massive piers with engaged columns support the transverse and lateral arches. The columns have very large capitals, displaying human figures, some of which are extraordinarily fantastic, and instinct with a wild imagination still running riot in stone. How far are we now from the minds that bred these thoughts when Southern Gaul was struggling to develop a new Roman art by the aid of such traditions and models as the Visigoth, the Frank, and the Arab had not destroyed in the country, and such ideas as were brought along the Mediterranean from Byzantium! Lastly, I came to the apse, that part of a Romanesque church in which the artist seizes the purely religious ideal, or allows it to escape him. Here was the serenity, here the quietude of the early Christian purpose and hope. Perfect simplicity and perfect eloquence! Nothing more is to be said, except that there were stone benches against the wall and a piscina--details interesting to the archaeologist. Then I walked round the little church, knee-deep in the long grave-grass, and noted the broad pilaster-strips of the apse, the stone eaves ornamented with billets, the bracket or corbel heads just beneath, fantastic, enigmatic, and not two alike. Leaving this spot, where there was so much temptation to linger, I began to cross a highly-cultivated plain towards the village of Arthez, where the Tarn issues from the deep gorges which for many a league give it all the character of a mountain-river. I thought from the appearance of the land that everybody who lived upon it must be prosperous and happy, but a peasant whom I met was of another way of thinking. He said: 'By working from three o'clock in the morning until dark, one can just manage to earn one's bread.' They certainly do work exceedingly hard, these peasant-proprietors and _métayers_, never counting their hours like the town workmen, but wishing that the day were longer, and if they can contrive to save anything in these days it is only by constant self-denial. A man's labour upon his land to-day will only support him, taking the bad years with the good, on the condition that he lives a life of primitive simplicity. Even then the problem of existence is often a terribly hard one to solve. In the South of France the blame is almost everywhere laid to the destruction of the vines by the phylloxera, but here in the plain of Albi the land is quite as suitable for corn as it is for grape-growing, which is far from being the case elsewhere; nevertheless, the peasants cry out with one voice against the bad times. They have to contend with two great scourges: hail that is so often brought by the thunder-storms in summer, and which the proximity of the Pyrenees may account for; and the south-east wind--_le vent d'autan_--that comes across from Africa, and scorches up the crops in a most mysterious manner. But for this plague the yield of fruit would be enormous. On the other hand, the region is blessed with lavish sunshine from early spring until November, and a half-maritime climate, explained by the neighbourhood of the ocean--not the Mediterranean--renders long periods of drought such as occur in Provence and Lower Languedoc rare. In the valleys the soil is extremely fertile, and, favoured by moisture and warmth, its productive power is extraordinary. Four crops of lucern are taken from the same land in the course of a season. Unfortunately, these valleys being mere gorges--cracks in the plain, with precipitous rocky sides--the strip of land bordering the stream at the bottom is usually very narrow. On reaching Arthez, the character of the country changed suddenly and completely. Here the plain with its tertiary deposits ended, and in its stead commenced the long series of schistous rocks wildly heaped up and twisted out of their stratification, by which the Tarn is hemmed in for seventy miles as the crow flies, and nearly twice that distance if the windings of the gorge be reckoned. When the calcareous region of the Gévaudan is reached, the schist, slate, and gneiss disappear. On descending to the level of the river at Arthez, I saw before me one of the grandest cascades in France--the Saut de Sabo. It is not so much the distance that the river falls in its rapid succession of wild leaps towards the plain as the singularly chaotic and savage scene of dark rocks and raging waters, together with the length to which it is stretched out, that is so impressive. The mass of water, the multitude of cascades, and the wild forms of the rocks, compose a scene that would be truly sublime if one could behold it in the midst of an unconquered solitude; but the hideous sooty buildings of a vast iron foundry on one bank of the river are there to spoil the charm. I stayed in the village of Arthez for food and rest, but not long enough for the mid-day heat to pass. When I set forth again on my journey, the air was like the breath of a furnace; but as the slopes were well wooded with chestnuts, there was some shelter from the rays of the sun. There were a few patches of vineyard, the leaves showing the ugly stains of sulphate of copper with which they had been splashed as a precaution against mildew, which in so many districts has followed in the wake of the phylloxera, and hastened the destruction of the old vines. The Albigeois has ceased to be a wine-producing region, and, judging from present signs, it will be long in becoming one again. The valley, deepening and narrowing, became a gorge, the beginning of that long series of fissures in the metamorphic and secondary rocks which, crossing an extensive tract of Languedoc and Guyenne, leads the traveller up to the Cevennes Mountains, through scenery as wild and beautiful as any that can be found in France, and perhaps in Europe. But the difficulties of travelling by the Tarn from Arthez upwards are great, and, indeed, quite forbidding to those who are not prepared to endure petty hardships in their search for the picturesque. Between Albi and St. Affrique, a distance that cannot be easily traversed on foot in less than four days, railways are not to be thought of, and the line of route taken by the _diligence_ leaves the Tarn far to the north. In the valley the roads often dwindle away to mere paths or mule-tracks, or they are so rocky that riding either upon or behind a horse over such an uneven surface, with the prospect of being thrown into the Tarn in the event of a slip, is unpleasant work. Those who are unwilling to walk or unable to bear much fatigue should not attempt to follow this river through its gorges. All the difficulties have not yet been stated. Along the banks of the stream, and for several miles on either side of it, there are very few villages, and the accommodation in the auberges is about as rough as it can be. The people generally are exceedingly uncouth, and between Arthez and Millau, where a tourist is probably the rarest of all birds of passage, the stranger must not expect to meet with a reception invariably cordial. Even a Frenchman who appears for the first time in one of their isolated villages, and who cannot speak the Languedocian dialect, is looked upon almost as a foreigner, and is treated with suspicion by the inhabitants. This matter of language is in itself no slight difficulty. French is so little known that in many villages the clergy are compelled to preach in _patois_ to make themselves understood. This region I had now fairly entered. The road had gone somewhere up the hills, and I was walking beside the river upon sand glittering with particles of mica. This sand the Tarn leaves all along its banks. It is one of the most uncertain and treacherous of streams. In a few hours its water will rise with amazing rapidity and spread consternation in a district where not a drop of rain has fallen. Warm winds from the south and south-west, striking against the cold mountains in the Lozère, have been condensed, and the water has flowed down in torrents towards the plain. The river is as clear as crystal now, and the many-coloured pebbles of its bed reflect the light, but a thunderstorm in the higher country may change it suddenly to the colour of red earth. The path led me into a steep forest, where I lost sight of the Tarn. The soil was too rocky for the trees--oaks and chestnuts chiefly--to grow very tall; consequently the underwood, although dense, was chequered all through with sunshine. Heather and bracken, holly and box, made a wilderness that spread over all the visible world, for the opposite side of the gorge was exactly similar. Shining in the sun amidst the flowering heather or glowing in majestic purple grandeur in the shade of shrubs stood many a foxglove, and almost as frequently seen was its relative _digitalis lutea_, whose flowers are much smaller and of a pale yellow. Now and again a little rill went whispering downward through the woods under plumes of forget-me-nots in a deep channel that it had cut by working age after age. Reaching at length a spot where I could look down into the bottom of the fissure, I perceived a small stream that was certainly not the Tarn. I had been ascending one of the lateral gorges of the valley, and had left the river somewhere to the north. My aim was now to strike it again in the higher country, and so I kept on my way. But the path vanished, and the forest became so dense that I was bound to realize that I was in difficulties. I resolved to try the bank of the stream, and reached it after some unpleasant experience of rocks, brambles and holly. Here, however, was a path which I followed nearly to the head of the gorge and then climbed to the plateau. There the land was cultivated, and the musical note of a cock turkey that hailed my coming from afar, as he swaggered in front of his harem on the march, led me to a spot where a man was mowing, and he told me where I should find the Tarn, which he, like all other people in the country, pronounced Tar. Evening was coming on when I had crossed this plateau, and I saw far below me the village of Marsal on the banks of the shining Tarn. The river here made one of those bold curves which add so much to its beauty. The little village looked so peaceful and charming that I decided to seek its hospitality for that night. There was but one inn at Marsal that undertook to lodge the stranger, and very seldom was any claim of the sort made upon it. The peasant family who lived in it looked to their bit of land and their two or three cows to keep them, not to the auberge. The bottles of liquor on the shelf were rarely taken down, except on Sundays, when villagers might saunter in, to gossip and smoke over coffee and _eau de vie_, or the glass of absinthe, which, since the failure of the vines in the South of France, has become there the most convivial of all drinks, although it makes men more quarrelsome than any other. In these poor riverside villages, however, where a mere ribbon of land is capable of cultivation--which, although exceedingly fertile, is constantly liable to be flooded by the uncertain Tarn--men have so little money in their pockets that water is their habitual drink, and when they depart from this rule they make a little dissipation go a very long way. I found this single auberge closed, and all the family in an adjoining field around a waggon already piled with hay, to which a couple of cows were harnessed. My appearance there brought the pitchforks suddenly to a rest. If I had been shot up from below like a stage-devil, these people could not have stared at me with greater amazement and a more frank expression of distrust. First in _patois_, and then, seeing that I was at a loss, in scarcely intelligible French, they asked me what my trade was, and what object I had in coming to Marsal. I tried to explain that I was not a mischievous person, that I was travelling merely to look at their beautiful rocks and gorges, but I failed completely to bring a hospitable expression into their faces. An old man of the party was the worst to deal with. He put the greatest number of questions and understood the least French, and all the while there was a most provokingly keen, suspicious glitter in his little gray eyes. Presently he beckoned me, and led the way, as I thought, to the inn; but such was not his intention. He stopped at the door of the communal school, where the schoolmaster was already waiting for me, for he had evidently been warned of the presence of a doubtful-looking stranger, who had come to the village on foot with a pack on his back, and who, being dressed a trifle better than the ordinary tramp, was probably the more dangerous for this reason. Like most of the village schoolmasters in France, this gentleman was also secretary at the _mairie_, a function highly stimulating to the sense of self-importance, and no wonder, considering that the person who fills it frequently supplies the mayor, who may scarcely be able to sign his name to official documents, with such intelligence as he may need for his public duties. This schoolmaster was affable and pleasant, but as a crowd quickly collected to see what would happen, he was not going to let a good opportunity slip of showing how indispensable he was to the safety of the village. He said that personally he was quite satisfied with my explanations, but that in his official capacity he was compelled to ask me for my papers. These were forthcoming, and the serious official air with which he pretended to read the English passport from beginning to end was very pretty comedy, considering that he did not understand a word of the language. Having asserted his importance, and made the desired impression, he invited me into his house, introduced me to his young wife, who was charmingly gracious, and who would have been pleased to see any fresh face at Marsal--English or Hottentot. I was really indebted to the schoolmaster, for he harangued in _patois_ the people of the inn drawn up in line, and by seizing a word here and there, I made out that I was a respectable Englishman travelling to improve my mind, and that they might receive me into their house without any distrust. And they did receive me, almost with open arms, when their doubts were removed. The old man slunk off, and I never saw him again; but the young couple to whom the inn had been given up now proved to me that their only wish was to please. They were rough people, but sound at heart and honest, as the French peasants, when, judged in the mass, undoubtedly are. The hostess, who, by-the-bye, gave me a soup-plate in which to wash my hands, was greatly perplexed to know how to get up a dinner for me, and, as she told me afterwards, she went to the schoolmaster and held a consultation with him on the subject. An astonishing dish of minced asparagus fried in oil was concocted in accordance with his prescription. It was ingenious, but I preferred her dish of barbel from the Tarn, notwithstanding the multitudinous bones which this fish perversely carries in its body, to choke the enemy, although nothing could be more absurd than such petty vengeance. The schoolmaster's wife said to me, with a suggestion of malice at the corners of her mouth, that she was afraid I should be troubled by a few fleas at the auberge. 'Oh, bast!' observed her husband; 'monsieur in his travels has doubtless already encountered a flea or two.' 'Yes, and other _bestioles_,' said I. Madame's local knowledge did not deceive her, but her expression 'a few fleas' did not at all represent the true state of affairs. And I had forgotten the precious powder and the little pair of bellows, without which no one should travel in Southern France. The morning air was fresh, and the fronds of the bracken were wet with dew, when I left Marsal, and took my course along the margin of the river through meadows that dwindled away into woodlands, where the rocky sides of the gorge rose abruptly from the stream. Haymakers were abroad, and I heard the sound of their scythes cutting through the heavy swathes with all their flowers; but the sunshine had not yet flashed down into the deep valley, and the grasshoppers were waiting to hail it from their watch-towers in the green herbage and on the purple heather. As the breeze stirred the leaves of the wood, it brought with it the perfume of hidden honeysuckle. Golden oriels were busy in the tops of the wild cherry trees, feeding upon the ripe fruit, and calling out their French name, _loriot_; and when they flew across the river, a gleam of brilliant yellow moved swiftly over the rippled surface. For an hour or so I remained in the shade of trees, and then the sandy path met a road where the gorge widened and cultivation returned. Here I left the stream for awhile. Now came sunny banks bright with the common flowers that deck most of the waysides of Europe. Bedstraw galium and field scabious, ox-eyes and knapweed, bladder-campions and ragged robins, mallows and crane's-bill--all the flowers of the English banks seemed to be there. Where the bare rock showed itself, yellow sedum spread its gold, and in the little clefts stood stalks of cotyledon, now turning brown. At the base of the rocks, where there was still some moisture, were the blue flowers of the brooklime veronica, and the brighter blue of the forget-me-not. Having passed a village, I met the Tarn again. Here the beauty of the rushing water, and all that was pictured upon it, tempted me to sit down upon a bank; but I had no sooner chosen the spot than I changed my intention. A red viper was curled up there, and sleeping so comfortably that it really seemed unkind to wake it with a blow across all its rings. When I thought, however, of the little consideration it would have shown me had I sat upon it, I added it without compunction to the number of _aspics_ I had already slain. My mind was taken off the contemplation of this good or evil deed by a scene that seemed to contain as much of the picturesque as the eye could seize and the mind dwell upon, without being bewildered and fatigued. I had turned the bend of the wooded gorge, and, looking up the river, saw what resembled a dyke of basalt stretching sheer across the stream, with a ruined castle on a bare and apparently inaccessible pinnacle, another ruin on the opposite end of the ridge, and, between the two, a little church on the brink of a precipice. Houses were clustered at the foot of the rocks by the blue water. This was Ambialet, so called from the extraordinary loop which the Tarn forms here in consequence of the mass of schistous rock which obstructs its direct channel. After flowing about two miles round a high promontory, where dark crags jut above the dark woods, the stream returns almost to the spot from which it was compelled to deviate, and the lower water is only separated from the upper by a few yards of rock. There are several similar phenomena in France, but there is none so remarkable as that at Ambialet. Although nothing is now to be seen of its defensive works, except the ruined castle upon the high rock, Ambialet was one of the strongest places in the Albigeois. Now a small and poor village, it was in the Middle Ages an important burg, with its consuls, its council of _prud'hommes_, and its court of justice. It became a fief of the viscounts of Beziers, and was thus drawn into the great religious conflict of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Viscount of Beziers having espoused the cause of Count Raymond of Toulouse. An army of Crusaders, which had been raised to crush the Albigenses, having Simon de Montfort at its head, appeared before Ambialet in 1209, and, although the burghers were quite capable of withstanding a long siege, they were so much impressed by the magnitude of the force brought against them, and also by Simon's sinister reputation, that they surrendered the place almost immediately. But when the army was campaigning elsewhere, these burghers, growing bold again, attacked the garrison that had been left in the town and castle, and distinguished themselves by one of those treacherous massacres which were among the small incidents of that ruthless war. When Simon reappeared in the Albigeois, the people of Ambialet, cowards again, laid down their arms. The castle was soon afterwards the meeting-place of De Montfort and Raymond VI.; but the interview, which it was hoped would lead to peace, had no such result, and the war was carried on in Languedoc and Guyenne with renewed fury. [Illustration: AMBIALET.] Ambialet was enjoying comparative freedom and self-government in an age when many a town was still in the midnight darkness of feudal servitude. It had its communal liberties and organization before the eleventh century. There is a very interesting charter in existence, dated 1136, by which Roger, Viscount of Beziers and Albi, recognises and confirms these liberties. Although it opens in Latin, the body of the charter is in the Romance language. It shows that the idiom of Southern Gaul in the twelfth century was a little nearer the Latin than that which is spoken now. The document is full of curious information. It tells us that the inhabitants of Ambialet were liable to be fined if they did not keep the street in front of their houses clean. Perhaps the towns in the South of France were less foul in the twelfth century than most of them are now. We learn, too, that the profits in connection with the most necessary trades were fixed in the interest of the greater number. Thus, the butchers were required to take oath that they would reserve for their own profit no more than the head of the animal that they killed. What sort of face would a butcher of to-day make if he were asked to work on such terms? The tavern-keepers had to take oath that they would buy no wine outside of the boundaries of the viscounty of Ambialet, which shows what was thought in the twelfth century of the practice of purchasing in the cheapest market to the neglect of communal interests. The price of wine, like that of bread, was fixed, and five worthies (_prohomes_) were appointed to examine weights and measures, and to confiscate those which were not just. The concluding part of the charter confirms the right of the youth of Ambialet to their traditional festivals and merry-making: 'E volem e auctreiam que lo Rei del Joven d'Ambilet puesco far sas festas, tener sos senescals e sos jutges, e sos sirvens e sos officials,' etc. The whole passage is worth giving in English, because historians tell us very little about the festive manners of the twelfth century: 'We wish and order that the King of Youth of Ambialet shall keep his festivals, have his seneschals, judges, servants, and officials, and that on the day appointed for the merry-making, the King of Youth shall demand from the most recently married man in the viscounty, and woman who shall have taken a husband, a pail of wine and a quarter of walnuts; and if they refuse, the king can order his officers to break the doors of their house, and neither we nor our bailiffs shall have the right to interfere. And any person who shall have cut ever so little from the leaves of the elm, planted upon the place, shall be sentenced by the King of Youth to pay a pail of wine, and the king can enforce it as above. Moreover, we declare that on the first day of May the youth shall have the right to set up a maypole, and any person who shall cut a portion of it shall owe a pail of wine, and the king can compel him to pay it, for such is our wish. We have granted this favour to the youth because, having been a witness of their merry-making, we have taken great pleasure and satisfaction therefrom.' This custom has been continued to the present day. The youth of Ambialet have their annual festival, and the most recently married couple of the commune are called upon to 'pay' their pail of wine, although the exact measure is not strictly enforced. The rocks at Ambialet at one time supported a multitude of dwellings, of which there would be no trace now had they been entirely of masonry. In addition to partial chambers made with the pick-axe, one sees here and there a series of stairs cut out of the mica-schist. The strength of the burg made it a place of refuge for numerous families in the Albigeois, who had retreats upon these rocks to which they repaired in time of danger. All that made up the grandeur and importance of the place has passed away. Among those who now guide the plough and scatter the grain for bread are descendants of the old nobility of the Albigeois. Fascinated by the quietude and picturesque decay of this beautiful spot by the Tarn, instead of leaving it in a few hours, as I had intended, I remained there for days. Let no wayfarer, if he can help it, be the slave of a programme. On the side of the promontory already mentioned, a rough bit of ancient forest, steep and craggy, stretches down to the strip of cultivated land beside the river. Here chance led me to take up my abode in an old farm-house--a long building of one story, with dovecot raised above the roof, and massive walls that kept the rooms cool even in the sultry afternoons. It was half surrounded by an orchard of plum, peach, apple, and cherry trees, and at the border of this were three majestic stone-pines, whose vast heads were lifted so high and seemed so full of radiance that they appeared to belong more to the sky than to the earth. The gleam of the oriel's golden breast could be seen amidst the branches, but the little birds that flew up there were lost to sight in the sunny wilderness of tufted leaves. On the stony slope above the orchard, the stock of an old and leafless vine, showing here and there over the purple flush of flowering marjoram and the more scattered gold of St. John's-wort, told the story of the perished vineyard. For centuries a rich wine had flowed from these slopes, but at length the phylloxera spread over them like flame, and now where the vine is dead the wild-flower blooms. A little higher a fringe of broom, the blossom gone, the pods blackening and shooting their seeds in the sun, marked the line of the virgin wilderness. Then came tall heather and bracken, dwarf oak and chestnut, box and juniper, all luxuriating about the blocks of mica-schist, a rock that holds water and is therefore conducive to a varied and splendid vegetation, wherever a soil can rest upon it. Towards the summit the trees and shrubs dwindled away, and then came the dry thyme-covered turf scenting the air. The tall thyme, the garden species in the North, had already flowered, but the common wild thyme of England, the _serpolet_ of the French, was beginning to spread its purple over the stony ground. A great wooden cross stood upon the ridge, and hard by, buffeted by the wintry winds and blazed upon by the summer sun, was the ancient priory of Nôtre Dame de l'Oder. I ring the bell. Presently a little wicket is pulled back, and a dark eye glitters at me from the other side of the door. It belongs to a serving brother, who, perceiving that I am not in petticoats, allows me to enter. While I am waiting for the Père Etienne, a Franciscan of wide learning, whose acquaintance had already brought me both pleasure and profit, I sit in the cloisters watching another Father counting the week's washing, which has just been brought in, and neatly folding up handkerchiefs and undergarments. He has placed a board across a wheelbarrow, and the heap of linen is upon this. Seated upon a stool, he leisurely takes each great coarse handkerchief with blue border, which, like the rest of the linen, has not been ironed, folds it into four, lays it upon another board, smooths it with his large, thin yellow hand, and so goes on with his task without saying a word or raising his eyes. He is a gaunt, angular, sallow man of about fifty, with hollow cheeks and long black beard. He has a melancholy air, and does his work as though he were thinking all the while that it is a part of the sum of labour he has to get through before reaching that perfect state of felicity in which there is no more washing to be done or counted. If there were only monks in the priory, this one would have very little to do in looking after the linen; but there are many boys who, although they are being educated with a view to the religious life, have not yet put off such worldly things as shirts. Very different from the sombre-looking Franciscan, bent over the wheelbarrow, is the Père Etienne. He is as cheerful and sprightly as if he were now convinced that a convent is the pleasantest place on earth to live in, and that outside of it all is vanity and vexation. He teaches the boys Latin, Greek, English, and the physical sciences. Although he has never been out of France and Italy, he can speak English, and actually make himself understood. He is a botanist, and he and I have already spent some hours together in his cell before a table strewn with floras and plants, both dry and fresh. This time we are joined by a young monk who has been gathering flowers on the banks of the Tarn, and has placed them between the leaves of a great Latin Bible. These meetings, and the library of the priory, with its valuable works by local historians, strengthened the spell by which Ambialet held me. The monks whom one occasionally meets in Languedoc are generally men of better culture than the ordinary rural clergy, most of whom show plainly enough by their ideas and the vigorous expressions which they rarely hesitate to use in any company that they are sons of the soil. As priests, situated as they are, this coarseness of manners and circumscribed range of ideas, so far from being a disadvantage, forms a bond of union between them and the people. A man to be deeply pitied is he who, having a really superior and cultivated mind, is charged with the cure of souls in some forlorn parish where nobody has the time or the taste to read. Such a priest must either bring his ideas down to those of the people around him, or be content to live in absolute intellectual isolation. He may turn to the companionship of books, it is true, but his library is very small; and if, as is probable, his income is not more than £40 a year, he is too poor to add to it. Such a revenue, when the bare needs of the body have been met, does not leave much for satisfying a literary appetite. The priory of Nôtre Dame de l'Oder was founded in the twelfth or thirteenth century by the Benedictines, but a church already existed on the spot as early, it is supposed, as the eighth century. The one now standing, and which became incorporated with the priory, probably dates from the eleventh. If the interior is cold by the severity of the lines scarcely broken by ornament, the artistic sense is warmed by the beauty of the proportions and general disposition. The apse, with its three little windows, has the perfect charm of grace and simplicity. A structural peculiarity, to be especially noted as one of the tentative efforts of Romanesque art, is the use of half-arches for the vaulting of the two narrow aisles. Unfortunately, the plastering mania, which has robbed the interior of so many French churches of their venerable air, has not spared this one. A singularly broad flight of steps, partly cut in the rock and covered with tiles, leads up to the portal; but as the building has been closed to the public since the application of the law dispersing religious communities, these steps look as if they belonged to the Castle of Indolence, so overgrown with grass are they and abandoned to the wandering wild-flowers. Great mulleins have been allowed to spring up from the gaps between the lichen-spotted tiles. When there was a regular community of monks here, the ancient pilgrimage to Nôtre Dame de l'Oder was kept up, and near the top of the _via crucis_, which forms a long succession of zigzags upon the bare rock, a dark shrub or small tree allied to box may be seen railed off with an image of the Virgin against it. According to the legend, a Crusader returning from the Holy Land made a pilgrimage to the sanctuary upon these rocks at Ambialet, and planted on the hill the staff he had brought with him. This grew to a tree, to which the people of the country gave the name of _oder_. In course of time it came to be so venerated that Nôtre Dame d'Ambialet was changed to Nôtre Dame de l'Oder. The existing tree is said to be a descendant of the original one. The monks at the priory told me that nearly all the old historical documents relating to Ambialet had been taken away by the English and placed in the Tower of London. In various parts of the Quercy, I had also been told exactly the same with regard to the documents connected with the early history of the locality. There are people who still speak of this as a proof of the intention of the English to return. How the belief became so widespread that the English placed the documents which they carried away in the Tower of London, I am unable to explain. Memory takes me back again to the farmhouse by the Tarn. It is well that there is plenty of space, for the household is numerous. There are the farmer, his wife and children, an aged mother whose voice has become a mere thread of sound, and who thinks over the past in the chimney-corner, sometimes with a distaff in her hand; two old uncles, a youth of all work, who has been brought up as one of the family, and a little bright-eyed, bare-legged servant girl, whose brown feet I still hear pattering upon the floors. One of the old men is a white-bearded priest of eighty-five, who has spent most of his life in Algeria, and has himself come to look like the patriarchal Arab in all but the costume. He has no longer any sacerdotal work, but he has other occupation. His special duty is to look after a great flesh-coloured pig, and many a time have I seen him under the orchard trees following close at the heels of the grunting beast while reading his office. His old breviary, like his _soutane_, is very much the worse for wear, the leaves having been thumbed nearly to the colour of chocolate; but if he had a new one now, he would find it hard to believe that it had the same virtue as the other. Notwithstanding his years, he can do harder work than watching a pig. I have seen him haymaking and reaping, and always the merriest of the party. Before taking the fork or the sickle in hand, he would hitch up his _soutane_, and reveal a pair of still active sacerdotal legs in white linen drawers. The sight of the old man bending his back while reaping, his white beard brushing the golden corn, was pathetic or comic as the humour might seize the beholder. As gay as any of the cicadas that keep the summer's jubilee in the sunny tree-tops, he sings songs that have nothing in common with psalms, and he needs little provocation to dance. French has become an awkward language to him, but his tongue is nimble enough both in Languedocian and Latin. When he hears that the evening soup is ready, he hurries the pig home, flourishes his stick above his head in imitation of the Arabs, and shouts in his cheeriest voice, 'Oportet manducare!' The other uncle's chief business is to look after a couple of cows, and as the farm has no pasturage but the orchard, he is away with them the greater part of the day along the banks of the Tarn. One evening I met him by the river, and he stopped me to quote a passage from the Georgics which he had recalled to mind. His face beamed with satisfaction. I knew that he had not been brought up to cow-tending, but was, nevertheless, taken aback when the unfortunate old bachelor wished me to share the pleasure he felt in having brought to mind a long-forgotten passage of Virgil. The surprises of real life never cease to be startling. Speaking to me afterwards of the growing extravagance of all classes, he said: 'When I was young there were only two _cafés_ in Albi, and none but the rich ever entered them. Now every man goes to his _café_. I remember when, in middle-class families in easy circumstances, coffee was only drunk two or three times a year, on festive occasions.' Very different is the state of things now in France. The figure of the old man bending upon his stick glides away by the dark willow-fringe of the Tarn, and I am standing alone in the solemn splendour of the luminous dusk--the clear-obscure of the quickly passing twilight, beside the bearded corn, whose gold is blended with the faint rosiness that spreads through the air of the valley, and lets free the fragrance of those flowers which keep all their sweetness for the evening. There is still a gleam of the lost sun upon the priory walls, and over the dark rocks and wooded hollows floats a purple haze. The dusk gathers apace, and the poplars that rise far above the willows along the river, their outlines shaded away into the black forest behind them, stand motionless like phantom trees, for not a leaf stirs; but the corn seems to grow more luminous, as if it had drunk something of the fire as well as the colour of the sun, while the horns of the sinking moon gleam silver-bright just over the topmost trees, painted in sepia upon a cobalt sky. How weird, phantasmal, enigmatic the forms of those trees now appear! Some like hell-hags, with wild hair flying, are rushing through the air; others, majestic, solitary, wrapped about with dark horror, are the trees of Fate; some have their arms raised in the frenzy of a torturing passion; others look like emblems of Care when hope and passion are alike dead: each touches the spring of a sombre thought or a fantastic fancy. On the road to Villefranche, about half a mile from Ambialet, is a mine which has been abandoned from time immemorial, and which the inhabitants say was worked by the English for gold. I have noticed, however, throughout this part of France, that nearly everything that was done in a remote age, whether good or evil, is attributed by the people to the English, and that they not infrequently make a curious confusion between Britons and Romans. As for the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and Arabs, all traditions respecting them appear to have passed out of the popular mind. In the side of a stony hill on which scarcely a plant grows, a narrow passage, a few feet wide, has been quarried, and air shafts have been cut down into it through the solid rock with prodigious labour. I followed this passage until a falling in of the roof prevented me from going any farther. I could perceive no trace of a metallic vein, so thoroughly had it been worked out, but scattered over the hillside with schist, talcose slate, and fragments of quartz, was a great deal of scoriae, showing that metal of some kind had been excavated, and that the smelting had been done on the spot. That the mine was worked for gold seems quite probable, inasmuch as a lump of mineral containing a considerable quantity of the precious metal was picked up near the entrance some years ago. Besides the scoriae, I found upon the hillside much broken pottery, and from the shape of several fragments it was easy to restore the form of earthenware pots which were probably used for smelting purposes. There is no record to show who the people were who were so busy upon these rocks glittering with mica and talc. They may have belonged to any one of the races who passed over the land from the time of the Romans. One morning, still in the month of July, I broke away from the charms of Ambialet, and shouldering again my old knapsack--which, by travelling hundreds of miles in all weathers, had become disgracefully shabby, but which was a friend too well stitched together to be thrown aside on account of ill-looks--I continued my journey up the valley of the Tarn. I had agreed to walk with the parish priest as far as the village of Villeneuve, and having found him at the presbytery, we passed through the churchyard on the edge of the rock. Here there is a remarkable cross, with the figure of Christ on one side and that of the Virgin on the other, not carved in relief, but in that early mediaeval style which consisted of hollowing out the stone around the image. The cure frankly declared that, if anyone offered him a large new cross in the place of this little one, he would be glad to make the exchange. It is unfortunate that so many rural priests place but little value upon religious antiquities other than images and relics which have a legend. Their appreciation of ecclesiastical art is too often regulated by the practical and utilitarian order of ideas. To dazzle the eye of the peasant may, and does, become the single aim of church ornamentation. Hence the brassy, vulgar altars, and those coloured plaster images of modern manufacture that one sees with regret in so many of the country churches of France. I soon took my last look at Ambialet, its rocks and ruins on which the wild pinks nodded, and its stone-covered roofs overgrown with white sedum. I was struck by the number of prickly plants on the sandy banks of the Tarn. Those which now made the best show of bloom were the star-thistle centaurea and _ononis repens_. The appearance of this last was very curious, for in addition to its pink pea-blossoms it seemed to be sprinkled over with little flowers the colour of forget-me-nots. These, however, were not flowers at all, but small flying beetles painted the brilliant blue of myosotis. Another plant that showed a strong liking for these banks was the horned poppy (_glaucium luteum_), which I had only found elsewhere near the sea-coast. Brown stalks of broomrape were still standing, and I lighted upon a lingering bee-ophrys, a plant which by its amazing mimicry makes one look at it with awe as if it were something supernatural. It was an invitation to lunch at a presbytery that was the reason for my companion taking a walk of about eight miles. Passing through a small village on the way he called for the _curé_ there, who was also an expected guest. This priest had obtained a reputation throughout the district for his humour, his eccentricity, and contempt for appearances. He had passed most of his life alone, cooking his food, making his bed, and probably mending his clothes, without the help of any woman. Being now over eighty years of age, he had realized the necessity of changing his ways, and a woman not much younger than himself had succeeded in obtaining a firm footing in his paved kitchen, which was also the dining-room and _salon_. His presbytery in the steep and rocky village street was no better built or more luxuriously furnished than the dwellings of his peasant parishioners. Here we found the old white-haired man, gay and hospitable, anxious to offer everything he had in the house to the visitor, but only able to think of two things which might be acceptable--snuff and sausage. '_Un peu de saucisson?_' he said to me, with a winning smile after handing me his snuff-box. I assured him I could eat nothing then. '_Tè!_ and so you are really English, monsieur?--_Un peu de saucisson?_' The _curé_ had been shut up in this village so many years, speaking nothing but Languedocian to his parishioners, even when preaching to them, that his French had become rather difficult to understand. I was keenly alive to the exceptional study of human nature presented by this fine specimen of an old rustic priest, who was not the less to be respected because he took a great deal of snuff, hated shaving, wore hob-nailed shoes of the roughest make, and a threadbare, soup-spotted _soutane_ with frayed edges. He was not a bit ascetic, and although he had lived so many years by himself, his good-humour and gaiety continually overflowed. It may be that a housekeeper tends to sour a priest's temper more than anything else, and this one knew it. The sacerdotal domestic help must be fifty years old when she enters the presbytery. Spinster or widow, she has that inherent purpose of every woman to be, if she can, the mistress of the house in which she lives. If she encounters no other woman in the field, against whom if she tried conclusions she would be broken like the earthen pot in the fable, she generally succeeds in achieving her ambition, although she may be in name a servant. There are such phenomena as hen-pecked priests, and those who peck them have no right whatever to do it. It is a state of things brought about by too much submission, for the sake of peace, to a mind determined to be uppermost while pretending to be humble. When we left again for Villeneuve, we were three in number, and the old _curé_ trudged along over the rocky or sandy paths as nimbly as either of his companions. He pointed out to me a spot in the Tarn where he said was a gulf the bottom of which had never been sounded. There are many such holes in the bed of this river, which receives much of its water from underground tributaries. I was looking at the mournful vine-terraces, now mostly abandoned and grass-grown. 'Ah!' said the octogenarian, shaking his head, and for once wearing a melancholy expression, 'the best wine of the South used to be grown there.' Near a village a very tall pole, probably a young poplar that had been barked, had been raised in a garden, and painted with stripes of red, white, and blue. It was described to me as a 'tree of liberty,' and I was told that the garden in which it was placed belonged to the mayor for the current year. Every fresh mayor had a fresh tree. At the village of Villeneuve I parted from my companions, who went to lunch with the _curé_, together with several other ecclesiastics. These occasional meetings and junketings at one another's houses are the chief mundane consolation of the rural priests, who are as weak as other mortals in the presence of a savoury dish, and, when they can afford to do so, they enter into the pleasures of hospitality with Horatian zest. Poor as they often are, they generally know the faggot that conceals a drop of old wine to place before the guest. The people in the South believe that the bounty of the Creator was intended to be made the most of, and the type of priest that one meets most frequently there in the richer parishes thinks that the next good thing to a clear conscience is a good table. I lunched at the auberge, and I had for my companion a ruby-faced cattle-dealer of about fifty. He spent his life chiefly in a trap, followed by an old cattle-dog of formidable build and determined expression of mouth. This animal was now lying down near the table, so tired and footsore from almost perpetual running that he thought it too much trouble to get up and eat. I read in his eye that he was in the habit of breathing every day of his life a canine curse on the business of cattle-dealing. His master seemed a good-natured man, but he had a fixed idea that was unfortunate for the dog. He considered that the beast ought to be able to run from thirty-five to forty miles a day, and that if he got sore paws it was his own fault. 'And do you never give him a lift?' 'Never!' roared the cattle-dealer, laughing like an ogre. The dog being now ten years old, I was not surprised to hear that he sometimes tried to lose himself just before his master was starting upon a long round. Considering his age, and all the running he had done in return for board and lodging, I thought his diplomacy excusable; but the cattle-dealer used strong language to express his loathing of such depravity and ingratitude in a dog old enough to be serious, and on which so much kindness had been lavished. This man had a very bad opinion of the inhabitants of that part of the Rouergue which I was about to cross, and he strove to convince me that it was very imprudent of me to think of travelling on foot and alone through such a wild country. Had I told him that I carried no other arm but my oak stick with iron spike, he would have been still more vehement. Frenchmen like the companionship of a revolver. I do not. In the first place, it makes me imagine there is an assassin lurking in every thicket; secondly, I do not know where to carry it conveniently so that it would be of use in time of need. I place confidence in my stick, and take my chance. To tell the plain truth, I did not believe what my table companion said about the dangerous character of the inhabitants. The reason he gave for their exceptional wickedness was that they were very poor, but this view was contrary to my experience of humanity. While we were talking over our coffee, there was a rising uproar in the village street. Looking out of the window, we saw two men fighting in the midst of a crowd. 'Ah!' exclaimed the cattle-dealer, with a sonorous chuckle, 'that ought to give you an idea of the capacities of the inhabitants.' Then, entering into the spirit of the battle, he shouted: 'Leave them alone--leave them alone! It is not men who are fighting; it is the juice of the grape!' Both combatants soon had enough of it, and very little damage was done on either side. The scene was more ludicrous than tragic. After all, it was well, perhaps, that these men had not learnt how to use their fists, and that with them pushing, slapping, and rolling upon one another satisfied honour. The hostess of this inn, while cooking the inevitable fowl for lunch, basted it after the Languedocian fashion, of which I had taken note elsewhere. Very different is it from what is commonly understood by basting. A curious implement is used for the purpose. This is an iron rod, with a piece of metal at one end twisted into the form of an extinguisher, but with a small opening left at the pointed extremity. The extinguisher, if it may be so termed, is made red-hot, or nearly so, and then a piece of fat bacon is put into it, which bursts into flame. A little stream of blazing fat passes through the small opening, and this is made to trickle over the fowl, which is turned upon, the spit by clockwork in front of the wood fire. The fowl or joint thus treated tastes of burnt bacon; but the Southerners like strong flavours, and revel in grease as well as garlic. Fat bacon is the basis of all cookery in Guyenne and Upper Languedoc, where the winters are too cold for the olive to flourish, and where butter is rarely seen. The _cuisine_ is substantial, but not refined. A little beyond Villeneuve I found Trébas, a pleasant river-side village, with a ferruginous spring that has obtained for the place a local reputation for healing. Here I left the Tarn again, and followed its tributary, the Ranee, for the sake of change. This stream ran at the bottom of a deep gorge, the sides of which were chiefly clothed with woods, but here and there was a patch of yellow corn-field and green vineyard. Reapers, men and women, were busy with their sickles, singing, as they worked, their Languedocian songs that troubadours may have been the first to sing; but nature was quiet with that repose which so quickly follows the great festival of flowers. Already the falling corn was whispering of the final feast of colour. All the earlier flowers of the summer were now casting or ripening their seed. I passed a little village on the opposite side of the gorge. The houses, built of dark stone, even to the roofs, looked scarcely different from their background of bare rock. Weedy vine-terraces without vines told the oft-repeated story of privation and long-lasting bitterness of heart in many a little home that once was happy. I found the grandeur of solitude, without any suggestion of human life, where huge rocks of gneiss and schist, having broken away from the sides of the gorge, lay along the margins and in the channel of the stream. Here I lingered, listening to the drowsy music of the flowing water, and the murmuring of the bees amongst the purple marjoram and the yellow agrimony, until the sunshine moving up the rocks reminded me of the fleet-winged hours. Continuing my way up the gorge, I presently saw a village clinging to a hill, with a massive and singular-looking church on the highest point. It was Plaisance, and I knew now that I had left the Albigeois, and had entered the Rouergue. Having decided to pass the night here, and the auberge being chosen, I climbed to the top of the bluff to have a near view of the church. It is a remarkable structure representing two architectural periods. The apse and transept are Romanesque, but the nave is Gothic. Over the intersection of the transept is a cupola supported by massive piers. Engaged with these are columns bearing elaborately carved capitals embellished with little figures of the quaintest workmanship. In the apse are two rows of columns with cubiform capitals carved in accordance with the florid Romanesque taste, as it was developed in Southern France. Although the little cemetery on the bluff was like scores of others I had seen in France--a bit of rough neglected field with small wooden crosses rising above the long herbage, tangled with flowers that love the waste places, I yielded to the charm of that old simplicity which is ever young and beautiful. I strolled amongst the grave mounds, and passing the sunny spot where the dead children of the village lay side by side, under the golden flowers of St. John's-wort, reached the edge of the rock, whose dark nakedness was hidden by reddening sedum, and looked at the wave-like hills, their yellow cornfields, vine terraces and woods, the gray-green roofs of the houses below, and lower still the stream flashing along through a desert of pebbles. Descending to the valley, I noticed the number and beauty of the vine trellises in the village. One, commencing at a Gothic archway, extended from wall to wall far up a narrow lane, and here the twilight fell an hour too soon. I wandered down to the pebbly shore of the Rance, where bare-footed children, sent out to look after pigs and geese, were building castles with the many-coloured stones, while others on the rocky banks above were singing in chorus, like a somewhat louder twittering of sedge warblers from the fringe of willows. I wandered on until all was quiet save the water, and returned to the inn when the fire on the hearth was sending forth a cheerful red glow through the dusk. The soup was bubbling in the chain pot, and a well-browned fowl was taking its final turns upon the spit. I dined with a commercial traveller, one who went about the country in a queer sort of vehicle containing samples of church ornaments and sacerdotal vestments. His business lay chiefly with the rural clergy, and, like most people, he seemed convinced that circumstances had pushed him into the wrong groove, and that he had remained in it too long for him to be able to get out of it. For twenty years he had been driving over the same roads, reappearing in the same villages and little towns, watching the same people growing old, and spending only three months of the year with his family in Toulouse. He declared the life of a commercial traveller, when the novelty of it had worn down, to be the most abominable of all lives. He was one of the most pleasant, and certainly the most melancholy, of commercial travellers whom I had met in my rambles. He left the impression on me that there was more money to be made nowadays in France by travelling with samples of _eau de vie_ and groceries than with church candlesticks and chasubles. Nevertheless, although he had his private quarrel with destiny, he was not at all a gloomy companion at dinner. A person who had not had previous experience of French country inns would have been astonished at the order in which the dishes were laid on the table. The first course after the soup was potatoes (_sautées_); then came barbel from the stream, and afterwards veal and fowl. The order is considered a matter of no importance; the main thing aimed at in the South of France is to give the guest plenty of dishes. If there is any fish, more often than not it makes its appearance after the roast, and I have even seen a custard figure as the first course. By living with the people one soon falls into their ways, accepting things as they come, without giving a thought to the conventional sequence. Among other things that one has to grow accustomed to in rural France, especially in the South, is the presence of beds in dining-rooms and kitchens. At first it rasps the sense of what is correct, but the very frequency of it soon brings indifference. In the large kitchen of this rather substantial auberge there was an alcove, a few feet from the chimney-place, containing a neatly tucked-up bed with a crucifix and little holy-water shell by the side. It was certainly a snug corner in winter, and I felt sure that the stout hostess reserved it for herself. ACROSS THE ROUERGUE. At an early hour in the morning I was wayfaring again. I had made up my mind to reach St. Affrique in a day's walk. There were some thirty miles of country to cross, and I had, moreover, to reckon with the July sun, which shines very earnestly in Southern France, as though it were bent on ripening all the fruits of the earth in a single day. By getting up earlier than usual I was able to watch the morning opening like a wild rose. When we feel all the charm that graces the beginning of a summer day, we resolve in future to rise with the birds, but the next morning's sun finds most of us sluggards again. I returned towards the Tarn, which I had left the day before, but with the intention of keeping somewhat to the south of it for awhile. However beautiful the scenery of a gorge may be, the sensation of being at the bottom of a crevice at length becomes depressing, and the mind, which is never satisfied with anything long, begins to wonder what the world is like beyond the enclosing cliffs, and the desire to climb them and to look forth under a wider range of sky grows stronger. Such change is needed, for when there is languor within, the impressions from without are dull. The country through which I now passed was very beautiful with its multitude of chestnut-trees, the pale yellow plumes of the male blossom still clinging to them and hiding half their leaves; but here again was the sad spectacle of abandoned, weedy, and almost leafless vineyards upon stony slopes which had been changed into fruit-bearing terraces by the long labour of dead generations. The first village I came to was Coupiac, lying in a deep hollow, from the bottom of which rose a rugged mass of schistous rock, with houses all about it, under the protecting shadow of a strong castle with high round towers in good preservation. It was a mediaeval fortress, but its mullioned windows cut in the walls of the towers and other details showed that it had been considerably modified and adapted to changed conditions of life at the time of the Renaissance. A troop of little girls were going up to it, and teaching Sisters, who had changed it into a stronghold of education, were waiting for them in the court. Hard by upon the edge of the castle rock was a calvary. The naked schist, ribbed and seamed, served for pavement in the steep little streets of this picturesque old village, where most of the people went barefoot. This is the custom of the region, and does not necessarily imply poverty. Here the _sabotier's_ trade is a poor one, and the cobbler's is still worse. In the Albigeois I was the neighbour of a well-to-do farmer who up to the age of sixty had never known the sensation of sock or stocking, nor had he ever worn a shoe of wood or leather. No female beauty did I see here, nor elsewhere in the Rouergue. Plainness of feature in men and women is the rule throughout this extensive tract of country. But there is this to be said in favour of the girls and younger women, that they generally have well-shaped figures and a very erect carriage, which last is undoubtedly due to the habit of carrying weights upon the head, especially water, which needs to be carefully balanced. How the peasants stared at me as I passed along! The expression of their faces showed that they were completely puzzled as to what manner of person I was, and what I was doing there. Had I been taking along a dancing-bear they would have understood my motives far better, and my social success with them would have been undoubtedly greater. As it was, most of them eyed me with extreme suspicion. Not having been rendered familiar, like the peasants of many other districts, with that harmless form of insanity which leads people to endure the hardship of tramping for the sake of observing the ruder aspects of human life, the lingering manners of old times, and of reading the book of nature in solitude, they thought I must perforce be engaged upon some sinister and wicked work. And now this reminds me of an old man at Ambialet, whom I used to send on errands to the nearest small town. He liked my money, but he could never satisfy his conscience that it was not something like treason to carry letters for me, for he had the feeling to the last that he was in the pay of the enemy. 'Ah!' he growled one day (not to me), 'I have always heard it said that the English regretted our beautiful rocks and rich valleys. They are coming back! I am sure they are coming back!' I used to see him looking at me askance with a peculiarly keen expression in his eyes, and as his words had been repeated to me I knew of what he was thinking. He was the first man of his condition who to my knowledge called rocks beautiful. The peasant class abhor rocks on account of their sterility, and because the rustic idea of a beautiful landscape is the fertile and level plain. In searching for the picturesque and the grandeur of nature, it is perfectly safe to go to those places which the peasant declares to be frightful by their ugliness. Leaving Coupiac behind me, I turned towards the east. The road, having been cut in the side of the cliff, exposed layers of brown argillaceous schist, like rotten wood, and so friable that it crumbled between the fingers; but what was more remarkable was that the layers, scarcely thicker than slate, instead of being on their natural plane, were turned up quite vertically. I was now ascending to the barren uplands. Near the brow of a hill I passed a very ancient crucifix of granite, the head, which must originally have been of the rudest sculpture, having the features quite obliterated by time. A rural postman in a blouse with red collar had been trudging up the hill behind me, and I let him overtake me so that I might fall into conversation with him, for these men are generally more intelligent or better informed than the peasants. I have often walked with them, and never without obtaining either instruction or amusement. When we had reached the highest ground, from which a splendid view was revealed of the Rouergue country.--a crumpled map of bare hills and deep dark gorges--the postman pointed out to me the village of Roquecésaire (Caesar's Rock), on a hill to the south, and told me a queer story of a battle between its inhabitants and those of an adjacent village. The quarrel, strange to say, arose over a statue of the Virgin, which was erected not long since upon a commanding position between the two villages. 'Now, the Holy Virgin,' said the postman, in no tone of mockery, 'was obliged to turn her back either to one village or the other, and this was the cause of the fight!' When first set up, the statue looked towards Roquecésaire, to the great satisfaction of the inhabitants; but the people of the other village, who thought themselves equally pious, held that they had been slighted; and the more they looked at the back of the Virgin turned towards them the angrier they became, and the more determined not to submit to the indignity. At length, unable to keep down their fury any longer, they sallied forth one day, men, women and children, with the intention of turning the statue round. But the people of Roquecésaire were vigilant, and, seeing the hostile crowd coming, went forth to give them battle. The combat raged furiously for hours, and it was watched--so said the postman--with much excitement and interest by the _curé_ of Montclar--the village we were now approaching--who, happening to have a telescope, was able to note the varying fortune of war. At length the Roquecésaire people got the worst of it, and they were driven away from the statue, which was promptly turned round. Although many persons were badly knocked about, nobody died for the cause. The energetic intervention of the spiritual and temporal authorities prevented a renewal of the scandal, and it was thought best, in the interest of peace, to allow the statue to be turned half-way to one village and half to the other. The postman was a little reserved at first, not knowing to what country I belonged, but when he was satisfied that I was not a German, he let his tongue rattle on with the freedom which is one of the peculiarities of his class. He confided to me that the best help to a man who walked much was absinthe. It pulled him up the hills and sent him whisking across the plains. 'I eat very little,' said my black-bearded, bright-eyed fellow-tramp; 'but,' he added, 'I drink three or four glasses of absinthe a day.' 'You will eat still less,' I said, 'if you don't soon begin to turn off the tap.' Considering the hard monotony of their lives and the strain imposed upon physical endurance by walking from twenty to twenty-five miles a day in all weathers, the rural postmen in France are a sober body of men. This one told me that he walked sometimes eight miles out of his way to carry a single letter. Thus gossiping, we reached Montclar, on the plateau, a little to the south of the deep gorge of the Tarn. Here we entered an auberge, where the postman was glad to moisten his dry throat with the green-eyed enemy. This inn was formerly one of those small châteaux--more correctly termed _maisons fortes_, or manors--which sprang up all over France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The inhabited part of the building was reached by a spiral staircase enclosed by a tower. A balcony connected with the principal room enabled me to read an inscription cut in a stone of the tower: 'Tristano Disclaris, 1615.' But for this record left by the founder, his name would probably have passed, long ago, out of the memory of men. I found that the chief occupation of the people in this house was that of making Roquefort cheeses; indeed, it was impossible not to guess what was going on from the all-pervading odour. And yet: I was still many miles from Roquefort! However, I knew all about this matter before. I was not twenty miles from Albi when I found that Roquefort cheese-making was a local industry. In fact, this is the case over a very wide region. The cheeses, having been made, are sent to Roquefort to ripen in the cellars, which have been excavated in the rock, and also to acquire the necessary reputation. While my lunch was being prepared I looked into the dairy, which was very clean and creditable. On the ground were large tubs of milk, and on tables were spread many earthenware moulds pierced with little holes and containing the pressed curds. The hostess was a buxom, good-tempered woman with rosy cheeks. She told me that she could not give me anything better than ham and eggs. She could not have offered me anything more acceptable after all the greasy cooking, the steadfast veal and invariable fowl which I had so long been compelled to accept daily with resignation. By a mysterious revelation of art she produced the ham and eggs in a way that made me think that she must surely be descended from one of the English adventurers who did all manner of mischief in the Rouergue some five or six centuries ago. Such ham and eggs in her case could only be explained by the theory of hereditary ideas. Nevertheless, she had become French enough to look at me with a dubious, albeit a good-natured eye. My motive in coming there and going farther without having any commercial object in view was more than she could fathom. After my visit to the dairy I fancy her private notion was that I was commissioned by the English Government to find out how Roquefort cheese was made, with a view to competition. At length, as we talked freely, she let the state of her mind with regard to me escape her unawares by putting this question plump: 'How is it the gendarmes have not stopped you?' 'That I cannot tell you,' said I, much amused by her candour; 'but you may be sure of this, I am not afraid of them.' Her husband was listening behind the door, and I observed an expression of relief in his face when I took up my pack and departed. If I was to be pounced upon, he preferred, for his own peace of mind and the reputation of his house, that it should be done elsewhere. All the village had heard of my coming, and when I reappeared outside there was a small crowd of people waiting to have a good look at me. I thought from these signs that I was likely to be asked to show my papers again by some petty functionary; but no, I was allowed to pass on without interference. Perhaps the postman had given a good account of me, the absinthe having touched his heart. There is much diplomacy in getting somebody on your side while travelling alone through these unopened districts far from railways. Wandering among the peasants of the Tarn and the Aveyron teaches one what ignorance really means, what blindness of intellect goes with it. And yet their enlightenment by the usual methods would be a doubtful blessing to themselves and others. I was now descending to the valley, and not long after leaving the village an attempt to escape from the winding hot road led me into one of those wildernesses which are to me infinitely more pleasing than the most artistic gardens, with their geometric flower-beds and their counterfeit lakes and grottoes. The surface of the land was thrown or washed up into dark-brown hillocks of broken argillaceous schist, which repelled vegetation, but the hollows were wooded with mountain oak and many shrubs. Farther down there were other hillocks, equally bare, but formed of the blue-looking lias marl which the husbandman detests with good reason, for its sterility is incorrigible. This _terre bleue_, as the peasants call it, was not the only sign of a change in the formation; fragments of calcareous stone were mixed with the brown soil. I was leaving the dark schist and was approaching those immense accumulations of jurassic rock, whose singular forms and brilliant colours lend such extraordinary grandeur to the scenery of the Upper Tarn. There was also a change in the vegetation. A large species of broom, four or five feet high, covered with golden blossom the size of pea-flowers, although the common broom had long passed its blooming, now showed itself as well as roseroot sedum, neither of which had I seen while coming over the schist. The cicadas returned and screamed from every tree. I captured one and examined the musical instrument--a truly marvellous bit of mechanism--that it carried in each of its sides. It is not legs which make the noise, as is the case with crickets and grasshoppers, but little hard membranes under the wings are scraped together at the creature's will. The sound is not musical, for when it is not a continuous scissor-grinding noise, it is like the cry of a corncrake with a weak throat; but what delight there is in it! and how it expresses that joy in the present and recklessness of the morrow, which the fabulist has in vain contrasted with the virtuous industry of the ant in order to point a moral for mankind!--vainly, because the _cigale's_ short life in the sunlit trees will ever seem to men a more ideal one than that of the earth-burrowing ant, with its possible longevity, its peevish parsimony, and restless anxiety for the future. I could have lain down under a tree like a gipsy in this wild spot, and let the summer dreams come to me from their airy castles amongst the leaves, if I had not made up my mind to reach St. Affrique before night. There was another reason which, although it clashes with poetry, had better be told for the sake of truth. Insects would soon have taken all pleasure from the siesta. Great black ants, and great red ones, little ants too, that could have walked with comfort through the eye of a fine needle, notwithstanding their wickedness, and intermediate species of the same much-praised family, would have scampered over me and stung me, and flies of bad propensities would have settled upon me. An enthusiastic entomologist has only to lie down in the open air in this part of France at the end of July or in August, and he will soon be able to observe, perhaps feel, sufficient insects travelling on their legs or on the wing to satisfy a great deal of curiosity. Often the air is all aflutter with butterflies, many of them remarkable for their size or the beauty of their colouring. One I have particularly noticed; not large, but coloured with exquisite gradations of bright-yellow, orange, and pale-green. I believe I added to my day's journey by my excursion across country, but the time would have passed less pleasantly on the road. The winding yellow line, however, appeared again, and I had to tramp upon it. And a hot, toilsome trudge it was, through that long narrow valley with scrubby woods reaching down to the road, but with no habitations and no water. It was the desert. The afternoon was far advanced when the country opened and I saw a village of coquettish appearance, for most of the houses had been washed with red, and many of the window-shutters were painted green. I was parched with thirst, for the sun had been broiling me for hours; therefore, when I saw this village on the hillside, I hurried towards it with the impatience of a traveller who sees the palm-trees over a well in the sands of Africa. In a place that could give so much attention to colour there must surely be an auberge, I thought. And I judged rightly, for there were two little inns. I found the door of the first one closed, and learnt that the people were out harvesting. I walked on to the next, and found that likewise closed, and was again informed that all the family were out in the fields. The whole village was nearly deserted; almost everyone was busy reaping and putting up the sheaves. I stopped beside the village pump and reflected upon my misery. I had resigned myself to water, when a woman carrying a sickle opened the door of one of the inns. Some friendly bird must have told her of my thirst and weariness--perhaps the merry little quail that I heard as I came up from the plain crying 'To-whit! To-whit!' That blessed auberge actually contained bottled beer. And the room was so cool that butter would not have melted in it. These southern houses have such thick stone walls that they have the double advantage of being warm in winter and delightfully cool in summer. I had some difficulty in resisting the temptation to stop the night at this inn; but I did resist it, and was again on the road to St. Affrique before the heat of the day had passed. Another toilsome trudge, during which I met an English threshing-machine being dragged along by bullocks, and the familiar words upon it made me feel for awhile quite at home. The apparition, however, gave me a shock, for the antique flail is still the instrument commonly used for threshing in the southern provinces of France. At a village called Moulin, lying in a rich and beautiful valley, I met the Sorgues, one of the larger tributaries of the Tarn, and for the rest of my journey I had the companionship of a charming stream. Evening came on, and the fiery blue above me grew soft and rosy. Rosy, too, were the cornfields, where bands of men and women, fifteen or twenty together, were reaping gaily, for the heat of the day was gone, the freshness of the twilight had come, and the fragrance of the valley was loosened. I had left the last group of reapers behind, and the silence of the dusk was broken only by the tree crickets and the rapids of the little river, when a woman passed me on the road and murmured '_Adicias!_' (God be with you!). '_Adicias!_ I replied, and then I was again alone. Presently there was a jangling of bells behind, and I was soon overtaken by three horses and a crowded _diligence_. The sound of the bells grew fainter and fainter, and once more I was alone with the summer night. The stars began to shine, and the river was lost in the mystery of shadow, save where a sunken rock made the water gleam white, and broke the peace with a cry of trouble. It was late when I reached St. Affrique, and I believe no tramp arrived at his bourne that night more weary than I, for I had been walking most of the day in the burning sun. But although I lay down like a jaded horse, I was too feverish to sleep. To make matters worse, there was a cock in the yard just underneath my window, and the fiendish creature considered it his duty to crow every two or three minutes after the stroke of midnight. How well did I then enter into the feelings of a man I knew who, under similar provocation, got up from his bed, and, taking a carving-knife from the kitchen, quietly and deftly cut off the cock's head before the astonished bird had time to protest. Having stopped the crowing and assured himself that it would not begin again, he went back to bed and slept the sleep of the innocent. I was out early the next morning, looking at the extraordinary astronomical dials of the parish church, covering much of the surface of the outer walls. All the straight lines, curves, and figures, and the inscriptions in Latin, must have the effect of convincing the majority of the inhabitants that their ignorance is hopeless. Such a display of science must be like wizard symbolism to the common people. The dials are exceedingly curious, and there are some really astonishing calculations, as, for instance, a table showing the 'number of souls that have appeared before the Tribunal of God.' Near a great sundial are these solemn words: 'Sol et luna faciunt quae precepta sunt eis; nos autem pergrimamur a Domino.' The church itself is one of the most fantastically ugly structures imaginable. All possible tricks of style and taste appear to have been played upon it. It is a jumble of heavy Gothic and Italian, and the apse is twisted out of line with the nave, in which respect, however, it is like the cathedral of Quimper. As I left the church a funeral procession approached, women carrying palls by the four corners a little in front of the coffin, according to the custom of the country when the dead person is of their own sex. St. Affrique is a small town of about 7,000 inhabitants, lying in a warm valley and surrounded by high hills, the sides of which were once covered with luxuriant vineyards. These slopes, arid, barren, and sun-scorched, are perfectly suited to the cultivation of the vine, the fig, and the almond; but the elevation is still too great for the olive. According to the authors of 'Gallia Christiana,' a saint named Fricus, or Africus, came at the beginning of the sixth century into the valley of the Sorgues, and was the founder of the burg. St. Affrique was a strong place in the Middle Ages, and for this reason it was disturbed less by the English than some other towns in the Rouergue. After the treaty of Brétigny the consuls went to Millau and swore fealty to the King of England, represented there by John Chandos. As I toiled up the side of the valley in the direction of Millau, I noticed the Rocher de Caylus, a large reddish and somewhat fantastically shaped block of oolitic rock, perched on the hill above the vineyards. Here the lower formation was schistous, the upper calcareous. The sun was intensely hot, but there was the shade of walnut-trees, of which I took advantage, although it is said to be poisonous, like that of the oleander. When I reached the plateau there was no shade whatever, baneful or beneficent. If there was ever any forest here all vestige of it has disappeared. I was on the border of the Causse de Larzac, one of the highest, most extensive, and hopelessly barren of the calcareous deserts which separate the rivers in this part of France. Not a drop of water, save what may have been collected in tanks for the use of sheep, and the few human beings who eke out an existence there, is to be found upon them. Swept by freezing winds in winter and burnt by a torrid sun in summer, their climate is as harsh as the soil is ungenerous. But although I was sun-broiled upon this _causse_, I was interested at every step by the flowers that I found there. Dry, chaffy, or prickly plants, corresponding in their nature to the aridity and asperity of the land, were peculiarly at home upon the undulating stoniness. The most beautiful flower then blooming was the catananche, which has won its poetic French name, _Cupidon bleu_, by the brilliant colour of its blossom. Multitudes of yellow everlastings also decked the solitude. On reaching the highest ground the crests of the bare Cevennes were seen against the cloudless sky to the south. A little to the east, beyond the valley of the Cernon, which I intended to cross, were high hills or cliffs, treeless and sterile, with hard-cut angular sides, terminating upwards in vertical walls of naked stone. These were the buttresses of the Causse de Larzac. The lower sides of some of the hills were blue with lias marl, and wherever they were steep not a blade of grass grew. Having descended to the valley, I was soon climbing towards Roquefort by the flanks of those melancholy hills which seemed to express the hopelessness of nature after ages of effort to overcome some evil power. And yet the tinkling of innumerable sheep-bells told that even here men had found a way of earning their bread. I saw the flocks moving high above me where all was wastefulness and rockiness, and heard the voices of the shepherds. There were the Roquefort sheep whose milk, converted into cheese of the first quality, is sent into distant countries whose people little imagine that its constituents are drawn from a desert where there is little else but stones. I came in view of the village, clinging as it seemed to the steep at the base of a huge bastion of stark jurassic rock. Facing it was another barren hill, and in the valley beneath were mamelons of dark clay and stones partly conquered by the great broom and burning with its flame of gold. When I reached the village I felt that I had earned a rest. Cheese, which has been the fortune of Roquefort, has destroyed its picturesqueness. It has brought speculators there who have raised great ugly square buildings of dazzling whiteness, in harsh contrast with the character and sombre tone of the old houses. Although the place is so small that it consists of only one street and a few alleys, the more ancient dwellings are remarkable for their height. It is surprising to see in a village lost among the sterile hills houses three stories high. The fact that there is only a ledge on which to build must be the explanation. What is most curious in the place is the cellars. Before the cheese became an important article of commerce these were natural caverns, such as are everywhere to be found in this calcareous formation, but now they are really cellars which have been excavated to such a depth in the rock that they are to be seen in as many as five stages, where long rows of cheeses are stacked one over the other. The virtue of these cellars from the cheese-making point of view is their dryness and their scarcely varying temperature of about 8° Centigrade summer and winter. But the demand for Roquefort cheese has become so great that trickery now plays a part in the ripening process. The peasants have learnt that 'time is money,' and they have found that bread-crumbs mixed with the curd cause those green streaks of mouldiness, which denote that the cheese is fit for the market, to appear much more readily than was formerly the case when it was left to do the best it could for itself with the aid of a subterranean atmosphere. This is not exactly cheating; it is commercial enterprise, the result of competition and other circumstances too strong for poor human nature. In cheese-making, breadcrumbs are found to be a cheap substitute for time, and it is said that those who have taken to beer-brewing in this region have found that box, which here is the commonest of shrubs, is a cheap substitute for hops. The notion that brass pins are stuck into Roquefort cheese to make it turn green is founded on fiction. Having remained at Roquefort long enough to see all that was needful, to lunch and to be overcharged--commercial enterprise is very infectious--I turned my back upon it and scrambled down a stony path to the bottom of the valley where the Cernon--now a mere thread of a stream--curled and sparkled in the middle of its wide channel, the yellow flowers and pale-green leaves of the horned poppy basking upon the rocky banks. Following it down to the Tarn, I came to the village of St. Rome de Cernon, where the houses of dark-gray stone, built on a hillside, are overtopped by the round tower of a small mediaeval fortress which has been patched up and put to some modern use. I thought the people very ill-favoured by nature here, but perhaps they are not more so than others in the district. The harshness of nature is strongly reflected in all faces. Having passed a man on the bank of the stream washing his linen--presumably his own--with bare arms, sinewy and hairy like a gorilla's, I was again in the open country; but instead of following donkey-paths and sheep-tracks I was upon the dusty highroad. Well, even a, _route nationale_, however hot and dusty, so that it be not too straight, has its advantages, which are felt after you have been walking an uncertain number of miles over a very rough country, trusting to luck to lead you where you wished to go. The feeling that you may at length step out freely and not worry yourself with a map and compass is a kind of pleasure which, like all others, is only so by the force of contrast and the charm of variety. I knew that I could now tramp along this road without troubling myself about anything, and that I should reach Millau sooner or later. It was really very hot--ideal sunstroke weather, verging on 90° in the shade; but I had become hardened to it, and was as dry as a smoked herring. For miles I saw no human being and heard no sound of life except the shrilling of grasshoppers and the more strident song of the cicadas in the trees. By-and-by houses showed themselves, and I came to the village of St. Georges beside the bright little Cernon, but surrounded by wasteful, desolate hills, one of which, shaped like a cone, reared its yellow rocky summit far towards the blue solitude of the dazzling sky. I passed by little gardens where great hollyhocks flamed in the afternoon sunshine, then I met the Tarn again and reached Millau, a weary and dusty wayfarer. I stopped in Millau (sometimes spelt Milhau) more than a day, in order to rest and to ramble--moderately. Although the town, with its 16,000 inhabitants, is the most populous in the department of the Aveyron, it is so remote from all large centres and currents of human movement that very little French is spoken there. And this French is about on a par with the English of the Sheffield grinders. In the better-class families an effort now is made to keep _patois_ out-of-doors for the sake of the children; but there is scarcely a middle-aged native to whom it is not the mother-tongue. The common dialect is not quite the same throughout Guyenne and Languedoc; but the local variations are much less marked than one would expect, considering that the _langue d'oc_ has been virtually abandoned as a literary vehicle for centuries. The word _oc_ (yes), which was once the most convenient sound to distinguish the dialect from that of the northern half of France, is not easy to recognise nowadays in the conversation of the people. The _c_ in the word is not pronounced--perhaps it never was--and the _o_ is usually joined to _bè_, which has the same meaning as _bien_ in the French language. Thus we have the forms _obè_, _opè_, and _apè_ according to the district, and all equivalent to 'yes.' All these people can understand Spanish when spoken slowly. Many can catch your meaning when you speak to them in French, but reply in _patois_. I had grown accustomed, although not reconciled, to this manner of conversing with peasants; but I was surprised to find on entering a shop at Millau that neither the man nor his wife there could reply to me in French. This town lies in the bottom of a basin; some of the high hills, especially those on the east, showing savage escarpments with towering masses of yellow or reddish rock at the summits. The climate of the valley is delightful in winter, but sultry and enervating in summer. It is so protected from the winds that the mulberry flourishes there, and countless almond-trees rise above the vines on the burning hillsides. Millau presents a good deal of interest to the archaeologist. Very noteworthy is the ancient market-place, where the first and upper stories project far over the paving and are supported by a colonnade. Some of the columns, with elaborately carved Romanesque capitals, date from the twelfth century, and look ready to fall into fragments. At one end of the square is an immense modern crucifix--a sure sign that the civic authorities do not yet share the views of the municipal councillors of Paris in regard to religious emblems. Protestants, however, are numerous at Millau as well as at St. Affrique, both towns having been important centres of Calvinism at the time of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes; and after the forced emigration many of the inhabitants must have strongly sympathized with their persecuted neighbours, the Camisards. Nevertheless, the department of the Aveyron, taken in its entirety, is now one of the most fervently Catholic in France. The church is Romanesque, with a marked Byzantine tendency. It has an elegant apse, decorated in good taste; but the edifice having received various patchings and decorations at the time of the Renaissance, the uniformity of style has been spoilt. The most striking architectural feature of the town is a high Gothic belfry of octagonal form, with a massive square tower for its base. In the Middle Ages the government of this town was vested in six consuls, who received twenty gold florins a year as salary, and also a new robe of red and black cloth with a hood. In 1341 they furnished forty men-at-arms for the war against the English, but the place was given up to Chandos in 1362. The rising of 1369 delivered the burghers again from the British power, but for twenty-two years they were continually fighting with the English companies. The evening before I left Millau I strolled into the little square where the great crucifix stands. I found it densely crowded. Three or four hundred men were there, each wearing a blouse and carrying a sickle with a bit of osier laid upon the sharp edge of the blade along its whole length, and firmly tied. All these harvesters were waiting to be hired for the following week. They belonged to a class much less numerous in France than in England--the agricultural labourers who have no direct interest in the soil that they help to cultivate and the crops that they help to gather in. I have often met them on the dusty roads, frequently walking with bare feet, carrying the implements of their husbandry and a little bundle of clothes. It must be very hard to ask for work from farm to farm. I can enter fully into the attachment of the French peasant to his bit of land, which, although it may yield him little more than his black bread, cannot be taken from him so long as he can manage to live by the sweat of his brow. Many of these peasant proprietors can barely keep body and soul together; but when they lie down upon their wretched beds at night, they feel thankful that the roof that covers them and the soil that supports them are their own. The wind may howl about the eaves, and the snow may drift against the wall, but they know that the one will calm down, and that the other will melt, and that life will go on as before--hard, back-breaking, grudging even the dark bread, but secure and independent. Waiting to be hired by another man, almost like a beast of burden--what a trial is here for pride! Happily for the human race, pride, although it springs naturally in the breast of man, only becomes luxuriant with cultivation. The poor labourer does not feel it unless his instinctive sense of justice has been outraged. THE BLACK CAUSSE. One cannot be sure of the weather even in the South of France, where the skies are supposed, by those who do not know them, to be perpetually blue. The 'South of France' itself is a very deceptive term. The climate on one side of a range of mountains or high hills may be altogether different from that on the other. In Upper Languedoc and Guyenne the climate is regulated by three principal factors: the elevation of the soil, the influence of the Mediterranean, and the influence of the Atlantic. On the northern side of the Cevennes, the currents from the ocean, together with the altitude, do much to keep the air moist and comparatively cool in summer; whereas on the other side of the chain, where the Mediterranean influence--in a large measure African--is paramount, the climate is dry and torrid during the hot months. A liability to sudden changes goes with the advantages of the more favoured region. This was enforced upon me at Millau. At seven o'clock the sky, lately of such a fiery blue, was of a most mournful smokiness, and the rain fell in a drenching spray. It was mountain weather, and I blamed the Cevennes for it. But I was in the South, and at a season when bad weather is seldom in earnest, so I did not despair of a change when the sun rose higher. It came, in fact, at about eight o'clock, when, a breeze springing up, the clouds, after a short struggle, were swept away. The market-women spread out upon the pavement their tomatoes, their purple _aubergines_, their peaches, and green almonds; the harvesters, long hesitating, went out into the fields to reap; and I, leaving the Tarn, took my way up the valley of the gleaming Dourbie. Millau was soon nearly hidden in its basin, but above it, on the sides of the surrounding hills, scattered amongst the sickly vines, or the vigorous young plants which promised in a few years to make the stony soil flow once more with purple juice, were the small white houses of the wine-growers. Where I could, I walked in the shade of walnut and mulberry trees, for the heat was great, and the rain that had fallen rose like steam in the sun-blaze from the herbage and the golden stubble. In this low valley all corn except maize had been gathered in, and Nature was resting, after her labour, with the smile of maternity on her face. Nevertheless, this stillness of the summer's fulfilment, this pause in the energy of production, is saddening to the wayfarer, to whom the vernal splendour of the year and the time of blossoming seem like the gifts of yesterday. The serenity of the burnished plains now prompts him upward, where he hopes to overtake the tarrying spring upon the cool and grassy mountains. Although the mountains towards which I was now bearing were the melancholy and arid Cevennes, I wished the distance less that lay between me and their barren flanks, where the breeze would be scented with the bloom of lavender. There were flowers along the wayside here, but they were the same that I had been seeing for many a league, and they reminded me too forcibly of the rapid flight of the summer days by their haste--their unnecessary haste, as I thought--in passing from the flower to the seed. A sprig of lithosperm stood like a little tree laden with Dead Sea fruit, for the naked seeds clung hard and flinty where the flowers had been. The glaucium, although still blooming, had put forth horns nine inches long, and the wild barley, so lately green, was now a brown fringe along the dusty road. And thus all these familiar forms of vegetable life, which we notice in our wanderings, but never understand, come and go, perish and rise again--so quickly, too, that we have no time to listen to what they say; we only feel that the song which they sing along the waysides of the world is ever joyous and ever sad. In the lower part of this valley were scattered farmhouses, which looked like small rural churches, for their high rectangular dovecots at one end had much the air of towers with broach spires. Throughout Guyenne one is amazed at the apparently extravagant scale on which accommodation has been provided for pigeon-rearing. There are plenty of pigeons in the country, but the size of their houses is usually out of all proportion to the number of lodgers, and dovecots without tenants are almost as frequently seen as those that are tenanted. They are seldom of modern construction; many are centuries old. All this points to the conclusion that people of former times laid much greater store by pigeon-flesh than their descendants do. It may have been that other animal food was relatively more expensive than at the present day. But as I ascended the valley the breadth of cultivated land grew narrower, and the habitations fewer. On either side the cliffs rose higher, and the walls of Jurassic rock, above the brashy steeps, more towering, precipitous, and fantastic. Where vegetable life could draw sustenance from crumbling, stones stretched a veritable forest of box. Now, in a narrow gorge, the Dourbie frolicked about the heaps of pebbles it had thrown up in its winter fury. Strong wires, attached to high rocks, crossed the gorge and the stream, and were made fast to the side of the road. Bundles of newly-cut box at the lower end showed the use to which these wires were put. Far aloft upon the heated rocks women were cutting down the tough shrub for firewood or manure, for it is put to both uses. It serves a very useful purpose when buried in dense layers between the vine rows. When I looked aloft, and saw those petticoated beings toiling in the terrible heat, I thought it a pity that there was no society to protect women as well as horses from being cruelly overworked. Let social reformers ponder this truth: The more the man is encouraged to shirk work, the more the woman will have to toil to make up for wasted time. As it is, women everywhere, except perhaps in England, work harder than men, as far as I can speak from observation. I was on my way to Vieux Montpellier--the 'Devil's City'--and already the scenery began to take the character to be expected of it in such a neighbourhood. It seemed as though the demon builder of the fantastic town, sporting with man's architectural ideals before his appearance on the earth, had hewn the red and yellow rocks above the Dourbie into the ironic semblance of feudal towers and heaven-pointing spires. The highest limestone rocks in this region, those which rise from the plateau or _causse_ and strike the imagination by the strangeness of their forms, are dolomite; in the gorges they approach the character of lias towards the base, and not unfrequently contain lumps of pure silex embedded in their mass. The redness which they so often show, and which, alternating with yellow, white, or gray, adds to the grandeur of their rugged outlines, is due to the iron which the rock contains. A young gipsy-woman, carrying a child upon her shoulders, and holding on to a dusky little leg on each side of her neck, followed in the wake of an old caravan drawn by a mule of resigned countenance--a beast that seemed to have made a vow never to hurry again, and to let the flies do their worst. She vanished upon the winding road, and presently I saw another wayfarer seated on the bank beside the stream, binding up a bleeding foot under the trailing traveller's joy. Before reaching the village of La Roque-Sainte-Marguerite, I passed a genuine rock dwelling. A natural cavern, some twenty or thirty feet above the level of the road, had been walled up to make a house. It had its door and windows like any other dwelling, and some convenient crevice in the rock had probably been used for a chimney. Having taken an hour's rest and a light meal in the village, I commenced the ascent towards the 'Devil's City.' A mule-path wound up the steep side of the gorge, which had been partly reclaimed from the desert by means of terraces where many almond-trees flourished, safe from the north wind. Very scanty, however, was the vegetation that grew upon this dry stony soil, burning in summer, and washed in winter of its organic matter by the mountain rains. Tall woody spurges two feet high or more, with tufts of dusty green leaves, managed to draw, however, abundant moisture from the waste, as the milk that gushed from the smallest wound attested. An everlasting pea, with very large flowers of a deep rose-colour, also loved this arid steep. I was wondering why I found no lavender, when I saw a gray-blue tuft above me, and welcomed it like an old friend. The air was soon scented with the plant, and for five days I was in the land of lavender. On nearing the buttresses of the plateau the ground was less steep, and here I came to pines, junipers, oaks, and the bird-cherry prunus. But the tree which I was most pleased to find was a plum, with ripe fruit about the size of a small greengage, but of a beautiful pale rose-colour. I am now upon the _causse_ and already see the castellated outworks of the 'Devil's City.' The city itself lies in a hollow, and I have not yet reached it. The mule-path fortunately leads in the right direction. On my way multitudes of very dark, almost black, butterflies flutter up from the short turf, which is flecked with the gold of yellow everlastings. Here and there a solitary round-headed allium nods from the top of its long leafless stem. I walk over the shining dark leaves and the scarlet beads of the bearberry, and am presently roaming in the fantastic streets of the dolomitic city. To say streets is scarcely an exaggeration, for these jutting rocks have in places almost the regularity of the menhirs of Carnac. But the megalithic monuments of Brittany are like arrow-heads compared to the stones of Montpellier-le-Vieux. In placing these and in giving them that mimicry of familiar forms at times so startling to human eyes, Nature has been the sole engineer and artist. There is but one theory by which the working cause of the existing phenomena can be brought to our understanding. It is that these honeycombed and fantastically-shaped masses of dolomite or magnesian limestone represent the skeletons of vaster rocks whose less resisting parts were washed away by the wearing action of the sea. Some are formed of blocks of varying size, lying one upon another, with a pinnacle or dome at the summit; others show no trace of stratification, but are integral rocks which in many cases appear to have been cut away and fashioned to the mocking likeness of some animal form by a demon statuary. Now it is a colossal owl, now a frightful head that may be human or devilish, now some inanimate shape such as a prodigious wineglass which fixes the eye and excites the fancy. A mass of rock on which can be seen half sitting, half reclining, a monstrous stony shape with head hideously jovial, has been named the 'Devil's Chair.' I saw this spot under circumstances very favourable to the full reception of its fantastic, mysterious, and gloomy influence. It was late enough in the afternoon for the feeling of evening and of the coming night to be in the air, especially here, where dark pines stood in the mimic streets and squares like cypresses in a cemetery. The awful mournfulness of the shadowy groves was deepened by my own solitariness, for although surrounded by frightful shapes that caricatured humanity, mine was the only human form that moved amongst the dumb but fiend-like rocks and the pines, which moaned and whispered like unhappy ghosts. I was alone in the 'Devil's City,' and perchance with the devil himself. When a hawk flew over and screamed it was welcome, although there was nothing cheerful in its cry. There could be no severer trial perhaps to the nerves of a superstitious person than to take a solitary walk by moonlight through Montpellier-le-Vieux. The sense of the weird and the horrible would give him too many cold shudders for him to enjoy the grandeur and the strangeness of the scene. The superstitious horror in which this spot has always been held by the peasants--chiefly shepherds--of the district, together with the fact that the rustic, uninfluenced from without, never speaks of rocks except in terms of contempt, however extraordinary their forms may be, must be the reason why Montpellier-le-Vieux has only been known of late years to persons interested in such curiosities of nature. To the geologist it is fascinating ground, as, indeed, is the whole expanse of these _causses_ of Guyenne and Upper Languedoc, so fissured and honeycombed--a region of gorges and caverns, of subterranean lakes and rivers, of bottomless pits and mysterious streams. It is said that the dolomitic city owes its name, Montpellier-le-Vieux, to the shepherds of Lower Languedoc, who from time immemorial have brought their flocks in summer to pasture upon these highlands. In their dialect they call Montpellier, which is to them what Paris is to the peasants of the Brie, 'Lou Clapas'--literally, a heap of stones. On seeing rocks covering several acres, and looking like the ruins of a great city of the past, they could think of no better name for it than 'Lou Clapas Biel,' or 'old heap of stones.' This turned into French becomes Montpellier-le-Vieux. The 'Devil's City' can be recommended to the botanist, who need not fear that the flowers he will find there will wither at his touch like those gathered for Marguerite by her guileless lover. The ever-crumbling dolomite has formed a soil very favourable to a varied flora. As I had, however, to reach the gorge of the Tarn before nightfall, and it was still far off, I only took away two souvenirs of the diabolic garden--a white scabious and a bit of rock-potentil. The name given to the tract of country I was now crossing--the Causse Noir, fitly describes it, It is singularly dark and mournful, and almost uninhabited. It is not, strictly speaking, a plateau, but a succession of valleys and low hills like the bed of the ocean. The barren land is thickly overgrown with box and juniper, and these shrubs, which often attain a height of six or eight feet, sufficiently account for the sombre tone of the landscape. Here and there savage little, gorges run up between the dismal hills, with trees of larger growth, such as oaks and pines, in the hollows. There is good reason to believe that all these _causses_ were at one time more or less covered by forests; but the reason commonly given for their disappearance--namely, that they were burnt down during the religious wars--is less likely to be the true one than that they gradually perished because it was nobody's business to protect the seedlings from sheep and goats--animals capable of changing the world into a treeless desert, but which, fortunately, cease to be profitable when they come down from the sterile highlands, where they thrive best, into the rich plains and valleys. The disastrous floods which occur with such appalling suddenness in the valleys of the Tarn and the Lot are due in a large measure to the nudity of the _causses_ and the Cevennes, where these mountains turn northward and cross the Lozère to meet the Auvergne range. The French Government nurses the hope that it will be able some day to cover much of the baldness of this extensive region with magnificent pine-forests, and planting actually goes on in places; but what with the nibbling flocks, and the increasing seventy of the winters, the measure of success already obtained by such laudable efforts is not encouraging. I wished to reach Peyreleau that night, but how to get there I knew not otherwise than by persistently keeping in a north-easterly course, and despising all natural obstacles. I was attracted by what looked like a road running up between two hills in the right direction; but when I came to it I found that it was the dry channel of a stream. I nevertheless took advantage of it, as I have of many another such in the South, although there are few watercourses whose beds can be walked upon with comfort. I was lucky now beyond my expectations, for it was not long before I struck a road which I was sure could lead nowhere but to Peyreleau. It first took me through a darkly-wooded gorge, where evening stood like a nun in a chapel. The brilliant sky had changed to a sad gray. There was to be no gorgeous sunset, with rosy after-glow, softening with transparent colour the harshness of the dark box and darker juniper. No: the day that commenced sadly was ending sadly--going to its grave in a gray habit with drawn cowl. A great falcon passed slowly on its way under the dull sky, but no bird nor beast uttered a sound. The Causse Noir was as silent as a crypt. I became very uncertain where this road over the dismal solitude was going to lead me, for it turned about in such a way as to put me out of my reckoning. At length I saw a deep gorge yawning below, and this told me that I had reached the edge of the _causse_. Oh, the sublime desolation of these heights and depths in the solemn evening! How, mournful then is the silence of the innumerable, gray stones and monstrous rocks which try to speak to us like creatures once eloquent and possessing the knowledge of wondrous changes, and the key to problems that everlastingly distress the human mind, but on which the curse of dumbness has lain for ages! I thought that I must have wandered beyond the peopled world, when suddenly I saw, far down in the bottom of the widening valley, a village or small town at the foot of a cone-shaped hill. The little river running near satisfied me that I was in view of Peyreleau. The descent was tedious and long, notwithstanding the loops that I cut off of the curling road by scrambling down the steep sides of the gorge over the loose stones and lavender. It was still daylight when I reached a small hotel, outside of which some tourists were smoking cigarettes and drinking beer while waiting for dinner. Until then I had not seen a tourist after leaving Albi. All through the Albigeois and the Rouergue, I was looked upon as an animal of unknown species, and possibly noxious; but here I was recognised at once as one of a familiar tribe, of small brain development, but harmless. I had entered a region which for several years past had drawn to it many persons--mostly French--who had heard of the grand gorge, or cañon, of the Tarn. I had been told that the right way--the one followed by all sensible people--of seeing the gorge from Sainte-Enimie to Le Rozier was to come down the stream in a boat; but circumstances, or my own perversity, had led me once more to do the thing that was considered wrong. Instead of coming down the swift stream like a fly on a leaf, my intention was to crawl up the gorge by such goat or mule paths as were available on the margin of the river or on the ledges of the cliffs. Thus I should not be obliged to treat every fresh view as if it were a bird on the wing, but could dawdle as long as I pleased over this or that object without being a trouble to anybody. It was far from unpleasant, however, to spend an evening at this water-side inn with people fresh from Paris, bringing with them the spray of the sea that beats against the shores of high-strung life. Nor was it unpleasant to find a little refinement in the kitchen again, and to eat trout not saturated with the essence of garlic. THE CAÑON OF THE TARN. At an early hour next morning I was making my way up the gorge beside the Tarn; but before leaving Peyreleau, I wandered about its steep streets--in some places a series of steps cut in the rock--noted Gothic doorways, and houses with interior vaulting, and climbed to the top of a machicolated tower built over the ivy-draped wall of a ruined castle. The place is very charming to the eye; but in this region one soon becomes a spoilt child of the picturesque, and the mind, fatigued by admiration, loses something of its sensibility to the impressions of beauty and grandeur, and is capable of passing by almost unmoved what, where Nature deals out her surprises with a calmer hand, might engrave upon the memory images of lasting delight. This is the chief reason, perhaps, why I hate the hurry of the sightseer who, even in his pleasure, makes himself the bondman of time and the creature of convention. It was pleasant and easy walking on the bank of the river, for as yet the cliffs were far apart, and in the valley there were strips of meadow and flowering buckwheat. The water, where it was not broken into white anger by the rocky channel, was intensely green with the reflection of poplar and alder, although of crystal clearness. I watched the large trout swimming in the pools, and wished I had a rod, but consoled myself with the thought that if I had brought one I should probably have not seen a fish. Opportunities are never so ready to show themselves as when we have not the means of seizing them. While I was looking at the river, a boat shot into view round a bend of the gorge and came down like an arrow over the rapids. It contained a small party of tourists and two boatmen, who stood in. the flat-bottomed craft with poles in their hands, with which they kept it clear of the rocks. I understood at once the delicious excitement of coming down the Tarn in this fashion. Bucketfuls of water are often shipped where the stream rushes furiously between walls of rock; but the men have become so expert with practice that the risk of being capsized is very slight. In a few minutes the boat had vanished, and then the gorge became wilder and sterner; but just as I thought the sentiment of desolation perfect, a little goatherd, who had climbed high up the rocks somewhere with his equally sure-footed companions, began to sing, not a pastoral ditty in the Southern dialect, but the 'Marseillaise,' thus recalling with shocking incongruity impressions of screaming barrel-organs at the fête of St. Cloud. The gorge narrowed and the rocks rose higher, the topmost crags being 1,000 or 1,200 feet above the water. Although everything here was on a grander scale, all the strong peculiarities of formation which I had remarked elsewhere in Guyenne and Languedoc, wherever the layers of Jurassic rock have split asunder and produced gorges more or less profound, were repeated in this cañon of the Tarn. Competent geologists, however, have noted a distinctive difference, namely: that, of all the rivers running in the fissures of the _causses_, the Tarn is the only one whose water does not penetrate to the beds of marl beneath the lias; and this is said to partly explain the great height and verticality of the cliffs, for when the water reaches the marl it saps the foundations of the rocks, and these, subsiding, send their dislocated masses rolling to the bottom of the gorge. I overtook a man and two boys who were hauling and pushing a boat up-stream. The man was wading in the water with a towing-rope over his shoulder, and the boys were in the punt plying their boat-hooks against the rocks and the bed of the river. They made very slow headway on account of the strength and frequency of the rapids. In coming down the Tarn, all that the boatman has to do is to use his _gaffe_ so as to keep clear of the rocks; but the return-journey is by no means so pleasant and exciting. I passed a little cluster of hovels built against the rock, and here a kind woman offered me some sheep's milk, which I declined for no better reason than because it was sheep's. Towards mid-day I reached the village of Les Vignes, which takes its name from the vineyards which have long been cultivated here, where the gorge widens somewhat, and offers opportunities to husbandry. The great cliffs protect vegetation and human life from the mountain climate which prevails upon the dismal Causse Méjan and the Causse de Sauveterre, separated by the deep fissure. Until tourists came to the Tarn, Les Vignes was quite cut off from the world, but now it is a halting-place for the boatmen and their passengers; and a little auberge, while retaining all its rustic charm, provides the traveller with a good meal at a fair price. The rush of strangers during the summer has not yet been sufficient to spoil the river-side people between Sainte-Enimie and Peyreleau by fostering that spirit of speculation which, when it takes hold of an inn-keeper, almost fatally classifies him with predatory animals. On reaching the auberge I walked straight into the kitchen as usual. A fowl and a leg of mutton were turning on the spit, and the hostess was very busy with stewpans and other utensils on various parts of her broad hearth. I soon learnt that a party of several persons had arrived before me, and that all these preparations were for them. My application for a meal was not met with a refusal, but it was evident that I should have to wait until others were served, and that, they having bespoken the best of everything in the house, my position was not as satisfactory as could be desired. I suppose I must have looked rather sad, for one of the party who had so swooped down upon the little inn and all its resources suggested that I should take my meal at their table. I should have accepted this offer with more hesitation had I known that they had brought with them the _pièce de résistance_, the leg of mutton, nearly as large as an English one, that was browning upon the spit before the blazing wood. After thinking myself unlucky, it turned out that I was in luck's way. I was presently seated at a long table with about a dozen others of both sexes, all relatives or old friends. They belonged to the small town of Severac, and had driven in two queer countrified vehicles about fifteen miles in order to spend a happy day at Les Vignes. They were terribly noisy, but boundlessly good-natured. Not only was I made to share their leg of mutton, but also the champagne which they had brought with them. The modest lunch that I had expected became a veritable feast, and having been entangled in the convivial meshes, I had to stay until the end of it all. The experience was worth something as a study of provincial life and manners. These people--husbands and wives and friends--had come out with the determination to enjoy themselves, and their enjoyment was not merely hearty; it was hurricane-like. There were moments when pieces of bread and green almonds were flying across the table, and the noise of voices was so terrific that the quiet hostess looked in at the door with a scared expression which made me think she was wondering how much longer the roof would be able to remain in its right place. Then, the jokes that were exchanged over the table were as broad as the humour of the South is broad. I felt sorry for the women, but quite unnecessarily. Although the local colour was not refined, human nature present was frank, hospitable, and irresistibly warm-hearted. The vulgarity of the party was of the unselfish sort, and therefore amusing. The enjoyment of each was the enjoyment of all; and even when the tempest of humour was at its height, not a word was said that was intended to be offensive. As a compliment to me, they all rose to their feet, glasses in hand, and the hostess was again startled by a mighty rush of sound repeating the words 'Vive l'Angleterre!' far up and down the valley. Instead of going on to La Malène that afternoon, as I had intended, I went after crayfish with one of the members of this jovial party, who had brought with him the necessary tackle for the sport. There are various ways of catching crayfish; but in this district the favourite method is the following: Small wire hoops, about a foot in diameter, are covered with netting strained nearly tight, and to this pieces of liver or other meat are tied. A cord a few yards long, fastened to the centre of the netting, completes the tackle. The baited snare is thrown into the stream, not far from the bank, and generally where the bottom is strewn with stones. No more art is needed. The crayfish, supposing them to be in the humour to eat, soon smell the meat or divine its presence, and, coming forth from their lairs beneath the stones, make towards the lure with greedy alacrity. Their movements can be generally watched, for although they are not delicate feeders, they are as difficult as Chinamen to please in the matter of water, and are only to be found in very clear streams. As is the case with their congeners--the sea crayfish and the crab--greediness renders them stupid, and, rather than leave a piece of meat which is to their taste, they will allow themselves to be pulled with it out of the water. It sometimes happens that the netting is covered with these creatures in a few minutes, and that all the trouble the fisherman has is to haul them up. But they are capricious, and, notwithstanding their voracity, there are times when they will not leave their holes upon any consideration. Such was their humour to-day. The cause of their sullenness was said to be a wind that rippled the surface of the water; but, whatever the reason, not a crayfish did we catch. The breeze which was supposed to have upset the temper of the crustaceous multitude in the Tarn blew up bad weather before night. The panic-stricken leaves upon the alders and poplars announced the change with palsied movements and plaintive cries; the willows whitened, and bent towards the stream; and muttered threats of the strife-breeding spirits in nature seemed to issue from caverns half hidden by sombre foliage. As the gorge darkened, the gusts grew stronger, and the moaning rose at times to a shriek. Now the thunder groaned, the lightning flashed, and the face of the river gleamed. I returned to the inn just as the hissing rain began to fall. I was by this time alone, for the party from Severac had left at the approach of the storm. As I took my solitary evening meal in a low building cut off from the inn, composed of a large _salle-à-manger_--the same in which the feast was held--and a bedroom, where I was to pass the rest of the night, I could not help contrasting the exuberant joviality of the morning with the absolute want of it now. The place seemed much too big for me; I had rather it had been half as large, to have got rid of half the shadow. Instead of the tempestuous laughter, there was the thunder's roar. There was also the lightning's flash to drive the shadows out of the corners from time to time. It was a wild and awful night. I was busily building around me a vaporous rampart of tobacco-smoke, as a barrier to gloomy suggestions from without, when the door suddenly opened, and in walked two gendarmes--one a very self-important-looking brigadier, with thin sharp nose and keen, weasel-like eyes. My immediate impression was that they had come to question me respecting my intentions--inasmuch as I was not going to work in the same way as other tourists--and possibly to ask me for my papers; but I was mistaken. They had merely taken shelter from the rain, and they had not found a refuge too soon, for their appearance was that of half-drowned rats. The brigadier called for a bottle of beer, and while he and his younger companion were drinking it I learnt from their conversation what business had taken them out of doors that night. Their object was to surprise the fish-poachers at the illegal, but very exciting and picturesque, sport of spearing by torchlight. Now, as I had already seen these night-poachers at work on the Tarn, I may as well describe their method here. I was walking one dark night on the bank of the river near Ambialet, when a glare of lurid light suddenly shot up from the water some distance in front of me, illuminating the willows, and even the black woods, on each side of the gorge. I imagined myself at once in a Canadian forest, near an Indian camp-fire. The light came gliding in my direction, and presently I distinguished the forms of men in a boat, all lit up by the glare. One was punting; another was holding aloft, not a torch, but blazing brushwood--which I afterwards learnt was broom-that he replenished from a heap in the boat; and a third was in the stern, gazing intently at the water, and holding in his hand a staff, which he plunged from time to time to the bottom of the stream. I understood that this was the _pêche au flambeau_, of which I had already heard. The Tarn being in summer shallow, and of crystal clearness except in time of flood, it offers every facility for this kind of fishing. The flat-bottomed boat glides along with the current; the fish, dazzled by the sudden light, sink at once to the bottom, and lie there stupefied until they are either speared or the cause of their bewilderment passes on. The spear head used is a small trident. When the moon is up, the fish are not to be fascinated by artificial light; consequently the darkest nights are chosen for this kind of poaching. The two gendarmes, then, had been looking for poachers, and, not liking the weather, they had been unable to resist the auberge light that beckoned them indoors. While they were talking, in walked the most hardened and skilful poacher of the place, whose acquaintance I had made earlier in the day, and who made no secret to me of his business. So far from being abashed by the presence of the gendarmes, he gave them a genial salutation, and, sitting down beside them, talked to them as if he had been on the pleasantest terms with them for years. He was a man of about fifty, who boasted to me that he had been a poacher from the age of fifteen, and had never been caught. He was therefore an artful old fox, and one very difficult to run down. He made the most of his opportunities in all seasons, and laughed at those who troubled their heads about the months which were open or closed. His coolness in the presence of the gendarmes was charming. He actually offered to furnish the brigadier with a dish of trout at any time on a day's notice, and argued that they had no right to seize a net wherever found, because the meshes were not of the lawful size. 'If you doubt it,' said the brigadier, 'just show me yours.' Then he added with a grin: 'I shall pinch you some day, _mon vieux_.' The other did not seem to believe it, and I am inclined to think that no one will 'pinch' him but Death. Of the few really attractive callings left, that of the poacher must be given a prominent place, especially in France, where the law is not too severe upon a man who tries to make an honest living by breaking the law so far as it relates to fish and game. The excitement of catching wild creatures must be greatly increased by the risk that the hunter or fisher runs of being caught himself. A poacher is by no means looked down upon in France. He is considered a useful member of society, especially by hotel-keepers. I know a very respectable beadle of a singularly pious parish who is an inveterate poacher. On week-days he is slinking about the woods and rocks with his gun, and has generally a hare or a partridge in his bag; but on Sundays he wears a cocked hat, a gold-laced coat with a sword at his side, and he brings down his staff upon the church pavement with a thundering crack at those moments when the wool-gathering mind has to be hurried back and fixed upon the sacredness of the ritual. He is a well-knit, agile fellow, who knows every inch of his ground, and he has led the gendarmes who have surprised him such dances over rocks, and placed them in such unpleasant positions, that they have come to treat him with the respect and consideration due to a man of his talent and resource. The French poacher must not be judged by the same ethics as the English poacher. Generally speaking, game is not preserved in France. There are extensive tracts everywhere where anybody can shoot, provided that he has satisfied the license formality and observes the regulations with regard to the seasons. The poacher is a man who thinks it waste of money to pay for a gun-license, and a waste of opportunities to respect the breeding season. If he is a fisher, he not only scoffs at the close time, but uses illegal means to achieve his purpose, such as nets with meshes smaller than they should be, and the three-pronged spear. In the Tarn and other French rivers the fish have been destroyed in a woeful manner by poison and dynamite, but it is the rock-blaster and the navvy, not the regular poacher, who is chiefly to be blamed for this. Men who have the constant handling of dynamite, and who move from place to place, are rapidly destroying the life of the rivers and streams. Having noted a good pool, they return by night and drop into it a dynamite cartridge, the explosion of which brings every fish, big and small, to the surface. With these destructive causes, which do not belong to the natural order of things, should be mentioned another that does, namely, the frequency of floods in the season when the trout are spawning. But for this drawback, and the unfair methods of fishing, the Upper Tarn would be one of the finest trout streams in the world. As it is, an expert angler would find plenty of sport on the banks of the river above Le Rozier, and as all anglers are said to be lovers of nature, he would never be dull in the midst of such entrancing scenery as is to be found here. The storm having spent its fury, the gendarmes and the poacher left, and I was again alone. Although it was not yet ten o'clock, there was the quietude of midnight around me. The village was asleep, and I should have thought Nature asleep had I not heard the harsh scream of an owl as I entered my bedroom and threw open the window. The clouds had broken up, and the moon was shining above the great rocks at the foot of which I knew that the owl was flying silently and searching with glowing eyes for the happy, unsuspecting mouse or young hare amidst the thyme and bracken. Can Nature never rest? Is there no peace without bloodshed under the sun and moon, no respite from ravin even when the night is hooded like a dead monk? I turned from the moonlit clouds, the rushing dark water, the long white reach of pebbles, and made a little journey round my room. The people who owned this inn may not have been very prosperous, but they were evidently rich in faith. The walls were ornamented with rosaries yards long--probably from Lourdes--and religious pictures. There were also statuettes of sacred figures, a large crucifix, and close by the bed a holy-water stoup. The inhabitants of the Lozère, like those of the Aveyron, are not only believing, they are zealous, and in their homes they surround themselves with the emblems of their faith. These are the only works of art which the villagers possess--almost their only books. At seven the next morning I had left Les Vignes, and was making my way up the gorge, whose rocky walls drew closer together, became more stupendous, fantastic, and savagely naked. All cultivation disappeared. A rock of immense size, pointing to the sky, but leaning towards the gorge, soon attracted my notice, as it must that of any traveller who comes within view of it. This monolith, over 200 feet in height, has its base about 500 feet above the stream, but it is only a jutting fragment of the prodigious wall. It has received the name of L'Aiguille, from its needle-like shape. Below this, and partly in the bed of the stream, is another prodigious block of dolomite called La Sourde, and here the channel is so obstructed by the number and size of the rocks which have fallen into it, that the river has forced a passage beneath them, and does not reappear until the obstacle is passed. But although the water vanishes, its muffled groan arises from mysterious depths. This, together with the monstrous masses of dolomite, wrinkled, white and honeycombed, the narrowness and gloomy depth of the gorge, the fury of the water as it descends amongst the blocks to leap into its gulf, makes the imagination ask if something supernatural has not happened here. But the geologist says that this chaos of tumbled-down rocks is simply the result of a 'fault' in the stratification, and that, the foundations having given way, the masses of dolomite fell where they now lie. In the Middle Ages, however, geology was an undiscovered science, and the human mind was compelled--perhaps with much advantage to itself--to seek supernatural causes in order to explain the mysterious phenomena of nature, many of which, so far as subsidiary causes are concerned, have ceased to be mysterious. This spot--called the Pas de Souci--has, therefore, its poetic and miraculous legend. St. Enimie, when she established her convent near the fountain of Burlats, higher up the Tarn, interfered with the calculations of the devil, who had found the numerous orifices in this region communicating with the infernal kingdom exceedingly convenient for his terrestrial enterprises. He therefore lost no time in entering upon a tug-of-war with the saintly interloper. But she was more than a match for him. Her nuns, however, were of weaker flesh, and so he tried his wiles upon them. Their devotions and good resolutions were so much troubled by the infernal teaser of frail humanity that St. Enimie, realizing the great danger, rose to the occasion. One day or night she caught the devil unawares in the convent and tried to chain him up; but he was too strong or too crafty for the innocent virgin, and made his escape down the gorge of the Tarn, intending to reach his own fortress by the hole down which the stream plunges at the Pas de Souci, and which the peasant believes existed from the beginning of the world. St. Enimie followed at his heels as closely as she could, and he led her a wild scamper over the rocks. She hoped that St. Ilère, her confessor, who lived in a cavern of the gorge, would stop the fiend in his flight, but the saint was so busy praying that he did not notice the arch-enemy as he sped on his frantic course. St. Enimie was quite out of breath and ready to drop from exhaustion when she drew near the Pas de Souci, a little in the rear of the tormentor of souls, and he was just about to plunge into the gulf. The saint threw herself upon her knees, and exclaimed: 'Help me, O ye mountains and crags! Stop him, fall upon him!' Thereupon there was a great commotion of the ancient rocks far above under the calm sky, and they fell, one after the other, with a frightful crash. It was, however, the immense block, since named La Sourde, that stopped the devil; the others he shook off as if they had been pebbles. When La Sourde struck him it was more than he could contend with, and it flattened him out. The Needle Rock was just about to tumble, when La Sourde cried out: 'Hold on, my sister! You need not trouble yourself; I have him fast!' This explains why the Needle Rock has ever since looked so undecided. For centuries La Sourde bore the impress of a sanguinary hand, left upon it by Satan in his frantic efforts to get free, but some years ago it was washed away by an exceptionally high flood. A little beyond this impressive and legendary spot, the gorge, widening, displays an immense concavity on the left, nearly semicircular. Here among the spur-like rocks which jut out from its steep sides--much clothed, however, with vegetation--was the hermitage of St. Ilère, and the spot where it is supposed to have been is a place of pilgrimage. Here, too, are numerous caverns, in some of which many implements of the Stone Age have been found, as well as the bones of extinct animals and others which disappeared from Europe before the historic period. To those who have the special knowledge that is requisite, the caverns of the Causses de Sauveterre and Méjan offer great enticement, for only a few of their secrets, covered by the darkness of incalculable ages, have yet been brought to light. Again the cliffs draw closer together, and the tower-like masses on the brink of each precipice lift their inaccessible ramparts higher and higher in the blue air. Gray-white or ochre-stained layers and monoliths shine like incandescent coals in the unmitigated radiance of the sun. I pass a little group of houses in the hollow of overhanging rocks, splashed by the shadow of the wild fig-tree's leaves. One side of the gorge is all luminous with sunbeams, down to the lathy poplars leaning in every direction by the edge of the torrent, their leaves still wet with last night's rain. Another boat is being tugged laboriously up the rapids, a mule taking the first place at the end of the rope. The impetuous water looks strong enough to carry the beast off his legs; but he, like the boatman, is used to the work, and has good nerves. The path--if path it can be called, when it has lost all trace of one--now leads over large pebbles which are not pleasant to walk upon; but presently the way along the water-side is absolutely closed by vertical rocks some hundred feet high. To enter the mad torrent in order to get beyond these terrible rocks, forming a narrow strait, was an undertaking only to be thought of if the case were desperate. I believed that there must be a path somewhere running up the cliff, and after going back a little I found one. It led me four or five hundred feet up the side of the gorge; but on looking down the distance seemed much less, because the rocks rose a thousand feet higher. I was gazing at the loftiest peak on the opposite side, when two eagles suddenly appeared in the air above it; and so long as I remained did they continue to circle over it without any apparent movement of their wings. The eyrie upon this needle-like point is well known; according to the popular belief, it has always been there. It was in vain, however, that I searched the horizon for the vultures, whose principal stronghold--a long ledge of rock, protected from above by an overhanging cornice, and beyond the range of a fowling-piece from below--is immediately over the river in this part of the gorge. Had I left Les Vignes before daybreak, I might have seen them start off all together, the brown vultures and their black cousins, the arians, in quest of carrion; but now there was not one to be seen. As the vulture has become a rare bird in France, inhabiting only a few localities where there are very high and inaccessible rocks, and where man is crestfallen in the presence of nature, it is to be hoped that they will not be driven from the great gorge of the Tarn by being too frequently shot at in the breeding season, when they are obliged to show themselves at all hours of the day. No peasant would think of wasting a cartridge upon them; but the sharpshooting tourist, armed with a rifle, may be tempted to do so. He would probably fire many bullets before he succeeded in striking a bird five or six hundred feet above him; and even if the shot took effect, there would be very small chance of the vulture falling where it could be picked up. The bombardment would do them little damage; but it might, if often repeated, prove too trying to their nerves, and, notwithstanding their conservative principles, they might be driven at length to quit these rocks inhabited by their ancestors for centuries. To the naturalist this district is of fascinating interest, on account of the large number of carnivorous birds of various species by which it is still haunted. Besides the common brown eagle, three kinds of vulture, several species of falcons, hawks, and owls, the raven family appears to be fully represented, with the exception of the jackdaw, which possibly finds itself too weak and too slow of flight to live in the midst of such strong and ferocious air-robbers as those which have established themselves in these grand solitudes. Among smaller birds of different habits, the red partridge and the water-ousel are frequently seen. The rock-partridge, or _bartavelle_, is also found, but is rare. The four-legged fauna is not represented by the wolf or the boar, the forests being too scanty to afford them sufficient cover, and the largest wild quadrupeds are the badger and the fox. Descending the path by steps cut in the rock, I again reached the margin of the Tarn. Gradually the gorge opened, slopes appeared, and upon these were almond-trees and vines planted on terraces. Flowers, too, which had little courage to bloom in the dim depths where the cliffs seemed ready to join again, and the sunbeam vanished before it dried the dew, now took heart under the broader sky. Great purple snapdragons hung from clefts in the rocks, inula flashed gorgeously yellow, white melilot raised its graceful drooping blossoms, and hemp-agrimony made the bees sing a drowsy song of the brimming cup of summer. Some vestiges of a castle appeared upon a high-jutting craggy mass, marking the site of the Château de Montesquieu, one of the strongest fortresses of the gorge in the Middle Ages. I guessed rightly by the vines and almonds that La Malène was not far off. Soon came that sight, ever welcome to the wayfarer--the village where he intends to seek rest and refreshment. The inn here was as unpretentious as the one at Les Vignes; but with hare, _en civet_, a dish of trout, and a bottle of the wine grown upon the sunny terrace above the houses, I had as good a meal as any hungry tramp has a right to expect. As for myself, I never expect anything so sumptuous, and in this way I let luck have a chance of giving me now and then a pleasant surprise. The trout in the Upper Tarn do not often reach a large size, because by growing they become too conspicuous in such clear water; but their flesh obtains that firmness which is the gift of mountain streams. The wine grown upon the slopes of the gorge is a _petit vin_ with a sparkle in it, and it comes as a delightful change to those who have been drinking the tasteless, deep-coloured wines of the Béziers and Narbonne region, with which the South of France has been flooded since the new vineyards upon the plains and slopes of the Mediterranean have been yielding torrents of juice. The fruit of no plant is so dependent upon the soil for its flavour as that of the vine. Chalk produces champagne, and some of the best wines of Southern France are grown upon calcareous soils where the eye perceives nothing but stones. The plant loves to get its roots down into the crevices of a rock. I now drank the fragrant light wine of the Gévaudan--the calcareous district of the Upper Tarn--with a pleasure not unmixed with sorrow; for the phylloxera had found its way up the gorge, and the vineyards were already sick unto death. The pest had come some years later here than in districts nearer the plains; but it had too surely come, and the fear of poverty was gnawing the hearts of the poor men--many of them old--who had been bending their backs such a number of years, and their fathers before them, upon those terraces which had been won from the desert at the price of such long labour. Before continuing my journey up the gorge, I climbed to the little church overlooking the village, and which stands in the midst of the rough burying-ground where the dead must lie very near the solid rock. It is a plain Romanesque building, presenting the peculiarity not often seen of exterior steps leading to the belfry. Against an inner wall is a tablet, which tells of certain men of Florac who 'pro Deo et rege legitime certantes coronati sunt, die II mensis Junii, anni 1793.' They were guillotined by the Revolutionists at Florac. I passed the Château de la Caze, a small but well-preserved castle, showing the transition from the feudal to the Renaissance style, and still surrounded by its moat. It has five towers, and is a picturesque building; but I thought it gloomy in the deep shade of the gorge and the surrounding trees. It must be gloomier still at night when the owls shriek and hoot. If it is not haunted, it must be because there are so many abandoned solitary great houses in this part of France that the ghosts have become rather spoilt and hard to please. What is the pale yellow flame that I see burning by the river where a slanted beam strikes down from a crenellated bastion of ruddy rock? Reaching the spot, I find two pale-yellow flames, one hanging from the bank, the other trembling upon the stream. The evening primrose has lit its lamp from the sunbeam. More rocks there are to climb, for the river again rushes between upright walls. The path goes along the edge of a horrid precipice, then descends abruptly by steps cut in the rock. At a very poor hamlet, clinging to the side of the gorge at a sufficient height to be safe from the floods, I ask a woman if anybody there sells wine. 'Yes,' she replies, 'he does,' pointing at the same time to a tall old white-haired man, who beckons me to follow him. He hobbles along with a stick, dragging one leg, and leads the way into his house under a rock. It is a mere hovel, but it has a wooden floor, and there are signs of personal dignity--what is known in England as 'respectability'--struggling with poverty. Perhaps the ancient clock, whose worm-eaten case reaches from the floor to the ceiling, and whose muffled but cheery tick-tack is like the voice of an old friend, impressed me in favour of this poor home as soon as I entered. The crippled man, having given me his best chair, disappeared into his cellar scooped out of the rock, and presently returned with a bottle of wine. Then he brought out a great loaf of very dark bread, which he placed upon the table with the wine, and a plateful of green almonds. The French peasants observe the wholesome rule of never drinking red wine without 'breaking a crust' at the same time. I made my new acquaintance break a crust with me and share the contents of the bottle. Then he talked freely of the cares that weighed upon him. He told me that he and others who lived in the gorge had always depended upon their wine to buy bread. 'And are the vines in a very bad way?' 'The year after next will see the last of them.' Many persons, he added, would be obliged to leave the district because it would become impossible for them to live there. While we were talking two or three little barefooted boys, whose clothes had been patched over and over again, but still showed gaping places, watched and listened in the open doorway with round-eyed attention. They were robust children with health and happiness in their faces, in spite of the hard times, for the mountain air fed them, and their troubles were yet to come. They were the old man's grandchildren, and I suppose I was looking at them more keenly than I should have had I reflected, for he made excuses for their neglected appearance with an expression of pain. Then, changing the subject suddenly, he said: 'What country do you belong to?' 'To England.' 'Ah, c'est un riche pays!' I told him that it was rich and poor like other countries, and that the people there had no vines at all to help them. 'It is a rich country all the same,' repeated the old man, for the impression had somehow become deeply fixed in his mind. There I see him still seated at the rough table, and behind his broad bent back the wide fireplace against the bare rock blackened with smoke. I had left this hamlet, and was on the bank of the Tarn, when I heard the patter of bare feet upon the pebbles behind me. Turning round, I saw the eldest of the boys who had been watching me in the doorway. He had an idea that I should go wrong, and followed stealthily to see. He now told me that if I continued by the water I should soon be stopped by rocks, and I accepted his offer to show me the way up the cliff. His recklessness in running over the sharp stones made me ask him if they did not hurt his feet. 'Oh no!' he replied; 'they are used to it.' It is indeed astonishing what feet are able to get used to. The boy's joy at the few sous which I gave him was almost ecstatic. He had hardly thanked me when he set off running homeward to show how he had been rewarded--for his sharpness in thinking that I should lose my way, and allowing me to do so before saying a word. I was by the river-side not far from Sainte-Enimie when a rather alarming noise broke the silence and became rapidly louder. I looked up the steep cliff, and saw to my consternation a great stone bounding down the rocks and crashing through the vines. As I seemed to be in the line of it I hastened on. I had only gone about ten yards when it bounded into the air and, passing sheer over the path and bank, plunged into the Tarn with a mighty splash. I reckoned that had I remained where I was it would have just cleared my head. It was a fragment of rock which, from its size, might well have been two hundredweight. The same thing happened earlier in the day, but that time I was not so unpleasantly near. The heavy rain of the previous night, coming after a long period of drought, was probably the cause of these already-loosened stones starting upon their downward career. All these calcareous rocks are breaking up. The process of disintegration and decomposition is slow, but it is sure. Every frost does something to split them, and every shower of rain entering the crevices does something to rot them; so that even they cannot last. The Tarn is carrying them back to the sea, to be deposited again, but somewhere else. I was at Sainte-Enimie before sunset, and there I found the air laden with the scent of lavender. True, all the hills round about were covered with a blue-gray mantle; but I had never known the plant when undisturbed give out such an aroma before. Looking down from the little bridge to the waterside, my wonder ceased. There in a line, with wood-fires blazing under them, were several stills, and behind these, upon the bank, were heaps of lavender stalks and flowers such as I had never seen even in imagination. There were enough to fill several bullock-waggons. The fragrance in the air, however, did not come so much from these mounds as from the distilled essence. It was evident that Sainte-Enimie had a considerable trade in lavender-water. I spent an unhappy evening, for the inn where I stopped--it called itself a hotel--had been made uninteresting by enterprise; and a couple of tourists from the South, with whom it was my lot to dine, caused me unspeakable misery by talking of nothing else but of a bridge which they had lately seen; If I should ever be near it, I think the recollection of that evening will make me avoid it. It may be a miracle in iron, but none the less shall I owe it an everlasting grudge. These gentlemen from Carcassonne were typical sons of the South in this, that the sound of their own voices acted upon their imagination like the strongest coffee blended with the oldest cognac. They would have been amusing, nevertheless, but for the horrible intensity of their resolve to make me see that nightmare of a bridge. If one had taken breath while the other spoke, or rather shouted, I should have suffered less; but they both shouted together, and their struggle to get the better of one another by force of lung, gesticulation, and frenzied rolling of the eyes became a duel, whereby the solitary witness was the only person harmed. What a relief to me if they had gone down to the river bank and fought it out there! No such luck, however. Had there been no listener, they, too, might have wished the bridge in the depths of Tartarus. If I passed an unhappy evening at Sainte-Enimie, I spent a worse morning. There was a change of weather in the night, and when the day came again, it was a blear-eyed, weeping day, with that uniform gray sky with steam-like clouds hiding half the hills which, when seen in a mountainous region by a person bent on movement, is enough to give him 'goose flesh.' I now felt a longing to leave the Cevennes and to return to the lower country, but there seemed no chance of escape. The rain continued hour after hour--and such rain! It was enough to turn a frog against water. As the people of the inn seemed incapable of showing sympathy, I went out to look at the town under a borrowed umbrella. It was certainly not much to look at, especially under circumstances of such acute depression. I walked or waded through a number of miry little streets where all manner of refuse was in a saturated or deliquescent state--cabbage-stumps and dead rats floating in the gutters, potato-peelings and bean-pods sticking to the mediaeval pitching--everything slippery, nasty, and abominable. There were old houses, as a matter of course; but who can appreciate antiquities when his legs are wet about the knees and his boots are squirting water? Nevertheless, I tried to notice a few things besides the vileness underfoot. One was a rudely-carved image of the Virgin in a niche covered by a grating. This was in such a dark little street that it seemed as if the sun had given up all hope of ever shining there again. I struggled through the slush to the church, built, with the town, on the side of a hill rising from the Tarn. I found a Romanesque edifice--old, but rough, and offering no striking feature, save the arched recesses in the exterior surface of the wall. A little higher upon the hill was the convent founded by St. Enimie; but the original building disappeared centuries ago. On returning to the inn I passed the Fontaine de Burlats, where St. Enimie was cured of her leprosy in the Merovingian age. It was a change to see something that really seemed to enjoy the incessant downpour and to enter into the spirit of it. The fountain would be remarkable in another region by the volume of water that gushes in all seasons like a little river out of the earth; but there are so many such between the Dordogne and the Tarn, wherever the calcareous formation has lent itself to the honeycombing action of water, that this copious outflow loses thereby much of its claim to distinction. The legend of St. Enimie is fully set forth in a Provençal poem of the thirteenth century by the troubadour Bertrand de Marseilles, who received his information from his friend the Prior of the monastery at Sainte-Enimie, which in the Middle Ages was the most important religious house in the Gévaudan. The MS. is preserved in the library of the Arsenal, Paris. It was at the express recommendation of St. Ilère that Enimie sought the fountain of Burla (now Burlats), and bathed her afflicted body in its pure waters. The passage of the poem containing this injunction is as follows: 'Enimia verges de Dyeu, Messatges fizels ti suy yeu. Per me ti manda Dieus de pla Que t'en anes en Gavalda,[*] Car, lay trobaras una fon Que redra ton cors bel e mon Si te laves en l'aygua clara. * * * * A nom Burla; vay l'en lay Non ho mudar per negun play.' [*] Gévaudan. The relics of the saint were destroyed or lost at the time of the Revolution; but high upon the side of a neighbouring hill a chapel has been raised to her, and it is a place of pilgrimage. IN THE VALLEY OF THE LOT. The rambler in the highlands of the North knows so well what the wretchedness of being shut up by bad weather in a mountain inn means, that he may have grown reconciled to it, and have learnt how to spend a day under such circumstances pleasantly. But to me, a sun-lover, to whom the charm of the South has been irresistible, such a trial is one that taxes to the utmost all the powers of endurance. Hence it is that, when I think of Sainte-Enimie, I can recall nothing but impressions of dismal wetness. This may seem shocking to those who have seen, under a different aspect, the little town on the Upper Tarn, named after the Merovingian saint. Be it remembered, however, that I was shut up hour after hour in an inn crowded with peasants in damp blouses, shouting _patois_ at each other, and clutching great cotton umbrellas, whose fragrance under the influence of moisture, was not idyllic; In that abominable little auberge, that styled itself a hotel, I decided to go no farther up the Tarn, but, as soon as the weather would set me free, to cross the _causse_ that separated me from the Lot, and to descend the valley of this river towards the warmer and dryer region of the plains. Not until the afternoon were there any signs of improvement in the weather; and then, as soon as the clouds grew lighter, I started without waiting for the rain to stop. It was Sunday, and outside the old church was a crowd of men and boys, who had come for vespers. The women did not join them, but passed through the door as they arrived. Throughout rural France, wherever religion keeps a firm hold on the peasant, it is the custom of the men to gather for gossip in front of the church some time before the service, and, just as the bell stops; to make a rush at the doorway, and struggle through the opening like sheep into a fold when there is a dog at their heels. While looking at these men, I was again struck by the prevailing tendency of the peasants of the Lozère to develop long, sharp noses--a feature that often gives them a very weasel-like expression. Having passed the ruins of the monastery, whose high loopholed walls and strong tower showed that it had once been a fortress as well as a religious house, I was soon rising far above the valley of the Tarn. The winding road led me up the flanks of stony hills, terraced everywhere for almond-trees; but after two or three hours of ascent the almonds dwindled away, and the country became an absolute desert of brashy hills, showing little asperity of outline, but mournful and solemn by their wastefulness and abandonment to a degree that makes the traveller ask himself if he is really in Europe, or has been transported by magic to the most arid steppes of Asia. But there is a plant that thrives in this desert, that loves it so much as to give to it a tinge of dusty blue as far as the eye can reach on every side. Needless to say that this is the lavender. It was in all its flowering beauty as I crossed the treeless waste, and it gave to the breath of the desert what seemed to be the mystical fragrance of peace. Leaving the highway to Mende, I took a rough road on the left, which, according to the map, led directly to Chanac by the Lot. I should recommend no one else to take it unless he have more hours of daylight before him than I had. Again I ran a near risk of passing the night in the open air. The road became little better than a track; then it crossed others, and it was a very pretty puzzle to tell which was the one for me and which was not. It is true that I could have made straight towards the Lot by the compass, but the descent of the precipitous cliffs into the deep gorge, unless one knows the paths, is only a task to be undertaken at nightfall with a light heart by those who have had no experience of this savage district. When my perplexity was at its worst I saw a shepherd, whose form, wrapped in the long brown homespun cloak called a _limousine_, stood solemnly against the evening sky. I made towards him, thinking that he would help me out of my difficulty; but no: either he did not understand a word I said, or did not choose to give any information. Perhaps he thought me an escaped madman, or a dangerous tramp, with whom it was better to hold no conversation. The sun was setting when I reached a wood of scattered firs--a more melancholy spot at that hour than the bare _causse_. The weather had been fine for some hours, but now a storm that had been gathering broke. As the wind blew the rain in slanting lines, the level sun shone through the vapour and the streaming atmosphere. Looking above me, as I sheltered myself behind a wailing fir, I saw that the dreary world was spanned by two glorious rainbows. But although the scene was so wildly beautiful, the spirit of desolation was upon me, and I felt like a homeless wanderer. I was roaming among the firs in the dusk, when I met a shepherd boy, who put me on a path that joined the main road to Chanac. Then began the descent into the valley of the Lot. It was very long; the winding road passed through a black forest of firs, and the dark night fell when I was still far from the little town. The walk was gloomy, but in all gloom there is something that is grand and elevating--something that gives a sense of expansion to the soul. The cries of the unseen night-birds, the solemn mystery of the enigmatic trees wrapped in darkness, make us feel the supernatural that surrounds us, and is a part of us, more than the visible movement of life in the light of the sun. At length the oil-lamps of Chanac flashed brightly in the hollow below, and not long afterwards I was sitting at a table in an upper room of a comfortable old inn, the lower part of which was filled with roisterers, for it was Sunday night. I dined with a Government functionary--an inland revenue _contrôleur_, who happened to be a Frenchman of the reserved and solemn sort that cultivates dignity. By dint of being looked up to by others he had acquired the fixed habit of looking up to himself. All the time that I was in his company I felt that, had he been an angel dining with a modern Tobias, he could scarcely have shown greater anxiety not to sit upon his wings. Moved by the genial spirit of the grape, or not wishing, perhaps, to crush me altogether with the weight of his official importance, his ice began to melt a little at about the second or third course. Forgetting discretion, he actually smiled. The meal, which had been prepared in anticipation of his coming, was a much more splendid entertainment than would have been got up for me had I been alone. The cook's masterpiece was a very cunningly contrived pasty--a work of local genius that I was quite unprepared for. Even M. le contrôleur, had he not checked himself in time, would have beamed at this achievement; but he would never have forgiven himself such an admission of weakness common to mortals not in the service of the Government. Just before the dessert a superb trout that had been drawn out of the sparkling Lot was brought in, and it had been mercifully spared the disgrace of being sprinkled with chopped garlic. While we were dining the wassailers in the great kitchen and general room downstairs became more and more uproarious. Dancing had commenced, and it was the _bourrée_, the delightful _bourrée_ of Auvergne (the Upper Lot here runs not very far from the Cantal) that was being danced. It is a measure that has no local colour unless it is accompanied by violent stamping. The _contrôleur_ looked very scandalized, and said it was abominable that the house should be given up to such tumult and disorder. I observed, however, that as the joyousness of the party downstairs increased my companion's face became animated by an expression that was not one of genuine anger, and as soon as he had drunk his coffee he remarked in a tone of indifference that, as the evening had to be spent somehow, it might be less disagreeable to see what was going on below than simply to hear it. I soon followed him, and found that he was enjoying himself thoroughly, although discreetly, in a quiet corner. The kitchen was filled with young fellows in blouses, some sitting at tables drinking and smoking, others standing; all were shouting, whistling or raising peals of laughter that might have brought the house about their ears had it been built by a modern contractor. In the centre of the room the bare-armed kitchenmaid, who had left the platters, and a young peasant in a blouse were dancing, their backs turned to each other, moving their arms up and down like puppets in a barrel-organ, and banging the floor with their sabots, with the full conviction that the greater the noise the greater the fun. And this was the opinion of all except the stout hostess, who looked on at the scene with a distressed countenance from behind a mighty pile of dirty plates. The musicians were spectators who whistled in a band the air of the _bourrée_, which is enough to make the most sedate Canon who ever sat in a stall dance, or at least to remember with charity the promptings of his adolescence. When the kitchenmaid went back to her plates--to the great relief of her mistress, who would have sternly condemned her tripping if thoughts of business had not beset her practical mind--two young men stood up and danced another _bourrée_. With the exception of the scullion and household drudge there was no chance of getting a female partner. In these villages and small towns the girls are kept out of harm's way. They go to bed at eight or nine, and are hard at work either in the fields or in the house, or washing by the stream, all through the hours of daylight. The priests, wherever they have influence--and in the South they have a great deal--set their faces strongly against dancing by the two sexes, except under very exceptional circumstances. They are right; they have peculiar facilities for knowing the variety of human nature with which they have to deal. Humanity is fundamentally the same everywhere, but what is fundamental is modified by race and climate. Temperament, fashioned by causes innate and local, exercises an immense influence upon practical morality. And so the revel went on. As the glasses were refilled the noise grew louder and the smoke denser. I soon had enough of it, and taking a candle I climbed to my bedroom, leaving the _contrôleur_ in his corner. Before going to bed I did a little sewing, having borrowed a threaded needle from the landlady with this object in view. The wayfarer should be ready to help himself as far as he can, and although sewing is not, perhaps, the most manly of accomplishments, no tourist should be incapable of sewing on a button or closing up a rent that makes the village children laugh. My walk across the _causse_ separating two rivers had tired me, but I might as well have remained downstairs for all the sleep that I enticed. As the hours wore on the uproar, instead of subsiding, became more terrific. These Southerners have voices of such rock-splitting power that, when twenty or thirty of them, inspired by Bacchus, or excited by discussion, shout together, one asks if it would be possible for devils on the rampage to raise a more hideous tumult. The house trembled as from a succession of thunderclaps. Midnight struck, and the uproar was unabated. At one it had entered upon the quarrelsome phase, and at two there was a fight. Chairs or tables were overthrown, there was a smashing of glass, a rapid scuffling of feet, and the screaming and howling as of a menagerie on fire. Above the fiendish din rang out the shrill voice of the hostess, who was evidently trying to separate the combatants, and who seemed to be successful, for the hurricane suddenly lulled. This hostess was a woman of words, but the landlady of an inn near Rodez, which I entered one summer evening, showed herself under similar circumstances to be a woman of action. Two young men who were sitting at a table, after a very brief difference of opinion, stared fixedly and fiercely into each other's face, and then sprang at one another like a couple of tom-cats. Presently the stronger took the other up in his arms, carried him out through the door, and, having pitched him considerately upon the manure-heap in the yard, returned to his place with the expression of the victorious cat. But he reckoned without his hostess. She was not tall, but her cubic capacity took up more place in the world than that of two or three ordinary mortals. With her great bare arms folded across her ample person she waddled towards the triumphant young man, and there was a look in her eye that made him wriggle uneasily upon his chair. I think he was tempted to run away, but shame nailed him to his seat. As soon as the pair were at close quarters, one of the folded bolster-like arms made a sudden movement, and the back of the strong rough hand, hardened by forty years or more of toil, covered for an instant the youth's nose and mouth. That single movement of a female arm, the muscular development of which a pugilist might have envied, shed more blood than all the clawing, tugging, and butting of the male combatants had caused to flow. 'That is to teach you,' said the strong woman, 'not to fight in my house again!' But I am forgetting that I am now at Chanac. When I went down into the kitchen at about seven o'clock, after two or three hours' sleep, the landlady and the other women of the inn looked very tired and sheepish. They were prepared to hear some strong criticism of the night's proceedings, such as they would be sure to get when the _contrôleur_ came down. 'You seem to have had some good amusement last night, and to have kept it up well,' said I. 'Oh, monsieur,' exclaimed the hostess, shaking her head dolefully, 'what a night it was!' And she went on shaking her head, while the kitchen-maid--the one who danced the _bourrée_, and was now listlessly rinsing glasses innumerable--giggled behind her mistress's back. She evidently thought that it was a good sort of night. In making up the bill I think that the regretful aubergiste, who felt, that the reputation of her house had received a cruel blow, and that all the mothers in the place were reviling her for encouraging their sons in dissipation, must have left the bed out of the reckoning, considering that she could not honestly charge me for a night's rest which I did not get. At any rate, the bill was ridiculously small. [Illustration: CIGALA, THE SHOEBLACK.] Now, with the help of daylight, I can see what the little town is like. The houses--many of which have late Gothic doorways--are clustered about the sides of an isolated hill or mamelon in the valley of the Lot, beyond which rise the high cliffs covered with dark woods. The town is still dominated by the tall rectangular tower that helped to protect it in the Middle Ages, and near to this is the church, which is both Romanesque and Gothic, and is rich in curious details. The sanctuary is separated from the rest of the choir by the graceful arcade of numerous little arches supported by tall and slender columns, which is one of the most charming and characteristic features of the Auvergnat style. The carving of the capitals exhibits in a delightful manner the hardihood and florid fancy of this singularly interesting development of Byzantine-Romanesque taste. Upon one of the piers of the sanctuary are a pair of symbolical doves dipping their beaks into the chalice that separates them, and upon another are two grotesque and fantastic beasts facing one another with frightful jaws wide open. The walk from Chanac down the valley through the rest of the department of the Lozère I did not do fairly. The sun was so hot and the way so tedious that I at length yielded to the temptation of the railway that I met here, and rode some fifteen or twenty miles. It was not until the next morning at St. Laurent d'Olt that I braced myself up to the task of faring on foot by the river through the department of the Aveyron. Here in the upper country the stream retains its ancient name, the Olt, which is merely an abbreviation of Oltis, unless it be the Celtic origin of the Latin word. It is easy to see how in rapid speech L'Olt became changed to Lot. The _t_ is still pronounced. The valley down which I now took my way from St. Laurent was broad and green, but the high rocky cliffs which shut it off from the outer world drew nearer as I went on. An old tramp who had a bag slung over his back stopped me and said that he was 'dans la misère.' Doubtless he guessed that I was not quite so deep in it as himself, and that I might be able to spare him something. As I always look upon the tramp with a fraternal interest, however disreputable he may appear, because my own wayfaring has helped to teach me contempt for appearances, I stopped to talk with the aged wanderer while hunting for some stray sous. His matted gray beard and sunken cheeks gave him the air of a Job of the studios; but no such luck had probably ever befallen him as to be asked to pose for thirty sous the hour. Such a sum would be more than he could gather in a day, even after selling the surplus of his begged crusts. He talked to me of 'the picturesque,' which proved that he had not grown gray and half doubled up without learning something of the world's wisdom. I learnt from him that between the spot where we met and St. Geniez there was only a hamlet, but that I should be able to find a house there where I could get a meal. The old man went hobbling away, wondering, perhaps, when he would meet another foreign imbecile on the tramp, and I was soon alone upon the margin of the river's broad bed of sand, strewn with pebbles like the seashore. The stream was still fresh from the mountains, and it had the joyousness and bounding movements of young life. It was very narrow now, and many plants had grown up since the spring upon its far-shelving banks of mica-glittering sand and many-coloured pebbles; but often its swollen waters had rolled through this smiling valley, a raging and uncontrollable force, spreading terror and destruction. The cliffs drew nearer and rose higher, and then the river ran through a gorge nearly impassable, and abandoned to all the wildness of nature. The partial loop here formed by the Lot is hidden and defended by a forbidding wilderness of rocks and forest, as if it were one of the last retreats of the fluvial deities, where they can defy the curiosity of man. The adventurous spirit prompted me to explore it, but the lazy one said, 'Leave it.' I took the advice of the latter, and went on by the road, which now left the river, and ascended towards the plateau under cliffs of red sandstone. The thirsty sun had by this time drained almost every flower-cup of its dew; but the freshness of the morning still lingered in the hollows of the rocks, and in the shade of the chestnut, the walnut, and elm. As the earth warmed, it became quieter. All creatures seemed to grow drowsy, except the sociable little quails that kept calling to one another, 'How are you?' and the flies of wicked purpose, which become more and more enterprising as the temperature rises. It was long since I had seen a human being, when I heard the click-clack of loose _sabots_ coming nearer. Presently a couple of young bulls showed their grim visages round a corner, and after them came a very small girl with a very long stick. She looked about six years old, and she had great trouble to keep her little brown feet inside the wooden shoes, which were many sizes too large for her. How was it that those big, and perhaps bad-tempered, animals allowed themselves to be driven and beaten by that child, whereas they would have turned upon a dog double her size, and done their best to toss him over the chestnut trees? What is it that the brutes see below the surface of the human being to inspire them with such respect and fear of this biped, even when he or she has just crawled out of the cradle? These bulls, by-the-bye, stopped and looked at me in a way that was anything but respectful, and I delayed the study of the metaphysical question until I could watch them from the rear. I found on the top of the hill the village or hamlet that the old tramp had mentioned; but there was no sign of an inn--indeed, there was no sign of anybody being alive in the place. I threaded the steep little lanes between the houses and hovels, up to the ankles in dirty straw that had been turned out of the animals' sheds, but saw nothing moving except fowls. I knocked at various doors, and obtained no response. It was clear that all the people, including the children, were away in the fields, and had left the village to take care of itself. Hungry and thirsty, I was resigning myself with a heavy heart to trudge on, when I observed a column of blue smoke rise suddenly from a chimney, and I was not long in finding the house to which it belonged. It was a dilapidated building, very wretched now, but with an air of bygone superiority. This was chiefly shown in the Renaissance doorway, a rather elaborate piece of work, over which was the date 1602. I ascended the steps with a little misgiving, for I thought that perhaps some cantankerous person whose family had seen better times might be living there, and that my questions as to food and drink might meet with surly answers. I knocked, nevertheless, with my stick upon the old door studded with nail-heads. It was opened, and before me stood a woman who looked old, but who was probably middle-aged; she was very poorly clad, very imperfectly washed, but on her tired and toil-worn face there was no forbidding expression. I told her that I was looking for an auberge, and she said that hers was one _au besoin_. It was the only one that answered at all to the name thereabouts. So the smoke had led me to the right place. I followed the heiress of the dilapidated house--she was a descendant of the original owner--through the dingy kitchen, where upon the hearth the fire of sticks that she had just lighted was blazing cheerfully, into a back room, where there were two beds without linen, and with nothing but patchwork quilts over big bundles of dry maize leaves. It is thus that many of the peasants of the Aveyron sleep. This is not a part of France where the study of cleanliness and comfort is carried to excess. If the floor of the room that I now entered had ever been washed, the boards must have forgotten the scrubbing sensation a century or more ago. The appearance of everything indicated that I was in a fleas' paradise; but as it was by no means the first of the kind of which I had had experience, I merely took the precaution of keeping my feet off the ground, so as to offer as few travelling facilities as possible to the enemy. The room, although it was dirty, was cheerful; for the sunshine streamed in through the open window, and the view of the green valley beneath and the woods beyond soon drove the fleas out of mind. Upon the sill were plums laid out on wooden trays to dry in the sun and become what English people call prunes. The excellent woman, who installed me before a little table on which she laid a cloth, said that she had little to offer me; but that all she had was at my service. She first fished out of the wood-ashes in which it was preserved one of those dry, stringy sausages with which everyone who knows this part of France must be familiar. Then she brought in some white bread which a presentiment of my coming had perhaps caused her to buy a month before, for it was green with mildew. She thought that I should prefer this to the very dark bread of her own making. The choice was perplexing. My meal was chiefly made upon a dish of firm cream like that of Devonshire, with plums and fresh cob-nuts for dessert. Then my hostess made me some coffee, a luxury rarely used in the house; and when she had set it on the table, I induced her to stay and talk awhile. The conversation was made easier because, notwithstanding her poverty, she spoke French with much more facility than most of the people in these rural districts. She told me that her husband and children had not yet returned from the fields, and that she was at home because she was so tired after threshing buckwheat all yesterday in the sun. 'In winter,' I said, 'you have an easier time?' 'Oh no! In winter we are always working at something or another. We then make our linen from the hemp, patch up the clothes, prepare the walnuts for pressing, and blanch the chestnuts.[*] We have always something on hand.' [*] _Blanchir les châtaignes_. In Guyenne, after the first sale of chestnuts in their natural state, the peasants prepare a large quantity of those that remain in a special manner, which consists of removing the first and second skins, and artificially drying the nuts until they become quite hard. They will then keep an indefinite period, and can be boiled for food when required. In the winter evenings, while the women work at their distaffs, the men frequently skin chestnuts either for drying or for food the next day. But while there was any work to be done out-of-doors, there they were busy from sunrise until dusk. Supper over, the beasts were looked after. 'Then,' she added, 'we say our prayers and go to bed.' She volunteered no statements respecting her ancestry, but when I questioned her concerning the house, she said that her family had been living in it for nearly 300 years. At one time they were the principal people in the district. It was true that they had come down in the world, but she felt thankful for the blessings that had been given her, and was satisfied. The family were all in good health, and that was the main thing. Her mother was still living with her--eighty-seven years of age, and had never been ill in her life. Here was a simple but eloquent story of human vicissitude and uncertainty that was told without a word of regret or repining, and as though it were a tale of no interest to anybody. This poor, humble woman before me, whose back was still aching from the movement of bending and lifting the flail hour after hour, was, by right of birth, what we call in England a 'gentlewoman.' But she was poor, and ignorant of all books except the one that contained her prayers. She was not less a peasant than any of the women around her, nor did she wish to be thought anything better. That her ancestors were gentlemen, that, they may have borne a forgotten title (many that were borne in France have been forgotten by the descendants), was as nothing to her. She clung only to what, in her simple but grand philosophy, was really to be valued--the blessings of life and health, opportunities of labour, independence, and faith in God. This woman would only take the equivalent of a shilling for her wine, her coffee, and her food; then she made me drink some of her _eau de noix_ (spirit prepared with the juice of green walnuts), and as I left she pressed more nuts and plums upon me. The old woman who had never been ill was waiting for me under a tree. She could not speak a word of French, but she said a great deal in _patois_, of which all that I could make out was that she was afraid the _calour_ (heat) would hurt me if I left so early in the afternoon. A little beyond the village I passed a party of threshers, men and women--two rows of them facing each other like dancers; the figures bending and straightening in unison, and all the. flails whirling together in the air. They had spread a large cloth upon the ground, and were thrashing out the grain upon it. A block of granite cropping out of the sandstone indicated a change in the formation, and this came, for the rocks gradually passed into gneiss and schist, frequently covered with moss and ferns, golden-rod in bloom, and purple heather. St. Geniez by the Lot was reached long before sundown; but although I had the time, I was not tempted to walk any farther that day. The little town is picturesquely situated on the river-bank, and it has some old houses with turrets, and other interesting details. There is a late Gothic church that was formerly attached to an Augustinian monastery, of which part of the cloisters remains. Inside the edifice every flagstone covers a tomb, and in several instances masons' hammers and other tools are carved upon them. It fell out that several commercial travellers and superior pedlars came into St. Geniez on the same day as myself, but in more genteel fashion, for they had their traps, and would not for all the world have risked their reputation for respectability, and rendered themselves despicable in the eyes of customers, by entering on foot. Nevertheless, their first impression (as I afterwards learnt), when I sat down with them to dinner at the comfortable inn, which, thanks to their patronage, had found the courage to style itself a hotel, was that I might be a new rival in the field. But the difficulty was to guess the particular field that I had marked out for my own distinction and the confusion of competitors. Was I in the grocery line, or the oil and colour line? Was I _dans les spiritueux_ or _dans les articles d'église_? Then they had a suspicion that I was, perhaps, a German traveller trying to open up a fresh market for potato spirit, or those scientific syrups which are said to change any alcohol into 'old cognac' or the most venerable Jamaica rum. This may have accounted for the somewhat chilly reserve that fell upon my table companions as I took my seat among them. But, as this was unpleasant for everybody, I soon found an opportunity of dispelling the mystery that hung over me. Then they threw off all restraint, and showed themselves to be the jolly, rollicking, good-natured beings that these men almost invariably are. They were much more polite to me than Englishmen generally are to strangers, who are felt to be something like intruders--recognising me as a guest, and insisting upon my helping myself first to every dish that was brought on the table. It is customary for tourists to speak of the French commercial traveller as a very ridiculous or vulgarly offensive person. I have found these so-called 'bagmen' to be among the most pleasant-mannered, agreeable, and intelligent people whom I have met while roaming in provincial France. I have been disturbed at night by their uproariousness, for they are convivial to a fault; but in my immediate relations with them I have always found them frank, kindly, and courteous. Before eight o'clock the next morning I had left St. Geniez behind me in the light mist, and was again on the banks of the Lot. At a waterside village called Sainte-Eulalie--a saint so much venerated by the French in the Middle Ages that a multitude of places have been named after her--was a church with a broad tower and low broach spire. I was struck by the noble simplicity and elegance of the Romanesque apse, which was much in the Auvergnat style. The village was very picturesque, partly on account of its position by the sunny, babbling water, and partly because of its numerous old houses, some with projecting stories, and others with exterior staircases communicating with an open gallery covered by the prolonged eaves of the roof. Outside of the doors mushrooms (_boleti_) after being cut in slices, were spread in the sun to dry. As I continued my way down the valley I met several women and girls returning from the chestnut woods on the hillsides carrying baskets of these _cépes_ on their heads. Although I hoped to sleep that night at Espalion, I soon left the direct road and struck off across country to the south-west in order to take in the village of Bozouls, a place that some soldier whom I had met told me was like Constantine in Algeria. I therefore left the valley of the Lot, and proceeded to cross the hills and tablelands which separated me from the gorge of its tributary, the Dourdou. In taking by-paths to reach the _causse_, I passed over hillocks of chocolate-coloured marl mixed with broken schist and flints: here the broom and juniper, the heather and bracken, flourished. At length I felt the fresh breeze and drank the invigorating air of the limestone plateau. Descending the hill beyond, on the road to Rodez, I passed a very strange-looking spot where huge flat blocks of bare gneiss, laid together as though giants of the Titanic age had here been trying to pave the world, sloped with extraordinary regularity towards the highway. And these prodigious slabs of gneiss now lay amidst schistous marl and calcareous rock. Farther down in the valley was a small village of which the houses were dwarfed by a gloomy strong hold, apparently of the fifteenth century, whose four high and massive towers, occupying the angles of a small quadrilateral, gave it the appearance of a vast _donjon_. At a small inn kept by a blacksmith I was able to get a meal and the rest that was now needed. The blacksmith's wife, a pleasant young woman; who seemed much amused at the sight of a being from the outer and, to her, half-fabulous world, drew part of a duck out of the grease in which it had been preserved, and gave me this with rice for my lunch. During the repast I was not a little worried by the questions of the blacksmith and some other village worthies who were drinking coffee in the small room that had to do for everybody, and who had so placed themselves that they could watch me at their ease. Such a strange bird as myself did not drop into their midst every day. They were not unfriendly, but their curiosity was troublesome, and I perceived that nothing that I might have said would have removed the impression from their minds that I was a mysterious character. The country beyond this village was not unpleasant to the eye, with its vineyards on the slopes and its green pasturage in the valleys, but the hours went by drearily as I tramped upon the long road. I felt solitary, and was not in the mood to be interested easily; nevertheless, I lingered on the wayside awhile before a remarkable relic of the past: a rectangular machicolated tower of great height and strength rising out of a dark grove of trees. The afternoon was drawing towards evening, when I descended suddenly into a deep and narrow ravine where the sunshine was lost, and the twilight dwelt with greenness and dampness. At the bottom the Dourdou ran swiftly over its pebbly bed. After following it a little distance I found myself between towering walls of Jurassic rock, vertical towards the summit, capped on each side by a long row of houses. There was also a church, likewise on the edge of the precipice. This was Bozouls--a place scarcely known beyond a small district of the Aveyron, but one of the most curious in France. The traveller, when he reaches the gorge, after crossing a somewhat monotonous country, is quite unprepared for such a startling revelation of the sentiment of human fellowship in the midst of the savagery of nature. Why did men build houses in rows on the brink of these frightful precipices? It appears to have been all done for the sake of the artist and the lover of the picturesque. And yet Bozouls grew to be a village in an age when men of work and action only knew two kinds of enthusiasm--war and religion. Either a castle or a religious foundation must have been the beginning of this community. There are no remains of a fortress, but the church is very old, and its elaborate architecture suggests that it was at one time attached to a monastic establishment. After crossing the stream I climbed to this church by a path that wound about the rocks, and found it an exceedingly interesting example of the Southern Romanesque. The portal opens into a narthex, where there is a very primitive font like a low square trough. The nave entrance has two columns on each side supporting archivolts, and upon the capitals of these columns are carved figures of the quaintest Romanesque character, illustrating Biblical subjects. The nave has an aisle on each side scarcely four feet wide, and most of the separating columns are out of the perpendicular. The capitals here are wrought with acanthus-leaves or little figures. The sanctuary and apse are in the style of Auvergne, with this peculiarity, that the capitals of the slender columns are singularly massive, and bear only the mere outline of the acanthus-leaf for ornament. The long street of the village, white and sunbaked, running within a few yards of the precipice, was almost as deserted as the church. But for a Sister who stood by the convent gate like a statue of Eternal Silence, and a man who was killing a wretched calf in the middle of the road, I might have asked myself if this fantastic Bozouls was not some spectral village, reproducing the past in all except the living beings who had gone down into their graves. When I recrossed the Dourdou, the light was several tones lower than it was when I first descended to the bottom of the ravine, and the vegetation was of a deeper and sadder green. And the stream rushed onward with a low wail, and a distressful cry, as of a soul passing down the Dark Valley and not yet free from the panic of death. When I had reached the plateau that I had left an hour or more ago, the sun was about to set. As I knew that the _diligence_ to Espalion would soon pass, I preferred to wait for it rather than to walk any farther. The south wind was blowing with such force that I lay down on the leeside of a bush to be sheltered from it. Here I watched the sun burning dimly in a yellow haze on the edge of the world. The wind wailed amongst the leaves of the hawthorn-bushes, but over the brown land, flushed with the sad yellow gleam, came the sound of cattle-bells, softening the harshness of the solitude, and bringing almost a smile upon the careworn face of Nature. I watched the dingy golden light rising up the stubble of the hills. Now the sun began to dip behind a knoll; a far-off tree stood in the line of vision, and I could see the leaves shaking as if in frenzy against the disc of sullen fire. Then from the edge of the western sky shot up into the yellow haze fair colours of pink and purple that seemed to say: 'The south wind may blow and burn the beauty of the earth, but the west wind will come again, its light wings laden with refreshment and joy.' The sun was gone, the shadows of night were being laid upon the dreary land, when the wavy clouds about the brightening moon became like a shower of rose-petals; the breeze grew softer and softer, for it was, in the language of the peasant, the 'sun-wind,' and the nocturnal peace began to reign over the sadness of the day's death. The sound of jingling bells coming rapidly nearer roused me from my contemplative mood. The _diligence_, so called, was in sight, and a few minutes later I took my place in the very stuffy box on wheels, nearly filled with women and bundles. As it was only a drive of some seven or eight miles to Espalion, the town was reached in good time for dinner. I sat at a side-table in the large room of the inn, at the door of which the coach stopped. The central table was already occupied by half a dozen persons--all fat, vulgar, and noisy. They were examples of the _petit bourgeois_ class whom one meets rather too frequently wherever there are towns in this part of France, and with whom the disposition to grossness is equally apparent in mind and body. There were women in the party, but had they been absent, the language of the men would have been no coarser. These fat and middle-aged women, married, doubtless, and highly respectable after their fashion, when struck by each gust of humour, such as might issue from the mouth of a foul-minded buffoon at a fair, rolled like ships at sea. I passed a troubled night at Espalion, for there were a couple of feathered fiends just underneath the window crowing against each other with maddening rivalry. One, an old cock, had a very hoarse crow, and seemed to be suffering from chronic laryngitis brought on by an abuse of his vocal powers; and the other was a young cock with a very squeaky crow, for he was still taking lessons, and, as is the case with many beginners, he had too much enthusiasm. I had had more than enough of this duo before the night was through, and was out very early in the morning looking at the ancient town of Espalion, which witnessed both the victory and the defeat of British arms long ere the Maid of Domrémy came to the rescue of the golden lilies. Its capture took place soon after the Battle of Crécy. The lords of Espalion were the Calmont d'Olt, who played an active part in the wars with the English. The town deserves a prominent place among the many picturesque old burgs stamped with mediaeval character on the banks of the Lot. One may stand upon its Gothic bridge of the thirteenth century and dream of the past without risk of being hustled by a crowd except on market days. This venerable bridge must have been admirably built to have withstood all the floods which have smote it in the course of six centuries. The great central arch is so much higher than the others that in crossing you go up a hill and then down one. Close by on the river-bank is the sixteenth-century Hôtel de Ville, a castle, partly built on a rock, in the gracefully-ornamental style of the French Renaissance, with turrets, mullioned windows, and a loggia. Having crossed the river, I went in search of the chief architectural curiosity in or near Espalion--that known as the Church of Pers, or the Chapel of St. Hilarion. It is on the outskirts of the town, and stands in the old cemetery. I had first to find a potter who kept the key, and I discovered him at length in a narrow street in the midst of his clay and the vessels of his handicraft. He gave me the great key, and it was one that some fervent archaeologist might press reverentially to his heart, for the smith who forged it must have died centuries ago. Entering the cemetery, I saw, surrounded by a multitude of closely-packed tombs and grave mounds, on which the long grass stood with the late summer flowers, a small Romanesque building that seemed to have sunk far into the soil, like the ancient lichen-covered slabs from which the inscriptions had been washed away by time's inexorable and ever-wearing sea. Perhaps the soil had risen about the walls. This church of the twelfth century is built of red sandstone, the blocks being laid together without mortar. On entering it such a dimness falls, with such a sacred silence; the air is so heavy with dampness and the odour of mildew, that you feel as if you were already in the vestibule of the Halls of Death, where darkness and stillness have never known the sound of a human voice or the blessed light of the sun. The design of the building is that of a nave with transept and apse. At each end of the transept is some curious cross-vaulting. The columns have all very large capitals in proportion to the diameter and height; some are ornamented with plain acanthus leaves, others are carved with numerous small figures of men and animals, ideally uncouth and typical of the fantastic medley of Christian symbolism and the barbaric imagination that found a mystical relationship between the monsters of its own creation and the problems of the universe. The exterior of the church is not less interesting than the interior. The charming Romanesque apse, with its three narrow windows, its blind arcade, the capitals ornamented with the acanthus, the row of fantastic modillions above carried all round the building, their sculpture exhibiting the strangest variety of ideas--heads of men, women, beasts, birds, and fabulous monsters; and then the venerable portal, with its elaborate bas-relief of the Last Judgment, furnish much matter for reflection and study. In this 'Judgment' Christ is standing in the midst of the Apostles, and the dead are rising from the tombs below. Fiends are pulling the wicked out of their coffins, and others are throwing the condemned into the wide-opened jaws of a frightful monster. Above are numerous figures separated by various mouldings forming archivolts. The arch of the door is Gothic, but all the other work is Romanesque. The belfry is simply a roofed wall pierced with four arched openings for bells. Espalion had once its strong fortress on a neighbouring hill--the Castle of Calmont d'Olt. It is now a ruin. I climbed to it, and found the undertaking more tedious than I had supposed. The narrow path winding through the vineyards was bordered with cat-mint, agrimony, vervain, and camomile. Then it passed through a little village, where there were old walnut-trees and mossy walls, and a small church with these words over the door: 'C'est ici la maison de Dieu et la porte du ciel.' After the village, the path was almost lost amidst blocks of sandstone and the _débris_ of the fortress, where snakes basking in the sun slid away at my approach, hissing indignantly at the intruder. On the summit there had been in the far-off ages an outpour of basalt, which had crystallized into columnar prisms, and upon this foundation of ancient lava the castle was built. A good deal of wall and the lower part of a rectangular keep remain of this fortress, which dates from the twelfth century. The outer wall was strengthened with semicircular bastions, the ruins of which are seen. Fennel now thrives amongst the fallen stones, which were dumb witnesses of so much that was human. Returning to the inn, I resisted the temptation held out to stop and lunch, although the preparations in the kitchen were far advanced, and started off on the road to Estaing. I was again following the Lot, which here flows between high vine-clad hills. After walking a few miles, I saw a bush over the door of a roadside cottage, and, entering, found that the only person in charge of this very rustic inn was a pretty girl of about seventeen. She looked a little scared at first; but when I had sat down with the evident intention of making myself at home, she became reconciled to the sight of me, and consented to let me have what there was in the house to eat. This was not much, as she took care to point out. The nearest approach to meat there was eggs, excepting, of course, the fat bacon--quite uneatable in the English fashion--which is the basis of all the soup made throughout a great part of France. Having lighted a fire on the hearth, and fried me some eggs with bits of fat bacon instead of butter, she said she must go and call 'papa,' who was working in the vineyard. So she left me in charge of the inn while she went to fetch her father on the hillside. While I was alone, I looked at the sunny view of green meadows and trees through the open door that faced the shining river, and easily fancied that what I saw was a bit of verdant England. In the room, too, the twittering of a pair of canaries recalled impressions of other days; but the plague of flies was thoroughly French, and it soon brought me back to realities. When the girl returned with her father, she gave me some excellent goat-cheese, and for my dessert some hazelnuts, together with a spirit distilled from plums, similar to the _quertch_ of Alsace. I had not been long in the sunshine again, when I noticed a large house in the midst of the vines not far off the road. On drawing near I found that it was ruinous, and had been long since abandoned. It had been a rather grand house once, and must have belonged to people of importance in the country. There was a finely-carved scutcheon with arms over the Gothic door, and the mullioned windows, which had lost all their glass, had something of the pathos of gentility that, becoming poor and old, has been abandoned to all winds and weathers. The little courtyard was full of high weeds and shrubs, and the wild flags that grow on the rocks had laid their green leaves together to hide the wounds of the old walls. Swallows, sparrows, and bats were now the tenants of this mysterious house, which must have had a troubled history. The picture has since haunted my memory; the mind goes back to it in a strange way, and the sentiment of it, as it was communicated to me, I find perfectly expressed in these lines by Alphonse Karr: 'De la solitaire demeure Une ombre lourde d'heure en heure, Se détache sur le gazon, Et cet ombre, couchée et morte Est la seule chose qui sorte Tout le jour de cette maison.' Some distance farther I passed another deserted dwelling. It was perched upon rocks, and was overgrown with ivy and clematis. The road led me down beside the Lot, which now began to rush again over rocks as the hills drew closer, and the valley became once more a gorge. On one side were dense woods; on the other vines reached up to the sky. At length I saw before me a row of houses beside the river in a bright bit of valley hemmed in by high cliffs. On the rocks behind the houses were a church and a castle. This was Estaing. It is a little place full of originality, and looks as if it had been built to set forth the dream of some old writer of romance. The late-Gothic church is more quaint and odd than beautiful. The architect sported with the laws of symmetry, and revelled in the fanciful. The nave is much wider at one end than the other. The great sundial over the door, bearing the date 1636, is scarcely less useful now than when it was placed there. The castle is a strange pile, all the more picturesque by its incongruity. It stands upon a mass of schistous rock about fifty feet above the river. Most of the visible portion of the building is late Gothic and Renaissance; but this was grafted upon the lower walls and arches of a feudal fortress. Towers rise from towers, mullioned windows have their lines cut in the shadow of beetling machicolations, and higher still are dormer windows with graceful Gothic gables. This castle is now a convent and village school. From the court I could see the Sisters' little garden, where flowers and melons and potherbs were curiously mixed without the gardener's systematic art, which is so often a deadly thing to beauty; and nasturtiums climbing the weedy walls from rough deal boxes were basking in the steady glow of afternoon sun, which seemed to me so intensely brilliant because I was in the dark shadow. A Sister consented to let me go to the top of the highest tower, and she went before me rattling her keys officially. On the way she showed me a fine Renaissance chimney-piece with florid carvings. After Estaing the valley became wilder, and the river fell over rocks in a series of cascades. Clouds came up and hid the sun; a rainy wind made the willows hoary, and set all the poplar leaves sighing and quivering. The vines had disappeared, and the wooded gorge became very solemn in the fading light. There was one figure in the landscape--that of a peasant woman bending and rolling up into bundles the hemp that had been spread out to dry. It added the human touch of melancholy to the sadness of the picture. More and more gloomy became the scene. Great black precipitous rocks of schist, their hollows filled with sombre foliage, rose in solemn grandeur far above me, and in the bottom the plunging stream foamed and roared. The mad wind caught up the dust from the road and whirled it onward, and then the rain began to fall. Rockier and darker became the way, and louder the roar of the stream. So narrow was the gorge at length that the road ran along a ledge that had been cut in the gneiss. When I was still some miles from Entraygues (called by the peasants Entrayou), I met a young gendarme. He did not ask me for my papers, for he was a native of the district of Lourdes, and had been brought into contact with so many English people at Pau that he detected at once my Britannic accent, which has not been worn away by many years' residence in France. To him the fact of my being an Englishman was a sufficient assurance that I was respectable. He was a rakish, devil-may-care fellow, who, after being a sub-officer in the army, had lately been moved into the gendarmerie. His heart had been deeply touched by an English governess whom he had met at Pau, and he spoke to me about her with 'tears in his voice.' He talked much about Lourdes, where he said the people were sincerely religious, and not hypocritical. His opinion of the Aveyronnais was somewhat different, but perhaps unjust, for as yet he could not have had much experience of them. Having taken the precaution to tell me that he was anything but a strict Catholic himself, he declared that he was a believer in miracles. 'Why?' I asked. 'Because,' said he, 'my father saw Bernadette go up a rock on her knees--one that no man could climb--and I myself have been a witness of miracles at Lourdes. I have seen at least twenty people cured at the fountain. One was a captain, who was so paralyzed that he had to be carried to the water, and when he came away he walked as if nothing had been the matter with him.' Thus talking we reached Entraygues. I allowed the gendarme to take me to the inn of his fancy, which he praised with true Southern warmth for its comfort and good cheer. The large kitchen as we entered was only lighted by the flame of the wood-fire on the hearth, in front of which a fowl and a piece of veal were turning on the same spit, moved by clockwork that said 'click-clack, click-clack;' which was as genial an invitation to dinner as any I had ever heard. Presently the lamp was lighted, the table was laid, and I sat down to dinner with the innkeeper and the gendarme from the Basses Pyrénées. The meal was of the substantial kind, such as gives complete satisfaction to the wayfarer at the end of his day's wandering, after putting up with frugal fare on the road. The aubergiste brought out his best wine, and his best cheeses made from goat's milk, and which had been kept carefully wrapped up in vine leaves. These little cheeses, when they have been allowed to mature in a wrapping of vine or plane leaf, are among the best made. The landlord had studied all matters relating to the stomach within the range of his experience. He said that hares were not fit to eat unless they had fed chiefly on thyme, and that a starling had no value in the kitchen until it had been feeding on juniper berries. This night when I went to bed I had not the frantic crowing of cocks to keep me awake, but the soft murmuring of the flowing river to lull me asleep. The weather being now fair and calm after the troubled evening, I threw the window open, so that I could feel the wafting of the great invisible wings of the summer night, and listen to the soothing song of the water repeating the tales that were told to it by the rocks and the woods on its way down from the Lozère mountains. I was again on the banks of this beautiful river--at no place more beautiful than at Entraygues--when the rising sun was gilding only the topmost vines of the high western hill that shadows it. The little town of 2,000 inhabitants is close to the spot where the Thuyère falls into the Lot. It lies in the angle where two lovely valleys meet. The Thuyère comes down from the Cantal mountains, and as it reaches Entraygues it spreads out over a broad smooth bed of pebbles, its water as clear as rock-crystal; and when the morning sun looks down upon it over the vine-clad hills, it is like something that has been seen in the happiest of dreams. There is a castle at Entraygues, and, as in the case of the one at Estaing, it is now used as a convent and school. The archaeologist will find perhaps more to interest him in the two thirteenth-century bridges which span the Lot and the Thuyère, both noble specimens of Gothic work. As I left Entraygues the bells in the church-tower were ringing--not the monotonous ding-dong with which French people generally have had to content themselves since the Revolutionists turned the old bell-metal into sous, but a blithe and joyous peal of high silvery tones that seemed to belong to the blue air, and to be the voices of the little spirits that flutter about the morning's rosy veil. My design was to reach the abbey of Conques before evening, but instead of going directly towards it over the hills, I preferred to keep as long as possible in the valley of the Lot, which is here of such witching loveliness. As there was a road on the river-bank for many miles, I could follow this fancy, and yet feel the comfort of walking on good ground. Although the season was getting late, I found the valley below Entraygues very rich in flowers. Agrimony, mint, and marjoram, with a tall inula, and the pretty, sweet-scented white melilot, were in great abundance along the bank. Upon the rocks, which now bordered the road, were the deep red blossoms of the orpine sedum, and a small crimson-flowered stock with very hoary stem. A tall handsome plant about three feet high, with large white flowers, drew me down a bank to where it was growing near the water. I found that it was a very luxuriant specimen of the thorn-apple (_datura_). While I was admiring its poisonous beauty a woman stopped on the road just above me, and, after contemplating me in silent curiosity for a few minutes, said to me first in _patois_ and then in French (when I replied to her in this language): 'It is a wicked plant, that! The beasts will not touch it, so you had better leave it alone.' Although I did not think this association of ideas very complimentary to myself, I thanked her for her good advice. I nevertheless took away as a souvenir a flower and one of the thorny apples, seeing which the peasant trudged on her way, saying no doubt that it was wasting time and words to give advice to lunatics. Again the cliffs drew very close together, and the valley was nothing more than a deep crack in the earth's crust. On one side was unbroken forest; on the other vines were terraced up the rocky steep to the height of seven or eight hundred feet. Even amidst the jutting crags the adventurous vine lifted its sunny leaves; but, alas! here, too, the phylloxera had begun its work of desolation, and I had little doubt that these hills laden with fruit were destined in a few years to become a waste of stones like so many others that I had seen nearer the plains which had once streamed with wine. The cultivated land by the river was only a narrow strip, and the crops were chiefly maize and buckwheat. At length the vine cultivation was only carried on at intervals. Then the long blue line of water lay between high rocky hills covered with box and broom, bracken and heather. A stream came tumbling down a deep ravine over blocks of gneiss to join the Lot, and a little beyond this was a hamlet. The morning was now far advanced; so, as I was passing a cottage inn, I wavered a minute, and the result of the wavering was that I crossed the threshold. I said to myself: 'Perhaps I may walk on for miles, and not find another chance so good as this.' It was one of the poorest of inns, but it was able to give me a meal of bread and cheese and eggs, which was as much as I could expect hereabouts. There was also a light wine of local growth--sparkling, fragrant, and deliciously cool. What more could I want? Two motherless girls looked after this waterside inn, and also the ferry belonging to it. The boat lay a few feet from the door. When I was ready to leave, the younger of the two girls ferried me to the other side of the river, and a very pretty figure she made for an artist to sketch--the simplicity of childhood in her face, and the strength of a woman in her bare sunburnt arms. As is the case with so many of the peasants in this district, where the old Gaulish stock (the _Ruteni_ and the _Cadurci_) has been much less influenced than in the towns by the tumultuous passage of races from the south, the east, and the north, she was fair-haired, and naturally fair-skinned; but exposure to the sun had darkened her by many shades. I had been walking for some time in the department of the Cantal, but the ferry landed me on the Aveyron side of the river. I had now seriously to consider the shortest way to Conques, separated from me by very rough hill country and an uncertain number of miles. I was on a narrow path skirting the forest and the water, when I met a peasant family dressed in their best clothes, and on their way, as I learnt, to the village of Notre Dame, where the _fête patronale_ was being held. The man, who seemed well pleased with himself in his new black blouse, carried the sleeping baby, and his wife held a great coloured umbrella over it. They were followed by a girl of about fourteen, who wore the open-work hand-made white stockings which the young women of these southern villages use on festive occasions as soon as they begin to grow coquettish. I fell into conversation with these people, who told me that, after reaching the village, I must commence the ascent through the forest. Speaking to the man about the trout, which are plentiful in this part of the river, he entertained me with a story of a selfish angler who once came there, and who had a fish on his hook as soon as he threw a fly. The people of the district--who, it seems, know nothing about fly-fishing--watched his success with wonder and admiration, and asked him to explain to them how he managed to catch fish in that way; but he was surly, and refused to give them any lessons. He had imitators, nevertheless; but after spending many hours vainly endeavouring to hook the crafty trout, they lost patience, and gave up the attempt. Two or three score of houses huddled together at the foot of a rocky cliff, a little above the water, was Notre Dame. The village was all in movement. The space in front of the church was crowded with peasant figures; a bell was swinging backward and forward in the wall-belfry, as though it was trying to turn right over; stall-keepers with cakes, barley-sugar, and other dainties dear to the village child, to whom the opportunity of feasting even his eyes upon such things comes very seldom, were surrounded by eager little faces, and outstretched sunburnt hands, each clutching the sou that offered such a bewildering field for dissipation. In the auberge hard by was a noisy throng, of peasants sitting and standing in a cloud of smoke. Serving-women, hired for the occasion, gaily coifed and be-ribboned, holding bottles and glasses elbowed their way to the men who shouted the loudest for drink, and, catching the jest in the air, gave one as good or as bad in exchange. The scene was one for another Teniers to paint, although there were no costumes to give a local colour to the picturesque. Most of the older men wore the ugly short blouse--generally black in this part of France; but ambitious youths of eighteen or twenty showed a preference for the cloth coat which the village tailor had tried to cut according to the Paris fashion. Leaving the rustic revellers, the queer little church, with its ancient calvary, rudely carved, and resting upon a single column, I was soon in the shadow of the old chestnut forest that covered the steep side of the high cliffs above the Lot. The path was very rocky and toilsome. A young man, who was hastening down from his home on the hills to join the merrymakers, said to me, in allusion to the roughness of the way: 'Le bon Dieu ne passe pas souvent par ici,' thereby expressing the sentiment of the peasant, who associates all that is wild and rugged in nature with the devil. While still in the forest, and not a little puzzled by its paths, I met a woman and a youth, and asked them if the way I was taking led to Conques. '_Apé_' (yes) was the reply. Not a word of French could I draw from them. When the cliffs were at length scaled, and I was on the open tableland, I found the south wind blowing there with great violence, although in the valley there was scarcely breeze enough to ripple the river pools. The sun was falling into the yellow haze of the west as I began to descend towards the valley of the Dourdou. I came upon a tributary of this stream in the bottom of a deep and solemn gorge, whose steep sides were densely wooded except where the rock jutted out and revealed its dark nakedness, and where higher, near the sky, showed here and there a patch of heather-purple waste, on which the brilliant light was softening into evening tones. But in the depth of the gorge, where the redly-running stream was nearly hidden under the tent of leaves, the air was already dim, and the forms of the trees were beginning to blend with their own shadows. Following the stream in its course, I found the Dourdou, and then turned down the broader valley. I was tramping wearily on my way, which seemed endless, when, clustered on the side of another wild and thickly wooded gorge running up amidst the hills, I saw many houses, and a dark pile of masonry, rising far above their roofs. I knew that this must be Conques; it showed its religious origin so plainly in the choice of the site. This was selected not because Nature was gentle and pitiful to man in the cleft of those savage hills, but because she was stern and solemn, and the veil that hides the supernatural was felt to be thinner there, where the rocks and forest seemed to the mediaeval mind to have remained just as the Almighty hand had fashioned them. A monastery arose in the desert, then the abbey church, and gradually a little lay community placed itself under the protection of the religious one. A long narrow street, steep and stony, leads to the church, which is all that is left of the Benedictine abbey, excepting some massive buttresses, ruinous arches, and a round tower grafted upon the rock--remnants of the ancient monastery which must have been half a fortress. The burg itself was fortified, and one of the gateways of the old wall is still standing. The existing church dates from the eleventh century, but various details point to the conclusion that it was built on the site of a more ancient structure. For example, in the entrance is a holy-water stoup, the basin having been scooped out of the capital of a column which is supposed to have been one of the supports of a very primitive altar. The figure of an emperor is carved on one of the faces, and on another that of a pagan divinity. The architecture of the church is simple and majestic, the only jarring note being the cupola raised about the time of the Renaissance over the intersection of the nave and transept. The barrel-vaulted nave, crossed by plain broad fillets, is in keeping with the early Romanesque severity of the façade. The ornament is nearly confined to the tympan over the portal, the capitals of columns, and to the choir with its seven absidal chapels. The choir itself is cross-vaulted, and the sanctuary, except at its junction with the nave, is enclosed by an arcade of narrow stilted arches, the only ornament of the capitals being acanthus leaves; but those against the wall are elaborately storied with little figures. A moulding of small billets is carried round the apse. The great height of the nave vaulting, obtained by a triforium and clerestory, is very remarkable in a Romanesque church of such early construction. In accordance with the style of the period, the capitals of the nave show a complete absence of uniformity, some being carved with figures, and others with leaves or intricate line ornament. To obtain an adequate impression of all the fantastic imagination expressed in these capitals, and the craftsmanship brought to bear upon the carving, it is necessary to climb to the triforium galleries. The aisle windows are narrow and placed high in the wall. The interest of the exterior is centred upon the bas-relief representing the Last Judgment, which fills the entire tympan of the arch covering the two main doorways. The composition, which contains over a hundred figures, is singularly animated, and although the forms are uncouthly proportioned, and the treatment of the subject in some of the details touches what to the modern mind seems grotesque, it is an exceedingly vivid and faithful reflection of the religious ideas of the age that produced it. What now appears grotesque was then sublime and awful. We smile at the barbaric imagination that placed here, at the door of hell, the head of a vast and hideous monster of the crocodile family, into whose gaping jaws the damned are being thrust by a pantomime devil; but eight centuries ago Christian people had too lively a faith in the materialistic horrors of the infernal kingdom to perceive anything extravagant in this idea of stuffing a scaly monster with condemned sinners. Eight centuries ago!--the peasant of the Aveyron and of Finistère still look upon these Dantesque sculptures with genuine awe. Those who blame the monks for giving the devil a forked tail and a pair of horns, and otherwise exhausting their invention in the endeavour to materialize the terrors of hell, are strangely unphilosophic. The mass of humanity with whom the monks had to deal had the minds of children in regard to metaphysical ideas; only by the pictorial method could they be sufficiently impressed with the joys or horrors of the future life. Bas-reliefs such as this must have had a great influence on the conduct of many generations; nor has their influence yet ceased, although, as popular education spreads, the interest taken in these quaint sculptures by those for whom they were especially intended, so far from being stimulated, is lessened. Inasmuch as the mind needs deep ploughing for the new culture, and the majority can get no more than a superficial raking, the peasant of to-day is often a poorer man intellectually than his father was--poorer by the loss of faith and the confusion of ideas. The sculptor of this Last Judgment--a Benedictine monk, doubtless, like the architect of the church who has left this personal record, 'Bernardus me fecit,' upon a stone in a dim corner--died centuries ago, and although his bones or their dust may be near, his name will never be known. But how his mind lives in the figures that took life under his hand! With what inspired longing of the soul he must have conceived and felt the majesty of Christ sitting in judgment at the end of time to have expressed so much that is sublime in the holy face and figure with his poor knowledge of art! The right hand is raised to bless the just, and the left repels the unforgiven. Grouped around the central figure are saints and angels. Peter, holding his keys, is followed by a crowd of the elect, headed by an old man on crutches, and a crowned sovereign--said to be Charlemagne--carries a reliquary. In the lower half of the tympan Satan is enthroned, his feet resting upon a writhing and hideously grimacing figure, supposed to be that of Judas. Immediately above, an angel and a fiend are weighing souls in a pair of scales, and the demon is trying to cheat. In this lower division the infernal punishments inflicted upon sinners of different categories are set forth. The sin of Francesca and Paolo is treated less poetically than by Dante, for here two guilty lovers are seen hanging to the same rope. A glutton is being stuffed with flaming viands, sent up from the devil's kitchen. All manner of torture is being inflicted by jubilant demons upon the souls that have fallen into their clutches. One has caught in the net that he has just thrown a mitred abbot and two other monks. As the dead rise from their tombs the justiciary angels bar the way of the wicked who strive to approach the Judge. A seraphim holds the closed book of life, upon which these words are carved: 'Hic signatur liber vitae.' On various parts of the portal are numerous inscriptions, some of which, like the following, are in leonine verses: 'Casti pacifici mites pietatis amici Sic stant gaudentes securi nil metuentes.' The archaeological interest of Conques is not confined to its church. Here, hidden from the world in this obscure little gorge, far from any railway-station, is one of the most remarkable collections of ancient reliquaries in France. The chief treasure is the very ancient gold statue of St. Foy (Sancta Fides) virgin and martyr, the patron saint of Conques. It is a seated figure nearly three feet in height, and its appearance is thoroughly Byzantine; indeed, one may go farther, and say that it looks much more pagan than Christian. There is nothing in the treatment that indicates a Christian motive; while the antique engraved gems with which it is studded, illustrating, as some of them do, workings of the Greek and Roman mind very far removed from the Christian idea of what is becoming in morals, make this astonishing statue an archaeological puzzle. The explanation that these gems were placed upon it to symbolize the victory of Christian purity over the impurity of the ancient religions of Greece and Rome is more ingenious than conclusive. This statue of gold (_repoussé_), with regal crown enriched with precious stones and enamels on which may be distinguished Jupiter, Mars, Apollo and Diana, among the more respectable of the divinities; if it was originally intended to represent the virgin Fides, martyred at Agen, was certainly one of the most fantastic achievements of ecclesiastical art. But whether this was its origin or not, the style of its workmanship is considered by competent judges to be sufficient proof that it is at least nine hundred years old. In favour of the opinion that the statue was made at Conques, there is the fact that the cult of St. Foy at this place dates from the early Middle Ages. The ancient seal of the abbey bears the motto: 'Duc nos quo resides, Inclyta Virgo Fides.' Historians of the abbey state that the relics of the saint were brought from Agen to Conques about the year 874, and that Etienne, Bishop of Clermont, caused a basilica to be raised here in her honour between the years 942 and 984. It was under the direction of Ololric, Abbot of Conques, that the existing church was built between the years 1030 and 1062. Throughout the Middle Ages the relics drew large numbers of pilgrims to the spot. In the dialect of the country they were called _Roumious_, because the pilgrimage to Conques was one of those which enjoyed the privilege of conferring under certain conditions the same advantages as were to be gained by the great pilgrimage to Rome. The pilgrims kept the 'holy vigil'--that is to say, they passed an entire night in prayer before the relics with a lighted taper either fixed at their side or carried in the hand. The pilgrimage and the ancient association of St. Foy were revived in 1874. The darkness of night drove me to take shelter in an inn which, like everything else here, is dedicated to St. Foy. The pilgrims' money had not made it pretentious, nor the people who kept it dishonest --changes which 'filthy lucre' is very apt to bring about in the holiest places. But the pilgrims who come to Conques are, for the most part, peasants who look well before they leap, and who so contrive matters as never to spend more upon anything than they have set aside for it. Having completed the next morning my impressions of Conques, noting among other things the curious and richly decorated _enfeux_ in the exterior walls of the church, I returned to the bottom of the ravine, and having crossed the old Gothic bridge over the Dourdou, began the ascent of the rocky chestnut forest on the other side of the valley. Small white crosses planted at intervals amidst the broom and heather of the open wood marked the way to St. Foy's Chapel for the guidance of pilgrims. According to the legend, it was near this spot that, the relics of the saint having been set down by those who had carried them from Agen, a fountain of the purest water burst forth from the earth, and has continued to flow ever since. I found the chapel--a modern Gothic one, with a statue of St. Foy in Roman dress in the niche over the door--under a high rugged rock of schist. There was no one but myself to trouble the solitude of this quiet nook on the wild hillside, all broken up into little gullies and ravines, where the aged chestnuts sheltered the tender moss and fern from the eager sunbeam, and kept the dew upon the bracken until the noonday hours. An exquisitely delicate campanula with minute flowers bloomed with hemp-agrimony and wood-sage along the sides of the rills that -scarcely murmured as they slid down the clefts of the impervious rock. As I went higher, the chestnuts became more scattered, and at length the rough land was covered only by the tufted heather and broom. Here, instead of the light whispering of leaves, was the drowsy song of multitudinous bees. The breeze blew freshly on the plateau, and grew stronger as the sun rose. Could it be a cemetery, that grouping of stones that I saw upon the moorland? No; it was a cottage-garden, surrounded by disconnected slabs of mica-schist, standing like little menhirs. peasant family lived in the wretched dwelling, exposed to the full force of the howling winds, and striving continually with nature for their black bread and the vegetables that give flavour to the watery soup. A young man with a _béret_ on his head overtook me. He was a Béarnais, who had not been long in the district, and who earned his living by certain services that he rendered at widely-scattered farms. He had to walk a great deal in all winds and weathers; therefore he knew the country well, and could give me useful information. I was crossing the hills with the intention of meeting the Lot again in the great coal basin of the Aveyron, and thus cutting off a wide bend of the river. All went well for some time after the Béarnais left me; but at length I became fairly bewildered by the woods and ravines, the hills and valleys that lay before me in seemingly endless succession. Savage rockiness, sylvan quietude, open solitudes, bare and windblown, gave me all the sensations of nature which expand the soul; but the body grumbled for rest and refreshment long before I had crossed this singularly wild tract of country almost abandoned by man. I had been wading through bracken up to my neck, or wandering almost at hazard through chestnut-woods for an hour or two, when hope was revived by my meeting a peasant, who told me that I was not far from the village of Firmi. I left the great woods, and reached a district that was new in every sense. Entering a little gorge, to me it seemed that nature had been cursed there ages ago, and still carried the sign of the malediction in the sooty darkness of the rocks--jagged, tormented, baleful--that rose on either hand. Nothing grew upon them save a low wretched turf, and this only in patches. Beyond, the metamorphic rock gave place to red sandstone, and the ground sloped down into the little coal basin of Firmi. What a change of scene was there! The air was thick with smoke, the road was black with coal-dust, most of the houses were new and grimy, nearly all the faces were smutty. There was a confused noise of wheels going round, of invisible iron monsters grinding their teeth, of trollies rattling along upon rails, and of human voices. Nature had no charm; but of beauty combined with fasting I had had enough for awhile, so my prejudices melted before the genial ugliness of this sooty paradise, knowing as I did that prosperity goes with such griminess, and that where there is money there are inns offering creature comforts both to man and beast. Either the angel or the goblin who goes a wayfaring with me led me this time into a heated little auberge infested by myriads of flies, which, getting into the steam of the _soupe caix choux_ in their anxiety to be served first, fell upon their backs in the hot mixture, and made frantic signals to me with their legs to help them out. There was no temptation to linger at the table when the purpose for which I was there had been attained; so I was very soon on the tramp again, making for the valley of the Lot. Leaving Décazeville a few miles to the west, I took the direction of Cransac, being curious to see the 'Smoking Mountains' in that district. Between the little coal basin of Firmi and the large one at Cransac and Aubin lay a strip of toilsome hill country. I had left the round tower of the ruined castle of Firmi below, and was following a winding path up a steep chestnut wood, when two mounted gendarmes passed me going down. About five minutes later I heard the sound of horses' hoofs coming near again. 'One of the gendarmes is returning,' was my reflection, and, looking round, I saw this was really so. The man was trotting his horse up the wood. Being sure that he was coming after me, I walked slower, and gave myself the most indifferent and loitering air that I could put on. In a few minutes he reined up his horse at my side. He was a young man, and his expression told me that he did not much like the duty that his chief had put upon him. Addressing me, he said: 'Pardon, monsieur, you are a stranger in this country?' 'Yes, I am.' 'Will you please tell me your quality?' In reply I asked him if he wished to see my papers. 'If it will not vex you,' he said. His manners were quite charming. If he was a native of the Rouergue, the army had polished him up wonderfully. After looking at the papers and finding them satisfactory, he said: 'Je vous demande pardon, monsieur, mais vous comprenez-----' 'Oh yes, I understand perfectly, and I assure you that my feelings are not at all hurt!' And so we parted on very good terms. A woman standing at a cottage door at a little distance watched the scene with a scared and wondering look in her face. When I was again alone, and she saw me coming towards her, she disappeared with much agility into her fortress and shut the door. She must have thought that, although I had managed to escape arrest that time, I should certainly come to a bad end. After reaching the top of the hill, white smoke rising continually into the blue air led me to the _Montagnes fumantes_. Coming at length to the spot so named, 'Surely,' I thought, 'my wayfaring has brought me at last to the Phlegraean Fields.' All about me were rocks that had been burnt red, black, or yellow, and on their scorched surface not a shrub, nor a blade of grass, nor even a tuft of spurge, grew. The subterranean fires which had burnt these upper rocks had long since gone out; but a hot and sulphurous vapour still passed over them when the wind blew it in their direction. Continuing down the hillside, I heard a crackling as of stones being split by heat, and presently saw little tongues of flame shooting up from the crevices in the soil almost at my feet, but scarcely perceptible in the brilliant sunshine. From these and other vents, however, came intermittent puffs, or continuous fillets of smoke, and the air was almost overpoweringly hot and sulphurous. To wander by night among these jets of fire must be very stimulating to the imagination, for then the hill is lit up by them; but I thought the spot sufficiently infernal by daylight. Beds of coal lying underneath this rocky hill, perhaps at a great depth, have been burning for centuries, and the same phenomenon is repeated elsewhere in the district. The popular legend is that the English, when they were compelled to abandon Guyenne, set fire to these coal-measures with the motive of doing all the mischief they could before leaving. Such fables are handed down from generation to generation. All the evil that happened to the region in the dim past is placed to the account of the English. These burning hills in the Aveyron have been turned to one good purpose. The hot air that escapes from crevices where there is neither smoke nor fire is used for heating little cabins which have been constructed for the treatment of persons suffering from rheumatic disorders. There they can obtain a natural vapour-bath that is both cheap and effectual. At the foot of the cliffs lay Cransac, bristling with tall chimneys and in a cloud of dark coal-smoke that filled the valley. Here, instead of the solemn calm of the barren uplands, the murmurous chanting of rills and shallow rivers, and the mystical voices that speak from the depths of the forest, I heard the fretful buzz of a human beehive. Here was human life intensified and yet lowered in tone by aggregation, by the strain of organized effort that suppresses initiative and makes the value of a man merely a question of dynamics. The number of shops, especially of drinking-shops--sordid _cafés_ and flashy _buvettes,_ where the enterprising poisoners of the coal-miner stood behind their zinc counters pouring out the corrosive absinthe and the beetroot brandy--told of the prosperity of Cransac. Evidently it was a place in which money could be earned by those prepared to accept the conditions. The women wore better clothes than the wives of the peasants; but low morality, instead of the sad but always honourable stamp of ravaging toil, was impressed on many a female face. Even the children looked as degraded by the social atmosphere as they were blackened by the smoke and ever-falling soot. Hastening along the road towards Aubin, I soon found that the two places, separated according to the map by a considerable distance, had grown together. The long road powdered with coal-dust was now a street lined on each side with houses and hovels. Wooden shanties with sooty, bushes of juniper hanging over the door, and the word 'Buvette' painted beneath, competed for the miner's money at distances of twenty or fifty yards. One had a notice such as is rarely seen in France, and which was significant here: 'Ready money for everything sold over the counter.' Close by was the sign of a _sage-femme_, who, under the picture of a woman holding aloft in triumph an unreasonably fat baby, announced that she also bled and vaccinated. Grimy children and grimy pigs that were intended to be white or pink sprawled upon the thresholds or wallowed in the hot dust. Having left the blissful coal basin, I met the Lot again near the boundary-line of the Aveyron and entered the department named after the river. Thence to Capdenac the valley was a curving line of uninterrupted but ever-changing beauty. The season was farther advanced when I continued the journey from this point to Cahors. A person who had contracted the 'morphia habit' would probably find the most effectual cure for it by forced residence at Capdenac, because the town does not boast the luxury of a chemist's shop. Supposing the patient, however, to be a lady of worldly tastes, she might die of _ennui_ in twenty-four hours. The Capdenac of which I am speaking is not the utterly unpicturesque collection of houses that has been formed about the well-known railway junction on the line to Toulouse, but old romantic Capdenac, whose dilapidated ramparts, dating from the early Middle Ages, crown the high rocky hill that rises abruptly from the valley on the other side of the Lot, which here separates the department named after it from, the Aveyron. The situation of this town is one of the most remarkable. It is perched upon a lofty table of reddish rock of the same calcareous composition as that which prevails throughout the region of the _causses_. Its walls are so escarped that the topmost crags in places overhang the path that winds about their base far below. Only strategical considerations could ever have induced men to build a town on such a site. The Gauls set the example, and their _oppidum_ was long supposed to have been Uxellodunum, but the controversy has been settled in favour of the Puy d'Issolu. I chose the hour of eight in the morning for climbing the rock of Capdenac. The broad winding river was brilliantly blue, like the vault overhead, and although the vine-clad hills, which shut in the valley, and the bare rocks, whose outlines were sharply drawn against the sky, were luminous, the light had the pure and clear sparkle of the morning. Reaching the hill, I took a zigzag stony path that led through terraced vineyards. The vintage had commenced, and men, women, and children were busy picking the purple grapes still wet with dew. The children only, however, showed any joy in the work, for the bunches hung at such a distance from each other that a vine was very quickly stripped. The _vigneron_, with his mind dwelling upon the bygone fruitful years, when these arid steeps poured forth torrents of wine as surely as October came round, wore an expression on his face that was not one of thankfulness to Providence. They are a rather surly people, moreover, the inhabitants of this district, and I do not think at any time their hearts could have been very expansive. As I approached a woman who had a great basket of grapes in front of her, she hastily threw a bundle of leaves over them, casting a keenly suspicious glance at me the while. If she meant me to understand that the times were too bad for grapes to be given away, the movement was unnecessary. Where now are the generous sentiments and the poetry traditionally associated with the vintage? Not here, certainly. Men go out into their vineyards by night armed with guns, and the depredators whom they fear most are not dogs that have acquired a taste for grapes. The stony path was bordered by brambles, overclimbed by clematis, whose glistening awns were mingled with blackberries, which not even a child troubled to pick. There was much fleabane--a plant that deserves to be cherished in these parts, if it be really what its name indicates, but it would have to be extensively cultivated to be a match for the fleas. After the vineyards came the dry rock, that held, however, sufficient moisture for the wild fig-tree, wherever it could find a deep, crevice. Passing underneath the perpendicular wall of rock, and the vine-clad ramparts above it, built on the very edge of the precipice, the winding path led me gradually up to the town. A little in front of an arched gateway was a ruined barbican, the inner surface of the walls being green with ferns and moss. Four loopholes were still intact. Had it been night I might have seen ghostly men with crossbows issuing from the gateway, but it being broad daylight, I was met by a troop of young pigs followed by a little hump-backed woman who addressed her youthful swine in the language of the troubadours. In the narrow street beyond the arch a company of gigantic geese drew themselves up in order of battle, and challenged me in chorus to come on; but their courage was like that of Ancient Pistol. No other living creature did I see until I had walked nearly half through the ancient burg, between houses several centuries old, their stories projecting over the rough pitching and the stunted fig-trees which grew there unmolested. Some of these dwellings were in absolute ruin, with long dry grasses waving on the roofless walls. Nobody seemed to think it worth while to rebuild or repair anything. The town appeared to have been left to itself and to time for at least two hundred years. And yet there really were some inhabitants left. I found another gateway and another ruined barbican, and near to these, on the verge of the precipice, a high rectangular tower, which was the citadel and prison. The lower part was occupied by the schoolmaster of the commune, and he allowed me to ascend the winding staircase, which led to two horrible dungeons, one above the other. Neither was lighted by window or loophole, and but for the candle I should have been in utter darkness. Great chains by which prisoners were fastened to the wall still lay upon the ground, and as I raised them and felt their weight, I thought of the human groans that only the darkness heard in the pitiless ages. In another part of the building was a heavy iron collar that was formerly attached to one of these chains. There were also several old pikes in a corner. A little beyond the citadel I found the church, a small Romanesque building without character. An eighteenth-century doorway had been added to it, and the tympan of the pediment was quite filled up with hanging plants. Still more suggestive of abandonment was the little cemetery behind, which was bordered by the ramparts. It was a small wilderness. Just inside the entrance, a life-sized figure with outstretched arms lay against a damp wall in a bed of nettles and hemlock. It had become detached from the cross on which it once hung, and had been left upon the ground to be overgrown by weeds. I have seen many a neglected rural cemetery in France, but never one that looked so sadly abandoned as this. It was like the 'sluggard's garden,' where 'the thorn and the thistle grow higher and higher.' Most of the gravestones and crosses were quite hidden by dwarf elder, artemisia, wild carrot, and other plants all tangled together. A grave had just been dug in this wilderness and it was about to have a tenant, for the two bells in the open tower were sounding the _glas_, and a distant murmur of chanting was growing clearer. The priest had gone to 'fetch the body,' and the procession was now on its way. On the top of the earth and stones thrown up on each' side of the new grave were a broken skull, a jawbone, several portions of leg and arm bones, besides many smaller fragments of the human framework. I thought the gravedigger might at least have thrown a little earth over these remains out of consideration for the feelings of those who were about to stand around this grave, but concluded that he probably understood the people with whom he had to deal. Presently this functionary--a lantern-jawed, nimble old man, with a dirty nightcap on his head--made his appearance to take a final look at his work. After strutting round the very shallow hole he had dug, in an airy, self-satisfied manner, he concluded that everything was as it should be, and retired for the priest to perform his duty. The great difficulty with the people of Capdenac in time of war must have been the water supply. When their cisterns were empty, they had the river at the bottom of the valley and a spring that flowed at certain seasons, as it does now, at the foot of the rock on which they had built their little town. When they were besieged, they could not descend to the Lot to draw water; consequently they laid great store by the stream at the base of the rock. A long zigzag flight of steps down the side of the precipice was constructed, and it was covered by a wall that protected those who fetched water from arrows and bolts. Near the spring this wall was built very high and strong, and was pierced with loopholes. It also served as an outwork. The steps and much of the wall still exist. The spring in modern times came to be called Caesar's Well, because the elder Champollion and others endeavoured to prove that Capdenac was the site of Uxellodunum. The fact, however, that the spring is dry for several months in the year, and could never have been aught else but the drainage of the rock, is in itself a sufficient refutation of the hypothesis; because, according to Caesar, the fountain at Uxellodunum was so perennially abundant that when he drew off the water by tunnelling, the Gauls recognised in this disaster the intervention of the gods. Capdenac appears to have given the English a great deal of trouble, which the natural strength of the place fully explains. It must have been a fortress of the first order in the Middle Ages, and would be so to-day, if the French thought it worth while to use it in a military sense; but, happily for the inhabitants of this part of France, their territory now lies far from the theatre of any war that is likely to occur. A charter by Philippe le Long, dated 1320, another by King John, and a third by Charles VII., recognise the immunity of the people of Capdenac from all public charges on account of the resistance which they constantly opposed to the English. The rock must, nevertheless, have fallen into the hands of a company attached to the British cause, for the Count of Armagnac bought the place in 1381 of a band of so-called English _routiers_. Sully lived there after the death of Henry IV., and the house that he occupied still exists. According to a local tradition, Capdenac was on the point of being captured by the English, when it was saved from this fate by a stratagem. The defenders were starving, and the besiegers were relying upon famine to reduce them. In order to make the English believe that the place was still well provisioned, a pig was given a very full meal of all the corn that could be scraped together and then pushed over the side of the rock in a cautious manner, so that the animal might appear to be the victim of its own indiscretion. The pig fulfilled expectations by splitting open when it struck the ground, and thus revealed the corn that was in its body. When the English saw this, they said: 'If the men of Capdenac can afford to feed their swine on wheat, they must still have plenty for themselves.' Discouraged by this reflection, they raised the siege. When they went away there was not an ounce of bread left to divide amongst the garrison. A market was being held at Capdenac--the lower town--as I left it. Bunches of fowls tied together by the legs were dangling from the hands of a score or so of peasant women standing in line. The wretched birds had ceased to complain, and even to wriggle; but although, with their toes upward and their beaks downward, life to them could not have looked particularly rosy, they seemed to watch with keen interest all that was going on. Only when they had their breasts well pinched by critical fingers did they struggle against their fate. The legs of these fowls are frequently broken, but the peasants only think of their own possible loss; and women are every bit as indifferent to the sufferings of the lower animals as men. There was a sharp wrangle going on in the Languedocian dialect over a coin--a Papal franc--that somebody to whom it had been offered angrily rejected. Here I may say that one of the small troubles of my life in this district came from accepting coins which I could not get rid of. As a rule, the native here turns over a piece of money several times before he satisfies himself that no objection can be brought against it; but if, in the hurry of business, the darkness of night, or the trustfulness inspired by a little extra worship of Bacchus, he should happen to take a Papal, Spanish, Roumanian, or other coin that is unpopular, he puts it on one side for the first simpleton or stranger who may have dealings with him. Thus, without intending it, I came to possess a very interesting numismatical collection, which I most unconscientiously, but with little success, tried to scatter. I made my way down the valley of the Lot, taking the work easily, stopping at one place long enough to digest impressions before pushing on towards a fresh point. This valley is so strangely picturesque, so full of the curiosities of nature and bygone art, that if I had not been a loiterer before, I should have learnt to loiter here. Keeping on the Aveyron side of the river, I soon reached the village of St. Julien d'Empare, where almost every house had somewhat of a castellated appearance, owing to the dovecot tower which occupied one angle and rose far above the roof. One of these houses had two rows of dormer windows, covered by little gables with very long eaves in the high-pitched roof, whose red tiles were well toned by time. The tower-like pigeon-house, with extinguisher roof, stood at one end upon projecting beams, and the pigeons kept going in and coming out of the holes in their two-storied mansion. One sees dovecots everywhere in this district, and most of them are two or three centuries old. Some are attached to houses, and others are isolated on the hillsides amongst the vines. When in the latter position, they are generally round, and are built on such a scale that they really look like towers. There were grape-gatherers in the vineyards, but they had to search for the fruit. The wine grown upon these hills by the Lot has been famous from the days of the Romans; but there is very little of it left. There is, however, a consoling side to every misfortune. A man of Figeac told me that since the vines had failed in the district the death-rate had diminished remarkably. 'Why?' I asked. 'Why?' replied he, with a sad smile, 'because in the happy times everybody drank wine at all hours of the day; but now, in these miserable times, nearly everybody drinks water.' The new state of things would be still more satisfactory from a teetotal point of view if Nature were less niggardly of water in these parts. In some localities it has to be strictly economized, and this is done in the case of streams by using it first for the exterior, and afterwards for the interior needs of man. I, having still some English prejudices, would rather run all the risks incurred by drinking wine, than swallow any more than I am obliged of the rinsings of dirty linen. Having crossed the Lot by a suspension bridge, a roadside inn enticed me with its little terrace, where there were many hanging plants and flowers, and a wild fig-tree that had climbed up from the rock below, so that it could look into people's glasses and listen to their talk in that pleasant bower. I might have lingered here too long had it not been for the wasps, which were even a greater nuisance than the flies. To reach the village of Frontenac I took a little path leading through maize-fields by the river's side. The maize was ready for the harvest, and the long leaves had lost nearly all their greenness. The lightest breath of air made each plant rustle like a paper scarecrow. The river was fringed with low, triggy willows and a multitude of herbs, rich in seeds, but poor in flowers. Among those still in bloom were the evening primrose, soapwort, and marjoram. The river was as blue as the heaven, and on each side rose steep hills, wooded or vine-clad, with the yellow or reddish rock upon the ridges glowing against the hot sky. As I was moving south-west I had the afternoon sun full in the face. The lizards that darted across the path, raising little clouds of dust in their hurry, found this glare quite to their taste, but it was too much for me, and when at length I saw a leafy walnut tree I lay down in the shade until the fiery sun began to touch the high woods, the river, and the yellow maize-stalks with the milder tones of evening. A narrow grassy lane between tall hedgerows sprinkled over with innumerable glistening blackberries led me to Frontenac, a village upon the rocky hillside. Here is a little church partly raised upon the site of a Roman or Gallo-Roman temple. A broken column left standing was included in the wall of the Romanesque apse, upon the lower masonry of which both pagan and Christian hands have worked. The nave has been rebuilt in modern times, but in the open space before the entrance Roman coffins crop up above the rough paving, separated from each other only by a few feet. There is a stone coffin lying right across the doorway, and the _curé_, whom I drew into conversation, confided to me, with a comical smile upon his pale dark face, that he had raised a fragment of the lid to see if anything more enduring than man had been left there, but that he found nothing but very fine dust. Every bone had become powder. This priest was a companionable man, and he must have looked upon me with a less suspicious eye than most people hereabouts, for he invited me into his house to take a _petit verre_ with him. But the sun was getting near the end of his journey, and I had to fare on foot to the next village; so I thought it better to decline the offer. The next village was St. Pierre-Toirac, also built upon the hillside above the Lot. It is a larger place than Frontenac, and must have been of considerable importance in the Middle Ages, to judge from its fortified church, whose high gloomy walls give it the appearance of a veritable stronghold. Some of the inhabitants say that it was built by the English, but the architecture does not indicate that such was the case. The interior is a beautiful example of the Romanesque style. The capitals of the columns are fit to serve as models, so strongly typical are the designs, and so exquisite is their workmanship. It is probable that the walls of the church were raised, and that it was turned into a fortress during the religious wars of the thirteenth century between Catholics and Albigenses, which explain the existence of so many fortified churches in Languedoc and Guyenne, as well as so many ruins. I had reached this church by an old archway, whose origin was evidently defensive, and crossing the dim and silent square, surrounded by mediaeval houses, some half ruinous, and all more or less adorned with pellitory, ivy-linaria, and other wall-plants which had fixed their roots between the gaping stones. I passed through another archway, and stopped at a terrace belonging to a ruined château or country-house. Here I was looking at the valley of the Lot in the warm after-glow of sunset, when an elderly gentleman came up to me and disturbed my contemplative mood by asking me not very courteously if I wanted to see anybody. I was somewhat taken aback to find such an important-looking person in such a dilapidated place. I tried, however, not to appear too much overcome, and explained that it was only with the intention of seeing the picturesque that I had found my way to that ruinous spot. The agreeable person who had questioned me now let me understand that it was his spot, and informed me that nobody was allowed to see it 'sans être presenté.' Then, looking at me very fiercely, he said: 'Are you an Englishman or a German?' 'An Englishman,' I replied, whereupon his ferocious expression relaxed considerably, but he did not become genial. I retired from his ruin considerably disgusted with its owner, who contrasted badly with all Frenchmen in his social position whom I had previously met. I asked a woman who he was, and she replied that all she knew about him was that he was an 'espèce de noble.' Her cruelty was unintentional. The next morning I learnt from an old Crimean soldier, who knew I was English because he had drained many a glass with my fellow-countrymen, that the magnates of the village had held a consultation overnight upon the advisability of coming down upon me in a body and asking me for my papers. Nothing came of it, which was well for me, for I had come away without my papers. There was rain that night, and when morning came it had changed the face of the world. The sun was shining again and warmly, but summer had gone and autumn had come. Upon the rocky slopes the maples were on fire; in the valley the large leaves of the walnut-trees mimicked the sunshine, and by the river-side the tall poplars, as they bowed to the water deities, cast upon the mirror of many tones the image of a trembling golden leaf repeated beyond all power of numbering. A little rain had been enough to produce this magical change. It had opened the great feast of colour that brings the year to its gray, sad close. But the sky was brilliantly blue when I left St. Pierre-Toirac. The next village was Laroque-Toirac. The houses were clustered near the foot of an escarped hill, where thinly-scattered pines relieved the glare of the naked limestone. Upon a precipitous rock dominating the village is a castle, the lower works of which belong to the Feudal Ages, the upper to the Renaissance epoch--a combination very frequent in this district. The mullioned windows and the graceful balustrade, carried along a high archway, are in strong contrast to the stern and dark masonry of the feudal stronghold. This picturesque incongruity reaches its climax in the lofty round tower upon which a dovecot has been grafted, whose extinguisher-roof, with long drooping eaves, is quite out of keeping with the machicolations which remain a little below the line of the embattled parapet that has disappeared. The castle is now used for the schools of the commune, and a score or so of little boys and girls whom I met on my way up the rough path stared at me with much astonishment. I climbed to a bastion of the outer works, where a fig-tree, growing from the old wall, and reaching above it, softened the horror of the precipice; for such it really was. The masonry was a continuation of one of those walls of rock which give such a distinctive character: to the geological formation of this region. The village lay far below--a broken surface of tiled roofs, sloping rapidly towards the Lot, itself a broad ribbon of many blended colours, winding through the sunlit plain. The castle of Laroque belonged to the Cardaillac family. In 1342 it was stormed and taken by Bertegot Lebret, captain of a strong company of English, who had established their headquarters at Gréalou. As I approached Montbrun, the next village, the rocks which hemmed in the valley became more boldly escarped. In their lower part the beds of lias were shown with singular regularity. Box and pines and sumach were the chief vegetation upon the stony slopes, where the scattered masses of dark-green foliage gave by contrast a whiter glitter to the stones. Montbrun, like so many of the little towns and villages hereabouts, is built upon rocks immediately below a protecting stronghold, or, rather, what was one centuries ago. The windows of some of the dwellings look out upon the sheer precipice. The vine clambers over ruined houses and old walls built on to the rock, and seemingly a part of it. Of the mediaeval castle little is left besides the keep. The Marquis de Cadaillac, to whom it belonged, strengthened the fortifications with the hope that the stronghold would be able to resist any attack by the English; but it was nevertheless captured by them. After leaving Montbrun I saw nothing more of civilization until I came near a woman seated on a doorstep, and engaged in the exciting occupation of fleaing a cat. She held the animal upon its back between her knees, and was so engrossed by the pleasures of the chase that she scarcely looked up to answer a question I put to her. The word _café_ painted upon a piece of board hung over another door enticed me inside, for it was now nearly midday, and I had been in search of the picturesque since seven o'clock, sustained by nothing more substantial than a bowl of black coffee and a piece of bread. This is the only breakfast that one can expect in a rural auberge of Southern France. If milk is wanted in the coffee it must be asked for over-night, and even then it is very doubtful if the cow will be found in time. To ask for butter with the bread would be looked upon as a sign of eccentric gluttony, but to cap this request with a demand for bacon and eggs at seven in the morning, as a man fresh from England might do with complete unconsciousness of his depravity, would be to openly confess one's self capable of any crime. People who travel should never be slaves to any notions on eating and drinking, for such obstinacy brings its own punishment. A stout woman with a coloured silk kerchief on her head met me with a good-tempered face, and, after considering what she could do for me in the way of lunch, said, as though a bright idea had suddenly struck her: 'I have just killed some geese; would monsieur like me to cook him some of the blood?'. 'Merci!' I replied. 'Please think of something else.' An Englishman may possibly become reconciled to snails and frogs as food, but never, I should say, to goose's blood. In about twenty minutes a meal was ready for me, composed of soup containing great pieces of bread, lumps of pumpkin and haricots; minced pork that had been boiled with the soup in a goose's neck, then a veal cutlet, covered with a thick layer of chopped garlic. Horace says that this herb is only fit for the stomachs of reapers, but every man who loves garlic in France is not a reaper. Strangers to this region had better reconcile themselves both to its perfume and its flavour without loss of time, for of all the seasoning essences provided by nature for the delight of mankind garlic is most esteemed here. Those who have a horror of it would fare very badly at a _table-d'hôte_ at Cahors, for its refined odour rises as soon as the soup is brought in, and does not leave until after the salad. Even then the unconverted say that it is still present. To cultivate a taste for garlic is, therefore, essential to happiness here. I crossed a toll-bridge over the river just below Cajarc, and again entered the department of the Aveyron, my object being to ascend the valley of a tributary of the Lot, to a spot where it flows out of a pool of unknown depth, called the Gouffre de Lantouy. The road passed under the village of Savagnac, built upon the hillside. A Renaissance castle with sham machicolations, little chambers. with their projecting floors resting on brackets turrets on _culs de lampe_ and with extinguisher roofs, and a high terrace overgrown with vines and fig-trees left to fight their own battle, lorded it over all the other houses, like a sunflower in an onion-bed. But the castle, although it gives itself such aristocratic airs, is, in these days, nothing but a farmhouse, sacks of maize being now stored in rooms where ladies once touched the lute with white fingers, and where gentlemen may have crumpled their frills while swearing eternal love upon their knees. The little cemetery adjoining the château has swallowed up the great and the lowly century after century, and the rank grass, now sprinkled with the lingering flowers of summer, barely covers their mingled bones. The old gravestones, left undisturbed, have sunk into the soil nearly out of sight. Such is the ending of all that is human. A little beyond this village a peasant woman, whom I met picking up walnuts from the road that was strewn with them, lifted her wide-brimmed straw hat to me as I passed. This was indeed polite. I now left the road, and followed a lane by the stream that flows out of the _gouffre_. This valley is narrow enough to be called a gorge, and the stony hills on either side presented a picture of utter barrenness and desolation. But along the level of the stream the deep-green grass shadowed by the hill was lighted up with the pale-purple death-torches of the poisonous colchicum. After crossing a stubble-field, now overgrown by the violet-coloured pimpernel, I reached the sinister pool, fringed with the flag's sword-like leaves and shadowed by willows and alders. I expected to find the water all in tumult; but no, it had the dark, solemn stillness of the mountain tarn. The two streams that poured out of it to meet a little lower down the valley hardly murmured as they started upon their journey amidst the iris and sedge, although the body of water was strong enough to turn a millwheel. There is something that troubles the imagination in the appearance of this lonely pool for ever silently overflowing, and so deep that nobody as yet has been able to find the bottom. On the side of the stony hill close by are some ruined walls of a church and convent, said to have been built by St. Mamphaise. The peasants of the district have an extraordinary story with regard to this convent, which is either the cause or the consequence of the superstitious awe in which they hold the Gouffre de Lantouy. This legend is to the effect that the conventual building was once inhabited by women who ate children, and that a certain mother, whose baby they had kidnapped and eaten, cursed them so heartily and to such purpose that the _gouffre_ was formed, and their convent, or the greater part of it, was supernaturally carried down the hill and plunged into the bottomless water. The legend also says that those who stand by the pool on St. John's Eve will hear the convent bell ringing. It not being St. John's Eve when I was there I was unable to test the truth of this part of the legend. What I did hear was a raven croaking from the ruin, and the sound harmonized well with the air of mystery and gloom hanging over the spot. There is some historic reason for believing that the convent at Lantouy was founded by Charlemagne. Very near this spot are the remains of some ancient fortified works, and the locality is known as 'La domaine de Waïffier.' This name is evidently the same as Waïfré. There is reason to believe that the last of the sovereign Dukes of Aquitaine made a stand here when pursued by his implacable enemy Pepin le Bref. The people pronounce the word 'Waïffier' as though it commenced with a 'G.' Towards evening I recrossed the Lot and entered Cajarc. Passing through the little town, which is not in itself very interesting, I took a path winding up the side of the hill, at the base of which lies the burg. I wished to see a cascade that has a local reputation for beauty. I reached the foot of a high, fantastic rock, from the ledges of which masses of ivy hung woven together like a veritable tapestry of nature. A small stream descended from the uppermost ridge upon a rock covered with moss showing every hue of green, and then into a dark pool below. The hillside above the cascade has been extensively tunnelled for phosphate. An Englishman discovered the value of the site, and dug a fortune out of it. There are several phosphate-mines in this district, all more or less connected with British enterprise. Phosphate inspires respect for Englishmen here, for it has been the means of giving a great deal of employment and rendering petty proprietors, who could barely get a living out of their thankless soil, comparatively rich. The inhabitants, therefore, consider English speculators in the light of public benefactors, and such they have really proved, although the motive that brought them here was scarcely a philanthropic one. Neither the French nor the British public has any conception of the extent to which the mineral resources of France are worked by the English. Cajarc, although it looks like a village to-day, was once a fortified town of considerable importance in the Quercy. Its inhabitants offered an obstinate resistance to the English on several occasions. In 1290 they refused to swear fealty to the King of England until their lord, the Bishop of Cahors, gave them the order to do so in the name of the King of France. Subsequently in the same and the following century, when the Ouercynois were again in arms against the English, various attempts to take the town by surprise failed through the vigilance and courage of the burghers. To punish them, the English, in 1368, destroyed their bridge across the Lot, of which some remnants may still be seen. After leaving Cajarc in the morning I was soon alone with Nature on the right bank of the river. Autumn was there in a gusty mood, blowing yellow leaves down from the hills upon the water and driving them towards the sea over the rippled, gray surface lit up with cold, steel-like gleams of sunshine struggling through the vapour. The wilderness of herbs and under-shrubs along the banks was no longer aflame with flowers. Dead thistles, whose feathered seeds had drifted far away upon the wind to found new colonies, and a multitude of withered spikes and racemes, told the old story of the summer's life passing into the death or sleep of winter. Yet the river-banks were not without flowers. A rose, very like the 'monthly rose' of English gardens, was still blooming there, together with hawkweed, wild reseda, and a mint with lilac-coloured blossoms which one sees on every bit of waste ground throughout this region. A rock rising from the river's bank carried the ruin of an ancient chapel. Only the apse was left. It contained one narrow deeply-splayed Romanesque window, and a piscina where the priest washed his hands. The altar-stone lay upon the ground where the altar must have stood, and behind it a rough wooden cross had been piously raised to remind the passer-by that the spot was hallowed. The road now ran under high red rocks or steep stony slopes, where, on neglected terraces overgrown with weeds, the dead or dying vines repeated the monotonous tale of the phylloxera. I passed through the village of Lannagol, mostly built upon rocks overlooking the bed of its dried-up stream, and was soon again under the desert hills, where the fiery maple flashed amid the sombre foliage of the box. The next village or hamlet was a very curious one. Rows of little houses, some of them mere huts, were built against the side of the rock under the shelter of huge masses of oolite or lias projecting like the stories of mediaeval dwellings. People climbed to their habitations, like goats, up very steep paths winding amongst the rocks. The overleaning walls were blackened to a great height by the smoke from the chimneys. It was dusk when I crossed a bridge leading to the village of Cénevières, where I intended to pass the night. There was a very fair inn here, less picturesque than many of the auberges of the country, but cleaner, perhaps, for this reason. The aubergiste was suspicious of me at first, as he afterwards admitted, for like others he had turned over in his mind the question, Is he a German spy? Judging from my own experience in this part of France, I should say that a German tourist would not spend a very happy holiday here. The sentiment of the Parisians towards the Teuton is fraternal love compared to that of the Southern French. These people proved themselves to be thorough going haters in the religious wars, and the old character is still strong in them. Although the Germans in 1870-71 did not show themselves in Guyenne, the resentment of the inhabitants towards them is intense, and it is the vivacity of this feeling that renders them so suspicious of foreigners. I noticed, however, that as I went farther down the Lot the people became more genial, so that the long evenings in the rural inns generally passed very pleasantly. Dinner over, I usually took possession of a chimney-corner, the only place where one can be really warm on autumnal nights, and while satisfying the curiosity of the rustic intelligence concerning the English and their ways I gathered much information that was useful to me respecting local customs and the caverns, castles and legends of the district where I happened to be. By nine o'clock everybody was yawning, and if the village blacksmith, the postman, and the bell-ringer had not left by that time, they were in an unusually dissipated frame of mind. By ten o'clock the great kitchen was dark, and the mice were making up a quadrille upon the hearth, supposing no cat to be looking on. Early the next morning I was climbing the hill towards the Castle of Cénevières. This building is a most picturesque jumble of the castellated styles of the thirteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. The oldest part of the structure--and it is very considerable--is that of a frowning feudal fortress of great strength, built upon a rock, which on the side of the Lot is a perpendicular wall some 200 feet high. The inhabitants agree in saying that the feudal walls are the work of the English, but they are probably in error. The original castle belonged to Waïfré. It afterwards passed to the Gourdon family, who doubtless rebuilt it upon the old foundations. The last descendant of this family was one of the most ardent Huguenots in the Quercy. The late Gothic superstructure, which is still inhabited, has a very high-pitched roof, with dormer windows covered by high gables with elaborate carvings. Very near this castle, in the side of the cliff, is a fortified cavern, which for centuries has gone by the name of La Grotte des Anglais. It must have been in communication with the castle, of which it may have served as an outwork or a place of refuge in the last extremity. I might have passed the whole day trying to find it but for the help of a peasant, who led the way down the rocks, hanging on to bushes of box. The remains of a small tower, pierced with loopholes on one side of the opening, and the other ruined masonry, leave no doubt as to the defensive use to which this cavern was at one time put. Having left Cénevières, I recrossed the Lot and passed through Saint-Martin, a village of little interest, but the point from which it is most convenient to reach a certain cave where animals of the prehistoric ages were obliging enough to die, so that their skeletons might be preserved for the delight and instruction of the modern scientific bone-hunter. This is not one of the celebrated caves in the department, consequently the visitor with thoughts fixed on bones may carry away a sackful if he has the patience to grub for them. If the cavern were near Paris it would give rise to a fierce competition between the palaeontologist and the _chiffonnier_, but placed where it is the soil has not yet been much disturbed. I went in search of it up a very steep, stony hill, and there had the good fortune to meet an old woman who was coming down over the rocks with surprising nimbleness. She knew at once what I wanted. Although she spoke French with great difficulty, three words out of every five being _patois_, she made me understand that her house was just in front of the cave, and that it was not to be visited without her consent and guidance. She therefore began to reascend the 'mountain,' as she called the hill, making signs to me to follow. There was certainly nothing wrong with the old woman's lungs, for it was as much as I could do to keep pace with her, especially when she led the way up almost naked rock. At length we reached the brow of the hill, where a cottage showed itself in a desert of limestone, but where a little garden, by dint of long labour, had been formed upon a natural terrace on which the sun's rays fell warmly. The woman left me in the cottage while she went to find her daughter. It was composed of one small room, in which there were two beds, an old worm-eaten walnut buffet, an eight-day clock after the pattern of Sir Humphrey's, a hearth covered with white wood-ashes, a large wheel-shaped loaf of black bread in a rack, onions, grapes, garlic, and balls of twisted hemp hanging from the beams; baskets of maize and chestnuts, and a great copper swing-pot, only a little less imposing than the one out of which the scullion fished the fowls for Sancho Pança. I afterwards learned that two couples slept in the two beds--the old pair and the young pair. Presently the old woman reappeared, followed by a much younger one, carrying upon her head a copper water-pot, that glowed in the sun like a wind-blown brand. Having set down her pot, the daughter, a rather wild-looking person with sun-baked face and large gleaming eyes, took an old-fashioned brass dish-lamp--a deformed and vulgar descendant of the agate lamp held in the hand of the antique priestess--and, after bringing the wick towards the lip, lighted it. I lit the candle I had brought with me, and, followed by the old woman, we entered the cavern, near the mouth of which was a fig-tree. The entrance was so small that it was almost necessary to crawl for some distance; but it must have been much larger at one time if the story that the younger woman told me about the bones of a mastodon having been discovered inside was well founded. As we proceeded, the roof rose rapidly, so that the rocks overhead could not presently be seen by the light of the candle and lamp. Farther in, the roof became lower, and it was connected with the ground in places by natural columns of vast size, formed in the course of ages by the calcareous deposit of the dropping water. Near the end of the cavern, at about 100 yards from the entrance, various holes dug in the yellow soil showed where the bone-searchers had been at work. I had ample encouragement, for I had only to stir the earth a little to find bones half turned to stone. I selected two or three teeth with the hope that a scientific friend would say they were a mastodon's or a mammoth's. If I had liked the prospect of carrying a bag of bones on my back down the valley of the Lot, I might have taken away many very large specimens. I called to mind, however, an experience of early days which prevented me from being again a martyr to science. I had found a quantity of bones in a newly-dug gravel-pit, and fully believing that they belonged to some animal that flourished before the flood, I carried them twelve miles with infinite labour and suffering, and then learned that they were part of the anatomy of a very modern cow. Since that adventure I have left bones for those who understand them. I had ample leisure for studying the river after leaving Saint-Martin, for I stood upon the bank waiting for a ferryman until I lost all the patience I had brought with me. He was taking a couple of oxen harnessed to a cart across the stream, and the strong wind that was blowing sent the great flat boat far out of its course. Every day I noticed a larger fleet of floating leaves upon the water, hurrying through the ever-curving valley, drifting over the golden reflections of other leaves that waited for the gust to cast them too upon the water; passing into the deep shadow of bridges whose arches resounded with mournful murmurs, riding the white foam of the weirs, whirling in the dark eddies beyond, gliding in the brown shade of vine-clad hills and under the beetling brows of solemn rocks, now mingling with the imaged dovecot with pigeons perched upon the red-tiled roof, now with the tracery of Gothic gables or the grim blackness of feudal walls splashed with fern and pellitory, now in a warm glow of dying summer, and now in the melancholy gray of wintry clouds heavy with rain. Away they went, the multitudinous leaves--children of the poplar, the willow, the fig-tree, and vine; some broad and clumsy like rafts or barges, others slender and graceful like little skiffs; all stained with some brilliant colour of autumn. I had reckoned upon getting a mid-day meal at a village called Crégols on the opposite bank, but when I at length reached it I had another trial. The only place of public entertainment was an exceedingly dirty hovel that called itself a _café_, and the woman who kept it declared that she had no victuals of any sort in the house. This, of course, was not true, but it was a polite way of saying that she did not wish to be bothered with me. The wayfarer in the little-travelled districts of France must not expect to find in all his stopping-places a fowl ready to be placed on the spit for him. Had I obtained a meal at Crégols, I should have looked for some dolmens said to be in the neighbourhood, but failure in one respect spoilt my zeal in the other. I am afraid, moreover, that I only half appreciated the grandeur of some prodigious walls of rock which I passed in my rapid walk to the little town of Saint-Cirq-la-Popie. It is deplorable to think how much the mind is influenced by internal circumstances which ought to have nothing to do with the spirit. After climbing a steep wood where there were unripe medlars, I came in sight of a small burg, lying high above the Lot in a hollow of the hill. A fortress-like church towered far above the closely-packed red-tiled roofs sprinkled with dormer windows, and upon a still higher rock were the ruined walls of a castle. This was Saint-Cirq-la-Popie, a place no less quaint than its name. I was presently seated in a dimly-lighted back-room of an auberge, whose walls--built apparently for eternity--dated from the Middle Ages. The hostess, who, as I entered, was gossiping with some cronies in the dark doorway, while she pretended to twist the wool that she carried upon the most rustic of distaffs--a common forked stick--laid this down, and, blowing up the embers on the hearth, proceeded to cook some eggs _sur le plat_. This with bread, goat-cheese and walnuts, and an excellent wine of the district--the new vintage--made my lunch. The fact that there was no meat in the auberge reminded me that it was Friday. Speaking generally, the inhabitants of the Lot are practising Catholics. The churches are well filled, and the clergy are as comfortably off as French priests can expect to be in these days. It is no uncommon thing for a _curé_ to keep his trap. I have several times met priests on horseback in the Quercy, but never without thinking that they would look better if they used side-saddles. The early Gothic Church of Saint-Cirq-la-Popie, to judge by its high massive walls and round tower, was raised more with the idea of defence than ornament. In the interior there is still the feeling of Romanesque repose; nothing of the animation of the Pointed style--no vine-leaf or other foliage breaks the severity of the lines. I ascended the tower with the bell-ringer's boy. In the bell-loft, with other lumber, was an old 'stretcher,' very much less luxurious than the _brancard_ that is used in Paris for carrying the sick and wounded. It was composed of two poles, with cross-pieces and a railing down the sides. I ascertained that this piece of village carpentry was used within the memory of people still living for carrying the dead to the cemetery merely wrapped in their shrouds. They were buried without coffins, not because wood was difficult to obtain, but because the four boards had not yet come into fashion at Saint-Cirq-la-Popie. To bury a person in such a manner even there would nowadays cause great scandal, but sixty or seventy years ago it was considered folly to put good wood into a grave. A homespun sheet was thought to be all that was needed to break the harshness of the falling clay. And there are people who call this age that gives coffins even to the poorest dead utilitarian! Among other curious things I saw in this ancient out-of-the-way burg were two mediaeval corn-measures forming part of a heap of stones in a street corner. They had much the appearance of very primitive holy-water stoups, such as are to be seen in some rural churches, for they were blocks of stone rounded and hollowed out with the chisel. Each of these measures, however, had a hole in the side near the bottom for the corn to run through, and irons to which a little flap-door was once affixed in front of this hole. The commune treated these stones as rubbish until some accidental visitor offered 500 francs for them; now it clings to them tightly, hoping, no doubt, that the price will go up. Prowling curiosity-hunters are destined to destroy much of the archaeological interest of these old towns. They are doing to them what Lord Elgin did to the Parthenon. Fantastic corbel-heads and other sculptured details disappear every year from the Gothic houses, and find their way into private museums. As I was taking leave of the bellringer's boy--a lad of about fifteen--he put his hand under his blouse and, pulling out a snuff-box, offered me a pinch. I had met plenty of boys who chewed tobacco--they abound along the coast of Brittany--but never one who carried a snuff-box before. The castle whose ruins are to be seen on the bluff above the church received Henry IV. as a guest after his memorable exploit at Cahors. A man who was laying eel-lines across the Lot consented to take me to the other side in his boat, and there I struck the road to Cahors, which closely borders the river all along this valley. In several places it is tunnelled through the rock, where the buttresses of the cliffs could not be conveniently shattered with dynamite. All this has been the work of late years. Previously the passage between the river and the rocks was about as bad as it could be. The English fortified several of the caverns in the cliffs commanding the passage, to which the name of _Le Défilé des Anglais_ was consequently given. Now the term is applied by the country people to the caves themselves, wherever these have been walled up for defence. I soon reached one of these caverns, the embattled wall being a conspicuous object from the road below. Having fallen into ruin, it had lately been repaired at the expense of the commune. To an Englishman the spot could not be otherwise than strangely interesting. I imagined my own language being spoken there five or six centuries ago, and speculated as to whether the accent was Cockney or Lancashire, or West of England. Several fig-trees grew beside the walled-up cavern, and I was picking the ripest of the fruit when I heard a voice from the road below calling upon me to come down. Peering through the boughs, I saw a man seated in the smallest and most gimcrack of donkey-carts. It was something like a grocer's box on wheels. The owner gave violent smacks to the plank on which he was sitting, to let me understand that there was room for another person. I did not think there could be, but I left the figs and came down the rocks. 'If you are going to Saint-Géry,' said the man, 'I can take you about five kilomètres on the road.' 'But the donkey,' I urged, 'will lie down and roll.' 'What, the little beast! Not he! he will go along like an arrow.' I accepted the invitation, and away went the donkey, making himself as much like an arrow on the wing as any ass could. My companion, who was a handsome fellow, with a moustache that one would expect to see upon the face of a Sicilian brigand, was a cantonnier, and as he scraped out the ditches and mended the roads, his donkey browsed upon what he could find along the wayside. In summer and winter they were inseparable companions, and had come to thoroughly understand one another. The cantonnier confided to me that he was formerly employed in the phosphate quarries, and that he had closed his experience in this line by working three months without wages for an Englishman whose speculation turned out a failure. Phosphate then lost its charm upon the proprietor of the donkey-cart, for it had caused him to 'eat all his economies,' and he resigned himself to the wages of a road-mender, which were small but sure. It was getting dusk when we parted. My next companion on the road was a poor bent-backed, shambling, idiotic youth, who was driving home two long-tailed sheep and a lamb, and who had just enough intelligence for this work. He kept at my side for a mile or two, flourishing a long stick over the backs of the sheep and uttering melancholy cries. His presence was not cheering, but I had to put up with it, for when I walked fast he ran. He likewise left me at length to continue my way alone, and his wild cries became fainter and fainter. Then, in the deepening dusk, two churches, one on each side of the river, began to sound the angelus. A gleam of yellow light lingered in the western sky between two dark hills, but the clouds above and the river below were of the colour of slate. Suddenly a bright blaze flashed across the dim and misty valley from a cottage hearth where a woman had just thrown on a faggot to boil the evening soup, and the gloom of nature was at once filled with the sentiment of home. It was quite dark when I reached Saint-Géry. The narrow passage leading to the best inn was illumined by the red glare of a forge, and was rich in odours ancient and modern. Some twenty geese tightly packed in a pen close to the hostelry door announced my arrival with shrieks of derision. They said: 'It's Friday; no goose for you to-night!' Those who suppose that geese cannot laugh have not studied bucolic poetry from nature. The forge was attached to the inn, a very common arrangement here, and one that enables the traveller who has hope of sleep at daybreak--because the fleas are then thinking of rest after labour--to enjoy the melody of the 'Harmonious Blacksmith' without the help of Handel. I was not cheered by the sight of goose or turkey turning on the spit as I entered the vast smoke-begrimed kitchen, lighted chiefly by the flame of the fire, but the great chain-pot sent forth a perfume that was not offensive, although the soup was _maigre_. There was also fish that had been freshly pulled out of the Lot. The cooking left something to be desired, but the hostess, the wife of the Harmonious Blacksmith, had thrown her best intentions into it. A rosy light wine grown upon the side of a neighbouring hill compensated for the lack of culinary art. It was a rather rough inn, but I had been in many worse. Seated in the chimney-corner after dinner, and sending the smoke of my pipe to join the sparks of the blazing wood up the yawning gulf where the soot hung like stalactites below the calm sky and twinkling stars, I had a long talk with the aubergiste, who told me that he had been taken prisoner at Sedan, and had, in consequence, spent eight months in Germany. He considered that he had been as well treated by the Germans as a prisoner could expect to be. He had always enough to eat, but there was no soup, and, lacking this, he thought it impossible for any civilized stomach to be happy. Rural inns have charms, especially when they are old and picturesque, and smell of the Middle Ages; but to be kept a prisoner in one of them by rainy weather is apt to plunge a restless wanderer into the Slough of Despond. The chances are that the inn itself becomes at such times a slough, so that Bunyan's expression is then applicable in a real as well as in a figurative sense. There is a constant coming in and going out of peasants with dripping sabots, of dogs with wet paws, and draggle-tailed hens with miry feet; geese, and even pigs, not unfrequently venture inside, and have a good walk round before their presence is noticed and they are treated to quotations from Rabelais, enforced with the broomstick. Then the rain beats in at the open door, which nobody troubles to close. Under these circumstances, the rural inn becomes detestable. So I found the auberge at Saint-Géry, where I waited long hours for the weather to change, after having received a soaking while climbing the escarped cliffs which rise so grandly on one side of the little town. A fortified cavern and a ruined castle tempted me up the rocks. On my way I passed a small Gothic house, dating apparently from the fourteenth or fifteenth century, with pointed arched doorway and window lights separated by slender columns with foliated capitals carved by no clumsy rustic workman. The boy who accompanied me had the key. As I entered I was met on the threshold by the fragrant odour of the tobacco-plant; I perceived that the mediaeval house was used for drying tobacco-leaves--a purpose that could never have been in the imagination of the original owner, for those stones were laid together long before the herb, now so precious to the French Government, was brought to Europe. The stalks with all the leaves attached were hung to strings stretched from wall to wall. There is much tobacco grown hereabouts in the valley of the Lot, but it is considered too strong for smoking purposes, and is therefore made into snuff. When the utmost care has been used in its cultivation and drying the price paid by the Government to the grower does not exceed half a franc the pound. Those who enjoy the privilege of raising it consider the money very hardly earned. I reached the ruined castle at the foot of the limestone buttresses supporting the plateau above. Enough is left of the wall to show that it must have been a strong place at one time. It is attributed by common consent to the English. Protected on one side by the abrupt rock, it overlooked the valley from a height that to an enemy must have been very difficult of access. The fortified cavern is in the escarped cliff above the castle, with which there was, perhaps, a secret communication. The upper part of the wall is gone, but what remains is about ten feet high and nine feet thick. Swallows build their nests in the roof of the cavern, and the spot is noisy with the harsh cries of countless jackdaws. These sagacious birds can doubtless tell many stories of the English which they received from their ancestors. When I returned to the auberge wet and shivering, I found no sympathy, the thoughts of the hostess being occupied by a matter that interested her more deeply. The badgers had eaten her maize which she needed for fattening the geese, and her tongue was busily employed in wishing them every misfortune, both in time and eternity. Badgers are very numerous in the district, and they continue to increase and multiply, while the peasants jeopardise their immortal interests by cursing them every time they see a spike of ripening maize pulled down and half stripped of its corn. In the daytime these animals sleep comfortably, digesting their ill-gotten meal in the holes of the rocks, which are so honeycombed that dogs cannot easily get at the hermits. Moreover, it is not every dog that likes the prospect of being bitten nearly in half, the badger being much better known than trusted by the canine race. Another animal that flourishes here, in spite of the hatred in which it is held by the inhabitants, is the fox, which likewise finds the valley an Elysium on account of the convenient neighbourhood of the rocks pierced with multitudinous holes. Badgers and foxes, with all their vices, are preferable to the hyenas which used to infest this part of France, as is proved by the bones found in the larger caverns. The present inhabitants ought to take comfort from this reflection, but they do not. While the aubergiste's wife, a little woman who carried about with her the outline of a wine-cask, was breathing maledictions upon the badgers, and venting her fury upon the little boy-of-all-work--who, being used to such outbursts, ate his morning allowance of soup with philosophic indifference--I took up my place again in the chimney-corner, and endeavoured to dry myself on all sides by somewhat imitating the movement of a fowl turning on the spit. At length the heavy pall of cloud lifted, and when the first yellow gleam of sunshine filtering through vapour was reflected by the puddles and streaming roofs, I walked out of Saint-Géry. When the last houses were out of sight, solitude added to the desolate grandeur of the scenery. It was a relief to be alone with Nature, dripping as she was with recent tears, after the depressing influences of the inn--the dimness, dampness, and dirt, the unreasoning anger of ignorance, the dull routine of human beings whose chief concern was to feed themselves and the animals which helped them to live. As an alterative to the mind, rural life is of real value in the case of those who have been carried round and round in the whirlpool of a great city until they have had more than enough of the sensation; but, like other useful medicines, rusticity is best when taken in moderate doses, and at judicious intervals. I had stayed at Saint-Géry long enough to feel like a fish that in jumping out of water for the sake of variety had fallen upon the mud. The sun that changes the face of all things, and warms the ideas no less than the earth, now shone out from a blue sky, spreading fire over the ruddy tops of the chestnut woods, and flashing into the dark caverns of the ancient crags, fringed with box, sumach and juniper. I noticed that one of these caverns had been fortified, but my curiosity was satisfied with the distant view. A yellow chicory, quite leafless, was still blooming on the stony banks, and I also, found a white scabious. Green hellebore and wild madder flourished amidst the broken limestone. A forest of brown maize-stalks, from which the golden corn had been gathered, followed the windings of the river, now turgid and tumultuous, and dyed sienna-red by the washings from the hills. Every day the increasing water as it descended the weirs made a wilder tumult. These weirs are a great beauty to the Lot, for they generally form an angle or the arc of a circle, and the river tumbles over the rough blocks like a natural cascade. They are connected with a series of locks, which render the stream navigable from the sea; but one rarely sees a barge upon it now, the railway having completely ruined the water traffic, and caused a most elaborate and costly piece of engineering to be practically useless. The valley now widened out, and a village came into view, together with a ruined castle upon a mamelon, that rose like a volcanic cone from the plain. On the castle wall an immense wooden cross had been set, showing against the sky with an effect truly grand. The village was Vers, and the castle, which was built by the English, is called the Château de Béars. At Vers I was met by an old man, who insisted upon showing me another cave fortified by the English, after taking the precaution of telling me that he would accept nothing for his trouble. He was long and lean and brown, and had a 'glittering, eye' like the Ancient Mariner, but his conversation was much more cheerful than that of the hero who shot the albatross. He was a born actor, for he accompanied his talk with magnificent dramatic gestures, and, after letting his voice drop suddenly to a tragic whisper, he would raise it again to the most gusty and blustering heights of sound. He was a strong type of the Southerner, inasmuch as all this amazing vehemence and gesticulation was quite uncalled for. It is remarkable, however, how much may be done by mere action and intonation to impress the listener with the idea that the speaker must be a person of uncommon intelligence. But when half a dozen such talkers are engaged in discussion upon some trivial topic, and each employs the same means to enforce his views upon the rest (this occurs nightly in the _cafés_ at Cahors), the Northerner is inclined to think that they are all mad. The wiry old man explained to me, in order to account for the ease and agility with which, notwithstanding his years and his awkward _sabots_, he stepped from block to block in the ascent, that he had been all his life a rock-blaster. At length we reached the cavern. The English, who used it as a refuge, had shown much sagacity in its selection, for the enemy that attacked them there would have been compelled to climb up the face of the rock beneath by following zigzag ledges, while the besieged behind their loopholed wall were raining arrows and bolts upon them. The wall, as it exists, is twenty or thirty feet high. There is a doorway protected by an inner wall. To reach the upper loopholes and parapet the men mounted upon oak beams resting crosswise between the masonry and the rock. One massive beam, crumbling and worm-eaten, as may be supposed after the centuries that it has been there, may still be seen serving as the lintel of a window. I made a rather long stay at Vers, in order to visit the site of a Celtic town on the _causse_; but I did not start upon this journey until the next day. The inn where I put up was much more comfortable than some others which I had chosen for night-quarters while wandering down the valley. To anybody fresh from London it would have seemed primitive indeed, with its broad hearth and massive iron dogs, its enormous fire built with logs and the roots of trees, and its cosy chimney-corners, where the sitters' heads were from time to time enveloped with wreathing smoke; but I had grown so accustomed to such sights that this hostelry seemed to contain all the blessings and commodities of an advanced state of civilization. The hostess was a good and sprightly cook, and I watched her proceedings with a keen interest as I sat upon one of the seats in the chimney. Having hitched the pot that contained the soup upon the hook at the end of the sooty chain, she raked out embers from the centre of the burning mass, and made separate fires with them upon the hearth. Others she carried to a range of small charcoal fireplaces on one side of the spacious kitchen, and very soon afterwards she had sauce-pans and a frying-pan and a gridiron all murmuring or hissing together. There was too much garlic in her cookery, but I had also grown used to that. Although the phylloxera had blighted nearly all the vineyards in this region, the landlord here was able to put upon the table some wine, grown upon his own hillside, not unworthy of the ancient reputation of the Cahors district for its vintage. After dinner I returned to the chimney-corner which was decidedly the most comfortable place in the inn, in spite of the smoke and the close neighbourhood of soot, and set about obtaining information from the aubergiste and his cronies who had dropped in concerning the exact whereabouts of a Celtic town whose ruined fortifications, I knew, were to be found somewhere among the barren hills to the west of Vers. It was some time before I could make these men understand what I was really in search of, and when they understood they seemed to think I was a little mad, until the idea struck them that I might be a dealer in antiquities, hoping to pick up certain odds and ends that would repay me for the trouble of walking to such a desolate and uninteresting spot. At length I gathered that the site of the ancient _oppidum_ was at Murcens, a hamlet upon a hill, half a day's walk away to the west, and that the best way to reach it was to follow the valley of the Vers. At about seven o'clock the next morning I started, and, having been warned that I should find no inn where I could get a meal, I took with me some provisions. It was a gray, dreary morning, and at that hour the weather could not have been more November-like had I been upon the banks of the Severn or the Trent, instead of being by one of the rivers of our ancient southern province of Guyenne. As I turned westward up the valley of the Vers, I passed under detached fragments of the aqueduct built by the Romans to carry water to Cahors. By taking advantage of the rocks which hem in the narrow valley, they saved themselves the trouble of raising arches to the desired height to ensure the flow. The conduit is carried along upon a ledge hewn out of the natural wall, projecting masses of rock being cut through with the hammer and chisel. The masonry is of undressed stone, but so firmly cemented that it is scarcely less solid than the rock itself. Where an inconvenient buttress projected, a narrow passage was cut through it for the channel, and the marks of the chisel look as fresh as if they had been lately made. Much of this aqueduct was destroyed in quite recent days, when the rocks were blasted to make room for the road to Cahors. The Romans may have thought of many destructive agencies being employed upon their work, but dynamite was certainly not one of them. Box and hellebore, bramble and dogwood, moss and ferns, have been striving for centuries to conceal all trace of the conduit, and those whose foreknowledge did not lead them to look for it might easily pass by without observing it. The road followed the stream, now a furious torrent that a man on horseback could hardly ford without risk of being carried away. Two or three weeks previously a mere thread of water wound its way amongst the stones in the centre of the channel. It is one of the many streams which in Guyenne gradually disappear in summer, but at the return of winter fill the long-scorched and silent valleys with the sound of roaring waters. On either side of the gorge rose abrupt stony hills thinly wooded, chiefly with stunted oak, or escarped craggy cliffs pierced with yawning caverns. There was no sunshine, but the multitude of lingering leaves lit up all the desert hills with a quiet, solemn flame. Here and there, amidst the pale gold of the maple or the browner, ruddier gold of the oak, glowed darkly the deep crimson fire of a solitary cornel. In steady, unchanging contrast with these colours was the sombre green of the box. The stream descends in a series of cascades, and there is a mighty roar of waters. For many yards I have for a companion a little wren, that flies from twig to twig through the well-nigh naked hedge along the wayside, now hidden behind a bramble's crimson-spotted leaf, now mingled with a tracery of twigs and thorns. I can almost believe it to be the same wren that kept up with me years ago in English lanes, and since then has travelled with me so many miles in France, vanishing for long periods, but reappearing as if by enchantment in some roadside hedge, its eyes bright with recognition, and every movement friendly. Whimsical little bird, or gentle spirit in disguise, we may travel many a mile together yet. My thoughts were turned from the wren by a carrier's cart, which the people of the country would term a _diligence_. It was like a great oblong box with one end knocked out, set on wheels. The interior was a black hole, crammed with people and bundles. When I looked for my little feathered friend it was gone, but we shall meet again. Two or three miles farther up the valley, near a small village or hamlet, I crossed a low bridge over the Vers, and by following the road on the other side, still ascending the course of the stream, I came to a spot where a volume of water that would soon have filled a large reservoir flowed quietly out of a little hollow at the foot of great rocks. It was the Fountain of Polémie which, on account of its abundant flow in all seasons, is supposed to have been the source from which the Romans led their aqueduct to Divona--now called Cahors. The water of this fountain, which derives its name from Polemius, a Roman functionary, is of limpid purity, and its constancy proves that it rises from a great depth. The Romans must have carried the water on arches across the valley, and probably for a considerable distance down it, before they made use of the natural wall of rock in the manner described, but not a trace remains of the arches, or even of the piers. In order to reach the tableland of Murcens, it was necessary to cross again the roaring torrent of the Vers, and after several vain attempts to do so, by means of the rocks lying in its bed, I came to a bridge which solved the difficulty. The scene was now sublimely rugged and desolate. On each side the majestic rocks reared their ever-varying fantastic shapes towards the sky. I knew, from what I had been told, that Murcens lay somewhere above the escarped cliff on my left, and at no great distance, but the difficulty was to reach it. I had heard of a path, but I soon gave up the attempt to find it. As there was not a human being to be seen who could give me any counsel, I commenced climbing the hill in the direction that I wished to take. It was anything but straightforward walking. The lower part of the steep was strewn with loose stones like shingle, that slipped under the feet, so that I had to proceed in zigzag fashion, taking advantage of every bush of juniper and box and root of hellebore as a foothold. But the vegetation grew denser as I ascended, and I had soon plenty of box and dwarf oak to help me. Before attempting to climb the upper wall of solid limestone, I sat in the mouth of a small cavern to eat the frugal lunch I had brought with me, and to contemplate at my leisure the wild grandeur of the valley. I could not have chosen a better place for feeling in one sense dwindled, in another expanded, by the majesty of the stony solitude. Suddenly, while I gazed, the sun breaking through the clouds made every yellow tree brighten like melting gold, and drew a voice of joy from all the dumb and solemn rocks. I leave the remnants of my feast for the foxes and magpies to quarrel over, and feel prepared to put forth a vigorous effort to reach the _causse_. I work my way up by the clefts of the rocks, hanging on to the tough box, and getting thoroughly asperged by the dew that has not yet dried upon it. I have not ascended fifty feet in this manner before I am as wet as if I had been walking in a thunderstorm. I creep along ledges, now to the right and now to the left, and presently I am only about twenty-five feet from the top of the rock that prevents me from attaining my object. It is pleasanter to look up than to look down, for, being no climber of mountain peaks, I do not enjoy the sensation of clinging to the side of a precipice like a caterpillar to a leaf. Now comes the real trial. The rest of the rock above me is quite bare of vegetation. By making four or five steps upwards to the left, then to the right, a spot can be reached where the trouble will be over; but some of these steps need a considerable stretch of leg, and the eye cannot measure the distance with certainty. Time is on the wing, and the days are short. I am strongly tempted to make the essay, but doubt holds me back. What if I, were to get half-way, and were unable to go on or to retreat? What if I were to slip and roll down the rocks? If I were not killed outright, who would be likely to come to my aid in such a solitude? The ravens would have ample time to pick my bones before those interested in my existence would know what had happened to me. I resolve that I will not give the birds of ill omen a chance of so rare a meal. In descending, the cold showers from the box bushes add to my humiliation and discomfiture. Keeping on the side of the hill, I went farther up the valley, seeking a place where I could with better chance of success make another attack upon the difficulties of this rocky wall. I found what I wanted at no great distance, the only objection to the spot being the dense growth of shrubs laden with moisture. It was almost like wading through a stream. At length the line of high rocks was passed, and I was upon land that, notwithstanding its steepness and the multitude of stones with which it was strewn, had undergone some cultivation. That wine had not long since been grown here was evident from the numerous stumps of vines which had been killed by the phylloxera. A few lingering flowers of hawkweed relieved the monotony of the dreary waste. But if, while looking before me, the scene was saddening, in looking back there was a sublime and soul-lifting picture which the forces of Nature had been painting unmolested for ages. I can do no more than suggest to the imagination the combined effect of those fantastic rocks rising from the foaming torrent to the drifting, tinted clouds; buttresses and bastions of the ancient earth laid bare in the mysterious night of the inconceivable past, some black and gloomy as the walls of a feudal moat, others yellow like ochre; others, again, sun-bleached almost to whiteness, yet streaked with ruddy veins--all flashed here and there with burning oak and maple, or sprinkled with the purple blood of the dogwood's dying leaves. Half an hour later I reached Murcens, only inhabited nowadays by a few peasants in two or three scattered hovels, which are nevertheless called farms. I had no difficulty in finding the wall of the Gaulish town. It is broken down completely in places, but the almost circular line is plainly marked. The site of the _oppidum_ is a little tableland raised above the surrounding soil by a natural embankment. The circumvallation in its best preserved places is now from seven to ten feet high. The materials used were such as Caesar mentions as having been employed by the Gauls in the fortification of their _oppida_, namely, timber and rough stone. I looked for some traces of the wooden uprights, but although there is ample proof that they existed there down to our own time, my search was vain. Many stones measuring several feet in length were set in a perpendicular position to give extra stability to the wall. The ancient rampart is in places completely overgrown with juniper. Within the wall is nothing but level field. No trace remains of any buildings that stood there in the far-off days when the spot was the scene of all passions and vanities, the tragedy and comedy of human life, even as we know it now. The peasant as he ploughs or digs turns up from time to time a bit of worked metal, such as a coin, or a ring, but the hands which held them may or may not be mingled with the soil that supports the buckwheat and enables the peasant to live. The Gaulish city has no history. I had some talk with a peasant who had been watching my movements wonderingly. He spoke French with difficulty, but his boy--a lad of about twelve, who had been to school--could help him over the stiles. I got the man to speak about the ancient wall, although it was evidently not a subject that interested him so deeply as his pigsty. He told me that all the beams of wood had now rotted (they may have helped to warm him on winter evenings), but that nails a foot long were often found amongst the stones of the wall or in the soil round about it. He had picked up several, but had taken no care of them. When I observed that I should much like to see one, he said he thought there was one somewhere in his house, and, calling to his wife, he asked her in Languedocian to look for it. While she was searching he drew my attention to a circular stone lying upon the top of his rough garden wall. It was about a foot in diameter, and concave on one side. 'What is it?' I asked. 'A millstone,' he replied. True enough, it was one of the stones of an ancient handmill, such as was used in remote antiquity, chiefly by women, for grinding corn. It must have been as nearly as possible after the pattern of the first implement invented by man for this purpose. The peasant set no value upon it; I could have had it for a trifle--even for nothing, had I been so minded; but whatever liking I may have for antiquities, it did not gird me up to the task of carrying a millstone back to Vers. The nail could not be found, so I was obliged to leave without a souvenir of the Celtic city. Not far from this spot I found another millstone that would have fitted the one I had left and made a complete mill. They are doubtless still lying upon the dreary height of Murcens; but whether they are there or in a museum, they are as dumb as any other stones, although, had they the power to repeat some of the gossip of the women who once bent over them, they might tell us a good deal that Caesar left out of his Commentaries because he thought it unimportant, but which we should much like to know. I did not return by the way I came, but kept upon the plateau, going southward, then, dropping down into another valley at the bottom of which ran a tributary of the Vers, I crossed the stream and rose upon the opposite hill, making somewhat at random towards the village of Cours. On my way I started numerous coveys of red partridges from juniper and box and other low shrubs. Had I been a sportsman carrying a gun I could have made a splendid 'bag,' but these chances generally fall to those who cannot profit by them. I wondered, however, at the lack of poaching enterprise in a district so near to Cahors. It is not often that one meets even in the least populous parts of France so many partridges in an absolutely wild state. Immense flocks of larks were likewise feeding upon the moorland, and the beating of their countless wings as they rose made a mighty sound when it suddenly broke the silence of the hills. I met a small peasant girl with a face as dark as a Moorish child's, and eyes wonderfully large and lustrous. She was a beautiful little creature of a far Southern or Arabian type. At Cours I talked to a woman who was a pure type of the red-haired Celt. How strange it is that with all the intermixture of blood in the course of many centuries the old racial characteristics return when they are deeply ingrained in a people! I took shelter at Cours from a sharp storm. It was a wretched little village upon a dreary height, and the inhabitants, to whom French was a foreign language, stared at me as if I had been a gorilla. An overhanging 'bush' of juniper led me to a very small inn that bore the familiar signs of antiquity, dirt and poverty. I knocked at the old oak door studded with nail-heads, and it presently creaked upon its rusty hinges. It was opened by a poor woman whose manners were wofully uncouth; but this was no fault of hers. She was honest, as such rough people generally are. Although she must have wanted money, it did not occur to her to extract a sou from the stranger beyond the just price. When I had had enough of her wine and bread and cheese, and asked her to tell me what I owed her, she carefully measured with her eye how much wine was left in the bottle, how much bread and cheese I had taken, and when her severe calculation was finished she replied, in a harsh, firm voice, which meant that the reckoning being made she intended to stand by it: 'Eleven sous.' When I met the valley of the Vers again the storm had passed far away; the evening rose was in the calm heaven, and the topmost oaks along the rocky ridge burnt like tapers upon a high altar of the vast temple whose roof is the vaulted sky. Already the deep aisles were dim with gathering shadows. When I reached the inn at Vers it was nearly dark, and after my day's tramp I was very glad to exchange the outer gloom for the brightness of the cheery fireside and the warmth of the chimney-corner beside the redly glowing logs. The next day brought me to the end of my long journey down the valley of the Lot, for I had decided to leave the country below Cahors until some future day. I reached the city of Divona when the yellow glow of the autumnal rainy sunset was stealing up the ancient walls. It is always with a certain dread that I say anything about history, because when I am once upon such high stilts I do not know when I shall be able to get down again. Moreover, when one is so mounted, one has to step very judiciously, especially in a region like this, where the roads to knowledge are so roughly paved. Nothing would be easier, however, than to fill a book with the history of Cahors, for the place, since the days of the Romans, has gone through such vicissitudes, and witnessed such stirring events, that those who wish to turn over the leaves of its past have abundant facilities for doing so; but it will be better for me to speak rather of what I have seen than what I have read. Nevertheless, my impressions of this old town at the present day would be like salad without salt if no flavour of the past were put into them. When, a mud-bespattered tramp, I came down the road by the winding Lot, and saw the pale golden light rising upon the walls of churches and towers high above me, I could not but think of some of the terrible scenes which, in the course of 2,000 years, were witnessed by the inhabitants of Cahors. In the fast-falling twilight I saw the ghosts of the Vandals and Visigoths who helped to destroy the works of the Caesars, and passed onward to the unknown; of the Franks who burnt Cahors in the sixth century; of the Arab hordes, dabbled with blood, who afterwards came up from the South slaying, violating, plundering; of the English troops under Henry II. besieging and taking the town, accompanied by the Chancellor, Thomas-à-Becket; of the Albigenses and Catholics, who cut one another's throats for the good of their souls; of the Huguenots and Catholics, who repeated these horrors in the sixteenth century for the same excellent reason; but of all these shadows, the most interesting and the most dramatic was that of Henry IV. He was then Henry of Navarre, and the hope of the Protestants in the South, while Cahors was one of the strongholds of Catholicism. What a feat of war was that capture of Cahors by Henry with only 1,400 men, after almost incessant fighting in the streets for five days and nights! How red the paving-stones must have been on the sixth day, when it was all over, and the surviving Navarrese, smarting from the recollection of the tiles and stones that were hurled at them from the roofs by women, children, and old men, had given the final draught of blood to their vengeful swords! Never was so much courage so uselessly squandered. After the lapse of three centuries Henry's figure is still full of heroic life, as, with back set against a shop-window, and sword in hand, he shouted to those who urged upon him the hopelessness of his enterprise: 'My retreat from this town will be that of my soul from my body!' If is really wonderful how certain buildings at Cahors have been preserved to the present day through all the storms of the tempestuous Middle Ages, the furious hurricane of religious hatred that brought those centuries to a close, and that other one, the Revolution, which ushered in the new epoch of liberty and well-dressed poverty. Of these buildings, the cathedral has the right to be named first. As a whole it cannot be called a beautiful structure, for its form is graceless; but what a charm there is in its details! Even its incongruity has a singular fascination. This most evident incongruity arises from the combination that it expresses of the Gothic and Byzantine styles. The façade is very early Gothic (about the year 1200), still full of Romanesque feeling, but the church having been much pulled about in the thirteenth century, it came to have a semi-Byzantine choir and two depressed domes, quite Byzantine, over the nave. The façade, with its squat towers, exhibits no lofty aim, but when one looks at the tabernacle-work in the tympan of the divided portal, the capitals in the jambs and the mouldings of the archivolts, the elegant arcade above and the tracery of the great rose window, one feels that although the Pointed style could not yet embody its dream of beauty by means of the tower and spire, it was moving towards it through a maze of glorious ideas destined to become inseparable from the spirit of the perfect whole. Still more interesting than this façade is that of the north portal (twelfth century). It is Gothic, but the general treatment has much of that Byzantine-Romanesque which produced some very remarkable buildings in Southern France. The portal is very wide and deeply recessed, and the tympan is crowded with bas-reliefs, the sculpture of which, rude yet expressive, is of a striking originality. There is a broad arabesque moulding in the doorway suggesting Eastern influence, and the closed arcade of the façade, with corbel-table above and its row of uncouth monstrous heads, presents a highly curious effect of struggling motives in early Gothic art. The nave is much below the level of the soil, and is reached by a flight of steps from the main entrance. These steps at the Sunday services are crowded by the poorer class of churchgoers, sitting, kneeling, and standing, and, like the catechumens in the narthex of the early Christian basilica, they look as if they were separated from the rest of the faithful on account of their not being as yet full-fledged members of the Church. It may well be that they are the most faithful of the faithful, for stone is a hard thing to kneel upon, and when it is used for this purpose without ostentation, it is a pretty safe test of sincerity in religion. The grouping of the people here would interest at once an artistic eye, the more so because many of the women of Cahors wear upon their heads kerchiefs of brilliant-coloured silk folded in a peculiarly graceful and picturesque manner, resembling the Bordelaise coiffure, but yet distinct. The nave of the cathedral is cold and tasteless, the whole effect being centred upon the choir, the richness of which is quite dazzling. The vault is a semi-dome, and the apse-like polygonal termination is pierced with several lofty Gothic windows, so that the eye rests upon the harmonious lines of the tracery and a subdued blaze of many-coloured glass. Then the columns, walls and vaulting of the choir are elaborately decorated in the Byzantine style, and, all the tones being kept in aesthetic harmony, the result is a general effect more beautiful than gorgeous. I observed it under most favoured circumstances. I entered the church for the first time during the pontifical High Mass. The vestments of the mitred bishop under his canopy, of the officiating priest and deacons, of the canons in their stalls, together with the white surplices and scarlet cassocks of the many choir-boys distributed over the vast sanctuary, and the sunbeams stained with the hues of purple, crimson, azure and green by the windows that reached towards the sky, falling upon all these figures, realized with a splendour more Oriental than Western a grand conception of colour in relation to a religious ideal. After leaving the cathedral I changed my ideas by looking for the Gambetta grocery. It happened to be close by. The name is still over the door, but the shop no longer looks democratic. Its plateglass, its fresh paint and gilding, and the specimens of ceramic art which fill the window, give it somewhat the air of one of those London shops kept by ladies of title. Sugar, coffee, and candles now hide themselves in the far background, as though they were ashamed of their own celebrity. Much more interesting than this shop is the old house where Gambetta spent his childhood. His parents did not live on the premises where they carried on their business. Therefore the odour of honey and vinegar had not, after all, so much to do with the formation of the clever boy's character. I found the house down a dark passage. The rooms occupied by the Gambetta family are now those of a small _restaurateur_ for the working class. After ascending some steps, I entered a greasy, grimy, dimly-lighted room, the floor of which had never felt water save what had been sprinkled upon it to lay the dust. It had the old-fashioned hearth and fire-dogs and gaping sooty chimney, a bare table or so for the customers, a shelf with bottles, and the ordinary furniture and utensils of the provincial kitchen. Here I had some white wine with the present occupier as a reason for being in a place that must have often resounded with the infantile screams of Léon Gambetta. I ascertained that he was not born in this house, but that he was brought to it when about three months old, and that he passed his childhood here. I was shown an adjoining room, darker, dingier, less persecuted by soap, if possible, than the other. It was here that Gambetta slept in those early years. Did he ever dream here of a great room in a palace, draped with black and silver, of a catafalque fit for a prince, of a coffin heaped with flowers? Again I changed my ideas by crossing the Lot and searching for the Fountain of Divona, now called the Fontaine des Chartreux. The old name is Celtic, and as it charmed the Romans they preserved it. Following the river downward, I came to a spot where a great stream flowed silently and mysteriously out of a cavity at the foot of lofty rocks overgrown by herbage and low shrubs that seemed to have been left untouched by the hand of Autumn, that burns and beautifies. The water came out of the hill like a broad sheet of green glass, giving scarcely any sign of movement until it reached a low weir, where it turned to the whiteness of snow. The Romans held this beautiful fountain in high esteem, and if they had known how to raise the water to the level of the town on the opposite bank of the river, they need not have taken the trouble to carry an aqueduct some twenty miles from the valley of the Vers. Nowadays it is the Fountain of Divona that supplies Cahors with water. Still following the river, I came to that famous bridge, the Pont Valentré, which is one of the most interesting specimens of the defensive architecture of the Middle Ages. It is probably the most curious example of a fortified bridge in existence. In addition to its embattled parapet, it is protected by three high slender towers, machicolated, crenellated, and loopholed. The archway of each spans the road over the bridge, so that an enemy who forced the portcullis of the first, and ran the gauntlet of the hot lead from the machicolations, would have to repeat the same performance twice before reaching the bank on which the town is built. This bridge was raised at the commencement of the fourteenth century. By what wonderful chance was it preserved intact, together with its towers, after the invention of gunpowder? The people of Cahors call it the Pont du Diable. When a certain stone was placed in one of the towers, the devil always pulled it out, or did so until lately. THE END. 
13048	----	This eBook was produced by Steven desJardins and Distributed Proofreaders. [Illustration: Where the Sabots Clatter Again by Katherine Shortall] [Illustration: Katherine Shortall (autograph), December 1921] _The Radcliffe Unit in France collaborated with the French Red Cross in its work of reconstruction after the Armistice. It was as a member of this unit and as chauffeuse in the devastated regions that the writer received the impressions set forth in these sketches._ Where the Sabots Clatter Again by Katherine Shortall [Illustration: street scene] Ralph Fletcher Seymour Publisher 410 S. Michigan Avenue Chicago PUBLISHED FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE RADCLIFFE COLLEGE ENDOWMENT FUND IN AN EDITION LIMITED TO 150 COPIES SECOND EDITION OF 150 COPIES 1921 WHERE THE SABOTS CLATTER AGAIN. THE BRIDE OF NOYON. A returning flush upon the plain. Streaks of color across a mangled landscape: the gentle concealment of shell hole and trench. This is what one saw, even in the summer of 1919. For the sap was running, and a new invasion was occurring. Legions of tender blades pushed over the haggard No Man's Land, while reckless poppies scattered through the ranks of green, to be followed by the shyer starry sisters in blue and white. Irrepressibly these floral throngs advanced over the shell torn spaces, crowding, mingling and bending together in a rainbow riot beneath the winds that blew them. They were the vanguard. * * * * * In the midst of the reviving fields lay Noyon: Noyon, that gem of the Oise, whose delicate outline of spires and soft tinted roofs had graced the wide valley for centuries. Today the little city lay blanched and shapeless between the hills, as all towns were left that stood in the path of the armies. The cathedral alone reared its battered bulk in the midst; a resisting pile, its two grim and blunted towers frowning into the sky. Nobly Gothic through all the shattering, the great church rose out of the wreckage, with flying buttresses still outspread like brooding wings to the dead houses that had sunk about her. But Noyon was not dead. We of the Red Cross knew that. We knew that in cellars and nooks of this labyrinth of ruin already hundreds of hearts were beating. On this calm September morning the newly cleared streets resounded with the healthful music of hammer and saw, and cartwheels rattled over the cobblestones, while workmen called to each other in resonant voices. Pregnant sounds, these, the significance of which we could estimate. For we had seen Noyon in the early months of the armistice: tangled and monstrous in her attitude of falling, and silent with the bleeding silence of desertion. Then, one memorable day, the stillness had been broken by the first clatter of sabots--that wooden noise, measured, unmistakable, approaching. Two pairs of sabots and a long road. Two broad backs bent under bulging loads; an infant's wail; a knock at the Red Cross Door--but that was nearly eight months before. The _Poste de Secours_ was closed for the first time since Madame de Vigny and her three young _infirmières_ had come to Noyon. Two women stood without, one plump and bareheaded, the other aged and bent, with a calico handkerchief tied over her hair. They stared at the printed card tacked upon the entrance of the large patched-up house that served as Headquarters for the French Red Cross. "_Tiens! c'est fermé_," exclaimed Madame Talon, shaking the rough board door with all her meagre weight, "and I have walked eight kilometers to get a _jupon_, and with rheumatism, too." "Haven't you heard the news?" asked her companion with city-bred scorn. "Ah? What news?" The crisp old face crinkled with anticipation. "Why, Mademoiselle Gaston is to be married today." "_Tiens, tiens! est-ce possible?_ What happiness for that good girl!" and Madame Talon, forgetful of the loss of her _jupon_, smiled a wrinkled smile till her nose nearly touched her chin, and her eyes receding into well worn little puckers, became two snapping black points. "Is it really so? And the bridegroom--who is he?" There followed that vivacious exchange of questions and answers and speculations which accompanies the announcement of a marriage the world over. Mademoiselle Gaston was the daughter of an ancient family of Noyon. But now, her ancestral home was a heap of debris, a tomb for men of many nations, which she did not like to visit. She took me there once, and we walked through the old tennis court where a little summer house remained untouched, its jaunty frailty seeming to mock at the desolation of all that is solid. "Ah, I have had good times here," she said in the expressionless voice of one who has endured too much. For now she was alone. Tennis tournaments for her were separated from the present by a curtain of deaths, by the incomparable space of those four years. Mademoiselle Gaston had played her part in it all. When the Germans were advancing upon Noyon, she had stuck to her post and remained in the hospital where she nursed her compatriots under enemy rule during the first occupation of the city. Something about her had made them treat her with respect, although I have been told that the Prussian officers were always vaguely uncomfortable in her presence. There was, perhaps, not enough humility in her clear eyes, and they worked her to the breaking point. Yet so impeccable and businesslike was her conduct that they could never convict her of any infringement of rules. Little did these pompous invaders suspect how this slender capable girl with the hazel eyes was spicing the hours behind their backs, and drawing with nimble and irreverent pencil portraits of her captors, daring caricatures which she exhibited in secret to the terrified delight of her patients. Luckily for her this harmless vengeance had not been discovered, for doubtless she would have paid dearly for her Gallic audacity. She was small of stature and very thin. Not even the nurse's flowing garb could conceal the angularity of her figure. One wondered how so fragile a frame could have survived the crashings and shakings of war. What secret of yielding and resisting was hers? The tension, nevertheless, had left its mark upon her young face; had drawn the skin over the aquiline profile, and compressed the sensitive mouth in a line too rigid for her years. This severity of feature she aggravated by pinning her _coiffe_ low over a forehead as uncompromising as a nun's. Not a relenting suggestion of hair would she permit. Yet whatever of tenderness or hope she strove thus to hood, nothing could suppress the beauty of her luminous eyes; caressing eyes that belied her austere manner. No sight of blood nor weariness, no insult had hardened them. Even when their greenish depths went dark and wide with reminiscence, a light lurked at the bottom--the reflection of something dancing. Yes, everybody loved Mademoiselle Gaston. For weeks we had seen it coming. She had told us of her engagement at breakfast one Monday morning after a week-end visit to her married sister in Paris. It had seemed a good business proposition. She announced it as such, calmly, with a frankness that astonished my American soul. We were pleased. She would have a château and money, and a _de_ before her name. Best of all she would have peace and companionship after her lonely struggles. On the whole we were very much pleased. Madame de Vigny and her gentle niece were entirely delighted. Noyon was vociferous in its approval and congratulations. I could have wished--but at least I did not thrust any transatlantic notions into the general contentment. And I soon saw--no one could fail to see--the change that day by day came over our reserved companion. The stern line of her lips relaxed. In amazement one day we heard her laugh. Then her laughter began to break forth on all occasions; and we listened to her singing above in her room, and we smiled at each other. That tightness of her brow dissolved in a carefree radiance. At work, she mixed up her faultless card catalogues and laughed at her mistakes. Once, during our busy hours of distribution, we caught her blithely granting the request of fat Mère Copillet for a cook stove and thereupon absently presenting that jovial dame with a pair of sabots, much too small for her portly foot, to the amusement of all the good wives gathered in the Red Cross office. They laughed loudly in a sympathetic crowd, and Mademoiselle Gaston laughed also, and they loved her more than ever. When they learned that she had chosen to be married in the ruined cathedral of her native town, their affection turned to adoration. Not a peasant in the region but took this to be an honor to his city and to himself. Gratitude and a nameless hope filled the hearts of the people of Noyon. The day was at hand. The _poste_ was closed, for within there was a feast to prepare and a bride to adorn. In the early morning the sun-browned peasant women brought flowers, masses of goldenrod and asters. These we arranged in brass shells, empty husks of death, till the bleak spaciousness of our shattered house was gay. The rooms, still elegant in proportion, lent themselves naturally to adornment; and I found myself wondering what former festivities they had sheltered, what other brides had passed down this stately corridor before the bombs let in the wind and the rain and the thieves; and what remote luxuries had been reflected in the great mirror of which only the carved gilt frame was left? Today, goldenrod and asters bloomed against the mouldy walls and one little tri-colored bouquet. Flowers of France, in truth, sprung on the battle field and offered by earth-stained fingers to her who had served. From the kitchen came noises of snapping wood, and a sizzling which tempted me to the door. It was a fine old kitchen, though now the tiles were mostly gone from the floor, and the cracked walls were smeared with uncouth paintings, the work of some childish soul--some German mess sergeant, perhaps, who had been installed there, but today Jeanne reigned again, bending her philosophic face over the smoking stove, and evoking with infallible arts aromatic and genial vapors from her casseroles. At her side, Thérèse, pink and cream in the abundance of her eighteen years, fanned the fire, her eyes wide open with the novel excitement of the occasion. "_La guerre est finie, Mademoiselle Miss!_" cried Jeanne with spoon dripping in mid air. "Today I have butter to cook with. Now you shall taste a French dinner _comme il faut_!" In the garage, Michel, all seriousness, polished the Ford that was to carry away the bridal pair. Recently demobilized, he wore the bizarre combination of military and civilian clothes that all over France symbolized the transition from war to peace--black coat encroaching upon stained blue trousers, khaki puttees, evidence of international intimacy and--most brilliant emblem of freedom--a black and white checked cap, put on backwards. His the ultimate responsibility at our wedding ceremony and he looked to his tires and sparkplugs with passion. The married sister, beautiful and charming in her Paris gown, was superintending the _toilette_; and when all was ready, we were called up to examine and admire. The bride was sweet and calm, smiling dreamily at us in the foggy fragment of mirror. Below, somewhat portly and constrained in his black coat and high collar, the bridegroom marched with agitation back and forth in the corridor, clasping and unclasping his hands in their gray suède gloves. The Paris train was due. Relatives and friends began to arrive; and little nieces and nephews, all in their best clothes. Noyon had not seen anything so gay in years. There was bustle and business and running up and down stairs. The _poste_, usually clamorous with the hoarse dialect of northern France, hummed and rippled with polite conversation and courtly greetings. The bride appeared. The bridegroom's face lost its perturbed expression in his unaffected happiness at seeing her. Photographs were taken; she, gracious and bending in a cloud of tulle; he, stiffly upright but smiling resolutely. They were off in a string of carriages--sagging old carriages resurrected from the dust--while a few of us hastened to the cathedral by a short cut to take more pictures as they entered. The vast nave engulfed us in its desolation. The mutilated apse seemed to be far, far away, and one looked at it fearfully. High above through the broken vaulting shone the indestructible blue, and through the hollow windows the breath of Heaven wandered free. The little bride stepped bravely between the piles of refuse, daintily gathering her dress about her. A dirty sheet on the wall flapped without warning, and we had a glimpse of a gaunt and pallid crucifix, instantly shrouded again in a spasm of wind. Passing under an arch we entered a less demolished chapel. Here all Noyon was waiting. Thin and quavering through the expectant hush came the chords of a harmonium. Rustlings and whisperings among the closely packed people as the misty white figure advanced slowly into sight. At the altar the silver-haired bishop turned his scholarly face upon her, full of tenderness; and when he spoke, his voice seemed an assurance of peace and purity. The service was long. In France one listens to a sermon when one is married, and the pretty bridesmaids came round for three collections. The bishop talked of her father, his friend, who had died under cruel circumstances. Shoulders heaved in the congregation, and in a dark corner a sob was stifled. "You have suffered, my children. There has been a mighty mowing and a winter of death, and our mother the earth has lain barren. But today stand up, O children, and listen and feel. We are united in these ruins by more than sorrow. What are these pulsations that beat this day upon our soul?" The words flowed on following the ancient grooves of sermons, but the loving voice thrilled us. It floated through the dim atmosphere into our consciousness, holding us as in a dream, dovelike and soothing. My eyes trailed to the delicate bride kneeling beside a great cracked column, and I thought of the tiny blossom again by the road, and of those stretches without the town, no longer gray, but brushed with new color. I saw the daisies and the grasses waving out on No Man's Land: like heralding banners of the triumph march they waved, leading out of sight beyond the horizon. And as the priest talked, my heart throbbed its own silent canticle: "Joy in the new dawned day, and in peace-awakened fields. Hope of the flower that blooms again. Faith in the unfolding of petals, gently, forever, and in season." "_Soyez loué, Seigneur!_" the voice deepened and concluded. Decisively, now, burst forth the reedlike chords of music. A wave of movement throughout the crowd. And the bowed form trembled a moment within its sheathing veil, against the cold stone pillar. LITTLE GRAINS OF SAND Shall I tell you about the old woman and her statue of Sainte Claire? She was a true native of Picardy, and if I could give you her dialect, this story would be more amusing. We came upon her in the course of our visits, living in her clean little house that had been well mended. She was delighted to have someone to talk to. "Come in, my good girl," she patronized the queenly and aristocratic Madame de Vigny. "Come in, everybody," and we all went in. "Sit down, my dear," again to Madame de Vigny. "Those barbarians didn't leave me many chairs, but here is one, and this box will do for these young ladies." She herself remained standing, a stout old body in spite of her eighty years. Her blue eyes were clear and twinkled with fun, and she had a mischievous way of smiling out of the corner of her mouth, displaying two teeth. She loved her joke, this shrewd old lady. "_Dites, Madame_," she said, "is it true that you give away flannel petticoats and stockings?" "Yes, Madame, when one has need of them." "Is it possible? And for nothing? Ah, that is good, that is generous. Tonight I shall tell Sainte Claire about you. Would you like to see my '_tiote[1] Sainte Claire_?" We followed her back through a little yard and down into a cellar. "You see, Mesdames, when the villains bombarded Noyon, I stayed right here. I wasn't going to leave my home for those people. One night the convent opposite was struck, and the next morning in the street I found my Sainte Claire. She wasn't harmed at all, lying on her back in the mud. 'Now God will protect me,' I said, and I picked her up in my arms and carried her into my house. And Sainte Claire said to me, 'Place me down in the cave, and you will be safe.' So I brought her down." [Footnote 1: Dialect for _petite_.] She led us to a tiny underground apartment, probably a vegetable cellar, and there, on a bracket jutting from the mildewed wall, stood the painted plaster image of the saint. "_Voilà ma Sainte Claire!_" exclaimed the old peasant woman, crossing herself. "She and I have lived down here during the bombardment and the entire occupation. She has protected me. Look, Madame--" and she showed us a corner of the ceiling that had been newly repaired. "The _obus_ passed through here, and never touched us. I kept on praying to the Sainte, and she said, 'Do not move and you will be safe.' All night I was on my knees before her, and toward morning the house was hit--only one meter away the wall fell down, and we were not harmed, Madame, neither the Sainte nor I. Then Sainte Claire said to me, 'The Boches are coming. Take half of your potatoes and bring them down here.' I had a beautiful pile of potatoes, Madame, just harvested. But I took only half and put them in a sack and stuffed it with hay. For thirteen months, Madame, I slept on those potatoes. Then Sainte Claire said, 'Take half your wine, and put it down the well.' I wanted to hide it all, but she said 'No, take only half.' And I sunk one hundred bottles, Madame, of my best wine in the well. The Boches came. Five of them came to my house. Five _grands gaillards_ with square heads. Oh, they are ugly, Madame! 'Show us your wine,' they ordered. 'It is there, Messieurs, in the cellar,' I answered meek as a lamb. And they all began drinking till they were drunk. Then one of them dragged me down here by the arm, and for thirteen months, Madame, I lived in this hole with Sainte Claire while they possessed my house. They made me cook for them, the animals; but I should have starved, Madame, if I had not had my potatoes. Then the French began their bombardment. Ah, it was terrible, Madame, to be bombarded by one's friends. I did not leave this cave, and I prayed and prayed, 'Sainte Claire, save me once more!' and Sainte Claire replied, 'The French are coming. We shall not be hurt.' One morning it was suddenly quiet: the cannon had stopped. I listened and heard nothing, and I came up into my house. It was empty, Madame. The Boches had gone. One shell had fallen through the roof into my bedroom--that was all. But ah, Madame! _Noyon, pauvre Noyon!_ She was like a corpse. _Ah lala, lala! Qué'malheur!_ The next day our soldiers came. Ah, how glad I was. And I asked Sainte Claire, 'May I not go to the well and bring up a bottle of wine?' And she said 'No, not yet.' So we waited, Madame, until the day of the Armistice. Then Sainte Claire said, 'Now you may go and bring up all the wine.' And, Madame, what do you think? I went to the well and I hauled up the wine and out of the hundred bottles only two were broken." The old woman laughed with delight at the trick she had played on the invader. "They never guessed it was there. It was Sainte Claire, Madame, who saved it. I poured her a glassful and we celebrated, Madame; we celebrated the victory down in our cave, _ma'tiote Sainte Claire_ and I." * * * * * Mademoiselle Froissart and I left the _Poste de Secours_ one day, and started for a far away village that was said to be utterly wiped out. Our drive lay over a terrific road. We crossed a vast sad plain, intersected with trenches, with nothing in sight but one monster deserted tank, still camouflaged, and here and there the silhouette of a blasted tree against the lowering sky. These dead trees of the battle line! Sometimes, with their bony limbs flung forth in gnarled unnatural gestures, they remind me of frantic skeletons suddenly petrified in their dance of death. They are frenzied, and unutterably tragic. They seem to move; yet they are so dead. And I imagine their denuded tortured arms reaching toward unanswering Heaven in an agony of protest against the fate that has gripped all nature. We entered a torn and tangled forest. The road was narrow and overgrown, and several times I had to dodge hand grenades that lay in the grassy ruts. The Ford ploughed bravely through deep mud, skidded, recovered, fell into holes, and kept on. My attention was so focused upon driving that I saw little else but the road ahead, though once at an exclamation from Mademoiselle Froissart, out of the corner of my eye I saw a machine gun mounted and apparently intact. The motor was toiling, but in my soul I blessed its regular noise that told me all was well. Leaving the wood we came to what appeared to be a large rough clearing. There were no trees--only bumps of earth covered with tall weeds. To our surprise we caught sight of the jaunty blue figure of a poilu, and then a band of slouching green-coated prisoners who were digging in their heavy leisurely manner. Mademoiselle Froissart inquired for the village of Evricourt. "_Mais c'est ici, Madame_," replied the soldier with a grin. "Here!" We stared. There was nothing by which one could have told that this was the site of a town, except an occasional bit of brick that showed beneath the weeds. All the Germans had stopped work to look at these two women who had so unexpectedly penetrated to this God-forsaken spot. We asked whether any of the inhabitants had returned. "Just one old man," said the poilu, "who lives all alone in his cellar, over there." He pointed, and suddenly from the ground emerged an aged man, white haired and erect. He came toward us, an astonishingly handsome figure. His beautifully modeled head was like a bit of perfect sculpture found suddenly among rank ruins, whose very fineness shocks us because of its contrast with its coarse surroundings. His blue eyes were piercing under bushy white brows, while a snowy and curling beard, abundant yet well trimmed, set off the dark ivory of his complexion. And on his head, above the silvery waving hair, was placed at a careful angle a blue _callot_. He was dressed in that agreeable soft blue that distinguishes the garments of those who work out of doors, and a spotless white shirt was turned back at the throat. "_Bonjour, Mesdames_," he greeted us, taking off his cap and came up for a chat. We were amazed at his charm and intelligence. He had come back thus alone "because, Mademoiselle, this is my home. An old man can best serve his country by living off his own land. What good is he in a strange province where they eat such ridiculous things, and where everyone has the craze for machinery? Besides, the more one's home is ruined the greater the obligation to return and rebuild it. _C'est un devoir, Mademoiselle._" His place was here, unless--with a twinkle in my direction--Mademoiselle would take him back to America with her, in which case he would willingly leave. I laughed at the compliment and told him to name the day and the boat. Food? He had scratched a little garden by his door and had plenty, thank you. Clothing? "Do I not look well dressed, Mademoiselle?" We admitted that he looked ready for a fête. Company? "Ah, Mademoiselle, memories, memories! I smoke my pipe and I repeople this village. It is alive for me. Look, Mademoiselle, that is where the church was--it was a pretty church. And there was the _mairie_. Only"--with a shrug of good humored despair--"now I have no more tobacco. These _messieurs_"--indicating the soldier and the Germans who were smiling good naturedly--"are kind enough to share theirs with me, but they are not very rich themselves, you see," at which they all laughed at their common plight. Here at last was something that we could offer. I usually kept cigarettes with me for such emergencies. And now I produced two boxes of them and several packages of American matches. "Mademoiselle, I accept them with my profound thanks," said the old _gallant_ with a bow, removing his cap. At length we had to leave. A prisoner stepped forward to crank my car, and all of them, the dauntless Frenchman in the center, lined up and gave us the military salute. Before reentering the woods I looked back and saw the blue-coated figure offering a light to the green coat. From cigarette tip to cigarette tip the fraternal spark was being transmitted: the spark that crosses borders and nationalities, that glows in the darkness, and puts mankind at peace. And so we left them all--smoking; smoking out there in the ruins, smoking and dreaming of home. Of home and love unattainable beyond the Rhine; of home and love buried forever in the wreckage of war and of time. * * * * * This week Mademoiselle Froissart and I spent forty-eight hours in Paris, during which time we purchased one thousand toys for our Christmas party. Such a time as I had coralling a taxi to carry our large crate of playthings to the station. Paris was gay and crowded, making up for its four years of gravity, and the conscienceless taxi drivers were having pretty much their own way, refusing all that were going in a direction that did not suit their convenience, and extorting enormous _pour boire_. I stood on the edge of the mad stream of vehicles that pressed by on the boulevard, and watched for an empty taxi. One came, the old reprobate who drove it casting his practiced eye about for a likely looking customer. He deigned to notice me, recognizing me for an American, and well knowing our national childish impatience, and its lucrative consequences. He drove up to the curb. "Where to?" he asked defiantly, blinking his bleary eyes, his red alcoholic face set in insolent lines. "_La Gare du Nord._" He reflected an instant. "Bon," he decided. I got in, resolving to take possession before breaking all the news to him. "First I must stop at the _Grand Bazaar_ to call for a box," I said in a most matter-of-fact way. "Ah ça! non! It can't be done!" he exclaimed in a fury. "How do you expect me to earn my living if I have to go out of my way and wait a century outside a store?" "I will pay you for your time." Still he refused to move. "Déscendez, déscendez!" he cried in an ugly voice. I knew the next one would be just as bad, and besides I had no time to lose. The hour of the train was approaching. Basely I resorted to bribery: "Look here, Monsieur, I am American and I will pay you well. Did you ever know an American to fail to make it worth your while?" He considered, and looked me over appraisingly. "It will be twenty francs then, Madame." This was too outrageous. "Ah non," I said in my turn, but I laughed. "_Ecoutez_, do you know what is in that box I am going to get? Toys for the little children of the devastated regions. If I don't take it with me they will have nothing, nothing at all for Christmas." "Eh, what?" His old heart was moved. "_Pays dévasté? C'est vrai? Bien, Madame_, I will take you anywhere you wish." And he started the car. On our way through traffic he related to me over his shoulder how his wife and children had fled from Soissons while he was driving a _camion_ at the front, and that their home was gone. At the _Grand Bazaar_ Mademoiselle Froissart was waiting with the huge crate of toys. It was hoisted onto the front seat beside the chauffeur, who, far from grumbling at its size, was most solicitous in placing it so that it would not jar. "We mustn't break the dolls," he said with a wink. Arriving at the station he insisted upon carrying it to the baggage room for us. "_Hey, mon vieux!_" he addressed the baggage man, "step lively and get that case on the train for Noyon. It's full of dolls--dolls for the little girls." And the whole force laughed and flew to the crate, and tenderly hustled it out to the train with paternal interest. "Merry Christmas and many thanks," I said to our driver, holding out the twenty francs. He did not glance at the money and pushed back my hand. "_Non, non, Mademoiselle, c'est un plaisir_," he murmured. I protested, but his whole expression pleaded. "It's not much, Mademoiselle. It's for the little girls--out there." Passing through the gate, I looked back and saw him still standing and watching us. He waved his hat. "_Bon voyage!_" he called above the crowd. Then, turning, he went back into the roaring street, doubtless to continue his business of preying upon the intimidated and helpless public. VAUCHELLES. Three roads wander down from the hills and come together; and at the point of meeting stands a crucifix. This large and dignified _Calvaire_, though bearing the nicks of bullets and faded by weather, still sheds a sorrowful beauty that is perhaps the more impressive because of these marks of desecration. It forms the center of the tiny village, whose houses cluster close to the mourning image and then straggle thinly along the three roads. Not even the war which swept over in all its ferocity has robbed Vauchelles of its winding charm. Many houses have collapsed, but the village still retains its ancient outline of peaked roofs, and on all sides orderly piles of bricks, fresh plaster and new tar paper give an aspect of thrift and optimism. Vauchelles has met the challenge of devastation and is setting things aright. Is the town asleep? The healing July sun softly warms the silent houses and their broken walls and closed doors. No one is in sight. Yet we have come with our camionette well laden with clothing for the inhabitants. Ah! they are all away working in the fields. Old Mademoiselle Masson, peering through the one pane of glass that is left in her window, sees us, and hobbles to the door to give us the information. She beams upon us, an unkempt yet gracious figure, and when she talks her false teeth move slightly up and down. She will run and call her sister who is up on the hill, and she will tell Madame Riflet as she goes. The news will spread. The news always spreads. Already the people are gathering, for _la Croix Rouge_ is its own introduction; and these peasants, too proud--most of them--to go and ask, will accept what is freely and gladly given at their doors. The first person I call upon is Madame Cat. Shall I soon forget that determined little face with its deep set blue eyes, and sharp features unsoftened by the brown hair that is pulled back from her forehead? Or the one room left in that tiny house, shattered and bare, yet stamped indelibly with the character of its valiant occupants? The ashes are swept in the fireplace. Two burnished shells tattooed in a careful pattern and filled with flowers brighten the mantel. And the bed! Even though made of fragments found in the debris, with naught but a hay _paillasse_ and a few old quilts dragged through the long flight and return, it is nevertheless smooth and noble, adorned only with the reverence and importance with which the French surround The Bed. The daughter comes in, a thin music-voiced girl with a fine profile like her mother's. They accept simply, and with appreciation, the useful things the Red Cross offers. In this case I am authorized to make an unusual present. For we have a few rolls of wall paper which we have been holding for someone who takes a special pride in her interior. It would cover the cracked and damp walls of Madame Cat and would add much cheer to her little room, besides keeping out the wind. Their faces are radiant at the suggestion. The daughter will come to the _poste_ tomorrow for it. Can they hang it themselves? "_Ah, c'est facile, Mademoiselle!_" and the mother gives me her recipé for a wonderful glue that will hold for years. They accompany me to the street. "You will come again soon, Mademoiselle, and see it for yourself?" I promise eagerly. Across the street lives Monsieur Martin. He comes from his house to greet me and holds open the gate, a tall farmer in corduroys with gentle, genial face. His wife had died during the cruel flight from the invader, and he and his three sons have come back to the remains of their old home. He apologizes for it, though I find it immaculate. Shining casseroles hang by the hearth, the three beds are carefully made, and on the fire something savory is cooking in a _cocotte_. "It needs a woman's touch," he says smiling. "We are four men and we do what we can, but--" he finishes with a gesture of the helpless male entangled in that most clinging, exasperating web of all--cooking and dish-washing! "_Ca n'en finit plus, Mademoiselle_," he exclaims in humorous misery. "One has no sooner finished, when one must begin again. Bah! It is woman's work," with a lordly touch of imperiousness. It is the ancient voice of Man. The next house is dark. No one answers my knock, and I lift the latch and go in. The windows, being broken, are all boarded up to keep out the dreaded drafts. It is a moment before I can see, though a quavering voice that is neither man's nor woman's bids me enter. Gradually my eyes make out two wise old faces of ivory in the obscurity by the hearth. They are old, old--nobody knows how old they are. "_Entrez, Madame_," and the old woman rises with difficulty, leaning on her cane, and draws forward a chair. "_Bonjour, Madame_," in far-away tones from the aged husband, too feeble to move alone. I linger for some time with these two dear souls--for they are scarcely more than souls. We talk of bygone, happy days, of the war, and of their present needs--so few! Then I tell them I am American. "American?" says the old man, peering into my face, "that means--friend." "Yes," I reply, "that means--friend." Then I come to a wooden _barraque_, a hive buzzing with children. They are clambering at the windows and playing in the dirt before the door, all clad in a many-colored collection of scraps which an ingenious mother has pieced together. A little boy, wearing the blue _callot_ of a poilu on the back of his head, sits on the doorsill. He smiles and stands up, and tells me his mother is inside. Within I find the mother seated in a room of good-natured disorder, nursing her latest born. Her lavish smile of welcome lights her broad sunburned face framed in tawny braids, and she indicates a bench for me with the ease and authority of a long practiced hostess. She sits there with the infant at her ample breast, and on her face is written unquestioning satisfaction with her part in life. A swift laughing tale I hear, of little frocks outgrown and of sabots worn through, and no place to buy anything, and little Jean so thin and nervous, "but no wonder, Mademoiselle, for he was born during the evacuation, and only Cécile to take care of me, and she just sixteen years old, and I had to be carried in a wheelbarrow." I picture the flight, the father away at the front, the mother unable to walk, yet marshalling her little ones, comforting, cajoling, scolding, and feeding them through it all. The baby finishes with a little contented sigh and the proud mother exhibits him. "It's a boy, Mademoiselle," as exuberantly as though it were her first instead of her ninth. "_C'est un petit garçon de l'Armistice_" with a happy blush. "Ah, let us hope that he will always be a little child of peace." But in another moment she is playing with him, chucking him under the chin. "_Tiens, mon coco! Viens, mon petit soldat_--you must grow up strong and big, for you are another little soldier for France." Little Vauchelles, far away in the hills of the fertile Oise, I think of you. I hope I may again visit you. And I wonder. What ripples from the seething capitals will stir the placid thoughts of your stouthearted peasants? And will your broad-browed women wait with age-old resignation for the next wave of war, or will they catch the echo that is rebounding through all the valleys of the world and join their voices in the swelling chord for brotherhood? In your midst, where the three roads meet, still stands the image of Christ on the Cross. 
12990	----	Proofreading Team. This file was produced from images generously made available by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) at http://gallica.bnf.fr COLLECTION OF ANCIENT AND MODERN BRITISH AUTHORS VOL. CXLIV. A RESIDENCE IN FRANCE; WITH AN EXCURSION UP THE RHINE, AND A SECOND VISIT TO SWITZERLAND. BY J. FENIMORE COOPER ESQ. AUTHOR OF "THE PILOT," "THE SPY," &c. PARIS, BAUDRY'S EUROPEAN LIBRARY, RUE DU COQ. NEAR THE LOUVRE; SOLD ALSO BY AMYOT, RUE DE LA PAIX; TRUCHY, BOULEVARD DES ITALIENS; THEOPHILE BARROIS, JUN., RUE RICHELIEU; LIBRAIRIE DES ETRANGERS, RUE NEUVE-SAINT-AUGUSTIN; AND HEIDELOFF AND CAMPE, RUE VIVIENNE. 1836. PREFACE. The introduction to Part I. of the "Sketches of Switzerland," leaves very little for the author to say in addition. The reader will be prepared to meet with a long digression, that touches on the situation and interests of another country, and it is probable he will understand the author's motive for thus embracing matter that is not strictly connected with the principal subject of the work. The first visit of the writer to Switzerland was paid in 1828; that which is related in these two volumes, in 1832. While four years had made no changes in the sublime nature of the region, they had seriously affected the political condition of all Europe. They had also produced a variance of feeling and taste in the author, that is the unavoidable consequences of time and experience. Four years in Europe are an age to the American, as are four years in America to the European. Jefferson has somewhere said, that no American ought to be more than five years, at a time, out of his own country, lest he get _behind_ it. This may be true, as to its _facts_; but the author is convinced that there is more danger of his getting _before_ it, as to _opinion_. It is not improbable that this book may furnish evidence of both these truths. Some one, in criticising the First Part of Switzerland, has intimated that the writer has a purpose to serve with the "Trades' Unions," by the purport of some of his remarks. As this is a country in which the avowal of a tolerably sordid and base motive seems to be indispensable, even to safety, the writer desires to express his sense of the critic's liberality, as it may save him from a much graver imputation. There is really a painful humiliation in the reflection, that a citizen of mature years, with as good natural and accidental means for preferment as have fallen to the share of most others, may pass his life without a _fact_ of any sort to impeach his disinterestedness, and yet not be able to express a generous or just sentiment in behalf of his fellow-creatures, without laying himself open to suspicions that are as degrading to those who entertain them, as they are injurious to all independence of thought, and manliness of character. CONTENTS. LETTER I. Influence of the late Revolution in France.--General Lafayette.--Sketch of his Private Life.--My visits to him.--His opinion of Louis XVI.--Mr. Morris and Mr. Crawford.--Duplicity of Louis XVIII.--Charles X.--Marie Antoinette.--Legitimacy of the Duc de Bordeaux.--Discovery of the Plot of 1822.--Lafayette's conduct on that occasion.--A negro Spy.--General Knyphausen.--Louis-Philippe and Lafayette.--My visit to Court.--The King, the Queen, Madame Adelaide, and the Princesses.--Marshal Jourdan.--The Duke of Orleans.--Interview with the King.--"_Adieu l'Amérique!_"--Conversation with Lafayette.--The _Juste Milieu._--Monarchy not inconsistent with Republican Institutions.--Party in favour of the Duc de Bordeaux. LETTER II. The Cholera in Paris.--Its frightful ravages.--Desertion of the city--My determination to remain.--Deaths in the higher classes.--Unexpected arrival and retreat.--Praiseworthy conduct of the Authorities.--The Cholera caricatured!--Invitation from an English General.--Atmospherical appearance denoting the arrival of the Cholera.--Lord Robert Fitzgerald.--Dinner at the house of Madame de B---- LETTER III. Insecurity of the Government--Louis-Philippe and the Pear.--Caricatures.--Ugliness of the Public Men of France.--The Duke de Valmy.--Care-worn aspect of Society under the New Regime.--Controversy in France respecting the Cost of Government in America.--Conduct of American Agents in Europe LETTER IV. Gradual disappearance of the Cholera.--Death of M. Casimir Perier.--His Funeral.--Funeral of General Lamarque.--Magnificent Military Escort.--The Duc de Fitzjames.--An Alarm.--First symptoms of popular Revolt.--Scene on the Pont Royal.--Charge on the people by a body of cavalry.--The _Sommations_.--General Lafayette and the _Bonnet Rouge_.--Popular Prejudices in France, England, and America.--Contest in the Quartier Montmartre.--The Place Louis XVI.--A frightened Sentinel.--Picturesque Bivouac of troops in the Carrousel.--Critical situation.--Night-view from the Pont des Arts.--Appearance of the Streets on the following morning.--England an enemy to Liberty.--Affair at the Porte St. Denis.--Procession of Louis-Philippe through the streets.--Contest in the Rue St. Méry.--Sudden Panic.--Terror of a national Guard and a young Conscript.--Dinner with a Courtier.--Suppression of the Revolt LETTER V. National Guards in the Court of the Palace.--Unclaimed Dead in the Morgue.--View of the Scene of Action.--A blundering Artillerist.--Singular Spectacle.--The Machinations of the Government.--Martial Law.--Violations of the Charter.--Laughable Scene in the Carrousel.--A refractory Private of the National Guard. LETTER VI. Aspect of Paris.--Visit to Lafayette.--His demeanour.--His account of the commencement of the Revolt.--Machinations of the Police.--Character of Lafayette.--His remarkable expression to General ----.--Conversation on the Revolution of July.--The _Doctrinaires_.--Popular Sympathy in England and on the Rhine.--Lafayette's dismissal from the command of the National Guards.--The Duke of Orleans and his Friends.--Military Tribunals in Paris.--The Citizen King in the Streets.--Obliteration of the _Fleur-de-lis._--The Royal Equipage.--The Duke of Brunswick in Paris.--His forcible Removal from France.--His Reception in Switzerland.--A ludicrous Mistake. LETTER VII. Public Dinner.--Inconsiderate Impulses of Americans.--Rambles in Paris.--The Churches of Paris.--View from the leads of Notre Dame.--The Place Royale.--The Bridges.--Progress of the Public Works.--The Palaces of the Louvre and the Tuileries.--Royal Enclosures in the Gardens of the Tuileries.--Public Edifices.--Private Hotels and Gardens.--My Apartments in the house of the Montmorencies.--Our other Residences.--Noble Abodes in Paris.--Comparative Expense of Living in Paris and New York.--American Shopkeepers, and those of Europe. LETTER VIII. Preparations for leaving Paris.--Travelling arrangements.--Our Route.--The Chateau of Ecouen.--The _Croisée_.--Senlis.--Peronne.--Cambray.--Arrival at the Frontier.--Change in the National Character.--Mons.--Brussels.--A Fête.--The Picture Gallery.--Probable Partition of Belgium. LETTER IX. Malines.--Its Collection of Pictures.--Antwerp.--The Cathedral.--A Flemish Quack.--Flemish Names.--The Picture Gallery at Antwerp.--Mr. Wapper's Carvings in Wood.--Mr. Van Lankeren's Pictures.--The Boulevards at Brussels.--Royal Abodes.--Palace of the Prince of Orange.--Prince Auguste d'Ahremberg's Gallery of Pictures.--English Ridicule of America. LETTER X. School System in America.--American Maps.--Leave Brussels.--Louvain.--Quarantine.--Liége.--The Soleil d'Or.--King Leopold and Brother.--Royal Intermarriages.--Environs of Liége.--The Cathedral and the Church of St. Jacques.--Ceremonies of Catholic Worship.--Churches of Europe.--Taverns of America.--Prayer in the Fields.--Scott's error as regards the Language spoken in Liége.--Women of Liége.--Illumination in honour of the King LETTER XI. Leave Liége.--Banks of the Meuse.--Spa.--Beautiful Promenades.--Robinson Crusoe.--The Duke of Saxe-Cobourg.--Former magnificence of Spa.--Excursions in the vicinity.--Departure from Spa.--Aix-la-Chapelle.--The Cathedral.--The Postmaster's Compliments.--Berghem.--German Enthusiasm.--Arrival at Cologne. LETTER XII. The Cathedral of Cologne.--The eleven thousand Virgins.--The Skulls of the Magi--House in which Rubens was born.--Want of Cleanliness in Cologne.--Journey resumed.--The Drachenfels.--Romantic Legend.--A Convent converted into an Inn.--Its Solitude.--A Night in it.--A Storm.--A Nocturnal Adventure.--Grim Figures.--An Apparition.--The Mystery dissolved.--Palace of the Kings of Austrasia.--Banks of the Rhine.--Coblentz.--Floating Bridges.--Departure from Coblentz.--Castle of the Ritterstein.--Visit to it.--Its Furniture.--The Ritter Saal.--Tower of the Castle.--Anachronisms. LETTER XIII. Ferry across the Rhine.--Village of Rudesheim.--The _Hinter-hausen_ Wine.--Drunkenness.--Neapolitan curiosity respecting America.--The Rhenish Wines enumerated.--Ingelheim.--Johannisberg.--Conventual Wine.--Unseasonable praise.--House and Grounds of Johannisberg.--State of Nassau.--Palace at Biberich.--The Gardens.--Wiesbaden.--Its public Promenade.--Frankfort on the Maine. LETTER XIV. Boulevards of Frankfort.--Political Disturbances in the town.--_Le petit Savoyard_.--Distant glimpse of Homberg.--Darmstadt.--The Bergestrasse.--Heidelberg.--Noisy Market-place.--The Ruins and Gardens.--An old Campaigner.--Valley of the Neckar.--Heilbronn.--Ludwigsberg.--Its Palace.--The late Queen of Wurtemberg.--The Birthplace of Schiller.--Comparative claims of Schiller and Goethe.--Stuttgart.--Its Royal Residences.--The Princess of Hechingen.--German Kingdoms.--The King and Queen of Wurtemberg.--Sir Walter Scott.--Tubingen.--Ruin of a Castle of the middle ages.--Hechingen.--Village of Bahlingen.--The Danube.--The Black Forest.--View from a mountain on the frontier of Baden.--Enter Switzerland. LETTER XV. A Swiss Inn.--Cataract of the Rhine.--Canton of Zurich.--Town of Zurich.--Singular Concurrence.--Formidable Ascent.--Exquisite View.--Einsiedeln.--The Convent.--"_Par exemple_."--Shores of the Lake of Zug.--The _Chemin Creux_.--Water Excursion to Alpnach.--Lake of Lungern.--Lovely Landscape.--Effects of Mists on the prospect.--Natural Barometer.--View from the Brunig.--Enter the great Canton of Berne.--An Englishman's Politics.--Our French Companion.--The Giesbach.--Mountain Music.--Lauterbrunnen.--Grindewald.--Rising of the Waters in 1830.--Anecdote.--Excursion on the Lake to Thoun. LETTER XVI. Conspiracy discovered.--The Austrian Government and the French Carlists.--Walk to La Lorraine.--Our old friend "Turc."--Conversation with M. W----.--View of the Upper Alps.--Jerome Bonaparte at La Lorraine.--The Bears of Berne.--Scene on the Plateforme. LETTER XVII. Our Voiturier and his Horses.--A Swiss Diligence.--Morat.--Inconstancy of feeling.--Our Route to Vévey.--Lake Leman.--Difficulty in hiring a House.--"Mon Repos" engaged for a month.--Vévey.--The great Square.--The Town-house.--Environs of Vévey.--Summer Church and Winter Church.--Clergy of the Canton.--Population of Vaud.--Elective qualifications of Vaud. LETTER XVIII. Neglect of the Vine in America.--Drunkenness in France.--Cholera especially fatal to Drunkards.--The Soldier's and the Sailor's Vice.--Sparkling Champagne and Still Champagne.--Excessive Price of these Wines in America.--Burgundy.--Proper soil for the Vine.--Anecdote.--Vines of Vévey.--The American Fox-grape. LETTER XIX. The Leman Lake.--Excursions on it.--The coast of Savoy.--Grandeur and beauty of the Rocks.--Sunset.--Evening Scene.--American Families residing on the banks of the Lake.--Conversation with a Vévaisan on the subject of America.--The Nullification Question.--America misrepresented in Europe--Rowland Stephenson in the United States.--Unworthy arts to bring America into disrepute.--Blunders of Europe in respect of America.--The Kentuckians.--Foreign Associations in the States.--Illiberal Opinions of many Americans.--Prejudices. LETTER XX. The Equinox.--Storm on the Lake.--Chase of a little Boat--Chateau of Blonay.--Drive to Lausanne.--Mont Benon.--Trip to Geneva in the Winkelried.--Improvements in Geneva.--Russian Travellers.--M. Pozzo di Borgo.--Table d'hôte.--Extravagant Affirmations of a Frenchman.--Conversation with a Scotchman.--American Duels.--Visit at a Swiss Country-house.--English Customs affected in America.--Social Intercourse in the United States.--Difference between a European and an American Foot and Hand.--Violent Gale.--Sheltered position of Vévey.--Promenade.--Picturesque View.--The great Square.--Invitation.--Mountain Excursion.--An American Lieutenant.--Anecdote.--Extensive Prospect.--Chateau of Glayrole. LETTER XXI. Embark in the Winkelried.--Discussion with an Englishman.--The Valais.--Free Trade.--The Drance.--Terrible Inundation.--Liddes.--Mountain Scenery.--A Mountain Basin.--Dead-houses.--Melancholy Spectacle.--Approach of Night.--Desolate Region.--Convent of the Great St. Bernard.--Our Reception there.--Unhealthiness of the Situation.--The Superior.--Conversation during Supper.--Coal-mine on the Mountain.--Night in the Convent. LETTER XXII. Sublime Desolation.--A Morning Walk.--The Col.--A Lake.--Site of a Roman Temple.--Enter Italy.--Dreary Monotony.--Return to the Convent.--Tasteless Character of the Building.--Its Origin and Purposes.--The Dead-house.--Dogs of St. Bernard.--The Chapel.--Desaix interred here.--Fare of St. Bernard, and Deportment of the Monks.--Leave the Convent.--Our Guide's Notion of the Americans.--Passage of Napoleon across the Great St. Bernard.--Similar Passages in former times.--Transport of Artillery up the Precipices.--Napoleon's perilous Accident.--Return to Vévey. LETTER XXIII. Democracy in America and in Switzerland.--European Prejudices.--Influence of Property.--Nationality of the Swiss.--Want of Local Attachments in Americans.--Swiss Republicanism.--Political Crusade against America.--Affinities between America and Russia.--Feeling of the European Powers towards Switzerland. LETTER XXIV. The Swiss Mountain Passes.--Excursion in the neighbourhood of Vévey.--Castle of Blonay.--View from the Terrace.--Memory and Hope.--Great Antiquity of Blonay.--The Knight's Hall.--Prospect from the Balcony.--Departure from Blonay.--A Modern Chateau.--Travelling on Horseback.--News from America.--Dissolution of the Union predicted.--The Prussian Polity.--Despotism in Prussia. LETTER XXV. Controversy respecting America.--Conduct of American Diplomatists.--_Attachés_ to American Legations.--Unworthy State of Public Opinion in America. LETTER XXVI. Approach of Winter.--The _Livret_.--Regulations respecting Servants.--Servants in America.--Governments of the different Cantons of Switzerland.--Engagement of Mercenaries.--Population of Switzerland.--Physical Peculiarities of the Swiss.--Women of Switzerland.--Mrs. Trollope and the American Ladies.--Affected manner of speaking in American Women.--Patois in America.--Peculiar manner of Speaking at Vévey.--Swiss Cupidity. LETTER XXVII. Departure from Vévey.--Passage down the Lake.--Arrival at Geneva.--Purchase of Jewellery.--Leave Geneva.--Ascent of the Jura.--Alpine Views.--Rudeness at the Custom-house.--Smuggling.--A Smuggler detected.--The second Custom-house.--Final View of Mont Blanc.--Re-enter France.--Our luck at the Post-house in Dôle.--A Scotch Traveller.--Nationality of the Scotch.--Road towards Troyes.--Source of the Seine. LETTER XXVIII. Miserable Inn.--A French Bed.--Free Trade.--French Relics.--Cross Roads.--Arrival at Lagrange.--Reception by General Lafayette.--The Nullification Strife.--Conversation with Lafayette.--His Opinion as to a Separation of the Union in America.--The Slave Question.--Stability of the Union.--Style of living at La Grange.--Pap.--French Manners, and the French Cuisine.--Departure from La Grange.--Return to Paris. RESIDENCE IN FRANCE. LETTER I. Influence of the late Revolution in France.--General Lafayette--Sketch of his Private Life.--My visits to him.--His opinion of Louis XVI.--Mr. Morris and Mr. Crawford.--Duplicity of Louis XVIII.--Charles X.--Marie Antoinette.--Legitimacy of the Duc de Bordeaux.--Discovery of the Plot of 1822.--Lafayette's conduct on that occasion.--A negro Spy.--General Knyphausen.--Louis-Philippe and Lafayette.--My visit to Court.--The King, the Queen, Madame Adelaide, and the Princesses.--Marshal Jourdan.--The Duke of Orleans.--Interview with the King.--"_Adieu l'Amérique!_"--Conversation with Lafayette.--The _Juste Milieu_.--Monarchy not inconsistent with Republican Institutions.--Party in favour of the Duc de Bordeaux. Paris, February, 1832. Dear ----, Your speculations concerning the influence of the late revolution, on the social habits of the French, are more ingenious than true. While the mass of this nation has obtained less than they had a right to expect by the severe political convulsions they have endured, during the last forty years, they have, notwithstanding, gained something in their rights; and, what is of far more importance, they have gained in a better appreciation of those rights, as well as in the knowledge of the means to turn them to a profitable and practical account. The end will show essential improvements in their condition, or rather the present time shows it already. The change in polite society has been less favourable, although even this is slowly gaining in morals, and in a healthier tone of thought. No error can be greater, than that of believing France has endured so much, without a beneficial return. In making up my opinions of the old regime, I have had constant recourse to General Lafayette for information. The conversations and anecdotes already sent you, will have prepared you for the fine tone, and perfect candour, with which he speaks even of his bitterest enemies; nor can I remember, in the many confidential and frank communications with which I have been favoured, a single instance where, there has been the smallest reason to suspect he has viewed men through the medium of personal antipathies and prejudices. The candour and simplicity of his opinions form beautiful features in his character; and the _bienséance_ of his mind (if one may use such an expression) throws a polish over his harshest strictures, that is singularly adapted to obtain credit for his judgment. Your desire to know more of the private life of this extraordinary man, is quite natural; but he has been so long before the public, that it is not easy to say anything new. I may, however, give you a trait or two, to amuse you. I have seen more of him this winter than the last, owing to the circumstance of a committee of Americans, that have been appointed to administer succour to the exiled Poles, meeting weekly at my house, and it is rare indeed that he is not present on these benevolent occasions. He has discontinued his own soirées, too; and, having fewer demands on his time, through official avocations, I gain admittance to him during his simple and quiet dinners, whenever it is asked. These dinners, indeed, are our usual hours of meeting, for the occupations of the General, in the Chamber, usually keep him engaged in the morning; nor am I commonly at leisure, myself, until about this hour of the day. In Paris, every one dines, nominally, at six; but the deputies being often detained a little later, whenever I wish to see him, I hurry from my own table, and generally reach the Rue d'Anjou in sufficient season to find him still at his. On quitting the Hôtel de l'Etat Major, after being dismissed so unceremoniously from the command of the National Guard, Lafayette returned to his own neat but simple lodgings in the Rue d'Anjou. The hotel, itself, is one of some pretensions, but his apartments, though quite sufficient for a single person, are not among the best it contains, lying on the street, which is rarely or never the case with the principal rooms. The passage to them communicates with the great staircase, and the door is one of those simple, retired entrances that, in Paris, so frequently open on the abodes of some of the most illustrious men of the age. Here have I seen princes, marshals, and dignitaries of all degrees, ringing for admission, no one appearing to think of aught but the great man within. These things are permitted here, where the mind gets accustomed to weigh in the balance all the different claims to distinction; but it would scarcely do in a country, in which the pursuit of money is the sole and engrossing concern of life; a show of expenditure becoming necessary to maintain it. The apartments of Lafayette consist of a large ante-chamber, two salons, and an inner room, where he usually sits and writes, and in which, of late, he has had his bed. These rooms are _en suite_, and communicate, laterally, with one or two more, and the offices. His sole attendants in town, are the German valet, named Bastien, who accompanied him in his last visit to America, the footman who attends him with the carriage, and the coachman (there may be a cook, but I never saw a female in the apartments). Neither wears a livery, although all his appointments, carriages, horses, and furniture, are those of a gentleman. One thing has struck me as a little singular. Notwithstanding his strong attachment to America and to her usages, Lafayette, while the practice is getting to be common in Paris, has not adopted the use of carpets. I do not remember to have seen one, at La Grange, or in town. When I show myself at the door, Bastien, who usually acts as porter, and who has become quite a diplomatist in these matters, makes a sign of assent, and intimates that the General is at dinner. Of late, he commonly dispenses with the ceremony of letting it be known who has come, but I am at once ushered into the bed-room. Here I find Lafayette seated at a table, just large enough to contain one cover and a single dish; or a table, in other words, so small as to be covered with a napkin. His little white lap-dog is his only companion. As it is always understood that I have dined, no ceremony is used, but I take a seat at the chimney corner, while he goes on with his dinner. His meals are quite frugal, though good; a _poulet rôti_ invariably making one dish. There are two or three removes, a dish at a time, and the dinner usually concludes with some preserves or dried fruits, especially dates, of which he is extremely fond. I generally come in for one or two of the latter. All this time, the conversation is on what has transpired in the Chambers during the day, the politics of Europe, nullification in America, or the gossip of the chateau, of which he is singularly well informed, though he has ceased to go there. The last of these informal interviews with General Lafayette, was one of peculiar interest. I generally sit but half an hour, leaving him to go to his evening engagements, which, by the way, are not frequent; but, on this occasion, he told me to remain, and I passed nearly two hours with him. We chatted a good deal of the state of society under the old regime. Curious to know his opinions of their private characters, I asked a good many questions concerning the royal family. Louis XVI. he described as a-well-meaning man, addicted a little too much to the pleasures of the table, but who would have done well enough had he not been surrounded by bad advisers. I was greatly surprised by one of his remarks. "Louis XVI," observed Lafayette, "owed his death as much to the bad advice of Gouverneur Morris, as to any one other thing." You may be certain I did not let this opinion go unquestioned; for, on all other occasions, in speaking of Mr. Morris, his language had been kind and even grateful. He explained himself, by adding, that Mr. Morris, coming from a country like America, was listened to with great respect, and that on all occasions he gave his opinions against democracy, advising resistance, when resistance was not only too late but dangerous. He did not call in question the motives of Mr. Morris, to which he did full justice, but merely affirmed that he was a bad adviser. He gave me to understand that the representatives of America had not always been faithful to the popular principle, and even went into details that it would be improper for me to repeat. I have mentioned this opinion of Mr. Morris, because his aristocratical sentiments were no secret, because they were mingled with no expressions of personal severity, and because I have heard them from other quarters. He pronounced a strong eulogium on the conduct of Mr. Crawford, which he said was uniformly such as became an American minister. There is nothing, however, novel in these instances, of our representatives proving untrue to the prominent feeling of the country, on the subject of popular rights. It is the subject of very frequent comment in Europe, and sometimes of complaint on the part of those who are struggling for what they conceive to be their just privileges; many of them having told me, personally, that our agents frequently stand materially in their way. Louis XVIII, Lafayette pronounced to be the _falsest_ man he had ever met with; to use his own expression, "_l'homme le plus faux_." He gave him credit for a great deal of talent, but added that his duplicity was innate, and not the result of his position, for it was known to his young associates, in early youth, and that they used to say among themselves, as young men, and in their ordinary gaieties, that it would be unsafe to confide in the Comte de Provence. Of Charles X he spoke kindly, giving him exactly a different character. He thought him the most honest of the three brothers, though quite unequal to the crisis in which he had been called to reign. He believed him sincere in his religious professions, and thought the charge of his being a professed Jesuit by no means improbable. Marie Antoinette he thought an injured woman. On the subject of her reputed gallantries he spoke cautiously, premising that, as an American, I ought to make many allowances for a state of society, that was altogether unknown in our country. Treating this matter with the discrimination of a man of the world, and the delicacy of a gentleman, he added that he entirely exonerated her from all of the coarse charges that had proceeded from vulgar clamour, while he admitted that she had betrayed a partiality for a young Swede[1] that was, at least, indiscreet for one in her situation, though he had no reason to believe her attachment had led her to the length of criminality. [Footnote 1: A Count Koningsmarke.] I asked his opinion concerning the legitimacy of the Duc de Bordeaux, but he treated the rumour to the contrary, as one of those miserable devices to which men resort to effect the ends of party, and as altogether unworthy of serious attention. I was amused with the simplicity with which he spoke of his own efforts to produce a change of government, during the last reign. On this subject he had been equally frank even before the recent revolution, though there would have been a manifest impropriety in my repeating what had then passed between us. This objection is now removed in part, and I may recount one of his anecdotes, though I can never impart to it the cool and quiet humour with which it was related. We were speaking of the attempt of 1822, or the plot which existed in the army. In reply to a question of mine, he said--"Well, I was to have commanded in that revolution, and when the time came, I got into my carriage, without a passport, and drove across the country to ----, where I obtained post-horses, and proceeded as fast as possible towards ----. At ----, a courier met me, with the unhappy intelligence that our plot was discovered, and that several of our principal agents were arrested. I was advised to push for the frontier, as fast as I could. But we turned round in the road, and I went to Paris, and took my seat in the Chamber of Deputies. They looked very queer, and a good deal surprised when they saw me, and I believe they were in great hopes that I had run away. The party of the ministers were loud in their accusations against the opposition for encouraging treason, and Perier and Constant, and the rest of them, made indignant appeals against such unjust accusations. I took a different course. I went into the tribune, and invited the ministers to come and give a history of my political life; of my changes and treasons, as they called them; and said that when they had got through, I would give the character and history of theirs. This settled the matter, for I heard no more from them." I inquired if he had not felt afraid of being arrested and tried. "Not much," was his answer. "They knew I denied the right of foreigners to impose a government on France, and they also knew they had not kept faith with France under the charter. I made no secret of my principles, and frequently put letters unsealed into the post office, in which I had used the plainest language about the government. On the whole, I believe they were more afraid of me than I was of them." It is impossible to give an idea, in writing, of the pleasant manner he has of relating these things--a manner that receives additional piquancy from his English, which, though good, is necessarily broken. He usually prefers the English in such conversations. "By the way," he suddenly asked me, "where was the idea of Harvey Birch, in the Spy, found?" I told him that the thought had been obtained from an anecdote of the revolution, related to me by Governor Jay, some years before the book was written. He laughingly remarked that he could have supplied the hero of a romance, in the person of a negro named Harry (I believe, though the name has escaped me), who acted as a spy, both for him and Lord Cornwallis, during the time he commanded against that officer in Virginia. This negro he represented as being true to the American cause, and as properly belonging to his service, though permitted occasionally to act for Lord Cornwallis, for the sake of gaining intelligence. After the surrender of the latter, he called on General Lafayette, to return a visit. Harry was in an anteroom cleaning his master's boots, as Lord Cornwallis entered. "Ha! Master Harry," exclaimed the latter, "you are here, are you?" "Oh, yes, masser Cornwallis--muss try to do little for de country," was the answer. This negro, he said, was singularly clever and bold, and of sterling patriotism! He made me laugh with a story, that he said the English officers had told him of General Knyphausen, who commanded the Hessian mercenaries, in 1776. This officer, a rigid martinet, knew nothing of the sea, and not much more of geography. On the voyage between England and America, he was in the ship of Lord Howe, where he passed several uncomfortable weeks, the fleet having an unusually long passage, on account of the bad sailing of some of the transports. At length Knyphausen could contain himself no longer, but marching stiffly up to the admiral one day, he commenced with--"My lord, I know it is the duty of a soldier to be submissive at sea, but, being entrusted with the care of the troops of His Serene Highness, my master, I feel it my duty just to inquire, if it be not possible, that during some of the dark nights, we have lately had, _we may have sailed past America_?" I asked him if he had been at the chateau lately. His reply was very brief and expressive. "The king denies my account of the programme of the Hôtel de Ville, and we stand in the position of two gentlemen, who, in substance, have given each other the lie. Circumstances prevent our going to the Bois de Boulogne to exchange shots," he added, smiling, "but they also prevent our exchanging visits." I then ventured to say that I had long foreseen what would be the result of the friendship of Louis-Philippe, and, for the first time, in the course of our conversations, I adverted to my own visit to the palace in his company, an account of which I will extract, for your benefit, from my note-book.[2] [Footnote 2: The period referred to was in 1830.] * * * * * In the morning I received a note from General Lafayette, in which he informed me that Mr. M'Lane, who is here on a visit from London, was desirous of being presented; that there was a reception in the evening, at which he intended to introduce the minister to England, Mr. Rives not having yet received his new credentials, and, of course, not appearing in matters of ceremony. General Lafayette pressed me so strongly to be of the party, in compliment to Mr. M'Lane, that, though but an indifferent courtier, and though such a visit was contrary to my quiet habits, I could do nothing but comply. At the proper hour, General Lafayette had the good nature to call and take me up, and we proceeded, at once, for Mr. M'Lane. With this gentleman we drove to the Palais Royal, my old brother officer, Mr. T----, who was included in the arrangement, following in his own carriage. We found the inner court crowded, and a throng about the entrance to the great staircase; but the appearance of Lafayette cleared the way, and there was a movement in the crowd which denoted his great personal popularity. I heard the words "_des Américains_" passing from one to another, showing how completely he was identified with us and our principles, in the public mind. One or two of the younger officers of the court were at the foot of the stairs to receive him, though whether their presence was accidental or designed, I cannot say; but I suspect the latter. At all events the General was received with the profoundest respect, and the most smiling assiduity. The ante-chamber was already crowded, but following our leader, his presence cleared the way for us, until he got up quite near to the doors, where some of the most distinguished men of France were collected. I saw many in the throng whom I knew, and the first minute or two were passed in nods of recognition. My attention was, however, soon attracted to a dialogue between Marshal Soult and Lafayette, that was carried on with the most perfect _bonhomie_ and simplicity. I did not hear the commencement, but found they were speaking of their legs, which both seemed to think the worse for wear. "But you have been wounded in the leg, monsieur?" observed Lafayette. "This limb was a little _mal traité_ at Genoa," returned the marshal, looking down at a leg that had a very game look: "but you, General, you too, were hurt in America?" "Oh! that was nothing; it happened more than fifty years ago, and _then it was in a good cause_--it was the fall and the fracture that made me limp." Just at this moment, the great doors flew open, and this _quasi_ republican court standing arrayed before us, the two old soldiers limped forward. The King stood near the door, dressed as a General of the National Guards, entirely without decorations, and pretty well tricoloured. The Queen, Madame Adelaide, the Princesses, and several of the children, were a little farther removed, the two former standing in front, and the latter being grouped behind them. But one or two ladies were present, nor did I see anything at the commencement of the evening of the Ducs d'Orléans and de Nemours. Lafayette was one of the first that entered, and of course we kept near him. The King advanced to meet him with an expression of pleasure--I thought it studied--but they shook hands quite cordially. We were then presented by name, and each of us had the honour of shaking hands, if that can be considered an honour, which fell to the share of quite half of those who entered. The press was so great that there was no opportunity to say anything. I believe we all met with the usual expressions of welcome, and there the matter ended. Soon after we approached the Queen, with whom our reception had a more measured manner. Most of those who entered did little more than make a distant bow to this group, but the Queen manifesting a desire to say something to our party, Mr. M'Lane and myself approached them. She first addressed my companion in French, a language he did not speak, and I was obliged to act as interpreter. But the Queen instantly said she understood English, though she spoke it badly, and begged he would address her in his own tongue. Madame Adelaide seemed more familiar with our language. But the conversation was necessarily short, and not worth repeating. Queen Amélie is a woman of a kind, and, I think, intelligent countenance. She has the Bourbon rather than the Austrian outline of face. She seemed anxious to please, and in her general air and carriage has some resemblance to the Duchess of St. Leu.[3] She has the reputation of being an excellent wife and mother, and, really, not to fall too precipitately into the vice of a courtier, she appears as if she may well deserve it. She is thin, but graceful, and I can well imagine that she has been more than pretty in her youth. [Footnote 3: Hortense.] I do not remember a more frank, intelligent, and winning countenance than that of Madame Adelaide, who is the King's sister. She has little beauty left, except that of expression; but this must have made her handsome once, as it renders her singularly attractive now. Her manner was less nervous than that of the Queen, and I should think her mind had more influence over her exterior. The Princess Louise (the Queen of Belgium) and the Princess Marie are pretty, with the quiet subdued manner of well-bred young persons. The first is pale, has a strikingly Bourbon face, resembling the profiles on the French coins; while the latter has an Italian and classical outline of features, with a fine colour. They were all dressed with great simplicity; scarcely in high dinner dress; the Queen and Madame Adelaide wearing evening hats. The Princesses, as is uniformly the case with unmarried French girls of rank, were without any ornaments, wearing their hair in the usual manner. After the ceremonies of being presented were gone through, I amused myself with examining the company. This was a levee, not a drawing-room, and there were no women among the visitors. The men, who did not appear in uniform, were in common evening dress, which has degenerated of late into black stocks and trousers. Accident brought me next to an old man, who had exactly that revolutionary air which has become so familiar to us by the engravings of Bonaparte and his generals that were made shortly after the Italian campaign. The face was nearly buried in neckcloth, the hair was long and wild, and the coat was glittering, but ill-fitting and stiff. It was, however, the coat of a _maréchal_; and, what rendered it still more singular, it was entirely without orders. I was curious to know who this relic of 1797 might be; for, apart from his rank, which was betrayed by his coat, he was so singularly ugly as scarcely to appear human. On inquiry it proved to be Marshal Jourdan. There was some amusement in watching the different individuals who came to pay their court to the new dynasty. Many were personally and familiarly known to me as very loyal subjects of the last reign; soldiers who would not have hesitated to put Louis-Philippe _au fil de l'épée_, three months before, at the command of Charles X. But times were changed. They now came to show themselves to the new sovereign; most of them to manifest their disposition to be put in the way of preferment, some to reconnoitre, others to conceal their disaffection, and all to subserve their own interests. It was laughably easy to discern who were confident of their reception by being of the ruling party, who distrusted, and who were indifferent. The last class was small. A general officer, whom I personally knew, looked like one who had found his way into a wrong house by mistake. He was a Bonapartist by his antecedents, and in his true way of thinking; but accident had thrown him into the hands of the Bourbons, and he had now come to see what might be gleaned from the House of Orleans. His reception was not flattering, and I could only compare the indecision and wavering of his manner to that of a regiment that falters before an unexpected volley. After amusing ourselves some time in the great throng, which was densest near the King, we went towards a secondary circle that had formed in another part of the room, where the Duke of Orleans had appeared. He was conversing with Lafayette, who immediately presented us all in succession. The Prince is a genteel, handsome young man, with a face much more Austrian than that of any of his family, so far as one can judge of what his younger brothers are likely to be hereafter. In form, stature, and movements, he singularly resembles W----, and there is also a good deal of likeness in the face, though in this particular the latter has the advantage. He was often taken for the Duc de Chartres during our former residence at Paris. Our reception was gracious, the heir to the throne appearing anxious to please every one. The amusing part of the scene is to follow. Fatigued with standing, we had got chairs in a corner of the room, behind the throng, where the discourtesy of being seated might escape notice. The King soon after withdrew, and the company immediately began to go away. Three-fourths, perhaps, were gone, when an aide-de-camp came up to us and inquired if we were not the three Americans who had been presented by General Lafayette? Being answered in the affirmative, he begged us to accompany him. He led us near a door at the other end of the _salle_, a room of great dimensions, where we found General Lafayette in waiting. The aide, or officer of the court, whichever might be his station, passed through the door, out of which the King immediately came. It appeared to me as if the General was not satisfied with our first reception, and wished to have it done over again. The King looked grave, not to say discontented, and I saw, at a glance, that he could have dispensed with this extra attention. Mr. M'Lane standing next the door, he addressed a few words to him in English, which he speaks quite readily, and without much accent: indeed he said little to any one else, and the few words that he did utter were exceedingly general and unmeaning. Once he got as far as T----, whom he asked if he came from New York, and he looked hard at me, who stood farther from the door, mumbled something, bowed to us all, and withdrew. I was struck with his manner, which seemed vexed and unwilling, and the whole thing appeared to me to be awkward and uncomfortable. I thought it a bad omen for the influence of the General. By this time the great _salle_ was nearly empty, and we moved off together to find our carriages. General Lafayette preceded us, of course, and as he walked slowly, and occasionally stopped to converse, we were among the last in the ante-chamber. In passing into the last or outer ante-chamber, the General stopped nearly in the door to speak to some one. Mr. M'Lane and Mr. T---- being at his side, they so nearly stopped the way that I remained some distance in the rear, in order not to close it entirely. My position would give an ordinary observer reason to suppose that I did not belong to the party. A young officer of the court (I call them aides, though, I believe, they were merely substitutes for chamberlains, dignitaries to which this republican reign has not yet given birth), was waiting in the outer room to pass, but appeared unwilling to press too closely on a group of which General Lafayette formed the principal person. He fidgeted and chafed evidently, but still kept politely at a distance. After two or three minutes the party moved on, but I remained stationary, watching the result. Room was no sooner made than the officer brushed past, and gave vent to his feelings by saying, quite loudly and distinctly, "_Adieu, l'Amérique_!" It is a pretty safe rule to believe that in the tone of courtiers is reflected the feeling of the monarch. The attention to General Lafayette had appeared to me as singularly affected and forced, and the manner of the King anything but natural; and several little occurrences during the evening had tended to produce the impression that the real influence of the former, at the palace, might be set down as next to nothing. I never had any faith in a republican king from the commencement, but this near view of the personal intercourse between the parties served to persuade me that General Lafayette had been the dupe of his own good faith and kind feelings. In descending the great stairs I mentioned the occurrence just related to Mr. M'Lane, adding, that I thought the days of our friend were numbered, and that a few months would produce a schism between him and Louis-Philippe. Everything, at the moment, however, looked so smiling, and so much outward respect was lavished on General Lafayette, that this opinion did not find favour with my listener, though, I believe, he saw reason to think differently, after another visit to court. We all got invitations to dine at the palace in a day or two. * * * * * I did not, however, touch upon the "_adieu l'Amérique_," with General Lafayette, which I have always deemed a subject too delicate to be mentioned. He startled me by suddenly putting the question, whether I thought an executive, in which there should be but one agent, as in the United States, or an executive, in which there should be three, or five, would best suit the condition of France? Though so well acquainted with the boldness and steadiness of his views, I was not prepared to find his mind dwelling on such a subject, at the present moment. The state of France, however, is certainly extremely critical, and we ought not to be surprised at the rising of the people at any moment. I told General Lafayette, that, in my poor judgment, the question admitted of a good deal of controversy. Names did not signify much, but every administration should receive its main impulses, subject to the common wishes and interests, from a close conformity of views, whether there were one incumbent or a dozen. The English system certainly made a near approach to a divided executive, but the power was so distributed as to prevent much clashing; and when things went wrong, the ministers resigned; parliament, in effect, holding the control of the executive as well as of the legislative branches of the government. Now I did not think France was prepared for such a polity, the French being accustomed to see a real as well as a nominal monarch, and the disposition to intrigue would, for a long time to come, render their administrations fluctuating and insecure. A directory would either control the chambers, or be controlled by them. In the former case it would be apt to be divided in itself; in the latter, to agitate the chambers by factions that would not have the ordinary outlet of majorities to restore the equilibrium. He was of opinion himself that the expedient of a directory had not suited the state of France. He asked me what I thought of universal suffrage for this country. I told him, I thought it altogether unsuited to the present condition of France. I did not attach much faith to the old theory of the necessary connexion between virtue and democracy, as a cause; though it might, with the necessary limitations, follow as an effect. A certain degree of knowledge of its uses, _action_, and objects, was indispensable to a due exercise of the suffrage; not that it was required every elector should be learned in the theory of governments, but that he should know enough to understand the general connexion between his vote and his interests, and especially his rights. This knowledge was not at all difficult of attainment, in ordinary cases, when one had the means of coming at facts. In cases that admit of argument, as in all the questions on political economy, I did not see that any reasonable degree of knowledge made the matter much better, the cleverest men usually ranging themselves on the two extremes of all mooted questions. Concerning the right of every man, who was qualified to use the power, to have his interests directly represented in a government, it was unnecessary to speak, the only question being who had and who had not the means to make a safe use of the right in practice. It followed from these views, that the great desiderata were to ascertain what these means were. In the present state of the world, I thought it absolutely necessary that a man should be able to read, in order to exercise the right to vote with a prudent discretion. In countries where everybody reads, other qualifications might be trusted to, provided they were low and within reasonable reach of the mass; but, in a country like France, I would allow no man to vote until he knew how to read, if he were as rich as Croesus. I felt convinced the present system could not continue long in France. It might do for a few years, as a reaction; but when things were restored to their natural course, it would be found that there is an unnatural union between facts that are peculiar to despotism, and facts that are peculiarly the adjuncts of liberty; as in the provisions of the Code Napoleon, and in the liberty of the press, without naming a multitude of other discrepancies. The _juste milieu_ that he had so admirably described[4] could not last long, but the government would soon find itself driven into strong measures, or into liberal measures, in order to sustain itself. Men could no more serve "God and Mammon" in politics than in religion. I then related to him an anecdote that had occurred to myself the evening of the first anniversary of the present reign. [Footnote 4: When the term _juste milieu_ was first used by the King, and adopted by his followers, Lafayette said in the Chamber, that "he very well understood what a _juste milieu_ meant, in any particular case; it meant neither more nor less than the truth, in that particular case: but as to a political party's always taking a middle course, under the pretence of being in a _juste milieu_, he should liken it to a discreet man's laying down the proposition that four and four make eight, and a fool's crying out, 'Sir, you are wrong, for four and four make ten;' whereupon the advocate for the _juste milieu_ on system, would be obliged to say, 'Gentlemen, you are equally in extremes, _four and four make nine_.'" It is the fashion to say Lafayette wanted _esprit_. This was much the cleverest thing the writer ever heard in the French Chambers, and, generally, he knew few men who said more witty things in a neat and unpretending manner than General Lafayette. Indeed this was the bias of his mind, which was little given to profound reflections, though distinguished for a _fort bon sens_.] On the night in question, I was in the Tuileries, with a view to see the fireworks. Taking a station a little apart from the crowd, I found myself under a tree alone with a Frenchman of some sixty years of age. After a short parley, my companion, as usual, mistook me for an Englishman. On being told his error, he immediately opened a conversation on the state of things in France. He asked me if I thought they would continue. I told him, no; that I thought two or three years would suffice to bring the present system to a close. "Monsieur," said my companion, "you are mistaken. It will require ten years to dispossess those who have seized upon the government, since the last revolution. All the young men are growing up with the new notions, and in ten years they will be strong enough to overturn the present order of things. Remember that I prophesy the year 1840 will see a change of government in France." Lafayette laughed at this prediction, which, he said, did not quite equal his impatience. He then alluded to the ridicule which had been thrown upon his own idea of "A monarchy with republican institutions," and asked me what I thought of the system. As my answer to this, as well as to his other questions, will serve to lay before you my own opinions, which you have a right to expect from me, as a traveller rendering an account of what he has seen, I shall give you its substance, at length. So far from finding anything as absurd as is commonly pretended in the plan of a "throne surrounded by republican institutions," it appears to me to be exactly the system best suited to the actual condition of France. By a monarchy, however, a real monarchical government, or one in which the power of the sovereign is to predominate, is not to be understood, in this instance, but such a semblance of a monarchy as exists to-day, in England, and formerly existed in Venice and Genoa under their Doges. la England the aristocracy notoriously rules, through the king, and I see no reason why in France, a constituency with a base sufficiently broad to entitle it to assume the name of a republic, might not rule, in its turn, in the same manner. In both cases the sovereign would merely represent an abstraction; the sovereign power would be wielded in his name, but at the will of the constituency; he would be a parliamentary echo, to pronounce the sentiment of the legislative bodies, whenever a change of men or a change of measures became necessary It is very true that, under such a system, there would be no real separation, in principle, between the legislative and the executive branches of government; but such is to-day, and such has long been the actual condition of England, and her statesmen are fond of saving, the plan "works well." Now, although the plan does not work half as well in England as is pretended, except for those who more especially reap its benefits, simply because the legislature is not established on a sufficiently popular basis, still it works better, on the whole, for the public, than if the system were reversed, as was formerly the case, and the king ruled through the parliament, instead of the parliament ruling through the king. In France the facts are ripe for an extension of this principle, in its safest and most salutary manner. The French of the present generation are prepared to dispense with a hereditary and political aristocracy, in the first place, nothing being more odious to them than privileged orders, and no nation, not even America, having more healthful practices or wiser notions on this point than themselves. The experience of the last fifteen years has shown the difficulty of creating an independent peerage in France, notwithstanding the efforts of the government, sustained by the example and wishes of England, have been steadily directed to that object. Still they have the traditions and _prestige_ of a monarchy. Under such circumstances, I see no difficulty in carrying out the idea of Lafayette. Indeed some such polity is indispensable, unless liberty is to be wholly sacrificed. All experience has shown that a king, who is a king in fact as well as name, is too strong for law, and the idea of restraining such a power by _principles_, is purely chimerical. He may be curtailed in his authority, by the force of opinion, and by extreme constructions of these principles; but if this be desirable, it would be better to avoid the struggle, and begin, at once, by laying the foundation of the system in such a way as will prevent the necessity of any change. As respects France, a peerage, in my opinion, is neither desirable nor practicable. It is certainly possible for the king to maintain a chosen political corps, as long as he can maintain himself, which shall act in his interests and do his bidding; but it is folly to ascribe the attributes that belong to a peerage to such a body of mercenaries. They resemble the famous mandamus counsellors, who had so great an agency in precipitating our own revolution, and are more likely to achieve a similar disservice to their master than any thing else. Could they become really independent, to a point to render them a masculine feature in the state, they would soon, by their combinations, become too strong for the other branches of the government, as has been the case in England, and France would have a "throne surrounded by aristocratic institutions." The popular notion that an aristocracy is necessary to a monarchy, I take it, is a gross error. A titular aristocracy, in some shape or other, is always the _consequence_ of monarchy, merely because it is the reflection of the sovereign's favour, policy, or caprice; but _political_ aristocracies like the peerage, have, nine times in ten, proved too strong for the monarch. France would form no exception to the rule; but, as men are apt to run into the delusion of believing it liberty to strip one of power, although his mantle is to fall on the few, I think it more than probable the popular error would be quite likely to aid the aristocrats in effecting their object, after habit had a little accustomed the nation to the presence of such a body. This is said, however, under the supposition that the elements of an independent peerage could be found in France, a fact that I doubt, as has just been mentioned.. If England can have a throne, then, surrounded by aristocratical institutions, what is there to prevent France from having a throne "surrounded by republican institutions?" The word "Republic," though it does not exclude, does not necessarily include the idea of a democracy. It merely means a polity, in which the predominant idea is the "public things," or common weal, instead of the hereditary and inalienable rights of one. It would be quite practicable, therefore, to establish in France such an efficient constituency as would meet the latter conditions, and yet to maintain the throne, as the machinery necessary, in certain cases, to promulgate the will of this very constituency. This is all that the throne does in England, and why need it do more in France? By substituting then a more enlarged constituency, for the borough system of England, the idea of Lafayette would be completely fulfilled. The reform in England, itself, is quite likely to demonstrate that his scheme was not as monstrous as has been affirmed. The throne of France should be occupied as Corsica is occupied, not for the affirmative good it does the nation, so much as to prevent harm from its being occasionally vacant. In the course of the conversation, I gave to General Lafayette the following outline of the form of government I could wish to give to France, were I a Frenchman, and had I a voice in the matter. I give it to you on the principle already avowed, or as a traveller furnishing his notions of the things he has seen, and because it may aid in giving you a better insight into my views of the state of this country. I would establish a monarchy, and Henry V. should be the monarch. I would select him on account of his youth, which will admit of his being educated in the notions necessary to his duty; and on account of his birth, which would strengthen his nominal government, and, by necessary connexion, the actual government: for I believe, that, in their hearts, and notwithstanding the professions to the contrary, nearly half of France would greatly prefer the legitimate line of their ancient kings to the actual dynasty. This point settled, I would extend the suffrage as much as facts would justify; certainly so as to include a million or a million and a half of electors. All idea of the _représentation_ of property should be relinquished, as the most corrupt, narrow, and vicious form of polity that has ever been devised, invariably tending to array one portion of the community against another, and endangering the very property it is supposed to protect. A moderate property _qualification_ might be adopted, in connexion with that of intelligence. The present scheme in France unites, in my view of the case, precisely the two worst features of admission to the suffrage that could be devised. The qualification of an elector is a given amount of direct contribution. This _qualification_ is so high as to amount to _représentation_, and France is already so taxed as to make a diminution of the burdens one of the first objects at which a good government would aim; it follows, that as the ends of liberty are attained, its foundations would be narrowed, and the _représentation_ of property would be more and more assured. A simple property qualification would, therefore, I think, be a better scheme than the present. Each department should send an allotted number of deputies, the polls being distributed on the American plan. Respecting the term of service, there might arise various considerations, but it should not exceed five years, and I would prefer three. The present house of peers should be converted into a senate, its members to sit as long as the deputies. I see no use in making the term of one body longer than the other, and I think it very easy to show that great injury has arisen from the practice among ourselves. Neither do I see the advantage of having a part go out periodically; but, on the contrary, a disadvantage, as it leaves a representation of old, and, perhaps, rejected opinions, to struggle with the opinions of the day. Such collisions have invariably impeded the action and disturbed the harmony of our own government. I would have every French elector vote for each senator; thus the local interests would be protected by the deputies, while the senate would strictly represent France. This united action would control all things, and the ministry would be an emanation of their will, of which the king should merely be the organ. I have no doubt the action of our own system would be better, could we devise some plan by which a ministry should supersede the present executive. The project of Mr. Hillhouse, that of making the senators draw lots annually for the office of President, is, in my opinion, better than the elective system; but it would be, in a manner, liable to the old objection, of a want of harmony between the different branches of the government. France has all the machinery of royalty, in her palaces, her parks, and the other appliances of the condition; and she has, moreover, the necessary habits and opinions, while we have neither. There is, therefore, just as much reason why France should not reject this simple expedient for naming a ministry, as there is for our not adopting it. Here, then, would be, at once, a "throne surrounded by republican institutions," and, although it would not be a throne as powerful as that which France has at present, it would, I think, be more permanent than one surrounded by bayonets, and leave France, herself, more powerful, in the end. The capital mistake made in 1830, was that of establishing the _throne_ before establishing the _republic_; in trusting to _men_ instead of trusting to _institutions_. I do not tell you that Lafayette assented to all that I said. He had reason for the impracticability of getting aside the personal interests which would be active in defeating such a reform, that involved details and a knowledge of character to which I had nothing to say; and, as respects the Duc de Bordeaux, he affirmed that the reign of the Bourbons was over in France. The country was tired of them. It may appear presumptuous in a foreigner to give an opinion against such high authority; but, "what can we reason but from what we know?" and truth compels me to say, I cannot subscribe to this opinion. My own observation, imperfect though it be, has led to a different conclusion. I believe there are thousands, even among those who throng the Tuileries, who would hasten to throw off the mask at the first serious misfortune that should befall the present dynasty, and who would range themselves on the side of what is called legitimacy. In respect to parties, I think the republicans the boldest, in possession of the most talents compared to numbers, and the least numerous; the friends of the King (active and passive) the least decided, and the least connected by principle, though strongly connected by a desire to prosecute their temporal interests, and more numerous than the republicans; the Carlists or _Henriquinquists_ the most numerous, and the most generally, but secretly, sustained by the rural population, particularly in the west and south. Lafayette frankly admitted, what all now seem disposed to admit, that it was a fault not to have made sure of the institutions before the King was put upon the throne. He affirmed, however, it was much easier to assert the wisdom of taking this precaution, than to have adopted it in fact. The world, I believe, is in error about most of the political events that succeeded the three days. LETTER II. The Cholera in Paris.--Its frightful ravages.--Desertion of the city--My determination to remain.--Deaths in the higher classes.--Unexpected arrival and retreat.--Praiseworthy conduct of the Authorities.--The Cholera caricatured!--Invitation from an English General.--Atmospherical appearance denoting the arrival of the Cholera.--Lord Robert Fitzgerald.--Dinner at the house of Madame de B----. Dear ----, We have had little to occupy us since my last letter, but the cholera, which alighted in the heart of this great and crowded metropolis like a bomb. Since the excursion on the frontiers last year, and our success in escaping the quarantine, I had thought little of this scourge, until the subject was introduced at my own table by a medical man who was among the guests. He cautiously informed us that there were unpleasant conjectures among the faculty on the subject, and that he was fearful Paris was not to go unscathed. When apart, he privately added, that he had actually seen a case, which he could impute to no other disease but that of Asiatic cholera. The next day a few dark hints were given in the journals, and, with frightful rapidity, reports followed that raised the daily deaths to near a thousand. The change in the appearance of the town was magical, for the strangers generally fled, while most of the _habitués_ of the streets in our immediate vicinity were soon numbered with the dead. There was a succession of apple-women seated at the corners, between the Rue St. Dominique and the Pont Royal, with whose faces I had become intimate in the course of P----'s traffic, as we passed to and fro, between the hotel and the Tuileries. Every one of these disappeared; the last, I was told, dropping from her chair, and dying before those who came to her aid had reached the nearest hospital. One case, among multitudes, will serve to give you a faint idea of the situation of Paris, at this moment of severe affliction. Returning from a walk through the deserted streets one morning, I saw a small collection of people around the _porte-cochère_ of our hotel. A matchseller had been seized with the disease, at the gate, and was then sustained on one of the stone seats, which are commonly used by the servants. I had her carried info the court, and made such applications as had been recommended by the faculty. The patient was a robust woman of middle age, accompanied by her mother, both having come in from a distant village, to raise a few sous by selling matches. In making the applications, I had occasion to observe the means by which these poor people sustain life. Their food consisted of fragments of hard dried bread, that had been begged, or bought, in the course of their progress. While two or three of us were busied about the daughter, the mother knelt on the pavement, and, with streaming eyes, prayed for her child, for us, and for herself. There was something indescribably touching in this display of strong natural ties, between those who were plunged so deep in misery. A piece of five francs was put into the hands of the old woman, but, though she blessed the donor, her look was not averted an instant from the agony depicted in her daughter's face, nor did she appear conscious of what she possessed, a moment after. The carriers from the hospital bore the sick woman away, and the mother promised to return, in a day or two, to let me know the result. Not appearing, an inquiry was made at the hospital, and the answer was, that they were both dead! In this manner some ten or fifteen thousand were swept away in a few weeks. Not only hotels, but, in some instances, nearly whole streets were depopulated. As every one fled, who could with convenience or propriety quit the town, you may feel surprised that we chose to remain. When the deaths increased to eight or nine hundred a day, and our own quarter began to be visited, I felt it to be a duty to those under my charge, to retire to some of the places without the limits of the disease. The trunks were packed, the carriage was in the court, and my passports were signed, when A---- was suddenly taken ill. Although the disease was not the cholera, I began to calculate the chances of any one of us being seized, myself for instance, in one of the villages of the environs, and the helpless condition of a family of females in a foreign country, under such circumstances. The result was a determination to remain, and to trust to Providence. We have consequently staid in our apartments through it all, although two slight cases have occurred in the hotel, and hundreds around it. The manner in which individuals known to us have vanished, as it were, from before our eyes, has been shockingly sudden. To-day the report may be that the milkman is gone; yesterday it was the butcher's boy; the day before the poulterer, and presently a new servant appears with a message from a friend, and on inquiring for his predecessor, we learn that he is dead. Ten or fifteen cases of this sort have occurred among those with whom we are in constant and immediate connexion. The deaths in the higher classes, at first, were comparatively few, but of late several of the most distinguished men of France have been seized. Among them are M. Perier, the prime minister, and the General Lamarque. Prince Castelcicala, too, the Neapolitan Ambassador, is dead, in our neighbourhood; as, indeed, are very many others. There is one short street quite near us, out of which, it is said, between seventy and eighty dead have been carried. The situation of all this faubourg is low, and that of the street particularly so. Dr. S----, of North Carolina, who, with several other young physicians, has done credit to himself by his self-devotion and application, brought in the report of the appearance of things, once or twice a week, judging of the state of the disease more from the aspect of the hospitals, than from the published returns, which are necessarily and, perhaps, designedly, imperfect. He thinks of the first hundred that were admitted at the Hotel Dieu, all but one died, and that one he does not think was a case of Asiatic cholera at all. All this time, the more frequented streets of Paris presented, in the height of the usual season too, the most deserted aspect. I have frequently walked on the terrace of the Tuileries when there were not a dozen others in the whole garden, and driven from my own hotel in the Rue St. Dominique to the Place Vendôme without meeting half a dozen vehicles, including _fiacres_ and _cabriolets de place_. I was returning one day from the Rue de la Paix, on foot, during the height of the disease, at the time when this gay and magnificent part of the town looked peculiarly deserted. There was scarcely a soul in the street but the _laquais de place_, the _garçons_, and the chambermaids of the public hotels, that abound in this quarter. These were at the gateways, with folded arms, a picture in themselves of the altered condition of the town. Two travelling carriages drove in from the Rue de Rivoli, and there was at once a stir among those who are so completely dependent on travellers for their bread. "_On part_" was, at first, the common and mournful call from one group to another, until the mud on the carriage-wheels caught the attention of some one, who cried out "_On arrive_!" The appearance of the strangers under such circumstances, seemed to act like a charm. I felt no little surprise at seeing them, and more, when a hand beckoned to me from a carriage window. It was Mr. H----, of New York, an old schoolfellow, and a friend of whom we had seen a good deal during our travels in Europe. He had just come from England, with his family, and appeared astonished to find Paris so deserted. He told me that Mr. Van Buren was in the other carriage. He had chosen an unfortunate moment for his visit. I went to see the H----s next morning, and it was arranged that they should come and pass the succeeding day in the Rue St. Dominique; but they disappointed us. The day following I got a letter from H----, dated Amiens, written on his way to England! They had been imprudent in coming, and wise in hurrying away from the frightful scene. I believe that Mr. Van Buren remained but a day or two. Although most of our acquaintances quitted the town, a few thought it safer to remain in their own comfortable apartments, than to run the hazards of travelling; for, in a short time, most of the north of France was suffering under the same grievous affliction. The authorities conducted themselves well, and there have been very many instances of noble self-devotion, on the part of private individuals, the French character never appearing to better advantage. In this respect, notwithstanding the general impression to the contrary, I am inclined to believe, after a good deal of inquiry, that Paris has acquitted itself better than London. The French, certainly, are less disposed, as a rule, to "hide their light under a bushel," than most other people; but, on the spot and a looker-on, my respect for their feelings and philanthropy has been greatly raised by their conduct during this terrible calamity. Notwithstanding the horror of the disease, some of the more prominent traits of national character have shown themselves lately. Among other things, the artists have taken to caricaturing the cholera! One gets to be so hardened by exposure, as to be able to laugh at even these proofs of moral obtuseness. Odd enough traits of character are developed by seeing men under such trying circumstances. During one of the worst periods of the disease, I met a countryman in the street, who, though otherwise a clever man, has the weakness to think the democracy of America its greatest blot. I asked him why he remained in Paris, having no family, nor any sufficient inducement? "Oh," said he, "it is a disease that only kills the rabble: I feel no concern--do you?" I told him that, under my peculiar circumstances, I felt a great deal of uneasiness, though not enough to make an unreflecting flight. A few days afterwards I missed him, and, on inquiry, learned that he had fled. Some _nobleman_ had died in our faubourg, when he and one of a fellow feeling, finding a taint "between the wind and their nobility," forthwith beat a retreat! During the height of the malady, an old English general officer, who had served in India, and who was now residing near us, sent me an invitation to dinner. Tired of seeing no one, I went. Here everything was as tranquil as if we were living in the purest atmosphere in Europe. Sir ----, my host, observed that he had got seasoned in India, and that he believed _good living_ one of the best preventives against the disease. The Count de ---- came in just before dinner was announced, and whispered to me that some twelve or fifteen hundred had been buried the previous day, although less than a thousand had been reported. This gentleman told a queer anecdote, which he said came from very respectable authority, and which he gave as he had heard it. About ten days before the cholera appeared, a friend of his had accompanied one of the Polish generals, who are now in Paris, a short distance into the country to dine. On quitting the house, the Pole stopped to gaze intently at the horizon. His companion inquired what he saw, when, pointing to a hazy appearance in the atmosphere, of rather an unusual kind, the other said, "You will have the cholera here in less than ten days; such appearances always preceded it in the North." As M. de ---- observed, "I tell it as I heard it." Sir ---- did me the favour, on that occasion, to introduce me to a mild gentleman-like old man, who greatly resembled one of the quiet old school of our own, which is so fast disappearing before the bustling, fussy, money-getting race of the day. It was Lord Robert Fitzgerald, a brother of the unfortunate Lord Edward, and the brother of whom he so pleasantly speaks in his natural and amiable letters, as "Plenipo Bob." This gentleman is since dead, having, as I hear, fallen a victim to the cholera. I went to one other dinner, during this scene of destruction, given by Madame de B----, a woman who has so much vogue, as to assemble, in her house, people of the most conflicting opinions and opposite characters. On this occasion, I was surprised to hear from Marshal ----, one of the guests, that many believe the cholera to be contagious. That such an opinion should prevail among the mass, was natural enough, but I was not prepared to hear it from so high a quarter. A gentleman mentioned, at this dinner, that the destruction among the porters had been fearful. A friend of his was the proprietor of five hotels, and the porters of all are dead! LETTER III. Insecurity of the Government.--Louis-Philippe and the Pear.--Caricatures.--Ugliness of the Public Men of France.--The Duke de Valmy.--Care-worn aspect of Society under the New Regime.--Controversy in France respecting the Cost of Government in America.--Conduct of American Agents in Europe. Dear ----, The government is becoming every day less secure, and while it holds language directly to the contrary, it very well knows it cannot depend on the attachment of the nation. It has kept faith with no one, and the mass looks coldly on, at the political agitation that is excited, in all quarters, by the Carlists and the republicans. The bold movement of the Duchess of Berri, although it has been unwise and unreflecting, has occasioned a good deal of alarm, and causes great uneasiness in this cabinet.[5] [Footnote 5: Louis-Philippe has been more singularly favoured by purely fortuitous events than, probably, ever fell to the fortune of one in his situation. The death of the Duke of Reichstadt, the arrest and peculiar position of the Duchess of Berri, the failure of the different attempts to assassinate and seize him, and the sudden death of the young Napoleon Bonaparte, in Italy (the son of Louis), are among the number.] In a country where the cholera could not escape being caricatured, you will readily imagine that the King has fared no better. The lower part of the face of Louis-Philippe is massive, while his forehead, without being mean, narrows in a way to give the outline a shape not unlike that of a pear. An editor of one of the publications of caricatures being on trial for a libel, in his defence, produced a large pear, in order to illustrate his argument, which ran as follows:--People fancied they saw a resemblance in some one feature of a caricature to a particular thing; this thing, again, might resemble another thing; that thing a third; and thus from one to another, until the face of some distinguished individual might be reached. He put it to the jury whether such forced constructions were safe. "This, gentlemen," he continued, "is a common pear, a fruit well known to all of you. By culling here, and here," using his knife as he spoke, "something like a resemblance to a human face is obtained: by clipping here, again, and shaping there, one gets a face that some may fancy they know; and should I, hereafter, publish an engraving of a pear, why everybody will call it a caricature of a man!" You will understand that, by a dexterous use of the knife, such a general resemblance to the countenance of the King was obtained, that it was instantly recognised. The man was rewarded for his cleverness by an acquittal, and, since that time, by an implied convention, a rude sketch of a pear is understood to allude to the King. The fruit abounds in a manner altogether unusual for the season, and, at this moment, I make little doubt, that some thousands of pears are drawn in chalk, coal, or other substances, on the walls of the capital. During the carnival, masquers appeared as pears, with pears for caps, and carrying pears, and all this with a boldness and point that must go far to convince the King that the extreme license he has affected hitherto to allow, cannot very well accord with his secret intentions to bring France back to a government of coercion. The discrepancies that necessarily exist in the present system will, sooner or later, destroy it. Little can be said in favour of caricatures. They address themselves to a faculty of the mind that is the farthest removed from reason, and, by consequence, from the right; and it is a prostitution of the term to suppose that they are either cause or effect, as connected with liberty. Such things may certainly have their effect, as means, but every good cause is so much the purer for abstaining from the use of questionable agencies. _Au reste_, there is really a fatality of feature and expression common to the public men of this country that is a strong provocative to caricature. The revolution and empire appear to have given rise to a state of feeling that has broken out with marked sympathy, in the countenance. The French, as a nation, are far from handsome, though brilliant exceptions exist; and it strikes me that they who appear in public life are just among the ugliest of the whole people. Not long since I dined at the table of Mr. de ----, in company with Mr. B. of New York. The company consisted of some twenty men, all of whom had played conspicuous parts in the course of the last thirty years. I pointed out the peculiarity just mentioned to my companion, and asked him if there was a single face at table which had the placid, dignified, and contented look which denotes the consciousness of right motives, a frank independence, and a mind at peace with itself. We could not discover one! I have little doubt that national physiognomy is affected by national character. You may form some idea, on the other hand, of the perfect simplicity and good taste that prevails in French society, by a little occurrence on the day just mentioned. A gentleman, of singularly forbidding countenance, sat next us; and, in the course of the conversation, he mentioned the fact that he had once passed a year in New York, of which place he conversed with interest and vivacity. B---- was anxious to know who this gentleman might be. I could only say that he was a man of great acuteness and knowledge, whom I had often met in society, but, as to his name, I did not remember ever to have heard it. He had always conducted himself in the simple manner that he witnessed, and it was my impression that he was the private secretary of the master of the house, who was a dignitary of the state, for I had often met him at the same table. Here the matter rested for a few days. The following week we removed into the Rue St. Dominique. Directly opposite to the _porte-cochère_ of our hotel was the _porte-cochère_ of an hotel that had once belonged to the Princes of Conti. A day or two after the removal, I saw the unknown gentleman coming out of the gateway opposite, as I was about to enter our own. He bowed, saluted me by name, and passed on. Believing this a good occasion to ascertain who he was, I crossed the street, and asked the porter for the name of the gentleman who had just gone out. "Mais, c'est Monsieur le Duc!" "Duke!--what Duke?" "Why, Monsieur le Duc de Valmy, the proprietor of this hotel!" It was the younger Kellerman, the hero of Marengo![6] [Footnote 6: He is since dead.] But I could fill volumes with anecdotes of a similar nature; for, in these countries, in which men of illustrious deeds abound, one is never disturbed in society by the fussy pretension and swagger that is apt to mark the presence of a lucky speculator in the stocks. Battles, unlike bargains, are rarely discussed in society. I have already told you how little sensation is produced in Paris by the presence of a celebrity, though in no part of the world is more delicate respect paid to those who have earned renown, whether in letters, arts, or arms. Like causes, however, notoriously produce like effects; and, I think, under the new regime, which is purely a money-power system, directed by a mind whose ambition is wealth, that one really meets here more of that swagger of stocks and lucky speculations, in the world, than was formerly the case. Society is decidedly less graceful, more care-worn, and of a worse tone to-day, than it was previously to the revolution of 1830. I presume the elements are unchanged, but the ebullition of the times is throwing the scum to the surface; a natural but temporary consequence of the present state of things. While writing to you in this desultory manner, I shall seize the occasion to give the outline of a little occurrence of quite recent date, and which is, in some measure, of personal interest to myself. A controversy concerning the cost of government, was commenced some time in November last, under the following circumstances, and has but just been concluded. As early as the July preceding, a writer in the employment of the French government produced a laboured article, in which he attempted to show that, head for head, the Americans paid more for the benefits of government than the French. Having the field all to himself, both as to premises and conclusions, this gentleman did not fail to make out a strong case against us; and, as a corollary to this proposition, which was held to be proved, he, and others of his party, even went so far as to affirm that a republic, in the nature of things, must be a more expensive polity than a monarchy. This extravagant assertion had been considered as established, by a great many perfectly well-meaning people, for some months, before I even knew that it had ever been made. A very intelligent and a perfectly candid Frenchman mentioned it one day, in my presence, admitting that he had been staggered by the boldness of the proposition, as well as by the plausibility of the arguments by which it had been maintained. It was so contrary to all previous accounts of the matter, and was, especially, so much opposed to all I had told him, in our frequent disquisitions on America, that he wished me to read the statements, and to refute them, should it seem desirable. About the same time, General Lafayette made a similar request, sending me the number of the periodical that contained the communication, and suggesting the expediency of answering it. I never, for an instant, doubted the perfect right of an American, or any one else, to expose the errors that abounded in this pretended statistical account, but I had little disposition for the task. Having, however, good reason to think it was aimed covertly at General Lafayette, with the intention to prove his ignorance of the America he so much applauded, I yielded to his repeated requests, and wrote a hasty letter to him, dissecting, as well as my knowledge and limited access to authorities permitted, the mistakes of the other side. This letter produced replies, and the controversy was conducted through different channels, and by divers agents, up to a time when the varying and conflicting facts of our opponents appeared to be pretty well exhausted. It was then announced that instructions had been sent to America to obtain more authentic information; and we were promised a farther exposure of the weakness of the American system, when the other side should receive this re-enforcement to their logic.[7] [Footnote 7: No such exposure has ever been made; and the writer understood, some time before he quitted France, that the information received from America proved to be so unsatisfactory, that the attempt was abandoned. The writer, in managing his part of the discussion, confined himself principally to the state of New York, being in possession of more documents in reference to his own state, than to any other. Official accounts, since published, have confirmed the accuracy of his calculations; the actual returns varying but a few sous a head from his own estimates, which were in so much too liberal, or against his own side of the question.] I have no intention of going over this profitless controversy with you, and have adverted to it here, solely with a view to make you acquainted with a state of feeling in a portion of our people, that it may be useful not only to expose, but correct.[8] [Footnote 8: See my _Letter to General Lafayette_, published by Baudry, Paris.] LETTER IV. Gradual disappearance of the Cholera.--Death of M. Casimir Perier.--His Funeral.--Funeral of General Lamarque.--Magnificent Military Escort.--The Duc de Fitzjames.--An Alarm.--First symptoms of popular Revolt.--Scene on the Pont Royal.--Charge on the people by a body of cavalry.--The _Sommations_.--General Lafayette and _the Bonnet Rouge_.--Popular Prejudices in France. England, and America.--Contest in the Quartier Montmartre.--The Place Louis XVI.--A frightened Sentinel.--Picturesque Bivouac of troops in the Carousel.--Critical situation.--Night-view from the Pont des Arts.--Appearance of the Streets on the following morning.--England an enemy to Liberty.--Affair at the Porte St. Denis.--Procession of Louis-Philippe through the streets.--Contest in the St. Mary.--Sudden Panic.--Terror of a national Guard and a young Conscript.--Dinner with a Courtier.--Suppression of the Revolt. Dear ----, Events have thickened since my last letter. The cholera gradually disappeared, until it ceased to be the subject of conversation. As soon as the deaths diminished to two or three hundred a day, most people became easy; and when they got below a hundred, the disease might be said to be forgotten. But though the malady virtually disappeared, the public was constantly reminded of its passage by the deaths of those who, by force of extraordinary care, had been lingering under its fatal influence. M. Casimir Perier was of the number, and his death has been seized on as a good occasion to pass a public judgment on the measures of the government of the _juste milieu_, of which he has been popularly supposed to be the inventor, as well as the chief promoter. This opinion, I believe, however, to be erroneous. The system of the _juste milieu_ means little more than to profess one thing and to do another; it is a stupendous fraud, and sooner or later will be so viewed and appropriately rewarded. It is a profession of liberty, with a secret intention to return to a government of force, availing itself of such means as offer, of which the most obvious, at present, are the stagnation of trade and the pressing necessities of all who depend on industry, in a country that is taxed nearly beyond endurance. Neither M. Perier, nor any other man, is the prime mover of such a system; for it depends on the Father of Lies, who usually employs the most willing agents he can discover. The inventor of the policy, _sub Diabolo_, is now in London. M. Perier had the merits of decision, courage, and business talents; and, so far from being the founder of the present system, he had a natural frankness, the usual concomitant of courage, that, under other circumstances, I think, would have indisposed him to its deceptions. But he was a manufacturer, and his spinning-jennies were very closely connected with his political faith. Another state of the market would, most probably, have brought him again into the liberal ranks. The funeral obsequies of M. Perier having been loudly announced as a test of public opinion, I walked out, the morning they took place, to view the pomp. It amounted to little more than the effect which the patronage of the ministry can at any time produce. There was a display of troops and of the _employés_ of the government, but little apparent sympathy on the part of the mass of the population. As the deceased was a man of many good qualities, this indifference was rather studied, proceeding from the discipline and collision of party politics. As an attempt to prove that the _juste milieu_ met with popular approbations I think the experiment was a failure. Very different was the result, in a similar attempt made by the opposition, at the funeral of General Lamarque. This distinguished officer fell also a victim to the cholera, and his interment took place on the 4th of June. The journals of the opposition had called upon its adherents to appear on this occasion, in order to convince the King and his ministers that they were pursuing a dangerous course, and one in which they were not sustained by the sentiment of the nation. The preparations wore a very different appearance from those made on the previous occasion. Then everything clearly emanated from authority; now, the government was visible in little besides its arrangements to maintain its own ascendency. The military rank of the deceased entitled him to a military escort, and this was freely accorded to his friends; perhaps the more freely, from the fact that it sanctioned the presence of so many more bayonets than were believed to be at the command of the ministers. It was said there were twenty thousand of the National Guards present in uniform, wearing, however, only their side-arms. This number may have been exaggerated, but there certainly were a great many. The whole procession, including the troops, has been estimated at a hundred thousand men. The route was by the Boulevards to the Jardin des Plantes, where the body was to be delivered to the family of the deceased, in order to be transported to the South of France for interment. Having other engagements, I merely viewed the preparations, and the commencement of the ceremonies, when I returned to our own quiet quarter of the town to pursue my own quiet occupations. The day passed quietly enough with us, for the Faubourg St. Germain has so many large hotels, and so few shops, that crowds are never common; and, on this occasion, all the floating population appeared to have completely deserted us, to follow the procession of poor Lamarque. I do not remember to have alluded to the change produced in this particular, by the cholera, in the streets of Paris. It is supposed that at least ten thousand of those who have no other abodes, except the holes into which they crept at night, were swept out of them by this fell disease. About five o'clock, I had occasion to go to the Rue de Rivoli, and I found the streets and the garden with much fewer people in them than was usual at that hour. There I heard a rumour that a slight disturbance had taken place on the Boulevard des Italiens, in consequence of a refusal of the Duc de Fitzjames, a leading Carlist, to take off his hat to the body of Lamarque, as he stood at a balcony. I had often met M. de Fitzjames in society, and, although a decided friend of the old regime, I knew his tone of feeling and manners to be too good, to credit a tale so idle. By a singular coincidence, the only time I had met with General Lamarque in private was at a little dinner given by Madame de M----, at which Monsieur de Fitzjames was also a guest. We were but five or six at table, and nothing could be more amicable, or in better taste, than the spirit of conciliation and moderation that prevailed between men so widely separated by opinion. This was not long before Gen. Lamarque was attacked by his final disease, and as there appeared to me to be improbability in the rumour of the affair of the Boulevards, I quite rightly set it down as one of the exaggerations that daily besiege our ears. It being near six, I consequently returned home to dinner, supposing that the day would end as so many had ended before. We were at table, or it was about half-past six o'clock, when the drum beat the _rappel_. At one period, scarcely a day passed that we did not hear this summons; indeed, so frequent did it become, that I make little doubt the government resorted to it as an expedient to strengthen itself, by disgusting the National Guards with the frequency of the calls; but of late, the regular weekly parades excepted, we had heard nothing of it. A few minutes later, François, who had been sent to the _porte-cochère_, returned with the intelligence that a soldier of the National Guard had just passed it, bleeding at a wound in the head. On receiving this information, I left the hotel and proceeded towards the river. In the Rue du Bac, the great thoroughfare of the faubourg, I found a few men, and most of the women, at their shop-doors, and _portes-cochères_, but no one could say what was going on in the more distant quarters of the town. There were a few people on the quays and bridges, and, here and there, a solitary National Guard was going to his place of rendezvous. I walked rapidly through the garden, which, at that hour, was nearly empty, as a matter of course, and passing under the arch of the palace, crossed the court and the Carrousel to la Rue de Richelieu. A profound calm reigned in and about the chateau; the sentinels and loungers of the Guards seeming as tranquil as usual. There was no appearance of any coming and going with intelligence, and I inferred that the royal family was either at St. Cloud, or at Neuilly. Very few people were in the Place, or in the streets; but those who were, paused occasionally, looking about them with curiosity, and almost uniformly in a bewildered and inquiring manner. I had reached the colonnade of the Théâtre Français, when a strong party of _gendarmes à cheval_ went scouring up the street, at a full gallop. Their passage was so swift and sudden, that I cannot say in which direction they came, or whither they went, with the exception that they took the road to the Boulevards. A _gendarme à pied_ was the only person near me, and I asked him, if he could explain the reason of the movement. "_Je n'en sais rien_," in the _brusque_ manner that the French soldiers are a little apt to assume, when it suits their humours, was all the reply I got. I walked leisurely into the galleries of the Palais Royal, which I had never before seen so empty. There was but a single individual in the garden, and he was crossing it swiftly, in the direction of the theatre. A head was, now and then, thrust out of a shop-door, but I never before witnessed such a calm in this place, which is usually alive with people. Passing part of the way through one of the glazed galleries, I was started by a general clatter that sprung up all around me in every direction, and which extended itself entirely around the whole of the long galleries. The interruption to the previous profound quiet, was as sudden as the report of a gun, and it became general, as it were, in an instant. I can liken the effect, after allowing for the difference in the noises, to that of letting fly sheets, tacks, and halyards, on board a vessel of war, in a squall, and to a sudden call to shorten sail. The place was immediately filled with men, women, and children, and the clatter proceeded from the window-shutters that were going up all over the vast edifice, at the same moment. In less than five minutes there was not a shop-window exposed. Still there was no apparent approach of danger. The drums had almost ceased beating, and as I reached the Carrousel, on my way back to the Rue St. Dominique, I saw nothing in the streets to justify all this alarm, which was either the result of a panic, or was calculated for political effect; artifice acting on apprehension. A few people were beginning to collect on the bridges and quays, and there was evidently a greater movement towards the Pont Neuf, than in the lower parts of the town. As I crossed the Pont Royal, a brigade of light artillery came up the quays from the Ecole Militaire, the horses on the jump, and the men seated on the carriages, or mounted, as belongs to this arm. The noise and hurry of their passage was very exciting, and it gave an impulse to the shopkeepers of the Rue du Bac, most of whom now began to close their windows. The guns whirled across the bridge, and dashed into the Carrousel, on a gallop, by the _guichet_ of the Louvre. Continuing down the Rue du Bac, the street was full of people, chiefly females, who were anxiously looking towards the bridge. One _garçon_, as he aided his master in closing the shop-window, was edifying him with anathemas against "_ces messieurs les républicains_," who were believed to be at the bottom of the disturbance, and for whom he evidently thought that the artillery augured badly. The next day he would be ready to shout _vive la république_ under a new impulse; but, at present, it is "_vive le commerce_!" On reaching the hotel, I gave my account of what was going on, pacified the apprehensions that had naturally been awakened, and sallied forth a second time, to watch the course of events. By this time some forty or fifty National Guards were collected on the quay, by the Pont Royal, a point where there ought to have been several hundreds. This was a sinister omen for the government, nor was the appearance of the crowd much more favourable. Tens of thousands now lined the quays, and loaded the bridges; nor were these people rabble, or _sans culottes_, but decent citizens, most of whom observed a grave, and, as I thought, a portentous silence. I make no manner of doubt that had a thousand determined men appeared among them at that moment, headed by a few leaders of known character, the government of Louis-Philippe would have dissolved like melting snow. Neither the National Guard, the army, nor the people were with it. Every one evidently waited the issue of events, without manifesting much concern for the fate of the present regime. Indeed it is not easy to imagine greater apathy, or indifference to the result, than was nearly everywhere visible. A few shopkeepers alone seemed troubled. On the Pont Royal a little crowd was collected around one or two men of the labouring classes, who were discussing the causes of the disturbance. First questioning a respectable-looking by-stander as to the rumours, I mingled with the throng, in order to get an idea of the manner in which the _people_ regarded the matter. It would seem that a collision had taken place between the troops and a portion of the citizens, and that a charge had been made by a body of cavalry on some of the latter, without having observed the formalities required by the law. Some of the people had raised the cry "_aux arms_;" several _corps de garde_ had been disarmed, and many thousands were rallying in defence of their liberties. In short everything wore the appearance of the commencement of another revolution. The point discussed by the crowd, was the right of the dragoons to charge a body of citizens without reading the riot act, or making what the French call, the "_sommations_." I was struck with the plain common sense of one or two of the speakers, who were of the class of artisans, and who uttered more good reason, and displayed more right feeling, in the five minutes I listened, than one is apt to meet with, on the same subjects, in a year, in the salons of Paris. I was the more struck by this circumstance, in consequence of the manner in which the same topic had been broached, quite lately, in the Chamber of Deputies. In one of the recent affairs in the east of France, the troops had fired on a crowd, without the previous _sommations_, in consequence, as was alleged, of some stones being hurled from the crowd against themselves. Every one, who has the smallest knowledge of a government of laws, understands its action in an affair of this sort. Ten thousand people are in a street, in their own right, and half a dozen of them commit an outrage. Military force becomes necessary, but before it is applied certain forms are required, to notify the citizen that his ordinary rights are suspended, in the interests of public order, and to warn him to go away. This is a provision that the commonest intellect can understand; and yet some of the leading administration men, _lawyers too_, maintained that soldiers had the rights of other men, and if stones were hurled at them from a crowd, they were perfectly justifiable in using their arms against that crowd! It is only necessary, you will perceive, to employ an agent, or two, to cast a few stones from a crowd, to place every collection of citizens at the mercy of an armed force, on this doctrine. A soldier has the right of a citizen to defend himself beyond dispute, against the man who assails him; but a citizen who is assailed from a crowd has no right to discharge a pistol into that crowd, by way of defending himself. But this is of a piece with most of the logic of the friends of exclusion. Their cause is bad, and their reasoning is necessarily bad also. From the Pont Royal I proceeded to the Pont Neuf, where the collection of people was still more numerous, every eye being fastened on the quays in the direction of the Place de la Bastille, near which the disturbance had commenced. Nothing, however, was visible, though, once or twice, we heard a scattering fire of musketry. I waited here an hour, but nothing farther was heard, and, according to promise, I returned to the hotel, to repeat the little I had seen and gathered. In passing, I observed that the number of National Guards at the Pont Royal had increased to about a hundred. After quieting the apprehensions of my family, I proceeded to quiet those of a lady of my acquaintance, who was nearly alone in her lodgings. I found her filled with apprehensions, and firmly believing that the present government was to be overturned. Among other things, she told me that the populace had drawn General Lafayette, in triumph, to his own house, and that, previously to the commencement of the conflict, he had been presented with a _bonnet rouge_, which he had put upon his head. The _bonnet rouge_, you will understand, with all Frenchmen is a symbol of extreme Jacobinism, and of the reign of terror. I laughed at her fears, and endeavoured to convince her that the idle tale about General Lafayette could not be true. So far from wishing to rule by terror, it was his misfortune not to resort to the measures of caution that were absolutely necessary to maintain his own legal ascendancy, whenever he got into power. He was an enthusiast for liberty, and acted on the principle that others were as well disposed and as honest as himself. But to all this she turned a deaf ear, for, though an amiable and a sensible woman, she had been educated in the prejudices of a caste, being the daughter and sister of peers of France. I found the tale about General Lafayette quite rife, on going again into the streets. The disposition to give credit to vulgar reports of this nature, is not confined to those whose condition in life naturally dispose them to believe the worst of all above them, for the vulgar-minded form a class more numerous than one might be induced to think, on glancing a look around him. Liberality and generosity of feeling is the surest test of a gentleman; but, in addition to those of training and of a favourable association, except in very peculiar cases, they are apt to require some strong natural advantages, to help out the tendencies of breeding and education. Every one who has seen much of the world, must have remarked the disposition, on the part of those who have not had the same opportunities, to cavil at opinions and usages that they cannot understand, merely because they do not come within the circle of their own every-day and familiar usages. Our own country abounds with these rustic critics; and I can remember the time when there was a species of moral impropriety attached to practices that did not enter into every man's habits. It was almost deemed immoral to breakfast or dine at an hour later than one's neighbour. Now, just this sort of feeling, one quite as vulgar, and much more malignant, prevails in Europe against those who may see fit to entertain more liberal notions in politics than others of their class. In England, I have already told you, the system is so factitious, and has been so artfully constructed, by blending church and state, that it must be an uncommonly clever man who, in politics, can act vigorously on the golden rule of Christ, that of doing "unto others, as you would have others do unto you," and escape the imputation of infidelity! A desire to advance the interests of his fellow-creatures, by raising them in the social scale, is almost certain to cause a man to be set down as destitute of morals and honesty. By imputations of this nature, the efforts and influence of some of the best men England has ever produced, have been nearly neutralized, and there is scarcely a distinguished liberal in the kingdom, at this moment, whom even the well-meaning of the church-and-state party do not regard with a secret distrust of his intentions and character. In the practice of imitation this feeling has even extended (though in a mitigated form) to America, a country in which, were the truth felt and understood, a man could not possibly fulfil all the obligations of education and superior training, without being of the party of the people. Many gentlemen in America, beyond dispute, are not of the popular side, but I am of opinion that they make a fundamental mistake as _gentlemen_. They have permitted the vulgar feelings generated by contracted associations and the insignificant evils of a neighbourhood, to still within them the high feelings and generous tendencies that only truly belong to the caste. In France, the English feeling, modified by circumstances, is very apparent, although it is not quite so much the fashion to lay stress on mere morality. The struggle of selfishness and interests is less veiled and mystified in France than on the other side of the Channel. But the selfish principle, if anything, is more active; and few struggle hard for others, without being suspected of base motives. By looking back at the publications of the time, you will learn the manner in which Washington was vituperated by his enemies, at the commencement of the revolution. Graydon, in his "Memoirs of a Life spent in Pennsylvania," mentions a discourse he held with a young English officer, who evidently was well disposed, and wished to know the truth. This gentleman had been taught to believe Washington an adventurer, who had squandered the property of a young widow whom he had married, by gambling and dissipation, and who was now ready to embark in any desperate enterprise to redeem his fortune! This, then, was probably the honest opinion the British army, in 1776, entertained of the man, whom subsequent events have shown to have been uniformly actuated by the noblest sentiments, and who, instead of being the adventurer represented, is known to have put in jeopardy a large estate, through disinterested devotion to the country, and the prevailing predominant trait of whose character was an inflexible integrity of purpose. Now, Lafayette is obnoxious to a great deal of similar vulgar feeling, without being permitted, by circumstances, to render the purity of his motives as manifest, as was the better fortune of his great model, Washington. The unhandsome and abrupt manner in which he was dismissed from the command of the National Guards, though probably a peace-offering to the allies, was also intended to rob him of the credit of a voluntary resignation.[9]--But, all this time, we are losing sight of what is passing in the streets of Paris. [Footnote 9: General Lafayette took the republican professions of the King too literally, at first, and he did not always observe the _ménagement_, perhaps, that one seated on a throne, even though it be a popular one, is apt to expect. In 1830 he told the writer the King had, that morning, said, that some about him called the General a "maire du palais." On being asked if the King appeared to entertain the same notion, his answer was, "Well, he professes not to do so; but then I think he has _tant soit peu_ of the same feeling." This was ticklish ground to stand on with a sovereign, and, perhaps, a case without a parallel in France, since the days of Hugues Capet. A few weeks later, General Lafayette related another conversation held with Louis-Philippe, on the subject of his own unceremonious dismissal from office. "You shall be named _honorary_ Commander-in-chief of the National Guards, for life," said the King. "Sire, how would you like to be an honorary king?" It is quite apparent that such a friendship could not last for ever.] Troops of the line began to appear in large bodies as the evening closed, and the reports now came so direct as to leave no doubt that there was a sharp contest going on in the more narrow streets of the Quartier Montmartre. All this time the feelings of the crowd on the bridges and quays appeared to be singularly calm. There was little or no interest manifested in favour of either side, and, indeed, it would not be easy to say what the side opposed to the government was. The Carlists looked distrustful, the republicans bold, and the _juste milieu_ alarmed. I went back to the hotel to make my report, again, about nine, and then proceeded by the quay and the Pont Louis XVI. to the Carrousel. By the way, I believe I have forgotten to say, in any of my letters, that in crossing the Place Louis XVI, with a French friend, a month or two since, he informed me he had lately conversed with Count--, who had witnessed the execution of Louis XVI, and that he was told there was a general error prevalent as regarded the spot where the guillotine was erected on that occasion. According to this account, which it is difficult to believe is not correct, it was placed on the side of the Place near the spot where the carriages for Versailles usually stand, and just within the _borgnes_ that line the road that here diverges towards the quay. While correcting popular errors of this sort, I will add that M. Guillotine, the inventor of that instrument that bears his name, is, I believe, still living; the story of his having been executed on his own machine, being pure poetry. Passing by the Rue de Rivoli, I went to see an English lady of our acquaintance, who resided in this quarter of the town. I found her alone, uneasy, and firmly persuaded that another revolution had commenced. She was an aristocrat by position, and though reasonably liberal, anxious to maintain the present order of things, like all the liberal aristocrats, who believe it to be the last stand against popular sway. She has also friends and connexions about the person of the King, and probably considered their fortunes as, in some measure, involved in those of the court. We condoled with each other, as a matter of course; she, because there was a revolution, and I, because the want of faith, and the stupendous frauds, practised under the present system, rendered it necessary. It was near eleven o'clock before I quitted this part of the town. The streets were nearly deserted, a patrol occasionally passing; but the strangers were few, scarcely any having yet returned after their flight from the cholera. The gates of the garden were closed, and I found sentinels at the _guichets_ of the Carrousel, who prevented my return by the usual route. Unwilling to make the _détour_ by the way I had come, I proceeded by the Rue de Rivoli. As I was walking quite near to the palace, in order to avoid some mud, I came suddenly on a _Garde National_ who was placed behind a sentry-box _en faction_. I cannot describe to you the furious scream with which this man cried "_Allez au large_." If he took me for a body of bloody-minded republicans, rushing forward to disarm him, I certainly thought he was some wild beast. The man was evidently frightened, and just in a condition to take every bush for an enemy. It is true the other party was rather actively employed in disarming the different guards, but this fellow was within a hundred feet of the Etat Major, and in no sort of danger. Notwithstanding the presented bayonet, I am not quite certain he would not have dropped his arms had I lifted my walking-stick, though one runs more hazard from a robber, or a sentinel, who is frightened, than from one who is cool. There was, however, no blood shed. Finding the Carrousel closed to me, I passed into the Rue St. Honoré, which was also pretty well garnished with troops. A few truculent youths were shouting a short distance ahead of me, but, on the appearance of a patrol, they ran off. At length I got as far as the Rue du Coq St. Honoré, and seeing no one in the street, I turned short round its corner, thinking to get into the court of the Louvre, and to the other side of the river by the Pont des Arts. Instead of effecting this clever movement, I ran plump on a body of troops, who were drawn up directly across the street, in a triple line. This was a good position, for the men were quite protected from a fire, up or down the great thoroughfare, while by wheeling on either flank they were ready to act, in a moment, in either direction. My reception was not flattering, but the officer in command was too cool, to mistake a solitary individual for a band of rebels, and I was suffered to continue up the Rue St. Honoré. I got into the rear of this guard by turning through the next opening. The court of the Louvre was unguarded and empty, and passing through it, I got a glimpse of a picturesque bivouac of troops in the Carrousel. Seeing no obstruction, I went in that direction, and penetrated to the very rear of a squadron of cuirassiers, who were dismounted, forming the outer line of the whole body. There may have been three or four thousand men of all arms assembled in this spot, chiefly, if not all, regular troops. I stayed among them unobserved, or at least, unmolested, near half an hour, watching the effect of the different groups, by the light of the camp fires. Strong patrols, principally cavalry, went and came constantly, and scarcely five minutes passed without the arrival and departure of mounted expresses, the head-quarters of the National Guards being in the palace. It was drawing towards midnight, and I bethought me of the uneasiness of those I had left in the Rue St. Dominique. I was retiring by the upper _guichet_, the only one unguarded, and had nearly reached it, when a loud shout was heard on the quay. This sounded like service, and it was so considered by the troops, for the order "_aux armes_" was given in a moment. The cuirassiers mounted, wheeled into platoons, and trotted briskly towards the enemy with singular expedition. Unluckily, they directed their advance to the very _guichet_ which I was also approaching. The idea of being caught between two fires, and that in a quarrel which did not concern me, was not agreeable. The state of things called for decision, and knowing the condition of affairs in the Carrousel, I preferred siding with _the juste milieu_, for once in my life. The cuirassiers were too much in a hurry to get through the _guichet_, which was a defile, and too steady to cut me down in passing; and, first giving them a few minutes to take the edge off the affair, if there was to be any fighting, I followed them to the quay. This alarm was real, I understood next day; but the revolters made their retreat by the Pont des Arts, which is impracticable for cavalry, attacking and carrying a _corps de garde_, in the Quartier St. Jacques. The cuirassiers were trotting briskly towards the Pont Neuf, in order to get at them, when I came out on the quay, and, profiting by the occasion, I got across the river, by the Pont des Arts. It was strange to find myself alone on this bridge at midnight, in the heart of a great capital, at a moment when its streets were filled with troops, while contending factions were struggling for the mastery, and perhaps the fate of not only France, but of all Europe, was hanging on the issue! Excited by these reflections, I paused to contemplate the scene. I have often told you how picturesque and beautiful Paris appears viewed from her bridges. The finest position is that of the Pont Royal; but the Pont des Arts, at night, perhaps affords even more striking glimpses of those ancient, tall, angular buildings along the river, that, but for their forms and windows, would resemble low rocky cliffs. In the centre of this mass of dwellings, among its damp and narrow streets, into which the sun rarely penetrates, lay bodies of men, sleeping on their arms, or merely waiting for the dawn, to decide the fate of the country. It was carrying one back to the time of the "League" and the "Fronde," and I involuntarily cast my eyes to that balconied window in the Louvre, where Charles IX. is said to have stood when he fired upon the flying Protestants. The brooding calm that reigned around was both characteristic and strange. Here was an empire in jeopardy, and yet the population had quietly withdrawn into their own abodes, awaiting the issue with as much apparent tranquillity, as if the morrow was to be like another day. Use, and a want of sympathy between the governed and their governors, had begotten this indifference. When I reached the Quai Voltaire, not a man was visible, except a picket on the Pont Royal. Not knowing but some follower of the House of Orleans, more loyal than usual, might choose to detain me, because I came from America, I passed down one of the first streets, entering the Rue du Bac, at some distance from the bridge. I met but half a dozen people between the quays and the Hotel de ----, and all the shops were hermetically sealed. As soon as I entered, the porter shut and barred the gate of our own hotel, and we retired, to rise and see what a "night might bring forth." "_Les canons grondent dans les rues, monsieur_" was the remark of the porter, as I passed out into the street next morning. The population was circulating freely in our part of the town; the shops, too, were re-opened, and it appeared to be pretty generally understood that no fighting was to take place in that vicinity. Passing up the Rue du Bac, I met three _Gardes Nationaux_, who, by their conversation, were fresh from the field, having passed the night in what may be called the enemy's country. They were full of marvels, and, in their own opinion, full of glory. The streets were now alive with people, the quays and bridges being still resorted to, on account of their affording an unobstructed avenue to the sounds that came from the quarter where the conflict was going on. Occasionally, a discharge of musketry reached these spots, and once or twice I heard the report of a gun; but the firing was desultory, far from heavy, and irregular. In the Carrousel I met an English acquaintance, and we agreed to go towards the scene of action together, in order to learn what was going on. My companion was loud in his complaints against the revolters, who, he said, would retard the progress of liberty half a century by their rashness. The government would put them down, and profit by its victory to use strong measures. I have learned to distrust the liberalism of some of the English, who are too apt to consult their own national interests, in regarding the rights of their neighbours. This, you will say, is no more than human nature, which renders all men selfish. True; but the concerns of few nations being as extensive, varied, and artificial, as those of England, the people of other countries are not liable to be influenced by so many appeals to divert them from a sound and healthful state of feeling. England, as a nation, has never been a friend of liberty in other nations, as witness her long and bitter hostility to ourselves, to France and Holland, and her close alliance with Turkey, Persia, etc., etc. Just at this moment, apprehension of Russia causes her to dilate a little more than usual on the encouragement of liberty; but it is a mystification that can deceive no one of the least observation. Of whatever sins England is to be accused, as a nation, she cannot be accused of that of political propagandism. Even her own recent progress in liberty has been the result of foreign and external example. I now speak of the state, which extends its influence very far into society; but there are many individuals who carry their principles as far as any men on earth. This latter class, moreover, is largely and rapidly on the increase, has always effected, and will still effect, far more than the slate itself in favour of freedom. We went by the Palais Royal, the Passages Vivienne, and du Panorama, to the Boulevards. The streets were filled with people, as on a fête, and there appeared still to be a good deal of anxiety as to the result. There were plenty of troops, report saying that sixty thousand men were under arms on the side of the government. Half that number would suffice to assure its success unless there should prove to be disaffection. Had a single regiment of the line declared against the King the previous day, or even on the 6th of June, Louis-Philippe, in my opinion, would have been dethroned. But, so far as I can learn, none of the principal persons of the opposition appeared against him on this occasion, or seemed to have any connexion with the affair. My companion left me on the Boulevards, and I proceeded towards the Porte St. Denis where there was evidently something like a contest. There was a little firing, and I met one or two wounded men, who were retiring to their _casernes._ One was shot through the body. But the affair at the Porte St. Denis proved to be nothing serious, and was soon over. The revolters had retired into the Rue St. Méry, where they were closely encircled by large bodies of troops, and whither I did not deem it prudent to follow them. The struggle, in that direction, was much sharper, and we occasionally heard cannon. You will probably be curious to know if one did not feel uneasy, in walking about the streets of a town, while so many men were contending in its streets. A moment's reflection will show you that there was little or no danger. One could find a cover in a moment. The streets were thronged, and it was little probable that either party would wantonly fire on the mass. The contest was confined to a particular part of the town, and then a man of ordinary discretion would hardly be so silly as to expose himself unnecessarily, in a quarrel with which he had no concern. Women and children were certainly killed on this occasion, but it was probably under circumstances that did not, in the least, affect the great body of the inhabitants. The cafés were frequented as usual, and a little distance from the scene of action, everything wore the air of an ordinary Sunday, on which the troops were to be reviewed. The morning passed in this manner, when, about four o'clock, I again found myself at the Pont Royal, after paying a visit to the hotel. Here I met two American friends, and we walked by the quay of the palace, towards the Pont Neuf. The people were in a dense crowd, and it was even difficult to penetrate the mass. Just before we reached the bridge, we heard shouts and cries of _Vive le Roi_, and presently I saw M. de Chabot-Rohan, the first honorary aide-de-camp, a gentleman whom I personally knew, and who usually led the cortege of the King. It would seem that Louis-Philippe had arrived from the country, and had passed by the Boulevards to the Place de la Bastille, whence he was now returning to the Tuileries, by the quays. His appearance in the streets, during such a scene, has been much lauded, and the firmness necessary to the occasion, much dwelt on in the papers. A very timid man might certainly have been afraid to expose his person in this manner, but the risk was by no means as great as has been supposed. The cortege was nowhere under fire, nor, but for, a few minutes, near the scene of action; and it was not easy to assassinate a man moving through streets that were filled with troops. _Au reste_, there is no reason whatever to suppose the King would not have behaved personally well, in far more critical circumstances.[10] The royal party passed into the Carrousel by the court of the Louvre, while we turned upon the bridge. [Footnote 10: I once asked General Lafayette his opinion of the nerve of the Duc d'Orleans (_Egalité_). He laughed, and said the King had made an appeal to him quite lately, on the same subject. "And the answer?" "I told his Majesty that I believed his father was a _brave_ man; but, you may be sure, I was glad be did not ask me if I thought he was an _honest_ one, too."] The Pont Neuf was crowded with troops, who occupied the _trottoirs_, and with men, women, and children. There had been some skirmishing at the Place de Grève, and the scene of the principal contest, the Rue St. Méry, was near by. We were slowly threading the crowd with our faces towards the island, when a discharge of musketry (four or five pieces at most), directly behind us, and quite near, set everybody in motion. A flock of sheep would not have scattered in greater confusion, at the sudden appearance of a strange dog among them, than the throng on the bridge began to scamper. Fear is the most contagious of all diseases, and, for a moment, we found ourselves running with the rest. A jump or two sufficed, however, and we stopped. Two soldiers, one a National Guard, and the other a young conscript, belonging to the line, caught my eye, and knowing there was no danger, we had time to stop and laugh at them. The National Guard was a little Mayeux-looking fellow, with an abdomen like a pumpkin, and he had caught hold of his throat, as if it were actually to prevent his heart from jumping out of his mouth. A caricature of fright could scarcely be more absurd. The young conscript, a fair red-haired youth, was as white as a sheet, and he stood with his eyes and mouth open, like one who thought he saw a ghost, immoveable as a statue. He was sadly frightened, too. The boy would probably have come to, and proved a good soldier in the end; but as for Mr. Mayeux, although scarcely five feet high, he appeared as if he could never make himself short enough. He had evidently fancied the whole affair a good joke, up to that precise moment, when, for the first time, the realities of a campaign burst upon his disordered faculties. The troops in general, while they pricked up their ears, disdained even to shoulder their arms. For those on the bridge, there was, in truth, no danger, although the nearness of the volley, and the suddenness of the alarm, were well adapted to set a crowd in motion. The papers next day, said one or two had been slain by this discharge, which actually came from the revolters. You will probably be surprised, when I tell you that I had an engagement to dine to-day, with a gentleman who fills a high situation near the person of the King. He had sent me no notice of a postponement, and as I had seen him pass in the cortège, I was reminded that the hour to dress was near. Accordingly, I returned home, in order to prove to him that I was as indifferent as any Frenchman could be, to the events we had all just witnessed. I found a dozen people assembled in the drawing-room of Madame ----, at six o'clock precisely, the same as if Paris were quite tranquil. The General had not yet returned, but I was enabled to report that he had entered the palace in safety. A moment before the dinner was announced, he returned, and brought the information that the revolt was virtually suppressed, a few desperate individuals, who had thrown themselves into a church, alone holding out. He was in high spirits, and evidently considered the affair a triumph to Louis-Philippe. LETTER V. National Guards in the Court of the Palace.--Unclaimed Dead in the Morgue.--View of the Scene of Action.--A blundering Artillerist.--Singular Spectacle.--The Machinations of the Government--Martial Law.--Violations of the Charter.--Laughable Scene in the Carrousel.--A refractory Private of the National Guard. Dear ----, The day after the contest was closed, I went to the Louvre, where I usually met Mr. M----, who was busy copying. He was almost alone, in the long and gorgeous galleries, as in the days of the cholera; but we got a view of the National Guards that had been concerned in the affair of the previous day, who were drawn up in the court of the palace to receive the thanks of the King. There could not have been five thousand of them, but all might not have been present. From the Louvre I went to took at the principal scene of action. A collection of some of the unclaimed dead was in the Morgue, and every one was allowed to enter. There were fifty or sixty bodies in this place, and among them were a few women and children, who had probably been killed by accident. Nearly all had fallen by gun-shot wounds, principally musket-balls; but a few had been killed by grape. As the disaffected had fought under cover most of the time, I fancy the cavalry did little in this affair. It was whispered that agents of the police were present to watch the countenances and actions of the spectators, with a view to detect the disaffected. As we had several of Napoleon's soldiers at dinner yesterday, and they had united to praise the military character of the position taken by the revellers, I was curious to examine it. The Rue St. Méry is narrow, and the houses are high. The tower of the church is a little advanced, so as to enfilade it, in a manner, and the paving-stones had been used to make barricades, as in 1830. These stones are much larger than our own, are angular, and of a size that works very well into a wall; and the materials being plenty, a breastwork, that is proof against everything but artillery, is soon formed by a crowd. Two streets entered the Rue St. Méry near each other, but not in a right line, so that the approach along each is commanded by the house that stands across its end. One of these houses appears to have been a citadel of the disaffected, and most of the fighting was at and near this spot. Artillery had been brought up against the house in question, which was completely riddled, though less injured by round-shot than one could have thought possible. The windows were broken, and the ceilings of the upper rooms were absolutely torn to pieces by musket-balls, that had entered on the rise. Some twenty or thirty dead were found in this dwelling. I had met Col.--, in the course of the morning, and we visited this spot together. He told me that curiosity had led him to penetrate as far as this street, which faces the citadel of the revolters, the previous day, and he showed me a _porte-cochère_, under which he had taken shelter, during a part of the attack. The troops engaged were a little in advance of him, and he described them as repeatedly recoiling from the fire of the house, which, at times, was rather sharp. The troops, however, were completely exposed, and fought to great disadvantage. Several hundreds must have been killed and wounded at and near this spot. There existed plain proof of the importance of nerve in battle, in a shot that just appeared sticking in the wall of one of the lateral buildings, nearly opposite the _porte-cochère_, where Col.--had taken shelter. The artillerist who pointed the gun from which it had been discharged, had the two sides of the street to assist his range, and yet his shot had hit one of the lateral buildings, at no great distance from the gun, and at a height that would have sent it far above the chimneys of the house at which it was fired! But any one in the least acquainted with life, knows that great allowances must be made for the poetry, when he reads of "charges," "free use of the bayonet," and "braving murderous discharges of grape." Old and steady troops do sometimes display extraordinary fortitude, but I am inclined to think that the most brilliant things are performed by those who have been drilled just long enough to obey orders and act together, but who are still so young as not to know exactly the amount of the risk they run. Extraordinary acts of intrepidity are related of the revolters on this occasion, which are most probably true, as this desperate self-devotion, under a state of high excitement, enters fully into the composition of the character of the French, who are more distinguished for their dashing than for their enduring qualities. The Rue St. Méry exhibited proofs of the late contest, for some distance, but nowhere had the struggle been so fierce as at the house just mentioned. The church had been yielded the last, but it did not strike me that there had been as sharp fighting near it, as at the other place. It was a strange spectacle to witness the population of a large town crowding through its streets, curious to witness the scene of a combat that so nearly touched their own interests, and yet apparently regarding the whole with entire indifference to everything but the physical results. I thought the sympathies of the throng were with the conquered rather than with their conquerors, and this more from admiration of their prowess, than from any feeling of a political character, for no one appeared to know who the revolters were. In the course of the morning I met--in the street. He is one of the justest-minded men of my acquaintance, and I have never known him attempt to exaggerate the ill conduct of his political opponents, or to extenuate the errors of those to whom he belongs. Speaking of this affair, he was of opinion that the government had endeavoured to bring it on, with the certainly that success would strengthen them, but, at the same time, he thought it useless to deny that there was a plot to overturn the present dynasty. According to his impressions, the spontaneous movements of the disaffected were so blended with those that proceeded from the machinations of the government to provoke a premature explosion, that it was not easy to say which predominated, or where the line of separation was to be drawn. I presume this is the true state of the case, for it is too much to say that France is ever free from political plots. The public had been alarmed this morning, by rumours of an intention on the part of government to declare Paris in a state of siege, which is tantamount to bringing us all under martial law. This savours more of the regime Napoleon, than of the promised liberty that was to emanate from the three days. The opposition are beginning to examine the charter, in order to ascertain what their rights are on paper: but what avails a written compact, or indeed any other compact, against the wants and wishes of those who have the power? The Cour de Cassation, however, is said to be composed of a majority of Carlists, and, by way of commentary on the wants of the last two years, the friends of liberty have some hopes yet from these nominees of the Bourbons! We live in a droll world, dear ----, and one scarcely knows on which side he is to look for protection, among the political weathercocks of the period. In order to comprehend the point, you will understand that a clause of the charter expressly stipulates that no one shall be condemned by any "but his natural judges," which clearly means that no extraordinary or unusual courts shall be established for the punishment of ordinary crimes. Now, while it is admitted that martial law brings with it military tribunals and military punishments, it is contended that there is no pretext for declaring martial law in the capital, at a moment when the power of the present government is better assured than it has been at any time since its organization. But the charter solemnly stipulates that the conscription shall be abolished, while conscripts are and have been regularly drafted yearly, ever since the signature of Louis XVIII. was affixed to the instrument. The shops were all open to-day, and business and pleasure are resuming their regular rounds. The National Guards of the _banlieue_, who were actively engaged yesterday, are befêted and be-praised, while the lookers-on affirm that some of them believe they have just been fighting against the Carlists, and that some think they have crushed the Jacobins. All believe they have done a good turn to liberty. I was returning through the Carrousel, when chance made me the spectator of a laughable scene. A body of these troops, honest, well-intentioned countrymen, with very equivocal equipments, were still in the court of the palace. It would seem that one warrior had strayed outside the railing, where he was enjoying a famous gossip with some neighbours, whom he was paying, for their cheer, by a narrative of the late campaign. A sergeant was summoning him back to his colours, but the love of good wine and a good gossip were too strong for discipline. The more dignified the sergeant became, the more refractory was his neighbour, until, at last, the affair ended in a summons as formal as that which would be made to a place besieged. The answer was truly heroic, being rendered into the vernacular, "I won't." An old woman advanced from the crowd to reason with the sergeant, but she could get no farther than "_Ecoutez, Mons. le Sergeant_"--for, like all in authority, he was unreasonable and impatient when his power was called in question. He returned to the battalion, and tried to get a party to arrest the delinquent, but this was easier said than done. The troops evidently had no mind to disturb a neighbour who had just done the state good service, and who was now merely enjoying himself. The officer returned alone, and once more summoned the truant, if possible, more solemnly than ever. By this time the mouth of the delinquent was too full to answer, and he just turned his back on the dignitary, by way of letting him see that, his mind was made up. In the end, the soldier got the best of it, compelling the other to abandon the point. The country people, of whom there were a good many present, looked on the matter seriously, but the Parisians laughed outright. I mention this little incident, for it shows that men are the same everywhere, and because this was an instance of military insubordination directly under the windows of the palace of the King of France, at the precise moment when his friends were boasting that the royal authority was triumphant, which, had it occurred in the interior of America, would have been quoted as proof of the lawlessness of democracy! I apprehend that militia, taken from their daily occupations, and embodied, and this, too, under the orders of their friends and neighbours, are pretty much alike, in their leading characteristics, all over the world. LETTER VI. Aspect of Paris.--Visit to Lafayette.--His demeanour.--His account of the commencement of the Revolt.--Machinations of the Police.--Character of Lafayette.--His remarkable expression to General--.--Conversation on the Revolution of July.--The _Doctrinaires_.--Popular Sympathy in England and on the Rhine.--Lafayette's dismissal from the command of the National Guards.--The Duke of Orleans and his Friends.--Military Tribunals in Paris.--The Citizen King in the Streets.--Obliteration of the _Fleur-de-lis_.--The Royal Equipage.--The Duke of Brunswick in Paris.--His forcible Removal from France.--His Reception in Switzerland.--A ludicrous Mistake. Dear ----, During the excitement of the last three days, I had not bethought me of paying a visit to the Rue d'Anjou: indeed I was under the impression that General Lafayette was at La Grange, for I had understood that he only remained at Paris to attend the funeral of Lamarque. There were rumours of his having been arrested, but these I set down to the marvel-mongers, who are always busy when extraordinary events occur. Just at dusk, I heard, by accident, there was still a chance of finding him in his apartment, and I walked across the river, in order to ascertain the fact for myself. What a difference between the appearance of the streets this evening, and that which they had made on the night of the 5th! Now the bridges were deserted, the garden was empty, and the part of the population that was visible, seemed uneasy and suspicious. The rumour that the government intended to declare Paris in a state of siege, and to substitute military for the ordinary civil tribunals, was confirmed, though the measure was not yet officially announced. This act was in direct opposition to a clause in the charter, as I have told you, and the pretence, in a town in which fifty thousand troops had just quelled a rising of a few hundred men, was as frivolous as the measure itself is illegal. It has, however, the merit of throwing aside the mask, and of showing the world in what manner the present authorities understand a government of the people. A dead calm reigned in the Rue d'Anjou. Apart from the line of _cabriolets de place_, of which there were but three, not a carriage nor a human being was visible in the street. Nothing stood before the _porte-cochère_ of No. 6, a thing so unusual, more especially in critical moments, that I suspected I had been misled, and that I should have a bootless walk. The gate was open, and entering without knocking, I was just turning off the great staircase, to ascend the humbler flight that leads to the well-known door, that door through which I had so lately seen so many dignitaries pressing to enter, when the porter called to me to give an account of myself. He recognised me, however, by the light of the lamp, and nodded an assent. I waited a minute or more, after ringing, before the door was opened by Bastien. The honest fellow let me in on the instant, and, without proceeding to announce me, led the way through the salons to the bed-room of his master. The General was alone with the husband of his grand-daughter, François de Corcelles. The former was seated with his back to the door as I entered; the latter was leaning against the mantel-piece. The "_bonsoir, mon ami_," of the first was frank and kind as usual, but I was immediately struck with a change in his manner. He was calm, and he held out his hand, as Bastien mentioned my name; but, although not seated at his table, he did not rise. Glancing my eyes at him, as I passed on to salute Monsieur de Corcelles, I thought I had never before seen Lafayette wearing so fine an air of majesty. His large, noble form was erect and swelling, and that eye, whose fire age had not quenched, was serenely proud. He seemed prepared to meet important events with the dignity and sternness that marked his principles. A perfect knowledge of these principles, and the intimacy that he had so kindly encouraged, emboldened me to speak frankly. After a few minutes' conversation, I laughingly inquired what he had done with the _bonnet rouge_. The question was perfectly understood, and I was surprised to learn that, in the present instance, there was more foundation for the report than is usually the case with vulgar rumour. He gave the following account of what occurred at la Place de la Bastille. When the procession halted, and the funeral discourses were being delivered, the tumult commenced; in what manner, he was unable to say. In the midst of the commotion, a man appeared on horseback wearing the dreaded _bonnet rouge_. Some one approached him, and invited him to repair to the Hôtel de Ville, in short, to put himself again at the head of the revolt, and offered him a _bonnet rouge_. He took the cap, and threw it into the mud. After this, he entered his carriage to return home, when a portion of the populace took out the horses and drew him to the Rue d'Anjou. On reaching the hotel, the people peaceably withdrew. You will readily suppose I was curious to learn the opinion of General Lafayette concerning the events of the week. The journals of the opposition had not hesitated to ascribe the affair to the machinations of the police, which, justly or not, is openly accused of having recourse to expedients of this nature, with a view to alarm the timid, and to drive them to depend for the security of their persons, and the maintenance of order, on the arm of a strong government. In the recent case it had also been said, that aware of the existence of plots, the ministry had thought it a favourable occasion to precipitate their explosion, taking the precaution to be in readiness with a force sufficient to secure the victory. I have often alluded to that beautiful and gentleman-like feature in the character of Lafayette, which appears to render him incapable of entertaining a low prejudice against those to whom he is opposed in politics. This is a trait that I conceive to be inseparable from the lofty feelings which are the attendant of high moral qualities, and it is one that I have, a hundred times, had occasion to admire in Lafayette. I do not, now, allude to that perfect _bon ton_, which so admirably regulates all his words and deportment, but to a discriminating judgment that does not allow interest or passion to disarm his sense of right. It certainly is a weakness in him not to distinguish sufficiently between the virtuous and the vicious,--those who are actuated like himself by philanthropy and a desire to do good, and those who seek their own personal ends; but this is a sacrifice, perhaps, that all must make who aim at influencing men by the weight of personal popularity. Jefferson has accused Lafayette of a too great desire to live in the esteem of others,[11] and perhaps the accusation is not altogether false; but the peculiar situation in which this extraordinary man has been placed, must be kept in view, while we decide on the merits of his system. His principles forbid his having recourse to the agencies usually employed by those who loose sight of the means in the object, and his opponents are the great of the earth. A man who is merely sustained by truth and the purity of his motives, whatever visionaries may say, would be certain to fail. Popularity is indispensable to the success of Lafayette, for thousands now support him, who, in despite of his principles, would become his enemies, were he to fall back sternly on the truth, and turn his back on all whose acts and motives would not, perhaps, stand the test of investigation. The very beings he wished to serve would desert him, were he to let them see he drew a stern but just distinction between the meritorious and the unworthy. Then the power of his adversaries must be remembered. There is nothing generous or noble in the hostility of modern aristocrats, who are mere graspers after gain, the most debasing of all worldly objects, and he who would resist them successfully must win golden opinions of his fellows, or they will prove too much for him. [Footnote 11: Was Mr. Jefferson himself free from a similar charge?] But I am speculating on principles, when you most probably wish for facts, or, if you must have opinions, for those of Lafayette in preference to my own. When I ventured to ask him if he thought the government had had any agency in producing the late struggle, his answer was given with the integrity and fearlessness that so eminently characterize the man. He was of opinion that there was a plot, but he also thought it probable that the agents of the government were, more or less, mixed up with it. He suspected at the moment, that the man who offered him the _bonnet rouge_ was one of these agents, though he freely admitted that the suspicion was founded more on past experience than on any knowledge of present facts. The individual himself was an utter stranger to him. It had been his intention to quit town immediately after the funeral obsequies were completed, but, added the old man, proudly, "they had spread a rumour of an intention to cause me to be arrested, and I wish to save them the trouble of going to La Grange to seek me." He then went on to tell me what he and his political friends had expected from the demonstration of public opinion, that they had prepared for this important occasion. "Things were approaching a crisis, and we wished to show the government that it must change its system, and that France had not made a revolution to continue the principles of the Holy Alliance. The attempt to obtain signs of popular support at the funeral of Casimir Perier was a failure, while, so great was our success at this procession in honour of Lamarque, that there must have been a new ministry and new measures, had not this unfortunate event occurred. As it is, the government will profit by events. I do not wish to wake any unjust accusations, but, with my knowledge of men and things, it is impossible not to feel distrust."[12] [Footnote 12: It appeared subsequently, by means of a public prosecution, that Vidocq, with a party of his followers, were among the revolters, disguised as countrymen. A government that has an intimation of the existence of a plot to effect its own overthrow, has an unquestionable right to employ spies to counteract the scheme; but if it proceed so far as to use incentives to revolt, it exceeds its legitimate powers.] While we were conversing, General ----, whom I had not seen since the dinner of the previous day, was announced and admitted. He stayed but a few minutes, for, though his reception was kind, the events of the last week had evidently cast a restraint about the manners of both parties. The visit appeared to me, to be one of respect and delicacy on the part of the guest, but recent occurrences, and his close connexion with the King, rendered it constrained; and, though there appeared no evident want of good feeling on either side, little was said, during this visit, touching the "two days," as the 5th and 6th of June are now termed, but that little served to draw from Lafayette a stronger expression of political hostility, than I had ever yet heard from his lips. In allusion to the possibility of the liberal party connecting itself with the government of Louis-Philippe, he said--"_à présent, un ruisseau de sang nous sépare_."[13] I thought General--considered this speech as a strong and a decisive one, for he soon after rose and took his leave. [Footnote 13: "We are now separated by a rivulet of blood."] Lafayette spoke favourably of the personal qualities and probity of his visitor, when he had withdrawn, but said that he was too closely incorporated with the _juste milieu_ to be any longer classed among his political friends. I asked him if he had ever known a true liberal in politics, who had been educated in the school of Napoleon? The General laughingly admitted that he was certainly a bad master to study under, and then added it had been intended to offer General ---- a portfolio, that of the public works I understood him to say, had they succeeded in overturning the ministry. This conversation insensibly led to one on the subject of the revolution of July, and on his own connexion with the events of that important moment. I despair of doing justice to the language of General Lafayette on this occasion, and still less so to his manner, which, though cool and dignified, had a Roman sternness about it that commanded the deepest respect. Indeed, I do not remember ever to have seen him with so much of the externals of a great man as on this evening, for no one, in common, is less an actor with his friends, or of simpler demeanour. But he now felt strongly, and his expressions were forcible, while his countenance indicated a portion of that which was evidently working within. You must be satisfied, however, with receiving a mere outline of what fell from his lips in an uninterrupted explanation that lasted fully half an hour. He accused his opponents, in general terms, of distorting his words, and of misrepresenting his acts. The celebrated saying of "_voici la meilleure des républiques_" in particular, had been falsely rendered, while the circumstances under which he spoke and acted at all, had been studiously kept out of view. It was apropos of this saying, that he entered into the explanations of the causes of the change of dynasty. The crisis which drove the cabinet of Charles X. to the extreme measures that overturned the throne, had been produced by a legislative combination. To effect their end, nearly every opinion, and all the shades of opposition, had united; many, even of those who were personally attached to the Bourbons, resisting their project of re-establishing the _ancien régime_. Most of the capitalists, in particular, and more especially those who were engaged in pursuits that were likely to be deranged by political convulsions, were secretly disposed to support the dynasty, while they were the most zealously endeavouring to reduce its power. The object of these men was to maintain peace, to protect commerce and industry, more especially their own, and, at the same time, to secure to property the control, of affairs. In short, England and her liberty were their models, though some among them had too much good sense to wish to retrograde, as is the case with a party in America, in order to make the imitation more perfect. Those who were for swallowing the English system whole, were called the _doctrinaires_, from their faith in a theory, while the different shades of dissenting opinions were distributed among all those who looked more to facts, and less to reasoning, than their credulous coadjutors. But all were zealous in opposing government under its present system, and with its palpable views. You know that the result was the celebrated ordinances, and a rising of the people. So little was either of these events foreseen, that the first probably astonished and alarmed the friends of the Bourbons, quite as much as it did their enemies. The second was owing chiefly to the courage and zeal of the young men connected with the press, sustained by the pride and daring of the working classes of Paris. The emergency was exactly suited to the _élan_ of the French character, which produced the sympathy necessary to the occasion among the different degrees of actors. With the movements that followed, those who had brought about the state of things which existed, by their parliamentary opposition, had little or nothing to do. Lafayette, himself, was at La Grange, nor did he reach Paris until the morning of the second day. So far from participating in the course of events, most of the deputies were seriously alarmed, and their first efforts were directed to an accommodation. But events were stronger than calculations, and the Bourbons were virtually dethroned, before any event or plan could be brought to bear upon the issue, in either the offensive or defensive. You are now to imagine the throne vacant, the actors in the late events passive spectators of what was to follow, and opportunity for a recurrence to parliamentary tactics. Men had leisure to weigh consequences. Another political crusade menaced France, and it is probable that nothing prevented its taking place, but the manifestations of popular sympathy in England, and on the Rhine. Then there was danger, too, that the bankers and manufacturers, and great landed proprietors, would lose the stake for which they had been playing, by permitting a real ascendancy of the majority. Up to that moment, the mass had looked to the opposition in the deputies as to their friends. In order to entice all parties, or, at least, as many as possible, the cry had been "_la charte_;" and the opposition had become identified with its preservation. The new Chambers had been convened, and, after the struggle was over, the population naturally turned to those who had hitherto appeared in their ranks as leaders. This fragment of the representation became of necessity the repository of all power. Lafayette had, thus far, been supported by the different sections of the opposition; for his influence with the mass to suppress violence, was looked to as of the last importance, by even his enemies. The very men who accused him of Jacobinical principles, and a desire to unsettle society, felt a security under his protection, that they would not have felt without him. Louis-Philippe, you will remember, made use of him, until the trial of the ministers was ended, when he was unceremoniously dismissed from the command of the National Guards, by the suppression of the office.[14] "It would have been in my power to declare a republic," he continued, in the course of his explanations, "and sustained by the populace of Paris, backed by the National Guards, I might have placed myself at its head. But six weeks would have closed my career, and that of the republic. The governments of Europe would have united to put us down, and the Bourbons had, to a great degree, disarmed France. We were not in a state to resist. The two successful invasions had diminished the confidence of the nation, which, moreover, would have been nearly equally divided in itself. But, allowing that we might have overcome our foreign enemies, a result I admit to have been possible, by the aid of the propaganda and the general disaffection, there would have been a foe at home, that certainly would have prevailed against us. Those gentlemen of the Chambers to whom a large portion of the people looked up with confidence, would have thwarted every important measure I attempted, and were there no other means to prevent a republic, _they would have thrown me into the river_." [Footnote 14: The writer has had a hundred occasions to learn, since his return to America, how much truth is perverted in crossing the Atlantic, and how little is really known of even prominent European facts, on this side of the water. It has suited some one to say, that Lafayette _resigned_ the office of commander-in-chief of the National Guards, and the fact is thus stated in most of our publications. The office was suppressed without consulting him, and, it was his impression, at the instigation of the Allied Powers. Something like an awkward explanation and a permission to resign was subsequently attempted.] This last expression is literal, and was twice uttered in the course of the evening. He then went on to add, that seeing the impossibility of doing as he could wish, he had been compelled to acquiesce in the proposal that came nearest to his own views. The friends of the Duke of Orleans were active, particularly M. Lafitte, who enjoyed a great deal of his own confidence, and the Duke himself was free in the expression of the most liberal sentiments. Under these circumstances, he thought it possible to establish a government that should be monarchical in form, and republican in fact. Such, or nearly such, is the case in England, and he did not see why such might not be the case in France. It is true the English republic is aristocratical, but this is a feature that depends entirely on the breadth and independence of the constituency. There was no sufficient reason why France should imitate England in that essential point, and by erecting a different constituency, she would virtually create another polity in fact, adhering always to the same general form. As respects the expression so often cited, he said his words were "_voici la meilleure des républics pour nous_;" distinctly alluding to the difficulties and embarrassments under which he acted. All this time he made no pretension to not having been deceived in the King, who had led him to think he entertained very different principles from those which events have shown to be his real sentiments. Something was then said of the _état de siége_, and of the intentions of the government. "I shall go to La Grange in a few days," observed the General, smiling, "unless they arrest me; there to remain until the 4th of July, when we shall have our usual dinner, I hope." I told him that the long fever under which A---- had suffered rendered a change of air necessary, and that I was making my preparations to quit France temporarily, on another tour. He pressed me to remain until the 4th, and when I told him that we might all be shot for sedition under the present state of things, if we drunk liberal toasts, he laughed and answered, that "their bark was worse than their bite." It was near tea when I took my leave, and returned to the Rue St. Dominique. The streets were gloomy and deserted, and I scarcely met a single individual, in walking the mile between the two hotels. There was a wild pleasure in viewing a town in such an extraordinary state, and I could not help comparing its present moody silence, to the scenes we had witnessed when the government was still so young and dependent as to feel the necessity of courting the people. I have already mentioned to you many of the events of that period, but some of them have been omitted, and some, too, which quite naturally suggest themselves, at this moment, when the King has established military tribunals in his very capital. On one occasion, in particular, I was walking in the Tuileries, when a noise attracted me towards a crowd. It was Louis-Philippe taking a walk! This you will understand was intended for effect--republican effect--and to show the lieges that he had the outward conformation of another man. He wore a white hat, carried an umbrella (I am not sure that it was red), and walked in as negligent a manner as a man could walk, who was working as hard as possible to get through with an unpleasant task. In short, he was condescending with all his might. A gentleman or two, in attendance, could barely keep up with him; and as for the rabble, it was fairly obliged to trot to gratify its curiosity. This was about the time the King of England electrified London, after a reign of exclusion, by suddenly appearing in its streets, walking about like another man. Whether there was any concert in this coincidence or not I do not know. On another occasion, A---- and myself drove out at night to view a bivouac in the Carrousel. We got ourselves entangled in a dense crowd in the Rue St. Honoré, and were obliged to come to a stand. While stationary, the crowd set up a tremendous cry of _Vive le roi!_ and a body of dismounted cavalry of the National Guard passed the carriage windows, flourishing their sabres, and yelling like madmen. Looking out, I saw the King in their midst, patrolling the streets of his good city of Paris, on foot! Now he has declared us all under martial law, and is about to shoot those he dislikes. The _fleur-de-lis_, as you know, is the distinctive symbol of the family of France. So much stress is laid on trifles of this nature here, that Napoleon, with his grinding military despotism, never presumed to adopt one for himself. During the whole of his reign, the coins of the country were decorated on one side with no more than an inscription and a simple wreath, though the gradual progress of his power, and the slow degress by which he brought forward the public, on these points, may yet be traced on these very coins. The first that were struck bore his head, as First Consul, with "_République Française_" on the reverse. After a time it was "_Empereur_," with "_République Française_." At length he was emboldened to put "_Empire Français_" on the reverse, feeling a true royal antipathy to the word republic. During the existing events that first succeeded the last revolution, no one thought of the _fleur-de-lis_ with which the Bourbons had sprinkled everything in and about the capital, not to say France. This omission attracted the attention of some demagogue, and there was a little _émeute_, before the arch of the Carrousel, with threats of destroying these ornaments. Soon after, workmen were employed to deface everything like a _fleur-de-lis_ in Paris. The hotel of the Treasury had many hundreds of them in large stone rosettes, every one of which disappeared before the chisel! The King actually laid down his family arms, causing the brush to be put to all his carriages. Speaking to Lafayette on this subject, he remarked, pithily--"Well, I told his Majesty I would have done this before there was a mob, and I would not have done it afterwards." The Bourbons usually drove with eight horses, but this king rarely appears with even six; though that number is not offensive, the other being the regal style. Some time since, before the approach of the late crisis, I saw the coachman of the palace, quite early, or before the public was stirring, exercising with eight. It is to be presumed that the aspect of things, the pears, and the Duchess of Berri, compelled the leaders to be taken off. A day or two after this event, I dined in company with a deputy, who is also a distinguished advocate, who made me laugh with an account of a recent freak of another sovereign, that has caused some mirth here. This advocate was employed in the affair, professionally, and his account may be depended on. You know that shortly after the revolution of 1830, the people of Brunswick rose and deposed their Duke, bestowing the throne, or arm-chair, for I know not the official term, on his brother. This Duke of Brunswick is the grandson of him who figured in the wars of the _old_ revolution, and the son of him who was killed at Quatre Bras. His grandmother was a sister of George III, and his aunt was the wife of George IV; the latter being his cousin, his uncle, and his guardian. The deposed prince retired to Paris, if it can be called retirement to come from Brunswick here. After some time, the police was informed that he was busy in enrolling men to make a counter-revolution in his own states. He was warned of the consequences, and commanded to desist. The admonition was disregarded, and after exhausting its patience, the government proceeded so far as to order him to quit Paris. It was not obeyed. I must now tell you, that a few years previously the Duke of Brunswick had visited Paris, and apprehending assassination, for some cause that was not explained, he had obtained from the police one of its agents to look out for the care of his person. The man had been several weeks in this employment, and knowing the person of the contumacious prince, when it was determined to resort to force, he was sent with the gendarmes, expressly that he might be identified. A party, accordingly, presented themselves, one fine morning, at the hotel which had the honour to contain his Serene Highness, demanding access to his person, in the name of the police. No one was hardy enough to deny such an application, and the officers were introduced. They found the indomitable prince, in his morning gown and slippers, as composed as if he were still reigning in Brunswick, or even more so. He was made acquainted with their errand, which was, neither more nor less than to accompany him to the frontier. The great-nephew of George III, the cousin and nephew of George IV, the cousin of William IV, and the Ex-duke of Brunswick, received this intelligence with a calm entirely worthy of his descent and his collaterals, treating the commissary of police, _de haut en bas_. In plain English, he gave them to understand he should not budge. Reverence for royal blood was at last overcome by discipline, and seeing no alternative, the gendarmes laid their sacrilegious hands on the person of the prince, and fairly carried him down stairs, and put him, dressing-gown, slippers, and all, into a _fiacre_. It was a piteous sight to see a youth of such high expectations, of a lineage so ancient, of a duchy so remote, treated in this rude and inhospitable manner! Like Cæsar, who bore up against his enemies until he felt the dagger of Brutus, he veiled his face with his handkerchief, and submitted with dignity, when he ascertained how far it was the intention of the Minister of the Interior to push matters. M. ---- did not tell us whether or not he exclaimed, "_Et tu, Montalivet!_" The people of the hotel manifested a proper sympathy at the cruel scene, the _filles de chambre_ weeping in the corridors, as _filles de chambre_, who witnessed such an indecent outrage, naturally would do. The Duke was no sooner in the _fiacre_ than he was carried out of town, to a post-house on the road to Switzerland. Here he was put in a caleche, and transported forthwith to the nearest frontier. On reaching the end of the journey, the Duke of Brunswick was abandoned to his fate, with the indifference that marked the whole outrage; or, as might have been expected from the servants of a prince, who had so lately shown his respect for rank by sending his own relatives out of his kingdom, very much in the same fashion. Happily, the unfortunate Duke fell into the hands of republicans, who, as a matter of course, hastened to pay their homage to him. The mayor of the commune appeared and offered his civilities; all the functionaries went forth with alacrity; and the better to show their sympathy, a young German traveller was produced, that he might console the injured prince by enabling him to pour out his griefs in the vernacular of his country. This bit of delicate attention, however, was defeated by an officious valet, who declared that ever since his dethronement, his master had taken such an aversion to the German language, that it threw him into fits even to hear it! Of course the traveller had the politeness to withdraw. While these things were in progress, the Duke suddenly disappeared, no one knew whither. The public journals soon announced the fact, and the common conjecture was, that he had returned to Paris. After several weeks, M. ---- was employed to negotiate an amnesty, promising, on the part of his principal, that no further movements against the duchy should be attempted in France. The minister was so far prevailed on as to say, he could forgive all, had not the Duke re-entered the kingdom, after having been transported to Switzerland, by the order of the government, in the manner you have heard. M. ---- assured the minister, _parole d'honneur_, that this was altogether a mistake. "Well, then, convince me of this, and his Serene Highness shall have permission to remain here as long as he pleases." "His Serene Highness, _having never left France, cannot have re-entered it_." "Not left France!--Was he not carried into Switzerland?" "Not at all: liking Paris better, he chose to remain here. The person you deported, was a young associate, of the same stature of the Duke, a Frenchman, who cannot speak a word of German!" A compromise was made on the spot, for this was a matter to be hushed up, ridicule being far more potent, in Paris, than reason. This is what you may have heard alluded to, in some of the journals of the day, as the _escapade_ of the Duke of Brunswick. LETTER VII. Public Dinner.--Inconsiderate Impulses of Americans.--Rambles in Paris.--The Churches of Paris.--View from the leads or Notre Dame.--The Place Royale.--The Bridges.--Progress of the Public Works.--The Palaces of the Louvre and the Tuileries.--Royal Enclosures in the Gardens of the Tuileries.--Public Edifices.--Private Hotels and Gardens. My Apartments in the house of the Montmorencies.--Our other Residences.--Noble Abodes in Paris.--Comparative Expense of Living in Paris and New York.--American Shopkeepers, and those of Europe. Dear ---- The time between the revolt of the two days, and the 17th July, passed in the usual manner. The court-martial had made considerable progress in condemning men to be shot, but appeals were made to the Carlist Court of Cassation, which finally adjudged the whole proceedings to be illegal. In the mean time we got up the dinner for the 4th, Lafayette coming from La Grange expressly to make one among us. As for this dinner, I have only to say that one of its incidents went to prove how completely a body of Americans are subject to common and inconsiderate impulses, let the motive be right or wrong,--of how low estimate character is getting to be among us, and to determine me never to be present at another. It is a painful confession, but truth compels me to say, that, I believe, for the want of a condensed class, that are accustomed to sustain each other in a high tone of feeling and thinking, and perhaps from ignorance of the world, no other people, above the illiterate and downright debased, are so easily practised on and cajoled, as the great mass of our own. I hope I have never been addicted to the vice of winning golden opinions by a sacrifice of sentiments or principles; but this dinner has given me a surfeit of what is called "popularity," among a people who, while affecting to reduce everything to a standard of their own creating, do not give themselves time or opportunity to ascertain facts, or weigh consequences. The weather was pleasant and warm for several weeks, about the close of June and the commencement of July, and, although a slight shade has been cast over our enjoyments by the re-appearance of the cholera, in a greatly diminished degree however, I do not remember to have passed the same period of time in Paris with so much satisfaction to myself. The town has been empty, in the usual signification of the term, and the world has left us entirely to ourselves. After completing the morning's task, I have strolled in the gardens, visited the churches, loitered on the quays, rummaged the shops of the dealers in old furniture and other similar objects. The number of these shops is great, and their stores of curious things incredible. It appears to me that all France has poured her relics of the old system into the warehouses of the capital. The plunder of the chateaux and hotels has enriched them to a degree that must be witnessed to be understood, and to me it is matter of surprise that some of our wealthy travellers do not transfer many of these treasures to the other side of the Atlantic. I usually spend an our or two with M----, in the gallery of the Louvre, from two to four: he returns home with me to dinner; and at seven, which, at this season in this latitude, is still broad day, we issue forth for a promenade. Paris, I have often told you, is a picturesque town, and offers endless sources of satisfaction, beyond its living throngs, its society, its theatres, and its boulevards. The public displays at the Academy, and its meetings of science, taste, and philanthropy are little to my taste, being too artificial and affected, and I have found most enjoyment in parts of this little world that I believe travellers usually overlook. The churches of Paris want the odour, the genial and ecclesiastical atmosphere and the devout superstition that rendered those of Italy so strikingly soothing and pleasant; but they are huge piles, and can always be visited with pleasure. Notre Dame de Paris is a noble monument, and now that the place of the archbishop is destroyed, one is likely to get better views of it, than is apt to be the case with these venerable edifices. A few evenings since M----, and myself ascended the towers, and seating ourselves on the leads, looked down, for near an hour, on the extraordinary picture beneath. The maze of roofs, out-topped, here and there, by black lacquered-looking towers, domes, pavilions of palaces, and, as is the case with the Tuileries and Louvre, literally by a mile of continuous structures; the fissures of streets, resembling gaping crevices in rocks; the river meandering through the centre of all, and spanned by bridges thronged by mites of men and pigmy carriages; the crowds of images of the past; the historical eminences that surround the valley of the capital; the knowledge of its interior; our acquaintance with the past and the present, together with conjectures for the future, contributed to render this a most impressive evening. The distant landscape was lost, and even quarters of the town itself were getting to be obscure before we descended, helping singularly to increase the effect produced by our speculations on those ages in which Paris had been the scene of so many momentous events. We have also wandered among the other relics of antiquity, for the present structure of Notre Dame is said to have already stood seven centuries. The Place Royale is one of the most singular quarters of the town, and although often visited before, we have again examined it, for we are beginning to regard objects with the interest that one is apt to feel on leaving a favourite spot, perhaps for ever. This square, unique in its kind, occupies the site of the ancient residences of the kings of France, who abandoned it in consequence of the death of Henri II, in a tournament. Henri IV caused the present area to be enclosed by hotels, which are all of brick, a novelty in Paris, and built in the style of his reign. Fashion has, however, been stronger than the royal will; and noble ranges of rooms are to be hired here at a fourth of the prices that are paid for small and crowded apartments near the Tuileries. The celebrated arsenal, where Sully so often received his royal master, is near this place, and the Bastile stood at no great distance. In short, the world has moved, within the last two centuries, directly across the town. I can never tire of speaking of the bridges of Paris. By day and by night have I paused on them to gaze at their views; the word not being too comprehensive for the crowds and groupings of objects that are visible from their arches. They are less stupendous and magnificent, as public works, than the bridges of London, Florence, Dresden, Bordeaux, and many other European towns, the stream they have to span being inconsiderable; but their number, the variety of their models, even the very quaintness of some among them, render them, as a whole, I think, more interesting than any others that I know. The Pont de Jena is as near perfection in all respects, perhaps, as a bridge well can be. I greatly prefer it to the celebrated Ponte della Trinità, at Florence. Some enormous statues are about to be placed on the Pont Louis XVI, which, if they do not escape criticism, will, at least, I think, help the picturesque. I have now known Paris a sufficient time to watch, with interest, the progress of the public works. The arch at the Barrière de Neuilly has, within my observation, risen several feet, and approaches its completion. The wing, a counterpart of the gallery, that is to enclose the Carrousel, and finally to convert the Louvre and the Tuileries into a single edifice, has advanced a long distance, and preparations are making to clear the area of the few buildings that still remain. When this design shall be executed, the Palace of the Kings of France will contain considerably more than a mile of continuous buildings, which will be erected around a large vacant area. The single room of the picture-gallery is of itself a quarter of a mile in length! During the heat of the late finance discussion, all sorts of unpleasant things were said of America, for the money-power acts here as it does everywhere else, proving too strong even for French _bon ton_, and, failing of facts and logic, some of the government writers had recourse to the old weapon of the trader, abuse and vituperation. Among other bold assertions, one of them affirmed, with a view to disparage the vaunted enterprise of the Americans, that while they attempted so much in the way of public works, nothing was ever finished. He cited the Capitol, a building commenced in 1800, and which had been once destroyed by fire in the interval, as an example. As one of the controversionalists, on this occasion, I certainly had no disposition to debase my mind, or to descend from the level of a gentleman who was compelled to bow before no political master, in order to retort in kind; but as is apt to be the case under provocations of this sort, the charge induced me to look about, in order to see what advantages the subjects of a monarchy possess over us in this particular. The result has made several of my French friends laugh, and acknowledge that they who "live in glass houses should not throw stones." The new palace of the Louvre was erected more than two centuries since. It is a magnificent pile, surrounding a court of more than a quarter of a mile in circumference, possessing many good statues, fine bas-reliefs, and a noble colonnade. In some respects, it is one of the finest palaces in Europe. The interior is, however, unfinished, though in the course of slow embellishment. Now a principal and very conspicuous window, in the pavilion that caps the entrance to the Carrousel, is unglazed, the weather being actually excluded by the use of _coarse unplaned boards_, precisely in the manner in which one is apt to see a shingle palace embellished at home. One hundred francs would conceal this deformity. The palace of the Tuileries was built by Catherine di Medici, who was dead before the present United States were first peopled. It is a lantern-like, tasteless edifice, composed of different pavilions, connected by _corps de bâtimens_ of different sizes, but of pretty uniform ugliness. The stone of this vicinity is so easily wrought, that it is usual to set it up, in blocks, and to work out the capitals and other ornaments in the wall. On a principal portion of this palace, _these unwrought blocks still remain_, just enough being finished to tell the observer that the design has never been completed. I shall not go beyond the palaces to make out our case, though all Europe abounds with these discrepancies in taste, and with similar neglect. As a rule, I believe we more uniformly push through our public undertakings than any other people, though they are not always executed with the same taste, on the same scale, or as permanently, perhaps, as the public works that are undertaken here. When they yield profit, however, we need turn our backs on no nation. It is a curious commentary on the change in the times, that Louis-Philippe has dared to do that which Napoleon, with all his power, did not deem it expedient to undertake, though it is known that he chafed under the inconvenience, which it was desirable to both to be rid of. Until quite lately, the public could approach as near the palace windows, as one usually gets to those of any considerable dwelling that stands on a common street. The Emperor complained that he could not look out of a window, into his own gardens, without attracting a crowd: under this evil, however, he reigned, as consul and emperor, fourteen years, for there was no obvious way of remedying it, but by taking possession of a part of that garden, which so long had been thrown open to the public, that it now considered it as its own. Sustained by the congregated wealth of France, and secretly by those nations with whom his predecessor had to contend, Louis-Philippe has boldly broken ground, by forming two little gardens beneath the palace windows, which he has separated from the public promenade by ditches and low railings, but which serves effectually to take possession, to keep the tiger at a distance, and to open the way for farther improvement. In the end there will probably be a wing of the palace thrown forward into the garden, unless, indeed, the whole of the present structure should be destroyed, to make place for one more convenient and of purer architecture. Paris enjoys a high reputation for the style of its public edifices, and, while there is a very great deal to condemn, compared with other capitals, I think it is entitled to a distinguished place in this particular. The church of the Magdalen (Napoleon's Temple de la Gloire, on which the names of distinguished Frenchmen were to be embossed in letters of bronze), is one of the finest modern edifices of Europe. It is steadily advancing to completion, having been raised from beneath the cornices during my visit. It is now roofed, and they are chiseling the bas-reliefs on the pediment. The Gardes-Meubles, two buildings, which line one entire side of the Place Louis Seize, or de la Concorde, as it is now termed, and which are separated by the Rue Royale, are among the best structures of the town. Some of their ornaments are a little meretricious, but the prevalent French features of their architecture are more happy than common. Only one of these edifices belongs to the public, and is now the hotel of the Admiralty, the other having been erected for symmetry, though occupied as private dwellings, and actually private property. The Bourse, or Exchange, is another modern building that has an admirable general effect. Of the private hotels and private gardens of Paris, a stranger can scarcely give a just account. Although it is now six years since I have been acquainted with the place, they occasion surprise daily, by their number, beauty, and magnificence. Relatively, Rome, and Florence, and Venice, and Genoa, may surpass it, in the richness and vastness of some of their private residences; but, Rome excepted, none of them enjoy such gardens, nor does Rome even, in absolute connection with the town abodes of her nobles. The Roman villas[15] are almost always detached from the palaces, and half of them are without the walls, as I have already described to you. The private gardens of Paris certainly cannot compare with these villas, nor, indeed, can those which belong to the public; but then there is a luxury, and a quiet, and a beauty, about the five or six acres that are so often enclosed and planted in the rear of the hotels here, that I do not think any other Christian city can show in equal affluence. The mode of living, which places the house between court and garden, as it is termed here, is justly esteemed the perfection of a town residence; for while it offers security, by means of the gate, and withdraws the building from the street--a desideratum with all above the vulgar--it gives space and room for exercise and beauty, by means of the verdure, shrubbery, trees, and walks. It is no unusual thing for the French to take their repasts, in summer, within the retirement of their gardens, and this in the heart of one of the most populous and crowded towns of Europe. The miserable and minute subdivisions of our own towns preclude the possibility of our ever enjoying a luxury as great, and yet as reasonable as this; and if, by chance, some lucky individual should find the means to embellish his own abode and his neighbourhood, in this way, some speculation, half a league off, would compel him to admit an avenue through his laurels and roses, in order to fill the pockets of a club of projectors. In America, everybody sympathises with him who makes money, for it is a common pursuit, and touches a chord that vibrates through the whole community; but few, indeed, are they who can enter into the pleasures of him who would spend it elegantly, rationally, and with good taste. If this were the result of simplicity, it would, at least, be respectable; but every one knows that the passion at home is for display--finery, at the expense of comfort and fitness, being a prevalent evil. [Footnote 15: This word has a very different signification in Italian, from that which we have given it, in English. It means a _garden_ in the country; the _house_ not being necessarily any part of it, although there is usually a _casino_ or pavilion.] The private hotels are even more numerous than the private gardens, land not always having been attainable. Of course these buildings vary in size and magnificence, according to the rank and fortune of those who caused them to be constructed, but the very smallest are usually of greater dimensions than our largest town-houses, and infinitely better disposed; though we have a finish in many of the minor articles, such as the hinges, locks, and the wood-work in general, and latterly, in marbles, that is somewhat uncommon, even in the best houses of France; when the question, however, is of magnificence, we can lay no claim to it, for want of arrangement, magnitude, and space. Many American travellers will render you a different account of these things, but few of our people stay long enough to get accurate notions of what they see, and fewer still have free access to the sort of dwellings of which I now speak. These hotels bear the names of their several owners. In the instances of the high nobility, it was usual to build a smaller hotel, near the principal structure, which was inhabited by the inferior branches of the family, and sometimes by favoured dependants (for the French, unlike ourselves, are fond of maintaining the domestic relations to the last, several generations frequently dwelling under the same roof), and which it is the fashion to call the _petit hôtel_. Our first apartments were in one of these _petits hôtels_, which had once belonged to the family of Montmorency.[16] The great hotel, which joined it, was inhabited, and I believe owned, by an American, who had reversed the usual order of things by coming to Europe to seek his fortune. Our next abode was the Hôtel Jumilliac, in a small garden of a remote part of the Faubourg St. Germain. This was a hotel of the smaller size, and our apartments were chiefly on the second floor, or in what is called the third story in America, where we had six rooms besides the offices. Our saloon, dining-room, &c. had formerly been the bed-chamber, dressing-room, and ante-chamber of Madame la Marquise, and gave one a very respectful opinion of the state of a woman of quality, of a secondary class, though I believe that this family too was highly allied. From the Rue St. Maur, we went into a small country-house on the bank of the Seine, about a league from the gates of Paris, which, a century since, was inhabited by a Prince de Soubise, as _grand veneur_ of Louis XV, who used to go there occasionally, and eat his dinner, in a very good apartment, that served us for a drawing-room. Here we were well lodged, having some two or three-and-twenty well-furnished rooms, offices included. From this place we went into the Rue des Champs-Elysées, where we had a few rooms in a hotel of some size. Oddly enough, our predecessor in a portion of these rooms was the Prince Polignac, and our successor Marshal Marmont, two men who are now proscribed in France. We have been in one or two apartments in nameless edifices since our return from Germany, and we are now in a small hotel in the Rue St. Dominique, where in some respects we are better lodged than ever, though compelled to occupy three floors. Here the salon is near thirty feet in length, and seventeen high. It is panelled in wood, and above all the doors, of which, real and false, there are six, are allegories painted on canvass, and enclosed in wrought gilded frames. Four large mirrors are fixtures, and the windows are vast and descend to the floor. The dining-room, which opens on a garden, is of the same size, but even loftier. This hotel formerly had much interior gilding, but it has chiefly been painted over. It was built by the physician of the Duc d'Orléans, who married Madame de Montesson, and from this fact you may form some idea of the style maintained by the nobles of the period; a physician, at that time, being but a very inferior personage in Europe. [Footnote 16: This ancient family still exists, though much shorn of its splendour, by the alienation of its estates, in consequence of the marriage of Charlotte de Montmorency, heiress of the eldest line, with a Prince of Condé, two centuries since. By this union, the estates and chateaux of Chantilly, Ecouen, etc., ancient possessions of the house, passed into a junior branch of the royal family. In this manner Enghien, a _seigneurie_ of the Montmorencies, came to be the title of a prince of the blood, in the person of the unfortunate descendant of Charlotte of that name. At the present time, besides the Duc de Montmorency, the Duc de Laval-Montmorency, the Duc de Luxembourg, the Prince de Bauffremont, the Prince de Tancarville, and one or two more, are members of this family, and most of them are, or were before the late revolution, peers of France. The writer knew, at Paris, a Colonel de Montmorency, an Irishman by birth, who claimed to be the head of this celebrated family, as a descendant of a cadet who followed the Conqueror into England. There are two Irish peers, who have also pretensions of the same sort, though the French branches of the family look coolly on the claim. The title of "First Christian Baron," is not derived from antiquity, ancient as the house unquestionably is, but from the circumstance that the barony of Montmorency, from its local position, in sight of Paris, aided by the great power of the family, rendered the barons the first in importance to their sovereign. The family of Talleyrand-Perigord is so ancient, that, in the middle ages, when a King demanded of its head, "Who made you Count de Perigord?" he was asked, by way of reply, "Who made you King of France?"--God! I think I should have hesitated on the score of taste about establishing myself in a house of the Montmorencies, but Jonathan has usually no such scruples. Our own residence was but temporary, the hotel being public.] In describing these residences, which have necessarily been suited to very moderate means, I have thought you might form some idea of the greater habitations. First and last, I may have been in a hundred, and, while the Italian towns do certainly possess a few private dwellings of greater size and magnificence, I believe Paris contains, in proportion, more noble abodes than any other place in Europe. London, in this particular, will not compare with it. I have been in some of the best houses in the British capital, but very few of them rise to the level of these hotels in magnificence and state, though nearly all surpass them in comfort. I was at a ball given by the Count ----, when thirteen rooms _en suite_ were opened. The Duke of Devonshire can hardly exceed this. Prince Borghese used, on great occasions, to open twenty, if I remember right, at Florence, one of which was as large as six or eight of our ordinary drawing-rooms. Although, as a whole, nothing can be more inconvenient or irrational than an ordinary town-house in New York, even we excel the inhabitants of these stately abodes, in many of the minor points of domestic economy, particularly in the offices, and in the sleeping-rooms of the second class. Your question, as to the comparative expense of living at home and of living in Europe, is too comprehensive to be easily answered, for the prices vary so materially, that it is difficult to make intelligent comparisons. As between Paris and New York, so long as one keeps within the usual limits of American life, or is disposed to dispense with a multitude of little elegancies, the advantage is essentially with the latter. While no money will lodge a family in anything like style, or with suites of rooms, ante-chambers, &c. in New York, for the simple reason, that buildings which possess these elegancies, or indeed with fine apartments at all, have never yet been erected in the country; a family can be better lodged in a genteel part of the town for less money, than it can be lodged, with equal room and equal comforts, in a genteel quarter of Paris; always excepting the inferior distribution of the rooms, and other little advantages, such as the convenience of a porter, &c. all of which are in favour of the latter place.[17] Food of all kinds is much the cheapest with us, bread alone excepted. Wines can be had, as a whole, better and cheaper in New York, if obtained from the wine-merchant, than in any European town we have yet inhabited. Even French wines can be had as cheap as they can be bought here, for the entrance-duty into the country is actually much less than the charges at the gates of Paris. The transportation from Bordeaux or Champagne, or Burgundy, is not, as a whole, essentially less than that to New York, if indeed it be any less. All the minor articles of table luxuries, unless they happen to be of French growth, or French fabrications, are immeasurably cheaper in America than here. Clothes are nominally much cheaper here than with us; but neither the French nor the English use habitually as good clothes as we; nor are the clothes generally as well made. You are not, however, to suppose from this that the Americans are a well-dressed people; on the contrary, we are greatly behind the English in this particular, nor are our men, usually, as well attired as those of Paris. This is a consequence of a want of servants, negligent habits, greediness of gain, which monopolizes so much of our time as to leave little for relaxation, and the high prices of articles, which prevent our making as frequent calls on the tailor, as is the practice here. My clothes have cost me more in Europe, however, than they did at home, for I am compelled to have a greater variety, and to change them oftener. [Footnote 17: In New York, the writer has a house with two drawing-rooms, a dining-room, eight bed-rooms, dressing-rooms, four good servants' rooms, with excellent cellars, cisterns, wells, baths, water-closets, etc. for the same money that he had an apartment in Paris, of one drawing-room, a cabinet, four small and inferior bed-rooms, dining-room, and ante-chamber; the kitchens, offices, cellars, etc. being altogether in favour of the New York residence. In Paris, water was bought in addition, and a tax of forty dollars a year was paid for inhabiting an apartment or a certain amount of rent; a tax that was quite independent of the taxes on the house, doors, and windows, which in both cases were paid by the landlord.] Our women do not know what high dress is, and consequently they escape many demands on the purse, to which those of Paris are compelled to submit. It would not do, moreover, for a French belle to appear every other night for a whole season in the same robe, and that too looking bedraggled, and as jaded as its pretty wearer. Silks and the commoner articles of female attire are perhaps as cheap in our own shops, as in those of Paris: but when it comes to the multitude of little elegances that ornament the person, the salon, or the boudoir, in this country, they are either wholly unknown in America, or are only to be obtained by paying treble and quadruple the prices at which they may be had here. We absolutely want the caste of shopkeepers as it exists in Europe. By shopkeepers, I mean that humble class of traders who are content with moderate profits, looking forward to little more than a respectable livelihood, and the means of placing their children in situations as comfortable as their own. This is a consequence of the upward tendency of things in a young and vigorous community, in which society has no artificial restrictions, or as few as will at all comport with civilization, and the buoyancy of hope that is its concomitant. The want of the class, notwithstanding, deprives the Americans of many elegancies and some comforts, which would be offered to them at as low rates as they are sold in the countries in which they are made, were it not for the principle of speculative value, which enters into nearly all of our transactions. In Paris the man or woman who sells a duchess an elegant bauble, is half the time content to eat his humble dinner in a small room adjoining his shop, to sleep in an _entresol_ over it, and to limit his profits by his wants. The pressure of society reduces him to this level. With us the thing is reversed, and the consumer is highly taxed, as a necessary result. As we become more familiar with the habits of European life, the demand will gradually reduce the value of these minor articles, and we shall obtain them at the same relative prices, as ordinary silks and shawls are now to be had. At present it must be confessed that our shops make but indifferent figures compared with those of London and Paris. I question if the best of them would pass for more than fourth-rate in London, or for more than third-rate here; though the silk-mercers at home might possibly be an exception to the rule. The amount of all my experience, on this point, is to convince me, that so long as one is willing to be satisfied with the habits of American life, which include a great abundance, many comforts, and even some few elegancies, that are not known here, such as the general use of carpets, and that of many foreign articles which are excluded from the European markets by the different protective systems, but which, also, do not know a great many embellishments of living that are common all over Europe, he can get along with a good deal less money in New York, than in Paris; certainly, with less, if he mix much with the world. EXCURSION UP THE RHINE, &c. LETTER VIII. Preparations for leaving-Paris.--Travelling arrangements.--Our Route.--The Chateau of Ecouen.--The _Croisée_.--Senlis.--Peronne.--Cambray.--Arrival at the Frontier.--Change in the National Character.--Mons.--Brussels.--A Fête.--The Picture Gallery.--Probable Partition of Belgium. Dear ----, We had been preparing for our summer excursion some time, but were unable to get away from Paris before the 18th of July. Our destination was undetermined, health and pleasure being the objects, though, a portion of our party having never seen Belgium, it was settled to visit that country in the commencement of the journey, let it end where it might The old caleche was repaired for the purpose, fitted with a new rumble to contain Francois and Jetty (the Saxon _femme de chambre_, hired in Germany), the _vache_ was crammed, sacks stowed, passport signed, and orders were sent for horses. We are a little apt to boast of the facilities for travelling in America, and, certainly, so long as one can keep in the steam-boats or on the rail-roads, and be satisfied with mere velocity, no part of the world can probably compete with us, the distances considered; but we absolutely want the highest order of motion, which, I think, beyond all question, is the mode of travelling post. By this method, your privacy is sacred, you are master of your own hours, going where you please, and stopping when you please; and, as for speed, you can commonly get along at the rate of ten miles in the hour, by paying a trifle in addition, or you can go at half that rate should it better suit your humour. A good servant and a good carriage are indispensable, and both are to be had at very reasonable rates, in this part of the world. I never felt the advantage of this mode of travelling, and I believe we have now tried nearly all the others, or the advantages of the Parisian plan of living, so strongly as on the present occasion. Up to the last moment, I was undecided by what route to travel. The furniture of the apartment was my own, and it was our intention to return to Paris, to pass the winter. The luggage had been stowed early in the morning, the carriage was in the court ready to hook on, and at ten we sat down quietly to breakfast, as usual, with scarcely a sign of movement about us. Like old campaigners, the baggage had been knowingly reduced to the very minimum admissible, no part of the furniture was deranged, but everything was in order, and you may form some idea of the facilities, when you remember that this was the condition of a family of strangers, that in half an hour was to start on a journey of several months' duration, to go--they knew not whither. A few minutes before ten, click-clack, click-clack, gave notice of the approach of the post-horses. The _porte-cochère_ opened, and two votaries of the old-fashioned boot enter, each riding one and leading another horse. All this is done quietly, and as a matter of course; the cattle are put before the carriage without a question being asked, and the two liveried roadsters place themselves by the sides of their respective beasts. In the mean time, we had entered the caleche, said adieu to the cook, who was left in charge of the apartment, a trust that might, however, equally well have been confided to the porter, kissed our hands to the family of M. de V----, and the other inmates of the hotel, who crowded the windows to see us off. Up to this moment, I had not decided even by what road to travel! The passport had been taken out for Brussels, and last year, you may recollect, we went to that place by Dieppe, Abbeville, Douay, and Arras. The "Par quelle route, monsieur?" of the postilion that rode the wheel-horse, who stood with a foot in the stirrup, ready to get up, brought me to a conclusion. "A St. Denis!" the question compelling a decision, and all my doubts terminating, as doubts are apt to terminate, by taking the most beaten path. The day was cool and excessively windy, while the thermometer had stood the previous afternoon but one, at 93°, in the shade. We were compelled to travel with the carriage-windows closed, the weather being almost wintry. As we drove through the streets, the common women cried after us, "They are running away from the cholera;" an accusation that we felt we did not merit, after having stood our ground during the terrible months of April and May. But popular impulses are usually just as undiscriminating as the favouritism of the great: the mistake is in supposing that one is any better than the other. When we had reached the city where the Kings of France are buried, it was determined to sleep at Senlis, which was only four posts further, the little town that we visited with so much satisfaction in 1827. This deviation from the more direct road led us by Gonesse, and through a district of grain country, that is less monotonous than most of the great roads that lead from Paris. We got a good view of the chateau of Ecouen, looking vast and stately, seated on the side of a distant hill. I do not know into whose hands this princely pile has fallen since the unhappy death of the last of the Condés, but it is to be hoped into those of the young Duc D'Aumale, for I believe he boasts the blood of the Montmorencies, through some intermarriage or other; and if not, he comes, at least, of a line accustomed to dwell in palaces. I do not like to see these historical edifices converted into manufactories, nor am I so much of a modern utilitarian as to believe the poetry of life is without its correcting and useful influences. Your cold, naked utilitarian, holds a sword that bruises as well as cuts; and your sneaking, trading aristocrat, like the pickpocket who runs against you in the crowd before he commits his theft, one that cuts as well as bruises. We were at Ecouen not long before the death of its last possessor, and visited its wide but untenanted halls with strong interest. The house was first erected by some Montmorency, or other, at or near the time of the crusades, I believe; though it has been much altered since. Still it contains many curious vestiges of the taste of that remote age. The old domestic who showed us through the building was as quaint a relic as anything about the place. He had accompanied the family into exile, and passed many years with them in England. In courtesy, respect, and delicate attention, he would have done credit to the court of Louis XIV; nor was his intelligence unworthy of his breeding. This man, by the way, was the only Frenchman whom I ever knew address an Englishman (or, as in my case, one whom he mistook for an Englishman), by the old appelation of _milord_. The practice is gone out, so far as my experience extends. I remember to have learned from this courteous old servant, the origin of the common term _croisée_, which is as often used in large houses as that of _fenêtre_. At the period when every man's heart and wishes were bound up in the excitement and enterprise of the crusades, and it was thought that heaven was to be entered sword in hand, the cross was a symbol used as a universal ornament. Thus the aperture for a window was left in the wall, and a stone cross erected in the centre. The several compartments in the casements came from the shape of the cross, and the term _croisée_ from _croix_. All this is plain enough, and perhaps there are few who do not know it; but gazing at the ornaments of Ecouen, my eyes fell on the doors, where I detected crosses in the most familiar objects. There is scarcely a panelled door, twenty years old, in all America, that does not bear this evidence of the zeal, and, if you will, the superstition of those distant ages! The form of the door is made by the exterior stile; a cross is then built within it, and the open spaces are filled with panels, as, in the case of the window, it is filled with the sash. The exactitude of the form, the antiquity of the practice, its obvious connexion with the common feeling, and the inability to account for the usage in any other way, leave no doubt, in my mind, of its origin, though I do not remember to have ever met with such an account of it, in any author. If this conjecture be true, we Protestants, while fastidiously, not to say foolishly, abstaining from the use of a symbol that prejudice has led us to think peculiarly unsuited to our faith, have been unconsciously living with it constantly before our eyes. But the days of puritan folly and puritan vice (there is nothing more vicious than self-righteousness, and the want of charity it engenders) are numbered, and men are beginning to distinguish between the exaggerations of fanaticism and the meek toleration of pure Christianity. I can safely say that the lowest, the most degraded, and the most vulgar wickedness, both as to tone and deed, and the most disordered imaginations, that it has ever been my evil fortune to witness, or to associate with, was met with at school, among the sons of those pious forefathers, who fancied they were not only saints themselves, but that they also were to be the progenitors of long lines of saints. It is a melancholy truth, that a gentleman-like training does more for the suppression of those abominations than all the dogmas that the pilgrims have imported into the country. We reached Senlis in time for dinner, and while the repast was getting ready, we strolled through the place, in order to revive the sensations with which we had visited it five years before. But, alas! these are joys, which, like those of youth are not renewable at pleasure. I could hardly persuade myself it was the same town. The walls, that I had then fancied lined with the men-at-arms of the Charleses of France, and the English Henries and Edwards, had now lost all their peculiarities, appearing mean and common-place; and as to the gate, from which we had almost heard the trumpets of the heralds, and the haughty answer to a bold summons of surrender, we absolutely had difficulty in persuading ourselves that we had found it at all. Half Europe had been roamed over since the time when, fresh from America, we made the former visit, predisposed to gaze with enthusiasm at every relic of a former age and a different state of society. If we were disagreeably disappointed in the antiquities of the town, we were as agreeably disappointed in the inn. It was clean, gave us a good dinner, and, as almost invariably proves to be the case in France, also gave us good beds. I do not remember ever to have been more fatigued than by the five posts between Paris and this place. The uneven _pavés_, the random and careless driving of the postillions, with whom it is a point of honour to gallop over the broken streets of the villages, besides having a strong fellow-feeling for the smiths, always makes the eight or ten posts nearest to Paris, much the most disagreeable part of a journey to or from the French capital. We dined at six, exhausted the curiosities of Senlis, and went to bed by daylight! The next morning was fresh and bland, and I walked ahead of the carriage. A wood-cutter was going to the forests to make faggots, and we fell into discourse. This man assured me that he should get only ten sous for his day's work! The view of the principal church-tower of Senlis as beautiful, and, in a slight degree, it carried the mind back to the fifteenth century. You have travelled to and from Paris with me so often, that I can only add we found the same fatiguing monotony, on this occasion, as on all the others. We reached Peronne early, and ordered beds. Before dinner we strolled around the ramparts, which are pleasant of themselves though the place stands in a marsh, which renders its position not only strong, but strongly disagreeable. We endeavoured in vain to find some features to revive the pictures of "Quentin Durward." There was no sign of a soldier in the place, though barracks were building. The French are evidently less jealous of this frontier, than of that on the east, or the one next the Austrians. The next morning we breakfasted at Cambray. Here we found a garrison, and considerable activity. The citadel is well placed, and the esplanade is a pretty walk. We visited the cathedral, which contains a monument to Fenelon, by our friend David. We were much gratified by this work, which ranks among his best. Near Valenciennes we broke a tire, and were detained two hours. Here the garrison was still stronger, the place in better condition, and the troops mounted guard with their marching accoutrements about them; all of which, I presume, was owing to the fact, that this is the last fortified town on the road. We did not get to the frontier until seven, and the French postilions broke another bolt before we got fairly rid of them, compelling us to wait an hour to have it mended. We were now in a low wet country, or one perfectly congenial to cholera; it was just the hour when the little demons of miasma are said to be the most active, and to complete the matter, we learned that the disease was in the village. The carriage-windows were closed, while I walked about, from door to door, to pacify uneasiness by curiosity. Use, however, had made us all tolerably indifferent, and little P---- settled the matter by remarking it was nothing after all, for here only two or three died daily, while at Paris there had been a thousand! Older heads than his, often take material facts more in a lump than this. The change in the national character is so evident, immediately on crossing into Belgium, as to occasion surprise. The region was, at no remote period, all Flanders. The same language is still spoken, the same religion professed in both countries, and yet a certain secret moral influence appears to have extended itself from the capital of each country, until they have met on the frontier, where both have been arrested within their proper geographical limits. We had come into this village on a gallop, driven with the lighthearted _étourderie_ of French vanity, and we left it gravely, under the guidance of postilions who philosophically smoked, as their cattle trotted along like elephants. It was quite late when we reached Mons, where we found a good house, of unexceptionable neatness: of course we were in no haste to quit it the next day. The distance to Brussels was so short that we took it leisurely, reaching the Hôtel de l'Europe at three. It was a fête, on account of the anniversary of the arrival of Leopold, who had now reigned just a twelvemonth. He passed our window, while we were still at table, on his way to the theatre. The royal cortege was not very brilliant, consisting of four carriages, each drawn by two horses, which, by the way, are quite enough for any coachman to manage, in descending the formidable hill that leads from the great square. You have now been with me three times, in Brussels, and I shall not go over the old ground again. We revisited some of the more prominent places of interest, and went to a few others that were neglected on former occasions. Among the rest we took a look at the public picture-gallery, which greatly disappointed us. The Flemish school naturally awakened our expectations, but a fine Gerard Douw and a few other old paintings were all that struck us, and as a whole, we gave a preference to the paintings of the present day. The King appears to be personally popular, even those who have no faith in the duration of the present order of things, and who politically are his opponents, speaking well of him. The town has but few strangers, though the presence of a court renders it a little more gay than it was last year. The aspect of everything is gloomy, for the country may be again engaged in a war of existence, in a week. Many still think the affair will end in a partition; France, Prussia, and Holland getting the principal shares. I make no doubt that everybody will profit more by the change than they who brought it about. LETTER IX. Malines.--Its Collection of Pictures.--Antwerp.--The Cathedral.--A Flemish Quack.--Flemish Names.--The Picture Gallery at Antwerp.--Mr. Wapper's Carvings in Wood.--Mr. Van Lankeren's Pictures.--The Boulevards at Brussels.--Royal Abodes.--Palace of the Prince of Orange.--Prince Auguste d'Ahremberg's Gallery of Pictures.--English Ridicule of America. Dear ----, After a consultation with François, I sent the carriage to get a set of entirely new wheels, Brussels being a coach-making town, and taking a _voiture de remise_, we drove down to Antwerp. While the horses rested, we looked at the pictures in Malines. The "Miraculous Draught of Fishes" is thought by many to be the chef-d'oeuvre of Rubens, but, after conceding it a hardy conception and magnificent colouring, I think one finds too much of the coarse mannerism of the artist, even for such a subject. The most curious part of the study of the different schools is to observe how much all have been influenced by external objects, and how completely conventional, after all, the _beau idéal_ of an artist necessarily becomes. It would be impossible, for one who knew the several countries, to mistake the works of Murillo, Rubens, or Raphael, for the works of artists of different schools, and this without reference to their peculiar manners, but simply as Flemings, Spaniards, and Italians. Rubens, however, is, I think, a little apt to out-Dutch the Dutch. He appears to me to have delighted in the coarse, while Raphael revelled in the pretty. But Raphael could and often did step out of himself and rise to the grand; and then he was perfect, because his grandeur was chastened. We reached Antwerp some time before dinner. The situation of the town was singular, the Dutch holding the citadel; the place, which was peopled by their enemies, as a matter of course, lying quite at their mercy. The road from Brussels is partly commanded by them, and we saw their flag rising out of the low mounds--for in Flanders the art of fortifying consists in burrowing as deep as possible--as we approached the town. Several Dutch gun-boats were in the river, off the town, and, in the reaches of the Scheldt below, we got glimpses of divers frigates and corvettes, riding at anchor. As an offset to the works of their enemies, the Belgians had made a sort of entrenched camp, by enclosing the docks with temporary ramparts, the defences of the town aiding them, in part, in effecting their object. One of our first visits was to the cathedral. This beautiful edifice had escaped without material damage from the recent conflicts, though the garrison of the citadel have thrown a few shots at its tower, most probably with a view to drive curious eyes out of it, the great height enabling one to get a complete bird's-eye view of what is going on within their walls. The celebrated Rubenses were cased in massive timber to render them bomb-proof, and, of course, were invisible. Processions of peasants were passing from church to church, the whole day, to implore succour against the cholera, which, by the way, and contrary to all rule for a low and moist country, is said to be very light here. The Flemings have the reputation of being among the most bigoted Catholics, and the most ignorant population of Europe. This accounts, in some measure, for the existence of the latter quality among the first inhabitants of New York, most of whom were from Flanders, rather than from Holland. I have found many of our names in Antwerp, but scarcely one in Holland. The language at home, too, is much nearer the Flemish than the Dutch; though it is to be presumed that there must have been some colonists from Holland, in a province belonging to that nation. I listened to-day to a fellow vending quack medicines and vilely printed legends, to a song which, tune and all, I am quite sure to have heard in Albany, when a schoolboy. The undeviating character and habits of the people, too, appear to be very much like those which existed among ourselves, before the influx of eastern emigration swallowed up everything even to the _suppan_. I remember to have heard this same quack singing this same song, in the very same place in June, 1828, when we first visited Antwerp. The effect was exceedingly ludicrous, for it seemed to me, that the fellow had been occupying the same spot, employed in the same pursuits, for the last five years, although the country had been revolutionized. This is also a little characteristic, for some of our own Communipaws are said to believe we are still the property of the United Provinces. The Flemish language has many words that are French in the spelling, but which have entirely different meanings, representing totally different things or ideas. _De_ is one. In French this word, pronounced _der_, without dwelling on the last letter, is a preposition generally meaning "of." Before a name, without being incorporated with it, it is an invariable sign of nobility, being even frequently affixed, like the German _von_, to the family name, on attaining that rank. In Flemish it is an article, and is pronounced precisely as a Dutchman is apt to pronounced _the_, meaning the same. Thus De Witt, means _the_ White, or White; the Flemings using the article to express things or qualities in the abstract, like the French. Myn Heer De Witt is just the same as Monsieur le Blanc, or Monsieur Du Bois, in French; one of which means Monsieur White, and the other Monsieur Wood. So nearly does this language resemble the English, that I have repeatedly comprehended whole sentences, in passing through the streets. Now in New York, we used to think the Dutch had become corrupted by the English, but I fancy that the corruption has been just the other way. We had made the acquaintance of a Flemish artist of extraordinary merit, at Paris; and this gentleman (Mr. Wappers) kindly called this morning to take us to see the gallery. The collection is not particularly large, nor is it rich in cabinet pictures, being chiefly composed of altar-pieces taken from churches. The works are principally those of Rubens, Vandyke, and a few of the older masters. The Vandykes, I think, are the best. On the whole, it struck me there were more curious than pleasing pictures in this gallery, although they are all valuable as belonging to a school. The study of the "Descent from the Cross" is among them, and it gave me more pleasure than anything else. Vandyke certainly rose in our estimation, after this close comparison with his great rival: he is altogether more human than Rubens, who is a sort of Dutch giant in the art; out of the natural proportions, and always a giant. Mr. Wappers permitted us to see his own painting-room. He is of the school of the great Flemish masters, and, I think, quite at the head of his profession, in many of its leading points. It was curious to trace in the works of this young artist the effects of having Rubens and Vandyke constantly before him, corrected by the suggestions of his own genius. His style is something between the two; broader and bolder than Vandyke, and less robust than Rubens. We went the round of the churches, for, if Italy be the land of marbles, Belgium is, or rather has been, the very paradise of those who carved in wood. I have seen more delicate and highly-finished works of this sort, in a small way, in other countries; as in the high reliefs of Santa Maria della Salute, at Venice; but nowhere else is so much attempted, or, indeed, so much achieved in this branch of art, as here. Many of the churches are quite surrounded by oak confessionals that are highly and allegorically ornamented; though, in general, the pulpits contain the most elaborate designs, and the greatest efforts of this curious work. One at Brussels has the Conversion of St. Paul, horse, rider and all, larger than life. The whole is well wrought, even to the expression. But the best specimens of carving in wood that I remember, were a few figures over the door of an hospital that we saw in 1828, though I now forget whether it was at Gorcum or at Breda. One often sees statuary of great pretension and a wide-spread reputation, that is wanting in the nature, simplicity, and repose of these figures. We went to see a collection of pictures owned by Mr. Van Lankeren. It is a very fine gallery, but there are few paintings by very great artists. A Van der Heyden (an old New York name, by the way), surpassed anything I know, in its atmosphere. Poussin, and our own artist Cole, excel in this high merit, but this picture of Van der Heyden has a cold, gray transparency that seems actually to have transferred a Dutch atmosphere to the canvass. We returned to Brussels in time to dine. At Malines I stood with admiration beneath the great tower, which possesses a rare majesty. Had it been completed according to the original plan, I believe it would have been the highest church-tower in Europe. In the evening we had a call from Mr. and Mrs. ----, and made an appointment to visit the palace of the Prince of Orange in the morning. I was up betimes next day, and took a walk round the park, and on the upper boulevards. The injuries done in the fight have been, in some measure, repaired, but the place was deserted and melancholy. The houses line one side of the boulevards, the other being open to the fields, which are highly cultivated and unenclosed. This practice of cutting off a town like a cheese-paring is very common on the continent of Europe, and the effect is odd to those who are accustomed to straggling suburbs, as in America and England. At ten we went to the palace, according to appointment. The royal abodes at Brussels are very plain edifices, being nothing more than long unbroken buildings, with very few external ornaments. This of the Prince of Orange stands in the park, near that of the King, and is a simple parallelogram with two gates. The principal apartments are in the same form, being an entire suite that are entered on one side and left on the other. There is great good taste and elegance in the disposition of the rooms. A few are rich, especially the _salle de bal_, which is really magnificent. The place was kept just as it had been left by its last occupants, Leopold, with good taste, not to say good feeling, religiously respecting their rights. A pair of gloves belonging to the princess were shown us, precisely on the spot where she had left them; and her shawls and toys were lying carelessly about, as if her return were momentarily expected. This is true royal courtesy, which takes thrones without remorse, while it respects the baubles. This palace had many good pictures, and among others a Raphael. There was a Paul Potter or two, and a couple of pictures, in the same stile, as pendants, by a living artist of the name of Verboeckhoven, whose works sustained the comparison wonderfully well. We were shown the window at which the robber entered who stole the jewels of the princess; an event that has given room to the enemies of the house of Nassau to torture into an accusation of low guilt against her husband.[18] I have never met a gentleman here, who appeared to think the accusation worthy of any credit, or who treated it as more than the gossip of underlings, exaggerated by the agents of the press. [Footnote 18: This affair of the jewels of the Princess of Orange is one proof, among many others, of the influence of the vilest portion of mankind over their fellow-creatures. It suited the convenience and views of some miscreant who pandered for the press (and the world is full of them), to throw out a hint that the Prince of Orange had been guilty of purloining the jewels to pay his gambling debts, and the ignorant, the credulous, and the wonder-mongers, believed a charge of this nature, against a frank and generous soldier! It was a charge, that, in the nature of things, could only be disproved by detecting the robber, and one that a prince and a gentleman would scarcely stoop to deny. Accident favoured the truth. The jewels have, oddly enough, been discovered in New York, and the robber punished. Now, the wretch who first started this groundless calumny against the Prince of Orange, belongs exactly to that school whose members impart to America more than half her notions of the distinguished men of Europe.] From the palace of the Prince of Orange we went to the house of Prince Auguste d'Ahremberg, to see his collection. This is one of the best private galleries in Europe, though not particularly large. It is rich in the works of Teniers,[19] Woovermans, Both, Cuyp, Potter, Rembrandt, and the other masters of the country. Among others is a first-rate Gerard Douw (another New York name). [Footnote 19: One hears of occasionally discovering good pictures in the streets, an event that actually once occurred to the writer. Shortly after the revolution of 1830, in passing through the Carrousel, he bought a female portrait, that was covered with dirt, but not materially injured. Finding it beautifully painted, curiosity led him to question the man who had sold it. This person affirmed that it was a portrait of the wife of David Teniers painted by himself. He was not believed, of course, and the thing was forgotten, until two picture-dealers, who accidentally saw it, at different times, affirmed that it was by Teniers, though neither knew the original of the likeness. On examining the catalogues, the writer found that such a picture had existed in Paris, before the revolution, and that it was now lost. But this picture was square, while that was oval and much larger. The dealer was questioned again, on the appearance of the picture, without giving him any clue to the object, and he explained the matter at once, by saying that it had once been oval, but the canvass getting an injury, he had reduced it to its present form. Since then, an engraving has been discovered that scarce leaves a doubt as to the originality of the portrait.] I passed the evening at the house of an English gentleman, where the master of the last-named gallery was one of the company. A guest, a Sir ----, amused me by the peculiarly _British_ manner in which he conveyed a few remarks on America. Speaking of a countrywoman of ours, who had lately been at Brussels, he said that she called standing up to dance, "taking the floor," and he was curious to know if it were a usual form of expression with us. I had to tell him, we said a horse "took the track," in racing, and as this lady came from a racing region, she might have used it, _con amore_, especially in the gallopade. Capt. ----, of the navy, once called out to the ladies of a quadrille to "shove off," when he thought the music had got the start of them; and it is lucky that this Sir ---- did not hear him, or he would have set it down at once as an Americanism. These people are constantly on the hunt for something peculiar and ridiculous in Americans, and make no allowance for difference in station, provincialisms, or traits of character. Heaven knows that we are not so very original as to be thus ruthlessly robbed of any little individuality we may happen to possess. LETTER X. School System in America.--American Maps.--Leave Brussels.--Louvain.--Quarantine.--Liége.--The Soleil d'Or.--King Leopold and Brother.--Royal Intermarriages.--Environs of Liége.--The Cathedral and the Church of St. Jacques.--Ceremonies of Catholic Worship.--Churches of Europe.--Taverns of America.--Prayer in the Fields.--Scott's error as regards the Language spoken in Liége.--Women of Liége.--Illumination in honour of the King. Dear ----, In the morning the Director-General of Public Instruction called to obtain some information on the subject of the common school system in America. I was a little surprised at this application, the Finance controversy having quite thrown me into the shade at the Tuileries, and this court being just now so dependent on that of France. You will smile at this opinion, but even facts are subject to such circumstances, and great men submit to very little influences occasionally.[20] The old ground of explaining the power of the States had to be gone over, and the affair was disposed of by agreeing that written querries should be sent to Paris. I had a similar application from a French functionary not long since. A digest of the facts, as they are connected with the State of New York, was accordingly prepared, and handed to the Minister of Public Instruction. This gentleman rose in debate with the document in his hand, and got on well enough until he came to the number of children in the schools (near half a million), which appeared to him to be so much out of proportion to whole numbers (a little exceeding two millions) that, without hesitation, he reduced them on his own responsibility one half! As a proof that no more was meant than to keep within reasonable bounds, he immediately added, "or all there are." Now this is a fair specimen of the manner in which America is judged, her system explained, and her facts curtailed. In Europe everything must be reduced to a European standard, to be even received. Had we been Calmucks or Kurds, any marvel might go down; but being deemed merely deteriorated Europeans, tanned to ebony, our facts are kept closely within the current notions. Such a disproportion between adults and minors being unknown in this hemisphere, it was at once set down as an American exaggeration, to pretend to have them in the other. What were our official returns to a European prejudice! [Footnote 20: A few months before this, a friend, not a Frenchman, called on the writer at Paris. He began to make inquiries on the subject of American Parliamentary Law, that were entirely out of the track of his usual conversations, and finally submitted a series of written questions to be answered. When the subject was disposed of, the writer asked his friend the object of these unusual investigations, and was told that they were for the use of a leading Deputy, who was thoroughly _juste milieu_. Surprised at the name, the writer expressed his wonder that the application had not been made to a certain agent of the American government, whose name had already figured before the public, as authority for statistical and political facts against him. The answer was, in substance, that those facts were intended for _effect_!] Not long since an artist of reputation came to me, in Paris, with a view to get a few hints for a map of the Hudson, that had been ordered as an illustration of one of our books. He was shown all the maps in my possession, some of which were recent and sufficiently minute. I observed some distrust in his manner, and in the end, he suggested that an old French map of the Canadas, that he had in his pocket, might possibly be more accurate than those which had just been received from America. The map was produced, and, as might have been expected, was utterly worthless; but an intimation to that effect was not well received, as the artist had not been accustomed to consider the Americans as map-makers. At length I was compelled to show him Poughkeepsie laid down on his map directly opposite to Albany, and to assure him gravely that I had myself travelled many a time in a north and south direction, from sunrise to sunset, in order to go from one of these places to the other, and that they were eighty miles asunder! We left Brussels at noon, and reached Louvain at three. Though not taken so completely by surprise as we were last year, the town-house still gave us great pleasure. They were at work repairing it, and the fresh stones gave it a mottled look, but, on the whole, it is one of the most extraordinary edifices I know. It is a sort of condensation of quaintness, that is quite without a rival even in this land of laboured and curious architecture. The little pavilion of the Prince of Orange, that lies on the road, was still deserted and respected. I dare say his fishing-rods and fowling-pieces are intact, while his inheritance is shorn of half its glory. There was a quarantine before entering the Prussian states on account of the cholera, and having understood that we should gain in time after quitting Brussels, beyond which the malady has not yet extended, we went no farther than Thirlemont, where we passed the night. The place is insignificant, and the great square was chiefly occupied by "awkward squads" of the new levies, who were drilling as fast as they could, in readiness for the Dutch. The Belgians have reached Protocol No. 67, and they begin to think it is most time now to have something more substantial. They will find King William of the true "hard-kopping" breed. The next morning we posted down to Liége in time to take a late breakfast. The road from Brussels to this place has run through a fertile and well-cultivated country, but the scene changed like magic, as soon as we got a glimpse of the valley of the Meuse. Liége has beautiful environs, and the town is now the seat of industry. Coal-pits abound in the immediate vicinity, and iron is wrought in a hundred places. As we drove through the antique and striking court of the venerable episcopal palace, and emerged on the great square, we found the place alive with people, and our arrival at the Soleil d'Or produced a sensation that seemed inexplicable. Landlord, laquais, populace and all, ran to greet us, and people were hurrying to the spot in every direction. There was nothing to be done but to wait the result patiently, and I soon saw by the cold looks of the servants, and the shrug of François, who had jumped down to order rooms, that there was mutual disappointment. Everybody turned their backs upon us, and there we sat in the shadow of neglect, after having momentarily shone in the sunshine of universal observation. It had been merely ascertained that we were not the King of the Belgians and his brother the Grand Duke of Saxe-Cobourg-Gotha. The Soleil d'Or, which like other suns, is most apt to shine on the great, veiled its face from us, and we were compelled to quit the great square, and to seek more humble lodgings. These were soon obtained at the Black Eagle, a clean and good house. I went to the police immediately with my passport, and found that one of our five days of quarantine had been comfortably gotten rid of at Thirlemont. These quarantines are foolish things, and quite easily evaded. You have been told the manner in which, last year, instead of spending five times twenty-four hours in a hut, shut up with a Russian Princess, I drove into the court of our own hotel in Paris on the evening of the fifth day, and M----, you will remember, merely turned the flanks of a sentinel or two, by walking a mile in the fields. We were advised, on this occasion, to have our passport _viséd_ at Brussels, the moment we arrived, and the intermediate time would have counted on the frontier, but being in no haste, we preferred proceeding regularly. The next day the town filled rapidly, and about noon the cannon announced the entrance of the King. A worse salute was never fired; but his Majesty is greeted with smiling faces, which is, probably more to his liking. He is certainly a prudent and respectable man, if not a great one; and just now very popular. I met him and his brother in the streets, the day after their arrival: they were in an open carriage and pair, with two boys, the sons of the Duke, on the front seat. Leopold has a grave and thoughtful face, and is far from being as well-looking as his brother, who is a large comely man; not unlike the Duke Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, so well known in America. All the princes of the Saxon duchies that I have seen, are large, well-formed men, while those of Saxe Royal, as the kingdom is called, are the reverse. A diplomatic man, here, once remarked to me, that this rule held good as to most of the protestant and catholic princes, throughout Europe, the close intermarriages of the latter in his opinion, affecting the stock. The imagination has had something to do with this notion, for there are certainly many exceptions on both sides, if, indeed, it be a rule at all. I think, there is little doubt that the habits of the mind, mode of living, and climate, contribute essentially to vary the physiognomy; but I cannot subscribe fully to the influence of these intermarriages, which, by the way, are nearly, if not quite, as circumscribed among the Protestants as among the Catholics. The portion of Europe that is governed by princes, is divided among forty-four different states,[21] of whom twenty-eight are Protestant, one a Greek, one a Mahomedan, and the rest are Catholics. These forty-four sovereigns claim to be descended from nineteen different roots: thus, the direct _male_ descendants of Hugh Capet occupy the thrones of France, Spain, Naples, Lucca, and Portugal; the latter being derived from an illegitimate son of a Duke of Burgundy, before the accession of the Bourbon branch. The houses of Austria, Baden, Tuscany, and Modena, are derived from a Duke of Alsace, who flourished in the seventh century. I was mistaken in a former letter, in saying that the family of Lorraine is different from that of Habsbourg, for it is said to be derived in the male line equally from this Prince of Alsace. The Hohenzollerns are on the throne of Prussia, and possess the two little principalities of that name; while the Emperor of Russia is merely a Prince of Holstein. These families have been intermarrying for a thousand years, and it is not possible that they should have entirely escaped some personal peculiarities; still, as a whole, they are quite as fine physical specimens of humanity, as the average of their subjects. The Princes of Russia are singularly fine men; the house of Denmark well-looking; the Saxons, the royal branch excepted, more than usually so; the house of Wurtemburg very like the English family; the Bourbons, as a family, are a fine race; the Austrians peculiar, and less comely, though the women are often quite handsome; Don Miguel is a little beauty, _very mild and gentleman-like in his appearance_, though Lady ----, who sat next him at dinner, on a certain occasion, assured me she saw nothing but blood and rapine in his countenance! Her father, Lord ----, one of the ablest men of his time, and one familiar with high political events, gravely assured me he gave implicit credence to the tales we have heard of the outrages committed by this prince, and which, if true, render him a fit subject for the gallows. But I have seen so much of the exaggeration of factions, that incredulity, perhaps, has got to be a fault with me. I longed to tell Lord ---- what I had heard, in England, under his very nose, of himself! Among other absurdities, I had, shortly before this very conversation, heard a respectable Englishman affirm that such was the _morgue aristocratique_ of this nobleman, that he compelled his wife and daughters to walk backwards, in quitting his presence, as is done at court! This was said of a man, whom I found to be of more simple, off-hand, unpretending, gentleman-like deportment, whose demeanour had more of the nice tact which neither offends by superciliousness, nor wounds by condescension, than that of any other man of rank in England. To return to our subject;--the Austrian face is, certainly, getting to be prevalent among the southern catholic families, for all of them are closely allied to the house of Habsbourg by blood, but I do not see any more in the _physique_ of the Saxon Dukes than the good old Saxon stamina, nor aught in the peculiar appearance of the royal branch but an accident. [Footnote 21: This excludes Lichtenstein, Monaco, and Greece.] Three or four days of leisure have enabled us to look very thoroughly at the exterior of Liége, which is certainly an interesting town, with lovely environs. There are some very good old houses along the banks of the river, and a few of the churches are noble edifices. The cathedral and the church of St. Jaques, in particular, are venerable and interesting structures; and I stood beneath their lofty arches, listening to the chants of the choir, and inhaling the odours of the incense, with a satisfaction that never tires. I sometimes wish I had been educated a Catholic, in order to unite the poetry of religion with its higher principles. Are they necessarily inseparable? Is man really so much of a philosopher, that he can conceive of truth in its abstract purity, and divest life and the affections of all the aids of the imagination? If they who strip the worship of God of its factious grace, earnestly presented themselves in the garb of moral humility, rendering their familiar professions conformable to their general tenets, and stood before us as destitute of self-esteem as they are of ornament, one might not so much feel the nakedness of their rites; but, as a rule, the less graceful the forms and the more intense the spirituality of the minister of the altar become, the higher is his tone of denunciation and the more palpable his self-righteousness. In point of fact, when the proper spirit prevails, forms, of themselves, become of little account; and when men begin to deem them otherwise, it is proof rather of the want, than of the excess, of the humility and charity which are the inseparable companions of faith. I do not say that I would imitate all the unmeaning and irreverent practices of the Romish church; and least of all could one wish to see the devout and solemn manner of the Protestant ministering at the altar supplanted by the unintelligible mumblings of the Latin breviaries: but why have we denounced the holy symbol of the cross, the ornaments of the temple, the graceful attire, and the aid of music? It is impossible, I think, for the American, who has visited Europe, not to feel the want of edifices reared in honour of God, which everywhere exists in his own country. I do not mean churches, in which the comfort and convenience of the pew-holders have been mainly consulted, for these pious speculations abound; but _temples_ to mark a sense of the superiority of the Deity, and which have been reared in his honour. It may be easy enough to account for the absence of such buildings, in a country so peopled and still so young, but this does not make the deficiency the less obvious. In this hemisphere, scarcely a village is approached, that the high roof and towers of a church do not form its nucleus, the temple appearing to spread its protection over the humbler abodes of men. The domes, the pointed and lofty arches, and the Gothic tracery of cathedrals, soar above the walls of cities, and everywhere man is congregated, he appears to seek shelter under the wide-spreading wings of the church. It is no argument to say that true religion may exist without these edifices, for infidelity may also exist without them, and if it be right or useful to honour God at all, in this manner, it is a right and a usefulness to which we have not yet attained. The loftiest roofs of an American town are, invariably, its taverns; and, let metaphysics get over the matter as it may, I shall contend that such a thing is, at least, unseemly to the eye. With us it is not Gog and Magog, but grog or no grog; we are either a tame plane of roofs, or a _pyramid_ in honour of brandy and mint-juleps. When it comes to the worship of God, each man appears to wish a nut-shell to contain himself and his own shades of opinion; but when there is question of eating and drinking, the tent of Pari Banou would not be large enough to hold us. I prefer large churches and small taverns. There are one or two usages, especially, of the Romish church, that are not only beautiful, but which must be useful and salutary. One is the practice of leaving the church open at all hours, for the purposes of prayer. I have seldom entered one of these vaulted, vast, and appropriate Houses of God, without finding fewer or more devotees kneeling at the different altars. Another usage is that of periodical prayer, in the fields, or wherever the peasants may happen to be employed, as in the _angelus_, &c. I remember, with pleasure, the effect produced by the bell of the village church, as it sent its warning voice, on such occasions, across the plains, and over the hills, while we were dwellers in French or Italian hamlets. Of all these touching embellishments of life, America, and I had almost said, Protestantism, is naked; and in most cases, I think it will be found, on inquiry, naked without sufficient reason. The population of Liége is still chiefly Catholic, I believe, although the reign of the ecclesiastics has ceased. They speak an impure French, which is the language of the whole region along this frontier. Scott, whose vivid pictures carried with them an impress of truth that misled his readers, being by no means a man of either general or accurate attainment, out of the immediate circle of his peculiar knowledge, which was Scottish traditions, has represented the people of Liége, in Quentin Durward, as speaking Flemish; an error of which they make loud complaints, it being a point on which they are a little sensitive. A poet may take great licences, and it is hypercriticism to lay stress on these minor points when truth is not the aim; but this is a blunder that might, as well as not, have been spared, and probably would have been, had the author given himself the trouble to inquire into the fact. But for the complaints of the Liégeois, the error would not have been very generally known, however; certainly, not by me, had I not visited the place. The women of Liége appear to labour even more than usual for this part of Europe. They are employed in field-labour, everywhere; but in the towns, more attention is paid to the great distinctions between the employments of the sexes. Here, however, I saw them toiling in the coal-yards, and performing the offices of the common porters. They were much employed in unloading the market-boats, and yet they are far from being either coarse or ugly. The men are short, but sturdy. The average stature appears to be about five feet five and a half inches, but even this, I think, exceeds the average stature of the French. The town has been illuminated two nights in succession, in honour of the King. Every one is occupied with his approaching marriage with the Princess Louisa of France, or as it is now the fashion to say, the Princess Louisa of Orleans--for since the revolution of 1830, there is no longer a King, nor any Children of France. It would have been better had more essential points been attended to and the old names retained. In England matters are differently managed, for there the government is always one of King, Lords, and Commons, though it is constantly fluctuating, and two of the parties are usually cyphers. LETTER XI. Leave Liége.--Banks of the Mense.--Spa.--Beautiful Promenades.--Robinson Crusoe.--The Duke of Saxe-Cobourg.--Former magnificence of Spa.--Excursions in the vicinity.--Departure from Spa.--Aix-la-Chapelle.--The Cathedral.--The Postmaster's Compliments.--Berghem.--German Enthusiasm.--Arrival at Cologne. Dear ----, On the fourth day of our quarantine, we left Liége, if not with clean bills of health, with passport bearing proof about it that would enable us to enter Prussia the next morning. The King and his brother having laid all the horses in requisition, we did not get away before two; but once on the road, our postilions drove like men who had reaped a double harvest. The route lay for some distance along the banks of the Meuse, and the whole region was one of exquisite landscape beauties. An intensely dark verdure--a road that meandered through the valley, occasionally shifting from bank to bank--hill-sides covered with fruit-trees and fragrant with flowers--country-houses--hamlets--cottages--with every appearance of abundance and comfort, and back-grounds of swelling land, that promised equal beauty and equal affluence, were the principal features of the scene. The day was as fine as possible, and, everything bearing a leaf having just been refreshed with a recent shower, we glided through this fairy region with something like enthusiasm with which we had formerly journeyed in Switzerland and Italy. The Meuse, however, was soon abandoned for a tributary, and, after proceeding a few leagues, the character of the country gradually changed, although it still continued peculiar and beautiful. The intensity of the verdure disappeared in a pale, but still a decided green--the forest thickened--the habitations no longer crowded the way-side, and we appeared to be entering a district, that was altogether less populous and affluent than the one we had left, but which was always neat, picturesque, and having an air of comfort. We were gradually, but almost imperceptibly ascending. This lasted for four hours, when, reaching a country-house, the road turned suddenly at a right angle, and ran for near a mile through an avenue of trees, bounded by open meadows. At the termination of this avenue we dashed into the streets of a small, well-built, neat, and compact village, that contained about one hundred and fifty dwellings, besides three or four edifices of rather more than usual pretensions. This was the celebrated Spa, a watering-place whose reputation was once co-extensive with civilization. We drove to an inn, where we dined, but finding it crowded and uncomfortable. I went out and hired a furnished house by the day, putting our own servants, with an assistant, in possession of the kitchen. Next morning, perceiving that I had been too hasty, and that our lodgings were too confined, I discharged them and took a better. We got a dining-room, two drawing-rooms, several bed-rooms, with offices, etc., all neat and well-furnished, for a Napoleon a day. I mention these things as they serve to show you the facilities a traveller enjoys in this part of the world. Nearly every house in Spa is to be had in this manner, fitted for the reception of guests, the proprietor occupying a small building adjoining, and usually keeping a shop, where wine and groceries may be had. Servants can be engaged at any moment, and one is thus enabled to set up his own _ménage_ at an hour's notice. This mode is more economical for a large family, than living at an hotel, vastly more comfortable, and more respectable. Dinners can be had from the taverns, if desired. François being something of a cook, with the aid of the Spa assistant, we lived entirely within ourselves. You will remember that in hiring the house by the day, I reserved the right to quit it at any moment. Spa, like most other places that possess chalybeate waters, stands in the centre of a country that can boast but little of its fertility. Still, time and cultivation have left it the character of pale verdure of which I have just spoken, and which serves for a time to please by its novelty. The hue looked neither withered nor sickly, but it was rather that of young grasses. It was a ghostly green. The eye wanders over a considerable extent of naked fields, when one is on the steep wooded hills, under whose very brows the village is built, and I scarcely can recall a spot where a stronger impression of interminable vastness is left, than I felt while gazing at the illimitable swells of land that stretch away towards France. The country is said to be in the mountains of the Ardennes, and once there was the forest through which the "Boar of Ardennes" was wont to roam; but of forest there is now none; and if there be a mountain, Spa must stand on its boundless summit. High and broken hills do certainly appear, but, as a whole, it is merely an upland region. The glory of Spa has departed! Time was when the idle, the gay and the dissolute crowded to this retired village to intrigue and play, under the pretence of drinking the waters; when its halls were thronged with princes and nobles, and even monarchs frequented its fêtes and partook of its festivities. The industrious inhabitants even now spare no pains to render the abode pleasant, but the capricious taste of the age lures the traveller to other springs, where still pleasanter haunts invite their presence. Germany abounds with watering-places, which are usually rendered agreeable by a judicious disposition of walks, and by other similar temptations. In nothing are the money-grasping and shiftless habits of America rendered more apparent, than in the inferiority of her places of public resort. In all these particulars nature has done a good deal for some of them, but nowhere has man done anything worth naming. A trifling expenditure has rendered the rude hill which, covered chiefly with evergreens, overlooks Spa, a succession of beautiful promenades. Serpentine walks are led through its thickets, agreeable surprises are prepared for the stranger, and all the better points of view are ornamented by seats and summer-houses. One of these places was covered by a permanent protection against the weather that had a name which amused us, though it was appropriate enough, so far as the shape went. It was called a "mushroom," it being, in fact, a sort of wooden umbrella, not unlike those which the French market-women spread over their heads in the streets of Paris, and which, more sentimental and imaginative, they term a "_Robinson_" in honour of Robinson Crusoe.[22] This mushroom was the scene of a remarkable occurrence, that it will scarcely do to relate, but which, taking all together, furnishes a ludicrous sample of national manners, to say nothing of miracles. [Footnote 22: Pronounced Ro-ban-_sown_. The writer once went to return the call of Mr. Robinson, at Paris. The porter denied that such a person lived in the hotel. "But here is his card; Mr. Robinson, N----, Rue ----." "Bah," looking at the card, "ceci est Monsieur Ro-ban-_sown_; c'est autre chose. Sans doute, Monsieur a entendu parler du célèbre Ro-ban-_sown?_"] The waters and the air together proved to be so much a tonic, that we determined to pass a week at Spa, A----, who was so weak on leaving Paris, as scarcely to be able to enter the carriage, gaining strength in a way to delight us all. The cholera and the quarantine together induce a good many people to come this way, and though few remain as long as ourselves, the constant arrivals serve to keep attention alive. Among others, the Duke of Saxe-Cobourg passed a night here, on his way home. He appeared in the public room, for a few minutes; but so few were assembled, that he retired, it was said, disappointed. There is still some playing in public, and occasionally the inhabitants of Verviers, an affluent manufacturing town, near the Prussian frontier, come over in sufficient numbers to make a tolerably brilliant evening. These meetings take place in the Redoute, a building of moderate dimensions, erected in the heart of the place according to a very general German custom; Wauxhall, the ancient scene of revelry, standing aloof in the fields, deserted and desolate, as does a rival edifice of more recent existence. The dimensions and style of these structures give one an idea of the former gaiety and magnificence of Spa, though the only use that either is now put to, is to furnish a room for a protestant clergyman to preach in, Sundays. As health, after all, is the greatest boon of life, we loitered at Spa a fortnight, endeavouring to while away the time in the best way we could. Short as was our stay, and transient as were the visits, we remained long enough to see that it was an epitome of life. Some intrigued, some played, and some passed the time at prayer. I witnessed trouble in one _ménage_, saw a parson drunk, and heard much pious discourse from a captain in the navy! We got little Ardennes horses, which were constantly parading the streets, led by countrymen in _blouses_, to tempt us to mount, and took short excursions in the vicinity. Sometimes we made what is called the tour of the springs; of which there are several, each differing from the others in its medicinal properties, and only one of which is in the village itself, the rest being a mile or more distant. At other times, we lounged in the shops, admiring and purchasing the beautiful boxes and ornaments that are known as Spa work, and which are merely the wood of the hills, coloured by being deposited for a time in the spring, and then painted and varnished highly. Similar work is made in other places, but nowhere else as beautifully as here. At length _ennui_ got the better of the good air and the invigorating water, and I sent for my passport and the horses. François, by this time, was tired of cooking, and he carried the orders for both right joyfully, while my _bourgeois_ received his Napoleons with many handsome expressions of regret, that I dare say were truer than common. In the mean time we hurried about with our cards of P.P.C.; bidding adieu to some, without the slightest expectation of ever meeting them again, and promising others to renew the acquaintance on the Rhine, or among the Alps, as events might decide. At half-past eleven all was ready, and shaking hands with two countrymen who came to see us off, we took our places, and dashed away from our _ménage_ of a fortnight's duration, as unceremoniously as we had stepped into it. The dog-star raged with all its fury, as we drove through the close and pent-up valleys that lie between Spa and Verviers. At the latter place we began to ascend, until finally we reached a broad and naked height, that overlooked a wide reach of country towards the east. This was the region that lies around the ancient capital of Charlemagne, and is now a part of what M. de Pradt has described "as a façade thrown before Europe," or the modern and disjointed kingdom of Prussia. We reached the frontier on the height of land, where, everything proving to be _en règle_, we met with no obstruction or delay. While crossing the swell of land just mentioned, the wind changed with a suddenness that we are apt to think American, but which occurs more frequently in this hemisphere, or rather in this part of it, than in our own. The peculiarity of the American climate is its exaggeration rather than its fickleness; its passages from extreme heat to extreme cold, more than the frequency of its lesser transitions. One never thinks of an umbrella in America, with a cloudless sky; whereas, during the spring months in particular, there is no security against rain an hour at a time, near the western coast of Europe, more especially north of the Bay of Biscay. On the present occasion, we passed in a few minutes from the oven to the ice-house, and were travelling with cloaks about us, and closed windows, long before we reached Aix-la-Chapelle, at which ancient town we arrived about six. Unlike Spa, where we had the choice among a hundred furnished houses, Aix was so crowded that we got narrow lodgings, with great difficulty, in a second-rate hotel. As a matter of course, although it was going over old ground with most of us, we could do no less than look at the sights. The environs of Aix, though exceedingly pretty, and well ornamented by country-houses, are less beautiful than those of Liege. Although Charlemagne has been buried near a thousand years, and there is no longer an Emperor of Germany, or a King of the Romans, Aix-la-Chapelle is still a town of more than 30,000 inhabitants. It is a crowded and not a particularly neat place, though material improvements are making, and we have been more pleased with it this year than we were last. The town-house is a very ancient structure, one of its towers being supposed to have been built by the Romans, and it is celebrated as having been the place of meeting of two European congresses; that of 1748, and that of our own times. It has a gallery of portraits of the different ambassadors, a big-wigged if a not big-witted set. The cathedral, though imperfect, is a noble and a curious monument: the choir is modern, that is to say, of Gothic workmanship, and only five hundred years old, while the main body is an antique rotunda, that dates more than twice as far back, or as remotely as the reign of Charlemagne himself. There is a circular gallery in it, around which the thrones of the Emperor and Electors were formerly placed, at the ceremonies of coronations. Each of these thrones was flanked by small antique columns, brought from Rome, but which during the reign of Napoleon, in the spirit of monopoly and desecration[23] that marked the era, had been transferred to Paris, where some of them are still seen standing in the gallery of the Tuileries. A chair that was found in Charlemagne's tomb stands in this gallery, and was long used as a throne for the Emperors. [Footnote 23: Extract from the unpublished manuscript of these letters: "You have lately been at Richmond Hill," said Mr. ----; "did you admire the view, as much as is the fashion?" "To be frank with you, I did not. The Park struck me as being an indifferent specimen of your parks; and the view, though containing an exquisite bit in the fore-ground, I think, as a whole, is both tame and confused." "You are not alone in your opinion, though I think otherwise. Canova walked with me on the terrace, without seeming to be conscious there was anything unusual to be seen. He scarcely regarded the celebrated view a second time. Did you know him?" "He was dead before I came to Europe." "Poor Canova!--I met him in Paris, in 1815, in a ludicrous dilemma. It rained, and I was crossing the Carrousel in a _fiacre_, when I saw Canova stealing along near the walls, covered in a cloak, and apparently uncertain how to proceed. _I drove_ near him, and offered him a seat. He was agitated, and appeared like a man who had stolen goods about him. The amount of it was, that they were distributing the pictures to their former owners, and having an order to receive "la Madonna della Seggiola," he had laid hands on the prize, and, in his eagerness to make sure of it, was carrying it off, under his cloak. He was afraid of being discovered and mobbed, and so I drove home with him to his hotel." I think Mr. ---- named this particular picture, though I have somewhere heard it was never brought to Paris, having been sent to Sicily for security: it might, therefore, have been another painting.] The cathedral is said to be rich in relics, and, among other things, it has some of the manna from the desert, and a bit of Aaron's rod! It has a window or two, in a retired chapel, which have a few panes of exquisitely painted glass that are much more precious than either. At noon I sent my passport to the post-house for horses, and, in return, I had a visit from the postmaster in compliment to the republic of letters. We said a few flattering things to each other, much to the amusement of A----, when we took our departure. The country, after quitting the valley of Aix,[24] became flat and monotonous, and it was in the midst of a vast level district that we found the town of Juliers, the capital of the ancient duchy, buried behind grassy ramparts, that were scarcely visible until we were actually passing them. It is a tame and insignificant place, at present. At Berghem, a post or two further, I had another visit from the postmaster and his clerk, who made no scruple in asking me if I was the man who wrote books! We talk a great deal of our national intelligence in America, and certainly with truth, when we compare ourselves with these people in many important particulars; but blocks are not colder, or can have less real reverence for letters, arts, or indeed cultivation of any kind, than the great bulk of the American people. There are a few among us who pretend to work themselves up into enthusiasm as respects the first, more especially if they can get a foreign name to idolize; but it is apparent, at a glance, that it is not enthusiasm of the pure water. For this, Germany is the land of sensations, whether music, poetry, arms, or the more material arts be their object. As for myself, I can boast of little in this way, beyond the homage of my two postmasters, which perhaps was more than properly fell to my share; but I shall never forget the feeling displayed by a young German, at Dresden, whom chance threw in my way. We had lodgings in a house directly opposite the one inhabited by Tieck, the celebrated novelist and dramatist. Having no proper means of introduction to this gentleman, and unwilling to obtrude myself anywhere, I never made his acquaintance, but it was impossible not to know, in so small a town, where so great a celebrity lived. Next door to us was a Swiss confectioner, with whom I occasionally took an ice. One day a young man entered for a similar purpose, and left the room with myself. At the door he inquired if I could tell him in which of the neighbouring hotels M. Tieck resided, I showed him the house and paused a moment to watch his manner, which was entirely free from pretension, but which preserved an indescribable expression of reverence. "Was it possible to get a glimpse of the person of M. Tieck?" "I feared not; some one had told me that he was gone to a watering-place." "Could I tell him which was the window of his room?" This I was able to do, as he had been pointed out to me at it a few days before. I left him gazing at the window, and it was near an hour before this quiet exhibition of heartfelt homage ceased by the departure of the young man. In my own case, I half suspect that my two postmasters expected to see a man of less European countenance than the one I happen to travel with. [Footnote 24: _Aachen_, in German. In French it is pronounced Ais-la-Chapelle.] It was near sunset when we reached the margin of the upper terrace, where we began to descend to the level of the borders of the Rhine. Here we had a view of the towers of Cologne, and of the broad plain that environs its walls. It was getting to be dark as we drove through the winding entrance, among bastions and half-moons, and across bridges, up to the gates of the place, which we reached just in season to be admitted without the extra formalities. LETTER XII. The Cathedral of Cologne.--The eleven thousand Virgins.--The Skulls Of the Magi--House in which Rubens was born.--Want of Cleanliness in Cologne.--Journey resumed.--The Drachenfels.--Romantic Legend.--A Convent converted into an Inn.--Its Solitude.--A Night in it.--A Storm.--A Nocturnal Adventure.--Grim Figures.--An Apparition.--The Mystery dissolved.--Palace of the Kings of Australia.--Banks of the Rhine.--Coblentz.--Floating Bridges.--Departure from Coblentz.--Castle of the Ritterstein.--Visit to it.--Its Furniture,--The Ritter Saal--Tower of the Castle.--Anachronisms. Dear ----, I do not know by what dignitary of the ancient electorate the hotel in which we lodged was erected, but it was a spacious building, with fine lofty rooms and a respectable garden. As the language of a country is influenced by its habits, and in America everything is so much reduced to the standard of the useful that little of the graceful has yet been produced, it may be well to remind you that this word "garden," signifies pleasure-grounds in Europe. It way even be questioned if the garden of Eden was merely a _potager_. After breakfasting we began to deliberate as to our future movements. Here we were at Cologne, in Prussia, with the wide world before us, uncertain whither to proceed. It was soon decided, however, that a first duty was to look again at the unfinished cathedral, that wonder of Gothic architecture; to make a pilgrimage to the house in which Rubens was born; to pay a visit to the eleven thousand virgins, and to buy some Cologne water: after which it would be time enough to determine where we should sleep. The first visit was to the bones. These relics are let into the walls of the church that contains them, and are visible through a sort of pigeon-holes which are glazed. There is one chapel in particular, that is altogether decorated with the bones arranged in this manner, the effect being very much like that of an apothecary's shop. Some of the virgins are honoured with hollow wooden or silver busts, lids in the tops of which being opened, the true skull is seen within. These relics are not as formidable, therefore, as one would be apt to infer the bones of eleven thousand virgins might be, the grinning portion of the skulls being uniformly veiled for propriety's sake. I thought it a miracle in itself to behold the bones of all these virgins, but, as if they were insufficient, the cicerone very coolly pointed out to us the jar that had held the water which was converted into wine by the Saviour at the marriage of Cana! It was Asiatic in form, and may have held both water and wine in its day. The cathedral is an extraordinary structure. Five hundred years have gone by, and there it is less than half finished. One of the towers is not forty feet high, while the other may be two hundred. The crane, which is renewed from time to time, though a stone has not been raised in years, is on the latter. The choir, or rather the end chapel that usually stands in rear of the choir, is perfect, and a most beautiful thing it is. The long narrow windows, that are near a hundred feet in height, are exquisitely painted, creating the peculiar cathedral atmosphere, that ingenious invention of some poet to render solemn architecture imaginative and glorious. We could not dispense with looking at the skulls of the Magi, which are kept in an exceedingly rich reliquary or shrine. They are all three crowned, as well as being masked like the virgins. There is much jewellery, though the crowns had a strong glow of tinsel about them, instead of the mild lustre of the true things. Rubens, as you know, was of gentle birth, and the house in which he was born is just such a habitation as you would suppose might have been inhabited by a better sort of burgher. It is said that Mary of Medicis, the wife of Henry IV, died in this building, and tradition, which is usually a little ambitious of effect, has it that she died in the very room in which Rubens was born. The building is now a public-house. I do not know that there is a necessary connection between foul smells and Cologne water, but this place is the dirtiest and most offensive we have yet seen, or rather smelt, in Europe. It would really seem that people wish to drive their visitors into the purchase of their great antidote. Disagreeable as it was, we continued to _flaner_ through the streets until near noon, visiting, among other things, the floating bridge, where we once more enjoyed the sight of the blue waters of the Rhine glancing beneath our feet. Like true _flaneurs_, we permitted chance to direct our steps, and at twelve, tired with foul smells and heat, we entered the carriage, threaded the half-moons, abbatis and grassy mounds again, and issued into the pure air of the unfenced fields, on the broad plain that stretches for miles towards the east, or in the direction of Bonn. The day was sultry, and we fully enjoyed the transition. In this part of Germany the postilions are no laggards, and we trotted merrily across the wide plain, reaching Bonn long before it was time to refresh ourselves. The horses were changed, and we proceeded immediately. As we left the town I thought the students, who were gasping at the windows of their lodgings, envied us the pleasure of motion Having so lately accompanied me over this road; I shall merely touch upon such points as were omitted before, and keep you acquainted with our movements. The afternoon was lovely, when, passing the conical and castle-crowned steep of Godisberg, we approached the hills, where the road for the first time runs on the immediate borders of the stream. Opposite to us were the Seven mountains, topped by the ruins of the Drachenfels, crag and masonry wearing the appearance of having mouldered together under the slow action of centuries; and, a little in advance, the castle of Rolandseck peered above the wooded rocks on our own side of the river. Two low islands divided the stream, and on one of them stood the capacious buildings of a convent. Every one at all familiar with the traditions of the Rhine, has heard the story of the crusader, who, returning from the wars, found his betrothed a nun in this asylum. It would seem that lies were as rife before the art of printing had been pressed into their service, or newspapers known, as they are to-day, for she had been taught to think him dead or inconstant; it was much the same to her. The castle which overlooked the island was built for his abode, and here the legend is prudently silent. Although one is not bound to believe all he hears; we are all charmed with the images which such tales create, especially when, as in this case, they are aided by visible and tangible objects in the shape of good stone walls. As we trotted along under the brow of the mountain that upholds the ruins of the castle of Charlemagne's nephew, my eye rested musingly on the silent pile of the convent. "That convent," I called out to the postilion, "is still inhabited?" "_Ja, mein Herr, es ist ein gasthaus_." An inn!--the thing was soon explained. The convent, a community of Benedictines, had been suppressed some fifteen or twenty years, and the buildings had been converted into one of your sentimental taverns. With the closest scrutiny I could not detect a soul near the spot, for junketing in a ruin is my special aversion. A hamlet stood on the bank at no great distance above the island; the postilion grinned when I asked if it would be possible to get horses to this place in the morning, for it saved him a trot all the way to Oberwinter. He promised to send word in the course of the night to the relay above, and the whole affair was arranged in live minutes. The carriage was housed and left under the care of François on the main land, a night sack thrown into a skiff, and in ten minutes we were afloat on the Rhine. Our little bark whirled about in the eddies, and soon touched the upper point of the island. We found convent, _gasthaus_, and sentiment, without any pre-occupants. There was not a soul on the island, but the innkeeper, his wife, a child, a cook, a crone who did all sorts of work, and three Prussian soldiers, who were billeted on the house, part of a detachment that we had seen scattered along the road, all the way from Bonn. I do not know which were the most gladdened by the meeting, ourselves or the good people of the place; we at finding anything like retirement in Europe, and they at seeing anything like guests. The man regretted that we had come so late, for a large party had just left him; and we felicitated ourselves that we had not come any sooner, for precisely the same reason. As soon as he comprehended our tastes, he very frankly admitted that every room in the convent was empty. "There is no one, but these, on the island. Not a living being, _herr graf_" for these people have made a count of me, whether or not. Here then were near two hundred acres, environed by the Rhine, prettily disposed in wood and meadow, absolutely at our mercy. You can readily imagine, with what avidity a party of young Parisiennes profited by their liberty, while I proceeded forthwith to inspect the ladder, and then to inspect the cloisters. Sooth to say, sentiment had a good deal to do with two of the courses of a dinner at Nonnenswerth, for so is the island called. The buildings were spacious, and far from mean; and it was a pleasant thing to promenade in cloisters that had so lately been trodden by holy nuns, and see your dinner preparing in a convent kitchen. I could do no less than open a bottle of "Liebfraumilch" in such a place, but it proved to be a near neighbour to bonny-clabber. As the evening closed we took possession of our rooms. Our parlour had been that of the lady abbess, and A---- had her bed-chamber. These were spacious rooms and well furnished. The girls were put into the cells, where girls ought never to be put. Jetty had another near them, and, these dispositions made, I sallied forth alone, in quest of a sensation. The intense heat of the day had engendered a gust. The thunder was muttering among the "seven mountains," and occasionally a flash of lightning illumined the pitchy darkness of the night. I walked out into the grounds, where the wind was fiercely howling through the trees. A new flash illumined the hills, and I distinctly saw the naked rock of the Drachenfels, with the broken tower tottering on the half-ruined crag, looked fearful and supernatural. By watching a minute, another flash exposed Rolandseck, looking down upon me with melancholy solicitude. Big drops began to patter on the leaves, and, still bent on sensations, I entered the buildings. The cloisters were gloomy, but I looked into the vast, smoked, and cavern-like kitchen, where the household were consuming the fragments of our dinner. A light shone from the door of a low cell, in a remote corner of the cloisters, and I stole silently to it, secretly hoping it would prove to be a supernatural glimmering above some grave. The three Prussians were eating their cheese-parings and bread, by the light of a tallow candle, seated on a stone floor. It was short work to squeeze all the poetry out of this group. The storm thickened, and I mounted to the gallery, or the corridor above the cloisters, which communicated with our own rooms. Here I paced back and forth, a moment, in obscurity, until, by means of a flash, I discovered a door, at one extremity of the passage. Bent on adventure, I pushed and it opened. As there were only moments when anything could be seen, I proceeded in utter darkness, using great caution not to fall through a trap. Had it been my happy fortune to be a foundling, who had got his reading and writing "by nature," I should have expected to return from the adventure a Herzog,[25] at least, if not an Erz-Herzog[26] Perhaps, by some inexplicable miracle of romance, I might have come forth the lawful issue of Roland and the nun! [Footnote 25: Duke.] [Footnote 26: Arch-Duke.] As it was, I looked for no more than sensations, of which the hour promised to be fruitful. I had not been a minute in the unknown region, before I found that, if it were not the abode of troubled spirits, it at least was worthy to be so. You will remember that I am not now dealing in fiction, but truth, and that, unlike those who "read when they sing, and sing when they read," I endeavour to be imaginative in poetry and literal in my facts. I am now dealing strictly with the latter, which I expect will greatly enhance the interest of this adventure. After taking half-a-dozen steps with extreme caution, I paused a moment, for the whole air appeared to be filled by a clatter, as if ten thousand bats' wings were striking against glass. This was evidently within the convent, while, without, the wind howled even louder than ever. My hand rested on something, I knew not what. At first I did not even know whether I was in the open air, or not, for I felt the wind, saw large spaces of dim light, and yet could distinguish that something like a vault impended over my head. Presently a vivid flash of lightning removed all doubt. It flickered, seemed extinguished, and flared up again, in a way to let me get some distinct ideas of the _locus in quo_. I had clearly blundered into the convent chapel; not upon its pavement, which was on a level with the cloisters below, but into an open gallery, that communicated with the apartments of the nuns, and my hand was on the chair of the lady abbess, the only one that remained. The dim light came from the high arched windows, and the bats' wings were small broken panes rattling in the gale. But I was not alone. By the transient light I saw several grim figures, some kneeling, others with outstretched arms, bloody and seared, and one appeared to be in the confessional. At the sight of these infernal spectres, for they came and went with the successive flashes of the lightning, by a droll chain of ideas, I caught myself shouting, rather than singing--"Ship ahoy! ship ahoy!--what cheer, what cheer?" in a voice loud as the winds. At last, here was a sensation! Half-a-dozen flashes rendered me familiar with the diabolical-looking forms, and as I now knew where to look for them, even their grim countenances were getting to be familiar. At this moment, when I was about to address them in prose, the door by which I had entered the gallery opened slowly, and the withered face of an old woman appeared in a flash. The thunder came next, and the face vanished--"Ship ahoy! ship ahoy!--what cheer, what cheer?" There was another pause--the door once more opened, and the face re-appeared. I gave a deep and loud groan; if you ask me why, I can only say, because it seemed to be wanting to the general effect of the scene and place. The door slammed, the face vanished, and I was alone again with the demons. By this time the gust was over I groped my way out of the gallery, stole through the corridor into my own room, and went to bed. I ought to have had exciting dreams, especially after the _Liebfraumilch_, but, contrary to all rule, I slept like a postilion in a cock-loft, or a midshipman in the middle watch. The next morning at breakfast, A---- had a melancholy tale to relate; how the poor old crone, who has already been mentioned, had been frightened by the gust--how she stole to the chapel to mutter a prayer--how she opened the door of the gallery--how she heard strange sounds, and particularly certain groans--how she had dropped the candle--how the door had blown to, and she, miserable woman, had stolen to the bed of her (A----'s) maid, whom she had implored to give her shelter and protection for the night! We went in a body to look at the chapel, after breakfast, and it was admitted all round, that it was well suited to produce a sensation, in a thunder-storm, of a dark night, and that it was no wonder Jetty's bed-fellow had been frightened. But now everything was calm and peaceful. The glass hung in fragments about the leaden sashes; the chair and _prière-dieu_ of the lady abbess had altogether an innocent and comfortable air, and the images, of which there were several, as horrible as a bungling workman and a bloody imagination could produce, though of a suffering appearance, were really insensible to pain. While we were making this reconnoissance a bugle sounded on the main, and looking out, we saw the Oberwinter postilion coming round the nearest bend in the river. On this hint, we took our leave of the island, not forgetting to apply a little of the universal salve to the bruised spirit of the old woman whose dread of thunder had caused her to pass so comfortless a night. The day was before us, and we went leisurely up the stream, determined to profit by events. The old castles crowned every height, as you know, and as we had the carriage filled with maps and books, we enjoyed every foot of this remarkable road. At Andernach we stopped to examine the ruins of the palace of the Kings of Austrasia, of whom you have heard before. The remains are considerable, and some parts of the walls would still admit of being restored. The palace has outlasted not only the kingdom, but almost its history. This edifice was partly built of a reddish freestone, very like that which is so much used in New York, a material that abounds on the Rhine. Between Andernach and Coblentz the road passes over a broad plain, at some little distance from the river, though the latter is usually in sight. It may give you some idea of its breadth, if I tell you that as we approached Neuwied, it became a disputed point in the carriage, whether the stream flowed between us and the town, or not. Still the Rhine is a mighty river, and even imposing, when one contemplates its steady flow, and remembers its great length. It is particularly low at present, and is less beautiful than last year, the colours of the water being more common-place than usual. It was still early, though we had loitered a good deal by the way, to study views and examine ruins, when we drew near the fort-environed town of Coblentz. The bridge across the Moselle was soon passed, and we again found ourselves in this important station. The territory opposite the city belongs to the duchy of Nassau, but enough has been ceded to the King of Prussia to enable him to erect the celebrated Ehrenbreitstein, which is one of the strongest forts in the world, occupying the summit of a rocky height, whose base is washed by the Rhine, and whose outworks are pushed to all the neighbouring eminences. The position of Coblentz, at the junction of the Rhine and the Moselle, the latter of which penetrates into the ancient electorate of Treves, now belonging to Prussia, may render it an important station to that power, but it does not strike me as military. The enemy that can seize any one of its numerous outworks, or forts, must essentially command the place. As at Genoa, it seems to me that too much has been attempted to succeed. Last night we had a convent that was a parallelogram of six hundred feet by three hundred, all to ourselves; while this night we were crowded into a small and uncomfortable inn that was overflowing with people. The house was noisy and echoish, and not inappropriately called the "Three Swiss." We crossed the river by the bridge of boats, and ascended the opposite hill to enjoy the view. There was another island up the stream, with a ruined convent, but unhappily it was not an inn. The Rhine is a frontier for much of its course, washing the shores of France, Darmstadt, Bavaria, Baden, Nassau, Prussia, &c., &c., for a long distance, and permanent bridges are avoided in most places. The floating bridges, being constructed of platforms laid on boats, that are united by clamps, can be taken apart, and withdrawn, to either shore, in an hour or two. We quitted Coblentz at ten, and now began in truth to enter the fine scenery of the Rhine. The mountains, or rather hills, for they scarcely deserve the former name, close upon the river, a short distance below the town, and from that moment, with very immaterial exceptions, the road follows the windings of the stream, keeping generally within a few yards of the water. The departures from this rule are not more than sufficient to break the monotony of a perfectly uniform scene. I have nothing new to tell you of the ruined castles--the villages and towns that crowd the narrow strand--the even and well-kept roads--the vine-covered hills--and the beautiful sinuosities of this great artery of Europe. To write any thing new or interesting of this well-beaten path, one must linger days among the ruins, explore the valleys, and dive into the local traditions. We enjoyed the passage, as a matter of course, but it was little varied, until we drew near the frontier of Prussia, when a castle, that stood beetling on a crag, immediately above the road, caught my eye. The building, unlike most of its sister edifices, appeared to be in good order; smoke actually arose from a beacon-grate that thrust itself out from an advanced tower, which was nearly in a perpendicular line above us, and the glazed windows and other appliances denoted a perfect and actual residence. As usual, the postilion was questioned. I understood him to say that the place was called the Ritterstein, but the name is of little moment. It was a castle of the middle ages, a real hold of the Rhine, which had been purchased by a brother of the King of Prussia, who is now the governor of the Rhenish provinces. This prince had caused the building to be restored, rigidly adhering to the ancient style of architecture, and to be furnished according to the usages of the middle ages, and baronial comfort; what was more, if the prince were not in his hold, as probably would prove not to be the case, strangers were permitted to visit it! Here was an unexpected pleasure, and we hastened to alight, admiring the governor of Rhenish provinces, his taste, and his liberality, with all our hearts. If you remember the satisfaction with which we visited the little hunting-tower of the poor Prince de Condé in 1827, a building whose chief merit was its outward form and the fact that it had been built by the Queen Blanche, you can form some notion of the zeal with which we toiled up the steep ascent, on the present occasion. The path was good, tasteful, and sinuous; but the buildings stood on crags that were almost perpendicular on three of their sides, and at an elevation of near, or perhaps quite, two hundred feet above the road. We were greeted, on reaching the gate, not by a warder, but by the growl and bark of a ferocious mastiff, who would have been more in keeping at his post near a henroost, than at the portal of a princely castle. One "half-groom, half-seneschal," and who was withal a little drunk, however, soon came forth to receive us, and, after an exhortation to the dog in a Dutch that was not quite as sonorous as the growl of the animal, he very civilly offered to do the honours of the place. We entered by a small drawbridge, but the buildings stand so near the brow of an impending rock, as to induce me to think this bridge has been made for effect, rather than to renew the original design. A good deal of the old wall remains, especially in the towers, which are mostly round, and all that has been done with the exterior, has been to fill the gaps, and to re-attach the balconies and the external staircases, which are of iron. I can no more give you a clear idea of the irregular form of this edifice with the pen, than you would obtain of the intricate tracery of Gothic architecture, having never seen a Gothic edifice, or studied a treatise on the style, by the same means. You will understand the difficulty when you are told that this castle is built on crags, whose broken summits are its foundations, and give it its form. The court is narrow and inconvenient, carriages never approaching it, but several pretty little terraces in front answer most of the purposes of courts, and command lovely glimpses of the Rhine, in both directions. These terraces, like the towers and walls, were placed just where there was room, and the total absence of regularity forms one of the charms of the place. In the interior, the ancient arrangement has been studiously respected. The furniture is more than imitation, for we were told that much of it had been taken from the royal collections of Berlin. By royal, you are not to suppose, however, that there are any attempts at royal state, but merely that the old castles of the barons and counts, whose diminutive territories have contributed to rear the modern state of Prussia, have been ransacked for this end. The Ritter Saal, or Knight's Hall, though not large, is a curious room; indeed it is the only one in the entire edifice that can be called a good room, at all. The fire-place is huge,--so much so, that I walked into it with ease, and altogether in the ancient style. There is a good deal of curious armour hung up in this room, and it has many other quaint and rare objects. The chandelier was a circle formed by uniting buck's horns, which were fitted with lamps. There was almost too much good taste about this for feudal times, and I suspect it of being one of our modern embellishments; a material picture of the past, like a poem by Scott. There may have been some anachronisms in the furniture, but we all use furniture of different ages, when we are not reduced to the fidgety condition of mere gentility. In one corner of the Bitter Saal there stood an ancient vessel to hold water, and beneath it was a porcelain trough to catch the drippings. The water was obtained by turning a cock. The chairs, tables, settees, &c. were all of oak. The coverings of the chairs, _i. e_. backs and bottoms, were richly embroidered in golden thread, the work of different royal personages. The designs were armorial bearings. All the stairs were quaint and remarkable, and, in one instance, we encircled the exterior of a tower, by one of them, at a giddy elevation of near three hundred feet above the river, the tower itself being placed on the uttermost verge of the precipice. From this tower the grate of the beacon thrust itself forward, and as it still smoked, I inquired the reason. We were told that the wad of a small piece of artillery, that had been fired as a signal to the steam-boat, had lodged in the grate, where it was still burning. The signal had been given to enable the Prince and his family to embark, for they had not left the place an hour when we arrived. _Tempora mutantur_ since the inhabitants of such a hold can go from Bingen to Coblentz to dine in a steamer. We saw the bed-rooms. The Prince slept on an inner camp bedstead, but the ladies occupied bunks let into the walls, as in the olden time. The rooms were small, the Bitter Saal excepted, and low, though there were a good many of them. One or two were a little too much modernized, perhaps, though, on the whole, the keeping was surprisingly good. A severe critic might possibly have objected to a few anachronisms in this _romaunt_, but this in a fault that Prince Frederic shares in common with Shakspeare and Sir Walter Scott. I cannot recall a more delightful hour than that we passed in examining this curiosity, which was like handling and feeding, and playing with a living cameleopard, after having seen a dozen that were stuffed. * * * * * In reference to the controversy touching the expenses of the American Government alluded to in page 37, of this volume, the following particulars may not be uninteresting. Early in the day, the party who conducted the controversy for the other side began to make frequent allusions to certain Americans--"_plusieurs honorables Américains_" was the favourite expression--who, he alleged, had furnished him with information that went to corroborate the truth of his positions, and, as a matter of course, to invalidate the truth of ours. Secret information reached me, also, that a part, at least, of our own legation was busy for the other side. At one period, M. Perier, the Premier of France, publicly cited the name of the minister, himself, at the tribune, as having given an opinion against those who conducted the controversy on the side of the American system, and in favour of our opponents. I understand Mr. Rives declares that M. Perier had no authority either for using his name, or for attributing such sentiments to him; although the statement, as yet, stands uncontradicted before the world. You will probably be startled, when I tell you, that this is the third instance, within a few months, in which the public agents of America have been openly quoted as giving evidence against the action of the American system. The two other cases occurred in the British parliament, and, in one of them, as in this of Mr. Rives, the agent was quoted by name! It is not in my power to say whether these gentlemen have or have not been wrongfully quoted; but all cannot be right, when they are quoted at all. Figure to yourself, for a moment, what would be the effect of a member of congress quoting the minister of a foreign government, at Washington, as giving an opinion against a material feature of the polity he represented, and the disclaimers and discussions, not to say quarrels, that would succeed. How is it, that the representatives of exclusion are so much more faithful to the interests of their principals, than the representatives of liberal institutions? Some will tell you that the condition of Europe is critical; that our own relations with certain countries are delicate, and that it is expedient to temporize. In the first place, judging from my own observations, I do not believe there is any of the much-talked-of temporizing spirit about all this compliance, but that in most of the cases in which the agents of the government disown the distinguishing principles of the institutions (and these cases have got to be so numerous as to attract general attention, and to become the subject of sneering newspaper comments) it is "out of the fulness of the heart that the mouth speaketh." But, allowing that the first position is true, and that these gentlemen actually acquiesce for the sake of quiet, and with a view to advance what they conceive to be the interests of America, I shall maintain that the course is to the last degree impolitic and unworthy. Our motto is to "ask nothing but what is right, and to submit to nothing that is wrong." Apart from the sound morality of this sentiment, the wisdom of Solomon could not better express the true policy of a nation situated like our own. It can hardly be pretended, that the "right" for which we ask ought to be purchased at the disgraceful price of abandoning the truth. This would be truly bargaining away a better right for another of less value. These gentlemen of expedients may beat their brains as much as they please, they will never invent any means so simple, and so sure of attaining the great ends included in the political maxim just quoted, as by adhering to the plain, direct dictates of common honesty. Each trifling temporary advantage they may gain, will certainly and speedily be met by some contingent disadvantage, that will render them losers by the exchange.[27] [Footnote 27: As respects France, the result has shown the impolicy of the temporizing system. The French Government, finding such a disposition to compliance in the agents that were placed near it, by America, has quite reasonably inferred that the mass at home acted on the same temporizing and selfish policy, and has treated a solemn compact, that contains a tardy and very insufficient reparation, for some of the greatest outrages that were ever committed by one civilized nation on the rights of another, as a matter quite within its own control. This consequence was foreseen by the writer, and foretold, in a letter that was written in 1832, and published as far back as the year 1833. It was only necessary to be on the spot, and to witness the contempt and indifference engendered by this miserable policy, to predict the events which have since occurred. The accidental situation of Europe has favoured us, and we owe the tardy reparation that has been received more to Russia than to ourselves.] To return to France and the controversy on finance, our opponents had at length the indiscretion to publish a document that they said had been furnished them by some of their "_honorables Américains_" and by which they attempted to prove some one of their various positions; for by this time they had taken a great many, scarcely any two of which agreed. I have no doubt that this document, in the present instance, did come from "Americans," though it originally came from Captain Basil Hall. This gentleman had appended to his travels, a table, which purported to contain an arranged statement of the cost of the state governments. You will form some idea of the value of this table, as a political and statistical document, by an exposure of one or two of its more prominent errors. Taking, for instance, our own state; the receipts from the _property_ of the state, such as its canal, common school, literature, and other funds, necessarily passing through the treasury, the sum total is made to figure against us, as the annual charge of government; which, by these means, is swelled to five times the real amount. Every one knows that the receipts of the canals alone, the moment that the conditions of the loans effected to construct them shall admit of their application, will be more than sufficient to meet the entire charges of the state government twice over; but, by this mystified statement, we are made to appear the poorer for every dollar of properly we possess! And yet this is the nature of the evidence that some of our people furnished to the writers on the French side of this question; a side that, by their own showing, was the side of monarchy? But this is not all. A citizen has been found willing, under his own name, to espouse the argument of the French writers. Of the validity of the statements presented by this gentleman (Mr. Leavitt Harris, of New Jersey), or of the force of his reasoning, I shall say nothing here, for his letter and our answers will sufficiently speak for themselves. The administration party, however, have thought the statements of Mr. Harris of sufficient importance to be published in a separate number of their literary organ, _La Revue Britannique_, and to dwell upon it in all their political organs, as the production of an American who has been intrusted by his government with high diplomatic missions, and who, consequently, is better authority than an unhonoured citizen like myself, who have no claims to attention beyond those I can assemble in my argument.[28] The odds, as you will perceive, are greatly against me; for, in these countries, the public know little of the details of government, and it gives a high sanction to testimony of this nature to be able to say it comes from one, who is, or has been, connected with an administration. Standing as I do, therefore, contradicted by the alleged opinion (true or false) of Mr. Rives, and by this statement of Mr. Harris, you will readily conceive that my situation here is not of the most pleasant nature. Unsalaried and untrusted by my own Government, opposed, in appearance at least, by its agents, I am thrown, for the vindication of truth, completely on my own resources, so far as any American succour has been furnished; and am reduced to the narrow consolation of making this simple record of the facts, which, possibly, at some future day, may answer the purpose of an humble protest in favour of the right. [Footnote 28: The French writers, to make the most of their witness, exaggerated a little; for, at that time, Mr. Harris had never filled any higher diplomatic station than that of one left _chargé des affaires_ of the legation at St. Petersburg, during the absence of Mr. Adams at Ghent. Shortly after the publication of this letter, however, he was appointed by the President and the Senate of the United States of America to represent it at the King of the French, as if _expressly to give value to his testimony_.] This controversy has, at least, served to remove the mask from this Government, on the subject of its disposition towards America and her institutions. To that pretended feeling I have never been even momentarily a dupe; but, failing of arguments--for no talents or ingenuity, after all, can make the wrong the right--most of the writers on the other side of the question have endeavoured to enliven their logic with abuse. I do not remember anything, in the palmy days of the Quarterly Review, that more completely descended to low and childish vituperation than some of the recent attacks on America. Much of what has been written is unmitigated fraud, that has been meant to produce an impression on the public mind, careless of any other object than the end; but much also, I think, has really been imagined to be true, while it is, in fact, the offspring of the prejudices that studied misrepresentation has so deeply implanted in the opinions of Europe. As we are not immaculate, of course, a greater portion of their charges is true than one could wish. Some of the allegations are so absurd, that it may amuse you to hear them. The French consider the Sabbath as a day of recreation, and after going to mass (a duty, by the way, that few besides women discharge in Paris), the rest of the time is devoted to dancing and other amusements. With a view to act on the rooted opinions of the nation, on this subject, the American practice of running a chain across the street in front of the churches, to prevent the rattling of the carriages from disturbing the worship (a practice, by the way, that is quite as much European as it is American, and which has never even been very general among us), has been so represented as to induce the French to believe that our streets are in chains, and that even walking, or using a horse, or any vehicle of a Sunday, is a prohibited thing. In addition to a variety of similar absurdities, we are boldly charged with most of the grosser vices, and, in some instances, intimations have been given that our moral condition is the natural consequence of our descent from convicted felons! To the American, who is a little prone to pride himself on being derived from a stock of peculiar moral purity, this imputation on his origin sounds extraordinary, and is apt to excite indignation. I dare say you are not prepared to learn, that it was a common, perhaps the prevalent opinion of Europe, that our states were settled by convicts. That this, until very lately, was the prevalent opinion of Europe, I entertain no doubt, though I think the few last years have produced some change in this respect; more of the popular attention most probably having been attracted to us, within this period, than during the two centuries that preceded it. You will smile to hear, that the common works of fiction have been the material agents in producing the change; information that has been introduced through the medium of amusement, making its way where the graver labours of the historian have never been able to penetrate. Courier, the cleverest political writer France has produced, perhaps in any age, and a staunch republican, says, it would be quite as unjust to reproach the modern Romans with being descended from ravishers and robbers, as it is to reproach the Americans with being descended from convicts. He wishes to remove the stigma from his political brethren, but the idea of denying the imputation does not appear to have entered his mind. Jefferson, also, alludes to the subject in some of his letters, apparently, in answer to a philosophical inquiry from one of his friends. He estimates the whole number of persons transported to the American colonies, under sentence from the courts, at about two thousand; and, taking into consideration their habits, he was of opinion, half a century ago, that their descendants did not probably exceed the original stock. I do not know where Mr. Jefferson obtained his data for this estimate, but he did not show his ordinary acuteness in ascribing the reason why the convicts left few or no issue. Women were by far too much in request in America, during the first century or two of its political existence, to admit of the probability of men so openly stamped with infamy from obtaining wives, and I think there existed a physical inability for the propagation of the stock, since very few women were transported at any time. Within the last few months, two instances have occurred in the Chamber of Deputies, of members quoting the example of America, in enforcing their arguments in favour of the possibility of forming respectable communities by the transportation of criminals! I had no intention of quoting any part of the controversy on finance, but, on reflection, it may serve a good purpose to give one or two extracts from the letter of Mr. Harris. In order that this may be done fairly, both as it respects the point at issue and the parties concerned, it will be necessary to make a brief preliminary explanation. M. Sauliner, the principal writer of the other side, had made it a charge against our system, that nearly all the public money was derived from the customs, which he assumed was a bad mode of obtaining revenue. Let this be as it might, my answer, was, that, as between France and America, there was no essential variance of system, the only difference lying in the fact that the one got _all_ the revenue it _could_ in this manner, and that the other got all it _wanted_. I added, a tax on exports excepted, that all the usual means of raising revenue known to other nations were available, at need, to the government of the United-States. To this latter opinion Mr. Harris took exceptions, saying, in effect, that the administration of Mr. Adams, the father, had been broken down by resorting to excises, stamp-acts, and direct taxation; and that since his unfortunate experiment, no administration in America had dreamed, even in time of war, of resorting to a mode of obtaining revenue which was so offensive as to produce the revolution of 1776! Of course Mr. Harris was reminded, that the stamp-act, of which the colonists complained, was repealed many years before the epoch of 1776; that the revolution proceeded from a denial of the right in parliament to tax the colonies at all, and not from any particular imposition; and that excises and a stamp-act had all been resorted to, in the war of 1812, without overturning the administration of Mr. Madison, or weakening that of his successor. But of what avail was a statement of this kind, in opposition to the allegations of one who appeared before Europe in the character of an American diplomate? Mr. Harris enjoyed the double advantage of giving his testimony as one in the confidence of both the French and the American governments--an advantage that a quotation from the statute-books themselves could not overcome. Mr. Harris disposed of one knotty point in this controversy with so much ingenuity, that it deserves to be more generally known. Our adversaries had brought the accusation of luxury against the American government, inasmuch as it was said to furnish both a town and a country palace for the President--a degree of magnificence little suspected in France. This point was not treated as a matter of any importance by us, though General Lafayette had slightly and playfully alluded to it, once or twice. The words of Mr. Harris shall speak for themselves: "Le Général Lafayette paraît surtout avoir été frappé de l'erreur dans laquelle est tombé l'auteur de la Revue, à l'égard de la belle maison de campagne dont il a doté la présidence; et c'est peut-être là ce qui l'a porté à faire appel à M. le Général Bernard et à M. Cooper." "L'erreur de l'auteur de la Revue, au sujet de la maison de campagne du président, est de très peu d'importance. Personne ne sait mieux que le Général Lafayette que la résidence affectée par la nation à son president, dans le District de Columbia, est située de manière à jouir des avantages de la ville et de la campagne." Here you perceive the intellectual _finesse_ with which we have had to contend. We are charged with the undue luxury of supporting a town and country house for a public functionary; and, disproving the fact, our opponents turn upon us, with a pernicious subtlety, and show, to such a condensing point has the effeminate spirit reached among us, that we have compressed the essence of two such establishments into one! Mr. Harris might have carried out his argument, and shown also that to such a pass of self-indulgence have we reached, that Washington itself is so "situated as to enjoy the advantages of both town and country!" I have reason to think Mr. Harris gained a great advantage over us by this _tour de logique_. I had, however, a little better luck with another paragraph of his letter. In pages 22 and 23 of this important document, is the following; the state alluded to being Pennsylvania, and the money mentioned the cost of the canals; which Mr. Harris includes in the cost of government, charging, by the way, not only the interest on the loans as an annual burden, but the loans themselves. I translate the text, the letter having appeared in French:--"The greater part of this sum, about twenty-two millions of dollars, has been expended during the last twelve years--that is to say, while the population _was half or two-thirds less than it is to-day_, offering an _average of not more than_ 800,000 _souls_, (the present population of Pennsylvania being 1,350,161:) It follows, that each inhabitant has been _taxed_ about two and a half dollars, annually, for internal improvements during this period." I think, under ordinary circumstances, and as against a logician who did not appear supported by the confidence and favour of the government of the United States of America, I might have got along with this quotation, by showing, that 800,000 is neither the _half of_, nor _two-thirds less_ than 1,350,161; that Pennsylvania, so far from trebling, or even doubling her population in twelve years, had not doubled it in twenty; that Pennsylvania, at the commencement of the twelve years named, had actually a population more than twenty-five per cent. greater than that which Mr. Harris gives as the average of a period, during which he affirms that this population has, at least, doubled; and by also showing that money borrowed and invested in public works, which are expected to return an ample revenue, cannot be presented as an annual charge against the citizen until he is called on to pay it. Having said so much about the part that Mr. Harris has had in this controversy, I owe it to truth to add, that his course has, at least, the merit of frankness, and that he is just so much the more to be commended than that portion of our ex-agents and actual agents who have taken the same side of the question, covertly. I have dwelt on this subject at some length, because I think it is connected, not only with the truth, but with the character, of America. I have already told you the startling manner in which I was addressed by one of the first men in England, on the subject of the tone of our foreign agents; and since that time, occasions have multiplied, to learn the mortifying extent to which this unfavourable opinion of their sincerity has spread. If the United States has neither sufficient force nor sufficient dignity to maintain its interests abroad, without making these sacrifices of opinion and principle, we are in a worse condition than I had believed; but you will require no logic from me, to understand the effect that must be, and is produced, by this contradiction between the language that is studiously used--used to nauseous affectation--at home, and so much of the language that is used by too many of the agents abroad. I very well know that the government of the Union guarantees neither the civil nor religious liberty of the citizen, except as against its own action; that any state may create an establishment, or a close hereditary aristocracy, to-morrow, if it please, the general provision that its polity must be that of a republic, meaning no more than that there should not be an hereditary monarchy; and that is quite within the limits of constitutional possibilities, that the base of the national representation should be either purely aristocratical, purely democratical, or a mixture of both. But in leaving this option to the states, the constitution has, in no manner, impaired the force of facts. The states have made their election, and, apart from the anomaly of a slave population, the fundamental feature of the general government is democratic. Now, it is indisputably the privilege of the citizen to express the opinions of government that he may happen to entertain. The system supposes consultation and choice, and it would be mockery to maintain that either can exist without entire freedom of thought and speech. If any man prefer a monarchy to the present polity of the nation, it is his indefeasible right to declare his opinion, and to be exempt from persecution and reproach. He who meets such a declaration in any other manner than by a free admission of the right, does not _feel_ the nature of the institutions under which he lives, for the constitution, in its spirit, everywhere recognises the principle. But One, greater than the constitution of America, in divine ordinances, everywhere denies the right of a man to profess one thing and to mean another. There is an implied pledge given by every public agent that he will not misrepresent what he knows to be the popular sentiment at home, and which popular sentiment, directly or indirectly, has clothed his language with the authority it carries in foreign countries; and there is every obligation of faith, fidelity, delicacy, and discretion, that he should do no discredit to that which he knows to be a distinguishing and vital principle with his constituents. As respects our agents in Europe, I believe little is hazarded in saying, that too many have done injury to the cause of liberty. I have heard this so often from various quarters of the highest respectability,[29] it has been so frequently affirmed in public here, and I have witnessed so much myself, that, perhaps, the subject presents itself with more force to me, on the spot, than it will to you, who can only look at it through the medium of distance and testimony. I make no objection to a rigid neutrality in the strife of opinions that is going on here, but I call for the self-denial of concealing all predilections in favour of the government of one or of the few; and should any minister of despotism, or political exclusion, presume to cite an American agent as being of his way of thinking, all motives of forbearance would seem to disappear, and, if really an American in more than pretension, it appears to me the time would be come to vindicate the truth with the frankness and energy of a freeman. [Footnote 29: In 1833, the writer was in discourse with a person who had filled one of the highest political situations in Europe, and he was asked who represented the United States at the court of ----. On being told, this person paused, and then resumed, "I am surprised that your government should employ that man. He has always endeavoured to ingratiate himself in my favour, by depreciating everything in his own country." But why name a solitary instance? Deputies, members of parliament, peers of France and of England, and public men of half the nations of Europe, have substantially expressed to the writer the same opinion, under one circumstance or another, in, perhaps, fifty different instances.] LETTER XIII. Ferry across the Rhine.--Village of Rudesheim.--The _Hinter-hausen_ Wine,--Drunkenness.--Neapolitan curiosity respecting America.--The Rhenish Wines enumerated.--Ingelheim.--Johannisberg.--Conventual Wine.--Unseasonable praise.--House and Grounds of Johannisberg.--State of Nassau.--Palace at Biberich.--The Gardens.--Wiesbaden.--Its public Promenade.--Frankfort on the Maine. Dear ----, Within an hour after we left the Ritterstein, we were crossing the bridge that leads into Bingen. Like true _flaneurs_, we had not decided where to sleep, and, unlike _flaneurs_, we now began to look wistfully towards the other side of the Rhine into the duchy of Nassau. There was no bridge, but then there might be a ferry. Beckoning to the postmaster, who came to the side of the carriage, I put the question. "Certainly, as good a ferry as there is in Germany."--"And can we cross with your horses?"--"Ja--ja--we do it often." The affair was arranged in a minute. The leaders were led back to the stable, and with two horses we drove down to the water-side. A skiff was in readiness, and spreading a sprit-sail, we were in the middle of the stream before there was time for thought. In ten minutes we landed in the celebrated Rheingau, and at the foot of a hill that was teeming with the vines of Rudesheim. "Charlemagne observing, from the window of his palace at Ingelheim," says an old legend, "that the snow disappeared from the bluff above Rudesheim earlier than from any of the neighbouring hills, caused the same to be planted with vines." What has become of Charlemagne and his descendants, no one knows; but here are the progeny of his vines to the present hour. François followed us in a few minutes with the carriage and horses, and we were soon comfortably housed in an inn, in the village of Rudesheim. Here, then, we were in the heart of the richest wine region in Europe, perhaps in the world. I looked curiously at mine host, to see what effect this fact might have had on him, but he did nor appear to have abused the advantage. He told me there had just been a sale, at which I should have been most welcome; complained that much sour liquor was palmed off on the incredulous as being the pure beverage; and said that others might prefer Johannisberger, but for his part, good _hinter-hausen_[30] was good enough for him. "Would I try a bottle?" The proposition was not to be declined, and with my dinner I did try a bottle of his oldest and best; and henceforth I declare myself a convert to _Rudesheimer hinter-hausen._ One cannot drink a gallon of it with impunity, as is the case with some of the French wines; but I feel persuaded it is the very article for our _market_, to use the vernacular of a true Manhattanese. It has body to bear the voyage, without being the fiery compound that we drink under the names of Madeira and Sherry. [Footnote 30: _Behind the houses_; so termed, from the vines standing on lower land than the hill, behind the village.] It is a singular fact, that in none but wine growing countries are the true uses of the precious gift understood. In them, wine is not a luxury, but a necessary; its use is not often abused, and its beneficial effect can scarcely be appreciated without being witnessed. I do not mean that there is no drunkenness in these countries, for there is probably as much of the vice in France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland, as there is with us; but they who drink hard generally drink some of the vile compounds which exist everywhere under the names of brandy, _agua diente_, or something else. I was one day crossing the bay of Naples in my hired craft, La Divina Providenza, rowed by a crew of twenty-one men who cost me just the price of a carriage and horses for the same time, when the _padrone_, who had then been boating about with us several weeks, began to be inquisitive concerning America, and our manner of living, more especially among the labouring classes. The answers produced a strong sensation in the boat; and when they heard that labourers received a ducat a-day for their toil, half of the honest fellows declared themselves ready to emigrate. "_Et, il vino, signore; quale è il prezzo del vino?_" demanded the _padrone_. I told him wine was a luxury with us, and beyond the reach of the labourer, the general sneer that followed immediately satisfied me that no emigrants would go from La Divina Providenza. It is scarcely necessary to tell one of your habits, that the wines we call Hock are Rhenish, and that each properly bears the name of its own vintage. This rule prevails everywhere, the names of Claret, Burgundy, and Sherry, being unknown in France and Spain. It is true the French have their Burgundy wines, and the Spaniards their Xeres wines; but _vin de Bourgogne_ includes liquors of different colours and very different qualities. The same is true of other places. What we call Claret the French term Bordeaux wines; though _Clairet_ is an old French word, still occasionally used, signifying a thin weak potation. The Rheingau, or the part of the Nassau in which we now are, produces the best wines of the Rhine. The principal vineyards are those of Johannisberg, Hochheim, (whence the name of Hock,) Geissenheim, Steinberg, and Rudesheim Johannisberg is now the property of Prince Metternich; Geissenheim belongs to the Count of Ingelheim; and Hochheim and Rudesheim are villages, the vines having different proprietors. I do not know the situation of Steinberg. The best wine of Johannisberg has the highest reputation; that of Geissenheim is also delicious, and is fast growing in value; Hochheimer _Dom_, (or houses growing near the village,) is also in great request; and of the _hinter-hausen_ of Rudesheim you have already heard. Dr. Somerville once told me he had analysed the pure Johannisberger, and that it contained less acidity than any other wine he knew. The Steinberger is coming into favour; it is the highest flavoured of all the German wines, its perfume or _bouquet_, being really too strong. Rudesheim was a Roman station, and it is probable that its wines date from their government. There is still a considerable ruin, belonging, I believe to the Count of Ingelheim, that is supposed to have been built by the Romans, and which has been partially fitted up by its proprietor, as a place of retreat, during the vintage. This is truly a classical _villagiatura_. It was curious to examine these remains, which are extensive, so soon after going over the feudal castle, and it must be confessed that the sons of the South maintained their long established superiority here, as elsewhere. Ingelheim, where Charlemagne had a palace, and where some pretend he was born, is in plain view on the other side of the river, but no traces of the palace are visible from this spot. Such is the difference between the false and the true Roman. There is also a ruin, a small high circular tower, that is connected with our inn, forming even one of our own rooms, and which is very ancient, probably as ancient as the great Frank. We left Rudesheim after breakfast, driving quite near to the hill of Geissenheim, and quitting the main road, for the purpose of visiting Johannisberg, which lies back a mile from the great route. We wound our way around the hill, which on three sides is shaped like a cone, and on the other is an irregular ridge, and approached the house by the rear. If you happen to have a bottle of the wine of this vineyard (real or reputed, for in this respect the false Simon Pure is quite as likely to be true as the real,) you will find a sufficiently good resemblance of this building on its label. I can give you no other reason why this wine was formerly so little known, while that of Hochheim had so great a reputation, than the fact that the mountain, house, and vines were all the property of a religious community, previously to the French revolution, and that the monks probably chose to drink their own liquors. In this particular they were unlike the people of Brie; for walking one day with Lafayette, over his estate at La Grange, I expressed surprise at seeing some labourers making wine. "Oh, yes, my dear friend," returned the General, "we do _make_ wine here, but then we take very good care not to _drink_ it." The monks of Johannisberg most likely both made wine and drank it. Johannisberg has changed owners several times. Shortly after our return from the journey on the Rhine of last year, chance placed me, at Paris, at table between the _chargé d'affaires_ of Nassau and the Duc de Valmy. The former observed that I had lately been in Nassau, and asked how I liked the country. Under such circumstances one would wish to praise, and as I could honestly do so, I expressed my admiration of what I had seen. Among other things, I spoke of its rich vineyards, and, as a matter of course, began to extol that of Johannisberg. The more I praised, the graver the _diplomate_ looked, until thinking I had not come up to his own feelings, I began to be warmer still in my expressions. A touch under the table silenced me. The _chargé_ soon after gave me to understand that Johannisberg produced only sour grapes for my neighbour, as Napoleon had given the estate to the first Duke, and the allies had taken it away from his son. This was not the first time I have had occasion to see the necessity of being guarded how one speaks, lest he offend some political sensibility or other in this quarter of the world. The present owner of Johannisberg has fitted up the house, which is quite spacious, very handsomely, though without gorgeousness, and there is really a suite of large and commodious rooms. I saw few or no signs of the monastery about the building. The vines grow all around the conical part of the hill quite up to the windows. The best wine is made from those near the house, on the south-eastern exposure. The view was beautiful and very extensive, and all that the place wants to make it a desirable residence is shade; an advantage, however, that cannot be enjoyed on the same spot in common with good wine. The nakedness of the ground impaired the effect of the dwelling. The owner is seldom here, as is apparent by the furniture, which, though fresh and suitable, does not extend to the thousand little elegancies that accumulate in a regular abode. The books say that this celebrated vineyard contains sixty-three acres, and this is near the extent I should give it, from the eye. The produce is stated at twenty-five hogsheads, of thirteen hundred bottles each. Some of the wines of the best vintages sell as high as four and even five dollars a bottle. I observed that the soil was mixed with stone much decomposed, of a shelly appearance, and whitish colour. The land would be pronounced unsuited to ordinary agriculture, I suspect, by a majority of farmers. I bought a bottle of wine from a servant who professed to have permission to sell it. The price was two florins and a half, or a dollar, and the quality greatly inferior to the bottle that, for the same money, issued from the cellar of the host at Rudesheim. It is probable the whole thing was a deception, though the inferior wines of Johannisberg are no better than a vast deal of the other common wine of the neighbourhood. From Johannisberg we descended to the plain and took the road to Biberich. This is a small town on the banks of the Rhine, and is the residence of the Duke. Nassau figures in the tables of the Germanic confederation as the fourteenth state, having three hundred and thirty-eight thousand inhabitants, and furnishing three thousand troops as its contingent. The population is probably a little greater. The reigning family is of the ancient line of Nassau, from a junior branch of which I believe the King of Holland is derived; the Duchess is a princess of Wurtemberg, and a sister of the Grand-duchess Helena, of whom I have already spoken so often. This little state is one of the fabricated sovereignties of 1814, being composed of divers fragments, besides the ancient possessions of the family. In short, it would seem to be intended for the government and better management of a few capital vineyards. Nassau has been much agitated of late with liberal opinions, though the government is already what it is the fashion to term representative, on this side of the Atlantic. It is the old theory, that small states can better support a popular form of government than a large state. This is a theory in which I have no faith, and one, in my opinion, that has been fabricated to suit the accidental situation of Europe. The danger of popular governments are popular excesses, such as those truculent errors that men fall into by a misconception of truth, misstatements, ignorance of their interests, and the sort of village-like gossip which causes every man to think he is a judge of character, when he is not even a judge of facts. The abuses of absolutism are straightforward, dogged tyranny, in which the rights of the mass are sacrificed to the interests and policy of a prince and his favourites. Now, in a large country, popular excesses in one part are checked and repressed by the power and interests of the other parts. It is not an easy matter to make a popular error, that leads to popular excesses, extend simultaneously over a very extended surface; and they who are tranquil, control, and finally influence, those who are excited. In a small state, absolutism is held under the checks of neighbourhood and familiarity. Men disregard accidents and crime in a capital, while they reason on them and act on them in the country. Just so will the sovereign of a small state feel and submit to the authority of an active public opinion. If I must have liberty, let it come in large draughts like learning, and form an atmosphere of its own; and if I must be the subject of despotic power, Heaven send that my sovereign be a small prince. The latter is on the supposition that I am an honest man, for he who would rise by servility and a sacrifice of his principles, had better at once choose the greatest monarch he can find for a master. Small states are usually an evil in themselves, but I think they are least so when the authority is absolute. The people of Nassau had better be moderate in their progress, while they of France should press on to their purpose; and yet the people of Nassau will probably be the most urgent, simply because the power with which they have to contend is so feeble, for men rarely take the "just medium," though they are always talking about it. We entered the palace at Biberich, which, without being larger than usual, is an edifice well worth viewing. We could not but compare this abode with the President's house, and certainly, so far as taste and elegance are concerned, the comparison is entirely to the disadvantage of us Americans. It is easy to write unmeaning anathemas against prodigal expenditures, and extorting the hard earnings of the poor, on such occasions, but I do not know that the castle of Biberich was erected by any means so foul. The general denunciation of everything that does not happen to enter into our own system, has no more connexion with true republicanism than cant has to do with religion. Abuses of this nature have existed beyond dispute, and the public money, even among ourselves, is not always honestly or prudently expended; but these are the errors inseparable from human nature, and it is silly to quarrel with all the blandishments of life until we can find faultless substitutes. The simple fact that a nation like our own has suffered an entire generation to go by with its chief magistrate living in a house surrounded by grounds almost as naked as a cornfield, while it proves nothing in favour of its economy, goes to show either that we want the taste and habits necessary to appreciate the privation, (as is probably the case), or the generosity to do a liberal act, since it is notorious that we possess the means. The gardens of Biberich are extensive and beautiful. We are proofs ourselves that they are not reserved, in a niggardly spirit, for the exclusive uses of a few, nor in truth are those of any other prince in Europe where we have been. The interior of the house is much ornamented by a very peculiar marble that is found in the duchy, and which produces a good effect. A circular hall in the centre of the building, surmounted by a dome, is rather striking, from having a colonnade of this material. The family was here, and the preparations were making for dinner in one of the rooms; the whole style of the domestic economy being that of a nobleman of liberal means. The house was very quiet, and we saw but few menials, though we met two of the children, accompanied by a governess, in the grounds. Biberich and the castle, or palace, stand immediately on the banks of the river, which, between Bingen and Mayence, is straggling and well covered with islands, having an entire breadth of near half a mile. The effect, when seen from the neighbouring heights, is not unlike that of a lake. From Biberich we diverged directly into the interior of the Rheingau, taking the road to Wiesbaden, which is a watering-place of some note, and the seat of government of the duchy. We reached it early, for it is no great matter to pass from the frontiers of one of these small states into its centre, ordered dinner, and went out to see the lions. Wiesbaden has little to recommend it by nature, its waters excepted. It stands in a funnel rather than a valley, and it is said to be excessively hot in summer, though a pleasant winter residence. I do not remember a place that so triumphantly proves how much may be made out of a little, as the public promenade of Wiesbaden. The springs are nearly, or perhaps quite a mile from the town, the intervening land being a gentle inclination. From the springs, a rivulet, scarce large enough to turn a village mill, winds its way down to the town. The banks of this little stream have been planted, artificial obstructions and cascades formed, paths cut, bridges thrown across the rivulet, rocks piled, etc., and by these simple means, one walks a mile in a belt of wood a few rods wide, and may fancy himself in a park of two thousand acres. Ten years would suffice to bring such a promenade to perfection, and yet nothing like it exists in all America! One can surely smoke cigars, drink Congress water, discuss party politics, and fancy himself a statesman, whittle, clean his nails in company and never out of it, swear things are good enough for him without having known any other state of society, squander dollars on discomfort, and refuse cents to elegance and convenience, because he knows no better, and call the obliquity of taste patriotism, without enjoying a walk in a wood by the side of a murmuring rill! He may, beyond dispute, if such be his sovereign pleasure, do all this, and so may an Esquimaux maintain that whale's blubber is preferable to beefsteaks. I wonder that these dogged and philosophical patriots do not go back to warlocks, scalps, and paint! The town of Wiesbaden, like all German towns of any consequence I have ever been in, Cologne excepted, is neat and clean. It is also well-built, and evidently improving. You may have heard a good deal of the boulevards and similar places of resort, in the vicinity of French towns, but as a whole, they are tasteless and barren-looking spots. Even the Champs Elysées, at Paris, have little beauty of themselves, for landscape gardening is but just introduced into France; whereas, to me, it would seem that the Germans make more use of it, in and near their towns, than the English. We left Wiesbaden next morning, after enjoying its baths, and went slowly up to Frankfort on the Maine, a distance of about twenty miles. Here we took up our old quarters at the White Swan, a house of a second-rate reputation, but of first-rate civility, into which chance first threw me; and, as usual, we got a capital dinner and good wine. The innkeeper, in honour of Germany, caused a dish, that he said was national and of great repute, to be served to us pilgrims. It was what the French call a _jardinière_, or a partridge garnished with cabbage, carrots, turnips, etc. I seized the opportunity to put myself _au courant_ of the affairs of the world, by going to one of the reading-rooms, that are to be found all over Germany, under the names of _Redoutes, Casinos_, or something of that sort. Pipes appear to be proscribed in the _casino_ of Frankfort, which is altogether a genteel and respectable establishment. As usual, a stranger must be introduced. LETTER XIV. Boulevards of Frankfort.--Political Disturbances in the town.--_Le petit Savoyard_.--Distant glimpse of Homberg.--Darmstadt.--The Bergestrasse.--Heidelberg.--Noisy Market-place.--The Ruins and Gardens.--An old Campaigner.--Valley of the Neckar.--Heilbronn.--Ludwigsberg.--Its Palace.--The late Queen of Wurtemberg.--The Birthplace of Schiller.--Comparative claims of Schiller and Goethe.--Stuttgart.--Its Royal Residences.--The Princess of Hechingen.--German Kingdoms.--The King and Queen of Wurtemberg.--Sir Walter Scott.--Tubingen.--Ruin of a Castle of the middle ages.--Hechingen.--Village of Bahlingen.--The Danube.--The Black Forest.--View from a mountain on the frontier of Baden.--Enter Switzerland. Dear ----, I have little new to tell you of Frankfort. It appeared to be the same busy, clean, pretty, well-built town, on this visit, as it did at the two others. We examined the boulevards a little more closely than before, and were even more pleased with them than formerly. I have already explained to you that the secret of these tasteful and beautiful walks, so near, and sometimes in the very heart (as at Dresden) of the large German towns, is in the circumstance of the old fortifications being destroyed, and the space thus obtained having been wisely appropriated to health and air. Leipsig, in particular, enjoys a picturesque garden, where formerly there stood nothing but grim guns, and frowning ramparts. Frankfort has been the subject of recent political disturbances, and, I heard this morning from a banker, that there existed serious discontents all along the Rhine. As far as I can learn, the movement proceeds from a desire in the trading, banking, and manufacturing classes, the _nouveaux riches_, in short, to reduce the power and influence of the old feudal and territorial nobility. The kingly authority, in our time, is not much of itself, and the principal question has become, how many or how few, or, in short, _who_ are to share in its immunities. In this simple fact lies the germ of the revolution in France, and of reform in England. Money is changing hands, and power must go with it. This is, has been, and ever will be the case, except in those instances in which the great political trust is thrown confidingly into the hands of all; and even then, in half the practical results, money will cheat them out of the advantages. Where the pressure is so great as to produce a recoil, it is the poor against the rich; and where the poor have rights to stand on, the rich are hard at work to get the better of the poor. Such is the curse of Adam, and man himself must be changed before the disease can be cured. All we can do, under the best constructed system, is to mitigate the evil. We left Frankfort at eleven, declining the services of a celebrated _voiturier_, called _le petit Savoyard_, whom François introduced, with a warm recommendation of fidelity and zeal. These men are extensively known, and carry their _soubriquets_, as ships do their names. The little Savoyard had just discharged a cargo of _miladies_, bound to England, after having had them on his charter-party eighteen months, and was now on the look-out for a return freight. As his whole equipments were four horses, the harness, and a long whip, he was very desirous of the honour of dragging my carriage a hundred leagues or so, towards any part of the earth whither it might suit my pleasure to proceed. But it is to be presumed that _miladies_ were of full weight, for even François, who comes of a family of _voituriers_, and has a fellow-feeling for the craft, is obliged to admit that the cattle of _le petit_ appear to have been overworked. This negotiation occupied an hour, and it ended by sending the passport to the post. We were soon beyond the tower that marks the limits of the territory of Frankfort, on the road to Darmstadt. While mounting an ascent, we had a distant glimpse of the town of Homberg, the capital and almost the whole territory of the principality of Hesse Homberg; a state whose last sovereign had the honour of possessing an English princess for a wife. Truly there must be something in blood, after all; for this potentate has but twenty-three thousand subjects to recommend him! Darmstadt is one of those towns which are laid out on so large a scale as to appear mean. This is a common fault, both in Germany and America; for the effect of throwing open wide avenues, that one can walk through in five minutes, is to bring the intention into ludicrous contrast with the result. Mannheim is another of these abortions. The disadvantage, however, ends with the appearance, for Darmstadt is spacious, airy, and neat; it is also well-built. The ancient Landgraves of Hesse Darmstadt have become Grand Dukes, with a material accession of territory, the present sovereign ruling over some 700,000 subjects. The old castle is still standing in the heart of the place, if a town which is all artery can be said to have any heart, and we walked into its gloomy old courts, with the intention of examining it; but the keeper of the keys was not to be found. There is a modern palace of very good architecture near it, and, as usual, extensive gardens, laid out, so far as we could perceive from the outside, in the English taste. A short distance from Darmstadt, the Bergestrasse (mountain road) commences. It is a perfect level, but got its name from skirting the foot of the mountain, at an elevation to overlook the vast plain of the Palatinate; for we were now on the verge of this ancient territory, which has been merged in the Grand Duchy of Baden by the events of the last half century. I may as well add, that Baden is a respectable state, having nearly 1,300,000 subjects. The Bergestrasse has many ruins on the heights that overlook it, though the river is never within a league or two of the road. Here we found postilions worthy of their fine track, and, to say the truth, of great skill. In Germany you get but one postilion with four horses, and, as the leaders are always at a great distance from those on the pole, it is an exploit of some delicacy to drive eight miles an hour, riding the near wheel-horse, and governing the team very much by the use of the whip. The cattle are taught to travel without blinkers, and, like men to whom political power is trusted, they are the less dangerous for it. It is your well-trained animal, that is checked up and blinded, who runs away with the carriage of state, as well as the travelling carriage, and breaks the neck of him who rides. It was quite dark when we crossed the bridge of the Neckar, and plunged into the crowded streets of Heidelberg. Notwithstanding the obscurity, we got a glimpse of the proud old ruin overhanging the place, looking grand and sombre in the gloom of night. The view from the windows next morning was one of life in the extreme. The principal market-place was directly before the inn, and it appeared as if half the peasants of the grand duchy had assembled there to display their fruits and vegetables. A market is always a garrulous and noisy place; but when the advantage of speaking German is added to it, the perfection of confusion is obtained. In all _good_ society, both men and women speak in subdued voices, and there is no need to allude to them; but when one descends a little below the _élite_, strength of lungs is rather a German failing.[31] We went to the ruins while the fogs were still floating around the hill-tops. I was less pleased with this visit than with that of last year, for the surprise was gone, and there was leisure to be critical. On the whole, these ruins are vast rather than fine, though the parts of the edifice that were built in the Elizabethan taste have the charm of quaintness. There is also one picturesque tower; but the finest thing certainly is the view from the garden-terrace above. An American, who remembers the genial soil and climate of his country, must mourn over the want of taste that has left, and still leaves, a great nation (numerically great, at least) ignorant of the enjoyment of those delicious retreats! As Nelson once said, "want of frigates" would be found written on his heart were he to die, I think "want of gardens" would be found written on mine. Our cicerone, on this occasion, was a man who had served in America, during the last war, as one of the corps of De Watteville. He was born in Baden, and says that a large portion of the corps were Germans. He was in most of the battles of the Niagara, and shook his head gravely when I hinted at the attack on Fort Erie. According to his account, the corps suffered exceedingly in the campaign of 1814, losing the greater portion of its men. I asked him how he came to fight us, who had never done him any harm; and he answered that Napoleon had made all Europe soldiers or robbers, and that he had not stopped to examine the question of right. [Footnote 31: Until the revolution of 1830, the writer never met but one noisy woman in Paris. Since that period, however, one hears a little more of the _tintamarre_ of the _comptoir_.] We drove up the valley of the Neckar, after a late breakfast, by an excellent road, and through a beautiful country, for the first post or two. We then diverged from the stream, ascended into a higher portion of undulating country, that gradually became less and less interesting, until, in the end, we all pronounced it the tamest and least inviting region we had yet seen in Europe. I do not say that the country was particularly sterile, but it was common-place, and offered fewer objects of interest than any other we had yet visited. Until now, our destination was not settled, though I had almost decided to go to Nuremberg, and thence, by Ratisbonne and the Danube, to Vienna; but we all came to the opinion that the appearance of things towards the east was too dreary for endurance. We had already journeyed through Bavaria, from its southern to its northern end, and we wished to vary the scene. A member of its royal family had once told me that Wurtemberg offered but little for the traveller, at the same time saying a good word for its capital. When one gets information from so high authority it is not to be questioned, and towards Stuttgart it was determined to turn our faces. At Heilbronn, therefore, we changed direction from east to south. This Heilbronn was a quaint old German town, and it had a few of its houses painted on the exterior, like those already described to you in Switzerland. Weinsberg, so celebrated for its wives, who saved their husbands at a capitulation, by carrying them out of the place on their backs, is near this town. As there are no walled towns in America, and the example could do no good, we did not make a pilgrimage to the spot. That night we slept at a little town called Bessingheim, with the Neckar, which we had again met at Heilbronn, murmuring beneath our windows. The next morning we were off betimes to avoid the heat, and reached Ludwigsberg to breakfast. Here the scene began to change. Troops were at drill in a meadow, as we approached the town, and the postilion pointed out to us a portly officer at the Duke of Wurtemberg, a cadet of the royal family, who was present with his staff. Drilling troops, from time immemorial, has been a royal occupation in Germany. It is, like a Manhattanese talking of dollars, a source of endless enjoyment. Ludwigsberg is the Windsor, the St. Denis, of the Princes of Wurtemberg. There an extensive palace, the place of sepulture, and a town of five or six thousand inhabitants. We went through the former, which is large and imposing, with fine courts and some pretty views, but it is low and Teutonic--in plain English, squat--like some of the old statues in armour that one sees in the squares of the German towns. There is a gallery and a few good pictures, particularly a Rembrandt or two. One of the latter is in the same style as the "Tribute-money" that I possess, and greatly encourages me as to the authenticity of that picture. The late Queen of Wurtemberg was the Princess Royal of England, and she inhabited this palace. Being mistaken for English, we were shown her apartments, in which she died lately, and which were exactly in the condition in which she left them. She must have had strong family attachments, for her rooms were covered with portraits of her relatives. The King of England was omnipresent; and as for her own husband, of whom, by the way, one picture would have been quite sufficient for any reasonable woman, there were no less than six portraits of him in a single room! As one goes north, the style of ornamenting rooms is less graceful, and the German and English palaces all have the same formal and antiquated air. Ludwigsberg does not change the rule, though there was an unusual appearance of comfort in the apartments of the late Queen, which had evidently been Anglicised. While we were standing at a balcony, that overlooks a very pretty tract of wooded country and garden, the guide pointed to a hamlet, whose church tower was peering above a bit of forest, in a distant valley, or rather swell. "Does Mein Herr see it?" "I do--it is no more than a sequestered hamlet, that is prettily enough placed."--It was Marbach, the birth-place of Schiller! Few men can feel less of the interest that so commonly attaches to the habits, habitations, and personal appearance of celebrated men, than myself. The mere sight of a celebrity never creates any sensation. Yet I do not remember a stronger conviction of the superiority enjoyed by true over factitious greatness, than that which flashed on my mind, when I was told this fact. That sequestered hamlet rose in a moment to an importance that all the appliances and souvenirs of royalty could not give to the palace of Ludwigsberg. Poor Schiller! In my eyes he is the German genius of the age. Goethe has got around him one of those factitious reputations that depend as much on gossip and tea-drinking as on a high order of genius, and he is fortunate in possessing a _coddled celebrity_--for you must know there is a fashion in this thing, that is quite independent of merit--while Schiller's fame rests solely on its naked merits. My life for it, that it lasts the longest, and will burn brightest in the end. The schools, and a prevalent taste and the caprice of fashion, can make Goethes in dozens, at any time; but God only creates such men as Schiller. The Germans say, _we_ cannot feel Goethe; but after all, a translation is perhaps one of the best tests of genius, for though bad translations abound, if there is stuff in the original, it will find its way even into one of these. From Ludwigsberg to Stuttgart it is but a single post, and we arrived there at twelve. The appearance of this place was altogether different from what we had expected. Although it contains near 30,000 inhabitants, it has more the air of a thriving Swiss town, than that of a German capital, the abodes and gardens of the royal family excepted. By a Swiss town, I do not mean either such places as Geneva, and Berne, and Zurich, but such towns as Herisau and Lucerne, without including the walls of the latter. It stands at the termination of an irregular valley, at the base of some mountains, and, altogether, its aspect, rustic exterior, and position, took us by surprise. The town, however, is evidently becoming more European, as they say on this side the Atlantic, every day; or, in other words, it is becoming less peculiar. At and around the palaces there is something already imposing. The old feudal castle, which I presume is the cradle of the House of Wurtemberg, stands as a nucleus for the rest of the town. It is a strong prison-like looking pile, composed of huge round towers and narrow courts, and still serves the purposes of the state, though not as a prison, I trust. Another hotel, or royal residence, is quite near it on one side, while the new palace is close at hand on another. The latter is a handsome edifice of Italian architecture, in some respects not unlike the Luxembourg at Paris, and I should think, out of all comparison the best royal residence to be found in the inferior states of Germany, if not in all Germany, those of Prussia and Austria excepted. We took a carriage, and drove through the grounds to a new classical little palace, that crowns an eminence at their other extremity, a distance of a mile or two. We went through this building, which is a little in the style of the Trianons, at Versailles; smaller than Le Grand Trianon, and larger than Le Petit Trianon. This display of royal houses, after all, struck us as a little dis portioned to the diminutive size and poverty of the country. The last is nothing but a _maison de plaisance_, and is well enough if it did not bring taxation with it; nor do I know that it did. Most of the sovereigns have large private fortunes, which they are entitled to use the same as others, and which are well used in fostering elegant tastes in their subjects. There is a watering-place near the latter house, and preparations were making for the King to dine there, with a party of his own choosing. This reminded us of our own dinner, which had been ordered at six, and we returned to eat it. While sitting at a window, waiting the service, a carriage that drove up attracted my attention. It was a large and rather elegant post chariot, as much ornamented as comported with the road, and having a rich blazonry. A single female was in it, with a maid and valet in the rumble. The lady was in a cap, and, as her equipage drove up, appeared to be netting. I have frequently met German families travelling along the highway in this sociable manner, apparently as much at home as when they were under the domestic roof. This lady, however, had so little luggage, that I was induced to enquire who it might be. She was a Princess of Hechingen, a neighbouring state, that had just trotted over probably to take tea with some of her cousins of Wurtemberg. These _quasi_ kingdoms are so diminutive that this sort of intercourse is very practicable, and (a pure conjecture) it may be that German etiquette, so notoriously stiff and absurd, has been invented to prevent the intercourse from becoming too familiar. The mediatising system, however, has greatly augmented the distances between the capitals, though, owing to some accidental influence, there is still here and there a prince, that might be spared, whose territories have been encircled, without having been absolutely absorbed, by those who have been gainers by the change. Bavaria has risen to be a kingdom of four millions of souls, in this manner; and the Dukes of Wurtemberg have become kings, though on a more humble scale, through the liberality or policy of Napoleon. The kingdom of the latter contains the two independent principalities of Hohenzollern (spared on account of some family alliances, I believe) in its bosom. One of the princes of the latter family is married to a Mademoiselle Murat, a niece of Joachim. After dinner we went again to the garden, where we accidentally were witnesses of the return of the royal party from their pic-nic. The King drove the Queen in a pony phaeton, at the usual pace of monarchs, or just as fast as the little animals could put foot to the ground. He was a large and well-whiskered man, with a strong family likeness to the English princes. The attendants were two mounted grooms, in scarlet liveries. A cadet, a dark, Italian-looking personage, came soon after in full uniform, driving himself, also, in a sort of barouche. After a short time we were benefited by the appearance of the cooks and scullions, who passed in a _fourgon_, that contained the remnants and the utensils. Soon after we got a glimpse of the Queen and three or four of the daughters, at a balcony of the palace, the lady of the net-work being among them. They all appeared to be fine women. At the inn I heard with regret that Sir Walter Scott, had passed but two days before. He was represented as being extremely ill; so much so, indeed, as to refuse to quit his carriage, where he kept himself as much as possible out of view. We left Stuttgart early the following morning, and as the carriage wound up the mountain that overlooks the town, I thought the place one of singular incongruities. The hill-sides are in vineyards; the palace, in excellent keeping, was warm and sunny; while the old feudal-looking towers of the castle, rudely recalled the mind to ancient Germany, and the Swissish habitations summoned up the images of winter, snows, and shivering February. Still I question, if a place so sheltered ever endures much cold. The town appears to have been built in the nook it occupies, expressly to save fuel. We met the Neckar again, after crossing a range of wooded mountain, and at Tubingen we once more found a city, a university, the remains of feodality, redoutes, pipes, and other German appliances. Here we breakfasted, and received a visit from a young countryman, whose parents, Germans, I believe, had sent him hither to be educated. He will, probably return with a good knowledge of Greek, perfect master of metaphysics and the pipe, extravagant in his political opinions, a sceptic in religion, and with some such ideas of the poetry of thought, as a New England dancing-master has of the poetry of motion, or a teacher of psalmody, of the art of music. After all, this is better than sending a boy to England, whence he would come back with the notions of Sir William Blackstone to help to overturn or pervert his own institutions, and his memory crammed with second-hand anecdotes of lords and ladies. We labour under great embarrassments on this point of education, for it is not easy to obtain it, suited equally to the right, and to our own peculiar circumstances, either at home or abroad. At home we want science, research, labour, tone, manners, and time; abroad we get the accumulated prejudices that have arisen from a factitious state of things; or, what is perhaps worse, their reaction, the servility of castes, or the truculence of revolution. About a post beyond Tubingen, a noble ruin of a castle of the middle ages appeared in the distance, crowning the summit of a high conical eminence. These were the finest remains we had seen in a long time, and viewed from the road, they were a beautiful object, for half an hour. This was the castle of Hohenzollern, erected about the year 980, and the cradle of the House of Brandenburg. This family, some pretend, was derived from the ancient Dukes of Alsace, which, if true would give it the same origin as those of Austria and Baden; but it is usual, and probably much safer, to say that the Counts of Hohenzollern were its founders. We must all stop somewhere short of Adam. I was musing on the chances that have raised a cadet, or a younger branch, of the old feudal counts who had once occupied this hold, to the fifth throne in Europe, when we entered an irregular and straggling village of some 3000 souls, that was not, by any means, as well built as one of our own towns of the same size. A sign over a door, such as would be occupied by a thriving trader with us, with "Department of War" on it, induced me to open my eyes, and look about me. We were in Hechingen, the capital of Hohenzollern-Hechingen, an independent state, with a prince of its own; who is the head of his family, in one sense, and its tail in another; there being, besides the King of Prussia, a Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen adjoining, who is his junior in rank, and his better in power; having some 40 or 50,000 subjects, while he of Hechingen has but 15,000. On ascending a hill in the place itself, we passed an unfinished house, all front, that stood on the street, with no grounds of any beauty near it, and which certainly was not as large, nor nearly as well constructed, as one of our own principal country-houses. This building, we were told, was intended for the town residence of the heir-apparent, who is married to a daughter of Eugene Beauharnois, and of course to a niece of the King of Bavaria. All this was an epitome of royalty I had never before witnessed. The Saxon duchies, and Bayreuth and Anspach, now merged in Bavaria, had been the subjects of curious contemplation to us, but they were all the possessions of potentates compared to this principality. I inquired for the abode of the prince, which could not well be far off, without being out of his own dominions. It lay behind a wood a mile distant, and was not visible from the inn where we stopped. Here was a capital mistake; had the old castle, which was but half a mile from the village, been kept up, and it seemed to be in good condition for a ruin, with the title of Count of Hohenzollern and the war and state departments been put in one of the towers, no one could have laughed at the pretension, let him try as hard as he pleased; but-- We had a strong desire to visit the ruin, which puts that of Habsburg altogether in the shade, but were prevented by a thunder-shower which shook the principality to its centre. The Knight's Hall, the chapel and the clock-tower are said to have been restored, and to be now in good condition. We could do no more, however, than cast longing eyes upward as we drove under the hill, the ground being still too wet for female accoutrements to venture. We had a Hechingen postilion in a Hechingen livery, and, although the man was sensible of his dignity and moved with due deliberation, we were just one hour in crossing his master's dominions. Re-entering Wurtemberg, we slept that night at the village of Bahlingen. The country next morning was particularly tame, though uneven, until near noon, when it gradually took more interesting forms and spread itself in pretty valleys and wooded hills. The day was pleasant; and, as we trotted merrily through one of the vales, A---- pointed to a little rivulet that meandered through the meadows on our right, and praised its beauty. "I dare say it has a name; inquire of the postilion." "Wie ist diesen fluschen?" "Mein Herr, der Donau." The Danube! There was something startling in so unexpectedly meeting this mighty stream, which we had seen rolling its dark flow through cities and kingdoms, a rivulet that I could almost leap across. It was to us like meeting one we had known a monarch, reduced to the condition of a private man. I was musing on the particles of water that were gliding past us on their way to the Black Sea, when we drove up to the door of the inn at Tuttlingen. This was in the Black Forest, and what is more, there were some trees in it. The wood was chiefly larches, whence I presume the name. Our host discovered from the servants that we were Americans, and he immediately introduced the subject of emigration. He told us that many people went from Wurtemberg to America, and gave us to understand that we ought to be glad of it--they were all so well educated! This was a new idea, certainly, and yet I will not take it on myself to say that the fact is otherwise. While we were at breakfast, the innkeeper, who was also the postmaster, inquired where we meant to sleep, and I told him at Schaffhausen, on the Rhine. He then gave me to understand that there was a long, but not a steep mountain to ascend, which separated the waters of the Danube from those of the Rhine, and that two extra horses would add greatly to the facility of getting along. Taking a look at the road, I assented, so that we left the inn with the honours of a coach and six. The effect was evident from the start, and after entering Wurtemberg and travelling through it complaining of the dullness of the teams, we left it with _éclat_, and at the rate of ten miles the hour. The frontier of Baden met us again on the summit of the mountain. Here we got a line and extensive view, that included the lake of Constance in its sweep. The water looked dark and wild, and the whole scene had a tint that strongly reminded me of the character of Germanic mysteriousness. We must have been at a great elevation, though the mountains were not prominent objects; on the contrary, the eye ranged until it found the horizon, as at sea, in the curvature of the earth. The rills near us flowed into the Rhine, and, traversing half Europe, emptied themselves into the North Sea; while the stream that wound its way through the valley below, took a south-easterly direction towards the confines of Asia. One gets grand and pleasing images in the associations that are connected with the contemplation of these objects. From this point we began to descend, shorn of our honours in the way of quadrupeds, for it was with a good deal of difficulty we got three horses at the next relay. Thus is it with life, in which at one moment we are revelling in abundance, and at the next suffering with want. We got along, however, as in life, in the best manner we could, and after driving through a pretty and uneven country, that gradually descended, we suddenly plunged down to the banks of the Rhine, and found ourselves once more before an inn-door, in Switzerland! SECOND VISIT TO SWITZERLAND. LETTER XV. A Swiss Inn.--Cataract of the Rhine.--Canton of Zurich.--Town of Zurich.--Singular Concurrence.--Formidable Ascent.--Exquisite View.--Einsiedeln--The Convent.--"_Par exemple_."--Shores of the Lake of Zug.--The _Chemin Creux_.--Water Excursion to Alpnach.--Lake of Lungern.--Lovely Landscape.--Effects of Mists on the prospect.--Natural Barometer.--View from the Brunig.--Enter the great Canton of Berne.--An Englishman's Politics.--Our French Companion.--The Giesbach.--Mountain Music.--Lauterbrunnen.--Grindewald.--Rising of the Waters in 1830.--Anecdote.--Excursion on the Lake to Thoun. Dear ----, We had sought refuge on the Rhine, from the tameness and monotony of Wurtemberg! I dare say the latter country has many beautiful districts, that it contains much to admire and much to awaken useful reflection, but to the mere passer-by it is not a land of interest. Like a boat that has unexpectedly got into a strong adverse current, we had put our helm down and steered out of it, to the nearest shore. Here we were then, and it became necessary to say where we should be next. My own eyes were turned wistfully towards the east, following the road by the Lake of Constance, Inspruck, and Saltzbourg, to Vienna; but several of our party were so young when we were in Switzerland, in 1828, that it seemed ungracious to refuse them this favourable opportunity to carry away lasting impressions of a region that has no parallel. It was, therefore, settled before we slept, again to penetrate the cantons next morning. I heard the drum-like sound of the inn once more with great satisfaction; for although the house, judging from the coronets and armorial bearings about it, had once been the abode of a count, it was not free from the peculiar echoes of a true Swiss tenement, any more than it was free from its neatness. The drum, however, did not prevent us all from sleeping soundly, and after an early breakfast we went forth on this new pilgrimage to the mountains. There was an end to posting, no relays existing in this part of Switzerland, and I had been compelled to confide in the honesty of an unknown _voiturier_; a class of men who are pre-eminently subject to the long-established frailty of all who _deal_ in horses, wines, lamp-oil, and religion. Leaving this functionary to follow with the carriage, we walked along the banks of the river, by a common-place and dirty road, among forges and mills, to the cataract of the Rhine. What accessories to a cataract! How long will it be before the imagination of a people who are so fast getting to measure all greatness, whether in nature or art, by the yard-stick, will think of those embellishments for Niagara? Fortunately the powers of men are not equal to their wishes and a mill by the side of this wonder of the world will be a mill still; whereas these falls of the Rhine are nearly reduced to the level of a raceway, by the spirit of industry. We were less struck with them than ever, and left the place with the conviction that, aided by a few _suitable_ embellishments, they would have been among the prettiest of the pretty cascades that we know, but that, as matters go, they are in danger of soon losing the best part of their charms. We saw no reason, in this instance, to change the impressions made at the former visit, but think, the volume of water excepted, that Switzerland has cascades that outdo this cataract. After following the course of the river, for a few miles, we met the stream, buried low in the earth, at one of its sudden bends, and, descending a sharp declivity, crossed to its left bank, and into the Canton of Zurich. We were taken by surprise, by this sudden rencontre, and could hardly believe it was the mighty Rhine, whose dark waters were hurrying beneath us, as we passed a covered bridge of merely a hundred or two feet in length. One meets with a hundred streams equal to this in width, while travelling in America, though it is rare to find one anywhere with the same majesty of motion, and of its fine cerulean tint. We had travelled an hour or two towards Zurich, before our eyes were greeted with the sight of peaks capped with snow. They looked like the faces of old acquaintances, and, distance depriving them of their severity, they now shone in a mild sublimity. We were all walking ahead, while the horses were eating, when these noble objects came into the view, and, preceding the rest a little, I involuntarily shouted with exultation, as, turning a knoll, they stood ranged along the horizon. The rest of the party hurried on, and it was like a meeting of dear friends, to see those godlike piles encircling the visible earth. The country through which we travelled, was the low land of which I have so often spoken, nor was it particularly beautiful or well cultivated until we drew near the capital, when it assumed the polished look of the environs of a large town; and the approach to Zurich, on this side, though less romantic perhaps, wanting the lake and mountains, we thought, if anything, was more beautiful than that by which we had come in 1828. We were much gratified with the appearance of Zurich; more even than in our former visit, and not the less so at finding it unusually empty. The agitated state of Europe, particularly of England, has kept the usual class of travellers at home, though the cantons are said to be pretty well sprinkled with Carlists, who are accused of assembling here lo plot. M. de Châteaubriand is in the same hotel as ourselves, but it has never been my fortune to see this distinguished writer to know him, even accidentally; although I afterwards learned that, on one occasion, I had sat for two hours on a bench immediately before him, at a meeting of the French Academy. My luck was no better now, for he went away unseen, an hour after we arrived. Some imagine themselves privileged to intrude on a celebrity, thinking that those men will pardon the inconvenience for the flattery, but I do not subscribe to this opinion: I believe that nothing palls sooner than notoriety, and that nothing is more grateful to those who have suffered under it, than retirement. By a singular concurrence, we were at Zurich the second time on Sunday, and almost on the same day of the year. In 1828, we drove along the lake-shore, August 30th, and we now left Zurich, for the same purpose, August 28th, after an interval of four years. The same objects were assembled, under precisely the same circumstances: the lake was covered with boats, whose tall sails drooped in pure laziness; the solemn bells startled the melancholy echoes, and the population was abroad, now as then, in holiday guise, or crowding the churches. The only perceptible changes in the scene were produced by the change in our own direction. Then we looked towards the foot of the lake, and had its village-lined shores before us, and the country that melts away towards the Rhine for a back-ground; while now, after passing the objects in the near view, the sight rested on the confused and mysterious mountains of Glaris. We took our _goûter_ at the _Paon_, and, unwilling to cross the bridge in the carriage, we all preceded it through the crowded streets of Rapperschwyl, leaving the _voiturier_ to follow at his leisure. We were just half an hour on this bridge, which appeared as ticklish as ever, though not so much as to stifle the desire of P---- to see how near its edge he could walk. When we entered Schweitz, the carriage overtook us, and we drove to the foot of the mountain which it is necessary to ascend to reach Einsiedeln. Here we took _chevaux de renfort_, and a reinforcement they proved indeed; for I do not remember two nobler animals than the _voiturier_ obtained for the occasion. They appeared to be moulded on the same scale as the mountains. We were much amused by the fellow's management, for he contrived to check his own cattle in such a way as to throw all the work on the recruits. This was not effected without suspicion; but he contrived to allay it, by giving his own beasts sundry punches in the sides, so adroitly bestowed as to render them too restive to work. By way of triumph, each poke was accompanied by a knowing leer at François, all whose sympathies, a tribute to his extraction, I have had frequent opportunities of observing, to my cost, were invariably on the side of the _voituriers_. So evident, indeed, was this feeling in the gentleman, that had I been accustomed to travel much by this mode, I should not have kept him a month. It was a mild evening as we travelled our way up this formidable ascent, which is one of the severest in Switzerland, and we had loitered so much along the shores of the lake, as to bring us materially behind our time. Still it was too late to return, and we made the best of things as they were. It is always more pleasant to ascend than to descend, for the purposes of scenery; and, as picture after picture broke upon us, the old touzy-mouzy was awakened, until we once more felt ourselves in a perfect fever of mountain excitement. In consequence of diverging by a foot-path, towards the east, in descending this mountain, in 1828, I had missed one of the finest reaches of its different views, but which we now enjoyed under the most favourable circumstances. The entire converging crescent of the north shore of the lake, studded with white churches, hamlets, and cottages, was visible, and as the evening sun cast its mild light athwart the crowded and affluent landscape, we involuntarily exclaimed, "that this even equalled the Neapolitan coast in the twilight." The manner in which the obscurity settled on this picture, slowly swallowing up tower after tower, hamlet, cottage, and field, until the blue expanse of the lake alone reflected the light from the clouds, was indescribably beautiful, and was one of those fine effects that can only be produced amid a nature as grand as that of the Alps. It was dark when we reached the inn at the summit; but it was not possible to remain there, for it had room for little more than kirschwasser. The night came on dark and menacing, and for near two hours we crawled up and down the sharp ascents and descents, and, to make the matter worse, it began to rain. This was a suitable approach to the abodes of monastic votaries, and I had just made the remark, when the carriage stopped before the door of my old inn, the Ox, at Einsiedeln. It was near ten, and we ordered a cup of tea and beds immediately. The next morning we visited the church and the convent. The first presented a tame picture, compared to that I had witnessed in the former visit, for there was not a pilgrim present; the past year it had been crowded. There were, however, a few groups of the villagers kneeling at the shrine, or at the different altars, to aid the picturesque. We ascended into the upper part of the edifice, and walked in those narrow galleries through which I had formerly seen the Benedictines stalking in stealthy watchfulness, looking down at the devotees beneath. I was admitted to the cloisters, cells, library, &c., but my companions were excluded as a matter of course. It is merely a spacious German convent, very neat, and a little _barnish_. A recent publication caused me to smile involuntarily once or twice, as the good father turned over the curiosities of the library, and expatiated on the history and objects of his community; but the book in question had evidently not yet, if indeed it will ever reach this remote spot. We had a little difficulty here in getting along with the French; and our German (in which, by the way, some of the party are rather expert) had been acquired in Saxony, and was taken for base coin here. The innkeeper was an attentive host, and wished to express every thing that was kind and attentive; all of which he succeeded in doing wonderfully well, by a constant use of the two words, "_par exemple_." As a specimen of his skill, I asked him if an extra horse could be had at Einsiedeln, and his answer was, "_Par exemple, monsieur; par exemple, oui; c'est-à-dire, par exemple_." So we took the other horse, _par exemple_, and proceeded. Our road carried us directly across the meadows that had been formed in the lake of Lowertz, by the fall of the Rossberg. When on them, they appeared even larger than when seen from the adjacent mountain; they are quite uneven, and bear a coarse wiry grass, though there are a few rocks on their surface. Crossing the ruin of Goldau, we passed on a trot from the desolation around it, into the beautiful scenery of Arth. Here we dined and witnessed another monastic flirtation. After dinner we drove along the shores of the lake of Zug, winding directly round the base of the cone of the Righi, or immediately beneath the point where the traveller gets the sublime view of which you have already heard. This was one of the pleasantest bits of road we had then seen in Switzerland. The water was quite near us on the right, and we were absolutely shut in on the left by the precipitous mountain, until having doubled it, we came out upon an arm of the lake of Lucerne, at Küsnacht, to which place we descended by the _chemin creux_. Night overtook us again while crossing the beautiful ridge of land that separates the bay of Küsnacht from the foot of the lake, but the road being excellent, we trotted on in security until we alighted, at nine o'clock, in the city of Lucerne. The weather appearing unusually fine the next day, François was ordered round to Berne with the carriage and luggage, and we engaged a guide and took a boat for Alpnach. At eleven we embarked and pulled up under lovely verdant banks, which are occupied by villas, till we reached the arm of the lake that stretches towards the south-west. Here a fair breeze struck us, and making sail, away we went, skimming before it, at the rate of eight miles an hour. Once or twice the wind came with a power that showed how necessary it is to be cautious on a water that is bounded by so many precipitous rocks. We passed the solitary tower of Stanztad on the wing, and reached Alpnach in less than two hours after embarking. Here we took two of the little vehicles of the country and went on. The road carried us through Sarnen, where my companions, who had never before visited the Unterwaldens, stopped to see the lions. I shall not go over these details with you again, but press on towards our resting-place for the night. On reaching the foot of the rocks which form the natural dam that upholds the lake of Lungern, P---- and myself alighted and walked ahead. The ascent being short, we made so much progress as to reach the upper end of the little sheet, a distance of near a league, before we were overtaken by the others; and when we did meet, it was amid general exclamations of delight at the ravishing beauties of the place. I cannot recall sensations of purer pleasure produced by any scenery, than those I felt myself on this occasion, and in which all around me appeared to participate. Our pleasures, tastes, and even our judgments are so much affected by the circumstances under which they are called into action, that one has need of diffidence on the subject of their infallibility, if it be only to protect himself from the imputation of inconsistency. I was pleased with the Lake of Lungern in 1828, but the term is not strong enough for the gratification it gave me on this return to it. Perhaps the day, the peculiar play of light and shade, a buoyancy of spirits, or some auxiliary causes, may have contributed to produce this state of mind; or it is possible that the views were really improved by changing the direction of the route; as all connoisseurs in scenery know that the Hudson is much finer when descending than when ascending its stream; but let the cause be what it might, had I then been asked what particular spot in Europe had given me most delight, by the perfection of its natural beauties, taken in connexion with its artificial accessories, I should have answered that it was the shores of the lake of Lungern. Nor, as I have told you, was I alone in this feeling, for one and all, big and little,--in short, the whole party joined in pronouncing the entire landscape absolutely exquisite. Any insignificant change, a trifle more or less of humidity in the atmosphere, the absence or the intervention of a few clouds, a different hour or a different frame of mind, may have diminished our pleasure, for these are enjoyments which, like the flavour of delicate wines, or the melody of sweet music, are deranged by the condition of the nerves, or a want of harmony, in the chords. After this explanation you will feel how difficult it will be to describe the causes of our delight. The leading features of the landscape, however, were a road that ran along the shore beneath a forest, within ten feet of the water, winding, losing itself, and re-appearing with the sinuosities of the bank; water, limpid as air and blue as the void of the heavens, unruffled and even holy in its aspect, as if it reflected the pure space above; a mountain-side, on the opposite shore, that was high enough to require study to draw objects from its bosom, on the distant heights, and yet near enough below, to seem to be within an arrow's flight; meadows shorn like lawns, scattered over its broad breast; woods of larches, to cast their gloom athwart the glades and to deepen the shadows; brown chalets that seemed to rise out of the sward, at the bidding of the eye; and here and there a cottage poised on a giddy height, with a chapel or two to throw a religious calm over all! There was nothing ambitious in this view, which was rural in every feature, but it was the very _bean idéal_ of rustic beauty, and without a single visible blemish to weaken its effect. It was some such picture of natural objects as is formed of love by a confiding and ingenuous youth of fifteen. We passed the night in the _drum_ of Lungern, and found it raining hard when we rose the following morning. The water soon ceased to fall in torrents, however, changing to a drizzle, at which time the valley, clouded in mists in constant motion, was even more beautiful than ever. So perfect, were the accessories, so minute was everything rendered by the mighty scale, so even was the grass and so pure the verdure that bits of the mountain pasturages, or Alps, coming into view through the openings in the vapour, appeared like highly-finished Flemish paintings; and this the more so, because all the grouping of objects, the chalets, cottages, &c. were exactly those that the artist would seize upon to embellish his own work. Indeed, we have daily, hourly, occasions to observe how largely the dealers in the picturesque have drawn upon the resources of this extraordinary country, whether the pallet, or poetry in some other form, has been the medium of conveying pleasure. The _garçon_ of the inn pointed to some mist that was rolling along a particular mountain, and said it was the infallible barometer of Lungern. We might be certain of getting fair weather within an hour. A real barometer corroborated the testimony of the mist, but the change was slower than had been predicted; and we began to tire of so glorious a picture, under an impatience to proceed, for one does not like to swallow pleasure even, perforce. At ten we were able to quit the inn, one half of the party taking the bridle-path, attended by two horse-keepers, while the rest of us, choosing to use our own limbs, were led by the guide up the mountains by a shorter cut, on foot. The view from the Brunig was not as fine as I had round it in 1828, perhaps because I was then taken completely by surprise, and perhaps because ignorance of the distant objects had then thrown the charm of mystery over its back-ground. We now saw the scene in detail, too, while mounting; for, though it is better to ascend than descend, the finest effects are produced by obtaining the whole at once. We joined the equestrians on the summit, where the horses were discharged, and we proceeded the remainder of the distance on foot. We soon met the Bear of Berne, and entered the great canton. The view of the valley of Meyringen, and of the cataracts, greeted us like an old friend; and the walk, by a path which wound its way through the bushes, and impended over this beautiful panorama, was of course delightful. At length we caught a glimpse of the lake of Brientz, and hurrying on, reached the village before two. Here we ordered a _goûter_, and, while taking it, the first English party we had yet seen, entered the inn, as we were all seated at the same table. The company consisted of this English party, ourselves, and a solitary Frenchman, who eyed us keenly, but said nothing. It soon appeared that some great political crisis was at hand, for the Englishman began to cry out against the growing democracy of the cantons. I did not understand all his allusions, nor do I think he had very clear notions about them himself, for he wound up one of his denunciatory appeals, by the old cant, of "instead of one tyrant they will now have many;" which is a sort of reasoning that is not particularly applicable to the overturning of aristocracy anywhere. It is really melancholy to perceive how few men are capable of reasoning or feeling on political subjects, in any other way than that which is thought most to subserve their own particular interests and selfishness. Did we not know that the real object of human institutions is to restrain human tendencies, one would be almost disposed to give up the point in despair; for I do affirm, that in all my associations in different countries, I do not recollect more than a dozen men who have appeared to me to entertain right notions on this subject, or who have seemed capable of appreciating the importance of any changes that were not likely materially to affect their own pockets. The Frenchman heard us speaking in his own language, which we did with a view of drawing John Bull out, and he asked a passage in the boat I had ordered, as far as Interlachen. Conditioning that he should make the _détour_ to the Giesbach, his application was admitted, and we proceeded forthwith. This was the fourth time I had crossed the lake of Brientz, but the first in which I visited the justly celebrated falls, towards which we now steered on quitting the shore. Our companion proved to be a merry fellow, and well disposed to work his passage by his wit. I have long been cured of the notion "that the name of an American is a passport all over Europe," and have learned to understand in its place, that, on the contrary, it is thought to be _prima facie_ evidence of vulgarity, ignorance, and conceit; nor do I think that the French, as a nation, have any particular regard for us; but knowing the inherent dislike of a Frenchman for an Englishman, and that the new-fangled fraternity, arising out of the trading-principle government, only renders, to a disinterested looker on, the old antipathies more apparent, I made an occasion, indirectly, to let our new associate understand that we came from the other side of the Atlantic. This produced an instantaneous change in his manner, and it was now that he began to favour us with specimens of his humour. Notwithstanding all this facetiousness, I soon felt suspicion that the man was an _employé_ of the Carlists, and that his business in Switzerland was connected with political plots. He betrayed himself, at the very moment when he was most anxious to make us think him a mere amateur of scenery: I cannot tell you how, but still so clearly, as to strike all of us, precisely in the same way. The Giesbach is a succession of falls, whose water comes from a glacier, and which are produced by the sinuosities of the leaps and inclined planes of a mountain side, aided by rocks and precipices. It is very beautiful, and may well rank as the third or fourth cascade of Switzerland, for variety, volume of water, and general effect. A family has established itself among the rocks, to pick up a penny by making boxes of larch, and singing the different _ranz des raches_. Your mountain music does not do so well, when it has an air so seriously premeditated, and one soon gels to be a little _blasé_ on the subject of entertainments of this sort, which can only succeed once, and then with the novice. Alas! I have actually stood before the entrance of the cathedral at Rouen, and the strongest feeling of the moment was that of surprise at the manner in which my nerves had thrilled, when it was first seen. I do not believe that childhood, with its unsophistication and freshness, affords the greatest pleasures, for every hour tells me how much reason and cultivation enhance our enjoyments; but there are certainly gratifications that can be felt but once; and if an opera of Rossini or Meyerbeer grows on us at each representation, or a fine poem improves on acquaintance, the singing of your Swiss nightingales is sweeter in its first notes than in its second. After spending an hour at the Giesbach, we rowed along the eastern, or rather the southern, shore of the lake to Interlachen. The sight of the blue Aar revived old recollections, and we landed on its banks with infinite pleasure. Here a few civil speeches passed between the merry Frenchman and myself, when we separated, he disappearing altogether, and we taking the way to the great lodging-house, which, like most of the other places of resort in Switzerland, was then nearly empty. The Grand-duchess Anna, however, had come down from Ulfnau, her residence on the Aar, for a tour in the Oberland, and was among the guests. We got a glimpse of her coming in from a drive, and she appeared to resemble her brother the Duke, more than her brother the King. In the morning we drove up to Lauterbrunnen, and I am compelled to say that so completely fickle had we become, that I believe all who had seen this valley before, pronounced it less beautiful than that of Lungern. By the way of proving to you how capricious a thing is taste, I liked the Staubbach better than in the former visit. We did not attempt the mountains this time, but drove round in our _chars_ to Grindewald, where we dined and slept. Either a new approach, or improved tastes, or some other cause, wrought another change here; for we now preferred Grindewald to Lauterbrunnen, as a valley. The vulgar astonishment was gone, and our eyes sought details with critical nicety. We went to the lower glacier, whose form had not materially changed in four years, and we had fine views of both of them from the windows of the inn. There was a young moon, and I walked out to watch the effect on the high glaciers, which were rendered even more than usually unearthly in appearance, under its clear bland light. These changes of circumstances strangely increase the glories of the mountains! We left Grindewald quite early next morning, and proceeded towards Neuhaus. The road led us through a scene of desolation that had been caused by a rising of the waters in 1830, and we examined the devastation with the more interest, as some of our acquaintances had nearly perished in the torrent. The family in question were residing temporarily at Interlachen, when two of the ladies with a child, attended by a black servant, drove up the gorge of Lauterbrunnen for an airing. They were overtaken by a tempest of rain, and by the torrent, which rose so rapidly as to cut off all retreat, except by ascending the precipice, which to the eye is nearly perpendicular. There is, however, a hamlet on one of the terraces of the mountain, and thither the servant was despatched for succour. The honest peasants at first believed he was a demon, on account of his colour, and it was not without difficulty they were persuaded to follow him. The ladies eventually escaped up the rocks; but our coachman, who had acted as the coachman on that occasion, assured us it was with the utmost difficulty he saved his horse. This accident, which was neither a _sac d'eau_ nor an avalanche, gives one a good idea of the sudden dangers to which the traveller is liable, in the midst of a nature so stupendous. A large part of the beautiful meadows of Interlachen was laid desolate, and the calamity was so sudden that it overtook two young and delicate females in their morning drive! We drove directly to the little port at Neuhaus, and took a boat for Thoun, pulling cut into the lake, with a fresh breeze directly in our teeth. The picturesque little chateau of Spietz stood on its green promontory, and all the various objects that we had formerly gazed at with so much pleasure, were there, fresh, peculiar, and attractive as ever. At length, after a heavy pull, we were swept within the current of the Aar, which soon bore us to the landing. At Thoun we breakfasted, and, taking a return carriage, trotted up to Berne, by the valley of which you have already heard so much. François was in waiting for us, and we got comfortable rooms at the Crown. Our tastes are certainly altering, whether there be any improvement or not. We are beginning to feel it is vulgar to be astonished, and even in scenery, I think we rather look for the features that fill up the keeping, and make the finish, than those which excite wonder. We have seen too much to be any longer taken in, by your natural clap-traps; a step in advance, that I attribute to a long residence in Italy, a country in which the sublime is so exquisitely blended with the soft, as to create a taste which tells us they ought to be inseparable. In this little excursion to the Oberland, while many, perhaps most, of our old impressions are confirmed, its relative beauties have not appeared to be entitled to as high praises as we should have given them, had they not been seen a second time. We had fine weather, were all in good spirits and happy, and the impression being so general, I am inclined to think, it is no more than the natural effect which is produced by more experience and greater knowledge. I now speak of the valleys, however, for the high Alps are as superior to the caprices of taste, as their magnificent dimensions and faultless outline are beyond change. LETTER XVI. Conspiracy discovered.--The Austrian Government and the French Carlists.--Walk to La Lorraine.--Our old friend "Turc."--Conversation with M. W----.--View of the Upper Alps.--Jerome Bonaparte at La Lorraine.--The Bears of Berne.--Scene on the Plateforme. Dear ----, Soon after we reached Berne, François came to me in a mysterious manner, to inquire if I had heard any news of importance. I had heard nothing; and he then told me that many arrests had just taken place, and that a conspiracy of the old aristocracy had been discovered, which had a counter-revolution for its object. I say a counter-revolution, for you ought to have heard that great political changes have occurred in Switzerland since 1830, France always giving an impulse to the cantons. Democracy is in the ascendant, and divers old opinions, laws, and institutions have been the sacrifice. This, in the land of the Burgerschaft, has necessarily involved great changes, and the threatened plot is supposed to be an effort of the old privileged party to regain their power. As François, notwithstanding he has seen divers charges of cavalry against the people, and has witnessed two or three revolutions, is not very clear-headed in such matters, I walked out immediately to seek information from rather better authority. The result of my inquiries was briefly as follows:--Neufchâtel, whose prince is the King of Prussia, has receded from the confederation, on account of the recent changes, and the leaders of the aristocratic party were accused of combining a plan, under the protection and with the knowledge of the authorities of this state, to produce a counter-revolution in Berne, well knowing the influence of this canton in the confederation. This very day is said to be the one selected for the effort, and rumour adds, that a large body of the peasants of the Oberland were to have crossed the Brunig yesterday, with a view to co-operate in other sections of the country. A merry company we should have been, had it been our luck to have fallen in with this escort! Now, rightfully or not, the Austrian government and the French Carlists are openly accused of being concerned in this conspiracy, and probably not without some cause. The suspicions excited concerning our fellow-traveller, through his own acts, recurred to me, and I now think it probable he was in waiting for the aforesaid peasants, most probably to give them a military direction, for he had the air and _franchise_ of an old French soldier. The plot had been betrayed; some were already arrested, and some had taken refuge in flight. The town was tranquil, but the guards were strengthened, and the popular party was actively on the alert. The next morning we went forth to look once more at picturesque, cloistered, verdant Berne. Nothing appeared to be changed, though the strangers were but few, and there was, perhaps, less movement than formerly. We crossed the Aar, and walked to La Lorraine. As we were going through the fields, several dogs rushed out against us; but when P---- called out "_Turc_" the noble animal appeared to know him, and we were permitted to proceed, escorted, rather than troubled, by the whole pack. This was a good omen, and it was grateful to be remembered, by even a dog, after an absence of four years. We found the same family in possession of the farm, though on the point of removing to another place. Our reception in the house was still more cordial than that given by Turk, and our gratitude in proportion. The old abode was empty, and we walked over it with feelings in which pain and pleasure were mingled; for poor W----, who was with us, full of youth and spirits, when we resided here, is now a tenant of Père Lachaise. When we went away, all the dogs, with Turk at their head, escorted us to the ferry, where they stood looking wistfully at us from the bank, until we landed in Berne. Soon after, I met M. W---- in the streets, and, as he had not been at home, I greeted him, inviting him to dine with us at the Crown. The present aspect of things was of course touched upon during the dinner, when the worthy member of the Burgerschaft lamented the changes, in a manner becoming his own opinions, while I rejoiced in them, in a manner becoming mine. He asked me if I really thought that men who were totally inexperienced in the affairs of government could conduct matters properly,--an old and favourite appeal with the disciples of political exclusion. I endeavoured to persuade him that the art of administering was no great art; that there was more danger of rulers knowing _too much_ than of their knowing _too little_, old soldiers proverbially taking better care of themselves than young soldiers; that he must not expect too much, for they that know the practices of free governments, well know it is hopeless to think of keeping pure and disinterested men long in office, even as men go, there being a corrupting influence about the very exercise of power that forbids the hope; and that all which shrewd observers look for in popular institutions is a greater check than common on the selfishness of those to whom authority is confided. I told him the man who courts popular favour in a republic, would court a prince in a monarchy, the elements of a demagogue and a courtier being exactly the same; and that, under either system, except in extraordinary instances, it was useless to attempt excluding such men from authority, since their selfishness was more active than the feelings of the disinterested; that, in our own case, so long as the impetus of the revolution and the influence of great events lasted, we had great men in the ascendant, but, now that matters were jogging on regularly, and under their common-place aspects, we were obliged to take up with merely clever managers; that one of the wisest men that had ever lived (Bacon) had said, that "few men rise to power in a state, without a union of _great_ and _mean_ qualities," and that this was probably as true at Berne as it is at Washington, and as true at Paris as at either; that the old system in his country savoured too much of the policy of giving the milk of two cows to one calf, and that he must remember it was a system that made very bad as well as very good veal, whereas for ordinary purposes it was better to have the same quantity of merely good veal; and, in short, that he himself would soon be surprised at discovering how soon the new rulers would acquire all the useful habits of their predecessors, and I advised him to look out that they did not acquire some of their bad ones too. I never flattered myself with producing a change of opinion in the captain, who always listened politely, but with just such an air of credulity as you might suppose one born to the benefits of the Burgerschaft, and who had got to be fifty, would listen to a dead attack on all his most cherished prejudices. The next day was Sunday, and we still lingered in our comfortable quarters at the Crown. I walked on the Plateforme before breakfast, and got another of those admirable views of the Upper Alps, which, notwithstanding the great beauty of its position and immediate environs, form the principal attraction of Berne. The peaks were draped rather than veiled in clouds, and it was not easy to say which was the most brilliant, the snow-white vapour that adorned their sides, or the icy glaciers themselves. Still they were distinct from each other, forming some such contrast as that which exists between the raised and sunken parts on the faces of new coin. We went to church and listened to some excellent German, after which we paid our last visit to La Lorraine. This house had been hired by King Jerome for a short time, after his exile in 1814, his brother Joseph occupying a neighbouring residence. The W----s told me that Jerome arrived, accompanied by his amiable wife, like a king, with horses, chamberlains, pages, and all the other appliances of royalty, and that it was curious, as well as painful, to witness how fast these followers dropped off, as the fate of the family appeared to be settled. Few besides the horses remained at the end of ten days! On our return from this visit we went in a body to pay our respect to our old friends, the bears. I believe you have already been told that the city of Berne maintains four bears in certain deep pens, where it is the practice to feed them with nuts, cakes, apples, etc., according to the liberality and humour of the visitor. The usage is very ancient, and has some connexion with a tradition that has given its name to the canton. A bear is also the arms of the state. One of these animals is a model of grace, waddling about on his hind legs like an alderman in a ball-room. You may imagine that P---- was excessively delighted at the sight of these old friends. The Bernese have an engraving of the graceful bear in his upright attitude; and the stove of our salon at the Crown, which is of painted tile, among a goodly assemblage of gods and goddesses, includes Bruin as one of its ornaments. François made his appearance after dinner, accompanied by his friend, _le petit Savoyard_, who had arrived from Frankfort, and came once more to offer his services to conduct us to Lapland, should it be our pleasure to travel in that direction. It would have been ungracious to refuse so constant a suitor, and he was ordered to be in attendance next morning, to proceed towards the lake of Geneva. In the evening we went on the Plateforme to witness the sunset, but the mountains were concealed by clouds. The place was crowded, and refreshments were selling in little pavilions erected for the purpose. We are the only Protestants who are such rigid observers of the Sabbath, the Scotch perhaps excepted. In England there is much less restraint than in America, and on the Continent the Protestants, though less gay than the Catholics, very generally consider it a day of recreation, after the services of the church are ended. I have heard some of them maintain that we have misinterpreted the meaning of the word holy, which obtains its true signification in the term holiday. I have never heard any one go so far, however, as Hannah Moore says was the case with Horace Walpole, who contended that the ten commandments were not meant for people of quality. No one whose mind and habits have got extricated from the fogs of provincial prejudices, will deny that we have many odious moral deformities in America, that appear in the garb of religious discipline and even religious doctrine, but which are no more than the offspring of sectarian fanaticism, and which, in fact, by annihilating charity, are so many blows given to the essential feature of Christianity; but, apart from these, I still lean to the opinion that we are quite as near the great truths as any other people extant. Mr. ----, the English _chargé d'affaires_, whom I had known slightly at Paris, and Mr. ----, who had once belonged to the English legation in Washington, were on the Plateforme. The latter told me that Carroll of Carrolton was dead; that he had been dead a year, and that he had written letters of condolence on the occasion. I assured him that the old gentleman was alive on the 4th July last, for I had seen one of his letters in the public journals. Here was a capital windfall for a regular _diplomate_, who now, clearly, had nothing to do but to hurry home and write letters of felicitation! The late changes in England have produced more than the usual mutations in her diplomatic corps, which, under ordinary circumstances, important trusts excepted, has hitherto been considered at the disposal of any minister. In America we make it matter of reproach that men are dismissed from office on account of their political opinions, and it is usual to cite England as an example of greater liberality. All this is singularly unjust, because in its spirit, like nine-tenths of our popular notions of England, it is singularly untrue. The changes of ministry, which merely involve the changes incident on taking power from one clique of the aristocracy to give it to another, have not hitherto involved questions of sufficient importance to render it matter of moment to purge all the lists of the disaffected; but since the recent serious struggles we have seen changes that do not occur even in America. Every Tory, for instance, is ousted from the legations, if we except nameless subordinates. The same purification is going on elsewhere, though the English system does not so much insist on the changes of _employés_, as that the _employés_ themselves should change their opinions. How long would an English tide-waiter, for instance, keep his place should he vote against the ministerial candidate? I apprehend these things depend on a common principle (_i. e_. self-interest) everywhere, and that it makes little difference, in substance, what the form of government may happen to be. But of all the charges that have been brought against us, the comparative instability of the public favour, supposed to be a consequence of fluctuations in the popular will, is the most audacious, for it is contradicted by the example of every royal government in Christendom. Since the formation of the present American constitution, there have been but two changes of administration, that have involved changes of principles, or changes in popular will;--that which placed Mr. Jefferson in the seat of Mr. Adams, senior, and that which placed Mr. Jackson in the seat of Mr. Adams, junior: whereas, during the short period of my visit to Europe, I have witnessed six or seven absolute changes of the English ministry, and more than twenty in France, besides one revolution. Liberty has been, hitherto, in the situation of the lion whose picture was drawn by a man, but which there was reason to think would receive more favourable touches, when the lion himself should take up the pallet. LETTER XVII. Our Voiturier and his Horses.--A Swiss Diligence.--Morat.--Inconstancy of feeling.--Our Route to Vévey.--Lake Leman.--Difficulty in hiring a House.--"Mon Repos" engaged for a mouth.--Vévey.--Tne great Square--The Town-house.--Environs of Vévey.--Summer Church and Winter Church.--Clergy of the Canton.--Population of Vaud.--Elective qualifications of Vaud. Dear ----, Le Petit Savoyard was punctual, and after breakfasting, away we rolled, along the even and beaten road towards Morat. This man and his team were epitomes of the _voiturier_ caste and their fixtures. He himself was a firm, sun-burned, compact little fellow, just suited to ride a wheeler, while the horses were sinewy, and so lean, that there was no mistaking their vocation. Every bone in their bodies spoke of the weight of _miladi_, and her heavy English travelling chariot, and I really thought they seemed to be glad to get a whole American family in place of an Englishwoman and her maid. The morning was fine, and our last look at the Oberland peaks was sunny and pleasant. There they stood ranged along the horizon, like sentinels (not lighthouses) of the skies, severe, chiseled, brilliant, and grand. Another travelling equipage of the gregarious kind, or in which the carriage as well as the horses was the property of the _voiturier_, and the passengers mere _pic-nics_, was before us in ascending a long hill, affording an excellent opportunity to dissect the whole party. As it is a specimen of the groups one constantly meets on the road, I will give you some idea of the component parts. The _voiturier_ was merely a larger brother of _le petit Savoyard_, and his horses, three in number, were walking bundles of chopped straw. The carriage was spacious, and I dare say convenient, though anything but beautiful. On the top there was a rail, within which effects were stowed beneath an apron, leaving an outline not unlike the ridges of the Alps. The merry rogues within had chosen to take room to themselves, and not a package of any sort encumbered their movements. And here I will remark, that America, free and independent, is the only country in which I have ever journeyed, where the comfort and convenience in the vehicle is the first thing considered, that of the baggage the next, and that of the passengers the last.[32] Fortunately for the horses, there were but four passengers, though the vehicle could have carried eight. One, by his little green cap, with a misshapen shade for the eyes; light, shaggy, uncombed hair; square high shoulders; a coat that appeared to be half-male half-female; pipe and pouch--was undeniably a German student, who was travelling south to finish his metaphysics with a few practical notions of men and things. A second was a Jew, who had trade in every lineament, and who belonged so much to _the_ nation, that I could not give him to any other nation in particular. He was older, more wary, less joyous, and probably much more experienced, than either of his companions. When they laughed, he only smiled; when they sang, he hummed; and when they seemed thoughtful, he grew sad. I could make nothing out of him, except that he ran a thorough bass to the higher pitches of his companions' humours. The third was Italian "for a ducat." A thick, bushy, glossy, curling head of hair was covered by a little scarlet cap, tossed negligently on one side, as if lodged there by chance; his eye was large, mellow, black as jet, and full of fun and feeling; his teeth white as ivory; and the sun, the glorious sun, and the thoughts of Italy, towards which he was travelling, had set all his animal spirits in motion. I caught a few words in bad French, which satisfied me that he and the German were jeering each other on their respective national peculiarities. Such is man; his egotism and vanity first centre in himself, and he is ready to defend himself against the reproofs of even his own mother; then his wife, his child, his brother, his friend is admitted, in succession, within the pale of his self-love, according to their affinities with the great centre of the system; and finally he can so far expand his affections as to embrace his country, when that of another presents its pretensions in hostility. When the question arises, as between humanity and the beasts of the field, he gets to be a philanthropist! [Footnote 32: The Americans are a singularly good-natured people, and probably submit to more impositions, that are presented as appeals to the spirit of accommodation, than any other people on earth. The writer has frequently ridden miles in torture to _accommodate_ a trunk, and the steam-boats manage matters so to _accommodate everybody_, that everybody is put to inconvenience. All this is done, with the most indomitable kindness and good nature, on all sides, the people daily, nay hourly exhibiting, in all their public relations, the truth of the axiom, "that what is everybody's business, is nobody's business."] Morat, with its walls of Jericho, soon received us, and we drove to an inn, where chopped straw was ordered for the horses, and a more substantial _goûter_ for ourselves. Leaving the former to discuss their meal, after finishing our own, we walked ahead, and waited the appearance of the little Savoyard, on the scene of the great battle between the Swiss and the Burgundians. The country has undergone vast changes since the fifteenth century, and cultivation has long since caused the marsh, in which so many of the latter perished, to disappear, though it is easy to see where it must have formerly been. I have nothing new to say concerning Avenche, whose Roman ruins, after Rome itself, scarce caused us to cast a glance at them, and we drove up to the door of the _Ours_ at Payerne, without alighting. When we are children, we fancy that sweets can never cloy, and indignantly repel the idea that tarts and sugar-plums will become matters of indifference to us; a little later we swear eternal constancy to a first love, and form everlasting friendships: as time slips away, we marry three or four wives, shoot a bosom-friend or two, and forget the looks of those whose images were to be graven on our hearts for ever. You will wonder at this digression, which has been excited by the simple fact that I actually caught myself gaping, when something was said about Queen Bertha and her saddle. The state of apathy to which one finally arrives is really frightful! We left Payerne early, and breakfasted at the "inevitable inn" of Moudon. Here it was necessary to decide in what direction to steer, for I had left the charter-party with _le petit Savoyard_, open, on this essential point. The weather was so fine, the season of the year so nearly the same, and most of the other circumstances so very much like those under which we had made the enchanting passage along the head of the Leman four years before, that we yielded to the desire to renew the pleasures of such a transit, and turned our faces towards Vévey. At the point where the roads separate, therefore, we diverged from the main route, which properly leads to Lausanne, inclining southward. We soon were rolling along the margin of the little blue lake that lies on the summit of the hills, so famous for its prawns. We knew that a few minutes would bring us to the brow of the great declivity, and all eyes were busy, and all heads eagerly in motion. As for myself, I took my station on the dickey, determined to let nothing escape me in a scene that I remembered with so much enduring delight. Contrary to the standing rule in such cases, the reality surpassed expectation. Notwithstanding our long sojourn in Italy, and the great variety and magnificence of the scenery we had beheld, I believe there was not a feeling of disappointment among us all. There lay the Leman, broad, blue, and tranquil; with its surface dotted by sails, or shadowed by grand mountains; its shores varying from the impending precipice, to the sloping and verdant lawn; the solemn, mysterious, and glen-like valley of the Rhone; the castles, towns, villages, hamlets, and towers, with all the smiling acclivities loaded with vines, villas, and churches; the remoter pastures, out of which the brown chalets rose like subdued bas-reliefs, and the back-ground of _dents_, peaks, and glaciers. Taking it altogether, it is one of the most ravishing views of an earth that is only too lovely for its evil-minded tenants; a world that bears about it, in every lineament, the impression of its divine Creator! One of our friends used to tell an anecdote of the black servant of a visitor at Niagara, who could express his delight, on seeing the falls, in no other way than by peals of laughter; and perhaps I ought to hesitate to confess it, but I actually imitated the Negro, as this glorious view broke suddenly upon me. Mine, however, was a laugh of triumph, for I instantly discovered that my feelings were not quite worn out, and that it was still possible to awaken enthusiasm within me, by the sight of an admirable nature. Our first resolution was to pass a month in this beautiful region. Pointing to a building that stood a thousand feet below us, on a little grassy knoll that was washed by the lake, and which had the quaint appearance of a tiny chateau of the middle ages, we claimed it, at once, as the very spot suited for the temporary residence of your scenery-hunters. We all agreed that nothing could possibly suit us better, and we went down the descent, among vineyards and cottages, not building "castles in the air," but peopling one in a valley. It was determined to dwell in that house, if it could be had for love or money, or the thing was at all practicable. It was still early when we reached the inn in Vévey, and I was scarcely on the ground, before I commenced the necessary inquiries about the little chateauish house. As is usual in some parts of Europe, I was immediately referred to a female commissionnaire, a sort of domestic broker of all-work. This woman supplies travelling families with linen, and, at need, with plate; and she could greatly facilitate matters, by knowing where and to whom to apply for all that was required; an improvement in the division of labour that may cause you to smile, but which is extremely useful, and, on the whole, like all division of labour, economical. The commissionnaire informed us that there were an unusual number of furnished houses to be let, in the neighbourhood, the recent political movements having driven away their ordinary occupants, the English and Russians. Some of the proprietors, however, might object to the shortness of the time that we could propose for (a month), as it was customary to let the residences by the year. There was nothing like trying, however, and, ordering dinner to be ready against our return, we took a carriage and drove along the lake-shore as far as Clarens, so renowned in the pages of Rousseau. I ought, however, to premise that I would not budge a foot, until the woman assured me, over and over, that the little antiquated edifice, under the mountain, which had actually been a sort of chateau, was not at all habitable for a genteel family, but had degenerated to a mere coarse farm-house, which, in this country, like "love in a cottage," does better in idea than in the reality. We gave up our "castle under the hill" with reluctance, and proceeded to Clarens, where a spacious, unshaded building, without a spark of poetry about it, was first shown us. This was refused, incontinently. We then tried one or two more, until the shades of night overtook us. At one place the proprietor was chasing a cow through an orchard, and, probably a little heated with his exercise, he rudely repelled the application of the commissionnaire, by telling her, when he understood the house was wanted for only a month, that he did not keep a _maison garnie_. I could not affirm to the contrary, and we returned to the inn discomfited, for the night. Early next morning the search was renewed with zeal. We climbed the mountain-side, in the rear of the town, among vines, orchards, hamlets, terraces castles, and villas, to see one of the latter, which was refused on account of its remoteness from the lake. We then went to see a spot that was the very _beau idéal_ of an abode for people like ourselves, who were out in quest of the picturesque. It is called the Chateau of Piel, a small hamlet, immediately on the shore of the lake, and quite near Vévey, while it is perfectly retired. The house is spacious, reasonably comfortable, and had some fine old towers built into the modern parts, a detached ruin, and a long narrow terrace, under the windows, that overhung the blue Leman, and which faced the glorious rocks of Savoy. Our application for their residence was also refused, on account of the shortness of the time we intended to remain.[33] [Footnote 33: It is not easy for the writer to speak of many personal incidents, lest the motive might be mistaken, in a country where there are so many always disposed to attach a base one if they can; but, it is so creditable to the advanced state of European civilization and intelligence, that, at any hazard, he will here say, that even his small pretensions to literary reputation frequently were of great service to him, and, in no instance, even in those countries whose prejudices be had openly opposed, had he any reason to believe it was of any personal disadvantage. This feeling prevailed at the English custom-houses, at the bureaux all over the Continent, and frequently even at the inns. In one instance, in Italy, an apartment that had been denied, was subsequently offered to him on his own terms, on this account; and, on the present occasion, the proprietor of the Chateau de Piel, who resided at Geneva, sent a handsome expression of his regret that his agent should have thought it necessary to deny the application of a gentleman of his pursuits. Even the cow-chaser paid a similar homage to letters. In short, let the truth be said, the only country in which the writer has found his pursuits a disadvantage, _is his own_.] We had in reserve, all this time, two or three regular _maisons meublées_ in the town itself, and finally took refuge in one called "Mon repos," which stands quite near the lake, and in a retired corner of the place. A cook was engaged forthwith, and in less than twenty-four hours after entering Vévey, we had set up our household gods, and were to be reckoned among them who boiled our pot in the commune. This was not quite as prompt as the proceedings had been at Spa; but here we had been bothered by the picturesque, while at Spa we consulted nothing but comfort. Our house was sufficiently large, perfectly clean, and, though without carpets or mats, things but little used in Switzerland, quite as comfortable as was necessary for a travelling bivouac. The price was sixty dollars a month, including plate and linen. Of course it might have been got at a much lower rate, had we taken it by the year. One of the first measures, after getting possession of Mon Repos, was to secure a boat. This was soon done, as there are several in constant attendance, at what is called the port. Harbour, strictly speaking, Vévey has none, though there is a commencement of a mole, which scarcely serves to afford shelter to a skiff. The crafts in use on the lake are large two-masted boats, having decks much broader than their true beam, and which carry most of their freight above board. The sails are strictly neither latine nor lug, but sufficiently like the former to be picturesque, especially in the distance. These vessels are not required to make good weather, as they invariably run for the land when it blows, unless the wind happen to be fair, and sometimes even then. Nothing can be more primitive than the outfit of one of these barks, and yet they appear to meet the wants of the lake. Luckily Switzerland has no custom-houses, and the King of Sardinia appears to be wise enough to let the Savoyards enjoy nearly as much commercial liberty as their neighbours. Three cantons, Geneva, which embraces its foot; Vaud, which bounds nearly the whole of the northern shore; Valais, which encircles the head; together with Savoy, which lies along the cavity of the crescent, are bounded by the lake. There are also many towns and villages on the lake, among which Geneva, Lausanne, and Vévey are the principal. This place lies immediately at the foot of the Chardonne, a high retiring section of the mountains called the Jorat, and is completely sheltered from the north winds. This advantage it possesses in common with the whole district between Lausanne and Villeneuve, a distance of some fifteen miles, and, the mountains acting as great natural walls, the fruits of milder latitudes are successfully cultivated, notwithstanding the general elevation of the lake above the sea is near thirteen hundred feet. Although a good deal frequented by strangers, Vévey is less a place of fashionable resort than Lausanne, and is consequently much simpler in its habits, and I suppose cheaper, as a residence. It may have four or five thousand inhabitants, and possessing one or two considerable squares, it covers rather more ground than places of that population usually do, in Europe. It has no edifice of much pretension, and yet it is not badly built. We passed the first three or four days in looking about us, and, on the whole, we have been rather pleased with the place. Our house is but a stone's throw from the water, at a point where there is what in the Manhattanese dialect would be called a battery.[34] This _battery_ leads to the mole and the great square. At the first corner of the latter stands a small semi-castellated edifice, with the colours of the canton on the window-shutters, which is now in some way occupied for public purposes, and which formerly was the residence of the _bailli_, or the local governor that Berne formerly sent to rule them in the name of the Burgerschaft. The square is quite large, and usually contains certain piles of boards, &c. that are destined for the foot of the lake, lumber being a material article in the commerce of the place. On this square, also, is the ordinary market and several inns. The town-house is an ancient building in a more crowded quarter, and at the northern gate are the remains of another structure that has an air of antiquity, which I believe also belongs to the public. Beyond these and its glorious views, Vévey, in itself, has but little to attract attention. But its environs contain its sources of pride. Besides the lake-shore, which varies in its form and beauties, it is not easy to imagine a more charming acclivity than that which lies behind the town. The inclination is by no means as great, just at this spot, at it is both farther east and farther west, but it admits of cultivation, of sites for hamlets, and is much broken by inequalities and spacious natural terraces. I cannot speak with certainty of the extent of this acclivity, but, taking the eye for a guide, I should think there is quite a league of the inclined plane in view from the town. It is covered with hamlets, chateaux, country-houses, churches and cottages, and besides its vines, of which there are many near the town, it is highly beautiful from the verdure of its slopes, its orchards, and its groves of nut-trees. [Footnote 34: The manner in which the English language is becoming corrupted in America, as well as in England, is a matter of serious regret. Some accidental circumstance induced the Manhattanese to call a certain enclosure the Park. This name, probably, at first was appropriate enough, as there might have been an intention really to form a park, though the enclosure is now scarcely large enough to be termed a paddock. This name, however, has extended to the enclosures in other areas, and we have already, in vulgar parlance, St. John's Park, Washington Park, and _least_ though not _last_, Duane-street _Park_, an enclosure of the shape of, and not much larger than, a cocked-hat. The site of an ancient fort on the water has been converted into a promenade, and has well enough been called _the Battery_. But other similar promenades are projected, and the name is extended to them! Thus in the Manhattanese dialect, any enclosure in a town, _off the water_, that is a _park_, and any similar enclosure, on _the water_, a _battery!_ The worthy aldermen may call this English, but it will not be easy to persuade any but their constituents to believe them.] Among other objects that crowd this back-ground, is a church which stands on a sharp acclivity, about a quarter of a mile on the rear of the town. It is a stone building of some size, and has a convenient artificial terrace that commands, as a matter of course, a most lovely view. We attended service in it the first Sunday after our arrival, and found the rites homely and naked, very much like those of our own Presbyterians. There was a luxury about this building that you would hardly expect to meet among a people so simple, which quite puts the coquetry of our own carpeted, cushioned, closet-like places of worship to shame. This is the summer church of Vévey, another being used for winter. This surpasses the refinement of the Roman ladies, who had their summer and their winter rings, but were satisfied to use the same temples all the year round. After all there is something reasonable in this indulgence: one may love to go up to a high place to worship, whence he can look abroad on the glories of a magnificent nature, which always disposes the mind to venerate Omnipotence, and, unable to enjoy the advantage the year round, there is good sense in seizing such occasions as offer for the indulgence. I have frequently met with churches in Switzerland perched on the most romantic sites, though this is the first whose distinctive uses I have ascertained. There is a monument to the memory of Ludlow, one of Charles' judges, in this church, and an inscription which attributes to him civic and moral merits of a high order. The clergy in this canton, as in most, if not all the others, are supported by the state. There is religious toleration, much as it formerly existed in New England, each citizen being master of his religious professions, but being compelled to support religion itself. Here, however, the salaries are regulated by a common scale, without reference to particular congregations or parishes. The pastors at first receive rather less than three hundred dollars a year. This allowance is increased about fifty dollars at the end of six years, and by the same sum at each successive period of six years, until the whole amounts to two thousand Swiss, or three thousand French francs, which is something less than six hundred dollars. There is also a house and a garden, and pensions are bestowed on the widows and children. On the whole, the state has too much connexion with this great interest, but the system has the all-important advantage of preventing men from profaning the altar as a pecuniary speculation. The population of Vaud is about 155,000 souls, and there are one hundred and fifty-eight Protestant pastors, besides four Catholics, or about one clergyman to each thousand souls, which is just about the proportion that exists in New York. In conversing with an intelligent Vaudois on returning from the church, I found that a great deal of interest is excited in this Canton by the late conspiracy in Berne. The Vaudois have got that attachment to liberty which is ever the result of a long political dependence, and which so naturally disposes the inferior to resist the superior. It is not pretended, however, that the domination of Berne was particularly oppressive, though as a matter of course, whenever the interests of Vaud happened to conflict with those of the great canton, the former had to succumb. Still the reaction of a political dependency, which lasted more than two centuries and a half, had brought about, even previously to the late changes, a much more popular form of government than was usual in Switzerland, and the people here really manifest some concern on the subject of this effort of aristocracy. As you may like to compare the elective qualifications of one of the more liberal cantons of the confederation with some of our own, I will give you an outline of those of Vaud, copied, in the substance, from Picot. The voter must have had a legal domicile in the canton one year, be a citizen, twenty-five years old, and be of the number of _the three-fourths of the citizens who pay the highest land-tax_, or have three sons enrolled and serving in the militia. Domestics, persons receiving succour from the parishes, bankrupts, outlaws, and convicted criminals, are perpetually excluded from the elective franchise. This system, though far better than that of France, which establishes a certain _amount_ of direct taxation, is radically vicious, as it makes property, and that of a particular species, the test of power. It is, in truth, the old English plan a little modified; and the recent revolution that has lately taken place in England under the name of reform, goes to prove that it is a system which contains in itself the seeds of vital changes. As every political question is strictly one of practice, _changes_ become necessary everywhere with the changes of circumstances, and these are truly reforms; but when they become so serious as to overturn principles, they produce the effects of revolutions, though possibly in a mitigated form. Every system, therefore, should be so framed as to allow of all the alterations which are necessary to convenience, with a strict regard to its own permanency as connected with its own governing principle. In America, in consequence of having attended to this necessity from the commencement, we have undergone no revolution in principle in half a century, though constantly admitting of minor changes, while nearly all Europe has, either in theory or in practice, or in both, been effectually revolutionized. Nor does the short period from which our independent existence dates furnish any argument against us, as it is not so much _time_, as the _changes_ of which time is the parent, that tries political systems; and America has undergone the ordinary changes, such as growth, extension of interests, and the other governing circumstances of society, that properly belong to two centuries, within the last fifty years. America to-day, in all but government, is less like the America of 1776, than the France of to-day is like the France of 1600. While it is the fashion to scout our example as merely that of an untried experiment, ours is fast getting to be the oldest political system in Christendom, as applied to one and the same people. _Nations_ are not easily destroyed,--they exist under a variety of mutations, and names last longer than things; but I now speak in reference to distinguishing and prominent facts, without regard to the various mystifications under which personal interests disguise themselves. LETTER XVIII. Neglect of the Vine in America.--Drunkenness in France.--Cholera especially fatal to Drunkards.--The Soldier's and the Sailor's Vice.--Sparkling Champagne and Still Champagne.--Excessive Price of these Wines in America.--Burgundy.--Proper soil for the Vine.--Anecdote.--Vines of Vévey.--The American Fox-grape. Dear ----, A little incident has lately impressed me with the great wealth of this quarter of the world in wines, as compared with our own poverty. By poverty, I do not mean ignorance of the beverage, or a want of good liquors; for I believe few nations have so many varieties, or varieties so excellent, as ourselves. Certainly it is not common to meet as good Bordeaux wines in Paris as in New York. The other good liquors of France are not so common; and yet the best Burgundy I ever drank was in America.[35] This is said without reference to the different qualities of the vineyards--but, by poverty, I mean the want of the vines. [Footnote 35: Since his return, the author can say the same of Rhenish wines; though the tavern wines of Germany are usually much better than the tavern wines of France.] Vineyards abound all over the American continent, within the proper latitudes, except in the portions of it peopled by the colonists who have an English origin. To this fact, then, it is fair to infer, that we owe the general neglect of this generous plant among ourselves. The Swiss, German, and French emigrants are already thinking of the vine, while we have been in possession of the country two centuries without making a cask of wine. If this be not literally true it is so nearly true, as to render it not less a leading fact. I do not attach exactly the same moral consequences to the want of the vine as is usually attributed to the circumstances by political economists; though I am of opinion that serious physical evils may be traced to this cause. Men will seek some stimulus or other, if it be attainable, place them in what situations you will, although wine is forbidden by the Koran, the Mahomedan is often intoxicated; and my own eyes have shown me how much drunkenness exists in the vine-growing countries of Europe. On this subject it may be well to say a word _en passant_. I came to Europe under the impression that there was more drunkenness among us than in any other country, England, perhaps, excepted. A residence of six months in Paris changed my views entirely. You will judge of my surprise when first I saw a platoon of the Royal Guard,--literally a whole platoon, so far as numbers and the order of their promenade was concerned,--staggering drunk, within plain view of the palace of their master. From this time I became more observant, and not a day passed that I did not see men, and even women, in the same situation in the open streets. Usually, when the fact was mentioned to Americans, they expressed surprise, declaring they had never seen such a thing! They were too much amused with other sights to regard this; and then they had come abroad with different notions, and it is easier to float in the current of popular opinion than to stem it. In two or three instances I have taken the unbelievers with me into the streets, where I have never failed to convince them of their mistake in the course of an hour. These experiments, too, were usually made in the better quarters of the town, or near our own residence, where one is much less apt to meet with drunkenness than in the other quarters. On one occasion, a party of four of us went out with this object, and we passed thirteen drunken men, during a walk of an hour. Many of them were so far gone as to be totally unable to walk. I once saw, on the occasion of a festival, three men literally wallowing in the gutter before my window; a degree of beastly degradation I never witnessed in any other country. The usual reply of a Frenchman, when the subject has been introduced, was that the army of occupation introduced the habit into the capital. But I have spoken to you of M----, a man whose candour is only equalled by his information. He laughed at this account of the matter, saying that he had now known France nearly sixty years; it is his native country; and he says that he cannot see any difference, in this particular, in his time. It is probable that, during the wars of Napoleon, when there was so great a demand for men of the lower classes, it was less usual to encounter this vice in the open streets, than now, for want of subjects; but, by all I can learn, there never was a time when drunkards did not abound in France. I do assure you that, in the course of passing between Paris and London, I have been more struck by drunkenness in the streets of the former, than in those of the latter. Not long since, I asked a labourer if he ever got _grisé_, and he laughingly told me--"yes, whenever he could." He moreover added, that a good portion of his associates did the same thing. Now I take it, this word _grisé_ contains the essence of the superiority of wine over whiskey. It means fuddled, a condition from which one recovers more readily, than from downright drunkenness, and of which the physical effects are not so injurious. I believe the consequences of even total inebriety from wine, are not as bad as those which follow inebriety from whiskey and rum. But your real amateur here is no more content with wine than he is with us; he drinks a white brandy that is pretty near the pure alcohol. The cholera has laid bare the secrets of drunkenness, all over Europe. At first we were astonished when the disease got among the upper classes; but, with all my experience, I confess I was astonished at hearing it whispered of a gentleman, as I certainly did in a dozen instances--"_mais il avait l'habitude de boire trop_." Cholera, beyond a question, killed many a sober man, but it also laid bare the fault of many a devotee of the bottle. Drunkenness, almost as a matter of course, abounds in nearly all, if not in all, the armies of Europe. It is peculiarly the soldier's and the sailor's vice, and some queer scenes have occurred directly under my own eyes here, which go to prove it. Take among others, the fact, that a whole guard, not long since, got drunk in the Faubourg St. Germain, and actually arrested people in the streets and confined them in the guard-house. The Invalids are notorious for staggering back to their quarters; and I presume I have seen a thousand of these worthies, first and last, as happy as if they had all their eyes, and arms, and legs about them. The official reports show ten thousand cases of females arrested for drunkenness, in Paris, during the last year.--But to return to our vineyards. Although I am quite certain drunkenness is not prevented by the fact that wine is within the reach of the mass, it is easy to see that its use is less injurious, physically, than that of the stronger compounds and distillations, to which the people of the non-vine-growing regions have recourse as substitutes. Nature is a better brewer than man, and the pure juice of the grape is less injurious than the mixed and fiery beverages that are used in America. In reasonable quantities, it is not injurious at all. Five-and-twenty years since, when I first visited Europe, I was astonished to see wine drunk in tumblers. I did not at first understand that half of what I had up to that time been drinking was brandy, under the name of wine. While our imported wines are, as a whole, so good, we do not always show the same discrimination in choosing. There is very little good champagne, for instance, drunk in America. A vast deal is consumed, and we are beginning to understand that it is properly a table-wine, or one that is to be taken with the meats; but sparkling champagne is, _ex necessitate_, a wine of inferior quality. No wine _mousses_, as the French term it, that has body enough to pass a certain period without fermentation. My friend de V---- is a proprietor of vines at Aï, and he tells me that the English take most of their good wines, which are the "still champagnes," and the Russians and the Americans the poor, or the sparkling. A great deal of the sparkling, however, is consumed in France, the price better suiting French economy. But the wine-growers of Champagne themselves speak of us as consumers of their second-class liquors. I drunk at Paris, as good "sparkling champagne" as anybody I knew, de V---- having the good nature to let me have it, from his cellar, for the price at which it is sold to the dealer and exporter, or at three francs the bottle. The _octroi_ and the transportation bring the price up to about three francs and a half. This then is the cost to the restaurateur and the innkeeper. These sell it again to their customers, at six francs the bottle. Now a bottle of wine ought not, and I presume does not, cost the American dealer any more; the difference in favour of the duty more than equalling the difference against them, in the transportation. This wine is sold in our eating-houses and taverns at two dollars, and even at two dollars and a half, the bottle! In other words, the consumer pays three times the amount of the first cost and charges. Now, it happens, that there is something very like free trade in this article, (to use the vernacular), and here are its fruits; You also see in this fact, the truth of what I have told you of our paying for the want of a class of men who wilt be content to be shopkeepers and innkeepers, and who do not look forward to becoming anything more. I do not say that we are the less respectable for this circumstance, but we are, certainly, as a people, less comfortable. Champagne, Rhenish, and Bordeaux wines ought to be sold in New York, quite as cheap as they are sold in the great towns of the countries in which they are made. They can be bought of the wine-merchants nearly as low, even as things are. If the innkeepers and steam-boat stewards, of America, would buy and sell low-priced Burgundy wines, that, as the French call it, _carry water well_, as well as some other wines that might be named, the custom of drinking this innocent and useful beverage at table would become general, attention would then be paid to the vine, and in twenty years we should be consumers of the products of our own vineyards. The idea that our winters are too severe can hardly be just. There may be mountainous districts where such is the fact, but, in a country that extends from the 27th to the 47th degrees of latitude, it is scarcely possible to suppose the vine cannot flourish. I have told you that wine is made on the Elbe, and it is made in more than half the Swiss cantons. Proper exposures and proper soil are necessary for good wines, anywhere, but nothing is easier than to have both. In America, I fear, we have hitherto sought land that was too rich; or rather, land that is wanting in the proper and peculiar richness that is congenial to the vine. All the great vineyards I have seen, and all of which I can obtain authentic accounts, are on thin gravelly soils; frequently, as is the case in the Rheingau, on decomposed granite, quartz, and sienite. Slate mixed with quartz on a clayish bottom, and with basalt, is esteemed a good soil, as is also marl and gravel. The Germans use rich manures, but I do not think this is the case in France. The grape that makes good wine is rarely fit to eat. Much care is had to reject the defective fruit, when a delicate wine is expected, just as we cull apples to make fine cider. A really good vineyard is a fortune at once, and a tolerable one is as good a disposition as can be made of land. All the fine wines of Hockheim are said to be the produce of only eight or ten acres. There is certainly more land than this, in the vine, south of the village, but the rest is not esteemed to be Hockheimer. Time is indispensable to fine wines, and time is a thing that an American lives too fast to spare. The grapes become better by time, although periodically renewed, and the wine improves in the same way. I have told you in these letters, that I passed a vineyard on the lake of Zurich of which there are records to show it has borne the vine five hundred years. Five centuries since, if historians are to be believed, the winters on this lake must have been as severe as they are usually on Champlain; they are almost as severe, even now. Extraordinary characters are given to some of the vines here. Thus some of the Moselle wines, it is said, will not make good vinegar! If this be true, judging by my own experience, vinegar is converted into wines of the Moselle. I know no story of this sort, after all, that is more marvellous than one I have heard of the grandfather of A----, and which I believe to be perfectly true, as it is handed down on authority that can scarcely be called in question. A pipe of Madeira was sent to him, about the year 1750, which proved to be so bad that, giving it up as a gone case, he ordered it to be put in the sun, with a bottle in its bung-hole, in order that it might, at least, make good vinegar. Bis official station compelled him to entertain a great deal, and his factotum, on these occasions, was a negro, whose name I have forgotten. This fellow, a capital servant when sober, occasionally did as he saw his betters do, and got drunk. Of course this greatly deranged the economy of the government dinners. On one occasion, particular care was taken to keep him in his right senses, and yet at the critical moment he appeared behind his master's chair, as happy as the best of them. This matter was seriously inquired into next day, when it was discovered that a miracle had been going on out of doors, and that the vinegar had been transformed into wine. The tradition is, that this wine was remarkable for its excellence, and that it was long known by the name of the negro, as the best wine of a colony, where more good wine of the sort was drunk, probably, than was ever known by the same number of people, in the same time, anywhere else. Now should one experimenting on a vineyard, in America, find vinegar come from his press, he would never have patience to let it ferment itself back into good liquor. Patience, I conceive, is the only obstacle to our becoming a great wine-growing and a great silk-growing country. I have been led into these remarks by observing the vineyards here. The _qualities_ of wines, of course, are affected by the positions of the vineyards, for all who can make wine do not make good wine, but the vines of Vévey, owing most probably to their exposure, are said to be the best of Switzerland. The best liquor comes from St. Saphorin, a hamlet that is quite near the town, which lies at the foot of the acclivity, described to you in our approach to this place. The little chateau-looking house that so much struck our fancies, on that occasion, is, in fact, in the immediate neighbourhood of the spot. All these circumstances show how much depends on minor circumstances in the cultivation of the vine, and how much may be expected from the plant, when care is had to respect them. The heat may be too great for the vineyard as well as the cold. In Italy there is a practice of causing the vines to run on trees, in order to diminish the effect of the heat, by means of the shade they create. But the good wines are nearly everywhere, if not positively everywhere, produced from the short, clipped standards. This fact has induced me to think that we may succeed better with the vine in the middle, and even in the eastern, than in the southern and western states. I take it, the cold is of no importance, provided it be not so intense as to kill the plant, and the season is long enough to permit the fruit to ripen. It would be absurd in me, who have but a very superficial knowledge of the subject, to pretend to be very skillful in this matter, but I cannot help thinking that, if one had patience to try the experiment, it would be found the common the American fox-grape would in time bring a fine wine. It greatly resembles the grapes of some of the best vineyards here, and the fact of its not being a good eating grape is altogether in its favour. In short, I throw it out as a conjecture more than as an ascertained fact, it is true, but from all I have seen in Europe, I am induced to think that, in making our experiments on the vine, we have been too ambitious to obtain a fat soil, and too warp of the higher latitudes of the country. A gravelly hill-side, in the interior, that has been well stirred, and which has the proper exposure, I cannot but thing would bring good wine, in all the low countries of the middle states. LETTER XIX. The Leman Lake.--Excursions on it.--The coast of Savoy.--Grandeur and beauty of the Rocks.--Sunset.--Evening Scene.--American Families residing on the banks of the Lake.--Conversation with a Vévaisan on the subject of America.--The Nullification Question.--America misrepresented in Europe.--Rowland Stephenson in the United States.--Unworthy arts to bring America into disrepute.--Blunders of Europe in respect of America.--The Kentuckians.--Foreign Associations in the States.--Illiberal Opinions of many Americans.--Prejudices. Dear ----, Our residence at Vévey, thus far, has been fruitful of pleasure. The lake, with its changeful aspects and movement, wears better even than the Oberland Alps, and we have now become thoroughly convinced of our mistake in establishing ourselves at Berne, beautiful as is that place, in 1828. The motive was a desire to be central, but Switzerland is so small that the distances are of no great moment, and I would advise all our friends who intend to pass a summer in the cantons, and who have need of a house, to choose their station somewhere on the shores of the Leman. Two steam-boats ply daily in different directions, and it is of little consequence at which end one may happen to be. Taking everything into consideration "_mon lac est le premier_" is true; though it may be questioned if M. de Voltaire ever saw, or had occasion to see, half of its advantages. We never tire of the Leman, but spend two or three hours every day in the boat. Sometimes we row in front of the town, which literally stands in the water, in some places, musing on the quaint old walls, and listening to the lore of honest John, who moves two crooked oars as leisurely as a lady of the tropic utters, but who has seen great events in his time. Sometimes even this lazy action is too much for the humour of the moment, and we are satisfied with drifting along the shore, for there is generally current enough to carry us the whole length of Vévey in half an hour. Occasionally we are tossed about like an egg-shell, the winds at a distance soon throwing this part of the sheet into commotion. On the whole, however, we have, as yet, had little besides calms, and, what is unusual in Switzerland, not a drop of rain. We have no reason to suspect the lake to be unhealthy, for we are often out until after sunset, without experiencing any ill effects. The shores are everywhere bold about Vévey, though the meadows and the waters meet near the entrance of the Rhone, some eight or ten miles from this place, in a way to raise the thoughts of rushes and lilies, and a suspicion of fevers. The pure air and excellent food of the mountains, however, have done us all good thus far, and we are looking eagerly forward to the season of grapes, which is drawing near, and which every body says make those who are perfectly well, infinitely better. I have not yet spoken to you of the greatest charm in the scenery of Vévey, and the one which perhaps has given us the highest degree of satisfaction. The coast of Savoy, immediately opposite the town, is a range of magnificent rocks, that rises some four or five thousand feet above the surface of the water. In general these precipices are nearly perpendicular, though their surfaces are broken by huge ravines, that may well be termed valleys. This is the region that impends over Meillerie, St. Gingoulph, and Evian, towns or hamlets that cling to the bases of the mountains, and form, of themselves, beautiful objects, from this side of the lake. The distance from Vévey to the opposite shore, agreeably to the authority of old John, our boatman, is about five miles, though the great purity of the atmosphere and the height of the land make it appear less. The summit of the rocks of Savoy are broken into the most fantastical forms, so beautifully and evenly drawn, though they are quite irregular and without design, that I have termed them natural arabesques. No description can give you an accurate idea of their beauty, for I know nothing else in nature to compare them to. As they lie nearly south of us, I cannot account for the unusual glow of the atmosphere behind them, at every clear sunset, except from the reflection of the glaciers; Mont Blanc lying in that direction, at the distance of about fifty miles, though invisible. Now the effect of the outline of these rocks, at, or after sunset, relieved by a soft, golden sky, is not only one of the finest sights of Switzerland, but, in its way, is just the most perfect spectacle I have ever beheld. It is not so apt to extort sudden admiration, as the rosy tints and spectral hues of the high Alps, at the same hour; but it wins on you, in the way the lonely shadows of the Apennines grow on the affections, and, so far from tiring or becoming satisfied with their view, each successive evening brings greater delight than the last. You may get some idea of what I mean, by imagining vast arabesques, rounded and drawn in a way that no art can equal, standing out huge, and dark, and grand, in high relief, blending sublimity with a bewitching softness, against a sky. whose light is slowly passing from the glow of fiery gold, to the mildest tints of evening. I scarcely know when this scene is most to be admired; when the rocks appear distinct and brown, showing their material, and the sky is burnished; or when the first are nearly black masses, on whose surfaces nothing is visible, and the void beyond is just pregnant with sufficient light to expose their exquisite forms. Perhaps this is the perfection of the scene, for the gloom of the hour throws a noble mystery over all. These are the sights that form the grandest features in Swiss scenery. That of the high peaks cut off from the earth by the clouds, is perhaps the most extraordinary of them all; but I think this of the rocks of Savoy the one that wins the most on the affections, although this opinion is formed from a knowledge of the general fact that objects which astonish so greatly at first, do not, as a rule, continue the longest to afford pleasure, for I never saw the former spectacle but twice and on one of those occasions, imperfectly. No _dilettanti_ were ever more punctual at the opening of the orchestra, than we are at this evening exhibition, which, very much like a line and expressive harmony, grows upon us at each repetition. All this end of the lake, as we float lazily before the town, with the water like a mirror, the acclivity behind the town gradually darkening upward under the retiring light, the remote Alpine pastures just throwing out their chalets, the rocks of Savoy and the sublime glen of the Rhone, with the glacier of Mont Velan in its depths, raising its white peak into the broad day long after evening has shadowed everything below, forms the most perfect natural picture I have ever seen. You can easily fancy how much we enjoy all this. John and his boat have been in requisition nearly every evening since our arrival; and the old fellow has dropped so readily into our humours, that his oars rise and fall in a way to produce a melancholy ripple, and little else. The sympathy between us is perfect, and I have almost fancied that his oars daily grow more crooked and picturesque. We are not alone, however, in the possession of so much natural beauty. No less than seven American families, including ourselves, are either temporarily established on or quite near this lake, or are leisurely moving around its banks. The fame of the beauty of the women has already reached our ears, though, sooth to say, a reputation of that sort is not very difficult of attainment in this part of the world. With one of these families we were intimate in Italy, the tie of country being a little increased by the fact that some of their connexions were also ours. They hurried from Lausanne to meet us, the moment they were apprized of our arrival, and the old relations have been re-established between us. Since this meeting excursions have been planned, and it is probable that I may have something to communicate, in reference to them. A day or two since I met a Vévaisan on the public promenade, with whom business had led to a slight acquaintance. We saluted, and pursued our walk together. The conversation soon turned on the news from America, where nullification is, just now, menacing disunion. The Swiss are the only people, in Europe, who appear to me to feel any concern in what has been generally considered to be a crisis in our affairs. I do not wish to be understood as saying that individuals of other nations do not feel the same friendly interest in our prosperity, for perhaps a million such might be enumerated in the different nations of Europe, the extreme liberals everywhere looking to our example as so much authority in favour of their doctrines; but, after excluding the mass, who have too much to do to live, to trouble themselves with concerns so remote, so far as my knowledge extends, the great majority on this side the Atlantic, without much distinction of country, Switzerland excepted, are waiting with confidence and impatience for the knell of the Union. I might repeat to you many mawkish and unmeaning declarations to the contrary of all this, but I deem them to be mere phrases of society to which no one, in the least acquainted with the world, can attach any importance; and which, as they have never deceived me, I cannot wish should be made the means of deceiving you. Men generally hesitate to avow in terms, the selfishness and illiberality that regulate all their acts and wishes, and he who is credulous enough to mistake words for deeds, or even thoughts, in this quarter of the world, will soon become the dupe of more than half of those he meets. I believe I never mentioned to you an anecdote of Sir James Mackintosh, which bears directly on this subject. It was at a dinner given by Sir ----, that some one inquired if he (Sir James Mackintosh) had ever discovered the author of a certain libellous attack on himself. "Not absolutely, though I have no doubt that ---- was the person. I suspected him at once; but meeting him in Pall Mall, soon after the article appeared, he turned round and walked the whole length of the street with me, covering me with protestations of admiration and esteem, and then I felt quite sure of my man!" My Vévaisan made many inquiries as to the probable result of the present struggle, and appeared greatly gratified when I told him that I apprehended no serious danger to the republic. I made him laugh by mentioning the opinion of the witty Abbé Correa, who said, "The Americans are great talkers on political subjects; you would think they were about to fly to their arms, and just as you expect a revolution, _they go home and drink tea_." My acquaintance was anxious to know if our government had sufficient strength to put down nullification by force, for he had learned there was but a single sloop of war, and less than a battalion of troops, in the disaffected part of the country. I told him we possessed all the means that are possessed in other countries to suppress rebellion, although we had not thought it necessary to resort to the same system of organization. Our government was mild in principle, and did not wish to oppress even minorities; but I made no doubt of the attachment of a vast majority to the Union, and, when matters really came to a crisis, if rational compromise could not effect the object, I thought nine men in ten would rally in its defence. I did not believe that even civil war was to produce results in America different from what it produced elsewhere. Men would fight in a republic as they fought in monarchies, until they were tired, and an arrangement would follow. It was not common for a people of the same origin, of similar habits, and contiguous territory, to dismember an empire by civil war, unless violence had been used in bringing them together, or conquest had first opened the way to disunion. I did not know that we were always to escape the evils of humanity any more than others, or why they were to fall heavier on us, when they proceeded from the same causes, than on our neighbours. As respects the small force in Carolina, I thought it argued our comparative strength, rather than our comparative weakness. Here were loud threats of resistance, organized and even legal means to effect it, and yet the laws were respected, when sustained by only a sloop of war and two companies of artillery. If France were to recall her battalions from La Vendée, Austria her divisions from Italy, Russia her armies from Poland, or England her troops from India or Ireland, we all know that those several countries would be lost, in six months, to their present possessors. As we had our force in reserve, it really appeared to me that either our disaffection was very different from the disaffection of Europe, or that our institutions contained some conservative principle that did not usually exist in this hemisphere. My Vévaisan was curious to know to which of these circumstances I ascribed the present quiet in Carolina. I told him to both. The opposition in that state, as a whole, were honest in their views; and, though some probably meant disunion, the greater part did not. It was a governing principle of our system to seek redress by appeals to the source of power, and the majority were probable looking still, to that quarter, of relief. Under other systems, rebellion, nine times in ten, having a different object, would not be checked by this expectation. The Swiss listened to all this attentively, and remarked that America had been much misrepresented in Europe, and that the opinion was then getting to be general in his country, from improper motives. He told me that a great deal had been said about the proceedings in the case of Rowland Stephenson, and he frankly asked me to explain them; for, being a commercial man, he admitted that injurious impressions had been made even on himself in relation to that affair. This was the third Swiss who had alluded to this subject, the other two instances occurring at Rome. In the latter cases, I understood pretty distinctly that there were reports current that the Americans were so desirous of obtaining rich emigrants, that they had rescued a criminal in order to reap the benefit of his gold! Of course I explained the matter, by simply stating the facts, adding, that the case was an admirable illustration of the treatment America had received from Europe, ever since 1776. An Englishman, _a member of Parliament, by the way_, had absconded from his own country, taking shelter in ours, by the mere accident of meeting at sea a Swedish brig bound thither. A reward was offered for his arrest, and certain individuals had taken on themselves, instigated by whom I know not, to arrest him on a retired road, in Georgia, and to bring him covertly within the jurisdiction of New York, with the intention to send him clandestinely on board a packet bound to Europe. Now a grosser abuse than an act like this could not well be committed. No form of law was observed, and the whole proceeding was a violation of justice, and of the sovereignty of the two states interested. It is true the man arrested was said to be guilty of gross fraud; but where such practices obtain, guilt will soon cease to be necessary in order to commit violence. The innocent may be arrested wrongfully, too. As soon as the circumstances became known, an application was made to the proper authorities for relief, which was granted on a principle that obtained in all civilized countries, where right is stronger than might. Had any one been transferred from Canada to England, under similar circumstances, he would have been entitled to the same relief, and there is not a jurist in England who does not know the fact; and yet this transaction, which, if it redound to the discredit of either nation at all, (an exaggerated opinion, I admit,) must redound to the discredit of that which produced the delinquent, and actually preferred him to one of its highest legislative stations, has been so tortured all over Europe, as to leave an impression unfavourable to America! Now I tell you, dear ----, as I told my Vévaisan, that this case is a very fair example of the manner in which, for seven years, I have now been an attentive observer of the unworthy arts used to bring us into disrepute. The power to injure, in order to serve their own selfish views, which old-established and great nations possess over one like our own, is not fully appreciated in America, nor do we attach sufficient importance to the consequences. I am not conscious of a disposition to shut my eyes to our own peculiar national defects, more especially since the means of comparison have rendered me more sensible of their nature and existence; but nothing can be more apparent to any man of ordinary capacity, who has enjoyed the opportunities necessary to form a correct judgment, than the fact, that the defects usually imputed to us here, such as the want of morals, honesty, order, decency, liberality, and religion, are, in truth, _as the world goes_, the strong points of American character; while some of those on which we are a little too apt to pride ourselves,--intelligence, taste, manners, and education, for instance, as applied to all beyond the base of society,--are, in truth, those on which it would most become us to be silent. Others may tell you differently, especially those who are under the influence of the "trading humanities," a class that is singularly addicted to philanthropy or vituperation, as the balance-sheet happens to show variations of profit and loss. I told my Swiss that one of the reasons why Europe made so many blunders in her predictions about America, was owing to the fact that she sought her information in sources ill qualified, and, perhaps, ill disposed to impart it. Most of the information of this nature that either entered or left America, came, like her goods, through two or three great channels, or sea-ports, and these were thronged with the natives of half the countries of Europe; commercial adventurers, of whom not one in five ever got to feel or think like Americans. These men, in some places, possess even a direct influence over a portion of the press, and by these means, as well as by their extended correspondence, they disseminate erroneous notions of the country abroad. The cities themselves, as a rule, or rather the prominent actors in the towns, do not represent the tone of the nation, as is proved on nearly every distinctive political question that arises, by the towns almost uniformly being found in the minority, simply because they are purely trading communities, follow the instinct of their varying interests, and are ready to shout in the rear of any leader who may espouse them. Now these foreign merchants, as a class, are always found on the side which is the most estranged from the regular action of the institutions of the country. In America, intelligence is not confined to the towns; but, as a rule, there is less of it there than among the rural population. As a proof of the errors which obtain on the subject of America in Europe, I instanced the opinion which betrayed itself in England, the nation which ought to know us best, during the war of 1812. Feeling a commercial jealousy itself, its government naturally supposed her enemies were among the merchants, and that her friends were to be found in the interior. The fact would have exactly reversed this opinion, an opinion whose existence is betrayed in a hundred ways, and especially in the publications of the day. It was under this notion that our invaders made an appeal to the Kentuckians for support! Now, there was not, probably, a portion of the earth where less sympathy was to be found for England than in Kentucky, or, in short, along the whole western frontier of America, where, right or wrong, the people attribute most of their Indian wars to the instigation of that power. Few foreigners took sufficient interest in the country to probe such a feeling; and England, being left to her crude conjectures, and to theories of her own, had probably been thus led into one of the most absurd of all the blunders of this nature that she could possibly have committed. I believe that a large proportion of the erroneous notions which exist in Europe, concerning American facts, proceed from the prejudices of this class of the inhabitants.[36] [Footnote 36: This was the opinion of the writer, while in Europe. Since his return, he has seen much reason to confirm it. Last year, in a free conversation with a foreign diplomatic agent on the state of public feeling in regard to certain political measures, the _diplomate_ affirmed that, according to his experience, the talent, property, and respectability of the country were all against the government. This is the worn-out cant of England; and yet, when reform has been brought to the touchstone, its greatest opponents have been found among the _parvenus_. On being requested to mention individuals, the diplomatic man in question named three New York merchants, all of whom are foreigners by birth, neither of whom can speak good English, neither of whom could influence a vote--neither of whom had, probably, ever read the constitution or could understand it if he had read it, and neither of whom was, in principle, any more than an every-day common-place reflection of the antiquated notions of the class to which he belonged in other nations, and in which he had been, educated, and under the influence of which he had arrived here.] In order to appreciate the influence of such a class of men, it is necessary to recollect their numbers, wealth, and union, it has often been a source of mortification to me to see the columns of the leading journals of the largest town of the republic, teeming with reports of the celebrations of English, Irish, German, French, and Scotch societies; and in which the sentiments promulgated, half of the time, are foreign rather than American. Charitable associations, _as charities_, may be well enough, but the institutions of the country, so generous and liberal in themselves, are outraged by every factitious attempt to overshadow them by these appeals to the prejudices and recollections of another state of society. At least, we might be spared the parade in the journals, and the offensive appearance of monopolizing the land, which these accounts assume. Intelligent travellers observe and comment on these things, and one of them quaintly asked me, not long since, "if really there were no Americans in America?" Can it be matter of surprise that when the stranger sees these men so prominent in print and in society, (in many instances quite deservedly), he should mistake their influence, and attach an importance to their opinions which they do not deserve? That Europe has been receiving false notions of America from some source, during the present century, is proved by the results so completely discrediting her open predictions; and, while I know that many Americans have innocently aided in the deception, I have little doubt that the foreign merchants established in the country have been one of the principal causes of the errors. It is only necessary to look back within our own time, to note the progress of opinion, and to appreciate the value of those notions that some still cherish, as containing all that is sound and true in human policy. Thirty years ago, the opinion that it was unsafe to teach the inferior classes to read, "_as it only enabled then to read bad books_," was a common and favourite sentiment of the upper classes in England. To-day, it is a part of the established system of Austria to instruct her people! I confess that I now feel mortified and grieved when I meet with an American gentleman who professes anything but liberal opinions, as respects the rights of his fellow-creatures. Although never illiberal, I trust, I do not pretend that my own notions have not undergone changes, since, by being removed from the pressure of the society in which I was born, my position, perhaps, enables me to look around, less influenced by personal considerations than is usual; but one of the strongest feelings created by an absence of so many years from he me, is the conviction that no American can justly lay claim to be, what might be and ought to be the most exalted of human beings, the milder graces of the Christian character excepted, an American gentleman, without this liberality entering thoroughly into the whole composition of his mind. By liberal sentiments, however, I do not mean any of the fraudulent cant that is used, in order to delude the credulous; but the generous, manly determination to let all enjoy equal political rights, and to bring those to whom authority is necessarily confided, as far as practicable, under the control of the community they serve. Opinions like these have little in common with the miserable devices of demagogues, who teach the doctrine that the people are infallible; or that the aggregation of fallible parts, acting, too, with diminished responsibilities, form an infallible whole; which is a doctrine almost as absurd as that which teaches us to believe "the people are their own worst enemies;" a doctrine, which, if true, ought to induce those who profess it, to forbid any man from managing his own affairs, but compel him to confide them to the management of others; since the elementary principle is the same in communities and individuals, and, as regards interests, neither would go wrong unless deceived. I shall not conceal from you the mortification and regret I have felt at discovering, from this distance, and it is more easily discovered from a distance than when near by, how far, how very far, the educated classes of America are, in opinion, (in my poor judgment, at least), behind the fortunes of the country. Notions are certainly still entertained at home, among this class, that are frankly abandoned here, by men of any capacity, let their political sect be what it may; and I have frequently seen assertions and arguments used, in Congress, that, I think, the dullest Tory would now hesitate about using in Parliament. I do not say that certain great prejudices are not yet prevalent in England, that are exploded with us; but my remark applies to some of the old and cherished theories of government, which have been kept alive as theories in England, long after they have ceased to be recognised in practice, and some of which, indeed, like that of the doctrine of a balance between different powers in the state, never had any other than a theoretical existence, at all. The absurd doctrine just mentioned has many devout believers, at this moment, in America, when a moment's examination must show its fallacy. The democracy of a country, in the nature of things, will possess its physical force. Now give to the physical force of a community an equal political power, and the moment it finds itself gravely interested in supporting or defeating any measure, it will fall back on its strength, set the other estates at defiance, and blow your boasted balance of power to the winds! There never has been an active democratical feature in the government of England; nor have the commons, since they have enjoyed anything like independence, been aught but an auxiliary to the aristocracy, in a modified form. While the king was strong, the two bodies united to put him down, and, as he got to be weak, they gradually became identified, to reap the advantages. What is to come remains to be seen. LETTER XX. The Equinox.--Storm on the Lake.--Chase of a little Boat.--Chateau of Blonay.--Drive to Lausanne.--Mont Benon.--Trip to Geneva in the Winkelried.--Improvements in Geneva.--Russian Travellers.--M. Pozzo di Borgo.--Table d'hôte.--Extravagant Affirmations of a Frenchman.--Conversation with a Scotchman.--American Duels.--Visit at a Swiss Country-house.--English Customs affected in America.--Social Intercourse in the United States.--Difference between a European and an American Foot and Hand.--Violent Gale.--Sheltered position of Vévey.--Promenade.--Picturesque View.--The great Square.--Invitation.--Mountain Excursion.--An American Lieutenant.--Anecdote.--Extensive Prospect.--Chateau of Glayrole. Dear ----, We have had a touch of the equinox, and the Leman has been in a foam, but its miniature anger, though terrible enough at times, to those who are embarked on its waters, can never rise to the dignity of a surf and a rolling sea. The rain kept me housed, and old John and I seized the occasion to convert a block of pine into a Leman bark, for P----. The next day proving fair, our vessel, fitted with two latine sails, and carrying a weather helm, was committed to the waves, and away she went, on a wind, toward the opposite shore. P----, of course, was delighted, and clapped his hands, until, perceiving that it was getting off the land, he compelled us to enter the boat and give chase. A chase it was, truly; for the little thing went skipping from wave, to wave, in such a business-like manner, that I once thought it would go all the way to Savoy. Luckily a flaw caused it to tack, when it soon became our prize. We were a long distance off when the boat was overtaken, and I thought the views behind the town finer, at that position, than when nearer in. I was particularly struck with the appearance of the little chateau of Blonay, which is still the residence of a family of the same name, that has been seated, for more than seven centuries, on the same rocky terrace. I was delighted to hear that its present owner is a liberal, as every ancient gentleman should be. Such a man ought to be cautious how he tarnishes his lineage with unjust or ungenerous sentiments. The equinoctial blow returned the next day, and the lake became really fine, in a new point of view; for, aided by the mountains, it succeeded in getting up a very respectable appearance of fury. The sail-boats vanished, and even the steamers went through it with a good deal of struggling and reluctance. As soon as the weather became better, we went to Lausanne, preferring the road, with a view to see the country. It is not easy to fancy anything prettier than this drive, which ran, nearly the whole distance, along the foot of hills, that would be mountains anywhere else, and quite near the water. The day was beautiful, and we had the lake, with its varying scenery and movement, the whole time in sight; while the road, an excellent solid wheel-track, wound between the walls of vineyards, and was so narrow as scarcely to admit the passage of two carriages at a time. At a short distance from Lausanne, we left the margin of the lake, and ascended to the level of the town, through a wooded and beautifully ornamented country. We found our friends established in one of the numberless villas that dot the broken land around the place, with their windows commanding most of that glorious view that I have already described to you. Mont Benon, a beautiful promenade, was close at hand, and, in the near view, the eye ranged over fields, verdant and smooth lawns, irregular in their surfaces, and broken by woods and country-houses. A long attenuated reach of the lake stretched away towards Geneva, while the upper end terminated in its noble mountains, and the mysterious, glen-like gorge of Valais. We returned from this excursion in the evening, delighted with the exterior of Lausanne, and more and more convinced that, all things considered, the shores of this lake unite greater beauties, with better advantages as a residence, than any other part of Switzerland. After remaining at Vévey a day or two longer, I went to Geneva, in the Winkelried, which had got a new commander; one as unaffected as his predecessor had been fantastical. Our progress was slow, and, although we reached the port early enough to prevent being locked out, with the exception of a passage across Lake George, in which the motion seemed expressly intended for the lovers of the picturesque, I think this the most deliberate run, or rather _walk_, I ever made by steam. I found Geneva much changed, for the better, in the last four years. Most of the hideous sheds had been pulled down from the fronts of the houses, and a stone pier is building, that puts the mighty port of New York, with her commercial _energies_, to shame. In other respects, I saw no material alterations in the place. The town was crowded, more of the travellers being French, and fewer English, than common. As for the Russians, they appear to have vanished from the earth, to my regret; for in addition to being among the most polished people one meets, (I speak of those who travel), your Russian uniformly treats the American kindly. I have met with more personal civilities, conveyed in a delicate manner, from these people, and especially from the diplomatic agents of Russia, than from any others in Europe, and, on the whole, I have cause, personally, to complain of none; or, in other words, I do not think that personal feeling warps my judgment, in this matter. M. Pozzo di Borgo, when he gave large entertainments, sent a number of tickets to Mr. Brown to be distributed among his countrymen, and I have heard this gentleman say, no other foreign minister paid him this attention. All this may be the result of policy, but it is something to obtain civil treatment in this world, on any terms. You must be here, to understand how completely we are overlooked. Late as we were, we were in time for dinner, which I took at a _table d'hôte_ that was well crowded with French. I passed as an Englishman, as a matter of course, and had reason to be much amused with some of the conversation. One young Frenchman very coolly affirmed that two members had lately fought with pistols in the hall of Congress, during the session, and his intelligence was received with many very proper exclamations of horror. The young man referred to the rencontre which took place on the terrace of the Capitol, in which the party assailed _was_ a member of Congress; but I have no doubt he believed all he said, for such is the desire to blacken the American name just now, that every unfavourable incident is seized upon and exaggerated, without shame or remorse. I had a strong desire to tell this young man that the affair to which he alluded, did not differ essentially from that of M. Calémard de Lafayette[37], with the exception that no one was slain at Washington; but I thought it wiser to preserve my _incognito_. [Footnote 37: This unfortunate gentleman was no relation of the family of Lafayette, his proper appellation being that of M. Calémard. _Fayette_, so far as I can discover, is an old French word, or perhaps a provincial word, that signifies a sort of _hedge_, and has been frequently used as a territorial appellation, like _de la Haie_.] The next day our French party was replaced by another, and the master of the house promoted me to the upper end of his table, as an old boarder. Here I found myself, once more, in company with an Englishman, an Irishman, and a Scotchman. The two former sat opposite to me, and the last at my side. The civilities of the table passed between us, especially between the Scotchman and myself, with whom I fell into discourse. After a little while, my neighbour, a sensible shrewd fellow enough, by the way of illustrating his opinion, and to get the better of me, cited some English practice, in connexion with "you in England." I told him I was no Englishman. "No Englishman! you are not a Scotchman?" "Certainly not." "Still less an Irishman!" "No." My companion now looked at me as hard as a well-bred man might, and said earnestly, "Where did you learn to speak English so well?" "At home, as you did--I am an American." "Umph!" and a silence of a minute; followed by abruptly putting the question of--"What is the reason that your duels in America are so bloody?--I allude particularly to some fought in the Mediterranean by your naval officers. We get along, with less vindicative fighting." As this was rather a sharp and sudden shot, I thought it best to fire back, and I told him, "that as to the Mediterranean, our officers were of opinion they were ill-treated, till they began to shoot those who inflicted the injuries; since which time all had gone on more smoothly. According to their experience, their own mode of fighting was much the most efficacious, in that instance at least." As he bore this good-naturedly, thinking perhaps his abrupt question merited a saucy answer, we soon became good friends. He made a remark or two, in better taste than the last, on the facts of America, and I assured him he was in error, showing him wherein his error lay. He then asked me why some of our own people did not correct the false impressions of Europe, on the subject of America, for the European could only judge by the information laid before him. He then mentioned two or three American writers, who he thought would do the world a service by giving it a book or two, on the subject. I told him that if they wrote honestly and frankly, Europe would not read their books, for prejudice was not easily overcome, and no favourable account of us would be acceptable. It would not be enough for us to confess our real faults, but we should be required to confess the precise faults that, according to the notions of this quarter of the world, we are morally, logically, and politically bound to possess. This he would not admit, for what man is ever willing to confess that his own opinions are prejudiced? I mention this little incident, because its spirit, in my deliberate judgment, forms the _rule_, in the case of the feeling of all British subjects, and I am sorry to say the subjects of most other European countries; and the mawkish sentiment and honeyed words that sometimes appear in toasts, tavern dinners, and public speeches, the exception. I may be wrong, as well as another, but this, I repeat for the twentieth time, is the result of my own observations; you know under what opportunities these observations have been made, and how far they are likely to be influenced by personal considerations. In the evening I accompanied a gentleman, whose acquaintance I had made at Rome, to the country-house of a family that I had also had the pleasure of meeting during their winter's residence in that town. We passed out by the gate of Savoy, and walked a mile or two, among country-houses and pleasant alleys of trees, to a dwelling not unlike one of our own, on the Island of Manhattan, though furnished with more taste and comfort than it is usual to meet in America. M. and Mad. N---- were engaged to pass the evening at the house of a connexion near by, and they frankly proposed that we should be of the party. Of course we assented, leaving them to be the judges of what was proper. At this second dwelling, a stone's throw from the other, we found a small party of sensible and well-bred people, who received me as a stranger, with marked politeness, but with great simplicity. I was struck with the repast, which was exactly like what a country tea is, or perhaps I ought to say, used to be, in respectable families, at home, who have not, or had not, much of the habits of the world. We all sat round a large table, and, among other good things that were served, was an excellent fruit tart! I could almost fancy myself in New England, where I remember a judge of a supreme court once gave me _custards_, at a similar entertainment. The family we had gone to see, were perhaps a little too elegant for such a set-out, for I had seen them in Rome with _mi-lordi_ and _monsignori_, at their six o'clock dinners; but the quiet good sense with which everybody dropped into their own distinctive habits at home, caused me to make a comparison between them and ourselves, much to the disadvantage of the latter. I do not mean that usages ought not to change, but that usages should be consistent with themselves, and based on their general fitness and convenience for the society for which they are intended. This is good sense, which is commonly not only good-breeding, but high-breeding. The Genevois are French in their language, in their literature, and consequently in many of their notions. Still they have independence enough to have hours, habits, and rules of intercourse that they find suited to their own particular condition. The fashions of Paris, beyond the point of reason, would scarcely influence them; and the answer would probably be, were a discrepancy between the customs pointed out, "that the usage may suit Paris, but it does not suit Geneva." How is it with, us? Our women read in novels and magazines, that are usually written by those who have no access to the society they write about, and which they oftener caricature than describe, that people of quality in England go late to parties; and they go late to parties, too, to be like English people of quality. Let me make a short comparison, by way of illustration. The English woman of quality, in town, rises at an hour between nine and twelve. She is dressed by her maid, and if there are children, they are brought to her by a child's maid: nourishing them herself is almost out of the question. Her breakfast is eaten between eleven and one. At three or four she may lunch. At four she drives out; at half-past seven she dines. At ten she begins to think of the evening's amusement, and is ready for it, whatever it may be, unless it should happen to be the opera, or the theatre, (the latter being almost proscribed as vulgar), when she necessarily forces herself to hours a little earlier. She returns home, between one and four, is undressed by her maid, and sleeps until ten or even one, according to circumstances. These are late hours, certainly, and in some respects unwise; but they have their peculiar advantages, and, at all events, _they are consistent with themselves_. In New York, the house is open for morning visits at twelve, and with a large straggling town, bad attendance at the door, and a total want of convenience in public vehicles, unless one travels in a stage-coach, yclept an omnibus, it is closed at three, for dinner. _Sending_ a card would be little short of social treason. We are too country-bred for such an impertinence. After dinner, there is an interval of three hours, when tea is served, and the mistress of the house is at a loss for employment until ten, when she goes into the world, in order to visit at the hour she has heard, or read, that fashion prescribes such visits ought to be made, in other countries, England in particular. Here she remains until one or two, returns home, undresses herself, passes a sleepless morning, perhaps, on account of a cross child, and rises at seven to make her husband's coffee at eight! There is no exaggeration in this, for such is the dependence and imitation of a country that has not sufficient tone to think and act for itself, in still graver matters, that the case might even be made stronger, with great truth.--The men are no wiser. When _invited_, they dine at six; and at home, as a rule, they dine between three and four. A man who is much in society, dines out at least half his time, and consequently he is eating one day at four and the next at six, all winter! The object of this digression is to tell you that, so far as my observation goes, we are the only people who do not think and act for ourselves, in these matters. French millinery may pass current throughout Christendom, for mere modes of dress are habits scarce worth resisting; but in Germany, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, or wherever we have resided, I have uniformly found that, in all essentials, the people have hours and usages of their own, founded on their own governing peculiarities of condition. In America, there is a constant struggle between the force of things and imitation, and the former often proving the strongest, it frequently renders the latter lame, and, of course, ungraceful. In consequence of this fact, social intercourse with us is attended with greater personal sacrifices, and returns less satisfaction, than in most other countries. There are other causes, beyond a doubt, to assist in producing such a result; more especially in a town like New York, that doubles its population in less than twenty years; but the want of independence, and the weakness of not adapting our usages to our peculiar condition, ought to be ranked among the first. In some cases, necessity compels us to be Americans, but whenever there is a tolerable chance, we endeavour to become "second chop English." In a fit of gallantry, I entered a jeweller's shop, next day, and bought a dozen or fifteen rings, with a view to distribute them, on my return, among my young country women at Vévey, of whom there were now not less than eight or ten, three families having met at that place. It may serve to make the ladies of your family smile, when I add, that, though I was aware of the difference between a European and an American foot and hand,[38] every one of my rings, but three, had to be cut, in order to be worn! It will show you how little one part of mankind know the other, if I add, that I have often met with allusions in this quarter of the world to the females of America, in which the writers have evidently supposed them to be coarse and masculine! The country is deemed vulgar, and by a very obvious association, it has been assumed that the women of such a country must have the same physical peculiarities as the coarse and vulgar here. How false this notion is, let the rings of Geneva testify; for when I presented my offerings, I was almost laughed out of countenance. [Footnote 38: The southern parts of Europe form an exception.] A wind called the _bise_ had been blowing for the last twenty-four hours, and when we left Vévey the gale was so strong, that the steam-boat had great difficulty in getting ahead. This is a north wind, and it forces the water, at times, into the narrow pass at the head of the lake, in a way to cause a rise of some two or three feet. We had taken a large empty bark in tow, but by the time we reached Nyon, where the lake widens suddenly, the boat pitched and struggled so hard, as to render it advisable to cast off the tow, after which we did much better. The poor fellow, as he fell off broadside to the sea, which made a fair breach over him, and set a shred of sail, reminded me of a man who had been fancying himself in luck, by tugging at the heels of a prosperous friend, but who is unexpectedly cut adrift, when he is found troublesome. I did not understand his philosophy, for, instead of hauling in for the nearest anchorage, he kept away before it, and ran down for Geneva, as straight as a bee that is humming towards its hive. The lake gradually grew more tranquil as we proceeded north, and from Lausanne to Vévey we actually had smooth water. I saw vessels becalmed, or with baffling winds, under this shore, while the _bise_ was blowing stiff, a few leagues farther down the lake. When I got home I was surprised to hear that the family had been boating the previous evening, and that there had scarcely been any wind during the day. This difference was owing to the sheltered position of Vévey, of which the fact may serve to give you a better notion than a more laboured description. The following morning was market-day, and I walked upon the promenade early, to witness the arrival of the boats. There was not a breath of wind, even to leeward, for the _bise_ had blown itself out of breath. The bay of Naples, in a calm, scarcely presents a more picturesque view, than the head of the lake did, on this occasion. I counted more than fifty boats in sight; all steering towards Vévey, stealing along the water, some crossing from Savoy, in converging lines, some coming down, and others up the sheet, from different points on the Swiss side. The great square was soon crowded, and I walked among the peasants to observe their costumes and listen to their language. Neither, however, was remarkable, all speaking French, and, at need, all I believe using a _patois_, which does not vary essentially from that of Vaud. There was a good deal of fruit, some of which was pretty good, though it did not appear in the abundance we had been taught to expect. The grapes were coming in, and they promised to be fine. Though it is still early for them, we have them served at breakfast, regularly, for they are said to be particularly healthful when eaten with the morning dew on them. We try to believe ourselves the better for a regimen that is too agreeable to be lightly dropped. Among other things in the market, I observed the inner husks of Indian corn, that had been dried in a kiln or oven, rubbed, and which were now offered for sale as the stuffing of beds. It struck me that this was a great improvement on straw. I had received a visit the day before from a principal inhabitant of Vévey, with an invitation to breakfast, at his country-house, on the heights. This gratuitous civility was not to be declined, though it was our desire to be quiet, as we considered the residence at Vévey, a sort of _villagiatura_, after Paris. Accordingly, I got into a _char_, and climbed the mountain for a mile and a half, through beautiful pastures and orchards, by narrow winding lanes, that, towards the end, got to be of a very primitive character. Without this little excursion, I should have formed no just idea of the variety in the environs of the place, and should have lost a good deal of their beauty. I have told you that this acclivity rises behind the town, for a distance exceeding a mile, but I am now persuaded it would have been nearer the truth had I said a league. The majesty of Swiss nature constantly deceives the eye, and it requires great care and much experience to prevent falling into these mistakes. The house I sought, stood on a little natural terrace, a speck on the broad breast of the mountain, or what would be called a mountain, were it not for the granite piles in its neighbourhood, and was beautifully surrounded by woods, pastures, and orchards. We were above the vine. A small party, chiefly females, of good manners and great good sense, were assembled, and our entertainment was very much what it ought to be, simple, good, and without fuss. After I had been formally presented to the rest of the company, a young man approached, and was introduced as a countryman. It was a lieutenant of the navy, who had found his way up from the Mediterranean squadron to this spot. It is so unusual to meet Americans under such circumstances, that his presence was an agreeable surprise. Our people abound in the taverns and public conveyances, but it is quite rare that they are met in European society at all. One of the guests to-day recounted an anecdote of Cambacérè's, which was in keeping with a good banquet. He and the _arch-chancelier_ were returning from a breakfast in the country, together, when he made a remark on the unusual silence of his companion. The answer was, "_Je digère_." We walked through the grounds, which were prettily disposed, and had several good look-outs. From one of the latter we got a commanding view of all the adjacent district. This acclivity is neither a _côte_, as the French call them, nor a hill-side, nor yet a mountain, but a region. Its breadth is sufficiently great to contain hamlets, as you already know, and, seen from this point, the town of Vévey came into the view, as a mere particle. The head of the lake lay deep in the distance, and it was only when the eye rose to the pinnacles of rock, hoary with glaciers above, that one could at all conceive he was not already perched on a magnificent Alp. The different guests pointed out their several residences, which were visible at the distance of miles, perhaps, all seated on the same verdant acclivity. I descended on foot, the road being too precipitous in places to render even a _char_ pleasant. On rejoining the domestic circle, we took boat and pulled towards the little chateau-looking dwelling, on a narrow verdant peninsula, which, as you may remember, had first caught my eye on approaching Vévey, as the very spot that a hunter of the picturesque would like for a temporary residence. The distance was about a mile, and, the condition of the house excepted, a nearer view confirmed all our first impressions. It had been a small chateau, and was called Glayrole. It stands near the hamlet of St. Saphorin, which, both François and Jean maintain, produces the best wines of Vaud, and, though now reduced to the condition of a dilapidated farm-house, has still some remains of its ancient state. There is a ceiling, in the Ritter Saal, that can almost vie with that of the castle of Habsburg, though it is less smoked. The road, more resembling the wheel-track of a lawn than a highway, runs quite near the house on one side, while the blue and limpid lake washes the foot of the little promontory. LETTER XXI. Embark in the Winkelried.--Discussion with an Englishman.--The Valais.--Free Trade.--The Drance.--Terrible Inundation.--Liddes.--Mountain Scenery.--A Mountain Basin.--Dead-houses.--Melancholy Spectacle.--Approach of Night.--Desolate Region.--Convent of the Great St. Bernard.--Our Reception there.--Unhealthiness of the Situation.--The Superior.--Conversation during Supper.--Coal-mine on the Mountain.--Night in the Convent. Dear ----, After spending a few more days in the same delightful and listless enjoyments, my friend C---- came over from Lausanne, and we embarked in the Winkelried, on the afternoon of the 25th September, as she hove-to off our mole, on her way up the lake. We anchored off Villeneuve in less than an hour, there being neither port, nor wharf, nor mole at that place. In a few minutes we were in a three-horse conveyance, called a diligence, and were trotting across the broad meadows of the Rhone towards Bex, where we found one of our American families, the T----s, on their way to Italy. C---- and myself ate some excellent quails for supper in the public room. An Englishman was taking the same repast, at another table, near us, and he inquired for news, wishing particularly to know the state of things about Antwerp. This led to a little conversation, when I observed that, had the interests of France been consulted at the revolution of 1830, Belgium would have been received into the kingdom. Our Englishman grunted at this, and asked me what Europe would have said to it. My answer was, that when both parties were agreed, I did not see what Europe had to do with the matter; and that, at all events, the right Europe could have to interfere was founded in might; and such was the state of south-western Germany, Italy, Savoy, Spain, and even England, that I was of opinion Europe would have been glad enough to take things quietly. At all events, a war would only have made the matter worse for the allied monarchs. The other stared at me in amazement, muttered an audible dissent, and, I make no doubt, set me down as a most disloyal subject; for, while extending her empire, and spreading her commercial system, (her Free Trade _à l'Anglaise!_) over every nook and corner of the earth where she can get footing, nothing sounds more treasonable to the ears of a loyal Englishman than to give the French possession of Antwerp, or the Russians possession of Constantinople. So inveterate become his national feelings on such subjects, that I am persuaded a portion of his antipathy to the Americans arises from a disgust at hearing notions that have been, as it were, bred in and in, through his own moral system, contemned in a language that he deems his own peculiar property. Men, in such circumstances, are rarely very philosophical or very just. We were off in a _char_ with the dawn. Of course you will understand that we entered the Valais by its famous bridge, and passed St. Maurice, and the water-fall _à la Teniers_; for you have already travelled along this road with me. I saw no reason to change my opinion of the Valais, which looked as chill and repulsive now as it did in 1828, though we were so early on the road as to escape the horrible sight of the basking _crétins_, most of whom were still housed. Nor can I tell you how far these people have been elevated in the scale of men by an increasing desire for riches. At Martigny we breakfasted, while the innkeeper sent for a guide. The canton has put these men under a rigid police, the prices being regulated by law, and the certificate of the traveller becoming important to them. This your advocate of the absurdity called Free Trade will look upon as tyranny, it being more for the interest of human intercourse than the traveller who arrives in a strange country should be cheated by a hackney-coachman, or the driver of a cart, or stand higgling an hour in the streets, than to violate an abstraction that can do no one any good! If travelling will not take the minor points of free tradeism out of a man, I hold him to be incorrigible. But such is humanity! There cannot be even a general truth, that our infirmities do not lead us to push it into falsehood, in particular practice. Men are no more fitted to live under a system that should carry out the extreme doctrines of this theory, than they are fitted to live without law; and the legislator who should attempt the thing in practice, would soon find himself in the condition of Don Quixote, after he had liberated the galley-slaves from their fetters:--in other words, he would be cheated the first moment circumstances compelled him to make a hard bargain with a stranger. Were the canton of Valais to say, you _shall_ be a guide, and such _shall_ be your pay, the imputation of tyranny might lie; by saying, you _may_ be a guide, and such _must_ be your pay, it merely legislates for an interest that calls for particular protection in a particular way, to prevent abuses. Our guide appeared with two mules harnessed to a _char à banc_, and we proceeded. The fragment of a village which the traveller passes for Martigny, on his way to Italy, is not the true hamlet of that name, but a small collection of houses that has sprung up since the construction of the Simplon road. The real place is a mile distant, and of a much more rural and Swiss character. Driving through this hamlet, we took our way along the winding bank of a torrent called the Drance, the direction, at first, being south. The road was not bad, but the valley had dwindled to a gorge, and, though broken and wild, was not sufficiently so to be grand. After travelling a few miles, we reached a point where our own route diverged from the course of the Drance, which came in from the east, while we journeyed south. This Drance is the stream that produced the terrible inundation a few years since. The calamity was produced by an accumulation of ice higher in the gorges, which formed a temporary lake. The canton made noble efforts to avert the evil, and men were employed as miners, to cut a passage for the water, through the ice, but their labour proved useless, although they had made a channel, and the danger was greatly lessened. Before half the water had escaped, however, the ice gave way, and let the remainder of the lake down in a flood. The descent was terrific, sweeping before it every thing that came in its way, and although so distant, and there was so much space, the village of Martigny was deluged, and several of its people lost their lives. The water rose to the height of several feet on the plain of the great valley, before it could disgorge itself into the Rhone. The ascents now became more severe, though we occasionally made as sharp descents. The road lay through a broken valley, the mountains retiring from each other a little, and the wheel-track was very much like those we saw in our own hilly country, some thirty years since, though less obstructed by mud. At one o'clock we reached Liddes, a crowded, rude, and dirty hamlet, where we made a frugal repast. Here we were compelled to quit the _char_, and to saddle the mules. The guide also engaged another man to accompany us with a horse, that carried provender for himself, and for the two animals we had brought with us. We then mounted, and proceeded. On quitting Liddes, the road, or rather path, for it had dwindled to that, led through a valley that had some low meadows; after which the ascents became more decided, though the course had always been upward. The vegetation gradually grew less and less, the tree diminishing to the bush, and finally disappearing altogether, while the grasses became coarse and wiry, or were entirely superseded by moss. We went through a hamlet or two, composed of stones stained apparently with iron ore, and, as the huts were covered with the same material, instead of lending the landscape a more humanized air, they rather added to its appearance of sterile dreariness. There were a few tolerably good bits of savage mountain scenes, especially in a wooded glen or two by the wayside; but, on the whole, I thought this the least striking of the Swiss mountains I had ascended. We entered a sort of mountain basin, that was bounded on one side by the glacier of Mont Vélan; that which so beautifully bounds the view up the Valais, as seen from Vévey. I was disappointed in finding an object which, in the distance, was so white and shining, much disfigured and tarnished by fragments of broken rock. Still the summit shone, in cold and spotless lustre. There was herbage for a few goats here, and some one had commenced the walls of a rude building that was intended for an inn. No one was at work near it, a hut of stone, for the shelter of the goatherds, being all that looked like a finished human habitation. Winding our way across and out of this valley, we came to a turn in the rocks, and beheld two more stone cabins, low and covered, so as to resemble what in America are called root-houses. They stood a little from the path, on the naked rock. Crossing to them, we dismounted and looked into the first. It was empty, had a little straw, and was intended for a refuge, in the event of storms. Thrusting my head into the other, after the eye had got a little accustomed to the light, I saw a grinning corpse seated against the remotest side. The body looked like a mummy, but the clothes were still on it, and various shreds of garments lay about the place. The remains of other bodies, that had gradually shrunk into shapeless masses, were also dimly visible. Human bones, too, were scattered around. It is scarcely necessary to add that this was one of the dead-houses, or places in which the bodies of those who perish on the mountain are deposited, to waste away, or to be claimed, as others may or may not feel an interest in their remains. Interment could only be effected by penetrating the rock, for there was no longer any soil, and such is the purity of the atmosphere that putrescence never occurs. I asked the guide if he knew anything of the man, whose body still retained some of the semblance of humanity. He told me he remembered him well, having been at the convent in his company. It was a poor mason, who had crossed the _col_, from Piémont, in quest of work; failing of which, he had left Liddes, near nightfall, in order to enjoy the unremitting hospitality of the monks on his return, about a fortnight later. His body was found on the bare rock, quite near the refuge, on the following day. The poor fellow had probably perished in the dark, within a few yards of shelter, without knowing it. Hunger and cold, aided, perhaps, by that refuge of the miserable, brandy, had destroyed him. He had been dead now two years, and yet his remains preserved a hideous resemblance to the living man. Turning away from this melancholy spectacle, I looked about me with renewed interest. The sun had set, and evening was casting its shadows over the valley below, which might still be seen through the gorges of our path. The air above, and the brown peaks that rose around us like gloomy giants, were still visible in a mellow saddened light, and I thought I had never witnessed a more poetical, or a more vivid picture of the approach of night. Following the direction of the upward path, a track that was visible only by the broken fragments of rock, and which now ascended suddenly, an opening was seen between two dark granite piles, through which the sky beyond still shone, lustrous and pearly. This opening appeared to be but a span. It was the _col_, or the summit of the path, and gazing at it, in that pure atmosphere, I supposed it might be half a mile beyond and above us. The guide shook his head at this conjecture, and told me it was still a weary league! At this intelligence we hurried to bestride our mules, which by this time were fagged, and as melancholy as the mountains. When we left the refuge there were no traces of the sun on any of the peaks or glaciers. A more sombre ascent cannot be imagined. Vegetation had absolutely disappeared, and in its place lay scattered the fragments of the ferruginous looking rocks. The hue of every object was gloomy as desolation could make it, and the increasing obscurity served to deepen the intense interest we felt. Although constantly and industriously ascending towards the light, it receded faster than we could climb. After half an hour of toil, it finally deserted us to the night. At this moment the guide pointed to a mass that I had thought a fragment of the living rock, and said it was the roof a building. It still appeared so near, that I fancied we had arrived; but minute after minute went by, and this too was gradually swallowed up in the gloom. At the end of another quarter of an hour, we came to a place where the path, always steep since quitting the refuge, actually began to ascend by a flight of broad steps formed in the living rock, like that already mentioned on the Righi, though less precipitous. My weary mule seemed at times, to be tottering beneath my weight, or hanging in suspense, undecided, whether or not to yield to the downward pressure. It was quite dark, and I thought it best to trust to his instinct and his recollections. This unpleasant struggle between animal force and the attraction of gravitation, in which the part I played was merely to contribute to the latter, lasted nearly a quarter of an hour longer, when the mules appeared to be suddenly relieved. They moved more briskly for a minute, and then stopped before a pile of rock, that a second look in the dark enabled us to see was made of stone, thrown into the form of a large rude edifice. This was the celebrated convent of the Great St. Bernard! I bethought me of the Romans, of the marauders of the middle ages, of the charity of a thousand years, and of Napoleon, as throwing a leg over the crupper, my foot first touched the rock. Our approach had been heard, for noises ascend far through such a medium, and we were met at the door by a monk in a black gown, a queer Asiatic-looking cap, and a movement that was as laical as that of a _garçon de café_. He hastily enquired if there were any ladies, and I thought he appeared disappointed when we told him no. He showed us very civilly, however, into a room, that was warmed by a stove, and which already contained two travellers, who had the air of decent tradesmen who were crossing the mountain on business. A table was set for supper, and a lamp or two threw a dim light around. The little community soon assembled, the prior excepted, and the supper was served. I had brought a letter for the _clavier_, a sort of caterer, who is accustomed to wander through the vallies in quest of contributions; and this appeared to be a good time for presenting it, as our reception had an awkward coldness that was unpleasant. The letter was read, but it made no apparent difference in the warmth of our treatment then or afterwards. I presume the writer had unwittingly thrown the chill, which the American name almost invariably carries with it, over our reception. By this time seven of the Augustines were in the room; four of whom were canons, and three novices. The entire community is composed of about thirty, who are professed, with a suitable number who are in their noviciate; but only eight in all are habitually kept on the mountain, the rest residing in a convent in the _bourg_, as the real village of Martigny is called. It is said that the keen air of the _col_ affects the lungs after a time, and that few can resist its influence for a long continued period. You will remember that this building is the most elevated permanent abode in Europe, if not in the Old World, standing at a height of about 8,000 English feet above the sea. As soon as the supper was served, the superior or prior entered. He had a better air than most of his brethren, and was distinguished by a gold chain and cross. The others saluted him by removing their caps; and proceeding to the head of the table, he immediately commenced the usual offices in Latin, the responses being audibly made by the monks and novices. We were then invited to take our places at table, the seats of honour being civilly left for the strangers. The meal was frugal, without tea or coffee, and the wine none of the best. But one ought to be too grateful for getting anything in such a place, to be too fastidious. During supper there was a free general conversation, and we were asked for news, the movements in La Vendée being evidently a subject of great interest with them. Our French fellow-traveller on the lake of Brientz had been warm in his eulogiums on this community, and, coupling his conversation with the present question, the suspicion that they were connected by a tie of common feeling flashed upon me. A few remarks soon confirmed this conjecture, and I found, as indeed was natural for men in their situation, that these religious republicans[39] took a strong interest in the success of the Carlists. Men may call themselves what they will, live where they may, and assume what disguises artifice or necessity may impose, political instincts, like love, or any other strong passion, are sure to betray themselves to an experienced observer. How many of our own republicans, of the purest water, have I seen sighing for ribands and stars--ay, and men too who appear before the nation as devoted to the institutions and the rights of the mass. The Romish church is certain to be found in secret on the side of despotic power, let its pretensions to liberty be what it may, its own form of government possessing sympathies with that of political power too strong to be effectually concealed. I will not take on myself to say that the circumstance of our being Americans caused the fraternity to manifest for us less warmth than common, but I will say that our Carlist of the lake of Brientz eloquently described the warm welcome and earnest hospitality of _les bons pères_, as he called them, in a way that was entirely inapplicable to their manner towards us. In short, the only way we could excite any warmth in them, was by blowing the anthracite coal, of which we had heard they had discovered a mine on the mountain. This was a subject of great interest, for you should know that, water excepted, every necessary of life is to be transported, for leagues to this place, up the path we came, on the backs of mules; and that about 8,000 persons cross the mountain annually; all, or nearly all, of whom lodge, of necessity, at the convent. The elevation renders fires constantly necessary for comfort, to say nothing of cooking; and a mine of gold could scarcely be as valuable to such a community, as one of coal. Luckily, C----, like a true Pennsylvanian, knew something about anthracite, and by making a few suggestions, and promising further intelligence, he finally succeeded in throwing one or two of the community into a blaze. [Footnote 39: Your common-place logicians argue from these sentiments that distinctions are natural, and ought to be maintained. These philosophers forget that human laws are intended to restrain the natural propensities, and that this argument would be just as applicable to the right of a strong man to knock down a weak one, and to take the bread from his mouth, as it is to the institution of exclusive political privileges.] A little before nine, we were shown into a plain but comfortable room, with two beds loaded with blankets, and were left to our slumbers. Before we fell asleep, C---- and myself agreed, that, taking the convent altogether, it was a _rum_ place, and that it required more imagination than either of us possessed, to throw about it the poetry of monastic seclusion, and the beautiful and simple hospitality of the patriarchs. LETTER XXII. Sublime Desolation.--A Morning Walk.--The Col.--A Lake.--Site of a Roman Temple.--Enter Italy.--Dreary Monotony.--Return to the Convent--Tasteless Character of the Building.--Its Origin and Purposes.--The Dead-house.--Dogs of St. Bernard.--The Chapel.--Desaix interred here.--Fare of St. Bernard, and Deportment of the Monks.--Leave the Convent.--Our Guide's Notion of the Americans.--Passage of Napoleon across the Great St. Bernard.--Similar Passages in former times.--Transport of Artillery up the Precipices.--Napoleon's perilous Accident.--Return to Vévey. Dear ----, The next morning we arose betimes, and on thrusting my head out of a window, I thought, by the keen air, that we had been suddenly transferred to Siberia. There is no month without frost at this great elevation, and as we had now reached the 27th September, the season was essentially beginning to change. Hurrying our clothes on, and our beards off, we went into the air to look about us. Monks, convent, and historical recollections were, at first, all forgotten, at the sight of the sublime desolation that reigned around. The _col_ is a narrow ravine, between lofty peaks, which happens to extend entirely across this point of the Upper Alps, thus forming a passage several thousand feet lower than would otherwise be obtained. The convent stands within a few yards of the northern verge of the precipice, and precisely at the spot where the lowest cavity is formed, the rocks beginning to rise, in its front and in its rear, at very short distances from the buildings. A little south of it, the mountains recede sufficiently to admit the bed of a small, dark, wintry-looking sheet of water, which is oval in form, and may cover fifty or sixty acres. This lake nearly fills the whole of the level part of the _col_, being bounded north by the site of the convent, east by the mountain, west by the path, for which there is barely room between the water and the rising rocks, and south by the same path, which is sheltered on its other side by a sort of low wall of fragments, piled some twenty or thirty feet high. Beyond these fragments, or isolated rocks, was evidently a valley of large dimensions. We walked in the direction of this valley, descending gradually from the door of the convent, some thirty feet to the level of the lake. This we skirted by the regular path, rock smoothed by the hoof of horse and foot of man, until we came near the last curve of the oval formation. Here was the site of a temple erected by the Romans in honour of Jupiter of the Snows, this passage of the Alps having been frequented from the most remote antiquity. We looked at the spot with blind reverence, for the remains might pass for these of a salad-bed of the monks, of which there was one enshrined among the rocks hard by, and which was about as large, and, I fancy, about as productive, as those that are sometimes seen on the quarter-galleries of ships. At this point we entered Italy! Passing from the frontier, we still followed the margin of the lake, until we reached a spot where its waters trickled, by a low passage, southward. The path took the same direction, pierced the barrier of low rocks, and came out on the verge of the southern declivity, which was still more precipitous than that on the other side. For a short distance the path ran _en corniche_ along the margin of the descent, until it reached the remotest point of what might be called the _col_, whose southern edge is irregular, and then it plunged, by the most practicable descent which could be found, towards its Italian destination. When at this precise point our distance from the convent may have been half a mile, which, of course, is the breadth of the _col_. We could see more than half a league down the brown gulf below, but no sign of vegetation was visible. Above, around, beneath, wherever the eye rested--the void of the heavens, the distant peaks of snow, the lake, the convent and its accessories excepted--was dark, frowning rock, of the colour of iron rust. As all the buildings, even to the roofs, were composed of this material, they produced little to relieve the dreary monotony. The view from the _col_ is in admirable keeping with its desolation. One is cut off completely from the lower world, and, beyond its own immediate scene, nothing is visible but the impending arch of heaven, and heaving mountain tops. The water did little to change this character of general and savage desolation, for it has the chill and wintry air of all the little mountain reservoirs that are so common in the Alps. If anything, it rather added to the intensity of the feeling to which the other parts of the scenery gave rise. Returning from our walk, the convent and its long existence, the nature of the institution, its present situation, and all that poetical feeling could do for both, were permitted to resume their influence; but, alas! the monks were common-place, their movements and utterance wanted the calm dignity of age and chastened habits, the building had too much of the machinery, smell, and smoke of the kitchen; and, altogether, we thought that the celebrated convent of St. Bernard was more picturesque on paper than in fact. Even the buildings were utterly tasteless, resembling a _barnish_-looking manufactory, and would be quite abominable, but for the delightfully dreary appearance of their material. It is a misfortune that vice so often has the best of it in outward appearance. Although a little disposed to question the particular instance of taste, in substance, I am of the opinion of that religionist who was for setting his hymns to popular airs, in order "that the devil might not monopolize all the good music," and, under this impression, I think it a thousand pities that a little better keeping between appearances and substance did not exist on the Great St. Bernard. The convent is said to have been established by a certain Bernard de Menthon, an Augustine of Aoste, in 962, who was afterwards canonized for his holiness. In that remote age the institution must have been eminently useful, for posting and Macadamized roads across the Alps were not thought of. It even does much good now, as nine-tenths who stop here are peasants that pay nothing for their entertainment. At particular seasons, and on certain occasions, they cross in great numbers, my guide assuring me he had slept at the convent when there were eight hundred guests; a story, by the way, that one of the monks confirmed. Some fair or festival, however, led to this extraordinary migration. Formerly the convent was rich, and able to bear the charges of entertaining so many guests; but since the Revolution it has lost most of its property, and has but a small fixed income. It is authorized, however, to make periodical _quêtes_ in the surrounding country, and obtains a good deal in that way. All who can pay, moreover, leave behind them donations of greater or less amount, and by that means the charity is still maintained. As many perish annually on the mountain, and none are interred, another dead-house stands quite near the convent for the reception of the bodies. It is open to the air, and contained forty or fifty corpses in every stage of decay apart from putrescency, and was a most revolting spectacle. When the flesh disappears entirely, the bones are cast into a small enclosure near by, in which skulls, thigh-bones, and ribs were lying in a sort of waltz-like confusion. Soon after our return from the walk into Italy, a novice opened a little door in the outer wall of the convent, and the famous dogs of St. Bernard rushed forth like so many rampant tigers, and most famous fellows they certainly were. Their play was like that of elephants, and one of them rushing past me, so near as to brush my clothes, gave me to understand that a blow from him might be serious. There were five of them in all, long-legged, powerful mastiffs, with short hair, long bushy tails, and of a yellowish hue. I have seen very similar animals in America. They are trained to keep the paths, can carry cordials and nourishment around their necks, and frequently find bodies in the snow by the scent. But their instinct and services have been greatly exaggerated, the latter principally consisting in showing the traveller the way, by following the paths themselves. Were one belated in winter on this pass, I can readily conceive that a dog of this force that knew him, and was attached to him, would be invaluable. Some pretend that the ancient stock is lost, and that their successors show the want of blood of all usurpers. We were now shown into a room where there was a small collection of minerals, and of Roman remains found about the ruins of the temple. At seven we received a cup of coffee and some bread and butter, after which the prior entered, and invited us to look at the chapel, which is of moderate dimensions, and of plain ornaments. There is a box attached to a column, with _tronc pour les pauvres_, and as all the poor in this mountain are those who enjoy the hospitality of the convent, the hint was understood. We dropped a few francs into the hole, while the prior was looking earnestly the other way, and it then struck us we were at liberty to depart. The body of Desaix lies in this chapel, and there is a small tablet in it, erected to his memory. It would be churlish and unreasonable to complain of the fare, in a spot where food is to be had with so much difficulty; and, on that head, I shall merely say, in order that you may understand the fact, that we found the table of St. Bernard very indifferent. As to the deportment of the monks, certainly, so far as we were concerned, it had none of that warmth and hospitality that travellers have celebrated; but, on the contrary, it struck us both as cold and constrained, strongly reminding me, in particular, of the frigidity of the ordinary American manner.[40] This might be discipline; it might be the consequence of habitual and incessant demands on their attentions and services; it might be accidental; or it might be prejudice against the country from which we came, that was all the stronger for the present excited state of Europe. [Footnote 40: The peculiar coldness of our manners, which are too apt to pass suddenly from the repulsive to the familiar, has often been commented on, but can only be appreciated by those who have been accustomed to a different. Two or three days after the return of the writer from his journey in Europe (which had lasted nearly eight years), a public dinner was given, in New York, to a distinguished naval officer, and he was invited to attend it, _as a guest_. Here he met a crowd, one half of whom he knew personally. Without a single exception, those of his acquaintances who did speak to him (two-thirds did not), addressed him as if they had seen him the week before, and so cold and constrained did every man's manner seem, that he had great difficulty in persuading himself there was not something wrong. He could not believe, however, that he was especially invited to be neglected, and he tried to revive his old impressions; but the chill was so thorough, that he found it impossible to sit out the dinner.] Our mules were ready, and we left the _col_ immediately after breakfast. A ridge in the rock, just before the convent, is the dividing line for the flow of the waters. Here a little snow still lay; and there were patches of snow, also, on the northern face of the declivity, the remains of the past winter. We chose to walk the first league, which brought us to the refuge. The previous day, the guide had given us a great deal of gossip; and, among other things, be mentioned having been up to the convent lately, with a family of Americans, whom he described as a people of peculiar appearance, and _peculiar odour_. By questioning him a little, we discovered that he had been up with a party of coloured people from St. Domingo. His head was a perfect Babel as it respected America, which was not a hemisphere, but one country, one government, and one people. To this we were accustomed, however; and, finding that we passed for English, we trotted the honest fellow a good deal on the subject of his nasal sufferings from travelling in such company. On the descent we knew that we should encounter the party left at Bex, and our companion was properly prepared for the interview. Soon after quitting the refuge, the meeting took place, to the astonishment of the guide, who gravely affirmed, after we had parted, that there must be two sorts of Americans, as these we had just left did not at all resemble those he had conducted to the convent. May this little incident prove an entering wedge to some new ideas in the Valais, on the subject of the "twelve millions!" The population of this canton, more particularly the women, were much more good-looking on the mountain than in the valley. We saw no _crétins_ after leaving Martigny; and soft lineaments, and clear complexions, were quite common in the other sex. You will probably wish to know something of the celebrated passage of Napoleon, and of its difficulties. As far as the ascent was concerned, the latter has been greatly exaggerated. Armies have frequently passed the Great St. Bernard. Aulus Coecinna led his barbarians across in 69; the Lombards crossed in 547; several armies in the time of Charlemagne, or about the year 1000; and in the wars of Charles le Téméraire, as well as at other periods, armies made use of this pass. Near the year 900, a strong body of Turkish corsairs crossed from Italy, and seized the pass of St. Maurice. Thus history is full of events to suggest the idea of crossing. Nor is this all. From the time the French entered Switzerland in 1796, troops occupied, manoeuvred, and even _fought_ on this mountain. The Austrians having succeeded in turning the summit, contended an entire day with their enemies, who remained masters of the field, or rather rock. Ebel estimates the number of the hostile troops who were on this pass, between the years 1798 and 1801, 150,000, including the army of Napoleon, which was 30,000 strong. These facts of themselves, and I presume they cannot be contested, give a totally different colouring, from that which is commonly entertained, to the conception of the enterprise of the First Consul, so far as the difficulties of the ascent were concerned. If the little community can transport stores for 8,000 souls to the convent, there could be no great difficulty in one, who had all France at his disposal, in throwing an army across the pass. When we quitted Martigny, I began to study the difficulties of the route, and though the road as far as Liddes has probably been improved a little within thirty years, taking its worst parts, I have often travelled, in my boyhood, during the early settlement of our country, in a heavy, high, old-fashioned coach over roads that were quite as bad, and, in some places, over roads that were actually more dangerous, than any part of this, _as far as Liddes_. Even a good deal of the road after quitting Liddes is not worse than that we formerly travelled, but wheels are nearly useless for the last league or two. As we rode along this path, C---- asked me in what manner I would transport artillery up such an ascent. Without the least reflection I answered, by making sledges of the larches, which is an expedient that I think would suggest instantly itself to nineteen men in twenty. I have since understood from the Duc de ----, who was an aide of Napoleon, on the occasion of the passage, that it was precisely the expedient adopted. Several thousand Swiss peasants were employed in drawing the logs, thus loaded, up the precipices. I do not think it absolutely impracticable to take up guns limbered, but the other plan would be much the easiest, as well as the safest. In short, I make no doubt, so far as mere toil and physical difficulties are concerned, that a hundred marches have been made through the swamps and forests of America, in every one of which, mile for mile, greater natural obstacles have been overcome than those on this celebrated passage. The French, it will be remembered, were unresisted, and had possession of the _col_, a garrison having occupied the convent for more than a year. The great merit of the First Consul was in the surprise, the military manner in which the march was effected, and the brilliant success of his subsequent movements. Had he been defeated, I fancy few would have thought so much of the simple passage of the mountain, unless to reproach him for placing the rocks between himself and a retreat. As he _was not_ defeated, the _audace_ of the experiment, a great military quality sometimes, enters, also, quite properly into the estimate of his glory. The guide pointed to a place where, according to his account of the matter, the horse of the First Consul stumbled and pitched him over a precipice, the attendants catching him by his great-coat, assisted by a few bushes. This may be true, for the man affirmed he had heard it from the guide who was near Napoleon at the time, and a mis-step of a horse might very well produce such a fall. The precipice was both steep and high, and had the First Consul gone down it, it is not probable he would ever have gone up the St. Bernard. At Liddes we re-entered the _char_ and trotted down to Martigny in good time. Here we got another conveyance, and pushed down the valley, through St. Maurice, across the bridge, and out of the gate of the canton, again, reaching Bex a little after dark. The next morning we were off early for Villeneuve, in order to reach the boat. This was handsomely effected, and heaving-to abreast of Vévey, we succeeded in eating our breakfast at "Mon Repos." LETTER XXIII. Democracy in America and in Switzerland.--European Prejudices.--Influence of Property.--Nationality of the Swiss.--Want of Local Attachments in Americans.--Swiss Republicanism.--Political Crusade against America.--Affinities between America and Russia.--Feeling of the European Powers towards Switzerland. Dear ----, It is a besetting error with those who write of America, whether as travellers, political economists, or commentators on the moral features of ordinary society, to refer nearly all that is peculiar in the country to the nature of its institutions. It is scarcely exaggerated to say that even its physical phenomena are ascribed to its democracy. Reflecting on this subject, I have been struck by the fact that no such flights of the imagination are ever indulged in by those who speak of Switzerland. That which is termed the rudeness of liberty and equality, with us, becomes softened down here into the frankness of mountaineers, or the sturdy independence of republicans; what is vulgarity on the other side of the Atlantic, is unsophistication on this, and truculence in the States dwindles to be earnest remonstrances in the cantons! There undeniably exist marked points of difference between the Swiss and the Americans. The dominion of a really popular sway is admitted nowhere here, except in a few unimportant mountain cantons, that are but little known, and which, if known, would not exercise a very serious influence on any but their own immediate inhabitants. With us, the case is different. New York and Pennsylvania and Ohio, for instance, with a united population of near five millions of souls, are as pure democracies as can exist under a representative form of government, and their trade, productions, and example so far connect them with the rest of Christendom, as to render them objects of deep interest to all who look beyond the present moment, in studying the history of man. We have States, however, in which the franchise does not materially differ from those of many of the cantons, and yet we do not find that strangers make any material exceptions even in _their_ favour. Few think of viewing the States in which there are property qualifications, in a light different from those just named; nor is a disturbance in Virginia deemed to be less the consequence of democratic effervescence, than it is in Pennsylvania. There must be reasons for all this. I make no doubt they are to be found in the greater weight of the example of a large and growing community, of active commercial and political habits, than in one like this, which is satisfied with simply maintaining a quiet and secure existence; in our total rejection of the usual aristocratical distinctions which still exist, more or less, all over Switzerland; in the jealousy of commercial and maritime power, and in the recollections which are inseparable from the fact that the parties once stood to each other, in the relation of principals and dependants. This latter feeling, an unavoidable consequence of metropolitan sway, is more general than you may imagine, for, as nearly all Europe once had colonies, the feelings of superiority they uniformly excite, have as naturally led to jealousy of the rising importance of our hemisphere. You may smile at the suggestion, but I do not remember a single European in whom, under proper opportunities, I have not been able to trace some lingering feeling of the old notion of the moral and physical superiority of the man of Europe over the man of America. I do not say that all I have met have betrayed this prejudice, for in not one case in ten have I had the means to probe them; but such, I think, has uniformly been the case, though in very different degrees, whenever the opportunity has existed. Though the mountain, or the purely rural population, here, possess more independence and frankness of manner than those who inhabit the towns and advanced valleys, neither has them in so great a degree, as to leave plausible grounds for believing that the institutions are very essentially connected with the traits. Institutions may _depress men below_ what may be termed the natural level of feeling in this respect, as in the case of slavery; but, in a civilized society, where property has its influence, I much question if any political regulations can raise them above it. After allowing for the independence of manner and feeling that are coincident to easy circumstances, and which is the result of obvious causes, I know no part of America in which this is not also the fact. The employed is, and will be everywhere, to a certain point, dependent on his employer, and the relations between the two cannot fail to bring forth a degree of authority and submission, that will vary according to the character of individuals and the circumstances of the moment. I infer from this that the general aspects of society, after men cease to be serfs and slaves, can never be expected to vary essentially from each other, merely on account of the political institutions, except, perhaps, as those institutions themselves may happen to affect their temporal condition. In other words, I believe that we are to look more to property and to the absence or presence of facilities of living, for effects of this nature, than to the breadth or narrowness of constituencies. The Swiss, as is natural from their greater antiquity, richer recollections, and perhaps from their geographical position, are more national than the Americans. With us, national pride and national character exist chiefly in the classes that lie between the yeomen and the very bottom of the social scale; whereas, here, I think the higher one ascends, the stronger the feeling becomes. The Swiss moreover is pressed upon by his wants, and is often obliged to tear himself from his native soil, in order to find the means of subsistence; and yet very few of them absolutely expatriate themselves. The emigrants that are called Swiss in America, either come from Germany, or are French Germans, from Alsace and Lorrain. I have never met with a migration of a body of true Swiss, though some few cases probably have existed. It would be curious to inquire how far the noble nature of the country has an influence in producing their strong national attachments. The Neapolitans love their climate, and would rather be Lazzaroni beneath their sun, than gentlemen in Holland, or England. This is simple enough, as it depends on physical indulgence. The charm that binds the Swiss to his native mountains, must be of a higher character, and is moral in its essence. The American character suffers from the converse of the very feeling which has an effect so beneficial on that of the Swiss. The migratory habits of the country prevent the formation of the intensity of interest, to which the long residence of a family in a particular spot gives birth, and which comes, at last, to love a tree, or a hill, or a rock, because they are the same tree, and hill, and rock, that have been loved by our fathers before us. These are attachments that depend on sentiment rather than on interest, and which are as much purer and holier, as virtuous sentiment is purer and holier than worldly interestedness. In this moral feature, therefore, we are inferior to all old nations, and to the Swiss in particular, I think, as their local attachments are both quickened and heightened by the exciting and grand objects that surround them. The Italians have the same local affections, in a still stronger degree; for with a nature equally, or even more winning, they have still prouder and more-remote recollections. I do not believe the Swiss, at heart, are a bit more attached to their institutions than we are ourselves; for, while I complain of the _tone_ of so many of our people, I consider it, after all, as the tone of people who, the means of comparison having been denied them, neither know that which they denounce, nor that which they extol. Apart from the weakness of wishing for personal distinctions, however, I never met with a Swiss gentleman, who appeared to undervalue his institutions. They frequently, perhaps generally, lament the want of greater power in the confederation; but, as between a monarchy and a republic, so far as my observation goes, they are uniformly Swiss. I do not believe there is such a thing, in all the cantons, as a man, for instance, who pines for the Prussian despotism! They will take service under kings, be their soldiers, body-guards--real Dugald Dalgettys--but when the question comes to Switzerland, one and all appear to think that the descendants of the companions of Winkelried and Stauffer must be republicans. Now, all this may be because there are few in the condition of gentlemen, in the democratic cantons, and the gentlemen of the other parts of the confederation prefer that things should be as they are (or rather, so lately were, for the recent changes have hardly had time to make an impression), to putting a prince in the place of the aristocrats. Self is so prominent in everything of this nature, that I feel no great faith in the generosity of men. Still I do believe that time and history, and national pride, and Swiss _morgue_, have brought about a state of feeling that would indispose them to bow down to a Swiss sovereign. A policy is observed by the other states of Europe towards this confederation, very different from that which is, or perhaps it would be better to say, has been observed toward us. As respects ourselves, I have already observed it was my opinion, there would have been a political crusade got up against us, had not the recent changes taken place in Europe, and had the secret efforts to divide the Union failed. Their chief dependence, certainly, is on our national dissensions; but as this would probably fail them, I think we should have seen some pretence for an invasion. The motive would be the strong necessity which existed for destroying the example of a republic, or rather of a democracy, that was getting to be too powerful. Strange as you may think it, I believe our chief protection in such a struggle would have been Russia. We hear and read a great deal about the "Russian bear," but it will be our own fault if this bear does us any harm. Let the Edinburgh Review, the advocate of mystified liberalism, prattle as much as it choose, on this topic, it becomes us to look at the subject like Americans. There are more practical and available affinities between America and Russia, at this very moment, than there is between America and any other nation in Europe. They have high common political objects to obtain, and Russia has so little to apprehend from the example of America, that no jealousy of the latter need interrupt their harmony. You see the counterpart of this in the present condition of France and Russia. So far as their general policy is concerned, they need not conflict, but rather ought to unite, and yet the mutual jealousy on the subject of the institutions keeps them alienated, and almost enemies. Napoleon, it is true, said that these two nations, sooner or later, must fight for the possession of the east, but it was the ambition of the man, rather than the interests of his country, that dictated the sentiment. The France of Napoleon, and the France of Louis-Philippe, are two very different things. Now, as I have told you, Switzerland is regarded by the powers who would crush America, with other eyes. I do not believe that a congress of Europe would convert this republic into a monarchy, if it could, to-morrow. Nothing essential would be gained by such a measure, while a great deal might be hazarded. A king must have family alliances, and these alliances would impair the neutrality it is so desirable to maintain. The cantons are equally good, as outworks, for France, Austria, Bavaria, Wurtemburg, Lombardy, Sardinia, and the Tyrol. All cannot have them, and all are satisfied to keep them as a defence against their neighbours. No one hears, in the war of opinion, that is going on here, the example of the Swiss quoted on the side of liberty! For this purpose, they appear to be as totally out of view, as if they had no existence. LETTER XXIV. The Swiss Mountain Passes.--Excursion in the neighbourhood of Vévey.--Castle of Blonay.--View from the Terrace.--Memory and Hope.--Great Antiquity of Blonay.--The Knight's Hall.--Prospect from the Balcony.--Departure from Blonay.--A Modern Chateau.--Travelling on Horseback.--News from America.--Dissolution of the Union predicted.--The Prussian Polity.--Despotism in Prussia. Dear ----, You may have gathered from my last letters that I do not rank the path of the Great St. Bernard among the finest of the Swiss mountain passes. You will remember, however, that we saw but little of the Italian side, where the noblest features and grandest scenes on these roads are usually found. The Simplon would not be so very extraordinary, were it confined to its Swiss horrors and Swiss magnificence, though, by the little I have seen of them, I suspect that both the St. Gothard and the Splugen do a little better on their northern faces. The pass by Nice is peculiar, being less wild and rocky than any other, while it possesses beauties entirely its own (and extraordinary beauties they are), in the constant presence of the Mediterranean, with its vast blue expanse, dotted with sails of every kind that the imagination can invent. It has always appeared to me that poets have been the riggers of that sea. C---- and myself were too _mountaineerish_ after this exploit to remain contented in a valley, however lovely it might be, and the next day we sallied forth on foot, to explore the hill-side behind Vévey. The road led at first through narrow lanes, lined by vineyards; but emerging from these, we soon came out into a new world, and one that I can compare to no other I have ever met with. I should never tire of expatiating on the beauties of this district, which really appear to be created expressly to render the foreground of one of the sublimest pictures on earth worthy of the rest of the piece. It was always mountain, but a mountain so gradual of ascent, so vast, and yet so much like a broad reach of variegated low land, in its ornaments, cultivation, houses, villages, copses, meadows, and vines, that it seemed to be a huge plain canted into a particular inclination, in order to give the spectator a better opportunity to examine it in detail, and at his leisure, as one would hold a picture to the proper light. Some of the ascents, nevertheless, were sufficiently sharp, and more than once we were glad enough to stop to cool ourselves, and to take breath. At length, after crossing some lovely meadows, by the margin of beautiful woods, we came out at the spot which was the goal we had aimed at from the commencement of the excursion. This was the castle of Blonay, of whose picturesque site and pleasant appearance I have already spoken in my letters, as a venerable hold that stands about a league from the town, on one of the most striking positions of the mountain. The family of Blonay has been in possession of this place for seven hundred years. One branch of it is in Sardinia; but I suppose its head is the occupant of the house, or castle. As the building was historical, and the De Blonays of unquestionable standing, I was curious to examine the edifice, since it might give me some further insight into the condition of the old Swiss nobility. Accordingly we applied for admission, and obtained it without difficulty. The Swiss castles, with few exceptions, are built on the breasts, or spurs, of mountains. The immediate foundation is usually a rock, and the sites were generally selected on account of the difficulties of the approach. This latter peculiarity, however, does not apply so rigidly to Blonay as to most of the other holds of the country, for the rock which forms its base serves for little else than a solid foundation. I presume one of the requisites of such a site was the difficulty or impossibility of undermining the walls, a mode of attack that existed long before gunpowder was known. The buildings of Blonay are neither extensive nor very elaborate. We entered by a modest gateway in a retired corner, and found ourselves at once in a long, narrow, irregular court. On the left was a _corps de bâtiment_, that contained most of the sleeping apartments, and a few of the others, with the offices; in front was a still older wing, in which was the knight's hall, and one or two other considerable rooms; and on the right was the keep, an old solid tower, that was originally the nucleus and parent of all the others, as well as a wing that is now degraded to the duties of a storehouse. These buildings form the circuit of the court, and complete the edifice; for the side next the mountain, or that by which we entered, had little besides the ends of the two lateral buildings and the gate. The latter was merely a sort of chivalrous back-door, for there was another between the old tower and the building of the knight's hall, of more pretension, and which was much larger. The great gate opens on a small elevated terrace, that is beautifully shaded by fine trees, and which commands a view, second, I feel persuaded, to but few on earth. I do not know that it is so perfectly exquisite as that we got from the house of Cardinal Rufo, at Naples, and yet it has many admirable features that were totally wanting to the Neapolitan villa. I esteem these two views as much the best that it has ever been my good fortune to gaze at from any dwelling, though the beauties of both are, as a matter of course, more or less shared by all the houses in their respective neighbourhoods. The great carriage-road, as great carriage-roads go on such a mountain-side, comes up to this gate, though it is possible to enter also by the other. Blonay, originally, must have been a hold of no great importance, as neither the magnitude, strength, nor position of the older parts, is sufficient to render the place one to be seriously assailed or obstinately defended. Without knowing the fact, I infer that its present interest arises from its great antiquity, coupled with the circumstance of its having been possessed by the same family for so long a period. Admitting a new owner for each five-and-twenty years, the present must be somewhere about the twenty-fifth De Blonay who has lived on this spot! A common housemaid showed us through the building, but, unfortunately, to her it was a house whose interest depended altogether on the number of floors there were to be scrubbed, and windows to be cleaned. This labour-saving sentiment destroys a great deal of excellent poetry and wholesome feeling, reducing all that is venerable and romantic to the level of soap and house-cloths. I dare say one could find many more comfortable residences than this, within a league of Vévey; perhaps "Mon Repos" has the advantage of it, in this respect: but there must be a constant, quiet, and enduring satisfaction, with one whose mind is properly trained, in reflecting that he is moving, daily and hourly, through halls that have been trodden by his fathers for near a thousand years! Hope is a livelier, and, on the whole, a more useful, because a more stimulating, feeling, than that connected with memory; but there is a solemn and pleasing interest clinging about the latter, that no buoyancy of the first can ever equal. Europe is fertile of recollections; America is pregnant with hope. I have tried hard, aided by the love which is quickened by distance, as well as by the observations that are naturally the offspring of comparison, to draw such pictures of the latter for the future, as may supplant the pictures of the past that so constantly rise before the mind in this quarter of the world; but, though reasonably ingenious in castle-building, I have never been able to make it out. I believe laziness lies at the bottom of the difficulty. In our moments of enjoyment we prefer being led, to racking the brain for invention. The past is a fact; while, at the best, the future is only conjecture. In this case the positive prevails over the assumed, and the imagination finds both and easier duty, and all it wants, in throwing around the stores of memory, the tints and embellishments that are wanting to complete the charm. I know little of the history of Blonay, beyond the fact of its great antiquity, nor is it a chateau of remarkable interest as a specimen of the architecture and usages of its time; and yet, I never visited a modern palace, with half the intense pleasure with which I went through this modest abode. Fancy had a text, in a few unquestionable facts, and it preached copiously on their authority. At Caserta, or St. Cloud, we admire the staircases, friezes, salons, and marbles, but I never could do anything with your kings, who are so much mixed up with history, as to leave little to the fancy; while here, one might imagine not only time, but all the various domestic and retired usages that time brings forth. The Ritter Saal, or Knight's Hall, of Blonay has positive interest enough to excite the dullest mind. Neither the room nor its ornaments are very peculiar of themselves, the former being square, simple, and a good deal modernized, while the latter was such as properly belonged to a country gentleman of limited means. But the situation and view form its great features; for all that has just been said of the terrace, can be better said of this room. Owing to the formation of the mountain, the windows are very high above the ground, and at one of them is a balcony, which, I am inclined to think, is positively without a competitor in this beautiful world of ours. Cardinal Rufo has certainly no such balcony. It is _le balcon des balcons_. I should despair of giving you a just idea of the mingled magnificence and softness of the scene that lies stretched before and beneath the balcony of Blonay. You know the elements of the view already,--for they are the same mysterious glen, or valley, the same blue lake, the same _côtes_, the same solemn and frowning rocks, the same groupings of towers, churches, hamlets, and castles, of which I have had such frequent occasion to speak in these letters. But the position of Blonay has about it that peculiar nicety, which raises every pleasure to perfection. It is neither too high, nor too low; too retired, nor too much advanced; too distant, nor too near. I know nothing of M. de Blonay beyond the favourable opinion of the observant Jean, the boatman, but he must be made of flint, if he can daily, hourly, gaze at the works of the Deity as they are seen from this window, without their producing a sensible and lasting effect on the character of his mind. I can imagine a man so far _blasé_, as to pass through the crowd of mites, who are his fellows, without receiving or imparting much; but I cannot conceive of a heart, whose owner can be the constant observer of such a scene, without bending in reverence to the hand that made it. It would be just as rational to suppose one might have the Communion of St. Jerome hanging in his drawing-room, without ever thinking of Domenichino, as to believe one can be the constant witness of these natural glories without thinking of God. I could have liked, above all things, to have been in this balcony during one of the fine sunsets of this season of the year. I think the creeping of the shadows up the acclivities, the growing darkness below, and the lingering light above, with the exquisite arabesques of the rocks of Savoy, must render the scene even more perfect than we found it. Blonay is surrounded by meadows of velvet, the verdure reaching its very walls, and the rocks that occasionally do thrust their heads above the grass, aid in relieving rather than in lessening their softness. There are just enough of them to make a foreground that is not unworthy of the rocky belt which encircles most of the picture, and to give a general idea of the grand geological formation of the whole region. We left Blonay with regret, and not without lingering some time on its terrace, a spot in which retirement is better blended with a bird's eye view of men and their haunts, than any other I know. One is neither in nor out of this world at such a spot; near enough to enjoy its beauties, and yet so remote as to escape its blemishes. In quilting the castle, we met a young female of simple lady-like carriage and attire, whom I saluted as the Lady of Blonay, and glad enough we were to learn from an old dependant, whom we afterwards fell in with, that the conjecture was true. One bows with reverence to the possessor of such an abode. From Blonay we crossed the meadows and orchards, until we hit a road that led us towards the broad terrace that lies more immediately behind Vévey. We passed several hamlets, which lie on narrow stripes of land more level than common, a sort of _shelves_ on the broad breast of the mountain, and which were rural and pretty. At length we came to the object of our search, a tolerably spacious modern house, that is called a _château_, and whose roofs and chimneys had often attracted our eyes from the lake. The place was French in exterior, though the grounds were more like those of Germany than those of France. The terrace is irregular but broad, and walks wind prettily among woods and copses. Altogether, the place is quite modern and much more extensive than is usual in Switzerland. We did not presume to enter the house, but, avoiding a party that belonged to the place, we inclined to the left, and descended, through the vines, to the town. The true mode to move about this region is on horseback. The female in particular, who has a good seat, possesses a great advantage over most of her sex, if she will only improve it; and all things considered, I believe a family could travel through the cantons in no other manner so pleasantly; always providing that the women can ride. By riding, however, I do not mean sticking on a horse, by dint of rein and clinging, but a seat in which the fair one feels secure and entirely at her ease. Otherwise she may prove to be the _gazee_ instead of the gazer. On my return home, I went to a reading-room that I have frequented during our residence here, where I found a good deal of feeling excited by the news from America. The Swiss, I have told you, with very few exceptions, wish us well, but I take it nothing would give greater satisfaction to a large majority of the upper classes in most of the other countries of Europe, than to hear that the American republic was broken up: if buttons and broadcloths could be sent after us, it is not too much to add, or sent to the nether world. This feeling does not proceed so much from inherent dislike to us, as to our institutions. As a people, I rather think we are regarded with great indifference by the mass; but they who so strongly detest our institutions and deprecate our example, cannot prevent a little personal hatred from mingling with their political antipathies. Unlike the woman who was for beginning her love "with a little aversion," they begin with a little philanthropy, and end with a strong dislike for all that comes from the land they hate. I have known this feeling carried so far as to refuse credit even to the productions of the earth! I saw strong evidences of this truth, among several of the temporary _habitués_ of the reading-room in question, most of whom were French. A speedy dissolution of the American Union was proclaimed in all the journals, on account of some fresh intelligence from the other side of the Atlantic; and I dare say that, at this moment, nine-tenths of the Europeans, who think at all on the subject, firmly and honestly believe that our institutions are not worth two years' purchase. This opinion is very natural, because falsehood is so artfully blended with truth, in what is published, that it requires a more intimate knowledge of the country to separate them, than a stranger can possess. I spent an hour to-day in a fruitless attempt to demonstrate to a very sensible Frenchman that nothing serious was to be apprehended from the present dispute, but all my logic was thrown away, and nothing but time will convince him of that which he is so strongly predisposed not to believe. They rarely send proper diplomatic men among us, in the first place; for a novel situation like that in America requires a fertile and congenial mind,--and then your diplomatist is usually so much disposed to tell every one that which he wishes to hear! We mislead, too, ourselves, by the exaggerations of the opposition. Your partizan writes himself into a fever, and talks like any other man whose pulse is unnatural. This fact ought to be a matter of no surprise, since it is one of the commonest foibles of man to dislike most the evils that press on him most; although an escape from them to any other might even entail destruction. It is the old story of King Log and King Stork. As democracy is in the ascendant, they revile democracy, while we all feel persuaded we should be destroyed, or muzzled, under any other form of government. A few toad-eaters and court butterflies excepted, I do not believe there is a man in all America who could dwell five years in any country in Europe, without being made sensible of the vast superiority of his own free institutions over those of every other Christian nation. I have been amused of late, by tracing, in the publications at home, a great and growing admiration for the Prussian polity! There is something so absurd in an American's extolling such a system, that it is scarcely possible to say where human vagaries are to end. The Prussian government is a _despotism_; a mode of ruling that one would think the world understood pretty well by this time. It is true that the government is mildly administered, and hence all the mystifying that we hear and read about it. Prussia is a kingdom compounded of heterogenous parts; the north is Protestant, the south Catholic; the nation has been overrun in our own times, and the empire dismembered. Ruled by a king of an amiable and paternal disposition, and one who has been chastened by severe misfortunes, circumstances have conspired to render his sway mild and useful. No one disputes, that the government which is controlled by a single will, when that will is pure, intelligent, and just, is the best possible. It is the government of the universe, which is perfect harmony. But men with pure intentions, and intelligent and just minds, are rare, and more rare among rulers, perhaps, than any other class of men. Even Frederic II, though intelligent enough, was a tyrant. He led his subjects to slaughter for his own aggrandizement. His father, Frederic William, used to compel tall men to marry tall women. The time for the latter description of tyranny may be past, but oppression has many outlets, and the next king may discover some of them. In such a case his subjects would probably take refuge in a revolution and a constitution, demanding guarantees against this admirable system, and blow the new model-government to the winds! Many of our people are like children who, having bawled till they get a toy, begin to cry to have it taken away from them. Fortunately the heart and strength of the nation, its rural population, is sound and practical, else we might prove ourselves to be insane as well as ridiculous. LETTER XXV. Controversy respecting America.--Conduct of American Diplomatists.--_Attachés_ to American Legations.--Unworthy State of Public Opinion in America. Dear ----, The recent arrivals from America have brought a document that has filled me with surprise and chagrin. You may remember what I have already written you on the subject of a controversy at Paris, concerning the cost of government, and the manner in which the agents of the United States, past and present, wrongfully or not, were made to figure in the affair. There is a species of instinct in matters of this sort, which soon enables a man of common sagacity, who enjoys the means of observation, to detect the secret bias of those with whom he is brought in contact. Now, I shall say, without reserve, that so far as I had any connexion with that controversy, or had the ability to detect the feelings and wishes of others, the agents of the American government were just the last persons in France to whom I would have applied for aid or information. The minister himself stood quoted by the Prime Minister of France in the tribune, as having assured him (M. Perier) that we were the wrong of the disputed question, and that the writers of the French government had truth on their side. This allegation remains before the world uncontradicted to the present hour. It was made six months since, leaving ample time for a knowledge of the circumstance to reach America, but no instructions have been sent to Mr. Rives to clear the matter up; or, if sent, they have not been obeyed. With these unquestionable facts before my eyes, you will figure to yourself my astonishment at finding in the papers, a circular addressed by the Department of State to the different governors of the Union, formally soliciting official reports that may enable us to prove to the world, that the position taken by our opponents is not true! This course is unusual, and, as the Federal government has no control over, or connexion with, the expenditures of the States, it may even be said to be extra-constitutional. It is formally requesting that which the Secretary of State had no official right to request. There was no harm in the proceeding, but it would be undignified, puerile, and unusual, for so grave a functionary to take it, without a commensurate object. Lest this construction should be put on his course, the Secretary has had the precaution to explain his own motives. He tells the different governors, in substance, _that the extravagant pretension is set up flat freedom is more costly than despotism, and that what he requests may be done, will be done in the defence of liberal institutions_. Here then we have the construction that has been put on this controversy by our own government, _at home_, through one of its highest and ablest agents. Still the course of its agents _abroad_ remains unchanged! _Here_ the American functionaries are understood to maintain opinions, which a distinguished functionary _at home_ has openly declared to be injurious to free institutions. It may be, _it must be_, that the state of things here is unknown at Washington. Of this fact I have no means of judging positively; but when I reflect on the character and intelligence of the cabinet, I can arrive at no other inference. It has long been known to me that there exists, not only at Washington, but all through the republic, great errors on the subject of our foreign relations; on the influence and estimation of the country abroad; and on what we are to expect from others, no less than what they expect from us. But these are subjects which, in general, give me little concern, while this matter of the finance controversy has become one of strong personal interest. The situation of the private individual, who, in a foreign nation, stands, or is supposed to stand, contradicted in his facts, by the authorized agents of their common country, is anything but pleasant. It is doubly so in Europe, where men fancy those in high trusts are better authority, than those who are not. It is true that this supposition under institutions like ours, is absurd; but it is not an easy thing to change the settled convictions of an entire people. In point of truth, other things being equal, the American citizen who has been passing his time in foreign countries, employed in diplomacy, would know much less of the points mooted in his discussion, than the private citizen who had been living at home, in the discharge of his ordinary duties; but this is a fact not easily impressed on those who are accustomed to see not only the power, but all the machinery of government in the hands of a regular corps of _employés_. The name of Mr. Harris was introduced into the discussion, as one thus employed and trusted by our government. It is true he was falsely presented, for the diplomatic functions of this gentleman were purely accidental, and of very short continuance; but there would have been a littleness in conducting an argument that was so strong in its facts, by stooping to set this matter right, and it was suffered to go uncontradicted by me. He therefore possessed the advantage, the whole time, of appearing as one who enjoyed the confidence of his own government. We had this difficulty to overcome, as well as that of disproving his arguments, if, indeed, the latter could be deemed a difficulty at all.[41] [Footnote 41: The American government, soon after the date of this letter, appointed Mr. Harris to be _chargé d'affaires_ at Paris.] The private individual, like myself, who finds himself in collision with the agents of two governments, powerful as those of France and America, is pretty sure to get the worst of it. It is quite probable that such has been my fortune in this affair (I believe it to be so in public opinion, both in France and at home), but there is one power of which no political combination can deprive an honest man, short of muzzling him:--that of telling the truth. Of this power I have now availed myself, and the time will come when they who have taken any note of the matter may see reason to change their minds. Louis-Philippe sits on a throne, and wields a fearful force; but, thanks to him of Harlem (or of Cologne, I care not which), it is still within my reach to promulgate the facts. His reign will, at least, cease with his life, while that of truth will endure as long as means can be found to disseminate it. It is probable the purposes of the French ministers are answered, and that they care little now about the controversed points at all; but _their_ indifference to facts can have no influence with _me_. Before dismissing this subject entirely, I will add another word on that of the tone of some of our agents abroad. It is not necessary for me to say, for the tenth time, that it is often what it ought not to be; the fact has been openly asserted in the European journals, and there can, therefore, be no mistake as to the manner in which their conduct and opinions are viewed by others. Certainly every American has a right to his opinions, and, unless under very peculiar circumstances, a right to express them; but, as I have already said to you in these letters, one who holds a diplomatic appointment is under these peculiar circumstances. We are strangely, not to say disgracefully, situated, truly, if an American _diplomate_ is to express his private opinions abroad on political matters only when they happen to be adverse to the system and action of his own government! I would promptly join in condemning the American agent who should volunteer to unite against, or freely to give his opinions, even in society, against the political system of the country to which he is accredited. Discretion and delicacy both tell him to use a proper reserve on a point that is of so much importance to others, while it is no affair of his, and by meddling with which he may possibly derange high interests that are entrusted to his especial keeping and care. All this is very apparent, and quite beyond discussion. Still circumstances may arise, provocations may be given, which will amply justify such a man in presenting the most unqualified statements in favour of the principles he is supposed to represent. Like every other accountable being, when called to speak at all, he is bound to speak the truth. But, admitting in the fullest extent the obligations and duties of the diplomatic man towards the country to which he is sent, is there nothing due to that from which he comes? Is he to be justified in discrediting the principles, denying the facts, or mystifying the results of his own system, in order to ingratiate himself with those with whom he treats? Are rights thus to be purchased by concessions so unworthy and base? I will not believe that we have yet reached the degraded state that renders a policy so questionable, or a course so mean, at all necessary. It really appears to me, that the conduct of an American minister on all these points ought to be governed by a very simple rule. He should in effect tell the other party, "Gentlemen, I wish to maintain a rigid neutrality, as is due to you; but I trust you will manifest towards me the same respect and delicacy, if not on my own account, at least on account of the country I represent. If you drag me into the affair in any way, I give you notice that you may expect great frankness on my part, and nothing but the truth." Such a man would not only get a _treaty_ of indemnity, but he would be very apt to get the _money_ into the bargain. The practice of naming _attachés_ to our legations leads to great abuses of this nature. In the first place the Constitution is violated; for, without a law of Congress to that effect (and I believe none exists), not even the President has a right to name one, without the approval of the Senate. In no case can a minister appoint one legally, for the Constitution gives him under no circumstances any such authority; and our system does not admit of the constructive authority that is used under other governments, unless it can be directly referred to an expressly delegated power. Now the power of appointment to office is expressly delegated; but it is to another, or rather to another through Congress, should Congress choose to interfere. This difficulty is got over by saying an _attaché_ is not an officer. If not an officer of the government, he is nothing. He is, at all events, deemed to be an officer of the government in foreign countries, and enjoys immunities as such. Besides, it is a dangerous precedent to name to any situation under a pretence like this, as the practice may become gradually enlarged. But I care nothing as to the legality of the common appointments of this nature, the question being as to the _tone_ of the nominees. You may be assured that I shall send you no idle gossip; but there is more importance connected with these things than you may be disposed at first to imagine. Here, these young men are believed to represent the state of feeling at home, and are listened to with more respect than they would be as simple travellers. It would be far better not to appoint them at all; but, if this is an indulgence that it would be ungracious to withhold, they should at least be made to enter into engagements not _to deride the institutions they are thought to represent_; for, to say nothing of principle, such a course can only re-act, by discrediting the national character. In writing you these opinions, I wish not to do injustice to my own sagacity. I have not the smallest expectation, were they laid to-morrow before that portion of the American public which comprises the reading classes, that either these facts or these sentiments would produce the least effect on the indomitable selfishness, in which nine men in ten, or even a much larger proportion, are intrenched. I am fully aware that so much has the little national pride and national character created by the war of 1812 degenerated, that more of this class will forgive the treason to the institutions, on account of their hatred of the rights of the mass, than will feel that the republic is degraded by the course and practices of which I complain. I know no country that has retrograded in opinion so much as our own, within the last five years. It appears to me to go back, as others advance. Let me not, therefore, be understood as expecting any _immediate_ results, were it in my power to bring these matters promptly and prominently before the nation. I fully know I should not be heard, were the attempt made; for nothing is more dull than the ear of him who believes himself already in possession of all the knowledge and virtue of his age, and peculiarly entitled, in right of his possessions, to the exclusive control of human affairs. The most that I should expect from them, were all the facts published to-morrow, would be the secret assent of the wise and good, the expressed censure of the vapid and ignorant (a pretty numerous clan, by the way), the surprise of the mercenary and the demagogue, and the secret satisfaction of the few who will come after me, and who may feel an interest in my conduct or my name. I have openly predicted bad consequences, in a political light, from the compliance of our agents here, and we shall yet see how far this prediction may prove true.[42] [Footnote 42: Has it not? Have we not been treated by France, in the affair of the treaty, in a manner she would not have treated any second-rate power of Europe.] LETTER XXVI. Approach of Winter.--The _Livret_.--Regulations respecting Servants.--Servants in America.--Governments of the different Cantons of Switzerland.--Engagement of Mercenaries.--Population of Switzerland.--Physical Peculiarities of the Swiss.--Women of Switzerland.--Mrs. Trollope and the American Ladies.--Affected manner of Speaking in American Women.--Patois in America.--Peculiar manner of Speaking at Vévey.--Swiss Cupidity. Dear ----, The season is giving warning for all intruders to begin to think of quitting the cantons. We have not been driven to fires, as in 1828, for Vévey is not Berne; but the evenings are beginning to be cool, and a dash of rain, with a foaming lake, are taken to be symptoms, here, as strong as a frost would be there. Speaking of Berne, a little occurrence has just recalled the Burgerschaft, which, shorn of its glory as it is, had some most praiseworthy regulations. During our residence near that place, I hired a Bernois, as a footman, discharging the man, as a matter of course, on our departure for Italy. Yesterday I got a doleful letter from this poor fellow, informing me, among a series of other calamities, that he had had the misfortune to lose his _livret_, and begging I would send him such testimonials of character, as it might suit my sense of justice to bestow. It will be necessary to explain a little, in order that you may know what this _livret_ is. The commune, or district, issues to the domestics, a small certified blank book (_livret_), in which all the evidences of character are to be entered. The guides have the same, and in many instances, I believe, they are rendered necessary by law. The free-trade system, I very well know, would play the deuce with these regulations; but capital regulations they are, and I make no doubt, that the established fidelity of the Swiss, as domestics, is in some measure owing to this excellent arrangement. If men and women were born servants, it might a little infringe on their natural rights, to be sure; but as even a von Erlach or a de Bonestetten would have to respect the regulation, were they to don a livery, I see no harm in a _livret_. Now, by means of this little book, every moment of a domestic's time might be accounted for, he being obliged to explain what he was about in the interregnums. All this, to be sure, might be done by detached certificates, but neither so neatly nor so accurately; for a man would pretend a need, that he had lost a single certificate, oftener than he would pretend that he had lost those he really had, or in other words, his book. Besides, the commune gives some relief, I believe, when such a calamity can be proved, as proved it probably might be. In addition, the authorities will not issue a _livret_ to any but those who are believed to be trust-worthy. Of course I sent the man a character, so far as I was concerned, for he had conducted himself perfectly well during the short time he was in my service. A regulation like this could not exist in a very large town, without a good deal of trouble, certainly; and yet what is there of more moment to the comfort of a population, than severe police regulations on the subject of servants? America is almost--perhaps the only civilized country in which the free-trade system is fully carried out in this particular, and carried out it is with a vengeance. We have the let-alone policy, _in puris naturalibus_, and everything is truly let alone, but the property of the master. I do not wish, however, to ascribe effects to wrong causes. The dislike to being a servant in America, has arisen from the prejudice created by our having slaves. The negroes being of a degraded caste, by insensible means their idea is associated with service; and the whites shrink from the condition. This fact is sufficiently proved by the circumstance that he who will respectfully and honestly do your bidding in the field--be a farm-servant, in fact--will not be your domestic servant. There is no particular dislike in our people to obey, and to be respectful and attentive to their duties, as journeymen, farm-labourers, day-labourers, seamen, soldiers, or anything else, domestic servants excepted, which is just the duties they have been accustomed to see discharged by blacks and slaves. This prejudice is fast weakening, whites taking service more readily than formerly, and it is found that, with proper training, they make capital domestics, and are very faithful. In time the prejudice will disappear, and men will come to see it is more creditable to be trusted about the person and house, than to be turned into the fields. It is just as difficult to give a minute account of the governments of the different cantons of Switzerland, as it is to give an account of the different state governments of America. Each differs, in some respect, from all the others; and there are so many of them in both cases, as to make it a subject proper only for regular treatises. I shall therefore confine the remarks I have to make on this subject to a few general facts. Previously to the recent changes, there were twenty-two cantons; a number that the recent secession of Neufchâtel has reduced to twenty-one.[43] Until the French revolution, the number was not so great, many of the present cantons being then associated less intimately with the confederation, as _allies_, and some of them being held as political dependents, by those that were cantons. Thus Vaud and Argovie were both provinces, owned and ruled by Berne. [Footnote 43: Berne, Soleure, Zurich, Lucerne, Schweitz, Unterwalden, Uri, Glarus, Tessino, Valais, Vaud, Geneva, Basle, Schaffhausen, Argovie, Thourgovie, Zug, Fribourg, St. Gall, Appenzell, and the Grisons. They are named here without reference to their rank or antiquity.] The system is that of a confederation, which leaves each of its members to do pretty much as it pleases, in regard to its internal affairs. The central government is conducted by a Diet, very much as our affairs were formerly managed by the old Congress. In this Diet, each canton has one vote. The executive power, such as it is, is wielded by a committee or council. Its duties do not extend much beyond being the organ of communication between the Diet and the Cantons, the care of the treasury (no great matter), and the reception of, and the treating with, foreign ministers. The latter duty, however, and indeed all other acts, are subject to a revision by the Diet. Although the cantons themselves are only known to the confederation as they are enrolled on its list, many of them are subdivided into local governments that are perfectly independent of each other. Thus there are two Unterwaldens in fact, though only one in the Diet; two Appenzells, also; and I may add, half a dozen Grisons and Valais. In other words, the two Unterwaldens are absolutely independent of each other, except as they are connected through the confederation, though they unite to choose common delegates to the Diet, in which they are known as only one canton, and possess but one vote. The same is true of Appenzell, and will soon, most probably, be true of Schweitz and Basle; in both of which there are, at this moment, serious dissensions that are likely to lead to internal separations.[44] The Grisons is more of a consolidated canton than these examples, but it is subdivided into _leagues_, which have a good many strong features of independence. The same is true of Valais, where the subdivisions are termed _dizains_. The Diet does little beyond controlling the foreign relations of the republic. It makes peace and war, receives ambassadors, forms treaties, and enters into alliances. It can only raise armies, however, by calling on the cantons for their prescribed contingents. The same is true as respects taxes. This, you will perceive, is very much like our own rejected confederation, and has most of its evils; though external pressure, and a trifling commerce, render them less here than they were in America. I believe the confederation has some control over the public mails, though I think this is done, also, _through_ the cantons. The Diet neither coins money, nor establishes any courts, beyond its own power to decide certain matters that may arise between the cantons themselves. In short, the government is a very loose one, and it could not hold together in a crisis, were it not for the jealousy of its neighbours. [Footnote 44: Basle is now divided into what are called "Basle town" and "Basle country;" or the city population and the rural. Before the late changes, the former ruled the latter.] I have already told you that there exists a strong desire among the intelligent to modify this system. Consolidation, as you know from my letters, is wished by no one, for the great difference between the town and the rural populations causes both to wish to remain independent. Three languages are spoken in Switzerland, without including the Rhetian, or any of the numerous _patois_. All the north is German. Geneva, Vaud, and Valais are French, as are parts of Berne; while Tessino, lying altogether south of the Alps, is Italian. I have been told, that the states which treat with Switzerland for mercenaries, condition that none of them shall be raised in Tessino. But the practice of treating for mercenaries is likely to be discontinued altogether, though the republic has lately done something in this way for the Pope. The objection is to the Italian character, which is thought to be less constant than that of the real Swiss. Men, and especially men of narrow habits and secluded lives, part reluctantly with authority. Nothing can to be more evident than the fact, that a common currency, common post-offices, common custom-houses, if there are to be any at all, and various other similar changes, would be a great improvement on the present system of Switzerland. But a few who control opinion in the small cantons, and who would lose authority by the measure, oppose the change. The entire territory of the republic is not as great as that of Pennsylvania, nor is the entire population much greater than that of the same state. It is materially less than the population of New York. On the subject of their numbers, there exists a singular, and to me an inapplicable, sensitiveness. It is not possible to come at the precise population of Switzerland. That given in the tables of the contingents is thought to be exaggerated, though one does not very well understand the motive. I presume the entire population of the country is somewhere between 1,500,000, and 1,900,000. Some pretend, however, there are 2,000,000. Admitting the latter number, you will perceive that the single state of New York considerably surpasses it.[45] More than one-third of the entire population of Switzerland is probably in the single canton of Berne, as one-seventh of that of the United States is in New York. The proportion between surface and inhabitants is not very different between New England and Switzerland, if Maine be excluded. Parts of the cantons are crowded with people, as Zurich for instance, while a large part is uninhabitable rocks and ice. [Footnote 45: The population of New York, to-day, is about 2,200,000, or not greatly inferior to that of Scotland; and superior to that of Hanover, or Wurtemberg, or Denmark, or Saxony, all of which are kingdoms. The increase of population in the United States, at present, the immigration included, is not far from 500,000 souls annually, which is equal to the addition of an average state each year! The western speculations find their solution in this fact.] The Swiss have most of the physical peculiarities of the different nations that surround them. The German part of the population, however, are, on the whole, both larger and better-looking than the true Germans. All the mountaineers are fresher and have clearer complexions than those in the lower portions of the country, but the difference in size is not very apparent. Nowhere is there such a population as in our south-western states; indeed, I question if large men are as common in any other country. Scotland, however, may possibly form an exception. The women of Switzerland are better-looking than those of France or Germany, but beauty, or even extreme prettiness, is rare. Light, flexible, graceful forms are quite uncommon. Large hands and feet are met with everywhere, those of our women being miraculous in comparison. But the same thing is true nearly all over the north of Europe. Even our men--meaning the gentlemen--I think, might be remarked for the same peculiarities in this part of the world. The English have absurd notions on this subject, and I have often enjoyed a malicious pleasure in bringing my own democratic paws and hoofs (no prodigies at home) in contrast with their aristocratic members. Of course, the climate has great influence on all these things. I scarcely think the Swiss women of the mountains entitled to their reputation for beauty. If strength, proportions on a scale that is scarcely feminine, symmetry that is more anatomically than poetically perfect, enter into the estimate, one certainly sees in some of the cantons, female peasants who may be called fine women. I remember, in 1828, to have met one of these in the Grisons, near the upper end of the valley of the Rhine. This woman had a form, carriage, and proportions that would have made a magnificent duchess in a coronation procession; but the face, though fresh and fair, did not correspond with the figure. The women of our own mountains excel them altogether, being a more true medium between strength and coarseness. Even Mrs. Trollope admits that the American women (perhaps she ought to have said the girls) are the most beautiful in the world, while they are the least interesting. Mrs. Trollope has written a vast deal of nonsense, putting cockneyisms into the mouths of Americans, and calling them Americanisms, but she has also written a good many truths. I will not go as far as to say she was right in the latter part of this charge; but if our girls would cultivate neater and more elegant forms of expression; equally avoiding vulgar oh's and ah's! and set phrases; be more careful not to drawl; and not to open the mouth, so as to call "hot," "haut;" giggle less; speak lower; have more calmness and more dignity of manner, and _think_ instead of _pulsating_,--I would put them, for all in all, against any women in the world. They lose half of these defects when they marry, as it is; but the wisdom of Solomon would come to our ears with a diminished effect, were it communicated through the medium of any other than a neat enunciation. The great desideratum in female education, at home, is to impart a graceful, quiet, lady-like manner of speaking. Were it not for precisely this place, Vévey, I should add, that the women of America speak their language worse than the women of any other country I ever was in. We all know, that a calm, even, unemphatic mode of speaking, is almost a test of high-breeding; that a clear enunciation is, in short, an indispensable requisite, for either a gentleman or a lady. One may be a fool, and utter nonsense gracefully; but aphorisms lose their force when conveyed in a vulgar intonation. As a nation, I repeat, there is more of this fault in America, perhaps, than among an equal portion of educated people anywhere else. Contrary to the general rule too, the men of America speak better than the women; though the men, as a class, speak badly. The peculiar dialect of New England, which prevails so much all over the country, is derived from a provincial mode of speaking in England which is just the meanest in the whole island; and though it is far more intelligible, and infinitely better grammar is used with us, than in the place whence the _patois_ came, I think we have gained little on the score of elegance. I once met in England a distinguished man, who was one of the wealthiest commoners of his county, and he had hardly opened his mouth before I was struck with this peculiarity. On inquiry, I learned that he came from the West of England. It is by no means uncommon to meet with bad grammar, and an improper use of words as relates to their significations, among the highest classes in England, though I think not as often as in America, but it is rare, indeed, that a gentleman or a lady does not express himself or herself, so far as utterance, delivery, and intonation go, as a gentleman and lady should. The fault in America arises from the habits of drawling, and of opening the mouth too wide. Any one knows that, if he open the stop of an organ, and keep blowing the bellows, he will make anything but music. We have some extraordinary words, too: who, but a Philadelphian, for instance, would think of calling his mother a _mare_? But I am digressing; the peculiar manner of speaking which prevails at Vévey having led me from the main subject. These people absolutely sing in their ordinary conversation, more especially the women. In the simple expression of "_Bon jour, madame_" each alternate syllable is uttered on an octave higher than the preceding. This is not a _patois_ at all, but merely a vicious and ungraceful mode of utterance. It prevails more among the women than among the men; and, as a matter of course, more among the women of the inferior, than among those of the superior classes. Still it is more or less general. To ears that are accustomed to the even, unemphatic, graceful enunciation of Paris, it is impossible to describe to you, in words, the ludicrous effect it produces. We have frequently been compelled to turn away, in the shops, to avoid downright laughter. There exists the same sensitiveness, on the subject of the modes of speech, between the French Swiss and their French neighbours, as is to be found between us and the English. Many intelligent men here have laboured to convince me that the Genevese, in particular, speak purer French than even the Parisians. I dare say a part of this pretension may be true, for a great people take great liberties with everything; but if America, with her fifteen millions, finds it difficult to maintain herself in such matters, even when in the right, against the influence of England, what can little Geneva look for, in such a dispute with France, but to be put down by sheer volubility. She will be out-talked as a matter of course, clever as her citizens are. On the subject of the prevalent opinion of Swiss cupidity, I have very little to say: the practice of taking service as mercenaries in other countries, has probably given rise to the charge. As is usually the case in countries where the means of obtaining a livelihood are not easy, the Swiss strike me as being more influenced by money than most of their neighbours, though scarcely more so than the common classes of France. To a man who gains but twenty in a day, a sou is of more account than to him who gains forty. I presume this is the whole amount of the matter. I shall not deny, however, that the _honorarium_ was usually more in view, in a transaction with a Swiss, than in a transaction with a Frenchman, though I think the first the most to be depended on. Notwithstanding one or two instances of roguery that I have encountered, I would as soon depend on a Swiss, a clear bargain having been made, as on any other man I know. LETTER XXVII. Departure from Vévey.--Passage down the Lake.--Arrival at Geneva.--Purchase of Jewellery.--Leave Geneva.--Ascent of the Jura.--Alpine Views.--Rudeness at the Custom-house.--Smuggling.--A Smuggler detected.--The second Custom-house.--Final View of Mont Blanc.--Re-enter France.--Our luck at the Post-house in Dôle.--A Scotch Traveller.--Nationality of the Scotch.--Road towards Troyes.--Source of the Seine. Dear ----, Notwithstanding all the poetry of our situation, we found some of the ills of life in it. A few light cases of fever had occurred among us, which gave reason to distrust the lake-shore at this late season, and preparations were accordingly made to depart. Watching an opportunity, the skiff of honest Jean was loaded with us and our effects to the water's edge, and we embarked in the Leman, as she lay-to, in one of her daily trips, bidding a final adieu to Vévey, after a residence of about five weeks. The passage down the lake was pleasant, and our eyes rested on the different objects with melancholy interest, for we knew not that they would ever be again looked upon by any among us. It is an exquisite lake, and it grows on us in beauty each time that we look at it, the surest sign of perfection. We reached Geneva early, and took lodgings at _l'Ecu_, in season for the ladies to make some purchases. The jewellery of this town is usually too tempting to be resisted by female self-denial, and when we met at dinner, we had a course of ear-rings, chains and bracelets served up, by a succession of shopmen, who understand, as it were by instinct, the caprices of the daughters of Eve. One of the party had taken a fancy to a pair of unfinished bracelets, and had expressed her regrets that she could not carry them with her. "Madame goes to Paris?" "Yes." "If she will leave her address, they shall be sent to her in a month." As we were strangers in France, and the regulation which prevented travellers from buying articles of this sort for their personal use, however necessary, has always appeared to me inhospitable, I told the man that if delivered in Paris, they should be received, and paid for. The bargain was made, and the jewels have already reached us. Of course I have asked no questions, and am ignorant whether they came by a balloon, in the luggage of an ambassador, or by the means of a dog. The next day it rained tremendously; but having ordered horses, we left Geneva in the afternoon, taking the road to Ferney. Not an individual of the whole party had any desire to visit the _chateau_, however, and we drove through the place on a gallop. We took French post-horses at the foot of the Jura, where we found the first post-house, and began to climb the mountains. Our party made a droll appearance just at that moment. The rain was falling in torrents, and the carriage was dragging slowly through the mud up the long winding ascent. Of course the windows were shut, and we were a sort of full-dress party within, looking ridiculously fine, and, from time to time, laughing at our silly appearance. Everybody was in travelling dresses, jewellery excepted. The late purchases, however, were all on our persons, for we had been told they would certainly be seized at the custom-houses, if left in their boxes in the trunks. The _douaniers_ could tell a recent purchase by instinct. Accordingly, all our fingers were brilliant with rings, brows glittered with _ferronières_, ear-rings of the newest mode were shining beneath travelling caps and hats, and chains abounded. I could not persuade myself that this masquerade would succeed, but predicted a failure. It really appeared to me that so shallow a distinction could avail nothing against harpies who denied the right of strangers to pass through their country with a few purchases of this nature, that had been clearly made for their own use. But, while the sumptuary laws of the custom-houses are very rigid, and set limits to the wants of travellers without remorse, like quarantine regulations, they have some rules that seem framed expressly to defeat their own ordinances. The road led up the mountain, where a view that is much praised exists. It is the counterpart of that which is seen everywhere, when one touches on the eastern verge of the Jura, and first gets sight of Switzerland proper. These views are divided into that which embraces the valley of the Aar and the Oberland range, and this which comprises the basin of the Leman, and the mountains that surround it. Mont Blanc, of course, is included in the other. On the whole, I prefer the first, although the last is singularly beautiful. We got clear weather near the summit, and stopped a few minutes to dissect the elements of this scene. The view is very lovely, beyond a question; but I think it much inferior to that which has been so often spoken of between us above Vévey, notwithstanding Mont Blanc enters into this as one of its most conspicuous objects. I have, as yet, nowhere seen this mountain to so much advantage. In size, as compared with the peaks around it, it is a hay-stack among hay-cocks, with the advantage of being a pile of shining ice, or frozen snow, while everything else near it is granite. By insulating this mountain, and studying it by itself, one feels its mild sublimity; but still, as a whole, I give the preference greatly to the other view. From this point the lake is too distant, the shores of Savoy dwindle in the presence of their mightier neighbour, and the mysterious-looking Valais, which in its peculiar beauty has scarcely a rival on earth, is entirely hid from sight. Then the lights and shades are nearly lost from the summit of the Jura; and, after all, it is these lights and shades, the natural _chiaroscuro_, that finishes the picture. We reached the first custom-house a little before sunset; but, as there was a reasonably good inn opposite, I determined to pass the night there, in order to be able to defend my rights against the myrmidons of the law at leisure, should it be necessary. The carriage was driven to the door of the custom-house, and we were taken into separate rooms to be examined. As for myself, I have no reason to complain; but the ladies were indignant at being subjected to a personal examination by a female harpy, who was equally without politeness and propriety. Surely France--polished, refined, intellectual France--cannot actually need this violation of decorum, not to say of decency! This is the second time that similar rudeness has been encountered by us, on entering the country; and, to make the matter worse, females have been the sufferers. I made a pretty vigorous remonstrance, in very animated French, and it had the effect of preventing a repetition of the rudeness. The men pleaded their orders, and I pleaded the rights of hospitality and propriety, as well as a determination not to submit to the insults. I would have made a _détour_ of a hundred leagues to enter at another point in preference. In the course of the conversation that succeeded, the officers explained to me the difficulties they had to contend with, which certainly are not trifling. As to station, they said that made no great difference, your duchess being usually an inveterate smuggler. Travellers are not content to supply their own wants, but they purchase for all their friends. This I knew to be true, though not by experience, you will permit me to say, the ambassador's bags, half the time, containing more prohibited articles than despatches. But, notwithstanding this explanation, I did not deem the case of one who bought only for himself the less hard. It is so easy to conceal light articles, that, except in instances where is reason for distrust, it were better to confide in character. If anything could induce me to enter seriously into the contraband, it would be such treatment. The officers explained to me the manner in which smuggling is conducted. The usual mode is to cross the fields in the night; for when two custom-houses are passed, the jewellery may be put in a common trunk, and sent forward by the diligence, unless there is some particular grounds of suspicion. They know perfectly well, that bargains are constantly made in Geneva, to deliver purchases in Paris; but, with all their care and vigilance, the smugglers commonly succeed. On a recent occasion, however, the officers had been more successful. A cart loaded with split wood (larch) had boldly passed the door of the _douane_. The man who drove it was a peasant, and altogether he appeared to be one driving a very common burthen to his own home. The cart, however, was stopped and the wood unloaded; while reloading, for nothing but wood was found, one stick attracted attention. It was muddy, as if it had fallen into the road. The mud, however, had a suspicious _malice prepense_ air about it; it seemed as if it were _smeared_ on, and by examining it closely, two _seams_ were discovered, which it had been hoped the mud would conceal. The billet had been split in two, hollowed, and reunited by means of pegs. The mud was to hide these pegs and the seams, as I have told you, and in the cavity were found seventy gold watches! I saw the billet of wood, and really felt less resentment at the old virago who had offended us. The officers caught relenting in my eyes and inquired what I thought of it, and I told them that _we_ were not muddy logs of larch. The next morning we were off betimes, intending to push through the mountains and the custom-houses that day. The country was wild and far from fruitful, though there were bits of naked mountain, through which the road wound in a way to recall, on a greatly diminished scale however, that peculiar charm of the Apennines. The villages were clean but dreary, and nowhere, for leagues, did we see a country that was genial, or likely to reward agriculture. This passage of the Jura is immeasurably inferior to that by Salins and Neufchâtel. At first I was afraid it was my worn-out feelings that produced the impression; but, by close comparisons, and by questioning my companions, some of whom scarcely recollected the other road, I feel certain that such is the fact. Indeed it would be like comparing a finished painting to an _esquisse_. We had not much trouble at the second custom-house, though the officers eyed our ornaments with a confiscating rapacity. For my part I took my revenge, by showing off the only ornament I had to the utmost. A---- had made me a present of a sapphire-ring, and this I flourished in all sorts of ways, as it might be in open defiance. One fellow had an extreme longing for a pretty _ferronière_, and there was a private consultation about it, among them, I believe; but after some detention, and a pretty close examination of the passports, we were permitted to proceed. If François smuggled nothing, it must have been for want of funds, for speculation is his hobby, as well as his misfortune, entering into every bone of his body. We were all day busy in those barren, sterile, and unattractive mountains--thrice unattractive after the God-like Alps--and were compelled to dip into the night, in order to get rid of them. Once or twice on looking back, we saw the cold, chiseled peak of Mont Blanc, peering over our own nearer ridges; and as the weather was not very clear, it looked dim and spectral, as if sorry to lose us. It was rather late when we reached a small town, at the foot of the Jura, and stopped for the night. This was France again,--France in cookery, beds, tone, and thought. We lost the Swiss simplicity (for there is still relatively a good deal of it), and Swiss directness, in politeness, _finesse_, and _manner_. We got "_monsieur sait--monsieur pense--monsieur fera_"--for "_que voulez-vous, monsieur?_" We had no more to do with mountains. Our road next morning was across a wide plain, and we plunged at once into the undeviating monotony of French agriculture. A village had been burned, it was thought to excite political commotion, and the postilions began to manoeuvre with us, to curtail us of horse-flesh, as the road was full of carriages. It now became a matter of some moment to push on, for "first come, first served," is the law of the road. By dint of bribes and threats, we reached the point where the two great routes unite a little east of Dôle, before a train of several carriages, which we could see pushing for the point of junction with the same object as ourselves, came up. No one could pass us, on the same road, unless we stopped, and abandoning all idea of eating, we drove up to the post-house in Dôle, and preferred our claim. At the next moment, four other carriages stopped also. But five horses were in the stable, and seventeen were needed! Even these five had just arrived, and were baiting. Four of them fell to my share, and we drove off with many handsome expressions of regret at being obliged to leave but one for the four other carriages. Your travelling is an epitome of life, in which the lucky look upon the unlucky with a supercilious compassion. A league or two beyond Dôle, we met two carriages coming the other way, and exchanged horses; and really I had some such generous feelings on the occasion, as those of a rich man who hears that a poor friend has found a bank note. The carriage with which we exchanged was English, and it had an earl's coronet. The pair within were man and wife; and some fine children, with an attendant or two, were in the one that followed. They were Scotch at a glance: the master himself wearing, besides the stamp of his nation on his face, a bonnet with the colours of his clan. There is something highly respectable in this Scotch nationality, and I have no doubt it has greatly contributed towards making the people what they are. If the Irish were as true to themselves, English injustice would cease in a twelvemonth. But, as a whole, the Irish nobles are a band of mercenaries, of English origin, and they prefer looking to the flesh-pots of Egypt, to falling back sternly on their rights, and sustaining themselves by the proud recollections of their forefathers. Indeed half of them would find their forefathers among the English speculators, when they found them at all. I envied the Scotchman his cap and tartan, though I dare say both he and his pretty wife had all the fine feelings that such an emblem is apt to inspire. Your earldoms are getting to be paltry things; but it is really something to be the chief of a clan! You have travelled the road between Dôle and Dijon with me once, already, and I shall say no more than that we slept at the latter town. The next morning, with a view to vary the route, and to get off the train of carriages, we took the road towards Troyes. Our two objects were effected, for we saw no more of our competitors for post-horses, and we found ourselves in an entirely new country; but, parts of Champagne and the Ardennes excepted, a country that proved to be the most dreary portion of France we had yet been in. While trotting along a good road, through this naked, stony region, we came to a little valley in which there was a village that was almost as wild in appearance, as one of those on the Great St. Bernard. A rivulet flowed through the village, and meandered by our side, among the half sterile meadows. It was positively the only agreeable object that we had seen for some hours. Recollecting the stream at Tuttlingen, A---- desired me to ask the postilion, if it had a name. "_Monsieur, cette petite rivière s'appelle la Seine._" We were, then, at the sources of the Seine! Looking back I perceived, by the formation of the land, that it must take its rise a short distance beyond the village, among some naked and dreary-looking hills. A little beyond these, again, the streams flow towards the tributaries of the Rhone, and we were consequently in the high region where the waters of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean divide. Still there were no other signs of our being at such an elevation, except in the air of sterility that reigned around. It really seemed as if the river, so notoriously affluent in mud, had taken down with it all the soil. LETTER XXVIII. Miserable Inn.--A French Bed.--Free-Trade.--French Relics.--Cross Roads.--Arrival at La Grange.--Reception by General Lafayette.--The Nullification Strife.--Conversation with Lafayette.--His Opinion as to a Separation of the Union in America.--The Slave Question.--Stability of the Union.--Style of living at La Grange.--Pap.--French Manners, and the French Cuisine.--Departure from La Grange.--Return to Paris. Dear ----, I have little to say of the next two days' drive, except that ignorance, and the poetical conceptions of a postilion, led us into the scrape of passing a night in just the lowest inn we had entered in Europe. We pushed on after dark to reach this spot, and it was too late to proceed, as all of the party were excessively fatigued. To be frank with you, it was an _auberge aux charretiers_. Eating was nearly out of the question; and yet I had faith to the last, in a French bed. The experience of this night, however, enables me to say all France does not repose on excellent wool mattresses, for we were obliged to put up with a good deal of straw. And yet the people were assiduous, anxious to please, and civil. The beds, moreover, were tidy; our straw being clean straw. The next night we reached a small town, where we did much better. Still one can see the great improvements that travellers are introducing into France, by comparing the taverns on the better roads with those on the more retired routes. At this place we slept well, and _à la Française_. If Sancho blessed the man who invented sleep after a nap on Spanish earth, what would he have thought of it after one enjoyed on a French bed! The drums beat through the streets after breakfast, and the population crowded their doors, listening, with manifest interest, to the proclamation of the crier. The price of bread was reduced; an annunciation of great interest at all times, in a country where bread is literally the staff of life. The advocates of free-trade prices ought to be told that France would often be convulsed, literally from want, if this important interest were left to the sole management of dealers. A theory will not feed a starving multitude, and hunger plays the deuce with argument. In short, free-trade, as its warmest votaries now carry out their doctrines, approaches suspiciously near a state of nature: a condition which might do well enough, if trade were a principal, instead of a mere incident of life. With some men, however, it is a principal--an all in all--and this is the reason we frequently find those who are notoriously the advocates of exclusion and privileges in government, maintaining the doctrine, as warmly as those who carry their liberalism, in other matters, to extremes. There was a small picture, in the manner of Watteau, in this inn, which the landlady told me had been bought at a sale of the effects of a neighbouring chateau. It is curious to discover these relics, in the shape of furniture, pictures, porcelain, &c., scattered all over France, though most of it has found its way to Paris. I offered to purchase the picture, but the good woman held it to be above price. We left this place immediately after breakfast, and soon quitted the great route to strike across the country. The _chemins vicinaux_, or cross-roads of France, are pretty much in a state of nature; the public, I believe, as little liking to work them, as it does at home. Previously to the revolution, all this was done by means of the _corvée_; a right which empowered the _seigneur_ to oblige his tenants to perform a certain amount of labour, without distinction, on the highways of his estate. Thus, whenever M. le Marquis felt disposed to visit the chateau, there was a general muster, to enable him and his friends to reach the house in safety, and to amuse themselves during their residence; after which the whole again reverted to the control of nature and accident. To be frank, one sometimes meets with by-roads in this old country, which are positively as bad as the very worst of our own, in the newest settlements. Last year I actually travelled post for twenty miles on one of these trackless ways. We were more fortunate, however, on the present occasion; the road we took being what is called a _route départementale_, and little, if any, inferior to the one we had left. Our drive was through a slightly undulating country that was prettily wooded, and in very good agriculture. In all but the wheel-track, the traveller gains by quitting the great routes in France, for nothing can be more fatiguing to the eye than their straight undeviating monotony. They are worse than any of our own air-line turnpikes; for in America the constant recurrence of small isolated bits of wood greatly relieves the scenery. We drove through this country some three or four leagues, until we at length came to an estate of better arrangements than common. On our left was a wood, and on our right a broad reach of meadow. Passing the wood, we saw a wide, park-like lawn, that was beautifully shaded by copses, and in which there were touches of landscape-gardening, in a taste altogether better than was usual in France. Passing this, another wood met us, and turning it, we entered a private road--you will remember the country has neither fence nor hedge, nor yet scarcely a wall--which wound round its margin, describing an irregular semicircle. Then it ran in a straight line for a short distance, among a grove of young evergreens, towards two dark picturesque towers covered with ivy, crossed a permanent bridge that spanned a ditch, and dashing through a gateway, in which the grooves of the portcullis are yet visible, we alighted in the court of La Grange! It was just nine, and the family was about assembling in the drawing-room. The "_le Général sera charmé de vous voir, monsieur_," of the faithful Bastien, told us we should find his master at home; and on the great stairs, most of the ladies met us. In short, the patriarch was under his own roof, surrounded by that family which has so long been the admiration of thousands--or, precisely as one would most wish to find him. It is not necessary to speak of our reception, where all our country are welcome. We were soon in the drawing-room, which I found covered with American newspapers, and in a few minutes I was made acquainted with all that was passing on the other side of the Atlantic. Mr. Rives had sailed for home; and as M. Perier was dead, General Lafayette had not explained in the Chamber the error into which that minister had permitted himself to fall, agreeably to a tardy authority to that effect received from Mr. Rives. The ministry was on the point of dissolution in France; and it was said the _doctrinaires_ were to come in--and the nullification strife ran high at home. On the latter subject, Lafayette spoke with a reserve that was unusual on subjects connected with America, though he strongly deprecated the existence of the controversy. There is great weakness in an American's betraying undue susceptibility on the score of every little unpleasant occurrence that arises at home. No one of the smallest intelligence can believe that we are to be exempt from human faults, and we all ought to know that they will frequently lead to violence and wrongs. Still there is so much jealousy here on this subject, the votaries of monarchies regard all our acts with so much malevolence, and have so strong a desire to exaggerate our faults, that it is not an easy matter at all times to suppress these feelings. I have often told our opponents that they pay us the highest possible compliment, in their constant effort to compare the results of the system with what is purely right in the abstract, instead of comparing its results with those of their own. But the predominance of the hostile interests are so great here, that reason and justice go for nothing in the conflict of opinions. If a member of congress is flogged, it is no answer to say that a deputy or a member of parliament has been murdered. They do not affirm, but they always _argue_ as if they thought we ought to be better than they! If we have an angry discussion and are told of it, one would think it would be a very good answer, so far as comparative results are concerned, to tell them that half-a-dozen of their provinces are in open revolt; but to this they will not listen. They expect _us_ never to quarrel! We must be without spot in all things, or we are worse than they. All this Lafayette sees and feels; and although it is impossible not to detect the unfairness and absurdity of such a mode of forming estimates of men, it is almost equally impossible, in the present situation of Europe, for one who understands the influence of American example, not to suffer these unpleasant occurrences to derange his philosophy. Before breakfast the General took me into his library, and we had a long and a much franker conversation on the state of South Carolina. He said that a separation of the Union would break his heart. "I hope they will at least let me die," he added, "before they commit this _suicide_ on _our_ institutions." He particularly deprecated the practice of talking about such an event, which he thought would accustom men's minds to it. I had not the same apprehensions. To me it appeared that the habit of menacing dissolution, was the result of every one's knowing, and intimately feeling, the importance of hanging together, which induced the dissatisfied to resort to the threat, as the shortest means of attaining their object. It would be found in the end, that the very consciousness which pointed out this mode as the gravest attack that could be made on those whom the discontented wish to influence, would awaken enough to consequences to prevent any consummation in acts. This menace was a natural argument of the politically weak in America, just as the physically weak lay hold of knives and clubs, where the strong rely on their hands. It must be remembered that the latter, at need, can resort to weapons, too. I do not believe there could be found in all America any great number of respectable men who wish the Union dissolved; and until that shall be the case, I see no great grounds of apprehension. Moreover, I told him that so long as the northern states were tranquil I had no fears, for I felt persuaded that no great political change would occur in America that did not come from that section of the Union. As this is a novel opinion, he inquired for its reasons, and, in brief, this was the answer:-- There is but one interest that would be likely to unite all the south against the north, and this was the interest connected with slavery. Now, it was notorious that neither the federal government nor the individual states have anything to do with this as a national question, and it was not easy to see in what manner anything could be done that would be likely to push matters as far as disunion on such a point There might be, and there probably would be, discussion and denunciations--nay, there often had been; but a compromise having been virtually made, by which all new states at the north are to be free states, and all at the south slave-holding, I saw nothing else that was likely to be serious.[46] As respects all other interests, it would be difficult to unite the whole south. Taking the present discussion as an example: those that were disaffected, to use the strongest term the case admits of, were so environed by those that were not, that a serious separation became impossible. The tier of states that lies behind the Carolinas, Virginia, and Georgia, for instance, are in no degree dependent on them for an outlet to the sea, while they are so near neighbours as to overshadow them in a measure. Then the south must always have a northern boundary of free states, if they separate _en masse_--a circumstance not very desirable, as they would infallibly lose most of their slaves. [Footnote 46: Recent facts have confirmed this opinion.] On the other hand, the north is very differently situated. New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and the tier of states west, are closely connected geographically, must and would go together, and they have one frontier that is nearly all water. They contain already a free population of eight millions, which is rapidly increasing, and are strong enough, and united enough, to act as they please. It is their interest to remain united with the south, and it is also a matter of feeling with them, and I apprehend little to the Union so long as these states continue of this mind.[47] [Footnote 47: This was written before the recent events in Texas, which give a new aspect to the question.] Lafayette wished to know if I did not think the Union was getting too large for its safety. I thought not, so long as the means of necessary intercommunication were preserved, but just the reverse, as the larger the Union, the less probability there would be of agitating its whole surface by any one interest; and the parties that were tranquil, as a matter of course, would influence those that were disturbed. Were the Union to-day, for instance, confined to the coast, as it was forty years since, there would be no south-western states to hold the southern in check, as we all know is the fact at present, and the danger from nullification would be doubled. These things act both ways; for even the state governments, while they offer positive organised and _quasi_ legal means of resisting the federal government, also afford the same organized local means of counteracting them in their own neighbourhood. Thus, Carolina and Georgia do not pull together in this very affair, and, in a sense, one neutralizes the other. The long and short of the matter was, that the Union was a compromise that grew out of practical wants and _facts_, and this was the strongest possible foundation for any polity. Men would assail it in words, precisely as they believed it important and valued by the public, to attain their ends.--We were here summoned to the breakfast. I was well laughed at the table for my ignorance. The family of La Grange live in the real old French style, with an occasional introduction of an American dish, in compliment to a guest. We had obtained hints concerning one or two capital things there, especially one for a very simple and excellent dish, called _soupe au lait_; and I fancied I had now made discovery the second. A dish was handed to me that I found so excellent, _so very appropriate to breakfast_, that I sent it to A----, with a request that she would get its history from Madame George Lafayette, who sat next her. The ladies put their heads together, and I soon saw that they were amused at the suggestion. A---- then informed me, that it was an American as well as a French dish, and that she knew great quantities of it had been consumed in the hall at C----, in particular. Of course I protested that I had no recollection of it. "All this is very likely, for it is a good while since you have eaten any. The dish is neither more nor less than pap!" Two capital mistakes exist in America on the subject of France. One regards its manners, and the other its kitchen. We believe that French deportment is superficial, full of action, and exaggerated. This would truly be a wonder in a people who possess a better tone of manners, perhaps, than any other; for quiet and simplicity are indispensable to high breeding. The French of rank are perfect models of these excellences. As to the _cuisine_, we believe it is high-seasoned. Nothing can be farther from the truth; spices of all sorts being nearly proscribed. When I went to London with the Vicomte de V----, the first dinner was at a tavern. The moment he touched the soup, he sat with tears in his eyes, and with his mouth open, like a chicken with the pip! "_Le diable!_" he exclaimed, "_celle-ci est infernale!_" And infernal I found it too; for after seven years' residence on the Continent, it was no easy matter for even me to eat the food or to drink the wines of England; the one on account of the high seasoning, and the other on account of the brandy. We left La Grange about noon, and struck into the great post-road as soon as possible. A succession of accidents, owing to the random driving of the postilions, detained us several hours, and it was dark before we reached the first _barrière_ of Paris. We entered the town on our side of the river, and drove into our own gate about eight. The table was set for dinner; the beds were made, the gloves and toys lay scattered about, _à la Princesse d'Orange_, and we resumed our customary mode of life, precisely as if we had returned from an airing in the country, instead of a journey of three months! THE END. 
12537	----	Proofreaders Europe, http://dp.rastko.net. This file was produced from images generously made available by the Bibliotheque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) at http://gallica.bnf.fr. ACCOUNT OF A TOUR IN NORMANDY Volume I by Dawson Turner LETTERS FROM NORMANDY ADDRESSED TO THE REV. JAMES LAYTON, B.A. OF CATFIELD, NORFOLK. UNDERTAKEN CHIEFLY FOR THE PURPOSE OF INVESTIGATING THE ARCHITECTURAL ANTIQUITIES OF THE DUCHY, WITH OBSERVATIONS ON ITS HISTORY, ON THE COUNTRY, AND ON ITS INHABITANTS. ILLUSTRATED WITH NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS. VOL. I. LONDON: 1820. PREFACE. The observations which form the basis of the following letters, were collected during three successive tours in Normandy, in the summers of 1815, 1818, and 1819; but chiefly in the second of these years. Where I have not depended upon my own remarks, I have endeavored, as far as appeared practicable and without tedious minuteness, to quote my authorities for facts; and I believe that I have done so in most instances, except indeed where I have borrowed from the journals of the companions of my tours,--the nearest and dearest of my connections,--or from that of my friend, Mr. Cohen, who, at almost the same time, travelled through a great part of Normandy, pursuing also very similar objects of inquiry. The materials obtained from these sources, it has been impossible to separate from my own; and, interwoven as they are with the rest of the text, it is only in my power to acknowledge, in these general terms, the assistance which I have thus received.--We were proceeding in 1818, to the southern and western districts of Normandy, when a domestic calamity compelled me to return to England. The tour was consequently abridged, and many places of note remained unvisited by us. My narrative is principally addressed to those readers who find pleasure in the investigation of architectural antiquity. Without the slightest pretensions to the character either of an architect or of an antiquarian, engaged in other avocations and employed in other studies, I am but too conscious of my inability to do justice to the subject. Yet my remarks may at least assist the future traveller, by pointing out such objects as are interesting, either on account of their antiquity or their architectural worth. This information is not to be obtained from the French, who have habitually neglected the investigation of their national monuments. I doubt, however, whether I should have ventured upon publication, if those who have always accompanied me both at home and abroad, had not produced the illustrations which constitute the principal value of my volumes. Of the merits of these illustrations I must not be allowed to speak; but it may be permitted me to observe, that the fine arts afford the only mode of exerting the talents of woman, which does not violate the spirit of the precept which the greatest historian of antiquity has ascribed to the greatest of her heroes-- [English. Greek in Original] "Great will be your glory in not falling short of your natural character; and greatest will be hers who is least talked of among the men whether for good or for bad." Thucydides' Historiae. (Book 2, Chapter 45, Paragraph 2, Verses 3-5.) DAWSON TURNER. YARMOUTH, _13th August_1820. CONTENTS. LETTER I. Arrival at Dieppe--Situation and Appearance of the Town--Costume of the People--Inhabitants of the Suburb of Pollet. LETTER II. Dieppe--Castle--Churches--History of the Place--Feast of the Assumption. LETTER III. Cæsars Camp--Castle of Arques. LETTER IV. Journey from Dieppe to Rouen--Priory of Longueville--Rouen-Bridge of Boats--Costume of the Inhabitants. LETTER V. Journey to Havre--Pays de Caux--St. Vallery--Fécamp--The precious Blood--The Abbey--Tombs in it--Moutivilliers--Harfleur. LETTER VI. Havre--Trade and History of the Town--Eminent Men--Bolbec--Yvetot--Ride to Rouen--French Beggars. LETTER VII. On the State of Affairs in France. LETTER VIII. Military Antiquities--Le Vieux Château--Original Palace of the Norman Dukes--Halles of Rouen--Miracle and Privilege of St. Romain--Château du Vieux Palais--Petit Château--Fort on Mont Ste. Catherine--Priory there--Chapel of St. Michael--Devotee. LETTER IX. Ancient Ecclesiastical Architecture--Churches of St. Paul and St. Gervais--Hospital of St. Julien--Churches of Léry, Pavilly, and Yainville. LETTER X. Early Pointed Architecture--Cathedral--Episcopal Palace. LETTER XI. Pointed Ecclesiastical Architecture--Churches of St. Ouen, St. Maclou, St. Patrice, and St. Godard. LETTER XII. Palais de Justice--States, Exchequer, and Parliament of Normandy--Guild of the Conards--Joan of Arc--Fountain and Bas-Relief in the Place de la Pucelle--Tour de la Grosse Horloge--Public Fountains--Rivers Aubette and Robec--Hospitals--Mint. LETTER XIII. Monastic Institutions--Library--Manuscripts--Museum--Academy--Botanic Garden--Theatre--Ancient History--Eminent Men. LIST OF PLATES. Plate 01 Head-Dress of Women of the Pays de Caux. Plate 02 Entrance to the Castle at Dieppe. Plate 03 Font in the Church of St. Remi, at Dieppe. Plate 04 Plan of Caesar's Camp, near Dieppe. Plate 05 General View of the Castle of Arques. Plate 06 Tower of remarkable shape in ditto. Plate 07 Church at Arques. Plate 08 View of Rouen, from the Grand Cours. Plate 09 Tower and Spire of Harfleur Church. Plate 10 Bas-Relief, representing St. Romain. Plate 11 Sculpture, supposed Roman, in the Church of St. Paul, at Rouen. Plate 12 Circular Tower, attached to the Church of St. Ouen, at Rouen. Plate 13 Interior of the Church at Pavilly. Plate 14 Monumental Figure of Rollo, in Rouen Cathedral. Plate 15 Ditto of an Archbishop, in ditto. Plate 16 Monument of ditto. Plate 17 Equestrian Figure of the Seneschal de Brezé, in Rouen Cathedral. Plate 18 Tower of the Church of St. Ouen, at Rouen. Plate 19 South Porch of ditto. Plate 20 Head of Christ, in ditto, seen in profile. Plate 21 Ditto, in ditto, seen in front. Plate 22 Stone Staircase in the Church of St. Maclou, at Rouen. Plate 23 Sculpture, representing the Feast of Fools. Plate 24 Bas-Relief, from the representations of the Champ du Drap d'or. Plate 25 Initial Letter from a MS. of the History of William of Jumieges. LETTERS FROM NORMANDY. LETTER I. ARRIVAL AT DIEPPE--SITUATION AND APPEARANCE OF THE TOWN--COSTUME OF THE PEOPLE--INHABITANTS OF THE SUBURB OF POLLET. (_Dieppe, June_, 1818) MY DEAR SIR, You, who were never at sea, can scarcely imagine the pleasure we felt, when, after a passage of unusual length, cooped up with twenty-four other persons in a packet designed only for twelve, and after having experienced every variety that could he afforded by a dead calm, a contrary wind, a brisk gale in our favor, and, finally, by being obliged to lie three hours in a heavy swell off this port, we at last received on board our French pilot, and saw hoisted on the pier the white flag, the signal of ten feet water in the harbor. The general appearance of the coast, near Dieppe, is similar to that which we left at Brighton; but the height of the cliffs, if I am not mistaken, is greater. They vary along the shores of Upper Normandy from one hundred and fifty to seven hundred feet, or even more; the highest lying nearly mid-way between this town and Havre, in the vicinity of Fécamp; and they present an unbroken barrier, of a dazzling white[1], except when they dip into some creek or cove, or open to afford a passage to some river or streamlet. Into one of these, a boat from the opposite shores of Sussex shot past us this afternoon, with the rapidity of lightning. She was a smuggler, and, in spite of the army of Douaniers employed in France, ventured to make the land in the broad face of day, carrying most probably a cargo, composed principally of manufactured goods in cotton and steel. The crew of our vessel, no bad authority in such cases, assured us, that lace is also sent in considerable quantities as a contraband article into France; though, as is well known, much of it likewise comes in the same quality into England, and there are perhaps few of our travellers, who return entirely without it. On the same authority, I am enabled to state, what much surprised me, that the smuggled goods exported from Sussex into Normandy exceed by nearly an hundred fold those received in return. The first approach to Dieppe is extremely striking. To embark in the evening at Brighton, sleep soundly in the packet, and find yourself, as is commonly the case, early the next morning under the piers of this town, is a transition, which, to a person unused to foreign countries, can scarcely fail to appear otherwise than as a dream; so marked and so entire is the difference between the air of elegance and mutual resemblance in the buildings, of smartness approaching to splendor in the equipages, of fashion in the costume, of the activity of commerce in the movements, and of newness and neatness in every part of the one, contrasted in the other with a strong character of poverty and neglect, with houses as various in their structure as in their materials, with dresses equally dissimilar in point of color, substance, and style, with carriages which seem never to have known the spirit of improvement, and with a general listlessness of manner, the result of indolence, apathy, and want of occupation. With all this, however, the novelty which attends the entrance of the harbor at Dieppe, is not only striking, but interesting. It is not thus at Calais, where half the individuals you meet in the streets are of your own country; where English fashions and manufactures are commonly adopted; and where you hear your native tongue, not only in the hotels, but even the very beggars follow you with, "I say, give me un sou, s'il vous please." But this is not the only advantage which the road by Dieppe from London to Paris possesses, over that by Calais. There is a saving of distance, amounting to twenty miles on the English, and sixty on the French side of the water; the expence is still farther decreased by the yet lower rate of charges at the inns; and, while the ride to the French metropolis by the one route is through a most uninteresting country, with no other objects of curiosity than Amiens, Beauvais, and Abbeville; by the other it passes through a province unrivalled for its fertility and for the beauty of its landscape, and which is allowed by the French themselves to be the garden of the kingdom. Rouen, Vernon, Mantes, and St. Germain, names all more or less connected with English history, successively present themselves to the traveller; and, during the greater part of his journey, his path lies by the side of a noble stream, diversified beyond almost every other by the windings of its channel, and the islands which stud its surface. The only evil to counterbalance the claims of Dieppe is, that the packets do not sail daily, although they profess and actually advertise to that effect; but wait till what they consider a sufficient freight of passengers is assembled, so that, either at Dieppe or Brighton, a person runs the risk of being detained, as has more than once happened to myself, a circumstance that never occurs at Dover. There is still a third point of passage upon our southern coast, and one that has of late been considerably frequented, from Southampton to Havre; but this I never tried, and do not know what it has to recommend it, except to those who are proceeding to Caen or to the western parts of France. The voyage is longer and more uncertain, the distance by land between London and Paris is also greater, nor does it offer equal facilities as to inns and public carriages. Dieppe is situated on a low tongue of land, but from the sea appears to great advantage; characterized as it is by its old castle, an assemblage of various forms and ages, placed insulated upon an eminence to the west, and by the domes and towers of its churches. The mouth of the harbor is narrow, and inclosed by two long stone piers, on one of which stands an elegant crucifix, raised by the fathers of the mission; to the other has lately been affixed a stone, with an inscription, stating that the Duchess d'Angoulême landed there on her return to her native country; but here is no measure of her foot, no votive pillar, as are to be seen at Calais, to commemorate a similar honor done to the inhabitants by the monarch. A small house on the western pier, is, however, more deserving of notice than either the inscription or the crucifix: it was built by Louis XVIth, for the residence of a sailor, who, by saving the lives of shipwrecked mariners, had deserved well of his sovereign and his country. Its front bears, "A J'n. A'r. Bouzard, pour ses services maritimes;" but there was originally a second inscription in honor of the king, which has been carefully erased. The fury of the revolution could pardon nothing that bore the least relation to royalty; or surely a monument like this, the reward of courage and calculated to inspire only the best of feelings[2], might have been allowed to have remained uninjured. The French are wiser than we are in erecting these public memorials for public virtues: they better understand the art of producing an effect, and they know that such gratifications bestowed upon the living are seldom thrown away. We rarely give them but to the dead. Capt. Manby, to whom above one hundred and thirty shipwrecked mariners are even now indebted for their existence, and whose invention will probably be the means of preservation to thousands, is allowed to live in comparative obscurity; while in France, a mere pilot, for having saved the lives of only eight individuals, had a residence built for him at the public expence, received an immediate gratification of one thousand francs, enjoyed a pension during his life, and, with his name and his exploits, now occupies a conspicuous place in the history of the duchy. Within the piers, the harbor widens into a stone basin, capable of holding two hundred vessels, and full of water at the flow of the tide; but at the ebb exhibiting little more than a sheet of mud, with a small stream meandering through it. Round the harbor is built the town, which contains above twenty thousand inhabitants, and is singularly picturesque, as well from its situation, backed as it is by the steep cliff to the east, which, instead of terminating here abruptly, takes an inland direction, as from the diversity in the forms and materials of the houses of the quay, some of which are of stone, others of grey flint, more of plaster with their timbers uncovered and painted of different colors, but most of brick, not uncommonly ornamented, with roofs as steep as those of the Thuilleries, and full of projecting lucarnes. This remark, however, applies only to the quay: in its streets, Dieppe is conspicuous among French towns for the uniformity of its buildings. After the bombardment in 1694, when the English, foiled near Brest, wreaked their vengeance upon Dieppe, and reduced the whole to ashes, the town was rebuilt on a regular plan, agreeably to a royal ordinance. Hence this is commonly regarded as one of the handsomest places in France, and you will find it mentioned as such by most authors; but the unfortunate architect who was employed in rebuilding it, got no other reward than general complaints and the nickname of M. Gâteville. The inconveniences arising from the arrangements of the houses which he erected must have been serious; for we find that sixty years afterwards an order of council was procured, allowing the inhabitants to make some alterations that they considered most essential to their comfort. Upon the quay there is occasionally somewhat of the activity of commerce; but elsewhere it is as I have observed before, as well with the people as the buildings. As far as the houses are concerned, a little care and paint would remove their squalid aspect: to an English eye it is singularly offensive; but it cannot possibly be so to the French, among whom it seems almost universal. To a painter Dieppe must be a source of great delight: the situation, the buildings, the people offer an endless variety; but nothing is more remarkable than the costume of the females of the middle and lower classes, most of whom wear high pyramidal caps, with long lappets entirely concealing their hair, red, blue, or black corsets, large wooden shoes, black stockings, and full scarlet petticoats of the coarsest woollen, pockets of some different die attached to the outside, and not uncommonly the appendage of a key or corkscrew: occasionally too the color of their costume is still farther diversified by a chequered handkerchief and white apron. The young are generally pretty; the old, tanned and ugly; and the transition from youth to age seems instantaneous: labor and poverty have destroyed every intermediate gradation; but, whether young or old, they have all the same good-humored look, and appear generally industrious, though almost incessantly talking. Even on Sundays or feast-days, bonnets are seldom to be seen, but round their necks are suspended large silver or gilt ornaments, usually crosses, while long gold ear-rings drop from either side of their head, and their shoes frequently glitter with paste buckles of an enormous size. Such is the present costume of the females at Dieppe, and throughout the whole Pays de Caux; and in this description, the lover of antiquarian research will easily trace a resemblance to the attire of the women of England, in the XVth and XVIth centuries. As to the cap, which the Cauchoise wears when she appears _en grand costume_, its very prototype is to be found in _Strutt's Ancient Dresses_. Decorated with silver before, and with lace streaming behind, it towers on the head of the stiff-necked complacent wearer, whose locks appear beneath, arrayed with statuary precision. Nor is its antiquity solely confined to its form and fashion; for, descending from the great grandmother to the great grand-daughter, it remains as an heir-loom in the family from generation unto generation. In my former visit to Normandy, three years ago, we first saw this head-dress at the theatre at Rouen, and my companion was so struck with it that he made the sketch, of which I send you a copy. The costume of the females of somewhat higher rank is very becoming: they wear muslin caps, opening in front to shew their graceful ringlets, colored gowns, scarlet handkerchiefs, and black aprons. [Illustration: Head-Dress of Women of the Pays de Caux] But nothing connected with the costume or manners of the people at Dieppe is equally interesting as what refers to the inhabitants of the suburb called Pollet; and I will therefore conclude my letter, by extracting from the historian of the place[3] his account of these men, which, though written many years ago, is true in the main even in our days, and it is to be hoped will, in its most important respects, continue so for a length of time to come. "Three-fourths of the natives of this part of the town are fishermen, and not less effectually distinguished from the citizens of Dieppe by their name of Poltese, taken from their place of residence, than by the difference in their dress and language, the simplicity of their manners, and the narrow extent of their acquirements. To the present hour they continue to preserve the same costume as in the XVIth century; wearing trowsers covered with wide short petticoats, which open in the middle to afford room for the legs to move, and woollen waistcoats laced in the front with ribands, and tucked below into the waistband of their trowsers. Over these waistcoats is a close coat, without buttons or fastenings of any kind, which falls so low as to hide their petticoats and extend a foot or more beyond them. These articles of apparel are usually of cloth or serge of a uniform color, and either red or blue; for they interdict every other variation, except that all the seams of their dress are faced with white silk galloon, full an inch in width. To complete the whole, instead of hats, they have on their heads caps of velvet or colored cloth, forming a _tout-ensemble_ of attire, which is evidently ancient, but far from unpicturesque or displeasing. Thus clad, the Poltese, though in the midst of the kingdom, have the appearance of a distinct and foreign colony; whilst, occupied incessantly in fishing, they have remained equally strangers to the civilization and politeness, which the progress of letters during the last two centuries has diffused over France. Nay, scarcely are they acquainted with four hundred words of the French language; and these they pronounce with an idiom exclusively their own, adding to each an oath, by way of epithet; a habit so inveterate with them, that even at confession, at the moment of seeking absolution for the practice, it is no uncommon thing with them to _swear_ they will be guilty of it no more. To balance, however, this defect, their morals are uncorrupted, their fidelity is exemplary, and they are laborious and charitable, and zealous for the honor of their country, in whose cause they often bleed, as well as for their priests, in defence of whom they once threatened to throw the Archbishop of Rouen into the river, and were well nigh executing their threats." Footnotes: [1] The chalk in the cliff, in the immediate vicinity of Dieppe, is divided at intervals of about two feet each by narrow strata of flint, generally horizontal, and composed in some cases of separate nodules, which are not uncommonly split, in others of a continuous compressed mass, about two or three inches thick and of very uncertain extent, but the strata are not regular. [2] _Goube Histoire de Normandie_, III. p. 188.--In _Cadet Gassicourt Lettres sur Normandie_, I. p. 68, the story of Bouzard is given still more at length. [3] _Histoire de Dieppe_, II. p. 56. [Illustration: Entrance to the Castle at Dieppe] LETTER II. DIEPPE--CASTLE--CHURCHES--HISTORY OF THE PLACE--FEAST OF THE ASSUMPTION. (_Dieppe, June_, 1818.) The bombardment of this town, alluded to in my last, was so effectual in its operation, that, excepting the castle and the two churches, the place can boast of little to arrest the attention of the antiquary, or of the curious traveller. These three objects were indeed almost all that escaped the conflagration; and for this they were indebted to their insulated situations, the first on an eminence unconnected with the houses of the place, the other two in their respective cemeteries. The hill on which the castle stands is steep; and the building, as well from its position, as from its high walls, flanked with towers and bastions, has an imposing appearance. In its general outline it bears a resemblance to the castle of Stirling, but it has not the same claims to attention in an architectural point of view. It is a confused mass of various æras, and its parts are chiefly modern: nor is there any single feature that deserves to be particularized for beauty or singularity; yet, as a whole, a picturesque and pleasing effect results from the very confusion and irregularity of its towers, roofs, and turrets; and this is also enhanced by a row of lofty arches, thrown across a ravine near the entrance, supporting the bridge, and appearing at a distance like the remains of a Roman aqueduct. What seems to be the most ancient part is a high quadrangular tower with lofty pointed pannels in the four walls; and though inferior in antiquity, an observer accustomed only to the English castellated style, is struck by the variety of numerous circular towers with conical roofs, resembling those which flanked the gates of the town. Some of these gates still remain perfect; and one of them, leading to the sea, now serves as a military prison. It was the Sieur des Marêts[4], the first governor of the place, who began this castle shortly after the year 1443, when Louis the XIth, then dauphin, freed Dieppe from the dominion of the English, attacking in person, and carrying by assault, the formidable fortress, constructed by Talbot, in the suburb of Pollet. Of this, not a vestige now remains: the whole was levelled with the ground in 1689; though, at a period of one hundred and twenty years after it was originally taken and dismantled, it had again been made a place of strength by the Huguenots, and had been still further fortified under Henry IVth, in whose reign the present castle was completed; for it was not till this time that permission was given to the inhabitants to add to it a keep. In its perfect state, whilst defended by this keep, and still further protected by copious out-works and bomb-proof casemates, its strength was great; but the period of its power was of short duration; for the then perturbed state of France naturally gave rise to anxiety on the part of the government, lest fortresses should serve as rallying points to the faction of the league; and the castle of Dieppe was consequently left with little more than the semblance of its former greatness. Of the churches here, that of St. Jaques is considerably the finest building, and is indeed an excellent specimen of what has been called the _decorated English style of architecture_, the style of this church nearly coinciding in its principal lines with that which prevailed in our own country during the reigns of the second and third Edward. It was begun about the year 1260, but was little advanced at the commencement of the following century; nor were its nineteen chapels, the works of the piety of individuals, completed before 1350. The roof of the choir remained imperfect till ninety years afterwards, whilst that of the transept is as recent as 1628[5]. The most ancient work is discernible in the transepts, but the lines are obscured by later additions. A cloister gallery fronted by delicate mullions runs round the nave and choir, and the extent and arrangement of the exterior would induce a stranger, unacquainted with the history of the building, to suppose that he was entering a conventual or cathedral church. The parts long most generally admired by the French, though they have always been miserable judges of gothic architecture, were the vaulted roof, and the pendants of the Lady-Chapel. The latter were originally ornamented with female figures, representing the Sibyls, made of colored terra cotta, and of such excellent workmanship, that Cardinal Barberini, when he visited this chapel in 1647, declared he had seen nothing of the kind, not even in Italy, superior to them for the beauty and delicacy of their execution; but they are now gone, and, according to Noel[6], were destroyed at the time of the bombardment. The state, however, of the roof does not seem to warrant this observation; and, contrary also to what he says, the pendants between the Lady-Chapel and the choir are still perfect, and serve, together with numerous small canopies in the chapel itself, to give a clear idea of what the whole must have been originally. One of the most elegant of the decorations of the church is a spirally-twisted column, elaborately carved, with a peculiarly fanciful and beautiful capital, placed against a pillar that separates the two south-eastern chapels of the choir. The richest object is a stone-screen to a chantry on the north side, which is divide into several canopies, whose upper part is still full of a profusion of sculpture, though the lower is sadly mutilated. I could not ascertain its history or use; but I do not suppose it is of earlier date than the age of Francis Ist, as the Roman or Italian style is blended with the Gothic arch. The Chapel of the Sepulchre, is not uncommonly pointed out as an object of admiration. There is certainly some, handsome sculpture round the portal; but it is not this for which your admiration is required: you are told that the chapel was made in 1612, at the expence of a traveller, then just returned from Palestine, and that it offers a faithful representation of the Holy Sepulchre itself at Jerusalem; by which if we are to understand that the wretched, grisly, painted, wooden figures of the three Maries, and other holy women and holy men, assembled round a disgusting representation of the dead Saviour, have their prototype in Judea, I can only add I am sorry for it: for my own part, putting aside all question of the propriety or effect of symbolical worship, and meaning nothing offensive to the Romish faith, I must be allowed to say that most assuredly I can conceive nothing less qualified to excite feelings of devotion, or more certain to awaken contempt and loathing, than the images of this description, the tinselled virgins, and the wretched daubs, nick-named paintings, which abound in the churches of Picardy and Normandy, the only catholic provinces which I have yet visited; so that, if the taste of the inhabitants is to be estimated by the decoration of the religious buildings, this faculty must be rated very low indeed. The exterior of the church is as richly ornamented as the inside; and not a buttress, arch, or canopy is without the remains of crumbled carving, worn by time, or disfigured by the ruder hand of calvinistic or revolutionary violence. Tradition refers the erection of this edifice to the English. From the certainty with which a date may be assigned to almost every part, it is very interesting to the lover of architecture. The Lady-Chapel is also perhaps one of the last specimens of Gothic art, but still very pure, except in some of the smaller ornaments, such, as the niches in the tabernacles, which end in escalop shells. [Illustration: Font in the Church of St. Remi, at Dieppe] The other church is dedicated to St. Remi, and is a building of the XVIIth century; though, judging from some of its pillars, it would be pronounced considerably more ancient. Those of the transept and of the central tower are lofty and clustered, and of extraordinary thickness; the rest are circular and plain, and not very unlike the columns of our earliest Norman or Saxon churches, though of greater proportionate altitude. The capitals of those in the choir are singularly capricious, with figures, scrolls, &c.; but it is the capriciousness of the gothic verging into Grecian, not of the Norman. On the pendants of the nave are painted various ornaments, each accompanied by a mitre. The eastern has only a mitre and cross, with the date 1669; the western the same, with 1666; denoting the æra of the edifice, which was scarcely finished, when a bomb, in 1694, destroyed the roof of the choir, and this remains to the present hour incomplete. The most remarkable object in the church is a _bénitier_ of coarse red granite, on whose basin is an inscription, to me illegible. The annexed sketches will give you some idea of it: [Illustration: Sketch of inscription] In the letters one looks naturally for a date: the figures that alternate with them are probably mitres, and, like those on the roof, indicate the supreme jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Rouen in the place. Dieppe itself is, by its own historians[7], said to boast an origin as early as the days of Charlemagne[8], who is reported to have built a fortress on the scite of the present town, and to have called it Bertheville, in honor of the Berthas, his mother and his daughter. Bertheville was one of the first places taken by the Normans, by whom the appellation was changed to Dyppe or Dieppe, a word which in their language is said to signify a good anchorage. Other writers[9], however, treat the whole of the early chronicle of Dieppe as a fiction, and maintain, that even at the beginning of the XIth century the town had no existence, and the place was only known as the port of Arques, within whose territory it was comprehended; nor was it till the end of the same century that the inhabitants of Arques were, partly from the convenience of the fisheries, and partly from the advantages of the salt trade, induced to form this settlement. Whatever date may be assigned to the foundation of Dieppe, it is frequently contended that William the Conqueror embarked here for the invasion of England, and it seems undoubted that he sailed hence for his new kingdom in the next year, agreeably to the following passage from Ordericus Vitalis, (p. 509) by which you will observe, that the river had at that time the same name as the town, "Deinde sextâ nocte Decembris ad ostium amnis Deppæ ultra oppidtim Archas accessit, primâque vigiliâ gelidæ noctis Austro vela dedit, et mane portum oppositi littoris, (quem Vvicenesium vocitant) prospero cursu arripuit." In 1188, our Henry II built a castle upon the same hill on which the present fortress stands. This strong hold, however, afforded little protection; for we find that, in 1195, Philip Augustus of France, entering Normandy with an hostile army, laid siege to Dieppe, and set fire not only to the town, but also to the shipping in the harbor. Two years subsequently to this event, Dieppe ceased to form a part of the demesne of the Sovereign of the Duchy. Richard the Ist had given great offence to Walter, Archbishop of Rouen, by persisting in the erection of Château Gaillard, in the vicinity of Andelys, which belonged to the archbishop in right of his see; and though our lion-hearted monarch was not appalled either by the papal interdict or by the showers of blood that fell upon his workmen, yet at length he thought it advisable to purchase at once the forgiveness of the prelate and the secular seignory of Andelys, by surrendering to him, as an equivalent, the towns and lordships of Dieppe and Louviers, the land and forest of Alihermont, the land and lordship of Bouteilles, and the mills of Rouen. This exchange was regarded as so great a subject of triumph to the archbishop, that he caused the memory of it to be perpetuated by inscriptions upon crosses in various parts of Rouen, some of which remained as late as 1610, when Taillepied wrote his _Recueil des Antiquitéz et Singularitéz de la Ville de Rouen_. The following lines are given as one of these inscriptions in the _Gallia Christiana_[10]: "Vicisti, Galtere, tui sunt signa triumphi Deppa, Locoveris, Alacris-mons, Butila, molta, Deppa maris portus, Alacris-mons locus amoenus, Villa Locoveris, rus Butila, molta per urbem. Hactenus hæc Regis Richardi jura fuere; Hæc rex sancivit, hæc papa, tibique tuere[11]." Nor was this the only memorial of the fact; for the advantages of the exchange were so generally recognized, that the name of Walter became proverbial; and to this day it is said in Normandy of a man who over-reaches another, "c'est un fin Gautier." It might be inferred from the terms of the bargain in which Dieppe merely appears as one of the items of the account, that it was then a place of little consequence; yet, one of the old chroniclers speaks of it at the time it was taken by the French under Philip Augustus, as "portus famâ celeberrimus atque Villa potens opibus." These historians, however, of former days are not always the most accurate; but from this period the annals of the place are preserved, and at certain epochs it is far from unimportant in French history: as, when Talbot raised in 1442 the fortress called the Bastille, a defence so strong and in so well-chosen a situation, that even Vauban honored its memory by lamenting its destruction; when the inhabitants fought with the Flemings in the channel, in 1555; when Henry IVth, with an army of less than four thousand men, fled hither in 1589, as to his last place of refuge, winning the hearts of the people by his frank address:--"Mes amis, point de cérémonie, je ne demande que vos coeurs, bon pain, bon vin, et bon visage d'hôtes;" and when, as I have already mentioned, the town sustained from our fleet a bombardment of three days' duration, and was reduced by it to ashes. For the excellence of its sailors, Dieppe has at all times been renowned: no less an authority than the President de Thou has pronounced them to be men, "penes quos præcipua rei nauticæ gloria semper fuit;" and they have proved their claims to this encomium, not only by having supplied to the navy of France the celebrated Abraham Du Quesne, the successful rival of the great Ruyter, but still more so by having taken the lead in expeditions to Florida[12]; by having established a colony for the promotion of the fur trade in Canada, if indeed they were not the original discoverers of that country; and by having been the first Christians who ever made a settlement on the coast of Senegal. This last-mentioned event took place, according to French writers, at as early a period as the XIVth century; and, though the establishment was not of long duration, its effects have been permanent; for it is owing to the consignments of ivory then made to Dieppe, that many of the inhabitants were induced to become workers in that substance; a trade which they preserve to the present time, and carry the art to such perfection that they have few rivals. This and the making of lace are the principal employments of such of the natives as are not engaged in the fishery. In the earlier ages of the Duchy, the inhabitants of the Pays de Caux found a more effectual and important employment in the salt-works which were then very numerous on the coast, but which have long since been suffered to fall into decay. Ancient charters, recorded in the _Neustria Pia_, trace these works on the coast of Dieppe, and at Bouteilles on the right of the valley of Arques, to as remote a period as 1027; and they at the same time prove the existence of a canal between Dieppe and Bouteilles, by which in 1390 vessels loaded with salt were wont to pass. But here, as in England, such works have been abandoned, from the greater facility of communication between distant places, and of obtaining salt by other means. At present the only manufacture on the beach is that of kelp, for which a large quantity of the coarser sea-weeds is burned; but the fisheries, which are not carried on with equal energy in any other port of France, are the chief support of the place. The sailors of Dieppe were not confined to their own seas; for they used to pursue the cod fishery on the coast of Newfoundland with considerable success. The herring fishery however was a greater staple; and previously to the revolution, when alone a just estimate could be formed of such matters, the quantity of herrings caught by the boats belonging to Dieppe averaged more than eight thousand lasts a year, and realized above £100,000. This fishery is said to have been established here as early as the XIth century[13]. From sixty to eighty boats, each of about thirty tons and carrying fifteen men, were annually sent to the eastern coast of England about the end of August; and then, again, in the middle of October nearly double the quantity of vessels, but of a smaller size, were engaged in the same pursuit on their own shores, where the fish by this time repair. The mackerel fishery was an object of scarcely less importance than that of herrings, producing in general about one hundred and seventy thousand barrels annually. Great quantities of these fish are eaten salted and dried, in which state they afford a general article of food among the lower classes in Normandy. Surely this would be deserving of the attention and imitation of our merchants at home. During the war with England this branch of trade necessarily suffered; but Napoléon did every thing in his power to assist the town, by giving it peculiar advantages as to ships sailing under licences. He succeeded in his views; and, thus patronized, Dieppe flourished exceedingly, and the gains brought in by the privateers connected with the port, added not a little to its prosperity. Hence to this hour the inhabitants regret the peace, although the town cannot fail to be benefitted by the fresh impulse given to the fisheries, and the quantity of money circulated by the travellers who are continually passing. Napoléon intended also to bestow an additional boon upon the place. A canal had been projected many years ago, in the time of the Maréchal de Vauban, and was to have extended to Pontoise, through the fertile districts of Gournay and Neufchâtel, and to have communicated by different branches with the Seine and Oise. This plan, which had been forgotten during so many reigns, Napoléon determined to carry into effect, and the excavations were actually begun under his orders. But the events which succeeded his Russian campaign put a stop to this, as to all similar labors: the plan is now, however, again in agitation, and, if performed, Dieppe will soon become one of the most important ports in France. By the revolution Dieppe was emancipated from the dominion of the Archbishop of Rouen, who, by virtue of the cession made by Richard Coeur de Lion, exercised a despotic sway, even until the dissolution of the _ancien régime_. His privileges were oppressive, and he had and made use of the right of imposing a variety of taxes, which extended even to the articles of provision imported either by land or sea. Yet it must be admitted that the progress of civilization had previously done much towards the removal of the most obnoxious of the abuses. The times, happily, no longer existed, when, as in the XIIth century, the prelate, with a degree of indecency scarcely to be credited, especially under an ecclesiastical government, did not scruple to convert the wages of sin into a source of revenue, as scandalous in its nature as it must have been contemptible in its amount, by exacting from every prostitute a weekly tax of a farthing, for liberty to exercise her profession[14]. Many uncouth and frivolous ecclesiastical rites and ceremonies of the middle ages, which good sense had banished from most other parts of France, where they once were common, still lingered in the archbishop's seignory. Thus, at no very remote period, it was customary on the Feast of Pentecost to cast burning flakes of tow from the vaulting of the church; this stage-trick being considered as a representation of the descent of the fiery tongues. The Virgin, the great idol of popery, was honored by a pageant, which was celebrated with extraordinary splendor; and as I must initiate you in the mysteries of Catholicism, I think you will be well pleased to receive a detailed account of it. The ceremony I consider as curiously illustrative of the manners of the rulers, of the ruled, and of the times; and I will only add, by way of preface, that it was instituted by the governor, Des Marêts, in 1443, in honor of the final expulsion of the English, and that he himself consented to be the first master of the _Guild of the Assumption_, under whose auspices and direction it was conducted.--About Midsummer the principal inhabitants used to assemble at the Hôtel de Ville, and there they selected the girl of the most exemplary character, to represent the Virgin Mary, and with her six other young women, to act the parts of the Daughters of Sion. The honor of figuring in this holy drama was greatly coveted; and the historian of Dieppe gravely assures us, that the earnestness felt on the occasion mainly contributed to the preservation of that purity of manners and that genuine piety, which subsisted in this town longer than in any other of France! But the election of the Virgin was not sufficient: a representative of St. Peter was also to be found among the clergy; and the laity were so far favored that they were permitted to furnish the eleven other apostles. This done, upon the fourteenth of August the Virgin was laid in a cradle of the form of a tomb, and was carried early in the morning, attended by her suite of either sex, to the church of St. Jacques; while before the door of the master of the guild was stretched a large carpet, embroidered with verses in letters of gold, setting forth his own good qualities, and his love for the holy Mary. Hither also, as soon as _Laudes_ had been sung, the procession repaired from the church, and then they were joined by the governor of the town, the members of the guild, the municipal officers, and the clergy of the parish of St. Remi. Thus attended, they paraded the town, singing hymns, which were accompanied by a full band. The procession was increased by the great body of the inhabitants; and its impressiveness was still farther augmented by numbers of the youth of either sex, who assumed the garb and attributes of their patron saints, and mixed in the immediate train of the principal actors. They then again repaired to the church, where _Te Deum_ was sung by the full choir, in commemoration of the victory over the English, and high mass was performed, and the Sacrament administered to the whole party. During the service, a scenic representation was given of the Assumption of the Virgin. A scaffolding was raised, reaching nearly to the top of the dome, and supporting an azure canopy intended to emulate the "spangled vault of heaven;" and about two feet below the summit of it appeared, seated on a splendid throne, an old man as the image of the Father Almighty, a representation equally absurd and impious, and which could alone be tolerated by the votaries of the worst superstitions of popery. On either side four pasteboard angels of the size of men floated in the air, and flapped their wings in cadence to the sounds of the organ; while above was suspended a large triangle, at whose corners were placed three smaller angels, who, at the intermission of each office, performed upon a set of little bells the hymn of "_Ave Maria gratiâ Dei plena per Secula_," &c. accompanied by a larger angel on each side with a trumpet. To complete this portion of the spectacle, two others, below the old man's feet, held tapers, which were lighted as the services began, and extinguished at their close; on which occasions the figures were made to express reluctance by turning quickly about; so that it required some dexterity to apply the extinguishers. At the commencement of the mass, two of the angels by the side of the Almighty descended to the foot of the altar, and, placing themselves by the tomb, in which a pasteboard figure of the Virgin had been substituted for her living representative, gently raised it to the feet of the Father. The image, as it mounted, from time to time lifted its head and extended its arms, as if conscious of the approaching beatitude, then, after having received the benediction and been encircled by another angel with a crown of glory, it gradually disappeared behind the clouds. At this instant a buffoon, who all the time had been playing his antics below, burst into an extravagant fit of joy; at one moment clapping his hands most violently, at the next stretching himself out as if dead. Finally, he ran up to the feet of the old man, and hid himself under his legs, so as to shew only his head. The people called him _Grimaldi_, an appellation that appears to have belonged to him by usage, and it is a singular coincidence that the surname of the noblest family of Genoa the Proud, thus assigned by the rude rabble of a sea-port to their buffoon, should belong of right to the sire and son, whose _mops_ and _mowes_ afford pastime to the upper gallery at Covent-Garden. Thus did the pageant proceed in all its grotesque glory, and, while-- "These labor'd nothings in so strange a style Amazed the unlearned, and made the learned smile," the children shouted aloud for their favorite Grimaldi; the priests, accompanied with bells, trumpets, and organs, thundered out the mass; the pious were loud in their exclamations of rapture at the devotion of the Virgin; and the whole church was filled with "un non so che di rauco ed indistinto".--But I have told you enough of this foolish story, of which it were well if the folly had been the worst. The sequel was in the same taste and style, and ended with the euthanasia of all similar representations, a hearty dinner. Footnotes: [4] _Description de la Haute Normandie_, I. p. 130. [5] _Histoire de Dieppe_, II. p. 86. [6] _Essals sur le Département de la Seine Inférieure_, I. p. 119. [7] _Histoire de Dieppe_, I. p. 1. [8] Another author, mentioned by the Abbé Fontenu, in the _Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions_, X. p. 413, carries the antiquity of the place still eight centuries higher, representing it as the _Portus Ictius_, whence Julius Cæsar sailed for Britain. [9] _Description de la Haute Normandie_, I. p. 125. [10] Vol. XI. p. 55. [11] The deed itself under which this exchange was made is also preserved in _Duchesne's Scriptores Normanni_, and in the _Gallia Christiana_, XI. _Instr_. p. 27, where it is entitled "_Celebris commutatio facta inter Richardum I, regem Angliæ et Walterium Archiepisc. Rotomagensem_." It is worth remarking, in illustration of the feudal rights and customs, how much importance is attached in this instrument to the mills and the seignorage for grinding: the king expressly stipulates that every body "tam milites quàm clerici, et omnes homines, tam de feodis militum quàm de prebendis, sequentur molendina de _Andeli_, sicut consueverunt et debent, et moltura erit nostra. Archiepiscopus autem et homines sui de _Fraxinis_ (a manor specially reserved,) molent ubi idem Archiepiscopus volet, et si voluerit molere apud _Andeli_, dabunt molturas suas, sicut alii ibidem molentes. In escambium autem ... concessimus ... omnia molendina quæ nos habuimus Rotomagi, quando hæc permutatio facta fuit, integrè cum omni sequelâ et molturâ suâ, sine aliquo retinemento eorum quæ ad molendinam pertinent vel ad molturam, et cum omnibus libertatibus et liberis consuetudinibus quas solent et debent habere. Nec alicui alii licebit molendinum facere ibidem ad detrimentum prædictorum molendinorum; et debet Archiepiscopus solvere eleemosinas antiquitùs statutas de iisdem molendinis." [12] A very copious and interesting account of the nautical discoveries made by the inhabitants of Dieppe, and of their merits as sailors, is given by Goube, in his _Histoire du Duché de Normandie_, III, p. 172-178. [13] _Goube, Histoire de Normandie_, III, p. 170. [14] _Noel, Essais sur le Département de la Seine Inférieure_, I. p. 194. LETTER III. CÆSAR'S CAMP--CASTLE OF ARQUES. (_Dieppe, June_, 1818) After having explored Dieppe, I must now conduct you without the walls, to the castle of Arques and to Cæsar's camp, both of which are in its immediate neighborhood. At some future time you may thank me for pointing out these objects to you, for should you ever visit Dieppe, your residence may be prolonged beyond your wishes, by the usual mischances which attend the traveller. And in that case, a walk to these relics of military architecture will furnish a better employment than thumbing the old newspaper of the inn, or even than the contemplation of the diligences as they come in, or of the packets as they are not going out, for I am anticipating that you are becalmed, and that the pennons are flagging from the mast. With respect to my walk, let me be allowed to begin by introducing you to a friend of mine at Dieppe, M. Gaillon, an obliging, sensible, and well-informed young man, as well as an ardent botanist, my companion in this walk, and the source of much of the information I possess respecting these places. The intrenchment, commonly known by the name of Cæsar's camp, or even more generally in the country by that of "_la Cité de Limes_," and in old writings, of "_Civitas Limarum_," is situated upon the brink of the cliff, about two miles to the east of Dieppe, on the road leading to Eu, and still preserves in a state of perfection its ancient form and character; though necessarily reduced in the height of its vallum by the operation of time, and probably also diminished in its size by the gradual encroachments of the ocean. Upon its shape, which is an irregular triangle, it may be well to make a preliminary observation, that this was necessarily prescribed by the scite; and that, however the Romans might commonly prefer a square outline for their temporary encampments, we have abundant proofs that they only adhered to this plan when it was perfectly conformable to the nature of the ground, but that when they fortified any commanding position, upon which a rectangular rampart could not be seated, their intrenchments were made to follow the sinuosities of the hill. In the present instance the northern side, the longest, extending nearly five thousand feet, fronts the channel, and it required no other defence than was afforded by the perpendicular face of the cliff, here more than two hundred feet in height. The western side, the second in length, and not greatly inferior to the first, after running about three thousand feet from the sea, in a tolerably straight line southward, suddenly bends to the east, and forms two semi-circles, of one of which the radius is turned from the camp, and of the other into it. The third side is scarcely more than half the length of the others, and runs nearly straight from south to north, where it again unites with the cliff. Of the two last-mentioned sides the first is difficult of access; from its position at the summit of a steep hill; but it is still protected by a vallum from thirty to forty feet high, and between the sea and the entrance nearest to it, a length of about three hundred yards, by a wide exterior ditch with other out-works, as well as by an inner fosse, faint traces of which only now remain. Hence to the next and large entrance is a distance of about two thousand feet; and in this space the interior fosse is still very visible; but the great abruptness of the hill forbade an outer one. You, who are not a stranger to the pleasures of botany, would have shared my delight at finding upon the perpendicular side of this entrance the beautiful _Caucalis grandiflora_, growing in great luxuriance upon almost bare chalk, and with its snowy flowers resembling, as you look down to it, the common species of _Iberis_ of our gardens. The _Asperula cynanchica_, and other plants peculiar to a chalky soil, are also found here in plenty, together with the _Eryngium campestre_, a vegetable of extreme rarity in England, but most abundant throughout the north of France. _Papaver hybridum_ is likewise common in the neighboring corn fields round. Returning from this short botanical digression, let me tell you that the position considered by some as the southern side of the fortification, but which I have described as the sinuous part of the western, has its ramparts of less height. Not so the eastern: on this, as being the most destitute of all natural defence, (for here there is no hill, and the eye ranges over an immense level tract, stopped only by distant woods,) is raised an agger, full forty-five feet in height, and, at a further distance, is added an outward trench nearly fifty feet wide, though in its present state not more than three feet deep, and now serving for a garden. Such is the external appearance of this camp, which, seen from the sea, or on the approach either by the west or south, cannot fail to strike from the boldness of its position; but the effect of the interior is still more striking; for here, while on one side the horizon is lost in the immensity of the ocean, on the other two the view is narrowly circumscribed by the lofty bulwark, at whose feet are almost every where discernible the remains of the trenches I have already noticed, more than thirty feet in width. Nor is this the only remarkable circumstance; for it is still more unaccountable to observe, extending nearly across the encampment, the traces of an ancient fosse not less than one hundred and fifty feet wide, and, though in most places shallow, terminating towards the sea in a deep ravine. Internally the camp appears to have been also divided into three parts, in one of which it has been supposed, from a heap of stones which till lately remained, that there was originally a place of greater strength; while in another, distinguished by some irregular elevations, it is conjectured that there was a wall, the defence probably to the keep. [Illustration: Plan of Cæsar's Camp, near Dieppe] But I must tell you that these conjectures are none of my own, nor could I have had any opportunity of making them; the stones and the hillocks having disappeared before the operations of the plough. Such as they are, I have borrowed them from a dissertation by the Abbé de Fontenu[15], a copy of whose engraving of the place I insert. Indebted as I am to him for his hints, I can, however, by no means subscribe to his reasoning, by which he labors with great erudition to prove that, neither the popular tradition which ascribes this camp to Cæsar, nor its name, evidently Roman, nor some coins and medals of the same nation that have been found here, are at all evidences of its Latin origin; but that, as we have no proof that Cæsar was ever in the vicinity of Dieppe, as the whole is in such excellent preservation, (a point I beg leave to deny,) and as the vallum is full thrice the height of that of other Roman encampments in France[16], we are bound to infer it is a work of far more modern times, and probably was erected by Talbot, the Cæsar of the English[17], while besieging Dieppe in the middle of the XVth century. This opinion of the learned Abbé I quote, principally for the purpose of shewing how far a man of sense and acquirements maybe led astray from truth and probability in support of a favorite theory. Nothing but the love of theory could surely have induced him to suppose that this strong hold was erected for a purpose to which it could in no wise be applicable, as the intervening ground prevents all possibility of seeing any part of Dieppe from the camp, or to ascribe it to times when earth-works were no longer used. In Normandy and Picardy are other camps, more evidently of Roman construction, which are likewise ascribed to Cæsar[18]; with much the same reason perhaps as every thing wonderful in Scotland is referred to Fingal, to King Arthur in Cornwall, and in the north of England and Wales to the devil. [Illustration: General View of the Castle of Arques] Upon the origin of the castle of Arques, it is somewhat unfortunate for the learned that there is not an equal field for ingenious conjecture, its antiquity being incontestible. Du Moulin, the most comprehensive, though the most credulous of Norman historians, one who, not content with dealing in miracles by wholesale, tells us how the devil changed himself into a postillion, to apprize an alehouse-keeper of the fate of the posterity of Rollo, may still be entitled to credit, when the theme is merely stone and mortar; and from him we may conclude that Arques was a place of importance at the time of William the Conqueror, as it gave the title of Count to his uncle, who then possessed it, and who, confiding perhaps in the strength of his fortress, and secretly instigated by Henry Ist, of France, usurped the title of Duke of Normandy, but was defeated by his nephew, and finally obliged to surrender his castle. This, however, was not till, after a long siege, in which Arques proved itself impregnable to every thing but famine. In the following reign, we again find mention made of Arques, as a portion given by Robert, Duke of Normandy, to induce Helie, son of Lambert of St. Saen, to marry his illegitimate daughter, and join him in defending the Pays de Caux against the English. From this period, during the reigns of the Anglo-Norman Sovereigns, it continues to be occasionally noticed. Before the walls of Arques, according to William of Malmesbury, Baldwin, Count of Flanders, received the wound which afterwards proved fatal. Arques was the last castle which held out in Normandy for King Stephen. It was taken in 1173, by our Henry IInd, and then repaired; was seized by Philip Augustus during the captivity of Richard Coeur de Lion; was restored to its legitimate sovereign at the peace in 1196; and was a source of disgrace to its former captor, when in 1202 he laid siege to it with a powerful army, and was obliged to retreat from its walls. Under the reign of our third Edward, we find it again return to the British crown, as one of the castles specified to be surrendered to the English, by the treaty of Bretigny, in 1359; after which, in 1419, it was taken by Talbot and Warwick, and was finally given up to France by one of the articles of the capitulation of Rouen in 1449. More recently, in 1584[19], it was captured by a party of soldiers disguised like sailors, who, being suffered to approach without distrust, put the sentinels to the sword, and made themselves masters of the fortress; while in 1589 it obtained its last and most honorable distinction, as the chief support of Henry IVth, at the time of his being received at Dieppe, and as having by the cannon from its ramparts, materially contributed to the glorious defeat of the army of the league, commanded by the Duke de Mayenne, when thirty thousand were compelled to retire before one tenth of the number. I have already mentioned to you the address of this king to the citizens of Dieppe: still more magnanimous was his speech to his prisoner, the Count de Belin, previously to this battle, when, on the captive's daring to ask, how with such a handful of men, he could expect to resist so powerful an army, "Ajoutez," he answered, "aux troupes que vous voyez, mon bon droit, et vous ne douterez plus de quel côté sera la victoire." In _Sully's Memoirs_[20], as well as in the history of the town of Dieppe, you will find these transactions described at much length, and the warrior, as well as the historian, expatiates on the strength of the castle of Arques; but how much longer it remained a place of consideration I have no means of knowing: most probably the alteration introduced into the art of war by the use of cannon, caused it to be soon after neglected, and dismantled, and suffered to fall gradually into its present state of ruin. It is now the property of a lady residing in the neighboring town of Arques, who purchased it during the revolution, and by her good sense and feeling it has been preserved from further injury. The castle is situated at the extremity of a ridge of chalk hills, which, commencing to the west of Dieppe, run nearly parallel to the sea, and here terminate to the east, so that it has a complete command over the valley. Standing by its walls, you have to the north-west a full view of the town of Dieppe; in an opposite direction the eye ranges uncontrolled over a rich vale of corn and pasturage; and in front, immediately at your feet, lies the town of Arques itself, backed by the hills that are covered by the forest of the same name. Either this forest, or the neighboring one of Eavy, is supposed to have been the ancient Arelanum. The little river called the Arques flows through the valley, and beneath the walls of the castle is lost in the Béthune, under which name the united waters continue their course to Dieppe, after receiving the tribute of a third, yet smaller, stream, the Eaulne. Of the power of the castle an idea may be formed from the extent of the fosse, little less than half a mile in circumference. The outline of the walls is irregularly oval, and the even front is interrupted by towers of various sizes, and placed at unequal distances. On the northern side, where the hill is steepest, there are no towers; but the walls are still farther strengthened by square buttresses, so large that they indeed look like bastions, and with a projection so great as to indicate an origin posterior to the Norman æra. The two towers which flank the western entrance, and the towers which stand behind each of the flanking towers in the retiring line of the wall, are much larger than any of the rest. One of the latter towers is of so extraordinary a shape, that I consider it as a non-descript; but, as I should tire both you and myself by endeavoring to describe it, I think it most prudent to refer you to a sketch: perhaps its angular parts may not be coeval with the rest of the building[21]: on this it would be impossible to decide positively, so shattered, impaired, and defaced are the walls, and so evidently is their coating the work of different periods. I fancied that in some parts I could discern a mode of construction, in layers of brick and stone, similar to that of Roman buildings in our own country, while many of the bricks, from their texture and shape, appear also to be Roman. Tradition, if we follow that delusive guide, teaches us that we are contemplating a work of the middle of the eighth century, and of one of the sons of Charles Martel. If we follow William of Jumieges, the Chronicle of St. Vandrille, and William of Poitiers, we ascribe it to the uncle and rival of the Conqueror; other writers tell us that the ruins arose under Henry IInd. I dare not decide amongst such reverend authorities, but I think I may infer, without the least disrespect towards monks and chroniclers, that the Norman Arques now occupies the place of a far more early structure, and that a portion of the walls of this latter was actually left in existence. Taken, however, as a whole, the castle is evidently a building of different æras; and it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to define the parts belonging to each. [Illustration: Tower of remarkable shape in Castle of Arques] The principal entrance is to the west, between the two towers first mentioned, over a draw-bridge, whose piers still remain, and through three gateways, whose arches, though now torn and dislocated into shapeless rents, seem to have been circular, and probably of Norman erection. One of the towers of the gate-way appears formerly to have been a chapel. Hence you pass into a court, whose surface, uneven with the remains of foundations, marks it to have been originally filled with apartments, and, at the opposite end of this, through a square gate-house with high embattled walls, a place evidently of great strength, and leading into a large open space that terminated in the quadrangular and lofty keep. This, which is externally strengthened by massy buttresses, similar to those of the walls, is within divided into two apartments, each of them about fifty feet by twenty. In one of them is a well, communicating with a reservoir below, which is filled by the water of the river, and was sufficiently capacious for watering the horses of the garrison. The greatest part, if not the whole, of the walls seems to have been faced with brick of comparatively modern date. The keep also was coated with brick within, and with stones carefully squared without. The windows are so battered, that no idea can be formed of their original style. The walls of the keep are filled with small square apertures. At Rochester, and at many other castles in England, we observe the same; and unless you can give a better guess respecting their use, you must content yourself with mine: that is to say, that they are merely the holes left by the scaffolding. At the foot of the hill to the west is a gate-house, by no means ancient, from which a wall ascends to the castle; and another similar wall connects the fortress with the ground below, on the north-eastern side; but the extent or nature of these out-works can no longer be traced. Still less possible would it be to say any thing with certainty as to the excavations, of the length of which, tradition speaks, as usual, in extravagant terms, and mixes sundry marvellous and frightful tales with the recital. In the general plan a great resemblance is to be traced between many castles in Wales and its frontiers, especially Goodrich Castle, and this at Arques. Yet I do not think that any of ours are of an equal extent; nor can you well conceive a more noble object than this, when seen at a distance: and it is only then that the eye can comprehend the vast expanse and strength of the external wall, with the noble keep towering high above it. [Illustration: Church at Arques] Until the revolution, the decaying town of Arques was not wholly deprived of all the vestiges of its former honours: the standards of the weights and measures of Upper Normandy were deposited here. It was the seat of the courts of the Archbishop of Rouen, and, though the actual session of the municipal courts took place at Dieppe, they bore the legal style and title of the courts of Arques. Since the revolution these traces of its importance have wholly disappeared, nor is there any outward indication of the consequence once enjoyed by this poor and straggling hamlet. The church is a neat and spacious building, of the same kind of architecture as that of St. Jacques, at Dieppe; and, as it is a good specimen of the florid Norman Gothic, (I forbid all cavils respecting the employment of this term) I have added a figure of it. My slender researches have not enabled me to discover the date of the building, but it may, have been erected towards the year 1350. A most elegant bracket, formed by the graceful dolphin, deserves the attention of the architect; and I particularize it, not merely on account of its beauty, but because, even at the risk of exhausting your antiquarian patience, I intend to point out all architectural features which cannot be retraced in our own structures; and this is one of them. By the way, Arques contributed to increase the bulk of our herbal as well as of our sketch-book, for under the walls of the church is found the rare _Erodium moschatum_; and near the castle grow _Astragalus glycyphyllos_ and _Melissa Nepeta_. The field of battle is to the southward of the town. A small walk under the south wall of the castle, near the east end, adjoining a covered way which led to a postern-gate or draw-bridge, is still called the walk of Henry the IVth, because it was here that this monarch was wont to reconnoitre the enemy's forces from below. Napoléon, towards the conclusion of his reign, visited the field of battle at Arques; he ascertained the position of the two armies, and pronounced that the King ought to have lost the day, for that his tactics were altogether faulty. I am willing to suppose that this military criticism arose merely from military pedantry, though it is now said that Napoléon was envious of the veneration, which, as the French believe, they feel for the memory of Henri quatre. Napoléon is accused of having given the title of _le Roi de la Canaille_ to the Bourbon Monarch. And when Napoléon was in full-blown pride, he might have had the satisfaction of hearing the rabble of Paris chaunt his comparative excellence in a parody of the old national song-- "Vive Bonaparte, vice ce conquérant, Ce diable à quatre a bien plus de talent Que ce Henri quatre et tous ses descendans," Footnotes: [15] _Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions_, X. p. 403. tab. 15. [16] Such are the Abbé's principal arguments; but he goes on to say, that the height of the ramparts proves almost to demonstration their having been erected since the use of fire-arms, a mode of reasoning that would, I fear, be equally conclusive against the antiquity of a very celebrated earth-work, the Devil's-Ditch, in Cambridgeshire, whose agger is of about the same elevation, but of whose modern origin nobody ever yet dreamed;--that the ramparts opposite Dieppe could only be of use against cannon, another position equally untenable;--that, were the camp Roman, there would be platforms on the agger for the reception of wooden towers, as if time would not wear away vestiges of this nature;--that the disposition is not in regular order like that of a Roman encampment, a matter equally liable to be defaced;--and, finally, that the out-works to the west are fully decisive of a more modern æra, as if intrenchments were not, like buildings, frequently the objects of subsequent alterations;--In his inferences he is followed, and, apparently without any question as to their authenticity, by Ducarel, whom I suspect from his description never to have visited the place. The Abbé Fontenu, in a paper in the same volume, gives it as his opinion that, from the term _Civitas Limarum_, it might safely be believed there was a _city_ in this place; and he tries to persuade himself that he can trace the foundations of houses. [17] _Noel, Essais sur le Départment de la Seine Inférieure_, I. p. 88. [18] The same is also notoriously the case in our own country: popular tradition, by a metonymy very easily to be accounted for, from a desire of adding importance to its objects, attributes whatever is Roman to Julius Cæsar, as the most illustrious of the Roman generals in England; just as we daily hear smatterers in art referring to Raphael any painting, however ordinary, that pretends to issue from the schools of Rome or Florence, every Bolognese one to Guido or Annibal Carracci, every Kermes to Ostade or Teniers, &c. [19] _Noel, Essais sur la Seine Inférieure_, I. p. 98. [20] Sully, who was himself in this battle, and bore a conspicuous part in it, dwells upon its details completely _con amore_, and evidently regards the issue of this day as decisive of the fate of the monarch, who is reported to have said of himself shortly before the battle, that "he was a king without a kingdom, a husband without a wife, and a warrior without money."--I. p. 204. [21] In justice to my readers, I must not here omit to say that such is the opinion of a most able friend of mine, Mr. Cohen, who visited this castle nearly at the same time with myself, and who writes me on the subject: "I feel convinced that the brick coating of the _wedge-tower_ at Arques is recent. Such was the impression I had upon the spot; and now I cannot remove it. It appeared to me that the character of the brick-work, and of the stone cordons or fillets, was entirely like that of the fortifications of the XVIth century; and I also thought, perhaps erroneously, that the _wedge_ or _bastion_ was _affixed to_ the round tower of the castle, and that it was an after-construction. At the south end of the castle, you certainly see very ancient and singular masonry. The diagonal or herring-bone courses are found in the old church of St. Lo, and in the keep at Falaise; not in the front of the latter, but on the side where you enter, and on the side which ranges with Talbot's Tower. The same style of masonry is also seen, according to Sir Henry Englefield, at Silchester, which is most undoubtedly a pure Roman relic."--It abounds likewise in Colchester Castle. LETTER IV. JOURNEY FROM DIEPPE TO ROUEN--PRIORY OF LONGUEVILLE--ROUEN--BRIDGE OF BOATS--COSTUME OF THE INHABITANTS. (_Rouen, June_, 1818.) I arrived alone at this city: my companions, who do not always care to keep pace with my constitutional impatience, which sometimes amuses, and now and then annoys them, made a circuit by Havre, Bolbec, and Yvetot, while I proceeded by the straight and beaten track. What I have thus gained in expedition, I have lost in interest. During the whole of the ride, there was not a single object to excite curiosity, nor would any moderate deviation from the line of road have brought me within reach of any town or tower worthy of notice, except the Priory of Longueville, situate to the right of the road, about twelve miles from Dieppe. I did not see Longueville, and I am told that the ruins are quite insignificant, yet I regret that I did not visit them. The French can never be made to believe that an old rubble wall is really and truly worth a day's journey: hence their reports respecting the notability of any given ruin can seldom be depended upon. And at least I should have had the satisfaction of ascertaining the actual state of the remains of a building, known to have been founded and partly built in the year 1084, by Walter Giffard[22], one of the relations and companions of the Conqueror, in his descent upon England, and therefore created Earl of Buckingham, or, as the French sometimes write it, _Bou Kin Kan_. The title was held by his family only till 1164 when, upon the decease of his son without issue, the lands of his barony were shared among the collateral female heirs. He himself died in 1102, and by his will directed that his body should be brought here, which was accordingly done; and he was buried, as Ordericus Vitalis[23] tells us, near the entrance of the church, having over him an epitaph of eight lines, "in maceriâ picturis decoratâ." You will find the epitaph, wherein he is styled "templi fundator et ædificator," copied both in the _Neustria Pia_ and in _Ducarel's Anglo-Norman Antiquities_. The latter speaks of it as if it existed in his time; but the doctor seldom states the extent of his obligations towards his predecessors. And in consequence of this his silent gratitude, we can never tell with any degree of certainty whether we are perusing his observations or his transcripts. If he really saw the inscriptions with his own eyes, it is greatly to be regretted that he has given us no information respecting the paintings: did they still exist, they would afford a most genuine and curious proof of the state of Norman art at that remote period; and possibly, a search after them among the cottages in the neighborhood might even now repay the industry of some keen antiquary; for the French revolution may well he compared to an earthquake: it swallowed up every thing, ingulphing some so deep that they are lost for ever, but leaving others, like hidden treasures, buried near the surface of the soil, whence accident and labor are daily bringing them to light. The descendants of Walter Giffard are repeatedly mentioned as persons of importance in the early Norman writers; nor are they less illustrious in England, where the great family of Clare sprung from one of the daughters; while another, by her marriage with Richard Granville, gave birth to the various noble families of that name, of which the present Marquis of Buckingham is the chief. Of the Priory, we are told in the _Neustria Pia_[24], that it was anciently of much opulence, and that a Queen of France contributed largely to the endowment of the house. Many men of eminence, particularly three of the Talbot family, were buried within its walls. Peter Megissier, a prior of Longueville, was in the number of the judges who passed sentence of death upon the unfortunate Joan of Arc; and the inscription upon his tomb is so good a specimen of monkish Latinity, that I am tempted to send it you; reminding you at the same time, that this barbarous system of rhyming in Latin, however brought to perfection by the monks and therefore generally called their own, is not really of their invention, but may be found, though quoted to be ridiculed, in the first satire of Persius, "Qui videt hunc lapidem, cognoscat quòd tegit idem Petrum, qui pridem conventum rexit ibidem Annis bis senis, tumidis Leo, largus egenis, Omnibus indigenis charus fuit atque alienis." I believe it is always expected, that a traveller in France should say something respecting the general aspect of the country and its agriculture. I shall content myself with remarking, that this part of Normandy is marvellously like the country which the Conqueror conquered. When the weather is dull, the Normans have a sober English sky, abounding in Indian ink and neutral tint. And when the weather is fine, they have a sun which is not a ray brighter than an English sun. The hedges and ditches wear a familiar livery, and the land which is fully cultivated repays the toil of the husbandman with some of the most luxuriant crops of wheat I ever saw. Barley and oats are not equally good, perhaps from the stiffness of the soil, which is principally of chalk; but flax is abundant and luxuriant. The surface of the ground is undulated, and sufficiently so to make a pleasing alternation of hill and dale; hence it is agreeably varied, though the hills never rise to such a height as to be an obstacle to agriculture. There is some difficulty in conjecturing where the people by whom the whole is kept in cultivation are housed; for the number of houses by the road-side is inconsiderable; nor did we, for the first two-thirds of the ride, pass through a single village, excepting Tôtes, which lies mid-way between Dieppe, and Rouen, and is of no great extent. Yet things in France are materially altered in this respect since 1814, when I remember that, in going through Calais by the way of the Low Countries to Paris, and returning by the direct road to Boullogne, the whole journey was made without seeing a single new house erecting in a space of four hundred miles. This is now far from being the case; there is every where an appearance of comparative prosperity, and, were it not for the coins, of which the copper bear the impress of the republic, and the gold and silver chiefly that of Napoléon, a stranger would meet with but few visible marks of the changes experienced in late years by the government of France. Much has been also done of late towards ornamenting the châteaux, of which there are several about Tôtes, though in the opinion of an Englishman, much also is yet wanting. They are principally the residences of Rouen merchants. Upon approaching Malaunay, about nine miles from Rouen, the scene is entirely changed. The road descends into a valley, inclosed between steep hills, whose sides are richly and beautifully clothed with wood, while the houses and church of the village beneath add life and variety to the plain at the foot. Here the cotton manufactories begin, and, as we follow the course of the little river Cailly, the population gradually increases, and continues to become more dense through a series of manufacturing villages, each larger than the preceding, and all abounding in noble views of hill, wood, and dale; while the tracts around are thickly studded with picturesque residences of manufacturers, and extensive, often picturesque, manufactories. Such indeed was the country, till we found ourselves at Rouen, shortly before entering which the Havre road unites to that from Dieppe, and the landscape also embraces the valley of the Seine, as well as of the Cailly the former broader by far, and grander, but not more beautiful. Rouen, from this point of view, is seen to considerable advantage, at least by those who, like us, make a _détour_ to the north, and enter it in that direction: the cathedral, St. Ouen, the hospital and church of La Madeleine, and the river, fill the picture; nor is the impression in any wise diminished on a nearer approach, when, through a long avenue, formed by four rows of lofty elms, you advance by the side of a stream, at once majestic from its width and eminently beautiful from its winding course. Rouen is now unfortified; its walls, its castles, are level with the ground. But, if I may borrow the pun of which old Peter Heylin is guilty when, describing Paris, Rouen is still a _strong_ city, "for it taketh you by the nose." The filth is extreme; villainous smells overcome you in every quarter, and from every quarter. The streets are gloomy, narrow, and crooked, and the houses at once mean and lofty. Even on the quay, where all the activity of commerce is visible, and where the outward signs of opulence might be expected, there is nothing to fulfil the expectation. Here is width and space, but no _trottoir_; and the buildings are as incongruous as can well be imagined, whether as to height, color, projection, or material. Most of them, and indeed most in the city, are merely of lath and plaster, the timbers uncovered and painted red or black, the plaster frequently coated with small grey slates laid one over another, like the weather-tiles in Sussex. Their general form is very tall and very narrow, which adds to the singularity of their appearance; but mixed with these are others of white brick or stone, and really handsome, or, it might be said, elegant. The contrast, however, which they form only makes their neighbors look the more shabby, while they themselves derive from the association an air of meanness. The merchants usually meet upon a small open plot, situated opposite to the quay, inclosed with palisades and fronted with trees. This is their exchange in fine weather; but adjoining is a handsome building, called _La Bourse à couvert_, or _Le Consulte_, to which recourse is always had in case of rain. It was here that Napoléon and Maria Louisa, a very short time previous to their deposition, received from the inhabitants of Rouen the oath of allegiance, which so soon afterwards found a ready transfer to another sovereign. About the middle of the quay is placed the bridge of boats, an object of attraction to all strangers, but more so from the novelty and singularity of its construction than from its beauty. Utility rather than elegance was consulted by the builder. This far-famed structure is ugly and cumbrous, and a passenger feels a very unpleasing sensation if he happens to stand upon it when a loaded waggon drives along it at low water, at which time there is a considerable descent from the side of the suburbs. An undulatory motion is then occasioned, which goes on gradually from boat to boat till it reaches the opposite shore. The bridge is supported upon nineteen large barges, which rise and fall with the tide, and are so put together that one or more can easily be removed as often as it is necessary to allow any vessel to pass. The whole too can be entirely taken away in six hours, a construction highly useful in a river peculiarly liable to floods from sudden thaws; which sometimes occasion such an increase of the waters, as to render the lower stories of the houses in the adjacent parts of the city uninhabitable. The bridge itself was destroyed by a similar accident, in 1709, for want of a timely removal. Its plan is commonly attributed to a monk of the order of St. Augustine, by whom it was erected in 1626, about sixty years after the stone bridge, built by the Empress Matilda in 1167, had ceased to be passable. It seems the fate of Rouen to have _wonderful_ bridges. The present is dignified by some writers with the high title of a _miracle of art_: the former is said by Taillepied, in whose time it was standing, to have been "un des plus beaux édifices et des plus admirables de la France." A few lines afterwards, however, this ingenuous writer confesses that loaded carriages of any kind were seldom suffered to pass this _admirable edifice_, in consequence of the expence of repairing it; but that two barges were continually plying for the transport of heavy goods. The delay between the destruction of the stone bridge, and the erection of the boat bridge, appears to have been occasioned by the desire of the citizens to have a second similar to the first; but this, after repeated deliberations, was at last determined to be impracticable, from the depth and rapidity of the stream. Napoléon, however, seems to have thought that the task which had been accomplished under the auspices of the Empress Matilda, might be again repeated in the name of the daughter of the Cæsars and the wife of the successor of Charlemagne; and he actually caused Maria-Louisa to lay the first stone of a new bridge, at some distance farther to the east, where an island divides the river into two. This, I am told, will certainly he finished, though at an enormous expence, and though it will occasion great inconvenience to many inhabitants of the quay, whose houses will be rendered useless by the height to which it will be necessary to raise the soil upon the occasion. My informant added, that, small as is the appearance yet made above water, whole quarries of stone and forests of wood have been already sunk for the purpose. From the scite of the projected bridge, the view eastward is particularly charming. The bold hill of St. Catherine presents its steep side of bare chalk, spotted only in a few places with vegetation or cottages, and seems to oppose an impassable barrier; the mixture of country-houses with trees at its base, makes a most pleasing variety; and, still nearer, the noble elms of the _boulevards_ add a character of magnificence possessed by few other cities. The _boulevards_ of Rouen are rather deficient in the Parisian accompaniments of dancing-dogs and music-grinders, but the sober pedestrian will, perhaps, prefer them to their namesakes in the capital. Here they are not, as at Paris, in the centre of the town, but they surround it, except upon the quay, with which they unite at each end, and unite most pleasingly; so that, immediately on leaving this brilliant bustling scene, you enter into the gloom of a lofty embowered arcade, resembling in appearance, as well as in effect, the public walks at Cambridge, except that the addition of females in the fanciful Norman costume, and of the Seine, and the fine prospect beyond, and Mont St. Catherine above, give it a new interest. On the opposite side of the Seine, the inhabitants of Rouen have another excellent promenade in the _grand cours_, which, for a considerable space, occupies the bank of the river, turning eastward from the bridge. Four rows of trees divide it into three separate walks, of which the central one is by far the widest, and serves for horses and carriages; the other two are appropriated exclusively to foot passengers. In these, on a summer's evening, are to be seen all classes of the inhabitants of Rouen, from the highest to the lowest; and the following sketch, which you will easily perceive to be from a pencil more delicate than mine, gives a most lively and faithful picture of them. It may indeed be in some measure in the nature of a treatise _de re vestiariá_, yet such details of gowns and petticoats never fail to interest, at least to interest me, when proceeding from a wearer. [Illustration: View of Rouen, from the Grand Cours] "Our carriage had scarcely stopped when we were surrounded with beggars, principally women with children in their arms. The poor babes presented a most pitiable appearance, meagre, dirty to the utmost degree, ragged and flea-bitten, so that round the throat there was not the least portion of "carnation" appearing to be free from the insect plague. Their hair, too, is seldom cut; and I have seen girls of eight or ten years of age, bearing a growing crop which had evidently remained unshorn, and I may add, uncombed, from the time of their birth. It is impossible not to dread coming into contact with these imps, who, when old, are among the ugliest conceivable specimens of the human race. The women, even those who inhabit the towns, live much in the open air: besides being employed in many slavish offices, they sit at their doors or windows pursuing their business, or lounge about, watching passengers to obtain charity. Thus their faces and necks are always of a copper color, and, at an advanced age, more dusky still; so that, for the anatomy and coloring of witches, a painter needs look no further. Their wretchedness is strongly contrasted by the gaiety of the higher classes. The military, who, I suppose, as usual in France, hold the first place, appear in all possible variety of keeping and costume, with their well-proportioned figures, clean apparel, decided gait, martial air, and whiskered faces. Here and there we see gliding along the well-dressed lady (not well dressed, indeed, as far as becomingness goes, but fashionably), with a gown of triple flounces, whose skirt intrudes even upon the shoulders, obliterating the waist entirely, while her throat is lost in an immense frill of four or more ranks; and sometimes a large shawl over all completes the disguise of the shape. The head of the dame or damsel is usually enveloped in a gauze or silk bonnet, sufficiently large to spread, were it laid upon a table, two feet in diameter, and trimmed with various-colored ribbons and artificial flowers: in the hand is seen the ridicule, a never-failing accompaniment. The lower orders of women at Rouen usually wear the Cauchoise cap, or an approach to it, rising high to a narrowish point at top, and furnished with immense ears or wings that drop on the shoulder, then opening in front so as to allow to be seen on the forehead a small portion of hair, which divides and falls in two or three spiral ringlets on each side of the face. The remainder of the dress is generally composed of a colored petticoat, probably striped, an apron of a different color, a bodice still differing in tint from the rest, and a shawl, uniting all the various hues of all the other parts of the dress. Some of the peasants from the country look still more picturesque, when mounted on horseback bringing vegetables: they keep their situation without saddle or stirrup, and seem perfectly at ease. But the best figures on horseback are the young men who take out their masters' horses to give them exercise, and who are frequently seen on the _grand cours_. They ride without hat, coat, saddle, or saddle-cloth, and with the shirt sleeves rolled up above the elbow. Their negligent equipment, added to their short, curling hair, and the ease and elasticity they display in the management of their horses, gives them, on the whole, a great resemblance to the Grecian warriors of the Elgin marbles. Men, as well as women, are frequently seen without hats in the streets, and continually uncravatted; and when their heads are covered, these coverings are of every shape and hue; from the black beaver, with or without a rim, through all gradations of cap, to the simple white cotton nightcap. A painter would delight in this display of forms and these sparkling touches of color, especially when contrasted with the grey of the city, and the tender tints of the sky, water, and distance, and the broad coloring of the landscape." Footnotes: [22] "He was son of Osborne de Bolebec and Aveline his wife, sister to Gunnora, Duchess of Normandy, great-grandmother to the Conqueror, and was one of the principal persons who composed the general survey of the realm, especially for the county of Worcester. In 1089 he adhered to William Rufus, against his brother Robert Courthose, and forfeited his Norman possessions on the king's behalf, of whose army there he was a principal commander, and behaved himself very honorably. Yet, in the time of Henry Ist, he took the part of the said Courthose against that king, but died the year following,"--_Banks' Extinct Baronagé_, III. p. 108. [23] _Duchesne, Scriptores Normanni_, p. 809. [24] P. 668. LETTER V. JOURNEY TO HAVRE--PAYS DE CAUX--ST. VALLERY--FÉCAMP--THE PRECIOUS BLOOD--THE ABBEY--TOMBS IN IT--MONTIVILLIERS--HARFLEUR. (_Rouen, June_, 1818.) Lest I should deserve to be visited with the censure which I have taken the liberty of passing upon Ducarel's tour, I shall begin by premising that my account of the present state of the tract, intended for the subject of this and the following letter, is wholly derived from the journals of my companions. Their road by Fécamp, Havre, Bolbec, and Yvetot, has led them through the greater part of the Pays de Caux, a district which, in the time of Cæsar, was peopled by the Caletes or Caleti. Antiquaries suppose, that in the name of this tribe, they discover the traces of its Celtic origin, and that its radical is no other than the word _Kalt_ or _Celt_ itself. As a proof of the correctness of this etymology, Bourgueville[25] tells us that but little more than two hundred years have passed since its inhabitants, now universally called _Cauchois_, were not less commonly called _Caillots_ or _Caillettes_; a name which still remains attached to several families, as well as to the village Gonfreville la Caillotte, and, probably, to some others. I shall, however, waive all Celtic theory, "for that way madness lies," and enter upon more sober chorography. The author of the Description of Upper Normandy states, that the territory known by that appellation was limited to the Pays de Caux and the Vexin: the former occupying the line of sea-coast from the Brêle to the Seine, together with the governments of Eu and Havre and the Pays de Brai; the latter comprising the Roumois, and the French as well as the Norman Vexin. All these territorial divisions have, indeed, been obliterated by the state-geographers of the revolution; and Normandy, time-honored Normandy herself, has disappeared from the map of the dominions of the French king. The ancient duchy is severed into the five departments of the Seine Inférieure, the Eure, the Orne, Calvados, and the Manche. These are the only denominations known to the government or to the law, yet they are scarcely received in common parlance. The people still speak of Normandy, and they still take a pleasure in considering themselves as Normans: and, I too, can share in their attachment to a name, which transmits the remembrance of actual sovereignty and departed glory. Until the re-union of feudal Normandy to the crown of its liege lord, the duke was one of the twelve peers of the kingdom; and to his hands that kingdom entrusted the sacred Oriflamme, as often as it was expedient to unfurl it in war. Normandy also contained several titular duchies, ancient fiefs held of the King as Duke of Normandy, but which, out of favour to their owners, were "erected," as the French lawyers say, into duchies, after the province had reverted to the crown. This erection, however, gave but a title to the noble owner, without increasing his territorial privileges; nor could any of our Richards, or our Henries, have allowed a liege man to write himself duke, like his proud feudal suzerein. The recent duchies were Alençon, Aumale, Harcourt, Damville, Elbeuf, Etouteville, and Longueville, and three of them were included in the Pays de Gaux, the inhabitants of which, from the titles connected with it, were accustomed to dignify it with the epithet of _noble_. Their claim to the epithet is thus given by an ancient Norman poet of the fifteenth century; and if, according to the old tradition, which Voltaire has bantered with his usually incredulity, we could admit that Yvetot was ever really a kingdom, it must be allowed that few provinces could produce such a titled terrier: "Au noble Pays de Caux Y a quatre Abbayes royaux, Six Prieurés conventionaux, Et six Barons de grand arroi, Quatre Comtes, trois Ducs, un Roi." The soil of the district is generally rich; but the farmers frequently suffer from drought, especially in its western part, where they are obliged almost constantly to have recourse to artifical irrigation. The houses and villages are all surrounded with hedges, thickly planted, and each village is also belted in the same manner. These inclosures, which are peculiar to the Pays de Caux, give a monotonous appearance to the landscape, but they are highly beneficial, for they break the force of the winds, and furnish the inhabitants with fuel. If my memory does not deceive me, the towns either of the ancient Gauls or Teutons, are described as being thus encompassed in primitive times; but I cannot name my authorities for the assertion. St. Vallery, the first stage beyond Dieppe, is situated in a valley; and there is an obscure tradition that this valley was once watered by a river, which disappeared some centuries ago. It is conjectured, from the name of the town, that it claims an origin as high as the seventh century, when the disciples of St. Vallery were obliged to quit their original monastery and take refuge elsewhere. Yet, according to other authorities[26], it did not receive its present appellation till 1197, when Richard Coeur de Lion, after having destroyed the town and abbey of St. Vallery sur Somme, carried off the relics of the patron saint, and deposited them in this town. My reporters tell me that it has an air of antiquity and gloom, but that it contains nothing worthy of notice except a crucifix in the churchyard, of stone, richly wrought, dated 1575, and a _bénitier_ of such simple form and rude workmanship, as to appear of considerable antiquity. The place itself is only a wretched residence for four or five thousand fishermen; but still it has a name[27] in history. Hence William sailed for the conquest of England; and its harbor, all poor and small as it is, has always been considered of importance to the country; there being no other between Havre and Dieppe capable of affording shelter to vessels of even a moderate size. The road to Fécamp passes through the little town of Cany, situated in a beautiful valley; and there my family met the Archbishop of Rouen, who, at this moment, is in progress through his diocese, for the purpose of confirmation. The approach of his eminence gave the appearance of a fair to every village: young and old of both sexes were collected in the highways to welcome the prelate. He travelled in considerable state, attended by a military escort of twenty men; and arrayed in the scarlet robe of a Roman Cardinal, with the brilliant "decoration" of the Legion of Honor conspicuous upon his breast. For the archbishop is a grand officer of that brotherhood of bastard chivalry; and this ornament, conjoined to his train of whiskered warriors, seemed to render him a very type of the church militant. His eminence is extremely bulky; and my pilgrims were wicked enough to be much amused by the oddity of his pomp and pride. Nor did the postillion spare his facetiousness on the occasion; for you are aware that in France, as in most other parts of the continent, the servile classes use a degree of familiarity in their intercourse with their betters, to which we are little accustomed in England, and which has given rise to the Italian proverb, that "Il Francese è fedele, l'Italiano rispettoso, l'Inglese schiavo[28]." Throughout this part of France, large flocks of sheep are commonly seen in the vicinity of the sea, and, as the pastures are uninclosed, they are all regularly guarded by a shepherd and his black dog, whose activity cannot fail to be a subject of admiration. He is always on the alert and attentive to his business, skirting his flock to keep them from straggling, and that, apparently, without any directions from his master. In the night they are folded upon the ploughed land; and the shepherd lodges, like a Tartar in his _kibitka_, in a small cart roofed and fitted up with doors. Fécamp, like other towns in the neighborhood, is imbedded in a deep valley; and the road, on approaching it, threads through an opening between hills "stern and wild," a tract of "brown heath and shaggy wood," resembling many parts of Scotland. The town is long and straggling, the streets steep and crooked; its inhabitants, according to the official account of the population of France, amount to seven thousand, and the number of its houses is estimated at thirteen hundred, besides above a third of that quantity which are deserted, and more or less in ruins[29]. Fécamp appeared desolate and decaying to its visitors, but they recollected that its very desolation was a voucher of the antiquity from which it derives its interest. It claims an origin as high as the days of Cæsar, when it was called _Fisci Campus_, being the station where the tribute was collected. It is in vain, however, to expect concord amongst etymologists; and, of course, there are other right learned wights who protest against this derivation. They shake their heads and say, "no; you must trace the name, Fécamp, to _Fici Campus_;" and they strengthen their assertion by a sort of _argumentum ad ecclesiam_, maintaining that the _precious blood_, for which Fécamp was long celebrated, corroborates and confirms their tale. A chapel in the abbey church attests the sanctity of this relic. The legend states that Nicodemus, at the time of the entombment of our Saviour, collected in a phial the blood from his wounds, and bequeathed it to his nephew, Isaac; who afterwards, making a tour through Gaul, stopped in the Pays de Caux, and buried the phial at the root of a fig-tree[30]. Nor is this the only miracle connected with the church. The monkish historians descant with florid eloquence upon the white stag, which pointed out to Duke Ansegirus the spot where the edifice was to be erected; the mystic knife, inscribed "in nomine sanctæ et individuæ trinitatis," thus declaring to whom the building should be dedicated; and the roof, which, though prepared for a distant edifice, felt that it would be best at Fécamp, and actually, of its own accord, undertook a voyage by sea, and landed, without the displacing of a single nail, upon the sea-coast near the town. All these _contes dévots_, and many others, you will find recorded in the _Neustria Pia_[31]. I will only detain you with a few words more upon the subject of the _precious blood_, a matter too important to be thus hastily dismissed. It was placed here by Duke Richard I.; but was lost in the course of a long and turbulent period, and was not found again till the year 1171, when it was discovered within the substance of a column built in the wall. Two little tubes of lead originally contained the treasure; but these were soon inclosed in two others of a more precious metal, and the whole was laid at the bottom of a box of gilt silver, placed in a beautiful pyramidical shrine. Thus protected, it was, before the revolution, fastened to one of the pillars of the choir, behind a trellis-work of copper, and was an object of general adoration. I know not what has since become of it; but, as they are now managing these matters better in France, we may safely calculate upon the speedy reappearance of the relic. Nor must you refer this legend to the many which protestant incredulity is too apt to class with the idle tales of all ages, the "... quicquid Græcia mendax Audet in historiâ;" for no less grave an authority than the faculty of theology at Paris determined, by a formal decree of the 28th of May, 1448, that this worship was very proper; for that, to use their words, "Non repugnat pietati fidelium credere quòd aliquid de sanguine Christi effuso tempore passionis remanserit in terris." The abbey, to which Fécamp was indebted for all its greatness and celebrity, was founded in 664[32] for a community of nuns, by Waning, the count or governor of the Pays de Caux, a nobleman who had already contributed to the endowment of the Monastery of St. Wandrille. St. Ouen, Bishop of Rouen, dedicated the church in the presence of King Clotaire; and, so rapidly did the fame of the sanctity of the abbey extend, that the number of its inmates amounted in a very short period to three hundred or more. The arrival, however, of the Normans, under Hastings, in 841, caused the dispersion of the nuns; and the same story is related of the few who remained at Fécamp, as of many others under similar circumstances, that they voluntarily cut off their noses and their lips, rather than be an object of attraction to the lust of their conquerors. The abbey, in return for their heroism, was levelled with the ground, and it did not rise from its ashes till the year 988, when the piety of Duke Richard I. built the church anew, under the auspices of his son, Robert, Archbishop of Rouen; but, departing from the original foundation, he established therein a chapter of regular canons, who, however, were so irregular in their conduct, that within ten years they were doomed to give way to a body of Benedictine Monks, headed by an Abbot, named William, from a convent at Dijon. From his time the monastery continued to increase in splendor. Three suffragan abbies, that of Notre Dame at Bernay, of St. Taurin at Evreux, and of Ste. Berthe de Blangi, in the diocese of Boullogne, owned the superior power of the abbot of Fécamp, and supplied the three mitres which he proudly bore on his abbatial shield. Kings and princes in former ages frequently paid the abbey the homage of their worship and their gifts; and, in a period nearer to our own, Casimir of Poland, after his voluntary abdication of the throne, selected it as the spot in which he sought for repose, when wearied with the cares of royalty. The English possessions of Fécamp (for like most of the great Norman abbeys, it held lands in our island) do not appear to have been large; but, according to an author of our own country[33] the abbot presented to one hundred and thirty benefices, some in the diocese of Rouen, others in those of Bayeux, Lisieux, Coutances, Chartres, and Beauvais; and it enjoyed so many estates, that its income was said to be forty thousand crowns per annum. Fécamp moreover could boast of a noble library, well stored with manuscripts[34], and containing among its archives many original charters, deeds, &c. of William the Conqueror, and several of his successors. This magnificent church is three hundred and seventy feet long and seventy high; the transept, including the Chapel of the Precious Blood, one hundred and twenty feet long; the tower two hundred feet high. A portion of it was burned in 1460, but soon repaired. William de Ros, third abbot, rebuilt all the upper part in a better taste, and enlarged the nave, which was not finished till 1200. A successor of his at the beginning of the next century completed the chapels round the choir. The screen was begun by one of the monks about 1500, who erected the chapel dedicated to the death of the Virgin, a master-piece of architecture and adorned with historical carving. The cloister was built so late as 1712. Cathedral service was performed in the church, in which were the tombs of the first and second of the Richards of Normandy; of Richard, infant son of the former, and of William, third son of the latter; of Margaret, betrothed to Robert, son of William the Conqueror, who died 1060; of Alard, third Earl of Bretagne, 1040; of Archbishop Osmond, and of a Lady Judith, whose jingling epitaph has given rise to a variety of conjectures, whether she was the wife of Duke Richard IInd, or his daughter, or some other person.-- "Illa solo sociata, mariti at jure soluta, Judita judicio justificata jacet; Et quæ, dante Deo, sed judice justificante, Primo jus subiit sed modò jura regit." As to Duke Richard Ist, he caused a sarcophagus of stone to be made and placed within this church; and so long as he lived, it was filled with wheat on every Friday, and the grain, together with five shillings, distributed weekly among the poor. And when his death approached, he expressly charged his successor, "Bury not my body within the church, but deposit it on the outside, immediately under the eaves, that the dripping of the rain from the holy roof may wash my bones as I lie, and may cleanse them of the spots of impurity contracted during a negligent and neglected life." Our party could not ascertain whether any of the historical monuments were yet in existence. The church, at the time they were there, was wholly occupied with preparations for the approaching confirmation. Young girls in their best dresses, all in white, and holding tapers in their hands, filled the nave, while the chapels were crowded with individuals at prayer, or still more with females waiting for an opportunity of confessing themselves, previously to receiving the expected absolution from the archbishop. Under such circumstances nothing could be examined; but there appeared to be in the chapels five or six fine, though mutilated, altar tombs: to whom, however, they belonged, or what was their actual state, it was impossible to tell. Accompanying them are also some curious pieces of sculpture. For the same reason no farther remark could be made upon the interior of the building, except that its architecture is imposing, and its roof, supported by tall clustered pillars, has much the general effect of the nave of our cathedral at Norwich, one of the purest specimens of Norman architecture in England. Externally the tower is handsome, and of nearly the earliest pointed style; not altogether so, as its arches, though narrow, contain each a double arch within. The rest of the building seems to have suffered much from alterations and dilapidation; and whatever tracery there may have been originally has disappeared from the windows; nor are there saints or even niches remaining above the doors. The exterior of the church of St. Etienne, one of the ten parochial churches of Fécamp, before the revolution, is considerably more imposing; but upon this I will not detain you, as you will see it engraved in Mr. Cotman's _Architectural Antiquities of Normandy_, from a sketch taken by him last year. Henry IInd, of England, made a donation of the town to the abbey, whose seignorial jurisdiction also extended over many other parishes, as well in this as in the adjoining dioceses. Its exclusive privileges were likewise ample. Under the first and second race, Fécamp was the seat of government of the Pays de Caux, and the residence of the counts of the district: it was also a residence of the Norman Dukes. Their castle was rebuilt by William Longue-Epeé, with a degree of magnificence which is said to have been extraordinary. This duke took particular pleasure in the place, and he and his immediate successors frequently lived here. But the palace has long since disappeared[35]: the continual increase of the monastic buildings gradually occupied its place; and they, in their turn, are now experiencing the revolutions of fortune, the inhabitants being at this very time actively employed in their demolition. The town is at present wholly supported by the fisheries, in which are employed about fourteen hundred sailors[36]. The herrings of Fécamp have always had the same high character in France, as those of Lowestoft and Yarmouth in England. The armorial lion of our own town ends, as you know, with the tail of a herring; and I really have been often inclined to affix the same appendage to the rump of the lion of Normandy. You are not much of an epicure, nor are you very likely to search in the _Almanach des Gourmands_ for dainties; if you did, you would probably find there the following proverb, which has existed since the thirteenth century,-- "Aloses de Bourdeaux; Esturgeons de Blaye; Congres de la Rochelle; Harengs de Fécamp; Saumons de Loire; Sêches de Coutances." The fortifications of Fécamp are destroyed; but, upon the cliffs which command the town, there still remain some slight vestiges of a fort, erected in the time of Henry IVth, when the inhabitants espoused the party of the league. The capture of this fort was one of those gallant exploits which the historian delights in recording; and it is detailed at great length in Sully's Memoirs[37]. From Fécamp to Havre the country is well wooded, and much applied to the cultivation of flax, which flourishes in this neighborhood, and has given rise to considerable linen manufactories. The trees look well in masses, but individually they are trimmed into ugliness. Near Havre the road goes through Montivilliers, and, still nearer, through Harfleur. The first of these is, like Fécamp, a place of antiquity, and derived its name[38] and importance from a monastery which was founded at the end of the seventh century. Its history is headed by the chapter which begins the records of most of the ecclesiastical foundations of the duchy: when the invading heathen Normans reached Montivilliers, it shared the common fate of destruction, and when they withdrew, the common piety recalled it to existence. Richard IInd bestowed it upon Fécamp, but the same sovereign restored it to its independence, at the request of his aunt, Beatrice, who retired hither as abbess, at the head of a community of nuns. A convent, over which an abbess of royal blood had presided, could not fail to enjoy considerable privileges; and it retained them to the period of the revolution. The tower of the church still remains, a noble specimen of the Norman architecture of the eleventh century, at which period the building is known to have been erected. The rest of the edifice, though handsome as a whole, is the work of different æras. The archives of the monastery furnish an account of large sums expended in additions and alterations in the years 1370 and 1513. The interior contains some elegant stone fillagree-work in the form of a small gallery or pulpit, attached to the west end near the roof, and probably intended to receive a band of singers on high festivals. A gallery of a similar nature, but of wood, and to which the foregoing purpose was assigned by the learned wight, John Carter, is yet remaining at the north-west corner of Westminster Abbey. You and I, who are sadly inclined to admire ugliness and antiquity, would have been better pleased with the capitals of the pillars, which are evidently coeval with the tower. Drawings were made of some of these capitals, and I have selected two which appeared to be the most singular. [Illustration: Capital with angel] In this you observe an angel weighing the good works of the deceased against his evil deeds; and, as the former are far exceeding the avoirdupois upon which Satan is to found his claim, he is endeavoring most unfairly to depress the scale with his two-pronged fork. This allegory is of frequent occurrence in the monkish legends.--The saint, who was aware of the frauds of the fiend, resolved to hold the balance himself.--He began by throwing in a pilgrimage to a miraculous virgin.--The devil pulled out an assignation with some fair mortal Madonna, who had ceased to be immaculate.--The saint laid in the scale the sackcloth and ashes of the penitent of Lenten-time.--Satan answered the deposit by the vizard and leafy-robe of the masker of the carnival.--Thus did they still continue equally interchanging the sorrows of godliness with the sweets of sin, and still the saint was distressed beyond compare, by observing that the scale of the wicked thing (wise men call him the correcting principle,) always seemed the heaviest. Almost did he despair of his client's salvation, when he luckily saw eight little jetty black claws just hooking and clenching over the rim of the golden basin. The claws at once betrayed the craft of the cloven foot. Old Nick had put a little cunning young devil under the balance, who, following the dictates of his senior, kept clinging to the scale, and swaying it down with all his might and main. The saint sent the imp to his proper place in a moment, and instantly the burthen of transgression was seen to kick the beam. Painters and sculptors also often introduced this ancient allegory of the balance of good and evil, in their representations of the last judgment: it was even employed by Lucas Kranach. The other capital which I send to you is ornamented with groups of Centaurs or Sagittaries. Astronomical sculptures are frequently found upon the monuments of the middle ages. Two capitals, forming part of a series of zodiacal sculptures, are preserved in the _Musée des Monumens Français_; and, speaking from memory, I think they bear a near resemblance in style to that which is here represented. [Illustration: Capital with Centaurs or Sagittaries] Montivilliers itself is a neat little town, beautifully situated in a valley, with a stream of clear water running through it. At this time its trade is trifling; but the case was otherwise in former days, when its cloths were considered to rival those of Flanders, and the preservation of the manufacture was regarded of so much consequence, that sundry regulations respecting it are to be found in the royal ordinances. One of them in particular, of the fourteenth century, notices the frauds committed by other towns in imitating the mark of the cloth of Montivilliers. The general appearance of Harfleur is much like that of Montivilliers; but numerous remains of walls and gates denote that it was once of still greater comparative importance. The ancient trade of the place is now transferred to Havre de Grace, the situation of the latter town being far more elegible. The Seine no longer rolls its waves under Harfleur; and the desiccated harbor is now seen as a verdant meadow. Without the aid of history, therefore, you would in vain inquire into the derivation of the name, in connection with which, the learned Huet, Bishop of Avranches[39], calls upon us to remark, that the names of many places in Normandy end in _fleur_, as Barfleur, Harfleur, Honfleur, Fiefleur, Vitefleur, &c.; and that, if, as it is commonly supposed, this termination comes from _fluctus_, it must have passed through the Saxon, in which language _fleoten_ signifies _to flow_. Hence we have _flot_, and from _flot, fleut_ and _fleur_, the last alteration being warranted by the genius of the French language. The bishop further states, that there are two facts, affording a decisive proof of this origin: the one, that the names now terminating in _fleur_, ended anciently _flot_, Barfleur being Barbeflot, Harfleur Hareflot, and Honfleur Huneflot; the other, that all places so called are situated where they are washed by the tide. Such is also the position of the towns in Holland, whose names terminate in _vliet_, and of those in England, ending in _fleet_, as Purfleet, Byfleet, &c. The Latin word _flevus_ is of the same kind, and is derived from the same source; for, instead of Hareflot and Huneflot, some old records have Hareflou and Huneflou, and some others Barfleu, terms approaching _flevus_, which is also called by Ptolemy, _fleus_, and by Mela, _fletio_. It is highly improbable, that these two last terms should have been coined subsequently to the time of the Romans becoming masters of Gaul, and it is equally unlikely that the Saxon _fleoten_ should be derived from the Latin. Thus far, therefore, the languages appear to have had a common origin, and they are insomuch allied to the Celtic, that those towns in Britanny, in whose names are found the syllables _pleu_ and _plou_, are also invariably placed in similar situations. If, however, I am fairly embarked in the sea of etymological conjecture, I know not where I shall be carried; and therefore, instead of urging the probability that the root of the Celtic _pleu_ is apparently to be found in the Pelasgic [Greek in original] sail or float, I shall return to Harfleur and its history. Whilst Harfleur was in its glory, it was considered the key of the Seine and of this part of France. In 1415 it opposed a vigorous resistance to our Henry Vth, who had no sooner made himself master of it, than, with a degree of contradiction, which teaches man to regard the performance of his duty to God as no reason for his performing it to his fellow-creatures, "the King uncovered his feet and legs, and walked barefoot from the gate to the parish church of St. Martin, where he very devoutly offered up his prayers and thanksgivings for his success. But, immediately afterwards he made all the nobles and the men at arms that were in the town his captives, and shortly after sent the greater part out of the place, clothed in their jerkins only, taking down their names and surnames in writing, and obliging them to swear by their faith that they would surrender themselves prisoners at Calais on Martinmas-day next ensuing. In like manner were the townsmen made prisoners, and obliged to ransom themselves for large sums of money. Afterwards did the King banish them out of the town, with numbers of women and children, to each of whom were given five sols and a portion of their garments." Monstrelet[40], from whom I have transcribed this detail, adds, that "it was pitiful to hear and see the sorrow of these poor people, thus driven away from their homes; the priests and clergy were likewise dismissed; and, in regard to the wealth found there, it was not to be told, and appertained even to the King, who distributed it as he pleased." Other writers tell us that the number of those thus expelled was eight thousand, and that the conqueror, not satisfied with this act of vengeance, publicly burned the charters and archives of the town and the title-deeds of individuals, re-peopled Harfleur with English, and forbad the few inhabitants that remained to possess or inherit any landed property. After a lapse, however, of twenty years, the peasants of the neighboring country, aided by one hundred and four of the inhabitants, retook the place by assault. The exploit was gallant; and a custom continued to prevail in Harfleur, for above two centuries subsequently, intended to commemorate it; a bell was tolled one hundred and four times every morning at day-break, being the time when the attack was made. In 1440, the citizens, undismayed by the sufferings of their predecessors, withstood a second siege from our countrymen, whom the town resisted four months, and in whose possession it remained ten years, when Charles VIIIth permanently united it to the crown of France. Notwithstanding these calamities, it rose again to a state of prosperity, till the revocation of the edict of Nantes gave the death-blow to its commerce; and intolerance completed the desolation which war had begun. At present, it is only remarkable for the elegant tower and spire of its church, connected by flying buttresses of great beauty, the whole of rich and elaborate workmanship. [Illustration: Tower and Spire of Harfleur Church] At a short distance from Harfleur, the Seine comes in view, flowing into the sea through a fine rich valley; but the wide expanse of water has no picturesque beauty. The hills around Havre are plentifully spotted with gentlemen's houses, few only of which have been seen in other parts in the ride. The town itself is strongly fortified; and, having conducted you hither, I shall leave you for the present, reserving for another letter any particulars respecting Havre, and the rest of the road to Rouen. Footnotes: [25] _Antiquités de Normandie_, p. 53. [26] _Dumoulin, Géographie de la France_, II p. 80. [27] _Description de la Haute Normandie_, I. p. 109. [28] Heylin notices the familiarity of the approach of the French servants, in his delineation of a Norman inn. An extract may amuse those who are not familiar with the works of this quaint yet sensible writer. "There stood in the chamber three beds, if at the least it be lawful so to call them; the foundation of them was straw, so infinitely thronged together, that the wool-packs which our judges sit on in the Parliament, were melted butter to them; upon this lay a medley of flocks and feathers sewed up together in a large bag, (for I am confident it was not a tick) but so ill ordered that the knobs stuck out on each side like a crab-tree cudgel. He had need to have flesh enough that lyeth on one of them, otherwise the second night would wear out his bones.--Let us now walk into the kitchen and observe their provision. And here we found a most terrible execution committed on the person of a pullet; my hostess, cruel woman, had cut the throat of it, and without plucking off the feathers, tore it into pieces with her hands, and afterwards took away skin and feathers together: this done, it was clapped into a pan and fried for supper.--But the principal ornaments of these inns are the men-servants, the raggedest regiment that ever I yet looked upon; such a thing as a chamberlain was never heard of amongst them, and good clothes are as little known as he. By the habits of his attendants a man would think himself in a gaol, their clothes are either full of patches or open to the skin. Bid one of them make clean your boots, and presently he hath recourse to the curtains.--They wait always with their hats on, and so do all servants attending on their masters.--Time and use reconciled me to many other things, which, at the first were offensive; to this most irreverent custom I returned an enemy; _neither can I see how it can choose but stomach the most patient_ to see the worthiest sign of liberty usurped and profaned by the basest of slaves."--Peter then has a learned _excursus de jure pileorum_, wherein _Tertullian de Spectaculis, Erasmus_ his _Chiliades_, and many other reverent authorities are adduced; also, giving an account of his successful exertions, as to "the licence of putting on our caps at our public meetings, which privilege, time, and the tyranny of the vice-chancellor, had taken from." After which, he still resumes in ire,--"this French sauciness hath drawn me out of the way; an impudent familiarity, which, I confess, did much offend me; and to which I still profess myself an open enemy. Though Jacke speak French, I cannot endure Jacke should be a gentleman." [29] _Géographie de la France_, II. p. 115. [30] _Description de la Haute Normandie_, I. p. 94. [31] P. 196, 203, 204. [32] _Description de la Haute Normandie_, I. p. 90.--Some other writers date the foundation A.D. 666. [33] _Gough's Alien Priories_, I. p. 9. [34] This important part of its treasures, we may hope, from the following passage in Noel, has been in a measure preserved. "On m'a assuré que cette dernière partie des richesses littéraires de notre pays étoit heureusement conserveé: puisse aujourd'hui ce dépot, honorant les mains qui le possédent, parvenir intégre jusqu'aux tems propères où le génie de l'histoire pourra utiliser sa possession."--_Essais sur la Seine Inférieure_, II. p. 21. [35] I do not know if it be wholly destroyed; for the author of the Description of Upper Normandy and Goube both speak of the existence of a square tower within the precincts of the abbey, part of the old palace, and known by the name of the _Tower of Babel_. [36] _Noel, Essais sur la Seine Inférieure_, II. p. 11. [37] Vol. I. p. 389. [38] This name, in Latin, is _Monasterium Villare_; in old French records it is called _Monstier Vieil_. [39] _Origines de Caen, 2nd edit._ p. 300. [40] Vol. II. p. 78. LETTER VI. HAVRE--TRADE AND HISTORY OF THE TOWN--EMINENT MEN--BOLBEC--YVETOT--RIDE TO ROUEN--FRENCH BEGGARS. (_Rouen, June_, 1818.) To Fécamp and the other places noticed in my last letter, a more striking contrast could not easily be found than Havre. It equally wants the interest derived from ancient history, and the appearance of misery inseparable from present decay. And yet even Havre is now suffering and depressed. A town which depends altogether upon foreign commerce, could not fail to feel the effects of a long maritime war; and we accordingly find the number of its inhabitants, which twenty years ago was estimated at twenty-five thousand, now reduced to little more than sixteen thousand. The blow, which Havre will with most difficulty recover is the loss of St. Domingo; for, before the revolution, it almost enjoyed a monopoly of the trade of this important colony, in which upwards of eighty ships, each of above three hundred tons burthen, were constantly employed. With Martinique and Guadaloupe it had a similar, though less extensive, intercourse. As the natural outlet for the manufactures of Rouen and Paris, it supplied the French islands in the West Indies with the principal part of their plantation stores; and the situation of the port was equally advantageous for the importation of their produce. Guinea and the coast of Africa afforded a second and important branch of commerce; and this also is little likely entirely to recover. We may add that, happily it is not so; for it depended principally upon the slave-trade, the profits of which were such, that it was calculated a vessel might clear upon an average nearly eight thousand pounds by each voyage[41]. Its whale-fishery has, for more than a century, ceased to exist. This pursuit began with spirit and at as early a period as the year 1632, when the merchants of this port, in conjunction with those of Biscay, fitted out the expedition commanded by Vrolicq, seized upon a station near Spitzbergen, where they would have obtained a permanent establishment, had they not been violently expelled by the Danes and Dutch. But the coasting-trade with the various ports of France, and the communication with the other countries of Europe, is now again in full vigor; and it is to these sources that Havre is chiefly indebted for the life and spirit visible in its quays and public places. The appearance of bustle and activity is a striking, at the same time that it is a most pleasing, character, of every great and commercial sea-port, in every part of the world: it is especially so in a climate which is milder than our own, and where not only the loading and unloading of the ships, with the consequent transport of merchandize, is continually taking place before the spectator; but the sides of the shops are commonly set open, sail-makers are pursuing their business in rows in the streets, and almost every handicraft and occupation is carried on in the open air. An acute traveller might also conjecture that the mildness of the atmosphere is comfortable and congenial to the parrots, perroquets, and monkeys, which are brought over as pets and companions by the sailors. Great numbers of these exotic birds and brutes are to be seen at the windows, and they almost give to the town of Havre the appearance of a tropical settlement. The quays are strongly edged and faced with granite: the streets, of which there are forty, are all built in straight lines, and chiefly at right angles with each other. In them are several fountains, round which picturesque groups of women are continually collected, employed with Homeric industry in the task of washing linen. The churches are ugly, their style is a miserable caricature of Roman architecture, the interiors are incumbered by dirty and dark chapels, filled up with wood carvings. The principal church has figures of saints, of wretched execution, but of the size of life, ranged round the interior. The harbor is calculated to contain three hundred vessels. The houses are oddly constructed: they are very narrow, and very lofty, being commonly seven stories high, and they are mostly fronted with stripes of tiled slate, and intermediate ones of mortar, so fantastically disposed, that two are rarely seen alike. Notwithstanding what is alledged by the author of the _Mémoires sur Havre_, in his endeavors to give consequence to his native place, by maintaining its antiquity, it appears certain that no mention is made of the town previously to the fifteenth century. Even so late as 1509, its scite was occupied by a few hovels, clustered round a thatched chapel, under the protection of Notre Dame de Grace, from whom the place derived the name of Havre de Grace. Francis Ist, who was the real founder[42] of Havre, was desirous of changing this name to _Françoisville_ or _Franciscopole_. But the will of a sovereign, as Goube very justly observes, most commonly dies with him: in our days, the National Convention, aided by the full force of popular enthusiasm, has equally failed in a similar attempt. The jacobins tried in vain to banish the recollections of good St. Denis, by unchristening his vill under the appellation of _Franciade_. Disobedience to the edict, exposed, indeed, the contravener to the chance of experiencing the martyrdom of the bishop; yet the mandate still produced no effect. Nor was Napoléon more successful; and history affords abundant proof, that it is more easy to build a city, or even to conquer a kingdom, than to alter an established name. Viewed in its present condition, no town in France unites more advantages than Havre: it is one of the keys of the kingdom; it commands the mouth of the river that leads direct to the metropolis; and it is at once a great commercial town and a naval station. Possessing such claims to commercial and military pre-eminence, it may appear matter of surprise that it should be of so recent an origin; but the cause is to be sought for in the changes which succeeding centuries have induced in the face of the country-- "Vidi ego quæ fuerat quondam durissima tellus Esse fretum; vidi factas ex æquore terras." The sea continually loses here, and, without great efforts on the part of man to retard the operation of the elements, Havre may, in process of time, become what Harfleur is. At its origin it stood immediately on the shore; the consequence of which was, that, within a very few years, a high tide buried two-thirds of the houses and nearly all the inhabitants. The remembrance of this dreadful calamity is still annually renewed by a solemn procession on the fifteenth of January. With regard to historical events connected with Havre, there is little to be said. It was the spot whence our Henry VIIth embarked, in 1485, aided by four thousand men from Charles VIIIth, of France, to enforce his claim to the English crown. The town was seized by the Huguenots, and delivered to our Queen Elizabeth, in 1562. But it was held by her only till the following year, when Charles IXth, with Catherine of Medicis, commanded the siege in person, and pressed it so vigorously, that the Earl of Warwick was obliged to evacuate the place, after having sacrificed the greater part of his troops. At the end of the following century, after the bombardment and destruction of Dieppe, an attack was made upon Havre, but without success, owing to the strength of the fortifications, and particularly of the citadel. For this, the town was indebted to Cardinal Richelieu, who was its governor for a considerable time, and who also erected some of its public buildings, improved the basin, and gave a fresh impulse to trade, by ordering several large ships of war to be built here. As ship-builders, the inhabitants of Havre have always had a high character: they stand conspicuous in the annals of the art, for the construction of the vessel called _la Grande Françoise_, and justly termed _la grande_, as having been of two thousand tons burthen. Her cables are said to have been above the thickness of a man's leg; and, besides what is usually found in a ship, she contained a wind-mill and a tennis-court[43]. Her destination was, according to some authors, the East Indies; according to others, the Isle of Rhodes, then attacked by Soliman IInd; but we need not now inquire whither she was bound; for, after advantage had been taken of two of the highest tides, the utmost which could be done was to tow her to the end of the pier, where she stuck fast, and was finally obliged to be cut to pieces. Her history and catastrophe are immortalized by Rabelais, under the appellation of _la Grande Nau Françoise_. It were unpardonable to take leave of Havre without one word upon the celebrated individuals to whom it has given birth; and you must allow me also, from our common taste for natural history, to point it out to your notice as a spot peculiarly favorable for the collecting of fossil shells, which are found about the town and neighborhood in great numbers and variety. The Abbé Dicquemare, a naturalist of considerable eminence, who resided here, may possibly be known to you by his observations on this subject, or still more probably by those upon the Aetiniæ; the latter having been translated into English, and honored with a place in the Transactions of our Royal Society. Of more extensive, but not more justly merited, fame, are George Scudery and his sister Magdalen: the one a voluminous writer in his day, though now little known, except for his _Critical Observations upon the Cid_; the other, a still more prolific author of novels, and alternately styled by her contemporaries the Sappho of her age, and "un boutique de verbiage;" but unquestionably a writer of merit, notwithstanding the many unmanly sneers of Boileau, whose bitter pen, like that of our own illustrious satirist, could not even consent to spare a female that had been so unfortunate as to provoke his resentment. She died in 1701, at the advanced age of ninety-four. The last upon my list is one of whom death has very recently deprived the world, the excellent Bernardin de Saint Pierre; a man whose writings are not less calculated to improve the heart than to enlarge the mind. It is impossible to read his works without feeling love and respect for the author. His exquisite little tale of _Paul and Virginia_ is in the hands of every body; and his larger work, the _Studies of Nature_, deserves to be no less generally read, as full of the most original observations, joined to theories always ingenious, though occasionally fanciful: the whole conveyed in a singularly captivating style, and its merits still farther enhanced by a constant flow of unaffected piety. The road from Havre to Rouen is of a different character, and altogether unlike that from Dieppe; but what it gains in beauty of landscape it loses in interest. And yet, perhaps, it is even wrong to say that it gains much in point of beauty; for, though: trees are more generally dispersed, though cultivation is universal, and the soil good, and produce luxuriant, and though the mind and the eye cannot but be pleased by the abundance and verdure of the country, yet in picturesque effect it is extremely deficient. Monotony, even of excellence, displeases. I am speaking of the road which passes through Bolbec and Yvetot: there is another which lies nearer to the banks of the Seine, through Lillebonne and Caudebec, and this, I do not doubt, would, in every point of view, have been preferable. At but a short distance from Havre, to the left, lies the church, formerly part of the priory, of Grâville, a picturesque and interesting object. Of the date of its erection we have no certain knowledge, and it is much to be regretted that we have not, for it is clearly of Norman architecture; the tower a very pure specimen of that style, and the end of the north transept one of the most curious any where to be seen, and apparently; also one of the most ancient[44]. I should therefore feel no scruple in referring the building to a more early period than the beginning of the thirteenth century, where our records of the establishment commence; for it was then that William Malet, Lord of Grâville, placed here a number of regular canons from Ste. Barbe en Auge, and endowed them with all the tythes and patronage he possessed in France and England. The act by which Walter, Archbishop of Rouen, confirmed this foundation, is dated in 1203. _Stachys Germanica_, a plant of extreme rarity in England, grows abundantly here by the road-side; and apple-trees are very numerous, not only edging the road, but planted in rows across the fields. The valley by which you enter Bolbec is pretty and varied; full of trees and houses, which stand at different heights upon the hills on either side. The town itself is long, straggling, and uneven. Through it runs a rapid little stream, which serves many purposes of extensive business, connected with the cotton manufactory, the preparation of leather, cutlery, &c. This stream, of the same name with the town, afterwards falls into the Seine, near Lillebonne, one of the most ancient places in Normandy, and formerly the metropolis of the Caletes, but now only a wretched village. Tradition refers its ruin to the period of the invasion of Gaul by the Romans; but it revived under the Norman Dukes, who resided here a portion of the year, and it was a favorite seat of William the Conqueror. To him, or to one of his immediate predecessors or successors, it is most probable that the castle owes its existence. Mr. Cotman found the ruins of it extensive and remarkable. The importance of the place, at a far more early date, is proved by the medals of the Upper and Lower Empire, which are frequently dug up here, and not less decisively by the many Roman roads which originate from the town. Bolbec can lay claim to no similar distinction; but it is full of industrious manufacturers. Twice in the last century it was burned to the ground; and, after each conflagration, it has arisen more flourishing from its ashes. At the last, which happened in 1765, Louis XVth made a donation to the town of eighty thousand livres, and the parliament of Normandy added a gratuity of half as much more, to assist the inhabitants in repairing their losses. Yvetot, the next stage, possesses no visible interest, and furnishes no employment for the pencil. The town is, like Bolbec, a residence for manufacturers; and the curious stranger would seek in vain for any traces of decayed magnificence, any vestiges or records of a royal residence. And yet, it is held that Yvetot was the capital of a _kingdom_, which, if it really did exist, had certainly the distinction of being the smallest that ever was ruled on its own account. The subject has much exercised the talents and ingenuity of historians. It has been maintained by the affirmants, that an actual monarchy existed here at a period as remote as the sixth century; others argue that, though the Lords of Yvetot may have been stiled _Kings_, the distinction was merely titular, and was not conferred till about the year 1400; whilst a third, and, perhaps, most numerous, body, treat the whole as apocryphal. Robert Gaguin[45], a French historian of the fifteenth century, prefaces the anecdote by observing, that he is the first French writer by whom it is recorded; and, as if sensible that such a remark could not fail to excite suspicion, he proceeds to say, that it is wonderful that his predecessors should have been silent. Yet he certainly was not the first who stated the story in print; for it appears in the Chronicles of Nicholas Gilles, which were printed in 1492, whilst the earliest edition of Gaugin was published in 1497.--According to these monkish historians, Clotharius, of France, son of Clovis, had threatened the life of his chamberlain, Gaultier, Lord of Yvetot, who thereupon fled the kingdom, and for ten years remained in voluntary exile, fighting against the infidels. At the end of this period, Gaultier hoped that the anger of his sovereign might be appeased, and he accordingly went to Rome, and implored the aid of the Supreme Pontiff. Pope Agapetus pitied the wanderer; and he gave unto him a letter addressed to the King of the Franks, in which he interceded for the supplicant. Clotharius was then residing at Soissons, his capital, and thither Gaultier repaired on Good-Friday, in the year 536, and, availing himself of the moment when the King was kneeling before the altar, threw himself at the feet of the royal votary, beseeching pardon in the name of the common Savior of mankind, who on that day shed his blood for the redemption of the human race. But his prayers and appeal were in vain: he found no pardon; Clothair drew his sword, and slew him on the spot. The Pope threatened the monarch with apostolical vengeance, and Clothair attempted to atone for the murder, by raising the town and territory of Yvetot into a kingdom, and granting it in perpetuity to the heirs of Gaultier. Such is the tradition. There is a very able dissertation upon the subject, by the Abbé de Vertot[46], who endeavors to disprove the whole story: first by the silence of all contemporary authors; then by the fact, that Yvetot was not at that time under the dominion of Clothair; then by an anachronism, which the story involves as to Pope Agapetus; and finally by sundry other arguments of minor importance. Even he, however, admits, that in a royal decree, dated 1392, and preserved among the records of the Exchequer of Normandy, the title of _King_ is given to the Lord of Yvetot; and he is obliged to cut the knot, which he is unable to untie, by stating it as his opinion, that at or about this period Yvetot was really raised into a sovereignty, though, on what occasion, for what purpose, and with what privileges, no document remains to prove. As a parallel case, he instances the Peers of France, an order with whose existence every body is acquainted, while of the date of the establishment nothing is known. It is surprising, that so clear-sighted a writer did not perceive that he was doing nothing more than illustrating, as the logicians say, _obscurum per obscurius_, or, rather, making darkness more dark; as if it were not considerably more probable, that so strange a circumstance should have taken place in the sixth century, and have been left unrecorded, when society was unformed, anomalies frequent, and historians few, than that it should have happened in the fourteenth, a period when the government of France was completely settled in a regular form, under one monarch, when literature was generally diffused, and when every remarkable event was chronicled. Besides which, the inhabitants of the little kingdom continued, in some measure, independent of his Most Christian Majesty, even until the revolution. At least, they paid not a sou of taxes, neither _aides_, nor _tenth-penny_, nor _gabelle_. It was a sanctuary into which no farmer of the revenue dared to enter. And it is hardly to be doubted, but that there must have been some very singular cause for so singular and enviable a privilege. In our own days, M. Duputel[47], a member of the academy of Rouen, has entered the lists against the Abbé; and between them the matter is still undecided, and is likely so to continue. For myself, I have no means of throwing light upon it; but the impression left upon my mind, after reading both sides of the question, is, that the arguments are altogether in favor of Vertot, while the greater weight of probabilities is in the opposite scale. I shall leave you, however, to poise the balance, and I shall not attempt to cause either end of the beam to preponderate, by acting the part of Old Nick as before exhibited to you; though I decidedly believe that Gaguin had some authority for his tale, but, by neglecting to quote it, he has left the minds of his readers to uncertainty, and his own veracity to suspicion. With this digression I bid farewell to Yvetot, and its Lilliputian kingdom; nor will I detain you much longer on the way to Rouen, the road passing through nothing likely to afford interest in point of historical recollection or antiquities; though within a very short distance of the ancient Abbey of Pavilly on the one side, and at no great distance from the still more celebrated Monastery of Jumieges on the other. The houses in this neighborhood are in general composed of a framework of wood, with the interstices filled with clay, in which are imbedded small pieces of glass, disposed in rows, for windows. The wooden studs are preserved from the weather by slates, laid one over the other, like the scales of a fish, along their whole surface, or occasionally by wood over wood in the same manner. I am told that there are some very ancient timber churches in Norway, erected immediately after the conversion of the Northmen, which are covered with wood-scales: the coincidence is probably accidental, yet it is not altogether unworthy of notice. At one end the roof projects beyond the gable four or five feet, in order to protect a door-way and ladder or staircase that leads to it; and this elevation has a very picturesque effect. A series of villages, composed of cottages of this description, mixed with large manufactories and extensive bleaching grounds, comprise all that is to be remarked in the remainder of the ride; a journey that would be as interesting to a traveller in quest of statistical information, as it would be the contrary to you or to me. Poverty, the inseparable companion of a manufacturing population, shews itself in the number of beggars that infest this road as well as that from Calais to Paris. They station themselves by the side of every hill, as regularly as the mendicants of Rome were wont to do upon the bridges. Sometimes a small nosegay thrown into your carriage announces the petition in language, which, though mute, is more likely to prove efficacious than the loudest prayer. Most commonly, however, there is no lack of words; and, after a plaintive voice has repeatedly assailed you with "une petite charité, s'il vous plait, Messieurs et Dames," an appeal is generally made to your devotion, by their gabbling over the Lord's Prayer and the Creed with the greatest possible velocity. At the conclusion, I have often been told that they have repeated them once, and will do so a second time if I desire it! Should all this prove ineffectual, you will not fail to hear "allons, Messieurs et Dames, pour l'amour de Dieu, qu'il vous donné un bon voyage," or probably a song or two; the whole interlarded with scraps of prayers, and ave-marias, and promises to secure you "santé et salut." They go through it with an earnestness and pertinacity almost inconceivable, whatever rebuffs they may receive. Their good temper, too, is undisturbed, and their face is generally as piteous as their language and tone; though every now and then a laugh will out, and probably at the very moment when they are telling you they are "pauvres petits misérables," or "petits malheureux, qui n'ont ni père ni mère." With all this they are excellent flatterers. An Englishman is sure to be "milord," and a lady to be "ma belle duchesse," or "ma belle princesse." They will try too to please you by "vivent les Anglais, vive Louis dix-huit." In 1814 and 1815, I remember the cry used commonly to be "vive Napoléon," but they have now learned better; and, in truth, they had no reason to bear attachment to the ex-emperor, an early maxim of whose policy it was to rid the face of the country of this description of persons, for which purpose he established workhouses, or _dépots de mendicité_, in each department, and his gendarmes were directed to proceed in the most summary manner, by conveying every mendicant and vagrant to these receptacles, without listening to any excuse, or granting any delay. He had no clear idea of the necessity of the gentle formalities of a summons, and a pass under his worship's hand and seal. And, without entering into the elaborate researches respecting the original habitat of a _mumper_, which are required by the English law, he thought that pauperism could be sufficiently protected by consigning the specimen to the nearest cabinet. The simple and rigorous plan of Napoléon was conformable to the nature of his government, and it effectually answered the purpose. The day, therefore, of his exile to Elba was a _Beggar's Opera_ throughout France; and they have kept up the jubilee to the present hour, and seem likely to persist in maintaining it. Footnotes: [41] _Goube, Histoire de la Normandie_, III. p. 127. [42] "François premier, revenant vainqueur de la bataille de Marignan en 1515, crut devoir profiter de la situation avantageuse de la Crique; il conçut le dessin de l'agrandir et d'en faire une place de guerre importante. Ce prince avoit pris les interêts du jeune Roi d'Ecosse, Jacques V, et ce fut pour se fortifier contre les Anglais qu'il forma la résolution de leur opposer cette barrière. Pour conduire l'entreprise il jetta les yeux sur un Gentilhomme nommé Guion le Roi, Seigneur de Chillon, Vice-Amiral, et Capitaine de Honfleur, et la premiere pierre fut posée en 1516."--_Description de la Haute Normandie_, I. p. 195. [43] _Description de la Haute Normandie_, I. p. 200. [44] See _Cotman's Architectural Antiquities of Normandy_, t. 12.--There is also a general view of the church, and of some of the monastic buildings from the lithographic press of the Comte de Lasteyrie. [45] "Sed priusquàm a Clotario discedo, illud non prætermittendum reor, quod, cùm maximè cognitu dignum est, mirari licet a nullo Franco Scriptore litteris fuisse commendatum. Fuit inter familiarissimos Clotarii aulicos, Galterus Yvetotus, Caletus agri Rothomagensis, apprimè nobilis et qui regii cubiculi primarius cultor esset. Huic pro suâ integritate, de Clotario cùm meliùs meliùsque in dies promereretur, reliqui aulici invident, depravantes quodlibet ab eo gestum, nec desistunt donec irritatum illi Clotarium pessimis susurris efficiunt; quamobrem jurat Rex se hominem necaturum. Perceptâ Clotarii indignatione, Galterus pugnator illustris cedere Regi irato constituit. Igitur derelictâ Franciâ in militiam adversus religionis catholicæ inimicos pergit, ubi decem annos multis prosperè gestis rebus, ratus Clotarium simul cum tempore mitiorem effectum, Romam in primis ad Agapitum Pontificem se contulit: a quo ad Clotarium impetratis litteris, ad eum Suessione agentem se protinùs confert, Veneris die, quæ parasceve dicitur, cogitans religiosam Christianis diem ad pietatem sibi profuturam. Verùm litteris Pontificis exceptis cùm Galterum Clotarius agnovit, vetere irâ tanquam recenti livore percitus, rapto a proximo sibi equite gladio, hominem statìm interemit. Tam indignam insignis atque innocentis hominis necem, religioso loco et die ad Christi passionem recolendam celebri, pontifex inæquanimitèr ferens, confestìm Clotarium reprehendit, monetque iniquissimi facinoris rationem habere, se alioquin excommunicationis sententiam subiturum. Agapiti monita reveritus Rex, capto cum prudentibus consilio, Galteri hæredes, et qui Yvetotum deinceps possiderent, ab omni Francorum Regum ditione atque fide liberavit, liberosque prorsùs fore suo syngrapho et regiis scriptis confirmat. Ex quo factum est ut ejus pagi et terræ possessor _Regem_ se Yvetoti hactenus sine controversiâ nominaverit. Id autem anno christianæ gratiæ quingentesimo trigesimo sexto gestum esse indubiâ fide invenio. Nam dominantibus longo post tempore in Normanniâ. Anglis, ortâque inter Joannem Hollandum, Auglum, et Yvetoti dominum quæstione, quasi proventuum ejus terræ pars fisco Regis Anglorum quotannis obnoxia esset, Caleti Proprætor anno salutis 1428, de ratione litis judiciario ordine se instruens, id, sicut annotatum a me est, comperisse judicavit."--_Robert Gaguin_, lib. II. fol. 17. [46] _Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions_, IV. p. 728.--The question is also discussed in the _Traité de la Noblesse_, by M. de la Roque; in the _Mercure de France_, for January, 1726; and in a Latin treatise by Charles Malingre, entitled "_De falsâ regni Yvetoti narratione, ex majoribus commentariis fragmentum_." [47] _Précis Analytique des Travaux de l'Académie de Rouen_, 1811, p. 181. LETTER VII. ON THE STATE OF AFFAIRS IN FRANCE. (_Rouen, June_, 1818.) Abandoning, for the present, all discussion of the themes of the elder day, I shall occupy myself with matters relating to the living world. The fatigued and hungry traveller, whose flesh is weaker than his spirit, is often too apt to think that his bed and his supper are of more immediate consequence than churches or castles. And to those who are in this predicament, there is a material improvement at Rouen, since I was last here: nothing could be worse than the inns of the year 1815; but four years of peace have effected a wonderful alteration, and nothing can now be better than the Hôtel de Normandie, where we have fixed our quarters. Objection may, indeed, be made to its situation, as to that of every other hôtel in the city; but this is of little moment in a town, where every house, whatever street or place it may front, opens into a court-yard, so that its views are confined to what passes within its own quadrangle; and, for excellence of accommodations, elegance of furniture, skill in cookery, civility of attendance, nay, even for what is more rare, neatness, our host, M. Trimolet, may challenge competition with almost any establishment in Europe. For the rent of the house, which is one of the most spacious in Rouen, he pays three thousand francs a year; and, as house-rent is one of the main standards of the value of the circulating medium, I will add, that our friend, M. Rondeau, for his, which is not only among the largest but among the most elegant and the best placed for business, pays but five hundred francs more. This, then, may be considered as the _maximum_ at Rouen. Yet Rouen is far from being the place which should be selected by an Englishman, who retires to France for the purpose of economizing: living in general is scarcely one-fourth cheaper than in our own country. At Caen it is considerably more reasonable; on the banks of the Loire the expences of a family do not amount to one-half of the English cost; and still farther south a yet more sensible reduction takes place, the necessaries of life being cheaper by half than they are in Normandy, and house-rent by full four-fifths. A foreigner can glean but little useful information respecting the actual state of a country through which he journeys with as much rapidity as I have done. And still less is he able to secern the truth from the falsehood, or to weigh the probabilities of conflicting testimony. I therefore originally intended to be silent on this subject. There is a story told, I believe, of Voltaire, at least it may be as well told of Voltaire as of any other wit, that, being once in company with a very talkative empty Frenchman, and a very _glum_ and silent Englishman, he afterwards characterized them by saying, "l'un ne dit que des riens, et l'autre ne dit rien." Fearing that my political and statistical observations, which in good truth are very slender, might be ranked but too truly in the former category, I had resolved to confine them to my own notebook. Yet we all take so much interest in the destinies of our ancient rival and enemy, (I wish I could add, our modern friend,) that, according to my usual habit, I changed my determination within a minute after I had formed it; for I yielded to the impression, that even my scanty contribution would not be wholly unacceptable to you. France, I am assured on all sides, is rapidly improving, and the government is satisfactory to all _liberal_ men, in which number I include persons of every opinion, except the emigrants and those attached exclusively to the _ancien régime_. Men of the latter description are commonly known by the name of _Ultras_; and, speaking with a degree of freedom, which is practised here, to at least as great an extent as in England, they do not hesitate to express their decided disapprobation of the present system of government, and to declare, not only that Napoléon was more of a royalist than Louis, but that the King is a jacobin. They persuade themselves also, and would fain persuade others, that he is generally hated; and their doctrine is, that the nation is divided into three parties, ready to tear each other in pieces: the _Ministerialists_, who are few, and in every respect contemptible; the _Ultras_, not numerous, but headed by the Princes, and thus far of weight; and the _Revolutionists_, who, in point of numbers, as well as of talents and of opulence, considerably exceed the other two, and will, probably, ultimately prevail; so that these conflicts of opinion will terminate by decomposing the constitutional monarchy into a republic. To listen to these men, you might almost fancy they were quoting from Clarendon's History of the Rebellion in our own country; so entirely do their feelings coincide with those of the courtiers who attended Charles in his exile. Similar too is the reward they receive; for it is difficult for a monarch to be just, however he may in some cases he generous. Yet even the Ultras admit that the revolution has been beneficial to France, though they are willing to confine its benefits to the establishment of the trial by jury, and the correction of certain abuses connected with the old system of nobility. Among the advantages obtained, they include the abolition of the game laws; and, indeed, I am persuaded, from all I hear, that this much-contested question could not receive a better solution than by appealing to the present laws in France. Game is here altogether the property of the land-owner; it is freely exposed for sale, like other articles of food; and every one is himself at liberty to sport, or to authorize his friend to do so over his property, with no other restriction than that of taking out a licence, or _port d'armes_, which, for fifteen francs, is granted without difficulty to any man of respectability, whatever may be his condition in life. In this particular, I cannot but think that France has set us an example well worthy of our imitation; and she also shews that it may be followed without danger; for neither do the pleasures of the field lose their relish, nor is the game extirpated. The former are a subject of conversation in almost every company; and, as to the latter, whatever slaughter may have taken place in the woods and preserves, at the first burst of the revolution, I am assured that a good sportsman may, at the present time, between Dieppe and Rouen kill with ease, in a day, fifty head of game, consisting principally of hares, quails, and partridges. But, while these men thus restrict the benefits derived from the revolution, the case is far different with individuals of the other parties, all of whom are loud and unanimous in its praises. The good resulting from the republic has been purchased at a dreadful price, but the good remains; and those, who now enjoy the boon, are not inclined to remember the blood which drenched the three-colored banner. Thirty years have elapsed, and a new generation has arisen, to whom the horrors of the revolution live only in the page of history. But its advantages are daily felt in the equal nature and equal administration of the laws; in the suppression of the monasteries with their concomitant evils; in the restriction of the powers of the clergy; in the liberty afforded to all modes of religious worship; and in the abolition of all the edicts and mandates and prejudices, which secured to a peculiar sect and caste a monopoly of all the honors and distinctions of the common-wealth; for now, every individual of talent and character feels that the path to preferment and power is not obstructed by his birth or his opinions. The constitutional charter, in its present state, is a subject of pride to the French, and a sure bulwark to the throne. The representative system is beginning to be generally appreciated, and particularly in commercial towns. The deputies of this department are to be changed the approaching autumn, and the minds of men are already anxiously bent upon selecting such representatives as may best understand and promote their local interests. Few acts of the Bourbon government have contributed more powerfully to promote the popularity of the King, than the law enacted in the course of last year, which abolished the double election, and enabled the voters to give their suffrages directly for their favorite candidate, thus putting a stop at once to a variety of unfair influence, previously exerted upon such occasions. The same law has also created a general interest upon the subject, never before known; the strongest proof of which is, that, of the six or eight thousand electors contained in this department, nearly the whole are expected now to vote, whereas not a third ever did so before. The qualifications for an elector and a deputy are uniform throughout the kingdom, and depending upon few requisites; nothing more being required in the former case, than the payment of three hundred francs per annum, in direct taxes, and the having attained the age of thirty; while an addition of ten years to the age, and the payment of one thousand francs, instead of three hundred, renders every individual qualified to be of the number of the elected. The system, however, is subject to a restriction, which provides, that at least one half of the representatives of each department shall be chosen from among those who reside in it. In the beginning of the revolution, a much wider door was open: all that was then necessary to entitle a man to vote, was, that he should be twenty-one years of age, a Frenchman, and one who had lived for a year in the country on his own revenue, or on the produce of his labor, and was not in a state of servitude. It was then also decreed, that the electors should have each three livres a day during their mission, and should be allowed at the rate of one livre a league, for the distance from their usual place of residence, to that in which the election of members for their department is held. Such were the only conditions requisite for eligibility, either as elector or deputy; except, indeed, that the citizens in the primary assemblies, and the electors in the electoral assembly, swore that they would maintain liberty and equality, or die rather than violate their oath[48]. The wisdom and prudence of the subsequent alterations, few will be disposed to question: the system, in its present state, appears to me admirably qualified to attain the object in view; and such seems the general character of the French _Constitutional Charter_, which unites two excellent qualities, great clearness and great brevity. The whole is comprised in seventy-four short articles; and, that no Frenchman may plead ignorance of his rights or his duties, it is usually found prefixed to the almanacks. Some persons might, indeed, be inclined to deem this station as ominous; for, since the revolution began, the frame of the French government has sustained so many alterations, that, considering that several of their constitutions never outlived the current quarter, they may be fairly said to have had a new constitution in each year. How far the Bourbon charter will answer the purpose of serving as the basis of a code of laws for the government of an extensive kingdom, time only can determine. At present, it has the charm of novelty to recommend it; and there are few among us with whom novelty is not a strong attraction. Our friends on this side of the water are greatly belied, if it be not so with them. The finances of the French municipalities are administered with a degree of fairness and attention, which might put many a body corporate, in a certain island, to the blush. Little is known in England respecting the administration of the French towns: the following particulars relating to the revenue and expences of Rouen, may, therefore, in some measure, serve as a scale, by which you may give a guess at the balance-sheet of cities of greater or lesser magnitude.--The budget amounted for the last year to one million two hundred thousand francs. The proposed items of expenditure must be particularized, and submitted to the Prefect and the Minister of the Interior, before they can be paid. In this sum is comprised the charge for the hospitals, which contain above three thousand persons, including foundlings, and for all the other public institutions, the number and excellence of which has long been the pride of Rouen. You must consider too, that every thing of this kind is, in France, national: individuals do nothing, neither is it expected of them; and herein consists one of the most essential differences between France and England. To meet this great expenditure, the city is provided with the rents of public lands, with wharfage, with tolls from the markets and the _halles_; and, above all, with the _octroi_, a tax that prevails through France, upon every article of consumption brought into the towns, and is collected at the barriers. The _octroi_, like turnpike-tolls or the post-horse duty with us, is farmed; two-thirds are received by the government, and the remaining one-third by the town. In Rouen it produced the last year one million four hundred and fifty thousand francs.--If, now, this sum appears to you comparatively greater than that of our large cities in England, you must recollect that, with us, towns are not liable to similar charges: our corporations support no museums, no academies, no learned bodies; and our infirmaries, and dispensaries, and hospitals, are indebted, as well for their existence as their future maintenance, to the piety of the dead, or the liberality of the living. Nor must we forget that, even in this great kingdom, Rouen, at present, holds the fifth place among the towns; though it was far from being thus, when Buonaparté, uniting the imperial to the iron crown, overshadowed with his eagle-wings the continent from the Baltic to Apulia; and when the mural crowns of Rome and Amsterdam stood beneath the shield of the "good city" of Paris. The population of Rouen is estimated at eighty-seven thousand persons, of whom the greater number are engaged in the manufactories, which consist principally of cotton, linen, and woollen cloths, and are among the largest in France. At present, however, "trade is dull;" and hence, and as the politics of a trader invariably sympathize with his cash account, neither the peace, nor the English, nor the princes of the Bourbon dynasty, are popular here; for the articles manufactured at Rouen, being designed generally for exportation, ranged almost unrivalled over the continent, during the war, but now in every town they meet with competitors in the goods from England, which are at once of superior workmanship and cheaper. The latter advantage is owing very much to the greater perfection of our machinery, and, perhaps, still more to the abundance of coals, which enables us, at so small an expence, to keep our steam-engines in action, and thus to counterbalance the disproportion in the charge of manual labor, as well as the many disadvantages arising from the pressure of our heavy taxation.--But I must cease. An English fit of growling is coming upon me; and I find that the Blue Devils, which haunt St. Stephen's chapel, are pursuing me over the channel. Footnotes: [48] _Moore's Journal of a Residence in France_, I. p. 82. LETTER VIII. MILITARY ANTIQUITIES--LE VIEUX CHÂTEAU--ORIGINAL PALACE OF THE NORMAN DUKES--HALLES OF ROUEN--MIRACLE AND PRIVILEGE OF ST. ROMAIN--CHÂTEAU DU VIEUX PALAIS--PETIT CHÂTEAU--FORT ON MONT STE. CATHERINE--PRIORY THERE--CHAPEL OF ST. MICHAEL--DEVOTEE. (_Rouen, June,_ 1818) My researches in this city after the remains of architectural antiquity of the earlier Norman æra, have hitherto, I own, been attended with little success. I may even go so far as to say, that I have seen nothing in the circular style, for which it would not be easy to find a parallel in most of the large towns in England. On the other hand, the perfection and beauty of the specimens of the pointed style, have equally surprised and delighted me. I will endeavor, however, to take each object in its order, premising that I have been materially assisted in my investigations by M. Le Prevost and M. Rondeau, but especially by the former, one of the most learned antiquaries of Normandy. Of the fortifications and castellated buildings in Rouen very little indeed is left[49], and that little is altogether insignificant; being confined to some fragments of the walls scattered here and there[50], and to three circular towers of the plainest construction, the remains of the old castle, built by Philip Augustus in 1204, near to the Porte Bouvreuil, and hence commonly known by the name of the _Château de Bouvreuil_ or _le Vieux Château_.--It is to the leading part which this city has acted in the history of France, that we must attribute the repeated erection and demolition of its fortifications. An important event was commemorated by the erection of the _old castle_, it having been built upon the final annexation of Normandy to the crown of France, in consequence of the weakness of our ill-starred monarch,--John Lackland. The French King seems to have suspected that the citizens retained their fealty to their former sovereign. He intended that his fortress should command and bridle the city, instead of defending it. The town-walls were razed, and the _Vieille Tour_, the ancient palace of the Norman Dukes, levelled with the ground.--But, as the poet says of language, so it is with castles,-- ... "mortalia facta peribunt, Nec _castellorum_ stet honos et gratia vivax;" and, in 1590, the fortress raised by Philip Augustus experienced the fate of its predecessors; it was then ruined and dismantled, and the portion which was allowed to stand, was degraded into a jail. Now the three[51] towers just mentioned are alone remaining, and these would attract little notice, were it not that one of them bears the name of the _Tour de la Pucelle_, as having been, in 1430, the place of confinement of the unfortunate Joan of Arc, when she was captured before Compiégne and brought prisoner to Rouen. It must be stated, however, that the first castle recorded to have existed at Rouen, was built by Rollo, shortly after he had made himself master of Neustria. Its very name is now lost; and all we know concerning it is, that it stood near the quay, at the northern extremity of the town, in the situation subsequently occupied by the Church of St. Pierre du Châtel, and the adjoining monastery of the Cordeliers. After a lapse of less than fifty years, Rouen saw rising within her walls a second castle, the work of Duke Richard Ist, and long the residence of the Norman sovereigns. This, from a tower of great strength which formed a part of it, and which was not demolished till the year 1204, acquired the appellation of _la Vieille Tour_; and the name remains to this day, though the building has disappeared. The space formerly occupied by the scite of it is now covered by the _halles_, considered the finest in France. The historians of Rouen, in the usual strain of hyperbole, hint that their _halles_ are even the finest in the world[52], though they are very inferior to their prototypes at Bruges and Ypres. The hall, or exchange, allotted to the mercers, is two hundred and seventy-two feet in length, by fifty feet wide: those for the drapers and for wool are, each of them, two hundred feet long; and all these are surpassed in size by the corn-hall, whose length extends to three hundred feet. They are built round a large square, the centre of which is occupied by numberless dealers in pottery, old clothes, &c.; and, as the day on which we chanced to visit them was a Friday, when alone they are opened for public business, we found a most lively, curious, and interesting scene. It was on the top of a stone staircase, the present entry to the _halles_, that the annual ceremony[53] of delivering and pardoning a criminal for the sake of St. Romain, the tutelary protector of Rouen, was performed on Ascension-day, according to a privilege exercised, from time immemorial, by the Chapter of the Cathedral. The legend is romantic; and it acquires a species of historical importance, as it became the foundation of a right, asserted even in our own days. My account of it is taken from Dom Pommeraye's History of the Life of the Prelate[54].--He has been relating many miracles performed by him, and, among others, that of causing the Seine, at the time of a great inundation, to retire to its channel by his command, agreeably to the following beautiful stanza of Santeuil:-- "Tangit exundans aqua civitatem; Voce Romanus jubet efficaci; Audiunt fluctus, docilisque cedit Unda jubenti." Our learned Benedictine thus proceeds:--"But the following miracle was deemed a far greater marvel, and it increased the veneration of the people towards St. Romain to such a degree, that they henceforth regarded him as an actual apostle, who, from the authority of his office, the excellence of his doctrine, his extreme sanctity, and the gift of miracles, deserved to be classed with the earliest preachers of our holy faith. In a marshy spot, near Rouen, was bred a dragon, the very counterpart of that destroyed by St. Nicaise. It committed frightful ravages; lay in wait for man and beast, whom it devoured without mercy; the air was poisoned by its pestilential breath, and it was alone the cause of greater mischief and alarm, than could have been occasioned by a whole army of enemies. The inhabitants, wearied out by many years of suffering, implored the aid of St. Romain; and the charitable and generous pastor, who dreaded nothing in behalf of his flock, comforted them with the assurance of a speedy deliverance. The design itself was noble; still more so was the manner by which he put it in force; for he would not be satisfied with merely killing the monster, but undertook also to bring it to public execution, by way of atonement for its cruelties. For this purpose, it was necessary that the dragon should be caught; but when the prelate required a companion in the attempt, the hearts of all men failed them. He applied, therefore, to a criminal condemned to death for murder; and, by the promise of a pardon, bought his assistance, which the certain prospect of a scaffold, had he refused to accompany the saint, caused him the more willingly to lend. Together they went, and had no sooner reached the marsh, the monster's haunt, than St. Romain, approaching courageously, made the sign of the cross, and at once put it out of the power of the dragon to attempt to do him injury. He then tied his stole around his neck, and, in that state, delivered him to the prisoner, who dragged him to the city, where he was burned in the presence of all the people, and his ashes thrown into the river.--The manuscript of the Abbey of Hautmont, from which this legend is extracted, adds, that such was the fame of this miracle throughout France, that Dagobert, the reigning sovereign, sent for St. Romain to court, to hear a true narrative of the fact from his own lips; and, impressed with reverent awe, bestowed the celebrated privilege upon him and his successors for ever." The right has, in comparatively modern times, been more than once contested, but always maintained; and so great was the celebrity of the ceremony, that princes and potentates have repeatedly travelled to Rouen, for the purpose of witnessing it. There are not wanting, however, those[55] who treat the whole story as allegorical, and believe it to be nothing more than a symbolical representation of the subversion of idolatry, or of the confining of the Seine to its channel; the winding course of the river being typified by a serpent, and the word _Gargouille_ corrupted from _gurges_. Other writers differ in minor points of the story, and alledge that the saint had two fellow adventurers, a thief as well as a murderer, and that the former ran away, while the latter stood firm. You will see it thus figured in a modern painting on St. Romain's altar, in the cathedral; and there are two persons also with him, in the only ancient representation of the subject I am acquainted with, a bas-relief which till lately existed at the Porte Bouvreuil, and of which, by the kindness of M. Riaux, I am enabled to send you a drawing. [Illustration: Bas-Relief, representing St. Romain] To keep alive the tradition, in which Popish superstition has contrived to blend Judaic customs with heathen mythology, the practice was, that the prisoner selected for pardon should be brought to this place, called the chapel of St. Romain, and should here be received by the clergy in full robes, headed by the archbishop, and bearing all the relics of the church; among others, the shrine of St. Romain, which the criminal, after having been reprimanded and absolved, but still kneeling, thrice lifted, among the shouts of the populace, and then, with a garland upon his head and the shrine in his hands, accompanied the clergy in procession to the cathedral[56].--But the revolution happily consigned the relics to their kindred dust, and put an end to a privilege eminently liable to abuse, from the circumstance of the pardon being extended, not only to the criminal himself, but to all his accomplices; so that, an inferior culprit sometimes surrendered himself to justice, in confidence of interest being made to obtain him the shrine, and thus to shield under his protection more powerful and more guilty delinquents. The various modifications, however, of latter times, had so abridged its power, that it was at last only able to rescue a man guilty of involuntary homicide[57]. We may hope, therefore, it was not altogether deserving the hard terms bestowed upon it by Millin[58] who calls it the most absurd, most infamous, and most detestable of all privileges, and adduces a very flagrant instance of injustice committed under its plea.--D'Alégre, governor of Gisors, in consequence of a private pique against the Baron du Hallot, lord of the neighboring town of Vernon, treacherously assassinated him at his own house, while he was yet upon crutches, in consequence of the wounds received at the siege of Rouen. This happened during the civil wars; in the course of which, Hallot had signalized himself as a faithful servant, and useful assistant to the monarch. The murderer knew that there were no hopes for him of royal mercy; and, after having passed some time in concealment and as a soldier in the army of the league, he had recourse to the Chapter of the Cathedral of Rouen, from whom he obtained the promise of the shrine of St. Romain. To put full confidence, however, even in this, would, under such circumstances, have been imprudent. The clergy might break their word, or a mightier power might interpose. D'Alégre, therefore, persuaded a young mam, formerly a page of his, of the name of Pehu, to surrender himself as guilty of the crime; and to him the privilege was granted; under the sanction of which, the real culprit, and several of his accomplices in the assassination, obtained a free pardon. The widow and daughter of Hallot, in vain remonstrated: the utmost that could be done, after a tedious law-suit, was to procure a small fine to be imposed upon Pehu, and to cause him to be banished from Normandy and Picardy and the vicinity of Paris. But regulations were in consequence adopted with respect to the exercise of the privilege; and the pardons granted under favor of it were ever afterwards obliged to be ratified under the high seal of the kingdom. The _Château du Vieux Palais_ and _le petit Château_ like the edifices which I have already noticed, have equally yielded to time and violence. M. Carpentier has furnished us with representations of both these castles, drawn and etched by himself, in the _Itinerary of Rouen_. The first of them has also been inaccurately figured by Ducarel, and satisfactorily by Millin, in the second volume of his _Antiquités Nationales_; where, to the pen of this most meritorious and indefatigable writer, of whom, as of our Goldsmith, it may be justly said, that "nullum ferè scribendi genus non tetigit, nullum quod tetigit non ornavit," it affords materials for a curious memoir, blended with the history of our own Henry Vth, and of Henry IVth, of France. The castle was the work of the first of these sovereigns, and was begun by him in 1420, two years after a seven months' siege had put him in possession of the city, long the capital of his ancestors, and had thus rendered him undisputed master of Normandy. This was an event worthy of being immortalised; and it may easily be imagined that private feelings had no little share in urging him to erect a magnificent palace, intended at once as a safeguard for the town, and a residence for himself and his posterity. The right to build it was an express article in the capitulation he granted to Rouen, a capitulation of extreme severity[59], and purchased at the price of three hundred thousand golden crowns, as well as of the lives of three of the most distinguished citizens; Robert Livret, grand-vicar of the archbishop, John Jourdain, commander of the artillery, and Louis Blanchard, captain of the train-bands. The two first of these were, however, suffered to ransome themselves; the last, a man of distinguished honor and courage, was beheaded; but Henry, much to his credit, made no farther use of his victory, and even consented to pay for the ground required for his castle. He selected for the purpose, the situation where, defence was most needed, upon the extremity of the quay, by the side of the river, near the entrance from Dieppe and Havre. A row of handsome houses now fills the chief part of the space occupied by the building, which, at a subsequent period, was again connected with English history[60], as the residence of our James IInd, after the battle of La Hague; before his spirit was yet sufficiently broken to suffer him to give up all thoughts of the British crown, and to accept the asylum offered by Louis XIVth, in the obscure tranquillity of Saint Germain's. It continued perfect till the time of the revolution, and was of great extent and strength, defended by massy circular towers, surrounded by a moat, and approachable only by a draw-bridge. The castle, which still remains to be described, and whose smaller size is sufficiently denoted by its name, was also built by the same monarch, but it was raised upon the ruins of a similar edifice that had existed since the days of King John. Being situated at the foot of the bridge, the older castle had been selected as the spot where it was stipulated that the soldiers, composing the Anglo-Norman garrison, should lay down their arms, when the town surrendered to Philip Augustus.--It was known from very early time by the appellation of the _Barbican_, a term of much disputed signification as well as origin: if we are to conclude, according to some authorities, that it denoted either a mere breast-work, or a watch-tower, or an appendage to a more important fortress, it would appear but ill applied to a building like the one in question. I should rather believe it designated an out-post of any kind; and I would support my conjecture by this very castle, which was neither upon elevated ground, nor dependent on any other. It consisted of two square edifices, similar to what are called the _pavillions_ of the Thuilleries, flanked by small circular towers with conical roofs, and connected by an embattled wall. Not more than fifty years have passed since its demolition; yet no traces of it are to be found. A few rocky fragments, appearing now to bid defiance to time, indicate the scite of the fortress, which once arose on the summit of Mont Ste. Catherine, and which, though dismantled by Henry IVth, and reduced to a state of dilapidation, was still suffered to maintain its ruined existence till a few years ago. Its commanding situation, upon an eminence three hundred and eighty feet high and immediately overhanging the city, could not but render it of great importance towards the defence of the place; and we accordingly find that Taillepied, who probably wrote before its demolition, gives it as his opinion, that whoever is in possession of Mont Ste. Catherine, is also master of the town, if he can but have abundant supplies of water and provisions;--no needless stipulation! At the same time, it must be admitted that the fort was equally liable to be converted into the means of annoyance. Such actually proved the case in 1562, at which time it was seized by the Huguenots; and considerations of this nature most probably prevailed with the citizens, when they declined the offer made by Francis Ist, who proposed at a public meeting to enlarge the tower into an impregnable citadel. In the hands of the Protestants, the fortress, such as it was, proved sufficient to resist the whole army of Charles IXth, during several days.--Rouen was stoutly defended by the reformed, well aware of the sanguinary dispositions of the bigotted monarch. They yielded, and he sullied his victory by giving the city up to plunder, during twenty-four hours; and we are told, that it was upon this occasion he first tasted heretical blood, with which, five years afterwards, he so cruelly gorged himself on the day of St. Bartholomew. Catherine of Medicis accompanied him to the siege; and it is related that she herself led him to the ditches of the ramparts, in which many of their adversaries had been buried, and caused the bodies to be dug up in his presence, that he might be accustomed to look without horror upon the corpse of a Protestant! Near the fort stood a priory[61], whose foundation is dated as far back as the eleventh century, when Gosselin, Viscount of Rouen, Lord of Arques and Dieppe, having no son to inherit his wealth, was induced to dispose of it "to pious uses," by the persuasions of two monks, who had wandered in pilgrimage from the monastery of Saint Catherine, on Mount Sinai. These good men assured him, that, if he dedicated a church to the martyred daughter of the King of Alexandria, the stones employed in building it would one day serve him as so many stepping-stones to heaven. They confirmed him in his resolution, by presenting him with one of the fingers of Saint Catherine. To her, therefore, the edifice was made sacred, and hence it is believed that the hill also took its name. In the _Golden Legend_, we find an account of the translation of the finger to Rouen not wholly reconcileable with this history.--According to the veracious authority of James of Voragine, there were certain monks of Rouen, who journeyed even until the Arabian mountain. For seven long years did they pray before the shrine of the Queen Virgin and Martyr, and also did they implore her to vouchsafe to grant them some token of her favor; and, at length, one of her fingers suddenly disjointed itself from the dead hand of the corpse.--"This gift," as the legend tells, "they received devoutly, and with it they returned to their monastery at Rouen."--Never was a miracle less miraculous; and it is fortunately now of little consequence to inquire whether the mouldering relic enriched an older monastery, or assisted in bestowing sanctity on a rising community. According to the pseudo-hagiologists, the corpse of Saint Catherine was borne through the air by angels, and deposited on the summit of Mount Sinai, on the spot where her church is yet standing. Conforming, as it were, to the example of the angels, it was usual, in the middle ages, to erect her religious buildings on an eminence. Various instances may be given of this practice in England, as well as in France: such is the case near Winchester, near Christ-Church, in the Isle of Wight, and in many other places. St. Michael contested the honor with her; and he likewise has a chapel here, whose walls are yet standing. Its antiquity was still greater than that of the neighboring monastery; a charter from Duke Richard IInd, dated 996, speaking of it as having had existence before his time, and confirming the donation of it to the Abbey of St. Ouen. But St. Michael's never rivalled the opulence of Saint Catherine's priory.--Gosselin himself, and Emmeline his wife, lay buried in the church of the latter, which is said to have been large, and to have resembled in its structure that of St. Georges de Bocherville: it is also recorded, that it was ornamented with many beautiful paintings; and loud praises are bestowed upon its fine peal of bells. The epitaph of the founder speaks of him, as-- "Premier Autheur des mesures et poids Selon raison en ce päis Normand." It is somewhat remarkable, that there appear to have been only two other monumental inscriptions in the church, and both of them in memory of cooks of the convent; a presumptive proof that the holy fathers were not inattentive to the good things of this world, in the midst of their concern for those of the next.--The first of them was for Stephen de Saumere,-- "Qui en son vivant cuisinier Fut de Révérend Pere en Dieu, De la Barre, Abbé de ce lieu." The other was for-- "Thierry Gueroult, en broche et en fossets Gueu très-expert pour les Religieux." The fort and the religious buildings all perished nearly at the same time: the former was destroyed at the request of the inhabitants, to whom Henry IVth returned on that occasion his well-known answer, that he "wished for no other fortress than the hearts of his subjects;" the latter to gratify the avarice of individuals, who cloked their true designs under the plea that the buildings might serve as a harbor for the disaffected. Of the origin of the fort I find no record in history, except what Noel says[62], that it appears to have been raised by the English while they were masters of Normandy; but what I observed of the structure of the walls, in 1815, would induce me to refer it without much hesitation to the time of the Romans. Its bricks are of the same form and texture as those used by them; and they were ranged in alternate courses with flints, as is the case at Burgh Castle, at Richborough, and other Roman edifices in England. That the fort was of great size and strength is sufficiently shewn by the depth, width, and extent of the entrenchments still left, which, particularly towards the plain, are immense; and, if credence may be given to common report, in such matters always apt to exaggerate, the subterraneous passages indicate a fortress of importance. It chanced, that I visited the hill on Michaelmas-day, and a curious proof was afforded me, that, at however low an ebb religion may be in France, enthusiastic fanaticism is far from extinct. A man of the lower classes of society was praying before a broken cross, near St. Michael's Chapel, where, before the revolution, the monks of St. Ouen used annually on this day to perform mass, and many persons of extraordinary piety were wont to assemble the first Wednesday of every month to pray and to preach, in honor of the guardian angels. His manner was earnest in the extreme; his eyes wandered strangely; his gestures were extravagant, and tears rolled in profusion down a face, whose every feature bore the strongest marks of a decided devotee. A shower which came at the moment compelled us both to seek shelter within the walls of the chapel, and we soon became social and entered into conversation. The ruined state of the building was his first and favorite topic: he lamented its destruction; he mourned over the state of the times which could countenance such impiety; and gradually, while he turned over the leaves of the prayer-book in his hand, he was led to read aloud the hundred and thirty-sixth psalm, commenting upon every verse as he proceeded, and weeping more and more bitterly, when he came to the part commemorating the ruin of Jerusalem, which he applied, naturally enough, to the captive state of France, smarting as she then was under the iron rod of Prussia. Of the other allies, including even the Russians, he owned that there was no complaint to be made: "they conduct themselves," said he, "agreeably to the maxim of warfare, which says 'battez-vous contre ceux qui vous opposent; mais ayez pitié des vaincus.' Not so the Prussians: with them it is 'frappez-çà, frappez-là, et quand ils entrent dans quelque endroit, ils disent, il nous faut çà, il nous faut là, et ils le prennent d'autorité.' Cruel Babylon!"--"Yet, even admitting all this," we asked, "how can you reconcile with the spirit of christianity the permission given to the Jews by the psalmist, to 'take up her little ones and dash them against the stones.'"--"Ah! you misunderstand the sense, the psalm does not authorize cruelty;--mais, attendez! ce n'est pas ainsi: ces pierres là sont Saint Pierre; et heureux celui qui les attachera à Saint Pierre; qui montrera de l'attachement, de l'intrépidité pour sa religion."--Then again, looking at the chapel, with tears and sobs, "how can we expect to prosper, how to escape these miseries, after having committed such enormities?"--His name, he told us, was Jacquemet, and my companion kindly made a sketch of his face, while I noted down his words. This specimen will give you some idea of the extraordinary influence of the Roman catholic faith over the mind, and of the curious perversions under which it does not scruple to take refuge. Leaving for the present the dusty legends of superstition, I describe with pleasure my recollections of the glorious prospect over which the eye ranges from the hill of Saint Catherine.--The Seine, broad, winding, and full of islands, is the principal feature of the landscape. This river is distinguished by its sinuosity and the number of islets which it embraces, and it retains this character even to Paris. Its smooth tranquillity well contrasts with the life that is imparted to the scene, by the shipping and the bustle of the quays. The city itself, with its verdant walks, its spacious manufactories, its strange and picturesque buildings, and the numerous spires and towers of its churches, many of them in ruins, but not the less interesting on account of their decay, presents a foreground diversified with endless variety of form and color. The bridge of boats seems immediately at our feet; the middle distance is composed of a plain, chiefly consisting of the richest meadows, interspersed copiously with country seats and villages embosomed in wood; and the horizon melts into an undulating line of remote hills. Footnotes: [49] _Farin, Histoire de Rouen_, I. p. 97. [50] In a paper printed in the _Transactions of the Rouen Academy for 1818_, p. 177, it appears that, so late as 1789, a considerable portion of very old walls was discovered under-ground; and that they consisted very much of Roman bricks. Among them was also found a Roman urn, and eighty or more medals of the same nation, but none of them older than Antoninus.--From this it appears certain that Rouen was a Roman station, though of its early history we have no distinct knowledge. [51] These are the _Tour du Gascon_, _Tour du Donjon_, and _Tour de la Pucelle_. [52] _Histoire de Rouen_, I. p. 32. [53] _Histoire de Rouen_, III. p. 34. [54] It is also worth while to read the following details from Bourgueville, (_Antiquités de Caen_, p. 33) whose testimony, as that of an eye-witness to much of what he relates, is valuable:--"Ils ont le Privilege Saint Romain en la ville de Rouen et Eglise Cathédrale du lieu, au iour de l'Ascension nostre Seigneur de deliurer un prisonnier, qui leur fut concedé par le Roy d'Agobert en memoire d'un miracle que Dieu fist par saint Romain Archeuesque du lieu, d'auoir deliuré les habitans d'un Dragon qui leur nuisoit en la forest de Rouuray pres ladite ville: pour lequel vaincre il demanda à la justice deux prisonniers dignes de mort, l'un meurtrier et l'autre larron: le larron eut si grand frayeur qu'il s'enfuit, et le meurtrier demeura auecque ce saint homme qui vainquit ce Serpent. C'est pourquoy l'on dit encore en commun prouerbe, il est asseuré comme vn meurtrier. Ce privilege de deliurance ne doit estre accordé aux larrons.--Saint Ouen successeur de S. Romain, Chancelier dudit Roy d'Agobert viron l'an 655, impetra ce priuilege: dont ie n'en deduiray en plus oultre les causes, pour ce qu'elles sont assez communes et notoires, et feray seulement cest aduertissement, qu'il y a danger que messieurs les Ecclesiastiques le perdent, acause qu il s'y commet le plus souuent des abus, par ce qu'il se doit donner en cas pitoyable et non par authorité ou faueurs de seigneurs, comme aussi ne se doit estendre, sinon à ceux qui sont trouuez actuellement prisonniers sans fraude, et non à ceux qui s'y rendent le soir precedent comme estans asseurez d'obtenir ce priuilege, combien qu'ils ayent commis tous crimes execrables et indignes d'un tel pardon, voire et que les Ecclesiastiques n'ayent eu loisir d'avoir veu et bien examinez leur procez. Aussi ce beau priuilege est enfraint en ce que ceux qui l'obtiennent doiuent assister par sept annees suiuantes aux processions au tour de la Fierte S. Romain, portant vne torche ardante selon qu'il leur est chargé faire. Ce qui est de ceste heure trop contemné: et tel mespris leur pourroit estre reproché comme indignes et contempteurs d'vn tel pardon. Vn surnommé Saugrence pour auoir abusé d'un tel priuilege fut quelque temps apres retrudé et puni de la peine de la rouë pour auoir confesse des meurtres en agression pour sauuer aucuns nobles ou nocibles qui les auoient commis.--Il s'est faict autres fois et encore du temps de ma ieunesse de grands festins, danses, mommeries ou mascarades audit iour de l'Ascension, tant par les feturiers de ceste confrairie saint Romain que autres ieunes hommes auec excessiues despences: et s'appelloit lors tel iour Rouuoysons, à cause que les processions rouent de lieu en autre, et disoit l'on comme en prouerbe, quand aucuns desbauchez declinoient de biens qu'ils auoient fait Rouuoysons, à sçauoir perdu leurs biens en trop uoluptueuses despenses et mommeries sur chariots, qui se faisoient de nuict par les ruës quelque saison d'Esté qu'il fust, pour plus grandes magnificences." [55] See _Gallia Christiana_, XI. p. 12. [56] A minute and very curious account of the whole of this ceremony, from the first claiming of the prisoner to his final deliverance, is given in _Tuillepied's Antiquités de Rouen_, p. 79. [57] _Noel, Essais sur le Département de la Seine Inférieure_, II. p. 228. [58] _Antiquités Nationales_, II. No. 21 p. 3 [59] _Millin, Antiquités Nationales_, II. No. 20. p. 3. [60] _Noel, Essais sur le Département de la Seine Inférieure_, II. p. 209 [61] _Farin, Histoire de Rouen_, V. p. 113. [62] _Essais sur le Département de la Seine Inférieure_, II. p. 210. LETTER IX. ANCIENT ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE--CHURCHES OF ST. PAUL AND ST. GERVAIS--HOSPITAL OF ST. JULIEN--CHURCHES OF LERY, PAVILLY, AND YAINVILLE. (_Rouen, June_, 1818.) We, _East Angles_, are accustomed to admire the remains of Norman architecture, which, in our counties, are perhaps more numerous and singular than in any other tract in England. The noble castle of Blanchefleur still honors our provincial metropolis, and although devouring eld hath impaired her charms and converted her into a very dusky beauty, the fretted walls still possess an air of antique magnificence which we seek in vain when we contemplate the towers of Julius or the frowning dungeons of Gundulph. Our cathedral retains the pristine character which was given to the edifice, when the Norman prelate abandoned the seat of the Saxon bishop, and commanded the Saxon clerks to migrate into the city protected or inclosed by the garrison of his cognate conquerors. Even our villages abound with these monuments. The humbler, though not less sacred structures in which the voice of prayer and praise has been heard during so many generations, equally bear witness to Norman art, and, I may say, to Norman piety; and when we enter the sheltered porch, we behold the fantastic sculpture and varied foliage, encircling the arch which arose when our land was ruled by the Norman dynasty. Comparatively speaking, Rouen is barren indeed of such relics. Its military antiquities are swept away; and the only specimens of early ecclesiastical architecture are found in the churches of St. Paul and St. Gervais, both of them, in themselves, unimportant buildings, and both so disfigured by subsequent alterations, that they might easily escape the notice of any but an experienced eye. Of these, the first is situated by the side of the road to Paris, under Mont Ste. Catherine, yet, still upon an eminence, beneath which are some mineral springs, that were long famous for their medicinal qualities, but have of late years been abandoned, and the spa-drinkers now resort to others in the quarter of the town called _de la Maréquerie_. Both the one and the other are highly ferruginous, but the latter most strongly impregnated with iron. The chancel is the only ancient part of the present church of St. Paul's, and even this must be comparatively modern, if any confidence may be placed in the current tradition, that the building, in its original state, was a temple of Adonis or of Venus, to both which divinities the early inhabitants of Rouen are reported to have paid peculiar homage. They were worshipped in vice and impurity[63]; nor were the votaries deterred by the evil spirits who haunted the immediate vicinity of the temple, and who gave rise to so fetid and infectious a vapor, that it often proved fatal! This very remark seems to indicate the scite of the church of St. Paul, with its neighboring sulphureous waters. St. Romain demolished the temple, and dispersed the sinners. Farin, in his _History of Rouen_[64], says, that the church was repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt by the Norman Dukes, to some of whom, the chancel, which is now standing, probably owes its existence. The nave is evidently of much more modern construction: it is thrice the width of the other part, from which it is separated by a circular arch. The eastern extremity differs from that of any other church I ever saw in Normandy or in England: it ends in three circular compartments, the central considerably the largest and most prominent, and divided from the others, which serve as aisles, by double arches, a larger and smaller being united together. This triple circular ending is, however, only observable without; for, in the interior, the southern part has been separated and used as a sacristy; the northern is a lumber-room. In the latter division, M. le Prevost desired us to notice a piece of sculpture, so covered with dirt and dust that it could scarcely be seen, but evidently of Roman workmanship, and, probably, of the fourth century, if we may judge from its resemblance to some ornaments[65] upon the pedestal of the obelisk raised by Theodosius, in the Hippodrome of Constantinople. Our friend's conjecture is, that it had originally served for an altar: perhaps it might, with equal probability, be supposed to have been a tomb.--The corbels on the exterior of this building are strange and fanciful. [Illustration: Sculpture, supposed Roman, in the Church of St. Paul, at Rouen ] St. Gervais also stands without the walls of Rouen; but at the opposite end of the town, upon a hill adjoining the Roman road to Lillebonne, and near the Mont aux Malades, a place so called, as having been selected in the eleventh century, on account of the salubrity of its air, for the situation of a monastery, destined for the reception of lepers. Upon this eminence, the Norman Dukes had likewise originally a palace; and, it was to this, that William the Conqueror caused himself to be conveyed, when attacked with his mortal illness, after having wantonly reduced the town of Mantes to ashes. Here, too, this mighty monarch breathed his last, and left a sad warning to future conquerors, deserted by his friends and physicians the moment he was no more; while his menials plundered his property, and his body lay naked and neglected in the hall[66]. The ducal palace, and the monastic buildings of the priory, once connected with it, are now completely destroyed. Fortunately, however, the church still remains, though parochial and in poverty. It preserves some portions of the original structure, more interesting from their features than their extent. The exterior of the apsis is very curious: it is obtusely angular, and faced at the corners with large rude columns, of whose capitals some are Doric or Corinthian, others as wild as the fancies of the Norman lords of the country. None reach so high as the cornice of the roof, it having been the intention of the original architect, that a portion of work should intervene between the summit of the capitals and this member. A capital to the north is remarkable for the eagles carved upon it, as if with some allusion to Roman power. But the most singular part of this church is the crypt under the apsis, a room about thirty feet long by fourteen wide, and sixteen high, of extreme simplicity, and remote antiquity. Round it runs a plain stone bench; and it is divided into two unequal parts by a circular arch, devoid of columns or of any ornament whatever, but disclosing, in the composition of its piers, Roman bricks and other _débris_, some of them rudely sculptured. Here, according to Ordericus Vitalis[67], was interred the body of St. Mellonus, the first Archbishop of Rouen, and one of the apostles of Neustria; and here, his tomb, and that of his successor, Avitien, are shewn to this day, in plain niches, on opposite sides of the wall. St. Mello's remains however, were not suffered to rest in peace; for, about five hundred and seventy years after his death, which happened in the year 314, they were removed to the castle of Pontoise, lest the canonized corpse should be violated by the heathen Normans. In the diocese of Rouen St. Mello is honored with particular veneration; and the history of the prelates of the see contains many curious, and not unedifying stories of the miracles he performed. His feast, together with that of St. Nicasius, his companion, is celebrated on the second of October; and their labors are commemorated with a hymn appointed for their festival:-- "Primæ vos canimus gentis apostolos, Per quos relligio tradita patribus; Errorisque jugo libera Neustria CHRISTO sub duce militat. "Facti sponte suis finibus exules Hùc de Romuleis sedibus advolant; Merces est operis, si nova consecrent Vero pectora Numini. "Qui se pro populis devovet hostiam Mellonus tacitâ se nece conficit; Mactatus celeri morte Nicasius Christum sanguine prædicat." Heretics as we are, we ought not to refrain from respecting the zeal even of a saint of the Catholic calendar, when thus exerted. Besides which, he has another claim upon our attention: our own island gave him birth, and he appeared at Rome as the bearer of the annual tribute of the Britons, at the very time when he was converted to Christianity, whose light he had afterwards the glory of diffusing over Neustria. The existence of these tombs and the antiquity of the crypt, recorded as it is by history and confirmed by the style of its architecture, have given currency to the tradition, which points it out as the only temple where the primitive Christians of Neustria dared to assemble for the performance of divine service. Many stone coffins have also been discovered in the vicinity of the church. These sarcophagi seem to confirm the general tradition: they are of the simplest form, and apparently as ancient as the crypt; and they were so placed in the ground that the heads of the corpses were turned to the east, a position denoting that the dead received Christian burial. [Illustration: Circular Tower, attached to the Church of St. Ouen, at Rouen] Another opportunity will be afforded me of speaking of the church of St. Ouen; but, as a singular relic of Norman architecture, I must here notice the round tower on the south side of the choir, probably part of the original edifice, finished by the Abbot, William Balot, and dedicated by the Archbishop Géoffroi, in 1126. It consists of two stories, divided by a billetted moulding. Respecting its use it would not now be easy to offer a probable conjecture: the history of the abbey, indeed, mentions it under the title of _la Chambre des Clercs_, and supposes that it was formerly a chapel[68]; but its shape and size do not seem to confirm that opinion. The chapel of the suppressed lazar-house of St. Julien, situated about three miles from Rouen, on the opposite side of the Seine, is more perfect than either St. Paul or St. Gervais, and, consequently, more valuable to the architect. This building, without spire or tower, and divided into three parts of unequal length and height, the nave, the choir, and the circular apsis, externally resembles one of the meanest of our parish-churches, such as a stranger, judging only from the exterior, would be almost equally likely to consider as a place of worship, or as a barn. It is, however, if I am not mistaken, one of the purest and most perfect specimens of the Norman æra. I know of no building in England, which resembles it so nearly as the chancel of Hales Church, in Norfolk; but the latter has been exposed to material alterations, while the chapel of which I am speaking is externally quite regular in its design, being divided throughout its whole length into small compartments, by a row of shallow buttresses rising from the ground to the eaves of the roof, without any partition into splays. Those on the south side are still in their primæval state; but a buttress of a subsequent, though not recent, date, has been built up against almost every one of the original buttresses on the north side, by way of support to the edifice. Each division contains a single narrow circular-headed window: beneath these is a plain moulding, continued uninterruptedly over the buttresses as well as the wall, thus proving both to be coeval; another plain moulding runs nearly on a level with the tops of the windows, and takes the same circular form; but it is confined to the spaces between the buttresses. There are no others. The entrance was by circular-headed doors at the west end and south side, both of them very plain; but particularly the latter. The few ornaments of the western are as perfect and as sharp as if the whole were the work of yesterday. This part of the church has, however, been exposed to considerable injury, owing to its having joined the conventual buildings, which were destroyed at the revolution. The inside is, like the exterior, almost perfect, but it is very much more rich, uniting to the common ornaments of Norman architecture, capitals, in some instances, of classical beauty. The ceiling is covered with paintings of scriptural subjects, which still remain, notwithstanding that the building is now desecrated, and used as a woodhouse by the neighboring farmer. The date of the erection of the chapel is well ascertained[69]. The hospital was founded in 1183, by Henry Plantagenet, as a priory for the reception of unmarried ladies of noble blood, who were destined for a religious life, and had the misfortune to be afflicted with leprosy. One of their appellations was _filles meselles_, in which latter word, you will immediately recognize the origin of our term for the disease still prevalent among us, the _measles_. Johnson strangely derives this word from _morbilli_; but the true northern roots have been given by Mr. Todd, in his most valuable republication of our national dictionary; a work which now deserves to be named after the editor, rather than the original compiler. It may also be added, that the word was in common use in the old Norman French, and was plainly intended to designate a slight degree of scurvy. To pursue this subject a few steps farther, Jamieson, who is as excellent in points of etymology as Johnson is deficient, quotes, in his Scottish Dictionary, an instance where the identical expression, _meselle-houses_, is used in old English; "...to _meselle-houses_ of that same rond, Thre thousand mark unto ther spense he fond." R. BRUNNE, p. 136. The Norfolk farmers and dairy-maids tell us to this day of _measly pork_: in Scotch, a leper is called a _mesel_; and, among the Swedes, the word for measles is one nearly similar in sound, _mäss-ling_. The French academy, however, have refused to admit _meselle_ to the honor of a place in their language, because it was obsolete or vulgar in the time of Louis XIIIth. The word is expressive, and no better one has supplied its place; and we may suppose that it was introduced by the Norman conquerors, and that it properly belongs to the Gothic tongues, in the whole of which the root is to be found more or less modified. Instances of this kind, and they are many, serve as additional proofs, if proofs indeed were needed, of the common origin of the Neustrian Normans, of the Lowland Scots, and of the Saxon and Belgian tribes, who peopled our eastern shores of England. The priory continued to be appropriated to its original purpose till 1366, when Charles Vth united it to the hospital, called the Magdalen, at Rouen, upon condition that a mass should be celebrated there daily for the repose of his soul. In the year 1600, on the destruction of the abbey upon Mont Ste. Catherine, the monks of that establishment were allowed to fix themselves at St. Julien; but they resigned it, after a period of sixty-seven years, to the Carthusians of Gaillon, who, incorporating themselves with their brethren of the same order at Rouen, formed a very opulent community. The monastery, previously occupied by the latter, was known by the poetical appellation of _la Rose de Notre Dame_: indeed, it is thus termed in the charter of its foundation, dated 1384. But the situation was unhealthy, and the new comers had therefore little difficulty in persuading its occupants to remove to the convent of St. Julien, which they inhabited conjointly till the revolution. At a very short period before that event, they had rebuilt the whole of the priory with such splendor, that it was one of the most magnificent in the neighborhood. But the edifice, which had then been scarcely raised, was soon afterwards levelled with the ground. The foundations alone attest the former extent of the buildings; and the park, now in a state of utter neglect, their original importance. Rouen, as I have observed, is scantily ornamented with remains of _real_ Norman architecture; for, even at the risk of a bull, we must deny that title to the Norman edifices of the pointed style. Its vicinity, however, furnishes a greater number of specimens, among which the churched of _Léry_, of _Pavilly_, and of _Yainville_, are all of them deserving of a visit from the diligent antiquary. Léry is a village adjoining Pont-de-l'Arche: its church is cruciform, having in the centre a low, massy, square tower, surmounted by a modern spire. A row of plain Norman arches, intended only for ornament, runs round the tower near the base, and over them on each side is a single round-headed window. All the other windows of the building are of the same construction, and this renders it probable that the east end, in which there is also one of these windows, is really coeval with the rest of the church; though, contrary to the usual plan of the Norman churches, it is terminated by a straight wall instead of a semi-circular apsis. The west front contains a rich Norman door-way, surmounted by three windows of the same style, adjoining each other, with a triple row of the chevron-ornament above them. The interior wears the appearance of remote antiquity: the arches are without mouldings, the pillars without bases, and the capitals are destitute of all ornamental sculpture. In fact, these portions are nothing but rounded piers; and so obviously was mere solid strength the aim of the architect, that their diameter is fully equal to two-thirds of their height. A double row of pillars and arches separates the nave into three parts, of unequal width; and another arch of greater span, though equally plain, divides it from the chancel. In St. Julien, we observe a most simple exterior, accompanied by an interior of comparatively an ornamented style: here the case is exactly the reverse; but in neither instance does there appear any reason to doubt that the whole of the building is coeval. We shall be driven, therefore, to admit, that any inferences respecting the æra of architecture drawn merely from the comparative richness of the style, must be considered of little weight, and that, even in those days, a great deal depended upon the fancy of the patron or architect. Of the real time of the erection of the church at Léry, there is no certain knowledge. Topographers, however minute in other matters, seem in general to have considered it beneath their dignity to record the dates of parish-churches; though, as connected with the history of the arts, such information is exceedingly valuable. Lauglois, who has given a figure of the western front of this at Léry, refers it without any hesitation to the time of the Carlovingian dynasty. But this opinion is merely grounded on the resemblance of some of its capitals to those of the pillars in the crypt at St. Denis; the best judges doubt whether there is a single architectural line in that crypt, which can fairly be referred to the reign of Charlemagne. Hence such a proof is entitled to little attention; and On studying the style of the whole, and its conformity with the more magnificent front of St. Georges de Bocherville, it would seem most reasonable to regard them both as of nearly the same æra, the time of the Norman Conquest. We may through them be enabled to fix the date to a specimen of ancient architecture in our own country, more splendid than these, the Church of Castle Rising, whose west front is so much on the same plan, that it can scarcely have been erected at a very different period. Pavilly has considerably more to recommend it, as the "magni nominis umbra" than either of the others; it having been the seat of an abbey founded about the year 668, and named after Saint Austreberte, who first presided over it. Here, too, we have the advantage of being able to ascertain with greater precision the date of the building, which, in the archives of the Chartreux at Rouen[70], is stated to have been constructed about the conclusion of the eleventh century. The remains of the monastery are not considerable: they consist of little more than a ruined wall, containing three circular arches, evidently very ancient from their simplicity and the style of their masonry, and some pillars with capitals differing in ornament from any others I recollect, but imitations of the Grecian, or rather attempts to improve upon it. The inside of the parish-church is more interesting than the ruins of the abbey. It is characterised, as you will observe in the annexed sketch, by massy square piers, to each side of which are attached several small clustered columns, intended merely for ornament. One of them is fluted, the work, probably, of some subsequent time; and another, on the same pier, is truncated, to afford a pedestal for the statue of a saint. The capitals are without sculpture. [Illustration: Interior of the Church at Pavilly] The church at Yainville differs materially from either of the others: its square low central tower is of far greater base than that of Léry: the transept parts of the cross have been demolished; and, beyond the tower, to the east, is only an addition that looks more like an apsis than a choir, a small semi-circular building with a roof of a peculiarly high pitch, like those of the stone-roofed chapels in Ireland, which, I trust, I shall be able hereafter to convince you were undoubtedly of Norman origin. But the most curious feature in this building is, that one of the buttresses is pierced with a narrow lancet window; a decisive proof, that the Normans regarded their buttresses as constituent parts of the edifice at its original construction, and that they did not add them at a subsequent time, or design them to afford support, in the event of any unexpected failure of strength. Indeed, what are usually called Norman buttresses, such as we find at Yainville, and at the lazar-house at St. Julien, have so very small a projection, that they seem much more designed to add ornament or variety than for any useful purpose.--Yainville is a parish adjoining Jumieges, and was formerly dependent upon the celebrated abbey there, which will furnish ample materials for a future letter. Footnotes: [63] _Taillepied, Antiquités de Rouen_, p. 77. [64] Vol. II. part V. p. 8. [65] _Seroux d'Agincourt, Historie de la Décadence de l'Art_; plate 10, _Sculpture_, fig. 4-7. [66] _Du Moulin, Histoire Générale de Normandie,_ p. 236. [67] _Duchesne, Scriptores Normanni_, p. 558. [68] _Histoire de l'Abbaye de St. Ouen_, p. 188. [69] _Farin, Histoire de Rouen_, V. p. 121 [70] _Description de la Haute Normandie_, II. p. 268. LETTER X. EARLY POINTED ARCHITECTURE--CATHEDRAL--EPISCOPAL PALACE. (_Rouen, June_, 1818.) In passing from the true Norman architecture, characterised "by the circular arch, round-headed doors and windows, massive pillars with a kind of regular base and capital, and thick walls without any very prominent buttresses",[71] to those edifices which display the pointed style, I shall enter into a more extensive field, and one where the difficulty no longer lies in discovering, but in selecting objects for observation and description. The style which an ingenious author of our own country has designated as _early English_[72], is by no means uncommon in Normandy. In both countries, the circular style became modified into _Gothic_, by the same gradations; though, in Normandy, each gradation took place at an earlier period than amongst us. The style in question forms the connecting link between edifices of the highest antiquity, and those of the richest pointed architecture; combined in some instances principally with the peculiarities of the former, in others with the character of the latter: generally speaking, it assimilates itself to both. The simplicity of the principal lines betray its analogy to its predecessors; whilst the form of the arch equally displays the approach of greater beauty and perfection. Of this æra, the cathedral[73] of Rouen is unquestionably the most interesting building; and it is so spacious, so grand, so noble, so elegant, so rich, and so varied, that, as the Italians say of Raphael, "ammirar non si può che non s'onori."--By an exordium like this, I am aware that an expectation will be raised, which it will be difficult for the powers of description to gratify; but I have still felt that it was due to the edifice, to speak of it as I am sure it deserves, and rather to subject myself to the charge of want of ability in describing, than of want of feeling in the appreciation of excellence. The west front opens upon a spacious _parvis_, to which it exposes a width of one hundred and seventy feet, consisting of a centre, flanked by two towers of very dissimilar form and architecture, though of nearly equal height. Between these is seen the spire, which rises from the intersection of the cross, and which, from this point of view, appears to pierce the clouds; and these masses so combine themselves together, that the entire edifice assumes a pyramidical outline. The French, who, without any real affection for ancient architecture, are often extravagant in their praises, regard this spire as a "chef d'oeuvre de hardiesse, d'élégance, et de légèreté." Bold and light it certainly is; but we must pause before we consider it as elegant: the lower part is a combination of very clumsy Roman pediments and columns; and, as it is constructed of wood, the material conveys an idea of poverty and comparative meanness.--It is commonly said in France, that the portal of Rheims, joined to the nave of Amiens, the choir of Beauvais, and the tower of Chartres, would make a perfect church; nor is it to be denied that each of these several cathedrals surpasses Rouen in its peculiar excellence; but each is also defective in other respects; so that Rouen, considered as a whole, is perhaps equal, if not superior, to any. The front is singularly impressive: it is characterised by airy magnificence. Open screens of the most elegant tracery, and filled, like the pannels to which they correspond, with imagery, range along the summit. The blue sky shines through the stone filagree, which appears to be interwoven like a slender web; but, when you ascend the roof, you find that it is composed of massy limbs of stone, of which the edge alone is seen by the observer below. This _free_ tracery is peculiar to the pointed architecture of the continent; and I cannot recollect any English building which possesses it. The basement story is occupied by three wide door-ways, deep in retiring mouldings and pillars, and filled with figures of saints and martyrs, "tier behind tier, in endless perspective." The central portal, by far the largest, projects like a porch beyond the others, and is surmounted by a gorgeous pyramidal canopy of open stone-work, in whose centre is a great dial, the top of which partly conceals the rose window behind. This portal, together with the niches above on either side, all equally crowded with bishops, apostles, and saints, was erected at the expence of the cardinal, Georges d'Amboise, by whom the first stone was laid, in 1509[74]. The lateral door-ways are of a different style of architecture, and, though obtusely pointed, are supposed to be of the eleventh century: a plain and almost Roman circular arch surmounts the southern one. Over each of the entrances is a curious bas-relief: in the centre is displayed the genealogical tree of Christ; the southern contains the Virgin Mary surrounded by a number of saints; the northern one, the most remarkable[75] of all, affords a representation of the feast given by Herod, which ended in the martyrdom of the Baptist. Salomè, daughter of Herodias, plays, as she ought to do, the principal character. The group is of good sculpture, and curiously illustrative of the costumes and manners of the times. Salomè is seen dancing in an attitude, which perchance was often assumed by the _tombesteres_ of the elder day; and her position affords a graphical comment upon the Anglo-Saxon version of the text, in which it is said that she "_tumbled_", before King Herod. The bands or pilasters (if we may so call them) which ornament the jambs of the door-ways, are crowned with graceful foliage in a very pure style; and the pedestals of the lateral pillars are boldly underworked. On the northern side of the cathedral is situated the cloister-court. Only a few arches of the cloister now remain; and it appears, at least on the eastern side, to have consisted of a double aisle. Here we view the most ancient portion of the tower of Saint Romain.--There is a peculiarity in the position of the towers of this cathedral, which I have not observed elsewhere. They flank the body of the church, so as to leave three sides free; and hence the spread taken by the front of the edifice, when the breadth of the towers is added to the breadth of the nave and aisles. The circular windows of the tower which look in the court, are perhaps to be referred to the eleventh century; and a smaller tower affixed against the south side, containing a stair-case and covered by a lofty pyramidical stone roof, composed of flags cut in the shape of shingles, may also be of the same æra. The others, of the more ancient windows, are in the early pointed style; and the portion from the gallery upwards is comparatively modern; having been added in 1477. The roof, I suppose, is of the sixteenth century. The southern tower is a fine specimen of the pointed architecture in its greatest state of luxuriant perfection, enriched on every side with pinnacles and statues. It terminates in a beautiful octagonal crown of open stone-work.--Legendary tales are connected with both the towers: the oldest borrows its name from St. Romain, by whom chroniclers tell us that it was built; the other is called the _Tour de Beurre_, from a tradition, that the chief part of the money required for its erection was derived from offerings given by the pious or the dainty, as the purchase for an indulgence granted by Pope Innocent VIIIth, who, for a reasonable consideration, allowed the contributors to feed upon butter and milk during Lent, instead of confining themselves, as before, to oil and lard.--The archbishop, Georges d'Amboise, consecrated this tower, of which the foundation was laid in 1485; and he had the satisfaction of living to see it finished, in 1507, after twenty-two years had been employed in the building. The cardinal was so truly delighted by the beauty of the structure, which had arisen under his auspices, that he determined to grace it with the largest bell in France; and such was afterwards cast at his expence.--Even Tom of Lincoln could scarcely compete with Georges d'Amboise; for thus the bell was duly christened. It weighed thirty-three thousand pounds; its diameter at the base was thirty feet; its height was ten feet; and thirty stout and sweating bell-ringers could hardly put it into swing.--Such was the importance attached to the undertaking, that it was thought worthy of a religious ceremony. At the appointed hour for casting the bell, the clergy paraded in full procession round the church, to implore the blessing of heaven upon the work; and, when the signal was given that the glowing metal had filled the enormous mould, _Te Deum_ resounded as with one voice; the organ pealed, the trombones and clarions sounded, and all the other bells in the cathedral joined, as loudly and as sweetly as they could, in announcing the birth of their prouder brother.--The remainder of the story is of a different complexion:--The founder, Jean le Machon, of Chartres, died from excess of joy, and was buried in the nave of the cathedral, where Pommeraye[76] tells us the tomb existed in his time; with a bell engraved upon it, and the following epitaph:-- "Cy-dessous gist Jean le Machon De Chartres homme de façon Lequel fondit Georges d'Amboise Qui trente six mille livres poise Mil cinq cens un jour d'Aoust deuxième Puis mourut le vingt et unième." Nor was this the only misfortune; for, after all, this great bell proved, like a great book, a great nuisance: the sound it uttered was scarcely audible; and, at last, in an attempt to render it vocal, upon a visit paid by Louis XVIth to Rouen in 1786, it was cracked[77]. It continued, however, to hang, a gaping-stock to children and strangers, till the revolution, in 1793, caused it to be returned to the furnace, whence it re-issued in the shape of cannon and medals, the latter commemorating the pristine state of the metal with the humiliating legend, "monument de vanité détruit pour l'utilité[78]." Some of the clerestory windows on the northern side of the nave are circular: the tracery which fills them, and the mouldings which surround them, belong to the pointed style; the arches may therefore have been the production of an earlier architect. The windows of the nave are crowned by pediments, each terminating, not with a pinnacle, but with a small statue. The pediments over the windows of the choir are larger and bolder, and perforated as they rise above the parapet; the members of the mouldings are full, and produce a fine effect. The northern transept is approached through a gloomy court, once occupied by the shops of the transcribers and caligraphists, the _libraires_ of ancient times, and from them it has derived its name. The court is entered beneath a gate-way of beautiful and singular architecture, composed of two lofty pointed arches of equal height, crowned by a row of smaller arcades. On each side are the walls of the archiepiscopal palace, dusky and shattered, and desolate; and the vista terminates by the lofty _Portal of St. Romain_; for it is thus the great portal of the transept is denominated. The oaken valves are bound with ponderous hinges and bars of wrought iron, of coeval workmanship. The bars are ornamented with embossed heads, which have been hammered out of the solid metal. The statues which stood on each side of the arch-way have been demolished; but the pedestals remain. These, as well as other parts of the portal, are covered with sculptured compartments, or medallions, in high preservation, and of the most singular character. They exhibit an endless variety of fanciful monsters and animals, of every shape and form, mermaids, tritons, harpies, woodmen, satyrs, and all the fabulous zoology of ancient geography and romance; and each spandril of each quatrefoil contains a lizard, a serpent, or some other worm or reptile. They have all the oddity, all the whim, and all the horror of the pencil of Breughel. Human groups and figures are interspersed, some scriptural, historical, or legendary; others mystical and allegorical. Engravings from these medallions would form a volume of uncommon interest. Two lofty towers ornament the transept, such as are usually seen only at the western front of a cathedral. The upper story of each is perforated by a gigantic window, divided by a single mullion, or central pillar, not exceeding one foot in circumference, and nearly sixty feet in height. These windows are entirely open, and the architect never intended that they should be glazed. An extraordinary play of light and shade results from this construction. The rose window in the centre of the transept is magnificent: from within, the painted glass produces the effect of a kaleidoscope.--The pediment or gable of this transept was materially injured by a storm, in 1638, one hundred and thirty years after it was completed; and the damage was never restored. The southern transept bears a near resemblance to that which I have already described; but it was originally richer in its ornaments, and it still preserves some of its statues. Here the medallions relate chiefly to scripture-history; but the sculpture is greatly corroded by the weather, and the more delicate parts are nearly obliterated; besides which, as well here, as at the other entrances, the Calvinists, in 1562, and, more recently, the Revolutionists, have been most mischievously destructive, mutilating and decapitating without mercy. The spirit, indeed, of the French reformers, bore a near resemblance to the proceedings of John Knox and his brethren: the people embraced the new doctrine with turbulent violence. There was in it nothing moderate, nothing gradual: it was not the regular flow of public opinion, undermining abuses, and bringing them slowly to their fall; but it was the thunderbolt, which-- "In sua templa furit, nullâque exire vetante Materiâ, magnamque cadens magnamque revertens Dat stragem latè sparsosque recolligit ignes." Among the legends recorded on the southern portal, or the _Portail de la Calende_, is that of the corn-merchant; the confiscation of whose property paid, as the chronicles tell us, for the erection of this beautiful entrance. He himself, if we may believe the same authority, was hanged in the street opposite to it, in consequence of having been detected in the use of false measures. The original Lady-Chapel, at the east end of the cathedral, was taken down in 1302. The present, which is considerably more spacious, is chiefly of a date immediately subsequent. Part, however, was built in 1430, when new and larger windows were inserted throughout the church; whilst other parts were not finished till 1538, at which time the Cardinal Georges d'Amboise restored the roof of the choir, which had been injured in 1514, by the destruction of the spire. The square central tower, which is low and comparatively plain, is the work of the year 1200. It is itself more ancient than would be supposed from the character of its architecture; but it occupies the place of one of still greater antiquity, which was materially damaged in 1117, when the original spire of the church was struck by lightning. This first spire was of stone, but was replaced by another of wood, which, as I have just mentioned, was also destroyed at the beginning of the sixteenth century. A fire, arising from the negligence of plumbers employed to repair the lead-work, was the cause of its ruin.--To remedy the misfortune, recourse was had to extraordinary efforts: the King contributed twelve thousand francs; the chapter a portion of their revenue and their plate; collections were made throughout the kingdom; and Leo Xth authorised the sale of indulgences, a measure, which, at nearly the same period, in its more extensive adoption for the building of St. Peter's at Rome, shook the Papacy to its foundation. The spire thus raised, the second of wood, but the third in chronological order, is the one which is now in existence. It was, like its predecessor, endangered by the carelessness of the plumbers, in 1713; but it does not appear to have required any material reparations till ten years ago, when a sum of thirty thousand francs was expended upon it. From what has already been said, you will not have failed to observe that this cathedral is the work of so many different periods, that it almost contains within itself a history of pointed architecture. To attempt a labored description of it were idle: minute details of any one of the portals would fill a moderate volume; and a quarto of seven hundred pages, from which I have borrowed most of my dates, has already been written upon the subject by a Benedictine Monk of the name of Pommeraye, who also published the history of the Archbishops of the See[79]. The first church at Rouen was built about the year 270: three hundred and thirty years subsequently, this edifice was succeeded by another, the joint work of St. Romain and St. Ouen, which was burned in the incursions of the Normans, about the year 842. Fifty years of Paganism succeeded; at the expiration of which period, Rollo embraced the faith of Christ, and Rouen saw once more within its walls, by the munificence and piety of the conqueror, a place of Christian worship. Richard Ist, grandson of this duke, and his son Robert, the archbishop, enlarged the edifice in the middle of the tenth century; but it was still not completed till 1063, when, according to Ordericus Vitalis, it was dedicated by the Archbishop Maurilius with great pomp, in the presence of William, Duke of Normandy, and the bishops of the province. Of this building, however, notwithstanding what is said by Ducarel[80] and other authors, it is certain that nothing more remains than the part of St. Romain's tower, just noticed, and possibly two of the western entrances; though the present structure is believed to occupy the same spot. To the honor of the spirit and good feeling of the inhabitants of Rouen, this church is one of those that suffered least in the outrages of the year 1793. Its dimensions, in French feet, are as follows:-- FEET. Length of the interior.............. 408 Width of ditto....................... 83 Length of nave...................... 210 Width of nave........................ 27 Ditto of aisles...................... 15 Length of choir..................... 110 Width of ditto....................... 35-1/2 Ditto of transept.................... 25-1/2 Length of ditto..................... 164 Ditto of Lady-Chapel................. 88 Width of ditto....................... 28 Height of spire..................... 380 Ditto of towers at the west end..... 230 Ditto of nave........................ 84 Ditto of aisles and chapels.......... 42 Ditto of interior of central tower.. 152 Depth of chapels..................... 10 Four clustered pillars support the central tower, each of which is thirty-eight feet in circumference; the rest, of which there are forty-four in the nave and choir, those in the former clustered, the others circular, are less by one-third. The windows amount in number to one hundred and thirty-three; the chapels to twenty-five. Most of the latter were fitted up during the minority of Louis XIVth, with wreathed columns, entwined with foliage, the style in vogue in the seventeenth century. In the farthest of these chapels, upon the south side, is the tomb of Rollo, first Duke of Normandy; in the opposite chapel, that of his son and successor, William Longue-Epeé, who was treacherously murdered at Pecquigny, in 944, during a conference with Arnoul, Count of Flanders. [Illustration: Monumental Figure of Rollo, in Rouen Cathedral] The effigies of both these princes still remain placed upon sarcophagi, under plain niches in the wall. They are certainly not contemporary with the persons which they represent, but are probably productions of the thirteenth century, to which period Mr. Stothard, from whose judgment few will be disposed to appeal, refers the greater part of what are called the most ancient in the _Musée des Monumens Français_. At the same time, they may possibly have been copied from others of earlier date; and I therefore send you a slight sketch of the figure of Rollo. Even imaginary portraits of celebrated men are not without their value: we are interested by seeing how they have been conceived by the artist.--Above the statue is the following inscription:-- HIC POSITUS EST ROLLO, NORMANNIÆ A SE TERRITÆ, VASTATÆ, RESTITUTÆ, PRIMUS DUX, CONDITOR, PATER, A FRANCONE ARCHIEP. ROTOM. BAPTIZATUS ANNO DCCCCXIII, OBIIT ANNO DCCCCXVII. OSSA IPSIUS IN VETERI SANCTUARIO, NUNC CAPITE NAVIS, PRIMUM CONDITA, TRANSLATO ALTARI, HIC COLLOCATA SUNT A B. MAURILIO ARCHIEP. ROTOM. ANNO MLXIII. Two other epitaphs in rhyming Latin, which were previously upon his tomb, are recorded by various authors: the first of them began with the three following lines-- DUX NORMANNORUM, CUNCTORUM NORMA BONORUM, ROLLO FERUS FORTIS, QUEM GENS NORMANNICA MORTIS INVOCAT ARTICULO, CLAUDITUR HOC TUMULO. Over William Longue-Epeé is inscribed-- HIC POSITUS EST GULIELMUS DICTUS LONGA SPATHA, ROLLONIS FILIUS, DUX NORMANNIÆ, PREDATORIE OCCISUS DCCCCXXXXIV. with an account of the removal of his bones, exactly similar to the concluding part of his father's epitaph. The perspective on first entering the church is very striking: the eye ranges without interruption, through a vista of lofty pillars and pointed arches, to the splendid altar in the Lady-Chapel, which forms at once an admirable termination to the building and the prospect. The high altar in the choir is plain and insulated. No other praise can be given to the screen, except that it does not interrupt the view; for surely it was the very consummation of bad taste to place in such an edifice, a double row of eight modern Ionic pillars, in white marble, with the figures of Hope and Charity between them, surmounted by a crucifix, flanked on either side with two Grecian vases. The interior falls upon the eye with boldness and regularity, pleasing from its proportions, and imposing from its magnitude. The arches which spring from the pillars of the aisles, are surmounted by a second row, occupying the space which is usually held by the triforium: the vaulted roof of the aisles runs to the level of the top of this upper tier. This arrangement, which is found in other Norman churches, is almost peculiar to these; and in England it has no parallel, except in the nave of Waltham Abbey. Within the aisle you observe a singular combination of small pillars, attached to the columns of the nave: they stand on a species of bracket, which is supported by the abacus of the capital; and they spread along the spandrils of the arches on either side. These pillars support a kind of entablature, which takes a triangular plan. The whole bears a near resemblance to the style of the Byzantine architecture. Above the second row of arches are two rows of galleries. The story containing the clerestory windows crowns the whole; so that there are five horizontal divisions in the nave.--I give these details, because they indicate the decided difference of order which exists between the Norman and the English Gothic; a difference for which I have not been able to assign any satisfactory cause. The tombs that were originally in the choir, commemorating Charles Vth, of France; Richard Coeur de Lion; his elder brother, Henry; and William, son of Geoffrey Plantagenet, were all removed in 1736, as interfering with the embellishments then in contemplation. The first of them alone was preserved and transferred to the Lady-Chapel, where it has subsequently fallen a victim to the revolution. The others are wholly destroyed; nor could Ducarel find even a fragment of the effigies that had been upon them; but engravings of these had fortunately been preserved by Montfaucon[81], from whom he has copied them. The monument of the celebrated John of Lancaster, third son of our Henry IVth, better known as the Regent Duke of Bedford, had been previously annihilated by the Calvinists. Lozenge-shaped slabs of white marble, charged with inscriptions, were inserted in the pavement over the spots that contain the remains of the princes, and they have been suffered to continue uninjured through the succeeding tumults. On the right of the altar, you read,-- COR RICHARDI, REGIS ANGLIÆ, NORMANNIÆ DUCIS, COR LEONIS DICTI. OBIIT ANNO MCXCIX. On the opposite side:-- HIC JACET HENRICUS JUNIOR, RICHARDI, REGIS ANGLIÆ, COR LEONIS DICTI, FRATER. OBIIT ANNO MCLXXXIII. And in the choir behind the altar:-- AD DEXTRUM ALTARIS LATUS JACET JOHANNES, DUX BEDFORDI, NORMANNIÆ PROREX. OBIIT ANNO MCCCCXXXV. Of Prince William nothing is said; it was found, upon opening his place of sepulture, that he had not been interred here.--Richard strangely received a triple funeral. In obedience to his wishes, his heart was buried at Rouen, while his body was carried to Fontevraud, and his entrails were deposited in the church of Chaluz, where he was killed:--this division is commemorated in the quaint, yet energetic lines, which are said to have been inscribed upon his tomb:-- VISCERA CARCEOLUM, CORPUS FONS SERVAT EBRARDI, ET COR ROTOMAGUM, MAGNE RICHARDE, TUUM. IN TRIA DIVIDITUR UNUS QUI PLUS FUIT UNO; NEC SUPEREST UNI GLORIA TANTA VIRO. Richard neither withheld his gifts nor his protection from the metropolitan church; and, after his death, the chapter inclosed the heart of their benefactor in a shrine of silver. But a hundred and fifty years subsequently, the shrine was despoiled, and the precious metal was melted into ingots, forming a portion of the ransom which redeemed St. Louis from the fetters of his Saracen conqueror. Henry the younger, who was crowned King of England during the life-time of his father, against whom he subsequently revolted, also requested on his death-bed, that his body might be interred in this church; and his directions were obeyed, though not without much difficulty; for the chapter of the cathedral of Mans, where his servants rested with the body _in transitu_, seized and buried it there; nor did those of Rouen recover the corpse, without application to the Pope and to the King his father. A tablet of black marble, affixed to one of the pillars of the nave, contains the following interesting memorial: IN MEDIA NAVI, E REGIONE HUJUS COLUMNÆ, JACET BEATÆ MEM. MAURILIUS, ARCHIEP. ROTOM. AN. MLV. HANC BASILICAM PERFECIT CONSECRAVITQUE ANNO MLXIII. VIX NATOS BERENGARII ERRORES IN PROX. CONCIL. PRÆFOCAVIT. PLENUS MERITIS OBIIT ANN. MLXVII. HOC PONTIF. NORMANNI, GULIELMO DUCE, ANGLIA POTITI SUNT ANNO MLXVI. [Illustration: Monumental Figure of an Archbishop, in Rouen Cathedral] In the northern aisle of the choir, there still exists a curious monument, in an injured state indeed, but well deserving of attention, from its antiquity. It has been referred by tradition to Maurice, or William of Durefort, both of them archbishops of Rouen, and buried in the cathedral, the former in 1237, the latter in 1331; but the recumbent figure upon it seems of a yet more distant date. It differs in several respects from any that I have seen in England[82]. The tomb is in the wall, behind a range of pillars, which form a kind of open screen round the apsis. Below the effigy, it is decorated with a row of whole-length figures of saints, much mutilated: the circular part above is lined with angels, a couple of whom are employed in conveying the soul of the deceased in a winding-sheet to heaven[83]. [Illustration: Monument of an Archbishop] The Lady-Chapel contains two monuments of great merit, and which, considered as specimens of matured art, have now no rivals in Normandy; for both owe their origin to a period of refinement and splendor. The sepulchre raised over the bodies of the two Cardinals of Amboise, successively Archbishops of Rouen, towers on the southern side of the chapel. The statues of the cardinals are of white marble. The prelates appear kneeling in prayer; and the following inscription, engraved in a single line, and not divided into verses, is placed beneath them:-- PASTOR ERAM CLERI, POPULI PATER, AUREA SESE LILIA SUBDEBANT QUERCUS[84] ET IPSA MIHI. MORTUUS EN JACEO, MORTE EXTINGUUNTUR HONORES; AT VIRTUS MORTIS NESGIA MORTE VIRET. Immediately behind the cardinals are figures of patron saints; a centre tablet represents St. George and the Dragon; above are the apostles; below, the seven cardinal virtues. The execution of these is particularly admired, especially that of the figure of Prudence; but a row of still smaller figures, in devotional attitudes, carved upon the pilasters between the virtues, are in higher taste. Various arabesques in basso-relievo, of great beauty, and completely in the style of the _Loggie_ of Raphael, adorn the other parts of this sumptuous tomb.--As a whole it is unquestionably grand, and it is yet farther valuable as an illustration of the gorgeous taste that prevailed at the end of the fifteenth century; but the mixture of black and white marble and gilding has by no means a good effect, and every part is overloaded with ornaments[85]. These, however, are the faults of the times: its merits are its own. On the north side of the chapel is entombed the Duke of Brezé, once Grand Seneschal of Normandy; his tomb is chaste and simple, forming a pleasing contrast to the elaborate memorial of the cardinals. The statue of the seneschal himself, represented stretched as a corpse, upon a black marble sarcophagus, is admirable for its execution. The rigid expression of death is visible, not only in the countenance, but extends through every limb. Diana of Poitiers, a beauty who enjoys more celebrity than good fame, erected the monument; and she caused her statue to be placed on the tomb, where she is seen kneeling and contemplating. In the following inscription she promises to be as faithful and united to him after his death as she was while they both lived: and she truly kept her word; for, during his life-time, she was grievously suspected of infidelity[86], and she subsequently lived in an open state of concubinage with Henry IInd, and was at last buried at her own celebrated residence at Anet, twenty leagues from her husband.-- HOC, LODOICE, TIBI POSUI, BREZÆE, SEPULCHRUM, PICTONIS AMISSO MOESTA DIANA VIRO; INDIVULSA TIBI QUONDAM ET FIDISSIMA CONJUX, UT FUIT IN THALAMO, SIC ERIT IN TUMULO. A second female figure on the tomb, with a child in her arms, has been supposed intended to represent the nurse of the duke; as if the design of the sculptor had been to read a lesson to mortality, by exhibiting the warrior in the helplessness of infancy, in the vigor of manhood, and as a breathless corpse. Some persons, however, consider it as a personification of Charity; others suppose that it represents the Virgin Mary. In the midst was originally an erect statue of De Brezé, decorated with the various symbols of his dignities; but this sinned beyond the hope of redemption against the doctrines of liberty and equality, and it was accordingly removed at the time of the revolution, together with two inscriptions. One of them, which detailed his honors, with the addition that he died July twenty-third, 1531, has recently been recovered by the care of M. Riaux, and is restored to its place. The other inscription and the effigy, it is feared, are irrevocably lost. An equestrian statue in the upper part of the monument was suffered to remain, and, as a record of the military costume of the sixteenth century, I annex a sketch of it. The armorial hearings upon the horse and armor are nearly obliterated.--The pile is surmounted a figure of Temperance; the bridle in whose mouth shews how absurd is allegory, when "submitted to the faithful eye." [Illustration: Equestrian Figure of the Seneschal de Brezé, in Rouen Cathedral] Lenoir, who, in his work on the _Musée des Monumens Français_, has treated much at large of the history of Diana of Poitiers, and has figured her own beautiful mausoleum, which he had the merit of rescuing from destruction, pronounces[87] this monument to be from the hand of Jean Cousin, one of the most able sculptors of the French school. Over the altar in the Lady-Chapel is the only good painting in the cathedral, the _Adoration of the Shepherds_, by Philip de Champagne, a solid, well-colored, and well-grouped picture. Two cherubs in the air are excellently conceived and drawn: the whole is lighted from the infant Christ in the cradle, a _concetto_, which has been almost universally adopted, since the time when Corregio painted his celebrated _Notte_, now at Dresden. There is no great quantity of painted glass in the church, but much of it is of good quality. The windows of the choir, on either side of the Lady-Chapel, are as rich as a profusion of brilliant colors can make them; but the figures are so small, and so crowded, that the subjects cannot be traced. They are said to be the work of the thirteenth century. The painted windows in St. Stephen's chapel, of the sixteenth century, are generally considered the best in the cathedral. I own, however, that I should give the preference to those in the chapel of St. Romain, in the south transept. One of them is filled with allegorical representations of the virtues of the archbishop; another with his miracles: every part is distinct and clear, and executed with great force and great minuteness. The vestments of the saint have all the delicacy of miniature-painting. The library of the cathedral, formerly one of the richest in France, disappeared during the revolution; but the noble room which contained it, one hundred feet long, by twenty-five feet wide, still remains uninjured; as does the door which led into it from the northern transept, and which continues to this day to bear the inscription, _Bibliotheca_. The staircase, communicating with this door, is delicate and beautiful. The balustrades are of the most elegant filagree; and it has all the boldness and lightness which peculiarly characterise the French Gothic. Its date being well ascertained, we may note it as an architectural standard. It was erected by the archbishop, Cardinal d'Etouteville, about the year 1460, thirty or forty years subsequently to the building of the room. Respecting the contents of the sacristy, I can say little from my own knowledge; but I find by Pommeraye, that, before the revolution, it boasted of a large silver image of the Virgin, endued with peculiar sanctity, a few drops of her milk, and a portion of her hair[88]; a splinter of the true cross, set in gold, studded with pearls, sapphires, and turquoises; and reliques of saints without number. Now, however, it appears, that of all its treasures, it has preserved little else except the shrine of St. Romain, and another known by the general name of _Chasse des Saints_. The former is two feet six inches long, and one foot nine inches high, and is of handsome workmanship, with a variety of figures on the sides, and St. Romain himself at the top. Formerly it was supposed to be made of gold; now I was assured by one of the canons, that it is of silver gilt; but Gilbert[89], who is a plain layman, maintains that it is only copper. Had it been otherwise, it would have contributed to the ways and means of the unchristian republic; but the democrats spared it, for they had well ascertained that the metal was base, and that the jewels, which adorn it, are but glass.--This is not the original shrine which held the precious relics: the shrine in which they were deposited by the archbishop, William Bonne Ame, when first brought to the cathedral, in 1090, was sold during a famine, and its proceeds distributed to the starving poor; after which, in 1179, Archbishop Rotrou caused another still more costly to be made; but the latter was broken to pieces by the Calvinists, in 1562, and the saint's body cast into the fire[90]. Thus, then, I have led you, as far as I am able; through the cathedral, adjoining which, at the east end, stands the palace of the archbishop, a large building, but neither handsome nor conspicuous, principally the work of the Cardinal Georges d'Amboise, though begun by the Cardinal d'Etouteville, in 1461. The rooms in it which are shewn to strangers are the anti-chamber, commonly called _la salle de la Croix_, the library, and the great gallery. This last, which is one hundred and sixty feet long, is also known by the name of _la salle des Etats_. In it are placed four very large paintings by Robert, an eminent French artist of comparatively modern date. They represent the city of Rouen, the town of Dieppe, that of Havre de Grace, and the archiepiscopal palace at Gaillon. The view of Rouen represents in the foreground the _petit Château_, and is on that account peculiarly interesting. All of them are fine paintings, but much injured by the damp. In the anti-chamber are portraits of seven prelates of the see, and among them those of the Cardinal de la Rochefoucault, and M. de Tressan: our guide could name no others. The present archbishop is the Cardinal Cambacérés, brother to the ex-consul of that name, a man of moral life and regular in his religious duties. He was placed here by Napoléon, all of whose appointments of this nature, with one or two exceptions, have been suffered to remain; but I need scarcely add that, though the title of archbishop is left, and its present possessor is decorated with the Roman purple, neither the revenue, nor the dignity, nor the establishment, resemble those of former times. The chapter, which, before the revolution, consisted of an archbishop, a dean, fifty canons, and ten prebendaries, besides numberless attendants, now consists but of his eminence, with the dean, the treasurer, the archdeacon, and twelve canons. The independent annual income of the church, previous to the revolution, exceeded one hundred thousand pounds sterling; but now its ministers are all salaried by government, whose stated allowance, as I am credibly informed, is to every archbishop six hundred and twenty-five pounds per annum; to every bishop four hundred and sixteen pounds thirteen shillings and fourpence; and to every canon forty-one pounds thirteen shillings and four-pence. But each of these stipends is doubled by an allowance of the same amount from the department; and care is taken to select men of independent property for the highest dignities.--From the foregoing scale, you may judge of the state of the religious establishment in France. It is, indeed, unjustly and unreasonably depressed, and there is much room for amendment; but we must still hope and trust that things will not soon regain their former standard, though attempts are daily making to identify the Catholic clergy with the present dynasty; and the most lively expectations are entertained from the well-known character of some of the royal family. Footnotes: [71] _Bentham, History of Ely, 2nd edit_. I. p. 34. [72] _Liverpool Panorama of Arts and Sciences_, article _Architecture_. [73] The only views of the cathedral with which I am acquainted, are, A single plate of the west front, 16 in. by 11-1/2in.--_Anonymous_; . . . . . . . . . . . north side, 16 in. by 11-1/2in.--Marked _S.L.B._; A small north-west view, engraved by Pouncey, in the first volume of _Gough's Alien Priories_; And the west front, on an extremely reduced; scale, in _Seroux d'Agincourt's Histoire de l'Art par les Monumens, Architecture_, t. 64. f. 21. p. 68. [74] This great benefactor to Rouen died the following year, deeply lamented by the inhabitants, and generally so by France; but, above all, regretted by Louis XIIth, his sovereign, whom, to use the words of Guicciardini, he served as oracle and authority. The author of the History of the Chevalier Bayard, is still louder in his praise.--The western facade of the cathedral was not finished till 1530, twenty years after his death. [75] A representation of this has recently been published from an engraving on stone by Langlois. [76] _Histoire de l'Eglise Cathédrale de Rouen_, p. 50. [77] _Noel, Essais sur le Département de la Seine Inférieure_, II. p. 239. [78] _Millin, Histoire Métallique de la Révolution Française_, t. 22. f. 84. [79] _Histoire des Archevêques de Rouen_, folio 1667. [80] Anglo-Norman Antiquities, p. 12. [81] _Monumens de la Monarchie Française_, II. t. 15. f. 3 and 5. [82] As these effigies are in general little understood, even by those who look at them with pleasure as specimens of art, or with respect as relics of antiquity, I am happy to be able to give the following detailed illustration of this at Rouen, extracted from a letter which the Right Rev. Dr. Milner had lately the kindness to write me upon the subject. "The sepulchral monument in the cathedral of Rouen represents a prelate; that is to say, Bishop or Mitred Abbot, as appears by his mitre, gloves, ring, and sandals. But, as he bears the _Pallium_, (to be seen on his neck, just above his breast, and hanging down before him, almost to his feet) it appears that he is a _Metropolitan_, or Archbishop, as, indeed, each of the bishops of Rouen was, from the time of St. Ouen and St. Romanus, in the seventh century, if not from that of St. Nicasius, in the third or fourth. The statue has been mutilated in the mitre, the face, and the crosier; probably when the Huguenots were masters of the city. The mitre is low, as they used to be from the tenth century, when they began to rise at all in the Latin Church, down to the fourteenth, since which they have grown to their present disproportioned height. The arms are crossed, as in prayer; and the left arm supported a crosier, the remnant of which is seen under that arm. Both hands are wrapped up in ornamented gloves, which were an essential part of the prelatic dress. The principal vestment is the _Planeta, Casula,_ or _Chausible_; as it was shaped till within these three or four hundred years. Underneath that, and behind the hanging _Pallium_, appears the _Dalmatic_, edged with gold lace; and under that, extending the whole breadth of the figure, and finishing with rich and deep thread lace, is the _Alb_, made of fine linen. The _Tunic_ is quite hidden by the dalmatic. The _Sandals_ appear to be of gold tissue, and to rest on a rich carpet. "I ought to have mentioned, that the mitre appears, by the jewels with which it is ornamented, to represent that which is called _Mitra pretiosa_, from this circumstance. An inferior kind of mitre, worn on less solemn occasions, was termed _Mitra Aurifrygiata_; and a common one, made of plain linen or silk, was termed _Simplex Mitra_. The only part of the dress which puzzles me, is the great ornament on the neck and shoulders. The question is, (which those can best determine who have seen the original statue,) whether it adheres to the _Pallium_, or to the _Casula_. In either case, it must be considered as part of the vestment to which it adheres. "It is quite out of my power to determine, or even to conjecture on any rational grounds, which, of a certain three-score of archbishops of Rouen, the figure represents; but, if I were to choose between Maurice, the fifty-fourth archbishop, who died in 1235, and William, of Durefort, the sixty-first, who died in 1330, from the comparative lowness of the mitre, and some other circumstances of the dress, I should determine in favor of the former. Perhaps it may represent our Walter, who was first Bishop of Lincoln, and then transferred to Rouen, by Pope Lucius IIIrd. He died in 1208, after having signalized himself as much as any of his predecessors or successors have done. "P.S. On consulting with an intelligent ecclesiastic of Rouen, I am inclined to think that the above-mentioned ornament upon the shoulders, is the _Mozetta_, being a short round cloak, which all bishops still wear, with the _Rochet, Pectoral Cross_, and _Purple Cassock_, as their _ordinary dress_; but, in modern times, the _Mozetta_ is laid aside, when the prelate puts on his officiating vestments; though he retains the cassock, cross, and rochet, underneath them. My informant says, that this mozett is common on the tombs of bishops who died in former ages." [83] The same idea is to be observed on many ancient monuments: among others, it is engraved on the fine sepulchral brass to the memory of Sir Hugh Hastings, in Elsing church.--See _Cotman's Norfolk Sepulchral Brasses._ [84] By the words _Lilia_ and _Quercus_, are designated the armorial bearings of the King of France, and Pope Julius IInd, of the House of Rovere. [85] The bodies of the Cardinals d'Amboise were dug up in 1793, together with most of the others interred in the cathedral, for the sake of their leaden coffins: at the same time the lead was also stripped from the transepts; and a colossal statue of St. George, which stood on the eastern point of the choir, was likewise consigned to the furnace. [86] Ducarel says (_Anglo-Norman Antiquities_, p. 20.) that she was the favorite mistress of two successive kings; but I do not find this assertion borne out by history. [87] Vol. IV. p. 47. [88] The doctrine of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, gave rise to some curious doubts respecting the authenticity of the Virgin's hair. Ferrand, the Jesuit, states the arguments to the contrary with candor; but replies to them with laudable firmness. The passage is a whimsical specimen of the style and reasoning of the schools:--"Restat posteriore loco de capillis Deiparæ Virginis paucis dicere, enimverò an illi sint jam in terris!--Dubitationem aliquam afferre potest mirabilis ipsius anastasis, et in coelum viventis videntisque assumptio triumphalis.--Quid ita?--quid si intra triduum ad vitam revocata, si coelis triumphantis in morem invecta, si corpore gloriâ circumfuso Christo assidet? _Quidquid Virgineo capiti crinium inerat hand dubiè cælis intulit_, ne quid perfectæ ac numeris omnibus absolutæ ipsius pulchritudini deesse possit. Næ ille in politiori literaturâ imo et in rebus humanis omnino peregrinus sit qui ignoret quantum ad muliebrem formam comæ conferat pulchritudo ... ne singulas Marianæ pulchritudinis dotes persequar, ejus ima cræaries de quâ, agimus tantæ fuit venustatis ut mysticus ipsius Sponsus blandè querulus exclamare cogatur, _vulnerasti cor meum in uno crine colli tui_.... Nænias igitur occinere videtur qui Deiparæ capillos in terris relatos esse memoret atque adeo servari obfirmatè asseveret, cùm illos tantum ad redivivæ Virginis speciem conferre constet.--Non efficiet tamen unquam hæc _Antidicomarianitæ_ fabula, quin credam bene multos ex aureâ Dei Genitricis cæsarie crines, diversis in locis ecclesiisque religiosè servari.... Meæ fidei non unum est argumentum; nam a primâ ætate ad confectam usque, e Marianâ comâ non pancos, ut fit, capillos pecten decussit, nisi si fortè cæsariem B. Virginis impexam semper perstitisse velis, quòd numquam (ut inquit de Christo Diva Brigitta) super eam venit vermis, aut perplexitas, aut immunditium. At sine causâ multiplicari miracula quis æquo animo feret?--Ubi vero Genetrix e vitâ discessit, quàm sollicitè pollinctrices auream illam Marianæ comæ segetem demessuerunt, quàm in sacris suis tunc hierothecia reconderent ad memoriam tantæ Imperatricis, et ad suæ consolationis et pietatis argumentum: quòd si fortè totam funditùsque a pollinctricibus, Deiparæ reverentissimis, demessam cæsariem ferre nec possis nec velis, extremes saltem illius cincinnos attonsos fuisse feres ab piissimis illis fæminis, quibus vel perexiguus Dei Genitricis capillus ingentis thesauri loco futurus etat."--_Disquisitio Reliquiaria_, l. 1. cap. II. [89] _Description Historique de l'Eglise de Notre Dame de Rouen_, p. 83. [90] The event is described in the metrical history of Rouen, composed by a minstrel ycleped _Poirier, the limper_. This little tract is a _chap-book_ at Rouen: most towns, in the north of France and Belgium, possess such chronicle ballads in doggerel rhyme, which are much read, and eke chaunted, by the common people. "... un massacre horrible Survint soudainement. Les Huguenots terribles Et Montgommerie puissant, Par cruels enterprises Renverserent les Eglises De Rouen pour certain. Sans aucune relâche Pillent et volent la châsse Du corps de St. Romain. "Le zelé Catholique Poursuivant l'Huguenot Un combat héroique Lui livra à propos, Au lieu nommé la Crosse, Et reprirent par force La châsse du Patron. Puis de la Rue des Carmes La portent à Notre Dame En déposition!" LETTER XI. POINTED ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE--THE CHURCHES OF ST. OUEN, ST. MACLOU, ST. PATRICE, AND ST. GODARD. (_Rouen, June_, 1818.) In the religious buildings, the subject of my preceding letters, I have endeavored to point out to you the specimens which exist at Rouen, of the two earliest styles of architecture. The churches which I shall next notice belong to the third, or _decorated_ style, the æra of large windows with pointed arches divided by mullions, with tracery in flowing lines and geometrical curves, and with an abundance of rich and delicate carving. This style was principally confined in England to a period of about seventy years, during the reigns of the second and third Edward. In France it appears to have prevailed much longer. It probably began there full fifty years sooner than with us, and it continued till it was superseded by the revival of Grecian or Italian architecture. I speak of France in general, but I must again repeat, that my observations are chiefly restricted to the northern provinces, the little knowledge which I possess of the rest being derived from engravings. No where, however, have I been able to trace among our Gallic neighbors the existence of the simple _perpendicular_ style, which is the most frequent by far in our own country, nor of that more gorgeous variety denominated by our antiquaries after the family of Tudor. So long as Normandy and England were ruled by the same sovereign, the continual intercourse created by this union caused a similarity in their architecture, as in other arts and customs; and therefore the two earliest styles of architecture run parallel in the two countries, each furnishing the counterpart of the other. Whether or not the _decorated_ style was transmitted to England from the continent, is a question which cannot be solved, until our collections of continental architecture shall become more extensive. After the reign of Henry VIth, our intercourse with Normandy wholly ceased; and, left to ourselves, many innovations were gradually introduced, which were not known to the French architects, who, with nicer taste, adhered to the pure style which we rejected. Hence arose the _perpendicular_ style of pointed architecture, a style sufficiently designated by its name, and obviously distinguished from its predecessors, by having the mullions of its windows, its ornamental pannelling, and other architectural members and features, disposed in perpendicular lines. Finally, however, both countries discarded the Gothic style, though at different æras. The revival of the arts in Europe, in consequence of the capture of Constantinople and of the greater commercial intercourse between transalpine Europe and Italy, gradually gave rise to an admiration of the antique: imitation naturally succeeded admiration; and buildings formed upon the classical model generally replaced the Gothic. Italian architects found earlier patrons and earlier scholars, in France, than amongst us, our intermediate style being chiefly distinguished by its clumsiness. I will not detain you by any attempt at a comparison between the relative beauties of the Gothic and Grecian architecture, or their respective fitness for ecclesiastical buildings. The very name of the former seems sufficient to stamp its inferiority; and perhaps you will blame the employment of a term which was obviously intended at the outset as an expression of contempt; but I still retain the epithet, as one generally received, and therefore, commonly understood. It may be added, that the modern French seem to be the only _Goths_, in the real and true acceptation of the word. They, to the present day, build Gothic churches; but, instead of confining themselves to the prototypes left them, they are eternally aiming at alterations, under the specious name of improvements. Horace was indignant that, in the Augustan age, the meed of praise was bestowed only upon what was ancient: the architects of this nation of recent date seem under the influence of an opposite apprehension. They build upon their favorite poet:-- "Loin d'ici ce discours vulgaire Que l'art pour jamais dégénère, Que tout s'éclipse, tout finit; La nature est inépuisable, Et le génie infatigable Est le Dieu qui la rajeunit." But they overlook, what Voltaire makes an indispensable requisite, that art must be under the guidance of genius: when it is not so, and caprice holds the reins, the result cannot fail to be that medley of Grecian, Norman, Gothic, and Gallic, of which this country furnishes too many examples. The church of St. Ouen is unquestionably the noblest edifice in the pointed style in this city, or perhaps in France; the French, blind as they usually are to the beauties of Gothic architecture, have always acknowledged its merits. Hence it escaped the general destruction which fell upon the conventual churches of Rouen, at the time of the revolution; though, during the violence of the storm, it was despoiled and desecrated. At one period, it was employed as a manufactory, in which forges were placed for making arms; at another, as a magazine for forage. Nor was this the first instance of its being violated; for, like most of the religious buildings at Rouen, it was visited in the sixteenth century with the fury of the Calvinists[91], who burned the bodies of St. Ouen, St. Nicaise, and St. Remi, in the midst of the temple itself; and cast their ashes to the winds of heaven. The other relics treasured in the church experienced equal indignities. All the shrines became the prey of the eager avarice of the Huguenots; and the images of the saints and martyrs, torn from their tabernacles, graced the gibbets which were erected to receive them in various parts of Rouen. Dom Pommeraye, in reciting these deplorable events, rises rather above his usual pitch of passion: "O malheur!" he exclaims, "ces corps sacrés, ces temples du Saint Esprit, qui avoient autrefois donné de la terreur aux Démons, ne trouverent ni crainte ni respect dans l'esprit de ces furieux, qui jetterent au feu tout ce qui tomba entre leurs mains impies et sacrilèges!"--The mischief thus occasioned was infinitely more to be lamented, he adds, than the burning of the church by the Normans;--"stones and bricks, and gold and jewels, may be replaced, but the loss of a relic is irreparable; and, moreover, the abbey thus forfeits a portion of its protection in heaven; for it is not to be doubted, but that the saints look down with eyes of peculiar favor upon the spots that contain their mortal remains; their glorified souls feeling a natural affection towards the bodies to which they are hereafter to be united for ever," on that day, when "Ciascun ritrovera la trista tomba, Ripigliera sua carne e sua figura, Udira ciò che in eterno rimbomba." The outrages were curiously illustrative of the spirit of the times; the quantity of relics and ornaments equally characterise the devotion of the votaries, and the reputed sanctity of the place. The royal abbey of St. Ouen had, indeed, enjoyed the veneration of the faithful, during a lengthened series of generations. Clothair is supposed to have been the founder of the monastery in 535; though other authorities claim for it a still higher degree of antiquity by one hundred and thirty years. The church, whoever the original founder may have been, was first dedicated to the twelve apostles; but, in 689, the body of St. Ouen was deposited in the edifice; miracles without number were performed at his tomb; pilgrims flocked thither; his fame diffused itself wider and wider; and at length, the allegiance of the abbey was tranferred to him whose sanctity gave him the best claims to the advocation. Changes of this nature, and arising from the same cause, were frequent in those early ages: the abbey of St. Germain des Prés, at Paris, was originally dedicated to St. Vincent; that of Ste. Genevieve to St. Peter; and many other churches also took new patrons, as occasion required. According to one of the fathers of the church, the tombs of the beatified became the fortifications of the holy edifices: the saints were considered as proprietors of the places in which their bodies were interred, and where power was given them, to alter the established laws of nature, in favor of those who there implored their aid. But the aid which they afforded willingly to all their suitors, they could not bestow upon themselves. And oft, when the sword of the heathen menaced the land, the weary monks fled with the corpse of their patrons from the stubborn enemy. Thus, St. Ouen himself, on the invasion of the Normans, was transported to the priory of Gany, on the river Epte, and thence to Condé; but was afterwards conveyed to Rouen, when Rollo embraced Christianity. Other causes also contributed to the migration of these remains: they were often summoned in order to dignify acts of peculiar solemnity, or to be the witnesses to the oaths of princes, like the Stygian marsh of old, "Dii cujus jurare timent et fallere numen." William the Conqueror, upon the dedication of the abbey of St. Stephen, collected the bodies of all the saints in Normandy[92]. Those who wish to be informed of the acts and deeds of St. Ouen, may refer to Pommeraye's history of the convent, in which thirty-seven folio pages are filled with his life and miracles; the latter commencing while he was in long clothes. The monastery, under his protection, continued to increase in reputation; and, in the year 1042, the abbatial mitre devolved upon William, son of Richard IInd, Duke of Normandy, who laid the foundation of a new church, which, after about eighty years, was completed and consecrated by William Balot, next but one to him in the succession[93]. But this church did not exist long: ten years only had elapsed when a fire reduced it, together with the whole abbey, to ashes. An opportunity was thus afforded to the sovereign to shew his munificence, and Richard Coeur de Lion was not tardy in availing himself of it; but a second fire in 1248 again dislodged the monks; and they continued houseless, till the abbot, Jean Rousel, better known by the name of _Mardargent_, laid the foundation in 1318, of the present structure, an honor to himself, to the city, and to the nation. By this prelate the building was perfected as far as the transept: the rest was the work of subsequent periods, and was not completed till the prelacy of Bohier, who died in the beginning of the sixteenth century. To speak more properly, I ought rather to say that it was not till then brought to its present state; for it was never completed. The western front is still imperfect. According to the original design, it was to have been flanked by magnificent towers, ending in a combination of open arches and tracery, corresponding with the outline and fashion of the central tower. These towers, which are now only raised to the height of about fifty feet, jut diagonally from the angles of the facade; and it was intended that, in the lower division, they should have been united by a porch of three arches, somewhat resembling the west entrance of Peterborough; and such as in this town is still seen, at St. Maclou, though on a much larger scale. Pommeraye has given an engraving of this intended front, taken from a drawing preserved in the archives of the abbey. The engraving is miserably executed; but it enables us to understand the lines of the projected building. Pommeraye has also preserved details of other parts of the church, among them of the beautiful rood-loft erected by the Cardinal d'Etouteville, and long an object of general admiration. The bronze doors of this screen were of a most singular and elegant pattern: Horace Walpole imitated them in his bed-room, at Strawberry-Hill. The rood-loft, which had been maimed by the Huguenots, was destroyed at the revolution; when the church was also deprived of its celebrated clock, which told the days of the month, the festivals, and the phases of the moon, and afforded other astronomical information. Such gazers as heeded not these mysteries, were amused by a little bronze statue of St. Michael, who sallied forth at every hour, and announced the progress of time, by the number of strokes which he inflicted on the Devil with his lance. [Illustration: Tower of the Church of St. Ouen, at Rouen] It is impossible to convey by words an adequate idea of the lightness, and purity, and boldness of St. Ouen. My imperfect description will be assisted by the sketches which I inclose. Of their merits I dare not speak; but I will warrant their fidelity; The flying buttresses end in richly crocketed pinnacles, supported by shafts of unusual height. The triple tiers of windows seem to have absorbed the solid wall-work of the building. Balustrades of varied quatrefoils run round the aisles and body; and the centre-tower, which is wholly composed of open arches and tracery, terminates, like the south-tower of the cathedral, with an octangular crown of fleurs-de-lys. The armorial symbol of France, which in itself is a form of great beauty, was often introduced by the French architects of the middle ages, amongst the ornaments of their edifices: it pleases the eye by its grace, and satisfies the mind by its appropriate and natural locality. The elegance of the south porch is unrivalled. This portion of the church was always finished with care: it was the scene of many religious ceremonies, particularly of espousals. Hence they gave it a degree of magnitude which might appear disproportionate, did we not recollect that the arch was destined to embower the bride and the bridal train. The bold and lofty entrance of this porch is surrounded within by pendant trefoil arches, springing from carved bosses, and forming an open festoon of tracery. The vault within is ornamented with pendants, and the portal which it shades is covered with a profusion of sculpture: the death, entombment, and apotheosis of the Virgin, form the subjects of the principal groups. The sculptures, both in design and execution, far surpass any specimens of the corresponding æra in England. But this porch is now neglected and filled with lumber, and the open tracery is much injured. I hope, however, it will receive due attention; as the church is at this time under repair; and the restorations, as far as they go, have been executed with fidelity and judgment. [Illustration: South Porch the Church of St. Ouen, at Rouen] The perspective of the interior[94] is exceedingly impressive: the arches are of great height and fine proportions. If I must discover a defect, I should say that the lines appear to want substance; the mouldings of the arches are shallow. The building is all window. Were it made of cast iron, it could scarcely look less solid. This effect is particularly increased by the circumstance of the clerestory-gallery opening into the glazed tracery of the windows behind, the lines of the one corresponding with those of the other. To each of the clustered columns of the nave is attached a tabernacle, consisting of a canopy and pedestal, evidently intended originally to have received the image of a saint. It does not appear to have been the design of the architect that the pillars of the choir should have had similar ornaments; but upon one of them, at about mid-height, serving as a corbel to a truncated column, is a head of our Saviour, and, on the opposite pillar, one of the Virgin: the former is of a remarkably fine antique character. The capitals of the pillars in this part of the church were all gilt, and the spandrils of the arches painted with angels, now nearly effaced. The high altar is of grey marble, relieved, by a scarlet curtain behind, the effect of which is simple, singular, and good. Round the choir is a row of chapels, which are wholly wanting to the nave. The walls of these chapels have also been covered with fresco paintings; some with figures, others with foliage. The chapels contain many grave-stones displaying indented outlines of figures under canopies, and in other respects ornamented; but neglected, and greatly obliterated, and hastening fast to ruin. It is curious to see the heads and hands, and, in one instance, the crosier of a prelate, inlaid with white or grey marble; as if the parts of most importance were purposely made of the most perishable materials. I was much interested by observing, that many of these memorials are almost the exact counterparts of some of our richest English sepulchral brasses, and particularly of the two which are perhaps unrivalled, at Lynn[95].--How I wished that you, who so delight in these remains, and to whom we are indebted for the elucidation of those of Norfolk, had been with me, while I was trying to trace the resemblance; and particularly while I pored over the stone in the chapel of Saint Agnes, that commemorates Alexander Berneval, the master-mason of the building! [Illustration: Head of Christ, in the Church of St. Ouen, at Rouen, seen in profile] [Illustration: Head of Christ, in the Church of St. Ouen, at Rouen, seen in front] According to tradition, it was this same Alexander Berneval who executed the beautiful circular window in the southern transept. But being rivalled by his apprentice, who produced a more exquisite specimen of masonry in the northern transept, he murdered his luckless pupil. The crime he expiated with his own life; but the monks of the abbey, grateful for his labors, requested that his body might be entombed in their church; and on the stone that covers his remains, they caused him to be represented at full length, holding the window in his hand. These large circular windows, sometimes known by the name of rose windows, and sometimes of marigold windows, are a strong characteristic feature of French ecclesiastical architecture. Few among the cathedrals or the great conventual churches, in this country, are without them. In our own they are seldom found: in no one of our cathedrals, excepting Exeter only, are they in the western front; and, though occasionally in the transepts, as at Canterbury, Chichester, Litchfield, Westminster, Lincoln and York, they are comparatively of small size with little variety of pattern. In St. Ouen, they are more than commonly beautiful. The northern one, the cause of death to the poor apprentice, exhibits in its centre the produced pentagon, or combination of triangles sometimes called the pentalpha.--The painted glass which fills the rose windows is gorgeous in its coloring, and gives the most splendid effect. The church preserves the whole of its original glazing. Each inter-mullion contains one whole-length figure, standing upon a diapered ground, good in design, though the artist seems to have avoided the employment of brilliant hues. The sober light harmonizes with the grey unsullied stone-work, and gives a most pleasing unity of tint to the receding arches. Among the pictures, the-best are, the _Cardinal of Bologna opening the Holy Gate, instead of the Pope_, in the nave; and _Saint Elizabeth stopping the Pestilence_, in the choir: two others, in the Lady-Chapel, by an artist of Rouen, of the name of Deshays, the _Miracle of the Loaves_, and the _Visitation_, are also of considerable merit.--Deshays was a young man of great promise; but the hopes which had been entertained of him were disappointed by a premature death. A church like this, so ancient, so renowned, and so holy, could not fail to enjoy peculiar privileges. The abbot had complete jurisdiction, as well temporal as spiritual, over the parish of St. Ouen; in the Norman parliament he took precedence of all other mitred abbots; by a bull of Pope Alexander IVth, he was allowed to wear the pontifical ornaments, mitre, ring, gloves, tunic, dalmatic, and sandals; and, what sounds strange to our Protestant ears, he had the right of preaching in public, and of causing the conventual bells to be rung whenever he thought proper. His monks headed the religious processions of the city; and every new archbishop of the province was not only consecrated in this church, but slept the evening prior to his installation at the abbey; whence, on the following day, he was conducted in pomp to the entrance of the cathedral, by the chapter of St. Ouen, headed by their abbot, who delivered him to the canons, with the following charge,--"Ego, Prior Sancti Audoeni, trado vobis Dominum Archiepiscopum Rothomagensem vivum, quem reddetis nobis mortuum."--The last sentence was also strictly fulfilled; the dean and chapter being bound to take the bodies of the deceased prelates to the church of St. Ouen, and restore them to the monks with, "Vos tradidistis nobis Dominum Archiepiscopum vivum; nos reddimus eum vobis mortuum, ita ut crastinâ die reddatis eum nobis."--The corpse remained there four and twenty hours, during which the monks performed the office of the dead with great solemnity. The canons were then compelled to bear the dead archbishop a second time from the abbey cross (now demolished) to the abbey of St. Amand[96], where the abbess took the pastoral ring from off his finger, replacing it by another of plain gold; and thence the bearers proceeded to the cathedral. These duties could not be very agreeable to portly, short-winded, well-fed dignitaries; and consequently the worthy canons were often inclined to shrink from the task. In the case of the funeral of Archbishop d'Aubigny, in 1719, they contented themselves with carrying him at once to his dormitory; but the prior and monks of St. Ouen instantly sued them before the parliament, and this tribunal decreed that the ancient service must be performed, and in default of compliance, the whole of their temporalities were to be put under sequestration: it is almost needless to add, that a sentence of excommunication would scarcely have been so effectual in enforcing the execution of the sentence. The gardens formerly belonging to the abbey are at this time a pleasant promenade to the inhabitants of the town: the remains of the monastic buildings are converted into an _Hôtel de Ville_, where also the library and the museum are kept, and the academy hold their sittings. No remains, however, now exist of the abbatial residence, which was built by Anthony Bohier, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and which, according to the engraving given of it by Pommeraye, must have been a noble specimen of domestic architecture. The sovereigns of France always took up their abode in it, during their visits to Rouen.--The circular tower called the _Tour des Clercs_, mentioned in a former letter, is the only vestige of Norman times.--The cloister corresponded with the architecture of the church: the south side of the quadrangle attached to the northern aisle still exists, but blocked up and dilapidated, and converted into a sort of cage for those who are guilty of disturbances during the night. [Illustration: Stone Staircase in the Church of St. Maclou, at Rouen] The church of St. Maclou is unquestionably superior to every other in the city, except the cathedral and St. Ouen. Its principal ornament are its carved doors, produced during the reign of Henry IIIrd, by Jean Goujon, a man so eminent as to have been termed the Corregio of sculpture; but they have been materially injured by repairs and alterations by unskilful hands. Within the church, near the west entrance, is a singularly elegant stair-case, in filagree stone-work, which formerly led to the organ.--This building was erected in the year 1512, and chiefly by voluntary contributions, if such can be called _voluntary_ as were purchased by promises from the archbishop, first of forty, and then of one hundred, days' indulgences, to all who would contribute towards the pious labor.--The central tower resembles that of the cathedral, both in the interior and the exterior. It now appears truncated; but it was originally surmounted by a spire, which was of such beauty, that even Italian artists thought it worthy to be engraved and held out as a model at Rome[97]. The spire, however, was greatly injured by a hurricane, in 1705, and it was at last taken down thirty years afterwards. To the triple porch, I have already alluded, in describing the intended front of St. Ouen. The general lines of the church, are such as in England would be referred to the fourteenth century: on a closer examination, however, the curious eye will discover the peculiar beauties of the French Gothic. Thus the bosses of the groined roof are wrought and perforated into filagree, the work extending over the intersections of the groins, which are seen through its reticulations. Such bosses are only found in the French churches of the sixteenth century. In other parts, the interior closely resembles the style of the cathedral[98]. St. Patrice is a building of the worst style of the commencement of the sixteenth century: to use the quaint phraseology of Horace Walpole, it exhibits "that _betweenity_ which intervened when Gothic declined and Palladian was creeping in." The paintings on the walls of this church, and the stained glass in its windows, are more deserving of notice than its architecture. The first are of small size, and generally better than are seen in similar places. One of them is after Bassan, an artist, whose works are not often found in religious edifices in France. The painted windows of the choir deserve unqualified commendation. They are said to have been removed from St. Godard. Each is confined to a single subject; among which, that of the _Annunciation_ is esteemed the best. To this church was attached a confraternity[99], established in 1374, under the name of the _Guild of the Passion_. Its annual procession, which continued till the time of the revolution, took place on Holy-Thursday. It consisted of the usual pageantry; a host of children, dressed like angels, increased the train, which also included twelve poor men, whose feet the masters of the brotherhood publicly washed after mass. Like some other guilds, they were in possession of a pulpit or tribune, called, in old French, a _Puy_, from which they issued a general invitation to all poets, who were summoned to descant upon the themes which were commemorated by their union. The rewards held out to the successful candidates were, in the true monastic spirit of the guild, a reed, a crown of thorns, a sponge, or some other mystic or devotional emblem. Occasionally, too, they gave a scenic representation of certain portions of religious history, according to the practice of early times. The account of the _Mystery of the Passion_ having been acted in the burial-ground of the church of St. Patrice, so recently as September, 1498, is preserved by Taillepied[100], who tells us, that it was performed by "bons joueurs et braves personages." The masters of this guild had the extraordinary privilege of being allowed to charge the expence attendant on the processions and exhibitions, upon any citizen they might think proper, whether a member or otherwise. The neighboring church of St. Godard possesses neither architectural beauty, nor architectural antiquity; for, although it occupies the scite of an edifice of remote date, yet the present structure is coeval with St. Patrice. It has been supposed that this church was the primitive cathedral of the city[101]. One of the proofs of this assertion is found in a procession which, before the revolution, was annually made hither by the chapter of the present cathedral, with great ceremony, as if in recognition of its priority. The church was originally dedicated to the Virgin; but it changed its advocation in the year 525, when St. Godard, more properly called St. Gildard, was buried here in a subterranean chapel; and, for the reasons before noticed, the old tutelary patroness was compelled to yield to the new visitor. In the succeeding century, St. Romain, a saint of still greater fame, was also interred here; and, as I collect from Pommeraye[102], in the same crypt. This author strenuously denies the inferences which have been drawn from the annual procession, which he maintains was performed solely in praise and in honor of St. Romain; for the chapter, after having paid their devotions to the Host, descended into the chapel, to prostrate themselves before the sepulture of the saint; on which subject, an antiquary[103] of Rouen has preserved the following lines:-- "Ad regnum Domini dextrâ invitatus et ore, Huic sacra Romanus credidit ossa loco; Sontibus addixit quæ cæca rebellio flammis, Nec tulit impietas majus in urbe scelus. Quid tanto vesana malo profecit Erynnis? Ipsa sui testis pignoris extat humus. Crypta manet, memoresque trahit confessio cives, Nec populi fallit marmor inane fidem. Orphana, turba, veni, viduisque allabere saxis, Est aliquid soboli patris habere thorum." The body of St. Godard was carried to Soissons; but the tomb, which, has doubtfully been designated as appropriated either to him or to St. Romain, was left to the church, and remained there at least till the revolution. I have even been told that it is there still; but I had no opportunity of going down into the chapel to verify this point. It consisted, or rather consists, of a single slab of jasper, seven and a half feet long, by two feet wide, and two feet four inches thick. Upon it was this inscription:-- "Malades, voulez-vous soulager vos douleurs? Visitez ce tombeau, baignez-le de vos pleurs; Rechauffez vos esprits d'une divine flame; Touchez-le settlement du doigt, Et vous y trouverez (si vous avez la foi) Et la santé du corps, et la santé de l'ame." The building retains, at this time, only two of its celebrated painted windows; but they are fortunately the two which were always considered the best. One of them represents the history of St. Romain; the other, the genealogy of Jewish kings, from whom the Holy Virgin descended. Rouen has, from a very early period, been famous for its manufactories of painted glass. But the windows of this church were still esteemed the _chef d'oeuvre_ of its artists; and these had so far passed into a proverb, that Farin[104] tells us it was common throughout France to say, in recommendation of choice wine, that "it was as bright as the windows of St. Godard." The saying, however, was by no means confined to Rouen, for it was also applied to the windows of the Ste. Chapelle, at Dijon. It was at St. Godard that the burst of the reformation was first manifested. The Huguenots, taking courage from the secret increase of their numbers, broke into the building, in 1540, demolished the images, and sold the pix to a goldsmith. But the man suffered severely for his purchase: he was shortly afterwards sentenced, by a decree of the parliament, to be hanged in front of his shop; and two of those concerned in the outrage also suffered capital punishment. The spark thus lighted, afterwards increased into a conflagration; and, to this hour, there is a larger body of Protestants at Rouen, than in most French towns. I do not expect that you will reproach me with the prolixity of these details. The subject is attractive to me, and I feel that you will accompany me with pleasure in my pilgrimage, from chapel to shrine, dwelling with me in contemplation on the relics of ancient skill and the memorials of the piety of the departed. Nor must it be forgotten, that the hand of the spoliator is falling heavily on all objects of antiquity. And the French seem to find a source of perverse and malignant pleasure in destroying the temples where their ancestors once worshipped: many are swept away; a greater number continue to exist in a desecrated state; and time, which changes all things, is proceeding with hasty strides to obliterate their character. The lofty steeple hides its diminished head; the mullions and tracery disappear from the pointed windows, from which the stained glass has long since fallen; the arched entrance contracts into a modern door-way; the smooth plain walls betray neither niches, nor pinnacles, nor fresco paintings; and in the warehouse, or manufactory, or smithy, little else remains than the extraordinary size, to point out the original holy destination of the edifice. Footnotes: [91] The following brief statement of their excesses is copied from a manuscript belonging to the monastery: the full detail of them engages Pommeraye for nearly seven folio pages:--"Le Dimanche troisiéme de May, 1562, les Huguenots s'étans amassez en grosse troupe, vinrent armez en grande furie dans l'Eglise de S. Ouen, où étant entrez ils rompirent les chaires du choeur, le grand autel, et toutes les chapelles: mirent en pieces l'Horloge, dont on voit encore la menuiserie dans la chapelle joignant l'arcade du costé du septentrion, aussi bien que celles des orgues, dont ils prirent l'étaim et le plomb pour en faire des balles de mousquet: puis ils allumerent cinq feux, trois dedans l'Eglise et deux dehors, où ils brûlerent tous les bancs et sieges des religieux, auec le bois des balustres des chapelles, les bancs et fermetures d'icelles, plusieurs ornemens et vestemens sacrez, comme chappes, tuniques, chasubles, aubes, vne autre partie des plus riches et precieux ornemens de broderie et drap d'or ayant esté enlevée en l'hôtellerie de la pomme de pin, où ils les brûlerent pour en auoir l'or et l'argent. Ils firent la mesme chose des saintes reliques, qu'ils brûlerent, ayant emporté l'or, l'argent, et les pierreries des reliquaires."--_Histoire de l'Abbaye Royale de St. Ouen_, p. 205. [92] Farin, Histoire de Rouen, IV. p. 134. [93] _Histoire de l'Abbaye Royales de Saint Ouen_, p. 204. [94] The following are the dimensions of the interior of the building, in French feet: Length of the church.................. 416 Ditto of the nave..................... 234 Ditto of the choir.................... 108 Ditto of the Lady-Chapel.............. 66 Ditto of the transept................. 130 Width of ditto........................ 34 Ditto of nave, without the aisles..... 34 Ditto, including ditto................ 78 Height of roof........................ 100 Ditto of tower........................ 240 [95] _Figured in Cotmans Norfolk Sepulchral Brasses_. [96] The house of the abbess of St. Amand is still standing, though neglected, and in a great degree in ruins. What remains, however, is very curious; and is, perhaps, the oldest specimen of domestic architecture in Rouen. It is partly of wood, the front covered with arches and other sculpture in bas-relief, and partly of stone. [97] _Farin, Histoire de Rouen_, IV. p. 156. [98] The dimensions of the building, in French feet, are,-- Length of the nave.................... 70 Ditto of choir........................ 40 Ditto of Lady-Chapel.................. 30 Ditto of the whole building.......... 140 Width of ditto........................ 76 Height to the top of the lanthorn.... 142 [99] _Farin, Histoire de Rouen_, IV. p. 168. [100] _Antiquitéz et Singularitéz de la Ville de Rouen_, p. 186. [101] _Farin, Histoire de Rouen_, IV. p. 132. [102] _Histoire des Archevêques de Rouen_, p. 130. [103] _La Normandie Chrétienne_, p. 487. [104] _Histoire de Rouen_, IV. p. 134. LETTER XII. PALAIS DE JUSTICE--STATES, EXCHEQUER, AND PARLIAMENT OF NORMANDY--GUILD OF THE CONARDS--JOAN OF ARC--FOUNTAIN AND BAS-RELIEF IN THE PLACE DE LA PUCELLE--TOUR DE LA GROSSE HORLOGE--PUBLIC FOUNTAINS--RIVERS AUBETTE AND ROBEC--HOSPITALS--MINT. (_Rouen, June_, 1818.) Amongst the secular buildings of Rouen, the Palais de Justice holds the chief place, whether we consider the magnificence of the building, or the importance of the assemblies which once were convened within its precinct. The three estates of the Duchy of Normandy, the parliament, composed of the deputies of the church, the nobility, and the good towns, usually held their meetings in the Palace of Justice. Until the liberties of France were wholly extirpated by Richelieu, this body opposed a formidable resistance to the crown; and the _Charte Normande_ was considered as great a safeguard to the liberties of the subject, as Magna Charta used to be on your side of the channel. Here, also, the _Court of Exchequer_ held its session. According to a fond tradition, this, the supreme tribunal of Normandy, was instituted by Rollo, the good Duke, whose very name seemed to be considered as a charm averting violence and outrage. This court, like our _Aula Regia_, long continued ambulatory, and attendant upon the person of the sovereign; and its sessions were held occasionally, and at his pleasure. The progress of society, however, required that the supreme tribunal should become stationary and permanent, that the suitors might know when and where they might prefer their claims. Philip the Fair, therefore, about the year 1300, began by enacting that the pleas should be held only at Rouen. Louis the XIIth remodelled the court, and gave it permanence; yielding in these measures to the prayer of the States of Normandy, and to the advice of his minister, the Cardinal d'Amboise. It was then composed of four presidents, and twenty-eight counsellors; thirteen being clerks; and the remainder laymen. The name of exchequer was perhaps unpleasing to the crown, as it reminded the Normans of the ancient independence of their duchy; and, in 1515, Francis Ist ordered that the court should thenceforward be known as the _Parliament of Normandy_; thus assimilating it in its appellation to the other supreme tribunals of the kingdom. There is an old poem extant, written in very lawyer-like rhyme, which invests all the cardinal virtues, and a great many supernumerary ones besides, with the offices of this most honorable court, in which purity is the usher, truth has a silk gown, and virginity enters the proceedings on the record. "De ceste _court_ grace est grand _chanceliere_, Vertus ont lieu de _présidens_ prudens: Vérité est première _conseillere_, Et pureté _huyssiére_ là-dedans: La _greffiére_ est virginité féconde, Et la _concierge_ humilité profonde. Pythié _procure_ a vuider les discords, Comme _advocat_, amour ayde aux accords. De _geolier_ vacque le seul office: Aussy on voyt par _officiers_ concors, La noble _court_ rendante à tous justice." In the same style and strain is a ballad, which, thanks to the care of De Bourgueville, the author of the _Antiquities of Caen_, hath been preserved for the edification of posterity. It enumerates all the members of the court _seriatim_, and compares their lordships and worships, one after another, to the heroes and demi-gods of ancient story. The parliament in its turn has given way to the _Court of Assizes_; and, where the states once deliberated, the electors of the department now come together for the purpose of naming the deputies who represent them in the great council of the nation;--such are the vicissitudes of all human institutions. When the Jews were expelled from Normandy, in 1181, the _Close_, or Jewry, in which they dwelled, escheated to the king. The sons of Japhet spoiled the sons of Shem with pious alacrity. The debtor burnt his bond; the bailie seized the store of bezants; the synagogue was razed to the ground. In this _Close_ the palace was afterwards built. The wise custom of Normandy was mooted on the spot where the law of Moses had once been taught; and, by a strange, perhaps an ominous, fatality, the judge held the scales of justice, where whilome the usurer had poised his balance. The palace forms three sides of a quadrangle. The fourth is occupied by an embattled wall and an elaborate gate-way. The building was erected about the beginning of the sixteenth century; and, with all its faults, it is a fine adaptation of Gothic architecture to civil purposes. It is in the style which a friend of mine chooses to distinguish by the name of _Burgundian architecture_; and he tells me that he considers it as the parent of our Tudor style. Here, the windows in the body of the building take flattened elliptic heads; and they are divided by one mullion and one transom. The mouldings are highly wrought, and enriched with foliage. The lucarne windows are of a different design, and form the most characteristic feature of the front: they are pointed and enriched with mullions and tracery, and are placed within triple canopies of nearly the same form, flanked by square pillars, terminating in tall crocketed pinnacles, some of them fronted with open arches crowned with statues. The roof, as is usual in French and Flemish buildings of this date, is of a very high pitch, and harmonizes well with the proportions of the building. An oriel, or rather tower, of enriched workmanship projects into the court, and varies the elevations. On the left-hand side of the court, a wide flight of steps leads to the hall called _la Salle des Procureurs_, a place originally designed as an Exchange for the merchants of the city, who had previously been in the habit of assembling for that purpose in the cathedral. It is one hundred and sixty feet in length, by fifty in breadth. "In this great hall," says Peter Heylin, "are the seats and desks of the procurators; every one's name written in capital letters over his head. These procurators are like our attornies; they prepare causes, and make them ready for the advocates. In this hall do suitors use, either to attend on, or to walk up and down, and confer with, their pleaders."--The attornies had similar seats in the ancient English courts of justice; and these seats still remain in the hall at Westminster, in which the Court of Exchequer holds its sittings. The walls of the Salle des Procureurs are adorned with chaste niches. The coved roof is of timber, plain and bold, and destitute either of the open tie-beams and arches, or the knot-work and cross timber which adorn our old English roofs. If the roof of our priory church was not ornamented, as last mentioned, it would nearly resemble that in question.--Below the hall is a prison; to its right is the room where the parliament formerly held its sittings, but which is now appropriated to the trial of criminal causes. The unfortunate Mathurin Bruneau, the soi-disant dauphin, was last year tried here, and condemned to imprisonment. He is treated in his place of confinement with ambiguous kindness. The poor wretch loves his bottle; and, being allowed to intoxicate himself to his heart's content, he is already reduced to a state of idiotism.--Heylin, who saw the building when it was in perfection, says, speaking of this _Great Chamber_, "that it is so gallantly and richly built, that I must needs confess it surpasseth all the rooms that ever I saw in my life. The palace of the Louvre hath nothing in it comparable; the ceiling is all inlaid with gold, yet doth the workmanship exceed the matter."--The ceiling which excited Heylin's admiration still exists. It is a grand specimen of the interior decoration of the times. The oak, which age has rendered almost as dark as ebony, is divided into compartments, covered with rich but whimsical carving, and relieved with abundance of gold. Over the bench is a curious old picture, a _Crucifixion_. Joseph and the Virgin are standing by the cross: the figures are painted on a gold ground; the colors deep and rich; the drawing, particularly in the arms, indifferent; the expression of the faces good. It was upon this picture that witnesses took the oaths before the revolution; and it is the only one of the six formerly in this situation that escaped destruction[105]. Round the apartment are gnomic sentences in letters of gold, reminding judges, juries, witnesses, and suitors, of their duties. The room itself is said to be the most beautiful in France for its proportions and quantity of light. In the _Antiquités Nationales_, is described and figured an elaborately wrought chimney-piece in the council-chamber, now destroyed, as are some fine Gothic door-ways, which opened into the chamber. The ceiling of the apartment called la _seconde Chambre des Enquêtes_, painted by Jouvenet, with a representation of Jupiter hurling his thunderbolts at Vice, is also unfortunately no more. It fell in, from a failure in the woodwork of the roof, on the first of April, 1812. It was among the most highly-esteemed productions of this master, and not the less remarkable for having been executed with the left hand, after a paralytic stroke had deprived him of the use of the other. Millin observes, with much justice, that one of the most remarkable of the decrees that issued from this palace, was that which authorized the meetings of the _Conards_, a name given to a confraternity of buffoons, who, disguised in grotesque dresses, performed farces in the streets on Shrove Tuesday and other holidays. Nor is it a little indicative of the taste of the times, that men of rank, character, and respectability entered into this society, the members of which, amounting to two thousand five hundred, elected from among themselves a president, whom they dressed as an abbot[106], with a crozier and mitre, and, placing him on a car drawn by four horses, led him, thus attired, in great pomp through the streets; the whole of the party being masked, and personating not only the allegorical characters of avarice, lust, &c. but the more tangible ones of pope, king, and emperor, and with them those of holy writ. The seat of this guild was at Notre Dame de Bonnes Nouvelles. [Illustration: Sculpture, representing the Feast of Fools] In the cathedral itself the more notorious _Procession des Fous_ was also formerly celebrated, in which, as you know, the ass played the principal part, and the choir joined in the hymn[107],-- "Orientis partibus Adventavit Asinus," &c. These, or similar ceremonies, call them if you please absurdities, or call them impieties, (you will in neither case be far from their proper name,) were in the early ages of Christianity tolerated in almost every place. Mr. Douce has furnished us with some curious remarks upon them in the eleventh volume of the _Archaeologia_, and Mr. Ellis in his new edition of _Brand's Popular Antiquities_. I am indebted to the first of these gentlemen for the knowledge that the inclosed etching, copied some time ago from a drawing by Mr. Joseph Harding, is allusive to the ceremony of the _feast of fools_, and does not represent a group of morris-dancers, as I had erroneously supposed. Indeed, Mr. Douce believes that many of the strange carvings on the _misereres_ in our cathedrals have references to these practices. And yet, to the honor of England, they never appear to have been equally common with us as in France.--According to Du Cange[108], the confraternity of the Conards or Cornards was confined to Rouen and Evreux. I have not been able to ascertain when they were suppressed; but they certainly existed in the time of Taillepied, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, about fifty years previously to which they dropped their original name of _Coqueluchers_. At this time too they had evidently degenerated from the primary object of their institution, "ridendo castigare mores atque in omne quod turpitèr factum fuerat ridiculum immittere." Taillepied was an eye-witness of their practices; and he prudently contents himself with saying; "le fait est plus clair à le voir que je ne pourrois icy l'escrire." At a short distance from the palace is a small square, called the _Place de la Pucelle_, a name which it has but recently acquired, in lieu of the more familiar appellation of _le Marché aux Veaux_. The present title records one of the most interesting events in the history of Rouen, the execution of the unfortunate Joan of Arc, which is said to have taken place on the very spot now covered by the monument that commemorates her fate. Three different ones have in succession occupied this place. The first was a cross, erected in 1454, only twenty-four years after her death; for even at this early period, the King of France had obtained from Pope Calixtus IIIrd, a bull directing the revision of her sentence, and he had caused her innocence to be acknowledged. The second was a fountain of delicate workmanship, consisting of three tiers of columns placed one above the other, on a triangular plan, the whole decorated with arabesques and statues of saints, while the Maid herself crowned the summit, and the water flowed through pipes that terminated in horses' heads. The present monument is inferior to the second, equally in design and in workmanship: it is a plain triangular pedestal, ornamented with dolphins at the base, and surmounted by the heroine in military costume. Of the two last, figures are given by Millin[109], who could not be expected to suffer a subject to escape him, so calculated for the gratification of national pride. In a preceding volume of the same work[110], he has represented the monument erected to her memory by Charles VIIth, upon the bridge at Orleans: the latter is commemorative of her triumphs; that at Rouen, only of her capture and death. But the King testified his gratitude by more substantial tokens: he ennobled her three brothers and their descendants; and even allowed the females of the family to confer their rank upon the persons whom they married, a privilege which they continued to enjoy till the time of Louis XIIIth, who abolished it in 1634. In the square is a house within a court, now occupied as a school for girls, of the same æra as the Palais de Justice, and in the same _Burgundian style_, but far richer in its sculptures. The entire front is divided into compartments by slender and lengthened buttresses and pilasters. The intervening spaces are filled with basso-relievos, evidently executed at one period, though by different masters. A banquet beneath a window in the first floor, is in a good _cinque-cento_ style. Others of the basso-relievos, represent the labors of the field and the vineyard; rich and fanciful in their costume, but rather wooden in their design: the Salamander, the emblem of Francis Ist, appears several times amongst the ornaments, and very conspicuously. I believe there is not a single square foot of this extraordinary building, which has not been sculptured.--On the north side extends a spacious gallery. Here the architecture is rather in Holbein's manner: foliaged and swelling pilasters, like antique candelabra, bound the arched windows. Beneath, is the well-known series of bas-reliefs, executed on marble tablets, representing the interview between Francis Ist of France, and Henry VIIIth of England, in the _Champ du Drap d'or_, between Guisnes and Ardres. They were first discovered by the venerable father Montfaucon, who engraved them in his _Monumens de la Monarchie Française_[111]; but to the greater part of our antiquaries at home, they are, perhaps, more commonly known by the miserable copies inserted in Ducarel's work, who has borrowed most of his plates from the Benedictine.--These sculptures are much mutilated, and so obscured by smoke and dirt, that the details cannot be understood without great difficulty. The corresponding tablets above the windows, are even in a worse condition; and they appear to have been almost unintelligible in the time of Montfaucon, who conjectures that they were allegorical, and probably intended to represent the triumph of religion. Each tablet contains a triumphal car, drawn by different animals, one by elephants, another by lions, and so on, and crowded with mythological figures and attributes.--A friend of mine, who examined them this summer, tells me, that he thinks the subjects are either _taken_ from the triumphs of Petrarch, or _imitated_ from the triumphs introduced in the _Polifilo_. Graphic representations of allegories are susceptible of so many variations, that an artist, embodying the ideas of the poet, might produce a representation bearing a close resemblance to the mythological processions of the mystic dream.--Of one of the most perfect of the historical subjects, I send you a drawing: it is the first in order in Montfaucon's work, and exhibits the suite of the King of England, on their way from the town of Guisnes, to meet the French monarch. Two of the figures might be mistaken for Henry himself and Wolsey, riding familiarly side by side; but these dignified personages have more important parts allotted them in the second and third compartments, where they appear in the full-blown honors of their respective characters. [Illustration: Bas-Relief, from the representations of the Champ du Drap d'or] The interior has been modernized; so that a beam covered with small carvings is the only remaining object of curiosity. On the top, a bunch of leaden thistles has been a sad puzzle to antiquaries, who would fain find some connection between the building and Scotland; but neither record nor tradition throw any light upon their researches. Montfaucon, copying from a manuscript written by the Abbé Noel, says, "I have more than once been told that Francis Ist, on his way through Rouen, lodged at this house; and it is most probable, that the bas-reliefs in question were made upon some of these occasions, to gratify the king by the representation of a festival, in which he particularly delighted." The gallery sculptures are very fine, and the upper tier is much in the style of Jean Goujon. It is not generally known that Goujon re-drew the embellishments of Beroald de Verville's translation of the Polifilo; and that these, beautiful as they are in the Aldine edition, acquired new graces from the French artist.--I have remarked that the allegorical tablets appear to coincide with the designs of the Polifilo: a more accurate examination might, perhaps, prove the fact; and then little doubt would remain. The building is much dilapidated; and, unless speedily repaired, these basso-relievos, which would adorn any museum, will utterly perish. In spite of neglect and degradations, the aspect of the mansion is still such that, as my friend observed, one would expect to see a fair and stately matron standing in the porch, attired in velvet, waiting to receive her lord.--In the adjoining house, once, probably, a part of the same, but now an inn, bearing the sign of _la Pucelle_, is shewn a circular room, much ornamented, with a handsome oriel conspicuous on the outside. In this apartment, the Maid is said to have been tried; but it is quite certain that not a stone of the building was then put of the quarry. Hence I must take you, and still under the auspices of Millin[112], to the great town-clock, or, as it is here called, _la Tour de la Grosse Horloge_; and I cannot help wishing on the occasion, that I had half the powers of instructing and amusing which he possessed. Like the writers in our most popular Reviews, he uses the subjects which he places at the head of his articles as little more than a peg, whereon to hang whatever he knows connected with the matter; and the result is, that he is never read without pleasure or information. Such is peculiarly the case in the present instance, in which he takes an opportunity of giving the history of the origin of clocks, tracing them from the simple dial, and particularising the most curious and intricate contrivances of modern ingenuity. Another name of the tower which contains this clock, is _la Tour du Beffroi_, or, as we should say in English, the _Belfry_; for the two words have the same meaning, and it is not to be doubted but that they originated from the same root, the Anglo-Saxon _bell_, whence barbarous Latinists have formed _Belfredus_ and _Berfredus_, terms for moveable towers used in sieges, and so denominated from their resemblance in form to bell-towers. I mention this etymology, because the French have misled themselves strangely on the subject; and one of them has wandered so widely in his conjectures, as to derive _beffroi_ from _bis effroi_, supposing it to be the cause of double alarm! Happily, in the most alarming of all times for France, that of the revolution, this bell, though appointed the _tocsin_, had scarcely ever occasion to sound. There is, however, another purpose, alarming at all periods, and especially in a town built of wood, to which it is appropriated, and to which we only yesterday heard it applied, the ringing to announce a fire. The precautions taken against similar accidents in Rouen, are excellent, and they had need be so; for insurance-companies of any kind are unknown, I believe, in France[113], or exist only upon a most limited scale, at the foot of the Pyrenees, where the farmers mutually insure each other against the effects of the hail. The daily office of this bell is to sound the curfew, a practice which, under different names, is still kept up through Normandy. Here it rings nightly at nine. In other towns it rings at nine in winter only, but not till ten in summer. In some places it is called _la retraite_. Adjoining the bell-tower is a fountain, ornamented with statues of Alpheus and Arethusa, united by Cupid; a specimen of the taste of the far-famed _siècles de Louis XIV et de Louis XV_, and a worthy companion of the water-works at Versailles. There are in Rouen more than thirty public fountains, all supplied by five different springs, among which, those of Yonville and of Darnétal are accounted to afford the purest water.--The Robec and the Aubette also flow through Rouen in artificial channels. St. Louis granted them both to the city in 1262; but it was the great benefactor of the place, the Cardinal d'Amboise, who brought them within the walls, by means of a canal, which he caused to be dug at his own expence. For a space of two leagues their banks are uninterruptedly lined with mills and manufactories of various descriptions; and it is this circumstance which has given rise to the saying, that Rouen is a wonderful place, for "that it has a river with three hundred bridges, and whose waters change their color ten times a day." As a building, the fountain of Lisieux, decorated with a bas-relief representing Parnassus, with Apollo, the Muses, and Pegasus, is most frequently pointed out to strangers; a wretched specimen of wretched taste. Infinitely more interesting to us are the Gothic fountains or conduits, which are now wholly wanting in England. Such is the fountain _de la Croix de Pierre_, which, in shape, style, and ornaments, resembles the monumental crosses erected by; our King Edward Ist, for his Queen Eleanor. The water flows from pipes in the basement. The stone statues, which filled the tabernacles, were destroyed during the revolution: they have been replaced by others in wood.--The fountain _de la Crosse_ is of inferior size, and more recent date. It is a polygon, with sides of pannelled work, each compartment occupied by a pointed arch, with tracery in the spandrils. It ends in a short truncated pyramid, which, in Millin's time, was surmounted by a royal crown[114]. Its name is taken from a house, at whose corner it stands, and on whose roof was originally a crozier. Writing to a friend may be regarded, if we extend to writing the happy comparison which Lord Bacon has applied to conversation, not as walking in a high-road which leads direct to a house, but rather as strolling through a country intersected with a variety of paths, in which the traveller wanders as fancy or accident directs. Hence I shall scarcely apologize for my abrupt transition to another very different subject, the hospitals.--There are at Rouen two such establishments, situated at opposite extremes of the town, the _Hospice Général_ and the _Hôtel Dieu_, more commonly called _la Madeleine_. The latter is appropriated only to the sick; the former is also open to the aged, to foundlings, to paupers, and to lunatics. For the poor, I have been able to hear of no other provision; and poor-laws, as you know, have no existence in France; yet, even here, in a manufacturing town, and at a season of distress, beggary is far from extreme. These institutions, like all the rest at Rouen, are said to be under excellent management. The annual expences of la Madeleine are estimated at two hundred and forty thousand-francs[115]; out of which sum, no less than forty-seven thousand francs are expended in bread. The number of individuals admitted here, during the first nine months of 1805, the last authentic statement I have been able to procure, was two thousand seven hundred and seventeen: during the same period, two thousand one hundred and fifty-eight were discharged, and two hundred and seventy died. The building is modern and handsome, and situated at the end of a fine avenue. The church, a Corinthian edifice, and indisputably the handsomest building of that description at Rouen, is generally admired. The Hospice Général, destitute as it is of architectural magnificence, cannot be visited without satisfaction. When I was at this hospital, the old men who are housed there were seated at their dinner, and I have seldom witnessed a more pleasing sight. They exhibited an appearance of cleanliness, propriety, good order, and comfort, equally creditable to themselves and to the institution. The number of inmates usually resident in this building is about two thousand; and they consisted, in 1805, of one hundred and sixty aged men, one hundred and eighty aged women, six hundred children, and eight hundred and twenty-five invalids. Among the latter were forty lunatics. The food here allowed to the helpless poor is of good quality; and, as far as I could learn, is afforded in sufficient quantity: there are also two work-shops; in one of which, articles are manufactured for the use of the house; in the other, for sale. The principal towns of France, as was anciently the case in England, have each its mint. The numismatic antiquities of this kingdom are yet involved in considerable obscurity; but it is said that the monetary privileges of the towns were first settled by Charles the Bald[116], who, about the year 835, enacted, that money, which had previously only been coined in the royal palace itself, or in places where the sovereign was present, should be struck in future at Paris, Rouen, Rheims, Sens, Chalons sur Saone, Mesle in Poitou, and Narbonne. At present, the money struck at Rouen is impressed with the letter _B_, indicating that the mint is second only to that of Paris; for the city has remained in possession of the right of coinage throughout all its various changes of masters: it now holds it in common with ten other, cities in the kingdom. Ducarel[117] has figured two very scarce silver pennies, coined here by William the Conqueror, before the invasion of England; and Snelling and Ruding[118] detail ordinances for the regulation of the mintage of Rouen, during the reign of Henry Vth. I have not been able, however, to procure in the city any specimens of these, or of other Norman coins; and in fact the native spot of articles of _virtu_ is seldom the place where they can be procured either genuine or in abundance. Greek medals, I am told, are regularly exported from Birmingham to Athens, for the supply of our travelled gentlemen; and, if groats and pennies should ever rise in the market, I doubt not but that they will find their way in plenty into the old towns of Normandy. There is not, at Rouen, any public collection of the productions of the mint. Since the annexation of the duchy to the crown of France, no coins have been struck here, except the common silver currency of the kingdom: the manufacture of medals and of gold coins is exclusively the privilege of the Parisian mint. The establishment is under the care of a commissary and assay-master, appointed by the crown, but not salaried. Their pay depends upon the amount of money coined, on which they are allowed one and a half per cent., and are left to find silver where they can; so that, in effect, it is little more than a private concern. The work is performed by four die-presses, moved by levers, each of which requires ten men; and about twenty thousand pieces can be produced daily from each press. But this method of working is attended with unequal pressure, and causes both trouble and uncertainty: it is even necessary that each coin should be separately weighed. The extreme superiority of the machinery of our own mint, where the whole operation is performed by steam, with a rapidity and accuracy altogether astonishing, affords Just reason for exultation to an Englishman.--It is true, that the execution of our bank paper rather counterbalances such feelings of complacency. Footnotes: [105] This appears from the following inscription now upon a silver tablet placed near it.--"Ce tableau est celui qui fut donné par Louis XII, en 1499, à l'Exchiquier, lorsqu'il le rendit permanent. C'est le seul de tous les ornemens de ce palais qui ait échappé aux ravages de la révolution: il a été conservé par les soins de M. Gouel, graveur, et par lui remis à la cour royale de Rouen qui l'a fait placer ici, comme un monument de la piété d'un roi, à qui sa bonté mérita le surnom de père du peuple, et dont les vertus se reproduisent aujourd'hui dans la personne non moins chérie que sacrée de sa majesté très chrétienne, Louis XVIII, 15 Janvier, 1816." [106] Du Cange, (I. p. 24.) quoting from a book printed at Rouen, in 1587, under the title of _Les Triomphes de l'Abbaye des Conards_, &c. gives the following curious mock patent from the abbot of this confraternity, addressed to somebody of the name of De Montalinos.-- "Provisio Cardinalatus Rothomagensis Julianensis, &c. "Paticherptissime Pater, &c. "Abbas Conardorum et inconardorum ex quacumque Natione, vel genitatione sint aut fuerint: Dilecto nostro filio naturali et illegitimo Jacobo à Montalinasio salutem et sinistram benedictionem. Tua talis qualis vita et sancta reputatio cum bonis servitiis ... et quod diffidimus quòd postea facies secundùm indolem adolescentiæ ac sapientiæ tuæ in Conardicis actibus, induxenunt nos, &c. Quocirca mandamus ad amicos, inimicos et benefactores nostros qui ex hoc sæculo transierunt vel transituri sunt ... quatenus habeant te ponere, statuere, instalare et investire tàm in choro, chordis et organo, quàm in cymbalis bene sonantibus, faciantque te jocundari et ludere de libertatibus franchisiis, &c.... Voenundatum in tentorio nostro prope sanctum Julianum sub annulo peccatoris anno pontificatus nostri, 6. Kalend. fabacearum, hora verò noctis 17. more Conardorum computando, &c." [107] The music of this hymn, or _prose_, as it is termed in the Catholic Rituals, is given in the Atlas to Millin's Travels through the Southern Departments of France, _plate_ 4. [108] See under the article _Abbas Conardorum_, I. p. 24. [109] _Antiquités Nationales_, III. No. 36. [110] Vol. II. No. 9. [111] Vol. IV. t. 29, 30, 31. [112] _Antiquités Nationales_, III. No. 30. [113] This ceased to be the case almost immediately after this remark was made; for, on my return to France, in 1819, I observed on the whole road from Dieppe to Paris, the letters P A C I, or others, equally meaning _pour assurance contre l'incendie_, painted upon the fronts of the houses. [114] _Antiquités Nationales_, III. article 30, p. 26.--(In the figure, however, which accompanies this article, the summit is mutilated, as I saw it.) [115] _Peuchet, Description Topographique et Statistique de la France, Département de la Seine Inférieure_, p. 33. [116] _Histoire de la Haute Normandie_, I. p. 94. [117] _Anglo-Norman Antiquities_, p. 33. t. 3. [118] _Annals of the Coinage of Britain_, I. p. 505-507. LETTER XIII. MONASTIC INSTITUTIONS--LIBRARY--MANUSCRIPTS--MUSEUM--ACADEMY--BOTANIC GARDEN--THEATRE--ANCIENT HISTORY--EMINENT MEN. (_Rouen, June_, 1818.) The laws of France do not recognize monastic vows; but of late years, the clergy have made attempts to re-establish the communities which once characterized the Catholic church. To a certain degree they have succeeded: the spirit of religion is stronger than the law; and the spirit of contradiction, which teaches the subject to do whatever the law forbids, is stronger than either. Hence, most towns in France contain establishments, which may be considered either as the embers of expiring monachism, or the sparks of its reviving flame. Rouen has now a convent of Ursulines, who undertake the education of young females. The house is spacious; and for its neatness, as well as for the appearance of regularity and propriety, cannot be surpassed. On this account, it is often visited by strangers. The present lady-abbess, Dame Cousin, would do honor to the most flourishing days of the hierarchy: when she walks into the chapel, Saint Ethelburgha herself could not have carried the crozier with greater state; and, though she is somewhat short and somewhat thick, her pupils are all wonderfully edified by her dignity. She has upwards of dozen English heretics under her care; but she will not compromise her conscience by allowing them to attend the Protestant service. There are also about ninety French scholars, and the inborn antipathy between them and the _insulaires_, will sometimes evince itself. Amongst other specimens of girlish spite, the French fair-ones have divided the English damsels into two _genera_. Those who look plump and good-humored, they call _Mesdemoiselles Rosbifs_; whilst such as are thin and graver acquire the appellation of the _Mesdemoiselles Goddams_, a name by which we have been known in France, at least five centuries ago.--This story is not trivial, for it bespeaks the national feeling; and, although you may not care much about it, yet I am sure, that five centuries hence, it will be considered as of infinite importance by the antiquaries who are now babes unborn. The Ursulines and _soeurs d'Ernemon_, or _de la Charité_, who nurse the sick, are the only two orders which are now protected by government. They were even encouraged under the reign of Napoléon, who placed them under the care of his august parent, _Madame Mère_.--There are other sisterhoods at Rouen, though in small numbers, and not publickly patronized. Nuns are thus increasing and multiplying, but monks and friars are looked upon with a more jealous eye; and I have not heard that any such communities have been allowed to re-assemble within the limits of the duchy, once so distinguished for their opulence, and, perhaps, for their piety and learning. The libraries of the monasteries were wasted, dispersed, and destroyed, during the revolution; but the wrecks have since been collected in the principal towns; and thus originated the public library of Rouen, which now contains, as it is said, upwards of seventy thousand volumes. As may be anticipated, a great proportion of the works which it includes relate to theology and scholastic divinity; and the Bollandists present their formidable front of fifty-four ponderous folios. [Illustration: Initial Letter from a MS. of the History of William of Jumieges] The manuscripts, of which I understand there are full eight hundred, are of much greater value than the printed books. But they are at present unarranged and uncatalogued, though M. Licquet, the librarian, has been for some time past laboring to bring them into order. Among those pointed out to us, none interested me so much as an original autograph; of the _Historica Normannorum_, by William de Jumiegies, brought from the very abbey to which he belonged. There is no doubt, I believe, of its antiquity; but, to enable you to form your own judgment upon the subject, I send you a tracing of the first paragraph. [Illustration: Historica Normannorum tracing of autograph] I also add a fac-simile of the initial letter of the foregoing epistle, illuminated by the monk, and in which he has introduced himself in the act of humbly presenting his work to his royal namesake. I am mistaken, if any equally early, and equally well authenticated representation of a King of England be in existence. The _Historia Normannorum_ is incomplete, both at the beginning and end, and it does not occupy more than one-fifth of the volume: the rest is filled with a comment upon the Jewish History. The articles among the manuscripts, most valued by antiquaries, are a _Benedictionary_ and a _Missal_, both supposed of nearly the same date, the beginning of the twelfth century. The Abbé Saas, who published, in 1746, a catalogue of the manuscripts belonging to the library of the cathedral of Rouen, calls this Benedictionary, which then belonged to the metropolitan church, a _Penitential_; and gives it as his opinion, that it is a production of the eighth century, with which æra he says that the character of the writing wholly accords. Montfaucon, who never saw it, follows the Abbé; but the opinion of these learned men has recently been confuted by M. Gourdin[119], who has bestowed considerable pains upon the elucidation of the history and contents of this curious relic. He states that a sum of fifteen thousand francs had been offered for it, by a countryman of our own; but I should not hesitate to class this tale among the numberless idle reports which are current upon the continent, respecting the riches and the folly of English travellers. The famous Bedford Missal, at a time when the bibliomania was at its height[120], could hardly fetch a larger sum; and this of Rouen is in no point of view, except antiquity, to be put in competition with the English manuscript. Its illuminations are certainly beautiful; but they are equalled by many hundreds of similar works; and they are only three in number, the _Resurrection_, the _Descent of the Holy Ghost_, and the _Death of the Virgin_.--The volume appears to have been originally designed for the use of the cathedral of Canterbury; as it contains the service used at the consecration of our Anglo-Saxon sovereigns. The Missal, which is also the object of M. Gourdin's dissertation, is from the convent of Jumieges. Its date is established by the circumstance of the paschal table finishing with the year 1095. It contains eleven miniatures, inferior in execution to those in the Benedictionary; and it ends with the following anathema, in the hand-writing of the Abbot Robert, by whom it was given to the monastery:--"Quem si quis vi vel dolo seu quoque modo isti loco subtraxerit, animæ suæ propter quod fecerit detrimentum patiatur, atque de libro viventium deleatur et cum justis non scribatur." As a memorial of a usage almost universal in the earlier ages of the church, the _Diptych_, commonly called the _Livre d'Ivoire_, is a valuable relic. The covers exhibit figures of St. Peter and of some other saint, in a good style of workmanship, perhaps of the lower empire. The book contains the oaths administered to each archbishop of Rouen and his suffragans, upon their entering on their office, all of them severally subscribed by the individuals by whom they were sworn. It begins at a very early period, and finishes with the name of Julius Basilius Ferronde de la Ferronaye, consecrated Bishop of Lisieux, in 1784. In the first page is the formula of the oath of the archbishop.--"Juramentum Archiepiscopi Rothomagensis jucundo adventu receptionis suæ.--Primo dicat et pronuntiet Decanus vel alius de Majoribus verba quæ sequentur in introitu atrii;--Adest, reverende pater, tua sponsa, nostra mater, hæc Rothom. ecclesia, cum maximo gaudio recipere te parata, ut eam regas salubriter, potenter protegas et defendas.--Responsio Archiepiscopalis;--Hæc, Deo donante, me facturum promitto.--Iterum Decanus vel alius;--Firma juramento quæ te facturum promittis.--Ego, Dei patientia, bujus Rothom. ecclesiæ minister, juro ad hæc sancta Dei evangelia quod ipsam ecclesiam contra quoslibet tam in bona quam in personas ipsius invasores et oppressores pro posse protegam viriliter et defendam, atque etiam ipsius ecclesiæ jura, libertates, privilegia, statuta et consuetudines apostolicas servabo fideliter. Bona ejusdem ecclesiæ non alienabo nec alienari permittam, quin pro posse, si quæ alienata fuerint, revocabo. Sic me Deus adjuvet et sancta Dei evangelia." The oath of the bishops and abbots was nothing more than a promise of constant respect and obedience on their parts to the church and archbishop of Rouen. You will find it in the _Voyages Liturgiques_[121]; in which you will also meet with a great deal of curious matter touching the peculiar customs and ceremonies of this cathedral. The different metropolitan churches of France before the revolution, like those of our own country prior to the reformation, varied materially from one another in observances of minor importance; at the same time that their rituals all agreed in what may be termed the doctrinal ceremonies of the church. The last manuscript which I shall mention, is the only one that is commonly shewn to strangers: it is a _Graduel_, a very large folio volume, written in the seventeenth century, and of transcendent beauty. Julio Clovio himself, the Raphael of this department of art, might have been proud to be considered the author of the miniatures in it. The representations of lapis lazuli are even more wonderful than the flowers and insects. The whole was done by a monk, of the name of Daniel D'Eaubonne, and is said to have cost him the labor of his entire life. In earlier times, a similar occupation was regarded as peculiarly meritorious[122].--There died a friar, a man of irregular life, and his soul was brought before the judgment-seat to receive its deserts. The evil spirits attended, not anticipating any opposition to the claim which they preferred; but the guardian angels produced a large book, filled with a transcript from holy writ by the hand of the criminal; and it was at length agreed that each letter in it should be allowed to stand against a sin. The tale was carefully gone through: Satan exerted his utmost ingenuity to substantiate every crime of omission or commission; and the contending parties kept equal pace, even unto the last letter of the last word of the last line of the last page, when, happily for the monk, the recollection of his accuser failed, and not a single charge could be found to be placed in the balance against it. His soul was therefore again remanded to the body, and a farther time was allotted to it to correct its evil ways.--The legend is pointed by an apposite moral; for the brethren are exhorted to "pray, read, sing, and write, always bearing in mind, that one devil only is allowed to assail a monk who is intent upon his duties, but that a thousand are let loose to lead the idle into temptation." The library is open every day, except Sundays and Thursdays, from ten to two, to everybody who chooses to enter. It is to the credit of the inhabitants of Rouen, that they avail themselves of the privilege; and the room usually contains a respectable assemblage of persons of all classes. The revenue of the library does not amount to more than three thousand francs per annum; but it is also occasionally assisted by government. The French ministers of state consider that it is the interest of the nation to promote the publication of splendid works, either by pecuniary grants to the authors, or, as more commonly happens, by subscribing for a number of copies, which they distribute amongst the public libraries of the kingdom.--I could say a great deal upon the difference in the conduct of the governments of France and England in this respect, but it would be out of place; and I trust that our House of Commons will not be long before they expunge from the statute-books, a law which, under the shameless pretence of "encouraging learning," is in fact a disgrace to the country. The museum is also established at the Hôtel-de-Ville, where it occupies a long gallery and a room adjoining. It is under the superintendence of M. Descamps, son of the author of two very useful works, _La Vie des Peintres Flamands_ and _Le Voyage Pittoresque_. The father was born at Dunkirk, in 1714, but lived principally at Paris, till an accidental circumstance fixed him at Rouen, in 1740. On his way to England, he here formed an acquaintance with M. de Cideville, the friend of Voltaire, who, anxious for the honor of his native town, persuaded the young artist to select it as the place of his future residence. The event fully answered his expectation; for the ability and zeal of M. Descamps soon gave new life to the arts at Rouen. A public academy of painting was formed under his auspices, to which he afforded gratuitous instruction; and its celebrity increased so rapidly, that the number of pupils soon amounted to three hundred; and Norman authors continued to anticipate in fancy the creation of a Norman school, which should rival those of Bologna and Florence, until the very moment when the revolution dispelled this day-dream. Descamps died at the close of the last century. To his son, who inherits his parent's taste, with no small portion of his talent, we were indebted for much obliging attention. The museum is open to the public on Sundays and Thursdays; but daily to students and strangers. It contains upwards of two hundred and thirty paintings. Of these, the great mass is undoubtedly by French artists, comparatively little known and of small merit, imitators of Poussin and Le Brun. Such paintings as bear the names of the old Italian masters, are in general copies; some of them, indeed, not bad imitations. Among them is one of the celebrated Raphael, commonly called the _Madonna di San Sisto_, a very beautiful copy, especially in the head of the virgin, and the female saint on her left hand. It is esteemed one of his finest pieces; but few of his pictures are less generally known: there is no engraving of it in Landon's eight volumes of his works. Looking to the unquestionable originals in the collection, there are perhaps none of greater value than Jouvenet's finished sketches for the dome of the Hôtel des Invalides, at Paris. They represent the twelve apostles, each with his symbol, and are extremely well composed, with a bold system of light and shadow. The museum has five other pictures by the same master; in this number are his own portrait, a vigorous performance, as well in point of character as of color; and the _Death of St. Francis_, which has generally been considered one of his happiest works. Both these were painted with his left hand. The death of St. Francis is said to have been his first attempt at using the brush, after he was affected with paralysis, and to have been done by way of model for his scholar, Restout, whom he had desired to execute the same subject for him. A _Christ bearing his Cross_, by Polemburg; is a little piece of high finish and considerable merit; an _Ecce Homo_, by Mignard, is excellent; and a _St. Francis in Extasy_, by Annibal Caracci, is a good illustration of the true character of the Bolognese school: it is a fine and dignified picture, depending for its excellence upon a grand character of expression and drawing, and light and shade, and not at all on bright or varied coloring, to which it makes no pretension. As local curiosities, the attention of the amateur should be devoted to the productions of the painters to whom Rouen has given birth, Restout, Lemonnier, Deshays, Leger, Houel, Letellier, and Sacquespée, artists, not of the first class, but of sufficient merit to do great credit to the exhibition of a provincial metropolis. From these recent specimens, you would turn with the more pleasure to a picture by Van Eyck, the inventor, as it is generally supposed, of oil painting. Let us respect these fathers of the art. Let us pardon the stiffness of their composition, the formality of their figures, the inelegance of their draperies, the hardness of their outlines, and the want of chiaroscuro;--for, in spite of all these failings, there is a truth to nature, and a richness of coloring, which always attract and win. The picture in question is the _Virgin Mother in her Domestic Retirement_, surrounded by her family, a comely party of young females in splendid attire, some of them wearing the bridal crown. It is altogether a curiosity, partaking, indeed, of the general bad taste of the times, but painted with great attention to nature in the minutiæ, and resembling Lionardo da Vinci in many particulars, especially in the high finishing, the coloring of the carnations, and the grace, and beauty of some of the heads. The draperies, too, are rich and brilliant. This museum is a recent erection: most, if not all, of the departments of France, possess similar establishments in their principal towns. The basis of the collection is founded upon the plunder of the suppressed monasteries; but M. Descamps told us that, in the course of a journey to Italy, he had been the means of adding to this, at Rouen, its principal ornaments. He had the greater merit of preserving it entire, when orders were transmitted from Paris to send off its best pictures, to replace those taken from the Louvre by the allies; for on all occasions, whether great or small, the interests of the departments are sacrificed without mercy to the engulphing capital. Descamps was firm in defending his trust: he resisted the spoliation, upon the principle that the museum was the private property of the town; and the plea was admitted. The same conventual buildings also contain the rooms appropriated to the use of the academy at Rouen, a royal institution of old standing, and which has published fifteen volumes of its transactions.--It was founded in 1744, under a charter granted to the Duke of Luxembourg, then governor of the province, and its first president. The present complement of members consists of forty-six fellows, besides non-resident associates. Its meetings are held every Friday evening, and the members, as at the institute at Paris, read their own papers. A few nights ago, at a meeting of this academy, I heard a memoir from the pen of the professor of botany, in which he dwelt at large upon the family of the lilies, but prized and praised them for nothing so much as for their connection with the Bourbon family. I mention the fact to shew you how readily the French seize hold of every occasion of displaying their devotion to the powers that be. In 1814, at the moment of the restoration of Louis XVIIIth, we were not surprised to see every town and village between Calais and Paris, decorated with a proud display of the busts of the monarch, the shields of France and Navarre, and innumerable devices and mottoes, _consecrated_, as the French say, to the Bourbons; but four years have given time for this ebullition of loyalty to subside; and the introduction of such topics at the present day, and especially in the meetings of a body devoted solely to the improvement of literature and of the arts and sciences, appears to savor somewhat of adulation. These praises excited no remarks and no criticisms; though both might have been expected; for, during the reading of a paper, the by-standers are allowed to discuss its merits and its defects. This practice gives the sittings of a French literary society a degree of life and spirit wanting to ours in England; but I doubt if the advantage be not more than counter-balanced by the frequent interruptions which it occasions, and which an ill-natured person might in some cases suspect to proceed from a desire of attracting notice, rather than from fair, and just reprehension. I should be sorry to insinuate that any thing of this kind was evident at the time, just alluded to, which was the Friday previous to the annual meeting, the day appointed for taking into consideration the report intended to be submitted to the full assembly of the inhabitants. The president also read his projected speech, in the course of which he took the opportunity of declaring in strong terms his dislike to Napoléon's plan of education, directed almost exclusively to military affairs and mathematics: he even stated that the present generation "étoit sans morale."--The opinion could not be allowed to pass: he found himself beset on all sides; not an individual supported him; and after a variety of attempts to palliate and explain away the offensive passage, he was obliged to consent to expunge it. This will give some farther idea of the state of public feeling in France: the compliment upon the lilies passed as words of course; but the same body that tolerated it, positively refused to stamp with the sanction of their approbation, any comparison unfavorable to the system of Napoléon, when put in opposition to that of the subsisting government. There is another literary body at Rouen; called _la Société d'Emulation_, of more recent establishment, it having been founded in 1791. Conformably to the national spirit which then prevailed, it is directed exclusively to the encouragement of manufactories and agriculture.--This society distributes annual medals as the reward of improvements and discoveries, though I am afraid that as yet it has been productive but of slender utility. Rouen also possesses a Botanic Garden, which was founded in 1738; but the scite which it now occupies was not thus applied till twenty years subsequently, when the municipality conveyed the ground in perpetuity to the academy in its corporate capacity, stipulating that it should yield a nosegay every year as an appropriate _rent in kind_. At the revolution a grant like this would scarcely be respected; still less did the jacobins appreciate the pleasures or advantages derived from the garden. The demagogues of that period seem to have entered heartily into Jean Jacques Rousseau's notions, that the arts and sciences were injurious to mankind: this fine establishment was seized as national property, and, according to the revolutionary jargon, was _soumissioné_; but a more temporate faction obtained the ascendancy before the sale was carried into effect.--The collection is extensive, and the plants are in good order: I am not however, aware that the city has ever given birth to any man of eminence in this department of science. Lately, indeed, the Abbé Le Turquier Deslongchamps, a very well-informed botanist, as well as a most excellent man, has published a _Flore des Environs de Rouen_, in two volumes; and there are many instances in which such works have been known to diffuse a taste, which public gardens and the lectures of professors had in vain endeavored to excite. The variety of soil in the vicinity of the city renders it eminently favorable to the study of botany. It is peculiarly rich in the _Orchideoe_ of the most beautiful and interesting families of the vegetable kingdom. The curious _Satyrium hircinun_ is found in the utmost profusion upon the chalky hills immediately adjoining the city; and, at but a few miles distance, in a continuation of the same ridge, the bare chalk, under the romantic hill of St. Adrien, is purpled with the flowers of the _Viola Rothomagensis_, a plant scarcely known to exist in any other place. The suburbs of Rouen abound with nursery-grounds and gardens: the former contribute greatly to the preservation of the genuine stock of apple-trees, which furnish the cider, for which Normandy has for many centuries been celebrated; the latter supply the inhabitants with the flowers which are seen at almost every window. The square in front of the cathedral is the principal flower-market; and the bloom and luxuriance and variety of the plants exposed for sale, render it a most pleasing promenade. Various species of jessamines and roses, with oleanders, pomegranates, myrtles, egg-plants, orange and lemon trees, the _Lilium superbum_ and _tigrinum_, _Canna Indica_, _Gladiolus cardinalis_, _Clerodendrum fragrans_, _Datura ceratocolla_, _Clethra alnifolia_, and _Dianthus Carthusianorum_, are to be seen in the greatest profusion and beauty. They at once attest the care of the cultivators, and a climate more genial than ours. None of the flowers, however, excited my envy so much as the _Rosa moschata_, which grows here in the open air, and diffuses its delicious fragrance from almost every window of the town. It is perhaps to the credit of Rouen, that science and learning appear to flourish more kindly than the drama. The theatre of Rouen is quite uncharacteristic of the passion which the French usually entertain for _spectacles_. The house is shabby; the audience, as often as we have been there, has been small; and in this great city, the capital of an extensive, populous, and wealthy district we have witnessed acting so wretched, as would disgrace the floor of a village barn. We have been much surprised by seeing the performers repeatedly laugh in the face of the spectators, a thing which I should least of all have expected in France, where usually, in similar cases, the whole nation is tremblingly alive to the slightest violations of decorum. And yet Corneille, the father of the French drama, was born in this city: the scene that is used for a curtain at the theatre bears his portrait, with the inscription, "_P. Corneille, natif de Rouen_;" and his apotheosis is painted upon the cieling. These recollections ought to tend to the improvement of the drama. The portrait of the great tragedian is more appropriate than the busts of Henry IVth and Louis XVIIIth, which occupy opposite sides of the stage; the latter laurelled and flanked with small white flags, whose staffs terminate in paper lilies. Corneille and Fontenelle are the citizens, of whom Rouen is most proud: the house in which Corneille was born, in the _Rue de la Pie_, is still shewn to strangers. His bust adorns the entrance, together with an inscription to his honor. The residence of his illustrious nephew, the author of the _Plurality of Worlds_, is situated in the _Rue des bans Enfans_, and is distinguished in the same manner. The whole _Siécle de Louis XIV_, scarcely contains two names upon which Voltaire dwells with more pleasure.--Rouen was also the birth-place of the learned Bochart, author of _Sacred Geography_ and of the _Hierozöicon_; of Basnage, who wrote the _History of the Bible_; of Sanadon, the translator of Horace; of Pradon, "damn'd," in the Satires of Boileau, "to everlasting fame;" of Du Moustier, to whom we are indebted for the _Neustria Pia_; of Jouvenet, whom I have already mentioned as one of the most distinguished painters of the French school; and of Father Daniel, not less eminent as an historian.--These, and many others, are gone; but the reflection of their glory still plays upon the walls of the city, which was bright, while they lived, with its lustre;--"nam præclara facies, magnæ divitiæ, ad hoc vis corporis, alia hujuscemodi omnia, brevi dilabuntur; at ingenii egregia facinora, sicuti anima, immortalia sunt. Postremò corporis et fortunæ bonorum, ut initium, finis est; omnia orta occidunt et aucta senescunt: animus incorruptas, æternus, rector humani generis, agit atque habet cuncta, neque ipse habetur." The more remote and historical honors of Rouen would present ample materials. Prior to the Roman invasion, it appears to have been of less note than as the capital of Neustria. Julius Cæsar, copious as he is in all that relates to Gaul, makes no mention of Rouen in his Commentaries. Ptolemy first speaks of it as the capital of the Velocasses, or Bellocasses, the people of the present Vexin; but he does not allow his readers to entertain an elevated idea of its consequence; for he immediately adds, that the inhabitants of the Pays de Caux were, singly, equal to the Velocasses and Veromandui together; and that the united forces of the two latter tribes did not amount to one-tenth part of those which were kept on foot by the Bellovaci.--Not long after, however, when the Romans became undisputed masters of Gaul, we find Rouen the capital of the province, called the _Secunda Lugdunensis_; and from that tine forward, it continued to increase in importance. Etymologists have been amused and puzzled by "Rothomagus," its classical name. In an uncritical age, it was contended that the name afforded good proof of the city having been founded by Magus, son of Samothes, contemporary of Nimrod. Others, with equal diligence, sought the root of Rothomagus in the name of Roth, who is said to have been its tutelary god; and the ancient clergy adopted the tradition, in the hymn, which forms a part of the service appointed for the feast of St. Mellonus,-- "Extirpate Roth idolo, Fides est in lumine; Ferro cinctus, pane solo Pascitur et flumine, Post hæc junctus est in polo Cum sanctorum agmine." The partizans of _Roth_ are therefore supported by the authority of the church; the favorers of _Magus_ must defend themselves by more worldly erudition; and we must leave the task of deciding between the claims of the two sections of the word, divided as they are by the neutral _o_, to wiser heads than ours. Footnotes: [119] Précis Analytique des travaux de l'Académie de Rouen, pendant l'année 1812, p. 164. [120] At the sale of Mr. Edwards' library, in April 1815, it was bought by the present Duke of Marlborough for six hundred and eighty-seven pounds fifteen shillings.--The following anecdote, connected with it, was communicated to me by a literary friend, who had it from one of the parties interested; and I take this opportunity of inserting it, as worthy of a place in some future _Bibliographical Decameron_.--At the time when the Bedford Missal was on sale, with the rest of the Duchess of Portland's collection, the late King sent for his bookseller, and expressed his intention to become the purchaser. The bookseller ventured to submit to his Majesty, that the article in question, as one highly curious, was likely to fetch a high price.--"How high?"--"Probably, two hundred guineas!"--"Two hundred guineas for a Missal!" exclaimed the Queen, who was present, and lifted up her hands with extreme astonishment.--"Well, well," said his Majesty, "I'll still have it; but, since the Queen thinks two hundred guineas so enormous a sum for a Missal, I'll go no farther."--The bidding for the royal library did actually stop at that point; and Mr. Edwards carried off the prize by adding three pounds more. [121] Published at Rouen, A.D. 1718.--The book professes to be written by the Sieur de Moléon; but its real author was Jean Baptiste de Brun Desmarets, son of a bookseller in that city.--He was born in 1650, and received his education at the Monastery of Port Royal des Champs, with the monks of which order he kept up such a connection, that he was finally involved in their ruin. His papers were seized; and he was himself committed to the Bastille, and imprisoned there five years. He died at Orleans, 1731. [122] _Ordericus Vitalis_, in _Duchesne's Scriptores Normanni_, p. 470. * * * * * END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. INDEX. A. Abbey, of Fécamp, Montivilliers, Pavilly, Abbot of the Canards, his patent, Academy, Royal, at Rouen, Angel weighing the good and evil deeds of a departed spirit, on a capital in the church at Montivilliers, Archbishop, tomb of, in Rouen cathedral, Archbishop of Rouen, formerly had jurisdiction at Dieppe his present salary, the oath taken by him on his accession, Architecture, perpendicular style of, unknown in Normandy, Arques, battle of, Arques, castle of, its origin, its history, situation, described, when built, Arques, town of, formerly a place of importance, Arques, church of, a beautiful specimen of florid Norman-gothic architecture, B. B, the mark of money coined at Rouen, Bedford, John, Duke of, buried in Rouen cathedral, Bedford Missal, anecdote respecting the sale of, in 1786, Beggars In France, Benedictionary, in the public library at Rouen, Berneval, Alexander, his tomb in the church of St. Ouen Bertheville, ancient name of Dieppe, Bochart, a native of Rouen, Bolbec, Botanic Garden, at Rouen, Boulevards, at Rouen, Bourgueville, his account of the privilege of St. Romain, Bouzard, I.A., house built for, at Dieppe, Brezé, Lewis, Duke of, his monument in Rouen cathedral Bridge of boats, at Rouen, Brighton, compared with Dieppe, C. Cæsar, Julius, Roman camps in France commonly ascribed to, Cæsar's camp, near Dieppe, described, plan of, if really Roman, Caletes, name of the former inhabitants of the Pays de Caux, Canal from Dieppe to Pontoise, projected by Vauban, Castle, at Dieppe, at Lillebonne, Cathedral at Rouen, described western portal sculpture over the doors, tower of St. Romain, Tour de Beurre, great bell, transepts, central tower, origin of, details of, monuments, lady-chapel, paintings, staircase leading to the library, relics, Catherine of Medicis, her sanguinary conduct at the capture of Rouen, Caucalis grandiflora, found at Cæsar's camp, near Dieppe, Champ du Drap d'or, meeting at, represented in a series of bas-reliefs, Charles Vth, buried in Rouen cathedral, Charles IXth, his conduct at the capture of Rouen, Charter, constitutional, of France, Château de Bouvreuil at Rouen, three towers standing of, Château du Vieux Palais at Rouen, built by Henry Vth; destroyed at the revolution, Church, of St. Jacques, at Dieppe, St. Remi, at ditto, Arques, the Trinity, at Fécamp, St. Stephen, at ditto, Montivilliers, Harfleur, St. Paul, at Rouen, St. Gervais, at ditto, Léry, Pavilly, Yainville, St. Ouen, Rouen, St. Maclou, at ditto, St. Patrice, at ditto, St. Godard, at ditto, Churches, in early times, often changed patrons, Cité de Limes, Cæsar's camp, near Dieppe, anciently so called, Civitas Limarum, Cæsar's camp, near Dieppe, anciently so called, Cliffs, height of, near Dieppe, Conards, confraternity of, confined to Rouen and Evreux; their original object, Convent of the Ursulines, at Rouen, Coqueluchers, name originally borne by the Conards, Corneille, a native of Rouen, Costume, of females at Dieppe, of the inhabitants of the suburb of Pollet, at Dieppe, of the people at Rouen, Crypt in the church of St. Gervais, at Rouen, the burial place of St. Mello, D. D'Amboise George, Cardinal of, builds the west portal of Rouen cathedral, builds the Tour de Beurre, and places in it the great bell called after him, finishes the lady-chapel in the cathedral, builds the archbishop's palace, brings the Robec and Aubette to Rouen, his monument in Rouen cathedral, Daniel, Father, native of Rouen, Deputies, qualifications requisite for, in France, Descamps, a resident at Rouen, and founder of the academy of painting there, Devotee, anecdote of, Dicquemare L'Abbé, native of Havre, Dieppe, arrival at, compared with Brighton, situation and appearance of, harbor and population, rebuilt in 1694, costume of females, castle, church of St. Jacques, church of St. Remi, history of, one of the articles in the exchange for Andelys, celebrated for its sailors, its nautical expeditions, its trade in ivory, the chief fishing-town in France, much patronized by Napoléon, formerly under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Rouen, feast of the Assumption at, Duchies, titular, in Normandy before the revolution, Du Moulin, his character as an historian, Du Quesne, Admiral, native of Dieppe, E. Electors, qualifications requisite for, in France, Erodium moschatum, found at Arques, Establishment, clerical, in France, how paid, Expences, annual, of the city of Rouen, F. Feast of the Assumption, how celebrated at Dieppe, Fécamp, population and appearance of, etymology of the name, given by Henry IInd to the abbey, formerly the seat of the government of the Pays de Caux, a residence of the Norman Dukes, now a poor fishing-town, Fécamp, abbey of, founded in 664, famous for the precious blood, its armorial bearings, burial-place of Duke Richard Ist, church of St. Stephen, Fécamp, church of the abbey, Ferrand, his reasoning as to any portion of the hair of the Virgin being on earth, Flint, strata of, in the cliffs near Dieppe, Fontenelle, native of Rouen, Fontenu, Abbé de, his dissertation on Cæsar's camp, Fossil shells, found plentifully near Havre, Fountains, public, at Rouen, Francis Ist, founder of Havre Françoisville, name given by Francis Ist to Havre, G. Gaguin, his account of the origin of the kingdom of Yvetot, Game-laws, in France, Gargouille, dragon so called, destroyed by St. Romain, Glass, painted, in the cathedral, at Rouen, in the church of St. Godard, Goujon, Jean, author of the embellishments in the French translation of the Polifilo, Graduel, by Daniel d'Eaubonne, in the Public Library at Rouen, Grâville, priory of, Guild, of the Assumption at Dieppe, of the Passion at Rouen, H. Hair of the Virgin, curious dissertation concerning, Halles, at Rouen, Harfleur, formerly of importance, now chiefly deserted, etymology of the name, its history, beauty of the tower and spire of the church, Havre, a great commercial town, its present appearance, founded in 1515, history of, eminent men, Henry, eldest son of Henry IInd, buried in Rouen cathedral, Henry IVth, his address to the inhabitants of Dieppe, speech before the battle of Arques, Henry Vth, his conduct at the capture of Harfleur, builds the Château du Vieux Palais, at Rouen, Herring and Mackerel Fishery, at Dieppe, Heylin, Peter, his description of a Norman inn, account of the great chamber of the Palais de Justice, at Rouen, Holy sepulture, chapel of the, in the church at Dieppe, Hospitals at Rouen, annual charge of, Houses, construction of, between Yveto and Rouen, House-rent, expence of, at Rouen, Huguenots, excesses committed by, in the church of St. Ouen, Hymn, in honor of St Nicaise and St. Mello, I. Inns in Normandy, described by Peter Heylin, Inscription, on a bénitier, at Dieppe, formerly upon crosses, at Rouen, Ivory, much wrought by the inhabitants of Dieppe, J. Joan of Arc, burned at Rouen, privileges granted to her family, Jouvenet, cieling painted by, in the Palais de Justice, at Rouen, his sketches for the dome of the Hôtel des Invalides, native of Rouen, Judith, Lady, her epitaph at Fécamp, K. Kelp, made in large quantity near Dieppe, L. Lace, much smuggled into France, Léry, church of, a fine specimen of Norman architecture, Library, public, at Rouen, how formed, its regulations and revenue, Lillebonne, ruins of the castle, metropolis of the Caletes Living, expence of, in France, Livre d'Ivoire, Longueville, priory of, built by Walter Giffard, burial-place of the Talbots, M. Machon, Jean, founder of the great bell, at Rouen, his epitaph, Malaunay Manby, Captain, ill rewarded, Manuscript, by William de Jumieges, fac-simile from, Maurilius, archbishop of Rouen, his epitaph, Medallions, remarkable, on the portal of St. Romain, in Rouen cathedral, Megissier, Peter, one of the judges of Joan of Arc, his epitaph, Millin, his account of a crime, screened under the privilege of St. Romain, Milner, Rev. Dr., his description of a monumental effigy in Rouen cathedral, Mint, at Rouen, Miserere, sculpture upon, in Beverley Minster, Missal from Jumieges, in the library, at Rouen, Missals, merit attached to writing, in early times, Mont aux Malades, near Rouen, site of a ducal palace, Mont Ste. Catherine, fort upon, priory, fortress probably Roman, view from, Montfaucon, his engravings of historical sculpture, at Rouen, Montivilliers, seat of an abbey in the seventh century, church, remarkable capitals in the church, present state of, Monument, of the Cardinals d'Amboise, of the Duc de Brezé Museum, at Rouen, N. Napoléon, benefactor to Dieppe, his opinion as to the issue of the battle of Arques, jealous of Henry IVth, song in his honour, began a new bridge at Rouen, cleared France of beggars, Normandy, divided into departments, its former titular duchies, O. Oath of the Archbishop of Rouen, Orchideæ, abundant about Rouen, P. Palais de Justice, at Rouen, built on the site of the Jewry, described, now used as a court of assize, great chamber in, Parliament of Normandy, Parties, state of, in France, Patent, of the abbot of the Conards, Pavilly, monastery and church of, Pays de Caux, the country of the Caletes, formerly dignified with the epithet, noble, Philip de Champagne, painting by, in Rouen cathedral, Place de la Pucelle, so called because Joan of Arc was burned there, monument in it in honor of Joan of Arc, house in it richly ornamented with sculpture, Poirier, his account of the destruction of the Châsse of St. Romain, Pollet, a suburb of Dieppe, costume of its inhabitants, Pommeraye, Dom, his account of the outrages committed by the Huguenots in the church of St. Ouen, Precious blood, the most sacred relic at Fécamp, Priory, of Longueville, Grâville, at Rouen, on Mont Ste. Catherine, Procession des Fous, held in the cathedral, at Rouen, R. Relics, in old times, often migratory, frequently collected on solemn occasions, Representative system in France, Révolution, advantages resulting from, to France, Richard Ist, Duke of Normandy, buried at Fécamp, his extraordinary directions respecting his interment, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, offends the archbishop of Rouen, by building Château Gaillard, his heart buried at Rouen, Roads to Paris, by Dieppe, Calais, and Havre, compared, from Dieppe to Rouen, from Yvetot to Rouen, Rolec and Aubette, brought to Rouen by the Cardinal d'Amboise, Robert, paintings by, in the palace at Rouen, Rollo, his monument and epitaph, Roth, idol so called, worshipped at Rouen, Rouen, seen to advantage on entering from Dieppe, general character of, bridge of boats, stone bridge built by Matilda, boulevards, grand cours, costume of the inhabitants, house-rent, annual expences of the city, population, probably a Roman station, old castles, halles, privilege of St. Romain, capitulation to Henry Vth, Château du Vieux Palais, petit Château, fort on Mont Ste. Catherine, priory upon ditto, taken by Charles IXth, mineral springs, church of St. Paul, church of St. Gervais, palace on the Mont aux Malades, old part of the church of St. Ouen, cathedral, church of St. Ouen, church of St; Maclou, church of St. Patrice, church of St. Godard, house of the Abbess of St. Amand, Palais de Justice, Place de la Pucelle, Tour de la Grosse Horloge, fountains, hospitals, mint, convent of the Ursulines, public library, museum, academy, Société d'Emulation, botanic garden, flower-market, theatre, eminent men, etymology of the name, Rousel, John, abbot of St. Ouen, built the present church, S. St. Amand, house of the abbess at Rouen, Ste. Catherine, eminences dedicated to, St. Gervais, church of, at Rouen, St. Godard, his monument, St. Godard, church of, at Rouen, originally dedicated to the Virgin, the primitive cathedral of the city, famous for its painted glass, St. Jacques, church of, at Dieppe, pendants in the lady-chapel, chapel of the sepulchre, St. Julien, lazar-house of, near Rouen, its chapel, a fine specimen of Norman architecture, monastery ceded to the Carthusians, and now destroyed St. Maclou, church of, at Rouen, St. Mello, buried in the crypt of St. Gervais, at Rouen, St. Nicaise, buried in the crypt of St. Gervais, at Rouen, St. Ouen, church of, at Rouen, a fine specimen of pointed architecture, its history, described, details of, paintings in, privileges of, St. Patrice, church of, at Rouen, St. Paul, church of, at Rouen St. Pierre, Bernardin de, native of Havre, St. Remi, church of, at Dieppe, inscription on its bénitier St. Romain, archbishop of Rouen, dragon destroyed by, his shrine in the cathedral, St. Romain, privilege of, abuse committed under its plea, St. Vallery, Satyrium hircinum, plentiful near Rouen, Scuderi, George and Magdalen, natives of Havre, Sculpture, on the capitals of the church at Montivilliers, in the church of St. Paul, over the entrances to Rouen cathedral, head of Christ, in fine character, in the church of St. Ouen, on a house at Rouen, Senegal, first colonized from Dieppe, Société d'Emulation, at Rouen, Stachys germanica, abundant, near Grâville, Stair-case of filagree stone-work, in the cathedral at Rouen, in the church of St. Maclou, T. Talbot, fortress called the Bastille, built by, at Dieppe, Theatre, at Rouen, Tour de Beurre, in Rouen cathedral, built with money raised from the sale of indulgences, Tour de la Grosse Horloge, at Rouen, U. Upper Normandy, limits of, Ursulines, convent of, at Rouen, V. Van Eyck, painting by, in the museum at Rouen, Vertot, Abbé de, denies the existence of the kingdom of Yvetot, Viola Rothomagensis, abundant on the hill of St. Adrien, W. Walter, archbishop of Rouen, offended with Richard Coeur-de-Lion, proverbial for his cunning, William Longue Epée, his monument and epitaph, William the Conqueror, sailed from St. Vallery to invade England, died in the palace on the Mont aux Malades, William of Jumieges, the original autograph of his history at Rouen, Windows, rose, characteristic of French ecclesiastical architecture, Y. Yainville, church of, Yvetot, present appearance of, said to have been formerly a kingdom, exempt before the revolution from taxes, 
14857	----	[Frontispiece: Statue of Louis XIV, the Builder of Versailles.] The Story of Versailles BY FRANCIS LORING PAYNE NEW YORK MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY 1919 COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY. Press of J.J. Little & Ives Co. New York CONTENTS INTRODUCTION Chapter I. THE BEGINNING OF VERSAILLES II. THE MAKING OF VERSAILLES. THE LUXURIOUS CHATEAU AND PARKLAND OF LOUIS XIV III. THE LUXURY OF VERSAILLES IV. THE GARDENS, THE FOUNTAINS AND THE GRAND TRIANON V. A DAY WITH THE SUN KING VI. GOLDEN DAYS AND RED LETTER NIGHTS VII. THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES VIII. THE VERSAILLES OF LOUIS XV IX. THE TWILIGHT OF THE BOURBON KINGS X. THE SHRINE OF ROYAL MEMORIES, THE SCENE OF WORLD ADJUSTMENTS FOREWORD THE HALL OF MIRRORS I If you could speak what tales your tongues could tell, You voiceless mirrors of the storied past! Do you remember when the curtain fell On him who learned he was not God at last? II Do you still see the shadows of the great? On powdered wigs and velvets, silks and lace; Or dream at night a feted queen, in state, Accepts men's homage with a haughty face? III A thousand names come tumbling to the mind. Of dead who gazed upon themselves through you. And went their way, each one his end to find In paths that glory or red terror knew. IV Voltaire and Rousseau and Ben Franklin here, You've seen hobnobbing with the highly-born; Seen Genius smile, while, with a hint of fear, It gave to Birth not homage but its scorn. V Do you remember that Teutonic jaw Of him who crowned an emperor, that you Might know that Bismarck was above all law And free to do what victor vandals do? VI Oh, Hall of Visions, now shall come anon A grander sight than you have ever seen; You've mirrored kings, but you shall look upon The mighty men whose edicts freedom mean VII To races and to peoples sore oppressed; The men who mould the future for a race That breathes a wind that's blowing from the West-- And you'll forget the Bourbon's evil face! --EDWARD S. VAN ZILE. _N. Y. Eve. Sun., Nov. 25_ LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS The Builder of Versailles . . . Frontispiece Versailles The Hall of Mirrors The Fountain at Versailles INTRODUCTION A TRAVELER'S REFLECTIONS ON VERSAILLES From the low heights of Satory we get a complete view of the plains of Versailles--the woods, the town and the sumptuous chateau. The palace on its dais rules the scene. The village and ornamental environment have been constructed to augment its majesty. Even the soil has been "molded into new forms" at a monarch's caprice. Versailles is the expression of monarchy, as conceived by Louis XIV. It is the only epic produced in his reign--a reign so fertile in the other forms of poetry, and in talent of all kinds. What epic ever chronicled the destiny of an epoch in a manner more brilliant and complete? In this poem of stone the manners of heroic and familiar life mingle at every step. Besides the halls and galleries, the theaters of royal estate, there are mysterious passages and sequestered nooks that whisper a thousand secret histories. The palace has two voices, one grave and one gay and trifling. It is full of truths and fictions, tears and smiles. The personages of its drama are as various as life itself; kings, poets, ministers, courtiers, confessors, courtesans, queens without power, and queens with too much power; ambassadors, generals, little abbés and great ladies; nobles, clergy, even the people. For two centuries did this crowd continue to pass and re-pass over these marble floors and under these gilded vaults; and every day its flood became more impetuous, every day it gave way more and more to the whims and passions. And the palace heard all, saw all, spied all--and has retained all, each action in its acted hour, each word in its place. During the two centuries of absolute monarchy, nothing took place that Versailles did not either originate or answer. Every shot that was fired in Flanders, Germany and Spain awakened here an echo. Richelieu was here, the first statesman of the monarchy, and Necker, the last. French literary history is inscribed on its walls, which received within them the great writers of France from Molière to Beaumarchais. Art erected especially for Versailles the schools and systems whose influence has been felt through the succeeding centuries. For Versailles, Lebrun became a painter, Coysevox a sculptor, and Mansard an architect. But it was not France alone that depended on Versailles. Foreign nations sent their representatives to this famous center; the choice spirits of Europe came to visit it. The history of Versailles was for two centuries the history of civilization. From Versailles may be seen the movement of manners, wars, diplomacy, literature, arts and energies that agitated Europe. On entering Versailles by the Paris avenue, we see the palace on the summit of the horizon. The houses, scattered here and there and concealed among the trees, appear less to form a town than to accompany the monument raised beyond and above them. Approaching the Place d'Armes, we distinguish the different parts of which the imposing mass of buildings is composed. In the center is a singular bit of architecture. In vain the neighboring masses extend their circle around it: their great arms are unable to stifle it; but it possesses a seriousness of character that attracts the eye more strongly than their high white walls. This is the remains of the château built by Louis XIII at Versailles. Louis XIV did not wish to bury his father's dwelling. THE STORY OF VERSAILLES CHAPTER I THE BEGINNINGS OF VERSAILLES A dreary expanse of low-lying marsh-land, dismal, gloomy and full of quicksands, where the only objects that relieved the eye were the crumbling walls of old farm buildings, and a lonely windmill, standing on a roll of higher ground and stretching its gaunt arms toward the sky as if in mute appeal against its desolate surroundings--such was Versailles in 1624. This uninviting spot was situated eleven miles southwest of Paris, the capital city of France, the royal city, the seat, during a century before, of the splendid court of the brilliant Francis I and of the stout-hearted Henry II, the scene of the masterful rule of Catherine de Medici, of the career of the engaging and beautiful Marguerite de Valois and of the exploits of the gallant Henry of Navarre. The desolate stretch of marshland, with its lonely windmill, meant nothing then to the court nor to the busy fortune-hunting and pleasure-seeking inhabitants of Paris. No one had reason to go to Versailles, except perhaps the poor farmers and the owner of the isolated mill--least of all the nobility and fashionable folk of the glittering capital. No exercise of the imagination could then have conjured up the picture of the splendor in store for the barren waste of Versailles. The mention of the name in 1600 would have brought nothing more from the lips of royalty and nobility than an indifferent inquiry: "And what, pray, is Versailles and where may it be?" You, my lord, who raise your eyebrows interrogatingly, and you, my lady, who flick your fan so carelessly, will some day behold your grandchildren paying humble and obsequious court to the reigning favorites at Versailles--yes, out there on this very moorland where you see nothing but marshy hollows and ruined walls, there will your lord and master, your glorious Sun King, the Grand Monarch, Louis the Fourteenth, build a palace home that Belshazzar might justly have envied: there will he hold high court and set the whole world agape at his prodigal outlay and magnificent festivities. And well may we inquire to-day: how came this dreary waste to be the wondrous Versailles, the seat and scene of so much in the making and the making-over of the world? Ancient records of France indicate that in 1065 the priory of St. Julien was established on the estates of the house of Versaliïs--a grant under royal protection. A poor farm community grew up about the ecclesiastical retreat. Here, also, on the estates of the barony of Versailles, was a repair of lepers, destroyed in the sixteenth century. The origin of the name is said by some to be derived from the fact that the plains thereabouts were exposed to such high winds that the grain in the poor land was frequently overturned (_versés_). The lord of these acres first named in history is Hugues (Hugo) de Versaliïs, who lived early in the eleventh century and was a contemporary of the first kings of the Capet dynasty. A long line of nobles of this family succeeded him. In 1561 Martial de Léomenie, Secretary of Finance under Charles IX, became master of Versailles. The farming village being on the route between Paris and Brittany, he obtained from the king permission to establish here four annual fairs and a weekly market on Thursdays. Martial perished in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572. Henry IV, as a prince, when hunting the stag with Martial often swept across the low plains of Versailles. The rights to the lands of the barony were acquired by Maréchal de Retz from the children of Martial de Léomenie, and inherited from the noble duke by his son, Jean-François de Gondi, first archbishop of France. It was this prelate that sold to Louis XIII in 1632, for 66,000 pounds (about $27,400), the land and barony of Versailles, consisting, in the phrase of the original deed, "of an old house in ruins and a farm with several buildings." In 1624, Louis XIII, who had hunted in the vicinity of Versailles since childhood and in later life had sought relief there from ennui and melancholy, often slept in a low inn or in the hill-top windmill after long hunts in the forest of St. Leger. It occurred to him that it would be convenient for him to have a pavilion or hunting-lodge in this unattractive place, and accordingly he ordered one erected at Versailles, on the road that led to the forest of St. Leger. In 1627, concluding that in no other domain of its limited acreage could he find so great variety of land over which to hunt on foot and horse-back, he bought a small piece of property at Versailles. Immediately afterwards he caused to be erected what Saint-Simon called "a little house of cards" on the isolated hill that rolled up in the heart of the valley, where the windmill had stood. Louis' architect was Philbert Le Roy, and the new villa was about two hundred feet from the lodge first constructed. Its form was a complete square, each corner being terminated by a tower. The building was of brick, ornamented with columns and gilded balustrades; it was surrounded by a park adorned with statues sculptured after designs by the artist Poussin. Ambitious addition! A villa on the old mill site, decorated by the favorite court artist of the day, Nicolas Poussin! The court resented the enterprise, the nobility despised it. It was the King's fancy; nothing else excused it. A noble of the court, Bassompierre, exclaimed that "it was a wretched château in the construction of which no private gentleman could be vain." Scarcely was his new chateau finished (1630) when the King took up his residence there for the hunt. In this place were terminated in November, 1630, the autocratic services of Cardinal Richelieu to the King--the first of many significant historical events to take place there. The King's sojourns at Versailles during the hunting season, however, had their effect. Many of the royal intimates were influenced to build on land given to them by the sovereign. So before Louis XIII died his chateau was surrounded by many charming country houses. On April 8, 1632, Louis came into possession of the feudal dwelling of Jean-François de Gondi and its lands. Versailles then began to acquire distinction. It was the King's resort. Could any one afford to question its character, or location, or the standing of those that, at the King's behest, took up their residence there? Not we surely, who can now view Versailles in the light of history. All aside from its splendid court life and its magnificent festivities, we know it as the scene of three epoch-making events in the world's history. During and shortly after the American Revolution, Versailles was the scene of treaty negotiations in which France, England and America were the active parties. About a century later, in 1871, the treaty was consummated there that ended the Franco-Prussian War, by which France lost Alsace and Lorraine and was forced to pay to Germany $1,000,000,000. And now, in our day, the most superb irony of history has brought about a treaty in the same Hall of Mirrors by which Germany repays, and the map of Europe undergoes radical changes. CHAPTER II THE MAKING OF VERSAILLES The Luxurious Château and Parkland of Louis XIV At the death of Louis XIII, in 1643, the little château of Versailles was abandoned as a dwelling. Then followed a fall in values at Versailles and a great flutter of uncertainty among those that had followed the King there. This feeling of doubt lasted for seven years. The faces of the court favorites were turned back toward Paris, and individual fortunes were speculatively weighed in the balance with the possibilities of the new King's whims and fancies. But when the twelve-year-old Louis XIV came to hunt in the vicinity of Versailles for the first time, he found the suburban dwelling of his father attractive from the start. The Gazette noted this visit, in 1651, and described the supper that the royal boy shared with the officials of the chateau. Two months later the King supped again at Versailles, and was so delighted with the estate and the hunting to be had thereabouts that, thereafter, he made it a yearly custom to visit Versailles once or twice in the hunting season, sometimes with his brother, sometimes with his prime minister, Cardinal Mazarin. Returning in 1652 from an interview at Corbeil with Charles II of England, then seeking refuge in France, Louis XIV dined at Versailles with his mother, Anne of Austria. In October, 1660, four months after his marriage to Maria Theresa of Spain, he brought his young queen there. The future of Versailles was assured. The King had decided to set his star and make his palace home where his father had established a hunting lodge. The year 1661 was one of the most important in the history of the monarch. On March fifteenth, eight days after the death of Mazarin, the great Colbert was named Superintendent of Finances. It was he who was to give to the reign of Louis XIV its definite direction; his name was to be lastingly associated with the founding of the greater Versailles, and with the construction of the Louvre, the Tuileries, Fontainebleau and Saint-Germain. But Colbert's task in the enlargement of Versailles was no easy one, nor did he approve of it. He opposed the young King's purpose obstinately and expressed himself on the subject without reserve. "Your majesty knows," he wrote to the King, "that, apart from brilliant actions in war, nothing marks better the grandeur and genius of princes than their buildings, and that posterity measures them by the standard of the superb edifices that they erect during their lives. Oh, what a pity that the greatest king, and the most virtuous, should be measured by the standard of Versailles! And there is always this misfortune to fear." But the King, like many another great monarch, had dreamed a dream. He was not satisfied with Paris as a residence. So he told Colbert to make his dream of Versailles come true--and Colbert had to find some way to pay the cost. An irritating cause of the King's purpose lay in the fact that he was incited by the splendors of the chateau of Vaux-le-Vicomte, built by his ill-fated minister, Fouquet. Louis determined to surpass that mansion by one so much more elaborate as to crush it into insignificance. Nicholas Fouquet had employed the most renowned masters of this period--among them Louis Le Vau, the architect, André Le Nôtre, the landscape gardener, and Charles Lebrun, the decorator. These were the men the King summoned to transform the modest hunting villa of his father. At the truly gorgeous chateau of his minister, he had witnessed the full measure of their genius. On August 17, 1661, Fouquet gave an elaborate fête to celebrate the completion of the chateau, which the King attended. Within three weeks the host was a prisoner of State, accused of peculation in office. Acting immediately upon his resolution to out-do the glories of Vaux-le-Vicomte, Louis engaged Le Nôtre to plan gardens and Le Vau to submit proposals for the enlargement and decoration of the chateau. One of the first apartments completed was the chamber of the infant Dauphin--heir to the throne, who was born in November, 1661. Colbert reported in September, 1663, that in two years he had spent 1,500,000 pounds, and a good part of this sum was for the construction of the gardens. Builders and decorators suggested one elaborate project after another, without regard to the cost, despite the protest of Colbert to the King that they were exceeding all estimates and provisions. It was a paradise period for profiteers. Versailles became a favorite retreat of the extravagant young sovereign. He frequently drove out from Paris, and on sundry occasions gave splendid balls and dinners. For periods of increasing frequency the King was in residence at Versailles. He urged on the builders who had in hand the construction of the living-rooms, kitchens, stables; he supervised the placing of pictures and other decorative works in various parts of the expanded chateau; impatiently he chided the superintendents for delay and feverishly they strove to meet his demands for greater haste. And though every hour of haste cost the King of France a substantial sum, he cared for nothing but the fulfillment of his luxurious plans. Hundreds of laborers were engaged in laying out the orangery, the grand terrace, the fruit and vegetable gardens. The original entrance court was greatly enlarged. Long wings terminated by pavilions bordered it. On the right were the kitchens, with quarters for the domestics; on the left, the stables, where there were stalls for fifty-four horses. At the main entrance to the court were pavilions used by the musketeers as guard-houses. Those were bustling times at Versailles, and every day disclosed a new development and opened the way to new miracles of construction. And the miracles were wrought, one after another--all by order of the King. On the site of the park a great terrace was bordered by a parterre in the shape of a half-moon, where a waterfall was later installed. A long promenade, now called the Allée Royale, extended to a vast basin named the Lake of Apollo. Streamlets were diverted to feed fountains. Twelve hundred and fifty orange trees were transported from the fallen estate of Vaux to fill the long arcades of the orangery. In the midst of the activities of masons, carpenters, gardeners, the King was dominant, directing minute details--the laying of floors, the hanging of draperies, the installation of art works in the chapel. The restive master of the estate was impatient to enjoy his creation, and to invite his Court there to celebrate its completion with fêtes both brilliant and costly. Colbert wrote in a letter dated September, 1663, of the beauty of the chateau's adornments--its Chinese filigree of gold and silver. "Never," he swore, "had China itself seen so many examples of this work together--nor had all Italy seen so many flowers." Colbert suffered, but the King found royal satisfaction. The splendid scene of the Sun King must be set--the people had to pay. It was Colbert's affair to finance it. The King commanded a series of fêtes to be arranged. For eight days every diversion appropriate to the autumn season was enjoyed by the royal family and all the Court. Every day there were balls, ballets, comedies, concerts, promenades, hunts. Molière and his troupe were commanded to appear in a new piece called "_Impromptu de Versailles_." Colbert regretted the absorption of his sovereign in Versailles, "to the neglect of the Louvre--assuredly the most superb palace in the world." Louis tolerantly gave ear and inspected the Louvre, but to the building of Versailles he devoted all his enthusiasm. The appearance of the villa erected by Louis XIII had been vastly altered as to its roofs, chimneys, facades. In 1665 the court was ornamented by the placing of the pedestals and busts that still surround it. In addition to the main edifice, the King gave orders for the building of small dwellings to be occupied by favorites of his entourage, and by musicians, actors and cooks. Three broad tree-lined avenues were laid out and the highway to Paris--the Cours-la-Reine--commenced. Already Versailles took on a more imposing aspect than ancient Fontainebleau. Workmen were constantly busy with the building of reservoirs, the laying of sod, the planting of labyrinths, hedges, secret paths and bosky retreats, with the setting out of hundreds of trees brought from Normandy, and the seeding of flower gardens of surpassing beauty. Ponds, fountains, grottoes, waterfalls and straying brooks came into being at the command of the ambitious young ruler. At some distance from the chateau courts and cages were constructed to shelter rare birds and animals. It was designed that this should be "the most splendid palace of animals in the world." The King decided the details of building and decoration and supervised the installation of the furred and feathered tenants of the palatial menagerie. This was the enclosure so greatly admired by La Fontaine, Racine and Boileau, during a visit to Versailles in 1668. The first epoch of the construction of Louis XIV coincided with the first sculptural decoration of Versailles. A great number of works of art were ordered for the adornment of the walks and gardens. Many statues and busts of mythological subjects that were made at Rome to the order of Fouquet, after models by Nicolas Poussin, were removed from Vaux to Versailles. That was a thriving period for sculptors of France and adjacent countries. Records faithfully kept by Colbert detail expenditures of thousands of pounds of the nation's money for bronze vases, stone figures of nymphs and dryads and dancing fauns that were placed among the trees and fountains of Versailles. Much of the ornamental sculpture ordered at this time disappeared from the royal domain, as Louis XIV constantly demanded the work of the newest artists and all the novelties of the moment. By the year 1668 Versailles apparently approached completion. It had then been seven years in building. But in 1669 the general character of the chateau was again changed. In the embellishments proposed by Le Vau, the architect, the royal domain became the scene of renewed activity, engendered by the King, then just turned thirty years of age, and eager to achieve still greater improvements at Versailles to mark the increasing prosperity of his reign. Half-finished buildings were demolished and begun anew. Immense structures arose, and once again artists flocked to Versailles. Inside the palace and in the park they wrought an elaborate scheme of decoration that made this the most sumptuous dwelling of the monarchy. In the words of Madame Scudery, an annalist of that epoch, Versailles, under the new orders of the King, became "incomparably more beautiful." Another Versailles was born; at the same time there was created a town on the vast acres purchased by the King, in the midst of which three great avenues were built, converging toward the chateau. In addition to the enlargement and improvement of the palace, the King ordered the erection of houses for the use of Colbert, now superintendent of the royal buildings, and for the officers of the Chancellery. From this time he interested himself particularly in the advancement of the infant town; he bought the village of "Old Versailles" and made liberal grants of land to individuals who agreed to build houses there. Opposite the chateau arose the mansions of illustrious nobles of the Court. As the King remained obstinate in his determination that the "little chateau" of his father should not be removed to make room for a structure more in harmony with the surrounding ostentation, Le Vau covered over the moats and built around the lodge of Louis XIII with imposing effect. The new buildings containing the state apartments of the King and Queen and public salons were separated by great courts from the insignificant beginning of all this mounting splendor. Le Vau did not live to see the completion of the palace. He died in 1670. The work of reconstruction, in which the King maintained a lively interest whether at home or abroad, was continued by the architect's pupils at a cost of thousands of pounds. Eagerly Louis read plans and listened to reports. With still greater interest he attended the proposals of the great Mansard--nephew of the designer and builder who in 1650 revived the use of the "Mansard roof." When he succeeded as "first architect," Jules Mansard (or Mansart) first undertook the erection of quarters for the Bourbon princes. In the same year (1679) that he began the immense south wing for their use, he gave instructions for the building of the now historic Hall of Mirrors between two pavilions named--most appropriately in the light of after events--the Salon of Peace and the Salon of War. From the high arched windows of this glittering Grand Gallery great personages of past and present epochs have surveyed the gardens, fountains and broad walks that are the crowning glory of Versailles. In the time of the Grand Monarque more than a thousand jets of water cast their silver spray against the greenery of hedge and grove. "Nothing is more surprising," said a chronicler of Louis the Fourteenth's reign, "than the immense quantity of water thrown up by the fountains when they all play together at the promenades of the King. These jets are capable of using up a river." A writer of our day bids us pause for a moment at the viewpoint in the gardens most admired by the King--at the end of the Allée of Latona. "To the east, beyond the brilliant parterre of Latona, with its fountains, its flowers, and its orange-trees, rise the vine-covered walls of the terraces, with their spacious flights of steps and their vividly green clipped yews. Turn to the west and survey the Royal Allée, the Basin of Apollo, and the Grand Canal, or look to the north to the Allée of Ceres, or to the south to that of Bacchus, and you realize the harmony that existed between Mansard and Le Nôtre in the decoration of the chateau and in the plan of the gardens." Beyond the palace and the surrounding gardens lay the park in which the Grand Trianon was built, of marble, near the bank of the Grand Canal. Madame de Maintenon, who became the King's second wife, was housed within these sumptuous walls, which were completed in 1688. And so the construction of this miracle work of the Great Monarch went on. In Versailles, Louis was bent on realizing himself, and nothing but himself. The Pharaoh of Egypt built his pyramids with as little consideration of what it meant in tribute from his subjects. Each year took its toll in money and men to make this home of Louis the Magnificent. "The King," wrote Madame de Sévigné on the twelfth of October, 1678, "wishes to go on Saturday to Versailles, but it seems that God does not wish it, by the impossibility of putting the buildings in a state to receive him, and by the great mortality among the workmen." But the work had continued, as the King commanded, and when he finally entered into possession of his new palace in 1682 with all his Court, thirty-six thousand men and six thousand horses were still engaged in making matters comfortable and satisfactory for His Glorious Majesty. "The State," exclaimed the Sun King, "it is I!" and in the same mood he might have added, "Versailles--it is the State!" CHAPTER III THE LUXURY OF VERSAILLES The Splendors of the Château--its Apartments and Gardens, the Hall of Mirrors In planning the interior decorations at Versailles, the numerous company of artists employed by the sovereign devised a scheme of ornamentation inspired by the arts of ancient Rome. Mythological and historical subjects were utilized for the glorification of the Grand Monarch. A _Description_ of the château, officially printed in 1674, gives us the key to the interpretation of the allegories. "As the Sun is the device of the King, and poets represent the Sun and Apollo as one, nothing exists in this superb dwelling that does not bear relation to the Sun divinity." The emblem of Apollo was in evidence everywhere; signs of the month ornamented facades and walls; and inside the palace and out were symbols of the seasons and the hours of the day. The King's apartment bore on its ceiling and walls paintings depicting deeds of seven heroes of Antiquity, supported by Louis' planet emblem. All the interior decoration was Italian in style--marble wainscoting in window embrasures, floors of marble, panels of marble, doors of repoussé bronze. The apartments of Anne of Austria and the Gallery of Apollo at the Louvre offered the first examples in France of this decorative style, and guided the artists at Versailles in making their plans. Upon the Grand Apartments of the King and Queen alone, a dozen painters were engaged between the years 1671 and 1680. Charles Lebrun directed the artists, most of whom, be it said, were poor colorists. He himself worked on the vault above the Stairway of the Ambassadors and in the Hall of Mirrors. To imitate Italian works of art was at that time the avowed ideal of French decorators. At Rome the King's purse paid the expenses of a group of young artists who were allotted the task of copying designs that were later evolved at Versailles. To some was assigned the copying of ornaments made of metal, mosaic and inlay. Others specialized on bronze and wood-carving designs. There were painters who made only sketches of battle scenes and sieges. There were sculptors on the King's staff of copyists, and goldsmiths, and enamel workers. Flemish, Dutch, French, but principally Italian, craftsmen were recruited from the art centers of Europe, "for the glory of the King." At the Gobelin Tapestry Factory--a royal establishment--the workers were directed by Charles Lebrun, who for many years had been head of the "Royal Manufactory of Crown Furniture." It was in the year 1677 that Louis XIV formally proclaimed Versailles his residence and the seat of Government. It was for the purpose of providing quarters for the Court and its attendants that Mansard was commanded to enlarge the château. Versailles now became, in truth, the temple of royalty. The newly appointed architect gave to the chateau its final aspect; the stamp of his genius rests upon the exterior design and interior embellishment of the most remarkable dwelling in the history of French architecture. [Illustration: Versailles] When the Court came to live at Versailles in May, 1682, Mansard and his builders were still feverishly occupied in the work of construction and reconstruction. The year 1684 saw the end of the ornamentation of the interior in the completion of the Hall of Mirrors. Mansard's style is particularly impressed upon the Marble Stairway, and the adjacent Hall of the Queen's Guards, and, above all, on the Grand Gallery of the Mirrors and the Salons (Peace and War) that flank it--works truly impressive in their proportions, adornment and arrangement. Disposed about three sides of the main court, the red château was set low on a slight rise of land. The main entrance was flanked by the North Wing and the South Wing, interrupted throughout their length by lesser courts. The domed chapel upreared to the right of the gate was the fourth one to serve the palace. After a period of building lasting ten years it was consecrated in the year 1710. The exquisite white stone edifice is still regarded as an architectural gem. Its interior embellishments were carried out by some of the best artists of the Sun King's epoch. Here during the last years of his long and spectacular reign, Louis the Great worshiped. Here Marie Antoinette was married to the Sixteenth Louis. Arrivals at the palace were admitted from the Place d'Armes to the court designated for their reception. Only the King and his family might enter by the central gate. Nobles passed through the gates at the side. Privileged persons were permitted to alight in the Royal Court; those of inferior prestige in the Court of the Ministers, which gave entrance to the offices and living quarters of the palace executives and the hundreds of minions composing the King's retinue. On the left of the enclosure called the Marble Court was the vestibule to the Marble Stairway; opposite was the doorway leading to the renowned Stairway of the Ambassadors, later removed by command of Louis XV. The royal suites, except those of the Dauphin and his attendants, were on the second floor. These rooms beneath the ornate Mansard attic were the scene of all the potent events and ceremonies that have distinguished Versailles above the palaces of the world. Grouped above the Marble Court at the far end of the main court of the château, were the State Apartments of the King. Though, in later times, the sequence of some of these salons was changed, in the years when the Sun King occupied them they comprised the Salon of Venus, opening upon the Ambassadors' Staircase, the Salon of Diana, the Salon of Mars, and the Salon of Mercury. These halls formed a magnificent prelude to the still greater magnificence of the Salon of Apollo,--the Throne Room where guests came into the presence of the King himself. The Salon of Venus was most admired for its marble mosaics and its ceiling painting representing Venus subduing all the other deities. In Louis' day, as now, the royal master of all this grandeur was here portrayed in white marble, garbed in the robes of a Roman emperor. Diana and her nymphs were depicted on the ceiling of the salon named for the Goddess of the Hunt. Here under candles glimmering in sconces of silver and crystal the courtiers engaged in games of billiards, while their ladies disposed themselves gracefully upon tapestried seats. And there were orange trees in silver tubs to add brilliance to the scene. In the Salon of Mars dancing parties and concerts were given. Silver punchbowls set on silver tables offered refreshment to the gay throng that coquetted and danced and applauded beneath the triumphant picture of Mars limned upon the ceiling. This room was a-glitter with silver, cut glass and gold embroidered draperies. In the crimson-hung Salon of Mercury was the King's bed of state, before which was a balustrade of silver. In all the Grand Apartments were hangings and furniture of extraordinary richness. There were tables of gilded wood and mosaic, Florentine marbles, pedestals of porphyry for vases of precious metal, ebony cabinets inlaid with copper, columns of jasper, agate and lapis lazuli, silver chandeliers, branched candle-sticks, baskets, vessels for liqueurs, silver perfuming pans. Windows were draped with silver brocade worked in gold thread, with Venetian silks and satins, or embroideries from the Gobelin studios. On the floors, originally of marble, were spread carpets woven in designs symbolical of kingly power. The Throne Room known as the Salon of Apollo--the seat of the Sun King--was of the utmost richness. The throne itself was of silver and stood eight feet high. Tapestries represented scenes of splendor in the life of Louis the Great and on the walls were masterpieces by Italian artists of the first rank, which were later deemed worthy of a place in the Louvre. Much of the treasure vanished in the years 1689-1690 when the King was constrained to raise money for his depleted treasury. In December, 1682, the _Mercure Galant_, desirous of pleasing its readers, always avid of details about everything that concerned their King, published a long description of the furnishings of the State Apartments--the velvet hangings, the marble walls enriched with gold relief, the chimney-pieces bossed with silver. Yet the glory of these apartments was outdone by the later achievements of architect and decorators in the Salons of War and Peace and the Hall of Mirrors that joins them. In the cupola of the Salon of War the great Lebrun painted an allegorical picture of France hurling thunderbolts and carrying a shield blazoned with the portrait of King Louis, while Bellona, Spain, Holland and Germany are shown crouching in awe. The colored marbles of the walls contrasted brilliantly with gilded copper bas-reliefs. Six portraits of Roman emperors contributed to the impressiveness of the Salon, and on the wall was a stucco relief of the King of France on horseback, clad like a Roman. The Salon of Peace was also decorated by Lebrun's adept brush. A ceiling piece portrays France and her conquered enemies rejoicing in the fruits of Peace. And, again, there are portraits of the ever-present Louis and the Caesars of Rome. Both these splendid halls remain to-day much as they were in the time of their creator. Most lavish is the decoration of the Grand Hall of Mirrors--"the epitome of absolutism and divine right and the grandeur of the House of Bourbon." For two hundred and forty feet it extends along the terrace that surveys the gardens where Louis XIV and his successors delighted to ordain fêtes of unimaginable gayety. Gorgeously costumed courtiers, women that dictated the fate of dynasties, diplomats of our day bent upon the solution of world-rocking problems, all have gazed from this resplendent gallery upon the fountains and allées that beautify the scene below. Seventeen lofty windows are matched by as many Venetian framed mirrors. Between each window and each mirror are pilasters designed by Coyzevox, Tubi and Caffieri--reigning masters of their time. Walls are of marble embellished with bronze-gilt trophies; large niches contain statues in the antique style. The gilded cornice is by Coyzevox, the ceiling by Lebrun. The conception of the latter comprises more than a score of paintings representing events that had to do with wars waged by Louis the Great against Holland, Germany and Spain. In the period when Versailles was the residence of kings--not a museum, alone, and the assembly-place of international Councils--the tables in the Grand Gallery, the benches between the windows, the many-branched candelabra, the tubs in which orange trees grew, were all of heavy silver. Thousands of wax candles lighted the salon, some of them set in immense chandeliers, others in lusters of silver and crystal. But Louis the Fourteenth's reign was not yet over when he was compelled to send many hundred pieces of his precious furniture to the mint, and the superb appointments of the Hall of Mirrors were partially substituted by furnishings of wood and damask. [Illustration: The Hall of Mirrors] Visitors to Versailles view the private or "little" apartments of King Louis the Great, Louis XV and Louis XVI. The superb bedchamber of Louis XIV contains the bed in which the French Monarch died on September 1, 1715. In an ante-chamber, later called the Bull's Eye by reason of its unique oval window, courtiers were wont to gossip and intrigue while they awaited the King's rising. A quaint painting by a French artist presents Louis XIV and his family in the character of pagan deities. Next to the Bull's Eye was the room in which the King dined on occasion. The Hall of the King's Guards was near of approach to the Marble Staircase and to the ample and ornate apartments of Madame de Maintenon. The wonders of this Hall are also departed. In a group of small rooms were rich stores of objects of art, medals, cameos, onyx, bronzes, and gems of great value. The State Apartments of the Queens of France were entirely altered in their decoration as one queen succeeded another. Marie Thérèse was the first to occupy them. We are told that before her bed there stood a railing of silver, that later gave way, for economical reasons, to one carved in wood. In the Grand Cabinet the wife of Louis the Great received in audience those that the King commanded. Here, at the end of a short and insignificant period as mistress of Versailles, Marie Thérèse died, July 30, 1683. One of the few apartments that still retains the aspect it bore in King Louis the Fourteenth's reign is the Hall of the Queen's Guards, which had a door on the landing of the marble stair, also called the Queen's Staircase. This was the flight of steps most used in the time of Louis, since it led to the apartments of the sovereign, the Queen Madame de Maintenon. The Ambassadors' Staircase, across the court, was of the richest possible decoration, but like the glory of the Kings of France, it has passed into oblivion. Louis commanded that it be paved and walled in marble from the choicest quarries, vaulted with bronze, graced by fountains. Amazing frescoes representing a brilliant assemblage of people of all nations adorned the walls. Of this staircase a reporter of the epoch wrote, "When full of light it vies in magnificence with the richest apartments of the most beautiful palace in the world." Which palace was, of course, Versailles. The Grand Hall of the Guards, the apartments of the Children of France and their governess, the ten rooms that composed the suite of the Dauphin, the Grand Hall of Battles--each had its special decoration. "At the house of Monseigneur," wrote an old chronicler of the Court, "one sees in the cabinets an exquisite collection of all that is most rare and precious, not only in respect to the necessary furniture, tables, porcelains, mirrors, chandeliers, but also paintings by the most famous masters, bronzes, vases of agate, jewels and cameos." For one dazzling table of carved silver in the apartment of the King's son, the silversmith that fashioned it was paid thirty thousand dollars. Beneath the state apartments of the King was the Hall of the Baths lined with marble and adorned with beautiful paintings. Upon the marble tubs, the tessellated floors, the gilded columns and mirrors of this apartment a great sum was expended. * * * * * Versailles at last was finished--and what a spectacle and monument to selfish exaltation it was! "There is an intimate relation between the King and his château," wrote Imbert de Saint-Amand. "The idol is worthy of the temple, the temple of the idol. There is always something immaterial, something moral so to speak, in monuments, and they derive their poesy from the thought connected with them. For a cathedral, it is the idea of God. For Versailles, it is the idea of the King. Its mythology is but a magnificent allegory of which Louis XIV is the reality. It is he always and everywhere. Fabulous heroes and divinities impart their attributes to him or mingle with his courtiers. In honor of him, Neptune sheds broadcast the waters that cross in air in sparkling arches. Apollo, his favorite symbol, presides over this enchanted world as the god of light, the inspirer of the muses; the sun of the god seems to pale before that of the great King. Nature and art combine to celebrate the glory of the sovereign by a perpetual hosannah. All that generations of kings have amassed in pictures, statues and precious movables is distributed as mere furniture in the glittering apartments of the chateau. The intoxicating perfumes of luxury and power throw one into a sort of ecstasy that makes comprehensible the exaltation of this monarch, enthusiastic over himself, who, in chanting the hymns composed in his praise, shed tears of admiration." CHAPTER IV THE GARDENS, THE FOUNTAINS AND THE GRAND TRIANON The first gardens of Versailles--those that gave a modest setting to the villa constructed for Louis XIII, comprised a few parterres of flowers and shrubs bounded by well trimmed box hedges, and two groves planted on each side of the _Allée Royale_. To Jacques Boyceau is accredited the first plan of the gardens of Versailles, but Andre Le Nôtre greatly amplified and improved the original scheme. Le Nôtre's achievements at Versailles gave him rank as the most distinguished landscape gardener of his time, and of all time. Besides the luxurious and symmetrical gardens at Versailles, he originated the designs of those at the royal houses at Trianon, Saint-Cloud, Merly, Clagny, Chantilly and the Tuileries. The Parterre of the Tiber at Fontainebleau also added to his high reputation. For a long period the style of garden perfected by Le Nôtre was taken as a model and imitated throughout Europe. In 1678 he went to Italy on a mission for the King, who desired him to make researches there. While at Rome the eminent artist from France was commissioned to plan the gardens of the Quirinal, the Vatican and the villas Ludovisi and Albani. The Elector of Brandenburg summoned him to design the garden at Oranienburg; Kensington Park in London is still another example of Le Nôtre's skill. In his genius were reflected the qualities that distinguished the art of his century: regularity of design, harmony, dignity and richness of materials. Louis XIV had an enduring admiration for the work and character of the Chief Gardener--a man at all times honest, retiring, and inspired by enthusiasm for his calling. We are told by a French chronicler that "when Le Nôtre had traced out his ideas, he brought Louis XIV to the spot to judge the distribution of the principal parts of their ornamentation. He began with two grand basins which are on the terrace in front of the chateau, with their magnificent decorations. He explained next his idea of the double flight of stairs, which is opposite the center of the palace, adorned with yew-trees and with statues, and gave in detail all the pieces that were to enrich the space that it included. He passed then to the _Allée du Tapis Vert_, and to that grand place where we see the head of the canal, of which he described the size and shape, and at the extremities of whose arms he placed the Trianon and the Menagerie. At each of the grand pieces whose position Le Nôtre marked, and whose future beauties he described, Louis XIV interrupted him, saying, 'Le Nôtre, I give you twenty thousand francs.' This magnificent approbation was so frequently repeated that it annoyed Le Nôtre, whose soul was as noble and disinterested as that of his master was generous. At the fourth interruption he stopped, and said brusquely to the King, 'Sire, Your Majesty shall hear no more. I shall ruin you.'" In 1695 the King ennobled Le Nôtre and bestowed upon him the Order of St. Michael. Later, Le Nôtre presented to his sovereign his collection of pictures and bronzes, for which he had previously received an offer of 80,000 francs, or about $16,000. This collection was placed in one of the King's intimate rooms among the rarest objects in his possession. On occasion, when about to make a tour of the gardens, Louis liked to command a rolling chair similar to his own for the aged Le Nôtre. Discussing new projects, appraising those that were finished, they made the promenade together. One of the first garden decorations undertaken was the Grotto of Thetis, a green alcove beautified by exquisite marbles and a fountain that stirred the muse of La Fontaine to sing. This graceful conceit, dominated by Apollo seated among the nymphs of Venus, was destroyed when Mansard built the north wing of the palace; the groups were removed to adorn other sites. While the vast pleasure-house was in course of construction, each year marked the creation of new fountains and woods. In 1664, the _Parterre du Nord_ was laid out below the windows of the north wing; in 1667 and 1668 the _Théâtre d'Eau_, the Maze, the Star, the Grand Canal, the Avenue of Waters, the Cascade of Diana and the Pyramid on the North Parterre, and the Green Carpet (_Tapis-Vert_) spread out in view of the windows of the rear facade of the palace. In 1670 and the three succeeding years the low-lying _Marais_ (fen) was constructed next to the Parterre of the Fountain of Latona, to meet the wishes of the King's favorite, Madame de Montespan. While she was in power "people spoke of the _Marais_ as one of the marvels of the gardens, but it was undoubtedly considered less wonderful after her fall," a writer comments. "In the center stood a large oak surounded by an artificial marsh, bordered with reeds and grasses, and containing plants and a number of white swans. From the swans, from the reeds and grasses, and from the leaves and branches of the oak, thousands of little jets of water leaped forth, falling like fine rain upon the masses of natural vegetation that flourished amid the artificial. At the sides of the bosquet there were two tables of marble, on which a collation was served when the marquise came to her grove to see the waters play. In 1704 the King ordered Mansard to destroy the _Marais_ and transform the bosquet into the Baths of Apollo." In 1674 the Royal Isle came into being; and the next year the Arch of Triumph and the Three Fountains, between the Avenue of Waters and the château. In the thicket of the Three Fountains were "an immense number of small jets of water, leaping from basins at the sides and forming an arch of water overhead, beneath which one could walk without being wet. . . . The Arch of Triumph filled the end of the bosquet; it was placed on an estrade with marble steps, and was preceded by four lofty obelisks of gilded iron in which the water leaped and fell in sheets of crystal. The fountain itself was composed of three porticos of gilded iron, with large jets in the center of each, while seven jets leaped up from the basins above the porticos, and all the waters rushed down over the steps of marble. In addition, twenty-two vases at the sides of the bosquet threw jets into the air. 'Without having seen it,' says Blondel, 'it is impossible to imagine the wonderful effect produced by this decoration.'" The Orangery was the chief work begun in 1678, and in the following year the superb Basin of Neptune and the Lake of the Swiss Guards were commenced. In the years 1680-1685 workmen were busy digging, laying pipes, planting and decorating the _Salle de Bal_, or outdoor salon of festivities, the Parterre of Fountains, and the Colonnade, where amid marble columns and balustrades the Court often came to sup and make merry. In all, fourteen hundred gushing fountain jets animated the gardens. Le Nôtre, the author of these amazing water-works, died in the year 1700, when almost ninety years of age. Saint-Simon declared him justly renowned in that he had given to France gardens of so unique and ravishing a design that they completely outran in beauty the famous gardens of Italy. European landscape decorators counted it part of their education to journey to France for the purpose of studying the handiwork of the supreme craftsman. An illustrated guide, printed at Amsterdam in 1682, contains the following quaint description of the Labyrinth, or Maze: "Courteous Reader," it begins, "it is sufficiently known how eminently France and especially the Royal Court doth excel above other places with all manner of delights. The admirable faire Buildings and Gardens with all imaginable ornaments and delightful spectacles represent to the eye of the beholder such abundant and rich objects as verily to ravish the spectator. Amongst all these works there is nothing more admirable and praiseworthy than the Royal Garden at Versailles, and, in it, the Labyrinth. Other representations are commonly esteemed because they please the eye, but this because it not only delights the ear and eye, but also instructs and edifies. This Labyrinth is situated in a wood so pleasant that Daedalus himself would have stood amazed to behold it. The Turnings and Windings, edged on both sides with green cropt hedges, are not at all tedious, by reason that at every hand there are figures and water-works representing the mysterious and instructive fables of Aesop, with an explanation of what Fable each Fountain representeth carved on each in black marble. Among all the Groves in the Park at Versailles the Labyrinth is the most to be recommended, as well for the novelty of the design as the number and diversity of the fountains that with ingenuity and _naïveté_ express the philosophies, of the sage Aesop. The animals of colored bronze are so modeled that they seem truly to be in action. And the streams of water that come from their mouths may be imagined as bearing the words of the fable they represent. There are a great number of fountains, forty in all, each different in subject, and of a style of decoration that blends with the surrounding verdure. At the entrance to the Maze is a bronze statue of Aesop himself--the famous Mythologist of Phrygia." [Illustration: The Fountain of Versailles] To appreciate the engineering skill of the directors of fountain construction at Versailles it must be remembered that it was from an arid plateau that hundreds of streams were made to spring from the earth. Thousands of laborers were employed to lay beneath the surface of the ground a net-work of canals and aqueducts to receive the tribute of water-courses directed hither from distant sources. The waters were finally pumped into immense reservoirs adroitly dissembled on the roofs of buildings overlooking the park. From these tanks a maze of pipes carried the water to thickets, grottoes, basins, fountains and canals. Nothing could surpass the ingenuity with which all this was contrived. The play of water directed to the Basin of the Mirrors reappeared later in the Baths of Apollo and the Fountain of the Dragon. Flowing in turn among successive pools and ornamental groups--branching hither and yon in the gardens, the stream attained its full display in the most majestic effect of all, the Basin of Neptune. "Here again is the hand of Le Nôtre," remarks James Farmer, author of "Versailles and the Court Under Louis XIV." "The basin of Neptune, called at first the Grand Cascades, was constructed from 1679 to 1684, in accordance with his designs. This immense basin, surrounded on the side toward the chateau by a handsome wall of stone, and on the other by an amphitheater of turf and trees,--a vast half-circle, in the center of which stands a marble statue of Renown, is simple in conception and imposing from its size. The richly carved lead vases which adorn the wall were gilded under the Grand Monarch, and each throws a jet of water to a great height. Dangeau tells us that His Majesty saw the waters play here for the first time on the 17th of May, 1685, and that he was quite content. However, Neptune had not then appeared in the basin that now bears his name; for the large groups of Neptune, the Ocean, and the Tritons, which ornament the base of the wall at present, were not put in place until 1739, in the reign of Louis XV. This majestic basin at the foot of the _Allée d'Eau_ is a striking contrast to Perrault's ugly Pyramid at the head of it. Le Nôtre knew what was fitting for the gardens of a Sun King." A vast avenue, interrupted by many fair reaches of water, stretched its level length before the windows of the Grand Gallery. It was prolonged to the outer bounds of the gardens by the Grand Canal, on whose gleaming surface the sky was mirrored in the dusk of dawn, the golden glow of noon, or the sunset of declining day. This has ever been the supreme view from the palace of Versailles. Standing at one of the great windows of the Hall of Mirrors, the _Galerie des Glaces_, it often pleased the ruler of France to admire the Fountain of Latona, casting its fifty jets of water from the circular pool below the twin terraces. Beyond, the Green Carpet glowed in its emerald beauty among the clear waters of Versailles. The furthest fountain that met the eye was the Basin of Apollo, with its plunging bronze horses. In the outer park, that held the Trianon and the Menagerie, the royal gaze beheld the cross-shaped Canal which so often, in the revels that marked the first part of this reign, bore gay Venetian barges between the scintillating lights and fireworks that illumined the shore. At the right side, still looking from the rear of the chateau, the King's beauty-loving eyes dwelt upon the North Terrace, with its rich growth of greenery, on the graceful Fountains of the Pyramid and the Dragon, and above all on the magnificently soaring fountains of Neptune's Basin. At his left were the Terrace of Flowers, the two stairways that flanked the Orangery, chief work of Mansard and especial pride of Louis, and the lake in the small park named for the Swiss Guards. Nowhere, it is safe to say, could a place be found that embraced so many beautiful garden views at one time. Bordering the avenue that Le Nôtre opened through the primitive groves where Louis XIII once came to hunt--on either side the broad lane of trees and leaping waters--groves were laid out, varied in design and decoration--delectable retreats where lovers, traitors, diplomats might vow and plot, beneath the discreet ears of marble nymphs and goddesses. Many of the groups and marble figures that beautified the walks and bowers of Versailles were conceived by the gifted Lebrun. Among his designs were the Four Seasons, the Four Quarters of the Globe, the Four Kinds of Poetry (Heroic, Satiric, Lyric and Pastoral), the Four Periods of the Day (Morning, Noon, Twilight, Night), the Four Elements (Earth, Air, Fire, Water), the Four Temperaments (Phlegmatic, Melancholy, Coleric and Sanguine). Mythological figures, vases ornamented with bas-reliefs of Louis XIV and great men of his reign, fountain groups representing the chief rivers of France, water nymphs, sportive babies, beasts in combat--sculpture massive, graceful, grotesque--all added their individual lure to the dells, the walks and the terraces of the magic palace. Tile-workers from Flanders, marble-cutters from the Pyrenees, Italy and Greece, masons, sculptors, castmen, metal-workers, bronze colorists--innumerable artisans trained to meet the exacting tastes of that Silver Age of Art--lent their skill to the construction of fountains whose ingenuity and variety have set a standard for all time for the makers of kingly estates. A hundred sculptors of highest reputation were engaged to model groups, statues, busts and low reliefs for the Versailles park, under the supervision of Lebrun and Mignard. Ladies of the Court sometimes claimed the ear of the compliant André Le Nôtre to suggest fancies that he graciously evolved with greenery and marbles, with tinkling streams and bright-winged birds. The new Orangery, begun by Mansard on plans submitted by Le Nôtre, consumed nearly ten years in building, from 1678 to 1687. Twin stairways, one hundred and three steps high, united the South Parterre with the Parterre of the Orangery. The shelter erected for the protection of hundreds of orange trees, which often blossomed and came to fruit, contained a main gallery and two lateral galleries, lighted by twelve large windows. In the center stood a huge statue of Louis the Great. During warm weather the tubs containing the orange trees were set out on the Orange Parterre between the lofty stone stairways. The Orangery was one of the favorite retreats of the King. Besides the royal family, only those were permitted to stroll among the fragrant trees that had been granted special permission to do so. It was in 1688, after more than a quarter of a century's labor, the sacrifice of hundreds of lives, and the expenditure of over fifty million francs, that the splendid parks and gardens with their buildings and fountains were finally achieved. Le Nôtre's successors rearranged some of the fountains and groves; others were renamed. In 1739-1740 there were placed near the Basin of Neptune three groups that still lend adornment to this spot. This was the final attempt to decorate the gardens during the reign of the House of the Bourbons. Strangers from every clime marveled at the beauty of the fountains. The ambassadors from the Court of Siam were astounded "that so much of bronze, marble and gilded metal could find place in a single garden." A member of the train of the Ambassador from England described the park, in 1698, as "a whole province traced by avenues, paths, canals, and ornamented in all ways possible by masterpieces of ancient and modern art." The avenues were of white sand, with grassy by-ways on either side bordered by elms and iron railings six or seven feet high. Beyond these were thickets and niches where statues, sculptured urns and benches of white carved stone were placed. Occasional archways of green led down dim arbors to new enchantments. Here and there were round or star-shaped retreats whose carpets of grass were sprayed by murmuring fountains. In each recess were marble pedestals, busts, a long bench that invited repose. Trees of mature growth were brought in great numbers from distant parts of France and Flanders. Despite difficulties of transportation, twenty-five thousand trees were carried on wagons from Artois alone. The forests of Normandy were denuded of yew-trees; from the mountains of _Dauphiné_ the King's emissaries brought _epicea_ trees, and India sent chestnut trees for the adornment of Versailles. Among these groves Louis delighted to promenade in the evening, sometimes, in the _belle saison_, until midnight. Often he went on foot, but oftener in a light carriage drawn by a team of small black horses that had been given him by the Duke of Tuscany. THE GRAND TRIANON This palace decorated with pilasters of pink marble was not the first building chosen by the Grand Monarch to occupy the site at the end of the north arm of the canal of Versailles. Ambitious to extend his domain, the King had purchased and razed a shabby little village named Trianon, and on its somewhat dreary site erected for Madame de Montespan a villa so unpretentious as to arouse the comment of courtiers accustomed to the ruler's profligacy at Versailles. The vases of faïence that shone among the figures of gilded lead, the walk ornamented with Dutch tiles, the cornices of blue and white stucco, in the Chinese fashion, gave the little house the name, the Porcelain Trianon. Poets called it the Palace of Flora because of the wondrous gardens where rare flowers perfumed the pleasaunce in summer. Built in 1670, probably on designs of Francois Le Vau, the Porcelain Trianon was demolished toward the end of the year 1686. There remains to-day nothing to remind us of the Villa of Flowers but the gardens and a fountain for horses near the canal, where a terrace planted with beautiful trees overlooks it. Here Louis XIV often came in a gondola on summer evenings, when the Marble Trianon had replaced the Trianon of Porcelain. The latter's demolition was inspired, no doubt, by the urging of the new favorite, Madame de Maintenon, who found distasteful this reminder of another's supremacy in the King's affections. Moreover, this site continued to please the King for he recognized its convenience to the palace, and its accessibility by barge or carriage. He determined to build in the midst of these enchanting woods and blooms a dwelling less formal than the one at Versailles, smaller even than the one at Marly, but more habitable than the porcelain _maisonette_--a retreat, in short, where, without wearisome ceremony, he could retire with certain favored ones of his Court and while the summer hours away. The accounts of the King's treasurer show that the building of the edifice and the gardens proceeded rapidly during the year 1687. By the end of November the royal master found his new residence "well advanced and very beautiful." Soon after the New Year he heard the opera "Roland" performed here, and was pleased to dine for the first time within the new walls. He gave orders on recurring visits for the embellishment of the summer palace. The Trianon of marble and porphyry, "the most graceful production of Mansard," was finally completed in the autumn of 1688. But the work of decoration went on under the hands of a horde of artists almost until the end of the monarch's reign. Says an English author of a century ago: "In the midst of all the austerities imposed upon him by the ambition of Madame de Maintenon, the King went to Trianon to inhale the breath of the flowers which he had planted there, of the rarest and most odoriferous kind. On the infrequent occasions when the Court was permitted to accompany him thither to share in his evening collation, it was a beautiful spectacle to see so many charming women wandering in the midst of the flowers on the terrace rising from the banks of the canal. The air was so rich with the mingled perfume of violets, orange flowers, jessamines, tuberoses, hyacinths and narcissuses that the King and his visitors were sometimes obliged to fly from the overpowering sweets. The flowers in the parterres were arranged in a thousand different figures, which were constantly changed, so that one might have supposed it to be the work of some fairy, who, passing over the gardens, threw upon them each time a new robe aglow with color." In the salons and copses where Louis the Great basked in the somewhat chary smiles of his latest (and last) favorite, his grandson, the fifteenth of his name, was to install the fascinating Madame de Pompadour. The very apartments once dedicated to the use of Madame de Maintenon, and later to Queen Marie Leczinska, became the living-rooms of the reigning mistress of the heart of Louis XV. The Revolution spared the Grand Trianon. But under pretext of restoring it and rendering it, according to their tastes, more habitable, Napoleon First and Louis Philippe spared it less. The last king of France commanded in 1836 the architectural changes necessary to convert the Trianon into the royal residence, in place of the chateau of Versailles. He stayed here for the last time in the winter of 1848, before departing for Dreux. But, despite changes and mutilations, the facade and the interior of the rose-colored palace retain the stamp of the Great King who sponsored the Gallery of Mirrors, the Antechamber of the Bull's Eye, and the Chapel at Versailles. CHAPTER V A DAY WITH THE SUN KING Louis the Magnificent, we must agree with that profuse and sharp-witted chronicler, the Duke of Saint-Simon, was made for a brilliant Court. "In the midst of other men, his figure, his courage, his grace, his beauty, his grand mien, even the tone of his voice and the majestic and natural charm of all his person, distinguished him till his death as the King Bee, and showed that if he had been born only a simple private gentleman, he would have excelled in fetes, pleasures and gallantry. . . . He liked splendor, magnificence and profusion in everything. Nobody ever approached his magnificence." With sumptuous detail the King's day progressed at Versailles, from the formal "rising" to the hour when, with equal pomp, the monarch went to bed. Before eight o'clock in the morning the waiting-room next the King's bedchamber was the gathering-place of princes, nobles and officers of the Court, each fresh from his own laving and be-wigging. While they passed the time in low converse, the formal ceremony of the King's awakening took place behind the gold and white doors of the royal sleeping-room. "The Chamber," one of the eleven offices in the service of the King, comprised four first gentlemen of the Chamber, twenty-four gentlemen of the Chamber, twenty-four pages of the Chamber, four first valets of the Chamber, sixteen ushers, thirty-two valets of the Chamber, two cloak-bearers, two gun-bearers, eight barbers, three watch-makers, one dentist, and many minor attendants--all under the direction of the Grand Chamberlain. A few minutes before eight o'clock it was the duty of the chief _valet de chambre_ to see that a fire was laid in the King's chamber (if the weather required one), that blinds were drawn, and candles snuffed. As the clock chimed the hour of eight, he approached the embroidered red velvet curtains of the royal bed with the announcement, "Sire, it is the hour." When the curtains were drawn and the royal eyelids lifted upon a new day, the children of the King were admitted to make their morning obeisance. The chief physician and surgeon and the King's old nurse then entered to greet the waking monarch. While they performed certain offices allotted them, the Grand Chamberlain was summoned. The first _valet de chambre_ took his place by the bed and, holding a silver basin beneath the King's hands, poured on them spirits of wine from a flagon. The Grand Chamberlain next presented the vase of Holy Water to the King, who accepted it and made the Sign of the Cross. Opportunity was given at this moment for the princes, or any one having the _grande entrée_, to speak to the King, after which the Grand Chamberlain offered to His Majesty a prayer-book, and all present passed from the room except those privileged to stay for the brief religious service that followed. Surrounded by princes, nobles and high officers attached to his person, the King chose his wig for the day, put on the slippers and dressing-gown presented by the appointed attendant, and stepped outside the massive balustrade that surrounded his bed. Now the doors opened to admit those that had the right to be present while the King donned his silk stockings and diamond-buckled garters and shoes--acts that he performed "with address and grace." On alternate days, when his night-cap had been removed, the nobles and courtiers were privileged to see the King shave himself, while a mirror, and, if the morning was dull, lighted candles were held before his face by the first _valet de chambre_. Occasionally His Majesty briefly addressed some one in the room. The assemblage was, by this time, augmented by the admission of secretaries and officers attached to the palace, whose position entitled them to the "first _entrée_." When his wig was in place and the dressing of the royal person had proceeded at the hands of officers of the Wardrobe (there were, in all, sixty persons attached to this service), the King spoke the word that opened the ante-chamber doors to the cardinals, ambassadors and government officials that awaited the ceremony of the _grand lever_, or "grand rising," so-called in distinction to the more intimate _petit lever_. Altogether, no less than one hundred and fifty persons were present while the King went through the daily ceremony of the rising and the toilet. When the Sovereign of France had breakfasted on a service of porcelain and gold, had permitted his sword and his jeweled orders to be fastened on, and, from proffered baskets of cravats and handkerchiefs, had made his choice; when he had prayed by his bedside with cardinals and clergy in attendance; had granted brief informal interviews, and had attended mass in the chapel of Versailles, it was his custom to ask for the Council. Thrice a week there was a council of State, and twice a week a finance council. Thus the mornings passed, with the exception of Thursday morning, when His Majesty gave "back-stair" audiences known to but a few, and Friday morning, which was spent with his confessor. Louis was always a busy man of affairs and never shirked his kingly duties. It was a principle of his life to place duty first and pleasure after. He told his son in his memoirs that an idle king showed ingratitude toward God and injustice toward man. "The requirements and demands of royalty," he wrote, "which may, at times, appear hard and irksome, you should find easy and agreeable in high places. Nothing will exhaust you more than idleness. If you tire of great affairs, and give up to pleasures, you will soon be disgusted with your own idleness. To take in the whole world with intelligent eyes, to be learning constantly what is going on in the provinces and among other nations--the court secrets, the habits, the weaknesses of princes and foreign ministers, to see clearly what all people are trying, to their utmost, to conceal, to fathom the most deep-seated thoughts and convictions of those that attend us in our own court--what greater pleasure and satisfaction could there be, if we were simply prompted by curiosity?" Ordinarily, when at Versailles, the King dined alone at one o'clock, seated by the middle window of his chamber, overlooking the courtyards, the Place d'Armes, and the long avenue that led to Paris. More than three hundred persons,--stewards, chefs, butlers, gentlemen servants, carvers, cup-bearers, table-setters, cellarers, gardeners,--were charged with the care of the kitchens, pantries, cellars, fruit-lofts, store-rooms, linen closets, and treasuries of gold and silver plate belonging to the King's immediate household--the _Maison du Roi_. The Officers of the Goblet were present when the King was served, having first, with attendant ceremonies, "made the trial" of napkins and table implements as a safeguard from evil designs against his life. Even the simplest repast served to the King comprised many dishes, for the Grand Monarch ate heartily, though with discriminating appetite. Unless the Sovereign dined in the privacy of his bed-chamber, he was surrounded by princes and courtiers. At "public dinners" a procession of well-dressed persons continually passed through the room to observe the King at his dining. It was ordained that the King's meat should be brought to the table from the kitchens in the Grand Commune after this manner: "Two of His Majesty's guards will march first, followed by the usher of the hall, the _maître d'hôtel_ with his baton, the gentleman servant of the pantry, the controller-general, the controller clerk of the Office, and others who carry the Meat, the equerry of the kitchen and the guard of the plates and dishes, and behind them two other guards of His Majesty, who are to allow no one to approach the Meat. "In the Office called the _Bouche_, the equerry of the Kitchen arranges the dishes upon a table, and presents two trials of bread to the _maître d'hôtel_, who makes the trial of the first course, and who, having placed the meats for the trial upon these two trials of bread, gives one to the equerry of the Kitchen, who eats it, while the other is eaten by the _maître d'hôtel_. Afterward the gentleman servant takes the first dish, the second is taken by the controller, and the other officers of the Kitchen take the rest. They advance in this order: the _maître d'hôtel_, having his baton, marches at the head, preceded some steps by the usher of the hall, carrying his wand, which is the sign of his office, and in the evening bearing a torch as well. When the Meat, accompanied by three of the body-guards with carbines on their shoulders, has arrived (that is, in the first antechamber, where the King is to dine), the _maître d'hôtel_ makes a reverence to the _nef_. The gentleman servant, holding the first dish, places it upon the table where the _nef_ is, and having received a trial portion from the gentleman servant in charge of the trial table, he makes the trial himself and places his dish upon the trial table. The gentleman servant having charge of this table takes the other dishes from the hands of those who carry them, and places them also on the trial table. After the trial of them has been made they are carried by the other gentlemen servants to the table of the King. "The first course being on the table, the _maître d'hôtel_ with his baton, preceded by the usher of the hall with his wand, goes to inform the King; and when His Majesty has arrived at table the _maître d'hôtel_ presents a wet napkin to him, of which trial has been made in the presence of the officer of the Goblet, and takes it again from the King's hands. During the dinner the gentleman servant in charge of the trial table continues to make trial in the presence of the officers of the Goblet and of the Kitchen of all that they bring for each course. "When His Majesty desires to drink, the cup-hearer cries at once in a loud tone, 'The drink for the King!' makes a reverence to the King, and goes to the sideboard to take from the hands of the chief of the Wine-cellars the salver and cup of gold, and the two crystal decanters of wine and water. He returns, preceded by the chiefs of the Goblet and the Wine-cellars, and the three, having reached the King's table, make a reverence to His Majesty. The chief of the Goblet, standing near the King, holds a little trial cup of silver-gilt, into which a gentleman servant pours a small quantity of wine and water from the decanters. A portion of this the chief of the Goblet pours into a second trial cup which is presented by his assistant, who, in turn, hands it to the gentleman servant. The chief and the gentleman servant make the trial, and when the latter has handed his cup to the chief, that officer returns both cups to his assistant. When the trial has been made in this manner in the King's sight, the gentleman servant, making a reverence to the King, presents to His Majesty the cup of gold and the golden salver on which are the decanters. The King pours out the wine and water, and having drunk, replaces the cup upon the salver. The gentleman servant makes another reverence to the King, and returns the salver and all upon it to the chief of the Wine-cellars, who carried it to the side-board." The ceremony of tasting the King's wine was most impressive, and it was regarded as a necessary and effective safeguard against poisonous attacks or deleterious effects on His Majesty's august health. The thought is suggested, however, that the test could have been effective only in case of immediate or quick-working poison. A slow and insidious drug--and there were experts in such concoctions in those days--would surely have passed the taster's test and affected the King in time. The test was but a mere formality, however, for Louis was the Most Adored Monarch. As one chronicler has observed, "He was not only majestic, he was amiable. Those that surrounded him, the members of his family, his ministers, his domestics, loved him." Poison played no part in his career. That subtle method of attack was reserved for Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, on both of whom it was attempted more than once. The carver, having taken his place before the table of the King, presented and uncovered all the dishes, and when His Majesty told him to do so, or made him a sign, he removed them, handing them to the plate-changer or to his assistants. He changed the King's plate and napkin from time to time, and cut the meats when the King did not cut them himself. On rare occasions, when the King was in residence at Versailles, his brother dined with him. But large, formal dinners were rare, and women were seldom at the King's table except on grand occasions. Upon leaving the table, Saint-Simon tells us, "the King immediately entered his cabinet. That was the time for distinguished people to speak to him. He stopped at the door a moment to listen, then entered; very rarely did any one follow him, never without asking permission to do so; and for this few had the courage. . . . The King amused himself by feeding his dogs, and remained with them more or less time, then asked for his wardrobe, changed before the very few distinguished people it pleased the first gentleman of the Chamber to admit there, and immediately went out by the back stairs into the court of marble to get the air. . . . He went out for three objects: stag-hunting, once or more each week; shooting in his parks (and no man handled a gun with more grace or skill), once or twice each week; and walking in his gardens, and to see his workmen." The King was fond of hunting and the chase held an important part in the service of the royal household. The conditions of the sport were determined with a formality in keeping with the other affairs of Versailles. There were two divisions of the chase--the hunting and the shooting. The first had to do with the chase of the stag, deer, wild boar, wolf, fox and the hare. The shooting had to do with smaller game. Here was also falconry, though in this Louis was not particularly interested. The chase was conducted by the Grand Huntsman of France, and his duties were enormous and varied. Under him the Captain General of the Toils kept the woods of Versailles well stocked with stag, deer, boars, and other animals caught in the forests of France. Some idea of the pomp and ceremony of the hunt may be obtained from the following account which was printed in the _Mercure Galant_ in 1707: "The toils were placed in the glades of Bombon. In the inclosure there were a large number of stags, wild boars, roebucks, and foxes. The court arrived there. The King, the Queen of England (the wife of James II, then in exile), her son, Madame la Duchesse de Bourgogne, and Madame (the Duchesse d'Orleans, wife of Monsieur) were in the same carriage, and all the princesses and the ladies followed in the carriages and _calèches_ of the king. A very large number of noblemen on horseback accompanied the carriages. Within the inclosure there were platforms, arranged with seats covered with tapestry for the ladies, and many riding-horses for the nobles who wished to attack the game with swords or darts. They killed sixteen of the largest beasts, and some foxes. Mgr. le Duc de Berry slew several. This chase gave much pleasure on account of the brilliancy of the spectacle, and the large number of nobles who surrounded the toils. A multitude of people had climbed into the trees, and by their diversity they formed an admirable background." Stag hunting was even more impressive in ceremonial details. After the chase the "quarry" was usually held by torchlight at Versailles, in one of the inner courts, and the ceremony of the quarry was as follows: "When His Majesty had made known his intentions on the subject, all the huntsmen with their horns and in hunting-dress came to the place where the quarry was to be made. On the arrival of the King, who was also in hunting-dress, the grand huntsman, who had received two wands of office, gave one to the King, and retained the other. The dogs were held under the whip about the carcass of the stag until the grand huntsman, having received the order from the King, gave the sign with his wand that they should be set at liberty. The horns sounded, and the huntsmen, who while the hounds were held under the whip had cried, 'Back, dogs! Back!' shouted now, 'Hallali, valets! Hallali!' When the quarry had been made, that is to say, when the flesh had been torn from the bones, a valet took the _forhu_ (the belly of the stag, washed and placed on the end of a forked stick), and called the dogs, crying, '_Tayaut, tayaut_!' and threw the _forhu_ into the midst of the pack, where it was devoured at once. At this instant the fanfares redoubled, and finished by sounding the retreat. The King returned the wand to the grand huntsman, who at the head of all the huntsmen followed His Majesty." In his promenades at Versailles and Trianon any courtiers that chose to do so were permitted to follow the King. On his return from out-door recreation His Majesty, after again changing his costume, remained in his cabinet resting or working. Frequently he passed some time in the apartments of Madame de Maintenon. At ten o'clock the captain of the guard announced supper in the chamber between the Hall of the King's Guards and the antechamber called "Bull's Eye." This meal was always on a pretentious scale, and was attended at table by the royal children and numerous courtiers and ladies. When the last course had been served the King retired to his bedchamber and there for a few moments received all his Court, before passing into his Cabinet, where he spent something less than an hour in the company of his immediate household, his brother seated in an arm-chair, the princesses upon stools, and the Dauphin and all the other princes standing. When the King had bid the company goodnight he entered his sleeping-room, where were already the courtiers privileged to attend the ceremony of the _coucher_, or going-to-bed. At the _grand coucher_ the King, being formally divested of his hat, gloves, cane and sword, knelt by the balustrade about his bed, while an almoner murmured a prayer as he held a lighted candle above the royal head. When the King had risen from his knees he gave to the first _valet de chambre_ his watch and the holy relics he was accustomed to wear, and proceeded through the assemblage to his chair. This was the moment when, with regal mien, the Sun King bestowed the candle upon whomever he wished to honor--a ceremony brief, trifling, but significant of the Monarch of Monarchs in its gracious portent. To the Master of the Wardrobe fell the task of removing the King's coat and vest; the diamond buckles of the right and left garters were unfastened respectively by the first _valet de chambre_ and the first valet of the wardrobe, and the valets of the Chamber withdrew with the kingly shoes and breeches while the pages of the Chamber presented slippers and dressing-gown. The latter was held as a screen while the shirt was removed, and the night-dress was accepted from the hands of a royal prince, or the Grand Chamberlain. Having put on the dressing-gown, the King, with an inclination of the head, dismissed the courtiers, to whom the ushers cried, "Gentlemen, pass on!" All those that were entitled to remain for the _petit coucher_--princes, clergymen, officers, chosen intimates--then disposed themselves about the bedchamber while the King submitted to the hands of his coiffeur and received from the Grand Master of the Wardrobe the night-cap and handkerchiefs. After bathing his face and hands in a silver basin held by a royal prince or grand master, the _petit coucher_ was at an end. The bathing apartments of Versailles were numerous and luxuriously appointed, but, though the most trivial details in the daily life of His Majesty were attended with imposing circumstance, there is no record of a Ceremony of the King's Bath, nor do we know of any noble order at the Grand Monarch's court that held the title of Knights of the Bath. When the assemblage that witnessed the _petit coucher_ in the royal apartment had dwindled one by one, according to precedent, the Master of Versailles was, at last, free to do as he chose,--to play with his dogs in an adjoining cabinet, or take his ease in pleasing solitude. Then, in the familiar words of Samuel Pepys' immortal diary, "Home, and to bed." Outside the gilded balustrade the first _valet de chambre_ slept on a folding cot. "Beyond that balustrade, by the faint candle-light, there loomed among the shadows a white-plumed canopy and crimson curtains. The Grand Monarch slept." CHAPTER VI GOLDEN DAYS AND RED LETTER NIGHTS _The Gayety and Fashion of Versailles Life. The Prodigal Frivolities and Diversions of the Court._ The ceremonious routine of the days at Versailles was enlivened at certain times of the year by festivities of astounding brilliance, and, on occasion, by gorgeous receptions offered to visiting rulers and ambassadors, It has already been related that the arrival of Louis XIV and his family at Versailles in the fall of 1663 was celebrated by a fete at which a troupe headed by Molière was heard in a piece by the great dramatist called Impromptu de Versailles, In the month of May, 1664, Louis commanded a performance of "Pleasures of the Enchanted Isle," in which his favorite actor and playwright furnished the comedy, Lully the music and the ballets, and an Italian mechanician the decorations and illuminations. On the first day there was tilting at the ring, in which pastime Louis XIV played a part, wearing a diamond-embroidered costume. The next day, on an outdoor stage, Molière and his company played the "_Princesse d'Élide_." There followed ballets, races, tourneys and a lottery, "in which the prizes were pieces of furniture, silverware and precious stones." In September, 1665, a hunt was organized in the woods of Versailles, at which the royal ladies wore Amazonian habits. A mid-winter day in the year 1667 was chosen for a tournament "that over-passed the limits of magnificence." The Queen herself led a cortege of Court beauties on a white horse that was set off by brocaded and gem-sewn trappings. The _Gazette_ of 1667 described the appearance of the youthful Master of Versailles at this tournament, he being "not less easily recognized by the lofty mien peculiar to him than by his rich Hungarian habit covered with gold and precious stones, his helmet with waving plumes, his horse that was arrayed in magnificent accouterments and a jeweled saddle-cloth." Again in the summers of 1668 and 1672 Molière and Lully entertained the guests at the King's chateau, while in the gardens there were statues, vases and chandeliers so lighted as to give the impression that they glowed with interior names. In the summer of 1674, Molière "was no longer alive to arrange dramatic performances among the green and flowery coppices of Versailles. But there was no lack of entertainment at the splendid fêtes that marked that year. We have the recital of Félebien, a fastidious chronicler of Court doings, referring to this period of merry-making, which lasted during most of the summer and fall. "The King," says Félebien, "ordained as soon as he arrived at Versailles that festivities be arranged at once, and that, at intervals, new diversions should be prepared for the pleasure of the Court. The things most noticeable at such times as these were the promptitude, minute pains and silent ease with which the King's orders were invariably executed. Like a miracle--all in a moment--theaters rose, wooded places were made gay with fountains, collations were spread, and a thousand other things were accomplished that one would have supposed would require a long time and a vast bustle of workers." The "Grand Fêtes" occupied six days of the months of July and August. The celebrations of the fourth of July began with a feast laid on the verdant site later usurped by the basin called the Baths of Apollo. Here the beauty of nature was enhanced by an infinity of ornate vases filled with garlands of flowers. Fruits of every clime were served on platters of porcelain, in silver baskets and in bowls of priceless glass. In the evening the Court attended a production of _"Alceste_"--an opera by Quinault and Lully, executed by artists from the Royal Academy of Music. The stage was set in the Marble Court. The windows facing the court were ablaze with two rows of candles. The walls of the chateau were screened with orange trees, festooned with flowers, illumined by candelabra made of silver and crystal. The marble fountain in the center of the court was surrounded by tall candlesticks and blossoming urns. The spraying waters escaped through vases of flowers, that their falling should not interrupt the voices of those on the stage. Artificial waters, silver-sconced tapers, bowers of fragrant shrubs united to create the richest of settings for this outdoor theater. It was the King's wish that the grounds of the little "porcelain house" at Trianon be chosen as the scene of the second fête, which took place a week later. In an open-air enclosure, decorated by "a prodigious quantity of flowers," the guests listened to the "_Êglogue de Versailles_," composed for the occasion by Lully, leader of the _Petits-Violons_, Louis' favorite Court orchestra. Afterwards all the nobles and their fair companions returned to sup at Versailles in a wood where the Basin of the Obelisk now is. Seven days later, at the third fete of the series, the King gave a banquet to ladies in the pavilion at the Menagerie. The guests were conveyed in superbly decorated gondolas down the Grand Canal. In a large boat were violinists and hautboy-players that made sweet music. Finally, in a theater arranged this time before the Grotto, all the ladies were regaled with a performance of "_La Malade Imaginaire_," the last of Molière's comedies. For the fourth festal day, the twenty-eighth of July, the King commanded a fête of surpassing beauty. The feast was laid in the center of the _Théâtre-d'Eau_. The steps forming the amphitheater served as tables for the arrangement of the viands. Orange trees heavy with blossoms and golden fruit, apple trees, apricot trees, trees laden with peaches, and tall oleanders--all set out in ornamental tubs; three hundred vessels of fine porcelain filled with fruit; one hundred and twenty baskets of dried preserves; four hundred crystal cups containing ices, an uncounted number of carafes sparkling with rare liqueurs--all created a picture of colorful luxury, which, we are assured, struck those that looked upon it as "most agreeable." Threading their musical murmurings through all the laughter and badinage, the tossing jets of the pyramidal fountains fell away to pools and green-bordered streams. Lully's opera, "_Cadmus et Hermione_" Was sung in a theater arranged at the end of the Allée of the Dragon. At its close every one made a tour of the park in open vehicles, lighted by torches carried by lackeys, and all assisted at an exhibition of fire-works on the canal. The evening ended with a supper in the Marble Court. Here an illuminated column was placed on an immense pedestal, while around it was disposed a table with seats for fifty persons. The fifth gala day was marked by the presentation to the King of one hundred and seven flags and standards that Condé, the illustrious general, had taken at the battle of Senef. In the evening the company toured the park of Versailles, occupying thirty six-horse carriages. After a supper served in a forest retreat the invited ones witnessed a performance of "Iphigénie," a new tragedy by Racine, which was most admirably played by the royal troupe, and much applauded by the Court. There followed a grand illumination of the great fountain at the head of the canal--a display whose beauty and ingenuity "surprised every one"--even the luxury-surfeited guests of Versailles. Besides an encircling balustrade six feet in height and ornamented with _fleurs de lys_ and the arms of the King (all of which glowed with a golden light most lovely to look upon), there were high pedestals that appeared to be of transparent marble, with ornaments representing Apollo and the Sun, whose device Louis, instigator of all the splendor of Versailles, had adopted as his own insignia. These decorations were made after designs by Lebrun. On the night of the thirty-first of August, the sixth and last day of the fêtes, the Court witnessed what seemed to be indeed a magic spectacle. "His Majesty," it is recorded, "coming out of the château at one o'clock in the morning, beneath a starless sky, suddenly beheld about him a miraculous rain of lights. All the parterres glittered. The grand terrace in front of the château was bordered by a double row of lights. The steps and railings of the horseshoe, all the walls, all the fountains, all the reservoirs, shone with myriad flames. The borders of the Grand Canal were adorned with statues and architectural decorations, behind which lights had been placed to make them transparent. The King, the Queen, and all the Court took their seats in richly ornamented gondolas. Boats filled with musicians followed them, and Echo repeated the sounds of an enchanted harmony." Thus ended the fêtes of 1674--the last of their kind that were given by Louis XIV. The Versailles calendar of events was divided into three periods: the season of the winter carnival, the pious observances of Easter, and the summer-time festivities. Ordinarily, in the winter months, there was a hunt on foot or horseback almost every day. In the warm season the Court often took part in a promenade by boat on the Grand Canal, followed by a concert and a feast for the ladies at Trianon or at the Menagerie. Ladies were always invited in great numbers to such parties. Sometimes they walked among the orange trees or made a tour of the gardens in light carriages, or repaired to the stables to watch the trainers putting the royal mounts through their paces. And always there were games of chance, for gambling was the ruling passion of the Court. From the record of Dangeau we read a description of a gay tournament that took place in the riding-school of the Great Stables of Versailles on two successive June days: "The King and Mme. la Dauphine (wife of the heir to the throne) dined at an early hour, and on leaving table, the King and Monseigneur entered a carriage. Mme. la Dauphine and many ladies followed in other carriages. In the court of the ministers, they found all the cavaliers of the tournament drawn up in two lines; the pages and lackeys were there also. Monseigneur mounted a horse at the head of one company; M. le Duc de Bourbon was at the head of the other. The King took his seat in the place prepared for him. "The cavaliers first rode round the courtyard of the chateau, passing under the windows of the young Duc de Bourgogne (grandson of the King) who was on the balcony. Then they rode out of the gate and down the Avenue de Paris, and entered the riding-school of the Great Stables by a gate made near the Kennels. After riding in procession before the raised seats of the court, they took their posts, twenty cavaliers in each corner, with their pages and grooms behind them; the drums and trumpets at the barrier. The subject of the tournament was the Wars of Granada, and the cavaliers represented the Spaniards and the Moors. Monseigneur rode a tilt with the Due de Bourbon, and Messieurs de Vendôme and de Brionne rode at the same time to make the figure. . . . There were three courses run for the prize, which was won by the Prince de Lorraine. It was a sword ornamented with diamonds, and he received it from the hand of the King. After the tournament all the cavaliers conducted the King to the courtyard of the château, lance in hand, and the heads of the companies saluted him with their swords. "On the fifth, a second tournament was held, and, in spite of the bad weather, the King found it more beautiful than the first. Many ladies were present. The Russian envoys, who had not seen the previous fête, occupied seats at the King's right. During a shower, the spectators retired quickly, but as soon as it had passed, all the seats were filled again. The Marquis de Plumartin won the prize. It was a sword adorned with diamonds, but more costly than that won by the Prince de Lorraine." The Fête of Kings celebrated each year was a brilliant affair at Versailles. Then the Hall of Mirrors and Salons of War and Peace were illumined by hundreds upon hundreds of twinkling tapers, while over the floor glided a throng of slippered feet to the beat of strings and hautboys. At the suppers, which preceded and followed the dancing, seventy-two Swiss guards served the guests, each one distinguished by a ribbon corresponding with the color of the table to whose service he was assigned. It was the King's custom to retire from the revel with regal formalities at one hour after midnight. But the feasting and dancing continued many times until rosy dawn stole in the windows and paled the candle-light. Besides balls, concerts, plays, games of chance, masquerades, all the Court was invited every week--between October and Easter--to take part in the _appartements_ or receptions given by the King. These soirées began at seven o'clock and lasted till ten. The chief diversion was card-playing. The King, the Queen and all the princes so far unbent as to play with their guests at the same tables, and move about without ceremony, conversing, listening to the music of Lully's band, watching a minuet or a gavotte, eating and drinking, or bestowing special favors upon courtiers that engaged their momentary fancy. Sometimes the losses of the players at the tables were enormous; again, nobles counted their gains by the hundred thousands. The youthful granddaughter of the King, the Duchess of Bourgogne, lost at one time a sum equaling 600,000 francs, which her doting grandfather paid, as he also paid debts of the Duke of Bourgogne. During one night's play the King himself lost a sum totaling "many millions." On occasion the courtiers were entertained at festivities arranged for the heir to the throne, or by the cardinal that was in residence at the chateau. During masked balls held in the carnival season dancers sometimes changed their costumes two or three times in an evening--one worn under another being revealed by pulling a silken cord. Often well-tempered confusion was caused by gay subterfuges--an exchange of masks, or the imposing of one mask on another. The costumes were sumptuous beyond words. "It is impossible to witness at one time more jewelry," naïvely recited the _Mercure_ in setting forth the richness of a _cercle_ at which the Court was present in 1707. Let us read further from the _Mercure_ of the diversions that drove dull care away at a Court carnival: "There have been this winter five balls in five different apartments at Versailles, all so grand and so beautiful that no other royal house in the world can show the like. Entrance was given to masks only, and no persons presented themselves without being disguised, unless they were of very high rank. . . . People invent grotesque disguises, they revive old fashions, they choose the most ridiculous things, and seek to make them as amusing as possible. . . . Mgr. le Dauphin changed his disguise eight or ten times each evening. M. Bérain had need of all his wit to furnish these disguises, and of all his ingenuity to get them made up, since there was so little time between one ball and another. The prince did not wish to be recognized, and all sorts of extraordinary disguises were invented for him; frequently under the figures that concealed him, one could not have told whether the person thus masked was tall or short, fat or thin. Sometimes he had double masks, and under the first a mask of wax so well made that, when he took off his first mask, people fancied they saw the natural face, and he deceived everybody. Nothing can equal the enjoyment which Mgr. le Dauphin takes in all these diversions, nor the rapidity with which he changes his disguises. He leaves all his officers without being fatigued, although he works harder at dressing and undressing himself than they do, and he danced much. This prince shows in the least things, in his horsemanship, and in the ardor with which he follows the chase, what pleasure he will take some day in commanding armies. But could one expect less from the son of Louis the Great! "The first of the five balls," continues the correspondent, "was given by M. le Grand, in his apartments in the new wing of Versailles. The ball commenced with a masquerade. They danced a minuet and a jig; but only Mlle. de Nantes danced in the latter. Mlle. de Nantes was especially admired when she danced, and made so great an impression that people stood on chairs to see her better, Mgr. le Dauphin came to the masquerade with M. le Prince de la Roche-sur-Yon and many other notables. He was in a sedan-chair, accompanied by a number of merry-andrews and dwarfs. He changed his disguise four or five times during the ball, which lasted until four o'clock in the morning. . . . The second ball was given by Mgr. le Dauphin in the hall of his Guards, which forms the entrance to his apartments. M. le Duc gave the third, which was magnificent. Some days after it was the turn of the Cardinal de Bouillon to receive the court." "From just before Candlemas day to Easter of the year 1700," wrote Saint-Simon, "nothing was heard of but balls and pleasures of the Court. The King gave at Versailles and Marly several masquerades, by which he was much amused under pretext of amusing the Duchesse de Bourgogne. "No evening passed on which there was not a ball. The chancellor's wife gave one--which was a fête the most gallant and the most magnificent possible. There were different rooms for the fancy-dress ball, for the masqueraders, for a superb collation, for shops of all countries, Chinese, Japanese, etc., where many singular and beautiful things were sold, but no money taken; there were presents for the Duchesse de Bourgogne and the ladies. Everybody was especially diverted at this entertainment, which did not finish until eight o'clock in the morning. Madame de Saint-Simon and I passed the last three weeks of this time without ever seeing the day. Certain dancers were allowed to leave off dancing only at the same time as the Duchesse de Bourgogne. One morning, when I wished to escape too early, the duchesse caused me to be forbidden to pass the doors of the salon; several of us had the same fate. I was delighted when Ash Wednesday arrived, and I remained a day or two dead-beat." The _Mercure_ describes the fête given by the wife of the Chancellor of France at her mansion beyond the palace grounds: "Mme. la Duchesse de Bourgogne, learning that Mme. la Chancelière wished to give her a ball, received the proposition with much joy. Although there were but eight days in which to prepare for it, Mme. la Chancelière resolved to give the princess in one evening all the diversions that people usually take during all the carnival period--namely, comedy, fair, and ball. When the evening came, detachments of Swiss were posted in the street and in the courtyard, with many servants of Mme. la Chancelière, so that there was no confusion at the gates or in the court, which was brightly lighted with torches. . . . The ball-room was lighted by ten chandeliers and by magnificent gilded candelabra. At one end, on raised seats, were the musicians, hautboys and violins, in fancy dress with plumed caps. In front of the velvet-covered benches for the courtiers were three arm-chairs, one for Mme. la Duchesse de Bourgogne, and the others for Monsieur and the Madame. Beyond the ball-room, across the landing of the staircase, was another hall, brilliantly lighted, in which were hautboys and violins, and this hall was for the masks, who came in such numbers that the ball-room could not have contained them all. ". . . After remaining about an hour at the ball, Mme. la Chancelière and the Comte de Pontchartrain conducted Mme. la Duchesse de Bourgogne into another hall, filled with lights and mirrors, where a theater had been erected to furnish the diversion of a comedy. Only about one hundred people were allowed to enter the hall of comedy, and the princes and princesses of the blood, being masked, took no rank there. Mme. la Duchesse de Bourgogne and Madame had arm-chairs in the center of the hall. The Duchesse de Bourgogne was surprised to see a splendid theater, adorned with her arms and monogram. . . . As soon as the princess was seated, Bari, the famous mountebank of Paris, came forward and asked her protection against the doctors, and having extolled the excellence of his remedies, and the marvels of his secrets, he offered to the princess as a little diversion a comedy such as they sometimes played at Paris. There was given then a little comedy which Mme. le Chancelière had got M. Dancourt to write expressly for that fête. All the actors were from the company of the comedians of the king. They played to perfection, and received much praise. . . . At the end of the comedy, Mme. la Duchesse de Bourgogne was conducted into another hall, where a superb collation had been prepared in an ingenious manner. At one end of the hall, in a half-circle, were five booths, in which were merchants, clad in the costumes of different countries; a French pastry-cook, a seller of oranges and lemons, an Italian lemonade-seller, a seller of sweetmeats, a vendor of coffee, tea and chocolate. They were from the king's musicians, and sung their wares, accompanied by music, at the sides of the booths, and had pages to serve the guests. The booths were splendidly painted and gilded, adorned with lusters and flowers, and bore the arms and cipher of Mme. la Duchesse de Bourgogne. At the back of each booth a large mirror reflected the whole. . . . The Duchesse de Bourgogne left this hall, after the collation, delighted with all that she had seen and heard. Since the ball-room was so crowded with masks, the princess returned to the hall of comedy, where they held a smaller court ball until two o'clock, when she went to the grand ball to see the masks. She was much amused there until four in the morning. When Mme. la Chancelière and the Comte de Pontchartrain conducted her to the foot of the staircase, she thanked them much for the pleasure they had given her. This fete brought many congratulations to Mme. la Chancelière." La Palatine, Duchess of Orleans, has left among her letters a description of her costume on a day of august ceremonies. "The crowd was so great," she wrote, "that we had to wait a quarter of an hour at the door of each salon before entering, and I was wearing a robe and an overskirt so intolerably heavy that I could scarcely stand erect. My costume was of gold woven with black chenille flowers, and my jewels were pearls and diamonds. Monsieur had on a coat of black velour embroidered with gold, and wore all his great diamonds. The coat of my son was embroidered with gold and a variety of other colors and it was covered with gems. The robe my daughter wore was made of green velour threaded with gold and garnished with rubies and diamonds. In her hair was an ornament designed in brilliants and sprays of rubies." For these extraordinary functions the King and his entourage bedecked themselves with priceless ornaments. When in 1714 the Sun King received the ambassador of Siam, he chose a habit of black and gold bordered with diamonds, valued at 12,500,000 _livres_, or about $2,500,000. The weight was so great that he was compelled to change it soon after dinner. Besides the jewelry he wore on his own person, the royal host loaned for this event a garniture of diamonds and pearls to the Duke of Maine and another garniture of colored stones to the Count of Toulouse. When the King of France received foreign ambassadors, or celebrated, with pomp befitting his tastes, marriages and births in the royal family, the Court, weightily, stiffly, sumptuously appareled, thronged through the Hall of Mirrors--the Grand Gallery--in spectacular defile. These brilliant tableaux, the most brilliant of all Europe, had their source in the King's love of splendor and profusion. It was to please him that his courtiers and favorites staked fortunes at the gaming tables, outran each other in devising costly dresses, contrived novel equipages and unique dwellings. In his superb Court he found all the elements required to satisfy his pride, and glorify his reign. The Sun King was the most profligate host in all history. Determined to outdo the fabulous luxury of the feasts of Lucullus in early Roman times, and to outshine the storied splendor of Oriental princes, he entertained his Court and guests with lavish liberality, superbly indifferent to the cost of his boundless extravagance and considering not at all the day of reckoning that must come later for the Bourbon dynasty in France. To glow with commanding brilliance, like the Sun, in the center of his royal firmament, to overwhelm his subjects with his grandeur, and to dazzle the eyes of other nations--that was the ambition that Louis cherished and achieved. CHAPTER VII THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES We have pictured the Sun King and his imposing Court. We have told the story of the founding and construction of his luxurious palace, and described the spectacles and entertainments that made Versailles the most brilliant spot in Europe. We have said nothing of the women of Versailles and the part they played in the life of the Court and the influence they exerted in the affairs of France. Some of these women, though occupying the Queen's apartments and sharing the crown, lived an existence of bitter disappointment and thwarted affection--Queens in name only, and serving only as mothers of princes and future monarchs. Such were Marie Thérèse, the heart-sick wife of Louis XIV, and Marie Leczinska, the sad consort of Louis XV. About them were many brilliant women that graced the palace with their beauty and charm and made romantic court history that the chroniclers of the time fed on eagerly, and that the world has devoured eagerly ever since. Rich were those years in intrigue and adventure, and many and rapid were the changing fortunes of favorites. No one could tell what a day might bring forth. The woman of one hour might go the next. Self-interest stimulated the ambitious seekers of favors to constant endeavor. Grim, determined strugglers for social preference frequented the salons with smiling faces that sometimes glowed with pride and satisfaction, but more often veiled rankling disappointment and carking care. Even the great Madame de Maintenon, who successfully weathered the storms of the social struggle for so many years, once exclaimed: "I can hold out no longer. I wish that I were dead." And a short time before her demise, she observed bitterly, "One atones in full for youthful joys and gratification. I can see, as I review my life, that since I was twenty-two years of age--when my good fortune began--I have not been free from suffering for a moment; and through my life my sufferings increased." If Madame de Maintenon confessed so much in her last days, what must the other favorites of Versailles have experienced and felt? Each wore the mask of Comedy, with Tragedy gnawing beneath. These brilliant women, who seemed at times to be so happy, were little more than slaves, and we find them disclosed in the memoirs of the time as "penitents who make their apologies to history and lay bare to future generations their miseries, vexations and the remorse of their souls." The demands of Court life were constant and relentlessly exacting. The favorites, each one striving to outdo the others, knew not, from day to day, what way their destinies were leading them. "If," exclaimed Saint-Amand, "among these favorites of the King, there were a single one that had enjoyed her shameful triumphs in peace, that could have recalled herself happy in the midst of her luxury and splendor, one might have concluded that, from a merely human point of view, it is possible to find happiness in vice. But no; there was not even one. The Duchesse de Châteauroux and Marquise de Pompadour were no happier than the Duchesse de la Vallière and the Marquise de Montespan." The Sun King built Versailles and established his Court there. It was the women that made the life of Versailles--and gave their lives to it. The Court was a dazzling spider's web, and many a beautiful favorite became fatally entangled in its glittering meshes. Louis XIV, when twenty-two years of age, married Marie Thérèse, daughter of Philip IV of Spain. If he had been a simple, respectable young man of France, he might then have settled down and finished the story by "living happily ever after." But he was not. He was the King of France; so he pursued the royal road that his antecedents had blazed before him; and the way was made easy and pleasant for him. In treading the "primrose path of dalliance" he allowed no grass to grow under his feet. Louis made Marie Thérèse his Queen and consort in 1660, and it was only a year later when his fancy was caught by the dainty and attractive little Françoise Louise La Vallière. She was scarcely more than seventeen years of age when she became the favorite of the King. She was a delicate little creature, slightly lame, but most feminine in her appeal, and she caught the King by her very girlishness, as she played like a child with him in the parks of the palace. She was a simple maid of honor to Queen Marie Thérèse when she first attracted the notice of the King. A few years afterward she was created a duchess and, as such, retained the royal favor for a time. Then remorse seized upon La Vallière; she took the veil, and, as Sister Louise of Mercy, entered a convent, and gave her life in religious solitude to expiate the grief that she had caused the good Queen. The atonement was only just, for Louise de Vallière had made Marie Thérèse suffer bitterly the tortures of jealousy and offended conjugal affection. The Queen was not a woman of unusual intelligence, but she was sensible, tactful, and had a certain native dignity that compelled respect. She was, moreover, devoutly religious and devotedly attached to her children. She shared her royal Husband's conviction as to the divine right of kings, and what he did she considered could not be wrong. Of all the women that were associated with Louis, no one more truly admired him nor was more ardently devoted to him than his Queen. When they were first married, Louis treated Marie Thérèse with kindly consideration. He shed tears of sympathy and anguish while she suffered in giving birth to her first child. During the following dozen years, Marie Thérèse bore six sons and daughters, but all were lost except the Dauphin, and he died before ascending the throne. These bereavements sank deep into her heart and left a wound there that never healed. Added to this was the spectacle that she was called on repeatedly to witness of the King's infidelities with a succession of favorites. She was compelled to take these women into her household and make companions of them, knowing the while that they were really her rivals and persecutors. She was often heard to cry out concerning one or other of the favorites, "That woman will be the death of me." La Vallière she could afford to forgive, for the first mistress paid for the brief royal favor that she enjoyed by thirty-six years of rigid and austere penitence. Other favorites, however, pursued a path of pride, lowering their heads only under the "bludgeonings of Fate." Yet most of them, while Marie Thérèse lived, respected and honored her and felt a certain sense of shame in her presence. The brilliant and beautiful Madame de Montespan said, some time before her scandalous relations with the King had fairly begun, "God preserve me from being the King's mistress. If I were so I should feel ashamed to face the Queen." And yet Madame de Montespan, within a short time, assumed the role of favorite, and carried it out with great pride and arrogant assurance. The conviction is forced upon us, however, by the evidence of those that witnessed her ascendancy, that Montespan frequently felt the stings of self-reproach when she met the Queen, and that her haughty bearing concealed a genuine sense of shame. In the midst of luxury, power and brilliant success she seemed at times a small and mean character in the presence of the pious Marie Thérèse. As Louis' infidelities increased in number, his sense of guilt toward his consort was stamped deeper on his consciousness. He endeavored to make amends by paying her marked respect and treating her at times with distinguished tenderness and consideration. But Versailles was the high seat of elaborate and elegant insincerity, and no one was deceived by the formal courtesies paid by the Sun King to his unhappy wife. The deference that he displayed toward her in public appeared to the eyes of the world to be simply a cloak for essential neglect. And she, poor creature, with all the prestige of the Queen of France, was but a pitiful thing in the presence of the King. She tried to do her best to please him. The thought of offense to the Monarch beset her with fear. The Princess Palatine wrote of her once: "When the King came to her she was so gay that people remarked it. She would laugh and twinkle and rub her little hands. She had such a love for the King that she tried to catch in his eyes every hint of the things that would give him pleasure. If he ever looked at her kindly, that day was bright." Madame De Caylus tells us that the Queen had such a dread of her royal husband and such an inborn timidity that she hardly dared speak to him. Madame de Maintenon relates that the King, having once sent for the Queen, asked Madame to accompany Her Majesty so that she might not have to appear alone in the presence of her royal husband, and that when Madame de Maintenon conducted the Queen to the door of the King's room, and there took the liberty of pushing her ahead so as to force her to enter, she observed that Marie Therese fell into such a great tremble that her very hands shook with fright. And why should not the Queen tremble with unhappy apprehension when even the greatest favorite of all, Madame de Maintenon, found nothing in the life of the Court but bitter striving and heart misery? In the very midst of her splendor she exclaimed to a friend, "If I could only make clear to you the hideous _ennui_ that devours all of us, the troubles that fill our days! Do you not see that I am dying of sadness in the midst of a fortune that passes all imagination? I have had youth and beauty, I have sated myself with pleasure, I have had my hours of intellectual satisfaction, I have enjoyed royal favor, and yet I protest to you, my good friend, that all these conditions leave only a dreadful void." Marie Thérèse took up her abode at Versailles only when the palace was pronounced complete. She entered her apartments there in 1682, and breathed her last in July of the following year. The Queen's bedroom is filled with historic memories. The walls could whisper many tragic secrets and the halls might assemble by invocation innumerable ghostly figures of fair women that once stood close to the throne, wore royal robes, and nursed breaking hearts. In the Queen's bed chamber died Marie Therese and, later, Marie Leczinska, the Queen of Louis XV. There also the Dauphiness of Bavaria and the Duchess of Burgundy passed away; and, in that chamber, nineteen princes and princesses of the royal blood were born, among whom were King Philip V of Spain and Louis XV of France. The chamber was occupied first by the pious and devoted Marie Therese; after that by the Bavarian Dauphiness, who died in 1690 at the early age of twenty-nine; then by the Duchess of Burgundy, the mother of Louis XV. She died in 1712 at the age of twenty-six. Then Mary Anne Victoire, the Infanta of Spain, occupied the apartment for a brief time; after that, in 1725, came Marie Leczinska, the wife of Louis XV, who lived there for forty-three years, during which she gave birth to ten children. And, finally, the most appealing figure of all entered that fateful apartment--she who has been characterized as "the most poetic of women, who combined in herself all majesties and all sorrows, all triumphs and all humiliations, all feminine joys and tears, she whose very name inspires the emotion, tenderness and respect of the world"--Marie Antoinette. During the hundred years that followed the entrance of Marie Thérèse on the scene at Versailles, many extraordinary women came, shone and passed away. The Hall of Mirrors, had it the power to reflect the past, would afford a gallery of brilliant portraits. There would be, first, the devout Queen herself, virtuous, kind, considerate, loved by all her people and gently resigned to her fate. Then would follow a glittering train of proud and brilliant mistresses, some compelling by their beauty and gayety, others by their wit and sense. Sweet Madame de La Vallière had scarcely passed into obscurity when the haughty and imperious Marquise de Montespan assumed supremacy and became "the center of pleasures, of fortune, of hope and of terror to all that were dependent on the Court." No one could rightly claim to be an intimate of Montespan except the King, and at times he did not understand her. While apparently frank and free in her enjoyment of life and in her dealings with associates in the Court, Montespan always withheld enough to keep her best friends guessing. No one knew all her romance. She had experienced both extremes of fortune and when she gained favor with Louis she had acquired a confidence and a command of herself that influenced the King to a degree that even he would not have acknowledged. But the Court knew well the influence of Montespan and also the ministers, generals of the army and foreign ambassadors. Montespan succeeded Madame de La Vallière in favor about 1667 and she held her supremacy for ten years. Then came the turn of her fortunes, for Madame de Maintenon, fascinating in all that makes feminine charm and with an extraordinary mind in addition, supplanted Montespan and became the companion of the King until his dying day. Montespan, who had eight children by the King, left the Court in bitterness and humiliation and, like La Vallière, ended her life in a convent. Madame de Maintenon was the most distinguished woman in the history of Versailles. As a girl, in abject poverty, she married in 1652 the good old poet Scarron. There was no love lost there. She merely took the gentle-hearted man because he offered either to pay for her entrance into a convent or to make her his wife, and she found the latter alternative more acceptable. During the nine years she lived with Scarron, she maintained a brilliant salon, in which gathered the great intelluctual figures of the time. In 1669 Madame de Montespan gave Madame de Maintenon the charge of one of her sons. In that manner Montespan brought her governess in touch with her King, and, in so doing, sealed her own fate. Madame de Maintenon was a very wise woman. She did not entertain any sincere affection for the King, and, during all the years of his devotion to her, she never really loved him. She found a monarch much sated with the luxurious pleasures of the Court, and beginning to tire of his latest mistress, and she saw in the situation an opportunity that appealed to her ambition. With shrewd judgment she measured the character of Madame de Montespan, and she forecast in her mind the inevitable downfall of the proud and arrogant favorite. She was the very opposite in nature of Madame de Montespan. Her self-possession, poise, skill and tact, virtue and piety made an irresistible appeal to the tired King. That her piety was scarcely more than a cloak is betrayed by many of her own utterances. "Nothing is more clever than irreproachable behavior," she said at one time to close friends. Her behavior was both irreproachable and clever, and it obtained for her the satisfaction of her highest ambitions. She fascinated and lured the King, playing the coquette to him, but evading him with a baffling assumption of virtue, yielding just enough to draw the Monarch on; then playing the part of a prude, until, finally, she became in the eyes of the fascinated Louis the most desired of women. It was not long before Madame de Maintenon was so advanced in the King's favor that the affair was the gossip of the Court, and Madame de Montespan was compelled to stand by, a silent and bitter witness of her own defeat. It was a humiliating blow to Madame de Montespan to see the King with eyes only for Madame de Maintenon, saying witty and agreeable things to her, and ignoring his former favorite completely. It was not long before Madame de Montespan received her dismissal and, trembling with rage, descended the great staircase of Versailles never again to mount it. Madame de Maintenon was installed in special apartments at the head of the Marble Staircase, opposite the Hall of the King's Guards, and a new spirit dominated the halls of the palace. Under Madame de Montespan a "haughtiness in everything that reached to the clouds" had held the Court and attendants in fear, made the lives of all uneasy, and kept the atmosphere of the palace astir. With the entrance of Madame de Maintenon into favor a quieter tone pervaded Versailles. Madame was a woman of great intelligence and wit, and made all feel the gracious influence of her fine companionship. There was nothing ascetic in her piety, but, on the other hand, frivolity, immorality, and unworthy intrigue had no place in her circle. And all those that attended her held her in esteem and profound respect. With all her incomparable grace, she was in mind and spirit more truly the queen than mistress. She was older than the King and her influence was stronger on that account. She had comprehended the situation at Versailles with characteristic shrewdness. The King needed her. The Court of France needed her--and she needed both the King and the Court for the fulfillment of her supreme ambitions. As one writer has ironically put it, "With her gracious bearing and her calm, even temper, she must have seemed to a king of forty-six, who had buried his queen and cast off his mistress, the ideal wife for his old age. Then, too, she was pious and devout, she wished to withdraw the King from the world and give him to God; she had no ambitions (!), she desired to meddle in nothing, she was grateful when her husband took her into his confidence, but she longed only to save his soul. It seemed almost too wonderful to be true. It was not true." Madame de Maintenon was determined to be Queen of France, and she became so in soul as well as in fact. During her latter years she ruled, and the King was content to follow her advice and do her will. When the King was dying and she could gain no more at his hands, Madame de Maintenon effected a most satisfactory settlement for herself at St. Cyr, where she ended her days in piety and serene repose. Saint-Amand has observed truly that the women of Versailles were interesting not only from the moral point of view and as subjects of study, but on account of what he called the "symbolical importance of their relations to the history of France." Each seemed to be the living expression of the spirit of her day. Madame de Montespan was just such a superb, luxurious and magnificent beauty as Versailles needed to display to all the ambassadors that came to bask in the glitter of the Sun King's Court. She was the dazzling mistress that ruled imperiously over the gay and brilliant life of the palace, the very incarnation of haughty and triumphant France at the culminating point of the reign of Louis XIV. Then came Madame de Maintenon who, with her discreet and temperate nature, restored order, and was, for years, the living symbol of a changed condition in the Court in which piety and religious observance displaced licentious and voluptuous pleasure. And, along with this "wisdom of a repentant age," as Saint-Amand observes, "this reaction of austerity against pleasure, there was still the contrast of youth." It was the Duchess of Burgundy who was the living embodiment of this protest of joy against sadness, of springtime against cold winter, of licentiousness against the exacting restrictions of etiquette. Affairs in the Court had reached a turning point, and it was the logical mind of Madame de Maintenon that saw it. When Madame de Montespan was in the ascendancy, the Court had reached a condition of voluptuous indulgence that could not continue long. The Princess Palatine, wife of the brother of Louis XIV, wrote: "I hear and see every day so many villainous things that it disgusts me with life. You have good reason to say that the good Queen is now happier than we are, and if any one would do me, as to her and her mother, the service of sending me in twenty-four hours from this world to the other, I would certainly bear him no ill will." However we may question the soul sincerity of Madame de Maintenon, to her at least we must give credit for checking the corrupt tendencies of the Court and, with correcting finger, pointing the way toward better things. After Louis XIV, as Saint-Amand points out, the conditions of the Court of France were reflected even more vividly in the characters of the women of Versailles. "With compression and reserve," he observes, "there followed scandal. During the regency and the reign of Louis XV the morals of the Court fast deteriorated. A new epoch opened--troublous, lewd, dissolute. And was not the Duchess of Berry eccentric, capricious, passionate, the very image of the time? The favorites of Louis XV indicate to us in their own sad history the conditions of debasing humiliation and moral decadence of monarchical power. At first Louis XV chose his favorites from among ladies of quality--after that, from the middle classes, and, finally, from the common women of the people." He did not stop at the low-born shop girl or the frequenter of evil resorts. Louis began with the Duchesse de Châteauroux, the exquisite, who lasted, as we might say, but a day. From that he turned to the Marquise de Pompadour, a descent sufficiently significant, but it was only the beginning of decadence. The King's feeling for the Marquise was wholly unworthy, and it soon wore itself out. Her death caused him no regret. On the day of her funeral, during a heavy rainstorm, the King, standing at one of the windows of Versailles, watched the carriage bearing the body of his former favorite to Paris, and observed carelessly: "The Marquise will not have fine weather for her journey." Louis soon turned to Madame Dubarry--and a lower step was taken. The prestige and dignity of the Court suffered. "Vice," as Saint-Amand observes, "threw off all semblance of disguise" and yet, while the King slowly submerged his nature in a slough of corruption, and his associates made of the Court a carnival of immorality, there was still one figure in whom the traditional morals and manners were maintained--the Queen Marie Leczinska. She was the one pure and virtuous figure in the Court life. "Her domestic hearth," writes Saint-Amand, "was near the boudoir of the favorites, but it was she that preserved for the Court the traditions of decency and decorum. "Last of all of the women of Versailles, came Marie Antoinette, the woman who, in the most striking and tragic of all destinies, represents not solely the majesty and the griefs of royalty, but all the graces and all the agonies, all the joys and all the sufferings, of her sex." CHAPTER VIII THE VERSAILLES OF LOUIS XV Louis the Great, in commanding immense and costly edifices to rise out of the earth, was moved, at least in part, by a desire to assure the monarchy and its established ceremonial a worthy background. Louis XV, in the numerous graceful additions to the chateau made by him, sought only to satisfy his own caprice and convenience. When the Court returned from Vincennes to Versailles in 1722, seven years after the death of Louis XIV, one of the new King's first undertakings was the construction of the Salon of Hercules, adjoining the chapel court. This splendid hall, which to-day serves as the entrance to the _grand appartements_, owed its design to Robert de Cotte. As in the time of Louis XIV and Mansard, marble was chosen as the main decorative medium. All the sculptural ornaments are in bronze and marble. The bases of the pilasters are of gilded bronze. Carvings in wood and stucco were contributed by a Flemish artist named Verberckt, to whom Louis XV assigned most of the sculptural work done at the chateau during his reign. It was he that modeled the two doors placed on either side the bronze and marble chimney-piece, and the sculptures of the cornice. The painting on the ceiling--the Apotheosis of Hercules--was first seen by His Majesty as he passed through the room on his way to mass on a day in September, 1736. He examined it with much attention (some one has taken the trouble to record), and demonstrated his satisfaction by forthwith naming Sire Le Moine, the creator of the work, his chief painter. And thereon hangs a tragic tale. So great was Le Moine's pride in the honor thus done him that he determined to bring his work to still higher perfection. He resolved to finish each detail with the same exactitude as though he were painting a canvas that was to be observed at close range. But the more he applied his brush to bring out intricate effects, the less the design pleased him. In a sudden revulsion for the completed work, he effaced it and began the entire painting anew. This time he was better satisfied, though critics attached to the Court esteemed the second canvas not so good as the one destroyed. Upon the completion of the decorative scheme, the Sovereign bestowed upon Le Moine 5,000 _livres_ for the _Salon d'Hercule_. Then, to his chagrin, the over-careful artist discovered that he was out of pocket 24,000 _livres_ by the transaction. The loss turned his head; seized by grief and disappointment he committed suicide. This salon served during the reign of Louis XV as a ball-room, and here in March, 1749, the Monarch was formally presented with two young ostriches, brought from Egypt and destined for the Menagerie. In contrast to the passion for ostentation exhibited by Louis XIV, his great-grandson and successor was chiefly occupied in finding ways to evade his gilded prison. When the demand of the Court necessitated his presence at Versailles, he sought diversion in changing the apartments, making them over, demolishing here, reconstructing there--expending vast sums at all times. In 1738, finding the chamber of Louis XIV cold and inconvenient, he ordered another suite to be arranged for him on the second floor of the chateau above the Marble Court, and here he lived at his ease, untrammeled by etiquette and far from the curious gaze of courtiers. Small living rooms, kitchens, grills and bakeries were built on the Court of the Stags, and above the private apartments of Louis XIV rooms were added for the favorites of the King. The storied Staircase of the Ambassadors, by which ceremonious visitors were admitted to the presence of the Sun King, was leveled by the whim of Louis XV. Little mattered it to him that this superb entrance filled an essential role in the life of the royal residence. Forgetful of the scenes that had been enacted on the triumphal stair, the great-grandson of the builder of Versailles commanded the destruction of one of the noblest architectural works of the time. Its bas-reliefs, its incomparable marbles, its paintings on which Lebrun had exercised all the resources of his decorative genius--all disappeared at the nod of the ambitious Madame de Pompadour, who desired a theater to be erected on this site. In later years the theater disappeared to make room for the apartments of the King's fair daughter, Madame Adelaïde. The project to build another flight of steps ending in the Salon of Hercules was never carried out. Future guests were therefore admitted to the reception rooms by a dark, narrow entrance, or they made a long roundabout tour by way of the Queen's staircase across the Marble Court. The demolition of the stairway of honor was an irreparable loss. No other piece of wantonness equaled it in the tumultuous history of Versailles. However, there remain in the château a number of memorials to the judgment and good taste of the third master of the chateau, among them, the exquisitely decorated rooms of the King, re-made on the site of those dedicated to Louis XIV; the seven rooms of Madame Adelaide, and the suites set apart for the mistresses that succeeded one another in the favor of Louis the Fifteenth. These apartments, evolved out of the confusion of orders and counter-orders, remain to-day as examples of the pure and elegant decorative styles of the eighteenth century. Especially admired is the Council Room. Richly adorned, but always in charming taste, it represents the transition period between the more severe ornamental art peculiar to the reign of Louis XIV and the warmer effects beloved by Louis XV. Behind the Council Room were installed, on the west side of the Court of the Stags, a _cabinet de bains_ (bath-room) and a little room called the Salon of the Wigs. By these rooms access was gained to the Salon of Apollo. The billiard-room, where King Louis XIV was wont to play with his hounds before retiring, became the bed-room of his heir. After the year 1738, Louis XV occupied this chamber, and here he died thirty-six years later. It then became the sleeping-room of the ill-starred Louis XVI--who died in no bed. Locks, door-knobs, chimney ornaments--each detail in gilded bronze reflected rare taste and workmanship. The bed stood in an alcove enclosed between two columns, railed in by a balustrade of elaborate design, and curtained by wonderful tapestries. Ordinarily the King slept in this room; when he wakened in the morning he put on a robe and passed through the Council Room to the salon where the "rising" was celebrated with traditional pomp. If Louis XV indulged in an orgy of building and repair, it was because he pined with an _ennui_ that was only relieved by constant diversion. If at the cost of unnumbered thousands of francs, Madame de Pompadour urged on her royal lover and contrived new outlets for his craze for building, it was because she was adroit enough to enliven by this means an existence that often palled upon him. If, throughout the long series of decisions and contradictions regarding changes in the chateau, the Monarch commanded one day that a library and marble bath be added to the apartments of his daughter, and on another that useful halls, staircases and offices be removed; if he ordered the construction of a great Opera House with a facade like a temple, and, in another mood, made away with insignificant rooms that consumed no more space than would have filled a remote corner of this great hall of the theater--the motive was ever the same: to banish for the time-being the hovering specter of boredom and melancholy. "Louis XV," comments the author of "France Under Louis XV," "was not a man that sought relief from ceremony and adulation in any useful work; but, on the other hand, this dull grandeur was not dear to his heart; he did not derive from it the majestic satisfaction that it furnished to his predecessor. From youth to age the King was bored; he wearied of his throne, his court, himself; he was indifferent to all things, and unconcerned as to the weal or the woe of his people." One of the Salons on which he lavished all the art of his epoch was the reception-room of the royal Adelaïde. Here all was carved and gilded in a manner exquisite beyond words--chimney, doors, ceiling, window embrasures, mirror frames. Musical instruments were employed as sculpture _motifs_, for in this room the princess liked to sit and play her violoncello. In the dining-room, the decorative designs were delicately carved rosettes, arabesques, garlands of fruits and flowers, crowns and medallions. The supreme ruler of Louis XV's affections--the amazing Madame Dubarry--was lodged "in a suite of delectable boudoirs" facing the Marble Court, above the private apartments of the King. Everywhere appeared the initial _L_ linked with the torches of Love. One of the objects most admired in the drawing-room was an English piano-forte, with a case adorned with rosewood medallions, blue and white mosaics and gilded metal. In this room there were chests of drawers of antique lacquer and ebony, statues of marble, and garnishings of sculptured bronze. At night all was ablaze with the lights of the great luster of rock-crystal that hung from the center of the ceiling, and had cost, it was said, a sum equaling three thousand American dollars. In varying form, but with equal richness, all the apartments of Dubarry were beautified at the King's behest. In January, 1747, the "theater of the little apartments" of the King was inaugurated by a representation of "_Tartuffe_" with Madame de Pompadour in the cast. The King frequently permitted himself to be distracted with music and the play in this hall in the Little Gallery. Here was an orchestra of twenty-eight musicians, a ballet, and a chorus of twenty-six, under the direction of Monsieur de Bury, Lully's successor as master of the Court music. Actors, singers, dancers, all were supplied with gorgeous costumes, and given the services of Sire Notrelle, the most celebrated wig-maker in Paris, who had in his day a prodigious vogue. One of his advertisements announced his ability to imitate the coiffures of "gods, demons, heroes and shepherds, tritons, cyclops, naiads and furies." Astounding were the head-dresses of the actors and actresses that graced the stage of Versailles. Invitations to a dramatic performance were given by the King himself, and, for many years, to men guests only. Sometimes the Pompadour played the comedies of Voltaire, whom she favored against the will of all the royal family. Occasionally, performances were of necessity postponed out of respect to a member of the Court that had been slain in a duel; but not for long did the King and his train pause in their restless pursuit of pleasure. A new theater was installed, with more room for auditors, troupe and musicians. Finally, in 1753, the Opera House was begun according to designs submitted by Gabriel, first architect to the King. After long delays the edifice was completed in time for the marriage fêtes of the Dauphin (Louis XVI) and Marie Antoinette, Archduchess of Austria. The hall of the Opera was so surpassingly fine in its dress of fine woodwork, green marble and gilding that a writer of the period, addressing a friend in Paris, where all were discontented with the Opera House just built in the capital, bade him "come with the crowd of curious folk to Versailles and admire the magnificent building of the Court Opera. Besides the beautiful outer view it presents," said he, "and the splendor of its ensemble, the mechanism of the interior is amazing." In this imposing auditorium the Court of Louis XVI heard the operas of Lully and Rameau, the tragedies of Racine and Voltaire. Here at a banquet in October, 1789, Louis XVI called on his supporters at Versailles to oppose the Revolution. And a short time later, the hall of the Opera served as a meeting-place for the insurrectionists. In 1837, Louis Phillipe, last of the Bourbon kings, restored the building and redecorated it in red marble. In memory of Louis XIV, the reigning King commanded his troupe to perform a comedy by Molière. Extracts from Meyerbeer's opera, _Robert le Diable_, and a piece written by Auber concluded the fête organized by this monarch to recall the golden days of Louis the Superb. When, in the summer of 1855, Napoleon III entertained Queen Victoria at Versailles, the supper that terminated a day of brilliant celebrations was laid in the banquet hall of the Opera. The last theatrical performance given in this worthy memorial to the building enterprise of Louis XV was witnessed by Napoleon III, Empress Eugénie, and the King of Spain. CHAPTER IX THE TWILIGHT OF THE BOURBON KINGS It was on a May morning in the year 1770 that the child-bride of the Dauphin of France arrived at Versailles--the graceful, winsome, golden-haired Marie Antoinette, daughter of Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria. The future Queen of France was then not fifteen years of age, and her affianced husband was but a few months older. A letter in her own hand, dated at Versailles on the 24th of May, 1770, describes the incidents of her ceremonious journey from Austria, and her reception by Louis XV and his heir. Other letters to her family give us glimpses of the wedding in the chapel of Versailles, of the fêtes, the balls at the palace, the function of distributing bread and wine to the people, the hunts in nearby forests, the dances, musicales and informal assemblages of the royal family in the intimate apartments of the chateau. "Our life here is perpetual movement," wrote the Dauphine to her sister; and to her mother she sent this quaint epistle a few weeks after her arrival in France: "You wish to know how I spend my time habitually. I will say, therefore, that I rise at ten o'clock or nine, or half-past nine, and after dressing I say my prayers; then I breakfast, after which I go to my aunts' (Madame Adelaïde, Victoire and Sophie), where I usually meet the King. At eleven I go to have my hair dressed. At noon the Chambre is called, and any one of sufficient rank may come in. I put on my rouge and wash my hands before everybody; then the gentlemen go out; the ladies stay, and I dress before them. At twelve is mass; when the King is at Versailles I go to mass with him and my husband and my aunts. After mass we dine together before everybody, but it is over by half-past one, as we both eat quickly. (Marie Antoinette always found the custom of eating in public most distasteful.) I then go to Monsieur the Dauphin; if he is busy I return to my own apartments, where I read, I write, or I work, for I am embroidering a vest for the King, which does not get on quickly, but I trust that, with God's help, it will be finished in a few years! At three I go to my aunts', where the King usually comes at that time. At four the Abbé (her literary mentor) comes to me; at five the master for the harpsichord, or the singing-master, till six. At half-past six I generally go to my aunts' when I do not go out. You must know that my husband almost always comes with me to my aunts'. At seven, card-playing till nine. When the weather is fine I go out; then the card-playing takes place in my aunts' apartments instead of mine. At nine, supper; when the King is absent my aunts come to take supper with us; if the King is there, we go to them after supper, and we wait for the King, who comes usually at a quarter before eleven; but I lie on a large sofa and sleep till his arrival; when he is not expected we go to bed at eleven. Such is my day. "I entreat you, my very dear mother, to, forgive me if my letter is too long. I ask pardon also for the blotted letter, but I have had to write two days running at my toilet, having no other time at my disposal." In the winter the Court made merry with sleighing, skating and dancing parties, and formal affairs in honor of foreign princes. "There is too much etiquette here to live the family life," lamented the child to her mother. "Altogether, the Court at Versailles is a little dull, the formalities are so fatiguing. But I am happy, for Monsieur the Dauphin is very polite to me and always attentive." In another letter she recounted the triumph attending the first presentation of the opera _Iphigénie_, by Gluck. "The Dauphin applauded everything and Gluck showed himself very well pleased. . . . He has written me some pieces that I sing to the harpsichord." Several times a week, the awkward, bashful boy who was to become Louis XVI of France pleased his light-hearted wife by taking dancing lessons with her. Hours were spent with him in the park at Versailles, skipping about, laughing, playing pranks like the little girl she was. Sometimes there were charades, and plays by amateurs and professionals behind the "closed doors" of their own rooms. In 1774, four years after the marriage of Marie Antoinette to the Dauphin, Louis XV was taken ill of smallpox during a sojourn at the Little Trianon, and was removed to Versailles. Within a fortnight he was dead, and a scandalous reign was ended. "The rush of the courtiers, with a noise like thunder, as they hastened to pay homage to the new sovereign," says a narrator of the Queen's story, "was the first announcement of the great event to the young heir and his wife." The new King had not yet reached his twentieth year. "God help and protect us!" they both cried on their knees. "We are too young to reign!" As Queen of France, Marie Antoinette occupied a series of superbly appointed rooms in the left wing of the palace. Beyond a dark passageway were her husband's apartments. Her bed-chamber was the scene of the formal toilet, a ceremony always irksome to the youthful sovereign. In this sumptuous room, where queens had borne kings-to-be, and had closed their eyes forever upon a melancholy existence, she gave birth to four children. The royal bed was raised on steps and surrounded by a gilt balustrade; nearby was a gorgeously fitted dressing-table. There were also armchairs, we are told, with down cushions, "tables for writing, and two chests of drawers of elaborate workmanship. The curtains and hangings were of rich but plain blue silk. The stools for those that had the privilege of being seated in the royal presence, with a sofa for the Queen's use, were placed against the walls, according to the formal custom of the time. The canopy of the bed was adorned with Cupids playing with garlands and holding gilt lilies, the royal flower." Other rooms prepared for the Queen faced an inner court, and here with music, small talk and embroidery she spent contented moments, remote from the demands of her high estate. Usually the mistress of Versailles was wakened at eight o'clock by a lady of the bedchamber, whose first duty it was to proffer a ponderous volume containing samples of the dresses that were in the royal wardrobe. Marie Antoinette marked with pins, taken from an embroidered cushion, the costumes she wished to put on for the various events of the day--the brocaded and hooped Court dress for the morning mass, the negligee to be worn during leisure hours in her own living rooms, and the gown to be donned for evening festivities. These vital matters determined, the Queen proceeded with her bath and her breakfast of chocolate and rolls. She was accustomed then to return to bed, and, with her tapestry-work in hand, receive various persons attached to her service. Physicians, reader, secretary, came to ask her wishes and do her bidding. At noon followed the "rising," and the stately progress of the Queen and her attendants through the Salon of Peace to the dazzling Hall of Mirrors, where the King awaited her on his way to chapel. Often at this hour there were admitted to the Grand Gallery of Mirrors respectful groups of commoners, who gathered to watch the passing of the gracious Marie Antoinette beside the husband whose uncouth gait and features were ever in forbidding contrast to her own comely bearing. Amid all the follies and splendors of life at Versailles appeared the sturdy American figure of Dr. Benjamin Franklin. In the year 1767 he was presented at Court on the occasion of his first visit to Paris. "You see," said he, in a letter to Miss Stevenson, daughter of his landlady in London, "I speak of the Queen as if I had seen her; and so I have, for you must know I have been at Court. We went to Versailles last Sunday, and had the honor of being presented to the King, Louis XV. In the evening we were at the _Grand Convert_, where the family sup in public. The table was half a hollow square, the service of gold. . . . An officer of the Court brought us up through the crowd of spectators, and placed Sir John (Pringle) so as to stand between the Queen and Madame Victoire. The King talked a good deal to Sir John, and did me, too, the honor of taking some notice of me. "Versailles has had infinite sums laid out in building it and supplying it with water. Some say the expenses exceeded eighty millions sterling ($400,000,000). The range of buildings is immense; the garden-front most magnificent, all of hewn stone; the number of statues, figures, urns, etc., in marble and bronze of exquisite workmanship, is beyond conception. But the water-works are out of repair, and so is a great part of the front next the town, looking, with its shabby, half-brick walls, and broken windows, not much better than the houses in Durham Yard. There is, in short, both at Versailles and Paris, a prodigious mixture of magnificence and negligence with every kind of elegance except that of cleanliness, and what we call tidiness." Franklin next appeared at the Court of Versailles upon the momentous occasion of the ratification of the alliance signed in 1778 by France and America. Dressed in a black velvet suit with ruffles of snowy white, white silk stockings and silver buckles, the emissary of the United States appeared in a gorgeous coach at the portals of Versailles. It is related that the chamberlain hesitated a moment to admit him, for he was without the wig and sword Court etiquette demanded, "but it was only for a moment; and all the Court were captivated at the democratic effrontery of his conduct." Franklin and the four envoys that accompanied him were conducted to the dressing-room of Louis XVI, who, without ceremony, assured them of his friendship for the new-born country they represented. In the evening the Americans were invited to watch the play of the royal family at the gaming-table, and Dr. Franklin, so Madame Campan relates, "was honored by the particular notice of the Queen, who courteously desired him to stand near to her, and as often as the game did not require her immediate attention, she took occasion to speak to him in very obliging terms." The _New York Journal_, under date of July 6, 1778, recounted another picturesque detail of this presentation of the American envoys at Versailles. When they entered the inner part of the palace, so the dispatch ran, "they were received by _les Cents Suisses_ (Swiss Guards), the major of which announced, '_Les Ambassadeurs des treize provinces unies,' i.e., The Ambassadors from the Thirteen United Provinces." During the Revolution in America the newspapers made much of Marie Antoinette's liking for Benjamin Franklin. Among others, the _New Hampshire Gazette_ printed this story, which went the rounds of the States. "Franklin being lately in the gardens of Versailles, showing the Queen some electrical experiment, she asked him in a fit of raillery if he did not dread the fate of Prometheus, who was so severely served for stealing fire from Heaven. 'Yes, please your Majesty' (replied old Franklin, with infinite gallantry), 'if I did not behold a pair of eyes pass unpunished which have stolen infinitely more fire from Jove than I ever did, though they do more mischief in a week than I have done in all my experiments.'" On January 20, 1783, at the office of the Count de Vergennes at Versailles, in the presence of Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams, the representatives of England, France and Spain affixed their signatures to the preliminary documents declaring war at an end between America and England. A little over seven months later, on September 3, 1783, at the Hotel de York in Paris, the final treaty between Great Britain and the United States was signed. Later on the same day, the definitive treaty between England and France was concluded at Versailles. When Franklin was about to take leave of France and return to Philadelphia, Louis XVI presented to him the royal portrait, framed by 408 diamonds, the value of which was estimated at $10,000. No less than his predecessor had the new Monarch of Versailles and his gay, ease-loving, oft-times imprudent young wife disregarded the traditions and dignity of the Sun King's palace. If Louis XV demolished the Staircase of the Ambassadors and mutilated the _grands appartements_, Marie Antoinette imitated his desecrations in the royal dwelling by commanding any change that pleased her fancy, by reducing rooms of state to mere private chambers, and shutting herself off from the irritating claims of Court life. Many of the trees in the park died that had been set out at the proud command of Louis XIV. The gardens became neglected and desolate. The famous Labyrinth of Aesop's fountains disappeared. A grove planted on the place formerly beautified by the Grotto of Thetis (or Tethys) gave sanctuary to the impious scheming of that Madame de Lamotte, whose intrigue and evil ambition brought upon the Queen in 1785 the scandal of the Diamond Necklace, with the subsequent dramatic arrest of Cardinal de Rohan in the fateful Hall of Mirrors, and the humiliating trial of Marie Antoinette. Bored by incessant publicity, finding no pleasure in the formal promenades of the palace park, the Queen pleaded for "a house of her own," where she could find recreation after her own tastes, unobserved by the curious and the critical. Louis XV had built near the Grand Trianon a small villa for Madame de Pompadour. On the modest estate were several small outbuildings, to which were added a pavilion for open-air pastimes and a "French garden." It was Gabriel, architect of the Opera House, that drew the plans for the little chateau, begun in 1762. But Madame de Pompadour died before the villa of her fancy was completed. Dubarry succeeded her as chatelaine, and richly embellished the interior of the delectable retreat. When Marie Antoinette desired to possess a _maison de plaisance_ of which she should be sole mistress, the King, always eager to satisfy her whims, bade her accept for her own use both the Grand and the Petit Trianon. Said he, graciously, "These charming houses have always been the repair of favorites of the reigning king--consequently they should now be yours." The Queen was much pleased with the gift and with her husband's gallantry. She responded, laughingly, that she would accept the Little Trianon on condition that he would not come there except when invited! During the tenancy of Marie Antoinette, some of the rooms of the Petit Trianon were altered according to the elaborate style that received the name of Louis XVI. Sculptures, wood-work, gilded chimneys, staircases, were fashioned by the hands of master artists. No sooner was she possessor of her new domain than the Queen desired a garden after the pastoral English style that was then coming in favor. A lake, a stream with ornamental bridges, clusters of trees, supplanted the symmetrical design of a botanical garden that had been much admired. A gallant attached to the Court wrote an _Elégie_ in praise of the Petit Trianon, its flowers, tulip trees and fragrant walks. At one end of the lake a hamlet was created, with a picture-mill and a dairy, fitted with marble tables and cream jugs of rare porcelain. There was also a farm where the Queen pastured a splendid herd of Swiss cattle. Among these bucolic surroundings the King of France, forgetful of his people and their growing anguish, played shepherd to his shepherdess Queen. In the Temple of Love they basked on summer days among rosy vines, while the music of Court players wafted through the trees from a nearby pavilion. Every Sunday during the summer season there was a ball in the park, where any one might dance whose clothes and behavior were respectable. The Queen, sensing the need to propitiate a disgruntled populace, shared in the afternoon's revelries, petted the children that flocked about her knees, chatted with their nurses and parents. Often, Marie Antoinette resided for weeks at a time at her favorite dwelling, fishing in the lake, tending her herd, picking berries in her garden patch. The King and the princes came every day for supper, and were received by a Queen dressed in white with a fichu of net--sometimes in a "rumpled gown of cotton." A score of favorites composed the Court of the Little Trianon. All others were excluded. Heavy silks and towering head-dresses were forgotten in the simple life of the Petit Trianon. Tiresome etiquette was banished, together with thoughts of international matters of portent and impending calamity. Occasionally, comedies were given, or groves and canal were illuminated in honor of a visitor of high degree--the Emperor Joseph of Austria (brother of the Queen), the King of Sweden, ambassadors, princes, archduchesses. Surrounded by the persons and the objects she most loved--free to go and come unattended by a train of attendants--those were the least unhappy days in the life of Marie Antoinette at Versailles. At the Little Trianon, Madame Vigée Lebrun made, in 1787, the painting of Marie Antoinette with her children, which the Queen's intimates counted the truest likeness among all her portraits. Two years later, on the fifth day of October, the Queen was at Trianon when news came of the approach of the mob of starving, angry women that stormed the road from Paris, swept across the Place d'Armes, and surged about the doors of the despised palace. On that day, Marie Antoinette left her "little house," never to see it again. For many months the clouds had been gathering on the horizon of the Bourbon King, whose extravagance and weak will were matched by the childish indiscretions of his Austrian consort. In November, 1787, the Notables assembled at Versailles in the grand hall of the palace guards. In May, 1789, the Salon of Hercules witnessed the presentation of the twelve hundred deputies elected by the people in all parts of France to the States-General. The Assembly, "the true era of the birth of the French people," opened on May fifth in the immense _Salle des Menus_, on the Paris Avenue, outside the gates of the palace. During the thirty days that the deputies sat inactive under the oratory of the King, of Necker, Mirabeau and Robespierre, work ceased throughout the kingdom. "He who had but his hands, his daily labor, to supply the day, went to look for work, found none, begged, got nothing, robbed. Starving gangs over-ran the country; wherever they found any resistance, they became furious, killed, and burned. Horror spread far and near; communications ceased, and famine went on increasing." At last the Assembly was founded, but the nation remained in tumult, the King vacillating, the Queen in retirement, mourning the death of the little Dauphin. On June twentieth, the people's representatives gathered, in spite of the King, in the bare tennis-court, without the walls of the chateau, and made oath as citizens of France never to adjourn until they had given their country a constitution. On the same day Marie Antoinette inscribed a letter from Versailles whose import was in piteous contrast to the prattling epistles of her girlhood. "The Chambre Nationale is declared," she wrote. "They are deliberating, but I am in despair to see nothing come of their deliberations; every one is greatly alarmed. The nobility may be wiped out forever. But the kingdom will be calm; if not, one cannot estimate the evils by which we shall be menaced. . . . Not far away civil war exists, and, besides, bread is lacking. God give us courage!" Three days later the King read to the deputies an arbitrary declaration that had been composed by interested advisers. He commanded the assembly to disperse, and met a calm and silent resistance. Workmen entered to demolish the amphitheater, but laid down their tools on the declaration of Mirabeau that "whoever laid hands on a deputy was a traitor, infamous and worthy of death." At last the King, wearied and confused, commanded, "Let them alone." The parterres, the courts, even the salons of the palace swarmed with ruffians that had marched out from Paris to menace Versailles. By June 25th there was open revolt in the capital. "A stormy, heavy, gloomy time, like a feverish, painful dream," prefaced the furious deeds of the 14th of July. Every day witnessed some new outbreak. July was a month of insurrections and murders. The Bastille was assailed by rioters. News came to the King that the ancient fortress had fallen. "Sire," announced the Duke of Orleans to the sleepy Monarch in his bedchamber, "it is a Revolution!" Lafayette, back from the war across the sea, became the unwilling leader of the National Guard. On the evening of the first of October occurred the fatal banquet of the King's guard, held, not in the Orangery or in some other informal hall, but in the palace theater, where no fête had been given since the visit of the Emperor Joseph II of Austria. A French writer describes the scene. "The doors open. Behold the King and the Queen! The King has been prevailed on to visit them on his return from the chase. The Queen walks round to every table, looking beautiful, and adorned with the child she bears in her arms. "So beautiful and yet so unfortunate! As she was departing with the King, the band played the affecting air: 'O Richard, O my King, abandoned by the whole world!' Every heart melted at that appeal. Several tore off their cockades, and took that of the Queen, the black Austrian cockade, devoting themselves to her service. . . . "On the 3rd of October, another dinner; they grow more daring, their tongues are untied, and the counter-revolution showed itself boldly. In the long gallery, and in the apartments, the ladies no longer allow the tricolor cockade to circulate. With their handkerchiefs and ribands they make white cockades, and tie them themselves." Stories of royalist revels and open insults to the cockade of the Revolutionists still further inflamed starving Paris. On the fifth of October there were thousands of inhabitants that had tasted no food for thirty hours. And then the ravenous women of Paris arose--mothers, shop-girls, courtesans--and, gathering recruits as they swept through the restless city streets, they rolled like an angry flood out the eleven-mile road to Versailles. The King was hunting at Meudon; a courier was sent for him. The Queen Consort was in her retreat at Trianon. The messenger found her, sad and contemplative, seated in her grotto. Hastily she was brought back to the palace. Later, she and the King would have fled the anger of the crowd whose shouts of "Bread! Bread!" echoed across the Marble Court to the windows of the royal apartments. But their decision, put off from moment to moment, came too late. The gates were closed. They were prisoners within the walls of Versailles. "It was a rainy night," relates a French historian of the Revolution. "The crowd took shelter where they could; some burst open the gates of the great stables, where the regiment of Flanders was stationed, and mixed pell-mell with the soldiers. Others, about four thousand in number, had remained in the Assembly. The men were quiet enough, but the women were impatient at that state of inaction; they talked, shouted, and made an uproar. "The King's heart was beginning to fail him; he perceived that the Queen was in peril. However agonizing it was to his conscience to consecrate the legislative work of philosophy, at ten o'clock in the evening he signed the Declaration of Rights. "Mounier was at last able to depart. He hastened to resume his place as president before the arrival of that vast army from Paris, whose projects were not yet known. He reentered the hall; but there was no longer any Assembly; it had broken up; the crowd, ever growing more clamorous and exacting, had demanded that the prices of bread and meat should be lowered. Mounier found in his place, in the president's chair, a tall, fine, well-behaved woman, holding the bell in her hand, who left the chair with reluctance. He gave orders that they were to try to collect the deputies again; meanwhile, he announced to the people that the King had just accepted the constitutional article. The women, crowding about him, then entreated him to give them copies of them; others said: 'But, Monsieur President, will this be very advantageous? Will this give bread to the poor people of Paris?' Others exclaimed: 'We are very hungry. We have eaten nothing to-day.' Mounier ordered bread to be fetched from the bakers. Provisions then came in on all sides. They all began eating in the hall with much clamour." At midnight Lafayette arrived at the head of twenty thousand men of the National Guard. To the amazement of the soldiers and onlookers, he dared to pass unattended through the palace doors to the Bull's Eye. "He appeared very calm," says Madame de Staël, Necker's observant daughter. "Nobody ever saw him otherwise." When he had reported his arrival to the King, Lafayette stationed guards about the palace, and, worn with hours of marching in the rain and mud, so far forgot his duty to his Sovereign and his command that he retired to his house in the town of Versailles to seek sleep. In the masses of people outside the gates were thieves and men of violence. "What a delightful prospect was opened for pillage in the wonderful palace of Versailles, where the riches of France had been amassed for more than a century!" exclaims the commentator, Michelet. Here follows a dramatic account of what followed, based on the story of Madame de Staël, who witnessed many of the bloody scenes in person. "At five in the morning, before daylight, a large crowd was already prowling about the gates, armed with pikes, spits, and scythes. About six o'clock, this crowd, composed of Parisians and people of Versailles, scale or force the gates, and advance into the courts with fear and hesitation. The first who was killed, if we believe the Royalists, died from a fall, having slipped in the Marble Court. According to another and a more likely version, he was shot dead by the body-guard. "Some took to the left, toward the Queen's apartment, others to the right, toward the chapel stairs, nearer the King's apartment. On the left, a Parisian running unarmed, among the foremost, met one of the body guard, who stabbed him with a knife. The guardsman was killed. On the right, the foremost was a militia-man of the guard of Versailles, a diminutive locksmith, with sunken eyes, almost bald, and his hands chapped by the heat of the forge. This man and another, without answering the guard, who had come down a few steps and was speaking to him on the stairs, strove to pull him down by his belt, and hand him over to the crowd rushing behind. The guards pulled him towards them; but two of them were killed. They all fled along the Grand Gallery, as far as the _Oeil-de-boeuf_ (Bull's Eye), between the apartments of the King and the Queen. Other guards were already there. "The most furious attack had been made in the direction of the Queen's apartment. The sister of her _femme de chambre_, Madame de Campan, having half opened the door, saw a guardsman covered with blood, trying to stop the furious rabble. She quickly bolted that door and the next, put a petticoat on the Queen, and tried to lead her to the King. An awful moment! The door was bolted on the other side! They knock again and again. The King was not within; he had gone round by another passage to reach the Queen. At that moment a pistol was fired, and then a gun close to them. 'My friends, my dear friends,' cried the Queen, bursting into tears, 'save me and my children!' At length the door was opened, and she rushed into the King's apartment. "The crowd was knocking louder and louder to enter the _Oeil-de-boeuf_. The guards barricaded the place, piling up benches, stools, and other pieces of furniture; the lower panel was burst in. They expected nothing but death; but suddenly the uproar ceased, and a kind clear voice exclaimed: 'Open!' As they did not obey, the same voice repeated: 'Come, open to us, body-guard; we have not forgotten that you men saved us French Guards at Fontenoy.' "It was indeed the French Guards, now become National Guards, with the brave and generous Hoche, then a simple sergeant-major--it was the people, who had come to save the nobility. They opened, threw themselves into one another's arms, and wept. "At that moment, the King, believing the passage forced, and mistaking his saviors for his assassins, opened his door himself, by an impulse of courageous humanity, saying to those without: 'Do not hurt my guards.' "The danger was past, and the crowd dispersed; the thieves alone were unwilling to be inactive. Wholly engaged in their own business, they were pillaging and moving away the furniture. The grenadiers turned that rabble out of the castle. "Lafayette, awakened but too late, then arrived on horseback. He saw one of the body-guards whom they had taken and dragged near the body of one of those killed by the guards, in order to kill him by way of retaliation. 'I have given my word to the King,' cried Lafayette, 'to save his men. Cause my word to be respected.' "He then entered the castle. Madame Adelaïde, the King's aunt, went up to him and embraced him: 'It is you,' cried she, 'who have saved us.' He ran to the King's cabinet. Who would believe that etiquette still subsisted? A grand officer stopped him for a moment, and then allowed him to pass: 'Sir,' said he seriously, 'the King grants you _les grandes entrées_.' "The King showed himself at the balcony, and was welcomed with the unanimous shout of 'God save the King.' 'Vive le Roi!' "At that moment several voices raised a formidable shout: 'The Queen!' The people wanted to see her in the balcony. She hesitated: 'What!' said she, 'all alone?' 'Madame, be not afraid,' said Lafayette. She went, but not alone, holding an admirable safeguard--in one hand her daughter, in the other her son. The Court of Marble was terrible, in awful commotion, like the sea in its fury; the National Guards, lining every side, could not answer for the center; there were fire-arms, and men blind with rage. Lafayette's conduct was admirable; for that trembling woman, he risked his popularity, his destiny, his very life; he appeared with her on the balcony, and kissed her hand. "The crowd felt all that; the emotion was unanimous. They saw there the woman and the mother, nothing more. 'Oh! how beautiful she is! What! is that the Queen? How she fondles her children!'" The King, overcome by dread, was forced to agree to the demand of the people that he go to Paris. In leaving his palace, he realized that he was finally surrendering all his claims to royalty. About noon on the sixth day of October, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, under the protection of the Marquis de Lafayette, turned their faces forever from Versailles. Little they knew that they were even then traveling the long road to the guillotine. A rabble of men and women surrounded them, some on foot, some in carts and carriages. "All were very merry and amiable in their own fashion, except a few jokes addressed to the Queen." Such was the end of royal Versailles. Who can contest its tragic grandeur? In these halls, these gardens, these secluded villas the supreme destiny of the Bourbon monarchy was achieved. They witnessed the apogee, the decline, and the ruin of the dynasty. CHAPTER X THE SHRINE OF ROYAL MEMORIES, THE SCENE OF WORLD ADJUSTMENTS It was not long after the enforced departure of Louis XVI and the Court that the immense sepulcher of regal glory was dismantled and forsaken. During the Revolution some of the furnishings were taken to Paris to supply the needs of the king and his family at the Tuileries. A number of pictures and objects of art contained in the palace and the two Trianons were removed to the Museum of the Louvre, which had been founded in 1775. Some of these paintings, including the _Joconde_ by da Vinci, and famous canvases by Titian, del Sarto, Rubens and Van Dyck, still hang on the walls of the first national gallery of France. Agitated discussions arose as to the final destiny of the palace and its contents. A group of law-makers would have sold the building outright. But in July, 1793, the Convention decreed the establishment at Versailles of a provincial school, a museum of art objects taken from the houses of those that had emigrated from troublous France, a public library, a French museum for painting and sculpture, and a natural history exhibition. There were, however, Revolutionaries that so despised the relics of royalty that they continued to urge from time to time the complete demolition of the palace and park--chief works of Louis XIV's reign. The most diligent defenders of the chateau were the inhabitants of the town of Versailles, who were keenly aware that the continued existence of the palace would insure a measure of prosperity to the community. They protested, that, just object of the people's venom as the edifice was, it nevertheless stood as a monument to the arts and crafts of France during two centuries. The assailants that made hideous the days of October fifth and sixth, 1789, had done comparatively little material damage within the palace precincts. Gun shots of the Paris mob had disfigured two statues at the main entry to the courtyard, had destroyed the grill that separated the Royal Court from the Court of the Ministers; lunges of their bayonets had broken the mirrors in the Grand Gallery, while pursuing the Guards to massacre them. Otherwise, the historic walls and gardens bore no evidence of Revolutionary fury. After several years of contention, plan and counter-plan, the Convention definitely saved Versailles for the nation by the decrees of 1794 and 1795. During this epoch of violence and revolt, thousands of articles were offered for sale at the stables of Versailles, in the presence of appointed representatives of the people. Linen, utensils, mirrors, clocks, cabinets, chandeliers, stoves, damask curtains, carriages, wines of Madeira, Malaga and Corinth, coffee, Sevres porcelains, engravings, paintings, drawings, and some fine furniture went for a song at this colossal auction. In 1796 the Minister of finance ordered that remaining pieces of furniture of great beauty and value be put on sale. In this way were summarily dispersed chairs of tapestry and gilt that would to-day command extravagant sums; desks of exquisite marquetry, at which kingly documents and _billets doux_ had been penned; dressing-tables whose mirrors had reflected the faces, sad or gay, frank or subtle, of queens and mistresses; wardrobes that had held the linens and brocades of princes and courtiers; clocks of gold and enamel that had registered the hours of portentous births and marriages. Tables of mosaic and satinwood, cushions of gold brocade, cameo medallions, porcelain panels, plaques of lacquer and bronze were included on the list of articles to be disposed of. In the original inventory, discovered in the library at Versailles, were included pieces of Saxony ware, Watteau figures, Sevres vases, dishes and cups, Beauvais tapestries, clocks made by Robin and de Sotian, candelabra of crystal, chandeliers of silver--all from the apartments of the King, the Queen and the Dauphin. For 20,000 francs there was sold a tapestry emblematic of the American Revolution. Creditors of the new Government were paid in furniture and art works whose value they estimated to please their own purses. A brochure published at Paris by Charles Davillier recites the romance of "The Sale of the Furnishings of Versailles during the Terror." To a certain Monsieur Lanchère, a former cab driver who had undertaken the conduct of military convoys and transports for the State, were assigned clocks, carpets, statuary, chests, secretaries and consoles that embarrassed every nook and corner of the spacious Paris mansion of which he became proprietor. "Paris," narrates Monsieur Davillier, "was gorged after the sale at the chateau of Versailles with priceless furniture and objects of _vertu_." Newspapers were filled with the advertisements of second-hand dealers offering to the public these souvenirs--redolent, splendid, tragic--of a dead-and-gone dynasty, of an epoch vanished never to return. The institutions whose establishment at Versailles definitely saved the chateau and its dependencies for posterity, were, at the Palace, a conservatory of arts and sciences and a library of 30,000 volumes; in the Kitchen Garden a school of gardening and husbandry; at the Grand Commune, a manufactory of arms; at the Menagerie, a school of agriculture. Halls that had echoed to the dance and the clink of gold at gaming-tables now heard profound lectures on history, ancient languages, mathematics, chemistry, and political economy! Classic exercises beneath the painted ceilings of these memoried rooms! Scholastic discourse where music and laughter had vibrated for a hundred extravagant years! The galleries at the Louvre contributed to the new Versailles museum all the canvases of French artists that it possessed. Fragonard and Greuze, Lebrun, Claude Lorrain, Mignard, Poussin, Rigaud, Vanloo, Vernet--all were represented, some of them by numerous examples of their graceful art. Besides, there was a Rubens Gallery, and two salons filled with the works of Paul Veronese. Some of these treasures were later removed to the Luxembourg Palace, where the French Senate was sitting, and to the palace of Saint-Cloud, residence of Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul. Little by little the canvases were dispersed, until, at the end of the Empire, the Versailles Museum of French Art ceased to be. At the beginning of the year 1800, Napoleon Bonaparte established at Versailles a branch of the _Hôtel des Invalides_ in Paris, and wounded veterans of the Revolution to the number of 2,000 were installed for two years in the vast apartments of Louis XV and in rooms overlooking the garden and the Court of Ministers. During this period several of the salons were opened to the people for exhibitions and assemblies, and the public were free to enjoy the park, the Orangery and the fragrant bosques of Trianon. Fêtes of the Republic frequently took place about a national altar raised near the Lake of the Swiss Guards, and a Tree of Liberty was planted with great solemnity in the court of the château, where the equestrian statue of Louis XIV now stands. In illuminating contrast to the regal celebrations it succeeded was this latter ceremony, which was inaugurated by a meeting in the historic Tennis Court, where loyal republicans took a new oath of hatred for all things royal, and swore devotion to the constitution. Into the dwelling of former sovereigns the people then crowded to witness the ceremony of breaking a scepter and crown into a thousand pieces. Next, they gathered around the Liberty Oak to consecrate it; they hung it with ribbons of the tricolor of France, a band played "a republican air," and an orator delivered a speech in commemoration of the glorious anniversary of the day on which "the last tyrant of the French" had been guillotined. Fortunately for the peace of mind of the Sixteenth Louis, he had no gift of prevision! With the beginning of Napoleon's reign, Versailles and the Trianon became once more part of the Crown lands. The Emperor ordered necessary repairs to be made. In the theater the royal troupe of comedians was sometimes heard. The canal, which had nearly dried up during the neglectful rule of the Republic, was again filled with water. The park and the facades of the palace were restored, and in the Gallery and State Apartments artists renewed the colors of the mural decorations. Many of the repairs and changes made by Dufour, Napoleon's architect, have remained to the present time. Certain parts of the palace giving on the courts were in ruins, Louis XV and his heir having had no money to spare for their restoration. In 1811, after the Peace of Vienna, Napoleon, then in residence at the Grand Trianon, took under advisement the complete reconstruction of the palace. In consternation he surveyed the tumbling walls and the general confusion that confronted him during one of his promenades in the park and Orangery. "Why," cried he, "did the Revolution, which destroyed everything else, spare the chateau of Versailles! Then I would not have had on my hands this embarrassing legacy from Louis XIV--an old chateau poorly built--one much favored without just cause." Architects busied themselves with innumerable plans for re-making the shabby pile. Some would have torn down the Council Hall, the bed-chamber of Louis XIV, the antechamber of the Bull's Eye, and all the rest of the palace except the apartments of the King and Queen, the Gallery with the salons at either end, the Chapel and the Opera House. Napoleon was willing to spend 6,000 francs on the construction of suites for himself and his family "and fifty others." "Then," said he, "we could perhaps come to Versailles to pass a summer." The disasters of the year 1812 and the fall of the Empire saved the palace from the threatened renovation. When Louis XVIII ascended the throne of his Bourbon ancestors after the extinction of Napoleon's Star of Hope, he conceived a new plan "to put the chateau of Versailles in a habitable state." During the next six years (1814-1820) the King restored the Hall of Mirrors and all that was especially associated with Louis XIV. He finished the facade on the Paris side, begun by Gabriel under Louis XV, and built a pavilion corresponding to the one designed and erected by this same architect. He did away with a maze of small apartments, cleaned and simplified the interior, restored painted ceilings and gilt embellishments, and with great care put in order the entire palace and its surroundings. The chapel was repaired and blessed anew by the Bishop of Strassbourg. Many State visitors came to see Versailles, even in the days when it was shorn of its glory. Pope Pius VII was there in 1805. From the balcony outside the Gallery of Mirrors he bestowed his benediction upon a crowd that stood below on the terraces. Two days later the Salon of Hercules was the scene of a ball in celebration of the coronation of the first Emperor of France. In May, 1814, Czar Alexander I of Russia visited Versailles with his two brothers, following the example of Peter the Great, who had been there when Louis XV was on the throne. Another historic cortège was composed of Frederick William III of Prussia and his two sons, one of whom, Prince William, was to return to Versailles in the year 1870 on a mission less peaceful. The gates of Versailles opened to the Duke of Wellington in 1818. Other visitors there were that came to Versailles and, by the good will of Louis XVIII, lodged there--homeless dependents, who dried their laundry at the stately windows of the palace and installed goats and cows on the roofs overlooking the inert bronze fountains. After the reign of Charles X all the occupants at the chateau left, following the Revolution of July, 1830. Once more the question arose as to the disposition of the palace. Empty, abandoned, "What shall we do with it?" cried the ministers. The answer was found in the project proposed to Louis Philippe that Versailles should become a national depository for souvenirs of French history, surrounded by the splendors of Louis the Great. This suggestion had the king's approval and cooperation. A confusion of offices, rooms, staircases and passages was simplified in the two wings, and the main body of the chateau and long galleries were created for the reception of thousands of battle pictures, portraits and pieces of sculpture, reflecting events and personalities concerned with the story of France. The Queen's bed-chamber, the apartments of Madame de Maintenon and of the daughters of Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour were among those that were altered. In the entrance court of the chateau were placed a group of statues from the Paris bridge _de la Concorde_, all of them so massive that they were out of proportion to the low surrounding walls. On the face of the north and south wings Louis Philippe caused to be engraved the dedication of the huge pile and its contents "To all the Glories of France." The sum expended under the direction of the architect, Nepveu, for the creation of the National Museum of Versailles, exceeded 20,000,000 francs (about $4,000,000). The inauguration of the museum in June, 1837, was attended by Louis Philippe and his Queen, by officers of the Army and Government and representatives of French Law, Commerce, Art and Education. Arriving from Trianon, where they had been in residence, the King and his wife entered the palace by the Marble Stairway, traversed the Grand Hall of the Guards (to-day called the Hall of Napoleon) and the halls leading to the Grand Gallery of Battles, where they saw portrayed on canvas all the important military engagements of French armies, from Tolbiac to Wagram. In the Chamber of Louis XIV the King and Queen examined the restorations of the furniture, and found them well done. A royal banquet was laid in the Grand Gallery and in adjacent salons. At eight o'clock His Majesty, the royal family and 1500 guests assembled in the brilliantly illuminated Opera House, where they witnessed a performance of Molière's _Misanthrope_ and extracts from the opera, _Robert le Diable_, by Meyerbeer. The spectacle was concluded by a piece written by Eugene Scribe, the famous French librettist, in celebration of the founding of the Museum. At midnight the King and his family led a procession through the galleries of the palace, lighted by footmen carrying torches. At two o'clock in the morning the festivities were at an end and the royal party left for Trianon. Says a French author, writing two years after the opening of the museum. "When Louis Philippe first cast his eye upon Versailles, he saw at once the impiety of allowing such a monument to sink into utter ruin. . . . He determined that the palace of Louis XIV, without losing its individuality, should become a palace of the entire people; and that the bygone spirit of absolutism should give shelter to the spirit of modern liberty. Versailles, therefore, erected as a homage to individual pride, has become, under the Orleans regime, a great national monument--and certainly the most complete and splendid of its class in all Europe. The temple of luxury was converted into a temple of the arts, and French valor was recorded in immortal colors upon the walls, by French genius." In the vast edifice Louis Philippe created a pictorial record that embraced not only the great battles from the beginning of the monarchy down to his own day, but the chief incidents that distinguished the reigns of Louis XIV, XV and XVI; the victories of the Republic; the campaigns of Napoleon; the reigns of Louis XVIII and Charles X; the Revolution of 1830, and the reign of Louis Philippe. The kings of France, the members of their families and immediate entourage, great French warriors, statesmen, artists, men of letters and science are depicted on canvases that line the immense halls of Versailles. The Gallery of Warriors was arranged by Louis Philippe in that part of the palace formerly occupied by Madame de Montespan. The Gallery of Napoleon, created by removing the partition from a dozen rooms belonging to various members of the royal family, presents a complete history of the Emperor's life. More than a hundred apartments, large and small, were obliterated to make room for the galleries of portraits--a most engrossing exhibition to students of French history. Carlyle said, "I have found that the Portrait was a small lighted candle by which the Biographies could for the first time be read, and some human interpretation be made of them." Unfortunately a considerable number of paintings hung in the new museum suffered in quality through the desire of Louis Philippe to bring his achievement to immediate completion. He gave commissions right and left, always with the stipulation that the artists _make haste_. But many canvases of high merit, artistically and historically, still grace the walls of these galleries. Portraits of the four unmarried daughters of Louis XV have been appropriately arranged by the present curator of Versailles, Monsieur de Nolhac, in the apartments on the ground floor where Mesdames passed most of their dull, insignificant lives. Nattier made flattering representations of all of them, sometimes in the costume of mythological characters. Both Nattier and the great La Tour portrayed Marie Leczinska, the mother of Louis XV's ten children. Nattier's likeness shows a smiling, matronly lady with sweet-tempered brown eyes, seated in a chair, the face softened by a frill and a black lace scarf. Many of the portraits at Versailles painted by Charles Lebrun, Madame Vigée Lebrun, Jean-Baptiste and Michel Vanloo, Boucher, Largillière, Pierre Mignard, Rigaud, are familiar to us through frequent reproduction. In the years following the inauguration of the National Museum, Versailles was once again the scene of ostentatious fêtes in the halls, gardens and splendid Opera House. When Louis Napoleon succeeded Louis Philippe as head of the French nation, he came to Versailles with his bride of three days, the beautiful Eugénie, to see the portraits of Marie Antoinette, for whom the young Empress cherished a special admiration. On an August night in 1855, "the grand court of the château shone with a brilliance resembling day. The profile of the great edifice was outlined in small lights. In the gardens, arches and columns were raised and the fountains showered rainbow torrents. The Hall of Mirrors presented a spectacle whose splendor recalled nights when Louis XIV strolled here in brocade and ruffles. Garlands hung from the ceiling, thousands of lights reproduced themselves in the lofty mirrors and shed scintillating floods upon the handsome costumes of the invited ones." Thus the _Moniteur Universel_ described to its readers the reception offered by the Emperor of France to Queen Victoria, the Prince Consort and the future King of England. A few years later Emperor Napoleon III commanded another fête amid the grandeurs of Versailles, this time in honor of the King of Spain. But the days and nights of royal spectacles at last came to an end--and for all time. In the month of September, 1870, the chateau offered refuge to German soldiers wounded in the short but bitter war with France. In the _Oeil-de-Boeuf_, the Council Hall, the little apartments of Louis XV and those of Marie Antoinete were placed four hundred invalid cots. By October, Bismarck arrived in the town of Versailles. During the next five months he resided on the Rue de Provence, in the villa of Madame Jessé, widow of a prosperous cloth manufacturer. His quarters were the center of diplomatic action during the period that preceded the signing of the shameful peace terms. January 18, 1871, the anniversary of the day on which the first king of Prussia had crowned himself at Konigsberg (1701), was fixed for the proclamation of William II as German Emperor, in the Hall of Mirrors. In the phrase of a chronicler of that time, "It was impossible for the boldest imagination to picture a more thorough revenge on the traditional foes of Germany than the proclamation of the German Empire in the storied palace of the Kings of France. With the shades of Richelieu and the Grand Monarch looking down upon them did the Teutonic chieftains raise as it were, their leader on their shields, and with clash of arms and martial music acclaim him kaiser of a re-united Germany." King William passed from the altar in the middle of the Gallery to a platform at the end of the hall and there took his place before the colors, surrounded "by a brilliant multitude of princes, generals, officers and troops." When he had announced the re-establishment of the Empire, and when Bismarck, "looking pale, but calm and self-possessed," had read to the assemblage the Proclamation to the German people, "the bands burst forth with the national anthem, colors and helmets were wildly waved, and the Hall of Mirrors shook with a tremendous shout that was taken up and swelled till the rippling thunder-roll of cheers struck the ears of the startled watchers on the walls of Paris," where roar of cannon night and day summoned the French to surrender. Thus the German Empire was born at the very seat of French Monarchy. The armistice terms were signed at Versailles on the twenty-eighth day of January. One month later the representative of stricken France and Bismarck, sitting in the Chancellor's headquarters, affixed their signatures to the Peace Preliminaries, by which France surrendered Alsace (except Belfort) and Lorraine, and agreed to pay within three years a war indemnity of five thousand million francs.[*] After the departure of the Prussians from Versailles (March 12, 1871), the Deputies of France arrived from Bordeaux, the temporary capital, and lodged in the Hall of Mirrors, which then became a dormitory, as it had on occasion been a hospital ward, a ball-room and the banqueting hall of royalty. The insurrection of the Commune of Paris compelled the ministers to seek a place of security at Versailles. Once more the palace was chosen as the seat of Government. The ground floor, the upper floor and the attic, the picture galleries, even the vestibule of the Queen's Stairway and the servants' quarters served as offices for ministers and secretaries. The Department of Justice was installed in the Guards' Hall, the _Oeil-de-Boeuf_ and the rooms of Marie Antoinette. The Secretary of Public Works directed his affairs within walls that had sheltered the nefarious Dubarry. The official _Journal_ was printed in the palace kitchens. For several years the Opera House, the north wing, and the intimate apartments of Louis XV were given over to the National Assembly. A Republican fête offered in 1878 by the president, Marshal MacMahon, was attended by twelve thousand guests. Once more the fountains of the north parterre were illuminated, but this time with electric bulbs instead of oil lanterns. There were ingenious fireworks on the _Tapis-Vert_ that would have astounded even the courtiers of the Grand Monarch. In the _Galerie des Glaces_, Dussieux tells us, there was a ball "not exclusively aristocratic, but nevertheless very gay and animated." Within the past forty years the treasury of the French Republic has not infrequently been taxed for repairs at Versailles and Trianon. More than a million francs were spent on the chapel alone. Improvements in the park, including the restoration of the Basin of Neptune, the Orangery and the Colonnade, cost another million. "This Versailles," exclaims a French author, "does it not attract to our country strangers without number, does it not lend lasting prestige to the land of France? . . . Outside of the Invalides and the Louvre, what edifices equal it in evoking the memorable periods with which they are associated? What lasting respect do these annals of stone and bronze merit from men of taste! These salons, gardens, statues, works of art, attached irrevocably to the Past, bid us pause and ponder long upon the matchless Story of Versailles." [*]The final treaty of peace between France and Germany was signed in the Swan Hotel at Frankfort, Germany, on May 10, 1871. 
14233	----	OVER STRAND AND FIELD A Record of Travel through Brittany by GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Simon P. Magee Publisher Chicago, Ill. 1904 OVER STRAND AND FIELD[1] A Trip through Brittany CHAPTER I. CHÂTEAU DE CHAMBORD. We walked through the empty galleries and deserted rooms where spiders spin their cobwebs over the salamanders of Francis the First. One is overcome by a feeling of distress at the sight of this poverty which has no grandeur. It is not absolute ruin, with the luxury of blackened and mouldy débris, the delicate embroidery of flowers, and the drapery of waving vines undulating in the breeze, like pieces of damask. It is a conscious poverty, for it brushes its threadbare coat and endeavours to appear respectable. The floor has been repaired in one room, while in the next it has been allowed to rot. It shows the futile effort to preserve that which is dying and to bring back that which has fled. Strange to say, it is all very melancholy, but not at all imposing. And then it seems as if everything had contributed to injure poor Chambord, designed by Le Primatice and chiselled and sculptured by Germain Pilon and Jean Cousin. Upreared by Francis the First, on his return from Spain, after the humiliating treaty of Madrid (1526), it is the monument of a pride that sought to dazzle itself in order to forget defeat. It first harbours Gaston d'Orléans, a crushed pretender, who is exiled within its walls; then it is Louis XIV, who, out of one floor, builds three, thus ruining the beautiful double staircase which extended without interruption from the top to the bottom. Then one day, on the second floor, facing the front, under the magnificent ceiling covered with salamanders and painted ornaments which are now crumbling away, Molière produced for the first time _Le Bourgeois gentilhomme_. Then it was given to the Maréchal de Saxe; then to the Polignacs, and finally to a plain soldier, Berthier. It was afterwards bought back by subscription and presented to the Duc de Bordeaux. It has been given to everybody, as if nobody cared to have it or desired to keep it. It looks as if it had hardly ever been used, and as if it had always been too spacious. It is like a deserted hostelry where transient guests have not left even their names on the walls. When we walked through an outside gallery to the Orléans staircase, in order to examine the caryatids which are supposed to represent Francis the First, M. de Chateaubriand, and Madame d'Étampes, and turned around the celebrated lantern that terminates the big staircase, we stuck our heads several times through the railing to look down. In the courtyard was a little donkey nursing its mother, rubbing up against her, shaking its long ears and playfully jumping around. This is what we found in the court of honour of the Château de Chambord; these are its present hosts: a dog rolling in the grass, and a nursing, braying donkey frolicking on the threshold of kings! CHÂTEAU D'AMBOISE. The Château d'Amboise, which dominates the whole city that appears to be thrown at its feet like a mass of pebbles at the foot of a rock, looks like an imposing fortress, with its large towers pierced by long, narrow windows; its arched gallery that extends from the one to the other, and the brownish tint of its walls, darkened by the contrast of the flowers, which droop over them like a nodding plume on the bronzed forehead of an old soldier. We spent fully a quarter of an hour admiring the tower on the left; it is superb, imbrowned and yellowish in some places and coated with soot in others; it has charming charlocks hanging from its battlements, and is, in a word, one of those speaking monuments that seem to breathe and hold one spellbound and pensive under their gaze, like those paintings, the originals of which are unknown to us, but whom we love without knowing why. The Château is reached by a slight incline which leads to a garden elevated like a terrace, from which the view extends on the whole surrounding country. It was of a delicate green; poplar trees lined the banks of the river; the meadows advanced to its edge, mingling their grey border with the bluish and vapourous horizon, vaguely enclosed by indistinct hills. The Loire flowed in the middle, bathing its islands, wetting the edge of the meadows, turning the wheels of the mills and letting the big boats glide peacefully, two by two, over its silvery surface, lulled to sleep by the creaking of the heavy rudders; and in the distance two big white sails gleamed in the sun. Birds flew from the tops of the towers and the edge of the machicolations to some other spot, described circles in the air, chirped, and soon passed out of sight. About a hundred feet below us were the pointed roofs of the city, the empty courtyards of the old mansions, and the black holes of the smoky chimneys. Leaning in the niche of a battlement, we gazed and listened, and breathed it all in, enjoying the beautiful sunshine and balmy air impregnated with the pungent odour of the ruins. And there, without thinking of anything in particular, without even phrasing inwardly about something, I dreamed of coats of mail as pliable as gloves, of shields of buffalo hide soaked with sweat, of closed visors through which shot bloodthirsty glances, of wild and desperate night attacks with torches that set fire to the walls, and hatchets that mutilated the bodies; and of Louis XI, of the lover's war, of D'Aubigné and of the charlocks, the birds, the polished ivy, the denuded brambles, tasting in my pensive and idle occupation--what is greatest in men, their memory;--and what is most beautiful in nature, her ironical encroachments and eternal youth. In the garden, among the lilac-bushes and the shrubs that droop over the alleys, rises the chapel, a work of the sixteenth century, chiselled at every angle, a perfect jewel, even more intricately decorated inside than out, cut out like the paper covering of a _bonbonnière_, and cunningly sculptured like the handle of a Chinese parasol. On the door is a _bas-relief_ which is very amusing and ingenuous. It represents the meeting of Saint Hubert with the mystic stag, which bears a cross between its antlers. The saint is on his knees; above him hovers an angel who is about to place a crown on his cap; near them stands the saint's horse, watching the scene with a surprised expression; the dogs are barking and on the mountain, the sides and facets of which are cut to represent crystals, creeps the serpent. You can see its flat head advancing toward some leafless trees that look like cauliflowers. They are the sort of trees one comes upon in old Bibles, spare of foliage, thick and clumsy, bearing blossoms and fruit but no leaves; the symbolical, theological, and devout trees that are almost fantastical on account of their impossible ugliness. A little further, Saint Christopher is carrying Jesus on his shoulders; Saint Antony is in his cell, which is built on a rock; a pig is retiring into its hole and shows only its hind-quarters and its corkscrew tail, while a rabbit is sticking its head out of its house. Of course, it is all a little clumsy and the moulding is not faultless. But there is so much life and movement about the figure and the animals, so much charm in the details, that one would give a great deal to be able to carry it away and take it home. Inside of the Château, the insipid Empire style is reproduced in every apartment. Almost every room is adorned with busts of Louis-Philippe and Madame Adélaïde. The present reigning family has a craze for being portrayed on canvas. It is the bad taste of a parvenu, the mania of a grocer who has accumulated money and who enjoys seeing himself in red, white, and yellow, with his watch-charms dangling over his stomach, his bewhiskered chin and his children gathered around him. On one of the towers, and in spite of the most ordinary common sense, they have built a glass rotunda which is used for a dining-room. True, the view from it is magnificent. But the building presents so shocking an appearance from the outside, that one would, I should think, prefer to see nothing of the environs, or else to eat in the kitchen. In order to go back to the city, we came down by a tower that was used by carriages to approach the Château. The sloping gravelled walk turns around a stone axle like the steps of a staircase. The arch is dark and lighted only by the rays that creep through the loop-holes. The columns on which the interior end of the vault rests, are decorated with grotesque or vulgar subjects. A dogmatic intention seems to have presided over their composition. It would be well for travellers to begin the inspection at the bottom, with the _Aristoteles equitatus_ (a subject which has already been treated on one of the choir statues in the Cathedral of Rouen) and reach by degrees a pair embracing in the manner which both Lucretius and _l'Amour Conjugal_ have recommended. The greater part of the intermediary subjects have been removed, to the despair of seekers of comical things, like ourselves; they have been removed in cold blood, with deliberate intent, for the sake of decency, and because, as one of the servants of his Majesty informed us convincingly, "a great many were improper for the lady visitors to see." CHÂTEAU DE CHENONCEAUX. A something of infinite suavity and aristocratic serenity pervades the Château de Chenonceaux. It is situated outside of the village, which keeps at a respectful distance. It can be seen through a large avenue of trees, and is enclosed by woods and an extensive park with beautiful lawns. Built on the water, it proudly uprears its turrets and its square chimneys. The Cher flows below, and murmurs at the foot of its arches, the pointed corners of which form eddies in the tide. It is all very peaceful and charming, graceful yet robust. Its calm is not wearying and its melancholy has no tinge of bitterness. One enters through the end of a long, arched hallway, which used to be a fencing-room. It is decorated with some armours, which, in spite of the obvious necessity of their presence, do not shock one's taste or appear out of place. The whole scheme of interior decoration is tastefully carried out; the furniture and hangings of the period have been preserved and cared for intelligently. The great, venerable mantel-pieces of the sixteenth century do not shelter the hideous and economical German stoves, which might easily be hidden in some of them. In the kitchen, situated in a wing of the castle, which we visited later, a maid was peeling vegetables and a scullion was washing dishes, while the cook was standing in front of the stove, superintending a reasonable number of shining saucepans. It was all very delightful, and bespoke the idle and intelligent home life of a gentleman. I like the owners of Chenonceaux. In fact, have you not often seen charming old paintings that make you gaze at them indefinitely, because they portray the period in which their owners lived, the ballets in which the farthingales of all those beautiful pink ladies whirled around, and the sword-thrusts which those noblemen gave each other with their rapiers? Here are some temptations of history. One would like to know whether those people loved as we do, and what difference existed between their passions and our own. One would like them to open their lips and tell their history, tell us everything they used to do, no matter how futile, and what their cares and pleasures used to be. It is an irritating and seductive curiosity, a dreamy desire for knowledge, such as one feels regarding the past life of a mistress.... But they are deaf to the questions our eyes put to them, they remain dumb and motionless in their wooden frames, and we pass on. The moths attack their canvases, but the latter are revarnished; and the pictures will smile on when we are buried and forgotten. And others will come and gaze upon them, till the day they crumble to dust; then people will dream in the same old way before our own likenesses, and ask themselves what used to happen in our day, and whether life was not more alluring then. I should not have spoken again of those handsome dames, if the large, full-length portrait of Madame Deshoulières, in an elaborate white _dêshabille_, (it was really a fine picture, and, like the much decried and seldom read efforts of the poetess, better at the second look than at the first), had not reminded me, by the expression of the mouth, which is large, full, and sensual, of the peculiar coarseness of Madame de Staël's portrait by Gérard. When I saw it two years ago, at Coppet, in bright sunshine, I could not help being impressed by those red, vinous lips and the wide, aspiring nostrils. George Sand's face offers a similar peculiarity. In all those women who were half masculine, spirituality revealed itself only in the eyes. All the rest remained material. In point of amusing incidents, there is still at Chenonceaux, in Diane de Poitiers's room, the wide canopy bedstead of the royal favourite, done in white and red. If it belonged to me, it would be very hard for me not to use it once in a while. To sleep in the bed of Diane de Poitiers, even though it be empty, is worth as much as sleeping in that of many more palpable realities. Moreover, has it not been said that all the pleasure in these things was only imagination? Then, can you conceive of the peculiar and historical voluptuousness, for one who possesses some imagination, to lay his head on the pillow that belonged to the mistress of Francis the First, and to stretch his limbs on her mattress? (Oh! how willingly I would give all the women in the world for the mummy of Cleopatra!) But I would not dare to touch, for fear of breaking them, the porcelains belonging to Catherine de Médicis, in the dining-room, nor place my foot in the stirrup of Francis the First, for fear it might remain there, nor put my lips to the mouth-piece of the huge trumpet in the fencing-room, for fear of rupturing my lungs. CHAPTER II. CHÂTEAU DE CLISSON. On a hill at the foot of which two rivers mingle their waters, in a fresh landscape, brightened by the light colours of the inclined roofs, that are grouped like many sketches of Hubert, near a waterfall that turns the wheel of a mill hidden among the leaves, the Château de Clisson raises its battered roof above the tree-tops. Everything around it is calm and peaceful. The little dwellings seem to smile as if they had been built under softer skies; the waters sing their song, and patches of moss cover a stream over which hang graceful clusters of foliage. The horizon extends on one side into a tapering perspective of meadows, while on the other it rises abruptly and is enclosed by a wooded valley, the trees of which crowd together and form a green ocean. After one crosses the bridge and arrives at the steep path which leads to the Château, one sees, standing upreared and bold on the moat on which it is built, a formidable wall, crowned with battered machicolations and bedecked with trees and ivy, the luxuriant growth of which covers the grey stones and sways in the wind, like an immense green veil which the recumbent giant moves dreamily across his shoulders. The grass is tall and dark, the plants are strong and hardy; the trunks of the ivy are twisted, knotted, and rough, and lift up the walls as with levers or hold them in the network of their branches. In one spot, a tree has grown through the wall horizontally, and, suspended in the air, has let its branches radiate around it. The moats, the steep slope of which is broken by the earth which has detached itself from the embankments and the stones which have fallen from the battlements, have a wide, deep curve, like hatred and pride; and the portal, with its strong, slightly arched ogive, and its two bays that raise the drawbridge, looks like a great helmet with holes in its visor. When one enters, he is surprised and astonished at the wonderful mixture of ruins and trees, the ruins accentuating the freshness of the trees, while the latter in turn, render more poignant the melancholy of the ruins. Here, indeed, is the beautiful, eternal, and brilliant laughter of nature over the skeleton of things; here is the insolence of her wealth and the deep grace of her encroachments, and the melodious invasions of her silence. A grave and pensive enthusiasm fills one's soul; one feels that the sap flows in the trees and that the grass grows with the same strength and the same rhythm, as the stones crumble and the walls cave in. A sublime art, in the supreme accord of secondary discordances, has contrasted the unruly ivy with the sinuous sweep of the ruins, the brambles with the heaps of crumbling stones, the clearness of the atmosphere with the strong projections of the masses, the colour of the sky with the colour of the earth, reflecting each one in the other: that which was, and that which is. Thus history and nature always reveal, though they may accomplish it in a circumscribed spot of the world, the unceasing relation, the eternal hymen of dying humanity and the growing daisy; of the stars that glow, and the men who expire, of the heart that beats and the wave that rises. And this is so clearly indicated here, is so overwhelming, that one shudders inwardly, as if this dual life centred in one's own body; so brutal and immediate is the perception of these harmonies and developments. For the eye also has its orgies and the mind its delights. At the foot of two large trees, the trunks of which are intersected, a stream of light floods the grass and seems like a luminous river, brightening the solitude. Overhead, a dome of leaves, through which one can see the sky presenting a vivid contrast of blue, reverberates a bright, greenish light, which illuminates the ruins, accentuating the deep furrows, intensifying the shadows, and disclosing all the hidden beauties. You advance and walk between those walls and under the trees, wander along the barbicans, pass under the falling arcades from which spring large, waving plants. The vaults, which contain corpses, echo under your footfalls; lizards run in the grass, beetles creep along the walls, the sky is blue, and the sleepy ruins pursue their dream. With its triple enclosure, its dungeons, its interior court-yards, its machicolations, its underground passages, its ramparts piled one upon the other, like a bark on a bark and a shield on a shield, the ancient Château of the Clissons rises before your mind and is reconstructed. The memory of past existences exudes from its walls with the emanations of the nettles and the coolness of the ivy. In that castle, men altogether different from us were swayed by passions stronger than ours; their hands were brawnier and their chests broader. Long black streaks still mark the walls, as in the time when logs blazed in the eighteen-foot fireplaces. Symmetrical holes in the masonry indicate the floors to which one ascended by winding staircases now crumbling in ruins, while their empty doors open into space. Sometimes a bird, taking flight from its nest hanging in the branches, would pass with spread wings through the arch of a window, and fly far away into the country. At the top of a high, bleak wall, several square bay-windows, of unequal length and position, let the pure sky shine through their crossed bars; and the bright blue, framed by the stone, attracted my eye with surprising persistency. The sparrows in the trees were chirping, and in the midst of it all a cow, thinking, no doubt, that it was a meadow, grazed peacefully, her horns sweeping over the grass. There is a window, a large window that looks out into a meadow called _la prairie des chevaliers_. It was there, from a stone bench carved in the wall, that the high-born dames of the period watched the knights urge their iron-barbed steeds against one another, and the lances come down on the helmets and snap, and the men fall to the ground. On a fine summer day, like to-day, perhaps, when the mill that enlivens the whole landscape did not exist, when there were roofs on the walls, and Flemish hangings, and oil-cloths on the window-sills, when there was less grass, and when human voices and rumours filled the air, more than one heart beat with love and anguish under its red velvet bodice. Beautiful white hands twitched with fear on the stone, which is now covered with moss, and the embroidered veils of high caps fluttered in the wind that plays with my cravat and that swayed the plumes of the knights. We went down into the vaults where Jean V was imprisoned. In the men's dungeon we saw the large double hook that was used for executions; and we touched curiously with our fingers the door of the women's prison. It is about four inches thick and is plated with heavy iron bars. In the middle is a little grating that was used to throw in whatever was necessary to prevent the captive from starving. It was this grating which opened instead of the door, which, being the mouth of the most terrible confessions, was one of those that always closed but never opened. In those days there was real hatred. If you hated a person, and he had been kidnapped by surprise or traitorously trapped in an interview, and was in your power, you could torture him at your own sweet will. Every minute, every hour, you could delight in his anguish and drink his tears. You could go down into his cell and speak to him and bargain with him, laugh at his tortures, and discuss his ransom; you could live on and off him, through his slowly ebbing life and his plundered treasures. Your whole castle, from the top of the towers to the bottom of the trenches, weighed on him, crushing, and burying him; and thus family revenges were accomplished by the family itself, a fact which constituted their potency and symbolised the idea. Sometimes, however, when the wretched prisoner was an aristocrat and a wealthy man, and he near death, and one was tired of him, and his tears had acted upon the hatred of his master like refreshing bleedings, there was talk of releasing him. The captive promised everything; he would return the fortified towns, hand over the keys to his best cities, give his daughter in marriage, endow churches and journey on foot to the Holy Sepulchre. And money! Money! Why, he would have more of it coined by the Jews! Then the treaty would be signed and dated and counter-signed; the relics would be brought forth to be sworn on, and the prisoner would be a free man once more. He would jump on his horse, gallop away, and when he reached home he would order the drawbridge hoisted, call his vassals together, and take down his sword from the wall. His hatred would find an outlet in terrific explosions of wrath. It was the time of frightful passions and victorious rages. The oath? The Pope would free him from it, and the ransom he simply ignored. When Clisson was imprisoned in the Château de l'Hermine, he promised for his freedom a hundred thousand francs' worth of gold, the restitution of the towns belonging to the duke of Penthièvre, and the cancelling of his daughter Marguerite's betrothal to the Duke of Penthièvre. But as soon as he was set free, he began by attacking Chateladren, Guingamp, Lamballe and St. Malo, which cities either were taken or they capitulated. But the people of Brittany paid for the fun. When Jean V. was captured by the Count of Penthièvre at the bridge of Loroux, he promised a ransom of one million; he promised his eldest daughter, who was already betrothed to the King of Sicily. He promised Montcontour, Sesson and Jugan, etc., but he gave neither his daughter nor the money, nor the cities. He had promised to go to the Holy Sepulchre. He acquitted himself of this by proxy. He had taken an oath that he would no longer levy taxes and subsidies. The Pope freed him from this pledge. He had promised to give Nôtre-Dame de Nantes his weight in gold; but as he weighed nearly two hundred pounds, he remained greatly indebted. With all that he was able to pick up or snatch away, he quickly formed a league and compelled the house of Penthièvre to buy the peace which they had sold to him. On the other side of the Sèvre, a forest covers the hill with its fresh, green maze of trees; it is _La Garenne_, a park that is beautiful in itself, in spite of the artificial embellishments that have been introduced. M. Semot, (the father of the present owner), was a painter of the Empire and a laureate, and he tried to reproduce to the best of his ability that cold Italian, republican, Roman style, which was so popular in the time of Canova and of Madame de Staël. In those days people were inclined to be pompous and noble. They used to place chiselled urns on graves and paint everybody in a flowing cloak, and with long hair; then Corinne sang to the accompaniment of her lyre beside Oswald, who wore Russian boots; and it was thought proper to have everybody's head adorned with a profusion of dishevelled locks and to have a multitude of ruins in every landscape. This style of embellishment abounds throughout La Garenne. There is a temple erected to Vesta, and directly opposite it another erected to Friendship.... Inscriptions, artificial rocks, factitious ruins, are scattered lavishly, with artlessness and conviction.... But the poetical riches centre in the grotto of Héloïse, a sort of natural dolmen on the bank of the Sèvre. Why have people made Héloïse, who was such a great and noble figure, appear commonplace and silly, the prototype of all crossed loves and the narrow ideal of sentimental schoolgirls? The unfortunate mistress of the great Abélard deserved a better fate, for she loved him with devoted admiration, although he was hard and taciturn at times and spared her neither bitterness nor blows. She dreaded offending him more than she dreaded offending God, and strove harder to please him. She did not wish him to marry her, because she thought that "it was wrong and deplorable that the one whom nature had created for all ... should be appropriated by one woman." She found, she said, "more happiness in the appellation of mistress or concubine, than in that of wife or empress," and by humiliating herself in him, she hoped to gain a stronger hold over his heart. * * * * * The park is really delightful. Alleys wind through the woods and clusters of trees bend over the meandering stream. You can hear the bubbling water and feel the coolness of the foliage. If we were irritated by the bad taste displayed here, it was because we had just left Clisson, which has a real, simple, and solid beauty, and after all, this bad taste is not that of our contemporaries. But what is, in fact, bad taste? Invariably it is the taste of the period which has preceded ours. Bad taste at the time of Ronsard was represented by Marot; at the time of Boileau, by Ronsard; at the time of Voltaire, by Corneille, and by Voltaire in the day of Chateaubriand, whom many people nowadays begin to think a trifle weak. O men of taste in future centuries, let me recommend you the men of taste of to-day! You will laugh at their cramps, their superb disdain, their preference for veal and milk, and the faces they make when underdone meat and too ardent poetry is served to them. Everything that is beautiful will then appear ugly; everything that is graceful, stupid; everything that is rich, poor; and oh! how our delightful boudoirs, our charming salons, our exquisite costumes, our palpitating plays, our interesting novels, our serious books will all be consigned to the garret or be used for old paper and manure! O posterity, above all things do not forget our gothic salons, our Renaissance furniture, M. Pasquier's discourses, the shape of our hats, and the aesthetics of _La Revue des Deux Mondes!_ While we were pondering upon these lofty philosophical considerations, our wagon had hauled us over to Tiffanges. Seated side by side in a sort of tin tub, our weight crushed the tiny horse, which swayed to and fro between the shafts. It was like the twitching of an eel in the body of a musk-rat. Going down hill pushed him forward, going up hill pulled him backward, while uneven places in the road threw him from side to side, and the wind and the whip lashed him alternately. The poor brute! I cannot think of him now without a certain feeling of remorse. The road down hill is curved and its edges are covered with clumps of sea-rushes or large patches of a certain reddish moss. To the right, on an eminence that starts from the bottom of the dale and swells in the middle like the carapace of a tortoise, one perceives high, unequal walls, the crumbling tops of which appear one above another. One follows a hedge, climbs a path, and enters an open portal which has sunken into the ground to the depth of one third of its ogive. The men who used to pass through it on horseback would be obliged to bend over their saddles in order to enter it to-day. When the earth is tired of supporting a monument, it swells up underneath it, creeps up to it like a wave, and while the sky causes the top to crumble away, the ground obliterates the foundations. The courtyard was deserted and the calm water that filled the moats remained motionless and flat under the pond-lilies. The sky was white and cloudless, but without sunshine. Its bleak curve extended far away, covering the country with a cold and cheerless monotony. Not a sound could be heard, the birds did not sing, even the horizon was mute, and from the empty furrows came neither the scream of the crows as they soar heavenward, nor the soft creaking of plough-wheels. We climbed down through brambles and underbrush into a deep and dark trench, hidden at the foot of a large tower, which stands in the water surrounded by reeds. A lone window opens on one side: a dark square relieved by the grey line of its stone cross-bar. A capricious cluster of wild honeysuckle covers the sill, and its maze of perfumed blossoms creeps along the walls. When one looks up, the openings of the big machicolations reveal only a part of the sky, or some little, unknown flower which has nestled in the battlement, its seed having been wafted there on a stormy day and left to sprout in the cracks of the stones. Presently, a long, balmy breeze swept over us like a sigh, and the trees in the moats, the moss on the stones, the reeds in the water, the plants among the ruins, and the ivy, which covered the tower from top to bottom with a layer of shining leaves, all trembled and shook their foliage; the corn in the fields rippled in endless waves that again and again bent the swaying tops of the ears; the pond wrinkled and welled up against the foot of the tower; the leaves of the ivy all quivered at once, and an apple-tree in bloom covered the ground with pink blossoms. Nothing, nothing! The open sky, the growing grass, the passing wind. No ragged child tending a browsing cow; not even, as elsewhere, some solitary goat sticking its shaggy head through an aperture in the walls to turn at our approach and flee in terror through the bushes; not a song-bird, not a nest, not a sound! This castle is like a ghost: mute and cold, it stands abandoned in this deserted place, and looks accursed and replete with terrifying recollections. Still, this melancholy dwelling, which the owls now seem to avoid, was once inhabited. In the dungeon, between four walls as livid as the bottom of an old drinking-trough, we were able to discover the traces of five floors. A chimney, with its two round pillars and black top, has remained suspended in the air at a height of thirty feet. Earth has accumulated on it, and plants are growing there as if it were a jardinière. Beyond the second enclosure, in a ploughed field, one can recognise the ruins of a chapel by the broken shafts of an ogive portal. Grass has grown around it, and trees have replaced the columns. Four hundred years ago, this chapel was filled with ornaments of gold cloth and silk, censers, chandeliers, chalices, crosses, precious stones, gold vessels and vases, a choir of thirty singers, chaplains, musicians, and children sang hymns to the accompaniment of an organ which they took along with them when they travelled. They were clad in scarlet garments lined with pearl grey and vair. There was one whom they called archdeacon, and another whom they called bishop, and the Pope was asked to allow them to wear mitres like canons, for this chapel was the chapel, and this castle one of the castles of Gilles de Laval, lord of Rouci, of Montmorency, of Retz and of Craon, lieutenant-general of the Duke of Brittany and field-marshal of France, who was burned at Nantes on the 25th of October, 1440, in the Prée de la Madéleine for being a counterfeiter, a murderer, a magician, an atheist and a Sodomite. He possessed more than one hundred thousand crowns' worth of furniture; an income of thirty thousand pounds a year, the profits of his fiefs and his salary as field-marshal; fifty magnificently appointed horsemen escorted him. He kept open house, served the rarest viands and the oldest wines at his board, and gave representations of mysteries, as cities used to do when a king was within their gates. When his money gave out, he sold his estates; when those were gone, he looked around for more gold, and when he had destroyed his furnaces, he called on the devil. He wrote him that he would give him all that he possessed, excepting his life and his soul. He made sacrifices, gave alms and instituted ceremonies in his honour. At night, the bleak walls of the castle lighted up by the glare of the torches that flared amid bumpers of rare wines and gipsy jugglers, and blushed hotly under the unceasing breath of magical bellows. The inhabitants invoked the devil, joked with death, murdered children, enjoyed frightful and atrocious pleasures; blood flowed, instruments played, everything echoed with voluptuousness, horror, and madness. When he expired, four or five damsels had his body removed from the stake, laid out, and taken to the Carmelites, who, after performing the customary services, buried him in state. On one of the bridges of the Loire, relates Guépin, opposite the Hôtel de la Boule-d'Or, an expiatory monument was erected to his memory. It was a niche containing the statue of the _Bonne Vierge de crée lait_, who had the power of creating milk in nurses; the good people offered her butter and similar rustic products. The niche still exists, but the statue is gone; the same as at the town-house, where the casket which contained the heart of Queen Anne is also empty. But we did not care to see the casket; we did not even give it a thought. I should have preferred gazing upon the trousers of the marshal of Retz to looking at the heart of Madame Anne de Bretagne. CHAPTER III. CARNAC. The field of Carnac is a large, open space where eleven rows of black stones are aligned at symmetrical intervals. They diminish in size as they recede from the ocean. Cambry asserts that there were four thousand of these rocks and Fréminville has counted twelve hundred of them. They are certainly very numerous. What was their use? Was it a temple? One day Saint Cornille, pursued along the shore by soldiers, was about to jump into the ocean, when he thought of changing them all into stone, and forthwith the men were petrified. But this explanation was good only for fools, little children, and poets. Other people looked for better reasons. In the sixteenth century, Olaüs Magnus, archbishop of Upsal (who, banished to Rome, wrote a book on the antiquities of his country that met with widespread success except in his native land, Sweden, where it was not translated), discovered that, when these stones form one long, straight row, they cover the bodies of warriors who died while fighting duels; that those arranged in squares are consecrated to heroes that perished in battle; that those disposed in a circle are family graves, while those that form corners or angular figures are the tombs of horsemen or foot-soldiers, and more especially of those fighters whose party had triumphed. All this is quite clear, but Olaüs Magnus has forgotten to tell us how two cousins who killed each other in a duel on horseback could have been buried. The fact of the duel required that the stones be straight; the relationship required that they be circular; but as the men were horsemen, it seems as if the stones ought to have been arranged squarely, though this rule, it is true, was not formal, as it was applied only to those whose party had triumphed. O good Olaüs Magnus! You must have liked Monte-Pulciano exceeding well! And how many draughts of it did it take for you to acquire all this wonderful knowledge? According to a certain English doctor named Borlase, who had observed similar stones in Cornouailles, "they buried soldiers there, in the very place where they died." As if, usually, they were carted to the cemetery! And he builds his hypothesis on the following comparison: their graves are on a straight line, like the front of an army on plains that were the scene of some great action. Then they tried to bring in the Greeks, the Egyptians, and the Cochin Chinese! There is a Karnac in Egypt, they said, and one on the coast of Brittany. Now, it is probable that this Karnac descends from the Egyptian one; it is quite certain! In Egypt they are sphinxes; here they are rocks; but in both instances they are of stone. So it would seem that the Egyptians (who never travelled), came to this coast (of the existence of which they were ignorant), founded a colony (they never founded any), and left these crude statues (they produced such beautiful ones), as a positive proof of their sojourn in this country (which nobody mentions). People fond of mythology thought them the columns of Hercules; people fond of natural history thought them a representation of the python, because, according to Pausanias, a similar heap of stones, on the road from Thebes to Elissonte, was called "the serpent's head," and especially because the rows of stones at Carnac present the sinuosities of a serpent. People fond of cosmography discovered a zodiac, like M. de Cambry, who recognised in those eleven rows of stones the twelve signs of the zodiac, "for it must be stated," he adds, "that the ancient Gauls had only eleven signs to the zodiac." Subsequently, a member of the Institute conjectured that it might perhaps be the cemetery of the Venetians, who inhabited Vannes, situated six miles from Carnac, and who founded Venice, as everybody knows. Another man wrote that these Venetians, conquered by Cæsar, erected all those rocks solely in a spirit of humility and in order to honour their victor. But people were getting tired of the cemetery theory, the serpent and the zodiac; they set out again and this time found a Druidic temple. The few documents that we possess, scattered through Pliny and Dionysius Cassius, agree in stating that the Druids chose dark places for their ceremonies, like the depths of the woods with "their vast silence." And as Carnac is situated on the coast, and surrounded by a barren country, where nothing but these gentlemen's fancies has ever grown, the first grenadier of France, but not, in my estimation, the cleverest man, followed by Pelloutier and by M. Mahé, (canon of the cathedral of Vannes), concluded that it was "a Druidic temple in which political meetings must also have been held." But all had not been said, and it still remained to be discovered of what use the empty spaces in the rows could have been. "Let us look for the reason, a thing nobody has ever thought of before," cried M. Mahé, and, quoting a sentence from Pomponius Mela: "The Druids teach the nobility many things and instruct them secretly in caves and forests;" and this one from Tucain: "You dwell in tall forests," he reached the conclusion that the Druids not only officiated at the sanctuaries, but that they also lived and taught in them. "So the monument of Carnac being a sanctuary, like the Gallic forests," (O power of induction! where are you leading Father Mahé, canon of Vannes and correspondent of the Academy of Agriculture at Poitiers?), there is reason to believe that the intervals, which break up the rows of stones, held rows of houses where the Druids lived with their families and numerous pupils, and where the heads of the nation, who, on state days, betook themselves to the sanctuary, found comfortable lodgings. Good old Druids! Excellent ecclesiastics! How they have been calumnied! They lived there so righteously with their families and numerous pupils, and even were amiable enough to prepare lodgings for the principals of the nation! But at last came a man imbued with the genius of ancient things and disdainful of trodden paths. He was able to recognize the rests of a Roman camp, and, strangely enough, the rests of one of the camps of Cæsar, who had had these stones upreared only to serve as support for the tents of his soldiers and prevent them from being blown away by the wind. What gales there must have been in those days, on the coasts of Armorica! The honest writer who, to the glory of the great Julius, discovered this sublime precaution, (thus returning to Cæsar that which never belonged to Cæsar), was a former pupil of l'École Polytechnique, an engineer, a M. de la Sauvagère. The collection of all these data constitutes what is called _Celtic Archæology_, the mysteries of which we shall presently disclose. A stone placed on another one is called a "dolmen," whether it be horizontal or perpendicular. A group of upright stones covered by succeeding flat stones, and forming a series of dolmens, is a "fairy grotto," a "fairy rock," a "devil's stable," or a "giant's palace"; for, like the people who serve the same wine under different labels, the Celto-maniacs, who had almost nothing to offer, decorated the same things with various names. When these stones form an ellipse, and have no head-covering, one must say: There is a "cromlech"; when one perceives a stone laid horizontally upon two upright stones, one is confronted by a "lichaven" or a "trilithe." Often two enormous rocks are put one on top of the other, and touch only at one point, and we read that "they are balanced in such a way that the wind alone is sufficient to make the upper rock sway perceptibly," an assertion which I do not dispute, although I am rather suspicious of the Celtic wind, and although these swaying rocks have always remained unshaken in spite of the fierce kicks I was artless enough to give them; they are called "rolling or rolled stones," "turned or transported stones," "stones that dance or dancing stones," "stones that twist or twisting stones." You must still learn what a _pierre fichade_, a _pierre fiche_, a _pierre fixée_ are, and what is meant by a _haute borne_, a _pierre latte_ and a _pierre lait_; in what a _pierre fonte_ differs from a _pierre fiette_, and what connection there is between a _chaire à diable_ and a _pierre droite_; then you will be as wise as ever were Pelloutier, Déric, Latour d'Auvergne, Penhoet and others, not forgetting Mahé and Fréminville. Now, all this means a _pulvan_, also called a _men-hir_, and designates nothing more than a stone of greater or lesser size, placed by itself in an open field. I was about to forget the tumuli! Those that are composed of silica and soil are called "barrows" in high-flown language, while the simple heaps of stones are "gals-gals." People have pretended that when they were not tombs the "dolmens" and "trilithes" were altars, that the "fairy rocks" were assembling places or sepultures, and that the business meetings at the time of the Druids were held in the "cromlechs." M. de Cambry saw in the "swaying rocks" the emblems of the suspended world. The "barrows" and "gals-gals" have undoubtedly been tombs; and as for the "men-hirs," people went so far as to pretend that they had a form which led to the deduction that a certain cult reigned throughout lower Brittany. O chaste immodesty of science, you respect nothing, not even a peulven! A reverie, no matter how undefined, may lead up to splendid creations, when it starts from a fixed point. Then the imagination, like a soaring hippogriff, stamps the earth with all its might and journeys straightway towards infinite regions. But when it applies itself to a subject devoid of plastic art and history, and tries to extract a science from it, and to reconstruct a world, it remains even poorer and more barren than the rough stone to which the vanity of some praters has lent a shape and dignified with a history. To return to the stones of Carnac (or rather, to leave them), if anyone should, after all these opinions, ask me mine, I would emit an irresistible, irrefutable, incontestable one, which would make the tents of M. de la Sauvagère stagger, blanch the face of the Egyptian Penhoët, break up the zodiac of Cambry and smash the python into a thousand bits. This is my opinion: the stones of Carnac are simply large stones! * * * * * So we returned to the inn and dined heartily, for our five hours' tramp had sharpened our appetites. We were served by the hostess, who had large blue eyes, delicate hands, and the sweet face of a nun. It was not yet bedtime, and it was too dark to work, so we went to the church. This is small, although it has a nave and side-aisles like a city church. Short, thick stone pillars support its wooden roof, painted in blue, from which hang miniature vessels, votive offerings that were promised during raging storms. Spiders creep along their sails and the riggings are rotting under the dust. No service was being held, and the lamp in the choir burned dimly in its cup filled with yellow oil; overhead, through the open windows of the darkened vault, came broad rays of white light and the sound of the wind rustling in the tree-tops. A man came in to put the chairs in order, and placed two candles in an iron chandelier riveted to the stone pillar; then he pulled into the middle of the aisle a sort of stretcher with a pedestal, its black wood stained with large white spots. Other people entered the church, and a priest clad in his surplice passed us. There was the intermittent tinkling of a bell and then the door of the church opened wide. The jangling sound of the little bell mingled with the tones of another and their sharp, clear tones swelled louder as they came nearer and nearer to us. A cart drawn by oxen appeared and halted in front of the church. It held a corpse, whose dull white feet protruded from under the winding-sheet like bits of washed alabaster, while the body itself had the uncertain form peculiar to dressed corpses. The crowd around was silent. The men bared their heads; the priest shook his holy-water sprinkler and mumbled orisons, and the pair of oxen swung their heads to and fro under the heavy, creaking yoke. The church, in the background of which gleamed a star, formed one huge shadow in the greenish outdoor atmosphere of a rainy twilight, and the child who held a light on the threshold had to keep his hand in front of it to prevent the wind from blowing it out. They lifted the body from the cart, and in doing so struck its head against the pole. They carried it into the church and placed it on the stretcher. A crowd of men and women followed. They knelt on the floor, the men near the corpse, and the women a little farther away, near the door; then the service began. It did not last very long, at least it impressed us that way, for the low psalmodies were recited rapidly and drowned now and then by a stifled sob which came from under the black hoods near the door. A hand touched me and I drew aside to let a bent woman pass. With her clenched fists on her breast, and face averted, she advanced without appearing to move her feet, eager to see, yet trembling to behold, and reached the row of lights which burned beside the bier. Slowly, very slowly, lifting up her arm as if to hide herself under it, she turned her head on her shoulder and sank in a heap on a chair, as limp as her garments. By the light of the candles, I could see her staring eyes, framed by lids that looked as if they had been scalded, so red were they; her idiotic and contracted mouth, trembling with despair, and her whole pitiful face, which was drenched with tears. The corpse was that of her husband, who had been lost at sea; he had been washed ashore and was now being laid to rest. The cemetery adjoined the church. The mourners passed into it through a side-door, while the corpse was being nailed in its coffin, in the vestry. A fine rain moistened the atmosphere; we felt cold; the earth was slippery and the grave-diggers who had not completed their task, found it hard to raise the heavy soil, for it stuck to their shovels. In the background, the women kneeling in the grass, throwing back their hoods and their big white caps, the starched wings of which fluttered in the wind, appeared at a distance like an immense winding-sheet hovering over the earth. When the corpse reappeared, the prayers began again, and the sobs broke out anew, and could be heard through the dropping rain. Not far from us, issued, at regular intervals, a sort of subdued gurgle that sounded like laughter. In any other place, a person hearing it would have thought it the repressed explosion of some overwhelming joy or the paroxysm of a delirious happiness. It was the widow, weeping. Then she walked to the edge of the grave, as did the rest of the mourners, and little by little, the soil assumed its ordinary level and everybody went home. As we walked down the cemetery steps, a young fellow passed us and said in French to a companion: "Heavens! didn't the fellow stink! He is almost completely mortified! It isn't surprising, though, after being in the water three weeks!" * * * * * One morning we started as on other mornings; we chose the same road, and passed the hedge of young elms and the sloping meadow where the day before we had seen a little girl chasing cattle to the drinking-trough; but it was the last day, and the last time perhaps, that we should pass that way. A muddy stretch of land, into which we sank up to our ankles, extends from Carnac to the village of Pô. A boat was waiting for us; we entered it, and they hoisted the sail and pushed off. Our sailor, an old man with a cheerful face, sat aft; he fastened a line to the gunwale and let his peaceful boat go its own way. There was hardly any wind; the blue sea was calm and the narrow track the rudder ploughed in the waters could be seen for a long time. The old fellow was talkative; he spoke of the priests, whom he disliked, of meat, which he thought was a good thing to eat even on fast days, of the work he had had when he was in the navy, and of the shots he had received when he was a customs officer.... The boat glided along slowly, the line followed us and the end of the _tape-cul_ hung in the water. The mile we had to walk in order to go from Saint-Pierre to Quiberon was quickly covered, in spite of a hilly and sandy road, and the sun, which made our shoulders smart beneath the straps of our bags, and a number of "men-hirs" that were scattered along the route. CHAPTER IV. QUIBERON. In Quiberon, we breakfasted at old Rohan Belle-Isle's, who keeps the Hôtel Penthièvre. This gentleman had his bare feet stuck in old slippers, on account of the heat, and was drinking with a mason, a fact which does not prevent him from being the descendant of one of the first families of Europe; an aristocrat of the old stock! a real aristocrat! _Vive Dieu!_ He immediately set to work to pound a steak and to cook us some lobsters. Our pride was flattered to its innermost fibre. The past of Quiberon is concentrated in a massacre. Its greatest curiosity is a cemetery, which is filled to its utmost capacity and overflows into the street. The head-stones are crowded together and invade and submerge one another, as if the corpses were uncomfortable in their graves and had lifted up their shoulders to escape from them. It suggests a petrified ocean, the tombs being the waves, and the crosses the masts of shipwrecked vessels. In the middle, an open ossuary contains skeletons that have been exhumed in order to make room for other corpses. Who has said: "Life is a hostelry, and the grave is our home?" But these corpses do not remain in their graves, for they are only tenants and are ejected at the expiration of the lease. Around this charnel-house, where the heaps of bones resemble a mass of fagots, is arranged, breast-high, a series of little black boxes, six inches square, surmounted by a cross and cut out in the shape of a heart in front, so that one can see the skulls inside. Above the heart-shaped opening are the following words in painted letters: "This is the head of ---- ----, deceased on such and such a day, in such and such a year." These heads belonged to persons of a certain standing, and one would be considered an ungrateful son if, after seven years, he did not give his parents' skulls the luxury of one of these little black boxes. The remainder of the bodies is thrown into the bone-house, and twenty-five years afterwards the heads are sent to join them. A few years ago they tried to abolish the custom; but a riot ensued and the practice continued. Perhaps it is wicked to play with those round skulls which once contained a mind, with those empty circles in which passion throbbed. Those boxes surrounding the ossuary and scattered over the graves, over the wall and in the grass, without any attempt at order, may appear horrible to a few and ridiculous to many; but those black cases rotting even as the bones blanch and crumble to dust; those skulls, with noses eaten away and foreheads streaked by the slimy trails of snails, and hollow, staring eyes; those thigh-bones piled up as in the great charnel-houses mentioned in the Bible; those pieces of skulls lying around filled with earth, in which a flower springs up sometimes and grows through the holes of the eyes; even the vulgarity of those inscriptions, which are as similar as the corpses they identify--all this human rottenness appeared beautiful to us, and procured us a splendid sight. If the post of Auray had arrived, we should have started at once for Belle-Isle; but they were waiting for it. Transient sailors with bare arms and open shirts sat in the kitchen of the inn, drinking to pass away the time. "At what time is the post due here in Auray?" "That depends; usually at ten o'clock," replied the innkeeper. "No, at eleven," put in a man. "At twelve," said M. de Rohan. "At one." "At half-past one." "Sometimes it doesn't reach here until two o'clock." "It isn't very regular!" We were aware of that; it was already three. We could not start before the arrival of this ill-fated messenger, which brings Belle-Isle the despatches from _terra firma_, so we had to resign ourselves. Once in a while some one would get up, go to the door, look out, come back, and start up again. Oh! he will not come to-day.--He must have stopped on the way.--Let's go home.--No, let's wait for him.--If, however, you are tired of waiting gentlemen.... After all, there may not be any letters.... No, just wait a little longer.--Oh! here he comes!--But it was some one else, and the dialogue would begin all over again. At last we heard the beating of tired hoofs on the cobblestones, the tinkling of bells, the cracking of a whip and a man's voice shouting: "Ho! Ho! Here's the post! Here's the post!" The horse stopped in front of the door, hunched its back, stretched its neck, opened its mouth, disclosed its teeth, spread its hind legs and rose on its hocks. The animal was lean and tall, and had a moth-eaten mane, rough hoofs and loose shoes; a seton bobbed up and down on its breast. Lost in a saddle that swallowed him up, supported at the back by a valise and in front by the mail-bag, which was passed through the saddle-bow, its rider sat huddled on it like a monkey. His small face, adorned with straggling blond whiskers and as wrinkled and rough as a winter apple, was hidden by a large oil-cloth hat lined with felt; a sort of gray coutil coat was drawn up to his hips and bagged around his stomach, while his trousers stopped at the knees and disclosed his bare legs reddened by the rubbing of the stirrup-straps, and his blue hose, which hung over his shoes. The harness was held together with strings, the rider's clothes had been mended with threads of different colours; all sorts of patches and all kinds of spots, torn linen, greasy leather, dried mud, recent dust, hanging straps, bright rags, a dirty man and a mangy horse, the former sickly and perspiring, the latter consumptive and almost spent; the one with his whip and the other with its bells--all this formed but one object which had the same colour and movement and executed almost the same gestures, which served the same purpose, the conducting of the Auray post. After another hour, when all the packages and commissions had been attended to and we had waited for several passengers who were to come, we finally left the inn and went aboard. At first there was nothing but a confused mass of people and luggage, oars that caused us to stumble, sails that dropped on our heads, men falling over each other and not knowing where to go; then everything quieted down, each one found his nook, the luggage was put in the bottom of the boat, the sailors got on the benches, and the passengers seated themselves as best they could. There was no breeze and the sails clung limply to the masts. The heavy boat hardly moved over the almost motionless sea, which swelled and subsided with the gentle rhythm of a sleeping breast. Leaning against one of the gunwales, we gazed at the water, which was as blue and calm as the sky, and listened to the splashing of the oars; sitting in the shadow of the sail, the six rowers lifted their oars regularly to make the forward stroke, and when they dipped them into the water and brought them up again, drops of crystal clung to their paddles. Reclining on the straw, or sitting on the benches, with their legs dangling and their chins in their hands, or leaning against the sides of the boat, between the big jambs of the hull, the tar of which was melting in the heat, the silent passengers hung their heads and closed their eyes to shut out the glare of the sun, that shone on the flat ocean as on a mirror. A white-haired man was sleeping at my feet, a gendarme was sweltering under his three-cornered hat, and two soldiers had unfastened their knapsacks and used them as pillows. Near the bowsprit stood a cabin-boy looking into the stay-sail and whistling for wind, while the skipper remained aft and managed the tiller. Still no wind arose. Orders were given to haul in the sails; slowly and gently they came down and fell in a heap on the benches; then each sailor took off his waistcoat, stowed it away under the bow of the boat, and the men began to row again with all their might. * * * * * Our departure had been so delayed that there was hardly any water left in the harbour and we had great difficulty in landing. Our boat grated on the pebbles, and in order to leave it, we were compelled to walk on an oar as if it were a tight-rope. Ensconced between the citadel and its ramparts, and cut in two by an almost empty port, the Palay appeared to us a useless little town overcome with military ennui, and put me in mind, I do not know why, of a gaping _sous-officier_. One fails to see the low-crowned, broad-brimmed black felt hats of Le Morbihan, that give protection to the shoulders as well as the head. The women do not affect the big, white caps that stand out from their faces, and reach down their backs like those worn by the nuns, so that when worn by little girls they cover half of their bodies. Their gowns are made without the wide stripe of velvet applied on each shoulder and rounding away under the arms. Nor do they wear the low shoes with square toes, high heels, and long black ribbon streamers. Here, as elsewhere, we found faces that resemble other faces, costumes that really are no costumes at all, cobblestones, and even a sidewalk. Was it worth while to expose ourselves to seasickness (which, by the way, we escaped, a fact that inclined us to leniency), only to see a citadel that we do not admire, a lighthouse that did not appeal to us in the least, and a rampart built by Vauban, of whom we were already heartily tired? But people had spoken to us of Belle-Isle's rocks. So we started at once, and taking a short cut across the fields, walked to the beach. We saw one grotto, only one (the day was near its close), but it appeared so beautiful to us (it was draped with sea-weed and decorated with shells, and water dripped from the top), that we resolved to spend a day in Belle-Isle, in order to discover more of them, if there were any, and feast our eyes leisurely upon their beauties. The following day, at dawn, having filled our flasks and put some sandwiches in our knapsacks, we decided to go where we pleased; so, without a guide or information of any sort (this is the best way), we set out to walk, having resolved that we would go anywhere, provided it were far, and would return home at any time, provided it were late. We began by a path which led to the top of a cliff, then followed its asperities and valleys and continued around the whole island. When we reached places where landslips had obliterated it, we struck out into the country and let our eyes roam over the horizon of the sea, the deep blue line of which touched the sky; then we walked back to the edge of the rocks, which had suddenly reappeared at our side. The perpendicular cliff, the top of which we were treading, concealed the flank of the rocks, and we could only hear the roaring of the breakers below us. Sometimes the rock was split in its entire length, disclosing its two almost straight sides, streaked with layers of silica, with tufts of yellow flowers scattered here and there. If we threw a stone, it appeared suspended in the air for a time, would then strike the sides of the cliff, rebound from the one to the other, break into a thousand bits, scattering earth and pebbles in its course, and finally land at the bottom of the pit, where it frightened the cormorants, which shrieked and took flight. Frequent storms and thaws have pushed a part of the upper grounds into these gorges, and so their steep slope has grown less abrupt, and one is able to climb down to the bottom. We attempted to do so by sliding down like children, holding ourselves back with our hands and feet, and finally we landed safely on the soft, wet sand. The tide was going out, but in order to be able to pass, we had to wait until the breakers receded. We watched them approach us. They dashed against the rocks, swirled in the crevices, rose like scarfs on the wind, fell back in drops and sprays, and with one long, sweeping libration, gathered their green waters together and retreated. When one wave left the sand, its currents immediately joined, and sought lower levels. The sea-weed moved its slimy branches; the water bubbled between the pebbles, oozed through the cracks of the rocks and formed a thousand rivulets and fountains. The drenched sand absorbed it all, and soon its yellow tint grew white again through the drying action of the sun. As soon as we could, we jumped over the rocks and continued on our way. Soon, however, they increased in numbers, their weird groups being crowded together, piled up and overturned on one another. We tried to hold on with our hands and feet, but we slid on their slippery asperities. The cliff was so very high that it quite frightened us to look up at it. Although it crushed us by its formidable placidity, still it fascinated us, for we could not help looking at it and it did not tire our eyes. A swallow passed us and we watched its flight; it came from the sea; it ascended slowly through the air, cutting the luminous, fluid atmosphere with its sharp, outstretched wings that seemed to enjoy being absolutely untrammelled. The bird ascended higher and higher, rose above the cliff and finally disappeared. Meanwhile we were creeping over the rocks, the perspective of which was renewed by each bend of the coast. Once in a while, when the rocks ended, we walked on square stones that were as flat as marble slabs and seamed by almost symmetrical furrows, which appeared like the tracks of some ancient road of another world. In some places were great pools of water as calm as their greenish depths and as limpid and motionless as a woodland stream on its bed of cresses. Then the rocks would reappear closer than before and more numerous. On one side was the ocean with its breakers foaming around the lower rocks; on the other, the straight, unrelenting, impassive coast. Tired and bewildered, we looked about us for some issue; but the cliff stretched out before us, and the rocks, infinitely multiplying their dark green forms, succeeded one another until their unequal crags seemed like so many tall, black phantoms rising out of the earth. We stumbled around in this way until we suddenly perceived an undulating series of rough steps which enabled us to climb up to flat land again. It is always a pleasure, even when the country is ugly, to walk with a friend, to feel the grass under one's feet, to jump over fences and ditches, to break thistles with one's stick, to pull leaves from the bushes and wheat from the fields, to go where one's fancy dictates, whistling, singing, talking, dreaming, without strange ears to listen to one's conversation, and the sound of strange footsteps behind one, as absolutely free as if one were in the desert! Ah! Let us have air! air! And more space! Since our contracted souls suffocate and die on the window-sill, since our captive spirits, like the bear in its cage, turn around and around, and stagger against the walls of their prison, why not, at least, let our nostrils breathe the different perfumes of all the winds of the earth, why not let our eyes rove over every horizon? No steeple shone in the distance, no hamlet with thatched roofs and square yards framed by clusters of trees, appeared on the side of a hill; not a soul was to be seen, not even a peasant, a grazing sheep, or a stray dog. All those cultivated fields look uninhabited; the peasants work in them, but they do not live there. One is led to believe that they benefit by them but do not care about them in the least. We saw a farm and walked in; a ragged woman served us some ice-cold milk in earthen cups. The silence all around was peculiar. The woman watched us eagerly, and we soon took our departure. We walked into a valley, the narrow gorge of which appeared to extend to the ocean. Tall grass with yellow flowers reached up to our waists, and we had to take long strides in order to advance. We could hear the murmur of flowing water near by, and we sank ankle-deep into the marshy soil. Presently the two hills parted; their barren sides were covered with short, stubby grass and here and there were big yellow patches of moss. At the foot of one hill a stream wends its way through the drooping boughs of the stunted shrubs that grow on its edges, and loses itself in a quiet pond where long-legged insects disport themselves on the leaves of the water-lilies. The sun beat down on us. The gnats rubbed their wings together and bent the slender ends of the reeds with the weight of their tiny bodies. We were alone in the tranquillity of this desert. At this point, the valley curved and widened and formed a sharp bend. We climbed a little hill, in order to locate ourselves, but the horizon either ended abruptly, enclosed by another hill, or else stretched out over new plains. We did not lose courage, however, and continued to advance, while we thought of the travellers on desert islands who climb on promontories in the hope of sighting some vessel setting sail towards them. The soil was growing less moist, and the grass less high; presently the ocean came in view, ensconced in a narrow bay, and soon the shore, strewn with débris of shells and madrepores, crunched beneath our footsteps. We let ourselves drop to the ground and as we were exhausted, we soon fell asleep. An hour later the cold woke us up, and we started homeward without any fear of losing our way this time. We were on the coast facing France, and Palay was on our left. It was here, the day before, that we had discovered the grotto we admired so much. It did not take us long to find others, higher and deeper even than the first one. They always opened through large, pointed arches which were either upright or inclined, their bold columns supporting enormous pieces of rock. Black, veined with purple, fiery red, or brown streaked with white, these beautiful grottoes displayed for their visitors the infinite variety of their shapes and colouring, their graces and their grand caprices. There was one all of silver veined with deep red; in another, tufts of flowers resembling periwinkles had grown on glazings of reddish granite, and drops of water fell from the ceiling on the fine sand with never-ceasing regularity. In the background of another grotto, beneath a long semi-circle, a bed of polished white gravel, which the tide no doubt turns and makes fresh every day, seemed to be waiting to receive the body of a mermaid; but the bed is empty and has lost her forever! Only the moist seaweed remains on which she used to stretch her delicate nude limbs when she was tired of swimming, and on which she reclined till daybreak, in the pale light of the moon. The sun was setting, and the tide was coming in over the rocks that melted in the blue evening mist, which was blanched on the level of the ocean by the foam of the tumbling waves. In the other part of the horizon, the sky streaked with orange stripes looked as if it had been swept by a gale. Its light reflected on the waters and spread a gleaming sheen over them, and projected on the sand, giving it a brownish tinge and making it glitter like steel. Half a mile to the south, the coast is covered by a line of rocks that extends to the sea. In order to reach them, we should have been compelled to tramp as we had already done that morning. We were tired, and it was far; but a temptation seemed to push us forward. The breeze played in the cracks of the rocks and wrinkled the surface of the pools; the sea-weed, cleaving to the sides of the cliff, shook in the wind, and from the part of the sky where the moon was to rise, a pale light spread over the waters. It was the hour when the shadows lengthen. The rocks appeared larger, and the breakers a deeper green. The sky seemed to expand, and all nature assumed a different appearance. So we started, without giving a thought to the incoming tide or whether or not we should find later a way to get back to land. We wished to enjoy our pleasure to the fullest extent. We seemed lighter than in the morning, and ran and jumped without the slightest feeling of fatigue. An abundance of animal spirits impelled us onward and we felt a peculiarly robust twitching in our muscles. We shook our heads in the wind and touched the grasses with our fingers. We breathed the salt air of the ocean, and noted and assimilated every color, every sunbeam, every sound, the design of the seaweed, the softness of the sand, the hardness of the rocks that echoed under our footsteps, the height of the cliffs, the fringe of the waves, the accidents of the coast, and the voice of the horizon; and the breeze that passed over our faces like intangible kisses, the sky with its passing clouds, the rising moon, the peeping stars. Our souls bathed in all this splendour, and our eyes feasted on it; we opened our ears and nostrils wide; something of the very life of the elements, forced from them undoubtedly by the attraction of our eyes, reached us and was assimilated, so that we were able to comprehend them in a closer relation and feel them more keenly, thanks to this complex union. By thus entering and penetrating into nature, we became a part of it, diffused ourselves in it, and were claimed by it once more; we felt that it was overpowering us, and we rejoiced; we desired to be lost in it, to be borne away, or to carry it away with us. As in the raptures of love, one wishes more hands with which to caress, more lips with which to kiss, more eyes with which to see, more soul with which to worship; spreading ourselves out in nature, with a joyful and delirious abandon, we regretted that our eyes could not penetrate to the innermost parts of the rocks, to the bottom of the sea, to the end of the heavens, in order to see how the stones grow, how the breakers are made, how the stars are lighted; we regretted that our ears could not catch the rumour of the fermentation of the granite in the bowels of the earth, could not hear the sap circulate in the plants and the coral roll in the solitudes of the ocean. And while we were under the spell of that contemplative effusion, we wished that our souls, radiating everywhere, might live all these different lives, assume all these different forms, and, varying unceasingly, accomplish their metamorphoses under an eternal sun! But man was made to enjoy each day only a small portion of food, colours, sounds, sentiments and ideas. Anything above the allotted quantity tires or intoxicates him; it becomes the idiocy of the drunkard or the ravings of the ecstatic. O, God! How small is our glass and how large is our thirst! What weak heads we have! CHAPTER V. RETURN. In order to return to Quiberon, we were compelled, on the following day, to arise before seven o'clock, a feat which required some courage. While we were still stiff from fatigue and shivering with sleep, we got into a boat along with a white horse, two drummers, the same one-eyed gendarme and the same soldier who, this time, however, did not lecture anybody. As drunk as a lord, he kept slipping under the benches and had all he could do to keep his shako on his head and extricate his gun from between his feet. I could not say which was the sillier of the two. The gendarme was sober, but he was very stupid. He deplored the soldier's lack of manners, enumerated the punishments that would be dealt out to him, was scandalised by his hiccoughs and resented his demeanour. Viewed from the side of the missing eye, with his three-cornered hat, his sabre and his yellow gloves, the gendarme presented one of the sorriest aspects of human life. Besides, there is something so essentially grotesque about gendarmes that I cannot help laughing at them; these upholders of the law always produce the same comic effect on me, and so do attorneys for the king, magistrates, and professors of literature. Tipped to one side, the boat skimmed lightly through the foaming waves. The three sails were comfortably swelled; the masts creaked and the wind rattled the pulleys. A cabin-boy stood at the helm singing. We could not catch the words, but it was some slow, monotonous lay which neither rose nor fell and was repeated again and again, with long-drawn-out inflections and languid refrain. And it swept softly and sadly out over the ocean, as some confused memory sweeps through one's mind. The horse stood as straight as it could on its four legs and pulled at a bundle of hay. The sailors, with folded arms, looked absently at the sails and smiled a far-away smile. * * * * * So we journeyed on without speaking a word and as best we could, without reaching the edge of the bay, where it looked as if Plouharnel might be. However, after a while we arrived there. But when we did, we were confronted by the ocean, for we had followed the right side of the coast instead of the left, and were forced to turn back and go over a part of the route. A muffled sound was heard. A bell tinkled and a hat appeared. It was the Auray post. Again the same man, the same horse, the same mail-bag. He was ambling quietly towards Quiberon; he would be back directly and return again the next day. He is the guest of the coast; he passes in the morning and again at night. His life is spent going from one point to another; he is the only one who gives the coast some animation, something to look forward to, and, I was almost going to say, some charm. He stopped and talked to us for a few minutes, then lifted his hat and was off again. What an ensemble! What a horse, and what a rider! What a picture! Callot would probably have reproduced it, but it would take Cervantes to write it. After passing over large pieces of rock that have been placed in the sea in order to shorten the route by cutting the back of the bay in two, we finally arrived at Plouharnel. The village was quiet; chickens cackled and scratched in the streets, and in the gardens enclosed by stone walls, weeds and oats grew side by side. While we were sitting in front of the host's door, an old beggar passed us. He was as red as a lobster, dirty and unkempt and covered with rags and vermin. The sun shone on his dilapidated garments and on his purple skin; it was almost black and seemed to transude blood. He kept bellowing in a terrible voice, while beating a tattoo on the door of a neighbouring house. CHAPTER VI. QUIMPER. Quimper, although it is the centre of the real Brittany, is distinctly different from it. The elm-tree promenade that follows the winding river, which has quays and boats, renders the town very pretty and the big Hôtel de la Préfecture, which alone covers the little western delta, gives it a thoroughly administrative and French appearance. You are aware that you are in the _chef-lieu_ of a department, a fact brought home to you by the latter's division in _arrondissements_, with their large, medium, and small parishes, its committee of primary instruction, its saving banks, its town council and other modern inventions, which rob the cities of local colour, dear to the heart of the innocent tourist. With all due deference to the people who pronounce the name of Quimper-Corentin as the synonyme of all that is ridiculous and provincial, it is a most delightful place, and well worth other more respected ones. You will not, it is true, find the charms and riotous wealth of colouring possessed by Quimperlé; still, I know of few things that can equal the charming appearance of that alley following the edge of the river and shaded by the escarpment of a neighbouring mountain, which casts the dark shadows of its luxuriant foliage over it. It does not take long to go through cities of this kind, and to know their most intimate recesses, and sometimes one stumbles across places that stay one's steps and fill one's heart with gladness. Small cities, like small apartments, seem warmer and cosier to live in. But keep this illusion! There are more draughts in such apartments than in a palace, and a city of this kind is more deadly monotonous than the desert. Returning to the hotel by one of those paths we dearly love, that rises and falls and winds, sometimes through a field, sometimes through grass and brambles, sometimes along a wall, which are filled in turn with daisies, pebbles and thistles, a path made for light thoughts and bantering conversation,--returning, I said, to the city, we heard cries and plaintive wails issue from under the slated roof of a square building. It was the slaughter-house. At that moment I thought of some terrible city, of some frightful and immense place like Babylon or Babel, filled with cannibals and slaughter-houses, where they butchered men instead of animals; and I tried to discover a likeness to human agonies in those bleating and sobbing voices. I thought of groups of slaves brought there with ropes around their necks, to be tied to iron rings, and killed in order to feed their masters, who would eat their flesh from tables of carved ivory and wipe their lips on fine linen. Would their attitudes be more dejected, their eyes sadder or their prayers more pitiful? While we were in Quimper, we went out one day through one side of the town and came back through the other, after tramping about eight hours. Our guide was waiting for us under the porch of the hotel. He started in front of us and we followed. He was a little white-haired man, with a linen cap and torn shoes, and he wore an old brown coat that was many sizes too large for him. He stuttered when he spoke, and when he walked he knocked his knees together; but in spite of all this, he managed to advance very quickly, with a sort of nervous, almost febrile perseverance. From time to time, he would pull a leaf off a tree and clap it over his mouth to cool his lips. His business consists in going from one place to another, attending to letters and errands. He goes to Douarnenez, Quimperlé, Brest and even to Rennes, which is forty miles away (a journey which he accomplished in four days, including going and coming). His whole ambition, he said, was to return to Rennes once more during his lifetime. And only for the purpose, mind you, of going back, of making the trip, and being able to boast of it afterwards. He knows every road and every _commune_ that has a steeple; he takes short cuts across the fields, opens gates, and when he passes in front of a farm, he never fails to greet its owners. Having listened to the birds all his life, he has learned to imitate their chirpings, and when he walks along the roads, under the trees, he whistles as his feathered friends do, in order to charm his solitude. Our first stop was at Loc-Maria, an ancient monastery, given in olden times by Conan III to the abbey of Fontevrault; it is situated a quarter of a mile from the town. This monastery has not been shamefully utilised like the abbey of poor Robert d'Arbrissel.[2] It is deserted, but has not been sullied. Its Gothic portal does not re-echo the voices of jailers, and though there may not be much of it, one experiences neither disgust nor rebellion. In that little chapel, of a rather severe Romance style, the only curious thing is a large granite holy-water basin which stands on the floor and is almost black. It is wide and deep and represents to perfection the real Catholic holy-water basin, made to receive the entire body of an infant, and not in the least like those narrow shells in our churches in which you can only dip your fingers. With its clear water rendered more limpid by the contrast of a greenish bed, the vegetation which has grown all around it during the religious calm of centuries, its crumbling angles, and its great mass of bronzed stone, it looks like one of those hollowed rocks which contain salt water. After we had inspected the chapel carefully, we walked to the river, crossed it in a boat, and plunged into the country. It is absolutely deserted and strangely empty. Trees, bushes, sea-rushes, tamarisks, and heather grow on the edge of the ditches. We came to broad stretches of land, but we did not see a soul anywhere. The sky was bleak and a fine rain moistened the atmosphere and spread a grey veil over the country. The paths we chose were hollow and shaded by clusters of foliage, the branches of which, uniting, drooped over our heads and almost prevented us from walking erect. The light that filtered through the dome of leaves was greenish, and as dim as on a winter evening. But farther away, it was brilliant, and played around the edges of the leaves and accentuated their delicate pinking. Later we reached the top of a barren slope, which was flat and smooth, and without a blade of grass to relieve the monotony of its colour. Sometimes, however, we came upon a long avenue of beech-trees with moss growing around the foot of their thick, shining trunks. There were wagon-tracks in these avenues, as if to indicate the presence of a neighbouring castle that we might see at any moment; but they ended abruptly in a stretch of flat land that continued between two valleys, through which it would spread its green maze furrowed by the capricious meanderings of hedges, spotted here and there by a grove, brightened by clumps of sea-rushes, or by some field bordering the meadows which rose slowly to meet the hills and lost themselves in the horizon. Above these hills, far away in the mist, stretched the blue surface of the ocean. The birds are either absent or they do not sing; the leaves are thick, the grass deadens one's footfalls, and the country gazes at you like some melancholy countenance. It looks as if it had been created expressly to harbour ruined lives and shattered hopes, and to foster their bitterness beneath its weeping sky, to the low rustling of the trees and the heather. On winter nights, when the fox creeps stealthily over the dry leaves, when the tiles fall from the pigeon-house and the reeds bend in the marshes, when the beech-trees stoop in the wind, and the wolf ambles over the moonlit snow, while one is alone by the dying embers listening to the wind howl in the empty hallways, how charming it must be to let one's heart dwell on its most cherished despairs and long forgotten loves! We spied a hovel with a Gothic portal; further on was an old wall with an ogive door; a leafless bush swayed there in the breeze. In the courtyard the ground is covered with heather, violets, and pebbles; you walk in, look around and go out again. This place is called "The temple of the false gods," and used to be, it is thought, a commandery of Templars. Our guide started again and we followed him. Presently a steeple rose among the trees; we crossed a stubble-field, climbed to the top of a ditch and caught a glimpse of a few of dwellings: the village of Pomelin. A rough road constitutes the main street and the village consists of several houses separated by yards. What tranquillity! or rather what forlornness! The thresholds are deserted; the yards are empty. Where are the inhabitants? One would think that they had all left the village to lie in wait behind the furze-bushes to catch a glimpse of the _Blues_ who are about to pass through the ravine. The church is poor and perfectly bare. No beautiful painted saints, no pictures on the walls or on the roof, no hanging lamp oscillating at the end of a long, straight cord. In a corner of the choir, a wick was burning in a glass filled with oil. Round wooden pillars hold up the roof, the blue paint of which has been freshened recently. The bright light of the fields, filtering through the green foliage which covers the roof of the church, shines through the white window-panes. The door, a little wooden door that closes with a latch, was open; a flight of birds came in, chirping and beating their wings against the walls; they fluttered for awhile beneath the vault and around the altar, two or three alighted upon the holy-water basin, to moisten their beaks, and then all flew away as suddenly as they had come. It is not an unusual thing to see birds in the Breton churches; many live there and fasten their nests to the stones of the nave; they are never disturbed. When it rains, they all gather in the church, but as soon as the sun pierces the clouds and the rain-spouts dry up, they repair to the trees again. So that during the storm two frail creatures often enter the blessed house of God together; man to pray and allay his fears, and the bird to wait until the rain stops and to warm the naked bodies of its frightened young. A peculiar charm pervades these churches. It is not their poverty that moves us, because even when they are empty, they appear to be inhabited. Is it not, then, their modesty that appeals to us? For, with their unpretentious steeples, and their low roofs hiding under the trees, they seem to shrink and humiliate themselves in the sight of God. They have not been upreared through a spirit of pride, nor through the pious fancy of some mighty man on his death-bed. On the contrary, we feel that it is the simple impression of a need, the ingenuous cry of an appetite, and, like the shepherd's bed of dried leaves, it is the retreat the soul has built for itself where it comes to rest when it is tired. These village churches represent better than their city sisters the distinctive features of the places where they are built, and they seem to participate more directly in the life of the people who, from father to son, come to kneel at the same place and on the same stone slab. Every day, every Sunday, when they enter and when they leave, do they not see the graves of their parents, are these not near them while they pray, and does it not seem to them as if the church was only a larger family circle from which the loved ones have not altogether departed? These places of worship thus have a harmonious sense, and the life of these people is influenced by it from the baptismal font to the grave. It is not the same with us, because we have relegated eternity to the outskirts of the city, have banished our dead to the faubourgs and laid them to rest in the carpenter's quarter, near the soda factories and night-soil magazines. About three o'clock in the afternoon, we arrived at the chapel of Kerfeunteun, near the entrance to Quimper. At the upper end of the chapel is a fine glass window of the sixteenth century, representing the genealogical tree of the Holy Trinity. Jacob forms the trunk, and the top is figured by the Cross surmounted by the Eternal Father with a tiara on His head. On each side, the square steeple represents a quadrilateral pierced by a long straight window. This steeple does not rest squarely on the roof, but instead, by means of a slender basis, the narrow sides of which almost touch, it forms an obtuse angle near the ridge of the roof. In Brittany, almost every church has a steeple of this kind. Before returning to the city, we made a détour in order to visit the chapel of _La Mère-Dieu_. As it is usually closed, our guide summoned the custodian, and the latter accompanied us with his little niece, who stopped along the road to pick flowers. The young man walked in front of us. His slender and flexible figure was encased in a jacket of light blue cloth, and the three velvet streamers of his black hat, which was carefully placed on the back of his head, over his knotted hair, hung down his back. At the bottom of a valley, or rather a ravine, can be seen the church of _La Mère-Dieu_, veiled by thick foliage. In this place, amid the silence of all these trees and because of its little Gothic portal (which appears to be of the thirteenth century, but which, in reality, is of the sixteenth), the church reminds one of the discreet chapels mentioned in old novels and old melodies, where they knighted the page starting for the Holy Land, one morning when the stars were dim and the lark trilled, while the mistress of the castle slipped her white hand through the bars of the iron gate and wept when he kissed her goodbye. We entered the church. The young custodian took off his hat and knelt on the floor. His thick, blond hair uncoiled and fell around his shoulders. It clung a moment to the coarse cloth of his jacket, and then, little by little, it separated and spread like the hair of a woman. It was parted in the middle and hung on both sides over his shoulders and neck. The golden mass rippled with light every time he moved his head bent in prayer. The little girl kneeled beside him and let her flowers fall to the ground. For the first time in my life, I understood the beauty of a man's locks and the fascination they may have for bare and playful arms. A strange progress, indeed, is that which consists in curtailing everywhere the grand superfetations nature has bestowed upon us, so that whenever we discover them in all their virgin splendour, they are a revelation to us. CHAPTER VII. PONT-L'ABBÉ. At five o'clock in the evening, we arrived at Pont-l'Abbé, covered with quite a respectable coating of mud and dust, which fell from our clothing upon the floor of the inn with such disastrous abundance, every time we moved, that we were almost mortified at the mess we made. Pont-l'Abbé is a peaceful little town, cut in two in its entire length by a broad, paved street. Its modest inhabitants cannot possibly look any more stupid or insignificant than the place itself. For those who must see something wherever they go, there are the unimportant remains of the castle and the church, an edifice that would be quite passable were it not for the thick coat of paint that covers it. The chapel of the Virgin was a bower of flowers; bunches of jonquils, pansies, roses, jessamine, and honeysuckle were arranged in blue glasses or white china vases and spread their bright colours over the altar and upward between the two tall candlesticks framing the Virgin's face and her silver crown, from which fell a long veil caught on the gold star of the plaster Infant she held in her arms. One could smell the odour of the holy water and the flowers. It was a perfumed, mysterious little nook all by itself, a hidden retreat decorated by loving hands, and peculiarly adapted for the exhalation of mystical desires and long, heart-broken orisons. All his heart's sensuousness, compressed by the climate and numbed by misery, is brought here by man and laid at the feet of Mary, the Divine Mother, and he is thus able to satisfy his unquenchable longing for love and enjoyment. No matter if the roof leaks and there are no benches or chairs in the rest of the church, you will always find the chapel of the Virgin bright with flowers and lights, for it seems as if all the religious tenderness of Brittany has concentrated there; it is the softest spot of its heart; it is its weakness, its passion, its treasure. Though there are no flowers in these parts, there are flowers in the church; though the people are poor, the Virgin is always sumptuous and beautiful. She smiles at you, and despairing souls go to warm themselves at her knees as at a hearthstone that is never extinguished. One is astonished at the way these people cling to their belief; but does one know the pleasure and voluptuousness they derive from it? Is not asceticism superior epicureanism, fasting, refined gormandising? Religion can supply one with almost carnal sensations; prayer has its debauchery and mortification its raptures; and the men who come at night and kneel in front of this dressed statue, feel their hearts beat thickly and a sort of vague intoxication, while in the streets of the city, the children on their way home from school stop and gaze dreamily at the woman who smiles at them from the stained window of the church. But you must attend a fête in order to gain an insight into the gloomy character of these people. They don't dance; they merely turn; they don't sing; they only whistle. That very evening we went to a neighbouring village to be present at the inauguration of a threshing-floor. Two _biniou_ players were stationed on top of the wall surrounding the yard, and played continuously while two long lines of men and women, following in one anothers' footsteps, trotted around the place and described several figures. The lines would turn, break up and form again at irregular intervals. The heavy feet of the dancers struck the ground without the slightest attempt at rhythm, while the shrill notes of the music succeeded one another rapidly and with desperate monotony. The dancers who tired withdrew without interrupting the dance, and when they had rested, they re-entered it. During the whole time we watched this peculiar performance, the crowd stopped only once, while the musicians drank some cider; then, when they had finished, the lines formed anew and the dance began again. At the entrance of the yard was a table covered with nuts; beside it stood a pitcher of brandy and on the ground was a keg of cider; near by stood a citizen in a green frock coat and a leather cap; a little farther away was a man wearing a jacket and a sword suspended from a white shoulder-belt; they were the _commissaire de police_, of Pont-l'Abbé and his _garde-champêtre_. Suddenly, M. le commissaire pulled out his watch and motioned to the _garde_. The latter drew several peasants aside, spoke to them in a low tone, and presently the assembly broke up. All four of us returned to the city together, which afforded us the opportunity of again admiring mother of the harmonious combinations of Providence which had created this _commissaire de police_ for this _garde-champêtre_ and this _garde-champêtre_ for his _commissaire de police_. They were made for each other. The same fact would give rise in both of them to the same reflections; from the same idea both would draw parallel conclusions. When the _commissaire_ laughed, the _garde_ grinned; when he assumed a serious expression, his shadow grew gloomy; if the frock-coat said, "This must be done," the jacket replied, "I think so, too;" if the coat added, "It is necessary;" the waistcoat affirmed: "It is indispensable." Notwithstanding this inward comprehension, their outward relations of rank and authority remained unchanged. For the _garde_ spoke in a lower tone than the _commissaire_, and was a trifle shorter and walked behind him. The _commissaire_ was polished, important, fluent; he consulted himself, ruminated, talked to himself, and smacked his tongue; the _garde_ was deferential, attentive, pensive and observing, and would utter an exclamation from time to time and scratch his nose. On the way, he inquired about the news, asked the _commissaire's_ advice, and solicited his orders, while his superior questioned, meditated, and issued commands. We had just come in sight of the first houses of the city, when we heard shrieks issue from one of them. The street was blocked by an excited crowd, and several persons rushed up to the _commissaire_ and exclaimed: "Come, come quickly, Monsieur, they're having a fight! Two women are being killed!" "By whom?" "We don't know." "Why?" "They are bleeding." "But with what?" "With a rake." "Where's the murderer?" "One on the head and the other on the arm. Go in, they're waiting for you; the women are there." So the _commissaire_ went in and we followed. We heard sobs, screams, and excited conversation and saw a jostling, curious mob. People stepped on one another's toes, dug one another's ribs, cursed, and caused general confusion. The _commissaire_ got angry; but as he could not speak Breton, the _garde_ got angry for him and chased the crowd out, taking each individual by his shoulders and shoving him through the door into the street. When the room had been cleared of all except a dozen persons, we managed to discover in a corner, a piece of flesh hanging from an arm and a mass of black hair dripping with blood. An old woman and a young girl had been hurt in the fight. The old woman was tall and angular and had skin as yellow and wrinkled as parchment; she was standing up, groaning and holding her left arm with her right hand; she did not seem to be suffering much, but the girl was crying. She was sitting on a chair with her hands spread out on her knees and her head bent low; she was trembling convulsively and shaking with low sobs. As they replied by complaints to all our questions, and as the testimony of the witnesses was conflicting, we could not ascertain who had started the fight or what it was about. Some said that a husband had surprised his wife; others, that the women had started the row and that the owner of the house had tried to kill them in order to make them stop. But no one knew anything definite. M. _le commissaire_ was greatly perplexed and the _garde_ perfectly nonplussed. As the doctor was away, and as it might be that the good people did not wish his services, because it meant expense, we had the audacity to offer the help of our limited knowledge and rushed off for our satchels, a piece of cerecloth, and some linen and lint which we had brought with us in anticipation of possible accidents. It would really have been an amusing sight for our friends, had they been able to see us spread out our bistoury, our pincers, and three pairs of scissors, one with gold branches, on the table of this hut. The _commissaire_ praised our philanthropy, the women watched us in awed silence, and the tallow candle melted and ran down the iron candle-stick in spite of the efforts of the _garde_, who kept trimming the wick with his fingers. We attended to the old woman first. The cut had been given conscientiously; the bare arm showed the bone, and a triangle of flesh about four inches long hung over it like a cuff. We tried to put this back in its place by adjusting it carefully over the edge of the gaping wound and bandaging the arm. It is quite possible that the violent compression the member was subjected to caused mortification to set in, and that the patient may have died. We did not know exactly what ailed the girl. The blood trickled through her hair, but we could not see whence it came; it formed oily blotches all over it and ran down into her neck. The _garde_, our interpreter, bade her remove the cotton band she wore on her head, and her tresses tumbled down in a dull, dark mass and uncoiled like a cascade full of bloody threads. We parted the thick, soft, abundant locks, and found a swelling as large as a nut and pierced by an oval hole on the back of her head. We shaved the surrounding parts; and after we had washed and stanched the wound, we melted some tallow and spread it over some lint, which we adapted to the swelling with strips of diachylum. Over this we placed first a bandage, then the cotton band, and then the cap. While this was taking place, the justice of the peace arrived. The first thing he did was to ask for the rake, and the only thing he seemed to care about was to examine it. He took hold of the handle, counted the teeth, waved it in the air, tested the iron and bent the wood. "Is this," he demanded, "the instrument with which the assault was committed? Jérôme, are you sure it is?" "They say so, Monsieur." "You were not present, Monsieur le commissaire?" "No, Monsieur le juge de paix." "I would like to know whether the blows were really dealt with a rake or whether they were given with a blunt instrument. Who is the assailant? And did the rake belong to him or to some one else? Was it really with this that these women were hurt? Or was it, I repeat, with a blunt instrument? Do they wish to lodge a complaint? What do you think about it, Monsieur le commissaire?" The victims said little, remarking only that they suffered great pain; so they were given over night to decide whether or not they wished to seek redress by law. The young girl could hardly speak, and the old woman's ideas were muddled, seeing that she was drunk, according to what the neighbours intimated,--a fact which explained her insensibility when we had endeavoured to relieve her suffering. After they had looked at us as keenly as they could in order to ascertain who we were, the authorities of Pont-l'Abbé bade us good night and thanked us for the services we had rendered the community. We put our things back into our satchel, and the _commissaire_ departed with the _garde_, the _garde_ with his sword, and the justice of the peace with the rake. CHAPTER VIII. ROAMING. En route! the sky is blue, the sun is shining, and our feet are eager to tread on the grass. From Crozon to Leudevenec the country is quite flat, and there is not a house nor a tree to be seen. As far as the eye can reach, reddish moss spreads over the ground. Sometimes fields of ripe wheat rise above the little stunted sea-rushes. The latter are flowerless now, and look as they did before the springtime. Deep wagon-tracks, edged by rolls of dried mud, make their appearance and continue for a long time; then they suddenly describe a bend and are lost to the eye. Grass grows in large patches between these sunken furrows. The wind whistles over the flats; we walk on; a welcome breeze dries the beads of perspiration on our cheeks, and when we halted we were able to hear, above the sound of our beating arteries, the rustling of the wind in the grass. From time to time, a mill with rapidly revolving wheels would rise up and point the way. The creaking wooden fans descended, grazed the ground and then rose. Standing erect in the open garret-window, the miller watched us pass. We walked on; coming to a hedge of elm-trees which probably concealed a village, we caught sight of a man standing in a tree, at the foot of which was a woman with her blue apron spread out to catch the plums he was throwing to her. I recollect a crop of dark hair falling in masses over her shoulders, two uplifted arms, the movement of the supple neck and the sonorous laughter that floated over the hedge to me. The path we were following grew narrower. Presently the plain disappeared and we found ourselves on the crest of a promontory dominating the ocean. Looking towards Brest, it seemed to extend indefinitely; but on the other side, it projected its sinuosities into the land, between short hills covered with underwood. Each gulf is ensconced between two mountains; each mountain is flanked by two gulfs, and nothing can equal the beauty of those vast green slopes rising almost in a straight line out of the sea. The hills have rounded tops and flattened bases, and describe a wide, curved chain which joins the plateaux with the graceful sweep of a Moorish arch; following so closely upon one another, the colour of their foliage and their formation are almost exactly alike. Propelled by the sea-breeze, the breakers dashed up against the foot of these hills, and the sun, falling on them, made them gleam; the whole surface of the ocean was blue and glittering with silver, and we could not get enough of its beauty. Then we watched the sunbeams glide over the hills. One of the latter had already been deserted by them, and appeared more indistinct than the rest, while a broad black shadow was rapidly gathering over another. As we approached the level of the shore the mountains that faced us a moment ago seemed to grow loftier; the gulfs deepened and the ocean expanded. We walked on, oblivious to everything, and let our eyes roam at will, and the pebbles that our feet dislodged rolled down the hill quickly and disappeared in the bushes edging the road. The roads followed hedges that were as compact and thick as walls; we climbed up and we climbed down; meanwhile, it was growing dark, and the country was settling into the deep silence characteristic of midsummer evenings. As we failed to meet anybody who could show us the way, the few peasants we had questioned having responded by unintelligible cries, we produced our map and our compass, and, locating ourselves by the setting sun, we resolved to head straight for Daoulas. Instantly our vigour returned, and we started across the fields, vaulting fences and ditches, and uprooting, tearing and breaking everything in our way, without giving a thought to the stiles we left open or the damaged crops. At the top of a slope, we discovered the village of l'Hôpital lying in a meadow watered by a stream. A bridge spans the latter and on this bridge is a mill; beyond the meadow is a hill, which we started to climb nimbly, when suddenly we saw, by a ray of light, a beautiful yellow and black salamander creeping along the edge of a ditch with its slender tail dragging in the dust and undulating with every motion of its speckled body. It had come from its retreat under a big stone covered with moss, and was hunting insects in the rotten trunks of old oak-trees. A pavement of uneven cobblestones echoed beneath our feet, and a street stretched out before us. We had arrived in Daoulas. There was light enough to enable us to distinguish a square sign swinging on an iron rod on one of the houses. We should have recognised the inn even without the sign, as houses, like men, have their professions stamped on their faces. So we entered, for we were ravenous, and told the host above all things not to keep us waiting. While we were sitting in front of the door, waiting for our dinner, a little girl in rags came along with a basket of strawberries on her head. She entered the inn and came out again after a short while, holding a big loaf of bread in both hands. Uttering shrill cries, she scampered off with the alertness of a kitten. Her dusty hair fluttered in the wind and stood out straight from her wizened face, and her bare legs, which she lifted high in the air when running, disappeared under the rags that covered her form. After our meal, which comprised, besides the unavoidable omelet and the fatal veal, the strawberries the little girl had brought, we went up to our rooms. The winding staircase with its worm-eaten steps groaned beneath our weight, like a sensitive woman under a new disillusion. At the top was a room with a door that closed on the outside with a hook. We slept there. The plaster on the once yellow walls was crumbling away; the beams of the ceiling bent beneath the weight of the slated roof, and on the window-panes was a layer of dust that softened the light like a piece of unpolished glass. The beds, four walnut boards carelessly put together, had big, round, worm-eaten knobs, and the wood was split by the dryness. On each bed was a mattress and a matting, covered with a ragged green spread. A piece of mirror in a varnished frame, an old game-bag on a nail, and a worn silk cravat which showed the crease of its folds, indicated that the room belonged to some one who probably slept there every night. Under one of the red cotton pillows I discovered a hideous object, a cap of the same color as the coverlet, but coated with a greasy glazing which prevented its texture from being recognisable; a worn, shapeless, clammy, oily thing. I am sure that its owner prizes it highly and that he finds it warmer than any other cap. A man's life, the perspiration of an entire existence, is secreted in this layer of mouldy cerate. How many nights it must have taken to make it so thick! How many nightmares have galloped under this cap? How many dreams have been dreamed beneath it? And charming ones, too, perhaps,--why not? If you are neither an engineer, nor a blacksmith, nor a builder, Brest will not interest you very much. The port is magnificent, I admit; beautiful, if you say so; gigantic, if you wish. It is imposing, you know, and gives the impression of a powerful nation. But those piles of cannons and anchors and cannon-balls, the infinite extension of those quays, which enclose a calm, flat sea that appears to be chained down, and those big workshops filled with grinding machinery, the never-ceasing clanking of galley chains, the convicts who pass by in regular gangs and work in silence,--this entire, pitiless, frightful, forced mechanism, this organized defiance, quickly disgusts the soul and tires the eye. The latter can rest only on cobblestones, shells, piles of iron, madriers, dry docks containing the naked hulls of vessels, and the grey walls of the prison, where a man leans out of the windows and tests the iron bars with a hammer. Nature is absent and more completely banished from this place, than from any other spot on the face of the earth; everywhere can be seen denial and hatred of it, as much in the crowbar which demolishes the rocks, as in the sabre of the _garde-chiourme_ who watches over the convicts. Outside of the arsenal and the penitentiary, there is nothing but barracks, corps-de-garde, fortifications, ditches, uniforms, bayonets, sabres and drums. From morning until night, military music sounds under your windows, soldiers pass through the streets, come, go, and drill; the bugle sounds incessantly and the troops file past. You understand at once that the arsenal constitutes the real city and that the other is completely swallowed up by it. Everywhere and in every form reappear discipline, administration, ruled paper. Factitious symmetry and idiotic cleanliness are much admired. In the navy hospital for instance, the floors are so highly polished that a convalescent trying to walk on his mended leg would probably fall and break the other. But it looks nice. Between each ward is a yard, but the sun never shines in it, and the grass is carefully kept out. The kitchens are beautiful, but are situated so far from the main building that in winter the food must be cold before it reaches the patients. But who cares about them? Aren't the saucepans like polished suns? We saw a man who had broken his skull in falling from a vessel, and who for eighteen hours had received no medical assistance whatsoever; but his sheets were immaculate, for the linen department is very well kept. In the prison ward I was moved like a child by the sight of a litter of kittens playing on a convict's bed. He made them little paper balls, and they would chase them all over the bed-spread, and cling to its edges with their claws. Then he would turn them over, stroke them, kiss them and cuddle them to his heart. More than once, when he is put back to work and sits tired and depressed on his bench, he will dream of the quiet hours he spent alone with the little animals, and of the softness of their fur on his rough hands and the warmth of their little bodies against his breast. I believe, though, that the rules forbid this kind of recreation and that probably he had them through the kindness of the sister in charge. But here, as well as elsewhere, rules have their exceptions, for, in the first place, the distinction of caste does not disappear (equality being a lie, even in the penitentiary). Delicately scented locks sometimes show beneath the numbered caps, just as the sleeve of the red blouse often reveals a cuff surrounding a well-kept hand. Moreover, special favours are shown toward certain professions, certain men. How have they been able, in spite of the law and the jealousy of their fellow-prisoners, to attain this eccentric position which makes them almost amateur convicts, and keep it without anybody trying to wrest it from them? At the entrance to the workshop, where boats are built, you will find a dentist's table filled with instruments. In a pretty frame on the wall, rows of plates are exhibited, and when you pass, the artist utters a little speech to advertise his ability. He stays in his place all day, polishing his instruments and stringing teeth; he can talk to visitors without feeling the restraint of being watched, be informed of what is going on in the medical world, and practise his profession like a licensed dentist. At the present time, I daresay, he must use ether. More than that, he may have pupils and give lectures. But the man who has the most enviable position of all is the curé Delacollonge.[3] He is the mediator between the convicts and the ban; the authorities use his ascendency over the prisoners, and they, in turn, address themselves to him when they want to obtain any favours. He lives apart from the rest of them in a neat little room, has a man to wait on him, eats big bowls of Plougastel strawberries, takes his coffee and reads the newspapers. If Delacollonge is the head of the penitentiary, Ambroise is its arm. Ambroise is a superb negro almost six feet tall, who would have made a fine servant for a sixteenth century man of quality. Heliogobalus must have kept some such fellow to furnish amusement for himself and his guests by strangling lions and fighting gladiators single-handed. His polished skin is quite black, with steely reflections; his body is well knit and as vigorous as a tiger's, and his teeth are so white that they almost frighten one. King of the penitentiary by right of strength, all the convicts fear and admire him; his athletic reputation compels him to test every newcomer, and up to the present time, all these contests have turned out in his favour. He can bend iron rods over his knee, carry three men with one hand, and knock down eight by opening his arms; he eats three times as much as an ordinary man, for he has an enormous appetite and a heroic constitution. When we saw him, he was watering the plants in the botanical garden. He is always hanging around the hot-house behind the plants and the palm-trees, digging the soil and cleansing the wood-work. On Thursday, when the public is admitted, Ambroise receives his mistresses behind the boxed orange-trees; he has several of them, in fact, more than he wishes. He knows how to procure them, whether by his charms, his strength or his money, which he always carries in quantities about his person and spends lavishly whenever he wishes to enjoy himself. So he is very popular among a certain class of women, and the people who have put him where he is, have never perhaps been loved as much as Ambroise. In the middle of the garden, in a little lake shaded by a willow-tree and bordered by plants, is a swan. With one stroke of its leg it can swim from one side of the pond to the other, and although it crosses it a hundred times a day and catches gold fishes to while away the time, it never thinks of wandering away. Further on, in a line against the wall, are some cages for rare animals from foreign lands destined for the Museum of Paris. Most of the cages, however, were empty. In front of one, in a narrow grated yard, a convict was teaching a young wild-cat to obey commands like a dog. Hasn't this man had enough of slavery himself? Why does he torment this poor little beast? The lashes with which he is threatened he gives the wild-cat, which, some day, will probably take its revenge by jumping over the iron railing and killing the swan. One moonlit evening, we decided to take a stroll through the streets known to be frequented by _filles de joie_. They are very numerous. The navy, the artillery, the infantry, each has its own particular streets, without mentioning the penitentiary, which covers a whole district of the city. Seven parallel streets ending at its walls, compose what is called Keravel, and are filled by the mistresses of jailers and convicts. They are old frame houses, crowded together, with every door and window closed tight. No sound issues from them, nobody is seen coming out, and there are no lights in the windows; at the end of each street is a lamp-post which the wind sways from side to side, thus making its long yellow rays oscillate on the sidewalk. The rest of the quarter is in absolute darkness. In the moonlight, these silent houses with their uneven roofs projected fantastic glimmerings. When do they open? At unknown hours, at the most silent time of the darkest nights. Then comes the jailer who has slipped away from his watch, or the convict who has managed to escape from the prison, though sometimes they arrive together, aiding and abetting each other; then, when daylight dawns, the jailer turns his head away and nobody is the wiser. In the sailor's district, on the contrary, everything is open and above-board. The disreputable houses are full of noise and light; there is dancing and shouting and fighting. On the ground floors, in the low rooms, women in filmy attire sit on the benches that line the white-washed walls lighted by an oil lamp; others, in the doorway, beckon to you, and their animated faces stand out in relief on the background of the lighted resort, from which issues the sound of clinking glasses and coarse caresses. You can hear the kisses which fall on the opulent shoulders of the women and the laughter of the girl who is sitting on some tanned sailor's lap, her unruly locks slipping from under her cap and her bare shoulders issuing from her chemise. The street is thronged, the place is packed, the door is wide open, anybody who wishes may go in. Men come and peep through the windows or talk in an undertone to some half-clad creature, who bends eagerly over their faces. Groups stand around and wait their turn. It is all quite informal and unrestrained. Being conscientious travellers, and desiring to see and study everything at close range, we entered. In a room papered in red, three or four girls were sitting at a round table, and a man with a cap on his head and a pipe in his mouth was reclining on the sofa; he bowed politely when we entered. The women wore Parisian dresses and were modest in their demeanour. The mahogany furniture was covered with red plush, the floor was polished and engravings of battles decorated the walls. O Virtue! you are beautiful, for very stupid is vice. The woman who was sitting by my side had hands which were sufficient in themselves to make a man forget her sex, and not knowing how to spend our time we treated the whole company to drinks. Then I lighted a cigar, stretched out on the divan, and, sad and depressed, while the voices of the women rose shrilly and the glasses were being drained, I said to myself: Where is she? Where can she be? Is she dead to the world, and will men never see her again? She was beautiful, in olden times, when she walked up the steps leading to the temple, when on her shell-like feet fell the golden fringe of her tunic, or when she lounged among Persian cushions, twirling her collar of cameos and chatting with the wise men and the philosophers. She was beautiful when she stood naked on the threshold of her _cella_ in the street of Suburra, under the rosin torchlight that blazed in the night, slowly chanting her Campanian lay, while from the Tiber came the refrains of the orgies. She was beautiful, too, in her old house of the _Cité_ behind the Gothic windows, among the noisy students and dissipated monks, when, without fear of the sergeants, they struck the oaken tables with their pewter mugs, and the worm-eaten beds creaked beneath the weight of their bodies. She was beautiful when she leaned over the green cloth and coveted the gold of the provincials; then she wore high heels and had a small waist and a large wig which shed its perfumed powder on her shoulders, a rose over her ear and a patch on her cheek. She was beautiful also among the goat-skins of the Cossacks and the English uniforms, pushing her way through the throngs of men and letting her bare shoulders dazzle them on the steps of the gambling houses, under the jewellers' windows, beneath the lights of the cafés, between starvation and wealth. What are you regretting? I am regretting the _fille de joie_. On the boulevard, one evening, I caught a glimpse of her as she passed under the gaslight, with watchful and eager eyes, dragging her feet over the sidewalk. I saw her pale face on the street-corner, while the rain wet the flowers in her hair, and heard her soft voice calling to the men, while her flesh shivered in her low-necked bodice. It was her last day; after that she disappeared. Fear not that she will ever return, for she is dead, quite dead! Her dress is made high, she has morals, objects to coarse language, and puts the sous she earns in a savings bank. Cleared of her presence, the street has lost the only poetry it still retained; they have filtered the gutter and sorted the garbage. In a little while, the mountebanks will also have disappeared, in order to make room for magnetic _séances_ and reform banquets, and the rope-dancer with her spangled skirt and long balancing-pole will be as remote from us as the bayadère of the Ganges. Of all that beautiful, glittering world as flighty as fancy itself, so melancholy and sonorous, so bitter and yet so gay, full of inward pathos and glaring sarcasms, where misery was warm and grace was sad, the last vestige of a lost age, a distant race, which, we are told, came from the other end of the earth and brought us in the tinkling of its bells the echo and vague memory of idolised joys; some covered wagon moving slowly along the road, with rolled tents on its roof and muddy dogs beneath it, a man in a yellow jacket, selling _muscade_ in tin cups, the poor marionnettes in the Champs-Elysées, and the mandolin players who visit the cafés in the outskirts of the city, are all that is left. Since then, it is true, we have had a number of farces of a higher class of humour. But is the new as good as the old? Do you prefer Tom Thumb or the Museum of Versailles? On a wooden stand that formed a balcony around a square tent of grey canvas, a man in a blouse was beating a drum; behind him was a big painted sign representing a sheep and a cow, and some ladies, gentlemen, and soldiers. The animals were the two young phenomena from Guérande, with one arm and four shoulders. Their exhibitor, or editor, was shouting himself hoarse and announcing that besides these two beautiful things, battles between wild beasts would take place at once. Under the wooden stand stood a donkey and three bears, and the barking of the dogs, which proceeded from the interior of the tent, mingled with the beating of the drum, the shouts of the owner of the two phenomena and the cries of another fellow who was not as jovial and fat as the former, but tall and lanky, with a funereal expression and ragged clothes. This was the partner; they had met on the road and had combined their shows. The lean one contributed his bears, his dogs and his donkey, while the fat man brought his two phenomena and a grey felt hat which was used in their performance. The theatre was roofless and its walls were of grey canvas; they fluttered in the wind and would have blown down had it not been for the poles which held them. Along the sides of the ring was a railing, behind which was the audience, and in a reserved corner we perceived the two phenomena nibbling at a bundle of hay half concealed by a gorgeous blanket. In the middle of the ring a high post was sunk in the ground, and here and there, attached to smaller posts, were dogs, barking and tugging at their chains. The men continued to shout and beat the drum, the bears growled, and the crowd began to file in. First they brought out a poor, half-paralyzed bear, which seemed considerably bored. It wore a muzzle and had a big collar with an iron chain around its neck, a rope in its nose, to make it obey commands promptly, and a sort of leather hood over its ears. They tied bruin to the centre post, and the barks grew louder and fiercer. The dogs stood up, a bristling, scratching crew, their hind-quarters elevated, their snouts near the ground, their legs spread, while their masters stood in opposite corners of the ring and yelled at them in order to increase their ferocity. They let three bull-dogs go and the brutes rushed at the bear, which began to dodge around the post. The dogs followed, crowding and barking; sometimes the bear would upset them and trample them with its huge paws, but they would immediately scramble to their feet and make a dash for its head, clinging to its neck so that it was unable to shake off their wriggling bodies. With watchful eye, the two masters waited the moment when it looked as if the bear would be strangled; then they rushed at the dogs, tore them away, pulled their necks and bit their tails to make them unlock their jaws. The brutes whined with pain, but they would not let go. The bear struggled to free itself from the dogs, the dogs bit the bear, and the men bit the dogs. One young bull-dog especially, was remarkable for its ferocity; it clung to the bear's back and would not let go, though they chewed and bent its tail, and lacerated its ears. The men were compelled to get a mattock to loosen its jaws. When they had all been disentangled, everyone took a rest; the bear lay down on the ground, the gasping dogs hung their tongues out, and the perspiring men pulled the hairs from between their teeth, while the dust that had arisen during the fight scattered in the atmosphere and settled on the heads of the spectators. Two more bears were led into the ring, and one acted the gardener of the fable, went on a hunting trip, waltzed, took off its hat, and played dead. After this performance came the donkey. But it defended itself well; its kicks sent the dogs flying through the air like balloons; with its tail between its legs and its ears back, it ran around the ring trying to get its foes under its forelegs while they endeavoured to run around it and fasten their teeth in its throat. When the men finally rescued it, it was completely winded and shaking with fright; it was covered with drops of blood which trickled down its legs (on which repeated wounds had left scars), and, mingling with sweat, moistened its worn hoofs. But the best of the performance was the general fight between the dogs; all took part in it, the big and the little ones, the bull-dogs, the sheep-dogs, the white ones, the black ones, the spotted ones, and the russet variety. Fully fifteen minutes were spent in bringing them to the proper pitch of excitement. The owners held them between their legs and pointing their heads in the direction of their adversaries, would knock them together violently. The thin man, especially, worked with great gusto. With much effort he succeeded in producing a ferocious, hoarse chest-note that maddened the whole irritated pack. As serious as an orchestra leader, he would absorb the discordant harmony, and direct and strengthen its emission; but when the brutes were let loose and the howling band tore one another to pieces, he would be in a frenzy of enthusiasm and delight. He would applaud and bark and stamp his feet and imitate all the motions of the dogs; he would have enjoyed biting and being bitten, would gladly have been a dog himself with a snout, so that he could wallow in the dust and blood, and sink his teeth in the hairy skins and warm flesh, and enjoy the fray to his heart's content. There was a critical moment when all the dogs, one on top of another, formed a wriggling mass of legs, backs, tails and ears, which oscillated to and fro in the ring without separating, and in another instant had torn down the railing and threatened to harm the two young phenomena. The owner's face paled and he hastily sprang forward, while his partner rushed to his side. Then tails were bitten, and kicks and blows were distributed right and left! They grabbed the dogs everywhere, pulled them away and flung them over their shoulders like bundles of hay. It was all over in a second, but I had seen the moment when the two young phenomena were near being reduced to chopped meat, and I trembled for the safety of the arm which grows on their back. Flustered, no doubt, by their narrow escape, they did not care to be shown off. The cow backed and the sheep bucked; but finally the green blanket with yellow fringe was removed and their appendage was exhibited to the public, and then the performance ended.... CHAPTER IX. BREST. At the light-house of Brest. Here the Old World ends. This is its most advanced point; its farthest limit. Behind you spread Europe and Asia; before you lies the entire ocean. As great as space appears to our eye, does it not always seem limited as soon as we know that it has a boundary? Can you not see from our shores, across the Channel, the streets of Brighton and the fortresses of Provence; do you not always think of the Mediterranean as an immense blue lake ensconced in rocks, with promontories covered with falling monuments, yellow sands, swaying palm-trees and curved bays? But here nothing stops your eye. Thought can fly as rapidly as the winds, spread out, divagate, and lose itself, without finding anything but water, or perhaps vague America, nameless islands, or some country with red fruits, humming-birds and savages; or the silent twilight of the pole, with its spouting whales; or the great cities lighted by coloured glass, Japan with its porcelain roofs, and China with its sculptured staircases and its pagodas decorated with golden bells. Thus does the mind people and animate this infinity, of which it tires so soon, in order that it may appear less vast. One cannot think of the desert without its caravans, of the ocean without its ships, of the bowels of the earth without evoking the treasures that they are supposed to conceal. We returned to Conquet by way of the cliff. The breakers were dashing against its foot. Driven by a sea-breeze, they would come rushing in, strike the rocks and cover them with rippling sheets of water. Half an hour later, in a _char-à-banc_ drawn by two sturdy little horses, we reached Brest, which we left with pleasure two days afterwards. When you leave the coast and approach the Channel, the country undergoes a marked change; it becomes less wild, less Celtic; the dolmens become scarcer, the flats diminish as the wheat fields grow more numerous, and, little by little, one reaches the fertile land of Léon, which is, as M. Pitre-Chevalier has gracefully put it, "the Attica of Brittany." Landerneau is a place where there is an elm-tree promenade, and where we saw a frightened dog running through the streets with a pan attached to its tail. In order to go to the Château de la Joyeuse-Garde, one must first follow the banks of the Eilorn and then walk through a forest, in a hollow where few persons go. Sometimes, when the underwood thins out and meadows appear between the branches, one catches sight of a boat sailing up the river. Our guide preceded us at quite a distance. Alone together we trod the good old earth, flecked with bunches of purple heather and fallen leaves. The air was perfumed with the breath of violets and strawberries; slender ferns spread over the trunks of the trees. It was warm; even the moss was hot. A cuckoo, hidden in the foliage, now and then gave out its long cry, and gnats buzzed in the glades. We walked on with a feeling of inward peace, and let our conversation touch on many subjects; we spoke of sounds and colours, of the masters and their works, and of the joys of the mind; we thought of different writings, of familiar pictures and poses; we recited aloud some wonderful verses, the beauty of which thrilled us so that we repeated the rhythm again and again, accentuating the words and cadencing them so that they were almost sung. Foreign landscapes and splendid figures rose before our mind's eye, and we dwelt with rapture on soft Asiatic nights with the moon shining on the cupolas; or our admiration was aroused by some sonorous name; or we delighted in the artlessness of some sentence standing out in relief in an ancient book. Stretched out in the courtyard of Joyeuse-Garde, near the filled-up subterranean vaults, beneath the semi-circle of its unique ivy-covered arcade, we talked of Shakespeare and wondered whether the stars were inhabited. Then we started off again, having given but a hasty glance at the crumbling home of good old Lancelot, the one a fairy stole from his mother and kept in a shining palace at the bottom of a lake. The dwarfs have disappeared, the drawbridge has flown away, and lizards now crawl where formerly the entrancing Geneviève dreamed of her lover gone to fight the giants in Trébizonde. We went back through the same paths to the forest; the shadows were lengthening, the flowers and shrubs were hardly visible, and the blue peaks of the low mountains opposite seemed to grow taller against the fading sky. The river, which is bordered by artificial quays for half a mile outside the city, now becomes free to spread its waters at will over the meadow; its wide curve stretched far away into the distance, and the pools of water coloured by the setting sun looked like immense golden platters forgotten on the grass. Till it reaches Roche-Maurice, the Eilorn follows the road, which winds around the foot of the rocky hills, the uneven eminences of which extend into the valley. We were riding in a gig driven by a boy who sat on one of the shafts. His hat had no strings and consequently blew off occasionally, and during his efforts to catch it, we had plenty of time to admire the landscape. The Château de la Roche-Maurice is a real burgrave's castle, a vulture's nest on the top of a mountain. It is reached by an almost perpendicular slope along which great blocks of stone are strewn in place Of steps. At the top is a wall built of huge stones laid one above another, and in the wall are large windows, through which the whole surrounding country can be viewed; the woods, the fields, the river, the long, white road, the mountains with their uneven peaks, and the great meadow, which separates them through the middle. A crumbling flight of steps leads to a dilapidated tower. Here and there stones crop out among the grass, and the rock shows amid the stones. Sometimes it seems as if this rock assumed artificial shapes, and as if the ruins, on the contrary, by crumbling more and more, had taken on a natural appearance and gone back to original matter. A whole side of the wall is covered with ivy; it begins at the bottom and spreads out in an inverted pyramid, the color of which grows darker towards the top. Through an aperture, the edges of which are concealed by the foliage, one can see a section of the blue sky. It was in these parts that the famous dragon lived, which was killed in olden times by knight Derrien, who was returning from the Holy Land with his friend, Neventer. Derrien attacked it as soon as he had rescued the unfortunate Eilorn who, after giving over his slaves, his vassals and his servants (he had no one left but his wife and son), had thrown himself headlong from the top of the tower into the river; but the monster, mortally wounded, and bound by the sash of its conqueror, soon drowned itself in the sea, at Poulbeunzual,[4] like the crocodile of Batz island, which obeyed the behest of Saint Pol de Léon and drowned itself with the stole of the Breton saint wound around it. The gargoyle of Rouen met a similar fate with the stole of Saint Romain. How beautiful those terrific old dragons were, with their gaping, fire-spitting jaws, their scales, their serpent-tails, their bat-wings, their lion-claws, their equine bodies and fantastic heads! And the knight who overpowered them was a wonderfully fine specimen of manhood! First, his horse grew frightened and reared, and his lance broke on the scales of the monster, whose fiery breath blinded him. Finally he alighted, and after a day's battle, succeeded in sinking his sword up to the hilt in the beasts belly. Black blood flowed in streams from the wound, the audience escorted the knight home in triumph, and he became king and married a fair maiden. But where did the dragons come from? Are they a confused recollection of the monsters that existed before the flood? Were they conceived from the contemplation of the carcasses of the ichthyosaurus and pteropod, and did the terror of men hear the sound of their feet in the tall grass and the wind howl when their voices filled the caves? Are we not, moreover, in the land of fairies, in the home of the Knights of the Round Table and of Merlin, in the mythological birthplace of vanished epopees? These, no doubt, revealed something of the old worlds which have become mythical, and told something of the cities that were swallowed up, of Is and Herbadilla, splendid and barbaric places, filled with the loves of their bewitching queens, but now doubly wiped out, first, by the ocean which has obliterated them and then by religion, which has cursed their memory. There is much to be said on this subject. And, indeed, what is there on which much cannot be said? It might perhaps be Landivisian, for even the most prolix man is obliged to be concise in his remarks, when there is a lack of matter. I have noticed that good places are usually the ugliest ones. They are like virtuous women; one respects them, but one passes on in search of others. Here, surely, is the most productive spot of all Brittany; the peasants are not as poor as elsewhere, the fields are properly cultivated, the colza is superb, the roads are in good condition, and it is frightfully dreary. Cabbages, turnips, beets and an enormous quantity of potatoes, all enclosed by ditches, cover the entire country from Saint Pol de Léon to Roscoff. They are forwarded to Brest, Rennes, and even to Havre; it is the industry of the place, and a large business is done with them. Roscoff has a slimy beach and a narrow bay, and the surrounding sea is sprinkled with tiny black islands that rise like the backs of so many turtles. The environs of Saint Pol are dreary and cheerless. The bleak tint of the flats mingles without transition with the paleness of the sky, and the short perspective has no large lines in its proportions, nor change of colour on the edges. Here and there, while strolling through the fields, you may come across some silent farm behind a grey stone wall, an abandoned manor deserted by its owners. In the yard the pigs are sleeping on the manure heap and the chickens are pecking at the grass that grows among the loose stones; the sculptured shield above the door has worn away under the action of rain and atmosphere. The rooms are empty and are used for storage purposes; the plaster on the ceiling is peeling off, and so are the remaining decorations, which, besides, have been tarnished by the cobwebs of the spiders one sees crawling around the joists. Wild mignonette has grown on the door of Kersa-lion; near the turret is a pointed window flanked by a lion and a Hercules, which stand out in bold relief on the wall like two gargoyles. At Kerland, I stumbled against a wolf-trap while I was ascending the large winding staircase. Ploughshares, rusted shovels, and jars filled with dried grain were scattered around the rooms or on the wide stone window-seats. Kerouséré has retained its three turrets with machicolations; in the courtyard can still be seen the deep furrows of the trenches that have been filled up little by little, and are now on level with the ground; they are like the track of a bark, which spreads and spreads over the water till it finally disappears. From the platform of one of the towers (the others have pointed roofs), one can see the ocean between two low, wooded hills. The windows on the first floor are half stopped up, so as to keep the rain out; they look out into a garden enclosed by a high wall. The grass is covered with thistles and wheat grows in the flower-beds surrounded by rose-bushes. A narrow path wends its way between a field where the ripe wheat sways in the breeze and a line of elm-trees growing on the edge of a ditch. Poppies gleamed here and there amongst the wheat; the ditch was edged with flowers, brambles, nettles, sweet-brier, long prickly stems, broad shining leaves, blackberries and purple digitalis, all of which mingled their colours and various foliage and uneven branches, and crossed their shadows on the grey dust like the meshes of a net. When you have crossed a meadow where an old mill reluctantly turns its clogged wheel, you follow the wall by stepping on large stones placed in the water for a bridge; you soon come to the road that leads to Saint-Pol, at the end of which rises the slashed steeple of Kreisker; tall and slender, it dominates a tower decorated with a balustrade and produces a fine effect at a distance; but the nearer one gets to it, the smaller and uglier it becomes, till finally one finds that it is nothing more than an ordinary church with a portal devoid of statues. The cathedral also is built in a rather clumsy Gothic style, and is overloaded with ornaments and embroideries: but there is one notable thing, at least, in Saint-Pol, and that is the _table d'hôte_ of the inn. The girl who waits on it has gold earrings dangling against her white neck and a cap with turned up wings, like Molière's soubrettes, and her sparkling blue eyes would incline anyone to ask her for something more than mere plates. But the guests! What guests! All _habitués_! At the upper end sat a creature in a velvet jacket and a cashmere waistcoat. He tied his napkin around the bottles that had been uncorked, in order to be able to distinguish them. He ladled the soup. On his left, sat a man in a light grey frock-coat, with the cuffs and collar trimmed with a sort of curly material representing fur; he ate with his hat on and was the professor of music at the local college. But he has grown tired of his profession and is anxious to find some place that would bring him from eight to twelve hundred francs at the most. He does not care so much about the salary, what he desires is the consideration that attaches to such a place. As he was always late, he requested that the courses be brought up again from the kitchen, and if he did not like them, he would send them back untouched; he sneezed and expectorated and rocked his chair and hummed and leaned his elbows on the table and picked his teeth. Everybody respects him, the waitress admires everything he says, and is, I am sure, in love with him. The high opinion he has of himself shows in his smile, his speech, his gestures, his silence, and in his way of wearing his hair; it emanates from his entire obnoxious personality. Opposite to us sat a grey-haired, plump man with red hands and thick, moist lips, who looked at us so persistently and annoyingly, while he masticated his food, that we felt like throwing the carafes at him. The other guests were insignificant and only contributed to the picture. One evening the conversation fell upon a woman of the environs who had left her husband and gone to America with her lover, and who, the previous week, and passed through Saint-Pol on her way home, and had stopped at the inn. Everybody wondered at her audacity, and her name was accompanied by all sorts of unflattering epithets. Her whole life was passed in review by these people, and they all laughed contemptuously and insulted her and grew quite hot over the argument. They would have liked to have her there to tell her what they thought of her and see what she would say. Tirades against luxury, virtuous horror, moral maxims, hatred of wealth, words with a double meaning, shrugs, everything, in fact, was used to crush this woman, who, judging by the ferocity these ruffians displayed in their attacks, must have been pretty, refined, and charming. Our hearts beat indignantly in our breasts, and if we had taken another meal in Saint-Pol, I am sure that something would have happened. CHAPTER X. SAINT-MALO. Saint-Malo, which is built right on the ocean and is enclosed by ramparts, looks like a crown of stones, the gems of which are the machicolations. The breakers dash against its walls, and when the tide is low they gently unfurl on the sand. Little rocks covered with sea-weed dot the beach and look like black spots on its light surface. The larger ones, which are upright and smooth, support the fortifications, thus making them appear higher than they really are. Above this straight line of walls, broken here and there by a tower or the pointed ogive of a door, rise the roofs of the houses with their open garret-windows, their gyrating weather-cocks, and their red chimneys from which issue spirals of bluish smoke that vanishes in the air. Around Saint-Malo are a number of little barren islands that have not a tree nor a blade of grass, but only some old crumbling walls, great pieces of which are hurled into the sea by each succeeding storm. On the other side of the bay, opposite the city and connected with dry land by a long pier, which separates the port from the ocean, is Saint-Servan, a large, empty, almost deserted locality, which lies peacefully in a marshy meadow. At the entrance to Saint-Servan rise the four towers of the Château de Solidor, which are connected by curtains and are perfectly black from top to bottom. These alone are sufficient compensation for having made that extended circuit on the beach, under the broiling July sun, among the dock-yards and tar-pots and fires. A walk around the city, over the ramparts, is one of the finest that can be taken. Nobody goes there. You can sit down in the embrasures of the cannons and dangle your feet over the abyss. In front of you lies the mouth of the Rance, which flows between two green hills, the coast, the islands, the rocks, and the ocean. The sentinel marches up and down behind you, and his even footsteps echo on the sonorous stones. One evening we remained out for a long time. The night was beautiful, a true summer night, without a moon, but brilliant with stars and perfumed by the sea-breeze. The city was sleeping. One by one the lights went out in the windows, and the lighthouses shone red in the darkness, which was quite blue above us and glittering with myriads of twinkling stars. We could not see the ocean, but we could hear and smell it, and the breakers that lashed the walls flung drops of foam over us through the big apertures of the machicolations. In one place, between the wall and the city houses, a quantity of cannon-balls are piled up in a ditch. From that point you can see these words written on the second floor of one of the dwellings: "Chateaubriand was born here." Further on, the wall ends at the foot of a tower called Quiquengrogne; like its sister, La Générale, it is high, broad, and imposing, and is swelled in the middle like a hyperbola. Though they are as good as new and absolutely intact, these towers would no doubt be improved if they lost some of their battlements in the sea and if ivy spread its kindly leaves over their tops. Indeed, do not monuments grow greater through recollection, like men and like passions? And are they not completed by death? We entered the castle. The empty courtyard planted with a few sickly lime-trees was as silent as the courtyard of a monastery. The janitress went and obtained the keys from the commander. When she returned, she was accompanied by a pretty little girl who wished to see the strangers. Her arms were bare and she carried a large bunch of flowers. Her black curls escaped from beneath her dainty little cap, and the lace on her pantalettes rubbed against her kid shoes tied around the ankles with black laces. She ran up stairs in front of us beckoning and calling. The staircase is long, for the tower is high. The bright daylight passes through the loop-holes like an arrow. When you put your head through one of these openings, you can see the ocean, which seems to grow wider and wider, and the crude colour of the sky, which seems to grow larger and larger, till you are afraid you will lose yourself in it. Vessels look like launches and their masts like walking-sticks. Eagles must think we look like ants. I wonder whether they really see us. Do they know that we have cities and steeples and triumphal arches? When we arrived on the platform, and although the battlement reached to our chest, we could not help experiencing the sensation one always feels at a great height from the earth. It is a sort of voluptuous uneasiness mingled with fear and delight, pride and terror, a battle between one's mind and one's nerves. You feel strangely happy; you would like to jump, fly, spread out in the air and be supported by the wind; but your knees tremble and you dare not go too near the edge. Still, one night, in olden times, men climbed this tower with ropes. But then, it is not astonishing for those times, for that wonderful sixteenth century, the epoch of fierce convictions and frantic loves! How the human instrument vibrated then in all its chords! How liberal-minded, productive, and active men were! Does not this phrase of Fénelon apply wonderfully well to that period: "A sight well calculated to delight the eye?" For, without making any reference to the foreground of the picture,--beliefs crumbling at their foundation like tottering mountains, newly discovered worlds, lost worlds brought to light again, Michael-Angelo beneath his dome, laughing Rabelais, observant Shakespeare, pensive Montaigne,--where can be found a greater development in passions, a greater violence in courage, a greater determination in willpower, in fine, a more complete expansion of liberty struggling against all native fatalities? And with what a bold relief the episode stands out in history, and still, how wonderfully well it fits in, thereby giving a glimpse of the dazzling brightness and broad horizons of the period. Faces, living faces, pass before your eyes. You meet them only once; but you think of them long afterwards, and endeavour to contemplate them in order that they may be impressed more deeply upon your mind. Was not the type of the old soldiers whose race disappeared around 1598, at the taking of Vervins, fine and terrible? It was a type represented by men like Lamouche, Heurtand de Saint-Offange, and La Tremblaye, who came back holding the heads of his enemies in his hand; also La Fontenelle, of whom so much has been said. They were men of iron, whose hearts were no softer than their swords, and who, attracting hundreds of energies which they directed with their own, entered towns at night, galloping madly at the heads of their companies, equipped corsairs, burned villages, and were dealt with like kings! Who has thought of depicting those violent governors of the provinces, who slaughtered the people recklessly, committed rapes and swept in gold, like D'Epernon, an atrocious tyrant in Provence and a perfumed courtier at the Louvre; like Montluc, who strangled Huguenots with his own hands, or Baligui, the king of Cambrai, who read Machiavel in order to copy the Valentinois, and whose wife went to war on horseback, wearing a helmet and a cuirass. One of the forgotten men of the period, or at least one of those whom most historians mention only slightly, is the Duke of Mercoeur, the intrepid enemy of Henri IV, who defied him longer than Mayenne, the Ligue, and Philip II. Finally he was disarmed, that is, won over and appeased (by terms that were such that twenty-three articles of the treaty were not disclosed); then, not knowing what to do, he enlisted in the Hungarian army and fought the Turks. One day, with five thousand men, he attacked a whole army, and, beaten again, returned to France and died of the fever in Nuremberg, at the age of forty-four. Saint-Malo put me in mind of him. He always tried to get it, but he never could succeed in making it his subject or his ally. They wished to fight on their own account, and to do business through their own resources, and although they were really _ligueurs_, they spurned the duke as well as the Béarnais. When De Fontaines, the governor of the city, informed them of the death of Henri III, they refused to recognize the King of Navarre. They armed themselves and erected barricades; De Fontaines intrenched himself in the castle and everybody kept upon the defensive. Little by little, the people encroached upon him; first, they requested him to declare that he was willing to maintain their franchises. De Fontaines complied in the hope of gaining time. The following year (1589), they chose four generals who were independent of the governor. A year later, they obtained permission to stretch chains. De Fontaines acceded to everything. The king was at Laval and he was waiting for him. The time was close at hand when he would be able to take revenge for all the humiliations he had suffered, and all the concessions he had been forced to make. But he precipitated matters and was discovered. When the people of Saint-Malo reminded him of his promises, he replied that if the king presented himself, he (De Fontaines) would let him enter the city. When they learned this, they decided to act. The castle had four towers. It was the highest one, La Générale, the one on which De Fontaines relied the most, which they climbed. These bold attempts were not infrequent, as proved by the ascension of the cliffs of Fécamp by Bois-Rosé, and the attack of the Château de Blein, by Guebriant. The rebels connived and assembled during several evenings at the place of a certain man named Frotet, sieur de La Lanbelle; they entered into an understanding with a Scotch gunner, and one dark night they armed themselves, went out to the rampart, let themselves down with ropes and approached the foot of La Générale. There they waited. Soon a rustling sound was heard on the wall, and a ball of thread was lowered, to which they fastened their rope ladder. The ladder was then hoisted to the top of the tower and attached to the end of a culverin which was levelled in an embrasure of the battlement. Michel Frotet was the first to ascend, and after him came Charles Anselin, La Blissais and the others. The night was dark and the wind whistled; they had to climb slowly, to hold their daggers between their teeth and feel for the rungs of the ladder with their hands and feet. Suddenly (they were midway between the ground and the top), they felt themselves going down; the rope had slipped. But they did not utter a sound; they remained motionless. Their weight had caused the culverin to tip forward; it stopped on the edge of the embrasure and they slowly resumed their ascension and arrived one after another on the platform of the tower. The sleepy sentinels did not have time to give the alarm. The garrison was either asleep or playing dice on the drums. A panic seized the soldiers and they fled to the dungeon. The conspirators pursued them and attacked them in the hallways, on the staircase, and in the rooms, crushing them between the doors and slaughtering them mercilessly. Meanwhile the townspeople arrived to lend assistance; some put up ladders, and entered the tower without encountering any resistance and plundered it. La Pérandière, lieutenant of the castle, perceiving La Blissais, said to him: "This, sir, is a most miserable night." But La Blissais impressed upon him that this was not the time for conversation. The Count of Fontaines had not made his appearance. They went in search of him, and found him lying dead across the threshold of his chamber, pierced by a shot from an arquebuse that one of the townspeople had fired at him, as he was about to go out, escorted by a servant bearing a light. "Instead of rushing to face the danger," says the author of this account,[5] "he had dressed as leisurely as if he were going to a wedding, without leaving one shoulder-knot untied." This outbreak in Saint-Malo, which so greatly harmed the king, did not in the least benefit the Duke de Mercoeur. He had hoped that the people would accept a governor from his hands, his son, for example, a mere child, for that would have meant himself, but they obstinately refused to listen to it. He sent troops to protect them, but they refused to let them enter, and the soldiers were compelled to take lodgings outside of the city. Still, in spite of all this, they had not become more royalist, for some time later, having arrested the Marquis of La Noussaie and the Viscount of Denoual, it cost the former twelve thousand crowns to get out of prison and the latter two thousand. Then, fearing that Pont-Brient would interrupt commercial relations with Dinan and the other cities in the Ligue, they attacked and subjected it. Presuming that their bishop, who was the temporal master of the city, might be likely to deprive them of the freedom they had just acquired, they put him in prison and kept him there for a year. The conditions at which they finally accepted Henri IV are well-known: they were to take care of themselves, not be obliged to receive any garrison, be exempt from taxes for six years, etc. Situated between Brittany and Normandy, this little people seems to have the tenacity and granite-like resistance of the former and the impulses and dash of the latter. Whether they are sailors, writers, or travellers on foreign seas, their predominant trait is audacity; they have violent natures which are almost poetical in their brutality, and often narrow in their obstinacy. There is this resemblance between these two sons of Saint-Malo, Lamennais and Broussais: they were always equally extreme in their systems and employed their latter years in fighting what they had upheld in the earlier part of their life. In the city itself are little tortuous streets edged with high houses and dirty fishmongers' shops. There are no carriages or luxuries of any description; everything is as black and reeking as the hold of a ship. A sort of musty smell, reminiscent of Newfoundland, salt meat, and long sea voyages pervades the air. "The watch and the round are made every night with big English dogs, which are let loose outside of the city by the man who is in charge of them, and it is better not to be in their vicinity at that time. But when morning comes, they are led back to a place in the city where they shed all their ferocity which, at night, is so great."[6] Barring the disappearance of this four-legged police which at one time devoured M. du Mollet, the existence of which is confirmed by a contemporaneous text, the exterior of things has changed but little, no doubt, and even the civilized people living in Saint-Malo admit that it is very much behind the times. The only picture we noticed in the church is a large canvas that represents the battle of Lepante and is dedicated to Nôtre-Dame des Victoires, who can be seen floating above the clouds. In the foreground, all Christianity, together with crowned kings and princesses, is kneeling. The two armies can be seen in the background. The Turks are being hurled into the sea and the Christians stretch their arms towards heaven. The church is ugly, has no ornamentation, and looks almost like a Protestant house of worship. I noticed very few votive offerings, a fact that struck me as being rather peculiar in this place of sea perils. There are no flowers nor candles in the chapels, no bleeding hearts nor bedecked Virgin, nothing, in fact, of all that which causes M. Michelet to wax indignant. Opposite the ramparts, at a stone's throw from the city, rises the little island of Grand-Bay. There, can be found the tomb of Chateaubriand; that white spot cut in the rock is the place he has designated for his body. We went there one evening when the tide was low and the sun setting in the west. The water was still trickling over the sand. At the foot of the island, the dripping sea-weed spread out like the hair of antique women over a tomb. The island is deserted; sparse grass grows in spots, mingled here and there with tufts of purple flowers and nettles. On the summit is a dilapidated casemate, with a courtyard enclosed by crumbling walls. Beneath this ruin, and half-way up the hill, is a space about ten feet square, in the middle of which rises a granite slab surmounted by a Latin cross. The tomb comprises three pieces: one for the socle, one for the slab, and another for the cross. Chateaubriand will rest beneath it, with his head turned towards the sea; in this grave, built on a rock, his immortality will be like his life--deserted and surrounded by tempests. The centuries and the breakers will murmur a long time around his great memory; the breakers will dash against his tomb during storms, or on summer mornings, when the white sails unfold and the swallow arrives from across the seas; they will bring him the melancholy voluptuousness of far-away horizons and the caressing touch of the sea-breeze. And while time passes and the waves of his native strand swing back and forth between his cradle and his grave, the great heart of René, grown cold, will slowly crumble to dust to the eternal rhythm of this never-ceasing music. We walked around the tomb and touched it, and looked at it as if it contained its future host, and sat down beside it on the ground. The sky was pink, the sea was calm, and there was a lull in the breeze. Not a ripple broke the motionless surface of ocean on which the setting sun shed its golden light. Blue near the coast and mingled with the evening mist, the sea was scarlet everywhere else and deepened into a dark red line on the horizon. The sun had no rays left; they had fallen from its face and drowned their brilliancy in the water, on which they seemed to float. The red disc set slowly, robbing the sky of the pink tinge it had diffused over it, and while both the sun and the delicate color were wearing away, the pale blue shades of night crept over the heavens. Soon the sun touched the ocean and sank into it to the middle. For a moment it appeared cut in two by the horizon; the upper half remained firm, while the under one vacillated and lengthened; then it finally disappeared; and when the reflection died away from the place where the fiery ball had gone down, it seemed as if a sudden gloom had spread over the sea. The shore was dark. The light in one of the windows in a city house, which a moment before was bright, presently went out. The silence grew deeper, though sounds could be heard. The breakers dashed against the rocks and fell back with a roar; long-legged gnats sang in our ears and disappeared with a buzzing of their transparent wings, and the indistinct voices of the children bathing at the foot of the ramparts reached us, mingled with their laughter and screams. Young boys came out of the water, and, stepping gingerly on the pebbles, ran up the beach to dress. When they attempted to put on their shirts, the moist linen clung to their wet shoulders and we could see their white torsos wriggling with impatience, while their heads and arms remained concealed and the sleeves flapped in the wind like flags. A man with his wet hair falling straight around his neck, passed in front of us. His dripping body shone. Drops trickled from his dark, curly beard, and he shook his head so as to let the water run out of his locks. His broad chest was parted by a stubby growth of hair that extended between his powerful muscles. It heaved with the exertion of swimming and imparted an even motion to his flat abdomen, which was as smooth as ivory where it joined the hips. His muscular thighs were set above slender knees and fine legs ending in arched feet, with short heels and spread toes. He walked slowly over the beach. How beautiful is the human form when it appears in its original freedom, as it was created in the first day of the world! But where are we to find it, masked as it is and condemned never to reappear. That great word, Nature, which humanity has repeated sometimes with idolatry and sometimes with fear, which philosophers have sounded and poets have sung, how it is being lost and forgotten! If there are still here and there in the world, far from the pushing crowd, some hearts which are tormented by the constant search of beauty, and forever feeling the hopeless need of expressing what cannot be expressed and doing what can only be dreamed, it is to Nature, as to the home of the ideal, that they must turn. But how can they? By what magic will they be able to do so? Man has cut down the forests, has conquered the seas, and the clouds that hover over the cities are produced by the smoke that rises from the chimneys. But, say others, do not his mission and his glory consist in going forward and attacking the work of God, and encroaching upon it? Man denies His work, he ruins it, crushes it, even in his own body, of which he is ashamed and which he conceals like a crime. Man having thus become the rarest and most difficult thing in the world to know (I am not speaking of his heart, O moralists!), it follows that the artist ignores his shape as well as the qualities that render it beautiful. Where is the poet, nowadays, even amongst the most brilliant, who knows what a woman is like? Where could the poor fellow ever have seen any? What has he ever been able to learn about them in the salons; could he see through the corset and the crinoline? Better than all the rhetoric in the world, the plastic art teaches those who study it the gradation of proportions, the fusion of planes, in a word, harmony. The ancient races, through the very fact of their existence, left the mark of their noble attitudes and pure blood on the works of the masters. In Juvenal, I can hear confusedly the death-rattles of the gladiators; Tacitus has sentences that resemble the drapery of a laticlave, and some of Horace's verses are like the body of a Greek slave, with supple undulations, and short and long syllables that sound like crotala. But why bother about these things? Let us not go so far back, and let us be satisfied with what is manufactured. What is wanted nowadays is rather the opposite of nudity, simplicity and truth? Fortune and success will fall to the lot of those who know how to dress and clothe facts! The tailor is the king of the century and the fig-leaf is its symbol; laws, art, politics, all things, appear in tights! Lying freedom, plated furniture, water-colour pictures, why! the public loves this sort of thing! So let us give it all it wants and gorge the fool! CHAPTER XI. MONT SAINT-MICHEL. The road from Pontorson to the Mont Saint-Michel is wearying on account of the sand. Our post-chaise (for we also travel by post-chaise), was disturbed every now and then by a number of carts filled with the grey soil which is found in these parts and which is transported to some place and utilised as manure. They became more numerous as we approached the sea, and defiled for several miles until we finally saw the deserted strand whence they came. On this white surface, with its conical heaps of earth resembling huts, the fluctuating line of carts reminded us of an emigration of barbarians deserting their native heath. The empty horizon stretches out, spreads, and finally mingles its greyish flats with the yellow sand of the beach. The ground becomes firmer and a salt breeze fans your cheeks; it looks like a vast desert from which the waters have receded. Long, flat strips of sand, superposed indefinitely in indistinct planes, ripple like shadows, and the wind playfully designs huge arabesques on their surfaces. The sea lies far away, so far, in fact, that its roar cannot be heard, though we could distinguish a sort of vague, aërial, imperceptible murmur, like the voice of the solitude, which perhaps was only the effect produced by the intense silence. Opposite us rose a large round rock with embattled walls and a church on its top; enormous counterparts resting on a steep slope support the sides of the edifice. Rocks and wild shrubs are strewn over the incline. Half-way up the slope are a few houses, which show above the white line of the wall and are dominated by the brown church; thus some bright colours are interspersed between the two plain tints. The post-chaise drove ahead of us and we followed it, guiding ourselves by the tracks of the wheels; finally it disappeared in the distance, and we could distinguish only its hood, which looked like some big crab crawling over the sand. Here and there a swift current of water compelled us to move farther up the beach. Or we would suddenly come upon pools of slime with ragged edges framed in sand. Beside us walked two priests who were also going to the Mont Saint-Michel. As they were afraid of soiling their new cassocks, they gathered them up around their legs when they jumped over the little streams. Their silver buckles were grey with mud, and their wet shoes gaped and threw water at every step they took. Meantime the Mount was growing larger. With one sweep of the eye we were able to take in the whole panorama, and could see distinctly the tiles on the roofs, the bunches of nettles on the rocks, and, a little higher, the green shutters of a small window that looks out into the governor's garden. The first door, which is narrow and pointed, opens on a sort of pebble road leading to the ocean; on the worn shield over the second door, undulating lines carved in the stone seem to represent water; on both sides of the doors are enormous cannons composed of iron bars connected by similar circular bands. One of them has retained a cannon-ball in its mouth; they were taken from the English in 1423, by Louis d'Estouteville, and have remained here four hundred years. Five or six houses built opposite one another compose the street; then the line breaks, and they continue down the slopes and stairs leading to the castle, in a sort of haphazard fashion. In order to reach the castle, you first go up to the curtain, the wall of which shuts out the view of the ocean from the houses below. Grass grows between the cracked stones and the battlements. The rampart continues around the whole island and is elevated by successive platforms. When you have passed the watch-house, which is situated between the two towers, you see a little straight flight of steps; when you climb them, the roofs of the houses, with their dilapidated chimneys, gradually grow lower and lower. You can see the washing hung out to dry on poles fastened to the garret-windows, or a tiny garden baking in the sun between the roof of one house and the ground-floor of another, with its parched leeks drooping their leaves over the grey soil; but the other side of the rock, the side that faces the ocean, is barren and deserted, and so steep that the shrubs that grow there have a hard time to remain where they are and look as if they were about to topple over every minute. When you are standing up there, enjoying as much space as the human eye can possibly encompass and looking at the ocean and the horizon of the coast, which forms an immense bluish curve, or at the wall of La Merveille with its thirty-six huge counterparts upreared on a perpendicular cliff, a laugh of admiration parts your lips, and you suddenly hear the sharp noise of the weaving-looms. The people manufacture linen, and the shrill sound of the shuttles produces a very lively racket. Between two slender towers, which represent the uplifted barrels of two cannons, is the entrance to the castle, a long, arched hallway, at the end of which is a flight of stone steps. The middle of the hall is always dark, being insufficiently lighted by two skylights one of which is at the bottom of the hall and the other at the top, between the interval of the drawbridge; it is like a subterranean vault. The guard-room is at the head of the stairs as you enter. The voice of the sergeants and the clicking of the guns re-echoed along the walls. They were beating a drum. Meanwhile a _garde-chiourme_ returned with our passports, which M. le gouverneur had wished to see; then he motioned us to follow him; he opened doors, drew bolts, and led us through a maze of halls, vaults and staircases. Really, one can lose oneself in this labyrinth, for a single visit does not enable you to understand the complicated plan of these combined buildings, where a fortress, a church, an abbey, a prison and a dungeon, are mingled, and where you can find every style of architecture, from the Romance of the eleventh century to the bewildering Gothic of the sixteenth. We could catch only a glimpse of the knights' hall, which has been converted into a loom-room and is for this reason barred to the public. We saw only four rows of columns supporting a ceiling ornamented with salient mouldings; they were decorated with clover leaves. The monastery is built over this hall, at an altitude of two hundred feet above the sea level. It is composed of a quadrangular gallery formed by a triple line of small granite, tufa, or stucco columns. Acanthus, thistles, ivy, and oak-leaves wind around their caps; between each mitred ogive is a cut-out rose; this gallery is the place where the prisoners take the air. The cap of the _garde-chiourme_ now passes along these walls where, in olden times, passed the shaved heads of industrious friars; and the wooden shoes of the prisoners click on the slabs that used to be swept by the trailing robes of monks and trodden by their heavy leather sandals. The church has a Gothic choir and a Romance nave, and the two architectures seem to vie with each other in majesty and elegance. In the choir, the arches of the windows are pointed, and are as lofty as the aspirations of love; in the nave, the arcades open their semi-circles roundly, and columns as straight as the trunk of a palm-tree mount along the walls. They rest on square pedestals, are crowned with acanthus leaves, and continue in powerful mouldings that curve beneath the ceiling and help support it. It was noon. The bright daylight poured in through the open door and rippled over the dark sides of the building. The nave, which is separated from the choir by a green curtain, is filled with tables and benches, for it is used also as a dining-hall. When mass is celebrated, the curtain is drawn and the condemned men may be present at divine service without removing their elbows from the table. It is a novel idea. In order to enlarge the platform by twelve yards on the western side of the church, the latter itself has been curtailed; but as it was necessary to reconstruct some sort of entrance, one architect closed the nave by a façade in Greek style; then, perhaps, feeling remorseful, or desiring (a presumption which will be accepted more readily), to embellish his work still further, he afterwards added some columns "which imitate fairly well the architecture of the eleventh century," says the notice. Let us be silent and bow our heads. Each of the arts has its own particular leprosy, its mortal ignominy that eats its face away. Painting has the family group, music the ballad, literature the criticism, and architecture the architect. The prisoners were walking around the platform, one after another, silent, with folded arms, and in the beautiful order we had the opportunity to admire at Fontevrault. They were the patients of the hospital ward taking the air. Tottering along with the file was one who lifted his feet higher than the rest and clung to the coat of the man ahead of him. He was blind. Poor, miserable wretch! God prevents him from seeing and his fellow-men forbid him to speak! The following day, when the tide had again receded from the beach, we left the Mount under a broiling sun which heated the hood of the carriage and made the horses sweat. They only walked; the harness creaked and the wheels sank deep into the sand. At the end of the beach, when grass appeared again, I put my eye to the little window that is in the back of every carriage, and bade goodbye to Mont Saint-Michel. CHAPTER XII. COMBOURG. A letter from the Viscount Vésin was to gain us entrance to the castle. So as soon as we arrived, we called on the steward, M. Corvesier. They ushered us into a large kitchen where a young lady in black, marked by smallpox and wearing horn spectacles over her prominent eyes, was stemming currants. The kettle was on the fire and they were crushing sugar with bottles. It was evident that we were intruding. After several minutes had elapsed, we were informed that M. Corvesier was confined to his bed with a fever and was very sorry that he could not be of any service to us, but sent us his regards. In the meantime, his clerk, who had just come in from an errand, and who was lunching on a glass of cider and a piece of buttered bread, offered to show us the castle. He put his napkin down, sucked his teeth, lighted his pipe, took a bunch of keys from the wall and started ahead of us through the village. After following a long wall, we entered through an old door into a silent farm-yard. Silica here and there shows through the beaten ground, on which grows a little grass soiled by manure. There was nobody around and the stable was empty. In the barns some chickens were roosting on the poles of the wagons, with their heads under their wings. Around the buildings, the sound of our footsteps was deadened by the dust accumulated from the straw in the lofts. Four large towers connected by curtains showed battlements beneath their pointed roofs; the openings in the towers, like those in the main part of the castle, are small, irregular windows, which form uneven black squares on the grey stones. A broad stoop, comprising about thirty steps, reaches to the first floor, which has become the ground-floor of the interior apartments, since the trenches have been filled up. The yellow wall-flower does not grow here, but instead, one finds nettles and lentisks, greenish moss and lichens. To the left, next to the turret, is a cluster of chestnut-trees reaching up to the roof and shading it. After the key had been turned in the lock and the door pushed open with kicks, we entered a dark hallway filled with boards and ladders and wheelbarrows. This passage led into a little yard enclosed by the thick interior walls of the castle. It was lighted from the top like a prison yard. In the corners, drops of humidity dripped from the stones. We opened another door. It led into a large, empty, sonorous hall; the floor was cracked in a hundred places, but there was fresh paint on the wainscoting. The green forest opposite sheds a vivid reflection on the white walls, through the large windows of the castle. There is a lake and underneath the windows were clusters of lilacs, petunia-blossoms and acacias, which have grown pell-mell in the former parterre, and cover the hill that slopes gradually to the road, following the banks of the lake and then continuing through the woods. The great, deserted hall, where the child who afterwards wrote _René_, used to sit and gaze out of the windows, was silent. The clerk smoked his pipe and expectorated on the floor. His dog, which had followed him, hunted for mice, and its nails clicked on the pavement. We walked up the winding stairs. Moss covers the worn stone steps. Sometimes a ray of light, passing through a crack in the walls, strikes a green blade and makes it gleam in the dark like a star. We wandered through the halls, through the towers, and over the narrow curtain with its gaping machicolations, which attract the eye irresistibly to the abyss below. On the second floor is a small room which looks out into the inside courtyard and has a massive oak door that closes with a latch. The beams of the ceiling (you can touch them), are rotten from age; the whitewashed walls show their lattice-work and are covered with big spots; the window-panes are obscured by cobwebs and their frames are buried in dust. This used to be Chateaubriand's room. It faces the West, towards the setting sun. We continued; when we passed in front of a window or a loop-hole, we warmed ourselves in the warm air coming from without, and this sudden transition rendered the ruins all the more melancholy and cheerless. The floors of the apartments are rotting away, and daylight enters through the fireplaces along the blackened slab where rain has left long green streaks. The golden flowers on the drawing-room ceiling are falling off, and the shield that surmounts the mantelpiece is broken into bits. While we were looking around, a flight of birds entered, flew around for a few minutes and passed out through the chimney. In the evening, we went to the lake. The meadow has encroached upon it and will soon cover it entirely, and wheat will grow in the place of pond-lilies. Night was falling. The castle, flanked by its four turrets and framed by masses of green foliage, cast a dark shadow over the village. The setting sun made the great mass appear black; the dying rays touched the surface of the lake and then melted in the mist on the purplish top of the silent forest. We sat down at the foot of an oak and opened _René_. We faced the lake where he had often watched the nimble swallow on the bending reeds; we sat in the shadow of the forest where he had often pursued rainbows over the dripping hills; we harkened to the rustling of the leaves and the whisperings of the water that had added their murmur to the sad melody of his youth. As the darkness gathered on the pages of the book, the bitterness of its words went to our hearts, and we experienced a sensation of mingled melancholy and sweetness. A wagon passed in the road, and the wheels sank in the deep tracks. A smell of new-mown hay pervaded the air. The frogs were croaking in the marshes. We went back. The sky was heavy and a storm raged all night. The front of a neighbouring house was illumined and flared like a bonfire at every flash of lightning. Gasping, and tired of tossing on my bed, I arose, lighted a candle, opened the window and leaned out. The night was dark, and as silent as slumber. The lighted candle threw my huge shadow on the opposite wall. From time to time a flash of lightning blinded me. I thought of the man whose early life was spent here and who filled half a century with the clamouring of his grief. I thought of him first in these quiet streets, playing with the village boys and looking for nests in the church-steeple and in the woods. I imagined him in his little room, leaning his elbows on the table, and watching the rain beating on the window-panes and the clouds passing above the curtain, while his dreams flew away. I thought of the bitter loneliness of youth, with its intoxications, its nausea, and its bursts of love that sicken the heart. Is it not here that our own grief was nourished, is this not the very Golgotha where the genius that fed us suffered its anguish? Nothing can express the gestation of the mind or the thrills which future great works impart to those who carry them; but we love to see the spot where we know they were conceived and lived, as if it had retained something of the unknown ideal which once vibrated there. His room! his room! his childhood's poor little room! It was here that he was tormented by vague phantoms which beckoned to him and clamoured for birth: Attala shaking the magnolias out of her hair in the soft breeze of Florida, Velléda running through the woods in the moonlight, Cymodocée protecting her white bosom from the claws of the leopards, and frail Amélie and pale René! One day, however, he tears himself away from the old feudal homestead, never to return. Now he is lost in the whirl of Paris and mingles with his fellow-men; and then he feels an impulse to travel and he starts off. I can see him leaning over the side of the ship, I can see him looking for a new world and weeping over the country he has left. He lands; he listens to the waterfalls and the songs of the Natchez; he watches the flowing rivers and the bright scales of the snakes and the eyes of the savages. He allows his soul to be fascinated by the languor of the Savannah. They tell each other of their native melancholy and he exhausts its pleasures as he exhausted those of love. He returns, writes, and everyone is carried away by the charm of his magnificent style with its royal sweep and its supple, coloured, undulating phrase, as stormy as the winds that sweep over virgin forests, as brilliant as the neck of a humming-bird, and as soft as the light of the moon shining through the windows of a chapel. He travels again; this time he goes to ancient shores; he sits down at Thermoplyæ and cries: Leonidas! Leonidas! visits the tomb of Achilles, Lacedæmon, and Carthage, and, like the sleepy shepherd who raises his head to watch the passing caravans, all those great places awake when he passes through them. Banished, exiled, laden with honours, this man who had starved in the streets will dine at the table of kings; he will be an ambassador and a minister, will try to save the tottering monarchy, and after seeing the ruin of all his beliefs, he will witness his own glorification as if he were already counted among the dead. Born during the decline of one period and at the dawn of another, he was to be its transition and the guardian of its memories and hopes. He was the embalmer of Catholicism and the proclaimer of liberty. Although he was a man of old traditions and illusions, he was constitutional in politics and revolutionary in literature. Religious by instinct and education, it is he, who, in advance of everyone else, in advance of Byron, gave vent to the most savage pride and frightful despair. He was an artist, and had this in common with the artists of the eighteenth century: he was always hampered by narrow laws which, however, were always broken by the power of his genius. As a man, he shared the misery of his fellow-men of the nineteenth century. He had the same turbulent preoccupations and futile gravity. Not satisfied with being great, he wished to appear grandiose, and it seems that this conceited mania did not in the least efface his real grandeur. He certainly does not belong to the race of dreamers who have made no incursion into life, masters with calm brows who have had neither period, nor country nor family. But this man cannot be separated from the passions of his time; they made him what he was, and he in turn created a number of them. Perhaps the future will not give him credit for his heroic stubbornness and no doubt it will be the episodes of his books that will immortalise their titles with the names of the causes they upheld. I stayed at the window enjoying the night and feeling with delight the cold morning air on my lids. Little by little the day dawned; the wick of the candle grew longer and longer and its flame slowly faded away. The roof of the market appeared in the distance and a cock crowed; the storm had passed; a few drops of water remained in the dust of the road and made large round spots on it. As I was very tired, I went back to bed and slept. We felt very sad on leaving Combourg, and besides, the end of our journey was at hand. Soon this delightful trip which we had enjoyed for three months would be over. The return, like the leave-taking, produces an anticipated sadness, which gives one a proof of the insipid life we lead. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: Gustave Flaubert was twenty-six years old when he started on this journey. He travelled on foot and was accompanied by M. Maxime Ducamp. When they returned, they wrote an account of their journey. It is by far the most important of the unpublished writings, for in it the author gives his personal genius full sway and it abounds in picturesque descriptions and historical reflections.] [Footnote 2: Founder of the abbey of Fontevrault, in 1099.] [Footnote 3: He strangled his mistress whose mutilated body was found floating in a sack on a pond. (See _Causes Célèbres_.)] [Footnote 4: A contraction of Poulbeuzanneval, the swamp where the beast was drowned.] [Footnote 5: Josselin Frotet, sieur de La Lanbelle, at whose place the rebels congregated before the escalade. (Note on the manuscript of G.F.)] [Footnote 6: D'Argentré, _Hist. de Bretagne_. p. 62.] 
12538	----	Proofreaders Europe, http://dp.rastko.net. This file was produced from images generously made available by the Bibliotheque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) at http://gallica.bnf.fr. ACCOUNT OF A TOUR IN NORMANDY Volume II by Dawson Turner LETTERS FROM NORMANDY, ADDRESSED TO THE REV. JAMES LAYTON, B.A. OF CATFIELD, NORFOLK. UNDERTAKEN CHIEFLY FOR THE PURPOSE OF INVESTIGATING THE ARCHITECTURAL ANTIQUITIES OF THE DUCHY, WITH OBSERVATIONS ON ITS HISTORY, ON THE COUNTRY, AND ON ITS INHABITANTS. ILLUSTRATED WITH NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS. CONTENTS. LETTER XIV. Ducler--St. Georges de Bocherville--M. Langlois LETTER XV. Abbey of Jumieges--Its History--Architectural Details--Tombs of Agnes Sorel and of the Enervez LETTER XVI. Gournay--Castle of Neufmarché--Castle and Church of Gisors LETTER XVII. Andelys--Fountain of Saint Clotilda--La Grande Maison--Château Gaillard--Ecouis LETTER XVIII. Evreux--Cathedral--Abbey of St. Taurinus--Ancient History LETTER XIX. Vicinity of Evreux--Château de Navarre--Cocherel--Pont-Audemer-- Montfort-sur-Risle--Harfleur--Bourg-Achard--French Wedding LETTER XX. Moulineaux--Castle of Robert the Devil--Bourg-Theroude--Abbey of Bec--Brionne LETTER XXI. Bernay--Broglie--Orbec--Lisieux--Cathedral--Ecclesiastical History LETTER XXII. Site and Ruins of the Capital of the Lexovii--History of Lisieux--Monasteries of the Diocese--Ordericus Vitalis--M. Dubois--Letter from the Princess Borghese LETTER XXIII. French Police--Ride from Lisieux to Caen--Cider--General Appearance and Trade of Caen--English resident there LETTER XXIV. Historians of Caen--Towers and Fortifications--Château de la Gendarmerie--Castle--Churches of St. Stephen, St. Nicholas, St. Peter, St. John, and St. Michel de Vaucelles LETTER XXV. Royal Abbeys of the Holy Trinity and St. Stephen--Funeral of the Conqueror, Exhumation of his Remains, and Destruction of his Monument LETTER XXVI. Palace of the Conqueror--Heraldic Tiles--Portraits of William and Matilda--Museum--Public Library--University--Academy--Eminent Men--History of Caen LETTER XXVII. Vieux--La Maladerie--Chesnut Timber--Caen Stone--History of Bayeux--Tapestry LETTER XXVIII. Cathedral of Bayeux--Canon of Cambremer--Cope of St. Regnobert--Odo LETTER XXIX. Church and Castle of Creully--Falaise--Castle--Churches--Fair of Guibray LETTER XXX. Rock and Chapel of St. Adrien--Pont-de-l'Arche--Priory of the two Lovers--Abbey of Bonport--Louviers--Gaillon--Vernon APPENDIX I. APPENDIX II. INDEX. LIST OF PLATES. Plate 26 Sculpture upon a capital in the Chapter-House at St. Georges Plate 27 M. Langlois Plate 28 Musicians, from the Chapter-House at St. Georges Plate 29 Distant View of the Abbey of St. Jumieges Plate 30 Ancient trefoil-headed Arches in ditto Plate 31 Distant of the Castle of Gisors Plate 32 Banded Pillar in the Church of ditto Plate 33 Distant View of Château Gaillard Plate 34 Gothic Puteal, at Evreux Plate 35 Leaden Font at Bourg-Achard Plate 36 Ancient Tomb in the Cathedral at Lisieux Plate 37 Head-Dress of Females, as Caen Plate 38 Tower in the _Château de Calix_, at ditto Plate 39 Tower and Spire of St. Peter's Church, at ditto Plate 40 Sculpture upon a Capital in ditto Plate 41 Tower of St. John's Church, at Caen Plate 42 Monastery of St. Stephen, at ditto Plate 43 Fireplace in the Conqueror's Palace, at Ditto Plate 44 Profile of M. Lamouroux Plate 45 Figure from the Bayeux Tapestry Plate 46 Sculpture at Bayeux Plate 47 Ornaments in the Spandrils of the Arches in Bayeux Cathedral Plate 48 Castle of Falaise Plate 49 Elevation of the West Front of _La Délivrande_ Plate 50 Font at Magneville LETTERS FROM NORMANDY. LETTER XIV. DUCLER--ST. GEORGES DE BOCHERVILLE--M. LANGLOIS. (_Ducler, July_, 1818.) You will look in vain for Ducler in the _livre des postes_; yet this little town, which is out of the common road of the traveller, becomes an interesting station to the antiquary, it being situated nearly mid-way between two of the most important remains of ancient ecclesiastical architecture in Normandy--the abbeys of St. Georges de Bocherville and of Jumieges.--The accommodation afforded by the inns at Bocherville and Jumieges, is but a poor substitute for the hospitality of the suppressed abbeys; and, as even the antiquary must eat and perhaps sleep, he who visits either St. George or the holy Virgin, will do well to take his _fricandeau_ and his bed, at the place whence I am writing. At a period when the right bank of the Seine from Harfleur to Rouen displayed an almost uninterrupted line or monastic buildings, Ducler also boasted of a convent[1], which must have been of some importance, as early as the middle of the seventh century.--King Childeric IInd, granted the forest of Jumieges to the convent of the same name and that of St. Vandrille; and St. Ouen was directed by the monarch to divide the endowment between the two foundations. His award did not give satisfaction to St. Philibert, the abbot of Jumieges, who maintained that his house had not received a fair allotment. The proposition was stoutly resisted by St. Lambert, abbot of St. Vandrille; and the dispute was at length settled by the saints withdrawing their claims, and ceding the surplus land to the abbey of Ducler. St. Denys was the patron of this abbey; and to him also the present parochial church is dedicated: it is of Norman architecture; the tower is surrounded by a row of fantastic corbels; and a considerable quantity of painted glass yet remains in the windows. The village itself (for it is nothing more than a village, though honored by French geographers with the name of a _bourg_), consists of a single row of houses, placed immediately under the steep chalk cliff which borders the Seine. The face of the cliff is also indented by excavations, in which the poorer inhabitants dwell, almost like the Troglodytes of old. The situation of Ducler, and that of the two neighboring abbeys, is delightful in summer and in fine weather. In winter it must be cold and cheerless; for, besides being close to a river of so great breadth, it looks upon a flat marshy shore, whence exhalations copiously arise. The view from our chamber window this morning presented volumes of mist rolling on with the stream. The tide was setting in fast downwards; and the water glided along in silent rapidity, involved in clouds. The village of Bocherville, or, as it is more commonly called, of St. Georges, the place borrowing its name from the patron saint of the abbey, lies, at the distance of about two leagues from Rouen. The road is exceedingly pleasing. Every turning presents a fresh view of the river; while, on looking back, the city itself is added to the landscape; and, as we approach, the abbey-church is seen towering upon the eminence which it commands. The church of St. Georges de Bocherville, called in old charters _de Baucherville_, and in Latin _de Balcheri_ or _Baucheri villa_, was built by Ralph de Tancarville, the preceptor of the Conqueror in his youth, and his chamberlain in his maturer age. The descendants of the founder were long the patrons and advocates of the monastery. The Tancarvilles, names illustrious in Norman, no less than in English, story, continued during many centuries to regard it as under their particular protection: they enriched it with their donations whilst alive, and they selected it as the spot to contain their remains when they should be no more. The following portion of the charter, which puts us in possession of the indisputable æra of the erection of the church, is preserved by Mabillon[2]. It is the Conqueror who speaks.--"Radulfus, meus magister, aulæque et cameræ princeps, instinctu divino tactus, ecclesiam supradicti martyris Georgii, quæ erat parva, re-edificare a fundamentis inchoavit, et ex proprio in modum crucis consummavit." The Monarch and his Queen condescended to gratify a faithful and favorite servant, by endowing his establishment. The corpse of the sovereign himself was also brought hither from St. Gervais, by the monks and clergy, in solemn procession, before it was carried to Caen[3] for interment. Ralph de Tancarville, however, was not fortunate in the selection of the inmates whom he planted in his monastery. His son, in the reign of Henry Ist, dismissed the canons for whom it was first founded, and replaced them by a colony of monks from St. Evroul. Ordericus Vitalis, himself of the fraternity of St. Evroul, commemorates and of course praises the fact. Such changes are of frequent occurrence in ecclesiastical history; and the apprehension of being rejected from an opulent and well-endowed establishment, may occasionally have contributed, by the warning example, to correct the irregularities of other communities. A century later, the abbot of St. Georges was compelled to appeal to the pope, in consequence of an attempt on the part of his brethren at St. Evroul, to degrade his convent into a mere cell, dependent upon theirs.--The chronicle of the abbey is barren of events of general interest; nor do its thirty-one abbots appear to have been men of whom there was much more to be said, than that they arrived at their dignity on such a year, and quitted it on such another. Of the monks, we are told that, in the fifteenth century, though their number was only eight, the dignitaries included, the daily task allotted them was greater than would in any of the most rigid establishments, in latter days, have been imposed upon forty brethren in a week! Inconsiderable as is the abbey, in an historical point of view, the church of St. Georges de Bocherville is of singular importance, inasmuch as it is one of the land-marks of Norman architecture. William, in his charter, simply styles himself _Dux Normannorum_; it therefore was granted a few years before the conquest. The building has suffered little, either from the hands of the destroyers, or of those who do still more mischief, the repairers; and it is certainly at once the most genuine and the most magnificent specimen of the circular style, now existing in Upper Normandy.--The west front is wholly of the time of the founder, with the exception of the upper portion of the towers that flank it on either side. In these are windows of nearly the earliest pointed style; and they are probably of the same date as the chapter-house, which was built in the latter part of the twelfth century. The effect of the front is imposing: its general simplicity contrasts well with the rich ornaments of the arched door-way, which is divided into five systems of mouldings, all highly wrought, and presenting almost every pattern commonly found in Norman buildings. A label encircles the whole, the inner edge of which is indented into obtuse pyramids, erroneously called lozenges. The capitals of the columns supporting the arch are curiously sculptured: upon the second to the left, on entering, are Adam and Eve, in the act of eating the forbidden fruit; upon the opposite one, is represented the Flight into Egypt. Normandy does not contain, I believe, a richer arch; but very many indeed are to be seen in England, even in our village churches, superior in decoration, though not, perhaps, in size; for this at St. Georges is on a very large scale: on each side of it is a smaller blank arch, with a single moulding and a single pillar. Two tiers of circular-headed windows of equal size fill up the front.--The rest of the exterior may be said to be precisely as it was left by the original builders, excepting only the insertion of a pointed window near the central tower. The inside is at least equally free from modern alterations or improvements. No other change whatever is to be traced in it than such as were required to repair the injuries done it during the religious wars; and these were wholly confined to a portion of the roof, and of the upper part of the wall on the south side of the nave. The groined roof, though posterior to the original date of the building, is perhaps of the thirteenth century. The nave itself terminates towards the east in a semi-circular apsis, according to the custom of the times; and there, as well as at the opposite extremity of the building, it has a double tier of windows, and has columns more massy than those in the body of the church. The aisles end in straight lines; but, within, a recess is made in the thickness of the wall, for the purpose of admitting an altar. Both the transepts are divided within the church, at a short distance from their extremities, into two stories, by a vaulted roof of the same height as the triforium.--M. Le Prevost, who has very kindly communicated to me the principal part of these details, has observed the same to be the case in some other contemporary buildings in Normandy. On the eastern side of each transept is a small chapel, ending, like the choir, in a semi-circular apsis, which rises no higher than the top of the basement story. A cable moulding runs round the walls of the whole church within.--You and I, in our own country, have often joined in admiring the massy grandeur of Norman architecture, exemplified in the nave of Norwich cathedral: at St. Georges I was still more impressed by the noble effect of semi-circular arcades, seen as they are here on a still larger scale, and in their primitive state, uninterrupted and undebased by subsequent additions. On closer examination, the barbarous style of the sculpture forces itself upon the eye. Towards the western end of the building the capitals are comparatively plain: they become more elaborate on approaching the choir. Some of them are imitations or modifications (and it may even be said beautiful ones) of the Grecian model; but in general they are strangely grotesque. Many represent quadrupeds, or dragons, or birds, and commonly with two bodies, and a single head attached to any part rather than the neck. On others is seen "the human form divine," here praying, there fighting; here devouring, there in the act of being devoured; not uncommonly too the men, if men they must be called, are disfigured by enormous heads with great flapping ears, or loll out an endless length of tongue.--One is almost led to conceive that Schedel, the compiler of the _Nuremberg Chronicle_, had a set of Norman capitals before his eyes, when he published his inimitable series of monsters. His "homines cynocephali," and others with "aures tam magnas ut totum corpus contegant," and those again whose under lips serve them as coverlids, may all find their prototypes, or nearly so, in the carvings of St. Georges. The most curious sculptures, however, in the church, are two square bas-reliefs, opposite to one another, upon the spandrils of the arches, in the walls that divide the extremities of the transepts into different stories[4]. They are cut out of the solid stone, in the same manner as the subjects on the block of a wood-engraving: one of these tablets represents a prelate holding a crosier in his left hand, while the two fore-fingers of the right are elevated in the act of giving the blessing; the other contains two knights on horseback, jousting at a tournament. They are armed with lance and buckler, and each of them has his head covered with a pointed helmet, which terminates below in a nasal, like the figures upon the Bayeux tapestry.--This coincidence is interesting, as deciding a point of some moment towards establishing the antiquity of that celebrated relic, by setting it beyond a doubt that such helmets were used anterior to the conquest; for it is certain that these basso-relievos are coeval with the building which contains them. This church affords admirable subjects for the pencil. It should be drawn in every part: all is entire; all original; the corbel-stones that support the cornice on the exterior are perfect, as well along the choir and nave, as upon the square central steeple: each of the sides of this latter is ornamented with a double tier of circular arches. The buttresses to the church are, like those of the chapel of St. Julien, shallow and unbroken; and they are ranged, as there, between the windows. At the east end alone they take the shape of small semi-cylindrical columns of disproportionate length. [Illustration: Sculpture upon a capital in the Chapter-House at St. Georges] The monastic buildings, which were probably erected about the year 1700, now serve as a manufactory. Between them and the church is situated the chapter-house, which was built towards the end of the twelfth century, at a period when the pointed architecture had already begun to take place of the circular style. Its date is supplied in the _Gallia Christiana_, where we read, that Victor, the second abbot, "obiit longævus dierum, idibus Martii, seu XVIII calendas Aprilis, ante annum 1211; sepultusque est sub tabulâ marmoreâ in capitulo quod erexerat." We found it in a most ruinous and dilapidated state, yet extremely curious; indeed not less so than the church. Its front to the west exhibits a row of three semi-circular arches, with an ornament on the archivolt altogether different from what I recollect to have seen elsewhere[5]. The inside corresponds in profuse decoration with this entrance; but the arches in it are all pointed. An entablature of beautiful workmanship is carried round the whole building, which is now used as a mill: it was crowded with dirty children belonging to the manufactory; and the confusion which prevailed, was far from being favorable to the quiet lucubrations of an antiquary. In no part of the church is the sculpture equally curious; and it is very interesting to observe the progress which this branch of the art had made in so short a time. Two or three of the capitals to the arches in front, seem to include one continued action, taken apparently from the history of Joshua. Another capital, of which I send you a sketch from the pencil of M. Le Prevost, is a great curiosity. The group which it contains, is nearly a duplicate of the supposed statue of William the Conqueror at Caen. In all probability it represents some legendary story, though the subject is not satisfactorily ascertained. Against the pillars that support these arches, were affixed whole-length figures, or cariatides, in alto-relievo. Three of them still remain, though much mutilated; two women and a man. They hold in their hands labels, with inscriptions that fall down to their feet in front. One of the females has her hair disposed in long braided tresses, which reach on either side to her girdle. In this respect, as well as in the style of the sculpture and costume, there is a resemblance between these statues and those on the portals at St. Denys and at Chartres, as well as those formerly on that of St. Germain des Prés, at Paris, all which are figured by Montfaucon in his _Monumens de la Monarchie Française_, and are supposed by him to be of the times of the Merovingian or Carlovingian dynasty; but subsequent writers have referred them to the eleventh or twelfth century. [Illustration: M. Langlois] It was in this chapter-house that M. Langlois[6] found, among a heap of stones, a most interesting capital, that had formerly been attached to a double column. By his kindness, I inclose you two drawings of it. One of them shews it in its entire form as a capital; the other exhibits the bas-relief carved upon it[7]. [Illustration: Bas-relief on capital] The various injuries sustained by the building, render it impossible to ascertain the spot which this capital originally occupied; but M. Le Prevost supposes that it belonged to some gate of the cloister, which is now destroyed. A more curious series of musical instruments is, perhaps, no where to be found; and it is a subject upon which authors in general are peculiarly unsatisfactory. I am told that, in an old French romance, the names of upwards of twenty are enumerated, whose forms and nature are quite unknown at the present day; while, on the other hand, we are all of us aware that painting and sculpture supply figures of many, for which it would be extremely difficult or impossible to find names[8]. [Illustration: Musicians, from the Chapter-House at St. Georges] The chapter-house, previously to the revolution, contained a tomb-stone[9], uninscribed and exhibiting only a sculptured sword, under which it was supposed that either Ralph de Tancarville himself, the founder of the abbey, or his grandson, William, lay interred. It is of the latter that the records of the monastery tell, how, on the fifth day after he girded himself with the military belt, he came to the church, and deposited his sword upon the altar, and subsequently redeemed it by various donations, and by confirming to the monks their right to the several benefices in his domain, which had been ceded to them by his grandfather.--Here then, I quit you: in a few days I shall have paid my devotions at the shrine of Jumieges:--meanwhile, in the language of the writers of the elder day, I close this sheet with. EXPLICIT FELICITER Stus. GEORGIUS DE BOCHERVILLA; DEO GRATIAS. * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: _Histoire de la Haute Normandie_, II. p. 266. VOL. II.] [Footnote 2: _Ann. Benedict._ III. p. 674, 675.--This charter was not among the archives of the monastery; but I am informed by M. Le Prevost, that several are still in existence, most of them granted by the family of the founder, but some by Kings of England. One of the latter is by Richard Coeur de Lion, and his seal of red wax still remains appended to it, in fine preservation. The seal, on one side, represents the king seated upon his throne, with a pointed beard, having his crown on his head, and a sword in one hand, and sceptre in the other: on the other side, he is on horseback, with his head covered with a cylindrical helmet, surmounted with a very remarkable crest, in the form of a fan: on his shield are plainly distinguishable the three lions of England.--From among the charters granted by the Tancarville family, M. Le Prevost has sent me copies of two which have never yet been printed; but which appear to deserve insertion here. One is from Lucy, daughter of William de Tancarville, and grand-daughter of Ralph, the chamberlain.--"Notum sit Ricardo de Vernon and Willelmo Camerario de Tancarvilla, et veteribus et juvenibus, quòd Lucia, filia Willelmi, Camerarii de Tancarvilla, pro animâ suâ et pro animabus antecessorum suorum, ad ecclesiam Sti. Georgii de Bauchervilla dedit molendinum de Waldinivilla, quod est subter aliud molendinum et molendinum de Waldinval, liberè et quietè, et insupèr ecclesiam de Seonvilla, salvâ elemosinâ Roberti sacerdotis in vitâ suâ, si dignus est habendi eam. Et post mortem Willelmi capellani sui de Sancto Flocello, ad ecclesiam suprà dictam dedit decimam de vavassoribus de Seolvilla, quam dedit in elemosinâ habendam Willelmo capellano totâ vitâ bene et in pace et securè, et decimas de custodiis totius terre sue que est in Constantino.--Ego Lucia do hanc elemosinam pro animâ meâ et pro antecessoribus ad ecclesiam Sanctii Georgii; et qui auferet ab eâ et auferetur ab eo regnum Dei. Amen.--Testibus, Ricardo de Haia et Matille uxore suâ et Nigello de Chetilivilla et hominibus de Sancto Flocello."--To this is added, in a smaller hand-writing, probably the lady's own autograph, the following sentence:--"Et precor vos quòd ecclesia Sancti Georgii non decrescatur in tempore vestro pro Dei amore et meo de elemosinis patris mei neque de meis."--There is still farther subjoined, in a different hand-writing, and in a much paler ink:--"Hæc omnia Ricardus de Vernon libenter concessit."--The other charter was granted by William the Younger, and details a curious custom occasionally observed in the middle ages, in making donations:-- "Universis sancte ecclesie fidelibus. Willelmus junior camerarius in domino salutem. Notum sit presentibus et futuris, quod ego Willelmus junior camerarius quinto die post susceptum militie cingulum veni apud Sanctum Georgium, ibique cum honorificâ processione suscepérunt me Abbas Ludovicus et monachi cum magno gaudio letantes; et ibi obtuli gladium meum super altare Sti. Georgii, et tunc consilio et admonitione sociorum meorum nobilium virorum qui mecum venerant, scilicet Roberti des Is, dapiferi mei, et Rogerii de Calli, et Johannis de Lunda, et aliorum plurium, redemi gladium meum per dona et confirmationem plurium ecclesiarum, quas ipso die concessi eisdem meo dono, et, sicut avus meus, fundator illius monasterii dederat, confirmavi; scilicet ecclesiam de Abetot et ecclesiam de Espretot cum decimâ, et ecclesiam Sancti Romani cum duabus partibus decime, et similitèr ecclesiam de Tibermaisnil: confirmavi etiam dona militum meorum et amicorum quæ dederunt ipso die abbatie in perpetuam elemosynam, Rogerius de Calli dedit XX Sot. annuatìm; Robertus de Mortùomari X Sot.; Robertus des Is X solidos; Johannes de Lunda, cognatus meus X Sot.; Andreas de Bosemuneel X solidos, vel decimam de una carrucatura terre ... Humfridus de Willerio X solid.; Willelmus de Bodevilla X acras terre; Garinus de Mois V solid.; Adam de Mirevilla X solid.; Robert. de Fuschennis X solid.; Lesra de Drumara I acram terre."] [Footnote 3: The following are the words of Ordericus Vitalis, upon the subject: "Religiosi tandem viri, Clerici et Monachi, collectis viribus et intimis sensibus, processionem ordinaverunt: honestè induti, crucibus et thuribus, ad Sanctum Georgium processerunt, et animam Regis, secundum morem sanctæ Christianitatis Deo commendaverunt."--_Duchesne, Scriptores Normanni_, p. 661.] [Footnote 4: See _Cotman's Architectural Antiquities of Normandy_, t. 10. f. A. and B.] [Footnote 5: See _Cotman's Architectural Antiquities of Normandy_, t. 11. last figure.] [Footnote 6: My readers will join with me, I trust, in thanks to M. Langlois, for his drawings; and will not be sorry to see, accompanying his sketch of the bas-relief, a spirited one of himself. Normandy does not contain a more ardent admirer of her antiquities, or one to whom she is more indebted for investigating, drawing, and publishing them. But, to the disgrace of Rouen, his labors are not rewarded. All the obstacles, however opposed by the "durum, pauperies, opprobium," have not been able to check his independent mind: he holds on his course in the illustration of the true Norman remains; and to any antiquary who visits this country, I can promise a great pleasure in the examination of his port-folio.] [Footnote 7: Its size at top is fourteen inches and a half, by six inches and two-thirds.] [Footnote 8: This difficulty, in the present instance, has yielded to the extensive researches of Mr. Douce, who has afforded assistance to me, which, perhaps, no other antiquary could have bestowed. He has unravelled all the mysteries of minstrelsy with his usual ability; and I give the information in his own words, only observing that the numbers begin from the left.--"No. 1 was called the _violl_, corresponding with our _Viol de Gamba_. As this was a larger violin, though the sculptor has not duly expressed its comparative bulk, I conceive it was either used as a tenor or base, being perfectly satisfied, in spite of certain doubts on the subject, that counterpoint was known in the middle ages.--No. 2 is the largest instrument of the kind that I have ever seen, and it seems correctly given, from one part of it resting on the figure, No. 3, to support it. Twiss mentions one that he saw sculptured on the cathedral, at Toro, five feet long. The proper name of it is the _rote_, so called from the internal wheel or cylinder, turned by a winch, which caused the _bourdon_, whilst the performer stopped the notes on the strings with his fingers. This instrument has been very ignorantly termed a _vielle_, and yet continues to be so called in France. It is the modern Savoyard _hurdy-gurdy_, as we still more improperly term it; for the hurdy-gurdy is quite a different instrument. In later times, the _rote_ appears to have lost its rank in concert, and was called the _beggar's lyre_.--No. 4 is evidently the _syrinx_, or _Pan's pipe_, which has been revived with so much success in the streets of London.--Twiss shewed me one forty years ago, that he got in the south of France, where they were then very common.--No. 5 is an instrument for which I can find no name, nor can I immediately call to memory any other representation of it. It has some resemblance to the old Welsh fiddle or _crowth_; but, as a bow is wanting, it must have been played with the fingers; and I think the performer's left hand in the sculpture does seem to be stopping the strings on the upper part, or neck, a portion of which has been probably broken off.--I suspect it to be the old _mandore_, whence the more modern _mandolin_. The rotundity of the sounding-board may warrant this conjecture.--No. 6 was called the _psalterion_, and is of very great antiquity, (I mean as to the middle ages).--Its form was very diversified, and frequently triangular. It was played with a _plectrum_, which the performer holds in his right hand.--No. 7 is the _dulcimer_, which is very common in sculpture. This instrument appears, as in the present case, to have been sometimes played with the fingers only, and sometimes with a _plectrum_.--No. 8 is the real _vielle_, or _violin_, of very common occurrence, and very ancient.--No. 9 is a female tumbler, or _tomllesterre_, as Chaucer calls them. This profession, so far as we can depend on ancient representation, appears to have exclusively belonged to women.--No. 10. A _harp_ played with a _plectrum_, and, perhaps, also with the left hand occasionally.--No. 11. The figure before the suspended _bells_ has had a hammer in each hand with which to strike them, and the opposite, and last, person, who plays in concert with him, has probably had a harp, as is the case in an ancient manuscript psalter illumination that I have, prefixed to the psalm _Exaltate Deo_.--I have seen these bells suspended (in illumination to the above psalm) to a very elegant Gothic frame, ascending like the upper part of a modern harp."] [Footnote 9: _Gallia Christiana_, XI. p. 270.] [Illustration: Distant View of the Abbey of St. Jumieges] LETTER XV. ABBEY OF JUMIEGES--ITS HISTORY--ARCHITECTURAL DETAILS--TOMBS OF AGNES SOREL AND OF THE ENERVEZ. (_Ducler, July_, 1818) The country between Ducler and Jumieges is of much the same character with that through which we had already travelled from Rouen; the road sometimes coasting the Seine, and sometimes passing through a well-wooded country, pleasantly intermingled with corn-fields. In its general appearance, this district bears a near resemblance to an English landscape; more so, indeed, than in any other part of Normandy, where the features of the scenery are upon a larger scale. The lofty towers of the abbey of Jumieges are conspicuous from afar: the stone of which they are built is peculiarly white; and at a distance scarcely any signs of decay or dilapidation are visible. On a nearer approach, however, the Vandalism of the modern French appears in full activity. For the pitiful value of the materials, this noble edifice is doomed to destruction. The arched roof is beaten in; and the choir is nearly levelled with the ground. Two cart-loads of wrought stones were carried away, while we were there; and the workmen were busily employed in its demolition. The greater part, too, of the mischief, appears recent: the fractures of the walls are fresh and sharp; and the fresco-paintings are unchanged.--Had the proud, abbatial structure but been allowed to have existed as the parochial church of the village, the edifice might have stood for ages; but the French are miserably deficient in proper feeling; and neither the historical recollections connected with Jumieges, nor its importance as a monument of architectural antiquity, could redeem it from their tasteless selfishness. In a few years, its very ruins will have perished; and not a wreck will remain of this ancient sanctuary of religion and of learning. It was in the year 654 or 655, that St. Philibert, second abbot of Rebais, in the diocese of Meaux, founded this monastery. He selected the site upon which the present building stands, a delightful situation, in a peninsula on the right bank of the Seine. This peninsula, and the territory extending from Ducler to Caudebec, had been granted to him for this purpose by Clovis IInd, or, more properly speaking, by Bathilda, his queen; for the whole administration of affairs was in reality under her guidance, though the reins of state were nominally held by her feeble husband. The territory[10] had previously borne the name of Jumieges, or, in Latin, Gemeticum, a term whose origin has puzzled etymologists. Those who hold it disgraceful to be ever at a loss on points of this nature, and who prefer displaying a learned to an unlearned ignorance, derive Gemeticum, either from _gemitus_, because, "pro suis offensis illìc gemunt, qui in flammis ultricibus non erunt gemituri;" or from _gemma_, conformably to the following distich,-- "Gemmeticum siquidem a gemmâ dixere priores; Quòd reliquis gemmæ, præcelleret instar Eoæ." The ground upon which the abbey was erected was previously occupied by an ancient encampment. The author of the Life of St. Philibert, who mentions this circumstance, has also preserved a description of the original church. These authentic accounts of edifices of remote date, which frequently occur in hagiology, are of great value in the history of the arts[11].--The bounty of the queen was well employed by the saint; and the cruciform church, with chapels, and altars, and shrines, and oratories, on either side, and with its high altar hallowed by relics, and decked out with gold and silver and precious stones, shews how faithfully the catholics, in their religious edifices of the present day, have adhered to the models of the early, if not the primitive, ages of the church. Writers of the same period record two facts in relation to Jumieges, which are of some interest as points of natural history.--Vines were then commonly cultivated in this place and neighborhood;--and fishes of so great a size, that we cannot but suppose they must have been whales, frequently came up the Seine, and were caught under the walls of the monastery.--The growth of the vine is abundantly proved: it is not only related by various monkish historians, one of whom, an anonymous writer, quoted by Mabillon, in the _Acta Sanctorum ordinis Sancti Benedicti_, says, speaking of Jumieges, "hinc vinearum abundant botryones, qui in turgentibus gemmis lucentes rutilant in Falernis;" but even a charter of so late a date as the year 1472, expressly terms a large tract of land belonging to the convent, the vineyard[12].--The existence of the English monastic vineyards has been much controverted, but not conclusively. Whether these instances of the northern growth of the vine, as a wine-making plant, do or do not bear upon the question of the supposed refrigeration of our climate by the increase of the Polar ice, must be left to the determination of others.--The whale-fishery of Jumieges rests upon the single authority of the _Gesta Sancti Philiberti_: the author admits, indeed, that it is a strange thing, "et a sæculo inauditum;" but still he speaks of it as a fact that has fallen under his own knowledge, that the monks, by means of hooks, nets, and boats, catch sea-fish[13], fifty feet in length, which at once supply their table with food, and their lamps with oil. The number of holy men who originally accompanied St. Philibert to his new abbey, was only seventy; but they increased with surprising rapidity; insomuch, that his successor, St. Aicadras, who received the pastoral staff, after a lapse of little more than thirty years from the foundation of Jumieges, found himself at the head of nine hundred monks, besides fifteen hundred attendants and dependants of various denominations. During all these early ages, the monastery of Jumieges continued to be accounted one of the most celebrated religious houses in France. Its abbots are repeatedly mentioned in history, as enjoying the confidence of sovereigns, and as charged with important missions. In their number, was Hugh, grandson of Pépin le Bref, or, according to other writers, of Charlemagne. Here also, Tassilo, Duke of Bavaria, and his son, Theodo, were compelled to immure themselves, after the emperor had deposed them; whilst Anstruda, daughter of Tassilo, was doomed to share his imperial bed. An æra of misfortune began with the arrival of the Normans. It was in May, in the year 841, that these dreadful invaders first penetrated as far as Rouen, marking their track by devastation. On their retreat, which almost immediately succeeded, they set fire to Jumieges, as well as to the capital. In their second invasion, under Ironside and Hastings, the "fury of the Normans" was poured out upon Neustria; and, during their inroad, they levelled Jumieges with the ground[14]. But the monks saved themselves: they dispersed: one fled as far as St. Gall; others found shelter in the royal abbey of St. Denis; the greater part re-assembled in a domain of their own, called Haspres, in Flanders, whither they carried with them the bodies of St. Aicadrus and St. Hugh: there too they resided till the conversion of their enemies to Christianity. The victorious fleet of Rollo first sailed in triumph up the Seine, in the year 876. According to three monkish historians, Dudo of St. Quintin, William of Jumieges, and Matthew of Westminster, the chieftain venerated the sanctity of Jumieges, and deposited in the chapel of St. Vast, the corpse of the holy virgin, Hameltruda, whom he had brought from Britain. They also tell us that, on the sixth day after his baptism, he made a donation of some lands to this monastery.--The details, however, of the circumstances connected with the first, diminish its credibility; and Jumieges, then desolate, could scarcely contain a community capable of accepting the donation. But under the reign of the son and successor of Rollo, the abbey of Jumieges once more rose from its ashes. Baldwin and Gundwin, two of the monks who had fled to Haspres, returned to explore the ruins of the abbey: they determined to seclude themselves amidst its fire-scathed walls, and to devote their lives to piety and toil.--In pursuing the deer, the Duke chanced to wander to Jumieges, and he there beheld the monks employed in clearing the ground. He listened with patience to their narration; but when they invited him to partake of their humble fare, barley-bread and water, he turned from them with disdain. It chanced, however, that immediately afterwards, he encountered in the forest a boar of enormous size. The beast unhorsed him, and he was in danger of death. The peril he regarded as a judgment from heaven; and, as an expiation for his folly, he rebuilt the monastery. So thoroughly, however, had the Normans _demonachised_ Neustria, that William Longa Spatha was compelled to people the abbey with a colony from Poitou; and thence came twelve monks, headed by Abbot Martin, whom the duke installed in his office in the year 930. William himself also desired to take refuge from the fatigues of government in the retirement of the monastery; and though dissuaded by Abbot Martin, who reminded him that Richard, his infant, son still needed his care, he did not renounce his intention:--but his life and his reign were soon ended by treachery. This second æra of the prosperity of Jumieges was extremely short; for the prefect, whom Louis d'Outremer, King of France, placed in command at Rouen, when he seized upon the young Duke Richard, pulled down the walls of this and of all the other monasteries on the banks of the Seine, to assist towards the reparation and embellishment of the seat of his government. But from that time forward the tide of monastic affairs flowed in one even course of prosperity; though the present abbatial church was not begun till the time of Abbot Robert, the second of that name, who was elected in 1037. By him the first stone of the foundation was laid, three years after his advancement to the dignity; but he held his office only till 1043, when Edward the Confessor invited him to England, and immediately afterwards promoted him to the Bishopric of London.--Godfrey, his successor at Jumieges, was a man conversant with architecture, and earnest in the promotion of learning. In purchasing books and in causing them to be transcribed, he spared neither pains nor expence. The records of the monastery contain a curious precept, in which he directs that prayers should be offered up annually upon a certain day, "pro illis qui dederunt et fecerunt libros."--The inmates of Jumieges continued, however, to increase in number; and the revenues of the abbey would not have been adequate to defray the expences of the new building, had not Abbot Robert, who, in 1050, had been translated to the see of Canterbury, supplied the deficiency by his munificence, and, as long as he continued to be an English prelate, remitted the surplus of his revenues to the Norman abbey. He held his archiepiscopal dignity only one year, at the expiration of which he was banished from England: he then retired to Jumieges, where he died the following spring, and was buried in the choir of the church which he had begun to raise. At his death, the church had neither nave nor windows; and the whole edifice was not completed till November, in the year 1066. In the following July the dedication took place. Maurilius, Archbishop of Rouen, officiated, in great pomp, assisted by all the prelates of the duchy; and William, then just returned from the conquest of England, honored the ceremony with his presence. I have dwelt upon the early history of this monastery, because Normandy scarcely furnishes another of greater interest. In the _Neustria Pia_, Jumieges fills nearly seventy closely-printed folio pages of that curious and entertaining, though credulous, work.--What remains to be told of its annals is little more than a series of dates touching the erection of different parts of the building: these, however, are worth preserving, so long as any portion of the noble church is permitted to have existence, and so long as drawings and engravings continue to perpetuate the remembrance of its details. The choir and extremities of the transept, all of pointed architecture, are supposed to have been rebuilt in 1278.--The Lady-Chapel was an addition of the year 1326.--The abbey suffered materially during the wars between England and France, in the reigns of our Henry IVth and Henry Vth: its situation exposed it to be repeatedly pillaged by the contending parties; and, were it not that the massy Norman architecture sufficiently indicates the true date, and that we know our neighbors' habit of applying large words to small matters, we might even infer that it was then destroyed as effectually as it had been by Ironside: the expression, "lamentabilitèr desolata, diffracta et annihilata," could scarcely convey any meaning short of utter ruin, except to the ears of one who had been told that a religious edifice was actually _abimé_ during the revolution, though he saw it at the same moment standing before him, and apparently uninjured.--The arched roof of the choir received a complete repair in 1535: that of the nave, which was also in a very bad state, underwent the same process in 1688; at the same time, the slender columns that support the cornice were replaced with new ones, and the symbols of the Evangelists were inserted in the upper part of the walls. These reparations are managed with a singular perception of propriety; and though the manner of the sculpture in the symbolic figures, is not that of a Gothic artist, yet they are most appropriate, and harmonize admirably with the building. [Illustration: Symbols of the Evangelists] You must excuse me that, now I am upon this subject, I venture to "travel somewhat out of the record," for the sake of proposing to you a difficulty which has long puzzled me:--the connection which Catholic divines find between St. Luke's Bull and the word Zecharias;--for it appears, by the following distich from the Rhenish Testament, that some such cause leads them to regard this symbol as peculiarly appropriate to the third Evangelist:-- "Effigies vituli, Luca, tibi convenit; extat Zacariæ in scriptis mentio prima tuis."-- [Illustration: Figures of effigies] An antiquary might be perplexed by these figures, the drawings whereof I now send you. He would find it impossible to suppose the exquisitely-sculptured images and the slender shafts with richly-wrought capitals, of the same date as the solid simple piers and arches all around; and yet the stone is so entirely the same, and the workmanship is so well united, that it would require an experienced eye to trace the junction. In the middle of the sixteenth century, the central tower was also found to need reparation; and the church, upon this occasion, sustained a lasting injury, in the loss of its original spire, which was of lead, and of great height and beauty. It was taken down, under pretence of its insecurity; but in reality the monks only wished to get the metal. This happened in 1557, under Gabriel le Veneur, Bishop of Evreux, the then abbot. Five years afterwards the ravages of the Huguenots succeeded: the injury done to Jumieges by these sectaries, was estimated at eighty thousand francs; and the library and records of the convent perished in the devastation. The western front of the church still remains almost perfect; and it is most singular. It consists, of three distinct parts; the central division being nearly of equal width to the other two conjointly, and projecting considerably beyond them. The character of the whole is simplicity: the circular door-way is comparatively small, and entirely without ornament, except a pillar on each side; the six circular-headed windows over the entrance, disposed in a double row, are equally plain. Immediately above the upper tier of windows, is a projecting chequered cornice; and, still higher, where the gable assumes a triangular form, are three lancet-shaped apertures, so extremely narrow, that they resemble the loop-holes of a dungeon rather than the windows of a church. In each of the lateral compartments was likewise originally a door-way, and above it a single window, all of the same Norman style, but all now blocked up. These compartments are surmounted with short towers, capped with conical spires. The towers appear from their style and masonry to be nearly coeval with the lower part of the building, though not altogether so: the southern is somewhat the most modern. They are, however, so entirely dissimilar in plan from the rest of the front, that we cannot readily admit that they are a portion of the original design. Nor are they even like to each other. Both of them are square at their bases, and preserve this form to a sufficient height to admit of two tiers of narrow windows, separated from each other by little more than a simple string-course. Above these windows both become octagon, and continue so to the top; but in a very different manner. The northern one has obtuse angles, imperfectly defined; the southern has four projecting buttresses and four windows, alternating with each other. The form of the windows and their arrangement, afford farther marks of distinction. The octagon part is in both turrets longer than the square, but, like it, divided into two stories. The central tower of the church, which was large and square, is now reduced to a fragment: three of its sides are gone; the western remains sufficiently perfect to shew what the whole was when entire. It contained a double tier of arches, the lower consisting of two, which were large and simple, the upper of three, divided by central shafts and masonry, so that each formed a double window. All of them were circular-headed, but so far differed from the architecture of the nave, that they had side-pillars with capitals. The church[15] was entered by a long narrow porch.--The nave is a fine specimen of Norman architecture, but is remarkable in that style for one striking peculiarity, that the eight wide circular arches on either side, which separate it from the aisles, are alternately supported by round pillars and square piers; the latter having semi-cylindrical columns applied to each of their sides. The capitals are ornamented with rude volutes. The arches in the triforium are of nearly the same width as those below, but considerably less in height. There is no archivolt or moulding or ornament. Above these there is only one row of windows, which, like all the rest, are semi-circular headed; but they have neither angular pillars, nor mouldings, nor mullions. These windows are rather narrow externally, but within the opening enlarges considerably. The windows in the upper and lower tiers stand singly: in the intermediate row they are disposed by threes, the central one separated from the other two by a single column.--The inside of the nave is striking from its simplicity: it is wholly of the eleventh century, except the reparations already mentioned, which were made in 1688.--The choir and Lady-Chapel are nearly demolished; and only some fragments of them are now standing: they were of pointed architecture, and posterior to the nave by at least two centuries. A smaller church, dedicated to St. Peter, stood near the principal one, with which it was connected by means of a corridor of pointed arches. There are other instances of two churches being erected within the precincts of one abbey, as at Bury St. Edmund's. St. Peter's was a building at least of equal antiquity with the great church. But it had undergone such alterations in the year 1334, during the prelacy of the twenty-seventh abbot, William Gemblet, that little of the original structure remained. He demolished nearly the whole of the nave, for the sake of adding uniformity to the cloisters of the monastery.--M. Le Prevost, however, is of opinion, that the ruins of Jumieges contain nothing more interesting to an antiquary than the west end of the portion of building, which subsequently served as the nave. It is a mass of flint-work; and he considers it as having belonged to the church that existed before the incursion of the Normans. The cloisters, which stood to the south-west of St. Peter's, are now almost wholly destroyed.--To the west of them is a large hall or gallery, known by the name of _la Salle des Chevaliers_. It is entered by two porches, one towards the north-west, the other towards the south-west[16], both full of architectural beauty and curiosity. I know of no authority for their date; but, from the great variety and richness of their ornaments, and the elegant taste displayed in the arrangement of these, I should suppose them to have been erected during the latter half of the twelfth century: one of the arches is unquestionably pointed, though the cusp of the arch is very obtuse. The slight sketch which accompanies this letter, represents a fragment of the inner door-way of the south-west porch, and may enable you to form your own judgment upon the subject. [Illustration: Sketch of fragment of inner door-way] The stones immediately over the entrance are joggled into each other, the key-stone having a joggle on either side.--I have not observed this peculiarity in any other specimen of Norman masonry.--Between these porches apartments, along the interior of which runs a cornice, supported by grotesque corbels, and under it a row of windows, now principally blocked up, disposed in triplets, a trefoil-headed window being placed between two that are semi-circular, as seen in the accompanying drawing. The date of the origin of the trefoil-headed arch has been much disputed: these perhaps are some of the earliest, and they are unquestionably coeval with the building. [Illustration: Ancient trefoil-headed Arches in Abbey of Jumieges] The stupid and disgraceful barbarism, which is now employing itself in the ruins of Jumieges, has long since annihilated the invaluable monuments which it contained.--In the Lady-Chapel of the conventual church was buried the heart of the celebrated Agnes Sorel, mistress of Charles VIIth, who died at Mesnil, about a league from this abbey, during the time when her royal lover was residing here.--Her death was generally attributed to poison; nor did the people hesitate in whispering that the fatal potion was administered by order of the Queen. Her son, the profligate tyrant Louis XIth, detested his father's concubine; and once, forgetting his dignity and his manhood, he struck the _Dame de Beauté_.--The statue placed upon the mausoleum represented Agnes kneeling and offering her heart to the virgin; but this effigy had been removed before the late troubles: a heart of white marble, which was at the foot of the tomb, had also disappeared. According to the annals of the abbey, they were destroyed by the Huguenots. The tomb itself, with various brasses inlaid upon it, remained undisturbed till the period of the revolution, when the whole memorial was removed, and even her remains were not suffered to rest in peace. The slab of black marble which covered them, and which bore upon its edges the French inscription to her memory, is still in existence; though it has changed its place and destination. The barbarians who pillaged the convent sold it with the rest of the plunder; and it now serves as a threshold to a house near the Mont aux Malades, at Rouen[17]. The inscription, which is cut in very elegant Gothic characters, is as follows: a part of it is, however, at present hidden by its position:--"Cy gist Agnes Surelle, noble damoiselle, en son vivant Dame de Roqueferriere, de Beaulté, d'Yssouldun, et de Vernon sur Seine, piteuse entre toutes gens, qui de ses biens donnoit largement aux gens d'église et aux pauvres; qui trespassa le neuvieme jour de Fevrier, l'an de grace 1449.--Priez Dieu pour elle."--It is justly to be regretted, that some pains are not taken for the preservation of this relic, which even now would be an ornament to the cathedral.--The manor-house at Mesnil, where the fair lady died, still retains its chimneys of the fifteenth century; and ancient paintings are discernible on the walls. The monument in the church of St. Peter, generally known by the name of _le tombeau des énervez_, was of still greater singularity. It was an altar-tomb, raised about two feet above the pavement; and on the slabs were carved whole-length figures, in alto-relievo, of two boys, each about sixteen years of age, in rich attire, and ornamented with diadems, broaches, and girdles, all copiously studded with precious stones. Various traditions concerning this monument are recorded by authors, and particularly at great length by Father du Plessis[18].--The nameless princes, for such the splendor of their garb denotes them to have been, were considered, according to a tradition which prevailed from very early times, as the sons of Clovis and Bathilda, who, in the absence of their father, were guilty of revolt, and were punished by being hamstrung; for this is the meaning of the word _énervez_.--According to this tradition, the monks, in the thirteenth century, caused the monument to be ornamented with golden fleurs-de-lys, and added the following epitaph:-- "Hic in honore Dei requiescit stirps Clodovei, Patris bellica gens, bella salutis agens. Ad votum matris Bathildis poenituere, Scelere pro proprio, proque labore patris."-- Three other lines, preserved by Yepez, in his chronicle, refer to the same tale, but accuse the princes of a crime of deeper die than mere rebellion against parental authority:-- "Conjugis est ultus probrum; nam in vincula tradit Crudeles natos, pius impietate, simulque Et duras pater, o Clodovee, piusque maritus." Mabillon supposed the tomb to have been erected for Tassilo and his son; but I do not know how this conjecture is to be reconciled to the appearance of the statues, both representing persons of equal age. An examination of the grave at the time of the destruction of the abbey, might have afforded some interesting results; though, had any discovery been made, it would have been but a poor reward for the desolation which facilitated the research. * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 10: Immediately on the opposite side of the Seine, are extensive turf-bogs, which are of rare occurrence in this part of France; and in them grows the _Andromeda polifolia_, a plant that seems hitherto to have been discovered no where else in the kingdom.] [Footnote 11: The following particulars relative to the territory of Jumieges, as well as the church, are curious: they are copied from an extract from the Life of St. Philibert, as given in the _Neustria Pia_, p. 262.--"Congruè sanè locus ille _Gemmeticus_ est dictus, quippe qui instar gemmarum multivario sit decore conspicuus. Videas illic arborum comas sylvestrium, multigenos arborum fructus, solum fertile, prata virentia, hortorum flores suaveolentes, bortis gravidas vîtes, humum undique cinctam aquis, pascua pecorum uberrima, loca venationi apta, avium cantu circumsonantia. Sequana fluvius illic cernitur late ambiens: et deindè suo pergeus cursu, uno duntaxat commeantibus aditu relicto. Ibi mare increscens nunc eructat: nunc in sinum suum revolutum, navium fert compendia, commercia plurimorum. Nihil illic deest; quicquid vehiculis pedestribus, et equestribus plaustris, et ratibus subministratur, abunde suppetit. Illic castrum condidere antiqui; ibi stant, in acie, illustria castra Dei: ibi præ desiderio paradisi suspirantes gemunt, quibus postea opus non erit, in flammis ultricibus, nihil profuturos edere gemitus. Ibi denique almus sacerdos, Philibertus, multiplici est laude et prædicatione efferendus: qui instar Patriarchæ Jacob, in animabus septuaginta, demigravit in hanc eremum, addito grege septemplici, propter septiformem gratiam spiritus sancti. Ibi enim eius prudentia construxit mÅ�nia quadrata, turrita mole surgentia; claustra excipiendis adventantibus mirè opportuna. In his domus alma fulget; habitatoribus digna. Ab Euro surgit Ecclesia, crucis effigie, cujus verticem obtinet Beatissima Virgo Maria; Altare est ante faciem lectuli, cum Dente sanctiss, patris _Philiberti_, pictum gemmarum luminibus, auro argentoque comptum: ab utroque latere, _Joannis_ et _Columbani_ Aræ dant gloriam Deo; adherent verò a Boreâ, _Dyonisii_ Martyris, et _Germani_ Confessoris, ædiculæ; in dextrâ domus parte, sacellum nobile extat _S. Petri_; a latere habens _S. Martini_ oratorium. Ad Austrum est S. Viri cellula, et petris habens margines; saxis cinguntur claustra camerata: is decor cunctorum animos oblectans, eum inundantibus aquis, geminus vergit ad Austrum. Habet autem ipsa domus in longum pedes ducentos nonaginta, in latum quinquaginta: singulis legere volentibus lucem transmittunt fenestræ vitreæ: subtus habet geminas ædes, alteras condendis vinis, alteras cibis apparandis accommodatas."] [Footnote 12: Allusions to the cultivation of the vine at Jumieges, as then commonly practised, may be found in many other public documents of the fifteenth century: but we may come yet nearer our own time; for we know that, in the year 1500, there was still a vineyard in the hamlet of Conihoult, a dependence upon Jumieges, and that the wine called _vin de Conihoult_, is expressly mentioned among the articles of which the charitable donations of the monastery consisted.--We are told, too, that at least eighteen or twenty acres, belonging to the grounds of the abbey itself, were used as a vineyard as late as 1561.--At present, I believe, vines are scarcely any where to be seen in Normandy, much north of Gaillon.] [Footnote 13: In a charter belonging to the monastery, granted by Henry IInd, in 1159, (see _Neustria Pia_, p. 323) he gives the convent, "integritatem aquæ ex parte terræ Monachorum, et _Graspais_, si fortè capiatur."--The word _Graspais_ is explained by Ducange to be a corruption of _crassus piscis_. Noel (in his _Essais sur le Département de la Seine Inférieure_, II, p. 168) supposes that it refers particularly to porpoises, which he says are still found in such abundance in the Seine, nearer its mouth, that the river sometimes appears quite black with them.] [Footnote 14: The following account of the destruction of the monastery is extracted from William of Jumieges. (See _Duchesne's Scriptores Normanni_, p. 219)--"Dehinc Sequanica ora aggrediuntur, et apud _Gemmeticum_ classica statione obsidionein componunt.... In quo quamplurima multitudo Episcoporum, seu Clericorum, vel nobilium laïcorum, spretis secularibus pompis, collecta, Christo Regi militatura, propria colla saluberrimo iugo subegit. Cuius loci Monachi, sive incolæ, Paganorum adventum comperientes, fugâ lapsi quædam suarum rerum sub terra occulentes, quædam secum asportantes, Deo juvante evaserunt. Pagani locum vacuum reperientes, Monasterium sanctæ Mariæ sanctíque Petri, et cuncta ædificia igne iniecto adurunt, in solitudinem omnia redigentes. Hac itaque patrata eversione, locus, qui tauto honoris splendore diu viguerat, exturbatis omnibus ac subuersis domibus, cÅ�pit esse cubile ferarum et volucrum: maceriis in sua soliditate in sublime porrectis, arbustisque densissimis; et arborum virgultis per triginta fermè annorum curricula ubique a terra productis."] [Footnote 15: The following are the proportions of the building, in French feet:-- Length of the church..................265 Ditto of the nave.....................134 Width of ditto.........................62 Length of choir........................43-1/2 Width of ditto.........................31 Length of Lady-Chapel..................63 Width of ditto.........................27 Height of central tower...............124 Ditto of western towers...............150 ] [Footnote 16: Mr. Cotman has figured this porch, (_Architectural Antiquities of Normandy_, t. 4) but has, by mistake, called it "_An Arch on the West Front of the Abbey Church_."] [Footnote 17: See a paper by M. Le Prevost in the _Précis Analitique des Travaux de l'Académie de Rouen_, 1815, p. 131.] [Footnote 18: _Histoire de la Haute Normandie_, II, p. 260.] LETTER XVI. GOURNAY--CASTLE OF NEUFMARCHÉ--CASTLE AND CHURCH OF GISORS. (_Gisors, July_, 1818) We are now approaching the western frontiers.--Gournay, Gisors, and Andelys, the objects of our present excursion, are disposed nearly in a line between the capitals of France and Normandy; and whenever war broke out between the two states, they experienced all the glory, and all the afflictions of warfare. This district was in fact a kind of debatable land; and hence arose the numerous strong holds, by which the country was once defended, and whose ruins now adorn the landscape. The tract known by modern topographers, under the names of the _arrondissemens_ of Gournay and of Andelys, constituted one of the general divisions of ancient Normandy, the _Pays de Bray_. It was a tract celebrated beyond every other in France, and, from time immemorial, for the excellence of the products of its dairies. The butter of Bray is an indispensable requisite at every fashionable table at Paris; and the _fromage de Neufchâtel_ is one of the only two French cheeses which are honored with a place in the bill of fare at Véry's at Grignon's, or at Beauvilliers'. The females of the district frequently passed us on the road, carrying their milk and eggs to the provincial metropolis. Accustomed as we are to the Norman costume, we still thought that the many-colored attire and long lappetted cap, of the good wife, of Bray, in conjunction with her steed and its trappings, was a most picturesque addition to the surrounding scenery. The large pannier on either side of the saddle leaves little room for the lady, except on the hinder parts of the poor beast; and there she sits, perfectly free and _dégagée_, without either pillion or stirrup, showing no small portion of her leg, and occasionally waving a little whip, ornamented in the handle with tufts of red worsted.--We had scarcely quitted the suburbs of Rouen before we found ourselves in Darnétal, a place that has risen considerably in importance, since the revolution, from the activity of its numerous manufacturers. Its population is composed entirely of individuals of this description, to whose pursuits its situation upon the banks of the Robec and Aubette is peculiarly favorable: the greater part of the goods manufactured here are coarse cloths and flannels. Before the revolution, the town belonged to the family of Montmorenci.--The rest of the ride offered no object of interest. The road, like all the main post-roads, is certainly wide and straight; but the French seem to think that, if these two points are but obtained, all the rest may be regarded as matter of supererogation. Hence, very little attention is paid to the surface of the highways: even on those that are most frequented, it is thought enough to keep the centre, which is paved, in decent repair: the ruts by the side are frequently so deep as to be dangerous; and in most cases the cross roads are absolutely impassable to carriages of every description, except the common carts of the country.--There is nothing in which England has a more decided superiority over France than in the facility of communication between its different towns; and there is also nothing which more decidedly marks a superiority of civilization. English travellers, who usually roll on the beaten track to and from the capital, return home full of praises of the French roads; but were they to attempt excursions among the country-towns and villages, their opinion would be wofully altered.--The forest of Feuillée extends about four leagues on each side of the road, between Rouen and Gournay. It adds little to the pleasantness of the ride: the trees are planted with regularity, and the side-branches are trimmed away almost to the very tops. Those therefore who expect overhanging branches, or the green-wood shade, in a French forest, will be sadly disappointed. On the contrary, when the wind blows across the road, and the sun shines down it, such a forest only adds to the heat and closeness of the way. The country around Gournay is characterized by fertility and abundance; yet, in early times, the rich valley in which it is situated, was a dreary morass, which separated the Caletes from the Bellovacences. A causeway crossed the marshes, and formed the only road of communication between these tribes; and Gournay arose as an intermediate station. Therefore, even prior to the Norman æra, the town was, from its situation, a strong hold of note; and under the Norman dukes, Gournay necessarily became of still greater consequence, as the principal fortress on the French frontier; but the annexation of the duchy to the crown of France, destroyed this unlucky pre-eminence; and, at present, it is only known as a great staple mart for cheese and butter. Nor is it advantageously situated for trade; as there is no navigable river or means of water-carriage in its vicinity. The inhabitants therefore look forward with some anxiety to the completion of the projected canal from Dieppe. Gournay is a small, clean, and airy place. The last two circumstances are no trifling recommendation to those who have just escaped from the dirt and closeness of Rouen. Its streets are completely those of a country town: the intermixture of wood and clay in the houses gives them a mean aspect, and there are scarcely two to be found alike, either in size, shape, color, or materials.--The records of Gournay begin in the reign of Rollo. That prince gave the town, together with the Norman portion of the Pays de Bray, to Eudes[19], a nobleman of his own nation, to be held as a fief of the duchy, under the usual military tenure. In one of the earliest rolls of Norman chieftains[20], the Lord of Gournay is bound, in case of war, to supply the duke with twelve soldiers from among his vassals, and to arm his dependants for the defence of his portion of the marches. Hugh, the son of Eudes de Gournay, erected a castle in the vicinity of the church of St. Hildebert, and the whole town was surrounded with a triple wall and double fosse. The place was inaccessible to an invading enemy, when these fosses were filled with the waters of the Epte; but Philip Augustus caused the protecting element to become his most powerful auxiliary. Willelmus Brito relates his siege with minuteness in his _Philippiad_, an heroic poem, devoted to the acts and deeds of the French monarch.--After advancing through Lions and Mortemer, Philip encamped before Gournay, thus described by the historical bard;-- "Non procul hinc vicum populosâ genta superbum, Divitiis plenum variis, famâque celebrem, Rure situm piano, munitum triplice muro, Deliciosa nimis speciosaque vallis habebat. Nomine GORNACUM, situ inexpugnabilis ipso, Etsi nullus ei defensor ab intus adesset; Cui multisque aliis præerat Gornacius HUGO. Fossæ cujus erant amplæ nimis atque profundae Quas sic Epta suo repleret flumine, posset Nullus ut ad muros per eas accessus haberi. Arte tamen sibi REX tali pessundedit ipsum. Haud procul a muris stagnum pergrande tumebat, Cujus aquam, pelagi stagnantis more, refusam Urget stare lacu sinuoso terreus agger, Quadris compactus saxis et cespite multo. Hunc REX obrumpi medium facit, effluit inde Diluvium immensum, subitâque voragine tota Vallis abit maris in speciem, ruit impete vasto Eluvies damnosa satis, damnosa colonis. * * * * * Municipes fugiunt ne submergantur, et omnis Se populus villâ viduat, vacuamque relinquit. * * * * * Armis villa potens, muris munita virisque, Arte capi nullâ metuens aut viribus ullis, Diluvio capitur inopino............... * * * * * REX ubi GORNACUM sic in sua jura redegit, Indigenas omnes revocans ad propria, pacem Indicit populis libertatemque priorem; Deinde re-ædificat muros............. In 1350, after the death of Philip of Valois, Gournay was again separated from France, and given as a dower to Blanche of Navarre, the widow of that prince, who held it forty-eight years, when, after her death, it reverted to the crown. At the commencement of the following century, the town fell, with the rest of the kingdom, into the possession of the English; and once more, upon the demise of our sovereign, Henry Vth, formed part of the dower of the widowed queen. On her decease, it devolved upon her son; but a period of eleven years had scarcely elapsed, when the laws of conquest united it for a third time to the crown of France, in 1449.--From that period to the revolution, it was constantly in the possession of different noble families of the kingdom. The name of Hugo de Gournay is enrolled amongst those who followed the conqueror into England, and who held lands _in capite_ from him in this country[21]. Hugo was a man of eminent valor, and his services were requited by the grant of many large possessions; but, after all his military actions, he sought repose in the abbey of Bec, which had been enriched by his piety. His son, Girald, who married the sister of William, Earl Warren, accompanied Robert, Duke of Normandy, into the Holy Land; and the grandson of Girald was in the number of those who followed Richard Coeur-de-Lion in a similar expedition, and was appointed his commissioner, to receive the English share of the spoil, after the capture of Acre. He was also among the barons who rose against King John. Their descendants settled in very early times in our own county, where their possessions were extensive and valuable. It was in Gournay that the unfortunate Arthur, heir to the throne of England, received the order of knighthood, together with the earldoms of Brittany, Poitou, and Angers, from Philip Augustus, immediately previously to entering upon the expedition, which ultimately ended with his death; and, according to tradition, it was on this occasion that the town adopted for its arms the sable shield, charged with a knight in armor, argent[22]. Gournay has now no other remains of antiquity, except the collegiate church of St. Hildebert[23], which was founded towards the conclusion of the eleventh century, though it was scarcely completed at the end of the thirteenth. Hence the discrepancy of style observable in the architecture of its different parts. The west front, in which the windows are all pointed, was probably one of the last portions completed. The interior is principally of semi-circular architecture, with piers unusually massy, and capitals no less fanciful and extraordinary than those already noticed at St. Georges. Here, however, we have fewer monsters. The ornaments consist chiefly of foliage, and wreaths, and knots, and chequered work, and imitations of members of the antique capital. Some of the pillars, instead of ending in regular capitals, are surmounted by a narrow projecting rim, carved with undulating lines. It has been supposed that this ornament, which is quite peculiar to the church of St. Hildebert, is a kind of hieroglyphical representation of water.--Perhaps, it is the chamber of Sagittarius; or, perhaps, it is a _fess wavy_, to which the same signification has been assigned by heralds.--If this interpretation be correct, the symbol is allusive to the ancient situation of the town, built in the midst of a marsh, intersected by two streams, the Epte and the St. Aubin. While we were on the point of setting out from Gournay, we had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Cotman, who landed a few days since at Dieppe, and purposes remaining in Normandy, to complete a series of drawings which he began last year, towards the illustration of the architectural antiquities of the duchy. He has joined our party, and we are likely to have the advantage of his society for some little time. The village of Neufmarché, about a league from Gournay, on the right bank of the Epte, still retains a small part of its castle, built by Henry Ist, to command the passage of the river, and to serve as a barrier against the incursions of the French. Its situation is good, upon an artificial hill, surrounded by a fosse; and the principal entrance is still tolerably entire. But the rest is merely a shapeless heap of ruins: the interior is wholly under the plough; and the fragments of denudated walls preserve small remains of the coating of large square stones, which formerly embellished and protected them. Neufmarché, in the days of Norman sovereignty, was one of the strong holds of the duchy. The chroniclers[24] speak of the village as being defended by a fortress, in the reign of William the Conqueror. The church, too, with its semi-circular architecture, attests the antiquity of the station. Long before we reached Gisors, we had a view of the keep of the castle, rising majestically above the town, which is indeed at present "une assez maussade petite ville, qui n'a guère qu'une rue." From its position and general outline, the castle, at first view, resembles the remains of Launceston, in Cornwall. It recalled to my mind the impressions of surprise, mixed with something approaching to awe, which seized me, when the first object that met my eyes in the morning (for it was late and dark when I reached Launceston) was the noble keep, towering immediately above my chamber windows, and so near, that it appeared as if I had only to open them and step into it. I do not mean to draw a parallel between the castles of Launceston and Gisors, and still less am I about to inquire into the relationship between the Norman and the Cornish fortresses. The lapse of twenty years has materially weakened my recollection of the latter, nor would this be a seasonable opportunity for such a disquisition: but the subject deserves investigation, the result of which may tend to establish the common origin of both, and to dissipate the day-dreams of Borlase, who longed to dignify the castellated ruins of the Cornish peninsula, by ascribing them to the Roman conquerors of Britain. Gisors itself existed before the tenth century; but its chief celebrity was due to William Rufus, who, anxious to strengthen his frontiers against the power of the kings of France, caused Robert of Bellême to erect this castle, in 1097. Thus then we have a certain date; and there is no reason to believe, but that the whole of what is left us is really of the same æra, or of the following reign, in which it is known that the works were greatly augmented; for Henry Ist was completely a castle-builder. He was a prince who spared no pains in strengthening and defending the natural frontiers of his province, as the fortresses of Verneuil, Tillières, Nonancourt, Anet, Ivry, Château-sur-Epte, Gisors, and many others, abundantly testify. All these were either actually built, or materially strengthened by him.--This at Gisors, important from its strength and from its situation, was the source of frequent dissentions between the sovereigns of England and France, as well as the frequent witness of their plighted faith, and the scene of their festivities.--In 1119, a well-known interview took place here, between Henry Ist and Pope Calixtus IInd, who had travelled to France for the purpose of healing the schisms in the church, and who, after having accomplished that task, was desirous not to quit the kingdom till he had completed the work of pacification, by reconciling Henry to Louis le Gros, and to his brother, Robert. The speech of our sovereign upon this occasion, as recorded by Ordericus Vitalis[25], is a valuable document to the English historian: it sets forth, at considerable length, his various causes of grievance, whether real, imaginary, or invented, against the legal heir to our throne.--After a lapse of thirty-nine years, Louis le Jeune succeeded in annexing Gisors to the crown of France; but he resigned it to our Henry IInd, only three years subsequently, as a part of the marriage portion of his daughter, Margaret. It then remained with our countrymen till the conquest of the duchy by Philip Augustus; previously to which event, that sovereign and Henry met, in the year 1188, under an elm near Gisors, on the road to Trie, upon receiving the news of the capture of Jerusalem by the Sultan Saladin[26]. The monarchs, actuated by religious zeal, took up the cross, and mutually pledged themselves to suspend for a while their respective differences, and direct their united efforts against the common foe of the christian faith, Legends also tell that, during the conference, a miraculous cross appeared in the air, as if in ratification of the compact; and hence the inhabitants derive the armoria bearing of the town; _gules_, a cross engrailed _or_[27]. In 1197, Philip embellished Gisors with new buildings; and he retired hither the following year, after the battle of Courcelles, a conflict, which began by his endeavor to surprise Richard Coeur-de-Lion, but which ended with his total defeat. He had well nigh lost his life during the flight, by his horse plunging with him, all armed as he was, into the Epte.--He took refuge in Gisors; and the _golden gate_ of the town commemorated his gratitude. With eastern magnificence, he caused the entire portal to be covered with gold; and the statue of the Virgin, which surmounted it, received the same splendor. During the wars between France and England, in the fifteenth century, Gisors was repeatedly won and lost by the contending parties. In later and more peaceable times, it has been only known as the provincial capital of the bailiwick of Gisors, and of the Norman portion of the Vexin. The castle consists of a double ballium, the inner occupying the top of a high artificial mound, in whose centre stands the keep. The whole of the fortress is of the most solid masonry. Previously to the discovery of cannon, it could scarcely be regarded otherwise than as impregnable, for the site which it occupies is admirably adapted for defence; and the walls were as strong as art could make them.--The outer walls were of great extent: they were defended by two covered ways, and flanked by several towers, of various shapes.--In the inclosed sketch, you will observe a circular tower, which is perhaps more perfect than any of the rest. The two entrances which led to the inner wards, were defended by more massy towers, strengthened with portcullises and draw-bridges. [Illustration: Distant of the Castle of Gisors] The conical mound is almost inaccessible, on account of its steepness. The summit is inclosed by a circular wall of considerable height, pierced with loop-holes, and strengthened at regular intervals with buttresses, most of which are small and shallow, and resemble such as are found in the Norman churches. Those, however, which flank the entrance of the keep, are of a different character: they project so boldly, that they may rather be considered as bastions or solid turrets.--The dungeon rises high above all the rest, a lofty octagon tower, with a turret on one side of the same shape, intended to receive the winding staircase, which still remains, but in so shattered a state, that we could not venture to ascend it. The shell of the keep itself is nearly perfect, and is also varied in its outline with projecting piers.--Within the inner ballium, we discovered the remains of the castle-chapel. More than half, indeed, of the building is destroyed, but the east end is standing, and is tolerably entire. The roof is vaulted and groined: the groins spring from short pillars, whose capitals are beautifully sculptured with foliage; The architecture of the whole is semi-circular; but I should apprehend it to be posterior to any part of the fortress.--The inside of the castle serves at this time for a market-hall: the fosse, now dry and planted with trees, forms a delightful walk round the whole. [Illustration: Banded Pillar in the Church of Gisors] We were much disappointed by the church of Gisors; in the illustration of the details of which, Millin is very diffuse. The building is of considerable magnitude; its proportions are not unpleasing, and it contains much elaborate sculpture; but the labor has been ill bestowed, having been lavished without any attention to consistency. It is throughout a jumble of Roman and Gothic, except that the exterior of the north transept is wholly Gothic. Some of the little figures which decorate it are very gracefully carved, especially in the drapery. A pillar in the south aisle, entwined by spiral fillets, is of great singularity and beauty. The dolphin is introduced in each pannel, and the heraldic form of this fish harmonizes with the gentle curve of the field upon which it is sculptured. A crown of fleurs-de-lys surrounds the columns at mid-height. These symbols, as I believe I observed on a former occasion, are often employed as ornaments by the French architects. The church, which is dedicated to the twin saints, St. Gervais and St. Protais, is the work of different æras, but principally of the latter half of the sixteenth century, a time when, as a Frenchman told me, "l'on commença à bâtir dans le beau style Romain."--The man who made the observation was of the lower order of society, one of the _swinish multitude_, who, in England, never dream about styles in architecture. I mention the circumstance, for the sake of pointing out the difference that exists in these matters between the two countries. Here, every man, gentle or simple, educated or uneducated, thinks himself qualified and bound to deliver his opinion on objects connected with the fine arts; and though such opinions are of necessity commonly crude, and sometimes absurd, they, on the other hand, frequently display a degree of feeling, and occasionally of knowledge, that surprises you. It may be true indeed, as Dr. Johnson said, with some illiberality, of our brethren across the Tweed, that though "every man may have a mouthful, no one has a belly full;" but it still marks a degree of national refinement, that any attention whatever is bestowed upon such subjects. This smattering of knowledge, accompanied with the constant readiness to communicate it, is also agreeable to a stranger. Except in a few instances at Rouen, I never failed to find civility and attention among the French. To the ladies of our nation they are uniformly polite though occasionally their compliments may appear of somewhat a questionable complexion; as it happened to a female friend of mine to be told, while drawing the church of St, Ouen, "qu'elle avait de l'esprit comme quatre diables." * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 19: _Histoire de la Haute Normandie_, I, p. 18.] [Footnote 20: _Duchesne, Scriptores Normanni_, p. 1046.] [Footnote 21: _Duchesne, Scriptores Normanni_, p. 1129.] [Footnote 22: _Histoire de la Haute Normandie_, I. p. 20.] [Footnote 23: See _Cotman's Architectural Antiquities of Normandy, plates_ 38-41.] [Footnote 24: _Ordericus Vitalis_, in _Duchesne's Scriptores Normanni_, p. 490, 491, 606.] [Footnote 25: _Duchesne, Scriptores Normanni_, p. 865.] [Footnote 26: Some writers say that the real cause of their meeting was to settle a difference of long standing.--Hoveden, as quoted in the _Concilia Normannica_, I. p. 92, tells us, that Henry was upon the point of sailing for England, when tidings were brought him that Philip had collected a great force, with which he threatened to lay Normandy waste, unless the British monarch surrendered to him Gisors with its dependencies, or caused his son Richard, Count of Poitou, to marry Alice, sister of the French king;--"Quod cùm regi Angliæ constaret, reversus est in Normanniam; et, accepte colloquio inter ipsum et Regem Franciæ inter Gisortium et Trie, XII. Kalendas Februarii, die S. Agnetis V. et Martyris, convenerunt illuc cum Archiepiscopis, et Episcopis et Comitibus, et Baronibus regnoram suorum. Cui colloquio interfuit Archiepiscopus Tyri, qui repletus spiritu sapientiæ et intellectus, miro modo prædicavit verbum Domini coram regibus et principibus. Et convertit corda eorum ad crucem capiendam; et qui priùs hostes erant, illo prædicante, et Deo co-operante, facti sunt amici in illa die, et de manu ejus crucem receperunt: et in eadem hora apparuit super eos signum crucis in cÅ�lo. Quo viso miraculo, plures catervatim ruebant ad susceptionem crucis. Prædicti verò reges in susceptionem crucis, ad cognoscendum gentem suam, signum sibi et suis providerunt. Rex namque Franciæ et gens sua receperunt cruces rubeas et Rex Angliæ cum gente sua suscepit cruces virides: et sic unusqnisque ad providendum sibi et itineri suo necessaria, reversus est in regionem suam."] [Footnote 27: In 1555, an addition was made to this coat of a chief _azure_, charged with three fleurs-de-lys, _or_, by the command of Henry IInd of France, to commemorate his public entry into Gisors.] LETTER XVII. ANDELYS--FOUNTAIN OF SAINT CLOTILDA--LA GRANDE MAISON--CHÂTEAU GAILLARD--ECOUIS. (_Ecouis, July_, 1818) Our evening journey from Gisors to Andelys, was not without its inconveniences.--The road, if road it may be called, was sometimes merely a narrow ravine or trench, so closely bordered by trees and underwood, that our vehicle could scarcely force its way; and sometimes our jaded horses labored along a waggon-way which wound amidst an expanse of corn-fields. Our postilion had earnestly requested us to postpone our departure till the following morning; and he swore and cursed most valiantly during the whole of his ride. On our arrival, however, at Andelys, a few kind words from my companions served to mitigate his ire; and as their eloquence may have been assisted by a few extra sous, presented to him at the same time, his nut-brown countenance brightened up, and all was tranquillity. Andelys is a town, whose antiquity is not to be questioned: it had existence in the time of the venerable Bede, by whom it is expressly mentioned, under its Latin appellation, _Andilegum_[28]. The derivation of this name has afforded employment to etymologists. The syllable _and_ enters, as it is said, into the composition of the names of sundry places, reported to be founded by Franks, and Saxons, and Germans; and therefore it is agreed that a Teutonic origin must be assigned to Andelys. But, as to the import of this same syllable, they are all of them wholly at a loss.--The history of Andelys is brief and unimportant, considering its antiquity and situation. It was captured by Louis le Gros in the war which he undertook against Henry Ist, in favour of Clito, heir of the unfortunate Duke Robert; and his son, Louis le Jeune, in 1166, burned Andelys to the ground, thus revenging the outrages committed by the Anglo-Normans in France: in 1197, it was the subject of the exchange which I have already mentioned, between Richard Coeur-de-Lion and Walter, Archbishop of Rouen; and only a few years afterwards it passed by capitulation into the possession of Philip Augustus, when the murder of Arthur of Brittany afforded the French sovereign a plausible pretext for dispossessing our worthless monarch of his Norman territory. What Andelys wants, however, in secular interest, it makes up in sanctity. Saint Clotilda founded a very celebrated monastery here, which was afterwards destroyed by the Normans.--If we now send our ripening daughters to France, to be schooled and accomplished, the practice prevailed equally amongst our Anglo-Saxon ancestors; and we learn from Bede, that Andelys was then one of the most fashionable establishments[29]. However, we must not forget that the fair Elfleda, and the rosy Ælfgiva, were so taught in the convent, as to be fitted only for the embraces of a celestial husband--a mode of matrimony which has most fortunately become obsolete in our days of increasing knowledge and civilization. After the destruction of the monastery by the Normans, it was never rebuilt; yet its sanctity is not wholly lost. At the behest of Clotilda, the waters of the fountain of Andelys were changed into wine for the relief of the weary labourer, and the tutelary saint is still worshipped by the faithful. It was our good fortune to arrive at Andelys on the vigil of the festival of Saint Clotilda. The following morning, at early dawn, the tolling bell announced the returning holiday; and then we saw the procession advance, priests and acolytes bearing crosses and consecrated banners and burning tapers, followed by a joyous crowd of votaries and pilgrims. We had wished to approach the holy well; but the throng thickened around it, and we were forced to desist. We could not witness the rites, whatever they were, which were performed at the fountain; and long after they had concluded, it was still surrounded by groups of women, some idling and staring, some asking charity and whining, and some conducting their little ones to the salutary-fountain. Many are the infirmities and ailments which are relieved through the intercession of Saint Clotilda, after the patient has been plunged in the gelid spring. A Parisian sceptic might incline to ascribe a portion of their cures to cold-bathing and ablution; but, at Andelys, no one ever thought of diminishing the veneration, inspired by the Christian queen of the founder of the monarchy. Several children were pointed out to us, heretical strangers, as living proofs of the continuance of miracles in the Catholic church. They had been cured on the preceding anniversary; for it is only on Saint Clotilda's day that her benign influence is shed upon the spring. Andelys possesses a valuable specimen of ancient domestic architecture. The _Great House_[30] is a most sumptuous mansion, evidently of the age of Francis Ist; but I could gain no account of its former occupants or history. I must again borrow from my friend's vocabulary, and say, that it is built in the "Burgundian style." In its general outline and character, it resembles the house in the _Place de la Pucelle_, at Rouen. Its walls, indeed, are not covered with the same profusion of sculpture; yet, perhaps, its simplicity is accompanied by greater elegance.--The windows are disposed in three divisions, formed by slender buttresses, which run up to the roof. They are square-headed, and divided by a mullion and transom.--The portal is in the centre: it is formed by a Tudor arch, enriched with deep mouldings, and surmounted by a lofty ogee, ending with a crocketed pinnacle, which transfixes the cornice immediately above, as well as the sill of the window, and then unites with the mullion of the latter.--The roof takes a very high pitch.--A figured cornice, upon which it rests, is boldly sculptured with foliage.--The chimneys are ornamented by angular buttresses.--All these portions of the building assimilate more or less to our Gothic architecture of the sixteenth century; but a most magnificent oriel window, which fills the whole of the space between the centre and left-hand divisions, is a specimen of pointed architecture in its best and purest style. The arches are lofty and acute. Each angle is formed by a double buttress, and the tabernacles affixed to these are filled with statues. The basement of the oriel, which projects from the flat wall of the house, after the fashion of a bartizan, is divided into compartments, studded with medallions, and intermixed with tracery of great variety and beauty. On either side of the bay, there are flying buttresses of elaborate sculpture, spreading along the wall.--As, comparatively speaking, good models of ancient domestic architecture are very rare, I would particularly recommend this at Andelys to the notice of every architect, whom chance may conduct to Normandy.--This building, like too many others of the same class in our own counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, is degraded from its station. The _great house_ is used merely as a granary, though, by a very small expence, it might be put into habitable repair. The stone retains its clear and polished surface; and the massy timbers are undecayed.--The inside corresponds with the exterior, in decorations and grandeur: the chimney-pieces are large and elaborate, and there is abundance of sculpture on the ceilings and other parts which admit of ornament. The French, in speaking of Andelys, commonly use the plural number, and say, _les Andelys_, there being a smaller town of the same name, within the distance of a mile: hence, the larger, all inconsiderable as it is, and though it scarcely contains two thousand inhabitants, is dignified by the appellation of _le Grand Andelys_. As the French seldom neglect the memory of their eminent men, I was rather disappointed at not finding any tribute to the glory of Poussin, nor any object which could recal his name.--The great master of the French school was born at Andelys, in 1594, of poor but noble parents. The talents of the painter of the _Deluge_ overcame all obstacles. Young Poussin, with barely a sufficiency to buy his daily bread, found means of making his abilities known in the metropolis to such advantage, as enabled him to proceed to Rome, where the patronage of the Cavaliere Marino smoothed his way to that splendid career, which terminated only with his life.--And yet I doubt if the example of Poussin has, on the whole, been favorable to the progress of French art. Horace Walpole, in his summary of the excellencies and defects of great painters, observed with much justice, that "Titian wanted to have seen the antique; Poussin to have seen Titian." The observation referred principally to the defective coloring, which is admitted to exist in the greater part of the works of the painter of Andelys. But Poussin, considered as a model for imitation, and especially as a model for the student, is liable to a more serious objection.--He was a total stranger to real nature:--classical taste, indeed, and knowledge, and grace, and beauty, pervade all his works; but it is a taste, and a knowledge, and a grace, and a beauty, formed solely upon the contemplation of the antique. Horace's adage, that "decipit exemplar vitiis imitabile," has been remarkably verified in the case of Poussin; and I am mistaken, if the example set by him, which has been rigorously followed in the French school, even down to the present day, has not contributed more than any thing else to that statuary style in forms, and that coldness in coloring, which every one, who is not born in France, regrets to see in the works of the best of their artists.--The learned Adrian Turnebus was also a native of Andelys; and the church is distinguished as the burial-place of Corneille. [Illustration: Distant View of Château Gaillard] I doubt, however, whether we should have travelled hither, had we not been attracted by the celebrity of the castle, called _Château Gaillard_, erected by Richard Coeur-de-Lion, in the immediate vicinity of Le Petit Andelys.--Our guide, a sturdy old dame, remonstrated strongly against our walking so far to look at a mere heap of stones, nothing comparable to the fine statue of Clotilda, of which, if we would but have a little patience, we might still procure a sight.--Our expectations respecting the castle were more than answered. Considered as to its dimensions and its situation, it is by far the finest castellated ruin I ever saw. Conway, indeed, has more beauty; but Château Gaillard is infinitely superior in dignity. Its ruins crown the summit of a lofty rock, abruptly rising from the very edge of the Seine, whose sinuous course here shapes the adjoining land into a narrow peninsula. The chalky cliffs on each side of the castle, are broken into hills of romantic shape, which add to the impressive wildness of the scene. The inclosed sketch will give you an idea, though a very faint one, of the general appearance of the castle at a distance. Towards the river, the steepness of the cliff renders the fortress unassailable: a double fosse of great depth, defended by a strong wall, originally afforded almost equal protection on the opposite side. The circular keep is of extraordinary strength; and in its construction it differs wholly from any of our English dungeon-towers.--It may be described as a cylinder, placed upon a truncated cone. The massy perpendicular buttresses, which are ranged round the upper wall, from which they project considerably, lose themselves at their bases in the cone from which they arise. The building, therefore, appears to be divided into two stories. The wall of the second story is upwards of twelve feet in thickness. The base of the conical portion is perhaps twice as thick.--It seldom happens that the military buildings of the middle ages have such a _talus_ or slope, on the exterior face, agreeing with the principles of modern fortification, and it is difficult to guess why the architect of Château Gaillard thought fit to vary from the established model of his age. The masonry is regular and good. The pointed windows are evidently insertions of a period long subsequent to the original erection. The inner, ballium is surrounded by a high circular wall, which consists of an uninterrupted line of bastions, some semi-circular and others square.--The whole of this part of the castle remains nearly perfect. There are also traces of extensive foundations in various, directions, and of great out-works. Château Gaillard was in fact a citadel, supported by numerous smaller fortresses, all of them communicating with the strong central hold, and disposed so as to secure every defensible post in the neighborhood. The wall of the outer ballium, which was built of a compact white and grey stone, is in most places standing, though in ruins. The original facing only remains in those parts which are too elevated to admit of its being removed with ease.--Beneath the castle, the cliff is excavated into a series of subterraneous caverns, not intended for mere passages or vaults, as at Arques and in most other places, but forming spacious crypts, supported by pillars roughly hewn out of the living rock, and still retaining every mark of the workman's chisel. It will afford some satisfaction to the antiquary to find, that the present appearance of the castle corresponds in every important particular with the description given by Willelmus Brito, who beheld it within a few years after its erection, and in all its pride. Every feature which he enumerates yet exists, unaltered and unobliterated:-- "Huic natura loco satis insuperabile per se Munimeu dederat, tamen insuperabiliorem Arte quidem multa Richardus fecerat illum. Duplicibus muris extrema clausit, et altas Circuitum docuit per totum surgere turres, A se distantes spatiis altrinsecus æquis; Eruderans utrumque latus, ne scandere quisquam Ad muros possit, vel ab ima repere valle. Hinc ex transverso medium per planitiei Erigitur murus, multoque labore cavari Cogitur ipse silex, fossaque patere profunda, Faucibus et latis aperiri vallis ad instar; Sic ut quam subito fiat munitio duplex Quæ fuit una modo muro geminata sequestro. Ut si forte pati partem contingeret istam Altera municipes, queat, et se tuta tueri. Inde rotundavit rupem, quæ celsior omni Planitie summum se tollit in aera sursum; Et muris sepsit, extremas desuper oras Castigansque jugi scrupulosa cacumina, totum Complanat medium, multæque capacia turbæ Plurima cum domibus habitacula fabricat intus. Umboni parcens soli, quo condidit arcem. Hic situs iste decor, munitio talis honorem Gaillardæ rupis per totum prædicat orbem." The keep cannot be ascended without difficulty. We ventured to scale it; and we were fully repaid for our labor by the prospect which we gained. The Seine, full of green willowy islands, flows beneath the rock in large lazy windings: the peninsula below is flat, fertile, and well wooded: on the opposite shores, the fantastic chalky cliffs rise boldly, crowned with dark forests. I have already once had occasion to allude to the memorable strife occasioned by the erection of Château Gaillard, which its royal founder is reported to have so named by way of mockery. In possession of this fortress, it seemed that he might laugh to scorn the attacks of his feudal liege lord.--The date of the commencement of the building is supposed to have been about the year 1196, immediately subsequent to the treaty of Louviers, by which, Richard ceded to Philip Augustus the military line of the Epte, and nearly the whole of the Norman Vexin. By an express article of the treaty, neither party was allowed to repair the fortifications of Andelys; and Philip was in possession of Gisors, as well as of every other post that might have afforded security to the Normans. Thus the frontiers of the duchy became defenceless; but Richard, like other politicians, determined to evade the spirit of the treaty, adhering nevertheless to its letter, by the erection of this mighty bulwark.--The building arose with the activity of fear. Richard died in 1199, yet the castle must have been completely habitable in his life-time, for not a few of his charters are dated from Château Gaillard, which he terms "his beautiful castle of the rock."--Three years only had elapsed from the decease of this monarch, when Philip Augustus, after having reduced another castle, erected at the same time upon an island opposite the lesser Andelys, encamped before Château Gaillard, and commenced a siege, which from its length, its horrors, and the valor shewn on either side, has ever since been memorable in history.--Its details are given at great length by Father Daniel; and Du Moulin briefly enumerates a few of the stratagems to which the French King was obliged to have recourse; for, as the reverend author observes, "to have attempted to carry the place by force, would have been to have exposed the army to certain destruction; while to have tried to scale the walls, would have required the aid of Dædalus, with the certainty of a fall, as fatal as that of Icarus;" and without the poor consolation of ".... vitreo daturus Nomina ponto."-- The castle, commanded by Roger de Lacy, defied the utmost efforts of Philip for six successive months.--So great was its size; that more than two thousand two hundred persons, who did not form a part of the garrison, were known to quit the fortress in the course of the siege, compelled to throw themselves upon the mercy of the besiegers. But they found none; and the greater part of these unfortunate wretches, alternately suppliants to either host, perished from hunger, or from the weapons of the contending parties. At length the fortress yielded to a sudden assault. Of the warriors, to whose valor it had been entrusted, only thirty-six remained alive. John, ill requiting their fidelity, had already abandoned them to their fate. Margaret of Burgundy, the queen of Louis Xth, and Blanche, the consort of his brother, Charles le Bel, were both immured in Château Gaillard, in 1314. The scandalous chronicle of those times will explain the causes of their imprisonment. Margaret was strangled by order of her husband. Blanche, after seven years' captivity, was transferred to the convent of Maubuisson, near Pontoise, where she continued a recluse till her death--In 1331, David Bruce, compelled to flee from the superior power of the third Edward, found an asylum in Château Gaillard; and here, for a time, maintained the pageantry of a court.--Twenty-four years subsequently, when Charles the Bad, king of Navarre, was sent as a captive from Rouen to Paris, he was confined here, during one night, by order of the dauphin, who had made him his prisoner by treachery, whilst partaking of a banquet.--In the following century Château Gaillard braved the victorious arms of Henry Vth; nor was it taken till after a siege of sixteen months. The garrison only consisted of one hundred and twenty men; yet this scanty troop would not have yielded, had not the ropes, by which they drew up their water-buckets[31], been worn out and destroyed.--During the same reign, it was again taken and lost by the French, into whose hands it finally fell in 1449, when Charles VIIth commanded the siege in person. Even then, however it stood a long siege; and it was almost the last of the strong-holds of Normandy, which held out for the successors of the ancient dukes. After the re-union of the duchy, it was not destroyed, or suffered to fall into decay, like the greater number of the Norman fortresses: during the religious wars, it still continued to be a formidable military post, as well as a royal palace; and it was honored by the residence of Henry IVth, whose father, Anthony of Bourbon, died here in 1562.--Its importance ceased in the following reign.--The inhabitants of the adjacent country requested the king to order that the castle should be dismantled. They dreaded, lest its towers should serve as an asylum to some of the numerous bands of marauders, by whom France was then infested. It was consequently undermined and reduced to its present state of ruin. We did not again attempt to pay our devotions at the shrine of Saint Clotilda, and we found no interesting object in the church of Andelys which could detain us. We therefore proceeded without delay to Ecouis, where we were assured that the church would gratify our curiosity.--This building has an air of grandeur as it is seen rising above the flat country; and it is of a singular shape, the ground-plan being that of a Greek cross. The exterior is plain and offers nothing remarkable: the interior retains statues of various saints, which, though not very ancient or in very good taste, are still far from being inelegant. Saint Mary, the Egyptian, who is among them, covered with her tresses, which may easily be mistaken for a long plaited robe, is a saint of unfrequent occurrence in this part of France. In the choir are several tomb-stones, with figures engraved upon them, their faces and hands being inlaid with white marble.--In this part of the building also remains the tomb of John Marigni, archbishop of Rouen, with his effigy of fine white marble, in perfect preservation. The face is marked with a strong expression of that determined character, which he unquestionably possessed. When he was sent as an ambassador to Edward IIIrd, in 1342, he made his appearance at the English court in the guise of a military man, and not as a minister of peace; and we may doubt whether his virtues qualified him for the mitre. If even a Pope, however, in latter days, commanded a sculptor to pourtray him with a sword in his hand, the martial tendency of an archbishop may well be pardoned in more turbulent times. The following distich, from his epitaph, alludes to his achievements:-- "Armis præcinctus, mentisque charactere cinctus, Dux fuit in bellis, Anglis virtute rebellis." The unfortunate Enguerrand de Marigni, brother of the archbishop, and lord treasurer under Philip the Fair, was the founder of this church. At the instigation of the king's uncle, Enguerrand was hanged without trial, and his family experienced the most bitter persecution. His body, which had at first been interred in the convent of the Chartreux, at Paris, was removed hither in 1324; and his descendants obtained permission, in 1475, to erect a mausoleum to his memory. But the king, at the same time that he acceded to their petition, added the express condition[32], that no allusion should be made to Marigni's tragical end. The monument was destroyed in the revolution; but the murder of the treasurer is one of those "damned spots," which will never be washed out of the history of France.--Charles de Valois soon felt the sting of remorse; and within a year from the wreaking of his vengeance, he caused alms to be publicly distributed in the streets of Paris, with an injunction to every one that received them, "to pray to God for the souls of Enguerrand de Marigni, and Charles de Valois, taking care to put the subject first[33]."--In the church at Ecouis, was formerly the following epitaph, whose obscurity has given rise to a variety of traditions:-- "Ci gist le fils, ci gist la mere, Ci gist la soeur, ci gist le frère, Ci gist la femme, et le mari; Et ci ne sont que deux ici[34]." Other inscriptions of the same nature are said to have existed in England. Goube[35] supposes that this one is the record of an incestuous connection; but we may doubt whether a less sinful solution may not be given to the enigma. * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 28: Andelys is also called in old deeds _Andeleium_ and _Andeliacum_.] [Footnote 29: "Seculo septimo, cum pauca essent in regione Anglorum monasteria, hunc morem in illâ gente fuisse, ut multi ex Britanniâ, monastiae conversationis gratiâ, Francorum monasteria adirent, sed et filias suas eisdem erudiendas ac sponso coelesti copulandas mitterent, maximè in Brigensi seu S. Farae monasterio, et in Calensi et in _Andilegum_ monasterio."--_Bede, Hist_. lib. III. cap. 8.] [Footnote 30: _Cotman's Architectural Antiquities of Normandy_, plate 15.--In a future portion of his work, Mr. Cotman designs devoting a second plate exclusively to the oriel in the east front of this building.] [Footnote 31: _Monstrelet, Johnes' Translation_, II. p. 242.] [Footnote 32: The letter of this stipulation appears to have been attended to much more than its spirit for at the top of the monument were five figures:--Our Savior seated in the centre, as if in the act of pronouncing sentence; on either side of him, an angel; and below, Charles de Valois and Enguerrand de Marigni; the former on the right of Christ, crowned with the ducal coronet; the other, on the opposite side, in the guise and posture of a suppliant, imploring the divine vengeance for his unjust fate.--_Histoire de la Haute Normandie_, II. p. 338.] [Footnote 33: _Montfaucon, Monumens de la Monarchie Française_, II. p. 220.] [Footnote 34: In a collection of epitaphs printed at Cologne, 1623, under the title of _Epitaphia Joco-seria_, I find the same monumental inscription, with the observation, that it is at Tournay, and with the following explanation.--"De pari conjugum, posteà ad religionem transeuntium et in eâ præfectorum. Alter fuit Franciscanus; altera verò Clarissa."] [Footnote 35: _Histoire du Duché de Normandie_, III. p. 15.] LETTER XVIII. EVREUX--CATHEDRAL--ABBEY OF ST. TAURINUS--ANCIENT HISTORY. (_Evreux, July_, 1818.) Our journey to this city has not afforded the gratification which we anticipated.--You may recollect Ducarel's eulogium upon the cathedral, that it is one of the finest structures of the kind in France.--It is our fate to be continually at variance with the doctor, till I am half inclined to fear you may be led to suspect that jealousy has something to do with the matter, and that I fall under the ban of the old Greek proverb,-- "Î�αι ϰεÏ�Î±Î¼ÎµÏ Ï� ϰεÏ�αμει ΦÏ�ονεει ϰαι Ï�εϰÏ�ονι Ï�εϰÏ�Ï�ν."-- [English. Not in Original: The potter is jealous of the potter, as the builder is jealous of the builder.] As for myself, however, I do hope and trust that I am marvellously free from antiquarian spite.--And in this instance, our expectations were also raised by the antiquity and sanctity of the cathedral, which was entirely rebuilt by Henry Ist, who made a considerate bargain with Bishop Audinus[36], by which he was allowed to burn the city and its rebellious inhabitants, upon condition of bestowing his treasures for the re-construction of the monasteries, after the impending conflagration. The church, thus raised, is said by William of Jumieges[37], to have surpassed every other in Neustria; but it is certain that only a very small portion of the original building now remains. A second destruction awaited it. Philip Augustus, who desolated the county of Evreux with fire and sword, stormed the capital, sparing neither age nor sex; and all its buildings, whether sacred or profane, were burnt to the ground. Hoveden, his friend, and Brito, his enemy, both bear witness to this fact--the latter in the following lines:-- "... irarum stimulis agitatus, ad omne Excidium partis adversæ totus inardens, Ebroicas primò sic incineravit, ut omnes Cum domibus simul ecclesias consumpserit ignis."-- The church, in its present state, is a medley of many different styles and ages: the nave alone retains vestiges of early architecture, in its massy piers and semi-circular arches: these are evidently of Norman workmanship, and are probably part of the church erected by Henry.--All the rest is comparatively modern.--The western front is of a debased Palladian style, singularly ill adapted to a Gothic cathedral. It is flanked with two towers, one of which ends in a cupola, the other in a short cone.--The central tower, which is comparatively plain and surmounted by a high spire, was built about the middle of the fifteenth century, during the bishopric of the celebrated John de Balue, who was in high favor with Louis XIth, and obtained from that monarch great assistance towards repairing, enlarging, and beautifying his church. The roof, the transept towards the palace, the sacristy, the library, and a portion of the cloisters, are all said to have been erected by him[38].--The northern transept is the only part that can now lay claim to beauty or uniformity in its architecture: it is of late and bastard Gothic; yet the portal is not destitute of merit: it is evidently copied from the western portal of the cathedral at Rouen, though far inferior in every respect, and with a decided tendency towards the Italian style. Almost every part of it still appears full of elaborate ornaments, though all the saints and bishops have fled from the arched door-way, and the bas-relief which was over the entrance has equally disappeared. Ducarel[39] notices four statues of canons, attached to a couple of pillars at the back of the chancel.--We were desirous of seeing authentic specimens of sculpture of a period at least as remote as the conquest; and, as the garden belonging to the prefect, the Comte de Goyon, incloses this portion of the church, we requested to be allowed to enter his grounds. Leave was most obligingly granted, and we received every attention from the prefect and his lady; but we could find no traces of the objects of our search. They were probably destroyed during the revolution; at which time, the count told us that the statues at the north portal were also broken to pieces. At Evreux, the democrats had full scope for the exercise of their iconoclastic fury. Little or no previous injury had been done by the Calvinists, who appear to have been unable to gain any ascendency in this town or diocese, at the same time that they lorded it over the rest of Normandy. Evreux had been fortified against heresy, by the piety and good sense of two of her bishops: they foresaw the coming storm, and they took steps to redress the grievances which were objects of complaint, as well as to reform the church-establishment, and to revise the breviary and the mass-book.--Conduct like this seldom fails in its effect; and the tranquil by-stander may regret that it is not more frequently adopted by contending parties. The interior of the cathedral is handsome, though not peculiar. Some good specimens of painted glass remain in the windows; and, in various parts of the church, there are elegant tabernacles and detached pieces of sculpture, as well in stone as in wood. The pulpit, in particular, is deserving of this praise: it is supported on cherubs' heads, and is well designed and executed. The building is dedicated to the Virgin: it claims for its first bishop, Taurinus, a saint of the third century, memorable in legendary tale for a desperate battle which he fought against the devil. Satan was sadly drubbed and the bishop wrenched off one of his horns[40]. The trophy was deposited in the crypt of his church, where it long remained, to amuse the curious, and stand the nurses of Evreux in good stead, as the means of quieting noisy children.--The learned Cardinal Du Perron succeeded to St. Taurinus, though at an immense distance of time. He was appointed by Henry IVth, towards whose conversion he appears to have been greatly instrumental, as he was afterwards the principal mediator, by whose intercession the Pope was induced to grant absolution to the monarch. The task was one of some difficulty: for the court of Spain, then powerful at the Vatican, used all their efforts to prevent a reconciliation, with a view of fomenting the troubles in France.--Most of the bishops of this see appear to have possessed great piety and talent. I have already mentioned to you, that the fraternity of the Conards was established at Evreux, as well as at Rouen. Another institution, of equal absurdity, was peculiar, I believe, to this cathedral[41]. It bore the name of the Feast of St. Vital, as it united with the anniversary of that saint, which is celebrated on the first of May: the origin of the custom may be derived from the heathen Floralia, a ceremony begun in innocence, continued to abomination. At its first institution, the feast of St. Vital was a simple and a natural rite: the statues of the saints were crowned with garlands of foliage, perhaps as an offering of the first-fruits of the opening year. In process of time, branches were substituted for leaves, and they were cut from the growing trees, by a lengthened train of rabble pilgrims.--The clergy themselves headed the mob, who committed such devastation in the neighboring woods, that the owners of them were glad to compromise for the safety of their timber, by stationing persons to supply the physical, as well as the religious, wants of the populace. The excesses consequent upon such a practice may easily be imagined: the duration of the feast was gradually extended to ten days; and, during this time, licentiousness of all kinds prevailed under the plea of religion. To use the words of a manuscript, preserved in the archives of the cathedral, they played at skittles on the roof of the church, and the bells were kept continually ringing. These orgies, at length, were quelled; but not till two prebendaries belonging to the chapter, had nearly lost their lives in the attempt.--Hitherto, indeed, the clergy had enjoyed the merriment full as well as the laity. One jolly canon, appropriately named Jean Bouteille, made a will, in which he declared himself the protector of the feast; and he directed that, on its anniversary, a pall should be spread in the midst of the church, with a gigantic _bottle_ in its centre, and four smaller ones at the corners; and he took care to provide funds for the perpetuation of this _rebus_. The cathedral offers few subjects for the pencil.--As a species of monument, of which we have no specimens in England, I add a sketch of a Gothic _puteal_, which stands near the north portal. It is apparently of the same æra as that part of the church. [Illustration: Gothic Puteal, at Evreux] From the cathedral we went to the church of St. Taurinus. The proud abbey of the apostle and first bishop of the diocese retains few or no traces of its former dignity. So long as monachism flourished, a contest existed between the chapter of the cathedral and the brethren of this monastery, each advocating the precedency of their respective establishment.--The monks of St. Taurinus contended, that their abbey was expressly mentioned by William of Jumieges[42] among the most ancient in Neustria, as well as among those which were destroyed by the Normans, and rebuilt by the zeal of good princes. They also alleged the dispute that prevailed under the Norman dukes for more than two hundred years, between this convent and that of Fécamp, respecting the right of nominating one of their own brethren to the head of their community, a right which was claimed by Fécamp; and they displayed the series of their prelates, continued in an uninterrupted line from the time of their founder. Whatever may have been the justice of these claims, the antiquity of the monastery is admitted by all parties.--Its monks, like those of the abbey of St. Ouen, had the privilege of receiving every new bishop of the see, on the first day of his arrival at Evreux; and his corpse was deposited in their church, where the funeral obsequies were performed. This privilege, originally intended only as a mark of distinction to the abbey, was on two occasions perverted to a purpose that might scarcely have been expected. Upon the death of Bishop John d'Aubergenville in 1256, the monks resented the reformation which he had endeavoured to introduce into their order, by refusing to admit his body within their precinct; and though fined for their obstinacy, they did not learn wisdom by experience, but forty-three years afterwards shewed their hostility decidedly towards the remains of Geoffrey of Bar, a still more determined reformer of monastic abuses. Extreme was the licentiousness which prevailed in those days among the monks of St. Taurinus, and unceasing were the endeavors of the bishop to correct them. The contest continued during his life, at the close of which they not only shut their doors against his corpse, but dragged it from the coffin and gave it a public flagellation. So gross an act of indecency would in all probability be classed among the many scandalous tales invented of ecclesiastics, but that the judicial proceedings which ensued leave no doubt of its truth; and it was even recorded in the burial register of the cathedral. The church of St. Taurinus offers some valuable specimens of ancient architecture.--The southern transept still preserves a row of Norman arches, running along the lower part of its west side, as well as along its front; but those above them are pointed. To the south are six circular arches, divided into two compartments, in each of which the central arch has formerly served for a window. Both the lateral ones are filled with coeval stone-work, whose face is carved into lozenges, which were alternately coated with blue and red mortar or stucco: distinct traces of the coloring are still left in the cavities[43]. To the eastern side of this transept is attached, as at St. Georges, a small chapel, of semi-circular architecture, now greatly in ruins. The interior of the church is all comparatively modern, with the exception of some of the lower arches on the north side.--A strange and whimsical vessel for holy water attracted our attention. I cannot venture to guess at its date, but I do not think it is more recent than the fourteenth century. [Illustration: Vessel for holy water] The principal curiosity of the church, and indeed of the town, is the shrine, which contained, or perhaps, contains, a portion of the bones of the patron saint, whose body, after having continued for more than three hundred years a hidden treasure, was at last revealed in a miraculous manner to the prayers of Landulphus, one of his successors in the episcopacy.--The cathedral of Chartres, in early ages, set up a rival claim for the possession of this precious relic; but its existence here was formally verified at the end of the seventeenth century, by the opening of the _châsse_, in which a small quantity of bones was found tied up in a leather bag, with a certificate of their authenticity, signed by an early bishop.--The shrine is of silver-gilt, about one and a half foot in height and two feet in length: it is a fine specimen of ancient art. In shape it resembles the nave of a church, with the sides richly enchased with figures of saints and bishops. Our curious eyes would fain have pried within; but it was closed with the impression of the archbishop's signet.--A crypt, the original burial place of St. Taurinus, is still shewn in the church, and it continues to be the object of great veneration. It is immediately in front of the high altar, and is entered by two staircases, one at the head, the other at the foot of the coffin. The vault is very small, only admitting of the coffin and of a narrow passage by its side. The sarcophagus, which is extremely shallow, and neither wide nor long, is partly imbedded in the wall, so that the head and foot and one side alone are visible.--A portion of the monastic buildings of St. Taurinus now serves as a seminary for the catholic priesthood. The west front of the church of St. Giles is not devoid of interest. Many other churches here have been desecrated; and this ancient building has been converted into a stable. The door-way is formed by a fine semi-circular arch, ornamented with the chevron-moulding, disposed in a triple row, and with a line of quatrefoils along the archivolt. Both these decorations are singular: I recollect no other instance of the quatrefoil being employed in an early Norman building, though immediately upon the adoption of the pointed style it became exceedingly common; nor can I point out another example of the chevron-moulding thus disposed. It produces a better effect than when arranged in detached bands. The capitals to the pillars of the arch are sculptured with winged dragons and other animals, in bold relief. These are the only worthy objects of architectural inquiry now existing in the city. Many must have been destroyed by the ravages of war, and by the excesses of the revolution.--Evreux therefore does not abound with memorials of its antiquity. But its existence as a town, during the period of the domination of the Romans, rests upon authority that is scarcely questionable. It has been doubted whether the present city, or a village about three miles distant, known by the name of _Old Evreux_, is the _Mediolanum Aulercorum_ of Ptolemy. His description is given with sufficient accuracy to exclude the pretensions of any other town, though not with such a degree of precision as will enable us, after a lapse of sixteen centuries, to decide between the claims of the two sites. Cæsar, in his _Commentaries_, speaks in general terms of the _Aulerci Eburovices_, who are admitted to have been the ancient inhabitants of this district, and whose name, especially as modified to _Ebroici_ and _Ebroi_, is clearly to be recognized in that of the county. The foundations of ancient buildings are still to be seen at Old Evreux; and various coins and medals of the upper empire, have at different times been dug up within its precincts. Hence it has been concluded, that the _Mediolanum Aulercorum_ was situated there. The supporters of the contrary opinion admit that Old Evreux was a Roman station; but they say that, considering its size, it can have been no more than an encampment: they also maintain, that a castle was subsequently built upon the site of this encampment, by Richard, Count of Evreux, and that the destruction of this castle, during the Norman wars, gave rise to the ruins now visible, which in their turn were the cause of the name of the village[44]. It is certain that, in the reign of William the Conqueror, the town stood in its present situation: Ordericus Vitalis speaks in terms that admit of no hesitation, when he states that, in the year 1080, "fides Christi Evanticorum, id est Evroas, urbem, _super Ittonum fluvium sitam_ possidebat et salubritèr illuminabat[45]." In the times of Norman sovereignty, Evreux attained an unfortunate independence: Duke Richard Ist severed it from the duchy, and erected it into a distinct earldom in favor of Robert, his second son. From him the inheritance descended to Richard and William, his son and grandson; after whose death, it fell into the female line, and passed into the house of Montfort d'Amaury, by the marriage of Agnes, sister of Richard of Evreux.--Nominally independent, but really held only at the pleasure of the Dukes of Normandy, the rank of the earldom occasioned the misery of the inhabitants, who were continually involved in warfare, and plundered by conflicting parties. The annals of Evreux contain the relation of a series of events, full of interest and amusement to us who peruse them; but those, who lived at the time when these events were really acted, might exclaim, like the frogs in the fable, "that what is entertainment to us, was death to them."--At length, the treaty of Louviers, in 1195, altered the aspect of affairs. The King of France gained the right of placing a garrison in Evreux; and, five years afterwards, he obtained a formal cession of the earldom. Philip Augustus took possession of the city, to the great joy of the inhabitants, who, six years before, had seen their town pillaged, and their houses destroyed, by the orders of this monarch. The severity exercised upon that occasion had been excessive; but Philip's indignation had been roused by one of the basest acts of treachery recorded in history.--John, faithless at every period of his life, had entered into a treaty with the French monarch, during the captivity of his brother, Coeur-de-Lion, to deliver up Normandy; and Philip, conformably with this plan, was engaged in reducing the strong holds upon the frontiers, whilst his colleague resided at Evreux. The unexpected release of the English king disconcerted these intrigues; and John, alarmed at the course which he had been pursuing, thought only how to avert the anger of his offended sovereign. Under pretence, therefore, of shewing hospitality to the French, he invited the principal officers to a feast, where he caused them all to be murdered; and he afterwards put the rest of the garrison to the sword.--Brito records the transaction in the following lines, which I quote, not only as an historical document, illustrative of the moral character of one of the worst sovereigns that ever swayed the British sceptre, but as an honorable testimony to the memory of his unfortunate brother:-- "Attamen Ebroïcam studio majore reformans Armis et rebus et bellatoribus urbem, Pluribus instructam donavit amore Johanni, Ut sibi servet eam: tamen arcem non dedit illi. Ille dolo plenus, qui patrem, qui modo fratrem Prodiderat, ne non et Regis proditor esset, Excedens siculos animi impietate Tyrannos, Francigenas omnes vocat ad convivia quotquot Ebroïcis reperit, equites simul atque clientes, Paucis exceptis quos sors servavit in arce. Quos cum dispositis armis fecisset ut una Discubuisse domo, tanquam prandere putantes, Evocat e latebris armatos protinus Anglos, Interimitque viros sub eadem clade trecentos, Et palis capita ambustis affixit, et urbem Circuit affixis, visu mirabile, tali Regem portento quærens magis angere luctu: Talibus obsequiis, tali mercede rependens Millia marcharum, quas Rex donaverat illi. Tam detestanda pollutus cæde Johannes Ad fratrem properat; sed Rex tam flagitiosus Non placuit fratri: quis enim, nisi dæmone plenus, Omninoque Deo vacuus, virtute redemptus A vitiis nulla, tam dira fraude placere Appetat, aut tanto venetur crimine pacem? Sed quia frater erat, licet illius oderit actus Omnibus odibiles, fraternæ foedera pacis Non negat indigno, nec eum privavit amore, Ipsum qui nuper Regno privare volebat." The vicissitudes to which the county of Evreux was doomed to be subject, did not wholly cease upon its annexation to the crown of France. It passed, in the fourteenth century, into the hands of the Kings of Navarre, so as to form a portion of their foreign territory; and early in the fifteenth, it fell by right of conquest under English sovereignty.--Philip the Bold conferred it, in 1276, upon Louis, his youngest son; and from him descended the line of Counts of Evreux, who, originating in the royal family of France, became Kings of Navarre. The kingdom was brought into the family by the marriage of Philip Count of Evreux with Jane daughter of Louis Hutin, King of France and Navarre, to whom she succeeded as heir general. Charles IIIrd, of Navarre, ceded Evreux by treaty to his namesake, Charles VIth of France, in 1404; and he shortly after bestowed it upon John Stuart, Lord of Aubigni, and Constable of Scotland.--Under Henry Vth, our countrymen took the city in 1417, but we were not long allowed to hold undisturbed possession of it; for, in 1424, it was recaptured by the French. Their success, however, was only ephemeral: the battle of Verneuil replaced Evreux in the power of the English before the expiration of the same year; and we kept it till 1441, when the garrison was surprised, and the town lost, though not without a vigorous resistance.--Towards the close of the following century, the earldom was raised into a _Duché pairie_, by Charles IXth, who, having taken the lordship of Gisors from his brother, the Duc d'Alençon, better known by his subsequent title of Duc d'Anjou, recompenced him by a grant of Evreux. Upon the death of this prince without issue, in 1584, Evreux reverted to the crown, and the title lay dormant till 1652, when Louis XIVth exchanged the earldom with the Duc de Bouillon, in return for the principality of Sedan. In his family it remained till the revolution, which, amalgamating the whole of France into one common mass of equal rights and laws, put an end to all local privileges and other feudal tenures. Evreux, at present, is a town containing about eight thousand inhabitants, a great proportion of whom are persons of independent property, or _rentiers_, as the French call them. Hence it has an air of elegance, seldom to be found in a commercial, and never in a manufacturing town; and to us this appearance was the more striking, as being the first instance of the kind we had seen in Normandy. The streets are broad and beautifully neat. The city stands in the midst of gardens and orchards, in a fertile valley, watered by the Iton, and inclosed towards the north and south by ranges of hills. The river divides into two branches before it reaches the town, both which flow on the outside of the walls. But, besides these, a portion of its waters has been conducted through the centre of the city, by means of a canal dug by the order of Jane of Navarre. This Iton, like the Mole, in Kent, suddenly loses itself in the ground, near the little town of Damville, about twenty miles south of Evreux, and holds its subterranean course for nearly two miles. A similar phenomenon is observable with a neighboring stream, the Risle, between Ferrière and Grammont[46]: in both cases it is attributed, I know not with what justice, to an abrupt change in the stratification of the soil. * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 36: This curious transaction, which took place in the year 1119, is related with considerable _näiveté_ by Ordericus Vitalis, p. 852, as follows:--"Henricus Rex rebellibus ultrà parcere nolens, pagum Ebroicensem adiit, et Ebroas cum valida manu impugnare coepit. Sed oppidanis, qui intrinsecus erant, cum civibus viriliter repugnantibus, introire nequivit. Erant cum illo Ricardus filius ejus, et Stephanus Comes nepos ejus, Radulfus de Guader, et maxima vis Normannorum. Quibus ante Regem convocatis in unnm, Rex dixit ad Audinum Episcopum. "Videsne, domine Præsul, quòd repellimur ab hostibus, nec eos nisi per ignem subjugare poterimus? Verùm, si ignis immittitur, Ecclesiæ comburentur, et insontibus ingens damnum inferetur. Nunc ergo, Pastor Ecclesiæ, diligentèr considera, et quod utilius prospexeris providè nobis insinua. Si victoria nobis per incendium divinitùs conceditur, opitulante Deo, Ecclesiæ detrimenta restaurabuntur: quia de thesauris nostris commodos sumptus gratantèr largiemur. Unde domus Dei, ut reor, in melius reædificabuntur." Hæsitat in tanto discrimine Præsul auxius, ignorat quid jubeat divinæ dispositioni competentius: nescit quid debeat magis velle vel eligere salubrius. Tandem prudentum consultu præcepit ignem immitti, et civitatem concremari, ut ab anathematizatis proditoribus liberaretur, et legitimis habitatoribus restitueretur. Radulfus igitur de Guader a parte Aquilonali primus ignem injecit, et effrenis flamma per urbem statim volavit, et omnia (tempos enim autumni siccum erat) corripuit. Tunc combusta est basilica sancti Salvatoris, quam Sanctimoniales incolebant, et celebris aula gloriosæ virginis et matris Mariæ, cui Præsul et Clerus serviebant, ubi Pontificalem Curiam parochiani frequentabant. Rex, et cuncti Optimales sui Episcopo pro Ecclesiarum combustione vadimonium supplicitèr dederunt, et uberes impensas de opibus suis ad restaurationem earum palam spoponderunt."] [Footnote 37: _Duchesne, Scriptores Normanni_, p. 309.] [Footnote 38: _Gallia Christiana_, XI. p. 606.] [Footnote 39: From the manner in, which Ducarel speaks of these statues, (_Anglo-Norman Antiquities_, p. 85.) he leaves it to be understood, that they were in existence in his time; but it is far from certain that this was the case; for the whole of his account of them is no more than a translation from the following passage in Le Brasseur's _Histoire du Comté d'Evreux_, p. 11.--"Le Diocèse d'Evreux a été si favorisé des grâces de Dieu, qu'on ne voit presqu'aucun temps où l'Hérésie y ait pénétré, même lorsque les Protestans inondoient et corrompoient toute la France, et particulierement la Normandie. On ne peut pas cependant desavoüer qu'il y a eu de temps en temps, quelques personnes qui se sont livrées à l'erreur; et l'on peut remarquer quatre Statuës attachées à deux piliers au dehors du chancel de l'Eglise Cathédrale du côté du Cimetiere, dont trois représentent trois Chanoines, la tête couverte de leurs Aumuces selon la coûtume de ce temps-là, et une quatrième qui représente un Chanoine à un pilier plus éloigné, la tête nuë, tenant sa main sur le coeur comme un signe de son repentir; parce que la tradition dit, qu'aïant été atteint et convaincu du crime d'hérésie, le Chapitre l'avoit interdit des fonctions de son Bénéfice; mais qu'aïant ensuite abjuré son erreur, le même Chapitre le rétablit dans tous ses droits, honneurs, et privileges: cependant il fut ordonné qu'en mémoire de l'égarement et de la pénitence de ce Chanoine, ces Statuës demeureroient attachées aux piliers de leur Eglise, lorsqu'elle fût rébâtie des deniers de Henry I. Roy d'Angleterre, par les soins d'Audoenus Evêque d'Evreux."] [Footnote 40: This was not the first, nor the only, contest, which was fought by Taurinus with Satan. Their struggles began at the moment of the saint's coming to Evreux, and did not even terminate when his life was ended. But the devil was, by the power of his adversary, brought to such a helpless state, that, though he continued to haunt the city, where the people knew him by the name of _Gobelinus_, he was unable to injure any one.--All this is seriously related by Ordericus Vitalis, (p. 555.) from whom I extract the following passage, in illustration of what Evreux was supposed to owe to its first bishop.--"Grassante secundâ persecutione, quæ sub Domitiano in Christianos furuit, Dionysius Parisiensis Episcopus Taurinum filiolum suum jam quadragenarium, Præsulem ordinavit; et (vaticinatis pluribus quæ passurus erat) Ebroicensibus in nomine Domini direxit. Viro Dei ad portas civitatis appropinquanti, dæmon in tribus figmentis se opposuit: scilicet in specie ursi, et leonis, et bubali terrere athletam Christi voluit. Sed ille fortiter, ut inexpugnabilis murus, in fide perstitit, et coeptum iter peregit, hospitiumque in domo Lucii suscepit. Tertia die, dum Taurinus ibidem populo prædicaret, et dulcedo fidei novis auditoribus multùm placeret, dolens diabolus Eufrasiam Lucii filiam vexare coepit, et in ignem jecit. Quæ statim mortua est; sed paulò pòst, orante Taurino ac jubente ut resurgeret, in nomine Domini resuscitata est. Nullum in ea adustionis signum apparuit. Omnes igitur hoc miraculum videntes subitò territi sunt, et obstupescentes in Dominum Jesum Christum crediderunt. In illa die cxx. homines baptizati sunt. Octo cæci illuminati, et quatuor multi sanati, aliique plures ex diversis infirmitatibus in nomine Domini sunt curati."] [Footnote 41: _Masson de St. Amand, Essais Historiques sur Evreux_, I. p. 77.] [Footnote 42: _Duchesne, Scriptores Normanni_, p. 279.] [Footnote 43: For this observation, as well as for several others touching Evreux and Pont-Audemer, I have to express my acknowledgments to Mr. Cotman's memoranda.] [Footnote 44: _Le Brasseur, Histoire du Comté d'Evreux_, p. 4.] [Footnote 45: _Duchesne, Scriptores Normanni_, p. 555.] [Footnote 46: _Goube, Histoire du Duché de Normandie_, III. p. 223.] LETTER XIX. VICINITY OF EVREUX--CHÂTEAU DE NAVARRE--COCHEREL--PONT-AUDEMER --MONTFORT-SUR-RISLE--HARFLEUR--BOURG-ACHARD--FRENCH WEDDING. (_Bourg-Achard, July_, 1818.) Evreux is seldom visited by the English; and none of our numerous absentees have thought fit to settle here, though the other parts of Normandy are filled with families who are suffering under the sentence of self-banishment. It is rather surprising, that this town has not obtained its share of English settlers: the air is good, provisions are cheap, and society is agreeable. Those, too, if such there be, who are attracted by historical reminiscences, will find themselves on historical ground. The premier viscount of the British parliament derives his name from Evreux; though, owing to a slight alteration in spelling and to our peculiar pronunciation, it has now become so completely anglicised, that few persons, without reflection, would recognize a descendant of the Comtes d'Evreux, in Henry Devereux, Viscount of Hereford. The Norman origin of this family is admitted by the genealogists and heralds, both of France and of England; and the fate of the Earl of Essex is invariably introduced in the works of those authors, who have written upon Evreux or its honors. It would have been unpardonable to have quitted Evreux, without rambling to the Château de Navarre, which is not more than a mile and half distant from the town.--This Château, whose name recals an interesting period in the history of the earldom, was originally a royal residence. It was erected in the middle of the fourteenth century by Jane of France, who, with a very pardonable vanity, directed her new palace to be called Navarre, that her Norman subjects might never forget that she was herself a queen, and that she had brought a kingdom as a marriage portion to her husband. Her son, Charles the Bad, a prince whose turbulent and evil disposition caused so much misfortune to France, was born here. Happy too had it been for him, had he here closed his eyes before he entered upon the wider theatre of the world! During his early days passed at Navarre, he is said to have shewn an ingenuousness of disposition and some traits of generosity, which gave rise to hopes that were miserably falsified by his future life.--The present edifice, however, a modern French Château, retains nothing more than the name of the structure which was built by the queen, and which was levelled with the ground, in the year 1686, by the Duc de Bouillon, the lord of the country, who erected the present mansion. His descendants resided here till the revolution, at which time they emigrated, and the estate became national property. It remained for a considerable period unoccupied, and was at last granted to Joséphine, by her imperial husband. At present, the domain belongs to her son, Prince Eugene, by whom the house has lately been stripped of its furniture. Many of the fine trees in the park have also been cut down, and the whole appears neglected and desolate. His mother did not like Navarre: he himself never saw it: the queen of Holland alone used occasionally to reside here.--The principal beauty of the place lies in its woods; and these we saw to the greatest advantage. It was impossible for earth or sky to look more lovely.--The house is of stone, with large windows; and an ill-shaped dome rises in the centre. The height of the building is somewhat greater than its width, which makes it appear top-heavy; and every thing about it is formal; but the noble avenue, the terrace-steps, great lanthorns, iron gates, and sheets of water on either side of the approach, are upon an extensive scale, and in a fine baronial style.--Yet, still they are inferior to the accompaniments of the same nature which are found about many noblemen's residences in England.--The hall, which is spacious, has a striking effect, being open to the dome. Its sides are painted with military trophies, and with the warlike instruments of the four quarters of the globe. We saw nothing else in the house worthy of notice. It is merely a collection of apartments of moderate size; and, empty and dirty as they were, they appeared to great disadvantage. In the midst of the solitude of desolation, some ordinary portraits of the Bouillon family still remain upon the walls, as if in mockery of departed greatness. We were unable to direct our course to Cocherel, a village about sixteen miles distant, on the road to Vernon, celebrated as the spot where a battle was fought, in the fourteenth century, between the troops of Navarre, and those of France, commanded by Du Guesclin.--I notice this place, because it is possible that, if excavations were made there, those antiquaries who delight in relics of the remotest age of European history, might win many prizes. A tomb of great curiosity was discovered in the year 1685; and celts, and stone hatchets, and other implements, belonging, as it is presumed, to the original inhabitants of the country, have been found beneath the soil. Many of these are described and figured by the Abbé de Cocherel, in a paper full of curious erudition, subjoined to Le Brasseur's _History of Evreux_. The hatchets resembled those frequently dug up in England; but they were more perfect, inasmuch as some of them were fastened in deers' horns, and had handles attached to them; thus clearly indicating the manner in which they were used.--The place of burial differed, I believe, in its internal arrangement from any sepulchral monument, whether Cromlech, Carnedd, or Barrow, that has been opened in our own country. Three sides of it were rudely faced with large stones: within were contained about twenty skeletons, lying in a row, close to each other, north and south, their arms pressed to their sides. The head of each individual rested on a stone, fashioned with care, but to no certain pattern. Some were fusiform, others wedge-shaped, and others irregularly oblong. In general, the stones did not appear to be the production of the country. One was oriental jade, another German agate. In the tomb were also a few cinerary urns; whence it appears that the people, by whom it was constructed, were of a nation that was at once in the habit of burning, and of interring, their dead. From these facts, the Abbé finds room for much ingenious conjecture; and, after discussing the relative probabilities of the sepulchre having been a burying-place of the Gauls, the Jews, the Druids, the Normans, or the Huns, he decides, though with some hesitation, in favor of the last of these opinions. From Evreux we went by Brionne to Pont-Audemer: at first the road is directed through an open country, without beauty or interest; but the prospect improved upon us when we joined the rapid sparkling _Risle_, which waters a valley of great richness, bounded on either side by wooded hills.--Of Brionne itself I shall soon have a better opportunity of speaking; as we purpose stopping there on our way to Caen. A few miles before Brionne, we passed Harcourt, the ancient barony of the noble family still flourishing in England, and existing in France. It is a small country town, remarkable only for some remains of a castle[47], built by Robert de Harcourt, fifth in descent from Bernard the Dane, chief counsellor, and second in command to Rollo. The blood of the Dane is in the present earl of Harcourt: he traces his lineage in a direct line from Robert, the builder of the castle, who accompanied the Conqueror into England, and fell in battle by his side. Pont-Audemer is a small, neat, country town, situated upon the Risle, which here, within ten miles of its junction with the Seine, is enlarged into a river of considerable magnitude. But its channel, in the immediate vicinity of the town, divides into several small streams; and thus it loses much of its dignity, though the change is highly advantageous to picturesque beauty, and to the conveniences of trade. Mills stand on some of these streams, but most of them are applied to the purposes of tanning; for leather is the staple manufacture of the place, and the hides prepared at Pont-Audemer are thought to be the best in France. From Brionne the valley of the Risle preserves a width of about a mile, or a mile and half: at Pont-Audemer it becomes somewhat narrower, and the town stretches immediately across it, instead of being built along the banks of the river.--The inhabitants are thus enabled to avail themselves of the different streams which intersect it. Tradition refers the origin, as well as the name of Pont-Audemer, to a chief, called Aldemar or Odomar, who ruled over a portion of Gaul in the fifth century, and who built a bridge here.--These legendary heroes abound in topography, but it is scarcely worth while to discuss their existence. In Norman times Pont-Audemer was a military station. The nobility of the province, always turbulent, but never more so than during the reign of Henry Ist, had availed themselves of the opportunity afforded by the absence of the monarch, and by his domestic misfortunes, to take up arms in the cause of the son of Robert. Henry landed at the mouth of the Seine, and it was at Pont-Audemer that the first conflict took place between him and his rebellious subjects. The latter were defeated, and the fortress immediately surrendered; but, in the early part of the fourteenth century, it appears to have been of greater strength: it had been ceded by King John of France to the Count of Evreux, and it resisted all the efforts of its former lord during a siege of six weeks, at the end of which time his generals were obliged to retire, with the loss of their military engines and artillery. This siege is memorable in history, as the first in which it is known that cannon were employed in France.--Pont-Audemer, still in possession of the kings of Navarre, withstood a second siege, towards the conclusion of the same century, but with less good fortune than before. It was taken by the constable Du Guesclin, and, according to Froissart[48], "the castle was razed to the ground, though it had cost large sums to erect; and the walls and towers of the town were destroyed." St. Ouen, the principal church in the place, is a poor edifice. It bears, however, some tokens of remote age: such are the circular arches in the choir, and a curious capital, on which are represented two figures in combat, of rude sculpture.--A second church, that of Notre Dame des Prés, now turned into a tan-house, exhibits an architectural feature which is altogether novel. Over the great entrance, it has a string-course, apparently intended to represent a corbel-table, though it does not support any superior member; and the intermediate spaces between the corbels, instead of being left blank, as usual, are filled with sculptured stones, which project considerably, though less than the corbels with which they alternate. There is something of the same kind, but by no means equally remarkable, over the arcades above the west door-way of Castle-Acre Priory[49]. Neither Mr. Cotman's memory, nor my own, will furnish another example.--The church of Notre Dame des Prés is of the period when the pointed style was beginning to be employed. The exterior is considerably injured: to the interior we could not obtain admission. The suburbs of Pont-Audemer furnish another church dedicated to St. Germain, which would have been an excellent subject for both pen and pencil, had it undergone less alteration. The short, thick, square, central tower has, on each side, a row of four windows, of nearly the earliest pointed style; many of the windows of the body of the church have semi-circular heads; the corbels which extend in a line round the nave and transepts are strangely grotesque; and, on the north side of the eastern extremity, is a semi-circular chapel, as at St. Georges.--The inside is dark and gloomy, the floor unpaved, and every thing in and about it in a state of utter neglect, except some dozen saints, all in the gayest attire, and covered with artificial flowers. The capitals of the columns are in the true Norman style. Those at St. Georges are scarcely more fantastic, or more monstrous.--Between two of the arches of the choir, on the south side of this church, is the effigy of a man in his robes, coifed with a close cap, lying on an altar-tomb. The figure is much mutilated; but the style of the canopy-work over the head indicates that it is not of great antiquity. The feet of the statue rest upon a dog, who is busily occupied in gnawing a marrow-bone.--Dogs at the base of monumental effigies are common, and they have been considered as symbols of fidelity and honor; but surely the same is not intended to be typified by a dog thus employed; and it is not likely that his being so is a mere caprice of the sculptor's.--There is no inscription upon the monument; nor could we learn whom it is intended to commemorate. At but a short distance from Pont-Audemer, higher up the Risle, lies the yet smaller town of Montfort, near which are still to be traced, the ruins of a castle,[50] memorable for the thirty days' siege, which it supported from the army of Henry Ist, in 1122; and dismantled by Charles Vth, at the same time that he razed the fortifications of Pont-Audemer. The Baron of Montfort yet ranks in our peerage; though I am not aware that the nobleman, who at present bears the title, boasts a descent from any part of the family of _Hugh with a beard_, the owner of Montfort at the time of the conquest, and one of the Conqueror's attendants at the battle of Hastings. From Pont-Audemer we proceeded to Honfleur: it was market-day at the place which we had quitted, and the throng of persons who passed us on the road, gave great life and variety to the scene. There was scarcely an individual from whom we did not receive a friendly smile or nod, accompanied by a _bon jour_; for the practice obtains commonly in France, among the peasants, of saluting those whom they consider their superiors. Almost all that were going to market, whether male or female, were mounted on horses or asses; and their fruit, vegetables, butchers' meat, live fowls, and live sheep, were indiscriminately carried in the same way. About a league before we arrived at Honfleur, a distant view of the eastern banks of the river opened upon us from the summit of a hill, and we felt, or fancied that we felt, "the air freshened from the wave." As we descended, the ample Seine, here not less than nine miles in width, suddenly displayed itself, and we had not gone far before we came in sight of Honfleur. The mist occasioned by the intense heat, prevented us from seeing distinctly the opposite towns of Havre and Harfleur: we could only just discern the spire of the latter, and the long projecting line of the piers and fortifications of Havre. The great river rolls majestically into the British Channel between these two points, and forms the bay of Honfleur. About four miles higher up the stream where it narrows, the promontories of Quilleboeuf and of Tancarville close the prospect.--Honfleur itself is finely situated: valleys, full of meadows of the liveliest green, open to the Seine in the immediate vicinity of the town; and the hills with which it is backed are beautifully clothed with foliage to the very edge of the water. The trees, far from being stunted and leafless, as on the eastern coast of England, appear as if they were indebted to their situation for a verdure of unusual luxuriancy. A similar line of hills borders the Seine on either side, as far as the eye can reach. It was unfortunate for us, that we entered the town at low water, when the empty harbor and slimy river could scarcely fail to prepossess us unfavorably. The quays are faced with stone, and the two basins are fine works, and well adapted for commerce. This part of Honfleur reminded us of Dieppe; but the houses, though equally varied in form and materials, are not equally handsome.--Still less so are the churches; and a picturesque castle is wholly wanting.--In the principal object of my journey to Honfleur, my expectations were completely frustrated. I had been told at Rouen, that I should here find a very ancient wooden church, and our imagination had pictured to us one equally remarkable as that of Greensted, in Essex, and probably constructed in the same manner, of massy trunks of trees. With the usual anticipation of an antiquary, I imagined that I should discover a parallel to that most singular building; which, as every body knows, is one of the greatest architectural curiosities in England. But, alas! I was sadly disappointed. The wooden church of Honfleur, so old in the report of my informant, is merely a thing of yesterday, certainly not above two hundred and fifty years of age; and, though it is undeniably of wood, within and without, the walls are made, as in most of the houses in the town, of a timber frame filled with clay. There is another church in Honfleur, but it was equally without interest. Thus baffled, we walked to the heights above the town: at the top of the cliff was a crowd of people, some of them engaged in devotion near a large wooden crucifix, others enjoying themselves at different games, or sitting upon the neat stone benches, which are scattered plentifully about the walks in this charming situation. The neighboring little chapel of Notre Dame de Grace is regarded as a building of great sanctity, and is especially resorted to by sailors, a class of people who are superstitious, all the world over. It abounds with their votive tablets. From the roof and walls "Pendono intorno in lungo ordine i voti, Che vi portaro i creduli divoti." Among the pictures, we counted nineteen, commemorative of escape from shipwreck, all of them painted after precisely the same pattern: a stormy sea, a vessel in distress, and the Virgin holding the infant Savior in her arms, appearing through a black cloud in the corner,--In the Catholic ritual, the holy Virgin, is termed _Maris Stella_, and she is καÏ�' εξοÏ�ην [English. Not in Original: pre-eminently, especially, above all] the protectress of Normandy. Honfleur is still a fortified town; but it does not appear a place of much strength, nor is it important in any point of view. Its trade is inconsiderable, and its population does not amount to nine thousand inhabitants. But in the year 1450, while in the hands of our countrymen, it sustained a siege of a month's duration from the king of France; and, in the following century, it had the distinction, attended with but little honor, of being the last place in the kingdom that held out for the league. From Honfleur we would fain have returned by Sanson-sur-Risle and Foullebec, at both which villages M. Le Prevost had led us to expect curious churches; but our postillion assured us that the roads were wholly impassable. We were therefore compelled to allow Mr. Cotman to visit them alone, while we retraced a portion of our steps through the valley of the Risle, and then took an eastern direction to Bourg-Achard in our way to Rouen. Bourg-Achard was the seat of an abbey, built by the monks of Falaise, in 1143: it was originally dedicated to St. Lô; but St. Eustatius, the favorite saint of this part of the country, afterwards became its patron. Before the revolution, his skull was preserved in the sacristy of the convent, enchased in a bust of silver gilt[51]; and even now, when the relic has been consigned to its kindred dust, and the shrine to the furnace, and the abbey has been levelled with the ground, there remains in the parochial church a fragment of sculpture, which evidently represented the miracle that led to Eustatius' conversion.--The knight, indeed, is gone, and the cross has disappeared from between the horns of the stag; but the horse and the deer, are left, and their position indicates the legend.--The church of Bourg-Achard has been materially injured. The whole of the building, from the transept westward, has been taken down; but it deserves a visit, if only as retaining a _bénitier_ of ancient form and workmanship, and a leaden font. Of the latter, I send you a drawing. Leaden fonts are of very rare occurrence in England[52], and I never saw or heard of another such in France: indeed, a baptismal font of any kind is seldom to be seen in a French church, and the vessels used for containing the holy water, are in most cases nothing more than small basins in the form of escalop shells, affixed to the wall, or to some pillar near the entrance.--It is possible that the fonts were removed and sold during the revolution, as they were in our own country, by the ordinance of the houses of parliament, after the deposition of Charles Ist; but this is a mere conjecture on my own part. It is also possible that they may be kept in the sacristy, where I have certainly seen them in some cases. In earlier times, they not only existed in every church, but were looked upon with superstitious reverence. They are frequently mentioned in the decrees of ecclesiastical councils; some of which provide for keeping them clean and locked; others for consigning the keys of them to proper officers; others direct that they should never be without water; and others that nothing profane should be laid upon them[53]. [Illustration: Leaden Font at Bourg-Achard] As we were at breakfast this morning, a procession, attended by a great throng, passed our windows, and we were invited by our landlady to go to the church and see the wedding of two of the principal persons of the parish, We accepted the proposal; and, though the same ceremony has been witnessed by thousands of Englishmen, yet I doubt whether it has been described by any one.--The bride was a girl of very interesting appearance, dressed wholly in white: even her shoes were white, and a bouquet of white roses, jessamine, and orange-flowers, was placed in her bosom.--The mayor of the town conducted her to the altar. Previously to the commencement of the service, the priest stated aloud that the forms required by law, for what is termed the civil marriage, had been completed. It was highly necessary that he should do so; for, according to the present code, a minister of any persuasion, who proceeds to the religious ceremonies of marriage before the parties have been married by the magistrate, is subject to very heavy penalties, to imprisonment, and to transportation. Indeed, going to church at all for the purpose of marriage, is quite a work of supererogation, and may be omitted or not, just as the parties please; the law requiring no other proof of a marriage, beyond the certificate recorded in the municipal registry. After this most important preliminary, the priest exhorted every one present, under pain of excommunication, to declare if they knew of any impediment: this, however, was merely done for the purpose of keeping up the dignity of the church, for the knot was already tied as fast as it ever could be. He then read a discourse upon the sanctity of the marriage compact, and the excellence of the wedded state among the Catholics, compared to what prevailed formerly among the Jews and Heathens, who degraded it by frequent divorces and licentiousness. The parties now declared their mutual consent, and his reverence enjoined each to be to the other "comme un époux fidèle et de lui tenir fidélité en toutes choses."--The ring was presented to the minister by one of the acolytes, upon a gold plate; and, before he directed the bridegroom to place it upon the finger of the lady, he desired him to observe that it was a symbol of marriage.--During the whole of the service two other acolytes were stationed in front of the bride and bridegroom, each holding in his hands a lighted taper; and near the conclusion, while they knelt before the altar, a pall of flowered brocade was stretched behind them, as emblematic of their union. Holy water was not forgotten; for, in almost every rite of the Catholic church, the mystic sanctification by water and by fire continually occurs.--The ceremony ended by the priest's receiving the sacrament himself, but without administering it to any other individual present. Having taken it, he kissed the paten which had contained the holy elements, and all the party did the same: each, too, in succession, put a piece of money into a cup, to which we also were invited to contribute, for the love of the Holy Virgin.--They entered by the south door, but the great western portal was thrown open as they left the church; and by that they departed. * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 47: _Masson de St. Amand, Essais Historiques sur Evreux_, I. p. 39.] [Footnote 48: _Johnes' Translation_, 8vo, IV. p. 292.] [Footnote 49: See _Britten's Architectural Antiquities_, III. t. 2.] [Footnote 50: _Goube, Histoire de Normandie_, III. 249.] [Footnote 51: _Histoire de la Haute Normandie_, II. p. 319.] [Footnote 52: Mr. Gough, (See _Archæologia_, X. p. 187.) whose attention had been much directed to this subject, seems to have known only four fonts made of lead, in the kingdom;--at Brookland in Kent, Dorchester in Oxfordshire, Wareham in Dorsetshire, and Walmsford in Northamptonshire; but there are in all probability many more. We have at least four in Norfolk. He says, "they are supposed to be of high antiquity; and that at Brookland may have relation to the time of Birinus himself. To what circumstance the others are to be referred, or from what other church brought, does not appear."--The leaden fonts which I have seen, have all been raised upon a basis of brick or stone, like this at Bourg-Achard, and are all of nearly the same pattern.] [Footnote 53: See _Concilia Normannica_, II. pp. 56, 117, 403, 491, 508, &c] LETTER XX. MOULINEAUX--CASTLE OF ROBERT THE DEVIL--BOURG-THEROUDE--ABBEY OF BEC--BRIONNE. (_Brionne, July_, 1818.) Having accomplished the objects which we had proposed to ourselves in Rouen and its vicinity, we set out this morning upon our excursion to the western parts of the province. Our first stage, to Moulineaux, was by the same road by which we returned a few days ago from Bourg-Achard. It is a delightful ride, through the valley of the Seine, here of great width, stretching to our left in an uninterrupted course of flat open country, but, on our right hand, bordered at no great distance by the ridge of steep chalky cliffs which line the bank of the river. The road appears to have been a work of considerable labor: it is every where raised, and in some places as high as fifteen feet above the level of the fields on either side.--Agriculture in this district is conducted, as about Paris, upon the plan called by the French _la petite culture_: the fields are all divided into narrow strips; so that a piece of not more than two or three acres, frequently produces eight or ten different crops, some of grain, others of culinary vegetables, at the same time that many of these portions are planted with apple and cherry trees. The land is all open and uninclosed: not a fence is to be seen; nor do there even appear to be any balks or head-marks. Strangers therefore who come, like us, from a country entirely inclosed, cannot refrain from frequent expressions of surprise how it is that every person here is enabled to tell the limits of his own property. Moulineaux is a poor village, a mere assemblage of cottages, with mud walls and thatched roofs. But the church is interesting, though desecrated and verging to ruin. Even now the outside alone is entire. The interior is gutted and in a state of absolute neglect.--The building is of the earliest pointed style: its lancet-windows are of the plainest kind, being destitute of side pillars: in some of the windows are still remains of handsome painted glass.--Either the antiquaries in France are more honest than in England, or they want taste, or objects of this kind do not find a ready market. We know too well how many an English church, albeit well guarded by the churchwardens and the parson, has seen its windows despoiled of every shield, and saint, and motto; and we also know full well, by whom, and for whom, such ravages are committed. In France, on the contrary, where painted glass still fills the windows of sacred buildings, now employed for the meanest purposes, or wholly deserted, no one will even take the trouble of carrying it away; and the storied panes are left, as derelicts utterly without value.--The east end of the church at Moulineaux is semi-circular; the roof is of stone, handsomely groined, and the groinings spring from fanciful corbels. On either side of the nave, near the choir, is a recess in the wall, carved with tabernacle-work, and serving for a piscina. Recesses of this kind, though of frequent occurrence in English churches, do not often appear in France. Still less common are those elaborate screens of carved timber, often richly gilt or gorgeously painted, which separate the nave from the chancel in the churches of many of our smaller villages at home. The only one I ever recollect to have seen in France was at Moulineaux.--I also observed a mutilated pillar, which originally supported the altar, ornamented with escalop shells and fleurs-de-lys in bold relief. It reminded me of one figured in the _Antiquarian Repertory_, from Harold's chapel, in Battle Abbey[54]. Immediately after leaving Moulineaux, the road winds along the base of a steep chalk hill, whose brow is crowned by the remains of the famous castle of Robert the Devil, the father of Richard Fearnought. Robert the Devil is a mighty hero of romance; but there is some difficulty in discovering his historical prototype. Could we point out his _gestes_ in the chronicle, they would hardly outvalue his adventures, as they are recorded in the nursery tale. Robert haunts this castle, which appears to have been of great extent, though its ruins are very indistinct. The walls on the southern side are rents, and covered with brush-wood; and no architectural feature is discernible. Wide and deep fosses encircle the site, which is undermined by spacious crypts and subterraneous caverns.--The fortress is evidently of remote, but uncertain, antiquity: it was dismantled by King John when he abandoned the duchy. The historians of Normandy say that it was re-fortified during the civil wars; and the fact is not destitute of probability, as its position is bold and commanding. Bourg-Theroude, our next stage, is one of those places which are indebted to their names alone for the little importance they possess. At present, it is a small assemblage of mean houses, most of them inns; but its Latin appellation, _Burgus Thuroldi_, commemorates no less a personage than one of the preceptors of William the Conqueror, and his grand constable at the time when he effected the conquest of England.--The name of Turold occurs upon the Bayeux tapestry, designating one of the ambassadors dispatched by the Norman Duke to Guy, Earl of Ponthieu; and it is supposed that the Turold there represented was the grand constable[55].--The church of Bourg-Theroude, which was collegiate before the revolution, is at present uninteresting in every point of view. About half way from this place to Brionne, we came in sight of the remains of the celebrated abbey of Bec, situated a mile and half or two miles distant to our right, at the extremity of a beautiful valley. We had been repeatedly assured that scarcely one stone of this formerly magnificent building was left upon another; but it would have shewn an unpardonable want of curiosity to have passed so near without visiting it: even to stand upon the spot which such a monastery originally covered is a privilege not lightly to be foregone:-- "The pilgrim who journeys all day, To visit some far distant shrine; If he bear but a relic away, Is happy, nor heard to repine."-- And _happiness_ of this kind would on such an occasion infallibly fall to your lot and to mine. A love for botany or for antiquities would equally furnish _relics_ on a similar _pilgrimage_. As usual, the accounts which we had received proved incorrect. The greater part of the conventual edifice still exists, but it has no kind of architectural value. Some detached portions, whose original use it would be difficult now to conjecture, appear, from their wide pointed windows, to be of the fifteenth century. The other buildings were probably erected within the last fifty years.--The part inhabited by the monks is at this time principally employed as a cotton-mill; and, were it in England, nobody would suspect that it ever had any other destination. Of the church, the tower[56] only is in existence. I find no account of its date; though authors have been unusually profuse in their details of all particulars relating to this monastery. I am inclined to refer it to the beginning of the seventeenth century, in which case it was built shortly after the destruction of the nave. Its character is simple, solid elegance. Its ornaments are few, but they are selected and disposed with judgment. Each corner is flanked by two buttresses, which unite at top, and there terminate in a crocketed pinnacle. The buttresses are also ornamented with tabernacles of saints at different heights; and one of the tabernacles upon each buttress, about mid-way up the tower, still retains a statue as large as life, of apparently good workmanship. They were fortunately too high for the democrats to destroy with ease. The height of the tower is one hundred and fifty feet, as I found by the staircase of two hundred steps, which remains uninjured, in a circular turret attached to the south side. The termination of this turret is the most singular part of the structure: it is surmounted by a cap, considerably higher than the pinnacles, and composed, like a bee-hive, of a number of circles, each smaller than the one below it. A few ruined arches of the east end of the church, and of one of the side chapels are also existing. The rest is levelled with the ground, and has probably been in a great measure destroyed lately; for piles of wrought stones are heaped up on all sides. If historical recollections or architectural beauty could have proved a protection in the days of revolution, the church of Bec had undoubtedly stood. Ducarel, who saw it in its perfection, says it was one of the finest gothic structures in France; and his account of it, though only an abridgement of that given by Du Plessis, in his _History of Upper Normandy_, is curious and valuable.--Mr. Gough states the annual income of the abbey at the period of the revolution, to have exceeded twenty thousand crowns. Its patronage was most extensive: the monks presented to one hundred and sixty advowsons, two of them in the metropolis; and thirty other ecclesiastical benefices, as well priories as chapels, were in their gift[57].--Its possessions, as we may collect from the various charters and donations, might have led us to expect a larger revenue. The estates belonging to the monastery in England, prior to the reformation, were both numerous and valuable. Sammarthanus, author of the _Gallia Christiana_, says, in speaking of Bec, that, whether considered as to religion or literature, there was not, in the eleventh century, a more celebrated convent throughout the whole of Neustria. The founder of the abbey was Hellouin, sometimes called Herluin, a nobleman, descended by the mother's side from the Counts of Flanders, but he himself was a native of the territory of Brionne, and educated in the castle of Gislebert, earl of that district. Hellouin determined, at an early age, to withdraw himself from the court and from the world: it seems he was displeased or affronted by the conduct of the earl; and we may collect from the chroniclers, that it was not a very easy task in those times for an individual of rank, intent upon monastic seclusion, to carry his purpose into effect, and that still greater difficulties were to be encountered if he wished to put his property into mortmain. Hellouin was obliged to counterfeit madness, and at last to come to a very painful explanation with his liege lord; and, when he finally succeeded in obtaining the permission he craved, his establishment was so poor, that he was compelled to take upon himself the office of abbot, from an inability to find any other person who would accept it.--The monkish historians lavish their praises upon Hellouin. They assign to him every virtue under heaven; but they particularly laud him for his humility and industry: all day long he worked as a laborer in the building of his convent, whilst the night was passed in committing the psalter to memory. At this period of his life, a curious anecdote is recorded of him: curious in itself, as illustrative of the character of the man; and particularly curious, in being quoted as matter of commendation, and thus serving to illustrate the feelings of a great body of the community.--His mother, who shared in the pious disposition of her son, had attached herself to the convent to assist in the menial offices; and one day, while she was thus engaged, the building caught fire, and she perished in the flames; upon which, Hellouin, though bathed in tears, lifted up his hands to heaven, and gave thanks to God that his parent had been burned to death in the midst of an occupation of humility and piety! During the life of Hellouin, the abbey was twice levelled with the ground: on each occasion it rose more splendid from its ruins, and on each the site was changed, till at length it was fixed upon the spot from which its ruins are now vanishing. The whole of Normandy would scarcely furnish a more desirable situation. Under the prelacy of Hellouin, Bec increased rapidly in celebrity, and consequently in the number of its inmates: it was principally indebted for this increase to an accidental circumstance. Lanfranc, a native of Pavia, a lawyer in Italy, but a monk in France, after having visited various monasteries, and distinguished himself by defending the doctrine of the real presence, then impugned by Berengarius, established himself here in the year 1042, and immediately opened a school, which, to judge from the language of Ordericus Vitalis[58], seems to have been the first ever known in Normandy. Scholars from France, from England, and from Flanders, hastened to place themselves under his care; his fame, according to William of Malmesbury, went forth into the outer parts of the earth; and Bec, under his auspices, became a most celebrated resort of literature. To borrow the more copious account given by William of Jumieges--"report quickly spread the glory of Bec, and of its abbot, Hellouin, through every land. The clergy, the sons of dukes, the most eminent schoolmasters, the most powerful of the laity, and the nobility, all hastened hither. Many, actuated by love for Lanfranc, gave their lands to the convent. The abbey was enriched with ornaments, with possessions, and with noble inmates. Religion and learning increased; property of all kinds abounded; and the monks, who but a few years before, could scarcely command sufficient ground for the site of their own building, now saw their estates extend for many miles in a lengthening line."--Promotion followed the fame of Lanfranc, who soon became abbot of the royal monastery of St. Stephen, at Caen, and thence was translated to the archiepiscopal see of Canterbury. It was the rare good fortune of Bec, that the abbey furnished two successive metropolitans to the English church, both of them selected for their erudition, Lanfranc and Anselm. It is not a little remarkable, too, that both were Italians. Lanfranc, whilst archbishop of Canterbury, presided in the year 1077, at the dedication of the third church built at Bec. We may judge how far the abbey had at that time increased in consequence; for five bishops, one of them brother to the Conqueror, honored the ceremony with their presence; and the nobles and ladies of France, Normandy, and England crowded to the spot, to refresh their bodies by the pleasures of the festival, and their souls by endowments to the convent. In the fifteenth century, when our Henry Vth brought his victorious armies into France, the monks of Bec were reduced to a painful alternative. It was apprehended by the French monarch, that the monastery might be converted into a dépôt by the English; and they were commanded either to demolish the church, or to fortify it against the invaders. They naturally regarded the latter as the lesser evil; and the consequence was, that the abbey was scarcely put into a state of defence, when it was attacked by the enemy, and, after sustaining a siege for a month, was obliged to surrender. A great part of the monastic buildings were levelled to the ground; and the fortifications which had been so strangely affixed to them were also razed: meanwhile the monks suffered grievously from the contending parties: their sacristy was plundered; their treasury emptied; and they were themselves exposed to a variety of personal hardships. At the same time, also, the tomb of the Empress Maud[59], which faced the high altar, was destroyed, after having been stripped of its silver ornaments. Considering the number of illustrious persons who were abbots or patrons of Bec, and who had been elected from it to the superintendance of other monasteries, the church does not appear to have been rich in monuments. We read indeed of many individuals who were interred here belonging to the house of Neubourg, a family distinguished among the benefactors of the convent; and the records of the abbey speak also of the tomb of Richard of St. Leger, Bishop of Evreux; but the Empress was the only royal personage who selected this convent as the resting-place for her remains; and she likewise appears to have been the only eminent one, except Hellouin, the founder, who lay in the chapter-house, under a slab of black marble, with various figures of rude workmanship[60] carved upon it. His epitaph has more merit than the general class of monumental inscriptions:-- "Hunc spectans tumulum, titulo cognosce sepultum; Est via virtutis nôsse quis ipse fuit. Dum quater hic denos ævi venisset ad annos, Quæ fuerant secli sprevit amore Dei. Mutans ergò vices, mundi de milite miles Fit Christi subito, Monachus ex laïco. Hinc sibi, more patrum, socians collegia fratrum, Curâ, quâ decuit, rexit eos, aluit. Quot quantasque vides, hic solus condidit ædes, Non tàm divitiis quàm fidei meritis. Quas puer haud didicit scripturas postea scivit, Doctus ut indoctum vix sequeretur eum. Flentibus hunc nobis tulit inclementia mortis Sextilis quinâ bisque die decimâ. Herluine pater, sic cÅ�lica scandis ovantèr; Credere namque tuis hoc licet ex meritis." In number of inmates, extent of possessions, and possibly, in magnificence of buildings, other Norman monasteries may have excelled Bec: none equalled it in the prouder honor of being a seminary for eminent men and especially for those destined to the highest stations in the church. Lanfranc and Anselm were not the only two of its monks who were seated on the archiepiscopal throne at Canterbury. Two others, Theobald and Hubert obtained the same dignity in the following century; and Roger, the seventh abbot of Bec, enjoyed the still more enviable distinction of having been unanimously elected to fill the office of metropolitan, but of possessing sufficient firmness of mind to resist the attractions of wealth, and rank, and power. The sees of Rochester, Beauvais, and Evreux were likewise filled by monks from Bec; and it was here that many monastic establishments, both Norman and foreign, found their pastors. Three of our own most celebrated convents, those of Chester, Ely, and St. Edmund's Bury, received at different epochs their abbots from Bec; and during the prelacy of Anselm, the supreme pontiff himself selected a monk of this house as the prior of the distant convent of the holy Savior at Capua.--The village of Bec, which adjoins the abbey, is small and unimportant. I was returning to our carriage, when a soldier invited me to walk to a part of the monastic grounds (for they are very extensive) which is appropriated to the purpose of keeping up the true breed of Norman horses. The French government have several similar establishments: they consider the matter as one of national importance; and, as France has not yet produced a Duke of Bedford or a Mr. Coke, the state is obliged to undertake what would be much better effected by the energy of individuals.--A Norman horse is an excellent draft horse: he is strong, bony, and well proportioned. But the natives are not content with this qualified praise: they contend that he is equally unrivalled as a saddle-horse, as a hunter, and as a charger. In this part of the country the present average price of a hussar's horse is nineteen pounds; of a dragoon's thirty-four pounds; and of an officer's eighty pounds.--These prices are considered high, but not extravagant. France abounds at this time in fine horses. The losses occasioned by the revolutionary wars, and more especially by the disastrous Russian campaign, have been more than compensated by five years of peace, and by the horses that were left by the allied troops. An annual supply is also drawn from Mecklenburg and the adjacent countries. Importations of this kind are regarded as indispensable, to prevent a degeneration in the stock. A Frenchman can scarcely be brought to believe it possible; that we in England can preserve our fine breed of horses without having recourse to similar expedients; and if at last, by dint of repeated asseverations, you succeed in obtaining a reluctant assent, the conversation is almost sure to end in a shrug of the shoulders, accompanied with the remark--"Ah, vous autres Anglais, vous voulez toujours voler de vos propres ailes." As we approached Brionne, the face of the country became more uneven; and we passed an extensive tract of uncultivated chalk hills, resembling the downs of Wiltshire.--Brionne itself lies in a valley watered by the Risle: the situation is agreeable, and advantageous for trade. The present number of its inhabitants does not amount to two thousand; and there is no reason to apprehend that the population has materially decreased of late years. But in the times of Norman rule, Brionne was a town of more importance: it had then three churches, besides an abbey and a lazar-house. At present a single church only remains; and this is neither large, nor handsome, nor ancient, nor remarkable in any point of view. We found in it a monument of the revolution, which I never saw elsewhere, and which I never expected to see at all. The age of reason was a sadly irrational age.--The tablet containing the rights and duties of man, disposed in two columns, like the tables of the Mosaic law, is still suffered to exist in the church, though shorn of all its republican dignity, and degraded into the front of a pew. On the summit of a hill that overhangs the town, stood formerly the castle of the Earls of Brionne; and a portion of the building, though it be but an insignificant fragment, is still left. The part now standing consists of little more than two sides of the square dungeon, The walls, which are about fifty feet in height, appear crumbling and ragged, as they have lost the greater part of their original facing. Yet their thickness, which even now exceeds twelve feet, may enable them to bid defiance for many a century, to "the heat of the sun, and the furious winter's rages."--Nearly the half of one of the sides, which is seventy feet long, is occupied by three flat Norman buttresses, of very small projection. No arched door-way, no window remains; nor any thing, except these buttresses, to give a distinct character to the architecture: the hill is so overgrown with brush-wood, that though traces of foundation are discernible in almost every part of it, no clear idea can be formed of the dimensions or plan of the building. Its importance is sufficiently established by its having been the residence of a son or brother of Richard IInd, Duke of Normandy, on whose account, the town of Brionne, with the adjacent territory, was raised into an earldom. Historians speak unequivocally of its strength. During the reign of William the Conqueror, it was regarded as impregnable. This king was little accustomed to meet with disappointment or even with resistance; but the castle of Brionne defied his utmost efforts for three successive years. Under his less energetic successor, it was taken in a day. Its possessor, Robert, Earl of Brionne, felt himself so secure within his towers, that he ventured, with only six attendants, to oppose the whole army of the Norman Duke; but the besiegers observed that the fortress was roofed with wood; and a shower of burning missiles compelled the garrison to surrender at discretion.--The castle was finally dismantled by the orders of Charles Vth. Brionne is known in ecclesiastical history as the place where the council of the church was held, by which the tenets of Berengarius were finally condemned. It appears that the archdeacon of Angers, after some fruitless attempts to make converts among the Norman monks, took the bold resolution of stating his doctrines to the duke in person; and that the prince, though scarcely arrived at years of manhood, acted with so much prudence on the occasion, as to withhold any decisive answer, till he had collected the clergy of the duchy. They assembled at Brionne, as a central spot; and here the question was argued at great length, till Berengarius himself, and a convert, whom he had brought with him, trusting in his eloquence, were so overpowered by the arguments of their adversaries, that they were obliged to renounce their errors. The doctrine of the real presence in the sacrament, was thus incontrovertibly established; and it has from that time remained an undisputed article of faith in the Roman Catholic church. * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 54: Vol. III. p. 187.--The engraving in the _Antiquarian Repertory_ was made from a drawing in the possession of the late Sir William Burrell, Bart.] [Footnote 55: The word _Turold_, in the tapestry, stands immediately over the head of a dwarf, who is holding a couple of horses; and it has therefore been inferred by Montfaucon, (_Monumens de la Monarchie Française_, I. p. 378.) that he is the person thus denominated. But M. Lancelot, in the _Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions_, VI. p. 753, supposes Turold to be the ambassador who is in the act of speaking; and this seems the more probable conjecture. The same opinion is still more decidedly maintained by Father Du Plessis, in his _Histoire de la Haute Normandie_, II. p. 342.--"Sur une ancienne tapisserie de l'Eglise de Baieux, que l'on croit avoir été faite par ordre de la Reine Mathilde femme du Conquérant, pour représenter les circonstances principales de cette mémorable expédition, on lit distinctement le mot _Turold_ à côté d'un des Ambassadeurs, que Guillaume avoit envoiez au Comte de Ponthieu; et je ne doute nullement que ce Turold ne soit le même que le Connétable. Le sçavant Auteur des Antiquitez de notre Monarchie croit cependant que ce mot doit se rapporter à un Nain qui tient deux chevaux en bride derriere les Ambassadeurs; et il ajoute que ce Nain devoit être fort connu à la Conr du Duc de Normandie. On avoue que si c'est lui en effet qui doit s'appeller Turold, il devoit tenir aussi à la Cour de son Prince un rang distingué; sans quoi on n'auroit pas pris la peine de le désigner par son nom dans la tapisserie. On avoue encore que le nom de Turold est placé là de maniere qu'on peut à la rigueur le donner au Nain aussi bien qu'à l'un des deux Ambassadeurs; et comme le Nain est appliqué à tenir deux chevaux en bride, on pourrait croire enfin que c'est le Connétable, dont les titres de l'Abbaïe de Facan nous ont appris le nom: _Signum Turoldi Constabularii_. Mais le Nain est très-mal habillé, il a son bonnet sur la tête, et tourne le dos au Comte de Ponthieu, pendant que les deux Ambassadeurs noblement vêtus regardent ce Prince en face, et lui parlent découverts: trois circonstances qui ne peuvent convenir, ni au Connétable du Duc, ni à toute autre personne de distinction qui auroit tenu compagnie, ou fait cortege aux Ambassadeurs."] [Footnote 56: This tower is figured, but very inaccurately, by Gough, in his _Alien Priories_, I. p. 22.--The cupola which then surmounted it is now gone; and the cap to the turret, which served as the staircase, has strangely changed its shape.] [Footnote 57: _Alien Priories_, I. p. 24.] [Footnote 58: "Nam antea, sub tempore sex ducum vix ullus Normannorum liberalibus studiis adhæsit; nec doctor inveniebatur, donec provisor omnium, Deus, Normannicis oris Lanfrancum appulit. Fama peritiæ illius in totâ ubertim innotuit Europâ, unde ad magisterium ejus multi convenerunt de Franciâ, de Wasconiâ, de Britanniâ, necne Flandriâ."--_Duchesne, Scriptores Normanni_, p. 519.] [Footnote 59: A question always existed, whether the Empress was really buried here, or at the abbey of Ste Marie des Prés, at Rouen. Hoveden expressly says, that she was interred at Rouen: the chronicle of Bec, on the other hand, is equally positive in the assertion that her body was brought to Bec, and entombed with honor before the altar of the Virgin. The same chronicle adds that, in the year 1273, her remains were discovered before the high altar, sewed up in an ox's hide.--Still farther to substantiate their claim, the monks of Bec maintained that, in 1684, upon the occasion of some repairs being done to this altar, the bones of the empress were again found immediately under the lamp (which, in Catholic churches, is kept constantly burning before the holy sacrament,) and that they were deposited once more in the ground in a wooden chest, covered with lead.--The Empress was a munificent endower of monasteries, and was at all times most liberal towards Bec. William of Jumieges says, that it would be tedious to enumerate the presents she made to the abbey, but that the sight of them gave pleasure to those strangers who have seen the treasures of the most noble churches. His remarks on this matter, and his account of her arguments with her father, on the subject of her choice of Bec, as a place of her interment, deserve to be transcribed.--"Transiret illac hospes Græcus aut Arabs, voluptate traheretur eadem. Credimus autem, et credere fas est, æquissimum judicem omnium non solùm in futuro, verumetiam in præsenti seculo, illi centuplum redditurum, quod seruis suis manu sicut larga, ita devota gratantèr impendit. Ad remunerationem verò instantis temporis pertinere non dubium est, quòd, miserante Deo, sopita adversa valetudine, sanctitatem refouit, et Monachos suos, Monachos Beccenses, qui præ omnibus, et super omnes pro ipsius sospitate, jugi labore supplicandi decertando pene defecerant, aura prosperæ valetudinis ejus afflatos omninò redintegravit.--Nec supprimendum illud est silentio, imò, ut ita dicatur, uncialibus literis exaratum, seculo venturo transmittendum; quòd antequam convalesceret postulaverat patrem suum, ut permitteret eam in CÅ�nobio Beccensi humari. Quod Rex primo abnuerat, dicens non esse dignum, ut filia sua, Imperatrix Augusta, quæ semel et iterùm in urbe Romulea, quæ caput est mundi, per manus summi Pontificis Imperiali diademate processerat insignita, in aliquo Monasterio, licèt percelebri et religione et fama, sepeliretur; sed ad civitatem Rotomagensium, quæ metropolis est Normannorum, saltem delata, in Ecclesia principali, in qua et majores ejus, Rollonem loquor et Willelmum Longamspatam filium ipsius, qui Neustriam armis subegerunt, positi sunt, ipsa et poneretur. Qua deliberatione Regis percepta, illi per nuncium remandavit, animam suam nunquam fore lætam, nisi compos voluntatis suæ in hac duntaxat parte efficeretur.--O femina macte virtutis et consilii sanioris, paruipendens pompam secularem in corporis depositione! Noverat enim salubrius esse animabus defunctorum ibi corpora sua tumulari, ubi frequentiùs et devotiùs supplicationes pro ipsis Deo offeruntur. Victus itaque pater ipsius Augustæ pietate et prudentia filiæ, qui ceteros et virtute et pietate vincere solitus erat, cessit, et voluntatem, et petitionem ipsius de se sepelienda Becci fieri concessit. Sed volente Deo ut præfixum est, sanitati integerrimæ restituta convaluit."--_Duchesne, Scriptores Normanni_, p. 305.] [Footnote 60: _Histoire de la Haute Normandie_, II. p, 281.] LETTER XXI. BERNAT--BROGLIE--ORBEC--LISIEUX--CATHEDRAL--ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. (_Lisieux, July_, 1818.) Instead of pursuing the straight road from Brionne to this city, we deviated somewhat to the south, by the advice of M. Le Prevost; and we have not regretted the deviation. Bernay was once celebrated for its abbey, founded in the beginning of the eleventh century, by Judith, wife of Richard IInd, Duke of Normandy. Some of the monastic buildings are standing, and are now inhabited: they appear to have been erected but a short time before the revolution, and to have suffered little injury.--But the abbey church, which belonged to the original structure, is all desolate within, and all defaced without. The interior is divided into two stories, the lower of which is used as a corn market, the upper as a cloth hall. Thus blocked up and encumbered, we may yet discern that it is a noble building: its dimensions are grand, and in most parts it is a perfect specimen of the semi-circular style, except the windows and the apsis, which are of later dates. The pillars in the nave and choir are lofty, but massy: the capitals of some of them are curiously sculptured. On the lower member of the entablature of one capital there are still traces of an inscription; but it is so injured by neglect and violence, that we were unable to decipher a single word. The capital itself is fanciful and not devoid of elegance. [Illustration: Capital] The convent was placed under the immediate protection of the sovereign, by virtue of an ordinance issued by Philip Augustus[61], in 1280, at which time Peter, Count of Alençon, attempted to establish a claim to some rights affecting the monastery. He alleged a grant from a former monarch to one of his predecessors, by whom he asserted that the convent had been founded; and, in support of his claim, he urged its position within the limits of his territory. The abbot and monks resisted: they gave proof that the abbey of Bernay was really founded by the duchess; and therefore the king, after a full and impartial hearing, decided against the count, and declared that the advocation of the monastery was thenceforth to belong to himself and his successors in the dukedom for ever.--Judith died before the convent was entirely built, and the task of completing it devolved upon her widowed husband, whose charter, confirming the foundation, is still in existence. It begins by a recital of the pious motives[62] which urged the duchess to the undertaking; it expressly mentions her death while the building was yet unfinished; and, after detailing the various lands and grants bestowed on the abbey, it concludes by denouncing the anger of God, and a fine of two hundred pounds weight of gold upon those who disturb the establishment, "that they may learn to their confusion that the good deeds of their ancestors, undertaken for the love of God, are not to be undone with impunity." The parochial church at Bernay is uninteresting. The sculptures, however, which adorn the high altar, are relics saved from the destruction of the abbey of Bec. The Virgin Mary and Joseph are represented, contemplating the infant Jesus, who is asleep. The statues are all of the natural size. We saw many grave-stones from the same abbey, nine or ten feet long, and covered with monumental figures of the usual description, indented in the stone. These memorials were standing by the side of the church door, not for preservation, but for sale! And at a small chapel in the burial-ground near the town, we were shewn twelve statues of saints, which likewise came from Bec. They are of comparatively modern workmanship, larger than life, and carved in a good, though not a fine, style. In the same chapel is kept the common coffin for the interment of all the poor at Bernay. The custom of merely putting the bodies of persons of the lower class into coffins, when they are brought to the burial-ground, and then depositing them naked in their graves, prevails at present in this part of France as it did formerly in England.--In a place which must be the receptacle for many that were in easy, and for not a few that were in affluent, circumstances, it was remarkable that all lay indiscriminately side by side, unmarked by any monumental stone, or any sepulchral record.--Republican France proscribed distinctions of every description, and those memorials which tended to perpetuate distinctions beyond the limits of mortal existence, were naturally most unpardonable in the eyes of the apostles of equality. But doctrines of this nature have fallen into disrepute for more than twenty years; and yet the country church-yard remains as naked as when the guillotine would have been the reward of opposition to the tenets of the day. There are few more comfortless sights, than such a cemetery: it looks as if those by whom it is occupied regarded death as eternal sleep, and thought that the memory of man should terminate with the close of his life. However unlettered the muse, however hackneyed the rhyme, however misapplied the text, it is consolatory to see them employed. Man dwells with a melancholy satisfaction upon the tomb-stones of his relations and friends, and not of them alone, but of all whom he has known or of whom he has heard.--A mere _hic jacet_, with the name and years of him that sleeps beneath, frequently recals the most lively impressions; and he who would destroy epitaphs would destroy a great incitement to virtue.--In other parts of France tomb-stones, or crosses charged with monumental inscriptions, have re-appeared: at Bernay we saw only two; one of them commemorated a priest of the town; the other was erected at the public expence, to the memory of three gendarmes, who were killed at the beginning of the revolution, and before religion was proscribed, in the suppression of some tumult. At less than a mile from Bernay, in the opposite direction, is another church, called Notre Dame de la Couture, a name borrowed from the property on which it stands. We were induced to visit it, by the representation of different persons in the town, who had noticed our architectural propensities. Some assured us that "C'est une belle pièce;" others that "C'est une pièce qui n'est pas vilaine;" and all concurred in praising it, though some only for the reason that "les processions vont tout autour du choeur."--We found nothing to repay the trouble of the walk. Bernay contains upwards of six thousand inhabitants, the greater part of whom are engaged in manufacturing coarse woollen and cotton cloths; and the manufactures flourish, the goods made being principally for home consumption. It is the chief place of the _arrondissement_, and the residence of a sub-prefect.--Most of the houses are like those at Rouen, merely wooden frames filled with mortar, which, in several instances, is faced with small bricks and flints, disposed in fanciful patterns: here and there the beams are carved with a variety of grotesque figures. The lower story of all those in the high street retires, leaving room for a wooden colonnade, which shelters the passenger, though it is entirely destitute of all architectural beauty. The head-dress of the females at Bernay is peculiar, and so very archaic, that our chamber-maid at the inn appeared to deserve a sketch, full as much as any monumental effigy. [Illustration: Head-dress of females of Bernay] On our road between Bernay and Orbec, we stopped at the village of Chambrais, more commonly called Broglie. Before the revolution, it belonged to the noble family of that name, and it thence derived its familiar appellation. The former residence of the Seigneurs of Broglie, which is still standing, apparently uninjured, upon an adjoining eminence, has lately been restored to the present Maréchal Duc de Broglie. It looks like an extensive parish work-house, or like any thing rather than a nobleman's seat.--The village church is very ancient and still curious, though in parts considerably modernized. Unlike most churches of great antiquity, it is not built in the form of a cross, but consists only of a nave and choir, with side-aisles and an apsis, all on a small scale[63]. Towards the north, the nave is separated from the aisle by some of the largest and rudest piers I ever saw. They occupy full two-thirds of the width of the intervening arches, which are five feet wide, elliptic rather than semi-circular, and altogether without ornament of any kind. Above each of these arches is a narrow, circular-headed window, banded with a cylindrical pilaster; and, in most instances, a row of quatrefoils runs between the pillar and the window. The bases of the windows rest upon a string-course that extends round the whole building; and on this also, alternating with the windows, rest corbels, from which spring very short, clustered columns, intended to support the groinings of the roof. On the south side, the massy piers have been pared into comparatively slender pillars; and the arches are pointed, as are all the lower windows in the church.--The font is of stone, and ancient: it consists of a round basin, on a quadrangular pedestal, like many in England.--The west front of the church is peculiar. It is entered by a very wide, low, semi-circular door-way, of rude architecture, and quite unornamented. Above is a window corresponding with those in the clerestory; and, still higher, a row of interlaced arches, also semi-circular. A pointed arch, the receptacle for the statue of a saint, surmounts the whole; but this is, most probably, of a later æra, as evidently are the two lateral compartments, which terminate in slender spires of slate, and are separated from the central division by Norman buttresses. We stopped to dine at Orbec, a small and insignificant country town, formerly an appendage of the houses of Orléans and Navarre, with the title of a barony; but, more immediately before the revolution, the domain of the family of Chaumont. Its church is a most uncouth edifice: the plan is unusual; the entrance is in the north transept, which ends in a square high tower. Bernay, Orbec, and Lisieux, communicate only by cross roads, scarcely passable by a carriage, even at this season of the year. From Orbec to Lisieux the road runs by the side of the Touques, which, at Orbec, is no more than a rivulet. The beautiful green meadows in the valley, appear to repay the great care which is taken in the draining and irrigating of them. They are every where intersected by small trenches, in which the water is confined by means of sluices.--In this part of the country, we passed several flocks of sheep, the true _moutons du pays_, a large breed, with red legs and red spotted faces. Their coarse wool serves to make the ordinary cloth of the country, but is inapplicable to any of a finer texture. To remedy this deficiency, and, if possible, improve the local manufactures, some large flocks of Merino sheep were imported at the time when the French occupied Spain; and they are said to thrive. But it is only of late years that any attempts, have been made of the kind.--The Norman farmer, however careful about the breed of his horses, has altogether neglected his sheep; and this is the more extraordinary, considering that the prosperity of the province is inseparably connected with that of the manufactures, and that much of the value of the produce must of necessity depend upon the excellence of the material. His pigs are the very perfection of ugliness: it is no hyperbole to say, that, in their form, they partake as much of a greyhound as of an English pig.--These animals are sure to attract the gaze of our countrymen; and poor Trotter, in his narrative of the journey of Mr. Fox, expressed his marvel so often, as to call down upon himself the witty vengeance of one of our ablest periodical writers. Melons are cultivated on a great scale in the country about Lisieux. They grow here in the natural soil, occupying whole fields of considerable size, and apparently without requiring any extraordinary pains.--As we approached the city, the meadows, through which we passed, were mostly occupied as extensive bleaching-grounds. Lisieux is an industrious manufacturing town. Its ten thousand inhabitants find their chief employment in the making of the ordinary woollen cloths, worn by the peasantry of Normandy and of Lower Brittany. Linen and flannels are also manufactured here, though on a comparatively trifling scale. For trade of this description, Lisieux is well situated upon the banks of the Touques, a small river, which, almost immediately under the walls of the town, receives the waters of a yet smaller stream, the Orbec. A project is in agitation, and it is said that it may be carried into effect at an inconsiderable expence, of making the Touques navigable to Lisieux. At present, it is so no farther than the the little town of the same name as the river; and even this derives no great advantage from the navigation; for, however near its situation is to the mouth of the stream, it is approachable only by vessels of less than one hundred tons burthen.--It was at Touques that Henry Vth landed in France, in the spring of 1417, when the monarch, flushed with a degree of success as extraordinary as it was unexpected, quitted England with the determination of returning no more till the whole kingdom of France should be subjugated. The greater part of the houses in Lisieux are built of wood; and many of them are old, and most of them are mean; yet, on the whole, it is picturesque and handsome. Its streets are spacious, and contain several large buildings: it is surrounded with pleasant _boulevards_; and its situation, like that of most other Norman towns, is delightful.--In consequence of the revolution, the city has lost the privilege of being an episcopal see. Even when Napoléon, by virtue of the concordat of 1801, restored the Gallican church to its obedience to the the supreme Pontiff, the see of Lisieux was suppressed. The six suffragan bishops of ancient Normandy were at that time reduced to four, conformably to the number of the departments of the province; and Lisieux and Avranches merged in the more important dioceses of Bayeux and Coutances. The cathedral, now the parish church of St. Peter, derived, however, one advantage from the revolution. Another church, dedicated to St. Germain, which had previously stood immediately before it, so as almost to block up the approach, was taken down, and the west front of the cathedral was made to open upon a spacious square.--Solid, simple grandeur are the characters of this front, which, notwithstanding some slight anomalies, is, upon the whole, a noble specimen of early pointed architecture.--It is divided into three equal compartments, the lateral ones rising into short square towers of similar height. The southern tower is surmounted by a lofty stone spire, probably of a date posterior to the part below. The spire of the opposite tower fell in 1553, at which time much injury was done to the building, and particularly to the central door-way, which, even to the present day, has never been repaired.--Contrary to the usual elevation of French cathedrals, the great window over the principal entrance is not circular, but pointed: it is divided into three compartments by broad mullions, enriched with many mouldings. The compartments end in acute pointed arches.--In the north tower, the whole of the space from the basement story is occupied by only two tiers of windows. Each tier contains two windows, extremely narrow, considering their height; and yet, narrow as they are, each of them is parted by a circular mullion or central pillar. You will better understand how high they must be, when told that, in the southern tower, the space of the upper row is divided into three distinct tiers; and still the windows do not appear disproportionately short. They also are double, and the interior arches are pointed; but the arches, within which they are placed, are circular. In this circumstance lies the principal anomaly in the front of the cathedral; but there is no appearance of any disparity in point of dates; for the circular arches are supported on the same slender mullions, with rude foliaged capitals, of great projection, which are the most distinguishing characteristics of this style of architecture. The date of the building establishes the fact of the pointed arch being in use, not only as an occasional variation, but in the entire construction of churches upon a grand scale, as early as the eleventh century.--Sammarthanus tells us that Bishop Herbert, who died in 1049, began to build this church, but did not live to see it completed; and Ordericus Vitalis expressly adds, that Hugh, the successor to Herbert, upon his death-bed, in 1077, while retracing his past life, made use of these words:--"Ecclesiam Sancti Petri, principis apostolorum, quam venerabilis Herbertus, praedecessor meus, coepit, perfeci, studiosè adornavi, honorificè dedicavi, et cultoribus necessariisque divino servitio vasis aliisque apparatibus copiosè ditavi."--Language of this kind appears too explicit to leave room for ambiguity, but an opinion has still prevailed, founded probably upon the style of the architecture, that the cathedral was not finished till near the expiration of the thirteenth century. Admitting, however, such to be the fact, I do not see how it will materially help those who favor the opinion; for the building is far from being, as commonly happens in great churches, a medley of incongruous parts; but it is upon one fixed plan; and, as it was begun, so it was ended.--The exterior of the extremity of the south transept is a still more complete example of the early pointed style than the west front: this style, which was the most chaste, and, if I may be allowed to use the expression, the most severe of all, scarcely any where displays itself to greater advantage. The central window is composed of five lancet divisions, supported upon slender pillars: massy buttresses of several splays bound it on either side. The same character of uniformity extends over the interior of the building. On each side of the nave is a side-aisle; and, beyond the aisles, chapels. The pillars of the nave are cylindrical, solid, and plain. Their bases end with foliage at each corner, and foliage is also sculptured upon the capitals. The arches which they support are acute.--The triforium is similar in plan to the part below; but the capitals of the columns are considerably more enriched, with an obvious imitation of the antique model, and every arch encircles two smaller ones. In the clerestory the windows are modern.--The transepts appear the oldest parts of the cathedral, as is not unfrequently the case; whether they were really built before the rest, or that, from being less used in the services of the church, they were less commonly the objects of subsequent alterations. They are large; and each of them has an aisle on the eastern side. The architecture of the choir resembles that of the nave, except that the five pillars, which form the apsis, are slender and the intervening arches more narrow and more acute.--The Lady-Chapel, which is long and narrow, was built towards the middle of the fifteenth century, by Peter Cauchon, thirty-sixth bishop of Lisieux, who, for his steady attachment to the Anglo-Norman cause, was translated to this see, in 1429, when Beauvais, of which he had previously been bishop, fell into the hands of the French. He was selected, in 1431, for the invidious office of presiding at the trial of the Maid of Orléans. Repentance followed; and, as an atonement for his unrighteous conduct, according to Ducarel, he erected this chapel, and therein founded a high mass to the Holy Virgin, which was duly sung by the choristers, in order, as is expressed in his endowment-charter, to expiate the false judgment which he pronounced[64].--The two windows by the side of the altar in this chapel have been painted of a crimson color, to add to the effect produced upon entering the church; and, seen as they are, through the long perspective of the nave and the distant arches of the choir, the glowing tint is by no means unpleasing.--The central tower is open within the church to a considerable height: it is supported by four arches of unusual boldness, above which runs a row of small arches, of the same character as the rest of the building; and, still higher, on each side, are two lancet-windows.--The vaulting of the roof is very plain, with bosses slightly pendant and carved. [Illustration: Ancient Tomb in the Cathedral at Lisieux] At the extremity of the north transept is an ancient stone sarcophagus, so built into the wall, that it appears to have been incorporated with the edifice, at the period when it was raised. The style of the medallions which adorn it will be best understood by consulting the annexed sketch, which is very faithful, though taken under every possible disadvantage. The transept is now used as a school; and the little filthy imps, who are there taught to drawl out their catechisms, continued swarming round the feverish artist, during the progress of the drawing. The character of the heads, the crowns, and the disposition of the foliage, may be considered as indicating that it is a production, at least of the Carlovingian period, if it be not indeed of earlier date. I believe it is traditionally supposed to have been the tomb of a saint, perhaps St. Candidus; but I am not quite certain whether I am accurate in the recollection of the name.--Above are two armed statues, probably of the twelfth or thirteenth centuries. These have been engraved by Willemin, in his useful work, _Les Monumens Français_, under the title of _Two Armed Warriors, in the Nave of the Cathedral at Lisieux_; and both are there figured as if in all respects perfect, and with a great many details which do not exist, and never could have existed, though at the same time the draftsman has omitted the animals at the feet of the statues, one of which is yet nearly entire.--This may be reckoned among the innumerable proofs of the disregard of accuracy which pervades the works of French antiquaries. A French designer never scruples to sacrifice accuracy to what he considers effect.--Willemin describes the monuments as being in the nave of the church. I suspect that he has availed himself of the unpublished collection of Gaignat, in this and many other instances. It is evident that originally the statues were recumbent; but I cannot ascertain when they changed their position.--No other tombs now exist in the cathedral: the brazen monument raised to Hannuier, an Englishman, the marble that commemorated the bishop, William d'Estouteville, founder of the _Collège de Lisieux_ at Paris, that of Peter Cauchon in the Lady-Chapel, and all the rest, were destroyed during the revolution. The diocese of Lisieux was a more modern establishment than any other in Normandy. Even those who are most desirous to honor it by antiquity, do not venture to date its foundation higher than the middle of the sixth century. Ordericus Vitalis, a monk of the province, suggests with some reason that we ought not to be hasty in forming our judgment upon these subjects; for that, owing to the destruction caused by the Norman pirates and the abominable negligence (_damnabilis negligentia_) of those to whom the care of the records of religious houses had subsequently been intrusted, many documents had been irretrievably lost.--The see of Lisieux was also peculiarly unfortunate, in having twice been in a state of anarchy, and on each occasion for a period of more than a century. The series of its prelates is interrupted from the year 670 to 853, and again from 876 to 990. It is rather extraordinary, that no one of the Lexovian bishops was ever admitted by the church into the catalogue of her saints. Many of them were prelates of unquestionable merit. Freculfus, in the ninth century, was a patron of literature, and himself an author; Hugh of Eu, grandson of Richard, Duke of Normandy, was one of the most illustrious ecclesiastics of his day; Gilbert is described by Ordericus Vitalis as having been a man of exemplary charity, and deeply versed in all sciences, though it is admitted that he was somewhat too much addicted to worldly pleasures, and not averse from gambling; and Arnulf, whose letters and epigrams are preserved among the manuscripts of the Vatican, was a prelate who would have done honor to St. Peter's chair.--All these were bishops of Lisieux, during the ages when canonization was not altogether so unfrequent as in our days. Arnulf particularly distinguished himself by taking a leading part in the principal transactions of the times. He accompanied the crusaders to the holy land in 1147; five years subsequently he officiated at the marriage of Henry Plantagenet with Eleanor of Guyenne, the repudiated wife of Louis le Jeune, which was performed in his cathedral; he assisted at the coronation of the same king, by whom he was shortly afterwards employed in a mission of great importance at Rome; and he interposed to settle the differences between that sovereign and Thomas à Becket; and though he espoused the part of the prelate, he had the good fortune to retain the favor of the monarch. A life thus eventful ended with the conviction that all was vanity!--Arnulf, disgusted with sublunary honors, abdicated his see and retired to a monastery at Paris, where he died.--One of the immediate successors of this prelate, William of Rupierre, was the ambassador of Richard Coeur-de-Lion to the Pope; and he pleaded the cause of his sovereign against Walter, Archbishop of Rouen, on the occasion of the differences that originated from the building of Château Gaillard. He also resisted the power usurped by King John within the city and liberties of Lisieux, and finally obtained a sentence from the Norman court of exchequer, whereby the privileges of the dukes of the province were restricted to what was called the _Placitum Spathæ_, consisting of the right of billetting soldiers, of coining money, and of hearing and determining in cases of appeal. The decision is honorable both to the independence of the court, and the vigor of the prelate.--In times nearer to our own, a bishop of Lisieux, Jean Hennuyer, obtained a very different distinction. Authors are strangely at variance whether this prelate is to be regarded as the protector or the persecutor of the protestants. All agree that his church suffered materially from the excesses of the Huguenots, in 1562, and that, on the following year, he received public thanks from the Cardinal of Bourbon, for the firmness with which he had opposed them; but the point at issue is, whether, after the massacre of St. Bartholomew, ten years subsequently, he withstood the sanguinary orders from the court to put the Huguenots to the sword, or whether he endeavored, as far as lay in his power, to forward the pious labor of extirpating the heretics, but was himself effectually resisted by the king's own lieutenant.--Sammarthanus tells us that the first of these traditions rests solely upon the authority of Anthony Mallet[65] but it obtained general credence till within the last three years, when a very well-informed writer, in the _Mercure de France_, and subsequently in the article _Hennuyer_ in the _Bibliographie Universelle_, espoused, and has apparently established, the opposite opinion. We visited only one other of the churches in Lisieux, that of St. Jacques, a large edifice, in a bad style of pointed architecture, and full of gaudy altars and ordinary pictures. On the outside of the stalls of the choir towards the north is some curious carving; but I should scarcely have been induced to have spoken of the building, were it not for one of the paintings, which, however uninteresting as a piece of art, appears to possess some historical value. It represents how the bones of St. Ursinus were miraculously translated to Lisieux, under the auspices of Hugh the Bishop, in 1055; and it professes, and apparently with truth, to be a copy, made in the seventeenth century, from an original of great antiquity. The legend relating to the relics of this saint, is noticed by no author with whom I am acquainted, nor do I find him mentioned any where in conjunction with the church of Lisieux, or with any other Norman diocese.--But the extraordinary privilege granted to the canons of the cathedral, of being Earls of Lisieux, and of exercising all civil and criminal jurisdiction within the earldom, upon the vigil and feast-day of St. Ursinus, in every year, is most probably connected with the tradition commemorated by the picture. The actual existence of the privilege, in modern times, we learn from Ducarel; who also details at length the curious ceremonies with which the claim of it was accompanied. The exercise of these rights was confirmed by a compact between the canons and the bishop, who, prior to the revolution, united the secular coronet of an earl with the episcopal mitre, and bore supreme sway in all civil and ecclesiastical polity, during the remaining three hundred and sixty-three days in the year. * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 61: This ordinance is preserved by Du Monstier in the _Neustria Pia_, p. 400.] [Footnote 62: The preamble of the charter is as follows:--"Nulli dubium videri debet futuros esse haeredes Regni coelestis, et cohaeredes Dei, qui Christum haeredem sui facientes, eorum, quæ in hujus vitae peregrinatione, quasi a quadam paterna haereditate possident, locis ea Divino cultui deditis mancipare non dubitant. Ad quam rem, nostram firmat fidem calix aquæ frigidae, qui, juxta Evangelicum verbum, suo pollet munere. Non ergò divini muneris gratia privari credendi sunt, qui Ecclesiasticis obsequiis, etsi officio non intersunt, rerum tamen suarum admistratione, Divini officii sustentant ministros: ea spe temporalem subministrantes alimoniam, ut sic solummodò coelestibus reddant intentos, qui coelestis Regis assiduo constituuntur invigilare obsequio, participes fiant ejusmodi beneficii omnimodò."--_Neustria Pia_, p. 398.] [Footnote 63: The following are the dimensions of the building, in English feet:-- LENGTH. WIDTH. Nave 54 15 Choir 45 15 North aisle 7 South ditto 15 ] [Footnote 64: _Anglo-Norman Antiquities_, p. 47.] [Footnote 65: "Sed ne quid omittam eorum etiam quæ unum Antonium _Mallet_ habent auctorem, anno 1572, cum prorex urbis Lexoviensis Livarotus a Carolo rege literas accepisset, quibus qui Lexovii infecti erant hæresi occidi omnes jubebantur per eos dies quibus princeps civitas cruore ejus insaniæ hominum commaduerat, easque communicasset episcopo: Neque sum passurus, inquit præsul, oves meas, et quamquam evagatas Christi caula, meas tamen adhuc, necdum desperatas, gladio trucidari. Referente contra prorege imperio se mandatoque urgeri principis; quod si posthabeatur, omnem esse periculi aleam in caput suum moriendique necessitatem redituram: Et polliceor, inquit episcopus, illa te eximendum, postulantique cautionem, præsul consignatum manu sua scriptum tradidit, fidem datam confirmans. Qua illico publicata clementia, et ad errantes oves perlata, sollicitudine præsulis vigilantis circa gregis commissi sibi salutem et conservationem, rediere sensim in ecclesiæ sinum omnes quotquot Lexovii per ea tempora novum istud fataleque delirium dementarat, nec ultra ibidem diu visi qui a recta fide aberrarent."--_Gallia Christiana_, p. 802.] LETTER XXII. SITE AND RUINS OF THE CAPITAL OF THE LEXOVII--HISTORY OF LISIEUX--MONASTERIES OF THE DIOCESE--ORDERICUS VITALIS--M. DUBOIS--LETTER FROM THE PRINCESS BORGHESE. (_Lisieux, July_, 1818.) Lisieux represents one of the most ancient capitals of the primitive tribes of Gaul. The Lexovii, noticed by Julius Cæsar, in his _Commentaries_, and by other authors, who were almost contemporary with the Roman conqueror, are supposed by modern geographers to have occupied a territory nearly co-extensive with the bishopric of Lisieux; and it may be remarked, that the bounds of the ancient bishoprics of France were usually conterminal with the Roman provinces and prefectures. The capital of the Lexovii was called the _Neomagus_ or _Noviomagus Lexoviorum_; and no doubt ever was entertained but that the present city occupied the same site, till an accidental discovery, in the year 1770, proved the contrary to be the fact.--About that time a _chaussée_ was formed between Lisieux and Caen; and, in the course of some excavations, which were made under the direction of M. Hubert, the superintending engineer, for the purpose of procuring stone, the laborers opened the foundations of some ruined buildings scattered over a field, called _les Tourettes_, about three-quarters of a mile from the former town. The character of these foundations was of a nature to excite curiosity: they were clearly the work of a remote age, and various specimens of ancient art were dug up amongst the ruins. The extent of the foundations, which spread over a space four times as large as the plot occupied by modern Lisieux left no doubt but that Danville, and all other geographers, must have been mistaken with respect to the position assigned by them to the ancient Neomagus. M. Hubert drew a plan of the ruins, and accompanied it with an historical memoir; but unfortunately he was a man little capable of prosecuting such researches; and though M. Mongez, in his report to the National Institute[66], eulogized the map as exact, and the memoir as excellent, they were both of them extremely faulty. It was reserved for M. Louis Dubois, of whom I shall have occasion to speak again before I close this letter, to repair the omissions and rectify the mistakes of M. Hubert, and he has done it with unremitting zeal and extraordinary success. The researches of this gentleman, among the remains of Neomagus Lexoviorum, have already brought to light a large number of valuable medals, both in silver and bronze, as well as a considerable quantity of fragments of foreign marble, granite, and porphyry, some of them curiously wrought. The most important of his discoveries has been recently made: it is that of a Roman amphitheatre, in a state of great perfection, the grades being covered only by a thin layer of soil, which a trifling expence of time and labor will effectually remove. Such vestiges prove that Neomagus must have been a place of importance; and, like the other Gallo-Roman cities, it would probably have maintained its honors under the Franks; but about the middle of the fourth century, the Saxons, swarming from the mouths of the Elbe and Weser, laid waste the coasts of Belgium and of Neustria, and finally established themselves in that portion of northern Gaul called the _Secunda Lugdunensis_, which thence obtained, in the _Notitia Imperii_, the title of the _Littus Saxonicum_.--In the course of these incursions, it is supposed that Neomagus was utterly destroyed by the invaders. None of the medals dug up within the precincts of the town, or in its neighborhood, bear a later date than the reign of Constantine; and, though the city is recorded in the _Itinerary of Antoninus_, no mention of it is to be found in the curious chart, known by the name of the _Tabula Peutingeriana_, formed under the reign of Theodosius the Great; so that it then appears to have been completely swept away and forgotten. The new town of Lisieux and the bishopric most probably arose together, towards the close of the sixth century; and the city, like other provincial capitals in Gaul, took the name of the tribe by whom the district had been peopled. It first appears in history under the appellation of _Lexovium_ or _Lexobium_: in the eleventh century, when Ordericus Vitalis composed his history, it was called _Luxovium_; and soon after it became _Lixovium_, and _Lizovium_, which, gallicised, naturally passed into _Lyzieulx_, or, as it is now written, _Lisieux_. The city was ravaged by the Normans about the year 877, in the course of one of their predatory excursions from Bayeux: it again felt their vengeance early in the following century, when Rollo, after taking Bayeux by storm, sacked Lisieux at the head of his army on his way to Rouen. The conqueror was not put in possession of the Lexovian territory by Charles the Simple till 923, eleven years after the rest of Neustria had been ceded to him. United to the duchy, Lisieux enjoyed a short respite from the calamities of war; nor does it appear to have borne any prominent part in the transactions of the times. The name, indeed, of the city occurs as the seat of the council held for the purpose of degrading Malgerius from the primacy of Normandy; but, except on this occasion, Lisieux is scarcely mentioned till the first year of the twelfth century, when it was the seat of rebellion. Ralph Flambart, bishop of Durham, a prelate of unbounded arrogance, had fled from England, and joined Duke Robert, then in arms against his brother. Raising the standard of insurrection, he fixed himself at Lisieux, took forcible possession of the town, and invested his son, only twelve years old, with the mitre[67], while he himself exercised despotic authority over the inhabitants. At length, he purchased peace and forgiveness, by opening the gates to his lawful sovereign, after the battle of Tinchbray.--In the middle of October, in the same year, Henry returned to Lisieux, and there held an assembly of the Norman nobility and prelates, who proclaimed peace throughout the duchy, enacted sundry strict regulations to prevent any infringement of the laws, and decreed that Robert, the captive duke, should be consigned to an English prison.--Two years subsequently, another council was also assembled at Lisieux, by the same sovereign, and for nearly the same objects; and again, in 1119, Henry convened his nobles a third time at Lisieux, when this parliament ratified the peace concluded at Gisors, six years previously, and witnessed the marriage[68] of the king's son, William Adelin, with Matilda, daughter of Fulk, earl of Anjou. Historical distinction is seldom enviable:--in the wars occasioned by the usurpation of Stephen, Lisieux once more obtained an unfortunate celebrity. The town was attacked in 1136, by the forces of Anjou, under the command of Geoffrey Plantagenet, husband of the Empress Maud, joined by those of William, Duke of Poitiers; and the garrison, consisting of Bretons, seeing no hope of effectual resistance or of rescue, set fire to the place to the extreme mortification of the invaders, who, in the language of the chronicles of the times, "when they beheld the city and all its wealth a prey to the flames, waxed exceedingly wroth, at being deprived of the spoil; and grieved sorely for the loss of the booty which perished in the conflagration."--The town, however, was not so effectually ruined, but that, during the following year, it served King Stephen as a rallying point, at which to collect his army to march against his antagonist.--In 1169, it was distinguished by being selected by Thomas à Becket, as the place of his retirement during his temporary disgrace. History from this time forward relates but little concerning Lisieux. Though surrounded with walls during the bishopric of John, who was promoted to the see early in the twelfth century, the situation of the town, far from the coast or from the frontiers of the province, rendered the inhabitants naturally unwarlike, and caused them in general to submit quietly to the stronger party.--Brito, in his _Philippiad_, says that, when Philip Augustus took Lisieux, in 1213, the Lexovians, destitute of fountains, disputed with the toads for the water of the muddy ditches. His mentioning such a fact is curious, as shewing that public fountains were at that early period of frequent occurrence in Normandy.--Our countrymen, in the fifteenth century, acted with great rigor, to use the mildest terms, towards Lisieux. Henry, after landing at Touques, in 1417, entered the town, in the character of an enraged enemy, not as the sovereign of his people: he gave it up to plunder; and even the public archives were not spared. The cruelty of our English king is strongly contrasted by the conduct of the Count de Danois, general of the army of Charles VIIth, to whom the town capitulated in 1449. Thomas Basin, then bishop, negociated with such ability, that, according to Monstrelet, "not the slightest damage was done to any individual, but each peaceably enjoyed his property as before the surrender." The most celebrated monasteries within the diocese of Lisieux were the Benedictine abbeys of Bernay, St. Evroul, Preaux, and Cormeilles.--Cormeilles was founded by William Fitz-Osborne, a relation to William the Conqueror, at whose court he held the office of sewer, and by whom he was promoted to the earldom of Hereford. Its church and monastic buildings had so far gone to ruin, in the last century, as to call forth a strong remonstrance from Mabillon[69]: they were afterwards repaired by Charles of Orléans, who was appointed abbot in 1726.--The abbey of Preaux is said to have existed prior to the invasion of the Normans; but its earliest records go no farther back than the middle of the eleventh century, when it was restored by Humphrey de Vetulis, who built and inclosed the monastery about the year 1035, at which time Duke Robert undertook his pilgrimage to the Holy Land. This abbey, according to the account given by Gough, in his _Alien Priories_, presented to thirty benefices, and enjoyed an annual revenue of twenty thousand livres.--Among its English lands which were considerable, was the priory of Toft-Monks in our own immediate vicinity: the name, as you know, remains, though no traces of the building are now in existence. The third abbey, that of St. Evrau or St. Evroul, called in Latin, _Monasterium Uticense_, was one of the most renowned throughout Normandy. The abbey dates its origin from St. Evroul himself, a nobleman, who lived in the reign of Childebert, and was attached to the palace of that monarch, "from which," to use the words of the chronicles, "he made his escape, as from shipwreck, and fled to the woods, and entered upon the monastic life."--The legend of St. Ebrulfus probably savors of romance, the almost inseparable companion of traditional, and particularly of monastic, history: it is safer, therefore, to be contented with referring the foundation of the monastery to the tenth century, when William Gerouis, after having been treacherously deprived of his sight and otherwise maimed, renounced the world; and, uniting with his nephews, Hugh and Robert de Grentemaisnil, brought considerable possessions to the endowment of this abbey. The abbey was at all times protected by the especial favor of the kings of France. No payment or service could be demanded from its monks; they acknowledged no master without their own walls, besides the sovereign himself; they were entitled to exemption from every kind of burthen; and they had the privilege of being empowered to castellate the convent, and to compel the people of the surrounding district to contribute their assistance for the purpose. St. Evroul, however, principally claims our attention, as the sanctuary where Ordericus Vitalis, to use his own expressions, "delighted in obedience and poverty."--This most valuable writer was an Englishman; his native town being Attingesham, on the Severn, where he was born in the year 1075. He was sent to school at Shrewsbury, and there received the first rudiments, both of the _humanities_ and of ecclesiastical education. In the tenth year of his age, his father, Odelerius, delivered the boy to the care of the monk Rainaldus. The weeping father parted from the weeping son, and they never saw each other more. Ordericus crossed the sea, and arrived in Normandy, an exile, as he describes himself, and "hearing, like Joseph in Egypt, a language which he understood not." In the eleventh year of his age, he received the tonsure from the hands of Mainerius, the abbot of St. Evroul. In the thirty-third year of his age, he was ordained a priest; and thenceforward his life wore away in study and tranquillity. Aged and infirm, he completed his _Ecclesiastical History_, in the sixty-seventh year of his age; and this great and valuable work ends with his auto-biography, which is written in an affecting strain of simplicity and piety.--The Ecclesiastical History of Ordericus is divided into parts: the first portion contains an epitome of the sacred and profane history of the world, beginning with the incarnation, and ending with Pope Innocent IInd. The second, and more important division, contains the history of Normandy, from the first invasion of the country, down to the year 1141.--Though professedly an ecclesiastical historian, yet Ordericus Vitalis is exceedingly copious in his details of secular events; and it is from these that his chronicle derives its importance and curiosity. It was first published by Duchesne, in his collection of Norman historians, a work which is now of rare occurrence, and it has never been reprinted. Valuable materials for a new edition were, however, collected early in the eighteenth century, by William Bessin, a monk of St. Ouen; and these, before the revolution, were preserved in the library of that abbey. Bessin had been assisted in the task by Francis Charles Dujardin, prior of St. Evroul, who had collated the text, as published in the collection of Norman historians, with the original manuscript in his own monastery, to which latter Duchesne unfortunately had not access, but had been obliged to content himself with a copy, now in the Royal Library at Paris. It is to be hoped, that the joint labors of Bessin and Dujardin may still be in existence, and may come to light, when M. Liquet shall have completed the task of arranging the manuscripts in the public library at Rouen. The manuscript which belonged to St. Evroul, and was always supposed to be an autograph from the hands of Ordericus Vitalis himself, was discovered during the revolution among a heap of parchments, thrown aside as of no account, in some buildings belonging to the former district of Laigle. It is now deposited in the public library of the department of the Orne, but unfortunately, nearly half the leaves of the volume are lost. The earliest part of what remains is towards the close of the seventh book, and of this only a fragment, consisting of eight pages, is left. The termination of the seventh book, and the whole of the eighth are wanting. From the ninth to the thirteenth, both of these inclusive, the manuscript is perfect. A page or two, however, at the end of the work, which contained the author's life, has been torn out.--At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the manuscript was complete; for it is known that, at that time, a monk of St. Evroul made a transcript of it, which extended through four volumes in folio. These volumes were soon dispersed. Two of them found their way to Rouen, where they were kept in the library of St. Ouen: the other two were in that of the abbey of St. Maur de Glandefeuille, on the Loire. A third, though incomplete, copy of the original manuscript was also known to exist in France before the revolution. It formerly belonged to Coaslin de Camboret, Bishop of Metz, by whom it was presented, together with four thousand manuscripts, to the monks of St. Germain des Prés at Paris. But the greater part of the literary treasures of this abbey fell a prey to the flames in July, 1793, and it is feared that the copy of Ordericus perished at that time. The original code from St. Evroul, was discovered by M. Louis Dubois, whom I have already mentioned in connection with the ruins of Neomagus. He is an antiquary of extensive knowledge and extraordinary zeal. His _History of Lisieux_, which he has long been preparing for the press, will be a work of great curiosity and interest. The publication of it is for the present suspended, whilst he superintends an edition of the _Vaux-de-Vires_, or _Vaux de villes_, of Olivier Basselin, an early Norman poet. Meanwhile, M. Dubois still continues his researches among the foundations of the ancient city, from which he has collected a number of valuable relics. Some of the most pleasant and instructive hours of my tour have been spent in his society; and, whilst it was under his guidance that I visited the antiquities of Lisieux, his learning assisted me in illustrating them. M. Dubois likewise possesses a large collection of original autograph letters, which I found much pleasure in perusing. During the reign of Napoléon, he held the office of librarian of Alençon, a situation that afforded him the opportunity of meeting with many literary curiosities of this nature. Among others, which thus fell into his hands, was the following letter, written by the Princess Borghese, sister to the Emperor, and addressed to the Empress Marie-Louise, by whom it was received, while on a tour through the western departments. I annex a transcript of this epistle; for, although it has no immediate connection with the main subject of our correspondence, it yet is a very singular contribution towards the private history of the dynasty of Napoléon.--The odd mixture of caudle-cup compliment and courtly flattery, is sufficiently amusing. I have copied it, word for word, letter for letter, and point for point; for, as we have no other specimen of the epistles of her imperial highness, I think it right to preserve all the peculiarities of the original; and, by, way of a treat for the collectors of autographs, I have added a fac-simile of her signature. Madame et tres chere SÅ�ur, je recois par le Prince Aldobrandini la lettre de V.M. et la belle tasse dont elle a daigné, le charger pour moi au nom de L'empereur, je remercie mille fois votre aimable bonté, et j'ose vous prier ma tres chere sÅ�ur d'être aupres de L'empereur l'interprete de ma reconnaissance pour cette marque de souvenir.--je fais parler beaucoup le Prince et la Princesse Aldobrandini sur votre santé, sur votre belle grossesse, je ne me lasse pas de les interroger, et je suis heureuse d'apprendre que vous vous portés tres bien, que rien ne vous fatigue, et que vous avés la plus belle grossesse qu'il soit possible de desirer, combien je desire chere sÅ�ur que tous nos vÅ�ux soient exaucés, ne croyés cependant pas que si vous nous donnés une petite Princesse je ne l'aimerais pas. non, elle nous serait chere, elle resemblerait a V.M. elle aurait sa douceur, son amabilité, et ce joli caractere qui la fait cherir de ceux qui out le bonheur de la Conaitre--mais ma chère sÅ�ur j'ai tort de m'apesantir sur les qualités dont serait douée cette auguste princesse, vous nous donnerés d'abord un prince un petit Roi de Rome, jugés combien je le desire nos bons toscans prient pour vous, ils vous aiment et je n'ai pas de peine a leur inspirer ce que je sens si vivement. je vous remercie ma tres chere sÅ�ur de l'interest que vous prenez a mon fils, tout le monde dit qu'il ressemble a L'empereur. cela me Charme il est bien portant a present, et j'espere qu'il sera digne de servir sous les drapeaux de son auguste oncle.--adieu ma chere sÅ�ur soyés assés bonne pour Conserver un souvenir a une sÅ�ur qui vous est tendrement attachée. Napoléon ne cesse de lire la lettre pleine de bonté que V.M. a daigné lui ecrire, cela lui a fait sentir le plaisir qu'il y avait a savoir lire, et l'encourage dans ses etudes--je vous embrasse et suis, Madame et tres chere SÅ�ur de V.M. La plus attachée [Illustration: Autograph of the Princess Borghese] Pitti le 18 janvier 1811 * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 66: See _Magazin Encyclopédique, for_ 1802, III. p. 504.] [Footnote 67: This transaction appears to have been peculiarly flagrant: a long detail of the circumstances, accompanied by several letters, very characteristic of the feeling and church-government of the times, is preserved in the _Concilia Normannica_, p. 520.--The account concludes in the following words:--"Exhorruit ad facinus, non Normannia solum et Anglia, quibus maledicta progenies notissima erat, sed et universa Gallia, et a singulis ad Apostolicum Paschalem delatum est. Nec tamen utrique simul ante quinquienniuin sordes de domo Dei propulsare prævaluerunt. Ceteris ferventiùs institit Yvo Carnotensis Antistes, conculcatæ disciplinæ ecclesiasticæ zelo succensus; in tantum ut Neustriacos Præsules quasi desides ac pusillanimes coarguere veritus non sit: sed ea erat Ecclesiæ sub ignavo Principe sors per omnia lamentabilis, ut ipsemet postmodum cum laude non invitus agnovit."] [Footnote 68: Sandford, in his _Genealogical History of the Kings of England_, says, that this marriage was solemnized at Luxseul, in the county of Burgundy; but he refers for his authority to Ordericus Vitalis, by whom it is stated to have been at Luxovium, the name by which he always calls Lisieux; and he, in the same page, mentions the assembly of the nobles also held there.] [Footnote 69: _Annal_, IV. p. 599.] LETTER XXIII. FRENCH POLICE--RIDE FROM LISIEUX TO CAEN--CIDER--GENERAL APPEARANCE AND TRADE OF CAEN--ENGLISH RESIDENT THERE. (_Caen, August_, 1818.) Our reception at Caen has been somewhat inauspicious: we had scarcely made the few necessary arrangements at the hôtel, and seated ourselves quietly before the _caffé au lait_, when two gens-d'armes, in military costume, stalked without ceremony into the room, and, taking chairs at the table, began the conversation rather abruptly, with "Monsieur, vous êtes sous arrêt."--My companions were appalled by such a salutation, and apprehended some mistake; but the fact turned out to be, that our passport did not bear the signature of the mayor of Rouen, and that this ignorance of the regulations of the French police had subjected us to so unexpected a visit. It was too late in the day for the deficiency to be then supplied; and therefore, after a few expostulations, accompanied with observations, on their part, that we had the good fortune to have fixed ourselves at an _honnête hôtel_, and did not wear the appearance of suspicious persons, the soldiers took their leave, first exacting from me a promise, that I would present myself the next morning before the proper officer, and would in the meanwhile consider myself a prisoner upon my parole. The impression which this occurrence could not fail to make upon our minds, was, that the object of the gens-d'armes had been either to extort from us money, or to shew their consequence; but I have since been led to believe that they did no more than their duty.--We have several acquaintance among the English who reside here, and we find from the whole of them, that the utmost strictness is practised in all matters relating to passports, and not less towards natives than foreigners. No Frenchman can quit his _arrondissement_ unprovided with a passport; and the route he intends to take, and the distance he designs to travel, must also be specified. A week or two ago the prefect of the police himself was escorted back to Caen, between a couple of gens-d'armes, because he inadvertently paid a visit to a neighboring bathing-place without his passport in his pocket. This is a current story here: I cannot vouch for its authenticity; however it is certain, that since the discovery of the late plot contrived by the ultras, a plot whose existence is generally disbelieved, the French police is more than usually upon the alert. When I presented myself at the Hôtel de Ville, to redeem my promise, a recent decree was pointed out to me, containing a variety of regulations which shew extraordinary uneasiness on the part of the government, and which would seem to indicate that they are in possession of intelligence respecting projects, that threaten the public tranquillity[70]. To judge from all official proceedings, it seems as if we were walking upon a smothered volcano, and yet we are told by every body that there is not the slightest room for apprehension of any kind. This interruption has thrown me out of the regular course of my narration.--My last letter left me still at Lisieux, from which city to Caen the road lies through a tract of country altogether without interest, and in most places without beauty. During the first half of the ride, we could almost have fancied ourselves at home in Norfolk.--About this part of the way, the road descends through a hollow or dale, which bore the ominous name of "_Coupe Gorge_." When Napoléon was last in Normandy, he inquired into the origin of the appellation.--The diligences, he was answered, "had often been stopped and robbed in this solitary pass."--Napoléon then said, "If one person can be made to settle here, more will follow, for it is conveniently situated between two good towns. Let the prefect buy a little plot of ground and build a house upon it, and give it to an old soldier, upon condition that he shall constantly reside in it with his family." The orders of Napoléon were obeyed. The old soldier opened an inn, other houses arose round it, and the cut-throat pass is now thoroughly secure. The conductor and the post-boy tell the tale with glee whilst they drive through the hamlet; and its humble dwellings will perhaps recal the memory and fame of Napoléon Buonaparte when the brazen column of the grand army, and the marble arch of the Thuilleries, shall have been long levelled with the ground.--As to the character of the landscape, I must add, that though it makes a bad picture, there are great appearances of care in the agriculture, and of comfort in the population. The country, too, is sufficiently well wooded; and apple and pear trees every where take the place of the pollard oaks and elms of our hedge-rows. Norman cider is famous throughout France: it is principally, however, the western part of the province that produces it. Throughout the whole of that district, the lower classes of the inhabitants scarcely use any other beverage. Vines, as I have already had occasion to mention, were certainly cultivated, in early times, farther to the north than they are at present. The same proofs exist of vineyards in the vicinity of Caen and Lisieux, as at Jumieges. Indeed, towards the close of the last century, there was still a vineyard at Argence, only four miles south-east of Caen; and a kind of white wine was made there, which was known by the name of _Vin Huet_. But the liquor was meagre; and I understand that the vineyard is destroyed.--Upon the subject of the early use of beer in Normandy, tradition is somewhat indistinct. The ancient name of one of the streets in Caen, _rue de la Cervoisiere_, distinctly proves the habit of beer-drinking; and, when Tacitus speaks of the beverage of the Germans, in his time, as "humor ex hordeo vel frumento in quandam similitudinem vini corruptus," it seems highly improbable but that the same liquor should have been in use among the cognate tribes of Gaul. Brito, however, expressly says of Flanders, that it is a place where, "Raris sylva locis facit umbram, vinea nusquam: Indigenis potus Thetidi miscetur avena, Ut vice sit vini multo confecta labore." And the same author likewise tells us, that the Normans of his time were cider-drinkers-- "... _Siceræque_ potatrix Algia tumentis ... Non tot in autumni rubet Algia tempore _pomis_ Unde liquare solet _siceram_ sibi _Neustria_ gratam." Huet is of opinion, that the use of cider was first introduced into Neustria by the Normans, who had learned it of the Biscayans, as these latter had done from the inhabitants of the northern coast of Africa. We did not find the Norman cider at all palatable: it is extremely sour, hard, and austere. The inhabitants, however, say that this is not its natural character, but is attributable to the late unfavorable seasons, which have prevented the fruit from ripening properly.--The apple-tree and pear-tree in Normandy, far from being ugly, and distorted, and stunted in their growth, as is commonly seen in England, are trees of great beauty, and of extreme luxuriance, both in foliage and ramification. The _Coccus_, too, which has caused so much destruction among our orchards at home, is fortunately still unknown here. The only place at which we stopped between Lisieux and Caen, was Croissanville, a poor village, but one that possesses a degree of historical interest, as the spot where the battle was fought between Aigrold, King of Denmark, and Louis d'Outremer, King of France; a battle which seated Richard Fearnought upon the throne of Normandy.--The country about Croissanville is an immense tract of meadow-land; and from it the Parisian market draws a considerable proportion of its supplies of beef. The cattle that graze in these pastures are of a large size, and red, and all horned; very unlike those about Caen, which latter are of small and delicate proportions, with heads approaching to those of deer, and commonly with black faces and legs. From Croissanville to Caen the road passes through a dead flat, almost wholly consisting of uninclosed corn-fields, extending in all directions, with unvaried dull monotony, as far as the eye can reach. Buck-wheat is cultivated in a large proportion of them: the inhabitants prepare a kind of cake from this grain, of which they are very fond, and which is said to be wholesome. Tradition, founded principally upon the French name of this plant, _sarrazin_, has given rise to a general belief, that buck-wheat was introduced into France by the Moors; but this opinion has, of late, been ably combated. The plant is not to be found in Arabia, Spain, or Sicily; the countries more particularly inhabited by Mahometans; and in Brittany, it still passes by the Celtic appellation, _had-razin_, signifying _red-corn_, of which words _sarrazin_ may fairly be regarded a corruption, as _buck-wheat_, in our own tongue, ought unquestionably to be written _beech-wheat_; a term synonymous to what it is called in Latin and German. The present name may well appear inexplicable, to those who are unacquainted with the Anglo-Saxon and its cognate dialects. In the midst of this level country, in which even apple-trees are scarce, stands the ancient capital of Lower Normandy, extending from east to west in so long a line, that on our approach it appeared to cover as much ground as Rouen, which is in fact double its size.--From a distance, the view of Caen is grand; not only from the apparent magnitude of the town, but from the numerous spires and towers, that, rising from every part of it, give it an air of great importance. Those of the abbeys of St. Stephen and the Trinity, at opposite extremities, constitute the principal features in the view.--The same favorable impressions continue when you enter the town. The streets are wide, and the houses of stone; and a stone city is a pleasing sight to eyes long accustomed to the wooden buildings of Rouen, Bernay, and Lisieux.--Besides, there is a certain degree of regularity in the construction of the buildings, and some care is taken in keeping them clean.--Lace-making is the principal occupation of females of the lower class in Caen and the neighborhood; the streets, as we passed along, were lined almost uninterruptedly on either side, with a row of lace-makers; and boys were not uncommonly working among the women. It is calculated that not fewer than twenty thousand individuals, of all ages, from ten or twelve years old and upwards, are thus employed; and the annual produce of their labor is estimated at one hundred and seventy thousand pounds sterling. Caen lace is in high estimation for its beauty and quality, and is exported in considerable quantities. The present population of Caen amounts to about thirty-one thousand individuals. The town, no longer the capital of Lower Normandy, is still equally distinguished as the capital of the department of the Calvados. The prefect resides here; and the royal court of Caen comprises in its jurisdiction, not only the department more especially appertaining to it, but also those of the Manche and the Orne.--The situation of the town, though at the confluence of the Orne and the Odon, is not such as can be regarded favorable to extensive trade. The united rivers form a stream, which, though navigable at very high tides for vessels of two hundred tons burthen, will, on other occasions, admit only of much smaller ones; while the channel, nearer to its mouth, is obstructed by rocks that render the navigation difficult and dangerous. Many plans have been projected and attempted for the purpose of improving and enlarging the harbor, but little or no progress has yet been made. Vauban long since pointed out the mouth of the Orne as singularly well adapted for a naval station; and Napoléon, in pursuance of this idea, actually commenced the excavation of a basin under the walls of the town, and intended to deepen the bed of the river, thinking it best to make a beginning in this direction. All idea, however, of prosecuting such a plan is for the present abandoned.--Other engineers have proposed the junction of the Orne with the Loire by means of a canal, which would be of the greatest importance to France, not only by facilitating internal commerce, but by saving her vessels the necessity of coasting Capes Finisterre, and la Hogue, and thus enabling them to avoid a navigation, which is at all times dangerous, and in case of war peculiarly exposed. For minor purposes, however, for mills and manufactories of different kinds, Caen is certainly well situated; being in almost every direction intersected with streams, owing to the repeated ramifications of the Odon, some of which are artificial, and of as early a date as the eleventh century. The same circumstance contributes materially to the pleasantness of the town; for the banks of the river are in many places formed into walks, and crowned by avenues of noble trees. [Illustration: Head-Dress of Females, at Caen] The _grand cours_ at Caen is almost as fine a promenade as that at Rouen. On Sunday evening it was completely crowded. The scene was full of life and gaiety, and very varied. All the females of the lower rank, and many of the higher orders, were dressed in the costume of the country, which commonly consists of a scarlet gown and deep-blue apron, or _vice versâ_. Their hair, which is usually powdered, is combed entirely back from every part of their faces, and tucked up behind. The snow-white cap which covers it is beautifully plaited, and has longer lappets than in the Pays de Caux. Mr. Cotman sketched the _coiffure_ of the chamber-maid, at the Hôtel d'Espagne, in grand costume, and I send his drawing to you.--The men dress like the English; but do not therefore fancy that you or I should have any chance of being mistaken for natives, even if we did not betray ourselves by our accent. Here, as every where else, our countrymen are infallibly known: their careless slouching gait is sure to mark them; and the police keep a watchful eye upon them. Caen is at present frequented by the English: those indeed, who, like the Virgilian steeds, "stare loco nesciunt," seldom shew themselves in Lower Normandy; but above thirty British families have taken up their residence in this town: they have been induced to do so principally by the cheapness of living, and by the advantages held out for the education of their children. A friend of mine, who is of the number of temporary inhabitants, occupies the best house in the place, formerly the residence of the Duc d'Aumale; and for this, with the garden, and offices, and furniture of all kinds, except linen and plate, he pays only nine pounds a month. For a still larger house in the country, including an orchard and garden, containing three acres, well stocked with fruit-trees, he is asked sixty pounds from this time to Christmas. But, cheap as this appears, the expence of living at Coutances, or at Bayeux, or Valognes, is very much less. Were I obliged to seek myself a residence beyond the limits of our own country, I never saw a place which I should prefer to Caen. I should not be tempted to look much farther before I said, "Sis meæ sedes utinam senectæ:"-- The historical recollections that are called forth at almost every turn, would probably have some influence in determining my choice; the noble specimens of ancient architecture which happily remain, unscathed by wars and Calvinists and revolutions, might possibly have more; but the literary resources which the town affords, the pleasant society with which it abounds, and, above all, the amiable character of its inhabitants, would be my great attraction.--At present, indeed, we have not been here sufficiently long to say much upon the subject of society from our own experience; but the testimony we receive from all quarters is uniform in this point, and the civilities already shewn us, are of a nature to cause the most agreeable prepossessions. It is not our intention to be hurried at Caen; and I shall therefore reserve to my future letters any remarks upon its history and its antiquities. To a traveller who is desirous of information, the town is calculated to furnish abundant materials. * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 70: The following were among the articles of the decree:--"No individual to leave his _arrondissement_ without a passport.--No person to receive a stranger in his house, or suffer one to quit it, without apprising the police.--The inhabitants to carry their arms of all kinds to the Hôtel de Ville.--No plays to be performed, except first approved by the officers of the police.--The manager of the theatre to give notice every Friday to the mayor, of the pieces intended to be acted the following week.--The actors to read nothing, and say nothing, which is not in the play.--The performance to begin precisely at six, and close at ten.--Only a certain interval to be allowed between the different pieces, or between the acts of each.--Every person to be uncovered, except the soldiers on duty.--No weapons of any kind, nor even sticks or umbrellas, to be taken into the theatre."] LETTER XXIV. HISTORIANS OF CAEN--TOWERS AND FORTIFICATIONS--CHÂTEAU DE LA GENDARMERIE--CASTLE--CHURCHES OF ST. STEPHEN, ST. NICHOLAS, ST. PETER, ST. JOHN, AND ST. MICHEL DE VAUCELLES. (_Caen, August,_ 1818.) France does not abound in topographical writers; but the history and antiquities of Caen have been illustrated with singular ability, by men to whom the town gave birth, and who have treated their subject with equal research and fidelity--these are Charles de Bourgueville, commonly called the Seigneur de Bras, and the learned Huet, Bishop of Avranches. De Bourgueville was a magistrate of Caen, where he resided during almost the whole of the sixteenth century. The religious wars were then raging; and he relates, in a most entertaining and artless manner, the history of the events of which he was an eye-witness. His work, as is justly observed by Huet, is a treasure, that has preserved the recollection of a great variety of the most curious details, which would otherwise have been neglected and forgotten. Every page of it is stamped with the character of the author--frankness, simplicity, and uprightness. It abounds in sound morality, sage maxims, and proofs of excellent principles in religion and politics; and, if the writer occasionally carries his _naïveté_ to excess, it is to be recollected that the book was published when he was in his eighty-fifth year, a period of life when indulgence may reasonably be claimed. He died four years subsequently, in 1593.--In Huet's work, the materials are selected with more skill, and are digested with more talent. The author brought to his task a mind well stored with the learning requisite for the purpose, and employed it with judgment. But he has confined himself, almost wholly, to the description of the town; and the consequence is, that while the bishop's is the work most commonly referred to, the magistrate's is that which is most generally read. The dedication of the former to the town of Caen, does honor to the feelings of the writer: the portrait of the latter, prefixed to his volume, and encircled with his quaint motto, _"L'heur de grace use l'oubli,"_ itself an anagram upon his name, bespeaks and insures the good will of the reader. The origin of Caen is uncertain.--Its foundation has been alternately ascribed to Phoenicians, Romans, Gauls, Saxons, and Normans. The earliest historical fact connected with the town, is recorded in an old chronicle of Normandy[71], written in 1487, by William de Talleur, of Rouen. The author, in speaking of the meeting between Louis d'Outremer, King of France, and Richard Ist, Duke of Normandy, about the year 945, enumerates Caen among the good towns of the province. Upon this, Huet observes that, supposing Caen to have been at that time only recently founded, it must have acquired importance with much rapidity; for, in the charter, by which Richard IIIrd, Duke of Normandy, granted a dowery to Adela, daughter of Robert, King of France, whom he married in 1026, Caen is not only stated as one of the portions of the dower, but its churches, its market, its custom-house, its quay, and its various appurtenances are expressly mentioned; and two hundred years afterwards, Brito in his _Philippiad_, puts Caen in competition with Paris, "Villa potens, opulenta situ, spatiosa, decora, Fluminibus, pratis, et agrorum fertilitate, Merciferasque rates portu capiente marino, Seque tot ecclesiis, domibus et civibus ornans, Ut se Parisio vix annuat esse minorem."-- Caen is designated in Duke Richard's charter, by the appellation of "in Bajocensi comitatu villa quæ dicitur _Cathim_, super fluvium Olnæ."--From _Cathim_, came _Cahem_; and _Cahem_, in process of time, was gradually softened into _Caen_. The elision that took place in the first instance, is of a similar nature to that by which the Italian words _padre_ and _madre_, have been converted into _père_ and _mère_; and the alteration in the latter case continued to be indicated by the diæresis, which, till lately, separated the two adjoining vowels.--Towards the latter part of the eleventh century, Caen is frequently mentioned by the monkish historians, in whose Latin, the town is styled _Cadomus_ or _Cadomum_.--And here ingenious etymologists have found a wide field for conjecture: Cadomus, says one, was undoubtedly founded by Cadmus; another, who hesitates at a Phoenician antiquity, grasps with greater eagerness at a Roman etymon, and maintains that _Cadomus_ is a corruption from _Caii domus_, fully and sufficiently proving that the town was built by Julius Cæsar. Robert Wace states, in his _Roman de Rou_, that, at the time immediately previous to the conquest of England, Caen was an open town.-- "Encore ert Caen sans Châtel, N'y avoit mur, ny quesnel."-- And Wace is a competent witness; for he lived during the reign of Henry Ist, to whom he dedicated his poem. Philip de Valois, in 1346, allowed the citizens to surround the town with ditches, walls, and gates. This permission was granted by the king, on the application of the inhabitants, Caen, as they then complained, being still open and unfortified. Hence, the fortifications have been considered to be the work of the fourteenth century, and, generally speaking, they were unquestionably, of that time; but it is equally certain, that a portion was erected long before. A proof of the antiquity of the fortifications may perhaps be found in the name of the tower called _la Tour Guillaume le Roi_, which stands immediately behind St. Peter's, and was intended to protect the river at the extremity of the walls, dividing the town from the suburb of Vaugeux. This tower is generally supposed to be the oldest in the fortifications. Its masonry is similar to that of the wall with which it is connected, and which is known to have been built about the same time as the abbey of St. Stephen. The appearance of it is plain, massy, and rugged; and it forms a picturesque object. Such also is the _Tour au Massacre_, which is situated at the confluence of the Orne and Odon. The tower in question is said to have received its gloomy title from a massacre, of which our countrymen were guilty, at the time when the town was taken in 1346. There is, however, reason to believe that this tale is a mere fiction. Huet, at the same time that he does not venture so far to oppose popular belief, as altogether to deny the truth of the story of the massacre, adds, that the original name of the tower was _la Tour Machart_, and suspects its present appellation to be no more than a corruption of the former one. Renauld Machart was bailiff of Caen two years prior to the capture of the place by Edward IIIrd; and the probability is, that the tower was erected by him in those times of alarm, and thus took his name. It has been supposed that the figure sculptured upon it, may also be intended for a representation of Machart himself. Caen contains another castellated building, which might easily mislead the studious antiquarian. The _Château de Calix_, as it is sometimes called, is situated at the extremity of the suburb known by that name; and the curious inhabitants of Caen usually suppose that it was erected for the purpose of commanding the river, whilst it flowed in its ancient, but now deserted, bed; or, at least, that it replaces such a fortification. According to the learned Abbé de la Rue, however, and he is a most competent authority, no real fortification ever existed here; but the castle was raised in conformity to the caprice of Girard de Nollent, the wealthy owner of the property, who flourished towards the beginning of the sixteenth century.--Girard de Nollent's mansion is now occupied by a farmer. It has four fronts. The windows are square-headed, and surrounded by elegant mouldings; but the mullions have been destroyed. One medallion yet remains over the entrance; and it is probable that the walls were originally covered with ornaments of this kind. Such, at least, is the case with the towers and walls, which, surrounding the dwelling, have given it a castellated aspect. The circular tower nearest the gate forms the subject of the accompanying sketch: it is dotted on all sides with busts in basso-relievo, enclosed in medallions, and of great diversity of character. One is a frowning warrior, arrayed in the helmet of an emperor of the lower empire; another, is a damsel attired in a ruff; a third, is a turbaned turk. The borders of the medallions are equally diversified: the _cordelière_, well known in French heraldry, the vine-leaf, the oak-leaf, all appear as ornaments. The battlements are surmounted with two statues, apparently Neptune, or a sea-god, and Hercules. These heathen deities not being very familiar to the good people of Caen, they have converted them, in imagination, into two gens-d'armes, mounting guard on the castle; and hence it is frequently called the _Château de la Gendarmerie_. Some of the busts are accompanied by inscriptions--"Vincit pudicitiam mors;" "Vincit amor pudicitiam;" "Amor vincit mortem;" and all seem to be either historical or allegorical. The battlements of the curtain-wall are ornamented in the same manner. The farther tower has less decoration, and is verging to decay. I have given these details, because the castle of Calix is a specimen of a style of which we have no fair parallel in England, and the workmanship is far from being contemptible. [Illustration: Tower in the _Château de Calix_, at Caen] In the Rue St. Jean is a house with decorations, in the same style, but more sumptuous, or, perhaps I ought rather to say, more perfect. Both of them are most probably of nearly the same date: for it was principally during the reigns of Charles VIIIth and Louis XIIth, that the practice prevailed in France, of ornamenting the fronts of houses with medallions. The custom died away under Francis Ist. I must now return to more genuine fortifications.--When the walls of Caen were perfect, they afforded an agreeable and convenient promenade completely round the town, their width being so great, that three persons might with ease walk abreast upon them. De Bourgueville tells us that, in his time, they were as much frequented as the streets; and he expatiates with great pleasure upon the gay and busy prospect which they commanded, The castle at Caen, degraded as it is in its character by modern innovation, is more deserving of notice as an historical, than as an architectural, relic. It still claims to be ranked as a place of defence, though it retains but few of its original features. The spacious, lofty, circular towers, known by the names of the black, the white, the red, and the grey horse, which flanked its ramparts, have been brought down to the level of the platform. The dungeon tower is destroyed. All the grandeur of the Norman castle is lost; though the width of its ditches, and the thickness of its walls, still testify its ancient strength. I doubt whether any castle in France covers an equal extent of ground. Monstrelet and other writers have observed, that this single fortress exceeded in size the towns of Corbeil or of Montferrand; and, indeed, there are reasons for supposing that Caen, when first founded, only occupied the site of the present castle; and that, when it became advisable to convert the old town into a fortress, the inhabitants migrated into the valley below. Six thousand infantry could be drawn up in battle-array within the outer ballium; and so great was the number of houses and of inhabitants enclosed within its area, that it was thought expedient to build in it a parochial church, dedicated to St. George, besides two chapels. One of the chapels is still in existence, though now converted to a store-house; and the Abbé de la Rue considers it as an erection anterior to the conquest, and, belonging to the old town of Caen. Its choir is turned towards the west, and its front to the east.--The religious edifices upon the continent do not preserve the same uniformity as our English ones, in having their altars placed in the direction of the rising sun; but this at Caen is a very remarkable instance of the position of the entrance and the altar being completely reversed[72]. The door-way is a fine semi-circular arch: the side pillars supporting it are very small, but the decorations of the archivolt are rich: they consist principally of three rows of the chevron moulding, enclosed within a narrow fillet of smaller ornaments, approaching in shape to quatrefoils. Collectively, they form a wide band, which springs from flat piers level with the wall, and does not immediately unite with the head of the inner arch. The intermediate space is covered by a reticulated pattern indented in the stone. Above the entrance is a window of the same form, its top encircled by a broad chequered band, a very unusual accompaniment to this style of architecture. The front of the chapel presents in other respects, a flat uniform surface, unvaried, except by four Norman buttresses, and a string-course of the simplest form, running round the whole building, at somewhat less than mid-height. The sides of the chapel are lighted by a row of circular-headed windows, with columns in the angles; and between these windows are buttresses, as in the chapel of the lazar-house of St. Julien, at Rouen. Huet endeavours to prove that the first fortress which was built at Caen, was erected by William the Conqueror, who frequently resided here with his Queen Matilda, and who was likely to find some protection of this nature desirable, as well to guard his royal residence against the mutinous disposition of the lords of the Bessin, as to command the navigation of the Orne. The castle was enlarged and strengthened by his son Henry; but it is believed that the four towers, just mentioned, and the walls surrounding the keep, were added by our countrymen, during that short period when the Norman sceptre was again wielded by the descendants of the Norman dukes. Under Louis XIIth and Francis Ist, the whole of the castle, but particularly the dungeon, underwent great repairs, by which the original form of the structure was entirely changed.--From that period history is silent respecting the fortress. I cannot, however, take leave of it without reminding you, that Sir John Fastolf, whilom our neighbour at Castor, was for some time placed in command here, as Lieutenant to the Regent Duke of Bedford. You, who are acquainted with the true character of the knight, need scarcely be told, that even his enemies concur in bearing testimony to his ability, his vigilance, and his valor: it is to be regretted that he has not met with equal justice at home. Not one individual troubles himself about history, whilst a thousand read the drama; and the stains which Shakspeare's pen has affixed to the name of Fastolf, are of a nature never to be wiped away; thus disproving the distich of the satyrist, who indeed, by his own works, has effectually falsified his own maxim, that-- "Truth will survive when merry jokes are past; For rising merit must buoy up at last." As usual, the buildings dedicated to religion are far more numerous and valuable than the relics of military architecture. Of these, the first which salutes the stranger who enters by the great high road, is the Hôtel Dieu, which is almost intact and unaltered. The basement story contains large and deep pointed arches, ornamented with the chevron moulding, disposed in a very peculiar manner.--From the style of the building, there is every reason to believe that it is of the beginning of the thirteenth century, at which time William, Count of Magneville, appropriated to charitable purposes the ground now occupied by this hospital, and caused his donation to be confirmed by a bull from Pope Innocent IIIrd, dated in April, 1210. The abbeys, the glories of Caen, will require more leisure: at present let us pass on to the parochial churches. Of these, the most ancient foundation is _St. Etienne le Vieil_; and tradition relates that this church was dedicated by St. Renobert, bishop of Bayeux, in the year 350.--But, though the present edifice may stand upon the site of an ancient one, there would be little risk in affirming, that not one stone of it was laid upon another till after the year 1400. The building is spacious, and its tower is not devoid of beauty. The architecture is a medley of debased gothic and corrupted Roman; but the large pointed windows, decorated by fanciful mouldings and scroll-work, have an air of richness, though the component parts are so inharmonious. Attached to the wall of the choir of this church is still to be seen an equestrian statue[73], part of the celebrated group supposed to represent William the Conqueror making his triumphal entry into Caen. A headless horse, mounted by a headless rider, and a figure, which has lost all shape and form, beneath the feet of the steed, are all that now remain; but De Bourgueville, who knew the group when perfect, says, that there likewise belonged to it a man and woman upon their knees, as if seeking some explanation for the death of their child, or rather, perhaps, in the act of imploring mercy.--I have already pointed out the resemblance between these statues and the bas-relief, of which I have sent you a sketch from St. Georges. One of the most learned antiquaries of the present time has found a prototype for the supposed figure of the Duke, among the sculptures of the Trajan column. But this, with all due deference, is far from a decisive proof that the statue in question was not intended for William. Similar adaptations of the antique model, "mutato nomine," frequently occur among the works of the artists of the middle ages; and there is at least a possibility that, had the face been left us, we might have traced some attempt at a portrait of the Norman Duke. Upon the date of the sculpture, or the style of the workmanship, I dare not venture an opinion. There are antiquaries, I know, (and men well qualified to judge,) who believe it Roman: I have heard it pronounced from high authority, that it is of the eleventh century, others suspect that it is Italian, of the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries; whilst M. Le Prevost and M. De Gerville maintain most strenuously that it is not anterior to the fifteenth. De Bourgueville certainly calls it "une antiquité de grand remarque;" but we all know that any object which is above an hundred years old, becomes a piece of antiquity in the eye of an uncritical observer; and such was the good magistrate. The church of St. Nicholas, now used as a stable, was built by William the Conqueror, in the year 1060, or thereabouts. Desecrated as it is, it remains entire; and its interior is remarkable for the uniformity of the plan, the symmetry of the proportions. All the capitals of the pillars attached to the walls are alike; and those of the arches, which very nearly resemble the others, are also all of one pattern. In the side-aisles there is no groining, but only cross vaulting. The vaulting of the nave is pointed, and of late introduction. Round the choir and transepts runs a row of small arches, as in the triforium.--The west end was formerly flanked by two towers, the southern of which only remains. This is square, and well proportioned: each side contains two lancet windows. The lower part is quite plain, excepting two Norman buttresses. The whole of the width of the central compartment, which is more than quadruple that of either of the others, is occupied below by three circular portals, now blocked up.--Above them are five windows, disposed in three tiers. In the lowest are two not wider than loop-holes: over these two others, larger; another small one is at the top. All these windows are of the simplest construction, without side pillars or mouldings.--The choir of the church ends in a semi-circular apsis, divided into compartments by a row of pillars, rising as high as the cornice: in the intercolumniation are windows, and under the windows small arches, each of which has its head hewn out of a single stone.--The roof of the choir is of stone, and the pitch of it is very high. Here, then, we have the exact counterpart of the Irish stone-roofed chapels, the most celebrated of which, that of Cormac, in Cashel Cathedral, appears, from all the drawings and descriptions I have seen of it, to be altogether a Norman building. Ledwich asserts that "this chapel is truly Saxon, and was erected prior to the introduction of the Norman, and gothic styles[74]." If, we agree with him, we only obtain a proof that there is no essential difference between Norman and Saxon architecture; and this proposition, I believe, will soon be universally admitted. We now know what is really Norman; and a little attention to the buildings in the north of Germany, may terminate the long-debated questions, relative to Saxon architecture and the origin of the stone-roofed chapels in the sister isle. In the burial-ground that surrounds the church of St. Nicholas, are several monumental inscriptions, all of them posterior to the commencement of the reign of Napoléon, and all, with one single exception, commemorative of females. The epitaphs are much in the same tone as would be found in an English church-yard. The greater part, however, of the tomb-stones, are uninscribed. They are stone coffins above-ground, sculptured with plain crosses, or, where they have been raised to ecclesiastics, with an addition of some portion of the sacerdotal dress. [Illustration: Tower and Spire of St. Peter's Church, at Caen] Among the churches of comparatively modern erection, St. Peter deserves most attention. From every part of the town and neighborhood, its lofty spire, towering above the surrounding buildings, forces itself upon your view. It is not easy to carry accurate ideas of height in the memory; but, as far as recollection will serve me, I should say that its elevation is hardly inferior to that of the spire of Salisbury cathedral. I have no hesitation in adding, that the proportions of the tower and spire of the church at Caen, are more pleasing. Elegance, lightness, and symmetry, are the general characters of the whole, though the spire has peculiar characters of its own.--The tower, though built a century later than that of Salisbury, is so much less ornamented, that it might be mistaken for an earlier example of the pointed style. The lowest story is occupied wholly by a portal: the second division is surrounded by pointed arches, beneath crocketed gables: the third is filled by four lancet arches, supported by reeded pillars, so lofty, that they occupy nearly two-thirds of the entire height of the tower. The flanking arches are blanks: the two middle ones are pierced into windows, divided by a central mullion. The balustrade at the top of the tower is of a varied pattern, each side exhibiting a different tracery. Eight crocketed pinnacles are added to the spire, which is octangular, and has a row of crockets at each angle. From the base to the summit it is encircled, at regular distances, with broad bands of stone-work, disposed like scales; and, alternating with the bands, are perforations in the form of cinquefoils, quatrefoils, and trefoils, diminishing as the spire rises, but so disposed, that the light is seen distinctly through them. The effect of these perforations was novel and very pleasing. [Illustration: Sculpture upon a Capital in St. Peter's Church at Caen] This tower and spire were built in the year 1308, under the directions of Nicolle L'Anglois, a burgher of Caen, and treasurer of the church.--How far we are at liberty to infer from his name, as Ducarel does, that he was an Englishman, may admit of some doubt. He was buried here; and De Bourgueville has preserved his epitaph, which recounts among his other merits, that "Et par luy, et par sa devise Fut la tour en sa voye mise D'estre faicte si noblement."-- But the name of the architect who was employed is unrecorded.--The rest of the church was erected at different periods: the northern aisle in 1410; the opposite one some time afterwards; and the eastern extremity, with the vaulted roof of the choir and aisles, in 1021.--With this knowledge, it is not difficult to account for the diversity of styles that prevails in the building.--The western front contains much good tracery, and well disposed, apparently as old as the tower.--The exterior of the east end, with its side-chapels, is rather Italian than gothic.--The interior is of a purer style: the five arches forming the apsis are perhaps amongst the finest specimens of the luxuriant French gothic: roses are introduced with great effect amongst the tracery and friezes, with which the walls are covered. The decorations of the chapels round the choir, although they display a tendency towards Italian architecture, are of the most elaborate arabesque. The niches are formed by escalop shells, swelling cylinders of foliage, and scrolls: some of the pendants from the roofs are of wonderfully varied and beautiful workmanship.--The nave has nothing remarkable, saving the capital of one of the side pillars. Its sculptures, with the exception of one mutilated group, have been drawn by Mr. Cotman.--The subjects are strangely inappropriate, as the ornaments of a sacred edifice. All are borrowed from romance.--Aristotle bridled and saddled by the mistress of Alexander. Virgilius, or, as some say, Hippocrates, hanging in the basket. Lancelot crossing the raging flood.--The fourth, which is not shewn in the sketch, is much defaced, but seems to have been taken from the _Chevalier et la Charette_. According to the usual fate of ancient sculpture, the _marguilliers_ of the parish have so sadly encumbered it with white-wash, that it is not easy to make out the details; and a friend of mine was not quite certain whether the bearded figure riding on the lion, was not a youthful Cupid. No other of the capitals has at present any basso-relievo of this kind; but I suspect they have been chopped off. The church suffered much from the Calvinists; and afterwards, during the revolution, when most of the bas-reliefs of the portal were destroyed. [Illustration: Tower of St. John's Church, at Caen] The neighboring church of St. John appears likewise to be the work of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This building and St. Peter's agree in general character: their towers are nearly the counterparts of each other. But, in St. John's, the great tower is placed at the west end of the edifice, the principal portal being beneath it. This is not very usual in the Norman-gothic churches, though common in England. The tower wants a spire; and, at present, it leans considerably out of the perpendicular line, so that some apprehensions are entertained for its safety. It was originally intended that the church should also be surmounted by a central tower; and, as De Bourgueville says, the beginning was made in his time; but it remains to the present day incomplete, and has not been raised sufficiently high to enable us to form a clear idea of the design of the architect, though enough remains to shew that it would have been built in the Romanizing-gothic style.--The inside is comparatively plain, excepting only the arches in the lower open part of the tower. These are richly ornamented; and a highly-wrought balustrade runs round the triforium, uniform in its pattern in the nave and choir, but varying in the transepts.--In the other ecclesiastical buildings at Caen, we saw nothing to interest us.--The chapel of St. Thomas l'Abattu, which, according to Huet, "had existed from time immemorial," and which, to judge from Ducarel's description and figure, must have been curious, has now entirely disappeared. In the suburb of Vaucelles, the church of St. Michael contains some architectural features of great curiosity[75]. The circular-headed arches in the short square tower, and in a small round turret that is attached to it, are unquestionably early Norman, and are remarkable for their proportions, being as long and as narrow as the lancet windows of the following æra. It would not be equally safe to pronounce upon the date of the stone-roofed pyramid which covers this tower. The north porch is entered by a pointed arch, which, though much less ornamented, approaches in style to the southern porch of St. Ouen, and, like that, has its inner archivolt fringed with pendant trefoils. The wall above the arch rises into a triangular gable, entirely covered with waving tracery, the only instance of the kind which I have seen at Caen. * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 71: _Huet, Origines de Caen_, p. 12.] [Footnote 72: Upon this subject, Huet has an extraordinary observation, (_Origines de Caen_, p. 186.) "that, in the early times of Christianity, it was customary for all churches to front the east or north, or some intermediate point of the compass."--So learned and careful a writer would scarcely have made such a remark without some plausible grounds; but I am at a loss where to find them. Bingham, in his _Origines Eccleslasticæ_, I. p. 288, says, "that churches were so placed, that the front, or chief entrances, were towards the west, and the sanctuary or altar placed towards the east;" and though he adduces instances of a different position, as in the church of Antioch, which faced the east, and that of St. Patrick, at Sabul, near Down in Ulster, which stood from north to south, he cites them only as deviations from an established practice.] [Footnote 73: _Cotman's Architectural Antiquities of Normandy_, t. 20.] [Footnote 74: _Antiquities of Ireland_, p. 151.] [Footnote 75: See _Cotman's Architectural Antiquities of Normandy_, t. 18, 19.] LETTER XXV. ROYAL ABBEYS OF THE HOLY TRINITY AND ST. STEPHEN--FUNERAL OF THE CONQUEROR, EXHUMATION OF HIS REMAINS, AND DESTRUCTION OF HIS MONUMENT. (_Caen, August_, 1818.) The two royal abbeys of Caen have fortunately escaped the storms of the revolution. These buildings are still standing, an ornament to the town, and an honor to the sovereign who caused them to be erected, as well as to the artist who planned, and to the age which produced them. As models of architecture they are the same land-marks to the history of the art in Lower Normandy, as the church of St. Georges is in the upper division of the province. Their dates are equally authenticated; and the characteristic features in each are equally perfect. Both these noble edifices rose at the same time, and from the same motive. William the Conqueror, by his marriage with Matilda, daughter of Baldwin, Earl of Flanders, had contracted an alliance proscribed by the degrees of consanguinity. The clergy inveighed against the union; and they were supported in their complaints by Lanfranc, then resident at Bec, whose remonstrances were so uncourtly and strenuous, that the duke banished him from the province. It chanced that the churchman, while in the act of obedience to this command, met the sovereign. Their interview began with recriminations: it ended with reconciliation; and Lanfranc finally engaged to undertake a mission to the supreme Pontiff, who, considering the turbulent disposition of the Normans, and that a better end was likely to be answered by peaceable than by hostile measures, consented to grant the necessary dispensation. At the same time, by way of penance, he issued an injunction that the royal pair should erect two monasteries, the one for monks, the other for nuns. And in obedience to this command, William founded the abbey of St. Stephen, and Matilda, the abbey of the Holy Trinity; or, as they are usually called at Caen, _l'abbaye aux hommes_, and _l'abbaye aux dames_. The approach to the monastery of the Trinity is through a spacious gate-tower, part of the original structure. Over the rent and shapeless door-way are three semi-circular arches, upon the capitals of which is distinctly observable the cable-moulding, and along the top of the tower runs a line of the same toothed ornament, remarked by Ducarel at Bourg-Achard, and stated by him to have been considered peculiar to Saxon architecture[76]. The park that formerly environed the abbey retains its character, though abandoned to utter neglect. It is of great extent, and is well wooded. The monastic buildings, which are, as usual, modern, are mostly perfect.--A ruined wall nearly in front of the church, with a chimney-piece, perhaps of Norman workmanship, belonged to the old structure. Such part of the chimney wall as was exposed to the flame is built of large tiles, placed diagonally. All other vestiges of the ancient apartments have been removed. The noble church[77] is now used as a work-house for the department. At the revolution it became national property, and it remained unappropriated, till, upon the institution of the Legion of Honor, Napoléon applied it to some purpose connected with that body, by whom it was lately ceded for it present object. But, if common report may be credited, it is likely soon to revert to its original destination. The restoration may be easily effected, as the building has sustained but little injury. A floor has been thrown across the nave and transept, dividing them into two stories; but in other respects they are unaltered, and divine service is still performed in the choir. A finer specimen of the solid grandeur of Norman architecture is scarcely to be found any where than in the west front of this church. The corresponding part of the rival abbey of St. Stephen is poor when compared to it; and Jumieges and St. Georges equally fail in the comparison. In all of these, there is some architectural anomaly: in the Trinity none, excepting, indeed, the balustrade at the top of the towers; and this is so obviously an addition of modern times, that no one can be misled by it. This balustrade was erected towards the beginning of the seventeenth century, when the oval apertures and scrolls seen in Ducarel's print were introduced. Anciently the towers were ornamented with very lofty spires. According to some accounts, these were demolished, because they served as land-marks to the English cruizers, being seen far out at sea; but other accounts state, that the spires were pulled down by Charles, King of Navarre, who was at war with his namesake, Charles Vth, then Dauphin and Regent. The abbey at that time bore the two-fold character of nunnery and fortress.--Strangely inconsistent as this union may appear, the fact is undoubted. Even now a portion of the fosses remains; and the gate-way indicates an approach to a fortified place. Ancient charters likewise expressly recognize the building in both capacities: they endow the abbey for the service of God; and they enjoin the inhabitants of the adjacent parishes to keep the fortifications in repair against any assaults of men. Nay, letters patent, granted by Charles Vth, which fix the salary of the captain of the _Fort of the Trinity, at Caen_, at one hundred francs per annum, are yet extant. I shall attempt no description of the west front of this monastery, few continental buildings being better known in England. The whole remains as it was in the time of Ducarel, except that the arches of entrance are blocked up, and modern windows have been inserted in the door-ways.--The north side of the church is quite concealed by the cloisters and conventual buildings. The southern aisle has been plastered and patched, and converted into a range of work-shops, so that its original elevation is wholly obliterated. But the nave, which rises above, is untouched by innovation. The clerestory range is filled by a row of semi-circular headed windows, separated by intervening flat buttresses, which reach to the cornice. Each buttress is edged with two slender cylindrical pilasters; and each window flanked by two smaller arches, whose surfaces are covered with chequer-work. The arch of every window has a key-stone, formed by a grotesque head.--Above the whole is a corbel-table that displays monsters of all kinds, in the form of beasts, and men scarcely less monstrous.--The semi-circular east end is divided in its elevation into three compartments. The lower contains a row of small blank arches: in each of the other two is a window, of a size unusually large for a Norman building, but still without mullions or tracery; its sides ornamented with columns, and its top encircled with a broad band of various mouldings. The windows are separated by cylindrical pillars, instead of buttresses.--In the upper part of the low central tower are some pointed arches, the only deviations of style that are to be found in the building. To the extremity of the southern transept has been attached a Grecian portico, which masks the ancient portal. Above is a row of round arches, some of which are pierced into windows. Of the effect of the nave and transept within, it is difficult now to obtain a correct idea, the floor intervening to obstruct a general view.--High arches, encircled with the embattled moulding below; above these, a wide billeted string-course, forming a basis for a row of smaller arches, without side-pillars or decoration of any kind; then another string-course of different and richer patterns; and over this, the triforium, consisting also of a row of small arches, supported by thick pillars;--such is the elevation of the sides of the nave; and the same system is continued with but small variation in the transepts. But, notwithstanding the general uniformity of the whole, no two compartments are precisely alike; and the capitals are infinitely varied. It is singular to see such a playfulness of ornament in a building, whose architect appears, at first view, to have contemplated only grandeur and solidity.--The four arches which support the central tower are on a magnificent scale. The archivolts are encircled by two rows of lozenged squares, indented in the stone. The rams, or rams' heads, upon the capitals of these piers, are peculiar. The eastern arch rises higher than the rest, and is obtusely pointed; yet it seems to be of the same date with its circular companions.--So exquisite, however, is the quality of the Caen stone, that no opinion drawn from the appearance of the material, ought to be hazarded with confidence. Seven centuries have elapsed since this church was erected, and there is yet no difference to be discovered in the color of the stone, or the sharpness of the work; the whole is as clean and sharp as if it were but yesterday fresh from the chisel. The interior of the choir has not been divided by the flooring; and the eastern extremity, which remains perfect, shews the original design. It consists of large arches, disposed in a double tier, so as to correspond with the windows of the apsis, and placed at a short distance from the wall; but without any Lady-Chapel beyond. The pillars that support these arches are well proportioned: the sculptures on their capitals are scarcely less grotesque than those at St. Georges; but, barbarous as they are, the corners of almost every capital are finished with imitations, more or less obvious, of the classical Ionic volute.--Among the sculptures is a head resting upon two lions, which has been fancied to be a representation of the Conqueror himself; whilst a faded painting of a female, attired as a nun, on the north side of the altar, is also commonly entitled a portrait of the foundress.--Were any plausible reason alleged for regarding the picture as intended to bear even an imaginary resemblance to Matilda, I would have sent you a copy of it; but there appear no grounds to consider it as authentic.--Willing, however, to contribute a mark of respect to a female, styled by William of Malmesbury, "fæminam prudentiæ speculum, pudoris culmen," and, by way of a companion to the rough sketch of her illustrious consort, in the initial letter in the library at Rouen, I add the fac-simile of a seal, which, by the kindness of a friend has fallen into my hands. It has been engraved before, but only for private distribution; and, if a suspicion should cross your mind, that it may have belonged to the Empress Maud, or to Matilda, wife to Stephen, I can only bespeak your thanks to me, for furnishing you with a likeness of any one of these ladies. [Illustration: Fac-simile of seal] Matilda was interred in the middle of this choir; and, according to Ordericus Vitalis, a monument of exquisite workmanship, richly ornamented with gold and precious stones, and bearing a long inscription in letters of gold, was raised to her memory. Her effigy was afterwards added to the monument; the whole of which was destroyed in 1652, by the Calvinists, who tore open the Queen's coffin, and dispersed her remains. After a lapse of an hundred and forty years, the royal bones were again collected, and deposited in this church. At the same time, the splendid monument was replaced by a plain altar-tomb, which existed till the revolution, when all was once more swept away. The marble slab, inscribed with the original epitaph, alone remained entire, and was carried to the abbey church of St. Stephen's, where it still forms a part of the pavement in a chapel. The letters are finely sculptured and perfectly sharp. However, it is not likely to continue there long; for Count de Montlivault, the prefect of the department, has already caused a search to be made for Matilda's remains, and he intends to erect a third monument to her memory. The excavations for this purpose have hitherto been unsuccessful: the Count met with many monumental stones, and many coffins of various kinds, but none that could be mistaken for the desired object; for one of the inscriptions on the late monument expressly states, that the Queen's bones had been wrapped in a linen cloth, and enclosed in a leaden box. The inquiry, however, will not be discontinued[78]: there are still hopes of success, especially in the crypt, which corresponds in its architecture with the church above. It is filled with columns placed in four ranges, each standing only four feet from the other, all of elegant proportions, with diversified capitals, as those in the choir.--Round it runs a stone bench, as in the subterraneous chapel in St. Gervais, at Rouen. Founded by a queen, the abbey of the Trinity preserved at all times a constitution thoroughly aristocratical. No individual, except of noble birth, was allowed to take the veil here, or could be received into the community. You will see in the series of the abbesses the names of Bourbon, Valois, Albret, Montmorenci, and others of the most illustrious families in France. Cecily, the Conqueror's eldest daughter, stands at the head of the list. According to the _Gallia Christiana_, she was devoted by her parents to this holy office, upon the very day of the dedication of the convent, in July 1066. The black marble slab which covered her remains, was lately discovered in the chapter-house. A crozier is sculptured upon it. It is delineated in a very curious volume now in the possession of the Abbé de la Rue, which contains drawings of all the tombs and inscriptions that formerly existed in the abbey. The annual income of the monastery of the Trinity is stated by Gough, in his _Alien Priories_, at thirty thousand livres, and that of the monastery of St. Stephen, at sixty thousand; but Ducarel estimates the revenue of the former at seventy thousand, and of the latter at two hundred thousand; and I should not doubt but that the larger sums are nearest the truth; indeed, the grants and charters still in existence, or noticed by historians, would rather lead to the supposition that the revenues must have been even greater. Parsimony in the endowment of religious buildings, was not a prevailing vice in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Least of all was it likely that it should be practised in the case of establishments, thus founded in expiation of the transgressions of wealthy and powerful sinners. Page after page, in the charters, is filled with the list of those, who, with "Lands and livings, many a rood, Had gifted the shrine for their soul's repose." The privileges and immunities enjoyed by these abbeys were very extensive. Both of them were from their origin exempted by Pope Alexander IInd, with the consent of Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, from all episcopal jurisdiction; and both had full power, as well spiritual as ecclesiastical, over the members of their own communities, and over the parishes dependent upon them; with no other appeal than to the archbishop of Rouen, or to the Pope. Express permission was likewise given to the abbot of St. Stephen's, by virtue of a bull from Pope Clement VIIth, to wear a gold mitre studded with precious stones, and a ring and sandals, and other episcopal ornaments. Many of the monuments and deeds of the greater abbey are now in the prefecture of the department. The original chartulary or register was saved by the Abbé de la Rue, and is at this time preserved in his valuable collection. The charters of the Trinity were hid, during the revolution, by the nuns, who secreted them beneath the tiling of a barn. They were discovered there not long since; but damp and vermin had rendered them wholly illegible. Lanfranc, whose services at Rome well deserved every distinction that his sovereign could bestow, was the first abbot of St. Stephen's. Upon his translation to the see of Canterbury, he was succeeded by William, who was likewise subsequently honored with an archiepiscopal mitre. The third abbot, Gislebert, was bishop of Evreux; and, though the series was not continued through an uninterrupted line of equal dignity, the office of abbot of this convent was seldom conferred, except upon an individual of exalted birth. Eight cardinals, two of them of the noble houses of Medici and Farnese, and three others, still more illustrious, the cardinals Richelieu, Mazarine, and Fleury, are included in the list, though in later times the abbacy was held _in commendam_ by these powerful prelates, whilst all the internal management of the house devolved upon a prior. Amongst the abbots will also be found Hugh de Coilly, grandson of King Stephen, Anthony of Bourbon, a natural son of Henry IVth of France, and Charles of Orléans, who was likewise of royal extraction.--St. Stephen was selected as the patron of the abbey, in consequence of the founder having bestowed upon it the head of the protomartyr, together with one of his arms, and a phial of his blood, and the stone with which he was killed. [Illustration: Monastery of St. Stephen, at Caen] The monastic buildings now serve for what, in the language of revolutionary and imperial France, was called a _Lycée_, but which has since assumed the less heathen appellation of a college. They constitute a fine edifice, and, seen from a short distance, in conjunction with the east end of the church, they form a grand _tout-ensemble_. The abbey church, from this point of view, has somewhat of an oriental character: the wide sweep of the semi-circular apsis, and the slender turrets and pyramids that rise from every part of the building, recal the idea of a Mahometan mosque. But the west end is still more striking than the east; and if, in the interior of the church of the Trinity, we had occasion to admire the beautiful quality of the Caen stone, our admiration of it was more forcibly excited here: notwithstanding the continual exposure to wind and weather, no part appears corroded, or discolored, or injured. A character of magnificence, arising in a great measure from the grand scale upon which it is built, pervades this front. But, to be regarded with advantage, it must be viewed as a whole: the parts, taken separately, are unequal and ill assorted. The simplicity of the main division approaches to meanness. Its three door-ways and double tier of windows appear disproportionally small, when contrasted with the expanse of blank wall; and their returns are remarkably shallow. The windows have no mouldings whatever, and the pillars and archivolts of the doors are very meagre. The front consists of three compartments, separated by flat buttresses; the lateral divisions rising into lofty towers, capped with octagon spires. The towers are much ornamented: three tiers of semi-circular arches surround the upper divisions; the arches of the first tier have no mouldings or pillars; the upper vary in pattern, and are enriched with pillars and bands, and some are pierced into windows.--Twelve pinnacles equally full of arches, some pointed, others semi-circular, surround each spire. Similar pinnacles rise from the ends of the transepts and the choir.--The central tower, which is short and terminates in a conical roof, was ruined by the Huguenots, who undermined it, thinking that its fall would destroy the whole building. Fortunately, however, it only damaged a portion of the eastern end; the reparations done to which have occasioned a discrepancy of style, that is injurious to the general effect. But the choir and apsis were previously of a different æra from the rest of the edifice. They were raised by the Abbot Simon de Trevieres, in the beginning of the fourteenth century.--I am greatly mistaken, if a real Norman church ever extended farther eastward than the choir. The building is now undergoing a thorough repair, at the expence of the town. No other revenues, at present, belong to it, except the _sous_ which are paid for chairs during mass. A friend, who is travelling through Normandy, describes the interior in the following manner; and, as I agree with him in his ideas, I shall borrow his description:--"Without doubt, the architect was conversant with Roman buildings, though he has Normanized their features, and adopted the lines of the basilica to a _barbaric_ temple. The Coliseum furnished the elevation of the nave;--semi-circular arches surmounted by another tier of equal span, and springing at nearly an equal height from the basis of the supporting pillars. The architraves connecting the lower rows of pillars are distinctly enounced. The arches which rise from them have plain bold mouldings. The piers between each arch are of considerable width. In the centre of each pier is a column, which ascends as usual to the vault. These columns are alternately simple and compound. The latter are square pilasters, each fronted by a cylindrical column, which of course projects farther into the nave than the simple columns; and thus the nave is divided into bays. This system is imitated in the gothic cathedral, at Sens. The square pilaster ceases at about four-fifths of its height: then two cylindrical pillars rise from it, so that, from that point, the column becomes clustered. Angular brackets, sculptured with knots, grotesque heads, and foliage, are affixed to the base of these derivative pillars. A bold double-billeted moulding is continued below the clerestory, whose windows adapt themselves to the binary arrangement of the bays. A taller arch is flanked by a smaller one on the right or the left side, as its situation requires. These are supported by short massy pillars: an embattled moulding runs round the windows. "In the choir the arches become pointed, but with Norman mouldings: the apsis is a re-construction. In that portion of the choir, which seems original, there are pointed windows formed by the interlacing of circular arches: these light the gallery. "The effect produced by the perspective of the interior is lofty and palatial. The ancient masonry of the exterior is worthy of notice. The stones are all small, perhaps not exceeding nine or twelve inches: the joints are about three-quarters of an inch." At the north-west angle of the nave has been built a large chapel, comparatively a modern erection; and in the centre of this lies Matilda's gravestone.--There is no other chapel to the nave, and, as usual, no monument in any portion of the church; but in front of the high altar is still to be seen the flat stone, placed there in 1742, in memory of the Conqueror, and bearing the epitaph-- [Illustration: Epitaph in memory of the Conqueror] QUI REXIT RIGIDOS NORMANNOS ATQUE BRITANNOS AVDACTER VICIT FORTITER OBTINVIT ET CENOMANENSES VIRTVTE COERCVIT ENSES IMPERIIQVE SVI LEGIBUS APPLICVIT REX MAGNVS PARVA JACET HIC VILLELMVS IN VRNA SVFFICIT HÆC MAGNO PARVA DOMVS DOMINO TER SEPTEM GRADIBVS SE VOLVERAT ATQUE DVOBVS VIRGINIS IN GREMIO PHOEBVS ET HIC OBIIT ANNO MLXXXVII REQVIESCEBAT IN SPE CORPVS BENEFICIENTISSIMI FVNDATORIS QVVM A CALVINIANIS ANNO MDLXII DISSIPATA SVNT EIVS OSSA VNVM EX EIS A VIRO NOBILI QVI TVM ADERAT RESERVATVM ET A POSTERIS ILLIVS ANNO MDCXLII RESTITVTVM IN MEDIO CHORO DEPOSITVM FVERAT MOLE SEPVLCHRALI DESVPER EXTRVCTA HANC CEREMONIARVM SOLEMNITATE MINVS ACCOMMODAM AMOVERVNT MONACHI ANNO MDCCXLII REGIO FVLTI DIPLOMATE ET OS QVOD VNVM SVPERERAT REPOSVERVNT IN CRYPTA PROPE ALTARE IN QVO IVGITER DE BENEDICTIONIBVS METET QVI SEMINAVIT IN BENEDICTIONIBVS FIAT FIAT The poetical part of this epitaph was composed by Thomas, archbishop of York, and was engraved upon the original monument, as well as upon a plate of gilt copper, which was found within the sepulchre when it was first opened. Many other poets, we are told by Ordericus Vitalis, exercised their talents upon the occasion; but none of their productions were deemed worthy to be inscribed upon the tomb. The account of the opening of the vault is related by De Bourgueville, from whom it has been already copied by Ducarel; but the circumstances are so curious, that I shall offer no apology for telling a twice-told tale. From Ordericus Vitalis also we may borrow some details respecting the funeral of the Conqueror, which, though strictly appertaining to English history, have never yet, I believe, appeared in an English dress. In speaking of the church of St. Gervais at Rouen, I have already briefly alluded to the melancholy circumstances by which the death of this monarch was attended. The sequel of the story is not less memorable. The king's decease was the signal for general consternation throughout the metropolis of Normandy. The citizens, panic struck, ran to and fro, as if intoxicated, or as if the town were upon the point of being taken by assault. Each asked counsel of his neighbor, and each anxiously turned his thoughts to the concealing of his property. When the alarm had in some measure subsided the monks and clergy made a solemn procession to the abbey of St. Georges, where they offered their prayers for the repose of the soul of the departed Duke; and archbishop William commanded that the body should be carried to Caen, to be interred in the church of St. Stephen, which William had founded. But the lifeless king was now deserted by all who had participated in his munificence and bounty. Every one of his brethren and relations had left him; nor was there even a servant to be found to perform the last offices to his departed lord. The care of the obsequies was finally undertaken by Herluin, a knight of that district, who, moved by the love of God and the honor of his nation, provided at his own expence, embalmers, and bearers, and a hearse, and conveyed the corpse to the Seine, whence it was carried by land and water to the place of its destination. Upon the arrival of the funeral train at Caen, it was met by Gislebert, bishop of Evreux, then abbot of St. Stephen's, at the head of his monks, attended with a numerous throng of clergy and laity; but scarcely had the bier been brought within the gates, when the report was spread that a dreadful fire had broken out in another part of the town, and the Duke's remains were a second time deserted. The monks alone remained; and, fearful and irresolute, they bore their founder "with candle, with book, and with knell," to his last home. Ordericus Vitalis enumerates the principal prelates and barons assembled upon this occasion; but he makes no mention of the Conqueror's son, Henry, who, according to William of Jumieges, was the only one of the family that attended, and was also the only one worthy of succeeding to such a father.--Mass had now been performed, and the body was about to be committed to the ground, "ashes to ashes, dust to dust," when, previously to this closing part of the ceremony, Gislebert mounted the pulpit, and delivered an oration in honor of the deceased.--He praised his valor, which had so widely extended the limits of the Norman dominion; his ability, which had elevated the nation to the highest pitch of glory; his equity in the administration of justice; his firmness in correcting abuses; and his liberality towards the monks and clergy; then, finally, addressing the people, he besought them to intercede with the Almighty for the soul of their prince, and to pardon whatsoever transgression he might have been guilty of towards any of them.--At this moment, one Asselin, an obscure individual, starting from the crowd, exclaimed with a loud voice, "the ground upon which you are standing, was the site of my father's dwelling. This man, for whom you ask our prayers, took it by force from my parent; by violence he seized, by violence he retained it; and, contrary to all law and justice, he built upon it this church, where we are assembled. Publicly, therefore, in the sight of God and man, do I claim my inheritance, and protest against the body of the plunderer being covered with my turf."--The appeal was attended with instant effect; bishops and nobles united in their entreaties to Asselin; they admitted the justice of his claim; they pacified him; they paid him sixty shillings on the spot by way of recompence for the place of sepulture; and, finally, they satisfied him for the rest of the land. But the remarkable incidents doomed to attend upon this burial, were not yet at an end; for at the time when they were laying the corpse in the sarcophagus, and were bending it with some force, which they were compelled to do, in consequence of the coffin having been made too short, the body, which was extremely corpulent, burst, and so intolerable a stench issued from the grave, that all the perfumes which arose from all the censers of the priests and acolytes were of no avail; and the rites were concluded in haste, and the assembly, struck with horror, returned to their homes. The latter part of this story accords but ill with what De Bourgueville relates. We learn from this author, that four hundred and thirty years subsequent to the death of the Conqueror, a Roman cardinal, attended by an archbishop and bishop, visited the town of Caen, and that his eminence having expressed a wish to see the body of the duke, the monks yielded to his curiosity, and the tomb was opened, and the corpse discovered in so perfect a state, that the cardinal caused a portrait to be taken from the lifeless features.--It is not worth while now to inquire into the truth of this story, or the fidelity of the resemblance. The painting has disappeared in the course of time: it hung for a while against the walls of the church, opposite to the monument; but it was stolen during the tumults caused by the Huguenots, and was broken into two pieces, in which state De Bourgueville saw it a few years afterwards, in the hands of a Calvinist, one Peter Hodé, the gaoler at Caen, who used it in the double capacity of a table and a door.--The worthy magistrate states, that he kept the picture, "because the abbey-church was demolished." He was himself present at the second violation of the royal tomb, in 1572; and he gives a piteous account of the transaction. The monument raised to the memory of the Conqueror, by his son, William Rufus, under the superintendance of Lanfranc, was a production of much costly and elaborate workmanship: the shrine, which was placed upon the mausoleum, glittered with gold and silver and precious stones. To complete the whole, the effigy of the king had been added to the tomb, at some period subsequent to its original erection.--A monument like this naturally excited the rapacity of a lawless banditti, unrestrained by civil or military force, and inveterate against every thing that might be regarded as connected with the Catholic worship.--The Calvinists were masters of Caen, and, incited by the information of what had taken place at Rouen, they resolved to repeat the same outrages. Under the specious pretext of abolishing idolatrous worship, they pillaged and ransacked every church and monastery: they broke the painted windows and organs, destroyed the images, stole the ecclesiastical ornaments, sold the shrines, committed pulpits, chests, books, and whatever was combustible, to the fire; and finally, after having wreaked their vengeance upon eyery thing that could be made the object of it, they went boldly to the town-hall to demand the wages for their labors.--In the course of these outrages the tomb of the Conqueror at one abbey, and that of Matilda at the other, were demolished. And this was not enough; but a few days afterwards, the same band returned, allured by the hopes of farther plunder. It was customary in ancient times to deposit treasures of various kinds in the tombs of sovereigns, as if the feelings of the living passed into the next stage of existence;-- "... quæ gratia currûm Armorumque fuit vivis, quæ cura nitentes Pascere equos, eadem sequitur tellure repostos." The bees that adorned the imperial mantle of Napoléon were found in the tomb of Childeric. A similar expectation excited the Huguenots, at Caen. They dug up the coffin: the hollow stone rung to the strokes of their daggers: the vibration proved that it was not filled by the corpse; and nothing more was wanted to seal its destruction. De Bourgueville, who went to the spot and exerted his eloquence to check this last act of violence, witnessed the opening of the coffin. It contained the bones of the king, wrapped up in red taffety, and still in tolerable preservation; but nothing else. He collected them, with care, and consigned them to one of the monks of the abbeys who kept them in his chamber, till the Admiral de Châtillon entered Caen at the head of his mercenaries, on which occasion the whole abbey was plundered, and the monks put to flight, and the bones lost. "Sad doings, these," says De Bourgueville, "_et bien peu réformez!_"--He adds, that one of the thigh-bones was preserved by the Viscount of Falaise, who was there with him, and begged it from the rioters, and that this bone was longer by four fingers' breadth than that of a tall man. The bone thus preserved, was re-interred, after the cessation of the troubles: it is the same that is alluded to in the inscription, which also informs us that a monument was raised over it in 1642, but was removed in 1742, it being then considered as an incumbrance in the choir. With this detail I close my letter. The melancholy end of the Conqueror, the strange occurrences at his interment, the violation of his grave, the dispersion of his remains, and the demolition and final removal of his monument, are circumstances calculated to excite melancholy emotions in the mind of every one, whatever his condition in life. In all these events, the religious man traces the hand of retributive justice; the philosopher regards the nullity of sublunary grandeur; the historian finds matter for serious reflection; the poet for affecting narrative; the moralist for his tale; and the school-boy for his theme.--Ordericus Vitalis sums the whole up admirably. I should spoil his language were I to attempt to translate it; I give it you, therefore, in his own words:--"Non fictilem tragoediam venundo, non loquaci comoedia cachinnantibus parasitis faveo: sed studiosis lectoribus varios eventus veraciter intimo. Inter prospera patuerunt adversa, ut terrerentur terrigenarum corda. Rex quondam potens et bellicosus, multisque populis per plures Provincias metuendus, in area jacuit nudus, et a suis, quos genuerat vel aluerat, destitutus. Aere alieno in funebri cultu indiguit, ope gregarii pro sandapila et vespilionibus conducendis eguit, qui tot hactenus et superfluis opibus nimis abundavit. Secus incendium a formidolosis vectus est ad Basilicam, liberoque solo, qui tot urbibus et oppidis et vicis principatus est, caruit ad sepulturam. Arvina ventris ejus tot delectamentis enutrita cum dedecore patuit, et prudentes ac infrunitos, qualis sit gloria carnis, edocuit[79]." * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 76: _Anglo-Norman Antiquities_, p. 45.] [Footnote 77: See _Cotman's Architectural Antiquities of Normandy_, t. 24-33.] [Footnote 78: A detailed account of the proceedings on this occasion, is given in the _Journal Politique du Département du Calvados_, for March 21, and May 6, 1819.--The first attempt at the discovery of Matilda's coffin, was made in March, 1818, and was confined to the chapter-house: the matter then slept till the following March, when Count de Montlivault, attended by the Bishop of Bayeux, Mr. Spencer Smythe, and other gentlemen, prosecuted his inquiries within the church itself, and, immediately under the spot where her monument stood, discovered a stone coffin, five feet four inches long, by eleven inches deep, and varying in width from twenty inches to eleven. Within this coffin was a leaden box, soldered down; and, in addition to the box, the head of an effigy of a monk, in stone, and a portion of a skull-bone filled with aromatic herbs, and covered with a yellowish-white membrane, which proved, upon examination, to be the remains of a linen cloth. The box contained various bones, that had belonged to a person of nearly the same height as Matilda is described to have been. No doubt seemed to remain but that the desideratum was discovered. The whole was therefore carefully replaced; and the prefect ordered that a new tomb should be raised, similar to that which was destroyed at the revolution; and that the slab, with the original epitaph, should be laid on the top; that copies of the former inscription, stating how the queen's remains had been re-interred by the abbess, in 1707, should be added to two of the sides; that to the third should be affixed the ducal arms of Normandy; and that the fourth should bear the following inscription:-- "Ce tombeau renfermant les dépouilles mortelles de l'illustre Fondatrice de cette Abbaye, renversé pendant les discordes civiles, et déplacé depuis une longue série d'années, a été restauré, conformément au voeu des amis de la religion, de l'antiquité et des arts, 1819. Casimir, comte de Montlivault, conseiller d'état, préfet. Léchaudé d'Anisy, directeur de l'Hospice." The ceremony of the re-interment was performed with great pomp on the fifth of May; and the Bishop of Bayeux pronounced a speech on the occasion, that does him credit for its good sense and affecting eloquence.] [Footnote 79: _Hist. Normannorum Scriptores_, p. 662.] LETTER XXVI. PALACE OF THE CONQUEROR--HERALDIC TILES--PORTRAITS OF WILLIAM AND MATILDA--MUSEUM--PUBLIC LIBRARY--UNIVERSITY--ACADEMY--EMINENT MEN--HISTORY OF CAEN. (_Caen, August_, 1818.) Within the precincts of the abbey of St. Stephen are some buildings, which do not appear to have been used for monastic purposes. It is supposed that they were erected by William the Conqueror, and they are yet called his palace. Only sixty years ago, when Ducarel visited Caen, these remains still preserved their original character. He describes the great guard-chamber and the barons' hall, as making a noble appearance, and as being perhaps equally worth the notice of an English antiquary as any object within the province of Normandy. The walls of these rooms are standing, but dilapidated and degraded; and they have lost their architectural character, which, supposing Ducarel's plate to be a faithful representation, must have been very decisive. It is scarcely possible to conceive how any man, with such a specimen of the palace before his eyes, could dream of its being coeval with the Norman conquest: every portion is of the pointed style, and even of a period when that style was no longer in its purity. Possibly, indeed, other parts of the edifice may have been more ancient; such certainly was the "Conqueror's kitchen," a singular octagon building, with four tall slender chimneys capped with perforated cones. This was destroyed many years ago; but Ducarel obtained an original drawing of it, which he has engraved. Amongst the ruins there is a chimney which perhaps belonged to this building.--The guard-chamber and barons' hall are noble rooms: the former is one hundred and ninety feet in length and ninety in breadth. You remember how admirably the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ opens with a description of such a hall, filled with knights, and squires, and pages, and all the accompaniments of feudal state. I tried, while standing by these walls, to conjure up the same pictures to my imagination, but it was impossible; so desolate and altered was every thing around, and so effectually was the place of baronial assemblage converted into a granary. The ample fire-place still remains; but, cold and cheerless, it looks as if had been left in mockery of departed splendor and hospitality. I annex a sketch of it, in which you will also see a few scattered tiles, relics of the magnificent pavement that once covered the floor. [Illustration: Fireplace in the Conqueror's Palace, at Caen] This pavement has been the subject of much learned discussion; because, if the antiquity of the emblazoned tiles could be established, (which it certainly cannot) we should then have a decisive proof of the use of armorial bearings in the eleventh century. Nearly the whole of these tiles are now removed. After the abbey was sold, the workmen entirely destroyed the tiles, breaking them with their pick-axes. The Abbé de la Rue, however, collected an entire set of them; and others have been preserved by M. Lair, an antiquary of Caen.--Ducarel thus describes the pavement when perfect: "The floor is laid with tiles, each near five inches square, baked almost to vitrification. Eight rows of these tiles, running from east to west, are charged with different coats of arms, said to be those of the families who attended Duke William in his invasion of England. The intervals between each of these rows are filled up with a kind of tessellated pavement, the middle whereof represents a maze or labyrinth, about ten feet in diameter, and so artfully contrived that were we to suppose a man following all the intricate meanders of its volutes, he could not travel less than a mile before he got from one end to the other. The remainder of the floor is inlaid with small squares of different colors, placed alternately, and formed into draught or chess-boards, for the amusement of the soldiers while on guard." Such is the general description of the floors of this apartment: with regard to the date of the tiles, Ducarel proceeds to state that "it is most probable the pavement was laid down in the latter part of the reign of King John, when he was loitering away his life at Caen, with the beautiful Isabel of Angoulême, his queen; during which period, the custom of wearing coats of arms was introduced."--Common tradition assigns the tiles to higher date, making them coeval with the conquest; and this opinion has not been without supporters. It was strenuously defended by Mr. Henniker Major, who, in the year 1794, printed for private distribution, two letters upon the subject, addressed to Lord Leicester, in which he maintained this opinion with zeal and laborious research. To the letters were annexed engravings of twenty coats of arms, the whole, as he observes, that were represented on the pavement; for though the number of emblazoned tiles was considerable, the rest were all repetitions[80]. The same observation was found in the inscription attached to a number of the tiles, which the monks kept framed for public inspection, in a conspicuous part of the monastery; and yet some of the armorial bearings in this very selection, differ from any of those figured by Mr. Henniker Major. The Abbé de la Rue has also many which are not included in Mr. Henniker Major's engravings. In one of the coats the arms are quartered, a practice that was not introduced till the reign of Edward IIIrd. The same quarterings are also found upon an escutcheon, placed over the door that leads to the apartment. This door is a flattened arch, with an ogee canopy, the workmanship probably of the fourteenth century. To the same date I should also refer the tiles; and possibly the whole palace was built at that period. There are no records of its erection; no document connects its existence with the history of the duchy; no author relates its having been suffered to fall into decay. So striking an absence of all proof, and this upon a point where evidence of different kinds might naturally have been expected, may warrant a suspicion how far the building was ever a royal palace, according to the strict import of the town. A friend of mine supposes that these buildings may have been the king's lodgings. During the middle ages it was usual for monarchs in their progresses, to put up at the great abbeys; and this portion of the convent of St. Stephen may have been intended for the accommodation of the royal guests. The assigning of a comparatively modern date to the pavement, does not necessarily interfere with the question as to the antiquity of heraldic bearings. The coats of arms which are painted upon the tiles may have been designed to represent those of the nobility who attended Duke William on his expedition to England: it is equally possible that they embraced a more general object, and were those of the principal families of the duchy--De Thou gives his suffrage in favor of the former opinion, but Huet of the latter; and the testimony of the bishop must be allowed, in this case, to outweigh that of the president.--Huet also says, that it is matter of notoriety that the tiles were laid down towards the close of the fourteenth century. He mentions, however, no authority for the assertion; and less credit perhaps will be given to it than it deserves, from his having stated just before, that the abbey and palace were contemporary structures. Upon the outside wall of a chapel that is supposed to have belonged to the same palace, were ancient fresco paintings of William and Matilda, and of their sons, Robert and William Rufus. They are engraved by Montfaucon[81], and are supposed by him, probably with reason, to be coeval with the personages they represent. The figures are standing upon animals, the distribution of which is the most remarkable circumstance connected with the portraits. To the king is assigned a dog; to the queen a lion: the eldest son has the same symbol as his father; the younger rests upon a two-bodied beast, half swine, half bird, the bodies uniting in a female head.--Upon the same plate, Montfaucon has given a second whole-length picture of the conqueror, which represents him with the crown upon his head, and the sceptre in his hand. Considering the costume, he observes with justice that it cannot have been painted earlier than the latter part of the fourteenth century. Ducarel, who, as usual, has copied the Benedictine's engravings, says that, in his time, the same portrait existed in fresco over a chimney-piece in the porter's lodge.--We saw two copies of it; the one in the sacristy of the abbey church, the other in the museum, an establishment which may, without injustice to the honors of Caen, be dismissed with the brief observation, that, though three rooms are appropriated to the purpose, there is a very scanty assortment of pictures, and their quality is altogether ordinary. The public library is a handsome apartment, one hundred and thirty feet in length, and it contains about twenty thousand volumes, mostly in good condition; but a great proportion of the books are of a description little read, being old divinity. To the students of the university, this establishment is of essential service; and on this account it is to be regretted, that the very scanty revenue with which it is endowed, amounting only to twelve hundred francs per annum, prevents the possibility of any material increase to the collection, except in the case of such books as the liberality of the state contributes. And these are principally works of luxury and great expence, which might advantageously be exchanged for the less costly productions of more extensive utility. We inquired in vain after manuscripts and specimens of early typography. None were to be found; and yet they might surely have been expected here; for a public library has existed in Caen from an early part of the last century, and, previous to the revolution, it was enriched with various donations. M. de Colleville presented to it the whole of the collection of the celebrated Bochart; Cavelier, printer to the university, a man known by several treatises on Roman antiquities, added a donation of two thousand volumes; and Cardinal de Fleury, who considered it under his especial protection, gave various sums of money for the purchase of books, and likewise provided a salary for the librarian. I suspect that no small proportion of the more valuable volumes, have been dispersed or stolen. Round the apartment hang portraits of the most eminent men of Caen: tablets are also suspended, for the purpose of commemorating those who have been benefactors to the library; but the tablets at present are blank. For its university Caen is indebted to Henry VIth, who, anxious to give éclat and popularity to British rule, founded a college by letters patent, dated from Rouen, in January, 1431. The original charter restricted the objects of the university to education in the canon and civil law; but, five years subsequently, the same king issued a fresh patent, adding the faculties of theology and the arts; and, in the following year, he still farther added the faculty of medicine.--To give permanency to the work thus happily begun, the states of Normandy preferred their petition to Pope Eugene IVth, who issued two bulls, dated the thirtieth of May, 1437, and the nineteenth of May, 1439, by which the new university received the sanction of the holy see, and was placed upon the same footing as the other universities of the kingdom. The Bishop of Bayeux was at the same time appointed chancellor; and sundry apostolical privileges were conceded, which have been confirmed by subsequent pontiffs.--Thus Normandy, as is admitted by De Bourgueville, owed good as well as evil to her English sovereigns; but Charles VIIth had no sooner succeeded in expelling our countrymen from the province, than jealousy arose in his breast, at finding them in possession of such a title to the gratitude of the people, and he resolved to run the risk of destroying what had been done, rather than lose the opportunity of gratifying his personal feeling. The university was therefore dissolved in 1450, that a new one might hereafter be founded by the new sovereign. The king thought it necessary to vary in some degree from the example of his predecessor; and for this purpose he had recourse to the extraordinary expedient of abolishing the faculty of law. A petition, however, from the states, induced him to replace the whole upon its original footing in 1452, and it continued till the time of the revolution to have all the five faculties, and to be the only one in France that retained them. Two years only intervened between the dates of the patents issued by Charles VIIth, upon the subject of this university; yet there is a remarkable difference in their language. The first of them, which is obviously intended to disparage Caen, styles it a large town, scantily inhabited, without manufactures or commerce, and destitute of any great river to afford facilities towards the transport of the produce of the country. The second was designed to have an opposite tendency; and in this, the people of Caen are praised for their acuteness, and the town for its excellent harbor and great rivers. The patent also adds, that the nearest university, that of Paris, is fifty leagues distant. In the estimation, at least, of the inhabitants, the university of Caen ranks at present the third in France; Paris and Strasbourg being alone entitled to stand before it. The faculty of law retains its old reputation, and the legal students are quite the pride of the university. Since the peace, many young jurisprudents from Jersey and Guernsey have resorted to it. Medical students generally complete their education at Paris, where it is commonly considered in France, that, both in theory and practice, the various branches of this faculty have nearly attained the acmè of perfection. The students, who amount to just five hundred, are under the care of twenty-six professors, many of them men of distinguished talents. The Abbé de la Rue fills the chair of history; M. Lamouroux, that of the natural sciences. They receive their salaries wholly from the government; their emoluments continue the same, whether the students crowd to hear their courses, or whether they lecture to empty benches. It is strictly forbidden to a student to attempt to make any remuneration to a professor, or even to offer him a present of any kind. The whole of the dues paid by the scholars go to the state; and the state in its turn, defrays the expences of the establishment. There is likewise at Caen an Academy of Sciences, Arts and Belles Lettres, which has published two volumes; not, strictly speaking, of its Transactions, but exhibiting a brief outline of the principal papers that have been read at the meetings. The antiquarian dissertations of the Abbé de la Rue, which they contain, are of great merit; and it is much to be regretted, that they have not appeared in a more extended form. A chartered academy was first founded here in the year 1705; and it continued to exist, till it was suppressed, like all others throughout France, at the revolution. The present establishment arose in 1800, under the auspices of General Dugua, then prefect of the department, who had been urged to the task by the celebrated Chaptal, Minister of the Interior.--Some interesting, letters are annexed to the second part of the poems of Mosant de Brieux, in which, among much curious information relative to Caen, he describes the literary meetings that led to the foundation of the first academy. The town at that time could boast an unusual proportion of men of talents. Bochart, author of _Sacred Geography_; Graindorge, who had published _De Principiis Generationîs_; Huet, a man seldom mentioned, without the epithet _learned_ being attached to his name; and Halley and Ménage, authors almost equally distinguished, were amongst those who were associated for the purposes of acquiring and communicating information. Indeed, Caen appears at all times to have been fruitful in literary characters. Huet enumerates no fewer than one hundred and thirty-seven, whom he considers worthy of being recorded among the eminent men of France. The greater part of them are necessarily unknown to us in England; and allowance must be made for a man who is writing upon a subject, in which self-love may be considered as in some degree involved; the glory of our townsmen shining by reflection upon ourselves. A portion, however, of the number, are men whose claims to celebrity will not be denied.--Such, in the fifteenth century, were the poets John and Clement Marot; such was the celebrated physician, Dalechamps, to whom naturalists are indebted for the _Historia Plantarum_; such the laborious lexicographer, Constantin; and, not to extend the catalogue needlessly, such above all was Malherbe. The medal that has been struck at Caen in honor of this great man, at the expence of Monsieur de Lair, bears for its epigraph, the three first words of Boileau's eulogium--"Enfin Malherbe vint."--The same inscription is also to be seen upon the walls of the library. So expressive a beginning prepares the reader for a corresponding sequel; and I should be guilty of injustice towards this eminent writer, were I not to quote to you the passage at length.-- "Enfin, Malherbe vint, et le premier en France Fit sentir dans les vers une juste cadence: D'un mot mis en sa place enseigna le pouvoir, Et reduisit la muse aux règles du devoir. Par ce sage écrivain, la langue repareé, N'offrit plus rien de rude à l'oreille épureé. Les stances avec grâce apprirent à tomber, Et le Vers sur le Vers n'osa plus enjamber." Wace and Baudius, though not born at Caen, have contributed to its honor, by their residence here. Baudius was appointed to the professorship of law in the university, by the President de Thou; but he disagreed with his colleagues, and soon removed to Leyden, where he filled the chair of history till his death. Some of his earlier letters, in the collection published by Elzevir, are dated from Caen. His Iambi, directed against his brethren of this university, are scarcely to be exceeded for severity, by the bitterest specimens of a style proverbially bitter. Their excessive virulence defeated the writer's aim; but there is an elegance in the Latinity of Baudius, and a degree of feeling in his sentiments, which will ensure a permanent existence to his compositions, and especially to his poems.--He it was who called forth the severe saying of Bayle, that "many men of learning render themselves contemptible in the places where they live, while they are admired where they are known only by their writings."--Wace was a native of Jersey, but an author only at Caen. The most celebrated of his works is _Le Roman de Rou et des Normans_, written in French verse. He dedicated this romance to our Henry IInd, who rewarded him with a stall in the cathedral at Bayeux. [Illustration: Profile of M. Lamouroux] Quitting the departed for the living, I send you a profile of M. Lamouroux, the professor of natural history at this university, to whom we have been personally indebted for the kindest attention. His name is well known to you, as that of a man who has, perhaps, deserved more than any other individual at the hands of every student of marine Botany. His treatises upon the _Classification of the Submersed Algæ_, have been honored with admission in the _Mémoires du Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle_, and have procured him the distinction of being elected into the National Institute: his subsequent publication on the _Corallines_, is an admirable manual, in a very difficult branch of natural history; and he is now preparing for the press, a work of still greater labor and more extensive utility, an arrangement of the organized fossils found in the vicinity of Caen. The whole of this neighborhood abounds in remains of the antediluvian world: they are found not only in considerable quantity, but in great perfection. In the course of last year; a fossil crocodile was dug up at Allemagne, a village about a mile distant, imbedded in blue lias. Other specimens of the same genus, comprising, as it appears, two species, both of them distinct from any that are known in a living state, had previously been discovered in a bed of similar hard blue limestone, near Havre and Honfleur, as well as upon the opposite shores of England. But the Caen specimen is the most interesting of any, as the first that has been seen with its scales perfect; and the naturalists here have availed themselves of the opportunity thus afforded them, to determine it by a specific character, and give it the name of _Crocodilus Cadomensis_. The civil and ecclesiastical history of Caen will be amply illustrated in the forthcoming volumes of the Abbé de la Rue, as he is preparing a work on the subject, _à l'instar_ of the Essays of St. Foix. In the leading events of the duchy, we find the town of Caen had but little share. It is only upon the occasion of two sieges from our countrymen, the one in 1346, the other in 1417, that it appears to have acted a prominent part. The details of the first siege are given at some length by Froissart.--Edward IIIrd, accompanied by the Black Prince, had landed at La Hogue; and, meeting with no effectual resistance, had pillaged the towns of Barfleur, Cherbourg, Carentan, and St. Lô, after which he led his army hither. Caen, as Froissait tells us, was at that time "large, strong, and full of drapery and all other sorts of merchandize, rich citizens, noble dames and damsels, and fine churches." In its defence were assembled the Constable of France, with the Counts of Eu, Guignes, and Tancarville. But the wisdom of the generals was defeated by the impetuosity of the citizens. They saw themselves equal in number to the invaders, and, without reflecting how little numerical superiority avails in war against experience and tactics, they required to be led against the foe. They were so, and were defeated. The conquerors and conquered entered the city pell-mell; and Edward, enraged at the citizens for shooting upon his troops from the windows, issued orders that the inhabitants should be put to the sword, and the town burned. The mandate, however, was not executed: Sir Godfrey de Harcourt, with wise remonstrances, assuaged the anger of the sovereign, and diverted him from his purpose.--Immense were the riches taken on the occasion. The English fleet returned home loaded with cloth, and jewels, and gold, and silver plate, together with sixty knights, and upwards of three hundred able men, prisoners. This gallant exploit was shortly afterwards followed by the decisive battle of Crécy. Caen suffered still more severely upon the occasion of its second capture; when Henry IVth marched upon the town immediately after landing at Touques. The siege was longer, and the place, taken by assault, was given up to indiscriminate plunder. Even the churches were not spared: that of the Holy Sepulchre was demolished, and, among its other treasures, a crucifix was carried away, containing a portion of the real cross, which, as we are told, testified by so many miracles its displeasure at being taken to England, that the conquerors were glad to restore it to its original destination. From this time to the year 1450, our countrymen kept undisturbed possession of Caen. In the latter year they capitulated to the Count de Dunois, after a gallant resistance. But though the town has thenceforward remained, without interruption, subject to the crown of France, it has not therefore been always free from the miseries of warfare. A dreadful riot took place here in 1512, occasioned by the disorderly conduct of a body of six thousand German mercenaries, whom Louis XIIth introduced, by way of garrison, to guard against any sudden attack from Henry VIIIth. The character given by De Bourgueville of these _Lansquenets_ is, that they were "drunkards who guzzle wine, cider, and beer, out of earthen pots, and then fall asleep upon the table." Three hundred lives were lost upon this occasion, on the part of the Germans alone.--In the middle of the same century, happened the civil wars, originating in the reformation: and in the course of these, Caen suffered dreadfully from the contending parties. Friend and foe conspired alike to its ruin: what was saved from the violence of the Huguenots, was taken by the treachery of the Catholics, under the plausible pretext of its being placed in security. Thus, after the Calvinists had already seized on every thing precious that fell in their way, the Duke de Bouillon, the governor of the town, commanded all the reliquaries, shrines, church-plate, and ecclesiastical ornaments, to be carried to him at the castle; and he had no sooner got them into his possession, than "all holy, rich, and precious, as they were, he caused them to be melted down, and converted into coin to pay his soldiers; and he scattered the relics, so that they have never been seen more."--Loosen but the bands of society, and you will find that, in all ages of the world, the case has been nearly the same; and, as upon the banks of the Simoeis, so upon the plains of Normandy,-- "Seditione, dolis, scelere, atque libidine, et irâ, _Iliacos_ extra muros peccatur et intra." * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 80: Engravings of the same tiles, and of some others, chiefly with fanciful patterns, are to be found in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for March 1789, LIX. p. 211, plates 2, 3. The subjects of the latter plate are those tiles which were hung in a gilt frame, on the walls of the cloister of the abbey, with an inscription, denoting whence they were taken.] [Footnote 81: _Monumens de la Monarchie Française_, I. p. 402, t. 55.] LETTER XXVII. VIEUX--LA MALADERIE--CHESNUT TIMBER--CAEN STONE--HISTORY OF BAYEUX--TAPESTRY. (_Bayeux, August_, 1818.) Letters just received from England oblige us to change our course entirely: their contents are of such a nature, that we could not prolong our journey with comfort or satisfaction. We must return to England; and, instead of regretting the objects which we have lost, we must rejoice that we have seen so much, and especially that we have been able to visit the cathedral and tapestry of Bayeux. At the same time, I will not deny that we certainly could have wished to have explored the vicinity of Caen, where an ample harvest of subjects, both for the pen and pencil, is to be gathered; but the circumstances that control us would not even allow of a pilgrimage to the shrine of our Lady of la Délivrande, on the border of the English Channel, or of an excursion to the village of Vieux, in the opposite direction.--Antiquaries have been divided in opinion, concerning the nature and character of the buildings which anciently occupied the site of this village.--The remains of a Roman aqueduct are still to be seen there, and the foundations of ancient edifices are distinctly to be traced. In the course of the last century, a gymnasium was likewise discovered, of great size, constructed according to the rules laid down by Vitruvius, and a hypocaust, connected with a fine stone basin, twelve feet in diameter, surrounded by three rows of seats. Abundance of medals of the upper empire, among others, of Crispina, wife to Commodus, and Latin inscriptions and sarcophagi, are frequently dug up among its ruins[82]. Hence, a belief has commonly prevailed that during the Roman dominion in Gaul, Vieux was a city, and that Caen, which is only six miles distant, arose from its ruins. This opinion was strenuously combated by Huet; yet it subsequently found a new advocate in the Abbé Le Beuf[83]. The bishop contends that the extent of the buildings rather denotes the ruins of a fortified camp, than of a city; and he therefore considers it most probable, that Vieux was the site of an encampment, raised near the Orne, for the purpose of defending the passage of the river, at the point where it was crossed by the military road that led from the district of the Bessin, to that of the Hiesmois.--Portions of the causeway, may still be traced, constructed of the same kind of brick as the aqueduct; and the name of the village so far tends to corroborate the conjecture, that _Vieux_ originally denoted a ford; and the word _Vé_, which is most probably a corruption from it, retains this signification in Norman French.--The Abbé, at the same time that he does not pretend to contradict the argument deduced from etymology, maintains that a careful comparison of the position of Vieux, with the distances marked on the _Tabula Peutingeriana_, and with what Ptolemy relates of certain towns adjoining the Viducassian territory, will support him in the assertion, that Vieux was the ancient _Augustodurum_ the Viducassian capital; and that Bayeux was probably the site of _Arigenus_ another of the towns of that tribe.--The red, veined marble of Vieux is much esteemed in France; as are also the other marbles of this department, which vary in color from a dull white, through grey, to blue. The quarries, as is generally believed, were first opened and worked by the Romans. Vieux marble is to be seen at Paris, where it was employed by Cardinal Richelieu, in the construction of the chapel of the Sorbonne. At about a mile from Caen, on the road to Bayeux, stands the village of St. Germain de Blancherbe, more commonly called in the neighborhood _la Maladerie_, a name derived from the lazar-house in it, the _Léproserie de Beaulieu_, founded by Henry IInd, in 1161.--Robert Du Mont terms the building a wonderful work. It was a princely establishment, designed for the reception of lepers from all the parishes of Caen, except four, whose patients had an especial right to be admitted into a smaller hospital in the same place. The great hospital is now used as a house of correction. Seen from the road, it appears to be principally of modern architecture though still retaining a portion of the ancient structure; the same, probably, as is mentioned by Ducarel, who says, that "part of the magnificent chapel, which was considered as the parish church for the lepers, and ruined by the English, is turned into a large common hall for the prisoners, and separated from the other part, which is made into a chapel, by means of an iron gate, through which they may have an opportunity of hearing mass celebrated every morning."--Within the village street stands a desecrated church of the earliest Norman style, with a very perfect door-way. The present parish church, though chiefly modern, deserves attention on account of the west front, which is wholly of the semi-circular style, and is somewhat curious, from having two Norman buttresses, that rise from a string-course at the top of the basement story, (in which the arched door-way is contained,) and are thence continued upwards till they unite with the roof. The decorations round its southern entrance are also remarkable: they principally consist of a very sharp chevron moulding, interspersed with foliage and various figures. The quarries in this village, and in that of Allemagne, on the opposite side of the Orne, supply most of the free-stone, for which Caen has, during many centuries, been celebrated. Stone of the finest quality is found in strata of different thickness, at the depth of about sixty feet below the surface of the ground. If worked much lower, it ceases to be good. It is brought up in square blocks, about nine feet wide, and two feet thick, by means of vertical wheels, placed at the mouths of the pits. When first dug from the quarry, its color is a pure and glossy white, and its texture very soft; but as it hardens it takes a browner hue, and loses its lustre. In former days this stone was exported in great quantity to our own country. Stow, in his _Survey of London_, states that London Bridge, Westminster Abbey, and several others of our public edifices were built with it. Extracts from sundry charters relative to the quarries are quoted by Ducarel, who adds that, in his time, though many cargoes of the stone were annually conveyed by water to the different provinces of the kingdom, the exportation of it out of France was strictly prohibited, insomuch that, when it was to be sent by sea, the owner of the stone, as well as the master of the vessel on board of which it was shipped, was obliged to give security that it should not be sold to foreigners.--We omitted to inquire how far the same prohibitions still continue in force. At but a short distance from St. Germain de Blancherbe, stands the ruined abbey of Ardennes, now the residence of a farmer; but still preserving the features of a monastic building. The convent was founded in 1138, for canons of the Præmonstratensian order. Its Celtic name denotes its antiquity, as it also tends to prove that this part of the country was covered with timber. The word, _arden_, signified a forest, and was thence applied, with a slight variation in orthography, to the largest forest in England, and to the more celebrated forest in the vicinity of Liege. According to tradition, the Norman ardennes consisted: of chesnut-trees. De Bourgueville tells us that timber of this description is the principal material of most of the houses in the town. John Evelyn relates the same of those in London; and in our own counties wherever a village church has been so fortunate as to preserve its ancient timber cieling, the clerk is almost sure to state that the wood is chesnut. Either this tree therefore must formerly have abounded in places where it has now almost ceased to exist, or oak timber must have been commonly mistaken for it: and we may equally adopt both these conjectures. The yew and the service, as well as the chesnut, are occasionally mentioned in old charters, and are admitted by botanists to be indigenous in England. I should doubt, however, if any one of them could now be found in a wild state; and there is a fashion in planting as well as in every thing else, which renders peculiar trees more or less abundant at different times. About half way between Caen and Bayeux, is the village of Bretteville l'Orgueilleuse, the lofty tower of whose church, perforated with long lancet windows, and surmounted by a high spire, excites curiosity. Churches are numerous in this neighborhood, and there is no other part of Normandy, in which, architecturally considered, they are equally deserving of notice. Scarcely one is to be seen that is not marked by some peculiarity. I know not why Bretteville acquired the epithet attached to its name; and I am equally at a loss for the derivation of the word _Bretteville_ itself; but the term must have some signification in Normandy, at least eleven villages in the duchy being so called. The first part of the road to Bayeux passes through a flat and open district, resembling that on the other side of Caen; in the remaining half, the country is enclosed, with a more varied surface. Apple-trees again abound; and the old custom of suspending a bush over the door of an inn is commonly practised here. For this purpose misletoe is almost always selected. Throughout the whole of this district and the neighboring province of Brittany, the ancient attachment of the Druids to misletoe continues to a certain degree to prevail. The commencement of the new year is hailed by shouts of "au gui; l'an neuf;" and the gathering of the misletoe for the occasion is still the pretext for a merry-making, if not for a religious ceremony. Bayeux was the seat of an academy of the Druids. Ausonius expressly addresses Attius Patera Pather, one of the professors at Bordeaux, as being of the family of the priesthood of this district:-- "Doctor potentum rhetorum, Tu Bajocassis stirpe Druidarum satus;" And tradition to this hour preserves the remembrance of the spot that was hallowed by the celebration of their mystic rites. This spot, an eminence adjoining the city, has subsequently served for the site of a priory dedicated to St. Nicholas _de la chesnaye_, thus commemorating by the epithet, the oaks that formed the holy grove. Near it stood the famous temple of Mount Phaunus, which was flourishing in the beginning of the fourth century, and, according to Rivet, was considered one of the three most celebrated in Gaul. Belenus was the divinity principally worshipped in it; but, according to popular superstition, adoration was also paid to a golden calf, which was buried in the hill, and still remains entombed there. Even within the last fifty years, two laborers have lost their lives in a fruitless attempt to find this hidden treasure. Tombs, and urns, and human bones, are constantly discovered; yet neither Druidic temples, nor pillars of stone, nor cromlechs or Celtic remains of any description exist, at least, at present, in the neighborhood of Bayeux. Roman relics, however, abound. The vases and statues dug up near this city, have afforded employment to the pen and the pencil of Count Caylus, who, judging from the style of art, refers the greater part of them to the times of Julius and Augustus Cæsar. Medals of the earliest emperors have likewise frequently been detected among the foundations of the houses of the city; and even so recently as in the beginning of the present century, mutilated cippi, covered with Latin inscriptions, have been brought to light. These discoveries all tend to shew the Roman origin of Bayeux, and two Roman causeways also join here; so that, notwithstanding the arguments of the Abbé le Beuf, most antiquaries still believe that Bayeux was the city called by Ptolemy the _Næomagus Viducassium_.--The term _Viducasses_ or _Biducasses_ was in early ages changed to _Bajocasses_; and the city, following the custom that prevailed in Gaul, took the appellation of _Bajocæ_, or, as it was occasionally written, of _Baiæ_ or _Bagicæ_. Its name in French has likewise been subject to alterations.--During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it was _Baex_ and _Bajeves_; in the fourteenth _Bajex_; in the sixteenth _Baieux_; and soon afterwards it settled info the present orthography. Pursuing the history of Bayeux somewhat farther, we find this city in the _Notitia Galileæ_ holding the first rank among the towns of the _Secunda Lugdunensis_. During the Merovingian and Carlovingian dynasties, its importance is proved by the mint which was established here. Golden coins, struck under the first race of French sovereigns, inscribed _HBAJOCAS_, and silver pieces, coined by Charles the Bald, with the legend _HBAJOCAS-CIVITAS_, are mentioned by Le Blanc. Bayeux was also in those times, one of the head-quarters of the high functionaries, entitled _Missi Dominici_, who were annually deputed by the monarchy for the promulgation of their decrees and the administration of justice. Two other cities only in Neustria, Rouen and Lisieux, were distinguished with the same privilege.--Nor did Bayeux suffer any diminution of its honors, under the Norman Dukes: they regarded it as the second town of the duchy, and had a palace here, and frequently made it the seat of their _Aula Regio_. The destruction of the Roman Bayeux is commonly ascribed, like that of the Roman Lisieux, to the Saxon invasion. No traces of the Viducassian capital are to be found in history, subsequently to the reign of Constantine; no medals, no inscriptions of a later period, have been dug up within its precincts. During the earliest incursions of the Saxons in Gaul, they seem to have made this immediate neighborhood the seat of a permanent settlement. The Abbé Le Beuf places the district, known by the name of the _Otlingua Saxonia_, between Bayeux and Isigny; and Gregory of Tours, in his relation of the events that occurred towards the close of the sixth century, makes repeated mention of the _Saxones Bajocassini_, whom the early Norman historians style _Saisnes de Bayeux_. Under the reign of Charlemagne, a fresh establishment of Saxons took place here. That emperor, after the bloody defeat of this valiant people, about the year 804, caused ten thousand men, with their wives and children, to be delivered up to him as prisoners, and dispersed them in different parts of France. Some of the captives were colonized in Neustria; and, among the rest, Witikind, son of the brave chief of the same name, who had fought so nobly in defence of the liberty of his country, had lands assigned to him in the Bessin. Hence, names of Saxon origin commonly occur throughout the diocese of Bayeux; sometimes alone and undisguised, but more frequently in composition. Thus, in _Estelan_, you will have little difficulty in recognizing _East-land: Cape la Hogue_ will readily suggest the idea of a lofty promontory; its appellation being derived from the German adjective, _hoch_, still written _hoog_, in Flemish: the Saxon word for the Almighty enters into the family names of _Argot_, _Turgot_, _Bagot_, _Bigot_, &c.; and, not to multiply examples, the quaking sands upon the sea-shore are to the present hour called _bougues_, an evident corruption of our own word _bogs_. When, towards the middle of the same century, the Saxons were succeeded by the Normans, the country about Bayeux was one of the districts that suffered most from the new invaders. Two bishops of the see, Sulpitius and Baltfridus, were murdered by the barbarians; and Bayeux itself was pillaged and burned, notwithstanding the valiant resistance made by the governor, Berenger. This nobleman, who was count of the Bessin, was personally obnoxious to Rollo, for having refused him his daughter, the beautiful Poppea, in marriage. But, on the capture of the town, Poppea was taken prisoner, and compelled to share the conqueror's bed. Bayeux arose from its ruins under the auspices of Botho, a Norman chieftain, to whom Rollo was greatly attached, and who succeeded to the honors of Berenger. By him the town was rebuilt, and filled with a Norman population, the consequence of which was, according to Dudo of St. Quintin, that William Longa-Spatha, the successor of Rollo, who hated the French language, sent his son, Duke Richard, to be educated at Bayeux, where Danish alone was spoken. And the example of the Duke continued for some time to be imitated by his successors upon the throne; so that Bayeux became the academy for the children of the royal family, till they arrived at a sufficient age to be removed to the metropolis, there to be instructed in the art of government. The dignity of Count of the Bessin ceased in the reign of William the Conqueror, in consequence of a rebellion on the part of the barons, which had well nigh cost that sovereign his life. From that time, till the conquest of Normandy by the French, the nobleman, who presided over the Bessin, bore the title of the king's viscount; and, under this name, you will find him the first cited among the four viscounts of Lower Normandy, in the famous parliament of all the barons of this part of the duchy, convened at Caen by Henry IInd, in 1152.--When Philip Augustus gained possession of Normandy, all similar appointments were re-modelled, and viscounts placed in every town; but their power was restricted to the mere administration of justice, the rest of their privileges being transferred to a new description of officers, who were then created, with the name of bailiffs. The bailiwicks assigned to these bore no reference to the ancient divisions of the duchy; but the territorial partition made at that time, has ever since been preserved, and Caen, which was honored by Philip with a preference over Bayeux, continues to the present day to retain the pre-eminence. After these troubles, Bayeux enjoyed a temporary tranquillity; and, according to the celebrated historical tapestry and to the _Roman de Rou_, this city was selected for the place at which William the Conqueror, upon being nominated by Edward, as his successor to the crown of England, caused Harold to attend, and to do homage to him in the name of the nation. The oath was taken upon a missal covered with cloth of gold, in the presence of the prelates and grandees of the duchy; and the reliques of the saints were collected from all quarters to bear witness to the ceremony. Bayeux was also the spot in which Henry Ist was detained prisoner by his eldest brother, and it suffered for this unfortunate distinction; for Henry had scarcely ascended the English throne, when, upon a shallow pretext, he advanced against the city, laid siege to it, and burned it to the ground; whether moved to this act of vengeance from hatred towards the seat of his sufferings, or to satisfy the foreigners in his pay, whom the length of the siege had much irritated. He had promised these men the pillage of the city, and he kept his word; but the soldiers were not content with the plunder: they set fire to the town, and what had escaped their ravages, perished in the flames.[84] In 1356, under the reign of Edward IIIrd, Bayeux experienced nearly the same fate from our countrymen; and in the following century it again suffered severely from their arms, till the decisive battle of Formigny, fought within ten miles of the city, compelled Henry VIth to withdraw from Normandy, carrying with him scarcely any other trophies of his former conquests, than a great collection of Norman charters, and, among the rest, those of Bayeux, which are to this hour preserved in the tower of London. During the subsequent wars occasioned by the reformation, this town bore its share in the common sufferings of the north of France. The horrors experienced by other places on the occasion were even surpassed by the outrages that were committed at Bayeux; but it is impossible to enter into details which are equally revolting to decency and to humanity. Of late years, Bayeux has been altogether an open town. The old castle, the last relic of its military character, a spacious fortress flanked by ten square towers, was demolished in 1773; and, as the poet of Bayeux has sung[85],-- "... Gaulois, Romains, Saxons, Oppresseurs, opprimés, colliers, faisceaux, blasons, Tout dort. Du vieux château la taciturne enceinte Expire. Par degrés j'ai vu sa gloire éteinte. J'ai marché sur ses tours, erré dans ses fossés: Tels qu'un songe bientôt ils vont être effacés." And in truth, they are so effectually _effaced_, that not a single vestige of the walls and towers can now be discovered. Bayeux is situated in the midst of a fertile country, particularly rich in pasturage. The Aure, which washes its walls, is a small and insignificant streamlet, and though the city is within five miles of the sea, yet the river is quite useless for the purposes of commerce, as not a vessel can float in it. The present population of the town consists of about ten thousand inhabitants, and these have little other employment than lace-making.--Bayeux wears the appearance of decay: most of the houses are ordinary; and, though some of them are built of stone, by far the greater part are only of wood and plaster. In the midst, however, of these, rises the noble cathedral; but this I shall reserve for the subject of my next letter, concluding the present with a few remarks upon that matchless relic, which, "... des siècles respecté, En peignant des héros honore la beauté." The very curious piece of historical needle-work, now generally known by the name of the _Bayeux tapestry_, was first brought into public notice in the early part of the last century, by Father Montfaucon and M. Lancelot, both of whom, in their respective publications, the _Monumens de la Monarchie Française_[86], and a paper inserted in the _Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions_[87], have figured and described this celebrated specimen of ancient art. Montfaucon's plates were afterwards republished by Ducarel[88], with the addition of a short dissertation and explanation, by an able antiquary of our own country, Smart Lethieuilier. These plates, however, in the original, and still more in the copies, were miserably incorrect, and calculated not to inform, but to mislead the inquirer. When therefore the late war was concluded and France became again accessible to an Englishman, our Society of Antiquaries, justly considering the tapestry as being at least equally connected with English as with French history, and regarding it as a matter of national importance, that so curious a document should be made known by the most faithful representation, employed an artist, fitted above all others for the purpose, by his knowledge of history and his abilities as a draughtsman, to prepare an exact fac-simile of the whole. Under the auspices of the Society, Mr. C.A. Stothard undertook the task; and he has executed it in the course of two successive visits with the greatest accuracy and skill. The engravings from his drawings we may hope shortly to see: meanwhile, to give you some idea of the original, I enclose a sketch, which has no other merit than that of being a faithful transcript. It is reduced one half from a tracing made from the tapestry itself. By referring to Montfaucon, you will find the figure it represents under the fifty-ninth inscription in the original, where "a knight, with a _private_ banner, issues to mount a led horse." His beardless countenance denotes him a Norman; and the mail covering to his legs equally proves him to be one of the most distinguished characters. [Illustration: Figure from the Bayeux Tapestry] Within the few last years this tapestry has been the subject of three interesting papers, read before the Society of Antiquaries. The first and most important, from the pen of the Abbé de la Rue[89], has for its object the refutation of the opinions of Montfaucon and Lancelot, who, following the commonly received tradition, refer the tapestry to the time of the conquest, and represent it as the work of Queen Matilda and her attendant damsels. The Abbé's principal arguments are derived from the silence of contemporary authors, and especially of Wace, who was himself a canon of Bayeux;--from its being unnoticed in any charters or deeds of gift connected with the cathedral;--from the improbability that so large a roll of such perishable materials would have escaped destruction when the cathedral was burned in 1106;--from the unfinished state of the story;--from its containing some Saxon names unknown to the Normans;--and from representations taken from the fables of Æsop being worked on the borders, whereas the northern parts of Europe were not made acquainted with these fables, till the translation of a portion of them by Henry Ist, who thence obtained his surname of _Beauclerk_.--These and other considerations, have led the learned Abbé to coincide in opinion with Lord Littleton and Mr. Hume, that the tapestry is the production of the Empress Maud, and that it was in reality wrought by natives of our own island, whose inhabitants were at that time so famous for labors of this description, that the common mode of expressing a piece of embroidery, was by calling it _an English work_. The Abbé shortly afterwards found an opponent in another member of the society, Mr. Hudson Gurney, who, without following his predecessor through the line of his arguments, contented himself with briefly stating the three following reasons for ascribing the tapestry to Matilda, wife to the Conqueror[90].--_First_, that in the many buildings therein pourtrayed, there is not the least appearance of a pointed arch, though much pointed work is found in the ornaments of the running border; whilst, on the contrary, the features of Norman architecture, the square buttress, flat to the walls, and the square tower surmounted by, or rather ending in, a low pinnacle, are therein frequently repeated.--_Secondly_, that all the knights are in ring armour, many of their shields charged with a species of cross and five dots, and some with dragons, but none with any thing of the nature of armorial bearings, which, in a lower age, there would have been; and that all wear a triangular sort of conical helmet, with a nasal, when represented armed.--And, _Thirdly_, that the Norman banner is, invariably, _Argent_, a Cross, _Or_, in a Bordure _Azure_; and that this is repeated over and over again, as it is in the war against Conan, as well as at Pevensey and at Hastings; but there is neither hint nor trace of the later invention of the Norman leopards.--Mr. Gurney's arguments are ingenious, but they are not, I fear, likely to be considered conclusive: he however, has been particularly successful in another observation, that all writers, who had previously treated of the Bayeux tapestry, had called it a _Monument of the Conquest of England_; following, therein, M. Lancelot, and speaking of it as an unfinished work, whereas, it is in fact an _apologetical history of the claims of William to the crown of England, and of the breach of faith and fall of Harold_, in a perfect and finished action.--With this explanation before us, aided by the short indication that is given of the subjects of the seventy-two compartments of the tapestry, a new light is thrown upon the story. The third memoir is from the pen of Mr. Amyot, and concludes with an able metrical translation from Wace. It is confined almost exclusively to the discussion of the single historical fact, how far Harold was really sent by the Confessor to offer the succession to William; but this point, however interesting, in itself, is unconnected with my present object: it is sufficient for me to shew you the various sources from which you may derive information upon the subject. Supposing the Bayeux tapestry to be really from the hands of the Queen, or the Empress, (and that it was so appears to me proved by internal evidence,) it is rather extraordinary that the earliest notice which is to be found of a piece of workmanship, so interesting from its author and its subjects, should be contained in an inventory of the precious effects deposited in the treasury of the church, dated 1476. It is also remarkable that this inventory, in mentioning such an article, should call it simply _a very long piece of cloth, embroidered with figures and writing, representing the conquest of England_, without any reference to the royal artist or the donor. Observations of this nature will suggest themselves to every one, and the arguments urged by the Abbé de la Rue are very strong; and yet I confess that my own feelings always inclined to the side of those who assign the highest antiquity to the tapestry. I think so the more since I have seen it. No one appears so likely to have undertaken such a task as the female most nearly connected with the principal personage concerned in it, and especially if we consider what the character of this female was: the details which it contains are so minute, that they could scarcely have been known, except at the time when they took place: the letters agree in form with those upon Matilda's tomb; and the manners and customs of the age are also preserved.--Mr. Stothard, who is of the same opinion as to the date of the tapestry, very justly observes, that the last of these circumstances can scarcely be sufficiently insisted upon; for that "it was the invariable practice with artists in every country, excepting Italy, during the middle ages, whatever subject they took in hand, to represent it according to the costume of their own times." Till the revolution, the tapestry was always kept in the cathedral, in a chapel on the south side, dedicated to Thomas à Becket, and was only exposed to public view once a year, during the octave of the feast of St. John on which occasion it was hung up in the nave of the church, which it completely surrounded. From the time thus selected for the display of it, the tapestry acquired the name of _le toile de Saint Jean_; and it is to the present day commonly so called in the city. During the most stormy part of the revolution, it was secreted; but it was brought to Paris when the fury of vandalism had subsided. And, when the first Consul was preparing for the invasion of England, this ancient trophy of the subjugation of the British nation was proudly exhibited to the gaze of the Parisians, who saw another _Conqueror_ in Napoléon Bonaparté; and many well-sounding effusions, in prose and verse, appeared, in which the laurels of Duke William were transferred, by anticipation, to the brows of the child and champion of jacobinism. After this display, Bonaparté returned the tapestry to the municipality, accompanied by a letter, in which he thanked them for the care they had taken of so precious a relic. From that period to the present, it has remained in the residence appropriated to the mayor, the former episcopal palace; and here we saw it. It is a piece of brownish linen cloth, about two hundred and twelve feet long, and eighteen inches wide, French measure. The figures are worked with worsted of different colors, but principally light red, blue, and yellow. The historical series is included between borders composed of animals, &c. The colors are faded, but not so much so as might have been expected. The figures exhibit a regular line of events, commencing with Edward the Confessor seated upon his throne, in the act of dispatching Harold to the court of the Norman Duke, and continued through Harold's journey, his capture by the Comte de Ponthieu, his interview with William, the death of Edward, the usurpation of the British throne by Harold, the Norman invasion, the battle of Hastings, and Harold's death. These various events are distributed into seventy-two compartments, each of them designated by an inscription in Latin. Ducarel justly compares the style of the execution to that of a girl's sampler. The figures are covered with work, except on their faces, which are merely in outline. In point of drawing, they are superior to the contemporary sculpture at St. Georges and elsewhere; and the performance is not deficient in energy. The colors are distributed rather fancifully: thus the fore and off legs of the horses are varied. It is hardly necessary to observe that perspective is wholly disregarded, and that no attempt is made to express light and shadow. Great attention, however, is paid to costume; and more individuality of character has been preserved than could have been expected, considering the rude style of the workmanship. The Saxons are represented with long mustachios: the Normans have their upper lip shaven, and retain little more hair upon their heads than a single lock in front.--Historians relate how the English spies reported the invading army to be wholly composed of ecclesiastics; and this tapestry affords a graphical illustration of the chroniclers' text. Not the least remarkable feature of the tapestry, in point of costume, lies in the armor, which, in some instances, is formed of interlaced rings; in others, of square compartments; and in others, of lozenges. Those who contend for the antiquity of Duke William's equestrian statue at Caen, may find a confirmation of their opinions in the shape of the saddles assigned to the figures of the Bayeux tapestry; and equally so in their cloaks, and their pendant braided tresses. The tapestry is coiled round a cylinder, which is turned by a winch and wheel; and it is rolled and unrolled with so little attention, that if it continues under such management as the present, it will be wholly ruined in the course of half a century. It is injured at the beginning: towards the end it becomes very ragged, and several of the figures have completely disappeared. The worsted is unravelling too in many of the intermediate portions. As yet, however, it is still in good preservation, considering its great age, though, as I have just observed, it will not long continue so. The bishop and chapter have lately applied to government, requesting that the tapestry may be restored to the church. I hope their application will be successful. * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 82: The most interesting relic of Roman times yet found at Vieux, is a cippus of variegated marble, about five feet high by two feet wide, and bearing inscriptions upon three of its sides. It generally passes in France by the name of the _Torigny marble_, being preserved at the small town of the latter name, whither it was carried in 1580, the very year when it was dug up. The Abbé Le Beuf has made it the subject of a distinct paper in the _Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions_. This cippus supported a statue raised in honor of Titus Sennius Sollemnis, a Viducassian by birth, and one of the high priests of the town. The statue was erected to him after his death, in the Viducassian capital, upon a piece of ground granted by the senate for the purpose, in pursuance of a general decree passed by the province of Gaul. The inscriptions set forth the motives that induced the nation to bestow so marked a distinction upon a simple individual; and, in the foremost rank of his merits, they place the games which he had given to his fellow-citizens, during four successive days.] [Footnote 83: _Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions_, XXI. p. 489.] [Footnote 84: _Archæologia_, XVII. p. 911.] [Footnote 85: _Bayeux et ses Environs, par M. Delauney_, p. 12.] [Footnote 86: I. p. 371-379; pl. 35-49, and II. p. 1-29; pl. 1-9.] [Footnote 87: VI. p. 739, and VIII. p. 602.] [Footnote 88: _Anglo-Norman Antiquities_, Appendix, No. 1.] [Footnote 89: _Archæologia_, XVII. p. 85.] [Footnote 90: _Archæologia_, XVIII. p. 359.] [Illustration: Sculpture at Bayeux] LETTER XXVIII. CATHEDRAL OF BAYEUX--CANON OF CAMBREMER--COPE OF ST. REGNOBERT--ODO. (_Bayeux, August_, 1818.) Excepting the tapestry and the cathedral, Bayeux, at this time, offers no objects of interest to the curious traveller. Its convents are either demolished, or so dilapidated or altered, that they have lost their characteristic features; and its eighteen parish churches are now reduced to four. We wandered awhile about the town, vainly looking after some relic of ancient art, to send you by way of a memento of Bayeux. At length, two presented themselves--the entrance of the corn-market, formerly the chapel of St. Margaret, a Norman arch, remarkable for the lamb and banner, an emblem of the saint, sculptured on the transom stone; and a small stone tablet, attached to an old house near the cathedral. The whimsical singularity of the latter, induced us to give it the preference. It may possibly be of the workmanship of the fourteenth century, and possibly much later. In all probability, it owes its existence merely to a caprice on the part of the owner of the residence, whose crest may be indicated by the tortoises which surmount the columns by way of capitals. Still there is merit in the performance, though perhaps for nothing so much as for the accurate resemblance of peeled wood; and this I never saw imitated with equal fidelity in stone. But, however unattractive Bayeux may be in other respects, so long as the cathedral is suffered to stand, the city will never want interest. It is supposed that the first church erected here was built by St. Exuperius otherwise called St. Suspirius, or St. Spirius, who, according to the distich subjoined to his portrait, formerly painted on one of the windows of the nave, was not only the earliest bishop of the diocese, but claimed the merit of having introduced the Christian faith into Normandy,-- "Primitùs hic pastor templi fuit hujus et auctor, Catholicamque fidem Normannis attulit idem." St. Exuperius lived in the third century, and his efforts towards the propagation of the gospel were attended with so great success, that his successor, St. Regnobert, was obliged to take down the edifice thus recently raised, and to re-construct it on a more enlarged scale, for the purpose of accommodating the increasing congregation. Regnobert is likewise reported to have built the celebrated chapel on the sea-coast, dedicated to our Lady de la Délivrande; and the people believe that a portion at least, of both the one and the other of these original edifices, exists to the present day. The Abbé Béziers, however, in his _History of Bayeux_, maintains, and with truth, that St. Regnobert's cathedral was destroyed by the Normans; and he adds that, immediately after the conversion of Rollo, another was raised in its stead on the same spot, and that this latter was one of those which the chieftain most enriched by his endowments at the period of his baptism. A dreadful fire, in the year 1046, reduced the Norman cathedral to ashes; but the episcopal throne was then filled by a prelate who wanted neither disposition nor abilities to repair the damage. Hugh, the third bishop of that name, son to Ralph, Count of the Bessin, who, by the mother's side, was brother to Duke Richard Ist, presided at that time over the see of Bayeux. Jealous for the honor of his diocese, the prelate instantly applied himself to rebuild the cathedral; but he lived to see only a small progress made in his work. It was finished by a prelate of still greater, though evil celebrity, the unruly Odo, brother to the Conqueror, who, for more than fifty years, continued bishop of this see, and by his unbounded liberality and munificence in the discharge of his high office, proved himself worthy of his princely descent. The Conqueror and his queen, attended by their sons, Robert and William, and by the archbishops of Canterbury and York, as well as by the various bishops and barons of the province, were present at the dedication of the church, which was performed in 1077, by John, Archbishop of Rouen. Odo, on the occasion, enriched his church with various gifts, one of which has been particularly recorded. It was a crown of wood and copper, sixteen feet high and thirty-eight feet in diameter, covered with silver plates, and diversified with other crowns in the shape of towers; the whole made to support an immense number of tapers, that were lighted on high festivals. This crown was suspended in the nave, opposite the great crucifix; and it continued to hang there till it was destroyed by the Huguenots, in 1562. It is doubtful how much, or indeed if any portion, of the church erected by Odo be now in existence. Thirty years had scarcely elapsed from the date of its dedication, when, as I have already mentioned to you, the troops of Henry Ist destroyed Bayeux with fire. The ruin was so complete, that for more than fifty years, no attempt was made to re-construct the cathedral; but it remained in ashes until the year 1157, when bishop, Philip of Harcourt, determined to restore it. A question has arisen whether the oldest part of what is now standing, be the work of Philip or of Odo. The lapse of eighty years in those early times, would perhaps occasion no very sensible difference in style; and chroniclers do not afford the means of determining, if, at the time when Bayeux suffered so dreadfully in 1106, the church was actually burned to the ground, or only materially damaged. In the _History of the Diocese_ we are merely told that Philip, having, by means of papal bulls, happily succeeded in regaining possession of all the privileges, honors, and property of the see, began to rebuild his cathedral in 1159, and completed it with great glory and expence.--From that time forward, we hear no more of demolition or of re-edification; but the injuries done by the silent lapse of ages, and the continued desire on the part of the prelates to beautify and to enlarge their church, have produced nearly the same effect as fire or warfare. The building, as it now stands, is a medley of various ages; and, in the absence of historical record, it would be extremely difficult to define the several portions that are to be assigned to each. The west front is flanked by two Norman towers, bold and massy, with semi-circular arches in the highest stories. The spires likewise appear ancient, though these and the surrounding pinnacles are all gothic. The northern one, according to tradition, was built with the church; the southern, in 1424. They both greatly resemble those of the abbey-church of St. Stephen at Caen. But the whole centre of this front, and indeed both the sides also, as high as the roof, is faced by a screen divided into five compartments. In the middle is a large, wide, pointed arch, with a square-headed entrance beneath. North and south of this are deep arches, evidently older, but likewise pointed, having their sides above the pillars, and the flat arched part of the door-way, filled with small figures. The door-ways themselves are arches that occupy only one half of the width of those which enclose them. In the two exterior compartments the arches are unpierced, and are flanked by a profusion of clustered pillars. Over each of the four lateral arches, rises a crocketed pyramid: the central one is surmounted by a flat balustrade, above which, behind the screen, is a large pointed window, and over it a row of saints, standing under trefoil-headed arches, arranged in pairs, the pediment terminating above each pair of arches in a pyramidal canopy. The outside of the nave is of florid gothic, but it is not of a pure style; nor is the southern portal, which, nevertheless, considered as a whole, is bold and appropriate. On each side of the door-way were originally three statues, whose tabernacles remain, though the saints have been torn out of the niches. Over the door is a bas-relief, containing numerous figures disposed in three compartments, and representing some legendary tale, which our knowledge of that kind of lore would not enable us to decipher.--The exterior of the choir is likewise of pointed architecture: it is considerably more simple, and excels, in this respect, the rest of the church. But even here there is a great want of uniformity: some of the windows are deeply imbedded in the walls; others are nearly on a level with their surface.--The cupola, which caps the low central tower, is wretchedly at variance with the other parts of the building. It was erected in the year 1714, at the expence of the bishop, Francis de Nesmond; and it is, as might be expected from a performance of that period, rather Grecian than gothic. Whichever style it may be termed, it is a bad specimen of either. And yet, such as it is, we are assured by Béziers, that it was built after the designs of a celebrated architect of the name of Moussard, and that it excited particular attention, and called forth loud praises, on the part of the Maréchal de Vauban, who was, probably, a better judge of a modern fortification, than of a gothic cathedral. The interior of the church consists of a wide nave, with side-aisles, and chapels beyond them. The first six piers of the nave are very massy, and faced with semi-circular pillars supporting an entablature. The arches above them are Norman, encircled with rich bands, composed chiefly of the chevron moulding and diamonds. On one of them is a curious border of heads, as upon the celebrated door-way at Oxford; but the heads at Bayeux are of much more regular workmanship and more distinctly defined. Had circumstances allowed, I would have sent you an accurate drawing of them; but our time did not permit such a one to be made, and I must beg of you to be contented with the annexed slight sketch. [Illustration: Border of heads] The wall above the arches is incrusted with a species of tessellated work of free-stone, of varied patterns, some interwoven, others reticulated, as seen in the sketches: the lines indented in the stones, as well as the joints which form the patterns, are filled with a black cement or mastich, so as to form a kind of _niello_. [Illustration: Tessellated work of free stone] With the sixth arch of the nave begins the pointed style. The capitals of the pillars are complicated, and the carving upon them is an evident attempt at an imitation of the Grecian orders. In this part of the church there is no triforium; but a row of small quartrefoils runs immediately above the ornaments of the spandrils; and above the quatrefoils is a cornice of an antique pattern, which is surmounted by a light gallery in front of the windows of the clerestory, the largest windows I remember to have seen in a similar situation. They extend almost from the roof to the line of the old Norman basement. Their magnitude is rendered still more remarkable by their being arranged in pairs, each separate pair inclosed within a pointed arch, and its windows parted only by a clustered pillar. The very lofty arches that support the central tower, are likewise pointed; as are those of the transepts, the choir, the side-aisles, and the chapels. In short, excepting the arches immediately beneath the northern and southern towers, which are most probably relics of Odo's cathedral, the part of the nave, which I first described, is all that is left above-ground of the semi-circular style; and this is of a very different character from whatever else I have seen of Norman architecture. The circular ornaments inserted in the spandrils of the arches of the choir, possess, as a friend of mine observes, somewhat of the Moorish, or, perhaps, Tartarian character; being nearly in the style of the ornaments which are found in the same situation in the Mogul mosques and tombs, though here they have much more flow and harmony in the curves. Some are merely in bas-relief: in others the central circles are deeply perforated, whilst the ribs are composed of delicate tracery.--There are so many peculiarities both in the arrangement and in the details of this cathedral[91], that it is quite impossible to convey an adequate idea of them by a verbal description; and I can only hope that they will be hereafter made familiar to the English antiquarian by the pencil of Mr. Cotman or Mr. Stothard. [Illustration: Ornaments in the Spandrils of the Arches in Bayeux Cathedral] The screen that separates the nave from the choir is Grecian, and is as much at variance with the inside of such a church, as the cupola, which is nearly over it, is with the exterior.--Upon the roof of the choir, are still to be seen the portraits of the first twenty-one bishops of Bayeux, each with his name inscribed by his side. The execution of the portraits is very rude, particularly that of the twelve earliest, whose busts are represented. The artist has contented himself with exhibiting the heads only, of the remaining nine. Common tradition refers the whole of these portraits to the time of Odo; but it is hardly necessary to observe, that the groined and pointed vaulting is subsequent to his date.--Bayeux cathedral abounded in works of this description of art: the walls of the chapels of the choir were covered with large fresco-paintings, now nearly obliterated.--It is believed, and with every appearance of probability, that the Lady-Chapel was erected at a time posterior to the rest of the building; but there is no certain account of its date. Before the revolution, it served as a burial-place for some of the bishops of the see, and for a duke of the noble family of Montemart. Their tombs ornamented the chapel, which now appears desolate and naked, retaining no other of its original decorations, than a series of small paintings, which represent the life of the Holy Virgin, and are deserving of some attention from the character of expression in the faces, though the drawing in general is bad. Over the altar is a picture, in which an angel is pointing out our Savior and the Virgin to a dying man, whose countenance is admirable.--The stalls of the choir display a profusion of beautiful oak carving; and beneath them are sculptured _misereres_, the first which we have observed in Normandy.--Very little painted glass is to be found in any part of the church; but the glazing of the windows is composed of complicated patterns. This species of ornament was introduced about the time of Louis XIVth; and Felibien, who has given several pattern plates in his treatise on architecture, observes, that it was intended to supply the place of painted glass, which, as it was then thought, excluded the light. Beneath the choir is a subterraneous chapel dedicated to St. Maimertus, otherwise called St. Manvieu. Its character is so similar to that of the crypt at the abbey of the Holy Trinity at Caen, that there would be little risk in pronouncing it to be part of Odo's church. It is supported on twelve pillars, disposed in two rows, the last pillar of each row being imbedded in the wall. The capitals of the pillars are carved, each with a different design from the rest. Their sculpture bears a strong resemblance to some of what is seen in similar situations in the Egyptian temples; indeed, so strong, that a very able judge tells me he has been led to suspect that the model might have been introduced by an anchorite from the desert. Take the following as a specimen. [Illustration: Capital of pillar] The walls of the crypt are covered with paintings, probably of the fifteenth century; but those upon the springing of the arches above the pillars, appear considerably older. Each spandril contains an angel, holding a trumpet or other musical instrument. The outlines of these figures are strongly drawn in black.--Upon the right-hand side, on entering the chapel, is the altar-tomb of John de Boissy, who was bishop at the beginning of the fifteenth century; and, on the opposite side, stands that of his immediate predecessor, Nicolas de Bosc. Their monuments were originally ornamented with bas-reliefs and paintings, all which were mutilated and effaced during the religious wars. De Boissy's effigy, however, remains, though greatly injured; and the following epitaph to his memory is preserved in a perfect state, over the only window that gives light to this crypt. The inscription is curious, as recording the discovery of the chapel, which had been forgotten and unknown for centuries. "En l'an mil quatre cens et douze Tiers jour d'Avril que pluye arrouse Les biens de la terre, la journée Que la Pasques fut célébrée Noble homme et révérend père Jehan de Boissy, de la mère Eglise de Bayeux Pasteur Rendi l'âme à Son Créateur Et lors en foillant la place Devant le grant autel de grâce Trova l'on la basse chapelle Dont il n'avoit esté nouvelle Ou il est mis en sépulture Dieu veuille avoir son âme en cure,--Amen." This inscription is engraved as prose: verse is very frequently written in this manner in ancient manuscripts, which custom, as Joseph Ritson conjectured, arose "from a desire of promoting the salvation of parchment." I must also add, that the initial letters are colored red and blue, so that the whole bears a near resemblance to a manuscript page. There is another epitaph, engraved in large letters, upon the exterior of the southern tower, which is an odd specimen of the spirit of the middle ages. It is supposed to have been placed there in the twelfth century. "Quarta dies Pasche fuerat cum Clerus ad hujus Que jacet hic vetule venimus exequias: Letitieque diem magis amisisse dolemus Quam centum tales si caderent vetule." Some authors contend, that the old lady alluded to was the mistress of one of the Dukes of Normandy: others believe her to have been the _chère amie_ of Robert, Earl of Gloucester, illegitimate son to Henry Ist. Till lately, there was an epitaph within the church, which, without containing in itself any thing remarkable, strange, or mysterious, had a legend connected: with it, that supplied the verger with an inexhaustible fund of entertainment for the curious and the credulous. The epitaph simply commemorated John Patye, canon of the prebend of Cambremer, who died in 1540; but upon the same plate of copper with the inscription, was also engraved the Virgin, with John Patye at her feet, kneeling, and apparently in the act of reading from a book placed on a fald-stool. Behind the priest stood St. John the Baptist, the patron saint of the prebend, having one hand upon his votary's neck, while with the other he pointed to a lamb.--In all this, there was still nothing remarkable: unfortunately, however, the artist, wishing perhaps to add importance to the saint, had represented him of gigantic stature; and hence originated the story, which continues to the present day, to frighten the old women, and to amuse the children of Bayeux.-- Once upon a time, the wicked canons of the cathedral murdered their bishop; in consequence of which foul deed, they and their successors for ever, were enjoined, by way of penance, annually to send one of their number to Rome, there to chaunt the epistle at the midnight mass. In the course of revolving centuries, this vexatious duty fell to the turn of the canon of Cambremer, who, to the surprise of the community, testified neither anxiety nor haste on the occasion.--Christmas-eve arrived, and the canon was still in his cell: Christmas-night came, and still he did not stir. At length, when the mass was actually begun, his brethren, more uneasy than himself, reproached him with his delay; upon which he muttered his spell, called up a spirit, mounted him, reached Rome in the twinkling of an eye, performed his task, and, the service being ended, he stormed the archives of the Vatican, where he burned the compulsory act, and then returned by the same conveyance to Bayeux, which he reached before the mass was completed, and, to the unspeakable joy of the chapter, announced the happy tidings of their deliverance. So idle and unmeaning is the tale, that I should scarcely have thought it worth while to have repeated it, but for the Latin distich, which, as the story goes, was extemporized by the demon, at the moment when they were flying over the Tuscan sea, and by which he sought to mislead his rider, and to cause him to end his journey beneath the deep.--The sense of the verses is not very perspicuous, but they are remarkable for reading forwards and backwards the same; and though to you they may appear a childish waste of intellect, you will, I am sure, admit them to be ingenious, and they may amuse some of the younger members of your family:-- "Signa te, signa, temerè me tangis et angis; Roma tibi subito motibus ibit amor."-- I must dismiss the canon of Cambremer, by stating, that I am informed by a friend, that the same story is also found in the lives of sundry other wizards and sorcerers of the good old times. Bayeux cathedral, like the other Neustrian churches, has been deprived of its sainted relics, and its most precious treasures, in consequence of the successive spoliations which have been inflicted upon it by heathen Normans, heretical Calvinists, and philosophical jacobins. The body of St. Exuperius was carried, in the ninth century, for safety to Corbeil, and the chapter have never been able to recover it: that of St. Regnobert was in after times stolen by the Huguenots. Many are the attempts that have been made to regain the relics of the first bishop of the see; but the town of Corbeil retained possession, whilst the Bajocessians attempted to console themselves by antithetical piety.--"Referamus Deo gratias, nec inde aliquid nos minus habere credamus, quòd Corbeliensis civitas pignus sacri corporis vindicavit. Teneant illi tabernaculum beatæ animæ in cineribus suis; nos ipsam teneamus animam in virtutibus suis: teneant illi ossa, nos merita: apud illos videatur remansisse quod terræ est, nos studeamus habere quod coeli est: amplectantur illi quod sepulchre, nos quod Paradiso continetur. Meminerit et beatior ille vir, utrique quidem loco, sed huic speciali se jure deberi."--St. Regnobert's _chasuble_ is however, left to the church, together with his maniple and his stole, all of them articles of costly and elaborate workmanship. They were found in his coffin, when it was opened by the Calvinists; and they are now worn by the bishop, on the anniversary of the saint, as well as on five other high festivals, during the year; at which times, the faithful press with great devotion to kiss them. When not in use, they are kept in an ivory chest, magnificently embossed with solid silver, and bearing an inscription in the Cufic character, purporting that whatever honor men may have given to God, they cannot honor him so much as He deserves. Father Tournemine, the Jesuit, is of opinion, that this box was taken by the French troops, under Charles Martel, in their pillage of the Saracen camp, at the time of the memorable defeat of the infidels; and that it was afterwards presented to Charles the Bald, whose queen, Hermentrude, devoted it to the pious purpose of holding the relics of Regnobert, in gratitude for a cure which the monarch had received through the intercession of the saint. But this is merely a conjecture, and it is not improbable but that the chest may have been brought from Sicily, which abounded with Arabic artificers, at the time when it was occupied by the Normans. St. Regnobert, who was one of the most illustrious bishops of Bayeux, is placed second on the list, in the _History of the Diocese_; but in the _Gallia Christiana_ he stands twelfth in order. It was customary before the revolution, and it possibly may be so at present, for the inhabitants of the city, upon the twenty-fourth of October, the anniversary of his feast, to bring their domestic animals in solemn procession to the church, there to receive the episcopal benediction, in the same manner as is practised by the Romans with their horses, on the feast of St. Anthony.--St. Lupus, the fourth bishop, and St. Lascivus, the tenth, are remarkable for their names. St. Lupus is said to have been so called from his having destroyed the wolves in the vicinity of Bayeux[92]; and the other is reported to have been descended from the same person, whom Ausonius addresses in the following stanza, which has likewise been applied to this bishop. "Iste _Lascivus_ patiens vocari, Nomen indignum probitate vitae Abnuit nunquam; quia gratum ad aures Esset amicas."-- But neither among her ancient nor her modern prelates can Bayeux boast of a name equally distinguished as that of Odo. Many were unquestionably the misdeeds of this great man, and many were probably his crimes, but no one who wore the episcopal mitre, ever deserved better of the see. As a statesman, Odo bore a leading part in all the principal transactions of the times: as a soldier, he accompanied the Conqueror to England, fought by his side at Hastings, and by his eloquence and his valor, contributed greatly to the success of that memorable day. Nor was William tardy in acknowledging the merits of his brother; for no sooner did he find himself seated firmly on the throne, than he rewarded Odo with the earldom of Kent, and appointed him his viceroy in England, whilst he himself crossed the channel, to superintend his affairs in Normandy. But the mind which was proof against difficulties, yielded, as too commonly happens, to prosperity. Nothing less than the papacy could satisfy the ambition of Odo: he abused the power with which he was invested in a flagrant manner; and William, finally, disgusted with his proceedings, arrested him with his own hand, and committed him prisoner to the old palace at Rouen, where he continued till the death of the monarch.--The sequel of the story is of the same complexion: more plots, attended now with success, and now with disgrace; till at length the prelate resolved to expiate his sins by a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and died on his journey, at Palermo.--Such was Odo in his secular character: as a churchman, historians unanimously agree that he was most zealous for the honor of his diocese, indefatigable in re-building the churches which time or war had destroyed, liberal in endowments, munificent in presents, and ever anxiously intent upon procuring a supply of able ministers, establishing regular discipline, and reforming the morals of the flock committed to his charge. The Bishop of Bayeux has at all times claimed the distinction of being regarded the first among the suffragan bishops of the Norman church. In the absence of the archbishop, he presides at, the ecclesiastical assemblies and councils. His revenue, before the revolution, was estimated at one hundred thousand livres: per annum. The see, in point of antiquity, even contests for the priority with Rouen. From time immemorial, the chapter has enjoyed the right of mintage; and they appear to have used it till the year 1577, at which time their coin was so much counterfeited, that they were induced to recal it by public proclamation. Their money, which was of the size of a piece of two sous, was stamped, on one side, with a two-headed eagle, and the legend _moneta capituli_; and on the obverse, with the letter V, surrounded by the word _Bajocensis_. The eagle was probably adopted, in allusion to the arms of the see, which were, _gules_; an eagle displayed with two heads, _or_[93].--Another privilege of the chapter was, that no person of illegitimate birth could be allowed to hold place in it, under any pretext or dispensation whatever.--Among their peculiar customs, they imitated that of the see of Rouen, in the annual election of a boy-bishop upon Innocents'-day; a practice prevalent in many churches in Spain and Germany, and notoriously in England at Salisbury. The young chorister took the crozier in his hands, during the first vespers, at the verse in the _Magnificat_, "He has put down the mighty from their seats, and has exalted the humble and meek;" and he resigned his dignity at the same verse in the second vespers.--The ceremony was abolished in 1482. * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 91: The following are the dimensions of the church, in French measure, according to Béziers. FEET. Height of the central tower 224 Ditto of the two western ditto 230 Length of the interior of the church 296 Width of ditto 76 Height of ditto 76 Length of the nave 140 Width of ditto 38 Ditto of side-aisles 17 Ditto of chapels 15 Length of the transepts 113 Width of ditto 33 Length of the choir 118 Width of ditto 36 ] [Footnote 92: A new St. Lupus is now wanted for the see; for wolves are by no means extinct in the neighborhood of Bayeux. We saw a tame one, kept near the cathedral, which had been taken in the woods, about a year ago, when it was quite young. Wild boars are likewise found in considerable numbers, and the breed is encouraged for the purposes of hunting.] [Footnote 93: In its origin, the _Baiocco_ of Naples seems to have been the two-penny piece of Bayeux, its denomination being abbreviated from the last word in the legend. It has been supposed that the coin was struck and named by lusty Joan, as a token of her affection towards a Frisick warrier, who, in his own country, was called the _Boynke_, or the Squire; but we think that our etymology is the most natural one.] LETTER XXIX. CHURCH AND CASTLE OF CREULLY--FALAISE--CASTLE--CHURCHES-FAIR OF GUIBRAY. (_Falaise, August_, 1818.) Previously to quitting Bayeux, we paid our respects to M. Pluquet, a diligent antiquary, who has been for some time past engaged in writing a history of the city. His collections for this purpose are extensive, and the number of curious books which he possesses is very considerable. Amongst those which he shewed to us, the works relating to Normandy constituted an important portion. His manuscript missals are numerous and valuable. I was also much pleased by the inspection of an old copy of Aristophanes, which had formerly belonged to Rabelais, and bore upon its title-page the mark of his ownership, in the hand-writing of the witty, though profligate, satirist himself. M. Pluquet's kindness allowed me to make the tracing of the signature, which I send you.-- [Illustration: Rabelais hand-writing] Such an addition as we here find to Rabelais' name, denoting that the owner of a book considered it as being the property of his friends conjointly with himself, is not of uncommon occurrence. Our friend, Mr. Dibdin, who had been here shortly before us, and had carried off, as we were told, some works of great rarity from this collection, has enumerated more than one instance of the kind in his _Bibliographical Decameron_; and the valuable library of my excellent friend, Mr. Sparrow, of Worlingham, contains an Erasmus, which was the property of Sir Thomas Wotton, and bears, stamped upon its covers, _Thomae Wotton et amicorum_. From Bayeux we returned to Caen, by way of Creully, passing along bad roads, through an open, uninteresting country, almost wholly cropped with buck-wheat.--The barony of Creully was erected by Henry Ist, in favor of his natural son, the Earl of Gloucester: it was afterwards held by different noble families, and continued to be so till the time of the revolution. At that period, it gave a title to a branch of the line of Montmorenci, whose emigration caused the domain to be confiscated, and sold as national property; but the baronial castle is still standing, and displays, in two of its towers and in a chimney of unusual form, a portion of its ancient character: the rest of the building is modernized into a spruce, comfortable residence, and is at this time occupied by a countryman of our own, General Hodgson. The church at Creully is one of the most curious we have seen. The nave, side-aisles, and choir, are all purely Norman, except at the extremities. The piers are very massy; the arches wide and low; the capitals covered with rude, but most remarkable sculpture, which is varied on every pillar. Round the arches of the nave runs a band of the chevron ornament; and over them is a row of lancet windows, devoid of ornament, and sunk in a wall of extraordinary thickness. Externally, all is modernized. The view of Caen, on entering from this direction, is still more advantageous than that on the approach from Lisieux. Time would not allow of our making any stop at the town on our return: we therefore proceeded immediately to Falaise, passing again through an open and monotonous country, which, thoughtfully cultivated, has a most dreary aspect from the scantiness of its population. We saw, indeed, as we went along, distant villages, thinly scattered, in the landscape, but no other traces of habitations; and we proceeded upwards of five leagues on our way, before we arrived at a single house by the road-side. [Illustration: Castle of Falaise] Falaise appeared but the more beautiful, from the impression which the desolate scenery of the previous country had left upon our minds. The contrast was almost equally pleasing and equally striking, as when, in travelling through Derbyshire, after having passed a tract of dreary moors, that seems to lengthen as you go, you suddenly descend into the lovely vallies of Matlock or of Dovedale. Not that the vale of Falaise may compete with those of Derbyshire, for picturesque beauty or bold romantic character; but it has features exclusively its own; and its deficiency in natural advantages is in some measure compensated, by the accessories bestowed by art. The valley is fertile and well wooded: the town itself, embosomed within rows of lofty elms, stretches along the top of a steep rocky ridge, which rises abrupt from the vale below, presenting an extensive line of buildings, mixed with trees, flanked towards the east by the venerable remains of the castle of the Norman Dukes, and at the opposite extremity, by the church of the suburb of Guibray, planted upon an eminence. Near the centre stands the principal church of Falaise, that of St. Gervais; and in front of the whole extends the long line of the town walls, varied with towers, and approached by a mound across the valley, which, as at Edinburgh, holds the place of a bridge. The name _Falaise_, denotes the position of the town: it is said to be a word of Celtic origin; but I should rather suppose it to be derived from the Saxon, and to be a modification of the German word, _fels_, a rock, in which conjecture I find I am borne out by Adelung: _falesia_, in modern Latinity, and _falaise_, in French, signify a rocky shore. Hence, Brito, at the commencement of his relation of the siege by Philip Augustus, says, "Vicus erat scabrâ circumdatus undique rupe, Ipsius asperitate loci Falæsa vocatus, Normannæ in medio regionis, cujus in altâ Turres rupe sedent et mÅ�nia; sic ut ad illam Jactus nemo putet aliquos contingere posse."-- The dungeon of Falaise, one of the proudest relics of Norman antiquity, is situated on a very bold and lofty rock, broken into fantastic and singular masses, and covered with luxuriant vegetation. The keep which towers above it is of excellent masonry: the stones are accurately squared, and put together with great neatness, and the joints are small; and the arches are turned clearly and distinctly, with the key-stone or wedge accurately placed in all of them. Some parts of the wall, towards the interior ballium, are not built of squared free-stone; but of the dark stone of the country, disposed in a zigzag, or as it is more commonly called, in a herring-bone direction, with a great deal of mortar in the interstices: the buttresses, or rather piers, are of small projection, but great width. The upper story, destroyed about forty years since, was of a different style of architecture. According to an old print, it terminated with a large battlement, and bartizan towers at the angles. This dungeon was formerly divided into several apartments; in one of the lower of which was found, about half a century ago, a very ancient tomb, of good workmanship, ornamented with a sphynx at each end, but bearing no inscription whatever. Common report ascribed the coffin to Talbot, who was for many years governor of the castle; and at length an individual engraved upon it an epitaph to his honor; but the fraud was discovered, and the sarcophagus put aside, as of no account. The second, or principal, story of the keep, now forms a single square room, about fifty feet wide, lighted by circular-headed windows, each divided into two by a short and massy central pillar, whose capital is altogether Norman. On one of the capitals is sculptured a child leading a lamb, a representation, as it is foolishly said, of the Conqueror, whom tradition alleges to have been born in the apartment to which this window belonged: another pillar has an elegant capital, composed of interlaced bands. Connected with the dungeon by a stone staircase is a small apartment, very much dilapidated, but still retaining a portion of its original facing of Caen stone. It was from the window of this apartment, as the story commonly goes, that Duke Robert first saw the beautiful Arlette, drawing water from the streamlet below, and was enamoured of her charms, and took her to his bed.--According to another version of the tale, the earliest interview between the prince and his fair mistress, took place as Robert was returning from the chace, with his mind full of anger against the inhabitants of Falaise, for having presumed to kill the deer which he had commanded should be preserved for his royal pastime. In this offence the curriers of the town had borne the principal share, and they were therefore principally marked out for punishment. But, fortunately for them, Arlette, the daughter of one Verpray, the most culpable of the number, met the offended Duke while riding through the street, and with her beauty so fascinated him, that she not only obtained the pardon of her father and his associates, but became his mistress, and continued so as long as he lived. From her, if we may give credence to the old chroniclers, is derived our English word, _harlot_. The fruit of their union was William the Conqueror, whose illegitimate birth, and the low extraction of his mother, served on more than one occasion as a pretext for conspiracies against his throne, and were frequently the subject of personal mortification to himself.--The walls in this part of the castle are from eight to nine feet thick. A portion of them has been hollowed out, so as to form a couple of small rooms. The old door-way of the keep is at the angle; the returns are reeded, ending in a square impost; the arch above is destroyed. Talbot's tower, thus called for having been built by that general, in 1430 and the two subsequent years, is connected with the keep by means, of a long passage with lancet windows, that widen greatly inwards. It is more than one hundred feet high, and is a beautiful piece of masonry, as perfect, apparently, as on the day when it was erected, and as firm as the rock on which it stands. This tower is ascended by a staircase concealed within the substance of the walls, whose thickness is full fifteen feet towards the base, and does not decrease more than three feet near the summit. Another aperture in them serves for a well, which thus communicates with every apartment in the tower. Most of the arches in this tower have circular heads: the windows are square.--The walls and towers which encircle the keep are of much later date; the principal gate-way is pointed. Immediately on entering, is seen the very ancient chapel, dedicated to St. Priscus or, as he is called in French, St. Prix. The east end with three circular-headed windows retains its original lines: the masonry is firm and good. Fantastic corbels surround the summit of the lateral walls. Within, a semi-circular arch resting upon short pillars with sculptured capitals, divides the choir from the nave. In other respects the building has been much altered.--Henry Vth repaired it in 1418, and it has been since dilapidated and restored.--A pile of buildings beyond, wholly modern in the exterior, is now inhabited as a seminary or college. There are some circular arches within, which shew that these buildings belonged to the original structure. Altogether the castle is a noble ruin. Though the keep is destitute of the enrichments of Norwich or Castle Rising, it possesses an impressive character of strength, which is much increased by the extraordinary freshness of the masonry. The fosses of the castle; are planted with lofty trees, which shade and intermingle with the towers and ramparts, and on every side they groupe themselves with picturesque beauty. It is said that the municipality intend to _restore_ Talbot's tower and the keep, by replacing the demolished battlements; but I should hope that no other repairs may take place, except such as may be necessary for the preservation of the edifice; and I do not think it needs any, except the insertion of clamps in the central columns of two of the windows which are much shattered[94]. From the summit we enjoyed a delightful prospect: at our feet lay the town of Falaise, so full of trees, that it seemed almost to deserve the character, given by old Fuller to Norwich, of _rus in urbe_: the distant country presented an undulating outline, agreeably diversified with woods and corn-fields, and spotted with gentlemen's seats; while within a very short distance to the west, rose another ridgy mass of bare brown rock, known by the name of Mont Mirat, and still retaining a portion of the intrenchments, raised by our countrymen when they besieged Falaise, in 1417.--By this eminence the castle is completely commanded, and it is not easy to understand how the fortress could be a tenable position; as the garrison who manned the battlements of the dungeon and Talbot's tower, must have been exposed to the missiles discharged from the catapults and balistas planted on Mont Mirat. The history of the castle is inseparably connected with that of the town: its origin may safely be referred to remote antiquity, the time, most probably, of the earliest Norman Dukes. If, however, we could agree with the fanciful author just quoted, it would claim a much earlier date. The very fact of its having a dungeon-tower, he maintains to be a proof of its having been erected by Julius Cæsar inasmuch as the word, _dungeon_, or, as it is written in French, _donjon_, is nothing but a corruption of _Domus Julii_! More than once in the course of this correspondence, I have called your attention to the fancies, or, to speak in plain terms, the absurdities, of theoretical antiquaries. The worthy priest, to whom we are indebted for the _Recherches Historiques sur Falaise_, "out-herods Herod." Writers of this description are curious and amusing, let their theories but rest upon the basis of fair probability. Even when we reject their reasonings, we are pleased with their ingenuity; and they serve, to borrow an expression from Horace, "the purpose of a whetstone." But M. Langevin has nothing farther to offer, than gratuitous assertion or vague conjecture; and yet, upon the faith of these, he insists upon our believing, that the foundation of Falaise took place very shortly after the deluge; that its name is derived from _Felé_, the cat of Diana, or from the less pure source of _Phaloi-Isis_; that the present site of the castle was that of a temple, dedicated to Belenus and Abraxas; and that every stone of remarkable form in the neighborhood, was either so shapened by the Druids, (notwithstanding it is the character of rocks, like those at Falaise, to assume fantastic figures,) or was at least appropriated by the Celtic priesthood to typify the sun, or moon, or stars. Various tombs, stone-hatchets, &c., have been dug up at Tassilly, a village within six miles of Falaise, and fragments of mosaic pavements have been discovered in the immediate vicinity of the castle[95]; but history and tradition are alike silent as to the origin of these remains.--The first historical mention of Falaise is in the year 1027; during the reign of the fifth Norman Duke, Richard IIIrd, at which period this town was one of the strong holds of the duchy, and afforded shelter to Robert, the father of the Conqueror, when he rebelled against his elder brother. Falaise on that occasion sustained the first of the nine sieges, by which it has procured celebrity in history.--Fourteen years only elapsed before it was exposed to a second, through the perfidy of Toustain de Goz, Count of Hiesmes, who had been intrusted with the charge of the castle, and who, upon finding that his own district was ravaged by the forces of the King of France, voluntarily offered to surrender to that monarch the fortress under his command, on condition that his territory, the Hiesmois, should be spared. But Duke William succeeded in retaking the place of his birth before the traitor had an opportunity of introducing the troops of his new ally.--In the years 1106 and 1139, Falaise opposed a successful resistance to the armies of Henry Ist, and of Geoffrey Plantagenet. Upon the first of these occasions, the Count of Maine, the general of the English forces, retired with shame from before the walls; and Henry was foiled in all his attempts to gain possession of the castle, till the battle of Tinchbray had invested him with the ducal mantle, and had induced Robert himself to deliver up the fortress in person to his more fortunate brother. On the second occasion, Robert Marmion, lord of the neighboring barony of Marmion le Fontenay, a name equally illustrious in Norman and in English story, held Falaise for Eustace of Boulogne, son to Stephen, and twice repelled the attacks of the husband of the Empress Maud.--The fourth siege was conducted with different success, by Philip Augustus: for seven days the citizens quietly witnessed the preparations of the French monarch; and then, either alarmed by the impending conflict, or disgusted by the conduct of their own sovereign, who had utterly deserted them, they opened their gates to the enemy.--In 1417 the case was far otherwise, though the result was the same. Henry Vth attacked Falaise upon the fourth of November, and continued to cannonade it till the middle of the following February; and, even then, the surrender was attributed principally to famine. Great injuries were sustained by the town in the course of this long siege; but, to the credit of our countrymen, the efforts made towards the reparation of them were at least proportionate. The fortifications were carefully restored; the chapel was rebuilt and endowed afresh; Talbot's tower was added to the keep; and a suite of apartments, also named after that great captain, was erected in the castle.--The resistance made by the English garrison of Falaise in 1450, at the time when we were finally expelled from the duchy, was far from equal to that which the French, had previously shewn. Vigour was indeed displayed in repeated sallies, but six days sufficed to put the French general in possession of the place. Disheartened troops, cooped up in a fortress without hope of succour, offer but faint opposition; and Falaise was then the last place which held out in Normandy, excepting, only Domfront and Cherbourg, both which were taken almost immediately afterwards.--Falaise, from this time forwards, suffered no more from foreign enemies: the future miseries of the town were inflicted by the hands of its own countrymen. In common with many other places in France, it was doomed to learn from hard experience, that "alta sedent civilis vulnera dextræ."--Instigated by the Count de Brissac, governor of the town, and one of the most able generals of the league, the inhabitants were immoveable in their determination to resist the introduction of tenets which they regarded as a fatal variance from the Catholic faith. The troops of Henry IIIrd, in alliance with those of his more illustrious successor, were vainly brought against Falaise in 1589, by the Duc de Montpensier; a party of enthusiastic peasants, called _Gautiers_, from the name of a neighboring village, where their association originated, harassed the assailants unremittingly, and rendered such effectual assistance to the garrison, that the siege was obliged to be raised.--But it was only raised to be renewed at the conclusion of the same year, by Henry of Bourbon, in person, whom the tragical end of his late ally had placed upon the throne of France. Brissac had now a different enemy to deal with: he answered the king's summons to surrender, by pleading his oath taken upon the holy sacrament to the contrary; and he added that, if it should ultimately prove necessary for him to enter into any negotiation, he would at least delay it for six months to come. "Then, by heavens!" replied Henry, "I will change his months into days, and grant him absolution;" and; so saying, he commenced a furious cannonade, which soon caused a breach, and, in seven days, he carried the town by assault. Brissac, who, on the capture of the fortress, had retired into the keep, found himself shortly afterwards obliged to capitulate; and I am sorry to add, that the terms which he proposed and obtained, were not of a nature to be honorable to his character. The security of his own life and of that of seven of his party, was the principal stipulation in the articles. The rest of the garrison were abandoned to the mercy of the conqueror, who contented himself with hanging seven of them in memorial of the seven days of the siege; but, if we may believe the French historians, always zealous for the honor of their monarchs, and especially of this monarch, Henry selected the sufferers from among those, who, for their crimes, had, subjected themselves to the pain of death. From these various attacks, but principally from those of 1417 and 1589, the fortifications of Falaise have suffered materially; and since the last no care has been taken to repair them. The injuries sustained at that period, and the more fatal, though less obvious ones, wrought by the silent operation of two centuries of neglect, have brought the walls and towers to their present state of dilapidation. The people of Falaise are commonly supposed to be Normans καÏ� εξοÏ�ην [English. Not in Original: pre-eminently, especially, above all]; and when a Norman is introduced upon the French stage, he calls himself a Falesian, just as any Irishman, in an English farce, is presumed to come from Tipperary. The town in the French royal calendar is stated to contain about fourteen thousand inhabitants; but we are assured that the real number does not exceed nine thousand. Its staple trade is the manufacture of stockings, coarse caps, and lace. The streets are wide; and the public fountains, which are continually playing, impart a freshness, which, at the present burning season, is particularly agreeable.--The town now retains only four churches, two within its precincts, and two in the suburbs. The revolution has deprived it of eight others. Of those which are now standing, the most ancient is that situated near the castle, and dedicated to the Holy Trinity. Langevin assures us that it was built upon the ruins of the temple of Felé, Isis, Belenus, and the heavenly host of constellations, and that in the fifth century it changed its heathen for its Christian patrons. The oldest part (a very small one it is) of the present structure, appertains to a building which was consecrated in 1126, by the Archbishop of Rouen, in the presence of Henry Ist, but which was almost entirely destroyed by the cannonade in the fifteenth century. An inscription in gothic letters, near the entrance, relates, that after this desolation, a beginning was made towards the re-building of the church, "in 1438, a year of war, and death, and plague, and famine;" but it is certain that not much of the part now standing can be referred even to that period. The choir was not completed till the middle of the sixteenth century, nor the Lady-Chapel till the beginning of the following one. Architecturally considered, therefore, the church is a medley of various styles and ages. The larger church, that of St. Gervais and St. Protais, is said to have been originally the ducal chapel, and to stand in the immediate vicinity of the site of the Conqueror's palace, now utterly destroyed. According to an ancient manuscript, this church was consecrated at the same time as that of the Trinity. The intersecting circular-headed arches of its tower are curious. The Norman corbel-table and clerestory windows still remain; and the exterior of the whole edifice promises a gratification to a lover of architectural antiquity, which the inside is little calculated to realize.--An invading army ruined the church of the Trinity; civil discord did the same for that of St. Gervais. The Huguenots, not content with plundering the treasure, actually set fire to the building, and well nigh consumed it: hence, the choir is the work of the year 1580, and the southern wall of the nave is a more recent construction. We see Falaise to a great advantage: every inn is crowded; every shop is decked out; and the streets are full of life and activity; all in preparation for the fair, which commences in three days, on the fifteenth of this month, the anniversary of the Assumption of the Holy Virgin. This fair, which is considered second to no other in France, excepting that of Beaucaire, is held in the suburbs of Guibray, and takes its name from the place where it is held. For the institution, Falaise is indebted to William the Conqueror; and from it the place derives the greatest share of its prosperity and importance. During the fourteen days that the fair continues, the town is filled with the neighboring gentry, as well as with merchants and tradesmen of every description, not only from the cities of Normandy, but from Paris and the distant provinces, and even from foreign countries. The revolution itself respected the immunities granted to the fair of Guibray, without, at the same time, having the slightest regard, either to its royal founder, or its religious origin.--An image of the Virgin, discovered under-ground by the scratching and bleating of a lamb, first gave the stamp of sanctity to Guibray. Miraculous means had been employed for the discovery of this statue; miraculous powers were sure to be seated in the image. Pilgrims crowded from all places to witness and to adore; and hawkers, and pedlars, and, as I have seen inscribed upon a hand-bill at Paris, "the makers of he-saints and of she-saints," found Guibray a place of lucrative resort. Their numbers annually increased, and thus the fair originated.--We are compelled to hasten, or we would have stopped to have witnessed the ceremonies, and joined the festivities on the occasion. Already more than one field is covered with temporary buildings, each distinguished by a flag, bearing the name and trade of the occupant; already, too, the mountebanks and showmen have taken their stand for the amusement of the company, and the relaxation of the traders; and, what is a necessary consequence of such assemblages, you cannot stir without being pestered with crowds of boys, proffering their services to transport your wares. The church of Guibray, like the others of Falaise, offers specimens of Norman architecture, strangely altered and half concealed by modern innovations. In the first syllable of the name of the place, you will observe the French word for misletoe, and may thence infer, and probably not without reason, the antiquity of the station; the latter syllable, albeit in England sheep are not wont to _bray_, is supposed by the pious to have reference to the bleating of the lamb, which led to the discovery of the miraculous image.--Etymology is a wide district in a pleasant country, strangely intersected by many and deceitful paths. He that ventures upon the exploring of it, requires the utmost caution, and the constant control of sober reason: woe will be sure to betide the unfortunate wight, who, in such a situation, gives the reins to fancy, and suffers imagination to usurp the place of judgment, without reflecting, as has been observed by the poet on a somewhat similar occasion, that "Tis more to curb than urge the generous steed, Restrain his fury, than provoke his speed." * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 94: The outline of the castle is egg-shaped; and the following are its dimensions, in French measure, according to M. Langevin.--Length, 720 feet; mean width, 420; quantity of ground contained within the walls, two acres and a perch.] [Footnote 95: _Recherches Historiques sur Falaise_, p. XIX. and XXIX.] LETTER XXX. ROCK AND CHAPEL OF ST. ADRIEN--PONT-DE-L'ARCHE--PRIORY OF THE TWO LOVERS--ABBEY OF BONPORT--LOUVIERS--GAILLON--VERNON. (_Mantes, August_, 1818) The last letter which I wrote to you, was dated from Falaise. Look in the map and you will see that you now receive one from a point completely opposite. In four days we have passed from one of the most western towns of the province, to a place situated beyond its eastern frontier; and in four more, we may almost hope to be with you again. In this hasty journey we travelled through a district which has not yet become the subject of description to you; and though we travelled with less comfort of mind, than in the early part of our tour, I am yet enabled to send you a few details respecting it. From Falaise we went in a direct line to Croissanville: the road, which we intended to take by St. Pierre sur Dive to Lisieux, was utterly impracticable for carriages. From Croissanville to Rouen we almost retraced our former steps: we did not indeed again make a _détour_ by Bernay; but the straight road from Lisieux to Brionne is altogether without interest. There are two ways from Rouen to Paris: the upper, through Ecouis, Magny, and Pontoise; the lower, by the banks of the Seine. Having travelled by both of them before, we could appreciate their respective advantages; and we knew that the only recommendation of the former was, that it saved some few miles in distance; while the latter is one of the most beautiful rides in France, and the towns, through which it passes, are far from being among the least interesting in Normandy. In such an alternative, there was no difficulty in fixing our choice, and we proceeded straight for Pont-de-l'Arche. The chalk cliffs, which bounded the road on our left, for some distance from Rouen, break near the small village of Port St. Ouen, into wild forms, and in one spot project boldly, assuming the shape of distinct towers. These projections are known by the name of the rock of St. Adrien; thus called from the patron saint of a romantic chapel, a place of great sanctity, and of frequent resort with pilgrims, situated nearly mid-way up the cliff.--The chapel is indeed little more than an excavation, and is altogether so rude, that its workmanship affords no clue to discover the date of the building. Its south side and roof are merely formed of the bare rock. To the north it is screened by an erection, which, were it not for the windows and short square steeple, might easily be mistaken for a pent-house. The western end appears to display some traces of Norman architecture. The hill, which leads to this chapel, commands a view of Rouen, the most picturesque, I think, of all that we have seen of this city, so picturesque from various points. You can scarcely conceive the eagerness with which we endeavored to catch the last glimpse, as the prospect gradually vanished from our sight, or the pleasure with which we still dwell, and shall long continue so to do, upon the recollection. All round the chapel, the bare chalk is at this time tinged with a beautiful glow, from the blue flowers of the _Viola Rothomagensis_: the _Isatis Tinctoria_, the _true Woad_, is also common on the steep sides of the cliff. This plant, which is here indigenous, became, during the reign of Napoléon, an object of attention with the government, as a succedaneum for indigo, at the same time that beet-root was destined to supply the continent with sugar, and salsafy, or parched wheat, to hold the place of coffee. The restoration of peace has caused the Isatis to be again neglected; but the _Reseda luteola_, or, _Dyer's woad_, is much cultivated in the neighborhood, as is the _Teasel_ for the use of the cloth manufactory. Pont-de-l'Arche, though now a small mean town, may boast of high antiquity, if it be rightly believed to be the ancient _Pistae_, the seat of the palace erected by Charles the Bald, in which that sovereign convened councils in the years 861 and 869, and held assemblies of his nobles in 862 and 864; and from which, his edicts promulgated in those years, are dated. The same monarch also built here a magnificent bridge, defended at one extremity by a citadel upon a small island.--From this there seems every reason to believe that the town has derived its name; for, in a diploma issued by our Henry IInd, he calls the place _Pontem Arcis_; and its present appellation is nothing but its Latin name translated into French. The fortress at the head of the bridge was demolished about thirty years ago, at the time when Millin published his[96] account of the town. The plate attached to that account, represents one of the towers as still standing.--Though deprived of its citadel, Pont-de-l'Arche retains to the present day its walls, flanked by circular towers; and its bridge, which is the lowest stone bridge down the Seine, is a noble one of twenty-two arches, through which the river at a considerable depth below, rolls with extraordinary rapidity. In the length of this bridge are some mills, which are turned by the stream; and the current is moderated under one of the arches, by a lock placed on the down-stream side, into which barges pass, and so proceed with security; The bridge, with its mills, forms a very picturesque object. At a short distance from the bridge, to the left, looking towards Paris, is the _Colline des deux amans_, formerly surmounted by the priory of the same name. Of the history of the monastery nothing is known with certainty, nor is even the date of its foundation ascertained, though it is stated by Millin to be one of the most ancient in Normandy[97]. But the traditionary tale connected with this convent, forms the subject of one of the lays of _Mary of France_; and it has been elegantly translated by the late Mr. Ellis, in the introduction to his _History of our Ancient Metrical Romances_;--Du Plessis[98] is, however, of opinion, that the name of the priory is nothing more than a corruption from the words, _deux monts_, in allusion to the twin hills, on one of which it stands; or, if _lovers_ must have any thing to do with the appellation, he piously suggests that divine love may have been intended, and that the parties were no other than our Savior and the Virgin, whose images were placed over the door of the conventual church. On the opposite side of the bridge of Pont-de-l'Arche, stand the remains of a far richer abbey, that of Bonport, of the Cistertian order, founded by Richard Coeur-de-Lion, in 1190, as an _ex voto_. The monarch, then just in possession of his crown, was indulging with his courtiers in the pleasures of the chace, and, carried away by the natural impetuosity of his temper, had plunged in pursuit of the deer into the Seine, whose rapid current brought his life into imminent danger; and he accordingly vowed, if he escaped with safety, to erect a monastery upon the spot where he should reach the shore. Hence, according to Le Brasseur[99], the foundation, and hence the name. I ought, however, to add, that no record of the kind is preserved in the _Neustrta Pia_, nor even by Millin, who has described and figured such of the monastic buildings and monuments as had been spared at the early part of the revolution[100]. Another view of the ruins has since been published by Langlois, in the first number of a work which was intended to have comprised a long series of Norman antiquities, but was discontinued for want of encouragement. The author, whose portrait I have sent you in the course of this correspondence, is himself a native of Pont-de-l'Arche, and has subjoined to his fas-ciculus a couple of plates, illustrative of the costume and customs of the neighborhood.--In one of these plates, an itinerant male fortune-teller is satisfying a young peasant as to the probability of her speedy marriage, by means of a pack of cards, from which he has turned up the king and queen and ace of hearts. In the other, _a cunning woman_ is solving a question by a book and key. The poor girl's sweetheart is an absent soldier, and fears and doubts are naturally entertained for his safety. To unlock the mysteries of fate, the key is attached to the mass-book, and suspended from the tip of the finger of the sybil, who reads the first chapter of the gospel of St. John; and the invocation is answered by the key turning of _its own accord_, when she arrives at the verse beginning, "and the word was made flesh[101]."--A fine rose-window in the church of the abbey of Bonport, and two specimens of painted glass from its windows, the one representing angels holding musical instruments, supposed to be of the thirteenth century, the other containing a set of male and female heads of extraordinarily rich color, probably executed about a century later, are given by _Willemin_ in his very beautiful _Monumens Français inédits_. In the same work, you will likewise find two still more interesting painted windows from Pont-de-l'Arche; some boatmen and their wives in the Norman costume of the end of the sixteenth century, and a citizen of the town with his lady, praying before a fald-stool, bearing the date, 1621. The church of Pont-de-l'Arche, though greatly dilapidated, is a building worth notice, in a fine style of the decorated gothic. The nave is very lofty; the high altar richly carved and gilt; the oak pulpit embossed with saints; and the font covered with curious, though not ancient, sculpture. Rich tracery abounds in the windows, which are also filled with painted glass, some of it of very good quality. Scripture history and personages occupy, as usual, the principal part; but in one of the windows we noticed a representation of the Seine full of islands, and the town of Pont-de-l'Arche, with a number of persons quitting it with their horses, baggage, &c. in apparent confusion. So shattered, however, is the window, that the story is no longer intelligible in its details; and fragments, quite illegible, are all that remain of the inscriptions formerly beneath it. It is probable, that the intention of the artist was to give a picture of the miseries experienced by the inhabitants at the burning of the town by our troops under Edward IIIrd.--On the south side of the church the buttresses are enriched with canopies and other sculpture; and there was originally a highly-wrought balustrade, ornamented with figures of children, a part of which remains.--Pont-de-l'Arche claims the merit of having been the first town in France, which acknowledged Henry IVth as its lawful sovereign, after the assassination of his predecessor, in 1589. On leaving this place, we passed through the forest of the same name, an extensive tract covered with young trees, principally beech, oak, and birch. The soil, a mixture of chalk and gravel, is poor, and offers but little encouragement to the labors of the plough. All around us, the distant prospect was pleasantly varied with gentle hills, upon one of which, nearly in front, we soon saw Louviers, a busy manufacturing town, of about seven thousand inhabitants, who are chiefly employed in making the fine cloth of the district, which is considered superior in quality to any other in France. Spanish wool is almost exclusively used for the purpose. Throughout the vicinity of Louviers, are the most undoubted symptoms of commercial prosperity; new houses every where erecting, and old ones undergoing improvement. But the streets of the town itself are, as usual, dirty and narrow, and the people of the lower orders more than commonly ragged and beggarly. It was impossible to mistake the nature of their occupations; so many of them had their faces and hands, and every part of their limbs and bodies that was visible, died of a bright blue.--The church at Louviers is very much injured, but very handsome; and though reduced to a nave with its four aisles it is still a spacious edifice. The south porch, which projects boldly in the form of a galilee, is scarcely to be excelled as a specimen of pointed architecture at its highest pitch of luxuriant beauty. Yet, even in this, the saints have been torn from their pedestals by the wanton violence of the Calvinists or democrats. The central tower is square and short: it is, however, handsome. Two windows, very similar to those of the tower of St. Romain, in Rouen cathedral, light it on either side; and saints, placed under canopies, ornament the angles behind the buttresses.--The great western door is closed, and the front defaced: the eastern end, likewise, is altogether modern.--Within, the same kind of architecture prevails as in the exterior, but the whole is so concealed, and degraded by ornaments in the worst of taste, and by painted saints in the most tawdry dresses, that the effect is disgusting. I never saw so great an array of wretched representations of the heavenly host: the stone images collected round the holy sepulchre, are even worse than those at Dieppe. Near the chapel of the sepulchre, however, are four bas-reliefs, attached to the wall, exhibiting different events in our Savior's life of good execution, and not in had taste: an open gallery of fillagree stone-work, under the central tower on the south side, is an object really deserving of admiration. M. Langlois has engraved the gable end of an old house at Louviers, said to have belonged to the Knights Templars. We found it used as an engine-maker's shop; and neither within nor without, could we discover any thing to justify his opinion, that it is a building of the twelfth or thirteenth century. On the contrary, the windows, which are double, under a flatly-pointed arch, and are all of them trefoil-headed, would rather cause it to be considered as erected two centuries later. The town of Louviers, though never fortified, is noticed on several occasions in history. It was the seat of the conferences between Richard Coeur-de-Lion and Philip Augustus, which ended in the treaty of 1195, defining new limits to Normandy.--It was, as I have already mentioned, one of the items of the compensation made by the same Duke to the Archbishop of Rouen, for the injury done to the church, by the erection of Château Gaillard.--During the wars of Edward IIIrd, "Louviers," to use the language of old Froissart, "after the battle of Caen, was soon entered by the Englishmen, as it was not closed; and they over-ran, and spoiled, and robbed it without mercy, and won great riches; for it was the chief place in all Normandy for drapery, and was full of merchandize."--And, in the subsequent warfare of the fifteenth century, this town, like the others in the duchy, was taken by our countrymen, under Henry Vth, and lost by them under his successor.--Hither the Norman parliament retired when the Huguenots were in possession of Rouen; and here they remained till the recapture of the capital.--It was probably owing in a great measure to this circumstance, that Louviers was induced to distinguish itself by a devoted attachment to the party of the league, for which it suffered severely in 1591, when it was captured and pillaged by the royalists shortly after their victory at Ivry. The town was then taken through the treachery of a priest of the name of Jean de la Tour, who received, as a recompence, a stall in the cathedral at Evreux, but was so much an object of abhorrence with his brethren, that he scarcely ever ventured to appear in his place. During the holy week, however, he attended; and it once happened, that while he was so officiating, all the canons contrived to leave the church towards the close of the psalm, which immediately precedes the _Benedictus_ at _Laudes_, so that the anthem, _Traditor autem_, which is sung with that hymn, necessarily fell to the part of de la Tour, who found himself compelled to chaunt it, to his own extreme confusion, and the infinite amusement of the congregation. Irritated and mortified, the poor priest preferred his complaints to the king; but it was one thing to love the treason, and another to love the traitor; and his appeal obtained no redress. From Louviers our next stage was Gaillon, on our road to which we passed some vineyards, the most northern, I believe, in Normandy. The vines cultivated in them are all of the small black cluster grape; and the wine they produce, I am told, is of very inferior quality,--No place can appear at present more poverty-stricken than Gaillon; but the case was far otherwise before the glories of royal and ecclesiastical France were shorn by the revolution. Ducarel, who visited this town about the year 1760, dwells with great pleasure upon the magnificence of its palace and its Carthusian convent and church. Of the palace the remains are still considerable; and, after having been suffered to lie in a state of ruin and neglect from an early period in the revolution, they are now fitting up as a prison. The long inscription formerly over the gate might with great propriety be replaced by the hacknied phrase, "Sic transit gloria mundi;" for the vicissitudes of the fortune of noble buildings are strikingly illustrated by the changes experienced by this sumptuous edifice, long proverbial throughput France for its splendor. Philip Augustus conferred the lordship of Gaillon upon one of his captains of the name of Cadoc, as a reward for his activity in the conquest of Normandy. Louis IXth afterwards, early in the thirteenth century, ceded the town in perpetuity to the Archbishop of Rouen. St. Louis here received by way of exchange the Château of Pinterville, which he bestowed upon William d'Aubergenville, whose uncle, the Bishop of Evreux, had, while chancellor of France, done much service to him and to Queen Blanche, his mother. From that time to the revolution the archbishops had their country seat at Gaillon, and enjoyed the sole right of trying civil and criminal causes within the town and its liberties. Their palace, which was destroyed during the wars of Henry Vth, in 1423, was rebuilt about a century afterwards by the munificence of the first cardinal Georges d'Amboise, one of whose successors in the prelacy, Colbert, expended, as it is said, more than one hundred thousand livres towards the embellishment of it.--Another archbishop, the Cardinal of Bourbon, founded the neighboring monastery, in the year 1571. The conventual church was destroyed by fire, through the carelessness of some plumbers, shortly after Ducarel visited it; and with it perished the celebrated monument of one of the counts of Bourbon Soissons, said to have been a master-piece of sculpture. The limits assigned to Normandy by the treaty of Louviers, made Gaillon a frontier town of the duchy; and here therefore I should take my leave of you, but that, in the prouder days of its history, Vernon was likewise swayed by the ducal sceptre. Vernon also seems peculiarly connected with England, from the noble family of the same name still flourishing, agreeably to their well-known punning motto, on your side of the water. This motto is in the highest degree inapplicable to the present state of the town, whose old and ruinous appearance looks as if it had known neither improvement nor repair for centuries. Better things might have been expected from the situation of Vernon, on the banks of the Seine, in a singularly beautiful valley, and from its climate, which is reported to be so extraordinarily healthy, that instances of individuals attaining in it the age of one hundred are not unfrequent. The royal palace, formerly here, is now wholly swept away; and of the ancient fortifications there remains little more than a tower, remarkable for the height and thickness of its walls, a part of the castle, which, in the reign of Henry IInd, was held by the service of sixteen knights for its defence[102].--Prior to the revolution, Vernon contained five religious houses, three of them founded by St. Louis, who is said to have regarded this town with peculiar favor, and probably on that account assigned it as a jointure to his queen, an honor which it has received upon more than one other occasion. The present parish church of Vernon was collegiate. It was founded about the year 1052, by William of Vernon, and was endowed by him, at the time of its dedication, with the property called, _La Couture du Pré de Giverny_, and with a fourth part of the forest of Vernon, all which the dean and canons continued to enjoy till the revolution. This William appears to have been the first of the family who adopted the surname of Vernon. His son, Richard, by whom the foundation was formally confirmed, attended the Conqueror to England, and obtained there considerable grants. One of their descendants ceded the town in 1190 to the King of France, accepting in return other lands, according to a treaty still preserved in the royal library at Paris. The tombs of the founder, and of his namesake, Sir William de Vernon, constable of England, who died in 1467, and of many others of the family, among the rest the stately mausoleum of the Maréchal de Belle Isle, were destroyed during the reign of jacobinism and terror. The portraits, however, of the Marshal and of the Duc de Penthièvre, both of them very indifferent performances, were saved, and are now kept in the sacristy. The only monument left to the church is that of Marie Maignard, whose husband, Charles Maignard, was Lord of Bernières and president of the parliament of Normandy. She died in 1610. Her effigy in white marble, praying before a fald-stool, has also been spared. [Illustration: Elevation of the West Front of _La Délivrande_] The church itself is a spacious building, consisting of a nave and two aisles, with chapels beyond, separated by lofty pointed arches, supported on clustered pillars, to each of which is still attached a tabernacle; but the statues have been destroyed. The choir is altogether in a different style of architecture: that portion of it which immediately surrounds the altar, is early Norman, and most probably belonged to the original structure. Its arches vary remarkably in width. The most narrow among them are more decidedly horseshoe-shaped, than any others which I recollect to have seen.--The west front, though much mutilated, is still handsome. It is flanked by two small, very short turrets, richly ornamented.--The square central tower, capped by a conical roof, does not even equal the height of the nave, which is greatly superior to that of the choir.--Upon an eminence in the immediate vicinity of Vernon, are the remains of a Roman encampment. With Vernon we quitted ancient Normandy: our ride thence to Mantes has been delightful; and this town, for the excellence of its buildings, for neatness, and for a general air of comfort, far excels any other which we have seen in the north of France. The name of Mantes also recals the memory of the Duc de Sully, and recals that of the Conqueror, whose life fell a sacrifice to the barbarous outrage of which he was here guilty.--But, I now lay down my pen, and take my leave of Normandy, happy, if by my correspondence during this short tour, I have been able to impart to you a portion of the gratification which I have myself experienced, while tracing the ancient history, and surveying the monuments of that wonderful nation, who, issuing from the frozen regions of the north, here fixed the seat of their permanent government, became powerful rivals of the sovereigns of France, saw Sicily and the fairest portion of Italy subject to their sway, and, at the same time that they possessed themselves of our own island, by right of conquest, imported amongst us their customs, their arts, and their institutions, and laid the basis of that happy constitution, under which, by the blessing of God, Britain is at this moment the pride and envy of the world! * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 96: _Antiquités Nationales_, IV. No. 48.] [Footnote 97: _Antiquités Nationales_, II. No. 17.] [Footnote 98: _Histoire de la Haute Normandie_, II. p. 332.] [Footnote 99: _Histoire d'Evreux_, p. 161.] [Footnote 100: _Antiquités Nationales_, IV. No. 40.] [Footnote 101: This mode of divination by the Bible and key, is also to be found among the superstitions of our own country.--See _Ellis' edition of Brand's Popular Antiquities_, II. p. 641.] [Footnote 102: _Ducarel's Anglo-Norman Antiquities_, p. 93.--Respecting Vernon, see also _Millin, Antiquités Nationales_, III. No. 26, in which four plates, and near fifty pages of letter-press, are devoted to this town.] APPENDIX I. * * * * * The printing of this work was just concluded, when the author was favored with drawings, accompanied with short descriptions, of the chapel of our _Lady of the Délivrande_, near Caen, and of an ancient font at Magneville, near Valognes. For the former he is indebted to Mr. Cohen, to whom he has so often in the course of the work, had occasion to express his obligations; for the latter, to M. de Gerville, an able antiquary at Valognes. Both these subjects are of such a nature, that he is peculiarly happy to be able to add them to his imperfect account of the Antiquities of Normandy: the whole duchy does not contain a religious building more celebrated for its sanctity than the chapel; and while ancient fonts of any description are rare in the province, he doubts if another is to be found like that of Magneville, ornamented with sculpture and an inscription. * * * * * Some historians suppose, that the country situated between Caen and the sea, formed at least, a part of the Saxon shore of Neustria. Amongst the other ancient buildings which are found in this district, the chapel of Notre Dame de la Délivrande, to which the Normans have resorted in pilgrimage during the last eight hundred years, is, perhaps, the most remarkable. When the philosophers of the revolution envied the religious enjoyments of the common man, all pilgrimages were forbidden, and the road leading to our Lady's Chapel, and which, indeed, is the only high road in this part of the country, became almost impassable. Under the Emperor it was thoroughly repaired, and, as they say, by his especial order; and since the accession of the present French king, the fathers of the mission, who lose no favorable opportunity of fostering the spirit of devotion, have erected roods and tabernacles, at due distances, all along the way side. After leaving Caen, the traveller will not fail to linger on the little hill which he ascends just after passing by the first crucifix. Hence he enjoys a lovely prospect, such as delighted the old masters. In the foreground is the lofty cross, standing on a quadrangular pyramid of steps. The broken hollow path bending upwards round the base, is always occupied by a grotesque group of cripples and beldames, in rags and tatters, laughing and whining and praying. The horizon is bounded by long lines of grey and purple hills, nearer are fields and pastures, whilst the river glitters and winds amidst their vivid tints. Nearer still, the city of Caen extends itself from side to side, terminated at each extremity by the venerable abbeys of William and Matilda. There are no traces of work-shops and manufactories, or of their pollution; but the churches with their towers and spires rise above the houses in bold architectural masses, and the city assumes a character of quiet monastic opulence, comforting the eye and the mind. About four miles farther on from Caen, we reached Cambre, one of the many seignories which belonged to the very noble family of Mathan. There was a Serlo de Mathan, who appears as a witness to one of the Conqueror's charters, and the family is now represented by the present Marquis, who has recovered his château, and a fragment of his domain. Cambre is also the residence of the Abbé de la Rue, by whom the Marquis was educated. When they both took refuge in England, the Abbé was the only protector of his pupil, who now returns the honorable obligation. It is well known that the Abbé has devoted his life to the investigation of the antiquities both of Normandy and of the Anglo-Normans. Possessing in a high degree the acute and critical spirit of research which distinguished the French archaiologists of the Benedictine school, we have only to regret, that the greater part of his works yet remain in manuscript. His _History of Anglo-Norman Poetry_, which is quite ready for the press, would be an invaluable accession to our literature; but books of this nature are so little suited to the taste of the French public, that, as yet, he has not ventured upon its publication. The collections of the Abbé, as may be anticipated, are of great value; they relate almost wholly to the history of the duchy. The château escaped spoliation. The portraits of the whole line of the Mathans, from the first founder of the race, in his hauberk, down to the last Marquis, in his _frisure_, are in good preservation; and they are ancient specimens of the sign-post painting usually found in old galleries. The Marquis has also a finely-illuminated missal, which belonged to a Dame de Mathan, in the fourteenth century, and which has been carefully handed down in the family, from generation to generation. The church of Douvre, the next village, is rather a picturesque building. The upper story of the tower has two pointed windows of the earliest date. A pediment between them rests on the archivolt on either side. This is frequently seen in buildings in the circular style. The other stories of the tower, and the west front of the church are Norman; the east end is in ruins. The British name of the village may afford ground for much ethnigraphical and etymological speculation. Saint Exuperius is said to have founded the Chapel of La Délivrande, some time in the first century. The tradition adds, that the chapel was ruined by the Northmen,--and the statue of the Virgin, which now commands the veneration of the faithful, remained buried until the appointed time of resuscitation, in the reign of Henry Ist, when it was discovered, in conformity to established usage and precedent in most cases of miraculous images, by a lamb. Baldwin, Count of the Bessin and Baron of Douvre, was owner of the flock to which the lamb belonged. The Virgin would not remain in the parish church of Douvre, in which she was lodged by the Baron, but she returned every night to the spot where she was disinterred. Baldwin therefore understood that it was his duty to erect a chapel for her reception, and he accordingly built that which is now standing, and made a donation of the edifice to the Bishop of Bayeux, whose successor receives the mass-pennies and oblations at this very day. Some idea of the architecture of the building may be formed from the inclosed sketch of the western front. During the morning mass, the chapel was crowded with women, young and old, who were singing the litany of the Virgin in a low and plantive tone. A hymn of praise was also chaunted. It was composed by the learned Bishop Huet, and it is inscribed upon a black marble tablet, which was placed in the chapel by his direction. The country women of the Saxon shore possess a very peculiar physiognomy, denoting that the race is unmixed. The Norman-Saxon damsel is full and well made, her complexion is very fair, she has light hair, long eyelashes, and tranquil placid features; her countenance has an air of sullen pouting tenderness, such as we often find in the women represented in the sculptures and paintings of the middle ages. And all the girls are so much alike, that it might have been supposed that they all were sisters. As to our Lady, she is gaily attired in a Cashemire shawl, and completely covered with glaring amber necklaces and beads, and ribband knots, and artificial flowers. Many votive offerings are affixed round her shrine. The pilgrim is particularly desired to notice a pair of crutches, which testify the cure of their former owner, who lately hobbled to the Virgin from Falaise, as a helpless cripple, and who quitted her in perfect health. Of course the Virgin has operated all the usual standard miracles, including one which may be suspected to be rather a work of supererogation, that of restoring speech to a matron who had lost her tongue, which had been cut out by her jealous husband. Miracles of every kind are very frequently performed, yet, if the truth must be told, they are worked, as it were, by deputy, for the real original Virgin suffered so much during the revolution, that it has been thought advisable to keep her in the sacristy, and the statue now seen is a restoration of recent workmanship. In order to conciliate the sailors and fishermen of the coast, the Virgin has entered into partnership with St. Nicholas, whose image is impressed on the reverse of the medal representing her, and which is sold to the pilgrims. The country about La Délivrande is flat, but industriously cultivated and thickly peopled. The villages are numerous and substantial. From a point at the extremity of the green lane which leads onward from La Délivrande, six or eight church spires may be counted, all within a league's distance. By the advice of the Abbé de la Rue, we proceeded to Bernieres, which is close to the sea. The mayor of the commune offered his services with great civility, and accompanied us to the church, which, as he told us, was built by Duke William. We easily gave credit to the mayor's assertion, as the interior of the nave is good Norman. The pillars which support the groining of the roof are square; this feature is rather singular. The tower and spire are copied from Saint Peter, at Caen. Those of Luc, Courseilles, Langrune, and the other neighboring villages, are upon the same model. Many instances of the same kind of affiliation occur at home, which shew how easily a fashion was set in ecclesiastical architecture. * * * * * [Illustration: Font at Magneville] APPENDIX II. * * * * * The most remarkable among the ancient inscriptions found in that part of Normandy, which is now comprised in the Department of La Manche, are upon an ancient altar, at Ham, on a medallion attached to the outside of the church of Ste. Croix, at St. Lô, and upon the font at Magneville, near Valognes. The first of these has generally been referred to the seventh century; the second seems to be of the ninth; and the last may with safety be considered as of the latter part of the tenth, or beginning of the eleventh, at which period, the choir of the church of Magneville appears also to have been erected. Of the sculpture upon the font, as well as of the inscription, an accurate idea may be formed, from the annexed drawing: the most remarkable character of the inscription seems to be in its punctuation. The letters upon the altar, at Ham, touch one another, and there is no separation of any kind between the words: here, on the contrary, almost all the words are divided by three or four points placed in a perpendicular direction, except at the end of the phrases, where stops are wholly wanting. At Ham, also, the letters are cut into the stone, while at Magneville they are drawn with a brush, with a kind of black pigment. G. INDEX. A. _Abbey_, of Ardennes, Bec, Bernay, Bonport, Cormeilles, Ducler, Jumieges, Preaux, St. Evroul, St. Georges de Bocherville, St. Stephen, at Caen, St. Taurinus, Trinity at Caen. _Academy of Druids_, at Bayeux. _Academy of Sciences_, at Caen. _Agnes Sorel_, buried at Jumieges, her statue destroyed by the Huguenots, her tomb destroyed at the revolution, inscription upon. _Amphitheatre, Roman_, found near Lisieux. _Amyot, Mr_. his paper on the Bayeux tapestry. _Andelys_, origin of the name, history of, seat of an early monastery, great house at, birth-place of Poussin. _Andromeda polifolia_, found near Jumieges. _Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury_, a monk at Bec. _Aqueduct, Roman_, remains of, at Vieux. _Archbishops of Rouen_, their palace at Gaillon. _Arches, trefoil-headed_, early specimen of, at Jumieges. _Ardennes_, abbey of, near Caen. _Arlette, mother of the Conqueror_, native of Falaise. _Arnulf_, bishop of Lisieux. _Arthur, Prince_, knighted at Gournay. _Asselin_, forbids the interment of the Conqueror. _Audinus, bishop of Evreux_, authorizes Henry Ist to burn the city. _Augustodurum_, probably the site of, at Vieux. B. _Bailiffs_, first established in Normandy under Philip Augustus, _Baiocco of Naples_, named after Bayeux, _Bas-relief_, in the church of St. Georges de Bocherville, _Baudius_, professor of law for a short time at Caen, _Bayeux_, seat of an academy of Druids, Roman relics found near, but no Druidic, a Roman station, probably the Næomagus Viducassium, its ancient name, its importance under the early French kings, its history, the place where the Norman princes were educated, castle, situation, population, and trade, tapestry, cathedral, _Bayeux, Roman_, probably destroyed by the Saxons, _Bec, abbey of_, its present state, former income and patronage, church described by Du Plessis, founded by Hellouin, history, seminary for eminent men, _Belenus_, worshipped near Bayeux, _Berengarius_, his tenets impugned by Lanfranc, condemned by the council of Brionne, _Bernay_, abbey of, church, burial-ground, population and trade, costume of the females, _Bernieres_, church of, _Blanche, wife of Charles the Bel_, confined in Château Gaillard, _Bochart_, one of the founders of the academy at Caen, _Boileau_, his eulogium on Malherbe, _Bonport_, abbey of, _Borghese, Princess of_, original letter by, _Bouillon, Duke of_, Lord of Evreux, at the revolution, _Bourg-Achard_, seat of an abbey, dedicated to St. Eustatius, leaden font, _Bourg-Theroude_, _Bourgueville_, his antiquities of Caen, present at the exhumation of the Conqueror's remains, _Boy, bishop_, annually elected at Caen, _Bretteville l'Orgueilleuse_, church of, _Brionne_, situation of, seat of the council which condemned the tenets of Berengarius, castle, _Brito_, his account of the siege of Gournay, of Château Gaillard, of the murder of the French garrison of Evreux, of Caen. _Broglie_, church of. _Bruce, David_, a resident in Château Gaillard. _Buck-wheat_, much cultivated in Lower Normandy, etymology of its French name. C. _Caen_, arrival at, distant view of, trade and population, situation, grand cours, costume of females, house-rent, foundation, described by Brito, etymology of the name, fortifications, Château de Calix, castle, chapel in the castle, hospital, royal abbeys, college, palace, museum, library, universities, men of eminence, academy, Malherbe, history, neighborhood abundant in fossil remains, seen from the road leading to La Délivrande. _Caen-stone_, large quarries of, formerly much used in England. _Cambre_. _Cambremer, Canon of_, tale respecting, at Bayeux. _Cannon_, first used in France, at the siege of Pont Audemer. _Canons_, four statues of, at Evreux. _Castle_, of Bayeux, Brionne, Caen, Creully, Falaise, Gisors, Montfort, Neufmarché. _Cathedral of Bayeux_, founded by St. Exuperius, history, described, crypt, stripped of its relics, revenue, right of mintage. _Cathedral of Evreux_, often destroyed, its present state, little injured by the Huguenots, founded by St. Taurinus. _Cathedral of Lisieux_, now the parish church of St. Peter, described, remarkable tomb in. _Cauchon, Peter_, bishop of Lisieux, president at the trial of Joan of Arc. _Cecily_, daughter of the Conqueror, abbess at Caen. _Chapel_, subterranean, in Bayeux cathedral, in the castle at Caen, in the castle at Falaise, of St. Adrian, of La Délivrande. _Chapel in the castle at Caen_, built fronting the east _Chapels_, stone-roofed, in Ireland, of Norman origin _Charles the Bad_, born in the Château de Navarre _Charters_, of the abbey of St. Georges de Bocherville _Château de Navarre_ _Château Gaillard_, its situation described account of, by Brito history _Château de Calix_, at Caen _Chesnut-timber_, formerly much used in Normandy _Church_, of the abbey of Bec Bernieres Bernay Bretteville l'Orgueilleuse Broglie Creully Ducler Ecouis Falaise Gisors Gournay Jumieges St. Peter's at ditto Louviers Moulineaux Pont Audemer Pont-de-l'Arche St. Germain de Blancherbe St. Gervais, at Falaise St. Georges de Bocherville St. Giles, at Evreux St. James, at Lisieux St. John, at Caen St. Michael, at ditto St. Nicholas, at ditto St. Peter, at ditto St. Stephen's abbey, at ditto St. Stephen, at ditto Trinity, at ditto Trinity at Falaise Vernon _Cider_, the common beverage, in Normandy first introduced by the Normans _Cocherel_ _Coins, golden_, struck at Bayeux, under the first French kings _Colline des deux amans_, priory of _Cormeilles_, abbey of _Corneille_, buried at Andelys _Costume_, at Bernay at Caen _Coupe gorge_, colony established at, by Napoléon _Creully_, castle church _Crocodile fossil_, found near Caen _Croissanville_ D. _Dalechamps_, native of Caen _D'Amboise, Cardinal_, built the palace at Gaillon _Darnétal_ _De Boissy_, bishop of Bayeux, his epitaph. _De la Rue, Abbé_, professor of history at Caen, is preparing an account of Caen, his paper on the Bayeux tapestry. _Douce, Mr._, his illustration of the sculpture at St. Georges de Bocherville. _Douvre_. _Druids_, academy of, at Bayeux. _Dubois Louis_, his discoveries among the ruins of Old Lisieux, preserved the original M.S. of Ordericus Vitalis, is preparing the history of Lisieux. _Ducarel_, his description of a pavement in the palace at Caen. _Ducler_, convent, parish church. _Du Perron_, cardinal, bishop of Evreux. _Du Plessis_, his opinion as to Turold on the Bayeux tapestry, description of the abbey church of Bec. E. _Ecouis, church of_, burial-place of John and Enguerrand de Marigny, singular epitaph. _Epitaph_, enigmatical at Ecouis, of John de Boissy, on the exterior of Bayeux cathedral. _Evreux_, destroyed by Henry Ist, cathedral, abbey of St. Taurinus, history, present appearance. _Evreux, Old_, a Roman station. F. _Falaise_, situation of, etymology of the name, castle, Talbot's tower, chapel in castle, history, firmly attached to the League, fortifications, inhabitants _true Normans_, population and trade, churches. _Fastolf, Sir John_, governor of Caen. _Flambart, Ralph_, bishop of Durham, seizes Lisieux. _Fleury, Cardinal_, abbot at Caen. _Fonts_, seldom seen in French churches. _Font_, curiously sculptured, at Magneville. _Font, leaden_, at Bourg-Achard. G. _Gaillon_, vineyards near, present state of, ceded to the archbishop of Rouen, made by the treaty of Louviers the frontier town of the Duchy, _Gisors_, castle, appearance of, history, place of interview between Henry IInd, and Philip Augustus, arms of the town, castle, described, church of, banded column in the church, _Glass painted_, at the abbey of Bonport, in the church of Pont de l'Arche, _Gournay_, origin of, present appearance, history, siege described by Brito, arms of, place where Prince Arthur was knighted, church, remarkable sculpture on the capitals, _Gournay, Hugo de_, _Guibray_, fair of, _Gurney, Hudson_, his paper on the Bayeux tapestry, H. _Harcourt_, castle of, _Hellouin_, founder of the abbey of Bec, his epitaph, _Hennuyer, John_, bishop of Lisieux, said to have saved the Huguenots, _Henry Ist_, kept prisoner by Robert at Bayeux, destroyed the city, _History, ecclesiastical, of Ordericus Vitalis_, materials for a new edition of, original manuscript, manuscript copies, _Holy Trinity_, church of, at Falaise, _Honfleur_, situation of, described, _Horses, Norman_, present price of, _Hospital at Caen_, founded in the thirteenth century, _Hoveden_, his account of the interview between Henry IInd, and Philip Augustus, near Gisors, _Hubert, archbishop of Canterbury_, a monk of Bec, _Hubert, M._, discovered the site of the Neomagus Lexoviorum, _Huet_, his _Origines de Caen_, one of the founders of the academy at Caen, _Huguenots_, destroy the tomb and violate the remains of the Conqueror, _Hume, David_, his opinion on the Bayeux tapestry, _Hypocaust, Roman_, found at Vieux, I. _Inscription_, on the font at Magneville, _John, King_, murders the French garrison of Evreux, _Isatis tinctoria_, cultivated in France under Napoléon, _Jumieges, abbey of_, its foundation, original building, history, church, Salle des Chevaliers, church of St. Peter, monuments, _Ivory chest_, in Bayeux cathedral, K. _Knights, Templars_, house of, at Louviers, L. _Lamouroux, M_. professor of natural history at Caen, his publications, _Lanfranc_, settled at Bec, first schoolmaster in Normandy, first abbot of St. Stephen's, _Langevin, M_., author of the history of Falaise, _Langlois, M_., his portrait, his work on Norman Antiquities, _Le Beuf, Abbé_, his opinion of Vieux, _Le Brasseur_, his account of the statues of four canons at Evreux, _Léproserie de Beauîleu_, _Letter, original_, from Princess Borghese, _Library, public_, at Caen, _Lisieux_, situation and trade of, its see suppressed in 1801, cathedral, tomb in cathedral, town probably founded in the sixth century, ancient names of, history of, church of St. Jacques, _Littleton, Lord_, his opinion of the Bayeux tapestry, _Louviers_, treaty of, population, church, house of knights templars, history, M. _Magneville_, font at, _Malherbe_, native of Caen, _Mallet, Anthony_, his statement of Hennuyer's saving the Calvinists, _Maréchal de Belle Isle_, his monument, _Margaret of Burgundy_, immured in Château Gaillard, _Marigny, Enguerrand de_, buried at Ecouis, his mausoleum destroyed at the revolution, _Marriage ceremony_, in France, _Matilda, wife of the Conqueror_, supposed portrait of, her seal buried in the church of the Trinity, her tomb destroyed by the Huguenots, her remains lately found and new tomb raised, _Maud, Empress_, her expostulations with her father as to the place of her burial, _Mazarine, Cardinal_, abbot of St. Stephen's, _Melons_, cultivated on a large scale, near Lisieux, _Misereres_, sculptured, in Bayeux cathedral, _Misletoe_, commonly hung over inn-doors, near Caen, _Money_, struck by the chapter of Bayeux, how marked, _Montfaucon_, his engravings of the portraits of the Conqueror and his family, _Montfort_, castle of, _Moulineaux_, church of, _Mount Phaunus_, temple of, near Bayeux, _Museum_, at Caen, _Musicians_, sculptured at St. Georges de Bocherville, N. _Napoléon_, establishment formed by him at the pass of _Coupe Gorge_, his attempt to make a naval station at Caen, _Navarre, kings of_, lords of Evreux, _Navarre, Château de_, _Næomagus Viducassium_, probably the modern Bayeux, _Neomagus Lexoviorum_, site of, lately discovered, _Neufmarché_, castle of, _Normandy_, divided anew, under Philip Augustus, _Notre Dame de la Délivrande_, chapel of, O. _Odo, bishop of Bayeux_, rebuilds the cathedral, his life and character. _Ordericus Vitalis_, his account of the destruction of Evreux, his account of St. Taurinus, sketch of his life, his ecclesiastical history, his reflections on the death of the Conqueror _Ornaments_ on the spandrils of the arches in Bayeux cathedral. _Oxen_, breed of, near Caen. P. _Paintings, fresco_, in Bayeux cathedral. _Passports_, regulations respecting, in France. _Patye, John, Canon of Cambremer_, legend concerning, at Bayeux. _Pays de Bray_. _Pistae_, the site of, occupied by Pont de l'Arche. _Pont Audemer_, its situation, history, churches. _Pont de l'Arche_, seat of a palace under Charles the Bald, origin of the name, church. _Portraits_, of the Conqueror and family. _Poussin_, born at Andelys, if his example has been favorable to French art. _Preaux_, abbey of. _Priory, des deux Amans_. R. _Rabelais_, his autograph. _Reseda luteola_, cultivated near Rouen. _Richelieu, Cardinal_, abbot of St. Stephen's at Caen. _Roads in France_, compared with those in England. _Robert the Devil_, his castle near Moulineaux. _Romance_, subjects borrowed from, sculptured on a capital in St. Peter's, at Caen. _Rupierre, William of, Bishop of Lisieux_, resists the power of King John. S. _St. Adrian_, Chapel of, near Rouen. _St. Clotilda_, her fountain, at Andelys still worshipped there. _St. Evroul_, abbey of, founded by William de Gerouis, residence of Ordericus Vitalis. _St. Georges de Bocherville_, abbey of, founded by Ralph de Tancarville, its history, abbey church described sculpture in ditto chapter-house. _St. Germain_, church of, at Pont Audemer. _St. Germain de Blancherbe_, church of. _St. Gervais_, church of, at Falaise. _St. Giles_, church of, at Evreux. _St. Jacques_, church of at Lisieux. _St. John_, church of, at Caen. _St. Lascivus_, bishop of Bayeux. _St. Lupus_, bishop of Bayeux, so called from destroying the wolves. _St. Maimertus_, subterranean chapel dedicated to, in Bayeux cathedal. _St. Michael_, church of, in the suburb of Vaucelles, at Caen. _St. Nicholas_, church of at Caen its roof like those of the Irish stone-roofed chapels. _St. Peter_, church of at Caen sculpture upon the capital of one of the columns. _St. Philibert_, founder of Jumieges. _St. Regnobert_, bishop of Bayeux, his chasuble kept in the cathedral, domestic animals blessed on his feast-day. _St. Stephen_, church of, at Caen. _St. Stephen_, abbey of, at Caen, its privileges now used as the college. _St. Stephen, abbey church of_, at Caen, described formed on the the Roman model burial-place of the Conqueror. _St. Taurinus_, founder of Evreux cathedral his fight with the devil, his shrine crypt, in which he was buried. _St. Taurinus, abbey of_ at Evreux its privileges ancient architecture in the church crypt. _St. Vitalis_, his feast celebrated annually at Evreux. _St. Ursinus_, privileges enjoyed by the Canons, at Lisieux, on his vigil and feast-day. _Saxons_, established about Bayeux, where many words from their language still exist. _Screens_, of rare occurrence in French churches. _Sculpture_, in the abbey church of St. Georges de Bocherville, in the chapter-house of the same abbey, in the abbey church of Jumieges, on the capitals in the church at Gournay, on a capital in the abbey church at Bernay, over the high altar at Bernay, on a tomb in Lisieux cathedral, on a capital in St. Peter's at Caen, on the capitals of the pillars in the crypt at Bayeux cathedral, _Seal_, supposed to belong to Matilda, wife of the Conqueror, _Sheep_, Norman breed of, _Siege_, of Château Gaillard, _Statues_, in the chapter-house of the abbey of St. Georges de Bocherville, of William the Conqueror, at Caen, _Stothard, C.A._, his drawings of the Bayeux tapestry, his opinion on its antiquity, _String-course_, remarkable, in the church of _Notre Dame des Prés_, at Pont Audemer, _Superstitions_, still remaining in Normandy, T. _Tancarville, Ralph_, chamberlain to the Conqueror, and founder of the abbey of St. Georges de Bocherville, _Tapestry, Bayeux_, accounts of, published by Montfaucon and Lancelot, referred by them to Matilda, Queen of the Conqueror, figure from, its antiquity denied by Lord Littleton, Hume, and the Abbé de la Rue, when first described, reasons for believing in its antiquity, formerly kept at the cathedral, exhibited during the revolution at Paris, described, _Tassillon_, confined at Jumieges, _Tassilly_, ancient tombs found at, _Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury_ a monk of Bec, _Thomas à Becket_, retired during his disgrace to Lisieux, _Tiles, painted_, in the palace at Caen, supposed to prove the antiquity of heraldic bearings, _Tombeau des énervez_, at Jumieges, _Tombs, ancient_, at Cocherel, in Lisieux cathedral, at Tassilly, _Torigny marble_, _Trinity Holy, abbey of the_, at Caen, when built, used as a fortress as well as a nunnery its income privileges. _Trinity Holy, church of the abbey of the_, at Caen, now a work-house, described, its spires destroyed by Charles, King of Navarre. _Turnebus_, Adrian, native of Andelys. _Turold_, founder of Bourg-Theroude, represented on the Bayeux tapestry. U. _University of Caen_, founded by Henry VIth, abolished and restored by Charles VIIth, esteemed the third in France. V. _Vernon_, its situation, formerly the seat of a royal palace, church. _Vieux_, a Roman station, etymology of the name. _Vines_, formerly cultivated at Jumieges, also at Caen and Lisieux. W. _Wace_, a resident at Caen. _Whales_, formerly caught near Jumieges. _William the Conqueror_, his statue at Caen, supposed figure of him on a capital in the church of the abbey of the Trinity, buried in the abbey-church of St. Stephen, his epitaph, his death and burial, and the disturbance of his remains, his palace at Caen, fresco-paintings of him and his family, born at Falaise, receives the homage of the English, as successor to Edward, at Bayeux. _William of Jumieges_, his account of the attachment of the Empress Maud to Bec. 
11993	----	A RESIDENCE IN FRANCE, DURING THE YEARS 1792, 1793, 1794, AND 1795; DESCRIBED IN A SERIES OF LETTERS FROM AN ENGLISH LADY; With General And Incidental Remarks On The French Character And Manners. Prepared for the Press By John Gifford, Esq. Author of the History of France, Letter to Lord Lauderdale, Letter to the Hon. T. Erskine, &c. Second Edition. _Plus je vis l'Etranger plus j'aimai ma Patrie._ --Du Belloy. London: Printed for T. N. Longman, Paternoster Row. 1797. 1793 Amiens, January, 1793. Vanity, I believe, my dear brother, is not so innoxious a quality as we are desirous of supposing. As it is the most general of all human failings, so is it regarded with the most indulgence: a latent consciousness averts the censure of the weak; and the wise, who flatter themselves with being exempt from it, plead in its favour, by ranking it as a foible too light for serious condemnation, or too inoffensive for punishment. Yet, if vanity be not an actual vice, it is certainly a potential one--it often leads us to seek reputation rather than virtue, to substitute appearances for realities, and to prefer the eulogiums of the world to the approbation of our own minds. When it takes possession of an uninformed or an ill-constituted mind, it becomes the source of a thousand errors, and a thousand absurdities. Hence, youth seeks a preeminence in vice, and age in folly; hence, many boast of errors they would not commit, or claim distinction by investing themselves with an imputation of excess in some popular absurdity--duels are courted by the daring, and vaunted by the coward--he who trembles at the idea of death and a future state when alone, proclaims himself an atheist or a free-thinker in public--the water-drinker, who suffers the penitence of a week for a supernumerary glass, recounts the wonders of his intemperance--and he who does not mount the gentlest animal without trepidation, plumes himself on breaking down horses, and his perils in the chace. In short, whatever order of mankind we contemplate, we shall perceive that the portion of vanity allotted us by nature, when it is not corrected by a sound judgement, and rendered subservient to useful purposes, is sure either to degrade or mislead us. I was led into this train of reflection by the conduct of our Anglo-Gallican legislator, Mr. Thomas Paine. He has lately composed a speech, which was translated and read in his presence, (doubtless to his great satisfaction,) in which he insists with much vehemence on the necessity of trying the King; and he even, with little credit to his humanity, gives intimations of presumed guilt. Yet I do not suspect Mr. Paine to be of a cruel or unmerciful nature; and, most probably, vanity alone has instigated him to a proceeding which, one would wish to believe, his heart disapproves. Tired of the part he was playing, and which, it must be confessed, was not calculated to flatter the censurer of Kings and the reformer of constitutions, he determined to sit no longer for whole hours in colloquy with his interpreter, or in mute contemplation, like the Chancellor in the Critic; and the speech to which I have alluded was composed. Knowing that lenient opinions would meet no applause from the tribunes, he inlists himself on the side of severity, accuses all the Princes in the world as the accomplices of Louis the Sixteenth, expresses his desire for an universal revolution, and, after previously assuring the Convention the King is guilty, recommends that they may instantly proceed to his trial. But, after all this tremendous eloquence, perhaps Mr. Paine had no malice in his heart: he may only be solicitous to preserve his reputation from decay, and to indulge his self-importance by assisting at the trial of a Monarch whom he may not wish to suffer.--I think, therefore, I am not wrong in asserting, that Vanity is a very mischievous counsellor. The little distresses I formerly complained of, as arising from the paper currency, are nearly removed by a plentiful emission of small assignats, and we have now pompous assignments on the national domains for ten sols: we have, likewise, pieces coined from the church bells in circulation, but most of these disappear as soon as issued. You would scarcely imagine that this copper is deemed worthy to be hoarded; yet such is the people's aversion from the paper, and such their mistrust of the government, that not an housewife will part with one of these pieces while she has an assignat in her possession; and those who are rich enough to keep a few livres by them, amass and bury this copper treasure with the utmost solicitude and secresy. A tolerably accurate scale of the national confidence might be made, by marking the progress of these suspicious interments. Under the first Assembly, people began to hide their gold; during the reign of the second they took the same affectionate care of their silver; and, since the meeting of the Convention, they seem equally anxious to hide any metal they can get. If one were to describe the present age, one might, as far as regards France, call it, both literally and metaphorically, the Iron Age; for it is certain, the character of the times would justify the metaphoric application, and the disappearance of every other metal the literal one. As the French are fond of classic examples, I shall not be surprized to see an iron coinage, in imitation of Sparta, though they seem in the way of having one reason less for such a measure than the Spartans had, for they are already in a state to defy corruption; and if they were not, I think a war with England would secure the purity of their morals from being endangered by too much commercial intercourse. I cannot be displeased with the civil things you say of my letters, nor at your valuing them so much as to preserve them; though, I assure you, this fraternal gallantry is not necessary, on the account you intimate, nor will our countrymen suffer, in my opinion, by any comparisons I can make here. Your ideas of French gallantry are, indeed, very erroneous-- it may differ in the manner from that practised in England, but is far from having any claim to superiority. Perhaps I cannot define the pretensions of the two nations in this respect better than by saying, that the gallantry of an Englishman is a sentiment--that of a Frenchman a system. The first, if a lady happen to be old or plain, or indifferent to him, is apt to limit his attentions to respect, or utility--now the latter never troubles himself with these distinctions: he is repulsed by no extremity of years, nor deformity of feature; he adores, with equal ardour, both young and old, nor is either often shocked by his visible preference of the other. I have seen a youthful beau kiss, with perfect devotion, a ball of cotton dropped from the hand of a lady who was knitting stockings for her grand-children. Another pays his court to a belle in her climacteric, by bringing _gimblettes_ [A sort of gingerbread.] to the favourite lap-dog, or attending, with great assiduity, the egresses and regresses of her angola, who paces slowly out of the room ten times in an hour, while the door is held open by the complaisant Frenchman with a most respectful gravity. Thus, you see, France is to the old what a masquerade is to the ugly --the one confounds the disparity of age as the other does that of person; but indiscriminate adoration is no compliment to youth, nor is a mask any privilege to beauty. We may therefore conclude, that though France may be the Elysium of old women, England is that of the young. When I first came into this country, it reminded me of an island I had read of in the Arabian Tales, where the ladies were not deemed in their bloom till they verged towards seventy; and I conceived the project of inviting all the belles, who had been half a century out of fashion in England, to cross the Channel, and begin a new career of admiration!-- Yours, &c. Amiens, 1793. Dear Brother, I have thought it hitherto a self evident proposition--that of all the principles which can be inculcated in the human mind, that of liberty is least susceptible of propagation by force. Yet a Council of Philosophers (disciples of Rousseau and Voltaire) have sent forth Dumouriez, at the head of an hundred thousand men, to instruct the people of Flanders in the doctrine of freedom. Such a missionary is indeed invincible, and the defenceless towns of the Low Countries have been converted and pillaged [By the civil agents of the executive power.] by a benevolent crusade of the philanthropic assertors of the rights of man. These warlike Propagandistes, however, do not always convince without experiencing resistance, and ignorance sometimes opposes, with great obstinacy, the progress of truth. The logic of Dumouriez did not enforce conviction at Gemappe, but at the expence of fifteen thousand of his own army, and, doubtless, a proportionate number of the unconverted. Here let me forbear every expression tending to levity: the heart recoils at such a slaughter of human victims; and, if a momentary smile be excited by these Quixotisms, it is checked by horror at their consequences!--Humanity will lament such destruction; but it will likewise be indignant to learn, that, in the official account of this battle, the killed were estimated at three hundred, and the wounded at six!--But, if the people be sacrificed, they are not deceived. The disabled sufferers, who are returning to their homes in different parts of the republic, betray the turpitude of the government, and expose the fallacy of these bloodless victories of the gazettes. The pedants of the Convention are not unlearned in the history of the Praetorian Bands and the omnipotence of armies; and an offensive war is undertaken to give occupation to the soldiers, whose inactivity might produce reflection, or whose discontent might prove fatal to the new order of things.--Attempts are made to divert the public mind from the real misery experienced at home, by relations of useless conquests abroad; the substantial losses, which are the price of these imaginary benefits, are palliated or concealed; and the circumstances of an engagement is known but by individual communication, and when subsequent events have nearly effaced the remembrance of it.--By these artifices, and from motives at least not better, and, perhaps, worse than those I have mentioned, will population be diminished, and agriculture impeded: France will be involved in present distress, and consigned to future want; and the deluded people be punished in the miseries of their own country, because their unprincipled rulers have judged it expedient to carry war and devastation into another. One of the distinguishing features in the French character is _sang froid_ --scarcely a day passes that it does not force itself on one's observation. It is not confined to the thinking part of the people, who know that passion and irritability avail nothing; nor to those who, not thinking at all, are, of course, not moved by any thing: but is equally possessed by every rank and condition, whether you class them by their mental endowments, or their temporal possessions. They not only (as, it must be confessed, is too commonly the case in all countries,) bear the calamities of their friends with great philosophy, but are nearly as reasonable under the pressure of their own. The grief of a Frenchman, at least, partakes of his imputed national complaisance, and, far from intruding itself on society, is always ready to accept of consolation, and join in amusement. If you say your wife or relations are dead, they replay coldly, _"Il faut se consoler:"_ or if they visit you in an illness, _"Il faut prendre patience."_ Or tell them you are ruined, and their features then become something more attenuated, the shoulders something more elevated, and a more commiserating tone confesses, _"C'est bien mal beureux--Mai enfin que voulez vous?"_ ["It's unlucky, but what can be said in such cases?"] and in the same instant they ill recount some good fortune at a card party, or expatiate on the excellence of a ragout.--Yet, to do them justice, they only offer for your comfort the same arguments they would have found efficacious in promoting their own. This disposition, which preserves the tranquillity of the rich, indurates the sense of wretchedness in the poor; it supplies the place of fortitude in the one, and that of patience in the other; and, while it enables both to endure their own particular distresses, it makes them submit quietly to a weight and excess of public evils, which any nation but their own would sink under, or resist. Amongst shopkeepers, servants, &c. without incurring personal odium, it has the effect of what would be deemed in England impenetrable assurance. It forces pertinaceously an article not wanted, and preserves the inflexibility of the features at a detected imposition: it inspires servants with arguments in defence of every misdemeanour in the whole domestic catalogue; it renders them insensible either of their negligences or the consequences of them; and endows them with a happy facility of contradicting with the most obsequious politeness. A gentleman of our acquaintances dined at a table d'Hote, where the company were annoyed by a very uncommon and offensive smell. On cutting up a fowl, they discovered the smell to have been occasioned by its being dressed with out any other preparation than that of depluming. They immediately sent for the host, and told him, that the fowl had been dressed without having been drawn: but, far from appearing disconcerted, as one might expect, he only replied, _"Cela se pourroit bien, Monsieur."_ ["'Tis very possible, Sir."] Now an English Boniface, even though he had already made his fortune, would have been mortified at such an incident, and all his eloquence would scarcely have produced an unfaultering apology. Whether this national indifference originate in a physical or a moral cause, from an obtuseness in their corporeal formation or a perfection in their intellectual one, I do not pretend to decide; but whatever be the cause, the effect is enjoyed with great modesty. So little do the French pique themselves on this valuable stoicism, that they acknowledge being more subject to that human weakness called feeling, than any other people in the world. All their writers abound in pathetic exclamations, sentimental phrases, and allusions to "la sensibilite Francaise," as though they imagined it proverbial. You can scarcely hold a conversation with a Frenchman without hearing him detail, with an expression of feature not always analogous, many very affecting sentences. He is _desole, desespere, or afflige_--he has _le coeur trop sensible, le coeur serre, or le coeur navre;_ [Afflicted--in despair--too feeling a heart-- his heart is wrung or wounded.] and the well-placing of these dolorous assertions depends rather upon the judgement and eloquence of the speaker, than the seriousness of the case which gives rise to them. For instance, the despair and desolation of him who has lost his money, and of him whose head is ill drest, are of different degrees, but the expressions are usually the same. The debates of the Convention, the debates of the Jacobins, and all the public prints, are fraught with proofs of this appropriated susceptibility, and it is often attributed to persons and occasions where we should not much expect to find it. A quarrel between the legislators as to who was most concerned in promoting the massacres of September, is reconciled with a "sweet and enthusiastic excess of fraternal tenderness." When the clubs dispute on the expediency of an insurrection, or the necessity of a more frequent employment of the guillotine, the debate terminates by overflowing of sensibility from all the members who have engaged in it! At the assassinations in one of the prisons, when all the other miserable victims had perished, the mob discovered one Jonneau, a member of the Assembly, who had been confined for kicking another member named Grangeneuve.* As the massacrers probably had no orders on the subject, he was brought forth, from amidst heaps of murdered companions, and a messenger dispatched to the Assembly, (which during these scenes met as usual,) to enquire if they acknowledged Jonneau as a member. A decree was passed in the affirmative, and Jonneau brought by the assassins, with the decree fastened on his breast, in triumph to his colleagues, who, we are told, at this instance of respect for themselves, shed tears of tenderness and admiration at the conduct of monsters, the sight of whom should seem revolting to human nature. * When the massacres began, the wife and friends of Jonneau petitioned Grangeneuve on their knees to consent to his enlargement; but Grangeneuve was implacable, and Jonneau continued in prison till released by the means above mentioned. It is observable, that at this dreadful moment the utmost strictness was observed, and every form literally enforced in granting the discharge of a prisoner. A suspension of all laws, human and divine, was allowed to the assassins, while those only that secured them their victims were rigidly adhered to. Perhaps the real sang froid I have before noticed, and these pretensions to sensibility, are a natural consequence one or the other. It is the history of the beast's confession--we have only to be particularly deficient in any quality, to make us solicitous for the reputation of it; and after a long habit of deceiving others we finish by deceiving ourselves. He who feels no compassion for the distresses of his neighbour, knows that such indifference is not very estimable; he therefore studies to disguise the coldness of his heart by the exaggeration of his language, and supplies, by an affected excess of sentiment, the total absence of it.--The gods have not (as you know) made me poetical, nor do I often tax your patience with a simile, but I think this French sensibility is to genuine feeling, what their paste is to the diamond--it gratifies the vanity of the wearer, and deceives the eye of the superficial observer, but is of little use or value, and when tried by the fire of adversity quickly disappears. You are not much obliged to me for this long letter, as I own I have scribbled rather for my own amusement than with a view to yours.-- Contrary to our expectation, the trial of the King has begun; and, though I cannot properly be said to have any real interest in the affairs of this country, I take a very sincere one in the fate of its unfortunate Monarch--indeed our whole house has worn an appearance of dejection since the commencement of the business. Most people seem to expect it will terminate favourably, and, I believe, there are few who do not wish it. Even the Convention seem at present disposed to be merciful; and as they judge now, so may they be judged hereafter! --Yours. Amiens, January 1793. I do all possible justice to the liberality of my countrymen, who are become such passionate admirers of the French; and I cannot but lament their having been so unfortunate in the choice of the aera from whence they date this new friendship. It is, however, a proof, that their regards are not much the effect of that kind of vanity which esteems objects in proportion as they are esteemed by the rest of the world; and the sincerity of an attachment cannot be better evinced than by its surviving irretrievable disgrace and universal abhorrence. Many will swell the triumph of a hero, or add a trophy to his tomb; but he who exhibits himself with a culprit at the gallows, or decorates the gibbet with a wreath, is a friend indeed. If ever the character of a people were repugnant to amity, or inimical to connection, it is that of the French for the last three years.--* * The editor of the _Courier de l'Egalite,_ a most decided patriot, thus expresses himself on the injuries and insults received by the King from the Parisians, and their municipality, previous to his trial: "I know that Louis is guilty--but are we to double his punishment before it is pronounced by the law? Indeed one is tempted to say that, instead of being guided by the humanity and philosophy which dictated the revolution, we have taken lessons of barbarity from the most ferocious savages! Let us be virtuous if we would be republicans; if we go on as we do, we never shall, and must have recourse to a despot: for of two evils it is better to choose the least." The editor, whose opinion of the present politics is thus expressed, is so truly a revolutionist, and so confidential a patriot, that, in August last, when almost all the journalists were murdered, his paper was the only one that, for some time, was allowed to reach the departments. In this short space they have formed a compendium of all the vices which have marked as many preceding ages:--the cruelty and treachery of the league--the sedition, levity, and intrigue of the _Fronde_ [A name given to the party in opposition to the court during Cardinal Mazarin's ministry.--See the origin of it in the Memoirs of that period.] with the licentiousness and political corruption of more modern epochs. Whether you examine the conduct of the nation at large, or that of its chiefs and leaders, your feelings revolt at the one, and your integrity despises the other. You see the idols erected by Folly, degraded by Caprice;--the authority obtained by Intrigue, bartered by Profligacy;--and the perfidy and corruption of one side so balanced by the barbarity and levity of the other, that the mind, unable to decide on the preference of contending vices, is obliged to find repose, though with regret and disgust, in acknowledging the general depravity. La Fayette, without very extraordinary pretensions, became the hero of the revolution. He dictated laws in the Assembly, and prescribed oaths to the Garde Nationale--and, more than once, insulted, by the triumph of ostentatious popularity, the humiliation and distress of a persecuted Sovereign. Yet when La Fayette made an effort to maintain the constitution to which he owed his fame and influence, he was abandoned with the same levity with which he had been adopted, and sunk, in an instant, from a dictator to a fugitive! Neckar was an idol of another description. He had already departed for his own country, when he was hurried back precipitately, amidst universal acclamations. All were full of projects either of honour or recompence-- one was for decreeing him a statue, another proposed him a pension, and a third hailed him the father of the country. But Mr. Neckar knew the French character, and very wisely declined these pompous offers; for before he could have received the first quarter of his pension, or the statue could have been modelled, he was glad to escape, probably not without some apprehensions for his head! The reign of Mirabeau was something longer. He lived with popularity, was fortunate enough to die before his reputation was exhausted, was deposited in the Pantheon, apotheosised in form, and his bust placed as a companion to that of Brutus, the tutelary genius of the Assembly.--Here, one might have expected, he would have been quit for this world at least; but the fame of a patriot is not secured by his death, nor can the gods of the French be called immortal: the deification of Mirabeau is suspended, his memory put in sequestration, and a committee appointed to enquire, whether a profligate, expensive, and necessitous character was likely to be corruptible. The Convention, too, seem highly indignant that a man, remarkable only for vice and atrocity, should make no conscience of betraying those who were as bad as himself; and that, after having prostituted his talents from the moment he was conscious of them, he should not, when associated with such immaculate colleagues, become pure and disinterested. It is very probable that Mirabeau, whose only aim was power, might rather be willing to share it with the King, as Minister, than with so many competitors, and only as Prime Speechmaker to the Assembly: and as he had no reason for suspecting the patriotism of others to be more inflexible than his own, he might think it not impolitic to anticipate a little the common course of things, and betray his companions, before they had time to stipulate for felling him. He might, too, think himself more justified in disposing of them in the gross, because he did not thereby deprive them of their right of bargaining for themselves, and for each other in detail.--* * La Porte, Steward of the Household, in a letter to Duquesnoy, [Not the brutal Dusquenoy hereafter mentioned.] dated February, 1791, informs him that Barrere, Chairman of the Committee of Domains, is in the best disposition possible.--A letter of Talon, (then minister,) with remarks in the margin by the King, says, that "Sixteen of the most violent members on the patriotic side may be brought over to the court, and that the expence will not exceed two millions of livres: that fifteen thousand will be sufficient for the first payment; and only a Yes or No from his Majesty will fix these members in his interest, and direct their future conduct."--It likewise observes, that these two millions will cost the King nothing, as the affair is already arranged with the Liquidator-General. Extract of a letter from Chambonas to the King, dated June 18, 1792: "Sire, "I inform your Majesty, that my agents are now in motion. I have just been converting an evil spirit. I cannot hope that I have made him good, but I believe I have neutralized him.--To-night we shall make a strong effort to gain Santerre, (Commandant of the Garde Nationale,) and I have ordered myself to be awakened to hear the result. I shall take care to humour the different interests as well as I can.--The Secretary of the Cordeliers club is now secured.--All these people are to be bought, but not one of them can be hired.--I have had with me one Mollet a physician. Perhaps your Majesty may have heard of him. He is an outrageous Jacobin, and very difficult, for he will receive nothing. He insists, previous to coming to any definitive treaty, on being named Physician to the Army. I have promised him, on condition that Paris is kept quiet for fifteen days. He is now gone to exert himself in our favour. He has great credit at the Caffe de Procope, where all the journalists and 'enragis' of the Fauxbourg St. Germain assemble. I hope he will keep his word.--The orator of the people, the noted Le Maire, a clerk at the Post-office, has promised tranquility for a week, and he is to be rewarded. "A new Gladiator has appeared lately on the scene, one Ronedie Breton, arrived from England. He has already been exciting the whole quarter of the Poisonnerie in favour of the Jacobins, but I shall have him laid siege to.--Petion is to come to-morrow for fifteen thousand livres, [This sum was probably only to propitiate the Mayor; and if Chambonas, as he proposed, refused farther payment, we may account for Petion's subsequent conduct.] on account of thirty thousand per month which he received under the administration of Dumouriez, for the secret service of the police.-- I know not in virtue of what law this was done, and it will be the last he shall receive from me. Your Majesty will, I doubt not, understand me, and approve of what I suggest. (Signed) "Chambonas." Extract from the Papers found at the Thuilleries. It is impossible to warrant the authenticity of these Papers; on their credibility, however, rests the whole proof of the most weighty charges brought against the King. So that it must be admitted, that either all the first patriots of the revolution, and many of those still in repute, are corrupt, or that the King was condemned on forged evidence. The King might also be solicitous to purchase safety and peace at any rate; and it is unfortunate for himself and the country that he had not recourse to the only effectual means till it was too late. But all this rests on no better evidence than the papers found at the Thuilleries; and as something of this kind was necessary to nourish the exhausted fury of the populace, I can easily conceive that it was thought more prudent to sacrifice the dead, than the living; and the fame of Mirabeau being less valuable than the safety of those who survived him, there would be no great harm in attributing to him what he was very likely to have done.-- The corruption of a notorious courtier would have made no impression: the King had already been overwhelmed with such accusations, and they had lost their effect: but to have seduced the virtuous Mirabeau, the very Confucius of the revolution, was a kind of profanation of the holy fire, well calculated to revive the languid rage, and extinguish the small remains of humanity yet left among the people. It is sufficiently remarkable, that notwithstanding the court must have seen the necessity of gaining over the party now in power, no vestige of any attempt of this kind has been discovered; and every criminating negotiation is ascribed to the dead, the absent, or the insignificant. I do not, however, presume to decide in a case so very delicate; their panegyrists in England may adjust the claims of Mirabeau's integrity, and that of his accusers, at their leisure. Another patriot of "distinguished note," and more peculiarly interesting to our countrymen, because he has laboured much for their conversion, is Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun.--He was in England some time as Plenipotentiary from the Jacobins, charged with establishing treaties between the clubs, publishing seditious manifestoes, contracting friendly alliances with discontented scribblers, and gaining over neutral or hostile newspapers.--But, besides his political and ecclesiastical occupations, and that of writing letters to the Constitutional Society, it seems this industrious Prelate had likewise a correspondence with the Agents of the Court, which, though he was too modest to surcharge his fame by publishing it, was, nevertheless, very profitable. I am sorry his friends in England are mostly averse from episcopacy, otherwise they might have provided for him, as I imagine he will have no objection to relinquish his claims on the see of Autun. He is not under accusation, and, were he to return, he would not find the laws quite so ceremonious here as in England. After labouring with impunity for months together to promote an insurrection with you, a small private barter of his talents would here cost him his head; and I appeal to the Bishop's friends in England, whether there can be a proper degree of freedom in a country where a man is refused the privilege of disposing of himself to the best advantage. To the eternal obloquy of France, I must conclude, in the list of those once popular, the ci-devant Duke of Orleans. But it was an unnatural popularity, unaided by a single talent, or a single virtue, supported only by the venal efforts of those who were almost his equals in vice, though not in wealth, and who found a grateful exercise for their abilities in at once profiting by the weak ambition of a bad man, and corrupting the public morals in his favour. The unrighteous compact is now dissolved; those whom he ruined himself to bribe have already forsaken him, and perhaps may endeavour to palliate the disgrace of having been called his friends, by becoming his persecutors.--Thus, many of the primitive patriots are dead, or fugitives, or abandoned, or treacherous; and I am not without fear lest the new race should prove as evanescent as the old. The virtuous Rolland,* whose first resignation was so instrumental in dethroning the King, has now been obliged to resign a second time, charged with want of capacity, and suspected of malversation; and this virtue, which was so irreproachable, which it would have been so dangerous to dispute while it served the purposes of party, is become hypocrisy, and Rolland will be fortunate if he return to obscurity with only the loss of his gains and his reputation. * In the beginning of December, the Council-General of the municipality of Paris opened a register, and appointed a Committee to receive all accusations and complaints whatever against Rolland, who, in return, summoned them to deliver in their accounts to him as Minister of the interior, and accused them, at the same time, of the most scandalous peculations. The credit of Brissot and the Philosophers is declining fast--the clubs are unpropitious, and no party long survives this formidable omen; so that, like Macbeth, they will have waded from one crime to another, only to obtain a short-lived dominion, at the expence of eternal infamy, and an unlamented fall. Dumouriez is still a successful General, but he is denounced by one faction, insulted by another, insidiously praised by a third, and, if he should persevere in serving them, he has more disinterested rectitude than I suspect him of, or than they merit. This is another of that Jacobin ministry which proved so fatal to the King; and it is evident that, had he been permitted to entertain the same opinion of all these people as they now profess to have of each other, he would have been still living, and secure on his throne. After so many mutual infidelities, it might be expected that one party would grow indifferent, and the other suspicious; but the French never despair: new hordes of patriots prepare to possess themselves of the places they are forcing the old ones to abandon, and the people, eager for change, are ready to receive them with the momentary and fallacious enthusiasm which ever precedes disgrace; while those who are thus intriguing for power and influence, are, perhaps, secretly devising how it may be made most subservient to their personal advantage. Yet, perhaps, these amiable levities may not be displeasing to the Constitutional Society and the revolutionists of England; and, as the very faults of our friends are often endearing to us, they may extend their indulgence to the "humane" and "liberal" precepts of the Jacobins, and the massacres of September.--To confess the truth, I am not a little ashamed for my country when I see addresses from England to a Convention, the members of which have just been accusing each other of assassination and robbery, or, in the ardour of a debate, threatening, cuffing, and knocking each other down. Exclusive of their moral character, considered only as it appears from their reciprocal criminations, they have so little pretension to dignity, or even decency, that it seems a mockery to address them as the political representatives of a powerful nation deliberating upon important affairs. If a bearer of one of these congratulatory compliments were not apprized of the forms of the House, he would be rather astonished, at his introduction, to see one member in a menacing attitude, and another denying his veracity in terms perfectly explicit, though not very civil. Perhaps, in two minutes, the partizans of each opponent all rise and clamour, as if preparing for a combat--the President puts on his hat as the signal of a storm--the subordinate disputants are appeased--and the revilings of the principal ones renewed; till, after torrents of indecent language, the quarrel is terminated by a fraternal embrace.*--I think, after such a scene, an addresser must feel a little humiliated, and would return without finding his pride greatly increased by his mission. * I do not make any assertions of this nature from conjecture or partial evidence. The journals of the time attest that the scenes I describe occur almost in every debate.--As a proof, I subjoin some extracts taken nearly at hazard: "January 7th, Convention Nationale, Presidence de Treilhard.--The debate was opened by an address from the department of Finisterre, expressing their wishes, and adding, that these were likewise the wishes of the nation at large--that Marat, Robespierre, Bazire, Chabot, Merlin, Danton, and their accomplices, might be expelled the Convention as caballers and intriguers paid by the tyrants at war with France." The account of this debate is thus continued--"The almost daily troubles which arise in the Convention were on the point of being renewed, when a member, a friend to order, spoke as follows, and, it is remarked, was quietly listened to: "'Citizens, "'If three months of uninterrupted silence has given me any claim to your attention, I now ask it in the name of our afflicted country. Were I to continue silent any longer, I should render myself as culpable as those who never hold their tongues. I see we are all sensible of the painfulness of our situation. Every day dissatisfied with ourselves, we come to the debate with the intention of doing something, and every day we return without having done any thing. The people expect from us wise laws, and not storms and tumults. How are we to make these wise laws, and keep twenty-five millions of people quiet, when we, who are only seven hundred and fifty individuals, give an example of perpetual riot and disorder? What signifies our preaching the unity and indivisibility of the republic, when we cannot maintain peace and union amongst ourselves? What good can we expect to do amidst such scandalous disturbances, and while we spend our time in attending to informations, accusations, and inculpations, for the most part utterly unfounded? For my part, I see but one means of attaining any thing like dignity and tranquillity, and that is, by submitting ourselves to coercive regulations.'" Here follow some proposals, tending to establish a little decency in their proceedings for the future; but the account from whence this extract is taken proceeds to remark, that this invitation to peace was no sooner finished, than a new scene of disturbance took place, to the great loss of their time, and the scandal of all good citizens. One should imagine, that if ever the Convention could think it necessary to assume an appearance of dignity, or at least of seriousness and order, it would be in giving their judgement relative to the King. Yet, in determining how a series of questions should be discussed, on the arrangement of which his fate seems much to have depended, the solemnity of the occasion appears to have had no weight. It was proposed to begin by that of the appeal to the people. This was so violently combated, that the Convention would hear neither party, and were a long time without debating at all. Petion mounted the tribune, and attempted to restore order; but the noise was too great for him to be heard. He at length, however, obtained silence enough to make a motion. Again the murmurs recommenced. Rabaud de St. Etienne made another attempt, but was equally unsuccessful. Those that were of an opposite opinion refused to hear him, and both parties rose up and rushed together to the middle of the Hall. The most dreadful tumult took place, and the President, with great difficulty, procured a calm. Again the storm began, and a member told them, that if they voted in the affirmative, those on the left side (Robespierre, &c.) would not wait the result, but have the King assassinated. "Yes! Yes! (resounded from all parts) the Scelerats of Paris will murder him!" --Another violent disorder ensuing, it was thought no decree could be passed, and, at length, amidst this scene of riot and confusion, the order of questions was arranged, and in such a manner as to decide the fate of the King.--It was determined, that the question of his guilt should precede that of the appeal to the people. Had the order of the questions been changed, the King might have been saved, for many would have voted for the appeal in the first instance who did not dare do it when they found the majority resolved to pronounce him guilty. It is very remarkable, that, on the same day on which the friends of liberty and equality of Manchester signalized themselves by a most patriotic compliment to the Convention, beginning with _"Francais, vous etes libres,"_ ["Frenchmen, you are free."] they were, at that very moment, employed in discussing a petition from numbers of Parisians who had been thrown into prison without knowing either their crime or their accusers, and were still detained under the same arbitrary circumstances.--The law of the constitution is, that every person arrested shall be interrogated within twenty-four hours; but as these imprisonments were the work of the republican Ministers, the Convention seemed to think it indelicate to interpose, and these citizens of a country whose freedom is so much envied by the Manchester Society, will most likely remain in durance as long as their confinement shall be convenient to those who have placed them there.--A short time after, Villette, who is a news-writer and deputy, was cited to appear before the municipality of Paris, under the charge of having inserted in his paper "equivocal phrases and anti-civic expressions, tending to diminish the confidence due to the municipality."--Villette, as being a member of the Convention, obtained redress; but had he been only a journalist, the liberty of the press would not have rescued him.--On the same day, complaint was made in the Assembly, that one man had been arrested instead of another, and confined for some weeks, and it was agreed unanimously, (a thing that does not often occur,) that the powers exercised by the Committee of Inspection [Surveillance.--See Debates, December.] were incompatible with liberty. The patriots of Belfast were not more fortunate in the adaption of their civilities--they addressed the Convention, in a strain of great piety, to congratulate them on the success of their arms in the "cause of civil and religious liberty."* * At this time the municipalities were empowered to search all houses by night or day; but their visites domiciliaires, as they are called, being made chiefly in the night, a decree has since ordained that they shall take place only during the day. Perhaps an Englishman may think the latter quite sufficient, considering that France is the freeest country in the world, and, above all, a republic. The harangue was interrupted by the _mal-a-propos_ entrance of two deputies, who complained of having been beaten, almost hanged, and half drowned, by the people of Chartres, for belonging, as they were told, to an assembly of atheistical persecutors of religion; and this Convention, whom the Society of Belfast admire for propagating "religious liberty" in other countries, were in a few days humbly petitioned, from various departments, not to destroy it in their own. I cannot, indeed, suppose they have really such a design; but the contempt with which they treat religion has occasioned an alarm, and given the French an idea of their piety very different from that so kindly conceived by the patriots of Belfast. I entrust this to our friend Mrs. ____, who is leaving France in a few days; and as we are now on the eve of a war, it will be the last letter you will receive, except a few lines occasionally on our private affairs, or to inform you of my health. As we cannot, in the state Mrs. D____ is in, think of returning to England at present, we must trust ourselves to the hospitality of the French for at least a few weeks, and I certainly will not abuse it, by sending any remarks on their political affairs out of the country. But as I know you interest yourself much in the subject, and read with partiality my attempts to amuse you, I will continue to throw my observations on paper as regularly as I have been accustomed to do, and I hope, ere long, to be the bearer of the packets myself. I here also renew my injunction, that no part of my correspondence that relates to French politics be communicated to any one, not even my mother. What I have written has been merely to gratify your own curiosity, and I should be extremely mortified if my opinions were repeated even in the little circle of our private acquaintance. I deem myself perfectly justifiable in imparting my reflections to you, but I have a sort of delicacy that revolts at the thought of being, in the remotest degree, accessary to conveying intelligence from a country in which I reside, and which is so peculiarly situated as France is at this moment. My feelings, my humanity, are averse from those who govern, but I should regret to be the means of injuring them. You cannot mistake my intentions, and I conclude by seriously reminding you of the promise I exacted previous to any political discussion.--Adieu. Amiens, February 15, 1793. I did not, as I promised, write immediately on my return from Chantilly; the person by whom I intended to send my letter having already set out for England, and the rule I have observed for the last three months of entrusting nothing to the post but what relates to our family affairs, is now more than ever necessary. I have before requested, and I must now insist, that you make no allusion to any political matter whatever, nor even mention the name of any political person. Do not imagine that you are qualified to judge of what is prudent, or what may be written with safety--I repeat, no one in England can form an idea of the suspicion that pervades every part of the French government. I cannot venture to answer decisively your question respecting the King-- indeed the subject is so painful to me, that I have hitherto avoided reverting to it. There certainly was, as you observe, some sudden alteration in the dispositions of the Assembly between the end of the trial and the final judgement. The causes were most probably various, and must be sought for in the worst vices of our nature--cruelty, avarice, and cowardice. Many, I doubt not, were guided only by the natural malignity of their hearts; many acted from fear, and expected to purchase impunity for former compliances with the court by this popular expiation; a large number are also supposed to have been paid by the Duke of Orleans--whether for the gratification of malice or ambition, time must develope.--But, whatever were the motives, the result was an iniquitous combination of the worst of a set of men, before selected from all that was bad in the nation, to profane the name of justice--to sacrifice an unfortunate, but not a guilty Prince--and to fix an indelible stain on the country. Among those who gave their opinion at large, you will observe Paine: and, as I intimated in a former letter, it seems he was at that time rather allured by the vanity of making a speech that should be applauded, than by any real desire of injuring the King. Such vanity, however, is not pardonable: a man has a right to ruin himself, or to make himself ridiculous; but when his vanity becomes baneful to others, as it has all the effect, so does it merit the punishment, of vice. Of all the rest, Condorcet has most powerfully disgusted me. The avowed wickedness of Thuriot or Marat inspires one with horror; but this cold philosophic hypocrite excites contempt as well as detestation. He seems to have wavered between a desire to preserve the reputation of humanity, which he has affected, and that of gratifying the real depravity of his mind. Would one have expected, that a speech full of benevolent systems, mild sentiments, and aversion from the effusion of human blood, was to end in a vote for, and recommendation of, the immediate execution of his sovereign?--But such a conduct is worthy of him, who has repaid the benefits of his patron and friend [The Duke de la Rochefaucault.] by a persecution which ended in his murder. You will have seen, that the King made some trifling requests to be granted after his decease, and that the Convention ordered him to be told, that the nation, "always great, always just," accorded them in part. Yet this just and magnanimous people refused him a preparation of only three days, and allowed him but a few hours--suffered his remains to be treated with the most scandalous indecency--and debated seriously, whether or no the Queen should receive some little tokens of affection he had left for her. The King's enemies had so far succeeded in depreciating his personal courage, that even his friends were apprehensive he might not sustain his last moments with dignity. The event proves how much injustice has been done him in this respect, as well as in many others. His behaviour was that of a man who derived his fortitude from religion--it was that of pious resignation, not ostentatious courage; it was marked by none of those instances of levity and indifference which, at such a time, are rather symptoms of distraction than resolution; he exhibited the composure of an innocent mind, and the seriousness that became the occasion; he seemed to be occupied in preparing for death, but not to fear it.--I doubt not but the time will come, when those who have sacrificed him may envy the last moments of Louis the Sixteenth! That the King was not guilty of the principal charges brought against him, has been proved indubitably--not altogether by the assertions of those who favour him, but by the confession of his enemies. He was, for example, accused of planning the insurrection of the tenth of August; yet not a day passes that both parties in the Convention are not disputing the priority of their efforts to dethrone him, and to erect a republic; and they date their machinations long before the period on which they attribute the first aggression to the King.--Mr. Sourdat, and several other writers, have very ably demonstrated the falsehood of these charges; but the circulation of such pamphlets was dangerous--of course, secret and limited; while those which tended to deceive and prejudice the people were dispersed with profusion, at the expence of the government.* * Postscript of the Courier de l'Egalite, Sept. 29: "The present minister (Rolland) takes every possible means in his power to enlighten and inform the people in whatever concerns their real interests. For this purpose he has caused to be printed and distributed, in abundance, the accounts and papers relative to the events of the tenth of August. We have yet at our office a small number of these publications, which we have distributed to our subscribers, and we still give them to any of our fellow-citizens who have opportunities of circulating them." I have seen one of these written in coarse language, and replete with vulgar abuse, purposely calculated for the lower classes in the country, who are more open to gross impositions than those of the same rank in towns; yet I have no doubt, in my own mind, that all these artifices would have proved unavailing, had the decision been left to the nation at large: but they were intimidated, if not convinced; and the mandate of the Convention, which forbids this sovereign people to exercise their judgement, was obeyed with as much submission, and perhaps more reluctance, than an edict of Louis the fourteenth.* * The King appealed, by his counsel, to the People; but the convention, by a decree, declared his appeal of no validity, and forbade all persons to pay attention to it, under the severest penalties. The French seem to have no energy but to destroy, and to resist nothing but gentleness or infancy. They bend under a firm or oppressive administration, but become restless and turbulent under a mild Prince or a minority. The fate of this unfortunate Monarch has made me reflect, with great seriousness, on the conduct of our opposition-writers in England. The literary banditti who now govern France began their operations by ridiculing the King's private character--from ridicule they proceeded to calumny, and from calumny to treason; and perhaps the first libel that degraded him in the eyes of his subjects opened the path from the palace to the scaffold.--I do not mean to attribute the same pernicious intentions to the authors on your side the Channel, as I believe them, for the most part, to be only mercenary, and that they would write panegyrics as soon as satires, were they equally profitable. I know too, that there is no danger of their producing revolutions in England--we do not suffer our principles to be corrupted by a man because he has the art of rhyming nothings into consequence, nor suffer another to overturn the government because he is an orator. Yet, though these men may not be very mischievous, they are very reprehensible; and, in a moment like the present, contempt and neglect should supply the place of that punishment against which our liberty of the press secures them. It is not for a person no better informed than myself to pronounce on systems of government--still less do I affect to have more enlarged notions than the generality of mankind; but I may, without risking those imputations, venture to say, I have no childish or irrational deference for the persons of Kings. I know they are not, by nature, better than other men, and a neglected or vicious education may often render them worse. This does not, however, make me less respect the office. I respect it as the means chosen by the people to preserve internal peace and order--to banish corruption and petty tyrants ["And fly from petty tyrants to the throne."--Goldsmith]--and give vigour to the execution of the laws. Regarded in this point of view, I cannot but lament the mode which has lately prevailed of endeavouring to alienate the consideration due to our King's public character, by personal ridicule. If an individual were attacked in this manner, his house beset with spies, his conversation with his family listened to, and the most trifling actions of his life recorded, it would be deemed unfair and illiberal, and he who should practice such meanness would be thought worthy of no punishment more respectful than what might be inflicted by an oaken censor, or an admonitory heel.--But it will be said, a King is not an individual, and that such a habit, or such an amusement, is beneath the dignity of his character. Yet would it be but consistent in those who labour to prove, by the public acts of Kings, that they are less than men, not to exact, that, in their private lives, they should be more.--The great prototype of modern satyrists, Junius, does not allow that any credit should be given a Monarch for his domestic virtues; is he then to be reduced to an individual, only to scrutinize his foibles, and is his station to serve only as the medium of their publicity? Are these literary miners to penetrate the recesses of private life, only to bring to light the dross? Do they analyse only to discover poisons? Such employments may be congenial to their natures, but have little claim to public remuneration. The merit of a detractor is not much superior to that of a flatterer; nor is a Prince more likely to be amended by imputed follies, than by undeserved panegyrics. If any man wished to represent his King advantageously, it could not be done better than by remarking, that, after all the watchings of assiduous necessity, and the laborious researches of interested curiosity, it appears, that his private life affords no other subjects of ridicule than, that he is temperate, domestic, and oeconomical, and, as is natural to an active mind, wishes to be informed of whatever happens not to be familiar to him. It were to be desired that some of these accusations were applicable to those who are so much scandalized at them: but they are not littlenesses--the littleness is in him who condescends to report them; and I have often wondered that men of genius should make a traffic of gleaning from the refuse of anti-chambers, and retailing the anecdotes of pages and footmen! You will perceive the kind of publications I allude to; and I hope the situation of France, and the fate of its Monarch, may suggest to the authors a more worthy employ of their talents, than that of degrading the executive power in the eyes of the people. Amiens, Feb. 25, 1793. I told you, I believe, in a former letter, that the people of Amiens were all aristocrates: they have, nevertheless, two extremely popular qualifications--I mean filth and incivility. I am, however, far from imputing either of them to the revolution. This grossness of behavior has long existed under the palliating description of _"la franchise Picarde,"_ ["Picardy frankness."] and the floors and stairs of many houses will attest their preeminence in filth to be of a date much anterior to the revolution.--If you purchase to the amount of an hundred livres, there are many shopkeepers who will not send your purchases home; and if the articles they show you do not answer your purpose, they are mostly sullen, and often rude. No appearance of fatigue or infirmity suggests to them the idea of offering you a seat; they contradict you with impertinence, address you with freedom, and conclude with cheating you if they can. It was certainly on this account that Sterne would not agree to die at the inn at Amiens. He might, with equal justice, have objected to any other house; and I am sure if he thought them an unpleasant people to die amongst, he would have found them still worse to live with.--My observation as to the civility of aristocrates does not hold good here--indeed I only meant that those who ever had any, and were aristocrates, still preserved it. Amiens has always been a commercial town, inhabited by very few of the higher noblesse; and the mere gentry of a French province are not very much calculated to give a tone of softness and respect to those who imitate them. You may, perhaps, be surprized that I should express myself with little consideration for a class which, in England, is so highly respectable: there gentlemen of merely independent circumstances are not often distinguishable in their manners from those of superior fortune or rank. But, in France, it is different: the inferior noblesse are stiff, ceremonious, and ostentatious; while the higher ranks were always polite to strangers, and affable to their dependents. When you visit some of the former, you go through as many ceremonies as though you were to be invested with an order, and rise up and sit down so many times, that you return more fatigued than you would from a cricket match; while with the latter you are just as much at your ease as is consistent with good breeding and propriety, and a whole circle is never put in commotion at the entrance and exit of every individual who makes part of it. Any one not prepared for these formalities, and who, for the first time, saw an assembly of twenty people all rising from their seats at the entrance of a single beau, would suppose they were preparing for a dance, and that the new comer was a musician. For my part I always find it an oeconomy of strength (when the locality makes it practicable) to take possession of a window, and continue standing in readiness until the hour of visiting is over, and calm is established by the arrangement of the card tables.--The revolution has not annihilated the difference of rank; though it has effected the abolition of titles; and I counsel all who have remains of the gout or inflexible joints, not to frequent the houses of ladies whose husbands have been ennobled only by their offices, of those whose genealogies are modern, or of the collaterals of ancient families, whose claims are so far removed as to be doubtful. The society of all these is very exigent, and to be avoided by the infirm or indolent. I send you with this a little collection of airs which I think you will find very agreeable. The French music has not, perhaps, all the reputation it is entitled to. Rousseau has declared it to be nothing but doleful psalmodies; Gray calls a French concert "Une tintamarre de diable:" and the prejudices inspired by these great names are not easily obliterated. We submit our judgement to theirs, even when our taste is refractory.--The French composers seem to excel in marches, in lively airs that abound in striking passages calculated for the popular taste, and yet more particularly in those simple melodies they call romances: they are often in a very charming and singular style, without being either so delicate or affecting as the Italian. They have an expression of plaintive tenderness, which makes one tranquil rather than melancholy; and which, though it be more soothing than interesting, is very delightful.--Yours, &c. Amiens, 1793. I have been to-day to take a last view of the convents: they are now advertised for sale, and will probably soon be demolished. You know my opinion is not, on the whole, favourable to these institutions, and that I thought the decree which extinguishes them, but which secured to the religious already profest the undisturbed possession of their habitations during life, was both politic and humane. Yet I could not see the present state of these buildings without pain--they are now inhabited by volunteers, who are passing a novitiate of intemperance and idleness, previous to their reception in the army; and those who recollect the peace and order that once reigned within the walls of a monastery, cannot but be stricken with the contrast. I felt both for the expelled and present possessors, and, perhaps, gave a mental preference to the superstition which founded such establishments, over the persecution that destroys them. The resigned and pious votaries, who once supposed themselves secure from all the vicissitudes of fortune, and whose union seemed dissoluble only by the common lot of mortality, are now many of them dispersed, wandering, friendless, and miserable. The religion which they cherished as a comfort, and practised as a duty, is now pursued as a crime; and it is not yet certain that they will not have to choose between an abjuration of their principles, and the relinquishment of the means of existence.--The military occupiers offered nothing very alleviating to such unpleasant reflections; and I beheld with as much regret the collection of these scattered individuals, as the separation of those whose habitations they fill. They are most of them extremely young, taken from villages and the service of agriculture, and are going to risk their lives in a cause detested perhaps by more than three parts of the nation, and only to secure impunity to its oppressors. It has usually been a maxim in all civilized states, that when the general welfare necessitates some act of partial injustice, it shall be done with the utmost consideration for the sufferer, and that the required sacrifice of moral to political expediency shall be palliated, as much as the circumstances will admit, by the manner of carrying it into execution. But the French legislators, in this respect, as in most others, truly original, disdain all imitation, and are rarely guided by such confined motives. With them, private rights are frequently violated, only to facilitate the means of public oppressions--and cruel and iniquitous decrees are rendered still more so by the mode of enforcing them. I have met with no person who could conceive the necessity of expelling the female religious from their convents. It was, however, done, and that with a mixture of meanness and barbarity which at once excites contempt and detestation. The ostensible, reasons were, that these communities afforded an asylum to the superstitious, and that by their entire suppression, a sale of the houses would enable the nation to afford the religious a more liberal support than had been assigned them by the Constituent Assembly. But they are shallow politicians who expect to destroy superstition by persecuting those who practise it: and so far from adding, as the decree insinuates, to the pensions of the nuns, they have now subjected them to an oath which, to those at least whose consciences are timid, will act as a prohibition to their receiving what they were before entitled to. The real intention of the legislature in thus entirely dispersing the female religious, besides the general hatred of every thing connected with religion, is, to possess itself of an additional resource in the buildings and effects, and, as is imagined by some, to procure numerous and convenient state prisons. But, I believe, the latter is only an aristocratic apprehension, suggested by the appropriation of the convents to this use in a few places, where the ancient prisons are full.-- Whatever purpose it is intended to answer, it has been effected in a way disgraceful to any national body, except such a body as the Convention; and, though it be easy to perceive the cruelty of such a measure, yet as, perhaps, its injustice may not strike you so forcibly as if you had had the same opportunities of investigating it as I have, I will endeavour to explain, as well as I can, the circumstances that render it so peculiarly aggravated. I need not remind you, that no order is of very modern foundation, nor that the present century has, in a great degree, exploded the fashion of compounding for sins by endowing religious institutions. Thus, necessarily, by the great change which has taken place in the expence of living, many establishments that were poorly endowed must have become unable to support themselves, but for the efforts of those who were attached to them. It is true, that the rent of land has increased as its produce became more valuable; but every one knows that the lands dependent on religious houses have always been let on such moderate terms, as by no means to bear a proportion to the necessities they were intended to supply; and as the monastic vows have long ceased to be the frequent choice of the rich, little increase has been made to the original stock by the accession of new votaries:--yet, under all these disadvantages, many societies have been able to rebuild their houses, embellish their churches, purchase plate, &c. &c. The love of their order, that spirit of oeconomy for which they are remarkable, and a persevering industry, had their usual effects, and not only banished poverty, but became a source of wealth. An indefatigable labour at such works as could be profitably disposed of, the education of children, and the admission of boarders, were the means of enriching a number of convents, whose proper revenues would not have afforded them even a subsistence. But the fruits of active toil or voluntary privation, have been confounded with those of expiatory bequest and mistaken devotion, and have alike become the prey of a rapacious and unfeeling government. Many communities are driven from habitations built absolutely with the produce of their own labour. In some places they were refused even their beds and linen; and the stock of wood, corn, &c. provided out of the savings of their pensions, (understood to be at their own disposal,) have been seized, and sold, without making them the smallest compensation. Thus deprived of every thing, they are sent into the world with a prohibition either to live several of them together, wear their habits,* or practise their religion; yet their pensions** are too small for them to live upon, except in society, or to pay the usual expence of boarding: many of them have no other means of procuring secular dresses, and still more will imagine themselves criminal in abstaining from the mode of worship they have been taught to think salutary. * Two religious, who boarded with a lady I had occasion to see sometimes, told me, that they had been strictly enjoined not to dress like each other in any way. ** The pensions are from about seventeen to twenty-five pounds sterling per annum.--At the time I am writing, the necessaries of life are increased in price nearly two-fifths of what they bore formerly, and are daily becoming dearer. The Convention are not always insensible to this--the pay of the foot soldier is more than doubled. It is also to be remembered, that women of small fortune in France often embraced the monastic life as a frugal retirement, and, by sinking the whole they were possessed of in this way, they expected to secure a certain provision, and to place themselves beyond the reach of future vicissitudes: yet, though the sums paid on these occasions can be easily ascertained, no indemnity has been made; and many will be obliged to violate their principles, in order to receive a trifling pension, perhaps much less than the interest of their money would have produced without loss of the principal. But the views of these legislating philosophers are too sublimely extensive to take in the wrongs or sufferings of contemporary individuals; and not being able to disguise, even to themselves, that they create much misery at present, they promise incalculable advantages to those who shall happen to be alive some centuries hence! Most of these poor nuns are, however, of an age to preclude them from the hope of enjoying this Millennium; and they would have been content en attendant these glorious times, not to be deprived of the necessaries of life, or marked out as objects of persecution. The private distresses occasioned by the dissolution of the convents are not the only consequences to be regretted--for a time, at least, the loss must certainly be a public one. There will now be no means of instruction for females, nor any refuge for those who are without friends or relations: thousands of orphans must be thrown unprotected on the world, and guardians, or single men, left with the care of children, have no way to dispose of them properly. I do not contend that the education of a convent is the best possible: yet are there many advantages attending it; and I believe it will readily be granted, that an education not quite perfect is better than no education at all. It would not be very difficult to prove, that the systems of education, both in England and France, are extremely defective; and if the characters of women are generally better formed in one than the other, it is not owing to the superiority of boarding-schools over convents, but to the difference of our national manners, which tend to produce qualities not necessary, or not valued, in France. The most distinguished female excellencies in England are an attachment to domestic life, an attention to its oeconomies, and a cultivated understanding. Here, any thing like house-wifery is not expected but from the lower classes, and reading or information is confined chiefly to professed wits. Yet the qualities so much esteemed in England are not the effect of education: few domestic accomplishments, and little useful knowledge, are acquired at a boarding-school; but finally the national character asserts its empire, and the female who has gone through a course of frivolities from six to sixteen, who has been taught that the first "human principle" should be to give an elegant tournure to her person, after a few years' dissipation, becomes a good wife and mother, and a rational companion. In France, young women are kept in great seclusion: religion and oeconomy form a principal part of conventual acquirements, and the natural vanity of the sex is left to develope itself without the aid of authority, or instillation by precept--yet, when released from this sober tuition, manners take the ascendant here as in England, and a woman commences at her marriage the aera of coquetry, idleness, freedom, and rouge.--We may therefore, I think, venture to conclude, that the education of a boarding-school is better calculated for the rich, that of a convent for the middle classes and the poor; and, consequently, that the suppression of this last in France will principally affect those to whom it was most beneficial, and to whom the want of it will be most dangerous. A committee of wise men are now forming a plan of public instruction, which is to excel every thing ever adopted in any age or country; and we may therefore hope that the defects which have hitherto prevailed, both in theirs and our own, will be remedied. All we have to apprehend is, that, amidst so many wise heads, more than one wise plan may be produced, and a difficulty of choice keep the rising generation in a sort of abeyance, so that they must remain sterile, or may become vitiated, while it is determining in what manner they shall be cultivated. It is almost a phrase to say, the resources of France are wonderful, and this is no less true than generally admitted. Whatever be the want or loss, it is no sooner known than supplied, and the imagination of the legislature seems to become fertile in proportion to the exigence of the moment.--I was in some pain at the disgrace of Mirabeau, lest this new kind of retrospective judgement should depopulate the Pantheon of the few divinities that remained; more especially when I considered that Voltaire, notwithstanding his merits as an enemy to revelation, had been already accused of aristocracy, and even Rousseau himself might not be found impeccable. His Contrat Social might not, perhaps, in the eyes of a committee of philosophical Rhadmanthus's, atone for his occasional admiration of christianity: and thus some crime, either of church or state, disfranchise the whole race of immortals, and their fame scarcely outlast the dispute about their earthly remains.* * Alluding to the disputes between the Convention and the person who claimed the exclusive right to the remains of Rousseau. My concern, on this account, was the more justifiable, because the great fallibility which prevailed among the patriots, and the very delicate state of the reputation of those who retained their political existence, afforded no hope that they could ever fill the vacancies in the Pantheon.--But my fears were very superfluous--France will never want subjects for an apotheosis, and if one divinity be dethroned, "another and another still succeeds," all equally worthy as long as they continue in fashion.--The phrenzy of despair has supplied a successor to Mirabeau, in Le Pelletier. [De St. Fargeau.] The latter had hitherto been little heard of, but his death offered an occasion for exciting the people too favourable to be neglected: his patriotism and his virtues immediately increased in a ratio to the use which might be made of them;* a dying speech proper for the purpose was composed, and it was decreed unanimously, that he should be installed in all the rights, privileges, and immortalities of the degraded Riquetti.-- * At the first intelligence of his death, a member of the Convention, who was with him, and had not yet had time to study a speech, confessed his last words to have been, "Jai froid."--"I am cold." This, however, would nave made no figure on the banners of a funeral procession; and Le Pelletier was made to die, like the hero of a tragedy, uttering blank verse. The funeral that preceded these divine awards was a farce, which tended more to provoke a massacre of the living, than to honour the dead; and the Convention, who vowed to sacrifice their animosities on his tomb, do so little credit to the conciliating influence of St. Fargeau's virtues, that they now dispute with more acrimony than ever. The departments, who begin to be extremely submissive to Paris, thought it incumbent on them to imitate this ceremony; but as it was rather an act of fear than of patriotism, it was performed here with so much oeconomy, and so little inclination, that the whole was cold and paltry. --An altar was erected on the great market-place, and so little were the people affected by the catastrophe of a patriot whom they were informed had sacrificed* his life in their cause, that the only part of the business which seemed to interest them was the extravagant gestures of a woman in a dirty white dress, hired to act the part of a "pleureuse," or mourner, and whose sorrow appeared to divert them infinitely.-- * There is every reason to believe that Le Pelletier was not singled out for his patriotism.--It is said, and with much appearance of probability, that he had promised PARIS, with whom he had been intimate, not to vote for the death of the King; and, on his breaking his word, PARIS, who seems to have not been perfectly in his senses, assassinated him.--PARIS had been in the Garde du Corps, and, like most of his brethren, was strongly attached to the King's person. Rage and despair prompted him to the commission of an act, which can never be excused, however the perpetrator may imagine himself the mere instrument of Divine vengeance.--Notwithstanding the most vigilant research, he escaped for some time, and wandered as far as Forges d'Eaux, a little town in Normandy. At the inn where he lodged, the extravagance of his manner giving suspicions that he was insane, the municipality were applied to, to secure him. An officer entered his room while he was in bed, and intimated the purpose he was come for. PARIS affected to comply, and, turning, drew a pistol from under the clothes, and shot himself.--Among the papers found upon him were some affecting lines, expressive of his contempt for life, and adding, that the influence of his example was not to be dreaded, since he left none behind him that deserved the name of Frenchmen!--_"Qu'on n'inquiete personne! personne n'a ete mon complice dans la mort heureuse de Scelerat St. Fargeau. Si Je ne l'eusse pas rencontre sous ma main, Je purgeois la France du regicide, du parricide, du patricide D'Orleans. Qu'on n'inquiete personne. Tous les Francois sont des laches auxquelles Je dis-- "Peuple, dont les forfaits jettent partout l'effroi, "Avec calme et plaisir J'abandonne la vie "Ce n'est que par la mort qu'on peut fuir l'infamie, "Qu'imprime sur nos fronts le sang de notre Roi."_ "Let no man be molested on my account: I had no accomplice in the fortunate death of the miscreant St. Fargeau. If he had not fallen in my way, I should have purged France of the regicide, parricide, patricide D'Orleans. Let no man be molested. All the French are cowards, to whom I say--'People, whose crimes inspire universal horror, I quit life with tranquility and pleasure. By death alone can we fly from that infamy which the blood of our King has marked upon our foreheads!'"--This paper was entitled "My Brevet of Honour." It will ever be so where the people are not left to consult their own feelings. The mandate that orders them to assemble may be obeyed, but "that which passeth show" is not to be enforced. It is a limit prescribed by Nature herself to authority, and such is the aversion of the human mind from dictature and restraint, that here an official rejoicing is often more serious than these political exactions of regret levied in favour of the dead.--Yours, &c. &c. March 23, 1793. The partizans of the French in England alledge, that the revolution, by giving them a government founded on principles of moderation and rectitude, will be advantageous to all Europe, and more especially to Great Britain, which has so often suffered by wars, the fruit of their intrigues.--This reasoning would be unanswerable could the character of the people be changed with the form of their government: but, I believe, whoever examines its administration, whether as it relates to foreign powers or internal policy, will find that the same spirit of intrigue, fraud, deception, and want of faith, which dictated in the cabinet of Mazarine or Louvois, has been transfused, with the addition of meanness and ignorance,* into a Constitutional Ministry, or the Republican Executive Council. * The Executive Council is composed of men who, if ever they were well-intentioned, must be totally unfit for the government of an extensive republic. Monge, the Minister of the Marine, is a professor of geometry; Garat, Minister of Justice, a gazette writer; Le Brun, Minister of Foreign Affairs, ditto; and Pache, Minister of the Interior, a private tutor.--Whoever reads the debates of the Convention will find few indications of real talents, and much pedantry and ignorance. For example, Anacharsis Cloots, who is a member of the Committee of Public Instruction, and who one should, of course, expect not to be more ignorant than his colleagues, has lately advised them to distress the enemy by invading Scotland, which he calls the granary of England. France had not yet determined on the articles of her future political creed, when agents were dispatched to make proselytes in England, and, in proportion as she assumed a more popular form of government, all the qualities which have ever marked her as the disturber of mankind seem to have acquired new force. Every where the ambassadors of the republic are accused of attempts to excite revolt and discontent, and England* is now forced into a war because she could not be persuaded to an insurrection. * For some time previous to the war, all the French prints and even members of the Convention, in their debates, announced England to be on the point of an insurrection. The intrigues of Chauvelin, their ambassador, to verify this prediction, are well known. Brissot, Le Brun, &c. who have since been executed, were particularly charged by the adverse party with provoking the war with England. Robespierre, and those who succeeded, were not so desirous of involving us in a foreign war, and their humane efforts were directed merely to excite a civil one.--The third article of accusation against Rolland is, having sent twelve millions of livres to England, to assist in procuring a declaration of war. Perhaps it may be said, that the French have taken this part only for their own security, and to procure adherents to the common cause; but this is all I contend for--that the politics of the old government actuate the new, and that they have not, in abolishing courts and royalty, abolished the perfidious system of endeavouring to benefit themselves, by creating distress and dissention among their neighbours.-- Louvois supplied the Protestants in the Low Countries with money, while he persecuted them in France. The agents of the republic, more oeconomical, yet directed by the same motives, eke out corruption by precepts of sedition, and arm the leaders of revolt with the rights of man; but, forgetting the maxim that charity should begin at home, in their zeal for the freedom of other countries, they leave no portion of it for their own! Louis the Fourteenth over-ran Holland and the Palatinate to plant the white flag, and lay the inhabitants under contribution--the republic send an army to plant the tree of liberty, levy a _don patriotique,_ [Patriotic gift.] and place garrisons in the towns, in order to preserve their freedom.--Kings have violated treaties from the desire of conquest --these virtuous republicans do it from the desire of plunder; and, previous to opening the Scheldt, the invasion of Holland, was proposed as a means of paying the expences of the war. I have never heard that even the most ambitious Potentates ever pretended to extend their subjugation beyond the persons and property of the conquered; but these militant dogmatists claim an empire even over opinions, and insist that no people can be free or happy unless they regulate their ideas of freedom and happiness by the variable standard of the Jacobin club. Far from being of Hudibras's philosophy,* they seem to think the mind as tangible as the body, and that, with the assistance of an army, they may as soon lay one "by the heels" as the other. * "Quoth he, one half of man, his mind, "Is, sui juris, unconfin'd, "And ne'er can be laid by the heels, "Whate'er the other moiety feels." Hudibras. Now this I conceive to be the worst of all tyrannies, nor have I seen it exceeded on the French theatre, though, within the last year, the imagination of their poets has been peculiarly ingenious and inventive on this subject.--It is absurd to suppose this vain and overbearing disposition will cease when the French government is settled. The intrigues of the popular party began in England the very moment they attained power, and long before there was any reason to suspect that the English would deviate from their plan of neutrality. If, then, the French cannot restrain this mischievous spirit while their own affairs are sufficient to occupy their utmost attention, it is natural to conclude, that, should they once become established, leisure and peace will make them dangerous to the tranquillity of all Europe. Other governments may be improved by time, but republics always degenerate; and if that which is in its original state of perfection exhibit already the maturity of vice, one cannot, without being more credulous than reasonable, hope any thing better for the future than what we have experienced from the past.--It is, indeed, unnecessary to detain you longer on this subject. You must, ere now, be perfectly convinced how far the revolutionary systems of France are favourable to the peace and happiness of other countries. I will only add a few details which may assist you in judging of what advantage they have been to the French themselves, and whether, in changing the form of their government, they have amended its principles; or if, in "conquering liberty," (as they express it,) they have really become free. The situation of France has altered much within the last two months: the seat of power is less fluctuating and the exercise of it more absolute-- arbitrary measures are no longer incidental, but systematic--and a regular connection of dependent tyranny is established, beginning with the Jacobin clubs, and ending with the committees of the sections. A simple decree for instance, has put all the men in the republic, (unmarried and without children,) from eighteen to forty-five at the requisition of the Minister of War. A levy of three hundred thousand is to take place immediately: each department is responsible for the whole of a certain number to the Convention, the districts are answerable for their quota to the departments, the municipalities to the district, and the diligence of the whole is animated by itinerant members of the legislature, entrusted with the disposal of an armed force. The latter circumstance may seem to you incredible; yet is it nevertheless true, that most of the departments are under the jurisdiction of these sovereigns, whose authority is nearly unlimited. We have, at this moment, two Deputies in the town, who arrest and imprison at their pleasure. One-and-twenty inhabitants of Amiens were seized a few nights ago, without any specific charge having been exhibited against them, and are still in confinement. The gates of the town are shut, and no one is permitted to pass or repass without an order from the municipality; and the observance of this is exacted even of those who reside in the suburbs. Farmers and country people, who are on horseback, are obliged to have the features and complexion of their horses minuted on the passport with their own. Every person whom it is found convenient to call suspicious, is deprived of his arms; and private houses are disturbed during the night, (in opposition to a positive law,) under pretext of searching for refractory priests.--These regulations are not peculiar to this department, and you must understand them as conveying a general idea of what passes in every part of France.--I have yet to add, that letters are opened with impunity--that immense sums of assignats are created at the will of the Convention--that no one is excused mounting guard in person--and that all housekeepers, and even lodgers, are burthened with the quartering of troops, sometimes as many as eight or ten, for weeks together. You may now, I think, form a tolerable idea of the liberty that has accrued to the French from the revolution, the dethronement of the King, and the establishment of a republic. But, though the French suffer this despotism without daring to murmur openly, many a significant shrug and doleful whisper pass in secret, and this political discontent has even its appropriate language, which, though not very explicit, is perfectly understood.--Thus when you hear one man say to another, _"Ah, mon Dieu, on est bien malheureux dans ce moment ici;"_ or, _"Nous sommes dans une position tres critique--Je voudrois bien voir la fin de tout cela;"_ ["God knows, we are very miserable at present--we are in a very critical situation--I should like to see an end of all this."] you may be sure he languishes for the restoration of the monarchy, and hopes with equal fervor, that he may live to see the Convention hanged. In these sort of conferences, however, evaporates all their courage. They own their country is undone, that they are governed by a set of brigands, go home and hide any set of valuables they have not already secreted, and receive with obsequious complaisance the next visite domiciliaire. The mass of the people, with as little energy, have more obstinacy, and are, of course, not quite so tractable. But, though they grumble and procrastinate, they do not resist; and their delays and demurs usually terminate in implicit submission. The Deputy-commissioners, whom I have mentioned above, have been at Amiens some time, in order to promote the levying of recruits. On Sundays and holidays they summoned the inhabitants to attend at the cathedral, where they harangued them on the subject, called for vengeance on the coalesced despots, expatiated on the love of glory, and insisted on the pleasure of dying for one's country: while the people listened with vacant attention, amused themselves with the paintings, or adjourned in small committees to discuss the hardship of being obliged to fight without inclination.--Thus time elapsed, the military orations produced no effect, and no troops were raised: no one would enlist voluntarily, and all refused to settle it by lot, because, as they wisely observed, the lot must fall on somebody. Yet, notwithstanding the objection, the matter was at length decided by this last method. The decision had no sooner taken place, than another difficulty ensued--those who escaped acknowledged it was the best way that could be devised; but those who were destined to the frontiers refused to go. Various altercations, and excuses, and references, were the consequence; yet, after all this murmuring and evasion, the presence of the Commissioners and a few dragoons have arranged the business very pacifically; many are already gone, and the rest will (if the dragoons continue here) soon follow. This, I assure you, is a just statement of the account between the Convention and the People: every thing is effected by fear--nothing by attachment; and the one is obeyed only because the other want courage to resist.--Yours, &c. Rouen, March 31, 1793. Rouen, like most of the great towns in France, is what is called decidedly aristocratic; that is, the rich are discontented because they are without security, and the poor because they want bread. But these complaints are not peculiar to large places; the causes of them equally exist in the smallest village, and the only difference which fixes the imputation of aristocracy on one more than the other, is, daring to murmur, or submitting in silence. I must here remark to you, that the term aristocrate has much varied from its former signification. A year ago, aristocrate implied one who was an advocate for the privileges of the nobility, and a partizan of the ancient government--at present a man is an aristocrate for entertaining exactly the same principles which at that time constituted a patriot; and, I believe, the computation is moderate, when I say, that more than three parts of the nation are aristocrates. The rich, who apprehend a violation of their property, are aristocrates--the merchants, who regret the stagnation of commerce, and distrust the credit of the assignats, are aristocrates--the small retailers, who are pillaged for not selling cheaper than they buy, and who find these outrages rather encouraged than repressed, are aristocrates--and even the poor, who murmur at the price of bread, and the numerous levies for the army, are, occasionally, aristocrates. Besides all these, there are likewise various classes of moral aristocrates--such as the humane, who are averse from massacres and oppression--those who regret the loss of civil liberty--the devout, who tremble at the contempt for religion--the vain, who are mortified at the national degradation--and authors, who sigh for the freedom of the press.--When you consider this multiplicity of symptomatic indications, you will not be surprized that such numbers are pronounced in a state of disease; but our republican physicians will soon generalize these various species of aristocracy under the single description of all who have any thing to lose, and every one will be deemed plethoric who is not in a consumption. The people themselves who observe, though they do not reason, begin to have an idea that property exposes the safety of the owner and that the legislature is less inexorable when guilt is unproductive, than when the conviction of a criminal comprehends the forfeiture of an estate.--A poor tradesman was lamenting to me yesterday, that he had neglected an offer of going to live in England; and when I told him I thought he was very fortunate in having done so, as he would have been declared an emigrant, he replied, laughing, _"Moi emigre qui n'ai pas un sol:"_ ["I am emigrant, who am not worth a halfpenny!"]--No, no; they don't make emigrants of those who are worth nothing. And this was not said with any intended irreverence to the Convention, but with the simplicity which really conceived the wealth of the emigrants to be the cause of the severity exercised against them. The commercial and political evils attending a vast circulation of assignats have been often discussed, but I have never yet known the matter considered in what is, perhaps, its most serious point of view--I mean its influence on the habits and morals of the people. Wherever I go, especially in large towns like this, the mischief is evident, and, I fear, irremediable. That oeconomy, which was one of the most valuable characteristics of the French, is now comparatively disregarded. The people who receive what they earn in a currency they hold in contempt, are more anxious to spend than to save; and those who formerly hoarded six liards or twelve sols pieces with great care, would think it folly to hoard an assignat, whatever its nominal value. Hence the lower class of females dissipate their wages on useless finery; men frequent public-houses, and game for larger sums than before; little shopkeepers, instead of amassing their profits, become more luxurious in their table: public places are always full; and those who used, in a dress becoming their station, to occupy the "parquet" or "parterre," now, decorated with paste, pins, gauze, and galloon, fill the boxes:--and all this destructive prodigality is excused to others and themselves _"par ce que ce n'est que du papier."_ [Because it is only paper.]--It is vain to persuade them to oeconomize what they think a few weeks may render valueless; and such is the evil of a circulation so totally discredited, that profusion assumes the merit of precaution, extravagance the plea of necessity, and those who were not lavish by habit become so through their eagerness to part with their paper. The buried gold and silver will again be brought forth, and the merchant and the politician forget the mischief of the assignats. But what can compensate for the injury done to the people? What is to restore their ancient frugality, or banish their acquired wants? It is not to be expected that the return of specie will diminish the inclination for luxury, or that the human mind can be regulated by the national finance; on the contrary, it is rather to be feared, that habits of expence which owe their introduction to the paper will remain when the paper is annihilated; that, though money may become more scarce, the propensities of which it supplies the indulgence will not be less forcible, and that those who have no other resources for their accustomed gratifications will but too often find one in the sacrifice of their integrity.--Thus, the corruption of manners will be succeeded by the corruption of morals, and the dishonesty of one sex, with the licentiousness of the other, produce consequences much worse than any imagined by the abstracted calculations of the politician, or the selfish ones of the merchant. Age will be often without solace, sickness without alleviation, and infancy without support; because some would not amass for themselves, nor others for their children, the profits of their labour in a representative sign of uncertain value. I do not pretend to assert that these are the natural effects of a paper circulation--doubtless, when supported by high credit, and an extensive commerce, it must have many advantages; but this was not the case in France--the measure was adopted in a moment of revolution, and when the credit of the country, never very considerable, was precarious and degraded--It did not flow from the exuberance of commerce, but the artifices of party--it never presumed, for a moment, on the confidence of the people--its reception was forced, and its emission too profuse not to be alarming.--I know it may be answered, that the assignats do not depend upon an imaginary appreciation, but really represent a large mass of national wealth, particularly in the domains of the clergy: yet, perhaps, it is this very circumstance which has tended most to discredit them. Had their credit rested only on the solvency of the nation, though they had not been greatly coveted, still they would have been less distributed; people would not have apprehended their abolition on a change of government, nor that the systems adopted by one party might be reversed by another. Indeed we may add, that an experiment of this kind does not begin auspiciously when grounded on confiscation and seizures, which it is probable more than half the French considered as sacrilege and robbery; nor could they be very anxious to possess a species of wealth which they made it a motive of conscience to hope would never be of any value.--But if the original creation of assignats were objectionable, the subsequent creations cannot but augment the evil. I have already described to you the effects visible at present, and those to be apprehended in future--others may result from the new inundation, [1200 millions--50 millions sterling.] which it is not possible to conjecture; but if the mischiefs should be real, in proportion as a part of the wealth which this paper is said to represent is imaginary, their extent cannot easily be exaggerated. Perhaps you will be of this opinion, when you recollect that one of the funds which form the security of this vast sum is the gratitude of the Flemings for their liberty; and if this reimbursement be to be made according to the specimen the French army have experienced in their retreat, I doubt much of the convention will be disposed to advance any farther claims on it; for, it seems, the inhabitants of the Low Countries have been so little sensible of the benefits bestowed on them, that even the peasants seize on any weapons nearest hand, and drub and pursue the retrograding armies as they would wild beasts; and though, as Dumouriez observes in one of his dispatches, our revolution is intended to favour the country people, _"c'est cependant les gens de campagne qui s'arment contre nous, et le tocsin sonne de toutes parts;"_ ["It is, however, the country people who take up arms against us, and the alarm is sounded from all quarters."] so that the French will, in fact, have created a public debt of so singular a nature, that every one will avoid as much as possible making any demand of the capital. I have already been more diffuse than I intended on the subject of finance; but I beg you to observe, that I do not affect to calculate, or speculate, and that I reason only from facts which are daily within my notice, and which, as tending to operate on the morals of the people, are naturally included in the plan I proposed to myself. I have been here but a few days, and intend returning to-morrow. I left Mrs. D____ very little better, and the disaffection of Dumouriez, which I just now learn, may oblige us to remove to some place not on the route to Paris.--Every one looks alert and important, and a physiognomist may perceive that regret is not the prevailing sentiment-- "We now begin to speak in tropes, "And, by our fears, express our hopes." The Jacobins are said to be apprehensive, which augurs well; for, certainly, next to the happiness of good people, one desires the punishment of the bad. Amiens, April 7, 1793. If the sentiments of the people towards their present government had been problematical before, the visible effect of Dumouriez' conduct would afford an ample solution of the problem. That indifference about public affairs which the prospect of an established despotism had begun to create has vanished--all is hope and expectation--the doors of those who retail the newspapers are assailed by people too impatient to read them-- each with his gazette in his hand listens eagerly to the verbal circulation, and then holds a secret conference with his neighbour, and calculates how long it may be before Dumouriez can reach Paris. A fortnight ago the name of Dumouriez was not uttered but in a tone of harshness and contempt, and, if ever it excited any thing like complacency, it was when he announced defeats and losses. Now he is spoken of with a significant modulation of voice, it is discovered that he has great talents, and his popularity with the army is descanted upon with a mysterious air of suppressed satisfaction.--Those who were extremely apprehensive lest part of the General's troops should be driven this way by the successes of the enemy, seem to talk with perfect composure of their taking the same route to attack the capital; while others, who would have been unwilling to receive either Dumouriez or his army as peaceful fugitives, will be "nothing loath" to admit them as conquerors. From all I can learn, these dispositions are very general, and, indeed, the actual tyranny is so great, and the perspective so alarming, that any means of deliverance must be acceptable. But whatever may be the event, though I cannot be personally interested, if I thought Dumouriez really proposed to establish a good government, humanity would render one anxious for his success; for it is not to be disguised, that France is at this moment (as the General himself expressed it) under the joint dominion of _"imbecilles"_ and _"brigands."_ [Ideots and robbers.] It is possible, that at this moment the whole army is disaffected, and that the fortified towns are prepared to surrender. It is also certain, that Brittany is in revolt, and that many other departments are little short of it; yet you will not very easily conceive what may have occupied the Convention during part of this important crisis--nothing less than inventing a dress for their Commissioners! But, as Sterne says, "it is the spirit of the nation;" and I recollect no circumstance during the whole progress of the revolution (however serious) that has not been mixed with frivolities of this kind. I know not what effect this new costume may produce on the rebels or the enemy, but I confess it appears to me more ludicrous than formidable, especially when a representative happens to be of the shape and features of the one we have here. Saladin, Deputy for this department, and an advocate of the town of Amiens, has already invested himself with this armour of inviolability; "strange figure in such strange habiliments," that one is tempted to forget that Baratraria and the government of Sancho are the creation of fancy. Imagine to yourself a short fat man, of sallow complexion and small eyes, with a sash of white, red, and blue round his waist, a black belt with a sword suspended across his shoulders, and a round hat turned up before, with three feathers of the national colours: "even such a man" is our representative, and exercises a more despotic authority than most Princes in Europe.--He is accompanied by another Deputy, who was what is called Pere de la Oratoire before the revolution--that is, in a station nearly approaching to that of an under-master at our public schools; only that the seminaries to which these were attached being very numerous, those employed in them were little considered. They wore the habit, and were subject to the same restrictions, as the Clergy, but were at liberty to quit the profession and marry, if they chose.--I have been more particular in describing this class of men, because they have every where taken an active and successful part in perverting and misleading the people: they are in the clubs, or the municipalities, in the Convention, and in all elective administrations, and have been in most places remarkable for their sedition and violence. Several reasons may be assigned for the influence and conduct of men whose situation and habits, on a first view, seem to oppose both. In the first ardour of reform it was determined, that all the ancient modes of education should be abolished; small temporary pensions were allotted to the Professors of Colleges, and their admission to the exercise of similar functions in the intended new system was left to future decision. From this time the disbanded oratorians, who knew it would be vain to resist popular authority, endeavoured to share in it; or, at least, by becoming zealous partizans of the revolution, to establish their claims to any offices or emoluments which might be substituted for those they had been deprived of. They enrolled themselves with the Jacobins, courted the populace, and, by the talent of pronouncing Roman names with emphasis, and the study of rhetorical attitudes, they became important to associates who were ignorant, or necessary to those who were designing. The little information generally possessed by the middle classes of life in France, is also another cause of the comparative importance of those whose professions had, in this respect, raised them something above the common level. People of condition, liberally educated, have unfortunately abandoned public affairs for some time; so that the incapacity of some, and the pride or despondency of others, have, in a manner, left the nation to the guidance of pedants, incendiaries, and adventurers. Perhaps also the animosity with which the description of men I allude to pursued every thing attached to the ancient government, may, in some degree, have proceeded from a desire of revenge and retaliation. They were not, it must be confessed, treated formerly with the regard due to persons whose profession was in itself useful and respectable; and the wounds of vanity are not easily cured, nor the vindictiveness of little minds easily satisfied. From the conduct and popular influence of these Peres de l'Oratoire, some truths may be deduced not altogether useless even to a country not liable to such violent reforms. It affords an example of the danger arising from those sudden and arbitrary innovations, which, by depriving any part of the community of their usual means of living, and substituting no other, tempt them to indemnify themselves by preying, in different ways, on their fellow-citizens.--The daring and ignorant often become depredators of private property; while those who have more talents, and less courage, endeavour to succeed by the artifices which conciliate public favour. I am not certain whether the latter are not to be most dreaded of the two, for those who make a trade of the confidence of the people seldom fail to corrupt them--they find it more profitable to flatter their passions than to enlighten their understandings; and a demagogue of this kind, who obtains an office by exciting one popular insurrection, will make no scruple of maintaining himself in it by another. An inferrence may likewise be drawn of the great necessity of cultivating such a degree of useful knowledge in the middle order of society, as may not only prevent their being deceived by interested adventurers themselves, but enable them to instruct the people in their true interests, and rescue them from becoming the instruments, and finally the victims, of fraud and imposture.--The insult and oppression which the nobility frequently experience from those who have been promoted by the revolution, will, I trust, be a useful lesson in future to the great, who may be inclined to arrogate too much from adventitious distinctions, to forget that the earth we tread upon may one day overwhelm us, and that the meanest of mankind may do us an injury which it is not in the power even of the most exalted to shield us from. The inquisition begins to grow so strict, that I have thought it necessary to-day to bury a translation of Burke.--In times of ignorance and barbarity, it was criminal to read the bible, and our English author is prohibited for a similar reason--that is, to conceal from the people the errors of those who direct them: and, indeed, Mr. Burke has written some truths, which it is of much more importance for the Convention to conceal, than it could be to the Catholic priests to monopolize the divine writings.--As far as it was possible, Mr. Burke has shown himself a prophet: if he has not been completely so, it was because he had a benevolent heart, and is the native of a free country. By the one, he was prevented from imagining the cruelties which the French have committed; by the other, the extreme despotism which they endure. April 20, 1793. Before these halcyon days of freedom, the supremacy of Paris was little felt in the provinces, except in dictating a new fashion in dress, an improvement in the art of cookery, or the invention of a minuet. At present our imitations of the capital are something more serious; and if our obedience be not quite so voluntary, it is much more implicit. Instead of receiving fashions from the Court, we take them now from the _dames des balles,_ [Market-women.] and the municipality; and it must be allowed, that the imaginations of our new sovereigns much exceed those of the old in force and originality. The mode of pillaging the shops, for instance, was first devised by the Parisian ladies, and has lately been adopted with great success in the departments; the visite domiciliaire, also, which I look upon as a most ingenious effort of fancy, is an emanation from the commune of Paris, and has had an universal run.--But it would be vain to attempt enumerating all the obligations of this kind which we owe to the indulgence of that virtuous city: our last importation, however, is of so singular a nature, that, were we not daily assured all the liberty in the world centers in Paris, I should be doubtful as to its tendency. It has lately been decreed, that every house in the republic shall have fixed on the outside of the door, in legible characters, the name, age, birth-place, and profession of its inhabitants. Not the poorest cottager, nor those who are too old or too young for action, nor even unmarried ladies, are exempt from thus proclaiming the abstract of their history to passers-by. --The reigning party judge very wisely, that all those who are not already their enemies may become so, and that those who are unable to take a part themselves may excite others: but, whatever may be the intention of this measure, it is impossible to conceive any thing which could better serve the purposes of an arbitrary government; it places every individual in the republic within the immediate reach of informers and spies--it points out those who are of an age to serve in the army-- those who have sought refuge in one department from the persecutions of another--and, in short, whether a victim is pursued by the denunciation of private malice, or political suspicion, it renders escape almost impracticable. We have had two domiciliary visits within the last fortnight--one to search for arms, the other under pretext of ascertaining the number of troops each house is capable of lodging. But this was only the pretext, because the municipalities always quarter troops as they think proper, without considering whether you have room or not; and the real object of this inquisition was to observe if the inhabitants answered to the lists placed on the doors.--Mrs. D____ was ill in bed, but you must not imagine such a circumstance deterred these gallant republicans from entering her room with an armed force, to calculate how many soldiers might be lodged in the bedchamber of a sick female! The French, indeed, had never, in my remembrance, any pretensions to delicacy, or even decency, and they are certainly not improved in these respects by the revolution. It is curious in walking the streets, to observe the devices of the several classes of aristocracy; for it is not to be disguised, that since the hope from Dumouriez has vanished, though the disgust of the people may be increased, their terror is also greater than ever, and the departments near Paris have no resource but silent submission. Every one, therefore, obeys the letter of the decrees with the diligence of fear, while they elude the spirit of them with all the ingenuity of hatred. The rich, for example, who cannot entirely divest themselves of their remaining hauteur, exhibit a sullen compliance on a small piece of paper, written in a small hand, and placed at the very extreme of the height allowed by the law. Some fix their bills so as to be half covered by a shutter; others fasten them only with wafers, so that the wind detaching one or two corners, makes it impossible to read the rest.* * This contrivance became so common, that an article was obliged to be added to the decree, importing, that whenever the papers were damaged or effaced by the weather, or deranged by the wind, the inhabitants should replace them, under a penalty. Many who have courts or passages to their houses, put their names on the half of a gate which they leave open, so that the writing is not perceptible but to those who enter. But those who are most afraid, or most decidedly aristocrates, subjoin to their registers, "All good republicans:" or, _"Vive la republique, une et indivisible."_ ["The republic, one and indivisible for ever!"] Some likewise, who are in public offices, or shopkeepers who are very timid, and afraid of pillage, or are ripe for a counter-revolution, have a sheet half the size of the door, decorated with red caps, tri-coloured ribbons, and flaming sentences ending in "Death or Liberty!" If, however, the French government confined itself to these petty acts of despotism, I would endeavour to be reconciled to it; but I really begin to have serious apprehensions, not so much for our safety as our tranquillity, and if I considered only myself, I should not hesitate to return to England. Mrs. D____ is too ill to travel far at present, and her dread of crossing the sea makes her less disposed to think our situation here hazardous or ineligible. Mr. D____, too, who, without being a republican or a partizan of the present system, has always been a friend to the first revolution, is unwilling to believe the Convention so bad as there is every reason to suppose it. I therefore let my judgement yield to my friendship, and, as I cannot prevail on them to depart, the danger which may attend our remaining is an additional reason for my not quitting them. The national perfidy which has always distinguished France among the other countries of Europe, seems now not to be more a diplomatic principle, than a rule of domestic government. It is so extended and generalized, that an individual is as much liable to be deceived and betrayed by confiding in a decree, as a foreign power would be by relying on the faith of a treaty.--An hundred and twenty priests, above sixty years of age, who had not taken the oaths, but who were allowed to remain by the same law that banished those who were younger, have been lately arrested, and are confined together in a house which was once a college. The people did not behold this act of cruelty with indifference, but, awed by an armed force, and the presence of the Commissioners of the Convention, they could only follow the priests to their prison with silent regret and internal horror. They, however, venture even now to mark their attachment, by taking all opportunities of seeing them, and supplying them with necessaries, which it is not very difficult to do, as they are guarded by the Bourgeois, who are generally inclined to favour them. I asked a woman to-day if she still contrived to have access to the priests, and she replied, _"Ah, oui, il y a encore de la facilite, par ce que l'on ne trouve pas des gardes ici qui ne sont pas pour eux."_* * "Yes, yes, we still contive it, because there are no guards to be found here who don't befriend them." Thus, even the most minute and best organized tyranny may be eluded; and, indeed, if all the agents of this government acted in the spirit of its decrees, it would be insupportable even to a native of Turkey or Japan. But if some have still a remnant of humanity left, there are a sufficient number who execute the laws as unfeelingly as they are conceived. When these poor priests were to be removed from their several houses, it was found necessary to dislodge the Bishop of Amiens, who had for some time occupied the place fixed on for their reception. The Bishop had notice given him at twelve o'clock in the day to relinquish his lodging before evening; yet the Bishop of Amiens is a constitutional Prelate, and had, before the revolution, the cure of a large parish at Paris; nor was it without much persuasion that he accepted the see of Amiens. In the severe winter of 1789 he disposed of his plate and library, (the latter of which was said to be one of the best private collections in Paris,) to purchase bread for the poor. "But Time hath a wallet on his back, wherein he puts alms for oblivion;" and the charities of the Bishop could not shield him from the contempt and insult which pursue his profession. I have been much distressed within the last few days on account of my friend Madame de B____. I subjoining a translation of a letter I have just received from her, as it will convey to you hereafter a tolerable specimen of French liberty. "Maison de Arret, at ____. "I did not write to you, my dear friend, at the time I promised, and you will perceive, by the date of this, that I have had too good an excuse for my negligence. I have been here almost a week, and my spirits are still so much disordered, that I can with difficulty recollect myself enough to relate the circumstances of our unfortunate situation; but as it is possible you might become acquainted with them by some other means, I rather determined to send you a few lines, than suffer you to be alarmed by false or exaggerated reports. "About two o'clock on Monday morning last our servants were called up, and, on their opening the door, the house was immediately filled with armed men, some of whom began searching the rooms, while others came to our bedchamber, and informed us we were arrested by order of the department, and that we must rise and accompany them to prison. It is not easy to describe the effect of such a mandate on people who, having nothing to reproach themselves with, could not be prepared for it.--As soon as we were a little recovered from our first terrors, we endeavoured to obey, and begged they would indulge us by retiring a few moments till I had put my clothes on; but neither my embarrassment, nor the screams of the child--neither decency nor humanity, could prevail. They would not even permit my maid to enter the room; and, amidst this scene of disorder, I was obliged to dress myself and the terrified infant. When this unpleasant task was finished, a general examination of our house and papers took place, and lasted until six in the evening: nothing, however, tending in the remotest degree to criminate us was found, but we were nevertheless conducted to prison, and God knows how long we are likely to remain here. The denunciation against us being secret, and not being able to learn either our crime or our accusers, it is difficult for us to take any measures for our enlargement. We cannot defend ourselves against a charge of which we are ignorant, nor combat the validity of a witness, who is not only allowed to remain secret, but is paid perhaps for his information.* * At this time informers were paid from fifty to an hundred livres for each accusation. "We most probably owe our misfortune to some discarded servant or personal enemy, for I believe you are convinced we have not merited it either by our discourse or our actions: if we had, the charge would have been specific; but we have reason to imagine it is nothing more than the indeterminate and general charge of being aristocrates. I did not see my mother or sister all the day we were arrested, nor till the evening of the next: the one was engaged perhaps with "Rosine and the Angola", who were indisposed, and the other would not forego her usual card-party. Many of our friends likewise have forborne to approach us, lest their apparent interest in our fate should involve themselves; and really the alarm is so general, that I can, without much effort, forgive them. "You will be pleased to learn, that the greatest civilities I have received in this unpleasant situation, have been from some of your countrymen, who are our fellow-prisoners: they are only poor sailors, but they are truly kind and attentive, and do us various little services that render us more comfortable than we otherwise should be; for we have no servants here, having deemed it prudent to leave them to take care of our property. The second night we were here, these good creatures, who lodge in the next room, were rather merry, and awoke the child; but as they found, by its cries, that their gaiety had occasioned me some trouble, I have observed ever since that they walk softly, and avoid making the least noise, after the little prisoner is gone to rest. I believe they are pleased with me because I speak their language, and they are still more delighted with your young favourite, who is so well amused, that he begins to forget the gloom of the place, which at first terrified him extremely. "One of our companions is a nonjuring priest, who has been imprisoned under circumstances which make me almost ashamed of my country.--After having escaped from a neighbouring department, he procured himself a lodging in this town, and for some time lived very peaceably, till a woman, who suspected his profession, became extremely importunate with him to confess her. The poor man, for several days, refused, telling her, that he did not consider himself as a priest, nor wished to be known as such, nor to infringe the law which excluded him. The woman, however, still continued to persecute him, alledging, that her conscience was distressed, and that her peace depended on her being able to confess "in the right way." At length he suffered himself to be prevailed upon--the woman received an hundred livres for informing against him, and, perhaps, the priest will be condemned to the Guillotine.* * He was executed some time after. "I will make no reflection on this act, nor on the system of paying informers--your heart will already have anticipated all I could say. I will only add, that if you determine to remain in France, you must observe a degree of circumspection which you may not hitherto have thought necessary. Do not depend on your innocence, nor even trust to common precautions--every day furnishes examples that both are unavailing.--Adieu.--My husband offers you his respects, and your little friend embraces you sincerely. As soon as any change in our favour takes place, I will communicate it to you; but you had better not venture to write--I entrust this to Louison's mother, who is going through Amiens, as it would be unsafe to send it by the post. --Again adieu.--Yours, "Adelaide de ____." Amiens, 1793. It is observable, that we examine less scrupulously the pretensions of a nation to any particular excellence, than we do those of an individual. The reason of this is, probably, that our self-love is as much gratified by admitting the one, as in rejecting the other. When we allow the claims of a whole people, we are flattered with the idea of being above narrow prejudices, and of possessing an enlarged and liberal mind; but if a single individual arrogate to himself any exclusive superiority, our own pride immediately becomes opposed to his, and we seem but to vindicate our judgement in degrading such presumption. I can conceive no other causes for our having so long acquiesced in the claims of the French to pre-eminent good breeding, in an age when, I believe, no person acquainted with both nations can discover any thing to justify them. If indeed politeness consisted in the repetition of a certain routine of phrases, unconnected with the mind or action, I might be obliged to decide against our country; but while decency makes a part of good manners, or feeling is preferable to a mechanical jargon, I am inclined to think the English have a merit more than they have hitherto ascribed to themselves. Do not suppose, however, that I am going to descant on the old imputations of "French flattery," and "French insincerity;" for I am far from concluding that civil behaviour gives one a right to expect kind offices, or that a man is false because he pays a compliment, and refuses a service: I only wish to infer, that an impertinence is not less an impertinence because it is accompanied by a certain set of words, and that a people, who are indelicate to excess, cannot properly be denominated "a polite people." A French man or woman, with no other apology than _"permettez moi,"_ ["Give me leave."] will take a book out of your hand, look over any thing you are reading, and ask you a thousand questions relative to your most private concerns--they will enter your room, even your bedchamber, without knocking, place themselves between you and the fire, or take hold of your clothes to guess what they cost; and they deem these acts of rudeness sufficiently qualified by _"Je demande bien de pardons."_ ["I ask you a thousand pardons."]--They are fully convinced that the English all eat with their knives, and I have often heard this discussed with much self-complacence by those who usually shared the labours of the repast between a fork and their fingers. Our custom also of using water-glasses after dinner is an object of particular censure; yet whoever dines at a French table must frequently observe, that many of the guests might benefit by such ablutions, and their napkins always testify that some previous application would be by no means superfluous. Nothing is more common than to hear physical derangements, disorders, and their remedies, expatiated upon by the parties concerned amidst a room full of people, and that with so much minuteness of description, that a foreigner, without being very fastidious, is on some occasions apt to feel very unpleasant sympathies. There are scarcely any of the ceremonies of a lady's toilette more a mystery to one sex than the other, and men and their wives, who scarcely eat at the same table, are in this respect grossly familiar. The conversation in most societies partakes of this indecency, and the manners of an English female are in danger of becoming contaminated, while she is only endeavouring to suffer without pain the customs of those she has been taught to consider as models of politeness. Whether you examine the French in their houses or in public, you are every where stricken with the same want of delicacy, propriety, and cleanliness. The streets are mostly so filthy, that it is perilous to approach the walls. The insides of the churches are often disgusting, in spite of the advertisements that are placed in them to request the forbearance of phthifical persons: the service does not prevent those who attend from going to and fro with the same irreverence as if the church were empty; and, in the most solemn part of the mass, a woman is suffered to importune you for a liard, as the price of the chair you sit on. At the theatres an actor or actress frequently coughs and expectorates on the stage, in a manner one should think highly unpardonable before one's most intimate friends in England, though this habit is very common to all the French. The inns abound with filth of every kind, and though the owners of them are generally civil enough, their notions of what is decent are so very different from ours, that an English traveller is not soon reconciled to them. In short, it would be impossible to enumerate all that in my opinion excludes the French from the character of a well-bred people.--Swift, who seems to have been gratified by the contemplation of physical impurity, might have done the subject justice; but I confess I am not displeased to feel that, after my long and frequent residences in France, I am still unqualified. So little are these people susceptible of delicacy, propriety, and decency, that they do not even use the words in the sense we do, nor have they any others expressive of the same meaning. But if they be deficient in the external forms of politeness, they are infinitely more so in that politeness which may be called mental. The simple and unerring rule of never preferring one's self, is to them more difficult of comprehension than the most difficult problem in Euclid: in small things as well as great, their own interest, their own gratification, is their leading principle; and the cold flexibility which enables them to clothe this selfish system in "fair forms," is what they call politeness. My ideas on this subject are not recent, but they occurred to me with additional force on the perusal of Mad. de B____'s letter. The behaviour of some of the poorest and least informed class of our countrymen forms a striking contrast with that of the people who arrested her, and even her own friends: the unaffected attention of the one, and the brutality and neglect of the other, are, perhaps, more just examples of English and French manners than you may have hitherto imagined. I do not, however, pretend to say that the latter are all gross and brutal, but I am myself convinced that, generally speaking, they are an unfeeling people. I beg you to remember, that when I speak of the dispositions and character of the French, my opinions are the result of general observation, and are applicable to all ranks; but when my remarks are on habits and manners, they describe only those classes which are properly called the nation. The higher noblesse, and those attached to courts, so nearly resemble each other in all countries, that they are necessarily excepted in these delineations, which are intended to mark the distinguishing features of a people at large: for, assuredly, when the French assert, and their neighbours repeat, that they are a polite nation, it is not meant that those who have important offices or dignified appellations are polite: they found their claims on their superiority as a people, and it is in this light I consider them. My examples are chiefly drawn, not from the very inferior, nor from the most eminent ranks; neither from the retailer of a shop, nor the claimant of a _tabouret,_* or _les grandes ou petites entrees;_ but from the gentry, those of easy fortunes, merchants, &c.--in fact, from people of that degree which it would be fair to cite as what may be called genteel society in England. * The tabouret was a stool allowed to the Ladies of the Court particularly distinguished by rank or favour, when in presence of the Royal Family.--"Les entrees" gave a familiar access to the King and Queen. This cessation of intercourse with our country dispirits me, and, as it will probably continue some time, I shall amuse myself by noting more particularly the little occurrences which may not reach your public prints, but which tend more than great events to mark both the spirit of the government and that of the people.--Perhaps you may be ignorant that the prohibition of the English mails was not the consequence of a decree of the Convention, but a simple order of its commissioners; and I have some reason to think that even they acted at the instigation of an individual who harbours a mean and pitiful dislike to England and its inhabitants.--Yours, &c. May 18, 1793. Near six weeks ago a decree was passed by the Convention, obliging all strangers, who had not purchased national property, or who did not exercise some profession, to give security to the amount of half their supposed fortune, and under these conditions they were to receive a certificate, allowing them to reside, and were promised the protection of the laws. The administrators of the departments, who perceive that they become odious by executing the decrees of the Convention, begin to relax much of their diligence, and it is not till long after a law is promulgated, and their personal fear operates as a stimulant, that they seriously enforce obedience to these mandates. This morning, however, we were summoned by the Committee of our section (or ward) in order to comply with the terms of the decree, and had I been directed only by my own judgement, I should have given the preference to an immediate return to England; but Mrs. D____ is yet ill, and Mr. D____ is disposed to continue. In vain have I quoted "how fickle France was branded 'midst the nations of the earth for perfidy and breach of public faith;" in vain have I reasoned upon the injustice of a government that first allured strangers to remain by insidious offers of protection, and now subjects them to conditions which many may find it difficult to subscribe to: Mr. D____ wishes to see our situation in the most favourable point of view: he argues upon the moral impossibility of our being liable to any inconvenience, and persists in believing that one government may act with treachery towards another, yet, distinguishing between falsehood and meanness, maintain its faith with individuals--in short, we have concluded a sort of treaty, by which we are bound, under the forfeiture of a large sum, to behave peaceably and submit to the laws. The government, in return, empowers us to reside, and promises protection and hospitality. It is to be observed, that the spirit of this regulation depends upon those it affects producing six witnesses of their _"civisme;"_* yet so little interest do the people take on these occasions, that our witnesses were neighbours we had scarcely ever seen, and even one was a man who happened to be casually passing by. * Though the meaning of this word is obvious, we have no one that is exactly synonymous to it. The Convention intend by it an attachment to their government: but the people do not trouble themselves about the meaning of words--they measure their unwilling obedience by the letter. These Committees, which form the last link of a chain of despotism, are composed of low tradesmen and day-labourers, with an attorney, or some person that can read and write, at their head, as President. Priests and nobles, with all that are related, or anywise attached, to them, are excluded by the law; and it is understood that true sans-culottes only should be admitted. With all these precautions, the indifference and hatred of the people to their government are so general, that, perhaps, there are few places where this regulation is executed so as to answer the purposes of the jealous tyranny that conceived it. The members of these Committees seem to exact no farther compliances than such as are absolutely necessary to the mere form of the proceeding, and to secure themselves from the imputation of disobedience; and are very little concerned whether the real design of the legislature be accomplished or not. This negligence, or ill-will, which prevails in various instances, tempers, in some degree, the effect of that restless suspicion which is the usual concomitant of an uncertain, but arbitrary, power. The affections or prejudices that surround a throne, by ensuring the safety of the Monarch, engage him to clemency, and the laws of a mild government are, for the most part, enforced with exactness; but a new and precarious authority, which neither imposes on the understanding nor interests the heart, which is supported only by a palpable and unadorned tyranny, is in its nature severe, and it becomes the common cause of the people to counteract the measures of a despotism which they are unable to resist.--This (as I have before had occasion to observe) renders the condition of the French less insupportable, but it is by no means sufficient to banish the fears of a stranger who has been accustomed to look for security, not from a relaxation or disregard of the laws, but from their efficacy; not from the characters of those who execute them, but from the rectitude with which they are formed.--What would you think in England, if you were obliged to contemplate with dread the three branches of your legislature, and depend for the protection of your person and property on soldiers and constables? Yet such is nearly the state we are in; and indeed a system of injustice and barbarism gains ground so fast, that almost any apprehension is justified.--The Tribunal Revolutionnaire has already condemned a servant maid for her political opinions; and one of the Judges of this tribunal lately introduced a man to the Jacobins, with high panegyrics, because, as he alledged, he had greatly contributed to the condemnation of a criminal. The same Judge likewise apologized for having as yet sent but a small number to the Guillotine, and promises, that, on the first appearance of a "Brissotin" before him, he will show him no mercy. When the minister of public justice thus avows himself the agent of a party, a government, however recent its formation, must be far advanced in depravity; and the corruption of those who are the interpreters of the law has usually been the last effort of expiring power. My friends, Mons. And Mad. de B____, are released from their confinement; not as you might expect, by proving their innocence, but by the efforts of an individual, who had more weight than their accuser: and, far from obtaining satisfaction for the injury they have received, they are obliged to accept as a favour the liberty they were deprived of by malice and injustice. They will, most probably, never be acquainted with the nature of the charges brought against them; and their accuser will escape with impunity, and, perhaps, meet with reward. All the French papers are filled with descriptions of the enthusiasm with which the young men "start to arms" [_Offian._] at the voice of their country; yet it is very certain, that this enthusiasm is of so subtle and aerial a form as to be perceivable only to those who are interested in discovering it. In some places these enthusiastic warriors continue to hide themselves--from others they are escorted to the place of their destination by nearly an equal number of dragoons; and no one, I believe, who can procure money to pay a substitute, is disposed to go himself. This is sufficiently proved by the sums demanded by those who engage as substitutes: last year from three to five hundred livres was given; at present no one will take less than eight hundred or a thousand, besides being furnished with clothes, &c. The only real volunteers are the sons of aristocrates, and the relations of emigrants, who, sacrificing their principles to their fears, hope, by enlisting in the army, to protect their estates and families: those likewise who have lucrative employments, and are afraid of losing them, affect great zeal, and expect to purchase impunity for civil peculation at home, by the military services of their children abroad. This, I assure you, is the real state of that enthusiasm which occasions such an expence of eloquence to our gazette-writers; but these fallacious accounts are not like the ephemeral deceits of your party prints in England, the effect of which is destroyed in a few hours by an opposite assertion. None here are bold enough to contradict what their sovereigns would have believed; and a town or district, driven almost to revolt by the present system of recruiting, consents very willingly to be described as marching to the frontiers with martial ardour, and burning to combat les esclaves des tyrans! By these artifices, one department is misled with regard to the dispositions of another, and if they do not excite to emulation, they, at least, repress by fear; and, probably, many are reduced to submission, who would resist, were they not doubtful of the support and union of their neighbours. Every possible precaution is taken to prevent any connections between the different departments-- people who are not known cannot obtain passports without the recommendation of two housekeepers--you must give an account of the business you go upon, of the carriage you mean to travel in, whether it has two wheels or four: all of which must be specified in your passport: and you cannot send your baggage from one town to another without the risk of having it searched. All these things are so disgusting and troublesome, that I begin to be quite of a different opinion from Brutus, and should certainly prefer being a slave among a free people, than thus be tormented with the recollection that I am a native of England in a land of slavery. Whatever liberty the French might have acquired by their first revolution, it is now much like Sir John Cutler's worsted stockings, so torn, and worn, and disguised by patchings and mendings, that the original texture is not discoverable.--Yours, &c. June 3, 1793. We have been three days without receiving newspapers; but we learn from the reports of the courier, that the Brissotins are overthrown, that many of them have been arrested, and several escaped to raise adherents in the departments. I, however, doubt much if their success will be very general: the people have little preference between Brissot and Marat, Condorcet and Robespierre, and are not greatly solicitous about the names or even principles of those who govern them--they are not yet accustomed to take that lively interest in public events which is the effect of a popular constitution. In England every thing is a subject of debate and contest, but here they wait in silence the result of any political measure or party dispute; and, without entering into the merits of the cause, adopt whatever is successful. While the King was yet alive, the news of Paris was eagerly sought after, and every disorder of the metropolis created much alarm: but one would almost suppose that even curiosity had ceased at his death, for I have observed no subsequent event (except the defection of Dumouriez) make any very serious impression. We hear, therefore, with great composure, the present triumph of the more violent republicans, and suffer without impatience this interregnum of news, which is to continue until the Convention shall have determined in what manner the intelligence of their proceedings shall be related to the departments. The great solicitude of the people is now rather about their physical existence than their political one--provisions are become enormously dear, and bread very scarce: our servants often wait two hours at the baker's, and then return without bread for breakfast. I hope, however, the scarcity is rather artificial than real. It is generally supposed to be occasioned by the unwillingness of the farmers to sell their corn for paper. Some measures have been adopted with an intention of remedying this evil, though the origin of it is beyond the reach of decree. It originates in that distrust of government which reconciles one part of the community to starving the other, under the idea of self-preservation. While every individual persists in establishing it as a maxim, that any thing is better than assignats, we must expect that all things will be difficult to procure, and will, of course, bear a high price. I fear, all the empyricism of the legislature cannot produce a nostrum for this want of faith. Dragoons and penal laws only "linger, and linger it out;" the disease is incurable. My friends, Mons. and Mad. de B____, by way of consolation for their imprisonment, now find themselves on the list of emigrants, though they have never been a single day absent from their own province, or from places of residence where they are well known. But that they may not murmur at this injustice, the municipality have accompanied their names with those of others who have not even been absent from the town, and of one gentleman in particular, who I believe may have been seen on the ramparts every day for these seven years.--This may appear to you only very absurd, and you may imagine the consequences easily obviated; yet these mistakes are the effect of private malice, and subject the persons affected by them to an infinity of expence and trouble. They are obliged, in order to avert the confiscation of their property, to appear, in every part of the republic where they have possessions, with attestations of their constant residence in France, and perhaps suffer a thousand mortifications from the official ignorance and brutality of the persons to whom they apply. No remedy lies against the authors of these vexations, and the sufferer who is prudent fears even to complain. I have, in a former letter, noticed the great number of beggars that swarm at Arras: they are not less numerous at Amiens, though of a different description--they are neither so disgusting, nor so wretched, but are much more importunate and insolent--they plead neither sickness nor infirmity, and are, for the most part, able and healthy. How so many people should beg by profession in a large manufacturing town, it is difficult to conceive; but, whatever may be the cause, I am tempted to believe the effect has some influence on the manners of the inhabitants of Amiens. I have seen no town in France so remarkable for a rude and unfeeling behaviour, and it is not fanciful to conjecture that the multitude of poor may tend in part to occasion it. The constant view of a sort of misery that excites little compassion, of an intrusive necessity which one is more desirous to repulse than to relieve, cannot but render the heart callous, and the manners harsh. The avarice of commerce, which is here unaccompanied by its liberality, is glad to confound real distress with voluntary and idle indigence, till, in time, an absence of feeling becomes part of the character; and the constant habit of petulant refusals, or of acceding more from fatigue than benevolence, has perhaps a similar effect on the voice, gesture, and external. This place has been so often visited by those who describe better than myself, that I have thought it unnecessary to mention public buildings, or any thing equally obvious to the traveller or the resident. The beauty and elegance of the cathedral have been celebrated for ages, and I only remind you of it to indulge my national vanity in the reflection that one of the most splendid monuments of Gothic architecture in France is the work of our English ancestors. The edifice is in perfect preservation, and the hand of power has not yet ventured to appropriate the plate or ornaments; but this forbearance will most probably give way to temptation and impunity. The Convention will respect ancient prejudices no longer than they suppose the people have courage to defend them, and the latter seem so entirely subdued, that, however they may murmur, I do not think any serious resistance is to be expected from them, even in behalf of the relics of St. Firmin. [St. Firmin, the patron of Amiens, where he is, in many of the streets, represented with his head in his hand.]--The bust of Henry the Fourth, which was a present from the Monarch himself, is banished the town-house, where it was formerly placed, though, I hope, some royalist has taken possession of it, and deposited it in safety till better times. This once popular Prince is now associated with Nero and Caligula, and it is "leze nation" to speak of him to a thorough republican.--I know not if the French had before the revolution reached the acme of perfection, but they have certainly been retrograding very fast since. Every thing that used to create fondness and veneration is despised, and things are esteemed only in proportion as they are worthless. Perhaps the bust of Robespierre may one day replace that of Henry the Fourth, and, to speak in the style of an eastern epistle, "what can I say more?" Should you ever travel this way with Gray in your hand, you will look for the Ursuline convent, and regret the paintings he mentions: but you may recollect, for your consolation, that they are merely pretty, and remarkable only for being the work of one of the nuns.--Gray, who seems to have had that enthusiastic respect for religious orders common to young minds, admired them on this account; and numbers of English travellers have, I dare say, prepossessed by such an authority, experienced the same disappointment I myself felt on visiting the Ursuline church. Many of the chapels belonging to these communities were very showy and much decorated with gilding and sculpture: some of them are sold for a mere trifle, but the greatest part are filled with corn and forage, and on the door is inscribed "Magazin des armees." The change is almost incredible to those who remember, that less than four years ago the Catholic religion was strictly practised, and the violation of these sanctuaries deemed sacrilegious. Our great historian [Gibbon] might well say "the influence of superstition is fluctuating and precarious;" though, in the present instance, it has rather been restrained than subdued; and the people, who have not been convinced, but intimidated, secretly lament these innovations, and perhaps reproach themselves conscientiously with their submission.--Yours. June 20, 1793. Mercier, in his Tableau de Paris, notices, on several occasions, the little public spirit existing among his countrymen--it is also observable, that many of the laws and customs presume on this deficiency, and the name of republicans has by no means altered that cautious disposition which makes the French consider either misfortunes or benefits only as their personal interest is affected by them.--I am just returned from a visit to Abbeville, where we were much alarmed on Sunday by a fire at the Paraclete convent. The tocsin rang great part of the day, and the principal street of the town was in danger of being destroyed. In such circumstances, you will suppose, that people of all ranks eagerly crouded to offer their service, and endeavour to stop the progress of so terrible a calamity. By no means--the gates of the town were shut to prevent its entire evacuation, many hid themselves in garrets and cellars, and dragoons patrolled the streets, and even entered the houses, to force the inhabitants to assist in procuring water; while the consternation, usually the effect of such accidents, was only owing to the fear of being obliged to aid the sufferers.--This employment of military coercion for what humanity alone should dictate, is not ascribeable to the principles of the present government--it was the same before the revolution, (except that the agents of the ancient system were not so brutal and despotic as the soldiers of the republic,) and compulsion was always deemed necessary where there was no stimulant but the general interest. In England, at any alarm of the fort, all distinction of ranks is forgotten, and every one is solicitous to contribute as much as he is able to the safety of his fellow-citizens; and, so far from an armed force being requisite to procure assistance, the greatest difficulty is to repress the too-officious zeal of the croud.--I do not pretend to account for this national disparity, but I fear what a French gentleman once said to me of the Parisians is applicable to the general character, _"Ils sont tous egoistes,"_ ["They are all selfish!"] and they would not do a benevolent action at the risk of soiling a coat or tearing a ruffle. Distrust of the assignats, and scarcity of bread, have occasioned a law to oblige the farmers, in every part of the republic, to sell their corn at a certain price, infinitely lower than what they have exacted for some months past. The consequence of this was, that, on the succeeding market days, no corn came to market, and detachments of dragoons are obliged to scour the country to preserve us from a famine. If it did not convey an idea both of the despotism and want with which the nation is afflicted, one should be amused by the ludicrous figures of the farmers, who enter the town preceded by soldiers, and reposing with doleful visages on their sacks of wheat. Sometimes you see a couple of dragoons leading in triumph an old woman and an ass, who follow with lingering steps their military conductors; and the very ass seems to sympathize with his mistress on the disaster of selling her corn at a reduced price, and for paper, when she had hoped to hoard it till a counter-revolution should bring back gold and silver. The farmers are now, perhaps, the greatest aristocrates in the country; but as both their patriotism and their aristocracy have been a mere calculation of interest, the severity exercised on their avarice is not much to be regretted. The original fault is, however, in an usurped government, which inspires no confidence, and which, to supply an administration lavish beyond all example, has been obliged to issue such an immense quantity of paper as nearly destroys its credit. In political, as in moral, vices, the first always necessitates a second, and these must still be sustained by others; until, at length, the very sense of right and wrong becomes impaired, and the latter is not only preferred from habit, but from choice. Thus the arbitrary emission of paper has been necessarily followed by still more arbitrary decrees to support it. For instance--the people have been obliged to sell their corn at a stated price, which has again been the source of various and general vexations. The farmers, irritated by this measure, concealed their grain, or sold it privately, rather than bring it to market.--Hence, some were supplied with bread, and others absolutely in want of it. This was remedied by the interference of the military, and a general search for corn has taken place in all houses without exception, in order to discover if any was secreted; even our bedchambers were examined on this occasion: but we begin to be so accustomed to the visite domiciliaire, that we find ourselves suddenly surrounded by the Garde Nationale, without being greatly alarmed.--I know not how your English patriots, who are so enamoured of French liberty, yet thunder with the whole force of their eloquence against the ingress of an exciseman to a tobacco warehouse, would reconcile this domestic inquisition; for the municipalities here violate your tranquillity in this manner under any pretext they choose, and that too with an armed cortege sufficient to undertake the siege of your house in form. About fifteen departments are in insurrection, ostensibly in behalf of the expelled Deputies; but I believe I am authorized in saying, it is by no means the desire of the people at large to interfere. All who are capable of reflection consider the dispute merely as a family quarrel, and are not partial enough to either party to adopt its cause. The tropps they have already raised have been collected by the personal interest of the members who contrived to escape, or by an attempt of a few of the royalists to make one half of the faction subservient to the destruction of the other. If you judge of the principles of the nation by the success of the Foederalists,* and the superiority of the Convention, you will be extremely deceived; for it is demonstrable, that neither the most zealous partizans of the ancient system, nor those of the abolished constitution, have taken any share in the dispute; and the departments most notoriously aristocratic have all signified their adherence to the proceedings of the Assembly. * On the 31st of May and 2d of June, the Convention, who had been for some months struggling with the Jacobins and the municipality of Paris, was surrounded by an armed force: the most moderate of the Deputies (those distinguished by the name of Brissotins,) were either menaced into a compliance with the measures of the opposite faction, or arrested; others took flight, and, by representing the violence and slavery in which the majority of the Convention was holden, excited some of the departments to take arms in their favour.--This contest, during its short existence, was called the war of the Foederalists.--The result is well known. Those who would gladly take an active part in endeavouring to establish a good government, are averse from risking their lives and properties in the cause of Brissot or Condorcet.--At Amiens, where almost every individual is an aristocrate, the fugitive Deputies could not procure the least encouragement, but the town would have received Dumouriez, and proclaimed the King without opposition. But this schism in the legislature is considered as a mere contest of banditti, about the division of spoil, not calculated to excite an interest in those they have plundered and oppressed. The royalists who have been so mistaken as to make any effort on this occasion, will, I fear, fall a sacrifice, having acted for the most part without union or concert; and their junction with the Deputies renders them suspicious, if not odious, to their own party. The extreme difficulty, likewise, of communication between the departments, and the strict watch observed over all travellers, form another obstacle to the success of any attempt at present; and, on the whole, the only hope of deliverance for the French seems to rest upon the allied armies and the insurgents of La Vendee. When I say this, I do not assert from prejudices, which often deceive, nor from conjecture, that is always fallible; but from unexceptionable information--from an intercourse with various ranks of people, and a minute observance of all. I have scarcely met with a single person who does not relate the progress of the insurgents in La Vendee with an air of satisfaction, or who does not appear to expect with impatience the surrender of Conde: and even their language, perhaps unconsciously, betrays their sentiments, for I remark, they do not, when they speak of any victory gained by the arms of the republic, say, Nous, or Notre armee, but, Les Francais, and, Les troupes de la republique;--and that always in a tone as though they were speaking of an enemy.--Adieu. June 30, 1793. Our modern travellers are mostly either sentimental or philosophical, or courtly or political; and I do not remember to have read any who describe the manner of living among the gentry and middle ranks of life in France. I will, therefore, relieve your attention for a moment from our actual distresses, and give you the picture of a day as usually passed by those who have easy fortunes and no particular employment.--The social assemblage of a whole family in the morning, as in England, is not very common, for the French do not generally breakfast: when they do, it is without form, and on fruit, bread, wine, and water, or sometimes coffee; but tea is scarcely ever used, except by the sick. The morning is therefore passed with little intercourse, and in extreme dishabille. The men loiter, fiddle, work tapestry, and sometimes read, in a robe de chambre, or a jacket and _"pantalons;"_ [Trowsers.] while the ladies, equipped only in a short manteau and petticoat, visit their birds, knit, or, more frequently, idle away the forenoon without doing any thing. It is not customary to walk or make visits before dinner, and if by chance any one calls, he is received in the bedchamber. At half past one or two they dine, but without altering the negligence of their apparel, and the business of the toilette does not begin till immediately after the repast. About four, visits of ceremony begin, and may be made till six or seven according to the season; but those who intend passing an evening at any particular house, go before six, and the card parties generally finish between eight and nine. People then adjourn to their supper engagements, which are more common than those for dinner, and are, for the most part, in different places, and considered as a separate thing from the earlier amusements of the evening. They keep better hours than the English, most families being in bed by half past ten. The theatres are also regulated by these sober habits, and the dramatic representations are usually over by nine. A day passed in this manner is, as you may imagine, susceptible of much ennui, and the French are accordingly more subject to it than to any other complaint, and hold it in greatest dread than either sickness or misfortune. They have no conception how one can remain two hours alone without being ennuye a la mort; and but few, comparatively speaking, read for amusement: you may enter ten houses without seeing a book; and it is not to be wondered at that people, who make a point of staying at home all the morning, yet do not read, are embarrassed with the disposition of so much time.--It is this that occasions such a general fondness for domestic animals, and so many barbarous musicians, and male-workers of tapestry and tambour. I cannot but attribute this littleness and dislike of morning exercise to the quantity of animal food the French eat at night, and to going to rest immediately after it, in consequence of which their activity is checked by indigestions, and they feel heavy and uncomfortable for half the succeeding day.--The French pique themselves on being a gayer nation than the English; but they certainly must exclude their mornings from the account, for the forlorn and neglected figure of a Frenchman till dinner is a very antidote to chearfulness, especially if contrasted with the animation of our countrymen, whose forenoon is passed in riding or walking, and who make themselves at least decent before they appear even in their own families. The great difficulty the French have in finding amusement makes them averse from long residences in the country, and it is very uncommon for those who can afford only one house not to prefer a town; but those whose fortune will admit of it, live about three months of the year in the country, and the rest in the neighbouring town. This, indeed, as they manage it, is no very considerable expence, for the same furniture often serves for both habitations, and the one they quit being left empty, requires no person to take charge of it, especially as house-breaking is very uncommon in France; at least it was so before the revolution, when the police was more strict, and the laws against robbers were more severe. You will say, I often describe the habits and manners of a nation so frequently visited, as though I were writing from Kamschatka or Japan; yet it is certain, as I have remarked above, that those who are merely itinerant have not opportunities of observing the modes of familiar life so well as one who is stationary, and travellers are in general too much occupied by more important observations to enter into the minute and trifling details which are the subject of my communications to you. But if your attention be sometimes fatigued by occurrences or relations too well known, or of too little consequence to be interesting, I claim some merit in never having once described the proportions of a building, nor given you the history of a town; and I might have contrived as well to tax your patience by an erudite description, as a superficial reflection, or a female remark. The truth is, my pen is generally guided by circumstances as they rise, and my ideas have seldom any deeper origin than the scene before me. I have no books here, and I am apt to think if professed travellers were deprived of this resource, many learned etymologies and much profound compilation would be lost to the modern reader. The insurgents of La Vendee continue to have frequent and decided successes, but the insurrections in the other departments languish. The avowed object of liberating the Convention is not calculated to draw adherents, and if any better purpose be intended, while a faction are the promoters of it, it will be regarded with too much suspicion to procure any effectual movement. Yet, however partial and unconnected this revolt may be, it is an object of great jealousy and inquietude: all the addresses or petitions brought in favour of it are received with disapprobation, and suppressed in the official bulletin of the legislature; but those which express contrary sentiments are ordered to be inserted with the usual terms of "applaudi, adopte, et mention honorable."--In this manner the army and the people, who derive their intelligence from these accounts (which are pasted up in the streets,) are kept in ignorance of the real state of distant provinces, and, what is still more important for the Convention, the communication of examples, which they know so many are disposed to imitate, is retarded. The people here are nearly in the same state they have been in for some time--murmuring in secret, and submitting in public; expecting every thing from that energy in others which they have not themselves, and accumulating the discontents they are obliged to suppress. The Convention call them the brave republicans of Amiens; but if their bravery were as unequivocal as their aristocracy, they would soon be at the gates of Paris. Even the first levies are not all departed for the frontiers, and some who were prevailed on to go are already returned.-- All the necessaries of life are augmenting in price--the people complain, pillage the shops and the markets one day, and want the next. Many of the departments have opposed the recruiting much more decidedly than they have ventured to do here; and it was not without inspiring terror by numerous arrests, that the levies which were immediately necessary were procured.--France offers no prospect but that of scarcity, disorder, and oppression; and my friends begin to perceive that we have committed an imprudence in remaining so long. No passports can now be obtained, and we must, as well as several very respectable families still here, abide the event of the war. Some weeks have elapsed since I had letters from England, and those we receive from the interior come open, or sealed with the seal of the district. This is not peculiar to our letters, as being foreigners, but the same unceremonious inspection is practised with the correspondence of the French themselves. Thus, in this land of liberty, all epistolary intercourse has ceased, except for mere matters of business; and though in the declaration of the rights of man it be asserted, that every one is entitled to write or print his thoughts, yet it is certain no person can entrust a letter to the post, but at the risk of having it opened; nor could Mr. Thomas Paine himself venture to express the slightest disapprobation of the measures of government, without hazarding his freedom, and, in the end, perhaps, his life. Even these papers, which I reserve only for your amusement, which contain only the opinions of an individual, and which never have been communicated, I am obliged to conceal with the utmost circumspection; for should they happen to fall into the hands of our domiciliary inquisitors, I should not, like your English liberties, escape with the gentle correction of imprisonment, or the pillory.--A man, who had murdered his wife, was lately condemned to twenty years imprisonment only; but people are guillotined every day for a simple discourse, or an inadvertent expression.--Yours. Amiens, July 5, 1793. It will be some consolation to the French, if, from the wreck of their civil liberty, they be able to preserve the mode of administering justice as established by the constitution of 1789. Were I not warranted by the best information, I should not venture an opinion on the subject without much diffidence, but chance has afforded me opportunities that do not often occur to a stranger, and the new code appears to me, in many parts, singularly excellent, both as to principle and practice.--Justice is here gratuitous--those who administer it are elected by the people--they depend only on their salaries, and have no fees whatever. Reasonable allowances are made to witnesses both for time and expences at the public charge--a loss is not doubled by the costs of a prosecution to recover it. In cases of robbery, where property found is detained for the sake of proof, it does not become the prey of official rapacity, but an absolute restitution takes place.--The legislature has, in many respects, copied the laws of England, but it has simplified the forms, and rectified those abuses which make our proceedings in some cases almost as formidable to the prosecutor as to the culprit. Having to compose an entire new system, and being unshackled by professional reverence for precedents, they were at liberty to benefit by example, to reject those errors which have been long sanctioned by their antiquity, and are still permitted to exist, through our dread of innovation. The French, however, made an attempt to improve on the trial by jury, which I think only evinces that the institution as adopted in England is not to be excelled. The decision is here given by ballot--unanimity is not required--and three white balls are sufficient to acquit the prisoner. This deviation from our mode seems to give the rich an advantage over the poor. I fear, that, in the number of twelve men taken from any country, it may sometimes happen that three may be found corruptible: now the wealthy delinquent can avail himself of this human failing; but, "through tatter'd robes small vices do appear," and the indigent sinner has less chance of escaping than another. It is to be supposed, that, at this time, the vigour of the criminal laws is much relaxed, and their execution difficult. The army offers refuge and impunity to guilt of all kinds, and the magistrates themselves would be apprehensive of pursuing an offender who was protected by the mob, or, which is the same thing, by the Jacobins. The groundwork of much of the French civil jurisprudence is arbitration, particularly in those trifling processes which originate in a spirit of litigation; and it is not easy for a man here, however well disposed, to spend twenty pounds in a contest about as many pence, or to ruin himself in order to secure the possession of half an acre of land. In general, redress is easily obtained without unnecessary procrastination, and with little or no cost. Perhaps most legal codes may be simple and efficacious at their first institution, and the circumstance of their being encumbered with forms which render them complex and expensive, may be the natural consequence of length of time and change of manners. Littleton might require no commentary in the reign of Henry II. and the mysterious fictions that constitute the science of modern judicature were perhaps familiar, and even necessary, to our ancestors. It is to be regretted that we cannot adapt our laws to the age in which we live, and assimilate them to our customs; but the tendency of our nature to extremes perpetuates evils, and makes both the wise and the timid enemies to reform. We fear, like John Calvin, to tear the habit while we are stripping off the superfluous decoration; and the example of this country will probably long act as a discouragement to all change, either judicial or political. The very name of France will repress the desire of innovation--we shall cling to abuses as though they were our support, and every attempt to remedy them will become an objection of suspicion and terror.--Such are the advantages which mankind will derive from the French revolution. The Jacobin constitution is now finished, and, as far as I am able to judge, it is what might be expected from such an origin: calculated to flatter the people with an imaginary sovereignty--to place the whole power of election in the class most easily misled--to exclude from the representation those who have a natural interest in the welfare of the country, and to establish the reign of anarchy and intrigue.--Yet, however averse the greater number of the French may be from such a constitution, no town or district has dared to reject it; and I remark, that amongst those who have been foremost in offering their acceptation, are many of the places most notoriously aristocratic. I have enquired of some of the inhabitants of these very zealous towns on what principle they acted so much in opposition to their known sentiments: the reply is always, that they fear the vengeance of the Jacobins, and that they are awed by military force. This reasoning is, of course, unanswerable; and we learn, from the debates of the Convention, that the people have received the new constitution _"avec la plus vive reconnoissance,"_ ["With the most lively gratitude."] and that they have all sworn to die in its defence.--Yours, &c. July 14, 1793. The return of this day cannot but suggest very melancholy reflections to all who are witnesses of the changes which a single year has produced. In twelve months only the government of France has been overturned, her commerce destroyed, the country depopulated to raise armies, and the people deprived of bread to support them. A despotism more absolute than that of Turkey is established, the manners of the nation are corrupted, and its moral character is disgraced in the eyes of all Europe. A barbarous rage has laid waste the fairest monuments of art--whatever could embellish society, or contribute to soften existence, has disappeared under the reign of these modern Goths--even the necessaries of life are becoming rare and inadequate to the consumption--the rich are plundered and persecuted, yet the poor are in want--the national credit is in the last stage of debasement, yet an immense debt is created, and daily accumulating; and apprehension, distrust, and misery, are almost universal.--All this is the work of a set of adventurers who are now divided among themselves--who are accusing each other of those crimes which the world imputes to them all--and who, conscious they can no longer deceive the nation, now govern with the fear and suspicion of tyrants. Every thing is sacrificed to the army and Paris, and the people are robbed of their subsistence to supply an iniquitous metropolis, and a military force that awes and oppresses them. The new constitution has been received here officially, but no one seems to take the least interest in it: it is regarded in just the same light as a new tax, or any other ministerial mandate, not sent to be discussed but obeyed. The mode of proclaiming it conveyed a very just idea of its origin and tendency. It was placed on a cushion, supported by Jacobins in their red caps, and surrounded by dragoons. It seemed the image of Anarchy, guarded by Despotism.--In this manner they paraded the town, and the "sacred volume" was then deposed on an altar erected on the Grande Place.--The Garde Nationale, who were ordered to be under arms, attended, and the constitution was read. A few of the soldiers cried "Vive la republique!" and every one returned home with countenances in which delight was by no means the prevailing expression. A trifling incident which I noticed on this occasion, will serve, among others of the same kind that I could enumerate, to prove that even the very lower class of the people begin to ridicule and despise their legislators. While a municipal officer was very gravely reading the constitution, an ass forced his way across the square, and placed himself near the spot where the ceremony was performing: a boy, who was under our window, on observing it, cried out, "Why don't they give him the _accolade fraternelle!"_* * Fraternal embrace.--This is the reception given by the President to any one whom the Convention wish particularly to distinguish. On an occasion of the sort, the fraternal embrace was given to an old Negress.--The honours of the fitting are also daily accorded to deputations of fish-women, chimney-sweepers, children, and all whose missions are flattering. There is no homage so mean as not to gratify the pride of those to whom dominion is new; and these expressions are so often and so strangely applied, that it is not surprizing they are become the cant phrases of the mob. --"Yes, (rejoined another,) and admit him _aux honneurs de la feance."_ [To the honours of the fitting.] This disposition to jest with their misfortunes is, however, not so common as it was formerly. A bon mot may alleviate the loss of a battle, and a lampoon on the court solace under the burthen of a new impost; but the most thoughtless or improvident can find nothing very facetious in the prospect of absolute want--and those who have been used to laugh under a circumscription of their political liberty, feel very seriously the evil of a government which endows its members with unlimited power, and enables a Deputy, often the meanest and most profligate character of his department, to imprison all who, from caprice, interest, or vengeance, may have become the objects of his persecution. I know this will appear so monstrous to an Englishman, that, had I an opportunity of communicating such a circumstance before it were publicly authenticated, you would suppose it impossible, and imagine I had been mistaken, or had written only from report; it is nevertheless true, that every part of France is infested by these Commissioners, who dispose, without appeal, of the freedom and property of the whole department to which they are sent. It frequently happens, that men are delegated to places where they have resided, and thus have an opportunity of gratifying their personal malice on all who are so unfortunate as to be obnoxious to them. Imagine, for a moment, a village-attorney acting with uncontrouled authority over the country where he formerly exercised his profession, and you will have some idea of what passes here, except that I hope no class of men in England are so bad as those which compose the major part of the National Convention.--Yours, &c. July 23, 1793. The events of Paris which are any way remarkable are so generally circulated, that I do not often mention them, unless to mark their effect on the provinces; but you will be so much misled by the public papers with regard to the death of Marat, that I think it necessary to notice the subject while it is yet recent in my memory. Were the clubs, the Convention, or the sections of Paris to be regarded as expressing the sense of the people, the assassination of this turbulent journalist must be considered being the case, that the departments are for the most part, if not rejoiced, indifferent--and many of those who impute to him the honour of martyrdom, or assist at his apotheosis, are much better satisfied both with his christian and heathen glories, than they were while he was living to propagate anarchy and pillage. The reverence of the Convention itself is a mere political pantomime. Within the last twelve months nearly all the individuals who compose it have treated Marat with contempt; and I perfectly remember even Danton, one of the members of the Committee of Salut Publique, accusing him of being a contre revolutionnaire. But the people, to use a popular expression here, require to be electrified.--St. Fargeau is almost forgotten, and Marat is to serve the same purposes when dead, to which he contributed while living.--An extreme grossness and want of feeling form the characteristic feature of the Parisians; they are ignorant, credulous, and material, and the Convention do not fail on all occasions to avail themselves of these qualities. The corpse of Marat decently enclosed in a coffin would have made little impression, and it was not pity, but revenge, which was to be excited. The disgusting object of a dead leper was therefore exposed to the eyes of a metropolis calling itself the most refined and enlightened of all Europe-- "And what t'oblivion better were consign'd, Is hung on high to poison half mankind." I know not whether these lines are most applicable to the display of Marat's body, or the consecration of his fame, but both will be a lasting stigma on the manners and morals of Paris. If the departments, however, take no interest in the loss of Marat, the young woman who assassinated him has created a very lively one. The slightest anecdotes concerning her are collected with avidity, and repeated with admiration; and this is a still farther proof of what you have heard me advance, that neither patriotism nor humanity has an abundant growth in this country. The French applaud an act in itself horrid and unjustifiable, while they have scarcely any conception of the motive, and such a sacrifice seems to them something supernatural.--The Jacobins assert, that Charlotte Corday was an emissary of the allied powers, or, rather, of Mr. Pitt; and the Parisians have the complaisance to believe, that a young woman could devote herself to certain destruction at the instigation of another, as though the same principles which would lead a person to undertake a diplomatic commission, would induce her to meet death. I wrote some days ago to a lady of my acquaintance at Caen, to beg she would procure me some information relative to this extraordinary female, and I subjoin an extract of her answer, which I have just received: "Miss Corday was a native of this department, and had, from her earliest years, been very carefully educated by an aunt who lives at Caen. Before she was twenty she had decided on taking the veil, and her noviciate was just expired when the Constituent Assembly interdicted all religious vows for the future: she then left the convent, and resided entirely with her aunt. The beauty of her person, and particularly her mental acquisitions, which were superior to that of French women in general, rendered an object of much admiration. She spoke uncommonly well, and her discourse often turned on the ancients, and on such subjects as indicated that masculine turn of mind which has since proved so fatal to her. Perhaps her conversation was a little tinctured with that pedantry not unjustly attributed to our sex when they have a little more knowledge than usual, but, at the same time, not in such a degree as to render it unpleasant. She seldom gave any opinion on the revolution, but frequently attended the municipalities to solicit the pensions of the expelled religious, or on any other occasion where she could be useful to her friends. On the arrival of Petion, Barbaroux, and others of the Brissotin faction, she began to frequent the clubs, and to take a more lively interest in political affairs. Petion, and Barbaroux especially, seemed to be much respected by her. It was even said, she had a tender partiality for the latter; but this I believe is untrue.--I dined with her at her aunt's on the Sunday previous to her departure for Paris. Nothing very remarkable appeared in her behaviour, except that she was much affected by a muster of the recruits who were to march against Paris, and seemed to think many lives might be lost on the occasion, without obtaining any relief for the country.--On the Tuesday following she left Caen, under pretext of visiting her father, who lives at Sens. Her aunt accompanied her to the gate of the town, and the separation was extremely sorrowful on both sides. The subsequent events are too well known to need recital." On her trial, and at her execution, Miss Corday was firm and modest; and I have been told, that in her last moments her whole figure was interesting beyond description. She was tall, well formed, and beautiful--her eyes, especially, were fine and expressive--even her dress was not neglected, and a simple white dishabille added to the charms of this self-devoted victim. On the whole, it is not possible to ascertain precisely the motives which determined her to assassinate Marat. Her letter to Barbaroux expresses nothing but republican sentiments; yet it is difficult to conceive that a young woman, who had voluntarily embraced the life of a cloister, could be really of this way of thinking.--I cannot but suppose her connection with the Deputies arose merely from an idea that they might be the instruments of restoring the abolished government, and her profession of republican principles after she was arrested might probably be with a view of saving Duperret, and others of the party, who were still in the power of the Convention.--Her selection of Marat still remains to be accounted for. He was, indeed, the most violent of the Jacobins, but not the most dangerous, and the death of several others might have been more serviceable to the cause. Marat was, however, the avowed persecutor of priests and religion, and if we attribute any influence to Miss Corday's former habits, we may suppose them to have had some share in the choice of her victim. Her refusal of the ministry of a constitutional priest at the scaffold strengthens this opinion. We pay a kind of involuntary tribute of admiration to such firmness of mind in a young and beautiful woman; and I do not recollect that history has transmitted any thing parallel to the heroism of Charlotte Corday. Love, revenge, and ambition, have often sacrificed their victims, and sustained the courage of their voluntaries under punishment; but a female, animated by no personal motives, sensible only to the misfortunes of her country, patriotic both from feeling and reflection, and sacrificing herself from principle, is singular in the annals of human nature.--Yet, after doing justice to such an instance of fortitude and philanthropic devotion, I cannot but sincerely lament the act to which it has given rise. At a time when so many spirits are irritated by despair and oppression, the example may be highly pernicious, and a cause, however good, must always be injured by the use of such means in its support.--Nothing can sanctify an assassination; and were not the French more vindictive than humane, the crimes of the republican party would find a momentary refuge in this injudicious effort to punish them. My friend La Marquise de ____ has left Paris, and is now at Peronne, where she has engaged me to pass a few weeks with her; so that my next will most probably be dated from thence.--Mr. D____ is endeavouring to get a passport for England. He begins to regret having remained here. His temper, naturally impatient of restraint, accords but ill with the portion of liberty enjoyed by our republicans. Corporal privations and mental interdictions multiply so fast, that irritable people like himself, and valetudinarians like Mrs. C____ and me, could not choose a worse residence; and, as we are now unanimous on the subject, I hope soon to leave the country.--There is, as you observe in your last, something of indolence as well as friendship in my having so long remained here; but if actions were always analyzed so strictly, and we were not allowed to derive a little credit from our weaknesses, how many great characters would be reduced to the common level. Voltaire introduced a sort of rage for anecdotes, and for tracing all events to trifling causes, which has done much more towards exploding the old-fashioned system or the dignity of human nature than the dry maxims of Rochefaucault, the sophisms of Mandeville, or even the malicious wit of Swift. This is also another effect of the progress of philosophy; and this sort of moral Quixotism, continually in search of evil, and more gratified in discovering it than pained by its existence, may be very philosophical; but it is at least gloomy and discouraging; and we may be permitted to doubt whether mankind become wiser or better by learning, that those who have been most remarkable either for wisdom or virtue were occasionally under the influence of the same follies and passions as other people.--Your uncharitable discernment, you see, has led me into a digression, and I have, without intending it, connected the motives of my stay with reflections on Voltaire's General History, Barillon's Letters, and all the secret biography of our modern libraries. This, you will say, is only a chapter of a "man's importance to himself;" but public affairs are now so confused and disgusting, that we are glad to encourage any train of ideas not associated with them. The Commissioners I gave you some account of in a former letter are departed, and we have lately had Chabot, an Ex-capuchin, and a patriot of special note in the Convention, and one Dumont, an attorney of a neighbouring village. They are, like all the rest of these missionaries, entrusted with unlimited powers, and inspire apprehension and dismay wherever they approach. The Garde Nationale of Amiens are not yet entirely subdued to the times, and Chabot gave some hints of a project to disarm them, and actually attempted to arrest some of their officers; but, apprized of his design, they remained two nights under arms, and the Capuchin, who is not martially inclined, was so alarmed at this indication of resistance, that he has left the town with more haste than ceremony.--He had, in an harangue at the cathedral, inculcated some very edifying doctrines on the division of property and the right of pillage; and it is not improbable, had he not withdrawn, but the Amienois would have ventured, on this pretext, to arrest him. Some of them contrived, in spite of the centinel placed at the lodging of these great men, to paste up on the door two figures, with the names of Chabot and Dumont; in the "fatal position of the unfortunate brave;" and though certain events in the lives of these Deputies may have rendered this perspective of their last moments not absolutely a novelty, yet I do not recollect that Akenside, or any other author, has enumerated a gibbet amongst the objects, which, though not agreeable in themselves, may be reconciled to the mind by familiarity. I wish, therefore, our representatives may not, in return for this admonitory portrait of their latter end, draw down some vengeance on the town, not easily to be appeased. I am no astrologer, but in our sublunary world the conjunction of an attorney and a renegade monk cannot present a fortunate aspect; and I am truly anxious to find myself once again under the more benign influence of your English hemisphere.--Yours. Peronne, July 29, 1793. Every attempt to obtain passports has been fruitless, and, with that sort of discontented resignation which is the effect of necessity, I now look upon myself as fixed here till the peace. I left Mr. and Mrs. D____ yesterday morning, the disappointment operating upon them in full force. The former takes longer walks than usual, breaks out in philippics against tyrannies of all kinds, and swears ten times a day that the French are the most noisy people upon earth--the latter is vexed, and, for that reason, fancies she is ill, and calculates, with great ingenuity, all the hazard and inconvenience we may be liable to by remaining here. I hope, on my return, to find them more reconciled. At Villars de Bretonne, on my road hither, some people told me, with great gaiety, that the English had made a descent on the coast of Picardy. Such a report (for I did not suppose it possible) during the last war would have made me tremble, but I heard this without alarm, having, in no instance, seen the people take that kind of interest in public events which formerly made a residence in France unpleasant to an individual of an hostile nation. It is not that they are become more liberal, or better informed--no change of this kind has been discovered even by the warmest advocates of the revolution; but they are more indifferent, and those who are not decidedly the enemies of the present government, for the most part concern themselves as little about the events of the war, as though it were carried on in the South Sea. I fear I should risk an imputation on my veracity, were I to describe the extreme ignorance and inattention of the French with respect to public men and measures. They draw no conclusions from the past, form no conjectures for the future, and, after exclaiming "Il ne peut pas durer comme cela," they, with a resignation which is certainly neither pious nor philosophic, leave the rest to the agency of Providence.--Even those who are more informed so bewilder themselves in the politics of Greece and Rome, that they do not perceive how little these are applicable to their own country. Indeed, it should seem that no modern age or people is worthy the knowledge of a Frenchman.--I have often remarked, in the course of our correspondence, how little they are acquainted with what regards England or the English; and scarcely a day passes that I have not occasion to make the same observation. My conductor hither, who is a friend of Mad. de T____, and esteemed "bien instruit," was much surprized when I told him that the population and size of London exceeded that of Paris--that we had good fruit, and better vegetables than were to be found in many parts of France. I saw that he suspected my veracity, and there is always on these occasions such a decided and impenetrable incredulity in a Frenchman as precludes all hopes of convincing him. He listens with a sort of self-sufficient complacence which tells you he does not consider your assertions as any thing more than the exaggerations of national vanity, but that his politeness does not allow him to contradict you. I know nothing more disgustingly impertinent than his ignorance, which intrenches itself behind the forms of civility, and, affecting to decline controversy, assumes the merit of forbearance and moderation: yet this must have been often observed by every one who has lived much in French society: for the first emotion of a Frenchman, on hearing any thing which tends to place another country on an equality with France, is doubt--this doubt is instantly reinforced by vanity--and, in a few seconds, he is perfectly satisfied that the thing is impossible. One must be captious indeed to object to this, did it arise from that patriotic feeling so common in the English; but here it is all vanity, downright vanity: a Frenchman must have his country and his mistress admired, though he does not often care much for either one or the other. I have been in various parts of France in the most critical periods of the revolution--I have conversed with people of all parties and of all ranks--and I assert, that I have never yet met but with one man who had a grain of real patriotism. If the Athenian law were adopted which doomed all to death who should be indifferent to the public welfare in a time of danger, I fear there would be a woeful depopulation here, even among the loudest champions of democracy. It is not thirty miles from Amiens to Peronne, yet a journey of thirty miles is not now to be undertaken inconsiderately; the horses are so much worked, and so ill fed, that few perform such a distance without rest and management. If you wish to take others, and continue your route, you cannot, or if you wait while your own horses are refreshed, as a reward for your humanity you get starved yourself. Bread being very scarce, no family can get more than sufficient for its own consumption, and those who travel without first supplying themselves, do it at the risk of finding none on the road. Peronne is chiefly remarkable in history for never having been taken, and for a tower where Louis XI. was confined for a short time, after being outwitted in a manner somewhat surprizing for a Monarch who piqued himself on his talents for intrigue, by Charles le Temeraire, Duke of Burgundy. It modern reputation, arises from its election of the Abbe Maury for its representative, and for entertaining political principles every way analogous to such a choice. I found the Marquise much altered in her person, and her health much impaired, by the frequent alarms and continual apprehensions she had been subject to at Paris. Fortunately she has no imputation against her but her rank and fortune, for she is utterly guiltless of all political opinions; so that I hope she will be suffered to knit stockings, tend her birds and dogs, and read romances in peace.--Yours, &c. &c. August 1, 1793. When the creation of assignats was first proposed, much ingenuity was employed in conjecturing, and much eloquence displayed in expatiating upon, the various evils that might result from them; yet the genius of party, however usually successful in gloomy perspective, did not at that time imagine half the inconvenience this measure was fraught with. It was easy, indeed, to foresee, that an immense circulation of paper, like any other currency, must augment the price of every thing; but the excessive discredit of the assignats, operating accessarily to their quantity, has produced a train of collateral effects of greater magnitude than even those that were originally apprehended. Within the last twelve months the whole country are become monopolizers--the desire of realizing has so possessed all degrees of people, that there is scarcely an article of consumption which is not bought up and secreted. One would really suppose that nothing was perishable but the national credit--the nobleman, the merchant, the shopkeeper, all who have assignats, engage in these speculations, and the necessities of our dissipated heirs do not drive them to resources for obtaining money more whimsical than the commerce now practised here to get rid of it. I know a beau who has converted his _hypotheque_ [Mortgage.] on the national domains into train oil, and a General who has given these "airy nothings" the substance and form of hemp and leather!* * In the late rage for monopolies in France, a person who had observed the vast daily consumption of onions, garlic, and eschalots, conceived the project of making the whole district of Amiens tributary for this indispensible article. In consequence, he attended several market-days, and purchased all that came in his way. The country people finding a ready sale for their onions, poured in from all quarters, and our projector found that, in proportion as he bought, the market became more profusely supplied, and that the commodity he had hoped to monopolize was inexhaustible. Goods purchased from such motives are not as you may conceive sold till the temptation of an exorbitant profit seduces the proprietor to risk a momentary possession of assignats, which are again disposed of in a similar way. Thus many necessaries of life are withdrawn from circulation, and when a real scarcity ensues, they are produced to the people, charged with all the accumulated gains of these intermediate barters. This illiberal and pernicious commerce, which avarice and fear have for some time kept in great activity, has at length attracted the notice of the Convention, and very severe laws are now enacted against monopolies of all kinds. The holder of any quantity of merchandize beyond what he may be supposed to consume is obliged to declare it to his municipality, and to expose the articles he deals in in writing over his door. These clauses, as well as every other part of the decree, seem very wise and equitable; but I doubt if the severity of the punishment annexed to any transgression of it will not operate so as to defeat the purposes intended to be produced. A false declaration is punishable by six years imprisonment, and an absolute non-compliance with death.--Blackstone remarks, that it is the certainty, not the severity, of punishment, which makes laws efficacious; and this must ever be the case amongst an humane people.--An inordinate desire of gain is not often considered by mankind as very criminal, and those who would willingly subject it to its adequate punishment of fine and confiscation, will hesitate to become the means of inflicting death on the offender, or of depriving him of his liberty. The Poets have, from time immemorial, claimed a kind of exclusive jurisdiction over the sin of avarice: but, unfortunately, minds once steeled by this vice are not often sensible to the attacks of ridicule; and I have never heard that any poet, from Plautus to Moliere, has reformed a single miser. I am not, therefore, sorry that our legislature has encroached on this branch of the poetical prerogative, and only wish that the mild regimen of the Muses had been succeeded by something less rigid than the prison or the guillotine. It is true, that, in the present instance, it is not the ordinary and habitual practice of avarice that has called forth the severity of the laws, but a species so destructive and extensive in its consequences, that much may be said in defence of any penalty short of death; and such is the general distrust of the paper-money, that I really believe, had not some measure of the kind been adopted, no article susceptible of monopoly would have been left for consumption. There are, however, those who retort on the government, and assert, that the origin of the evil is in the waste and peculation of its agents, which also make the immense emission of paper more necessary; and they are right in the fact, though not in their deduction, for as the evil does exist whatever may be the cause, it is certainly wise to endeavour to remedy it. The position of Valenciennes, which is supposed to be on the eve of a surrender--the progress of the insurgents in La Vendee--the discontents in the South--and the charge of treachery against so many of the Generals, and particularly Custine--all together seem to have agitated the public extremely: yet it is rather the agitation of uncertainty than that occasioned by any deep impression of hope or fear. The people wish to be relieved from their present situation, yet are without any determinate views for the future; and, indeed, in this part of the country, where they have neither leaders nor union, it would be very difficult for them to take a more active part. The party of the foederalists languish, merely because it is nothing more than a party, and a party of which the heads excite neither interest nor esteem. I conclude you learn from the papers all the more important events, and I confine myself, as usual, to such details as I think less likely to reach you. The humanity of the English must often banish their political animosities when they read what passes here; and thousands of my countrymen must at this moment lament with me the situation to which France is reduced by projects in which common sense can distinguish no medium between wickedness and folly. All apparent attachment to royalism is now cautiously avoided, but the royalists do not diminish by persecution, and the industry with which they propagate their opinions is nearly a match for all the force armee of the republicans.--It is not easy to print pamphlets or newspapers, but there are certain shops which one would think were discovered by instinct, where are sold a variety of mysterious emblems of royalty, such as fans that have no visible ornaments except landscapes, &c. but when opened by the initiated, present tolerable likenesses of the Royal Family; snuff-boxes with secret lids, containing miniature busts of the late King; and music so ingeniously printed, that what to the common eye offers only some popular air, when folded so as to join the heads and tails of the notes together, forms sentences of very treasonable import, and by no means flattering to the existing government--I have known these interdicted trifles purchased at extravagant prices by the best-reputed patriots, and by officers who in public breathe nothing but unconquerable democracy, and detestation of Kings. Yet, though these things are circulated with extreme caution, every body has something of the sort, and, as Charles Surface says, "for my part, I don't see who is out of the secret." The belief in religious miracles is exploded, and it is only in political ones that the faith of the people is allowed to exercise itself.--We have lately seen exhibited at the fairs and markets a calf, produced into the world with the tri-coloured cockade on its head; and on the painted cloth that announces the phoenomenon is the portrait of this natural revolutionist, with a mayor and municipality in their official scarfs, addressing the four-footed patriot with great ceremony. We set out early to-morrow-morning for Soissons, which is about twenty leagues from hence. Travelling is not very desirable in the present circumstances, but Mad. de F____ has some affairs to settle there which cannot well be entrusted to a third person. The times, however, have a very hostile appearance, and we intend, if possible, to be absent but three days.--Yours. Soissons, August 4, 1793. "And you may go by Beauvais if you will, for which reason many go by Beauvais;" and the stranger who turns out of his road to go by Soissons, must use the same reasoning, for the consciousness of having exercised his free agency will be all his reward for visiting Soissons. This, by the way; for my journey hither not being one of curiosity, I have no right to complain; yet somehow or other, by associating the idea of the famous Vase, the ancient residence of the first French Kings, and other circumstances as little connected as these I suppose with modern history, I had ranked Soissons in my imagination as one of the places I should see with interest. I find it, however, only a dull, decent-looking town, tolerably large, but not very populous. In the new division of France it is the capital of the department De l'Aisne, and is of course the seat of the administration. We left Peronne early, and, being so fortunate as to encounter no accidental delays, we arrived within a league of Soissons early in the afternoon. Mad. de F____, recollecting an acquaintance who has a chateau not far out of our road, determined to stop an hour or two; for, as she said, her friend was so "fond of the country," she should be sure to find him there. We did, indeed, find this Monsieur, who is so "fond of the country," at home, extremely well powdered, dressed in a striped silk coat, and engaged with a card party, on a warm afternoon on the third of August.--The chateau was situated as a French chateau usually is, so as to be benefited by all the noises and odours of the village--built with a large single front, and a number of windows so judiciously placed, that it must be impossible either to be cool in summer or warm in winter. We walked out after taking some coffee, and I learned that this lover of the country did not keep a single acre of land in his own hands, but that the part immediately contiguous to the house was cultivated for a certain share of the profit by a farmer who lives in a miserable looking place adjoining, and where I saw the operations of the dairy-maid carried on amidst pigs, ducks, and turkeys, who seemed to have established a very familiar access. Previous to our arrival at Soissons, the Marquise (who, though she does not consider me as an aristocrate, knows I am by no means a republican,) begged me to be cautious in expressing my sentiments, as the Comte de ____, where we were going, had embraced the principles of the revolution very warmly, and had been much blamed by his family on this account. Mad. de F____ added, that she had not seen him for above a year, but that she believed him still to be "extremement patriote." We reached Mons. de ____'s just as the family were set down to a very moderate supper, and I observed that their plate had been replaced by pewter. After the first salutations were over, it was soon visible that the political notions of the count were much changed. He is a sensible reflecting man, and seems really to wish the good of his country. He thinks, with many others, that all the good effects which might have been obtained by the revolution will be lost through the contempt and hatred which the republican government has drawn upon it. Mons. de ____ has two sons who have distinguished themselves very honourably in the army, and he has himself made great pecuniary sacrifices; but this has not secured him from numerous domiciliary visits and vexations of all kinds. The whole family are at intervals a little pensive, and Mons. de ____ told us, at a moment when the ladies were absent, that the taking of Valenciennes had occasioned a violent fermentation at Paris, and that he had serious apprehensions for those who have the misfortune to be distinguished by their rank, or obnoxious from their supposed principles--that he himself, and all who were presumed to have an attachment to the constitution of eighty-nine, were much more feared, and of course more suspected, than the original aristocrates--and "enfin" that he had made up his mind a la Francaise to the worst that could happen. I have just run over the papers of the day, and I perceive that the debates of the Convention are filled with invectives against the English. A letter has been very opportunely found on the ramparts of Lisle, which is intended to persuade the people that the British government has distributed money and phosphoric matches in every town in France--the one to provoke insurrection, the other to set fire to the corn.* You will conclude this letter to be a fabrication, and it is imagined and executed with so little ingenuity, that I doubt whether it will impose on the most ignorant of the people for a moment. * "The National Convention, in the name of violated humanity, denounces to all the world, and to the people of England in particular, the base, perfidious, and wicked conduct of the British government, which does not hesitate to employ fire, poison, assassination, and every other crime, to procure the triumph of tyranny, and the destruction of the rights of man." (Decree, 1st August, 1793.) The Queen has been transferred to the Conciergerie, or common prison, and a decree is passed for trying her; but perhaps at this moment (whatever may be the result hereafter) they only hope her situation may operate as a check upon the enemy; at least I have heard it doubted by many whether they intend to proceed seriously on this trial so long threatened.-- Perhaps I may have before noticed to you that the convention never seemed capable of any thing great or uniform, and that all their proceedings took a tinge from that frivolity and meanness which I am almost tempted to believe inherent in the French character. They have just now, amidst a long string of decrees, the objects of which are of the first consequence, inserted one for the destruction of all the royal tombs before the tenth of August, and another for reducing the expences of the King's children, particularly their food, to bare necessaries. Had our English revolutionists thus employed themselves, they might have expelled the sculptured Monarchs from the Abbey, and waged a very successful war on the admirers of Gothic antiquity; but neither the Stuarts, nor the Catholic religion, would have had much to fear from them. We have been wandering about the town all day, and I have not remarked that the successes of the enemy have occasioned any regret. When I was in France three years ago, you may recollect that my letters usually contained some relation of our embarrassment and delays, owing to the fear and ignorance of the people. At one place they apprehended the introduction of foreign troops--at another, that the Comte d'Artois was to burn all the corn. In short, the whole country teemed with plots and counterplots, every one of which was more absurd and inexplicable than those of Oates, with his whole tribe of Jesuits. At present, when a powerful army is invading the frontiers, and people have not in many places bread to eat, they seem to be very little solicitous about the former, and as little disposed to blame the aristocrates for the latter. It is really extraordinary, after all the pains that have been taken to excite hatred and resentment against the English, that I have not heard of a single instance of their having been insulted or molested. Whatever inconveniencies they may have been subjected to, were acts of the government, not of the people; and perhaps this is the first war between the two nations in which the reverse has not been the case. I accompanied Mad. de ____ this afternoon to the house of a rich merchant, where she had business, and who, she told me, had been a furious patriot, but his ardour is now considerably abated. He had just returned from the department, [Here used for the place where the public business is transacted.] where his affairs had led him; and he assures us, that in general the agents of the republic were more inaccessible, more insolent, corrupt, and ignorant, than any employed under the old government. He demurred to paying Mad. de ____ a sum of money all in _assignats a face;_* and this famous patriot would readily have given me an hundred livres for a pound sterling. * _Assignats a face_--that is, with the King's effigy; at this time greatly preferred to those issued after his death. We shall return to Peronne to-morrow, and I have availed myself of the hour between cards and supper, which is usually employed by the French in undressing, to scribble my remarks. In some families, I suppose, supping in dishabille is an arrangement of oeconomy, in others of ease; but I always think it has the air of preparation for a very solid meal; and, in effect, supping is not a mere ceremony with either sex in this country. I learnt in conversation with M. de ____, whose sons were at Famars when the camp was forced, that the carnage was terrible, and that the loss of the French on this occasion amounted to several thousands. You will be informed of this much more accurately in England, but you will scarcely imagine that no official account was ever published here, and that in general the people are ignorant of the circumstance, and all the disasters attending it. In England, you have opposition papers that amply supply the omissions of the ministerial gazettes, and often dwell with much complacence on the losses and defeats of their country; here none will venture to publish the least event which they suppose the government wish to keep concealed. I am told, a leading feature of republican governments is to be extremely jealous of the liberty of the press, and that of France is, in this respect, truly republican.--Adieu. Peronne, August, 1793. I have often regretted, my dear brother, that my letters have for some time been rather intended to satisfy your curiosity than your affection. At this moment I feel differently, and I rejoice that the inquietude and danger of my situation will, probably, not come to your knowledge till I shall be no longer subject to them. I have been for several days unwell, and yet my body, valetudinarian as I am at best, is now the better part of me; for my mind has been so deranged by suspense and terror, that I expect to recover my health long before I shall be able to tranquillize my spirits. On our return from Soissons I found, by the public prints, that a decree had passed for arresting all natives of the countries with which France is at war, and who had not constantly resided there since 1789.--This intelligence, as you will conceive, sufficiently alarmed me, and I lost no time in consulting Mad. de ____'s friends on the subject, who were generally of opinion that the decree was merely a menace, and that it was too unjust to be put in execution. As some days elapsed and no steps were taken in consequence, I began to think they were right, and my spirits were somewhat revived; when one evening, as I was preparing to go to bed, my maid suddenly entered the room, and, before she could give me any previous explanation, the apartment was filled with armed men. As soon as I was collected enough to enquire the object of this unseasonable visit, I learned that all this military apparel was to put the seals on my papers, and convey my person to the Hotel de Ville!--I knew it would be vain to remonstrated, and therefore made an effort to recover my spirits and submit. The business, however, was not yet terminated, my papers were to be sealed--and though they were not very voluminous, the process was more difficult than you would imagine, none of the company having been employed on affairs of the kind before. A debate ensued on the manner in which it should be done, and, after a very tumultuous discussion, it was sagaciously concluded to seal up the doors and windows of all the apartments appropriated to my use. They then discovered that they had no seal fit for the purpose, and a new consultation was holden on the propriety of affixing a cypher which was offered them by one of the Garde Nationale. This weighty matter being at length decided, the doors of my bedchamber, dressing-room, and of the apartments with which they communicated, were carefully fastened up, though not without an observation on my part that I was only a guest at Mad. de ____'s, and that an order to seize my papers or person was not a mandate for rendering a part of her home useless. But there was no reasoning with ignorance and a score of bayonets, nor could I obtain permission even to take some linen out of my drawers. On going down stairs, I found the court and avenues to the garden amply guarded, and with this numerous escort, and accompanied by Mad. de ____, I was conducted to the Hotel de Ville. I know not what resistance they might expect from a single female, but, to judge by their precautions, they must have deemed the adventure a very perilous one. When we arrived at the Hotel de Ville, it was near eleven o'clock: the hall was crouded, and a young man, in a dirty linen jacket and trowsers and dirty linen, with the air of a Polisson and the countenance of an assassin, was haranguing with great vehemence against the English, who, he asserted, were all agents of Pitt, (especially the women,) and were to set fire to the corn, and corrupt the garrisons of the fortified towns.-- The people listened to these terrible projects with a stupid sort of surprize, and, for the most part, seemed either very careless or very incredulous. As soon as this inflammatory piece of eloquence was finished, I was presented to the ill-looking orator, who, I learned, was a representant du peuple. It was very easy to perceive that my spirits were quite overpowered, and that I could with difficulty support myself; but this did not prevent the representant du peuple from treating me with that inconsiderable brutality which is commonly the effect of a sudden accession of power on narrow and vulgar minds. After a variety of impertinent questions, menaces of a prison for myself, and exclamations of hatred and vengeance against my country, on producing some friends of Mad. de ____, who were to be answerable for me, I was released, and returned home more dead than alive. You must not infer, from what I have related, that I was particularly distinguished on this occasion, for though I have no acquaintance with the English here, I understand they had all been treated much in the same manner.--As soon as the representant had left the town, by dint of solicitation we prevailed on the municipality to take the seal off the rooms, and content themselves with selecting and securing my papers, which was done yesterday by a commission, formally appointed for the purpose. I know not the quality of the good citizens to whom this important charge was entrusted, but I concluded from their costume that they had been more usefully employed the preceding part of the day at the anvil and last. It is certain, however, they had undertaken a business greatly beyond their powers. They indeed turned over all my trunks and drawers, and dived to the bottom of water-jugs and flower-jars with great zeal, but neglected to search a large portfolio that lay on the table, probably from not knowing the use of it; and my servant conveyed away some letters, while I amused them with the sight of a blue-bottle fly through a microscope. They were at first much puzzled to know whether books and music were included under the article of papers, and were very desirous of burning a history of France, because they discovered, by the title-plate, that it was "about Kings;" but the most difficult part of this momentous transaction was taking an account of it in writing. However, as only one of the company could write, there was no disputing as to the scribe, though there was much about the manner of execution. I did not see the composition, but I could hear that it stated "comme quoi," they had found the seals unbroken, "comme quoi," they had taken them off, and divers "as hows" of the same kind. The whole being concluded, and my papers deposited in a box, I was at length freed from my guests, and left in possession of my apartments. It is impossible to account for this treatment of the English by any mode of reasoning that does not exclude both justice and policy; and viewing it only as a symptom of that desperate wickedness which commits evil, not as a means, but an end, I am extremely alarmed for our situation. At this moment the whole of French politics seems to center in an endeavour to render the English odious both as a nation and as individuals. The Convention, the clubs, and the streets of Paris, resound with low abuse of this tendency; and a motion was made in the former, by one Garnier, to procure the assassination of Mr. Pitt. Couthon, a member of the Comite de Salut Publique, has proposed and carried a decree to declare him the enemy of mankind; and the citizens of Paris are stunned by the hawkers of Mr. Pitt's plots with the Queen to "starve all France," and "massacre all the patriots."--Amidst so many efforts* to provoke the destruction of the English, it is wonderful, when we consider the sanguinary character which the French people have lately evinced, that we are yet safe, and it is in effect only to be accounted for by their disinclination to take any part in the animosities of their government. * When our representative appeared at Abbeville with an intention of arresting the English and other foreigners, the people, to whom these missionaries with unlimited powers were yet new, took the alarm, and became very apprehensive that he was come likewise to disarm their Garde Nationale. The streets were crouded, the town house was beset, and Citizen Dumout found it necessary to quiet the town's people by the following proclamation. One part of his purpose, that of insuring his personal safety, was answered by it; but that of exciting the people against the English, failed-- insomuch, that I was told even the lowest classes, so far from giving credit to the malignant calumnies propagated against the English, openly regretted their arrestation. "Citizens, "On my arrival amongst you, I little thought that malevolence would be so far successful as to alarm you on the motives of my visit. Could the aristocrates, then, flatter themselves with the hope of making you believe I had the intention of disarming you? Be deaf, I beseech you, to so absurd a calumny, and seize on those who propagate it. I came here to fraternize with you, and to assist you in getting rid of those malcontents and foreigners, who are striving to destroy the republic by the most infernal manoeuvres.--An horrible plot has been conceived. Our harvests are to be fired by means of phosphoric matches, and all the patriots assassinated. Women, priests, and foreigners, are the instruments employed by the coalesced despots, and by England above all, to accomplish these criminal designs.--A law of the first of this month orders the arrest of all foreigners born in the countries with which the republic is at war, and not settled in France before the month of July, 1789. In execution of this law I have required domiciliary visits to be made. I have urged the preservation of the public tranquillity. I have therefore done my duty, and only what all good citizens must approve." I have just received a few lines from Mrs. D____, written in French, and put in the post without sealing. I perceive, by the contents, though she enters into no details, that circumstances similar to those I have described have likewise taken place at Amiens. In addition to my other anxieties, I have the prospect of a long separation from my friends; for though I am not in confinement, I cannot, while the decree which arrested me remains in force, quit the town of Peronne. I have not often looked forward with so little hope, or so little certainty, and though a first-rate philosopher might make up his mind to a particular event, yet to be prepared for any thing, and all things, is a more difficult matter. The histories of Greece and Rome have long constituted the grand resources of French eloquence, and it is not till within a few days that an orator has discovered all this good learning to be of no use--not, as you might imagine, because the moral character and political situation of the French differ from those of the Greeks and Romans, but because they are superior to all the people who ever existed, and ought to be cited as models, instead of descending to become copyists. "Therefore, continues this Jacobin sage, (whose name is Henriot, and who is highly popular,) let us burn all the libraries and all the antiquities, and have no guide but ourselves--let us cut off the heads of all the Deputies who have not voted according to our principles, banish or imprison all the gentry and the clergy, and guillotine the Queen and General Custine!" These are the usual subjects of discussion at the clubs, and the Convention itself is not much more decent. I tremble when I recollect that I am in a country where a member of the legislature proposes rewards for assassination, and the leader of a society, that pretends to inform and instruct the people, argues in favour of burning all the books. The French are on the eve of exhibiting the singular spectacle of a nation enlightened by science, accustomed to the benefit of laws and the enjoyment of arts, suddenly becoming barbarous by system, and sinking into ignorance from choice.--When the Goths shared the most curious antiques by weight, were they not more civilized than the Parisian of 1793, who disturbs the ashes of Henry the Fourth, or destroys the monument of Turenne, by a decree?--I have myself been forced to an act very much in the spirit of the times, but I could not, without risking my own safety, do otherwise; and I sat up late last night for the purpose of burning Burke, which I had brought with me, but had fortunately so well concealed, that it escaped the late inquisition. I indeed made this sacrifice to prudence with great unwillingness--every day, by confirming Mr. Burke's assertions, or fulfilling his predictions, had so increased my reverence for the work, that I regarded it as a kind of political oracle. I did not, however, destroy it without an apologetic apostrophe to the author's benevolence, which I am sure would suffer, were he to be the occasion, though involuntarily, of conducting a female to a prison or the Guillotine. "How chances mock, and changes fill the cup of alteration up with divers liquors."--On the same hearth, and in a mingled flame, was consumed the very constitution of 1789, on which Mr. Burke's book was a censure, and which would now expose me to equal danger were it to be found in my possession. In collecting the ashes of these two compositions, the tendency of which is so different, (for such is the complexion of the moment, that I would not have even the servant suspect I had been burning a quantity of papers,) I could not but moralize on the mutability of popular opinion. Mr. Burke's Gallic adversaries are now most of them proscribed and anathematized more than himself. Perhaps another year may see his bust erected on the piedestal which now supports that of Brutus or Le Pelletier. The letters I have written to you since the communication was interrupted, with some other papers that I am solicitous to preserve, I have hitherto always carried about me, and I know not if any danger, merely probable, will induce me to part with them. You will not, I think, suspect me of attaching any consequence to my scribblings from vanity; and if I run some personal risk in keeping them, it is because the situation of this country is so singular, and the events which occur almost daily so important, that the remarks of any one who is unlucky enough to be a spectator, may interest, without the advantage of literary talents.--Yours. Peronne, August 24, 1793. I have been out to-day for the first time since the arrest of the English, and, though I have few acquaintances here, my adventure at the Hotel de Ville has gained me a sort of popularity. I was saluted by many people I did not know, and overwhelmed with expressions of regret for what had happened, or congratulations on my having escaped so well. The French are not commonly very much alive to the sufferings of others, and it is some mortification to my vanity that I cannot, but at the expence of a reproaching conscience, ascribe the civilities I have experienced on this occasion to my personal merit. It would doubtless have been highly flattering to me to relate the tender and general interest I had excited even among this cold-hearted people, who scarcely feel for themselves: but the truth is, they are disposed to take the part of any one whom they think persecuted by their government; and their representative, Dumont, is so much despised in his private character, and detested in his public one, that it suffices to have been ill treated by him, to ensure one a considerable portion of the public good will. This disposition is not a little consolatory, at a time when the whole rage of an oligarchical tyranny, though impotent against the English as a nation, meanly exhausts itself on the few helpless individuals within its power. Embarrassments accumulate and if Mr. Pitt's agents did not most obligingly write letters, and these letters happen to be intercepted just when they are most necessary, the Comite de Salut Publique would be at a loss how to account for them. Assignats have fallen into a discredit beyond example, an hundred and thirty livres having been given for one Louis-d'or; and, as if this were not the natural result of circumstances like the present, a correspondence between two Englishmen informs us, that it is the work of Mr. Pitt, who, with an unparalleled ingenuity, has contrived to send couriers to every town in France, to concert measures with the bankers for this purpose. But if we may believe Barrere, one of the members of the Committee, this atrocious policy of Mr. Pitt will not be unrevenged, for another intercepted letter contains assurances that an hundred thousand men have taken up arms in England, and are preparing to march against the iniquitous metropolis that gives this obnoxious Minister shelter. My situation is still the same--I have no hope of returning to Amiens, and have just reason to be apprehensive for my tranquillity here. I had a long conversation this morning with two people whom Dumont has left here to keep the town in order during his absence. The subject was to prevail on them to give me a permission to leave Peronne, but I could not succeed. They were not, I believe, indisposed to gratify me, but were afraid of involving themselves. One of them expressed much partiality for the English, but was very vehement in his disapprobation of their form of government, which he said was "detestable." My cowardice did not permit me to argue much in its behalf, (for I look upon these people as more dangerous than the spies of the old police,) and I only ventured to observe, with great diffidence, that though the English government was monarchical, yet the power of the Crown was very much limited; and that as the chief subjects of our complaints at present were not our institutions, but certain practical errors, they might be remedied without any violent or radical changes; and that our nobility were neither numerous nor privileged, and by no means obnoxious to the majority of the people.--_"Ah, vous avez donc de la noblesse blesse en Angleterre, ce sont peut-etre les milords,"_ ["What, you have nobility in England then? The milords, I suppose."] exclaimed our republican, and it operated on my whole system of defence like my uncle Toby's smoke-jack, for there was certainly no discussing the English constitution with a political critic, who I found was ignorant even of the existence of a third branch of it; yet this reformer of governments and abhorrer of Kings has power delegated to him more extensive than those of an English Sovereign, though I doubt if he can write his own language; and his moral reputation is still less in his favour than his ignorance--for, previous to the revolution, he was known only as a kind of swindler, and has more than once been nearly convicted of forgery.--This is, however, the description of people now chiefly employed, for no honest man would accept of such commissions, nor perform the services annexed to them. Bread continues very scarce, and the populace of Paris are, as usual, very turbulent; so that the neighbouring departments are deprived of their subsistence to satisfy the wants of a metropolis that has no claim to an exemption from the general distress, but that which arises from the fears of the Convention. As far as I have opportunity of learning or observing, this part of France is in that state of tranquillity which is not the effect of content but supineness; the people do not love their government, but they submit to it, and their utmost exertions amount only to a little occasional obstinacy, which a few dragoons always reduce to compliance. We are sometimes alarmed by reports that parties of the enemy are approaching the town, when the gates are shut, and the great bell is toll'd; but I do not perceive that the people are violently apprehensive about the matter. Their fears are, I believe, for the most part, rather personal than political--they do not dread submission to the Austrians, but military licentiousness. I have been reading this afternoon Lord Orrery's definition of the male Cecisbeo, and it reminds me that I have not yet noticed to you a very important class of females in France, who may not improperly be denominated female Cecisbeos. Under the old system, when the rank of a woman of fashion had enabled her to preserve a degree of reputation and influence, in spite of the gallantries of her youth and the decline of her charms, she adopted the equivocal character I here allude to, and, relinquishing the adorations claimed by beauty, and the respect due to age, charitably devoted herself to the instruction and advancement of some young man of personal qualifications and uncertain fortune. She presented him to the world, panegyrized him into fashion, and insured his consequence with one set of females, by hinting his successes with another. By her exertions he was promoted in the army or distinguished at the levee, and a career begun under such auspices often terminated in a brilliant establishment.--In the less elevated circle, a female Cecisbeo is usually of a certain age, of an active disposition, and great volubility, and her functions are more numerous and less dignified. Here the grand objects are not to besiege Ministers, nor give a "ton" to the protege at a fashionable ruelle, but to obtain for him the solid advantages of what she calls _"un bon parti."_ [A good match.] To this end she frequents the houses of widows and heiresses, vaunts the docility of his temper, and the greatness of his expectations, enlarges on the solitude of widowhood, or the dependence and insignificance of a spinster; and these prefatory encomiums usually end in the concerted introduction of the Platonic "ami." But besides these principal and important cares, a female Cecisbeo of the middle rank has various subordinate ones--such as buying linen, choosing the colour of a coat, or the pattern of a waistcoat, with all the minutiae of the favourite's dress, in which she is always consulted at least, if she has not the whole direction. It is not only in the first or intermediate classes that these useful females abound, they are equally common in more humble situations, and only differ in their employments, not in their principles. A woman in France, whatever be her condition, cannot be persuaded to resign her influence with her youth; and the bourgeoise who has no pretensions to court favour or the disposal of wealthy heiresses, attaches her eleve by knitting him stockings, forcing him with bons morceaux till he has an indigestion, and frequent regales of coffee and liqueur. You must not conclude from all this that there is any gallantry implied, or any scandal excited--the return for all these services is only a little flattery, a philosophic endurance of the card-table, and some skill in the disorders of lap-dogs. I know there are in England, as well as in France, many notable females of a certain age, who delight in what they call managing, and who are zealous in promoting, matches among the young people of their acquaintance; but for one that you meet with in England there are fifty here. I doubt much if, upon the whole, the morals of the English women are not superior to those of the French; but however the question may be decided as to morals, I believe their superiority in decency of manners is indisputable--and this superiority is, perhaps, more conspicuous in women of a certain age, than in the younger part of the sex. We have a sort of national regard for propriety, which deters a female from lingering on the confines of gallantry, when age has warned her to withdraw; and an old woman that should take a passionate and exclusive interest about a young man not related to her, would become at least an object of ridicule, if not of censure:--yet in France nothing is more common; every old woman appropriates some youthful dangler, and, what is extraordinary, his attentions are not distinguishable from those he would pay to a younger object.--I should remark, however, as some apology for these juvenile gallants, that there are very few of what we call Tabbies in France; that is, females of severe principles and contracted features, in whose apparel every pin has its destination with mathematical exactness, who are the very watch-towers of a neighbourhood, and who give the alarm on the first appearance of incipient frailty. Here, antique dowagers and faded spinsters are all gay, laughing, rouged, and indulgent--so that 'bating the subtraction of teeth and addition of wrinkles, the disparity between one score and four is not so great: "Gay rainbow silks their mellow charms enfold, Nought of these beauties but themselves is old." I know if I venture to add a word in defence of Tabbyhood, I shall be engaged in a war with yourself and all our young acquaintance; yet in this age, which so liberally "softens, and blends, and weakens, and dilutes" away all distinctions, I own I am not without some partiality for strong lines of demarcation; and, perhaps, when fifty retrogrades into fifteen, it makes a worse confusion in society than the toe of the peasant treading on the heel of the courtier.--But, adieu: I am not gay, though I trifle. I have learnt something by my residence in France, and can be, as you see, frivolous under circumstances that ought to make me grave.--Yours. Peronne, August 29, 1793. The political horizon of France threatens nothing but tempests. If we are still tranquil here, it is only because the storm is retarded, and, far from deeming ourselves secure from its violence, we suffer in apprehension almost as much as at other places is suffered in reality. An hundred and fifty people have been arrested at Amiens in one night, and numbers of the gentry in the neighbouring towns have shared the same fate. This measure, which I understand is general throughout the republic, has occasioned great alarms, and is beheld by the mass of the people themselves with regret. In some towns, the Bourgeois have petitions to the Representatives on mission in behalf of their gentry thus imprisoned: but, far from succeeding, all who have signed such petitions are menaced and intimidated, and the terror is so much increased, that I doubt if even this slight effort will be repeated any where. The levee en masse, or rising in a body, which has been for some time decreed, has not yet taken place. There are very few, I believe, that comprehend it, and fewer who are disposed to comply. Many consultations have been holden, many plans proposed; but as the result of all these consultations and plans is to send a certain number to the frontiers, the suffrages have never been unanimous except in giving their negative.-- Like Falstaff's troops, every one has some good cause of exemption; and if you were to attend a meeting where this affair is discussed, you would conclude the French to be more physically miserable than any people on the glove. Youths, in apparent good health, have internal disorders, or concealed infirmities--some are near-sighted--others epileptic--one is nervous, and cannot present a musquet--another is rheumatic, and cannot carry it. In short, according to their account, they are a collection of the lame, the halt, and the blind, and fitter to send to the hospital, than to take the field. But, in spite of all these disorders and incapacities, a considerable levy must be made, and the dragoons will, I dare say, operate very wonderful cures. The surrender of Dunkirk to the English is regarded as inevitable. I am not politician enough to foresee the consequences of such an event, but the hopes and anxieties of all parties seem directed thither, as if the fate of the war depended on it. As for my own wishes on the subject, they are not national, and if I secretly invoke the God of Armies for the success of my countrymen, it is because I think all that tends to destroy the present French government may be beneficial to mankind. Indeed, the successes of war can at no time gratify a thinking mind farther than as they tend to the establishment of peace. After several days of a mockery which was called a trial, though the witnesses were afraid to appear, or the Counsel to plead in his favour, Custine has suffered at the Guillotine. I can be no judge of his military conduct, and Heaven alone can judge of his intentions. None of the charges were, however, substantiated, and many of them were absurd or frivolous. Most likely, he has been sacrificed to a cabal, and his destruction makes a part of that system of policy, which, by agitating the minds of the people with suspicions of universal treason and unfathomable plots, leaves them no resource but implicit submission to their popular leaders. The death of Custine seems rather to have stimulated than appeased the barbarity of the Parisian mob. At every defeat of their armies they call for executions, and several of those on whom the lot has fallen to march against the enemy have stipulated, at the tribune of the Jacobins, for the heads they exact as a condition of their departure,* or as the reward for their labours. The laurel has no attraction for heroes like these, who invest themselves with the baneful yew and inauspicious cypress, and go to the field of honour with the dagger of the assassin yet ensanguined. * Many insisted they would not depart until after the death of the Queen--some claimed the death of one General, some that of another, and all, the lives or banishment of the gentry and clergy. "Fair steeds, gay shields, bright arms," [Spencer.] the fancy-created deity, the wreath of fame, and all that poets have imagined to decorate the horrors of war, are not necessary to tempt the gross barbarity of the Parisian: he seeks not glory, but carnage--his incentive is the groans of defenceless victims--he inlists under the standard of the Guillotine, and acknowledges the executioner for his tutelary Mars. In remarking the difficulties that have occurred in carrying into execution the levee en masse, I neglected to inform you that the prime mover of all these machinations is your omnipotent Mr. Pitt--it is he who has fomented the perverseness of the towns, and alarmed the timidity of the villages--he has persuaded some that it is not pleasant to leave their shops and families, and insinuated into the minds of others that death or wounds are not very desirable--he has, in fine, so effectually achieved his purpose, that the Convention issues decree after decree, the members harangue to little purpose, and the few recruits already levied, like those raised in the spring, go from many places strongly escorted to the army.--I wish I had more peaceful and more agreeable subjects for your amusement, but they do not present themselves, and "you must blame the times, not me." I would wish to tell you that the legislature is honest, that the Jacobins are humane, and the people patriots; but you know I have no talent for fiction, and if I had, my situation is not favourable to any effort of fancy.--Yours. Peronne, Sept. 7, 1793. The successes of the enemy on all sides, the rebellion at Lyons and Marseilles, with the increasing force of the insurgents in La Vendee, have revived our eagerness for news, and if the indifference of the French character exempt them from more patriotic sensations, it does not banish curiosity; yet an eventful crisis, which in England would draw people together, here keeps them apart. When an important piece of intelligence arrives, our provincial politicians shut themselves up with their gazettes, shun society, and endeavour to avoid giving an opinion until they are certain of the strength of a party, or the success of an attempt. In the present state of public affairs, you may therefore conceive we have very little communication--we express our sentiments more by looks and gestures than words, and Lavater (admitting his system) would be of more use to a stranger than Boyer or Chambaud. If the English take Dunkirk, perhaps we may be a little more social and more decided. Mad. de ____ has a most extensive acquaintance, and, as we are situated on one of the roads from Paris to the northern army, notwithstanding the cautious policy of the moment, we are tolerably well informed of what passes in most parts of France; and I cannot but be astonished, when I combine all I hear, that the government is able to sustain itself. Want, discord, and rebellion, assail it within--defeats and losses from without. Perhaps the solution of this political problem can only be found in the selfishness of the French character, and the want of connection between the different departments. Thus one part of the country is subdued by means of another: the inhabitants of the South take up arms in defence of their freedom and their commerce, while those of the North refuse to countenance or assist them, and wait in selfish tranquillity till the same oppression is extended to themselves. The majority of the people have no point of union nor mode of communication, while the Jacobins, whose numbers are comparatively insignificant, are strong, by means of their general correspondence, their common center at Paris, and the exclusive direction of all the public prints. But, whatever are the causes, it is certain that the government is at once powerful and detested--almost without apparent support, yet difficult to overthrow; and the submission of Rome to a dotard and a boy can no longer excite the wonder of any one who reflects on what passes in France. After various decrees to effect the levee en masse, the Convention have discovered that this sublime and undefined project was not calculated for the present exhausted state of martial ardour. They therefore no longer presume on any movement of enthusiasm, but have made a positive and specific requisition of all the male inhabitants of France between eighteen and twenty-five years of age. This, as might be expected, has been more effectual, because it interests those that are exempt to force the compliance of those who are not. Our young men here were like children with a medicine--they proposed first one form of taking this military potion, then another, and finding them all equally unpalatable, would not, but for a little salutary force, have decided at all. A new law has been passed for arresting all the English who cannot produce two witnesses of their civisme, and those whose conduct is thus guaranteed are to receive tickets of hospitality, which they are to wear as a protection. This decree has not yet been carried into effect at Peronne, nor am I much disturbed about it. Few of our countrymen will find the matter very difficult to arrange, and I believe they have all a better protection in the disposition of the people towards them, than any that can be assured them by decrees of the Convention. Sept. 11. The news of Lord Hood's taking possession of Toulon, which the government affected to discredit for some days, is now ascertained; and the Convention, in a paroxism of rage, at once cowardly and unprincipled, has decreed that all the English not resident in France before 1789, shall be imprisoned as hostages, and be answerable with their lives for the conduct of their countrymen and of the Toulonese towards Bayle and Beauvais, two Deputies, said to be detained in the town at the time of its surrender. My first emotions of terror and indignation have subsided, and I have, by packing up my clothes, disposing of my papers, and providing myself with money, prepared for the worst. My friends, indeed, persuade me, (as on a former occasion,) that the decree is too atrocious to be put in execution; but my apprehensions are founded on a principle not likely to deceive me--namely, that those who have possessed themselves of the French government are capable of any thing. I live in constant fear, watching all day and listening all night, and never go to bed but with the expectation of being awakened, nor rise without a presentiment of misfortune.--I have not spirits nor composure to write, and shall discontinue my letters until I am relieved from suspense, if nor from uneasiness. I risk much by preserving these papers, and, perhaps, may never be able to add to them; but whatever I may be reserved for, while I have a hope they may reach you they shall not be destroyed. --I bid you adieu in a state of mind which the circumstances I am under will describe better than words.--Yours. Maison d'Arret, Arras, Oct. 15, 1793. Dear Brother, The fears of a timid mind usually magnify expected evil, and anticipated suffering often diminishes the effect of an apprehended blow; yet my imagination had suggested less than I have experienced, nor do I find that a preparatory state of anxiety has rendered affliction more supportable. The last month of my life has been a compendium of misery; and my recollection, which on every other subject seems to fail me, is, on this, but too faithful, and will enable me to relate events which will interest you not only as they personally concern me, but as they present a picture of the barbarity and despotism to which this whole country is subject, and to which many thousands besides myself were at the same instant victims. A few evenings after I concluded my last, the firing of cannon and ringing the great bell announced the arrival of Dumont (still Representative en mission in our department). The town was immediately in alarm, all the gates were shut, and the avenues leading to the ramparts guarded by dragoons. Our house being in a distant and unfrequented street, before we could learn the cause of all this confusion, a party of the national guard, with a municipal officer at their head, arrived, to escort Mad. de ___ and myself to a church, where the Representant was then examining the prisoners brought before him. Almost as much astonished as terrified, we endeavoured to procure some information of our conductors, as to what was to be the result of this measure; but they knew nothing, and it was easy to perceive they thought the office they were executing an unpleasant one. The streets we passed were crouded with people, whose silent consternation and dismayed countenances increased our forebodings, and depressed the little courage we had yet preserved. The church at our arrival was nearly empty, and Dumont preparing to depart, when the municipal officer introduced us to him. As soon as he learned that Mad. de ____ was the sister of an emigrant, and myself a native of England, he told us we were to pass the night in a church appointed for the purpose, and that on the morrow we should be conveyed to Arras. For a moment all my faculties became suspended, and it was only by an effort almost convulsive that I was able to ask how long it was probable we should be deprived of our liberty. He said he did not know--"but that the raising of the siege of Dunkirk, and the loss of six thousand troops which the French had taken prisoners, would doubtless produce an insurrection in England, par consequent a peace, and our release from captivity!" You may be assured I felt no desire of freedom on such terms, and should have heard this ignorant and malicious suggestion only with contempt, had not the implication it conveyed that our detention would not terminate but with the war overwhelmed every other idea. Mad. de ____ then petitioned that we might, on account of our health, (for we were both really unwell,) be permitted to go home for the night, accompanied by guards if it were thought necessary. But the Representant was inexorable, and in a brutal and despotic tone ordered us away.--When we reached the church, which was to be our prison till morning, we found about an hundred and fifty people, chiefly old men, women, and children, dispersed in melancholy groupes, lamenting their situation, and imparting their fears to each other. The gloom of the building was increased by the darkness of the night; and the noise of the guard, may of whom were intoxicated, the odour of tobacco, and the heat of the place, rendered our situation almost insupportable. We soon discovered several of our acquaintance, but this association in distress was far from consolatory, and we passed the time in wandering about together, and consulting upon what would be of most use to us in our confinement. We had, indeed, little to hope for from the morrow, yet the hours dragged on heavily, and I know not if ever I beheld the return of light with more pleasure. I was not without apprehension for our personal safety. I recollected the massacres in churches at Paris, and the frequent propositions that had been made to exterminate the gentry and clergy. Mad. de ____ has since confessed, that she had the same ideas. Morning at length came, and our servants were permitted to enter with breakfast. They appeared sorrowful and terror-stricken, but offered with great willingness to accompany us whithersoever we should be sent. After a melancholy sort of discussion, it was decided that we should take our femmes de chambres, and that the others should remain for the safety of the house, and to send us what we might have occasion for. This settled, they returned with such directions as we were able to give them, (God knows, not very coherent ones,) to prepare for our journey: and as our orders, however confused, were not very voluminous, they were soon executed, and before noon every thing was in readiness for our departure. The people employed by our companions were equally diligent, and we might very well have set out by one o'clock, had our case been at all considered; but, I know not why, instead of so providing that we might reach our destination in the course of the day, it seemed to have been purposely contrived that we should be all night on the road, though we had already passed one night without rest, and were exhausted by watching and fatigue. In this uncertain and unpleasant state we waited till near six o'clock; a number of small covered waggons were then brought, accompanied by a detachment of dragoons, who were to be our escort. Some time elapsed, as you may suppose, before we could be all settled in the carriages and such a cavalcade put in motion; but the concourse of people that filled the streets, the appearance of the troops, and the tumult occasioned by so many horses and carriages, overpowered my spirits, and I remember little of what passed till I found we were on the road to Arras. Mad. de ____'s maid now informed us, that Dumont had arrived the evening before in extreme ill humour, summoned the municipality in haste, enquired how many people they had arrested, and what denunciations they had yet to make. The whole body corporate trembled, they had arrested no one, and, still worse, they had no one to accuse; and could only alledge in their behalf, that the town was in the utmost tranquillity, and the people were so well disposed, that all violence was unnecessary. The Representant became furious, vociferated _tout grossierement a la Francaise,_ [In the vulgar French manner.] that he knew there were five thousand aristocrates in Peronne, and that if he had not at least five hundred brought him before morning, he would declare the town in a state of rebellion. Alarmed by this menace, they began to arrest with all possible speed, and were more solicitous to procure their number than to make discriminations. Their diligence, however, was inadequate to appease the choleric legislator, and the Mayor, municipal officers, and all the administrators of the district, were in the morning sent to the Castle, whence they are to be conveyed, with some of their own prisoners, to Amiens. Besides this intelligence, we learned that before our servants had finished packing up our trunks, some Commissioners of the section arrived to put the seals on every thing belonging to us, and it was not without much altercation that they consented to our being furnished with necessaries--that they had not only sealed up all the house, but had placed guards there, each of whom Mad. de ____ is to pay, at the rate of two shillings a day. We were too large a body to travel fast, and by the time we reached Bapaume (though only fifteen miles) it was after twelve; it rained dreadfully, the night was extremely dark, the roads were bad, and the horses tired; so that the officer who conducted us thought it would be difficult to proceed before morning. We were therefore once more crouded into a church, in our wet clothes, (for the covering of the waggon was not thick enough to exclude the rain,) a few bundles of damp straw were distributed, and we were then shut up to repose as well as we could. All my melancholy apprehensions of the preceding night returned with accumulated force, especially as we were now in a place where we were unknown, and were guarded by some of the newly-raised dragoons, of whom we all entertained very unfavourable suspicions. We did not, as you may well imagine, attempt to sleep--a bed of wet straw laid on the pavement of a church, filthy, as most French churches are, and the fear of being assassinated, resisted every effort of nature herself, and we were very glad when at the break of day we were summoned to continue our journey. About eleven we entered Arras: the streets were filled by idle people, apprized of our arrival; but no one offered us any insult, except some soldiers, (I believe, by their uniform, refugees from the Netherlands,) who cried, "a la Guillotine!--a la Guillotine!" The place to which we were ordered had been the house of an emigrant, now converted into an house of detention, and which, though large, was excessively full. The keeper, on our being delivered to him, declared he had no room for us, and we remained with our baggage in the court-yard some hours before he had, by dislodging and compressing the other inhabitants, contrived to place us. At last, when we were half dead with cold and fatigue, we were shown to our quarters. Those allotted for my friend, myself, and our servants, was the corner of a garret without a cieling, cold enough in itself, but rendered much warmer than was desirable by the effluvia of a score of living bodies, who did not seem to think the unpleasantness of their situation at all increased by dirt and offensive smells. Weary as we were, it was impossible to attempt reposing until a purification had been effected: we therefore set ourselves to sprinkling vinegar and burning perfumes; and it was curious to observe that the people, (_all gens comme il faut_ [People of fashion.]) whom we found inhaling the atmosphere of a Caffrarian hut, declared their nerves were incommoded by the essence of roses and vinaigre des quatre voleurs. As a part of the room was occupied by men, our next business was to separate our corner by a curtain, which we had fortunately brought with our bedding; and this done, we spread our mattresses and lay down, while the servants were employed in getting us tea. As soon as we were a little refreshed, and the room was quiet for the night, we made up our beds as well as we could, and endeavoured to sleep. Mad. de ____ and the two maids soon forgot their cares; but, though worn out by fatigue, the agitation of my mind conquered the disposition of my body. I seemed to have lost the very faculty of sleeping, and passed this night with almost as little repose as the two preceding ones. Before morning I discovered that remaining so long in damp clothes, and the other circumstances of our journey, had given me cold, and that I had all the symptoms of a violent fever. I leave you to conjecture, for it would be impossible to detail, all the misery of illness in such a situation; and I will only add, that by the care of Mad. de ____, whose health was happily less affected, and the attention of my maid, I was able to leave the room in about three weeks. --I must now secrete this for some days, but will hereafter resume my little narrative, and explain how I have ventured to write so much even in the very neighbourhood of the Guillotine.--Adieu. Maison d'Arret, Arras, Oct. 17, 1793. On the night I concluded my last, a report that Commissioners were to visit the house on the morrow obliged me to dispose of my papers beyond the possibility of their being found. The alarm is now over, and I proceed.--After something more than three weeks indisposition, I began to walk in the yard, and make acquaintance with our fellow-prisoners. Mad. de ____ had already discovered several that were known to her, and I now found, with much regret, that many of my Arras friends were here also. Having been arrested some days before us, they were rather more conveniently lodged, and taking the wretchedness of our garret into consideration, it was agreed that Mad. de ____ should move to a room less crouded than our own, and a dark closet that would just contain my mattresses was resigned to me. It is indeed a very sorry apartment, but as it promises me a refuge where I may sometimes read or write in peace, I have taken possession of it very thankfully. A lock on the door is not the least of its recommendations, and by way of securing myself against all surprize, I have contrived an additional fastening by means of a large nail and the chain of a portmanteau--I have likewise, under pretext of keeping out the wind, papered over the cracks of the door, and provided myself with a sand-bag, so that no one can perceive when I have a light later than usual.--With these precautions, I can amuse myself by putting on paper any little occurrences that I think worth preserving, without much danger, and perhaps the details of a situation so new and so strange may not be uninteresting to you. We are now about three hundred in number of both sexes, and of all ages and conditions--ci-devant noblesse, parents, wives, sisters, and other relations of emigrants--priests who have not taken the oaths, merchants and shopkeepers accused of monopoly, nuns, farmers that are said to have concealed their corn, miserable women, with scarcely clothes to cover them, for not going to the constitutional mass, and many only because they happened to be at an inn, or on a visit from their own town, when a general arrest took place of all who are what is called etrangers, that is to say, not foreigners only, but not inhabitants of the town where they are found.--There are, besides, various descriptions of people sent here on secret informations, and who do not themselves know the precise reason of their confinement. I imagine we are subject to nearly the same rules as the common prisons: no one is permitted to enter or speak to a "detenu" but at the gate, and in presence of the guard; and all letters, parcels, baskets, &c. are examined previous to their being either conveyed from hence or received. This, however, depends much on the political principles of those who happen to be on guard: an aristocrate or a constitutionalist will read a letter with his eyes half shut, and inspect bedding and trunks in a very summary way; while a thorough-paced republican spells every syllable of the longest epistle, and opens all the roasted pigs or duck-pies before he allows their ingress.--None of the servants are suffered to go out, so that those who have not friends in the town to procure them necessaries are obliged to depend entirely on the keeper, and, of course, pay extravagantly dear for every thing; but we are so much in the power of these people, that it is prudent to submit to such impositions without murmuring. I did not, during my illness, read the papers, and have to-day been amusing myself with a large packet. General Houchard, I find, is arrested, for not having, as they say he might have done, driven all the English army into the sea, after raising the siege of Dunkirk; yet a few weeks ago their utmost hopes scarcely amounted to the relief of the town: but their fears having subsided, they have now leisure to be jealous; and I know no situation so little to be envied under the present government as that of a successful General.--Among all their important avocations, the Convention have found time to pass a decree for obliging women to wear the national cockade, under pain of imprisonment; and the municipality of the superb Paris have ordered that the King's family shall, in future, use pewter spoons and eat brown bread! Oct. 18. I begin to be very uneasy about Mr. and Mrs. D____. I have written several times, and still receive no answer. I fear they are in a confinement more severe than my own, or that our letters miscarry. A servant of Mad. de ____'s was here this morning, and no letters had come to Peronne, unless, as my friend endeavours to persuade me, the man would not venture to give them in presence of the guard, who par excellence happened to be a furious Jacobin.--We had the mortification of hearing that a very elegant carriage of Mad. de ____'s has been put in requisition, and taken to convey a tinman and two farriers who were going to Paris on a mission--that two of her farmer's best horses had been killed by hard work in taking provisions to the army, and that they are now cutting down the young wood on her estate to make pikes.--The seals are still on our effects, and the guard remains in possession, which has put us to the expence of buying a variety of articles we could not well dispense with: for, on examining the baggage after our arrival, we found it very much diminshed; and this has happened to almost all the people who have been arrested. Our suspicions naturally fall on the dragoons, and it is not very surprizing that they should attempt to steal from those whom they are certain would not dare to make any complaint. Many of our fellow-prisoners are embarrassed by their servants having quitted them.--One Collot d'Herbois, a member of the Commite de Salut Public, has proposed to the Convention to collect all the gentry, priests, and suspected people, into different buildings, which should be previously mined for the purpose, and, on the least appearance of insurrection, to blow them up all together.--You may perhaps conclude, that such a project was received with horror, and the adviser of it treated as a monster. Our humane legislature, however, very coolly sent it to the committee to be discussed, without any regard to the terror and apprehension which the bare idea of a similar proposal must inspire in those who are the destined victims. I cannot myself believe that this abominable scheme is intended for execution, but it has nevertheless created much alarm in timid minds, and has occasioned in part the defection of the servants I have just mentioned. Those who were sufficiently attached to their masters and mistresses to endure the confinement and privations of a Maison d'Arret, tremble at the thoughts of being involved in the common ruin of a gunpowder explosion; and the men seem to have less courage than the women, at least more of the latter have consented to remain here.--It was atrocious to publish such a conception, though nothing perhaps was intended by it, as it may deprive many people of faithful attendants at a time when they are most necessary. We have a tribunal revolutionnaire here, with its usual attendant the Guillotine, and executions are now become very frequent. I know not who are the sufferers, and avoid enquiring through fear of hearing the name of some acquaintance. As far as I can learn, the trials are but too summary, and little other evidence is required than the fortune, rank, and connections of the accused. The Deputy who is Commissioner for this department is one Le Bon, formerly a priest--and, I understand, of an immoral and sanguinary character, and that it is he who chiefly directs the verdicts of the juries according to his personal hatred or his personal interest.--We have lately had a very melancholy instance of the terror created by this tribunal, as well as of the notions that prevail of its justice. A gentleman of Calais, who had an employ under the government, was accused of some irregularity in his accounts, and, in consequence, put under arrest. The affair became serious, and he was ordered to prison, as a preliminary to his trial. When the officers entered his apartment to take him, regarding the judicial procedure as a mere form, and concluding it was determined to sacrifice him, he in a frenzy of despair seized the dogs in the chimney, threw them at the people, and, while they escaped to call for assistance, destroyed himself by cutting his arteries.--It has appeared, since the death of this unfortunate man, that the charge against him was groundless, and that he only wanted time to arrange his papers, in order to exonerate himself entirely. Oct. 19. We are disturbed almost nightly by the arrival of fresh prisoners, and my first question of a morning is always _"N'est il pas du monde entre la nuit?"_--Angelique's usual reply is a groan, and _"Ah, mon Dieu, oui;" "Une dixaine de pretres;"_ or, _"Une trentaine de nobles:"_ ["Did not some people arrive in the night?"]--"Yes, God help us--half a score priests, or twenty or thirty gentry." And I observe the depth of the groan is nearly in proportion to the quality of the person she commiserates. Thus, a groan for a Comte, a Marquise, or a Priest, is much more audible than one for a simple gentlewoman or a merchant; and the arrival of a Bishop (especially if not one of the constitutional clergy) is announced in a more sorrowful key than either. While I was walking in the yard this morning, I was accosted by a female whom I immediately recollected to be Victoire, a very pretty _couturiere,_ [Sempstress.] who used to work for me when I was at Panthemont, and who made your last holland shirts. I was not a little surprized to see her in such a situation, and took her aside to enquire her history. I found that her mother was dead, and that her brother having set up a little shop at St. Omer, had engaged her to go and live with him. Being under five-and-twenty, the last requisition obliged him to depart for the army, and leave her to carry on the business alone. Three weeks after, she was arrested at midnight, put into a cart, and brought hither. She had no time to take any precautions, and their little commerce, which was in haberdashery, as well as some work she had in hand, is abandoned to the mercy of the people that arrested her. She has reason to suppose that her crime consists in not having frequented the constitutional mass; and that her accuser is a member of one of the town committees, who, since her brother's absence, has persecuted her with dishonourable proposals, and, having been repulsed, has taken this method of revenging himself. Her conjecture is most probably right, as, since her imprisonment, this man has been endeavouring to make a sort of barter with her for her release. I am really concerned for this poor creature, who is at present a very good girl, but if she remain here she will not only be deprived of her means of living, but perhaps her morals may be irremediably corrupted. She is now lodged in a room with ten or dozen men, and the house is so crouded that I doubt whether I have interest enough to procure her a more decent apartment. What can this strange policy tend to, that thus exposes to ruin and want a girl of one-and-twenty--not for any open violation of the law, but merely for her religious opinions; and this, too, in a country which professes toleration as the basis of its government? My friend, Mad. de ____ s'ennui terribly; she is not incapable of amusing herself, but is here deprived of the means. We have no corner we can call our own to sit in, and no retreat when we wish to be out of a croud except my closet, where we can only see by candle-light. Besides, she regrets her employments, and projects for the winter. She had begun painting a St. Theresa, and translating an Italian romance, and had nearly completed the education of a dozen canary birds, who would in a month's time have accompanied the harp so delightfully, as to overpower the sound of the instrument. I believe if we had a few more square inches of room, she would be tempted, if not to bring the whole chorus, at least to console herself with two particular favourites, distinguished by curious topknots, and rings about their necks. With all these feminine propensities, she is very amiable, and her case is indeed singularly cruel and unjust.--Left, at an early age, under the care of her brother, she was placed by him at Panthemont (where I first became acquainted with her) with an intention of having her persuaded to take the veil; but finding her averse from a cloister, she remained as a pensioner only, till a very advantageous marriage with the Marquis de ____, who was old enough to be her father, procured her release. About two years ago he died, and left her a very considerable fortune, which the revolution has reduced to nearly one-third of its former value. The Comte de ____, her brother, was one of the original patriots, and embraced with great warmth the cause of the people; but having very narrowly escaped the massacres of September, 1792, he immediately after emigrated. Thus, my poor friend, immured by her brother till the age of twenty-two in a convent, then sacrificed three years to a husband of a disagreeable temper and unsuitable age, is now deprived of the first liberty she ever enjoyed, and is made answerable for the conduct of a man over whom she has no sort of influence. It is not, therefore, extraordinary that she cannot reconcile herself to her present situation, and I am really often more concerned on her account than my own. Cut off from her usual resources, she has no amusement but wandering about the house; and if her other causes of uneasiness be not augmented, they are at least rendered more intolerable by her inability to fill up her time.--This does not arise from a deficiency of understanding, but from never having been accustomed to think. Her mind resembles a body that is weak, not by nature, but from want of exercise; and the number of years she has passed in a convent has given her that mixture of childishness and romance, which, my making frivolities necessary, renders the mind incapable of exertion or self-support. Oct. 20. The unfortunate Queen, after a trial of some days, during which she seems to have behaved with great dignity and fortitude, is no longer sensible of the regrets of her friends or the malice of her enemies. It is singular, that I have not yet heard her death mentioned in the prison --every one looks grave and affects silence. I believe her death has not occasioned an effect so universal as that of the King, and whatever people's opinions may be, they are afraid of expressing them: for it is said, though I know not with what truth, that we are surrounded by spies, and several who have the appearance of being prisoners like ourselves have been pointed out to me as the objects of this suspicion. I do not pretend to undertake the defence of the Queen's imputed faults-- yet I think there are some at least which one may be very fairly permitted to doubt. Compassion should not make me an advocate for guilt --but I may, without sacrificing morals to pity, venture to observe, that the many scandalous histories circulated to her prejudice took their rise at the birth of the Dauphin,* which formed so insurmountable a bar to the views of the Duke of Orleans.-- * Nearly at the same time, and on the same occasion, there were literary partizans of the Duke of Orleans, who endeavoured to persuade the people that the man with the iron mask, who had so long excited curiosity and eluded conjecture, was the real son of Louis XIII.--and Louis XIV. in consequence, supposititious, and only the illegitimate offspring of Cardinal Mazarin and Anne of Austria--that the spirit of ambition and intrigue which characterized this Minister had suggested this substitution to the lawful heir, and that the fears of the Queen and confusion of the times had obliged her to acquiesce: "Cette opinion ridicule, et dont les dates connues de l'histoire demontrent l'absurdite, avoit eu des partisans en France--elle tendoit a avilir la maison regnante, et a persuader au peuple que le trone n'appartient pas aux descendans de Louis XIV. prince furtivement sutstitue, mais a la posterite du second fils de Louis XIII. qui est la tige de la branche d'Orleans, et qui est reconnue comme descendant legitimement, et sans objection, du Roi Louis XIII." --Nouvelles Considerations sur la Masque de Fer, Memoirs de Richelieu. "This ridiculous opinion, the absurdity of which is demonstrated by historical dates, had not been without its partizans in France.--It tended to degrade the reigning family, and to make the people believe that the throne did not of right belong to the descendants of Louis XIV. (a prince surreptitiously intruded) but to the posterity of the second son of Louis XIII. from whom is derived the branch of Orleans, and who was, without dispute, the legitimate and unobjectionable offspring of Louis XIII." --New Considerations on the Iron Mask.--Memoirs of the Duc de Richelieu. The author of the above Memoirs adds, that after the taking of the Bastille, new attempts were made to propagate this opinion, and that he himself had refuted it to many people, by producing original letters and papers, sufficiently demonstrative of its absurdity. --He might hope, by popularity, to supersede the children of the Count d'Artois, who was hated; but an immediate heir to the Crown could be removed only by throwing suspicions on his legitimacy. These pretensions, it is true, were so absurd, and even incredible, that had they been urged at the time, no inference in the Queen's favour would have been admitted from them; but as the existence of such projects, however absurd and iniquitous, has since been demonstrated, one may now, with great appearance of reason, allow them some weight in her justification. The affair of the necklace was of infinite disservice to the Queen's reputation; yet it is remarkable, that the most furious of the Jacobins are silent on this head as far as it regarded her, and always mention the Cardinal de Rohan in terms that suppose him to be the culpable party: but, "whatever her faults, her woes deserve compassion;" and perhaps the moralist, who is not too severe, may find some excuse for a Princess, who, at the age of sixteen, possibly without one real friend or disinterested adviser, became the unrestrained idol of the most licentious Court in Europe. Even her enemies do not pretend that her fate was so much a merited punishment as a political measure: they alledge, that while her life was yet spared, the valour of their troops was checked by the possibility of negotiation; and that being no more, neither the people nor armies expecting any thing but execration or revenge, they will be more ready to proceed to the most desperate extremities.--This you will think a barbarous sort of policy, and considering it as national, it appears no less absurd than barbarous; but for the Convention, whose views perhaps extend little farther than to saving their heads, peculating, and receiving their eighteen livres a day, such measures, and such a principle of action, are neither unwise nor unaccountable: "for the wisdom of civilized nations is not their wisdom, nor the ways of civilized people their ways."*-- * I have been informed, by a gentleman who saw the Queen pass in her way to execution, that the short white bed gown and the cap which she wore were discoloured by smoke, and that her whole appearance seemed to have been intended, if possible, to degrade her in the eyes of the multitude. The benevolent mind will recollect with pleasure, that even the Queen's enemies allow her a fortitude and energy of character which must have counteracted this paltry malice, and rendered it incapable of producing any emotion but contempt. On her first being removed to the Conciergerie, she applied for some necessaries; but the humane municipality of Paris refused them, under pretext that the demand was contrary to the system of _la sainte elagite_--"holy equality." --It was reported that the Queen was offered her life, and the liberty to retire to St. Cloud, her favourite residence, if she would engage the enemy to raise the siege of Maubeuge and withdraw; but that she refused to interfere. Arras, 1793. For some days previous to the battle by which Maubeuge was relieved, we had very gloomy apprehensions, and had the French army been unsuccessful and forced to fall back, it is not improbable but the lives of those detained in the _Maison d'Arret_ [House of detention.] might have been sacrificed under pretext of appeasing the people, and to give some credit to the suspicions so industriously inculcated that all their defeats are occasioned by internal enemies. My first care, as soon as I was able to go down stairs, was to examine if the house offered any means of escape in case of danger, and I believe, if we could preserve our recollection, it might be practicable; but I can so little depend on my strength and spirits, should such a necessity occur, that perhaps the consolation of knowing I have a resource is the only benefit I should ever derive from it. Oct. 21. I have this day made a discovery of a very unpleasant nature, which Mad. de ____ had hitherto cautiously concealed from me. All the English, and other foreigners placed under similar circumstances, are now, without exception, arrested, and the confiscation of their property is decreed. It is uncertain if the law is to extend to wearing apparel, but I find that on this ground the Committee of Peronne persist in refusing to take the seals off my effects, or to permit my being supplied with any necessaries whatsoever. In other places they have put two, four, and, I am told, even to the number of six guards, in houses belonging to the English; and these guards, exclusive of being paid each two shillings per day, burn the wood, regale on the wine, and pillage in detail all they can find, while the unfortunate owner is starving in a Maison d'Arret, and cannot obtain permission to withdraw a single article for his own use.--The plea for this paltry measure is, that, according to the report of a deserter escaped from Toulon, Lord Hood has hanged one Beauvais, a member of the Convention. I have no doubt but the report is false, and, most likely, fabricated by the Comite de Salut Public, in order to palliate an act of injustice previously meditated. It is needless to expatiate on the atrocity of making individuals, living here under the faith of the nation, responsible for the events of the war, and it is whispered that even the people are a little ashamed of it; yet the government are not satisfied with making us accountable for what really does happen, but they attribute acts of cruelty to our countrymen, in order to excuse those they commit themselves, and retaliate imagined injuries by substantial vengeance.--Legendre, a member of the Convention, has proposed, with a most benevolent ingenuity, that the manes of the aforesaid Beauvais should be appeased by exhibiting Mr. Luttrell in an iron cage for a convenient time, and then hanging him. A gentleman from Amiens, lately arrested while happening to be here on business, informs me, that Mr. Luttrell is now in the common gaol of that place, lodged with three other persons in a miserable apartment, so small, that there is not room to pass between their beds. I understand he was advised to petition Dumont for his removal to a Maison d'Arret, where he would have more external convenience; but he rejected this counsel, no doubt from a disdain which did him honour, and preferred to suffer all that the mean malice of these wretches would inflict, rather than ask any accommodation as a favour.--The distinguishing Mr. Luttrell from any other English gentleman is as much a proof of ignorance as of baseness; but in this, as in every thing else, the present French government is still more wicked than absurd, and our ridicule is suppressed by our detestation. Oct. 22. Mad. de ____'s _homme d'affaires_ [Agent] has been here to-day, but no news from Amiens. I know not what to conjecture. My patience is almost exhausted, and my spirits are fatigued. Were I not just now relieved by a distant prospect of some change for the better, my situation would be insupportable.--"Oh world! oh world! but that thy strange mutations make us wait thee, life would not yield to age." We should die before our time, even of moral diseases, unaided by physical ones; but the uncertainty of human events, which is the "worm i'the bud" of happiness, is to the miserable a cheering and consolatory reflection. Thus have I dragged on for some weeks, postponing, as it were, my existence, without any resource, save the homely philosophy of _"nous verrons demain."_ ["We shall see to-morrow."] At length our hopes and expectations are become less general, and if we do not obtain our liberty, we may be able at least to procure a more eligible prison. I confess, the source of our hopes, and the protector we have found, are not of a dignity to be ushered to your notice by citations of blank verse, or scraps of sentiment; for though the top of the ladder is not quite so high, the first rounds are as low as that of Ben Bowling's. Mad. de ____'s confidential servant, who came here to-day, has learned, by accident, that a man, who formerly worked with the Marquis's tailor, having (in consequence, I suppose of a political vocation,) quitted the selling of old clothes, in which he had acquired some eminence, has become a leading patriot, and is one of Le Bon's, the Representative's, privy counsellors. Fleury has renewed his acquaintance with this man, has consulted him upon our situation, and obtained a promise that he will use his interest with Le Bon in our behalf. Under this splendid patronage, it is not unlikely but we may get an order to be transferred to Amiens, or, perhaps, procure our entire liberation. We have already written to Le Bon on the subject, and Fleury is to have a conference with our friend the tailor in a few days to learn the success of his mediation; so that, I trust, the business will not be long in suspense. We have had a most indulgent guard to-day, who, by suffering the servant to enter a few paces within the gate, afforded us an opportunity of hearing this agreeable intelligence; as also, by way of episode, that boots being wanted for the cavalry, all the boots in the town were last night put in requisition, and as Fleury was unluckily gone to bed before the search was made at his inn, he found himself this morning very unceremoniously left bootless. He was once a famous patriot, and the oracle of Mad. de ____'s household; but our confinement had already shaken his principles, and this seizure of his "superb English boots" has, I believe, completed his defection. Oct. 25. I have discontinued my journal for three days to attend my friend, Mad. de ____, who has been ill. Uneasiness, and want of air and exercise, had brought on a little fever, which, by the usual mode of treatment in this country, has been considerably increased. Her disorder did not indeed much alarm me, but I cannot say as much of her medical assistants, and it seems to me to be almost supernatural that she has escaped the jeopardy of their prescriptions. In my own illness I had trusted to nature, and my recollection of what had been ordered me on similar occasions; but for Mad. de ____ I was less confident, and desirous of having better advice, begged a physician might be immediately sent for. Had her disorder been an apoplexy, she must infallibly have died, for as no person, not even the faculty, can enter, without an order from the municipal Divan, half a day elapsed before this order could be procured. At length the physician and surgeon arrived, and I know not why the learned professions should impose on us more by one exterior than another; but I own, when I saw the physician appear in a white camblet coat, lined with rose colour, and the surgeon with dirty linen, and a gold button and loop to his hat, I began to tremble for my friend. My feminine prejudices did not, however, in this instance, deceive me. After the usual questions, the patient was declared in a fever, and condemned to cathartics, bleeding, and "bon bouillons;" that is to say, greasy beef soup, in which there is never an oeconomy of onions.--When they were departed, I could not help expressing my surprize that people's lives should be entrusted to such hands, observing, at the same time, to the Baron de L____, (who is lodged in the same apartment with Mad. de ____,) that the French must never expect men, whose education fitted them for the profession, would become physicians, while they continued to be paid at the rate of twenty-pence per visit.-- Yet, replied the Baron, if they make twenty visits a day, they gain forty livres--_"et c'est de quoi vivre."_ [It is a living.] It is undeniably _de quoi vivre,_ but as long as a mere subsistence is the only prospect of a physician, the French must be content to have their fevers cured by "drastics, phlebotomy, and beef soup." They tell me we have now more than five hundred detenus in this single house. How so many have been wedged in I can scarcely conceive, but it seems our keeper has the art of calculating with great nicety the space requisite for a given number of bodies, and their being able to respire freely is not his affair. Those who can afford it have their dinners, with all the appurtenances, brought from the inns or traiteurs; and the poor cook, sleep, and eat, by scores, in the same room. I have persuaded my friend to sup as I do, upon tea; but our associates, for the most part, finding it inconvenient to have suppers brought at night, and being unwilling to submit to the same privations, regale themselves with the remains of their dinner, re-cooked in their apartments, and thus go to sleep, amidst the fumes of _perdrix a l'onion, oeufs a la tripe,_ [Partridge a l'onion--eggs a la tripe.] and all the produce of a French kitchen. It is not, as you may imagine, the Bourgeois, and less distinguished prisoners only, who indulge in these highly-seasoned repasts, at the expence of inhaling the savoury atmosphere they leave behind them: the beaux and petites mistresses, among the ci-devant, have not less exigent appetites, nor more delicate nerves; and the ragout is produced at night, in spite of the odours and disorder that remain till the morrow. I conclude, notwithstanding your English prejudices, that there is nothing unwholesome in filth, for if it were otherwise, I cannot account for our being alive. Five hundred bodies, in a state of coacervation, without even a preference for cleanliness, "think of that Master Brook." All the forenoon the court is a receptacle for cabbage leaves, fish scales, leeks, &c. &c.--and as a French chambermaid usually prefers the direct road to circumambulation, the refuse of the kitchen is then washed away by plentiful inundations from the dressing-room--the passages are blockaded by foul plates, fragments, and bones; to which if you add the smell exhaling from hoarded apples and gruyere cheese, you may form some notion of the sufferings of those whose olfactory nerves are not robust. Yet this is not all--nearly every female in the house, except myself, is accompanied even here by her lap-dog, who sleeps in her room, and, not unfrequently, on her bed; and these Lesbias and Lindamiras increase the insalubrity of the air, and colonize one's stockings by sending forth daily emigrations of fleas. For my own part, a few close November days will make me as captious and splenetic as Matthew Bramble himself. Nothing keeps me in tolerable good humour at present, but a clear frosty morning, or a high wind. Oct. 27. I thought, when I wrote the above, that the house was really so full as to be incapable of containing more; but I did not do justice to the talents of our keeper. The last two nights have brought us an addition of several waggon loads of nuns, farmers, shopkeepers, &c. from the neighbouring towns, which he has still contrived to lodge, though much in the way that he would pack goods in bales. Should another convoy arrive, it is certain that we must sleep perpendicularly, for even now, when the beds are all arranged and occupied for the night, no one can make a diagonal movement without disturbing his neighbour.--This very sociable manner of sleeping is very far, I assure you, from promoting the harmony of the day; and I am frequently witness to the reproaches and recriminations occasioned by nocturnal misdemeanours. Sometimes the lap-dog of one dowager is accused of hostilities against that of another, and thereby producing a general chorus of the rest--then a four-footed favourite strays from the bed of his mistress, and takes possession of a General's uniform--and there are female somnambules, who alarm the modesty of a pair of Bishops, and suspended officers, that, like Richard, warring in their dreams, cry "to arms," to the great annoyance of those who are more inclined to sleep in peace. But, I understand, the great disturbers of the room where Mad. de ____ sleeps are two chanoines, whose noses are so sonorous and so untuneable as to produce a sort of duet absolutely incompatible with sleep; and one of the company is often deputed to interrupt the serenade by manual application _mais tout en badinant et avec politesse_ [But all in pleasantry, and with politeness.] to the offending parties. All this, my dear brother, is only ludicrous in the relation; yet for so many people to be thus huddled together without distinction of age, sex, or condition, is truly miserable.--Mad. De ____ is still indisposed, and while she is thus suffocated by bad air, and distracted by the various noises of the house, I see no prospect of her recovery. Arras is the common prison of the department, and, besides, there are a number of other houses and convents in the town appropriated to the same use, and all equally full. God knows when these iniquities are to terminate! So far from having any hopes at present, the rage for arresting seems, I think, rather to increase than subside. It is supposed there are now more than three hundred thousand people in France confined under the simple imputation of being what is called "gens suspect:" but as this generic term is new to you, I will, by way of explanation, particularize the several species as classed by the Convention, and then described by Chaumette, solicitor for the City of Paris;*-- * Decree concerning suspected people: "Art. I. Immediately after the promulgation of the present decree, all suspected persons that are found on the territory of the republic, and who are still at large, shall be put under arrest. "II. Those are deemed suspicious, who by their connections, their conversation, or their writings, declare themselves partizans of tyranny or foederation, and enemies to liberty--Those who have not demonstrated their means of living or the performance of their civic duties, in the manner prescribed by the law of March last--Those who, having been suspended from public employments by the Convention or its Commissioners, are not reinstated therein--Those of the ci-devant noblesse, who have not invariably manifested their attachment to the revolution, and, in general, all the fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, and agents of emigrants--All who have emigrated between the 1st of July, 1789, and 8th of April, 1792. "III. The execution of the decree is confided to the Committee of Inspection. The individuals arrested shall be taken to the houses of confinement appointed for their reception. They are allowed to take with them such only of their effects as are strictly necessary, the guards set upon them shall be paid at their expence, and they shall be kept in confinement until the peace.--The Committees of Inspection shall, without delay, transmit to the Committee of General Safety an account of the persons arrested, with the motives of their arrest. [If this were observed (which I doubt much) it was but a mockery, few persons ever knew the precise reason of their confinement.]--The civil and criminal tribunals are empowered, when they deem it necessary, to detain and imprison, as suspected persons, those who being accused of crimes have nevertheless had no bill found against them, (lieu a accusation,) or who have even been tried and acquitted." Indications that may serve to distinguish suspicious persons, and those to whom it will be proper to refuse certificates of civism: "I. Those who in popular assemblies check the ardour of the people by artful speeches, by violent exclamations or threats. "II. Those who with more caution speak in a mysterious way of the public misfortunes, who appear to pity the lot of the people, and are ever ready to spread bad news with an affectation of concern. "III. Those who adapt their conduct and language to the circumstances of the moment--who, in order to be taken for republicans, put on a studied austerity of manners, and exclaim with vehemence against the most trifling error in a patriot, but mollify when the crimes of an Aristocrate or a Moderee are the subject of complaint. [These trifling events were, being concerned in the massacres of September, 1792--public peculations--occasional, and even habitual robbery, forgeries, &c. &c. &c.--The second, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh classes, were particularly numerous, insomuch that I doubt whether they would not have included nineteen-twentieths of all the people in France who were honest or at all capable of reflection.] "IV. Those who pity avaricious farmers and shopkeepers, against whom the laws have been necessarily directed. "V. Those who with the words liberty, country, republic, &c. constantly in their mouths, hold intercourse with ci-devant Nobles, Contre-revolutionnaires, Priests, Aristocrates, Feuillans, &c. and take an interest in their concerns. "VI. Those who not having borne an active part in the revolution, endeavour to excuse themselves by urging the regular payment of their taxes, their patriotic gifts, and their service in the Garde National by substitute or otherwise. "VII. Those who received the republican constitution with coolness, or who intimated their pretended apprehensions for its establishment and duration. "VIII. Those who, having done nothing against liberty, have done as little for it. "IX. Those who do not frequent the assembly of their section, and offer, for excuse, that they are no orators, or have no time to spare from their own business. "X. Those who speak with contempt of the constituted authorities, of the rigour of the laws, of the popular societies, and the defenders of liberty. "XI. Those who have signed anti-revolutionary petitions, or any time frequented unpatriotic clubs, or were known as partizans of La Fayette, and accomplices in the affair of the Champ de Mars." --and it must be allowed by all who reside in France at this moment, and are capable of observing the various forms under which hatred for the government shelters itself, that the latter is a chef d'oeuvre in its kind. Now, exclusive of the above legal and moral indications of people to be suspected, there are also outward and visible signs which we are told from the tribune of the Convention, and the Jacobins, are not much less infallible--such as _Gens a bas de soie rayes mouchetes--a chapeau rond-- habit carre--culotte pincee etroite--a bottes cirees--les muscadins-- Freloquets--Robinets, &c._ [People that wear spotted or striped silk stockings--round hats--small coats--tight breeches--blacked boots-- perfumes--coxcombs--sprigs of the law, &c.] The consequence of making the cut of a man's coat, or the shape of his hat, a test of his political opinions, has been the transformation of the whole country into republicans, at least as far as depends on the costume; and where, as is natural, there exists a consciousness of inveterate aristocracy, the external is more elaborately "a la Jacobin." The equipment, indeed, of a French patriot of the latest date is as singular as his manners, and in both he is highly distinguishable from the inhabitants of any other country: from those of civilized nations, because he is gross and ferocious--from those of barbarous ones, because his grossness is often affected, and his ferocity a matter of principle and preference. A man who would not be reckoned suspect now arrays himself in a jacket and trowsers (a Carmagnole) of striped cotton or coarse cloth, a neckcloth of gaudy cotton, wadded like a horse-collar, and projecting considerably beyond his chin, a cap of red and blue cloth, embroidered in front and made much in the form of that worn by the Pierrot of a pantomime, with one, or sometimes a pair, of ear-rings, about the size of a large curtain-ring! Finally, he crops his hair, and carefully encourages the growth of an enormous pair of whiskers, which he does not fail to perfume with volumes of tobacco smoke. He, however, who is ambitious of still greater eminence, disdains these fopperies, and affects an appearance of filth and rags, which he dignifies with the appellation of stern republicanism and virtuous poverty; and thus, by means of a thread-bare coat out at elbows, wooden shoes, and a red woollen cap, the rich hope to secure their wealth, and the covetous and intriguing to acquire lucrative employment.--Rolland, I think, was the founder of these modern Franciscans, and with this miserable affectation he machinated the death of the King, and, during some months, procured for himself the exclusive direction of the government. All these patriots by prescription and system have likewise a peculiar and appropriated dialect--they address every one by the title of Citizen, thee and thou indistinctly, and talk of nothing but the agents of Pitt and Cobourg, the coalesced tyrants, royal ogres, satellites of the despots, automaton slaves, and anthropophagi; and if they revert to their own prosperous state, and this very happy country, it is, _un peuple libre, en peuple heureux, and par excellence la terre de la liberte._ ["A free people--a happy people--and, above all others, the land of liberty."]--It is to be observed, that those with whom these pompous expressions are most familiar, are officers employed in the war-like service of mutilating the wooden saints in churches, and arresting old women whom they encounter without national cockades; or members of the municipalities, now reduced to execute the offices of constables, and whose chief functions are to hunt out suspected people, or make domiciliary visits in quest of concealed eggs and butter. But, above all, this democratic oratory is used by tailors, shoemakers, &c.* of the Committees of Inspection, to whom the Representatives on mission have delegated their unlimited powers, who arrest much on the principle of Jack Cade, and with whom it is a crime to read and write, or to appear decently dressed. * For some months the departments were infested by people of this description--corrupt, ignorant, and insolent. Their motives of arrest were usually the hope of plunder, or the desire of distressing those whom they had been used to look upon as their superiors.--At Arras it sufficed even to have disobliged the wives of these miscreants to become the object of persecution. In some places they arrested with the most barbarous caprice, even without the shadow of a reason. At Hesden, a small town in Artois, Dumont left the Mayor carte blanche, and in one night two hundred people were thrown into prison. Every where these low and obscure dominators reigned without controul, and so much were the people intimidated, that instead of daring to complain, they treated their new tyrants with the most servile adulation.--I have seen a ci-devant Comtesse coquetting with all her might a Jacobin tailor, and the richest merchants of a town soliciting very humbly the good offices of a dealer in old clothes. These ridiculous accoutrements, and this magnificent phraseology, are in themselves very harmless; but the ascendancy which such a class of people are taking has become a subject of just alarm.--The whole administration of the country is now in the hands of uninformed and necessitous profligates, swindlers, men already condemned by the laws, and who, if the revolution had not given them "place and office," would have been at the galleys, or in prison.* * One of the administrators of the department de la Somme (which, however, was more decently composed than many others,) was, before the revolution, convicted of house-breaking, and another of forgery; and it has since been proved on various occasions, particularly on the trial of the ninety-four Nantais, that the revolutionary Committees were, for the most part, composed of the very refuse of society--adventurers, thieves, and even assassins; and it would be difficult to imagine a crime that did not there find reward and protection.--In vain were the privileges of the nobility abolished, and religion proscribed. A new privileged order arose in the Jacobins, and guilt of every kind, without the semblance of penitence, found an asylum in these Committees, and an inviolability more sacred than that afforded by the demolished altars. To these may be added a few men of weak character, and unsteady principles, who remain in office because they fear to resign; with a few, and but very few, ignorant fanatics, who really imagine they are free because they can molest and destroy with impunity all they have hitherto been taught to respect, and drink treble the quantity they did formerly. Oct. 30. For some days the guards have been so untractable, and the croud at the door has been so great, that Fleury was obliged to make various efforts before he could communicate the result of his negotiation. He has at length found means to inform us, that his friend the tailor had exerted all his interest in our favour, but that Dumont and Le Bon (as often happens between neighbouring potentates) are at war, and their enmity being in some degree subject to their mutual fears, neither will venture to liberate any prisoner arrested by the other, lest such a disposition to clemency should be seized on by his rival as a ground of accusation.* * But if they did not free the enemies of each other, they revenged themselves by throwing into prison all their mutual friends--for the temper of the times was such, that, though these Representatives were expressly invested with unlimited powers, they did not venture to set any one at liberty without a multitude of forms and a long attendance: on the contrary, they arrested without any form at all, and allowed their myrmidons to harrass and confine the persons and sequester the property of all whom they judged proper.--It seemed to have been an elementary principle with those employed by the government at this time, that they risked nothing in doing all the mischief they could, and that they erred only in not doing enough. --All, therefore, that can be obtained is, a promise to have us removed to Amiens in a short time; and I understand the detenus are there treated with consideration, and that no tribunal revolutionnaire has yet been established. My mind will be considerably more at ease if this removal can be effected. Perhaps we may not be in more real danger here than at any other place, but it is not realities that constitute the misery of life; and situated as we are, that imagination must be phlegmatic indeed, which does not create and exaggerate enough to prevent the possibility of ease.--We are, as I before observed, placed as it were within the jurisdiction of the guillotine; and I have learned "a secret of our prison-house" to-day which Mad. de ____ had hitherto concealed from me, and which has rendered me still more anxious to quit it. Several of our fellow prisoners, whom I supposed only transferred to other houses, have been taken away to undergo the ceremony of a trial, and from thence to the scaffold. These judicial massacres are now become common, and the repetition of them has destroyed at once the feeling of humanity and the sense of justice. Familiarized to executions, the thoughtless and sanguinary people behold with equal indifference the guilty or innocent victim; and the Guillotine has not only ceased to be an object of horror, but is become almost a source of amusement. * At Arras this horrid instrument of death was what they called en permanence, (stationary,) and so little regard was paid to the morals of the people, (I say the morals, because every thing which tends to destroy their humanity renders them vicious,) that it was often left from one execution to another with the ensanguined traces of the last victim but too evident.--Children were taught to amuse themselves by making models of the Guillotine, with which they destroyed flies, and even animals. On the Pontneuf, at Paris, a sort of puppet-show was exhibited daily, whose boast it was to give a very exact imitation of a guillotinage; and the burthen of a popular song current for some months was _"Dansons la Guillotine."_ --On the 21st of January, 1794, the anniversary of the King's death, the Convention were invited to celebrate it on the "Place de la Revolution," where, during the ceremony, and in presence of the whole legislative body, several people were executed. It is true, Bourdon, one of the Deputies, complained of this indecency; but not so much on account of the circumstance itself, as because it gave some of the people an opportunity of telling him, in a sort of way he might probably deem prophetic, that one of the victims was a Representative of the People. The Convention pretended to order that some enquiry should be made why at such a moment such a place was chosen; but the enquiry came to nothing, and I have no doubt but the executions were purposely intended as analogous to the ceremony.--It was proved that Le Bon, on an occasion when he chose to be a spectator of some executions he had been the cause of, suspended the operation while he read the newspaper aloud, in order, as he said, that the aristocrates might go out of the world with the additional mortification of learning the success of the republican arms in their last moments. The People of Brest were suffered to behold, I had almost said to be amused with (for if those who order such spectacles are detestable, the people that permit them are not free from blame,) the sight of twenty-five heads ranged in a line, and still convulsed with the agonies of death.--The cant word for the Guillotine was "our holy mother;" and verdicts of condemnation were called prizes in the Sainte Lotterie--"holy lottery." The dark and ferocious character of Le Bon developes itself hourly: the whole department trembles before him; and those who have least merited persecution are, with reason, the most apprehensive. The most cautious prudence of conduct, the most undeviating rectitude in those who are by their fortune or rank obnoxious to the tyrant, far from contributing to their security, only mark them out for a more early sacrifice. What is still worse, these horrors are not likely to terminate, because he is allowed to pay out of the treasury of the department the mob that are employed to popularize and applaud them.--I hope, in a few days, we shall receive our permission to depart. My impatience is a malady, and, for nearly the first time in my life, I am sensible of ennui; not the ennui occasioned by want of amusement, but that which is the effect of unquiet expectation, and which makes both the mind and body restless and incapable of attending to any thing. I am incessantly haunted by the idea that the companion of to-day may to-morrow expire under the Guillotine, that the common acts of social intercourse may be explained into intimacy, intimacy into the participation of imputed treasons, and the fate of those with whom we are associated become our own. It appears both useless and cruel to have brought us here, nor do I yet know any reason why we were not all removed to Amiens, except it was to avoid exposing to the eyes of the people in the places through which we must pass too large a number of victims at once.--The cause of our being removed from Peronne is indeed avowed, as it is at present a rule not to confine people at the place of their residence, lest they should have too much facility or communication with, or assistance from, their friends.* * In some departments the nobles and priests arrested were removed from ten to twenty leagues distant from their homes; and if they happened to have relations living at the places where they were confined, these last were forbidden to reside there, or even to travel that way. We should doubtless have remained at Arras until some change in public affairs had procured our release, but for the fortunate discovery of the man I have mentioned; and the trifling favour of removal from one prison to another has been obtained only by certain arrangements which Fleury has made with this subordinate agent of tyranny, and in which justice or consideration for us had no share. Alas! are we not miserable? is not the country miserable, when our only resource is in the vices of those who govern?--It is uncertain when we shall be ordered from hence--it may happen when we least expect it, even in the night, so that I shall not attempt to write again till we have changed our situation. The risk is at present too serious, and you must allow my desire of amusing you to give way to my solicitude for my own preservation. Bicetre at Amiens, Nov. 18, 1793. _Nous voila donc encore, logees a la nation;_ that is to say, the common prison of the department, amidst the thieves, vagabonds, maniacs, &c. confined by the old police, and the gens suspects recently arrested by the new.--I write from the end of a sort of elevated barn, sixty or seventy feet long, where the interstices of the tiles admit the wind from all quarters, and scarcely exclude the rain, and where an old screen and some curtains only separate Mad. de ____, myself, and our servants, from sixty priests, most of them old, sick, and as wretched as men can be, who are pious and resigned. Yet even here I feel comparatively at ease, and an escape from the jurisdiction of Le Bon and his merciless tribunal seems cheaply purchased by the sacrifice of our personal convenience. I do not pretend to philosophize or stoicize, or to any thing else which implies a contempt of life--I have, on the contrary, a most unheroic solicitude about my existence, and consider my removal to a place where I think we are safe, as a very fortunate aera of our captivity. After many delays and disappointments, Fleury at length procured an order, signed by the Representative, for our being transferred to Amiens, under the care of two _Gardes Nationalaux,_ and, of course, at our expence.--Every thing in this country wears the aspect of despotism. At twelve o'clock at night we were awakened by the officer on guard, and informed we were to depart on the morrow; and, notwithstanding the difficulty of procuring horses and carriages, it was specified, that if we did not go on the day appointed, we were not to go at all. It was, or course, late before we could surmount the various obstacles to our journey, and procure two crazy cabriolets, and a cart for the guards, ourselves, and baggage. The days being short, we were obliged to sleep at Dourlens; and, on our arrival at the castle, which is now, as it always has been, a state-prison, we were told it was so full, that it was absolutely impossible to lodge us, and that we had better apply to the Governor, for permission to sleep at an inn. We then drove to the Governor's* house, who received us very civilly, and with very little persuasion agreed to our request. At the best of the miserable inns in the town we were informed they had no room, and that they could not accommodate us in any way whatever, except a sick officer then in the house would permit us to occupy one of two beds in his apartment. * The Commandant had been originally a private soldier in the regiment of Dillon.--I know not how he had obtained his advancement, but, however obtained, it proved fatal to him: he was, a very short time after I saw him, guillotined at Arras, for having borrowed money of a prisoner. His real crime was, probably, treating the prisoners in general with too much consideration and indulgence; and at this period every suspicion of the kind was fatal. In England it would not be very decent to make such a request, or to accept such an accommodation. In France, neither the one nor the other is unusual, and we had suffered lately so many embarrassments of the kind, that we were, if not reconciled, at least inured to them. Before, however, we could determine, the gentleman had been informed of our situation, and came to offer his services. You may judge of our surprize when we found in the stranger, who had his head bound up and his arm in a sling, General ____, a relation of Mad. de ____. We had now, therefore, less scruple in sharing his room, though we agreed, notwithstanding, only to repose a few hours in our clothes. After taking some tea, the remainder of the evening was dedicated to reciprocal conversation of all kinds; and our guards having acquaintance in the town, and knowing it was impossible for us to escape, even were we so inclined, very civilly left us to ourselves. We found the General had been wounded at Maubeuge, and was now absent on conge for the recovery of his health. He talked of the present state of public affairs like a military man who is attached to his profession, and who thinks it his duty to fight at all events, whatever the rights or merits of those that employ him. He confessed, indeed, that they were repulsing their external enemies, only to confirm the power of those who were infinitely more to be dreaded at home, and that the condition of a General was more to be commiserated at this time than any other: if he miscarry, disgrace and the Guillotine await him--if he be successful, he gains little honour, becomes an object of jealousy, and assists in rivetting the chains of his country. He said, the armies were for the most part licentious and insubordinate, but that the political discipline was terrible--the soldiers are allowed to drink, pillage, and insult their officers with impunity, but all combinations are rigorously suppressed, the slightest murmur against the Representative on mission is treason, and to disapprove of a decree of the convention, death--that every man of any note in the army is beset with spies, and if they leave the camp on any occasion, it is more necessary to be on their guard against these wretches than against an ambuscade of the enemy; and he related a circumstance which happened to himself, as an example of what he mentioned, and which will give you a tolerable idea of the present system of government.--After the relief of Dunkirk, being quartered in the neighbourhood of St. Omer, he occasionally went to the town on his private concerns. One day, while he was waiting at the inn where he intended to dine, two young men accosted him, and after engaging him in a general conversation for some time, began to talk with great freedom, though with an affected caution of public men and measures, of the banditti who governed, the tyranny that was exercised, and the supineness of the people: in short, of all those too poignant truths which constitute the leze nation of the day. Mons. de ____ was not at first very attentive, but finding their discourse become still more liberal, it excited his suspicions, and casting his eyes on a glass opposite to where they were conversing, he perceived a sort of intelligence between them, which immediately suggested to him the profession of his companions; and calling to a couple of dragoons who had attended him, ordered them to arrest the two gentlemen as artistocrates, and convey them without ceremony to prison. They submitted, seemingly more surprized than alarmed, and in two hours the General received a note from a higher power, desiring him to set them at liberty, as they were agents of the republic. Duquesnoy, one of the Representatives now with the Northern army, is ignorant and brutal in the extreme. He has made his brother (who, as well as himself, used to retail hops in the streets of St. Pol,) a General; and in order to deliver him from rivals and critics, he breaks, suspends, arrests, and sends to the Guillotine every officer of any merit that comes in his way. After the battle of Maubeuge, he arrested a General Bardell, [The Generals Bardell and D'Avesnes, and several others, were afterwards guillotined at Paris.] for accommodating a wounded prisoner of distinction (I think a relation of the Prince of Cobourg) with a bed, and tore with his own hands the epaulette from the shoulders of those Generals whose divisions had not sustained the combat so well as the others. His temper, naturally savage and choleric, is irritated to fury by the habit of drinking large quantities of strong liquors; and Mad. de ___'s relation assured us, that he had himself seen him take the Mayor of Avesnes (a venerable old man, who was presenting some petition to him that regarded the town,) by the hair and throw him on the ground, with the gestures of an enraged cannibal. He also confined one of his own fellow deputies in the tower of Guise, upon a very frivolous pretext, and merely on his own authority. In fact, I scarcely remember half the horrors told us of this man; and I shall only remind you, that he has an unlimited controul over the civil constitution of the Northern army, and over the whole department of the North. You, I suppose, will be better informed of military events than we are, and I mention our friend's conjecture, that (besides an enormous number of killed) the wounded at Maubeuge amounted to twelve or fourteen thousand, only to remark the deception which is still practised on the people; for no published account ever allowed the number to be more than a few hundreds.--Besides these professional details, the General gave us some very unpleasant family ones. On returning to his father's chateau, where he hoped to be taken care of while his wounds were curing, he found every room in it under seals, three guards in possession, his two sisters arrested at St. Omer, where they happened to be on a visit, and his father and mother confined in separate houses of detention at Arras. After visiting them, and making some ineffectual applications for their relief, he came to the neighbourhood of Dourlens, expecting to find an asylum with an uncle, who had hitherto escaped the general persecution of the gentry. Here again his disappointment and chagrin were renewed: his uncle had been carried off to Amiens the morning of his arrival, and the house rendered inaccessible, by the usual affixture of seals, and an attendant pair of myrmidons to guard them from infraction. Thus excluded from all his family habitations, he had taken up his residence for a day or two at the inn where we met him, his intention being to return to Arras. In the morning we made our adieus and pursued our journey; but, tenacious of this comparative liberty and the enjoyment of pure air, we prevailed on our conductors to let us dine on the road, so that we lingered with the unwillingness of truant children, and did not reach Amiens until dark. When we arrived at the Hotel de Ville, one of the guards enquired how we were to be disposed of. Unfortunately for us, Dumont happened to be there himself, and on hearing we were sent from Arras by order of Le Bon, declared most furiously (for our Representative is subject to choler since his accession to greatness) that he would have no prisoners received from Arras, and that we should sleep at the Conciergerie, and be conveyed back again on the morrow. Terrified at this menace, we persuaded the guard to represent to Dumont that we had been sent to Amiens at our own instance, and that we had been originally arrested by himself, and were therefore desirous of returning to the department where he was on mission, and where we had more reason to expect justice than at Arras. Mollified, perhaps, by this implied preference of his authority, he consented that we should remain for the present at Amiens, and ordered us to be taken to the Bicetre. Whoever has been used to connect with the word Bicetre the idea of the prison so named at Paris, must recoil with horror upon hearing they are destined to such a abode. Mad. de ___, yet weak from the remains of her illness, laid hold of me in a transport of grief; but, far from being able to calm or console her, my thoughts were so bewildered that I did not, till we alighted at the gate, begin to be really sensible of our situation. The night was dark and dreary, and our first entrance was into a kitchen, such as my imagination had pictured the subterraneous one of the robbers in Gil Blas. Here we underwent the ceremony of having our pocket-books searched for papers and letters, and our trunks rummaged for knives and fire-arms. This done, we were shown to the lodging I have described, and the poor priests, already insufferably crouded, were obliged almost to join their beds in order to make room for us.--I will not pain you by a recital of all the embarrassments and distresses we had to surmount before we could even rest ourselves. We were in want of every thing, and the rules of the prison such, that it was nearly impossible, for some time, to procure any thing: but the human mind is more flexible than we are often disposed to imagine it; and in two days we were able to see our situation in this best point of view, (that is, as an escape from Arras,) and the affair of submitting our bodies to our minds must be atchieved by time.--We have now been here a week. We have sounded the very depth of humiliation, taken our daily allowance of bread with the rest of the prisoners, and contracted a most friendly intimacy with the gaoler. I have discovered since our arrival, that the order for transferring us hither described me as a native of the Low Countries. I know not how this happened, but my friend has insisted on my not rectifying the mistake, for as the French talk continually of re-conquering Brabant, she persuades herself such an event would procure me my liberty. I neither desire the one nor expect the other; but, to indulge her, I speak no English, and avoid two or three of my countrymen who I am told are here. There have been also some English families who were lately removed, but the French pronounce our names so strangely, that I have not been able to learn who they were. November 19, 1793. The English in general, especially of late years, have been taught to entertain very formidable notions of the Bastille and other state prisons of the ancient government, and they were, no doubt, horrid enough; yet I have not hitherto been able to discover that those of the new republic are any way preferable. The only difference is, that the great number of prisoners which, for want of room, are obliged to be heaped together, makes it impossible to exclude them as formerly from communication, and, instead of being maintained at the public expence, they now, with great difficulty, are able to procure wherewithal to eat at their own. Our present habitation is an immense building, about a quarter of a mile from the town, intended originally for the common gaol of the province. The situation is damp and unwholesome, and the water so bad, that I should suppose a long continuance here of such a number of prisoners must be productive of endemical disorders. Every avenue to the house is guarded, and no one is permitted to stop and look up at the windows, under pain of becoming a resident. We are strictly prohibited from all external intercourse, except by writing; and every scrap of paper, though but an order for a dinner, passes the inquisition of three different people before it reaches its destination, and, of course, many letters and notes are mislaid, and never sent at all.--There is no court or garden in which the prisoners are allowed to walk, and the only exercise they can take is in damp passages, or a small yard, (perhaps thirty feet square,) which often smells so detestably, that the atmosphere of the house itself is less mephitic. Our fellow-captives are a motley collection of the victims of nature, of justice, and of tyranny--of lunatics who are insensible of their situation, of thieves who deserve it, and of political criminals whose guilt is the accident of birth, the imputation of wealth, or the profession of a clergyman. Among the latter is the Bishop of Amiens, whom I recollect to have mentioned in a former letter. You will wonder why a constitutional Bishop, once popular with the democratic party, should be thus treated. The real motive was, probably, to degrade in his person a minister of religion--the ostensible one, a dispute with Dumont at the Jacobin club. As the times grew alarming, the Bishop, perhaps, thought it politic to appear at the club, and the Representative meeting him there one evening, began to interrogate him very rudely with regard to his opinion of the marriage of priests. M. Dubois replied, that when it was officially incumbent on him to explain himself, he would do so, but that he did not think the club a place for such discussions, or something to this purpose. _"Tu prevariques donc!--Je t'arrete sur le champ:"_ ["What, you prevaricate!--I arrest you instantly."] the Bishop was accordingly arrested at the instant, and conducted to the Bicetre, without even being suffered to go home and furnish himself with necessaries; and the seals being immediately put on his effects, he has never been able to obtain a change of linen and clothes, or any thing else--this too at a time when the pensions of the clergy are ill paid, and every article of clothing so dear as to be almost unpurchaseable by moderate fortunes, and when those who might otherwise be disposed to aid or accommodate their friends, abandon them through fear of being implicated in their misfortunes. But the Bishop, yet in the vigour of life, is better capable of enduring these hardships than most of the poor priests with whom he is associated: the greater number of them are very old men, with venerable grey locks-- and their tattered clerical habits, scanty meals, and wretched beds, give me many an heart-ache. God send the constant sight of so much misery may not render me callous!--It is certain, there are people here, who, whatever their feelings might have been on this occasion at first, seem now little affected by it. Those who are too much familiarized with scenes of wretchedness, as well as those to whom they are unknown, are not often very susceptible; and I am sometimes disposed to cavil with our natures, that the sufferings which ought to excite our benevolence, and the prosperity that enables us to relieve them, should ever have a contrary effect. Yet this is so true, that I have scarcely ever observed even the poor considerate towards each other--and the rich, if they are frequently charitable, are not always compassionate.* * Our situation at the Bicetre, though terrible for people unused to hardships or confinement, and in fact, wretched as personal inconvenience could make it, was yet Elysium, compared to the prisons of other departments. At St. Omer, the prisoners were frequently disturbed at midnight by the entrance of men into their apartments, who, with the detestable ensign of their order, (red caps,) and pipes in their mouths, came by way of frolic to search their pockets, trunks, &c.--At Montreuil, the Maisons d'Arret were under the direction of a Commissary, whose behaviour to the female prisoners was too atrocious for recital--two young women, in particular, who refused to purchase milder treatment, were locked up in a room for seventeen days.--Soon after I left Arras, every prison became a den of horror. The miserable inhabitants were subject to the agents of Le Bon, whose avarice, cruelty, and licentiousness, were beyond any thing a humane mind can imagine. Sometimes the houses were suddenly surrounded by an armed force, the prisoners turned out in the depth of winter for several hours into an open court, during the operation of robbing them of their pocket-books, buckles, ear-rings, or whatever article of value they had about them. At other times they were visited by the same military array, and deprived of their linen and clothes. Their wine and provisions were likewise taken from them in the same manner--wives were separated from their husbands, parents from their children, old men treated with the most savage barbarity, and young women with an indecency still more abominable. All communication, either by writing or otherwise, was often prohibited for many days together, and an order was once given to prevent even the entry of provisions, which was not revoked till the prisoners became absolutely distressed. At the Hotel Dieu they were forbidden to draw more than a single jug of water in twenty-four hours. At the Providence, the well was left three days without a cord, and when the unfortunate females confined there procured people to beg water of the neighbours, they were refused, "because it was for prisoners, and if Le Bon heard of it he might be displeased!" Windows were blocked up, not to prevent escape, but to exclude air; and when the general scarcity rendered it impossible for the prisoners to procure sufficient food for their support, their small portions were diminished at the gate, under pretext of searching for letters, &c. --People, respectable both for their rank and character, were employed to clean the prisons and privies, while their low and insolent tyrants looked on and insulted them. On an occasion when one of the Maisons d'Arrets was on fire, guards were planted round, with orders to fire upon those that should attempt to escape.--My memory has but too faithfully recorded these and still greater horrors; but curiosity would be gratified but too dearly by the relation. I added the above note some months after writing the letter to which it is annexed. Nov. 20. Besides the gentry and clergy of this department, we have likewise for companions a number of inhabitants of Lisle, arrested under circumstances singularly atrocious, even where atrocity is the characteristic of almost every proceeding.--In the month of August a decree was passed to oblige all the nobility, clergy, and their servants, as well as all those persons who had been in the service of emigrants, to depart from Lisle in eight-and-forty hours, and prohibiting their residence within twenty leagues from the frontiers. Thus banished from their own habitations, they took refuge in different towns, at the prescribed distance; but, almost as soon as they were arrived, and had been at the expence of settling themselves, they were arrested as strangers,* and conducted to prison. * I have before, I believe, noticed that the term estranger at this time did not exclusively apply to foreigners, but to such as had come from one town to another, who were at inns or on a visit to their friends. It will not be improper to notice here the conduct of the government towards the towns that have been besieged. Thionville,* to whose gallant defence in 1792 France owed the retreat of the Prussians and the safety of Paris, was afterwards continually reproached with aristocracy; and when the inhabitants sent a deputation to solicit an indemnity for the damage the town had sustained during the bombardment a member of the Convention threatened them from the tribune with "indemnities a coup de baton!" that is, in our vernacular tongue, with a good thrashing. * Wimpsen, who commanded there, and whose conduct at the time was enthusiastically admired, was driven, most probably by the ingratitude and ill treatment of the Convention, to head a party of the Foederalists.--These legislators perpetually boast of imitating and surpassing the Romans, and it is certain, that their ingratitude has made more than one Coriolanus. The difference is, that they are not jealous for the liberty of the country, but for their own personal safety. The inhabitants of Lisle, who had been equally serviceable in stopping the progress of the Austrians, for a long time petitioned without effect to obtain the sums already voted for their relief. The noblesse, and others from thence who have been arrested, as soon as it was known that they were Lillois, were treated with peculiar rigour;* and an _armee revolutionnaire,_** with the Guillotine for a standard, has lately harrassed the town and environs of Lisle, as though it were a conquered country. * The Commandant of Lisle, on his arrival at the Bicetre, was stripped of a considerable sum of money, and a quantity of plate he had unluckily brought with him by way of security. Out of this he is to be supplied with fifty livres at a time in paper, which, according to the exchange and the price of every thing, is, I suppose, about half a guinea. ** The armee revolutionnaire was first raised by order of the Jacobins, for the purpose of searching the countries for provisions, and conducting them to Paris. Under this pretext, a levy was made of all the most desperate ruffians that could be collected together. They were divided into companies, each with its attendant Guillotine, and then distributed in the different departments: they had extraordinary pay, and seem to have been subject to no discipline. Many of them were distinguished by the representation of a Guillotine in miniature, and a head just severed, on their cartouch-boxes. It would be impossible to describe half the enormities committed by these banditti: wherever they went they were regarded as a scourge, and every heart shrunk at their approach. Lecointre, of Versailles, a member of the Convention, complained that a band of these wretches entered the house of a farmer, one of his tenants, by night, and, after binding the family hand and foot, and helping themselves to whatever they could find, they placed the farmer with his bare feet on the chaffing-dish of hot ashes, by way of forcing him to discover where he had secreted his plate and money, which having secured, they set all the vessels of liquor running, and then retired. You are not to suppose this a robbery, and the actors common thieves; all was in the usual form--"au nom de la loi," and for the service of the republic; and I do not mention this instance as remarkable, otherwise than as having been noticed in the Convention. A thousand events of this kind, even still more atrocious, have happened; but the sufferers who had not the means of defence as well as of complaint, were obliged, through policy, to be silent. --The garrison and national guard, indignant at the horrors they committed, obliged them to decamp. Even the people of Dunkirk, whose resistance to the English, while the French army was collecting together for their relief, was perhaps of more consequence than ten victories, have been since intimidated with Commissioners, and Tribunals, and Guillotines, as much as if they had been convicted of selling the town. In short, under this philanthropic republic, persecution seems to be very exactly proportioned to the services rendered. A jealous and suspicious government does not forget, that the same energy of character which has enabled a people to defend themselves against an external enemy, may also make them less submissive to domestic oppression; and, far from repaying them with the gratitude to which they have a claim, it treats them, on all occasions, as opponents, whom it both fears and hates. Nov. 22. We have been walking in the yard to-day with General Laveneur, who, for an act which in any other country would have gained him credit, is in this suspended from his command.--When Custine, a few weeks before his death, left the army to visit some of the neighbouring towns, the command devolved on Laveneur, who received, along with other official papers, a list of countersigns, which, having probably been made some time, and not altered conformably to the changes of the day, contained, among others, the words Condorcet--Constitution; and these were in their turn given out. On Custine's trial, this was made a part of his accusation. Laveneur, recollecting that the circumstance had happened in the absence of Custine, thought it incumbent on him to take the blame, if there were any, on himself, and wrote to Paris to explain the matter as it really stood; but his candour, without availing Custine, drew persecution on himself, and the only notice taken of his letter was an order to arrest him. After being dragged from one town to another, like a criminal, and often lodged in dungeons and common prisons, he was at length deposited here. I know not if the General's principles are republican, but he has a very democratic pair of whiskers, which he occasionally strokes, and seems to cherish with much affection. He is, however, a gentleman-like man, and expresses such anxiety for the fate of his wife and children, who are now at Paris, that one cannot but be interested in his favour.--As the agents of the republic never err on the side of omission, they arrested Mons. Laveneur's aid-de-camp with him; and another officer of his acquaintance, who was suspended, and living at Amiens, has shared the same fate, only for endeavouring to procure him a trifling accommodation. This gentleman called on Dumont, to beg that General Laveneur's servant might be permitted to go in and out of the prison on his master's errands. After breakfasting together, and conversing on very civil terms, Dumont told him, that as he concerned himself so much in behalf of his friend, he would send him to keep the latter company, and at the conclusion of his visit he was sent prisoner to the Bicetre. Perhaps the greater part of between three and four hundred thousand people, now imprisoned on suspicion, have been arrested for reasons as little substantial. --I begin to fear my health will not resist the hardship of a long continuance here. We have no fire-place, and are sometimes starved with partial winds from the doors and roof; at others faint and heartsick with the unhealthy air produced by so many living bodies. The water we drink is not preferable to the air we breathe; the bread (which is now every where scarce and bad) contains such a mixture of barley, rye, damaged wheat, and trash of all kinds, that, far from being nourished by it, I lose both my strength and appetite daily.--Yet these are not the worst of our sufferings. Shut out from all society, victims of a despotic and unprincipled government capable of every thing, and ignorant of the fate which may await us, we are occasionally oppressed by a thousand melancholy apprehensions. I might, indeed, have boasted of my fortitude, and have made myself an heroine on paper at as small an expence of words as it has cost me to record my cowardice: but I am of an unlucky conformation, and think either too much or too little (I know not which) for a female philosopher; besides, philosophy is getting into such ill repute, that not possessing the reality, the name of it is not worth assuming. A poor old priest told me just now, (while Angelique was mending his black coat with white thread,) that they had left at the place where they were last confined a large quantity of linen, and other necessaries; but, by the express orders of Dumont, they were not allowed to bring a single article away with them. The keeper, too, it seems, was threatened with dismission, for supplying one of them with a shirt.--In England, where, I believe, you ally political expediency as much as you can with justice and humanity, these cruelties, at once little and refined, will appear incredible; and the French themselves, who are at least ashamed of, if they are not pained by, them, are obliged to seek refuge in the fancied palliative of a "state of revolution."--Yet, admitting the necessity of confining the persons of these old men, there can be none for heaping them together in filth and misery, and adding to the sufferings of years and infirmity by those of cold and want. If, indeed, a state of revolution require such deeds, and imply an apology for them, I cannot but wish the French had remained as they were, for I know of no political changes that can compensate for turning a civilized nation into a people of savages. It is not surely the eating acorns or ragouts, a well-powdered head, or one decorated with red feathers, that constitutes the difference between barbarism and civilization; and, I fear, if the French proceed as they have begun, the advantage of morals will be considerably on the side of the unrefined savages. The conversation of the prison has been much engaged by the fate of an English gentleman, who lately destroyed himself in a Maison d'Arret at Amiens. His confinement had at first deeply affected his spirits, and his melancholy increasing at the prospect of a long detention, terminated in deranging his mind, and occasioned this last act of despair.--I never hear of suicide without a compassion mingled with terror, for, perhaps, simple pity is too light an emotion to be excited by an event which reminds us, that we are susceptible of a degree of misery too great to be borne--too strong for the efforts of instinct, reflection, and religion. --I could moralize on the necessity of habitual patience, and the benefit of preparing the mind for great evils by a philosophic endurance of little ones; but I am at the Bicetre--the winds whistle round me--I am beset by petty distresses, and we do not expatiate to advantage on endurance while we have any thing to endure.--Seneca's contempt for the things of this world was doubtless suggested in the palace of Nero. He would not have treated the subject so well in disgrace and poverty. Do not suppose I am affecting to be pleasant, for I write in the sober sadness of conviction, that human fortitude is often no better than a pompous theory, founded on self-love and self-deception. I was surprized at meeting among our fellow-prisoners a number of Dutch officers. I find they had been some time in the town on their parole, and were sent here by Dumont, for refusing to permit their men to work on the fortifications.--The French government and its agents despise the laws of war hitherto observed; they consider them as a sort of aristocratie militaire, and they pretend, on the same principle, to be enfranchised from the law of nations.--An orator of the convention lately boasted, that he felt himself infinitely superior to the prejudices of Grotius, Puffendorff, and Vatel, which he calls "l'aristocratie diplomatique."--Such sublime spirits think, because they differ from the rest of mankind, that they surpass them. Like Icarus, they attempt to fly, and are perpetually struggling in the mire.--Plain common sense has long pointed out a rule of action, from which all deviation is fatal, both to nations and individuals. England, as well as France, has furnished its examples; and the annals of genius in all countries are replete with the miseries of eccentricity.--Whoever has followed the course of the French revolution, will, I believe, be convinced, that the greatest evils attending on it have been occasioned by an affected contempt for received maxims. A common banditti, acting only from the desire of plunder, or men, erring only through ignorance, could not have subjugated an whole people, had they not been assisted by narrow-minded philosophers, who were eager to sacrifice their country to the vanity of making experiments, and were little solicitous whether their systems were good or bad, provided they were celebrated as the authors of them. Yet, where are they now? Wandering, proscribed, and trembling at the fate of their followers and accomplices.--The Brissotins, sacrificed by a party even worse than themselves, have died without exciting either pity or admiration. Their fall was considered as the natural consequence of their exaltation, and the courage with which they met death obtained no tribute but a cold and simple comment, undistinguished from the news of the day, and ending with it. December. Last night, after we had been asleep about an hour, (for habit, that "lulls the wet sea-boy on the high and giddy mast," has reconciled us to sleep even here,) we were alarmed by the trampling of feet, and sudden unlocking of our door. Our apprehensions gave us no time for conjecture --in a moment an ill-looking fellow entered the room with a lantern, two soldiers holding drawn swords, and a large dog! The whole company walked as it were processionally to the end of the apartment, and, after observing in silence the beds on each side, left us. It would not be easy to describe what we suffered at this moment: for my own part, I thought only of the massacres of September, and the frequent proposals at the Jacobins and the Convention for dispatching the _"gens suspect,"_ and really concluded I was going to terminate my existence _"revolutionnairement."_ I do not now know the purport of these visits, but I find they are not unusual, and most probably intended to alarm the prisoners. After many enquiries and messages, I have had the mortification of hearing that Mr. and Mrs. D____ were taken to Arras, and were there even before I left it. The letters sent to and from the different prisons are read by so many people, and pass through so many hands, that it is not surprizing we have not heard from each other. As far as I can learn, they had obtained leave, after their first arrest, to remove to a house in the vicinity of Dourlens for a few days, on account of Mrs. D____'s health, which had suffered by passing the summer in the town, and that at the taking of Toulon they were again arrested while on a visit, and conveyed to a _Maison d'Arret_ at Arras. I am the more anxious for them, as it seems they were unprepared for such an event; and as the seals were put upon their effects, I fear they must be in want of every thing. I might, perhaps, have succeeded in getting them removed here, but Fleury's Arras friend, it seems, did not think, when the Convention had abolished every other part of Christianity, that they intended still to exact a partial observance of the eighth article of the decalogue; and having, in the sense of Antient Pistol, "conveyed" a little too notoriously, Le Bon has, by way of securing him from notice or pursuit, sent him to the frontiers in the capacity of Commissary. The prison, considering how many French inhabitants it contains, is tolerably quiet--to say the truth, we are not very sociable, and still less gay. Common interest establishes a sort of intimacy between those of the same apartment; but the rest of the house pass each other, without farther intercourse than silent though significant civility. Sometimes you see a pair of unfortunate aristocrates talking politics at the end of a passage, or on a landing-place; and here and there a bevy of females, en deshabille, recounting altogether the subject of their arrest. One's ear occasionally catches a few half-suppressed notes of a proscribed aire, but the unhallowed sounds of the Carmagnole and Marseillois are never heard, and would be thought more dissonant here than the war-whoop. In fact, the only appearance of gaiety is among the ideots and lunatics. --_"Je m'ennuye furieusement,"_ is the general exclamation.--An Englishman confined at the Bicetre would express himself more forcibly, but, it is certain, the want of knowing how to employ themselves does not form a small part of the distresses of our fellow-prisoners; and when they tell us they are _"ennuyes,"_ they say, perhaps, nearly as much as they feel-- for, as far as I can observe, the loss of liberty has not the same effect on a Frenchman as an Englishman. Whether this arises from political causes, or the natural indifference of the French character, I am not qualified to determine; probably from both: yet when I observe this facility of mind general, and by no means peculiar to the higher classes, I cannot myself but be of opinion, that it is more an effect of their original disposition than of their form of government; for though in England we were accustomed from our childhood to consider every man in France as liable to wake and find himself in the Bastille, or at Mont St. Michel, this formidable despotism existed more in theory than in practice; and if courtiers and men of letters were intimidated by it, the mass of the people troubled themselves very little about Lettres de Cachet. The revenge or suspicion of Ministers might sometimes pursue those who aimed at their power, or assailed their reputation; but the lesser gentry, the merchants, or the shopkeepers, were very seldom victims of arbitrary imprisonment--and I believe, amongst the evils which it was the object of the revolution to redress, this (except on the principle) was far from being of the first magnitude. I am not likely, under my present circumstances, to be an advocate for the despotism of any form of government; and I only give it as a matter of opinion, that the civil liberty of the French was not so often and generally violated,* as to influence their character in such a degree as to render them insensible of its loss. At any rate, we must rank it among the _bizarreries_ [Unaccountable whimsical events.] of this world, that the French should have been prepared, by the theory of oppression under their old system, for enduring the practice of it under the new one; and that what during the monarchy was only possible to a few, is, under the republic, almost certain to all. * I remember in 1789, after the destruction of the Bastille, our compassionate countrymen were taught to believe that this tremendous prison was peopled with victims, and that even the dungeons were inhabited; yet the truth is, though it would not have told so pathetically, or have produced so much theatrical effect, there were only seven persons confined in the whole building, and certainly not one in the dungeons. Amiens, Providence, Dec. 10, 1793. We have again, as you will perceive, changed our abode, and that too without expecting, and almost without desiring it. In my moments of sullenness and despondency, I was not very solicitous about the modifications of our confinement, and little disposed to be better satisfied with one prison than another: but, heroics apart, external comforts are of some importance, and we have, in many respects, gained by our removal. Our present habitation is a spacious building, lately a convent, and though now crouded with more prisoners by two or three hundred than it will hold conveniently, yet we are better lodged than at the Bicetre, and we have also a large garden, good water, and, what above all is desirable, the liberty of delivering our letters or messages ourselves (in presence of the guard) to any one who will venture to approach us. Mad. de ____ and myself have a small cell, where we have just room to place our beds, but we have no fire-place, and the maids are obliged to sleep in an adjoining passage. A few evenings ago, while we were at the Bicetre, we were suddenly informed by the keeper that Dumont had sent some soldiers with an order to convey us that night to the Providence. We were at first rather surprized than pleased, and reluctantly gathered our baggage together with as much expedition as we could, while the men who were to escort us were exclaiming "a la Francaise" at the trifling delay this occasioned. When we had passed the gate, we found Fleury, with some porters, ready to receive our beds, and overjoyed at having procured us a more decent prison, for, it seems, he could by no means reconcile himself to the name of Bicetre. We had about half a mile to walk, and on the road he contrived to acquaint us with the means by which he had solicited this favour of Dumont. After advising with all Mad. de ____'s friends who were yet at liberty, and finding no one willing to make an effort in her behalf, for fear of involving themselves, he discovered an old acquaintance in the "femme de chambre" of one of Fleury's mistresses.-- This, for one of Fleury's sagacity, was a spring to have set the whole Convention in a ferment; and in a few days he profited so well by this female patronage, as to obtain an order for transferring us hither. On our arrival, we were informed, as usual, that the house was already full, and that there was no possibility of admitting us. We however, set up all night in the keeper's room with some other people newly arrived like ourselves, and in the morning, after a little disputing and a pretty general derangement of the more ancient inhabitants, we were "nichees," as I have described to you. We have not yet quitted our room much, but I observe that every one appears more chearful, and more studied in their toilette, than at the Bicetre, and I am willing to infer from thence that confinement here is less insupportable.--I have been employed two days in enlarging the notes I had made in our last prison, and in making them more legible, for I ventured no farther than just to scribble with a pencil in a kind of short-hand of my own invention, and not even that without a variety of precautions. I shall be here less liable either to surprize or observation, and as soon as I have secured what I have already noted, (which I intend to do to-night,) I shall continue my remarks in the usual form. You will find even more than my customary incorrectness and want of method since we left Peronne; but I shall not allow your competency as a critic, until you have been a prisoner in the hands of French republicans. It will not be improper to notice to you a very ingenious decree of Gaston, (a member of the Convention,) who lately proposed to embark all the English now in France at Brest, and then to sink the ships.--Perhaps the Committee of Public Welfare are now in a sort of benevolent indecision, whether this, or Collot d'Herbois' gunpowder scheme, shall have the preference. Legendre's iron cage and simple hanging will, doubtless, be rejected, as too slow and formal. The mode of the day is "les grandes mesures." If I be not seriously alarmed at these propositions, it is not that life is indifferent to me, or that I think the government too humane to adopt them. My tranquillity arises from reflecting that such measures would be of no political use, and that we shall most likely be soon forgotten in the multitude of more important concerns. Those, however, whom I endeavour to console by this reasoning, tell me it is nothing less than infallible, that the inutility of a crime is here no security against its perpetration, and that any project which tends to evil will sooner be remembered than one of humanity or justice. [End of Vol. I. The Printed Books] [Beginning of Volume II. Of The Printed Books] Providence, Dec. 20, 1793. "All places that are visited by the eye of Heaven, are to the wise man happy havens." If Shakspeare's philosophy be orthodox, the French have, it must be confessed, many claims to the reputation of a wise people; and though you know I always disputed their pretensions to general gaiety, yet I acknowledge that misfortune does not deprive them of the share they possess, and, if one may judge by appearances, they have at least the habit, more than any other nation, of finding content under situations with which it should seem incompatible. We are here between six and seven hundred, of all ages and of all ranks, taken from our homes, and from all that usually makes the comfort of life, and crowded together under many of the inflictions that constitute its misery; yet, in the midst of all this, we fiddle, dress, rhyme, and visit as ceremoniously as though we had nothing to disturb us. Our beaux, after being correctly frizz'd and powdered behind some door, compliment the belle just escaped from a toilet, performed amidst the apparatus of the kitchen; three or four beds are piled one upon another to make room for as many card-tables; and the wits of the prison, who are all the morning employed in writing doleful placets to obtain their liberty, in the evening celebrate the loss of it in bout-rimees and acrostics. I saw an ass at the _Corps de Garde_ this morning laden with violins and music, and a female prisoner seldom arrives without her complement of bandboxes.--Embarrassed, stifled as we are by our numbers, it does not prevent a daily importation of lap-dogs, who form as consequential a part of the community in a prison, as in the most superb hotel. The faithful valet, who has followed the fortunes of his master, does not so much share his distresses as contribute to his pleasure by adorning his person, or, rather, his head, for, excepting the article of hair-dressing, the beaux here are not elaborate. In short, there is an indifference, a frivolity, in the French character, which, in circumstances like the present, appears unaccountable. But man is not always consistent with himself, and there are occasions in which the French are nothing less than philosophers. Under all these externals of levity, they are a very prudent people, and though they seem to bear with infinite fortitude many of the evils of life, there are some in which their sensibility is not to be questioned. At the death of a relation, or the loss of liberty, I have observed that a few hours suffice, _pour prendre son parti;_ [To make up his mind.] but on any occasion where his fortune has suffered, the liveliest Frenchman is _au desespoir_ for whole days. Whenever any thing is to be lost or gained, all his characteristic indifference vanishes, and his attention becomes mentally concentrated, without dissipating the habitual smile of his countenance. He may sometimes be deceived through deficiency of judgment, but I believe not often by unguardedness; and, in a matter of interest, a _petit maitre_ of five-and-twenty might _tout en badinage_ [All in the way of pleasantry.] maintain his ground against a whole synagogue.--This disposition is not remarkable only in affairs that may be supposed to require it, but extends to the minutest objects; and the same oeconomy which watches over the mass of a Frenchman's estate, guards with equal solicitude the menu property of a log of wood, or a hen's nest. There is at this moment a general scarcity of provisions, and we who are confined are, of course, particularly inconvenienced by it; we do not even get bread that is eatable, and it is curious to observe with what circumspection every one talks of his resources. The possessor of a few eggs takes care not to expose them to the eye of his neighbour; and a slice of white bread is a donation of so much consequence, that those who procure any for themselves do not often put their friends to the pain either of accepting or refusing it. Mad. de ____ has been unwell for some days, and I could not help giving a hint to a relation of her's whom we found here, and who has frequent supplies of bread from the country, that the bread we eat was peculiarly inimical to her; but I gained only a look of repulsive apprehension, and a cold remark that it was very difficult to get good bread--_"et que c'etoit bien malheureux."_ [And that it certainly was very unfortunate.] I own this kind of selfishness is increased by a situation where our wants are numerous, and our enjoyments few; and the great distinctions of meum and tuum, which at all times have occasioned so much bad fellowship in the world, are here perhaps more rigidly observed than any where else; yet, in my opinion, a close-hearted consideration has always formed an essential and a predominant quality in the French character. People here do not ruin themselves, as with us, by hospitality; and examples of that thoughtless profusion which we censure and regret, without being able entirely to condemn, are very rare indeed. In France it is not uncommon to see a man apparently dissipated in his conduct, and licentious in his morals, yet regular, even to parsimony, in his pecuniary concerns.--He oeconomizes with his vices, and indulges in all the excesses of fashionable life, with the same system of order that accumulates the fortune of a Dutch miser. Lord Chesterfield was doubtless satisfied, that while his son remained in France, his precepts would have all the benefit of living illustration; yet it is not certain that this cautious and reflecting licentiousness has any merit over the more imprudent irregularity of an English spendthrift: the one is, however, likely to be more durable than the other; and, in fact, the character of an old libertine is more frequent in France than in England. If oeconomy preside even over the vices of the rich and fashionable, you may conclude that the habits of the middling ranks of people of small fortunes are still more scrupulously subjected to its influence. A French _menage_ [Household.] is a practical treatise on the art of saving--a spirit of oeconomy pervades and directs every part of it, and that so uniformly, so generally, and so consistently, as not to make the same impression on a stranger as would a single instance where the whole was not conducted on the same principle. A traveller is not so forcibly stricken by this part of the French character, because it is more real than apparent, and does not seem the effect of reasoning or effort, which is never consequential, but rather that of inclination and the natural course of things. A degree of parsimony, which an Englishman, who does not affect the reputation of a Codrus, could not acquire without many self-combats, appears in a Frenchman a matter of preference and convenience, and till one has lived long and familiarly in the country, one is apt to mistake principles for customs, and character for manners, and to attribute many things to local which have their real source in moral causes.--The traveller who sees nothing but gay furniture, and gay clothes, and partakes on invitation of splendid repasts, returns to England the enamoured panegyrist of French hospitality.--On a longer residence and more domestic intercourse, all this is discoverable to be merely the sacrifice of parsimony to vanity--the solid comforts of life are unknown, and hospitality seldom extends beyond an occasional and ostentatious reception. The gilding, painting, glasses, and silk hangings of a French apartment, are only a gay disguise; and a house, which to the eye may be attractive even to splendour, often has not one room that an Englishman would find tolerably convenient. Every thing intended for use rather than shew is scanty and sordid--all is _beau, magnifique, gentil,_ or _superb,_ [Fine magnificent, genteel, or superb.] and nothing comfortable. The French have not the word, or its synonime, in their language. In France, clothes are almost as durable as furniture, and the gaiety which twenty or thirty years ago we were complaisant enough to admire is far from being expensive. People are not more than five or six hours a day in their gala habits, and the whole of this period is judiciously chosen between the hours of repast, so that no risk in incurred by accidents at table. Then the caprices of fashion, which in England are so various and despotic, have here a more limited influence: the form of a dress changes as long as the material is convertible, and when it has outlasted the possibility of adaptation to a reigning mode, it is not on that account rejected, but is generally worn in some way or other till banished by the more rational motive of its decay. All the expences of tea-visits, breakfast-loungings, and chance-dinners, are avoided--an evening visit is passed entirely at cards, a breakfast in form even for the family is unusual, and there are very few houses where you could dine without being previously engaged. I am, indeed, certain, that (unless in large establishments) the calculation for diurnal supply is so exact, that the intrusion of a stranger would be felt by the whole family. I must, however, do them the justice to say, that on such occasions, and where they find the thing to be inevitable, they put the best face possible on it, and the guest is entertained, if not plentifully, and with a very sincere welcome, at least with smiles and compliments. The French, indeed, allow, that they live less hospitably than the English: but then they say they are not so rich; and it is true, property is not so general, nor so much diffused, as with us. This is, however, only relative, and you will not suspect me of being so uncandid as to make comparisons without allowing for every difference which is the effect of necessity. All my remarks of this kind are made after an unprejudiced comparison of the people of the same rank or fortune in the two countries;--yet even the most liberal examination must end by concluding, that the oeconomy of the French too nearly approaches to meanness, and that their civility is ostentatious, perhaps often either interested, or even verbal. You already exclaim, why, in the year 1793, you are characterizing a nation in the style of Salmon! and implying a panegyric on the moral of the School for Scandal! I plead to the first part of the charge, and shall hereafter defend my opinion against the more polished writers who have succeeded Salmon. For the moral of the School for Scandal, I have always considered it as the seal of humanity on a comedy which would otherwise be perfection. It is not the oeconomy of the French that I am censuring, but their vanity, which, engrossing all their means of expence, prefers show to accommodation, and the parade of a sumptuous repast three or four times a year to a plainer but more frequent hospitality.--I am far from being the advocate of extravagance, or the enemy of domestic order; and the liberality which is circumscribed only by prudence shall not find in me a censurer. My ideas on the French character and manner of living may not be unuseful to such of my countrymen as come to France with the project of retrieving their affairs; for it is very necessary they should be informed, that it is not so much the difference in the price of things, which makes a residence here oeconomical, as a conformity to the habits of the country; and if they were not deterred by a false shame from a temporary adoption of the same system in England, their object might often be obtained without leaving it. For this reason it may be remarked, that the English who bring English servants, and persist in their English mode of living, do not often derive very solid advantages from their exile, and their abode in France is rather a retreat from their creditors than the means of paying their debts. Adieu.--You will not be sorry that I have been able for a moment to forget our personal sufferings, and the miserable politics of the country. The details of the former are not pleasant, and the latter grow every day more inexplicable. 
12064	----	Proofreading Team. NOTES OF AN OVERLAND JOURNEY THROUGH FRANCE AND EGYPT TO BOMBAY. BY THE LATE MISS EMMA ROBERTS. WITH A MEMOIR. 1841 This file was produced from images generously made available by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) at http://gallica.bnf.fr CONTENTS. * * * * * MEMOIR * * * * * CHAPTER I. LONDON TO PARIS. Departure from London--A French Steam-vessel--Unfavourable Weather--Arrival at Havre--Difficulties at the Custom-house--Description of Havre--Embarkation on the Steamer for Rouen--Appearance of the Country--Inclemency of the Weather--Arrival at Rouen--Description of Rouen--Departure by the Boat for Paris--Scenes and Traditions on the Banks of the Seine--Journey by the Railroad to Paris--The _Douaniers_--Observations on the Journey up the Seine * * * * * CHAPTER II. PARIS TO MARSEILLES. Description of Paris--Departure by the Diligence--The Country--The Vineyards--Hotels and fare--Arrival at Lyons--Description of the City--Departure in the Steam-boat for Arles--Descent of the Rhône--Beauty and Variety of the Scenery--Confusion on disembarking at Beaucaire--A Passenger Drowned--Arrival at Arles--Description of the Town--Embarkation in the Steamer for Marseilles--Entrance into the Mediterranean--Picturesque Approach to Marseilles--Arrival in the Harbour--Description of Marseilles--Observations upon the Journey through France by Ladies * * * * * CHAPTER III. MARSEILLES TO ALEXANDRIA. Vexations at the Custom-house--Embarkation on the Malta Steamer--Difficulties of exit from the Harbour--Storm--Disagreeable Motion of the Steam-vessel--Passengers--Arrival at Malta--Description of the City--Vehicles--Dress of the Maltese Women--State of Society--Church of St. John--The Palace--The Cemetery of the Capuchin Convent--Intolerance of the Roman Catholic Priesthood--Shops, Cafés, and Hotels--Manufactures and Products of Malta--Heat of the Island--Embarkation on board an English Government Steamer--Passengers--A young Egyptian--Arrival at Alexandria--Turkish and Egyptian Fleets--Aspect of the City from the Sea--Landing * * * * * CHAPTER IV. ALEXANDRIA TO BOULAK. Description of Alexandria--Hotels--Houses--Streets--Frank Shops--Cafés--Equipages--Arrangements for the Journey to Suez--Pompey's Pillar--Turkish and Arab Burial-grounds--Preparations for the Journey to Cairo--Embarkation on the Canal--Bad accommodation in the Boat--Banks of the Canal--Varieties of Costume in Egypt--Collision during the night--Atfee--Its wretched appearance--The Pasha--Exchange of Boats--Disappointment at the Nile--Scarcity of Trees--Manners of the Boatmen--Aspect of the Villages--The Marquess of Waterford--The Mughreebee Magician--First sight of the Pyramids--Arrival at Boulak, the Port of Cairo * * * * * CHAPTER V. CAIRO. Arrival at Boulak--Description of the place--Moolid, or Religious Fair--Surprise of the People--The Hotel at Cairo--Description of the City--The Citadel--View from thence--The City--The Shops--The Streets--The interior of the Pasha's Palace--Pictures--Furniture--Military Band--Affray between a Man and Woman--Indifference of the Police to Street Broils--Natives beaten by Englishmen--Visit to an English Antiquary--By-ways of the City--Interior of the Houses--Nubian Slave-market--Gypsies--Preparation for Departure to Suez--Mode of driving in the Streets of Cairo--Leave the City--The Changes in travelling in Egypt--Attractions of Cairo * * * * * CHAPTER VI. THE DESERT. Equipage for crossing the Desert--Donkey-chairs--Sense of calmness and tranquillity on entering the Desert--Nothing dismal in its aspect--The Travellers' Bungalow--Inconvenient construction of these buildings--Kafila of the Governor of Jiddah and his Lady--Their Equipage--Bedouins--Impositions practised on Travellers--Desert Travelling not disagreeable--Report of the sailing of the Steamer--Frequency of false reports--Ease with which an infant of the party bore the journey--A wheeled carriage crossing the Desert--Parties of Passengers from Suez encountered--One of Mr. Hill's tilted Caravans--Difficulty of procuring water at the Travellers' Bungalow--A night in the Desert--Magnificent sunrise--First sight of the Red Sea and the Town of Suez--Miserable appearance of the latter--Engagement of a Passage to Bombay * * * * * CHAPTER VII. SUEZ TO ADEN. Travellers assembling at Suez--Remarks on the Pasha's Government--Embarkation on the Steamer--Miserable accommodation in the _Berenice_, and awkwardness of the attendants--Government Ships not adapted to carry Passengers--Cause of the miserable state of the Red Sea Steamers--Shores of the Red Sea--Arrival at Mocha--Its appearance from the Sea--Arrival at Aden--Its wild and rocky appearance on landing--Cape Aden--The Town--Singular appearance of the Houses--The Garrison expecting an attack by the Arabs--Discontent of the Servants of Europeans at Aden--Complaints by Anglo-Indians against Servants--Causes--Little to interest Europeans in Aden * * * * * CHAPTER VIII. ADEN. Commanding situation of Aden--Its importance in former times--But few remains of its grandeur--Its facilities as a retreat for the piratical hordes of the Desert--The loss of its trade followed by reduction of the population--Speculations as to the probability of ultimately resisting the Arabs--Exaggerated notions entertained by the Shiekhs of the wealth of the British--Aden a free Port would be the Queen of the adjacent Seas--Its advantages over Mocha--The Inhabitants of Aden--The Jews--The Banians--The Soomalees--The Arabs--Hopes of the prosperity of Aden--Goods in request there--Exports--Re-embarkation on the Steamer--Want of attention--Makallah--Description of the place--Its products--The Gazelle--Traveller in Abyssinia--Adventurous English Travellers--Attractions of the Arab life--Arrival at Bombay * * * * * CHAPTER IX. BOMBAY. Contrast between landing at Bombay and at Calcutta--First feelings those of disappointment--Aspect of the place improves--Scenery of the Island magnificent, abounding with fine Landscapes--Luxuriance and elegance of the Palms--Profusion and contrast of the Trees--Multitude of large Houses in Gardens--Squalid, dirty appearance of the Native Crowd--Costume of the Natives--Inferior to the Costume of Bengal--Countenances not so handsome--The Drive to the Fort--The Burrah Bazaar--Parsee Houses--"God-shops" of the Jains--General use of Chairs amongst the Natives--Interior of the Native Houses--The Sailors' Home--The Native Town--Improvements--The Streets animated and picturesque--Number of Vehicles--The Native Females--The Parsee Women--The Esplanade--Tents and Bungalows--The Fort--The China Bazaar--A Native School--Visit to a Parsee Warehouse--Real ornamental China-ware--Apprehension of Fire in the Fort--Houses fired by Rats--Illumination of Native Houses--Discordant noise of Native Magic--The great variety of Religions in Bombay productive of lamp-lighting and drumming * * * * * CHAPTER X. BOMBAY--(_Continued_). Bombay the rising Presidency--Probability of its becoming the Seat of Government--The Anglo-Indian Society of Bombay--Style of Living--The Gardens inferior to those of Bengal--Interiors of the Houses more embellished--Absence of Glass-windows an evil--The Bungalows--The Encamping-ground--Facility and despatch of a change of residence--Visit to a tent entertainment--Inconveniences attending a residence in tents--Want of Hotels and Boarding-houses--Deficiency of public Amusements in Bombay--Lectures and _Conversaziones_ suggested, as means of bringing the native community into more frequent intercourse with Europeans--English spoken by the superior classes of Natives--Natives form a very large portion of the wealth and intelligence of Bombay--Nothing approaching the idea of a City to be seen--The climate more salubrious than that of Bengal--Wind blows hot and cold at the same time--Convenience a stranger finds in so many domestic servants speaking English--Their peculiar mode of speaking it--Dress of servants--Their wages--The Cooks--Improved by Lord Clare--Appointments of the tables--The Ramoosee Watchmen--Their vociferations during the night--Fidelity of the Natives--Controversy concerning their disregard of truth. * * * * * CHAPTER XI. BOMBAY--(_Continued_). Residences for the Governor--Parell--Its Gardens--Profusion of Roses--Receptions at Government-house--The evening-parties--The grounds and gardens of Parell inferior to those at Barrackpore--The Duke of Wellington partial to Parell--Anecdotes of his Grace in India--Sir James Mackintosh--His forgetfulness of India--The Horticultural Society--Malabar Point, a retreat in the hot weather--The Sea-view beautiful--The nuisance of fish--Serious effects at Bombay of the stoppage of the trade with China--Ill-condition of the poorer classes of Natives--Frequency of Fires--Houses of the Parsees--Parsee Women--Masculine air of the other Native Females of the lower orders who appear in public--Bangle-shops--Liqueur-shops--Drunkenness amongst Natives not uncommon here, from the temptations held out--The Sailors' Home--Arabs, Greeks, Chinamen--The latter few and shabby--Portuguese Padres--Superiority of the Native Town of Bombay over that of Calcutta--Statue of Lord Cornwallis--Bullock-carriages--High price and inferiority of horses in Bombay--Hay-stacks--Novel mode of stacking * * * * * CHAPTER XII. BOMBAY--(_Continued_). The Climate of Bombay treacherous in the cold season--The land-wind injurious to health--The Air freely admitted into Rooms--The Climate of the Red Sea not injurious to Silk dresses--Advice to lady-passengers on the subject of dress--The Shops of Bombay badly provided--Speculations on the site of the City, should the seat of Government be removed hither--The Esplanade--Exercise of Sailors on Shore and on Ship-board--Mock-fight--Departure of Sir Henry Fane--Visit to a fair in Mahim Wood--Prophecy--Shrine of Mugdooree Sahib--Description of the Fair--Visit to the mansion of a Moonshee--His Family--Crowds of Vehicles returning from the Fair--Tanks--Festival of the _Duwallee_--Visit to a Parsee--Singular ceremony--The Women of India impede the advance of improvement--They oppose every departure from established rules--Effect of Education in Bombay yet superficial--Cause of the backwardness of Native Education MEMOIR. * * * * * Experience has, especially of late years, amply refuted the barbarous error, which attributes to Nature a niggardliness towards the minds of that sex to which she has been most prodigal of personal gifts; the highest walks of science and literature in this country have been graced by female authors, and, perhaps, the purity and refinement which pervade our works of imagination, compared with those of former days, may not unjustly be traced to the larger share which feminine pens now have in the production of these works. It would appear to countenance the heretical notion just condemned, to assume that a robust organization is essential to the proper development and exercise of the powers of the understanding; but it is certain that, in several instances, individuals, who have exhibited the most striking examples of female pre-eminence, have not reached the full maturity of their intellectual growth, but have been lost to the world in a premature grave: to the names of Felicia Hemans and Laetitia E. Landon, besides others, is now added that of Emma Roberts, who, although in respect of poetical genius she cannot be placed upon a level with the two writers just named, yet in the vigour of her faculties, and in the variety of her talents, is worthy of being associated with them as another evidence against the asserted mental inequality of the sexes. Miss Roberts belonged to a Welsh family of great respectability. Her grandfather, who was a gentleman of good property, and served the office of High Sheriff for Denbighshire, North Wales, possessed the fine estate of Kenmell Park in that county, which was disposed of after his death to Colonel Hughes, the present Lord Dinorben, whose seat it continues to be. He had three sons, all of whom entered a military life, which seems to have had peculiar attractions to this gallant family. The eldest, the late General Thomas Roberts, raised a regiment, which became the 111th, and it is said he frequently officiated as Gold Stick in Waiting to George the Third. A son of General Roberts was aide-de-camp to Sir Arthur Wellesley in Portugal, was taken prisoner by the French, and detained during the war: he afterwards rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. The second son, Colonel David Roberts, of the 51st regiment, distinguished himself in the Peninsular war, having, on the 7th January, 1809, during Sir John Moore's retreat, near the heights of Lugo, headed a party which repulsed the French Light Brigade, on which occasion his cloak was riddled with bullets, two of which passed through his right-hand, which was amputated. He was then a major, but afterwards commanded the regiment, in Lord Dalhousie's brigade, and subsequently in Flanders, and was so seriously and repeatedly wounded, that his pensions for wounds amounted to £500 a year. Colonel Roberts was an author, and wrote, amongst other things, the comic military sketch called _Johnny Newcome_. The youngest son, William (the father of Miss Roberts), in the course of his travels on the continent, in early life, formed some intimacies at the Court of St. Petersburgh (to which he was introduced by the British Ambassador), and eventually entered the Russian service; he was made aide-de-camp to General Lloyd, his countryman, and served with great distinction in several campaigns against the Turks. He afterwards entered the British army, but had not attained a higher rank than that of captain (with the paymastership of his regiment), when he died, leaving a widow, a son (who died a lieutenant in the army), and two daughters. Emma, the youngest daughter of Captain Roberts, was born about the year 1794. After the death of her father, she resided with her mother, a lady of some literary pretensions, at Bath. Though possessed of a very attractive person, though of a lively disposition, and peculiarly fitted to shine in the gayest circles of social life, her thirst for letters was unquenchable, and the extent of her reading proves that her early years must have been years of application. Her first literary work was in the grave department of history,--_Memoirs of the Rival Houses of York and Lancaster, or the White and Red Roses,_ which was published in two volumes, 1827. In the preparation of this work, Miss Roberts prosecuted her researches into the historical records at the Museum with so much diligence and perseverance, as to attract the notice of the officers of that institution, who rendered her much assistance. This work did not take hold of public attention; the narrative is perspicuously and pleasingly written, but it throws no additional light upon the events of the time. It is not unusual for young writers, in their first essay, to mistake the bent of their powers. On the death of her mother and the marriage of her sister to an officer of the Bengal army (Captain R.A. M'Naghten), Miss Roberts accompanied Mrs. M'Naghten and her husband to India, in February 1828, taking her passage in the _Sir David Scott_, to Bengal. From Calcutta she proceeded with them to the Upper Provinces, where she spent the years 1829 and 1830, between the stations of Agra, Cawnpore, and Etawah. Her active and inquisitive mind was constantly employed in noting the new and extraordinary scenes around her, the physical aspect of the country, the peculiar traits of its population, and the manners of both natives and Anglo-Indians: the strong and faithful impressions they made never faded from a memory remarkably retentive. It is to these favourable opportunities of diversified observation, in her journeys by land and water, along the majestic Ganges, or by the dawk conveyance in a palanquin, and in her residence for so long a period away from the metropolis of British India, which exhibits but a mongrel kind of Eastern society, that the English public owe those admirable pictures of Indian scenery and manners, which have conquered, or contributed to conquer, its habitual distaste for such topics. Whilst at Cawnpore, Miss Roberts committed to the press a little volume of poetry, entitled _Oriental Scenes_, which she dedicated to her friend Miss Landon, then rising into eminence under the well-known designation of L.E.L. This volume, which she republished in England, in 1832, contains some very pleasing specimens of glowing description, graceful imagery, and well-turned expression, which show that her powers required only cultivation to have secured to her a respectable rank among modern poets. Mrs. M'Naghten died in 1831, and about this time (either soon after or shortly before the death of her sister), she exchanged provincial scenes and society for the more cheerful atmosphere of Calcutta, where a new world of observation and of employment opened to her. The sketches she has given of the City of Palaces, and of its inhabitants, prove how accurately she had seized their characteristic features. Here her pen was called into incessant activity; besides various contributions to Annuals and other ephemeral works, Miss Roberts undertook the formidable task (doubly formidable in such a climate) of editing a newspaper, and the _Oriental Observer_, whilst under her direction, was enriched by some valuable articles written by herself, indicating the versatility of her talents, the extent of her resources, and the large area of knowledge over which her active mind had ranged. This severe over-employment, however, entailed the inevitable penalty, loss of health, and in 1832, being now bound by no powerful tie to India, and looking forward, perhaps, with innocent ambition, to a less confined theatre for the display of her talents and acquisitions, she quitted the country, and returned to England, the voyage completely repairing the injury which the climate of India had wrought upon her constitution. The reputation she had acquired preceded her to this country, where she had many literary acquaintances, some of whom had reached a high station in public esteem; and her entrance into the best literary circles of the metropolis was thereby facilitated; but the position which she was entitled to claim was spontaneously conceded to talents such as hers, set off by engaging and unaffected manners, warmth and benevolence of heart, equanimity and serenity of temper. The fruits of her observations in the East were given to the world in several series of admirable papers, published in the _Asiatic Journal_,[A] a periodical work to which she contributed with indefatigable zeal and success, from shortly after her return to England until her death. A selection of those papers was published, in three volumes, in 1835, under the title of _Scenes and Characteristics of Hindostan_, which has had a large circulation, and (a very unusual circumstance attending works on Indian subjects) soon reached a second edition. This work established Miss Roberts's reputation as a writer of unrivalled excellence in this province, which demands a union of quick and acute discernment with the faculty of vivid and graphic delineation. Of the many attempts which have been made in this country to furnish popular draughts of Indian "Scenes and Characteristics," that of Miss Roberts is the only one which has perfectly succeeded. Her pen now came into extensive requisition, and the miscellaneous information with which she had stored her mind enabled her, with the aid of great fluency of composition and unremitted industry, to perform a quantity and a variety of literary labour, astonishing to her friends, when they considered that Miss Roberts did not seclude herself from society, but mixed in parties, where her conversational talents rendered her highly acceptable, and carried on, besides, a very extensive correspondence. History, biography, poetry, tales, local descriptions, foreign correspondence, didactic essays, even the culinary art, by turns employed her versatile powers. Most of these compositions were occasional pieces, furnished to periodical works; to some she attached her name, and a few were separately published. Amongst the latter is a very pleasing biographical sketch of Mrs. Maclean (formerly Miss Landon), one of her oldest and dearest friends. It was now seven years since she had quitted British India, during which period important events had occurred, which wrought material changes in its political and social aspects. The extinction of the East-India Company's commercial privileges had imparted a new tone to its government, given a freer scope to the principle of innovation, and poured a fresh European infusion into its Anglo-Indian society; steam navigation and an overland communication between England and her Eastern empire were bringing into operation new elements of mutation, and the domestic historian of India (as Miss Roberts may be appropriately termed) felt a natural curiosity to observe the progress of these changes, and to compare the British India of 1830 with that of 1840. With a view of enlarging the sphere of her knowledge of the country, and of deriving every practicable advantage from a twelve-months' visit, she determined to examine India on its Western side, and (contrary to the urgent advice of many of her friends) to encounter the inconveniences of performing the journey overland, through France and Egypt. Previous to her departure, she entered into an arrangement with the _Asiatic Journal_ (the depository of most of her papers on Indian subjects) to transmit, on her way, a series of papers for publication in that work, descriptive of the objects and incidents met with in the overland route, and of the "rising presidency," as she termed Bombay. By a singular coincidence, the last paper of this series was published in the very number of the _Asiatic Journal_[B] which announced her death. These papers, which are now before the reader, carry on the biography of Miss Roberts almost to the end of her life. She quitted England in September, 1839, and, having suffered few annoyances on the journey, except a fever which attacked her in the Gulf, arrived in Bombay in November, where she experienced the most cordial reception from all classes, including the Governor and the most respectable of the native community. Miss Roberts was known to Sir James Carnac, and in his Excellency's family she became a guest for some time, quitting his hospitable mansion only to meet with a similar cordiality of welcome from other friends, at the presidency and in the interior. Her residence at Parell has enabled her to draw, with her accustomed felicity, in one of the papers published in this volume, a lively sketch of the domestic scenes and public receptions, as well as the local scenery, at this delightful place. It appears from her letters that Miss Roberts meditated a tour into Cutch or Guzerat, which probably was prevented by her subsequent illness. "It is my intention," she wrote from Parell, December 30th, 1839, "to go into the provinces, as I have received numerous invitations; I am at present divided between Guzerat and Cutch: by going to the latter, I might have an opportunity of seeing Scinde, the new Resident, Captain Outram, being anxious that I should visit it." She adds: "I have received much attention from the native gentlemen belonging to this presidency, and have, indeed, every reason to be pleased with my reception." She had projected a statistical work on this part of India, and in her private letters she speaks with grateful enthusiasm of the liberality with which the government records were opened to her, and of the alacrity with which Europeans and natives forwarded her views and inquiries. In a letter dated in February, 1840, she says: "I am very diligently employed in collecting materials for my work; I am pleased with the result of my labours, and think I shall be able to put a very valuable book upon Bombay before the public. I hope to go in a short time to Mahableshwar, and thence to Sattara, Beejapore, &c." Her literary aid was invoked by the conductors of periodical works at Bombay, to which she furnished some amusing pictures of home-scenes, drawn with the same spirit and truth as her Indian sketches. She likewise undertook the editorship of a new weekly paper, the _Bombay United Service Gazette_, and with the benevolence which formed so bright a feature in her character, she engaged with zeal in a scheme for rescuing the native women, who (as her observation led her to believe) impede the progress of improvement, from the indolence in which they are educated, by devising employments for them suited to their taste and capacity. The concluding chapter of this volume contains some very sound and salutary reflections upon native education. Perhaps too close and unremitting application, in a climate which demands moderation in all pursuits that tax the powers of either mind or body, produced or aggravated a disease of the stomach, with which this lady was seriously attacked when on a visit to Colonel Ovans, the Resident at Sattara. Some indication of disordered health manifested itself whilst she was in the Hills. Writing from thence in April, and adverting to some incident which caused her vexation, she observed: "My health is failing me, and I can scarcely bear any increased subject of anxiety." She experienced in the family of Colonel Ovans all the attention and sympathy which the kindest hospitality could suggest; but her disorder increasing, she removed, in the hope of alleviating it by change of air, to Poona, and arrived at the house of her friend, Colonel Campbell, in that city, on the 16th of September. She expired unexpectedly on the following morning. Her remains are deposited near those of one of her own sex, who was also distinguished for her literary talents, Miss Jewsbury. The death of Miss Roberts excited universal sorrow amongst all classes, European and native, at Bombay, as well as at the other presidencies, especially Calcutta, where the most cordial and flattering tributes to her memory appeared in the public journals. She had nearly completed her inquiries, and accomplished all the objects for which she had revisited the treacherous clime of India, and one of her latest letters to the writer of this Memoir expressed a cheerful anticipation of her speedy return to England! "I positively leave India next October, and am now looking joyfully to my return." The person and manners of Miss Roberts were extremely prepossessing. In early life, she was handsome; and although latterly her figure had attained some degree of fulness, it had lost none of its ease and grace, whilst her pleasing features, marked by no lines of painful thought, were open and expressive, beaming with animation and good humour. She had not the slightest tinge of pedantry in her manner and deportment, which were natural and affable, so that a stranger never felt otherwise than at ease in her society. It was not her ambition to make a display of mental superiority, which inspires the other sex with any feelings but those of admiration--which is, indeed, tacitly resented as a species of tyranny, and frequently assigned as the ground of a certain prejudice against literary ladies. "It may safely he said," observes a friend of her's at Calcutta, "that, although devoted to literature as Miss Roberts was, yet in her conversation and demeanour she evinced less of what is known as '_blue_' than any of her contemporaries, excepting Miss Landon." Another Calcutta acquaintance says: "Though her mind was deeply interested in subjects connected with literature, her attention was by no means absorbed by them, and she mixed cordially and freely in society without the least disposition to despise persons of less intellectual elevation. She had a true relish of all the little pleasures that promiscuous society affords, and did not underrate those talents which are better fitted for the drawing-room than the study." Her warmth of heart and kindness of disposition, which co-operated with her good sense in thus removing all disagreeable points from her external character, made her the sincerest of friends, and ever ready to engage in any work of charity or benevolence. It would be affectation to attempt in this slight Memoir to elaborate a picture of the intellectual character of Miss Roberts, cut off, as she has been, before that character had been fully developed. The works, upon which her reputation as a writer principally rests, are not, perhaps, of a quality which calls for any commanding powers of mind. Her business was with the surfaces of things; her skill consisted in a species of photography, presenting perfect fac-similes of objects, animate and inanimate, in their natural forms and hues. Deep investigations, profound reflections, and laboured and learned disquisitions, would have defeated the very object of her lively sketches, which was to make them, not only faithful and exact, but popular. Of her success in this design, the following testimony from a competent authority, the _Calcutta Literary Gazette_, is distinct and decisive; and with this extract we may fitly close our melancholy office: "Nothing can be more minute and faithful than her pictures of external life and manners. She does not, indeed, go much beneath the surface, nor does she take profound or general views of human nature; but we can mention no traveller, who has thrown upon the printed page such true and vivid representations of all that strikes the eye of a stranger. Her book, entitled _Scenes and Characteristics of Hindostan_, is the best of its kind. Other travellers have excelled her in depth and sagacity of remark, in extent of information, and in mere force or elegance of style; but there is a vivacity, a delicacy, and a truth in her light sketches of all that lay immediately before her, that have never been surpassed in any book of travels that is at this moment present to our memory. She had a peculiar readiness in receiving, and a singular power of retaining, first impressions of the most minute and evanescent nature. She walked through a street or a bazaar, and every thing that passed over the mirror of her mind left a clear and lasting trace. She was thus enabled, even years after a visit to a place of interest, to describe every thing with the same freshness and fidelity as if she had taken notes upon the spot. They who have gone over the same ground are delighted to find in the perusal of her pages their own vague and half-faded impressions revived and defined by her magic glass, while the novelty and vividness of her foreign pictures make her home-readers feel that they are nearly as much entitled to be called travellers as the fair author herself." [Footnote A: The first appeared in the Journal for December, 1832.] [Footnote B: For December, 1840.] CHAPTER I. * * * * * LONDON TO PARIS. * * * * * Departure from London--A French Steam-vessel--Unfavourable Weather--Arrival at Havre--Difficulties at the Custom-house--Description of Havre--Embarkation on the Steamer for Rouen--Appearance of the Country--Inclemency of the Weather--Arrival at Rouen--Description of Rouen--Departure by the Boat for Paris--Scenes and Traditions on the Banks of the Seine--Journey by the Railroad to Paris--The _Douaniers_--Observations on the Journey up the Seine. A strong predilection in favour of river scenery induced me, at the commencement of an overland journey to Bombay, through France and Egypt, to take a passage from London in a steamer bound to Havre. Accordingly, on the 1st of September, 1839, accompanied by some friends, one of whom was to perform the whole journey with me, I embarked on board the _Phénix_, a French vessel, which left the Tower Stairs at about ten o'clock in the morning. The weather was showery, but occasional gleams of sunshine encouraged us to hope that it might clear up, and permit us to keep the deck during the greater part of the voyage, which we expected to perform in eighteen hours. To the majority of readers, in these days of universal travelling, it will be superfluous to describe a steam-boat; but there may possibly be some quiet people who are still ignorant of the sort of accommodation which it affords, and to whom the description will not be unacceptable. The _Phénix_ is a fine vessel of its class, five hundred tons burthen, and 160-horse power. It was handsomely fitted up, and the vases of flowers upon the chimney-piece in the principal saloon, and other ornaments scattered about, gave to the whole a gay appearance, as if the party assembled had been wholly bent upon pleasure. The ladies' cabin was divided by a staircase; but there were what, in a sort of mockery, are called "state-cabins" opening into that appropriated to the general use, around which were sofas, and bed-places upon a sort of shelf above, for the accommodation of the gentlemen. This apartment was handsomely carpeted, and otherwise well furnished; the steward and his assistant having the appearance of the better class of waiters belonging to a well-frequented hotel: all the servants were English, and the whole afforded a most delightful contrast to the sort of packets which many of the party on board were quite old enough to remember. The passengers were numerous, and apparently inclined to make themselves agreeable to each other; one, an American, objected to the sight of a footman, who came upon the quarter-deck for a few minutes, observing that such a thing would not be permitted in his country. As soon as the vessel got under weigh, preparations were made for breakfast, which was served, _à la fourchette_, in very excellent style, the cookery being a happy combination of the French and English modes. At the conclusion of the repast, we repaired to the deck, all being anxious to see the _British Queen_, which was getting her steam up, at Gravesend. We were alongside this superb vessel for a few minutes, putting some persons on board who had come down the river in the _Phénix_ for the purpose of paying it a visit; and taking advantage of a favourable breeze, we hoisted a sail, and went along at a rate which gave us hope of a speedy arrival at Havre. After passing the Nore, however, our progress was impeded; and at length, when off Margate, we were obliged to lie-to, in order to wait for the turn of the tide: the wind blowing so strongly as to render it questionable whether we could get round the Foreland. The sun was shining on the buildings at Margate, and the bells knolling for evening service; affording a home-scene of comfort and tranquillity which it was agreeable to carry abroad as one of the last reminiscences of England. In about three hours, we got the steam up again, and saw the _British Queen_ in the distance, still lying to, and apparently, notwithstanding her prodigious power, unable to get down the Channel. Dinner was served while the _Phénix_ lay off Margate; but it was thinly attended, the motion of the vessel having sent many persons to their cabins, while others were totally deprived of all appetite. An elderly gentleman, who sate upon my left hand, complained exceedingly of his inability to partake of the good things before him; and one or two left the table in despair. Again we sought the deck, and saw the sun sink behind an ominous mass of clouds; the sky, however, cleared, and the stars came out, reviving our spirits with hopes of a fine night. Unfortunately, soon after nine o'clock, a heavy squall obliged us to go below, and one of my female friends and myself took possession of a state cabin, and prepared to seek repose. It was my first voyage on board a steamer, and though the tremulous motion and the stamping of the engine are anything but agreeable, I prefer it to the violent rolling and pitching of a sailing vessel. We were certainly not nearly so much knocked about; the vases of flowers were taken off the mantel-piece, and placed upon the floor, but beyond this there were no precautions taken to prevent the movables from getting adrift; every thing remained quiet upon the tables, a circumstance which could not have happened in so heavy a sea in any vessel not steadied by the apparatus carried by a steamer. The _Phénix_ laboured heavily through the water; a torrent of rain soon cleared the deck of all the passengers, and the melancholy voices calling for the steward showed the miserable plight to which the male portion of the party was reduced. Daylight appeared without giving hope of better weather; and it was not until the vessel had reached the pier at Havre, which it did not make until after three o'clock P.M. on Monday, that the passengers were able to re-assemble. Many had not tasted food since their embarkation, and none had been able to take breakfast on the morning of their arrival. And here, for the benefit of future travellers, it may not be amiss to say, that a small medicine-chest, which had been packed in a carpet-bag, was detained at the custom-house; and that the following day we experienced some difficulty in getting it passed, being told that it was contraband; indeed, but for an idea that the whole party were going on to Bombay, and would require the drugs for their own consumption, we should not have succeeded in rescuing it from the hands of the Philistines. The day was too far advanced to admit of our getting the remainder of the baggage examined, a mischance which detained us a day at Havre, the steamer to Rouen starting at four o'clock in the morning. The weather was too unpropitious to admit of our seeing much of the environs of the town. Like all English travellers, we walked about as much as we could, peeped into the churches, made purchases of things we wanted and things we did not want, and got some of our gold converted into French money. We met and greeted several of our fellow-passengers, for though little conversation, in consequence of the inclemency of the weather, had taken place on board the _Phénix_, we all seemed to congratulate each other upon our escape from the horrors of the voyage. The gale increased rather than abated, and we now began to entertain fears of another day's detention at Havre, the steamer from Rouen not having arrived; and though we were very comfortably lodged, and found the town superior to the expectations we had formed of a sea-port of no very great consideration, we had no desire to spend more time in it than we could help. Havre appears to carry on a considerable commerce with India, several shops being wholly devoted to the sale of the productions of the East, while the number of parrots and monkeys to be seen show that the intercourse must be very extensive. The shops had a very English air about them, and though the houses were taller, and rather more dilapidated in their appearance, than they are usually found at home, they reminded us of familiar scenes. _Hamlet_ was announced for the evening's performance at the theatre, and but for the novelty of dining at a _table d'hôte_, we might have fancied ourselves still in England. The Hotel de l'Europe is the best in Havre; there are several others very respectable, and more picturesque, from the ancient style of the building: all were full, intercourse with Havre being on the increase. English carriages were arriving every hour; the steamer from Southampton brought an immense number of passengers, and travellers seemed to flock in from every part of the world. We were amused by seeing a well-dressed and well-mannered Russian lady, at the _table d'hôte_, fill her plate half-full of oil, and just dip the salad into it. It was the first time that one of my friends and myself had ever visited France, and we endeavoured as much as possible to accommodate ourselves to the manners of a strange country. We could not, however, entirely give up our English habits, and ordered tea in the evening in our private apartments: the French are by this time well accustomed to requisitions of this nature, and few places are now unsupplied with a tea-pot. On Tuesday morning, we were up at four o'clock, in order to embark on board the steamer for Rouen. It rained heavily, and any hopes, the interposition of the high houses gave, that the wind had abated, were destroyed upon turning the first angle, and after a hasty glance at the threatening sky and surging waters, we went below, intending, if possible, to remain there until the weather should clear. Passengers now came flocking in; many respectable French families, with their children and neatly dressed _bonnes_, were of the party; but the young folk speedily becoming very sick, we sought the deck, and in spite of the rain, which still continued to fall, established ourselves as well as we were able. Upon entering the river, the turbulence of the water subsided a little, and a gleam of sunshine, the first that smiled upon us, shewed a chateau and town nestling in the midst of gardens and orchards, and spreading down to the water's edge. The banks on either side were picturesque, presenting the most pleasing pictures of rural enjoyment, and conveying an idea of comfort which we had not previously associated with the smaller classes of country residences in France. The houses were cleanly on the outside, at least, and neither paint nor white-wash was spared in their decoration; the surrounding parterres were gay with flowers, amid which, as with us, dahlias made a very conspicuous appearance. They were not, we thought, quite so large and luxuriant as those which we see in our cottage-gardens at home; and this remark we found afterwards would apply to the more carefully tended plants in the pleasure-grounds of palaces. We are probably more skilful in the adaptation of soil to foreign importations, and therefore succeed in producing a finer flower. In my baggage I had brought a large basket-full of the roots of our English hearts-ease, as a present to a French gentleman, who had expressed a wish, in the early part of the summer, to take some with him from London, he having been much delighted with the superior beauty of those which he had seen in our English gardens; they were not then in a fit state for transplanting, and having, through the kindness of the secretary of the Royal Botanic Society, been enabled to carry away an extensive and choice collection of roots, I indulge a hope that I may be instrumental in spreading the finest varieties of this pretty flower throughout France. We lost, of course, many scenes of beauty and interest, in consequence of the inclemency of the weather. Just as we arrived at a most beautiful place, a church of elegant architecture rising in the centre, with gay-looking villas clustered round, the gathering clouds united over our devoted heads, the rain, descending in a cataract, beat down the smoke to the very decks, so that we all looked and felt as if we had been up the chimney, and the whole lovely scene was lost to us in a moment. The rain continued for about an hour after this, and then the sky began to clear. We reached Rouen at about half-past twelve. The approach is very fine, and the city makes an imposing appearance from the river. We had been recommended to the Hotel d'Angleterre, which is the best, but were so strongly tempted to rush into the hotel immediately opposite, that, trusting to its exterior, we hastened to house ourselves, and found no reason to repent our choice. We were shown into very handsome apartments, and found the staircases, lobbies, and ante-chambers as clean as we could desire. A change of attire and breakfast enabled us to sally forth to see as much of the town and its neighbourhood as our time would admit. The modern portion of Rouen is extremely handsome; the quay being lined with a series of lofty stone mansions, built in the style which is now beginning to be adopted in London. The public buildings are particularly fine, and there are two splendid bridges, one of stone, and one upon the suspension principle. Very extensive improvements are going on, and it seems as if, in the course of a very few years, the worst portions of the town will be replaced by new and elegant erections. Meantime, imagination can scarcely afford more than a faint idea of the horrors of the narrow, dirty streets, flanked on either side by lofty squalid houses, in the very last stage of dilapidation. The cathedral stands in a small square, or market-place, where the houses, though somewhat better than their neighbours in the lanes, have a very miserable appearance; they make a striking picture, but the reality sadly detracts from the pleasure which the eye would otherwise take in surveying the fine old church, with which, through the medium of engravings, it has been long familiar. Many workmen are at present employed in repairing the damage which time has inflicted upon this ancient edifice. The interior, though striking from its vastness, is at first rather disappointing, its splendid windows of stained glass being the most prominent of its ornaments. In pacing the long aisles, and pausing before the small chapels, the scene grows upon the mind, and the monuments, though comparatively few, are very interesting. An effigy of Richard Coeur de Lion, lately discovered while looking for the fiery monarch's heart, which was buried in Rouen, is shown as one of the chief curiosities of the place. The porter of the cathedral inhabited an extremely small dwelling, built up against the wall, and surrounded by high, dark buildings; but we were pleased to see that he had cheered this dismal place of abode by a gay parterre, several rich-looking flowers occupying pots beneath his windows. Our next pilgrimage was to the statue of Joan of Arc, which we approached through narrow streets, so dirty from the late heavy rains, as to be scarcely passable. We had, as we might have expected, little to reward us, except the associations connected with the Maid of Orleans, and her cruel persecutors. The spot had been to me, from my earliest years, one which I had felt a wish to visit, my researches, while writing the Memoirs of the Rival Houses of York and Lancaster, materially increasing the interest which an earlier perusal of the history of England and France had created, concerning scenes trodden by the brave, the great, and the good. However mistaken might have been their notions, however impolitic their actions, we cannot contemplate the characters of the Paladins, who have made Rouen famous, without feelings of respect. The murder of Joan of Arc formed the sole blot on the escutcheon of John Duke of Bedford, and the faults and vices of his companions in arms were the offspring of the times in which they lived. We were surprised by the excellence of the shops, even in the most dilapidated parts of the city of Rouen, the windows in every direction exhibiting a gay assemblage of goods of all descriptions, while the confectioners were little, if at all, inferior to those of Paris. One small square in particular, in which a market was held, was very striking, from the contrast between the valuable products sold, and the houses which contained them. Seven or eight stories in height, weather-stained, and dilapidated, the lower floors exhibited handsome porcelain and other costly articles, which gave an impression of wealth in the owners, that astonished those amongst our party who were strangers to the country. Our hearts absolutely sunk within us as we thought of the wretchedness of the interiors, the misery of being obliged to inhabit any one of the numerous suites of apartments rising tier above tier, and from which it would be absolutely impossible to banish vermin of every description. The French appear certainly to be beginning to study home comforts, all the modern houses being built upon very commodious plans; still the middling classes, in the towns at least, are miserably lodged, in comparison with the same grades in England, families of apparently great respectability inhabiting places so desolate as to strike one with horror. After picking our way through the least objectionable of the streets in the heart of the city, we were glad to escape into the open air, and solace ourselves with the views presented on the neighbouring heights. Nothing can be finer than the landscapes round Rouen; every necessary of life appears to be cheap and plentiful, and persons desirous of a quiet and economical residence abroad might spend their time very happily in the outskirts of this picturesque city. We found the guests at the _table-d'hôte_ chiefly English, travellers like ourselves, and some of our party recognised London acquaintance among those who, upon hearing our intention to proceed the following day up the Seine to Paris, recommended the boat by which they had arrived--the _Etoile_. Again we were summoned at four o'clock in the morning, and wended our way, along the banks of the river, to the starting-place, which was just beyond the second bridge. The one large boat, which conveyed passengers from Havre, was here exchanged for two smaller, better suited to the state of the river. We were taught to expect rather a large party, as we had understood that forty persons were going from our hotel. The bell of the _Dorade_, the opposition vessel, was sounding its tocsin to summon passengers on board, while ours was altogether mute. Presently, through the grey mist of the morning, we observed parties flocking down to the place of embarkation, who, somewhat to our surprise, all entered the other vessel. A large boat in the centre, in which the baggage is deposited, was speedily filled, carpet bags being piled upon carpet bags, until a goodly pyramid arose, which the rising sun touched with every colour of the prism. The decks of the _Dorade_ were now crowded with passengers, while two respectable-looking young women, in addition to ourselves, formed the whole of our company. Our bell now gave out a few faint sounds, as if rather in compliance with the usual forms observed, than from any hope that its warning voice would be heeded; and getting up our steam, we took the lead gallantly, as if determined to leave the heavier boat behind. Presently, however, the _Dorade_ passed us with all her gay company, and speeding swiftly on her way, would have been out of sight in a few minutes, but for the windings of the river, which showed us her smoke like a pennon in the distance. We were now left alone in our glory, and felt assured of what we had more than suspected before, namely, that we had got into the wrong boat. We then, though rather too late, inquired the cause of the extraordinary disproportion of the passengers, and were told that the _Etoile_ was the favourite boat going down the river, while the _Dorade_ had it hollow in going up. We now began to consider the circumstances of the case, and the chances of our not arriving time enough at the place of debarkation to get on to Paris by the rail-road that night. Agreeing that the detention would not be of the least consequence, that we should enjoy having the whole boat to ourselves, and the slow method of travelling, which would enable us the better to contemplate the beauties of the river, we made up our minds to a day of great enjoyment. The weather was fine, a cool breeze allaying the heat of the sun, which shone upon us occasionally through clouds too high to afford any apprehension of rain. The boat was very elegantly fitted up below, the ladies' cabin, in particular, being splendidly furnished. Above, the choice of seats proved very acceptable, since, in consequence of a new-fangled apparatus, we had four chimnies, whence sparks escaped in a constant shower, threatening destruction to any garment that might be exposed to them. Seated, therefore, at the prow, beyond the reach of this fiery shower, after partaking of an excellent breakfast, there being a first-rate _restaurateur_ on board, we began to converse with a very intelligent boatman, who amused us with the legends of the river and accounts of the different places which we passed. At Blossville-Bon-Secours there is an extremely steep hill, with a chapel, dedicated to the Virgin, at the summit; the holy edifice is, upon ordinary occasions, approached by a circuitous winding road, but at Easter and other great festivals, thousands of persons flock from all parts, for the purpose of making a pilgrimage up the steepest portion of the ascent, in order to fulfil vows previously made, and to pay their homage to the holy mother of God. There was a waggery in our friend's eye, as he described the sufferings of the devout upon these occasions, which indicated an opinion that, however meritorious the act, and however efficacious in shortening the path to heaven, he himself entertained no desire to try it. This man had seen something of the world, his maritime occupation having formerly led him to distant places; he had been a sailor all his life, was well acquainted with Marseilles, which he described with great enthusiasm, and gave us to understand that, having had a good offer elsewhere, this would be one of his last voyages in the _Etoile_, since he worked hard in it, without getting any credit. At the town of Elboeuf, we picked up another passenger; a country woman, with a basket or two, and a high Normandy cap, had come on board at one of the villages; and with this small reinforcement we proceeded, halting occasionally to mend some damage in the engine, and putting up a sail whenever we could take advantage of the breeze. Arriving at La Roquelle, our _cicerone_ pointed out to us the ruined walls of what once had been a very splendid chateau; its former owner being an inveterate gamester, having lost large sums of money, at length staked the chateau to an Englishman, who won it. Upon arriving to take possession, he was disappointed to find that he had only gained the chateau, and that the large estate attached to it was not in the bond. Being unable to keep it up without the surrounding property, he determined that no other person should enjoy it, and therefore, greatly to the annoyance of the people in the neighbourhood, he pulled it down. The present proprietor now lives in an adjacent farm-house, and the story, whether true or false, tells greatly to the prejudice of the English, and our friend, in particular, spoke of it as a most barbarous act. We found the chateaux on the banks of the Seine very numerous; many were of great magnitude, and flanked by magnificent woods, the greater number being clipped into the appearance of walls, and cut out into long avenues and arcades, intersecting each other at right angles, in the very worst taste, according to the English idea of landscape-gardening. There was something, however, extremely grand and imposing in this formal style, and we were at least pleased with the novelty which it afforded. At Andelys, perched upon a conical hill, are the picturesque remains of the chateau Gaillard, which was built by Richard Coeur de Lion, and must formerly have been of very great extent, its walls reaching down to the river's brink. We were told that the chateau furnished stabling for a thousand horses, and that there was a subterranean passage which led to the great Andelys. This passage is now undergoing a partial clearing, for the purpose of increasing the interest of the place, by exhibiting it to strangers who may visit the neighbourhood. Our informant proceeded to say, that during several years, an old witch inhabited the ruins, who was at once the oracle and the terror of the neighbourhood. The sketch-books of the party were here placed in requisition, and though the celerity with which a steamer strides through the water is not very favourable to the artist, a better idea of the scene was given than that which we found in the Guide Book. The banks of the Seine present a succession of pictures, all well worthy of the pencil, and those who are fond of the picturesque, and who have time at their disposal, will find the voyage up the river replete with the most interesting materials. The first sight of the vineyards, which began to spread themselves up the steep sides of the hills, delighted us all; and our prospects now began to be diversified with rock, which in a thousand fantastic forms showed itself along the heights. The country seemed thickly spread with villages, many at the edge of the water, others receding into winding valleys, and all boasting some peculiar beauty. Whether upon a nearer approach they would have been equally pleasing, it is not possible to say; but, from our position, we saw nothing to offend the eye, either in the cottages or the people; some of the very humblest of the dwellings boasted their little gardens, now gay with sun-flowers and dahlias, while the better sort, with their bright panes of glass, and clean muslin window-curtains, looked as if they would afford very desirable homes. A present of a bottle of wine made our boatmen very happy. They produced one of those huge masses of bread, which seems the principal food of the lower classes, and sate down to their meal with great content. Our dinner, which we had ordered rather early, was delayed by the arrival of the boat at Vernon, where we were obliged, according to the French phrase, to "mount the bridge." It was built, agreeably to the old mode of construction, with a mill in the centre, and the difficulty, and even danger, of getting through the arch, could not be called inconsiderable. Letting off the steam, we were hauled up by persons stationed for the purpose; and just as we got through, passed the steamers going down to Rouen, the partners of the vessels which went up in the morning; both were full, our _star_ being the only unlucky one. However, what might have been a hardship to many others was none to us, it being scarcely possible to imagine any thing more delightful than a voyage which, though comparatively slow, was the reverse of tedious, and in which we could discourse unrestrainedly, and occupy any part of the vessel most agreeable to ourselves. We picked up a very respectable man and his daughter, an interesting little girl, who spoke English very tolerably, and seemed delighted to meet with English ladies; and also an exquisite, dressed in the first style of the Parisian mode, but of him we saw little, he being wholly occupied with himself. The steam-company are entering into an arrangement at Vernon for the construction of a lock similar to one already formed at Pont-de-l'Arche, which we had passed through in the morning, and which will obviate the inconvenience and difficulty of the present mode of navigating the river. The next place of interest to which we came was Rosny, a village famous in the pages of history as the residence of the great and good, the friend and minister of Henry IV., the virtuous Sully. Our boatmen, who were not great antiquaries, said nothing about the early occupants of the chateau, exerting all their eloquence in praise of a later resident--the Duchesse de Berri. This lady rendered herself extremely popular in the vicinity, living in a style of princely splendour, and devoting her time to acts of munificence. Every year she portioned off a bride, giving a dowry to some respectable young lady of the neighbourhood, while to the poor she was a liberal and untiring benefactress. The boatmen blessed her as they passed, for to all she sent wine, and upon fête-days gave banquets to the rural population, to whom her remembrance will be ever dear. Our informants pointed out a small chapel, which they described as being very beautiful, which she had built as a depository for her husband's heart; this precious relic she carried away with her when she left Rosny, which she quitted with the regrets of every human being in the neighbourhood. The chateau has been purchased by an English banker, but is now uninhabited: there was a report of its being about to be pulled down. It is a large, heavy building, not distinguished by any architectural beauty, yet having an imposing air, from its extent and solidity. It is surrounded by fine woods and pleasure-grounds, laid out in the formal style, which is still the characteristic of French landscape-gardening. Nothing can be more beautiful than the surrounding scenery, the winding river with its vineyards hanging in terraces from the opposite heights, the village reposing beneath sun-lit hills, while corn-fields, pasture-land, and cattle grazing, convey the most pleasing ideas of the comfort of those who dwell upon this luxuriant soil. The city of Mantes now appeared in the distance, and as we approached it, our guides pointed out, on the opposite heights of Gassicourt, a hermitage and Calvary, which had formerly proved a great source of profit. An ascetic, of great pretensions to sanctity, took up his abode many years ago in this retreat, carrying on a thriving trade, every boat that passed contributing twopence, for which consideration the hermit rung a bell, to announce their arrival at the bridge of Mantes, giving notice to the town, in order to facilitate the transfer of baggage or passengers. This tax or tribute the hermit was not himself at the trouble of collecting, it being scrupulously despatched to him by the donors, who would have deemed it sinful to deprive the holy man of what they considered his just due. The sort of piety, which once supported so great a multitude of religious mendicants, is greatly on the decline in France. A few crosses on the bridges and heights, and the dresses of the priesthood whom we encountered in the streets, were the only exterior signs of Roman Catholicism which we had yet seen. Our boatmen spoke with great respect of the Sisters of Charity, pointing out a convent which they inhabited, and told us that during illness they had themselves been greatly indebted to the care and attention of these benevolent women. It was now growing dark, and we very narrowly escaped a serious accident in passing the bridge of Meulan, the boat coming into contact with one of the piers; fortunately, the danger was espied in time. There was now not the slightest chance of reaching Paris before the following morning; but we regretted nothing except the want of light, the gathering clouds rendering it impossible to see any thing of the scenery, which, we were told, increased in beauty at every mile. We consoled ourselves, however, with tea and whist in the cabin; in fact, we played with great perseverance throughout the whole of our journey, the spirits of the party never flagging for a single instant. We found a good hotel at the landing-place, at which we arrived at a very late hour, and starting the next morning by the early train to Paris, passed by the rail-road through an extremely interesting country, leaving St. Germain-en-Laye behind, and tracking the windings of the Seine, now too shallow to admit of the navigation of boats of any burthen. The construction of this rail-road was attended with considerable difficulty and great expense, on account of its being impeded by the works at Marli, for the supply of water to Versailles. The building of the bridges over the Seine, which it crosses three times, was also very costly. The carriages of the first class are very inferior to those of the same description upon the rail-roads in England, but they are sufficiently comfortable for so short a distance. We were set down at the barrier of Clichi, an inconvenient distance from the best part of Paris. Here we had to undergo a second inspection of our baggage, and I became somewhat alarmed for the fate of my medicine-chest. We had taken nothing else with as that could be seizable, and this was speedily perceived by the officials, who merely went through the form of an examination. The divisions in one of my portmanteaus had excited some suspicion at Havre, one of the men fancying that he had made a grand discovery, when he pronounced it to have a false bottom. We explained the method of opening it to his satisfaction, and afterwards, in overhauling my bonnet-box, he expressed great regret at the derangement of the millinery, which certainly sustained some damage from his rough handling. Altogether, we had not to complain of any want of civility on the part of the custom-house officers; but travellers who take the overland route to India, through France, will do well to despatch all their heavy baggage by sea, nothing being more inconvenient than a multitude of boxes. I had reduced all my packages to four, namely, two portmanteaus, a bonnet-box, and a leather bag, which latter contained the medicine-chest, a kettle and lamp, lucifer-matches, &c; my bonnet-box was divided into two compartments, one of which contained my writing-case and a looking-glass; for as I merely intended to travel through a portion of our British possessions in India, and to return after the October monsoon of 1840, I wished to carry every thing absolutely necessary for my comfort about with we. Another annoyance sustained by persons who take the route through France is, the trouble respecting their passports, which must be ready at all times when called upon for examination, and may be the cause of detention, if the proper forms are not scrupulously gone through. We were not certain whether it would be necessary to present ourselves in person at the Bureau des Passeports, Quai des Orfèvres, in Paris, after having sent them to the British embassy; but we thought it better to avoid all danger of delay, and therefore drove to a quarter interesting on account of its being a place of some importance as the original portion of Paris, and situated on the island. In this neighbourhood there are also the famous Hotel Dieu and Notre Dame, to both of which places we paid a visit, looking _en passant_ at the Morgue. The gentleman who accompanied us entered a building, with whose melancholy celebrity all are acquainted; but though it did not at that precise moment contain a corpse, the report did not induce us to follow his example: a circumstance which we afterwards regretted. It may be necessary to say, that at other places we sent our passports to the Hotel de Ville; but at Paris there is a different arrangement. Although the journey up the Seine from Havre proved very delightful to me, I do not recommend it to others, especially those to whom time is of importance. There is always danger of detention, and the length of the sea-voyage, especially from London, may be productive of serious inconvenience. For seeing the country, it is certainly preferable to the diligence, and my experience will teach those who come after me to inquire into the character of the steam-boat before they enter it. CHAPTER II. * * * * * PARIS TO MARSEILLES. * * * * * Description of Paris--Departure by the Diligence--The Country--The Vineyards--Hotels and fare--Arrival at Lyons--Description of the City--Departure in the Steam-boat for Arles--Descent of the Rhône--Beauty and Variety of the Scenery--Confusion on disembarking at Beaucaire--A Passenger Drowned--Arrival at Arles--Description of the Town--Embarkation in the Steamer for Marseilles--Entrance into the Mediterranean--Picturesque approach to Marseilles--Arrival in the Harbour--Description of Marseilles--Observations upon the Journey through France by Ladies. A week's residence in Paris does not give a stranger any title to decide upon the merits or demerits of that far-famed city. The period of the year (September) was not the most favourable for a visit, all the best families having emigrated to their country habitations, and the city consequently exhibited a deserted air, at variance with every preconceived notion of the gaiety of the French capital. The mixture of meanness and magnificence in the buildings, the dirt and bad smells, combine to give an unfavourable impression, which time only, and a better acquaintance with the more agreeable features of the place, can remove. We had entertained a hope, upon our arrival in Paris, of getting the _malle poste_ for our journey to Châlons; but it was engaged for at least a month in advance. We were not more fortunate, our party now being reduced to three, in our endeavour to secure the _coupé_, and were obliged to be contented with places (corners) in the interior. We despatched all our heavy goods--that is, the portmanteaus--by _messagerie_, to Marseilles, which was a great saving of trouble. Though the expense of this conveyance is enormous, it has the great advantage of speed, travelling nearly as quickly as the diligence, while by the _roulage_, which is cheaper, very inconvenient delays may be incurred. We quitted Paris on the 13th of September, well pleased with the treatment we had received. Though the charges for lodging, washing, &c. were high, there was no attempt at imposition; our landlady would not allow us to pay any thing for the eighth day of our abode, although we thereby entered into another week. We had the pleasure of leaving every body well satisfied with us, and willing to receive another English party. The diligence started at the appointed hour, namely, six o'clock in the evening. Unaccustomed to travel all night, we were rather anxious about breakfast, as we had merely stopped to change horses, without resting for any refreshment since we quitted Paris. Upon our arrival at Sens, at about seven o'clock in the morning, we were amused by the appearance of a party of persons running, gesticulating, and talking with all their might, who brought hot coffee, milk, bread, and fruit to the carriage-door. At first we were disinclined to avail ourselves of the breakfast thus offered, but learning that we should not get any thing else before twelve o'clock in the day, we overcame our scruples, and partook of the despised fare, which we found very good of its kind. The country we passed through was rich with vineyards, and, on account of the undulating nature of the land, and the frequency of towns and villages, exceedingly pleasing to the eye. We were continually delighted with some splendid burst of scenery. There was no want of foliage, the absence of the magnificent timber which we find in England being the less remarkable, in consequence of the number of trees which, if not of very luxuriant growth, greatly embellish the landscape, while we saw the vine everywhere, the rich clusters of its grapes reaching to the edge of the road. Though robbed of its grace, and its lavish display of leaf and tendril, by the method of cultivating, each plant being reduced to the size of a small currant-bush, the foliage, clothing every hill with green, gave the country an aspect most grateful to those who are accustomed to English verdure. We made our first halt at Auxerre, when a _déjeûner à la fourchette_ was served up to the travellers in the diligence. A bad English dinner is a very bad thing, but a bad French one is infinitely worse. Hitherto, we had fed upon nothing but the most dainty fare of the best hotels and _cafés_, and I, at least, who wished to see as much as I could of France, was not displeased at the necessity of satisfying the cravings of appetite with bread and melon. There were numerous dishes, all very untempting, swimming in grease, and brought in a slovenly manner to the table; a roast fowl formed no exception, for it was sodden, half-raw, and saturated with oil. It was only at the very best hotels in France that we ever found fowls tolerably well roasted; generally speaking, they are never more than half-cooked, and are as unsightly as they are unsavoury. Our fellow-passengers did ample justice to the meal, from which we gladly escaped, in order to devote the brief remainder of our time to a hasty toilet. From what we could see of it, Auxerre appeared to be a very pretty place, it being at this time perfectly enwreathed with vines. In fact, every step of our journey increased our regret that we should be obliged to hurry through a country which it would have delighted us to view at leisure, each town that we passed through offering some inducement to linger on the road. Active preparations were making for the vintage, the carts which we met or overtook being laden with wine-casks, and much did we desire to witness a process associated in our minds with the gayest scenes of rural festivity. It would not be a fair criterion to judge of the accommodation afforded at the hotels of the French provinces by those at which the diligence changed horses; in some I observed that we were not shown into the best apartments reserved for public entertainment, but in none did we find any difficulty in procuring water to wash with, nor did we ever see a dish substituted for a basin. From our own observation, it seems evident that the inns in the provinces have been much improved since the peace with England, and it appeared to us, that no reasonable objection could be made to the accommodation supplied. Auxerre certainly furnished the worst specimen we met with on the road; at no other place had we any right to complain of our entertainment, and at some the fare might be called sumptuous. On the third morning from our departure from Paris, when nearly exhausted, the rising sun gave us a view of the environs of Lyons. We had been afraid to stop at Châlons the day before, having been informed that the Saône was not sufficiently full to ensure the certainty of the steam-boat's arrival at the promised time at Lyons. This was a great disappointment, but we were rewarded by the rich and beautiful scenery which characterises the route by land. We could not help fancying that we could distinguish the home of Claude Melnotte amid those villages that dotted the splendid panorama; and the pleasure, with which I, at least, contemplated the fine old city, was not a little enhanced by its association with the Lady of Lyons and her peasant lover. Lyons more than realised all the notions which I had formed concerning it, having an air of antique grandeur which I had vainly expected to find at Rouen. It is well-built throughout, without that striking contrast between the newer buildings and the more ancient edifices, which is so remarkable in the capital of Normandy. The Hotel de Ville, in the large square, is a particularly fine building, and the whole city looks as if it had been for centuries the seat of wealth and commerce. Friends in England, and the few we met with or made in Paris, had furnished us with the names of the hotels it would be most advisable to put up at; but these lists were, as a matter of course, lost, and we usually made for the nearest to the place where we stopped. The Hotel de Paris, which looks upon the Hotel de Ville, was the one we selected at Lyons; it was large and commodious, but had a dull and melancholy air. As it is usual in French hotels, the building enclosed a court-yard in the centre, with galleries running round the three sides, and reaching to the upper stories. The furniture, handsome of its kind, was somewhat faded, adding to the gloom which is so often the characteristic of a provincial inn. As soon as possible, we sallied forth, according to our usual wont, to see as much as we could of the town and its environs; both invited a longer stay, but we were anxious to be at Marseilles by the 19th, and therefore agreed to rise at half-past three on the following morning, in order to be ready for the steamer, which started an hour after. We had begun, indeed, to fancy sleep a superfluous indulgence; my female friend (Miss E.), as well as myself, suffering no other inconvenience from three nights spent in a diligence than that occasioned by swelled feet and ancles. We found a very considerable number of persons in the steam-boat, many of whom were English, and amongst them a gentleman and his wife, who, with four children, were travelling to Nice, where they proposed to spend the winter. The fine weather of the preceding day had deserted us, and it rained in torrents during the first hours of the descent of the Rhône. The wet and cold became so difficult to bear, that I was glad to take up a position under the funnel of the steamer, where, protected a little from the rain, I speedily got dry and warm, enjoying the scenery in despite of the very unfavourable state of the weather. We missed our communicative boatman of the Seine, but met with a very intelligent German, who gave us an account of the remarkable places _en route_, pointing out a spot once exceedingly dangerous to boats ascending or descending, in consequence of a projecting rock, which, by the orders of the Emperor Napoleon, had been blown up. All the steamers which leave Lyons profess to go as far as Arles; but, in order to ensure conveyance to that place the same evening, it is necessary to ascertain whether they carry freight to Beaucaire, for in that case they always stay the night to unlade, taking the boat on at an early hour the following morning. We found ourselves in this predicament; and perhaps, under all the circumstances to be related, it would be advisable to leave the Lyons boat at Avignon and proceed by land to Marseilles. Many of the passengers pursued this plan. The weather cleared up in the middle of the day, and we passed Avignon in a rich crimson sunset, which threw its roseate flush upon the ruins of the Papal palace, and the walls and bastions of this far-famed city. Experience had shown us the impossibility of taking more than a cursory view of any place in which we could only sojourn for a single day, and therefore we satisfied ourselves with the glimpses which we caught of Avignon from the river. A half-finished bridge, apparently of ancient date, projects rudely into the middle of the stream; we passed through another more modern, though somewhat difficult to shoot; our voyage the whole day having been made under a succession of bridges, many upon the suspension principle, and extremely light and elegant. The beauty and variety of the scenery which presented itself, as we shot along the banks of the Rhône, were quite sufficient to engage our attention, and to make the hours fly swiftly along; there were few, however, of our fellow-travellers who did not resort to other methods of amusement. After the weather had cleared, the decks dried, and the sun-beams, warming, without scorching, glanced through fleecy clouds, the greater number of the passengers remained in the cabin below, whence, the windows being small and high, there was literally nothing to be seen. They employed themselves in reading, writing, or working; the French ladies in particular being most industrious in plying the needle. We noticed one family especially, who scarcely shewed themselves upon deck. It consisted of the mother, an elderly lady, of a very prepossessing appearance, with her son and daughter; the former about thirty years old, the latter considerably younger. The dress of the ladies, which was perfectly neat, consisting of printed muslin dresses, black silk shawls, and drawn bonnets, seemed so completely English, that we could scarcely believe that they were not our own countrywomen; they were the most diligent of the workers and readers, and as we never went down into the cabin unless to take some refreshment, or to fetch any thing we wanted, a few brief civilities only passed between us, but these were so cordially offered, that we regretted that want of inclination to enjoy the air and prospect upon deck which detained the party below. There was a _restaurateur_ on board the steamer, who supplied the passengers, at any hour they pleased, with the articles inserted in his _carte_; every thing was very good of its kind, but the boat itself was neither handsomely nor conveniently fitted up, and I should recommend in preference the new iron steamers which have been lately introduced upon the Rhône. It was about nine o'clock in the evening when we reached Beaucaire; one other boat stopped at this place, but the rest, to our mortification, went on to Arles. We were told that we must be at the river-side at four the next morning, in order to proceed, and we therefore could not reckon upon more than four or five hours' sleep. The night was very dark, and a scene of great confusion took place in the disembarkation. We had agreed to wait quietly until the remainder of the passengers got on shore; and Miss E. and myself, glad to escape from the bustle and confusion of the deck, went down below to collect our baggage, &c. The quay was crowded with porters, all vociferating and struggling to get hold of parcels to carry, while the commissionaires from the hotels were more than ever eager in their recommendations of their respective houses: their noise and gesticulations were so great, and their requests urged with so much boldness, that we might have been led to suppose we had fallen into the hands of banditti, who would plunder us the moment they got us into their clutches. Miss E. had posted herself at an open window, watching this strange scene, and while thus employed, was startled by hearing a piercing scream, and a plunge into the water; at the same moment, the clamour on shore became excessive. We instantly rushed upon deck, where we found our other friend safe; and upon inquiring what had happened, were told that a box had fallen into the river. Not quite satisfied of the truth of this statement, we asked several other persons, and received the same answer, the master of the steamer assuring us that no more serious accident had occurred. We soon afterwards went on shore, which was then perfectly quiet, and, preceded by a commissionaire, who had persuaded the gentleman of our party to put himself under his convoy, we walked into the town. At a short distance from the water, we came upon an hotel of very prepossessing appearance, which we concluded to be the one to which we were bound. The windows of the lower and upper floors were all open, the rooms lighted, showing clean, gay-looking paper upon the walls, and furniture of a tempting appearance. Our conductor, however, passed the door, and dived down a lane, upon which we halted, and declared our resolution to go no further. After a little parley, and amongst other representations of the superior accommodations of the unknown hotel, an assurance that the stables were magnificent, we gained our point, and entered the house which had pleased us so much. We were met at the door by two well-dressed, good-looking women, who showed us into some excellent apartments up-stairs, all apparently newly-fitted up, and exceedingly well-furnished. Ordering supper, we descended to the public room, and as we passed to a table at the farther end, noticed a young man sitting rather disconsolately at a window. We were laughing and talking with each other, when, suddenly starting up, the stranger youth exclaimed, "You are English? how glad I am to hear my own language spoken again!" He told us that he was travelling through France to Malta, and had come by the other steam-boat, in which there were no other English passengers beside himself. He then inquired whether a lady had not been drowned who came by our vessel; we answered no; but upon his assurance that such was the fact, we began to entertain a suspicion that the truth had been concealed from us. It was not, however, until the next morning, that we could learn the particulars. The gentleman who had accompanied us, and who had likewise been deceived by the statements made to him, ascertained that the accident had befallen the elderly French lady, with whose appearance we had been so much pleased. She had got on board a boat moored close to ours, and believing that she had only to step on shore, actually walked into the river. She was only ten minutes under water, and the probabilities are, that if the circumstance had been made known, and prompt assistance afforded, she might have been resuscitated. Amid the number of English passengers on board the steamer, the chances were very much in favour of its carrying a surgeon, accustomed to the best methods to be employed in such cases. No inquiry of the kind was made, and we understood that the body had been conveyed to a church, there to await the arrival of a medical man from the town. We were, of course, inexpressibly shocked by this fatal catastrophe, the more so because we all felt that we might have been of use had we been told the truth. The grief and distraction of the son and daughter, who had thus lost a parent, very possibly prevented them from taking the best measures in a case of such emergence; whereas strangers, anxious to be of service, and having all their presence of mind at command, might have afforded very important assistance. How little had we thought, during the day spent so pleasantly upon the Rhône, that a fiat had passed which doomed one of the party to an untimely and violent death! Our spirits, which had been of the gayest nature, were damped by this incident, which recurred to our minds again and again, and we were continually recollecting some trifling circumstance which had prepossessed us in favour of the family, thus suddenly overwhelmed by so distressing an event. A couple of hours brought us to Arles, where we arrived before the town was astir; the steamer to Marseilles did not leave the quay until twelve o'clock, and we were tantalized by the idea of the excellent night's rest we might have had if the steamer had fulfilled its agreement to go on to Arles. The Marseilles boat, though a fine vessel of its class, was better calculated for the conveyance of merchandize than of passengers; there being only one cabin, and no possibility of procuring any refreshment on board. This is the more inconvenient, as there is danger in bad weather of the passage into the harbour of Marseilles being retarded for several hours. We now lamented having slighted an invitation to comfortable quarters in Avignon, which we found on board the Lyons steamer, printed upon a large card. We were much pleased with what we saw of Arles; it is a clean, well-built town, the streets generally rather narrow, but the houses good. In walking about, we found many of the outer doors open, and neat-looking female servants employed in sweeping the halls and entries. With what I hope may be deemed a pardonable curiosity, we peeped and sometimes stepped into these interiors, and were gratified by the neatness and even elegance which they exhibited. We found the people remarkably civil, and apparently too much accustomed to English travellers to trouble themselves about us. The hotel was not of the best class, and we only saw some very inferior _cafés_, consisting of one small room, with a curtain before the open door, and on the outside a rude representation, on a board, of a coffee-pot, and a cup and saucer. All the shops at Arles had curtains at the doors, a peculiarity which we had not previously observed in the towns of France. We went into a handsome church, where we found a few people, principally beggars, at prayers, and leaving a small donation in the poor-box, beguiled the time by walking and sitting in the _boulevard_ of the town. We were glad to embark at twelve o'clock, and soon afterwards we were again in motion. The Rhône is at this place a fine broad stream; but its banks were less interesting than those which we had passed the previous day. We came at length to a large tract of low land, washed on the other side by the Mediterranean, which we were told was tenanted by troops of wild horses, known by their being invariably white. There were certainly many horses to be seen, and amongst them numerous white ones; but they appeared to be exceedingly tame, and had probably only been turned out for the benefit of grazing on the salt marsh. Possibly there might be some difficulty in catching them in so large a plain, perfectly unenclosed, and they might have bred in these solitudes. There were also some very peaceable-looking donkeys to be seen, and now and then a few cows. We did not perceive any human habitations until we came to the extreme point, where one or two low, dreary-looking tenements had been raised. The view for the last hour had been magnificent, extending over a splendid country to the lower Alps, and now Marseilles appeared in the distance, spread upon the side of a hill down to the water, and its environs stretching far and wide, villas and country mansions appearing in every direction. Upon entering the Mediterranean, we were struck by the line of demarcation which kept the green waters of the Rhône and the deep dark blue of the sea perfectly distinct from each other, there being no blending of tints. Here we were delighted by the appearance of a shoal of large fish, which were seen springing out of the water; several approached the steamer, gamboling about in the most beautiful manner possible, darting along close to the surface, and then making long leaps with their bodies in the air. One of our fellow-passengers, a German, with whom we had made acquaintance, hastened to fetch a gun; but, much to our joy, it missed fire in several attempts to discharge it at the beautiful creatures which had thus amused us with their sports. How strong must be the destructive propensity, when it leads men to wanton acts of barbarity like this; since, had a hundred fish been killed, there would have been no possibility of getting one on board, and the slaughter must merely have been perpetrated for slaughter's sake! Our remonstrances passed unheeded, and we therefore did not conceal our rejoicing over the disappointment. The entrance into Marseilles is very picturesque, it being guarded on either side by high rocks, bold, and projecting in various shapes. We found the harbour crowded with vessels of various denominations, and amongst them several steamers, one a French ship of war, and another the English Government steamer, appointed to carry the mails to Malta. The smell arising from the stagnant water in the harbour of Marseilles was at first almost intolerable, and it was not without surprise that we saw several gay gondola-looking boats, with white and coloured awnings, filled with ladies and gentlemen, rowing about apparently for pleasure. The clock struck five as we got on shore, and, much to our annoyance, we found that our first visit was to be paid to the customhouse. Upon embarking at Arles, a _gens-d'armes_ had laid his finger upon our baggage, and demanded our keys; but upon a remonstrance at the absurdity of a re-examination, after it had passed through the whole of France, he allowed it to be put on board inviolate. Here, however, there was no escaping, and, tired as we were, and anxious to get to our hotel, we were obliged to submit to the delay. Fortunately, we were the first arrivals, and the search not being very strict, we were not detained more than ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour, which, under the circumstances, seemed an age. The nearest hotel was of course our place of refuge, and we were fortunate in speedily ending a very good one, the Hotel des Embassadeurs, an immense establishment, exceedingly well-conducted in every respect. Here we enjoyed the prospect of a night's rest, having, during a hundred and ten hours, only had about ten, at two different periods, in bed. Refreshed, however, by a change of dress, we had no inclination to anticipate the period of repose, but hurried our toilet, in order to join the dinner at the _table-d'hôte._ Marseilles struck us as being the handsomest and the cleanest town we had yet seen in France. All the houses are spacious and lofty, built of white stone, and in good condition, while every portion of the city is well paved, either after the English fashion, or with brick, quite even, and inserted in a very tasteful manner. Many of the streets are extremely wide, and some are adorned with handsome fountains. The shops are very elegant, and much more decorated than those of any other place in France; some had paintings upon glass, richly gilded, on either side of the doors, handsome curtains hung down within, and the merchandise displayed was of the best description. These shops were also well lighted, and together with the brilliant illuminations of the neighbouring _cafés_, gave the streets a very gay appearance. We wandered about until rather a late hour; the _cafés_, both inside and outside, were crowded with gentlemen; but in the promenades we saw fewer ladies than we had expected, and came to the conclusion--an erroneous one in all probability--that French women stay very much at home. Assuredly, the beauty of the night was most inviting; but, worn out at last, we were obliged to retire to our hotel. The next day, we made inquiries concerning the steamers, and learned that the French boat was certainly to start on the following afternoon, the 21st, while the departure of the English vessel was uncertain, depending upon the arrival of the mails. Though disappointed at finding that the French steamer did not touch at Naples, as I had been led to believe, I felt inclined to take my passage in her; but the advantage of being in time to meet the Bombay steamer at Suez was so strongly urged upon me, in consequence of the ticklish state of affairs in Egypt, that, finding plenty of room on board the _Niagara_, we engaged a couple of berths in the ladies' cabins. Mehemet Ali was represented to us as being so obstinately determined to retain possession of the Turkish fleet, and the British Government so urgent with France to support the Porte against him, that, if this intelligence was to be depended upon, no time ought to be lost. It was with reluctance that I gave up my original intention of lingering on the road, and at Malta, but my unwillingness to run any risk of being shut out of Egypt prevailed. After executing this necessary business, we engaged a carriage, and paying a visit to the British consul, drove about the town and its environs, being the more pleased the more we saw of both. There appeared to be a deficiency of trees in the landscape, but a peculiar air of its own compensated for the want of foliage. The private streets and houses of Marseilles are very regular and well built, nor did we see any portion of the town of a very inferior description. I should have liked much to have remained a few weeks in it, and indeed regretted the rapidity of my journey through France, not being able to imagine any thing more delightful than a leisure survey of the country through which we passed. I had been so strongly determined to make the overland trip to India, that I would have undertaken it quite alone, had I not met with a party to accompany me; some kind friends would not allow me, however, to make the experiment; nor do I recommend ladies, unless they are very well acquainted with the country, to travel through it without the protection of a gentleman, a courier, or a good servant. Miss E. and myself performed the whole distance without a care or a thought beyond the objects on the road; but this we owed entirely to the attention of the gentleman who put us safely on board the Malta steamer, and who managed every thing for us upon the way, so that we were never in one single instance subjected to the slightest annoyance. CHAPTER III. * * * * * MARSEILLES TO ALEXANDRIA. * * * * * Venations at the Custom-house--Embarkation on the Malta Steamer--Difficulties of exit from the Harbour--Storm--Disagreeable Motion of the Steam-vessel--Passengers--Arrival at Malta--Description of the City--Vehicles--Dress of the Maltese Women--State of Society--Church of St. John--The Palace--The Cemetery of the Capuchin Convent--Intolerance of the Roman Catholic Priesthood--Shops, Cafés, and Hotels--Manufactures and Products of Malta--Heat of the Island--Embarkation on board an English Government Steamer--Passengers--A young Egyptian--Arrival at Alexandria--Turkish and Egyptian Fleets--Aspect of the City from the Sea--Landing. At twelve o'clock on the morning of the 21st of September, we were informed that the English Government-mails had not arrived, and that the probabilities were in favour of their not reaching Marseilles until five o'clock; in which event, the steamer could not leave the harbour that night. We, therefore, anticipated another day in our pleasant quarters; but thought it prudent to take our baggage on board. Upon getting down to the quay, we were stopped by a _gens-d'armes,_ who desired to have our keys, which we of course immediately surrendered. On the previous day, while driving about the town, our progress had been suddenly arrested by one of these officials, with an inquiry whether we had any thing to declare. He was satisfied with our reply in the negative, and allowed us to proceed. A gentleman afterwards asked me whether, in my travels through France, I had not observed that the police was a mere political agent, established for the purpose of strengthening the hands of the government, and not, as in England, intended for the protection of the people? I could only reply, that we had lost nothing in France, and that property there appeared to be as secure as at home. Certainly, the interference of the _gens-d'armes_ about the baggage, and the continual demand for our passports, were very vexatious, detracting in a great degree from the pleasure of the journey. We found the rate of porterage excessively high; the conveyance of our baggage to and fro, as we passed from steam-boats to hotels, proving, in the aggregate, enormous; the whole went upon a truck, which one man drew, with apparent ease, and for a very short distance, we paid nearly double the sum demanded for the hire of a horse and cart in London, from Baker Street, Portman Square, to the Custom House. Upon getting on board the _Megara_, we found that the mails were in the act of delivery, and that the vessel would start without delay. We had now to take leave of the friend who had seen us so far upon our journey, and to rely wholly upon ourselves, or the chance civilities we might meet with on the road. Our spirits, which had been so gay, were much damped by the loss of a companion so cheerful and ready to afford us every enjoyment within our reach, and we in consequence thought less of the danger to which we were shortly afterwards exposed, the pain of parting being the paramount feeling. There is always some difficulty in getting out of the harbour of Marseilles, and the natural obstacles are heightened by the want of a superintending power. There is no harbour-master, to regulate the movements of vessels, and to appoint their respective places; consequently, there is generally a great deal of confusion; while serious accidents are not unfrequent. Before we got under weigh, I saw my old acquaintance, Hussein Khan, the Persian ambassador, go on board the French steamer, which was anchored within a short distance of us. He was received with all the honours due to his rank; which, by the way, was not acknowledged in England; and his suite, whom we had seen lounging at the doors of the _cafés_ the evening before, made a gay appearance on the deck. We got foul of one or two ships as we went out, and just as we left the harbour, the clouds, which had threatened all the morning, burst upon us in a tremendous storm, accompanied by thunder and lightning. The rain came down in torrents, sweeping along the decks, while a heavy squall threatened to drive us upon the rocks, which we had admired so much as the guardians of the port. In this emergency, we were compelled to drop our anchor, and remain quiescent until the fury of the elements had abated. The storm passed away about midnight, and getting the steam up, we were far away from Marseilles and _la belle France_ before morning. The _Megara_ belonged to a class of steamers built for the government upon some new-fangled principle, and which have the art of rolling in any sea. Though the waters of the Mediterranean were scarcely ruffled by the breeze, which was in our favour, there was so much motion in the vessel, that it was impossible to employ ourselves in any way except in reading. In other respects, the _Megara_ was commodious enough; the stern cabin, with smaller ones opening into it, and each containing two bed-places, was appropriated to the ladies, the whole being neatly fitted up. We found some agreeable fellow-passengers; the only drawback being a family of three children. In consequence of the cabins being thus occupied, we could not preserve the neatness and order which are so essential to comfort, and which need not be dispensed with even in a short voyage. Our commandant, Mr. Goldsmith, a descendant of the brother of the poet, and who appeared to have inherited the benevolence of his distinguished relative, was indefatigable in his exertions to render us happy. He had procured abundant supplies for the table, which was every day spread with a profusion of good things, while eight or ten different kinds of wine, in addition to ale and porter, were placed at the disposal of the guests. Nothing, indeed, was wanting, except a French cook. No single meal had ever disagreed with us in France; but though partaking sparingly, we felt the inconvenience of the heavy English mode of cookery. Amongst the attendants at table was one who speedily grew into the good graces of all the passengers. A little fellow, eight years old, but who did not look more than seven, placed himself at the commandant's elbow, who immediately upon seeing him exclaimed, with a benevolent smile, "What, are you here, Jemmy? then we are all right." Jemmy, it seems, was the boatswain's son, and no diminutive page belonging to a spoiled lady of quality, or Lilliputian tiger in the service of a fashionable aspirant, could have been dressed in more accurate costume. Jemmy was every inch a sailor; but, while preserving the true nautical cut, his garments were fashioned with somewhat coxcombical nicety, and he could have made his appearance upon any stage as a specimen of aquatic dandyism. Jemmy would be invaluable on board a yacht. His services at table were rewarded by a plateful of pudding, which he ate standing at the captain's right hand, after having, with great propriety, said grace. The little fellow had been afloat for a year and a half; but during this period his education had not been neglected, and he could read as well as any person in the ship. Amongst our passengers was a French gentleman, the commandant and owner of an Indiaman, which had sailed from Bordeaux to Bombay under the charge of the first officer. He had previously made twelve voyages to India; but now availed himself of the shorter route, and proposed to join his vessel at Bombay, dispose of the cargo, and, after taking in a new freight, return through Egypt. The only coasts in sight, during our voyage from Marseilles to Malta, were those of Sardinia and Africa, Sicily being too far off to be visible. We were not near enough to Sardinia to see more than a long succession of irregular hills, which looked very beautiful under the lights and shades of a lovely summer sky. The weather was warm, without being sultry, and nothing was wanting excepting a few books. Mr. Goldsmith regretted the absence of a library on board, but expressed his intention of making a collection as speedily as possible. The excessive and continual motion of the vessel caused me to suffer very severely from seasickness; the exertion of dressing in the morning always brought on a paroxysm, but I determined to struggle against it as much as possible, and was only one day so completely overpowered as to be unable to rise from the sofa. This sickness was the more provoking, since there was no swell to occasion it, the inconvenience entirely arising from Sir Somebody Symonds' (I believe that is the name) method of building. What the _Megara_ would be in a heavy sea, there is no saying, and I should be very sorry to make the experiment. We found ourselves at Malta at an early hour of the morning of the 25th, having been only five nights and four days on board. Mr. Goldsmith celebrated our last dinner with a profusion of champaigne, and though glad to get out of the vessel, we felt unfeignedly sorry to take leave of our kind commandant. We were, of course, up by daylight, in order to lose nothing of the view. Much as I had heard of the gay singularity of the appearance of Malta, I felt surprise as well as delight at the beautiful scene around; nor was I at all prepared for the extent of the city of Valetta. The excessive whiteness of the houses, built of the rock of which the island is composed, contrasted with the vivid green of their verandahs, gives to the whole landscape the air of a painting, in which the artist has employed the most brilliant colours for sea and sky, and habitations of a sort of fairy land. Nor does a nearer approach destroy this illusion; there are no prominently squalid features in Malta, the beggars, who crowd round every stranger, being the only evidence, at a cursory gaze, of its poverty. Soon after the _Megara_ had dropped anchor, a young officer from the _Acheron_, the steamer that had brought the mails from Gibraltar, came on board to inquire whether I was amongst the passengers, and gave me the pleasing intelligence that a lady, a friend of mine, who had left London a few days before me, was now in Malta, and would proceed to India in the vessel appointed to take the mails. She was staying at Durnsford's Hotel, a place to which I had been strongly recommended. Mr. Goldsmith was kind enough to promise to see our heavy baggage on board the _Volcano_, the vessel under sailing orders; and a clergyman and his wife, resident in Malta, who had gone to Marseilles for a change of scene and air, inviting Miss E. and myself to accompany them on shore, we gladly accepted their offer. We found a _caless_ in waiting for us; a very singular description of vehicle, but one common to the island. I had seen representations of these carriages in old engravings, but had not the least idea that they were still in use. They have only two wheels, placed behind, so that the horse has to bear the weight of the vehicle as well as to draw it; and there is something so inexpressibly odd in the whole arrangement, that it put me in mind of the equipages brought on the stage in a Christmas pantomime. Our _caless_ held four persons very conveniently, and was really a handsome vehicle, gaily lined with scarlet leather, and having spring seats. We saw others plying for hire, of a very inferior description; some only calculated for two persons, and of a faded and dilapidated appearance. They seem to be dangerous conveyances, especially for the poor horse; we heard of one being upset, on a steep hill, and breaking the neck of the animal that drew it. In driving, we were obliged to take rather a circuitous route to our inn, though the distance, had we walked, would have been very inconsiderable. We were glad of the opportunity of seeing a little of the suburbs, and were almost sorry to arrive at the place of our destination. As we came along we were delighted with the picturesque appearance of the Maltese women, whose national dress is at once nunlike and coquettish. A black petticoat envelopes the form from the waist, and over that is thrown a singular veil, gathered into a hood, and kept out with a piece of whalebone. This covering, which is called the _faldetta_, is capable of many arrangements, and is generally disposed so as to "keep one eye free to do its worst of witchery." When one of the poorer classes is enabled to clothe herself in a veil and petticoat of silk, she considers that she has gained the _acmé_ of respectability. The streets of the city of Valetta are extremely narrow, and the houses high; a great advantage in such a climate, as it ensures shade, while, as they generally run at right angles, they obtain all the breeze that is to be had. The appearance of our hotel was prepossessing. We entered through a wide gateway into a hall opening upon a small court, in the centre of which stood a large vase, very well sculptured, from the stone of the island, and filled with flowers. A wide handsome staircase, also of stone, with richly-carved balustrades, and adorned with statues and vases, conducted us to a gallery, two sides of which were open, and the other two closed, running round the court-yard, and affording entrance to very good apartments. Every thing was perfectly clean; the bedsteads of iron, furnished with mosquito-curtains; and we were supplied immediately with every article that we required. As the rolling of the _Megara_ had prevented the possibility of forming a sentence, we sat down to write letters, and having despatched a few of the introductions to residents, with which my friends in England had supplied me, I was agreeably surprised by some visits which I had scarcely expected, as we found that we should be obliged to embark for Alexandria in the evening. I did not hear very flattering accounts of the state of society at Malta, which, like that of all other confined places, is split into factions, and where there seems to be a perpetual struggle, by the least fortunate classes, to assert equality with those whose rank is acknowledged; thus every person attached to the government assumes eligibility for the _entré_ into the best circles, while the magnates of the place are by no means inclined to admit them to these privileges. It appeared that the endeavours of the Commissioner to produce a greater degree of cordiality between the Maltese inhabitants and the English residents, so far from succeeding, had tended to widen the distance between them, and that the Maltese were by no means grateful for the efforts made for their improvement. However, though the fruits may not at present appear, the seed having been sown, we may entertain a strong hope that they will show themselves in time. While an undertaking so gigantic as the diffusion of the English language throughout India has been attempted, it seems rather extraordinary that the efforts of the committee should not have been directed to the same result in Malta, and that the progress of education should not have been conducted in the language that promised to prove the most useful to subjects of the British crown; but it appears that the committee decided otherwise, and complaints are making, that the instruction now supplied at the schools is of the most superficial nature, and by no means calculated to produce the desired end. Every object in Malta bears witness to the ingenuity and industry of its inhabitants. The softness of the stone renders it easily cut, and the Dowager Marchioness of Hastings (who has left imperishable marks of her desire to benefit those who came under her observation), in supplying the best designs, has filled the shops of Malta with a tasteful species of _bijouterie_, which is eagerly sought after by all the visitors. The carved work of Malta is sold very cheap; but the same quality, which renders it so easily cut, occasions it to chip, and, therefore, great care is necessary in packing these fragile articles. As soon as possible, we sallied forth to inspect the far-famed church of St. John, and found our expectations more than gratified by the interior of this gorgeous edifice. It was not, however, without melancholy feelings, that we reflected on the miserable remnant of those valiant knights, who had made Malta celebrated throughout all history, and who, on the suppression of the order, were suffered to languish out the remainder of their existence in obscurity. Mass was performing at the time of our entrance, and seating ourselves in one of the side chapels until it should be over, we were at its conclusion accosted by a priest, who, finding that we did not speak Italian, sent another person to show the beauties of the church. Some Maltese ladies greeted us very courteously, and though, perhaps, we would rather have wandered about alone, indulging in our own recollections of the past, we could not help being pleased with the attentions which were paid us. Upon returning to our inn, we met a gentleman with whom we were slightly acquainted, who, upon learning that I had a letter to Sir Henry Bouverie, the governor, recommended me to deliver it in person, the palace being close at hand. Our party met with a very courteous reception, and we were happy in the opportunity thus afforded of seeing the palace, which showed remains of former grandeur far more interesting than any modern improvements could have been. One apartment, in particular, hung round with tapestry, which, though brought from France 135 years ago, retains all the brilliancy of its original colouring, pleased us exceedingly. There are some good paintings upon the walls; but the armoury is the most attractive feature in the palace. It consists of one splendid apartment, running the whole length of the building, and makes a very imposing appearance; the arms of various periods being well arranged. The collection of ancient weapons was not so great as I had expected; still there were very interesting specimens, and an intelligent corporal, belonging to one of the Queen's regiments, who acted as _Cicerone_, gave us all the information we could require. Some of our party had the curiosity to visit the cemetery of the Capuchin convent, in which the monks who die, after having undergone a preserving process, are dressed in the habit of the order, and fastened up in niches; when the skeletons, from extreme age, actually fall to pieces, the skulls and bones are formed into funeral trophies for the decoration of the walls; and the whole is described as a most revolting and barbarous spectacle. The last occupant was said to have departed this life as late as 1835, adding, by the comparative newness of his inhumation, to the horrors of the scene. The influence of the priesthood, though still very great, is represented to be upon the decline; they have lately, however, shown their power, by retarding the progress of the building of the Protestant church, to which the Dowager Queen Adelaide so munificently subscribed. All the workmen employed are obliged to have dispensations from the Pope, and every pretext is eagerly seized upon to delay the erection of the edifice. At present, the Protestant community, with few exceptions, are content to have service performed in an angle of the court-yard of the palace, formerly a cellar and kitchen, but now converted into an episcopal chapel and vestry-room. The members of the society have a small chapel, not adequate to the accommodation of those who desire to attend it, belonging to the Methodist persuasion; but its minister is afraid to encounter the difficulties and delays which would be consequent upon an attempt to enlarge it. There is a public library adjoining the palace, originally formed by the knights, but considered now to be more extensive than valuable. The period which I spent upon the island was too brief to allow me to make any inquiries respecting its institutions, the novelties of the scene engaging my attention so completely, that I could give no thought to anything else. The shops and _cafés_ of La Valetta have a very gay appearance, and the ingenuity of the inhabitants is displayed in several manufactures; the black lace mittens, now so fashionable, being particularly well made. Table-linen, also of superior quality, may be purchased, wrought in elegant patterns, and, if bespoken, with the coat-of-arms or crest worked into the centre or the corners. In the fashioning of the precious metals, the Maltese likewise excel, their filagree-work, both in gold and silver, being very beautiful: the Maltese chains have long enjoyed a reputation in Europe, and other ornaments may be purchased of equal excellence. To the eye of a stranger, Malta, at this period of the year (the end of September), seems bare and destitute of verdure; yet, from the quantity of every kind of vegetables brought to market, it must be amazingly productive. The growth of cotton, lately introduced into Egypt, has been injurious to the trade and manufactures of Malta, and the attempt to supply its place with silk failed. In the opinion of some persons, the experiment made had not a fair trial. The mulberry trees flourished, and the silk produced was of an excellent quality; but the worms did not thrive, and in consequence the design was abandoned. Inquiry has shown, that the leaves from old trees are essential to the existence of the silk-worm, and that, had the projectors of the scheme been aware of a fact so necessary to be known, they would have awaited the result of a few more years, which seems all that was necessary for the success of the undertaking. How many goodly schemes have been ruined from the want of scientific knowledge upon the part of their projectors, and how frequently it happens that a moment of impatience will destroy the hopes of years! Fruit is cheap, plentiful, and excellent at Malta, the figs and grapes being of very superior quality, while the island affords materials for the most luxurious table. The golden mullet and the _Becca fica_ are abundant; and all the articles brought to market are procurable at low prices. I can scarcely imagine a more agreeable place to spend a winter in, and I promise myself much gratification in the sojourn of a few weeks at this delightful island upon my return to England. I can very strongly recommend Durnsford's Hotel as a place of residence, the accommodation being excellent and the terms moderate. In remaining any time, arrangement may be made for apartments and board, by which means the rate of living is much cheaper, while the style is equally good. There is an opera at Malta, in which performances of various degrees of mediocrity are given. The gay period to a stranger is that of the carnival; but, at other times, the festivals of the church, celebrated in this isolated place with more of the mummeries of Roman Catholicism than obtain in many other countries professing the same faith, afford amusement to the lovers of the grotesque. Though the thermometer at Malta seldom rises to 90°, yet the heat in the sultry season is very great. Every person, who is in the habit of studying the glass, becomes aware of the difference between the heat that is actually felt and that which is indicated by instruments; and in no place is this discrepancy more sensibly experienced than Malta, in which the state of the winds materially affects the comfort of the inhabitants. A good authority assures us, that "the heat of Malta is most oppressive, so much so, as to justify the term 'implacable,' which is often applied to it. The sun, in summer, remains so long above the horizon, and the stone walls absorb such an enormous quantity of heat, that they never have sufficient time to get cool; and during the short nights, this heat radiates from them so copiously, as to render the nights, in fact, as hot as the days, and much more oppressive to the feelings of those who are accustomed to associate the idea of coolness with darkness. I have seen the thermometer, in a very sheltered part of my house, steadily maintain, during the night, the same height to which it had arisen in the day, while I marked it with feelings of incalculably increased oppression, and this for three successive weeks in August and September, 1822." At Malta, we were recommended, in consequence of the unsettled state of affairs between Mehemet Ali and the European powers, to proceed forthwith to Egypt, and though strongly tempted to prolong my stay in the island, I thought it advisable to make the best of my way to the Red Sea, and defer the pleasure, which a more protracted residence promised, until my return in the ensuing year. Lieut. Goldsmith, our kind commandant of the _Megara_, called upon us, according to promise, to conduct us on board the new steamer, the _Volcano_, the vessel appointed to carry the mails on to Alexandria. This ship was in quarantine, and it was consequently necessary to take some precautions in going on board. We proceeded, in the first instance, to a police station, where we took a second boat in tow, and a _guadiano_, an official appointed to see that no persons transgress the rules and regulations of the port instituted for the preservation of health. Upon getting alongside of the _Volcano_, our baggage was placed in this boat; Miss E. and myself were then handed in, and cast adrift, to my great astonishment; for not having had any previous intimation of the method to be pursued, I was not at all prepared to hold on, as I believe it is called, without assistance. Miss E., however, who was more observant, hooked her parasol into one of the ropes, which she subsequently caught. We were now to be taught a new lesson--the extreme nonchalance with which the officers of a Government steamer treat the passengers who have the misfortune to choose these boats instead of making the voyage on board merchant vessels. Some minutes elapsed before any notice was taken of us, or any assistance afforded in getting up our baggage; our own people being obliged to look on and do nothing, since, had they touched the ship, they would have been obliged to perform eighteen days of quarantine. Upon reaching the deck, we requested that our baggage might be taken down into the ladies' cabin, in order that we might get our small dormitories put to rights before the rest of the passengers came on board; but, though it could have made no earthly difference to the people employed, we met with a refusal, and the whole was deposited in the grand saloon, already encumbered with luggage, every quarter of an hour adding to the heap and the confusion, and the difficulty of each person recognizing the identical carpet-bag or portmanteau that he might claim as his property.[A] Among our new fellow-passengers there was a young English gentleman, who intended to travel into Syria, and who, though looking scarcely twenty, had already spent some years in foreign countries. He was very modest and unassuming, and both agreeable and intelligent; and, having had a good deal of conversation together, I was sorry to lose sight of him at Alexandria. We had also one of Mehemet Ali's _protégés_ on board, a young Egyptian, who had been educated at the Pasha's expense in England, where he had resided for the last ten years, latterly in the neighbourhood of a dock-yard, in order to study the art of ship-building. This young man was a favourite with those persons on board who could make allowances for the circumstances in which he had been placed, and who did not expect acquirements which it was almost impossible for him to attain. His natural abilities were very good, and he had cultivated them to the utmost of his power. Strongly attached to European customs, manners, and institutions, he will lose no opportunity of improving the condition of his countrymen, or of inducing them to discard those prejudices which retard the progress of civilization. He was naturally very anxious concerning his future destiny, for the Pasha's favour is not always to be depended upon, while the salary of many of the appointments which he does bestow is by no means adequate to the support of men whom his liberality has enabled to live in great respectability and comfort in England. Our new acquaintance also felt that, in returning to his friends and relatives, he should shock all their prejudices by his entire abandonment of those customs and opinions by which they were still guided; he grieved especially at the distress which he should cause his mother, and determined not to enter into her presence until he had assumed the national dress, and could appear, outwardly at least, like an Egyptian. The weather, during our short voyage, was remarkably favourable, although it got rather too warm, especially at night, for comfort. There are, however, great alleviations to heat in the Mediterranean steamers. The ladies can have a wind-sail in their cabin, which, together with the air from the stern windows, renders the temperature at all times very delightful. They enjoy another advantage in having a light burning all night, a comfort which cannot be too highly appreciated, since darkness on board ship increases every other annoyance. We left Malta on the evening of the 25th, and arrived at Alexandria early in the morning of the 30th. Every eye was strained to catch the first view of the Egyptian coast, and especially of the Pharos, which in ancient time directed the mariners to its shores; but the great object of attraction at this period consisted of the united fleets, Turkish and Egyptian, which rode at anchor in the port. Our steamer threaded its way amid these fine-looking vessels, some of which we passed so closely, as to be able to look into the cabin-windows. To my unprofessional eye, these ships looked quite as efficient as any warlike armament of the same nature that I had yet seen. They all appeared to be well kept, and in good order, while the sailors were clean, neatly dressed, and actively engaged, some in boats, and others performing various duties. Though steamers are now very common sights, we in turn attracted attention, all eyes being directed to our deck. Our Egyptian fellow-passenger was especially interested and agitated at his approach to his native shore, and the evidences which he saw before him of the power and political influence of the Pasha. From a gentleman who came on board, we learned that an apprehension had been entertained at Alexandria of the arrival of a hostile fleet from Europe, in which event a collision would in all probability have taken place. Mehemet Ali, it was said, was so foolishly elated by his successes, and by the attitude he had assumed, as to be perfectly unaware of his true position, and of the lesson which he would receive, should he persist in defying the remonstrances of his European allies. It was also said, that nothing but the favour shown by the French cabinet to the Pasha had hitherto prevented the commencement of hostilities, since the British Government, taking the view of its representative at Constantinople, felt strongly inclined to proceed to extremities. I merely, of course, state the rumour that prevailed; whether they carried the slightest authority or not, I do not pretend to determine. Alexandria, from the sea, presents a very imposing appearance; long lines of handsome buildings, apparently of white stone, relieved by green Venetian blinds, afford evidence of increasing prosperity, and a wish to imitate the style of European cities. There is nothing, however, in the landing-place worthy of the approach to a place of importance; a confused crowd of camels, donkeys, and their drivers, congregated amidst heaps of rubbish, awaited us upon reaching the shore. We had been told that we should be almost torn to pieces by this rabble, in their eagerness to induce us to engage the services of themselves or their animals. Accustomed as we had been to the attacks of French waiters, we were astonished by the indifference of the people, who very contentedly permitted us to walk to the place of our destination. The lady-passengers, who arrived in the steamer, agreed to prosecute the remainder of the journey in company; our party, therefore, consisted of four, with two servants, and a baby; the latter a beautiful little creature, of seven months old, the pet and delight of us all. This darling never cried, excepting when she was hungry, and she would eat any thing, and go to any body. One of the servants who attended upon her was a Mohammedan native of India, an excellent person, much attached to his little charge; and we were altogether a very agreeable party, quite ready to enjoy all the pleasures, and to encounter all the difficulties, which might come in our way. Having formed my expectations of Alexandria from books of travels, which describe it as one of the most wretched places imaginable, I was agreeably disappointed by the reality. My own experience of Mohammedan cities had taught me to anticipate much more of squalor and dilapidation than I saw; though I confess, that both were sufficiently developed to strike an European eye. We wended our way through avenues ancle-deep in sand, and flanked on either side with various descriptions of native houses, some mere sheds, and others of more lofty and solid construction. We encountered in our progress several native parties belonging to the respectable classes; and one lady, very handsomely dressed, threw aside her outer covering, a dark silk robe, somewhat resembling a domino, and removing her veil, allowed us to see her dress and ornaments, which were very handsome. She was a fine-looking woman, with a very good-natured expression of countenance. [Footnote A: The author followed up these remarks with others, still more severe, upon the treatment which she and her fellow-travellers experienced on board this vessel; but as these remarks seem to have caused pain, and as Miss Roberts, without retracting one particle of her statements, regretted that she had published them, it has been deemed right to omit them in this work.] CHAPTER IV. * * * * * ALEXANDRIA TO BOULAK. * * * * * Description of Alexandria--Hotels--Houses--Streets--Frank Shops--Cafés--Equipages--Arrangements for the Journey to Suez--Pompey's Pillar--Turkish and Arab Burial-grounds--Preparations for the Journey to Cairo--Embarkation on the Canal--Bad accommodation in the Boat--Banks of the Canal--Varieties of Costume in Egypt--Collision during the night--Atfee--Its wretched appearance--The Pasha--Exchange of Boats--Disappointment at the Nile--Scarcity of Trees--Manners of the Boatmen--Aspect of the Villages--The Marquess of Waterford--The Mughreebee Magician--First sight of the Pyramids--Arrival at Boulak, the Port of Cairo. There are several excellent hotels at Alexandria for the accommodation of European travellers. We were recommended to Rey's, in which we found every comfort we could desire. The house is large and handsome, and well situated, being at the end of a wide street, or rather _place_, in which the more wealthy of the Frank inhabitants reside, and where there are several houses belonging to the consuls of various nations. These latter are usually detached mansions, of a very handsome description, and one especially, facing the top, will be magnificent when finished. All the houses in this quarter are very solidly constructed, lofty, and with flat roofs. The ground-floor seems to be appropriated to merchandize, or as domestic offices, the habitable apartments being above. The windows are supplied with outside Venetian blinds, usually painted green, which, together with the pure white of the walls, gives them a fresh and new appearance, which I had not expected to see. In fact, nothing could exceed the surprise with which I viewed a street that would have excited admiration in many of our European capitals. It will in a short time be embellished by a fountain, which was erecting at the period of my visit: could the residents get trees to grow, nothing more would be wanting to render it one of the most superb avenues of the kind extant; but, a few inches below the surface, the earth at Alexandria is so completely impregnated with briny particles, as to render the progress of vegetation very difficult at all times, and in some places impossible. This portion of the city is quite modern; near it there is a more singular and more ancient series of buildings, called the _Okella_; a word, I believe, derived from _castle_. This consists of one large quadrangle, or square, entered by gateways at different sides. A terrace, approached by flights of steps, extends all round, forming a broad colonnade, supported upon arches. The houses belonging to the Franks open upon this terrace; they are large and commodious, but the look-out does not equal that from the newer quarter; the quadrangle below exhibiting any thing rather than neatness or order. Goods and utensils of various kinds, donkeys, camels, and horses, give it the appearance of the court of a native serai, though at the same time it may be said to be quite as well kept as many places of a similar description upon the continent of Europe. The Frank shopkeepers have their establishments in a narrower avenue at the end of the wide street before-mentioned. Here are several _cafés_, apparently for the accommodation of persons to whom the hotels might be too expensive; some of these are handsomely fitted up in their way: one, especially, being panelled with shewy French paper, in imitation of the Gobelins tapestry. I was not sufficiently near to discern the subject, but when lighted, the colours and figures produced a very gay effect. I observed a considerable number of druggists' shops; they were generally entirely open in front, so that the whole economy of the interior was revealed to view. The arrangements were very neat; the various articles for sale being disposed upon shelves all round. We did not make any purchases either here or in the Turkish bazaar, which, both morning and evening, was crowded with people. Several very good houses in the European style were pointed out to us as belonging to Turkish gentlemen, high in office and in the receipt of large incomes. We had ordered dinner at seven o'clock, for the purpose of taking advantage of the cool part of the day to walk about. We confined our peregrinations to the Frank quarter and its immediate neighbourhood, and were amused by the singular figures of other European pedestrians whom we met with, but whose peculiar country it was difficult to discover by their dress. Several gentlemen made their appearance on horseback, but we did not see any females of the superior class. Two English carriages, filled with Turkish grandees, dashed along with the recklessness which usually distinguishes native driving; and other magnates of the land, mounted upon splendid chargers, came forth in all the pride of Oriental pomp. Having sufficiently fatigued ourselves with walking ancle-deep in dust and sand, we returned to our hotel, where we found an excellent dinner, which, among other good things, comprehended a dish of Beccaficos. As I had not intended to reach Alexandria so soon, neither Miss E. nor myself had given notice of our approach; consequently, there was nothing in readiness. We had, notwithstanding, hoped to have found a boat prepared, a friend in London having promised to mention the possibility of our being in Egypt with the mails that left Marseilles on the 21st; but this precaution had been neglected, and the gentleman, who would have provided us with the best vessel procurable, was too busy with duties which the arrival of the steamer entailed upon him to do more than express his regret that he could not devote his whole attention to our comfort. In this emergency, we applied to Mr. Waghorn, who, in the expectation that I might wish to remain at Alexandria, had most kindly prepared an apartment for my reception at his own house. The aspect of affairs, however, did not admit of my running any risks, and I therefore determined to proceed to Suez without delay. Under these circumstances, he did the best that the nature of the case permitted; assured me that I should have his own boat, which, though small, was perfectly clean, when we got to the Nile, and provided me with all that I required for the passage. Mrs. Waghorn also recommended a servant, whose appearance we liked, and whom we instantly engaged for the trip to Suez. I had brought letters to the consul-general, and to several residents in Alexandria, who immediately paid me visits at our hotel. Colonel Campbell was most particularly kind and attentive, offering one of the government janissaries as an escort to Cairo; an offer which we most readily accepted, and which proved of infinite service to us. We had no trouble whatever about our baggage; we left it on board, under the care of the trusty black servant. One of the officers of the ship, who had distinguished himself during the voyage by his polite attention to the passengers, had come on shore with us; he sent to the vessel for our goods and chattels, took our keys and the janissary with him to the custom-house, and we had speedily the pleasure of seeing them come upon a camel to the door of the hotel, the fees charged, and the hire of the animal, being very trifling. There was a large apartment on one side of the gateway, in which those boxes which we did not desire to open were deposited, the door being secured by a good lock; in fact, nothing could be better than the whole arrangements of the hotel. It was agreed that as little time as possible should be lost in getting to Suez, and we therefore determined to prosecute our journey as early in the afternoon of the next day as we could get every thing ready. Donkeys were to be in waiting at daylight, to convey the party to Pompey's Pillar, and we retired to rest, overcome by the fatigue and excitement we had undergone. It was sufficiently warm to render it pleasant to have some of the windows open; and once or twice in the night we were awakened by the furious barking of the houseless and ownerless dogs, which are to be found in great numbers throughout Egypt. In the day-time the prevailing sound at Alexandria is the braying of donkeys, diversified by the grunts and moans of the almost equally numerous camels. Engravings have made every inquiring person well acquainted with the celebrated monument which goes by the name of "Pompey's Pillar," and the feelings with which we gazed upon it are much more easily imagined than described. It has the advantage of standing upon a rather considerable elevation, a ridge of sand, and below it are strewed vast numbers of more humble memorials of the dead. The Turkish and the Arab burial-grounds spread themselves at the feet of the Pillar: each grave is distinguished by a mound of earth and a stone. The piety of surviving relatives has, in some places, forced the stubborn sand to yield proofs of their affectionate remembrance of the deceased; occasionally, we see some single green plant struggling to shadow the last resting-place of one who slept below; and if any thing were wanting to add to the melancholy of the scene, it would have been the stunted and withering leaves thus mournfully enshrouding the silent dead. There is something so unnatural in the conjunction of a scanty vegetation with a soil cursed with hopeless aridity, that the gardens and few green spots, occurring in the neighbourhood of Alexandria, detract from, instead of embellishing, the scene. Though pleasant and beautiful as retreats to those who can command an entrance, these circumscribed patches of verdure offend rather than please the eye, when viewed from a distance. The antiquities of Egypt have been too deeply studied by the erudite of all Christian countries, for an unlearned traveller to entertain a hope of being able to throw any additional light upon them. Modern tourists must, therefore, be content with the feelings which they excite, and to look, to the present state of things for subjects of any promise of interest to the readers of their journals. After breakfast, we received a visit from the Egyptian gentleman who had been our fellow-passenger. He brought with him a friend, who, like himself, had been educated in England, and who had obtained a good appointment, together with the rank of a field officer, from the Pasha. The manners of the gentleman were good; modest, but not shy. He spoke excellent English, and conversed very happily upon all the subjects broached. Our friend was still in doubt and anxiety respecting his own destination. Mehemet Ali had left Alexandria for one of his country residences, on the plea of requiring change of air; but, in reality, it was said, to avoid the remonstrances of those who advocated a policy foreign to his wishes. The new arrival could not present himself to the minister until he should be equipped in an Egyptian dress. The friend who accompanied him gave us the pleasing intelligence, that a large handsome boat, with ladies' cabin detached, and capable of carrying forty passengers, had been built by the merchants of Alexandria, and when completed--and it only wanted painting and fitting up--would convey travellers up the canal to Atfee, a distance which, towed by horses, it would perform in twelve hours. Small iron steamers were expected from England, to ply upon the Nile, and with these accommodations, nothing would be more easy and pleasant than a journey which sometimes takes many days to accomplish, and which is frequently attended with inconvenience and difficulty. We found that Mrs. Waghorn had provided Miss E. and myself with beds, consisting each of a good mattress stuffed with cotton, a pillow of the same, and a quilted coverlet, also stuffed with cotton. She lent us a very handsome canteen; for the party being obliged to separate, in consequence of the small accommodation afforded in the boats, we could not avail ourselves of that provided by the other ladies with whom we were to travel, until we should all meet again upon the desert. As there may be a danger of not meeting with a canteen, exactly suited to the wants of the traveller, for sale at Alexandria, it is advisable to procure one previously to leaving Europe; those fitted up with tin saucepans are necessary, for it is not easy to carry cooking apparatus in any other form. We did not encumber ourselves with either chair or table, but would afterwards have been glad of a couple of camp-stools. Our supplies consisted of tea, coffee, wine, wax-candles (employing a good glass lanthorn for a candlestick), fowls, bread, fruit, milk, eggs, and butter; a pair of fowls and a piece of beef being ready-roasted for the first meal. We also carried with us some bottles of filtered water. The baggage of the party was conveyed upon three camels and a donkey, and we formed a curious-looking cavalcade as we left the hotel. In the first place, the native Indian servant bestrode a donkey, carrying at the same time our beautiful baby in his arms, who wore a pink silk bonnet, and had a parasol over her head. All the assistance he required from others was to urge on his beast, and by the application of sundry whacks and thumps, he soon got a-head. The ladies, in coloured muslin dresses, and black silk shawls, rode in a cluster, attended by the janissary, and two Arab servants also on donkey-back; a gentleman, who volunteered his escort, and the owners of the donkeys, who walked by our sides. As I had never rode any animal, excepting an elephant, until I landed at Alexandria, I did not feel perfectly at home on the back of a donkey, and therefore desired Mohammed, our new servant, to give directions to my attendant to take especial care of me. These injunctions he obeyed to the letter, keeping close at my side, and at every rough piece of road putting one hand on the donkey and the other in front of my waist. I could not help shrinking from such close contact with a class of persons not remarkable for cleanliness, either of garment or of skin; but the poor fellow meant well, and as I had really some occasion for his services, and his appearance was respectable, I thought it no time to be fastidious, and could not help laughing at the ridiculous figure I made. We passed some fine buildings and baths; the latter very tempting in their external appearance, and, according to general repute, excellent of their kind. When we came to the gate of the wall of Alexandria, we encountered a funeral procession returning from the cemetery close to Pompey's Pillar. They were a large party, accompanied by many women, who, notwithstanding their grief, stopped to gratify their curiosity, by a minute inspection of our strange persons, and still stranger garb. We were all huddled together in the gateway, which, the walls being thick, took a few minutes to pass through, and thus had an opportunity of a very close examination of each other; the veils of the women, however, prevented us from scanning their countenances very distinctly; and as we passed on, we encountered a herd of buffaloes, animals quite new to Miss E., who had never seen one even as a zoological specimen. We passed the base of Pompey's Pillar, and through the burying-grounds; and in another quarter of an hour came to the banks of the canal, and got on board the boat, which had been engaged to take us to Atfee. In the whole course of my travels, I had never seen any thing so forlorn and uncomfortable as this boat. The accommodation destined for us consisted of two cabins, or rather cribs, opening into each other, and so low in the roof as not to permit a full-grown person to stand upright in either. Some attempt had been formerly made at painting and carving, but dirt was now the predominant feature, while the holes and crannies on every side promised free egress to the vermin, apparently long tenants of the place. Although certain of remaining the night upon the canal, we would not suffer our beds to be unpacked; but, seating ourselves upon our boxes, took up a position near the door, in order to see as much as possible of the prospect. The banks of the canal are very luxuriant; but, lying low, are infested with insects of various kinds; musquitoes came on board in clouds, and the flies were, if possible, more tormenting; it is, therefore, very desirable to get out of this channel as speedily as possible. We saw the vessel, a fine, large, handsome boat, which had been mentioned to us as building for the purpose of conveying passengers to Atfee; consequently, should the political questions now agitating be amicably settled, and Egypt still continue to be a high road for travellers to India, the inconveniences of which I now complain will soon cease to exist. We passed some handsome houses, built after the European fashion, one of which we were told belonged to the Pasha's daughter, the wife of the dufturdar; it was surrounded by gardens, but had nothing very imposing in its appearance. We came also upon an encampment of the Pasha's troops, which consisted of numerous small round tents, huddled together, without the order displayed by an European army. The men themselves, though report speaks well of their discipline, had not the soldierlike look which I had seen and admired in the native troops of India. The impossibility of keeping their white garments clean, in such a country as Egypt, is very disadvantageous to their appearance, and it is unfortunate that something better adapted to withstand the effects of dust should not have been chosen. The janissary who accompanied us, and who was clothed in red, had a much more military air. He was a fine-looking fellow, tall, and well-made; and his dress, which was very becoming, was formed of fine materials. Our servant Mohammed had also a pleasing countenance, full of vivacity and good humour, which we found the general characteristics of the people of Egypt, especially those immediately above the lower class, and who enjoyed any degree of comfort. There are several varieties of costume worn in Egypt, some consisting of long gowns or vests worn over the long trowser. The military dress, which was that worn by the janissary and our servant, is both graceful and becoming. It is rather difficult to describe the nether garment, which is wide to the knee, and very full and flowing behind; added to this, the janissary wore a light pantaloon, descending to the ancle; but Mohammed, excepting when he encased them in European stockings, had his legs bare: the waistcoat and jacket fit tight to the shape, and are of a tasteful cut, and together with a sash and the crimson cap with a dark blue tassel, almost universal, form a picturesque and handsome dress. That worn by our servant was made of fine blue stuff, embroidered, or rather braided, at the edges; and this kind of ornament is so general, that even some of the poorest fellahs, who possess but one coarse canvas shirt, will have that garnished with braiding in some scroll-pattern. There was not much to be seen on the banks of the Mahmoudie: here and there, a priest at his devotions at the water-side, or a few miserable cottages, diversified the scene. We encountered, however, numerous boats; and so great was the carelessness of the navigators, that we had considerable difficulty in preventing a collision, which, but for the good look-out kept by the janissary, must have happened more than once. Whenever the breeze permitted, we hoisted a sail; at other times, the boatmen dragged the boat along; and in this manner we continued our voyage all night. We regretted much the absence of moonlight, since, the moment the day closed, all our amusement was at an end. Cock-roaches, as large as the top of a wine-glass, made their appearance; we heard the rats squeaking around, and found the musquitoes more desperate in their attacks than ever. The flies with one accord went to sleep, settling in such immense numbers on the ceiling immediately over my head, that I felt tempted to look for a lucifer-match, and put them all to death. The expectation, however, of leaving the boat early the next morning, deterred me from this wholesale slaughter; but I had no mercy on the musquitoes, as, attracted by the light, they settled on the glasses of the lanthorn. It was a long and dismal night, the only accident that occurred being a concussion, which sent Miss E. and myself flying from our portmanteaus. We had run foul of another boat, or rather all the shouting of the Arab lungs on board our vessel had failed to arouse the sleepers in the craft coming down. At length, the day dawned, and we tried, by copious ablution and a change of dress, to refresh ourselves after our sleepless night. Finding that we wanted milk for breakfast, we put a little boy, one of the crew, on shore, in order to procure some at a village; meanwhile, a breeze sprung up, and we went on at so quick a rate, that we thought we must have left him behind. Presently, however, we saw the poor fellow running as fast as possible, but still careful of his pannikin; and after a time we got him on board. In accomplishing this, the boy was completely ducked; but whether he was otherwise hurt, or this catastrophe occurring when out of breath or fatigued with over-exertion, I do not know; but he began to cry in a more piteous manner than could be justified by the cause alleged, namely, the wetting of his only garment, an old piece of sacking. I directed Mohammed to reward his services with a piastre, a small silver coin of the value of 2-1/2d.; and never, perhaps, did so trifling a sum of money produce so great an effect. In one moment, the cries were hushed, the tears dried, and in the contemplation of his newly-acquired riches, he lost the recollection of all his troubles. It was nearly twelve o'clock in the day before we reached Atfee; and with all my previous experience of the wretched places inhabited by human beings, I was surprised by the desolation of the village at the head of the canal. The houses, if such they might be called, were huddled upon the side of a cliff; their mud walls, covered on the top with a few reeds or a little straw, looking like the cliff itself. A few irregular holes served for doors and windows; but more uncouth, miserable hovels could not have been seen amongst the wildest savages. Some of these places I perceived had a small court-yard attached, the hut being at the end, and only distinguishable by a poor attempt at a roof, the greater part of which had fallen in. We were here obliged to leave our boat; landing on the opposite side to this village, and walking a short distance, we found ourselves upon the banks of the Nile. The place was in great confusion, in consequence of the actual presence of the Pasha, who, for himself and suite, we were told, had engaged every boat excepting the one belonging to Mr. Waghorn, in which the mails, entrusted to him, had been put. As it was impossible that four ladies, for our friends had now joined us, with their European female servant and the baby, could be accommodated in this small vessel, we despatched our janissary, with a letter in the Turkish language to the governor of Atfee, with which we had been provided at Alexandria, and we were immediately politely informed that the best boat attainable should be at our disposal. The Pasha had taken up his quarters at a very mean-looking house, and he soon afterwards made his appearance in front of it. Those who had not become acquainted with his person by portraits, or other descriptions, were disappointed at seeing a common-looking man, short in stature, and very plainly clad, having formed a very different idea of the sovereign of Egypt. Not having any proper introductions, and knowing that the Pasha makes a great favour of granting an audience to European ladies, we made no attempt to address him; thus sacrificing our curiosity to our sense of decorum. There was of course a great crowd round the Pasha, and we embarked for the purpose of surveying it to greater advantage. Our boat was moored in front of a narrow strip of ground between the river and a large dilapidated mansion, having, however, glass windows in it, which bore the ostentatious title of _Hotel du Mahmoudie._ This circumscribed space was crowded with camels and their drivers; great men and their retainers passing to and fro; market people endeavouring to sell their various commodities, together with a multitudinous collection of men, dogs, and donkeys. I observed that all the people surveyed the baby as she was carried through them, in her native servant's arms, with peculiar benignity. She was certainly a beautiful specimen of an English infant, and in her pretty white frock, lace cap, and drawn pink silk bonnet, would have attracted attention anywhere; such an apparition the people now assembled at Atfee had probably never seen before, and they were evidently delighted to look at her. She was equally pleased, crowing and spreading out her little arms to all who approached her. The smallness of the boat rendered it necessary that I should open one of my portmanteaus, and take out a supply of clothes before it was sent away; while thus occupied, I found myself overlooked by two or three respectably-clad women, who were in a boat, with several men, alongside. I did not, of course, understand what they said, but by their gestures guessed that they were asking for some of the strange things which they saw. I had nothing that I could well spare, or that I thought would be useful to them, excepting a paper of needles, which I put into one of their hands, through the window of the cabin. The envelope being flourished over with gold, they at first thought that there was nothing more to be seen, but being directed by signs to open it, they were in ecstasy at the sight of the needles, which they proceeded forthwith to divide. We now pushed off, and found that, in the narrow limits to which we were confined, we must only retain our carpet-bags and dressing-cases. The small cabin which occupies the stern was surrounded on three sides with lockers, which formed seats, but which were too narrow to hold our beds; moveable planks, of different dimensions, to suit the shape of the boat, fitted in, making the whole flush when requisite, and forming a space amply wide enough for our mattresses, but in which we could not stand upright. To our great joy, we found the whole extremely clean, and in perfect repair, so that we could easily submit to the minor evils that presented themselves. We had found Mohammed very active, attentive, and ready in the departments in which we had hitherto employed him, but we were now about to put his culinary abilities to the test. He spoke very tolerable English, but surprised us a little by inquiring whether we should like an Irish stew for dinner. A fowl was killed and picked in a trice, and Mohammed had all his own way, excepting with regard to the onions, which were, in his opinion, woefully restricted. A fowl stewed with butter and potatoes, and garnished with boiled eggs, is no bad thing, especially when followed by a dessert of fresh dates, grapes, and pomegranates. A clerk of Mr. Waghorn's, an European, who had the charge of the mails, went up in the boat with us; but as we could not possibly afford him any accommodation in our cabin, his situation at the prow must have been very uncomfortable. He was attended by a servant; there were ten or twelve boatmen, which, together with Mohammed and the janissary, completely crowded the deck, so that it was impossible for them all to lie down at full length. I have not said a word about the far-famed river, which I had so long and so anxiously desired to see; the late inundations had filled it to the brim, consequently it could not have been viewed at a more favourable period; but I was dreadfully disappointed. In a flat country, like Lower Egypt, I had not expected any thing beyond luxuriance of vegetation; but my imagination had been excited by ideas of groves of palms. I found the date trees so thinly scattered, as to be quite insignificant as a feature in the scene, and except when we came to a village, there were no other. The wind being strong, we got on at first at a rapid rate, and as we carried a press of sail, the boat lay over completely, as to put the gunwale (as I believe it is called) in the water. We looked eagerly out, pleased when we saw some illustration of old customs with which the Bible had made us acquainted, or when the janissary, who was an intelligent person, pointed to a Bedouin on the banks. Miss E. flattered herself that she had caught sight of a crocodile, and as she described the huge jaws of some creature gaping out of the water, I thought that she was right, and envied her good fortune: however, afterwards, being assured that crocodiles never make their appearance below Cairo, I was convinced that, unaccustomed to see animals belonging to the Bovine group in a foreign element, she had taken the head of a buffalo emerging from the river, for one of the classic monsters of the flood. When weary of looking out, without seeing any thing but sky and water, and a few palm trees, I amused myself with reading Wordsworth, and thus the day passed away. When evening came, we seated ourselves in front of the cabin, outside, to enjoy the sunset, and after our loss of rest on the preceding night, slept very comfortably. The next morning at noon, we had accomplished half the distance to Cairo, having some time passed every boat we saw upon the river. Arriving at a village, Mr. Waghorn's agent determined upon going on shore, and carrying the mails on the backs of donkeys, in order to ensure their arrival at Suez time enough to meet the steamer. He had been assured that we had passed the boat containing the Government mails in the night, but had not been able to ascertain the fact himself. I think it necessary to mention this, as a proof of the indefatigable endeavours made by Mr. Waghorn to ensure the speediest method of transit. As the people had worked very hard, we directed Mohammed to purchase some meat for them in the bazaar, in order that they might indulge in a good meal; we also took the opportunity of purchasing a supply of eggs, fowls, and fruit, lest we should fall short before we reached Cairo. The fowls were so small, that, having our appetites sharpened by the fresh air of the river, we could easily manage one between us for breakfast, and another at dinner. We did not make trial of the unfiltered waters of the Nile, not drinking it until it had deposited its mud. Though previously informed that no beverage could be more delightful than that afforded by this queen of rivers in its unsophisticated state, I did not feel at all tempted to indulge; but am quite ready to do justice to its excellence when purified from the grosser element. We were much pleased with the alacrity and good humour of our boatmen, and the untiring manner in which they performed their laborious duties. When a favouring breeze allowed them to rest, they seldom indulged in sleep, but, sitting round in a ring upon the narrow deck, either told stories, or were amused by the dancing of one of the group, who, without changing his place, contrived to shift his feet very vigorously to the music of his own voice, and that of two sticks struck together to keep the time. They frequently used their oars in parts of the river where they could not find a towing-path, and when rowing, invariably accompanied their labours with a song, which, though rude, was not unpleasant. The breeze, which had hitherto favoured us, dying away, the poor fellows were obliged to work harder than ever, dragging the boat up against the stream: upon these occasions, however, we enjoyed a very agreeable degree of quietude, and were, moreover, enabled to take a more accurate survey of the river's banks. Living objects were not numerous, excepting in the immediate vicinity of the villages. I was delighted when I caught sight of an ibis, but was surprised at the comparatively small number of birds; having been accustomed to the immense flocks which congregate on the banks of Indian rivers. Our arrival at a village alone relieved the monotony of the landscape. Some of these places were prettily situated under groves of dates and wild fig trees, and they occasionally boasted houses of a decent description; the majority were, however, most wretched, and we were often surprized to see persons respectably dressed, and mounted upon good-looking donkeys, emerge from streets and lanes leading to the most squalid and poverty-stricken dwellings imaginable. The arrival of a boat caused all the beggars to hasten down to the river-side; these chiefly consisted of very old or blind persons. We had provided ourselves with paras, a small copper coin, for the purpose of giving alms to the miserable beings who solicited our charity, and the poor creatures always went away well satisfied with the trifling gift bestowed upon them. Every morning, the janissary and the Arab captain of the boat came to the door of the cabin to pay their respects; with the latter we could not hold much communication, as he did not speak a word of English; we were, nevertheless, excellent friends. He was very good-humoured, and we were always laughing, so that a bond of union was established between us. He had once or twice come into such close contact with some of our crockery-ware, as to put me in a fright, and the comic look, with which he showed that he was aware of the mischief he had nearly done, amused me excessively. He was evidently a wag, and from the moment in which he discovered the congeniality of our feelings, when any droll incident occurred, he was sure to look at us and laugh. The janissary spoke very tolerable English, and after sunset, when we seated ourselves outside the cabin-door, he came forward and entered into conversation. He told us that a quarrel having taken place between the boatmen of a small vessel and the people of a village, the former came on board in great numbers in the night, and murdered six of the boatmen; and that on the affair being represented to the Pasha, he sent three hundred soldiers to the village, and razed it to the ground. He said that he had been in the service of several English gentlemen, and had once an opportunity of going to England with a captain in the navy, but that his mother was alive at that time, and when he mentioned his wishes to her, she cried, and therefore he could not go. The captain had told him that he would always repent not having taken his offer; but though he wished to see England, he was glad he had not grieved his mother. He had been at Malta, but had taken a dislike to the Maltese, in consequence of a wrong he had received, as a stranger, upon his landing. Amongst the noblemen and gentlemen whom he had served, he mentioned the Marquess of Waterford. We asked him what sort of a person he was, and he immediately replied, "A young devil." Mohammed, who had been in various services with English travellers, expressed a great desire to go to England; he said, that if he could once get there, he would "never return to this dirty country." Both he and the janissary apparently had formed magnificent ideas of the wealth of Great Britain, from the lavish manner in which the English are accustomed to part with their money while travelling. We inquired of Mohammed concerning the magician, whose exploits Mr. Lane and other authors have recorded. At first, he did not understand what we meant; but, upon further explanation, told us that he thought the whole an imposture. He said, that when a boy, about the age of the Arab captain's son, who was on board, he was in the service of a lady who wished to witness the exhibition, and who selected him as the medium of communication, because she said that she knew he would tell her the truth. The ceremonies, therefore, commenced; but though anxiously looking into the magic mirror, he declared that he saw nothing: afterwards, he continued, "A boy was called out of the bazaar, who saw all that the man told him." But while Mohammed expressed his entire disbelief in the power of this celebrated person, he was not devoid of the superstition of his creed and country, for he told us that he knew of another who really did wonderful things. He then asked us what we had called the Mughreebee whom we had described to him: we replied, a magician; and he and the janissary repeated the word over many times, in order to make themselves thoroughly acquainted with it. In all cases, they were delighted with the acquisition of a new word, and were very thankful to me when I corrected their pronunciation. Thus, when the janissary showed me what he called _kundergo_, growing in the fields, and explained that it made a blue dye, and I told him that we called it _indigo_, he never rested until he had learned the word, which he repeated to Mohammed and Mohammed to him. I never met with two more intelligent men in their rank of life, or persons who would do greater credit to their teachers; and brief as has been my intercourse with the Egyptians, I feel persuaded, that a good method of imparting knowledge is all that is wanting to raise them in the scale of nations. During our progress up the river, I had been schooling myself, and endeavouring to keep down my expectations, lest I should be disappointed at the sight of the Pyramids. We were told that we should see them at the distance of five-and-thirty miles; and when informed that they were in view, my heart beat audibly as I threw open the cabin door, and beheld them gleaming in the sun, pure and bright as the silvery clouds above them. Far from being disappointed, the vastness of their dimensions struck me at once, as they rose in lonely majesty on the bare plain, with nothing to detract from their grandeur, or to afford, by its littleness, a point of comparison. We were never tired of gazing upon these noble monuments of an age shrouded in impenetrable mystery. They were afterwards seen at less advantage, in consequence of the intervention of some rising ground; but from all points they created the strongest degree of interest. We had a magnificent thunder-storm just as it was growing dark, and the red lightning lit up the pyramids, which came out, as it were, from the black masses of clouds behind them, while the broad waters of the Nile assumed a dark and troubled aspect. The scene was sublime, but of short duration; for the tempest speedily rolled off down the river; when, accompanied by a squall and heavy rain, it caught several boats, which were obliged to put into the shore. We did not experience the slightest inconvenience; and though the latter part of the voyage had been protracted from want of wind, arrived at the port of Boulak at half-past nine on the second evening of our embarkation. CHAPTER V. * * * * * CAIRO. * * * * * Arrival at Boulak--Description of the place--Moolid, or Religious Fair--Surprise of the People--The Hotel at Cairo--Description of the City--The Citadel--View from thence--The City--The Shops--The Streets--The interior of the Pasha's Palace--Pictures--Furniture--Military Band--Affray between a Man and Woman--Indifference of the Police to Street Broils--Natives beaten by Englishmen--Visit to an English Antiquary--By-ways of the City--Interior of the Houses--Nubian Slave-market--Gypsies--Preparations for Departure to Suez--Mode of driving in the Streets of Cairo--Leave the City--The Changes in travelling in Egypt--Attractions of Cairo. It was half-past nine o'clock, on the evening of the 4th of October, 1839, that we arrived at the port of Boulak. We expected to find some person in waiting to give us the pass-word, and thus enable us to get into Cairo, the gates of the city being closed at nine o'clock. Depending upon the attendance of the hotel-keeper at Cairo, who had been apprised of our approach, we had not put the janissary on shore, as we ought to have done, at the British Consul's country-house, who would have furnished us with a talisman to pass the gates. We sent Mohammed and the janissary on shore, to see what could be done. Including the voyage up the canal, Miss E. and myself had passed (we could not say slept) three nights on board a boat, the first without an attempt at repose, the two latter lying down in our dressing-gowns upon thin mattresses, stretched upon hard boards; we, therefore, could not very easily relinquish the endeavour to procure a bed during the time which would intervene between the period (an hour before day-light) in which the gates of the city would be open. I had a letter to the British Consul, which I gave Mohammed, telling him to try the effect of bribery upon the guardians of the city. During his absence, the Arab captain, feeling that we were left under his protection, came and seated himself beside us, outside the cabin-door. We conversed together without understanding each other's language; he had nothing to offer us except snuff, of which we each took a pinch, giving him in return, as he refused wine, a pomegranate, to which I added a five-franc piece from the remains of my French money. If any thing had been wanting to establish a good understanding between us, this would have accomplished it. The rais, or captain, took my hand in his, and pressed his own to his lips, in token of gratitude; and when upon the return of Mohammed he perceived that I was rather nervous at the idea of crossing the plank from the boat to the shore, he plunged at once into the water to assist me over it. The janissary brought word that there was a moolid, or religious fair, held at the opposite end of the city, and that if we would make a circuit of three miles round the walls, we might enter Cairo that night, as the gate was left open for the convenience of the people in the neighbourhood. Mohammed had aroused a donkey-man of his acquaintance, who was in attendance, with a youth his son, and two donkeys. To the boy was entrusted the care of the lanthorn, without which no person is allowed to traverse the streets after nightfall, and mounting, we set forward. The streets of Boulak are narrow, but the houses appear to be lofty and substantially built. We were challenged by the soldiers at the gates, but allowed to pass without farther inquiry. The ride round the walls at night was dreary enough, over broken ground, occupied by bandogs barking at us as we passed. We met occasionally groups of people coming from the fair, who gave us the welcome intelligence that the gates were still open, and, pushing on, we came at length to the entrance, an archway of some magnitude. Upon turning an angle of this wall, we suddenly emerged upon a very singular scene. The tomb of the saint, in whose honour the moolid was held, was surrounded by devotees, engaged in the performance of some religious rite. Around, and in front, throughout the neighbouring streets, gleamed a strong illumination, produced by an assemblage of lamps and lanthorns of various kinds. Some of the shops boasted handsome cut-glass chandeliers, or Argand lamps, evidently of European manufacture; others were content with a circular frame, perforated with holes, in which all sorts of glass vessels, wine-glasses, tumblers, mustard-pots, &c., were placed, filled with oil, and having several wicks. The articles displayed for sale at the fair were, as far as we could judge from the hasty glances we cast as we passed along, good of their kind, and of some value; the confectioners' shops made a gay appearance with their variously-coloured sweetmeats, piled up in tempting heaps, and we saw enough of embroidery and gold to form a very favourable idea of the taste and splendour of the native dress. We were, of course, objects of great surprise and curiosity; the sudden appearance of two European ladies, the only women present, at eleven o'clock at night, riding on donkeys through the fair, could not fail to create a sensation. Our boy with the lanthorn walked first, followed by the janissary, who, flourishing his silver stick, made room for us through the crowd. Had we not been accompanied by this respectable official, we should scarcely have dared to venture in such a place, and at such a period. Mohammed and the donkey-man attended at the side of Miss E. and myself, and though some of the people could not help laughing at the oddity of our appearance, we met with no sort of insult or hinderance, but made our way through without the slightest difficulty, much more easily, in fact, than two Arabs in their native costume, even if attended by a policeman, would have traversed a fair in England. The scene was altogether very singular, and we thought ourselves fortunate in having had an opportunity of witnessing a native fair under such novel circumstances. We could scarcely believe that we were in a Mohammedan city, noted for its intolerance, and could not help feeling grateful to the reigning power which had produced so striking a change in the manners and conduct of the people. Upon leaving the fair, we turned into dark streets, dimly illumined by the light of the lanthorn we carried; occasionally, but very seldom, we met some grave personage, preceded also by a lanthorn, who looked with great astonishment at our party as we passed. At length we came to the door of our hotel, and having knocked loudly, we were admitted into the court-yard, when, dismounting, we proceeded up a flight of stone steps to a verandah, which led into some very good-sized apartments. The principal one, a large dining-room, was furnished at the upper end in the Egyptian fashion, with divans all round; it was, however, also well supplied with European chairs and tables, and in a few minutes cold turkey and ham, and other good things, appeared upon the board. Being the first arrivals from the steamer, we had to answer numerous questions before we could retire to bed. Upon asking to be conducted to our chamber, we were shown up another flight of stone stairs, leading to a second and much larger verandah, which was screened off in departments serving as ante-chambers to the bed-rooms. There was sufficient space on the terraces of this floor, for the descent of a few steps led to another platform, to afford a walk of some extent, but of this we were not aware until the morning. We found a very comfortable two-bedded room, supplied with glass windows, and everything belonging to it in excellent repair, and apparently free from vermin; most thankfully did we lie down to enjoy the repose which our late exertions had rendered so needful. Our trusty Mohammed had engaged donkeys for us the next day, and promised to take us to every place worth seeing in the city. We were strongly tempted to visit the Pyramids, but were deterred by the danger of losing the steamer at Suez, and by the difficulties of the undertaking. We were told that the Nile was not sufficiently flooded to admit of our approach in a boat, and that we should be up to the donkey's knees in mud if we attempted to go upon the backs of those animals. We, therefore, reluctantly relinquished the idea, and contented ourselves with what we could see of Cairo. Our first visit was directed to the Citadel, a place which, I do not scruple to say, was to me quite as interesting as any of the monuments of ancient art that Egypt contains. The remains of ages long past, and whose history is involved in unfathomable obscurity, excite our wonder and admiration, and fill us with an almost painful curiosity to draw aside the veil which time has thrown around them, and to learn secrets that all the learning of man has hitherto been unable to unfold. The citadel of Cairo, on the contrary, has been the theatre of comparatively recent events; it is filled with recollections of the hero whose exploits, narrated by the most eloquent pens, have charmed us in our childhood, and still continue to excite interest in our breasts--the Sultan Saladin. Here are the remains of a palace which he once inhabited, and here is a well which bears his name. Who could sit under the broken pillars of that roofless palace, or drink the water from the deep recesses of that well, without allowing their thoughts to wander back to the days of the Crusades, those chivalric times, in which love, and war, and religion, swayed the hearts and the actions of men; when all that was honoured and coveted was to be found in a soldier of the cross, and when half-frantic enthusiasts, pursuing the vainest of hopes, the recovery of the Holy Land, brought away with them what they did not go to seek, the arts, and learning, and science of the East! The janissary, who was with us, pointed out the direction in which Damietta now stands, and I was instantly filled with a desire to see Damietta, of which I had heard and read so much. The most exciting romance of Oriental history is to be found amid the deserts that surround Egypt; and even if the most spirit-stirring tale of all, the _Talisman_, had not been written, the scenes in which our own lion-hearted Richard figured, and which witnessed the exploits of the Templars and the knights of St. John of Jerusalem, could not fail to create the highest degree of pleasurable feeling in minds capable of enjoying such brilliant reveries of the past. The Citadel of Cairo is also fraught with the recollections of an event which startled all Europe within the memory of many of the present generation--the massacre of the Mamelukes. We were shown the broken cleft in the wall from which the only one of the devoted men who escaped urged his gallant horse; it was, indeed, a fearful leap, and we gazed upon, the spot and thought of the carnage of that dreadful hour with an involuntary shudder. The Citadel of Cairo has less the air of a regular fortification than any place of arms I ever recollect to have entered; it is, however, I believe, exceedingly strong by nature, the situation being very commanding. I regretted that I could not look upon these things with a professional eye, and that I had no military authority at hand to refer to. Near to the ruins of Saladin's palace, the Pasha is now constructing a mosque, which, when finished, will be one of the most splendid temples of the kind in all the Moslem land. It is to be lined and faced with marble, very elegantly carved, but it will take three years to complete it, and should any circumstances occur to delay the work during the lifetime of the present ruler of Egypt, the chances seem much in favour of its never being completed at all. Mounting on the embrasure of one of the guns, I feasted my eyes upon one of the finest and most interesting views I had ever beheld. The city, with its minarets, towers, kiosks, and stately palm-trees, lay at my feet, displaying, by its extent, the solidity, loftiness, and magnificence of its buildings, its title to the proud name of "Grand Cairo." Beyond, in one wide flood of silver, flowed the Nile, extending far as the eye could reach along a plain verdant with its fertilizing waters. To the left, the tombs of the caliphs spread themselves over a desert waste, looking, indeed, like a city of the dead. These monuments, though not equalling in size and grandeur the tombs which we find in India, are very striking; they are for the most part surmounted by cupolas, raised upon lofty pillars, with the spaces open between. Upon one of these buildings we were shown a vessel in the form of a boat, which upon a certain festival is filled with grain and water, for the service of the birds. The Pyramids, which rise beyond the City of Tombs, are not seen to advantage from this point, an intervening ridge of sand cutting off the bases, and presenting the pinnacles only to view; but the whole of the landscape, under the clear bright atmosphere of an Egyptian sky, is of so exquisite a nature, that the eye can never tire of it, and had I been detained as a prisoner in the Pasha's dominions, I might have become reconciled to my fate, had I been confined in a situation which commanded this splendid prospect. About the middle of the day we again sallied forth, the streets of Cairo being so narrow that the sun is completely shut out, and shade thus afforded at noon. The air was not unpleasantly warm, and we suffered no inconvenience, excepting from the crowd. Mounted upon donkeys, we pushed our way through a dense throng, thrusting aside loaded camels, which scarcely allowed us room to pass, and coming into the closest contact with all sorts of people. The perusal of Mr. Lane's book had given me a very vivid idea of the interior of the city, though I was scarcely prepared to mingle thus intimately with its busy multitude. We had some shopping to execute, or rather we had to pay for some purchases made by Mohammed for us in the morning, and to return that portion of the goods sent for inspection that we did not intend to keep. We liked the appearance of the shops, which, in all cases of the more respectable kind, were well stocked, whole streets being devoted to the sale of one particular branch of merchandize. A long avenue was occupied by saddlers and the sellers of horse-furniture; another displayed nothing but woollen cloths; a third was devoted to weapons of every description, &c. &c. The wax-chandlers reminded me very much of those in England, being decorated in a similar manner, while the display of goods everywhere was much greater than I had ever seen in Eastern cities, in which for the most part merchandize of the best description is hidden in warehouses, and not to be found without deep research. The greater number of the streets are covered in with matting in rather a dilapidated state, and having many holes and crevices for the admission of air; this gives to the whole a ragged appearance, and we were told that the Pasha had determined not to allow in future awnings of these frail and unsightly materials. The Frank quarter, which is much better contrived, is the model for subsequent erections. This avenue has a roof of wood sufficiently high to allow of a free circulation of air, and having apertures, at regular distances near the top, to admit the light. The streets in this part of Cairo are wider than usual, and the shops appear to be large and convenient. All sorts of European manufactures are to be found here, for the most part at reasonable prices. The gentlemen who proposed to cross the desert purchased Leghorn hats of very good quality, and admirably adapted, from their size, lightness, and durability, for Indian wear. Wearied, at length, with the confusion and bustle of the streets, we took again the road to the Citadel, being exceedingly desirous to feast our eyes with the sunset view. After gazing long and earnestly upon a scene which, once beheld, can never be forgotten, we gladly accepted the offer of Mohammed to show us into the interior of the Pasha's palace, a large irregular building, having no great pretensions to architectural beauty, and mingling rather oddly the European with the Oriental style. Ascending a broad flight of steps, we passed through a large kind of guard-room to the state-apartments. These were of rather a singular description, but handsome and well adapted to the climate. A third portion, consisting of the front and part of the two sides of each room, was entirely composed of windows, opening a few feet from the ground, and having a divan running round, furnished in the usual manner with pillows at the back. The windows of some of these apartments opened upon gardens, laid out in the English taste and full of English flowers; others commanded the finest prospects of the city and the open space below. Round these rooms, at the top, forming a sort of cornice, were pictures in compartments or panels, one series consisting of views of the Pasha's palaces and gardens, another of the vessels of war which belong to him, and more especially his favourite steam-boat, of which there are many delineations. There is nothing that more strongly exhibits the freedom with which Mehemet Ali has thrown off the prejudices of the Moslem religion, than his permitting, contrary to its established principles, the representation of objects natural and artificial, which, both in painting and sculpture, is strictly forbidden. Much cannot be said for the execution of these pictures, which seem to have been the work of a native artist; but they become exceedingly interesting as proofs of the decline of a religion so completely opposed to the spread of knowledge, and to all improvement in the moral condition of its followers. The furniture in the Pasha's palace, though in a great measure limited to carpets and cushions, is very handsome. The divans are covered with rich brocade, figured satin, damask, or cut velvet. The attendants drew aside, with great pride, the curtains which concealed the looking-glasses, evidently fancying that we had never beheld mirrors of such magnitude in our lives. I observed that the chandeliers in some of the apartments did not match each other, but the whole was very creditable to the taste and spirit of the owner. Below them was a handsome apartment entirely lined with marble, and apparently designed as a retreat for the hot weather, the floor being divided into two parts--the one ascended by a step, in which the family might repose upon cushions; the other scooped into basins, with a fountain to play in the centre: the water either had not as yet been laid on, or the season did not render it necessary. Near to this apartment was the Pasha's bed-chamber, a fine room, also lined with marble, and containing a fire-place, which in the warm weather revolved upon a pivot, and was concealed in a recess made on purpose in the wall. The bathing-rooms, close at hand, were of the most beautiful description, the principal apartment and the antechamber having roofs which might serve as models for all erections of the kind. These were fretted in small compartments, light being admitted by a thick piece of ground-glass in the centre of each, thus securing the utmost privacy, together with one of the most beautiful methods of lighting possible. While we were still sitting in the Pasha's palace, the military band of the garrison began to play upon the parade-ground immediately below. Mohammed, who seemed to be quite at home, conducted us to an apartment which overlooked this space, opened one of the windows, and requested us to seat ourselves upon the cushions, where we remained for some time, listening to the well-known French airs played in the court-yard of the palace of a Turkish prince! The band was not a very large one, but the performers had been well-taught, and the wind-instruments produced in such a situation a very animating effect. They marched up and down the parade-ground, occasionally relieved by the drums and fifes also playing French music. The performers were clothed in white, like the men belonging to the ranks, and had the same soiled appearance, it being impossible to keep white garments pure in the dust of Egyptian cities. The sun was now completely down, and we returned to our hotel, where, to our great joy, we found our two female friends, who had not been able to reach Boulak until many hours after our landing. We had ordered dinner at seven o'clock, in the hope that our fellow-passengers in the steamer would come up, and according to our calculations, several dropped in. The possibility of getting to the Pyramids was again discussed; the greater number of the gentlemen determined at least to try, but we thought it best to avoid all danger of missing the _Berenice_, and the ladies, adhering to their original intention, determined to cross the desert together. We passed a most agreeable evening, telling over our voyage up the Nile, and upon retiring to my chamber, I regretted that it would be the last I should for some time spend in Cairo. Nothing can be more quiet than the nights in a city where all the inhabitants retire after dark to their own homes, the streets being perambulated by few persons, and those of the soberest description; but with the sun, a scene of bustle and noise ensues, which effectually prevents repose. The windows of my apartment looked out upon a narrow street, in which the ground-floors were, as it is usual, composed of shops, while several persons, having vegetables or grain to sell, were seated upon the ground. The hum of human voices, the grunting of the camels, and the braying of donkeys, kept up an incessant din, and therefore some minutes elapsed before my attention was attracted by a wordy war which took place beneath my window. Hastily arraying myself in my dressing-gown, and looking out, I saw a man and woman engaged in some vehement discussion, but whether caused by a dispute or not, I could not at first decide. They both belonged to the lower class, and the woman was meanly dressed in a blue garment, with a hood of the same over her head, her face being concealed by one of those hideous narrow black veils, fastened across under the eyes, which always reminded me of the proboscis of an elephant. Her hands were clasped upon the arms of the man just above the elbow, who held her in the same manner, and several people were endeavouring to part them, as they struggled much in the same manner which prevails in a melodrame, when the hero and heroine are about to be separated by main force. I thought it, therefore, probable that they were a loving couple, about to be torn asunder by the myrmidons of the law. Presently, however, I was set right upon this point, for the man, seizing a kind of whip, which is generally carried in Cairo, and flogging off his friends, dashed the poor creature on the ground, and inflicted several severe strokes upon her prostrate body, not one of the by-standers attempting to prevent him. The woman, screaming fearfully, jumped up, and seizing him again, as if determined to gain her point, whatever it might be, poured forth a volley of words, and again the man threw her upon the ground and beat her most cruelly, the spectators remaining, as before, quite passive, and allowing him to wreak his full vengeance upon her. Had I been dressed, or could I have made my way readily into the street, I should have certainly gone down to interpose, for never did I witness any scene so horrible, or one I so earnestly desired to put an end to. At length, though the pertinacity of the woman was astonishing, when exhausted by blows, she lay fainting on the ground, the man went his way. The spectators, and there were many, who looked on without any attempt to rescue this poor creature from her savage assailant, now raised her from the earth. The whole of this time, the veil she wore was never for a moment displaced, and but for the brutal nature of the scene, it would have been eminently ridiculous in the eyes of a stranger. After crying and moaning for some time, in the arms of her supporters, the woman, whom I now found to be a vender of vegetables in the street, told her sad tale to all the passers-by of her acquaintance, with many tears and much gesticulation, but at length seated herself quietly down by her baskets, though every bone in her body must have ached from the severe beating she had received. This appeared to me to be a scene for the interference of the police, who, however, do not appear to trouble themselves about the protection of people who may be assaulted in the street. I afterwards saw a drunken Englishman, an officer of the Indian army, I am sorry to say, beat several natives of Cairo, with whom he happened to come in contact in the crowd, in the most brutal and unprovoked manner, and yet no notice was taken, and no complaint made. It was certainly something very unexpected to me to see a Frank Christian maltreating the Moslem inhabitants of a Moslem city in which he was a stranger, and I regretted exceedingly that the perpetrator of acts, which brought disgrace upon his character and country, should have been an Englishman, or should have escaped punishment. No sooner have we been permitted to traverse a country in which formerly it was dangerous to appear openly as a Christian, than we abuse the privilege thus granted by outrages on its most peaceable inhabitants. I regret to be obliged to add, that it is but too commonly the habit, of Englishmen to beat the boat-men, donkey-men, and others of the poorer class, whom they may engage in their service. They justify this cowardly practice--cowardly, because the poor creatures can gain no redress--by declaring that there is no possibility of getting them to stir excepting by means of the whip; but, in most cases, all that I witnessed, they were not at the trouble of trying fairer methods: at once enforcing their commands by blows. The comments made by the janissary and our own servant upon those who were guilty of such wanton brutality showed the feeling which it elicited; and when upon one occasion Miss E. and myself interposed, declaring that we would not allow any person in our service to be beaten, they told us not to be alarmed, for that the rais (captain of the boat), who was an Arab, would not put up with ill-treatment, but had threatened to go on shore at the next village with all his men. An English gentleman, long resident in Cairo, had done me the honour to call upon me on the day after my arrival, and had invited me to come to his house, to see some mummies and other curiosities he had collected. Accompanied by two of my female friends, and escorted by a gentleman who was well acquainted with the topography of the city, we set out on foot, traversing blind alleys and dark lanes, and thus obtaining a better idea of the intricacies of the place than we could possibly have gained by any other means. Sometimes we passed under covered ways perfectly dark, which I trod, not without fear of arousing some noxious animal; then we came to narrow avenues, between the backs of high stone houses, occasionally emerging into small quadrangles, having a single tree in one corner. We passed a house inhabited by one of the superior description of Frank residents, and we knew that it must be tenanted by a European by the handsome curtains and other furniture displayed through its open windows. Turning into a street, for the very narrow lanes led chiefly along the backs of houses, we looked into the lower apartments, the doors of which were usually unclosed, and here we saw the men at their ordinary occupations, and were made acquainted with their domestic arrangements. At length we arrived at a court, which displayed a door and a flight of steps at the corner. Upon knocking, we were admitted by an Egyptian servant, who showed us up stairs into a room, where we found the master of the house seated upon one of the low stools which serve as the support of the dinner-trays in Egypt, the only other furniture that the room contained being a table, and the customary divan, which extended all round. Coffee was brought in, served in small China cups; but all the coffee made in Egypt was too like the Nile mud for me to taste, and warm and fatigued with a walk through places from which the fresh air was excluded, I felt myself unequal to make the trial now. Our friend's collection of antiquities appeared to be very valuable; but I had been at the opening of a mummy-case before, and though interested by the different articles which his researches had brought to light, was more so in the examination of his house. It was very oddly arranged, according to the ideas formed in Europe, many of the rooms looking like lanthorns, in consequence of their having windows on the stairs and passages, as well as to the street. This was probably caused by a desire to secure a free circulation of air, but it at the same time destroyed every idea of privacy, and therefore looked exceedingly uncomfortable. There were glass-windows to several of the apartments, but the house exhibited considerable quantities of that wooden trellice-work, represented in Mr. Lane's book. Nothing, indeed, can be more accurate than his descriptions; the English inhabitants of Cairo say that, reading it upon the spot, they cannot detect a single error; the designs are equally faithful, and those who study the work carefully may acquire the most correct notion of the city and its inhabitants. The apartments at the top of the house opened, as usual, upon a rather extensive terrace or court, but the surrounding wall was too high to admit of any prospect; both here, and in a similar place at our hotel, persons walking about could neither see their neighbours nor be seen by them. We, therefore, gained nothing by climbing so high, and I was disappointed at not obtaining any view of the city. I tried in each place to make acquaintance with an Egyptian cat, but I found the animal too shy. I noticed several, which seemed to be domestic pets; they were fine-looking creatures of the kind, and I fancied larger than the common English cat, but the difference, if existing at all, was very slight. I returned home, so much fatigued with my walk, as to be unable to go out again, especially as we were to start at four o'clock for the desert. Two of the ladies of the party, not having completed their purchases at the bazaars, went out upon a shopping excursion, and passing near the Nubian slave-market, were induced to enter. Christians are not admitted to the place in which Circassian women are sold, and can only obtain entrance by assuming the Turkish dress and character. My friends were highly interested in one woman, who sat apart from the rest, apparently plunged into the deepest melancholy; the others manifested little sorrow at their condition, which was not, perhaps, in reality, changed for the worse: all eagerly scrambled for some pieces of money which the visitors threw amongst them, and the sight was altogether too painful for Christian ladies to desire to contemplate long. They were much more amused by some gipsies, who were anxious to show their skill in the occult science. Upon the morning after our arrival, Miss E., who was always the first upon the alert, accepted the escort of a gentleman, who conducted her to a neighbouring shop; while making some purchases, a gipsy came and seated herself opposite, and by way of showing her skill, remarked that the lady was a stranger to Cairo, and had a companion, also of her own sex, who pretended to be a friend, but who would prove treacherous. As we had ridden through the fair together on the preceding evening, it did not require any great effort of art to discover that two Frank ladies had arrived at Cairo; but in speaking of treachery, the gipsy evidently wished to pique the curiosity of my friend, and tempt her to make further inquiry. Much to my regret, she did not take any notice of the fortune-teller, whose words had been repeated by the gentleman who had accompanied her, and who was well acquainted with the language in which they were spoken. I should like to have had a specimen of the talents of a modern scion of this race, in the country in which the learned have decided that the tribe, now spread over the greater part of the world, originated. The arrival of the _Berenice_ at Suez had been reported the evening before, and the mails had been brought to Cairo in the coarse of the night. All was, therefore, bustle and confusion in our hotel; gentlemen hourly arriving from the Nile, where they had been delayed by squalls and contrary winds, or snatching a hasty meal before they posted off to the Pyramids. Our camels and donkeys had been laden and despatched to the outskirts of the city, to which we were to be conveyed in a carriage. I had observed in the court-yard of the hotel an English-built equipage, of the britschka fashion, with a dark-coloured hood, for, whatever might have been its original tint, it had assumed the common hue of Egypt; and I found that two spirited horses were to be harnessed to the vehicle, which was dragged out into the street for our accommodation. A gentleman volunteered his services as coachman, promising that he would drive carefully, and we accordingly got in, a party of four, taking the baby along with us. Although the horses kicked and plunged a little, I did not fancy that we could be in any danger, as it was impossible for them to run away with us through streets so narrow as scarcely to be passable, neither could we have very easily been upset. I, therefore, hoped to have enjoyed the drive amazingly, as it promised to afford me a better opportunity than I had hitherto possessed of seeing Cairo, seated at my ease, instead of pushing and jostling through the crowd either on foot or upon a donkey. The gentleman, however, bent upon showing off, would not listen to our entreaties that the grooms should lead the horses, but dashed along, regardless of the danger to the foot-passengers, or the damage that the donkeys might sustain. So long as we proceeded slowly, the drive was very agreeable, since it enabled me to observe the effect produced by our party upon the spectators. Many sat with the utmost gravity in their shops, scarcely deigning to cast their eyes upon what must certainly have been a novel sight; others manifested much more curiosity, and seemed to be infinitely amused, while heads put out of the upper windows showed that we attracted some attention. My enjoyment was destined to be very brief, for in a short time our coachman, heedless of the mischief that might ensue, drove rapidly forward, upsetting and damaging every thing that came in his way. In vain did we scream and implore; he declared that it was the fault of the people, who would not remove themselves out of danger; but as we had no _avant-courrier_ to clear the road before us, and our carriage came very suddenly upon many persons, I do not see how they could have managed to escape. At length, we drove over an unfortunate donkey, which was pulled down by a piece of iron sticking from the carriage, and thus becoming entangled in the load he bore. I fear that the animal was injured, for the poor boy who drove him cried bitterly, and though we (that is, the ladies of the party) would gladly have remunerated him for the damage he might have sustained, neither time nor opportunity was permitted for this act of justice. On we drove, every moment expecting to be flung out against the walls, as the carriage turned round the corners of streets placed at right angles to each other. At length, we succeeded in our wish to have the grooms at the horses' heads, and without further accident, though rendered as nervous as possible, passed through the gate of the city. We drove forward now without any obstacle through the Necropolis, or City of Tombs, before-mentioned, and I regretted much that we had not left Cairo at an earlier hour, which would have permitted us to examine the interiors. The desert comes up to the very walls of Cairo, and these tombs rise from a plain of bare sand. I observed some gardens and cultivated places stretching out into the wilderness, no intermediate state occurring between the garden and the arid waste in which vegetation suddenly ceased. We might have performed the whole journey across the desert in the carriage which had brought us thus far, but as one of the ladies was a little nervous, and moreover thought the road too rough, I readily agreed to choose another mode of conveyance; in fact, I wished particularly to proceed leisurely to Suez, and in the manner in which travellers had hitherto been conveyed. The mighty changes which are now effecting in Egypt, should nothing occur to check their progress, will soon render the track to India so completely beaten, and so deeply worn by wheels, that I felt anxious to take advantage of the opportunity now offered to traverse the desert in a more primitive way. I disliked the idea of hurrying through a scene replete with so many interesting recollections. I had commenced reading the _Arabian Nights' Entertainment_ at the age of five years; since which period, I had read them over and over again at every opportunity, finishing with the last published number of the translation by Mr. Lane. This study had given me a strong taste for every thing relating to the East, and Arabia especially. I trust that I am not less familiar with the writings of the Old and New Testament, and consequently it may easily be imagined that I should not find three days in the desert tedious, and that I felt anxious to enjoy to the uttermost the reveries which it could not fail to suggest. In parting with our friend and the carriage, he declared that he would indemnify himself for the constraint we had placed upon him, by driving over two or three people at least. Fortunately, his desire of showing off was displayed too soon; we heard, and rejoiced at the tidings, that he upset the carriage before he got to the gate of Cairo. Two or three lives are lost, it is said, whenever the Pasha, who drives furiously, traverses the city in a European equipage. That he should not trouble himself about so mean a thing as the life or limb of a subject, may not be wonderful; but that he should permit Frank strangers to endanger both, seems unaccountable. No Anglo-Indian resident in either of the three presidencies thinks of driving a wheel-carriage through streets never intended for such conveyances. In visiting Benares, Patna, or any other of the celebrated native cities of India, elephants, horses, palanquins, or some other vehicle adapted for the occasion, are chosen. It, therefore, appears to be the more extraordinary that English people, who are certainly living upon sufferance in Egypt, should thus recklessly expose the inhabitants to danger, to which they are not subjected by any of their own people under the rank of princes. Nothing can be more agreeable or safe than a drive across the desert, and probably the time is speedily approaching in which the rich inhabitants of Cairo will indulge, as they do at Alexandria, in the luxury of English carriages, and for this purpose, the streets and open spaces best adapted for driving will be improved and widened. I cannot take leave of Cairo without paying the tribute due to the manner in which the streets are kept. In passing along the narrow lanes and avenues before-mentioned, not one of the senses was shocked; dust, of course, there is every where, but nothing worse to be seen at least; and the sight and smell were not offended, as at Paris or even in London, when passing through the by-ways of either. Altogether, if I may venture to pronounce an opinion, after so short a residence, I should say that, if our peaceful relations with Egypt should continue to be kept up, in no place will travellers be better received or entertained than in Cairo. CHAPTER VI. * * * * * THE DESERT. * * * * * Equipage for crossing the Desert--Donkey-chairs--Sense of calmness and tranquillity on entering the Desert--Nothing dismal in its aspect--The Travellers' Bungalow--Inconvenient construction of these buildings--Kafila of the Governor of Jiddah and his Lady--Their Equipage--Bedouins--Impositions practised on Travellers--Desert Travelling not disagreeable--Report of the sailing of the Steamer--Frequency of false reports--Ease with which an infant of the party bore the journey--A wheeled carriage crossing the Desert--Parties of Passengers from Suez encountered--One of Mr. Hill's tilted Caravans--Difficulty of procuring water at the Travellers' Bungalow--A night in the Desert--Magnificent sunrise--First sight of the Red Sea and the Town of Suez--Miserable appearance of the latter--Engagement of a Passage to Bombay. We found the equipages in which we were to cross the desert waiting for us at the City of Tombs. They consisted of donkey-chairs, one being provided for each of the females of the party, while my friend Miss E. had also an extra donkey, with a saddle, to ride upon occasionally. Nothing could be more comfortable than these vehicles; a common arm-chair was fastened into a sort of wooden tray, which projected in front about a foot, thereby enabling the passenger to carry a small basket or other package; the chairs were then slung by the arms to long bamboos, one upon either side, and these, by means of ropes or straps placed across, were fastened upon the backs of donkeys, one in front, the other, behind. Five long and narrow vehicles of this kind, running across the desert, made a sufficiently droll and singular appearance, and we did nothing but admire each other as we went along. The movement was delightfully easy, and the donkeys, though not travelling at a quick pace, got on very well. Our cavalcade consisted besides of two stout donkeys, which carried the beds and carpet-bags of the whole party, thus enabling us to send the camels a-head: the three men-servants were also mounted upon donkeys, and there were three or four spare ones, in case any of the others should knock up upon the road. In this particular it is proper to say that we were cheated, for had such an accident occurred, the extra-animals were so weak and inefficient, that they could not have supplied the places of any of those in use. There were eight or ten donkey-men, and a boy; the latter generally contrived to ride, but the others walked by the side of the equipages. In first striking into the desert, we all enjoyed a most delightful feeling of repose; every thing around appeared to be so calm and tranquil, that, especially after encountering the noises and multitudes of a large and crowded city, it was soothing to the mind thus to emerge from the haunts of men and wander through the vast solitudes that spread their wastes before us. To me there was nothing dismal in the aspect of the desert, nor was the view so boundless as I had expected. In these wide plains, the fall of a few inches is sufficient to diversify the prospect; there is always some gentle acclivity to be surmounted, which cheats the sense with the expectation of finding a novel scene beyond: the sand-hills in the distance also range themselves in wild and fantastic forms, many appearing like promontories jutting out into some noble harbour, to which the traveller seems to be approaching. Nor were there wanting living objects to animate the scene; our own little kafila was sufficiently large and cheerful to banish every idea of dreariness, and we encountered others much more picturesque. Soon after losing sight of the tombs, we came upon a party who had bivouac'd for the night; the camels, unladen, were, with their burthens, placed in a circle, and the people busily employed in preparing their evening meal. Other evidences there were, however, to show that the toils of the desert were but too frequently fatal to the wretched beasts of burthen employed in traversing these barren wastes; the whitened bones of camels and donkeys occurred so frequently, as to serve to indicate the road. Our first stage was the shortest of the whole, and we came to the rest-house, or travellers' bungalow, just as night closed in, and long before I entertained any idea that we should have been able to reach it, travelling as we did at an easy walk. The bungalow was not yet completed, which we found rather an advantage, since it seems to be exceedingly questionable whether the buildings erected for the accommodation of travellers on the track to Suez will be habitable even for a few hours in the course of another year. The funds of the Steam-committee have been lamentably mismanaged in this instance. However, there being no windows, we were enabled to enjoy the fresh air, and the room we occupied, not having been long whitewashed, was perfectly clean. Nothing can have been worse planned than the construction of these houses. The only entrance is in front, down a narrow passage, open at the top, and having apartments on either side, the two in front being sleeping-rooms for travellers, with a kitchen and other offices beyond, and at the back of all a stable, which occupies the whole width of the building. The consequence is, that all the animals, biped and quadruped, inhabiting the stable, must pass the traveller's door, who is regaled with the smell proceeding from the said stable, cook-rooms, &c.; all the insects they collect, and all the feathers from the fowls slaughtered upon the spot; the plan being, when parties arrive, to drive the unhappy creatures into the house, kill and pluck them immediately. The persons in care of these bungalows are usually a mongrel sort of Franks, who have no idea of cleanliness, and are regardless of the most unsavoury odours. The furniture of the rooms consisted of a deal table and a moveable divan of wicker-work, while another, formed of the same solid materials as the house, spread in the Egyptian fashion along one side. Upon this Miss E. and myself laid our beds; our two other lady friends, with the infant and female attendant, occupying the opposite apartment. We concluded the evening with tea and supper, for which we were amply provided, having cold fowls, cold ham, hard-boiled eggs, and bread and fruit in abundance. Wrapped up in our dressing-gowns, we passed a very comfortable night, and in the morning were able to procure the luxury of warm water for washing with. Having discovered that the people of the hotel at Cairo had forgotten to put up some of the articles which we had ordered, and being afraid that our supplies might fail, we had sent Mohammed back for them. He did not rejoin us until eight o'clock the following morning, just as we had begun to grow uneasy about him; it appeared that, although apparently well acquainted with the desert, having crossed it many times, he had missed the track, and lost his way, and after wandering about all night, was glad to meet with a man, whom he engaged as a guide. The poor fellow was much exhausted, but had not omitted to bring us a bottle of fresh milk for our breakfast. We desired him to get some tea for himself, and he soon recovered; his spirits never forsaking him. In consequence of these delays, it was rather late, past nine o'clock, before we set forward. I had provided myself with a pair of crape spectacles and a double veil, but I speedily discarded both; the crape fretted my eye-lashes, and would have produced a greater degree of irritation than the sand. A much better kind are those of wire, which tie round the head with a ribbon, and take in the whole eye. Though the sun was rather warm, its heat was tempered by a fresh cold air, which blew across the desert, though not strongly enough to lift the sand; we, therefore, travelled with much less inconvenience than is sustained upon a turnpike-road in England in dusty weather. I could not endure to mar the prospect by looking at it through a veil, and found my parasol quite sufficient protection against the rays of the sun. The kafila, which we had passed the preceding evening, overtook us soon after we started. It consisted of a long train of camels, and belonged to the native governor of Jiddah, who was proceeding to that place with, his wife and family, a native vessel being in waiting at Suez to take him down the Red Sea. We saw several females wrapped closely from head to foot in long blue garments, mounted upon these camels. The governor's wife travelled in a sort of cage, which I recognised immediately, from the description in Anastatius. This vehicle is formed of two rude kinds of sophas, or what in English country phrase would be called settles, canopied overhead, and with a resting place for the feet. They are sometimes separated, and slung on either side of a camel; at other times joined together, and placed on the top, with a curtain or cloth lining, to protect the inmates from the sun, and secure the privacy so necessary for a Mohammedan lady. The height of the camels with their lading, and this cage on the summit of all, give an extraordinary and almost supernatural appearance to the animal as he plods along, his head nodding, and his whole body moving in a strange ungainly manner. Occasionally we saw a small party of Bedouins, easily distinguished by the fierce countenances glaring from beneath the large rolls of cloth twisted over their turbans, and round their throats, leaving nothing besides flashing eyes, a strongly developed nose, and a bushy beard, to be seen. One or two, superior to the rest, were handsomely dressed, armed to the teeth, and rode camels well-groomed and richly caparisoned; wild-looking warriors, whom it would not have been agreeable to meet were the country in a less tranquil state. To the present ruler of Egypt we certainly owe the security now enjoyed in passing the desert; a party of ladies, having only three servants and a few donkey-drivers, required no other protection, though our beds, dressing-cases, and carpet-bags, to say nothing of the camels laden with trunks and portmanteaus a-head, must have been rather tempting to robbers by profession. The Pasha is the only person who has hitherto been able to oblige the Sheikhs to respect the property of those travellers not strong enough to protect themselves from outrage. It is said that occasionally these Bedouins, when desirous of obtaining water, make no scruple of helping themselves to the supplies at the bungalows; the will, therefore, is not wanting to commit more serious depredations. Consequently, in maintaining a good understanding with Egypt, we must likewise endeavour to render its sovereign strong enough to keep the neighbouring tribes in awe. Having made a slight refection on the road, of hard-boiled eggs, bread, grapes, and apples, we came up at mid-day to a rest-house, where it was determined we should remain for an hour or two, to water the donkeys, and afford them needful repose, while we enjoyed a more substantial luncheon. Our companions were so well satisfied with the management of Mohammed, who conducted the whole line of march, that they sent their Egyptian servant forward to order our dinner at the resting-place for the night. We found, however, that advantage had been taken of Mohammed's absence the preceding evening, and of the hurry of the morning's departure, to send back some of the animals we had engaged and paid for, and to substitute others so weak as to be perfectly useless. We were likewise cheated with regard to the water; we were told that the camel bearing the skins, for which we had paid at Cairo, had been taken by mistake by two gentlemen travelling in advance, and as we could not allow the poor animals to suffer, we of course purchased water for them. This was no doubt an imposition, but one for which, under the circumstances, we had no remedy. Upon reaching the bungalow, we again came up with the kafila that we had seen twice before; the wife of the governor of Jiddah, with her women, vacated the apartment into which we were shown, when we arrived; but her husband sent a message, requesting that we would permit her to occupy another, which was empty. We were but too happy to comply, and should have been glad to have obtained a personal interview; but having no interpreter excepting Mohammed, who would not have been admitted to the conference, we did not like to make the attempt. From the glance which we obtained of the lady, she seemed to be very diminutive; nothing beyond height and size could be distinguishable under the blue envelope she wore, in common with her women: some of the latter occasionally unveiled their faces, which were certainly not very attractive; but others, probably those who were younger and handsomer, kept their features closely shrouded. Again betaking ourselves to our conveyances, we launched forth into the desert, enjoying it as much the second day as we had done the first. I entertained a hope of seeing some of the beautiful gazelles, for which Arabia is famous; but not one appeared. A pair of birds occasionally skimmed over the desert, at a short distance from its surface; but those were the only specimens of wild animals we encountered. The skeletons of camels occurred as frequently as before; many nearly entire, others with their bones scattered abroad, but whether borne by the winds, or by some savage beast, we could not learn. Neither could we discover whether the deaths of these poor animals had been recent or not; for so short a time only is required in Eastern countries for the insects to anatomize any animal that may fall in their way, that even supposing that jackalls and hyaenas should not be attracted to the spot, the ants would make quick work even of so large a creature as a camel. There were hills in the back ground, which might probably shelter vultures, kites, and the family of quadrupeds that feed upon offal, and much did I desire to mount a high trotting camel, and take a scamper amongst these hills--obliged to content myself with jogging soberly on with my party, I was fain to find amusement in the contemplation of a cavalcade, the like of which will probably not be often seen again. Our five vehicles sometimes trotted abreast, affording us an opportunity of conversing with each other; but more frequently they would spread themselves all over the plain, the guides allowing their beasts to take their own way, provided they moved straight forward. Occasionally, a spare donkey, or one carrying the baggage, would stray off in an oblique direction, and then the drivers were compelled to make a wide detour to bring them in again. Once or twice, the ropes slipped, and my chair came to the ground; fortunately, it had not to fall far; or a donkey would stumble and fall, but no serious accident occurred; and though one of the party, being behind, and unable to procure assistance in righting the carriage, was obliged to walk a mile or two, we were all speedily in proper trim again. Towards evening, the easy motion of the chair, and the inclination I felt to close my eyes, after staring about all day, caused me to fall asleep; and again, much sooner than I had expected, I found myself at the place of our destination. Either owing to a want of funds, or to some misunderstanding, the bungalow at this place, which is considered to be nearly midway across the desert, had only been raised a few inches from the ground; there were tents, however, for the accommodation of travellers, which we infinitely preferred. The one we occupied was of sufficient size to admit the whole party--that is, the four ladies, the baby, and its female attendant. There were divans on either side, to spread the beds upon, and the openings at each end made the whole delightfully cool. We found Ali, the servant sent on in the morning, very busy superintending the cookery for dinner, which was performed in the open air. The share of bread and apples given to me upon the road I now bestowed upon my donkeys, not having reflected at the time that the drivers would be glad of it; so the next day, when the usual distributions were made, I gave the grapes, &c. to the donkey-men, who stuffed them into their usual repository, the bosoms of their blue shirts, and seemed very well pleased to get them. The adjoining tent was occupied by two gentlemen, passengers of the _Berenice_; their servant, a European, brought to some of our people the alarming intelligence that the steamers would leave Suez in the course of a few hours, and that our utmost speed would scarcely permit us to arrive in time. Distrusting this information, we sent to inquire into its truth, and learned that no danger of the kind was to be apprehended, as the steamer required repair, the engines being out of order, and the coal having ignited twice on the voyage up the Red Sea. Whatever may be the cause, whether from sheer misconception or an intention to mislead, it is almost impossible to rely upon any intelligence given concerning the sailing of vessels and other events, about which it would appear very possible to obtain authentic information. From the time of our landing at Alexandria, we had been tormented by reports which, if true, rendered it more than probable that we should be too late for the steamer appointed to convey the Government mails to Bombay. Not one of these reports turned out to be correct, and those who acted upon them sustained much discomfort in hurrying across the desert. We were, as usual, rather late the following morning; our dear little play-thing, the baby, bore the journey wonderfully; but it seemed very requisite that she should have good and unbroken sleep at night, and we found so little inconvenience in travelling in the day-time, that we could make no objection to an arrangement which contributed so much to her health and comfort. It was delightful to see this lovely little creature actually appearing to enjoy the scene as much as ourselves; sometimes seated in the lap of her nurse, who travelled in a chair, at others at the bottom of one of our chairs; then in the arms of her male attendant, who rode a donkey, or in those of the donkey-men, trudging on foot; she went to every body, crowing and laughing all the time; and I mention her often, not only for the delight she afforded us, but also to show how very easily infants at her tender age--she was not more than seven months old--could be transported across the desert. After breakfast, and just as we were about to start upon our day's journey, we saw what must certainly be called a strange sight--a wheeled carriage approaching our small encampment. It came along like the wind, and proved to be a phaeton, double-bodied, that is, with a driving-seat in front, with a European charioteer guiding a pair of horses as the wheelers, while the leaders were camels, with an Arab riding postillion. An English and a Parsee gentleman were inside, and the carriage was scarcely in sight, before it had stopped in the midst of us. The party had only been a few hours coming across. We hastily exchanged intelligence; were told that the _Berenice_ had lost all its speed, being reduced, in consequence of alterations made in the dock-yard in Bombay, from twelve knots an hour to eight, and that the engines had never worked well during the voyage up. During this day's journey, we met several parties, passengers of the steamer, coming from Suez. One lady passed us in a donkey-chair, with her daughter riding a donkey by the side; another group, consisting of two ladies and several gentlemen, were all mounted upon camels, and having large umbrellas over their heads, made an exceedingly odd appearance, the peculiar gait of the camel causing them to rise and fall in a very singular manner. At a distance, their round moving summits looked like the umbrageous tops of trees, and we might fancy as they approached, the lower portion being hidden by ridges of sand, that "Birnam Wood was coming to Dunsinane." The monotony usually complained of in desert travelling cannot be very strongly felt between Cairo and Suez, for though there is little else but sand to be seen, yet it is so much broken and undulated, that there is always some diversity of objects. The sand-hills now gave place to rock, and it appeared as if many ranges of hills stretched out both to the right and left of the plains we traversed; their crags and peaks, piled one upon the other, and showing various colours, rich browns and purples, as they stood in shade or sunshine. Greenish tints assured us that vegetation was not quite so seamy upon these hills as in the desert they skirted, which only showed at intervals a few coarse plants, scarcely deserving the name. It has been said, that there is only one tree between Cairo and Suez; but we certainly saw several, though none of any size; that which is called, _par excellence_, "the tree," affording a very poor idea of timber. We made a short rest, in the middle of the day, at a travellers' bungalow; and just as we were leaving it, one of Mr. Hill's caravans arrived--a tilted cart upon springs, and drawn by a pair of horses; it contained a family, passengers by the _Berenice,_ consisting of a gentleman and his wife, two children and a servant. We conversed with them for a few minutes, and learned that they had not found the road very rough, and that where it was heavy they added a camel as a leader. At this place we found some difficulty in purchasing, water for the donkeys; competition in the desert is not, as in other places, beneficial to the traveller. By some understanding with the Steam Committee, Mr. Hill has put his people into the bungalows; and they, it appears, have orders not to sell water to persons who travel under Mr. Waghorn's agency. If the original purpose of these houses was to afford general accommodation, the shelter which cannot be refused is rendered nugatory by withholding the supplies necessary for the subsistence of men and cattle. We procured water at last; but every thing attainable at these places is dear and bad. We arrived, at rather an early hour, at our halting place for the night; and as we considered it to be desirable to get into Suez as speedily as possible, we agreed to start by three o'clock on the following morning. Just as we had finished our evening meal, three gentlemen of our acquaintance, who had scrambled across the desert from the Pyramids, came up, weary and wayworn, and as hungry as possible. We put the best that we had before them, and then retired to the opposite apartment. But in this place I found it impossible to stay; there was no free circulation of air throughout the room, and it had all the benefit of the smell from the stable and other abominations. Leaving, therefore, my companions asleep, and wrapping myself up in my shawl, I stole out into the passage, where there were several Arabs lying about, and not without difficulty contrived to step between them, and to unfasten the door which opened upon the desert. There was no moon, but the stars gave sufficient light to render the scene distinctly visible. A lamp gleamed from the window of the apartment which I had quitted, and the camels, donkeys, and people belonging to the united parties, formed themselves into very picturesque groups upon the sand, constituting altogether a picture which could not fail to excite many agreeable sensations. The whitened bones of animals perishing from fatigue and thirst, while attempting to cross the arid expanse, associated in our minds with privation, toil, and danger, told too truly that these notions were not purely ideal; but here was a scene of rest and repose which the desert had never before presented; and mean and inconvenient as the building I contemplated might be, its very existence in such a place seemed almost a marvel, and the imagination, kindling at the sight, could scarcely set bounds to its expectations for the future. In the present frame of my mind, however, I was rather disturbed by the indications of change already commenced, and still to increase. I had long desired to spend a night alone upon the desert, and without wandering to a dangerous distance, I placed a ridge of sand between my solitary station and the objects which brought the busy world to view, and indulged in thoughts of scenes and circumstances which happened long ago. According to the best authorities, we were in the track of the Israelites, and in meditations suggested by this interesting portion of Bible history, the time passed so rapidly, that I was surprised when I found the people astir and preparing for our departure. My garments were rather damp with the night-dews, for, having left some of my friends sleeping upon my fur cloak, I had gone out more lightly attired than perhaps was prudent. I was not, therefore, sorry to find myself warmly wrapped up, and in my chair, in which I should have slept very comfortably, had Hot the man who guided the donkeys taken it into his head to quarrel with one of his comrades, and to bawl out his grievances close to my ear. My wakefulness was, however, amply repaid by the most glorious sunrise I ever witnessed. The sky had been for some time obscured by clouds, which had gathered themselves in a bank upon the Eastern horizon. The sun's rays started up at once, like an imperial crown, above this bank, and as they darted their glittering spears, for such they seemed, along the heavens, the clouds, dispersing, formed into a mighty arch, their edges becoming golden; while below all was one flush of crimson light. Neither at sea nor on land had I ever witnessed any thing so magnificent as this, and those who desire to see the god of day rise in the fulness of his majesty must make a pilgrimage to the desert. We made no stay at the rest-house, which we reached about nine o'clock in the morning; and here, for the last time, we saw the governor of Jiddah and his party, winding along at some distance, and giving life and character to the desert. The fantastic appearance of the hills increased as we advanced; the slightest stretch of fancy was alone necessary to transform many into fortresses and towers, and at length a bright glitter at a distance revealed the Red Sea. The sun gleaming upon its waters shewed them like a mirror, and soon afterwards the appearance of some low buildings indicated the town of Suez. I happened to be in advance of the party, under the conduct of one of the gentlemen who had joined us on the preceding evening; I therefore directed Mohammed to go forward, to announce our approach; and either the sight of the Red Sea, or their eagerness to reach a well-known spring of water, induced my donkeys to gallop along the road with me; a fortunate circumstance, as the day was beginning to be very sultry, and I felt that I should enjoy the shelter and repose of a habitation. As we went along, indications of the new power, which had already effected the easy transit of the desert, were visible in small patches of coal, scattered upon the sand; presently we saw a dark nondescript object, that did not look at all like the abode of men, civilized or uncivilized; and yet, from the group hovering about an aperture, seemed to be tenanted by human beings. This proved to be an old boiler, formerly belonging to a steam-vessel, and appearing, indeed, as if some black and shapeless hulk had been cast on shore. The well, which had attracted my donkeys, was very picturesque; the water flowed into a large stone trough, or rather basin, beneath the walls of a castellated edifice, pierced with many small windows, and apparently in a very dilapidated state. Those melancholy _memento moris,_ which had tracked our whole progress through the desert, were to be seen in the immediate vicinity of this well. The skeletons of five or six camels lay in a group within a few yards of the haven which they had doubtless toiled anxiously, though so vainly, to reach. I never could look upon the bones of these poor animals without a painful feeling, and in the hope that European skill and science may yet bring forward those hidden waters which would disarm the desert of its terrors. It is said that the experiment of boring has been tried, and failed, between Suez and Cairo, but that it succeeded in the great desert; some other method, perhaps, may be found, if the project of bringing water from the hills, by means of aqueducts, should be too expensive. We heard this plan talked of at the bungalow, but I fear that, in the present state of Egypt, it is very chimerical. This was now our fourth day upon the desert, and we had not sustained the smallest inconvenience; the heat, even at noon, being very bearable, and the sand not in the least degree troublesome. Doubtless, at a less favourable period of the year, both would prove difficult to bear. The wind, we were told, frequently raised the sand in clouds; and though the danger of being buried beneath the tombs thus made, we had reason to believe, was greatly exaggerated, yet the plague of sand is certainly an evil to be dreaded, and travellers will do well to avoid the season in which it prevails. The speed of my donkeys increasing, rather than diminishing, after we left the well, for they seemed to know that Suez would terminate their journey, I crossed the intervening three miles very quickly, and was soon at the walls of the town. Distance lends no enchantment to the view of Suez. It is difficult to fancy that the few miserable buildings, appearing upon the margin of the sea, actually constitute a town; and the heart sinks at the approach to a place so barren and desolate. My donkeys carried me through a gap in the wall, which answered all the purposes of a gateway, and we passed along broken ground and among wretched habitations, more fit for the abode of savage beasts than men. Even the superior description of houses bore so forlorn and dilapidated an appearance, that I actually trembled as I approached them, fearing that my guide would stop, and tell me that, my journey was at an end. Before I had time to make any observations upon the place to which I was conducted, I found myself at the foot of a flight of steps, and reaching a landing place, saw another above, and Mohammed descending to meet me. I followed him to the top, and crossing a large apartment, which served as dining and drawing room, entered a passage which led to a light and certainly airy bed-chamber; for half the front wall, and a portion of one of the sides, were entirely formed of wooden trellice, which admitted, with the utmost freedom, all the winds of heaven, the sun, and also the dust. There was a mat upon the floor, and the apartment was whitewashed to the rafters, which were in good condition; and upon Mohammed's declaration that it was free from rats, I felt an assurance of a share of comfort which I had dared not expect before. There were two neat beds, with musquito-curtains, two tables, and washing apparatus, but no looking-glass; an omission which I could supply, though we had dispensed with such a piece of luxury altogether in the desert. Well supplied with hot and cold water, I had enjoyed the refreshment of plenteous ablutions, and nearly completed my toilet, before the arrival of the friends I had so completely distanced. I made an attempt to sit down to my desk, but was unable to write a line, and throwing myself on my bed full dressed, I fell asleep in a moment, and enjoyed the deepest repose for an hour, or perhaps longer. I was awakened by my friend, Miss E., who informed me that the purser of the _Berenice_ was in the drawing-room, and that I must go to him and pay my passage-money. I was not, however, provided with the means of doing this in ready cash, and as the rate of exchange for the thirty pounds in sovereigns which I possessed could not be decided here, at the suggestion of one of my fellow-passengers, I drew a bill upon a banker in Bombay for the amount, eighty pounds, the sum demanded for half a cabin, which, fortunately, I could divide with the friend who had accompanied me from England. This transaction so completely roused me, that I found myself equal to the continuation of the journal which I had commenced at Cairo. I despatched also the letter with which I had been kindly furnished to the British Consul, and was immediately favoured by a visit from him. As we expressed some anxiety about our accommodation on board the steamer, he politely offered to take us to the vessel in his own boat; but to this arrangement the purser objected, stating that the ship was in confusion, and that one of the best cabins had been reserved for us. With this assurance we were accordingly content. We arrived at Suez on Wednesday, the 9th of October, and were told to hold ourselves in readiness to embark on Friday at noon. We were not sorry for this respite, especially as we found our hotel, which was kept by a person in the employment of Mr. Waghorn, more comfortable than could have been hoped for from its exterior. The greatest annoyance we sustained was from the dust, which was brought in by a very strong wind through the lattices. I endeavoured to remedy this evil, in some degree, by directing the servants of the house to nail a sheet across the upper portion of the perforated wood-work. The windows of our chamber commanded as good a view of Suez as the place afforded; one at the side overlooked an irregular open space, which stretched between the house and the sea. At some distance opposite, there were one or two mansions of much better appearance than the rest, and having an air of comfort imparted to them by outside shutters, of new and neat construction. These we understood to be the abodes of officers in the Pasha's service. Mehemet Ali is said to be extremely unwilling to allow English people to build houses for themselves at Suez; while he freely grants permission to their residence at Alexandria and Cairo, he seems averse to their settling upon the shores of the Red Sea. Mr. Waghorn and Mr. Hill are, therefore, compelled to be content to fit up the only residences at their disposal in the best manner that circumstances will admit. I had no opportunity of forming any opinion respecting Mr. Hill's establishment, but am able to speak very well of the accommodation afforded by the hotel at which we sojourned. Judging from the exterior, for the desert itself does not appear to be less productive than Suez, there must have been some difficulty in getting supplies, notwithstanding we found no want of good things at our breakfast and dinner-table, plenty of eggs and milk, fowl and fish being supplied; every article doing credit to the skill of the cook. Nor was the cleanliness that prevailed, in despite of all the obstacles opposed to it, less worthy of praise: the servants were civil and attentive, and the prices charged extremely moderate. All the guests of the hotel of course formed one family, assembling daily at meals, after the continental fashion. The dining-room was spacious, and divided into two portions; the one ascended by a step was surrounded by divans, after the Egyptian fashion, and here were books to be found containing useful and entertaining knowledge. A few stray numbers of the _Asiatic Journal_, half a dozen volumes of standard novels, files of the _Bombay Times_, and works illustrative of ancient and modern Egypt, served to beguile the time of those who had nothing else to do. Meanwhile, travellers came dropping in, and the caravanserai was soon crowded. CHAPTER VII. * * * * * SUEZ TO ADEN. * * * * * Travellers assembling at Suez--Remarks on the Pasha's Government--Embarkation on the Steamer--Miserable accommodation in the _Berenice_, and awkwardness of the attendants--Government Ships not adapted to carry Passengers--Cause of the miserable state of the Red Sea Steamers--Shores of the Red Sea--Arrival at Mocha--Its appearance from the Sea--Arrival at Aden--Its wild and rocky appearance on landing--Cape Aden--The Town--Singular appearance of the Houses--The Garrison expecting an attack by the Arabs--Discontent of the Servants of Europeans at Aden--Complaints by Anglo-Indians against Servants--Causes--Little to interest Europeans in Aden. Amongst the travellers who came dropping in at the hotel, was the Portuguese governor of Goa and his suite, consisting of four gentlemen, the private and public secretaries, an aide-de-camp, and the fourth holding some other appointment. They came by the French steamer, which had left Marseilles on the day of our departure. The governor, a fine old soldier, and a perfect gentleman, proved a great acquisition to our party; and knowing the state of Goa, and the disappointment he would in all probability sustain upon arriving at the seat of his government in the present low condition to which it is reduced, we could not help feeling much interested in his welfare. This gentleman, who inherited the title of baron, and was moreover an old general officer, had mixed in the very best society, and was evidently well acquainted with courts and camps; he spoke several languages, and in the course of his travels had visited England. His retinue were quiet gentlemanly men, and the young aide-de-camp, in particular, made himself very agreeable. There were two other travellers of some note at Suez, who had put up at Hill's Hotel; one, an American gentleman, who had come across the desert for the purpose of looking at the Red Sea. I saw him mounted upon a donkey, and gazing as he stood upon the shore at the bright but narrow channel, so interesting to all who have read the history of the Israelites, with reverential feelings. I felt a strong inclination to accost him; but refrained, being unwilling to disturb his reveries with what he might have thought an impertinent interruption. It was evidently a last look, for he was veiled for the journey, and at length, tearing himself away, he turned his donkey's head, and struck into the desert. The other traveller was a young Scotsman, who proposed to go as far as Aden in the _Berenice_, on his way to Abyssinia, trusting that a residence of some months in Egypt would enable him to pass for a Turk. He had no very precise object in view, but intended to make an attempt to explore the sources of the Nile. There was nothing in Suez that could make a longer stay desirable, and we quitted it without regret. My journey through Egypt had been much too rapid for me to presume to give any decided opinion concerning the strongly agitated question respecting the merits of the Pasha's government. It is very evident that he has not learned the most instructive lesson of political economy, nor has yet understood that the way to render himself powerful is to make his subjects rich; nevertheless, though his exactions and monopolies may be felt at present as very serious evils, yet, in establishing manufactories, and in embodying a national force, there can be no doubt that he has sown the seeds of much that is good; and should his government, after his death, fall into the hands of people equally free from religious prejudices, we may reasonably hope that they will entertain more enlarged and liberal views, and thus render measures, now difficult to bear, of incalculable advantage to the future prosperity of the country. The British Consul politely offered to conduct myself and my female friends on board the steamer; he accordingly called for us, and I bade, as I hoped, a last adieu to Suez, it being my wish and intention to return home by way of Cosseir. Previous to our embarkation, a series of regulations had been placed in our hands for the engagement of passages in the Honourable Company's armed steamers, with instructions to passengers, &c. Upon repairing to our cabin, Miss E. and myself were surprised and disappointed at the miserable accommodation it afforded. The three cabins allotted to the use of the ladies had been appropriated, in two instances, to married couples, and we were obliged to put up with one of smaller size, which had the additional inconvenience of opening into the public saloon. There were no Venetian blinds to the door, consequently, the only means of obtaining a free circulation of air was to have it open. A locker with a hinged shelf, which opened like a shutter, and thus afforded space for one mattress to be placed upon it, ran along one side of the cabin, under the port-hole, but the floor was the only visible means of accommodation for the second person crammed by Government regulation into this den. There was not a place in which a wash-hand basin could be put, so awkwardly were the doors arranged, to one of which there was no fastening whatsoever. Altogether, the case seemed hopeless, and as cock-roaches were walking about the vessel by dozens, the prospect of sleeping on the ground was anything but agreeable, especially with the feeling that we were paying at the rate of four pounds a day for our accommodation. We were, however, compelled to postpone our arrangements, by a summons to dinner; and in the evening, when repairing again to the cabin, I found my mattress placed upon two portmanteaus and a box. Of course, no attention was paid to the inequalities of the surface, and I endeavoured, by folding my fur cloak and a thick dressing-gown under my sheet, to render this miserable apology for a bed tenable. Hitherto, our berth-places in the Government-steamers had been very comfortable; though small, they answered the purpose of sleeping and of washing, while the larger cabin into which they opened, and which was set apart for the ladies, enabled us all to complete our toilets without inconvenience. A sail had been hung before the door by way of curtain, but the heat was still difficult to bear, and we found that we had adventured upon the Red Sea at least a month too soon. The next morning, the captain, hearing that I had, as might have been expected, passed a wretched night, kindly sent his cot for my future accommodation; after the second night, however, the servants thinking it too much trouble to attend to it properly, the ropes gave way, and it came down. The cabin being much too small to allow it to remain hanging all day, I at first trusted to the servants to put it up at night; but, after this accident, and finding them to be incorrigibly stupid, lazy, and disobliging, I contented myself with placing the cot upon two portmanteaus, and thus forming a bed-place. Subsequently, one of the passengers having kindly adjusted the ropes, Miss E. and myself contrived to sling it; a fatiguing operation, which added much to the discomforts of the voyage. The idea of going upon the quarter-deck, or writing a letter, which might perhaps be handed up to Government, to make a formal complaint to the captain, was not to be thought of, and seeing the impossibility of getting any thing properly done by the tribe of uncouth barbarians dignified by the name of servants, the only plan was to render myself quite independent of them, and much did we miss the activity, good humour, and readiness to oblige manifested by our Egyptian attendant, Mohammed. Where a wish to please is evinced, though wholly unattended by efficiency in the duties undertaken by a servant, I can very easily excuse awkwardness, forgetfulness, or any other fault; but the wretched half-castes, who take service on board the Government steamers, have not even common civility to recommend them; there was not a passenger in the vessel who did not complain of the insults to which all were more or less subjected. Where the blame lay, it is difficult to state exactly; no one could be more kind and obliging than the captain, and it was this disposition upon his part which rendered us all unwilling to worry him with complaints. The charge of a steamer in the Red Sea seems quite enough to occupy the commandant's time and attention, without having the comforts of seven or eight-and-twenty passengers to look after; but these duties might have been performed by a clever and active steward. Whether there was a personage on board of that designation, I never could learn; I asked several times to speak with him, but he never in a single instance attended the summons. We had no reason to complain of want of liberality on the part of the captain, for the table was plentifully supplied, though the cooks, being unfortunately most worthy of the patronage of that potentate who is said to send them to our kitchens, generally contrived to render the greater portion uneatable. The advantage of rising from table with an appetite is one which I have usually tried on board ship, having only in few instances, during my numerous voyages, been fortunate enough to find food upon which I dared to venture. The more I have seen of government ships, the more certain I feel that they are not adapted to carry passengers. The authorities appear to think that people ought to be too thankful to pay an enormous price for the worst species of accommodation. The commandants have not been accustomed to attend to the minutiae which can alone secure the comfort of those who sail with them, while the officers, generally speaking, endeavour to show their contempt of the service in which they are sent, against their inclination, by neglect and even rudeness towards the passengers. While on board the _Berenice_, the following paragraph in a Bombay newspaper struck my eye, and as it is a corroboration of the statements which I deem it to be a duty to make, I insert it in this place. "The voyager (from Agra) must not think his troubles at an end on reaching Bombay, or that the steam-packets are equal to the passenger Indiaman in accommodation. In fact, I cannot conceive how a lady manages; we have, however, five. There are only seven very small cabins, into each of which two people are crammed; no room to swing cats. Eight other deluded individuals, of whom I am one, are given to understand that a cabin-passage is included in permission to sleep on the benches and table of the cuddy. For this you pay Rs. 200 extra. The vessel is dirty beyond measure, from the soot, and with the difficulty of copious ablution and private accommodation, is almost worse, to a lover of Indian habits, than the journey to Bombay from Agra upon camels. No civility is to be got from the officers. If they are not directly uncivil, the passengers are luckier than we have been. They declare themselves disgusted with passenger ships, but do not take the proper way of showing their superiority to the duty." The only officer of the _Berenice_ who dined at the captain's table was the surgeon of the vessel, and in justice to him it must be said, that he left no means untried to promote the comfort of the passengers. It is likewise necessary to state, that we were never put upon an allowance of water, although, in consequence of late alterations made in the dockyard, the vessel had been reduced to about half the quantity she had been accustomed to carry in iron tanks constructed for the purpose. Notwithstanding this reduction, we could always procure a sufficiency, either of hot or cold water, for ablutions, rendered doubly necessary in consequence of the atmosphere of coal-dust which we breathed. Not that it was possible to continue clean for a single hour; nevertheless, there was some comfort in making the attempt. There were eight cabins in the _Berenice_, besides the three appropriated to ladies; these were ranged four on either side of the saloon, reaching up two-thirds of the length. The apartment, therefore, took the form of a T, and the upper end or cross was furnished with horse-hair sofas; upon these, and upon the table, those passengers slept who were not provided with cabins. Many preferred the deck, but being washed out of it by the necessary cleaning process, which took place at day-break, were obliged to make their toilettes in the saloon. This also formed the dressing-place for dinner, and the basins of dirty water, hair-brushes, &c. were scarcely removed from the side-tables before the party were summoned to their repast. The preparations for this meal were a work of time, always beginning at half-past one; an hour was employed in placing the dishes upon the table, in order that every thing might have time to cool. The reason assigned for not putting Venetian blinds to the cabin-doors was this: it would injure the appearance of the cabin--an appearance certainly not much improved by the dirty sail which hung against our portal. The saloon itself, without this addition, was dingy enough, being panelled with dark oak, relieved by a narrow gilt cornice, and the royal arms carved and gilded over an arm-chair at the rudder-case, the ornaments of a clock which never kept time. All the servants, who could not find accommodation elsewhere, slept under the table; thus adding to the abominations of this frightful place. And yet we were congratulated upon our good fortune, in being accommodated in the _Berenice_, being told that the _Zenobia_, which passed us on our way, had been employed in carrying pigs between Waterford and Bristol, and that the _Hugh Lindsay_ was in even worse condition; the _Berenice_ being, in short, the crack ship. Every day added to the heat and the dirt, and in the evening, when going upon deck to inhale the odours of the hen-coops, the smell was insufferable. When to this annoyance coal-dust, half an inch deep, is added, my preference of my own cabin will not be a subject of surprise. With what degree of truth, I cannot pretend to say, all the disagreeable circumstances sustained on board the _Berenice_ were attributed to the alterations made in the docks. Previously to these changes, we were told, the furnaces were supplied with coal by a method which obviated the necessity of having it upon deck, whence the dust was now carried all over the ship upon the feet of the persons who were continually passing to and fro. Occasionally, we suffered some inconvenience from the motion of the vessel, but, generally speaking, nothing more disagreeable occurred than the tremulous action of the engines, an action which completely incapacitated me from any employment except that of reading. The only seats or tables we could command in our cabin consisted of our boxes, so that being turned out of the saloon at half-past one, by the servants who laid the cloth for dinner, it was not very easy to make an attempt at writing, or even needle-work. Doubtless the passengers from Bombay could contrive to have more comforts about them. It was impossible, however, that those who had already made a long overland journey should be provided with the means of furnishing their cabins, and this consideration should weigh with the Government when taking money for the accommodation of passengers. Cabins ought certainly to be supplied with bed-places and a washing-table, and not to be left perfectly dismantled by those occupants who arrive at Suez, and who, having previously fitted them up, have a right to all they contain. The miserable state of the Red Sea steamers, of course, often furnished a theme for conversation, and we were repeatedly told that their condition was entirely owing to the jealousy of the people of Calcutta, who could not endure the idea of the importance to which Bombay was rising, in consequence of its speedy communication with England. Without knowing exactly where the fault may lie, it must be said that there is great room for improvement. In all probability, the increased number of persons who will proceed to India by way of the Red Sea, now that the passage is open, will compel the merchants, or other speculators, to provide better vessels for the trip. At present, the price demanded is enormously disproportioned to the accommodation given, while the chance of falling in with a disagreeable person in the commandant should be always taken into consideration by those who meditate the overland journey. The consolation, in so fine a vessel as the _Berenice_, consists in the degree of certainty with which the duration of the voyage may be calculated, eighteen or twenty days being the usual period employed. In smaller steamers, and those of a less favourable construction, accidents and delays are very frequent; sometimes the coal is burning half the voyage, and thus rendered nearly useless to the remaining portion, the vessel depending entirely upon the sails. During the hot weather and the monsoons, the navigation of the Red Sea is attended with much inconvenience, from the sultriness of the atmosphere and the high winds; it is only, therefore, at one season of the year that travellers can, with any hope of comfort, avail themselves of the route; it must, consequently, be questionable whether the influx of voyagers will be sufficiently great to cover the expense of the vessels required. A large steamer is now building at Bombay, for the purpose of conveying the mails, and another is expected out from England with the same object. The shores of the Red Sea are bold and rocky, exhibiting ranges of picturesque hills, sometimes seceding from, at others approaching, the beach. A few days brought us to Mocha. The captain had kindly promised to take me on shore with him; but, unfortunately, the heat and the fatigue which I had sustained had occasioned a slight attack of fever, and as we did not arrive before the town until nearly twelve o'clock, I was afraid to encounter the rays of the sun during the day. We could obtain a good view of the city from the vessel; it appeared to be large and well built, that is, comparatively speaking; but its unsheltered walls, absolutely baked in the sun, and the arid waste on which it stood, gave to it a wild and desolate appearance. We were told that already, since the British occupation of Aden, the trade of Mocha had fallen off. It seldom happens that a steamer passes down the Red Sea without bringing emigrants from Mocha, anxious to establish themselves in the new settlement; and if Aden were made a free port, there can be little doubt that it would monopolize the whole commerce of the neighbourhood. The persons desirous to colonize the place say, very justly, that they cannot afford to pay duties, having to quit their own houses at a loss, and to construct others, Aden being at present destitute of accommodation for strangers. If, however, encouragement should be given them, they will flock thither in great numbers; and, under proper management, there is every reason to hope that Aden will recover all its former importance and wealth, and become one of the most useful dependencies of the British crown. We were to take in coals and water at Aden, and arriving there in the afternoon of Saturday, the 19th of October, every body determined to go on shore, if possible, on the ensuing morning. By the kindness of some friends, we had palanquins in waiting at day-break, which were to convey us a distance of five miles to the place now occupied as cantonments. Our road conducted us for a mile or two along the sea-shore, with high crags piled on one side, a rugged path, and rocks rising out of the water to a considerable distance. We then ascended a height, which led to an aperture in the hills, called the Pass. Here we found a gate and a guard of sepoys. The scenery was wild, and though nearly destitute of vegetation--a few coarse plants occurring here and there scarcely deserving the name--very beautiful. It would, perhaps, be too much to designate the bare and lofty cliffs, which piled themselves upwards in confused masses, with the name of mountains; they nevertheless conveyed ideas of sublimity which I had not associated with other landscapes of a similar nature. The Pass, narrow and enclosed on either side by winding rocks, brought us at length down a rather steep declivity to a sort of basin, surrounded upon three sides with lofty hills, and on the fourth by the sea. Cape Aden forms a high and rocky promontory, the most elevated portion being 1,776 feet above the level of the sea. This lofty headland, when viewed at a distance, appears like an island, in consequence of its being connected with the interior by low ground, which, in the vicinity of Khora Muckse, is quite a swamp. Its summits assume the aspect of turretted peaks, having ruined forts and watch-towers on the highest elevations. The hills are naked and barren, and the valley little better; the whole, however, presenting a grand, picturesque, and imposing appearance. The town of Aden lies on the east side of the Cape, in the amphitheatre before mentioned. A sketch of its history will be given, gathered upon the spot, in a subsequent paper, the place being sufficiently interesting to demand a lengthened notice; meanwhile a passing remark is called for on its present appearance. At first sight of Aden, it is difficult to suppose it to be the residence of human beings, and more especially of European families. The town, if such it may be called, consists of a few scattered houses of stone, apparently loosely put together, with pigeon-holes for windows, and roofs which, being flat, and apparently surrounded by a low parapet, afford no idea of their being habitable. It is difficult to find a comparison for these dwellings, which appeared to be composed of nothing more than four walls, and yet, to judge from the apertures, contained two or more stories. The greater number were enclosed in a sort of yard or compound, the fences being formed of long yellow reeds; the less substantial dwellings were entirely made of these reeds, so that they looked like immense crates or cages for domestic fowls. My palanquin at length stopped at a flight of steps hewn out of the rock; and I found myself at the entrance of a habitation, half-bungalow, half-tent; and certainly, as the permanent abode of civilized beings, the strangest residence I had ever seen. The uprights and frame-work were made of reeds and bamboos, lined with thin mats, which had at one time been double; but the harbour thus afforded for rats being found inconvenient, the outer casing had been removed. Two good-sized apartments, with verandahs all round, and dressing and bathing-rooms attached, were formed in this way; they were well carpeted and well furnished, but destitute both of glass windows and wooden doors; what are called in India _jaumps_, and chicks of split bamboo, being the substitutes. Government not yet having fixed upon the site for the station intended to be established at Aden, none of the European inhabitants have begun to build their houses, which, it is said, are to be very solidly constructed of stone; at present, they are scattered, in Gipsy fashion, upon the rocks overlooking the sea, and at the time of the year in which I visited them they enjoyed a delightfully cool breeze. What they would be in the hot weather, it is difficult to say. The supplies, for the most part, come from a considerable distance, but appear to be abundant; and when at length a good understanding shall have taken place between the British Government and the neighbouring sheikhs, the markets will be furnished with every thing that the countries in the vicinity produce. The garrison were prepared, at the period of our arrival, for the outbreak which has since occurred. It is melancholy to contemplate the sacrifice of life which will in all probability take place before the Arabs will be reconciled to the loss of a territory which has for a long time been of no use to them, but which, under its present masters, bids fair to introduce mines of wealth into an impoverished country. The Pasha of Egypt had long cast a covetous eye upon Aden, and its occupation by the British took place at the precise period requisite to check the ambitious designs of a man thirsting for conquest, and to allay the fears of the Imaum of Muscat, who, naturally enough, dreaded encroachments upon his territory. Aden had hitherto agreed very well with its European residents. The sepoys, servants, and camp-followers, however, had suffered much both from mental and bodily ailments. They were deprived of their usual sources of amusement, and of their accustomed food, and languished under that home-sickness, which the natives of India feel in a very acute degree. The greater number of servants were discontented, and anxious to return to their native country. This natural desire upon their part was highly resented by their masters, who, instead of taking the most obvious means of remedying the evil, and employing the natives of the place, who appeared to be tractable and teachable enough, abused and threatened to beat the unfortunate people, convicted of what self-love styles "ingratitude." In a very clever work, I have seen the whole sum of the miseries of human life comprised in one word, "servants;" and until we can procure human beings with all the perfections of our fallen nature, and none of our faults, to minister to our wants and wishes, the complaint, so sickening and so general, and frequently so unjust, will be reiterated. Anglo-Indians, however, seem to be more tormented by these domestic plagues than any other set of people. The instant a stranger lands upon Asiatic ground, we hear of nothing else. It is considered to be polite conversation in the drawing-room, aid delicate-looking women will listen with the greatest complacence to the most brutal threats uttered by their male associates against the wretched people whom hard fate has placed about their persons. By some mischance, these very individuals are equally ill-served at home, the greater number who return to England being either rendered miserable there, or driven back to India in consequence of the impossibility of managing their servants. As far as my own experience goes, with the exception of the people in the _Berenice_, who were not in the slightest degree under the control of the passengers, or, it may be said, attached to them in any way, I have always found it easy, both at home and abroad, to obtain good servants, at least quite as good as people, conscious of the infirmities of humanity in their own persons, have a right to expect. My simple rule has been, never to keep a person who did not suit me, and to treat those who did with kindness and indulgence. The system has always answered, and I am probably on that account the less inclined to sympathize with persons who are eternally complaining. There may be some excuse at Aden for the conversation turning upon domestic matters of this kind, and perhaps I do the station injustice in supposing that they form a common topic. With the exception of those persons who take pleasure in the anticipation of the improvement of the surrounding tribes, there is very little to interest European residents in this arid spot. Should, however, the hopes which many enlightened individuals entertain be realized, or the prospect of their fulfilment continue unclouded, those who now endure a dreary exile in a barren country, and surrounded by a hostile people, will or ought to derive much consolation from the thought, that their employment upon a disagreeable duty may prove of the utmost benefit to thousands of their fellow-creatures. It is pleasant to look forward to the civilization of Abyssinia, and other more remote places, by means of commercial intercourse with Aden. CHAPTER VIII. * * * * * ADEN. * * * * * Commanding situation of Aden--Its importance in former times--But few remains of its grandeur--Its facilities as a retreat for the piratical hordes of the Desert--The loss of its trade followed by reduction of the population--Speculations as to the probability of ultimately resisting the Arabs--Exaggerated notions entertained by the Shiekhs of the wealth of the British--Aden a free Port would be the Queen of the adjacent Seas--Its advantages over Mocha--The Inhabitants of Aden--The Jews--The Banians--The Soomalees--The Arabs--Hopes of the prosperity of Aden--Goods in request there--Exports--Re-embarkation on the Steamer--Want of attention--Makallah--Description of the place--Its products--The Gazelle--Traveller in Abyssinia--Adventurous English Travellers--Attractions of the Arab life--Arrival at Bombay. Wretched and miserable as the appearance of Aden must be deemed at the present moment, its commanding situation rendered it of great importance in former times. During the reign of Constantine, it was an opulent city, forming one of the great emporia for the commerce of the East. The sole remains of the grandeur it once boasted consists of about ninety dilapidated stone houses, the greater number of dwellings which seem to shelter its scanty population being nothing more than huts rudely constructed of reeds. These wretched tenements, huddled together without the slightest attempt at regularity, occupy the crater of an extinct volcano. Unrelieved by trees, and assimilating in colour with the arid soil and barren hills rising around, they scarcely convey an idea of the purpose for which they are designed. A stranger, entering Aden, finds it difficult to believe that he is in the midst of an inhabited place, the houses appearing to be fewer in number, and more insignificant, than a closer inspection proves them to be. No splendid fragment, imposing in its ruin, records the glory and opulence of the populous city, as it existed in the days of Solyman the Magnificent, the era from whence it dates its decline. The possession of Aden was eagerly contended for by the two great powers, the Turks and the Portuguese, struggling for mastery in the East, and when they were no longer able to maintain their rivalry, it reverted into the hands of its ancient masters, the Arabs. The security afforded by its natural defences, aided by the fortifications, the work of former times, rendered it a suitable retreat for the piratical hordes of the desert. The lawless sons of Ishmael could, from this stronghold, rush out upon the adjacent waters, and make themselves masters of the wealth of those adventurers who dared to encounter the dangers of the Red Sea. With the loss of every thing approaching to good government, Aden lost its trade. The system of monopoly, which enriches the sovereign at the expense of the subject, speedily ends in ruin. The superior classes of the inhabitants were either driven away, in consequence of the tyranny which they endured, or, reduced to a state of destitution, perished miserably upon the soil, until at length the traces of former magnificence became few and faint, the once flourishing city falling into one wide waste of desolation. The remains of a splendid aqueduct, which was at the first survey mistaken for a Roman road; a solitary watch-tower, and a series of broken walls, alone attest the ancient glories of the place. Previous to the occupation of the British, the population of Aden scarcely exceeded six hundred souls; it is now, independently of the garrison, more nearly approaching to a thousand, and of these the principal number are Jews, who, together with about fifty Banians, have contrived to amass a little of what, by comparison, may be called wealth. The trade of Aden, for a long time before we obtained our present possession, was very trifling, the imports consisting of a few English cotton cloths, together with lead, iron, and tin, which were brought by Buglas on their way to Mocha; rice, dates, and small numbers of cattle, likewise, coming from neighbouring places; while the exports were limited to a little coffee, millet, and a few drugs. At the period of my visit to Aden, the garrison were in almost momentary expectation of an attack from the Arabs, who had gathered to the amount of five thousand in the neighbourhood, and kept the new occupants continually upon the alert. Of course, in such a state of affairs, great differences of opinion existed respecting the ultimate fate of this interesting place. Many acute persons consider the project of colonizing a barren spot, surrounded by hostile tribes, by a handful of soldiers from India, chimerical, especially in the teeth of predictions which have for so long a period been fulfilled to the letter. It is stated that the Imaum of Muscat asked, in astonishment, whether we were mad enough to contemplate the subjugation of the Arabs, the sons of his father Ishmael; since we could not be so ignorant of our own Scriptures as not to know that their hands were to be eternally against every man, and every man's hand against theirs. But, although the Arabs should continue hostile, while we are masters of the sea, and can strengthen Aden so completely upon the land-side, as to render it, what many people believe it can be made, a second Gibraltar, we have a wide field for commercial speculation in the opposite coast of Africa. Aden is, at present, a very expensive possession, and the long period which has elapsed since our occupation, without preparations having been commenced for a permanent residence, has occasioned an apprehension that it may be ultimately abandoned. Many persons are, however, sanguine in the hope that, as soon as scientific men have decided upon the best site for a cantonment, buildings will be erected for the reception of the garrison. These, it is confidently expected, will be upon a grand scale, and of solid construction. The greater portion of the materials must be brought from distant places, and already some of the European inhabitants are conveying from Bombay those portable houses which are commonly set up during the cold season on the Esplanade, and which will afford a great improvement upon the dwellings of bamboos, reeds, and mats, which at present form the abodes of the officers of this establishment. It has been satisfactorily ascertained, that the clearing out and repairing the old tanks and wells will be sufficient to secure an ample supply of water for a very extensive population, the report of those gentlemen employed in analyzing its quality being highly favourable. A little allowance must, of course, be made for the sanguine nature of the expectations formed by persons whose imaginations are dazzled by the splendid visions of the future arising before them; still, enough appears to have been demonstrated to justify a strong hope that there are no serious difficulties in the way of our permanent occupation of a place which we have succeeded in rescuing from Arab tyranny. It will be long, perhaps, before the neighbouring sheikhs will consent to an amicable arrangement with the British authorities of Aden, for they at present entertain the most exaggerated notions of the wealth of its new possessors. The English, with their usual thoughtless improvidence, threw about their money so carelessly, that, soon after their arrival, every article of household consumption doubled and trebled in price, the remuneration for labour rising in proportion. This improvident expenditure has had the effect of making the people discontented. Imagining our resources to be inexhaustible, they do not know how much to ask for their commodities or their services, and it will require great firmness and discretion, on the part of the persons in authority, to settle the fair price for both. The erection of new houses, which are called for by nearly every fresh arrival, even in their present light construction, serves very materially to enrich the inhabitants of Aden, the natural consequence being an increase of the industrious portion of the population, while it may be confidently expected that the commencement of superior works will attract a superior class of persons to the place. The present Resident is a strenuous advocate for the abolition of all duties, at least for a time; and should the representations made by him, and other persons well acquainted with the character and resources of the surrounding countries, succeed in inducing the Government of India to render Aden a free port, it would soon become the queen of the adjacent seas. The town of Senna is only at the distance of seven or eight days' journey for camels and merchandize. The coffee districts are actually nearer to it than to Mocha, and the road equally safe and convenient; other large towns in Yemen are within an easy journey, and the rich and populous places in the province of Hydramut are open for its trade. The mountains to the north of Aden produce gums, frankincense, and coffee, which would soon find their way to so promising a market. Its harbour being immediately to the north of Barbar, vessels during the north-eastern monsoon would reach it with the produce of Africa in twenty-four hours, returning with British and Indian produce in the same time. All the exports of Hanall, and other large interior towns on the opposite coast, consisting of coffee, gums, myrrh, hides, elephants' teeth, gold dust, ostrich feathers, &c, would be conveyed to Aden, to be exchanged for piece goods, chintzes, cutlery, and rice; all of which would find a ready market. The manufactures of India and of Great Britain would thus be very extensively introduced, there being good reason to believe that they would be largely purchased in the provinces of Yemen and Hydramut. Amongst the great advantages which Aden possesses over Mocha, is the situation of its harbour, which may be entered by a ship or boat at any period of the year, and quitted with the same facility: whereas its rival port is so difficult of access in the months of March, April, and May, that boats are sometimes six, seven, or eight days getting to the straits, a distance of forty miles only. These are considerations worthy of the attention of merchants, the length of the voyage not being the sole source of annoyance, since vessels taking cargoes at Aden save the great wear and tear occasioned in their return down the Red Sea. Perhaps, considering the difficulty of conciliating the semi-barbarous tribes in the neighbourhood, the trade and population of Aden have increased as much as we could reasonably hope; but when peace shall at length be established, it will doubtless attract merchants and Banians from Surat, as well as all other adjacent places. If at this moment our expectations have not been completely answered, we have at least the satisfaction of knowing that, besides having saved the Red Sea from the encroachments of the Pasha of Egypt, we have anticipated a rival power, which has already derived greater advantage from our supineness, with regard to our Eastern possessions, than is desirable. The Americans, during 1833-4-5, had a small squadron looking all about for a spot which they could turn to good account. Socotra, from its convenient position between Africa and Arabia, proved a point of attraction, and had not Capt. Haines, of the Indian Navy, promptly taken possession, in the name of Great Britain, they would in all probability have succeeded in effecting a settlement. With their usual attention to the interests of their commerce, the Americans have a resident permanently stationed at Zanzibar, and have made advantageous arrangements with the Imaum of Muscat, whereby the trade with the United States has greatly increased; American ships are constantly arriving, with piece-goods, glass-ware, &c, and returning with profitable cargoes, the produce of Africa. The inhabitants of Aden appear to be a peaceable race, generally well affected to the government, from which they cannot fail to derive advantage. The Jews, as I have before mentioned, are the most important, both in consequence of their number and of their superior wealth; they belong to the tribe of Judah, and are very industrious, being the manufacturers of the place. It is by the Jews and their families, the females assisting, that a coarse kind of cloth, employed for their own garments, and also sold to strangers, is spun and woven. This cloth is in much esteem amongst the Arabs: when prepared for them, it is dyed blue, sometimes ornamented with red borders, indigo being employed, together with extracts from other plants. The women generally wear a single loose garment, covering the head with a handkerchief when they leave the house; they do not, however, conceal their faces. Previous to the occupation of Aden, the Jewesses were remarkable for the propriety of their manners, but as they are esteemed handsome, and moreover attract by their good temper and intelligence, it is to be feared that they will meet with many temptations to depart from the decorum they have hitherto maintained. Like their sex and peculiar race, they are fond of ornaments, adorning themselves with large silver ear-rings, bracelets, necklaces, and armlets. Hitherto, whatever wealth they possessed, they were obliged to conceal, the Arabs proving very severe and oppressive masters; their prospects are now brightening, and they have already shown a disposition to profit by the new order of things, having opened shops in the bazaar, and commenced trading in a way they never ventured upon before. Nor is it in spinning and weaving alone that the Jews of Aden excel; artizans in silver and copper are to be found amongst them, together with stone-cutters, and other handicrafts-men. They have a school for the education of their male youth, the females not having yet enjoyed this advantage, in consequence of the intolerance of the Arabs, who view with prejudiced eyes every attempt to emancipate women from the condition to which they have been so long reduced. The means of instruction possessed by the Jews of Aden are not very extensive, a few printed Bibles and MS. extracts forming the whole of their literature. It has been thought that missionaries would here find a fair field for their exertions; but, unfortunately, the most promising places in the East are, by some mistake, either of ignorance or ambition, left wholly destitute of Christian teachers. While the pledges of Government are compromised in India, and its stability threatened, by the daring attempts to make converts at the presidencies, and other considerable places, where success is attended with great noise and clamour, many portions of the Company's territories, in which much quiet good might be effected, are left entirely without religious aid. The Banians, though small in number, rank next to the Jews in importance, and are, perhaps, more wealthy; they are not, however, so completely identified with the soil, for they do not bring their families with them when emigrating to Aden from the places of their birth. The greater number come from Cutch, arriving at an early period of life, and with the craft that usually distinguishes them, studying the character of the Arabs, and making the most of it. They are not esteemed such good subjects to the new government as the Jews, their expectations of benefit from a change of masters, in consequence of their having proved the chief gainers heretofore, being less sanguine. The Soomalees are natives of Barbora, and are in number about two hundred. They employ themselves in making baskets, mats, and fans, from the leaves of a species of palm-tree; they are not so active and industrious as the Jews, but the younger portion, if brought up in European families, might, with the advantage of good tuition, become useful as servants and labourers. They are Mohamedans, but not very strict, either in their religious or moral principles, violating oaths sworn upon the _Koran_, and cheating and thieving whenever they can. The love of money, however, is a strong stimulus to improvement, and where it exists, or can be created, the case is far more hopeful than when the wants and desires are both limited. The Soomalee women are reckoned handsome, though in that respect they cannot compare with the Jewesses, their complexions being much darker and their hair coarse; they have tall, well-proportioned figures, and are as attentive to their dress and appearance as their poverty will admit. The Arabs are the least prepossessing of all the inhabitants of Aden, and it will be long before any confidence can be placed in them. They religiously conceal their women, and are a bigoted, prejudiced race, disaffected of course to the new government, and shy of intercourse with the British occupants. That the hopes entertained of the prosperity of Aden have not been more speedily realized, may be attributed to the prevalent belief that its new masters could not maintain their ground against the hostile Arabs of the neighbourhood. It is the opinion of a competent judge, that, "as soon as the inhabitants of distant countries feel convinced that our occupation of Aden is intended to be a _permanent_, and not a temporary measure, they will establish agencies there under our flag, in preference to any other, and open an extensive traffic." The same authority states that "it is the opinion of the Banians and Arabs, that Aden _will regain_ her former commercial renown." With respect to the goods at present in requisition, or likely to meet a sale, at Aden, we learn from the report above quoted, that "of the manufactures of Europe, coloured handkerchiefs and hardware are only in demand, though longcloths are procurable and are sometimes purchased by the Arabs; but these articles are priced so high, as to prevent any great consumption of them. From what I observed of the Arab disposition and taste, I certainly believe that coloured cotton goods of _fast_ colours, and of patterns similar to those elsewhere specified, if offered at rates somewhat reasonable, would in a very short period meet with an extensive sale, and be rapidly introduced into common use amongst the Arabs of the interior. The novelty of the experiment would at first induce the Arabs to become purchasers, when, finding the articles _good_, it is but reasonable to anticipate an extensive demand. The colours should be particularly attended to, for the certainty of obtaining goods of _fast colours_ would alone ensure the articles in question a speedy sale. The handkerchiefs that have already been introduced into Aden are of the worst sort relative to colour, generally becoming after two or three washings white, or nearly so; thus it cannot be wondered at if these goods meet with but a poor demand." The ravages committed by the army of the Pasha of Egypt, in the fertile districts of the neighbourhood of Aden, have been prejudicial to the interests of the new settlement, and perhaps so long as the hope of plunder can be entertained by the petty princes, who rule the adjacent districts, they will be unwilling to wait for the slower advantages derivable from commerce. The apparently reckless expenditure of the British residents, and the princely pay given to the soldiers of the garrison, have offered so dazzling a prospect of gain, that they (the native chiefs) will have some difficulty in abandoning the hope of making themselves masters, at a single blow, of all the treasure brought to their shores. It is said that some Turks, deserters from Mehemet Ali, who took refuge in Aden, upon being made acquainted with the amount of pay given to the British troops, and the regularity with which it was issued, exclaimed, "God is great, and the English are immortal!" During the proper seasons, Aden is well supplied with fruit; its trade in honey and wax might become very important, the adjacent countries yielding abundance of both, and of so fine a quality, as to compete with the produce of the hives of the Mediterranean. Drugs are procurable in equal abundance, together with perfumes and spices. The European inhabitants are, of course, compelled to send to Bombay for those luxuries which habit has rendered necessary; the constant communication with the presidency renders them easily procurable, while the intercourse with India and England, by means of the steamers, relieves the monotony which would otherwise be severely felt. I could have spent two or three days with great pleasure at Aden, inquiring into its early history, present condition, and future prospects, and regretted much when a summons reached me to depart. We entertained a hope that the steamer would come round and take us off at the northern point; however, we were obliged to return the way we came. There are, and have been since its occupation, several English ladies living at Aden, but whether they have not shown themselves sufficiently often to render their appearance familiar, or the curiosity of the people is not easily satisfied, I cannot say; but I found myself an object of great attention to the women and children. The sun having declined, the whole of the population of Aden seemed to be abroad, and many well-dressed and good-looking women were seated on the rude steps and broken walls of the stone houses before-mentioned. As they saw me smiling upon them, they drew nearer, salaamed, and laughed in return, and appeared to examine my dress as closely as the open doors of the palanquin would permit. Some of the very little children turned away in horror from a white face, but the greater number seemed much pleased with the notice taken of them. While waiting a few minutes for my party, my bearers wanted to drive them away, but this I would not permit, and we carried on a very amicable intercourse by signs, both being apparently mutually delighted with each other. Their vivacity and good-humour made a favourable impression upon my mind, and I should like to have an opportunity of becoming better acquainted with them, feeling strongly tempted to proceed to Aden on my return to England in a sailing vessel, and await there the arrival of a steamer to convey me up the Red Sea to Cosseir or to Suez. I was offered a present of a milch-goat at Aden, but not being able to consult with the captain of the _Berenice_ concerning its introduction on board, I did not like to allow the poor creature to run any risk of neglect. Its productiveness would soon have diminished on board a steamer, and it was so useful in a place like Aden, that I could not feel justified in taking it away for my own gratification. I obtained, however, a bottle of milk, and when I got on board, having dined early, and being moreover exhausted with my journey, as I was only recovering from an attack of fever, I wished to have some tea. This was too great an indulgence to be granted by the petty authorities who ruled over the passengers. Unfortunately, upon leaving Suez, I had given away all my tea to my servant, Mohammed, who was fond of it, nothing doubting that I should be able to procure as much as I pleased on board the steamer. The refusal was the more provoking, as there was plenty of boiling water ready, and I had humbly limited my request to a spoonful of tea. Under the circumstances, I was obliged to content myself with milk and water: had the captain or the surgeon of the vessel been at hand, I should doubtless have been supplied with every thing I wanted, but in their absence, it was impossible to procure a single article. Upon one occasion, while tea was serving, a passenger in the saloon asked for a cup, and was told to go upon deck for it. I also procured a supply of soda water at Aden. I had suffered much from the want of this refreshing beverage during my fever, the supply taken on board having been exhausted on the voyage up. The passengers down the Red Sea have the disadvantage of sailing with exhausted stores. It seems hardly fair to them, especially in cases of illness, that the whole of any particular article should be given to the people who embark at Bombay, they having a right to expect that, as they pay the same price, a portion should be reserved for their use. On the second day after our departure from Aden--that is, the 22nd of October--we arrived at Makallah. It was mid-day before the vessel ceased to ply her engines, and though invited to go on shore, as we could not penetrate beyond the walls of the town, we thought it useless to exchange our cabins for a hot room in the mansion of its ruler. The town of Makallah, which forms the principal commercial depôt of the south-west of Arabia, is built upon a rocky platform of some length, but of very inconsiderable width, backed by a perfect wall of cliffs, and bounded in front by the sea. It seems tolerably well built for an Arabian town, many of the houses being of a very respectable appearance, two or more stories in height, and ornamented with small turrets and cupolas: the nakib, or governor's residence, is large, with a high square tower, which gives it the air of a citadel. There is not a tree or shrub to be seen, the absence of vegetation investing the place with a character of its own, and one that harmonizes with the bold and bare rocks which bound the coast on either side. We were told that, between two ranges of hills close to the entrance of the town, a beautiful green valley occurred, watered by delicious springs, and shaded by date-trees. Had we arrived at an early period of the morning, we might have spent the day on this delightful place, proceeding to it on the backs of camels or donkeys, or even on foot; but it being impossible to get thither while the sun was in full power, we were obliged to content ourselves with a description of its beauties. Although a very good understanding exists between our Government and that of Makallah, which has for some time been a depôt of coal for the use of the steamers, it is not advisable for visitors to proceed very far from the town without protection. A midshipman belonging to the Indian navy having gone on shore for the purpose of visiting the valley before-mentioned, and straying away to some distance, attracted by the beauty of the scenery, was suddenly surrounded by a party of Bedouins, who robbed him of all he possessed, cutting off the buttons from his clothes, under the idea that they were of gold--an impression which obtains all over the coast, and which inspired the people who made the last assault upon Aden with the hope of a rich booty. The population of Makallah is estimated at about 4,600 people, of various tribes and countries, the chief portion being either of the Beni Hassan and Yafái tribes, together with Banians, Kurachies, and emigrants from nearly all parts of the adjacent coasts. It carries on rather a considerable trade in gums, hides, and drugs, which, with coffee, form the exports, receiving in return iron, lead, manufactured cloths, earthenware, and rice, from Bombay, and all the productions of the neighbouring countries, slaves included, in which the traffic is said to be very great. The gentlemen who went on shore purchased very pretty and convenient baskets, wrought in various colours, and also quantities of sweetmeats, which are much in esteem in India; these are composed of honey and flour, delicately made, the honey being converted into a soft kind of paste, with a coating of the flour on the outside. These sweetmeats were nicely packed in straw baskets, of a different manufacture from those before-mentioned, and were very superior to the common sort which is brought from the coast in small coarse earthenware basins, exceedingly unattractive in their appearance. The interior of the country is said to be very beautiful, abundantly watered by refreshing springs, and shaded by groves of date-trees. Amongst its animal productions, the most beautiful is the gazelle, which, properly speaking, is only to be found in Arabia; a delicate and lovely creature, with the soft black eye which has been from time immemorial the theme of poets. The gazelle is easily tamed, becoming in a short time very familiar, and being much more gentle, as well as more graceful, than the common antelope. Its movements are the most airy and elegant imaginable. It is fond of describing a circle in a succession of bounds, jumping off the ground on four legs, and touching it lightly as it wheels round and round. At other times, it pirouettes upon the two fore feet, springing round at the same time like an opera-dancer; in fact, it would appear as if Taglioni, and all our most celebrated _artistes_, had taken lessons from the gazelle, so much do their _chefs-d'oeuvre_ resemble its graceful motions. When domesticated, the gazelle loves to feed upon roses, delighting apparently in the scent as well as the taste. It is the fashion in the East to add perfume to the violet, and I found these gazelles would eat with much zest roses that had been plentifully sprinkled with their extract, the _goolabee paanee_, so greatly in request. The gazelle is also very fond of crisply-toasted bread, a taste which must be acquired in domestication. It is a courageous animal, and will come readily to the assault, butting fiercely when attacked. In taking a gazelle away from Arabia, it should be carefully guarded against cold and damp, and if not provided with water-proof covering to its feet, would soon die if exposed to the wet decks of a ship. We had lost at Aden our fellow-passenger, whom I have mentioned as having assumed the Turkish dress for the purpose of penetrating into the interior of Abyssinia. He depended, in a great measure, for comfort and safety, upon two native priests, whom he had brought with him from Cairo, and who, in return for his liberality, had promised all the protection and assistance in their power. He left us with the good wishes of all the party, and not without some fears in the breasts of those who contemplated the hazards which he ran. Young and good-looking, he had, with pardonable, but perhaps dangerous, vanity, studied the becoming in his costume, which was composed of the very finest materials. His long outer garment, of a delicate woollen texture, was lined throughout with silk, and the crimson cap, which he wore upon his head, was converted into a turban by a piece of gold muslin wound round it. He expected nothing less than to be plundered and stripped of this fine apparel, and it will be well for him should he escape with life. The adventure and the romance of the undertaking possessed great charms, and he talked, after spending some years in a wild and wandering career, of sitting down quietly in his paternal halls, introducing as many of the Egyptian customs as would be tolerated in a Christian country. A short residence in Cairo proves very captivating to many Englishmen; they like the independent sort of life which they lead; their perfect freedom from all the thralls imposed by society at home, and, when tired of dreaming away existence after the indolent fashion of the East, plunge into the surrounding deserts, and enjoy all the excitement attendant upon danger. Numerous anecdotes were related to me of the hardships sustained by young English travellers, who, led by the spirit of adventure, had trusted themselves to the Bedouins, and, though escaping with life, had suffered very severely from hunger, thirst, and fatigue. I have no reason to doubt the veracity of one of these enterprising tourists, who assured me that he had passed through the holy city of Mecca. According to his account, he had made friends with an Arab boy, who offered to afford him a glimpse of the city, provided he would consent to pass rapidly through it, at an early hour in the morning. Accordingly, disguised in Mohamedan garb, and mounted upon a camel, they entered and quitted it at opposite ends, without exciting curiosity or remark. Of course, he could see nothing but the exterior of the houses and mosques, only obtaining a partial view of these; but, considering the difficulty and peril of the undertaking, the pleasure of being able to say that he had succeeded in an achievement which few would be daring enough to attempt, was worth running some risks. Notwithstanding the intolerant spirit generally manifested by the Arabs, those English strangers who embrace their way of life for a time frequently attach them very strongly to their persons, obtaining concessions from them which could scarcely be expected from a people so bigoted in their religious opinions, and entertaining so contemptible an opinion of those who are followers of other creeds. In spite of the faults of his character--for he is frequently deceitful, treacherous, cruel, and covetous--the Arab of the desert is usually much respected by the dwellers in towns. His independent spirit is admired by those who could not exist without the comforts and conveniences of life, which he disdains. It is no uncommon sight, either at Cairo or Alexandria, to see a handsome young Bedouin, splendidly attired, lodging in the open street by the side of his camel, for nothing will persuade him to sleep in a house; he carries the habits of the desert into the city, and in the midst of congregated thousands, dwells apart. We, who merely crossed the desert from Cairo to Suez, could form little idea of the pleasures which a longer sojourn and more extended researches would afford--the poetry of the life which the Arab leads. Nothing, I was told, could exceed the enjoyments of the night, when, after a day of burning heat, the cool breezes came down from elevated valleys, occurring between the ranges of hills which I had observed with so much interest. This balmy air brings with it perfumes wafted from sweet-scented flowers, which spring spontaneously in the green spots known to the gazelle, who repairs to them to drink. Although the dews are heavy, the Arab requires no more protection than that afforded by his blanket, and he lies down under the most glorious canopy, the broad vault of heaven with its countless spangles, no artificial object intervening throughout the large circle of that wide horizon. Here, his ablutions, prayers, and evening-meal concluded, he either sinks into profound repose, or listens to the tales of his companions, of daring deeds and battles long ago, or the equally interesting though less exciting narratives of passing events; some love-story between persons of hostile tribes, or the affection of a betrothed girl for a stranger, and its melancholy consequences. Notwithstanding the slight estimation in which the sex is held by the fierce and jealous Arab--jealous more from self-love than from any regard to the object that creates this feeling--there is still much of the romantic to be found in his domestic history. English travellers, who have acquired a competent knowledge of the language, may collect materials for poems as tragical and touching as those which Lord Byron loved to weave. I could relate several in this place, picked up by my fellow-travellers, but as they may at some period or other desire to give them to the public themselves, it would be scarcely fair to anticipate their intention. We now began to look out with some anxiety for the arrival of the steamer at Bombay, speculating upon the chances of finding friends able to receive us. As we drew nearer and nearer, the recollection of the good hotels which had opened their hospitable doors for us in the most unpromising places, caused us to lament over the absence of similar establishments at the scene of our destination. Bombay has been aptly denominated the landing-place of India; numbers of persons who have no acquaintance upon the island pass through it on their way to Bengal, or to the provinces, and if arriving by the Red Sea, are totally unprovided with the means of making themselves comfortable in the tents that may be hired upon their landing. A tent, to a stranger in India, appears to be the most forlorn residence imaginable, and many cannot be reconciled to it, even after long custom. To those, however, who do not succeed in obtaining invitations to private houses, a tent is the only resource. It seems scarcely possible that the number of persons, who are obliged to live under canvas on the Esplanade, would not prefer apartments at a respectable hotel, if one should be erected for the purpose; yet it is said that such an establishment would not answer. Bombay can never obtain the pre-eminence over Calcutta, which it is so anxious to accomplish, until it will provide the accommodation for visitors which the City of Palaces has afforded during several years past. However agreeable the overland journey may be, it cannot be performed without considerable fatigue. The voyage down the Red Sea, in warm weather especially, occasions a strong desire for rest; even those persons, therefore, who are so fortunate as to be carried off to friends' houses, immediately upon their arrival, would much prefer the comfort and seclusion of a hotel, for the first day or two at least. The idea of going amongst strangers, travel-soiled and travel-worn, is anything but agreeable, more particularly with the consciousness that a week's baths will scarcely suffice to remove the coal-dust collected in the steamers of the Red Sea: for my own part, I contemplated with almost equal alarm the prospect of presenting myself immediately upon the termination of my voyage, or of being left, on the charge of eight rupees _per diem_, to the tender mercies of the vessel. We entered the harbour of Bombay in the evening of the 29th of October, too late to contemplate the beauty of its scenery, there being unfortunately no moon. As soon as we dropped anchor, a scene of bustle and excitement took place. The boxes containing the mails were all brought upon deck, the vessel was surrounded with boats, and the first news that greeted our ears--news that was communicated with great glee--was the damage done by fire to the _Atalanta_ steamer. This open manifestation, by the officers of the Indian navy, of dislike to a service to which they belong, is, to say the least of it, ill-judged. A rapid increase in the number of armed steam-vessels may be calculated upon, while the destruction of half of those at present employed would scarcely retard the progress of this mighty power--a power which may alter the destinies of half the world. The hostility, therefore, of persons who cannot hope by their united opposition to effect the slightest change in the system, becomes contemptible. It is a wise proverb which recommends us not to show our teeth unless we can bite. To expose the defects of steamers, may produce their remedy; but to denounce them altogether, is equally useless and unwise, since, however inconvenient they may be, no person, with whom despatch is an object, will hesitate to prefer them to a sailing-vessel; while every officer, who takes the Queen's or the Company's pay, should consider it to be his duty to uphold the service which tends to promote the interests of his country. CHAPTER IX. * * * * * BOMBAY. * * * * * Contrast between landing at Bombay and at Calcutta--First feelings those of disappointment--Aspect of the place improves--Scenery of the Island magnificent, abounding with fine Landscapes--Luxuriance and elegance of the Palms--Profusion and contrast of the Trees--Multitude of large Houses in Gardens--Squalid, dirty appearance of the Native Crowd--Costume of the Natives--Inferior to the Costume of Bengal--Countenances not so handsome--The Drive to the Fort--The Burrah Bazaar--Parsee Houses--"God-shops" of the Jains--General use of Chairs amongst the Natives--Interior of the Native Houses--The Sailors' Home--The Native Town--Improvements--The Streets animated and picturesque--Number of Vehicles--The Native Females--The Parsee Women--The Esplanade--Tents and Bungalows--The Fort--The China Bazaar--A Native School--Visit to a Parsee Warehouse--Seal ornamental China-ware--Apprehension of Fire in the Fort--Houses fired by Rats--Illumination of Native Houses--Discordant noise of Native Magic--The great variety of Religions in Bombay productive of lamp-lighting and drumming. The bunder, or pier, where passengers disembark upon their arrival in Bombay, though well-built and convenient, offers a strong contrast to the splendours of Chandpaul Ghaut in Calcutta; neither are the bunder-boats at all equal in elegance to the budgerows, bohlias, and other small craft, which we find upon the Hooghley. There is nothing to indicate the wealth or the importance of the presidency to be seen at a glance; the Scottish church, a white-washed building of no pretensions, being the most striking object from the sea. Landward, a range of handsome houses flank so dense a mass of buildings, occupying the interior of the Fort, as to make the whole appear more like a fortified town than a place of arms, as the name would denote. The tower of the cathedral, rising in the centre, is the only feature in the scene which boasts any architectural charm; and the Esplanade, a wide plain, stretching from the ramparts to the sea, is totally destitute of picturesque beauty. The first feelings, therefore, are those of disappointment, and it is not until the eye has been accustomed to the view, that it becomes pleased with many of the details; the interest increasing with the development of other and more agreeable features, either not seen at all, or seen through an unfavourable medium. The aspect of the place improved, as, after crossing the Esplanade or plain, the carriage drove along roads cut through palm-tree woods, and at length, when I reached my place of destination, I thought that I had never seen any thing half so beautiful. The apartments which, through the kindness of hospitable friends, I called my own, commanded an infinite variety of the most magnificent scenery imaginable. To the left, through a wide vista between two hills, which seemed cleft for the purpose of admitting the view, lay the placid waters of the ocean, land-locked, as it were, by the bold bluff of distant islands, and dotted by a fairy fleet of fishing-boats, with their white sails glittering in the sun. In front, over a beautifully-planted fore-ground, I looked down upon a perfect sea of palms, the taller palmyras lifting their proud heads above the rest, and all so intermingled with other foliage, as to produce the richest variety of hues. This fine wood, a spur of what may be termed a forest further to the right, skirted a broad plain which stretched out to the beach, the bright waters beyond expanding and melting into the horizon, while to the right it was bounded by a hilly ridge feathered with palm-trees, the whole bathed in sunshine, and forming altogether a perfect Paradise. Every period of the day, and every variation in the state of the atmosphere, serve to bring out new beauties in this enchanting scene; and the freshness and delicious balm of the morning, the gorgeous splendour of mid-day, the crimson and amber pomps of evening, and the pale moonlight, tipping every palm-tree top with silver, produce an endless succession of magical effects. In walking about the garden and grounds of this delightful residence, we are continually finding some new point from which the view appears to be more beautiful than before. Upon arriving at the verge of the cleft between the two hills, we look down from a considerable elevation over rocky precipitous ground, with a village (Mazagong) skirting the beach, while the prospect, widening, shows the whole of the harbour, with the high ghauts forming the back-ground. Turning to the other side, behind the hill which shuts out the sea, the landscape is of the richest description--roads winding through thick plantations, houses peeping from embowering trees, and an umbrageous forest beyond. The whole of Bombay abounds with landscapes which, if not equal to that from Chintapooglee Hill, which I have, vainly I fear, attempted to describe, boast beauties peculiarly their own, the distinguishing feature being the palm-tree. It is impossible to imagine the luxuriance and elegance of this truly regal family as it grows in Bombay, each separate stage, from the first appearance of the different species, tufting the earth with those stately crowns which afterwards shoot up so grandly, being marked with beauty. The variety of the foliage of the coco-nut, the brab, and others, the manner of their growth, differing according to the different directions taken, and the exquisite grouping which continually occurs, prevent the monotony which their profusion might otherwise create, the general effect being, under all circumstances, absolutely perfect. Though the principal, the palm is far from being the only tree, and while frequently forming whole groves, it is as frequently blended with two species of cypress, the peepul, mango, banian, wild cinnamon, and several others. In addition to the splendour of its wood and water, Bombay is embellished by fragments of dark rock, which force themselves through the soil, roughening the sides of the hills, and giving beauty to the precipitous heights and shelving beach. Though the island is comparatively small, extensively cultivated and thickly inhabited, it possesses its wild and solitary places, its rains deeply seated in thick forests, and its lonely hills covered with rock, and thinly wooded by the eternal palm-tree; hills which, in consequence of the broken nature of the ground, and their cavernous recesses, are difficult of access. It is in these fastnesses that the hyenas find secure retreats, and the Parsees construct their "towers of silence." There is little, or indeed nothing, in the scenery that comes under the denomination of jungle, the island being intersected in every part with excellent roads, macadamized with the stone that abounds so conveniently for the purpose. These roads are sometimes skirted by walls of dark stone, which harmonize well with the trees that never fail to spread their shade above; at others, with beautiful hedge-rows, while across the flats and along the Esplanade, a water-course or a paling forms the enclosures. The multitude of large houses, each situated in the midst of gardens or ornamented grounds, gives a very cheerful appearance to the roads of Bombay; but what the stranger on his first arrival in India is said to be most struck with is, the number and beauty of the native population. Probably, had I never seen Bengal, I might have experienced similar delight and astonishment; but with the recollections of Calcutta fresh in my mind, I felt disappointed. Accustomed to multitudes of fine-looking well-dressed people, with their ample and elegant drapery of spotless white muslin, I could not help contrasting them with the squalid, dirty appearance of the native crowd of Bombay. Nor is it so easy at first to distinguish the varieties of the costume through the one grand characteristic of dirt; nor, with the exception of the peculiar Parsee turban, which is very ugly, the Persian cap, and the wild garb of the Arab, do they differ so widely as I expected. For instance; the Hindus and Mohamedans are not so easily recognized as in Bengal. The vest in ordinary wear, instead of being fitted tightly to the figure, and having that peculiarly elegant cut which renders it so graceful, seems nothing more than a loose bed-gown, coarse in materials and tasteless in shape: this forms the most common costume. The higher classes of Parsees wear an ample and not unbecoming dress; the upper garment of white cambric muslin fits tightly to the waist, where it is bound round with a sash or cummurbund of white muslin; it then descends in an exceedingly full skirt to the feet, covering a pair of handsome silk trowsers. A Parsee group, thus attired, in despite of their mean and unbecoming head-dress, make a good appearance. The Arabs wear handkerchiefs or shawls, striped with red, yellow, and blue, bound round their heads, or hanging in a fanciful manner over their turbans. The Persian dress is grave and handsome, and there are, besides, Nubians, Chinese, and many others; but the well-dressed people must be looked for in the carriages, few of the same description are to be seen on foot, which gives to a crowd in Bengal so striking an appearance. In fact, a Bengallee may be recognized at a glance by his superior costume, and in no place is the contrast more remarkable than in the halls and entrances of Anglo-Indian houses. The servants, if not in livery--and it is difficult to get them to wear one, the dignity of caste interfering--are almost invariably ill-dressed and slovenly in their appearance. We see none of the beautifully plaited and unsullied white turbans; none of the fine muslin dresses and well-folded cummurbunds; the garments being coarse, dirty, scanty, and not put on to advantage. Neither are the countenances so handsome or the forms so fine; for though a very considerable degree of beauty is to be found of person and feature amid many classes of Parsees, Jews, Hindus, and Mohamedans, it is not so general as in Bengal, where the features are usually so finely cut, and the eyes so splendid. Nevertheless, although my admiration has never been so strongly excited, and I was in the first instance greatly disappointed, every time I go abroad I become more reconciled to this change, and more gratified by the various objects which attract my attention; and there are few things that please me more than a drive to the Fort. It is very difficult, perhaps impossible, to convey any idea of the lively scene which is presented in this excursion, or the great variety of features which it embraces. Enclosures sprinkled over with palm-trees, and filled with a herd of buffaloes, occur close to a farm-house, which looks absolutely English; then we come to a cluster of huts of the most miserable description, occupying some low situation, placed absolutely on the ground, and scantily thatched with palm branches; stately mansions now arise to view, and then there is a row of small but apparently comfortable dwellings, habitations being thickly scattered over fields and gardens, until we reach what has been denominated the Black Town, but which is now generally known as the Burrah Bazaar. This is now a broad street, and, without exception, one of the most curious places I have ever beheld. It is said to have been much improved during late administrations, and, forming the high road to the Fort, is the avenue most frequented in the native town by Europeans. The buildings on either side are very irregular, and of various descriptions; some consist of ranges of small shops, with a story above in a very dilapidated and tumble-down condition. Then comes a row of large mansions of three floors, which look very much like the toy baby-houses constructed for children in England, the windows being so close together, and the interiors so public; others intervene, larger, more solid, and irregular, but exceedingly picturesque. Most of the better kind of houses are ascended by a flight of steps, which leads to a sort of verandah, formed by the floor above projecting over it, and being supported by wooden pillars or other frame-work in front. In the Parsee houses of this kind, there is usually a niche in this lower portion for a lamp, which is kept always burning. In some places, the houses are enclosed in courtyards, and at others a range of dwellings, not very unlike the alms-houses in England, are divided from the road by a low wall, placed a few yards in the front, and entered at either end by gateways. These houses have a very comfortable appearance, and the shading of a few palm-trees completes a rather pretty picture. There are two mosques, one on either side of this street, which are handsomely constructed, and would be great embellishments to the scene, were they not so painfully whiter-washed. A peculiar class of Hindus, the Jains, have also what have not been inappropriately termed "god-shops," for they certainly have not the slightest appearance of temples. These pagodas, if they may be so styled, are nothing more than large houses, of three floors, with balconies running in front, the heavy wooden frame-work that supports them being painted a dark dingy red, and the walk adorned with representations of deities, executed in a variety of colours, and of the most nondescript character. The interiors appear to be decorated in the same manner, as they are seen through the open windows and by the light of many lamps suspended from the ceilings. The ringing of bells, and the full attendance of priests and worshippers of an evening, show the purpose to which these houses are dedicated, and superstition is here exhibited in its most revolting aspect, for there is no illusion to cheat the fancy--no beautiful sequestered pagoda, with its shadowing trees and flower-strewed courts, to excite poetical ideas--all being coarse, vulgar, and contemptible. Great numbers of artizans are to be seen at work in their respective shops in this bazaar, copper-smiths particularly, who seem an industrious race, toiling by lamp-light long after the day has completely closed. There are also _caravanserais_ and _cafés_, where the country and religion of the owner may be known by the guests congregated about his gate. Groups of Persians are seen seated on the outside smoking; the beautiful cats, which they have brought down for sale, sporting at their feet. A few yards farther on, the Arab horse-dealers, in front of their stables, are equally conspicuous, and it is easy to perceive, by the eager glances with which some of these men survey the English carriages bearing fair freights of ladies along, that they have never visited an European settlement before. My former visit to India enabling me to observe the differences between two of our presidencies, I was particularly struck, on my arrival at Bombay, with the general use of chairs among the natives; none but the very meanest description of houses seem to be entirely destitute of an article of furniture scarcely known in the native habitations of Bengal; and these seats seem to be preferred to the more primitive method of squatting on the ground, which still prevails, the number of chairs in each mansion being rather circumscribed, excepting in the best houses, where they abound. Sofas and divans, though seen, are not so common as in Egypt, and perhaps the divan, properly speaking, is not very usual. The cheapness of oil, and in all probability the example shown by the Parsees, render lamps very abundant. The common kind of hall-lamp of England, of different sizes and different colours, is the prevailing article; these are supplied with a tumbler half-filled with water, having a layer of oil upon the top, and two cotton-wicks. As I lose no opportunity whatever of looking into the interiors of the native houses, I have been often surprised to see one of these lamps suspended in a very mean apartment of a cottage, boasting few other articles of furniture, which, nevertheless, in consequence of its cleanliness, and the excellence of the light afforded, possessed an air of comfort. In fact, many of the houses, whose exteriors are anything but promising, are very well fitted up in the inside; many of the apartments are panelled with wood, handsomely carved, and have ceilings and floors of the same, either painted of a dark colour, or highly polished. In the evening, the windows being all open, and the lamps lighted, a foil view may be obtained of these apartments. Many of the houses appear to be kept entirely for show, since in all my peregrinations I have never seen any human being in the upper chambers, although illuminated every night. In others, there can be no doubt concerning the fact of their having inhabitants, since the owners do not scruple to go to bed with the windows open and the lamps burning, not disturbed in their repose by the certainty of being seen by every passer-by, or by the noise and bustle of the street. The bazaar ends at the commencement of the Esplanade, in a large building, wooden-fronted, of a circular form, and not unhandsome, which is decorated with a flag upon the roof, and is called "The Sailors' Home." Its verandahs and open windows often display our jovial tars enjoying themselves in an asylum which, though evil has been spoken against it, is said to be well-conducted, and to prevent a very thoughtless class of persons from falling into worse hands. The native town extends considerably on either side of the principal avenue, one road leading through the coco-nut gardens, presenting a great variety of very interesting features; that to the left is more densely crowded, there being a large and well-frequented cloth bazaar, besides a vast number of shops and native houses, apparently of considerable importance. Here the indications shown of wealth and industry are exceedingly gratifying to an eye delighting in the sight of a happy and flourishing population. There are considerable spaces of ground between these leading thoroughfares, which, by occasional peeps down intersecting lanes, seem to be covered with a huddled confusion of buildings, and, until the improvements which have recently taken place, the whole of the town seems to have been nearly in the same state. The processes of widening, draining, pulling down, and rebuilding, appear to have been carried on very extensively; and though much, perhaps, remains to be done in the back settlements, where buffaloes may be seen wading through the stagnant pools, the eye is seldom offended, or the other senses disagreeably assailed, in passing through this populous district. The season is, however, so favourable, the heat being tempered by cool airs, which render the sunshine endurable, that Bombay, under its present aspect, may be very different from the Bombay of the rains or of the very hot weather. The continual palm-trees, which, shooting up in all directions, add grace and beauty to every scene, must form terrible receptacles for malaria; the fog and mist are said to cling to their branches and hang round them like a cloud, when dispersed by sun or wind elsewhere; the very idea suggesting fever and ague. Though, as I have before remarked, the contrast between the muslined millions of Bengal and the less tastefully clad populace of Bombay is unfavourable, still the crowds that fill the streets here are animated and picturesque. There is a great display of the liveliest colours, the turbans being frequently of the brightest of yellows, crimsons, or greens. The number of vehicles employed is quite extraordinary, those of the merely respectable classes being chiefly bullock-carts; these are of various descriptions, the greater number being of an oblong square, and furnished with seats across (after the fashion of our taxed carts), in which twelve persons, including women and children, are frequently accommodated. It is most amusing to see the quantity of heads squeezed close together in a vehicle of this kind, and the various contrivances resorted to in order to accommodate a more than sufficient number of personages in other conveyances, not so well calculated to hold them. Four in a buggy is a common complement, and six or nine persons will cram themselves into so small a space, that you wonder how the vehicle can possibly contain the bodies of all the heads seen looking out of it. The carts are chiefly open, but there are a few covered _rhuts_, the conveyances probably of rich Hindu or Mohamedan ladies, who do not content themselves, like the Parsees, with merely covering their heads with the veil. Young Parsee women of the better class are frequently to be seen in carriages with their male relations, nor do they object to appear publicly in the streets following wedding processions. They are the only well-dressed or nice-looking women who drive or walk about the streets or roads. The lower classes of females in Bombay are the most unprepossessing people I ever saw. In Bengal, the _saree_, though rather too scanty, is a graceful costume, and at a little distance appears to be a modest covering. Here it is worn very differently, and without the slightest attempt at delicacy or grace, the drapery being in itself insufficient, and rendered more offensive by the method of its arrangement. The Parsee women are, generally speaking, of fair complexions, with small features, and a very sweet expression of countenance; many of them are exceedingly pretty, and they all dress gracefully and becomingly. Very respectable females of this class are to be seen walking about, showing by their conduct that propriety of behaviour does not consist in seclusion, or the concealment of the face. There is an innate delicacy and refinement about Parsee women which commands respect, and their value is known and acknowledged by their male relatives, who treat them with a degree of deference and consideration which is highly creditable to both parties. Though the men are found in service in every European family, they do not allow their wives and daughters to become domestics to foreigners, and they are only permitted to become servants to their own people. The higher classes of natives have adopted European equipages, and are the owners of the handsomest carriages and horses in Bombay. Chariots, barouches, britschkas, and buggies, appear in great numbers, filled with Mohamedan, Hindu, or Parsee gentlemen. The less fashionable use the palanquin carriage, common in Bengal, but which at this place is called a _shigram_; these are often crammed full of servants and children. Upon emerging from the bazaar, we enter upon the wide plain called the Esplanade. To the left, across an extensive parade-ground, appears the Fort, which is seen to the best advantage from this point; the walls are low, and afford an ample view of a range of three-storied houses, having verandahs all the way up, called Rampart Row, and from which one or two very splendid mansions stand out conspicuously. To the right, there is a whole encampment of tents, these canvas dwellings being the sole refuge for the destitute. They may be hired in any number and of every degree of elegance, none, however, quite reaching to the refinements of Bengal, or being supplied with glass doors and windows. Beyond the tents, and quite close to the beach, is the space allotted for the temporary bungalows erected during the cold season--singular places, which will be more fully described under the head of Anglo-Indian residences. In front, and close to the warf or bunder, are immense irregular piles of cotton in bales, which at a distance appear like fortifications, and upon a nearer approach assume somewhat of a picturesque air. The Fort is surrounded on the land-side with a moat, and is entered through some very shabby gateways. The interior of this extensive work presents a busy, bustling scene; its numerous houses being arranged with some degree of regularity in streets and open places. Those who content themselves, however, with driving through the European portion, will have very little idea of the true character of the place. Rampart Row--the avenues leading into a large open space, in which stand the cathedral, the town-hall, the mint, a cavalry barrack, &c.--and the immediate environs, are composed of lofty, well-constructed houses, some standing a little apart in courtyards, and others with a narrow platform in front, ascended by steps, and roofed by the story above. This, as I have previously stated, is the general method of building in Bombay. These streets have somewhat of an European, though not an English, air, but are for the most part tenanted by natives, who may be seen at the windows of every floor, and who apparently are better lodged, at least according to our idea, than the same class in Calcutta. In this part of the Fort there are several shops, or rather warehouses, for the sale of European goods--dingy places, having a melancholy assortment of faded articles in dim glass cases, freshness and variety in the merchandize depending upon shipping arrivals. Earthenware, glass, and cutlery, are abundant; but, altogether, there is nothing at present to compare with the first-rate establishments of Calcutta--such as Tulloh's, for instance--the whole style being dirty and slovenly. A very civil native, named Muncherjee, who calls himself a milliner, has, I am informed, very frequently well-chosen investments to dispose of, but upon my visits I have seen nothing wearable in the shape of bonnets and caps. An English milliner resides in his neighbourhood, who possesses both skill and taste, and makes up her silks and gauzes after the best French models; but necessarily, perhaps, the purchases made at her rooms are rather expensive. There is quite enough of bustle and animation in this quarter of the Fort to engage the attention, but it seems silent and deserted when compared with the crowd of the more exclusively native portions. Here the streets literally swarm with life--men, women, children, and bullocks, filling them almost to suffocation. Ranges of open shops appear on each side, raised a foot or two from the ground, the occupant being seated upon a ledge in front, in the midst of his wares. Here, too, immense quantities of English glass and crockery-ware are exhibited, which may be purchased at a much cheaper rate than in shops styled, _par distinction_, European. One or two opportunities offering for a visit to what is called the China Bazaar, I gladly availed myself of them, and was much amused, as the carriage made its slow way through the multitudes that thronged the streets, to observe the employments of the people, buying, selling, manufacturing their goods, or, for want of something else to do, dragging little children in carts, which, by some contrivance, ran back across the floor of the narrow apartment, and were then impelled forward again by means of a string. This I found to be a favourite occupation, and I never in any place saw more fondness manifested towards children by their parents than in Bombay, or a greater desire to associate them in all their amusements. At length, the carriage stopped at a gateway, and upon alighting, I found myself in the midst of a crowd of little children--an infant school, in fact, composed indiscriminately of boys and girls. They were, generally speaking, very pretty, and all well-dressed, many being adorned with very handsome jewels. The pedagogue--a Parsee, and rather a young man--with the barbarity common to his class, was in the act of inflicting corporal punishment upon a poor little creature, whom he beat upon the feet (ornamented, by the way, with rich anclets) with a rod of split bamboo. I commanded him to forbear, but speaking half in English and half in Hindustanee, made myself better understood by look and gesture than by words. The unhappy infant seemed to know that I interfered in its behalf, for it gazed upon me with a piteous but grateful expression; it could not have been more than three years old, and was really very pretty and interesting in its tears. It was evidently the child of wealthy parents, being dressed in a silk shirt embroidered and trimmed with silver, a cap of the same upon its head, and numerous jewels besides. The whole of the Lilliputian assembly uttered their lesson as I passed, all raising their voices at the same time, and rendering it, I imagine, rather difficult to determine whether each pupil repeated his or her part correctly. I would fain have lingered for a few minutes, but my attendants officiously showing the way, I walked across a paved yard and up two flights of steps to the shop of which I came in search, which was kept by a good-looking Parsee. The trade of this person was designated as that of a _bottlee wallah_, which being literally rendered means 'bottle-fellow,' but, according to a more free translation, a dealer in glass, lamps, candlesticks, preserved meats in tin-cases, &c. &c. I found a vast stock of the articles most in request in Indian housekeeping, such as wall-shades, and all descriptions of earthen and hard-ware, all of which he sold at very moderate prices, but having executed the part of my commission which related to candlesticks, I was unable to find the more _recherché_ articles of which I came in quest. I had been told that a great variety of ornamental china, the real product of the Celestial Empire, was to be seen in the native shops in Bombay. Though showy in appearance, this sort of china is of little value, except to mark how much the manufacture has degenerated since Europeans have learned to make their own teacups. I wished to obtain a few specimens, but could not succeed. My friend, the bottlee wallah, though very civil, could not afford me the information I required, nor have I yet been able to obtain it. I have seen some handsome jars, plates such as are used in England for the deposit of visitors' cards, &c., which were purchased for a few annas, and have been told that I might procure any quantity I pleased, but the where is still a mystery. All the information obtainable in Bombay must be fished out in an extraordinary manner, both natives and Europeans seeming to make it a rule never to commit themselves by a direct reply to any question; in every single instance, up to the present time, I have always, upon making an inquiry, been referred to somebody else. Neither do I find the same zeal manifested in the servants, which amounts to officiousness on the other side of India. I have sent them to purchase the china, but can get nothing but rubbish, knowing all the while that there are plenty of a better description to be had. Upon my return, the bottlee wallah accompanied me to the carriage in waiting, and as I paused to notice some of the children in the school, introduced me to a group of his own sons and daughters, well decked out in jewels, and otherwise richly dressed. The instruction given at these schools I understood to be merely oral, the repetition of a few verses, intended rather to pass away the time and keep the children out of mischief, than as a foundation of more useful studies. I hope that the system will be improved, for the pupils seemed to be extremely intelligent, and capable of better things. Returning home, I passed several shops, in which the artizans of a very beautiful manufacture, peculiar to Bombay, were at work. Desks, dressing-cases, work-boxes, card-cases, ink-stands, and a variety of other ornamental fancy articles, are made of sandal-wood, covered and inlaid with ivory, ebony, and a material resembling silver. They copy the best patterns, and produce exceedingly elegant appendages for the drawing or dressing-room tables. A desk, handsomely fitted up and lined with velvet, is sold for seven or eight pounds; large ink-stands and blotting books for twenty rupees, and card-cases for six or eight. It is impossible, while perambulating the Fort of Bombay, to avoid a feeling of apprehension concerning a catastrophe, which sooner or later seems certain to happen, and which nothing short of a miracle appears to prevent from taking place every night; I mean the destruction of the whole by fire. All the houses are constructed of the most combustible materials, and the greater number belonging to the native quarter are thatched. Though contrary to law, many of the warehouses contain gunpowder, while the immense quantity of oil and spirits stored up in them would render a conflagration, once commenced, most fearful. Few or no precautions seem to be taken by the natives against fire. There are lights burning in every room of every house, fires are continually made outside, whence a single spark might set the whole in flames; and added to these dangers, are the prejudices of the great number of the inhabitants, whose religious feelings would prevent them from making the slightest endeavour to stay the progress of the element which they worship. Nor would the destruction of property be the sole danger. It is terrible to think of the fearful risk of life in a place in which escape would be so difficult. The gates of the Fort are few in number, and of narrow dimensions; a new one is now constructing, probably with some view to an emergence of the kind. The natives, upon the occasion of its proposal, evinced their readiness to assist in the execution of a plan so advantageous to the place of their abode, and immediately advanced half the sum which this necessary improvement would cost--namely, thirty thousand rupees--which were subscribed and paid into the treasury in the course of a week. In 1803 or 1804, a very destructive conflagration actually took place in the Fort of Bombay, and upon that occasion, in order to save the castle, which did then, and does now, contain an immense quantity of gunpowder, the authorities were obliged to bring out cannon to batter down the surrounding houses, for the purpose of arresting the progress of the flames. When the place was rebuilt, many salutary regulations were made to prevent the recurrence of so great a calamity, and could all the plans of Government have been accomplished, the danger which now threatens Bombay would have been very considerably lessened; but it was found impossible to carry out all the objects contemplated, in consequence of the great value of the property which they would affect. The land within the walls of the Fort has become in a great measure private property, and the convenience of its contiguity to the harbour is so great, and the natives entertain so strong an idea of security in a residence in a fortified place, however disqualified to resist a hostile force, that nothing would prevail upon them to relinquish their houses. The higher classes are well aware of the hazards they incur, but, like the dwellers in the neighbourhood of a volcano, are unwilling to quit a place endeared to them by long residence, though they know not the hour in which they may be buried beneath its smoking ruins. There are only a few Europeans who continue to inhabit the Fort, but it must contain a very considerable portion of the property of those merchants who have their offices and warehouses within its walls. The British authorities have taken all the precautions in their power, the fire-engines have been placed in a state of greater efficiency than heretofore, while, should an extensive fire take place, everything that European strength and skill could accomplish would be attempted. Amongst the various accidents to which houses in Bombay are subjected, the one to be most apprehended, that of fire, is often brought about by rats. They will carry off a lighted candle at every convenient opportunity, setting fire to dwellings by this means. They have been also known to upset tumblers containing oil, which is thus spread abroad and likely to be ignited by the falling wick. It is, perhaps, impossible totally to exterminate this race of vermin, which in the Fort set cats completely at defiance, but something might be done to keep the population down. I have been told that there are places in the more crowded portion rendered perfectly impassable at night in consequence of the effluvia arising from the immense quantities of musk rats, which, together with the common sort, and bandicoots of an incredible size, abound, the narrow close lanes being apparently built for the purpose of affording accommodation to vermin of every description. Nevertheless, some of the native houses of the Fort would form very agreeable residences to persons accustomed to the utmost refinement. Being exceedingly lofty, the upper apartments have the advantage of every breeze that blows, while the views both of sea and land are splendid. The immense size of these houses, and the elegance of their decorations, evince the spirit and wealth of their owners; they become absolutely beacons at night, in consequence of the frequency and the extent of their illuminations. Numerous are the occasions, either of holidays or other rejoicings, in which the natives of Bombay light up their houses; rows of lamps hung along the wide fronts of the verandahs, upon every floor, produce a good effect, which is often heightened by the flood of light poured out of apartments decorated with chandeliers and lamps of every description. In passing through the bazaar at night, every third or fourth house is lit up upon some festive occasion; one favourite and very pretty method consists of a number of small lamps, arranged to resemble bunches of grapes, and hung up in the trees of a court-yard. Sometimes in the evening, a sort of market is held in the native town beyond the Esplanade, and every stall is profusely lighted; the hawkers, who carry about their goods in a more humble way upon their heads in baskets, have them stuck with candles, and the wild shadowy effects produced, amid the quaint buildings thus partially lighted, afford a continual phantasmagoria. They must be destitute of imagination, indeed, who cannot find pleasure in the contemplation of the night-scenes of Bombay, either from its native crowds, or the delicious solitudes of its sylvan shades. The ear is the only organ absolutely unblest in this sunny island, the noises being incessant, and most discordant; the shrieking of jackals by night is music compared to that from native instruments, which, in the most remote places, are continually striking up: the drums, trumpets, bells, and squeaking pipes, of a neighbouring village, are now inflicting their torments upon my distracted brain in the most barbarous manner possible. The exertions of the performers never appear to relax, and by night or day, it is all the same; they make themselves heard at any distance, parading along the roads for the sole purpose, it should seem, of annoying the more peaceable inhabitants. Certainly, the sister arts of music and painting have yet to make their way in India, the taste for both being at present perfectly barbarous. The European bands, when playing on the Esplanade, attract a very considerable number of natives; but whether congregated for the purpose of listening to the music, or merely for the sake of passing the time, seems very doubtful. A few, certainly, manifest a predilection for "concord of sweet sounds," and no difficulty is experienced by band-masters in recruiting their forces from natives, the boys learning readily, and acquitting themselves very well upon instruments foreign to the country. There is, however, no manifestation at present of the spread of a refined taste, and many years will probably elapse before any thing like good music will be common in this part of Asia. The great variety of religions extant in Bombay, each being distinguished by numerous festivals, all celebrated in the same manner--that is, by noise and illuminations--sufficiently accounts for the perpetual recurrence of lamp-lighting and drumming in all directions. Every week brings round the anniversary of some day of rejoicing of the Mohamedans, Hindus, Parsees, Jews, Roman Catholics, or Armenians, and Bombay may therefore be said to present one universal holiday. Passing the other evening one of the handsomest pagodas in the island, an oblong square building of yellow stone, with a mitre-shaped tower at one end, I was surprised by the number of European carriages in waiting. The exterior had all the air of a Christian church, the situation beautiful, a platform of rock overlooking the sea; and I could not help indulging the hope, that the substitution of chariots and buggies for palanquins and _rhuts_ would lead to the introduction of a purer and better creed. CHAPTER X. * * * * * BOMBAY--(_Continued_). * * * * * Bombay the rising Presidency--Probability of its becoming the Seat of Government--The Anglo-Indian Society of Bombay--Style of Living--The Gardens inferior to those of Bengal--Interiors of the Houses more embellished--Absence of Glass-windows an evil--The Bungalows--The Encamping-ground--Facility and despatch of a change of residence--Visit to a tent entertainment--Inconveniences attending a residence in tents--Want of Hotels and Boarding-houses--Deficiency of public Amusements in Bombay--Lectures and _Conversaziones_ suggested, as means of bringing the native community into more frequent intercourse with Europeans--English spoken by the superior classes of natives--Natives form a very large portion of the wealth and intelligence of Bombay--Nothing approaching the idea of a City to be seen--The climate more salubrious than that of Bengal--Wind blows hot and cold at the same time--Convenience a stranger finds in so many domestic servants speaking English--Their peculiar mode of speaking it--Dress of servants--Their wages--The Cooks--Improved by Lord Clare--Appointments of the tables--The Ramoosee Watchmen--Their vociferations during the night--Fidelity of the natives--Controversy concerning their disregard of truth. Comparisons are so frequently both unfair and invidious, that I had determined, upon my arrival at Bombay, to abstain from making them, and to judge of it according to its own merits, without reference to those of the rival presidency. It was impossible, however, to adhere to this resolution, and being called upon continually to give an opinion concerning its claims to superiority over Calcutta, I was reluctantly compelled to consider it in a less favourable point of view than I should have done had the City of Palaces been left out of the question. That Bombay is the rising presidency there can be no doubt, and there seems to be every probability of its becoming the seat of the Supreme Government; nothing short of a rail-road between the two presidencies can avert this catastrophe; the number of days which elapse before important news reaching Bombay can be known and acted upon by the authorities of Calcutta rendering the measure almost imperative. Bengal, too proudly triumphing in her greatness, has now to bear the mortifications to which she delighted to subject Bombay, a place contemptuously designated as "a fishing village," while its inhabitants, in consequence of their isolated situation, were called "the Benighted." Steam-communication brought the news to Bombay of the accession of Queen Victoria to the throne of England, and this event was celebrated at the same time that the Bengallees were toasting the health of William the Fourth at a dinner given in honour of his birth-day. "Who are the Benighted now?" was the universal cry; and the story is told with great glee to all new arrivals. Concerning the Anglo-Indian society of Bombay, I do not pretend to know any thing, or to give opinions which must necessarily be premature and presumptuous. A round of dinner parties affords little opportunity of making acquaintance; they are much the same everywhere, and when a large company is assembled, their agreeability must entirely depend upon the persons who occupy the neighbouring chairs. Bombay is accused, with what degree of justice I cannot determine, of being a place much addicted to scandal and gossip. If this charge be well founded, it is one which it must share in common with all limited circles. The love of detraction is unhappily a thoroughly English vice, flourishing under all circumstances, and quite as prevalent, though not, perhaps, equally hurtful, in great cities as in the smallest village. The same people who in London delight in the perusal of newspapers of the most libellous description, and who read with avidity every publication which attacks private character, will, when removed into a congenial sphere, pick their neighbours to pieces; an amusement which cannot be enjoyed in the metropolis, where happily we do not know the names of the parties who occupy the adjoining houses. We are proud of our virtues, not unjustly giving ourselves credit for many that elevate and refine the human character; but even the most solid and the most dazzling can scarcely compensate for that one universal sin, that want of charity, which leads English people upon all occasions to undervalue and disparage their most intimate acquaintance. How few will scruple to point out to others the follies and foibles of their dearest friends, weaknesses which they have discovered during long and familiar intercourse; and how few will hesitate to impute the very worst motives for actions which may spring from a laudable source, or be merely the result of thoughtlessness! In our most Christian country, the spirit of the Christian religion is still to be sought, and until we see stronger proofs of its influence than can at present be shown throughout the United Kingdom, we must not single out a remote colony as a specimen of the indulgence of a vice common to us all. The great evil, which Bombay must share with other communities similarly constituted, is the want of family ties, and the consequent loss of all the gentle affections which spring amid a wide domestic circle. Neither the very old nor the very young are to be found in an Indian colony; there are few connecting links to bind the sojourners of a foreign land together; each has a separate interest, and the result is seen in a general want of sympathy; no one seems to enter into the views, feelings, hopes, or objects of another. I employ the word _seems_, since, as a stranger, I can only give my first impressions upon the subject. The style of living is more easily described, and its relative advantages determined. The Anglo-Indian residents of Bombay are, for the most part, scattered all over the island, living in very comfortable houses, of no great pretensions to exterior elegance, yet having for the most part an air of home enjoyment, which suggests pleasing ideas. One feature is very striking, the porticoes and verandahs of many being completely covered with luxuriant flowering creepers, which in Bengal are never suffered to be near the house, in consequence of the harbour they are supposed to give to insects and reptiles. The approach to these beautiful screens is, however, frequently through a cabbage-garden, the expedience of planting out the unsightly but useful vegetables destined for the kitchen not having been as yet considered; neither can the gardens at this period of the year, the cold season, compare with those of Bengal, the expense of irrigation preventing the inhabitants from devoting so much time and attention to their improvement, while as yet the natives have not been encouraged to fill the bazaars with European vegetables. Pease are spoken of as not being uncommon, but I have only seen them once, even at the best tables. Neither have cauliflowers, French beans, or asparagus, made their appearance--vegetables common at Christmas all over the Bengal presidency. The interiors of the houses are, generally speaking, more embellished than those of Calcutta; the greater part have handsome ceilings, and the doorways and windows are decorated with mouldings, and otherwise better finished. The walls also are coloured, and often very tastefully picked out with white or some other harmonizing tint. The reception-rooms, therefore, have not the barn-like air which detracts from the magnitude of those of Bengal, and the furniture, if not always equally splendid, is shown off to greater advantage; but here I should say the superiority ends. Some of the small bungalows are very neatly fitted up with boarded ceilings, a great improvement upon the cloth which conceals the rafters in those of Bengal; others, however, are canopied with cloth, and some there are which appear more like summer-houses than habitations intended for Europeans throughout the year, being destitute of glass windows, and open to all the winds of heaven. The frequent changes of the atmosphere which occur in Bombay, and the danger of a touch of the land-wind, render the absence of glass windows a very serious evil; they are, however, unknown in the temporary bungalows erected upon the Esplanade, which seem to be favourite residences of people who could lodge themselves more substantially if they pleased. The barn-like thatched roofs of these dwellings make them rather unsightly objects, though some are redeemed by a thick drapery of creepers; but the interiors of many are of a very pavilion-like description, and the singularity of all renders them interesting to a stranger. These houses usually consist of two or more principal apartments, united with each other by means of verandahs, and formed chiefly of wooden frame-work panelled with canvas, with here and there a partition of wattle and dab. They have generally large porticoes of trellice-work in front, sufficiently spacious to allow a carriage to drive under them, which is thus screened from the sun; these porticoes being mantled with flowering creepers of many beautiful kinds. A sort of garden is also formed by plants in tubs, and there is sometimes a cultivated oval or circular space, which, in such a climate, a very few weeks will render luxuriant. The fronts of these bungalows face the sea, and have all the benefit of its breezes, while the intervening space between the fort forms the parade-ground of the garrison, and the most esteemed evening drive. Those who inhabit these bungalows, and who do not rise before the sun, are subjected to all the inconveniences attending upon field practice, the firing of musquetry and the war of cannon close to their ears, and though favourite residences, they seem better suited to persons well accustomed to all the vicissitudes of Anglo-Indian life than to a stranger. For my own part, I confess a prejudice in favour of brick and mortar, glass windows, and chimneys; and though perfectly content, while travelling, to put up with any accommodation that may offer, would never willingly settle down for a season in a mansion of canvas, mat, and bamboo, where the rats have free ingress, and the atmosphere is filled with innumerable winged insects. Before the general setting-in of the rains, these bungalows, I am informed, assume a very damp and tatterdemalion appearance, and when the skies open their flood-gates, they are obliged to be taken down and warehoused until the following year. Some of these bungalows are private property, others are erected by the natives and let to their tenants at a monthly rent. In some, the sleeping and sitting apartments are under different roofs; all have a considerable piece of ground enclosed round them, the allotments to each party being made by Government, and appertaining to certain appointments in the service. Beyond these bungalows is the encamping ground, in which certain temporary sojourners in Bombay either pitch or hire a tent or tents, the accommodation differing according to the expense incurred. The superior tents--such, for instance, as that engaged by the late admiral--are spacious and convenient; a handsome suite of apartments, consisting of ante-room, drawing-room, and dining-room, partitioned off by canvas curtains, which could be rolled up at pleasure, were lighted by chandeliers suspended from the cross-poles and girandoles against those that supported the roof; the walls were handsomely lined, the floors covered with thick mats and carpets; nothing being wanted to render this canvas dwelling equal in comfort and elegance to the tents of Bengal, excepting glass doors. The weather, during the cold season in this part of India, is not nearly so inclement as in Calcutta and the north-western provinces; nevertheless, it is very desirable to shut out the keen and cutting wind, which frequently blows during the night. The people here, however, seem fond of living in tents, and it often happens that gentlemen especially, who have had good houses of their own over their heads, go to very considerable expense for the purpose of enjoying the free air of a camp. I had an opportunity of seeing the facility and despatch with which such a change of residence is managed in Bombay. Driving one evening round the foot of a conical hill overlooking the sea, we met a party of gentlemen who said that they were looking out for a good place to pitch their tents, and invited us to dine with them on the following evening at seven o'clock. As the hill was in our neighbourhood, we ascertained at eleven o'clock the next morning that there was not a symptom of habitation upon it; however, we were determined to keep our engagement, and accordingly arrived at the appointed hour at the point of the road at which a rude pathway opened. It was perfectly dark, but we found the place indicated by a cluster of lamps hanging like a bunch of grapes from a tree; a palanquin was also in waiting to carry the ladies up the hill in turn. I preferred walking; and though my shoes and the hem of my gown were covered with prickles and thorns, which interweaved themselves in an extraordinary manner through a satin dress, I enjoyed the walk amazingly. A man with a lanthorn led the way, a precaution always taken in Bombay, on account of the alleged multitude of the snakes, and at every three or four yards' distance, another cluster of lamps suspended from a tree pointed out the way. In a few minutes we arrived at a platform of table-land on the summit of the hill, prettily sprinkled with palm-trees, and came upon a scene full of life, picture, and movement. The white outline of the smaller tents had a sort of phantom look in the ambiguous light, but the open doors of the principal one showed a strong illumination. A table, which we might have supposed to be raised by the hand of an enchanter, gleaming with silver, cut glass, and wax candles, was absolutely framed in by the darkness around. Two or three horses picketed under the trees with their grooms, cowering over fires made upon the ground, looked very like unearthly chargers, just emerged with their grim attendants from some subterranean kingdom; while the red glare from the cooking tents, and the dusky figures moving about, could scarcely be recognised as belonging to human and every-day life--the whole scene having a supernatural air. The interior of the tents was extremely picturesque, fitted up with odds and ends of foreign products, and looking very like the temporary haunt of some pirate; tiger skins, rich soft thick rugs of Persian manufacture, interspersed with Indian mats, covered the floors; the tents were lined with flags, favouring the notion that the corsair's bark lay anchored in some creek below; while daggers, and pistols, and weapons of all kinds, helped out a fanciful imagination to a tale of wild adventure. The butler of our host had enacted more wonders than a man; under such circumstances, a repast of fish and curry might have been considered a great achievement, but we had the three regular courses, and those, too, of a most _recherché_ kind, with a dessert to match, all sent up to the point of perfection. After coffee, I went out to look upon the sea, which lay like a mirror below the perpendicular height on which I stood; and as my eyes became accustomed to the darkness of a moonless night, I saw under new aspects the sombre outlines of those soft hills, whose purple loveliness I had admired so much during the day. I spent several pleasant evenings in these tents, which were engaged by a young nobleman upon his travels for the purpose of escaping from the annoyances of the Fort, and who, during his short residence under canvas, had the advantage of the companionship of a friend, to whose experienced servants he was indebted for the excellence of the arrangements. When it is considered that these tents were pitched upon a lonely spot, upwards of four miles from Bombay and from the bazaars, the celerity and success with which every thing was managed will appear quite wonderful. The tents were found to be so cold, that a gentleman who afterwards joined the party slept in his palanquin; they were subsequently removed, and now the palm-tree waves its broad leaves over the lonely hill, and the prowling jackal seeks his meal elsewhere. Tents such as those now described form the rarer and brighter specimens, their usual character being very different. On the Esplanade we step at once from the ground upon a settrinjee, which bears all the marks of having been well trodden by sandy feet; an opening at the farther extremity shows the sea, glaring on the eye with a hot dazzle; a table, a few chairs, with some books and papers, perhaps, upon the ground, complete the arrangements that are visible; while, if proceeding farther, we find ourselves in a room fitted up as a bed-chamber, nearly as small and inconvenient as the cabin of a ship, with a square aperture in the thin canvas wall for a window. These tents are dreadfully warm during the day, and exceedingly cold at night; they are, moreover, notwithstanding their proximity to the sea, and the benefit of its breezes, filled with mosquitoes, or sand-flies, which are equally troublesome. Persons who contemplate a long residence in them, keep out of the cold and heat by erecting a chopper, or roof, formed of thatch, over them; but, in my opinion, they are but uncomfortable residences. Many strangers, however, arriving at Bombay, have no alternative, there being no other place where they can find equally good accommodation. An hotel, it appears, has been established in the Fort, but not of a description to suit private families or ladies; the constant arrival of steamers full of passengers fills the houses of the residents with a succession of guests, who would gladly put up at an hotel or boarding-house, if such could be found, while there are besides many ladies now in Bombay, whose husbands are in the army, living uncomfortably either alone or going about from friend to friend's houses, who would rejoice to be quietly and comfortably established in a respectable boarding-house. Nothing of the kind, however, appears to be at present in contemplation, and Bombay can never, with any degree of justice, presume to call itself England, until it can offer suitable accommodation to the vast numbers of strangers who land upon its shores. European foreigners, who visit Bombay in a commercial capacity, find it exceedingly _triste_; independently of private society, there is absolutely no amusement--no play, no concert, no public assembly of any kind; nor would it be advisable to attempt to establish an entertainment of this nature, since there would be no chance of its support. There is a fine building, the Town Hall, well adapted for the purpose, but its most spacious saloon is suffered to remain empty and unfurnished; the expense which must be incurred in the purchase of chandeliers proving sufficient to deter the community from an undertaking which would serve to add gaiety to a sombre scene. Those who have visited the Town Hall of Calcutta, and who retain a recollection of the brilliance of its re-unions, with all their gay variety of concert, opera, and acted charade, cannot help seeing that Bombay lags very far behind; it is, therefore, unwise to provoke comparisons, and the society here should rather pride itself upon what it will do, than upon what it has done. It is, perhaps, little to be lamented that merely frivolous amusements should be wholly confined to the private circles of social life, but there are others which might be cultivated with infinite advantage to the community at large, and for which the great room at the Town Hall seems to be most admirably adapted. Whether the native ear is sufficiently refined to relish the superior performances of music, seems doubtful; but when we see so large a portion of the society of Bombay composed of Parsee, Hindu, and Mohamedan gentlemen, we cannot help wishing that some entertainment should be provided for them which would attract and interest, while it expanded the mind. A series of lectures upon popular subjects, illustrated by entertaining experiments, might, I should think, be introduced with good effect. The wonders of the microscope, laid open to the eyes of intelligent persons who perfectly understand and speak English, could scarcely fail to delight and instruct, while the secrets of phantasmagoria, the astonishing effects produced by electricity, the movements of the heavenly bodies exhibited in an orrery, and, indeed, all the arcana of science, agreeably laid open, would furnish inexhaustible funds of amusement, and lead to inquiries of the most useful nature. Lectures, also, upon horticulture, floriculture, &c., might be followed by much practical good; and as there are many scientific men at the presidency who could assist one or more lecturers engaged for the purpose, the expense of such an institution would be materially lessened, while, if it were once established, the probabilities are in favour of its being supported by contributions of the necessary models, implements, &c., from the capitals of Europe. It is certainly very pleasing to see the numbers of native gentlemen of all religious persuasions, who enter into the private society of Bombay, but I could wish that we should offer them some better entertainment than that of looking on at the eternal quadrille, waltz, or galoppe. They are too much accustomed to our method of amusing ourselves to view it in the light in which it is looked upon in many other parts of India; still, they will never, in all probability, reconcile it to their ideas of propriety, and it is a pity that we do not show ourselves capable of something better. Conversation at these parties is necessarily restricted to a few commonplaces; nothing is gained but the mere interchange of civility, and the native spectators gladly depart, perhaps to recreate themselves with more debasing amusements, without having gained a single new idea. If meetings once a fortnight, or once a month, could be held at the Town Hall, for the purpose of diffusing useful knowledge in a popular manner, they would not only afford amusement at the time, but subjects also of conversation for the future. Such meetings would give no offence to that part of the community who are averse, upon religious principles, to cards and dancing, or dramatic amusements; and if not rendered too abstruse, and consequently tiresome and incomprehensible to the general auditor, must necessarily become a favourite method of passing time now too frequently lost or mis-spent. The literary and scientific _conversaziones_ given by Lord Auckland, in Calcutta, afford a precedent for an institution of the kind; the successful features might be copied, and if there should have been any failures, the experience thus gained would prevent similar hazards. There seems to be no good reason why ladies should be excluded, since the more general and extensive a plan of the kind could be made, the greater chance there would be of a beneficial exercise of its influence over society. There is a very good library attached to the Town Hall, and the germ of a museum, which would furnish materials for much intellectual entertainment; and there can be little doubt that, if the proposition were judiciously made, and properly supported, the wealthy portion of the native community would subscribe very liberally towards an establishment so eminently calculated to interest and amuse the youth of their families. The greater number of the sons of respectable natives are now receiving their education at the Elphinstone College, and these young people would understand and appreciate the advantages of a literary and scientific institution, for the discussion and illustration of subjects intimately connected with the end and aim of their studies. In the course of a few years, or even less, many of these young men would be qualified to take a leading part in the establishment, and perhaps there would be no greater incentive to the continuation of studies now frequently abandoned too early, for the sake of some money-getting pursuit, than the hope that the scientific acquirements attained at college might be turned to useful account. A small salary would allure many natives, who, in consequence of the necessity which they are under of gaining their own bread, are obliged to engage in some, perhaps not very lucrative, trade, and who, engrossed in the gathering together o petty gains, lose all the advantages they might otherwise have derived from a liberal education. The difficulties which in other parts of our Asiatic territories stand in the way of the participation of natives in the studies and amusements of Anglo-Indian residents, in consequence of the difference of language, are not felt in Bombay. All the superior classes of natives speak excellent English, the larger portion expressing themselves with great fluency, and even elegance. English is spoken in every shop frequented by Europeans, and there are generally one or two servants in every family who can make themselves understood in it. The natives form, in fact, a very large portion of the wealth and intelligence of Bombay, and become, consequently, an important part of its society. They are the owners of nearly all the best houses in the island, which are not commonly either built or purchased, as in Calcutta, by their European tenants. Many rich native merchants, who reside usually in the Fort, possess splendid country mansions, to which they retire occasionally, or which are used merely for the purpose of giving parties to their friends. These mansions are to be recognised by the abundance of ornament, by gateways surmounted by nondescript monsters, after the fashion of the lions or bears of carved stone, which are sometimes seen at the entrance of a nobleman's grounds in England. At others, they are gaily painted in a variety of colours, while a profusion of many-coloured lamps, hanging in the verandah and porticoes on the occasion of every fête, shed great brilliance on the evening scene. These residences are scattered all over Bombay, the interiors being all richly furnished, and many fitted up with infinite taste and elegance. Although, as I have before remarked, these scattered houses impart an air of rural enjoyment to the island, yet their being spread over its whole surface prevents Bombay from appearing to be so important a place as it is in reality. There is nothing approaching to the idea of a city to be seen, nothing solid or substantial to indicate the presence of wealth or of extensive commerce. Calcutta, on the contrary, offers to the stranger's eye an aspect so striking and imposing, brings so strongly to the mind the notion that its merchants are princes, and that it ranks crowned heads amongst its vassals and its tributaries, that we see at once that it must be the seat of a powerful and permanently established government. Nor does it seem possible, even in the event of Bombay taking the ascendance as the capital of British India, that the proud City of Palaces shall upon that account dwindle and sink into decay. Stranger things, and even more melancholy destinies, have befallen the mighty Babylons of the earth; but with all its faults of situation and of climate, I should at least, for one, regret the fate that would render the glories of a city so distinct in its character, and so proudly vying with the capitals of Europe, a tale of the past. A new direction in the course of the Ganges may reduce it to a swamp, and its palaces and pleasant places may be left to desolate creatures, but it will never be rivalled by any modern creation. The days of Anglo-Indian magnificence are gone by, and though we may hope for all that is conveyed by the words _comfort_ and _prosperity_, splendour will no longer form a feature in the scene. The climate of Bombay is said to be superior in point of salubrity to that of Bengal; what is termed the cold season, however, can scarcely merit the name, there being nothing like the bracing weather experienced at the same period of the year in the neighbouring presidency. One peculiarity of Bombay consists in the wind blowing hot and cold at the same time, so that persons who are liable to rheumatic pains are obliged to wrap themselves up much more warmly than is agreeable. While enduring a very uncomfortable degree of heat, a puff of wind from the land or the sea will produce a sudden revulsion, and in these alternations the whole day will pass away, while at night they become still more dangerous. It is said that the hot season is not so hot as in Bengal, and the absence of punkahs in the drawing-rooms and bed-chambers favours the statement; but if the atmosphere be much more sultry in the hot season than it is in what is by courtesy called cold, it must be rather difficult to bear. To a stranger in Bombay, it is a great convenience to find so many persons who speak English, the objection to the engagement of domestic servants who have acquired the language of their Christian masters not existing to the same extent here as in Bengal, where, in most cases, it is a proof of utter worthlessness. Numbers of very respectable servants, who are found in old established families at this presidency, speak English, and the greater portion take a pride in knowing a little of their masters' language. These smatterers are fond of showing off their acquirements upon all occasions, replying in English, as far as they are able, to every question asked in Hindostanee, and delivering their messages in all the words that they can muster. With few exceptions, the pronunciation of the language they have acquired is correct; these exceptions consist in the prefix of _e_ to all words beginning with an _s_, and the addition of the same letter to every termination to which it can be tacked. Thus they will ask you to take some _fowlee-stew;_ and if you object to any thing, say they will bring you _anotheree_. Though very respectful when addressing their superiors in their native language, the same degree of propriety is not maintained under the disadvantage of an incompetent acquaintance with English. Instead of the _khana tear hi_, 'dinner is ready,' they will very unintentionally substitute an abrupt summons. I was much amused one day, when, being rather late at my toilette, a servant made his appearance at the door of my apartment, just as I was quitting it, and said, "You come to dinner." He had been sent to tell me that it was served, and had not the least idea that he had not delivered his message with the greatest propriety. Though, generally speaking, well-behaved and attentive, the domestics of a Bombay establishment are very inferior in style and appearance to those of Bengal, the admixture of Portuguese and Parsees, with Mohammedans and Hindus, forming a motley crew, for all dress in their national costume, it being impossible to prevail upon people having so many and such different religious prejudices to assume the same livery. The Parsees who engage as domestic servants seldom dress well; the ugly chintz cap will always be a disfigurement, and it is not often redeemed by the ample robe and handsome shawl which distinguish the better classes. The Mohammedans do not wear the beautifully plaited turbans and well-fitting vests so common in Bengal, while the sailors' jackets and trowsers, almost universally worn by the Portuguese, a few only assuming the swallow-tailed coat, are any thing rather than handsome or becoming. The inferiority of dress exhibited is the more inexcusable, since the wages of servants in Bombay are much higher than those of the same class in Bengal, while the difference in point of number does not make up for the difference in the rate. The youngest table-servant demands twelve rupees a month, no one will engage as a butler under twenty, and the remainder are in proportion. The ayahs' wages are also very high, amounting to from fifteen to twenty rupees a month; they are certainly, however, more efficient than the same class of persons in Bengal, undertaking to wash silk stockings, lace, and fine muslin; they are, generally speaking, well-conducted and respectable. The dirzees or tailors are very inferior to their brethren of Bengal, though paid at a much higher rate, fifteen rupees a month being the common demand. Whenever a Bengal tailor happens to come round, he is eagerly seized upon, the reputation of workmen from the rival presidency being deservedly high. Tailors are indiscriminately Parsees, Mohammedans, or Hindus, the latter-named being the least desirable, as they will neither eat, drink, nor cook in a European manner, and are always eager to get away by half-past four in the afternoon. The cooks of Bombay are, for the most part, well acquainted with the culinary art, an advantage for which, according to common report, they are indebted to Lord Clare. Upon the arrival of that nobleman at the seat of his government, it is said that he started with horror at the repast which the hospitality of the island had provided for him. At this substantial dinner, the ponderous round jostled the sirloin of beef, saddles and haunches of mutton _vis-à-vis'd_ with each other, while turkey and ham, tongue and fowls, geese and ducks, filled up the interstices. Lord Clare had either brought a French cook in his train, or sent for one with the least possible delay, and this accomplished person not only reformed the _cuisine_ at Government House, but took pupils, and instructed all who chose to pay for the acquirement in the mysteries of his art. He found his scholars a very teachable race, and it is only now necessary to describe the way in which any particular method should be practised, in order to secure success. They easily comprehend the directions given, and, what is of equal consequence, are not above receiving instructions. Through the exertions of these praiseworthy persons, the tables of Bombay are frequently exceedingly well served, and nobody is actually obliged to dine upon the huge joints which still make their appearance. Turkey maintains its high position, and is, with its accompaniment of ham, considered indispensable; rounds of boiled salt-beef, plentifully garnished with carrots, are apparently in high esteem, the carrots being an importation from England, coming out hermetically sealed in tin cases. What are considered the dainties of the table consist chiefly of fresh salmon, preserved by the patent process, Highland mutton, partridges stuffed with truffles, &c., these things, in consequence of their rendering the dinner more expensive as well as more _recherché_, being in great request. Although the high prices of provisions are adduced as the reason of the high rate of servants' wages, as compared with those of Bengal, this increased expenditure, according to the observations I have been able to make, relates more to the commodities of the native bazaars than those consumed by Europeans. The necessity of bringing in supplies from a distance for the consumption of the island occasions the increase of the price of grain, &c, while probably the demand for beef, mutton, fowls, &c. not being go great as in Calcutta, these articles are sold at a lower rate. Buffalo meat is occasionally eaten by Europeans, a thing unheard of in Bengal; but it is not in any esteem. The tables in Bombay are handsomely appointed, though not with the same degree of splendour that prevails in Bengal, where the quantity of plate makes so striking a display. The large silver vases, in which butter and milk are enclosed in a vessel filled with saltpetre, which give to the breakfast-tables of Calcutta an air of such princely grandeur, are not in use here. The servants are summoned by the exclamation of "Boy" instead of the _Qui hi_? which is so Indian-like in its expression, and has afforded a distinguishing _soubriquet_ to the Bengallees. The word _boy_ is said to be a corruption of _bhaee_, 'brother,' a common mode of salutation all over the East. As it is now employed, it is often very absurdly answered by a grey-bearded man, who has long lost all title to the appellation. Notwithstanding the strength and acknowledged efficiency of the Bombay police, it is considered expedient in every house to engage a Ramoosee or watchman, who, while himself a professional thief, is bound in honour to protect his employer from the depredation of his brethren. Though, in virtue of this implied compact, the house ought to be considered sacred, and the Ramoosee entitled to receive his wages for the protection that his name affords, some there are who insist upon the display of their watchfulness in a very unwelcome manner. Occasionally the Ramoosee, more peaceably inclined, settles himself quietly down to sleep in the verandah, and leaves the family to the enjoyment of repose; but there are others who disdain thus to eat the bread of idleness, and who make it a point to raise an alarm every hour in the night. Personal courage or strength of body is by no means essential in a Ramoosee, all that is required of him being powerful lungs; this qualification he cultivates to the utmost, and any thing more dreadful than the sounds emitted in the dead of the night close to the window nearest the head of my bed I never heard. I have started up in the most horrible state of apprehension, fancying that the world was at an end, while, after calming down all this perturbation, just as I have been going to sleep again, the same fearful shout has brought on new alarm. Vainly have I remonstrated, vainly endeavoured to convince the Ramoosee that his duty to his employers would be better performed by making these shocking outcries at the road-side; he is either inflexibly silent, or waging war against my repose; for I believe that he selects the side of the house devoted to the visit or for the exercise of his extraordinary faculty; I cannot in any other way account for the small disturbance he gives to the rest of the family. The absolute necessity of paying one of these men, in order to secure the forbearance of his colleagues, is illustrated by an anecdote commonly told. It appears that two friends were living together, one of whom had engaged a Ramoosee, while the other, not imagining it to be incumbent upon him to incur the same expense, neglected this precaution. One night, every thing belonging to this unfortunate chum was stolen. The Ramoosee was summoned, and accused of not having performed his duty. He boldly denied the charge. "All master's property is safe," he said; "when master lose any thing, I will account for it." The fidelity with which the greater number of natives, however corrupt in other respects, fulfil all their engagements, the few instances in which a pledge once given is forfeited, if taken into grave consideration, would do much towards settling the point at issue between the Bishop of London and Sir Charles Forbes. The word of a native, generally speaking, if solemnly given, is a bond never to be broken, while an oath is certainly not equally binding. In accusing the natives of a deliberate crime in the commission of perjury, we do not sufficiently reflect upon the difference of the religious principles which actuate Christians, and the heinous nature in their eyes of the sin of calling upon a God of purity to witness their falsehoods. If we could administer an oath to a native, the profanation of which would fill him with equal horror, we should find that he would speak the truth. A case in point occurred lately at Aden. There are a class of Mohammedans who are great knaves, many being addicted to cheating and theft: the evidence of these men cannot be depended upon, since for the value of the most trifling sum they would swear to any thing. Nevertheless, although they do not hesitate to call upon God and the Prophet to witness the most flagrant untruths, they will not support a falsehood if put to a certain test. When required to swear by a favourite wife, they refuse to perjure themselves by a pledge which they esteem sacred, and will either shrink altogether from the ordeal or state the real fact. The following occurrence is vouched for by an eye-witness: "A Somali had a dispute with a Banian as to the number of komasies he had paid for a certain article, swearing by God and the Prophet that he had paid the price demanded of him for the article in question; but no sooner was he called upon to substantiate his assertions by swearing by his favourite wife, than he threw down the article contended for, and took to his heels with all speed, in order to avoid the much dreaded oath." It will appear, therefore, that there is scarcely any class of persons in India so utterly destitute of principle, as to be incapable of understanding the obligation of an oath, or the necessity of speaking truth when solemnly pledged to do so, the difficulty being to discover the asseveration which they consider binding. In nearly every transaction with servants in India we find them most unscrupulous respecting the truth of any account which they give, and yet at the same time they will fulfil every engagement they enter into with a conscientiousness almost unknown in Christian countries. The lowest servant of the establishment may be trusted with money, which will be faithfully appropriated to the purpose for which it was intended, but certainly they entertain little or no respect for abstract truth. The controversy at home concerning the general disregard to accuracy manifested by the natives of India has caused much consternation here, and will, I trust, be productive of good. It will show at least to the large portion of the native community, who can understand and appreciate the value of the good opinion of the country of which they are fellow-subjects, the necessity of a strict adherence to veracity, in order to maintain their pretensions to morality, and it will evince the superiority of that religion which, as one of its precepts, teaches a regard for truth. Willing as I feel to bear testimony to many excellent points in the native character, I regret to say, that, although they do not deserve the sweeping accusations brought against them, the standard by which they are guided is very low. At the same time it must be said, that the good faith which they observe, upon occasions in which persons guided by superior lights would be less scrupulous, shows that they only require a purer religious system to regard truth as we have been taught to regard it. CHAPTER XI. * * * * * BOMBAY--(_Continued_.) * * * * * Residences for the Governor--Parell--Its Gardens--Profusion of Roses--Receptions at Government-house--The evening-parties--The grounds and gardens of Parell inferior to those at Barrackpore--The Duke of Wellington partial to Parell--Anecdotes of his Grace in India--Sir James Mackintosh--His forgetfulness of India--The Horticultural Society--Malabar Point, a retreat in the hot weather--The Sea-view beautiful--The nuisance of fish--Serious effects at Bombay of the stoppage of the trade with China--Ill-condition of the poorer classes of Natives--Frequency of Fires--Houses of the Parsees--Parsee Women--Masculine air of the other Native Females of the lower orders who appear in public--Bangle-shops--Liqueur-shops--Drunkenness amongst Natives not uncommon here, from the temptations held out--The Sailors' Home--Arabs, Greeks, Chinamen--The latter few and shabby--Portuguese Padres--Superiority of the Native Town of Bombay over that of Calcutta--Statue of Lord Cornwallis--Bullock-carriages--High price and inferiority of horses in Bombay--Hay-stacks--Novel mode of stacking. There are three residences for the accommodation of the Governor of Bombay; one, the Castle, situated within the Fort, has been long disused, and appropriated to government-offices; a second, at Malabar Point, is intended as a retreat for the hot weather; Parell, the third, being the mansion most usually occupied. Though not built in a commanding position, Parell is very prettily situated in the midst of gardens, having a rich back-ground of wood, while, from the upper windows, the eye, after ranging over these luxuriant groves, catches a view of the sea, and is carried away to more remote regions by the waving outline of distant hills, melting into the soft haze until it effaces all their details. Parell was originally a college of Jesuits, and, after so many alterations and improvements, that its original occupants would be puzzled to recognise it, is now rendered worthy of the purpose to which it is dedicated. The house is an irregular structure, without pretension to architectural design or ornament, but having something noble in its appearance, which is helped out by a fine portico and battlemented roof. The interior is handsome and convenient; two flights of marble stairs, twelve feet broad, lead into a very spacious drawing-room, with galleries on either side, and three smaller drawing-rooms beyond. The terrace over the portico, at the other end, separated from this suite of apartments by a verandah, is easily convertible into a fourth reception-room, it being roofed in by an awning, and furnished with blinds, which in the day-time give a very Italian air to the whole building. Though I have never been in Italy, the acquaintance gained of it through the medium of illustrating pens and pencils makes me fancy that the island of Bombay, and Parell especially, at this season of the year (the cold weather), may bear a strong resemblance to that fair and sunny land. The gardens of Parell are perfectly Italian, with their fountains and cypress trees; though regular, they are not sufficiently symmetrical to offend the eye, the nature of the ground and of the building, which runs out at right angles, preventing the formality from being carried beyond its just limit. Price, the most judicious of landscape-gardeners, would scarcely have desired to alter arrangements which have quite enough of the varied and the picturesque to satisfy those who do not contend for eternal labyrinthine mazes and perpetually waving lines. There is one straight avenue in front, but the principal carriage-road has just the kind of curve most desirable, sweeping round some fine trees which group themselves for the purpose of affording an agreeable diversity. A broad terrace, overlooking a large tank, runs along one side of the garden, and beyond, upon a rising hill, are seen the New Horticultural Gardens, and a part of the picturesque village of Metunga, while the rest is laid out in small lawns, interspersed with rounds and ovals, fountains in the centre, surrounded by flower-beds, and flanked by tall, slender cypresses, and the more rare, delicate, and elegant species of palms: all this is set off by clumps of mangoes, now covered with blossoms of dark gold burnishing their green leaves. It is, indeed, a fair and stately garden, enriched with many native and foreign productions, both of tree and flower, of great beauty. In one place, two large trees, on either side a broad gravel walk, are united by a splendid festoon, formed by a creeper, which bears in the greatest profusion bell-shaped flowers, at least four inches long, and of the most beautiful pearly whiteness and fragrant scent. I regret that my want of botanical knowledge incapacitates me from giving its name and family. That species of palm which is called the Travellers' Tree, and which, growing in sandy places, contains in its leaves an ample supply of fresh water, is to be found here. It resembles the banana or plantain, in its broad leaves, springing immediately from the stem, but attains a much greater height, and is altogether very striking and singular in its appearance. The wealth of roses at the gardens of Parell seems to exceed all computation, bushels being collected every day without any apparent diminution; indeed it may be questioned whether there is in any part of the world so great a consumption of this beautiful flower as in Bombay. The natives cultivate it very largely, and as comparatively few employ it in the manufacture of rose-water, it is gathered and given away in the most lavish profusion. At Parell, every morning, one of the gardeners renews the flowers which decorate the apartments of the guests; bouquets are placed upon the breakfast-table, which, though formal, are made up after the most approved Parisian fashion, the natives being exceedingly skilful in the arrangement of flowers. Vases filled with roses meet the eye in every direction, flowers which assume their supremacy over all other daughters of Flora, though there are many beautiful specimens, the common productions of the gardens, which are rarely found even in hothouses in England. The society of Bombay enjoys the great advantage arising from the presence of the ladies of the Governor's family, who have rendered themselves most deservedly popular by the frequency and the agreeableness of their entertainments, and the kind attention which they pay to every invited guest. The slight forms that are kept up at Government-house are just sufficient to give a somewhat courtly air to these parties without depriving them of their sociability. Morning visitors are received once a-week, and upon these occasions Parell assumes a very gay appearance. The band, which is an excellent one, is stationed in the hall below, playing occasionally the most popular compositions of the day, while its pillared verandah is filled with liveried servants, handsomely dressed in scarlet, white, and gold. The ample staircases are lined with flowers, and as the carriages drive up, the aide-de-camps and other military resident guests are in readiness to receive the visitors, and to usher them up stairs, and introduce them to the ladies of the family. The morning reception lasts from eleven until two, and the numerous arrivals from distant stations, or from England, officers continually coming down from the army or the dominions of foreign princes, give occasion to conversations of great interest, while it forms a rallying-point to the whole of Bombay. The evening parties are distinguished for the excellence of the music, the band having improved greatly under the stimulating influence of the ladies of the Governor's family, who are all delightful performers, one especially excelling. In addition, therefore, to their own talents, all the musical genius of Bombay is put into requisition, and the result is shown in some very charming episodes between the dancing. At these evening parties, the brilliance of the lights, and the beauty of the flowers, which in the supper-room especially are very tastefully displayed, render the scene extremely attractive. One very pleasing feature must not be omitted; in the ante-room is placed a large silver salver, filled with bouquets, which are presented, according to the Oriental custom, to every guest. The number and variety of the uniforms, and the large proportion of native gentlemen, add much to the gaiety of the appearance of these parties, and the eye most accustomed to European splendour may find pleasure in roaming over these spacious, well-filled, and brilliantly illuminated apartments. Nor is it the interior alone that attracts; on the still moonlight nights, which are so beautiful in India, the scenery viewed from the windows assumes a peculiar and almost magical appearance, looking more like a painting than living reality. The trees, so motionless that not a leaf stirs, present a picture of such unbroken repose, that we can scarcely imagine it to be real; the sky seems to be drawn closer to us, while the whole breathes of divine art, suggesting poetry and music and thoughts of Paradise. In England I remember feeling a longing desire to breathe the delicious balm, and gaze upon the exquisite effects of an Indian night again, with its tone of soft beauty and the silvery mystery of its atmosphere, which adds so great a charm to the rich magnificence of the foliage; and now I fancy that I can never sufficiently drink in a scene, not only lovely in itself, but peculiarly delightful from its contrast to the glare of the day. The grounds and gardens of Parell, in extent and splendour, will bear no comparison with those of Barrackpore, which are, perhaps, some of the finest in the world, and which must be explored in carriages or on horseback, while the plantations and parterres at this place offer nothing more than agreeable walks, which perhaps, after all, afford superior gratification; at least to those who prefer a feeling of home to the admiration elicited by great splendour. Not one of the least pleasing sensations excited by a residence at Parell, is the recollection of the distinguished persons who have inhabited the same chambers, and sat in the same halls. The Duke of Wellington is said frequently to have expressed a partiality for Parell, and to look back to the days of his sojourn within its walls with pleasure. Here he reposed after those battles in which he laid the foundation of his future glory, and to which, after long experience, and so many subsequent triumphs as almost to eclipse their splendour, he recurs with peculiar satisfaction. So far from underrating, as is the fashion with many of the military servants of the Crown, the merits of a successful campaign in India, the great captain of the age, than whom there can be no better judge, rates the laurels that he gathered in his earliest fields as highly as those wrested from the soldiers of France, glorying in the title given him by Napoleon, of "the Sepoy General." Few things can be more agreeable than listening to anecdotes told at the dinner-table at Parell of the Duke of Wellington by officers who have formerly sat at the same board with him, who have served under his command in India, and who delight in recording those early traits of character which impressed all who knew him with the conviction that he was destined to become the greatest man of the age. The Duke of Wellington, though wholly unacquainted with the language spoken in India, was always held in the highest esteem by the natives, with whom, generally speaking, in order to become popular, it is absolutely necessary to be able to converse in their own tongue. He obtained, however, a perfect knowledge of their modes of feeling, thinking, and acting, and by a liberal policy, never before experienced, endeared himself to all ranks and classes. It is recollected at this day that, in times of scarcity, he ordered all the rice sent up for the subsistence of the troops to be sold, at a moderate price, to the starving multitude; and that, while more short-sighted people prophesied the worst results from this measure, it obtained for him abundant supplies, together with a name that will never be forgotten. A re-perusal at Parell of the "Life of Sir James Mackintosh" also affords interest, though of a different kind. The house which Sir James designates as large and convenient, with two really good rooms, has been much improved since his time. It could not be expected that a man like Sir James Mackintosh would employ many words in the description of a mansion chiefly interesting on account of its former occupants; but that he should have dismissed the whole of the presidency in as summary a manner, seems perfectly unaccountable. It does not appear that the importance and value of British India ever made any strong impression upon Sir James Mackintosh, who seems to have looked upon its various inhabitants with a cold and careless eye; to have done nothing in the way of making the people of England better acquainted with their fellow-subjects in the East, and never to have felt any desire to assist in the work of their improvement, or to facilitate its progress. During his subsequent career, India appears to have been totally forgotten, or remembered only as the scene of an exile, in which he had found nothing to compensate for the loss of literary society and the learned idling away of time, from which so much was expected, and which produced so little. The eloquence of Sir James Mackintosh, if exerted in favour of British India, might, years before, have excited that interest in its behalf, which remained dormant until Bishop Heber created a new feeling upon the subject; and in this place especially, I cannot help regretting that the powers of so great a mind should not have been devoted to the promotion of the welfare of a country dependant upon England for intellectual and moral improvement, and which, in the eyes of all reflecting persons, must be looked upon as the strongest support of England's ancient glory. The garden of the Horticultural Society, which occupies a convenient space of ground near Parell, is yet in an infant state, but bids fair in a short time to add very considerably to the pleasures of those persons who take delight in the cultivation of flowers and fruits. Many gentlemen are stimulating their gardeners to make great exertions for the prizes, which it is expected will be chiefly carried away at the ensuing meeting by exhibitors from the Deccan. Though there are several very good gardens in the island, they are, according to all accounts, greatly excelled in other parts of the presidency. The system of cultivation carried on by the Horticultural Society will, no doubt, tend very considerably to their improvement, while the new method of conveying plants to and from distant places, in boxes covered with glass, will soon enrich all the gardens, both in India and at home, with interesting exotics. Several of these cases, filled with bulbous and other roots, under the inspection of Messrs. Loddiges, have arrived at Parell, and been planted out in pots; the eases will be returned, filled with equally valuable specimens of Indian products; and thus a continual interchange may be kept up. I wished much to enrich the collection of foreign plants making by the Royal Botanical Society of London, by some of the most interesting specimens of Indian growth, feeling deeply interested in the success of this institution; but not being a practical gardener myself, I have as yet been unable to fulfil my intentions. I calculated, perhaps, too strongly upon the desire of scientific people in Bombay to promote objects of general utility at home, and see little chance, unless I do every thing relating to the collecting, planting, packing, and transmitting the plants with my own hands, of succeeding in sending any thing to England. Indeed, I find a difficulty in procuring a _hortus siccus_. As every body, who can possibly get away, leaves Bombay during the hot weather and the rains, the residence at Malabar Point, intended as a retreat in the sultry season, is seldom tenanted by the Governor's family. The house, however, is not very often empty, being generally occupied by some great person and his suite, such as newly-arrived commanders-in-chief, who are accommodated at this establishment until they can provide for themselves. The principal residence, and several bungalows attached to it, are erected on the side of a hill overlooking and washed by the sea. The views are beautiful, the harbour affording at all times a scene of great liveliness and interest, while the aerial summits of the hills in the distance, and their purple splendours, complete the charm. The numerous fairy-like skiffs, with their white sails, catching the sunlight, give life and movement to the picture, while the cottages of the fishermen are often placed with happy effect upon the neighbouring shore. There are, unfortunately, serious drawbacks to the enjoyment which the eye derives from the gliding boats and palm-crowned huts; the amusement of _yachting_ being seriously impeded by the method of spreading nets, for the purpose of capturing the finny tribes, while, in consequence of the immense quantity which is caught, the whole island occasionally smells of fish. The fishermen have certain places secured to them by law, in which they drive immense stakes, usually the trunks of palm-trees, and between these stakes they fasten their nets, any damage done to them by passing boats being punishable by a fine; the navigation of the harbour, to those who wish to visit its beautiful islands, is, in consequence, rather difficult, and would scarcely admit of being carried on by those small steamers, which render every place in the neighbourhood of Calcutta so accessible. The boats here, with the exception of private yachts, which are not numerous, are a disgrace to a civilized place. Nothing can be easily imagined to be worse than the pattamars usually employed for the conveyance of troops and travellers to distant points; they are dirty, many so low in the roof that the passengers cannot stand upright in them, and filled with insects and vermin. The abundance and cheapness of fish render it the common food of the lower classes, and consequently its effluvia sometimes pervade the whole atmosphere. The smell of frying fish, with its accompaniment of oil, is sufficiently disagreeable; but this is not all; a much more powerful odour arises from fish drying for future use, while, as it is commonly spread over the fields and employed as manure, the scents wafted by the breezes upon these occasions breathe any thing but perfume. There are many very delicate kinds of fish, which are held in great esteem, to be seen at European tables; but, to a stranger, the smell of the refuse allowed to decay is quite enough, and habit must reconcile the residents of Bombay to this unpleasant assailant of the olfactory nerves, before they can relish the finest specimens of pomfret or other favourite. As it can always be purchased freshly caught, fish appears at dinner as well as at the breakfast-table in Bombay; the list of shell-fish includes oysters, which, though not so tempting in their appearance as those of England, are of excellent quality. The fishermen, like those of Europe, leave the sale of their fish to their wives, who are said to be a busy, bustling, active race, quite equal to the tasks which devolve upon them, and, in consequence of the command which their occupation gives them over the pecuniary receipts of the house, exerting a proportionate degree of authority. Fishermen's huts, though very picturesque, are not usually remarkable for their neatness or their cleanliness, and those of Bombay form no exception to their general appearance. They are usually surrounded by a crowd of amphibious animals, in the shape of tribes of children, who for the most part are perfectly free from the incumbrance of drapery. Many, who have not a single rag to cover them, are, notwithstanding, adorned with gold or silver ornaments, and some ingeniously transform a pocket-handkerchief into a toga, or mantle, by tying two ends round the throat, and leaving the remainder to float down behind, so that they are well covered on one side, and perfectly bare on the other. Amid the freaks of costume exhibited at Bombay, an undue preference seems to be given to the upper portion of the person, which is frequently well covered by a warm jacket with long sleeves, while the lower limbs are entirely unclad. There is said to be cotton goods to the amount of a million sterling lying in the godowns and warehouses of Bombay, unemployed, in consequence of the stoppage of the China trade, and it seems a pity that the multitudes who wear gold chains about their necks, and gold ear-rings in their ears, could not be prevailed upon to exchange a part of this metal for a few yards of covering of some kind or other, of which apparently they stand much in need. Great numbers of the poorer classes seem to be ill-fed, ill-lodged, and worse clothed; yet scantiness in this particular is certainly not always the result of poverty, as the redundance of precious ornaments above mentioned can witness. Neither does the wretched manner in which many belonging to the lower orders of Bombay shelter themselves from the elements appear to be an absolute necessity, and it is a pity that some regulations should not be made to substitute a better method of constructing the sheds in which so many poor people find a dwelling-place. The precaution of raising the floor even a few inches above the ground is not observed in these miserable hovels, and their inhabitants, often destitute of bedsteads, sleep with nothing but a mat, and perhaps not even that, between them and the bare earth. At this season of the year, when no rain falls, the palm-branches with which these huts are thatched are so carelessly placed, as to present large apertures, which expose the inmates to sun-beams and to dews, both of which, so freely admitted into a dwelling, cannot fail to produce the most injurious effects. Were these houses raised a foot or two from the ground, and well roofed with the dry palm-branches, which seem to supply so cheap and efficient a material, they would prove no despicable abodes in a country in which only at one season of the year, the rains, very substantial shelter is required. As it may be supposed, conflagrations are frequent in these hovels; they are fortunately seldom attended with loss of life, or even of much property, since the household furniture and wardrobes of the family can be easily secured and carried off, while the people themselves have nothing to do but to walk out. On these occasions, the rats are seen to decamp in large troops, and gentlemen, returning home from drives or parties, are often arrested by a fire, and by the instructions they afford, do much towards staying the progress of the flames, while the greater number of natives, Parsees in particular, look quietly on, without offering to render the slightest assistance. Whole clusters of huts are in this manner very frequently entirely consumed; the mischief does not spread farther, and would be little to be lamented should it lead to the entire demolition of dwelling-places equally unsightly, and prejudicial to health. Much to my astonishment, I have seen, in the midst of these very wretched tenements, one superior to the rest placed upon a platform, with its verandah in front, furnished with chairs, and surrounded by all the dirt and rubbish accumulated by its poverty-stricken neighbours, miserable-looking children picking up a scanty subsistence, and lean cats groping about for food. Such houses are, besides, exposed to all the dangers of fire originating in the adjoining premises; but apparently this circumstance has been overlooked, together with the expediency of building a little apart from the horrors of the surrounding abominations. This is the more remarkable, from the contrast it affords to the air of comfort which is so often manifest in the inferior dwellings of the natives of Bombay. I often, in my drives, come upon a small patch of ground, well cultivated, and boasting vegetables, fruits, and flowers, with a small low-roofed house of unbaked mud in one corner, having a verandah all round, well tiled and supported on bamboos. It is difficult under this sloping roof to get a peep at the interior, but my efforts have been rewarded by the sight of floors cleanly swept, bedsteads, and those articles of furniture which can scarcely be dispensed with without suffering considerable privation. As yet, I have not been able to discover to what class of persons these kind of dwellings belong, but I suspect that they are tenanted chiefly by Parsees, a money-getting and luxurious race of people, who are sufficiently industrious to exert themselves, with great perseverance, to gain a living, and have the spirit to spend their money upon the comforts and conveniences of life. They are accused of extravagance in this particular, and perhaps do occasionally exceed; but, generally speaking, their style of living is more commendable than that of the Hindus, who carry their thrift and parsimony to an outrageous height. Near their houses very graceful groups of Parsee women and children are to be seen, who, upon the encouragement afforded by a smile, _salaam_ and smile again, apparently well-pleased with the notice taken of them by English ladies. These women are always well-dressed, and most frequently in silk of bright and beautiful colours, worn as a _saree_ over a tight-fitting bodice of some gay material. The manner in which the saree is folded over the head and limbs renders it a graceful and becoming costume, which might be imitated with great propriety by the Hindu women, who certainly do not appear to study either taste or delicacy in their mode of dress. I may have made the remark before, for it is impossible to avoid the recurrence of observations continually elicited by some new proofs of the contrast between the women upon this side of India, and their more elegant sisters on the banks of the Hooghly. Here all the women, the Parsees excepted, who appear in public, have a bold masculine air; any beauty which they may have ever possessed is effaced, in the very lower orders, by hard work and exposure to the weather, while those not subjected to the same disadvantages, and who occupy a better situation, have little pretensions to good looks. Many are seen employed in drawing water, or some trifling household work, wearing garments of a texture which shews that they are not indebted to laborious occupation for a subsistence; and while the same class in Bengal would studiously conceal their faces, no trouble whatever of the kind is taken here. They are possibly Mahrattas, which will account for their carelessness; but I could wish that, with superior freedom from absurd restraint, they had preserved greater modesty of demeanour. The number of shops in the bazaars for the sale of one peculiar ornament, common glass rings for bracelets, and the immense quantities of the article, are quite surprising; all the native women wear these bangles, which are made of every colour. The liqueur-shops are also very common and very conspicuous, being distinguished by the brilliant colours of the beverage shown through bottles of clear white glass. What pretensions this rose and amber tinted fluid may have to compete with the liqueurs most esteemed in Europe, I have not been able to learn. Toddy-shops, easily recognised by the barrels they contain upon tap, and the drinking-vessels placed beside them, seem almost as numerous as the gin-palaces of London, arguing little for the sobriety of the inhabitants of Bombay. In the drive home through the bazaar, it is no very uncommon circumstance to meet a group of respectably-dressed natives all as tipsy as possible. It is on account of the multitude of temptations held out by the toddy-shops, that the establishment I have mentioned as the Sailors' Home is so very desirable, by affording to those who really desire to live comfortably and respectably, while on shore, the means of doing both. Here they may enjoy the advantages of clean, well-ventilated apartments, apparently, according to what can be seen through the open windows, of ample size; and here they may, if they please, pass their time in rational employment or harmless amusement. Groups of sun-burnt tars, with their large straw hats and honest English faces, are often to be seen mingled with the crowd of Asiatics, of whom every day seems to show a greater variety. I saw three or four very remarkable figures last evening; one was an extremely tall and handsome Arab, well dressed in the long embroidered vest, enveloping an ample quantity of inner garments, which I have so often seen, but of which I have not acquired the name, and with a gaily-striped handkerchief placed above the turban, and hanging down on either side of his face. This person was evidently a stranger, for he came up to the carriage and stared into it with the strongest expression of surprise and curiosity, our dress and appearance seeming to be equally novel and extraordinary to this child of the desert. Shortly afterwards, we encountered a Greek, with luxuriant black ringlets hanging down from under a very small scarlet and gold cap; the others were Jews, very handsome, well-dressed men, profusely enveloped in white muslin, and with very becoming and peculiar caps on their heads. I regret to see my old friends, the China-men, so few in number, and so shabby in appearance; yet they are the only shoemakers here, and it ought to be a thriving trade. Their sign-boards are very amusing; one designating himself as "Old Jackson," while a rival, close at hand, writes "Young Jackson" upon his placard; thus dividing the interest, and endeavouring to draw custom from the more anciently established firm. The Portuguese padres form striking and singular groups, being dressed in long black gowns, fitting tightly to the shape, and descending to their feet. They seem to be a numerous class, and I hope shortly to see the interiors of some of their churches. A very large, handsome-looking house was pointed out to us by one of the servants of whom we made the inquiry, as belonging to a Portuguese padre; it was situated near the cloth bazaar, and I regretted that I could not obtain a better view of it. My predilection for exploring the holes and corners of the native town is not shared by many of the Anglo-Indian residents of Bombay, who prefer driving to the Esplanade, to hear the band play, or to a place on the sea-shore called the Breach. I hope, however, to make a tour of the villages, and to become in time thoroughly acquainted with all the interesting points in the island, the variety and extent of the rides and drives rendering them most particularly attractive to a traveller, who finds something interesting in every change of scene. I have accomplished a second drive through the coco-nut gardens on the Girgaum road, a name by which this quarter of the native town is more commonly known; the view thus obtained only excited a desire to penetrate farther into the cross-lanes and avenues; but as I do not ride on horseback, I have little chance of succeeding, since I could not see much from a palanquin, and taun-jauns, so common in Calcutta, are scarcely in use here. The more I see of what is called the Native Town in Bombay, the more satisfied I am of its great superiority over that of Calcutta; and I gladly make this admission, since I have found, and still continue to find, so great a falling-off in the style of the dress, whether it relates to form, material, or cleanliness. I have lately observed a very handsome turban, which seems worn both by the Mohammedans and Hindus, of red muslin, with gold borders, which is an improvement. A taste for flowers seems universal, plants in pots being continually to be seen on the ledges of the porticoes and verandahs; these are sometimes intermingled with less tasteful ornaments, and few things have struck me as more incongruous than a plaster bust of a modern English author, perched upon the top of a balustrade over the portico of a house in the bazaar; mustachios have been painted above the mouth, the head has been dissevered from the shoulders, and is now stuck upon one side in the most grotesque manner possible, looking down with half-tipsy gravity, the attitude and the expression of the countenance favouring the idea, upon the strange groups thus oddly brought into juxta-position. The exhibition is a droll one; but it always gives me a painful feeling: I do not like to see the effigy of a time-honoured sage abased. The statue of Lord Cornwallis, on the Esplanade--which, being surrounded by sculptured animals, not, I think, in good taste, might be mistaken for Van Amburgh and his beasts--is close to a spot apparently chosen as a hackney-coach stand, every kind of the inferior descriptions of native vehicles being to be found there in waiting. Some of the bullock-carriages have rather a classical air, and might, with a little brushing up and decoration, emulate the ancient triumphal car. They are usually dirty and shabby, but occasionally we see one that makes a good picture. The bullocks that draw it are milk-white, and have the hanging dewlap, which adds so greatly to the appearance of the animal; the horns are painted blue, and the forehead is adorned with a frontlet of large purple glass beads, while bouquets of flowers are stuck on either side of the head, after the manner of the rosettes worn by the horses in Europe. A very small pair of milk-white bullocks, attached to a carriage of corresponding dimensions, merely containing a seat for two persons, is a picturesque and convenient vehicle, which will rattle along the roads at a very good pace. These bullocks usually have bells attached to their harness, which keep up a perpetual and not disagreeable jingle. The distances between the European houses are so great, and the horses able to do so little work, that it seems a pity that bullocks should not be deemed proper animals to harness to a shigram belonging to the _saib logue_: but fashion will not admit the adoption of so convenient a means of paying morning visits, and thus sparing the horses for the evening drive. Great complaints are made about the high price and the inferiority of the horses purchaseable in Bombay, a place in which the Arab is not so much esteemed as I had expected. Some difficulty was experienced in obtaining very fine specimens of this far-famed race for the Queen, who gave a commission for them. I had the pleasure of seeing four that are going home in the _Paget_, destined for her Majesty's stables. The Imaum of Muscat lately sent a present of horses to Bombay, but they were not of high caste; those I have mentioned, as intended for the Queen, being of a much finer breed. They are beautiful creatures, and are to be put under the care of an English groom, who has the charge of some English horses purchased in London for a native Parsee gentleman. From the extent of the Arab stables, and the number of Arab horse-merchants in Bombay, it would appear easy to have the choice of the finest specimens; but this is not the case, while various circumstances have combined to reduce the numbers of native horses, which were formerly readily procurable. Thus, the fine breed of Kattywar is not now attainable, and the same value does not appear to be set upon horses from Kutch and the Deccan, which in other parts of India are esteemed to be so serviceable. Persian horses are little prized; and those imported from England, though very showy and handsome, will not do much work in this climate, and are therefore only suited to rich people, who can keep them for display. The stud-horses bred near Poonah do not come into the market so freely as in the Bengal presidency, where they are easily procurable, and are sought after as buggy and carriage horses. Old residents, I am told, prefer the Arabs, the good qualities of these celebrated steeds requiring long acquaintance to be justly appreciated, while persons new to the country can see nothing but faults in them. A novel feature in Bombay, to persons who have only visited the other side of India, is found in the hay-stack, the people having discovered the advantage of cutting and drying the grass for future use. Immense numbers of carts, drawn by bullocks and loaded with hay, come every day into the island; this hay is stacked in large enclosures built for the purpose, and can be purchased in any quantity. There are large open spaces, near tanks or wells, on the road-side, which give the idea of a hay-market; the carts being drawn up, and the patient bullock, always an accompaniment to an Indian rural scene, unyoked, reposing on the ground. The drivers, apparently, do not seek the shelter of a roof, but kindle their cooking-fires on the flats on the opposite side of the road, and sleep at night under the shelter of their carts. The causeway which unites the island of Bombay with its neighbour, Salsette, affords a safe and convenient road, greatly facilitating the carriage of supplies of various kinds necessary for the consumption of so populous a place. The villagers at Metunga, and other places, make as much hay as their fields will supply for their own use, and have hit upon a singular method of stacking it. They choose some large tree, and lodge the hay in its branches, which thus piled up, assumes the appearance of an immense bee-hive. This precaution is taken to preserve the crop from the depredations of cattle, and, if more troublesome, is less expensive than fencing it round. From the miserably lean condition of many of the unfortunate animals, which their Hindu masters worship and starve, it would appear that, notwithstanding its seeming abundance, they are very scantily supplied with hay. It is a pity that some agriculturist does not suggest the expedience of feeding them upon fish, which, as they are cleanly animals, they would eat while fresh. CHAPTER XII. * * * * * BOMBAY--(_Continued_). * * * * * The Climate of Bombay treacherous in the cold season--The land-wind injurious to health--The Air freely admitted into Rooms--The Climate of the Red Sea not injurious to Silk dresses--Advice to lady-passengers on the subject of dress--The Shops of Bombay badly provided--Speculations on the site of the City, should the seat of Government be removed hither--The Esplanade--Exercise of Sailors on Shore and on Ship-board--Mock-fight--Departure of Sir Henry Fane--Visit to a fair in Mahim Wood--Prophecy--Shrine of Mugdooree Sahib--Description of the Fair--Visit to the mansion of a Moonshee--His Family--Crowds of Vehicles returning from the Fair--Tanks--Festival of the _Duwallee_--Visit to a Parsee--Singular ceremony--The Women of India impede the advance of improvement--They oppose every departure from established rules--Effect of Education in Bombay yet superficial--Cause of the backwardness of Native Education. Every day's experience of the climate of Bombay assures me that, in what is called the cold season, at least, it is the most treacherous in the world; and that, moreover, its dangers are not sufficiently guarded against by the inhabitants. Cold weather, such as takes place during the period from November to March, in all parts of Bengal, is not felt here, the days being more or less sultry, and tempered only by cold, piercing winds. The land-wind, which blows alternately with the sea-breezes, comes fraught with all the influences most baneful to health; cramps, rheumatic pains, even head-aches and indigestion, brought on by cold, are the consequences to susceptible persons of exposure to this wind, either during the day or the night: so severe and so manifold are the pains and aches which attend it, that I feel strongly inclined to believe that Bombay, and not "the vexed Bermoothes," was the island of Prospero, and that the plagues showered upon Caliban still remain. Though the progress of acclimation can scarcely fail to be attended by danger to life or limb, the process, when completed, seems to be very effectual, since little or no pains are taken by the old inhabitants to guard against the evil. Some of the withdrawing-rooms of Bombay are perfectly open at either end, and though the effect is certainly beautiful--a charming living landscape of wood and water, framed in by the pillars at the angles of the chamber--yet it is enjoyed at too great a risk. Dining-rooms are frequently nearly as much exposed, the aim of everybody apparently being to admit as great a quantity of air as possible, no matter from what point of the compass it blows. Strangers, therefore, however guarded they may be in their own apartments, can never emerge from them without incurring danger, and it is only by clothing themselves more warmly than can be at all reconciled with comfort, that they can escape from rheumatic or other painful attacks. These land-winds are also very destructive to the goods and chattels exposed to them; desks are warped and will not shut, leather gloves and shoes become so dry that they shrink and divide, while all unseasoned wood is speedily split across. It is said that the hot weather is never so fierce in Bombay as in Bengal, the sea-breezes, which sometimes blow very strongly, and are not so injurious as those from the land, affording a daily relief. It may be necessary, for the advantage of succeeding travellers, to say that, in passing down the Red Sea, in the autumn and winter months, no danger need be apprehended from the effects of the climate upon coloured silks. It was not possible for me to burthen myself with tin cases, and I was obliged to put my wearing apparel, ribbons, &c, into portmanteaus, with no other precaution than a wrapper of brown paper. Nothing, however, was injured, and satin dresses previously worn came out as fresh as possible: a circumstance which never happens in the voyage round the Cape. And now, while upon the subject of dress, I will further say, that it is advisable for ladies to bring out with them to Bombay every thing they can possibly want, since the shops, excepting immediately after the arrival of a ship, are very poorly provided, while the packs, for few have attained to the dignity of tin boxes, brought about by the hawkers, contain the most wretched assortment of goods imaginable. The moment, therefore, that the cargo of a vessel hag been purchased by the retail dealers, all that is really elegant or fashionable is eagerly purchased, and the rejected articles, even should they be equally excellent, when once consigned to the dingy precincts of a Bombay shop, lose all their lustre. The most perfect bonnet that Maradan ever produced, if once gibbeted in one of Muncherjee's glass-cases, could never be worn by a lady of the slightest pretensions. Goods to the amount of £300 were sold in one morning, it is said, in the above-mentioned worthy's shop, and those who were unable to pay it a visit on the day of the opening of the cases, must either content themselves with the leavings, or wait the arrival of another ship. It is but justice to Miss Lyndsay, the English milliner, to say that she always appears to be well provided; but as her establishment is the only one of the kind in Bombay, there must necessarily be a sameness in the patterns of the articles made up. The want of variety is the evil most strongly felt in Anglo-Indian toilets; and, therefore, in preparing investments, large numbers of the same pieces of silk ribbons should be avoided, nobody liking to appear in a general uniform, or livery. The stoppage of the China trade has cut off one abundant source of supply, of which the ladies of Bombay were wise enough to avail themselves. It is difficult now to procure a morsel of China silk in the shops, and there appears to be little chance of any goods of the kind coming into the market, until the present differences between Great Britain and the Celestial Empire shall be adjusted. With the exception of the common and trifling articles brought about by hawkers, every thing that is wanted for an Anglo-Indian establishment must be sent for to the Fort, from which many of the houses are situated, four, five, or six miles. As there are populous villages at Bycullah, Mazagong, &c, it seems strange that no European bazaars have been established at these intermediate places for the convenience of the inhabitants, who, with the exception of a few fowls, do not usually keep much in the way of a farmyard. With an increase in the number of inhabitants, of course shops would start up in the most eligible situations, and should the anticipated change take place, and Bombay become the seat of the Supreme Government, the demands of the new establishment would no doubt be speedily supplied. It is impossible, however idle the speculation may be, not to busy the mind with fancies concerning the site of the city which it is supposed would arise in the event of the Governor-general being instructed to take up his abode at Bombay. The Esplanade has been mentioned as the most probable place, although in building over this piece of ground the island would, in a great measure, be deprived of its lungs, and the enjoyment of that free circulation of air, which appears to be so essential to the existence of Anglo-Indians, who seem to require the whole expanse of heaven in order to breathe with freedom. The happy medium between the want of air and its excess will not answer the demand, and accordingly the Esplanade, no matter how strongly the wind blows, is a favourite resort. Although its general features are unattractive, it occasionally presents a very animated scene; the review of the troops in the garrison is seen to great advantage, and forms a spectacle always interesting and imposing. This mustering of the troops is occasionally varied by military exercises of a more novel nature. The sailors of the flag-ship are brought on shore, for the purpose of perfecting themselves in the manual and platoon exercise, and in the performance of such military evolutions as would enable them to co-operate successfully with a land force, or to act alone with greater efficiency upon any emergency. Though not possessing much skill in military affairs, I was pleased with the ease and precision with which they executed the different movements, their steadiness in marching, and the promptness with which the line was dressed. They brought field-pieces on shore with them, which, according to my poor judgment, were admirably worked. These parades were the more interesting, in consequence of the expected war with China, a war in which the sailors of the _Wellesley_ will, no doubt, be actively engaged. I had also an opportunity of witnessing from the deck of that vessel, when accompanying the Governor's party on board, the manoeuvring of the ship's boats while landing a force. The mock fight was carried on with great spirit, and the most beautiful effect; the flashing from the guns in the bows of the boats and the musketry, amid the exquisite blue smoke issuing from the smaller species of artillery, producing fire-works which, in my opinion, could not be excelled by any of the most elaborate construction. The features of the landscape, no doubt, assisted to heighten the effect of the scene--a back-ground of lovely purple islands--a sea, like glass, calmly, brightly, beautifully blue--and the flotilla of boats, grouped as a painter would group them, and carrying on a running fire, which added much to the animation of their evolutions, the smoke occasionally enveloping the whole in vapour, and then showing the eager forms of men, as it rolled off in silvery clouds towards the distant hills. As I gazed upon this armament, and upon the palm-woods that fringed the shore, I could not help calling to mind the lawless doings of the buccaneers of old, and the terror spread through towns and villages by the appearance of a fleet of boats, manned by resolute crews, and armed with the most deadly weapons of destruction. The sight realized also the descriptions given in modern novels of the capture of towns, and I could easily imagine the great excitement which would lead daring men to the execution of deeds, almost incredible to those who have never felt their spirits stirred and their arms nerved by danger, close, imminent, and only to be mastered by the mightiest efforts. When any _tamasha_, as the natives call it, is going on upon the Esplanade, near the beach, they add very considerably to the effect of the scene, by grouping themselves upon the bales of cotton, piled near the wharf for exportation: those often appear to be a mass of human beings, so thickly are they covered with eager gazers. Upon the occasion of the departure of Sir Henry Fane to England, there appeared to be a general turn-out of the whole of Bombay, and the effect was impressive and striking. The road down to the Bunder, or place of embarkation, was lined with soldiers, the bands of the different regiments playing while the _cortège_ passed. All the ladies made their appearance in open carriages, while the gentlemen mounted on horseback, and joined the cavalcade. A large party of native gentlemen assembled on foot at the Bunder, for the purpose of showing a last mark of respect to a distinguished officer, about to leave the country for ever. Sir Henry, accompanied by his staff, but all in plain clothes, drove down the road in a barouche, attended by an escort of cavalry, and seemed to be much affected by the tokens of esteem which he received on every hand. He left the shore amidst the waving of handkerchiefs, and a salute of seventeen guns, and would have been greeted with hearty cheers, did military discipline allow of such manifestation of the feelings. Sights and scenes like these will, of course, always attract numerous spectators, while on the evenings in which the band plays, there is a fair excuse for making the Esplanade the object of the drive; but Bombay affords so many avenues possessing much greater beauty, that I am always delighted when I can diversify the scene by a visit to places not nearly so much in request, but which are to me infinitely more interesting, as developing some charm of nature, or displaying the habits and manners of the people of the country. With these views and feelings, I was much pleased at receiving an invitation to accompany some friends to a fair held in Mahim Wood--that sea of palm-trees, which I had often looked down upon from Chintapootzlee Hill with so much pleasure. The fair was held, as is usual in oriental countries, in honour of a saint, whose canonized bones rest beneath a tomb apparently of no great antiquity, but which the people, who are not the best chronologists in the world, fancy to be of very ancient date. The name of the celebrated person thus enshrined was Mugdooree Sahib, a devotee, who added the gift of prophecy to his other high qualifications, and amongst other things has predicted that, when the town shall join the wood, Bombay shall be no more. The accomplishment of what in his days must have appeared very unlikely ever to take place--namely, the junction of inhabited dwellings with the trees of Mahim--seems to be in rapid course of fulfilment; the land has been drained, many portions formerly impassable filled up, and rendered solid ground, while the houses are extending so fast, that the Burruh Bazaar will in no very long period, in all probability, extend to Mahim. Those who attach some faith to the prophecy, yet are unwilling to believe that evil and not good will befal the "rising presidency," are of opinion that some change of name will take place when it shall be made the seat of the Supreme Government: thus the saint's credit will be saved, and no misfortune happen to the good town of Bombay. The superstitious of all persuasions, the Christians perhaps excepted--though many of the Portuguese Christians have little more than the name--unite in showing reverence to the shrine of the saint, while Mugdooree Sahib is held quite as much in estimation by the Hindus as by the followers of he own corrupted creed, the Mohammedans of Bombay being by no means orthodox. Many respectable natives have built houses for themselves at Mahim, on purpose to have a place for their families during the time of the fair, while others hire houses or lodgings, for which they will pay as much as twenty rupees for the few days that it lasts. A delightful drive brought us to the confines of the wood; the whole way along, we passed one continuous string of bullock-carriages, filled with people of all tribes and castes, while others, who could not afford this mode of conveyance, were seen in groups, trudging on foot, leading their elder children, and carrying their younger in their arms. The road wound very prettily through the wood, which at every turn presented some charming bits of forest scenery, shown to great advantage in the crimson light of evening, which, as it faded, produced those wild, shadowy illusions, which lend enchantment to every view. Parasitical plants, climbing up the trunks of many of the trees, and flinging themselves in rich garlands from bough to bough, relieved the monotony of the tall, straight palm-trees, and produced delicious green recesses, the dearest charm of woodland scenery. I have frequently felt a strong desire to dwell under the shade of forest boughs, for there is something in that sylvan kind of life so redolent of the hunter's merry horn, the mating song of birds, and the gurgling of secret rills, as to possess indescribable charms to a lover of the picturesque. Now, however, experience in sober realities having dispelled the illusions of romance, I should choose a cottage in some cleared space by the wood-side, though at this dry season of the year, and mid the perpetual sunshine of its skies, the heart of Mahim Wood would form a very agreeable residence. The first house we came to was very comfortable, and almost English in its appearance; a small, neat mansion, with its little court-yard before it, such as we should not be surprised to see in some old-fashioned country village at home. Straggling huts on either side brought us to the principal street of Mahim, and here we found the houses lighted, and lamps suspended, in imitation of bunches of grapes, before all that were ambitious of making a good appearance. After passing the shops belonging to the village--the grain-sellers, the pan-sellers, and other venders of articles in common demand--we came to a series of booths, exactly resembling those used for the same purpose in England, and well supplied with both native and foreign products. The display was certainly much greater than any I had expected to see. Some of the shops were filled with French, English, and Dutch toys; others with China and glass ornaments; then came one filled with coloured glass bangles, and every kind of native ornament in talc and tinsel, all set off with a profusion of lights. Instead of gingerbread, there were immense quantities of _metai_, or sweetmeats, of different shapes and forms, and various hues; sugar rock-work, pink, white, and yellow, with all sorts and descriptions of cakes. The carriage moved slowly through the crowd, and at length, finding it inconvenient to proceed farther in it, we alighted. Our party had come to Mahim upon the invitation of a very respectable moonshee, who had his country-house there, and who was anxious to do the honours of the fair to the English strangers, my friends, like myself, being rather new to Bombay. We met the old gentleman at an opening in the village, leading to the tomb of the saint, and his offer to conduct us to the sacred shrine formed a farther inducement to leave the carriage, and venture through the crowd on foot. The tomb, which was strongly illuminated, proved to be a white-washed building, having a dome in the centre, and four minarets, one at each angle, standing in a small enclosure, the walls of which were also newly white-washed, and approached by a flight of steps, leading into a portico. Upon either side of the avenue from the village were seated multitudes of men and women, who, if not beggars by profession, made no scruple to beg on this occasion. I felt at first sorry that I had neglected to bring any money with me, but when I saw the crowd of applicants, whom it would have been impossible to satisfy, and recollected that my liberality would doubtless have been attributed to faith in the virtues of the saint, I no longer regretted the omission. The steps of the tomb were lined with these beggars, all vociferating at once, while other religious characters were singing with all the power of their lungs, and a native band, stationed in the verandah of the tomb, were at the same time making the most hideous discord by the help of all kinds of diabolical instruments. Having a magistrate of our party, we were well protected by the police, who, without using any rudeness, kept the people off. So far from being uncivil, the natives seemed pleased to see us at the fair, and readily made way, until we came to the entrance of the chamber in which, under a sarcophagus, the body of the saint was deposited. Here we were told that we could proceed no farther, unless we consented to take off our shoes, a ceremony with which we did not feel disposed to comply, especially as we could see all that the chamber contained through the open door, and had no intention to pay homage to the saint. The sarcophagus, according to custom, was covered with a rich pall, and the devout pressed forward to lay their offerings upon it. These offerings consisted of money, cloths, grain, fruit, &c. nothing coming amiss, the priests of the temple being quite ready to take the gifts which the poorest could bestow. The beggars in the porch were more clamorous than ever, the _maam sahibs_ being especially entreated to bestow their charity. Having satisfied my curiosity, I was glad to get away into the fair, where I found many things more interesting. Convenient spaces in the wood were filled with merry-go-rounds, swings, and other locomotive machinery, of precisely the same description as those exhibited in England, and which I had seen in Hyde Park at the fair held there, in honour of Queen Victoria. Mahim Wood boasted no theatres or wild-beast shows, neither were we treated with the sight of giants or dwarfs; but there was no want of booths for the purpose of affording refreshment. One of these _cafés_, the front of which was entirely open, was most brilliantly illuminated, and filled with numerous tables, covered with a multitude of good things. That it was expected to be the resort of English guests was apparent, from an inscription painted in white letters, rather askew, upon a black board, to the following effect: "Tea, Coffee, and Pastry-House." We were invited to enter this splendid establishment by the moonshee, who had evidently ordered a refection to be prepared for the occasion. Being unwilling to disappoint the old gentleman, we took the seats offered to us, and ate the cakes, and drank the coffee, presented by some respectable-looking Parsees, the owners of the shop, which they had taken pains to set off in the European style. Although the natives of India will not eat with us, as they know that we do not scruple to partake of food prepared for their tables, they are mortified and disappointed at any refusal to taste the good things set before us; the more we eat, the greater being the compliment. I was consequently obliged to convey away some of the cakes in my handkerchief, to avoid the alternatives of making myself ill or of giving offence. When we were sufficiently rested and refreshed, we followed the moonshee to his mansion. The moon was at the full, and being at this time well up, lighted us through the less thronged avenues of the village, these tangled lanes, with the exception of a few candles, having no other illumination. Here, seated in corners upon the ground, were the more humble traders of the fair, venders of fruit, the larger kind being divided into slices for the convenience of poor customers. In one spot, a group of dissipated characters were assembled round bottles and drinking-vessels (of which the contents bore neither the colour nor the smell of sherbet), who were evidently determined to make a night of it over the fermented juice of the palm. From what I have seen, I am inclined to believe sobriety to be as rare a virtue in Bombay as in London; toddy-shops appear to be greatly upon the increase, and certainly in every direction there are already ample means of gratifying a love of spirituous liquors. In other places, the usual occupation of frying fish was going on, while a taste for sweet things might be gratified by confectionary of an ordinary description compared with that exhibited in the shops. As we receded from the fair, the bright illumination in the distance, the twinkling lights in the fore-ground, dimly revealing dusky figures cowering round their fires, and the dark depths of the wood beyond, with now and then a gleam of moonshine streaming on its tangled paths, made up a landscape roll of scenic effects. Getting deeper and deeper into the wood, we came at last to a small modest mansion, standing in the corner of a garden, and shadowed by palm-trees, through which the moon-beams chequered our path. We did not enter the house, contenting ourselves with seats in the verandah, where the children of our host, his wife or wives not making their appearance, were assembled. The elder boys addressed us in very good English, and were, the moonshee told us, well acquainted with the Guzerattee and Mahratta languages; he had also bestowed an education upon his daughters, who were taught to read in the vernacular. The old man told us that he was born in Mahim Wood at the time of the festival, and, though a Hindu, had had the name of Mugdooree, that of the saint, bestowed upon him, for a good omen. Having a great affection for his native place, he had, as soon as he could command the means, built the house which we now saw, and in which he always resided during the fair, which was called _oories_, or the Mugdooree Sahib's _oories_, at Mahim. After sitting some time with the old man, and admiring the effect of the moonlight among the palm-trees, we rose to depart. In taking leave of the spot, I could not repress a wish to see it under a different aspect, although it required very slight aid from fancy to picture it as it would appear in the rains, with mildew in the drip of those pendant palm branches, green stagnant pools in every hollow, toads crawling over the garden paths, and snakes lurking beneath every stone. Returning to the place in which we had left the carriage, we found the fair more crowded than ever, the numbers of children, if possible, exceeding those to be seen at English places of resort of the same nature. The upper rooms of the superior houses, many of which seemed to be large and handsome, were well lighted and filled with company, many of the most respectable amongst the Hindus, Mohammedans, and Parsees, repairing to Mahim, to recreate themselves during the festival. The shops had put on even a gayer appearance, and though there was no rich merchandize to be seen, the character of the meeting being merely that of a rustic fair, I was greatly surprised by the elegance of some of the commodities, and the taste of their arrangement. It was evident that all the purchasers must be native, and consequently I could not help feeling some astonishment at the large quantities of expensive European toys with which whole booths were filled. Dolls, which were to me a novelty in my late visit to Paris, with real hair dressed in the newest fashion, were abundant; and so were those excellent representations of animals from Germany, known by the name of "Barking toys." The price of these things, demanded of our party at least, was high. I had wished to possess myself of something as a remembrance of this fair, but as the old moonshee was the only individual amongst us who carried any money about him, I did not like him to become my banker on this occasion, lest he should not permit me to pay him again, and I should by this means add to the disbursements already made upon our account. Upon leaving the fair, we found some difficulty in steering our way through the bullock-carriages which almost blocked up the road, and as we drove along the grand thoroughfare towards Girgaum, a populous portion of the native town, the visitants seemed to increase; cart followed upon cart in quick succession, all the bullocks in Bombay, numerous as they are, appearing to have been mustered for the occasion. In the different drives which I have taken through the island, I have come upon several fine tanks, enclosed by solid masonry of dark-coloured stone; but, with the exception, in some instances, of one or two insignificant pillars or minarets, they are destitute of those architectural ornaments which add so much splendour to the same works in Bengal. The broad flights of steps, the richly decorated temple, or the range of small pagodas, so frequently to be seen by the side of the tanks and bowlies in other parts of India, are here unknown; the more ancient native buildings which I have yet examined being, comparatively speaking, of a mean and paltry description, while all the handsome modern houses are built after the European manner. There is one feature, however, with which I am greatly pleased--the perpetual recurrence of seats and ledges made in the walls which enclose gentlemen's gardens and grounds, or run along the roads, and which seem to be intended as places of repose for the wayfarer, or as a rest to his burthen. It is always agreeable to see needful accommodation afforded to the poor and to the stranger; public benefits, however trifling, displaying liberality of mind in those who can give consideration to the wants and feelings of multitudes from whom they can hope for no return. These seats frequently occur close to the gate of some spacious dwelling, and may be supposed to be intended for the servants and dependants of the great man, or those who wait humbly on the outside of his mansion; but they as frequently are found upon the high roads, or by the side of wells and tanks. The festival of the _Duwallee_ has taken place since my arrival in Bombay, and though I have seen it celebrated before, and more splendidly in one particular--namely, the illuminations--I never had the same opportunity of witnessing other circumstances connected with ceremonies performed at the opening of the new year of the Hindus. When I speak of the superiority of the illuminations, I allude to their taste and effect; there were plenty of lights in Bombay, but they were differently disposed, and did not mark the outline of the buildings in the beautiful manner which prevails upon the other side of India, every person lighting up his own house according to his fancy. Upon the eve of the new year, while driving through the bazaar, we saw preparations for the approaching festival; many of the houses were well garnished with lamps, the shops were swept and put into order, and the horns of the bullocks were garlanded with flowers, while fire-works, and squibs and crackers, were going off in all directions. On the following evening, I went with a party of friends, by invitation, to the house of a native gentleman, a Parsee merchant of old family and great respectability, and as we reached the steps of his door, a party of men came up with sticks in their hands, answering to our old English morice-dancers. These men were well clad in white dresses, with flowers stuck in their turbans; they formed a circle somewhat resembling the figure of _moulinet_, but without joining hands, the inner party striking their sticks as they danced round against those on the outer ring, and all joining in a rude but not unmusical chorus. The gestures of these men, though wild, were neither awkward nor uncouth, the sticks keeping excellent time with the song and with the action of their feet. After performing sundry evolutions, and becoming nearly out of breath, they desisted, and called upon the spectators to reward their exertions. Having received a present, they went into the court-yard of the next mansion, which belonged to one of the richest native merchants in Bombay, and there renewed their dance. We found in the drawing-room of our host's house a large company assembled. The upper end was covered with a white cloth, and all round, seated on the floor against the walls, were grave-looking Parsees, many being of advanced years. They had their books and ledgers open before them, the ceremony about to be commenced consisting of the blessing or consecration of the account-books, in order to secure prosperity for the ensuing year. The officiating priests were brahmins, the custom and the festival--of which Lacshmee, the goddess of wealth, is the patroness--being purely Hindu. The Parsees of India, sole remnant of the ancient fire-worshippers, have sadly degenerated from that pure faith held by their forefathers, and for which they became fugitives and exiles. What persecution failed to accomplish, kindness has effected, and their religion has been corrupted by the taint of Hinduism, in consequence of their long and friendly intercourse with the people, who permitted them to dwell in their land, and to take their daughters in marriage. Incense was burning on a tripod placed upon the floor, and the priests muttering prayers, which sounded very like incantations, ever and anon threw some new perfume upon the charcoal, which produced what our friend Dousterswivel would call a "suffumigation." These preliminaries over, they caused each person to write a few words in the open book before him, and then threw upon the leaves a portion of grain. After this had been distributed, they made the circle again, and threw gold leaf upon the volumes; then came spices and betel-nut, cut in small pieces, and lastly flowers, and a profusion of the red powder (_abeer_) so lavishly employed in Hindu festivals. More incense was burned, and the ceremony concluded, the merchants rising and congratulating each other. Formerly, when our host was a more wealthy man than, in consequence of sundry misfortunes, he is at present, he was in the habit of disbursing Rs. 10,000 in gifts upon this day: everybody that came to the house receiving something. The custom of blessing the books, after the Hindu manner, will in all probability shortly decline among the Parsees, the younger portion being already of opinion that it is a vain and foolish ceremony, borrowed from strangers; and, indeed, the elders of the party were at some pains to convince me that they merely complied with it in consequence of a stipulation entered into with the Hindus, when they granted them an asylum, to observe certain forms and ceremonies connected with their customs, assuring me that they did not place any reliance upon the favour of the goddess, looking only for the blessing of God to prosper their undertakings. This declaration, however, was somewhat in contradiction to one circumstance, which I omitted to mention, namely, that before the assembled Parsees rose from the floor, they permitted the officiating brahmins to mark their foreheads with the symbol of the goddess, thus virtually admitting her supremacy. The lamps were then lighted, and we were presented with the usual offering of bouquets of roses, plentifully bedewed with _goolabee pánee_, or the distilled tears of the flower, to speak poetically; and having admired the children of the family, who were brought out in their best dresses and jewels, took our leave. The ladies, the married daughters and daughters-in-law of our host, did not make their appearance upon this occasion; for, though not objecting to be seen in public, they are not fond of presenting themselves in their own houses before strangers. It is the women of India who are at this moment impeding the advance of improvement; they have hitherto been so ill-educated, their minds left so entirely uncultivated, that they have had nothing to amuse or interest them excepting the ceremonies of their religion, and the customs with which it is encumbered. These, notwithstanding that many are inconvenient, and others entail much suffering, they are unwilling to relinquish. Every departure from established rule, which their male relatives deem expedient, they resolutely oppose, employing the influence which women, however contemned as the weaker vessel, always do possess, and always will exert, in perpetuating all the evils resulting from ignorance. The sex will ever be found active either in advancing or retarding great changes, and whether this activity be employed for good or for evil, depends upon the manner in which their intellectual faculties have been trained and cultivated. It appears to me that, although education is making great progress in Bombay, all it has yet accomplished of good appears upon the surface, it not having yet wrought any radical change in the feelings and opinions of the people, or, excepting in few instances, directing their pursuits to new objects. I give this opinion, however, with great diffidence--merely as an impression which a longer residence in Bombay may remove; meanwhile, I lose no opportunity of acquainting myself with the native community, and I hope to gather some interesting information relative to the probable effects of the system now adopting at the different national schools. As far as I can judge, a little of Uncle Jonathan's fervour in progressing is wanting here; neither the Anglo-Indian or native residents seem to manifest the slightest inclination to "go ahead;" and while they complain loudly of the apathy evinced at home to all that concerns their advantage and prosperity, are quite content to drowze over their old _dustoors_ (customs), and make no attempt to direct the public attention in England to subjects of real importance. Though unwilling to indulge in premature remarks, these are pressed upon me by the general complaints which I hear upon all sides; but though everybody seems to lament the evil, no one exerts himself to effect a remedy, and while much is talked of individually, little is done by common consent. One great bar to improvement consists, I am told, of the voluminous nature of the reports upon all subjects, which are heaped together until they become so hopelessly bulky, that nobody can be prevailed upon to wade through them. In England, at all public meetings, a great deal of time and breath are wasted in superfluous harangues; but these can only effect the remote mischief threatened by Mr. Babbage, and produce earthquakes and other convulsions in distant lands, in distant centuries; whereas the foolscap is a present and a weighty evil, and has probably swamped more systems of improvement, and more promising institutions, than any other enemy, however active. The intellectual community of India seems yet to have to learn the advantage of placing all that relates to it in a clear, succinct, and popular form, and of bringing works before the British public which will entertain as well as instruct, and lead those who are employed in legislating for our Eastern territories to inquire more deeply into those subjects which so materially affect its political, moral, and commercial prosperity. FINIS. 
12930	----	gallica (Bibliothèque nationale de France) at http://gallica.bnf.fr PUBLICATIONS OF THE SCOTTISH HISTORY SOCIETY, VOLUME XXXVI LAUDER OF FOUNTAINHALL'S JOURNALS MAY 1900 [Illustration: LORD FOUNTAINHALL.] JOURNALS OF SIR JOHN LAUDER LORD FOUNTAINHALL WITH HIS OBSERVATIONS ON PUBLIC AFFAIRS AND OTHER MEMORANDA 1665-1676 Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by DONALD CRAWFORD Sheriff of Aberdeen, Kincardine, and Banff [Illustration: SIR JOHN LAUDER, FIRST BARONET. (Lord Fountainhall's Father.)] CONTENTS INTRODUCTION JOURNALS:-- I Journal in France, 1665-1667, II 1. Notes of Journeys in London. Oxford, and Scotland, 1667-1670, 2. Notes of Journeys in Scotland, 1671-1672, 3. Chronicle of events connected with the Court of Session, 1668-1676, 4. Observations on Public Affairs, 1669-1670, III APPENDIX i. Accounts, 1670-1675, ii. Catalogue of Books, 1667-1679, iii. Letter of Lauder to his Son, PORTRAITS I. LORD FOUNTAINHALL II. SIR JOHN LAUDER, first Baronet, Lord Fountainhall's father III. JANET RAMSAY, first wife of Lord Fountainhall IV. SIR ANDREW RAMSAY, Lord Abbotshall All reproduced from pictures in the possession of Lady Anne Dick Lauder. INTRODUCTION THE MANUSCRIPTS There are here printed two manuscripts by Sir John Lauder, Lord Fountainhall, and portions of another. The first[1] is a kind of journal, though it was not written up day by day, containing a narrative of his journey to France and his residence at Orleans and Poictiers, when he was sent abroad by his father at the age of nineteen to study law in foreign schools in preparation for the bar. It also includes an account of his expenses during the whole period of his absence from Scotland. The second,[2] though a small volume, contains several distinct portions. There are narratives of visits to London and Oxford on his way home from abroad, his journey returning to Scotland, and some short expeditions in Scotland in the immediately following years, observations on public affairs in 1669- 70, and a chronicle of events connected with the Court of Session from 1668 to 1676; also at the other end of the volume some accounts of expenses. The third[3] may be described as a commonplace book, for the most part written during the first years of his practice at the bar and his early married life, but it also contains some notes of travel in Fife, the Lothians, and the Merse in continuation of those in MS. H., and a list of the books which he bought and their prices, brought down to a late period of his life. These manuscripts have been kindly made available to the Scottish History Society by the owners. The first is in the Library of the University of Edinburgh. The second is the property of the late Sir William Fraser's trustees. The third has been lent by Sir Thomas North Dick Lauder, Fountainhall's descendant and representative. [1] Referred to as MS. X. [2] Marked by Fountainhall H. [3] Marked by Fountainhall K. It was Lord Fountainhalls practice, during his whole life, to record in notebooks public events, and his observations upon them, legal decisions, and private memoranda. He kept several series of notebooks concurrently with great diligence and method. In all of those which have been preserved there is more or less matter of value to the student of history. But at his death his library was sold by public auction. The MSS. were dispersed, though their existence and value was known to some of his contemporaries.[4] Some are lost, in particular the series of _Historical Observes_, 1660-1680, which, judging from the sequel, which has been preserved and printed by the Bannatyne Club, would have been of great value. According to tradition the greater part of what has been recovered was found in a snuff-shop by Mr. Crosby the lawyer, the supposed original of Scott's Pleydell, and purchased at the sale of his books after his death by the Faculty of Advocates.[5] [4] Preface to Forbes's _Journal of the Session_, Edinburgh, 1714. [5] MS. Genealogical Roll of the Family of Lauder by the late Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, in possession of Sir T.N. Dick Lauder. Eight volumes came into the possession of the Faculty of Advocates, and under their auspices two folio volumes of legal decisions from 1678 to 1712 were published in 1759 and 1761.[6] In 1837 the Bannatyne Club printed _The Historical Observes_, 1680-1686, a complete MS. in the Advocates' Library, and in 1848 they printed two volumes of _Historical Notices_, 1661-1688. These are after 1678 selections from the same MSS. from which the folio of 1759 was compiled, and the additions to the text of the folio are not numerous, though the historical matter, which was buried among the legal decisions, is presented in a more convenient form. But from 1661 to 1678 (about half of vol. i.) and especially from 1670 (for the previous entries occupy only a few pages) the notices are all new and many of them of considerable interest. In printing these volumes, which I believe are acknowledged to contain some of the best material for the history of Scotland at the time, the Bannatyne Club carried out a design which had been long cherished by the late Sir Thomas Dick Lauder,[7] though he did not live to see its complete fulfilment, and he was helped in his efforts by Sir Walter Scott. The story[8] is worth telling more fully than has yet been done. In the winter of 1813-14 Sir Thomas, then a young man, met Sir Walter at a dinner-party. Sir Walter expressed his regret 'that something had not been done towards publishing the curious matter in Lord Fountainhall's MSS.,'[9] and urged Sir Thomas to undertake the task. In 1815 Sir Thomas wrote to Scott asking about a box in the Advocates' Library believed to contain MSS. of Fountainhalls. Sir Walter replied as follows:-- [6] See Mr. David Laing's Preface to the _Historical Notices_, p. xx, Bannatyne Club. [7] Author of _The Moray Floods, The Wolf of Badenoch_, and other well-known books. [8] The original correspondence was bound up by Sir Thomas in a volume along with Mylne's book (see _infra_), and is in the possession of Sir T.N. Dick Lauder. [9] Letter, Sir T.D. Lauder to Sir W. Scott, 22nd May 1822, _infra_. 'Dear Sir,--I am honoured with your letter, and should have been particularly happy in an opportunity of being useful in assisting a compleat edition of Lord Fountainhall's interesting manuscripts. But I do not know of any in the Advocates' Library but those which you mention. I think it likely I may have mentioned that a large chest belonging to the family of another great Scottish lawyer, Sir James Skene of Curriehill, was in our Library and had never been examined. But I could only have been led to speak of this from the similarity of the subject, not from supposing that any of Lord Fountainhall's papers could possibly be deposited there. I am very glad to hear you are busying yourself with a task which will throw most important light upon the history of Scotland, and am, with regard, dear sir, your most obedt. servant, 'WALTER SCOTT. '_Edinr., 19 February 1815._' After a further interchange of letters in 1816 the matter slumbered till 1822 when there appeared a volume entitled _Chronological Notes of Scottish Affairs from 1680 till 1701, being chiefly taken from the Diary of Lord Fountainhall_ (Constable, 1822), with a preface by Sir Walter Scott, who had evidently forgotten his correspondence with Sir Thomas.[10] The volume in reality contained a selection, comparatively small, from Fountainhall's notebooks in the Advocates' Library, with copious interpolations by the author, Robert Mylne (who died in 1747), not distinguished from the authentic text of the notes, and greatly misrepresenting Fountainhall's opinions. The next stage in the correspondence may be given in Sir Thomas's own words:-- [10] The preface and Mylne's interpolations are appended to Mr. Laing's preface to the _Historical Notices_. 'Having been much astonished to learn, from a perusal of the foregoing review,[11] that Sir Walter Scott had stolen a march on me, and published a Manuscript of Lord Fountainhall's, at the very time when he had reason to believe me engaged in the work, and that by his own suggestion, and being above all things surprised that he had not thought it proper to acquaint me with his intention before carrying it into effect, I sat down and wrote to him the following letter, in which, being aware how much he who I was addressing was to be considered as a sort of privileged person in literary matters, I took special care to give no offence, to write calmly, and to confine myself to such a simple statement of the facts as might bring a blush into his face without exciting the smallest angry feeling. I hoped, too, that I might prevail on him, as some atonement for his sins, to lend a helping hand to bring forth the real work of Lord Fountainhall in a proper style.' [11] In Constable's Magazine. See _infra_. To SIR WALTER SCOTT OF ABBOTSFORD, BARONET. '_Relugas, near Forres_, _22nd May 1822_. 'DEAR SIR,--From _Constable's Magazine_ for last month, which has this moment fallen into my hands, I learn, for the first time, with some surprise, but with much greater delight than mortification, that you have condescended to become the Editor of a portion of my Ancestor Lord Fountainhall's MSS. From this I am led to believe, that the circumstance of my having been engaged in the work since 1814 must have escaped your recollection, otherwise I think you would have informed me of _your_ intention or inquired into _mine_. In the winter 1813-14, I had the happiness of meeting you at the table of our mutual friend, Mr. Pringle of Yair, where you expressed regret to me that something had not been done towards publishing the curious matter contained in Lord Fountainhall's MSS., urging me at the same time to undertake the task. Having also soon afterwards been pressed to perform this duty by Mr. Thomas Thomson, Mr. Napier, and several other literary friends, I was led to begin it, and Lord Meadowbank having presented my petition to the Dean and Faculty of Advocates, they were so liberal as to permit me to have the use of the MSS. in succession at Fountainhall, where I then was on a visit to my Father, and where I transcribed everything fit for my purpose. Emboldened by the remembrance of what passed in conversation with you at Mr. Pringle's, I took the liberty of trespassing on you in a letter dated 18th February 1815, to beg you would inform me whether you knew of the existence of any of Lord Fountainhall's MSS. besides the eight Folio volumes I had then examined. You did me the honor to write me an immediate reply, in which you stated that you knew of no other MSS. but those I had mentioned, and you conclude by saying, that you were glad to hear that I was busying myself in a task which would throw much light on the history of Scotland. In May 1816, whilst engaged here in arranging and retranscribing the materials I had collected for the work in the order of a Journal, I met with a little difficulty about the word FORRES, which the sense of the passage led me to read FORREST, meaning ETTRICK FORREST. Knowing that you were the best source from which true information on such subjects was to be drawn, and presuming upon your former kindness, I again addressed you, 23rd May 1816, begging to know whether I was right in my conjecture. To this I received a very polite answer in course of post, in which you express great pleasure in complying with my request, and are so obliging as to conclude with the assurance that at any time you will be happy to elucidate my researches into my ancestors' curious and most valuable Manuscripts with such hints as your local knowledge may supply. 'Since the period to which I have just alluded, I have continued to prosecute the work, but only at intervals, having met with frequent interruptions, among which I may mention an excursion to Italy; and after having finished about two-thirds of it in my own handwriting, it is only now that I have been able to complete it, by the aid of an amanuensis. I do not much wonder that, employed as you are in administering fresh draughts of enjoyment from the exhaustless spring of your genius to the ever-increasing thirst of a delighted public, you should have forgotten my humble labours. But whilst I regret that they should have been so forgotten, inasmuch as they might have contributed to aid or lessen yours, I beg to assure you, that every other feeling is absorbed in that of the satisfaction I am now impressed with in learning that you have taken Lord Fountainhall under your fostering care, as I am well aware that, independent of the honor done him and his family by his name being coupled with that of Sir Walter Scott, there does not now, and perhaps there never will, exist any individual who could elucidate him so happily as your high talents and your deep research in the historical anecdote of your country must enable you to do. I am naturally very desirous to see your publication, of which I cannot procure a copy from the booksellers here. I should not otherwise have intruded on you until I had seen the book, as I am at present ignorant how far it clashes or agrees with the plan of the work I have prepared. As business calls me to Edinburgh, I can now have no opportunity of perusing it before my departure, as I leave this on Tuesday the 28th instant I observe, however, with great gratification, from a quotation in the _Magazine_ from your preface, that you hold out hopes of a farther publication, and I am consequently anxious to avail myself of being in Edinburgh to have the honor of an interview with you, that I may avoid any injudicious interference with your undertaking, and rather go hand in hand with you in promoting it. As I shall be detained on the road, I shall not be in Edinburgh until the evening of Friday the 31st, and my present intention is to remain in town only Saturday and Sunday, unless unavoidable circumstances occur to prevent my leaving it on the Monday. If you could make it convenient to grant me an audience on either of the days I have mentioned, viz., on Saturday, or Sunday, the 1st or 2nd of June, you would very much oblige me, and it will be a further favor if you will have a note lying for me at Mrs. President Blair's, or at my Agent, Mr. Macbean's, 11 Charlotte Square, stating the precise time when you can most conveniently receive me, that I may not be so unfortunate as to call on you unseasonably. With the highest respect, and with very great regard, I have the honor to be, dear sir, very truly yours, THOS. DICK LAUDER.' To this Sir Walter replied:-- 'MY DEAR SIR,--I am sorry you could for a moment think that in printing rather than publishing Lord Fountainhall's Notes or rather Mr. Milne's, for that honest gentleman had taken the superfluous trouble to write the whole book anew, I meant to interfere with your valuable and extensive projected work. I mentioned in the advertisement that you were engaged in writing the life of Lord Fountainhall, and therefore declined saying anything on the subject, and I must add that I always conceived it was his life you meant to publish and not his works. I am very happy you entertain the latter intention, for a great deal of historical matter exists in the manuscript copy of the collection of decisions which has been omitted by the publishers, whose object was only to collect the law reports and who appear in the latter volume entirely to have disregarded all other information. There is also somewhere in the Advocates' Library, but now mislaid, a very curious letter of Lord Fountainhall on the Revolution, and so very many other remains of his that I would fain hope your work will suffer nothing by my anticipation, which I assure you would never have taken place had I conceived those Notes fell within your plan. The fact was that the letter on the Revolution was mislaid and the little Ma[nuscript] having disappeared also, though it was afterwards recovered, it seemed to me worth while to have it put in a printed shape for the sake of preservation, and as only one hundred copies were printed, I hope it will rather excite than gratify curiosity on the subject of Lord Fountainhall. I expected to see you before I should have thought of publishing the Letter on the Revolution, and hoped to whet your almost blunted purpose about doing that and some other things yourself. I think a selection from the Decisions just on the contrary principle which was naturally enough adopted by the former publishers, rejected[12] the law that is and retaining the history, would be highly interesting. I am sure you are entitled to expect[13] on all accounts and not interruption from me in a task so honorable, and I hope you will spare me a day in town to talk the old Judge's affairs over. The history of the Bass should be a curious one. You are of course aware of the anecdote of one of your ancestors insisting on having the "auld craig back again." 'Constable undertook to forward to you a copy of the Notes with my respects, and it adds to my piggish behaviour that I see he had omitted it. I will cause him send it by the Ferry Carrier. 'I beg to assure you that I am particularly sensible of the kind and accomodating view you have taken of this matter, in which I am sensible I acted very thoughtlessly because it would have been easy to have written to enquire into your intentions. Indeed I intended to do so, but the thing had gone out of my head. I leave Edin'r in July, should you come after the 12 of that month may I hope to see you at Abbotsford, which would be very agreeable, but if you keep your purpose of being here in the beginning of June I hope you will calculate on dining here on Sunday 2d at five o'clock. I will get Sharpe to meet you who knows more about L'd Fountainhall than any one.--I am with great penitence, dear Sir Thomas, your very faithful humble servant, 'WALTER SCOTT.' [12] _sic_ for rejecting. [13] A word is omitted, perhaps 'assistance.' 'N.B.--The foregoing letter from Sir Walter, written in answer to mine of the 25th May,[14] sufficiently shows the extent of the dilemma he found himself thrown into. It is full of strange contradictions. He talks of "_printing_ rather than _publishing_" a book which was _publickly_ advertised _and publickly_ sold. He assures me that he believed that it was _Fountainhall's Life_, and not his _works_ I meant to publish, though the former part of the correspondence between us must have made him fully aware that it was _the works_ I had in view; and he unwittingly proves to me immediately afterwards that he had not altogether forgotten that it was _the works_ I had taken in hand to publish, for he says, "I expected to see you before I should have thought of publishing the letter on the Revolution, and hoped to _whet your almost blunted purpose about doing that and some_ other things yourself." And again afterwards--"it would have been easy to have written to enquire into your intentions, indeed _I intended to do so_, but the thing had gone out of my head." Why did you intend to write to me, Sir Walter, about intentions which you have said you were unconscious had any existence? But who can dare to be angry with Sir Walter Scott? Who could be savage enough to be angry with the meanest individual who could write with so much good nature and bonhommie as he displays in his letter? Had one particle of angry feeling lurked in my bosom against him, I should have merited scourging. My answer was as follows....' [14] _sic_ for 22nd May. Sir Thomas was unable to accept Sir Walter's invitation, but proposed to call on him, and received the following reply:-- 'My dear Sir Thomas,--I am much mortified at finding that by a peremptory message from my builder at Abbotsford, who is erecting an addition to my house, I must set out there to-morrow at twelve. But we must meet for all that, and I hope you will do me the honour to breakfast here, though at the unchristian hour of _Nine o'clock_, and if you come as soon after eight as you will, you will find me ready to receive you. I mention this because I must be in the court at _Ten_. I hope this will suit you till time permits a longer interview. I shall therefore expect you accordingly.--Yours very sincerely, WALTER SCOTT. '_Castle Street, Friday_' 'It gives me sincere regret that this unexpected news[15] prevents my having the pleasure of receiving you on Monday.' [15] This word doubtful. It is indistinctly written. Sir Thomas proceeds in his narrative:-- 'N.B.--I kept my appointment accurately to the hour and minute, and found the Great Unknown dashing off long foolscap sheets of what was soon to interest the eyes, and the minds, and the hearts of the whole reading world; preparing a literary food for the voracious maw of the many-headed monster, every mouth of which was gaping wide in expectation of it. He received me most kindly, though I could not help secretly grudging, more than I have no doubt he did, every moment of the time he so good-naturedly sacrificed to me. He repeated in words, and, if possible, in stronger terms, the apologies contained in his letter. I offered him my Manuscript and my humble services. He insisted that he would not rob me of the fruits of my pious labours. "As I know something of publishing," said he, with an intelligent smile on his countenance, "I shall be able to give you some assistance and advice as to how to bring the work properly and respectably out." I thanked him, and ventured to entreat that he would add to the obligation he was laying me under by giving me a few notes to the proposed publication. In short, the result of an hour's conversation was that he undertook to arrange everything about the publication with a bookseller, and to give me the notes I asked, and, in fact, to do everything in his power to assist me, and I left him with very great regret that a matter of business prevented me from accepting of his pressing invitation to breakfast. Before parting, he wrote for me the ensuing letter to Mr. Kirkpatrick Sharpe, which I was deprived of an opportunity of delivering by the shortness of my visit to Edinburgh.' Sir Thomas soon afterwards completed his transcript, and on 7th June 1823 he wrote:-- '_Relugas, near Forres, 7th June_ 1823. 'MY DEAR SIR WALTER,--Can you pardon me for thus troubling you, in order to have my curiosity satisfied about our old friend Fountainhall, whose work I gave you in July last. I hope you received the remainder of the Manuscript in October from my agent, Mr. Macbean. If you can spare time to say, in a single line, what is doing about him, you will confer a great obligation, on yours very faithfully, T.D. LAUDER.' Sir Walter replied:-- 'MY DEAR SIR,--We have not taken any steps about our venerable friend and your predecessor, whose manuscript is lying safe in my hands. Constable has been in London this long time, and is still there, and Cadell does not seem willingly to embark in any enterprize of consequence just now. We have set on foot a sort [of] Scottish Roxburgh Club[16] here for publishing curiosities of Scottish Literature, but Fountainhall would be a work rather too heavy for our limited funds, although few can be concerned which would come more legitimately under the purpose of our association, which is made in order to rescue from the chance of destruction the documents most essential to the history and literature of Scotland. 'We are having a meeting on the 4th July, when I will table the subject, and if we possibly can assist in bringing out the worthy Judge in good stile, we will be most ready to co-operate with your pious endeavours to that effect. I should wish to hear from you before that time what you would wish to be done in the matter respecting the size, number of the impression, and so forth. Whatever lies in my limited power will be gladly contributed by, dear sir, your very faithful servant, 'WALTER SCOTT. _'Castle Street, 18 June 1823.'_ [16] The Bannatyne Club was instituted on 15th February 1823. Its object was to print works of the history, topography, poetry, and miscellaneous literature of Scotland in former times. Sir Walter Scott was president till his death. The Club's last meeting was in 1861, but there were some publications till 1867. And in answer to further inquiry he again wrote on 10th July 1823:-- 'MY DEAR SIR THOMAS,--You are too easily alarmed about the fate of your ancestors. I did not mean it would not be published--far less that I would not do all in my power to advance the publication--but only that the size and probable expense of the work, with the limited sale for articles of literature only interesting to the Scottish Antiquaries, rendered the Booksellers less willing to adopt the proposal than they seemed at first. However I thought it as well to wait until Constable himself came down from London, as I had only spoken with his partner, and I have since seen him, and find him well disposed to the undertaking. I told him I would give with the greatest pleasure any assistance in my power in the way of historical illustration, and that I concluded that you, to whom the work unquestionably belongs, would contribute a life of the venerable Lawyer and some account of his family. Mr. Thomson has promised to look through the Manuscript and collate it with that of Mr. Maule, and is of opinion (as I am) that it would be very desirable to retrench all the mere law questions which are to be found in the printed folios. Indeed the Editors of those two volumes had a purpose in view directly opposed to ours, for they wished to omit historical and domestic anecdotes and give the law cases as unmixed as possible, while it would be our object doubtless to exclude the mere law questions in favour of the other. No doubt many of the law cases are in themselves such singular examples of the state of manners that it would be a pity not to retain them even although they may be found in the printed copy because they are there mixed with so much professional matter that general readers will not easily discover them. 'The retrenching of the mere law will entirely advantage the general sale of the work besides greatly reducing the expense, and in either point of view it will make it a speculation more like to be advantageous. I think Constable will be disposed to incur the expense of publishing at his own risque, allowing you one half of the free profits which the established mode of accounting amongst authors and booksellers circumcises so closely that the sum netted by the author seldom exceeds a 3'd or thereabout. But then you have no risque, and that is a great matter. My experience does not encourage me to bid you expect much profit upon an undertaking of this nature, in fact on any that I have myself tried I have been always rather a loser; but still there may be some, and I am sure the descendant of Lord Fountainhall is best entitled to such should it arise on his ancestor's work. I think you had better correspond with Constable, assuring him of my willingness to help in any thing that can get the book out, and I am sure Mr. Thomson will feel the same interest I have to leave here to-morrow for four months, but as I am only at Abbotsford I can do any thing that may be referred to me. 'As for Milne's notes, there are many of them that I think worth preservation as describing and identifying the individuals of whom Fountainhall wrote, although his silly party zeal makes him, like all such partizans of faction, unjust and scurrilous. 'I have only to add that the Manuscript is with Mr. Thomson for the purpose of collation, and that I am sure Constable will be glad to treat with you on the subject of publication, and that I will, as I have always been, be most ready to give any notes or illustrations in my power, the only way I suppose in which I can be useful to the publication. The idea of retrenching the law cases, which originates with Thomson, promises, if you entertain it, to remove the only possible objection to the publication, namely the great expense. My address for the next four months is, Abbotsford, by Melrose, and I am always, dear Sir Thomas, very much your faithful, humble servant, WALTER SCOTT. _'Edin'r, 10 July 1823.'_ Again on 27th November 1823:-- 'Dear Sir Thomas,--I have sent the Manuscript to Mr. Macbean, Charlotte Square, as you desire. It is a very curious one and contains many strange pictures of the times. Our ancestors were sad dogs, and we to be worse than them, as Horace tells us the Romans were, have a great stride to make in the paths of iniquity. Men like your ancestor were certainly rare amongst them. I had a scrap some where about the murder of the Lauders at Lauder where Fountainhall's ancestor was Baillie at the time. After this misfortune they are said to have retired to Edinburgh. Fountainhall's grandfather lived at the Westport. All this is I hope familiar to you, I say I hope so, for after a good deal of search I have abandoned hope of finding my memorandum. 'I have seen Constable who promises to send me the sheets as they are thrown off, and any consideration that I can bestow on them will be a pleasure to, dear Sir Thomas, your most obedient servant, WALTER SCOTT. _'Edin'r, 2d December.'_ The last letter on the subject, written apparently by Mr. Cadell, is as follows:-- _'Edinburgh, 28 July 1824._ 'Dear Sir,--We duly received your much esteemed letter of 16 instant, and beg to assure you that we are as willing as ever to do what we stated last year in bringing out your MS. in a creditable way. The reason, and the only reason of delay, has been the indisposition of Mr. Constable, who has from last November till about a month ago been unable to give his time to business. 'Having communicated your letter to him we beg now to state that we shall take immediate steps for getting the work expedited. The MS. is still in Mr. Thomson's hands, but we shall see him on the subject forthwith. It is proposed to print the work in 2 vols. octavo handsomely, the number 500 copies.--We remain, sir, with much respect, your most, ARCH. CONSTABLE & Co. 'Sir Thos. Dick Lauder, Bart.' 'The publication,' as Mr. Laing says in his Preface, 'intended to form two volumes in octavo, under the title of _Historical Notices of Scottish Affairs_, had actually proceeded to press to page 304 in 1825, when the misfortunes of the publisher put a stop to the enterprise. After an interval of several years the greater portion of Sir Thomas's transcripts was placed at the disposal of the Bannatyne Club.' The result was the publication of the _Observes_ and the _Historical Notices_. Mr. Laing adds, 'If at any subsequent time some of his missing MSS. should be discovered, another volume of Selections, to include his early Journal and extracts from his smaller notebooks, might not be undeserving the attention of the Bannatyne Club.' The Journal in France, though never printed, was reviewed by Mr. Cosmo Innes in 1864 in the _North British Review_, vol. xli. p. 170. OUTLINE OF FOUNTAINHALL'S LIFE A short relation of Lord Fountainhall's life is given in Mr. David Laing's preface to the _Historical Notices_. He was born in 1646. His father was John Lauder, merchant and bailie of Edinburgh, of the family of Lauder of that Ilk.[17] He graduated as Master of Arts in the University of Edinburgh in 1664. He went to France to study in 1665, and returned from abroad in 1667. He was 'admitted' as an advocate in 1668. He was married in 1669 to Janet, daughter of Sir Andrew Ramsay of Abbotshall,[18] Provost of Edinburgh, afterwards a Lord of Session. In 1674, along with the leaders of the bar and the majority of the profession, he was 'debarred' or suspended from practising by the king's proclamation for asserting the right of appeal from the decisions of the Court of Session, and was restored in 1676. He was knighted in 1681. In the same year his father, who was then eighty-six years old, purchased the lands of Woodhead and others in East Lothian. The conveyance is to John Lauder of Newington in liferent, and Sir John Lauder, his son, in fee. The lands were erected into a barony, called Fountainhall. In 1685, he was returned as member of Parliament for the county of Haddington, which he represented till the Union in 1707. In 1686 his wife, by whom he had a large family, died. In 1687 he married Marion Anderson, daughter of Anderson of Balram. He was appointed a Lord of Session in 1689, and a Lord of Justiciary in 1690. He resigned the latter office in 1709, and died in 1722. His father had been made a baronet in 1681 by James VII. The succession under the patent was to his son by his third marriage; but in 1690, after the Revolution, a new patent was granted by William and Mary to Sir John Lauder, senior, and his eldest son and his heirs. The first patent was reduced in 1692, and in the same year Fountainhall succeeded on his father's death. [17] 'Sir John Lauder of Fountainhall is deschended of the Lauders of that ilk, and his paternall coat is immatriculate and registrate in the Lyons Book of Herauldrie.'--Unprinted MS. by Lauder, in possession of Sir T.N. Dick Lauder. A Genealogical Roll in MS., of the Lauder Family, compiled by Sir T. Dick Lauder, also in the present baronet's possession, has afforded much useful information; and for Lauder's family connections, I have also consulted Mrs. Atholl Forbes's _Curiosities of a Scottish Charter Chest_, and Mrs. Stewart Smith's _Grange of St. Giles_. [18] See Appendix III. The following estimate of his character in Forbes's Preface to the _Journal of the Session_ (1714), a rare book, is quoted by Mr. Laing, but is too much in point to be omitted here. 'The publick and private character of this excellent judge are now so well known that I need say no more of him than that he signalized himself as a good patriot and true Protestant in the Parliament of 1686 in defence of the Penal Laws against Popery. This self-denyed man hath taken no less pains to shun places that were in his offer than some others have been at to get into preferment. Witness his refusing to accept a patent in the year 1692 to be the King's Advocate, and the resigning his place as a Lord of Justiciary after the Union, which Her Majesty with reluctancy took off his hand. In short, his lordship is (what I know by experience) as communicative as he is universally learned and knowing. He hath observed the decisions of the Session from November 1689 till November 1712, which I have seen in Manuscript; but his excessive modesty can't be prevailed on to make them publick.' There are no materials for expanding Mr. Laing's sketch of Fountainhall's life, except in so far as the notes of his travels and his expeditions into the country, and the accounts, here printed, give some glimpses of his habits and his domestic economy in his early professional years. He lived in troubled times, but his own career was prosperous and comparatively uneventful. The modesty which Professor Forbes truly ascribes to him disinclined him to take a part, as a good many lawyers did, in public affairs, except for a short period before the Revolution, as a member of Parliament; and, together with his prudence and strong conscientiousness, preserved him from mixing in the political and personal intrigues which were then so rife in the country. The same modesty is apparent in his writings in mature life to a tantalising degree. It may not be so conspicuous in his boyish journal, when he was ready enough to throw down the gauntlet in a theological discussion; but in the later voluminous MSS., when even dry legal disputes are enlivened by graphic and personal touches, the author himself rarely appears on the scene. We miss the pleasant details of Clerk of Penicuik's _Memoirs._[19] We learn little of the author's daily walk and conversation. It does not even appear (so far as I know) where his house in Edinburgh was. We do not know how often he went to Fountainhall, or whether he there realised his wish to spend half his time in the country.[20] We do not know how he occupied himself there, though it may be gathered that he took much interest in the management of his property and in country business, and he records with much gratification his appointment as a justice of the peace. He tells us nothing of his wife, except how much money she got for housekeeping, and nothing of his children, except when he records their births or deaths. Nothing of his personal relations with his distinguished contemporaries at the bar, or with the men who, as officers of State and Privy Councillors, still governed Scotland in Edinburgh. [19] Scottish History Society. [20] Journal, p. 21. On the other hand, his opinions on all subjects, on public affairs and public men, on such questions of speculation or ethical interest as astrology and witchcraft, often strikingly expressed in language always racy and sincere, are scattered through the published volumes of his writings, all printed without note or comment. It may at least be a tribute to Fountainhall's memory to present a short view of his opinions, and for that purpose I have not scrupled to quote freely, especially from the _Historical Observes,_ a delightful book, which deserves a larger public than the limited circle of its fortunate possessors. Fountainhall's political opinions were moderate, in an age when moderation was rare. We are tempted to think, if I am not mistaken, that in that dark period of Scottish history, every man was a furious partisan, as a Royalist or a Whig, or as an adherent of one or other of the chiefs who intrigued for power. But it may be that Lauder's attitude reflects more truly the average opinions of educated men of the time. HIS POLITICAL OPINIONS His political position has perhaps been imperfectly understood by the few writers who have had occasion to refer to it. Mr. Laing's statement, that prior to the Revolution 'he appears generally to have acted only with those who opposed the measure of the Court,' is not, I venture to think, wholly accurate. It is true that on one occasion, no doubt memorable in his own life, he incurred the displeasure of the government. When James VII. on his accession proposed to relax the penal laws against Roman Catholics, while enforcing them against Presbyterians, Lauder, who had just entered Parliament, opposed that policy and spoke against it in terms studiously moderate and respectful to the Crown. The result, however, was that he became a suspected person. As he records in April 1686, 'My 2 servants being imprisoned, and I threatened therewith, as also that they would seize upon my papers, and search if they contained anything offensive to the party then prevailing, I was necessitat to hide this manuscript, and many others, and intermit my Historick Remarks till the Revolution in the end of 1688.' Hence the Revolution was perhaps welcome to him. As an adherent of character and some position he met with marked favour from the new sovereigns, who promoted him to the bench, and corrected the injustice which had been done to him in the matter of the patent of his father's baronetcy, and also granted him a pension of £100 a year, an addition of fifty per cent. to his official salary. Shortly afterwards he was offered the post of Lord Advocate, but declined it, because the condition was attached that he should not prosecute the persons implicated in the Massacre of Glencoe.[21] From these facts it has been sometimes inferred that Lauder was disaffected to the Stewart dynasty, and that his professional advancement was thereby retarded. In reality his career was one of steady prosperity. Having already received the honour of knighthood while still a young man, and being a member of parliament for his county, he became a judge at the age of forty-three. So far from holding opinions antagonistic to the reigning house, Lauder was an enthusiastic royalist. He was indeed a staunch Protestant at a time when religion played a great part in politics. In his early youth the journal here published shows him as perhaps a bigoted Protestant. But he was not conscious of any conflict between his faith and his loyalty till the conflict was forced upon him, and that was late in the day. In this position he was by no means singular. Sir George Mackenzie, who as Lord Advocate was so vigorous an instrument of Charles II.'s policy, refused, like Lauder, to concur in the partial application of the penal laws, and his refusal led to his temporary disgrace. Lauder was not even a reformer. He was a man of conservative temperament, and while his love of justice and good government led him to criticise in his private journals the glaring defects of administration, and especially the administration of justice, there is no evidence that he had even considered how a remedy was to be found. There was indeed no constitutional means of redress, and all revolutionary methods, from the stubborn resistance of the Covenanters, to the plots in London, real or imaginary, but always implicitly believed in by Lauder, and the expeditions of Monmouth and Argyll, met with Lauder's unqualified disapproval and condemnation. [21] It has been said that there is no sufficient evidence of this honourable incident in Fountainhall's career. But Sir Thomas Dick Lauder (MS. Genealogical Roll, _supra_) reproduces it in a poem to the Memory of Sir John Lauder, published in 1743, and attributed to Blair, the author of 'The Grave,' in which the following lines occur. He 'Saw guiltless blood poured out with lavish hand, And vast depopulated tracts of land; And saw the wicked authors of that ill Unpunished, nay, caressed and favoured still. The power to prosecute he would not have, Obliged such miscreants overlooked to save.' [Sidenote: H.O. 148] [Sidenote: H.O. 6] [Sidenote: Decisions, p. 232.] I shall cite some passages in illustration. When Charles II. died and James was proclaimed, Lauder writes that 'peoples greiff was more than their joy, having lost their dearly loved king'; then after a gentle reference to 'his only weak syde,' he says, 'he was certainly a prince indued with many Royall qualities, and of whom the Divine providence had taken a speciall care by preserving him after Worcester fight in the oak.' ... 'A star appeared at noon day at his birth; he was a great mathematician, chemist, and mechanick, and wrought oft in the laboratories himselfe; he had a natural mildnesse and command over his anger, which never transported him beyond an innocent puff and spitting, and was soon over, and yet commanded more deference from his people than if he had expressed it more severely, so great respect had all to him. His clemencie was admirable, witnesse his sparing 2 of Oliver Cromwell's sones, tho on of them had usurped his throne. His firmnesse in religion was evident; for in his banishment he had great invitations and offers of help to restore him to his croun if he would turne Papist, but he always refused it. As for his brother James, now our present King, he is of that martiall courage and conduct, that the great General Turenne was heard say, if he ware to conquer the world, he would choise the Duke of York to command his army,' Such were Lander's loyal sentiments, as set down in a private journal a year before his servants and clerks were arrested, and the seizure of his papers threatened. But his Protestantism and his jealousy of Popery were equally strong. In 1680 he notes that the minister of Wells in Nithsdale had 'turned Roman Catholic: so this is one of the remarkable trophees and spoils the Papists are beginning to gain upon our religion.' A little further on he is indignant at ridicule being thrown on the Popish Plot 'Not only too many among ourselves, but the French, turned the Plot into matter of sport and laughter: for at Paris they acted in ther comedy, called Scaramucchio, the English tryall, and busked up a dog in a goune lik Chief Justice Scrogs.' Again, 'A Papist qua Papist cannot be a faithful subject,' He had, however, no sympathy with the Covenanters, a name which he does not use, but he describes them as 'praecise phanaticks.' He did not consider it unjust to bring them to capital punishment, because they denied the right of the king to govern, though on grounds of humanity and policy he was inclined to mercy. In 1682 he observes on the execution of Alexander Home, a small gentleman of the Merse, who had commanded a party at the insurrection of Bothwell Bridge, 'tho he came not that lenth,' 'It was thought ther was blood eneuch shed on that quarrell already ... for they are like Sampson, they kill and persuade mo at ther death than they did in ther life.' He couples the Roman Catholics and Presbyterians together as troublesome citizens. 'These foolish people that assume the name of Presbyterians have unwarily drunk in these restles principles from the Jesuites and seminary priests, who have had a hand in all our troubles and blown the coall.' Apart, however, from the political attitude of the Covenanters, whom he regarded as disaffected subjects, there is no evidence that he concerned himself with the controversy as to the Episcopal or Presbyterian form of Church government, or that he regretted the re- establishment of Presbytery after the Revolution. He was not interested in Church matters. In 1683 he writes, 'The Synod of Edinburgh' [which was then Episcopalian] 'sat down, and not having much else to do, enacted 1'o that ministers should not sit in the pulpit, but stand all the time they are in it.'[22] [22] A devotional diary, for 1700, apparently one of a series, preserved in the Edinburgh University Library, No. 274, and an undated letter in the Dick Lauder MSS. about the election of a 'godly, primitive, and evangelicall pastor,' lead me to think that his views were Calvinistic, and not out of sympathy with the Presbyterian Establishment of the Revolution. In the present volume, p. 229, there is a striking example of his sympathy with the royal prerogative. He says it was believed that the project of Union was 'mainly set on foot by his Majestie and so much coveted after by him that he may rid himselfe of the House of Commons, who have been very heavy on his loines, and the loins of his predecessors.... I confesse the king has reason to wrest this excessive power out of the Commons their hand, it being an unspeakable impairment of the soveraintie, but I fear it prosper not.' His repugnance to anything savouring of revolutionary methods, combined with his always candid recognition of merit, appears in his observation when Sidney was executed. [Sidenote: H.O. p. 110.] He was a gallant man, yet had he been so misfortunat as ever to be on the disloyal side, and seemed to have drunk in with his milk republican principles.' In December 1684 Baillie of Jerviswood was prosecuted for being art and part in a treasonable conspiracy in England, along with Shaftesbury, Russell, and others. Lauder and Sir George Lockhart were commanded on their allegiance to assist the King's Advocate in the prosecution. The Court, after deliberating from midnight till three in the morning, brought in a verdict finding 'his being art and part of the conspiracy and design to rise in arms, and his concealing the same proven,' He was hanged and quartered the same day. Fountainhall did not disapprove of his condemnation. He says, 'he carried all this with much calmness and composure of mind; only he complained the time they had given him to prepare for death was too short, and huffed a little that he should be esteemed guilty of any design against the life of the King or his brother, of which he purged himself, as he hoped to find mercy, so also he denied any purpose of subverting the monarchial government, only he had wished that some grievances in the administration of our affairs might be rectified and reformed; but seeing he purged not himself of the rest of his libel, his silence as to these looked like a tacit confession and acknowledgment thereof.' [Sidenote: Decisions, i. 366.] [Sidenote: H.O. 74] [Sidenote: H.N. 11] [Sidenote: H.O. 184] [Sidenote: Decisions, i. 160.] [Sidenote: H.O. 55.] A still more striking illustration of Lauder's political views is afforded by his numerous observations on Argyll, who played so great a part in public affairs during the period covered by the manuscripts until his execution in 1685. Argyll was not a sympathetic figure to Lauder, but, as usual, he does justice to his qualities, and recognises the tragedy of his fate. On the day of his execution he notes, 'And so ended that great man, with his family, at that time.' He had a more cordial personal admiration for a very different statesman, Lauderdale, though he often disapproved of his policy. At his death he writes, '24 of August, 1682, dyed John Maitland, Duke of Lauderdale, the learnedest and powerfullest Minister of State of his age, at Tunbridge Wells. Discontent and age were the ingredients of his death, if his Dutchesse and Physitians be freed of it; for she had abused him most grosely, and got all from him she could expect.... The Duke of York was certainly most ungrate to Lauderdale; for Lauderdale was the first who adventured in August 1679 to advise the King to bring home the Duke of York from Flanders.'[23] Argyll he deemed to be wanting in magnanimity. In 1671 he writes on the subject of a point in a lawsuit being decided in Argyll's favour, 'This was my Lord President's doing [Stair], he being my Lord Argyle's great confidant. It was admired by all that he blushed not to make a reply upon his Father's forfaultor, and whow he had committed many treasonable crimes before the discharge, and to see him rather than tyne his cause, suffer his father rather to be reproached and demeaned as a traitor of new again, by his own advocats,' So fourteen years later he writes, 'Whatever was in Argile's first transgression in glossing the Test (which appeared slender), yet God's wonderfull judgements are visible, pleading a controversie against him and his family, for the cruall oppression he used, not only to his father's, but even to his oune creditors. It was remembered that he beat Mistris Brisbane done his stairs for craving hir annuelrents, tho he would have bestowed as much money on a staff or some like curiosity.' He was, however, one of Argyll's counsel when he was prosecuted for taking the Test, with the explanation 'that he conceived that this Test did not hinder nor bind him up from endeavouring alterations to the better either in Church or State.' Argyll, who had escaped, was sentenced to death in his absence, attainted, and his estates forfeited. Lauder strongly disapproved of the proceedings. He writes, 'There was a great outcry against the Criminal Judges, their timorous dishonesty....' These words, 'consistent with my loyalty, were judged taxative and restrictive, seeing his loyalty might be below the standard of true loyalty, not five-penny fine, much less eleven- penny,' ... 'The design was to low him, that he might never be the head of a Protestant party, and to annex his jurisdiction to the Crown, and to parcel out his lands; and tho' he was unworthily and unjustly dealt with here, yet ought he to observe God's secret hand, punishing him for his cruelty to his own and his father's creditors and vassals, sundry of whom were starving.' Lauder speaks of 'that fatal Act of the Test.' He had no favour for it, and he narrates with glee how 'the children of Heriot's Hospitall, finding that the dog which keiped the yairds of that Hospitall had a publick charge and office, they ordained him to take the Test, and offered him the paper, but he, loving a bone rather than it, absolutely refused it; then they rubbed it over with butter (which they called an Explication of the Test in imitation of Argile), and he licked of the butter, but did spite out the paper, for which they hold a jurie on him, and in derision of the sentence against Argile, they found the dog guilty of treason, and actually hanged him.' [23] Sir George Mackenzie also, who criticises Lauderdale's proceedings very freely, pays a fine tribute to one trait in his character, 'Lauderdale who knew not what it was to dissemble.'--_Memoirs_, p. 182. [Sidenote: H.O. 166] [Sidenote: H.0. 196.] [Sidenote: H.O. 189.] Although Lauder considered that Argyll had been unjustly condemned in the matter of the Test, his opinion about the expedition of 1685 was very different. He did justice to his capacity. He writes, 'Argile had always the reputation of sense and reason, and if the Whigs at Bothwell Bridge in 1679 had got such a commander as he, it's like the rebellion had been more durable and sanguinarie' But as soon as the news of Argyll's landing on the west coast came, this is his note, 'Argile, minding the former animosities and discontents in the country, thought to have found us all alike combustible tinder, that he had no more adoe then to hold the match to us, and we would all blow up in a rebellion; but the tymes are altered, and the peeple are scalded so severely with the former insurrections, that they are frighted to adventure on a new on. The Privy Council, though they despised this invasion, yet by proclamations they called furth the whole heritors of Scotland,' and so on. 'Some look on this invasion as a small matter, but beside the expence and trouble it hes put the country to, if we ponder the fatall consequences of such commotions, we'll change our opinions: for when the ramparts of government are once broke down, and the deluge follows, men have no assurances that the water will take a flowing towards their meadows to fructify them; no, no, just in the contrare.' Argyll was discovered and apprehended in his flight by a weaver near Paisley, of whom Lauder says, 'I think the Webster who took him should be rewarded with a litle heritage (in such a place wher Argile's death will not be resented), and his chartre should bear the cause, and he should get a coat of arms as a gentleman, to incouradge others heirafter.' It does not appear that this suggestion was acted upon. But while Lauder was a supporter of the existing order of government and opposed to all revolutionary plans, his journals disclose that in the state of public affairs he found much matter for criticism and ground for anxiety. In 1674 he tells of what will happen 'whenever we get a fair and unpraelimited Parliament, which may be long ere we see it.' In 1683 he writes sadly: 'Though we change the Governors, yet we find no change in the arbitrary government. For we are brought to that pass we must depend and court the Chancelor, Treasurer, and a few other great men and their servants, else we shall have difficulty to get either justice or despatch in our actions, or to save ourselves from scaith, or being quarrelled on patched up, remote and innocent grounds. This arbitrary way Lauderdale attempted, but did not attain so great a length in it as our statesmen do now; and they value themselves much in putting the military and ecclesiastic Laws to strict and vigorous execution, so that, let soldiers commit as great malversations and oppressions as they please, right is not to be got against them. Witness John Cheisly of Dalry's usage with Daver and Clerk, in the Kings troupe, and Sir John Dalrymple's with Claverhouse.' In the same year he says of James, then Duke of York, and Monmouth, 'We know not which of their factions struggling in the womb of the State shall prevail.' He regarded these political evils and dangers as beyond his power to remedy. It was not till after he had entered Parliament in 1685 that he made any public utterance on politics. In the last two years of James's reign the Test Act was enforced against Nonconformist Protestants but not against Roman Catholics. Lauder, being then in Parliament, considered it his duty to take a part, and he made one or two very moderate speeches, which, although expressed with studious respect to the sovereign, were doubtless highly displeasing to the government. OPINIONS ON ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. INFLUENCE OF STUDIES ABROAD [Sidenote: H.N. 40.] In the matter of the administration of justice he writes with much less reserve in his journals. The system was bad. The jurisdiction of the Privy Council, who tried a considerable number of causes, was ill-defined. The judges since the time of Charles I. were removable magistrates, entirely in the dependence of the Crown. Even the ordinary Lords of Session were not always trained lawyers--Lauder's father-in-law, for example, Sir Andrew Ramsay, long Provost of Edinburgh, became a judge with the title of Lord Abbotshall. There were besides four extraordinary lords who were never lawyers, and were not bound to attend and hear causes pleaded, but they had the right to vote. At the Revolution one of the reasons assigned for declaring the Crown vacant was 'the changing of the nature of the judges' gifts _ad vitam aut culpam_, and giving them commissions _ad bene placitum_ to dispose them to compliance with arbitary sourses, and turning them out of their offices when they did not comply.' Thus in 1681, when the Test Act was passed, five judges were dismissed, four ordinary, including the President, Stair, and one extraordinary, Argyll, and a new commission issued. When the Court was so constituted, it could hardly inspire implicit confidence, and the instances are numerous in which Lauder complains that injustice has been done, and the principles of the law perverted through the influence of political and private motives. Even the most eminent of the judges were not in his opinion clear from this blot. I have quoted one passage in which Lauder hints at Stair's partiality for Argyll. In another case in which Argyll was concerned he observes, 'Every on saw that would be the fate of that action, considering the pershewar's probable intres in the President.'[24] In 1672 when, as he considered, a well-established rule of law had been unsettled, he writes, 'This is a miserable and pittiful way of wenting our wit, by shaking the very foundations of law, and leaving nothing certain. The true sourse of it all is from the wofull divisions in the House, especially between the President and the Advocat [Mackenzie], each of them raking, tho from hell, all that may any way conduce to carry the causes that they head, _Flectere si neque superos_,' etc. One decision which excited his warm indignation was given in a suit by Lord Abbotshall against Francis Kinloch, who held a wadset over the estate of Gilmerton, which Abbotshall maintained was redeemable. He lost the case. After an extraordinary account of the way in which the decision was arrived at Lauder proceeds, 'the Chancelor's [Rothes] faint trinqueting and tergiversation for fear of displeasing Halton (who agented passionately for Francis) has abated much of his reputation. The 2d rub in Abbotshall's way was a largesse and donation of £5000 sterling to be given to Halton and other persons forth of the town's revenue for their many good services done to the toune. By this they outshot Sir Androw in his oune bow, turned the canon upon him, and _justo Dei judicio_ defait him by the toune's public interest, with which weapone he was want to do miracles and had taught them the way[25].... This decision for its strangeness surprised all that heard of it; for scarce even any who once heard the case doubted but it would be found a clear wodsett, and it opened the mouths of all to cry out upon it as a direct and dounright subversion of all our rights and properties.' [24] Lauder was a very young man at the bar when he wrote these strictures on Stair. They may be compared with and in part corrected by a passage in Sir G. Mackenzie's _Memoirs_, p. 240, which also bears on the appointment of incompetent judges. 'Lauderdale by promoting four ignorant persons, who had not been bred as lawyers, without interruption, and in two years' time, to be judges in it [the Session], viz., Hatton, Sir Andrew Ramsay, Mr. Robert Preston, and Pittrichie, he rendered thereby the Session the object of all men's contempt. And the Advocates being disobliged by the regulations did endeavour, as far as in them lay, to discover to the people the errors of those who had opprest them: and they being now become numerous, and most of them being idle, though men of excellent parts, wanting rather clients than wit and learning, that society became the only distributor of fame, and in effect the fittest instrument for all alterations: for such as were eminent, did by their authority, and such as were idle, by well contrived and witty raillery, make what impressions they pleased upon the people. Nor did any suffer so much as the Lord Stairs, President of the Session; who, because of his great affection to Lauderdale, and his compliance with Hatton, suffered severely, though formerly he had been admired for his sweet temper and strong parts. And by him our countrymen may learn, that such as would be esteemed excellent judges must live abstracted from the court; and I have heard the President himself assert that no judge should be either member of Council or Exchequer, for these courts did learn men to be less exact justiciars than was requisite.' [25] See Appendix III. It is not to be inferred from such strictures on the administration of justice, a matter on which, as an upright lawyer, Lauder was keenly sensitive, that he was an ill-natured critic of his professional brethren or of public men. On the contrary, the tone of his observations, though shrewd and humorous, is kindly and large-minded. He admired Lockhart, who was his senior at the bar, and whom he perhaps regarded more than any other man as his professional leader and chief, though he does not escape a certain amount of genial criticism. His enthusiastic eulogy of Lockhart's eloquence has been often quoted. In his estimation of Mackenzie it is easy to see, that while he doubted the wisdom and humanity of his relentless prosecutions, and while his arrogance comes in for criticism in a lighter vein, respect for his capacity, learning, and industry was the predominating element. It is pleasant to see the constant interest that he took in Bishop Burnet's books and movements, though they do not appear ever to have met. 'Our Dr. Burnet,' as he calls him. But that only means that he was a Scotsman, for he describes Ferguson the Plotter in the same way. There is nowhere a touch of jealousy or envy in those private journals. The influence of Lander's period of youthful travels, his _Wanderjahre_, on his future development is seen in various ways. He always kept up his interest in foreign countries and foreign literature. He bought a great many books, a list of which year by year is preserved, and he read them. The law manuscripts, though they embrace a pretty wide field, are confined to domestic affairs. But in the _Observes_ there are every year notes and reflections on the events passing in every part of Europe, and especially France. There is some interest in the following passage, almost the last sentence in the _Historical Observes_, 'In regard the Duke of Brandenburgh and States of Holland have not roume in ther countries for all the fugitive Protestants, they are treating with Pen and other ouners of thesse countries of Pensylvania, Carolina, etc., to send over colonies ther; so that the purity of the Gospell decaying heir will in all probability passe over to America.' The foreign schools of law where he had studied naturally affected his treatment of legal questions. Until the publication of the great work of Stair, the common civil law of Scotland was in a comparatively fluid state, though there were some legal treatises of authority, such as Craig's _Feudal Law_. Mackenzie's _Criminalls_ was published in 1676, and is often referred to by Lauder. Many of his contemporaries at the bar had studied like himself in the foreign schools of the Roman Civil Law, and in his reports of cases the original sources are quoted with enviable familiarity and appositeness. TORTURE, ASTROLOGY, AND WITCHCRAFT In questions of social ethics, such as torture, and of popular belief, such as astrology and witchcraft, Lauder was not much in advance of his age. He frequently mentions the infliction of torture without any comment. When Spence and Carstairs were tortured with the thummikins, he describes them as 'ane ingine but lately used with us,' and possibly he had some misgiving. The subjects of astrology and witchcraft had an attraction for his inquiring and speculative mind.[26] He believed in the influence of the heavenly bodies, and more firmly in witchcraft, for which many unhappy women were every year cruelly put to death. These trials at times evidently gave him some uneasiness. But usually, with regard to both topics, his doubts do not go beyond a cautious hint of scepticism tinged with humour. He was fundamentally a religious man, and where he touches on the great issues of life, and the relation of man to his Maker, it is in a tone of deep solemnity. But he loves to discourse in a learned fashion on the influence of the stars. 'Charles the 2d,' he says, 'fell with few or no prognosticks or omens praeceeding his death, unlesse we recur to the comet of 1680, which is remote, or to the strange fisches mentioned, supra page 72, or the vision of blew bonnets, page 74,[27] but these are all conjecturall: vide, supra Holwell's prophecies in his Catastrophe Mundi,' and so on. In 1683 'we were allarumed with ane strange conjunction was to befall in it of 2 planets, Saturn and Jupiter in Leo.... Our winter was rather like a spring for mildnes. If it be to be ascrybed to this conjunction I know not.' In the case of comets there was less room for scepticism. In December 1680, 'a formidable comet appeared at Edinburgh.' In discoursing on this comet he remarks that Dr. Bainbridge observed the comet of 1618 'to be verticall to London, and to passe over it in the morning, so it gave England and Scotland in their civill wars a sad wype with its taill. They seldom shine in wain, though they proceed from exhalations and other natural causes.' [26] Mr. Andrew Lang has pointed out to me that Lauder's remarks on the identity of the popular legends in France and Scotland (_Journal_, p. 83) are a very early instance of this observation, now recognised to be generally applicable. [27] P. 74, i.e. of his MS. For the vision of blue bonnets, compare H.O., p. 142, and Wodrow's _History_, iv. 180. [Sidenote: H.N. 198.] [Sidenote: H.N. 146.] Lauder relates several trials for witchcraft in much detail, and they evidently gave him some uneasiness. Some of the women commonly confessed and implicated other persons. In one such case the women, who among other persons, accused the parish minister, said that the devil sometimes transformed them 'in bees, in crows, and they flew to such and such remote places; which was impossible for the devil to doe, to rarefy the substance of their body into so small a matter ... thir confessions made many intelligent sober persons stumble much what faith was to be adhibite to them.' In another case from Haddington a woman confessed and accused five others and a man. Lauder saw the man examined and tested by pricking. He says, 'I remained very unclear and dissatisfied with this way of triall, as most fallacious: and the man could give me no accompt of the principles of his art, but seemed to be a drunken foolish rogue.' Then, according to his custom, he cites a learned authority, Martino del Rio, who lays bare the craft and subtlety of the devil, and mentions that 'he gives not the nip to witches of quality; and sometimes when they are apprehended he delets it....' 'The most part of the creatures that are thus deluded by this grand impostor and ennemy of mankind are of the meanest rank, and are ather seduced by malice, poverty, ignorance, or covetousness.' But he finds comfort in the pecuniary circumstances of the Tempter. 'It's the unspeakable mercy and goodness of our good God that that poor devill has not the command of money (tho we say he is master of all the mines and hid treasures of the earth) else he would debauch the greatest part of the world.' CONTENTS OF HIS EARLY JOURNALS AND ACCOUNTS It has already been mentioned that Lauder's later journals, when he came to chronicle public affairs and legal decisions, though they are full of graphic detail, contain little that is personal to himself. The manuscripts here printed, besides giving a picture of a Scottish student's life in France during the seventeenth century, include a narrative of his visits to London and Oxford on his return from abroad, his journey by coach and post from London to Edinburgh, and various expeditions in Fife, the Lothians, and the Merse, Glasgow, and the Clyde district, places where he had connections. He travelled on horseback. He kept one horse at this time, which appears in the Accounts. Considering his evident relish for travelling, it is remarkable that in his long life he never seems to have left Scotland after his return in 1667, though many of his more political brethren at the bar were constantly on the road between Edinburgh and Whitehall. He kept his accounts with great care. There were no banks, and his method was to account for each sum which he received, detailing how it was spent in dollars, merks, shillings sterling and Scots, pennies, etc. We have both his accounts during his period of travel, which are included in the first manuscript, and those during the years 1670 to 1675. From the latter copious extracts are given, and they are informatory as to the prices of commodities, and the mode of life of a young lawyer recently married. There was settled on him by his father in his marriage contract an annuity of 1800 merks (£100), secured on land. His wife's marriage portion was 10,000 merks (about £555), half of it paid up and invested, the remainder bearing interest at 6 per cent. His 'pension' as one of the assessors of the burgh was £12 (sterling). His house-rent was £20 (sterling): in one place it is stated a little higher; and he sublet the attics and basement. The wages of a woman servant was nearly £2 (sterling). We find the prices of cows, meal, ale, wine, clothing, places at theatres, etc., the cost of travelling by coach, posting, fare in sailing packet to London and so on. [Sidenote: H.O. 137.] [Sidenote: Genealogical Roll.] There are many illustrations throughout Lauder's manuscripts of the poverty of Scotland, relatively not only to the present time but to England. The official salary of a judge before the Union was £200, and it only reached that figure during his lifetime. Some time after the Union it was raised to £500. On the appointment of the Earl of Middleton as joint Secretary of State for England with Sunderland, in place of Godolphin, Lauder notes, 'This was the Dutchesse of Portsmouth's doing, and some thought Midleton not wise in changing (tho it be worth £5000 sterling a year, and 3 or 4 years will enrich on), for envy follows greatnesse as naturally as the shadow does the body, and the English would sooner bear a Mahometan for ther Secretar than a Scot, only he has now a good English ally, by marrieng Brudnell Earle of Cardigan's sister.' Thus the salary of a Secretary of State in England was the same in 1684 as it is now, whereas the salary of a Scottish judge was only one eighteenth part of its present amount: Lauder in his will gives a detailed account of his own investments. Sir Thomas Dick Lauder computes that he left about £11,000 besides the estate of Fountainhall, which he inherited. He was, however, the son of a wealthy man. At his marriage before he had any means of his own, 90,000 merks were settled by his father, who had several other children, on the children of the marriage (£5000 sterling, representing a sum many times as large in the present day). MONEY Lauder mentions a great variety of coins both in his Journal in France and in his Accounts after his return home. Some explanation of the principal coins may be useful. It is necessary to keep in mind that the value of coins was in a perpetual flux. There were during the century frequent changes in the value of coins relatively even to those of the same country. 1. _In France._ (1) _Livre_. The livre used by Lauder, and called by him indifferently 'frank,' was the livre tournois,[28] of 20 sous. It was, subject to exchange, of the same value as the pound Scots,[29] 1s. 8d. sterling, which greatly simplifies calculations. The £ s. d. French was equal to the £ s. d. Scots, and one twelfth of the value of the £ s. d. English or sterling. [28] The livre parisis contained 25 sous.--Major's _Greater Britain_ (S.H.S.), p. 32, note. [29] See pp. 3 and 4 and _passim_. (2) _Ecu, écu blanc_, or _d'argent_, a silver coin worth 3 livres,[30] or 5s. sterling, thus of the same value as the English crown, and sometimes called crown by Lauder. [30] The value varied a little, but it was three livres in 1653.-- _Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions et de Belles Lettres_ (1857), Tome 21, 2'me partie, p. 350. (3) _Ecu d'or_, or _couronne_, golden crown. It was worth about 5 livres 12 sous,[31] equal to 9s. 4d. sterling. (P. 155, 'I receaved some 56 ll. in 10 golden crowns.') [31] The exact value in 1666 in livres tournois was 5 ll. 11s. 6d.-- _Mémoires, ut supra_, p. 256. (4) _Pistole_. A Spanish gold coin current in France. Its standard value was 10 livres tournois, equal to 16s. 8d. That fairly corresponds with a proclamation in Ireland in 1661 fixing it at 16s. Littré (_Dict._ s.v.), states the value of the coin a good deal higher, though he gives the standard as above. But its value gradually increased, like that of other gold coins, and in later Irish proclamations is much higher. The British gold coins _Jacobus_ and _Carolus_ were also used by Lauder in France, and are explained below. 2. _In Scotland and England._[32] [32] See Cochran Patrick's _Records of the Coinage of Scotland_ (1876); Ruding's _Annals of the Coinage_ (1817); and _Handbook of the Coins of Great Britain and Ireland_ in the British Museum, by H.A. Grueber (1899); Burns, _Coinage of Scotland_. (1) _Jacobus_ (2) _Carolus_. James VI. on his accession to the throne of England, with a view to the union of the kingdoms, issued a coinage for both countries, which was in this sense uniform that each Scottish coin was commensurable and interchangeable with an English coin. The ratio of the Scots to the English £ s. d., which during centuries was always becoming lower, was finally fixed at 1 to 12. The English 20s. and Scots 12 l. pieces of equal value now issued were called the unite. The double crown or 10s. piece was the Scots 6 l. piece, the crown the Scots 3 l. piece, and so on. The unite was so called from the leading idea of union, just as the double crown had the legend, _Henricus Rosas Regna Jacobus_. As Henry VII. united the Red and White Roses, James was to unite the two kingdoms. It seems probable that James intended the unite as a 20s. or pound piece to be the standard and pivot of the coinage of both countries, as the pound or sovereign has now become. This enlightened policy, though it had lasting effects, soon broke down in detail. In England the shilling proved too strong for the unite, and in Scotland the merk maintained its hold. To prevent the exportation of gold, the value of the unite of 154 grains[33] was raised to 22s. in 1612, though the king had himself proposed rather to lower the weight of silver. That caused confusion, 'on account of the unaptness for tale' of the gold pieces at their enhanced value, and a lighter 20s. piece of 140 grains was issued in 1619 for England only, known as the laurel piece, from the wreath round the king's head. In Scotland the original unite remained, and was sometimes called the 20 merk piece, to which value it roughly corresponded. It was repeated in the coinage of Charles I., the last sovereign who coined gold in Scotland prior to the Revolution. Thus it was the only Scottish 20s. sterling piece. Charles I.'s unite or double angel (20s. piece) for England was of the same lighter weight as the laurel. In 1661 the value of the gold coin was again heightened, the old unite to 23s. 6d., and the lighter English unite to 21s. 4d. [33] The weights are given in round numbers. The above information is necessary in order to identify the two gold coins which Lauder used. He generally calls the larger the Jacobus and the smaller the Carolus. At p. 80 the one is mentioned as 'the Scotes and English Jacobuses, which we call 14 pound peices,' and the other as 'the new Jacobus, which we cal the 20 shiling sterling peice.' At p. 154 he speaks of '10 Caroluses, or 20 shiling peices,' so that the new Jacobus and the Carolus are the same. While there was only one weight of Scots gold piece of the issue value of 20s. sterling, in England during the reigns of James I., Charles I., and Charles II. there were four: 1, the sovereign of James I. (172 grains); 2, the unite or double angel of James (154 grains), the same as in Scotland; 3, the laurel of James, the unite of Charles I., and the broad of Charles II. (140 grains); 4, the guinea[34] of Charles II., first struck in 1663 (131 grains). Now Lauder's larger coin was a Scots or English Jacobus, therefore it is the unite of James VI.; and his smaller coin is called both a Carolus and a new Jacobus, therefore it is the coin of 140 grains. The two pieces are mentioned in a proclamation by the Privy Council in 1661 heightening certain coins.[35] [34] Once mentioned by Lauder, p. 220. [35] This table may be compared with Louis XIII.'s valuation of some of these coins (p. 80). The Scots piece there mentioned with two swords, and the legend _Salus_, etc., is no doubt the sword and sceptre piece of James VI. (1601-4). But the issue value of the whole piece, not the half piece, was 611. Scots. £ s. D. Scots. £ s. D. Scots. formerlie current at now to be current at The Double Angel [36] 13.06.08 14.04.08 The Single Angel 6.13.04 7.02.04 The Dager Peice 6.13.04 7.02.04 The Scots Ryder 6.13.04 7.02.04 The New Peice[37] 12.00.00 12.16.00 The Halfe 6.00.00 6.08.00 The Quarter 3.00.00 3.04.00 The Rose Noble, Scots and English. 10.13.04 11.07.04 The Hary Noble 9.06.08 9.19.00 [36] Lauder's Jacobus. [37] Lauder's Carolus. (3) _Dollar_. In Lauder's accounts the reader is struck by the prominent position of the dollar. While debts and obligations were calculated in pounds Scots or merks, dollars supplied the currency for household and other payments, just as pounds do at the present day. They were foreign coins of various denominations and various intrinsic value, but of inferior fineness to the Scots standard of silver money, which was eleven penny fine--eleven parts silver to one part alloy. They passed current for more than their intrinsic value, and the native silver money was withdrawn from the country. All through the reigns of Charles I. and Charles II. the subject gave great concern to the Mint, the Parliament, the Privy Council, and bodies with commercial interests like the Convention of 'Burrowis.' In 1631 the Privy Council issued a proclamation 'considering the greit skarsitie of His Majestie's proper coynes ... occasioned by the frequent transport theirof and importing of dollours in place of the same,' prohibiting the receipt of any dollars for coal or salt after 1st November next to come. 'That in the mean tyme the maisters and owners of the coalhewes and saltpans may give tymous advertisement to the strangers trading with them for coal and salt that they bring no dollours with them for the pryce of the salt and coal,' and that merchants exporting bestial or other commodities to England are to 'make return of the pryces' not in dollars, but either in H.M. proper coin or in the following foreign coins, the value and weight of which is fixed by the proclamation: Spanish pistolet, French crown, rose noble, half rose noble, quartisdiskue, single ryall. The proper method of dealing with the difficulty was matter of great controversy. In 1633 George Foulis, master coiner, says in a memorial, 'In the first it is to be considerit that _the most pairt of the moneys presently in Scotland is only dollouris_. 'Secondlie, these dollouris are not all alike in wecht, some wheirof are 15 drops wecht, some 14-1/2 and many others lesser in wecht. 'Thirdlie, they are different in fineness, some 10, some 10-1/2, others baser. The best 15 drop and 10 1/2 fineness will not answer to the King's money in wecht or fynness to 54s. Scots.' The best of these dollars was the Rex or Rix Dollar (Reichsthaler, dalle imporiale). In the reign of Charles I. the baser dollars which gave most trouble to the authorities were the dog dollars and the cross dollars. In the reign of Charles II. we hear more of the leg dollar, which approached the rex dollar in value, and had got a pretty strong footing. On 14th January 1670, the Privy Council issued a proclamation on the narrative, 'Forasmuch as there hath been of late imported into this kingdom great numbers of those dollars commonly called leg dollars Haveing the impression of a man in armes _with one leg _and a shield ... covering the other leg ... which does usually pass at the rate of 58s. Scots money, and seeing that upon tryall of the intrinsick worth and value thereof they are found to fall short of the foresaid rate, and that in the United Provinces where the forsaid dollars are coyned, the passe only at the rate of crosse dollars, Therupon the King's Mtie with advice of his P.Cs. doth declare that (the rex or bank dollars now passing at 58s. Scotts) the true and just value at which the forsaids legs dollars ought to passe and be current in this kingdome is 56s. Scotts money....' Thus we get the authorised value of these dollars at the period of Lauder's accounts. The accounts themselves show that the current value varied indefinitely, and is sometimes different in two consecutive items.[38] [38] With regard to the etymology of 'leg,' Mr. Hallen in his introduction to the _Account Book of Sir John Foulis of Ravelston_ (S.H.S.), p. xxxiii, gives some strong and perhaps convincing reasons in favour of Liége. But the descriptions in the Proclamation above quoted, and the fact that Lauder sometimes calls them 'legged,' seem to show that the popular etymology in Scotland was the man's leg on the coin. Charles II. struck four merk-pieces at the issue value of 53s. 4d. Scots in two issues, the first in 1664, the second in 1675-1682. The second, and only the second issue, came at some later but unknown period to be known to numismatists as dollars. But I do not think there is any reason to suppose that Lauder called those pieces dollars. The accounts are in the period of the first issue, and Lander's dollar was of higher value. Probably his dollars were all foreign coins, generally rex dollars, as he often calls them. When they are leg dollars, he appears always so to distinguish them. (4) _The Merk_, 13s. 4d. Scots, was raised in value by James VI. to 13- 1/2d. sterling, to make it interchangeable with English money. He coined none after his accession to the throne of England, and probably intended that no more should be coined. But the merk had too strong a hold in Scotland, and half merks were struck by Charles I., and various multiples and parts of merks by Charles II. at the old issue value of 13s. 4d. the merk. On the other hand, in 1651 Parliament 'cryed up' the 12s. Scots piece--equal to the English shilling--to one merk; and in 1625 the Britain crown or 31. Scots piece is officially described as 'known as the five merk piece,' though its issue value was only five shillings. This illustrates the confusion and uncertainty of the relative value of coins, of which parenthetically two other examples may be given. On 20th June 1673 Lauder notes the receipt of his year's salary as one of the assessors for the burgh, 'being 150 lb. Scots, which is about 229 merks,' whereas with the merk at 13s. 4d. (the standard value), 150 lb. is exactly 225 merks. In the same way he constantly states the same salary indifferently at 1501. Scots or £12 sterling, whereas 1501. Scots ought to have been equal to £12, 10s. sterling. (5) _Shilling_. Lauder applies the name without distinction to the English shilling, 12s. Scots piece, which at page 80 he calls our shilling, and to the shilling Scots. The context generally shows which he means. (6) _Groat_. Lauder's groat is the English groat of four pence, sterling. The groat Scots of less value had not been coined for a century. (7) _Penny_. As in the case of the shilling, Lauder uses the name indifferently for English pence and pennies Scots, but more often English. Such coins as testoons, placks, bodles, bawbees and turners, do not appear in his accounts, but some of them are casually mentioned in the text of the MSS., and are explained in footnotes. LANGUAGE AND SPELLING No alteration has been made on the text of the MSS. except the substitution of capital letters for small ones, where capitals would now be used. In this matter Lauder's practice is capricious, and it may safely be said that it was governed by no rule, conscious or unconscious. He spells the pronoun I with a capital, and usually begins a sentence with one. But names of persons and places are very often spelt with small letters. The use of capitals was not yet fixed, as it is now, and the usage of different languages, such as English, French and German, as it came to be fixed, is not identical. Some changes in the punctuation have also been made in transcription for the sake of clearness, but the punctuation, which is scanty, has not been systematically altered. In the MSS. some single words have been erased, or rubbed off, at the top and the foot of the page. The blanks are indicated, and as a rule, but not quite invariably, explained in footnotes. MSS. X and H are printed entire, with two unimportant omissions, one in each, which are noted and explained, and as regards MS. H, with the exception of some detached pages of accounts, and a catalogue of some books. Of these it was thought that the Appendix contains enough. From MS. K only extracts are given. The remainder contains more accounts, and a further catalogue of books, without the prices, and other memoranda and reflections, now of no interest. The spelling is to a large extent arbitrary.[39] It is less regular than, for example, the contemporary Acts of Parliament, but more regular than the letters of some of Lauder's contemporaries, in high positions.[40] A word is often spelt in different ways on the same page. There are, however, many constant peculiarities, some of which may have a linguistic interest, thus 'laugh' 'rough' 'enough' 'through' are spelt with a final _t_. The use of a final but silent _t_ Mr. Mackay in his introduction to Pitscottie,[41] p. cxl, says is a distinct mark of Scots of the middle period. 'Voyage,' 'sponge,' and 'large' are sometimes spelt without the final _e_. 'Knew,' 'slew,' 'blew' are spelt 'know,' 'slow,' 'blow.' 'Inn' is spelt 'innes.' 'See' is always spelt 'sy' or 'sie,' and 'weigh,' 'wy.' But these are only examples, taken at random. 'One,' 'off,' 'too,' 'thee' are spelt 'on,' 'of,' 'to,' 'the,' a snare to the unwary reader. 'V' and 'W' are frequently interchanged. [39] Lauder's French in the Journal in France is full of mistakes, both of grammar and spelling. He was only learning the language. [40] Cf. Bishop Dowden's introduction to Lauderdale Correspondence (S.H.S.), _Miscellany_, vol. i. p. 230. [41] _Historic and Chronicles of Scotland_, by Robert Lindesay of Pitscottie (Scottish Text Society, 1899). Lauder's language is idiomatic, and he uses many Scottish words which were not common in the written literary language of his time. A few of these words are now rare and even difficult to trace.[42] Most of them are quite intelligible to persons who have been accustomed to hear Lowland Scots spoken, but for the sake of other readers I have been convinced that occasionally interpretation is not superfluous. [42] One of them is 'dron,' p. 146. With reference to the words '_7 arbres_,' in the description of the Mail at Tours, p. 20, Mr. A. Lang has suggested to me that _arbres_ might be a term in the _Jeu de Mail_. Mr. H.S.C. Everard has kindly sent me the following quotations from Joseph Lauthier's book on the game (1st ed., 1717): 'C'est quand deux ou plusieurs jouent à qui poussera plus loin, et quand l'un est plus fort que l'autre, le plus foible demande avantage, soit par distance d'arbres, soit par distance de pas.' 'On finit la Partie en touchant un arbre ou une pierre marquée qui sert de but.' If certain trees were marked as goals, that would be a better explanation than the one given in the note. The thanks of the Society and my own are due to the owners of the MSS. I am grateful to Sir T.N. Dick Lauder and Sir William Fraser's Trustees (Sir James Balfour Paul, Lyon King of Arms, and the late Mr. James Craik, W.S.), for intrusting me with their MSS. for a long time, which made my work much easier; and more satisfactory. The Society is also indebted to Mr. David Douglas for the use of his transcript of MS., and for the first suggestion that the MS. should be printed. By the kindness of Lady Anne Dick Lauder four portraits in her possession are reproduced. 1. Lord Fountainhall, in ordinary dress, a different picture from the one in robes published by the Bannatyne Club. 2. His first wife, Janet Ramsay, an attractive picture, which suffers in the photographic reproduction. 3. Sir John Lauder, Fountainhall's father. 4. Sir Andrew Ramsay, Lord Abbotshall, his father-in-law. I have received constant assistance and advice from Mr. T. Graves Law, Librarian of the Signet Library. I have also to thank Sir Arthur Mitchell, who read some of the proofs, and gave me valuable suggestions, Mr. J.T. Clark, Keeper of the Advocates' Library, for ready help on many points, Mr. H.A. Webster, Librarian of Edinburgh University, Mr. W.B. Blaikie, of Messrs. T. and A. Constable, and Mr. Alex. Mill of the Signet Library, who in transcription and otherwise has given me efficient and obliging assistance. I am particularly grateful to Miss Cornelia Dick Lauder, for the interest which she has taken in the book, and the help which she has given me in obtaining the necessary materials for it. D.C. EDINBURGH, _March_ 1900. I JOURNAL IN FRANCE 1665-1667 I JOURNAL 1665-1667. [The first leaves of the Manuscript are wanting. Lauder left Edinburgh on 20th March 1665, travelling by Berwick and Durham, and arrived in London on 1st April. See page 154.] * * * * * We saw also the fatall chair of Scotland wheirin our kings for many ages used to be croune. I fand it remarkable for nothing but its antiquity, it being thought to have come from Egypt some 3,000 years ago. I went in the nixt place to the Tower, wheir on our entrin according to custome I left my sword. Heir first we saw a very strong armory for weapons of all sorts, as many as could furnish 20,000 men; we saw great field pieces of ordinance as also granadoes; we saw also many coats of maill, and among the rest on[43] very conceity all joined like fines of fisches on to another, which they informed me came as a present from the great Mogull who comands over 36 kings. The[re] ware hinging their as Trophees several peices of armour that they had taken from the french in their wars wt them. Their we saw the huge armour of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster. We came nixt and saw the honors, wheir we saw the sword and seipter of honor; the croun was not their, by reason the parliament had use for it at Whitehal. We saw also a most rich Globe of christal beset wt most precious diamonds. We came in the 3d place to sie the Lyons, the Leopards, the aigle, and a long skine of a snake. [43] One. Lauder's usual spelling. We arrived London on Saturday 1 of April, we left it on Thursday 6 of April; about 4 a cloack we took boat, and landed at Gravesend about 10 a cloack at night, in which space we ware so merry in singing never but some of us singing and sometymes all, that the rowers protested that they never carried so merry a company doune the Thames. On the way we was tuise stoopt by men of war to know whither their ware any seamen in it, that they might be sent to the fleet: at which we alleadged Captain Blawprine[44] G. Moor was much troubled, for he was exceeding skipper like. To morrow tymously we tooke post about 6 a cloack, and reach Dover about one; yet we got not passage til ij at night. What a distressed brother I was upon the sea neids not hear be told, since its not to be feared that I'l forget it, yet I cannot but tell whow[45] Mr. John Kincead and I had a bucket betwixt us strove ... who should have the bucket first, both being equally ready; and whow at every vomit and gasp he gave he cried Gods mercy as give he had bein to expire immediately. [44] Compare Blawflum (Jamieson), a deception. 'Prine' may be prein, pin, a thing of little value. Moor is playfully described as captain or skipper. [45] How. About 5 in the morning we landed on France the land of graven images. Heir we divided into 8 companies: Joseph Marior wt one Mr. Colison went into Flanders; Mr. Dick Moor and Kinkead went to Deip and so to Roan. Mr. Strachan, Hamilton, and I stayed in Calais til Monday, 10 of April, and joined wt the messenger for Paris one Pierre, a sottish fellow, yet one that entertained us nobly; their went also wt him besides us on Mr. Lance Normand, Newwarks gouernor and a son of my Lord Arreray or Broll,[46] a very sharp boy wt his governour Doctor Hall. In our journey we passed severall brave tounes as Bulloigne, Monstrul, Abewill, Poix, Beauveaus, wheir is the most magnificent church I had ever then sien. We chanced to lay a night at a pitty vilage called Birny, wheir my chamber was contigue to a spatious pleasant wood that abounded wt nightingales, small birds to look upon; who wt the melodiousnesse of their singing did put sleip quit from me. The great number we meit of souldiers all the way begat in us great fears of wooling [robbing],[47] yet it pleased God to bring us most safely to Paris 14 of April at night. Mr. Strachan led Mr. Ham[ilton] and me to one Turners, a Scotsman, wheir I lay that night, and wheir I recountred wt several of our countrimen, as Patrick Mein, Mr. Castellaw, Mr. Murray, Mr. Sandilands, a man wonderfully civil, Mr. Wilky, Mr. Gibson, and Mr. Colt. The day following I made my addresse to F. Kinloch, and brought wt me a letter containing my safe anivall to go in his packet for Scotland, I not having written any thing since I wrot at my parting from London. I delivered him also my fathers letter, B.[48] Kinlochs letter, and Thomas Crafurds, wt the bill of exchange; my fathers is as followeth: [46] Roger Boyle, 1621-1679, first Baron of Broghill and Earl of Orrery, M.P. for Edinburgh, 1656-58, member of Cromwell's House of Lords. He was succeeded by his son Roger, 1646-1710. [47] 'Robbing' interlined. 'Wooling' may mean 'shearing,' so robbing. [48] Bailie. _Edinborough, March_ 15, 1665. SIR,--The bearer heirof, my sone, inclining to study the french tongue and the Laws, I have theirfor thought it expedient to direct him to you, being confident of your favour and caire, intreating[49] ... recommendation by a few lynes to one Monsieur Alex.[49] ... [pr]ofessor of the Laws at Poictiers to which place I intend he sould go: as also to place him their for his diet in the most convenient house but especially wt on of our profession and Religion. He hes a bill drawen on you wt a letter of advice and credit; which I hope ye will obey. I have bein desired by severalls to have direct him to our Mr. Mowat and have bein profered to cause answer him what money he sould neid for 20 shiling the Frank: but I inclined rather to send him to you (whilk I hope ye will not take as trouble) tho I have payed Thomas Crafurd 21 shiling.[50] What he stands in neid of during his abode I hope ye wil answer him, and upon your advertisment and eis receipt I sal either advance or pay the money upon sight. I most without vanity or flattery say hitherto he hes not bein inclined to any vice or evill way and I hope sall so continue. I know not positively what may defray his charges in his studies, diet, and otherwise, but I conceive about 7 or 8 hundred franks a year may do it; whowever I entreat you let me hear from you what ye think wil do it and what ye will take for the frank. So being confident of your cair heirof, and in doing wheirof ye sall very much oblidge him who is, Sir,--your reall friend, JOHN LAUDER. [49] Page torn. [50] See Introduction, p. xlviii. The bill of exchange is as followeth: _Edinburgh, 17 March 1665_, for 400 livres T.L.[51] Sir,--4 dayes after sight of this my first bill of exchange (my 2 not being payed) please pay to Mr. John Lauder or his order 400 livres TL value receaved heir from his father B. John Lauder. Make punctuall payment and please it to account, as by the advice of your humble servant, THOMAS CRAFURD. For Mr. Francis Kinloch, Merchant in Paris. [51] See Introduction, p. xlii. Francis having read thir, out of his kindnese would suffer me to stay no wheir but in his oune house, wheir I stayed all the space I was at Paris, attended and entertained as give I had bein a Prince. While I was heir I communicated my intentions and directions for going straight to Poictiers to these countrymen fornamed, who ware all unanimously against it, not sieing what good I could do their since the Colledge was just upon the point of rising; they conceived theirfor that I might imploy my tyme much better either in Orleans at Mr. Ogilvyes house, or Saumur at Mr. Dualls; for in either of these I could have a richer advantage in reference to the language, both because its beter spoken their [then at] Poictiers, as also fewer Scotsmen their then in Poictiers. I sould also have for a pistoll[52] a month a master to give me a lesson on the Instituts once a day, which I could not so have at that rate at Poictiers. Thus they reasoned, and I fand Mr. Kinloch to be of the same mind. I considering that it was not expedient for me to step one step wtout direction from my father, I wrot the Vednesday following, 19 of Aprill, acquainting him wt it; and that I sould attend his answer and will at Orleans. [52] See Introduction, p. xliii. While I was at Paris I went and saw the new Bridge, and Henry 4 his stately statue in brasse sent as a present by the King of Denmark. I was also at the Place Royalle wheir stands Lewis the 13, this king of France his father, caused to be done by that great statesman in his tym, Cardinall Mazarin, whom he left tutor to the young king during his minority. I was also at the Palais Cardinal and that Palais wheir the Lawyers pleads. The choops[53] their have great resemblance wt those in the hie exchange at London. I saw also that vast stupendious building, the Louwre, which hath layd many kings in their graves and yet stands unfinished; give[54] all be brought to a close that is in their intentions I think the Grand Seigniours seraglio sall bear no proportion to it. All we saw of it was the extrinsecks, excepting only the king's comoedy house which the force of mony unlocked and cost open; which truly was a very pleasant sight, nothing to be sein their but that which by reason of gilding glittered like gold. But the thing that most commended it was its rare, curious, and most conceity machines: their they had the skies, boats, dragons, vildernesses, the sune itselfe so artificially represented that under night wt candle light nothing could appear liker them. [53] Shops. [54] Give for gif, if. The day before I left Paris, being according to the French account the 5 of May, according to the Scots the 25 of Aprill, Mr. Kinloch wt his wife and daughter Magdalen took Mr. Mein, Mr. Dick,[55] Mr. Moor and me in coach 4 leagues of Paris to Ruell to sie the waterworks their, which wtout controll be the best of any about Paris, by the way we passed thorow one of the pleasantest woods or Parks that ever my eyes did sie, called the Park of Boloigne. We saw Madrid also, but not that in Spaine; the occasion of the building wheirof was this: Francis, one of the kings of France, became Spaines prisoner, who demanded ...[56] ransome 8 milions. The french king payes him 4, and ...[56] promises him upon the word of a king that having once lifted it in France he sould come in person to Madrid and pay it. Thus vinning home he caused build a stately house a litle from Paris, which he named Madrid, and so wrot to the Spaniard that he had bein at Madrid and payed what he owed, according to that, '_qui nescit dissimulare nescit regnare_' We saw also Mount Calvary, which the Deluded Papists will have to be the true representative of that Calvary wheir our Saviour suffered: its situate at that same distance from Paris that the true's from Jerusalem, of that same hieght, and so in all the circumstances. [55] This may be James Dick, who was born in the same year as Lauder, 1646, afterwards Sir J. Dick of Priestfield, Lord Provost of Edinburgh, and created a baronet. [56] Page torn. Thus we come to Ruell, wheir so many gallant sights offered themselfes that I know not wheir to begin; first the pleasant ponds abounding wt fishes of divers sorts, as carps, picks, etc., comes to be considred. But the rich waterworks are the main commendation of the place. It is not to be forgotten whow finely the fellow that showed us them, and set them on work by his engines did wet Mr. Dick, and followed him in the litle house (the Grotto) whethersoever he could stir. The thing that mainly moved my admiration was the hie ascendance of the water: what secret hidden power could carry the water clean contrary to its natural inclination which is to deschend, as every other heavy body, so hy that in some of them a man wt a speir could not reach its top. The most wonderfull thing ever I saw is the infinit art that some curious painter hath showen on a large timber broad, standing in a corner of the yard: a small distance from it their is a revell put up which makes it appear the more lively, so that we win no nearer then the revell would let us. At this distance ye would think ye saw the heavens thorow the wal on the other syde of it, so wonderously is the blew skie drawen; so that bring me a man without acquainting him wt the devce he sal constantly affirme he sies the lift on the other syde of the wall. On the same broad beneath the skie on the earth, as ye would think, is drawen a woman, walking thorow a montain in a trodden path, the woman, the mountain, the way, so cunningly drawen that I almost thought I saw a woman walking on the other syde of the wall over a hil throw the beaten rod. I constantly asserted also that the broad was wery inaequall and that it had many utraisings[57] because I seimed to sie as lively as ever I saw any thing pillars coming furth and standing out wt a great deal of prominency from that which seimed to be the skie, that at least I judged it halfe a ell farder out; yet it was but a mistake; for its certainly knowen that the broad is as smooth and aequall as can be. We also went out wtout the yeard to the back of the wall, wheir by the back and sydes of the broad we discerned it to be of such thinnesse that it could not admit any utcomings, as these pillars seimed to us. [57] Outraisings, reliefs. In our coming home from Ruell we went in and saw the king's brother the Duke of Orleances house, Sainct Low: it hath also a wery pretty yard, wheir we saw many water-works also, and in the pond several swanes. We saw also many orange trees, some of which had their ripe fruit, some very green, some betwixt the 2, according to the natur of the orange tree. The house we fand wery rich; many brave portraicturs; our kings portraitur is their better done then ever I saw it in my life. The partition that divides one roome from another is of strange glasse that showes a man his body in some of them 5 tymes, so that I saw in one of them 5 John Lauders. After this we came back to Paris, on the morrow after, being the 6 of May according to the French account, the 26 of April according to the Scots. I joined wt the messenger for Orleans severall accompanieng me to my horse, their went 4 Englishes alongs also, one of which was the doctor whom his cometicall face told to have the clap. We came to Orleans May 7 at night. I straight directed my course to Mr. Ogilvyes, which I did that I might get the better accomodation knowing that the Doctor also intended their. I delivered him the letter I brought him from F. Kinloch, which was as followeth: Mr. John Ogilvy. _Paris, May 6, 1665._ SIR,--Thesse are to accompany the bearer heirof, Mr. John Lauder, whose father is my wery much honored friend, his mother my neir kinswomen, and himselfe a very hopful youth inclined to vertue every way. He intends to stay som tyme wt you, theirfor I do earnestly recommend him to your best advice and counsell in what may concerne his welfare to assist him theirin, in all which I recommend him to you againe and againe as give he were my oune sone, assuring you that what favor or friendship you sall be pleased to show him, I sall ever acknowledge it as done to my selfe. He intends to improve his tyme in the study of the Laws, and having got some knowledge of the french tongue, he intends for Poictiers some moneths hence. Help him to a master that may come to him once a day and give him a lesson on the Instituts; and for the language I beseich you assist him in it. If their be no accommodation for him at your house, I pray you place him wheir he may be weil used and in good company. Let him not want what he stands in neid of for monyes or other necessaries, all which I sall make good to you thankfully upon advice from you. Thus recommending him to your care as my oune. Kissing your hand wt madam Ogilvyes, your daughters, and al your families, I rest your real friend and servant, FRANCIS KINLOCH.' At my arrival heir I fand in pension wt him the Mr. of Ogilvy[58] wt his servant, a very civil lad[59] James Hunter, young Thirlestan[60] wt his man Patrick Portues: besides them also their ware English, French, and Germans. The city (called Aurelia ather _a bonitate auroe_, or from Aurelian the emperor who keipt a station heir) I fand to be as big as Edinborough laying wt it also the next greatest citty of Scotland. I discovered likewise the city to abound wt such a wast number of lame folk, both men and women, but especially women, even many of them of good quality, that I verily beleive their are more lame women their at Orleans then is in all Scotland or much of France. Enquiring what the reason of this might be, the general woice was that it proceeded from the nature of the Aurelian wine, which they alledge to have such influence on the sperm of man as to produce a creature imperfect in their legs. Others sayd it was the purity of the air about Orleans whence the city has the name of Aurelia. But what influence the air can have in this point is hardly explicable. Monsieur Ogilvy more rationally informed me that he took it to be a race and generation of peaple who transmitted it hæreditarly to their posterity, for which I meit after[6l] a wery strong presumption: I saw a mother lame, not only the daughters lame, but in the very same faschion that the mother; and this I saw confirmed seweral tymes. [58] Apparently David, afterwards third Earl of Airlie. His grandfather was already dead, and he is afterwards called Lord Ogilvy in the Journal. [59] Probably the servant, though the punctuation is as in the text. [60] Thirlestan, probably Thurston in East Lothian, belonging to the family of Hunter. [61] Meit after, i.e. met afterwards. Just the morrow after my arrival was keipt very solemly by the whole toune in remembrance and commemoration of the valiant maid of Orleans, who, when the English had reduced al France excepting only Orleans to their obedience, and ware so fair for Orleans that they gained to the mids of the bridge over Loyer, most couragiously animated the citizens and beat them shamelesslie back: for which when the English got hir in their power they brunt hir at Roan quick. The ceremony we saw consisted of a procession partly spiritual or Ecclesiastick, partly civil or Temporal. To make the spirituall their was their all that swarm of grassopers which we are fortold sould aschend out of the bottemlese pit; all these filthy frogs that we are fortold that beast that false prophet sould cast out of his mouth, I mean that rable of Religious orders within the body of that Apostolical and Pseud-apostolicall Church of Rome. Only the Jesuits was wanting; the pride of whose hearts will not suffer them to go in procession with the meaner orders. In order went the Capuchines, then the Minimes, which 2 orders tho they both go under the name of Cordeliers by reason of that cord they wear about their midle, on whilk cord they have hinging their string of beads, to the end of their string is hinging a litle brazen crosse, tho also they be both in on habit, to wit long broun gowns or coats coming doune to their feet, a cap of that same coming furth long behind just like a Unicornes horne, tho the go both bar leged only instead of shoes having cloogs of wood (hence when I saw them in the winter I pitied them for going bar leged; on the other hand, when I saw them in the summer I pitied them that they ware necessitat by the first institution of their orders never to quate their gounes which cannot be but to hot for them; yea, never to suffer any linnen only wooll to come neirest their skine), notwithstanding of this its easy to distinguish them by the Clerical Tonsure, you sall never find a capuchin but wt a very liberall bard: for the Minime he most not have any. Again in their diet and other such things they differ much: the Minime most renounce for ever the eating of fleche, their only food is fishes and roots; hence Erasmus calles them fischy men (homines piscosos). Not so wt the Capuchines. Their be also many other differences that tyme most discover to me. Thir 2 orders our Bucanan means when he names _nodosa canabe cinctos_.[62] To returne to our purpose their came also the Dominicans or Jacobins, which are but one order having 2 names; then came the Chartereus or Carthusians: both which go in a long white playding robe. Only the Jacobins hood is black; the Carthusians is white: then followed the Franciscans, who now are called Recollects because being al banished France by reason of their turbulency and intromitting wt the state (of which wery stamp they seim to have bein in the tyme of our James the 5, when he caused Buchanan writ his Franciscani against them) by the prævalent faction the Pope had in France then, they were all recalled, so that France held them not so weil out as Venice do'es the Jesuits. Then came the Peres de l'Oratere, who goes allmost in the same very habit wt the Jesuits. Then cames the Augustines wt their white coat and a black gown above, after them came the moncks of the order of St. Bennet or the Benedictin friers, who goes in a white coat indeed, but above it he wears a black cloak to his heels, wt the Jesuits he wears also a hat as they do. Then came the chanoins of the Church of Sainct Croix in their white surplices above their black gounes and their 4 nooked caps. Tyme sould feel me ere I could nombair over all orders, but thir ware the most principall, each of which had their oune crosse wt the crucifix carried by one of their order. This much for the Ecclesiastick procession. After them came the tounes men in armes; in a knot of whom went a young fellow who represented the Maid of Orleans, clad in the same very habit, girt wt that sam very sword wt which the Maid beat the Englishes. This went thorow all the toun. [62] At line 19 of Buchanan's _Franciscanus_ is this passage: 'O sanctum festumque diem! cum cannabe cinctus Obrasumque caput duro velante cucullo,' etc. During my abode heir, about the end of May, I had occasion to sie another custome of the city. At that tyme of the year the tounes men put upon the other syde of the bridge a pole as hie as the hiest house in Edenborough: on the top of it they fasten a bird made of brasse at which they, standing at the feet of the pole, shoot in order, beginning at the better, wt gunes, having head peices on their heads, to sie who can ding it doun. I went and saw them shoot, but no man chanced to shoot it doun that year I was their. During the tyme I was heir their was so many fests or holy dayes that I werily think the thrid part of their year is made up of them. The principal was fest de Dieu, on which, such is the fury of the blinded papists, the Hugonots are in very great hazard if they come out, for if they kneel not at the coming by of the Hosty or Sacrament they cannot escape to be torn in peices; whence I can compare this day to no other but that wheir the Pagans performed their Baccanalian feasts wheir the mother used to tear hir childrens. The occasion of the institution of this day they fainge to be this. The Virgin appeared say they to a certain godly woman (who wt out doubt hes been phrenetick and brain sick), and made a griveous complaint that she had 4 dayes in the year for hir, and God had only the Sabath: this being devulged it was taken as a admonition from God, whence they instituted this day and ordainned it to be the greatest holy day in the year. The most part of all the city was hung with tapistry, espescialy the principall street which goes straight from the one end of the toune to the other, which also was covered all above in some parts with hingings, in other wt sheits according to the ability of the persones; for every man was obliged to hing over against his oune house, yet the protestants ware not, tho John Ogilvy was also called before the Judges for not doing it; yet producing a pladoyes[63] in the Hugonets faveurs they had nothing to say against it; yet they caused the wals of his house to be hung wt publick hingings that belonged to the toune. For to sy the procession I went wt the other pensioners to a place wheir when all others went to the knees, to wit, when the Hosty came by, we might retire out of sight. I retired not so far as they did, but boldly stood at a little distance that I aen might sy it the better. This procession was on the 4 of June, a little after followed Sainct Barnabas day. Then came mid-Summer even, on whiclk the papists put on bonfires for John Baptists nativity. The day after, called S. Jeans day, was keiped holy by processions. [63] Plaidoyer, pleading, legal argument. On the 1 of July was S. Pierres day, on which I heard a chanoin preach in S. Croy upon Piters confession, thou art the sone of the living God, very weill, only he endevored to have Pierre for the cheife of the Apostles because forsooth in the 10 of Mathew, wheir al the Apostles are named, he finds Piter formost. That I might have a full survey of the toune I went up to the steeple of St. Croy, which truly is on of the hiest steeples I saw abroad; from it I had a full visy of the toune, which I fand to be of that bigness specified; then the sight of the country lying about Orleans, nothing can be pleasanter to the eye. We saw also the forest of Orleans which environs the northren syde of the city as a halfe moon: in it ar many wild beasts and particularly boors; one of which, in the tyme of wintage, give it chance to come out to the wineyards wheir they comit great outrages, the boors or peasants uses to gather to the number of 2000 or 3000 from all the adiacent contry wt dogs, axes and poles to kil the boor. During my abode heir I went also to the Jesuits Colledge and discoursed wt the praefectus Jesuitarum, who earnestly enquiring of what Religion I was, for a long tyme I would give him no other answer but that I was religione christianus. He pressing that he smeled I was a Calvinist, I replied that we regarded not these names of Calvin, Luther, Zuinglius, yea not their very persons, but in whow far they hold the truth. After much discourse on indifferent matters, at our parting he desired me to search the spirits, etc. I went and saw the Gardens of the Minims, the Jacbins, the Carthusians, and the Peres de l'Orat.[64] [64] _Oratoire_. Many contrasts ha'es bein betwixt J.O. and I. laboring to defend presbytery and the procedures of the late tymes. During my abode heir 2 moneths I attended the Sale de dance wt Mr. Schovaut as also Mr. le Berche, explaining some of the institutions to me. John was my Mr. of language. A part of the tyme that I was heir was also the Admiral of Holland, Obdams Sone, who wt the companions carried himselfe marvelously proud. He and they feed themselfes so up wt the hoop of the victory that they præpared against the news sould come of the Engleshes being beat a great heap of punchions of wine wheir wt they intended to make merry, yea as I was informed to make Loyer run wt win. But when the news came the Hollanders was beat, that his father was slain,[65] he and his sunk away we know not whither. That ranconter that happened betuixt him and Sandwichs Viceadmiral of England sone coming from Italy (which the Mr. of Ogilvy getting wit of from the Germans came runing to my chamber and told me) is very remarkable. The first bruit that came to our ears of that battle was that the Englishes had lost, the Duc of York was slain. When the true news came the Hollanders sneered at it, boasting that they would equippe a better fleet ere a 4 night. The French added also the pace, vilifieng and extenuating the victory as much as they could, knowing that it was not their interest nor concernment that the King of England sould grow to great. It was fought in the channel eagerly for 3 dayes; and tho at a good distance from Calice, yet the noice of their canon mad it al to shake. [65] Admiral Opdam was blown up with his ship in the battle near Lowestoft, when the Dutch fleet was defeated by the English, commanded by the Duke of York, 4th June 1665. Some weeks that I was heir the heat was so great that afternoon (for then it was greatest) I would not have knowen what to have done. It occasioned also several tymes great thunders and such lightenings that sometymes ye would have thought this syde of the heavens sometymes that, sometymes al on a fire. During my staying heir I have learned a lesson which may be of use to me in the rest of our travels, to wit, to beware of keiping familiar company wt gentlemens servants, for such a man sal never get respect from the Mrs.[66]; to beware also of discoursing homly with anie servants. We sould keip both their for at a prudent distance. The Mr. of Ogilvy and I ware wery great. I know not what for a man he'el prove, but I have heard him speak wery fat nonsense whiles. [66] i.e. Masters. About 20 dayes ere I left Johns house the Mr. of Lour (Earle of Ethie's sone)[67] wt his governour David Scot, Scotstorvets nephew, came to Orleans; the Mr. the very day after took the tertian ague or axes....[68] [67] Apparently David, afterwards third earl. The title was changed from Ethie to Northesk after the Restoration. The Master was grandson to the first earl, who died in 1667. [68] Seven lines erased in MS. That Globe that stands on the top of S. Croix is spoken to be of so large a periphæria and circumference that 20 men may sit wt in about a round table. One day as I was going to my Mr. of Institutes as I was entring in a lane (about the martroy) I meit in the teeth the priests carrieng the Sacrament (as they call it) with a crosse to some sick person: my conscience not suffering me to lift of my hat to it, I turned back as fast as I could and betook me selfe to another street wheir I thought I might be safe: it followed me to that same very street, only fortunately I got a trumpket[69] wheir I sheltred myselfe til it passed by. [69] Spiral stair. Theirs a pretty maille their; we saw a better one at Tours one many accounts; the longitude wheirof we meeted and fand it to be neir 1000 paces, as also that of Orleans is only 2 ranks of tries; in some places of it 3; all the way ye have 4 ranks of tries all of a equall hight and most equally sett in that of Tours. About 10 days before my parting from Orleans at Mademoiselles invitation the Mr. of Ogilvy and I went wt hir, hir mother and Mr. Gandy ther Tutor, in their coach (for which I payed satly,[70] that being their policy) to their country village 9 leagues of, situat in the midest of the forest of Orleans, much of which is now converted into manured land. This tyme was the first adventure I made of speaking the language, wheir they ware pleased all to give me applause testifieng that I spake much for my tyme. I took coach tymously in the morning before halfe 6 and returned the day after about 8 at night. By the way we saw 2 places wery weill worth the sieng, Shynaille and Chasteau neuf: Shynaille[71] for its garden and the other both for its house and garden. At Synaille a great number of waterworks; creatures of all shapes most artificially casting furth water: heir ye may sy a frog sputing to a great hieght, their a Serpent and a man of marble treading on his neck, the water gliding pleasantly partly out at his meickle too, partly out at the Serpents mouth: in a 3 part a dog, in a 4, Lions; and all done most livelylie. We regrated that the prettiest machine of all was broken; wheir was to be sein wtin a little bounds above 300 spouts sending furth water and that in sundry formes. In one place it would arise uprightly as a spear; in another as a feather; in a trid[72] it sould rise sydelings and so furth, and when it had left of ye sould not be able to discern whence the water ishued. The main thing in the house of Chasteau neuf was the rich furniture and hingings; yet the richest Tapistry that used to be in that house was at that tyme in Paris; the master of the house being one of the Kings Counsellers; yet these we saw ware wery rich; some of them ware of leather stamped marvelously weill wt gold; others in silver; others wrought but wondrous livelylie. From the house we saw the extent of the yard, which was a monster to sy, being like a little country for bigness, and yet in marvelous good order in all things, but especially in the regularity of its walks, each corresponding so weill to the other; having also a pretty forrest of tries on every syd of it: the circuit of this yard will be nothing under 3 miles. I never saw a woman worse glid[73] then she was (tho otherwise a weelfawored women) that took us thorow the house. At night we lay at their country village. [70] i.e. Sautly, saltly. [71] I cannot find this name in the maps. [72] Third. [73] Gleyed, squint-eyed. On the morning we went and hard the curé say Mass, wheir saw a thing we had not sien before, to wit in a corner of the Church having 4 or 5 rocks of tow, some tied wt red snoods, some wt blew. On the sieng of this I was very sollicitous to know what it might mean. Having made my selfe understood about it I was told that when any honest women died she might leive a rock full of tow to be hung up in the church as a symboll that they ware vertuous thrifty women. This put me in mind of Dorcas whose coats and thrift the women showed to Paull after she was died. Mass being ended I went and fell in discours with the Curé. We was not long together when we fell hot be the ears: first we was on the Jansenists opinion about Prædestination, which by a bull from the present Pope, Alex'r the 7, had bein a litle before condemned at Paris; then we fell in one frie wil, then one other things, as Purgatory, etc.; but I fand him a stubborn fellow, one woluntary blind. We was in dispute above a hower and all in Latin: in the tyme gathered about us neir the half of the parish, gazing on me as a fool and mad man that durst undertake to controlle their curé, every word of whose mouth, tho they understood it no more nor the stone in the wall did, they took for ane oracle, which minds me of the miserablenese and ignorantnese of the peasants of France above all other commonalty of the world; our beggars leading a better life then the most part of them do. In our returning amongs the best merriments we had was my French, which moved us sewerall tymes to laughter; for I stood not on steeping stones to have assurance that it was right what I was to say, for if a man seek that, he sall never speak right, since he cannot get assurance at the wery first but most acquire it by use. 4 leagues from Orleans, we lighted at Gargeau[74] wt Maddle.[75] Ever after this Mademoiselle and I was wery great, which I know not whow the Mr. of Ogilvy took, I being of much shorter standing their in Orleans then he was. [74] Now Jargeau. [75] Mademoiselle. Just the Sabath before my parting from Orleans began the Jesuits Logick and Ethick theses to be disputed: the Mr. of Ogilvy and I went to hear, who bleetly[76] stayed at behind all almost; I, as give I had bein a person interested thrust into the wery first rank wheir at the distributor I demanded a pair of Theses, who civilly gave me a pair, against which tho I had not sein them till then, I durst have ventred a extemporary argument, give I had knowen their ceremonies they used in their disputing and proponing, which I fand litle differing from our oune mode. The most part of the impugners ware of the religious orders; some of them very sharply, some tolerably and some pittifully. The first that began was a Minim against a Logicall Thes[is] that was thus, _Relatio et Terminus non distinguuntur_. The fellows argument was that usual one, _quæ separantur distinguuntur et hæc_, etc.; the Lad answered by a distinction, _quæ separantur per se verum: per accidens, falsum_; and so they went on. The lad chanced to transmit a proposition one tyme: the fellow in a drollery replied, _si tu transmittas ego--revocabo_. Thus have we dwelt enough on Orleans, its hy tyme for us to leeve it. [76] Blately, modestly. On the 2'd day after this dispute, being the 14 of July wt the French and consequently the 4 wt the Scots, I took boat at Orleans, the Mr. of Ogilvy wt James his man, as also Danglebern accompanieng me to the boat. I left Salt[77] Orleans and sett up for Blois. In the boat among others were 3 of the order of Charité (as they call it) who beginning to sing their redicoulous matins, perceiving that I concurred not wt them, they immediatly suspected me for a Hæretick. One of them put me in mind of honest James Douy not only for his wisage but also for his zeall and ardeur he showed to have me converted and brought back to the mother church. That he seimed to me to personate Mr. Douy not only in his wisage but also in his strickness and bigotry--being oftner in telling of his beads then both his other 2 companions fat-looged stirrows[78] ware--made me fall into the abstract notion that thess who resemble in wisage usually agry in nature and manners, which at that tyme I thought was to be imputed to that influence which the temperament or crasis 4 _primarum qualitatum_ hath on the soull to make it partaker of its nature. [77] Dear, expensive. [78] Fat-eared fellows. I presume that loog is lug, ear. Betuixt Orleans and Blois of tounes on the river we saw first Merug,[79] then Baniency.[80] At night we came to Blois, wheir I was the day after to wiew the Toune. I fand it situat on a wery steep eminence, in some places as wearisom to go up as our Kirkheugh. I went and saw the Kings Garden as they call it; but nowise in any posture; only theirs besydes it a large gallery on every syde, wheirof I counted 60 windows, and that at a considerable distance one from another; it hath pillars also for every window on whelk it stands. I went nixt and saw the Castle whilk stands on a considerable eminence, only its the fatality theirof not to be parfaited, which hath happened by the death of the Duke of Orleans, who had undertaken the perfecting of it and brought it a considerable length. On the upmost top of that which he hath done stands his portraict in marble. She that showed in the rooms was a gay oldmouthed wife who in one chamber showed me wheir one of the Kings was slain, the very place wheir he fell (the Duke of Guise, author of the Parísien massacre) and the back door at which the Assasinates entered: in another wheir one of their Kings as also seweral of the nobility ware keipt prisoners, and the windows at whilk one of ther queen mothers attempted to escape, but the tow proving to short she fell and hurt hirself. [79] Meung, now Meun. [80] Beaugency. When I was in the upmost bartizan we had one of the boniest prospects that could be. About 2 leagues from us in the corner of a forest we saw the Castle of Chamburgh,[81] a place wery worthy the sieng (as they say) for the regularity of its bastimens. We saw wtin a league also tuo pretty houses belonging to Mr. Cuthbert, whom we would have to be a Scot. I went and saw sewerall Churches heir. I lay not at the Galere, but at the Chass Royall: part of the company went to the Croix Blanche. [81] Chambord. I cannot forget one passage that behappened me heir: bechance to supper I demanded give he could give me a pullet, he promises me it. My pullet comes up, and wt it instead of its hinder legs the hinder legs of a good fat poddock. I know them weill enough because I had sien and eaten of them at Orleans. I consedering the cheat called up my host and wt the French I had, demanded him, taking up the leg, what part of the pullet that might be, he wt a deal of oaths and execrations would have made me believe it was the legs of a pullet, but his face bewrayed his cause; then I eated civilly the rest of my pullet and left the legs to him: such damned cheats be all the French. Having bein a day at Blois I took boat for Tours in new company againe, of some Frenchmen, a Almand and a Dutchman; wt whom I had again to do vindicating my prince as the most just prince in the world in all his procedures wt the Hollandez. The fellow behaved himselfe wery proudly. Betuixt Blois and Tours we saw Amboise, which is in estime especially by reason of its casle. As we was wtin halfe a league of Tours by the carelesnese of the matelots and a litle pir of wind that rose we fell upon a fixt mill in the river, so that the boat ran a hazard of being broken to peices, but we wan of, only 3 or 4 dales in hir covert was torn of. Arriving at Tours about 3 a cloack we all tooke another boat to carry us about a league from the city to sie a convent of the Benedictines (Marmoustier) a very stupendious peice give ended. It hath also a very beautifull church, many of the pillars of it being of marble, others of alabastre, and that of sundry coleurs, some red, some white, etc.: whence on the entry theirs a prohibition hung up interdicting all from engraving their name or any other thing on the pillars, least of deforming them. One of the fathers of the order came and did let us sy the relicts of the church which ware the first relicts I saw neir at hand: I having sien some at a distance carried in processions at Orleans. Their we saw the heart of Benedictus, the founder of their order, enclosed in a crystall and besett wt diamonds most curiously. We of our company, being 6, ware all of the Religion, whence we had no great respects for the relict; but their ware som others their that ware papists; who forsooth bit[82] to sit doune on their knees and kist. At which I could not contein my selfe from laughing. [82] Were obliged. Their saw we also a great number of old relicts of one St. Martin. They had his scull enclosed (give his scull and not of some theife it may be) in a bowll of beaten silver. In a selver[83] besyde was shank bones, finger bones and such like wery religiously keipt. He showed us among others also a very massy silver crosse watered over wt gold very ancient, which he said was gifted them by a Englishman. I on that enquired whow they might call him. He could not tell til he cost up his book of memorials of that church; and then he found that they called him Bruce, on which I assured him that that was a Scots name indeed of a wery honorable family. [83] Salver. Then we returned back to Tours, wheir we went first to sie their mail[84] (which I counted by ordinar paces of whilk it was 1000.7 arbres).[85] About the distance of less than halfe a league we saw the Bridge that lays over the river of Chere, which payes its tribut to the Loier at Langes,[86] a little beneath Tours. Next we went and saw some of their churches. In their principal was hinging a iron chaine by way of a trophee. I demanding what it might mean, I was told it was brought their by the Chevaliers or Knights of Malta. [84] English, mall. Originally an alley where a game was played with a _mail_, a strong, iron-bound club, with long, flexible handle, and a ball of boxwood. [85] Arbre (arbour) probably means 'a shaded or covered alley or walk.'--Murray's _New English Dict_., s.v. 'Arbour.' The history of the word, with its double derivation from the Anglo-Saxon root of 'harbour' and the Latin _arbor_, is very curious. See Introduction, p. 1, note 2. [86] Langest in Blaeuw's map, now Langeais. We lodged at the Innes.[87] To-morrow tymously we took boat for Saumur (St. Louis). Al the way we fand nothing but brave houses and castles standing on the river, and amongst other that of Monsoreau tuo leagues large from Saumur, wheir the river of Chattellerault or Vienne, which riseth in the province of Limosin, tumbleth it selfe into the Loier; this Monsereau is the limits of 2 provinces; of Torrain, to the east of whilk Tours is the capital, and of Anjou to the west, in whilk is Saumur, but Angiers is the capitall. When we was wtin a league of Saumurs they ware telling us of the monstrous outbreakings the river had made wtin these 12 years upon all the country adiacent, which made us curious to go sie it. Whence we landed; and being on the top of the bank we discovered that the river had bein seiking a new channell in the lands adiacent, and had left a litle young Loier behind it; the inundations of this river seims so much the stranger to many, that finding it so shallow generally that we could not go a league but we had our selfes to row and work of some bed of sand or other, makes men to wonder whence it sould overflow so. Thir beds randers it wery dangerous in the winters; yea in our coming doun we saw in 3 or 4 places wheir boats had bein broken or sunk thir last winter; some part or other of them appearing above as beacons. In sewerall places it wines so on the land that it makes considerable islands, yea such as may give some rent by year. At last we landed at Saumur, but before I leive the,[88] fair Loier, what sall I say to thy commedation? Surely if anything might afford pleasure to mans unsatiable appetit it most be the, give they be any vestiges of that terrestrial paradise extant, then surely they may lively be read in the. Whow manie leagues together ware their nothing to be sein but beautiful arbres,[89] pleasant arrangements of tries, the contemplation of which brought me into a very great love and conceit of a solitary country life, which brought me also to pass a definitive sentence that give I ware once at home, God willing, I would allot the one halfe of the year to the country and the other halfe for the toune. Is it not deservedly, O Loier, that thou art surnamed the garden of France, but I can stay no longer on the, for I am posting to Mr. Doul my countrymans house, who accepts us kindly. His wife was in the country, seing give the pleasures of the samen might discuss and dissipat the melancholy she was in for the parting of her sone, whom his father had some dayes before send for England, to wit, for Oxford, meirly that he might be frie from his mothers corruptions, who answering him to franckly in mony, the lad began to grow debaucht. Behold the French women as great foolls as others. On the morrow after she returned, amongs other expressions, she said, that it gave heer encouragdement to let hir sone go wt the better will that she saw that I, as a young man, had left my native country to come travell. [87] Innes for inn, cf. p. 38 at top. [88] i.e. thee. [89] See p. 20, note 3. I went and saw my Lord Marquis of Douglasse[90] at Mr. Grayes, whom I was informed to live both wery quietly and discontentedly, mony not being answered him as it sould be to one of his quality; and this by reason of discord amongs his curators, multitude wheirof hath oft bein sein to redound to the damage of Minors. He was wearing his winter cloath suit for lack of another. He had a very civill man as could be to his governour, Mr. Crightoune, for whom I had a letter from William Mitchell. [90] James, second marquis, born 1646, died 1700. Sabath fornoon we went togither and hard sermon in their church, which is wtin the Toune; afternoon we took a walk out to a convent which they call St. Florans. By the way he communicated to me his intentions for leaving the Marquis, whom he thought wtin some few moneths would return for Scotland, his affairs demanding his oune presence, as also his resolutions of going into Italy give it took foot. I demanding him whow a man that came abroad might improve his tyme to the best advantage, and what was the best use that might be made of travelling. He freely told me that the first thing above all was to remember our Creator in the dayes of our youth, to be serious wt our God: not to suffer ourselfes to grow negligent and slack in our duty we ow to God, and then to seik after good and learned company whence we may learn the customes of the country, the nature and temper of the peaple, and what wast diversity of humours is to be sein in the world. He told me also a expression that the Protestant Minister at Saumur used to him, whereby he taxed the most part of strangers as being ignorant of the end they came abroad for, to wit, that these that came to sie Saumur all they had to writ doune in their book was that they went and saw such a church, that they drank good wines, and got good wictuals at the Hornes, a signe wheir strangers resorts. The convent we fand to be liker a castle than a Religious house. We saw a large window, the covert wheirof was stenchells like those that are on the windows of the Abby at Holyrood House; but very artificially all beat out of one peice of iron, but not ioined and soudred togither as they used to be. Saumurs is a pretty little toune wt fields upon all hands most pleasant. I, amongs other things, enquired at Mr. Doull what was their manner in graduating their students their. He told me it was wholly the same wt that in other places. They give out Theses which the students defended, only they had a pretty ceremony about the close: each of these to be graduat got a laurell branch, on the leaves wheirof was every mans name engraven in golden letters. Item, he said that when he reflected on the attendance that the Regents in Scotland gave to ther classes, he thought he saw another Egyptiacall bondage, for wt them they attended only 4 dayes of the weeks, and in thess no longer than they took account of ther former lesson, and gave them out a new one, which they send them home to gett. On a afternoon I was their I made a tour doune throu the suburbs of the toune to the Convent of Nostre Dame des Ardilliers.[91] On my return Mr. Doull and Mr. Crightoun demanding of me wheir I had bein, I freely told: wheirupon they fell to to scorne me, asking what I went to seek their. I told meerly to walk. They alleadged that John Ogilvy at Orleans bit to have told me of the place; that it was the most notorious part of France for uncleanness, and that women that could not gett children at home, coming their ware sure to have children. To speak the truth the place seimed to me wery toun like, for their came a woman to me and spered whey I all alone. [91] The Church of Notre Dame d'Ardiliers, of the sixteenth century, was enlarged by Richelieu and Madame de Montespan. The night before my parting from Saumur a young gallant of the toune, to show his skill, showed the wholle toune some fireworks in a boat on the river, but they ware wery pittifull, the principall thing we saw being only some fireballs which they cost up in the air to a considerable hight som tymes. Theirs one thing we most not forget in the river. In our coming doune in sewerall places on the syde of the rivers bank we saw pleasant little excrescencyes of litle rocks and craigs, which makes exceidingly to the commendation of the places. In thes craigs are built in houses, which be the vertue of Antiperistasis is cold in summer and hot in winter, tho their be some of them they dare not dwell in in winter by reason of the looseness of the earth then. Having stayed 2 dayes in Saumur I hired horse for Poictiers, only the fellow who aught the horse running at my foot. We rode by Nostre Dame and along the side of Loier as far as Monsereau. Heir I'm sure I was thrie miles togither under the shade of wast valnut tries on each syde ladened wt fruit, great abondance of which I meit all the way thorow. At Monsereau I left Loier, and struck south east be the banks of the river of Chasteleraut in Turrain, of whilk Tours is the capitall, the most renouned toune of France for manufacturies of silks of all sorts. We dined at Chinon, standing on that river 5 great leagues from Saumur. As we ware about a league from Chinon, I leiving my guid a considerable distance behind me, thinking that I bit always to keep close be the river syde, I went about a mile wrong. The fellow thinking I was in the right way he strikes in the right; I begines to look behind me. I cannot get my eye upon him; stands a long tym under a shade very pensive. First I saw some sheirers (for in France it was harvest then, being only the beginning of July wt the Scots) at their dinner. I imagined that the fellow might have sit doune wt them to take scare.[92] After waiting a long tyme I began to steep back, and drawing neir the sheirers I could not discover him, whence a new suspition entred in my head, because I had given him at Chinon, on his demand, 14 livres of 17 which I was to give him to defray all my charges to Poictiers, that he had sliped away wt that that he might bear no more of my charges, being sure enough that he would get his horse when I brought it to Poictiers. All this tyme I never dreamed I could be out of the way, yet I spered at the sheirers what might be the way to Richelieu, who told me I was not in the way. Then I know the fellow bit to be gone that way, whence I posted after him, and about a league from that place I overtook him laying halfe sleiping in a great deall of care, the poor fellow wery blaith to sy me. I demanded what was his thoughts, whether he thought I was a voler that had run away wt his horse. He said he quaestioned not in the least my honesty but he began to suspect I might have fallen amongs robbers. [92] Share, pot-luck. Thus we came to Chopigni,[93] a pretty village a league from Richelieu, and about 5 a cloack we entred Richelieu, a toune that give yeell consider its bigness it hath not its match in France. For being about a mile in circuit, besides a wery strong wall, it hath a considerable ditch environing it having something of the nature of a pond; for it abounds wt all sorts of fisches. The French calls it une canale. Being entred the toune ye have one of the prettiest prospects thats imaginable. It hath only one street, but that consisting of such magnifick stately houses that each house might be a palace. Ye no sooner enter unto the toune but ye have the clear survey of the whole wt its 4 ports; which comes to pass by the aequality of the houses on both sydes of the street, which are ranked in such a straight line that a Lyncaean or sharpest eye sould not be able to discover the least inaequality of one houses coming out before another. They are all reased also to the same hieght, that ye sall not sy one chimly hier then another: for they are al 3 story hy and built after that same mode window answering to window; so that ye sall sy a rank of about a hundred windows in a straight line. [93] Champigny. But I hast to the Castle, which is bueatiously environed wt that same canale on the banks of which are such pleasant arrangements (palissades)[94] and umbrages of tries making allies to the length of halfe a mile; in which I fand that same I had observed in the toune: the tries ranked so aequally that its wonderfull to hear; tho monstrously hy yet all of them observing such a aequality that ye sould find none arrogating superiority over his neighbour. We entred the castle by a stately draw bridge over the canale. Over the first gate stands a marble Lowis the 13, this present kings father, on horseback: on his right hand stands Mars the God of Armes; on his left Hercules wt his great truncheon or club. [94] Interlined, palissades. Rows of trees planted close. Term derived from fortification. See Littré's _Dict_. Having past this gat, we entred into the court or close round about whilk the palace is built. The court is 3 tymes as large as the inner court of the Abbey.[95] Al around the close stand a wast number of Statues infinitely weill done: only I fand they had not provided weill for the curiosity of spectateurs in withholding their names and not causing it to be engraven at their feet. They informed me they ware the statues of the bravest old Greeks and Romans: as of Alex'r, Epiminondas, Cæsar, Marcellus, and the rest. By the wertue of powerful money all the gates of the Castle unlockt themselves. The first chamber we entred into he called the chamber de Moyse, getting this denomination from the emblem hinging above the chimly, wheirin was wondrously weill done the story whow Pharoes daughter caused hir maid draw the cabinet of bulrushes wheirin Moses was exposed upon the Nile to hir sitting on the land. This room (the same may be repeated of the rest) was hung wt rich tapistry and furnished wt wery brave plenishings, as chairs, looking glasses, tables and beds. For the præserving of the curtains each bed had _tours de lit_ of linnen sheets, which, causing to be drawen by, we fand some hung wt rich crimson velvet hingings; others wt red satin; others wt blew; all layd over so richly wt lace that we could hardly decerne the stuffe. We fand one bed in a chamber (which they called one of the kings chambers) hung wt dool, which when occasion offered they made use of. This minded me of Suintones wife, who when she was in possession of Brunstone[96] had hir allyes and walks so appropriated to particular uses that she had hir ally wheirin she walked when she was in mourning, another when she had one such a goune, and so furth. But to return, in another chamber we was put to the strait of exercing our _Liberum Arbitrium_. Many pleasant objects offering themselfes to our wiew at the same tyme, we was at a pusle wt which of them to begin: for casting up our eyes to the cieling we fand it cut out most artificially unto sewerall sorts of creatures. Theirs a lion standing ramping ready as ye would think to devore you; yonder a horse; yonder a dog at the chass; and all this so glittering by reason that its covered wt gold that it would dazell any mans eyes. But calling away your eyes from this we deschended to the walls of the chamber, wheir ye have standing in one broad Justice, a martiall like woman wt a sword in hir one hand, and the balance in the other. On her right stands Verity, a woman painted naked to show that the truth most be naked since it demands no coverture. On the other stands Magnanimity, a woman of a bravadoing countenance. In another broad stands Prudence. In a 3d (la chambre de Lucresse) as a emblem of Chastity we have the story of Lucretias rapture by Tarquinius Superbus sone: first ye have him standing at hir chamber door wt his men at his back looking thorow the lock whither she was their or not; in the same broad[97] ye have represented the violence he used to hir; then as the epiloge of the tragædy ye have hir killing herselfe. In another broad ye have to the life don the story of Judith bringing away the head of Holofernes. [95] Holyrood. [96] When the Duke of Lauderdale was under forfeiture the estate of Brunston, belonging to him, was granted to Swinton of Swinton.-- Sir G. Mackenzie's _Memoirs_, p. 48. [97] Panel. In another chamber ye have Lewis the 13 portraicts wt those of all the rest of the royall family and the most part of the courtiers, counsellers and statesmen of that tyme, togither wt a embleme of the joy of the city of Paris at the nativity of this King. Of this chamber goes a pitty but pretty litle cabinet for Devotion. Their stands a large crucifix of marble wonderously weill done, round about hings the 12 Apostles wt the sufferings they ware put to. Their may ye sie the barbarous Indians knocking Bartholemew, who was spreading the gospell among them, wt clubs to death; and so of the rest. In another chamber on the cielery we have panted Thetis dipping hir sone Achilles in the Ocean to render him immortall. She hath him by the foot, whence in all his parts he becames immortal and impatible, save only in the sole of his feet, which ware not dippt. Next ye have him slain by Paris whiles he is busy on his knees at his devotion in the temple; Paris letting a dart at him thorow a hole of the door, which wounding him in the sole of his foot slow him. Nixt ye have Achilles dragging Hectors dead body round about the walls of Troy. Then ye have Priamus coming begging his sones body. Ye have also Diomedes and Glaucus frendly renconter wt the exambion they made of their armes. In another chamber we found wery delicat weill wrought Tapistry wheirin ware to be sien, besydes sewerall other stories taken out of Homer, the funestous and lamentable taking of Troy. In this same chamber saw we hinging the cardinals oune portraiture to the full, in his ride robes and his cardinals hat wt a letter in his hand to tel that he was the Kings secretary: his name is beneath. _Armandus Richeleus anagrammatized Hercules alter_. Surely the portrait represents a man of wery grave, wise and reverend aspect. Besydes him hinges the portraict of his father and mother. His father had bein a souldier; the cardinal was born in Richeliew. In another chamber was hinging 3 carts[98] (al done by Sampson), the one exceeding large of France done by one Sanson, the Kinges Geographer; the 2nd of Italy wt the Iles adiacent of Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, etc.; the 3d of the countryes that lyes on the famous river of Rhein, which runes thorow Germany, and in the low countries embrasses the sea. [98] Maps. At length we came unto a very large gallery, wheir hinges the emblems of al the things of greatest consequence that happened in France during the tyme of the Cardinall, as the beseigding of tounes that revolted, and the stratagemes by whilk some of them were taken. At each end of the gallery stands a table, but I sal confine my selfe to speak only of the one. Removing a cover of leather their appeares a considerable large table as long as etc., the richest beyond controversy of France: it consistes of precious stones and diamonds, but joined wt such wonderfull artifice that a man would easily take it for one inteer stone of sewerall colours, the proportion also of their joinctures, each colour answering to another, makes much to the commendation of it. Give their be a rid Sardix heir, it hath direictly of that same very bigness another Sardix answering to it their; or ye may suppose it to be a blew saphir. In the wery center and midle of the table is planted about the meikledoom[99] of a truncher[100] a beautifull green smaradyes; round about it stands a row of blew saphire, then another of rid diamonds; then followes a joincture of golden chrysolites, the bigness wheirof renders them wery wonderfull, being exceeding rare to be found of the halfe of that bigness. Their is not any coleur which is not to be found amoungs the Stones of that table. They are joined so marvelously that nothing can be smoother or æequaler. Thus breifly for the house. [99] Size. [100] Trencher. Of one of the balconies we descryed the garden, which was wery pleasant, having great resemblance wt that of Chateau Neuf, up and doune it ware growing Holyhaucks of all colours; but I cannot stay no longer upon the, for I am hasting to your church, which I find wery rich, as generally all the churches in France are. After I had supped I could not but come and wiew the situation and walls wtout; but fareweil, for the morrow night setts me in Poictiers. On the hy way as I travelled I mett bothe aples and plumes, which I looked not one as forbidden fruit, but franckly pulled. As soon as I came wtin sight of Poictiers I welcomed it heartily as being to be a place of rest to me for a tyme. Entering into the suburbes of the toune, I easily discovered the reason of our Buchannans expression, _Pictonum ad scopulos_: for then and afterwards I discovered it to be environed wt raged rocks and craigs, the toune it selfe also to be situat on a considerable eminence; and give ye take in all its circuit it neids not yeeld much to Paris in bigness; only much of it is filled up wt spatious gardens for the most part belonging to religious orders, sometymes of men sometymes of women. It hath also wines that growes within its circumference, as these that grow in the place of the Scots walk may testify. Having entred the toune we sought out Mr. Garnier the Apothecaries, for whom I had a letter from Mr. Doull at Saumurs, who on that accepted us kindly enough, only they had not such accomodation as I demanded, whence I took occasion to deliver a letter I brought wt me out of Scotland from young John Elies to Mr. Daillé, wt whom I entred pensionar about 8 dayes after I had bein in Poictiers, to wit 28 July 1665. I cannot bury in silence the moderation of Mr. Garniers wife, so wertous and sparing a house wife she was that Wine never entred in hir mouth. Always hir drink was pure water, tho no restraint was laying upon hir to do it. As the nature of thir peeple is to be wery frugall, so I fand that they ware right Athenians loving to tell and to hear news, which may be marked also in the most part of them that live on the Loier; for I had not bein a night in Poictiers when all that Street, and in sewerall other places of the toune, sundry knew that a Scotsman was come to the toune; that he came from Saumur, that he brought a letter for Mr. Garnier wt whom he quartred. The first night on my arrivall after I had supped came in my Hosts brother, a marchand, who amongs others enquired if I might know Mr. Douglas. I replied, yes; he added that he had left a child behind him, which tho Mr. Daillé owned for his, yet it had wholly a Scots cry not a French. The morning after my arrivall they chanced to have sermon in the Protestants church at Quatre Picket, wheir I fand Colinton,[101] who a little before had returned from the Rochell, wheir he had bein also on the Isle of Rhee and that of Oleron. He after dinner took me to Mr. Alex'rs, wheir I found all our Countrymen convened, only Alex'r Hume was at that tyme out in the Campaigne some leagues. Their I fand my right reverend good Sir Mr. Patrick Hume,[102] for whom I had two letters, one from Pighog,[103] another from John Suty at London, David Hume, for whom I had a letter from Saumur, Mr. Scot, Ardrosses sone, and Mr. Grahame, Morphees sone. Shortly after I saw both the 2 Alex'rs, Alexander the professour, to whom I delivred a letter from young J. Elies and Alex'r Hume: them all one night I took in to a Hostellery called le Chappeau d'Or and gav them their supper, which cost me about 17 livres 10 souse. [101] Probably James Foulis, son of Sir James Foulis, Lord Colinton, advocate 1669, a lord of Session 1674, with the title of Lord Reidford. [102] The friend thus playfully described may be Sir Patrick Hume, advocate, who often appears as a litigant in Fountainhall's _Decisions_. [103] See page 145, note 2. About 8 dayes after I had bein in Poictiers was keipt be the Jesuits Ignatius Loyola their founders day, whence in the Jesuits Church their was preaching a fellow that usualy preaches, extolling their patron above the wery skies; evicting whow that he utstripped infinitly the founders of all other orders, let it be St. François, St. Dominick, or be who he will, by reason that he founded a order to the universal good of Christendome; the order not being tyed to one place, as other religious are, but much given to travelling up and doune the world for the conversion of souls, which truly may be given as a reason whey all that order are usually so experimented and learned; for their are of them in Americk itselfe. From all this he concluded that Ignatius was and might deservedly be named the universall Apostle of the Christian World. He showed also the manner of his conversion to that manner of life; whow he had bein a soger (he was a Spaniard by nation) til his 36 or 40 year of age. One tyme in a battell he had receaved a wound right dangerous, during the cure of this wound one tyme being some what veary and pained he called for a Story or Romance. They having none their, some brought a devot book termed the Saints Rest, not that of Baxters; in which he began to read wt a sort of pleasure, but wtout any touch. At lenth continuing he began to feel himselfe sensibly touched, which wrought so that he wholly became a new man; and wt the permission and confirmation of the Pope then instituted the order. A litle after followed St. Dominicks day observed by the Jacobins, wheir I went to hear his panegyrick preached. Their preached a fat-looged[104] fellow of the order. His text was out of the 36 of Ecclesiasticus, _Vas auroeum[105] repletum omni lapide proetioso_: all his sermon ran to make Dominick this vessell. He deduced all that a man might be praised for from the 3 fold sort of dueties: 1, these we ow to God; 2, these towards our neighbours; and 3, these towards himselfe. For the vertues that are relative to God, he numbered them up to 13, and that out of Thomas, whom they follow in all things; amongs which were piety, sanctité, zeal for Religion, which broke out to that hieght that he caused sundry of the poor Albingenses, over the inquisition of whom he was sett, to be brunt; but this he mentioned _no_. For duties of the 2nd sort he numbered up out of the same Thomas amongs others thir, Chastité. Of Dominicks chastity he sayd he was as sure as of one thats new borne. Charité, which was so great one tyme that having nothing to give to the poor, he would have given himselfe to a poor widow woman; at which we could not but laugh, tho' his meaning was that he would have bein content to sell himselfe that the woman might get the money. He forgot not also his strictness of life and discipline, so that after his death their was found a cord in wtin his wery flech he girded him selfe so strait wt it. Heir he recknoned upe his prudence and magnanimity. Amongs theduties a man owes to himselfe amongs others he reckned up Temperance; in which he would gladly have us beleiving that St. Dominick never eated any in his dayes, so great was his abstinence. Then he came to compare him wt the cælestial powers, which he divided out of Dionysius pseudareopagita into the Hierarchies receaved in the Romish Church, of Angels, Archangels, Powere, Dominations, Cherubins, Seraphines, etc., and then showed his Dominick to excell them all. Many stories he told us which are to be seen in his legends, but never a word of the zeal he had when he sat doune and preached to the birds (and seing a frier kissing a nun he thanked God that their was so much charité left in the world). His epiloge was that St. Dominick was worth all the Saincts of them. And to speak the truth, beleiving him he made him on of the perfectest men of the world, subject to no imperfection. I could discover no difference he made betuixt him and Christ. [104] See p. 17, note 2. [105] _For aureum._ The forme of their preaching is thus. After they are come unto their pulpit they signe their foorfront and breast with the signe of the cross wt that in nomine patris, filij, and S.S., as a means to chass away Satan; then they go to their knees for a wery short space as our bischops do; then raising they read their text; after which they have a short prayer direct to Christ and his mother, or even the Sainct, if they be to speak of any, for their aid and assistance. Then they preach; after which thess that please to walk may do it. The rest stay out the Vespres. The forme of the protestant churches differs not much from ours. On the Sabath morning during the gathering of the congregation they sing a psalme; the minister coming up by a short sett forme of exhortation, stirring them up to ioin wt him in prayers, he reads a sett forme of confession of sines out of their priers ecclesiastiques or Liturgie; which being ended they singes a psalme, which the minister nominats, reading the first 2 or 3 lines of that to be sung, after which they read no more the line, as we do, but the peaple follows it out as we do in Glory to the Father, The psalme being ended, the minister has a conceaved prayer of himselfe adapted for the most part to what he'es to discourse on. This being ended he reads his text. Having preached, then reads a prayer out of their Liturgy, then sings a psalme, and then the blissing. About a 4 night after I had bein their some 2 chanced to be taken in the order of the Capuchins, of which order this is strange that the poorest yet they are numerousest, their being dailly some or other incorporating themselfes, Their poverty is such that they have nothing to sustein them but others charité when they come begging, and that every 24 hours. They having nothing layd up against tomorrow, if their be any day amongs others wheirin they have gotten litle or nothing, notwtstanding of this they come al to the Table, tho' nothing to eat. Each man sayes his grace to himselfe, their they sit looking on one another, poor creatures, as long as give they had had something to eat. They fast all that day, but if their be any that cannot fast it out, then he may go doune to the yard and houck out 2, 3 carrots to himselfe, or 'stow some likes some sibows, beets or such like things, and this is their delicates. If their be any day wheirin they have gotten more then suffices them all, the superplus they give to the poor. The convent hath no more rent than will defray their charges in keiping up their house about their ears. Al this do thir misers under the hopes of meriting by the samen: yet I would be a Capuchin before any other order I have sein yet. To sie the ceremony of their matriculation unto the order I went wt my good sire, wheir the principal ceremony was that they cast of their cloathes wheirwt they ware formerly cloathed and receaves the Capuchines broun weid, as also they get the clerical tonsure, the cord about their west, and the clogs of wood on their bare feet. A great number of speaches being used in the intervalls containing as is probable their dueties, but we could not understand them for the bruit. At the point of each of them all the peaple cried Amen. Finaly we saw them take all the rest of ther brethren by the hand, all of them having burning torches in their hands. After this, on August 14, came about Ste. Radegondes daye, wheiron I saw sewerall things: first wt Mr. Bouquiet we went doune to the church of Ste. Radegonde, which stands almost on the bord of the river Sein, which runes by Poictiers; and their visited hir tomb; but we had a difficulty of accez, such multitude was their dronning over their prayers, _Sainte Radegonde, Radegonde, priez pour nous et nos ames_, and this a 100 tymes over, at each tyme kissing the sepulchre stone which standes reasonable hy. From this we went to hir Chappell that stands besydes the Church of St. Croix, to sy the impression that Christ left wt his foot (so sottish is their delusion) on a hard great stone when he appeared to Ste. Radegonde as she was praying at that stone. The impression is as deip in the stone as a mans foot will make in the snow; and its wonderfull to sy whow thir zealots hath worn the print much deiper in severall parts wt their continuall and frequent touching of it thorow the iron grate wt which it is covered, and kissing it on Ste. Radegondes day when the iron grate is removed; according to that, _gutta cavat lapidem_, etc. All this they do thinking it the least reverence they can do to the place wheir our Saviours foot was. For immediatly upon the notification of that by Ste. Radegonde they caused erect a chappel above the stone, and hath set up Christ upon the right of the impression wt Capuchin shoes on his feet: and on the left Ste. Radegonde on hir knees wt hir hands folded praying to him. On the wall besydes they have this engraven, _Apparuit Dominus Jesus sanctae beatae Radegundae et dixit ei, tu es speciosa gemma, noverim te praetiosam in capite meo_ (and wt that they have Christ putting his fingers to his head) _gemmam_. Out of this we came to the Church of St. Croix, wheir just as we were entring ware coming out 2 women leading a young lass about the Age of 18 who appeared evidently to be distracted or possessed by some Dewill, by hir horrid looks, hir antick gestures, and hir strange gapes: hir they had had in the Church and had caused hir kneell, they praying before the Altar for hir to Ste. Radegonde, whom they beleived had the power to cure hir. The priests knaveries are wery palpable to the world in this point, who usually by conjurations, magicall exorcismes as their holy water, consecrated oill, take upon them to dispossess or cure sick persones, but so far from having any effect, that the Devill rather gets great advantage by it. Having entred the Church, standing and looking earnestly about to al the corners of the church, and particularly to the Altar, which was wery fine, wt as great gravity as at any tyme, a woman of faschion on hir knees (for indeed all that ware in the Church ware on their knees but my selfe) fixing hir eyes upon me and observing that I nether had gone to the font for water, nether kneelled, in a great heat of zeal she told me, _ne venez icy pour prophaner ce sainct lieu_. I suddenly replied, _Vous estez bien devotieuse, Madame; mais peut estre Vostre ignorance prophane ce sainct lieu d'avantage que ma presence_. This being spoken in the audience of severals, and amongs others of a preist, I conceived it would not be my worst to retire, which I did. That same afternoon I went to Mr. Alex'rs to seik Patrick Hume, wheir I faud them hearing him explaine some paragraphe of the Institutes: wheir Mr. Alex'r and I falling on some controverted points betuixt us and them, I using a great deall of liberty citing frome his oune authors as Bellarmine, etc., I angred him exceedingly. Then Patrick Hume, David, Mr. Grahame and I went to walk: and particularly to the pierre levé or stone erected a litle way from the city. The story or fable wheirof is this: once as Ste. Radegonde was praying the Devil thought to have smoored[106] or crushed her wt a great meikle stone greater than 2 milstones, which God knows whence he brought, but she miraculously supported it wt hir head, as the woman heir carries the courds and whey on their head. Surly she had a gay burden; and never rested till she came to that place wheir its standing even now. They talk also that she brought the 5 pillars on which its erected till above a mans hight in hir lap wt hir. I mocking at this fable, I fell in inquiry whence it might have come their, but could get no information; only it seimed probable to me that it might have bein found in the river and brought their. On the top of this stone I monted, and metted[107] it thorow the Diametrum and found it 24 foot; then metted it round about and found it about 60 foot. Coming doune and going beneath it we discovered the place wheir hir head had bein (_nugae_). [106] Smothered. [107] Measured. We went and saw a stately convent the Benedictines ware building, the oldest and richest order of France. To them it is that Nostre Dame at Saumur belongs; to them belongs the brave bastiments we saw at Tours, in which city as I was on the Loier I told 16 considerable steeples. We saw the relicts of a old Convent, wheirupon enquiring whow it came to be demolished, he replied it was in Calvines tyme, who studied his Law in Poictiers; and then turning preacher he preached in the same very hall wheir we hear our lessons of Law. His chamber also is to be sein wheir he studied on the river syde. I cannot forgett a story of Calvin which Mr. Alex'r told us saying it was in their Histories, that Calvin once gladly desiring to work a miracle suborned a fellow to feigne himselfe dead that so he might raise him to life. Gods hand was so visible upon the fellow that when he went to do it he verily died and Calvin could not raise him: this was in Poictiers. And it minded me first that I had read almost the like cited out of Gregorious Turonensis History by Bellarmine in his treatise _de Christo_ refuting Arianisine of a Arian bischop who just so suborned one to feinge himselfe blind that he might cure him, but God really strake him blind. Also it minded me of a certain Comoedian (who was to play before the Duc of Florence) who in his part had to act himselfe as dead for a while. He that he might act himselfe as dead wt the more life and vigeur agitated and stirred or rather oppressed his spirits so that when he sould have risen he was found dead in very truth. As also 3ly of a certain Italian painter who being to draw our Saviour as he was upon the Cross in his greatest torment and agony (he caused a comoedian whose main talent was to represent sorrow to the life), he caused one come and sit doune before him and feigne one of the dolfullest countenances that he could that he might draw Christ of him; but he tuise sticked it, wt which being angred he drew out a knife and stobbed the person to the heart; and out of his countenance as he was wrestling wt the pangs of death he drow Christ on the cross more lively then ever any had done, boasting that he cared not to dy for his murder since he had Christ beholden to him for drawing him so livelylie. I remember also of a passage that Howell in a letter he writes from Geneva hes, that Calvin having bein banished once by a prævalent faction from the city again being restored, he sould proudly and blasphemously have applied to himselfe that saying of David, proper to Christ, the stone which the builders refused the same is become the head of the corner. But granting that all thir to be true, as they are not, they ware but personall escapes, neither make they me to think a white worse of his doctrine. But as to the point of miracles its notoriously knowen that the Church of Rome abuses the world wt false miracles more then any: for besydes these fopperies we have discovered of Ste. Radegonde they have also another. Thus once St. Hilary (who was bischop of Poictiers about the 6 century, and who hes a church that bears his name, erected on the wast syde of the toune a little from the Scotes walk), about a league from the toune (thus reportes _les annales de Aquitaine_), as he was riding on his mule Christ meit him. His beast, as soon as it saw our Saviour, fell doune on the knees of it. As a testimony wheirof that it fell doune they show at this day the _impressa_ both its knee and its foot hes made miracoulously in the rock, but this is _fort mal a propos_; since they seem to mak their St. Hilary Balaam; and his mulet Balaam his ass which payed reverence to God before its mastre. This fable minded me of the story we have heir at home, that we can show in Leith Wind craigs the impressa that Wallace made wt his foot when he stood their and shoot over the steeple of Edenburgh. Yet their all these things are beleived as they do the bible. When we was wtout the city we discovered that it would signify litle if it wanted the convents and religious houses, which ware the only ornaments of the city. This much for the 14 of August, I had not bein so much out a fortnight before put it all together. Heir I most impart a drollery which happened a little before in Poictiers. Some Flamans had come to the toune and taken up the quarters in a certain Innes.[108] While they ware supping, the servant that attended them chanced to let a griveous and horrid fart. The landlady being in the roome and enquiring give she thought not shame to do so, she franckly replied, _sont Flamans, madame, sont Flamans, ils n'entendent pas_; thinking that because they ware strangers that understood not the language, they understood not also when they hard a fart. [108] Inn. O brave consequence, I went one night to the Marché Vieux and saw some puppy playes, as also rats whom they had learned to play tricks on a tow.[109] [109] Rope. Just besyde that port that leads to Quatre Picket (de St. Lazare) or Paris is erectcd a monument of stone, something in the fashion of a pyramide. I enquiring what it meant, they informed me the occasion of it was a man that lived about 3 or 4 years ago in the house just forganst it, who keiping a Innes, and receaving strangers or others, used to cut their throats and butcher them for their money; which trade he drave a considerable tyme undiscovered. At lenth it coming to light as they carried him to Paris to receave condigne punishment, they not watching him weill enough he killed himselfe whence they did execution on his body, and erected that before the door, _ad æternam rei memoriam._ I think they sould have razed his house also, yet their is folk dwelling in it prcsently. I went also and saw the palais wheir the Advocats used to plead but it had fallen down by meer antiquity about 3 moneths before I came to Poictiers whence the session had translated themselfes to the Jacobines, whom I went and saw their. In the falling of the palais it was observable that no harm redounded to any, and that a certain woman wt a child in hir armes chancing to be their on day raising out of a desk wheir she was sitting she was hardly weill gon when a great jest[110] fell (for it fell by degries) and brok the desk to peices. [110] Joist. Their hinges bound upon the wall wt iron chaines the relicts of a dead hideous crocodile, which, tho' it be infinitly diminished from what it was (it being some hundred years since it was slain), yet its monstrously great wt a wast throat. This, they say, was found in one of their prisones, which I saw also. On a tyme a number of prisoners being put in for some offences, on the morrow as some came to sie the prisoners not one of them could be found, it having eaten and devored them every one. Not knowing whow to be red of this trubulsom beast no man daring attempt to kill it, they profered one who was condemned to dy for some crime his life give he killed it. Wheir upon he went to the prison wt a weill charged pistoll as it seimingly being very hungry was advancing furiously to worry him he shoot in at a white spot of its breast wheir its not so weill armed wt scalles as elsewheir and slow it and wan his life. I enquiring whow that beast might come their it seimed most probable that it was engendred their _ex putri materia_, as the philosophers speaks, tho I could hardly weill believe that the sun could giv life to such a monstrous big creature as it. We have had occasion to sie severall tymes Madame Biton the tailleurs daughter, that lives forgainst Mr. Daillés, with whom Madame Daillé telles me Mr. Hope was great. Truly a gallant, personable woman to be of such mean extract and of parents wheirof the father is a wery unshappen man; the mother neids yeeld nothing to Jenny Geddes. I observing that ye sould never sy any of the religious orders be they Jesuits or others on the streets but 2 of them togither, I enquired the reason. First it was that the on might watch the other that so none may fly from their convents, which they might easily do if they had the liberty of going out alone. 2dly they do it to evite all scandall and suspicion. They know the thoughts of the common peeple, that they be litle faworable to them, the orders being talkt of as the lecherousest peeple that lives. To exime their thoughts they go tuo and 2; for then if the one be so given he his a restraint laying on him, to wit, another to sie his actions; but usually they are both lounes.[111] [111] Knaves. They have a way of conserving great lumps of ice all the summer over heir in low caves: and these to keip their wines cold and fresh from heating when they bring it to their chamber. To recknon over all the crys of Poictiers (since they are divers according to the diverse seasons of the year) would be difficult. Yet theirs one I cannot forgeet, a poor fellow that goes thorow the toune wt a barrell of wine on his back; in his on hand a glass full halfe wt win; in his other a pint stoop; over his arm hinges a servit; and thus marched he crieng his delicate wine for 5 souse the pot thats our pint; or 4 souse or cheaper it may be. He lets any man taste it that desires, giving them their loof full. I did sy one fellow right angry on a tyme: their came about 7 or 8 about one, every one to taste; giving every one of them some, to neir a chopin[112] not one of them bought from him; wheiron he sayd he sould sie better marchands before he gave to so many the nixt tyme. [112] Half a pint old French, and also old Scots, measure, was equal to about three times the present imperial measure. Wood also is a passable commodity heir as in all France, wheir they burn no thing but wood, which seimes indeed to be wholsomer for dressing of meat then coall. Every fryday and saturday the peasants brings in multitude of chariots charged wt wood, some of them drawen wt oxen, mo. wt mules, without whilk I think France could not subsist they are so steadable to them. For a chariot weill ladened theyle get 6 or 7 livres, which I remember Mr. Daillé payed. They have another use for wood in that country also which we know not: they make sabots of them, which the peasants serve themselfes wt instead of shoes; in some account they are better then shoes. They wil not draw nor take in water as shoes whiles do, they being made of one intier lump of wood and that whiles meikle enough. Their disadvantage is this none can run wt them, they being loose and not fastened to our feet, yet some weill used wt them can also run in them. They buy them for wery litle money. These also that cannot aspire to ordinar hats (for since we left Berwick we saw no bonnets as also no plaids) they have straw hats, one of which theyle buy for 6 souse, and get 3 or 4 moneths wearing out of it. The weather in France heir is large as inconstant as in Scotland, scarcely a week goes over wtout considerable raines. I cannot forgett the conditions that Madame Daillé in sport offered me if I would wait till hir daughter ware ready, and then take hir to wife, that I sould pay no pension all the tyme I stayed in their house waiting on hir. On the 15 of August (being wt the Scots the 5 and observed by them in remembrance of Gourie conspiracie) came about to be observed _feste de Nostre Dame_, who hath 4 or 5 fests in the year, as the annuntiation, the conception, hir purification; and this was hir death and assumption day. I went and heard the Jesuits preach, a very learned fellow, but turbulent, spurred and hotbrained; affecting strange gestures in his delivery mor beseiming a Comoedian then a pulpit man. Truly ever since in seing the Comoedians act I think I sy him. He having signed himselfe, using the words _In nomine patris, filij_, etc., and parfaited all the other ceremonies we mentioned already, he began to preach. The text was out of some part of Esay, thus, _Et sepulcrum ipsius erat gloriosum_. He branched out his following discourse unto 2:--1. the Virgines Death; 2. hir assumption. As to hir death he sayd she neided not have undergoon it but give she liked, since death is the wages of sin, _mais Nostre Dame estoit affranchie de toutes sorte de peché, soit originell, soit actuell_. In hir death he fand 3 priviledges she had above all others: first she died most voluntarly, villingly, and gladly; when to the most of men Death's a king of terrors. 2ndly, she died of no sickness, frie of all pain, languor or angoisse. 3dly, hir body after death was not capable of corruption, since its absurd to think that that holy body, which carried the Lord of Glory 9 moneths, layes under the laws of corruption. For thir privelegdes he cited Jean Damascen and their pope Victor. But it was no wonder she putrified no, for she was not 3 dayes in the grave (as he related to us) when she was assumed in great pomp, soul and body, unto heaven, Christ meiting hir at heavens port and welcoming hir. He spoke much to establish monstrous merite; laying doune for a principle that she had not only merited heaven, and indeed the first place their, being the princess of heaven; but also had supererogated by hir work for others to make them merit, which works the church had in its treasury to sell at mister.[113] He made heaven also _a vendre_ (as it is indeed amongs them), but taking himselfe and finding the expression beastly and mercenarie he began to speir, but whow is it to sell, is it not for your _bonnes oeuures_, your penances, repentance, etc. This was part of his sermon. [113] Mister, need. That Strachan that was regent at Aberdeen and turned papist, I was informed that he was in a society of Jesuits at Naples. This order ever since it was a order hath bein one of the most pestilent orders that ever was erected, being ever a republick in a republick wheir ever they be; which caused Wenice throw them out of hir, and maugre the pope who armed Spaine against hir for it holds them out unto this day. They contemne and disdain all the rest of the orders in comparation of themselfes; they being indeed that great nerve and sinew that holds all the popes asustataes[114] togither; whence they get nothing but hatred again from the other religious, who could wt ease generally sy them all hanged, especially the Peres de l'Oratoire, who are usually all Jansenists, so that ye sall seldome find these 2 orders setled in one city, tho they be at Orleans. The Jesuits be the subtilist folk that breathes, which especially appears when under the praetext of visitting they fly to a sick carkcass, especially if it be fat, as ravens does to their prey. Their insteed of confirming and strenthening the poor folk to dy wt the greater alacrity, they besett them wt all the subtile mines imaginable to wring and suck money from them, telling them that they most leive a dozen or 2 of serviets to the poor Cordeliers; as many spoones to the godly Capuchines who are busie praying for your soul, and so something to all the rest; but to us to whom ye are so much beholden a goodly portion, which they repeit wery oft over; but all this tends as one the one hand to demonstrate their inexplebible greediness, so one the other to distraict the poor miser wt thoughts of this world and praejudice or defraudation of his air. [114] Apparently from [Greek: asustatos], meaning 'ill-compacted forces or elements.' Some things are very cheap their. We have bought a quarter a 100 of delicat peirs for a souse, which makes just a groat the hunder. Madame Daillé also bought very fat geese whiles for 18 souse, whiles 12, whiles 15, whiles for 20; which generally they blood their, reserving it very carefully and makes a kind of pottages wt it and bread which seimes to them very delicious but not so to me, tho' not out of the principle that the Apostles, Actes 15, discharged the gentils to eat blood or things strangled. That which they call their pottage differ exceidingly from ours, wt which they serve themselfes instead of our pottage, as also our broth, neither of which they know. It seems to diffir little from our soups when we make them wt loaves. Surely I fand it sensibly to be nourishing meat; and it could not be otherwise, since it consisted of the substance first of the bread, which wtout doute is wholsomer then ours, since they know not what barme is their, or at least they know not what use we make of it, to make our bread firme, yet their bread is as firme wtout it: next the substance of the flech, which usually they put in of 3 sorts, of lard of mouton, of beef, of each a little morsell; 3dly of herbes for seasoning, whiles keel, whiles cocombaes, whiles leeks, whiles minte or others. In my experience I fand it very loosing, for before I was weill accoustened wt it, if I chanced to sup any tyme any quantity of the pottage, I was sure of 2 or 3 stools afternoon wt it. The French air after the sun setting I learned in my oune experience to be much more dangerous then ours in Scotland, for being much more thinner and purer, its consequently more peircing; for even in August their, which is the hotest and warmest moneth, if at night efter 8 a cloak I had sitten doune in my linnens and 2 shirtes to read but halfe a hower or a hower (which I have done in Scotland the mides of vinter and not have gotten cold) after the day I was sure to feell I had gotten cold; and that by its ordinary symptomes a peine and throwing in my belly, & 4 or 5 stools; I played this to my selfe tuize or I observed; ever after if I had liked to give my selfe physick I had no more ado but to let my selfe get cold. They let their children suck long heir, usually 2 years; if weak 2 years and a halfe. Madame Daillé daughter suckt but 6 quatres, they think much to give 40 or 50 livres to nourses for fostering. Madame Daillé gave 15 crounes in cash and some old cloaths and sick things as they to hir that nursed her daughter, a peasants wife whom I saw. The gossips and commers[115] heir give nothing as they do in Scotland, save it may be a gift to the child. [115] Godmothers, _commères_. I have called my selfe to mind of a most curious portrait that we saw in Richeliew castle, the description wheirof by reason its so marvelously weill done sall not be amiss tho it comes in heir _postliminio_ to insert. On the walls theirfor of one of the chambers we saw is drawen at large the emblem of the deluge or universall floud, in one corner of it I discovered men wt a great deall of art swiming (for the world is drawen all over covered wt waters, the catarracts of the heavens are represented open, the water deschending _guttatim_ so lively that til a man recall himselfe and wiew it narrowly hel make a scrupule to approach the broad[116] for fear of being wett), and that wt a bensill[117] their course being directed to a mountain which they sy at a distance; which is also drawen. Painters skill heir hes bein such, that a man would almost fancy he hears the dine the water makes wt their strugling and striking both hands and feet to gaine that mountaine. Just besydes thies are laying dead folke wt their armes negligently stretched out, the furious wawes tossing them terribly, as a man would think, some of them laying on their back, some of them on their belly, some wheirof nothing is to be sein but their head and their arme raxed up above their head. Amongs those that are laying wt their face up may be observed great diversity of countenances, some wt their mouth wide open and their tongue hinging out, some glooring,[118] some girning,[119] some who had bein fierce and cruell during their life, leiving legible characters in their horrible and barbarous countenances. In another part of the broad is to be sein all sorts of creatures confusedly thorow other, notwtstanding of that naturell antipathy that is betuixt some of them, as the sheip and the wolf, the crocodile and Lizard, etc.; ther may we sy the wawes peele mel swallowing up wolfes and sheip, Lions and buls, and other sorts of beasts. Remove your eyes to another corner, and their yeel sy great tries torn up by the roots, and tost heir and their by the waves; also hie strong wales falling; also rich moveables, as brave cloaths and others, whiles above and whiles beneath; and go a litle wy farder yeel sie brave tower which at every puft of wind give a rock, the water busily undermining its foundation. A little way from that ye have to admiration, yea, to the moving of pity, draweu women wt their hair all hinging disorderly about their face, wt their barnes in their armes, many a mint[120] to get a clift of a craig to save themselfes and the child to, some of them looking wt frighted countenances to sy give the waves be drawing neir them. In a nother ye have a man making a great deall of work to win out, hees drawen hinging by the great tronc of a try. At his back is drawen another that claps him desperatly hard and fast by the foot, that if he win out he may be drawen out wt him. Its wonderfull to sy whow weill the sundry passions of thir 2, the anger of him who hes a grip of the trunck, and the trembling fear of him who hes his neighbour by the foot are expressed; and what strugling they make both, the one to shake the other loose of his gripes, the other to hold sicker, and this all done so weill that it occasions in the spectateurs as much greife in beholding it as they seim to have who are painted. Finaly, the painter hath not forgot to draw the ark it selfe floting on the waters. [116] Panel. [117] Strenuous effort. [118] Staring. [119] Grinning (like a child crying). [120] Mint, attempt. On a night falling in discours wt some 2 or 3 Frenchmen of Magick and things of that nature, I perceaved it was a thing wery frequent in France, tho' yet more frequent in Italy. They told me seweral stories of some that practized sorcery, for the most part preists who are strangely given to this curiosity. They told of one who lived at Chateleraut, who, when he pleased to recreat himselfe, would sit doune and sett his charmes a work, he made severalls, both men and women, go mother naked thorow the toune, some chanting and singing, others at every gutter they came to taking up the goupings[121] of filth and besmeiring themselfes wt it. He hath made some also leip on horseback wt their face to the horse taill, and take it in their teeth, and in this posture ride thorow all the toune. [121] Handfuls. Ware their not a Comoedian at Orleans who used to bring us billets when their ware any Comoedies to be acted, who offered for a croune to let us sy what my father and mother was doing at that instant, and that in a glasse, I made my selfe as wery angry at him, telling him that I desired not to know it by such means. On that he gott up the laughter, demanding if I thought he had it be ill means; for his oune part he sayd he never saw the Dewill. Not only is it usuall heir to show what folkes are doing tho ther be 1000 miles distant; but their[122] also that will bring any man or woman to ye if ye like, let them be in the popes Conclave at Rome; but incontrovertably its the Devill himselfe that appeires in this case. The tricks also of robbing the bride groomes of their faculty that they can do nothing to the wives is very ordinar heir; as also that of bewitching gentlewomen in causing them follow them lasciviously and wt sundry indecent gestures; and this they effectuat sometymes by a kind of pouder they have and mix in amongs hir wine; some tymes by getting a litle of hir hair, which they boill wt pestiferous herbs; whilk act when its parfaited the women who aught the hair will come strangely, let hir be the modestest woman in Europe, wheir the thing is doing, and do any thing the persones likes. [122] their = there are. Plumes are in wery great abondance heir, and that of many sorts. We have bein offered the quatrain, thats 26 of plumes, wery like that we call the whitecorne, tho' not so big, for 2 deniers or a double, thats for 8 penies the 100; and they sel them cheaper. Great is the diversity amongs peirs their. Mr. Daillé hath told me that at least theirs 700 several sorts of peirs that grows in France, al distinguasble be the tast. We ourselfes have sien great diversity. Theirs a wery delicious sort of poir they call the _poir de Rosette_, because in eating it ye seime as give ye ware smelling a rose. They have also among the best of the peirs _poir de Monsieur_, and _de Madame_. They have the _poir de piss_, the _poir blanchette_ (which comes wery neir our safron peer we have at home), and _trompe valet_, a excelent peir, so called because to look to ye would not think it worth anything, whence the valets or servants, who comes to seik good peirs to their masters, unless they be all the better versed, will not readily buy it, whence it cheats them. They distinguise their peires into _poirs de l'esté de l'automne_, and _de l'yver_, amongs whilk theirs some thats not eatable til pais or pasque. In the gazetts or news books (which every friday we get from the Fullions[123] or Bernardines at their Convent, such correspondence does the orders of the country keip wt thess at Paris), we heard newes passing at home. The place they bring it from they terme it Barwick, on the borders of Scotland. We heard that the 29 of May, our Soverains birth day, was solemly keipt by the Magistrates of Edinburgh and the wholle toune. At another tyme we heard of a act of our privy counsill, inhibiting all trafic whatsoever wt any of the places infected wt the plague. In another we heard of a breach some pirates made in on our Northren Iles, setting some houses on fire; on whilk our privy counsell by a act layd on a taxation on the kingdome, to be employed in the war against the Hollanders, ordaining it to be lifted wtin the 5 years coming. [123] Fullions, Feuillants, 'Nom de religieux réformés de l'ordre de Citeaux, appelés en France feuillants, et en Italie réformés de St. Bernard... Etym., Notre-Dame de Feuillans, devenue en 1573 le chef de la congrégation de la plus étroite observation de Citeaux ... en Latin, Beata Maria fuliensis, fulium dicta a nemore cognomine, aujourd'hui Bastide des Feuillants, Haute Garonne.'-- Littré, _Dict_. s.v. Tho the French are knowen and celebrated throwghout the world for the civility, especially to strangers, yet I thought wonderfull to perceive the inbreed antipathy they carry against the Spaniard. That I have heard it many a tyme, not only from Mr. Daillé, but from persons of more refined judgements then his, yea even from religious persones, that they had not no civility for a Spaniard, that not one of a 1000 of them is welcoome. I pressing whence this might come to passe that they so courteously receaving all sortes of strangers, be they Scots, English, Germans, Hollanders, or Italians, and that they had none of this courtoisie to spare for a Spaniard, they replied that it came to pass from the contrariety of their humeurs; that the French ware franck (whence they would derive the name of their nation), galliard, pleasant, and pliable to all company; the Spaniard quite contrary retired, austere, rigid, proud. And indeed their are something of truth in it; for who knows not the pride of the Castilian: if a Castilian then a Demigod. He thinks himselfe _ex meliore luto natus_ then the rest of the world is. Its a fine drollery to sie a Frenchman conterfit the Castilian as he marches on his streets of Castile wt his castilian bever cockt, his hand in his syde, his march and paw[124] speaking pride it selfe. Who knows not also that mortell feud that the Castilian carries to the Portugueze and the Portuegueze reciprocally to them, and whence this I beseich you if not from the conceit they have of themselfe. This minds me of a pretty story I have heard them tell of a Castilian who at Lisbon came into a widows chop to buy something. She was sitting wt her daughter; the lass observing his habit crys to her mother, do not sell him nothing, mother, hees a Castilian, the mother chiding her daughter replied, whow dare you call the honest man a Castilian; on that tenet they hold that a Castilian cannot be a honest man. I leive you to ghesse whether the daughters wipe or the mothers was tartest. [124] paw = _pas_. Howell (as I remember) in a letter (its in the first volume, letter 43) he writes from Lyons, he findes the 2 rivers on which that brave city (for its situation yeelding to none in Europe, not to London tho' on lovely Thames) standes on, to wit the Rhosne and the Sosne, to be a pretty embleme of the diversity thats betuixt the humeurs of thess 2 mighty nations (France and Spain), who deservedly may be termed the 2 axletrees or poles on which the Microcosme of Europe turnes. Its theirfor wery much in the concernement of the rest of Europe to hold their 2 poles at a even balance, lest the one chancing at lenth to wieght doune the other there be no resisting of him, and we find ourselfes wise behind the hand. Looking again on the Rhosne, which runes impetuously and wiolently, it mindes him of the French galliardness and lightness, or even inconstancy. Looking again on the Sosne, and finding it glid smoothly and calmly in its channel, its mindes him (he sayes) of the rigid gravity the Spaniard affected. And to speak the truth, this pride and selfe conceetedness is more legible in the Spaniard than in the French, yet if our experience abuse us not, we have discovered a great tincture of it in the French. That its not so palpable amongs them as in the Spaniard we impute to that naturall courtoisie and civility they are given to, that tempers it or hides it a little, being of the mind that if the Spaniard had a litle grain of the French pleasantness, the pride for which we tax them sould not be so apparent. Yet we discovered a beastly proud principle that we have observed the French from the hiest to the lowest (let him be never so base or so ignorant) to carry about wt them, to wit, that they are born to teach all the rest of the world knowledge and manners. What may be the mater and nutrix of this proud thought is not difficult to ghess; since wtout doubt its occasioned by the great confluence of strangers of all sorts (excepting only the Italian and Spaniard, who think they have to good breeding at home to come and seik it of the French) who are drawen wt the sweitness of the country, and the common civility of the inhabitants. Let this we have sayd of the French pass for a definition of him till we be able to give a better. About the beginning of September at Poictiers, we had the newes of a horrid murder that had bein perpetrat at Paris, on a Judge criminell by tuo desperat rascalls, who did it to revenge themselfes of him for a sentence of death he had passed against their brother for some crime he had committed. His wife also, as she came in to rescue hir husband, they pistoled. The assassinats ware taken and broken on the wheell. He left 5 million in money behind him, a terrible summe for a single privat man, speaking much the richness of Paris. The palais at Poictiers (which with us we call the session) raises the 1 Saturday of September, and sittes doune again at Martimess. We remember that in our observations at Orleans we marked that the violent beats heir procures terrible thunders and lightnening, and because they are several tymes of bad consequence, the thunder lighting sometymes on the houses, sometymes on the steeples and bells, levelling all to the ground, that they may evite the danger as much as they can they sett all the bells of the city on work gin goon.[125] [125] Ding dong. A man may speir at me what does the ringing of the bells to the thunder. Yes wery much; for its known that the thunder is partly occasioned by the thickness, grossness, impuritude, crassitude of the circumambient air wt which the thunder feides itselfe as its matter. Now Im sure if we can dissipate and discusse this thickness of the air which occasiones the thunder, we are wery fair for extinguishing the thunder itselfe according to the Axioma, _sublata causa tollitur effectus_, whilk maxime tho it holds not in thess effect which dependes not on the cause _in esse_ and _conservari_ but only in _fieri_: as _filius, pater quidem est eius causa; attamen eo sublato non tollitur filius quia nullo modo dependet filius a patre sive in esse sive in conservari: solum modo ab eo dependet ut est in fieri_. Yet my axiome is good in this present demonstration, since the thunder dependes on this grossenese of the air, not only in its _fieri_, but even in its _esse_ and _conservari_. But weill yeell say, let it be so, but what influence has the ringing of the bells to dissipat this grosseness: even wery much: for the sound and noice certainly is not a thing immateriall; ergo it most be corporeall: since theirfor wt the consent of the papists themselfes _duo corpora non possunt se penetrare aut esse in codem loco nuturaliter_, its consequentiall that the sound of the bells as it passes thorow the circumambient air to come to our ears and to pass thorow all the places wheir it extends its noice makes place for it selfe by making the air yeeld that stands in its way; whence it rarifies and purifies the air and by consequence disipates the crassities of the air, which occasions the thunder. That the noice thats conveyed to our ears is corporeall and material be it of bels or of canons is beyond controversy, since _sonus_ is _obiectum sensûs corpori, ut auditus: at objectum rei corporcae oportet esse corporeum: cum incorporea sub sensibus naturaliter non cadunt_. I adde _naturaliter_, because I know _super naturaliter in beatificá visione Deus quodammodo cadet sub sensibus ut glorificatus_, according to that of Jobs with thir same wery eyes sall I see my Redeimer: yea not only is _sonus quid materiale_, but further something much more grossely material then the objects of the rest of the senses, as for instance in the discharging of a canon being a distance looking on we would think it gives fire long before it gives the crack, tho in wery truth they be both in the same instant. The reason then whey we sie the fire before we hear the crack is because the _species Wisibiles_ that carries the fire to our eyes, tho material are exceeding spirituall and subtill and are for that soon conveyed to our sight: when the _Species Audibiles_ being more gross takes a pitty tyme to peragrate and passe over that distance that is betuixt us and the canon, or they can rendre them selfes to the organ of our hearing. But let us returne, we are informed that in Italy, wheir thunders are bothe more frequent and more dangerous then heir, they are wery carefull not only to cause ring all their bells, but also to shoot of their greatest cannons and peices of ordonnances and that to the effect mentioned. I am not ignorant but the Papists feignes and attributes a kind of wertue to the ringing of bells for the chassing away of all evill spirits if any place be hanted or frequented wt them. Yet this reason cannot have roome in our case, since ther are few so ignorant of the natural causes of thunder as to impute it to the raging of ill spirits in the air, tho the Mr. of Ogilvy at Orleans, who very wilfully whiles would maintain things he could not maintain, would not hear that a natural cause could be given of the thunder, but would impute it to evill spirits. I do not deny but the Devils wt Gods permission may occasion thunders and other tempests in the air, but what I aime at is this, they never occasion it so, but they make use of natural means; for who is ignorant but the Meteorologists gives and assignes all the 4 causes of it its efficient, its materiall, its formall and its finall. I cannot forget the effect I have sein the thunder produce in the papists. When they hear a clap coming they all wery religiously signe theyr forfronts and their breast wt the signe of the cross, in the wertue of which they are confident that clap can do them no scaith. Some we have sein run to their beads and their knees and mumble over their prayers, others away to the church and doune before the Altar and blaither anything that comes in their cheek. They have no thunders in the winter. Discoursing of the commodityes of sundry nations transported to France, their ordinar cxpression is, that they are beholden to Scotland for nothing but its herrings, which they count a wery grosse fish no wayes royall, as they speak, thats, not for a kings table. As for linnen, cloath and other commodities the kingdome affords, we have litle more of them then serves our oune necessity. I was 5 moneth in France before I saw a boyled or roasted egge. Their mouton is neither so great nor so good heir as its at home. The reason of which may be the litle roome they leive for pasturage in the most parts of France. They buy a leg heir for 8 souse, whiles 10 souse. On the 20 of August came about St. Bernard, Abbot of Clarevill,[126] his day, who founded the order of the Foullions[127] or Bernardines, whence we went that afternoon to their Convent and heard one of the order preach his panygyrick, but so constupatly that the auditory seweral tymes had much ado to keip themselfes from laughting. [126] Clairvaux. [127] See p. 47, note. On the 24 of the samen ditto was keipt the Aposle St. Bartholemewes day: the morrow, 25, St. Lowis, king of France, his day, a great feste, and in that city the festivall day of the marchands (for each calling hes its particular festivall day: as the taylors theirs, the sutors theirs, the websters thers, and so furth). Every trade as their day comes about makes a sort of civil procession thorow all the streets of the toune. Instead of carrieng crosses and crucifixes, according to the custome of the place, they carry, and that on the shoulders of 4 of the principal of the trade, a great farle of bread, seiming to differ nothing from the great bunes we use to bake wt currants all busked wt the fleurs that the seasone of the year affordes, and give in winter then wt any herbe to be found at the tyme; and this wt a sort of pomp, 4 or 5 drummers going before and as many pipers playing; the body of the trade coming behind. To returne, tho this day was the feste of the marchands, yet I observed they used not the ceremomy before specified, looking on it as dishonorable and below them. This day we went to the Jesuits Church and heard one of the learnedest of the Augustinians preach, but tediously. The nixt feste was the 8 of Septembre, _Nativité de nostre Dame_. On which I went and heard our Comoedian the Jesuit preach hir panegyrick and his oune Valedictory Sermon (for they preach 12 moneth about, and he had ended his tower[128]). He would have had us beleiving that she was cleansed from the very womb from that wery sin which all others are born wt, that at the moment of hir conception she receaved a immense degrie of grace infused in her. If he ware to draw the Horoscope of all others that are born he would decipher it thus, thou sal be born to misery, angoiss, trouble and vexation of spirit, which, on they wery first entering into this walley of tears, because thou cannot tell it wt they tongue thou sal signify by thy weiping. But if I ware, sayes he, to cast our charming Ladies Horoscope I would have ascertained then, that she was born for the exaltation of many, that she [was] born to bear the only sone of God, etc. [128] Tour, turn The sone he brought in as the embleme of Justice ever minding his father of his bloody death and sufferings, to the effect that he take vengeance for it even on thess that crucifies him afresh. The mother he brought on the stage as the embleme of mercy, crying imperiously, _jure matris_, I inhibite your justice, I explode your rigor, I discharge your severity. Let mercy alone triumph. Surely if this be not blasphemy I know not whats blasphemie. To make Christ only Justice fights diamettrally[129] wt the Aposle John, If any man hath sinned he has a Advocat with the father. Christ the righteous, he sayes, is not Christ minding his father continualy of this passion; its true, but whey; to incite God to wrath, sayes he. O wicked inference, horrid to come out of the mouth of any Christian save only a Jesuites. Does not the Scripture language cut thy throat, O prophane, which teaches us that Christ offereth up to his father his sufferings as a propitiatory sacrifice; and consequently to appaise, not to irritate. [129] Diametrically. The word is indistinctly written. His inference at lenth was thus: since the business is thus then, Messieurs, Mesdames, mon cher Auditoire, yeel do weill in all occassion to make your address to the Virgin, to invock hir, yea definitivly I assert that if any of you have any lawfull request if yeel but pray 30 dayes togither once every day to the Virgin ye sal wtout faill obtain what you desire. On whilk decision I suppose a man love infinitly a woman who is most averse from him, if he follow this rule he sall obtaine hir. But who sies not except thess that are voluntary blind whow rash, inconsiderat, and illgrounded thir decisions are, and principally that of invocking the Virgin, since wtout doubt its a injury to Christ, whom we beleive following the Scripture to be the only one Mediator betwixt God and Man. Also, I find Christ calling us to come to him, but never to his mother or to Peter or Paull. It will not be a unreasonable drollery whiles to counterfit our Regent, Mr. James,[130] if it be weill tymed, whow when he would have sein any of his scollers playing the Rogue he would take them asyde and fall to to admonish them thus. I think you have forgot ye are _sub ferula_, under the rod, ye most know that Im your Master not only to instruct you but to chastize you, and wt a ton[131] do ye ever think for to make a man, Sir; no, I promise you no. [He killed Kincairnes father by boyling the antimonian cup, which ought only to seep in.][132] _Inter bonos bene agier_.[133] When any plead a prate[134] and all denied it, I know the man, yet _neminem nominabo_, Honest Cicero hes learned me that lesson. [130] I have not discovered who Mr. James was. [131] 'Wt a ton' is possibly 'with a tone,' i.e. raising his voice. [132] Interlined. [133] _Agier_ for _agere_. [134] Played a trick. We cannot forgett also a note of a ministers (called Mr. Rob. Vedderburne) preaching related me by Robert Scot which happened besyde them. God will even come over the hil at the back of the kirk their, and cry wt a hy woice, Angel of the church of Maln[moon]sy, compeir; than Ile answer, Lord, behold thy servant what hes thou to say to him. Then God wil say, Wheir are the souls thou hest won by your ministery heir thir 17 years? He no wal what to answer to this, for, Sirs, I cannot promise God one of your souls: yet Ile say, behold my own Soul and my crooked Bessies (this was his daughter), and wil not this be a sad matter. Yet this was not so ill as Mr. John Elies note of a Minister was, who prayed for the success of the Kings navy both by sea and be land. The very beggers in France may teach folk thrift. Ye sall find verie few women beggers (except some that are ether not working stockings, or very old and weak) who wants[135] their rock in their bosome, spining very busily as they walk in the streets. [135] wants = have not. The French, notwtstanding all their civility, are horridly and furiously addicted to the cheating of strangers. If they know a man to be a stranger or they cause him not pay the double of what they sell it to others for, theyl rather not sell it at all, which whither it comes from a malitious humour or a greedy I cannot determine, yet I'm sure they play the fooll in it, for tho they think a stranger wil readily give them all they demand, or if he mint to go away that he'el come again; yet they are whiles mistaken. Many instances we could give of it in our oune experience, al whilk we sall bury at this tyme, mentioning only one of Patrick Humes, who the vinter he was at Poictiers, chancing to get the cold, went to buy some sugar candy. Demanding what they sold the unce of it for, they demanded 18 souse, at last came to 15, vould not bat a bottle;[136] wheirupon thinking it over dear he would have none of it, but coming back to Mr. Alex'rs he sent furth his man, directing him to that same wery chop, who brought him in that for 3 souse which they would not give him under 15. That story may pass in the company of one that understandes French, of the daughter who was sitting wt her mother at the fire, wt a great sigh cried, '_O que je foutcrois._ The mother spearing what sayes thou, she replied readily, _O que je souperois_. [136] Bate a bodle. On September 12 arrived heir 2 Englishmen from Orleans, who brought us large commendations from Mr. Ogilvie their, who desiring to sy the toune, I took them first up to the steeple of the place, which being both situat on a eminence and also hy of it selfe gave us a clear survey of the whole toune. We discovered a great heap of wacuities filled up wt gardens and wines, and the city seimed to us like a round hill, the top of it and all the sydes being filled wt houses. And to our wiew it seimed not to have many mo houses then what we had discovered at Orleans, for their we thought we saw heir one and their one dispersed. At Orleans we would think they lay all in a heap (lump).[137] From thence, not desiring but that they sould find the Scots as civil and obligding as any, we was at the paines to take them first to the church of Nostre Dame la grande, on the wall of which that regardes the place standes the statue of the Empereur Constantine, _a cheval_, wt a sword in his hand. From thence to Ste. Radegondes, wheir we showed them hir _tombeau_; from that to St. Croix, wheir we showed them the _empressa_ of Christs foot, of which we spake already; and from that to St. Peters, which we looked all on as a very large church, being 50 paces broad. [137] Interlined. In the afternoon we went to the Church of St. Hilaire, wheir at a distance we discovered the Scots walk; so called because when the Englishes ware beseiging the toune a Regiment of Scotsmen who ware aiding the French got that syde of the toune to garde and defend, who on some onset behaving themselfes gallantly the Captain got that great plot of ground which goes now under that name gifted him by the toune, who after mortified to a nunnery neir hand, who at present are in possession of it. The church we fand to smell every way of antiquity. Heir we saw first that miraculous stone (of which we also brought away some relicts) which if not touched has no smell, if rubed hard or stricken wt a key or any other thing, casteth a most pestilentious, intollerable smell, which we could not indure. We tried the thing and fand it so. The occasion and cause of this they relate wariously. Some sayes that the stone was a sepulchre stone, and under it was buried a wicked man that had led a ill life, whos body the Dewill came on a tyme and carried away; whence the stone ever stinks in that maner since. Others say that when the Church was a bigging, the Dewill appeared to one of the maisons, in the signe [shape][138] of a mulet and troubled him; wheirupon the maison complained to St. Hilaire the Bischop, who watched the nixt day wt the maison, and the Dewill appearing in that shape he caused take him and yoke him in a cart to draw stones to the bigging of the church. They gott him to draw patiently that great stone which we saw and which stinks so, but he got away and would draw no more. [138] Interlined. Nixt we saw St. Hilaires _berceau_, wheirin they report he lay, a great long peice of wood hollowed (for it wil hold a man and I had the curiosité to lay in it a while) halfe filled wt straw that they may lay the softer. To this the blinded papists attributes the vertue of recovering madmen or those that are besydes themselfes to their right wites, if they lay in it 9 dayes and 9 nights wt their handes bound, a priest saying a masse for them once every day. And indeed according to the beleife of this place it hath bein oft verified. The fellow that hes a care of thess that are brought hither told us of a Mademoisselle who was extraordinarly distracted and who was fully recovered by this means. Another of a gentleman who had gone mad for love to a gentlewoman whom he could not obtaine, and who being brought their in that tyme recovered his right wits as weill as ever he had them in his dayes. Its commonly called the _berceau de fols_; so that heir in their flitting they cannot anger or affront one another worse then to cast up that they most be rockt in St. Hilaires cradle, since its none but fools or madmen that are used so. The greatest man in the province of Poictou is the governour, who in all things representes the king their, save only that he hath not the power to pardon offenders or guilty persones. Tho a man of wast estat, to wit of 300,000 livres a year, yet he keips sick a low saile[139] that he wil not spend the thrid of his rent a year, only a pitty garde or 7 or 8 persons on foot going before his coach; and 4 or 5 lacquais behind; yea he sells vin, which heir is thought no disparadgement to no peir of France, since theirs a certain tym of the year that the King himselfe professes to sell win, and for that effect he causes at the Louwre hing out a bunch of ivy, the symbol of vin to be sold. [139] Lives so quietly. The King also playes notably weill on the drum, especially the keetle drumes, thinking it no disparagdement when he was a boy to go thorow Paris whils playing on the drum, whiles sounding the trumpet, that his subjects may sie whow weill hes wersed in all these warlike, brave, martiall excercises. The invention of the keetle drume we have from the Germans who makes great use of it. The father of this present King also, Lowis the 13, could exactly frame and make a gun, and much more a pistol, with all the appartenances of it, as also canons wt all other sort of Artillerie; for he was a great engineer. There are amongs the French nobility some great deall richer then any subject of our Kings; for the greatest subject of the King of Englands is the Duc of Ormond, or the Earle of Northumberland, nether of which tho hath above 30,000 pounds sterling, which make some 300,000 livres in french money, which is ordinar for a peir in France. The last of which, to wit, my Lord Northumberland, by reason of that great power and influence he hath in the north of England, his oune country, the parliament of England of old hath found it not a miss to discharge him the ever going their, and that for the avoiding and eviting of insurrectiones which, if he ware amongs them, he could at his pleasure raise. Surely this restraint neids not be tedious to him since he is confined in a beautiful prison, to wit, London; yea he may go thorow all the world save only Northumberland, he may come to Scotland whilkes benorth Northumberland be sea.[140] It may be it might be telling Scotland that by sick another act they layd a constrainct on that house of Huntly, the Cock of the north. If so, the French Jesuits sould not have such raison to boast (as we have heard them), and the papists sould not have so great footing in the north as they have. [140] I have not traced the authority for this statement. We most not forgett the drolleries we have had wt our host Mr. Daillé when I would have heard him at the _gardé robe_, to sport my selfe whiles, I would have come up upon him or he had bein weill begun and prayed him to make hast by reason I was exceedingly straitned when they would have bein no such thing, wheiron he would have raisen of the stooll or he had bein halfe done and up wt his breecks, it may be whiles wt something in them. In our soups, which we got once every day, and which we have descryved already, such was Madames frugality that the one halfe of it she usually made of whiter bread, and that was turned to my syde of the board, the other halfe or a better part she made of the braner, like our rye loaves, and that was for hir and hir husband. The bread ordinarly used heir they bake it in the forme of our great cheeses, some of them 12 pence, others 10 souse, others for 8. Thess for 10 souse are as big again as our 6 penie loaves, and some of them as fine. There comes no vine out of France to forreine country, save that which they brimstone a litle, other wise it could not keip on the sea, but it would spoil. Its true the wine works much of it out againe, yet this makes that wine much more unwholsome and heady then that we drink in the country wheir it growes at hand. We have very strick laws against the adulterating of wines, and I have heard the English confess that they wished they had the like, yet the most do this for keiping of it; yea their hardly wine in any cabaret of Paris that is otherwise. Hearing a bel of some convent ringing and ronging on a tyme in that same very faschion that we beginne our great or last bel to the preaching, I demanding what it meint, they told me it was for some person that was expiring, and that they cailed it _l'agonie_. That the custome was that any who ware at the point of death and neir departing they cause send to any religious house they please, not forgetting money, to ring a Agonie that all that hears, knowing what it means, to wit, that a brother or sister is departing, may help them wt their prayers, since then they may be steadable, which surely seimes to be wery laudable, and it nay be not amiss that it ware in custome wt us. The Church of England hath it, and on the ringing any peaple that are weill disposed they assemble themselfes in the Church to pray. In France also they ring upon the death of any person to show the hearers, called _le trespas_, that some persone is dead. The same they have in England, wt which we was beguiled that night we lay at Anick, for about 2 howers of the morning the toune bel ronging on the death of one Richard Charleton, I taking it to be the 5 howers bel we rose in hast, on wt our cloaths, and so got no more sleip that night. Their was nothing we could render Mr. Daillé pensive and melancholick so soon wt as to fall in discourse of Mr. Douglas. He hes told me his mind of him severall tymes, that he ever had a evill opinion of him; that he never heard him pray in his tyme; all 16 month he was wt him, he was not 3 or 4 tymes at Quatre Piquet [the church],[141] and when he went it was to mock; that he was a violent, passionate man; that he spak disdainefully of all persones; that he took the place of all the other Scotsmen, that he had no religion, wt a 100 sick like. [141] Interlined. Its in wery great use heir for the bridegroomes to give rich gifts to the brides, especially amongs thess of condition; as a purse wt a 100 pistols in it, and this she may dispose on as she pleaseth to put hir selfe bravely in the faschion against hir marriage. We have heard of a conseillers sone in Poictiers who gave in a burse 10000 livres in gold. Yet I am of the mind that he would not have bein content if she had wared all this on hir marriage cloaths and other things concerning it, as on bracelets and rings. The parents also of the parties usually gives the new married folk gifts as rich plenishing, silver work, and sicklike. In parties appealls heir from a inferior to a superior, if it appear that they ware justly condemned, and that they have wrongously and rashly appealed, they condeime them unto a fine called heir Amende, which the Judge temperes according to the ability of the persones and nature of the businesse: the fine its converted ether to the use of the poor or the repairing of the palais. The Jurisdiction of thess they call Consuls in France is to decide controversies arising betuixt marchand and marchand. Their power is such that their sentence is wtout appeall, and they may ordaine him whom they find in the wrong to execute the samen wtin the space of 24 howers, which give they feill to do they may incarcerate them. Thus J. Ogilvie at Orleans. Even the wery papists heir punisheth greivously the sine of blasphemy and horrid swearing. Mr. Daillé saw him selfe at Bordeaux a procureurs clerk for his incorrigibleness in his horrid swearing after many reproofes get his tongue boored thorow wt a hot iron. The present bischop of Poictiers is a reasonable, learned man, they say. On a tyme a preist came to gett collation from him, the bischop, according to the custome, demanding of him if he know Latin, if he had learned his Rhetorick, read his philosophy, studied the scooll Divinity and the Canon Law, etc., the preist replied _quau copois_,[142], which in the Dialect of bas Poictou (which differes from that they speak in Gascoigne, from that in Limosin, from that in Bretagne, tho all 4 be but bastard French) signifies _une peu_. The bischop thought it a very doulld[143] answer, and that he bit to be but a ignorant fellow. He begines to try him on some of them, but try him wheir he will he findes him better wersed then himselfe. Thus he dismissed him wt a ample commendation; and severall preists, efter hearing of this, when he demanded if they had studied sick and sick things, they ware sure to reply _cacopois_. He never examined them further, crying, go your wayes, go your wayes, they that answers _cacopois_ are weill qualified. [142] Perhaps _quelque peu_. [143] Stupid, from doule, a fool. We have sein sewerall English Books translated in French, as the Practise of Piety, the late kings [Greek: eikon basilikae], Sidneyes Arcadia, wt others. We have sein the plume whilk they dry and make the plumdamy[144] of. [144] Dried plum, prune. The habit of the Carmelites is just opposite to that of the Jacobines,[145] who goe wt a long white robe beneath and a black above. The Carmes wt a black beneath and a white above. The Augustines are all in black, the Fullions all in white. [145] Jacobins, Dominicans, so called from the church of St. Jacques in Paris, granted to the order, near which they built their convent. The convent gave its name to the club of the Jacobins at the French Revolution, which had its quarters there. Its very rare to sy any of the women religious, they are so keipt up, yet on a tyme as I was standing wt some others heir in the mouth of a litle lane their came furth 2 nunnes, in the name of the rest, wt a litle box demanding our charity. Each of us gave them something: the one of them was not a lass of 20 years. Mr. Daillé loves fisch dearly, and generally, I observe, that amongs 10 Frenchmen their sall be 9 that wil præfer fisch to flech, and thinks the one much more delicat to the pallate then the other. The fisch they make greatest cont of are that they call the sardine, which seimes to be our sandell, and which we saw first at Saumur, and that they call _le solle_, which differs not from our fluck[146] but seimes to be the same. The French termes it _le perdrix de la mer_, the patridge of the sea, because as the pertridge is the most delicious of birds, so it of fisches. Mr. Daillé and his wife perceaving that we cared not for any sort of fisches, after they would not have fisches once in the moneth. [146] Flounder. We cannot forget a story or 2 we have heard of Capuchines. On a tyme as a Capuchin, as he was travelling to a certain village a little about a dayes journy from Poictiers, he rencontred a gentlemen who was going to the same place, whence they went on thegither. On their way they came to a little brook, over which their was no dry passage, and which would take a man mid leg. The Capuchin could easily overcome this difficulty for, being bare legged, he had no more ado but to truce up his gowen and pass over; the gentleman could not wt such ease, whence the Capucyn offers to carry him over on his back. When he was in the mides of the burn the Capucyn demanded him if he had any mony on him. The man, thinking to gratify the Capucyn, replied that he had as much as would bear both their charges. Wheiron the Capucyn replied, If so, then, Sir, I can carry you no further, for by the institution of our order I can carry no mony, and wt that he did let him fall wt a plasch in the mides of the burn. _Quoeritur_, whither he would have spleeted[147] on the regular obedience of their order if he carried the man having mony on him wholly throw the water. [147] Split, spleeted on, departed from. At another tyme a Capucyn travelling all alone fand a pistoll laying on the way. On which arose a conflict betuixt the flesch and the spirit, that same man as a Capuchin and as another man. On the one hand he reasoned that for him to take it up it would be a mortell sine; on the other hand, that to leive it was a folly, since their was nobody their to testify against him. Yet he left it, and as he was a litle way from it the flesch prevailed, he returned and took it up, but be a miracle it turned to a serpent in his hand and bit him. Enquiring on a tyme at Madame Daillé and others whow the murders perpetrate by that fellow that lived at the port St. Lazare came to be discovered, I was informed that after he had committed these villanies on marchands and others for the space of 10 years and above, the house began to be hanted wt apparitions and spirits, whence be thought it was tyme for him to quatte it, so that he sould it for litle thing, and retired to the country himselfe. He that had bought the house amongs others reformations he was making on it, he was causing lay a underseller wt stone, whilk while they are digging to do, they find dead bodies, which breeds suspicion of the truthe, wheirupon they apprehend him who, after a fainte deniall, confesses it; and as they are carrieing him to Paris to receave condigne punishment, they not garding him weell, some sayes he put handes in himselfe, others that his complices in the crime, fearing that he might discover them, to prevent it they layd wait for him and made him away by the way, for dead folk speaks none. On the 22 of Septembre 1665 parted from this for Paris 4 of our society, Mr. Patrick, David and Alex'r Humes, wt Colinton. We 3 that ware left behind hired horses and put them the lenth of Bonnévette, 3 leagues from Poictiers (it was built by admiral Chabot[148] in Francis the firsts time, and he is designed in the story Admirall de Bonnivette). By this we bothe gratified our commorades and stanched our oune curiosity we had to sie that house. It's its fatality to stand unfinished; by reason of whilk together wt its lack of furniture it infinitly comes short of Richelieu. It may be it may yeeld nothing to it in its bastiments, for its all built of a brave stone, veill cut, which gives a lustre to the exterior. Yet we discovered the building many wayes irregular, as in its chimlies, 4 on the one side and but 3 on the other. That same irregularity was to found in the vindows. In that which theirs up of it theirs roome to lodge a king and his palace. Al the chambres are dismantled, wtout plenishing save only one in which we fand som wery weill done pictures, as the present Kings wt the Queens, Cardinal Mazarin's (who was a Sicilian, a hatmakers sone) and others. The thing we most noticed heir was a magnifick stair or trumpket most curiously done, and wt a great deall of artifice, wt great steps of cut stone, the lenth of which I measured and fand 20 foot. I saw also a very pretty spatious hall, which made us notice it, and particularly Colinton, who told me that Colinton hous had not a hall that was worth, whence he would take the pattern of that. We fand it thre score 12 foot long, and iust the halfe of it broad, thats to say 36. Above the chimly of the roome are written in a large broad the 10 commandements. [148] Philippe de Chabot, amiral de Brion. Guillaume Gouffier, amiral da Bonnivet, was another of Francis I's admirals. Heir we bade adieu to our commorads, they forward to Micbo that night, 2 leagues beyond Bonnevette, to morrow being to dine at Richelieu and lay at Loudun; we back to Poictiers. Its like that we on their intreaties had gone forward to Richelieu if we had bein weill monted; but seing us all 3 so ill monted it minded us of that profane, debaucht beschop Lesly, who the last tyme the bischops ware in Scotland (when Spootswood was Archbischop) was bischop of the Isles. He on a tyme riding with the King from Stirveling to Edinburgh he was wery ill monted, so that he did nothing but curse wtin him selfe all the way. A gentleman of the company coming up to him, and seing him wt a wery discontented, ill looking countenance demanded, Whow is it, whow goes it wt you, my Lord? He answered, Was not the Dewill a fooll man, was he not a fooll? The other demanding wheirin, he replied, If he had but sett Job on the horse I am on, he had cursed God to his face. Let any man read his thoughts from that. The richness of France is not much to be wondred at, since to lay asyde the great cities wt their trafficks, as Tours in silkes. Bordeaux wt Holland wares of all sorts, Marseilles wt all that the Levant affordes, etc., their is not such a pitty city in France which hath not its propre traffick as Partenay[149] in its stuffes, Chatteleraut in its oil of olives, its plumdamies and other commodities which, by its river of Vienne, it impartes to all places that standes on the Loier. [149] A town in Poitou. In France heir they know not that distinction our Civil Law makes betuixt Tutors and Curators, for they call all curators, of which tho they have a distinction, which agries weill wt the Civil Law, for these that are given to on wtin the age of 14 they call _curateurs au persones et biens_, which are really the Justinianean tutors who are given _principaliter ad tuendam personam pupilli_ and _consequenter tantum res_; thes that [are] given to them that are past their 14, but wtin their 25, they call _curateurs du causes_, consequentialy to that, _quod curatores certoe rei vel causoe dari possunt_, and wtout the auctority of thir the minors can do nothing, which tends any wayes to. the deteriorating their estat, as selling, woodsetting or any wayes alienating. What concernes the consent of parents in the marriage of their children, the French law ordaines that a man wtin the age of 28, a woman wtin 25 sall not have the power of disposing themselfes in marriage wtout the consent of their parents. If they be past this age, and their parents wil not yet dispose of them, then and in that case at the instance of the Judge, and his auctority interveening they may marry tho their parents oppose. When the friends of a pupil or minor meits to choose him a curator, by the law of France they are responsible to the pupill if ether the party nominat be unfitting, or behave himself fraudulently and do damnage, and be found to be not _solvendo_. At Bourges in Berry theirs no church of the religion, since, notwtstanding its a considerable toune, their are none of the religion their, but one family, consisting of a old woman and hir 2 daughters, both whores; the one of them on hir deathbed turned Catholick when Mr. Grahame was their. Its a very pleasant place they say, situate on a river just like the Clin heir; they call it the Endre. Heir taught the renouned Cuiacius,[150] whom they call their yet[151] but a drunken fellow. His daughter was the arrantest whore in Bourges. Its not above 4 or 5 years since she died, whence I coniecture she might be comed to good years or she died. [150] Jacques Cujas, eminent jurist, 1522-1590. [151] i.e. 'still speak of there as.' This university is famous for many others learned men, as Douell,[152] Hotoman,[153] Duarene,[154] Vulteius, etc. [152] Possibly Douat, author of _Une centaines d'anagrammes_. Paris, 1647. [153] Francois Hotman, celebrated jurist, 1524-1590. [154] Francois Duaren, jurist, 1509-1559. The posterity of the poor Waldenses are to be sein stil in Piedmont, Merindol, and the rest of Savoy, as also of the Albigenses in Carcasson, Beziers and other places of Narbon. They are never 10 years in quietness and eas wtout some persecution stirred against, whence they are so stript of all their goods and being that they are necessitate to implore almes of the protestant churches of France. About 12 years ago a contribution was gathered for them, which amounted to neir 400,000 livres, which was not ill. The principall trafick of Geneva is in all goldsmiths work. The best _montres_ of France are made their, so that in all places of France they demand Geneva _montres_, and strangers if they come to Geneva they buy usually 3 or 4 to distribute amongs their friends when their are at home. In the mor southren provences of France to my admiration I fand they had and eated upright[155] cheries 2 tymes of the year, end of May and beginning of June, a little after which they are ordinar wt ourselfes, and also again in Octobre. On a day at the beginning of that moneth at dinner Mr. Daillé profered to make me eat of novelties, wheiron he demanded me what fruits I eated in the beginning of the year. I replied I had eaten asparagus, cherries and strawberries. You sall eat of cherries yet, said he, and wt that we got a plate full of parfait cherries, tho they had not so natural a tast as the others, by reason of the cold season, and the want of warmness which the others enioy. They had bein but gathered that same day; they are a sort of bigaro;[156] when the others are ripe they are not yet flourished. [155] Perhaps standard. Compare 'upright bur,' Jamieson's _Dict_. [156] Bigarade is a bitter orange. This may mean a bitter cherry. The most usuall names that women are baptized wt heir be Elizabeth, Radegonde, Susanne, Marguerite and Madleine. The familiar denomination they give the Elizabeths is babie, thus they call J. Ogilvies daughter at Orleans; that for Marguerite is Gotton, thus they call Madame Daillé and hir litle daughter. Thess of the religion, usually gives ther daughters names out of the bible, as Sarah, Rachel, Leah, etc. They have also a way of deducing women names out of the mens, as from Charles, Charlotte, from Lowis, Lowisse, from Paul, Pauline, from Jean, Jeane. Thir be much more frequent amongs the baser sort then the gentility, just as it is wt the names of Bessie, Barbary, Alison and others wt us. A camel or Dromedary would be as much gazed on in France for strangers as they would be in Scotland. In Italy they have some, but few, for they are properly Asiatick wares, doing as much service to the Persian, Arabian and others Oriental nations acknowledging the great Tartar chain as the silly, dul asse and the strong, robust mule does to the French. The camel, according to report indeniable, because a tall, hy beast it most couch and lay doune on its forward feet to receave its burden, which if it find to heavy it wil not stir til they ease it of some of it; if it find it portable it recoveres its feet immediatly. There comes severall Jewes to France, especially as professing physick, in which usually they are profondly skilled. Mr. Daillé know on that turned protestant at Loudun. Another, a very learned man, who turned Catholik at Montpeliers, who a year after observing a great nombre of peaple that lived very devotly and honestly, that ioined not wt the Church of Rome, having informed himself of the protestants beleife, he became of the Religion, publishing a manifesto or Apology wheirin he professes the main thing whey he quites the Catholick religion for is because he can never liberate their tennet wheirby they teach that we most really and carnally eat our God in the Sacrament, from uniustice, absurdity and implication.[157] [157] Implication perhaps means confusion of ideas. The Laws of Spaine, as also of Portugal, strikes wery sore against Jewes that will not turne Christians, to wit, to burning them quick, which hath bein practicate sewerall tymes. On the other hand a Jew thats Christian if at Constantinople he is wery fair to be brunt also. Whence may be read Gods heavy judgement following that cursed nation. Yet Holland, that sink of all religions, permits them their synagogues and the publick excercise of their religion. They rigorously observe their sabath, our Saturdy, so that they make ready no meat on that day. If the wind sould blow of their hat they almost judge it a sin and a breach of the sabath to follow it and take it up. Their was a Jew wt us in the 1662 year of God that professed at least to turne Christian, and communicated in the Abby Church. We may deservedly say, _omnia sunt venalia Gallis_, for what art their not but its to be sold publickly. Not so much as rosted aples ready drest, _chastans_,[158] _poirs_, rosted geese cut unto its percels, but they are crieng publicklie, and really I looked upon it as a wery good custome, for he that ether cannot or wil not buy a whole goose he'el buy it may be a leg. [158] Chestnuts. The prices of their meats waries according to the tymes of the year. The ordinars of some we have already mentioned; for a capon they wil get whiles 20 sous, whiles but 14 or 12. Theirs a fellow also that goes wt a barrel of vinegar on his back, crieng it thorow the toune; another in that same posture fresch oil, others moustard, others wt a maille[159] to cleave wood, also poor women wt their asses loadened wt 2 barrels of water crying, _Il y a l'eau fresche_. At Paris its fellows that carryes 2 buckets tied to a ordinar punchion gir,[160] wtin which they march crieng _de l'eau_, which seimed a litle strange to us at first, we not crying it so at home. Also theirs to be heard women wt a great web of linnen on their shoulder, a el[161] wand in their hand, crieng their fine _toile_. Theirs also poor fellows that goes up and doune wt their hurle barrows in which they carrie their sharping stone to sharp axes or gullies to any bodie that employes him. [159] Mell, mallet, beetle. [160] Hoop. [161] An el. Their came a Charlatan or Mountebanck to Poictiers the Septembre we was their, whose foolies we went whiles to sie. The most part of the French Charletanes and Drogists when they come to a toune to gain that he get them themselfes[162] a better name, and that they may let the peaple sie that they are not cheaters as the world termes them, they go to all the Phisitians, Apothecaries and Chiurgions of the toune and proferes to drink any poison that they like to mix him, since he hath a antidote against any poison whatsoever. [162] The meaning is, with the object of getting for themselves. A mountebank at Montpeliers having made this overture, the potingers[163] most unnaturally and wickedly made him a poisonable potion stuffed wt sulfre, quick silver, a vicked thing they cal _l'eau forte_, and diverse others burning corrasive ingredients to drink. He being confident in his antidote, he would drink it and apply his antidote in the view of all the peaple upon the stage. He had not weill drunk it when by the strenth of the ingredients he sunk all most dead upon the scalfold or stage; he suddenly made his recourse to his antidote which he had in his hand; but all would not do, or halfe a hower it bereaved him of his life. [163] Apothecaries. Their are also some of them that by litle and litle assuesses themselfes to the drinking of poison, so that at lenth by a habit they are able to take a considerable draught wt out doing themselfes harme. Historians reportes this also to have bein practicate by Mithridates, King of Persia [Parthia].[164] [164] Interlined. Upon the founding of the Jesuits Colledge at la Fleche on made thir 2 very quick lines: Arcum dola dedit patribus Gallique sagittam, Quis funem autem quem meruere dabit.[165] [165] _Dola_ is a mistake for _dona_. The pentameter does not scan. It might be emended, _Dic mihi quis funem_. In many places of Germany their growes very good wines, in some none at all. The Rhenish wine which growes on the renouned Rhein, on which standes so many brave tounes, is weill enough knowen. They sometymes sell their wine by the weight as the livre or pound, etc., which may seime as strange as the cherries 2 tymes a year in France. Thus they ar necessitate to do in the winter, when it freizes so that they most break it wt great mattocks and axes, and sell it in the faschion we have named. Adultery, especially in the women, is wery vigorously punished in many places of France. In Poictou, as Mr. Daillé informed, they ignominously drag them after the taile of a mule thorow the streits, the hangman convoying them, then they sett them in the most publick part of the toune bound be a stake, wt their hands behind their backs, to be a obiect of mockery ther to all that pleases. They that commits any pitty roobery or theifte are whipt thorow the toune and stigmatized wt a hote iron marked wt the _flower de lis_ on the cheik or the shoulder. If any be taken after in that fault having the mark, theirs no mercy for them under hanging. Every province almost hath its sundry manner of torturing persones suspected for murder or even great crimes to extort from them a confession of the truth. At Paris the hangman takes a serviet, or whiles a wool cloath (which I remember Cleark in his Martyrologie discovering the Spanish Inquisition also mentioned), which he thrustes doune the throat of him as far as his wery heart, keiping to himselfe a grip of one end of the cloath, then zest wt violence pules furth the cloath al ful of blood, which cannot be but accompanied wt paine. Thus does the _burreau_ ay til he confesses. In Poictou the manner is wt bords of timber whilk they fasten as close as possibly can be both to the outsyde and insyde of his leg, then in betuixt the leg and the timber they caw in great wedges[166] from the knee doune to the wery foot, and that both in the outsyde and insyde, which so crusheth the leg that it makes it as thin and as broad as the loafe[167] of a mans hand. The blood ishues furth in great abondance. At Bourdeaux, the capital of Guienne, they have a boat full of oil, sulfre, pitch, resets, and other like combustible things, which they cause him draw on and hold it above a fire til his leg is almost all brunt to the bone, the sinews shrunk, his thigh also al stretched wt the flame. [166] The torture of the boot was apparently new to Lauder, but from his later MSS., it appears to have been in use in Scotland. [167] Loof, palm. On a tyme we went to sie the charlatan at the Marcher Vieux, who took occasion to show the spectators some vipers he had in a box wt scalves[168] in it, as also to refute that tradition delivered by so many, of the young vipers killing their mother in raving[l69] her belly to win furth, and that wt the horrid peine she suffers in the bringing furth her young she dies, which also I have heard Mr. Douglas--preaching out of the last of the Acts about that Viper that in the Ile of Malta (wheir they are a great more dangerous then any wheir else) cleave to Pauls hand--affirme at least as a thing reported by naturalists, the etymon of the Greek word [Greek: hechidnae] seiming to make for this opinion, since it comes [Greek: apo ton echein taen odunaen][170] _a habendo dolorem_. Yet he hath demonstrated the falshood of that opinion: for he showed a black viper also spooted wt yellow about the lenth of a mans armes, about the grossenesse of a great inkhorne wholly shappen like a ell[171] save only its head wt its tongue, which was iust like a fork wt 2 teeth, wheir its poison mainly resydes, that had brought furth 2 young ones that same very day, which he showed us wt some life in them just like 2 blew, long wormes that are wrinkled; and notwtstanding the mother was on life and no apparence of any rupture in hir belly. To let us sie whow litle he cared for it he took hir and wrapt it that she might not reach him wt hir head, and put it in his mouth and held it a litle space wt his lipes; which tho the common peaple looked on as a great attempt, yet surely it was nothing, since their is no part of the Viper poisonnable save only its head and its guts. As for the flech of it, any man may eat it wtout hazard, for the same very charlatan promised that ere we left the toune, having decapitated and disbowelled it, he sould eat the body of it before all that pleased to look on, which he might easily do. For as litle as he showed himself to care for it, yet he having irritate and angred it, either by his brizing[172] it in his mouth or by his unattentive handling of it (for such is the nature of the Viper that tho its poison be a great deall more subtil, percing and penetrating, and consequently in some account more dangerous then that of the hideous coleuure or serpent, yet it wil not readily sting or bit except they be exasperate, when the others neids no incitations, but wil pershew a man if they sy him), when he was not taking heid, it snatcht him by the finger, he hastily shakt it of on the stage and his finger fell a blooding. He was not ordinarly moved at this accident, telling us that it might endanger the losse of his finger. He first scarified the flech that was about the wound, then he caused spread some theriac (one of the rarest contrepoisons, made mainly of the flech of the Viper) on a cloath which he applied to it. About a halfe hower after he looked to it in our presenc, and his finger was also raisen in blay[173] blisters. He said he would blood himselfe above a hower, to the end to reid himselfe of any blood already poisoned and infected, lest by that circulation that the blood makes thorow al the body of a man once of the 24 howers the blood infected sould communicate itselfe to much. Also he sayd that he had rather bein stung in the leg, the thigh, or many other parts of the body then the finger, by reason of the great abondance of nerves their, and the sympathy the rest of the body keips wt them, which renders the cure more difficile. [168] Shelves. [169] Riving, tearing. [170] Mistake for [Greek: hodunaen]. The etymology is fanciful and incorrect. [171] Eel. [172] Squeezing. [173] Livid. This charlatan seimed to be very weill experimented. He had bein at Rome, which voyage is nothing in France, and thorow the best of France. The stone thats to be found in the head of the hie[174] toad is very medicinal and of great use their. They call a toad grappeau; a frog grenouille. [174] i.e. he. The papists looks very much on the 7 sone for the curing of the cruels;[175] severall of the protestants look on it as superstition. They come out of the fardest nooks of Germany, as also out of Spain itselfe, to the King of France to be cured of this: who touches wt thir wordes, which our King æquivalently uses, tho he gives no peice of Gold as our King does, _c'est le roy qui vous touche, c'est Dieu qui vous guerisse_. He hath a set tyme of the year for the doing of it. The day before he prepares himself by fasting and praying that his touche may be the more effectuall. The French could give me no reason of it but lookt on it as a gift of God. [175] Cruels, scrofula, king's evil. For the healing powers of the seventh son, compare Chambers's _Book of Days_, vol. i. p. 167; _Notes and Queries_, June 12, 1852. We can not forget a witty answer of a young English nobleman who was going to travel thorow France and Italie, whom his friends feared exceedingly that he would change his Religion, because he mocked at Religion. They thought that King James admonition to him might do much to keip him constant, wheiron they prayed the King to speak to him. Yes I shall do that, quoth he. When he came to take his leave of the King, King James began to admonish him that he would not change his Religion, for amongs many other inconveniences he would so render himselfe incapable of serving his King and his country, and of bearing any office theirin. He quickly replied, I wonder of your Majesty who is so wise a man that ye sould speak so; for ther is no a man in all France or Italy that wil change wt me tho I would give him a 100,000 livres aboot.[176] The King was wery weill satisfied wt this, telling his freinds that he was not feared he would change, but that he saw he would bring back all the Religion he carried afield wt him. [176] To boot. At the Marcher Vieux beyond our expectation we saw one of the fellows eat the Viper head and all. The master striped it as a man would do an elle, and clasped it sicker wtin a inch of its neck. The fellow took the head of it in his mouth and zest[177] in a instant bit it of its neck and over his throat wt it, rubing his throat griveously for fear that it stake their. He had great difficulty of getting it over, and wt the time it had bein in his mouth his head swalled as big as 2 heads. The master immediatly took a glasse halfe full of wine, in which he wrang the blood and bowells of the headlesse body of the Viper and caused him drink it also, breaking the glasse in which he drank it to peices on the stage, causing sweip all wery diligently away that it might do no harme. Immediatly on the fellows drinking of it he had ready a cup of contrepoison, which he caused him drink, then giving him a great weighty cloak about his shoulders he sent him to keip him selfe warme before a great fire. The reason of which was to contrepoise the cold nature of this poison as of all that poison thats to be found in living creatures, which killeth us by extinguishing our natural radical heat, which being chockt and consumed the soul can no more execute its offices in the body but most depart. [177] Just. In the more Meridional provinces of France, as Provence, Languedoc, etc., they have besydes the other ordinar Serpents also Scorpions, which, according as we may sie them painted, are just like a litle lobster, or rather the French _rivier Escrivises_. They carry their sting in their taile as the Viper does in its mouth. Tho it be more dangerous then any, yet it carries about wt it contrepoison, for one stung wt it hath no more ado, but to take that same that stung him, or any other if he can light on it, and bruise out its substance on the place wheir he is stung, and theirs no hazard. The potingers also extracts a oile which hath the same virtue. Its not amisse to point as it ware wt the finger at that drollery of the priest who preaching upon the gifts that the 3 wise men gave to Christ, alleadged the first gave _d'or, myrrthe_, the 2d _argent_. He could never find, tho he repeated it 20 tymes over, what the 3d gave wt the rest of its circumstances. As also of the soger that made good cheir to his Landlord; and of Grillet the Deviner who notwtstanding of his ignorance yet fortune favorized. The Frenchwomen thought strange to hear that our women theyle keip the house a moneth after they are lighter, when they come abroad on 8 dayes, and they are very weak that keips it a fortnight. Be the Lawes of France a slave, let him be a Turk, slave to a Venitien or Spaniard, etc. (such enemies they pretend themselfes to be to servitude, tho their be legible enough marks of it amongs them as in their _gens de main mort_,[178] etc.), no sooner sets he his foot on French ground but _ipso facto_ he is frie. Yet al strangers are not in the same condition their, nether brook they the same priveledges, for some they call Regnicolls,[179] others Aubiens[180] (_suivans les loix du Royaume_, bastards). The principal difference they make betuixt them is this, that if a Regnicoll such as the Scots are, chance to dy in France they have the power of making a testament and disposing of their goods as they please which they have their, whither they be moveable or immoveable. If they die not leiving a testament yet its no less secure, since their friends to the 10 degrie may take possession of them. Its not so wt the Aubiens who have no such right, but dieng, the King is their heir, unless it may be they be Aubiens naturalized, who then begin to have the priveledges of the others and the very natives. [178] Serfs under the feudal law, whose power of disposing of their property by will was restricted. [179] A legal term meaning native or naturalised citizens. [180] _Aubains_. Foreigners, whose succession fell to the Crown (_droit d'aubaine_). The Laws of France [this is the rigor][181] denies children begotten in Adultery or incest aliments, which tho harsh, condemning the innocent for the guilty, yet they think it may serve to deterre the parents from sick illicit commixtions. [181] Interlined. The Laws of France, as of the most of Europe (tho not practicate wt us), in thess case wheirin a man gets a woman wt child, ordains that ether he marry hir or that he pay hir tocher good, which is very rigorously execute in France. We can not forget a Anagram that one hes found in Cornelius Jansenius, to wit, _Calvini sensus in ore_. At Rome the Jews have a street assigned to them to live in a part. In France, especially in Montpeliers, wheir theirs seweralls, they dare not wear hats of that coleur that others wear, as black or gray, but ether rid or green or others, that all may know them from Christians. The King of France amongs other titles he assumes, he calls himselfe Abbot of St. Hilaire, to wit of that church that bears the name in Poictiers, whence its amongs the ænigma'es of France that the Abbot of St. Hilaire hath the right of laying with the Queen of France the 1 night of the marriage. Wheirupon when this king married the Infanta of Spaine, some of the French nobility told hir that the Abbot of St. Hilaire had the right of lying wt the Queen of France the first night, she replied that no Abbot sould lay wt hir but her prince. They pressing that the laws of France ware such, she answered she would have that law repealed. They telling hir the matter she said the Abbot sould be welcome. The most part of Them that sweips the chimelies in France we discovered to be litle boyes that come out of Savoy wt a long trie over the shoulders, crying shrilly thorow the cityes, _je vengeray vos cheminées haut en bas_. Its strange of thir litle stirrows,[182] let us or the Frenchmen menace them as we like we can never get them to say, _Vive le Roy de France_, but instead of it, ay _Vive la Reine de Sauoye_. [182] Lads, fellows. We was not a little amazed to sy them on dy making ready amongs other things to our diet upright poddock stools, which they call _potirons_ or _champignons_. They'le raise in a night. They grow in humid, moisty places as also wt us. They frie them in a pan wt butter, vinegar, salt, and spice. They eated of it greedily vondering that I eated not so heartily of them as they did; a man seimes iust to be eating of tender collops in eating them. But my praeiudice hindred me. To know the way of making their sups is not uunecessar since our curiosity may cause us make of them at home. Of this we spoke something already. Further he that hes made ready boiled flech, he hath no more ado but to take the broth or sodden water wt his flech and pour it above his cut doune loaves, which we proved to be very nourishing. If a man would make a good soup wtout flech, he would cut me doune some onions wt a lump of butter ether fresh or salt, which he sall frie in a pan, then pour in some vinaigre, then vater, then salt and spice, and let al boil together, then pour it on your sup, and I promise you a good sup. We cannot forget what good company we have had some winter nights at the fire syde, my host in the one noock, Madame in the other, and I in the mides, in the navel of the fire. He was of Chattelerault, she of Partenay: they would fallen to and miscalled one anothers country, reckning over al that might be said against the place wheir the other was born and what might be sayd for their oune. Whiles we had very great bickering wt good sport. They made me iudge to decide according to the relevancy of what I fand ether alledge. I usually held for Madame as the weaker syde. The most part of the French sauces they make wt vergus.[183] For geese they use no more but salt and water. [183] Verjuice. This consequence may be whiles used: Sy ye this, yes. Then ye are not blind: hear you that; R, yes. Then ye are not deaf. We saw a horse ruber wt a blew bonnet in Poictiers almost in the faschion of our Scotes ones; another we saw not, from our leiving of Berwick, til our returne to it againe. To be fully informed of the history of the brave General [Mareschal][184] Birron,[185] whom they had such difficulty to get headed; as of the possessed Convent of Religious vomen called _les diablesses de Loudun_; as of the burning of the preist as sorcerer and his arraigning his iudges before the tribunal of the Almighty to answer him wtin a few dayes, and all that sat upon his Azize their dying mad wtin som litle tyme; it wil not be amisse to informe ourselfe of them from the History of France. [184] Interlined. [185] Ch. de Gontant, Duc de Biron, Marshal of France, born 1562, died 1602. A favourite of Henry IV, but executed for treason against him. The French, tho the civilest of peaple, yet be seweral experiences we may find them the most barbarous. Vitnes besyde him who dwellt at Porte St. Lazare, another who brunt his mother because she would not let him ly wt hir, and was brunt quick himselfe at the place in Poictiers some 5 years ago. The French Law is that if a women be 7 years wtout hearing news of hir husband that she may marrie againe. We have marked the German language to have many words common wt our oune, as bread, drink, land, _Goet_ for our God; _rauber_; feeds,[186] _inimiticiæ_; march, _limites_; fich; flech; _heer_, sir; our man, _homo_; _weib_ for wife. [186] Feeds, _fehde_, feuds. We have eated puddings heir also that we call sauses, which they make most usualy of suine. We cannot passe over in silence the observation the naturalists hath of the Sow, that it hath its noble parts disposed in the same very sort they are found in a man, which may furnish us very great matter of humility, as also lead us to the consideration and sight of our bassesse, that in the disposall of our noble parts we differ nothing from that beast which we recknon amongs the filthiest. They make great use of it in France heir. In travelling we rencontred wery great heards. Tuo boyes studieing the grammar in the Jesuits Colledge at Poictiers, disputing before the regent on their Lesson, the on demanded, _Mater cuius generis est_: the other, knowing that the mother of the proponer had a wery ill name of a whore, replied wittily, _distinguo; da distinctionem_ then; replied, _si intelligas de meâ est faeminini; si de tua, est communis_ (in the same sort does Rosse tel it). The occasion of the founding that order of the Charterous in France is wery observable. About the tyme of the wars in the Low Contries their was a man at Paris that led one of the strictest, godliest and most blameless lifes that could be, so that he was in great reputation for his holinesse. He dies, his corps are carried to some church neir hand wheir a preist was to preach his funeral sermon the nixt day. A great concourse of peaple who know him al weill are gathered to heir, amongs other, lead by meer curiosity, comes a Soger (Bruno) who had served in the Low Country wars against the Spaniard and had led a very dissolute, prophane, godless life. The preist in his sermon begins to extol the person deceased and amongs other expressions he had that, that undoubtedly he was in paradis at the present. Upon this the dead man lifted himselfe up in his coffin and cried wt a loud voice, _justo dei iudicio citatus sum_: the peaple, the preist and al ware so terrified that they ran al out of the kirk, yet considering that he was a godly man and that it would be a sin to leive his corps unburied they meit the nixt day. They ware not weill meet, when he cried again, _iusto dei indicio indicatus sum_; when they came again the 3d tyme, at which he cried, _justo dei iudicio condemnatus sum_. This seimed wery strange to all, yet it produced no such effects in any as in our Soger, who was present al the tymes: it occasioned enexpressible disquietment of spirit, and he fell a raisoning, If such a man who was knowen to be of so blamlesse a conversation, who was so observant of al his dueties to God be dammed, hath not obtained mercy, oh what wil word of[187] the who hath lead so vicious a life, thinks thou that thou will be able to reach the height that that man wan to, no. At last considering that company and the tongue ware great occasions to sin he resolves to institute a order who sould have converse wt none and whom all discourse should be prohibited save onlie when they meet one another, thir 2 words _Memento Mori_. For this effect he fel in scrutiny of a place wheir they might be friest from company, and pitched upon a rocky, desolate, unhabited place not far from Grenoble (about 3 leagues), wheir they founded their first Convent, which bears the name of Chartrouse, and is to be sein at this day. Notwtstanding that their first institution bears that they stay far from the converse of men, yet (which also may be observed in the primitive Monachisme) they are creeping into the most frequented cities. Vitness their spatious Convent, neir halfe a mile about, at Paris. [187] What will become of thee. Compare German, _werden, geworden_. These of the Religion at Poictiers from St. Michel to Paise[188] they have no preaching the Sabath afternoone. [188] Pasch, Easter. Its not leasum for a man or woman of the Religion to marry wt a Papist; which if they do, they most come and make a publick confession of the fault and of the scandal they have given by such a marriage before the whole church. Experience hes learned them to use it wery sparingly and meekly, for when they would have put it in execution on som they have lost them, they choosing rather to turne papists then do it. We are not so strick in this point as they are; for wt us _licet sed non expedit cum non omne quod liceat honestum sit_. Out of the same fear of loosing them they use wery sparingly the dart of excommunication except against such as lives al the more scandoulously. The protestants in speaking of their Religion before papists they dare not terme it otherwise then _pretendue Reformée_. We have eaten panches[189] heir, which we finding drest in a different sort from ours but better, we informed ourselfe of it thus: they keip them not intier as we do, but cuts them into peices as big as a man wil take in his mouth at once, then puts them in a frying pan wt a considerable lump of butter, having fryed them a good space, they put in vineger, a litle salt and some spice; this is all. [189] Tripe. Their goosing irons they heat them not in the fire as we do; but hath a pretty device. They make the body of the iron a great deall thicker then ours, which is boss,[190] and which opens at the hand, which boss they fil wt charcoall, which heats the bottom of the iron, which besydes that its very cleanly, they can not burn themselfes so readily, since the hands not hot. [190] Hollow. They dry not out their linnens before the fire as we do: they have a broad thing iust like a babret[191] on which we bak the cakes, only its of brass very clear, its stands on 4 right hight feet. They take a choffer whiles of brass oftner lame,[192] filled wt charcoall, which they sett beneath the thing, on which they dry out their cloaths wery neitly. [191] Babret or bawbret or baikbred, kneading trough. [192] Earthenware. We think fit to subioine heir a ridle or 2. Your father got a child; your mother bore the same child and it was nether brother nor sister to you: yourselfe. A man married a woman which was so his wife, his daughter and his sister. A man got his mother wt child of a lasse, which by that means was both his sister and his daughter, whom he afterwards not knowing married. France thinkes it a good policy to height[193] the gold and silver of stranger nations, by that thinking to draw the money of al other nations to themselfes. This gives occasion to that book we have sein called _Declaration du Roy et nouveau reglement sur le faict des Monnoyes tant de France que estrangeres, donné par Lowis 13, an_ 1636. This book at least hath 500 several peices gold and silver currant in France. It specifies what each of them vieghs and what the King ordaines them to passe for. First he showes us a great nombre of French peices of gold wt their shapes what they carry on both sydes: then the gold of Navarre that passes: then the Spanish and of Flanders, as the ducat and pistoles: then of Portugal, as St. Estienne: then the English Rosenoble passing for 10 livres 10 souse: the noble Henry of England for 9 liv. 10 souse: English Angelot for 7 livres: the Scotes and English Jacobuses, which we call 14 pound peices, as also the Holland Ridres for 13 liv: that Scots peice thats wt 2 swords thorow other, crouned the whol is 13, the halfe one 6 liv. 10 souse (it hath, _salus populi est suprema lex)_: the new Jacobus, which we cal the 20 shiling sterling peice, 12 fra: then Flandres gold. The Scotes croune of gold, which hath on the one syde_ Maria D.G. Regina Scotorum_, passes for 4 livres 5 souse.[194] Then he hath the Popes money, which hath Peter and Paul on the one syde and the Keyes, the mitre and 3 flies on the other, some of it coined at Avignon, some at Rome. Then the gold of Bologne, Milan, Venise, Florence, Parma, Avoye, Dombes, Orange, Besançon, Ferrare, Lucque, Sienne, Genes, Savoye, Geneve, wt that about the syde, _lux oritur post tenebras_: Lorraine, Liege, Spinola, Mets, Frise, Gueldres, Hongry, L'empyre, Salbourg, Prusse, Provinces Unies wt this, _concordiâ res parvae crescunt_, Ferrare and then of Turquie, which is the best gold of them al, its so fine it wil ply like wax: the armes wtin consistes of a number of caracters iust like the Hebrew. Thus for the Gold. As to mony it hath al the several realles of the Spaniard, as of al the Dolles or Dollers of the Empire wt the silver of al their neighbouring nations. Our shiling[195] is ordained to passe for 11 souse. [193] Enhance the price of. [194] For a comparison of these values, see Introduction, p. xliii. [195] Here the shilling sterling. Goropius Becanus in hes _Origines Antwerpianae_ would wery gladly have the world beleive that the Cimbrick or Low Dutch is the first language of the world, that which was spoken in Paradise; finally that the Hebrew is but a compond ishue of it because the Hebrew seimes to borrow some phrases and words of it when in the interim[196] it borrows of none. This he layes doune for a fondement and as in confesso, which we stiffly and on good ground denieng, al his arguments wil be found to split on the sophisme _petitionis principii_. [196] When in fact. So again p. 85. The ground upon which the Phrygians vendicats their langage for the anciennest is not worth refuting, to wit that these 2 Children that Psammeticus King of Egypt caused expose so that they never hard the woice of man: the first thing ever they cried was _bec_, which in the Phrygian language, as also in old Low Dutch (so that we have to do wt Goropius heir also, who thinks this to make mutch to his cause) signifies bread, is not worth refuting, since they might ether light on that word by chance, or they had learned it from the baying of the sheip wt whom they had conversed. To abstract from the Antiquitie of tongues, the most eloquent language at present is the French, which gets such acceptance every wheir and relishes so weill in eaches pallat that its almost universal. This it ounes to its _beauxs esprits_, who hath reformed it in such a faschion that it miskeens the garbe it had 50 or 60 years ago, witnesse _l'Historie du Serre_ (_francion_),[197] Montaign'es Essayes and du Barta'es Weeks,[198] who wt others have written marvelously weill in the language of their tyme, but at present is found no ways smooth nor agriable. We have sein the works of Du Bartas, which, tho in langage at present ancient, is marvelously weill exprest, large better than his translator Joseph Sylvester hath done. Amongs his works their was one which I fancied exceidingly, _La Lepanthe de Jacques 6, Roy d'Ecosse_, which he tornes in French, containing a narration of that bloody wictory the Christians gained over the Turk, Octobre 1571, the year before the massacre at Paris, on the Lepanto, which Howel in his History of Venise describes at large. He speaks wt infinite respect of our King, calling him among other stiles _Phoenix Ecossois_. [197] _Francion_ interlined. _Histoire Comique de Francion_, 1623-67. Sorel mentioned again p. 104. For de Serre, see same page. I thought at first that here Serre might be Sieur, but it is distinctly written, therefore perhaps _Francion_ is interlined by mistake. The reference is to an early writer, De Serres died in 1598. Sorel's _Francion_ was published in 1623. [198] G. de Saluste, sieur du Bartas, 1544-1590, religious poet. His _Divine Weeks_ were translated by Joshua Sylvester. To returne to our French language, not wtout ground do we estime it the Elegantest tongue. We have bein whiles amazed to sy [hear][199] whow copiously and richly the poor peasants in their meiting on another would expresse themselfes and compliment, their wery language bearing them to it; so that a man might have sein more civility in their expressions (as to their gesture its usually not wery seimly) then may be fund inthe first compliments on a rencontre betuixt 2 Scotes Gentlemen tolerably weil breed. Further in these that be ordinar gentlewomen only, theirs more breeding to be sein then in some of our Contesses in Scotland. For their frinesse[200] ennemy to a retired sullen nature they are commended be all; none wt whom a person may move easily and sooner make his acquaintance then wt them, and yet as they say wery difficult to board; the Englishwomen being plat contrary. They wil dance wt him, theyle laugh and sport wt him, and use al innocent freedome imaginable, and this rather wt strangers then their oune....[201] [199] Interlined. [200] Freeness. [201] Four lines erased in MS. This much precisely for the French mony (only its not to be forgotten that no goldsmith dare melt any propre French mony under the pain of hanging), their langage, and their women: of the men we touched something already in a comparison of them wt the Spaniard. I have caused Madame Daillé some vinter nights sit doune and tell me tales, which I fand of the same very stuffe wt our oune, beginning wt that usually _Il y avoit un Roy et une Reine_, etc., only instead of our red dracons and giants they have lougarous or war-woophs.[202] She told me on a tyme the tale or conte of daupht Jock wt his _sotteries_, iust as we have it in Scotland. We have laughten no litle at some. [202] Loups-garou or were-wolves, We saw the greatest aple we ever saw, which we had the curiosity to measure, to measure about and fand it 18 large inches. The gourds are monstrous great heir: we have sein them greater then any cannon bullet ever we saw. We have eaten cormes[203] heir, which is a very poor fruit, tho the peasants makes a drink of it they call cormet. In Octobre is the tyme of their roots, as Riphets, tho they eat of them al summer throw, neips and passeneips.[204] [203] Sorb apples. [204] Parsnips. Let us mark the reason whey the Pope permits bordel houses at Rome, and then let us sie who can liberat it from clashing immediatly wt the Aposles rule, Romans 3, v. 8. O. sayes the Pope, the toleration of stues in this place is the occasion of wery much good, and cuts short the occasion of wery mutch evil, for if men, especially the Italian, who, besydes his natural genius to Venery, is poussed by the heat of the country had not vomen at their command to stanch them, its to be feared that they would betake themselfes to Sodomy (for which stands the Apology of the Archbischop of Casa at this day), Adultery, and sick like illicit commixtions, since even notwtstanding of this licence we grant to hinder them from the other, (for _ex duabus malis minus est eligendum_), we sie some stil perpetrating the other. O brave, but since we sould not do evil that good sould come theirof, either let us say this praetext to be false and vicket, or the Aposles rule to be erroneous. Nixt if ye do it on so good a account, whence comes it that the whores most buy their licence by a 100,000 livres a year they pay to your exchequer, whey have they not simply their liberty since its a act, as ye say, of so good consequence? The ancient inhabitants of Rome at that tyme when it became of Pagan Christian seimes to me much viser then our reformers under Knox when we past from Papisme to Protestantisme. They did not demolish the Heathen Idol temples, as we furiously did Christian, but converted them to Christian temples, amongs others witness the stately temple dedicat to the goddess Fortune, much respected by the Romans, at present a church. Yea the Italians boasts that they have cheated, robbed the Devil in converting that hous which was consecrat for his service unto the service of the true God. But all that heirs of our act laughts at it as madness. Theirs a Scots Colledge at Rome. I find that conclusion the Duke of Burgundy tried on a peasant, whom he fand in a deip sleip in the fields as he returned from the hunting on a tyme, wery good. On a tyme we fel a discoursing of those that are given to riseng in their sleip and do things, whiles more exactly then give they ware waking. I cannot forget on drollery. 2 gentlemen fell to lodge to gither at one innes, the one began to plead for a bed by himselfe, since the other would find him a wery ill bedfellow, for he was so much given to hunting, that in the night he used to rise and cry up and doune the chambre hobois, hobois, as on his dog; the other thought Il'e sy if I can put you from that, wheiron he feigned he was iust of that temper in rising thorow his sleip, and that he was so much given to his horses that he thought he was dressing and speaking to them. Since it was so[205] they lay both together; about midnight the one rises in his sleip begines to cry on his doges; the other had brought a good whip to the bed wt him, makes himselfe to rise as throw his sleip, fals to and whipes the other throw the house like a companion,[206] whiles crying, Up, brouny; whiles, Sie the iade it wil no stir. The other wakened son enough, crying for mercy, for he was not a horse; the other, after he had whipt him soundly, made himselfe to waken, wheiron the other fel a railing on him; the other excused himselfe wery fairly, since he thought he was whiping his horses. In the interim the other never rose to cry on his doges again. [205] Interlined. [206] Low fellow. France in such abondance produces win, that seweral years if ye'el bring 2 punchions to the field as great as ye like, live them the on and they'le let you carry as many graps wt you as the other wil hold. They have in France the _chat sauuage_; the otter, which is excellent furring; the Regnard, the Wolfe. In the mountaines of Dauphiné theirs both _ours_ and _sangliers_, bear and boor. Their doges are generally not so good as ours. Yet their a toune in Bretagne which is garded by its dogs, which all the day ower they have chaned, under night they loose, who compasses the toune al the night ower, so that if either horse or man approach the city, they are in hazard to be torn in peices. The wolfes are so destructive to the sheip heir that if a man kill a wolfe and take its head and its taille and carry it thorow the country willages and little borrowes, the peasants as a reward will give him som egges, some cheese, some milk, some wooll, according as they have it. They have also many stratagemes to take the wolfe. Amongs others this: they dig a wery dip pit, wheir they know a wolfe hantes; they cover it with faill,[207] fastens a goose some wery quick, which by its crying attracks the wolfe who coming to prey on the goose, zest[208] plumpes he in their, and they fell him their on the morning. [207] Turf. [208] Just. We have sein that witty satyre that Howel has about the end of his Venitian History in French. The French Ministers of the Religion are exceedingly given to publish their sermons, in that like to the English. Vitnesse Daille'es sermons; Jean Sauvage, Ministre at Bergerac, betuixt Limosin (wheir they eat so much bread when they can get it) and Perigord, dedicated to Mr. de la Force, living at present their, Mareschal de France, father of Mareschal Turaines lady: wt diverses others we have sein. We have sein a catechisme of Mr. Drelincourt which we fancied exceedingly. The halfe of France wt its revenues belongs to the Ecclesiasticks, yea, the bueatifullest and the goodliest places. To confine our selfes wtin Poictiers, the rents of whosse convents, men and women togither, wil make above six 100 thousand livers a years, besydes what the bischop hath, to wit, 80,000 livres a year. The Benedictines, a wery rich order as we have marked, have 30,000 livres in rent; the Feuillans[209] 20,000; besydes what the Jacobins, Cordeliers, Minims, thess de la Charité, Capucyns, Augustins, the Chanoines of Ste. Croix, St. Radegonde, St. Peter, the cathedral of Poictiers, Notre Dame la grande, St. Hilaires, wt other men and al the women religious, have, being put togither wil make good my proposition. [209 1] See p. 47, *note. We had almost forgot the Jesuits, who, above 50 years ago, entred Poictiers wt their staffes in their hand, not a 100 livres amongs them all, since have wt their crafty dealings so augmented their Convent that they have 40,000 livres standing rent. Whow they come be this is not uneasy to dewine, we toucht it a litle already. If any fat carcasse be on his deathbed, they are sure to be their, undermine him wt all the slights imaginable, wring donations in their faveurs from them, of which we know and have heard seweral exemples: vitness the Abby at Bourdeaux, whom they undermined, and he subtilly getting a grip of his testaments tore it and so revocked his will. Also that testament so agitate by the Jesuits and the sone of the deceased who was debauched before the Duke of Parme, the Jesuits relaying on thesse words that the fathers Jesuits sould be his heirs, providing that they gave his sone _ce qu'ils voudront_, what they would: the Duk turning them against the Jesuits exponed them, that what they would have themselfes that that sould be given to his sone. Diverse others we have heard. The lawes of France wil hardly permit the father to disinherit his sone, unless he can prove him guilty of some hy ingratitude and disobedience against him, or that he hath attempted something against the life of his father; that he is debaucht he cannot. The custome among the great ones of the most part of the world is that they cause any other of quality that comes to sy them be conveyed thorow their stables to sy their horses, as also causeth them sy their doges, their haucks, ther gardens. Particularly in Spaine the custome is such, that they take special heed what horse or what dog ye praise most, and if ye change[210] to say, O their is a brave horse, the horse wil be as soon at your lodging in a gift as your selfe wil be. [210] Chance. We happened to discourse on night of fools and madmen, of their several sortes, of the occasions, as love, study, vin, hypocondriack, melancholly, etc. They told me of one at Marseilles who beleifed himselfe to be the greatest King of the world, that all the shipes of the harbour, together wt their waires, ware his; of another who really beleifeth himselfe to be made of glasse, cryed horridly if any but approach him for fear they sould break him. His friends, at the advice of some Doctor, took a great sand glasse and brook it on tyme on his head as he was raging in that fit: seeing the peices of glasse falling doune at his feet he cryed more hideously then ever, that he was broken to peices, that his head was broken. After he had calmed a litle they desyred his to consider that the glasse was broken, but that he was not broken; and consequently that he was not glasse. On this remonstrance he came to himselfe, and confessed he was not glasse. The same was practicat on a nother who beleived himselfe to be lame. We cannot forgett a story that happened at the bedlam at Paris. 2 gentlemen out of curiosity coming to sie the madmen, the Keeper of the Hospital be reason of some businesse he had could not go alongs wt them, whence he ordains one of the fools that was besyde to go alongs wt them, and show them al the madmen wt the occasions and nature of their madnese. The fool carried them thorow them all, showing that their was on mad for love, their another wt to much study, a third besottedly fool wt drunkness, a 4th Hypocondriack, and so wt all the rest marvelous pertinently. At last as they ware going out he sayd: Gentlemen, I beleife ye wondred at the folly of many ye have sein; but theirs a fool (pointing at him) whom ye'el admire more then them all, that poor fellow beleifes him selfe to be the beloved Aposle St. John, but to let you sie that he is not St. John, and whow false his beleife is, I that am St. Piter (for he chiefly held himselfe to be St. Peter) who keips the gates of heaven never opend the door to let him in yet. The gentlemen thought wery strange to find him so deiply fooll when they reflected whow pertinently he had discoursed to them before and not discovered the least foly. They ware informed that he was once a doctor in the colledge of Sorbonne, and that to much study had reduced him to that. It would appear he hes studied to profundly Peters primacy above the rest of the Aposles. The Protestant Churches throw Poictou keip a solemne fast 28 of Octobre, wt the Papists St. Simons day. The occasion was to deprecate Gods wrath which he showed he had conceived by reason he threathned them in sewerall places wt Scarcity of his word and removing of his candlestick, since sewerall temples ware throwen doune, as that at Partenay, etc. For that effect they sent 4 of the Religion, the eminentest amongs them in the Province to the King wt a supplication. We had 3 preachings. We eated no flech that day for fear of giving occasion to the Papists to mock: we suped on a soup, fried egges, roosted chaistains, and apples wt peirs. Sewerall schollers have made paction wt the Dewil, under the Proviso he would render them wery learned, which hath bein discovered. One at Tholouse gave his promise to the Dewil, which having confessed, they resolve to procede iudicially against him. Since the Dewil loves not iustic, they send a messenger to the place wheir they made the pact to cite him to compeir and answer. He not compairing they declaire him contumacious; and as they procede to condemn him as guilty, behold a horrid bruit about the hous and the obligation the lad had given him droops of the rigging[211] amongs the mids of the auditors. We fand the story called _funeste resemblance_ not il of the scholler in Lipswick University, who having killed on of his companions was put to flie, wheiron after a long peregrinatione he came to Coloigne, wheir to his misfortune was a young man whom he resembled so neir that theirs no man but he would take on for the other. This young man had ravished just at that same tyme a gentlewoman of great condition: now the Lawes of Germany, as also of France, permits to pershue a _Ravisseiur_, tho the women consent, if her parents contradict, criminelly for his life. On this our scholler Proclus is slain in the streets for him; together with what followes. [211] Rooftree. Thorow all Languedoc and Provence the olive tries is as common as the walnuts in Poictou: oranges thorow much of France and in seweral places China oranges. Lentils, the seeds rise and mile[212] growes abondantly towards Saumer: the Papists finds them wery delicate in caresme or Lent. Its wonderful to sie what some few degries laying neerer the sun fertilizes a country. [212] Mil, millet. France is a country that produceth abondantly all that the heart of man can desire, only they are obligded to fetch their spices (tho they furnish other countries wt saffran which growes in seweral places of Poictou, costes 15 livres the pound at the cheapest) from Arabia, their sugar from America and the Barbado Islands: yet wtout ether of the tuo they could live wery weill. A man may live 10 years in France or he sy a French man drink their oune Kings health. Amongs on another they make not a boast to call him[213] _bougre, coquin, frippon_, etc. I have sein them in mockery drink to the King of Frances coachhorses health. [213] _i. e_. think nothing of calling him. The plumdamy, heir prunecuite,[214] they dry so in a furnace. [214] Prune, dried plum. About the end of Octobre the peasants brings in their fruits to Poictiers to sel, especially their Apples, and that in loadened chariots. The beggar wifes and stirrows[215] ware sure to be their, piking them furth in neiwfulles[216] on all sydes. I hav sein the peasents and them fall be ears thegither, the lads wt great apples would have given him sick a slap on the face that the cowll[217] would have bein almost like to greet; yet wt his rung[218] he would have given them a sicker neck herring[219] over the shoulders. I am sure that the halfe of them was stollen from many of them or they got them sold. [215] Lads, boys. [216] Handfuls. [217] Fellow. See Jamieson's _Dict_, s.v. 'Coulie.' [218] Staff. [219] 'A smart wipe.' I have not traced the expression 'neck herring.' When we have had occasion to tel the Frenchman what our Adwocats would get at a consultation, 10,20 crounes, whiles they could not but look on it as a abuse, and think that our Justice was wery badly regulate and constitute. Thorow France a Adwocat dare take no more than a _quartescus_[220] for a consultation, but for that he multiplies them; for a psisitians advice as much. Surely if it be enquired whose ablest to do it, France by 20 degries might be more prodigal this way then we are; but their are wiser. Theris above 200 Adwocats at Poictiers. Of these that gets not employment they say, he never lost a cause, whey, because he never plaid one. Also, that theirs not good intelligence betuixt the Jugde and him, whey, because they do not speak togither. [220] Quart d'ecu, a silver coin, quarter of an écu. See Introduction, p. xlii. The cardecue was a common coin in Scotland. As to the privilege of primogeniture in France its thus, that the eldest carries away 2 parts of thrie: as, for instance, the father is a man of 15,000 livres a year, the eldest hath 10,000, the other 5000 goes amongs the cadets. Al the Capital tounes of provinces of France are frie from Taille.[221] [221] A tax on persons not noble or ecclesiastic or exempted. The wood cannot be but wholesomer to dresse meat wt then our coall: also they impute the oftner contagions that happens in Brittain to the smook of our coall, which grossens and thickens et,[222] by consequence infectes the air, their wood smooking wery little. [222] For 'it.' The French cryes out against the wanity of our King who most be served by his subjects on their knees, since that the knees sould be keipt to God alone; as also their King more absolute then [he] tho not served so. Yea some have bein so impudent as to impute (count)[223] the murder of our late King (which 1000 tymes hath bein casten up to me) as a iust iudgement of God on them for their pride. I cannot forget whow satyrically they have told this, saying that the peaple of great Britain keip their Kings at their beck, at their pleasure not only to bereave them of their croune but also of their life. I endewored to show them that they understood not things aright, that the same had bein practicat in France on Henry the 4t: the cases are not indeed alike, since our King was brought to a Schaffold, the other slain be a Assasin, Ravelliak, and regretted. To make the case iump the better, I remitted them to ther History to sie wt what publick consent Henry 3d was slain be Clement the Jacobine, yet heir their was no iudiciall procedure as against our King. Whence I had recourse to Chilperick, whom the peaple, tho legittime heir, first deposed then cowed him, and thrust him in a Monastry surrogating Pepin his brother in his roome. This wexed them, they could never answer this sufficiently. [223] Interlined. Sewerall tymes in France persones have suffered because they had discovered some plot or conspiracy against the King or estat and could not prove it. The Law is the same wt us, tho it seimes to carry injustice. On all hands I am in danger: if I do not reveale it I am aequally guilty of the treason as the actors are; if I rewealle it, I am immediatly made prisoner, tortured to show all I know of it, put to prove what I say, in which if I failly I lose my life. What can a man do when he have no proofes? He most tho' reveall it and consequently lose his life; since after the truth sal appear and he sal be held be all to have died gloriously as a weill wisher to his country. Its was strange of Cardinal Richelieu who know[224] all things that past thorow France as if he had bein present, and 2 of the most intimate sould not have spoken ill of him at Poictiers but he sould have knowen it or 4 dayes at Paris. Some imputed it to a familiar spirit he had, others to his spies he had every wheir. He was _toute en toute_ in France in his tyme. [224] Lauder's way of spelling knew. Compare p. 98, slow for slew. The French mock at our sweit sauses and sugared sallades. Their salt is a great deall better and more sawory then ours is. That which we parfait be the fire, which cannot but in some measure consume the strenth of its savorinesse, the sun denieng us it, they parfait be the sun. In Bearn or Navarre they make it be the fire as we do; but they make more cont of that which comes from the Rochel, which the Hollanders, Dans, and others carries in abondance then of their. On the place wheir they make it its sold for a sous marky[225] la livre, which costs at Poictiers 20 sous. In 2 heurs tyme the sun will converte a great ditch full of sea water unto upright salt: that they showle out, fills it again, and so in 3 moneth, May, Juin, July, they make more salt then the fire maks in 2 years in Scotland: and wt lesse cost and lesse pain. That our salt is whitter, its the effect of the fire, since they could render theirs as white but it sould lose so werie much of its savory. Their is a ile neir to that of St Christople which hath montaines of Salt. The sea casts in the water on the dry land and the sun convertes it immediatly, which beats their so violently that no corn can grow; it rises but its brunt or it come to the head. The sugar growes marvelously weill in it. [225] _Sou marqué_. Copper coin worth fifteen deniers. That was the value of the _sou parisis_. The _sou tournois_ was worth twelve deniers. The day before great fests, as _les Roys_[226] _Toussaints_, etc., their fellows that wt white surplices and a pigful[227] of holy water wt a spung in it goes thorow al the Catholick houses be-sprinkling the persons as also the house, and so sanctifieng them that the Dewil dare not enter their; passing by the Protestants houses as infected; or rather, as the Angel who smote the first born of the Egyptians past the Israelits. At _Toussaints_ al are in ther best cloaths. [226] Epiphany. [227] Jarful. Of the fal of our first parents its enquired what might have happened in the case of the women alone sould have fallen, the man keiping his integrity: wheither the children would have bein culpable wt the mother, or innocent wt the father. 2'do if any children had bein born before the fal they sould have bein exempt from the curse or not. 3'o if our parents fell the same day they ware created. 4to who would be Cains wife, ether his mother or a sister. Upon what the Scripture teaches us, that for the 40 years the Israelites ware in the wilderness their shoes nor their garments waxed not old, it may be enquired what they did for cloaths to their childeren that ware born in the wilderness, also theirs one that was 10 years old, another 20, at their coming furth out of Egypt, they had cloathes and shoes meit for them at that age, it may be demanded whow the same cloaths gained[228] them when they came to be 30 or 40 year old. It seimes to be said that the cloaths waxt wide as they grew. [228] Fitted. It may be demanded also, whither it was really a miracle in passing the rid sea or give it was only at a low ebbe, since Moses know weill enough both the sea and the desart, having feid his father-in-laws flocks their about long tyme. I demand, if our first parents had keipt their state of innocence whither they would have procreat their children in that same faschion that man and woman does now. It seims that they sould have copulated carnally, since theirs no other raison assignable whey God sould have made distinction of sex, since these sould have bein in wain: _at Deus et Natura nihil faciunt frustra_. On the other hand I dare not say they sould have copulate carnally when I consider the brutality and filthinesse of the act which does no wayes agree wt the perfection wheirin they ware created. On the supposition that they had keipt their innocence and begotten children, I demand whither the children at their coming furth of the bellie sould have had the vigueur that Adam had when he was created; or whither they bit to be born litle that could nether speak nor go for the first 6 quarters of a year as at present. This it seimes absurd to think, since that would have argued wery much imperfection in the man, which I wil be wery loath to think him capable of as he was in that state: the other syde seimes as absurd, since its inconceivable to think whow Ewe could have born a strong, robuste man of Adams strenth at the age of 30 years in hir womb. I demand also whither Adam after he had lived many hundred years on earth sould have died, gone to heaven and left the earth to his posterity, and so after a long tyme his posterity to theirs. Necessity seimes to say that it sould have bein so, since that if the fathers had not so made way to their sons, or some ages the world sould not hold them all, for I suppose all that hes lived in the world since Adam ware on the world at present, wt them that are living on it even now, I am inclinable to think that we would be put to seik some other new world besyde Americk to hold them. To think on the other hand that he sould have died is as absurd, since its confessed that the trie of Life was given him as a sacrament and signe he sould not lay under the strock of death, for as death comes from that contrariety and discord of the elements of whilk our bodies are composed, so the fruit of this trie, at least typicaly, had the wertue of maintaining the contrary elements in a parfait concord and by consequence of vindicating a man from Death. I demand in what season of the year the world was created. I find a great rable of the Scolasticks, as testifies Lerees[229] in his physical _disputa. de mundo_, teaching that it was in the spring tyme; and that the sun began his course in the first degree of Aries; that it is from this that the Astrologians begines their calculations, at Aries as the first signe of the Zodiack; that it was at this tyme that Christ suffered, restauring the world at that same season wheirin it fell. But who sies not the emptinesse of their reasons. Theirs another rank who think it was created in the Automne, since that Moses mentioned rip apples, which in the spring tyme are only virtually in their cause. Others wt greater reason condamne al thir autheurs as temerare and rash, since that Spring in our Hemispbere is Automne in the other. [229] Lery or Leri, Jean de, was a traveller and Protestant divine, but I do not find trace of such a work as this. About the Bi-location of bodies, I would demand the Popelings, in the case wheirin a army is made up of one man replicate in 1000 places, whither he shall have the strenth of one man or 1000: if one be wounded or slain, if all the rest shal be wounded or slain: also whither he can be hot at Paris and cold at Edin'r, headed at Paris, hanged at Edin'r, dy at Paris, live in good health at Edin'r, wt infinite other alleaged by Lerees and others. When he was at Poictiers a Gentleman accused of seweral murders and imprisoned escaped in womens cloaths about the gloaming, whom we saw passe thorow the street, giveng al ground of suspicion by the terror and amazement he was in; letting a scarf fal in on part, his napkin in another, his goun taille fell doune in a thrid. Yet none seazed on him. At the port of the toune he had a horse waiting for him on which he escaped. A litle after that a Mareschal, or ferrier, or Smith felled on of his boyes at the Scotes Walk because he demanded money of him, escaped to Lusignan, wheir he was taken. Just about the same tyme on a stormy, vindy night a rich Candlemakers (which office is not so dishonorable heir as wt us, their daughters wil be going in their satins) booth was broken up, 40 pistols, which he had receaved in payment just the day before, and which he had left in a box of the table, stollen. Persones wil do weill then to keip quiet any mony they have as weill as they can: according the tenor of my fathers letter. On the day after _Toussaint_ is a feste til noon called _les Trespassez_[230]. The papists prayes for their dead ancestres, over their graves mumbling so many paters and so many ave'es. [230] _Trépassés_, All Souls. They have a apple in France called _pomme de Calvile_, its all rid thorow to the wery heart, _pomme blanche_. In case of fire in a toune the neirest bel, or the bel of that paroiche wheir it is, ringes. In Octobre heir, tho reasonably sharp, they have upright[231] Summer weather, its so fair. [231] Equivalent to 'downright.' Our peirs that growes at home are all out as delicious, vitness the carnock, as any we have eaten in France, tho they grow their in greater abondance. As to the Apples we most not conteste wt them, since beseids many brave sorts they have the pipin, which I conceive most be that they call Reynett, brought unto France from Italy by Queen Blanche, mother of St. Louis: it was first fund in Africk. The _pomme Minion_ is better then any of ours: our Marican seimes to be a degenerat sort of it. The silver hat-strings are much in use at present: they sell them by the weight. The tabby doublets wt the silk [called wats][232] furring wtin are also in faschion: wery warm in winter, cost 20 franks. Men and women from the least to the greatest, yea not the wery keel wifes and fruit wifes, but they have manchon muffes. A man cannot get a good one under a pistol: some of a meiner size are sold for 6 or 4 francks. Our best furrings comes out of Musco'e. Chamois gloves and linnens mad of goats skines, which are found better in Poictou then in any other province of France, are not in so great cont[233] wt them as wt us; yet they find them wondrously warm; some thinkes them strenthning and corroborative of a feeble hand. We have sein som buy them to lay swallings of their handes. Perruvicks, besydes they are most faschious, they are destructive both to the body, since they are wery unwholsome, engendring humeurs; as also to the purse, they being extravagantly dear thorow all France, especially at Paris, wheir its a wery mean one a man will get for 4 pistols; and a man can have no fewer then 2 at a tyme, on to change another. [232] Interlined. Wats, _ouates_. [233] Estimation. We have spoken wt some Catolicks that have bein at Geneve. The disciplin is very strick their yet. A Catholick if a craftsman they suffer him to excerce his trade 3 moneth: they'le let him stay no longer. If a man swear their, he'el be layd in prison, lay their 24 howers wtout meat or drink. A man cannot speak wt a woman on the Street wtout giving scandal. The Sabath is keipt as we do, nothing to be sold their on it, as thorow France its the greatest market day of the week, the peasants bringing in al they have to sell in abondance. Its the resort of al the banished Germans, Italians and other strangers that would enjoy the excercise of their Religion freely and purely. In shaving a man, its impossible for a Frenchman to cut a man; they have such a net way of baging the flech: also it would do a man good to be washen wt their water, whiles rose water, whiles smelling of musck: tho their fingers stinkes whiles, the French dighting their staille[234] wt their fingers, thinking it prodigality to do it wt paper: yett ther Kings of old did so, to teach their peaple frugality: hence it is that the Frenchman wil not eat til he wash: wil not eat wt ye til ye wash: for my oune part I would not eat wt a Frenchman til he wash. [234] Foundation, breech. Fresch egges are wery dear wairs in France. At Paris they are 5 pence a peice, at Poictiers a shiling a dozen. They fry their egges differently from us: they break them first in a plate: in the meantym they fry a considerable lump of butter, then pours in the egges salting and spicing them. Their hens are not so fertile as ours. Our speaking of egges mindes me of Christophorus Colomba Lusitanian, a experienced skiper, first discowrer of the new world, tho he had gotten some encouradgements and conclusions about it from on Vespucius Americus Florentin, from whom it gets its denomination of America. Colomba on a tyme walking on the harbory of Lisbon, a toune knowen for the emporium of the east, such a boystrous wind blow to him iust of the sea that he could not get his feet holden; on this he began to reason that the wind could not come of the Sea, but that of necessity their bit to[235] be land beyond that sea, tho unknoun, of whilk[236] that wind bit to[235] blow, for the vapors or exhalations drawen of the sea are not so grosse as thess that montes of the land: and be consequence cannot produce such boystrous vindes. This his opinion he imparted to sewerall: at lenth it came to Ferdinando'es ears, who at the persuasions of Isabella his queen, a woman of greater spirit and more action then hir husband, equippes Columba a fleet, wt which after he had born out many stormes he gained his point, returning wt some few of his shipes that ware left him loadened wt the gold of the country. [235] Must. [236] i.e. though unknown, off which. The King accepted him wery kindly, as he had reason, but his courtiers out of that enwious nature of detracting from the merites of others, thinking that theirs no way of gaining themselfes credit unless they backhit at others, each most passe their seweral werdict on his attempt, al concluding that it was nothing, that any man might have done it. The honest, silly man hears them at this tyme patiently, when they have al done he calles for a egge: desires them al to try if the could make it stand on the end of it: they, not knowing his designe, try it all: it goes round about al the table, not one of them can make it stand so. Then he takes the egge, brakes the bottome of it, and so it standes upright, they being al most ashamed, else further he addes, As now after I have let you sie whow to do it, ye think nothing to make a egge stand upright: tho none of you could do it before: sikelike after I have found you the gate to the new world ye think nothing of it tho ye could not have done it yourselfes. They thought themselfes wery far out. Horrid and unchristian was the outrages the Spaniards committed on the poor natives. They slow them like beasts. Further they carried over whole shipeful of mastives which they hunted the naked Indians with; and I know not how many millions ware torn this way. The sogers ware so beastly that they could not refrain from laying and abusing the Indian women, which gave them the _verole picot_ or French pox, surely the just iudgement of god, wt a iudgement not knowen to former ages, punishing men wt shame in this world. The Spaniards brought it from America to Naples, infected some Napolitan women wt it, whence called _Morbus Napolitanus_; thir women gave it to some French sogers who brought it unto France, whence called wt us French pox, now its become universall. Philip of Spaine who died August 1665 was owergoon wt it, they say. The Indians calles the Spaniards Veracochié, which in their language signifies scume of the sea. Out of contempt and because they assaulted them first from the sea, they curse the sea always that vomited out sick monstres. Some chances to tel them of heaven and hell: wheiron they have demanded wheir the Spaniards would go to: they hearing that they would go to heaven, they sayed they would not go their then, for the Spaniards ware to bloody and cruell to stay wt. To informe our selfes fully of the singularites of America and other things it will be fitting for us to buy _Pancerollas[237] Vetera deperdita_ and his _Nova reperta_, as also Howels[238] Letters, Osburnes[239] advices to his sone, etc. [237] Panceroli, Guido, 1523-1599, Italian jurist. The work referred to is _Kerum memorabilium jam olim deperditarum at contra recens atque ingeniose inventarum_. Hamburg, 1599. [238] Howell, James, 1594-1666, Historiographer Royal to Charles II., published several series of _Familiar Letters_. [239] Osborne, Francis, 1589-1659, author. _The Advice to a Son_ was written for his son when at Oxford. Its a custome in Pictou that if a gentlewomen would have hir galland passe his gates[240] or any other to a other they have no more ado but to set the wood on one of the ends of it in the chemly and they wil not readily stay. [240] Go away. In France the father of the bride, if on life, accompany'es his daughter to the church; the worthiest of the company leading hir home, as wt us: yet at Saumur the bridegrome leds home his oune spouse. In France they observe that they have usually great rains about Martimess, which we saw werified. When a great rain hath fallen we have sein al sortes of peaple, prentises wt others, wt racks and shovles cume furth to cleange the gutters and make the passage clear that it may not damme before their doores; for the streets are but narrow at Poictiers and none of the neitest. Orleans hath wery neit streets, amongs others on that goes from the end of toune to the other. A woman laying in child birth they call _commair_. Our curds and whey (which they make not so oft as we) they call _caill botte_.[241] Milk is a great delicat in France. I never hard it cried up and doune the streits, as its wt us, tho they have many cries we have not. [241] _Caillebotte_, curds, They report of their sorciers and sorciares victches that they have their assembles and dances wt the Dewill, especially the evening of _Marde gras_. They look on the _corbique_ or raven as a bad prognostick of death; the pie tells that some strangers's to come. The Jesuites whipes their scollers wery cruelly, yea they whipt on to death at Poictiers: yet the father could obtaine nothing against them. The greatest affront that can be done to a woman is to cut the tayle of hir goune from hir, or even to cast ink in her face, since that a lovely face is the principal thing that commends a woman, hence as the greatest reproach a man can be upraided wt is _bougre_ or _j'en foute_; so the greatest of their railings against a woman is to say, _vous avez eu la robe coupé au queue_. It hath bein practicat on some. A man would take good heed that he never desire a woman a drink in company, for the Frenchwomen take it in very il part, and some hath gotten on the cheak for it. They think a man does them honour in making them go before him; so that a Frenchman wil never readily steep in before any woman of faschion, tho it be just contraire in our country. The 11 of November is St. Martins day, a very merry day in France. They passe it in eating, drinking and singing excesivelie. Every one tasts his new wine that day, and in tasting it takes to much; their be wery few but they are full. The Suisses and Alemmands (who drink like fisches, as we know in Mr. le Baron and his creatures at Orleans, each man each night could not sleip wt out his broll[242] or pot, which the Frenches their _L'abbé Flacour_ and _Brittoil_ mockt at) findes only 3 good festes in France, Mr. St. Martin,[243] Mr. les trois Rois, and Mr. marde gras, because al drinkes bitch full thess dayes. [242] I have not found this word elsewhere. [243] It was customary to speak of saints as Monsieur St. Martin, Mme. Ste. Catherine, etc. Lauder extends the usage (whether correctly or not) to Mardi Gras. On the morrow after opened the Palais, which sits neir 10 moneth togither, whither we went to sie the faschion. First their massers have not silver masses as ours have, only litle battons, yea the massers to the parliament at Paris have no more. Next none most bring nether swords nor spurs wtin any of the bars: the reason whey swords have bein discharged is because that judges and conseillers have bein several tymes assasinate on the bench be desperate persons poussed forward be revenge; whence a man bringing on wtin the bar wil be made prisoner: yet we had ours the first day. The judges being sit doune on the bench, the Kings Advocat began a harangue, reading it of his papers, wery elegantly extolling the lily or _fleur de lis_ above al other flowers, and then France and its Kings above all other nations, alleging that the whitnese and brightnese of the lily denotated the purity and integrity of justice thats don in France. He ending, the president in his scarlat robes (for they war al so that day wt their 4 nooked black bonnets lined wt scarlet) began a very weill conceaved harangue in the commendation of justice and vertu. That being done they gave their oath wt the Advocats and procureurs or Agents (for they swear anew every sitting doune of the Palais, when we give but one oath for all wt us and that at the entry vnto to the office); the judges that they sal passe no sentence contrare to ther conscience, but that they sal judge _2dum allegata et probata_; the Advocats that they shal never patronize a false cause; and if any cause they have taken in hand appeir after to them false, that they sall immediatly forsake it: that they shal plead the causes of the widow and orpheling, etc. The Praesidial of Poitou at Poictiers is the greatest of France: yea it consistes of mo conseillers or judges (to wit, about 30 wt 2 Kings Advocats, 2 Kings procureurs), is of greater extent then several parliaments: their be not so many membres in the parliament of Grenoble, which is for Dauphiné, etc. The parliament of Dijon for Burguiogne hath not so great extent. The song they sing at St. Martins is thus: 'Pour celebrer la St. Martins, Il nous fault tous chantre et boire Celuy quy a converty L'eau au Vin Pour luy que ne doibt on point faire A[244] le bon vein, bon vein, bon vein, Chasse de la melancolie Je te boire[245] Jusque a la lie.' [244] Probably for Ah! [245] For _boirai_. My host after his drinking of his glasse of wine, usually lifting up his eyes to heaven in admiration, shakt his head (as we remember Charles his nurse did at the seck),[246] crying, oh but win is a good thing (tho poor man I never saw him drunk), protesting that he would not live in our country because he could not drink ordinarly win so cheap. [246] Sack. Its a little strange to sie what alteration a sad accident may procure in a man: befor that scandal he fel under by his wife wt Mr. Douglas, to wit, in the tyme of Mr. Hope and my cousin Mr. Elies (as he and his wife confesses), he was one of gailliardest, merriest fellows that one could find amongs 100, ever since that, tho' he reteans something of his former gailliardness, taking it by fits, yet he is not like the man he was, as Madame hath told me. I seeing him mo jalous then a dog of his wife because she loved so weill to play at the carts and wandring from hir house to hir commorads, likt better their houses then hir oune. Oh, but she was blith when he went to the country upon any affair, she minding him of his affairs at Partenay or elsewheir to have him away; and in the interim from the morning to 12 howers at even, even whiles at midnight, she would not have bein wtin a hower. There ware only 5 or 6 of the women of the Religion that ware players at carts (as Mr. Dailly reproached sewerall tymes his wife, that she bit be on of them) all thir, when he was goon, come branking[247] ay to hir house, collationing togither. The first 3 moneth I was their she used all the persuasions she could to draw me to be on of their society, or at least to bear hir halfe in the gaine and the losse (whiles she would loss 2 crounes, tho she made hir husband beleife she wan), but I would do none of them (remembering my fathers expresse to beware of play, especially at carts and wt sick creatures), alleadging always that I knew nothing of the play. They offered to learn me, for they came seweral tymes a purpose to draw me on, but I sayd I had other thing ado. I am exceedingly weill satisfied at this present I did not engage. She hath told me ay, O Mr. Hope have played wt us: I replied Mr. Hope might do what he pleased. Return Mr Dailly when he please he could never find his wife wtin: some tymes he would have come home at 12 howers wheir she expected not: when she would come home and find him their, oh whow coldly would she welcome him and the least thing would that day put her out of hir patience, for she had ether in the afternoon tristed to come again to them, or tristed them to come to hir. [247] Prancing, tripping. Thus shortly out of many things, Henry the 4't was a most galliard, pleasant, and merry prince: his queens Marguerit (as we show else wheir) was thought to play by him. On a tyme as he was making himselfe merry dancing a ballat wt some of his nobility, each being obliged to make a extemporary sonnet as it cam about to him to dance, the our-word[248] being, _un cucou mene un autre_, it fel the Marquis of Aubigni (who was of Scots progeny, his goodsire was Robert Stuart Mareschal of France under François the first; it was this Aubigni who told Henry when he was wounded by the Jesuists scoller in the mouth, God, sire, hath suffered you to be stoobed in the mouth, etc.) to dance wt the King in his hand and make his couplets, which I fand right quick: [248] Ourword, overword, refrain, like ourcome and ourturn. 'Si toutes les femmes vouloyent les hommes cuco seroyent; les Roys comme les autres, un cuco mene un autre,' Henry confessed he had win at him in his sonnet. Follows some enigmes found in a Romance penned by Beroaldus,[249] named _le voyage des princes fortunez_, wtout the explication, whence Mr Daillé set me on work to resolve them: resolved sewerall betuixt us. [249] Beroalde de Verville, François, 1558-1612, philosopher, mathematician, and author of lighter works. _The Voyage_ was published in 1610. Paris. Un pere a douze fils qui lui naissent sans femme, Ces douze aussi sans femme engendrent des enfants; Quand un meurt l'autre naist et tous vivent sans ame. Noires les filles sont, et les males sont blancs. (The Year.) Un corp qui n'a point d'ame a une ame mouuante, N'ayant point de raison il rend raison des temps; Bien quil n'ait pas de vie une vie agissante Sans vie se fait vivre marchant sur ses dents. (A cloack.) Their follows that of a coffin that none care for, then, Voulant aller au ciel, si je suis empeschée, Les ieuz des assistans en larmes couleront; Si pleurent sans regret ie ne suis pas faschée Car quaud j'iray au ciel leur larmes cesseront. (Its rick.)[250] [250] Reek, smoke. Le vivant de moy vive sa nurriture amasse Je recoy les vivans haut et bas se suivans Lorsque ie suis tué sur les vivans je passe, Et ie porte les vifs par dessus les vivans. (A oak wt its fruit feiding swine, then cut and made in a ship cairyes men over fisches.) Bienque ie sois petit i'ay une soeur geante Qui me rends de grands coups qu'encore je lui rends; Nous faisons ceste guerre entre nous bien seante. Car c'est pour la beauté de nos propre parens. (The hammer and smiths studie.) Je n'ay sang, os, ny chair, nerfe, muscles ni artere, Bien que i'en sois produit et n'en tien rien du toute Propre a bien et a mal je fais effect contraire. Sans voix parlant apres qu'on ne a trunche la bout. (A pen.) Non male, non femelle, ains tout oeill en substance Sans cesser il produit des enfans differens. De la mort des ses fils ses fills[251] ont naissance Et d'icelles mourant d'autres fills sont naisant. [251] For _filles_. (The Sun wt the day and night.) Selon mon naturel ie m'escoule legere. Mais par fois mon voisin m'estraint de ses liens. Adonque on me void la mere de ma mere Et puis fille de ma fille en apres ie deviens. (Ice reduced to water.) Ma soeur est comme moy de grande bouche fournis. Elle l'a contre bas et moy deuer les cieux I'ayde aux conservateurs d'appetit et de vie-- Et ma soeur (as I friend to the sick, so she) aux coeur devotieux. (A bel and the Apothecaries morter.) D'une estoffe solide a point on me fait faire Pour servir au endroits ou loge la soucy. Mon maistre me cognoit lui estre necessaire, Car ie lui garde tout, il me tien chere ausi. (A key.) Elle a le poill dedans et dehors est sa graisse Et si peut elle ainsi au jour failly praevoir Mesme en plein nuict les autres elle adresse Faisant voir a plusieurs ce quelle ne peut voir. (A candle.) On cognoist au oiseau qui n'a point de plumage Qui donne a ses petits de son teton le laict. When it sies we sie not; when we sy it sies not. (A batt.) Ouvert de l'un des bouts une queue on me donne Afin qu'avec le bec je la traine par tout, Puis conduite au labeur que ma Dame ordonne Je laisse a chasque pas de ma queue le bout. (A neidle.) Trois ames en un corps distinguées d'essence Ensemble subsistoyent not knowing they ware so many, Deux enfin ont pris l'air, puis de mesme apparence En trois corps distinguez chacum les a peu voir. (A woman wt tuines.) We saw a book, originally written in Latin by a Spaniard,[252] translated in French, entituled, Histoire du grand royaume de la Chine situe aux Indes Orientales, contenant la situation, Antiquité, fertilité, Religion, ceremonies, sacrifices, Rois, Magistrats Moeurs, us,[253] Loix, et autres choses memorables du dit Royaume, etc., containing many things wery remarkable and weill worth the reading. showing how its bounded on al hands, having the Tartars for its neirest neibhours, whom it descrives whow it was discovered first by the Portugais, and the Spaniards at Mexico in Americk. [252] Gonzalez de Mendoza. [253] Usages. To the wondrous fertility of the country, much of it laying to the same climat wt Italy, the Inhabitants addes great industry: no vagabonds nor idle persons being suffered amongs them but punished vigorously. They have no cloath. The meanest of the natives are cloathed in silk: its so rife their that its to be had almost for nothing. France also hath some silk wormes wtin it selfe; but besydes the peins they most be at to feid them wt fresch mulberry leaves, they have no great abondance of them, whence they draw the most of their silk from Italy wheir its in great abondance; as Florence, litle republic of Lucques, Messin, as also from Grenade. Oranges of Chine are knowen for the best of the world. Cannel[254] (which growes not in France) is in its excellency their. [254] Cinamon. In selling and buying all things solid they weight them, even their mony, which hath no stamp, as in selling selks and other sick things, wheirin ther cannot be so meikle knavery as in metting them by elles. Great abondance of silk caddez[255] cotton produced by a trie (not growing in france, but just as the tries distilles the pick)[256] as of musk, wt the manner whow they make it. [255] A kind of cloth. [256] Pitch. The realme is found some 1800 leagues in longitude; 3000 in circumference. Its divided unto 15 great Provinces, each plenished wt wast cities, som of them taking 2 dayes to compasse them. Their follows a description of the natural disposition, traits of face, sorts of cloaths wt the excercises the men and women are addicted to. They are al Pagans, worshiping plurality of gods, seweral things in their religion symbolizing wt the Christian, which may be imputed to some seeds of the Gospel the Aposle Thomas sowed their in going to the Indians, wheir he was martyred. Divers good laws they have; one discharging expressely and prohibiting al natives of going out wtout the Royaume, for fear of bringing in strange customes, descharging any strangers to enter wtout express licence. The rights of succession of children to parents are almost the same as wt us. By infallible records to their admiration they fand that both the art of artillery, invented as was thought in Germany, and printing, invented, as is beleived, by Jean de Guttenberg, Allemand, not 200 years ago, ware amongs them, and of al older standing. Infinite other things we remit to be sought in the _Histoir_. We are informed that a lardship of 5000 livres rent wil sell in France for a 100,000 livres; and by consequence a place of 15,000 livres a year at a 100,000 crounes;[257] the prix being ay 20 years rents. It may wary in many places of France. Location-conduction[258] of lands, called their ferming, are wery usuall in France; yea, the most part of Gentlemens houses rises wt that, having bein first fermier or goodmen[259] (as we calle them) of the place. The ordinar tyme of the take is 5 or 7 year, not on of a 100, and yea being wiser then we wt our 19 and doubled 19 year takes.[260] In the contract they have many fin clauses by whilk the fermier is bound to meliorat the ground in all points as by planting of hedges and fruit tries, substituting by ingraftments young ones in the room of old ones decayed; finaly he is tyed to do all things comme un bon pere de famille feroit. [257] The crown is hero taken at 3 livres, or 5s. sterling (taking the livre at 1s. 8d. sterling). [258] _Locatio conductio_, the Roman contract of letting and hiring. [259] According to Jamieson's _Dict_. goodman meant (1) a proprietor or laird, (2)then a _small_ proprietor, (3)latterly, a farmer. [260] Tacks, leases. We have already exemplified the hatred thats betuixt the Castillan und Portugaize, we'el only tel another. A Spaniard Bischop was once preaching on that, Let brotherly love continue, he say'd the French are our brother, the Italian our brother, Allemand, Scotes, English, etc., our brether; yea, I durst almost say that the Portugaiz is our brother almost also. Many other stories I could report heir, as that of the poor man who fand himselfe marvelously filled wt the smell of meat in a cooks choop happened at Paris, and how the cook was payed by the gingling the mony, related by Cleark in his Exemples: that of the gentleman runing a race and giving the last to the Dewil, and the Dewils depriving the last of his shaddow; tho I can not conceive how the Dewil can hinder a body to cast a shaddow unless he perpetually interpose himself betuixt that man and the sun: that of the English to be married to a Scotsman, whom William Broun was admonishing of hir duty, that the man was the head of the woman, she quickly replieing that he bit to be her head, she bit to be the hat on his head above him, William sayd, that he would take his hat then and fling it amongs his feet: that of the tooth drawer and the lavement out of the History of Francion:[261] that of him who playing at the bowls in John Tomsons greine wt a English Captaine, casting out togither, wrong his nose so sore til it bled againe; being pershued by the Englishman for the wrong done, and put to his answers, being demanded of the fact, he replied he had only wipt his nose a litle straiter than he used to do his oune: that of King James and the collier, ye sould obey a man in his oune house: that apparition Henry the 4t saw as he was hunting in his pare at Fontainbleau, crying, _Amendez vous_: also that daughter of Brossier that feigned the Demoniack so weill wt its circumstancies, to be found in Du Serres[262] History of Henry the 4t.: that of the Scotsman at Paris who wan so much be a slight promising the peaple to let them sy a horse wt its taille wheir its head sould be: that of on Martin Merry, who on a tyme pressing to win in to sie the King, the great Tresorier of England was at the door, who seing him so pert demanded him whither he would go; he replied, he would sie the King; the Thersorer told him he could not sie the King; then, he replied, I know what I'le do then; the thresorer thinking he was bravado'ing him, demanded him what can ye do, Sir; he answered, I'le go back the way I came then, My Lord; he finding the answer wery good, he immediatly went and told the King what had passed, who commanded Martin to be brought in and fel to and talked wt him. Also the story of the Baron de la Crasse, place, place, etc. Also the comoedy intituled Les Visionnaires. Also the reply of a excellent painter who had children wery deformed, on demanding whow it came that he drow sick exquisite portraits and had such il made children, ye neid not wonder at that, sayd he, since I make my portraits in the day and my children in the night. [261] See p. 82, note. [262] Jean de Serres, 1540-1598, author of works on the history of France and theology. A man may get his portrait drawen in France, especially at Orleans, for a Pistoll. J. Ogilvy'es hal is all hung about wt portrait's of Gentlemen, al Scots, save only one Englishman (whom Lostis[263] alleadged to have the manliest face of all the company; we on the contrare, that he had the sheipest), one womans called Richeson, whom my L. Rutherfurd[264] was in great conceit of; Johns oune portrait is tuise their, his eldest sones as a litle boy, his daughters, My Lord [Bards],[265] Newbyths,[266] My Lord Cinhoules[267] brother, wt whom J. Ogilvie came to France as page; Sir Robert Flecher of Salton, who died the winter before I came to France; David Ramsay, a brother of the Provests,[268] so like him that I took it for the Provests at first. Mr. Hayes was the last that was drawen, who parted from J.'s house to make the tour of France the March before I arrived, wt divers other pictures. At Mr. Douls house we remarked the same in his sale;[269] only they ware all Englishmen, save on Sword whose father was Provest of Aberdeen, and who when King Charles the 1t was at Newcastle chapt him on his shoulder and impudently told him, he had spent our meikle. [263] Query, l'hostesse, l'hôtesse, Mme Ogilvy. [264] Probably Andrew Rutherfurd, first lord, a lieutenant-general in the French service, created Lord Rutherfurd, 1661. Governor of Dunkirk, Earl of Teviot, 1663, governor of Tangier, where he was killed, 1664. His patent as Lord Rutherfurd entitled him to bequeath the peerage to whom he pleased, and he left it to his kinsman Sir Thomas Rutherfurd of Hunthill, served heir 1665, died 1668. [265] Interlined. [266] Sir John Baird, advocate, 1647, lord of Session (title Newbyth) 1667, superseded 1681, restored 1689, died 1698, aged seventy- seven. [267] Kinnoul's. [268] Sir Andrew Ramsay, afterwards a lord of Session (title Abbotshall). Lauder married his daughter. [269] _Salle_, hall. We most not forget the Capucin, who, gazing on a stage play, had his prick stowed[270] from him instead of his purse. Also the good sport we have made wt Spiny when we presented him the rose filled wt snuffe, dewil! willain! ye most be hooled,[271] ye most, etc. I'm sorry for your case, etc. Also that we made wt Dowy when on night in our Basseler[272] year at night after the examination we put out the candles, I skein[273] brist him til he farted; then he brought Mr. Hew on us, he crieng, Douglas, Doug.; Lauder L., my hat amang you. Russel lay like a mart[274] in the midst of the stair; wt many other sports. [270] Stown, stolen. [271] Husked, probably gelded. [272] Bachelor. [273] Possibly J. Skein (Skene); brist = squeezed. [274] Carcass of an ox or cow killed about Martinmas for winter provision. The Laws of France permits, or at least forgives, a man to slay his wife if he take hir in the wery act of adultery; but if he slay hir after a litle interwall, as if he give hir lieve to pray a space, he is punished as a murderer, since its to be praesumed that that iust fury which the willanous act of his wife pouses him to, and which excuses his fact (since according to Solomon even wery Jalousie is the fury of a man) is layd in that interwal, so that he cannot be excused from murder. Both hath bein practicat seweral tymes in France. The punishment of women that beats their good men in Poictiers is that they are monted on a asse wt their face to the taile, in this posture conveyed ignominiously thorow all the toune: the hangman accompanieng them. We most not forget the sport K. James made wt his fool who to chasse away the axes[275] had flied[276] him, and whow the poor fellow was found dead. [275] Ague. [276] Frightened. The K. of France drawes more then a 100 million a year as revenues out of France besydes extraordinary taxations. Theirs a wery observable difference betuixt on thats drunk wt win and on drunk wt beir, the win perpetually causes to stagger and fall forward; the beir and alle[277] backward. [277] Ale. A women drowen[278] is carried wt the water on her belly, a man on his back. [278] Drowned. Their ware 4 peasants in a French village on a tyme discoursing about the King. They sayd it was a brave thing to be a King. If I ware King (said the first) I would rest wt ease all the day on that hy stack wt my vomb up to the sun: the 2nd, if I ware King I would eat my sup every day swimming wt bacon: the 3d, I would feid my swine _a cheval_: the 4t, Alas, ye have left me nothing to choose; ye have chosen all the best things. Francois the 1t was a King that loved exceedingly to discourse and hear the minds of al ranks of peaple, as even our James. For that effect he seweral tymes disguised himselfe and all alone gon to discours wt common peaple. On a tyme he fand a poor man digging a ditch: he demanded what he wan every day by his peins. 5 pence at most, quothe he. What family have ye? I have my wife, 4 bairns and my old mother whom I nourish; but, further, I most divide my 5 pence into 3 parts every day: by on part I pay my debt, another I lean, the thrid, nourishes us. Whow can that be, can 10 turners[279] maintain you a whole day? Sir, 10 I give to my old mother every day as payment of what she bestowed on me when I was young; 10 I lean[280] to my children, that when I am old and cannot work they may pay me again; the other 10 is betuixt my wife and me. The King proponed this to the courtiers to resolve him, etc. [279] Turner, a copper coin equal to two pennies Scots or one bodle. Thus the 5 English pence, which the man got, are equal to 5 sous or 5 shillings Scots, and so to 60 deniers or 60 pennies Scots, or 30 turners. [280] Lend. In France a man wil do weill to take heid what women he medles wt; for if he get a woman of degre below himself wt child he most ether mary hir or tocher hir: if his aequal, ether marry hir or be hanged (which few chooses): if she be far above his condition (especially if a valet engrosse his masters daughter or sister not married) he is hanged wtout al process _brevi manu_; the maid is thrust unto a convent to lead repentance their for hir lifetyme, since she hath prostrat hir honor so basely. While I was at Poictiers a young fellow got a wanton cocquette, a cream keiper, wt child. For fear he sould be put to marry hir he quietly went and enrolled himselfe amongs the sogers whom the King was levieng at Poictiers. She gets notice of it, causes clap him fast and lay him prisoner. The Captain came to seik back his soger, since he was under the protection of the King, but he could not praevaile: they replied, if he war their for debt they would villingly release him, but since he was criminal they could not. A soger may make his testament _quolibet modo_ in France: he may write it on the sand, the dust as his paper, his sword he may make his pen and his blood his ink, according to Justin. T. Institut.[281] _de Testam. Militis_. [281] Justinian, _Inst_., 2. II. Seweral tymes they have bein 3 moneth wtout a drop of rain in France, in which cases they make a great deall of Processions to obtain rain, tho they never do anything. Some winters it freezes so hard wt us (as Mr. James [P. Ramsay][282] is Author, to wit, that winter after the visitation in 1646 when the Colledge was translated to Lighgow),[283] that in a basin of water after ye have lift your hand out of the water ere ye dip it again it was al covered wt a thin striphen[284] ice, and the 3d, 4t, etc. tymes. [282] Interlined. It appears to be a correction. Patrick Ramsay was 'laureated' in 1646. [283] The plague in Edinburgh, 1645-6, obliged the University to remove to Linlithgow for a few months.--Waldie's _History of Linlithgow_. [284] Striffan, film. On the 17 of November opened the Law University at Poictiers, at present the most famous and renouned in France, usually consisting of above tuo 100 scholers, some coming to it from Navarre in the very skirts of Spain, sewerals from Tholouse, Bordeaux, Angiers, Orleans, Paris, Rouan, yea from Berry it selfe, tho formerly Bourges was more renouned--their's almost nothing to be had their now--and tho in all these places their be Universities. On its opening Mr. Umeau, our Alex'rs Antagonist, and who that year explained of the D.,[285] belonging _ad nuptias_, made a harangue of wery neit Latin, which is the property of this University. His text was out of the 4't book of the C.T.[286] 5 _de condictio Indeb. l., penultima_, whence he took occasion to discourse of the Discord amongs the Jurise.[287] raising 2 _quoest. 1'o, utrum recentiores sunt proeferendi antiquioribus: 2'do, utrum juniores natu maioribus_, wheir he ran out on the advantage of youth: _Quot video Juvenes candidatos tot mihi videor videre aequissimos Servios, sublimissimos Papinianos gravissimos Ulpianos, et disertissimos Cicerones: quod plura[288] stellae indubio[289] sunt jae magnitudines in Sphaerâ nostra Literariâ._ [285] Digest. [286] Code, title. [287] Jurisconsults. [288] Query, _plures_. [289] Query, _sindubio_. The Rector of the University was their, the Mair, the Eschewines, the President of the Palais, the University of the Physicians, wt a great heap of al orders, especially Jesuits. We might easily discover that basenese we are so subiect to in detracting from what al others do'es but ourselves in that groundless censur of many things in this harangue which our Alex'r had wt another of his partizans. Mr. Filleau (very like Edward Edgar) gives a paratitle on the title _pro socio_: he is on of the merriest carles that can be, but assuredly the learnest man in that part of France, for the Law. _Pro socio, pro socio_, quoth he, whats that to say _pro socio_, Trib.[290] speaks false Latin or non-sense, always wt sick familiar expressions. [290] Tribonian. Mr. Roy, whoss father was Doctor before him, explained that year T.C.[291] _de rescindenda vendit_. Mr. Gaultier, who left Angiers and came to be a Doctor their, explained the title of the canon L.,[292] _de simoniâ et ne quid pro spiritualibus exigatur_. [291] Title of the Code. [292] Lex. For Mr. Alex'r its some 17 years since he came to France; he had nothing imaginable. Seing he could make no fortune unless he turned his coat, he turned Papist; and tho he had passed his course of Philosophy at Aberden, yet he began his grammar wt the Jesuits; then studied his philosophy, then married his wife (who was a bookbinders wife in the toune and had bein a women of very il report), 50 year old and mor, only for hir gear, and she took him because he was bony.[293] Studied hard the Law (Pacius,[294] as he told me, giving him the 1 insight) and about some 5 year ago having given his trials was choosen _institutaire,_. He is nothing wtout his books, and if ye chap him on that he hath not latley meditate on, he is very confused. He is not wery much thought of by the French, he affectats to rigirous a gravity like a Spaniards, for which seweral (as my host) cannot indure him. Also his pensioners are not the best treated. We have sein P. and D. Humes seweral tymes breakfast: they had nothing but a litle crust of bread betuixt them both, and not a mutching botle of win for my.[295] I never almost breakfasted but I had the whole loave at my discretion, as much win as I please, a litle basquet ful of the season fruites, as cherries, pears, grapes: in winter wt apples. Also by Ps confession he drinks of another win, better than that his pensionars drinks of. Also if their be on dish better then another its set doune before him: he chooses and then his pensionars when its iust contrare wt me. [293] Bonnie. [294] Pacius, Julius, 1550-1635, jurist. [295] Me. He began his lessons 23 of November. A Frenchman casting up the Rubrics of the D.,[296] he fand _de edendo_. He showed himselfe wery offended whey Tribo. had forgot, T.[297] _de Bibendo_ also. [296] Digest. [297] Titulus. We most not forget to buy Gellius and Quintilians Declamations at Paris. A Coachman was felled dead dressing his horses; 5 masons ware slain at the Carmelits by the falling of a wal on them. Mr. Alex'r in salaire hath only 600 livres, the other 4 each a 1000, also seweral obventions and casualities divided amongs them, of which he gets no scare, as when any buyes the Doctorat. He is a hasty capped body. Once one of his servants brook a lossen,[298] he went mad, and amongs other expressions he had this: these maraudes[299] their break more to me in a moment then I can win in tuo moneth. They have no discourse at table. He cars not for his wife. That night the _oubliour_[300] was their and she would not send another plat[301] he threatned to cast hir and hir family over the window. [298] Pane of glass. [299] Rascals. [300] _Oublieur_, pronounced _oublieu_, pastrycook's man, who came round in the evening selling small round cakes, _oublies_. [301] Plate. We on night fel to telling of notes of preachings, as of the Englisman preaching on that, In came Tobit, and much controverted whither they called it baty, light feit or watch;[302] and of the minister that sayd, Christ, honest man, liked not war, sayd to Peter; and of on preaching on that, And Abram gave up the ghost, sayd that it was wery debated if it was for want of breath or not, that he durst not determin it. Of a Preist preaching on the miracle wt whilk Christ feed a multitude wt 5 loaves, it was not so great a miracle, quoth he, as ye trow, for every on of the loaves was as meikle as this Kirk: a baxter being at the pulpit fit[303] started up and demanded wheir they got a oven to bake them in, and a pole to put them in and take them out. Ye are to curious, quoth the preist, go and bake your oune bread and medle not wt Christs, they had other ovens in the days then they have now and other poles to, and do ye not think but Christ could have lent them a pole. Also on who praying for the King our dread soveraine Charles by the grace [of God] King of S[cots], etc., supream governour, instead of under the[304] and they sone Christ, sayd over the. Also of another who praying for the Illustrious Duke of York, sayd the Lusty Duk. Also whow a hostesse at Camphire served Mr. R. Macquaire, being their to dine, wt a great deall of other company, he was desired to seik a blissing, he began so long winded grace that the meat was all spilt and cold ere he had done. The wife was wood[305] angry. The nixt day comes, the meat was no sooner put to the fire but she comes to Mr. R. and bids him say the grace. Whats your haste Margerit, is the meat ready yet? No, Sir, but its layd to the fire, and ere ye have ended your grace, it wil be ready. We most not forget the Swisse, who coming in a cabaret at Poictiers demanding for win, drank for his oune hand 15 pints, calling for a reckning they gave him up 16 pints. He told they ware cheating him of a pint, for he know weill the measure of his womb, that it held no more but 15 pints, wheirupon he would pay no more but for 15. Also of the Preist who bringing our Saviour in the Sacrament to a young galliard very sick, sayd, behold, Sir, Christ is come to visit you. The sick party replied, I sie very weil that Christ is their by the carrier of him, for as he was knowen at his entry unto Jerusalem by his asse that carried him, so do I know him at present. [302] The meaning is whether Tobit's dog was to be called a comman cur (baty), or a greyhound, or a watch-dog. The dog does not appear in the English version of the Apocrypha, but in the Vulgate.--Tob. vi. I. Profectus est autem Tobias et canis sequutus est eum, et mansit ... juxta fluvium Tiberis.--xi. 9. Tunc praecucurrit canis ... et quasi nuncius adveniens, blandimento suae caudae gaudebat. [303] Foot. [304] Thee. [305] Mad. Wonderful was the temperance and moderation of the ancient Romans, yea greater then whats to be found amongs Christians even now. They know[306] no more but on diet a day, and that sober enough. At the first tyme that some Greeks came to Rome, and the Romans saw them, according to the custome of their country, eat thrise a day, they condamned them for the greatest gluttons that could be. [306 1] Knew, as on p. 91. That story of the General (Fabritius) Roman is weill knowen: who at his ennemies brought a wast sum of mony to bribe his fidelity to the commonwealth, they fand him busy stooving a pot of herbes to his supper, wheiron he answered them, that a man as he, that could be content wt sick a disch, could not readily be temted wt all their gold. Also of him who being choosen Dictator they fetched him from the plough to his dignity, sick was their industry. For a long tyme amongs the Romans old age was held such a ignominious thing that they could not get the scurviest coalsteeler in Rome that would act the person of a old man, not so much as in Comoedy. For 500 years, and above, after the building of Rome, it [divorce][307] was not knowen for a man to put away his wife. The first was one Spcius[308] Carvilius, who under the praetext of sterility divorced from his wife. [307] Interlined. [308] Spurius. We most buy that infamous book of Miltones against the late King,[309] wt Claudius Salmasius answer.[310] Surely it shal stand as long as the world stands for a everstanding memorandum of his impudence and ignorance: its nothing but a faggot of iniury (calomnies), theirs not on right principle either moral or politick to be found in it al; its penned by a pedant, a scoolmaster, on who deserved at the cheapest to be torn in peices by 4 horses. Neither in our judgement, tho he deserves not to be refuted, hath Salmasius done so weill to the cause. [309] _Iconoclastes_, 1649. [310] _Defensio Regia_, by Claude de Saumaise, 1588-1653. A Parisian Advocat cited some civil Laws of whilk he was not sure: his Antagonist retorting that their ware not sick a Law nether in the C nor D,[311] he replied, if it be not their yet it sould be their tho. [311] Code nor Digest. About the 12' of December 1665 at Poictiers ware programmes affixed thorow the toune intimating that the Physitians Colledge would sit doune shortly, and that their Doyen Deacon, on Renatus Cothereau, a wery learned man in his lessons, _Podagram hominum terrorem artuum que flagellum medicinali bettio acriter prosequeretur_; hence it hath[312] this exclamation, _accurite[313] itaque cives festinate arthici_. [312] Meaning, probably, 'then follows.' [313] For _accurrite_. The same Renatus had a harangue at the beginning wherin he descryved very pedantically the lamentable effects it produces on the body of man: amongs his salutations, I observed this, _Themidis nostra Argonauta sacratissime, fidelissime, æquissime_. They get no auditors to their lessons, whence its only but for faschions sake that they begin their colledge, of which they have nothing but the name. We have observed heir in France that on their shortest day, the 22 of December, the sun sets not but a hower, almost, after its set to us, to wit at 4 acloack, and that they have light a quarter almost after 5. Also looking to their Almanacks I fand that it rose on the shortest day at 7 acloack and some minuts, when it rises not to us but after 8, so that they have in winter at Juile[314] a hower at morn, as much at even, of sun more then we have. Their 2 howers we gain of them in the summer, for at our longest day we have a hower sooner the morning the sun then they have; we have it at 3 howers, they have it not til 4 wt some minuts. At even also we have a hower of sun after that he get to them on our longest day, for by their Almanacks he sets on that day in France, or at least at Poictiers, at 7 acloack wt some minuts, wt us not til after 8. [314] Yule. Their is a very considerable difference betuixt the French summers and the Scots: to wit, in their heat; but surely we could remark none in their winters. Its true we had no considerable cold before Juile, Nöel (tho their fel a drift of snow about the end of Octobre, French account), yet we fand it sickerly when it came, so that I do not remember that I felt it colder in Scotland then it was for a space togither. Its true it leasts not so long heir as it does wt us. Juile is a great feste in France. The Papists are very devote on it, yea so religious that they go all to Church at midnight to hear Masse, for a preist hath that day power to say thry masses consecutife, when at another tyme he can say no more but on at a tyine. I went after dinner and hard the cordelier at St. Pierre. The rest of our Scotsmen ware so curious as to go hear Midnight Masses. As for me I had no skil of it it was so cold; and surely I did not repent it considering the affront that they got, that they ware forced to render their swords at the command of the Intendant who the night before was come to toune from the Grand Jour[315] that was then in Auuergne. This he caused do following the mode of Paris, wheir no man is suffered to carry a sword that night, both by reason of many quarrels begun that night, as also of sewerals that take occasion to decide former quarrels on that night. Surely they had no satisfaction in that Mass. [315] High Commission sent down by the king to the provinces as a final Court of Appeal. During the tyme I was heir I fel in discourse wt the Jesuites, going once to sy our countryman Pere Broune, who was wery kind to us al, and came and saw me after. About the tyme was that poor smith, of whom we made mention before, execute, who was the first we ever did sie in France. Tho he had receaved his sentence at Poictiers, yet that could serve til he was taken to Paris (for the Capital tounes of France are not royal boroughs as our are, having the power of heading and hanging wtin themselfes), wheir he was condemned to be broken on the wheel, to be _rouée_, tho according to the custome of France he know not that he was sentenced til about 2 howers before he was broken, for by concealing it up til then they keip them from taking wiolent courses to prevent their death which they would take if they know of it, as killing themselfes, or means to ecscape, tho otherwise it be very il for their souls, they having so short tyme to prepare themselfes for death. They made this poor fellow beleive that he was only condemned to the galleys, at which he laught, telling that it appeared they knew not he was a smith, so that he could easily file his chaines and run away. About 12 acloak on that day he was to be execeut he was conveyed to the Palais to hear his sentence, wheir it was read to him on his knees, the hangman _bourreau_ at his back wt a tow in his hand. The sentence being read he puts the tow about his neck wt thir words, _le Roy wous salou, mon amy_, to show him that its the King that causes him dy. His sentence is read to him again at the foot of the Palais, as give ye sould say at the coming of the Parlement close, or Ladies Steeps;[316] and then a third tyme on the schaffold. [316] Steps close to St. Giles's Church. See Wilson, _Memorials of Edinburgh_, 1891, vol. i. p. 260. Their ware mo then 10,000 spectators at the Marcher Vieux. In the midle of it their was a little _eschaustaut_[317] erected, on which ware nailed 2 iests after the forme of a St. Androws crosse, upon whilk the poor fellow was bond on his back, wt his 2 armes and his 2 thigs and legs on the 4 nooks of the crosse, having bein strip naked to his shirt. After he had prayed a little and the 2 carmes[318] that assisted him, the _bourreau_ made himselfe ready to execute the sentence, which was that he sould get 2 strooks quick and the rest after he was stranguled. [317] _Echafaud,_ scaffold. [318] Carmelites. At Paris in breaking great robbers, for the better exemple they do not strangle them at all; but after they have broken all their bones to peices almost, they leave them to dy on the rack. To return to our poor miserable, the _bourreau_ wt a great baton of iron began at the armes and brook them wt tuo strooks, then his knees, then a strook on every thigh, then 2 on the belly, and as many on the stomack; and after all thir, yea after the 20 strook, he was not fully dead. The tow[319] brak twice that was ordained to strangle him. In sying what this cattif suffered made us conclud that it was a cruel death to be broken in that sort. [319] Rope. We cannot forget how coldrif the French women seimed to be in the winter. The marchands wifes and thorow all the shops every one have their lame choffer[320] ful of rid charcoal wt their hands in among the mids of it almost. The beggar wifes going up and doune the streits had them also. * * * * * [321] [320] Earthenware chafing dish. [321] Twenty-two lines erased in MS. We cannot forget the shift that the poor folk which have no bowets[322] (which generally are not so good as ours) take when they go out under night, as I have sein them when I have bein going or coming from Mr. Alex'rs, and it would have bein so dark that I could not sy my finger before me. It is they take a peice wood thats brunt only at one end, and goes thorow the toune waging[323] it from one syde to the other, it casting a litle light before him. It would almost fly[324] a man in a dark night to sie it at a distance, and always approaching him, til he keen what it is. [322] Lanterns. [323] Wagging. [324] Frighten. We cannot but insert a not of a Northren Ministers preaching. His text was about Piters threefold denial of Christ, and that wt oaths. Beloved, its wery much controverted amongs the learned what ware the oaths that Piter swoore, yet the most part condeschends that they ware thir: the 1, God confound me, if I keen such a man; the 2, Devil ding me in testons;[325] the third, by Gods wounds, I do not keen him. Mungo Murray of the life gard was in the kirk, and resolving to make sport came to the Minister after the kirk was scailed, telling him that he agreed wt him about the 1 [first] 2 oaths that they ware so, but he could not be of his mind about the thrid, by Gods wounds, for Christ had not yet received any wounds, so that he could not swear by Gods wounds. The Minister began, Sir, I am very glad that ye take the freedom to propon your doubts, for its a signe of attention. As to your difficulty, ye would know that a man when he is sorest prest he wil swear sorest, so that Peter keipt the greatest oath last; also ye would know that it was a Profetical oath, as give he sould have sayd, by the wounds that Christ is to receave. [325] Teston or testoon, a small silver coin. The last in Scotland were coined by Mary in 1561, value 5s. Scots. In the Hylands their was a minister that was to give the Communion to his Parish wheir it had not bein given 6 or 7 years before. For that effect they sent to Monross[326] to buy the win, which being come, he and his elders bit to tast it for fear of poisoning their honest parishioners. Er ever they wist of themselfes they fand it so good that they licked it out every drap, and was forced to give the communion in good rid aile. [326] Montrose. We most not forget the story of the English Capitaine, who thinking to flie his Hostesse, he was so frighted himselfe, his man wtout his direction having bought a great oxes hyde and covered himselfe wt it, that looping over the stair for hast he brake on of his legs. Wheir 2 layes in a chamber togither, their are many wayes to flie on another. We might take a litle cord or a strong threed when the other is sleiping, bind it to his covering or bed cloaths, then going to our oun bed wt a end of the string in our hand, making ourselfes to be sleiping, draw the string to us, and the cloaths wil follow, and he wil be wery ready to think that its a spirit. Also ty a string to 2, 3 chair feet, and so draw them up and doune the house. He that knows nothing of it wil impute it to a ghest. Any tymes I was angry at the Frenchmen, if so be I was familiar wt them, I fell to and abuse them in Scots, as logerhead, ye are a sheip, etc. Their was no way I could anger them worse then to speak in Scots to them. The consuetuds and rights of nations about hunting and halking throughout the most part of the Christian world are wondrously degenerated from the right of nature and nations and the Civil Law following the footsteps of both. According to thir, all men have æqualy the liberty of chassing of wild beasts, no sort of folk being excepted, and that not only in their oune land but also in any others, since vild beasts, wheir ever they be they are always wild beasts, apparteening to none; for if that the wild beast is on my ground sould make that it be estimd myne, then leiving my ground it leives of to be myn, and by entring unto my neibhours it begins to be his, and so it might change a 100 masters in one day, which is absurd. We might as weill say that the piot that bigs[327] on my try is myne. [327] Magpie that builds. This liberty is exceedingly impared by the consuetudes at present, so that nether can we hunt all beasts, the King having excepted dears, harts, etc., so that its not lawful for any to chasse or kil under the pein of a fine 500 francks, except only the King and some few others, great peirs, who have their permission from the King. Nether is it permitted for all indifferently to hunt, clergymen are decharged it, Peasants also. Its confessed also by al that Kings may discharge their subjects the pastime and pleasure of hunting, especially thess who holds their lands in fief immediatly of the King, which he called fiefs royalles, whom he may hinder to hunt in their oune ground, ower which they have ful power otherwise to sel it, woodset it, gift it, or do wt it what I please: the same power have the inferior seigneurs. Lords in giving lands to vassals, men who have bein serviceable to them in many occasions whom they cannot recompence in mony, they give them a tennement of land, they usualy retain the right of hunting in these lands only to themselfes. Halking in France is a excercise not permitted to any under a gentleman. We have sein its not permitted to al to hunt; also its not permitted to hunt al beasts; also its not permited now to hunt indifferentley in al places. The Kings keips their parks filled wt wild beasts, wheir its not leasum for any to hunt but themselfes, as Fontainbleau and St. James Park. The nobility have also the same right of keiping sick parks; as witnese upon the rode bothe of England and France we meit wt noblemens incloseurs wheir would [be] 2 or 300 dears. Yea, in France its not lawful to shoot wt the gun in another mans ground; so that if a man take another guning in his ground, he usualy takes the gun from him and breaks over his shoulders. If he can hinder a man to shoot in his ground, much more may be hinder him to hunt, since the on is more praeiudicial to him then the others; for its done wt greater noice, also does more damnage to the cornes or wines. What might be the reasons that have moved the Princes to hem in so narrow bounds the rights of Hunting by the right of nature and civil Law so patant to all are to be found in Vesembec,[328] paratitlo _de acquir[endo rerum dominio._ ], For fear that the whole race of beasts sould soon or sin[329] be totally exstirpated wt the multitude of hunters, if al ware permitted to hunt. 2do, Least to many (as we sie at present) being to much taken wt the plaisir of the sport sould forget their businesses of consequence. As to that obiection, that hunting being from the right of natur, which is unchangable, it cannot be prohibited by any civil Law, I say hunting is not from the rights of nature commanding but permitting. [328] Matthew Wesenbec, Dutch jurist, 1531-1586. [329] Sooner or later. Its a custome in France that when a young woman unmarried is condemned to dy for some offence (unlesse the fault be al the grivevuser) that if the hangman be unmarried he may sick hir in marriage and get hir hir life that way: that their hes bein seweral that have refused it and choosen rather to die. This hes great resemblance wt that custome in England that a man being sentenced to dy, if a common whore demand him in marriage she wil get him; it being a charitable work to recal a whore from hir loose and prophan life by making hir marry. Yet surely both the on custome and the other is but a corruptel and a mocking at Justice. The accent the French gives the Latin is so different from ours that sometymes we would not have understood some of them (for the most part I understood them weil enought), nor some of them us. Ether we or they most be right, but I dout not to affirm but that the accent they give it, straining it to the pronuntiation of their oune language, is not natural, but a vicious accent, and that we have the natural. My reason is, because if their be any wayes to know what was the Accent the ancient Romans prononced the Latin wt it is the Accent that the Italians gives it and their oune language, which is a degenerated Latin, who be the Romans posterity; but so be they give it the same very accent that we do: the French ware never able to answer me this. As to ther pronuntiation of the Greek I could never keip myselfe from laughting when they had occasion to read Greek or any Greek sentence, even their Doctors of Law: vitnesse le Berche at Orleans whom I attended 2 moneths, that Greek that occurres in the 2 T. 1 book of the instituts,[330] [Greek: ton nomon hoi], he pronunced it [Greek: hi; men agraphoi], prononced it [Greek: hagraphi; hoi, i; men engraphoi, phi]: as we observed also in Mr. Filleau at Poictiers, [Greek: dunamenon] esti, he pronunced the 2 last syllabes damned long. [Car [Greek: son kaphson] urens.][331] We could give infinite mo instances wheir they prononce it undoubtedly wrong. [330] Justinian, _Inst_. i. 2: [Greek: ton nhomon ohi men heggraphoi, ohi oe hagraphoi]. [331] Interlined. The meaning apparently is that the French pronounced [Greek: kahnson], a New Testament and Septuagint word for burning heat, as if it were written [Greek: kaphson]. They do not name their points in writing as we do, that which we cal comma (following the Greek) they cal it alwayes _Virgula_; our colon, _duo puncta_; semicolon, _punctum cum virgula_. When we say _nova Linea_ they say _a capite_, wt sundry others like that. A woman witness is receaved in France in any causes whither civil or criminal: only wt this difference that for one man their most be 2 women, id est, wheir 2 men being ocular witnesses of a murder wil condemne a man, their most be 4 women, under which their witnes is not admitted. They have their penny bridiles[332] in France as weil as we in Scotland. When a servant women marries, her master brings wt him folk to their wedding as he can get, who casts in into the plat according to their pleasure. They wil be ready enough to promise on back the halfe of his again wt the dessein so to engage the rest to give more. [332] See _Scotland and the Protectorate_, C.H. Firth (S.H.S.), vol. xxxi. p. 410, note. About the begining of February 1666 came Comoedians to Poictiers. I went and saw them severall tymes. The first was called Odip, who resolved the Sphinx his enigma: was so unfortunat to slay his father by ignorance, marry his mother, and to conclud al to put out his oune eyes: the fellow acted his griefe exceeding lifelylie. The farce was _le Marriage du rien_. A fool fellow in a scoolmasters habit wt a ugly nose, which I was angry at, a scoop hat, comes on the stage wt his daughter, who proposes to him that she apprehended furiusly that she might dy a maid and never tast of the pleasure in marriage. In comes a poet to suit hir, fals out in the commendation of Poesy; hir father shoots him away, saying that al the Poets ware fools. In comes a painter who praising his art, whom also he puts away, saying that the painter ware poor drunken fellows. After came a Musician, who fell to sing: he called him a cheater. Then came in a Astronomer, whom he put away because he could not tel whither he would give him his daughter or not. Then came in a Captain, a floop[333] like fellow wt his sword about him, making a wery fool reverence, who rodomontades a space, telling that he had made the Devils tremble; that he was that Achilles in Homer, that Eneas in Virgil, that Aiax in Ovid, and that al that historians wrot of brave men was only of him. At last came in one that called himself nothing, that would assume no title to himselfe. Not finding anything to obiect against him he accepted of him. [333] Floop or flup, awkward. In the comoedy when the King stood very scrupulously on his word, his sister fel to to convince him that it was a shame to a King to be slave of his word, which was the great maxim of Cardinal Mazarini, as I was informed. Having sent to consult the oracle of Delphos, and it not deigning to answer him, in a rage he cried furth, _flectere si superos nequeo_, etc. When a person dies in France they are very careful to mark in what posture after their death their feet are in; for if they be unæqually laying, on of them drawen up, they strongly beleive that by that the dead calls his or hir neirest friend let it be wife, father, or brother, on of which wil dy shortly after. Its the faschion of the grandees when they die that they are exposed for 3 days after in a chamber hung all in doole[334] in their bed, also of dool, in the bests cloaths which they wor when they ware in life, so that al may come to sy them in that space. Their is holy water in the roome. The Dutchesse of Montamor, whiles I was at Poictiers, was thus exposed. [334] Mourning. The bairnes of France have the excercise of the tap, the pery,[335] the cleking,[336] and (instead of our gouf, which they know not) they have shinyes. [335] Peg top. [336] Clekin or Clackan, a small wooden bat in shape like a racquet. In France they have apples without any seeds in them; also great Pavies[337] (which is the best sort of Peach) wtout any stone, which they informed me the curious does thus: they graft a peach in a old stock, the bow the end of the imp[338] and causes it to enter in a other rift made in the stock, leaves it like a halfe moon or bow til they think it hes taken, and then cut it in 2. That halfe imp that was grafted first wt the head upmost bears peaches according course of nature wt stones in them, the other, which growes as give ye would say backwardlies bears wtout any stones. This has bein practicat. They'le impe[339] any tyme of the year in France. [337] Sorte de pêche, dont la chair est ferme, et qui ne quitte pas le noyau.--Littré, _Dict_. [338] Shoot. [339] Graft. About the mids of February was receaved a new fencing master, whom we saw give his trials: the Mair made a assaut against him first, then the fencing masters, then some schollers. A litle after was the Queen mothers panegyrick or _funebre oraison_ made at St. Pierre in a prodigious confluence of peeple of al ranks; the Intendant, the President and the Conseillers, the Mair, the Eschiwines,[340] and the Maison de Ville assisting; also many of the religious orders. The Cordelier who preached the Advent before and the caresme after made the harangue. He deduced hir glory and commendation, lo, from that she was Anne of Austria, which is the province in which standes Vienne, the Metropolis of Germany; that she was Philip the 3d of Spaines daughter; next that she was Queen or wife to Lowis the Just, 13 of that name in France; 3dly, that she was mother to Lewis the 14't, so hopeful a Prince, after she had bein 23 years barren. Whence he took occasion to show that tho virginity and coelebat was wery commendable, yet that it was no wayes so in the succession to crounes. He had also heir a senselese gasconad which nobody approved of, that St. Gregoire sould say that as far as Kings are exalted above other men, that in so far the Kings of France ware above al other Kings. In the 4th place he fand a large elogium to hir in that she falling widdow she becam Regent of hir sone and the Realme during his minority. Hir last and principal commendation was that she was a Princesse most devot and religious. [340] _Echevins_, municipal magistrates. We was at comoedy, the farce of which was called _Le cocus imaginaire_. Their ware some honest women craking[341] togither on a tyme, they came among other things to speak of Eve and hir transgression: on of them cries furth very gravely, oh, that I was not their, I wish I had given hir a 12 penie loaf on the condition she had not eaten the apples. [341] Chatting. Wery rich stuff has bein heard at the examens in Scotland, some ignorant folks wt their answers being wery pleasant and merry. Mr. J. Smith, Minister of the Colledge Kirk, examining a bonnet maker, of whilk theirs a great number in his parish, he speared at him what was effectual calling; the fellow, clawing his head, replied, the feeklesest[342] calling I keen, Sir, is my oune. Kid, minister of the Abby Kirk, spearing at one of my Lord Catheneses servant women what was the Lords Supper. She, thinking that he had speared what was for my Lords Supper, answered, Sir, or I came out I set on the pot and My Ledy hes sent pies to the owen. Mr. Robert Blair, examining a wery ignorant body, speared at hir, wheirof was ye made, Magie; the folk neir hand rounded and harked in to hir, of the rib of man. Of the rib of man, Sir. Weil said, Magy, quoth Mr. Rob, I'm very blaith to sie that ye answer better then ye did the last examen. Who made man then? The peaple round about whispered to hir, God. God, Sir. Whirof made he him then, Magy? The peaple cried to hir then, of dust and clay: which she mistaking or not hearing weil, insteed of saying of dust and clay, she said, of curds and whey, Sir. I leive to ghesse whither them that ware their laught or not. Mr. Robert himselfe, tho a very grave man, could not refrain from smiling. [342] Feckless, feeble. In baptizing about the bairnes names ther hes bein mistakes both on the Ministers hand and the holder ups. Mr. James Vood was baptizing a man at St. Androws, and instead that he sould have baptized James, he called it John. The father, a litle bumbaized at this, after the barne is baptized and that he hes given it back to the midwife, he stands up and looks the Minister as griveously in the face and sayes, Sir, what sal I do wt 2 Johns, we have a John at home else, Sir? Whow would ye called then, Robin? quo' the Minister. James, Sir. James be the name of it then. Mr. Forbes told me that in the hylands once a mans wife was lighter of a lasse, the goodman was wery sick so that he could not go to church to present his oune barne, wheiron he desires one of his freinds or gossips to go and hold it up for him. He bit to have a Scriptural name for his daughter, at last he agreed upon Rebecca. The man thought he sould remember weil enough of it. Just as he is holding up the child he forgets the name. The Minister speares, whow call ye it. Sir, they call it, they cal it, they call it, shame fall it, ay hir oune selfe hes forgotten it. Yet I remember that its a name very lik tobacco. Many did laught wery heartylie at this, only some present remembered of the name, that it was Rebecca. Having stayed at Poictiers til the 14 of April French accompte: some 20 dayes before that I was beginning to make many acquantances at Poictiers, to go in and drink wt them, as wt De Gruché, Ingrande La Figonne, both Advocats sones, and of the Religion, Mr. de Gay, Borseau, Cotibby, etc. * * * * * [343] [343] Twenty-seven lines erased in MS. I was beginning to fall wery idle, so that if I had stayed longer in Poictiers, I had alwayes engaged myselfe in more company, and so done the lesse good, whence I have a sort of satisfaction that I came away. On the day of my departing I took my leive of Mr. Boutiet, Mlle. Alex'r, and Mlle. Strachan, Mlle. Chabate and hir mother wt some others, then went to the Chappeau d'or, wheir we dined, Mr. Alex'r, the Doctor, Sandy, Mr. De la Porte, Mr. Montozon (for Gorein was not in toune), and I. After having taken my leive of Madame Daillé (himselfe being at Partenay), I took horse before the buith door and came to the Daufin in the fauxbourgs, wheir I leapt of. The most part of the Hugonots going to their Temple, their I took my leive of Sandy'es wife, Madame Peager, and divers others. I took up to drink wt me Mr. de la Porte, De Gruché, De Gey, De Gaule, Barantons brother, etc. * * * * * [344] [344] Twenty-two lines erased in MS. On my vakening on the morning, I fand my head sore with the win I had drunk. For as sick as I was, on I got the morning wt the rest, and came and dined at Portpile,[345] a litle toune standing 5 leagues (for the leagues are long their in comparison of them about Paris) from Chattellerauld, on the Creuse, which runes also by Blanc in Berry. [345] Le Port de Pilles, Blaeuw's Atlas. Having ioined their wt the Messenger of Bordeau, who had about 7 Gascons wt him, and the Messenger of Angoulesme, who had above 12, we was a body above 24. We took al horseback, and having rode the river, tho wery deip, because the bridge was broken, I fell in wt the Gascons, and was the rarest stuffe wt them that could be.[346].... Also a gentleman of Sainctonge ioined wt us, who was coming to Paris. [346] Eight lines erased in MS. We came this night to Faux, a litle village standing upon the Lindre, about 7 leagues from Portpile, wher I played one of the Gascons a pret[347] in the boat; wheir also I saw a reservoire of fisches. Heir I was wery sick, so that I suped none, as I had not dined, my Poictiers rant incapacitating me. Yea, I was distempered al the way after, so that I cost not wery dear to my Messenger for my diet. [347] Trick. Nixt morning be 4 howers, having taken horse and riden the water, I came to Amboise. My heart began to lift in me for Joy when I came to places I had sein before, for I being wery sick, I fancied now I was almost at the end of my journy. Amboise is 5 leagues from Faux. We dined at the Cheval rouge, in the fauxbourgs, this syde of the Loire. I went and saw the Chasteau, having taken a French Gentleman of Quercy (of which Cahors is the Capital toune, and Dordogne the cheife river), and another of Thosose[348] wt me, whose brother, a boy not above 20 years, had already been at the wars against the Mores of Barbary, and had bein taken prisoner, and was ransoned by his father for 300 crounes, and was coming in to Paris to get some employment in the army: such stirring spirits are the French. The Castle I fand werie strong. I saw their arsenal, wheirs layes the canon of the fort, the greatest of them carrieng only 10 pound ball. Their best peices ware transported during the seige of the Rochel; they have never bein brought back yet. Theirs in the entry King Dagobert and his Queens statues, wt 2 great sheep done _à l'antique_. [348] Probably for Tholose, Toulouse. The most considerable thing we saw was the Harts hornes, hung up in the corner of a chapelle, of a monstrous bignesse, if they be natural. It was taken some many 100 years ago in a forest of Lorraine towards Allemagne, wt a collet,[349] about whilk the flesch was so growen that it covered it, bearing that it belonged to Cæsar. It bit to be wery old when it was taken. Also we saw some rib bons of it monstrouslie great. Also, I saw the chamber wheir Mr. Fouquet[350] was detained prisoner when the King brought him from Nantes. [349] Collar. [350] Nicolas Fouquet, 1615-1680, finance minister of Louis XIV., fell out of favour, and was arrested at Nantes, 1661. From Amboise we came to Blois 10 short leagues, wheir I went straight to the Castle (my remarks of which are elsewheir) to sie these verses of Faustus above the 1 gate of the castle, which are as followeth: Hic ubi natus erat dextro Ludovicus Olympo Sumpsit honorata regiâ[351] sceptra manu, Foelix quæ tanti fulsit lux nuntia regis, Gallia non alio principe digna fuit. 1498. [351] Regiâ for regia. At best the line does not scan. Next morning we came to St. Laurens, a pretty litle toune, wheir we dined. In the afternoone we passed by Clery, a litle village 4 leagues from Orleans, wheir I subscrived my name in the great book of all passengers (wheir I did read several Scots names, as Liddell, Douglas, etc.). I payed a collation, which cost me a croune. At Orleans we quartered at the Charrue, in the fauxbourgs towards Paris. As soon as I was arrived I went to J. Ogilvies, wheir I fand Madame, Mademoiselle hir daughter, hir 2 sones, Mr. le Baron, and another Allemand. They ware wery kind to me, caused me stay and sup wt them. They began and told me the depart of my Lord Ogilwie from their house very discontent, denieng J. Ogilvie, who was then in Germany for Mr. le Barons busines, to have bein given him as his Governor by my L[ord] his father. They would wery fain had me subscribing a paper (for they brought a notaire wtout my knowledg), wherin I sould have attested that I had heard from him that he was his gouwerneur, which they could not all obtain of me,... They pressed me so sore, making remonstrances, that I would obligd them infinitly by subscryving it, also that I could incurre no dommage by it, that I was put to feigne that I had made a solemme oath not to subscryve anything while I was in France, which stoopt their mouths. I went wt Mr le Baron D'Angleberne and Christophle, le Barons valet, after supper to the lodging, whither my Lord was retired, which was at the back of the Church Ste. Croix, wheir I plead[352] the dissembler. Just at the port of the toune I meet James Hunter, who had bein at my quarters to sie me. [352] Played. Being on horseback, tomorrow being a Sundy, ere 3 howers of the morning we dined at Thoury, a little toune 10 leagues from Orleans; came at night wt foul weather to Estampes, a ruinous toune, their no being so meikle as a whole house standing in al the fauxbourgs, and that since the late troubles raised by Mr le Prince,[353] who defended the toune against the King. Their is one long street in the toune. We lay at the trois Rois. We went to the Cordeliers Convent to sie that Barbet[354] rought[355] water dog that taks the Escrevisses,[356] but we could not sie it. [353] In 1652 the Prince of Condé's troops held Etampes against Turenne, Louis XIV.'s general. [354] A kind of dog with long curly hair. [355] Rought, rough: as he spells laugh, laught. [356] _Ecrévisses_, crayfish. Nixt day, having past by a Hermitage, wheir 2 hermites dwells, and seiks almes of al that passes, we came and dined at Linas, besydes Montlery, 9 leagues from Estampes,... At 5 oclock the afternoon we entred Paris by the fauxbourgs St. Jacques, wheir we passed by the Val de Grace, builded by Queen mother of France, lately dead, wheir hir heart is keeped; by the colledge of Clermont and the Sorbonne. We quit our horses in the rue St Jacques, neir the Grande Cerf. We was not weill of our horses when we was oppressed wt a generation of Hostlers, taverners, and others that lodges folk, some intreating us to come wt him, some wt him, all promising us good entertainement and accommodation. I went wt on Mr. Houlle, a barber, who had bein in England, because he was neir hand, and would stay but that night. Theyr was a French Gentleman of Lions and a Spaniard, one of the Queens Attendants: this was my company. That night they told me of the death of Madame de Touraine, and of the execution of Mr. del Camp, 2 dayes before my coming, a Maister of a Academy, and that for false mony, for whilk he had bein pardoned once before. Nixt day, whilk was the 20 Aprill 1666, French accompt, I came to Mr Kinlochs, wheir I am informed that the most part of our countrymen are already goon for England, and that Thirlestan, Gorenberry, and Sandilands (whom I saw and gave on his desire my new testament) was to go the day after. Their I was first acquaint wt Mr. Forbes[357] (Cullodin) and Archibald Hay (Bara's brother). I changed my quarters that same day and came to Kinlochs. [357] Probably Duncan Forbes, 1644-1704, M.P. for Nairn, succeeded his father about 1688, father of President Forbes. Within a day or 2 I was acquaint wt our Scots Captains, Captain Caddel, C. Rutherfurd wt a tree leg--his oune was dong from him at the Seige of Graveling--and Captain Scot, also on C. White. I saw the fruit they call grenades[358] at Paris. To look to before its cut most like a citron: being cut at the top its all ful of litle grains as like rezer[359] berries in the coulor and bigness, yea almost in the tast, as can be. It was a pretty sight to sy how prettily the grains ware ranked wtin the skin. [358] Pomegranates. [359] Rezer, rizzer, red currant. Mr. Kinloch on night coming from a burial of a Hugonet Medecin at Charenton saw a blind man of the Kings vingt (as they call them, tho they be 15 score) play at the Maille[360] to admiration, wheir upon Mr. Grahme took occasion to tel severall very wonderful things he know of blind men: amongs others, of one that could play weill to the gooffe, of another that, take doune 2 watches, mix their works as much as ye like in a hat or any other thing, and gave them him, he saw put them up as iust every one wt their oune vorks as any cknock maker shal do. Its common that they know any sort of silver by a more parfait touche then ordinar, which God is pleased to impart unto them in recompence of the want of sight. [360] See p. 20, note 2. In the renouned toune of Forfar, one who had many kyn having caused milk them at his door, left the tub wheirin he had milked them by neglect at his door. By comes a neigbhours cow, whow being damned thirsty, comes the by way to the tub and takes a wery hearty draught. In the mean tyme comes he that ought the milk, and seing the damage that was done him, to the Toune counsel he goes and makes a very greevous complaint, demandes that he that owes the cow that had drunk his milk pay him it. The counsel was exceedingly troubled wt this demand, never in their remembrance having had the like case throrough their fingers. After much debat on both sydes, a sutor[361] stands up and showes that he had light upon a medium to take up the difference. He askes whither it was a standing drink or not that the cow took when she drank out the milk. They replying whow could she take it but standing, he replyed that it was a most sure thing in that country, knowen to them all, that none ever payed for a standing drink. They following this decision assolzied and cleared cow wt its owner from paying ought, as having taken only a standing drink. [361] Cobbler. Its marked of the Aurelians[362] that they cannot drink standing, but that tho they have never so litle to drink, they most sit doune. Henry the 4't, as he was a very mery man, being at Orleans at a tyme, and my Lord maire and his Eschevins being come to sie him, he would try the truth of this. He first causes remove all the chaires and stools out of the roome, so that nothing was left that a man could sit doune on: then caused bring in win, and drinks to my L. mairs good health, then ordains him to pledge him, who begins to look about him for a seat; no, nay seat for him, wheir on he began to suspect the King had done it a purpose, he resolves to give his Majesty sport. He causes on of his Aldermen to sit doune on his knees and his hand, so that he may drink of his drink to the King on his back sitting, which he did, and at which the King did laught no litle. [362] People of Orleans. In the tyme of our late stirs one of the name of Gordon, called black Adam,[363] had broken in on a willage in some part of the north, and had made such a pillage that he had left nothing that was in the least worth the carrieng away. One of the women of the willage bewailling her lose wt her neighbours, demanded whow they called that wicked man that that had them the scaith. They call him Adam, quoth another, I know no more. Adam, quoth she. Adam began the world and I think he sal end it to. [363] Edom o' Gordon. The Irishes hes a damned respect for St. Phatrick, of whom they say, that if Christ had no bein Christ, St. Phatrick would have bein Christ, as he ware the most worthy person after Christ. In the first part of the Romance termed _Almahide_ or _l'esclave Reyne_, penned by the renouned Scudery,[364] dedicated to Mademoiselle, the Kings sister, are brought in the toun of Grenade in a uproar by reason of 2 mighty factions, the Abencerrages, of whilk Abindarrays is the head; and the Zegris, whose head is Mohavide, betuixt whilk 2 the whole toune is divided. It comes to a cruel fight in the spatious place of Viwaramble, notwtstanding what the Mufti wt the Alcoran in his hand could say to dissuade them, who is descryved wt all the rest of the religious orders. [364] George de Scudéri, 1601-1667. Amongs the Abencerrages was eminently conspicous the _bell esclave_ on the head of Moray Zel, the father of Sultane Queenes party, for fear of whom the queen suffers no small greife. At last by the mediation of the King they are brought to peace; only Mohavide subornes a Alfaguy to accuse criminelly the sclave for being found wt armes in his handes against the law of the Alcoran: whos harangue is answered and refuted by Moray Zell. The King, after deip deliberation and a magnanimous harangue of the sclave, himselfe assolyies him. This reased a curiosity in Roderick de Navarre, a great Spaniard, prisoner of the Mores at that tyme, having sein the valeur of the sclave, to know what he might be: whence one Ferdnand, a old slave of the Sultane queen, begines him his story thus: In the beginning of the reigne of Muleyhassel, whose sone reigneth at present, the greatest courtier at the court of Grenade was Morayzell; and tho their ware many brave Dames, yet none could captivate his heart, so that long tyme he was called le bel insensible. On a tyme on of his friends called Almadam came and invited him to a feigned fight of canes he was to make in the sight of his M'ris Semahis, to which at lenth yeelding, he beates him, and wines the heart of Semahis, and begines to find his oune touched. Finaly, after a combat for hir betuixt him and Almadan, in which he overthrowes Almadan, they are solennly married. About the course of a year after the beautiful Semahis gave a matchlesse daughter, which they called Almahide, and who at present is _Sultane reyne_, to the valliant Morayzel, who caused a learned Arabian cast hir Horoscope, who dressing hir figure, gave the strange answer, that the stars told him that she sould be fort sage et fort amoureuse, quelle sera en mesme temps femme et fille, Vierge et mariée, esclave et Reyne, femme d'un esclave et d'un Roy, heureuse et malheureuse, Mahometane et Chrestienne, innocente et coupable, et enfin plus estrange exposée an danger d'estre brulée toute vive. De plus quelle mourra plus contente qu'elle n'aura vescu, et que parmy les debris d'un Throne et le bouleversement d'un Royaume, son amour et son innocence la consoleront elle mesme de la perte d'une courrone que la fortune lui osterea. This gave no smal astonishment to Moray Zel, who to evite them the better resolves to send his daughter far from Grenade, to Algiers in Africk, that if it comes to pass it may light far from Grenade. This he puts in execution, shipping in the infant at Tarriffe under the tuition of seweral slaves, but especialy of Fernand de Solis. Them we leive on the sea a while to tell another rancontre. About 3 years before the birth of Almahide, Inez d'Arragon bore a son to hir Lord dom Pedro de Leon, due de Medine Sidonia, in Andalousy, in Spaine. The childs Horoscope the father caused to be casten by one of Toledo, who desired him to have a watchful eye of his sone til he pass 20, otherwise he may be made slave. To obey this the better Dom Pedro thought it not amisse to remove his sone from the court and city and send him to a plaisant country house called the Fountaines, wheir we leive the young Ponce de Leon, and returnes to our Almahide on the sea. The Ship is sett upon by pirats corsaires, and they are taken al sclaves and carried to the ile of Dorigni. Heir they stayed a long tyme, and Almahide growes to some years, and hir beauty growes wondrously wt her, which the pirats seing they resolve to carry hir to Constantinople to sell hir to them that plenishes the Turks seraglio. Whiles they are on their way they are casten away, none saved but Fernand and the litle Almahide, tho Fernand know not of it; for some shephards finding hir in a sound[365] on the shore, they carried hir to the Fountaines iust at hand (for their lot was such to be casten away their), and sold hir to the Duc and Dutchesse. Dom Fernand, finding that he was in his oune country, and knowing that the Ducks house, who was his old freind, was neir he went to visit him, wheir to his amazement he fand the litle Almahide, who came runing to him and velcomed him. Heir the Duc choses Fernand to be his sones gouueneur, and appointes the beautiful Almahide to stay their to bear his sone company. [365] Swoon. All this while Morayzel could gett no newes of his daughter, which was no small greife to him. In the interim the fierce and fair Semahis, his Lady, wt hir charmes conqueres so many souls to hir beck that being ambitious she brought Grenade in hazard. After this is intervoven a lang but pretty description of the house called Fontaines. Love begines incessantly to grow betuixt them. The only obstacle was she was still mahometane, which the sclaves had infused in hir. Yet on a tyme young Ponce mocking merrily at the fopperies of the Alcoran she tournes Christian. On this their love takes new strenthe: on a tyme he impartes it to hir; from whom at lenth he getts a promise of hir fidelity to him. After she turned Christian she got the name of Aminte. Theirs sowen in a pretty dispute that happened, what might be the prettiest of flowers, and its generally by Aminte also concluded on the Tulip. Their fame cannot be long confined at the Fontaines, but its at the Court of Sewill already; which drawes many galland persons to come sy them, and amongs others Dom Alvare, who proved to Ponce de Leon a Rivall, who expressing his affection to the fair Grenadine both in verses and lettres it occasioned bad intelligence betuixt him and Ponce, so that it comes to a combat, wheirin Ponce carries away the victory. And it was like to have occasioned more mischeif had not Fernand, Ponce his governor, writen to the Duc to fetche away Aminte, who was the occasion of their striv, which the Duc obeyes, sending a coach for hir to carry hir to Sewil, who having renewed hir promise of fidelity to Ponce leives him their a very sorry man. Thus ends the first Book. * * * * * [366] [366] Half a page blank. There follows here an essay in French or notes of a lecture on the study of law, a juvenile performance. Though inserted in the MS. book it is not part of the Journal. It has been printed here as it stands. Il y a deuz methodes pour estudier le droit, ou par la voye du text ou par celle des quæstions: certes le chemin du text est le plus asserre, plus solide et moins trompeur. Pour le text comme guides wous vous attacherez a Vinnèus, ou vous trouwerez cela qu'il est de la scholastick: a Sucidiwen non paralellé quant est de la practique. A la glosse ou Accurse si vous souhaitez les cas et les especes des loix: si vous ne tirez pas toute la satisfaction possible quant est de la text de ceux-cy, feuilletez Bartol, Cuiace et Azon dans son Summa, de qui autrefois l'on disoit, Qui non habet Azonem vendat pallium. Si vous voudrez chicaner ou jusque an moindres points epluscher une loix dans la text vous trouverez vostre conte dans Antonius Faber. Ayant leu les Institutes avec ses aydes, vous vous tournerez aux Paratitlairs. Sur la quelle matiere personne n'entrera en parrallelle avec Peresius in C. Vesenbecius ne laisse pas faire assez bicn la dessus: vous pourrez aussi regardez Corvinus. Calvin dans ses Paratitles n'a fait qu'une honteuse recueill de cela que les autres avoient dit la dessus devant lui, comme de Cuiace, Vesenbec, etc. Entre les Docteur Francois les parratitles de Maranus, Antecesseur de Tholose, sont en haute estime, mais puisque nos sentiments nous sont libres, nous ne voyons pas trop de raison. Vous n'oublierez pas les Paratitles de Tulden wrayment grand homme: comme ceux de Zoesig et sur les Digests, et sur le droit canon. Cette Methode apprendre le droit par le text a receu ses meilleurs et plus brillantes lumiers des Francois. Seulement vous prendrez icy garde d'une faute de qui je les accus presque tous, pourtant fort insupportable et bien digne de la fowette: c'est que ils advancent des choses en controverse comme s'ils estoient hors du controverses et autant de Principes, et par ainsi pitieusement abusent la ieunesse. Afin de vous detromper vous passerez dans l'autre chemin, qui est celui des Quæstions, lequel si vous pourrez marier heureusement a l'autre, de cette union vous peut redonder dans son temps une entiere connoissance du droit. Dans ce chemin-cy wous ne manquez pas des hommes sçavants pour vos præcepteurs. Ici s'offrent Fachinæi controversiæ, Vasquii controversiæ Illustres: item son traité De successionibus tam ex testamento quam ab intestato. Item Pacij centuriæ: qui outre son commentaire ad Institutiones a aussi escrit ad librum 4tum c. lequel oeuure de Pacius emporte sur tous ses autres. Vous y trowwerez Merenda. Vous chercherez pour Bronchorstii Quæstiones, qui a aussi escrit ad T.D. De Regulis Juris. Vous ne manquerez pas d'acheter les disputationes selecta Treutheri ou ses Theses, avec Hunnius (qui a aussi ecrit 4 libres variarum resolutionum) in 3 tomes le dessus, et Bachovius cet grand esprit, de qui Vineus derobe le meilleur de cela qu'il a. Mais sur toute n'oubliez pas le 4 Tomes de Harpreclitus sur les 4 livres des Institutes, qui vous donnera une lumiere merveilleuse dans toutes les quæstions; et ou il defail le lui-mesme, il vous n'envoye aux meilleurs autheurs qui a escrit sur cette matiere. A la mesme fin vous demanderez pour Mastertius, ou particulierement pour son sedes illustrium materiarum Juvis civilis, ou il vous monstre tous les meilleurs Autheurs de la connoissance qui explique une telle ou une telle loix Voyez Nicolaus de Passeribus De Reconciliationibus Legum. While I was at Campheire, towards the end of July 1667, I had occasion to sie the book writ by our banished ministers at Rotterdam and other places, and particularly by Mr. Macquaire[367] put ut in the years 1665, intituled 'An Apologetical Relation of the particular sufferings of the faithful ministers and professors of the Church of Scotland since August 1660, wherein severall questions useful for the tyme are discussed. The Kings praerogative over parliament and peaple soberly inquired into; the lawfulnesse of defensive war cleared; the supreme Magistrats powers in Church matters examined, Mr. Stellingfleets notion of the divine right of the formes of government considered; the author of the Seasonable Case answered: other particulars, such as the hearing of the curates, the appearing before the hy commission court., etc., canvassed, togither with the rise, raigne, and ruine of the former Praelats in Scotland, being a breiff accompt from History of the Goverment of the Church of Scotland from the beginning, and of the many troubles which Praelats have created to hir first and last, for satisfaction of Strangers and encouradgement of present sufferers by a weill wisher to the goud old cause. Then follows some places of Scripture, as Jeremias 50, ver. 34, Micah 7, ver. 9-10, Isay 51, ver. 22-23. [367] Robert Macquare wrote a postscript to the _Apologetical Relation_, etc., which was the work of J. Brown. A reprint in the _Presbyterian's Armoury_, vol. iii. (1843), is in the British Museum. In this book they traduce Spotswood, Archbishop of St. Androws, endeavoring to make him ridiculous, and empanelling him of falsehood in many places of his History, using to refute him the auctority of Buchanan, a auctor more suspected then himselfe. In their 4 section they prove the Marquis of Argyle most uniustly to have bein put to death the 27 of May 1661. The ground of his sentence they say in the 78 page to have bein that he was and had bein an ennemy to the King and his interests thesse 23 years or more bypast, which in effect (say they) is as much as give ye would say he had bein an active freind for the interest of Christ, making Gods interest and the Kings interest point blanc contrary, so that a freind to the one could not be but a ennemy to the other. The thing that more particularly the Parliament adhered to was his compliance wt the English and sitting in their Parliaments. But that this was not treason, and consequently not capable to take his life, they labor to prove by sundry particulars, first that the Lawyers themselfes (who best of any should know what treason is) complied, yea swore fidelity, to that government. They instance to his odium Sir John Fletcher, then Kings Advocate. 2dly, He was not guilty of compliance alon. Many members of Parliament sitting their to judge him war _conscii criminis_. 3dly, If compliance was treasonable and capable enough to put him to death, whey ware they so anxious to find out other grounds against him wheiron they might walk? 4ly, Whey was never on save this nobleman not so much as empanelled for this fault, much lesse put to death? Whow came it to passe that William Purves, who by complying had almost occasioned ruine to many noblemen, boroughs, and gentlemen, was absolved by a act of Parliament? Then their was never act of Parliament, nether any municipal Law, condemning necessesary compliance for life and liberty wt a conqueror, and for the good of the country conquered, as treasonable. Their was never a practick or _praejudicium_ in Scotland for it since it was a Kingdome. Bruce did never so much as quaestion his nobility that in Balliols tyme had complied wt Edward of England. Nixt the Royalists say conquaest is a just title to a croune. So Baleus[368] in his _Sacro-sancta Regum Maiestas_, cap. 17; but so be Cromwell conquered our country, ergo, he was our lawful governour and had just title to our croune. If so, whow could compliance and passive obedience to such a on be treason? In this he triumphs so, that he addes, let al the Royalists answer to this wtout contradicting themselfes if they can. No definition out of the civil Law can be brought of treason which wil comprehend necessary compliance; ergo, its no treasonable. Finally, we sie compliance to be the practise of all conquered nations, yet upon the alteration of government no body condemned for it. [368] John Bale, Bishop of Ossory, died 1563. In the end they appeal to al governours of states, Lawyers, casuists, politicians, canonists, and Quod-libetists, yea to Royalists themselfes, whither or no when a nation is broken in 3 or 4 battells, so that they can do no more, but are oblidged to take laws from the conqueror, wil it be treason to comply wt the ennemy for life and liberty, and when he is chosen by the country to go and sit in the conquerors judicatories (which priveledge _ex gratiâ_ he grants them), to sie the affairs of the Kingdom regulate, and sie to what wil be best for the good of the country. They persuade themselfes that all wil say this is no treason. Then subsume they, but such was Argiles compliance; ergo, for treasonable compliance he could not be put to death because not guilty of it. Then ye have a vindication of Mr. James Guthry,[369] execute 1 of June 1661, from the crimes layd to his charge wheirupon his sentence was founded. They say the crime was that some 10 years before, being challenged by the King for somthing spok over the pulpit, he declined his cognizance as a incompetent judge in ecclesiastical spiritual matters, which declinaturs be a act of Parliament, anno 1584, are discharged under the pain of hy treason; but this they contend was afterwards abrogated, so that they conclud him to have died a martyr for the truth against Erastian abomination. [369] Covenanting minister (? 1612-1661). In the 6 section ye have the zeal of that minister, who upon the Parliaments casting of the Covenant, pulling out a six pence, took instruments in the hands of the peaple and protested against all courses or acts in preiudice of the Covenant, for which he was banished. None of the banisht ministers could ever obtain a extrait of their sentence, which is a thing no judicatory ever refused. Nixt, because they could not banish them furder then from Scotland, they forged a bond to which they compelled the ministers to subscryve, wheirin they promised not to be found wtin any of his maiesties dominions under the pain of death; which they call cruel and unreasonable. Voetius they commend and cite often. Sharpe they call a betrayer of his bretheren, and a most unnatural sone of his mother church. Then the reasons whence they refuse to go to the prælats courts are rendred; whey they refuse collation and presentation of them, which they exclaime against as popish, foisting in its steed the peaples frie election. In France they know not moor foul. They have 2 sorts of excellent partridges. That we call the Lampre elle, wt us esteemed almost poison, wt them called la Lamprey, is a great delicacy. They are wery big. Follows some riddles. * * * * * [370] [370] Eight lines are omitted, containing four riddles with _double entendres_ which are grossly indecent without being witty. Sequitur Ænigmaticum quoddam epitaphium Bononia studiorum ante multa sæcula marmoreo lapidi insculptum: Ælia Lælia crispis, nec vir nec mulier, nec androgyna nec puella, nec juvenis nec anus, nec meretrix nec pudica, sed omnia; sublata neque fame nec ferro nec veneno sed omnibus; nec cælo nec aquis nec terra sed ubiqe iacet. Lucius Agatho Priscus nec maritus nec amator nec necessarius neque moerens, neque gaudens neque flens hanc neque molem nec pyramidem nec sepulchrum sed omnia, scit et nescit quid qui posuerit, hoc est, sepulchrum intus cadaver non habens, hoc est, cadaver sepulchrum extra non habens sed cadaver idem est et sepulchrum sibi. Bacon has write Apothegmes new and old, a litle book. A English curate said their was 3 things that annoyed man, and they began all wt a double w, win, women, and tobacco, but whow does tobacco begin wt a w, wil ye say: tobacco is nothing but a weed, which word begins wt a w. Another having read his text, sayd he had 3 things to tell them, the first thing he know and they know it not, and this was that under his gown he had a pair of ragged breitches; the 2d thing they know and he know it not, and this was, whither they would give him new ones or no; the thrid thing nether of us knows, and that is the true meaning of thir words: and thus out of the pulpit he went. Repasse Dom Alvare, repasse bien cxactement en ta memoire tous ces que tes yeux t'out fait voir de beau depuis que la suit de l'age les a rendus capables de faire une juste discernement des belles et de laides choses, et apres cette soigneuse recherche ne seras tu pas obliger de prononcer en faveur D'Aminte, et d'auoüer ingenument quelle est sans contredit la plus aimable et la plus accomplie personne que Nature ait jamais fait. Quelle grace n'a tu pas remarquée au ton de sa voix comme en ses paroles et ses beaux yeux; n'out ils pas beaucoup plus parlé que sa belle bouche? O qu'ils sont eloquens ces beaux yeux! qu'ils sont doux! qu'il sont pourtant imperieux, qu'ils ont de charmes et de Maiesté! qu'ils ont de charmes et de Maieste? qu'ils ont de feu! qu'ils ont de lumiere! et que leur eclat est brillant et dangereux! Vous dites tants de choses agreables que vous me fait venir l'eau a la bouche. Dissimulez aussi bien que vous voulez la mesche est deia eventée. Il n'y a gueres de fumée sans feu, iamais escritoire ne fut bonne espee, il vaut mieux tard que iamais. Il ne faut pas lire beaucoup, c'est a dire, il faut faire choiz des Auteurs et se les rendre familier. L'Histoire a bon droit est appelle le tesmoin des temps, le flambeau de la verité, la vie de la memoire, et la maistresse de la vie. L'occasion fait le Larron; for finding a thing in the way it temptes him to steall, it seing so faire a occasion. Pain coupé n'a point de maistre, whence a man seing bread cut, wheirof no man is as yet in possession, he may freely take hold of it as belonging to none or having no master. Chacune est fol de sa marotte: the crow thinks hir oune bird fairest. Chaque pais chaque coustume. Toutes choses ont leur season, qui premier nait premier paiste. The eldest feids first, insinuating the priveledges of primogeniture, which are great in France as also with us. Il faut prendre gard (saye the frenchman) d'une qui pro quo d'une Apotiquaire (as when in mistake he takes one pig[371] for another, or out of ignorance gives a binding thing for a laxative) d'une et caetera d'un Notaire (by which is taxed the knaveries of that calling), d'une dewant une femme, d'une derriere une mule, et d'un Moin de tout costes: thats to say, diligently. Of the man that undertakes the voyag to Rome, because of the great corruptions their, of which few can keip themselfes frie, the Frenchman sayes: Jamais bon cheval ni meschant homme ne s'amendist pour aller a Rome. When they would taxe on for being much given to lying, they say, Il est un menteur comme un arracheur de dents; for the tooth-drawers wil promise that they sall not so much as touch them almost, that they sal find no peine, when in the interim the peine wil be very sensible. Of one much given to study, they say, Il estudie tant que les rats scauroient manger ses oreilles. Who can approach such a glorious sun wtout being dazeled. [371] Earthenware vessel. The French are generally wery timorous on Sea, whereon he sayes, Je n'aime pas passer la ou le cheure[372] ne scauroit fermer ses pieds, hold its feet. The frenchman sayes that he hath heard qu'une grande riviere et un grand seigneur sont mauvais voisins. Vous serez bien venu comme une singe, mais point comme une renard. Chou pour chou, craft for craft. Patience abusé se tourne en fureur. Laughter compelled and bitter, as the Latins calles it, Risus sardonius, so the French sayes; Le ris d'hosteliers qui ne passe point le noeud de la gorge, because that hoasts and others of sick like stuffe laught ordainarly to please their ghests wt out any true affection to laught. The occasion of the Latin, Risus sardonius, as Erasmus explaines, is because of a Herbe called in Latin, Apium Risus, in French, Herbe de Sardagne, because it growes in great abondance in Sardinia, which no sooner eaten but it looseth and disiointeth al the nerves, so that the mouth falls wide open iust as give they ware laughting; yea in this posture they die. Thus the commentator on Du Bartas weeks, que dit un peuple dit un fol, who sayes a multitude sayes a fool. C'est tousiours plus mal-aisé de faire mal que bien, its easier to do a thing the right way then the wrong, as in opening a door. Il n'y a marchand qui gaigne tousjours. _Nemo ubique potest foelici_,[373] etc., its a good roost that drapes aye.[374] Of him that out of scarcity tauntes his neihbour wt the same scorne wt which he scorned him, the Frenchman sayes, il ne vaut rien pour prendre la bal a la seconde enleuement, at the 2d stot. He is a man of a 1000 crounes a year, l'un important l'autre, on way or other; its used also in drinking healths. Of a modest, learned young man, _cui contigit ante diem virtus_, they say, qu'il demente son menton, he belyes his chin. If one would know another weill he most try him and sus et sous la peau trinque [land][375] hachis hach, old French words used by Du Bartas. If ye demand him for a thing he hath eaten, he'el tel you, il est passé par la ville d'Angoulesme. Of a man that hath not spirit, they say, il est ni chair ni poisson; l'on moque de cela a la cour. Entre nous autres Gentils-hommes il n'y a point de bourgois, as give ye would say, among 10 whites their is not a black. [372] Chèvre, goat. [373] For _felici_. [374] Ferguson's _Scottish Proverbs_, p. 21: It's a good goose that draps ay. [375] Interlined. They put a gentleman and burgoise as opposites; he cannot be a gentleman if a burgoise; but he may become on and then he ceaseth to be a burgoise. I urged whither or no a gentlemans sone by becoming a burgoise was not stil gentleman; they sayd not, for by becoming bourgoise (he is called Roturier) he seimes to renounce his right of gentleman. Throw Germany they are thought so incompatible, that if a man can deduce himselfe, tho never so far fetcht, from gentlemen, he, tho he have no means and be like to starve, he wil not turne marchand or any other trade. Une harangue de Gascoigne is on courte et mauvaise, tho they have not the tongue and cannot manage it weil, yet they have ever manadged the sword weill, being brave sogers, and consequently horrid Rodomontades and boasters. Du Bartas tho was a Gascoin. They call a brothers sone in France neveu; our sones sone petit fils. A barren women in France they call very disdainfully une mulet: thus they termed Marguerit, King of Spaines daughter, Emperor Charles the 5 neice, Henry the 4ts queen, for a tyme, who cucolded him. We most never forget the 2 catalogues which served Pighoog[376] of so great use, on of all the fathers, the other of all the Haeresies; also the dron[377] and false Latin we fand in the Corpus Glossatum, Domine tanta, etc.; as also our rowing at the boat, Pighogs ...[378] and Piters falling on his back, his perruvick coming of; also our sports that night we studied the stars wt Mr. James, his griveous hat, and James of a low stature and William Ker had almost lost his hat, wt many others to be recalled to memory. [376] A nickname for somebody, perhaps a tutor or schoolmaster. [377] Have not found this word. [378] Three or four words erased. If we be demanded at any tyme to sing a song we may begin...[379] we would look to the company. If they be speaking of any song, we may say we have heard it song sweitly wt 3, 2 of them harkening and the 3d not opening his mouth. If we fall to be demanded to tell a story we may begin ...[380] that of him that called himselfe ...[381] If they be talking of wonders, we may say that their was a stone at Poictiers, which at every twelve howers it hard whirled about thrice. Also when togither wt any commorads and fall to in merrinesse to dance, at any pas in mockery we may say it was worth a 100 crouns. [379] Nearly a line erased. [380] Three or four words erased. [381] Two words erased. They have 3 proverbs in France: 1, save a thief from the gallowes and he'el be the readiest man to help you to it; 2, never commit your secrets to a woman, as to your wife; and 3d, a man sould not bourd[382] wt his masters. [382] Jest familiarly. One example sal verify all 3. In the tyme of Charles the great their was on that had a great wogue of learning and wisdome, to which man the King concredited his sone the Prince. One of the Princes attendants was taken in a roobery and condemned to the gibbet: the Prince and his master begged his life, and so saved him. To try the 2d byword, the master took his pupill the Prince to the Soan to bath, having bathed, he put him wtin a mil wt strait orders not to stir from that til he called for him. He comes home to his wife wt a feigned heady countenance, telling her wt a great deal of protestations for secrecy, that as he was causing the young Prince for his healths sake bath, he was perished. Tomorrow he pickt a litle quarrel wt his wife, before some company: she being angry wt him cost up the secret to him, so that it was immediatly conveyed to the Kings ears, who in a fury ordained that he sould be broken on the wheel. The usual executioners could not be found; yea, no other body that would supply his place, so generally was the man reverenced be all. The King enraged, offers 50 pistols to him that wil do the turne. None yet presents themselfes save only the theif he had saved from the gallowes. The childs gowernour having tried all that he desired, demanded licence to go bring the Prince safe, which he did to the admiration, wonder and gladness of all. He fand it was not good to play wt his superiors, as also he did who once taking of Charles the 9 beard in France took the boldnesse to sie that the Kings throat was in his reverence, was hanged immediatly, the King saying that his throat sould never be in his reverence againe. Also that nobleman who getting the King wtin that great cage that's to be sein at Chinon yet, in sporting said that he had the King at his reverence; its true, quoth the King, but let me out. He was no sooner out but he caused him be shut up in the cage, and suffered him to dy their for hunger wtout mercy. The story of K. James his fool may werify this same truth. The French sayes, _il n'est pas tant la qualité que la quantité de quelque chose qui fait mal_. Is it possible that the sun hath halfed his privilegde wt you; that as he communicated heatte to the inferior bodies wtout enioying any in his oune sphaere, so also can you ...[383] not heats but dazeles and mortally wounds all that approach you wtout being in the least touched yourselfe; no, pardon me, if I cannot beleive it. [383] Word erased. If I be spaired what sort of folks the French are, we may reply they are folk wt noses on their faces, and that like St. Paul never speaks but they open their mouth. Rapier and Miton[384] are French words. [384] _Mitten_. The French word has also other meanings. They have many othes in France. Jesus, Maria, and Nostre Dame are lawful oaths used by the Churchmen themselfes. Jarne[385] Diable is also lawful, as the Cordelier sayd in his preaching, Jarne Mahomet most also be lawful. They have a numbre of horrid ones, as ventre Dieu, teste Dieu, mort Dieu, ou mort blew Jarnec Dieu; cap de bious, a Gascoin oath, and verté chou, a great oath assuredly. [385] Corruption of _je renie_. Qui a bon voisin a bon mastin, he is as steadable to him as a good mastive. Charité bien reiglée commence a soy mesme. To the same purpose, le peau est nous plus cher que la chemise. Le chat aime le poisson bien, mais elle n'aime pas de mouiller ses pates. Ce qui vien de la fluste s'en retourne au son du tambour, Il woon soon spent; goods lightly gotten lightly slipes away. When ye would say that he knows not weil sick a man, vous n'avez iamais mangé un minot[386] de sel avec lui. Dite moy quelle companie vous avez frequenté, et ie vous diray vos moeurs. [386] A measure containing half a mine, equal to thirty-nine litres. A northern minister preaching on that, Esau sold to his brother Jacob his birthright for a morsel of pottage: base man that he was, quoth he, the belligod loune, sel his birth-right for a cog of pottage, what would he have done if it had bein a better dish. They alleadge that a Frenchman sould have sayd, that if our Saviour had a brother, the greatest honor he could put upon him would be to make him King of France. Anthoine le Bourbon, 1 protestant of the Kings of Navarre, having got a Capycin and a Minister together, he would have them dispute before him. The Minister began on the point of the crosse. Theirs a tree, sayd he, of the one halfe of it ye make a crosse which ye vorship, of the other halfe ye make a gallows to hang up a theif on. Whey carry ye respect for that peice ye make a crosse of, and no for that ye make the gibet of, since they are both of on matter? The Capycin seimed to be wery much pusled wt this. After a little pause he demands the Minister if he was married. Yes, that I am, what of it? quoth the M. Whow comes it to passe then, quoth the Capycin, that ye kisse your wifs mouth and not hir arse, whey have ye more respect for hir mouth then hir arse, since they are both of on mater? The Minister thought himselfe out; yea, King Anthony thought shame of him. Their was a minister of Fyfe of the name of Bruce that had a great gade[387] of ending promiscuosly his sermons, as, for example, he was telling on a tyme how the Beaver, being purshued hotly by the hunters, used to bit of his stones, the silly fellow, forgetting what he had to sy more, added, to which end, good God, bring us, as if he had sayd to bit of our stoons. He closed in that same sort once whow Judas hanged himselfe. Once as he was exhorting the peaple to beware of the Devil, who was a roaring and ramping lyon, etc., he added, to whom wt the father and the holy ghost be all honnor and glory for now and ever, amen. [387] Probably for 'gait,' way. One being asked whence came the antipathy that we find betuixt some beasts, as the dog and the hare, the Lizard (Ichneumon) and the crocodile, the sheip and the wolfe, and he replyed that it began wt the flood of Noah when they ware all in Ark together, that then the hare stol the dogs shoe from him, and that theirfor the dog ever when he sies him since runs efter him to get his shoe again. The Mythologists gives 2 reasons whey they[388] bloody bat flies under night, and compairs not on the day: the first is because of his defections from the birds when they ware in war wt the beasts; the 2d because beginning to marchandise he played banque route, whence he dare never be sein in the day for fear that his creditors take him wt caption. [388] Perhaps 'the.' The 'y' is indistinct, as if it was intended to be erased. This minds me of on at Edenborough, who being drouned in debt durst never pipe[389] out in the day light, but always under night. On a tyme coming by the fleschstocks of the Landmarket, a cleak[390] claughts a grip of his cloak, and holds him. He immediatly apprehending that it was some sergent or messenger that was arresting him, he cryes back as pittyfully, at whose instance, Sir; at whose, etc. [389] Peep. [390] Hook. A Minister of Bamf (as Mr. Mowat when I was at dinner once their reported it), being to give the communion, he had caused buy as much win as would serve for his parishioners. Whil the cup is going about, it falls to be ful on a strong, sturdy cloun that used not to drink win oft, and who was wery thristy; he gets the cup to his head; he never rested tel he had whistled it over. On of the Elders, seing what he had done, in a great anger cryes out, even the devil go doune wt it, for that might have geined[391] a dozen. [391] Gein or gane, sufficed for. Its reported of Gustavus Adolphus that he was used to say, that for ennemies he had to do wt a fool (which was Valstein, Duc of Fritland, one of the Imperialists generals, a cruell man and a foolish man, he thought to make himself Emperor; wheirupon at the Emperors instigation he was slain by our countrymen Leslie and Gordon: Butler would not do it), wt a soger (which was Pappenheim, a brave souldier, slain in that same battell of Lutzen that Gustavus was slain in), and a preist; which was Tilly who never wanted his chappelets of his arme, never missed a Messe, and boasted he never know a women. Many a brave Scotsman served in thesse wars of Germany (we most remember what he did to that tyran the Duc of Cleves), amongst others on Colonel Edmond,[392] a baxters sone of Stirleving. [392] Colonel Sir William Edmond. See _Scots Brigade in Holland_ (S.H.S.), vol. i. p. 577, where it appears that his father was a baker in Edinburgh. Colonel Edmond died in 1606. The Bischop of Munster, a merry man, wil cry whiles, _donnez moy trois grande verres de vin_, then, _c'est a la santé des mes trois Charles et Charles Seconds: Charles 2d D'Angleterre, Charles 2d D'Espaigne, et Charles 2d_ [sic] _de Suede_: this is wery remarkable. Philip, the 2d, Charles the Emperors son, had also a Charles, Prince of Spain, whom most barbarously he caused strangle, as Peter Mathieu reports it, tho Strada would dissemble it. We had several marks of the Spanish gravity in this Prince. When the news was told him of the great victory of Lepanto, woon over the Turks by his natural brother, Dom John of Austria (the way whow they made D. Jean know his quality is worth the knowing), generalissimo of the Christian forces, he would not appear to be moved wt the least joy, al he sayd was, _Dom Juan a beaucoup hazardé_. When the news was told him of the dissipation of his invincible Armado, commanded by the Duc of Medine Sidonia, he would not seim to be troubled wt it, all he sayd was, _j'ay envoyé une flote pour combattre des hommes non pas les vagues et les vents_. They reporte of the Queen of Suede when she was in France that she was wery curious to sie all the [brave][393] great men of the court, and amongs others to sy Mr. le Prince[394] who hes no great mine[395] to look to. On a tyme entering unto the roome wheir she was, some told her it was Mons'r le Prince. She, having contemplated him disdainfully, cryes out, _Esque la le prince de qui l'on parle tant_: he gied[396] his hat a litle, and payed hir wery weil back in her oune coin, _es que la la Reyne qui faict tant parler d'elle_. [393] Interlined. [394] Condé. [395] Mein. [396] Turned, cocked. The young Daufin of France, tho not yet 5 years old, gives great hopes of proving a brave man. As the King was removing from St. Germains to go to Fontainebleau, and they had taken doune the plenishing to carry and put up their, as the Daufin is coming thorough the roomes he begines to misse their hingers,[397] he spears what was come to them; they told him they ware carried to F'bleau. Hes not F'bleau, quoth he, furniture for it selfe of its oune; they replying no, _cela est vilain, cela est honteux, dit-il_. His answer was told to the King: he did laught and say, _il a raison, il a raison_. [397] Hangings, tapestry. They prove that a woman hes not a soul out of that of the 22 of Genesis, And all the souls of Abrahams house ware circumcised, but so be its certain the women ware not circumcised; ergo, they have not souls. Mr. Thomas Courty, preaching on that, be ye followers of Christ, sayd their was 4 sort of followers of Christ, the first was them that did not follow him at all, the 2 them that ran before him, the 3d sort of followers was them that went cheeky for chow wt him, the 4 was them that ware indeed behind him, but so far that they never could gett their eye on him. King James gave one of his daughters to the Count Palatin of the Rhin, Frederic, who was afterward chosen King of Bohemia in 1619, the States having declaired the nomination of the Archiduc Ferdinand afterwards Emperor nulle. This election was the occasion of thesse bloudy wars that troubled poor Germany from 19 to 48 wherin the peace of Munster was concluded. The Elector sent to King James desyring his assistance, who refused it (against his interest), wt this answer, I gave my daughter to the Palatin on the Rhin, not to the King of Bohemia. The Elector hearing this replyed, a man that marries the King of Englands daughter whey may not he be King of Bohemia. A Frenchman told me that he beleived when the devil tempted our Saviour to worship him by showing him al the Kingdomes of the earth and the glory of the samen, that the devil did put his meikle thomb upon Scotland to hide it from our Saviour for fear that having seen it sick a montanous, barren, scurvey country, he sould have conceaved a disgoust at all the rest.[398] [398] Montereul tells the same story. See his _Correspondence_ (S.H.S.), vol. ii. p. 513. [What follows is written at the end of book, and written the reverse way to the rest of the MS., the two writings meeting on the same page.] From Monsieur Kinloch, I have receaved first 100 livres at Paris; a bil for 150 at Orleans, another for 42; as also a third for 100 payed me by one Mr. Boyetet, marchand their. At Poietiers I have drawen on Francis for a 100 livres, of which I have receaved payment heir from Mr. Augier, marchand. I drow again for 200, out of which I have payed Mr. Alex'r 155 francks, whence their rests me about 46. In February 1666 I drow for 300f., out of which I payed 180 francks to my hoast; I lent 3 pistols to Mr. Alexandre, a escu to Mr. Grahme. * * * * * Claudes answer to the perpetuité of the faith 45_f_.,[399] Du Meulins Bouelier 30_f_., Hallicarnasseus 10 _f_., Hypocrates 5_f_. les Remarques du Droict Francois une escus, Fornery Selectionum llibri duo 6_f_., les bouffoneries des Guicciardin les lois usitees dans les cours des France de Buguion[400] acheptées dans le cemetiere des SSts Innocents. L'istoire universelle de Turcelin en 3 tomes 3_ll_., Le Parfaict Capitaine 20_f_., les oeuvres de Rabelais en deux tomes 1_l_. [399] f stands for sou; _l_ for livre. [400] Buguion, for Bourguignon. * * * * * In my voyage of Flanders I changed 2 Jacobuses and a carolus, amonting to some 30_ll_. To my hoste of Anvers, when I was going to Gand for 2 dayes and a night 6_11_. 5_f_., to the cocher for Gand 48_f_., for my diner by the way 9_f_. At Gand for going up on the belfroy 9_f_., to my hoste at the Cerf 4_ll_. 8_f_., for my place in the waggon coming back 42_f_., for diner wt that Suisse of Zurick 24_f_., to my hoste of Antwerp for a night 26_f_., for my place in the coach for Mardick 3_ll_., for my diner on the way 12_f_., for my supper 14_f_., to the master of the bark for Rotterdam 30_f_., for entry 6_f_., at the ...[401] house 7_ll_., for washing 12_f_. [401] A word here is illegible. The last part of it seems to be kerers. In Gold I have at present, 21 December 1665, 8 14 pound peices, 14 Caroluses, 10 of whilk I got from my father before my parting from Scotland, the other 4 remaines of 8 I exchanged wt Mony at London, besydes thir I have 3 other peices, which seime to be 10 schiling peices, wt 2 other lesser ones. I have a ring wt a 4 mark peice and a ii schilling peice. On of the 14 Caroluses is in 2 10 shiling sterling peices. I have but 13 Caroluses now. I changed on of them coming wt the messenger from Poictiers. In my voyage thorow Flanders for Holland, I spent 2 Jacobuses, so that I have no mo but 6 and a Carolus, so that I have no mo but 12; the Carolus at 10_ll_. 10_f_., the one Jacobus at Gand at 11_ll_. 10_f_., the other at Antwerp at 13_ll_.[402] [402] Half a page blank in MS. A breife account of my expenses from my taking horse at Edenborough, 20 of March til this present 11 of May 1665, according to the Scots account, and also after. First before my parture I got from my Father in Gold 10 Caroluses, or 20 shiling peices, 8 Jacobuses,[403] or 14 pound peices, wt 2 5 shil. peices, and as many 10. In money[404] I got first 50 shilings, then 60 halfe crounes, thats 30 crounes; and last I had my horse price, for which I got 5 pound and a croune to lift at London. Of my gold I spended none til I was in France, whence their remained only the silver mentioned to spend. Of this our journey to London spent 50 shilings, including also the 5 shilings I payed ut for the baggadge horse at Durham. At London of the silver resting, to wit, the 31 crounes and 5 pound sterl. I payed 9 pound of silver for 8 caroluses, whence they had 7 groats[405] of gain for every peice. This consumed the 30 crounes, a pound sterling and 2 crounes out of the horses price; so that for defraying my charges from my first arrival at London, on Saturday, April 1, til monday com 8 dayes, April 10, compleit 10 dayes, I had only the remaining mony wt in 4 pounds. Of which 20 shilings by that halfe day of posting to Dover was exhausted, comprehending also our expense for our meat, and in paying the postilion, for betuixt Gravesend and Rochester burn we payed halfe a croune; from it to Seaton, 14 miles (the former stage being but 7), 4 shillings; from it to Canterbury, 16 miles, 5 shilings; from Canterbury to Dover, 16 miles, 5 shillings: their was 17 of the 20 shil. At Dover, as dues we payed 4 shillings to that knave Tours; our supper at one Buchans was halfe a croune; our fraught throw the channell was a croune, and to the boat that landed us a shiling. [403] See Introduction, p. xliii. [404] i.e. smaller coin than gold; Fr. monnaie. The half-crown, 30s. Scots, 2s. 6d. sterling, was coined by James VI. [405] Groat (English), value 4d. No groat Scots had been struck since 1527, value l8d. Scots, or ijd. We landed at Calice on the Saturday morning, and stayed their til the Monday afternoone, spending much mony; so that from my arrival to London and my joining wit the messenger for Paris I spent 3 pound 10 shillings. Thus is all my silver, so that now I have my recourse to my gold, out of which I pay the messenger 40 livres to carry me to Paris, giving him 3 Caroluses, which according to the French rate roade 41 livres, 10 souse, whence 1 got 30 souse againe.[406] At Paris I changed [on]e carolus to pay Mr. Strachan and Mr. Hamilton, who on the rode in France had payed for me, as in the drink money, and in paying the messenger halfe a croune. [406] There seems to be a mistake here. Three Caroluses (20-shilling pieces) would be worth at their nominal value only 36 livres. But in France they did not fetch so much in exchange. If they were worth each 10_ll_. 10s., as the one he exchanged in Flanders (see p. 148), 30 livres to the messenger instead of 40 would make the calculation right. Thir ware all my expenses till I was answered of mony be Francis Kinloch, so that I find all my expenses betuixt Edinborough and Paris, wheir I arrived the 14 of April, to amount to 10 pound sterling give I count the peice I changed at Paris, to 9 only give I exclud it. All this being spent, on my demand F. advanced me 30 livres, 14 of which was spent on these books I bought at Paris, wheirof I have set doune the cataloge; 50 souse for a pair of halfe stockings; for a stamp, a comb, for helping[407] my whip and my pantons[408] I payed 10 souse; for a pair of gloves 18 souse; for vashing my cloaths 15 souse; a croune and a halfe among Mr. Kinloch's servants: theirs ane account of 23 livres out the 30. For the 7 other I can give no particular account, only it might be spent when I went in wt commorads, as when we went to drinke Limonade and Tissin, etc. At my parting from Francis I got 70 livres, which wt the former 30 makes a 100 livres. Of thir 70, 16 I payed to the messenger for Orleans, 4 livres baiting a groat for the carriadge of my valize and box, which weighted 39 pound weight, and for each pound I payed 2 souse. About a livre I spent in drinkmony by the way; another I gave to the messenger. Heir of my 70 livres are 22 gone. [407] Mending. [408] Slippers. Thus I won to Orleans. The fellow that carries my valize to Mr. Ogilvies gets 10 souse; at a breakfast wt Patrick Portues I was 30 souse. For books from my coming to Orleans til this present day, 11 of May, according to the Scots account, I have payed 8 livres; for seing a comedy 10 souse; for to helpe my hand in writting a croune; for dancing a croune in hand, the other at the moneths end; for to learn me the language I gave 2 crounes. To the maister of the law Im to give 11 livres 8 souse; for a supper wheir Mr. Ogilvy payed out for us 3 livres. This being all ramasht[409] togither it comes to 62 livres, so that of the 70 only 8 are left. Out of thes 8 I payed 4 livres 10 souse for a pair of clesps, whence rests only 3 livres 10 souse. I pay 24 souse for one vashing of my linnens, and 20 souse at a four hours wt James Hunter. Thus ye have ane account of all 100 livres I got from F. Kinloch til 26 souse. Ut of the mony mentioned I payed also 3 livres 5 souse for a pair of shoes. [409] Ramashed, ramassé. About a moneth after I had bein in Orleans Francis sent me a bill for a hundred and 50 livres on on Boyetet, marchand their. Out of whilk I immediatly payed Mr. Ogilvy for the moneths pension bypast 55 livres; for to teach me the language for the moneth to come 6 livres; for 2 washings of my linnens 40 souse, so that out of my 150 livres are 63 gone, whence remains 87 only. Francis, at Mr. Ogilvyes order, payed at Paris 42 livres. which Mr. Ogilvy was to refound to me: this sal pass as part of payment in the 2d moneths pension. Out of the 87 remaining I have to pay Mr. Le Berche a pistoll; Mr. Schovo 6 livres, whence their are only 70. For a pair of stockings 5 livres; for a wast belt 2 livres; for mending my silk stockings 25 souse, for washing my linnings 17 souse; so that now their remains only 60. Thir 60 livres put wt that 46 livres Francis payed at Paris, and was to be refounded to me, makes 96 livres, which Madam Ogilvyes extravagant compt for my 2d moneth, and my 6 dayes above (being) pension wholly exhausted, for first I payed 85 livres, and then for the drink that I had that night I took my leave of the gentlemen their a pistoll most shamelessly. This put me to write for a bil of another 100 livres, of whilk I receaved payment, paying out of it againe 30 souse to him that carried me from Orleans to Blois; to my host at Blois I payed 5 livres 10 souse, paying, to wit, for the victualls I took in wt me for the following day; to the fellow that carried from Blois to Saumur, 2 dayes journey, a croune; at Tours I was 36 souse; at Saumur, wheir I was 2 dayes, I was 7 livres 10 souse; to the fellow whose horse I had, and who bore my charges from Saumurs to Poictiers, 17 livres; to him who took us throw Richelieu Castle 20 souse; to the messenger that brought my box a croune; to Madam Garnier for the 8 dayes I was wt hir a pistoll, to hir maid 15 souse; for a pair of linnen socks 18 souse. Thir be all my considerable expenses til this present day, July last: all which ramassed wil amount to 53 livres, but in some places I most have heighted, for give so then I sould have only 47 of my 100 resting, when I have about 50 at present. Out of thir 50 I have payed 12 francks for a Corpus Juris; 4 francks for a Vesenbecius; 20 souse for a litle institutes, which ramassed makes 17 livres, whence their only remaines me 33: out of thir for a supper wt Mr. Alexander and all the rest of our compatriots above 18 livres; whence at this present August 5 rests with me about 14 livers 10 souse. Out of thir I have payed 18 souse for the lean[410] of Romances from Mr. Courtois, as Celie and the sundry parts of Almahide, penned by Scuderie; 50 souse for a pair of showes; 25 souse for our dinner one Sabath communion wt Colinton and Peter Hoome in the fauxbourgs; 8 souse for cutting my head; 5 souse on a pair of carts; about 10 souse on paper and ink; for washing 30 souse; so at this present first of September I have not full 7 livres. I have payed 40 souse or 2 livres for a pair of gallozes;[411] 5 souse for a quartron of peches; 5 souse to Charlotte, whence I have little more then 4 livres; 30 souse at a collation. [410] Loan. [411] Braces. When I was reduced to thir 3 livres, then I was answered of my bill I drow on Francis Kinloch for a 100 livres. Out of which I payed 15 livres for 2 halfe shirtes, but because we had 3 livres of old mony we shall call it only 12; 2 livres for 2 gravates; 60 livres to Mr. Daillié, whence I have about 25 livres. Out of thir 25 I have payed 3 livres to Mr. Rue, wt whom I began to dance, September 10, 1665; 20 souse at the tennis; 5 or 6 for lettres ports; 20 souse for a horse hire; 6 or 7 souse I was put to dispurse that day; 3 livres for washing my linnings; 8 souse sundry wayes; 5 souse on a quartron[412] of dragées[413] or sweityes, which are 20 sos. the livre; 3 souse on a peice stuffe, 2 sousemarkies[414] to Lowise;[415] 5 souse for ports; 8 souse to the Barber; 10 souse for a bottle of win to my C.;[416] 4 francks lost at carts; 34 souse at a collation after supper, when we wan all the fellows oubliés,[417] and made him sing the song; a escus to Mr. Rue; a escus for dressing my cloaths; une escus for wasching; [8 frank 5 souse for my supper the night of St. André; 10 souse wt Mad'm and others at the Croix de Fer].[418] Thus is al that rested me of thesse 200 francks, the first mony I drow at Poictiers gone. [412] Quarteron, quarter of a livre (pound). [413] Sugar almonds. [414] _Sous marqué_. See p. 92, note 1. [415] _Probably_ a maidservant at M. Daillé's. [416] 'My C.' has baffled me. [417] See p. 114, note 6. The meaning here is obscure. I can only conjecture that the party made a wager of some kind with the pastrycook's man for his cakes. See p. 114, Note 6. [418] Erased in MS., but legible. Then beginning of Novembre I drow 200 livers. Out of which I payed Mr. Alex're 155_ll_, whence there rests wt me 46 francks, of which I have payed 8 francks 5 souse for my part of that supper we had the night of St. André; 12 souse wt Mr. D. and others at the Croix de Fer; 8 souse to the Barbier; 12 souse for a pair of gloves; 21 francks to Mr. Daillie; 15 souse on Romances; 15 souse to Garniers man; une escus on the 1 day of the new year as hansel, les estraines to Rue, Biron, and Violet for their musick; 27 souse in collation to my countrymen that same day; 4 sousmarkies the Sabath I communicated at Quarter Picquet, being the 3 of January 1666; 52 sous markies on Nöels. When I had about 40 souse, I borrowed a Pistol from R. Scot, After I payed a croune[419] for the port of my cloack from Paris; 12 souse for win that night that Grame payed us his Royaute wt Frontignan and Enschovo'es. My oune Royauté cost me 30 souse on a good fat bresil cook and 8 on wine; 15 souse on a iockleg,[420] my Scots on being stolen from me; 5 souse on a inkhorn, my Scots on breaking wt a fall; 8 souse to the Barbcr. About the mids of January 1666, for a pair of shoes, which ware the 4 pair I had made since my leiving of Scotland, March before, a croune; to Mr. Rue a croune; to Madame Marie for my last washing 30 souse; at a collation 30 souse. [419] See Introduction, p. xliii. [420] Folding-knife. Etym., Jacques de Liege, cutler. About this tyme I receaved 3 crounes in lain[421] from Alex'r Home that same night that Mr. Mompommery was headed; 6 souse on a bottle of wine; 7 souse at another tyme; 15 souse at the comoedy; 3 souse for my chair; 18 souse at another comoedy; une escus to Mr. Rue the 20 of February; 20 souse at a comoedy, called Les Intrigues des Carosses a Cinq Sols, the farce was La Femme Ruse ou Industrieuse; 15 souse for mending my sword. [421] Loan. About the end of February I was payed of a bil of 300_ll_. I had drawen. Out of which I payed first a 130f. to my host; then lent 3 pistols, halfe a Pistol and 2 crounes to Mr. Alexander; out of it a croune to Grahme; 30 souse for a peice concerning Monting a Cheval, presented me by the Author of the samen; 10s. for mending stockings; a croune at a desjeuner wt Georges Sinclar and other 2 countrymen, coming from Bordeaux going for Paris; 30 souse to Mr. Rue; 20s. at a collation; a croune for La Perpetuité de la Foy; 30 souse on a collation in the fauxbourgs wt Mr. Bourseau; 30 souse lost at the fair on China oranges and cordecidron; 20 souse for le Capychin Escossois;[422] 30s. to Rue; 34 souse at a collation wt him; 40s. at another wt De Gruches and Ingrande; 40s. for une Voyage de France. That which remained of these 300_ll_. went away partly on my hoast, partly on my adieus, which stood me wery dear, and partly in paying the messenger for Paris (I payed 50_ll_.). [422] Father Archangel Leslie. It suffices to know that on my arriving to Paris I was wery light of mony, whence I borrowed from Mr. Kinloch some 20 crounes, of which I bestowed some 13_ll_. on books, thus, on some comoedies about 20 souse, on Scarrons Virgil travestis 20s., on Pacij Centuria[423] 30s., on Robertus rerum Judicatarum[424] 30s., on the Voyage de la Terre Saincte[425] 30s., on Laertius[426] 8s., on a new testament 50s., on Du Moulins Bouckler[427] 30s., on Mr. Claudes Answer[428] 45s., whence their remaines me about 47_ll_. Out of which I first payed neir 4_ll_. for a pair of shoes; 20s. that day I communicated at Charenton to the boatmen, the poor, and my seat; on day wt Mr. Forbes it cost me in a cabaret a croune, and Scot keipt up a escu dor, which was 5_ll_. 11 souse.[429] The day after at the bowlls I lost 4_ll_.; then I payed for Limonade 3_ll_. 20s.; then after 4_ll_. 10s. which I lost at bowlls; for a point de Flandres 15_ll_. Whence of the 60_ll_. their remains me only 6, to which add 5 I receaved from the Messenger of Poictiers, and I have just a pistoll this 5 of May 1666, of which I lent a croune to Mr. Grahme; then payed 50s. for a collation wt Kinloch, Mowat, and D. Hewes; also 50s. for a part of a collation; I payed 6 francks wt my L. Ogilvy at a collation; 30s. at another tyme wt J. Ogilvy; 20 souse on a Hallicarnasseus[430] and a Hippocrates; and that out of 38 livres I receaved from F. Kinloch the 10 of May, so that this day 16th I have now 30 francks. On Les Remarques du droit Francois a croune. That day I went to Ruell a pistol; on my journey to Fountainbleau 2 crounes of gold. On the Parfaict Capitaine and the universal history, in 3 tomes, 4_ll_. [423] Pacius, Julius, [Greek: ENANTIOPhANON], _seu legum conciliatarum Centuriae_ VII. (1605). Ed. alt. 1610. [424] Robertus, Annaeus, _R.J._, Lib. iv. 1599; new ed., 1645. [425] Doubdan, Jean, _Voyage_, etc., 1666. [426] Diogenes Laertius. [427] Molinaeus, Petrus, _Bouclier de la Foi_, 1619. Engl. tr. 1624. [428] Claude, Jean, _Réponse à la Perpétuité de la Foi_, 1665. [429] _Ecu d'or_. See Introduction, p. xliii. [430] Dionysius of Halicarnassus. On the 10 of June I receaved 20 crounes. Out of which I payed first 4_ll_. for Rablais in 2 tomes; 40s. at collation wt that Frenchman of the Kings Gard; 30s. the day after wt the Captains; 30s. wt J. Ogilvie; 6_ll_. for Mornacius observations;[431] 3_ll_. for Guiccardins[432] History, in 2 volumes; 40s. for Gomesii Commentarius in Regulas Cancellariæ and Le Martyre de la Reyne d'Escosse;[433] 20s. for Bellon[434] Resolutiones Antinomiarum and Molinoei Sommaire des rentes, usures, etc.; Molineus in Consuetudines Parisienses 50s.; Connani Commentarius in Jus Civile 40s.; Mantica de coniectur: ult. voluntatum[435] 60s.; Hottomanus[436] in Instit 30s.; Molinoei consilia 40s.; Menochius de Interdictis 40s.; Valerius Maximus 10s.; L'histoire du Concile de Trente 5_ll_.; Gellius[437] 10s.; Cepolla[438] de Servitutibus 50s.; les Memoires et le voyage du Duc du Rohan 40s.; Profession de foy catholique 12s.; Le Monde D'Avity,[439] in 5 Tomes, 8 crounes; Aubignées History[440] 4_ll_.; Pierre Mathieu his history, in 2 tomes, 3_ll_.; Du Plessis Memoires, in 2 volumes, 3_ll_. At a breakfast wt Mr. Fullerton 3_ll_.; at a collation wt Mr. Ogilvy 3_ll_.; 2 crounes given to the box of the Scots Talzors at Paris; 30s. given to sy the gallery of the Luxembourg; 40s. at a collation wt Mr. Hume and Grame; a croune on our diner that day that Mr. Geismar went to Charenton wt us; 4_ll_. for Munsteri Cosmographia; Thucydides 40s.; Desseins de Mr. de Laval 30s.; in collation wt that Gascon of the Kings garde (called St. Martin); Machiavellus 10s.; Justini Historia 5s.; Histoire du Seicle de fer 20s.; Les oeuvres de du Vair 40s.; Le Sage resolu, in 2 tomes, 40s.; Cardanus de Subtilitate 60s.; Histoire de Portugal 20s.; Tacitus 20s.; Remarques politiques from Henry Hamilton for a compend of Philosophy of Marandé[441]. [431] 1 Mornacius, Ant., _Obs. on Codex_. (1654), _on Digest_ (1654). [432] Guicciardini, Francesco, _Historia di Italia._ [433] Blackwood, Adam, _Le Martyre_, etc. [434] Bellonus, Joannes, _Antinomiarum Juris Dissolutiones_. Lugduni, 1551. [435] Mantica, Fr., _De Conjecturis_, etc., 1580. [436] Hottomannus, Fr., _Commentarius_, in iv. lib.; _Inst_., 1567. [437] Aulus Gellius, _Noctes Atticae._ [438] Cepola or Caepolla, Barth, _Tract, de Serv._ [439] Avity, Pierre d', _Les estats, empires, etc., du monde_. [440] Aubigné, Th. A., _L'histoire universelle._ [441] Marandé, Léonard de. _Abrégé curieux el familier de toute la philosophie_, 1648 and 1686. On the 14 of July 1666 I packt up al my books in a box to send them for Dieppe, and to the end they might not be visited any wheir else, I caused them be carried to the Douanne of Paris, which is the controoller of all others, and by which if things be once visited none in France dare efter offer to visite them. Their it stood me a croune or 3_ll_ to cause remballe it; 10 souse to cause plomb it wt the King of Frances armes; 30s. for a passeport. They lightly looked over the uppermost books. Then I caused it be carried to the Chassemary of Dieeppe. I gave the porte faix 20s.; 15s. for a Italian grammer; 5s. for Mureti orationes; 12s. to the Secretary of Sts. Innocents; 40s. for Sleidan; 30s. for Fabri rationalium Tomus jus;[442] for 4 volumes of de Thoues History 40s.; for Aschames lettres 10s.; for Le cose meravigliose della cita de Roma 8s.; for Pierii Hieroglyphica 50s.; for Harangues out of al the Classicks authors 50s.; to Schovo for a moneths dancing ii. _ll_.; 3_ll_. 10s. for a pair of shoes; 3_ll_. for sundry washings. [442] Primus. About the 28 of July I receaved some 56_ll_. in 10 golden crounes.[443] Out of which I have payed for Lucians Dialogues, le Tresor de St. Denis, Bodinus de specibus Rerum publicarum, Essex's instructions for a Traveller; 24s. for Oudins Italian Grammer; 5_ll_. for Index expurgatorius; 10s. for exames des esprits in 2 volumes; 30s. for Brerevood of sundry religions; 20s. for a Enchiridion Physicae restitutae for Mr. Fullerton; 20s. for a book of fortifications, not the Jesuit Fornevers; 3_ll_. for 6 carts, 70 for 3_ll_. 10s. I had payed for 4 volumes of Thou 40s.; heir again for other 4 I pay 60s.; for Scuderies discours de Rois 15s.; Itinerarium Hollandicum 15s.; 4_ll_. on a collation to Captaine Rutherford, etc.; 16s. for my breakfast wt Mr. Samuel Fullerton coming from the bastile; a white croune and a croune of gold...[444] 30s. for washing; 14s. at collation wt that Englishman Mr. Waren, his addresse in London was Towards Street, at Mr. Carbonells; 20s. lost playing under the hats; for Mr. Morus his poeme a croune; for a new testament a croune; for the State of France and of Germany, in 4 volumes 5_ll_.; to Mr. Fullerton for his Botero[445] a golden croune; for a purse at the faire of St. Laurens 20s., and that out of 10 crounes borrowed from Mr. Kinloch, 12 of August; 2 crounes given in drink monie; 8s. on fancies for the children; 21s. on a collation wt William Paterson; 7_ll_. for a trunck valise. [443] This gives the value of the _écu d'or_ at 5_ll_. 10s. See Introduction, p. xliii. [444] A few words erased. [445] Bolero, Giovanni, author of several treatises of political philosophy and history towards the close of the sixteenth century, some translated into English. Then to do my voyage a 100_ll_.; 38 given for my place in the coach to bruxells; for my diner at Louure 25s.; supper at Senlis 16s.; diner at Pons 16s.; supper at Conwilly 24s.; diner at Marchele peau 10s.; supper at Peronne 18s.; supper at Cambray 28s.; diner at Valenciennes 24s.; super at Kivray 20s.; diner at Mons 24s.; super at Bremen 24s.; diner at Hall 24s.; to the cocher 24s.; to our escort 7_ll_. At Bruxelles, for taking of my beard 9s.; for seing the Palais 40s.; for 6 dayes to my hostesse 10_ll_.; for my horse to Enguien 3_ll_.; for my diet their 3_ll_.; for washing, also for mending my shoes, 30s.; for my place in the bark of Anvers 20s.; for carrieng my things ther 12s.; for the removing them from bark to bark 18s.; for my diner their 33s.; for seing the citadelle of Anvers, wt some other smaller things, 18s. Thus goes the 100_ll_. II NOTES OF JOURNEYS IN LONDON, OXFORD, AND SCOTLAND, 1667-1672 AND OTHER PAPERS (1) NOTES OF JOURNEYS IN ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND, 1667-1670. A CONTINUATION OF SOME TRAVELLS. Sie 2 volumes in 4'to relating to the same subject _alibi_. The peace[446] was proclaimed at Camphire[447] the 3 of September, stylo novo, 1667, as also at Flusing: at Middleburg not til the 5, because their market day: their feu's de joy ware on the 7. [446] The Peace of Breda between Charles II. and the United Provinces was signed on 31st July, but the ratifications were not exchanged for some weeks. [447] Campvere, now Vere, a town in the island of Walcheren. Tervere (Der Vere) is the same place. I left Tervere the 5't, came to Flessinque; wheir we lay by reason of contrary winds til the 12, on which morning it was at south south east. Our skiper, a honest fellow, was called Tunis Van Eck. Coming out without the head,[448] whither by the wind or negligence of the marinels I know not, we dasht upon it which strake a lake in our ship wery neir my arme long. All ware wery afraided of drouning; only being neir the toune, a carpenter, a most lusty fellow, came and stoopt it wery weill; wheirupon we followed the rest and overtook them ere night, at which tyme the wind turned contrary upon us to south west, so that the 15 day at night being Thursday we was come but a litle abone Gravesend; wheirupon I advised Mr. Chiesly that we should hive of[449] the first boat should come aboard of us to carry us that night to London, which we did, and arrived ther tho late. Lay at the Black Bull in Bischopgate Street. Nixt day took a chamber in New Street neir Covent Garden at halfe a croune the week. Went to the Court, wher afterwards I fand Mr. Sandilands, Mr. Wallace, Mr. Lauder, C. Rutherfurd and a brother of his, Mr. John Chrichton, who was then with my Lord Drummond, Mr. Claude, etc., Henry Hamilton, who was win in to the Kings garde, P. Wans, Mr. Metellan, Mr. Don, Mr. Kirkwood, Mr. Ker my Lord Yesters man, D. Burnet, Mr. Johnston, etc.; kissed my Lord Lauderdales, Yesters, and the Provests hands; saw Sir William Thomsone, Collonel Bortwick, etc. Mr. Smith who was Mr. Simpsones man came over from Holland. [448] Headland, or point. [449] Off, so spelt usually by Lauder. Having stayed a fourtnight in New Street I came to my aunts,[450] M'ris Inglishes, house, wheir having stayed some 8 dayes, I took place in the coach for Oxford the last of September, being a Monday, at Snowhil neir Hoburne. Payed 10 shillings. Oxford is 47 miles from London. Saw Tyburne, under which layes the body of Cromwel, Ireton, and some others; saw that post to which they rode that would have any who ware hanged. I saw also the Chancellors house,[451] Dunkirke or Portugall, directly against S't James, a very magnificent building with a great park adjacent. [450] I have found no particulars about this lady. [451] Clarendon House, built by Lord Chancellor Hyde, was on the north side of Piccadilly, facing St. James's Palace. It was called by the populace Dunkirk, suggesting that Clarendon had got money from the Dutch for the sale of Dunkirk, and Tangier, the dowry of the Portuguese princess, Catherine of Braganza, for his share in her marriage to the king, which was barren. See _Pepys's Diary_, 14 June 1667. A gibbet was set up before the gate 'and these three words written, three sights to be seen: Dunkirke, Tangier, and a barren Queen.' Nixt we came to Oxbridge,[452] a toune 15 miles from London, wheir was their fair of rattles and other toyes for children. Their was also a market of horse and of cattell, for the most part come out of Wales. 7 miles further is Beconsfields, a village wheir we lay all night at King Charles his head. The host is a Scotsman called Hume; was made prisoner at Worcester. We was their but[453] that merchands wife that was going to sie hir child at Abinton (wheir is a braue market cross), M'r Lo, professor of Musick in Oxford, and I; the other 3 women ware at the Swan. Supper and breakfast stood me 4 shillings. [452] Now Uxbridge. [453] 'We was there but,' _i.e._ There were at our inn only. Nixt morning being the 1 of October we came to East Wickam,[454] a very pretty toune; then to West Wickam, being 5 miles; then to Stockam Church, 3 long miles; heir we walked doune a steep hil; then came to Whately;[455] nixt to Oxford, the whole journey 25 miles. I lodged at the Miter, a wery civill house. Calling at Exeter Colledge for Mr. Ackland, to whom I had a letter from Mr. Sprage at Leide,[456] I found he was gone unto his oune country of Devonshire. [454] Now High Wycombe. [455] Now Wheatley. [456] Leyden. Nixt morning I went and visited the booksellers shops. At last lighted upon on[457] almost forgainst Oriel Colledge at the back of Christs Church ['called him Mr. Daves'[458]], who had a most rich and weill furnished shop worth all the rest. Their I found the Heroe of Lorenzo and Arrianus, also Tyraeus _de apparitioni_.[459] _et demoniacis_. He had lately sold a Lesly. [457] One, as usual. [458] Interlined. [459] Contracted for _appartionibus_. After diner came Mr. Lo to me with a young gentleman who stayed at his house. He took me first thorough Lincolne, Exeter, and Jesus Colledges, then to their publick schooles, a magnificent building, wheir for all the arts and sciences their is a scool. [Illustration] Heir also is that library so famous, and undoubtedly the greatest of the World, the Vatican excepted, and that but of late since the augmentation it got by that of Heidleberg. The forme of it is the rarest thing heir be the incredible multitude of manuscripts never printed which they have gathered togither with a world of paines and expence, and gifted to the University. As their is their the gift of Archbischop Laud consisting of a multitude (vid. 2400) of manuscripts in all languages, as weill Eastern as Western. Their be all Sir Kenelme Digbies books, togither with Seldens, about which their ware a controversy in law. In his last will he gifted his books to the University, wheiron it was demanded whither Cambridge or Oxford was meant. Oxford carried it first because he was an alumnus of this University; nixt, because sundry tymes in his life tyme he had told some friends that he would leive them to Oxford. All the lower are chained; none can have the permission to read till he hath given an oath to the Bibliothecarius that first he shall be faithful to the Universitie; nixt, that he shall restore what books he receaves and that intier not torn. The papists gave occasion to this who under the prætext of reading maliciously tore out any thing that they judged nervously to conclude against themselfes: otherwise its disadvantageous to strangers who come but for a short tyme and have the curiosity to sie a book. They have a Catalogue, not, as others, _ordine alphabetico_, but according to the order they ware gifted in: if it was money left then their be the names of the books bought theirwith. Their are the maniest Theologicall books of all other, a great many in both law, _Corpus Glossatum,--Tractatus Tractatuum_ Venetiis 1584, _Vasquius_ 2 tomes, etc. Of[460] one of the ends of the Library goes up a pair of stairs unto a very fair and spatious gallery whither the students retire to refreshe themselfes with walking after reading. [460] Off, as usual. The walls are all hung with pictures of the most famous men both of their oune country and abroad, as weell moderne as ancient. Mr. Digby is drawen lik a old philosopher. The roof is al painted alongs with the armes of the University, wheir most artificially and couched up[461] in sundry faschions the name of him who built the gallery, Thomas Bodley. I saw a great many pretty medals wheirof they had 2 presses full. Their be also J. Cæsars portrait brought from Rome by a gentleman. [461] Couched up, disposed, laid on (like embroidery). See Murray's _New English Dict._, s.v. A litle below the Library is the Anatomy house, not altogither so weill furnished as that of Leiden: sundry anatomies of men, women, children, and embryoes. On man hes a great musket shot just in his breast, yet he did not dy of it but afterwards was hanged; a mans skin tanned sewed on straw, seimes like a naked man; the taille of an Indian cow, its white, wery long, at least in a dozen of sundry peices; the skines of some hideous serpents and crocodils brought from America and Nilus; a mans scull with 4 litle hornes in its front, they ware within the skin while he was alive; another cranium all covered over with fog which they told me was of great use in medicine; sea horses or sharpes[462] skins; a Indian kings croune made of a great sort of straw, deckt all with curious feathers to us (some being naturally red, some grein, etc.) tho not to them--they despise gold because they have it in abundance; a ring intier put in thorow a 4 nooked peice of wood, and we cannot tell whow; a stone as big as my hand, folded, taken out of a mans bladder, another lesse taken out of ones kidneyes. We saw that the crocodile moved only his upper jaw. [462] Sharpe, so written, query sharks. From this we went to a house wheir we drank aromatik, then to New Colledge, a great building. In the tyme of the plague the king lodged in the on syde and forrein embassadors on the other. They wer the French for gifting them a poringer worth 5 pound; but it was just at the tyme his Master declared war against England so that he went away in a fougue[463]. Went up to their hall, a pretty roome. Above the chimly is the Bischop that founded it; under him stands other 2 that ware each of this foundation, afterwards Bischops; and each of them built a Colledge, n, Marlan[464] and Lincolne. Saw the Chappel, the richest of Oxford; brave orgues,[465] excellent pictures, one of the resurrection, done by Angelo the Italian, just above the altar. [463] Rage. The sentence is obscure. Apparently the French ambassador intended to present the college where he was entertained with a piece of plate, when a rupture between the sovereigns occurred. [464] Merton, distinctly Marlan in MS. He had written it by the ear. Apparently it was pronounced Marton. Merton was founded before New College. [465] Organs. Just back from France, Lauder uses the French words _fougue_ and _orgue_. From this we went to Christs Church, the greatest and richest Colledge of them all, founded by Henry the 8't, or rather Cardinal Wolsie, who had wast designes had they not bein chookt. Their belonged to this Colledge by his gift lands thorough all England so that the students ['fellows'][466] ware as good as Lairds. The King took this from them and gave them pensions for it. Heir I went in to the Chappel with Mr. Lo, who is their organist, and hard their evening prayers, not unlike the Popish: saw the Bischop of Oxford and Vice Chancelor (for Hyde is Chancelor) of the University. [466] Interlined. By the means of that young student Mr. Lo recommended to me saw their Library, considerable for a private one. They have all the Counsels in 6 brave gilded tomes. They have a flint stone wery big in the one syde wheirof ye sie your face but it magnifies; a great stone congealed of water, another of wood. From that he led me to their kitchin; wheir ware 3 spits full of meat rosting (sometymes they have 7 when the Colledge is full). Then he took me up to the dining hall, a large roome with a great many tables all covered with clean napry. Heir we stayed a while; then the butler did come, from whom he got a flaggon of beir, some bread, apple tarts and fleck pies,[467] with which he entertained me wery courteously. Then came in a great many students, some calling for on thing and some for another. Their are a 102 students in this Colledge besydes Canons and others. [467] Suet puddings.--Murray's _New English Dict._ At the back of Christs Colledge is Oriel Colledge. Its a great building built by King Edward the 2'd, even when Ballioll was built. Above the inner gate stands King Charles the I. on horseback; then towards the broad street is the University Colledge, the oldest of all thesse in Oxford, founded by Alfred, a Saxon King, and long efterwards repaired, or rather erected (for the first buildings be like to fall about ones ears), by Percy of Northumberland. Over forgainst it is All Souls, wheir is a pretty chappell with a rare picture of the resurrection. From that to Queans Colledge, built long ago by on of their queans. Whiles they ware a laying the foundation they found a great horne (they know not weill of what beast), which since they have enchassed in silver and propine to strangers to drink out of. Their chappell is remarkable for its windows; in them ye have represented all the actions of our Saviour from his birth to his aschension. I saw Brazennose Colledge and Marlan[468] Colledge, also Balliols Colledge, which is not so pittiful and contemptible as many would have it. Before the utter gate is a pretty pallisade of tries. Within the building is tolerable; in their dining roome be battered[469] up Theses Moral, political, and out of all the others sciences. Nixt to it be Trinity Colledge. It hath 2 courtes: the inner is a new building. Not far from this are they building the stately Theater of cut stone for their Comoedyes. [468] See p. 171, note 3. [469] Pasted. Nixt day I went to the Physick Garden not far from Marlan Colledge. The gardener (a German by nation) gave me their printed Catalogue of all the hearbs, which may be about some 7000 in all. I have also some verses he gave me made on thesse 2 fellows thats keips centry, as it were, just as ye come in at the garden door; their menacing face is of timber; all the rest with their speir is artificially cut out of bush. They have also swans and such lik curiously cut out of the phileria. I saw the sensitive plant; it shrinked at my touching it, tho it was then excessively cold. Saw the tobacco: of the leives dryed they make it as good as that they bring from Spain, Virginia, Martinigo or elsewheir, if they had enough of it, and the entertaining of it ware not to costly; hence the Parliament discharges the planting of it. Saw African Marigolds, the true Aloes trie; all the wals cloathed with wery big clusters; tall cypruses, Indian figs, etc. The students can enter when they please. On the Thursday 3 of October at night went and took my leive of Mr. Lo. Nixt morning having payed my host 5 shillings in all (which made me admir the cheapnesse of the place, fire only being dear since the Kings army was their, who cutted all its woods about) about 10 a cloak bad adieu to Oxford watered with the lovely Thames tho wery litle their; it receives at that place the Isis whence Thamesis. In the coach was D. Willis his cheif man, a pretty physitician himselfe, going in to his Master, whom the Quean had caused come to London; a apothecary who also sold all kinds of garden seeds, and for that effect had bein at Oxford, P. Nicoll had oftnen traffiqued with him; a goldsmith's son in the Strand and his sister, and an old crabbed gentlewoman, tho she seimed to be of quality. When we walked up the hill at Stockam Church he showed me a number of pretty hearbs growing by the hedges syde. He confessed to me that tho they had a verie glorious utsyde, yet if we would consider the forme of their teaching and studieing it was werie defective comparatively to the oversea Universities. Their publick lessons are not much worth: if a student who is immatriculat in some on Colledge or other be desirous to be informed in any science, let it be Philosophie, Medicine or another, then he most apply himselfe to some fellow of that Colledge, who teaches him for a salarie; otherwise a student neids never make use of a master but if he please. Theologie is the only thing that flourishes their. Came back the same way to London the 5 of October, being Saturday. Nixt day came Haddow[470] and Bonnymoon to toune. Many a tyme hes he and I wisited Litle Brittain. We went throw Bedlam (I was in it and saw thosse poor peaple), then to Moore fields, wheir is a new street wheirin dwells thosse that ware burnt out in the fire. They pay wery dear for their ground and it is but to stand til they rebuild their houses again in the city. Then throw Long lane wheir is their fripperie; besydes it their is a hospitall for sick persons; then Smithfield East and West. I had almost forgot Aldergate Street, on of the nicest now in London, ye shall ever find mercats their; then we go thorow the Moon taverne. To the west of Smithfield is Snowhill, wheir the coach for Oxford is; then ye come to Hoburn bridge, a very filthy place, the street is large and long. In it is St. Andrews church wheir I went and heard Mr. Stellingfleet; the coach for York is at the Black swan their; above it ye come in to Lincolnes Innes Fields, a brave place weill built round about, much like the Place Royall at Paris. Heir lodged my Lord Middleton, heir is the Dukes playhouse, wheir we saw Tom Sydserfes Spanish Comedie Tarugo'es Wiles, or the Coffee House,[471] acted. In the pit they payed 30 p., in our place 18s. He could not forget himselfe: was very satyricall sneering at the Greshamers for their late invention of the transfusion of blood, as also at our covenant, making the witch of Geneva to wy[472] it and La Sainte Ligue de France togither. [470] Sir George Gordon of Haddo, 1637-1720 (see _infra_, p. 177), afterward Chancellor and Earl of Aberdeen, now returning from studying law abroad. Advocate, 1668, Lord of Session, 1680, President, 1681, Chancellor, 1682. [471] Printed in 1668. T.S. was the son of the Bishop of Galloway. He became conductor or proprietor of a theatre in the Canongate, Edinburgh, and published the _Caledonian Mercury_, the first Scottish newspaper. [472] Weigh. After some way ye come to Covent Garden, all which will quickly fall in to my Lord of Bedford by wertue of an assedation which quicklie is to expire, having let of old the ground on the condition they should build upon it and they brooking the ususfruit for such a space of tyme it should finally returne to him; and this they tell me to be a ordinary contract at London;[473] then New Street, Suffolk Street, Charron Crosse, St. Martins Lane. In its Church preaches D. Hardins, a pretty man. Heir is York house, the New Exchange, etc., then the Strand and Savoye, Temple bar within and without the Gate, wheir are all their Innes of Court, their lawyers and many booksellers. Then ye come to Ludgate hil; then to St. Pauls; then to Cheapsyde Crosse; then in to Broad Street at the back of the Exchange now: their is also Litle St. Helens and Great St. Helens, Leadinghal; also Aldgate, wtin the gate or wtout it; which is either wtin the bars or wtout them called White Chappell; out which way we went to Hackney, a village some 2 miles of London wheir M'ris Inglish hir son Edward lives; saw Bedlan Green by the way and the beggars house. Neir Algate goes of the Minorites leading to Tower-hil and the Tower, then doun to the Hermitage. The Custome house is in Mark Lane. [473] An early notice of building leases. London is in Midlesex; Southwark thats above the Bridge is in Surrey, thats under it is in Kent. Having stayed til the 28 of October (about which very tyme my mother was safely delivered of Walter), Hadow and I took our places in the coach for York. Their was a squire in Westmorland with his lady and hir sister returning home to his oune country, also a Atturneys wife who dwelt in the Bischoprick of Durham in the Coach with us. Had large discourses of the idlenes and vitiousnese of the citizens wifes at London being wery cocknies. We will not forget what contest we had with some of them at the taking of our places. Having left London, came first to Hygate, 4 miles, my Lord Lauderdales house, a village adjoining on the croup of a hill; then to Barnet, 10 miles from London; then to Hatfield wheir we dined, 17 miles, wheir we saw Hatfield house with brave parcks, all belonging to my Lord of Salisburie. A litle of this is the greatest hy way in England leading to S't Albanes. Came at night to Stesinwich,[474] 20 miles of London. [474] Stevenage. Nixt day, being Tuesday, and 29 came to Baldoc 5 miles; Begleswith[475] 10 miles; dined their at the Croun, wery bad entertainment; afternoon to Bugden,[476] 10 miles further, sad way. That night arrived their my Lord Rothes, my Lord Arley,[477] Sir J. Strachan, and others going to London. Its some 3 or 4 miles from Huntington; the country is all couered with willows like to Holland. [475] Biggleswade. [476] Now Buckden. [477] Arley, probably Airlie. Nixt day Vednesday, 30, baited at a willage called Walsford,[478] 17 miles of wery bad way. Came at night to Stamford 5 miles furder; within a mile of the toune we saw on each hand a brave stately house belonging to my Lord of Exeter, in one of them lived the Duc of Buckinghame. It stands on a river: whats besouth the bridge is in Northamptonshire, benorth in Lincolne. Its held amongs the greatest tounes of England after London. Norwich is the 2'd, it hath 50 churches in it: Bristol is a great toune to. [478] Watlingsford (Blaeuw), now Wansford. Nixt day, Thursday, 31, leiving Postwitham[479] and Grantham on our right hand, we entred unto the most pleasant valley of Bever, the best ground for corn and pasturage thats in all England: saw its castle at a distance, seimed to be most artificially fortified; it stands in Leister, Nottinghame, and Lincolneshires. Dined at Lougbirlington,[480] 18 miles: a long rabble of a toune indeed. Afternoon came to Newwark upon Trent; had fowll weather with haille. Its in Nottinghame: its commonly called the line of England, dividing it into 2 halfes south and north (all that live benorth it are called North country men) by its river of Trent, which embraces the sea at Hull; yet the halfes are not æqual. We saw the Kings Castle their, tho demolisht in the last Civill wars. [479] Postwitham, so written. North Witham and South Witham are near the route. [480] Longbennington. Nixt day, Fryday, 1 of November, left Toxford[481] on the Clay on our left hand, entred unto Sheerwood Forest, wheir Robin Hood of old hanted. Was of a incredible extent; now theirs no wood in it; but most excellent hunting: it was good way. Baited at Barnby in the Moore, 17 miles of Newwark. As we was heir J. Graham my Lord Middletons man overtook us going post. After diner past Scrouby and Batry and[482] came late at night to Doncaster, 10 miles further. [481] Tuxford. [482] Scrooby and Bawtry. The 6't day, being Saturday and the 2'd of November, it was a brave clinking frost in the morning; we clawed it away past Robin Hoods well; baited at Ferry bridges, arrived at York safely: lay wheir our coach stayed. Devoted the nixt being Sabath for viewing of the toune; saw that so much talked of minstrell, and truely not undeservedly, for it is a most stupendious, magnificent Church as I had sein. Duc Hamilton was come their then. Nixt day, being Monday and 4 of November, having bid adieu to our coach companie and Mr. Thomas Paterson who had come doune all the way with us, Sir George and I took post for Barrowbridges,[483] 10 miles. Arrived about 11 howers, dined on apple tarts and sider: on immediatly for Northallerton, 12 miles; arrived ere halfe 3; my horse almost jaded: was very unresolved whither to go any further or not; yet on for Darneton[484] (wheir the good spurs are made). We are all weill monted with a good guide: we are not 3 miles of[485] the toune when it falls pit dark; a most boystrous night both for wind and rain, and for the comble of our misery 10 of the worst way on all the rode; yet out we most it. He led us not the ordinar way but throw the enclosures, breaking doune the hedges for a passage wheir their was none. Many a 100 ditch and hedge did we leap, which was strange to sie had we not bein on horses that ware accustomed with it, yea some ware so horrible broad that we forced to leap of and lead over our horses. We was forced to ride close on on another, otherwise we should have losed on another. When we was within 2 miles of Darnton we came to a great river called Tees, in Latin by Cambden Tesis, which divides Yorkshire from the Bischoprick of Durham (for from the time we came to Barnby in the Moore til this place we ware ever in Yorkshire, which is the greatest in England); heir we lighted and hollowed on the boatman on the other syde to come and boat us and our horses over. If he had not bein their we had bein obliged to ride 2 miles ere we had come to a bridge: over we win, and at last reaches Darnton, both wet, weary, and hungrie. [483] Boroughbridge. [484] Darlington. [485] Off, as usual. Nixt day, Tuesday and 5 of November, on by tymes for Durham, 14 miles. My saddle proved so unmeit for the horse back that it turned perpetually with me. At last changed horses with the postillon. Came to Ferryhill, 4 miles to the south of Durham, askes for Isabell Haswal their, is most kindlie received; comes to Durham be ten a cloak, on of the most strong tounes, and that naturally, we saw in all England; then for Newcastle, 10 miles. Our postillon Need of Durham the greatest pimp of England. Neer Newcastle saw thesse pits of coall that carries its name. Then to Morpeth, 10 miles; which wearied us so sore that we resolved to post no more, but to hire horses home the Kelso way; wheirupon the postmaster furnished us horses to carry us to Ulars,[486] 22 miles; but ere we had reached Whittinghame throw that most sad and wearisome moore and those griveous rocks and craigs called Rumsyde Moore we ware so spent that we was able to go no further; sent back our horses and stayed their all night. [486] Wooler. Nixt day, being Thursday 7 November, got horses from that miserable village to carry us the other 8 miles to Ulars [Wooler[487]]. After we was once up the braes we meet with wery good way.[488] At Ulars had much difficulty to find horses for Kelso, 12 miles further. At lenth we found, which brought us thither about the evening; crossed the Tuede in boate just forgainst the toune, which beyond compare hes the pleasantest situation of ever any toune I yet saw in Scotland. Their stands the relicks of a magnifick Abbasie that hes bein their. Lodged at Charles Pots; fand a sensible decay of service by that a man hes in England. Having provided horses to carry us to Edinburgh, 28 miles, we parted nixt morning Fryday 8 November. [487] Interlined. [488] i.e. the road was good. Saw hard by Kelso thesse 2 most pleasant houses that belong to my Lord Roxborough, the Flowers[489] and the Friers. Throw muiresh, barren ground we came in sight of Lauder, 10 miles of Kelso, on the west bray, face of the Lider Water. Over forgainst it stands a pretty house belonging to my Lord Lauderdale: 4 mile further of excellent way all amongs the mids of hills stands Ginglekirk[490] wheir we dined; then forward our Sautry[491] hils of whilk we discovered Edinborough. Passing throw Fallean[492] came to the Furd within 6 mile of Edinborrough, yet we called first at New Cranston, Sir J. Fletchers house; but himselfe was in the north marrieing the Lady Elsick; his sone James and his daughter ware at Ormaston. James as soon as he heard we was their came to the foord to us, stayed with us all night; took us up to Cranston with him; wheir was receaved most magnifickly by him and his sister. [489] Now Floors. [490] Now Channelkirk, still locally pronounced Shinglekirk. [491] Soutra. [492] Now Fala. Parted that day, being Saturday and 9 of November 1667, for Edinborough, whither by Dalkeith I arrived safelie about 4 a Cloak in the afternoon amongs my friends, from whom I had bein absent some 2 years and 8 moneths. DEO GRATIAS. Accompte of my expence at London from September 6 to the 9 of November 1667. In money from Freiston received 36 lb. 14 s. from Lindsay by a bill, 19 lb., in all 55 lb. 15 s. sterling. For a 4 nights diet and chamber maille in New Street 0 17 0, for a suite of cloaths, 4 yards and 1/2 at 16 s. 3 yards sargeat, 4 s. and 6. so much taby. the garniture about the sleives, in garters, shoe strings, etc., 1 lb. 16 s. the making, 14 s. with the other appartenances, in all it stood me some 9 pound 10 s. For 2 laced bands, 3 0 0 For a laced gravate, 0 12 0 For 4 pair of holland sleives at 8 s the peice, 1 12 0 For 4 pair of laced cuffes to them, 1 1 0 For silk stockings, 0 12 6 For worsted ones, 0 6 0 For Jesmine gloves, 0 2 6 For a fusting wascoat, 0 5 0 For 2 whole shirtes, 0 12 0 For 2 pair drawers, 0 9 0 For 3 pair shoes, 0 3 0 For a cloathbag, 0 8 0 My Oxford woyage and back, 1 0 0 My expence that week, 0 10 0 For books bought their, my catalogue amounts to, 8 9 0 Given to Mris Inglish and hir maid, 5 0 0 For my place to York, 2 5 0 For my expence thither, 0 11 0 For 6 stages post, 1 10 0 For hired horses from Morpeth to this, 1 0 0 For my expense from York home, whither I came Saturday 9 November, 0 8 0 Lent to Mr Thomas Paterson, 1 15 0 Summa of all is, 42 9 0 Brought home 7 lb. 10 s. Repayed by Mr. T. Paterson 1 lb. 15 s. which in all makes 9 lb. 5. PETITION OF MR. JOHN LAUDER. Unto the Right Honourable the Lord President and remanent Lords of Counsel and Session the humble petition of Mr. John Lauder sheweth, That wheir your petitioner having applied himselfe to the study of the Civil law both at home and abroad, and being resolved to emprove the samen and to exerce it as Advocat, May it theirfor please your Lordships to remit your petitioner to the Dean of Faculty and Advocats for his tryall in the ordinar way in order to the office of ane advocat. And your Lordships favourable returne heirto. 21 January 1668. The Lords having considered this bill and desyre theirof remits the petitioner to the Dean of Faculty and Advocats to the effect they may take triall of his knowledge of the Civill law and make report to the haill Lords their anent. JOHN GILMOUR, I.P.D. Remits the supplicant to the private examinators to take tryall of his qualifications and to report. ROBERT SINCLAIR. 27 January 1668. The private examinators having taken tryall of the supplicants qualifications of the Civill law finds him sufficiently qualified theirin and remits him to his further tryall. ROBERT DICKSON, GEOR. NICOLSONE. PAT. HOOME, RODER. MACKEINZIE. JAMES DAES. Edemborough, 28 January 1668. Assignes to the supplicant for the subiect of his publick examination. Tit. D. _de collatione bonorum._ ROBERT SINCLAIR. Edemborough, 15 February 1668. The body of Advocats being met and having heard the supplicant sustain his tryal before them upon the befor-assigned title, did unanimously approve him theirin and recommend him for his lesson to the Lords favour. GEORGE MACKENZIE, in absence of D. of F. 22 February 1668. The Lords having considered the Report above written assignes to the petitioner the day of June nixt (which indeed was the 5h) to finish his tryall in order to the office of a ordinire advocate, and recommends the petitioner to the Dean of faculty for to have ane Law assigned to him to that effect. JOHN GILMOUR, I.P.D. Edemborough, 1668. Assignes to the supplicant for the subject of his publick lesson. _l. diffamari C. de Ingenuis Manumissis_. ROBERT SINCLAIRE. I was admitted advocat on the 5 of June 1668. * * * * * [493] [493] A page scored out. In August 1668 I went home with my sister for Glasco. Went by the White house, the Coudbridge, Corstorphin, held up to the right hand, saw Gogar on the left, Ingleston, Boghall, Norvells house. Came to Kirkliston, 6 miles from Edemburgh. Neir it on this syde of the Water is Carlaury; a mile furder is the Castle of Nidry; both it and Kirkliston toune belongs to my Lord Vinton, and Newliston on the left hand[494] then came to Lithcow, Limnuchum[495] 12 miles from Edenburgh. Baited at on Chrightones forgainst the Palace, which hes bein werie magnificent, is now for the most part ruinous. Under it stands the Loch, in the midle wheirof is a litle island with tries. In the midst of the court is a most artificiall font of most excellent water. Their is ane in the toune: their ... [496] wes neir the palace. They are a building a tolbuith all of aislaer work. [494] On margin [Vinsbrugh, Duntarvy, Wrae, Monteith], [495] Limnuchum, the Latin name. Arthur Johnston, in his _Carmen de Limnucho_, quoted at length by Sir Robert Sibbald, 'Nobile Limnuchum est Patio de marmore templum,' etc.-Treatises, Linlithgow, p. 16. [496] About two words obliterated. A mile from this on our left hand we saw Kettelston Stewart, then wheir the famous city of Camelon stood built by Cruthne Camelon first King of the Picts--330 years before Christ--alongs the river of Carron whither the sea also came up, so that yet to this day digging deip they find tackles and anchores and other appartenances of ships. Its thought that when the sea gained in Holland and the Netherlands it retired heir; so that now its not within 3 miles of this place now. Vespasian in the reigne of our Caratacus, 35 years after Christ, took it and sackt it. At last finally ransackt and ruined by Kenneth the 2d in the year of Christ 834. Neir to this place stands Dunipace with the 2 artificiall monts before the gate called Dunnipacis. Heir also is that old building called by some Arthurs Oven, and relicts of the great Wall of Adrian. But of all this consult Buchanan, lib 10, pag. 16, 17, 18. Within a mile of Falkirk stands Calendar, the residence of the Earles of Callendar, a place full of pleasure. We lay at Falkirk 6 miles beyond Linligligow. Nixt day on for Kilsith, 9 miles furder. Saw Cumbernauld and that great mosse wheir that fatall battell of Kilsith[497] was fought, 6000 slayn on the place. Past by the Water of Bony wheir John Scots mother lives. Bayted at Kilsith, saw the old place which was burned by the Englishs, and the new place, then other 9 miles to Glascow. Passed by Calder and a Water of the samen name. Saw Mucdock[498] at a distance, my Lord Montrosse his residence. [497] Montrose defeated the Covenanters under Baillie at Kilsyth in 1645. [498] Now Mugdock. Being arrived at Glasco we lighted at my sisters[499] in the Trone gate: then saw Old Colin at his house in the Bridge gate; then saw their Merchants Hall with its garden in the same street; then the 2 Hutchesones brether ther hospitall in the Tronegate. The eldest brother was a Wrytter. Then saw their bridge over Clyde, of which a man hes a most fair prospect both up the river and doune the river of all the trough of Clyde. [499] Mr. Laing mentions that one of Lauder's stepsisters was married to Campbell of Blythswood. Nixt day heard sermon in the Trone church: fornoon, Mr. Robert Stirling; afternoon, Mr. Milne. After sermon went to their Bromeylaw, wheir is their key for their boat, and a spring of most rare water. Nixt day saw their tolbuith, Gallowgate, Saltmarket, Colledge with the priveledges of the University of Bononia; their great church, on under another,[500] with the castle, the bischops residence with the Bischops hospitall and the tradesmen their hospitall, both at the head of the toune, which comes running doun from a eminence towards the river, supposing the river to be the edge of this book, in this fashion. [500] The crypt. [Illustration] We went after for the Ranfield, 5 short miles from Glasco, on the south side of the river. Saw on the way Govan, Renfrew, burgh royal. On the other syde ware Parket,[501] Scotts-toune Stewart lately married to Roysaithes daughter, and the Barnes. Ranfield stands most pleasantly with abondance of planting betuixt the Clyde and the Greiff[502] or Carst,[503] that comes from Pasley. [501] Now Partick. [502] Now Gryfe. [503] Now Cart. Went up to Pasley by the Knock: its 2 mile from the Ranfield, a most pleasant place with a pretty litle toune. In former tymes it belonged to my Lord Abercorn. Now my Lord Cochrane hath it, who sold to the toune for 4000 merks the right he had of the election of their Magistrates, which he sore repents now, for since the toune cares not for him. It hes bein a most magnificent Abbaye, much of it ruined now. Ye enter into the court by a great pend[504] most curiously built. The wals of the yard may almost passe for a miracle because of their curious workmanship and extent. The yards are no wayes keipt in order. My Lord hes enclosed a wast peice of ground for a park. [504] Arched passage. Nixt morning we went for Dumbarton, having crossed the river 5 long miles from the Ranfield and 10 from Glasco. Saw on the way Rowlan on our right hand, Bischopton, Brisbane, Erskin belonging to Hamilton of Orbiston, both on the other syde of the river. Came throught Kirkpatrick, which is the great mercat toune of the Hyland kyne; saw Castle Pottage; then by Dunglasse a ruined castle standing on a litle rock in the Clyde belonging to Sir John Colquhon of Luz[505]; then by the craig called Dunbuc came to Dumbarton toune, wheir meet with Walter Watsone, provest of Dumbritton. Stayed at his brothers: went over to the rock, a most impregnable place as any part of the world can show. Was so fortunat that Major George Grant was not their. The gunner went alongs with us and shewed us the cannons, some Scotes peices, some English, some French, some Flemish, one braze[506] of 34 pound bal taken up out of that ship of the invincible armado which was cast away on the north of Scotland in the 88. Their was 2 also iron peices carrieing 32 pound ball, a peice casten in King James the 4't his tyme, carried with him to Floudoun, and taken then and keipt ay to Charles the I., his tyme. They call them demy canons, some of one lb, some of 8, some of 14 lb ball, etc. They have excellent springs of water in many places of the rock: their ammunition house is almost on the top of it. Of it we saw my Lord Glencairnes house of residence, also Newwark, and under it the bay wheir Glasco is building their Port Glasco. Neir to Dumbarton stands Fulwood belonging to the Sempills. The Levin comes in to the Clyde heir. The provest heir related to me that merrie passage betuixt Thomas Calderwood and him. Its a most debaucht hole. Came back that night to the Ranfield. [505] Now Luss. [506] Brass. Nixt day came to Glasco. That night our horses were arrested and pressed because of the rumor that ther was a randevouz to be at Loudon hill. Saw old Robert Cambell and young Robert with their wifes, James Cambel, John Bell with his wyfe, Barbara Cambel, Colin Maclucas, Daniel Broun, Collonel Meiren, Sergeant Lauder. Went out and saw Blayswoode,[507] Woodsyde and Montbodo its house wheir stayes my fathers old landlady. Saw his quarry, his corne milnes, and his wack[508] milnes. If that of Monbodo wer once irredimeably his he will have above 50 chalders of wictuall lying their all togither. On the south of the bridge stands the Gorbbells wheir is the castle of the Gorbels: in it dwels at present Sir James Turner. [507] Now Blythswood. [508] For wauk. We took horse at the Gallogate to go for Hamiltoun 8 miles from Glascow; saw Wackingshaw, Kelving Water, the Castle of Bothwell, ruinous, belonging to the Marquis of Douglas on the Clyde. Over on the other syde stands the Craig of Blantyre, my Lord Blantyres residence: he has another house called Cardonald near Renfrew. Then ye come to Bothuel toune, on halfe belonging to the Marquis and the other to the Duc of Hamilton; then ye come to Bothuel bridge--six pennies of custome a horseman payes; then a mile from it stands Hamilton, first the nether toune, then the upper. Many of the gentlemen of Cliddesdail was their that day at the Duc, as Silvertounhil, Hages, Master of Carmichaell, Hamilton, Torrance, Stewart Hills, Castlemilk, Rouchsoles, my Lord Lee which[509] standes within 2 mile of Lanerk. Lanark is 8 from Hamilton. Went and saw the yards:[510] great abondance of as good wines,[511] peaches, apricoats, figs, walnuts, chaistins,[512] philberts, etc., in it as in any part of France; excellent bon Crestien pears, brave palissades of firs, sundry fisch ponds. The wals are built of brick, which conduces much to the ripening of the fruits: their be 20 ackers of land within the yeardes. Their's a fair bouling graine before the Palace gate. Then went to the wood, which is of a wast bounds; much wood of it is felled: their be many great oakes in it yet: rode thorough the lenth of it, it is thought to be 5 miles about. Saw great droves of heart and hinde with the young roes and faunes in companies of 100 and 60 togither. [509] Which, _i.e._ Lee. Sir James Lockhart Lord Lee's house. [510] Yards, enclosed gardens, orchards. [511] Vines. [512] Chestnuts. Fr., _Châtains_. Nixt day on for Edenburgh, 24 miles from Hamilton. Rode crost the Clyde at a furd about 5 miles from Hamilton, came in to the muire way for Glasco: wery ill way. Came to the Kirk of the Shots; then to Neidle eye wheir ye go of to Bathcat; then to Swynish Abbey[513]; then to Blaickburne belonging to the Laird of Binny, 12 miles from Edenburgh. Baited their, then came to Long Levinstone a mile furder; then to the pile of Levinstone Murray: the house [Toures][514] was destroyed by the English. Saw on our right hand Calder, my Lord Torphichens residence; then entered unto that moor, Drumshorling Moore; then came to Amont Water: rode within a bow shot of Clifton hall and within halfe a mile of Eleiston; then to Gogar stone and Gogar toune; then to Corstorphin, and so home, being the 15 of August 1668....[515] [513] Now Swineabbey. [514] Interlined. [515] Nearly half a page blank. One day in a promenade with Mr. James Pilans past by Wright houses, Greenhill, Mr. (Doctor) Levinstons, then a litle house belonging to Doctor Stevinsone; then Merchiston; then to the Barrowmoore wheir Begs famous house is; then to the Brig-house which belonged to Braid,[516] was given of by the Farlys in an assithment, liferented even now by the Ladie Braid, payes her 200 merks a year; then up towards Greenbank to the Buckstone, wheir is the merches of Braid with Mortinhall and Comistone; saw its merches with the new Maynes of Colinton belonging to Mr. Harie Hay with Craiglockart, the Pleughlands, and the Craighouse (now Sir Andro Dicks, of old a part of the Barronie of Braid); then saw wheir the English armie lay, also Swanston and Pentland. Then came alongs all the face or brow of the bray of the Wester hill, which is the meith between Braid and Mortonhall, till we came to Over libberton, Mr. William Little. Conquised by this mans goodsire, William Little, provest of Edenburgh, befor K. Ja. went in to England: a fyn man and stout: as appeared, 1°, that his taking a man out of the Laird of Innerleith his house at Innerleith, having set sentries at all the doors, and because they refused to open, tir[517] a hole in the hous top and fetch him out and laid him in the tolbuith for ryving a bond of borrowed money fra a burges of the toun; which proceidur the Secreit Counsell then, tho summar, allowed of. 2°, thair having bein long debats betuen the toun and the Logans of Restalrig for the passage throw Restalrig's lands to Leith (the way wheirto then was just by the tower), and Restalrig having aither refused to let them pas throw his lands or else would have them to acknowledge him, Prov: Little being with K. Ja. at Stirling made a griveous complaint of their insolency; wheirupon he said he cared not tho the highest stone of Restalrig ware as lach as the lachest. Wheirupon the prov: Will ye bid me doe it, Sir? Wheirupon the K. Doe it if ye like. Immediatly wtout telling the K. or anie else comes he post to Edenburgh and causes cast doune the tour that same night. The K. tyme of supping coming the K. calls for his prov: of Edenburght: no body could tell. At last some tells that he suddenly was goon to Edenb: this moved the K. I'll wad, sayd he againe, its to cast doun Restalrig Castle. Go with all the speid ye can and forbid it. Are anie could come their it was done. K. Ja: used to call the Huntly the 1 noble man of his kingdome and the provest of Edenb the 2d. [516] Dick of Braid. [517] Strip off part of the roof, and so make a hole. To returne. From Over liberton saw the byway to St. Catharines Well, a quarter of a mile from Liberton, Leswaid, and Drodden;[518] then came to Libberton Kirk; then came neir to Libberton burne, and turned up to Blackfurd, wheir we saw Braids merches with Libberton moore, now arable ground, bought lately by the President.[519] Also wt Grange[520] saw _Sacellum Sancti Marlorati_ Semirogues Chappell.[521] That burne that runes throw the Brighouse goes by Blackfurd to the Calsay[522] and Powburne, then to Dudiston Loch, out of which it runes again by West Dudiston milnes and is the Thiget burne.[523] Braides burne againe runes by Libbertone toune to Peppermilne, fra that straight to Nidrie by Brunstone and its milnes to the sea, a mile west of Musleburgh: the Magdalen[524] bridge layes over it their. [518] Anciently Dredden, now Dryden. [519] Sir John Gilmour. [520] Dick of Grange. See Appendix I., p. 239, note. [521] The two names seem to denote the same chapel. St. Roque's Chapel was on the Boroughmuir, half-a-mile west of Grange House. See Bishop Forbes's _Kalendar of Scottish Saints_ s.v., Semirookie: 'Aug. 16, 1327. Under this corruption we find the popular designation of a chapel dedicated to St. Roque, just outside the east gate of Dundee.' The other name, distinctly written, looks like a corruption of St. Mary of Loretto. Besides the more celebrated shrine at Musselburgh, there is a tradition of a Loretto chapel near the Lady's Wynd. Possibly Lauder confused it with St. Roque's Chapel. [522] Causeway, highroad. [523] So sometimes spelt, more often Figgate or Fegot. The course of the two streams is incorrectly described. [524] So called from a chapel to St. Mary Magdalen. That nunnerie the walls wheirof are standing at the Cheyns[525] was destined most by[526] burgesses daughters, as also that whilk was in the Colledge Yaird called _Monasterium Sanctae Mariae in Campis_. [525] Cheyns, now Sciennes, convent of St. Catherine of Sienna. [526] Destined by, meaning 'destined for,' hence, 'occupied by.' Cheynes holds of the toun: they ware Robisons that possest it of old; Grange by the Cants; Craigmillar, Prestons, Edmistons, of that Ilk, now Reth,[527] first of that name being Chancellar Seaton his servand and carried the purse before him; Shirefhal, Giffards, then bought by the Earl of Morton, Lord Dalkeith, now it belongs to the Balcleuch; Preistfield (never kirk lands, tho the name would seime to say so), Hamilton, Tam of the Cougates[528] father; before them in the Chopmans; as also in the Cants. [527] In 1671 the second son of Wauchope of Niddrie married the daughter and heiress of Raith of Edmonston. [528] Thomas Hamilton, first Earl of Haddington, favourite of James VI., who so styled him. Went on the 20 of September 1668 to Musselburgh to sie the Mid Lothian Militia, being a regiment 10 companies (_id est_, Lauderdales Collonel, Sir Jo. Nicolsons of Polton Lieutenant Collonel, Gogars Major, Mortanhalls, Deans, Halzeards, Calderhalls, Sir Mark Kars[529] of Cockpens, etc.), muster in a rendezvous in the Links. Saw in going Stainehill, a sweit place, the Dobies, ware burgesses, now Mr. William Sharps, keiper of the Kings Signet, about a mile on the west of Mussleburgh Water and bridge and Mussleburgh on the eist. [529] Apparently a son of the Earl of Lothian, afterwards a general of the army. On the way to the south stands Innerask[530] with its kirk. Hard at the toune stands Pinkie, built about the year 1612 by Alexander Seton, Erle of Dumferling, Lord High Chancellar of Scotland. His lady was Maitland, a daughter of the then Lord Thirlistanes (who had bein King James his Secretarie and Chancellar), now Erles of Lauderdale: his name and hirs are in manie places of the house. This Erle of Dunferline that stayes at London is his sone, hes so morcaged his Estate that my Lord Tueddalle for security of cautionry for him hes tane possession of Pinkie, Fyvie, Dunferline, with whatsomever other thing rests of his estate and is like to bruik it. Its a most magnificent, statelie building [it hes but 20 chalder victual belonging to it]:[531] much cost hes bein wared theirupon. Their is a brave building of a well in the court, fine shade of tries that fetches you into it, excellent lar[ge] gallries and dining roumes. He hes bein mighty conceity in pretty mottoes and sayings, wheirof the walls and roofs of all the roumes are filled, stuffed with good moralitie, tho somethat pedantick. See Spotiswood of him in _Anno_ 1622, page 543. A most sweit garden, the knot much larger than that at Hamilton and in better order. The rest of the yeard nether so great nor in so good order nor so well planted with such varietie as is in Hamilton yeards. The knot heir will be 200 foot square, a mighty long grein walk. Saw figs at a verie great perfection. Above the utter gait as ye enter in to the place their is an inscription in golden letters telling the founder theirof, and assuring them that shall ever attempt to destroy that fabrick by sword, fyre, demolishment, or other wayes that the wery stones and beams ut of the wall shall exclaime against them as destitute of all humanity and common courtesie. 18 plots in the garden, with a summer houses and sundry pondes. [530] Now Inveresk. [531] Interlined. Saw of[532] the linkes wheir Pinky field was fought on the hill neir Fawsyde. Heard whow the Laird of Carberrie then not desiring the battell should be to neir his house had so much influence on the Scots armie as to cause them leive the advantadge they had of the high ground and draw doune to the champagne countrey, which was a partiall cause of their rout, as also that the Englishes had their ships just at the links, who with their shots of the sea did our forces a great deall of hurt. [532] _i.e._ off, meaning 'from.' Saw Walafield belonging to the Paipes. East it on the sea syde the Salt pans. Above them within the land Tranent; then Prestonpans, wher was B. Jossies house; then Dauphintoun, once Archibald Wilkies; then Fawsyde, Ramsayes, on a hill head; then a mile beyond it Elphinston, the Clerk Registers;[533] then Carberrie, Blaires, they ware Rigs. [533] Sir Archibald Primrose. In the coming home saw Whithill, Easter Dudinstone, belonging to Sir Thomas Thomsone. He that first acquired it was an Advocat in Queen Maries tyme, who having bein much on hir party and afraid to be forfault, disponed his whole estate over to a 2d brother of his, out of whosse hands he nor his posterity (who are living this day in Rowen) could never pick it, so that this Laird of it is the grandchild of that 2d brother.[534] Its 60 chalder of wictuallat beir and wheat ever accompted the finest thing about Edenburgh. Its of great circumference. [534] I am informed by Mr. William Baird, author of _Annals of Duddingston and Portobello_, that this story is not authentic. Saw Brunstone and Nidrie. Came throw Restalrig toune, wheir stands an old chappel, the buriall place of the Lo: of Balmerinoch: also of old the parish church of South Leith, so that the minister of South Leith even now is parsone at this kirk, at least denominat so. Inchekeith might weill now be called Inche Scott, since Scottistarvet bought it, who had great designes to have made a good fischer toune theirupon. A litle after we went to Halton[535] (the young La:[536] being at London). Went out by Gorgie Milnes, belonging to one Broune; then by Sauchton hall; then by Belsmilne to Stanipmilne, Elies, up above which stands Reidhall, Brands, and Colinton, with Craiglockhart, wheirin the President, S.J. Gilmor, hes intres tho it belong to Colinton; then to Sauchton belonging to Mr. David Watsone. On our left hand was Langhermistoune, the portioners of it Mr. Robert Deans the Advocat and Alexander Beaton the Wryter. On our left hand Reidheues who are Tailfours, the last of them married a daughter of Corstorphin, Foster, for this Lo:[537] is Lieutenant General Bailzies sone, and got it by marrieng the heritrixe. Then came forward to Upper Gogar belonging to on Douglas, who was a chamberlan for the Earle of Morton. Kincaid of Wariston hes some intrest in it. Past Gogar Water, that comes from Halton by Dalmahoy and Adestoun, and comes down to Gogar place. On our left hand saw Riccarton Craig, Curriehill, Skene of old now Winrahames; Wariston, Johnstons; Killeith,[538] Scot of Limphoys, and nearest of all thesse Adeston,[539] bought by a Laird of Halton, who married on Bellenden of Broughton, to be a provision to hir children (for she was the Lairds 2d wife), wheiron he sold Cringelty neir Hayston in Tueddal (which belonged of old to the Laird of Halton), and theirwith purchessed Adelstoun and gave it to Sir Lues Lauder, who was the sone procreat betuixt him and that ladie of the house of Bruchton. Sir Lues married a daughter of Sir Archibald Achesons, who was Secretarie of Scotland, whom I have sein, and who bore him 2 sones, one evan now a preacher, married in England, the other in the Kings troup, with some daughters: on of them knowen to have bein to familiar with Sir William Fleming. Adelston now is sold to Sir John Gibson. Then saw Dalmahoy house with its toune at some distance on the croup of the hill. [535] Now Hatton. [536] Charles Maitland, afterward Lord Halton, and third Earl of Lauderdale, on whom and his children the estate was settled on his marriage to Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Laudcr of Hatton. [537] _i.e._ the present laird of Corstorphine. [538] Now Kinleith. [539] Now Alderston. On our right hand stands Ratho (that belonged to Duncan, who being the Kings talzeor conqueshed Bonytoun), now Mr. Alexander Foules; then Ratho toune, the halfe of it belonging to Halton, the other halfe to Ratho place; then Ratho kirk, the parish of many of the gentlemen of this country; then Rathobyres, the on halfe wheirof pertaines to James Fleming; then Northtoun,[540] a willage or meling[541] belonging to the Laird of Halton; then came to Halton. Their beside the old Laird,[542] the lady[543] Richard,[544] Jo.,[545] Charles and their sister Isabell[546] was Jean Areskin, Balgonies daughter, Elphiston, a daughter of Calderhals, and Mr. William Sims eldest daughter. [540] Now Norton. [541] Maling, Mailing (from 'mail,' rent) either has the ordinary meaning 'farm,' or perhaps a group of cottars' houses, 'maillers' or 'meallers,' who were allowed to build on waste land, and hired themselves out as labourers.--Jamieson, _Dict_., s.v. [542] Richard Lauder, last of Hatton. [543] Richard Lauder's daughter, wife of Charles Maitland. [544] Fourth earl. [545] Fifth earl. [546] Afterwards married to Lord Elphinston. Halton, as I saw their, carries the griffin bearing a sword, on the point wheirof is a Moors head. The occasion they tell me is that one of the Lairds went with a brother of Robert the Bruce to the Holyland and slew many of the Sarazens their, wheiron he added that to his coat. The motto is, Strike alike. Metellans[547] hes a lion with a star. [547] Maitlands. Learned of the old Laird that the Lairds of Calder ware knights of the order of St John of Jerusalem, after knights of the Rhodes, now of Malta, and that by vertue theirof they ware superiors of all the Temple lands (which in Edenburgh may be discerned yet by having Croces on them), as weill in burgh as in landward throwghout Scotland. Heard him speak of that Bond of Assurance betuixt the toune of Edenburgh and the Laird of Halton, the like wheirof few in Scotland hes of the toune of Edenburgh. This Laird hes bought in a place called the Spittle (_proprie_ the Hospitall), just over on the other syde of the water, which never appertained to the Laird of Halton of before. All the ground about it the Laird is taking just now in to be a park. In one of the chambers hings King Charles the 2d, King Henry le Grand of France, fetcht home by the old Laird; the old Earle of Lauderdale with his ladie, the Lady Reidhouse, now Lady Smeton Richison, the old Laird Mr. Richard, with some others. This Laird hes made a verie regular addition to the old dungeon tower. The garden that lies to the west of the dungeon would have bein better placed to the southe of the house wheir the bouling greine is, tho I confesse that by reason of the precipice of the bray hard at hand it would have bein to narrow. Hes its ponds. Came back the same way we went. Nixt day went for Eleiston, 7 miles from Edenburgh (Halton is 6). Went by Corstorphin, Gogar toune and Stone; saw Gogar place, then Ingleston, Eistfeild, belonging to James Gray, merchand, then Halzeards, Skein, then Newliston, Auldliston, toune of Kirkliston, Castle of Nidrie, Baruclan, my Lord Balmerinochs, Barnebougall, the Clerk Registers,[548] of old the Moubrayes, Dundas of that Ilk, Leine,[549] Youngs, Craigiehall, bought from my Lord Kingstone by Mr. Jo. Ferolme, 50 chalder of wictuall for a 100,000 merk, who seiking up some monies from some noblemen to pay it with occasioned the making the Act of debitor and creditor; then Kilpont, the Earle of Airths, Mr. Archibald Campbell hes 40,000 merks on it; then Kirkhill, Stewarts, conquised by Sir Lues Stewart the advocat; his daughter (a very good woman) is Ladie Glencairne; then Uphall Kirk, which is Kirkhils parish kirk; then Binnie and Binnie Craigs with Wester Binnie, which belongeth to Mr. Alexander Dicksone, professor in Hebrew. Crosed the Water of Amont at Cliftonhall. Beyond Binnie Craigs stands Dechmond, Hamiltons. [548] Sir Archibald Primrose, 1616-1679; Clerk Register, 1660; Justice-General, 1676. (See _infra_, p. 225.) His son Archibald was the first Earl of Rosebery, cr. 1703. [549] Leny. Came to Eleiston,[550] over against it stands Bonytoun, Scots, the Laird of Halton Mr. Richards ladie was of that family; also Clifton toune, consisting of many mechanicks, especially wobsters, etc. Stands in Linthgowshire 5 mile from it:[551] stands most hy and windie in the edge of Drumshorling Moor. [550] Now Illieston. [551] _i. e_. apparently Linlithgow. Inquiring, if because of its name Eleiston it ever belonged to the Eleis's of before. Answered, that no: also that the true name of it is not Eleiston but Hyliston. Belonged to the Earles of Monteith, and was a part of their barronie of Kilpont. Its some 300 acker of land paying about 6 firlots the acker; hes held at on rentall thesse 100 years. The gentlemen that last had it ware Hamiltons, ever Catholicks. K. James, because he had no house to bait at when he came to hunt in the moor, gave on of them 20,000 merks to build that house, wheirto he added 4 himselfe.[552] Its stronglic built as it had neid, being built in so windy a part. We first enter in to a hall. On our right hand as we enter is a kitchin and a sellar, both wouted.[553] On the left a fair chamber. Then ye go upstairs and ye have a fine high hall, and of everie end a chamber hung both with arras hangings. Then in the 3'd storie ye have a chamber and a larg loft. On the top of a turret again above ther is a litle chamber wheir their preist stayed when the Hamiltons had it, who had divers secret passages to convey himselfe away if pershued. Their was Marion Sandilands, Hilderstons daughter, with Margaret Scot his 2'd wyfe; item Sir John Scot of Scotstarvets picture. In the timber of the most part of the windows is cut out the name of the gentleman that had it, with the year of God when it was built, 1613, 1614. Mr. Jo. Eleis hes put up his name and his ladies on the gate. [552] _i. e_. the proprietor added 4000 merks. [553] Vaulted, _voutés_. Jo. Bonar hes bought a place just on the other syde of the loch of Lithgow forgainst the palace, called Bonytoun, which he hes changed and called Bonarton. Reidop, which belonged to on Drummond a Lord of the Sessionis, neir Lithgow, my Lord Lithgow hes bought it: its but a small thing. Yea manie of the Lords of Sessions purchess's at that tyme ware but small, divars of them no 12 chalder of wictuall. Neir to Binnie I saw Riccarton, Drummond. Came home the same way that we went afield.[554] [554] The passage which follows, enclosed within brackets, is scored out. [Illustration: JANET RAMSAY. (_First Wife of Lord Fountainhall._)] [I was married 21 January 1669 in the Trone Church at 6 a cloack at night, being Thursday, by Mr. John Patersone. On the 3d of December 1669 was my sone John born about on afternoone, and was baptized on the Sonday theirafter, being the 5th of December, in the Grayfriers, by Mr. David Stirling. On the 8 day of Aprill 1671, being about halfe are hower past tuo in the morning, being on Friday night and Saturdsdayes moring,[555] was my wife delivered of a daughter, who was baptized on the 23 of April, being Sunday, in the by kirk by Mr. James Lundie, and called Jannet. [555] Sic. On the 15 of September 1672, about halfe are hower past 5 in the morning, being Sundayes night or Mondayes morning, was my wife delivered of a daughter, who was baptized on the 30 or last day of September, being Monday, at 5 acloak in the afternoon, in the Tolbooth Church, by Mr. William Gairnes, and was called Isobell. See thir marked alibi.] About the 25 of Aprile 1669 I went over to Fyfe with my father in law. Landed at Kinghorne, wheir is an old castle ruinous, once belonging to the Lord of Glammes, who had also a considerable intres within that toune, but hes non now save the presentation of the minister (who is called Mr. Gilbert Lyon) onlie. Walked from that to the Links on our foot by the sea syde: saw Seafield Castle midway who ware Moutray to their names. The French in Queen Maries dayes made use of it for a strenth. Then came to Innerteill links, wheir be conies. Then to the Linktoune, divided by the West burne fra Innerteill lands, wheir dwell neir 300 families, most of them mechanicks, above 20 sutors masters, 37 wobsters, as many tailzeours: its set out to them by ruides, each ruid payes a shilling of few duetie. Saw the Westmilne house, the goodmen wheirof ware Boswels. The milne bes the toune of Kirkcaldie thirled to it: payes some 16 chalders of wictuall. Halfe a mile from this is Abbotshall church lands, tuise confirmed by the Popes: they ware Scots, cadets of the Laird of Balveirie. Payed a considerable few duety to the Abbots of Dumferling, which is now payed to the King. He[556] bes lately got in the Scarres and Montholie, 16 chalders of wictuall. Theirs a garden, bouling grein, tarraswalk, fruite yard, wild orchard and a most spatious park, with a meadow and a loch, wheir are a great number of picks, manie wild ducks big theirin. Neir it lyes the Raith, my Lord Melvills. Balveirie is his also, and Bogie, Bogs Eye, on the eye of a boog, Veimes.[557] Touch, Thomsone, his father was a Writer to the Signet, some 10 chalders of wictuall; Bannochie belongs to Boogie: on Ayton hes a wodset on it. [556] His father-in-law, Abbotshall. [557] _i.e._ Bogie belonged to a family of Wemyss. Saw Grange, a wery sweit place: was Tresaurer of Scottland in Quein Maries dayes, and Cunyghameheid was his depute, and his sone again was governour of Edenburgh Castle and was hanged. Slew a 100 Frenchmen once at Masse. Much planting about it. Is but 28 chalders of wictuall. Saw Innerteill. It layes low, belonged to on Erskein, was a Lord of the Session, had a daughter onlie, who married the Laird of Tarbet, then Colinton. Malcolm of Babedie hes bought it (its 36 chalders of good wictuall): gave for it 40,000 lb., and bids[558] hir liferent. [558] _i.e._ bides. Saw Pittedy, stands on the croup of a hill pleasantly but by; ware Boswuells. David Dewars father was tennent heir above 30 years. Its 25 chalders of wictuall. Kirkaldie is the best merchant toune in Fyfe: it had before the Englishes came in 80 sail of ships belonging to it, now it will not have 30. Then is Revensbeuch, its my Lord Sinclairs; then the Pathhead or Pittintillun, belonging to on Watsone in Bruntilland; then the Dysert, wheir are manie saltpans; the Weimes; Easter Weimes, Easter Buckhaven, Anstruther, Craill, Fyfenes, St. Androis, the Elie, belonging to Ardrosse. Went to Balgonie to sie the Chancelar,[559] which is not his, but the Earle of Levine his children, belonged to the Sibbalds who ware great men and of much power. Within halfe a mile to it stands Balfour, Beatons to their name, a cadet of Lundy, married the heretrix of Balgonie in _anno_ 1606, and tho he changed not his name yet he took the place of his elder brother Lundie. [559] Earl of Rothes. Saw by the way Kinglassie, Ayton, Leslie, wheir a most magnificent house is a building: it is neir the Lowmonds, and Falkland, and Lochlevin, in the castle wheirof was Queen Marie keipt. About halfe a mile from it is Markins,[560] wheir Mr. John Ramsay is minister, who is my goodfathers cousin german. Neir it stands Brunton, most pleasantly: it belongs to one Law. Their is much moorish ground in our way. [560] Now Markinch. Their was thrie thries[561] (as they called them) in Fyfe, Balveiry Scot, Ardrosse Scot, Dischingtoune of late, but Scot, and Balgonie Sibbald: Balmuto, Bosuel, Weimes of that Ilk, and Rossyth Stuart: then Lundie of that Ilk, Durie of that Ilk, and Colerine, Barclay or else Craighall, Kinninmont. [561] This seems only to mean that the three trios of lairds hunted, not in couples, but in threes. On the 5 of May we came over from Bruntiland. Skein in his de V. Signi:[562] _in verbo_ Clan Macduff, tells whow on William Ramsay was Earle of Fife in King David the 2'ds dayes. [562] _Verborum significatione_. Saw in the way to Bruntilland the sands King Alexander the 3'd brak his neck on. * * * * * Mr. Joseph Mede,[563] in one of his letters to Doctor Tuisse,[564] speaking anent the manner whow the great continent of America and its circumjacent ilands may probably be supposed to have bein peopled, thinks that the greatest part of that country (especially Mexico and Peru, who ware found the only civilized people amongs them, having both a State and a Church government established among them) was planted by great colonies sent out of the barborous northern nations laying upon the north frozen sea, videlicet, the Tartars and others,[565] who entred America by the Straits of Auvan, and that the most of them hes gone thether since our Saviours coming in the flesh. After which the devil, finding his kingdom ever more and more to decay through the spreading of Christianity upon the face of the wholle earth, which before he keipt inchained in black heathinsme, and being much afflicted with the great din and noyse of the gospell which was come to the utmost ends of the then knowen world, so that he was affraid to lose all his footing hear, he by his oracles and responses encouraged thesse Barbarians (in this Gods ape[566] who called Abram to the land of promise) to desert their native countrie and promised them better habitations in another part (which he might soon do) wheir he might be out of the dread of the gospell and might securly triumph over them as his bond slaves. [563] Mede, Joseph, B.D., 1586-1638. [564] Twisse, Wm., D.D., 1575-1646. [565] On the margin: 'Purchas in his Pilgrimage in Mexico reports this storie also.' [566]_ i.e._ imitator. The ground of this conjecture is from some records found in the city of Mexico of their kingdome and its foundation, bearing that their ancestors about 400 years ago onlie (who then dwelt far north) ware called out of that countrie by their God which they called Witzill Putzill, in effect, the Devil, to go to a far country (this was to Mexico), far more fruitfull and pleasant than their oune, which he should show them, and wheirof he did give them marks and that he should go before them. And that accordingly they sett on for the journey, and that their god went before them in ane ark, and that they had many stations and marches, and that they ware 40 years by the way, and that at last they came to the promised land, and that they know it by the marks their god had given them of it. All this in manifest imitation of God his bringing the children of Israel out of Egypt. Its reported that the State of Scotland looking ut for a suitable match for James the 2d, then King, sent over to the Duc of Gelderland (who had 3 daughters) some of the nobility and some bischops for the clergy to demand any of the 3 they should judge most sutable for the King. The Duc was content on of the Bischops [it was the Bischop of Rosse][567]--should sie them and feill them all 3 naked to discern theirby which of them was strongest and wholesomest like. His report was in favors of the youngest: his reason was, _Est enim bene crurata culata cunnata aptaque ad procreandos nobis generosos principes._[568] [567] Interlined. [568] The Bishop of Dunkeld (not Ross) was one of three commissioners sent to choose a bride for the king, first to the Court of France. Mary of Gueldres was an only daughter-Tytler, _Hist._ iii. 209. The story is probably apocryphal. But in Russia, when the Tsars were married, the inspection of the candidates was an established custom and ceremony for two centuries after the marriage of James II. A French gentleman being inamoured with a damoiselle of Lyons, going in to Italie to travell she gets notice that he had tane huge conceit of a Venetian, and that he was about to marrie hir. She writs a letter in a large sheit wheirin was nothing written but Lamasabachthani, withall a false diamond. He receaving it know not what to make of it, went to a jeweller to try the stone, who discovered it to be false tho it had ane excellent luster. After many tossing thoughts he fell upon the knack of it, videlicet, that it was a heiroglyphick diamant faux, and that it behoved to be read thus, Tell, false lover, why hast thou forsaken me. * * * * * [569] [569] There is here omitted an unpleasant story of a Duc de Montpensier of a former age, who in ignorance married a lady to whom he was doubly related by the closest ties of consanguinity. The same story will be found in Nouvelle 30 of Queen Margaret of Navarre (the scene being laid in Avignon), and in Horace Walpole's play _The Mysterious Mother_. Also an anecdote about the terms of the _tenendas_ clause of a charter said to be in the Tower of London, which is given in English, and is too gross to print. For farder demonstrations of the truth of that conspiracy of Gouries (which some cals in doubt), besydes what is in Spotswood, Mr. William Walker told that he heard oft from Mr. Andrew Ramsay that the said Earle being travelling in Italie had a response thus, _Dominus de Gourie erit Rex_. After which he took a strong fancie he would be King, wheiras it was to be reid, _Rex erit_, etc. In pershuit wheirof being in on of the Universities of Germanie and to leive his armes their, in his coat he caused put the Kings armes, videlicet, the Lyon, with a hand and a dager pointing at the Lyons breist, and so gifted them. And when he was returning he wrot to all his freinds and dependents to meit him at Muslebrugh, which they did to the number of 300 horse or their abouts, with which he came to Edenburgh; and that he might be the more tane notice of, he caused take his lodging in the Landmarket,[570] and came up al the streit with this train, and tho the King was in the Abbey yet he passed by without taking notice of him. He was likewayes a great receipter and protector of all the discontented factious persones of that tyme. [570] Now Lawnmarket. They say their are blood yet to be sein on the wall of the house in St. Johnston, wher he and his brothers ware slain, which cannot be washen away. Sir John Ramsay being then the Kings page killed him (he was a sone of the Laird of Wyliecleuchs in the Merse), and for his valeur and good service was made Earle of Huldernesse and got a great part of the lordship of Dumbar, which was then of the Kings annexed patrimonie, but on this accompt in anno 1600 ware dissolved by the Parliament. Thesse lands Mr. W. Kellie afterwards acquired. In September 1670 I waited upon my father to the Merse to sie the Laird of Idingtoun.[571] Lighted at St. Germains, so called from are old chappell dedicat to that saint of old standing their. From that went to Hadingtoun, saw in the way Elvingston, weill planted, but standing in Gladsmoore: item, Nunland, Adderstone, and Laurenceland, belonging to Doctor Hendersone. Above Hadingtone lyes Clerkingtone, Cockburne, Colstoune, Broun, who talk much of their antiquity and pear[572] they preserve, Yester, and Leidingtoune: 3 miles of stands the Registers house, Chesters, wheirin Mr. Patrick Gillespie now dwells. To the eist of Hadington stands the Abbay, Newmilnes, Stevinsone, and Hermistone, all most pleasant places and weill planted; as also Morhame and Hailles, past the Almous[573] house within a mile of Dumbar. Saw on our right hand Spot and the Bourhouscs, ware Happers now Muires; saw also Fuirstoun belonging to Andrew Whyte, once keiper of the Tolbuith; then saw Innerwick toune and church standing at a good distance from the house. Saw Neutonlies, Eistbarnes, Thornetounloch, Scatteraw, Douglas, and Colbrandspath: past thesse steip braes called the Pies. Saw Butterdean toune and house acquired by Mr. William Hay, the Clerk, who also bought Aberlady, now belonging to Sir Androw Fletcher: then saw Rentoun lying in a wild moir: item, Blacarstoun of on our right hand also in a wild seat, yet seimed to be reasonably weill busked with planting: item, Blaickburne in the moir: then Fosterland: then Bouncle, Preston, and Lintlands, belonging to the Marquise of Douglas and presently the Lady Stranavers jointer, worth 10,000 merks by year: then Billie, Renton to his name, and then Billie, Myre; then Edencraw, then came to Idington, 36 miles from Edenbrugh, ware Idingtons to their name, hes no evidents of it but since the year 1490. In this same condition are the most of the gentlemen of the Merse who ly most obnoxious to Englands invasions. [571] Sir John Lauder senior's third wife was a daughter of Ramsay of Idington. [572] The Coalston pear was presented by the Warlock of Gifford to his daughter, who married Broun of Coalston, telling her that as long as it was preserved fortune would not desert the family. [573] Alms. Saw the Maines, a roome lying betuixt Chirnesyde tour and Idington: ware Homes. On Patrick Mow, sone to the last Laird of Mow, maried the heritrix of it, and so hes the land. They tell whow the Earle of Roxbrugh was the cause of the ruine of the said Laird of Mow. Mow being on a tyme with some Englishmen took on a match for running upon a dog of my Lord Roxbrughs head[574] against their dogs, wheiron addressing himselfe to my Lord, he would not quite his dog unless Mow would give him a bond to pay him 8000 merks incaise he restored him not back the dog haill and sound: which Mow, thinking their ware no hazard in it, did. The day being come my Lords dog wins the race; but as soon as it was done my Lord had a man ther readie to shoot it: who accordingly did so, and fled. Then my Lord seiking the soume in the bond, and he unwilling to pay it, was at wast charges in defending, and at last succumbed, and so morgaged his estate to Adam Bell, who after got it. His ladie was a daughter of West Nisbets, with whom the young man Patrick was brought up. [574] Upon the head of a dog of Lord Roxburgh's, _i.e._ backing the dog. Saw Chirnesyde toune standing a mile of Idingtoun, belonging to sundry petty heritors, some of them of halfe mark lands. My Lord Mordington is superior as also patron of the Kirk: on Lanty is minister their. It will be more then halfe a mile long. At the end of it neir to Whitater stands the Nynewells (corruptly called the Nyneholes), from 9 springs of water besyde it, wheirof on in the fountain is verie great: are Homes to their name. Saw Blanerne, belonging now to Douglas of Lumbsdean. Saw Eist Nisbet, ware Chirnesydes, now belongs to the Earle of Levins daughter: item, Blacader, ware Blacaders (of which name Tullialen is yet), are now Homes who ware a cadet of Manderstones. At a greater distance saw Manderston, Aytoun, Wedderburne, Polwart, Reidbraes, a house of Polwerts, Crumstaine, Sandy Spottiswoods; West Nisbet, a most sweit place, ware Nisbets to their name. Saw Huttonhall, ware Homes to their name, now belongs to Hilton, which was a part of Suintons lands. Saw the toune of Hutton belonging to sundry portioners. Saw Paxtoun and Edringtone, a part of Basses[575] lands, and given away to a brother, now belongs to my Lord Mordington. Saw Foulden, the Bastile, Nunlands, Ramsay--his grandsire was parson of Foulden. Saw Mordington and Nather Mordington. Saw the bound road[576] within my Lords park. Saw on the English syde of Tuede Ourde the Birkes wheir King Charles army ly, Norame Castle and Furde; the ladie wheirof inviegled King James the 4t when he went in to Flouden: they have bein leud women ever since. Ker of Itall got it by marieng the heritrix. Went to Bervick, wheir they are building ane Exchange. In the way is Halidoun Hill, wheir on of the Douglasses was slain; Lammerton, in the Chappell wherof was King James the 3d maried on King Hendrie the 7th of Englands daughter. Their is a great salmond fisching on Tueid: for the freedome but of one boat on it they pay 100 lb. ster: per annum. We was at a kettle[577] on the water syde. My Lord Mordington had all the Magdalene field, but he could not get it peaceably possessed for thesse of Berwick, so that he sold it to Watsone. Holy Iland is 7 miles from Berwick. My Lords father Sir James Douglas was a sone of the Marquis of Douglas: he maried the only daughter of the Lord Oliphant. Idington is 5 miles furder in the Merse then Renton. [575] Lauder of the Bass. [576] Probably a road forming the boundary between the liberties of Berwick and the county. [577] 'A social party on Tweedside, common during the salmon fishing season.'--Ogilvie's _Imp. Dict_. Returned that same way almost and came to Auldhamstocks, 9 miles from Idington. Saw Auldcambus, then came to Eistbarnes; then for Linton bridges; within 2 mile of it saw the land of Nyne ware. Saw Gourlaybank; came and lay at Wauchton, who ware Moubrayes, and a 2d sone of my Lord Hailles marieing them they became Hepburnes. Quinkerstaines is a peice of old land of theirs. They got also Lufnes by marieng the heritrix theirof Riccartoun. But my Lord Hailes rose by 3 forfaulters: of the Earle of March, Dumbar, of the Creichton, and of Bothuell, Ramsay, the Laird of Balmayne.[578] Gorgie milne besyde Edenburgh did belong to Balmayne, but by a gift of nonentrie Otterbune of Reidhall, who was at that tyme Clerk Register, he got it. [578] As to Ramsay of Balmain being created Earl of Bothwell by James III., see p. 205. Saw nixt day Furd, Whitkirk, Craig, Hepburn, Balgone, Semple, Leuchie, Merjoribanks, Sydserfe, Achesone, Cassilton, Tomtallon, both the Marquis of Douglasses, and the Basse, 2 mile within the sea, about a short mile in circumference. Saw the May, belongs to Barnes Cunyghame. Saw Fentontour, ware Haliburtons and Wisconts, then purchased by the Earle of Gourie, now my Lord Advocats:[579] saw the Heuch-Home. [579] Sir John Nisbet. Nixt day went for Hadington: saw Ethelstanefield.[580] In Hadington saw my Lord Lawderdales buriall place, werie magnifiek. The Lord Yesters got Zester by mariage of the only child of my Lord Giffart. He had Beltan by marieng with a Cunyghame. [580] Probably Athelstaneford. In the coming to Edenbrugh saw Eister and Wester Adenstens, that is also their name; then Tranent, and neir it Windiegoule; then Elphinstone; then on the cost syde Cockenie, Seaton, Preston, Prestongrange, the Pans, Landnidrie:[581] up on the brae are Wallyfield, Dauphinton, Carberrie and Fausyde. [581] Now Longniddry. Master Thomas Scot of Abbotshall in King James the 5th tyme was Justice Clerk. Vide Hopes Collections, page 12, in principio. The Lairds of Glenbervie are not the oldest Douglasses as some say, but a cadet of Angus maried the heritrix theirof, they being then Melvils verie old in that name, and the powerfullest in all the Mearnes. They ware heritable shireffs their, and on of them being a great oppressor of the wholle country, manie complaints were made of him to the King. The King once answering that he cared not tho' they supped him in broth, they presently went and took him to a hill syde which they yet show, put on a ketle and boiled him their, and each of them took a soop out of it. It was in 1417.[582] [582] This story is told more fully by Sir W. Scott in a note to Leyden's ballad 'Lord Soulis,' _Border Minstrelsy_, vol. ii. p. 350, ed. 1802. Albany was Regent in 1417. They tell that amongs the manie Universities that are at Lovain their is one which of old was institute for poor scollars who had nought wheiron to maintaine themselfs, but that their diet was verie sober, nothing but bread and very small bread. At a tyme on of the students in it having a great stomack, in a rage sayd to his other fellows, If I ware Pope of Rome I would make the students of this Colledge to fare better then they do. He came to be Pope, and endowed that Colledge with great revenues, so that its the richest now in all Lovain. Of all the histories we have on record of magicians and sorcerers that seimes to me most strange which is reported of Ascletarion by Suetonius,[583] in Vita Domitiani, in pagina 82. [583] _Duodecim Caesares_, Domitian c. 15. The soothsayer's power of divination was tested by asking what his own fate would be. He said he would very soon be devoured by dogs. Domitian desiring to confute such uncanny powers of prediction ordered him to be killed and securely buried. The funeral pyre was knocked down by a storm, and dogs devoured the half-burnt remains. That Touch which George Tomsone hes wes acquired by his father from the Melvines, who are designed Lairds of Dyserts, who again acquired it in 1472 from on Touch, so then they have bein of that Ilk. Fingask, now McGill, ware Dundasses of before. (2) NOTES OF JOURNEYS IN SCOTLAND, 1671-72. [584] Having past over to Fyffe about the latter end of August 1671, I went to Leslie. Saw by the way Finglassie and Kinglassy and Caskieberry, bought by a Gennan who came heir about 60 or 70 years ago, and professed medicine: was called Shoneir. His grandchild sold it to the chancellor, who hes also bought the barrony of Cluny, sometyme belonging to Crighton of St. Leonards. Saw Touch, neir Markinch. Saw Balbirny, sometyme Sir Alex'r Clerks, now it pertaines to a tailzeour called Balfour. Saw Balquharge belonging to Bogie's unkle: then going for Couper, saw[585] Ramsayes forther,[586] now Pitcairnes by a marriage with the heritrix. Saw the hy way to Falkland, neir which stands Corston, whosse name is Ramsay: a sone wheirof was sir John Ramsay in K. James the 3ds dayes, and created by him Earle of Bothwell. He sent to the grammer scool of Edr. for a gentleman's sone to wait upon him, and who could writ weill. 2 ware brought him to choise one, wheirof Jo. Ramsay was the one; the other wrot better, yet the king made choise of John as having more the mean of a gentleman then the other, and made him his cubicular. He gave him the lands of Taringzean in Air, and Karkanders in Galloway, Gorgie and Gorgymilne in Louthian, and Balmayne in the Mernis. Without licence from him none could wear a sword within 2 miles of the K.'s palace. He made him also captain of his guards, vide Buchanan, pag. 444 and 450. Anent his being Earle of Bothwel Buchanan causes some doubt, because in K. Ja. the 3ds dayes, at pag. 452, he mentions Adam Hepburne, Earle of Bothwell; but I think he is in a mistake, for Drummond is formally contrare. The time of his death is controverted: some say he was killed at Stirling field with K. Ja. the 3'd, others (amongs whom is Mr. Androw Ramsay in his poems) at Flouden with Ja. the 4't. Whoever on Ja. the 3'ds death the title of honor conferred upon him was retracted; but he was not legally forfault nather in Parliament nor in a Justice court, so that the familie of Balmayne might the more easily be restored againe to that honor. He was the first in Scotland that ever got a patent of nobility. Buchanan throw the wholle tract of his history makes it his work to speak ill of all thosse who ware the king's favorites for the tyme. He sets doune all their vices in folio, but conceals the vertue by which it most be presumed they rose, and by which they did keip themselfes on foot. The tyme was their ware 22 landed gentlemen of the name of Ramsay in Fyffe. Some say Corston was a cadet of Dalhousie and some of Auchterhouse, of which family I have heard it contended the famous Alex'r Ramsay in King David's tyme (Buchanan, page 309) was, and not of Dalhousie; as also the Ramsay that was with Wallace. Of Dalhousie Ramsay, sy page 314. Skein, in the word Clan-McDuff, tells of W'm Ramsay E. of Fyffe, in K. Davids time. Its thought Auchterhouse is elder then Dalhousie; but that the most floorishing family is most ready to arrogat to it selfe as being the oldest house. Sir Jo. Ramsay that killed Gowry was a sone of Wiliecleuches in the Mers, and got Estbarnes, and was made E. of Huldernes. He was first made vicount of Hadingtoun. [584] MS. K. [585] It may be that the name of the property is omitted by mistake. [586] 'Formerly.' We saw also Rossie ...[587] and its loch, which seemes to be very large; saw Ramorney, Heriot; saw Scotstarvet, formerly Inglistarvet, on the croup of a hill; besyde it is the Struther. Then came to Couper by that way wheir the race is run; then came to Scotscraig-a part of it holds of the See of St. Androis and some of the E. of Mar--my Lord St. Androis big house, 6 miles from Couper and 4 from St. Androis, and a mile from the north ferry. It belonged, as also the Kirkton within a mile theirof, to George Lord Ramsay, father to this E. of Dalhousie, and was sold by him to S.[588] J. Buchanan, and Abbotshall conquestit[589] in lieu theirof. On the windows of the house of Scotscraig are the initiall letters of Sir Jo. Buchanan and Dame Margaret Hartsyde. Arthur Erskin got it from them, whosse creditors sold it to the Bischop, and got but 8 pence for their pounds of what was owing them. [587] Two words torn off. [588] Sir. [589] 'Acquired.' In the returning home to the Linkton, we saw 2 miles from the Craig Brackmont and Brackmont milne; then Forret, then Moonzie, as also Kinneuchar:[590] item, Dairsie, of old Leirmonts, now Morisones, with Bischop Spotswoods chappell he can see build their.[591] On the same water stand Kemnock[592] (theirs another in Fyffe called Cummock, who is Morton to his name), ware Sheveses, the successors of Wm. Sheves, archbischop of St. Androis, who outed Grahame, Kennedie's successor, and ingratiated himselfe with the nobility because of his skill in Astrology; they are now Mcgills; Rumgaye, also Migill; and Blebo, now Beaton. Saw Craigball, of old Kinninmonts, now Hopes, as also Cires. Came at last to Kennoway, belonging to the Laird of Balfour, and holden by him waird of the chancelor Rothes: its 12 miles fra Scotscraig. Then came to Dysert moor, wheir we saw the coal pits burning, which will ever burne so long as it hes any waste, but will die when it comes to the maine coall for want of air. In Dysert toun, hard by the church, which is a very old one, is a great cave which they call the Hermitage, and I imagine the toune hes bein called Desertum from it, yea, the most of the houses of the toun holds of it, and the parson of Dysert is designed rector rectoriae de Dysert. Then came to Revenscraig (alias Ruthvenscraig, of which name they seem to have bein of old), the lord Sinclars dwelling, and so to the Links, which is 6 miles from Kennoway, and so 18 from the Bischops house. Scotscraig was no old heritage to the lord Ramsay, but was acquired lately from Dury of that ilk by him. Balmayne had once Gorgie and Gorgiemilne, but Otterburne of Reidhall, by a gift of non-entry, evicted it from them. See of the E. of Bothwell and house of Balmaine largely alibi. [590] So pronounced, now Kilconquhar. [591] This seems obscure, though distinctly written. It may mean, 'ye can see built there.' [592] Now Kemback. The Bells wrongs themselfes in wearing bells in their armes, for certainly ther name is from France, in which language it signifies fair and bueatifull, hence it was the surname of one of their Kings, vid. Philip le Bell, yea, in the old Latine Bellum was that same with _pulchrum_; and war was called _bellum, ironice, quasi minime bellum, id est, minime pulcrum_. My Lord Twedale's predecessors have acquired all their fortune by marriages, so that all the original writs he hes in hes charter kist are only contracts of marriage. He was a cadet of Erroll, and the 1 heritrix he married with was one Macfud, and by her he got his land in Twedall; then he married one of the aires portioners of the Lord Frazer, and got some lands in the north with hir; then got Yester and many other lands with the only daughter of the Lord Giffart (tho my Lord Lauderdale sayes he can find by no record wheir ever he was a Lord). He got also Beltane by marieng the heritrix theirof, called Cunyghame. And now in this age he hes as much expectation to raise that way as ever. By his Lady he hes a claime to the estate of Baccleuch, failzeing of aires of this present Dutches hir body, tho the King hes somewhat inverted the straight succession heir. By his eldest sone he hes ane eye to my Lord Lauderdale's estate, providing he play his game weill, and is in hopes of getting the estate of Erroll entailled upon his 2'd sone. In the beginning of August, having gone to eist Louthian, saw Langnidrie; then a mile from it Reidhouse, the one was a Lord of the session and Tom of the Cowgate's brother; then Ballincreiff, belonging to my Lord Elibank; then Congilton, and on the brae above Ethalstanefoord, Byres, from which my Lord Hadingtone's eldest sone takes his title. My Lord Madertie's stile is truly Mater Dei, from some cloyster so named in the tyme of poperie: he should be induced to take some other denomination, this seeming to[593] blasphemous like. [593] too. * * * * * On the 17 of October 1672 having had occasion to go to Auldcambus with the provest, we went the first night to Waughton. Saw by the way Preston, Prestongrange, Seaton, St. Germains, Langnidrie, then Ballincreiff, then Reidhouse, then Dreme, and above it Byres, then Congilton, and above it Athelstanefoord and Westfortoun, and on the other hand Sydeserfe. The next day we parted for the Merse: saw Furd, Tunyghame, Westbarnes, Lochend, Broxmouth, Broxburne, Newtonlies, Eistbarnes, Spot, Fuirston, Bourhouses, Innerweik toun, kirk and place, Scarteraw, Thorntoun loch, Dunglas, Cockburnes path, then past the said path and came to Aulcambus path, corruptly called the pies. The provost hes a barrony their 4 miles long, and in the narrowest place at the leist a mile broad, which if it lay neir Edenborrough, we was counting would afford neir 100,000 mks. of rent per annum. He hes a great peice of Coldinghame moir in property, and he hes it all in commonty. His neibhours be Colbrandspeth, Renton, Butterdean, and the Laird of Lumsdean, now Douglas. The Lo. Renton dealt to have had the gift of the wholle moir from the king, and said it was only 2 rig lenth of land. I imagine the first possessors of that place ware Rentons to ther name, then they ware Forrestor, then Craw, whom the Home cheated out of it by marieng the Ladie. In the right of the Fosters he laid claime to the foster-corne to be payed to him by all the vassals and fewars of the abbacy, now the Lordship of Coldinghame, as being come in place of thesse who had a gift frae the prior and convent of Coldinghame to be forrester to all the woods and shaws growing within the lands holden of the said abbacy, to preserve and hayne the same; and for his paynes was to have a threiv of straw of each husband-land yeirly with some other dueties, and the Justice Clerk thought to have gotten the fewars decerned for more then 100 years that it was owing, but the Los. restricted him to 39 years preceiding his summons, finding all the years above prescryved. And for the dueties due to him on that accompt furth of the barrony of Auldcammas he got the property of a roume lying in the barrony called Fosterland, and when Waughton cutted his wood of Penmansheills, which is also a part of the barrony, Renton alledged that the boughs and bark of the tries within the Lo.ship was his by forsaid gift, and the heritor had nothing but the stock of the tries. They agried the matter betwen them. Tho he be most exact in lifting his fies, yet he does nothing that's incumbent to the office of forrester. On Sunday we went to Coldinghame Kirk, 4 miles from the smith's house at Haychester. The kirk hes bein a great fabrick. Its said to have bein built by K. Edgar, _anno_ 1098. Their was their a great abbacy. We saw the promontory so much taken notice of by the seamen called St. Abbes head (Sta. Ebba); over forgt[594] it layes Coldinghame Law, Home to his name. Saw the milne about which my Lord Home (who is the Lo. of erection now) and Renton are contending. Saw at 2 miles distance Haymouth,[595] and above it Gunsgrein, then Ayton, all standing on the water of Ei. Saw West Reston, Home, Eist Reston, Craw, and Henchcheid, Craw; of which name their was a nest in this place, but the Earle of Dumbar almost extinguished them, and now his owne memory is extinct and gone: let men then beware of oppression. Coldinghame stands pleasant, and verifies the byword that the kirkmen choised ever the warmest nests. Mr. Andro Ballantyne, brother to the sometyme Lo. Newhall, is heir minister. Auldcambus is in Cockburnspath parish. It hes a ruinous chappell standing in it dedicat to Ste. Helene, who was mother to Constantine the great, and found out the holy croce at Golgotha. Thrie mile from Auldcambus stands Monynet, and 3 miles from it againe stands Gammelisheills in Lammermuire. Blaikerston stands likewayes their about, as also Thorniedykes, now Broun, of old French. After some dayes stay at Auldcambus we came to Dumbar. Nixt day out of Dumbar we came to Northbervick by Belhaven, Tinynghame, Auldham, Scougall, Tomtallon, Cassilton. From Northberwick we went to Archerfield (so called because of the excellent links their fit for shooting at Rovers), my Lo. Advocat's[596] dwelling. Saw by the way Dirleton, with its castle, ruined by the English becaus it held out. Then from that came to Saltcoats, Leidingtone, to their name; then to Lufnes, of old Biccarton; then Waughtons, now Durhame; then to Abirlady toune and place, once Mr. Wm. Scot's, now Sir Androw Fletcher's. Theirs a great bay heir. Then saw Gosford, then Cockeny, the Pans, Wester Pans, wheir Jo. Jousie hes his house. [594] For 'forgainst,' 'opposite. [595] Now Eyemouth. [596] Sir John Nisbet of Dirleton. Naper is a french name and runs in it n'a pair, he hath not a peer. The Giffards of Shirefhall, they say, ware of old Shirefs of Louthian, and from that their house got its denomination. Tho some alledge their was in old tymes a Lord Giffard, and that it ended with ane heritrix married in the house of Yester: yet my Lord Duke of Lauderdale sayes he hes bein at very much pains to find if it was so, and he could never find any thing to instruct it. * * * * * The Wrichtshouses near Edenburgh, they say, was denominat from this, that in King James the 2ds dayes the ground about all being a forrest (lochia sylva is derived from lochs, _insidioe_, in the Greek, _quia insidiantibus capta est sylva_. Wossius[597] partit. orator, p. 328), and wheirin their was many robbries and murders committed. K. Ja. gave order to cut it doune. The Wrichts that ware appointed for this work had their huts and lodges whither they resorted for their dyet and on other accompts put up in the very individuall place wheir the house and place of the Wrightshouses is now situat, and so gave that denomination to the ground theirafter. [597] Vossius, Gerard. Johannes, Dutch philologist, 1577-1649, author of _De Quatuor Artibus Popularibus_, etc. (3) CHANGES AND ALTERATIONS AND REMARKABLE EMERGENTS OF AND IN THE SESSION 1668-1676.[598] [598] MS. H. On the 5 of June 1668 was I admitted Advocat. At this tyme died my Lord Carden, and Gosfurd succeided. In the November theirafter died Mr. Robert Burnet, Advocat. In May 1669 died Mr. Laurence Oliphant, Advocat. In July 1669 died William Lylle, Advocat. In August died William Douglas of Kirknes, who the session before had given in his trialls in order to his admission to be a Advocat. In September 1669 died Mr. Alexander Osuald, Advocat. On the 15 day of September 1669 was I chosen conjunct assessor with Sir George Lockart to the good toune. Its at large booked on the 13 of May 1670. On the 9nd of October also 1669 ware we chosen for assessors to the wholle borrows in their Convention. On the last of October 1669 died Mr. Laurence Scot of Bevely, one of the Clerks of Session, and that same night Alexander Monroe, Comisar of Stirling, was provided theirto. On the 25 of March 1670 died the Lord Kinglassie, to whosse place was provyded the Laird of Haltoun. In April 1670 died John Scot, Keiper of the Minut book, and his place was continued with his sone Francis. In May 1670 died John Kello, on of the under clerks, to whom succeided (after Robert Hamilton had officiat as under clerk the Summer session that followed, and Mr. Thomas Hay the following sessions till January 1673) James Hamilton, wryter. On the 5 of July 1670 Mr. Thomas Nicolsone, Advocat, died frenetick. In _anno_ 1668 Sir James Keith, Laird of Caddome, having threatned Mr. David Falconer, Advocat, ane ill turne, and being complained upon, and in his vindication reflecting upon my Lord Halkerton, he was committed to the tolbuith and fined. That same year, Mr. David Thoires having miscaried in a supplication given in by him to the Lords in behalfe of a client against Doctor Hay, bearing they were minded to satisfy the Doctors unsatiable covetousnesse to the oppression of the widow and the fatherles, he was sent to prison, fyned, and craved them humbly pardon. In _anno_ 1670, Mr. Alexander Spotswood, plaiding in the Oriminall Court for Wedderburne, and Mr. Patrick Home, being his antagonist and growing hot, called Alexander a knave, who replied, I can sooner prove you and your father knaves, who theirupon was imprisoned; but at last, upon intercession of freinds, was set at libertie. The Justice Clerk[599] was verie inexorable in the particular. [599] Lord Renton. In June 1670, Douglas of Kelheid, younger, affronted Hew Wallace, Writer to the Signet, in his oune house; which the Faculty, apprehending themselfes concerned in, at last caused Kelheid, in presence of them all, crave Hew and all the Faculty pardon for his offence, and confesse they did him a great courtesie in accepting that for satisfaction. On the end of January 1671, Sir John Gilmour, by reason of his infirmity, having dimitted his place of being President, but strongly having recommended Gosfoord to be his successor, it was offered to Sir John Nisbet, King's Advocat (whosse place if he had embraced it was thought Sir Robert Sinclair would have got), who faintly refusing, thinking theirby to have bein more woed, he was taken at his word, and our Jock of bread Scotland[600] would take none of their advices, but would take a way of his oune, and so did make choise of my Lord Stair, who was looking litle for it, and who truely came in betuixt tuo, and was so unacceptable to the former President that its thought he would not have dimitted had he dreamed the guise should have gone so; and the pitching on him was truely _in odium tertii_ to keip of Sir Robert Sinclar, whosse journey to Scotland under the pretence of coming to sie his new maried ladie suffered strange constructions at Court, and Lauderdale conjectured it was only to give my Lord Tueddale notice of some things that was then doing to his prejudice; and its beleived he would not have bein the coy duck to the rest of the Advocats for their obtempering to the Act of Regulations[60l] had he forsein that they would have hudibrased[602] him in the manner they did; hence we said give us all assurance to be Kings Advocat and we shall take it with the first; and the Lords, when he was plaiding before them in a particular, entreated him to come within the bar and put on his hat, since it was but to make him Advocat with 2 or 3 days antidate. He took also with it,[603] and did not deny it when he was posed on it. [600] Jock of bread (broad) Scotland, Lauderdale. [601] The Advocates objected to an article fixing their fees in the Regulations for the Court of Session, drawn up by a Commission and ratified by the king. Sinclair, Dean of Faculty, expecting preferment, instead of championing the bar, was the first to swear to the Regulations. The Advocates withdrew from practice for two months, and never forgave the Dean. See p. 222. [602] A participle coined on the same principle as the modern 'boycotted.' The point of the comparison with the hero of Butler's satire is not obvious. It seems to mean simply 'made a fool of.' [603] Took with it, _i. e_. acknowledged it. The expression is still common in the north-east of Scotland. In the beginning of May this year died Mr. James Wemes, Advocat, brother to the Laird of Lathoker. On the 28 of June 1671 was Sir Thomas Wallace receaved ane Ordinar Lord in the place vacand throw the promotion of my Lord Stair to be President. On the 13 of July 1671 died Sir John Home of Renton, Justice Clerk. He was indeid advanced by Lauderdale, and for his sake componed the more easily with Sir Robert Murray;[604] yet Lauderdale his kindnes relented much on this occasion. In _anno_ 1664, being minded to bring in my Lord Tueddale to be Chancelor, St. Androis entrefaired. Glasgow, thinking he should have a hand in it as weill as his brother the Primate, he enters in termes with my Lord Renton. Its commoned[605] that Sir Alex'r may marry the Archbischop's daughter, who was afterward Ladie Elphinstone, and that he at London may propose Renton to be Chancelor. My Lord Lauderdale was hudgely dissatisfied with that, yet having calmed, he told him Renton had not the fortune able to bear out the rank of a Chancelor. Burnet replied, Renton had a better fortune then ever Chancelor Hay[606] had. Lauderdale could never be pleased with him therafter for offering to aspire so hy. He was also at another disadvantage, my Lord Hume offered to compromit the difference betuen them to my Lord Lauderdale. Renton shifted it. He was a most peremptor man to his inferiors or æqualls, but a slavish fearer of any whom he supposed to be great at Court, on whom he most obsequiously fauned. [604] Murray was his predecessor. Apparently there was a bargain for his retirement. [605] Agreed. [606] Sir George Hay of Nethercliff, Lord of Session, Chancellor, 1622-1635, Lord Kinnoul. In the end of July, vid. the 27 day theirof, Mr. Alexander Suinton, one of the under clerks of Session, dimitted his place, and was admitted ane advocat _per saltum_ upon a bill. Adam Chrystie, reader of the Minut Book, succeided instantly in his place of clerk. That same day died Mr. Archibald Campbell, Advocat, sone to the Shireff of Argile. About the last of July 1671 came Collonell Lockhart from London, and brought doune a patent with him in favors of his father Lee to be Justice Clerk in place of Renton: he being an old man, and not supposed he can enjoy it long, its talked it is for the behoof of some on or other of his children, but especially the Collonells selfe. This was our Donna Olimpias[607] doing. [607] Duchess of Lauderdale. On the 14 day of August 1671 died Sir John Gilmor, late President, in his house of Craigmiller, and was buried the 24 day theirof in Liberton Kirk. In the beginning of September died my Lord Bellenden, sometime Thesaurer depute at London. On the 1 of October 1671 died Alexander,[608] Lord Halkerton, at his oune house, of the age of 77. He entered to his place in Session by simony, or rather _committendo crimen ambitus_, for he payed to my Lord Balmanno 7000 merks (a great soume at that tyme when their salaries ware small), to dimit in his favors, and by my Lord Traquaires moyen, then Threasurer whosse creature he was, he got the dimission to be accepted by his Majesty. This was about the 1643. I shall not say of him, as was said of Pope Hildebrand _alias_ Gregory the 7th, _Intravit ut vulpes, regnavit ut Leo, mortuus est ut canis_. Only this I shall say, wheir places of justice are bought, whow can it be otherwayes but justice will be sold. The family is said to be pretty old, and both their name and stile to be taken from the charge they had at the tyme our Kings of Scotland resided in the Mernes, whosse falconers they ware, and their village was hence called the Haukerstoune. They say my Lord Arbuthnet was at that tyme King's porter, and that he hes a peice of land yet designed Porterstoune; and that some other their was landresse, and so had a village called Waschingtoune. [608] Falconer. On the 15 of October 1671 died Mr. William Douglas, Advocat, or rather the poet, since in that he most excelled. In the end of the preceiding summer Session Adam Cunyghame, sone in law to James Wallace, Maisser, was received conjunctly to the office of maisserie with the said James, conforme to ane gift of the said place to them both conjunctly and to the longest liver of them tua. Arthur Forbes, having some clame upon the estate of Salton, and pershuing the Laird of Philorth, now Lord Salton, he was very rigorously and partially handled by my Lord Newbayth,[609] who heard the cause. It being againe enrolled in the beginning of November, and my Lord Newbayth falling to be ordinar in the Utter house, Arthur, out of a just resentiment of the past wrong and fear of his future carriage, come to my Lords chamber and boasted (as my Lord Newbayth sayes) in thir words, If you call that action of Philorth against me I vow to God I'le sie the best blood in your body. Newbayth having complained, and Arthur being theiron incarcerat and examined, denied he spoke any such words, and declared he only said, My Lord, if you continue to do me wrong (as you have done already, as appears because the Lords redrest me) I'le have the sentiment of the haill 14 Lords on it; and if that be denied, I'le complain to the King. After he had lyen some 4 or 5 dayes in prison he was set at freedome, having first acknowledged a wrong and craved my Lord Newbayth pardon in presence of the haill Lords and Advocats on the 10 of November. Before he did it the President had a short discourse whow the gentlemans carriage had bein modest thitherto, and my Lord Newbayth was earnest intercessor for him, and theirfor they resolved not to make him the first exemple; but they assured all, of whatsoever rank or quality they be, that they will not tolerat any to expostulat with them or to give them hard or sharp words in their oune chambers or any wheir, and that they will not suffer their authority, which they hold of his Majesty, and to whom they are answerable if they malverse, to be convelled,[610] but what sanctions their are already to that purpose they will endevor to sie them peremptorly keipt and execute. Vide Act 68, Parliament 1537; Act 104, Parliament 1540; Act 173, Parliament 1593; Act 4, Parliament 1600; and this is consonant to the Common law by which the killing of one of the Kings great consistory is declared treason, and if so then the menacing of them must be a haynous crime. Vide L. 5, C. Ad 1. Juliam Majestatis: item Clarum[611] par. læsæ Maj. num. 5, item Perezium[612] ad T. c. de L. 3, Majest. num. 3. [609] Sir John Baird of Newbyth, still pronounced Newbayth. [610] Torn to pieces. [611] Clarus, Ant. Sylv., _Commentarius ad Leges_, etc. Paris, 1603. [612] Perez, Antonio, Spanish Jurist, 1583-1678. On the 17 of November 1671, Mr. William Bailzie, Advocat, gave in a complaint on J. Watson of Lammyletham for having abused him, and called him a base rascall and threatning to draw on him. My Lord Newbayth being appointed to examine the witnesses, and having reported the Lords, called him and Mr. William in alone, rebuked him, and commanded him to cary him selfe more soberly in tyme coming. On the 23 of November 1671, Sir Androw Ramsay of Abbotshall, Lord Provest of Edinburgh for the 10't year altogither, was received ane ordinar Lord of the Session upon his Majestys letter to that effect, in the place vaicand throw the deceas of Alexander Lord Halkerton, who possest that place of before. I find in the records of Sederunt about the year 1553 and afterward on Sir William Hamilton[613] of Sanquhar Hamilton a Lord and provest of Edinburgh both at once. I find also that Chancelor Seyton[614] for some years that he was President Fyvie and some years that he was Chancelor (for he was 10 years altogither provest) was also Provest of Edinburgh; but that was at a tyme when the Senators of the Colledge of Justice grasped at the haill power of the toune upon their delinquency and uproar of the 17 of December 1596, for he entred at that tyme when the toune was at their feet, and when they had the approbation and reprobation of the toune their yearly election, but whow soon the toune begane to recover strenth and the memory of that foull slip waxed old they hoised him out; and for fear of the like inconveniency, and to bolt the door theirafter, they procured ane Act of Parliament _in Anno_ 1609 (Vid. the 8't Act), declaring that no man shall in tyme coming be capable of provestrie or magistracy but merchants and actuall traffiquers duelling within burgh. Its true Sir John Hay (who was at first toun Clerk of Edinburgh) when he was Clerk Register and a Lord of the Session, he was made Provest of Edinburgh, but it was not put upon him out of any favor, but was done by Traquaire, then Tresaurer, of designe to break him: so that none of thesse instances quadrat with our case; heir a merchant, one who entred _cum bona gratia_, and who hes maintained himselfe by his oune parts and moyen in that office by the space of 10 years altogether, on who toped with the Colledge of Justice for the precedency and carried it from them, and who feared not to make open war with the greatest of them; he as the only single instance is made a Lord of the Session.[615] [613] Lord of Session (Sanquhar), 1546-61; Provost, 1554. [614] Alexander Seton, Extraordinary Lord of Session, 1586, Ordinary, 1588, President, 1593, Chancellor, 1605-22, under the successive titles of Prior of Pluscardine, Lord Urquhart, Lord Fyvie, and Earl of Dunfermline. [615] See Appendix III. On the 14 of December 1671, Richard Maitland of Pitreichy was received ane ordinar Lord in the place vaicand throw the advancement of my Lord Lee to be Justice Clerk upon his Majesties letters to that purpose. On the 5 of January 1672 died Sir John Scougall of Whytkirk, and was buried in the Grayfriers on the 7 day of January theirafter in great pomp, his goune being carried before the herse. On the 4 of March 1672 was Mr. Robert Preston of that Ilk installed in his place in obedience to his Majesties letter direct to the Lords to that effect. On the 16 of February 1672 died John Ramsay, keiper of the Register of Hornings and Inhibitions, and on George Robertsone was admitted in his place by my Lord Register. About the end of March, this same year, died Mr. Alexander Hamilton, Justice Clerk Depute, to whosse place on Mr. Robert Martin was received by my Lord Lee. (_Vide infra._) About the 14 of May 1672 died Charles, Earle of Dumfermeling, Lord Privy Seall, and ane extraordinar Lord. Its reported that Mr. Martin hes payed saltly for his place, vid. 500 pound English money to the Justice Clerk, 500 merks Scots to Mr. William Cheisley as agenter, and 1000 merks to the widow. About the 20 of May this yeir died Mr. John Morray, advocat. Upon the 27 of June 1672, Sir Robert Sinclair fell unto a lamentable pramunire in this manner. Some merchants in Glasgow being quarrelled by the manadgers of the Royall Fisching for exporting herrings, that being their priviledge, their is a bill drawen up for them by Sir Robert, and given in to the Lords of Secret Counsell, wheirin, among other things, he had this expression, that the petitioners ware frie natives, members of a royall borrow, whosse priviledges ought not lightly to be reversed, else malcontents would thairon take occasion of grudge, and of sowing fears and jealousies betuixt his Majestie and his people. At the hearing of which my Lord Commissioner,[616] guessing the author, began to baule and foame, and scrued up the cryme to such a height as that it deserved emprisonment, deprivation, and a most severe reprimande. At last the Counsell agried in a more moderat censure, that he should with close doors (tho my Lord Commissioner would have had it publick) acknowledge his offence upon his knees before the wholle Lords, and recant and disclame the forsaid expression as seditious and not becoming a subject: And theiron, as its said, ane act was made, that no petition should be presented heirafter but subscryved ather by the party or the Advocat. [616] Lauderdale. Theirs no expression so innocent wheirupon malice will not fasten its teeth; and truly their hes bein many expressions by far harsher then this escaped the pens of advocats, and which hes never bein noticed. And yet I think its _justo Dei judicio_ casten in Sir Roberts lap for his so dishonourable complying, yea, betraying the priviledges of the Advocats, and breaking the bond of unity amongs them, and embracing first that brat of the Regulations. The excuse that he made for so over shoting him selfe was most dull and pittifull, vid. that they had come to him just after he had dined, and he had drawen it then, and so was hasted. On the 24 July 1672, in the Parliament, Sir Colin Campbell was reproved for disorderly tabling of the Summer Session:[617] the circumstances see _alibi_. So the Commissioner seimed in a manner set to afront the Advocats. [617] The proposal to abolish the Summer Session of the Court and add a month to the winter was made by the Commissioner in his speech, and argued before him in the Exchequer Chamber, where he decided against it. The account of the matter given by Mackenzie (_Memoirs_, 222 _sqq._) is curious and interesting. In favour of the change it was argued that 'before men could settle at home after the Winter Session, they were called again to the Summer Session, so that their projects and designs were interrupted and ruined, and the months of June and July, which were the only pleasant months, and the only months wherein gardens and land could be improved, were spent in the most unwholsome and unpleasant town of Scotland [Edinburgh].' Sir C. Campbell tried to revive the question in plain Parliament, but the Commissioner vetoed it. In November 1672 died Mr. Andrew Beaton, Advocat, and brother to the Laird of Balfour. On the 2d of November 1672, my Lord Newbayth being challenged for passing a Suspension of a Decreite Absolvitor given by the Admirall, he denied it was his subscription, and at last his servant, Jeremiah Spence, acknowledged he had forged the same, for which he got a guiny[618] for procuring, as the parties thought, his Masters subscription therto; wheirupon, being imprisoned, the Lords, on the 6 of November, having called for him to their presence, they did declare him infamous and uncapable of any charge or imployment about the Session, and seing he had judicially confest it, they remitted him to the Kings officers for his furder triall. Its thought this was not the first of many forgeries he hes committed, so that his master lay under very much obloquy and reproach, which hes bein greatly occasioned throw his default, only it cannot be denied that my Lord gave to much ear to the mans recommendations, yea gave very grosse insinuations of his contentment and favor when his man got money, so that it was confidently affirmed that his man and he shared the profit that accrued from the Saterdayes roll, the syde bar, etc., amongs them; and it is now judged the liklier because my Lord concernes himselfe exceidingly to bring his man of only with a sweip of a tods taill, wheiras in generosity he should be his main prosecuter. [618] Guinea. See Introduction, Money. In the beginning of November 1672 died William, Earle of Dalhousie, being a very old man, wheiron my Lord Halton, Thresurer Depute, was made Shireff principall of Edenboroughshire during his lifetyme in place of the said Earle; And Mr. Alexander Suinton, advocat, was made his depute and Mr. Laurence Charteris. About the same tyme, Mr. John Stewart of Ketleston, on of the Admirall deputes, died, and Walter Pringle, Advocat, by the mediation of Sir Charles Bickerstaffe, the other depute, succeided in his place, [and in November 1674, Mr. Patrick Lyon was nominat in place of W. Pringle, deprived].[619] [619] Interlined. In the same moneth of November the Earle of Atholl was made Lord Privy Seall in place of the Earle of Dumfermeling, who died in the May before. [As also the Earle of Kincardin was made Justice Generall upon the dimission of the Earle of Atholl. This held not.][620] [620] The two lines in brackets are scored through. See p. 225. In England, the great seall at the same tyme was taken from Sir Orlando Bridgeman, and the Earle of Shaftesbury, formerly Lord Ashley Couper, is made Hy Chancelor of England. Sir John Duncombe is made under threasurer, in place of Ashley Couper. The Lord Clifford, lately but Sir Thomas Clifford, is exalted to be great Treasaurer of England. [He is the 1[621] Thesaurer since the death of the Earle of Southhampton],[622] and the Commissioners for the Threasurie are suppressed, and its expected that they, as the _primum mobile_, will draw us as ane inferior orbe rolling within theirs after them. The Lord Mainart, brother in law to the Duck of Lauderdale, is made thesaurer of the Kings house. Sir Robert Howard, commonly called Sir Positive, is made Secretary to the Treasurer. The Duck of Monmouth is made Lord Cheiff Justice of all the forrests in England benorth the Trent. My Lord Lauderdale hes undoubtedly had a great hand in this extraordinary revolution; for they are on the caballe with him, and are all his confident privado'es. The old nobility cannot but repute them selfes slighted when they sie thesse great offices of State conferred upon [muschroomes][623] upstarts. But this is a part of the absolute power of kings to raise men from the dunghill and make them their oune companions. [621] i.e. first. [622] Interlined. [623] Interlined. In the beginning of December 1672 died Mr. George Norvell, advocate, on of the greatest formalists that was in all the tolbuith. His place as agent for the Colledge and toune of Edinburgh was by Act of the Toune Counsell conferred upon Mr. Robert Lauder, portioner of Belhaven, some few days after. At the same tyme died Mr. Thomas Buck, advocat. On the 14 of December 1672 the Faculty made choice of Sir G. Lockhart for their Dean, Sir Robert Sinclar having of some tyme before showen a willingnes to demit in regard he discovered many of the faculty displeased at him for his faint surrender and breaking the unity of the Faculty in the matter of the Regulations and for sundry other particulars. On the 2'd of January 1673 died Mr. John Andersone, advocat. About the beginning of January 1673 James Hamilton was received ane under clerk in place of Jo. Kello, who died (_ut supra notatum_) in May 1670. On the 14 of January 1673 the Earle of Atholl was received ane extraordinar Lord on the Session in place of the Earle of Dumfermeling, who died (_ut supra dixi_) in May 1672. In May 1673 died Mr. John Muirhead, advocat. In June 1673 I was named by the Lords to be on of the advocats for the poor the yeir enshueing, but upon the mediation of my Lord Abbotshall I was excused. On the 19 of July 1673 Forbes of Tolquhon was fined by the Lords in 40 lib. Scots for opprobrious speaches to Mr. David Thoires, advocat, and calling him a knave. On the 5 of Januar 1674 I was appointed on of the privat examinators of such as offered to enter advocats for that year. On the 10 of Januar 1674 died Mr. Robert Dicksone, advocat. In the beginning of this year 1674 died Mr. William Wallace, advocat, and on of the Shiref Deputes of Edenbrugh shire. In the beginning of March 1674 died Sir James Lockhart of Lee, Justice Clerk. On the 4 of June 1674 Mr. Thomas Murray of Glendoick, advocat, was admitted and receaved, in obedience to the Kings letters, a Lord of the Session, in place of Lee deceissed, as he was ane ordinary Lord, for they say Sir William Lockart the Collonell had his place by way of survivance and reversion of Justice Clerk. On the same 4 of June Mr. David Balfour of Forret or Glentarkie was, upon the Kings letter, receaved ane ordinar Lord in the place vaikand by the dimission of Sir Androw Ramsay of Abbotshall. On the 5'th of June 1674 died Sir James Ramsay of Whythill, advocat, and Mr. James Hamilton, advocat, sone to the Bischop of Galloway. On the 2'd of June 1674 I was nominat on of the advocats for the poor for the year enshueing. About the 10 of June 1674 the Earle of Argile was admitted and receaved ane extraordinar Lord of the Session upon the Kings letter, in place of the Earle of Tuedale, turned out, as also the said Earle of Argyle got Tuedales place as one of the Commissioners of the Tresaury. And my Lord of Atholl at this same tyme got that place of the Thesaury which was lying vaikand thesse severall years by the deceas of Sir Robert Moray. On the 4 of June 1674, in obedience to a new comission for the Secret Councell, sent doune by the King, the Councell was of new modelled, 6 of the former members put out, viz. the Earle of Queinsberry, Earle of Roxbrugh, Earle of ----[632], Earle of Tuedale, the Lord Yester, and Generall Major Drummond, and 6 new Councelors assumed in their place, viz. the Earle of Mar, Earle of Kinghorne, ----[624], Lord Rosse, my Lord Colinton, and my Lord Craigie. [624] Blank in MS. On the 3 of July 1674 the Lords of Session deprived about 49 advocats who partly adhæred to Sir G. Lockhart and Sir J. Cunyghame, who ware declared uncapable, conforme to the Kings letter on the 24 of June preceeding, and partly refused to officiat under the tyes and obligations contained in his Majesties letter anent appealls, and the Lords of Session their sentences, that none charge them of injustice. On the 7 of July 1674 died Mr. James Rosse, advocat. In October 1674 died Sir Robert Preston of that Ilk, on of the Lords of Session. And in the midle of November 1674 James Foulls, Advocat, younger of Colinton, by the name of Lord Reidfuird, was admitted and receaved a Lord in his place, in obedience to his Majesties letter, and was the first who was tryed in the new manner prescribed by his Majesty in July last. In June 1675 died Collonell Sir William Lockhart of Lee at Paris, wheir he lay embassador for his Majesty of Great Brittain, and so the Justice Clerkship waiked, which was immediatly bestowed and conferred on my Lord Craigie, but his gift bears _ad bene placitum_ only. In his place as on of the criminall lords succeided my Lord Glendoick. And at the same tyme my Lord Newbayth, by a letter from his Majesty, being eased and dispossest of his place in the Criminall Court, the same was given to my Lord Forret, so that his entrie both heir and on the Session is not so cleanly. The Earle of Atholl having at his being chosen Privy Seall oblidged himselfe to dimit the office of Justice Generall when his Majesty saw cause to dispose of it, now in June 1675 the Earle of Murray is created Justice Generall. In July 1675 died Mr. Robert Winrahame, advocat. On the 5 of August 1675 Sir Androw Ramsay, Lord Abbotshall, was, upon his Majesties letter, readmitted and sworne upon the Privy Councell, which and his other offices he had dimitted to my Lord Commissioner under trust on the 1 of December 1673. In the end of September 1675 died Mr. Alexander Spotswood of Crumstaine, advocat, of 2 dayes sicknes. Item, Mr. Patrick Oliphant, of a few dayes sicknes, about that same tyme. In the end of November 1675 died James Chalmers, advocat. In the beginning of Januarie 1676 died James Hamilton, on of the under clerks of Session, and his place was bestowed on John Hay, wryter, and criminall clerk depute under Mr. Robert Martin. On the 8 and 11 of January 1676 all the outed advocats to the number of 35 ware admitted again to their employments, conforme to his Majesties letter theranent. In the end of March 1676 died Mr. William Strachan, advocat, and brother to the Laird of Glenkindy. On the 16 of June 1676 was Sir Archbald Primerose, Clerk Register, by a letter from his Majesty, removed from his place of Register and from the Session, and a patent sent him to be Justice Generall, and the Earle of Murray gets a pension of 400 lb. Sterling for it, and his place in Session was instantly supplyed by a letter from his Majestie in behalfe of Sir David Falconer of Neuton, Advocat; and the office of Register was conferred theirafter in February 1678 (neir 2 years vacancy) on Sir Thomas Morray, Lord Glendoick. See it in my remarks then. On the 24 of June was a letter red from his Majestie, appointing their should be only 3 principall Clerks of Session, and that the Lords remove the rest, appointing them some satisfaction from thesse who stayed in. Heirupon the Lords voted Messrs. Alexander Gibsone, Thomas Hay, and John Hay to be the 3 who should only officiat (See the manuscript[625] at November 1682, page 73), and removed Sir John Gibsone, but prejudice of the contract betuixt him and his sone of 100 lb. sterling yeirly, Alexander Monro and Robert Hamilton, and modified them 7000 merks from the other 2, which Comissar Monro refused unles they gave him a reason of their depriving him, which was refused till he raised his declarator if he had a mind to doe it. He within a 4'tnight after accepted it. The letter also commanded the Advocats consulting togither. [625] Interlined. On the 28 of June 1676 was a letter from his Majesty red in the Thresaury commanding Sir John Nisbet his Advocat to call for Sir George M'cKeinzie in the concernes of his office, and act by his advice, and establist 100 lb. Sterling of pension upon him for the same. See the other Manuscript of Session Occurrents, page 13 and 42. On the last of June 1676 Mr. John Eleis and Mr. Walter Pringle ware suspended from being Advocats by the Lords, because they shifted to depone _super inquirendis_ if their was any combination amongs the late restored advocats not to consult with thosse who stayed in. See the Sentence _apud me_. On the 8 of July 1676 was Mr. John Eleis readmitted because he complyed with the Lords and deponed. W. Pringle readmitted in June 1677. On the 20 of July 1676 a new Commission of Secret Councell from his Majesty was red, wheirin six of the former Councelors ware left out and discarded, viz. the Duc of Hamilton, Earles of Dumfreis, Morton, and Kincairden, the Lord Cochrane and Sir Archibald Primrose, late Lord Register. In the beginning of June 1676 died Mr. James Aikenhead, on of the comisars of Edinburgh; and in the end of Jully Mr. James Dalrymple was presented by the Archbischop of St. Andrewes in his place who had got the right of presenting all the comisars of Edinburgh during the vacancy of that diocesse in _anno_ 1671, only his gift was caution'd that he sould confer them gratis, and on qualified persones. On the 19 of August 1676 died Mr. Laurence Charteris, Advocat, and on of the Shireff deputes of Edenborough shire, in which office succeided to him by the gift of deputation from my Lord Halton immediatly Mr. Thomas Skein, brother to Halzeards, in West Lothian, and afterwards admitted ane Advocat. On the last of October 1676 died Mr. John Bailzie, advocat. On the 13 of November 1676 Sir Archibald Primrois, late Register, took his place in the Criminall Court as Lord Justice Generall, and gave his oath _de fideli_. See more of it, _alibi_, page 144. See the continuations of the changes and alterations and remarkable emergents of and in the Session in another paper book besyde me that opens by the lenth. (4) OBSERVATIONS ON PUBLIC AFFAIRS, 1669-1670[626] [626] From MS. II. [In anno 1669 died the Q. mother of England. In anno 1670 died madame our K's sister mons'r the Duc of Orleans his Ladie she having bein in England but a litle while before. On the 24 of October 1670 was the church of the Blackfriars in Glasgow touched with lightning of thunder about seven a cloak of the morning, and having brok throu the roof it catcht hold upon its jests and had undoubtedly brunt the church to ashes had it not bein extiuguished in tyme. They say it brook also on their great church at the head of the toun. What follows in thir 9 leives is copied and enlarged alibi. In anno 1667 the French make ane invasion upon the Spanish Netherlands, and after he had ransact the country and made himselfe master of divers tounes][627] as Doway, Lisle, Tournay, etc., a peace was at last concluded in May 1668, wheirof the articles ware, 1'o to be perpetuall. 2'do so soon as the peace is published all hostility most cease. 3'do the French to keip the couquiest of the late campaigne. 4'to that he hold them with their dependances in soverainetie and the Spaniard to yeald them to him for ever. 5'to that the French King restore la France conté. 6'to the Spaniard most restore all places tane by him in the war. 7'o that all princes authorize the treatie and that nothing be retracted of the traitty of the Pyrenees save what is disposed on by this: To be mutually interchanged, ratified, and sworne by oath. [627] The first page, as above, within brackets, is scored out in MS. Upon the 27 of September 1669 was Candie toune (being the losse of the wholle Ile to the Venetians) surrendred to the Turks after a long seige wheir the French got a great overthrow, and their Admirall the Duc de Beaufort was killed with many other persons of note: and wheir Monsieur Annand our Master Annands brother behaved himselfe most gallantly, and since hes bein so hylie complemented for that his service by the Venetian senat that I beleive never was any stranger more. He is admitted unto all their counsels and sits upon their Ducks right hand: the Englishs ware so affrontedly impudent as in their new books first to cal him ane Englishman, and being challenged for that they designed him after a subject of his Maj. of Great Brittain, so loath are they to give us our due praise. In anno 1670 was ane insurrection of the paisants of the country of Vivarets in Daulphinée in France, upon the occasion of some extraordinarie tax cruelly exacted. They ware soon dissipat. Their is presently, in October 1670, a fellow called Ratzin[628] who hes taken up armes in Mosco agt the Emperor, and hes got of followers neir 100,000 men: he was a gunner, had a brother, who, being put to death for some crime, he in revenge of his brothers death hes made this commotion craving nothing lesse but that thesse who ware the cause of his brother's death (now they are the greatest men about the Ducks persone) may be delivered up to him. [628] Rebellion of Stenka Razin against the Tsar Alexis. It is apprehended by the wiser sort that this Union[629] is mainly set on foot by his Majestie, and so much coveted after by him, that he may rid himselfe of the house of Commons who have lyen verie heavy upon his loines and the loins of his predecessors Kings of England and especially of his brave father, and who have ever most crossed ther great designes. Now it being proposed that their should be but on parliament for all Britain, it will follow that the house of commons constitut no more a house apart, but that its members sit togither with the Lords in the house of peers: and for the better effectuating this great point, I hear his Majesty caresses and complements thesse of the house of commons a great deall more then ever he was in use to do, and that he converses most familiarly with them, seikes their company, and that they get accesse when many great persons cannot. But this is not all, such of them as seimed most active and concerned in pressing the priviledges and liberties of that house and of the commonalty of England, his majesty within this short tyme hes nobilitat them, and by this hes both engadged them to his oune party, and by setting them in a hyer sphoere weakned the house of commons. [629] Charles II. having renewed the proposal for the union of the kingdoms, Commissioners were appointed for England and Scotland, and sat in London for some months in the autumn of 1670. I confesse the King hes reason to wrest this excessive power out of the commons their hand it being a unspeakable impairment of his soverainetie, but I fear it prosper not. I hear the Earle of Strafford, who was Deputie of Ireland, was at first but a mean gentleman yet a member of the house of commons, and on of the most stirring amongst them, which K. Charles perceiving he created him a nobleman and by that so endeared him to his intrest that we know he suffered for it. In the middle of 1669 came his majesties letter to the secret counsell for indulging some of the outed ministers libertie to return to their oune kirks if vacant, or to preach at any other vacant churches the S. counsell should think fit to place them, and that they should not be answerable to the Bischop of the diocese where they ware, but to the counsell. Then in the Parl. 1669 was the King's supremacie in a very hy straine established. This procedure startled all our Bischops extreimly, yet all of them ware so cunning and such tyme servers as they seimed to applaud it, only Mr. Alex'r Burnet, Arch B. of Glascow, and the Dean theirof, with some others more ingenuous then the rest, pens a remonstrance (which also they put their hands to) to be presented to the King, showing his majesty whow that course he had tane for uniting distractcd parties and healing our breaches would prove unsuccesfull, yea was to be feared would produce the just contrare effect, vid., more dissentions, etc. Upon this occasion he[630] gets a passe, and if he refused to dimit voluntarlie then their is a warrand from his Majesty for processing him criminally: upon that and other heads, he ather judging it not safe to contend with his m'r, or else not daring bid[631] the touch, dimits in his Majesties hands and _ex gratia_ his Maj. grants him a pension out of the fruits of that benefice of 5000 mks. per annum for all the dayes of his lifetyme. [630] _i.e._ the Archbishop. [631] _i.e._ to abide. Then Lighton, Bischop of Dunblaine, was presented to it, who, after much nicety, and a journey to London, at last condeschended to take a tryall of it for a tyme under the name of Commendator Superintendent over the spirituality of that Bischoprick or some such like name, who took much paines to take up the differences betuixt the conformists and non- conformists, and to that purpose, in my Lord commissioners Audience in August 1670, ware then sundrie freindly conferences betuixt himselfe and some others adjoined to himself and some of the non-conformist ministers, upon which nothing then followed. He also in September 1670 took some moderat men, as Mr. Nairne, Mr. Cook, and others along wt him to his diocesse, by them to allure the people to frequent their oune parish churches, but he found them so exasperat wt the loud and scandalous cariage of the ministry that was planted amongs them on the removall of their former, that his great paines had not answerable successe. In anno 1668 was Honieman B. of Orkney shot in the arme, being sitting in the coach wt Arch. B. Sharp, for whom, it was thought, the pistoll was levelled. Some sayd it behoved to be some great hater of the Bischops, others said it might be out of privat splen and not for the privat quarrell of Religion; others said he was but suborned to do it by the Bychops themselves, that they might lay the blame on the Presbyterians, and draw the greater odium on them, and stoop the favor that was intended them of opening some of their ministers mouths; and the truth is, it did retard that better almost a year. In anno 1670, about July theirof, Mr. John Meinzeis, brother to the Laird of Culteraws, and minister at[632] in Annandale, left his church and emitted a declaration bearing what stings he suffared in his conscience for conforming with the present church governement, which he fand to be a fertile soyle for profanity and errors of all kinds, and theirfor he gives all to whom thir presents may come to know that he disapproves of the said governement and of his bypast complyance, and that in tyme coming he will forsake the ministrie, since he cannot exercise it unlesse he wound his soull farder by that sinfull compliance. The Bisc. ware verie pressing to have had him punisht, but his friends got him borne by. [632] Blank in MS. In that same year 1670 was that monster of men and reproach of mankind (for otherwayes I cannot stile him), Major Weir, for most horrible witchcraft, Incest, Bestiality, and other enorme crymes, at first confest by himselfe (his conscience being awakned by the terrors of the Almightie), but afterwards faintly denied by him, brunt. So sad a spectacle he was of humane frailty that I think no history can parallell the like. We saw him the fornoon before he died, but he could be drawen to no sense of a mercifull God, yea sometimes would he scarse confesse their was a God, so horribly was he lost to himselfe. The thing that aggravated his guilt most was the pretext and show of godlinesse wt which he had even to that tyme deceived the world. His sister also was but a very lamentable object, for she ran on the other extreem and præsumed exceidingly on the mercy of God, wheiras their ware no great evidences in hir of soull contrition. She was hanged. They say their is some difference fallen in betuen my Lo. Lauderdale and my Lo. Argyle about some desire my Lo. Lauderdale had in relation to the Lady Balcarras, now Lady Argile, which Argile relished not, and said, I think your grace would take the ward of my marriage. He answered, I may weill have that, for I once had the waird of your head, which was true in anno 1663, when the sentence of death and forfaultor was past on him as a traitor. In anno 1669 did his majesty in his Royall wisdome compose the differences betuixt the tua houses of parlia. in Engl., which ware likely to have occasioned great strife, it being anent their priviledges and liberties alledged brook[633] in the case of on Master Skinner, a member of the house of commons. His majesties course was that all memorie of discord betuen his 2 houses that might be found on record should be totallie abolished and expunged both out of the Registers of Parl., Exchequer, Counsell, and out of all other monuments, that the ages to come may not so much as know their was any variance betuixt them. On the 28 of September 1670 was Colonell Lockhart admitted a secret Counseller, and they say that Lambert is also made a Counsellor in England. [633] _i.e._ broken. The King in 1670 craving of his parliament a subsidie for defraying his debt, they proposed that ere any new tax could be granted account should be made of the former subsidies, whow the same ware employed by Mr. Cotteridge and others, whom the King made use of to that purposc. Sure this was very grieveous to the King to sie himselfe so controlled in his expence, and that he could give no gratuity to my Ladie Castlemain (now Dutchesse of Cleveland, etc.) but that which they behoved to get notice of, behold the stratagem he makes use of. The Presbyterians at that tyme, hearing of the Indulgence given to some ministers in Scotland, they offer to the King to pay all his debt, and advance him a considerable soume besyde, provydeing the same liberty be granted them. At the nixt sitting doune of parl. his mai. in a speach showed them whow harshly and uncivilly they had dealt with him, and, after much plain language, he told them if they would not grant his reasonable demands he know them that would do it. After they had come to know his majesties meaning by this,[634] who ware more forward then they, they passe fra craving any account of the former, they grant him a new subsidy of a million, they consent their should be a treaty wt Scotland anent ane union; yet onlie the dint of their fury falls on the Presbyterians, and they enact very strict statutes against them and against conventicles, because they had been the pin by which his mai. had scrued them up to that willingnesse. So we sie its usefull sometymes (as Matchiavell teaches) for a prince to entertaine and foment tua factions in his state, and whiles to boast the one with the other. [634] His majesties meaning by this, _i.e._ 'what H.M. meant by this imtimation.' As soon as they understood that, 'Who were more forward than they?' In October 1667 did at last break out that inveterat hatred of the wholle people of England against Chancellor Hide, and he is arraigned as guilty of hy treason by the house of commons, who pressed strongly that his persone might be secured till such tyme they had verified the crimes they attached him of. This motion the house of peers wt indignation rejected as derogatorie of their priviledges, he being a member of their house. While the 2 houses are thus contending he judges it safest for him to retire till this storme blow over, and this was also thought to have bein the King's advice to him, who was very sorrie at their procedor, thinking it a bad precedent for the house of commons to medle with persones so eminently neir to himselfe; yet in the breach he durst not stand but was forced to give them way, so much was Hyde hated in England, so that his Maj., rather then he will in the least endanger the disturbance of his oune peace and quiet, resolves now to quite his dearest minions and expose them to the malice of their ilwillers and haters then stand stoutly to their defence, and so make himselfe party against his people. So Hide makes his escape to France, leiving behind him a declaration wherin he refutes all the crimes they lay to his charge, as his being the author of the marriage of the King wt the Portugues, knowing she would be barren, and that his daughter's posterity might so reigne: item his being the occasion of the selling of Dunkerk to the French king, wheiras if it had bein in the English their possession in the year 1665, in their war betuixt them and Holland, they could have annoyed the States considerably theirby. But the truth is the Queen mother of England was wery instrumentall in that bargaine: item his being the active cause of the war betuixt England and Holland, of which he purges himselfe so largely that I think no man can scarse judge him any way accessor theirto. That war (wt pardon) was hardly weill manadged on the English syde, and they committed errors most unpardonable in good policie: as first in that battell that was given on the 17 June 1665, wheir Admirall Obdan and his ship ware blowen up, being fired (as was supposed) by the English bullets levelled at it, they contented themselves with the simple wictorie and honor of commanding the seas, wheiras if they had followed forth their victorie and had got betuixt the Holland their shattered fleet and the coast of Holland and Zealand, it was thought by the most judicious men that that on battell might have put ane end to the war and have produced most advantagious conditions for the English: but they verified the knowen saying, _vincere scit Hannibal sed õ victoriâ uti_. Their pretence indeid was that they would not pousse their victory farder by hazarding what they had already won, because the appearand air of the croun, the Duc of York, was present in person. But whow weak this is let any man judge, unles they mean that by intercepting the Dutch their way home they might have made them desperat and so fight like Devils, and that it hes ever bein a good maxime to make a fleing ennemy a bridge of gold. Whowever the Dutch concluded that they would have no mo Admirals that ware gentlemen (for Obdam was so) because they never fought fortunatly with their ennemies when they had such. But certainly this is nought but a fiction made by a commonwealth to cast a blur upon nobility, seing thir same very states have fought most couragiously and advantagiously under the conduct of the Princes of Orange. Upon his death De Ruyter was chosen admirall, and van Tromp the younger, upon a suspicion of being to affectionat to the intrest of the King of Britain, was disgraced. The nixt (but rather should have bein made the first) was his Mai:s bad choyse of a false chirking willain, Mr. Douning,[635] to be his agent to negotiat affaires at the States Generall in the beginning of that war, who steid of composing things rancored them worse and made them almost uncurable, judging it good fisching in troubled waters, wheiras if a moderat and ane honest man had bein made use of in that business, things would never have come to the height they were at, since the offers of reparation then made by the Dutch to his Majesty ware by all indifferent spectators judged most fair and reasonable. The 3^d is that in the engadgement the following summer, 1666, the King's intelligence should have bein so bad as to have apprehended at that tyme the joining of the French fleet wt the Hollander (wheiras their was no such thing, but it was of purpose done to divide his majesties fleet), and theiron ordering Prince Rupert with his squade away to attend their uniting; and in his absence the Dutch taking the advantage, provocked the Duck of Albemarle (who was a better land sojer then a sea, and who died in 1669) with sixtein ships to fight their wholle fleit, who more hardily then wisely encountering them, had undoubtedly bein totally routed and defeat had not Prince Rupert upon notice come up and releived them. By which conflict it at last appeared that it was possible for the English to be beat by the Hollander, which was never beleived before that. [635] Sir George Downing, 1623(?), 1684, long Resident at the Hague under the Commonwealth and Charles II. See _Nat. Dict. Biog._ The nixt error they committed was that the following summer, 1667, the King (for sparing of charges forsooth) was advysed not to set to sea that year, but to let his fleit lay up in the harbors, which gave cause to that mighty affront (then which since England was England it never received the like) given them at Chattan, and wheir the Scots regiment, brought over from France by the King's order, making braver resistance then all England beside, ware many of them slain, dying in the bed of honour. As for the Scots proclaiming war against France, and as for the more naturall way tane by our King in proclaiming the war then tane by France, I shall elsewheir speak more at large. APPENDIX APPENDIX I EXTRACTS FROM ACCOUNTS 1670 to 1675 § 1 On the 8 of July 1670, I receaved 168 lb. in 55 dollars,[636] which compleited one halfe a year's annuel rent,[637] vid., 900 m., wheirof first given out to my wife 8 dollars to defray sundrie debts, vid., 5 lb. to mistris Guthrie for 2 elle and a quarter of borders, 4 lb. 10s. to George Reidpeth, 7 lb. 4s. for 2 chandellers, 2s. for a pint of win, 3 lb. given to the wright with some other lesser things; then I gave une dalle Imperiale a mon serviteur pour acheter les saintes ecritures, 8 pence for a quaire of paper. Then on the ij of July 1670, I gave my wife 10 dollars for keiping the familie: 4 dollars given to my wife to buy wooll with. This makes a 100 merk. Then I gave a dollar to buy covers for the chaires, 8s. and 8 p. for a pair of shoes, 2 lb. at a collation with Mr. Hamilton, 24s. at a collation with Mr. Thomas Bell, 5s. for a mutchin of wine.[638] Halfe a dollar to Walter Cunyghame, 12s. for paper and ink, 10 lb. for 20 leads of coalls at 10s. the load, 3 dollars given to my wife, a dollar given for a french croune to my wife, 5 p. for a mutching of win,[638] 24 p. in Caddells with Mr. Hendersone. Item, 2s. sterling given to my wife. Item, 4 dollars given to hir, a groat to the barber, 5s. sterling for a new board, a mark in the contribution for the burgh of Dundie, a shiling to the keiper of my goun, 3 dollars given to my wife, halfe a dollar at a collation in Cuthbertsones, 18 pence at a collation with Balmayne. Out of the last 3 dollars given to my wife, she bought a chamberpot for 3 shillings, a board cloath for 3 shillings and 10 p., then I gave hir 2 dollars: this is another 100 merks, then 20 lb. payed for 40 load of coalls, 10 pence given in drink money to the cawer,[639] 12 pence at a collation with Colinton, 7 pence at on with Sir George Lauder, 3 lb. at a collation with Mr. Falconer, 12 p. for wine, a dollar to my wife, then 2 dollars given hir for the familie, so this is the account of the other 9 dollars remaining of the 55 dollars, togither with 5 other dollars pris de l'argent donné a la nourrice. [636] The dollar is here equal to 5s. 1d. sterling. [637] From his father secured on the lands of Carington, settled in his marriage-contract. [638] The shilling Scots and penny sterling are here used for the same value. [639] 'Cawer,' driver, carter. Then on the 16 of August 1670, I received from my father 20 dollars, the accompt wheirof follows:-- Item, payed for my press making and colouring, etc., 9 lb. 10s. For the glasses footgang, 2s. For seing the Duke's Berge at Leith, 2 lb. 10s. Given to my wife, 2 dollars. Given to the nurse to buy a bible with, one dollar. With Kilmundie, 10 pence. For the articles of Regulations, 10 pence. Then given to my wife, 2 doll. and a shilling. Then given hir to buy shoes, linnen, and other things with, 5 dollars. For 2 quaires of paper, 18 pence. At Hadoe's man's wedding, a dollar. For seck with Thomas Robertsone, 10 pence. For wine with my landlord, 5 pence. Given for the houses use, 2 dollars. For a coatch, 2 shillings. Summa is 19 dollars and a halfe. Then on the thrid of September 1670, I received my years annuel rent from Thomas Robertsone, vid., 300 merks, the count wheirof follows:-- Imprimis, given to my wife when she went to Wauchton, 2 dollars. Given to the barber, halfe a mark. Given to a poor boy, halfe a mark. Given in drinkmoney to my goodfather's nurse, a dollar. Given to Huntar, my goodfather's man, a 6 pence. A dollar to Jo. Scots nourrice, a dollar. Given to the woman Margaret, 2 dollars. Spent on Rhenish wine at Hadingtoun, 30 shilling. For my breakfast at Lintoun bridges, 22 shiling. To Idingtoun's men bigging the hay rick, 20 shiling. To his gairdner, halfe a dollar. To the kirkbroad, 10 shiling. To Idington's serving woman, a dollar. To his hielandman, 15 shilling. To my goodbrother's man Lambe, a mark. For the horse meat at Hadingtoun, 10 pence. To the tailzeor for mending my cloaths, a shilling. To my father's man Arthur, 45 shilling. To Wodstone's man Florie, a shilling. To the kirk broad at Abbotshall, a 6 pence. For Rhenish in Kirkealdy, 55 shiling. Then given to my wife for the house, 10 dollars. For binding Durie's 2'd volume, 2 lb. 2 shil. This makes one 100 merks of the 300 merks. Then gave for the acts of the 2'd session of parliament, 10 pence. Then for a pair of shoes, 1 lb. 19s. Then for Androw Young's nurse for my selfe, a dollar. Given then by my wife, halfe a dollar. Given then for a pint of wine, 20 shiling. Given to my wife to buy some slips with, a dollar. Given to Grissell Ramsayes mother for drink furnisht by hir to us by the space of 10 weeks, 3 dollars. Payed for wine, 7 pence. Payed for 2 horse hires to Preston, 3 shilings and 6 pence. Payed for wine in Daniel Rosses, 3 shilings st. For a quaire of paper, 9 pence. For ink, 2 pence. Given to my wife, 4 shilings s. Payed for causing intimat the assignation to H. Sinclar at Binny, 6 shil. st. Given to my wife, 6 pence. To the barber, 6 pence. 10 of October given to my wife for the house, 8 dollars. Given to Pitmedden's nurse, a dollar. Sent to a poor persone, a mark. Payed for Heylin's Cosmographie, 22 sh. and 6 pence. Given to the provest's woman, 6 pence. Given for paper, 9 pence. This makes another 100 mks. and 2 dollars more. Then payed at a collation with Mrs. Wood and Bell, a dollar. Payed to John Nicoll for a great bible, 17 shillings. Payed again to Grissel's mother for drink, 2 dollars. Given to my wife, halfe a dollar. Given also to my wife, a dollar. Given for a paper book by my brother for me, 12 p. Given to my brother William at that tyme, 6 pence. Given to my wife, 2 shil. 9 pence. Given to the woman in part of hir fie, a dollar. Given for 2 quaire of paper etc., 18 pence. Expended farder on the intimating Hew Sinclar's assignation, a shilling. For binding the reschinded acts of parl., halfe a crowne. At a collation with the Laird of Grange, 33 shiling. On win with Ja. Lauds, 5 pence. Given to my wife, a dollar. Item given to hir, halfe a mark. Given to the barber, a 6 pence. Given in Pentherer's, 8 pence. Given to my wife for my ...[640] a dollar. Item given to my wife for the house, a dollar. Given for new wine, a shilling. Given to my wife, 29 shilling. Given againe to my wife, a dollar. Given for the house, a dollar. Given to my wife, 3 dollars. [640] Word interlined illegible, like 'manninie.' This is the account of the wholle 300 mks. all till about a dollar which I remember not of. Then towards the end of November I received from my father about 200 mks. and 3 dollars which with all the former made 1200 mks. wheirof imprimis.[641] [641] In the first of these entries the value of the dollar comes out about 4s. 11d., in the second at 5s. A dollar and a halfe given to a man for teaching my wife writing and arithmetick, 4 lb. 8s. Then a dollar for the serving woman's halfe fie, 3lb. Item in drinkmoney to the bedell and others, halfe a croun. Item to my wife, a dollar. Item at Geo. Lauder's penny wedding, a dollar. Item to the fidlers, a 6 pence. Given to my wife, a dollar. Item, given hir for the use of the house on the 2'd of December, 10 dollars. To the barber, 10 pence. Upon win and at cards, 13 pence. To my wife, a mark. For a pair of shoes and gallasches[642] to them, 5s. and 10 p. To my wife, 6 pence. Given to my wife to buy to hir nurse a wastcoat with and shoes, etc., 2 dollars. At a collation with Rot. Bell in Pentherer's, 34 shiling. To Mr. Thomas Hay that he might give up the papers, 2 dolars. For Broun's Vulgar errors, 6 shilings 6 p. For the Present State of England, halfe a croun. For the moral state of it, 2 shilings. Then given at the kirk door, halfe a dollar. [642] Overshoes. This is neir ane account of ane 100 mks. and the 3 dollars. Then on the 21 of December 1670 was payed to the nurse as hir fee, 14 dolars. Item given hir as a pairt of the drinkmony she had receaved, 9 dollars. which two soumes make up the other 100 mks.[643] [643] 23 dollars equal to 100 marks. Taking the mark at 13-1/2d. dollar equal to 4s. 10-1/4d. Then I receaved from my father other 200 mks., which made 1400 mks. of all that I had received from him. Wheirof first payed to the nurse to compleat hir drinkmoney, which amounted in all to 18 dollars, 9 dollars. At a collation with Idington and others, a dollar. Given to my wife to buy a plaid with, 3 dollars. Given to my wife to buy lace with to hir apron, a dollar. Then on the end of December 1670 given to my wife 4 dollars and a halfe to pay 8 barrell of ale furnished us at 32s. the barrel, 4 dolars and a halfe.[644] Item given to my wife, 18 pence. Item payed for another pair of shoes, 3 shilings 3 pence. Item for wine with Mr. G. Dickson in Caddell's, 16 pence. Given to my wife, a dollar. Payed for wine, 10 pence. Given to my wife, halfe a dollar. Then given hir, a dollar. which makes up on hundred mks. [644] Dollar equal to about 4s. 9d. Then on the 2'd of January 1671 being hansell Monday I gave my wife to give out to people who expected handsel, 4 dollars. Then that same day I gave hir for the house, 8 dollars. Given for the Acts of G. Assembly 1638, 2 shillings. Given to my brother William, a dollar. Given to my wife, 2 mark. Also given to hir, a dollar. Then given to my wife to pay the waterman with, 30 shils. Then payed for Goodwin's Antiquities, etc., 7 shilings. Then given to my wife to buy linnen to make me shirts with, 2 dollars. Given at Mr. David Falconer's woman's brithell,[645] a dollar. Payed for a chopping of win, 10 pence. For a quaire of paper, 6 pence. For wine, 6 pence. At a collation with Idington, 23 shilings. Given to my wife to buy sugar with, 6 shilings st. Then given to Dr. Stevinson's nurse, a dollar. [645] Bridal. This is the other 100 mks. which makes in all the wholle 200 mks. Then I receaved my pension, vid., 200 mks. from the toune of Edenburgh: out of which imprimis: Given by my wife to Doctor Stevincon's nurse, a dollar. Given also to my wife, a dollar. Given to my wife, a dollar. Payed to John Jack for a pair of broatches to William Ramsay, 5 lb. Payed for wine, 15 pence. Payed for a quaire of paper, 8 pence. Payed to my man of depursements for me, 14 pence. Payed for Papon's arrests of Parliament, a dollar. Given to my wife, a dollar. Given to my wife, a shilling. Payed in a contribution for the poor out of money given me in consultation, 4 lb. Scots. Payed for a pair of gloves, 30 shil. Given on the 2d of Febr. to keep the house with, 7 dollars. Payed for horse hires when I went out and meit the provest, 6 shilings and 6 pence. Given to Rot. Lauder's man in Belhaven, a shiling. Given to my wife, a dollar. Given to Mr. Andro Wood's man in Dumbar, halfe a dolar. Given at Waughton to Darling and Pat. Quarrier, a dollar. Given at Gilmerton to the workmen their, a dollar. Given for 20 load of coalls furnisht to us, 10 Ib. This is on 100 mks. Then given 5 lb. to the nurse for hir child's halfe quarter, 5 lb. Then payed on the 15 of Febr. 1671 to my onckle 35 lb. in 12 dollars[646] for 6 bolls of meall, the first 3 bolls being at 5 lb. 12 s. the boll, the other 3 being at 6 lb. the boll, 12 dollars. Given to my wife, halfe a dolar. Given to Walt. Cunyghame, halfe a dolar. Given to my wife, a dollar. Given to my wife also, a dollar. Given for the use of the house, 3 dollars. Spent upon wine, 18 pence. Given to the macer's man, a mark. Given to my wife, 2 dollars. Given to the under keiper of our gounes, a mark. Given to the barber, a mark. [646] 1 Dollar equal to 4 s. 10-1/2d. This is the count of the other 100 mks. of the 200 given me in pension. Then I received from Wm Binning thesaurer 10 dollars, 4 of them consultation money, and 6 of them to make the 12 lb. st. or 150 lb. Scots,[647] of pension to me, out of which: [647] 150 l. Scots ought to have been equal to £12, 10s. This shows that the Scots money was not at the time at par with the English. Imprimis, given at a collation with Mr. Wm Lauder, 30 shils. Given to the bedell at Leith, 6 pence. Given to my wife, 2 shilings. For sweit pouder, 2 shilings. For wine, 5 pence. Given to my wife, 6 pence. Given for wine, 16 pence. Given to my wife to buy shoes with and lint, a dollar. Given for the use of the house, a dollar. Payed for wine in Lieth, 20 shil. Given at Hew Boyde's contribution, a shiling. Given to my wife, a dollar. Given to buy lint with, a dollar. Given for a drinking glasse, 6 pence. Given to my wife, a dollar. Given for the State of England, 2d volume, 3 shilings. Spent on wine, 18 pence. Given for the use of the house, a dollar. This is all the 10 dollars. Then I receaved on the 17 of March 1671 from my father 300 mks. which made in all of what I had receaved from him 1700 mks., out of which: Imprimis, given for the use of the house, a dollar. Given to my wife to buy lace for a pinner, to buy holland for napkins and aprons, etc., 5 dollars and a halfe. Item, for a chopin of win, 10 pence. Item, given to my wife, 10 pence. Item, for the use of the house, a dollar. To my wife to buy lace for apron and napkins, a dolar and a halfe. Payed at a collation with collonell Ramsay, 42 shiling. Lent to James Lauder, 2 dollars. Given for the house, halfe a dolar. Given to the barber, a shiling. Payed to the baker conforme to his accompt, 13 lb. 5 s. Payed for halfe a quarter's fie with the nurse's child, 5 Ib. Given to my wife, 2 shilings. Payed at a collation with Mr. Charles Wardlaw, etc., 29 shil. Item, to buy figs with, 9 pence. Item, for Knox his History and Navarri Manuale, 2 dollars. This is the accompt of one 100 mks. Then of the rest. Imprimis, given for the use of the house on the 1 of Aprile 1671, 7 dollars. On the 8 of Aprill given to the midwife, 5 dollars. Given to my wife to buy a litle silver dish with, which cost hir 33 shiling, a dollar. Given to my wife for sundry uses, 2 dollars. Spent upon wine, 24 shiling. Then given to my wife to buy turkies, etc., 2 dollars. Then given for ribbans to be garters, etc., 35 shil. Then on beir in Peter Wats at a morning drink, 5 shil. Then to Sir John Dalrymple's child's nurse, a dollar. To Mr. Archbald Camron for taking up[648] the child's name, a dollar. To the scavinger, 2 shilings. At the kirk door, a 6 pence. To the bedells, a dollar. Given to my wife for sundry uses, 3 lb. 15 shil. [648] Registering. This makes 200 mks. Then given out of the other: Imprimis, to my wife, a dollar. At a collation with Patrick Don, 43 shil. To my wife to pay a quarter for the nurse hir bairnes fie,[649] 2 dollars. Item for the houses use, 2 dollars. For a quaire of paper, 8 pence. Item given to my wife, 5 pound. Item given hir for buying meat to the gossips when they visit, 2 dollars. Given to pay the win and seck gotten out of Painston's, 4 dolars. Given to buy a coat to the bairne John, a dolar. Given to buy wool with, 2 dollars. Given to the poor, a shiling. Given for wine, 20 shiling. Given to the house, a dollar. Given by my wife and me to Sir Androw's nurse, 2 dollars. Waired on wine, 30 shiling. Given to my wife, 2 mark. On win with Mr. Alex'r Hamilton, 10 pence. Given for paper and ink, 12 pence. Given for wine, 10 pence. Given to the woman Margaret, 18 pence. [649] Wages of nursemaid eight dollars, about £2. Sie the rest of their accounts alibi. This is the accompt of the said 300 m. very neir. So that their is nothing resting to me to make up a compleit years rent: vid., from Lambes 1669 to Lambes 1670, but only one hundred merks, which I allowed to my father in respect he payed a compt of that value for me to John Scot: as also of his oune moneyes he was pleased to pay 90 lb. for me which I was addebted to the same John for 23 elle of cloath tane of for my bed and appertenances, at 4 lb. the elle and did not at all place it to my accompt. §2 O Lord, teach me so to be counting my dayes, that I may apply my heart to thy wisdome.[650] [650] These words stand as a motto at the head of MS. K. * * * * * Sie my counts praeceiding this in a litle black skinned book alibi. [_Supra_, p. 239.] On the 25 of May 1671, my father was debitor to me in the soume of 1800 mks., payable out of the lands of Carington, and that as my year's annuity from Lammas, in the yeir 1670, till Lambes coming in this instant year 1671; all preceidings are payed to me and discharged by me. Of this 1800 mks., I receaved the formentioned day from him 200 mks., out of which I payed: Imprimis, to the Janitor for 4 books, vid., the English laws, Polidorus Virgilius, Zosimus and aliorum Historiae, and Vimesius Theses, etc., 16 shil. st. Given to my wife for sundry uses, 3 dollars. For wine and seck in the Janitor's, 50 shil. To my father's skild nurse by myselfe and my wife given, 2 dollars. For 2 elle and a quarter scarlet ribban fra James Dick, 24 shil. For this paper book wheiron I write thir compts., 6 pence. Given to my wife, 6 pence. For wine in Pentherers, 16 pence. Given to the poor, a 6 pence. Given to my wife for the use of the house and other things, 4 dollars. Given to Joseph for shaving me, a shiling. Given to my wife for sundry uses, 4 shilings. On win, 6 pence. Item, to my wife, 9 pence. For a quaire of paper, a leather bag, and sundry small things, 14 pence. Item, given to my wife for the use of the house, 7 dollars. This is 100 mks. laking on by halfe a dollar. Then given to my wife for divers uses, 2 dollars. For a pair of shoes, 3 shil. and 6 pence. Upon win at Leith with Mr. Wood, etc., 16 pence. Since on win and otherwayes, 8 pence. Item, given since on beir, in Leith, for a velvet cod,[651] etc., 10 pence. On the 20 of June, given to my wife for the use of the house, 7 dolars. Item, for another pair of shoes, 42 shiling. Item, for wine, 12 pence. Item, for tent to my wife, a mark. Item, for wine to the landlord when I payed him 100 lb., 10 pence. Item, for sundry other adoes, 45 shiling. On win. with Doctor Steinson, 13 pence. Given to my wife to give hir wobster,[652] 3 shilings. For more tent, a shiling. Item, a dollar as a part of 6 lb. payed by me of annuity, a dolar. Item, on the 1 of July, given to my wife for the use of the house, 6 dolars. Item, at a collation with Kilmundy, 40 shil. Given to my wife, halfe a dollar. At a collation with Mr. Pat. Lyon, 50 shiling. Item, on sundrie other uses, a dollar. This is the accompt of the saids 200 mks. [651] Pillow. [652] Weaver. Then on the 10 of June 1671, I received from the Provest, Sir A. Ramsay, 100 lb. Scots as a termes annuel rent of the principal soume of 5000 mks.,[653] addebted by him to me, vid., from Candlemas 1670 to Lammas 1670. Which 100 lb. I payed to James Wilsone, my landlord, in part of my house maill, which was 160 lb.,[654] so that I remaine yet debitor to him on that accompt in 60 lb., afterwards payed and all discharged. [653] Unpaid half of his wife's marriage portion. See page xli; 3 per cent., equal to 6 per cent. per annum. [654] House rent, £13, 6s. 8d. half-yearly. Then on the 15 of July, I receaved from my father 400 mks., which made up 600 mks., of the year 1671, received by me, out of which Imprimis, payed to my landlord to compleit his maill, 60 lb. Item, to his woman Nans, a dollar. Item, to William Borthwick, the apothecar, conforme to his accompt, 36 lb. Item, to William Mitchell, the Baker, conforme to his accompt, 26 lb. Item, to Rot. Mein, for sweteis, glasses, etc., conforme to his compt., 14 lb. Item, given to my man when he brought me my 12 lb. sterl. from Wm. Broun, the burrows agent, a dollar. Item, given to my wife, 2 dollars. Item, upon win with Guus Grein, 15 pence. Item, to my wife for the use of the house, on the 22 of July 1671, 9 dollars. Given to my wife when she went to Innerkeithing fair, 2 dollars. Item, given hir to pay the deing[655] of hir hangings, 4 dollars. Item, on the 4 of August, given to my wife to buy a goune and petticoat, and furniture, conforme, 100 lb. [655] Dyeing, I presume. And because the 400 mks. receaved last from my father did not reach so far as to compleit it, theirfor I took 10 dollars out of 200 mks. payed me in July by Wm. Broun, in name and be halfe of the borrows for my pension, 1670, and made up the 100 lb. I gave to my wife theirby. Item, farder payed out of the said 200 mks. of pension for 25 barrells of aile furnisht to the house from the midst of January till August, at 32 shil. the barrell, 12 dollars and a halfe.[656] [656] Here the dollar is equal to 5s. 4d. This is near ane accompt of one 100 mks. of the 200 m. payed to me in pension. Item, given to my wife, 3 dollars. Payed in R. Gilbert's when I was at Leith with the Lady Wauchton, a dollar. Item, payed for the coach hyre, a dollar. Item, given to my wife to help to buy black lace for hir goun, 2 dollars. Item, given hir to buy coalls with from Leith and elsewhere, 5 dolars. Item, in Painston's with Sir Andro, 27 shill. Item, given to my wife when she went to Waughton to sie hir sone, 2 dollars and a halfe. Item, in Painston's with Mr. Rot. Lauder and Rot. Bell for our supper, 38 shill. For 2 quaire of paper and ink, 18 pence. For ane 100 plumes, 8 pence. To Idington's Man when he come from Dundy with the cloath, 29 shil. To my man for sundrie depursements for me, 29 shil. To the woman Marion for buying meall to the house, a shilling. Item, in Peirson's with Rot. Bell, 27 shill. Item, for my dinner in Pentherer's with Rot. Bell, etc., 48 shill. Item, for a coach hyre out of Leith, 30 shiling. Item, to Grange's man, a shilling. Item, to my wife, halfe a dollar. Item, for a mutching of tent, a shilling. Item, given to the nurse to be compted in her fie, 2 dollars. Item, given to my wife, a dollar. This is the full accompt of the said 200 mks. Then about the 14 of August I receaved from my father 300 mks. which made with all the former 900 mks. of this year 1671. Out of which imprimis: Given to my wife to pay the making of her goune and other things, 4 dollars. In Painston's with Mr. Jo. Eleis, 29 shiling. To my wife, 50 shiling. For a choping of brandy, 14 pence. Item for a hat in Broun's, 7 shilings. Item, to my wife, a dollar. Item, to Grange's nurse, a dollar. Item, to the barber Henry Porrock, 6 pence. Item, to George Gairner, a mark. Item, to W'm Binning the thesaurer his nurse, a dollar. Item, to David Colyear, 36 shilling. Item, on the 5 of September given to my wife for the use of the house, ij dollars and a halfe. This is one 100 merks. Then on the same day given her farder for the same use, 11 dollars. Item, given hir, halfe a dollar. Item, for wax and soap, 7 pence. Payed to Henry Hope for ports of letters when I was in Holland, 5 lb. 10s. For the acts of parlia. in June 1649, 34s. For 6 dozen of gold strips to the hangings at 7s.[657] and 6 p. the dozen, 9 dollars. Upon seck, 5 pence. [657] Sterling. This is another 100 mks. Then given to my wife, a shilling. For a quaire of paper, 9 pence. At a collation with Hary Grahame, 36 pence. To John Scots nurse, a dollar. On win their, 26 shill. In the Lady Home's yeards,[658] 6 pence. Payed for my man's horsehire to Wauchton, 46 shill. Payed of sundry depursements to my man, 20 shilling. Given to George Gairner, a shilling. Given to my wife, 10 dollars. Item, on win with Walter Pringle, 35 shill. Item, for a pair of botts, 17 shilings and sixpence. To Alex'r Todrig's nurse, a dollar. For a quaire of paper, 9 pence. For rasing[659] me at 2 severall tymes, 18 pence. Given at Coldinghame kirk, a 6 pence. Given to the foot boy their, a 6 pence. Upon sundrie other uses neir, a dollar. Item, given to my wife, twa dolars. [658] Probably means gardens. [659] Shaving. This makes neir the other 100 mks. And in wholle it makes up the 300 mks. receaved from my father on the 14 of August last. Then on the 3 of Nov'r. I receaved other 300 mks. from him, which makes 1200 mks. of what I received of my annuity 1671, out of which, etc., etc.[660] [660] This account is omitted as of no interest. * * * * * On the 20 of february 1672 I receaved 300 mks. more from my father, which with the former made 1500 mks. of the 1800 mks. due to me of annuity from Lammes 1670 till Lambes last in 1671, out of which, etc., etc. * * * * * Then on the 17 of Aprill 1672 I farder receaved from my father other 300 mks., which being joined with all the former makes up 1800 mks., which is a full years annuity owing to me by my father, vid., from Lambes 1670 till Lambes last in anno 1671: wheiron I retired all my partiall discharges and gave him a full discharge of that year's annuity and of all preceiding Lambes 1671. Out of this last 300 mks. Imprimis, payed to Margaret Neilsone in part of 2 years fie owing hir (it being 23 lb. Scots by year)[661] at Whitsonday approching, 34 lb. So that their yet rests to hir of thesse 2 years fie 12 lb. Scots. Item, payed to Bailyie Drummond for the cloath of my wife's black goune, 46 lb. Item, for Auctores Linguæ Latinæ, vid., Warre, Isidorus, etc., 40 shiling. Item, given to my wife, a dollar. Item, given hir to buy worsted stockings for me, 3 shillings. Given at a collation with Eleiston, 30 shilling. Item, for a quaire of paper, 9 pence. Given to my wife for the use of the house on the 27 of Aprill, 15 dollars. All which depursements make 200 mks. of the last 300 received from my father. [661] Women servants wages, nearly £2 sterling. Item, for the Covenanters Plea, a shilling. Given for a new quarter with the nurse hir bairne, 3 dollars and a halfe. For the Informations about the Firing of London, 6 pence. At a collation, 30 pence. For a quaire of paper, 8 pence. Given to my wife, a dollar. At a collation with Wm. Aickman, 26 shil. Item, given to the nurse in part of hir fie, 4 dollars. Item, for G. Burnet's letter to Jus populi and for the Tragi comedy of Marciano, 9 pence. For a book against the commonly received tennents of witchcraft, 8 pence. Given to my wife, tua dollars. Given to my unckle Andrew in compleit payment of his meall, 9 dollars. Given for the Seasonable Case and the Survey of Naphthali, 50 pence. Given for Milton's Traity anent Marriages, 2 shillings. Item, upon win, 2 shillings. Item, for a pair of shoes, 40 pence. This is the accompt of the haill 300 mks. last received by me from my father on the 17 of Aprill 1672. Then on the 1 of June 1672 I receaved from Thomas Robertsone 350 lb. Scots: 200 lb. of it was a years interest of my 5000 mks. he hes in his bond, vid., from Lambes 1670 till Lambes 1671: the other 150 lb. was my pension fra the toune of Edr for the year 1672. Given out of the 300 mks. Imprimis, to my wife, 20 rix dollars. Item, for Petryes History of the Church, 15 shills. sterl. This is one 100 merks.[662] Item, for Taylor's Cases of Conscience or Ductor, etc., 22 shillings. Item, for Baker's Chronicle of England and Blunt's Animadversions on it, 20 shillings. Item, for Plinius 2dus his Epistles cum notis variorum, 6 shillings. Item, for Cromwell's Proclamations and other Acts of his Counsell from Septr. 1653 till Decr. 1654, 4 shillings. For a pair of silk stockings, ij shills: 6 p. Given to the nurse's husband, a dollar. Given for Tyrannick love and the Impertinents, tuo comoedies, 40 pence. Given for Reflections upon the Eloquence of this tyme, 18 pence. Given for the Mystery of Iniquity unvailled by G.B., 9 pence. Given for the accompt of the sea fight betuixt E. and D. in 1665,[663] and are answer of our Commissioners to England in 1647, 4 pence. Given for ane answer to Salmasius Def. Regia,. 7 pence. Item, for my dinner and other charges at Leith, the race day, 3 shillings stg. Given for Holland to be a halfe shirt, 5 shillings. Given to my wife for the house, a dollar. Given for the life of the Duck D'Espernon, 15 shillings. This is another 100 mks. [662] This makes the dollar about 4s. 9-1/2d. [663] English and Dutch. Item, given to my wife for the use of the house, 18 dollars. Item, at Halbert Gledstans woman's marriage, a dollar. Item, at the comoedy, halfe a dollar. Item, that night in Rot. Meins for wine, halfe a dollar. Item, in James Dean's the consecration day, 23 shillings. Item, payed to Jonet's nurse and hir husband,[664] For hir fie drink money, bounty and all, 24 dollars. which absorbed all the 300 mks. received by me from Thomas Robertsone as my annuel rent and put me to take 21 dollars out of the money given me in pension. Hence of the 150 lb. given me in pension I payed to the said nurse as already is got doune, 21 dolars. Item, given to my wife, 2 dollars. Item, given hir for the use of the house on the 1 of August 21 dollars. [664] Amount torn off. This is 128 lb. of the 150 receaved by me in pension, so that their remains with me 23 lb. of that money, out of which 23 lb. Imprimis on the first of September 1672 given the said haill 23 lb. to my wife for the use of the house. Then on the 24 of August I had received from Thomas Robertsone the other year's interest of my 5000 mks. in his hands (being 300 mks.) vid., from Lambes 1671 till Lambes immediately bypast in 1672. Out of which imprimis: Given to my wife the forsaid 1 of September for the use of the house, 5 dollars. [Item lent to Eleiston, 3 dollars.[665]] repayed. Item, at a collation with Pat. Waus, a dollar. Item, on the 16 of September 1672, given to the midwife, 6 dollars. Payed in annuity from Whitsonday 1671 till Whytsonday 1672 in 3 dollars and a halfe, 10 lb. and a groat.[666] Item, at a collation, a mark. For a letter from France, 14 pence. To my father's man, a mark. For paper, vid., a quaire, 8 pence. Item, given to Grissell Ramsay for the use of my house, a dollar. Item, given at Gosfoord, 20 shiling. Item, to St Germain's nurse, a dollar. Item, to Mr. James Fausyde's man, 30 shill. Item, for win at Cokeny, [665] Erased in MS. [666] Apparently the last groat coined in Scotland was the copper twelvepenny groat of Francis and Mary in 1558. James V. coined a silver groat in 1525 worth 18d Scots. The groat here is an English groat, which was worth 4d. This is more then one 100 mks. of the 300. Item, given to my wife on the 28 of Septr. 1672, for providing things to the christning, 22 dollars. Item, to Doctor Stevinson's nurse, a dollar. This is 200 mks. of the 300 received from T. Robertsone. Item, for registration of my daughter's name to Mr. Archbald Camron, a dollar. Item, to Thomas Crawfurd, kirk treasurer because not christned at sermon tyme, a dollar. To the kirk bedell, 42 shilling. For a letter from France, 14 pence. On win in Rot. Meins, a mark. For a coatch hyre to Ja. Dean's house, a shilling. For a pair of shoes, 3 shillings. Given in with a letter to Paris, a shilling. For a quaire of paper and for ink, 10 pence. For a mutching of seck with Mr. William Beaton, 9 pence. Item, on the 13 of October, given to my wife, 9 dollars and a mark. Item, for win., 10 pence. Item, given to Pitmedden's man, a mark. Item, to William Broun's man when he payed me my pension, a dollar. Item, on the 22 of October, given to my wife, 7 dollars. Item, on incident charges, a dollar. This is the 300 mks. of annuel rent received by me from Thomas Robertsone on the 24 of August last. Item, on the 22 of October 1672, I receaved from William Broun, agent for the borrows, 12 pounds sterling, being my pension as their assessor for the year 1671, of which: Imprimis, for a pair of shoes, 40 shiling. Item, in charity to Ja. Hog, 29 pence. Item, for 4 quare of paper, 30 pence. Item, for a letter from France, 14 pence. Item, at a collation in James Halyburton's, 50 shiling. To Robert Boumaker, a dollar. On coffee and other things, 16 pence. Item, given to my wife, two dollars. Item, given to my wife, dollars 21. So then their remains of the said 12 lb. st. given me by William Broun only 22 dollars. With the which 21 dollars given to my wife, she payed first to Rot. Mein, for confections, wine, etc., to the christening, 28 lb. Item, to William Mitchell for baken meit at the same tyme, 18 lb. Item, for sundrie other accompts, 15 lb. Which is the haill 21 dollars.[667] [667] This brings out the dollar at about 4s. 10d. Item, of the 22 dollars remaining to me of the foresaid money given me in pension, Imprimis, given to my wife for the use of the house on the 5 of November 1672, 14 dollars. Item, at a collation or on win in Grissel Ramsay's house, 2 shillings. Item, for seing the comedy called the Silent Woman, halfe a dollar. Item, at a collation after it, 14 pence. Item, on some other charges, 2 shillings. Item, at a collation, 35 shillings. Item, given on the 13 of Nov. to my wife for the use of the house, 6 dollars. This is all the 12 lb. of pension. Then at a consultation of the Toune of Edrs, I receaved 23 dollars, of which: Imprimis, given to my wife the tyme aforsaid, 2 dollars. Item, for sundry books, vid.: Barronius Annals compendized, 2 tomes,. \ Summa conciliorum, Tyrius Maximus, Danaei Antiquitates, | Benzonis Historia Americae, Demosthenis | 15 shillings Olynthiaca, | and 6 pence. Apulei opera omnia, Bucholzeri Chronologia, | S.G. M'Keinzies Plaidings, / Item, for myselfe and my wife at the comedy called Love and Honor, a dollar. Item, on win after I came home, 18 pence. Item, given to my wife for the use of the house on the 20 of November, 16 dollars. Item, upon win at sundry times, 40 shiling. This is the haill 23 dollars. Item,[668] at sundrie consultations, vid., on of George Homes, 4 dollars; on of Henry Lindsay's for the Laird of Guthry, 4 dollars. Item, from James Gibsone, 2 dollars; on of Mr. P. Hamilton of Dalserfes, 4 dollars; from Mr. Alex. Seaton in name of my Lord Winton, 10 dollars. Item, at a consultation with the toune of Edr., 10 dollars, making in all 34 dolars, wheirof upon sundry occasions which do not now occurre, I spent 8 dollars long ago. So then their remains 26 dollars, out of which Imprimis: [668] Example of counsel's fees. Given or lent to Margaret Ramsay at the hilhead, 3 dollars. Given in charity to on Anna Gordon upon hir testificats, a shilling. Item, at Jo. Meggets relicts brithle, a dollar. Item, at collations since, a dollar. Item, upon other affairs, tuo dollars. For seing the comedy called the Siege of Granada, 2d part, for my selfe, my wife, and Grissell Ramsay, a dollar and a halfe. Item, to the bassin at the church door, halfe a dollar. Item, given to my wife, a dollar. Given to G. Patersone, the wright, his woman or nurse, a dollar. Item, at a collation with Charl. Oliphant about Touch, 24 pence. Item, at the comoedy, being the first part of Granada's seige, for my selfe, my wife, Rachel, and Grissell Ramsayes, 2 dollars. Item, given to my wife for the use of the house, 8 dollars. Item, for the acts of parlia., session 1672, etc., 30 shiling. Item, for binding Hadington's Praitiques, 42 shilling. For a quaire of paper, 6 pence. Item, upon other uses, 40 shilling. Item, to my wife, 2 dollars. This is the accompt of the haill 26 dollars. Item, receaved at 2 sundry consultations 6 dollars, out of which: Imprimis, given to my wife, 2 dollars. Item, on win at Aberdour, a mark. Item, for sieng the house and yairds of Dunybirsell, a mark. To G. Kirkcaldie's servante, a dollar. To my wife, halfe a croun. For the New art of wying vanity against Mr. G. Sinclar, 15 pence. Item, to my wife for the use of the house on the last of Decr. 1672, 8 dollars. Which was out of other money I had besyde me, which 8 dollars with what I gave formerly makes up 14 dollars and 3 shillings sterl. of the money due to hir for the moneth of January 1673. Item, again to my wife, a dollar and 4 merks. Item, given hir, 2 merks. As also given to hir, two dollars. Item, given to hir again, a dollar. Item, given hir, thrie dollars and 2 shillings. Item, given hir, 2 dollars. Then on the 19 of february 1673, I receaved from Rot. Govan, gairdner, 20 lb. in payment of his tack duety for all termes preceiding Martinmas 1672, out of which Imprimis: Payed for my selfe and Mr. John Wood for seing the comoedy called Sir Martin Mar-all, a dollar. Item, to my wife, 3 dollars. Given in with the trades bill, a dollar. Item, at a collation, l6 pence. Item, given to my wife, a dollar. Item, waired upon sundrie things, 40 shil. This is the accompt of the 20 lb. Then upon the 5't day of March 1673 I receaved from my father 400 merks, the first monie I lifted furth of the annuity payable to me from Lambes 1671 till Lambes 1672 last bypast: all preceiding Lambes 1671 being payed to me by my father as I have already marked, out of which: Imprimis, given to my wife, 23 dollars. to pay hir ale compt which was 9 dollars: hir baxter compt, 5 dollars, hir wobster, 2 dollars; hir coalman, 3 dollars. Hir nurse for the bairne Jonets quarter, 4 dollars.[669] Item, given my wife for the use of the house during this moneth of March, 10 dollars. Item, for a pair of gloves, halfe a dollar. Item, at a collation and on other uses, 3 shilings. Item, spent upon the race day, 3 shillings. Item, at a collation, 26 shiling. Item, sent to Calderwood's man's wedding, a dollar. Item, at a collation in Heriot's yards, 18 pence. Item, for seck with A. Todrigde, ij pence. To the Lady Pitmedden's nurse, a dollar. Item, in Ja. Haliburton's, tua merks. Item, to a poor woman, a mark. Item, for a quair of paper, 6 pence. Item, to the barber, 6 pence. Item, to the kirk basin, 6 pence. Item, given to my wife, a dollar and a halfe. Item, given hir, tua dollars and 2 mark. Item, spent in Ja. Haliburton's, 2 marks. Given to my wife, tua dollars. Given to the barber, a 6 pence. Given for a timber comb, 8 pence. Given on other uses, 8 pence. Item, in the taverne, 20 pence. Item, to my wife,. 20 pence. Item, on the 1 of April given to my wife for the use of the house that moneth, 12 dollars. Upon win at sundry tymes, 40 shilling. Item, to the barber, 6 pence. Upon other uses, 9 pence. Item to the kirk deacon for a year's contribution 2 dollars. [669] Wages of a nurse sixteen dollars, or about £4 yearly, double the wages of an ordinary woman servant. [Sidenote: [This money is repayed me.][670]] [Item, payed out for my Lord Provest's use and by his vreits[670] a hundred merks and 8 dollars to Marie Hamilton in pairt of payment of the right she had upon Popill][671] which being joyned with the former makes up exactly the haill 400 mks. receaved by me from my father on the 5't of March last. [Sidenote: [Which money is yet owing me.][671]] [670] Writs. [671] Erased in MS. Then out of 4 dollars receaved in a consultation, I gave first To the maid at Dudingstone, a mark. To the kirk broad their, a mark. Item, to Rot. Craw, a shilling. Item, for confections at Bervick, 2 shillings. Item, to Idington's man, a mark. Item, at Pople for shoing the horse, item at Auldcambus for brandy to the Dutchmen, a shilling. Item, to a barber at Hadinton, 6 pence. Item, given to my wife, 31 shiling. Item, to the kirk broads, a shilling. Item, given to my wife, 2 shillings. Item, spent at Leith and else wheir, 50 shilling. In the beginning of May 1673, my father and I having made our accompts he was debitor to me in the soume of 1400 merks as resting of 1800 mks. of my annuity from Lambes 1671 till Lambes 1672 (for on the 5 of March last I got from him 400 mks. of the 1800, hence rested only 1400 mks. of that years annuity) and I was found resting to him the soume of 40 pounds sterling or 720 merks[672] as tuo years maill of my dwelling-house[673] videlizet-from Witsonday 1671 (at which I entered to it) till Whitsonday nixt approaching 1673, which being deducted and retained by my father in his oun hand, of the 1400 mks. their remained 680 merks; wheirof I receaved at the said tyme from my father 380 merks in money, wheirupon their rested to me behind of my annuity preceiding Lambes 1672 just 300 mks: and I gave my father a discharge of the said 720 mks. of house maill, and of the said 380 mks. receaved by me in money, making togithir ij00 mks, which with the preceiding 400 mks. gotten by me on the 5 of March last makes up 1500 merks in all. [672] This is normal. £1 equal to eighteen marks. [673] His house rent was £20 a year. Out of this 380 mks. receaved from my father on the 8 of May 1673, Imprimis, given to my wife for paying hir meal and hir children's quarters, etc., 6 dollars. Item, for 2 quaire of paper, 18 pence. Item, for my decreit and charging Rot. Johnston, 18 pence. Item, on other uses, tua shillings. Item, on win with Mr. Pat. Hamilton, a shilling. Given to my wife on the 10 of May for the use of the house, ij dollars. Which making up 18 dollars and more compleit the 80 merks, so their remains 300 mks. behind, out of which imprimis: In Haliburton's with Sam. Cheisley, 40 shiling. Item, to the kirk broad at Dudiston, 6 pence. Item, to the barber, halfe a mark. Item, in Masterton's with G. Gibson, 31 shilling. Item, to Will. Sutherland, a mark. For G. Burnet's reply and conferences, 3 shillings. To Mr. Mathew Ramsay's nurse, a dollar. For a pint of win their, 24 shilings. For copieng a paper, 40 shiling. Item, for mum and walnuts, 9 pence. Item, at the kirk door, 6 pence. Item, for win and sugar, 7 pence. Given to my wife for furniture to my cloaths and hir oune goune, 5 dollars. Item, in Haliburton's for mum, 22 shiling. Item, upon seck, 9 shiling. Item, in James Haliburton's, 18 pence. Item, given to my wife, a dollar. Item, at the kirk door and on other uses, 13 pence. Item, to Jo. Steinsone, gairdner, 14 pence. Item, to my wife to be given to hir washer and other uses, 2 dollars. Item, to Lancelot Ker for copieng a book to me first, a dollar. Item, given to my wife, 6 dollars. Upon other use I remember not, 2 dolars. This is on 100 mks. Item, on coffee, the poor and other uses, 3 shillings. Item, given to my wife to pay hir servants fies on the 31 of May 1673, ij dollars. [Lent to Mr. Jo. W.][674] repayed me [3 dollars.][674] Item, upon mum, 12 pence. Item, for the provests last act, to Jo. Trotter in his Improbation, 30 shilling. For a quaire of paper, 9 pence. Given to my wife on the 4 of June, 1673, 5 dollars. In James Haliburton's, 14 pence. Payed for 2 pair of shoes, 6 shillings and a groat. On a quaire of paper and other uses, a mark. [674] Erased in MS. This is near another 100 merks. Item, given to my wife on the 9 day of June 1673, 6 dollars. To Joseph the barber, a shilling. Item, in Ja. Haliburton's, 18 pence. Item, for a timber chair, 18 pence. Item, on Leith on the race day, 3 shillings. Item, at the kirk door, 6 pence. For the post of a letter from my goodbrother, 14 pence. Item, in Maistertons with young Idington when he went away, 32 shiling. At dinner in Haliburton's, 20 pence. Item, to the barber, 6 pence. Item, upon other uses, 6 pence. Item, to my father's woman who keips the child George, given by myself and my wife, 2 dollars. Item, given to my wife, a dollar. Payed to the coallman, 10 lb.[675] Item, upon paper and ink, 10 pence. Item, in Ja. Haliburtons, 10 pence. Item, given to my wife for buying a scarfe, hood, 10 pence. fan, gloves, shoes, linnen for bands, etc., 7 dollars. [675] This is one of the few instances in which an item of expenditure is stated in pounds. This is another 100 merks. And which compleits the haill 380 merks receaved from my father on the 8 of may 1673. Upon the 20 of June 1673 I receaved from William Binning a years salarie as tounes assessor which he was owing me for the year 1671 wheirin he was tresurer, being 150 lb. Scots, which is about 229 merks, out of which: Imprimis, for a pair of net leather shoes, 3 shillings. Item, in Painston's with Mr. Todridge, 48 shill. Item, given to my wife partly to pay Margaret Neilsons fie and partly for other uses, 3 dollars. For a triple letter its post for Rome, 15 pence. Item, for seing the play called the Spanish Curate, halfe a dollar. Item, for cherries to Kate Chancellor their, halfe a dollar. Item, theirafter in Aikman's, 14 pence. Item, at the kirk door, halfe a mark. Item, spent when I was at Liberton kirk, 2 shillings. Item, for Thomas the Rymer's Prophecies, 4 pence. For the Lords answer in Fairlies case, a dollar. Item, given to my wife to compleit Margaret Neilsons fie during the haill tyme of hir service besides what was payed hir formerly, 6 dollars and a mark. Given to my wife for sundry uses, 10 dollars. To my sone John's nurse, 10 merks. Item, to buy paper etc. to him who copied me Mckeinzies Criminals, 29 shiling. Item, payed at sundrie tymes in the taverne, 30 pence. Item, for a dozen of silver spoons wying tuo onces the peice in all 24 onces at 5 shillings and 6 pence per once, making each spoon to be ellevin shillings sterling,[676] 47 lb. for I gave them in exchange 6 old silver spoons, which fell short of 6 new ons in 10 shillings sterl. upon the want of weight, and the accompt of the workmanship, so they stood me in all as I said before 47 pounds Scots. Item, payed to the ailman for are accompt of aill furnished, 24 lb. [676] Price of silver. This makes near the 150 lb. receaved from Bailzie Binnie. Item, in the end of June 1673 1 receaved from William Broun, agent for the borrows, in their name and behalfe, my pension of 12 lb. sterl., being for the year praeceiding Whitsonday 1673; out of which: Imprimis, given to my man when he brought it to me, a dollar. Item, to the barber, a 6 pence. To the kirk broad, halfe a mark. Item, on coffee, 3 pence. Item, for Reusneri Symbola Imperatoria to the Janitor, 18 pence. Item, to him for the particular carts[677] of Lothian, Fyffe, Orknay and Shetland, Murray, Cathanes, and Sutherland, at 10 p. the peice, 3 pound. Item, at Pitmeddens woman's marriage, given by my selfe and my wife, 2 dollars and a shil. Item, on halfe a dozen of acornie[678] spoons, 2 shillings. Item, payed to Adam Scot for a mulct in being absent from a meiting of the advocats, 28 shiling. Item, payed to Edward Gilespie for my seat maill[679] from Whitsonday 1672 to Whitsonday 1673, 12 lb. Item, to the copier of Mckeinzies Criminalls, a mark. Item, to the barber, halfe a mark. To the kirk basin, halfe a mark. Given to my wife, a mark. Item, on brandee, 3 shilling. Given to M'ris Mawer in charity, 29 shiling. Item, payed in Pat Steills, a mark. Item, on the 15 of July 1673 given to my wife, 10 rix dollars. Upon win in Rot. Bell's house, 2 shillings. Item, at the Presidents man's penny brithell, a dollar and a 6 pence. In H. Gourlay's with D. Stevinson, 38 shiling. [Given to my wife to buy me a pair of worsted stockings, 4 shillings.][680] Item to the barber, a 6 pence. Item, Tom Gairdner for bringing cheerries from Abbotshall, a shiling. To the kirk broad, 6 pence. Item, for mounting my suit of cloaths with callico, buttons, pockets, etc., 3 dollars. Item, to the taylor for making them, a dollar. Item, to Walter Cunyghame for keiping our gounes, a dollar. Item, upon cherries, 6 pence. Item, in Painstons, a shilling. Item, to the copier of Mckeinzies Criminalls, 2 mark. Item, for seing the Maidens tragaedy for my selfe and Mr. William Ramsay,[681] a dollar. At the kirk door, 6 pence. To the barber, halfe a mark. In Aickmans after the comedy, a mark. In Ja. Haliburtons, a mark. Item, at a collation also their, 28 shiling. Item, at collations theirafter, 7 shillings st. Upon the 1 of August 1673 given to my wife for the use of the house that moneth, 18 dollars and a halfe. [677] Price of maps. [678] This word, distinctly written, looks at first like acomie, but is no doubt the word acornie (French, _acorné_, horned), which Jamieson defines as a substantive, meaning 'apparently a drinking vessel with ears or handles.' He quotes from _Depredations on the Clan Campbell_, p. 80: '_Item_, a silver cup with silver acornie, and horn spoons and trenchers.' It seems more probable that the word in both passages is an adjective, applicable to spoons, and descriptive of the pattern. [679] Seat rent in church. [680] Erased in MS. [681] Price of theatre. Which makes up the full 12 lb. sterling received by me from the borrows. The nixt money I brok was some given me in consultation this summer session, or in payment ather by the gairdner or Rot. Johnston, who had the loft,[682] Mr. Jo. Wood or other, making in all as I have every particular set doune in writing beside me about 280 merks and upwards, out of which Imprimis the said 1 of August given farder to my wife for the use of the house, 4 dolars. Item, to Samuel Colvill for his Grand Impostor discovered, 3 dollars. Item, to him who brought home my session goune, a mark. To Rot. Meins man when he brought me the confections the nixt day after the tounes cherry feast to the exchequer, 15 pence. For the new help to discourse, 20 pence. To the barber, halfe a mark. To the kirk basin, halfe a mark. For 2 quaire of paper, 14 pence. For 4 quaire of great paper for copieng the statutes of the toune of Edr. theiron, 32 shilling. To Grange[683] his man, a mark. To the barber, 6 pence. To the kirk bason, 6 pence. To Will Sutherland, a mark. Given to my wife, a shilling. Upon win with Rot. Hamilton the clerk, a mark. For Evelins Publick employment against Mckeinzies Solitude, 9 pence. Spent in Arthur Somervells, a mark. Spent in Ja. Haliburtons on night, 2 mark. For carieng a book to Hamilton, 6 pence. To the barber, 6 pence. For a quaire of paper, 9 pence. To the kirk basin, 6 pence. For a double letter from my good-brother Sir Androw R., 28 shilings. To my nurse when she came to sie me on the 20 of August 1673, a dollar. Item, given to my man, a mark. Item, upon sundry other uses not weill remembred by me because small, 29 shil. To the barber, 6 pence. Upon seck with Mr. Innes my Lo. Lyons clerk for Granges armes, 13 pence. Upon pears and plumes, 5 pence. To the kirk bason, 6 pence. Item, upon seck, 8 pence. Item, in Mary Peirs's with Stow and John Joussie, 27 shiling. [682] Parts of his house sublet. [683] William Dick of Grange, son of William Dick, a younger son of Sir William Dick of Braid. His grand-daughter and heiress, Isobel Dick, was married to Sir Andrew Lauder, Fountainhall's grandson and successor. [After this portion of the MS. only selections have been made.] For the Gentleman's calling, a shilling. For the Guide to Gentlewomen, 2 mark. For the colledge of fools, 4 pence. Item, for a letter from Sir Androw R. from Paris, 14 pence. For Donning's Vindication of England against the Hollanders, 16 pence. For le tombeau des controverses, 7 pence. For 4 comoedies, viz. Love in a Nunnery, Marriage a la mode, Epsom Wells, and Mcbeth's tragedie at 16 p. the peice, 5 shils. and a groat. Upon morning drinks for sundry dayes, 6 pence. To Joseph Chamberlayne for trimming my hair, 6 pence. To Thomas Broun for Howell's Familiar letters, 5 shilings stg. For every man his oun doctor, 2 shillings. For the journall of the war with Holland in 1672, 2 shillings. For the Mercury Gallant, 2 shillings. For the Rehearsall transprosd, 18 pence. For the Transproser rehears't, 18 pence. On morning drinks and other uses, a mark. For Stubs Non justification of the present war with Holland, 4 marks. For the Present State of Holland, 34 shiling. For halfe a mutskin of malaga with Pat. Wause, 6 pence. To Samuell Borthwick for letting blood of my wife, 3 mark. To Ja. Borthwick's other prentise that was with him, a mark. For a mutskin of sack in Ja. Deans at the Cannogate foot, 14 pence. I had receaved from Thomas Robertsone thesaurer to the good toune on the 21 of August 1673 first 12 Ib. sterling for a years pension due to me by the toune from Lambes 1672 till Lambes 1673: as also I got at the same tyme ane years annuel rent of the principall soume of 5000 merks he is owing me by bond being from Lambes 1672 till Lambes last 1673, which was only 263 merks, because he retained 37 mks. and a halfe or 25 Ib. Scots of the ordinar annuelrent of 6 per cent. for 3 quarters of a year, vid., from Mertinmas 1672 till Lambes last 1673, conforme to the act of parlia. made in 1672,[684] and first out of the said 12 lb. sterling (being 220/219 merks) of pension given: [684] See note, p. 273. Imprimis to Granges man when he brought over the apples and pears, a mark. Item, on the 10 of October 1673 to my wife to buy hir great chimley with over and above hir old one, which she gave them in, 8 dollars. In Guynes with Mr. Wood, Mr. C. Lumsdean, and others, 20 pence. For taking out the extract of Granges blazoning, first to the Lyon himselfe, [10 merks.][685] this is repayed me. Then to Mr. Rot. Innes his clerk, [6 merks.][685] this also. To Wil. Sutherland when he went to Grange with his patent of his bearing, a mark. At dinner in Ja. Haliburtons with Mr. Gray the converted papist, 22 shiling. At Jo. Mitchells with Mr. Pollock the merchand and Mr. Gilbert, 52 shiling. To J. Mitchell's man who lighted me home, 3 pence. Given to Wm Sim for copieng to me the compend of the Statutes of Edenbrugh being. 6 rix dollars. just 5 quaire of paper, which 6 rix dollars makes just 3 pence the sheit; its only a shilling lesse. [685] Erased in MS. Item for a mutsking of sack with Mr. Garshoires, a shilling. In Mr. Rot. Lauder's when we saw his wife, a dollar. To my man Androw Bell to buy a bible and a knife with to himselfe, a rix dolar. On the 10 of Nov'r, the day the comissioner came in, spent with Mr. Thomas Patersone, 52 shiling. On the ij of Nov'r given to my wife more then hir monethes silver to perfit the price of hir black fringes to hir goune, which stood hir 36 lb., tua dollars. For Temple's Observations, 35 shiling. To the parsone of Dyserts woman when she brought over the ham, a mark. At Mr. David Dinmuires woman's brithell, a dollar and a groat. For Quean Margaret of France hir Memorialls, 16 pence. For a black muff to my wife, ij shillings. For buttons to my shag coat, 29 shiling. For the kings letter to the parl. of Scotland, 2 pence. Casten in at my servant John Nasmith's wedding on the 5 of Dec'r, 5 rix dolars. Item, to the music, a mark. Given to my wife to cast in, 3 rix dolars. Given in charity to on Christian Cranston, a dollar. Item, given to my wife, a dollar. Item, on the 8 of Dec'r given hir, 5 dollars. Item, in this money their was a dollar of ill money. The nixt money I brok upon was 52 dollars (wheirof 31 of them ware legs[686]), which I had receaved at sundrie tymes from severall parties in consultation money, conforme to a particular accompt of their receipt besyde me. [686] See Introduction, Money. Out of which payed Imprimis to Mr. Ja. Hendersone for Ja. Sinclar of Roslin in the begining of Dec'r 1673 to compleit the payment of the bill drawen by Sir Androw Ramsay upon me of 789 lb. 4 shillings Scots money conforme to Roslin's receipt of the haill bill. 185 mks. in 42 legged dollars,[687] so that their remains behind of that consultation money receaved by me before December 1673 about 9 rix dollars and some more, out of which For Loydes Warning to a careles world from T. Broun, 15 pence. For seing Marriage a la mode acted, for my selfe and Mr. J. Wood, a leg dollar. For M.A. Antoninus his Meditations on himselfe, 30 pence. The nixt money I made use of was 32 lb. Scots in ij rix dollars[688] receaved by me from George Patersone the wright for his house maill before Whitsonday last 1673, the other aught lb. of the 40 lb. being allowed to him in ane accompt of work. [687] This works out at about 4s. 10 3/4 d. for each leg dollar. [688] Dollar 58 2/11d. To on Lilias Darling in charity, 12 pence. Given to my wife on the 3 of Januar 1674, 6 merks. Payed in Ja. Haliburtons with Mr. Gabriell Semple, 21 shiling. Item, on the 5 of January 1674 to give in hansell being hansell Monday, 21 marks. Item, with Mr. Robert Lauder, clerk at Dumfries, 25 shiling. To Mr. Peirsone for writing the Observes out of the old books of parl. secret councell and sederunt, 4 merks. To criple Robin, a 6 pence. To him who copied Mckeinzies Criminalls 1 tome in compleat payment to him, 2 merks. Item, for a book anent the education of young gentlemen, 33 shiling. In Sandy Bryson's, 9 pence. To the contribution for the prisoners amongs the Turks, a mark. To Will Sutherland, 7 pence. Given to Walter Cunyghame for keiping our gounes, a dollar. Given to my wife on the 23 of february 1674, the 50 mk. in ij dollars and a halfe. For Lucas speech, the votes and adresses of the house of commons and the relation of the engagements of the fleets in 1673, 14 pence. To Thomas Broun for Parkers Reprooff to the Rehearsall transp., 6 shillings stg. To him for the Rehearsall transprosed. 2d part, 28 shilling. On mum with Mr. R. Forrest, 21 pence. Upon sweities, 4 pence. On win at Rot. Gilbert's bairnes christning, 24 pence. For Fergusone against Parker about Grace and morall vertue, 32 shilings. For the Art of complaisance, 16 shil. For the Articles of Peace, 2 shil. Item, with Mr. Rot. Wemyss, 12 shiling. To the Kirk Deacon for a yeirs contribution in March 1674, 2 rix dollars. Spent with Mr. William Ramsay, 5 pence. For the Proclamations against duells, and that about the E. of Loudon's annuity, and upon sundrie other uses, a mark. With Muire of Park, 9 pence. Given to hir, my wife, to give to Arthur Temple ane English croun which belonged to Mr. John Wood. To my wife to buy a petticoat of cesunt[689] taffety, 4 dollars. For Gudelinus and Zoesius deffendis, 29 pence. Upon win with Mr. Mathew Ramsay, a mark. Given to my wife on the 13 of April 1674, 13 Ib. 10 sh. [689] Query, 'seasoned.' To my wife to help to buy hir cow, for which she gave 20 Ib. Scots,[690] and which 13 Ib. 10s. Scots just compleited and exhausted the 450, 13 Ib. 10 shil. merks receaved by me from my father on the 20 of februar last 1674. As for the other 6 Ib. 10 shillings that rested to perfit the price of the cow, I gave that out of the other money I had besyde me. [690] Price of a cow. A dollar and a halfe that was owing me by Rot. Craw, and was repayed by him to me, was given to my wife to buy lyning for my new black cloath breatches. Payed for 4 limons, 16 pence. For the pamphlet called the Spirit of the Hat, 6 pence. In drinkmoney for making my new cloaths, a mark. Given to my wife, tua dollars. Given to hir to pay for linnen bed sheits bought by hir, a dollar. Given in the contribution anent the burnt houses, a dollar. For the book of rates of the custome house of Rome, 8 pence. The nixt money I made use of was 6 dollars given me in consultation by the toune Threasurer of Edr., on the 23 of Aprill 1674, when we consulted with my Lord Advocat about the rebuilding of brunt and ruinous houses with stone. Out of which For a discourse by L'Estrange upon the Fischery, 6 pence. Of boull maill, 6 pence. For my dinner on sunday with Mr. Wm. Patersone in Guines, 2 shillings. Au commencement du mois de May j'avois cent marks d'argent en vingt et trois thalers Imperiaux deposez chez moi par Monsieur Le Bois quand il alloit hors cette ville-cy, a fin les lui rendre a son retour [je les rendu.][691] De cette monnoye je pris premierement. [691] Interlined. For a sword belt, 22 pence. To Jo. Nasmith for morning drinks, etc., 15 pence. Of boull maill, 6 pence. In W. Cunyghames at the Linktoun of Abbotshall, a groat. To my Lord Abbotshall, and given by him to Tom Gairdner, 6 pence. For a quart of win in Mr. George Ogilbies of Kirkcaldy, 40 pence. To David Colyear, a groat.[692] With Mr. Lundy, Minister at Dysert, and others, 33 shill. To the beggers, 3 pence. To Tom Gairdner, a groat. To George Gairdner, 6 pence. For 2 oranges, a groat. For Lentuli Dubia Decisa, a dollar. To the beggers at sundry tymes, 6 pence. With Androw Young, halfe a mark. With Rot. Campbell, apothecar., 6 pence. To Hary Wood, Mr. W.R.'s man, 20 pence. With Mr. Wm. Ramsay in James Haliburtons, 12 pence. For my part of the dinner on Sunday at the West Kirk, 16 pence. For a horne comb, 6 pence. For Andrews morning drinks 19 dayes and some other things, 25 pence. To Comisar Aikenhead's masons, a shilling. [692] See note, p. 255. Woila comment je depencay ces cent marks pour quelles je demeure debtour an Monsieur Le Bois.[693] [693] In margin: Cette monnoye lui est payé comment il apparoistra cy dessous. Then on the 13 of June 1674 my father and I compted, and we found I had receaved all my annuities due præceeding Martinmas 1672, and that the last money I got was 450 merks on the 20 of february last 1674, and which compleited that quarter of my annuity which ran from Lambes 1672 till the Martinmas theirafter; then we considered that I was owing him ane years rent and maill of my house, viz. 20 pounds sterling from Whitsonday 1673 till Whitsonday last past in 1674 (all the former years maill being payed to him, as is marked supra). Then we proposed the deduction of on of 6 of the annuel rents imposed by the act of parliament made in 1672[694] for the space of a year, viz., from Mertinmas 1672 till Mertinmas 1673, which tuo particulars of the maill and the retention being deducted, viz., 20 lb. sterling for a years maill being 240 lb. Scots or 360 merks being allowed my father and 150 merks being retained by him as the deduction due off 900 merks, which is the halfe years annuity from Mertinmas 1672 till Whitsonday 1673, which tuo particulars makes 510 merks of my 900 merks; wheirupon their rested to be given me of the said 900 merks 390 merks, which soume I only receaved the forsaid 13 day of June in money and gave my father a discharge of the haill 900 merks due to me by him as half a years annuity from Mertinmas 1672 till Whitsonday 1673, bearing alwayes that deduction was given him conforme to the act 1672, and in regard he seimed unwilling to give me any discharge in writing of my house maill to be in my custody, he shewed me in his minute book of receipt that he had marked he had such a day got payed him by me 240 lb. Scots as a year maill of my house fra Whitsonday 1673 till Whitsonday 1674, as also in another place wheir he hes written doun the receipt from me of 480 lb. Scots as being 2 years maill of my house, viz. from Whitsonday 1671, which was my entry, till Whitsonday 1673; and which memorandum is all I have for a discharge to show my payment: only he affirmed their was no hazard in regard he was to name me on of his executors with the rest of my brothers. But in regard thesse 3 years I had possest I had never given him in any accompt of my debursements on the said house, in glasse windows, broads or others, he ordered me to give him in the compt theirof that he might pay it me. [694] In granting a supply of 864,000 lbs. Scots to Charles II., assessed on the land rent according to the valuations, the Parliament, 'considering it just that personall estates of money should beir some proportion of the burden,' enacted 'that every debtor owing money in the kingdom' should for one year, in payment of their annual-rents (interest) for that year 'have reduction in their own hands of one sixt pairt thereof,' and pay only the other five parts. The legal rate of interest was six per cent. To my wife, a dollar. Given also to hir on the 18 of June 1674 to buy a suite of french stripped hangings with, which stood 10 pounds sterling in pairt of payment of the same, 6 lb. sterling, 6 lb. sterl. or 110 mks. At the well besyde Comiston, 24 pence. For my horse hyre to Bervick, ij shill. ster. To Mr. Duncan Forbes for doubling[695] my Lord Hadington's reduction of Athelstanford, halfe a dollar. Given to Comisar Monro for reading the bill about the minister of Athelstanford's pershuit, a dollar. For the post of a letter from S.A.R. of Waughton, 10 pence. To Ja. Broun's lad for brushing my hat, 40 pennies. Given in with Knocks bill to the Lo.s of Thesaury for seing Skelmurlyes signator, a dollar. To the woman who keiped my niece Mary Campbell, a dollar. For raising and signeting the summonds of reduction in my Lord Abotshall's name, against the minister of Athelstanford, a dollar and a halfe. Spent with James Carnegie, 21 pence. With Mr. Wm. Morray and others, 20 pence. For black mourning gloves, 28 pence. Given to my wife, a dollar. Given hir to pay the harne[696] with which she lined hir hangings and for threid and cords to them, 6 rix dollars. With Walter Pringle, a mark. For a triple letter from S.A.R., 15 pence. With Ja. Inglis and others, 4 pence. With Mr. John Eleis, 16 pence. [695] Copying. [696] Coarse cloth. Item, on the 10 of Julie 1674, payé a Monsieur Le Bois treize thalers Imperiales in compleit payment de ces cent marks, this being joyned to the dix thalers payé à lui in the beginning of June last, 13 dollars. Given to David Coilzear when he went out to the Rendevous of the Eist Lothian militia regiment to defray his charge their, halfe a croun. At a collation with Sir David Falconer when I informed him anent the reduction against the minister of Athelstaneford, 4 lb. 4 shilling. Given to my wife to pay for 40 load of coalls at 10 p. the load, and for other uses, 8 dollars. For Ziegleri dissertationes de læsione ultra dimid. de jure clavium, etc., 32 pence. To Comisar Monro for calling and marking the reduction against the minister of Athelstainfurd on the 22 of July 1674, a dollar. Item, the same day given to him for reading a bill desiring our reduction might be considered and tane in presently and to stop the said minister's report in the menu tyme, a dollar. Item, on the 23 of July 1674, given by my wife and my selfe, at Mary Scot, my fathers serving woman, hir pennie wedding, 2 dollars. Item, to the fidlers, 6 pence. The nixt money I spent was some 7 dollars given me in 3 sundrie consultations as is marked besyde me in a paper apart. With Merchinston at Dairymilnes, 2 shilings. For the Empresse of Morocco, 18 pence. For Shutles[697] Observations upon the said farce revised against Dryden, 18 pence. At Arthur Somervells, 10 pence. Le 29 de Juillet 1674, je empruntée de Monsieur le Bois cent marques en vingt et trois thalers Imperiaux de quoy premierement. [697] Settle's. See p. 288. Donneé to William Stevinson, merchand, for compleiting to him the price of my French hangings which my wife bought from him at 10 lb. sterling, and wheirof he receaved 6 lb. st. before on the 18 of June, as is marked. I say payed to him, 4 lb. sterling. For my dinner on a sunday, 15 pence. Spent at the fountaine, 20 pence. Item, spent at Tom Hayes and elsewheir by my selfe, 16 pence. On the 15 of August given to my wife to pay of hir women Jonet Nicolsones fee when she went away from hir, 6 dolars. For Sir David Lindsayes poems, 7 pence. For the Baron D'Isola his Buckler of state and justice, 28 pence. For the Interest of the United Provinces being a defence of the Zeelander choice rather to be under England then France, 20 pence. Item, given in of the change of that 300 lb. sent me in from Patrick Lesly of my Lord Abbotshalls rents, 2 pence. To the penny wedding at Gogar, 29 pence. On 3 botles of botle ale, 9 pence. On the 31 of August 1674 given to Joan Chalmers the midwife when my wife was brought to bed of hir 4 child and 2'd sone, 6 rix dollars. To David Coilzear for to put tuo shoes on the horse, a mark. 5 Septembre 1674 donnée et payé à Henry le Bois an nom et sur le epistre de Monsieur Jean Du Bois, son frere dix thalers Imperiaux et dequoy ledit Hendry on'a donné une quitance, 10 rix dollars. On the 17 of September 1674 payed to Mr. Archbald Camron for registrating my sone Androws name with some of the witnesses, a dollar. On the 18 of Septr. payed for a new razor, 2 shillings. Payed to Thomas Wilsone kirk thresurer because my sone was not baptised the tyme of sermon, a rix dollar. Payed for a collation I gave to S.G. Lockhart, W. Murray, W. Pringle, etc., 8 lb. ij shill. Scots. Item, payed to Edward Gilespie for a years maill of my seat in the church, viz., from Whitsonday 1673 till Whitsonday last, and got his discharge of it, 12 lb. Scots. The nixt money I made use of was 287 merks I receaved on the 28 of September 1674 from Thomas Robertsone, being a years annuel rent of the principall summe of 5000 mks. owing by the said Thomas to me by bond, viz., from Lambes 1673 till Lambes last 1674 (which interest is indeed at 6 per cent. 300 merks), but in regard by the act of parliament 1672 their was deduction of on of 6 to be allowed for the quarter from Lambes to Martinmas 1673, theirfor 13 merks was abated of the full annuel rent upon the said accompt, and I receaved only the forsaid 287 mks. and discharged him of a years annuel rent including the deduction _per expressum_. Item, on the 29 of September 1674, payed to John Cheisley of Dalry, younger, in presence of his brother James 29 lb. Scots in 10 rix dollars for the maill of the 2 chambers I possest from him in Brunsfield,[698] by the space of 4 moneths in the last summer, 29 lb. Scots in 10 rix dollars. Item, spent that 6 of October 1674, that I quite Edenbrugh on the kings proclamation of banishment against the debarred advocats, 29 pence. [698] Summer quarters. In October 1674 my wife counted with George Patersone, wright, who had possest the low roume[699] of our house from Whitsonday 1673 till Whitsonday last 1674, and thairupon was owing me 40 lb. Scots of maill, and receaved in from him onlie 24 lb. Scots, the other 16 lb. being allowed him for a compt of work furnished by him to us, and wheiron shee gave him up my discharge to him of the wholle 40 lb. as a years maill of the said house. This 24 lb. Scots was waired out and employed upon my house. [699] Part of house sublet at 40 l. Scots. On the 20 of January 1675 I receaved from my father 400 merks Scots, which compleited all my annuityes due by him to me by vertue of my contract of marriage preceeding Candlemas 1674, and I gave him a discharge accordingly: for on the 13 of June last 1674 I discharged all preceiding Whitsonday 1673 (having only received from Mertinmas 1672 till Whitsonday 1673 for that halfe years annuitie instead of 900 merks only 750 merks because of the retention of on per cent.[700] by the act of parliament) and receaved then 100 mks. in part of payment of the halfe years annuity betuen Whitsonday and Martinmas 1673. [700] One per cent., i.e. on the capital sum of 30,000 merks for which his father had given him a bond, bearing interest at the legal rate of 6 per cent., equal to 1800 merks per annum. See Note, p. 273. On a butridge[701] to my hat, etc., 4 pence. [701] A form of spelling buttress. See Murray's _New English Dictionary_, s.v. Compare Jamieson, s. vv. Rig and Butt. It may mean the lace or band tying up the fold of a cocked hat. Item, on the 25 of Januar 1675 when I returned back to Hadinton[702] I took with me 13 dollars, which keip't me till the 8 of Februar theirafter. The particulars whow I spent and gave out the same is in a compt apart beside me. On the forsaid 25 day of Januar I left behind with my wife the remanent of the 400 merks I had receaved from my father, taking of the foresaid 20 dollars, viz., 300 merks and 3 rix dollars. Of which money on the 8 of february I find she hath debursed first a hundred merks, item, fyve dollars more, so their is now only resting of the money I left with hir about 190 merks. [702] He had retired to Haddington when 'debarred.' Out of the forsaid 100 merks and 5 dollars, I find shee had payed 38 lb. Scots to Patrick Ramsay for 5 moneth and a halfes ale, furnished by him. Item, on accounts in the creams[703] to John Nasmith, to the Baxters for win, etc., above 20 lb. Scots. And the rest is given out upon other necessar uses. [703] Krames, the shops round St. Giles Church. For S.G. Mck's[704] Observations on the act of p. 1621, anent Bankrupts, 16 pence. For binding the book of Cragie's collections and some other papers, 4 shills. stg. For fourbishing my sword and giving it a new Scabbord, 4 shils. st. For a candebec hat, 8 shils. st. For 6 quarters of ribban to it, 9 pence. On oranges, 6 pence. For the share of my dinner in Leith, the race day, a dollar. Item, for my part of the supper in Caddells when the advocats all met togither, 4 lb. Scots. [704] Sir George Mackenzie. On the 16 of March 1675 I receaved from James Sutherland, thresaurer of the good toune of Ed'r. 12 lb. sterling as a years pension or salary owing to me by the good toune as their assessor, from Lambes 1673 till Lambes last 1674, wheirof and all years preceiding I gave him a discharge. For the articles of war, 3 pence. For halfe a pound of sweit pouder, 2 shils, sterl. On the 20 of March 1675 I receaved from Andrew Young in name of my Lord Abbotshall, 600 mks. Scots (their was 4 rix dollars of it ill money which my Lord took in and promised to give me other 4 instead of them) wheirupon I discharged the said A.Y. and Lord Abbotshall of the said summe of 600 merks in payment and satisfaction to me in the first place of 89 lb. 17s. and 2 p. owing to me by the said L. Abotshall, as being payed out by me at his direction and order in Aprill 1673 (sie it marked their) to Mary Hamilton for 1200 merks, and hir papers being in Mr. John Sinclar minister at Ormiston his hands, he alledged their was 89 lb. 17s. and 2 p. owing him and would not give them up till he ware payed, wheirupon I at my Lord A's and hir order gave his sone Mr. James 100 merks and 8 rix dollars and retired them: item, for the remanent of the 600 mks. I accepted it in satisfaction and partiall payment and contentation to me of the bygane annuelrents (in so far as it would extend) of the principall summe of 5000 mks, yet resting by the said Lord Abbots: of 10,000 mks. of tocher contained in my contract of marriage and which annuelrents ware all resting owing to me from the terme of Lambes 1670, so that it will in compting pay me a yeir and a halfes annuelrent, viz., from the said Lambes 1670 till Candlemas 1672, and about 10 lb. Scots more in part of payment of the termes annuelrent from Candlemas to Lambes 1672: so that I may reckon that their is more then 3 years annuelrent of that principall summe of 5000 merks owing me, compting to the midle of this present moneth of March. With Mr. W'm. Murray and Blackbarrony, 16 pence. For my fraught to Bruntiland, 8 pence. For my supper and breakfast at James Angus's their, 37 shill. For 2 horses from thence to the Linkton, 16 pence. To Jo. Nasmith to carry him over from Fyffe to Ed'r with, a mark. To William Cunyghame's wife the tyme I staid at his house, 5 shills. st. Item, for 8 elles of drogat at 16 pence per elle, 2 dollars. In Jo. Blacks with Mr. A. M'cGill and Alexander Gay, 20 pence. Item, on the 24 or 25 of March last spent by my wife over and above the 48 lb. Scots, 8 rix dollars. I left with hir to pay out all hir compts she or I ware owing, and to bring over the plenishing, so that we ware owing nothing to any person preceeding that tyme. All which expenses being cast up they just make up and amount to 300 merks and 19 rix dollars, to which adde the 4 rix dollars of the wholle 600 mks. that ware not payed, their is spent 400 mks., and their rests behind 200 mks. Out of which Imprimis: On the 4 of May 1674 when I went to Ed'r., and stayed their till the 14 of May, during all that tyme spent according to the accompt of it particularly set doune in another paper besyde me, 10 dollars. Item, payed for a cow,[705] 34 lb. Scots. Donné a ma femme et emprunté d'elle de Rot. Craw, a dollar. Item, spent with Mr. Alex'r. McGil and Captain Crawfurd in Kirkcaldy, 3 lb. ij shil. Scots. Item, payed to the woman Mary[2] for hir years fie when she went away on the 24 of May 1675, 8 rix dollars. For seing the lionness and other beasts at Kirkcaldy, 12 pence. Donné a ma femme, 29 pence. Item, given hir more to pay the other woman's fee,[706] 3 dollars and a halfe. [705] Price of a cow. [706] Apparently his maidservants. Receaved from John Broun, elder, wool seller, 40 lb. Scots on the 12 of June 1675, and that for a years maill of the low chamber and sellar possest by him from me, viz., from Witsonday 1674 till Whitsonday last 1675, and wheirof I gave him a discharge. For 2 proclamations, 3 pence. To Henry Mensen for cutting my hair, 30 shil. For a quarter's payment with my man[707] begun on the 22 of June 1675 to the Master and doctor of Kirkcaldy scooll for learning him to wryte better, to read Latin, etc., 32 shilings Scots. On the 19 of July 1675 given a la servante Joannette Smith qui alloit avecque mon fils 100 merks ainez a Londres par mer pour leur d'espences and 9 shill. du voiage, six livres sterling, ings sterling. Donné a la dite servante pour ellememe, a dollar. To Mr. Tennent, skipper of the ship pour leur fraughts,[708] 35 shillings sterling. Spent at Kirkcaldy on Rhenish with Rot. Fothringhame that day, 44 shilings. Payed for fraught from Kingborne, 8 pence. Spent with Sir Ja. Stainfeild and Sam. Moncreiff, 39 pence. For the 3'd tome of Alciats Commentar on the Digests, 48 pence. For the Governement of the tongue, 12 pence. For botle aill, 4 pence. For a solen goose, 29 pence. Upon a mutskin of seck with Raploch and Camnetham, 10 pence. For 4 fraughts from Leith to Kingb., 16 pence. [707] His clerk. [708] Cost of passage to London. In the beginning of July 1675, their being a convention of the burrows to meet at Glasgow, and I finding their was tuo years pension then owing by them to me as their assessor, I gave W'm. Broun their agent alongs with him a discharge of the said 2 years pension under trust and upon this consideration that if neid ware he might make use of it for facilitating the passing of his accompts as to that article. In the said meiting and convention they ordered and warranded him to pay all the arrears of my said pension. At his returne back I still suffered the said discharge to remaine in his custody, and in regard I was owing to Thomas Broun, stationer, 84 lb. Scots or 7 lb. sterling for the price and binding of Prosperi Farinacij Jurisconsulti opera omnia, 9 volumes in folio which I had bought from him, ... I assigned the said Thomas Broun over with his oune consent to William Broun for the said summe of 7 lb. sterling, wheiron Thomas B. gave me on the 23 of July a discharge of the price of the said books, and William B. became oblidged to pay him the said summe, and he was to be allowed it in the foirend of the accompt betuixt him and me. Upon sweities to be tane to my brother George at Idington, a mark. For a horse hyre from Hadington to Idington, a dollar. To obtaine the copie of the king's letter reponing S.A.R.[709] to the Secret Councell, 6 pence. [709] Sir A. Ramsay. Then on the ij of August 1675 I was repayed the 2 rix dollars I had given out in the end of July last pour Monsieur Le Bois presse[710] which I gave a ma femme. [710] Query for pressé. Item, on the 13 of August 1675 Monsieur de la Cloche m'a repayé les douze thalers Imperiaux qu'il a empruntée de moy (as vous verrez ci devant on the 28 of fevrier 1674) and I gave them to my wife. The rest of my accompts of depursements given out by me since the 14 of August 1675 are to be found in another book like unto this. APPENDIX II A CATALOGUE OF MY BOOKS I BOUGHT SINCE 1667 Since my returne to Scotland from travelling, which was on the 9 of November 1667, I have got or bought the following books. As for the books I had ather before my parture or which I acquired and bought in forraine parts, I have a full and perfit Catalogue of them in my litle black-skinned book, and now I have two large Catalogues of them all. Imprimis, Brossoei Remissiones ad Corpus Glossatum, from Rot Broun, 10 shilings sterl. Vinnius ad Peckium de re nautica, 4 shil's st. Loccenius de Jure maritimo, 2 shi's st. Corpus Juris Civ. van Leuven, in 2 folios gifted me by Bailzie Calderwood. Mathematicall Magick, given me by my unckle Andrew Lauder. S.G. M'ckeinzies Solitude præferred, etc., given me by my father. 4 volumina Mascardi de probationibus, bound in 2 folios, from Thomas Broune, ij dollars. Montholon's plaidoiz, 18 pence. Received from Mr. James Ainsley, De in Consilia and Jason in Codicem, for which I gave him in exchange, Melchioris Cani Loci Theologici, Gaspar Pencerus de Divinationibus, Elliot's method of the French tongue, Manasseh ben Israel de termino vitæ, Bayri enchiridion, Densingius de Peste, Bodechevi poemata, and Jacobi Hantini angelus custos, in all 8 old books in 8'ro and 12. Guillim's Herauldry illuminat, got from Sir A. Ramsay, my brother in law. Receaved also from him, Bacon upon the union of Scotland and England. Receaved in Alex'r Hamilton's in the Linkton of Abotshall, Henricii Institutiones Medicæ. Heylin's Cosmographie, best edition, 22 shil's st. and 6 pence. For a great Bible of Andrew Hart's edition, 16 shil. stg. & 4 pence. For Broun's Vulgar errors, 6 shils. 6 pence. Present state of England, 1 vol., 30 pence. Morall state of England, 24 pence. Acts of the Generall Assembly, 1643, received from Bailzie Calderwood. The reschinded acts of parliament, 1646, 1647, 1648, with other papers theirto relating receaved from Collonell Ramsay, which with the rest of thesse acts which I had beside me, made up a compleit volume of the haill reschinded parliaments from 1640 till 1650 (except only the acts of the parl. held in June 1640, which I have since that tyme purchast a part and the acts of the parliament held in 1650 which I can no wheir come by), all which reschinded acts togither with thesse of the parliament 1633, which are not reschinded, I caused bind togither in on book and payed for the binding 30 pence. The Acts of the Generall Assembly, 1638, 24 pence. Papon's arrests of parliament, a dollar. Corpus Glossatum Canonicum, 2 tomes in folio, of the [I have now got the 3d as is marked infra, so that I have it now entire[711]] 3, wheirof it consists, for which I gave 3 dollars. and Henricij Institutiones Medicinæ, to on Mr. Chrystie. [711] Interlined. Receaved from Mr. Alex'r Seaton of Pitmedden, Criminalia Angeli de Aretino, Albertus de Gandino and Hippolytus de Marsiliis super eadem materia, all in on volume in the gothick letter; for which I gave him in exchange Alstedii encyclopaedia. Present state of England, 2d vol., 3 sh's st. Midleton and Rothesses acts of parliament in 1661, 1662 and 1663 received from Mr. C. Wardlaw. Knox's Cronicle of Scotland, 8 shils. st. Navarri manuale confessariorum, 26 pence. A collection of the English laws, a dollar. Polyd. Virgilij Historia Angliæ, a dollar. Zosimus, Procopius, Agathias, etc., their Histories in on volume, a dollar. Wimesii theses and other miscellanies in with it, a shilling. Thir 5 or six last books I bought from J. Nicoll, Janitor of the Colledge, in May 1671. Receaved from the provest S.A. Ramsay, S. Colvill's mock poem of the whigs, 1 volume, a Reflection on Monsieur Arnauld's book against Claud. The English act of parliament laying are imposition upon all law suits. Patavius his accompt of tymes. See infra I got Ramsey's astrologie. 3 Tomes in 8'ro of Bellarmines. Controversies in religion, from the Janitor, a dollar. The cause of the contempt of the Clergie and ane answer to it, 18 pence. S.G. Mckeinzie's morall gallantry, 2 shils. Acts of parliament in June 1649, 34 pence. Doolitle on the Lord's supper, a mark. St. Augustines confessions, 3 shils. st. His de Civitate Dei, 4 shils. st. Plinii panegyricus in Trajanum, a mark. The act about the taxation imposed in the convention 1665, 4 pence. The Clergie's vindication from Ignorance to Poverty. Item, some Observations on the Answer made to the Contempt of the Clergie, bought on the 1 of febr. 1672, both stood me, 30 pence. A Collection of English proverbs, 2 mark. Indian Emperor, a comedy, 20 pence. Cromwell's acts of parliament in 1656, 3 shils. st. Dryden's Annus Mirabilis, 8 pence. Auctores linguæ Latinæ, 40 pence. Warro, Festus, Marcellus, Isidorus, etc. Covenanters plea against absolvers, a shilling. The Informations anent the firing of London in 1666, 6 pence. Gilbert Burnet's letter to the author of Jus Populi, 3 pence. Marciano, a comoedy, 6 pence. A Treatise against the common received tenents anent Witchcraft, 8 pence. For the Seasonable case and a survey of Naphtali, 4 shils. st. For Milton's traittee anent Marriages and their nullities, 20 pence. For Baker's Cronicle of England, last edition, and Blunt's animadversions theiron, both stood me, 21 shillings sterling. Taylor's cases of Conscience, or Ductor Dubitintium, 22 shilings sterling. Petrie's Church Historie, 15 shili's sterl. Plinius 2'di Epistolæ cum notis variorum, 6 shill's ster. Cromwell's proclamations and acts of councell from 1653 til 1654, 4 shil's st. Tryrannick love and the Impertinents, 2 Comoedies, 40 pence. Reflections on the eloquence of this tyme, 18 pence. The mysterie of Iniquitie unvailled by G. Burnet, 9 pence. Ane Answer to Salmasius his defensio Regia by Peter English, 7 pence. A Relation of the fight in 1665 betwixt the Dutch and English and ane answer of our comissioners to England in 1647; both of them, 4 pence. Argentræi Commentarii ad consuetudines Brittaniæ, 9 shil's st. Peleus his Quæstiones illustres and arrests of parliament, 6 shill's sterling. The History and Life of the Duke D'Espernon, 15 shi's ster. 4 volumes of English pamphlets, most of them upon the late troubles in Britain, 15 shils. sterling. For the English Liturgie or book of common prayer, 5 shillings. Mr. G. Sinclares Hydrostaticks, given me by Mr. James Fawsyde in Cokenie, Baronius annalls compendized in two tomes, 3 shills. st. Summa Conciliorum et Pontificum per Carranzam 2 shil. st. Maximi Tyrii sermones, a shilling. Benzonis Historia novi orbis seu Americæ, a shilling. Dansæi Antiquitates mundi Antediluviani, a shilling. Demosthenes orationes olynthicæ Græce et Latine, 6 pence. Bucholzeri Index cronologicus, 3 shil's st. Apulei Madaurensis opera omnia, 6 pence. S.G. Mckeinzie's plaidings, 3 shil's st. Acts of the session of parlia' held in 1652, 27 pence. The New art of wying vanity against Mr. George Sinclars 15 pence. Hydrostaticks bought in Dec'r 1657. The Tempest, a Comoedie, 16 pence. The Dutch Usurpation, 6 pence. The Interest of England in the present war with Holland, 5 pence. The Dutch Remonstrance against the 2 De Wittes, 4 pence. The Lives of Arminius and Episcopius, 18 pence. The Way of exercising the French Infantrie, 3 pence. Moonshine or ane Answer to Doctor Wild's Poetica Licentia, 6 pence. Windiciae libertatis evangelii, 4 pence. The persecutions of the reformed churches of France, 4 pence. Rushworth's Collections, 23 shil's ster. The Civill wars of Great Britian till 1600, 4 mark. Charron upon Wisdome, 5 shill's 10 pence. Manchester al mondo, a mark. G. Burnet's Reply and 4 Conferences against the answerer, 3 shil. st. Walwood's maritime laws, given me by the provest Sir A. Ramsay. My Lord Foord's practiques, given me by the aird of Idingtoun. Thomas the Rymer's Prophecies, 4 pence. Reusneri Symbola Imperatoria, 18 pence. 6 particular carts of shires in Scotland, 5 shil. st. For the Grand Impostor discovered, payed to Samuel Colvill, 3 dollars. Roma Restituta gifted me by Mr. Thomas Bell. Thir which follow ware all bought from Thomas Broun in August 1673. A new help to discourse, 20 pence. Evelin for publick employment against S.G. Mckeinzie, 9 pence. The Gentleman's calling, a shilling. [The Guide to all Gentlewomen, 2 marks.[712]] The Colledge of foolls, 3 pence. Douning's Vindication against the Hollanders, 16 pence. Le Tombeau des controverses, 7 pence. 4 Comoedies, viz.: Love in a Nunnery, Marriage a la mode, Epsom-Wells and Mcbeth's tragedy, at 16 pence the peice, 5 shilings and a groat. [712] Erased in MS. Upon the 9 of September 1673 I bought from Thomas Broun thir 8 following, Imprimis, Howell's Letters, 5 shillings st. Every man his oune Doctor, 2 shillings. The Mercury Gallant, 2 shillings. The Journall of the French their war with Holland in 1672, 2 shilings. The Rehearsall transprosed, 18 pence. The Transproser rehears't, 18 pence. Stub's Justification of the Dutch war, 4 mark. The Present State of Holland, 34 shillings. Temple's Observations on the Dutch, 35 shilings. Memoires of Q. Margret of France, 16 pence. Loydes warning to a carles world, 15 pence. M.A. Antoninus Meditations upon himselfe, 30 pence. For Gregory Grey beard, 30 pence. For the Education of Gentry, 33 shiling. For Lucas Speach, the Comons their addresses, and the relation of the ingadgements of the fleets 1673, 14 pence. For Parker's reprooff to the Rehearsall transprosed, 6 shillings sterling. For the Rehearsall transprosed, 2d part, 28 shiling. For Ferguson against Parker about Grace and Morall vertue, 32 shilings. For the Art of Complaisance, 16 pence. For Gudelinus & Zoesius de Feudis, 29 pence. For the pamphlet against the Quakers called the Spirit of the Hat, 6 pence. A Discourse on the fischerie, 6 pence. The Book of rates used in the sin custome house of Rome, 9 pence. Les Exceptions et defences de Droit. Formulaire des Advocats, both thir receaved from G.T.[713] of Touch. [713] Thomson. See p. 196. Cyriaci Lentuli Dubia decisa, a dollar. Ziegleri dissertationes de læsione ultra dimidium, de juribus clavium. Commerciorum monopoliorum, etc. Epicteti Enchiridion et tabula cebetis, 32 pence. For the Notes and Observations on the Empresse of Morocco revised, 18 pence. in behalfe of Sir Elcanah Setle. For Sir David Lindsaye's poems, 7 pence. For the Baron D'Isola's buckler of state and justice, 28 pence. For the Interest of the United Provinces and a defence of the Zelanders choyce to submit rather to England, 20 pence. For the Empresse of Mororco, a farce, 18 pence. The Honest Lawyer, a comedy, and the office of general remembrance, got them from Idington in Nov'r. 1674. The Acts of the Assembly, 1648. Ægidius Bard in his Methodus Juris Civilis, from Edington. Les Effects pernicieux des meschans favoris par Balthazar Gerbier. Glanvil's way to Happines, 10 pence. The Bischop of Sarisburies animadversions on an Arminian book intitled God's love to mankind. Joannis a Sande decisiones Frisicæ, given me by Pitmedden. The Statute Law of England from Magna Carta to the year 1640. Collected by Ferdinando Pulton. The first part of Litleton's Instituts of the Law of England, with S. Edw. Coke's commentarie, both receaved from Mr. James Lauder, shireff clerk of Hadington. S.G. Mckeinzie's Observations on the Statute of Parliament 1621 against Banckrupts, etc., 16 pence. For binding the book of Craigie's collections and sundry other papers, 4 shil. s. et. The English Physitians freindly pill. Metamorphosis Anglorum, being ane accompt of the state affairs in England from Cromvell's death till 1660. Memoires de Philippe de Comines in French, j'ay les aussi en Latin chez moy. The Ladies calling, given me by my father. Wossii Elementa Rhetorica, 2 pence. Reginæ palatium eloquentiæ a patribus Jesuitis compositum constructum, ij shillings sterligs. For the 3d tome of Alciat's commentar upon the Digests, 4 shillings sterling. Payed to Thomas Broun conforme to his discharge for Prosperi Favinacii Jurisconsulti opera omnia, in 9 volumes in folio, 84 lb. Scots, or 7 lb. sterling. and which books I have gifted to the Libraire of Edenbrugh in June 1675, and upon every on of the volumes, as also in their publisht Register of gifts, bestowed on the bibliotheque il a pleu a Messieurs les Regens de cette université de me donner le tesmoignage qui s'en suit dequoy je ne suis pas aucunement digne. Vir summa laude præditus Magister Joannes Lauderus. (Joannis prætoris urbani filius de Academia cum primis meriti cuius Quæsturam agens temporibus difficillimis ejusdem res reditus que Anglorum injuria periclitantes fide sua ac diligentia vendicavit conservavit ordinavit amplificavit posteris que florentes tradidit.) Juris civilis haud vulgariter peritus ejusdemque in causis publice agendis consultus, civitatis hujus amplæ assessor, postquam Academiam suis studiis ornaverat hune librum cum octo fratribus Bibliothecæ donavit. Anno Domini 1675. Upon the forsaid bargain with Thomas Broun anent Favinacius (because he had great benefit) he gave me in Protegredivibus or the art of wheedling and insinuation, worth 2 and 6 pence or 3 shillings sterling. Item, Despauter's grammer worth, 12 pence. For the Governement of the tongue, by the author of the Gentleman's calling, 12 pence. The Causes of the decay of Christian Piety, by the same author. Item, his Wholle duety of man. Item, his Art of contentment 12 pence. New jests or witty Reparties. Joannes Voet de Jure Militari, 18 pence. The thrid tome of the Corpus Canonicum Glossatum, containing the 6'tus Decretalium Clementines et extravagantes communes, 8 shillings sterling. and which 3'd volume I still before wanted, having only the 2 first tomes of it. For Joannis Tesmari exercitationes Rhetoricae, 4 marks. De Prades Histoire de France from Pharamond till 1669 in 3 small 8'vos with pictures, 2 dollars. Hermannus Vulteius de Feudis, 4 shill. 8. ster. [Sidenote: I have now got the rest of his works, which see infra folio 7't after this.] Nicolai Abbatis Siculi Panor mi tani, his great glosse upon the Decretales Gregorii from the 25't title of the 2'd book, viz., de exceptionibus to the end of the haill 5 books of the Decretales, so that I want the volume before containing his glosse on the 1 book of the Decretals and the 2'd till the said 25 title, and the volume after myne upon the 6'tus Decretalium Clementines et extravagants; his wholle glosse consisting of 3 great folios; for he hes written nothing on the Decretum Gratiani: this broken tome m'a été donné par Pitmedden. Upon a review I made of my wholle library in Octobre 1675 I found sundrie books ware nather in this catalogue which containes all them I bought or acquired since my returne to Scotland from my travells, nor yet in that other Catalogue and list in the litle black-skinned book containing all them I had bought or got formerly ather at home or abroad: and theirfor I gathered their names togither so many of them as I could remember on and wrot them upon 4 or 5 sydes of paper and shewed[714] it in at the end of my Inventar and Catalogue in the forsaid black-skinned writ book; ubi illud vide. [714] Sewed. Sew is still pronounced like 'shoe' in Lowland Scots. Receaved from Pitmedden, Dynus ad Regulas Juris Canonici et Decius ad Regulas Juris Civilis, in exchange for my Ludovicus Gomez Commentarij ad Regulas Cancellariae Apostolicae et utriusque signaturae [of which I have bought another in October 1679.][715] [715] Interlined. Ratio reconcinnandi juris civil, 8 pence. On the 1 of Novembre 1675 bought from on William Broun, a dragist, the following books, being in number 23, Imprimis, Stoboei Sententiae Groecolat: 5 shillings and 6 pence. Ammirati politica ad Tacitum, 40 pence. Cypriani Censura Belgica, 56 pence. Autumni Censura Gallica, 29 pence. Bouritij Judex Advocatus et Captivus, 42 pence. Mynsingeri Observationes, 29 pence. Gudelinus de jure novissimo, 20 pence. Cujacij Observationum libri 28, 24 pence. Oldendorpij Classes Actionum, 24 pence. Rolandini Ars Notariatus, etc., 22 pence. Tuldeni Jurisprudent. extemporat. 22 pence. Aegidij Bossij Criminalia, 22 pence. Mindanus[716] de Continentia Causarum, 12 pence. Costatij adversaria ad digesta, 29 pence. Keckermauni Rhetorica, 20 pence. Dieterici Institutiones Rhetorica, 9 pence. Carpentarij Introductio Rhetorica, 6 pence. Faber de Variis nummariorium debitorum solutionibus, 9 pence. Herculanus de probanda negativa, 9 pence. Epistolae Synesij Episcopi Gr. Lat., 6 pence. Bouritij Satyricon in Saeculi mores, 6 pence. Virtus vindicata seu satyra, 6 pence. [23][717] Rhodolphinus de absoluta principis potestate, 6 pence. [716] Mindanus, Petrus Friderus. [717] Interlined. From His[718] shop bought, [718] i.e. Broun's. Blunts Academy of Eloquence or his Rhetorick, 15 pence. Clarks formulae Oratoriae, 15 pence. Item from the said William Broun on the 6 of November 1675, Imprimis, Matthias Stephani de officio judicis, 42 pence. Benevenutus stracca de mercatura, etc., 29 pence. Langij loci communes seu Anthologia, 42 pence. Spankemij dubia Evangelica, 2 tomes,. 7 lib. 10s. Mindanus de Mandatis, 18 pence. Macrobij Saturnalia et alia opera, 10 pence. Bertrandus de jurisperitorum vitis, 24 pence. Farnabij judex Rhetoricus, 13 pence. Cypriani Regneri Censura Belgica juris canonici, 3 shills. sterl. For Platonis opera omnia 3 tomes, 6 shills. sterl. For a book containing some sermons of Mr. William Struthers anent true happines; item a defensative against the poyson of supposed prophecies, Peters complaint, etc., 2 merks. The first three parts of the famed romance Cleopatra. 11 or 12 litle paper books all wrytten with my oune hand on miscellany subjects anno 1675 besydes many things then wryt be me in other books and papers. Reiffenbergij Orationes politicae, etc., 15 pence. Memoires of the reigne of Lowis the 14 of France. Doctorum aliquot virorum vivae effigies ad numerum 38, 3 shillings sterl. Luciani opera quae extant omnia gifted me by my client Mr. Patrick Hamilton of Dalserf. I had some of his Dialogues by themselfes in a book apart of before. For a treatise of maritime affairs, 5 shillings and 6 pence. The case of the bankers and their creditors stated and examined, 2 shills. sterl. Shaftesbury and Buckinghames Speeches in October and November 1675 with the letter to a friend about the test against dissenters from the Church, 3 shill. and 6 pence. For Robertj Baillij opus historicum, 4 shillings and 6 pence. For Le Grands Man without passion or wise stoick, 28 pence. For William Pens lnglands interest discovered with honor to the prince, 12 pence. For a treatise of human reason, 8 pence. For observations upon it, 8 pence. Vide Hobs infra in 1680. Gassendi Exercitationes adversus Aristoteleos, item de vita et moribus Epicuri, item L'Aunoy de varia Aristotelis fortuna in Academia Parisiensi, all bound togither, stood me, 3 shills. sterl. Kirkwoods Grammatica Latina, 8 pence. Mitchells Answer to Barclay the Quakers angrie pamphlet, 11 pence. Chevreau's Mirror of fortune, 28 pence. John Bona's Guide to Aeternity, 20 pence. A Rebuke to informers and a plea for nonconformists and their meitings, a shilling. A. Couleys poemes and works, 13 shil. ster. Boyls Seraphick love, 18 pence. Item, his Excellency of theology above Naturall Philosophy, 30 pence. His Considerationes concerning the stile of the Scriptures, 24 pence. Thir four last bought at London by my brother Colin in May 1676. The Naked Truth, 2 shillings ster. The Answer to it, 2 shillings ster. Vide in the other leiff another answer to it. Additiones Joannis Baptistae hodierna ad Petri Surdi Decisiones Mantuanas, gifted me in June 1676 by Mr. William Hendersone bibliothecar in the Colledge of Edenbrugh. Lesly Bischop of Rosse de rebus gestis Scotorum, 10 shillings sterling. The Conference betuixt Archbischop Laud and Fischer the Jesuite gifted me by the Lord Abotshall. Ane book of stiles in Octavo. Fullers History of the Holy War, 7 shillings sterling. Caves primitive Christianity, 5 shills. and 6 pence. Dutchesse of Mazarina Memoires, 12 pence. Durhame on the 10 commands, 2 shillings. Skinners Lexicon Ætymologicum Auglicanæ linguæ, etc., 17 shillings sterling. Le Notaire parfait, 12 pence. Pierre Matthieu's 1st tome de L'Histoire de France, I having the 2nd tome long before, 8 pence. Plethonis et aliorum tractatus de vita et morte, 8 pence. Judge Standfords plees del couronne and King's prærogative, 8 pence. For all the Acts of the Generall Assemblies from 1639 till 1648, 3 shillings st. For Regiam Majestatem in Latin with Skeens learned annotationes, 5 shills. ster. For Mangilius de Evictionibus, 5 shills. st. For Gildas Britannicus Epistola, 12 pence. For Mr. Hugh Binnings wholle works in 4 volumes, being a practicall catechisme and sermons, a dollar. For Drydens Notes on the Empresse of Morocco. I have Setles answers and revieu of them _supra,_ 15 pence. For the Siege of Granada in 2 parts, a comedy of Drydens, 3 shills. sterl. For the Libertin, a comædie, 15 pence. Menagij Amoenitates juris, 16 pence. Scipionis Gentilis parerga origines de jure publico, cum Coleri parergis, 16 pence. For the rules of Civility, 15 pence. For Hugo Grotius his Annotata Critica ad Vetus et novum testamentum in 6 volumes, 20 dollars. in folio from Thomas Broun in December 1676 (Vide infra. I gift them in Januar 1683). For Herberts Life of Henry the 8th of England, 40 pence. For Senecæ Tragoediæ cum notis Faruabij, 12 pence. Lord Bacons History of Henry the 7 of England gifted me by the Lord Abotshall. As also gifted to me by him on the 2d of March 1677 Euclids Geometry with Mr. Jo. Dees learned præface; and item gifted Ramseys Astrologia restaurata et munda with a vindication of it and rules for electing the tymes for all manner of works; item gifted me Lex Talionis being another answer made by Mr. Gunning or Mr. Fell to The Naked Truth, which see in the praeceeding leiff. For Daillees Right use of the Fathers, 4 shillings sterling. Baxters Grotian Religion discovered, 6 pence. Les Diverses leçons de Pierre Mexie et D'Antoine du Verdier. The pacquet of advices to the meu of Shaftsbury in answer to his letter to a friend, supra, 9 pence. Lukins cheiff interest of man, 6 pence. Mr. Smirk or Divine a la mode, being a reply to the animadversions on the Naked Truth mention'd in this and in the former leiff, 2 mark. Adam and Eve or the State of innocence, ane opera of Drydens, 18 pence. For The Plain Dealer, a comedy, 18 pence. The Toune Fop or Sir Timothy, etc., 18 pence. Received in June 1677 from Mr. James Lauder in name of Mistris Ker in Hadington. Francisci Connani Commentarius Juris Civilis in two volumes in folio. I had the first tome already, having bought it at Parise. Farder received from hir. Hottomanni partitiones juris et juris consultus and some other of his small tracts. Item, Lanfranci Balbi Decisionum et Observationum centuriae 5. The life of Pomponius Atticus, etc., 30 pence. A Guide to heaven from the world, 6 pence. For The 2'd pacquet of Advices to the men of Shaftsburie, 2 shills. sterl. For Madame Fickle a comoedy, 18 pence. For Johnstons History of King James the 6'th minority, 12 pence. Midletons Appendix to the Scots Church Historie, etc., 2 shills: sterl. Burnets Memoires of the 2 Dukes of Hamilton from 1625 18 shillings sterling. Doctor Hamonds Annotations on the New Testament, 18 lib. Scot. Steelingfleets Origines Sacrae, 7 shills. sterl. Glanvills Philosophicall Essayes, 4 shills. 6 pence. The Art of Speaking, 30 pence. Thir last 5 I bought from Thomas Broun on the 15 of September 1677. Sir George McKeinzies Criminalls, 4 Lb. Scots. The following books to the number of 13. 15 I receaved from my Lord Abotshall in October 1677, because he had doubles of them as we inventar'd his books, some of them I had myselfe already. Imprimis, a Latin and French bible in folio. 2. The Review of the councell of Trent. 3. Bacon's resuscitatio 2'd part. [4. Swinnock's Christian Man's calling.][719] given back to the Librarie. 5. Rosinus Romanae Antiquitates. 6. Goodwyns Moyses and Aaron. [7. Ja. Colvill's Grand Impostor discovered.][719] having another I gave this to Mr. Alexr. Drummond 8. Sympson's compend of the ten persecutions. 9. Brinsley's Ludus literarius. 10. Hooll's grammatica Latino Anglica. 11. Acts of parliament in 1669. 12. Milton's Paradise Lost 13. Hudibras mock poem. 14. Caesars commentaries in English. 15. Arcandam upon the constellations. 16. Adam out of Eden on planting. [719] Erased in MS. A mesme temps je empruntée l'usage de ces sept livres suivans de lui pour les rendre quand il les demandoit. Imprimis Rutherfuird's Lex Rex. 2. Wiseman's law of laws, etc. 3. The accomplish't Atturney. 4. Natalis comitis mythologiae. 5. Stephanus praeparative to his apologie for Herodote. 6. Imagines mortis et medicina animae. 7. Dom Huarto's triall of wits. The 3 following French books ware about that same tyme gifted me by Rot. Keith of Craig. Imprimis, Mr. Wicquefort's Memoires touchant ambassadeurs et les ministres publiques. 2. Histoire de la Reyne Christine de Suede. 3. Lettre sur la campaigne en Flandre, 1677. For the art to make love, 12 pence. For the countermine against the presb., 3 shils. stg. From John Nicol bought on the 18 Dec'ris 1677 the 6 following books. Bodinus de daemonomania majorum, 2 marks. Hall's Cases of Conscience, 14 pence. Walker against Socinianisme, 12 pence. Juvenalis et Persius cum notis Farnab., 10 pence. Sylvestri summa summarum, 2 dollars. Scapulæ Lexicon Græco-Latinum, 2 dollars. Drusius de tribus-sectis Judeorum, 20 pence. Item, the book of fortune, 20 pence. Vincent on Christ's Appearance at the Day of Judgement, ij pence. Antonii Mornacii observationes ad pandectas et ad Codicem, in 3 tomes in folio, at 22 shillings sterl. the tome, 40 lb. Scots. Gerardus Joan: Wossius de Historicis Latinis, 4 lb. Scots. Christophori Sandii animadversiones in istum Vosii librum, 12 pence. For Divi Thomæ Aquinatis summa Theologica, 16 shillings stering. For Wallis Due correction of Hobs geometrie, 8 pence. Lipsius Notes on Tacitus, 4 pence. Dominici Baudii epistolæ et orationes, 34 pence. Elberti Leonini consilia, a dollar. About the 19 of Aprill 1678, receaved from Abotshall a manuscript containing a most elegant summary and collection of sundry remarkable things from the 7 tomes of St. Augustins works. A meme temps je emprunté de lui les livres suivans: 2 manuscripts in Latin de Decimis, contra Erastianos, Independentes, de politia civili et ecclesiastica, de controversiis theologicis, etc., of Mr. Andrew Ramsayes: but now I have given him thir back: Rosse's Pansebeia or view of all Religions. Grotii de imperio summarum potestatum circa sacra. Florus Historie cum Lucii Ampelii memoriali. Catonis Disticha et Mimi Publiani by Hoole. Bought the 15 of Aprill 1678 from Mr. Charles Lumsdean thir six books, Imprimis, Andrew Willet's Hexapla upon Exodus and Leviticus. 2 volumes in folio, 12 shillings sterling. vide infra in 1679 and Aprill 1684. 6 shillings sterling each volume. Jermynes commentarie and meditations on the book of Proverbs, 6 shils. stg. Rosse's arcana microcosmi with a refutation of Bacon, Harvey, Broun, etc., 12 pence. The right of dominion, property, liberty, 10 pence. Mr. R. Baillie's antidote agt Arminianisme, 4 pence. Heraclitus Christianus, or the man of sorrow 12 pence. Lo. Hatton on Status and acts of parlia', 12 pence. Kirkwodi compendium Rhetorircæ, 2 pence. Godolphin upon legacies, last wills and devises, 6 shills. ster. Salernitana schola de conservanda bona valetudine, 2 shillings and 6 pence. Juvenalls Satyrca Englished by Stapylton, 2 mark and a halfe. The Fulfilling of the Scriptures. From Abotshall: ...[720] [Greek: kaina kai palaia]: Things new and old, or a storehouse of similes, sentences, allegories, etc., by John Spencer. [720] Word undeciphered. Item, receaved Drummond's History of the lives of the 5 James's, Kings of Scotland, with memorialls of state. Item, Wilson's art of Rhetorique and art of Logick. Item, l'Estat de l'Eglise by Jean de Hainault and Jean Crespin, they being 4 books in number which at this tyme j'ay recu de Abotshall. Fur a manuscript containing some law dictats of the professors at Poictiers and Bourge en Berry annis 1611 and 1612, 12 pence. For Masuerii practica forensis with Montis Albani exceptiones, 12 pence. Quintini Hedui Analecta juris ad Titul. Decretal de verborum significatione, 12 pence. For Jacobi de Voragine legenda aurea seu Vitæ sanctorum, ij pence. Ecloga Oxonio-Cantabrigiensis; being a Catalogue of all the manuscripts in thesse 2 universities, ij pence. Mr. D. Dickson's Therapeutica sacra. The Christian education of children, 36 pence. Gifted me by Mr. Wm. Henderson: Bibliothecar of Ed'r, H. Cardani arcana politica seu de prudentia civili. Gotten from Mr. Wm. Dundas Wisseinbachii Manuale de verborum signifcatione, item, Nota nomico-philologica in passionem Christi. Annibal Trabrotus his enarrationes ad Cuiacij paratitla in libros tres prinres Codicis, a mark. For A.S. Boetius de Consolatione philosophiæ et disciplina scholastica, 6 pence. Gifted to me by Mr. John Craig of Ramorney, advocat, on the 16 of November 1678, Davila's Historie of the civill wars of France. Leidington's practiques and some other papers bound togither by me at this time. Tbe Christians Patterne or A Kempis Imitation of Christ, 12 pence. For tuo volumes of Panormitans commentary upon the decretales, which compleits what I had of him before. Item, for Giuidonis Papae decisiones parlamenti Grationapolitanæ and Lipsius de constantia, in all 4 books, 6 shillings sterling. For Lucas de Penna ad tres posteriores libros codicis, 40 pence. For Joannis Amos Comenii janua linguarum in Greek; Latin and English, 18 pence. I have another in Latin, French, and Dutch. Poemata Niniani Patersoni gifted me by the said Mr. Ninian the author. Code Lowis ou ordannances pour les matieres criminelles. Georgii Macropedii methodus de conscribendis epistolis, etc., 6 pence. Jer. Taylor's liberty of prophecieng. Lubbertus contra Socinum de Christo mediatore. Aurengzebe and the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus Vespasian, 2 comedies. The Life of K. Charles the I. the pseudomartyr. Ane Accompt of the Scots greevances anno 1674. Mother Gregs Jests. Raphaell Holinsched's Chronicle of England from William the Conqueror till 1587, 9 shillings sterl. An Abridgement and written collection drawen furth of the Register of the commission for plantation of kirks and valuation of teynds, from 1661 till November 1673. Catalogus Librorum D. Jacobi Narnij, gifted by him to the Colledge of Edenbrugh. For Mr. Dods and Cleavers commentary on the wholle proverbs of Solomon, 4 shills. stg. For Mr. Cleaver's Commentar on some of the chapters of the Proverbs, more amply then in the præceeding commentary, their being only 5 chapters explained in this volume, viz., the 1, 2, 15, 16, and 17 chapters theirof, enriched with many discourses and doctrines from thesse chapters, not in the former commentarie. Gullielmi Cocci revelatio revelata, or expositio Apocalypse[Greek: o]s, 12 pence. Ludovici Cælii Rhodigini Antiqutæ lectiones, Parisiis 1517. The Apology for and vindication of the persecuted ministers in Scotland, gifted me by Abotshall. For the Differences of the tymes, written by Mr. David Foster, minister at Lauder, a mark. Erasmi Chiliades Adagiorum in folio, gifted me by Mr. John Wood's brother, Mr. Wood having lost some books lent by me to him, as Harprecht, etc. Cartwright's commentar upon the Proverbs in Latin, 3 shillings and 6 pence. Rudimenta Rhetorica Ro'ti Brunii, 8 pence. Academie Francoise pour l'institution des Moeurs, in 8vo, 6 pence. On the 10 of June 1679 bought 7 old books, some of them but pamphlets, viz., une recueill des gazettes nouvelles et relations de l'annee 1640, Cujacii ad tres postremos libros Codicis, des ordonnances de Lowis 13 en assemblée de notables, directions for health, naturall and artificiall, Resolution de Question prouvant qu'il est permis a sujets a resister la cruauté de leur Prince, a discourse touching the distractions of the tymes and the Causes theirof, the canons and constitutions made by the Quakers: for which I payed, 30 pence. The fyre upon the altar, or divine meditations and essayes, 28 pence. The Lively Oracles, or use of the holy scriptures, 30 pence. Atcheson's militarie garden. A Picktooth for the pope, Item, the apple of his left eye, item the greevances of the Scots ministers in 1633, etc. Regii Sanguinis clamor per Morum contra Miltonum Anglicum, 6 pence. Botero des gouvernements des estats in Italian and French, 8 pence. Mr. Traps commentar ou the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon, 3 lb. 7 shill. Bought on the ij of September 1679 from Mistris Forrest in Fyffe the ten following books. 1. Erasmi concio de misericordia Domini and other tracts, 10 pence. 2. Erasmi encomion Moriæ et de Lingua and other tracts, a mark. 3. Bezæ Responsio ad Castellionem de versione Novi testamenti, 10 pence. 4. Flores Doctorum pene Omnium per Thomam Hibernicum, 18 pence. 5. Sylva locorum communiuni per Ludovicum Granatensem, 30 pence. 6. Poetarum omnium flores, a mark. 7. Refutatio Cujusdam libelli de Jure magistratuum per Beccariam, 8 pence. 8. Chrysostomes Homilies and morals on the Ephesians, 24 pence. 9. Virgil in English verse by John Ogilbie, 24 pence. 10. Simon Patrick's Reflections on the devotions of the Roman Church, 24 pence. Having in September 1679 casten up the accompt of the wholle manuscript books I have besyde me, I find they are 94 in number of which see more in my other more full Catalogues of my books. APPENDIX III SIR ANDREW RAMSAY, LORD ABBOTSHALL _Letter by John Lauder, Lord Fountainhall, to his Son_[721] [721] MS. in possession of Sir T.N. Dick Lauder. The following letter from Fountainhall to his son, probably his eldest son and successor, John, is a characteristic specimen of his later style. It holds up to the young man as an example the character and career of his maternal grandfather, Sir Andrew Ramsay, Lord Abbotshall. [Illustration: SIR ANDREW RAMSAY, LORD ABBOTSHALL] _'Appryll 3d, 1691._ Sone,--The letters I formerly sent you, tho replenished with the best advyces that ather my reading or my experience and observatione or my paternall affection affoorded, and in thesse important affaires they handled, yet I conceive they might be the less effectuall that they had no other authority to back them but my own. Theirfor I am resolved a litle to trye another method, and so put thesse useful precepts in the mouths of some of your ancestors as if they wer allowed for some tyme to arryse from the dead and speak to those descended of them; and I shall set befor you some of their vertues and illustrious actions for ane pattern worthy your imitation, seeing there cannot be ane better direction in the stearing the compass of our lyves then by reading the lyves of good men, espccially wheir wee are nearly related to them, and in the using of this prosopopoea I have no less examples to follow then the prince of orators Cicero and the great Seneca who to give the greater weight and authority to the moral precepts they delyvered to the people of Rome they conjure up the ghosts of Scipio, Laelius, Cato, Appius and thesse other worthies, and bringe them upon the Stage, teaching their own posterity the principles of vertue which is observed to have left a far greater impression, and have proselyted and convinced the mynds of the hearers more than what the greatest philosophers delyvered only as their own sentiments and opinions. And because it is not usuall to wryte the lyves of men whyle[722] they be dead, Theirfor I will begin with your maternall lyne and sett befor you some of the most eminent transactions wheirin that excellent Gentleman, Sir Andrew Ramsay, your grandfather, was most concerned in, with the severall vertues and good qualities that made him so famous and considerable, which ought to be ane spurr and incitement to all good and vertuous actions, and to non so much as to his oun grand-chyld. And because it layes ane great tye and obligation wheir on is descended of ane race that never did anything that was base and unwurthy of a Gentleman, Theirfor I will also shortly as I can give you ane account of his pedegrie and descent befor I come to descrybe his oun personall merit and actions. For tho the poet sayes true, _Et genus et proavos et quae non fecimus ipsi, vix ea nostra voco_, yet to be of ane honourable descent of good people as it raises the expectation of the wurld that they will not beley their kynd as Horace sayes, _Fortes creantur fortibus_, so they turn contemptibly hatefull when they degenerat and by their vices blacken and sully the glory and honour their ancestors had gained, and they turn a disgrace to the family and relations they are come of. Bot to begin: Sr Andrew was the 3d sone of Mr. Andrew Ramsay, minister of Edr., and Mary Frazer. He being a sone of the Laird of Balmaynes, and shee a daughter of the Laird of Dores, and it being fitt that a man should know his oun genealogie that wheir ane of them has been signalized for vertue it may be ane motive to provock our imitation, and if they have att any tymes been led out of the way of vertue that it may serve for ane beacon and scar-crow to the descendants to hold of thesse rocks and shelves wheir they may see the bones of their friends as the memento of Lots wyfe to beware of thesse fatall errors. And tho a man should know the history of his oun nation and not be _domi talpa_, yet there is no part of that history so usefull as that of his genealogie, and therfor I would give you some account of that family of Balmayn and of some remarkable things have happened therin. The first of them was John Ramsay, sone to the Laird of Corstoun in Fyfe, who being ane handsome young boy was made choyse of to attend Ki: Ja: 3d att the Grammar School. Their was pains taken for another Gentleman's sone, who had been bred in the high-school of Edr. and both read and wrote better, yet the young King thinking John had more the mean of ane Gentleman preferred him, tho choyses of such princes being lyke Rhehoboams, not so much founded upon merits as fancy and ane similitude of humor, and I have observed friendship and acquaintance contracted betwixt boyes att schooll to be very durable, and so it proved here, for K.J. 3d made him on of his Cubiculars and then Captain of his guards, with this extravagant priveledge that non should wear a sword within two myles of the Kings palace without his speciall warrand and licence, which created him much envy and hatred, that for supporting him against the same, he first knighted him and then gave him the lands of Kirkcanders in Galloway, Terinean in Carrick, Gorgie in Lothian, and Balmayn in the Mernes. All which lands his posterity hath sold or wer evicted from them by recognitions, except Balmayn. And tho wee doe not find him taxed as on of the bad counsellors that made ane discord betuixt the said K. James and his nobles, att least not so much as Cochran, who from being his Master Mason he had made E. of Marr, and other mean people about him whom he had advanced, yet it was impossible for him to be in so much favour with his prince without drawing the emulation and envy of great and auntient families, who thought non should come between them and their Soveraigne. For you will find from our Chronicles that this King was on of the worst of all the James's and came to ane fatall end by his variance with the Nobility, whom he studyed to humble as factious and tumultuary, bot they thought themselves slighted and disobleidged by his making use of mean men in all offices about him. Bot to return to Sr. John Ramsay. It shewes the Kings great affection to him att Lundie bridge when Archbald E. of Angus, called bell the cat (the reason wheirof you know), and the other barons seazed upon Cochran and the bad Counsellors and hanged them over the bridge, and some of them apprehending Ramsay for that same end, the King grasped him in his armes and plead with them to spare him as more innocent than the rest, which was yealded to by the Kings intercession. Bot after this he created him E. of Bothwell, ane title that hes been funest and unluckie to all the three possessors of it, viz., the Ramsay, Hepburn, and Stewart, and which the Ramsay bruiked shorter then any of the other two. For after the killing of the King in Bannock-burn myln when he had fled out of the battell, the parliament did annull that title of honour, and from that tyme they have only been designed Lairds of Balmayn. Some say he was killed with his master in that feild, bot I have two unansreable arguments agst it. The on is that in severall of K.J. the 4ths parliats. I find him on of the Commissioners as now but joyned two or three in ane deputation. Neither had thesse offices att that tyme such splendour and greatness annexed to them as now, and by this it appears the K.J. the 4th durst not resent his fathers death, yet he took speciall nottice of those freinds who had faithfully adhered to him. Instance the iron belt and bitter repartee he gave the Lord Gray. The second is, That Mr. Andrew Ramsay his great grand-chyld, in his Latine epitaph made on him, printed amongst his Epigrams, affirmes that he was killed att the battell of Floudan with K.J. 4th, which, if true, he has out-lived J. the 3d 25 years. I find the said Sr. John Ramsay's sone hath lived till about the year 1567. For in the Sederunt books that year there is ane gift of tutory dative mentioned, making Sr Robert Carnagie of Kinnaird tutor to Wm. Ramsay of Balinayne, left ane minor by the death of his fayr., and this Sr Robt. did afterwards bestow Katharine Carnagie his daughter upon the said Wm. Ramsay. The present Earles of Southesk are lineally descended of the said Sr Robt. bot wer not nobilitat for 30 years after that. Of this Wm. Ramsay and the said Katharine Mr. Andrew Ramsay was their second sone, and being educat in literature, wes sent abroad by his parents to the famous protestant University of Saumur in France, where he gave such eminent specimens of his great knowledge that in 1600 he was created professor of theologie yr. And I have seen that printed Latine oration he had att his inauguration, and tho the Scots wer soouner preserved in France than any other strangers, yet it behooved to be extraordinary merits that adjudged the divinity chair to him befor so many candidats and rivals of their own nation. Bot being desirous to improve the talents heaven had bestowed on him in his oun countrey, he returned home, and about the year 1608 married that vertuous Gentlewoman, Mary Frazer, daughter to the Laird of Dores, and wes by Sr. Alexr. Arbuthnot of that ilk her uncle by the mother called to his Church of Arbuthnot in the Mernes, bot he being ane star of ane greater magnitude than to be consigned to so obscure ane place he wes, in 1613,[723] invited to the toun of Edr. to be on of their ministers, which he accepted, and continued their till 1649 that he was laid asyde by that prevailling remonstrator faction in the church, because he wold not dissown the engadgement undertaken by James Duke of Hamilton the year befor for procuring K. Ch. the first's liberty, and so continued solaceing himself with that _murus ahæneus_ of a good conscience till he resigned up his blessed soule into the hands of his merciful creator in the end of that year 1659, having, lyke Moses of[724] Mount-pisga, seen the designes and inclinations of this Island to bring back their banished King which he had much promoted by his prayers; and so this good man, lyke ane sheaff of rype corn, was gathered into his masters barn in the 86 year of his age, a man who for his singular piety and vast reading was the phenix of his tyme as his manuscripts yet extant can prove, so that his memory is yet sweet and fragrant, but especially to those who are descended of him who are more particularly oblidged to imitat his goodness, vertue and learning. Bot befor I leave Balmaynes family I shall only tell on passage because its remarkable of David Ramsay of Balmayn, the said Mr. Andrews nephew. Their is ane sheett of paper in form of ane testament wheron their is no word written bot only this, Lord, remember the promise thou hes made to thy servant David Ramsay such ane day of such ane moneth and such ane year, and then he adds, Let my posterity keep this among their principall evidents and subscrybes underneath it his name, and which paper is yet extant and keeped by Sr. Charles the present Laird, bot what the revelation was I could never learn. Now to give you but on word of the maternall descent, they wer aunciently Thanes of Collie, and were come of the great Frazer, who was named by the parliat. on of the governors of Scotland be-north Tay with the Cummings till the controversie should be decyded betuixt the Bruce and the Ballioll in 1270. Of thir parents was my Lord Abbotshall born in May 1619, being their 3d sone, and from his very infancy promised good fruit by the airlie blossomes of ane sharp and peircing witt, and his two elder brothers having been bred schollars, providence ordered him to be educat ane merchand, bot by his oun industry in reading and his good converse he supplied that defect in his education, and haveing been elected youngest Bailzie of Edr. in thesse troublesome tymes of the English invading and subdueing our nation in 1652, he behaved so well that Provost Archbald Tod comeing to dye in 1654, he was not only recommended by him bot was lykewayes by the toun counsell judged fittest to succeed him; a step which few or non hes made to ryse from the lowest to the cheiff place of Magistracy in the burgh without passing throw the intermediat offices, and which station he keeped till Michaelmass 1658. Dureing which tyme the toun haveing many aflaires to negotiat att London with Oliver the protector, and those whose estates wer sequestrat haveing addresses to give in ather to have the sequestration taken of or are part allocat for their aliment, they all unanimously agreed to employ provost Ramsay as the fittest, which he discharged with great dexterity to all their satisfactions; which made some reflect upon him as complying too much with the usurper, bot when a nation is broke and under the foott of ane enemy, it has alwayes been esteemed prudence and policy to get the best termes they can for the good of their countrey, and to make the yoke of the slavery lye alse easy upon our necks as may be: and the toun was so sensible of his wise and equall administration that they after tryall of severall others brought him in again to be provost in 1662, which he keeped for eleven years together more then what any had ever done befor hira, Chancellour Seton haveing continued for 10 years. When he entered upon this second part of his government he found the toun at the brink of ruine by the cruell dissentions then sprung up betuixt the merchands and trades about their priviledges, bot he lyke ane skilfull Chirurgeon bound up and healled their wounds; and being lykewayes sunck under the burthen of debt he procured such gifts and impositions from his Mat'ie upon all sorts of Liquors that he in a short tyme brought doun their debt from eleven hundredth thousand merks to seven hundredth thousand: and being thrcatened by the Lord Lauderdale to erect the citadels of Leith in a burgh Royall, which wold have broke the trade of Edr., for preventing therof he purchased the same and annexed it to the toun, and finding that Sr. Wm. Thomson their Clerk by his influence upon the deacons of trades nominated and elected the Magistrats att his pleasure, he in 1665 caused the toun Counsell of Edr. depryve him, and notwithstanding all the pains he took by brybery of the then Statsmen and other wayes to reenter to his place, yet he was never able to effectuat it, and then he procured Mr. Wm. Ramsay his second sone to be made conjunct Clerk of Edr. Bot his death att Newcastell some few years after made the designe of this profitable place abortive. Our Statsmen being att that tyme under great animosities and prejudices against on another, Lauderdale, Hamilton, and Rothes drawing three severall factions, Abbotshall, who could make a very judicious choyce, did strike in with Lauderdale, and upon his bottome reared up the fabrick of his enshueing greatnes. For by his favour he was both maintained in the provestrie of Edr., and advanced to the Session privy- Counsell and Excheqr. This could not but draw upon him the Vatinian hatred of the opposite parties. For they saw so long as Sr Andrew governed the toun of Edr. they could not expect non of those large donatives and gratifications which Lauderdale was yearly getting, besydes the citizens longed to have ane share in the government of the toun which they saw inhaunced and monopolized by Sr Andrew and his creatures, so that it was no wonder after so longe ane sun-shyne of prosperity their should come ane storm, that being alse usuall as after a longe tract of fair weather to expect foull, and envy and malice are alse naturall concomitants of greatnes and merite as the shaddow is of the body, and it was never found that good offices done to are society was ever otherwayes rewarded than by ingratitude. Themistocles, Coriolanus and the old worthies of Rome and Greece are sufficient proofs of this. And for compassing their end Sr James Rocheid Clerk, Sr Ffrancis Kinloch, who aspyred att the provistrie, and sevll. other burgers wer hounded out to accuse him in the parliat. held in 1673, and money was largely contributed and given to the Dutches of Lauderdale, and shee considering that his power was now so farr diminished in Edr. that he wold not be able for to drop those golden shoures that formerly he did, shee prevailled with the Duke her husband to wheedle Myn Lord Abbotshall into ane dimission of all his offices. For Plautus observes[725] in _Trinummus_ holds alwayes true that great men expect that favours most be laid so many ply thick on upon another that rain may not win through, which goes very wittily in his oun language, _beneficia aliis benefactis legito ne perpluant_. It is true the Duke designed no more by this dimission bot to ward of the present blow, and promised to keep all those offices for his oun behoof till the speat and humour of the people agst him wer spent and runne out, bot the Dutchess and others about him did so violent him that he was not so good as his word. They insinuating to him that it was not safe to trust a man of sense and parts whom he had so highly enraged and disobleidged, and that the bringing him back to power was but the putting him in a capacity to revenge himself, and the truth is that has ever been the practice of the inconsiderat mad world to runne doun any man when he is falling, as Juvenal observes in the case of Sejanus, who brings in the mobile who had adored him the day befor with Hosannas crying with displayed gorge, _dum jacet in ripa, calcemus Cæsaris hostem_, and it is very fitt that divyne providence tryst us with such dispensations. For if wee had alwayes prosperous gales that is so inebriating are potion that lyke the herb mentioned by Homer, it's ready both to cause us forgett our selves and our dewty to God, and I speak it from my oun knowledge that Abbotshall was rauch bettered by thir traverses of fortune, for it both gave him ane ryse and opportunity with more leasure and tyme to examine what he had done in the hurry of publick busines, and to repent and amend our errors is in Seneca's _Moralls_ the next best to the being innocent and not haveing committed thesse faults att all: the French proverb being of eternall truth that the shorter ane folly be it is the better; and tho' that physicall rule a _privatione ad habitium non datur regressus_ be also true in politicks as in physicks that a man divested of his offices seldome ever recovers his former greatnes, yet Lauderdale being ashamed of the injustice with which he had treated Abbotshall, he made him many large promises of reparation, but ther was never any more performed bot the reponeing him again to his office as ane privy- Counsellor to teach us how litle the favour and assureances of great men are to be regarded, being lyke thesse deceiving brooks wherin you shall not find ane drope of watter in the drougth of summer, and to teach us to look up to God and to despyse the lubricity of this world and all its allurements, which is _modo mater statim noverca_, and being blind, foollish, and arrogant, renders all who greedily embrace her alse foollish as herself, and instead of ane substance deludes us with ane empty shaddow of are Junonian cloud, and playes with men as so many tinnise-balls. I have oft blamed Abbotshall for his high manner of doeing bussines relyeing too much upon the strength of his oun judgement which, tho' very pregnant, yet in his oun concernes might be more impartially judged by other by-standers. I have wisht him, with the Marquesse Paulet, that he might have more of the complying willow and lesse of the sturdy oak, bot he oft acknowledged God's care of him in not suffering him to lose himself in ane false flattering world; and if it had been lawfull for him to have taken satisfaction in the calamities of others he had the pleasure in his lyfe to see Kincardyne, Dirltoun, Carringtoun, Lauderdale, and his other enemies turned out of their places more ignominiously than he. Thus wearied with troubles and the death of many of his children come to age, he devotly payed the last debt to nature in January 1688, being the 69 year of his age. This is all I can get at present proposed to you for one pattern and example, the sheat being able to hold no more.' [722] _i.e._ until. [723] Mr. Andrew Ramsay, Minister of the old Kirk in Edinr., was Professor of Divinity and Rector of the University of Edinr. for six years successively preceeding the 8th March 1626, att which time he gave up both offices.--Note in MS. [724] _i.e._ off, from. [725] _i.e._ Plautus's observation. Abbotshall was a man of great force of character. He was much respected by Lauder, who, on his marriage with his daughter, was probably a good deal indebted to him for his first start in professional life. For example, it was no doubt by his influence that he was very early appointed one of the Assessors to the town of Edinburgh along with Sir George Lockhart and soon afterwards to the whole of the Burghs. To the facts of his life as narrated in the letter it may be added that in the course of his career he acquired extensive estates. Besides Abbotshall in Fife, he became the owner, among other lands, of Waughton in East Lothian, a place often mentioned by Lauder, where his brother-in-law, Sir Andrew Ramsay, junior, resided. The eulogy in the letter is somewhat deficient in light and shade, more so than some other passages in which Lauder mentions his father-in-law (see Introduction, p. xxxvi). A good deal about Abbotshall may be read in Sir George Mackenzie's Memoirs, the following extract from which (p. 246) will help to supply the _chiaroscuro_. 'Sir Andrew Ramsay had, by obtaining 5000ll sterling to the Duke of Lauderdale for the Citadel of Leith, and other 5000ll to him for the new impositions granted to the town by the King upon ale and wine, insinuated himself very far into the favour of his Grace; and by his favour had, for ten successive years, continu'd himself Provost of Edinburgh, and consequently Preses of the Burghs; by which, and by having the first vote of Parliament, he was very serviceable to Lauderdale; who in requital of that favour obtained 200 ll sterling per annum settled upon the Provost of Edinburgh, and caused the king give him 4000ll sterling for his comprising of the Bass, a rock barren and useless. Thus they were kind to one another upon his Majesty's expenses. In this office of Provost he had governed most tyrannically for ten years, applying the Coramon Good to himself and friends, and inventing new though unnecessary employments within the town, to oblige those who depended upon him. But at last the citizens, weary of his yoke, resolved to turn him out at Michaelmas 1672.' The attempt failed at that time. INDEX Abbotshall, 207; church lands of, 195. ---- lord. _See_ Ramsay, sir Andrew. Abercorn, lord, 184. Aberlady, 200, 210. Accounts, extracts of, 239. Acheson, 203. ---- sir Archibald, 191. Ackland, Mr., 169. Addestone, 191, 192, 200. Adenstans easter and wester, 203. Administration of justice, xxxiv. Adrian's wall, 182. Adultery, punishment of, in France, 69-70, 110. Advocates, fees of, in France, 90, 214 and _n_. ---- suspension of, xxii-xxiii, 224-226, 277; meeting of, in Cadell's, 278. Aickman, William, 253. Aikenhead, James, death of, 226. Ainsley, James, 283. Airth, earl of, 193. Albemarle, the duke of, his engagement with the Dutch fleet, 236. Albigenses, persecutions of, 66. Alexander III. killed near Bruntilland, 197. Alexander ..., professor of law at Poictiers, 3, 128, 153, 157, 188; turns papist, 113. Alfred, king, founder of university college, Oxford, 172. Amboise, 19; arsenal of, 129. America, theory of the peopling of, 197. Amont water, 193. Anagram of Cornelius Jansenius, 75. Anderson, John, advocate, death of, 222. ---- Marion, wife of Fountainhall, xxiii. Anecdotes of the blind, 132; of a thirsty cow, 133; of preachers, etc., 52, 114-115, 120, 126-128, 142, 148, 149, 151; of the king of Spain, 150; the queen of Sweden, etc., 151; of a faithless Frenchman, 199; of the earl of Cowrie, 199. Angleberne, le baron d', 17, 130-131. Angus, Archibald, earl of, 302. ---- James, 279. Annand, M., distinguishes himself at the siege of Candy, 229. Anne of Austria, funeral oration on, 126; her heart preserved in the Val de Grace, 131. _Apologetical Relation_, 139 and _n_. Appeals, law of, in France, 60. Arbuthnot, lord, 216. ---- sir Alexander, of that ilk, 303. Archerfield, 210. Ardrosse of Elie, 196. Argyll, Archibald, ninth earl of, xxx-xxxiii, xxxv, 139, 223, 232. Arley, lord, 176 and _n_. Arthur's Oven, 182. Ascletarion, a magician, 204 and _n_. Astrology, xxxix. Athelstanford, 274. Atholl, earle of, lord privy seal, 221, 223-225. Aubigné, the marquis d', 103. Augier, M., 153. Augustines, order of, 10, 61, 86; Augustinian sermon on the virgin Mary, 52-53. Auldcambus, 202, 208-210. Auldham, 210. Auldhamstocks, 202. Auldliston, 193. Ayton of Bannochie, 196. Baccleuch, estate of, 208. Baillie of Jerviswood, trial of, xxx. ---- lt-general, 191. ---- John, advocate, death of, 227. ---- William, advocate, rebuked by lord Newbyth, 217. Baird, sir John, of Newbyth, 109, 216 and _n_, 220, 224. Balbirny, 205. Balcarres, lady, 232. Bale's _Sarro-Sancto Regum Maiestas,_ 140. Balfour, laird of, 207. ---- of Balbirny, 205. ---- sir David, of Forret, 223, 224. Balgonie, 196, 203. Ballantyne, Andro, minister at Coldinghame, 210. Ballincreiff, 208. Balliol college, Oxford, 173. Balmanno, lord, 215. Balmayne, 205, 302. ---- laird of. _See_ Ramsay. Balmerinoch, lord, 190, 193. Balquharge, 205. Balveirie, Fife, 196. Banished ministers' manifesto, 139 and _n._, 142. Bannatyne club, institution of the, xviii. Bannochie, 196. Barclay ----, 197. Barnbougall, 193. Barnes. _See_ Cunningham. Bartholomew, St., 52. Baruclan, 193. Bass, the, xvi, 203, 309. Beaton, Alexander, 191. ---- Andrew, advocate, death of, 220. ---- William, 256. ---- of Blebo, 207. Beatons of Balfour, 196. Beaufort, the duc de, kilted at the siege of Candy, 229. Beaugency, 18. Beconsfields, 168. Bedlam, 174. Bedlan Green, 175. Bell, Adam, 201. ---- Androw, 269. ---- John, 185. ---- Robert, 243, 251, 265. ---- Thomas, 239, 287. ---- family, origin of the name, 208. Bellenden, lord, 215. ---- of Broughton, 191. Bell-ringing during thunder, 49-51; for the last agonies, 59. Bels milne, 191. Beltan, 203, 205. Benedictine friars, 10, convent of, at Marmoustier, 19; convent at Poictiers, 36; wealth of the order, 86. Bernard, St., abbot of Clareville, 52. Bernardines. _See_ Fullions. Beroalde de Verville, Francois, 103 and _n._ Bever castle, 176. Biccarton of Lufnes, 210. Bickerstaffe, sir Charles, 221. Binnie, 193. ---- laird of, 186. ---- bailzie, 264. Binning, William, 245, 251, 263. Biron, duc de, 77 and n. Biton, madame, 39. Blacader of that ilk, 201. Blacarstoun, 200. Black. Jo., 279. Blackbarrony, laird of, 279. Blackford burn, Edinburgh, 188. Blackfriars church in Glasgow struck by lightning, 228. Blaickburne, 200. Blaikerston, 210. Blair of Carberrie, 190. Blair, rev. Robert, anecdote of, 127. Blanerne, 201. Blantyre, lord, 185. Blasphemy, punishment of, 60. Blind men, anecdotes of, 132. Blois, 17, description of, 18, castle of, 130. Blythswood, 185. Bodley, Thomas, 170. Bogie, 196, 205. ---- of Bannochie, 196. Bonar, Jo., of Bonytoun, 194. Bonnévette, 63. Bonnymoon ----, 174. Bonytoun, 192-194. Books, catalogues of, 153, 157, 160-162, 283-299. Bordeaux, 64; torture practised in, 70. Borseau, M., 128, 160. Borthwick, James, 268. ---- Samuell, 268. ---- William, apothccar, 250. ---- col., 168. Boswel of Balmuto, 197. ---- of Pittedy, 196. ---- of Westmilne, 195. Bothwell ----, 203. ---- Adam Hepburne, earle of, 205. ---- earls of. _See_ Ramsay. ---- castle of, 185. Boumaker, Robert, 256. Bouquiet, Mr., 34. Bourges, 65; university of, 66. Bourhouses, 200. Boyde, Hew, 246. Boyelet, Mr., merchant at Orleans, 153. Brackmont, 207. Braid burn, Edinburgh, 188. Brandenburgh, duke of, xxxvii. Brazennose college, Oxford, 173. Bread, price of, 59. Breda, peace of, 167 and _n_. Bridal gifts, 60. Bridgeman, sir Orlando, 221. Brisbane, Mrs., xxxi. Brothels in Rome, defence of, 83. Broun of Colston, 200 and _n_. ---- of Gorgie, 191. ---- of Thorniedykes, 210. ---- père, 118. ---- Daniel, 185. ---- John, 280. ---- Thomas, 267, 269, 270, 281, 283, 287, 289, 291, 293. ---- William, 108, 250, 256, 257, 264, 281, 290, 291. Brace, rev. Mr., of Fife, anecdote of, 148. Brimstone, 26 and _n_, 188, 190. Bruntilland. _See_ Burntisland. Brunton, 197. Bryson, Sandy, 270. Buchanan, George, 139; his _Frantiscanus_, 10 and _n_; criticism of his _History_, 205, 206. ---- sir John, 206, 207. Buck, Thomas, advocate, death of, 222. Burgundy, duke of, 84. Burnet, Alexander, archbishop of Glasgow, xxxvii; his remonstrance with Charles II., 230. ---- D., 168. ---- Robert, advocate, death of, 212. Burntisland, 197, 279. Butterdean, 200. ---- laird of. _See_ Hay, William. Byres, 208, 209. CADDEL, captain, 132. Calder, 186. ---- lairds of, 192. Calderhall, laird of, 189, 192. Calderwood, Thomas, 185. ---- bailzie, 283, 284. Callender, earl of, 183. Calvin, John, tradition of, 36. Camelon, king of the Picts, 182. Camnetham, laird of, 281. Campbell of Blythswood, 183 _n_. ---- Archibald, 193. ---- ---- advocate, death of, 215. ---- Barbara, 185. ---- sir Colin, 220 and _n_. ---- James, 185. ---- Mary, 274. ---- Robert, 185. ---- ---- apothecar, 272. Camron, Archbald, 247, 256, 276. Candie, tounc of, taken by the Turks, 228. Cants of Grange, 188. ---- of Priestfield, 188. Capuchins, order of, 9, 10, 33, 86; anecdotes of, 62, 148. Carberrie, 203. ---- laird of, his influence on the battle of Pinkie, 190. Carden, lord, death of, 212. Carington, laird of, 308. ---- lands of, 239 _n_, 248. Carmelites, order of, 61. Carmichael, master of, 185. Carnegie, Katharine, 303. ---- James, 274. ---- sir Robert, of Kinnaird, 303. Carthusians, 10. Caskieberry, 205. ---- laird of. _See_ Shoneir. Cassilton, 203, 210. Castellaw, Mr., 3. Castlemilk, 185. Catechism of M. Drelincourt, 86. Catherine, St., of Sienna, convent of, 188 _n_. Ceres (Cires), 207. Chabate, Mile., 128. Chabot, Philippe de, 63 and _n_. Chained books at Oxford, 170. Chalmers, James, advocate, death of, 225. ---- Joan, 276. Chamberlayne, Joseph, barber, 267. Chambord castle, 18. Champigny, 25. Chancellor, Kate, 263. Chapman of Priestfield, 188. Charles IX., anecdote of, 147. Charles I., murder of, 91. Charles II., his object in desiring the union of England and Scotland, 229-230; letter from, for indulging outed ministers; establishment of his supremacy, 230; settles the disputes between the houses of parliament, 232; his debts paid by parliament, 233; grant of money to, by parliament, 273 _n_; eulogy on, xxvii. Charleton, Richard, 59. Charteris, Laurence, advocate, 221; death of, 226. Chartreuse, founding of the order of, 78-79. Chatelerault, 64. Cheisly, John, of Dairy, xxxiv, 277. ---- Sam., 261. ---- William, 219. Cherries, 66, 69: cherry feast to the exchequer, 266. Chilperick, treatment of, 91. Chimney-sweeps from Savoy, 75. China, fertility of, 105-106. Chinon, 24. Chirnesyde, 201. Christ church, Oxford, 171. Christina, queen of Sweden, anecdote of, 151. Chrystie, Mr., 284. ---- Adam, clerk of session, 215. Civil law of France, 64-65. Clan Macduff, 197, 206. Clarendon house, 168 and _n_. Clarke's _Examples_ 108. Classics, pronunciation of the, 123. Clerical anecdotes, 52, 114, 115, 120, 126-128, 142, 148. Clerk, sir Alex., of Balbirny, 205. Clery, 130. Cleveland, dutchesse of, 233. Clifford, lord, treasurer of England, 222. Clifton hall, 186, 193. ---- toune, 193. Climate of France, 117. Cluny, barony of, 205. Coal pits of Dysert, 207. Coalston pear, the, 200 and _n_. Cochrane, lord, 184, 226. Cockburne of Clerkingtone, 200. Cockenie, 203, 211. Coinage, heightening of gold and silver coinage of foreign nations, 80. _See also_ Money. Colbrandspath, 200. ---- laird of, 209. Coldinghame abbey, 209. ---- kirk, 210. ---- moor, 209. Colerine, 197. Colison, Mr., 2. Colquhoun, sir John, of Luz, 184. Colt, Mr., 3. Columbus, anecdote of, 97. Colvill, Samuel, 266, 287. Colyear, David, 251, 272, 275, 276. Comedies played at Poictiers, 124, 127 Comets, appearance of, xxxix. Comiston well, 274. Congilton, 208. Conspiracy laws, hardships of, 91. Constantine the emperor, statue of, 56. Consultation fees, 257, 258, 260. Convent of Marmoustier, 18-20; of the Bernardines, 47; at St. Florans, 22; of Notre Dame d'Ardiliers, 23 and _n_. Conventicles, laws against, 233. Convention of burrows at Glasgow, 281. Cook, Mr., 231. Cooking in France, 76, 79. Cordeliers, order of, 9, 86. Coronation stone, 1. Cothereau, Renatus, 117. Cotibby, M., 128. Cotteridge, Mr., 233. Court of session, constitution of, xxxiv-xxxv; court of session documents, 212-227. Courty, rev. Thomas, anecdote of, 151. Covenanters, xxviii, xxix. Covent Garden, 175. Craig, 203. ---- of Riccarton, 191. ---- John, of Ramorney, advocate, 297. Craighall, 197, 207. Craighouse, 187. Craigie, lord, 224. Craigiehall, 193. Craiglockhart, 191. Cranston, Christian, 269. Craw, 209. ---- Rot., 260, 271, 280. ---- of Eist Reston, 210. ---- of Henchcheid, 210. Crawfurd, captain, 280. ---- Thomas, 3, 4, 256. Creichton, ----, 22, 23, 203. ---- John, 168. ---- of St. Leonards, 205. Crime in Poictiers, 95. Cringelty, in Tweeddale, 191. Crocodile story, 38. Crosby, Mr., x. Crumstaine, 202. Cujas, Jacques, 65 and _n_. Cunyghame, ----, 208. ---- Adam, 216. ---- sir J., 224. ---- W., 272. ---- Walter, 239, 265, 270. ---- William, 279. ---- of Barnes, 203. Curators in French civil law, 64-65. Curriehill, 191. Customs and Laws of France, 74-75. Cuthbert, Mr., 18. Daillé, Mr., 29, 30, 40, 58-60, 66, 101-102, 128, 158, 159. ---- madame, 41, 43. 63, 67, 83, 102, 128. Dairsie, 207. Dalhousie, William, earle of, death of, 221. Dalkeith, lord, 188. Dalmahoy, 192. Dalrymple, sir David, lord Hailes, 202, 203. Dalrymple, James, 226. ---- sir John, xxxiv, 247. Darling, Lilias, 270. Daulphinée, insurrection in, 229. Dauphintoun, 190, 203. Daves, Mr., bookseller in Oxford, 169. Dean, James, 255, 256, 268. Deans, Robert, advocate, 191. Death, customs connected with, in France, 125. Dechmond, 193. Del Camp, M., execution of, 132. Devil, the, being annoyed by the din of the gospel, favours the peopling of America from Christian lands, 197; his opinion of Scotland, 152 and _n_. Devils of Loudun, 77. Dewar, David, 196. Dick of Braid, 186. ---- of Grange, 188, 242. ---- sir Andro, 187. ---- James, 5 and _n_, 6, 248. ---- William, of Grange, 266 and _n_, 267, 268. Dickson, Alexander, of Binnie, 193. ---- G., 243. ---- Robert, advocate, death of, 223. Digbie, sir Kenelm, 169, 170. Dinmuire, David, 269. Dirleton castle, 210. Divorce in Rome, 116. Dobies of Stainehill, 189. Dog of Heriot's hospital hanged for refusing the test, xxxii. Dogs as guardians of a town, 85. Domenick, St., sermon on, 31. Dominicans, 10. Don, Mr., 168. ---- Patrick, 247. Donibristle house, 258. Douell, ----, 4, 21, 23, 66 and _n_. Douglas, marquis of, 22, 185, 200. ---- of Gogar, 191. ---- of Kelheid, 213. ---- of Lumbsdean, 201, 209. ---- sir James, 202. ---- William, of Kirknes, death of, 212. ---- ---- advocate and poet, death of, 216. ---- Mr., 59, 102. Douy, James, 17. Downing, sir George, 235 and _n_. Drelincourt's _Catechism_, 86. Drodden. _See_ Dryden. Drummond of Reidop, 194. ---- of Riccarton, 194. ---- Alex., 295. Drummond, generall-major, 224. ---- bailyie, 253. Drumshorling moore, 186, 194. Dryden (Drodden), 187. Duaren, François, 66 and _n_. Du Bartas's _Divine Weeks_, 82 and _n_. Dudinstone, Edinburgh, 190. Dumbarton castle, 184. Dumfries, earle of, 226. Dunbar, earle of, oppressor of the Craws, 210. ---- lordship of, 200. Duncan of Ratho, 192. Duncombe, sir John, 222. Dundas, Wm., 297. ---- of that ilk, 193. Dundasses of Fingask, 204. Dunfermline, 189. ---- Alex., earle of. _See_ Seton. ---- Charles, earle of, death of, 219, 223. Dunkirk, sale of, 234. Dunybirsell. _See_ Donibristle. Durhame of Lufnes, 210. Durie of that ilk, 197, 207. Du Serre's _Histoire_, 82 and _n_, 108 and _n_. Dutch fleet, defeat of, 234-236. ---- language, antiquity of, 81. Dysert salt pans, 196; coal pits, 207. East Lothian militia, 275. Ecclesiastical revenues of France, 86. Edencraw, 201. Edgar, Edward, 113. Edinburgh's bond of assurance with the laird of Halton, 192; dissensions among the trades of, 305. ---- university, removal of, to Linlithgow, 112 and _n_; gift of books to the library from Lauder, 289. Edmiston of that ilk, 188. Edmond, colonel sir William, 150 and _n_. Edringtone, 202. Eggs, price of, 97. Eistbarnes, 200. Eistfeild, 193. ---- laird of. _See_ Gray, James. Eleis, John, 29, 1O2, 194, 251, 274. ---- ---- advocate, suspension of, 226. Eleiston. _See_ Illieston. Elibank, lord, 208. Elphinston, 190, 200, 203 ---- lady, 215. ---- lord, 192 _n_. Elsick, lady, 179. Errol, estate of, 208. Erskin, Arthur, 207. ---- Jean, 192. ---- of Innerteill, 196. Estampes, 131 and _n_. Ethelstanefield, 203 and _n_. Ethie, earl of, 14 and _n_. Excommunication, moderate use of, 79. Execution of a criminal in France, 119. Expenses, notes of, 153-163; expenditure in London, 180. Eyemouth (Haymouth), 210. Fabritius, general, anecdote of, 116. Falconer, Alexander, lord Halkerton, death of, 215-217. ---- sir David, of Newton, advocate, 213, 225, 275. ---- Mr., 240. Farlies of Braid, 186. Fast kept by protestant churches of Poictiers, 88. Faustus, verses of, at Blois, 130. Fawsyde, near Tranent, 190, 203. ---- James, 286. Fentontour, 203. Ferolme, Jo., of Craigiehall, 193. Fête de Dieu, 11. Fife, earl of. _See_ Ramsay. Figgate burn, near Edinburgh, 188. Filleau, M., 113, 124. Finglassie, 205. Fireworks at Saumur, 23. Fish as French food, 61. Fleming, James, 192. ---- sir William, 191. Fletcher, sir Androw, of Abirlady, 200, 210. ---- James, 179. ---- sir John, king's advocate, 140, 179. ---- sir Robert, of Salton, 109. Floors castle, 179. Forbes of Tolquhon fined for opprobrious speech, 223. ---- Arthur, threatens a judge, 216-217. ---- Duncan, 274. ---- ---- of Culloden, 132 and _n_, 160. Forfar anecdote, 133. Forrest, Mrs., 299. ---- R., 270. Forrestor, 209. Forret, 207. ---- lord. _See_ Balfour, David. Foster of Corstorphine, 191. Fosterland, 200, 209. Fothringhame, Robt., 281. Foulden, 202. Foulis, Alexander, of Ratho, 192. Foulis, George, master-coiner, xlvi. ---- James, of Colinton, lord Reidfurd, 30 and _n_, 63, 64, 158, 196, 224, 240. Fouquet, Nicolas, 130 and _n_. Francion's _Histoire_, 82 and _n_, 108. Francis I., anecdote of, 111. Franciscans, 10. Frazer, Mary, 301. Frederic, king of Bohemia, 151. French of Thorniedykes, 210. ---- language, elegance of the, 82. ---- people, barbarity of, 77; addicted to cheating strangers, 55. Fruits of France, 46, 66, 67, 83, 89, 95, 126, 132; of Scotland, 186. Fuirstoun, 200, 209. Fullerton, Samuel, 161, 162, 163. Fullions or Bernardines, 47 and _n_, 52, 61, 86. Funeral oration on the queen mother, at St. Pierre, 126. Furd, 209. Fyvie, 189. Gairdner, George, 251, 252, 272. ---- Tom, 265, 272. Gairnes, rev. William, 195. Game laws, 121-122. Games of children in France, 125. Gammelisheills, 210. Gandy, Mr., 14. Garnier, Mr., apothecary at Poictiers, 29. ---- madame, 157. Garshoire, Mr., 269. Gaule, M. de, 128. Gaultier, Mr., 113. Gay, M. de, 128. ---- Alexander, 279. Geismar, Mr., 161. Gelderland, duke of, 198. Geneva, rules for catholics in, 96; watches of, 66. German language, 77. Gibsone, Alexander, principal clerk of session, 225. ---- G., 262. ---- James, 258. ---- sir John, of Adelston, 192, 226. ---- Mr., 3. Giffard, lord, 203, 208, 211. Giffards of Shirefhal, 188, 211. Gilbert, Robert, 250, 270. Gilespie, Edward, 265, 276. ---- Patrick, 200. Gilmerton estate, xxxvi. Gilmour, sir John, of Liberton, 181, 188, 191; resigns the presidentship of the court of session, 213; death of, 215. Glammes, lord of, 195. Glasgow, 183; Glasgow merchants and the exportation of herrings, 219; Blackfriars church struck by lightning, 228. Gledstan, Halbert, 255. Glenbervie, lairds of, 203. Glencairne, ladie, 193. Glencoe, massacre of, xxvi and _n_. Glendoick, lord. _See_ Murray. Gogar, 191. ---- laird of, 189. Gordon, Adam, of Edom, 134. ---- Anna, 258. ---- sir George, of Haddo, 174 _n_, 175, 177. Gorenberry, 132. Gorgie in Lothian, 191, 203, 205, 207, 302. Goropius Becanus, his _Origines Antwerpianz_, 81. Gosford, 211. ---- lord, 212, 213. Gouffier, Guillaume, admiral, 63 _n_. Gourlay, H., 265. Gourlaybank, 202. Govan, Robt., 259. Gowrie, earl of, 203. ---- conspiracy anecdote, 199. Grahame, Mr., 30, 35, 132, 153, 160, 161. ---- Hary, 252. Grange, Fife, 196. ---- laird of. _See_ Dick, William. Grant, major George, 184. Gray, lord, 303. ---- James, of Eistfeild, 193. ---- Mr., a converted papist, 268. Gruché, de, 128, 160. Guise, duke of, 18. Gunsgrein, 210, 250. Gustavus Adolphus, anecdote of, 150. Guthry, rev. James, 141. ---- laird of, 258. ---- Mrs., 239. Haddington, Thomas Hamilton, earl of, 188 and _n_, 208, 274. ---- abbey of, 200. Hailes, lord. _See_ Dalrymple, sir David. Haliburton, James, 256, 260, 262, 263, 265. Haliburtons of Fentontour, 203. Halidoun hill, 202. Halkerton, lord. _See_ Falconer, Alexander. Hall, Dr., 2. Halzeards, 193. Hamilton, Alexander, 247, 283. ---- ---- justice clerk depute, death of, 219. ---- Henry, 162, 168. ---- James, duke of, 177, 185, 226, 304, 306. ---- ---- 212. ---- ---- advocate, death of, 223. ---- ---- clerk of session, death of, 222, 225. ---- Marie, 260. ---- Mary, 279. ---- Patrick, of Dalserf, 258, 261, 292. ---- Robert, 212, 226, 266. ---- Thomas. _See_ Haddington, earl of. ---- sir William, a lord of session and lord provost of Edinburgh, 218. ---- of Dechmond, 193. ---- of Eleiston, 194. ---- of Orbiston, 184. ---- Mr., 2, 3, 239. Happers of Bourhouses, 200. Hardins, D., 175. Hartsyde, dame Margaret, 207. Haswal, Isabell, 178. Hatfield house, 176. Hatton, 191. ---- house, 192-193. Haukerstone, 216. Hay, Archibald, 132. ---- sir George, of Nethercliff, 215 and _n_. ---- Harie, 187. ---- sir John, provost of Edinburgh, 218. ---- John, principal clerk of session, 225. ---- Thomas, 212, 225, 243, 275. ---- William, of Butterdean, 200, 209. ---- Dr., 213. Haychester, 210. Haymouth. _See_ Eyemouth. Helene, Ste., chapel dedicated to, at Auldcambus, 210. Hendersone, James, 269. ---- William, bibliothecar in the colledge of Edenbrugh, 292, 297. ---- of Laurenceland, 200. ---- Mr., 239. Henry III. of France, 91. Henry IV. of France, 4, 91, 103, 108; anecdote of, 133. Hepburn, 203. ---- Adam. _See_ Bothwell, earl of. Hepburnes of Wauchton, 202. Heriot of Ramorney, 206. Heriot's hospital, dog of, hanged for refusing the test, xxxii. Hermistone, 200. Herrings, exportation of, 219. Heuch-Home, 203. Hewes, D., 160. Hilary, St., legend of, 37; tradition relating to St. Hilaire and the devil, 56; miracles wrought by the cradle of, 56. Hilton of Huttonhall, 202. Hog, Ja., 256. Holland a 'sink of all religions,' 68; treatment of Jews in, 68. Home. _See_ Hume. Honieman, Andrew, bishop of Orkney, 231. Hope, Henry, 252. ---- Mr., 39, 102. Hopes of Craighall, 207. Hotman, François, 66 and _n_. Houlle, a barber, 132. Household expenditure, 239-282. Howard, sir Robert, 223. Howel's _History of Venice_, 82, 85; his _Familiar Letters_, 99 and _n_. Hume or Home, Alexander, xxix, 30, 63, 159. ---- David, 30, 35, 63, 113. ---- George, 258. ---- sir John, of Renton, justice clerk, 210, 213; death of, 214, 215. ---- lady, 252. ---- sir Patrick, 30 and _n_, 35, 55, 113, 213. ---- Peter, 158. ---- of Coldinghame Law, 210. ---- of the Maines, 201. ---- of Nynewells, 201. ---- of West Reston, 210. ---- tavern keeper, 168. Humes of Blacader, 201. ---- of Huttonhall, 202. Hunter, James, 8, 17, 131, 156. Huntley, the cock of the north, 58. Husband-beaters, punishment of, 110. Huttonhall, 202. ---- laird of. _See_ Hilton: Humes. Hyde, sir Edward, lord chancellor, 168 _n_, 172; hatred of, in England, 233; he escapes to France, 234. Idington, 201. ---- laird of. _See_ Ramsay. Illieston (Eleiston), near Edinburgh, 186, 193, 194. Inchekeith, 190-191. Ingleston, 193. Inglish, Edwards, 175. Inglish, James, 274. ---- Mrs., 168, 175, 180. Innerask, 189. Innerleith, laird of, 187. Innerteill, 195, 196. Innerwick, 200. Innes, Robert, 267, 268. Jacobins, order of, 10, 61 and _n_, 86. James II., ceremonies connected with the marriage of, 198 and _n_. James III., marriage of, 202; bestows favours on John Ramsay, 302; death of, 206, 303. James IV., 303; at Norham castle, 202; killed at Flouden, 206. James V. and the Franciscans, 10. James VII., xxviii, xxxi, xxxiv, 13 and _n_, 115, 235. Jesuits, order of, 9, 42; college of, at Poictiers, 77; lines on their college at La Flèche, 69; wealth of the order, and how obtained, 86; their cruelty, 99. Jews, treatment of, in Spain, Portugal, and Holland, 67-68; laws against, in Rome and France, 75. 'Jock of bread Scotland,' 213 and _n_. John of Austria, his victory over the Turks at Lepanto, 150. ---- of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, armour of, 1. Johnston of Warriston, 191. ---- Robt., 261. ---- Mr., 168. Jossie, B., 190. Jousie, Jo., 211, 267. Kar. _See_ Ker. Karkanders, 205. Keith, sir James, of Caddome, committed to the Tolbuith and fined, 213. ---- Robert, of Craig, 295. Kellie, W., 200. Kello, John, 212, 222. Kelso abbey, 179. Kemnock, 207 and _n_. Kennoway, 207. Ker, Lancelot, 262. ---- sir Mark, of Cockpen, 189. ---- William, 146. ---- of Itall, 202. ---- Mr., 168. Kid, rev. Mr., of the abbey kirk, anecdote of, 127. Kilmundie, laird of, 240, 249. Kilpont, 193, 194. Kilsyth, battle of, 183 and _n_. Kincaid of Wariston, 191. ---- John, 2. Kincardin, earle of, 221, 226, 308. King's evil, curing of, 72 and _n_. Kinghorne, 195, 281. ---- earle of, 224. Kinglassy, 205. ---- lord, death of, 212. Kingstone, lord, 193. Kinleith (Killeith), 191. Kinloch, sir Francis, 306. ---- Francis, merchant in Paris, xxxvi, 5, 132, 153, 156, 158-161; Lauder's letter of introduction to, 3; letter from, to John Ogilvy, 7. ---- Magdalen, 5. Kinneuchar, 207 and _n_. Kinninmont, 197. Kinninmonts of Craighall, 207. Kinnoul, lord, 109. Kirkcaldie, 196. ---- G., 258. Kirkcanders, lands of, 302. Kirkhill, 193. Kirkwood, Mr., 168. La Figonne, Ingrande, 128, 160. La Fleche, jesuit college at, 69. Lambert ----, 233. Lame people, large numbers of, in Orleans, 8. Lammerton, 202. Lanark, 186. Land, price of, in France, 107. Langeais, 20. Langhermistoune, 191. Langnidrie, 203 and _n_, 208. Language, antiquity of, 81. Lanty, Mr., minister of Chirnesyde, 201. Latin and Greek, pronunciation of, 123. Laud, archbishop, his gift of MSS. to the Oxford university library, 169. Lauder, Andrew, 283. ---- Colin, 292. ---- Elizabeth, 191 _n_. ---- George, 242. ---- sir George, 240. ---- James, 246, 289. ---- John, of Newington, father of Fountainhall, xxii, xxiii; letter of introduction from, to Francis Kinloch, 3. ---- sir John, lord Fountainhall, outline of his life, xxii-xxv; his political opinions, xxv-xxxiv; on the administration of justice, xxxiv-xxxviii; account of his MSS., ix-x; correspondence between sir Walter Scott and sir T.D. Lauder on the proposed publication of his MSS., xi-xxii; his early journals and accounts, xl-xlii; language and spelling of his MSS., xlix; sets out on his travels, I; lands in France, 2; in Paris, 3; at Orleans, 7; enters into theological and logical discussions, 16; at Blois, 17; visits the convent at Marmoustier, 18; at Saumur, 20-23; at Richelieu, 25-29; arrives at Poictiers, 29; angers the French by abusing them in Scots, 121; leaves Poictiers, 128; at Amboise, 129; arrives in Paris, 131; his essay on the study of law, 137 and _n_; visits the colleges and physick garden, 169-173; returns to London, 174; his journey north, 175-I76; at York, 177; reaches Edinburgh, 179; note of his expenses in London, 180; at Glasgow, 183, 185; at Hamilton, 185; returns home, 186; excursions in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, 187-194; his marriage; birth of his son John, and his daughters Jannet and Isobell, 195; his tour through Fife, 195-197; in Haddingtonshire and Berwickshire, 200-204, 208-211; notes of journeys in Scotland in 1671-72, 205-207; notes of his expenditure, 153-163; arrives at London, 167; at Oxford, 169; admitted advocate, xxii, 181-182, 212; his marriage, xxii-xxiii, 195; appointed advocate for the poor, 223; his fees for consultations, 257-258; appointed assessor of Edinburgh, 212, 308; assessor for the convention of royal burrows, 281; his gift of books to the library of the university of Edinburgh, 289; letter from, to his son, on sir Andrew Ramsay, lord Abbots-hall, 300-308; catalogue of his books, 153, 157, 160-162, 283-299. ---- sir Lues, 191. ---- Richard, of Hatton, 191 and _n_, 192 and _n_, 193, 212. ---- Robert, 222, 245, 251, 269, 270. ---- sir Thomas Dick, his correspondence with sir Walter Scott on the publishing of Fountainhall's MSS., xi-xxii. ---- William, 242, 245. ---- of the Bass, 202 _n_. ---- sergeant, 185. ---- Mr., 168. Lauders, murder of, xxi. Lauderdale, 179. Lauderdale, John, earl of, 192. ---- ---- duke of, xxxi and _n_, xxxv, _n_, 26 _n_, 168, 189, 203, 213-215, 219-222, 232, 303, 306-308. ---- duchess of, 215, 306, 307. ---- Richard, earl of, 192. ---- colonel, 189. Lauds, Ja., 242. Laurenceland, 200. ---- laird of. _See_ Henderson. Law of Brunton, 197. Law, essay on the study of, 137 and _n_. Laws and customs of France, 64-65, 74, 77, 87. Lawyers' fees in France, 90. Le Berche, Mr., 13, 123-124, 157. Leidingtoune, 200. Leighton, Robert, archbishop of Dunblane, afterwards of Glasgow, 214, 231. Leirmonts of Dairsie, 207. Leith citadel, purchase of, 305, 308. Leny (Leine), near Edinburgh, 193. _Lepanthe (le) de Jacques VI_., 82. Lery, Jean de, 94 and _n_. Leslie, Fife, 197, 205. Lesly, bishop of the Isles, anecdote of, 64. ---- Patrick, 276. Leuchie, 203. Levine, earl of, 196, 201. Levinston, Dr., 186. Liberton, 187, 188. Lindsay, Henry, 258. Linktoune, Kirkcaldy, 195. Linlithgow palace, 182 and _n_. Lintlands, 200. Linton bridges, 202. Lithgow, lord, 194. Little, William, provost of Edinburgh, 187. ---- ---- of Over Libberton, 187. Lo ----, professor of music in Oxford 168, 172, 173. Lochlevin castle, 197. Lockhart, sir George, xxx, xxxvii, 212, 222, 224, 276, 308. ---- sir James, of Lee, lord justice clerk, 185 and _n_, 218, 219; death of, 223. ---- colonel sir William, of Lee, 215, 223, 233. death of, 224. Logans of Restalrig, 187. Loire, inundations of the, 20-21. London tower, 1. Loudun, the devils of, 77. Louis XIII., statue of, in Paris, 5; statue and portraits of, at Richelieu castle, 25-27; a gunmaker, 57; heightens the gold and silver of foreign nations, 80. Louis XIV., as a drummer, 57. Lovain, universities of, 204. Loyola, Ignatius, sermon on, 30-31. Lufnes, 203, 210. Lumsdean, Charles, 268, 296. Lundie, rev. James, 195. ---- of that ilk, 196-197. Lundy, Mr., minister at Dysert, 272. Lylle, William, advocate, death of, 212. Lyon, rev. Gilbert, 195. ---- Patrick, 221, 249. Macbean, Mr., xv, xviii, xxi. Macduff clan, 197, 206. Macfud ----, 208. M'Gill, Alex., 279, 280. ---- of Fingask, 204. ---- of Rumgaye, 207. M'Gills of Kemnock, 207. Mackenzie, sir George, lord advocate, xxvii, xxxvi, xxxviii, 181, 226. ---- Roderick, 181. Maclucas, Colin, 185. Macquare, Robert, 115, 139 and _n_. Madertie, lord, 208. Madmen, anecdotes of, 87. Madrid, near Paris, 5. Magdalen bridge, near Musselburgh, 188 and _n_. Maid of Orleans, festival of, 9-11. Mainart, lord, 222. Maitland, Charles, lord Halton, 191 _n_, 192 _n_, 208, 221, 227. ---- Richard, of Pitreichy, 218. ---- family, 192. Malcolm of Babedie, 196. Maps, price of, 264, 287. Mar, earle of, 224, 302. March, earle of, 203. Marior, Joseph, 2. Marjoribanks, 203. Markinch (Markins), 197. Marmoustier, convent at, 18. Marriage ceremonies, 99 marriages of protestants in France, 79 marriage laws of France, 65, 77. Marseilles, 64. Martin, St., celebration of, 100, 101; relics of, 19. ---- Robert, justice clerk-depute, 219, 225. Mary, St., of Loretto, 188 _n_. ---- Magdalen, St., nunnery of, at the Sciennes, 188. Masterton ----, 262, 263. Maule, Mr., xix. Mawer, Mrs., 265. May island, 203. Mazarin, cardinal, 5, 63. Meadowbank, lord, xiii. Mede, Joseph, theory of, on the peopling of America, 197. Megget, Jo., 258. Mein, Mr., 5. ---- Patrick, 3. ---- Robert, 250, 256, 257. Meinzeis, rev. John, 231. Meiren, col., 185. Melvill, lord, 196. ---- family, 203. Melvines of Touch, 204. Mendoza's _Histoire ... de la Chine_, 105. Mensen, Henry, 280 Merton college, Oxford, 171 and _n_, 173. Metellan, Mr., 168. Meung, 18. Mexico, founding of the kingdom of, 198. Middleton, earl of, xli, 174. Midlothian militia, 189. Migill. See M'Gill. Milne, rev. Mr., 183. Milton's _Iconoclastes_, 116. Minimes, order of, 9, 10, 86. Miracles performed at the cradle of St. Hilaire, 56. Mitchell, Jo., 268. ---- William, 22, 250, 257. Mompommery, Mr., 159. _Monasterium Sancte Mariæ in Campis_, 188. Moncreiff, Sam, 281. Money, comparative values of, xlii-xlviii, 81, 92 and _n_, 154, 239, 242, 243 and _n_, 245 and _n_, 257 and _n_, 269. Monmouth, the duck of, 222. Monro, Alexander, 212, 226. Monsoreau, 20, 24. Montaigne's _Essayes_, 82. Monteith, earles of, 194. Montozon, M., 128. Montrosse, lord, 183. Monynet, 210. Moonzie, 207. Moor, Mr., 5. ---- G., 2. ---- Dick, 2. Moorefields, 174. Moray. _See_ Murray. Mordington, 202. ---- lord, 201, 202. Morisons of Dairsie, 207. Morton, earl of, 188, 226. Morton of Cummock, 207. Mortonhall, laird of, 189. Moubrayes of Barnbougall, 193. ---- of Wauchton, 202. Mount Calvary, near Paris, 6. Mountebanks, 68-74. Moutray of Seafield castle, 195. Mow, laird of, 201. ---- Patrick, of the Maines, 201. Mowat, Mr., 3, 160. Muire of Park, 271. Muires of Bourhouses, 200. Muirhead, John, advocate, death of, 223. Munster, bishop of, anecdote of the, 150. Murder of a judge in Paris, 49. discovery of murders at St. Lazare, 63. Murray, earle of, created justice-generall, 225. pensioned, 225. ---- John, advocate, death of, 219. ---- Mungo, 120. ---- sir Robert, 214 and _n_. ---- death of, 224. ---- sir Thomas, of Glendoick, lord of session, 223-224. ---- Wm., 274, 276, 279. ---- of Levinstone, 186. ---- Mr., 3. Musselburgh, 188, 189. Mylne, Robert, annotator of Lauder's MSS., xi, xii, xv, xx. Myre of Billie, 201. Nairne, Mr., 231. Napier, origin of the name of, 211. Nasmith, John, 269, 272, 278, 279. Neilsone, Margaret, 253, 263. Newbyth, lord. _See_ Baird, sir John. New college, Oxford, 171. New Cranston, 179. Newliston, 193. Newmilnes, 200. Newtonlies, 200, 209. Neidle Eye, near Bathgate, 186. Nicol, John, 242, 284, 295. ---- P., 174. Nicolson, sir John, of Polton, 189. ---- Jonet, 276. ---- Thomas, advocate, death of, 212. Nidrie, 190. ---- castle, 193. Nisbet, sir John, of Dirleton, 203 _n_, 210, 213, 226, 308. ---- of West Nisbet, 202. Norame castle, 202. Normand, Lance, 2. Northtoun (Norton), 192. Northumberland, earl of, 58. Norvell, George, advocate, death of, 222. Nunlands, 200, 202. Nynewells, 201. Oaths of France, 147. Ogilvy, lord, 8 and _n_, 14, 16, 17, 130, 160. ---- John, 4, 7, 11, 13, 23, 60, 109, 130, 157, 158, 161; letter to, from Francis Kinloch, introducing Lauder, 7. Oliphant, lord, 202. ---- Laurence, advocate, death of, 212. ---- Patrick, death of, 225. Olive trees, abundance of, in France, 89. Opdam, admiral, 13 and _n_; defeat of, 234-235. Orange trees, 89. Oriel college, Oxford, 172. Orleans, 8; festival of the maid of, 9-11; the fête de Dieu at, 11; drinking customs of, 133. ---- duke of, statue of, at Blois, 18. Ormond, duke of, 58. Orrery, lord, 2 and _n_. Osborne's _Advice to a Son_, 99 and _n_. Oswald, Alex., advocate, death of, 212. Otterburne of Reidhall, 203, 207. Oxbridge. _See_ Uxbridge. Oxford and its library, 169-170; its colleges, 171-173. Painston ----, 251, 263, 265. Paipes of Walafield, 190. Paisley (Pasley) town and abbey, 184. Pancerolli's _Vetera Deperdita_, 99 and _n_. Papists, effects of thunder on, 51. Parma, the duke of, and the Jesuits, 86. Partenay, 64. Passive obedience, 140. Paterson, George, 258, 270, 277. ---- rev. John, 195. ---- Thomas, 177, 180, 269. ---- William, 163, 272. Pathhead or Pittintillun, 196. Patrick, St., Irish respect for, 134. Paxtoun, 202. Peager, madame, 128. Peirs, Mary, 267. Penmansheills, 209. Penny weddings, 124, 242, 265, 275, 276. Pentherer ----, 251. Peppermilne, near Edinburgh, 188. Péres de l'oratoire, 10, 13, 42. Petition to the court of session, 181. Philip II. of Spain, anecdotes of, 150. Phrygian language, antiquity of, 81. Physick garden, Oxford, 173. Pies, the, near Cockburnspath, 200. Pilans, James, 186. Pinkie, battle of, 190. ---- house, near Musselburgh, 189. Pitcairne ----, 205. Pitmedden. See Seton. Pittedy, Fife, 196. Pleughlands, Edinburgh, 187. Poictiers, 29; street cries of, 40, 68; anecdote of the bishop of, 60-61; Jesuit college at, 77; lawyers in, 90; crime in, 95. Poictou, governor of the province of, 57; the practice of torture in, 70. Pollock, Mr., 269. Popish plot, xxviii. Porrock, Henry, 251. Port de Pilles, 129. Porterstoune, 216. Portraiture in France, 109. Portsmouth, dutchesse of, xli. Portues, Patrick, 8, 156. Preistfield, 188. Preston of Bouncle, 200. ---- sir Robert, of that ilk, xxxv _n_, 219, 224. Prestons of Craigmillar, 188. Primogeniture, law of, in France, 90, 143. Primrose, sir Archibald, of Elphinston, 190, 193 and _n_, 225-227. Pringle, Mr., of Yair, xiii. ---- Walter, advocate, 221, 252, 275, 276; suspension of, 226. Productiveness of France, 89. Protestants, marriages of, in France, 79. Proverbs, 143-144, 146, 148. Psammeticus, king of Egypt, and the origin of language, 81. Puddock stools, cooking of, 76. Purves, William, 140. Quarrier, Pat, 245. Queen's college, Oxford, 172. Queinsberry, earle of, 224. Quinkerstaines, 202. Radegonde, Ste., 34; legend of, 35; tomb of, 56. Raith, the, Kirkcalcly, 196. ---- of Edmonston, 188 and _n_. Ramsay, sir Andrew, lord Abbotshall, lord provost of Edinburgh, xxii, xxxiv-xxxvi, 109 _n_, 195, 249, 251, 267, 269, 272, 274, 279, 281, 284, 287, 293-298; made a lord of session, 217; a member of the privy council, 225; letter from Lauder on the character and career of, 300; extract on, from sir George Mackenzie's Memoirs, 308-309. Ramsay, sir Andrew, of Wauchton, 283, 308. ---- lady Wauchton, 250. ---- Andrew, professor of theology at Saumur and afterwards rector of Edinburgh university, 199, 206, 301, 303-304 and _n_. ---- sir Charles, of Balmayn, 304. ---- David, 109. ---- ---- of Balmayn, 304. ---- George, lord, 206. ---- Grissell, 241, 255, 257, 258. ---- sir James, of Whythill, advocate, death of, 223. ---- Janet, wife of lord Fountainhall, xxii. ---- sir John, of Balmayn, afterwards earl of Bothwell, 200, 203-207. ---- John, keiper of the register of homings, death of, 219. ---- ---- minister of Markinch, 197. ---- Margaret, 258. ---- Mathew, 262, 271. ---- Patrick, 112 and _n_, 278. ---- William, earle of Fife, 197, 206. ---- ---- of Balmayne, 303. ---- ---- 244, 265, 271, 272, 306. ---- of Balmayne, 239. ---- of Corston, 205, 206. ---- of Fawsyde, 100. ---- of Idington, 200 and _n_, 241, 243, 287. ---- of Nunlands, 202. ---- colonel, 246. ---- 205. Ramsays in Fife, 206. Raploch, laird of, 281. Ratho, 192. Razin, Stenka, rebellion of, 229. Reidbraes, 202. Reidfuird, lord. _See_ Foulis, James, of Colinton. Reidhall, 191. Reidhouse, 208. Reidop, 194. Reidpeth, George, 239. Relics at the convent of Marmoustier, 19-20. Renton, 200, 209. ---- lord. _See_ Hume, sir John. ---- of Billie, 201. Rentons' claim on Coldingham, 209-210. Restalrig castle, 187; chapel, 190. Revenscraig, 207. Revensheuch, 196. Revenues of the king of France, 110. Riccarton, 191, 194. Richelieu town and castle, description of, 25-27, 44, 157. ---- cardinal, 28, 91. Richison, lady Smeton, 193. Riddles, 80, 103-105. Rigs of Carberrie, 190. Robertson, George, keiper of the register of hornings, 219. ---- Thomas, treasurer of Edinburgh, 240, 255, 256, 268, 276. Robison of the Cheynes (Sciennes), 188. Rocheid, sir James, 306. Roman catholics, penal laws against, xxvi, xxvii; troublesome citizens, xxix. Rome, brothels of, 83; Scots college at, 84; customs of, 116. Ross, bishop of, his mission on behalf of James II., 198 and _n_. ---- lord, 224. ---- Daniel, 241. ---- James, advocate, death of, 224. Rothes, earl of, xxxvi, 176, 196 _n_, 207, 306. Rouchsoles, 185. Roxbrugh, earle of, 179, 201, 224. Roy, Mr., 113. Rue, Mr., 159. Ruell waterworks, 5, 6. Rumgaye, 207. Rupert, prince, 236. Rutherfurd, lord, 109 and _n_. ---- C., 132, 168. ---- capt., 162. _Sacellum Sancti Marlorati_, 188 and _n_. St. Abbes Head, 210. St. Catharine's well, 187. St. Florans, convent at, 22. St. Germains, 200. St. Hilaire, abbot of, 75; church of, 56. St. Roque, chapel of, 188 _n_. Saints' days, 12. Salmasius' _Defensio Regio_, 116. Salmon fishing on the Tweed, 202. Salt, 92. Salton, estate of, 216. Sandilands, Mr., 3, 132, 168. ---- Marion, 194. Sandwich, vice-admiral, 13. Sanquhar, lord. _See_ Hamilton, sir William. Sanson's maps of France, etc., 28. Sauces and salads, 92. Sauchton, 191. Saumur, 20-22; system of graduation at, 23. Scatteraw, 200. Scholars' compact with the devil, 88. Scholastic speculations, 92-94. Schovo, Mr., 13, 157, 162. Sciennes, nunnery at, 188 and _n_. Scorpions, 74. Scots' walk at the church of St. Hilaire, 56. Scotscraig, 206, 207. Scotstarvet, 206. Scott, Adam, 265. ---- David, 14. ---- Francis, 212. ---- sir John, of Scotstarvet, 190, 191, 194. ---- John, 183, 212, 248, 252. ---- Laurence, of Bevely, clerk of session, death of, 212. ---- Margaret, 194. ---- Mary, 275. ---- Robert, 54, 159. ---- Thomas, of Abbotshall, 195, 203. ---- sir Walter, his correspondence with sir Thomas Dick Lauder on the proposed publication of Fountain-hall's MSS., xi-xxii. ---- Wm., of Abirlady, 210. ---- of Ardrosse, 197. ---- of Balveiry, 197. ---- of Bonytoun, 193. ---- of Dischingtoune, 197. ---- of Limphoys, 191. ---- captain, 132. ---- Mr., 30. Scougall, 210. ---- sir John, of Whytkirk, death of, 219. Scudéri's _Almahide_, account of, 134-137. Seafield castle, 195. Seat rent, 265, 276. Sempills of Fulwood, 185. Semple, 203. ---- Gabriell, 270. Senators of the college of justice, their usurpation of power over the town of Edinburgh, 218. Sermons on Ignatius Loyola, 30; on St. Domenick, 31; on the virgin Mary, 41, 52-53; anecdotes of sermons, 115. Seton, Alexander, chancellor, and provost of Edinburgh, 189, 218 and _n_, 305. ---- ---- of Pitmedden, 258, 284, 290. Shaftesbury, earle of, high chancelor of England, 221. Sharp, James, archbishop of St. Andrews, 141, 214, 231. ---- William, of Stainehill, 189. Sherwood forest, 177. Sheves, William, of Kemnock, archbishop of St. Andrews, 207. Shirefhal, 188. Shoneir of Caskieberry, 205. Shynaille, 15 and _n_. Sibbalds of Balgonie, 196, 197. Silver, price of, 264. Silvertonhil, 185. Sim, William, 192, 268. Sinclair, lord, 196. ---- George, 159. ---- Hew, 241, 242. ---- Ja., of Roslin, 269. ---- John, minister at Ormiston, 279. ---- sir Robert, 213, 214 and _n_, 219-220, 222. ---- Robert, 181, 182. Skene (Skein), J., 110 and _n_. ---- sir James, of Curriehill, xi, 191. ---- Thomas, advocate, 227. ---- of Halzeards, 193. Smith, rev. J., anecdote of, 127. ---- Joannette, 280. Somervell, Arthur, 266, 275. Somnambulism, a cure for, 84. Sorcery, xxxviii, 45-46, 99, 204 and _n_. Southampton, earle of, 222. Southesk, carles of, 303. Spaniards, antipathy of the French to, 47-48; Spanish cruelty in the New-World, 98. Spanish Netherlands invaded by the French, 228. Spence, Jeremiah, forges a decreet, 220-221. Spittle, 192. Spot, 200, 209. Spotswood, Alexander, 213. ---- ---- of Crumstaine, advocate, 202; death of, 225. ---- John, archbishop of St. Andrews, 139, 207. Sprage, Mr., 169. Spurius Carvilius, 116. Stainehill, near Edinburgh, 189. Stainfeild, sir Ja., 281. Stair, lord, president of the court of session, xxxi, xxxv and _n_, xxxvi _n_, 213, 214. Stanipmilne, 191. Steill, Pat, 265. Stevinson, Haddington, 200. ---- D., 265. ---- Jo., 262. ---- William, 275. ---- Dr., 186, 249. Stewart, John, of Ketleston, death of, 221. ---- sir Lues, advocate, of Kirkhill, 193. ---- Robert, marshal of France, 103. ---- of Rossyth, 197. Stillingfleet, Mr., 174. Stirling, rev. David, 195. ---- rev. Robert, 183. Strachan ---- regent at Aberdeen, 42. ---- sir J., 176. ---- William, advocate, death of, 225. ---- Mr., 2, 3. ---- Mlle, 128. Strafford, earle of, 230. Stranaver, lady, 201. Street cries, 40, 68, 99. Sutherland, James, treasurer of Edinburgh, 278. ---- Will., 262, 266, 268, 270. Suty, John, 30. Swearing, punishment of, 60. Swine, 77. Swinton, Alexander, advocate, 215, 221. ---- of Brunston, 26 and _n_. Sword ----, provost of Aberdeen, 109. Swynish abbey, 186. Sydserfe, 203. ---- Tom, his _Tarugoes Wiles_, 174-175 and _n_. Tailfours of Reidheues, 191. Tantallon (Tomtallon), 203, 210. Tarbet, laird of, 196. Taringzean, 205. Temple, Arthur, 271. ---- lands in Edinburgh, 192. Tennent, skipper, 281. Terinean, in Carrick, 302. Test act, xxxii-xxxv. Thanes of Collie, 304. Theft, punishment of, 70. Thiget burn. See Figgate burn. Thirlestan, 8 and _n_, 132. Thoires, David, advocate, 223; sent to prison and fined, 213. Thomson, George, of Touch, 196, 204, 288. ---- Thomas, xiii, xix-xx. ---- sir Thomas, 190. Thomsone, sir William, 168, 305. Thornetounloch, 200. Thorniedykes, 210. Thunder, bell-ringing during, 49-51. Toad, medicinal stone in head of, 72. Tobit's dog, 114 and _n_. Tod, Archibald, provost of Edinburgh, 305. Todrig, Alex., 252, 260, 263. 'Tom of the Cowgate.' _See_ Haddington, earl of. Torrance ----, 185. Torture, infliction of, xxxviii, 70, 83. Touch, 204, 205. ---- laird of. _See_ Thomson, George. Touraine, madame de, death of, 132. Tours, 19, 20, 24, 64. Trade processions in France, 52. Traditions and fables, 36-37. Traquair, lord, 216, 218. Trinity college, Oxford, 173. Trotter, Jo., 262. Turner ----, 3. ---- sir James, 185. Tweddale, earle of, 189, 214, 223, 224; his predecessors, 208. Tyninghame, 209, 210. Umeau, M., his speech at the opening of the law university of Poictiers, 112. Union of England and Scotland, 229 and _n_. University college, Oxford, 172. Uphall kirk, 193. Uxbridge, 168. Van Eck, Tunis, 167. Van Tromp, 235. Vipers exhibited by mountebanks, 71, 73. Voetius ----, 141. Vulteius ----, 66. Waldenses, persecutions of, 66. Walker, William, 199. Wallace, Hew, W.S., 213. ---- James, macer, 216. ---- sir Thomas, 214. ---- William, tradition of, 37. ---- ---- advocate, death of, 223. ---- Mr., 168. Wallyfield, near Musselburgh, 190, 203. Wardlaw, Charles, 246, 284. Waren, Mr., 163. Waschingtoune, 216. Wat, Peter, 247. Water, vendors of, 68. Waterworks at Ruell, 5,6; at Shynaille, 15. Watson, David, of Sauchton, 191. ---- J., of Lammyletham, 217. ---- Walter, provost of Dumbarton, 184. ---- of Pathhead or Pittintillun, 196. ---- ---- 202. Wauchope of Niddrie, 188 _n_. Wauchton, 202, 209. _See also_ Hepburn: Ramsay. ---- of Lufness, 210. Wause, Pat., 168, 255, 267. Wedderburne, Rob., sermon by, 54. Weir, major, execution of, 232. Wemes, James, advocate, death of, 214. Wemyss, Rot., 271. ---- (Veimes) of Bogie, 196. ---- of that ilk, 197. Wesenbec, Matthew, 122. Westmilne house, Kirkcaldy, 195. White, C, 132. Whithill, Easter Dudinstone, 190. Whitkirk, 203. Whyte, Andrew, of Fuirstoun, 200. Wild animals of France, 85. Wilkie, Archibald, of Dauphintoun, 190. Wilky, Mr., 3. Willis, D., physitian, 173. Wilson, James, 249. ---- Thomas, 276. Windiegoule, near Tranent, 203. Wine, adulteration of, 59. Wines of Germany, 69; of France, 85. Winrahame, Robert, advocate, death of, 225. ---- of Currichill, 191. Winton, lord, 182, 258. Witchcraft, xxxviii-xl. Wolsie, cardinal, 171. Wolves in France, 85. Wood, Andro, 245. ---- Hary, 272. ---- rev. James, anecdote of, 127. ---- John, 259, 266, 271, 298. Woodhead, lands of, xxiii. Wrightshouses, Edinburgh, 186; origin of, 211. Yester, 208. ---- lord, 168, 203, 224. York, duke of. _See_ James VII. ---- town and minster, 177. Young, Androw, 241, 272, 279. ---- of Leny, 193. Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty at the Edinburgh University Press. REPORT OF THE THIRTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE SCOTTISH HISTORY SOCIETY THE THIRTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE SOCIETY was held on TUESDAY, November 21, 1899, in Dowell's Rooms, George Street, Edinburgh,--Emeritus Professor MASSON in the chair. The HON. SECRETARY read the Report of the Council, as follows:-- During the past year the Society has lost twenty members, ten by death and ten by resignation. When the vacancies are filled up there will remain seventy names on the list of candidates for admission. In addition to the 400 individual members of the Society there are now 64 Public Libraries subscribing for the Society's publications. The Council particularly desire to express their regret at the death of the Rev. Dr. Alexander Mitchell, formerly Professor of Ecclesiastical History at St. Andrews University, and of the Rev. A.W. Cornelius Hallen. From the foundation of the Society, Dr. Mitchell had been a corresponding member of the Council. He took a great interest in the Society's work, and, in conjunction with the Rev. Dr. Christie, edited for us two volumes of _The Records of the Commissions of the General Assembly of the Years_ 1646- 49. Mr. Hallen was also an active member of the Council for many years, and edited _The Account Book of Sir John Foulis of Ravelston_. The Society's publications belonging to the issue of the past year, viz., Mr. Ferguson's first volume of _Papers Illustrating the History of the Scots Brigade_, and Mr. Firth's volume on _Scotland and the Protectorate_, have been for some months in the hands of members. But members for this year, 1898-99, are to be congratulated on their good fortune in receiving, in addition to the ordinary issue of the Society, two other volumes as a gift. It will be remembered that at our last Annual Meeting Mr. Balfour Paul announced on behalf of the trustees of the late Sir William Fraser, K.C.B., that, acting on the terms of the trust, they were prepared to print and present to members on the roll for the year 1898-99, at least one, and perhaps two volumes of documents having the special object of illustrating the family history of Scotland. The work then suggested, and subsequently determined upon, was the Macfarlane Genealogical Collections relating to families in Scotland, MSS. in the Advocates' Library, now passing through the press in two volumes, under the editorial care of Mr. J.T. Clark, the Keeper of the Library. The whole of the first volume and the greater part of the second are already in type. The Council, who very highly appreciate this welcome donation, desire to convey to the trustees the cordial thanks of the Society for their share in the presentation. The following are the publications assigned to the coming year, 1899-1900: (1.) The second volume of the _Scots Brigade_ which is already printed, bound, and ready for issue. (2.) _The Journal of a Foreign Tour in 1665 and 1666_, and portions of other Journals, by Sir John Lauder, Lord Fountainhall, edited by Mr. Donald Crawford, Sheriff of Aberdeen, Kincardine and Banff. The greater part of this book also is in type. (3.) _Dispatches of the Papal Envoys to Queen Mary during her reign in Scotland_, edited by the Rev. J. Hungerford Pollen, S.J. The editor expects to send his manuscripts to the printer in January next. Several new works have been proposed and provisionally accepted by the Council. Dr. J.H. Wallace-James offers a collection of Charters and Documents of the Grey Friars of Haddington and of the Cistercian Nunnery of Haddington. They will be the more welcome, as the desire has been frequently expressed that the Society should deal more fully with the period preceding the Reformation. Mr. Firth has suggested the publication of certain unedited or imperfectly edited papers concerning the _Negotiations for the Union of England and Scotland in_ 1651-1653, and Mr. C. Sandford Terry of Aberdeen has kindly consented to edit them. The three retiring members of Council are Dr. Hume Brown, Mr. G.W. Prothero, and Mr. Balfour Paul. The Council propose that Mr. Prothero should be removed to the list of corresponding members, that Dr. Hume Brown and Mr. Balfour Paul be re-elected, and that Mr. John Scott, C.B., be appointed to the Council in the place of Mr. Prothero. The Accounts of the Hon. Treasurer show that there was a balance in November 1898 of £172, 12s. 9d., and that the income for the year 1898-99 was £521, 15s. 5d. The expenditure for this same year was £438, 14s. 1d., leaving a balance in favour of the Society of £255, 14s. 1d. The CHAIRMAN, in moving the adoption of the Report, which, he said, was very satisfactory, said that in the first place they had kept their promises and arrangements in the past year, and, in the second place, they had a very good bill of fare for the current year, even if there were nothing additional to their programme as already published. The books that had been announced as forthcoming were just the kind of books that it was proper the Society should produce. But, in addition, they would see there was forthcoming a very important publication which had come to them out of the ordinary run. The late Sir William Fraser, in addition to his other important bequests, which would for the future affect the literature of Scottish history, gave power to his trustees that they might, if they saw occasion, employ a certain portion of his funds on some specific publications of the nature of those materials in which he had been spending his life. The result had been that the trustees, chiefly he believed by the advice of their Lyon King of Arms, Mr. Balfour Paul, had offered as a gift to this Society those very important genealogical documents, the Macfarlane documents, which had been lying in the Advocates' Library, and to which a great many people at various times had been referring, to such an extent that he believed Mr. Clark, the librarian of the Advocates' Library, had been almost incommoded by the number of such applications. Henceforth this would not be the case, as the Macfarlane genealogical documents were to be published under the editorship of Mr. Clark. That was a windfall for which he had no doubt all the members of the Society would be thankful, and when he moved the adoption of the report he meant specially to propose their adoption of a hearty vote of thanks to the trustees of Sir William Fraser. Professor MASSON then alluded to the proposal of Mr. C. Stanford Terry to produce the silent records relating to the union of Scotland with England in the years 1651 to 1653. That was a portion of Scottish history that had been almost forgotten, but a very important and interesting portion of Scottish history it was. In 1651, after the battle of Dunbar, and after Cromwell's occupation of Scotland, and after he had gone back to England and had left Monk in charge in Scotland, with about eight thousand Englishmen in Scotland, distributed in garrisons here and there, it occurred to the Long Parliament of England, then masters of affairs in Great Britain, that there ought to be an incorporating union of Scotland with the English Commonwealth. That proposal came before the Long Parliament in October 1651. It was agreed upon, by way of declaration, that it might be very desirable, and a committee of eight members of the Long Parliament was appointed to negotiate in the matter. They came to Scotland, and there was a kind of convention, a _quasi_ Scottish Parliament, held at Dalkeith, where the matter was discussed. Of course, it was a very serious matter, giving rise to various feelings. To part with the old Scottish nationality was a prospect that had to be faced with regret. To this Parliament the Commissioners proposed what was called the Tender, or an offer of incorporating union. The variety of elements in Scotland-- Royalists, Presbyterians, Independents--in the main said that they must yield, although they were reluctant. Even those who were most in sympathy with the English Commonwealth politically shrank for a while, and they tried whether the Long Parliament might not accept a kind of compromise, whether Scotland might not be erected into a little independent Republic allied to the English Commonwealth or Republic. But at last all these feelings gave way, and the English Commissioners were able to report before the end of the year, or in January--what we should now call 1652, but then called 1651--that twenty of the Scottish shires out of thirty-five had accepted the Tender, and that almost all the burghs had accepted it, Edinburgh and Aberdeen and all the chief burghs --Glasgow being the sole outstanding one. At last, however, Glasgow, on thinking over the thing, agreed, and the consequence was that in April 1652 the Act incorporating Scotland with the English Commonwealth passed the first and second readings in the Long Parliament. From April 1652 Scotland was, they might say, united with England, and in the Protectorate Parliaments, in Cromwell's first and second Parliaments, there were thirty members from Scotland sitting at Westminster with the English members, and so through the protectorate of his son Richard, and it was not till the Restoration that there came the rebound. Then the order universally was: 'As you were,' and a period of Scottish history was sponged out, so much so that they had forgotten it, and many of them rather regretted it. At all events, it was a very important period of Scottish history, and the proposed publication will give us flashes of light into the feelings and the state of the country between 1652 and 1660. Proceeding, Professor MASSON said the Society had kept strictly to their announcements, and they had already contributed a great many publications, which, at all events, had proved, and were proving, new materials for the history of Scotland, giving new conceptions of that history. They would observe in the first place how the publications had been dotted in respect of dates, some of them comparatively recent, others going far back. They would observe, in the second place, that the documents had been of almost all kinds--all those kinds that were of historical value; all those that really pertained to the history of Scotland--that was to say, the history of that little community which, with a small population, they named Scotland. There were various theories and conceptions of history. The main and common and the capital conception of the day was to give the story of the succession of events of all kinds. In that respect Scottish history, though the history of a small nation, would compete in interest with the history of any nation that had ever been. Small, but the variety, the intensity of the life, the changes, the vicissitudes, the picturesque incidents, no history could compete for that kind of interest with the history of that little torrent that had flowed through such a rocky, narrow bed. Crimes or illegalities got easily into books, and this was a little unfortunate, because people dwelt on such crimes and illegalities as constituting history. But they did not. No more would the digest of the trials of their Police Courts and of their chief Courts. They figured, of course, in history, but there ought to be a caution against allowing too great a proportion of those records of crimes and illegalities to affect their views. Then there was a notion of history very much in favour with their scholars at present, that it should consist merely of a narrative of the actions of the Government and the formation of institutions--what they should call constitutional history. There had been a school of historical writers of late who would almost confine history to that record--nothing else was proper history, and the consequence was that the constitution of history was in the publication of documents and in the changes in the manner of government. That was an essential and a very important part of history, but by itself it would be a very dreich kind of history. History was the authentic record of whatever happened in the world, and Scottish history of whatever had happened in the Scottish world. If he had been told that on a certain date King James V., the Red Fox, rode over Cramond Bridge with five horsemen, one of them on a white horse, they might say what use was it to him to know that, but he did want to know it and have that picture in his mind. It was a piece of history, and any one who was bereft of interest in that sort of thing--however little use it might be turned to--was bereft of the historical faculty. Then there was a conception of history that it should consist in pictures of the generation, of the people, how they were housed, how they were fed, and so on. That was a capital notion. But he was not sure that there were not certain overdoings of that notion. In the first place, they would observe that they must take a succession of generations in order to accomplish that descriptive history of the state of Scotland at one time, then at another, then at a third, and so on. A description at one time would not apply to the society of Scotland at another. 'Quhan Alysander, oure Kyng, was deid, Quhan Scotland led in luve and le, Awa' wes sons of ail and brede, Of wyne and wax, of gamyn and glee.' That was to say, it was a tradition before that time that there was abundance and even luxury in Scotland. There had been a tendency in history of late to dwell on the poverty and squalor of Scotland in comparison with other countries--all that should be produced, and made perfectly conceivable--and then also to dwell on the records of kirk- sessions and presbyteries, showing the state of morality in Scotland. All that it was desirable should be produced in abundance if they were not wrongly construed--but they were apt to be. A notion had arisen what a comical country Scotland must have been with its Shorter Catechism, and its presbytery records, and its miserable food, and so on. That was a wrong notion, and ought to be dismissed, because if they thought of it the life of a community consisted in how it felt, how it acted. In those days of poverty and squalor of external surroundings there were as good men, as brave men, and as good women as there were in Scotland now. And at all events, if there was anything in Scotland now, any power in the world, it had sprung from these progenitors. They must have some corrective for an exaggeration of that notion, which was very natural. One was biography. They would be surprised if they were to know how many biographies there might be along the course of Scottish history, say from the Reformation. If they fastened on a single individual, and told the story of his life, they not only told the story of his community in a very interesting manner, but they got straight to some of those faults which they were apt to be impressed by if they gazed vaguely at the community. Dr. Hume Brown had written an admirable summary of the history of Scotland, but he had contributed to the history of Scotland in another way by his two biographies of Buchanan and Knox, and especially by his biography of Buchanan. Another corrective was literature. There had been no sufficient perception of how literature might illustrate history; and why should it not if their aim was to recover the past mind of Scotland? Every song, every fiction--was not that a transmitted piece of the very mind that they wanted to investigate? Here was matter already at their hand. Then, in a similar way, if a noble thought, if a fine feeling, was in any way expressed in verse or in prose, that came out of some moment or moments in the mind of some individual, and it must have corresponded and been in sympathy with the community in which it was expressed. Nothing noble had come out of any man at any one time, but that man, in the way of expression of literature, must have had a constituency of people who felt as he felt. Unfortunately there was a long gap in what we called the finer history of Scotland from the time of the Reformation to Allan Ramsay--in literature of certain kinds. There were muses in those days, but they were muses of ecclesiastical and political controversy--very grim muses, but still they were muses. But from Allan Ramsay's time to this, to study the history of the literature was to know more of the history of the country than we would otherwise. David Hume, Adam Smith, Burns, Scott--all these men were born and bred in Scotland so poor and so squalid that we should say we would not belong to it now. Nobody was asking us to belong to it. But these men, their roots were in a soil capable of sustaining their genius and of pouring into their works those things in the way of thought and feeling that delighted us now, and that were our pride throughout the world. Mr. D.W. KEMP seconded the adoption of the Report, which was agreed to. The vacancies in the Council were filled by the re-election of Dr. Hume Brown and Mr. Balfour Paul, and the election of Mr. John Scott, C.B., in room of Mr. G.W. Prothero. In reply to Mr. James Bruce, W.S., Dr. LAW said that the death of Dr. Mitchell had caused some delay in the preparation of the third volume of the Records of the General Assembly, but it had already been transcribed for the printer. A vote of thanks to Professor Masson concluded the proceedings. ABSTRACT OF THE HONORARY TREASURER'S ACCOUNTS _For Year to 31st October 1899._ I. CHARGE. I. Balance in Bank from last year, £172 12 9 II. Subscriptions, viz.-- (1) 400 subscriptions for 1898-99, at £1, 1s., £420 0 0 2 in arrear for 1897-98, and 6 in advance for 1899-1900, 8 8 0 1 in advance for 1900-1, and 1 for 1901-2, 2 2 0 ---------- £430 10 0 Less 4 in arrear for 1898-99, 4 4 0 ---------- 426 6 0 (2) 64 Libraries at £1, 1s., £67 4 0 2 in advance for 1899-1900, 2 2 0 ---------- £69 6 0 Less 1 in advance for 1898-99, 1 1 0 ---------- 68 5 0 (3) Copies of previous issues sold to New Members, 23 12 6 III. Interest on Deposit Receipt, 3 11 11 ---------- Sum of Charge, £694 8 2 ========== II. DISCHARGE. I. _Incidental Expenses_-- Printing Cards, Circulars, and Reports, £7 18 6 --------- Carry forward, £7 18 6 * * * * * Brought forward, £7 18 6 Stationery, Receipt and Cheque Books,..... 3 13 0 Making-up and delivering copies, 28 12 6 Postages of Secretary and Treasurer, .... 3 9 7 Clerical Work and Charges on Cheques, ... 5 13 6 Hire of room for meeting, 1 1 0 ---------- £50 8 1 II. _Montereul Correspondence, Vol. II._,-- Composition, Printing, and Paper,..... £139 9 0 Proofs, Corrections, and Delete Matter, ... 20 8 0 Binding,..... 17 0 0 Indexing, ... 4 5 0 ---------- £181 2 0 Less paid to account, Oct. 1898, 145 3 0 ---------- 35 19 0 III. _The Scots Brigade, Vol. I._-- Composition, etc., ... £133 8 0 Proofs and Corrections,.. 29 14 0 Binding,..... 17 11 0 Indexing Vol. i., ... 5 5 0 ---------- 185 18 0 IV. _The Scots Brigade, Vol. II._-- Indexing,...... £5 5 0 V. _Scotland and the Protectorate_-- Composition, etc., ... 105 6 6 Proofs, Corrections, and Delete Matter, ... 18 3 0 Illustrations, ... 16 7 6 Binding,..... 17 11 0 Indexing,.... 3 16 0 ---------- 161 4 0 -------- Carry forward, ... £438 14 1 * * * * * Brought forward, £438 14 1 VI. _Balance to next account_-- Sum due by the Bank of Scotland on 31st October 1899-- (1) On Deposit Receipt, £200 0 0 (2) On Current Account, 55 14 1 -------- 255 14 1 --------- Sum of Discharge, £694 8 2 ========= EDINBURGH, _23rd November_ 1899.--Having examined the Accounts of the Hon. Treasurer of the Scottish History Society for the year to 31st October 1899, of which the foregoing is an abstract, and compared the same with the vouchers, we beg to report that we find the said Account to be correct, the sum due by the Bank at the close thereof being £255, 14s. 1d. WM. TRAQUAIR DICKSON, _Auditor._ RALPH RICHARDSON, _Auditor._ Scottish History Society. SCOTTISH HISTORY SOCIETY * * * * * THE EXECUTIVE. _President._ THE EARL OF ROSEBERY, K.G., K.T., LL.D. _Chairman of Council._ DAVID MASSON, LL.D., Historiographer Royal for Scotland. _Council._ JOHN SCOTT, C.B. Sir J. BALFOUR PAUL, Knt., Lyon King of Arms. P. HUME BROWN, M.A., LL.D. Rev. JOHN HUTCHISON, D.D. D. HAY FLEMING, LL.D. Right Rev. JOHN DOWDEN, D.D., Bishop of Edinburgh. J. MAITLAND THOMSON, Advocate, Keeper of the Historical Department, H.M. Register House. W.K. DICKSON, Advocate. DAVID PATRICK, LL.D. Sir ARTHUR MITCHELL, K.C.B., M.D., LL.D. ÆNEAS J.G. MACKAY, Q.C., LL.D., Sheriff of Fife and Kinross. Sir JOHN COWAN, Bart. _Corresponding Members of the Council._ C.H. FIRTH, Oxford; SAMUEL RAWSON GARDINER, D.C.L., LL.D.; Rev. W.D. MACRAY, Oxford; G.W. PROTHERO, Litt. D. _Hon. Treasurer._ J.T. CLARK, Keeper of the Advocates' Library. _Hon. Secretary._ T.G. LAW, LL.D., Librarian, Signet Library. RULES 1. The object of the Society is the discovery and printing, under selected editorship, of unpublished documents illustrative of the civil, religious, and social history of Scotland. The Society will also undertake, in exceptional cases, to issue translations of printed works of a similar nature, which have not hitherto been accessible in English. 2. The number of Members of the Society shall be limited to 400. 3. The affairs of the Society shall be managed by a Council, consisting of a Chairman, Treasurer, Secretary, and twelve elected Members, five to make a quorum. Three of the twelve elected Members shall retire annually by ballot, but they shall be eligible for re-election. 4. The Annual Subscription to the Society shall be One Guinea. The publications of the Society shall not be delivered to any Member whose Subscription is in arrear, and no Member shall be permitted to receive more than one copy of the Society's publications. 5. The Society will undertake the issue of its own publications, _i.e._ without the intervention of a publisher or any other paid agent. 6. The Society will issue yearly two octavo volumes of about 320 pages each. 7. An Annual General Meeting of the Society shall be held at the end of October, or at an approximate date to be determined by the Council. 8. Two stated Meetings of the Council shall be held each year, one on the last Tuesday of May, the other on the Tuesday preceding the day upon which the Annual General Meeting shall be held. The Secretary, on the request of three Members of the Council, shall call a special meeting of the Council. 9. Editors shall receive 20 copies of each volume they edit for the Society. 10. The owners of Manuscripts published by the Society will also be presented with a certain number of copies. 11. The Annual Balance-Sheet, Rules, and List of Members shall be printed. 12. No alteration shall be made in these Rules except at a General Meeting of the Society. A fortnight's notice of any alteration to be proposed shall he given to the Members of the Council. PUBLICATIONS OF THE SCOTTISH HISTORY SOCIETY _For the year 1886-1887._ 1. BISHOP POCOCKE'S TOURS IN SCOTLAND, 1747-1760. Edited by D.W. KEMP. (Oct. 1887.) 2. DIARY OF AND GENERAL EXPENDITURE BOOK OF WILLIAM CUNNINGHAM OF CRAIGENDS, 1673-1680. Edited by the Rev. JAMES DODDS, D.D. (Oct. 1887.) _For the year 1887-1888._ 3. PANURGI PHILO-CABALLI SCOTI GRAMEIDOS LIBRI SEX.--THE GRAMEID: an heroic poem descriptive of the Campaign of Viscount Dundee in 1689, by JAMES PHILIP of Almerieclose. Translated and Edited by the Rev. A.D. MURDOCH. (Oct. 1888.) 4. THE REGISTER OF THE KIRK-SESSION OF ST. ANDREWS. Part i. 1559-1582. Edited by D. HAY FLEMING. (Feb. 1889.) _For the year 1888-1889._ 5. DIARY OF THE REV. JOHN MILL, Minister of Dunrossness, Sandwick, and Cunningsburgh, in Shetland, 1740-1803. Edited by GILBERT GOUDIE, F.S.A. Scot. (June 1889.) 6. NARRATIVE OF MR. JAMES NIMMO, A COVENANTER, 1654-1709. Edited by W.G. SCOTT-MONCRIEFF, Advocate. (June 1889.) 7. THE REGISTER OF THE KIRK-SESSION OF ST. ANDREWS. Part ii. 1583-1600. Edited by D. HAY FLEMING. (Aug. 1890.) _For the year 1889-1890._ 8. A LIST OF PERSONS CONCERNED IN THE REBELLION (1745). With a Preface by the EARL OF ROSEBERY, and Annotations by the Rev. WALTER MACLEOD. (Sept. 1890.) _Presented to the Society by the Earl of Rosebery_. 9. GLAMIS PAPERS: The 'BOOK OF RECORD,' a Diary written by PATRICK, FIRST EARL OF STRATHMORE, and other documents relating to Glamis Castle (1684- 89). Edited by A.H. MILLAR, F.S.A. Scot. (Sept. 1890.) 10. JOHN MAJOR'S HISTORY OF GREATER BRITAIN (1521). Translated and edited by ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE, with a Life of the author by ÆNEAS J.G. MACKAY, Advocate. (Feb. 1892.) _For the year 1890-1891._ 11. THE RECORDS OF THE COMMISSIONS OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLIES. 1646-47. Edited by the Rev. Professor MITCHELL, D.D., and the Rev. JAMES CHRISTIE, D.D., with an Introduction by the former. (May 1892.) 12. COURT-BOOK OF THE BARONY OF URIE, 1604-1747. Edited by the Rev. D.G. BARRON, from a MS. in possession of Mr. R. BARCLAY of Dorking. (Oct. 1892.) _For the year 1891-1892._ 13. MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF SIR JOHN CLERK OF PENICUIK, Baronet, Baron of the Exchequer, Commissioner of the Union, etc. Extracted by himself from his own Journals, 1676-1755. Edited from the original MS. in Penicuik House by JOHN M. GRAY, F.S.A. Scot. (Dec. 1892.) 14. DIARY OF COL. THE HON. JOHN ERSKINE OF CARNOCK, 1683-1687. From a MS. in possession of HENRY DAVID ERSKINE, Esq., of Cardross. Edited by the Rev. WALTER MACLEOD. (Dec. 1893.) _For the year 1892-1893._ 15. MISCELLANY OF THE SCOTTISH HISTORY SOCIETY, First Volume-- THE LIBRARY OF JAMES VI., 1573-83. Edited by G.F. WARNER. DOCUMENTS ILLUSTRATING CATHOLIC POLICY, 1596-98. T.G. LAW. LETTERS OF SIR THOMAS HOPE, 1627-46. Rev. R. PAUL. CIVIL WAR PAPERS, 1643-50. H.F. MORLAND SIMPSON. LAUDERDALE CORRESPONDENCE, 1660-77. Right Rev. JOHN DOWDEN, D.D. TURNBULL'S DIARY, 1657-1704. Rev. R. PAUL. MASTERTON PAPERS, 1660-1719. V.A. NOËL PATON. ACCOMPT OF EXPENSES IN EDINBURGH, 1715. A.H. MILLAR. REBELLION PAPERS, 1715 and 1745. H. PATON. (Dec. 1893.) 16. ACCOUNT BOOK OF SIR JOHN FOULIS OF RAVELSTON (1671-1707). Edited by the Rev. A.W. CORNELIUS HALLEN. (June 1894.) _For the year 1893-1894._ 17. LETTERS AND PAPERS ILLUSTRATING THE RELATIONS BETWEEN CHARLES II. AND SCOTLAND IN 1650. Edited, with Notes and Introduction, by SAMUEL RAWSON GARDINER, LL.D., etc. (July 1894.) 18. SCOTLAND AND THE COMMONWEALTH. LETTERS AND PAPERS RELATING TO THE MILITARY GOVERNMENT OF SCOTLAND, Aug. 1651--Dec. 1653. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by C.H. FIRTH, M.A. (Oct. 1895.) _For the year 1894-1895._ 19. THE JACOBITE ATTEMPT OF 1719. LETTERS OF JAMES, SECOND DUKE OF ORMONDE, RELATING TO CARDINAL ALBERONI'S PROJECT FOR THE INVASION OF GREAT BRITAIN. Edited by W.K. DICKSON, Advocate. (Dec. 1895.) 20, 21. THE LYON IN MOURNING, OR A COLLECTION OF SPEECHES, LETTERS, JOURNALS, ETC., RELATIVE TO THE AFFAIRS OF PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD STUART, by the Rev. ROBERT FORBES, A.M., Bishop of Ross and Caithness. 1746-1775. Edited from his Manuscript by HENRY PATON, M.A. Vols. i. and ii. (Oct. 1895.) _For the year_ 1895-1896. 22. THE LYON IN MOURNING. Vol. III. (Oct. 1896.) 23. SUPPLEMENT TO THE LYON IN MOURNING.--ITINERARY OF PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD. With a Map. Compiled by W.B. BLAIKIE. (April 1897.) 24. EXTRACTS FROM THE PRESBYTERY RECORDS OF INVERNESS AND DINGWALL FROM 1638 TO 1688. Edited by WILLIAM MACKAY. (Oct. 1896.) 25. RECORDS OF THE COMMISSIONS OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLIES (continued) for the years 1648 and 1649. Edited by the Rev. Professor MITCHELL, D.D., and Rev. JAMES CHRISTIE, D.D. (Dec. 1896.) _For the year_ 1896-1897. 26. WARISTON'S DIARY AND OTHER PAPERS--JOHNSTON OF WARISTON'S DIARY, 1639. Edited by G.M. PAUL. THE HONOURS OF SCOTLAND, 1651-52. C.R.A. HOWDEN. THE EARL OF MAR'S LEGACIES, 1722, 1726. Hon. S. ERSKINE. LETTERS BY MRS. GRANT OF LAGGAN. J.R.N. MACPHAIL. (Dec. 1896.) _Presented to the Society by Messrs. T. and A. Constable._ 27. MEMORIALS OF JOHN MURRAY OF BROUGHTON, SOMETIME SECRETARY TO PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD, 1740-1747. Edited by R. FITZROY BELL, Advocate. (May 1898.) 28. THE COMPT BUIK OF DAVID WEDDERBURNE, MERCHANT OF DUNDEE, 1587-1630. With the Shipping Lists of the Port of Dundee, 1580-1618. Edited by A.H. MILLAR. (May 1898.) _For the year_ 1897-1898. 29. THE DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE OF JEAN DE MONTEREUL AND THE BROTHERS DE BELLIÈVRE, FRENCH AMBASSADORS IN ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND, 1645-1648. Edited, with Translation and Notes, by J.G. FOTHERINGHAM. Vol. I. (June 1898.) 30. THE SAME. Vol. II. (Jan. 1899.) _For the year_ 1898-1899. 31. SCOTLAND AND THE PROTECTORATE. LETTERS AND PAPERS RELATING TO THE MILITARY GOVERNMENT OF SCOTLAND, FROM JANUARY 1654 TO JUNE 1659. Edited by C.H. FIRTH, M.A. (March 1899.) 32. PAPERS ILLUSTRATING THE HISTORY OF THE SCOTS BRIGADE IN THE SERVICE OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS, 1572-1782. Edited by JAMES FERGUSON. Vol. I. 1572- 1697. (Jan. 1899.) 33, 34. MACFARLANE'S GENEALOGICAL COLLECTIONS CONCERNING FAMILIES IN SCOTLAND; MSS. in the Advocates' Library. 2 vols. Edited by J.T. CLARK, Keeper of the Library. (To be ready shortly.) _Presented to the Society by the Trustees of the late Sir William Fraser, K.C.B._ _For the year_ 1899-1900. 35. PAPERS ON THE SCOTS BRIGADE. Vol. II. 1698-1782. Edited by JAMES FERGUSON. (Nov. 1899.) 36. JOURNAL OF A FOREIGN TOUR IN 1665 AND 1666, AND PORTIONS OF OTHER JOURNALS, BY SIR JOHN LAUDER, LORD FOUNTAINHALL. Edited by DONALD CRAWFORD, Sheriff of Aberdeen, Kincardine, and Banff. (May 1900.) 37. DISPATCHES OF PAPAL ENVOYS TO QUEEN MARY DURING HER REIGN IN SCOTLAND. Edited by the Rev. J. HUNGERFORD POLLEN, S.J. _In preparation._ PAPERS ON THE SCOTS BRIGADE. Vol. III. THE DIARY OF ANDREW HAY OF STONE, NEAR BIGGAR, AFTERWARDS OF CRAIGNETHAN CASTLE, 1659-60. Edited by A.G. REID from a manuscript in his possession. MACFARLANE'S TOPOGRAPHICAL COLLECTIONS. Edited by J.T. CLARK. A TRANSLATION OF THE STATUTA ECCLESIÆ SCOTICANÆ, 1225-1556, by DAVID PATRICK, LL.D. SIR THOMAS CRAIG'S DE UNIONE REGNORUM BRITANNIÆ. Edited, with an English Translation, by DAVID MASSON, LL.D., Historiographer Royal. RECORDS OF THE COMMISSIONS OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLIES (_continued_), for the years 1650-53. REGISTER OF THE CONSULTATIONS OF THE MINISTERS OF EDINBURGH, AND SOME OTHER BRETHREN OF THE MINISTRY FROM DIVERS PARTS OF THE LAND, MEETING FROM TIME TO TIME, SINCE THE INTERRUPTION OF THE ASSEMBLY 1653, WITH OTHER PAPERS OF PUBLIC CONCERNMENT, 1653-1660. PAPERS RELATING TO THE REBELLIONS OF 1715 AND 1745, with other documents from the Municipal Archives of the City of Perth. A SELECTION OF THE FORFEITED ESTATES PAPERS PRESERVED IN H.M. GENERAL REGISTER HOUSE AND ELSEWHERE. Edited by A.H. MILLAR. A TRANSLATION OF THE HISTORIA ABBATUM DE KYNLOS OF FERRERIUS. By ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE, LL.D. DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE AFFAIRS OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC PARTY IN SCOTLAND, from the year of the Armada to the Union of the Crowns. Edited by THOMAS GRAVES LAW, LLD. THE LOYALL DISSUASIVE. Memorial to the Laird of Cluny in Badenoch. Written in 1703, by Sir ÆNEAS MACPHERSON. Edited by the Rev. A.D. MURDOCH. CHARTERS AND DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE GREY FRIARS AND THE CISTERCIAN NUNNERY OF HADDINGTON. Edited by J.G. WALLACE-JAMES, M.B. NEGOTIATIONS FOR THE UNION OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND IN 1651-53. Edited by C. SANDFORD TERRY, M.A. 
13044	----	THE IDLER IN FRANCE By MARGUERITE GARDINER, THE COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON 1841. CHAPTER I. NISMES. I have omitted to notice the route to this place, having formerly described the greater portion of it. I remarked a considerable improvement in the different towns we passed through: the people look cleaner, and an air of business has replaced the stagnation that used to prevail, except in Marseilles and Toulon, which were always busy cities. Nismes surpasses my expectations, although they had been greatly excited, and amply repays the long _détour_ we have made to visit it. When I look round on the objects of antiquity that meet my eye on every side, and above all on the Amphitheatre and _Maison Carrée_, I am forced to admit that Italy has nothing to equal the two last: for if the Coliseum may be said to surpass the amphitheatre in dimensions, the wonderful state of preservation of the latter renders it more interesting; and the _Maison Carrée_, it must be allowed, stands without a competitor. Well might the Abbé Barthélemy, in his _Voyage d'Anacharsis_, call it the masterpiece of ancient architecture and the despair of modern! The antiquities of Nismes have another advantage over those of Italy: they are kept wholly free from the disgusting _entourage_ that impairs the effect of the latter; and in examining them in the interior or exterior, no risk is incurred of encountering aught offensive to the olfactory nerves, or injurious to the _chaussure_. We devoted last evening to walking round the town, and so cloudless was the sky, so genial the air, and so striking the monuments of Roman splendour, that I could have fancied myself again transported to Italy. Our inn, the Hôtel du Midi, is an excellent one; the apartments good, and the _cuisine soignée_. In this latter point the French hôtels are far superior to the Italian; but in civility and attention, the hosts of Italy have the advantage. We had no sooner dined than half-a-dozen persons, laden with silk handkerchiefs and ribands, brocaded with gold and silver, and silk stockings, and crapes, all the manufacture of Nismes, came to display their merchandise. The specimens were good, and the prices moderate; so we bought some of each, much to the satisfaction of the parties selling, and also of the host, who seemed to take a more than common interest in the sale, whether wholly from patriotic feelings or not, I will not pretend to say. The _Maison Carrée_, of all the buildings of antiquity I have yet seen, is the one which has most successfully resisted the numerous assaults of time, weather, Vandalism, and the not less barbarous attacks of those into whose merciless hands it has afterwards fallen. In the early part of the Christian ages it was converted into a church, and dedicated to St.-Étienne the Martyr; and in the eleventh century it was used as the Hôtel-de-Ville. It was then given to a certain Pierre Boys, in exchange for a piece of ground to erect a new hôtel-de-ville; and he, after having degraded it by using a portion of it as a party-wall to a mean dwelling he erected adjoining it, disposed of it to a *Sieur Bruyes, who, still more barbarous than Pierre Boys, converted it into a stable. In 1670, it was purchased by the Augustin monks from the descendants of Bruyes, and once more used as a church; and, in 1789, it was taken from the Augustin monks for the purposes of the administration of the department. From that period, every thing has been done for its preservation. Cleared from the mean houses which had been built around it, and enclosed by an iron palisade, which protects it from mischievous hands, it now stands isolated in the centre of a square, or _place_, where it can be seen at every side. Poldo d'Albenas, a quaint old writer, whose book I glanced over to-day, attributes the preservation of the _Maison Carrée_ to the fortunate horoscope of the spot on which it stands. His lamentations for the insults offered to this building are really passionate. The _Maison Carrée_ is not square, though its denomination might lead one to suppose it to be so, being nearly eighty feet long, and only thirty-eight feet wide. Elevated on a base of cut stone, it is ascended by a flight of steps, which extends the length of the base in front. The walls of the building are of a fine white stone, and are admirably constructed. The edifice has thirty fluted columns, with Corinthian capitals beautifully sculptured, on which rests the architrave, with frieze and cornice. This last is ornamented with sculpture; and the frieze, with foliage finely executed. The entrance is by a portico, open on three sides, and supported by two columns, included in the thirty already named, of which six form the front, and extend to the fourth, when commences the wall of the building, in which the other columns are half imbedded, being united in the building with its architrave. The fronton, which is over the portico, has no ornament in the centre; neither has the frieze nor architrave: but some holes mark where the bronze letters of an inscription were once inserted. This inscription has been conjectured, by the ingenious mode of placing on paper the exact dimensions of the holes which formerly contained the letters of it, and is now said to be as follows:-- C. CÆSARI AUGUSTI. F. COS. L. CÆSARI AUGUSTI F. COS. DESIGNATO PRINCIPIBUS JUVENTUTES. But as more holes are found than would be filled by these letters, the conclusion does not seem to me to be justified. At the far end of the portico is the door of entrance, the only opening by which light is admitted to the building. It is very lofty, and on each side is a pilaster; beneath the cornice are two long cut stones, which advance like a kind of architrave, pierced by a square hole of above twelve inches, supposed to have been intended to support a bronze door. The original destination of this beautiful edifice still furnishes a subject for discussion among the antiquaries; some asserting it to have been erected by the Emperor Adrian in honour of Plotina, while others maintain it to have been a forum. At present, it is used as a museum for the antiquities discovered at Nismes, and contains some admirable specimens. Among these are a torso in marble of a Roman knight, in a cuirass, and another colossal torso, with a charming little draped statue seated in a curule chair, and holding a cornucopia in the left hand; a cinerary monument, enriched with bassi-relievi, representing a human sacrifice; a bronze head of Apollo, much injured; and a Janus. A funereal monument found in the neighbourhood of Nismes in 1824, offers a very interesting object, being in a good state of preservation. It is richly decorated, and by the inscription is proved to have been that of Marcus Attius, aged twenty-five years, erected to him by his mother Coelia, daughter of Sextus Paternus. So fine is the proportion, so exquisite is the finish, and so wonderful is the preservation of the _Maison Carrée_, that I confess I had much more pleasure in contemplating its exterior, than in examining all that it contains, though many of these objects are well worth inspection. I should like to have a small model of it executed in silver, as an ornament for the centre of a table; but it would require the hand of a master to do justice to the olive leaves of the capitals of the columns; that is, if they were faithfully copied from the original. It was, if I remember rightly, Cardinal Alberoni who observed that this beautiful building ought to be preserved in a golden _étui_, and its compactness and exquisite finish prove that the implied eulogium was not unmerited. I have nowhere else noticed the introduction of olive leaves in Corinthian capitals instead of those of the acanthus; the effect of which is very good. A design was once formed of removing the _Maison Carrée_ to Versailles. Colbert was the originator of this barbarous project, which, however, was fortunately abandoned from the fear of impairing, if not destroying, the beauty of the building. The Emperor Napoleon is said to have entertained a similar notion, and meant to grace Paris with this model of architectural perfection; but it was found to be too solidly built to admit of removal, and he who could shake empires, could not stir the _Maison Carrée_. The transportation of antiquities from their original site can never be excused, except in cases where it was the only means of insuring their preservation. All the power of association is lost when they are transferred to other places; and the view of them ceases to afford that satisfaction experienced when beheld where they were primarily destined to stand. I can no more fancy the _Maison Carrée_ appropriately placed in the bustle and gaiety of Paris, than I could endure to see one of the temples at Pæstum stuck down at Charing Cross. One loves, when contemplating such precious memorials of antiquity, to look around on the objects in nature, still wearing the same aspect as when they were reared. The hills and mountains, unlike the productions of man, change not; and nowhere can the fragments of a bygone age appear to such advantage as on the spots selected for their erection, where their vicinity to peculiar scenery had been taken into consideration. We spent a considerable time in examining the Amphitheatre, and so well is it preserved, that one can hardly bring one's self to believe that so many centuries have elapsed since it was built; and that generation after generation has passed away, who have looked on this edifice which now meets my view, so little changed by the ravages of that ruthless conqueror Time, or the still more ruthless Visigoths who converted it into a citadel, flanking the eastern door with two towers. In 737 Charles Martel besieged the Saracens, and set fire to it, and after their expulsion it continued to be used as a citadel. The form of this fine building is elliptical, and some notion of its vast extent may be formed, when it is stated to have been capable of containing above 17,000 spectators. Its façade consists of two rows of porticoes, forming two galleries one over the other, composing sixty arcades, divided by the same number of Tuscan pilasters in the first range, and of Doric columns in the upper, and an attic, which crowns all. Four principal doors, fronting the four cardinal points, open into the amphitheatre, divided at nearly equal distances one from the other. The attic has no arcades, pilasters, or columns; but a narrow ledge runs along it, which was probably used for the purpose of approaching the projecting consoles, 120 in number, placed in couples at equal distances between two columns, and pierced with a large hole, which corresponds with a similar one in the cornice, evidently meant for securing the awnings used to prevent the spectators from being inconvenienced by the rain or sun. These awnings did not extend to the arena, which was usually left open, but were universally adopted in all the Roman amphitheatres, after their introduction by Q. Catullus. The vast extent and extraordinary commodiousness of the amphitheatres erected by the Romans, prove not only the love of the sports exhibited in them entertained by that people, but the attention paid to their health and comfort by the architects who planned these buildings. The numerous vomitories were not amongst the least important of these comforts, securing a safe retreat from the theatre in all cases of emergency, and precluding those fearful accidents that in our times have not infrequently occurred, when an alarm of fire has been given. The mode of arrangements, too, saved the spectators from all the deleterious results of impure air, while the velarium preserved them from the sun. But not only were the spectators screened from too fervid heat, but they could retreat at pleasure, in case of rain or storm, into the galleries, where they were sheltered from the rain. Our superior civilization and refinement have not led to an equal attention to safety and comfort in the mode of our ingress and egress from theatres, or to their ventilation; but perhaps this omission may be accounted for by the difference of our habits from those of the Romans. Public amusements were deemed as essential to their comfort, as the enjoyment of home is to ours; and, consequently, while we prefer home--and long may we continue to do so--our theatres will not be either so vast or so commodious as in those times and countries, where domestic happiness was so much less understood or provided for. The erection of this magnificent edifice is attributed to Vespasian, Titus, or Domitian, from a fragment of an inscription discovered here some fourteen or fifteen years ago, of which the following is a transcript:-- VII. TRI. PO..... And as only these three filled the consulate eight times since Tiberius, in whose age no amphitheatre had been built in the Roman provinces, to one of them is adjudged its elevation. Could I only remember one half the erudition poured forth on my addled brain by the cicerone, I might fill several pages, and fatigue others nearly as much as he fatigued me; but I will have pity on my readers, and spare them the elaborate details, profound speculations, ingenious hypotheses, and archaiological lore that assailed me, and wish them, should they ever visit Nismes, that which was denied me--a tranquil and uninterrupted contemplation of its interesting antiquities, free from the verbiage of a conscientious cicerone, who thinks himself in duty bound to relate all that he has ever heard or read relative to the objects he points out. Even now my poor head rings with the names of Caius and Lucius Cæsar, Tiberius, Trajan, Adrian, Diocletian, and Heaven only knows how many other Roman worthies, to whom Nismes owes its attractions, not one of whom did this learned Theban omit to enumerate. Many of the antiquities of Nismes, which we went over to-day, might well command attention, were they not in the vicinity of two such remarkable and well-preserved monuments as the Amphitheatre and _Maison Carrée_. The Gate of Augustus, which now serves as the entrance to the barracks of the gendarmerie, is worthy of inspection. It consists of four arches--two of equal size, for the admittance of chariots and horsemen, and two less ones for pedestrians. The centres of the two larger arches are decorated by the head of a bull, in alto-relievo; and above each of the smaller arches is a niche, evidently meant for the reception of a statue. A Corinthian pilaster divides the larger arches from the less, and a similar one terminates the building on each side; while the two larger arches are separated by a small Ionic column, which rests on a projecting abutment whence the arches spring. The Gate of France has but one arch, and is said to have been flanked by towers; of which, however, it has little vestige. The inhabitants of Nismes seem very proud of its antiquities, and even the humbler classes descant with much erudition on the subject. Most, if not all of them, have studied the guide-books, and like to display the extent of their _savoir_ on the subject. They evince not a little jealousy if any preference seems accorded to the antiquities of Italy over those of their town; and ask, with an air of triumph, whether any thing in Italy can be compared with their _Maison Carrée_, expressing their wonder that so few English come to look at it. La Tour-Magne stands on the highest of the hills, at the base of which is spread the town. It is precisely in the state most agreeable to antiquaries, as its extreme dilapidation permits them to indulge those various conjectures and hypotheses relative to its original destination, in which they delight. They see in their "mind's eye" all these interesting works of antiquity, _not_ as they _really_ are, but as it pleases them to imagine they _once_ were; and, consequently, the less that actually remains on which to base their suppositions, the wider field have they for their favourite speculations. This tower is said by some to have been intended for a lighthouse; others assert it to have been a treasury; a third party declares it to be the remains of a palace; and, last of all, it is assumed to have been a mausoleum. Its form, judging from what remains, must have been pyramidical, composed of several stages, forming octagons, retreating one above the other. It suffered much from Charles Martel in 737, who wished to destroy it, owing to its offering a strong military position to the Saracens; and still more from the ravages of a certain Francis Trancat, to whom Henry IV granted permission to make excavations in the interior of it, on condition that three parts of the product should be given up to the royal coffer. The result did not repay the trouble or expense; and one cannot help being rejoiced that it did not, as probably, had it been otherwise, the success would have served as an incentive to destroy other buildings. In the vicinity of the Tour-Magne are the fountain, terrace, and garden, the last of which is well planted, and forms a very agreeable promenade for the inhabitants of Nismes. The fountain occupies the site of the ancient baths--many vestiges of which having been discovered have been employed for this useful, but not tasteful, work. It was not until the middle of the eighteenth century, that it was suspected that the water which served to turn a mill in the immediate vicinity had been obstructed by the ruins which impeded its course. This obstruction led to excavations, the result of which was the discovery of the remains of buildings, columns, statues, inscriptions, and fragments of rare marbles. The obstructions being thus removed, and the town enriched by the precious objects found, the persons to whom the direction of the excavation was confided, instead of vigorously pursuing the task, were content with what they had already discovered, and once more closed up the grave in which so many treasures of antiquity were still interred--using many of the materials disinterred for the formation of the terraces which now cover it. The architect selected to execute this work was Philip Maréchal, an engineer, never previously employed, except in military architecture: a fact to which may be attributed the peculiar style that he has exhibited--bastions and trenches being adopted, instead of the usual and more appropriate forms generally used for terraces and canals. To these are subjoined ornaments of the period in which the work was completed--the fitness of which is not more to HBO commended than that of the work itself: the whole offering a curious mixture of military and _rococo_ taste. It was in the freshness of early morning that I, yesterday, again visited the garden of the fountain and its fine chesnut trees and laurel roses; the latter, growing in great luxuriance, looked beautiful, the sun having not yet scorched them. The fountain, too, in its natural bed, which is not less than seventy-two French feet in diameter, and twenty feet in depth, was pellucid as crystal, and through it the long leaves that nearly cover the gravel appeared green as emerald. The hill above the fountain has been tastefully planted with evergreen trees, which shade a delicious walk, formed to its summit. This improvement to the appearance, as well as to the _agréments_, of Nismes, is due to Monsieur d'Haussey[1], prefect, whose popularity is said to be deservedly acquired, by his unremitting attention to the interests of the city, and his urbanity to its inhabitants. Nismes is a gay town, if I may judge by the groups of well-dressed women and men we have observed at the promenade. It has a considerable garrison, and the officers are occasionally seen passing and repassing; but not, as I have often remarked in England, lazily lounging about as if anxious to kill time, but moving briskly as if on business. The various accomplishments acquired by young men in France offer a great resource in country quarters. Drawing, in which most of them have attained a facility, if not excellence, enables them to fill albums with clever sketches; and their love of the fine arts leads them to devote some hours in most days to their cultivation. This is surely preferable to loitering in news-rooms, sauntering in the shops of pretty milliners, breaking down the fences of farmers, or riding over young wheat--innocent pastimes, sometimes undertaken by young officers for mere want of some occupation. The Temple of Diana is in the vicinity of the fountain, which has given rise to the conjecture that it originally constituted a portion of the ancient baths. Its shape is rectangular, and a large opening in the centre forms the entrance. Twelve niches, five of which open into the partition of the temple, and two on the right and left of the entrance, are crowned by frontons alternately circular and triangular, and are said to have contained statues. This is one of the most picturesque ruins I ever saw. Silence and solitude reign around it, and wild fig-trees enwreath with their luxuriant foliage the opening made by Time, and half conceal the wounds inflicted by barbarian hands. I could have spent hours in this desecrated temple, pondering on the brevity of life, as compared with its age. There is something pure and calm in such a spot, that influences the feelings of those who pause in it; and by reminding them of the inevitable lot of all sublunary things, renders the cares incidental to all who breathe, less acutely felt for the time. Is not every ruin a history of the fate of generations, which century after century has seen pass away?--generations of mortals like ourselves, who have been moved by the same passions, and vexed by the same griefs; like us, who were instinct with life and spirit, yet whose very dust has disappeared. Nevertheless, we can yield to the futile pleasures, or to the petty ills of life, as if their duration was to be of long extent, unmindful that ages hence, others will visit the objects we now behold, and find them little changed, while we shall have in our turn passed away, leaving behind no trace of our existence. I never see a beautiful landscape, a noble ruin, or a glorious fane, without wishing that I could bequeath to those who will come to visit them when I shall be no more, the tender thoughts that filled my soul when contemplating them; and thus, even in death, create a sympathy. CHAPTER II. ARLES. We stopped but a short time at Beaucaire, where we saw the largo plain on the banks of the Rhone, on which are erected the wooden houses for the annual fair which takes place in July, when the scene is said to present a very striking effect. These wooden houses are filled with articles of every description, and are inhabited by the venders who bring their goods to be disposed of to the crowds of buyers who flock here from all parts, offering, in the variety of their costumes and habits, a very animated and showy picture. The public walk, which edges the grassy plain allotted to the fair, is bordered by large elm-trees, and the vicinity to the river insures that freshness always so desirable in summer, and more especially in a climate so warm as this. The town of Beaucaire has little worthy of notice, except its Hòtel-de-Ville and church, both of which are handsome buildings. We crossed the Rhone over the bridge of boats, from which we had a good view, and arrived at Tarascon. The château called the Castle of King René, but which was erected by Louis II, count of Provence, is an object of interest to all who love to ponder on the olden time, when gallant knights and lovely dames assembled here for those tournaments in which the good René delighted. Alas for the change! In those apartments in which the generous monarch loved to indulge the effusions of his gentle muse, and where fair ladies smiled, and belted knights quaffed ruby wine to their healths, now dwell reckless felons and hopeless debtors; for the château is converted into a prison. In the Church of St. Martha we saw a relic of the barbarism of the dark ages, in the shape of a grotesque representation of a dragon, called the Tarasque. This image is formed of wood, rudely painted in gandy colours. Twice a-year it is borne through the streets of Tarascon, in commemoration of the destruction of a fabulous monster that long frequented the Rhone, and devoured many of the inhabitants of the surrounding country, but was at length vanquished by St. Martha; who, having secured it round the neck by her veil, delivered it to the just vengeance of the Tarascons. This legend is received as truth by common people, and our guide informed us that they warmly resent any _doubt_ of its authenticity. The monument of St. Martha is shown in the church dedicated to her, and her memory is held in great reverence at Tarascon. The country between this place and Tarascon is fertile and well cultivated, and the cheerfulness of its aspect presents a striking contrast to the silence and solitude of the town. The streets, however, are as clean as those of Holland, and the inhabitants are neat and tidy in their attire. The houses are for the most part old and dilapidated, looking in nearly as ruined a condition as the fragments of antiquity which date so many centuries before them. Nevertheless, some of the streets and dwellings seem to indicate that a spirit of improvement is abroad. Our hôtel is a large, crazy, old mansion, reminding me of some of those at Shrewsbury; and its furniture appears to be coeval with it, as nothing can be more homely or misshapen. Oak and walnut-tree chairs, beds, and tables form the chief part, and these are in a very rickety condition; nevertheless, an air of cleanliness and comfort pervades the rooms, and with the extreme rusticity of the _ameublement_, give one the notion of being in some huge old farm-house. Nor is the manner of the good hostess calculated to dispel this illusion. When our three carriages drove to her door, though prepared for our arrival by the courier, she repeatedly said that her poor house had no accommodation for such guests, and we had some difficulty in persuading her that we were easily satisfied. She had donned her fête dress for our reception, and presented a very picturesque appearance, as she stood smiling and bustling about at the door. She wore a high cap reminding me of those of the women in Normandy: brown stays; linsey-woolsey, voluminous petticoats; handkerchief and apron trimmed with rich old-fashioned lace; and long gold ear-rings, and chain of the same material, twisted at least ten times round her neck. She explained to us, in a _patois_ not easily understood, that her house was only frequented by the farmers, and their wives and daughters, who attended the fetes, or occasionally by a stray traveller who came to explore the antiquities. Before I had travelled much on the Continent, I confess that the appearance of this dwelling would have rather startled me as a _séjour_ for two days, but now I can relish its rusticity; for cleanliness, that most indispensable of all requisites to comfort, is not wanting. The furniture is scrubbed into brightness, the small diamond-shaped panes of the old-fashioned casements are clean as hands can make them; the large antique fireplace is filled with fresh flowers; and the walnut-tree tables are covered with white napkins. No sooner had we performed our ablutions, and changed our travelling dresses for others, than our good hostess, aided by three active young country maidens, served up a plentiful dinner, consisting of an excellent _pot-au-feu_, followed by fish, fowl, and flesh, sufficient to satisfy the hunger of at least four times the number of our party. Having covered the table until it literally "groaned with the weight of the feast," she seated herself at a little distance from it, and issued her commands to her hand-maidens what to serve, and when to change a plate, what wine to offer, and which dish she most recommended, with a good-humoured attention to our wants, that really anticipated them. There was something as novel as patriarchal in her mode of doing the honours, and it pleased us so much that we invited her to partake of our repast; but she could not be prevailed on, though she consented to drink our healths in a glass of her best wine. She repeatedly expressed her fears that our dinner was not sufficiently _recherché_, and hoped we would allow her to prepare a good supper. When we were descending the stairs, she met us with several of her female neighbours _en grande toilette_, whom she had invited to see the strangers, and who gazed at us with as much surprise as if we were natives of Otaheite, beheld for the first time. Cordial greetings, however, atoned for the somewhat too earnest examination to which we had been subjected; and many civil speeches from our good hostess, who seemed not a little proud of displaying her foreign guests, rewarded the patience with which we submitted to the inspection. One old lady felt the quality of our robes, another admired our trinkets, and a third was in raptures with our veils. In short, as a Frenchwoman would say, we had _un grand succès_; and so, our hostess assured us. We went over the Amphitheatre, the dimensions of which exceed those of the Amphitheatre at Nismes. Three orders of architecture are also introduced in it, and it has no less than sixty arcades, with four large doors; that on the north side has a very imposing effect. The corridor leading to the arena exhibits all the grandeur peculiar to the public buildings of the Romans, and is well worthy of attention; but the portion of the edifice that most interested me was the subterranean, which a number of workmen were busily employed in excavating, under the superintendence of the Prefect of Arles, a gentleman with whose knowledge of the antiquities of his native town, and urbanity towards the strangers who visit them, we have every reason to be satisfied. Under his guidance, we explored a considerable extent of the recently excavated subterranean, a task which requires no slight devotion to antiquities to induce the visitor to persevere, the inequalities of the ground exposing one continually to the danger of a fall, or to the still more perilous chance--as occurred to one of our party--of the head coming in contact with the roof. We saw also fragments of a theatre in the garden of the convent of La Miséricorde, consisting of two large marble columns and two arches. In the ancient church of St. Anne, now converted into a museum, are collected all the fragments of antiquity discovered at Arles, and in its vicinity; some of them highly interesting, and bearing evidences of the former splendour of the place. An altar dedicated to the Goddess of Good; the celebrated Mithras with a serpent coiled round him, between the folds of which are sculptured the signs of the zodiac; Medea and her children; a mile-stone, bearing the names of the Emperors Theodosius and Valentinian; a basso-relievo of the Muses; several sarcophagi, votive altars, cornices, pillars, mutilated statues, and inscriptions, are here carefully preserved: but nothing in the collection equals the statue known by the title of the Venus of Arles, found here, and which is so deservedly admired at the Louvre. An obelisk of granite, about sixty feet high, said to be the only antique one in France, stands on the place of the Hôtel-de-Ville. Discovered in 1389, it was not disinterred from the earth in which it was embedded until the reign of Charles IX, and was erected on its present site in 1676, with a dedication to the then reigning sovereign, Louis XIV; A globe, ornamented with _fleurs de lis_ placed on its point, deteriorates, in my opinion, from the beauty of its effect. It was originally in one block, but it was broken in two by its overturn. Many houses in the streets have portions of columns, friezes, and cornices embedded in their walls; and one of them, occupied by a barber, had a column in front, to which the insignia of his profession were attached. Ruins, said to be those of the palace of Constantine, were pointed out to us, as well as fragments of a forum and baths. Arles is certainly one of the most interesting towns I have ever seen, whether viewed as a place remarkable for the objects of antiquity it contains, or for the primitive manners of its inhabitants and its picturesque appearance. The quays are spacious and well built, presenting a very different aspect to the streets; for the former are very populous, being frequented by the boatmen who ply their busy commerce between Lyons and Marseilles--dépôts for the merchandise being erected along them, while the latter are comparatively deserted. With this facility of communication with two such flourishing towns, it is extraordinary that Arles should have so long retained the primitive simplicity that seems to pervade it, and that a good hotel has not yet been established here. Our good hostess provided nearly as substantial a supper for us last night as the early dinner served up on our arrival, and again presided at the repast, pressing us to eat, and recommending, with genuine kindness, the various specimens of dainties set before us. Our beds, though homely, were clean; and I have seldom, in the most luxurious ones, reposed equally soundly. When our courier asked for the bill this morning, the landlady declared she "knew not what to charge, that she never was in the habit of making out bills, and that we must give her what we thought right." The courier urged the necessity of having a regular bill, explaining to her that he was obliged to file all bills, and produce them every week for the arrangement of his accounts,--but in vain: she could not, she declared, make one out; and no one in her house was more expert than herself. She came to us, laughing and protesting, and ended by saying, "Pay what you like; things are very cheap at Arles. You have eaten very little; really, it is not worth charging for." But, when we persisted on having her at least name a sum, to our infinite surprise she asked, if a couple of louis would be too much?--And this for a party of six, and six servants, for two days! We had some difficulty in inducing her to accept a suitable indemnification, and parted, leaving her proclaiming what she was pleased to consider our excessive generosity, and reiterating her good wishes. CHAPTER III. ST.-RÉMY. The town of St.-Rémy is delightfully situated in a hollow that resembles the crater of an extinct volcano, and is surrounded by luxuriant groves of olive. The streets, though generally narrow, are rendered picturesque by several old houses, the architecture of which is striking; and the _place_--for even St.-Rémy has its Place Publique and Hôtel-de-Ville--is not without pretensions to ornament. In the centre of this _place_ is a pretty fountain, of a pyramidal form. The antiquities which attracted us to St.-Rémy are at a short distance from the town, on an eminence to the south of it, and are approached by a road worthy the objects to which it conducts. They consist of a triumphal arch, and a mausoleum, about forty-five feet asunder. Of the triumphal arch, all above the archivault has disappeared, leaving but the portico, the proportions of which are neither lofty nor wide. On each side of it are two fluted columns, said to have been of the Corinthian order, but without capitals, and the intercolumniations, in each of which are figures of male and female captives. A tree divides the male from the female; their hands are tied, and chained to the tree; and a graceful drapery falls from above the heads down to the consoles on which the figures stand. On the eastern side of the arch are also figures, representing two women, by the side of two men. One of the women has her hand on the arm of a chained warrior, and the other has at her feet military trophies; among which bucklers, arms, and trumpets, may be seen. The pilasters that bound the intercolumniations are of the Doric order, and their capitals support the arch. The cornice and astragals form a frieze, in which military emblems and symbols of sacrifice are intermingled. The archivault is ornamented on each side with sculptured wreaths of ivy, pine cones, branches of grapes and olives, interlaced with ribands. The ceiling of the portico is divided into hexagons and squares, enriched by various designs in the shape of eggs and roses, finely executed. This interesting monument appears to have been ornamented with equal care and richness on every side, but its decorations have not enabled any of the numerous antiquaries who have hitherto examined it to throw any light on its origin; and the destruction of its architecture must have caused that of its inscription, if, indeed, it ever bore one. The mausoleum is even more curious than the arch, as being the only building of a similar character of architecture to be seen. Placed on a large square pediment, approached by two steps, the edifice rises with unequalled lightness and beauty against the blue sky, forming two stages supported by columns and pilasters, united by a finely sculptured frieze. The first stage retreats from the pediment; and the second, which is of a round form, and terminated by a conical-shaped top, is less in advance than the first, giving a pyramidal effect. The four fronts of the pediment are nearly covered by bassi-relievi, representing battles of infantry; the figures of which are nearly as large as life, and admirably designed. On the north front is a combat of cavalry; on the west, an engagement, in the midst of which the body of a man is lying on the ground, one party of soldiers endeavouring to take possession of it, while another band of soldiers are trying to prevent them. The basso-relievo of the south front represents a field of battle, strewed with the dead and wounded, and mingled with warriors on horseback and on foot. On one side is seen a wild boar between the legs of the soldiers; and on the other, a female figure, quite nude, prostrate on the earth before a rearing horse, which some soldiers are endeavouring to restrain. In the centre of the basso-relievo is an old man expiring, surrounded by several persons; and at one end a soldier, bearing arms on his shoulder, has been left unfinished by the sculptor; there not being sufficient space for the figure, which is partly designed on the adjoining pilaster. On the east front is a winged female bearing the attributes of Victory, with several women and warriors, and an allegorical personage said to represent a river, because it holds in one hand a symbol of water. This last figure, also, is partly sculptured on the contiguous pilaster, as is the one previously noted, which proves that these ornaments were not executed at the time of the erection of the edifice. The pediment has a simple cornice around it, and the angles are finished by voluted pilasters without a base, but with Ionic capitals, which have an extraordinary effect. Above the basso-relievo is a massive garland, supported by three boys, at equal distances; and between them are four heads of old men, as hideously grotesque as the imaginations of the sculptors could render them. The first stage of the mausoleum which rises from this pedestal is pierced by an arch on each side, in the form of a portico, and their archivaults are ornamented by foliage and scrolls. The arches rest on plain pilasters, with capitals more resembling the Doric than any other order of architecture. On the keystone of each arch is the mark of a youthful male head, surmounted by two wings. The four angles of the first stage are finished by a fluted column, with a capital charmingly executed, like, but not quite, the Corinthian. These columns sustain an entablature or two, which terminate this stage, and its frieze is enriched with sculpture representing winged sea-monsters and sirens with sacrificial instruments. Above the first stage rises the second, which is of a round form, with ten fluted columns, which support its circular entablature; the capitals of these columns are similar to those of the first stage, and the frieze is ornamented with foliage delicately sculptured. A round cupola terminates this building, through which the light shines in on every side, although two male statues in togas occupy the centre of it. To view the height at which these figures are placed, one would suppose they were safe from the attacks of the mischievous or the curious; nevertheless, they did not escape, for, many years ago, during the night, their heads were taken off, and those that replaced them reflect little credit on the taste or skill of the modern sculptor who executed the task. On the architrave of the entablature of the first stage, and on the north front, is the following inscription:-- SEX. L. M. JVLIEI. C.F. PARENTIBUS. SVEIS. Various are the opinions given by the writers who have noticed this monument as to the cause for which, and person, or persons for whom, it was erected. Some maintain that the triumphal arch from its vicinity has a relation to the mausoleum, while others assert them to have been built at different epochs. The inscription has only served to base the different hypotheses of antiquaries, among which that of the Abbé Barthélemy is considered the most probable; namely, that in the three first words are found two initials, which he considers may be rendered as follows:-- SEXTUS · LUCIVS · MARCVS; and the two other initials, C.F., which follow the word JVLIEI, may be explained in the same manner to signify Caii Filii, and, being joined to Juliei, which precedes, may be received to mean Julii Caii Filii. Mantour's reading of the inscription is, Caius Sextius Lucius, Maritus JULIÆ Incomparabilis, Curavit Fieri PARENTIBUS SUIS; which he translates into Caius Sextius Lucius, Husband of Julia, caused this Monument to be erected to the Memory of his Ancestors, and the victories achieved by them in Provence, which on different occasions had been the theatre of war of the Romans. Bouche's version of it is,-- {Lucius, } Sextus {Lælius, } Maritus Juliæ. {Liberius,} Istud Cenotaphium,} or, } Fecit Parentibus Suis; Intra Circulum, } which he asserts to mean,--Sextus, in honour of his Father and Mother, buried in this place, and represented by the two statues surrounded by columns in the upper part of the mausoleum. Monsieur P. Malosse, to whose work on the antiquities of St.-Rémy I am indebted for the superficial knowledge I have attained of these interesting objects, explains the inscription to mean,-- SEXTVS · LVCIVS · MARCVS · JVLIEI · CVRAV · ERUNT · FIERE · SUEIS; which he translates into Sextus, Lucius, Marcus (all three), of the race of Julius, elevated this monument to the glory of their relations. M. Malosse believes that the mausoleum was erected to Julius, and the arch to Augustus Cæsar--the first being dead, and the second then living; and that the statues in the former, in the Roman togas, were intended to represent the two. He imagines that the subjects of the bassi-relievi on the four fronts of the mausoleum bear out this hypothesis. That of the east, he says, represents the combat of the Romans with the Germans on the bank of the Rhine (of which river the one on the basso-relievo is the emblem), and the triumph of Cæsar over Ariovistus, whoso women were taken prisoners. The basso-relievo on the south front represents Cæsar's conquest of the Allobroges, and the capture of the daughter of Orgetorix, one of the most powerful men of the country, and instigator of the war. The basso-relievo on the north front, representing a combat of cavalry, refers to the victory over the Britons; and that of the west front, to the battle gained by the Romans over the Gauls, in which the general of the latter was killed in the midst of his soldiers, who endeavoured to prevent his being seized by the enemy. Passages from the _Commentaries of Cæsar_, favour this ingenious interpretation of M.P. Malosse; but the abbreviations adopted in the inscription, while well calculated to give rise to innumerable hypotheses, will for ever leave in doubt, by whom, and in honour of whom, these edifices were erected, as well as the epoch at which they were built. Who could look on these monuments without reflecting on the vanity of mortals in thus offering up testimonials of their respect for persons of whose very names posterity is ignorant? For the identity of those in whose honour the Arch of Triumph and Mausoleum of St.-Rémy were raised puzzles antiquaries as much as does that of the individual for whom the pyramid of Egypt was built. Vain effort, originating in the weakness of our nature, to preserve the memory of that which was dear to us, and which we would fain believe will insure the reverence of ages unborn for that which we venerated! ON THE TRIUMPHAL ARCH AND MAUSOLEUM AT ST.-RÉMY. 1. Yon stately tomb that seeks the sky, Erected to the glorious dead, Through whose high arches sweeps, the sigh The night winds heave when day has fled; 2. How fair its pillared stories rise 'Gainst yon blue firmament so pure; Fair as they met admiring eyes, Long ages past, they still endure. 3. Yes, many a race hath left the earth Since first this Mausoleum rose; So many, that the name, or birth, Of dead, or founder, no one knows. 4. The sculptured pictures, all may see, Were by a skilful artist wrought; But, Time! the secret rests with thee, Which to unravel men have sought. 5. Of whom were they, the honoured dead, Whose mem'ry Love would here record? Lift up the veil, so long o'erspread, And tell whose dust yon fane doth guard. 6. Name those whose love outlived the grave And sought to give for aye to fame Mementos of the good and brave, Of whom thou hast effaced the name. 7. We know but that they lived and died,-- No more this stately tomb can tell: Here come and read a lesson, Pride, This monument can give so well. 8. They lived--they hoped--they suffered--loved-- As all of Earth have ever done; Were oft by wild Ambition moved, And basked, perchance, 'neath glory's Sun. 9. They deemed that they should leave behind Undying names. Yet, mark this fane, For whom it rose, by whom designed, Learned antiquaries search in vain. 10. Still doth it wear the form it wore, Through the dim lapse of by-gone age; Triumph of Art in days of yore, Whose Hist'ry fills the classic page. 11. To honour Victors it is said 'Twas raised, though none their names can trace; It stands as monument instead, Unto each long-forgotten race, 12. Who came, like me, to gaze and brood Upon it in this lonely spot-- Their minds with pensive thoughts imbued, That Heroes could be thus forgot. 13. Yet still the wind a requiem sighs, And the blue sky above it weeps; Thu Sun pours down its radiant dyes, Though none can tell who 'neath it sleeps. 14. And seasons roll, and centuries pass, And still unchanged thou keep'st thy place; While we, like shadows in a glass, Soon glide away, and leave no trace. 15. And yon proud Arch, the Victor's meed, Is nameless as the neighbouring Tomb: Victor, and Dead, the Fates decreed Your memory to oblivion's gloom. CHAPTER IV. LYONS. I see little alteration at Lyons since I formerly passed through it. Its manufactories are, nevertheless, flourishing, though less improvement than could be expected is visible in the external aspect of the place. This being Sunday, and the _Féte-Dieu_, the garrison, with flags flying, drums beating, trumpets sounding, and all in gala dress, marched through the streets to attend Divine worship. The train was headed by our old acquaintance General Le Paultre de la Motte, (whom we left at Lyons on our route to Italy), and his staff; wearing all their military decorations, attended by a vast procession, including the whole of the clergy in their rich attires and all the different religious communities in the town. The officers were bare-headed--their spurred heels and warlike demeanour rendering this homage to a sacred ceremony more picturesque. The gold and silver brocaded vestments and snowy robes of the priests glittering in the sun, as they marched along to the sound of martial music, looked very gorgeous; and this mixture of ecclesiastical and military pomp had an imposing effect. The streets through which the procession passed were ornamented with rich draperies and flowers, reminding me of Italy on similar occasions; and the intense heat of a sun glowing like a fiery furnace, aided the recollection. Since I have been on the continent, it has often struck me with surprise, that on solemn occasions like the present, sacred music has not been performed instead of military. Nay, I have heard quadrilles and waltzes played, fruitful in festive associations little suited to the feelings which ought to have been excited by solemn ceremonials. Knowing, by experience, the effect produced on the mind by sacred music, it is much to be wished that so potent an aid to devotional sentiment should not be omitted, _malgré_ whatever may be said against any extraneous assistance in offering up those devotions which the heart should be ever prompt to fulfil without them. I leave to casuists to argue whether, or how far, music, sculpture, or painting, may be employed as excitements to religious fervour: but I confess, although the acknowledgment may expose me to the censure of those who differ with me in opinion, that I consider them powerful adjuncts, and, consequently, not to be resigned because _some_--and happy, indeed, may they be deemed--stand in no need of such incitements to devotion. Who that has heard the "_Miserere_" in the Sistine chapel at Rome, and seen, while listening to it, "The Last Judgment," by Michael Angelo, on its walls, without feeling the powerful influence they exercised on the feelings? CHAPTER V. PARIS. _June_, 1828.--A fatiguing journey, over dusty roads, and in intensely hot weather, has brought us to Paris, with no accident save the failure of one of the wheels of our large landau--a circumstance that caused the last day's travelling to be any thing but agreeable; for though our courier declared the temporary repair it received rendered it perfectly safe, I was by no means satisfied on the point. We have taken up our abode in the Hôtel de la Terrasse, Rue de Rivoli, are well-lodged, but somewhat incommoded by the loud reverberation of the pavement, as the various vehicles roll rapidly over it. We were told that "it would be nothing when we got used to it"--an assertion, the truth of which, I trust, we shall not remain sufficiently long to test; for I have a peculiar objection to noise of every kind, and a long residence in Italy has not conquered it. So here we are, once more, at Paris, after six years' absence from it; and I find all that has hitherto met my eyes in it _in statu quo_. How many places have I seen during that period; how many associations formed; how many and what various impressions received; and here is every thing around looking so precisely as I left them, that I can hardly bring myself to believe that I have indeed been so many years absent! When we bring back with us the objects most dear, and find those we left unchanged, we are tempted to doubt the lapse of time; but one link in the chain of affection broken, and every thing seems altered. On entering Paris, I felt my impatience to see our dear friends there redouble; and, before we had despatched the dinner awaiting our arrival, the Duc and Duchesse de Guiche, came to us. How warm was our greeting; how many questions to be asked and answered; how many congratulations and pleasant plans for the future to be formed; how many reminiscences of our mutual _séjour_ in dear Italy to be talked over! The Duchesse was radiant in health and beauty, and the Duc looking, as he always does, more _distingué_, than any one else--the perfect _beau idéal_ of a nobleman. We soon quitted the _salle à manger_; for who could eat during the joy of a first meeting with those so valued?--Not I, certainly; and all the rest of our party were as little disposed to do honour to the repast commanded for us. It was a happy evening. Seated in the _salon_, and looking out on the pleasant gardens of the Tuileries, the perfume of whose orange-trees was wafted to us by the air as we talked over old times, and indulged in cheerful anticipations of new ones, and the tones of voices familiar to the ears thus again restored, were heard with emotion. Yes, the meeting of dear friends atones for the regret of separation; and like it so much enhances affection, that after absence one wonders how one has been able to stay away from them so long. Too excited to sleep, although fatigued, I am writing down my impressions; yet how tame and colourless they seem on paper when compared with the emotions that dictate them! How often have I experienced the impossibility of painting strong feelings during their reign! [_Mem_.--We should be cautious in giving implicit credit to descriptions written with great power, as I am persuaded they indicate a too perfect command of the faculties of the head to admit the possibility of those of the heart having been much excited when they were written. This belief of mine controverts the assertion of the poet-- "He best can paint them who has felt them most." Except that the poet says who _has_ felt; yes, it is after, and not when most felt that sentiments can be most powerfully expressed. But to bed! to bed!] I have had a busy day; engaged during the greater portion of it in the momentous occupation of shopping. Every thing belonging to my toilette is to be changed, for I have discovered--"tell it not in Gath"--that my hats, bonnets, robes, mantles, and pelisses, are totally _passée de mode_, and what the _modistes_ of Italy declared to be _la dernière mode de Paris_ is so old as to be forgotten here. The woman who wishes to be a philosopher must avoid Paris! Yesterday I entered it, caring or thinking as little of _la mode_ as if there were no such tyrant; and lo! to-day, I found myself ashamed, as I looked from the Duchess de Guiche, attired in her becoming and pretty _peignoir à la neige_ and _chapeau du dernier goût_, to my own dress and bonnet, which previously I had considered very wearable, if not very tasteful. Our first visit was to Herbault's, the high-priest of the Temple of Fashion at Paris; and I confess, the look of astonishment which he bestowed on my bonnet did not help to reassure my confidence as to my appearance. The Duchesse, too quick-sighted not to observe his surprise, explained that I had been six years absent from Paris, and only arrived the night before from Italy. I saw the words _à la bonne heure_ hovering on the lips of Herbault, he was too well-bred to give utterance to them, and immediately ordered to be brought forth the choicest of his hats, caps, and turbans. Oh, the misery of trying on a new _mode_ for the first time, and before a stranger! The eye accustomed to see the face to which it appertains enveloped in a _chapeau_ more or less large or small, is shocked at the first attempt to wear one of a different size; and turns from the contemplation of the image presented in the glass with any thing but self-complacency, listening incredulously to the flattering encomiums of the not disinterested _marchand de modes_, who avers that "_Ce chapeau sied parfaitement à Madame la Comtesse, et ce bonnet lui va à ravir_." I must, however, render M. Herbault the justice to say, that he evinced no ordinary tact in suggesting certain alterations in his _chapeaux_ and caps, in order to suit my face; and, aided by the inimitable good taste of the Duchesse, who passes for an oracle in _affaires de modes à Paris_, a selection was made that enabled me to leave M. Herbault's, looking a little more like other people. From his Temple of Fashion we proceeded to the _lingère à la mode_, Mdlle. La Touche, where _canezous_ and _robes de matin_ were to be chosen and ordered; and we returned to the Hôtel de la Terrasse, my head filled with notions of the importance of dressing _à la mode_, to which yesterday it was a stranger, and my purse considerably lightened by the two visits I had paid. Englishwomen who have not made their purchases at the houses of the _marchandes de modes_ considered the most _recherché_ at Paris, have no idea of the extravagance of the charges. Prices are demanded that really make a prudent person start; nevertheless, she who wishes to attain the distinction so generally sought, of being perfectly well dressed, which means being in the newest fashion, must submit to pay largely for it. Three hundred and twenty francs for a crape hat and feathers, two hundred for a _chapeau à fleurs_, one hundred for a _chapeau négligé de matin_, and eighty-five francs for an evening-cap composed of tulle trimmed with blonde and flowers, are among the prices asked, and, to my shame be it said, given. It is true, hats, caps, and bonnets may be had for very reasonable prices in the shops in the Rue Vivienne and elsewhere at Paris, as I and many of my female compatriots found out when I was formerly in this gay capital; but the bare notion of wearing such would positively shock a lady of fashion at Paris, as much as it would an English one, to appear in a hat manufactured in Cranbourn Alley. Here Fashion is a despot, and no one dreams of evading its dictates. Having noticed the extravagance of the prices, it is but fair to remark the elegance and good taste of the millinery to be found at Monsieur Herbault's. His _chapeaux_ look as if made by fairy fingers, so fresh, so light, do they appear; and his caps seem as if the gentlest sigh of a summer's zephyr would bear them from sight, so aerial is their texture, and so delicate are the flowers that adorn them, fresh from the _ateliers_ of Natier, or Baton. Beware, O ye uxorious husbands! how ye bring your youthful brides to the dangerous atmosphere of Paris, while yet in that paradise of fools ycleped the honey-moon, ere you have learned to curve your brows into a frown, or to lengthen your visages at the sight of a long bill. In that joyful season, when having pleased your eyes and secured your hearts, your fair brides, with that amiability which is one of the peculiar characteristics of their sex, are anxious to please all the world, and from no other motive than that _your_ choice should be admired, beware of entering Paris, except _en passant_. Wait until you have recovered that firmness of character which generally comes back to a Benedict after the first year of his nuptials, before you let your wives wander through the tempting mazes of the _magasins de modes_ of this intoxicating city. And you, fair dames, "with stinted sums assigned," in the shape of pin-money, beware how you indulge that taste for pretty bonnets, hats, caps, and turbans, with which all bountiful Nature has so liberally gifted you; for, alas! "beneath the roses fierce Repentance rears her snaky crest" in form of a bill, the payment of which will "leave you poor indeed" for many a long day after, unless your liege lord, melted by the long-drawn sighs heaved when you remark on the wonderfully high prices of things at Paris, opens his purse-strings, and, with something between a pshaw and a grunt, makes you an advance of your next quarter's pin-money; or, better still, a present of one of the hundred pounds with which he had intended to try his good luck at the club. Went yesterday to the Rue d'Anjou, to visit Madame Craufurd. Her hôtel is a charming one, _entre cour et jardin_; and she is the most extraordinary person of her age I have ever seen. In her eightieth year, she does not look to be more than fifty-five; and possesses all the vivacity and good humour peculiar only to youth. Scrupulously exact in her person, and dressed with the utmost care, as well as good taste, she gives me a notion of the appearance which the celebrated Ninon de l'Enclos must have presented at the same age, and has much of the charm of manner said to have belonged to that remarkable woman. It was an interesting sight to see her surrounded by her grand-children and great-grand-children, all remarkable for their good looks, and affectionately attached to her, while she appears not a little proud of them. The children of the Duc de Guiche have lost nothing of their beauty since their _séjour_ at Pisa, and are as ingenuous and amusing as formerly. I never saw such handsome children before, nor so well brought up. No trouble or expense is spared in their education; and the Duc and Duchesse devote a great portion of their time to them. All our friends are occupied in looking out for a house for us; and I have this day been over, at least, ten--only one of which seems likely to suit. I highly approve the mode at Paris of letting unfurnished houses, or apartments, with mirrors and decorations, as well as all fixtures (with us, in England, always charged separately) free of any extra expense. The good taste evinced in the ornaments is in general remarkable, and far superior to what is to be met with in England; where, if one engages a new house lately papered or painted, one is compelled to recolour the rooms before they can be occupied, owing to the gaudy and ill-assorted patterns originally selected. The house of the Maréchal Lobau, forming the corner of the Rue de Bourbon, is the one I prefer of all those I have yet seen, although it has many _désagrémens_ for so large an establishment as ours. But I am called to go to the review in the Champ-de-Mars, so _allons_ for a _spectacle militaire_, which, I am told, is to be very fine. The review was well worth seeing; and the troops performed their evolutions with great precision. The crowd of spectators was immense; so much so, that those only who formed part of the royal _cortège_ could reach the Champ-de-Mars in time to see its commencement. No carriages, save those of the court, were allowed to enter the file. The dust was insupportable; and the pretty dresses of the ladies suffered from it nearly as much as did the smart uniforms of the officers. The _coup d'oeil_ from the pavilion (where we had, thanks to our _chaperon_, the Duchesse de Guiche, front seats) was very fine. The various and splendid uniforms, floating standards, waving plumes, glittering arms, and prancing steeds, gave to the vast plain over which the troops were moving a most animated aspect, while the sounds of martial music exhilarated the spirits. Nor was the view presented by the interior of the pavilion without its charms. A number of ladies, some of them young and handsome, and all remarkably well-dressed, gave to the benches ranged along it the appearance of a rich _parterre_, among the flowers of which the beautiful Duchesse de Guiche shone pre-eminent. I was seated next to a lady, with large lustrous eyes and a pale olive complexion, whose countenance, from its extreme mobility, attracted my attention; at one moment, lighting up with intelligence, and the next, softening into pensiveness. A remarkably handsome young man stood behind her, holding her shawl, and lavishing on her those attentions peculiar to young Benedicts. The lady proved to be the Marchioness de Loulé, sister to the King of Portugal; and the gentleman turned out to be her husband, for whose _beaux yeux_ she contracted what is considered a _mésalliance_. The simplicity of her dress, and unaffectedness of her manner, invested her with new attractions in my eyes; which increased when I reflected on the elevated position she had resigned, to follow the more humble fortunes of her handsome husband. How strange, yet how agreeable too, must the change be, from the most formal court, over which Etiquette holds a despotic sway, to the freedom from such disagreeable constraint permitted to those in private life, and now enjoyed by this Spanish princess! She appears to enjoy this newly acquired liberty with a zest in proportion to her past enthralment, and has proved that the daughter of a King of Portugal has a heart, though the queens of its neighbour, Spain, were in former days not supposed to have legs. During the evolutions, a general officer was thrown from his horse; and a universal agitation among a group of ladies evinced that they were in a panic. Soon the name of the general, Count de Bourmont, was heard pronounced; and a faint shriek, followed by a half swoon from one of the fair dames, announced her deep interest in the accident. Flacons and vinaigrettes were presented to her on every side, all the ladies present seeming to have come prepared for some similar catastrophe; but in a few minutes a messenger, despatched by the general, assured Madame la Comtesse of his perfect safety; and tears of joy testified her satisfaction at the news. This little episode in the review shewed me the French ladies in a very amiable point of view. Their sensibility and agitation during the uncertainty as to the person thrown, vouched for the liveliness of their conjugal affection; and their sympathy for Madame la Comtesse de Bourmont when it was ascertained that her husband was the sufferer, bore evidence to the kindness of their hearts, as well as to their facility in performing the little services so acceptable in moments like those I had just witnessed. Charles X, the Dauphin and Dauphine, and the Duchesse de Berri, were present--the two latter in landaus, attended by their ladies. The king looked well, his grey hair and tall thin figure giving him a very venerable aspect. The Dauphine is much changed since I last saw her, and the care and sorrow of her childhood have left their traces on her countenance. I never saw so melancholy a face, and the strength of intellect which characterises it renders it still more so, by indicating that the marks of sorrow so visible were not indented on that brow without many an effort from the strong mind to resist the attacks of grief. I remember reading years ago of the melancholy physiognomy of King Charles I, which when seen in his portrait by a Florentine sculptor, to whom it was sent in order that a bust should be made from it, drew forth the observation that the countenance indicated that its owner would come to a violent death. I was reminded of this anecdote by the face of the Duchesse d'Angoulême; for though I do not pretend to a prescience as to her future fate, I cannot help arguing from it that, even should a peaceful reign await her, the fearful trials of her youth have destroyed in her the power of enjoyment; and that on a throne she can never forget the father and mother she saw hurried from it, to meet every insult that malice could invent, or cruelty could devise, before a violent death freed them from their sufferings. Who can look on this heroic woman without astonishment at the power of endurance that has enabled her to live on under such trials? Martyr is written in legible characters on that brow, and on those lips; and her attempt to smile made me more sad than the tears of a mourner would have done, because it revealed "a grief too deep for tears." Must she not tremble for the future, if not for the present, among a people so versatile as those among whom she is now thrown? And can she look from the windows of the palace she has been recalled to inhabit, without seeing the spot where the fearful guillotine was reared that made her an orphan? The very plaudits that now rend the skies for her uncle must remind her of the shouts that followed her father to the scaffold: no wonder, then, that she grows pale as she hears them; and that the memory of the terrible past, written in characters of blood, gives a sombre hue to the present and to the future. The sight of her, too, must awaken disagreeable recollections in those over whom her husband may be soon called to reign, for the history of the crimes of the Revolution is stamped on her face, whose pallid lint and rigid muscles tell of the horror and affliction imprinted on her youth; the reminiscence of which cannot be pleasant to them. The French not only love their country passionately, but are inordinately proud of it; hence, aught that reminds them of its sins--and cruelty is one of a deep dye--must be humiliating to them; so that the presence of the Duchesse d'Angoulême cannot be flattering to their _amor patriæ_ or _amour propre_. I thought of all this to-day, as I looked on the face of Madame la Dauphine; and breathed a hope that the peace of her life's evening may console her for the misfortunes of its morning and its noon. The Duchesse de Berri has an animated and peculiarly good-natured expression of countenance. Her restored gaiety makes the French forget why it was long and cruelly overclouded, and aids the many good qualities which she possesses, in securing the popularity she has so generally acquired in the country of her adoption. House-hunting again, and still unsuited. Dined yesterday at the Duchesse de Guiche's; a very pleasant party, increased by some agreeable people in the evening. Our old acquaintance, William Lock, was among the guests at dinner, and is as good-looking and light-hearted as ever. The Marquis l'Espérance de l'Aigle was also present, and is a perfect specimen of the fine gentleman of _la Vieille Cour_--a race now nearly extinct. Possessing all the gaiety and vivacity of youth, with that attention to the feelings of others peculiar only to maturity and high-breeding, the Count l'Espérance de l'Aigle is universally beloved. He can talk over old times with the grand-mother with all the wit that we read of, oftener than we meet with; give his opinion of _la dernière mode_ to the youthful mother, with rare tact and good taste; dance with the young daughter as actively and gracefully as any _garçon de dix-huit ans_ in Paris; and gallop through the Bois de Boulogne with the young men who pride themselves on their riding, without being ever left behind. I had frequently heard his praises from the Duchesse de Guiche, and found that her description of him was very accurate. The house of the Duc de Guiche is a picture of English comfort and French elegance united; and that portion of it appropriated to its fair mistress is fitted up with exquisite taste. Her _salons_ and _boudoir_ are objects of _vertù, bijouterie_, and vases of old Sèvre, enough to excite envy in those who can duly appreciate such treasures, and tempt to the violation of the tenth commandment. Order reigns in the whole arrangement of the establishment, which, possessing all the luxurious appliances of a _maison montée_, has all the scrupulous cleanliness of that of a Quaker. Went to the Opera last night, where I saw the _début_ of the new _danseuse_ Taglioni. Hers is a totally new style of dancing; graceful beyond all comparison, wonderful lightness, an absence of all violent effort, or at least of the appearance of it, and a modesty as new as it is delightful to witness in her art. She seems to float and bound like a sylph across the stage, never executing those _tours de force_ that we know to be difficult and wish were impossible, being always performed at the expense of decorum and grace, and requiring only activity for their achievement. She excited the most rapturous applause, and received it with a "decent dignity," very unlike the leering smiles with which, in general, a _danseuse_ thinks it necessary to advance to the front of the proscenium, shewing all her teeth, as she lowly courtesies to the audience. There is a sentiment in the dancing of this charming votary of Terpsichore that elevates it far beyond the licentious style generally adopted by the ladies of her profession, and which bids fair to accomplish a reformation in it. The Duc de Cazes, who came in to the Duchesse de Guiche's box, was enthusiastic in his praises of Mademoiselle Taglioni, and said hers was the most poetical style of dancing he had ever seen. Another observed, that it was indeed the poetry of motion. I would describe it as being the epic of dancing. The Duc de Cazes is a very distinguished looking man, with a fine and intelligent countenance, and very agreeable manners. _À propos_ of manners, I am struck with the great difference between those of Frenchmen and Englishmen, of the same station in life. The latter treat women with a politeness that seems the result of habitual amenity; the former with a homage that appears to be inspired by the peculiar claims of the sex, particularised in the individual woman, and is consequently more flattering. An Englishman seldom lays himself out to act the agreeable to women; a Frenchman never omits an opportunity of so doing: hence, the attentions of the latter are less gratifying than those of the former, because a woman, however free from vanity, may suppose that when an Englishman takes the trouble--and it is evidently a trouble, more or less, to all our islanders to enact the agreeable--she had really inspired him with the desire to please. In France, a woman may forget that she is neither young nor handsome; for the absence of these claims to attention does not expose her to be neglected by the male sex. In England, the elderly and the ugly "could a tale unfold" of the _naïveté_ with which men evince their sense of the importance of youth and beauty, and their oblivion of the presence of those who have neither. France is the paradise for old women, particularly if they are _spirituelle_; but England is the purgatory. The Comtesses de Bellegarde called on me to-day, and two more warm-hearted or enthusiastic persons I never saw. Though no longer young, they possess all the gaiety of youth, without any of its thoughtlessness, and have an earnestness in their kindness that is very pleasant. Dined yesterday at Madame Craufurd's--a very pleasant party. Met there the Duc de Gramont, Duc and Duchesse de Guiche, Colonel and lady Barbara Craufurd, and Count Valeski. The Duc de Gramont is a fine old man who has seen much of the world, without having been soured by its trials. Faithful to his sovereign during adversity, he is affectionately cherished by the whole of the present royal family, who respect and love him; and his old age is cheered by the unceasing devotion of his children, the Duc and Duchesse de Guiche, who are fondly attached to him. He gives up much of his time to the culture of flowers, and is more interested in the success of his dahlias than in those scenes of courtly circles in which he is called to fill so distinguished a part. It pleased me to hear him telling his beautiful daughter-in-law of the perfection of a flower she had procured him with some trouble; and then adding: "_À propos_ of flowers, how is our sweet Ida, to-day? There is no flower in my garden like her!--Ay, she will soon be two years old." There is something soothing to the mind in the contemplation of a man in the evening of life, whose youth was spent in all the splendour of a court, and whose manhood has been tried by adversity, turning to Nature for her innocent pleasures, when the discovery of the futility of all others has been made. This choice vouches for the purity of heart and goodness of him who has adopted it, and disposes me to give ample credit to all the commendation the Duchesse de Guiche used to utter of him in Italy. Lady Barbara Craufurd is an excellent specimen of an English woman. Pretty, without vanity or affectation; gentle, without insipidity; and simple, yet highly polished, in mariners. She has, too, a low, "sweet voice, an excellent thing in woman," and, to me, whose ears offer even a more direct road to the heart than do the eyes, is a peculiar attraction. Colonel Craufurd seems to be the quintessence of good nature and of good sense. Count Valeski is an intelligent young man, greatly _à la mode_ at Paris, and wholly unspoilt by this distinction. Handsome, well-bred, and agreeable, he is very popular, not only among the fine ladies but fine gentlemen here, and appears worthy of the favour he enjoys. Several people of both sexes came in the evening to Madame Craufurd's, and we had some excellent music. Madame C. does the honours of her _salon_ with peculiar grace. She has a bright smile and a kind word for every guest, without the slightest appearance of effort. Still house-hunting; continually tempted by elegantly decorated _salons_, and as continually checked by the want of room and comfort of the rest of the apartments. We have been compelled to abandon the project of taking the Maréchal Lobau's house, or at least that portion of it which he wishes to dispose of, for we found it impossible to lodge so large an establishment as ours in it; and, though we communicated this fact with all possible courtesy to the Maréchal, we have received a note in answer, written in a different style, as he is pleased to think that, having twice inspected his apartments, we ought to have taken them. In England, a person of the Maréchal's rank who had a house to let would not show it _in propriâ personâ_, but would delegate that task, as also the terms and negotiations, to some agent; thus avoiding all personal interference, and, consequently, any chance of offence: but if people _will_ feel angry without any just cause, it cannot be helped; and so Monsieur le Maréchal must recover his serenity and acquire a temper more in analogy with his name; for, though a brave and distinguished officer, as well as a good man, which he is said to be, he certainly is _not Bon comme un mouton_, which is his cognomen. Paris is now before us,--where to choose is the difficulty. We saw to-day a house in the Rue St.-Honoré, _entre cour et jardin_, a few doors from the English embassy. The said garden is the most tempting part of the affair; for, though the _salons_ and sleeping-rooms are good, the only entrance, except by a _passage dérobé_ for servants, is through the _salle à manger_, which is a great objection. Many of the houses I have seen here have this defect, which the Parisians do not seem to consider one, although the odour of dinner must enter the _salons_, and that in the evening visitors must find servants occupied in removing the dinner apparatus, should they, as generally happens, come for the _prima sera_. French people, however, remain so short a time at table, and dine so much earlier than the English people do, that the employment of their _salle à manger_ as a passage does not annoy them. Went to the opera last night, and saw the _Muette de Portici_. It is admirably got up, and the costumes and scenery, as well as the _tarantulas_, transported me back to Naples--dear, joyous Naples--again. Nourrit enacted "Massaniello," and his rich and flexible voice gave passion and feeling to the music. Noblet was the "Fenella," and her pantomime and dancing were good; but Taglioni spoils one for any other dancing. The six years that have flown over Noblet since I last saw her have left little trace of their flight, which is to be marvelled at, when one considers the violent and constant exercise that the profession of a _danseuse_ demands. When I saw the sylph-like Taglioni floating through the dance, I could not refrain from sighing at the thought that grace and elegance like hers should be doomed to know the withering effect of Time; and that those agile limbs should one day become as stiff and helpless as those of others. An _old danseuse_ is an anomaly. She is like an old rose, rendered more displeasing by the recollection of former attractions. Then to see the figure bounding in air, habit and effort effecting something like that which the agility peculiar to youth formerly enabled her to execute almost _con amore_; while the haggard face, and distorted smile revealing yellow teeth, tell a sad tale of departed youth. Yes, an old _danseuse_ is a melancholy object; more so, because less cared for, than the broken-down racer, or worn-out hunter. Went to Tivoli last night, and was amused by the scene of gaiety it presented. How unlike, and how superior to, our Vauxhall! People of all stations, of all ages, and of both sexes, threading the mazy dance with a sprightliness that evinced the pleasure it gave them. We paused to look at group after group, all equally enjoying themselves; and the Duchesse de Guiche, from her perfect knowledge of Paris, was enabled, by a glance, to name the station in life occupied by each: a somewhat difficult task for a stranger, as the remarkably good taste of every class of women in Paris in dress, precludes those striking contrasts between the appearance of a _modiste_ and a _marquise_, the wife of a _boutiquier_ and a _duchesse_, to be met with in all other countries. But it is not in dress alone that a similarity exists in the exteriors of Parisian women. The air _comme il faut_, the perfect freedom from all _gaucherie_, the ease of demeanour, the mode of walking, and, above all, the decent dignity equally removed from _mauvaise honte_ and effrontery, appertain nearly alike to all. The class denominated _grisettes_ alone offered an exception, as their demonstrations of gaiety, though free from boisterousness, betrayed stronger symptoms of hilarity than were evinced by women belonging to a more elevated class in society. The dancing, too, surprised as well as pleased me; and in this accomplishment the French still maintain their long-acknowledged superiority, for among the many groups I did not see a single bad dancer. Around one quadrille party a more numerous audience was collected than around the others, and the _entrechats_ of one of the gentlemen were much applauded. Nods and smiles passing between the dancers and the Duchesse de Guiche, revealed to me that they were among the circle of her acquaintance; and, approaching nearer, I recognised in the gentleman whose _entrechats_ were so much admired, my new acquaintance the Marquis l'Espérance de l'Aigle, of whose excellence in the mazy dance I now had an opportunity of seeing that Fame had not said too much. The ladies who formed the quadrille were la Marquise de Marmier, the Vicomtesse de Noailles, and Madame Standish; all excellent dancers, and attired in that most becoming of all styles of dress, the _demi-toilette_, which is peculiar to France, and admits of the after-dinner promenades or unceremonious visits in which French ladies indulge. A simple robe of _organdie_, with long sleeves, a _canezou_ of net, a light scarf, and a pretty _chapeau_ of _paille de riz_, form this becoming toilette, which is considered a suitable one for all theatres, except the Opera, where ladies go in a richer dress. On our return from Tivoli, we had a small party to drink tea, and remained chatting till one o'clock--a late hour for Paris. Among the guests was our old friend Mr. T. Steuart, the nephew of Sir William Drummond, who continues to be as clever and original as ever. His lively remarks and brilliant sallies were very amusing. Having complained of the want of a comfortable chair last evening, I found a _chef d'oeuvre_ of Rainguet's in my _salon_ this morning, sent me by my thoughtful and ever-kind friend the Duc de Guiche. A connoisseur in chairs and sofas, being unhappily addicted to "taking mine ease" not only in "mine inn," but wherever I meet these requisites to it, I am compelled to acknowledge the superiority of Rainguet over any that I have previously seen; and my only fear is, that this luxurious chair will seduce me into the still greater indulgence of my besetting or _besitting_ sin, sedentary habits. At length, we have found a house to suit us, and a delightful one it is; once the property of the Maréchal Ney, but now belonging to the Marquis de Lillers. It is situated in the Rue de Bourbon, but the windows of the principal apartments look on the Seine, and command a delightful view of the Tuilerie Gardens. It is approached by an avenue bounded by fine trees, and is enclosed on the Rue de Bourbon side by high walls, a large _porte-cochère_, and a porter's lodge; which give it all the quiet and security of a country house. This hôtel may be viewed as a type of the splendour that marked the dwellings of the imperial _noblesse_, and some notion of it may be conceived from the fact that the decorations of its walls alone cost a million of francs. These decorations are still--thanks to the purity of the air of Paris--as fresh as if only a year painted, and are of great beauty; so much so, that it will be not only very expensive but very difficult to assort the furniture to them; and, unfortunately, there is not a single _meuble_ in the house. The rent is high, but there are so many competitors for the hôtel, which has only been three days in the market, that we consider ourselves fortunate in having secured it. A small garden, or rather terrace, with some large trees and plenty of flowers, separates the house from the Quai d'Orsay, and runs back at its left angle. The avenue terminates in a court, from which, on the right, a gate opens into the stable offices; and a vestibule, fitted up as a conservatory, forms an entrance to the house. A flight of marble steps on each side of the conservatory, leads to a large ante-room, from which a window of one immense plate of glass, extending from the ceiling to the floor, divides the centre, permitting the pyramids of flowers to be seen through it. A glass door on each side opens from the vestibule to the steps of the conservatory. The vestibule, lofty and spacious, is lighted also by two other windows, beyond the conservatory, and is ornamented with pilasters with Corinthian capitals. On the right hand is the _salle à manger_, a fine room, lighted by three windows looking into the court-yard, and architecturally arranged with pilasters, a rich cornice and ceiling: the hall is stuccoed, painted in imitation of marble, and has so fine a polish as really to deceive the eye. In the centre of this apartment is a large door between the pilasters, opening into a drawing-room, and at the opposite end from the door that opens from the vestibule is that which leads to the kitchen offices, and by which dinner is served. _Vis-à-vis_ to the _salle à manger_, and divided from it by the large vestibule, is a dressing and bed-chamber with an alcove, both rooms being ornamented with columns and pilasters, between which are mirrors of large dimensions inserted in recesses. A corridor and _escalier dérobé_ at the back of these two apartments admit the attendance of servants, without their passing through the vestibule. In the centre of this last, and opposite to the large plate of glass that divides it from the conservatory, large folding doors open into the principal drawing-room, which is lighted by three large and lofty windows, the centre one exactly facing the folding doors, and, like them, supported by pilasters. This room is of large dimensions, and finely proportioned; the sides and ends are divided by fluted pilasters with Corinthian capitals richly gilt. At one extremity is a beautifully sculptured chimney-piece of Parian marble, over which is a vast mirror, bounded by pilasters, that separate it from a large panel on each side, in the centre of which are exquisitely designed allegorical groups. At the opposite end, a mirror, of similar dimensions to that over the chimney-piece, and resting like it on a white marble slab, occupies the centre, on each side of which are panels with painted groups. Doors at each end, and exactly facing, lead into other _salons_; opposite to the two end windows are large mirrors, resting on marble slabs, bounded by narrow panels with painted figures, and between the windows are also mirrors to correspond. The pictorial adornments in this _salon_ are executed by the first artists of the day, and with a total disregard of expense, so that it is not to be wondered at that they are beautiful. Military trophies are mingled with the decorations, the whole on a white ground, and richly ornamented with gilding. The Seine, with its boats, and the gay scene of the Tuilerie Gardens, are reflected in the mirrors opposite to the windows, while the groups on the panels are seen in the others. Nothing can exceed the beauty of this room, in which such fine proportion, architectural decoration, and exquisite finish reign, that the eye dwells on it with delight, and can trace no defect. The door on the right-hand end, on entering, opens to a less richly ornamented _salon_, inside which are two admirable bed-chambers and dressing-rooms, communicating by an _escalier dérobé_ with a suite of servants' apartments. The door on the left-hand end of the large _salon_ opens into a beautiful room, known as the _Salle de la Victoire_, from its being decorated by paintings allegorical of Victory. This apartment is lighted by two large windows, and opposite to them is a deep recess, or alcove. A cornice extends around the room, about four feet beneath the ceiling, and is supported by white columns, projecting into the chamber, on each of which stands a figure of Victory offering a wreath of laurels. This cornice divides the room from the recess before mentioned. The chimney-piece is in a recess, with columns on each side; and the large mirror over it, and which is finished by the cornice, is faced by a similar one, also in a recess, with white columns, standing on a plinth on each side. The windows are finished by the former cornice, that extends round the rooms, and have similar columns on each side with Victories on them, and a mirror between. The room is white and gold, with delicate arabesques, and medallions exquisitely painted. This _salon_ communicates with a corridor behind it, which admits the attendance of servants without the necessity of their passing through the other apartments. Inside this _salon_ is a _chambre à coucher_, that looks as if intended for some youthful queen, so beautiful are its decorations. A recess, the frieze of which rests on two white columns with silvered capitals, is meant to receive a bed. One side of the room is panelled with mirrors, divided by pilasters with silver capitals; and on the opposite side, on which is the chimney, similar panels occupy the same space. The colour of the apartment is a light blue, with silver mouldings to all the panels, and delicate arabesques of silver. The chimney-piece and dogs for the wood have silvered ornaments to correspond. Inside this chamber is the dressing-room, which is of an octagon shape, and panelled likewise with mirrors, in front of each of which are white marble slabs to correspond with that of the chimney-piece. The mouldings and architectural decorations are silvered, and arabesques of flowers are introduced. This room opens into a _salle de bain_ of an elliptical form; the bath, of white marble, is sunk in the pavement, which is tessellated. From the ceiling immediately over the bath hangs an alabaster lamp, held by the beak of a dove; the rest of the ceiling being painted with Cupids throwing flowers. The room is panelled with alternate mirrors and groups of allegorical subjects finely executed; and is lighted by one window, composed of a single plate of glass opening into a little spot of garden secluded from the rest. A small library completes the suite I have described, all the apartments of which are on the ground floor. There are several other rooms in a wing in the court-yard, and the whole are in perfect order. I remembered to-day, when standing in the principal drawing-room, the tragic scene narrated to me by Sir Robert Wilson as having taken place there, when he had an interview with the Princesse de la Moskowa, after the condemnation of her brave husband. He told me, years ago, how the splendour of the decorations of the _salon_--decorations meant to commemorate the military glory of the Maréchal Ney--added to the tragic effect of the scene in which that noble-minded woman, overwhelmed with horror and grief, turned away with a shudder from objects that so forcibly reminded her of the brilliant past, and so fearfully contrasted with the terrible present. He described to me the silence, broken only by the sobs that heaved her agonised bosom; the figures of the few trusted friends permitted to enter the presence of the distracted wife, moving about with noiseless steps, as if fearful of disturbing the sacredness of that grief to offer consolation for which they felt their tongues could form no words, so deeply did their hearts sympathise with it. He told me that the images of these friends in the vast mirrors looked ghostly in the dim twilight of closed blinds, the very light of day having become insupportable to the broken-hearted wife, so soon to be severed for ever, and by a violent death, from the husband she adored. Ah, if these walls could speak, what agony would they reveal! and if mirrors could retain the shadows replete with despair they once reflected, who dare look on them? I thought of all this to-day, until the tears came into my eyes, and I almost determined not to hire the house, so powerfully did the recollection of the past affect me: but I remembered that such is the fate of mankind; that there are no houses in which scenes of misery have not taken place, and in which breaking hearts have not been ready to prompt the exclamation "There is no sorrow like mine." How is the agony of such moments increased by the recollection that in the same chamber where such bitter grief now reigns, joy and pleasure once dwelt, and that those who shared it can bless us no more! How like a cruel mockery, then, appear the splendour and beauty of all that meets the eye, unchanged as when it was in unison with our feelings, but which now jars so fearfully with them! I wonder not that the bereaved wife fled from this house, where every object reminded her of a husband so fondly loved, so fearfully lost, to mourn in some more humble abode over the fate of _him_ who could no more resist the magical influence of the presence of that glorious chief, who had so often led him to victory, than the war-horse can resist being animated by the sound of that trumpet which has often excited the proud animal into ardour. Peace be to thy manes, gallant Ney; and if thy spirit be permitted to look down on this earth, it will be soothed by the knowledge that the wife of thy bosom has remained faithful to thy memory; and that thy sons, worthy of their sire--brave, noble, and generous-hearted--are devoted to their country, for which thou hadst so often fought and bled! CHAPTER VI. To my surprise and pleasure, I find that a usage exists at Paris which I have nowhere else met with, namely, that of letting out rich and fine furniture by the quarter, half, or whole year, in any quantity required for even the largest establishment, and on the shortest notice. I feared that we should be compelled to buy furniture, or else to put up with an inferior sort, little imagining that the most costly can be procured on hire, and even a large mansion made ready for the reception of a family in forty-eight hours. This is really like Aladdin's lamp, and is a usage that merits being adopted in all capitals. We have made an arrangement, that if we decide on remaining in Paris more than a year, and wish to purchase the furniture, the sum agreed to be paid for the year's hire is to be allowed in the purchase-money, which is to be named when the inventory is made out. We saw the house for the first time yesterday; engaged it to-day for a year; to-morrow, the upholsterer will commence placing the furniture in it; and to-morrow night we are to sleep in it. This is surely being very expeditious, and saves a world of trouble as well as of wailing. Spent last evening at Madame Craufurd's. Met there the Prince and Princesse Castelcicala, with their daughter, who is a very handsome woman. The Prince was a long time Ambassador from Naples at the Court of St. James, and he now fills the same station at that of France. The Princesse is sister to our friend Prince Ischetella at Naples, and, like all her country-women, appears sensible and unaffected. She and Mademoiselle Dorotea speak English perfectly well, and profess a great liking to England and its inhabitants. The Dowager Lady Hawarden, the Marquise de Brehan, the Baroness d'Etlingen, Madame d'Ocaris, Lady Barbara Craufurd, and Lady Combermere, composed the rest of the female portion of the party. Lady Hawarden has been very pretty: what a melancholy phrase is this same _has been_! The Marquise de Brehan is still a very fine woman; Lady Combermere is very agreeable, and sings with great expression; and the rest of the ladies, always excepting Lady Barbara Craufurd, who is very pretty, were very much like most other ladies of a certain time of life--addicted to silks and blondes, and well aware of their relative prices. Madame Craufurd is very amusing. With all the _naïveté_ of a child, she possesses a quick perception of character and a freshness of feeling rarely found in a person of her advanced age, and her observations are full of originality. The tone of society at Paris is very agreeable. Literature, the fine arts, and the general occurrences of the day, furnish the topics for conversation, from which ill-natured remarks are exploded. A ceremoniousness of manner, reminding one of _la Vieille Cour_, and probably rendered _à la mode_ by the restoration of the Bourbons, prevails; as well as a strict observance of deferential respect from the men towards the women, while these last seem to assume that superiority accorded to them in manner, if not entertained in fact, by the sterner sex. The attention paid by young men to old women in Parisian society is very edifying, and any breach of it would be esteemed nothing short of a crime. This attention is net evinced by any flattery, except the most delicate--a profound silence when these belles of other days recount anecdotes of their own times, or comment on the occurrences of ours, or by an alacrity to perform the little services of picking up a fallen _mouchoir de poche, bouquet_, or fan, placing a shawl, or handing to a carriage. If flirtations exist at Paris, they certainly are not exhibited in public; and those between whom they are supposed to be established observe a ceremonious decorum towards each other, well calculated to throw discredit on the supposition. This appearance of reserve may be termed hypocrisy; nevertheless, even the semblance of propriety is advantageous to the interests of society; and the entire freedom from those marked attentions, engrossing conversations, and from that familiarity of manner often permitted in England, without even a thought of evil on the part of the women who permit these indiscretions, leaves to Parisian circles an air of greater dignity and decorum, although I am not disposed to admit that the persons who compose them really possess more dignity or decorum than my compatriots. Count Charles de Mornay was presented to me to-day. Having heard of him only as-- "The glass of fashion and the mould of form, The observed of all observers," I was agreeably surprised to find him one of the most witty, well-informed, and agreeable young men I have ever seen. Gay without levity, well-read without pedantry, and good-looking without vanity. Of how few young men of fashion could this be said! But I am persuaded that Count Charles de Mornay is made to be something better than a mere man of fashion. Spent all the morning in the Hôtel Ney, superintending the placing of the furniture. There is nothing so like the magicians we read of as Parisian upholsterers; for no sooner have they entered a house, than, as if touched by the hand of the enchanter, it assumes a totally different aspect. I could hardly believe my eyes when I entered our new dwelling, to-day. Already were the carpets--and such carpets, too--laid down on the _salons_; the curtains were hung; _consoles_, sofas, tables, and chairs placed, and lustres suspended. In short, the rooms looked perfectly habitable. The principal drawing-room has a carpet of dark crimson with a gold-coloured border, on which is a wreath of flowers that looks as if newly culled from the garden, so rich, varied, and bright are their hues. The curtains are of crimson satin, with embossed borders of gold-colour; and the sofas, _bergères, fauteuils_, and chairs, richly carved and gilt, are covered with satin to correspond with the curtains. Gilt _consoles_, and _chiffonnières_, with white marble tops, are placed wherever they could be disposed; and, on the chimney pieces, are fine _pendules_. The next drawing-room, which I have appropriated as my sitting-room, is furnished with blue satin, with rich white flowers. It has a carpet of a chocolate-coloured ground with a blue border, round which is a wreath of bright flowers, and carved and gilt sofas, _bergères_, and _fauteuils_, covered with blue satin like the curtains. The recess we have lined with fluted blue silk, with a large mirror placed in the centre of it, and five beautiful buhl cabinets around, on which I intend to dispose all my treasures of old _Sèvre_ china, and ruby glass. I was told by the upholsterer, that he had pledged himself to _milord_ that _miladi_ was not to see her _chambre à coucher_, or dressing-room, until they were furnished. This I well knew was some scheme laid by Lord B. to surprise me, for he delights in such plans. He will not tell me what is doing in the rooms, and refuses all my entreaties to enter them, but shakes his head, and says he _thinks_ I will be pleased when I see them; and so I think, too, for the only complaint I ever have to make of his taste is its too great splendour--a proof of which he gave me when I went to Mountjoy Forest on my marriage, and found my private sitting-room hung with crimson Genoa silk velvet, trimmed with gold bullion fringe, and all the furniture of equal richness--a richness that was only suited to a state room in a palace. We feel like children with a new plaything, in our beautiful house; but how, after it, shall we ever be able to reconcile ourselves to the comparatively dingy rooms in St. James's Square, which no furniture or decoration could render any thing like the Hôtel Ney? The Duc and Duchesse de Guiche leave Paris, to my great regret, in a few days, and will be absent six weeks. He is to command the encampment at Luneville, and she is to do the honours--giving dinners, balls, concerts, and soirées, to the ladies who accompany their lords to "the tented field," and to the numerous visitors who resort to see it. They have invited us to go to them, but we cannot accept their kindness. They are "On hospitable thoughts intent," and will, I doubt not, conciliate the esteem of all with whom they come in contact. He is so well bred, that the men pardon his superiority both of person and manner; and she is so warm-hearted and amiable, that the women, with a few exceptions, forgive her rare beauty. How we shall miss them, and the dear children, too! Drove in the Bois de Boulogne yesterday, with the Duchesse de Guiche: met my old acquaintance, Lord Yarmouth, who is as amusing and original as ever. He has great natural talent and knowledge of the world, but uses both to little purpose, save to laugh at its slaves. He might be any thing he chose, but he is too indolent for exertion, and seems to think _le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle_. He is one of the many clever people spoilt by being born to a great fortune and high rank, advantages which exclude the necessity of exercising the talents he possesses. It is, however, no trifling merit, that born to immense wealth and high station, he should he wholly free from arrogance, or ostentation. At length, the secret is out, the doors of my _chambre à coucher_ and dressing-room are opened, and I am delighted with both. The whole fitting up is in exquisite taste, and, as usual, when my most gallant of all gallant husbands that it ever fell to the happy lot of woman to possess, interferes, no expense has been spared. The bed, which is silvered, instead of gilt, rests on the backs of two large silver swans, so exquisitely sculptured that every feather is in alto-relievo, and looks nearly as fleecy as those of the living bird. The recess in which it is placed is lined with white fluted silk, bordered with blue embossed lace; and from the columns that support the frieze of the recess, pale blue silk curtains, lined with white, are hung, which, when drawn, conceal the recess altogether. The window curtain is of pale blue silk, with embroidered muslin curtains, trimmed with lace inside them, and have borders of blue and white lace to match those of the recess. A silvered sofa has been made to fit the side of the room opposite the fire-place, near to which stands a most inviting _bergère_. An _ècritoire_ occupies one panel, a bookstand the other, and a rich coffer for jewels forms a pendant to a similar one for lace, or India shawls. A carpel of uncut pile, of a pale blue, a silver lamp, and a Psyche glass, the ornaments silvered to correspond with the decorations of the chamber, complete the furniture. The hangings of the dressing-room are of blue silk, covered with lace, and trimmed with rich frills of the same material, as are also the dressing-stools and _chaise longue_, and the carpet and lamp are similar to those of the bed-room. A toilette table stands before the window, and small _jardinières_ are placed in front of each panel of looking-glass, but so low as not to impede a full view of the person dressing in this beautiful little sanctuary. The _salle de bain_ is draped with white muslin trimmed with lace, and the sofa and _bergère_ are covered with the same. The bath is of white marble, inserted in the floor, with which its surface is level. On the ceiling over it, is a painting of Flora scattering flowers with one hand while from the other is suspended an alabaster lamp, in the form of a lotos. A more tasteful or elegant suite of apartments cannot be imagined; and all this perfection of furniture has been completed in three days! Lord B. has all the merit of the taste, and the upholsterer that of the rapidity and excellence of the execution. The effect of the whole suite is chastely beautiful; and a queen could desire nothing better for her own private apartments. Few queens, most probably, ever had such tasteful ones. Our kind friend, Charles Mills, has arrived from Rome,--amiable and agreeable as ever. He dined with us yesterday, and we talked over the pleasant days spent in the Vigna Palatina, his beautiful villa. Breakfasted to-day in the Rue d'Anjou, a take-leave repast given to the Duc and Duchesse de Guiche by Madame Craufurd. Lady Barbara and Colonel Craufurd were of the party, which was the only _triste_ one I have seen in that house. The Duc de Gramont was there, and joined in the regret we all felt at seeing our dear friends drive away. It was touching to behold Madame Craufurd, kissing again and again her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, the tears streaming down her cheeks, and the venerable Duc de Gramont, scarcely less moved, embracing his son and daughter-in-law, and exhorting the latter to take care of her health, while the dear little Ida, his granddaughter, not yet two years old, patted his cheeks, and smiled in his face. It is truly delightful to witness the warm affection that subsists between relatives in France, and the dutiful and respectful attention paid by children to their parents. In no instance have I seen this more strongly exemplified than in the Duc and Duchesse de Guiche, whose unceasing tenderness towards the good Duc de Gramont not only makes his happiness, but is gratifying to all who behold it, as is also their conduct to Madame Craufurd. I wish the encampment was over, and those dear friends back again. CHAPTER VII. Took possession of our new house to-day, and are delighted with it. Its repose and quiet are very agreeable, after the noise and bustle of the Rue de Rivoli. Spent several hours in superintending the arrangement of my books, china, _bijouterie_, and flowers, and the rooms look as habitable as if we had lived in them for weeks. How fortunate we are to have found so charming an abode! A chasm here occurs in my journal, occasioned by the arrival of some dear relatives from England, with whom I was too much occupied to have time to journalise. What changes five years effect in young people! The dear girls I left children are now grown into women, but are as artless and affectionate as in childhood. I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw them, yet I soon traced the same dear countenances, and marvelled that though changed from the round, dimpled ones of infancy, to the more delicate oval of maidenly beauty, the expression of gaiety and innocence of their faces is still the same. A week has passed rapidly by, and now that they have returned to England, their visit appears like a dream. I wish it had been longer, for I have seen only enough of them to wish to see a great deal more. The good Mrs. W. and her lively, clever, and her pretty daughter, Mrs. R., dined with us yesterday. They are _en route_ for England, but give many a sigh to dear Italy. It was pleasant to talk over the happy days passed there, which we did with that tender regret with which the past is always referred to by those who have sensibility, and they possess no ordinary portion of this lovable quality. Les Dames Bellegarde also dined with us, and they English friends took a mutual fancy to each other. I like the Bellegardes exceedingly. Our old friend, Lord Lilford, is at Paris, and is as amiable and kind-hearted as ever. He dined with us yesterday, and we talked over the pleasant days we spent at Florence. Well-educated, and addicted to neither of the prevalent follies of the day, racing nor gaming, he only requires a little ambition to prompt him to exertion, in order to become a useful, as well as an agreeable member of the community, but with a good fortune and rank, he requires an incentive to action. Met last evening at Madame Craufurd's the Marquis and Marquise Zamperi of Bologna. She is pretty and agreeable, and he is original and amusing. They were very civil, and expressed regret at not having been at Bologna when we were there. Had a visit from Count Alexandre de Laborde to-day. His conversation is lively and entertaining. Full of general information and good sense, he is no niggard in imparting the results of both to those with whom he comes in contact, and talks fluently, if not always faultlessly, in Italian and English. The Marquis de Mornay and his brother Count Charles de Mornay dined here yesterday. How many associations of the olden time are recalled by this ancient and noble name, Mornay du Plessis! The Marquis is agreeable, sensible, well-informed, and well-bred. Though justly proud of his high descent, the consciousness of it is never rendered visible by any symptom of that arrogance too often met with in those who have less cause for pride, and can only be traced by a natural dignity and bearing, worthy a descendant of the noble Sully. Count Charles de Mornay is a very remarkable young man. With a brilliant wit, the sallies of which can "set the table in a roar;" it is never used at the expense of others, and, when he chooses to be grave, the quickness and justice of his perception, and the fine tact and good sense which mark his reflections, betray a mind of no common order, and give the promise of future distinction. Nothing can be more agreeable than the mode in which I pass my time here. I read from nine until twelve: order the household arrangements, and inspect the _menu_ at twelve: write letters or journalise from one until four; drive out till six or half-past; return home, dress, dine, pay visits, or receive them at home, and get to bed at one o'clock. How much preferable is the French system of evening visits, to the English custom of morning ones, which cut up time so abominably! Few who have lived much abroad could submit patiently to have their mornings broken in upon, when evening, which is the most suitable time for relaxation, can be enlivened by the visits that are irksome at other hours. Paris is now nearly as empty as London is in September; all the _élite_ of French fashionable society having taken their departure for their country houses, or for the different baths they frequent. I, who like not crowds, prefer Paris at this season to any other, and shall be rather sorry than glad when it fills again. Madame Craufurd, Lady Barbara and Colonel Craufurd, the Ducs de Gramont, Dalberg, and Mouchy, dined with us yesterday. We had music in the evening, The Duc Dalberg is agreeable and well-bred, and his manner has that suavity, mingled with reserve, said to be peculiar to those who have lived much at courts, and filled diplomatic situations. The Duc was Minister Plenipotentiary from Baden at Paris, when Napoleon was First Consul, and escaped not censure on the occasion of the seizure of the unfortunate Duc d'Enghien; of the intention of which it was thought he ought to have apprised his court, and so have prevented an event which has entailed just blame on all concerned in it, as well as on some who were innocent. There is nothing in the character of the Duc Dalberg to warrant a belief of his being capable of lending himself to aught that was disloyal, for he is an excellent man in all the relations of life, and is esteemed and respected by as large a circle of friends as most persons who have filled high situations can boast of. The Duc de Mouchy is a very amiable as well as high-bred man; he has been in England, and speaks English with fluency. Letters from the camp of Luneville, received from our dear friends to-day, give a very animated description of their doings there. The Duc de Mouchy told me yesterday that they were winning golden opinions from all with whom they came in contact there, by their urbanity and hospitality. He said that people were not prepared to find the handsomest and most fashionable woman at Paris, "the observed of all observers," and the brightest ornament of the French court, doing the honours to the wives of the officers of the camp with an amiability that has captivated them all. The good Duc de Gramont was delighted at hearing this account, for never was there a more affectionate father. Went with a party yesterday to Montmorency. Madame Craufurd, the Comtesse de Gand, the Baronne d'Ellingen, Comte F. de Belmont, and our own circle, formed the party. It was gratifying to witness how much dear Madame Craufurd enjoyed the excursion; she even rode on a donkey through the woods, and the youngest person of the party did not enter into the amusement with more spirit and gaiety. Montmorency is a charming place, but not so the road to it, which, being paved, is very tiresome. We visited the hermitage where Rousseau wrote so many of his works, but in which this strange and unhappy man found not that peace so long sought by him in vain, and to which his own wayward temper and suspicious nature offered an insurmountable obstacle. As I sat in this humble abode, and looked around on the objects once familiar to his eyes, I could not resist the sentiment of pity that filled my breast, at the recollection that even in this tranquil asylum, provided by friendship [2], and removed from the turmoil of the busy world, so repugnant to his taste, the jealousies, the heart-burnings, and the suspicions, that empoisoned his existence followed him, rendering his life not only a source of misery to himself, but of pain to others; for no one ever conferred kindness on him without becoming the object of his suspicion, if not of his aversion. The life of Rousseau is one of the most humiliating episodes in the whole history of literary men, and the most calculated to bring genius into disrepute: yet the misery he endured more than avenged the wrongs he inflicted; and, while admiring the productions of a genius, of which even his enemies could not deny him the possession, we are more than ever compelled to avow how unavailing is this glorious gift to confer happiness on its owner, or to secure him respect or esteem, if unaccompanied by goodness. Who can reflect on the life of this man without a sense of the danger to which Genius exposes its children, and a pity for their sufferings, though too often self-inflicted? Alas! the sensibility which is one of the most invariable characteristics of Genius, and by which its most glorious efforts are achieved, if excited into unhealthy action by over-exercise, not unseldom renders its possessor unreasonable and wretched, while his works are benefiting or delighting others, and while the very persons who most highly appreciate them are often the least disposed to pardon the errors of their author. As the dancer, by the constant practice of her art, soon loses that roundness of _contour_ which is one of the most beautiful peculiarities of her sex, the muscles of the legs becoming unnaturally developed at the expense of the rest of the figure, so does the man of genius, by the undue exercise of this gift, acquire an irritability that soon impairs the temper, and renders his excess of sensibility a torment to himself and to others. The solitude necessary to the exercise of Genius is another fruitful source of evil to its children. Abstracted from the world, they are apt to form a false estimate of themselves and of it, and to entertain exaggerated expectations from it. Their morbid feelings are little able to support the disappointment certain to ensue, and they either rush into a reprisal of imaginary wrongs, by satire on others, or inflict torture on themselves by the belief, often erroneous, of the injuries they have sustained. I remembered in this abode a passage in one of the best letters ever written by Rousseau, and addressed to Voltaire, on the subject of his poem, entitled _Sur la Loi Naturelle, et sur le Désastre de Lisbonne_; in which, referring to an assertion of Voltaire's that few persons would wish to live over again on the condition of enduring the same trials, and which Rousseau combats by urging that it is only the rich, fatigued by their pleasures, or literary men, of whom he writes--"_Des gens de lettres, de tous les ordres d'hommes le plus sédentaire, le plus malsain, le plus réfléchissant, et, par conséquent, le plus malheureux_," who would decline to live over again, had they the power. This description of men of letters, written by one of themselves, is a melancholy, but, alas! a true one, and should console the enviers of genius for the want of a gift that but too often entails such misery on its possessors. The church of Montmorency is a good specimen of Gothic architecture, and greatly embellishes the little town, which is built on the side of a hill, and commands a delicious view of the chestnut forest and valley, clothed with pretty villas, that render it so much and so justly admired. It was amusing to listen to the diversity of opinions entertained by our party relative to Rousseau, as we wandered through the scenes which he so often frequented; each individual censuring or defending him, according to the bias of his or her disposition. On one point all agreed; which was, that, if judged by his actions, little could be said in mitigation of the conduct of him who, while writing sentiments fraught with passion and tenderness, could consign his offspring to a foundling hospital! Having visited every object worthy of attention at Montmorency, we proceeded to Enghien, to examine the baths established there. The building is of vast extent, containing no less than forty chambers, comfortably furnished for the accommodation of bathers; and a good _restaurateur_ furnishes the repasts. The apartments command a beautiful view, and the park of St.-Gratien offers a delightful promenade to the visitors of Enghien. Our route back to Paris was rendered very agreeable by the lively and clever conversation of the Comtesse de Gand. I have rarely met with a more amusing person. With a most retentive memory, she possesses the tact that does not always accompany this precious gift--that of only repeating what is perfectly _à propos_ and interesting, with a fund of anecdotes that might form an inexhaustible capital for a professional diner-out to set up with; an ill-natured one never escapes her lips, and yet--hear it all ye who believe, or act as if ye believe, that malice and wit are inseparable allies!--it would be difficult to find a more entertaining and lively companion. Our old friend, Col. E. Lygon, came to see us to-day, and is as amiable as ever. He is a specimen of a military man of which England may well be proud. The Ducs de Talleyrand and Dino, the Marquis de Mornay, the Marquis de Dreux-Brezé, and Count Charles de Mornay, dined here yesterday. The Marquis de Brezé is a clever man, and his conversation is highly interesting. Well-informed and sensible, he has directed much of his attention to politics without being, as is too often the case with politicians, wholly engrossed by them. He appears to me to be a man likely to distinguish himself in public life. There could not be found two individuals more dissimilar, or more formed for furnishing specimens of the noblemen of _la Vieille Cour_ and the present time, than the Duc de Talleyrand and the Marquis de Dreux-Brezé. The Duc, well-dressed and well-bred, but offering in his toilette and in his manners irrefragable evidence that both have been studied, and his conversation bearing that high polish and urbanity which, if not always characteristics of talent, conceal the absence of it, represents _l'ancien régime_, when _les grands seigneurs_ were more desirous to serve _les belles dames_ than their country, and more anxious to be distinguished in the _salons_ of the Faubourg St.-Germain than in the _Chambre de Parlement_. The Marquis de Dreux-Brezé, well-dressed and well-bred, too, appears not to have studied either his toilette or his manners; and, though by no means deficient in polite attention to women, seems to believe that there are higher and more praiseworthy pursuits than that of thinking only how to please them, and bestows more thought on the _Chambre des Pairs_ than on the _salons à la mode_. One is a passive and ornamental member of society, the other a useful and active politician, I have remarked that the Frenchmen of high birth of the present time all seem disposed to take pains in fitting themselves for the duties of their station. They read much and with profit, travel much more than formerly, and are free from the narrow prejudices against other countries, which, while they prove not a man's attachment to his own, offer one of the most insurmountable of all barriers to that good understanding so necessary to be maintained between nations. Dined yesterday at St.-Cloud with the Baron and Baroness de Ruysch; a very agreeable and intellectual pair, who have made a little paradise around them in the shape of an English pleasure ground, blooming with rare shrubs and flowers. Our old friend, Mr. Douglas Kinnaird--"the honourable Dug," as poor Lord Byron used to call him--paid me a visit to-day. I had not seen him for seven years, and these same years have left their traces on his brow. He is in delicate health, and is only come over to Paris for a very few days. He has lived in the same scenes and in the same routine that we left him, wholly engrossed by them, while "I've taught me other tongues, and in strange eyes Have made me not a stranger;" and wonder how people can be content to dwell whole years in so circumscribed, however useful, a circle. Those who live much in London seem to me to have tasted the lotus which, according to the fable of old, induced forgetfulness of the past, so wholly are they engrossed by the present, and by the vortex in which they find themselves plunged. Much as I like England, and few love it more dearly, I should not like to pass all the rest of my life in it. _All, all_: it is thus we ever count on futurity, reckoning as if our lives were certain of being prolonged, when we know not that the _all_ on which we so boldly calculate may not be terminated in a day, nay, even in an hour. Who is there that can boast an English birth, that would not wish to die at home and rest in an English grave? Sir Francis Burdett has arrived, and means to stay some time here. He called on us yesterday with Colonel Leicester Stanhope, and is as agreeable and good-natured as ever. He is much _fêted_ at Paris, and receives great attention from the Duc d'Orléans, who has offered him his boxes at the theatres, and shews him all manner of civilities. Colonel Leicester Stanhope gave me some interesting details of poor Byron's last days in Greece, and seems to have duly appreciated his many fine qualities, in spite of the errors that shrouded but could not eclipse them. The fine temper and good breeding that seem to be characteristic of the Stanhope family, have not degenerated in this branch of it; and his manner, as well as his voice and accent, remind me very forcibly of my dear old friend his father, who is one of the most amiable, as well as agreeable men I ever knew, and who I look forward with pleasure to meeting on my return home. The Marquise Palavicini from Genoa, her daughter-in-law the Princesse Doria, sir Francis Burdett, and Colonel Leicester Stanhope, dined with us yesterday. The marquise Palavicini is a very sensible and agreeable woman, and the Princesse Doria is very pretty and amiable. Like most of her countrywomen, this young and attractive person is wholly free from that affectation which deteriorates from so many of the women of other countries; and the simplicity of her manner, which is as remote from _gaucherie_ as it is from affectation, invests her with a peculiar charm. We talked over Genoa, where we have spent so many pleasant days, and the beautiful gardens of the villa Palavicini, the possession of which has always tempted me to envy its owner. I have never passed an hour in the society of Italian women without feeling the peculiar charm of their manner, and wishing that its ease and simplicity were more generally adopted. The absence of any effort to shine, the gentleness without insipidity, the liveliness without levity, and above all, the perfect good nature that precludes aught that could be disagreeable to others, form the distinguishing characteristics of the manner of Italian women from the princess to the peasant, and are alike practised by both towards all with whom they converse. Lord Darnley and Lord Charlemont dined here yesterday. It is pleasant to see old and familiar faces again, even though the traces of Time on their brows recall to mind the marks which the ruthless tyrant must have inflicted on our own. We all declared that we saw no change in each other, but the looks of surprise and disappointment exchanged at meeting contradicted the assertion. Mr. Charles Young, the tragedian, dined here to-day. We were very glad to see him again, for he is a very estimable as well as agreeable member of society, and reflects honour on his profession. Lord Lansdowne came here with Count Flahault this evening. It is now seven years since I last saw him, but time has dealt kindly with him during that period, as it ever does to those who possess equanimity of mind and health of body. Lord Lansdowne has always appeared to me to be peculiarly formed for a statesman. With a fortune that exempts him from incurring even the suspicion of mercenary motives for holding office, and a rank which precludes that of entertaining the ambition of seeking a higher, he is free from the angry passions that more or loss influence the generality of other men. To an unprejudiced mind, he joins self-respect without arrogance, self-possession without effrontery, solid and general information, considerable power of application to business, a calm and gentlemanly demeanour, and an urbanity of manner which, while it conciliates good will, never descends to, or encourages, familiarity. A lover and liberal patron of the fine arts, he is an encourager of literature, and partial to the society of literary men; irreproachable in private life, and respected in public, what is there wanting to render him faultless? I, who used to enjoy a good deal of his society in England, am of opinion, that the sole thing wanting is the warmth and cordiality of manner which beget friends and retain partisans, and without which no minister can count on constant supporters. It is a curious circumstance, that the political party to which Lord Lansdowne is opposed can boast a man among those most likely to hold the reins of government, to whom all that I have said of Lord Lansdowne might, with little modification, be applied. I refer to Sir Robert Peel, whose acquaintance I enjoyed in England; and who is much younger, and perhaps bolder, than Lord Lansdowne. Happy, in my opinion, is the country which possesses such men; though the friends and admirers of each would probably feel little disposed to admit any comparison to be instituted between them, and would deride, if not assail, any one for making it. Sir Francis Burdell dined here yesterday, and we had the Count Alexandra de Laborde and Count Charles de Mornay, to meet him. Several people came in the evening. I have lent a pile of books to Sir F. B., who continues to read as much as formerly, and forgets nothing that he peruses. His information is, consequently, very extensive, and renders his conversation very interesting. His thirst for knowledge is insatiable, and leads him to every scientific resort where it may be gratified. Spent last evening at Madame Craufurd's. Met there, the Princesse Castelcicala and her daughter, Lady Drummond, Mr. T. Steuart, and various others--among them, a daughter of the Marquess of Ailesbury, who has married a French nobleman, and resides in Paris. Lady Drummond talked to me a good deal of Sir William, and evinced much respect for his memory. She is proud, and she may well be so, of having been the wife of such a man; though there was but little sympathy between their tastes and pursuits, and his death can produce so little change in her habits of life, that she can scarcely be said to miss him. He passed his days and the greater portion of his nights in reading or writing, living in a suite of rooms literally filled with books; the tables, chairs, sofas, and even the floors, being encumbered with them, going out only for a short time in a carriage to get a little air, or occasionally to dine out. He seldom saw Lady Drummond, except at dinner, surrounded by a large party. She passed, as she still passes her time, in the duties of an elaborate toilette, paying or receiving visits, giving or going to _fêtes_, and playing with her lap-dog. A strange wife for one of the most intellectual men of his day! And yet this total dissimilarity produced no discord between them; for she was proud of his acquirements, and he was indulgent to her less _spirituelle_ tastes. Lady Drummond does much good at Naples; for, while the _beau monde_ of that gay capital are entertained in a style of profuse hospitality at her house, the poor find her charity dispensed with a liberal hand in all their exigencies; so that her vast wealth is a source of comfort to others as well as to herself. I have been reading _Vivian Grey_--a very wild, but very clever book, full of genius in its unpruned luxuriance; the writer revels in all the riches of a brilliant imagination, and expends them prodigally--dazzling, at one moment, by his passionate eloquence, and, at another, by his touching pathos. A pleasant dinner-party, yesterday. The Duc de Mouchy, the Marquis de Mornay, Count Flahault, the Count Maussion, Mons. de Montrond, and Mr. Standish, were the guests. Count Flahault is so very agreeable and gentlemanly a man, that no one can call in question the taste of the Baroness Keith in selecting him for her husband. Mr. Standish has married a French lady, accomplished, clever, and pretty. Intermarriages between French and English are now not unfrequent; and it is pleasant to observe the French politeness and _bon ton_ ingrafted on English sincerity and good sense. Of this, Mr. Standish offers a very good example; for, while he has acquired all the Parisian ruse of manner, he has retained all the English good qualities for which he has always been esteemed. CHAPTER VIII. Charles Kemble dined here yesterday, and in the evening read to us his daughter Fanny's Tragedy of _Francis the First_--a very wonderful production for so young a girl. There is considerable vigour in many parts of this work, and several passages in it reminded me of the old dramatists. The character of "Louisa of Savoy" is forcibly drawn--wonderfully so, indeed, when considered as the production of so youthful a person. The constant association with minds deeply imbued with a love of the old writers, must have greatly influenced the taste of Miss Kemble. _Francis the First_ bears irrefragable evidence that her reading has lain much among the old poets, and that Shakspeare is one of her most favourite ones. "Triboulet," the king's jester, may be instanced as an example of this; and "Margaret of Valois" furnishes another. "Françoise de Foix" is a more original conception; timid, yet fond, sacrificing her honour to save her brother's life, but rendered wretched by remorse; and not able to endure the presence of her affianced husband, who, believing her pure and sinless as he left her, appeals to her, when "Gonzales" reveals her shame. This same "Gonzales," urged on by vengeance, and ready to do aught--nay, more than "may become a man,"--to seek its gratification, is a boldly drawn character. The introduction of the poet "Clément Marot" is no less happy than judicious; and Miss Kemble gives him a very beautiful speech, addressed to his master "Francis the First," in which the charm that reigns about the presence of a pure woman is so eloquently described, as to have reminded me of the exquisite passage in _Comus_, although there is not any plagiary in Miss Kemble's speech. A poetess herself, she has rendered justice to the character of Clement Marot, whose honest indignation at being employed to bear a letter from the amorous "Francis" to the sister of "Lautrec," she has very gracefully painted. The "Constable Bourbon" is well drawn, and has some fine speeches assigned to him; and "Gonzales" gives a spirited description of the difference between encountering death in the battle-field, surrounded by all the spirit-stirring "pomp and circumstance of glorious war," and meeting the grisly tyrant on the scaffold, attended by all the ignominious accessories of a traitor's doom. This Tragedy, when given to the public, will establish Miss Kemble's claims to distinction in the literary world, and add another laurel to those acquired by her family. There are certain passages in the speeches of "Gonzales," that, in my opinion, require to be revised, lest they should provoke censures from the fastidious critics of the present time, who are prone to detect evil of which the authors, whose works they analyse, are quite unconscious. Innocence sometimes leads young writers to a freedom of expression from which experienced ones would shrink back in alarm; and the perusal of the old dramatists gives a knowledge of passions, and of sins, known only through their medium, but the skilful developement of which, subjects a female writer, and more particularly a youthful one, to ungenerous animadversion. It is to be hoped, that the friends of this gifted girl will so prune the luxuriance of her pen, as to leave nothing to detract from a work so creditable to her genius. Charles Kemble rendered ample justice to his daughter's Tragedy by his mode of reading it; and we counted not the hours devoted to the task. How many reminiscences of the olden time were called up by hearing him! I remembered those pleasant evenings when he used to read to us in London, hour after hour, until the timepiece warned us to give over. I remembered, too, John Kemble--"the great John Kemble," as Lord Guildford used to call him--twice or thrice reading to us with Sir T. Lawrence; and the tones of Charles Kemble's voice, and the expression of his face, forcibly reminded me of our departed friend. I have scarcely met with a more high-bred man, or a more agreeable companion, than Charles Kemble. Indeed, were I called on to name the professional men I have known most distinguished for good breeding and manners, I should name our four tragedians,--the two Kembles, Young, and Macready. Sir Francis Burdett dined here yesterday _en famille_, and we passed two very pleasant hours. He related to us many amusing and interesting anecdotes connected with his political life. Went to the Opera in the evening, whither he accompanied us. I like my box very much. It is in the centre of the house, is draped with pale blue silk, and has very comfortable chairs. The Parisians are, I find, as addicted to staring as the English; for many were the glasses levelled last night at Sir Francis Burdett who, totally unconscious of the attention he excited, was wholly engrossed by the "Count Ory," some of the choruses in which pleased me very much. A visit to-day from our excellent and valued friend, Sir A. Barnard, who has promised to dine with us to-morrow. Paris is now filling very fast, which I regret, as I dislike crowds and having my time broken in upon. I become more convinced every day I live, that quiet and repose are the secrets of happiness, for I never feel so near an approach to this blessing as when in the possession of them. General society is a heavy tax on time and patience, and one that I feel every year less inclination to pay, as I witness the bad effect it produces not only on the habits but on the mind. Oh! the weariness of listening for hours to the repetition of past gaieties, or the anticipation of future ones, to the commonplace remarks or stupid conversation of persons whose whole thoughts are engrossed by the frivolous amusements of Paris, which are all and every thing to them! How delicious is it to shut out all this weariness, and with a book, or a few rationally minded friends, indulge in an interchange of ideas! But the too frequent indulgence of this sensible mode of existence exposes one to the sarcasms of the frivolous who are avoided. One is deemed a pedant--a terrible charge at Paris!--or a _bas bleu_, which is still worse, however free the individual may be from any pretensions to merit such charges. Paid a visit to the justly celebrated Mademoiselle Mars yesterday, at her beautiful hôtel in the Rue de la Tour des Dames. I have entertained a wish ever since my return from Italy, to become acquainted with this remarkable woman; and Mr. Young was the medium of accomplishing it. Mademoiselle Mars is even more attractive off the stage than on; for her countenance beams with intelligence, and her manners are at once so animated, yet gentle; so kind, yet dignified; and there is such an inexpressible charm in the tones of her voice, that no one can approach without being delighted with her. Her conversation is highly interesting, marked by a good sense and good taste that render her knowledge always available, but never obtrusive. Her features are regular and delicate; her figure, though inclined to _embonpoint_, is very graceful, and her smile, like the tones of her voice, is irresistibly sweet, and reveals teeth of rare beauty. Mademoiselle Mars, off the stage, owes none of her attractions to the artful aid of ornament; wearing her own dark hair simply arranged, and her clear brown complexion free from any artificial tinge. In her air and manner is the rare and happy mixture of _la grande dame et la femme aimable_, without the slightest shade of affectation. Mademoiselle Mars' hôtel is the prettiest imaginable. It stands in a court yard, wholly shut in from the street; and, though not vast, it has all the elegance, if not the splendour, of a fine house. Nothing can evince a purer taste than this dwelling, with its decorations and furniture. It contains all that elegance and comfort can require, without any thing meretricious or gaudy, and is a temple worthy of the goddess to whom it is dedicated. It has been well observed, that a just notion of the character of a person can always be formed by the style of his or her dwelling. Who can be deceived in the house of a _nouveau riche_? Every piece of furniture in it vouches, not only for the wealth of its owner, but that he has not yet got sufficiently habituated to the possession of it, to be as indifferent to its attributes as are those to whom custom has rendered splendour no longer a pleasure. Every thing in the house of Mademoiselle Mars bespeaks its mistress to be a woman of highly cultivated mind and of refined habits. The boudoir is in the style of Louis XIV, and owes its tasteful decorations to the pencil of Ciceri. The pictures that ornament it are by Gérard, and are highly creditable to his reputation. The library serves also as a picture-gallery; and in it may be seen beautiful specimens of the talents of the most esteemed French artists, offered by them as a homage to this celebrated woman. Gérard, Delacroix, Isabey, Lany, Grévedon, and other distinguished artists, have contributed to this valuable collection. A fine portrait of Madame Pasta, and another of Talma, with two exquisite pictures of the mother of Mademoiselle Mars, not less remarkable for the rare beauty of the subject than for the merit of the artists, complete it. One book-case in the library contains only the presentation copies of the pieces in which Mademoiselle Mars has performed, magnificently bound by the authors. On a white marble _console_ in this gallery is placed an interesting memorial of her brilliant theatrical career, presented to her by the most enthusiastic of its numerous admirers. It consists of a laurel crown, executed in pure gold; on the leaves of which are engraved on one side, the name of each piece in which she appeared, and, on the other, the _rôle_ which she acted in it. A very fine statue of Molière is placed in this apartment. Never did two hours glide more rapidly away than those passed in the society of this fascinating woman, whose presence I left penetrated with the conviction that no one can know without admiring her; and that when she retires from the stage, "we shall not look upon her like again." Passed a very agreeable evening, at Madame Craufurd's, Met there la Duchesse de la Force, and the usual circle of _habitués_. Talking of theatres, some of _la Vieille Cour_, who happened to be present, remarked on the distinction always made between the female performers of the different ones. Those of the Théâtre Français were styled "_Les Dames de la Comédie Française_"; "those of the Théâtre Italien," "_Les Demoiselles du Théâtre Italien_;" and the dancers, "_Les Filles de l'Opéra_." This last mode of naming _les danseuses_, though in later times considered as a reproach, was, originally, meant as an honourable distinction; the king, on establishing the _Académie Royale de Musique_, having obtained the privilege that the performers attached to it should be exempt from excommunication. Hence they were named, "_Les Filles de l'Opéra_," as persons sometimes said "_Les Filles de la Reine_." _À propos_ of the Opera, Madame Grassini, once no less celebrated for her beauty than for her voice, was of the party last night. She is, and deservedly, a general favourite in Parisian society, in which her vivacity, good-nature, and amiability, are duly appreciated. Her lively sallies and _naïve_ remarks are very amusing; and the frankness and simplicity she has preserved in a profession and position so calculated to induce the reverse, add to her attractions and give piquancy to her conversation. There are moments in which Madame Grassini's countenance becomes lighted up with such animation, that it seems to be invested with a considerable portion of the rare beauty for which she was so remarkable. Her eyes are still glorious, and, like those only of the sunny South, can flash with intelligence, or melt with tenderness. It is when conversing on the grand _rôles_ which she filled as _prima donna_, that her face lights up as I have noticed,--as the war-horse, when hearing the sound of the trumpet, remembers the scene of his past glory. When in Italy, some years since, Madame Grassini's carriage was stopped by brigands, who, having compelled her to descend, ransacked it and took possession of her splendid theatrical wardrobe, and her magnificent diamonds. She witnessed the robbery with calmness, until she saw the brigands seize the portrait of the Emperor Napoleon, presented to her by his own hand, and set round with large brilliants, when she appealed to them with tears streaming down her cheeks to take the settings and all the diamonds, but not to deprive her of the portrait of her "dear, dear Emperor!" When this circumstance was referred to she told me the story, and her eyes glistened with tears while relating it. Went to Orsay yesterday, and passed a very agreeable day there. It was a fortified chateau, and must have been a very fine place before the Revolution caused, not only its pillage, but nearly total destruction, for only one wing of it now remains. Built in the reign of Charles VII, it was esteemed one of the best specimens of the feudal _château fort_ of that epoch; and the subterranean portion of it still attests its former strength and magnitude. It is surrounded by a moat, not of stagnant water, but supplied by the river Ivette, which flows at the base of the hill on which the château stands. The water is clear and brisk and the château looks as if it stood in a pellucid river. The view from the windows is very extensive, commanding a rich and well-wooded country. The chapel escaped not the ravages of the sacrilegious band, who committed such havoc on the château; for the beautiful altar, and some very interesting monuments, were barbarously mutilated, and the tomb of the Princesse de Croy, the mother of General Count d'Orsay, on which a vast sum had been expended, was nearly razed to the ground. If aught was required to increase my horror of revolutions, and of the baleful consequences to which they lead, the sight of this once splendid château, and, above all, of its half-ruined chapel, in which even the honoured dead were insulted, would have accomplished it. An heiress of one of the most ancient houses in the _Pays-Bas_, the Princesse de Croy brought a noble dowry to her husband, himself a man of princely fortune. Young and beautiful, her munificence soon rendered her an object of almost, adoration to the dependents of her lord; and when soon after having given birth to a son and heir, the present General Comte d'Orsay, she was called to another world, her remains were followed to her untimely grave by a long train of weeping poor, whose hearts her bounty had often cheered, and whose descendants were subsequently horror-struck to see the sanctity of her last earthly resting-place invaded. We passed through the hamlet of Palaiseau, on our return to Paris; and saw in it the steeple where the magpie concealed the silver spoons he had stolen, and which occasioned the event from which the drama of _La Pie Voleuse_, known in so many languages, has had its origin. The real story ended not so happily as the opera, for the poor girl was executed--the spoons not having been discovered until after her death. This tragedy in humble life has attached great interest to the steeple at Palaiseau, and has drawn many persons to the secluded hamlet in which it stands. The Duc and Duchesse de Quiche returned from Luneville yesterday; and we spent last evening with them. The good Duke de Gramont was there, and was in great joy at their return. They all dine with us to-morrow; and Madame Craufurd comes to meet them. Never have I seen such children as the Duc de Quiche's. Uniting to the most remarkable personal beauty an intelligence and docility as rare as they are delightful; and never did I witness any thing like the unceasing care and attention bestowed on their education by their parents. Those who only know the Duc and Duchesse in the gay circles, in which they are universally esteemed among the brightest ornaments, can form little idea of them in the privacy of their domestic one--emulating each other in their devotion to their children, and giving only the most judicious proofs of their attachment to them. No wonder that the worthy Duc de Gramont doats on his grandchildren, and never seems so happy as with his excellent son and daughter-in-law. Went to the Vaudeville Théâtre last evening, to see the new piece by Scribe, so much talked of, entitled _Avant_, _Pendant, et Aprés_. There is a fearful _vraisemblance_ in some of the scenes with all that one has read or pictured to oneself, as daily occurring during the terrible days of the Revolution; and the tendency of the production is not, in my opinion, calculated to produce salutary effects. I only wonder it is permitted to be acted. The piece is divided, as the title announces, into three different epochs. The first represents the frivolity and vices attributed to the days of _l'ancien régime_, and the _tableau des moeurs_, which is vividly coloured, leaves no favourable impression in the minds of the audience of that _noblesse_ whose sufferings subsequently expiated the errors said to have accelerated, if not to have produced, the Revolution. Nothing is omitted that could cast odium on them, as a preparation for the Reign of Terror that follows. The anarchy and confusion of the second epoch--the fear and horror that prevail when the voices and motions of a sanguinary mob are heard in the streets, and the terrified inmates of the houses are seen crouching in speechless terror, are displayed with wonderful truth. The lesson is an awful, and I think a dangerous, one, and so seemed to think many of the upper class among the audience, for I saw some fair cheeks turn pale, and some furrowed brows look ominous, as the scene was enacted, while those of the less elevated in rank among the spectators assumed, or seemed to assume, a certain _fierté_, if not ferocity, of aspect, at beholding this vivid representation of the triumph achieved by their order over the _noblesse_. It is not wise to exhibit to a people, and above all to so inflammable a people as the French, what _they_ can effect; and I confess I felt uneasy when I witnessed the deep interest and satisfaction evinced by many in the _parterre_ during the representation. The _Après_, the third epoch, is even more calculated to encourage revolutionary principles, for in it was displayed the elevation to the highest grades in the army and in the state of those who in the _ancien régime_ would have remained as the Revolution found them, in the most obscure stations, but who by that event had brilliant opportunities afforded for distinguishing themselves. Heroic courage, boundless generosity, and devoted patriotism, are liberally bestowed on the actors who figure in this last portion of the drama; and, as these qualities are known to have appertained to many of those who really filled the _rôles_ enacted at the period now represented, the scene had, as might be expected, a powerful effect on a people so impressible as the French, and so liable to be hurried into enthusiasm by aught that appeals to their imaginations. The applause was deafening; and I venture to say, that those from whom it proceeded left the theatre with a conviction that a revolution was a certain means of achieving glory and fortune to those who, with all the self-imagined qualities to merit both, had not been born to either. Every Frenchman in the middle or lower class believes himself capable of arriving at the highest honours. This belief sometimes half accomplishes the destiny it imagines; but even when it fails to effect this, it ever operates in rendering Frenchmen peculiarly liable to rush into any change or measure likely to lead to even a chance of distinction. As during the performance of _Avant, Pendant et Après_, my eye glanced on the faces of some of the emigrant _noblesse_, restored to France by the entry of the Bourbons, I marked the changes produced on their countenances by it. Anxiety, mingled with dismay, was visible; for the scenes of the past were vividly recalled, while a vague dread of the future was instilled. Yes, the representation of this piece is a dangerous experiment, and so I fear it will turn out. I am sometimes amused, but more frequently irritated, by observing the _moeurs Parisiennes_, particularly in the shop-keepers. The airs of self-complacency, amounting almost to impertinence, practised by this class, cannot fail to surprise persons accustomed to the civility and assiduity of those in London, who, whether the purchases made in their shops be large or small, evince an equal politeness to the buyers. In Paris, the tradesman assumes the right of dictating to the taste of his customers; in London, he only administers to it. Enter a Parisian shop, and ask to be shewn velvet, silk, or riband, to assort with a pattern you have brought of some particular colour or quality, and the mercer, having glanced at it somewhat contemptuously, places before you six or eight pieces of a different tint and texture. You tell him that they are not similar to the pattern, and he answers, "That may be; nevertheless, his goods are of the newest fashion, and infinitely superior to your model." You say, "You prefer the colour of your pattern, and must match it." He produces half-a-dozen pieces still more unlike what you require; and to your renewed assertion that no colour but the one similar to your pattern will suit you, he assures you, that his goods are superior to all others, and that what you require is out of fashion, and a very bad article, and, consequently, that you had much better abandon your taste and adopt his. This counsel is given without any attempt at concealing the contempt the giver of it entertains for your opinion, and the perfect satisfaction he indulges for his own. You once more ask, "If he has got nothing to match the colour you require?" and he shrugs his shoulders and answers, "_Pourtant_, madame, what I have shewn you is much superior," "Very possible; but no colour will suit me but this one," holding up the pattern; "for I want to replace a breadth of a new dress to which an accident has occurred." "_Pourtant_, madame, my colours are precisely the same, but the quality of the materials is infinitely better!" and with this answer, after having lost half an hour--if not double that time--you are compelled to be satisfied, and leave the shop, its owner looking as if he considered you a person of decidedly bad taste, and very troublesome into the bargain. Similar treatment awaits you in every shop; the owners having, as it appears to me, decided on shewing you only what _they_ approve, and not what you seek. The women of high rank in France seldom, if ever, enter any shop except that of Herbault, who is esteemed the _modiste, par excellence_, of Paris, and it is to this habit, probably, that the want of _bienséance_ so visible in Parisian _boutiquiers_, is to be attributed. CHAPTER IX. An agreeable party dined here yesterday--Lord Stuart de Rothesay, our Ambassador, the Duc and Duchesse de Guiche, the Duc de Mouchy, Sir Francis Burdett, and Count Charles de Mornay. Lord Stuart de Rothesay is very popular at Paris, as is also our Ambassadress; a proof that, in addition to a vast fund of good-nature, no inconsiderable portion of tact is conjoined--to please English and French too, which they certainly do, requires no little degree of the rare talent of _savoir-vivre_. To a profound knowledge of French society and its peculiarities, a knowledge not easily acquired, Lord and Lady Stuart de Rothesay add the happy art of adopting all that is agreeable in its usages, without sacrificing any of the stateliness so essential in the representatives of our more grave and reflecting nation. Among the peculiarities that most strike one in French people, are the good-breeding with which they listen, without even a smile, to the almost incomprehensible attempts at speaking French made by many strangers, and the quickness of apprehension with which they seize their meaning, and assist them in rendering the sense complete. I have seen innumerable proofs of this politeness--a politeness so little understood, or at least so little practised, among the English, that mistakes perfectly ludicrous, and which could not have failed to set my compatriots in a titter, if not in a roar, have not produced the movement of a single risible muscle, and yet the French are more prone to gaiety than are the English. Mr. D---- and Mr. T---- dined here yesterday. The former, mild, gentlemanlike, and unostentatious, seems to forget what so many would, if similarly situated, remember with arrogance, namely, that he is immensely rich; an obliviousness that, in my opinion, greatly enhances his other merits. Mr. T---- is little changed since I last saw him, and is well-informed, clover, and agreeable,--but his own too-evident consciousness of possessing these recommendations prevents other people from according him due merit for them. In society, one who believes himself clever must become a hypocrite, and so conceal all knowledge of his self-complacency, if he wishes to avoid being unpopular; for woe be to him who lets the world see he thinks highly of himself, however his abilities may justify his self-approval! The sight of Mr. T---- recalled his amiable and excellent mother to my memory. I never esteemed any woman more highly, or enjoyed the society of any other person more than hers. How many pleasant hours have I passed with her! I so well remember John Kemble fancying that if I went through a course of reading Shakspeare with his sister Mrs. T----, I should make, as he said, a fine actress; and we were to get up private theatricals at Mountjoy Forest. In compliance with the request of Lord Blessington, I studied Shakspeare with this amiable and gifted woman for many months, which cemented a friendship between us that ended but with her life. Her method of reading was admirable; for to the grandeur of her sister Mrs. Siddons, she united a tenderness and softness, in which that great actress was said to be deficient. I never open any of the plays of Shakspeare which I studied with her without thinking I hear her voice, and I like them better for the association. To great personal attractions, which even to the last she retained enough of to give a notion of what her beauty must have been in her youth, Mrs. T---- added a charm of manners, a cultivation of mind, and a goodness of heart seldom surpassed; and, in all the relations of life, her conduct was most praiseworthy. Even now, though six years have elapsed since her death, the recollection of it brings tears to my eyes. Good and gentle woman, may your virtues on earth find their reward in Heaven! I passed last evening at Madame Craufurd's, where I met Lady Charlotte Lindsay and the Misses Berry. How perfectly they answered to the description given of them by Sir William Gell; who, though exceedingly attached to all three, has not, as far as one interview permitted me to judge, overrated their agreeability! Sir William Gell has read me many letters from these ladies, replete with talent, of which their conversation reminded me. Francis Hare and his wife dined here to-day. They are _en route_ from Germany--where they have been sojourning since their marriage--for England, where her _accouchement_ is to take place. Francis Hare has lived with us so much in Italy, that we almost consider him a member of the domestic circle; and, on the faith of this, he expressed his desire that we should receive _madame son épouse_ as if she were an old acquaintance. Mrs. Hare is well-looking, and agreeable, appears amiable, and is a good musician. I remember seeing her and her sisters with her mother, Lady Paul, at Florence, when I had little notion that she was to be Mrs. Hare. I never meet Francis Hare without being surprised by the versatility of his information; it extends to the fine arts, literature, rare books, the localities of pictures and statues; in short, he is a moving library that may always be consulted with profit, and his memory is as accurate as an index in rendering its precious stores available. It is strange, that the prominent taste of his wife, which is for music, is the only one denied to him. He afforded an amusing instance of this fact last night, when Mrs. Hare, having performed several airs on the piano-forte, he asked her, "Why she played the same tune so often, for the monotony was tiresome?"--an observation that set us all laughing. Took Mrs. Hare out shopping--saw piles of lace, heaps of silk, pyramids of riband, and all other female gear. What a multiplicity of pretty things we women require to render us what we consider presentable! And how few of us, however good-looking we may chance to be, would agree with the poet, that "loveliness needs not the foreign aid of ornament, but is, when unadorned, adorned the most." Even the fairest of the sex like to enhance the charms of nature by the aid of dress; and the plainest hope to become less so by its assistance. Men are never sufficiently sensible of our humility, in considering it so necessary to increase our attractions in order to please them, nor grateful enough for the pains we bestow in the attempts. Husbands and fathers are particularly insensible to this amiable desire on the parts of their wives and daughters; and, when asked to pay the heavy bills incurred in consequence of this praiseworthy humility and desire to please, evince any feeling rather than that of satisfaction. It is only admirers not called on to pay these said bills who duly appreciate the cause and effect, and who can hear of women passing whole hours in tempting shops, without that elongation of countenance peculiar to husbands and fathers. I could not help thinking with the philosopher, how many things I saw to-day that could be done without. If women could be made to understand that costliness of attire seldom adds to beauty, and often deteriorates it, a great amelioration in expense could be accomplished. Transparent muslin, the cheapest of all materials, is one of the prettiest, too, for summer's wear, and with the addition of some bows of delicate-coloured riband, or a _bouquet_ of fresh flowers, forms a most becoming dress. The lowness of the price of such a robe enables the purchaser to have so frequent a change of it, that even those who are far from rich may have half-a-dozen, while one single robe of a more expensive material will cost more; and having done so, the owner will think it right to wear it more frequently than is consistent with the freshness and purity that should ever be the distinguishing characteristics in female dress, in order to indemnify herself for the expense. I was never more struck with this fact, than a short time ago, when I saw two ladies seated next each other, both young and handsome; but one, owing to the freshness of her robe, which was of simple _organdie_, looked infinitely better than the other, who was quite as pretty, but who, wearing a robe of expensive lace, whose whiteness had fallen into "the sere and yellow leaf," appeared faded and _passée_. Be wise, then, ye young and fair; and if, as I suspect, your object be to please the Lords of the Creation, let your dress, in summer, be snowy-white muslin, never worn after its pristine purity becomes problematical; and in winter, let some half-dozen plain and simple silk gowns be purchased, instead of the two or three expensive ones that generally form the wardrobe, and which, consequently, soon not only lose their lustre but give the wearer the appearance of having suffered the same fate! And you, O husbands and fathers, present and future, be ye duly impressed with a sense of your manifold obligations to me for thus opening the eyes of your wives and daughters how to please without draining your purses; and when the maledictions of lace, velvet, and satin-sellers full on my hapless head, for counsel so injurious to their interests, remember they were incurred for yours! Mr. and Mrs. Hare dined here yesterday. They brought with them Madame de la H----, who came up from near Chantilly to see them. She is as pretty as I remember her at Florence, when Mademoiselle D----, and is _piquante_ and _spirituelle_. Counts Charles de Mornay and Valeski formed the party, and Count Maussion and some others came in the evening. I observe that few English shine in conversation with the French. There is a lightness and brilliancy, a sort of touch and go, if I may say so, in the latter, seldom, if ever, to be acquired by strangers. Never dwelling long on any subject, and rarely entering profoundly into it, they sparkle on the surface with great dexterity, bringing wit, gaiety, and tact, into play. Like summer lightning, French wit flashes frequently, brightly and innocuously, leaving nothing disagreeable to remind one of its having appeared. Conversation is, with the French, the aim and object of society. All enter it prepared to take a part, and he best enacts it who displays just enough knowledge to show that much remains behind. Such is the tact of the Parisians, that even the ignorant conceal the poverty of their minds, and might, to casual observers, pass as being in no way deficient, owing to the address with which they glide in an _à propos oui, ou non_, and an appropriate shake of the head, nod of assent, or dissent. The constitutional vivacity of the French depending much on their mercurial temperaments, greatly aids them in conversation. A light and playful sally acquires additional merit when uttered with gaiety; and should a _bon mot_ even contain something calculated to pique any one present, or reflect on the absent, the mode in which it is uttered takes off from the force of the matter; whereas, on the contrary, the more grave and sententious manner peculiar to the English adds pungency to their satire. Our old and valued friend, Mr. J. Strangways, has arrived at Paris, and very glad were we to see him once more. He passed through a severe trial since last we parted; and his conduct under it towards his poor friend, Mr. Anson, does him credit. The two companions--one the brother of the Earl of Ilchester, and the other of Lord Anson--were travelling in Syria together. They had passed through Aleppo, where the plague had then appeared, and were at the distance of several days' journey from it, congratulating themselves on their safety, when, owing to some error on the part of those who examined their firman, they were compelled to retrace their steps to Aleppo, where, condemned to become the inhabitants of a lazaretto until the imagined mistake could be corrected, they found themselves _tête-à-tête_. The first two or three days passed without any thing to alarm the friends. Engaged in drawing maps for their intended route, and plans for the future, the hours glided away even cheerfully. But this cheerfulness was not long to continue; for Mr. Anson, having one morning asked Mr. Strangways to hold the end of his shawl while he twisted it round his head as a turban, the latter observed, with a degree of horror and dismay more easily to be imagined than described, the fatal plague-spot clearly defined on the back of the neck of his unfortunate friend. He concealed his emotion, well knowing that a suspicion of its cause would add to the danger of Mr. Anson, who, as yet, was unconscious of the fearful malady that had already assailed him. Totally alone, without aid, save that contained in their own very limited resources, what must have been the feelings of Mr. Strangways, as he contemplated his luckless companion? He dreaded to hear the announcement of physical suffering, though he well knew it must soon come, and marked with indescribable anguish the change that rapidly began to be manifested in his friend. But even this most terrible of all maladies was influenced by the gallant spirit of him on whom it was now preying; for not a complaint, not a murmur, broke from his lips: and it was not until Mr. Strangways had repeatedly urged the most affectionate inquiries that he admitted he was not quite well. Delirium quickly followed; but even then this noble-minded young man bore up against the fearful assaults of disease, and thought and spoke only of those dear and absent friends he was doomed never again to behold. It was a dreadful trial to Mr. Strangways to sit by the bed of death, far, far away from home and friends, endeavouring to cool the burning brow and to refresh the parched lips of him so fondly loved in that distant land of which he raved. He spoke of his home, of those who made it so dear to him, and even the songs of infancy were again murmured by the dying lips. His friend quitted him not for a minute until all was over; and _he_ was left indeed alone to watch, over the corpse of him whom he had tried in vain to save. That Mr. Strangways should have escaped the contagion, seems little less than miraculous. I, who have known him so long and so well, attribute it to the state of his mind, which was so wholly occupied by anxiety for his friend as to leave no room for any thought of self. Made no entry in my journal for two days, owing to a slight indisposition, which furnished an excuse for laziness. Dined at Lointier's yesterday--a splendid repast given by Count A. de Maussion, in consequence of a wager, lost on a subject connected with the line arts. The party consisted of all those present at our house when the wager was made. The Duc and Duchesse de Guiche, Mr. and Mrs. Francis Hare, the Duc de Talleyrand, Duc de Dino, Count Valeski, Mr. J. Strangways, and our own large family circle. The dinner was the most _recherché_ that could be furnished: "all the delicacies of the season," as a London paper would term it, were provided; and an epicure, however fastidious, would have been satisfied with the choice and variety of the _plats_; while a _gourmand_ would have luxuriated in the quantity. Nothing in the style of the apartments, or the service of the dinner, bore the least indication that we were in the house of a _restaurant_. A large and richly furnished _salon_, well lighted, received the company before dinner; and in a _salle à manger_ of equal dimensions, and equally well arranged, the dinner was served on a very fine service of old plate. Count de Maussion did the honours of the dinner _à merveille_, and it passed off very gaily. It had been previously agreed that the whole party were to adjourn to the Porte St. Martin, at which Count de Maussion had engaged three large private boxes; and the ladies, consequently, with one exception, came _en demi-toilette_. The exception was Mrs. Hare, who, not aware that at Paris people never go _en grande toilette_ to the theatres, came so smartly dressed, that, seeing our simple toilettes, she was afraid of incurring observation if she presented herself in a rich dress with short sleeves, a gold tissue turban with a bird-of-paradise plume, and an _aigrette_ of coloured stones; so she went to our house, with a few of the party, while I accompanied the rest to the theatre. The piece was _Faust_, adapted from Goethe, and was admirably performed, more especially the parts of "Mephistopheles" and "Margaret," in which Madame Dorval acts inimitably. This actress has great merit; and the earnestness of her manner, and the touching tones of her voice, give a great air of truth to her performances. The prison-scene was powerfully acted; and the madness of "Margaret" when stretched on her bed of straw, resisting the vain efforts of her lover to rescue her, had a fearful reality. The character of "Margaret" is a fine conception, and Goethe has wrought it out beautifully. The simplicity, gentleness, and warm feelings of the village maiden, excite a strong interest for her, even when worked upon by Vanity; that alloy which, alas for Woman's virtue and happiness! is too frequently found mixed up in the pure ore of her nature. The childish delight with which poor "Margaret" contemplates the trinkets presented by her lover; the baleful ascendency acquired over her by her female companion; and her rapid descent in the path of evil when, as is ever the case, the commission of one sin entails so many, render this drama a very effective moral lesson. Of all Goethe's works, _Faust_ is the one I most like; and, of all his female characters, "Margaret" is that which I prefer. A fine vein of philosophy runs through the whole of this production, in which the vanity of human knowledge without goodness was never more powerfully exemplified. "Faust," tempted by the desire of acquiring forbidden knowledge, yields up his soul to the evil one; yet still retains enough of the humanity of his nature to render him wretched, when her he loves, and has drawn ruin on, suffers the penalty of his crime and of her love. Exquisitely has Goethe wrought out the effects of the all-engrossing passion of the poor "Margaret"--a passion that even in madness, still clings to its object with all woman's tenderness and devotion, investing even insanity with the touching charm of love. How perfect is the part when, endeavouring to pray, the hapless "Margaret" fancies that she hears the gibbering of evil spirits interrupting her supplications, so that even the consolation of addressing the Divinity is denied her! But the last scene--that in the prison--is the most powerful of all. Never was madness more touchingly delineated, or woman's nature more truly developed;--that nature so little understood by those who are so prone to pervert it, and whose triumphs over its virtues are always achieved by means of the excess of that propensity to love, and to believe in the truth of the object beloved, which is one of the most beautiful characteristics in woman; though, wo to her! it is but too often used to her undoing. The feelings of poor "Margaret" are those of all her sex, ere vice has sullied the nature it never can wholly subdue. Mr. and Mrs. Hare left Paris to-day. I regret their departure; for she is lively and agreeable, and I have known him so long, and like him so well, that their society afforded me pleasure. A large party at dinner, yesterday; among whom, was Mr. M----, who has acquired a certain celebrity for his _bons mots_. He is said to be decidedly clever, and to know the world thoroughly: appreciating it at its just value, and using it as if formed for his peculiar profit and pleasure. He is lately returned from England, where he has been received with that hospitality that characterises the English, and has gone a round of visits to many of the best houses. He spoke in high terms of the hospitality he had experienced, but agreed in the opinion I have often heard Lord Byron give, that the society in English country-houses is any thing but agreeable. I had heard so much of Mr. M----, that I listened to his conversation with more interest than I might have done, had not so many reports of his shrewdness and wit reached me. Neither seem to have been overrated; for nothing escapes his quick perception; and his caustic wit is unsparingly and fearlessly applied to all subjects and persons that excite it into action. He appears to be a privileged person--an anomaly seldom innoxiously permitted in society: for those who may say _all they_ please, rarely abstain from saying much that may displease others; and, though a laugh may he often excited by their wit, some one of the circle is sure to be wounded by it. Great wit is not often allied to good-nature, for the indulgence of the first is destructive to the existence of the second, except where the wit is tempered by a more than ordinary share of sensibility and refinement, directing its exercise towards works of imagination, instead of playing it off, as is too frequently the case, against those with whom its owner may come in contact. Byron, had he not been a poet, would have become a wit in society; and, instead of delighting his readers, would have wounded his associates. Luckily for others, as well as for his own fame, he devoted to literature that ready and brilliant wit which sparkles in so many of his pages, instead of condescending to expend it in _bons mots_, or _réparties_, that might have set the table on a roar, and have been afterwards, as often occurs, mutilated in being repeated by, others. The quickness of apprehension peculiar to the French, joined to the excessive _amour propre_, which is one of the most striking of their characteristics, render them exceedingly susceptible to the arrows of wit; which, when barbed by ridicule, inflict wounds on their vanity difficult to be healed, and which they are ever ready to avenge. But this very acuteness of apprehension induces a caution in not resenting the assaults of wit, unless the wounded can retort with success by a similar weapon, or that the attack has been so obvious that he is justified in resenting it by a less poetical one. Hence arises a difficult position for him on whom a wit is pleased to exercise his talent; and this is one of the many reasons why privileged persons seldom add much to the harmony of society. Went last night to the Porte St. Martin, and saw _Sept Heures_ represented. This piece has excited a considerable sensation at Paris; and the part of the heroine, "Charlotte Corday," being enacted by Madame Dorval, a very clever actress, it is very popular. "Charlotte Corday" is represented in the piece, not as a heroine actuated purely by patriotic motives in seeking the destruction of a tyrant who inflicted such wounds on her country, but by the less sublime one of avenging the death of her lover. This, in my opinion, lessens the interest of the drama, and atones not for the horror always inspired by a woman's arming herself for a scene of blood. The taste of the Parisians has, I think, greatly degenerated, both in their light literature and their dramas. The desire for excitement, and not a decrease of talent, is the cause; and this morbid craving for it will, I fear, lead to injurious consequences, not only in literature, but in other and graver things. The schoolmaster is, indeed, abroad in France, and has in all parts of it found apt scholars--perhaps, too apt; and, like all such, the digestion of what is acquired does not equal the appetite for acquisition: consequently, the knowledge gained is as yet somewhat crude and unavailable. Nevertheless, the people are making rapid strides in improvement; and ignorance will soon be more rare than knowledge formerly was. At present, their minds are somewhat unsettled by the recentness of their progress; and in the exuberance consequent on such a state, some danger is to be apprehended. Like a room from which light has been long excluded, and in which a large window is opened, all the disagreeable objects in it so long shrouded in darkness are so fully revealed, that the owner, becoming impatient to remove them and substitute others in their place, often does so at the expense of appropriateness, and crowds the chamber with a heterogeneous _mélange_ of furniture, which, however useful in separate parts, are too incongruous to produce a good effect. So the minds of the French people are now too enlightened any longer to suffer the prejudices that formerly filled them to remain, and have, in their impatience, stored them with new ideas and opinions--many of them good and useful, but too hastily adopted, and not in harmony with each other to be productive of a good result, until time has enabled their owners to class and arrange them. I am every day more forcibly struck with the natural quickness and intelligence of the people here: but this very quickness is a cause that may tend to retard their progress in knowledge, by inducing them to jump at conclusions, instead of marching slowly but steadily to them; and conclusions so rapidly made are apt to be as hastily acted upon, and, consequently, occasion errors that take some time to be discovered, and still more to be corrected, before the truth is attained. CHAPTER X. Made the acquaintance of the celebrated Dr. P----, today, at Madame C----'s. He is a very interesting old man; and, though infirm in body, his mind is as fresh, and his vivacity as unimpaired, as if he had not numbered forty instead of eighty summers. I am partial to the society of clever medical men, for the opportunities afforded them of becoming acquainted with human nature, by studying it under all the phases of illness, convalescence, and on the bed of death, when the real character is exposed unveiled from the motives that so often shadow, if not give it a false character, in the days of health, render their conversation very interesting. I have observed, too, that the knowledge of human nature thus attained neither hardens the heart nor blunts the sensibility, for some of the most kind-natured men I ever knew were also the most skilful physicians and admirable, surgeons. Among these is Mr. Guthrie, of London, whose rare dexterity in his art I have often thought may be in a great degree attributed to this very kindness of nature, which has induced him to bestow a more than usual attention to acquiring it, in order to abridge the sufferings of his patients. In operations on the eye, in which he has gained such a justly merited celebrity, I have been told by those from whose eyes he had removed cataracts, that his precision and celerity are so extraordinary as to appear to them little short of miraculous. Talking on this subject with Dr. P---- to-day, he observed, that he considered strength of mind and kindness of heart indispensable requisites to form a surgeon; and that it was a mistake to suppose that these qualities had any other than a salutary influence over the nerves of a surgeon. "It braces them, Madame," said he; "for pity towards the patient induces an operator to perform his difficult task _con amore_, in order to relieve him." Dr. P---- has nearly lost his voice, and speaks in a low but distinct whisper. Tall and thin, with a face pale as marble, but full of intelligence, he looks, when bending on his gold-headed cane, the very _beau idéal_ of a physician of _la Vieille Cour_, and he still retains the costume of that epoch. His manner, half jest and half earnest, gives an idea of what that of the Philosopher of Ferney must have been when in a good humour, and adds piquancy to his narrations. Madame C----, who is an especial favourite of his, and who can draw him out in conversation better than any one else, in paying him a delicate and well-timed compliment on his celebrity, added, that few had ever so well merited it. "Ah! Madame, celebrity is not always accorded to real merit," said he, smiling. "I have before told Madame that mine--if I may be permitted to recur to it--was gained by an artifice I had recourse to, and without which, I firmly believe I should have remained unknown." "No, no! my dear doctor," replied Madame C----; "your merit must have, in time, acquired you the great fame you enjoy." The Doctor laughed heartily, but persisted in denying this; and the lady urged him to relate to me the plan he had so successfully pursued in abridging his road to Fortune. He seemed flattered by her request, and by my desire for his compliance with it, and commenced as follows:-- "I came from the country, Mesdames, with no inconsiderable claims to distinction in my profession. I had studied it _con amore_, and, urged by the desire that continually haunted me of becoming a benefactor to mankind--ay! ladies, and still more anxious to relieve your fair and gentle sex from those ills to which the delicacy of your frames and the sensibility of your minds so peculiarly expose you--I came to Paris with little money and few friends, and those few possessed no power to forward my interest. "It is true they recommended me to such of their acquaintance as needed advice; but whether, owing to the season being a peculiarly healthy one, or that the acquaintances of my friends enjoyed an unusual portion of good health, I was seldom called on to attend them; and, when I was, the remuneration offered was proportioned, not to the relief afforded, but to the want of fame of him who lent it. "My purse diminished even more rapidly than my hopes, though they, too, began to fade; and it was with a heavy heart that I look my pen to write home to those dear friends who believed that Paris was a second _El Dorado_, where all who sought--must find--Fortune. "At length, when one night stretched on my humble bed, and sleepless from the cares that pressed heavily on my mind, it occurred to me that I must put some plan into action for getting myself known; and one suggested itself, which I next day adopted. "I changed one of the few remaining _louis d'or_ in my purse, and, sallying forth into one of the most popular streets, I wrote down the addresses of some of the most respectable-looking houses, and going up to a porter, desired him to knock at the doors named, and inquire if the celebrated Doctor P---- was there, as his presence was immediately required at the hôtel of the Duc de ----. "I despatched no less than twenty messengers through the different streets on the same errand, and having succeeded in persuading each that it was of the utmost importance that the celebrated Doctor P---- should be found, they persuaded the owners of the houses of the same necessity. "I persevered in this system for a few days, and then tried its efficacy at night, thinking that, when knocked up from their beds, people would be sure to be more impressed with the importance of a doctor in such general request. "My scheme succeeded. In a few days, I was repeatedly called in by various patients, and liberal fees poured into the purse of the celebrated Dr. P----. Unfortunately my practice, although every day multiplying even beyond my most sanguine hopes, was entirely confined to the _bourgeoisie_; and though they paid well, my ambition pointed to higher game, and I longed to feel the pulses of _la haute noblesse_, and to ascertain if the fine porcelain of which I had heard they were formed was indeed as much superior to the delf of which the _bourgeoisie_ are said to be manufactured, as I was led to believe. "Luckily for me, the _femme de chambre_ of a grand lady fancied herself ill, mentioned the fancy to her friend, who was one of my patients, and who instantly advised her to consult the _celebrated_ Dr. P----, adding a lively account of the extent of my practice and the great request I was in. "The _femme de chambre_ consulted me, described symptoms enough to baffle all the schools of medicine in France, so various and contradictory were they, and I, discovering that she really had nothing the matter with her, advised what I knew would be very palatable to her,--namely, a very nutritious _régime_, as much air and amusement as was possible in her position, and gave her a prescription for some gentle medicine, to prevent any evil effect from the luxurious fare I had recommended. "I was half tempted to refuse the fee she slipped into my hand, but I recollected that people never value what they get for nothing, and so I pocketed it. "In a few days, I was sent for to the Hôtel--to attend the Duchesse de ---- the mistress of the said _femme de chambre_. This was an event beyond my hopes, and I determined to profit by it. I found the Duchesse suffering under a malady--if malady it could be called--to which I have since discovered grand ladies are peculiarly subject; namely, a superfluity of _embonpoint_, occasioned by luxurious habits and the want of exercise. "'I am very much indisposed, Doctor,' lisped the lady, 'and your prescription has done my _femme de chambre_ so much good, that I determined to send for you. I am so very ill, that I am fast losing my shape; my face, too, is no longer the same; and my feet and hands are not to be recognised.' "I drew out my watch, felt her pulse, looked grave, inquired--though it was useless, her _embonpoint_ having revealed it--what were her general habits and _régime_; and then, having written a prescription, urged the necessity of her abandoning _café au lait_, rich _consommés_, and high-seasoned _entrées_; recommended early rising and constant exercise; and promised that a strict attention to my advice would soon restore her health, and with it her shape. "I was told to call every day until further orders; and I, pleading the excess of occupation which would render my daily visits to her so difficult, consented to make them, only on condition that my fair patient was to walk with me every day six times around the garden of her hôtel; for I guessed she was too indolent to persevere in taking exercise if left to herself. "The system I pursued with her succeeded perfectly. I was then a very active man, and I walked so fast that I left the Duchesse every day when our promenade ended bathed in a copious perspiration; which, aided by the medicine and sparing _régime_, soon restored her figure to its former symmetry. "At her hôtel, I daily met ladies of the highest rank and distinction, many of whom were suffering from a similar cause, the same annoyance for which the Duchesse consulted me; and I then discovered that there is no malady, however grave, so distressing to your sex, ladies, or for the cure of which they are so willing to submit to the most disagreeable _régime_, as for aught that impairs their personal beauty. "When her female friends saw the improvement effected in the appearance of the Duchesse by my treatment, I was consulted by them all, and my fame and fortune rapidly increased. I was proclaimed to be the most wonderful physician, and to have effected the most extraordinary cures; when, in truth, I but consulted Nature, and aided her efforts. "Shortly after this period, a grand lady, an acquaintance of one of my many patients among the _noblesse_, consulted me; and here the case was wholly different to that of the Duchesse, for this lady had grown so thin, that wrinkles--those most frightful of all symptoms of decaying beauty--had made their appearance. My new patient told me that, hearing that hitherto my great celebrity had been acquired by the cure of obesity, she feared it was useless to consult me for a disease of so opposite a nature, but even still more distressing. "I inquired into her habits and _régime_. Found that she took violent exercise; was abstemious at table; drank strong green tea, and coffee without cream or milk; disliked nutritious food; and, though she sat up late, was an early riser. I ordered her the frequent use of warm baths, and to take all that I had prohibited the Duchesse; permitted only gentle exercise in a carriage; and, in short, soon succeeded in rendering the thin lady plump and rosy, to the great joy of herself, and the wonder of her friends. "This treatment, which was only what any one possessed of common sense would have prescribed in such a case, extended my fame far and wide. Fat and thin ladies flocked to me for advice, and not only liberally rewarded the success of my system, but sounded my praises in all quarters. "I became the doctor _à la mode_, soon amassed an independence, and, though not without a confidence in my own skill--for I have never lost any opportunity of improvement in my profession--I must confess that I still retain the conviction that the celebrated Doctor P---- would have had little chance, at least for many years, of acquiring either fame or wealth, had he not employed the means I have confessed to you, ladies." I cannot do justice to this _spirituel_ old man's mode of telling the story, or describe the finesse of his arch smile while recounting it. Mr. P.C. Scarlett, a son of our excellent and valued friend Sir James Scarlett[3], dined here yesterday. He is a fine young man, clever, well-informed, and amiable, with the same benignant countenance and urbanity of manner that are so remarkable in his father. I remember how much struck I was with Sir James Scarlett's countenance when he was first presented to me. It has in it such a happy mixture of sparkling intelligence and good-nature that I was immediately pleased with him, even before I had an opportunity of knowing the rare and excellent qualities for which he is distinguished, and the treasures of knowledge with which his mind is stored. I have seldom met any man so well versed in literature as Sir James Scarlett, or with a more refined taste for it; and when one reflects on the arduous duties of his profession--duties which he has ever fulfilled with such credit to himself and advantage to others--it seems little short of miraculous how he could have found time to have made himself so intimately acquainted, not only with the classics, but with all the elegant literature of England and France. How many pleasant days have I passed in the society of Lord Erskine and Sir James Scarlett! Poor Lord Erskine! never more shall I hear your eloquent tongue utter _bons mots_ in which wit sparkled, but ill-nature never appeared; nor see your luminous eyes flashing with joyousness, as when, surrounded by friends at the festive board, you rendered the banquet indeed "the feast of reason and the flow of soul!" Mr. H---- B---- dined here yesterday, and he talked over the pleasant days we had passed in Italy. He is an excellent specimen of the young men of the present day. Well-informed, and with a mind highly cultivated, he has travelled much in other countries, without losing any of the good qualities and habits peculiar to his own. Went to the Théàtre Italien, last night, and heard Madame Malibran sing for the first time. Her personation of "Desdemona" is exquisite, and the thrilling tones of her voice were in perfect harmony with the deep sensibility she evinced in every look and movement. I have heard no singer to please me comparable to Malibran: there is something positively electrical in the effect she produces on my feelings. Her acting is as original as it is effective; Passion and Nature are her guides, and she abandons herself to them _con amore_. The only defect I can discover in her singing is an excess of _fiorituri_, that sometimes destroys the _vraisemblance_ of the _rôle_ she is enacting, and makes one think more of the wonderful singer than of "Desdemona." This defect, however, is atoned for by the bursts of passion into which her powerful voice breaks when some deep emotion is to be expressed, and the accomplished singer is forgotten in the impassioned "Desdemona." Spent last evening at Madame C----'s, and met there la Duchcsse de la Force, la Marquise de Bréhan, and the usual _habitués de la maison_. La Duchesse is one of _l'ancien régime_, though less ceremonious than they are in general said to be, and appears to be as good-natured as she is good-humoured. The Marquise de B---- told me some amusing anecdotes of the Imperial Court, and of the gaiety and love of dress of the beautiful Princesse Pauline Borghese, to whom she was much attached. The whole of the Buonaparte family seem to have possessed, in an eminent degree, the happy art of conciliating good-will in those around them--an art necessary in all persons filling elevated positions, but doubly so in those who have achieved their own elevation. The family of the Emperor Napoleon were remarkable for the kindness and consideration they invariably evinced for those who in any way depended on them, yet a natural dignity of manner precluded the possibility of familiarity. The Marquise de B---- having mentioned the Duchesse d'Abrantes, Madame C---- inquired kindly for her, and the Marquise told her that she had been only a few days before to pay her a visit. Anxious to learn something of a woman who filled so distinguished a position during the imperial dynasty, I questioned Madame de B----, and learned that the Duchesse d'Abrantes, who for many years lived in a style of splendour that, even in the palmy days of her husband's prosperity, when, governor of Paris, he supported almost a regal establishment, excited the surprise, if not envy, of his contemporaries, is now reduced to so limited an income that many of the comforts, if not the necessaries of life, are denied her. "She supports her privations cheerfully," added the Marquise; "her conversation abounds in anecdotes of remarkable people, and she relates them with a vivacity and piquancy peculiar to her, which render her society very amusing and interesting. The humanity, if not the policy, of the Bourbons may be questioned in their leaving the widow of a brave general in a state of poverty that must remind her, with bitterness, of the altered fortunes entailed on her and many others by their restoration." When indemnities were granted to those whom the Revolution, which drove the royal family from France, nearly beggared, it would have been well if a modest competency had been assigned to those whose sons and husbands shed their blood for their country, and helped to achieve for it that military glory which none can deny it. Went over the Luxembourg Palace and Gardens to-day. The only change in the former since I last saw it, is that some pictures, painted by French artists at Rome, and very creditable to them, have been added to its collection. I like these old gardens, with their formal walks and prim _parterres_; I like also the company by which they are chiefly frequented, consisting of old people and young children. Along the walk exposed to the southern aspect, several groups of old men were sauntering, conversing with an animation seldom seen in sexagenarians, except in France; old women, too, many of them holding lapdogs by a riband, and attended by a female servant, were taking their daily walk; while, occasionally, might be seen an elderly couple exhibiting towards each other an assiduity pleasant to behold, displayed by the husband's arranging the shawl or cloak of his wife, or the wife gently brushing away with her glove the silken threads left on his sleeve by its contact with hers. No little portion of the love that united them in youth may still be witnessed in these old couples. Each has lost every trace of the comeliness that first attracted them to each other; but they remember what they were, and memory, gilding the past, shews each to the other, not as they actually are, but as they were many a long year ago. No face, however fair,--not even the blooming one of their favourite granddaughter, seems so lovely to the uxorious old husband as the one he remembers to have been so proud of forty years ago, and which still beams on him with an expression of tenderness that reminds him of its former beauty. And she, too, with what complacency does she listen to his oft-repealed reminiscences of her youthful attractions, and how dear is the bond that still unites them! Plain and uninteresting in the eyes of others, they present only the aspect of age; alas! never lovely: but in them at least other gleams of past good looks recall the past, when each considered the other peerless, though now they alone remember that "such things were, and were most sweet." Their youth and their maturity have been passed together; their joys and their sorrows have been shared, and they are advancing hand in hand towards that rapid descent in the mountain of life, at whose base is the grave, hoping that in death they may not be divided. Who can look at those old couples, and not feel impressed with the sanctity and blessedness of marriage, which, binding two destinies in one, giving the same interests and the same objects of affection to both, secures for each a companionship and a consolation for those days which must come to all, when, fallen into the sere and yellow leaf, the society of the young and gay can no longer charm them, and the present requires the recollections of the past to render it less cheerless; recollections only to be found in those who have grown old together? Yonder old man, leaning on the arm of a middle-aged woman, who seems less like his housekeeper than his domestic tyrant, offers an example of the fate of those who have lived in what is commonly called a state of single blessedness. A youth and maturity of pleasure have been followed by an old age of infirmity. He had a thousand pleasantries ready to utter on the subject of marriage whenever it was mentioned; could cite endless examples of unhappy couples (forgetting to name a single one of the happy); and laughed and shook his head as he declared that _he_ never would be caught. As long as health remained, and that he could pass his evenings in gay society, or at the theatres, he felt not the want of that greatest of all comforts, _home_; a comfort inseparable from a wife to share, as well as to make it. But the first attack of illness that confined him to his room, with no tender hand to smooth his pillow, no gentle voice to inquire into his wants, or to minister to them; no one to anticipate his wishes almost before he had framed them; no loving face to look fondly and anxiously on him; made him feel sensible, that though a bachelor's life of pleasure may pass agreeably enough during the season of health, it is a most cheerless and dreary state of existence when deprived of it. The discovery is, alas! made too late. All that he had ever heard or urged against matrimony applies tenfold to cases where it is contracted in old age. He can still admire youth and beauty, but he knows that with such there can never exist any reciprocity with his own feelings. The young beauty who would barter her charms for his wealth, would be, he knows, no suitable companion for his fire-side; and to wed some staid dame whose youth has been passed with some dear, kind, first husband--of whom, if not often speaking, she might in all human probability be sometimes thinking--has something too repugnant to his feelings to be thought of. An elderly maiden with a lap-dog, or a parrot, would be even more insupportable; for how could one who has never had to consult the pleasure or wishes of aught save self be able to study his? No! it is now too late to think of marriage, and what, therefore, is to be done? In this emergency, a severe attack of rheumatism confines him to his chamber for many days. His valet is found out to be clumsy and awkward in assisting him to put on his flannel gloves; the housekeeper, who is called up to receive instructions about some particular broth that he requires, is asked to officiate, and suggests so many little comforts, and evinces so much sympathy for his sufferings, that she is soon installed as nurse. By administering to his wants, and still more by flattery and obsequiousness, she soon renders herself indispensable to the invalid. She is proclaimed to be a treasure, and her accounts, which hitherto had been sharply scrutinised and severely censured, are henceforth allowed to pass unblamed, and, consequently, soon amount to double the sum which had formerly, and with reason, been found fault with. The slightest symptom of illness is magnified into a serious attack by the supposed affectionate and assiduous nurse, until her master, in compliance with her advice, becomes a confirmed hypochondriac, whom she governs despotically under a show of devoted attachment. She has, by slow but sure degrees, alienated him from all his relatives, and banished from his house the few friends whom she believed possessed any influence over him. Having rendered herself essential to his comfort, she menaces him continually with the threat of leaving his service; and is only induced to remain by a considerable increase to her salary, though not, as she asserts, by any interested motive. She lately informed her master, that she was "very sorry--very sorry, indeed--but it was time for her to secure her future comfort; and M. ----, the rich grocer, had proposed marriage to her, and offered a good settlement. It would be a great grief to her to leave so kind a master, especially as she knew no one to whom she could confide the care of him; but a settlement of 4000 francs a-year was not to be refused, and she might never again receive so good an offer." The proposal of the rich grocer, which never existed but in her own fertile brain, is rejected, and her continuance as housekeeper and nurse secured by a settlement of a similar sum made on her by her master; who congratulates himself on having accomplished so advantageous a bargain, while she is laughing with the valet at his credulity. This same valet, finding her influence to be omnipotent with his master, determines on marrying her secretly, that they may join in plundering the valetudinarian, whose infirmities furnish a perpetual subject for the coarse pleasantries of both these ungrateful menials. She is now giving him his daily walk on the sunny side of the Luxembourg Gardens. See how she turns abruptly down an alley, in despite of his request to continue where he was: but the truth is, her Argus eyes have discovered his niece and her beautiful children walking at a distance; and, as she has not only prevented their admission to his house, but concealed their visits, intercepted their letters, making him believe they are absent from Paris and have forgotten him, she now precludes their meeting; while to his querulous murmurs at being hurried along, she answers that the alley she has taken him to is more sheltered. It is true the invalid sometimes half suspects, not only that he is governed, but somewhat despotically, too, by the worthy and affectionate creature, whose sole study it is to take care of his health. He considers it hard to be debarred from sending for one of his old friends to play a party at picquet, or a game at chess with him, during the long winter evenings; and he thinks it would be pleasanter to have some of his female relatives occasionally to dinner: but as the least hint on these subjects never fails to produce ill-humour on the part of the "good Jeanette," who declares that such unreasonable indulgence would inevitably destroy the precious health of Monsieur, he submits to her will; and while wholly governed by an ignorant and artful servant, can still smile that he is free from being henpecked by a wife. CHAPTER XI. In no part of Paris are so many children to be seen us in the gardens of the Luxembourg. At every step may be encountered groups of playful creatures of every age, from the infant slumbering in its nurse's arms, to the healthful girl holding her little brother or sister by the hand as her little charge toddles along; or the manly boy, who gives his arm to his younger sister with all the air of protection of manhood. What joyous sounds of mirth come from each group--the clear voices ringing pleasantly on the ear, from creatures fair and blooming as the flowers of the rich _parterres_ among which they wander! How each group examines the other--half-disposed to join in each other's sports, but withheld by a vague fear of making the first advances--a fear which indicates that even already civilisation and the artificial habits it engenders, have taught them the restraint it imposes! The nurses, too, scrutinise each other, and their little masters and misses, as they meet. They take in at a glance the toilettes of each, and judge with an extraordinary accuracy the station of life to which they appertain. The child of noble birth is known by the simplicity of its dress and the good manners of its _bonne_; while that of _the parvenu_ is at once recognised by the showiness and expensiveness of its clothes, and the superciliousness of its nurse, who, accustomed to the purse-proud pretensions of her employers, values nothing so much as all the attributes that indicate the possession of wealth. The little children look wistfully at each other every time they meet; then begin to smile, and at length approach, and join, half-timidly, half-laughingly, in each other's sports. The nurses, too, draw near, enter into a conversation, in which each endeavours to insinuate the importance of her young charge, and consequently her own; while the children have already contracted an intimacy, which is exemplified by running hand-in-hand together, their clear jocund voices being mingled. It is a beautiful sight to behold these gay creatures, who have little more than passed the first two or three years of life, with the roses of health glowing on their dimpled cheeks, and the joyousness of infancy sparkling in their eyes. They know nought of existence but its smiles; and, caressed by doating parents, have not a want unsatisfied. Entering life all hope and gaiety, what a contrast do they offer to the groups of old men who must so soon leave it, who are basking in the sunshine so near them! Yet they, too, have had their hours of joyous infancy; and, old and faded as they are, they have been doated on, as they gambolled like the happy little beings they now pause to contemplate. There was something touching in the contrast of youth and age brought thus together, and I thought that more than one of the old men seemed to feel it as they looked on the happy children. I met my new acquaintance, Dr. P----, who was walking with two or three _savans_; and, having spoken to him, he joined us in our promenade, and greatly added to its pleasure by his sensible remarks and by his cheerful tone of mind. He told me that the sight of the fine children daily to be met in the Luxembourg Gardens, was as exhilarating to his spirits as the gay flowers in the _parterre_ and that he had frequently prescribed a walk here to those whose minds stood in need of such a stimulant. The General and Countess d'Orsay arrived yesterday from their _château_, in Franche-Comté. A long correspondence had taught me to appreciate the gifted mind of Madame, who, to solid attainments, joins a sparkling wit and vivacity that render her conversation delightful. The Countess d'Orsay has been a celebrated beauty; and, though a grandmother, still retains considerable traces of it. Her countenance is so _spirituelle_ and piquant, that it gives additional point to the clever things she perpetually utters; and what greatly enhances her attractions is the perfect freedom from any of the airs of a _bel esprit_, and the total exemption from affectation that distinguishes her. General d'Orsay, known from his youth as Le Beau d'Orsay, still justifies the appellation, for he is the handsomest man of his age that I have ever beheld. It is said that when the Emperor Napoleon first saw him, he observed that he would make an admirable model for a Jupiter, so noble and commanding was the character of his beauty. Like most people remarkable for good looks, General d'Orsay is reported to have been wholly free from vanity; to which, perhaps, may be attributed the general assent accorded to his personal attractions which, while universally admitted, excited none of the envy and ill-will which such advantages but too often draw on their possessor. There is a calm and dignified simplicity in the manners of General d'Orsay, that harmonises well with his lofty bearing. It is very gratifying to witness the affection and good intelligence that reign in the domestic circles in France. Grandfathers and grandmothers here meet with an attention from their children and grandchildren, the demonstrations of which are very touching; and I often see gay and brilliant parties abandoned by some of those with whom I am in the habit of daily intercourse, in order that they may pass the evenings with their aged relatives. Frequently do I see the beautiful Duchesse de Guiche enter the _salon_ of her grandmother, sparkling in diamonds, after having hurried away from some splendid _fête_, of which she was the brightest ornament, to spend an hour with her before she retired to rest; and the Countess d'Orsay is so devoted to her mother, that nearly her whole time is passed with her. It is pleasant to see the mother and grandmother inspecting and commenting on the toilette of the lovely daughter, of whom they are so justly proud, while she is wholly occupied in inquiring about the health of each, or answering their questions relative to that of her children. The good and venerable Duc de Gramont examines his daughter-in-law through his eyeglass, and, with an air of paternal affection, observes to General d'Orsay, "How well our daughter looks to-night!" Madame Craufurd, referring to her great age last evening, said to me, and a tear stole down her cheek while she spoke: "Ah, my dear friend! how can I think that I must soon leave all those who love me so much, and whom I so dote on, without bitter regret? Yes, I am too happy here to be as resigned as I ought to be to meet death." Saw Potier in the _Ci-devant Jeune Homme_ last night. It is an excellent piece of acting, from the first scene where he appears in all the infirmity of age, in his night-cap and flannel dressing-gown, to the last, in which he portrays tho would-be young man. His face, his figure, his cough, are inimitable; and when he recounts to his servant the gaieties of the previous night, the hollow cheek, sunken eye, and hurried breathing of the "Ci-devant Jeune Homme" render the scene most impressive. Nothing could be more comic than the metamorphose effected in his appearance by dress, except it were his endeavours to assume an air and countenance suitable to the juvenility of his toilette; while, at intervals, some irrepressible symptom of infirmity reminded the audience of the pangs the effort to appear young inflicted on him. Potier is a finished actor, and leaves nothing to be wished, except that he may long continue to perform and delight his audience as last night. Dined yesterday at the Countess d'Orsay's, with a large family party. The only stranger was Sir Francis Burdett. A most agreeable dinner, followed by a very pleasant evening. I have seldom seen any Englishman enjoy French society as much as the worthy baronet does. He speaks the language with great facility, is well acquainted with its literature, and has none of the prejudices which militate so much against acquiring a perfect knowledge of the manners and customs of a foreign country. French society has decidedly one great superiority over English, and that is its freedom from those topics which too often engross so considerable a portion of male conversation, even in the presence of ladies, in England. I have often passed the evening previously and subsequently to a race, in which many of the men present took a lively interest, without ever hearing it made the subject of conversation. Could this be said of a party in England, on a similar occasion? Nor do the men here talk of their shooting or hunting before women, as with us. This is a great relief, for in England many a woman is doomed to listen to interminable tales of slaughtered grouse, partridges, and pheasants; of hair breadth "'scapes by flood and field," and venturous leaps, the descriptions of which leave one in doubt whether the narrator or his horse be the greater animal of the two, and render the poor listener more fatigued by the recital than either was by the longest chase. A dissertation on the comparative merits of Manton's, Lancaster's, and Moore's guns, and the advantage of percussion locks, it is true, generally diversifies the conversation. Then how edifying it is to hear the pedigrees of horses--the odds for and against the favourite winning such or such a race--the good or bad books of the talkers--the hedging or backing of the betters! Yet all this are women condemned to hear on the eve of a race, or during the shooting or hunting season, should their evil stars bring them into the society of any of the Nimrods or sportsmen of the day, who think it not only allowable to devote nearly all their time to such pursuits, but to talk of little else. The woman who aims at being popular in her county, must not only listen patiently, but evince a lively interest in these _intellectual_ occupations; while, if the truth was confessed, she is thoroughly _ennuyée_ by these details of them: or if not, it must be inferred that she has lost much of the refinement of mind and taste peculiar to the well-educated portion of her sex. I do not object to men liking racing, hunting, and shooting. The first preserves the breed of horses, for which England is so justly celebrated, and hunting keeps up the skill in horsemanship in which our men excel. What I do object to is their making these pursuits the constant topics of conversation before women, instead of selecting those more suitable to the tastes and habits of the latter. There is none of the affectation of avoiding subjects supposed to be uninteresting to women visible in the men here. They do not utter with a smile--half pity, half condescension,--"we must not talk politics before the ladies;" they merely avoid entering into discussions, or exhibiting party spirit, and shew their deference for female society by speaking on literature, on which they politely seem to take for granted that women are well informed. Perhaps this deferential treatment of the gentler sex may not be wholly caused by the good breeding of the men in France; for I strongly suspect that the women here would be very little disposed to submit to the _nonchalance_ that prompts the conduct I have referred to in England, and that any man who would make his horses or his field-sports the topic of discourse in their presence, would soon find himself expelled from their society. Frenchwomen still think, and with reason, that they govern the tone of the circles in which they move, and look with jealousy on any infringement of the respectful attention they consider to be their due. A few nights ago I saw the Duchesse de Guiche, on her return from a reception at court, sparkling in diamonds, and looking so beautiful that she reminded me of Burke's description of the lovely and unfortunate Marie-Antoinette. To-day I thought her still more attractive, when, wearing only a simple white _peignoir_, and her matchless hair bound tightly round her classically shaped head, I saw her enacting the part of _garde-malade_ to her children, who have caught the measles. With a large, and well-chosen nursery-establishment, she would confide her precious charge to no care but her own, and moved from each little white bed to the other with noiseless step and anxious glance, bringing comfort to the dear little invalid in each. No wonder that her children adore her, for never was there so devoted a mother. In the meridian of youth and beauty, and filling so brilliant a position in France, it is touching to witness how wholly engrossed this amiable young woman's thoughts are by her domestic duties. She incites, by sharing, the studies of her boys; and already is her little girl, owing to her mother's judicious system, cited as a model. It was pleasant to see the Duc, when released from his attendance at court, hurrying into the sick chamber of his children, and their languid eyes, lighting up with a momentary animation, and their feverish lips relaxing into a smile, at the sound of his well-known voice. And this is the couple considered to be "the glass of fashion and the mould of form," the observed of all observers, of the courtly circle at Paris! Who could behold them as I have done, in that sick room, without acknowledging that, despite of all that has been said of the deleterious influence of courts on the feelings of those who live much in them, the truly good pass unharmed through the dangerous ordeal? Went to the Théâtre des Nouveautés last night, where I saw _La Maison du Rempart_. The Parisians seem to have decided taste for bringing scenes of riot and disorder on the stage; and the tendency of such exhibitions is any thing but salutary with so inflammable a people, and in times like the present. One of the scenes of _La Maison du Rempart_ represents an armed mob demolishing the house of a citizen--an act of violence that seemed to afford great satisfaction to the majority of the audience; and, though the period represented is that of the _Fronde_, the acts of the rabble strongly assimilated with those of the same class in later times, when the revolution let loose on hapless France the worst of all tyrants--a reckless and sanguinary mob. I cannot help feeling alarmed at the consequences likely to result from such performances. Sparks of fire flung among gunpowder are not more dangerous. Shewing a populace what they can effect by brutal force is a dangerous experiment; it is like letting a tame lion see how easily he could overpower his keepers. Mr. Cuthbert and M. Charles Laffitte dined here yesterday. Both are excellent specimens of their countries; the former being well-informed and agreeable, and the latter possessing all the good sense we believe to be peculiar to an Englishman, with the high breeding that appertains to a thoroughly well-educated Frenchman. The advance of civilization was evident in both these gentlemen--the Englishman speaking French with purity and fluency, and the Frenchman speaking English like a born Briton. Twenty years ago, this would have been considered a very rare occurrence, while now it excites little remark. But it is not alone the languages of the different countries that Mr. Cuthbert and M. Charles Laffitte have acquired, for both are well acquainted with the literature of each, which renders their society very agreeable. Spent last evening in the Rue d'Anjou, where I met Lady Combermere, the Dowager Lady Hawarden, and Mrs. Masters. Lady Combermere is lively and agreeable, _un peu romanesque_, which gives great originality to her conversation, and sings Mrs. Arkwright's beautiful ballads with great feeling. Mr. Charles Grant[4] dined here yesterday. He is a very sensible man, possessing a vast fund of general information, with gentle and highly-polished manners. What a charm there is in agreeable manners, and how soon one feels at ease with those who possess them! Spent, or mis-spent, a great portion of the day in visiting the curiosity shops on the _Quai Voltaire_, and came away from them with a lighter purse than I entered. There is no resisting, at least I find it so, the exquisite _porcelaine de Sèvres_, off which the dainty dames of the reign of Louis the Fourteenth feasted, or which held their _bouquets_, or _pot pourri_. An _étui of_ gold set with oriental agates and brilliants, and a _flacon_ of rock crystal, both of which once appertained to Madame de Sévigné, vanquished my prudence. Would that with the possession of these articles, often used by her, I could also inherit the matchless grace with which her pen could invest every subject it touched! But, alas! it is easier to acquire the beautiful _bijouterie_, rendered still more valuable by having belonged to celebrated people, than the talent that gained their celebrity; and so I must be content with inhaling _esprit de rose_ from the _flacon_ of Madame de Sévigné, without aspiring to any portion of the _esprit_ for which she was so distinguished. I am now rich in the possession of objects once belonging to remarkable women, and I am not a little content with my acquisitions. I can boast the gold and enamelled pincushion of Madame de Maintenon, heart-shaped, and stuck as full of pins as the hearts of the French Protestants were with thorns by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes; to which she is said to have so greatly contributed by her counsel to her infatuated lover, Louis the Fourteenth. I can indulge in a pinch of snuff from the _tabatière_ of the Marquise de Rambouillet, hold my court-plaster in the _boîte à mouches_ of Ninon de l'Enclos, and cut ribands with the scissors of Madame de Deffand. This desire of obtaining objects that have belonged to celebrated people may be, and often is, considered puerile; but confess to the weakness, and the contemplation of the little memorials I have named awakens recollections in my mind fraught with interest. I can fancy Madame de Sévigné, who was as amiable as she was clever, and whose tenderness towards her daughter is demonstrated so naturally and touchingly in the letters she addressed to her, holding the _flacon_ now mine to the nostrils of Madame de Grignan, in whose health she was always so much more interested than in her own. I can see in my mind's eye the precise and demure Madame de Maintenon taking a pin from the very pincushion now before me, to prevent the opening of her kerchief, and so conceal even her throat from the prying eyes of the aged voluptuary, whose passions the wily prude is said to have excited by a concealment of a portion of her person that had, in all probability, ceased to possess charms enough to produce this effect, if revealed. This extreme reserve on the part of the mature coquette evinced a profound knowledge of mankind, and, above all, of him on whom she practised her arts. The profuse display of the bust and shoulders in those days, when the ladies of the court left so little to the imagination of the amorous monarch on whose heart so many of them had designs, must have impaired the effect meant to have been achieved by the indelicate exposure; for--hear it ye fair dames, with whose snowy busts and dimpled shoulders the eyes of your male acquaintance are as familiar as with your faces!--the charms of nature, however beautiful, fall short of the ideal perfection accorded to them by the imagination, when unseen. The clever Maintenon, aware of this fact, of which the less wise of her sex are ignorant or forgetful, afforded a striking contrast in her dress to the women around her, and piquing first the curiosity, and then the passions, of the old libertine, acquired an influence over him when she had long passed the meridian of her personal attractions, which youthful beauties, who left him no room to doubt their charms, or to exaggerate them as imagination is prone to do, could never accomplish. This very pincushion, with its red velvet heart stuck with pins, was probably a gift from the enamoured Louis, and meant to be symbolical of the state of his own; which, in hardness, it might be truly said to resemble. It may have often been placed on her table when Maintenon was paying the penalty of her hard-earned greatness by the painful task of endeavouring--as she acknowledged--to amuse a man who was no longer amusable. Could it speak, it might relate the wearisome hours passed in a palace (for the demon _Ennui_ cannot be expelled even from the most brilliant; nay, prefers, it is said, to select them for his abode), and we should learn, that while an object of envy to thousands, the mistress, or unacknowledged wife of _le Grand Monarque_, was but little more happy than the widow of Scarron when steeped in poverty. Madame de Maintenon discovered what hundreds before and since have done--that splendour and greatness cannot confer happiness; and, while trying to amuse a man who, though possessed of sovereign power, has lost all sense of enjoyment, must have reverted, perhaps with a sigh, to the little chamber in which she so long soothed the sick bed of the witty octogenarian, Scarron; who, gay and cheerful to the last, could make her smile by his sprightly and _spirituelles_ sallies, which neither the evils of poverty nor pain could subdue. Perhaps this pincushion has lain on her table when Madame de Maintenon listened to the animating conversation of Racine, or heard him read aloud, with that spirit and deep pathos for which his reading was so remarkable, his _Esther_ and _Alhalie_, previously to their performance at St.-Cyr. That she did not make his peace with the king, when he offended him by writing an essay to prove that long wars, however likely to reflect glory on a sovereign, were sure to entail misery on his subjects, shews that either her influence over the mind of Louis was much less powerful than has been believed, or that she was deficient in the feelings that must have prompted her to exert it by pleading for him. The ungenerous conduct of the king in banishing from his court a man whose genius shed a purer lustre over it than all the battles Boileau has sung, and for a cause that merited praise instead of displeasure, has always appeared to me to be indicative of great meanness as well as hardness of heart; and while lamenting the weakness of Racine, originating in a morbid sensibility that rendered his disgrace at court so painful and humiliating to the poet as to cause his death, I am still less disposed to pardon the sovereign that could thus excite into undue action a sensibility, the effects of which led its victim to the grave. The diamond-mounted _tabatière_ now on my table once occupied a place on that of the Marquise de Rambouillet, in that hôtel so celebrated, not only for the efforts made by its coterie towards refining the manners and morals of her day, but the language also, until the affectation to which its members carried their notions of purity, exposed them to a ridicule that tended to subvert the influence they had previously exercised over society. Molière--the inimitable Molière--may have been permitted the high distinction of taking a pinch of snuff from it, while planning his _Précieuses Ridicules_, which, _malgré_ his disingenuous disavowal of the satire being aimed at the Hôtel Rambouillet, evidently found its subject there. I cannot look at the snuff-box without being reminded of the brilliant circle which its former mistress assembled around her, and among which Molière had such excellent opportunities of studying the peculiarities of the class he subsequently painted. Little did its members imagine, when he was admitted to it, the use he would make of the privilege; and great must have been their surprise and mortification, though not avowed, at the first representation of the _Précieuses Ridicules_, in which many of them must have discovered the resemblance to themselves, though the clever author professed only to ridicule their imitators. _Les Femmes Savantes_, though produced many years subsequently, also found the originals of its characters in the same source whence Molière painted _Les Précieuses Ridicules_. I can fancy him slily listening to the theme proposed to the assembly by Mademoiselle Scudéry--the _Sarraïdes_, as she was styled--"Whether a lover jealous, a lover despised, a lover separated from the object of his tenderness, or him who has lost her by death, was to be esteemed the most unhappy." At a later period of his life, Molière might have solved the question from bitter personal experience, for few ever suffered more from the pangs of jealousy, and assuredly no one has painted with such vigour--though the comic often prevails over the serious in his delineations--the effects of a passion any thing but comic to him. Strange power of genius, to make others laugh at incidents which had often tormented himself, and to be able to give humour to characters in various comedies, actuated by the feelings to which he had so frequently been a victim! I can picture to myself the fair _Julie d'Angennes_, who bestowed not her hand on the _Duc de Montausier_ until he had served as many years in seeking it as Jacob had served to gain that of Rachel, and until she had passed her thirtieth year (in order that his passion should become as purified from all grossness, as was the language spoken among the circle in which she lived), receiving with dignified reserve the finely painted flowers and poems to illustrate them, which formed the celebrated _Guirlande de Julie_, presented to her by her courtly admirer. I see pass before me the fair and elegant dames of that galaxy of wit and beauty, Mesdames de Longueville, Lafayette, and de Sévigné, fluttering their fans as they listened and replied to the gallant compliments of Voiture, Ménage, Chapelain, Desmarets, or De Réaux, or to the _spirituelle causerie_ of Chamfort. What a pity that a society, no less useful than brilliant at its commencement, should have degenerated into a coterie, remarkable at last but for its fantastic and false notions of refinement, exhibited in a manner that deserved the ridicule it called down! CHAPTER XII. Spent last evening in the Rue d'Anjou: met there la Marquise de Pouleprie, and the usual _habitués_. She is a delightful person; for age has neither chilled the warmth of her heart, nor impaired the vivacity of her manners. I had heard much of her; for she is greatly beloved by the Duchesse de Guiche and all the De Gramont family; and she, knowing their partiality to me, treated me rather as an old than as a new acquaintance. Talking of old times, to which the Duc de Gramont reverted, the Marquise mentioned having seen the celebrated Madame du Barry in the garden at Versailles, when she (the Marquise) was a very young girl. She described her as having a most animated and pleasant countenance, _un petit nez retroussé_, brilliant eyes, full red lips, and as being altogether a very attractive person. The Marquise de Pouleprie accompanied the French royal family to England, and remained with them there during the emigration. She told me that once going through the streets of London in a carriage, with the French king, during an election at Westminster, the mob, ignorant of his rank, insisted that he and his servants should take off their hats, and cry out "Long live Sir Francis Burdett!" which his majesty did with great good humour, and laughed heartily after. Went last night to see Mademoiselle Mars, in "Valérie." It was a finished performance, and worthy of her high reputation. Never was there so musical a voice as hers! Every tone of it goes direct to the heart, and its intonations soothe and charm the ear. Her countenance, too, is peculiarly expressive. Even when her eyes, in the _rôle_ she enacted last night, were fixed, and supposed to be sightless, her countenance was still beautiful. There is a harmony in its various expressions that accords perfectly with her clear, soft, and liquid voice; and the united effect of both these attractions renders her irresistible. Never did Art so strongly resemble Nature as in the acting of this admirable _artiste_. She identifies herself so completely with the part she performs, that she not only believes herself for the time being the heroine she represents, but makes others do so too. There was not a dry eye in the whole of the female part of the audience last night--a homage to her power that no other actress on the French stage could now command. The style, too, of Mademoiselle Mars' acting is the most difficult of all; because there is no exaggeration, no violence in it. The same difference exists between it and that of other actresses, as between a highly finished portrait and a glaringly coloured transparency. The feminine, the graceful, and the natural, are never lost sight of for a moment. The French are admirable critics of acting, and are keenly alive to the beauties of a chaste and finished style, like that of Mademoiselle Mars. In Paris there is no playing to the galleries, and for a simple reason:--the occupants of the galleries here are as fastidious as those of the boxes, and any thing like outraging nature would be censured by them: whereas, in other countries, the broad and the exaggerated almost invariably find favour with the gods. The same pure and refined taste that characterises the acting of Mademoiselle Mars presides also over her toilette, which is always appropriate and becoming. Accustomed to the agreeable mixture of literary men in London society, I observe, with regret, their absence in that of Paris. I have repeatedly questioned people why this is, but have never been able to obtain a satisfactory answer. It tells much against the good taste of those who can give the tone to society here, that literary men should be left out of it; and if the latter _will_ not mingle with the aristocratic circles they are to blame, for the union of both is advantageous to the interests of each. Parisian society is very exclusive, and is divided into small coteries, into which a stranger finds it difficult to become initiated. Large routes are rare, and not at all suited to the tastes of the French people; who comment with merriment, if not with ridicule, on the evening parties in London, where the rooms being too small to contain half the guests invited, the stairs and ante-rooms are filled by a crowd, in which not only the power of conversing, but almost of respiring is impeded. The French ladies attribute the want of freshness so remarkable in the toilettes of Englishwomen, to their crowded routes, and the knowledge of its being impossible for a robe, or at least of a greater portion of one than covers a bust, to be seen; which induces the fair wearers to economise, by rarely indulging in new dresses. At Paris certain ladies of distinction open their _salons_, on one evening of each week, to a circle of their acquaintances, not too numerous to banish that ease and confidence which form the delight of society. Each lady takes an evening for her receptions, and no one interferes with her arrangements by giving a party on the same night. The individuals of each circle are thus in the habit of being continually in each other's society; consequently the etiquette and formality, so _gênant_ among acquaintances who seldom meet, are banished. To preserve the charm of these unceremonious _réunions_, strangers are seldom admitted to them, but are invited to the balls, dinners, or large parties, where they see French people _en grande lenue_, both in dress and manner, instead of penetrating into the more agreeable parties to which I have referred, where the graceful _négligé_ of a _demi-toilette_ prevails, and the lively _causerie_ of the _habitués de la maison_ supersedes the constraint of ceremony. Such a society is precisely the sort of one that literary men would, I should suppose, like to mingle in, to unbend their minds from graver studies, and yet not pass their time unprofitably; for in it, politics, literature, and the fine arts, generally furnish the topics of conversation: from which, however, the warmth of discussion, which too frequently renders politics a prohibited subject, is excluded, or the pedantry that sometimes spoils literary _causerie_ is banished. French people, male and female, talk well; give their opinions with readiness and vivacity; often striking out ideas as original as they are brilliant; highly suggestive to more profound thinkers, but which they dispense with as much prodigality as a spendthrift throws away his small coin, conscious of having more at his disposal. Quick of perception, they jump, rather than march, to a conclusion, at which an Englishman or a German would arrive leisurely, enabled to tell all the particulars of the route, but which the Frenchman would know little of from having arrived by some shorter road. This quickness of perception exempts them from the necessity of devoting much of the time and study which the English or Germans employ in forming opinions, but it also precludes their being able to reason as justly or as gravely on those they form. Walked in the gardens of the Tuileries to-day. What a contrast their frequenters offer to those of the Luxembourg! In the Tuileries, the promenaders look as if they only walked there to display their tasteful dresses and pretty persons. The women eye each other as they pass, and can tell at a glance whether their respective _chapeaux_ have come from the _atelier_ of Herbault, or the less _rechercé magasin de modes_ of some more humble _modiste_. How rapidly can they see whether the Cashmere shawl of some passing dame owes its rich but sober tints to an Indian loom, or to the fabric of M. Ternaux, who so skilfully imitates the exotic luxury; and what a difference does the circumstance make in their estimation of the wearer! The beauty of a woman, however great it may be, excites less envy in the minds of her own sex in France, than does the possession of a fine Cashmere, or a _garniture_ of real Russian sable--objects of general desire to every Parisian _belle_. I met few handsome women to-day, but these few were remarkably striking. In Kensington Gardens I should have encountered thrice as many; but there I should also have seen more plain ones than here. Not that Englishwomen _en masse_ are not better-looking than the French, but that these last are so skilful in concealing defects, and revealing beauties by the appropriateness and good taste in their choice of dress, that even the plain cease to appear so; and many a woman looks piquant, if not pretty, at Paris, thanks to her _modiste_, her _couturière_, and her _cordonnier_, who, without their "artful aid," would be plain indeed. It is pleasant to behold groups of well-dressed women walking, as only French women ever do walk, nimbly moving their little feet _bien chaussé_, and with an air half timid, half _espiègle_, that elicits the admiration they affect to avoid. The rich and varied material of their robes, the pretty _chapeaux_, from which peep forth such coquettish glances, the modest assurance--for their self-possession amounts precisely to that--and the ease and elegance of their carriage, give them attractions we might seek for in vain in the women of other countries, however superior these last may be in beauty of complexion or roundness of _contour_, for which French women in general are not remarkable. The men who frequent the gardens of the Tuileries are of a different order to those met with in the Luxembourg. They consist chiefly of military men and young fashionables, who go to admire the pretty women, and elderly and middle-aged ones, who meet in knots and talk politics with all the animation peculiar to their nation. Children do not abound in the walks here, as in the Luxembourg; and those to be seen are evidently brought by some fond mother, proud of exhibiting her boys and girls in their smart dresses. The Tuileries Gardens, so beautiful in summer, are not without their attractions in winter. The trees, though leafless, look well, rearing their tall branches towards the clear sky, and the statues and vases seen through vistas of evergreen shrubs, with the gilded railing which gives back the rays of the bright, though cold sun, and the rich velvets of every hue in which the women are enveloped, giving them the appearance of moving _parterres_ of dahlias, all render the scene a very exhilarating one to the spirits. I observe a difference in the usages _de moeurs_ at Paris, and in those of London, of which an ignorance might lead to give offence. In England, a lady is expected to bow to a gentleman before he presumes to do so to her, thus leaving her the choice of acknowledging his acquaintance, or not; but in France it is otherwise, for a man takes off his hat to every woman whom he has ever met in society, although he does not address her, unless she encourages him to do so. In Paris, if two men are walking or riding together, and one of them bows to a lady of his acquaintance, the other also takes off his hat, as a mark of respect to the lady known to his friend, although he is not acquainted with her. The mode of salutation is also much more deferential towards women in France than in England. The hat is held a second longer off the head, the bow is lower, and the smile of recognition is more _amiable_, by which, I mean, that it is meant to display the pleasure experienced by the meeting. It is true that the really well-bred Englishmen are not to be surpassed in politeness and good manners by those of any other country, but all are not such; and I have seen instances of men in London acknowledging the presence of ladies, by merely touching, instead of taking off, their hats when bowing to them; and though I accounted for this solecism in good breeding by the belief that it proceeded from the persons practising it wearing wigs, I discovered that there was not even so good an excuse as the fear of deranging them, and that their incivility proceeded from ignorance, or _nonchalance_, while the glum countenance of him who bowed betrayed rather a regret for the necessity of touching his beaver, than a pleasure at meeting her for whom the salute was intended. Time flies away rapidly here, and its flight seems to me to mark two distinct states of existence. My mornings are devoted wholly to reading history, poetry, or _belles lettres_, which abstract me so completely from the actual present to the past, that the hours so disposed of appear to be the actual life, and those given up to society the shadowy and unreal. This forcible contrast between the two portions of the same day, gives charms to both, though I confess the hours passed in my library are those which leave behind them the pleasantest reflections. I experienced this sentiment when in the hey-day of youth, and surrounded by some of the most gifted persons in England; but now, as age advances, the love of solitude and repose increases, and a life spent in study appears to me to be the one of all others the most desirable, as the enjoyment of the best thoughts of the best authors is preferable even to their conversation, could it be had, and, consequently to that of the cleverest men to be met with in society. Some pleasant people dined here yesterday. Among them was Colonel Caradoc, the son of our old friend Lord Howden. He possesses great and versatile information, is good-looking, well-bred, and has superior abilities; in short, he has all the means, and appliances to boot, to make a distinguished figure, in life, if he lacks not the ambition and energy to use them; but, born to station and fortune, he may want the incitement which the absence of these advantages furnishes, and be content to enjoy the good he already has, instead of seeking greater distinction. Colonel Caradoc's conversation is brilliant and epigrammatic; and if occasionally a too evident consciousness of his own powers is suffered to be revealed in it, those who know it to be well-founded will pardon his self-complacency, and not join with the persons, and they are not few, whose _amour-propre_ is wounded by the display of his, and who question, what really is not questionable, the foundation on which his pretensions are based. The clever, like the handsome, to be pardoned for being so, should affect a humility they are but too seldom in the habit of feeling; and to acquire popularity must appear unconscious of meriting it. This is one of the many penalties entailed on the gifted in mind or person. _January 1st_, 1829.--There is always something grave, if not awful, in the opening of a new year; for who knows what may occur to render it memorable for ever! If the bygone one has been marked by aught sad, the arrival of the new reminds one of the lapse of time; and though the destroyer brings patience, we sigh to think that we may have new occasions for its difficult exercise. Who can forbear from trembling lest the opening year may find us at its close with a lessened circle. Some, now dear and confided in, may become estranged, or one dearer than life may be snatched away whose place never can be supplied! The thought is too painful to be borne, and makes one look around with increased affection on those dear to us. The custom prevalent at Paris of offering an exchange of gifts on the first day of the new year was, perhaps, originally intended to banish the melancholy reflections such an epoch is calculated to awaken. My tables are so crowded with gifts that I might set up a _petit Dunkerque_ of my own, for not a single friend has omitted to send me a present. These gifts are to be acknowledged by ones of similar value, and I must go and put my taste to the test in selecting _cadeaux_ to send in return. Spent several hours yesterday in the gallery of the Louvre. The collection of antiquities, though a very rich, one, dwindles into insignificance when compared with that of the Vatican, and the halls in which it is arranged appear mean in the eyes of those accustomed to see the numerous and splendid ones of the Roman edifice. Nevertheless, I felt much satisfaction in lounging through groups of statues, and busts of the remarkable men and women of antiquity, with the countenances of many of whom I had made myself familiar in the Vatican, the Musée of the Capitol, or in the collection at Naples, where facsimiles of several of them are to be found. Nor had I less pleasure in contemplating the personifications of the _beau idéal_ of the ancient sculptors, exhibited in their gods and goddesses, in whose faultless faces the expression of all passion seems to have been carefully avoided. Whether this peculiarity is to be accounted for by the desire of the artist to signify the superiority of the Pagan divinities over mortals, by this absence of any trace of earthly feelings, or whether it was thought that any decided expression might deteriorate from the character of repose and beauty that marks the works of the great sculptors of antiquity, I know not, but the effect produced on my mind by the contemplation of these calm and beautiful faces, has something so soothing in it, that I can well imagine with what pleasure those engaged in the turmoils of war, or the scarcely less exciting arena of politics, in former ages, must have turned from their mundane cares to look on these personations of their fabled deities, whose tranquil beauty forms so soothing a contrast to mortal toils. I have observed this calmness of expression in the faces of many of the most celebrated statues of antiquity, in the Aristides at Naples, I remember being struck with it, and noticing that he who was banished through the envy excited by his being styled the Just, was represented as unmoved as if the injustice of his countrymen no more affected the even tenour of his mind, than the passions of mortals disturb those of the mythological divinities of the ancients. A long residence in Italy, and a habit of frequenting the galleries containing the finest works of art there, engender a love of sculpture and painting, that renders it not only a luxury but almost a necessary of life to pass some hours occasionally among the all but breathing marbles and glorious pictures bequeathed to posterity by the mighty artists of old. I love to pass such hours alone, or in the society of some one as partial, but more skilled in such studies than myself; and such a companion I have found in the Baron de Cailleux, an old acquaintance, and now Under-Director of the Musée, whose knowledge of the fine arts equals his love for them. The contemplation of the _chefs-d'�uvre_ of the old masters begets a tender melancholy in the mind, that is not without a charm for those addicted to it. These stand the results of long lives devoted to the developement of the genius that embodied these inspirations, and left to the world the fruit of hours of toil and seclusion,--hours snatched from the tempting pleasures that cease not to court the senses, but which they who laboured for posterity resisted. The long vigils, the solitary days, the hopes and fears, the fears more frequent than the hopes, the depression of spirits, and the injustice or the indifference of contemporaries, endured by all who have ever devoted their lives to art, are present to my mind when I behold the great works of other times. What cheered these men of genius during their toils and enabled them to finish their glorious works? Was it not the hope that from posterity they would meet with the admiration, the sympathy, denied them by their contemporaries?--as the prisoner in his gloomy dungeon, refused all pity, seeks consolation by tracing a few lines on its dreary walls, in appeal to the sympathy of some future inhabitant who may be doomed to take his place. I seem to be paying a portion of the debt due by posterity to those who laboured long and painfully for it, when I stand rapt in admiration before the works of the great masters of the olden time, my heart touched with a lively sympathy for their destinies; nor can I look on the glorious faces or glowing landscapes that remain to us, evincing the triumph of genius over even time itself, by preserving on canvass the semblance of all that charmed in nature, without experiencing the sentiment so naturally and beautifully expressed in the celebrated picture, by Nicolas Poussin, of a touching scene in Arcadia, in which is a tomb near to which two shepherds are reading the inscription. "I, too, was an Arcadian." Yes, that which delighted the artists of old, they have transmitted to us with a tender confidence that when contemplating these bequests we would remember with sympathy that they, like us, had felt the charms they delineated. CHAPTER XIII. Went to see the Hôtel d'Orsay, to-day. Even in its ruin it still retains many of the vestiges of its former splendour. The _salle à manger_, for the decoration of which its owner bought, and had conveyed from Rome, the columns of the Temple of Nero, is now--hear it, ye who have taste!--converted into a stable; the _salons_, once filled with the most precious works of art, are now crumbled to decay, and the vast garden where bloomed the rarest exotics, and in which were several of the statues that are now in the gardens of the Tuileries, is now turned into paddocks for horses. It made me sad to look at this scene of devastation, the result of a revolution which plunged so many noble families from almost boundless wealth into comparative poverty, and scattered collections of the works of art that whole lives were passed in forming. I remember Mr. Millingen, the antiquary, telling me in Italy that when yet little more than a boy he was taken to view the Hôtel d'Orsay, then one of the most magnificent houses in Paris, and containing the finest collection of pictures and statues, and that its splendour made such an impression on his mind that he had never forgotten it. With an admirable taste and a princely fortune, Count d'Orsay spared neither trouble nor expense to render his house the focus of all that was rich and rare; and, with a spirit that does not always animate the possessor of rare works of art, he opened it to the young artists of the day, who were permitted to study in its gallery and _salons_. In the slate drawing-rooms a fanciful notion of the Count's was carried into effect and was greatly admired, though, I believe, owing to the great expense, the mode was not adopted in other houses, namely, on the folding-doors of the suite being thrown open to admit company, certain pedals connected with them were put in motion, and a strain of music was produced, which announced the presence of guests, and the doors of each of the drawing-rooms when opened took up the air, and continued it until closed. Many of the old _noblesse_ have been describing the splendour of the Hôtel d'Orsay to me since I have been at Paris, and the Duc de Talleyrand said it almost realised the notion of a fairy palace. Could the owner who expended such vast sums on its decoration, behold it in its present ruin, he could never recognise it; but such would be the case with many a one whose stately palaces became the prey of a furious rabble, let loose to pillage by a revolution--that most fearful of all calamities, pestilence only excepted, that can befall a country. General Ornano, his stepson Count Waleski, M. Achille La Marre, General d'Orsay, and Mr. Francis Baring dined here yesterday. General Ornano is agreeable and well-mannered. We had music in the evening, and the lively and pretty Madame la H---- came. She is greatly admired, and no wonder; for she is not only handsome, but clever and piquant. Hers does not appear to be a well-assorted marriage, for M. la H---- is grave, if not austere, in his manners, while she is full of gaiety and vivacity, the demonstrations of which seem to give him any thing but pleasure. I know not which is most to be pitied, a saturnine husband whose gravity is only increased by the gaiety of his wife, or the gay wife whose exuberance of spirits finds no sympathy in the Mentor-like husband. Half, if not all, the unhappy marriages, accounted for by incompatibility of humour, might with more correctness be attributed to a total misunderstanding of each other's characters and dispositions in the parties who drag a heavy and galling chain through life, the links of which might be rendered light and easy to be borne, if the wearers took but half the pains to comprehend each other's peculiarities that they in general do to reproach or to resent the annoyance these peculiarities occasion them. An austere man would learn that the gaiety of his wife was as natural and excusable a peculiarity in her, as was his gravity in him, and consequently would not resent it; and the lively wife would view the saturnine humour of her husband as a malady demanding forbearance and kindness. The indissolubility of marriage, so often urged as an additional cause for aggravating the sense of annoyance experienced by those wedded but unsuited to each other, is, in my opinion, one of the strongest motives for using every endeavour to render the union supportable, if not agreeable. If a dwelling known to be unalienable has some defect which makes it unsuited to the taste of its owner, he either ameliorates it, or, if that be impracticable, he adopts the resolution of supporting its inconvenience with patience; so should a philosophical mind bear all that displeases in a union in which even the most fortunate find "something to pity or forgive." It is unfortunate that this same philosophy, considered so excellent a panacea for enabling us to bear ills, should be so rarely used that people can seldom judge of its efficacy when required! Saw _la Gazza Ladra_ last night, in which Malibran enacted "Ninetta," and added new laurels to the wreath accorded her by public opinion. Her singing in the duo, in the prison scene, was one of the most touching performances I ever heard; and her acting gave a fearful reality to the picture. I have been reading the _Calamities of Authors_ all the morning, and find I like the book even better on a second perusal--no mean praise, for the first greatly pleased me. So it is with all the works of Mr. D'Israeli, who writes _con amore_; and not only with a profound knowledge of his subjects, but with a deep sympathy, which peeps forth at every line, for the literary men whose troubles or peculiarities he describes. His must be a fine nature--a contemplative mind imbued with a true love of literature, and a kindness of heart that melts and makes those of others melt, for the evils to which its votaries are exposed. How much are those who like reading, but are too idle for research, indebted to Mr. D'Israeli, who has given them the precious result of a long life of study, so admirably digested and beautifully conveyed that in a few volumes are condensed a mass of the most valuable information! I never peruse a production of his without longing to be personally acquainted with him; and, though we never met, I entertain a regard and respect for him, induced by the many pleasant hours his works have afforded me. Met the Princesse de Talleyrand last night at Madame C----'s. I felt curious to see this lady, of whom I had heard such various reports; and, as usual, found her very different to the descriptions I had received. She came _en princesse_, attended by two _dames de compagnie_, and a gentleman who acted as _chambellan_. Though her _embonpoint_ has not only destroyed her shape but has also deteriorated her face, the small features of which seem imbued in a mask much too fleshy for their proportions, it is easy to see that in her youth she must have been handsome. Her complexion is fair; her hair, judging from the eye-brows and eye-lashes, must have been very light; her eyes are blue; her nose, _retroussé_; her mouth small, with full lips; and the expression of her countenance is agreeable, though not intellectual. In her demeanour there is an evident assumption of dignity, which, falling short of the aim, gives an ungraceful stiffness to her appearance. Her dress was rich but suited to her age, which I should pronounce to be about sixty. Her manner has the formality peculiar to those conscious of occupying a higher station than their birth or education entitles them to hold; and this consciousness gives an air of constraint and reserve that curiously contrasts with the natural good-humour and _naïveté_ that are frequently perceptible in her. If ignorant--as is asserted--there is no symptom of it in her language. To be sure, she says little; but that little is expressed with propriety: and if reserved, she is scrupulously polite. Her _dames de compagnie_ and _chambellan_ treat her with profound respect, and she acknowledges their attentions with civility. To sum up all, the impression made upon me by the Princesse Talleyrand was, that she differed in no way from any other princess I had ever met, except by a greater degree of reserve and formality than were in general evinced by them. I could not help smiling inwardly when looking at her, as I remembered Baron Denon's amusing story of the mistake she once made. When the Baron's work on Egypt was the topic of general conversation, and the hôtel of the Prince Talleyrand was the rendezvous of the most distinguished persons of both sexes at Paris, Denon being engaged to dine there one day, the Prince wished the Princesse to read a few pages of the book, in order that she might be enabled to say something complimentary on it to the author. He consequently ordered his librarian to send the work to her apartment on the morning of the day of the dinner; but, unfortunately, at the same time also commanded that a copy of _Robinson Crusoe_ should be sent to a young lady, a _protégée_ of hers, who resided in the hôtel. The Baron Denon's work, through mistake, was given to Mademoiselle, and _Robinson Crusoe_ was delivered to the Princesse, who rapidly looked through its pages. The seat of honour at table being assigned to the Baron, the Princesse, mindful of her husband's wishes, had no sooner eaten her soup than, smiling graciously, she thanked Denon for the pleasure which the perusal of his work had afforded her. The author was pleased, and told her how much he felt honoured; but judge of his astonishment, and the dismay of the Prince Talleyrand, when the Princesse exclaimed. "Yes, Monsieur le Baron, your work has delighted me; but I am longing to know what has become of your poor man Friday, about whom I feel such an interest?" Denon used to recount this anecdote with great spirit, confessing at the same time that his _amour propre_ as an author had been for a moment flattered by the commendation, even of a person universally known to be incompetent to pronounce on the merit of his book. The Emperor Napoleon heard this story, and made Baron Denon repeat it to him, laughing immoderately all the time, and frequently after he would, when he saw Denon, inquire "how was poor Friday?" When the second restoration of the Bourbons took place, the Prince Talleyrand, anxious to separate from the Princesse, and to get her out of his house, induced her, under the pretence that a change of air was absolutely necessary for her health, to go to England for some months. She had only been there a few weeks when a confidential friend at Paris wrote to inform her that from certain rumours afloat it was quite clear the Prince did not intend her to take up her abode again in his house, and advised her to return without delay. The Princesse instantly adopted this counsel, and arrived most unexpectedly in the Rue St.-Florentin, to the alarm and astonishment of the whole establishment there, who had been taught not to look for her entering the hôtel any more; and to the utter dismay of the Prince, who, however anxious to be separated from her, dreaded a scene of violence still more than he wished to be released from his conjugal chains. She forced her admission to his presence, overwhelmed him with reproaches, and it required the exercise of all his diplomatic skill to allay the storm he had raised. The affair became the general topic of conversation at Paris; and when, the day after the event, the Prince waited on Louis the Eighteenth on affairs of state, the King, who loved a joke, congratulated him on the unexpected arrival of Madame la Princesse. Prince Talleyrand felt the sarcasm, and noticed it by one of those smiles so peculiar to him--a shake of the head and shrug of the shoulders, while he uttered "_Que voulez-vous, Sire, chacun a son vingt Mars_?" referring to the unexpected arrival of the Emperor Napoleon. I have been reading _Yes and No_, a very clever and, interesting novel from the pen of Lord Normanby. His writings evince great knowledge of the world, the work-o'-day world, as well as the _beau monde_; yet there is no bitterness in his satire, which is always just and happily pointed. His style, too, is easy, fluent, and polished, without being disfigured by the slightest affectation or pedantry. Had a long visit to-day from Dr. P----, who has lent me the works of Bichat and Broussais, which he recommends me to read. He is a most agreeable companion, and as vivacious as if he was only twenty. He reminds me sometimes of my old friend Lady Dysart, whose juvenility of mind and manner always pleased as much as it surprised me. Old people like these appear to forget, as they are forgotten by, time; and, like trees marked to be cut down, but which escape the memory of the marker, they continue to flourish though the lines traced for their destruction are visible. The more I see of Count Waleski the more I am pleased with him. He has an acute mind, great quickness of perception, and exceedingly good manners. I always consider it a good sign of a young man to be partial to the society of the old, and I observe that Count Waleski evinces a preference for that of men old enough to be his father. People are not generally aware of the advantages which agreeable manners confer, and the influence they exercise over society. I have seen great abilities fail in producing the effect accomplished by prepossessing manners, which are even more serviceable to their owner than is a fine countenance, that best of all letters of recommendation. Half the unpopularity of people proceeds from a disagreeable manner; and though we may be aware of the good qualities of persons who have this defect, we cannot conceal from ourselves that it must always originate in a want of the desire to please--a want, the evidence of which cannot fail to wound the self-love of those who detect, and indispose them towards those who betray it. By a disagreeable manner I do not mean the awkwardness often arising from timidity, or the too great familiarity originating in untutored good nature: but I refer to a superciliousness, or coldness, that marks a sense of superiority; or to a habit of contradiction, that renders society what it should never be--an arena of debate. How injudicious are those who defend their absent friends, when accused of having disagreeable manners, by saying, as I have often heard persons say--"I assure you that he or she can be very agreeable with those he or she likes:" an assertion which, by implying that the person accused did not like those who complained of the bad manner, converts them from simple disapprovers into something approaching to enemies. I had once occasion to notice the fine tact of a friend of mine, who, hearing a person he greatly esteemed censured for his disagreeable manner, answered, "Yes, it is very true: with a thousand good qualities his manner is very objectionable, even with those he likes best: it is his misfortune, and he cannot help it; but those who know him well will pardon it." This candid admission of what could not be refuted, checked all further censure at the moment, whereas an injudicious defence would have lengthened it; and I heard some of the individuals then present assert, a few days subsequently, that Lord ---- was not, after all, by any means to be disliked: for that his manners were equally objectionable even with his most esteemed friends, and consequently meant nothing uncivil to strangers. I tried this soothing system the other day in defence of ----, when a whole circle were attacking him for his rude habit of contradicting, by asserting, with a grave face, that he only contradicted those whose talents he suspected, in order that he might draw them out in discussion. ---- came in soon after, and it was positively amusing to observe how much better people bore his contradiction. Madame ---- only smiled when, having asserted that it was a remarkably fine day, he declared it to be abominable. The Duc de ---- looked gracious when, having repeated some political news, ---- said he could prove the contrary to be the fact; and the Comtesse de ---- looked archly round when, having extravagantly praised a new novel, he pronounced that it was the worst of all the bad ones of the author. ---- will become a popular man, and have to thank me for it. How angry would he be if he knew the service I have rendered him, and how quickly would he contradict all I said in his favour! ---- reminds me of the Englishman of whom it was said, that so great was his love of contradiction, that when the hour of the night and state of the weather were announced by the watchman beneath his window, he used to get out of bed and raise both his casement and his voice to protest against the accuracy of the statement. Read _Pelham_; commenced it yesterday, and concluded it to-day. It is a new style of novel, and, like all that is very clever, will lead to many copyists. The writer possesses a felicitous fluency of language, profound and just thoughts, and a knowledge of the world rarely acquired at his age, for I am told he is a very young man. This work combines pointed and pungent satire on the follies of society, a deep vein of elevated sentiment, and a train of philosophical thinking, seldom, if ever, allied to the tenderness which pierces through the sentimental part. The opening reminded me of that of _Anastatius_, without being in the slightest degree an imitation; and many of the passages recalled Voltaire, by their wit and terseness. I, who don't like reading novels, heard so much in favour of this one--for all Paris talk of it--that I broke through a resolution formed since I read the dull book of ----, to read no more; and I am glad I did so, for this clever book has greatly interested me. Oh, the misery of having stupid books presented to one by the author! ----, who is experienced in such matters, told me that the best plan in such cases was, to acknowledge the receipt of the book the same day it arrived, and civilly express the pleasure anticipated from its perusal, by which means the necessity of praising a bad book was avoided. This system has, however, been so generally adopted of late, that authors are dissatisfied with it; and, consequently, a good-natured person often feels compelled to write commendations of books which he or she is far from approving; and which, though it costs an effort to write, are far from satisfying the _exigeant amour propre_ peculiar to authors. I remember once being present when the merits of a book were canvassed. One person declared it to be insufferably dull, when another, who had published some novel, observed, with rather a supercilious air, "You know not how difficult it is to write a good book!" "I suppose it must be very difficult," was the answer, "seeing how long and how often you have attempted, without succeeding." How these letters of commendations of bad books, extorted from those to whom the authors present them, will rise up in judgment against the writers, when they are "gone to that bourne whence no traveller returns!" I tremble to think of it! What severe animadversions on the bad taste, or the want of candour of the writers, and all because they were too good-natured to give pain to the authors! Went to the Théâtre Italien last night, and saw Malibran in _la Cenerentola_, in which her acting was no less admirable than her singing. She sang "Non più Mesta" better than I ever heard it before, and astonished as well as delighted the audience. She has a soul and spirit in her style that carries away her hearers, as no other singer does, and excites an enthusiasm seldom, if ever, equalled. Malibran seems to be as little mistress of her own emotions when singing, as those are whom her thrilling voice melts into softness, or wakes into passion. Every tone is pregnant with feeling, and every glance and attitude instinct with truthful emotion. A custom prevails in France, which is not practised in Italy, or in England, namely, _les lettres de faire part_, sent to announce deaths, marriages, and births, to the circle of acquaintances of the parties. This formality is never omitted, and these printed letters are sent out to all on the visiting lists, except relations, or very intimate friends, to whom autograph letters are addressed. Another custom also prevails, which is that of sending _bonbons_ to the friends and acquaintance of the _accouchée_. These sweet proofs _d'amitié_ come pouring in frequently, and I confess I do not dislike the usage. The godfather always sends the _bonbons_ and a trinket to the mother of the child, and also presents the godmother with a _corbeille_, in which are some dozens of gloves, two or three handsome fans, embroidered purses, a smelling-bottle, and a _vinaigrette_; and she offers him, _en revanche_, a cane, buttons, or a pin--in short, some present. The _corbeilles_ given to godmothers are often very expensive, being suited to the rank of the parties; so that in Paris the compliment of being selected as a godfather entails no trifling expense on the chosen. The great prices given for wedding _trousseaux_ in France, even by those who are not rich, surprise me, I confess. They contain a superabundance of every article supposed to be necessary for the toilette of a _nouvelle mariée_, from the rich robes of velvet down to the simple _peignoir de matin_. Dresses of every description and material, and for all seasons, are found in it. Cloaks, furs, Cashmere shawls, and all that is required for night or day use, are liberally supplied; indeed, so much so, that to see one of these _trousseaux_, one might imagine the person for whom it was intended was going to pass her life in some far-distant clime, where there would be no hope of finding similar articles, if ever wanted. Then comes the _corbeille de mariage_, well stored with the finest laces, the most delicately embroidered pocket handkerchiefs, veils, _fichus, chemisettes_ and _canezous_, trinkets, smelling-bottles, fans, _vinaigrettes_, gloves, garters; and though last, not least, a purse well filled to meet the wants or wishes of the bride,--a judicious attention never omitted. These _trousseaux_ and _corbeilles_ are placed in a _salon_, and are exhibited to the friends the two or three days previously to the wedding; and the view of them often sends young maidens--ay, and elderly ones, too--away with an anxious desire to enter that holy state which ensures so many treasures. It is not fair to hold out such temptations to the unmarried, and may be the cause why they are generally so desirous to quit the pale of single blessedness. CHAPTER XIV. Count Charles de Mornay dined here yesterday, _en famille_. How clever and amusing he is! Even in his liveliest sallies there is the evidence of a mind that can reflect deeply, as well as clothe its thoughts in the happiest language. To be witty, yet thoroughly good-natured as he is, never exercising his wit at the expense of others, indicates no less kindness of heart than talent. I know few things more agreeable than to hear him and his cousin open the armoury of their wit, which, like summer lightning, flashes rapidly and brightly, but never wounds. In England, we are apt to consider wit and satire as nearly synonymous; for we hear of the clever sayings of our reputed wits, in nine cases out of ten, allied to some ill-natured _bon mot_, or pointed epigram. In France this is not the case, for some of the most witty men, and women too, whom I ever knew, are as remarkable for their good nature as for their cleverness. That wit which needs not the spur of malice is certainly the best, and is most frequently met with at Paris. Went last evening to see Mademoiselle Marsin _Henri III_. Her acting was, as usual, inimitable. I was disappointed in the piece, of which I had heard much praise. It is what the French call _décousue_, but is interesting as a picture of the manners of the times which it represents. There is no want of action or bustle in it; on the contrary, it abounds in incidents: but they are, for the most part, puerile. As in our own _Othello_, a pocket handkerchief leads to the _dénouement_, reminding one of the truth of the verse,-- "What great events from trivial causes spring!" The whole court of Henry the Third are brought on the scene, and with an attention to costume to be found only in a Parisian theatre. The strict attention to costume, and to all the other accessories appertaining to the epoch, _mise en scène_, is very advantageous to the pieces brought out here; but, even should they fail to give or preserve an illusion, it is always highly interesting as offering a _tableau du costume, et des moeurs des siècles passés_. The crowd brought on the stage in _Henri III_, though it adds to the splendour of the scenic effect, produces a confusion in the plot; as does also the vast number of names and titles introduced during the scenes, which fatigue the attention and defy the memory of the spectators. The fierce "Duc de Guise," the slave at once of two passions, generally considered to be the most incompatible, Love and Ambition, is made to commit strange inconsistencies. "Saïnt-Mégrin" excites less interest than he ought; but the "Duchesse de Guise," whose beautiful arm plays a _grand rôle_, must, as played by Mademoiselle Mars, have conquered all hearts _vi et armis_. _Henri III_ has the most brilliant success, and, in despite of some faults, is full of genius, and the language is vigorous. Perhaps its very faults are to be attributed to an excess, rather than to a want, of power, and to a mind overflowing with a knowledge of the times he wished to represent; which led to a dilution of the strength of his scenes, by crowding into them too much extraneous matter. A curious incident occurred during the representation. Two ladies--_gentlewomen_ they could not be correctly styled--being seated in the _balcon_, were brought in closer contact, whether by the crowd, or otherwise, than was agreeable to them. From remonstrances they proceeded to murmurs, not only "loud, but deep," and from murmurs--"tell it not in Ascalon, publish it not in Gath"--to violent pushing, and, at length, to blows. The audience were, as well they might be, shocked; the _Gendarmes_ interfered, and order was soon restored. The extreme propriety of conduct that invariably prevails in a Parisian audience, and more especially in the female portion of it, renders the circumstance I have narrated remarkable. Met Lady G., Lady H., and the usual circle of _habitués_ last night at Madame C----'s. The first-mentioned lady surprises me every time I meet her, by the exaggeration of her sentiment and the romantic notions she entertains. Love, eternal love, is her favourite topic of conversation; a topic unsuited to discussion at her age and in her position. To hear a woman, no longer young, talking passionately of love, has something so absurd in it, that I am pained for Lady C., who is really a kind-hearted and amiable woman. Her definitions of the passion, and descriptions of its effects, remind me of the themes furnished by Scudéry, and are as tiresome as the tales of a traveller recounted some fifty years after he has made his voyage. Lady H., who is older than Lady G., opens wide her round eyes, laughs, and exclaims, "Oh, dear!--how very strange!--well, that is so funny!" until Lady C. draws up with all the dignity of a heroine of romance, and asserts that "few, very few, are capable of either feeling or comprehending the passion." A fortunate state for those who are no longer able to inspire it! To grow old gracefully, proves no ordinary powers of mind, more especially in one who has been (oh, what an odious phrase that same _has been_ is!) a beauty. Well has it been observed by a French writer, that women no longer young and handsome should forget that they ever were so. I have been reading Wordsworth's poems again, and I verily believe for the fiftieth time. They contain a mine of lofty, beautiful, and natural thoughts. I never peruse them without feeling proud that England has such a poet, and without finding a love for the pure and the noble increased in my mind. Talk of the ideal in poetry? what is it in comparison with the positive and the natural, of which he gives such exquisite delineations, lifting his readers from Nature up to Nature's God? How eloquently does he portray the feelings awakened by fine scenery, and the thoughts to which it gives birth! Wordsworth is, _par excellence_, the Poet of Religion, for his productions fill the mind with pure and holy aspirations. Fortunate is the poet who has quaffed inspiration in the purest of all its sources, Nature; and fortunate is the land that claims him for her own. The influence exercised by courts over the habits of subjects, though carried to a less extent in our days than in past times, is still obvious at Paris in the display of religion assumed by the upper class. Coroneted carriages are to be seen every day at the doors of certain churches, which it is not very uncharitable to suppose might be less frequently beheld there if the King, Madame la Dauphine, and the Dauphin were less religious; and hands that have wielded a sword in many a well-fought battle-field, and hold the _bâton de maréchal_ as a reward, may now be seen bearing a lighted _cierge_ in some pious procession,--the military air of the intrepid warrior lost in the humility of the devotee. This general assumption of religion on the part of the courtiers reminds me forcibly of a passage in a poetical epistle, written, too, by a sovereign, who, unlike many monarchs, seemed to have had a due appreciation of the proneness of subjects to adopt the opinions of their rulers. "L'exemple d'un monarque ordonne et se fait suivre: Quand Auguste buvait, la Pologne était ivre; Et quand Louis le Grand brûlait d'un tendre amour, Paris devint Cythère, et tout suivait sa cour; Lorsqu'il devint dévot, ardent à la prière, Ses lâches courtisans marmottaient leur bréviaire." Should the Duc de Bordeaux arrive at the throne while yet in the hey-day of youth, and with the gaiety that generally accompanies that period of life, it will be amusing to witness the metamorphosis that will be effected in these same courtiers. There are doubtless many, and I am acquainted with some persons here, whose religion is as sincere and as fervent as is that of the royal personages of the court they frequent; but I confess that I doubt whether the general mass of the upper class would _afficher_ their piety as much as they now do if their regular attendance at divine worship was less likely to be known at the Tuileries. The influence of a pious sovereign over the religious feelings of his people must be highly beneficial when they feel, instead of affecting to do so, the sanctity they profess. When those in the possession of supreme power, and all the advantages it is supposed to confer, turn from the enjoyment of them to seek support from Heaven to meet the doom allotted to kings as well as subjects, the example is most salutary; for the piety of the rich and great is even more edifying than that of the poor and lowly, who are supposed to seek consolation which the prosperous are imagined not to require. The Duchesse de Berri is very popular at Paris, and deservedly so. Her natural gaiety harmonises With that of this lively people; and her love of the fine arts, and the liberal patronage she extends to them, gratify the Parisians. I heard an anecdote of her to-day from an authority which leaves no doubt of its truth. Having commanded a brilliant _fête_, a heavy fall of snow drew from one of her courtiers a remark that the extreme cold would impede the pleasure of the guests, who would suffer from it in coming and departing, "True," replied the Duchesse; "but if they in comfortable carriages, and enveloped in furs and cashmeres, can suffer from the severity of the weather, what must the poor endure?" And she instantly ordered a large sum of money to be forthwith distributed, to supply fuel to the indigent, saying--"While I dance, I shall have the pleasure of thinking the poor are not without the means of warmth." Received a long and delightful letter from Walter Savage Landor. His is one of the most original minds I have ever encountered, and is joined to one of the finest natures. Living in the delightful solitude he has chosen near Florence, his time is passed in reading, reflecting, and writing; a life so blameless and so happy, that the philosophers of old, with whose thoughts his mind is so richly imbued, might, if envy could enter into such hearts, entertain it towards him. Landor is a happy example of the effect of retirement on a great mind. Free from the interruptions which, if they harass not, at least impede the continuous flow of thought in those who live much in society, his mind has developed itself boldly, and acquired a vigour at which, perhaps, it might never have arrived, had he been compelled to live in a crowded city, chafed by the contact with minds of an inferior calibre. _The Imaginary Conversations_ could never have been written amid the vexatious interruptions incidental to one mingling much in the scenes of busy life; for the voices of the sages of old with whom, beneath his own vines, Landor loves to commune, would have been inaudible in the turmoil of a populous town, and their secrets would not have been revealed to him. The friction of society may animate the man of talent into its exercise, but I am persuaded that solitude is essential to the perfect developement of genius. A letter from Sir William Gell, and, like all his letters, very amusing. Yet how different from Landor's! Both written beneath the sunny sky of Italy, both scholars, and nearly of the same age, nevertheless, how widely different are their letters! Gell's filled with lively and comic details of persons, seldom fail to make me laugh; Landor's, wholly devoted to literary subjects, set me thinking. Cell would die of _ennui_ in the solitude Landor has selected; Landor would be chafed into irritation in the constant routine of visiting and dining-out in which Gell finds amusement. But here am I attempting to draw a parallel where none can be established, for Landor is a man of genius, Gell a man of talent. Was at the Opera last night, and saw the Duc d'Orléans there with his family. They are a fine-looking flock, male and female, and looked as happy as they are said to be. I know no position more enviable than that of the Duc d'Orléans. Blessed with health, a princely revenue, an admirable wife, fine children, and many friends, he can have nothing to desire but a continuance of these blessings. Having experienced adversity, and nobly endured the ordeal, he must feel with an increased zest the happiness now accorded to him,--a happiness that seems so full and complete, that I can fancy no addition possible to it. His vast wealth may enable him to exercise a generosity that even sovereigns can rarely practise; his exalted rank, while it places him near a throne, precludes him from the eating cares that never fail to attend even the most solidly established one, and leaves him free to enjoy the happiness of domestic life in a family circle said to contain every ingredient for creating it. The fondest husband, father, and brother, he is fortunate beyond most men in his domestic relations, and furnishes to France a bright example of irreproachable conduct and well-merited felicity in them all. In the possession of so many blessings, I should, were I in his position (and he probably does, or he is not the sensible man I take him to be), tremble at the possibility of any event that could call him from the calm enjoyment of them to the giddy height and uneasy seat of a throne. The present king is in the vale of years, the Dauphin not young, and the Duc de Bordeaux is but a child. Should any thing occur to this child, then would the Duc d'Orléans stand in direct line after the Dauphin. I thought of this contingency last night as I looked on the happy family, and felt assured that were the Duc d'Orléans called to reign in France, these same faces would look less cloudless than they did then, for I am one of those who believe that "uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." With a good sense that characterises the Duc d'Orléans, he has sent his sons to public schools--a measure well calculated not only to give them a just knowledge of the world, so often denied to princes, but to render them popular. The Duc de Chartres is an exceedingly handsome young man, and his brothers are fine youths. The Princesses are brought up immediately under the eye of their mother, who is allowed by every one to be a faultless model for her sex. The Duc d'Orléans is said to be wholly engrossed in the future prospects of his children, and in insuring, as far as human foresight can insure, their prosperity. I have been reading Shelley's works, in which I have found many beautiful thoughts. This man of genius--for decidedly such he was--has not yet been rendered justice to; the errors that shroud his poetry, as vapours rising from too rich a soil spread a mist that obstructs our view of the flowers that also spring from the same bed, have hindered us from appreciating the many beauties that abound in Shelley's writings. Alarmed by the poison that lurks in some of his wild speculations, we have slighted the antidote to be found in many others of them, and heaped obloquy on the fame of a poet whose genius and kindness of heart should have insured our pity for the errors of his creed. He who was all charity has found none in the judgment pronounced on him by his contemporaries; but posterity will be more just. The wild theories and fanciful opinions of Shelley, on subjects too sacred to be approached lightly, carry with them their own condemnation; and so preclude the evil which pernicious doctrines, more logically reasoned, might produce on weak minds. His theories are vague, dreamy, always erroneous, and often absurd: but the imagination of the poet, and the tenderness of heart of the man, plead for pardon for the false doctrines of the would-be philosopher; and those who most admire his poetry will be the least disposed to tolerate his anti-religious principles. As a proof that his life was far from being in accordance with his false creed, he enjoyed, up to his death, the friendship of some of the most excellent men, who deplored his errors but who loved and valued him. William Spencer, the poet, dined here yesterday. Alas! he has "fallen into the sere and yellow leaf," for though sometimes uttering brilliant thoughts, they are "like angel visits, few and far between;" and total silence, or half-incoherent rhapsodies, mark the intervals. This melancholy change is accounted for by the effects of an indulgence in wine, had recourse to in consequence of depression of spirits. Nor is this pernicious indulgence confined to the evening, for at a _déjeûner à la fourchette_ at two o'clock, enough wine is drunk to dull his faculties for the rest of the day. What an unpoetical close to a life once so brilliant! Alas, alas, for poor human nature! when, even though illumined by the ethereal spark, it can thus sully its higher destiny. I thought of the many fanciful and graceful poems so often perused with pleasure, written by Mr. Spencer amid the brilliant _fêtes_ in which he formerly passed his nights, and where he often found his inspirations. His was ever a courtly Muse, but without the hoop and train--a ball-room _belle_, with alternate smiles and sentimentality, and witty withal. No out-bursting of passion, or touch of deep pathos, interrupted the equanimity of feeling of those who perused Spencer's verses; yet was their absence unmissed, for the fancy, wit, and sentiment that marked them all, and the graceful ease of the versification, rendered them precisely what they were intended for,--_les vers de société_, the fitting volume elegantly bound to be placed in the _boudoir_. And there sat the pet poet of gilded _salons_, whose sparkling sallies could once delight the fastidious circles in which he moved. His once bright eyes, glazed and lustreless, his cheeks sunken and pale, seeming only conscious of the presence of those around him when offered champagne, the excitement of which for a few brief moments produced some flashing _bon mot à propos de rien_ passing at the time, after which his spirits subsided even more rapidly than did the bubbles of the wine that had given them their short excitement. It made me sad to contemplate this wreck; but most of those around him appeared unconscious of there being any thing remarkable in his demeanour. They had not known him in his better days. I am often amused, and sometimes half-vexed by witnessing the prejudices that still exist in France with regard to the English. These prejudices prevail in all ranks, and are, I am disposed to think, incurable. They extend to trivial, as well as to more grave matters, and influence the opinions pronounced on all subjects. An example of this prejudice occurred a few weeks ago, when one of our most admired _belles_ from London having arrived at Paris, her personal appearance was much canvassed. One person found her too tall, another discovered that she had too much _embonpoint_, and a third said her feet were much too large. A Frenchman, when appealed to for his opinion, declared "_Elle est très-bien pour une Anglaise_." I ought to add, that there was no English person present when he made this ungallant speech, which was repeated to me by a French lady, who laughed heartily at his notion. If an Englishwoman enters a glover's, or shoemaker's shop, these worthies will only shew her the largest gloves or shoes they have in their _magasins_, so persuaded are they that she cannot have a small hand or foot; and when they find their wares too large, and are compelled to search for the smallest size, they seem discomposed as well as surprised, and inform the lady that they had no notion "_une dame anglaise_ could want small gloves or shoes." That an Englishwoman can be witty, or brilliant in conversation, the French either doubt or profess to doubt; but if convinced against their will they exclaim, "_C'est drôle, mais madame a l'esprit éminemment français_." Now this no Englishwoman has, or, in my opinion, can have; for it is peculiar, half-natural and half-acquired. Conversation, in France, is an art successfully studied; to excel in which, not only much natural talent is required, but great fluency and a happy choice of words are indispensable. No one in Parisian society speaks ill, and many possess a readiness of wit, and a facility of turning it to account, that I have never seen exemplified in women of other countries. A Frenchwoman talks well on every subject, from those of the most grave political importance, to the _dernière mode_. Her talent in this art is daily exercised, and consequently becomes perfected; while an Englishwoman, with more various and solid attainments, rarely if ever, arrives at the ease and self-confidence which would enable her to bring the treasures with which her mind is stored into play. So generally is the art of conversation cultivated in France, that even those with abilities that rise not beyond mediocrity can take their parts in it, not only without exposing the poverty of their intellects, but with even a show of talent that often imposes on strangers. An Englishwoman, more concentrated in her feelings as well as in her pursuits, seldom devotes the time given by Frenchwomen to the superficial acquisition of a versatility of knowledge, which, though it enables _them_ to converse fluently on various subjects, _she_ would dread entering on, unless well versed in. My fair compatriots have consequently fewer topics, even if they had equal talent, to converse on; so that the _esprit_ styled, _par excellence, l'esprit éminemment français_, is precisely that to which we can urge the fewest pretensions. This does not, however, dispose me to depreciate a talent, or art, for art it may be called, that renders society in France not only so brilliant but so agreeable, and which is attended with the salutary effect of banishing the ill-natured observations and personal remarks which too often supply the place of more harmless topics with us. CHAPTER XV. Much as I deplore some of the consequences of the Revolution in France, and the atrocities by which it was stained, it is impossible not to admit the great and salutary change effected in the habits and feelings of the people since that event. Who can live on terms of intimacy with the French, without being struck by the difference between those of our time, and those of whom we read previously to that epoch? The system of education is totally different. The habits of domestic life are wholly changed. The relations between husband and wife, and parents and children, have assumed another character, by which the bonds of affection and mutual dependances are drawn more closely together; and _home_, sweet _home_, the focus of domestic love, said to have been once an unknown blessing, at least among the _haute noblesse_, is now endeared by the discharge of reciprocal duties and warm sympathies. It is impossible to doubt but that the Revolution of 1789, and the terrible scenes in the reign of terror which followed it, operated in producing the change to which I have referred. It found the greater portion of the _noblesse_ luxuriating in pleasure, and thinking only of selfish, if not of criminal indulgence, in pursuits equally marked by puerility and vice. The corruption of the regency planted the seeds of vice in French morals, and they yielded a plentiful harvest. How well has St.-Évremond described that epoch in his playful, but sarcastic verses!-- "Une politique indulgente, De notre nature innocente, Favorisait tous les désirs; Tout goût paraissait légitime, La douce erreur ne s'appelait point crime, Les vices délicats se nommalent des plaisirs." But it was reserved for the reign of Louis the Fifteenth to develope still more extensively the corruption planted by his predecessor. The influence exercised on society by the baleful example of his court had not yet ceased, and time had not been allowed for the reign of the mild monarch who succeeded that gross voluptuary to work the reform in manners, if not in morals, which his own personal habits were so well calculated to produce. It required the terrible lesson given by the Revolution to awaken the natural feelings of affection that had so long slumbered supinely in the enervated hearts of the higher classes in France, corrupted by long habits of indulgence in selfish gratifications. The lesson at once awoke even the most callous; while those, and there were many such, who required it not, furnished the noblest examples of high courage and self-devotion to the objects dear to them. In exile and in poverty, when all extraneous sources of consolation were denied them, those who if still plunged in pleasure and splendour might have remained insensible to the blessings of family ties, now turned to them with the yearning fondness with which a last comfort is clasped, and became sensible how little they had hitherto estimated them. Once awakened from their too long and torpid slumber, the hearts purified by affliction learned to appreciate the blessings still left them, and from the fearful epoch of the Revolution a gradual change may be traced in the habits and feelings of the French people. Terrible has been the expiation of their former errors, but admirable has been the result; for nowhere can be now found more devoted parents, more dutiful children, or more attached relatives, than among the French _noblesse_. If the lesson afforded by the Revolution to the upper class has been attended with a salutary effect, it has been scarcely less advantageous to the middle and lower; for it has taught them the dangers to be apprehended from the state of anarchy that ever follows on the heels of popular convulsions, exposing even those who participated in them to infinitely worse evils than those from which they hoped to escape by a subversion of the legitimate government. These reflections have been suggested by a description given to me, by one who mixed much in Parisian society previously to the Revolution, of the habits, modes, and usages of the _haute noblesse_ of that period, and who is deeply sensible of the present regeneration. This person, than whom a more impartial recorder of the events of that epoch cannot be found, assured me that the accounts given in the memoirs and publications of the state of society at that epoch were by no means exaggerated, and that the domestic habits and affections at present so universally cultivated in France were, if not unknown, at least neglected. Married people looked not to each other for happiness, and sought the aggrandizement, and not the felicity, of their children. The acquisition of wealth and splendour and the enjoyment of pleasure occupied their thoughts, and those parents who secured these advantages for their offspring, however they might have neglected to instil sentiments of morality and religion into their minds, believed that they had fully discharged their duty towards them. It was the want of natural affection between parents and children that led to the cynical observation uttered by a French philosopher of that day, who explained the partiality of grandfathers and grandmothers towards their grandchildren, by saying these last were the enemies of their enemies,--a reflection founded on the grossest selfishness. The habit of judging persons and things superficially, is one of the defects that most frequently strike me in the Parisians. This defect arises not from a want of quickness of apprehension, but has its source in the vivacity peculiar to them, which precludes their bestowing sufficient time to form an accurate opinion on what they pronounce. Prone to judge from the exterior, rather than to study the interior qualifications of those with whom they come in contact, the person who is perfectly well-dressed and well-mannered will be better received than he who, however highly recommended for mental superiority or fine qualities, happens to be ill-dressed, or troubled with _mauvaise honte_. A woman, if ever so handsome, who is not dressed _à la mode_, will be pronounced plain in a Parisian _salon_; while a really plain woman wearing a robe made by Victorine and a cap by Herbault, will be considered _très-bien, ou au moins bien gentille_. The person who can converse fluently on all the ordinary topics, though never uttering a single sentiment or opinion worth remembering, will be more highly thought of than the one who, with a mind abounding with knowledge, only speaks to elicit or convey information. Talent, to be appreciated in France, must be--like the wares in its shops--fully displayed; the French give no credit for what is kept in reserve. I have been reading _Devereux_, and like it infinitely,--even more than _Pelham_, which I estimated very highly. There is more thought and reflection in it, and the sentiments bear the stamp of a profound and elevated mind. The novels of this writer produce a totally different effect on me to that exercised by the works of other authors; they amuse less than they make me think. Other novels banish thought, and interest me only in the fate of the actors; but these awaken a train of reflection that often withdraws me from the story, leaving me deeply impressed with the truth, beauty, and originality of the thoughts with which every page is pregnant. All in Paris are talking of the _esclandre_ of the late trial in London; and the comments made on it by the French prove how different are the views of morality taken by them and us. Conversing with some ladies on this subject last night, they asserted that the infrequency of elopements in France proved the superiority of morals of the French, and that few examples ever occurred of a woman being so lost to virtue as to desert her children and abandon her home. "But if she should have rendered herself unworthy of any longer being the companion of her children, the partner of her home," asked one of the circle, "would it be more moral to remain under the roof she had dishonoured, and with the husband she had betrayed, than to fly, and so incur the penalty she had drawn on her head?" They were of opinion that the elopement was the most criminal part of the affair, and that Lady ---- was less culpable than many other ladies, because she had not fled; and, consequently, that elopements proved a greater demoralisation than the sinful _liaisons_ carried on without them. Lady C---- endeavoured to prove that the flight frequently originated in a latent sense of honour and shame, which rendered the presence of the deceived husband and innocent children insufferable to her whose indulgence of a guilty passion had caused her to forfeit her right to the conjugal home; but they could not comprehend this, and persisted in thinking the woman who fled with her lover more guilty than her who remained under the roof of the husband she deceived. One thing is quite clear, which is, that the woman who feels she dare not meet her wronged husband and children, if she dishonours them, will be more deterred from sin by the consciousness of the necessity of flight, which it imposes, than will be the one who sees no such necessity, and who dreads not the penalty she may be tempted to incur. Lady C---- maintained that elopements are not a fair criterion for judging of the morality of a country; for that she who sins and flies is less hardened in guilt than she who remains and deceives: and the example is also less pernicious, as the one who has forfeited her place in society serves as a beacon to warn others; while she whose errors are known, yet still retains hers, is a dangerous instance of the indulgence afforded to hardened duplicity. It is not the horror of guilt, but the dread of its exposure, that operates on the generality of minds; and this is not always sufficient to deter from sin. Les Dames de B---- dined with us yesterday. They are very clever and amusing, and, what is better, are excellent women. Their attachment to each other, and devotion to their nephew, are edifying; and he appears worthy of it. Left an orphan when yet an infant, these sisters adopted their nephew, and for his sake have refused many advantageous offers of marriage, devoting themselves to forwarding his interests and insuring him their inheritance. They have shared his studies, taken part in his success, and entered into his pains and pleasures, made his friends theirs, and theirs his; no wonder, then, that he loves them so fondly, and is never happier than with them, taking a lively interest in all their pursuits. These good and warm-hearted women are accused of being enthusiasts, and romantic. People say that at their age it is odd, if not absurd, to indulge in such exaggerated notions of attachment; nay more, to give such disinterested proofs of it. They may well smile at such remarks, while conscious that their devotion to their nephew has not only secured his happiness, but constitutes their own; and that the warmth of affection for which they are censured, cheers the winter of their lives and diffuses a comfort over their existence unknown to the selfish mortals who live only for self. They talked to me last night of the happiness they anticipated in seeing their nephew married. "He is so good, so excellent, that the person he selects cannot fail to love him fondly," said La Chanoinesse; "and we will love her so dearly for ensuring his happiness," added the other sister. Who could know these two estimable women, without acknowledging how harsh and unjust are often the sweeping censures pronounced on those who are termed old maids?--a class in whose breasts the affections instinct in woman, not being exercised by conjugal or maternal ties, expand into some other channel; and, if denied some dear object on which to place them, expends them on the domestic animals with which, in default of more rational favourites, they surround themselves. Les Dames de B----, happier than many of the spinsters of their age, have an estimable object to bestow their affections on; but those who are less fortunate should rather excite our pity than ridicule, for many and severe must have been the trials of that heart which turns at last, _dans le besoin d'aimer_, to the bird, dog, or cat, that renders solitude less lonely. The difference between servitude in England and in France often strikes me, and more especially when I hear the frequent complaints made by English people of the insolence and familiarity of French servants. Unaccustomed to hear a servant reply to any censure passed on him, the English are apt to consider his doing so as a want of respect or subordination, though a French servant does not even dream that he is guilty of either when, according to the general habit of his class and country, he attempts an exculpation not always satisfactory to his employer, however it may be to himself. A French master listens to the explanation patiently, or at least without any demonstration of anger, unless he finds it is not based on truth, when he reprehends the servant in a manner that satisfies the latter that all future attempts to avoid blame by misrepresentation will be unavailing. French servants imagine that they have the right to explain, and their employers do not deny it; consequently, when they change a French for an English master, they continue the same tone and manner to which they have been used, and are not a little surprised to find themselves considered guilty of impertinence. A French master and mistress issue their orders to their domestics with much more familiarity than the English do; take a lively interest in their welfare and happiness; advise them about their private concerns; inquire into the cause of any depression of spirits, or symptom of ill health they may observe, and make themselves acquainted with the circumstances of those in their establishment. This system lessens the distance maintained between masters and servants, but does not really diminish the respect entertained by the latter towards their employers, who generally find around them humble friends, instead of, as with us, cold and calculating dependents, who repay our _hauteur_ by a total indifference to our interests, and, while evincing all the external appearance of profound respect, entertain little of the true feeling of it to their masters. Treating our servants as if they were automatons created solely for our use, and who, being paid a certain remuneration for their services, have no claim on us for kindness or sympathy, is a system very injurious to their morals and our own interests, and requires an amelioration. But while I deprecate the tone of familiarity that so frequently shocks the untravelled English in the treatment of French employers to their servants, I should like to see more kindness of manner shewn by the English to theirs. Nowhere are servants so well paid, clothed, fed, and lodged, as with us, and nowhere are they said to feel so little attachment to their masters; which can only be accounted for by the erroneous system to which I have referred. ---- came to see me to-day. He talked politics, and I am afraid went away shocked at perceiving how little interest I took in them. I like not political subjects in England, and avoid them whenever I can; but here I feel very much about them, as the Irishman is said to have felt when told that the house he was living in was on fire, and he answered "Sure, what's that to me!--I am only a lodger!" ---- told me that France is in a very dangerous state; the people discontented, etc. etc. So I have heard every time I have visited Paris for the last ten years; and as to the people being discontented, when were they otherwise I should like to know? Never, at least since I have been acquainted with them; and it will require a sovereign such as France has not yet known to satisfy a people so versatile and excitable. Charles the Tenth is not popular. His religious turn, far from conciliating the respect or confidence of his subjects, tends only to awaken their suspicions of his being influenced by the Jesuits--a suspicion fraught with evil, if not danger, to him. Strange to say, all admit that France has not been so prosperous for years as at present. Its people are rapidly acquiring a love of commerce, and the wealth that springs from it, which induces me to imagine that they would not be disposed to risk the advantages they possess by any measure likely to subvert the present state of things. Nevertheless, more than one alarmist like ---- shake their heads and look solemn, foretelling that affairs cannot long go on as they are. Of one thing I am convinced, and that is, that no sovereign, whatever may be his merits, can long remain popular in France; and that no prosperity, however brilliant, can prevent the people from those _émeutes_ into which their excitable temperaments, rather than any real cause for discontent, hurry them. These _émeutes_, too, are less dangerous than we are led to think. They are safety-valves by which the exuberant spirits of the French people escape; and their national vanity, being satisfied with the display of their force, soon subside into tranquillity, if not aroused into protracted violence by unwise demonstrations of coercion. The two eldest sons of the Duc and Duchesse de Guiche have entered the College of Ste.-Barbe. This is a great trial to their mother, from whom they had never previously been separated a single day. Well might she be proud of them, on hearing the just eulogiums pronounced on the progress in their studies while under the paternal roof; for never did parents devote themselves more to the improvement of their children than the Duc and Duchesse de Guiche have done, and never did children offer a fairer prospect of rewarding their parents than do theirs. It would have furnished a fine subject for a painter to see this beautiful woman, still in the zenith of her youth and charms, walking between these two noble boys, whose personal beauty is as remarkable as that of their parents, as she accompanied them to the college. The group reminded me of Cornelia and her sons, for there was the same classic _tournure_ of heads and profiles, and the same elevated character of _spirituelle_ beauty, that painters and sculptors always bestow on the young Roman matron and the Gracchi. The Duc seemed impressed with a sentiment almost amounting to solemnity as he conducted his sons to Ste.-Barbe. He thought, probably, of the difference between their boyhood and his own, passed in a foreign land and in exile; while they, brought up in the bosom of a happy home, have now left it for the first time. Well has he taught them to love the land of their birth, for even now their youthful hearts are filled with patriotic and chivalrous feelings! It would be fortunate, indeed, for the King of France if he had many such men as the Duc de Guiche around him--men with enlightened minds, who have profited by the lessons of adversity, and kept pace with the rapidly advancing knowledge of the times to which they belong. Painful, indeed, would be the position of this excellent man should any circumstances occur that would place the royal family in jeopardy, for he is too sensible not to be aware of the errors that might lead to such a crisis, and too loyal not to share the perils he could not ward off; though he will never be among those who would incur them, for no one is more impressed with the necessity of justice and impartiality than he is. CHAPTER XVI. The approach of spring is already visible here, and right glad am I to welcome its genial influence; for a Paris winter possesses in my opinion no superiority over a London one,--nay, though it would be deemed by the French little less than a heresy to say so, is even more damp and disagreeable. The Seine has her fogs, as dense, raw, and chilling, as those of old Father Thames himself; and the river approximating closer to "the gay resorts" of the _beau monde_, they are more felt. The want of draining, and the vapours that stagnate over the turbid waters of the _ruisseaux_ that intersect the streets at Paris, add to the humidity of the atmosphere; while the sewers in London convey away unseen and unfelt, if not always unsmelt, the rain which purifies, while it deluges, our streets. Heaven defend me, however, from uttering this disadvantageous comparison to Parisian cars, for the French are too fond of Paris not to be proud even of its _ruisseaux_, and incredulous of its fogs, and any censure on either would be ill received. The gay butterflies when they first expand their varicoloured wings and float in air, seem not more joyous than the Parisians have been during the last two days of sunshine. The Jardins des Tuileries are crowded with well-dressed groups; the budding leaves have burst forth with that delicate green peculiar to early spring; and the chirping of innumerable birds, as they flit from tree to tree, announces the approach of the vernal season. Paris is at no time so attractive, in my opinion, as in spring; and the verdure of the foliage during its infancy is so tender, yet bright, that it looks far more beautiful than with us in our London squares or parks, where no sooner do the leaves open into life, than they become stained by the impurity of the atmosphere, which soon deposes its dingy particles on them, "making the green one"--black. The Boulevards were well stocked with flowers to-day, the _bouquetières_ having resumed their stalls; and many a pedestrian might be seen bargaining for these fair and frail harbingers of rosy spring. How exhilarating are the effects of this season on the spirits depressed by the long and gloomy winter, and the frame rendered languid by the same cause! The heart begins to beat with more energetic movement, the blood flows more briskly through the veins, and the spirit of hope is revivified in the human heart. This sympathy between awakening nature, on the earth, and on man, renders us more, that at any other period, fond of the country; for this is the season of promise; and we know that each coming day, for a certain time, will bestow some new beauty on all that is now budding forth, until glowing, laughing summer has replaced the fitful smiles and tears of spring. And there are persons who tell me they experience nought of this elasticity of spirits at the approach of spring! How are such mortals to be pitied! Yet, perhaps, they are less so than we imagine, for the same insensibility that prevents their being exhilarated, may preclude them from the depression so peculiar to all who have lively feelings. "I see nothing so very delightful in spring," said ---- to me, yesterday. "_Au contraire_, I think it rather disagreeable, for the sunshine cheats one into the belief of warmth, and we go forth less warmly clad in consequence, so return home chilled by the sharp cold air which always prevails at this season, and find, as never fails to be the case, that our stupid servants have let out the fires, because, truly, the sun was shining in the cold blue sky." ---- reminds me of the man mentioned in Sterne's works, who, when his friend looking on a beautiful prospect, compared a green field with a flock of snowy-fleeced sheep on it, to a vast emerald studded with pearls, answered that _he_ could see nothing in it but grass and mutton. Lord B---- set out for London to-day, to vote on the Catholic question, which is to come on immediately. His going at this moment, when he is far from well, is no little sacrifice of personal comfort; but never did he consider self when a duty was to be performed. I wish the question was carried, and he safely back again. What would our political friends say if they knew how strongly I urged him not to go, but to send his proxy to Lord Rosslyn? I would not have consented to his departure, were it not that the Duke of Wellington takes such an interest in the measure. How times are changed! and how much is due to those statesmen who yield up their own convictions for the general good! There is no action in the whole life of the Duke more glorious than his self-abnegation on this occasion, nor is that of the Tory leader of the House of Commons less praiseworthy; yet how many attacks will both incur by this sacrifice of their opinions to expediency! for when were the actions of public men judged free from the prejudices that discolour and distort all viewed through their medium? That which originates in the purest patriotism, will be termed an unworthy tergiversation; but the reward of these great and good men will be found in their own breasts. I am _triste_ and unsettled, so will try the effect of a drive in the Bois de Boulogne. I was forcibly reminded yesterday of the truth of an observation of a clever French writer, who says, that to judge the real merit of a cook, one should sit down to table without the least feeling of appetite, as the triumph of the culinary art was not to satisfy hunger but to excite it. Our new cook achieved this triumph yesterday, for he is so inimitable an artist, that the flavour of his _plats_ made even me, albeit unused to the sensation of hunger, feel disposed to render justice to them. Monsieur Louis--for so he is named--has a great reputation in his art; and it is evident, even from the proof furnished of his _savoir-faire_ yesterday, that he merits it. It is those only who have delicate appetites that can truly appreciate the talent of a cook; for they who devour soon lose the power of tasting. No symptom of that terrible malady, well named by the ingenious Grimod de la Reynière _remords d'estomac_, but vulgarly called indigestion, follows my unusual indulgence in _entrées_ and _entremets_, another delightful proof of the admirable skill of Monsieur Louis. The English are apt to spoil French cooks by neglecting the _entrées_ for the _pièce de résistance_, and, when the cook discovers this, which he is soon enabled to do by the slight breaches made in the first, and the large one in the second, his _amour-propre_ becomes wounded, and he begins to neglect his _entrées_. Be warned, then, by me, all ye who wish your cooks to retain their skill, and however your native tastes for that English favourite dish denominated "a plain joint" may prevail, never fail to taste the _entrée_. _À propos_ of cooks, an amusing instance of the _amour-propre_ of a Parisian cook was related to me by the gourmand Lord ----, the last time we dined at his house. Wishing to have a particular sauce made which he had tasted in London, and for which he got the receipt, he explained to his cook, an artist of great celebrity, how the component parts were to be amalgamated. "How, mylord!" exclaimed _Monsieur le cuisinier_; "an English sauce! Is it possible your lordsip can taste any thing so barbarous? Why, years ago, my lord, a profound French philosopher described the English as a people who had a hundred religions, but only one sauce." More anxious to get the desired sauce than to defend the taste of his country, or correct the impertinence of his cook, Lord ---- immediately said, "On recollection, I find I made a mistake; the sauce I mean is _à la Hollandaise_, and not _à l'Anglaise_." _A la bonne heure_, my lord, _c'est autre chose_; and the sauce was forthwith made, and was served at table the day we dined with Lord ----. An anecdote is told of this same cook, which Lord ---- relates with great good humour. The cook of another English nobleman conversing with him, said, "My master is like yours--a great _gourmand_." "Pardon me," replied the other; "there is a vast difference between our masters. Yours is simply a _gourmand_, mine is an epicure as well." The Duc de Talleyrand, dining with us a few days ago, observed that to give a perfect dinner, the Amphitryon should have a French cook for soups, _entrées_ and _entremets_; an English _rôtisseur_, and an Italian _confiseur_, as without these, a dinner could not be faultless. "But, alas!" said he--and he sighed while he spoke it--"the Revolution has destroyed our means of keeping these artists; and we eat now to support nature, instead of, as formerly, when we ate because it was a pleasure to eat." The good-natured Duc nevertheless seemed to eat his dinner as if he still continued to take a pleasure in the operation, and did ample justice to a certain _plat de cailles farcies_ which he pronounced to be perfect. Our landlord, le Marquis de L----, has sent to offer us the refusal of our beautiful abode. The Duc de N---- has proposed to take it for fourteen on twenty-one years, at the same rent we pay (an extravagant one, by the bye), and as we only took it for a year, we must eithor leave or hire it for fourteen or twenty-one years, which is out of the question. Nothing can be more fair or honourable than the conduct of the Marquis de L----, for he laid before us the offer of the Duc de N----; but as we do not intend to remain more than two or three years more in Paris, we must leave this charming house, to our infinite regret, when the year for which we have hired it expires. Gladly would we have engaged it for two, or even three years more, but this is now impossible; and we shall have the trouble of again going the round of house-hunting. When I look on the suite of rooms in which I have passed such pleasant days, I am filled with regret at the prospect of leaving them, but it cannot be helped, so it is useless to repine. We have two months to look about us, and many friends who are occupied in assisting us in the search. A letter from Lord B----; better, but still ailing. He presided at the Covent Garden Theatrical Fund Dinner, at the request of the Duke of Clarence. He writes me that he met there Lord F. Leveson Gower[5], who was introduced to him by Mr. Charles Greville, and of whom he has conceived a very high opinion. Lord B---- partakes my belief in physiognomy, but in this instance the impression formed from the countenance is justified by the reputation of the individual, who is universally esteemed and respected. Went again to see the Hôtel Monaco, which Lord B---- writes me to close for; but its gloomy and uncomfortable bed-rooms discourage me, _malgré_ the splendour of the _salons_, which are decidedly the finest I have seen at Paris, I will decide on nothing until Lord B----'s return. Went to the College of Ste.-Barbe to-day, with the Duchesse de Guiche, to see her sons. Great was their delight at the meeting. I thought they would never have done embracing her; and I, too, was warmly welcomed by these dear and affectionate boys, who kissed me again and again. They have already won golden opinions at the college, by their rare aptitude in acquiring all that is taught them, and by their docility and manly characters. The masters paid the Duchesse the highest compliments on the progress her sons had made previously to their entrance at Ste.-Barbe, and declared that they had never met any children so far advanced for their age. I shared the triumph of this admirable mother, whose fair cheeks glowed, and whose beautiful eyes sparkled, on hearing the eulogiums pronounced on her boys. Her observation to me was, "How pleased their father will be!" Ste.-Barbe is a little world in itself, and a very different world to any I had previously seen. In it every thing smacks of learning, and every body seems wholly engrossed by study. The spirit of emulation animates all, and excites the youths into an application so intense as to be often found injurious to health. The ambition of surpassing all competitors in their studies operates so powerfully on the generality of the _élèves_, that the masters frequently find it more necessary to moderate, than to urge the ardour of the pupils. A boy's reputation for abilities soon gets known, but he must possess no ordinary ones to be able to distinguish himself in a college where every victory in erudition is sure to be achieved by a well-contested battle. We passed through the quarter of Paris known as the Pays Latin, the aspect of which is singular, and is said to have been little changed during the last century. The houses, chiefly occupied by literary men, look quaint and picturesque. Every man one sees passing has the air of an author, not as authors now are, or at least as popular ones are, well-clothed and prosperous-looking, but as authors were when genius could not always command a good wardrobe, and walked forth in habiliments more derogatory to the age in which it was neglected, than to the individual whose poverty compelled such attire. Men in rusty threadbare black, with books under the arm, and some with spectacles on nose, reading while they walked along, might be encountered at every step. The women, too, in the Pays Latin, have a totally different aspect to those of every other part of Paris. The desire to please, inherent in the female breast, seems to have expired in them, for their dress betrays a total neglect, and its fashion is that of some forty years ago. Even the youthful are equally negligent, which indicates their conviction that the men they meet seldom notice them, proving the truth of the old saying, that women dress to please men. The old, with locks of snow, who had grown into senility in this erudite quarter, still paced the same promenade which they had trodden for many a year, habit having fixed them where hope once led their steps. The middle-aged, too, might be seen with hair beginning to blanch from long hours devoted to the midnight lamp, and faces marked with "the pale cast of thought." Hope, though less sanguine in her promises, still lures them on, and they pass the venerable old, unconscious that they themselves are succeeding them in the same life of study, to be followed by the same results, privation, and solitude, until death closes the scene. And yet a life of study is, perhaps, the one in which the privations compelled by poverty are the least felt to be a hardship. Study, like virtue, is its own exceeding great reward, for it engrosses as well as elevates the mind above the sense of the wants so acutely felt by those who have no intellectual pursuits; and many a student has forgotten his own privations when reading the history of the great and good who have been exposed to even still more trying ones. Days pass uncounted in such occupations. Youth fleets away, if not happily, at least tranquilly, while thus employed; and maturity glides into age, and age drops into the grave, scarcely conscious of the gradations of each, owing to the mind having been filled with a continuous train of thought, engendered by study. I have been reading some French poems by Madame Amabel Tastu; and very beautiful they are. A sweet and healthy tone of mind breathes through them, and the pensiveness that characterises many of them, marks a reflecting spirit imbued with tenderness. There is great harmony, too, in the versification, as well as purity and elegance in the diction. How much some works make us wish to know their authors, and _vice versâ_! I feel, while reading her poems, that I should like Madame Amabel Tastu; while other books, whose cleverness I admit, convince me I should not like the writers. A book must always resemble, more or less, its author. It is the mind, or at least a portion of it, of the individual; and, however circumstances may operate on it, the natural quality must always prevail and peep forth in spite of every effort to conceal it. Living much in society seldom fails to deteriorate the force and originality of superior minds; because, though unconsciously, the persons who possess them are prone to fall into the habits of thought of those with whom they pass a considerable portion of their time, and suffer themselves to degenerate into taking an interest in puerilities on which, in the privacy of their study, they would not bestow a single thought. Hence, we are sometimes shocked at observing glaring inconsistencies in the works of writers, and find it difficult to imagine that the grave reflection which pervades some of the pages can emanate from the same mind that dictated the puerilities abounding in others. The author's profound thoughts were his own, the puerilities were the result of the friction of his mind with inferior ones: at least this is my theory, and, as it is a charitable one, I like to indulge it. A pleasant party at dinner yesterday. Mr. W. Spencer, the poet, was among the guests, He was much more like the William Spencer of former days than when he dined here before, and was occasionally brilliant, though at intervals he relapsed into moodiness. He told some good stories of John Kemble, and told them well; but it seemed an effort to him; and, while the listeners were still smiling at his excellent imitation of the great tragedian, he sank back in his chair with an air of utter abstraction. I looked at him, and almost shuddered at marking the "change that had come o'er the spirit of his dream;" for whether the story touched a chord that awakened some painful reflection in his memory, or that the telling it had exhausted him, I know not, but his countenance for some minutes assumed a careworn and haggard expression, and he then glanced around at the guests with an air of surprise, like one awakened from slumber. It is astonishing how little people observe each other in society! This inattention, originating in a good breeding that proscribes personal observation, has degenerated into something that approaches very nearly to total indifference, and I am persuaded that a man might die at table seated between two others without their being aware of it, until he dropped from his chair. Civilization has its disadvantages as well as its advantages, and I think the consciousness that one might expire between one's neighbours at table without their noticing it, is hardly atoned for by knowing that they will not stare one out of countenance. I often think, as I look around at a large dinner-party, how few present have the slightest knowledge of what is passing in the minds of the others. The smile worn on many a face may be assumed to conceal a sadness which those who feel it are but too well aware would meet with little sympathy, for one of the effects of modern civilization is the disregard for the cares of others, which it engenders. Madame de ---- once said to me, "I never invite Monsieur de ----, because he looks unhappy, and as if he expected to be questioned as to the cause." This _naïve_ confession of Madame de ---- is what few would make, but the selfishness that dictated it is what society, _en masse_, feels and acts up to. Monsieur de ----, talking of London last evening, told the Count ---- to be on his guard not to be too civil to people when he got there. The Count ---- looked astonished, and inquired the reason for the advice. "Merely to prevent your being suspected of having designs on the hearts of the women, or the purses of the men," replied Monsieur de ----; "for no one can evince in London society the _empressement_ peculiar to well-bred Frenchmen without being accused of some unworthy motive for it." I defended my countrymen against the sweeping censure of the cynical Monsieur de ----, who shook his head and declared that he spoke from observation. He added, that persons more than usually polite are always supposed to be poor in London, and that as this supposition was the most injurious to their reception in good society, he always counselled his friends, when about to visit it, to assume a _brusquerie_ of manner, and a stinginess with regard to money, by which means they were sure to escape the suspicion of poverty; as in England a parsimonious expenditure and bluntness are supposed to imply the possession of wealth. I ventured to say that I could now understand why it was that he passed for being so rich in England--a _coup de patte_ that turned the laugh against him. Mr. de ---- is a perfect cynic, and piques himself on saying what he thinks,--a habit more frequently adopted by those who think disagreeable, than agreeable things. Dined yesterday at Madame C----'s, and being Friday, had a _dîner maigre_, than which I know no dinner more luxurious, provided that the cook is a perfect artist, and that the Amphitryon, as was the case in this instance, objects not to expense. The _soupes_ and _entrées_ left no room to regret the absence of flesh or poultry from their component parts, and the _relevés_, in the shape of a _brochet rôti_, and a _turbot à la hollandaise_ supplied the place of the usual _pièces de résistance_. But not only was the flavour of the _entrées_ quite as good as if they were composed of meat or poultry, but the appearance offered the same variety, and the _côtelettes de poisson_ and _fricandeau d'esturgeon_ might have deceived all but the profoundly learned in gastronomy,--they looked so exactly like lamb and veal. The second course offered equally delicate substitutes for the usual dainties, and the most fastidious epicure might have been more than satisfied with the _entremets_. The bishops in France are said to have had the most luxurious dinners imaginable on what were erroneously styled fast-days; and their cooks had such a reputation for their skill, that the having served _à Monseigneur d'Église_ was a passport to the kitchens of all lovers of good eating. There are people so profane as to insinuate that the excellence at which the cooks arrived in dressing _les dîners maigres_ is one of the causes why Catholicism has continued to flourish; but this, of course, must be looked on as a malicious hint of the enemies to that faith which thus proves itself less addicted to indulgence in the flesh than are its decryers. CHAPTER XVII. The more I observe Lady C---- the more surprised I am at the romantic feelings she still indulges, and the illusions under which she labours;--yes _labours_ is the suitable word, for it can be nothing short of laborious, at her age, to work oneself into the belief that love is an indispensable requisite for life. Not the affection into which the love of one's youth subsides, but the wild, the ungovernable passion peculiar to the heroes and heroines of novels, and young ladies and gentlemen recently emancipated from boarding-schools and colleges. Poor Lady C----, with so many estimable qualities, what a pity it is she should have this weakness! She maintained in our conversation yesterday that true love could never be extinguished in the heart, and that even in age it burnt with the same fire as when first kindled. I quoted to her a passage from Le Brun, who says--"L'amour peut s'éteindre sans doute dans le coeur d'un galant homme; mais combien de dédommagements n'a-t-il pas alors à offrir! L'estime, l'amitié, la confiance, ne suffisent-elles pas aux glaces de la vieillesse?" Lady C---- thinks not. Talking last night of ----, some one observed that "it was disagreeable to have such a neighbour, as he did nothing but watch and interfere in the concerns of others." "Give me in preference such a man as le Comte ----," said Monsieur ----, slily, "who never bestows a thought but on self, and is too much occupied with that interesting subject to have time to meddle with the affairs of other people." "You are right," observed Madame ----, gravely, believing him to be serious; "it is much preferable." "But surely," said I, determined to continue the mystification, "you are unjustly severe in your animadversions on poor Monsieur ----. Does he not prove himself a true philanthropist in devoting the time to the affairs of others that might be usefully occupied in attending to his own?" "You are quite right," said Mrs. ----; "I never viewed his conduct in this light before; and now that I understand it I really begin to like him,--a thing I thought quite impossible before you convinced me of the goodness of his motives." How many Mrs. ----'s there are in the world, with minds ductile as wax, ready to receive any impression one wishes to give them! Yet I reproached myself for assisting to hoax her, when I saw the smiles excited by her credulity. Mademoiselle Delphine Gay[6] is one of the agreeable proofs that genius is hereditary. I have been reading some productions of hers that greatly pleased me. Her poetry is graceful, the thoughts are natural, and the versification is polished. She is a very youthful authoress, and a beauty as well as a _bel esprit_. Her mother's novels have beguiled many an hour of mine that might otherwise have been weary, for they have the rare advantage of displaying an equal knowledge of the world with a lively sensibility. All Frenchwomen write well. They possess the art of giving interest even to trifles, and have a natural eloquence _de plume_, as well as _de langue_, that renders the task an easy one. It is the custom in England to decry French novels, because the English unreasonably expect that the literature of other countries should be judged by the same criterion by which they examine their own, without making sufficient allowance for the different manners and habits of the nations. Without arrogating to myself the pretension of a critic, I should be unjust if I did not acknowledge that I have perused many a French novel by modern authors, from which I have derived interest and pleasure. The French critics are not loath to display their acumen in reviewing the works of their compatriots, for they not only analyze the demerits with pungent causticity, but apply to them the severest of all tests, that of ridicule; in the use of which dangerous weapon they excel. House-hunting the greater part of the day. Oh the weariness of such an occupation, and, above all, after having lived in so delightful a house as the one we inhabit! Many of our French friends have come and told us that they had found hôtels exactly to suit us: and we have driven next day to see them, when lo and behold! these eligible mansions were either situated in some disagreeable _quartier_, or consisted of three fine _salons de réception_, with some half-dozen miserable dormitories, and a passage-room by way of _salle à manger_. Though Paris abounds with fine _hôtels entre cour et jardin_, they are seldom to be let; and those to be disposed of are generally divided into suites of apartments, appropriated to different persons. One of the hôtels recommended by a friend was on the Boulevards, with the principal rooms commanding a full view of that populous and noisy quarter of Paris. I should have gone mad in such a dwelling, for the possibility of reading, or almost of thinking, amidst such an ever-moving scene of bustle and din, would be out of the question. The modern French do not seem to appreciate the comfort of quiet and seclusion in the position of their abodes, for they talk of the enlivening influence of a vicinity to these same Boulevards from which I shrink with alarm. It was not so in former days; witness the delightful hôtels before alluded to, _entre cour et jardin_, in which the inhabitants, although in the centre of Paris, might enjoy all the repose peculiar to a house in the country. There is something, I am inclined to think, in the nature of the Parisians that enables them to support noise better than we can,--nay, not only to support, but even to like it. I received an edition of the works of L.E.L. yesterday from London. She is a charming poetess, full of imagination and fancy, dazzling one moment by the brilliancy of her flights, and the next touching the heart by some stroke of pathos. How Byron would have admired her genius, for it bears the stamp of being influenced no less by a graceful and fertile fancy than by a deep sensibility, and the union of the two gives a peculiar charm to her poems. Drove to the Bois de Boulogne to-day, with the Comtesse d'O----, I know no such brilliant talker as she is. No matter what may be the subject of conversation, her wit flashes brightly on all, and without the slightest appearance of effort or pretension. She speaks from a mind overflowing with general information, made available by a retentive memory, a ready wit, and in exhaustible good spirits. Letters from dear Italy. Shall I ever see that delightful land again? A letter, too, from Mrs. Francis Hare, asking me to be civil to some English friends of hers, who are come to Paris, which I shall certainly be for her sake. _À propos_ of the English, it is amusing to witness the avidity with which many of them not only accept but court civilities abroad, and the _sang-froid_ with which they seem to forget them when they return home. I have as yet had no opportunity of judging personally on this point, but I hear such tales on the subject as would justify caution, if one was disposed to extend hospitality with any prospective view to gratitude for it, which we never have done, and never will do. Mine is the philosophy of ----, who, when his extreme hospitality to his countrymen was remarked on, answered, "I can't eat all my good dinners alone, and if I am lucky enough to find now and then a pleasant guest, it repays me for the many dull ones invited." I expect no gratitude for our hospitality to our compatriots, and "Blessed are they who expect not, for they will not be disappointed." Longchamps has not equalled my expectations. It is a dull affair after all, resembling the drive in Hyde Park on a Sunday in May, the promenade in the Cacina at Florence, in the Corso at Rome, or the Chaija at Naples, in all save the elegance of the dresses of the women, in which Longchamps has an immeasurable superiority. It is at Longchamps that the Parisian spring fashions are first exhibited, and busy are the _modistes_ for many weeks previously in putting their powers of invention to the test, in order to bring out novelties, facsimiles of which are, the ensuing week, forwarded to England, Italy, Germany, Holland, and Russia. The coachmakers, saddlers, and horse-dealers, are also put in requisition for this epoch; and, though the exhibition is no longer comparable to what it was in former times, when a luxurious extravagance not only in dress, but in equipages, was displayed, some handsome and well-appointed carriages are still to be seen. Among the most remarkable for good taste, were those of the Princess Bagration, and Monsieur Schikler, whose very handsome wife attracted more admiration than the elegant vehicle in which she was seated, or the fine steeds that drew it. Those who are disposed to question the beauty of French women, should have been at Longchamps to-day, when their scepticism would certainly have been vanquished, for I saw several women there whose beauty could admit of no doubt even by the most fastidious critic of female charms. The Duchesse de Guiche, however, bore off the bell from all competitors, and so the spectators who crowded the Champs-Elysées seemed to think. Of her may be said what Choissy stated of la Duchesse de la Vallière, she has "_La grace plus belle encore que la beauté_." The handsome Duchesse d'Istrie and countless other _beautés à la mode_ were present, and well sustained the reputation for beauty of the Parisian ladies. The men _caracoled_ between the carriages on their proud and prancing steeds, followed by grooms, _à l'Anglaise_, in smart liveries, and the people crowded the footpaths on each side of the drive, commenting aloud on the equipages and their owners that passed before them. The promenade at Longchamps, which takes place in the Holy Week, is said to owe its origin to a religious procession that went annually to a church so called, whence it by degrees changed its character, and became a scene of gaiety, in which the most extravagant exhibitions of luxury were displayed. One example, out of many, of this extravagance, is furnished by a publication of the epoch at which Longchamps was in its most palmy state, when a certain Mademoiselle Duthé, whose means of indulging in inordinate expense were not solely derived from her ostensible profession as one of the performers attached to the Opera, figured in the promenade in a carriage of the most sumptuous kind, drawn by no less than six thorough-bred horses, the harness of which was of blue morocco, studded with polished steel ornaments, which produced the most dazzling effect. That our times are improved in respect, at least, to appearances, may be fairly concluded from the fact that no example of a similar ostentatious display of luxury is ever now exhibited by persons in the same position as Mademoiselle Duthé; and that if the same folly that enabled her to indulge in such extravagance still prevails, a sense of decency prevents all public display of wealth so acquired. Modern morals censure not people so much for their vices as for the display of them, as Aleibiades was blamed not for loving Nemea, but for allowing himself to be painted reposing on her lap. Finished the perusal of _Cinq Mars_, by Count Alfred de Vigny. It is an admirable production, and deeply interested me. The sentiments noble and elevated, without ever degenerating into aught approaching to bombast, and the pathos such as a manly heart might feel, without incurring the accusation of weakness. The author must be a man of fine feelings, as well as of genius,--but were they ever distinct? I like to think they cannot be, for my theory is, that the feelings are to genius what the chords are to a musical instrument--they must be touched to produce effect. The style of Count Alfred de Vigny merits the eulogium passed by Lord Shaftesbury on that of an author in his time, of which he wrote, "It is free from that affected obscurity and laboured pomp of language aiming at a false sublime, with crowded simile and mixed metaphor (the hobby-horse and rattle of the Muses.") ---- dined with us yesterday, and, clever as I admit him to be, he often displeases me by his severe strictures on mankind. I told him that he exposed himself to the suspicion of censuring it only because he had studied a bad specimen of it (self) more attentively than the good that fell in his way: a reproof that turned the current of his conversation into a more agreeable channel, though he did not seem to like the hint. It is the fashion for people now-a-days to affect this cynicism, and to expend their wit at the expense of poor human nature, which is abused _en masse_ for the sins of those who abuse it from judging of all others by self. How different is ----, who thinks so well of his species, that, like our English laws, he disbelieves the existence of guilt until it is absolutely proved,--a charity originating in a superior nature, and a judgment formed from an involuntary consciousness of it! ---- suspects evil on all sides, and passes his time in guarding against it. He dares not indulge friendship, because he doubts the possibility of its being disinterested, and feels no little self-complacency when the conduct of those with whom he comes in contact justifies his suspicions. ----, on the contrary, if sometimes deceived, feels no bitterness, because he believes that the instance may be a solitary one, and finds consolation in those whose truth he has yet had no room to question. His is the best philosophy, for though it cannot preclude occasional disappointment, it ensures much happiness, as the indulgence of good feelings invariably does, and he often creates the good qualities he gives credit for, as few persons are so bad as not to wish to justify the favourable opinion entertained of them, as few are so good as to resist the demoralising influence of unfounded suspicions. A letter from Lord B----, announcing a majority of 105 on the bill of the Catholic question. Lord Grey made an admirable speech, with a happy allusion to the fact of Lord Howard of Effingham, who commanded the English fleet in the reign of Elizabeth, having, though a Roman Catholic, destroyed the Armada under the anointed banner of the Pope. What a triumphant refutation of the notion that Roman Catholics dared not oppose the Pope! Lord B---- writes, that the brilliant and justly merited eulogium pronounced by Lord Grey on the Duke of Wellington was rapturously received by the House. How honourable to both was the praise! I feel delighted that Lord Grey should have distinguished himself on this occasion, for he is one of the friends in England whom I most esteem. ---- dined here to-day. He reminds me of the larva, which is the first state of animal existence in the caterpillar, for his appetite is voracious, and, as a French naturalist states in describing that insect, "Tout est estomac dans un larve." ---- is of the opinion of Aretæus, that the stomach is the great source of pleasurable affections, and that as Nature "abhors a vacuum," the more filled it is the better. Dining is a serious affair with ----. Soup, fish, flesh, and fowl, disappear from his plate with a rapidity that is really surprising; and while they are vanishing, not "into empty air," but into the yawning abyss of his ravenous jaws, his eyes wander around, seeking what next those same ravenous jaws may devour. On beholding a person indulge in such gluttony, I feel a distaste to eating, as a certain double-refined lady of my acquaintance declared that witnessing the demonstrations of love between two persons of low and vulgar habits so disgusted her with the tender passion, that she was sure she never could experience it herself. I have been reading _la Chronique du Temps de Charles IX_, by Prosper Mérimée, and a most interesting and admirably written book it is. Full of stirring scenes and incidents, it contains the most graphic pictures of the manners of the time in which the story is placed, and the interest progresses, never flagging from the commencement to the end. This book will be greatly admired in England, where the romances of our great Northern Wizard have taught us to appreciate the peculiar merit in which this abounds. Sir Walter Scott will be one of the first to admire and render justice to this excellent book, and to welcome into the field of literature this highly gifted brother of the craft. The French writers deserve justice from the English, for they invariably treat the works of the latter with indulgence. Scott is not more read or esteemed in his own country than here; and even the productions of our young writers are more kindly treated than those of their own youthful aspirants for fame. French critics have much merit for this amenity, because the greater number of them possess a peculiar talent, for the exercise of their critical acumen, which renders the indulgence of it, like that of the power of ridicule, very tempting. Among the most remarkable critics of the day Jules Janin, who though yet little more than a youth, evinces such talent as a reviewer as to be the terror of mediocrity. His style is pungent and vigorous, his satire searching and biting, and his tact in pointing ridicule unfailing. He bids fair to take a most distinguished place in his profession. Spent last evening in the Rue d'Anjou, where I met the usual circle and ----. He bepraised every one that was named during the evening, and so injudiciously, that it was palpable he knew little of those upon whom he expended his eulogiums; nay, he lauded some whom he acknowledged he had never seen, on the same principle that actuated the Romans of old who, having deified every body they knew, erected at last an altar to the unknown Gods, lest any should by chance be omitted. This habit of indiscriminate praise is almost as faulty as that of general censure, and is, in my opinion, more injurious to the praised than the censure is to the abused, because people are prone to indulge a greater degree of sympathy towards those attacked than towards those who are commended. No one said "Amen" to the praises heaped on some really deserving people by ----, but several put in a palliating "_pourtant_" to the ill-natured remarks made by ----, whose habit of abusing all who chance to be named is quite as remarkable as the other's habit of praising. I would prefer being attacked by ---- to being lauded by ----, for the extravagance of the eulogiums of the latter would excite more ill-will towards me than the censures of the other, as the self-love of the listeners disposes them to feel more kindly to the one they can pity, than to the person they are disposed to envy. I never look at dear, good Madame C---, without thinking how soon we may,--nay, we must lose her. At her very advanced age we cannot hope that she will be long spared to us; yet her freshness of heart and wonderful vivacity of mind would almost cheat one into a hope of her long continuing amongst us. She drove out with me yesterday to the Bois de Boulogne, and, when remarking how verdant and beautiful all around was looking, exclaimed, "Ah! why is no second spring allowed to us? I hear," continued she, "people say they would not like to renew their youth, but I cannot believe them. There are times--would you believe it?--that I forget my age, and feel so young in imagination that I can scarcely bring myself to think this heart, which is still so youthful, can appertain to the same frame to which is attached this faded and wrinkled face," and she raised her hand to her cheek. "Ah! my dear friend, it is a sad, sad thing to mark this fearful change, and I never look in my mirror without being shocked. The feelings ought to change with the person, and the heart should become as insensible as the face becomes withered." "The change in the face is so gradual, too," continued Madame C----. "We see ourselves after thirty-five, each day looking a little less well (we are loath to think it ugly), and we attribute it not to the true cause, the approach of that enemy to beauty--age,--but to some temporary indisposition, a bad night's rest, or an unbecoming cap. We thus go on cheating ourselves, but not cheating others, until some day when the light falls more clearly on our faces, and the fearful truth stands revealed. Wrinkles have usurped the place of dimples; horrid lines, traced by Time, have encircled the eyelids; the eyes, too, no longer bright and pellucid, become dim; the lips dry and colourless, the teeth yellow, and the cheeks pale and faded, as a dried rose-leaf long pressed in a _hortus siccus_." "Alas, alas! who can help thinking of all this when one sees the trees opening into their rich foliage, the earth putting forth its bright verdure, and the flowers budding into bloom, while we resemble the hoar and dreary winter, and scarcely retain a trace of the genial summer we once knew." This conversation suggested the following lines, which I wish I could translate into French verse to give to Madame C----: GRAY HAIRS. Snowy blossoms of the grave That now o'er care-worn temples wave, Oh! what change hath pass'd since ye O'er youthful brows fell carelessly! In silken curls of ebon hue That with such wild luxuriance grew, The raven's dark and glossy wing A richer shadow scarce could fling. The brow that tells a tale of Care That Sorrow's pen hath written there, In characters too deeply traced Ever on earth to be effaced, Was then a page of spotless white, Where Love himself might wish to write. The jetty arches that did rise, As if to guard the brilliant eyes, Have lost their smoothness;--and no more The eyes can sparkle as of yore: They look like fountains form'd by tears, Where perish'd Hope in by-gone years. The nose that served as bridge between The brow and mouth--for Love, I ween, To pass--hath lost its sculptured air. For Time, the spoiler, hath been there. The mouth--ah! where's the crimson dye That youth and health did erst supply? Are these pale lips that seldom smile, The same that laugh'd, devoid of guile. Shewing within their coral cell The shining pearls that there did dwell, But dwell no more? The pearls are fled, And homely teeth are in their stead. The cheeks have lost the blushing rose That once their surface could disclose; A dull, pale tint has spread around, Where rose and lily erst were found. The throat, and bust--but, ah! forbear, Let's draw a veil for ever there; Too fearful is 't to put in rhyme The changes wrought by cruel Time, The faithful mirror well reveals The truth that flattery conceals; The charms once boasted, now are flown, But mind and heart are still thine own; And thou canst see the wreck of years, And ghost of beauty, without tears. No outward change thy soul shouldst wring, Oh! mourn but for the change within; Grieve over bright illusions fled, O'er fondly cherish'd hope, now dead, O'er errors of the days of youth, Ere wisdom taught the path of truth. Then hail, ye blossoms of the grave, That o'er the care-worn temples wave-- Sent to remind us of "that bourn, Whence traveller can ne'er return;" The harbingers of peace and rest, Where only mortals can be blest. CHAPTER XVIII. Read Victor Hugo's _Dernier Jour d'un Condamné!_ It is powerfully written, and the author identifies his feelings so strongly with the condemned, that he must, while writing the book, have experienced similar emotions to those which a person in the same terrible position would have felt. Wonderful power of genius, that can thus excite sympathy for the erring and the wretched, and awaken attention to a subject but too little thought of in our selfish times, namely, the expediency of the abolition of capital punishment! A perusal of Victor Hugo's graphic book will do more to lead men's minds to reflect on this point than all the dull essays; or as dull speeches, that may be written or made on it. Talking of ---- to-day with ---- ----, she remarked that he had every sense but common sense, and made light of this deficiency. How frequently do we hear people do this, as if the possession of talents or various fine qualities can atone for its absence! Common sense is not only positively necessary to render talent available by directing its proper application, but is indispensable as a monitor to warn men against error. Without this guide the passions and feelings will be ever leading men astray, and even those with the best natural dispositions will fall into error. Common sense is to the individual what the compass is to the mariner--it enables him to steer safely through the rocks, shoals, and whirlpools that intersect his way. Were the lives of criminals accurately known, I am persuaded that it would be found that from a want of common sense had proceeded their guilt; for a clear perception of crime would do more to check its perpetration, than the goodness of heart which is so frequently urged as a preventive against it. Conscience is the only substitute for common sense, but even this will not supply its place in all cases. Conscience will lead a man to repent or atone for crime, but common sense will preclude his committing it by enabling him to judge of the result. I frequently hear people say, "So and so are very clever," or "very cunning, and are well calculated to make their way in the world." This opinion seems to me to be a severe satire on the world, for as cunning can only appertain to a mean intellect, to which it serves as a poor substitute for sense, it argues ill for the world to suppose it can be taken in by it. I never knew a sensible, or a good person, who was cunning; and I have known so many weak and wicked ones who possessed this despicable quality, that I hold it in abhorrence, except in very young children, to whom Providence gives it before they arrive at good sense. Went a round of the curiosity shops on the Quai d'Orsay, and bought an amber vase of rare beauty, said to have once belonged to the Empress Josephine. When I see the beautiful objects collected together in these shops, I often think of their probable histories, and of those to whom they once belonged. Each seems to identify itself with the former owner, and conjures up in my mind a little romance. A vase of rock crystal, set in precious stones, seen today, could never have belonged to aught but some beauty, for whom it was selected by an adoring lover or husband, ere yet the honeymoon had passed. A chased gold _étui_, enriched with oriental agates and brilliants, must have appertained to some _grande dame_, on whose table it rested in a richly-decorated _salon_; and could it speak, what piquant disclosures might it not make! The fine old watch, around the dial of which sparkle diamonds, and on the back the motto, executed in the same precious stones, "_Vous me faites oublier les heures_," once adorned the slender waist of some dainty dame,--a nuptial gift. The silvery sound of its bell often reminded her of the flight of Time, and her _caro sposo_ of the effects of it on his inconstant heart, long before her mirror told her of the ravages of the tyrant. The _flacon_ so tastefully ornamented, has been held to delicate nostrils when the megrim--that malady peculiar to refined organisations and susceptible nerves--has assailed its fair owner; and the heart-shaped pincushion of crimson velvet, inclosed in its golden case and stuck with pins, has been likened by the giver to his own heart, pierced by the darts of Love--a simile that probably displeased not the fair creature to whom it was addressed. Here are the expensive and tasteful gifts, the _gages d'amour_, not often disinterested, as bright and beautiful as when they left the hands of the jeweller; but the givers and the receivers where are they? Mouldered in the grave long, long years ago! Through how many hands may these objects not have passed since Death snatched away the persons for whom they were originally designed! And here they are in the ignoble custody of some avaricious vender, who having obtained them at the sale of some departed amateur for less than half their first cost, now expects to extort more than double. He takes them up in his unwashed fingers, turns them--oh, profanation!--round and round, in order to display their various merits, descants on the delicacy of the workmanship, the sharpness of the chiseling, the pure water of the brilliants, and the fine taste displayed in the form; tells a hundred lies about the sum he gave for them, the offers he has refused, the persons to whom they once belonged, and those who wish to purchase them! The _flacon_ of some defunct prude is placed side by side with the _vinaigrette_ of some _jolie danseuse_ who was any thing but prudish. How shocked would the original owner of the _flacon_ feel at the friction! The fan of some _grande dame de la cour_ touches the diamond-mounted _étui_ of the wife of some _financier_, who would have given half her diamonds to enter the circle in which she who once owned this fan found more _ennui_ than amusement. The cane of a deceased philosopher is in close contact with the golden-hilted sword of a _petit maître de l'ancien régime_, and the sparkling _tabatière_ of a _Marquis Musqué_, the partaker if not the cause of half his _succès dans le monde_, is placed by the _chapelet_ of a _religieuse de haute naissance_, who often perhaps dropped a tear on the beads as she counted them in saying her Ave Marias, when some unbidden thought of the world she had resigned usurped the place of her aspirations for a brighter and more enduring world. "And so 't will be when I am gone," as Moore's beautiful song says; the rare and beautiful _bijouterie_ which I have collected with such pains, and looked on with such pleasure, will probably be scattered abroad, and find their resting places not in gilded _salons_, but in the dingy coffers of the wily _brocanteur_, whose exorbitant demands will preclude their finding purchasers. Even these inanimate and puerile objects have their moral, if people would but seek it; but what has not, to a reflecting mind?--complained bitterly to-day, of having been attacked by an anonymous scribbler. I was surprised to see a man accounted clever and sensible, so much annoyed by what I consider so wholly beneath his notice. It requires only a knowledge of the world and a self-respect to enable one to treat such attacks with the contempt they merit; and those who allow themselves to be mortified by them must be deficient in these necessary qualifications for passing smoothly through life. It seems to me to indicate great weakness of mind, when a person permits his peace to be at the mercy of every anonymous scribbler who, actuated by envy or hatred (the invariable causes of such attacks), writes a libel on him. If a person so attacked would but reflect that few, if any, who have acquired celebrity, or have been favoured by fortune, have ever escaped similar assaults, he would be disposed to consider them as the certain proofs of a merit, the general acknowledgment of which has excited the ire of the envious, thus displayed by the only mean within their reach--anonymous abuse. Anonymous assailants may be likened to the cuttle-fish, which employs the inky secretions it forms as a means of tormenting its enemy and baffling pursuit. I have been reading the poems of Mrs. Hemans, and exquisite they are. They affect me like sacred music, and never fail to excite religious sentiments. England only could have produced this poetess, and peculiar circumstances were necessary to the developement of her genius. The music of the versification harmonises well with the elevated character of the thoughts, which inspire the reader (at least such is their effect on me) with a pensive sentiment of resignation that is not without a deep charm to a mind that loves to withdraw itself from the turmoil and bustle incidental to a life passed in a gay and brilliant capital. The mind of this charming poetess must be like an Æolian harp, that every sighing wind awakes to music, but to grave and chastened melody, the full charm of which can only be truly appreciated by those who have sorrowed, and who look beyond this earth for repose. Well might Goëthe write, "Wo du das Genie erblickst Erblickst du auch zugleich die martkrone"[7] for where is Genius to be found that has not been tried by suffering? Moore has beautifully said, "The hearths that are soonest awake to the flowers, Are always the first to be pierced by the thorns;" and so it is with poets: they feel intensely before they can make others feel even superficially. And there are those who can talk lightly and irreverently of the sufferings from which spring such exquisite, such glorious music, unconscious that the fine organization and delicate susceptibility of the minds of Genius which give such precious gifts to delight others, receive deep wounds from weapons that could not make an incision on impenetrable hearts like their own. Yes, the hearts of people of genius may be said to resemble the American maple-trees, which must be pierced ere they yield their honied treasures. If Mrs. Hemans had been as happy as she deserved to be, it is probable that she would never have written the exquisite poems I have been reading; for the fulness of content leaves no room for the sweet and bitter fancies engendered by an imagination that finds its Hippocrene in the fountain of Sorrow, whose source is in the heart, and can only flow when touched by the hand of Care. Well may England be proud of such poetesses as she can now boast! Johanna Baillie, the noble-minded and elevated; Miss Bowles, the pure, the true; Miss Mitford, the gifted and the natural; and Mrs. Hemans and Miss Landon, though last not least in the galaxy of Genius, with imaginations as brilliant as their hearts are generous and tender. Who can read the productions of these gifted women, without feeling a lively interest in their welfare, and a pride in belonging to the country that has given them birth? Lord B---- arrived yesterday, and, Heaven be thanked! is in better health. He says the spring is three weeks more advanced at Paris than in London. He is delighted at the Catholic Question having been carried; and trusts, as I do, that Ireland will derive the greatest benefit from the measure. How few, with estates in a province where so strong a prejudice is entertained against Roman Catholics as exists in the north of Ireland, would have voted as Lord B---- has done; but, like his father, Lord B---- never allows personal interest to interfere in the discharge of a duty! If there were many such landlords in Ireland, prejudices, the bane of that country, would soon subside. Lord B---- came back laden with presents for me. Some of them are quite beautiful, and would excite the envy of half my sex. Received letters from good, dear Sir William Gell, and the no less dear and good Archbishop of Tarentum, both urging us to return to Italy to see them, as they say, once more before they die. Receiving letters from absent friends who are dear to us, has almost as much of sadness as of pleasure in it; for although it is consolatory to know that they are in life, and are not unmindful of us, still a closely written sheet of paper is but a poor substitute for the animated conversation, the cordial grasp of the hand, and the kind glance of the eye; and we become more sensible of the distance that divides us when letters written many days ago arrive, and we remember with dread that, since these very epistles were indited, the hands that traced them may be chilled by death. This fear, which recurs so often to the mind in all cases of absence from those dear to us, becomes still more vivid where infirmity of health and advanced age render the probability of the loss of friends the greater. Italy--dear, beautiful Italy--with all its sunshine and attractions, would not be the same delightful residence to me if I no longer found there the friends who made my _séjour_ there so pleasant; and among these the Archbishop and Sir William Gell stand prominent. Gell writes me that some new and interesting discoveries have been made at Pompeii. Would that I could be transported there for a few days to see them with him, as I have beheld so many before when we were present at several excavations together, and saw exposed to the light of day objects that had been for two thousand years buried in darkness! There was a thrilling feeling of interest awakened in the breast by the first view of these so-long-interred articles of use or ornament of a bygone generation, and on the spot where their owners perished. It was as though the secrets of the grave were revealed; and that, to convince us of the perishable coil of which mortals are formed, it is given us to behold how much more durable are the commonest utensils of daily use than the frames of those who boast themselves lords of the creation. But here am I moralizing, when I ought to be taking advantage of this glorious day by a promenade in the Bois de Boulogne, where I promised to conduct Madame d'O----; so _allons en voiture_. Read the _Disowned_, and like it exceedingly. It is full of beautiful thoughts, sparkling with wit, teeming with sentiment, and each and all of them based on immutable truths. The more I read of the works of this highly gifted writer, the more am I delighted with them; for his philosophy passes through the alembic of a mind glowing with noble and generous sentiments, of which it imbibes the hues. The generality of readers pause not to reflect on the truth and beauty of the sentiments to be found in novels. They hurry on to the _dénoûment_; and a stirring incident, skilfully managed, which serves to develope the plot, finds more admirers than the noblest thoughts, or most witty maxims. Yet as people who read nothing else, will read novels, authors like Mr. Bulwer, whose minds are overflowing with genius, are compelled to make fiction the vehicle for giving to the public thoughts and opinions that are deserving of a higher grade of literature. The greater portion of novel readers, liking not to be detained from the interest of the story by any extraneous matter, however admirable it may be, skip over the passages that most delight those who read to reflect, and not for mere amusement. I find myself continually pausing over the admirable and profound reflections of Mr. Bulwer, and almost regret that his writings do not meet the public as the papers of the _Spectator_ did, when a single one of them was deemed as essential to the breakfast-table of all lovers of literature as a morning journal is now to the lovers of news. The merit of the thoughts would be then duly appreciated, instead of being hastily passed over in the excitement of the story which they intersect. A long visit from ----, and, as usual, politics furnished the topic. How I wish people would never talk politics to me! I have no vocation for that abstruse science,--a science in which even those who devote all their time and talents to it, but rarely arrive at a proficiency. In vain do I profess my ignorance and inability; people will not believe me, and think it necessary to enter into political discussions that _ennuient_ me beyond expression. If ---- is to be credited, Charles the Tenth and his government are so unpopular that his reign will not pass without some violent commotion. A fatality appears to attend this family, which, like the house of Stuart, seems doomed never to conciliate the affections of the people. And yet, Charles the Tenth is said not to be disposed to tyrannical measures, neither is he without many good qualities. But the last of the Stuart sovereigns also was naturally a humane and good man, yet he was driven from his kingdom and his throne,--a proof that weakness of mind is, perhaps, of all faults in a monarch, the one most likely to compromise the security of his dynasty. The restoration of the Stuarts after Cromwell, was hailed with much more enthusiasm in England than that of Louis the Eighteenth, after the abdication of the Emperor Napoleon. Yet that enthusiasm was no pledge that the people would bear from the descendants of the ill-fated Charles the First--that most perfect of all gentlemen and meekest of Christians--what they deprived him of not only his kingdom but his life for attempting. The house of Bourbon, like that of Stuart, has had its tragedy, offering a fearful lesson to sovereigns and a terrific example to subjects. It has had, also, its restoration; and, if report may be credited, the parallel will not rest here: for there are those who assert that as James was supplanted on the throne of England by a relative while yet the legitimate and unoffending heir lived, so will also the place of Charles the Tenth be filled by one between whom and the crown stand two legitimate barriers. Time will tell how far the predictions of ---- are just; but, _en attendant_, I never can believe that ambition can so blind _one_ who possesses all that can render life a scene of happiness to himself and of usefulness to others, to throw away a positive good for the uncertain and unquiet possession of a crown, bestowed by hands that to confer the dangerous gift must have subverted a monarchy. Pandora's box contained not more evils than the crown of France would inflict on him on whose brow a revolution would place it. From that hour let him bid adieu to peaceful slumber, to domestic happiness, to well-merited confidence and esteem, all of which are now his own. Popularity, never a stable possession in any country, is infinitely less so in France, where the vivacity of perception of the people leads them to discover grave faults where only slight errors exist, and where a natural inconstancy, love of change, and a reckless impatience under aught that offends them, prompt them to hurl down from the pedestal the idol of yesterday to replace it by the idol of to-day. I hear so much good of the Duc and Duchesse d'O---- that I feel a lively interest in them, and heartily wish they may never be elevated (unless by the natural demise of the legitimate heirs) to the dangerous height to which ---- and others assert they will ultimately ascend. Even in the contingency of a legitimate inheritance of the crown, the Tuileries would offer a less peaceful couch to them than they find in the blissful domestic circle at N----. A long visit from the Duc de T----. I never meet him without being reminded of the truth of an observation of a French writer, who says--"_On a vu des gens se passer d'esprit en sachant mêler la politesse avec des manières nobles et élégantes_." The Duc de T---- passes off perfectly well without _esprit_, the absence of which his noble manners perfectly conceal; while ----, who is so very clever, makes one continually conscious of his want of good breeding and _bon ton_. Finished reading _Sayings and Doings_, by Mr. Theodore Hook. Every page teems with wit, humour, or pathos, and reveals a knowledge of the world under all the various phases of the ever-moving scene that gives a lively interest to all he writes. This profound acquaintance with human life, which stamps the impress of truth on every character portrayed by his graphic pen, has not soured his feelings or produced that cynical disposition so frequently engendered by it. Mr. Hook is no misanthrope, and while he exposes the ridiculous with a rare wit and humour he evinces a natural and warm sympathy with the good. He is a very original thinker and writer, hits off characters with a facility and felicity that few authors possess, and makes them invariably act in accordance with the peculiar characteristics with which he has endowed them. The _vraisemblance_ is never for a moment violated, which makes the reader imagine he is perusing a true narration instead of a fiction. House-hunting to-day. Went again over the Hôtel Monaco, but its dilapidated state somewhat alarms us. The suite of reception rooms are magnificent, but the garden into which they open pleases me still more, for it is vast and umbrageous. The line old hôtels in the Faubourg St.-Germain, and this is one of the finest, give one a good idea of the splendour of the _noblesse de l'ancien régime_. The number and spaciousness of the apartments, the richness of the decorations, though no longer retaining their pristine beauty, and above all, the terraces and gardens, have a grand effect. CHAPTER XIX. House-hunting all the day with Lord B----. Went again over the Hôtel Monaco, and abandoned the project of hiring it. Saw one house newly built and freshly and beautifully decorated, which I like, but Lord B---- does not think good enough. It is in the Rue de Matignon. It is so desirable to get into a mansion where every thing is new and in good taste, which is the case with the one in question, that I hope Lord B---- will be satisfied with this. Sat an hour with General d'O---- who has been unwell. Never was there such a nurse as his wife, and so he said. Illness almost loses its irksomeness when the sick chamber is cheered by one who is as kind as she is clever. Madame d'O---- is glad we have not taken the Hôtel Monaco, for she resided in it a long time when it was occupied by her mother, and she thinks the sleeping-rooms are confined and gloomy. "After serious consideration and mature deliberation," we have finally decided on taking the house in the Rue de Matignon. It will be beautiful when completed, but nevertheless not to be compared to the Hôtel Ney. The _salons de réception_, are very good, and the decorations are rich and handsome. The large _salon_ is separated from the lesser by an immense plate of unsilvered glass, which admits of the fireplaces in each room (they are _vis-à-vis_) being seen, and has a very good effect. A door on each side this large plate of glass opens into the smaller _salon_. The portion of the house allotted to me will, when completed, be like fairy land. A _salon_, destined to contain my buhl cabinets, _porcelaine de Sèvres_, and rare _bijouterie_, opens into a library by two glass-doors, and in the pier which divides them is a large mirror filling up the entire space. In the library, that opens on a terrace, which is to be covered with a _berceau_, and converted into a garden, are two mirrors, _vis-à-vis_ to the two glass doors that communicate from the _salon_; so that on entering this last, the effect produced is exceedingly pretty. Another large mirror is placed at the end of the library, and reflects the terrace. When my books and various treasures are arranged in this suite I shall be very comfortably lodged. My _chambre à coucher_, dressing-room, and boudoir, are spacious, and beautifully decorated. All this sounds well and looks well, too, yet we shall leave the Rue de Bourbon with regret, and Lord B---- now laments that we did not secure it for a long term. Drove in the Bois de Boulogne. A lovely day, which produced a very exhilarating effect on my spirits. I know not whether others experience the same pleasurable sensations that I do on a fine day in spring, when all nature is bursting into life, and the air and earth look joyous. My feelings become more buoyant, my step more elastic, and all that I love seem dearer than before. I remember that even in childhood I was peculiarly sensible to atmospheric influence, and I find that as I grow old this susceptibility does not diminish. We dined at the Rocher de Cancale yesterday; and Counts Septeuil and Valeski composed our party. The Rocher de Cancale is the Greenwich of Paris; the oysters and various other kinds of fish served up _con gusto_, attracting people to it, as the white bait draw visitors to Greenwich. Our dinner was excellent, and our party very agreeable. A _dîner de restaurant_ is pleasant from its novelty. The guests seem less ceremonious and more gay; the absence of the elegance that marks the dinner-table appointments in a _maison bien montée_, gives a homeliness and heartiness to the repast; and even the attendance of two or three ill-dressed _garçons_ hurrying about, instead of half-a-dozen sedate servants in rich liveries, marshalled by a solemn-looking _maître-d'hôtel_ and groom of the chambers, gives a zest to the dinner often wanted in more luxurious feasts. The Bois de Boulogne yesterday presented one of the gayest sights imaginable as we drove through it, for, being Sunday, all the _bourgeoisie_ of Paris were promenading there, and in their holyday dresses. And very pretty and becoming were the said dresses, from those of the _femmes de négociants_, composed of rich and tasteful materials, down to those of the humble _grisettes_, who, with jaunty air and roguish eyes, walked briskly along, casting glances at every smart toilette they encountered, more intent on examining the dresses than the wearers. A good taste in dress seems innate in Frenchwomen of every class, and a confidence in their own attractions precludes the air of _mauvaise honte_ and _gaucherie_ so continually observable in the women of other countries, while it is so distinct from boldness that it never offends. It was pretty to see the gay dresses of varied colours fluttering beneath the delicate green foliage, like rich flowers agitated by a more than usually brisk summer's wind, while the foliage and the dresses are still in their pristine purity. The _beau monde_ occupied the drive in the centre, their vehicles of every description attracting the admiration of the pedestrians, who glanced from the well-appointed carriages, whose owners reclined negligently back as if unwilling to be seen, to the smart young equestrians on prancing steeds, who caracoled past with the air half dandy and half _militaire_ that characterises every young Frenchman. I am always struck in a crowd in Paris with the soldier-like air of its male population; and this air does not seem to be the result of study, but sits as naturally on them as does the look, half fierce, half mocking, that accompanies it. There is something in the nature of a Frenchman that enables him to become a soldier in less time than is usually necessary to render the natives of other countries _au fait_ in the routine of duty, just as he learns to dance well in a quarter of the time required to teach them to go through a simple measure. The Emperor Napoleon quickly observed this peculiar predisposition to a military life in his subjects, and took advantage of it to fool them to the top of their bent. The victories achieved beneath his banner reflect scarcely less honour on them than on him, and the memory of them associates his name in their hearts by the strongest bonds of sympathy that can bind a Frenchman--the love of glory. A sense of duty, high discipline, and true courage, influence our soldiers in the discharge of their calling. They are proud of their country and of their regiment, for the honour of which they are ready to fight unto the death; but a Frenchman, though proud of his country and his regiment, is still more proud of his individual self, and, believing that all eyes are upon _him_ acts as if his single arm could accomplish that which only soldiers _en masse_ can achieve. A pleasant party at dinner at home yesterday. The Marquis de Mornay, Count Valeski, and General Ornano, were among the number. Laughed immoderately at the _naïveté_ of ----, who is irresistibly ludicrous. Madame ---- came in the evening and sang "God save the King." Time was that her singing this national anthem would have electrified the hearers, but now--. Alas! alas! that voices, like faces, should lose their delicate flexibility and freshness, and seem but like the faint echo of their former brilliant tones! Does the ear of a singer, like the eye of some _has-been_ beauty, lose its fine perception and become accustomed to the change in the voice, as does the eye to that in the face, to which it appertains, from being daily in the habit of seeing the said face! Merciful dispensation of Providence, which thus saves us from the horror and dismay we must experience could we but behold ourselves as others see us, after a lapse of years without having met; while we, unconscious of the sad change in ourselves, are perfectly sensible of it in them. Oh, the misery of the _mezzo termine_ in the journey of life, when time robs the eyes of their lustre, the cheeks of their roses, the mouth of its pearls, and the heart of its gaiety, and writes harsh sentences on brows once smooth and polished as marble! Well a-day! ah, well a-day! Why fleets youth so fast away, Taking beauty in its train, Never to return again? Well a-day! ah, well a-day! Why will health no longer stay? After youth 't will not remain, Chased away by care and pain. Well a-day! ah, well a-day! Youth, health, beauty, gone for aye, Life itself must quickly wane With its thoughts and wishes vain. Well a-day! ah, well a-day! Frail and perishable clay That to earth our wishes chain, Well it is that brief's thy reign. I have been reading Captain Marryat's _Naval Officer_, and think it exceedingly clever and amusing. It is like himself, full of talent, originality, and humour. He is an accurate observer of life; nothing escapes him; yet there is no bitterness in his satire and no exaggeration in his comic vein. He is never obliged to explain to his readers _why_ the characters he introduces act in such or such a manner. They always bear out the parts he wishes them to enact, and the whole story goes on so naturally that one feels as if reading a narrative of facts, instead of a work of fiction. I have known Captain Marryat many years, and liked him from the first; but this circumstance, far from rendering me more indulgent to his novel, makes me more fastidious; for I find myself at all times more disposed to criticise the writings of persons whom I know and like than those of strangers: perhaps because I expect more from them, if, as in the present case, I know them to be very clever. Dined yesterday at the Cadran Bleu, and went in the evening to see _La Tour d'Auvergne_, a piece founded on the life, and taking its name from a soldier of the time of the Republic. A nobler character than that of La Tour d'Auvergne could not be selected for a dramatic hero, and ancient times furnish posterity with no brighter example. A letter from Carnot, then Minister of War, addressed to this distinguished soldier and admirable man, has pleased me so much that I give its substance: "On fixing my attention on the men who reflect honour on the army, I have remarked you, citizen, and I said to the First Consul--'La Tour d'Auvergne Corret, descendant of the family of Turenne, has inherited its bravery and its virtues. One of the oldest officers in the army, he counts the greatest number of brilliant actions, and all the brave name him to be the most brave. As modest as he is intrepid, he has shewn himself anxious for glory alone, and has refused all the grades offered to him. At the eastern Pyrénées the General assembled all the companies of the grenadiers, and during the remainder of the campaign gave them no chief. The oldest captain was to command them, and he was Latour d'Auvergne. He obeyed, and the corps was soon named by the enemy the Infernal Column. "'One of his friends had an only son, whose labour was necessary for the support of his father, and this young man was included in the conscription. Latour d'Auvergne, broken down by fatigue, could not labour, but he could still fight. He hastened to the army of the Rhine; replaced the son of his friend; and, during two campaigns, with his knapsack on his hack and always in the foremost rank, he was in every engagement, animating the grenadiers by his discourse and by his example. Poor, but proud, he has refused the gift of an estate offered to him by the head of his family. Simple in his manners, and temperate in his habits, he lives on the limited pay of a captain. Highly informed, and speaking several languages, his erudition equals his courage. We are indebted to his pen for the interesting work entitled _Les Origines Gauloises_. Such rare talents and virtues appertain to the page of history, but to the First Consul belongs the right to anticipate its award.' "The First Consul, citizen, heard this recital with the same emotions that I experienced. He named you instantly first grenadier of the Republic, and decreed you this sword of honour. _Salut et fraternité_." The distinction accorded so readily to Latour d'Auvergne by the First Consul, himself a hero, who could better than any other contemporary among his countrymen appreciate the glory he was called on by Carnot to reward, was refused by the gallant veteran. "Among us soldiers," said he, "there is neither first nor last." He demanded, as the sole recompense of his services, to be sent to join his old brothers-in-arms, to fight once more with them, not as the _first_, but as the _oldest_, soldier of the Republic. His death was like his life, glorious; for he fell on the field of battle at Neubourg, in 1800, mourned by the whole army, who devoted a day's pay to the purchase of an urn to preserve his heart, for a niche in the Pantheon. Another distinction, not less touching, was accorded to his memory by the regiment in which he served. The sergeant, in calling his names in the muster of his company, always called Latour d'Auvergne, and the corporal answered--"_Mort au champ d'honneur_." If the history of this hero excited the warm admiration of those opposed to him in arms, the effect of its representation on his compatriots may be more easily imagined than described. Nothing could exceed the enthusiasm it excited in their minds. Men, women, and children, seemed electrified by it. There is a chord in the hearts of the French that responds instantaneously, and with vivid emotion, to any appeal made to their national glory; and this susceptibility constitutes the germ so easily fructified by those who know how to cultivate it. Enthusiasm, if it sometimes leads to error, or commits its votaries into the ridiculous, also prompts and accomplishes the most glorious achievements; and it is impossible not to feel a sympathy with its unsophisticated demonstrations thus evinced _en masse_. Civilization, more than aught else, tends to discourage enthusiasm; and where it is pushed to the utmost degree of perfection, there will this prompter of great deeds, this darer of impossibilities and instigator of heroic actions, be most rarely found. Drove yesterday to see the villa of the Duchesse de Montmorency, which is to be let. The grounds are very pretty, and a portion of them opens by iron rails to the Bois de Boulogne, which is a great advantage. But neither the villa nor the grounds are to be compared to the beautiful ones in the neighbourhood of London, where, as an old French gentleman once observed to me, "the trees seem to take a peculiar pride and pleasure in growing." I have seen nothing to be compared with the tasteful villas on green velvet lawns sloping down to the limpid Thames, near Richmond, with umbrageous trees bending their leafy branches to the earth and water; or to the colonnaded mansions peeping forth from the well-wooded grounds of Roehampton and its vicinage. I can remember as distinctly as if beheld yesterday, the various tempting residences that meet the eye in a morning drive, or in a row on the silvery Thames, compelling the violation of the tenth commandment, by looking so beautiful that one imagines how happily a life might glide away in such abodes, forgetful that in no earthly abode can existence be passed free from the cares meant to remind us that this is not our abiding-place. Went to see Bagatelle yesterday with the Duchesse de G----. Here the Duc de Bordeaux and Mademoiselle, his sister, pass much of their time. It is a very pleasant villa, and contains many proofs of the taste and industry of these very interesting children, who are greatly beloved by those who have access to them. Various stories were related to us illustrative of their goodness of heart and considerate kindness for those around them; and, making all due allowance for the partiality of the narrators, they went far to prove that these scions of royalty are more amiable and unspoilt than are most children of their age, and of even far less elevated rank. "Born in sorrow, and nursed in tears," the Duc de Bordeaux's early infancy has not passed under bright auspices; and those are not wanting who prophesy that he may hereafter look back to the days passed at Bagatelle as the happiest of his life. It requires little of the prescience of a soothsayer to make this prediction, when we reflect that the lives of even the most popular of those born to the dangerous inheritance of a crown must ever be more exposed to the cares that weigh so heavily, and the responsibility that presses so continually on them, than are those who, exempt from the splendour of sovereignty, escape also its toils. "Oh happy they, the happiest of their kind," who enjoy, in the peace and repose of a private station, a competency, good health, a love of, and power of indulging in, study; an unreproaching conscience, and a cheerful mind! With such blessings they may contemplate, without a feeling of envy, the more brilliant but less fortunate lots of those great ones of the earth, whose elevation but too often serves to render them the target at which Fortune loves aim her most envenomed darts. Passed the greater part of the morning in the house in the Rue de Matignon, superintending the alterations and improvements to be carried into execution there. It has been found necessary to build an additional room, which the proprietor pledges himself can be ready for occupation in six weeks, and already have its walls reached nearly to their intended height. The builders seem to be as expeditious as the upholsterers at Paris, and adding a room or two to a mansion appears to be as easily accomplished as adding some extra furniture. One is made to pay dearly, however, for this facility and expedition; for rents are extravagantly high at Paris, as are also the prices of furniture. Already does the terrace begin to assume the appearance of a garden. Deep beds of earth inclosed in green cases line the sides, and an abundance of orange-trees, flowering shrubs, plants, and flowers, are placed in them. At the end of the terrace, the wall which bounds it has been painted in fresco, with a view of Italian scenery; and this wall forms the back of an aviary, with a fountain that plays in the centre. A smaller aviary, constructed of glass, is erected on the end of the terrace, close to my library, from the window of which I can feed my favourite birds; and this aviary, as well as the library, is warmed by means of a stove beneath the latter. The terrace is covered by a lattice-work, formed into arched windows at the side next the court: over the sides and roof there are trailing parasitical plants. Nothing in the new residence pleases me so much as this suite, and the terrace attached to it. Already do we begin to feel the unsettled state peculiar to an intended change of abode, and the prospect of entering a new one disturbs the sense of enjoyment of the old. Gladly would we remain where we are, for we prefer this hôtel to any other at Paris; but the days we have to sojourn in it are numbered, and our regret is unavailing. CHAPTER XX. September, 1829.--A chasm of many months in my journal. When last I closed it, little could I have foreseen the terrible blow that awaited me. Well may I exclaim with the French writer whose works I have been just reading, "_Nous, qui sommes bornés en tout, comment le sommes-nous si peu quand il s'agit de souffrir_." How slowly has time passed since! Every hour counted, and each coloured by care, the past turned to with the vain hope of forgetting the present, and the future no longer offering the bright prospect it once unfolded! How is my destiny changed since I last opened this book! My hopes have faded and vanished like the leaves whose opening into life I hailed with joy six months ago, little dreaming that before the first cold breath of autumn had tinted them with brown, _he_ who saw them expand with me would have passed from the earth! _October_.--Ill, and confined to my chamber for several days, my physician prescribes society to relieve low spirits; but in the present state of mine, the remedy seems worse than the disease. My old friends Mr. and Mrs. Mathews, and their clever son, have arrived at Paris and dined here yesterday. Mr. Matthews is as entertaining as ever, and his wife as amiable and _spirituelle_. They are excellent as well as clever people, and their society is very agreeable. Charles Mathews, the son, is full of talent, possesses all his father's powers of imitation, and sings comic songs of his own composition that James Smith himself might be proud to have written. The Duc and Duchesse de Guiche, the Marquise de Poulpry, Lady Combermere, Madame Craufurd, and Count Valeski, came in the evening, and were all highly gratified with some recitations and songs given us by Mr. Mathews and his son. They were not less pleased with Mrs. Mathews, whose manners and conversation are peculiarly fascinating, and whose good looks and youthfulness of appearance made them almost disbelieve that she could be the mother of a grown-up son. How forcibly did the recitations and songs bring back former times to my memory, when in St. James's Square, or in his own beautiful cottage at Highgate, I have so frequently been delighted by the performances of this clever and worthy man! The recollection of the past occupied me more last night than did the actual present, and caused me to return but a faint echo to the reiterated applause which every new effort of his drew forth from the party. There are moments when the present appears like a dream, and that we think the past, which is gone for ever, has more of reality in it! I took Mr. and Mrs. Mathews to the Jardin des Plantes to-day, and was much amused by an incident that occurred there. A pretty child, with her _bonne_, were seated on a bench near to which we placed ourselves. She was asking questions relative to the animals she had seen, and Mr. Mathews having turned his head away from her, gave some admirable imitations of the sounds peculiar to the beasts of which she was speaking, and also of the voice and speeches of the person who had exhibited them. Never did he exert himself more to please a crowded and admiring audience than to amuse this child, who, maintaining an immovable gravity during the imitations, quietly observed to her nurse, "_Ma bonne, ce Monsieur est bien drôle_." The mortification of Mr. Mathews on this occasion was very diverting. "How!" exclaimed he, "is it possible that all my efforts to amuse that child have so wholly failed? She never moved a muscle! I suppose the French children are not so easily pleased as our English men and women are?" He reverted to this disappointment more than once during our drive back, and seemed dispirited by it. Nevertheless, he gave us some most humorous imitations of the lower orders of the French talking loudly together, in which he spoke in so many different voices that one could have imagined that no less than half-a-dozen people, at least, were engaged in the conversation. I think so highly of the intellectual powers of Mr. Mathews, and find his conversation so interesting that, admirable as are his imitations, I prefer the former. He has seen so much of the world in all its phases, that he has a piquant anecdote or a clever story to relate touching every place and almost every person mentioned. Yet, with all this intuitive and acquired knowledge of the world, he possesses all the simplicity of a child, and a good nature that never can resist an appeal to it. Spent all yesterday in reading, and writing letters on business. I begin to experience the _ennui_ of having affairs to attend to, and groan in spirit, if not aloud, at having to read and write dry details on the subject. To unbend my mind from its painful thoughts and tension, I devoted the evening to reading, which affords me the surest relief, by transporting my thoughts from the cares that oppress me. Had a long visit from my old acquaintance the Count de Montalembert, to-day. He is in very low spirits, occasioned by the recent death of an only and charming daughter, and could not restrain his deep emotion, when recounting to me the particulars of her latter days. His grief was contagious, and found a chord in my heart that responded to it. When we last met, it was in a gay and brilliant party, each of us in high spirits; and now, though but a few more years have passed over our heads, how changed are our feelings! We meet, not to amuse and to be amused, but to talk of those we have lost, and whose loss has darkened our lives. He spoke of his son, who already gives the promise of distinguishing himself, and of reflecting credit on his family. How little do we know people whom we meet only in general society, in which every one assumes a similar tone and manner, reserving for home the peculiarities that distinguish each from the other, and suppressing all demonstration of the feelings indulged only in the privacy of the domestic circle! I have been many years acquainted with the Count de Montalembert, yet never really appreciated him until today. Had I been asked to describe him yesterday, I should have spoken of him as a _spirituel_, lively, and amusing man, with remarkably good manners, a great knowledge of the world, and possessing in an eminent degree the tact and talent _de société_. Had any one mentioned that he was a man of deep feeling, I should have been disposed to question the discernment of the person who asserted it: yet now I am as perfectly convinced of the fact as it is possible to be, and had he paid this visit before affliction had assailed me, he would not, I am convinced, have revealed his own grief. Yes, affliction is like the divinatory wand, whose touch discovers deep-buried springs the existence of which was previously unknown. ---- called on me to-day, and talked a good deal of ----. I endeavoured to excite sympathy for the unhappy person, but failed in the attempt. The unfortunate generally meet with more blame than pity; for as the latter is a painful emotion, people endeavour to exonerate themselves from its indulgence, by trying to discover some error which may have led to the misfortune they are too selfish to commiserate. Alas! there are but few friends who, like ivy, cling to ruin, and ---- is not one of these. The Prince and Princesse Soutzo dined with us yesterday. They are as amiable and agreeable as ever, and I felt great gratification in meeting them again. We talked over the many pleasant days we passed together at Pisa. Alas! how changed is my domestic circle since then! They missed _one_ who would have joined me in welcoming them to Paris, and whose unvaried kindness they have not forgotten! The "decent dignity" with which this interesting couple support their altered fortunes, won my esteem on our first acquaintance. Prince Soutzo was Hospodar, or reigning Prince of Moldavia, and married the eldest daughter of Prince Carraga, Hospodar of Walachia. He maintained the state attendant on his high rank, beloved and respected by those he governed, until the patriotic sentiments inseparable from a great mind induced him to sacrifice rank, fortune, and power, to the cause of Greece, his native land. He only saved his life by flight; for the angry Sultan with whom he had previously been a great favourite, had already sent an order for his decapitation! Never was a reverse of fortune borne with greater equanimity than by this charming family, whose virtues, endowments, and acquirements, fit them for the most elevated station. My old acquaintances, Mr. Rogers the poet, and Mr. Luttrell, called on me to-day. Of how many pleasant days in St. James's Square did the sight of both remind me! Such days I shall pass there no more: but I must not give way to reflections that are, alas! as unavailing as they are painful. Both of these my old friends are unchanged. Time has dealt gently by them during the seven years that have elapsed since we last met: the restless tyrant has been less merciful to me. We may, however, bear with equanimity the ravages of Time, if we meet the destroyer side by side with those dear to us, those who have witnessed our youth and maturity, and who have advanced with us into the autumn of life; but, when they are lost to us, how dreary becomes the prospect! How difficult it is to prevent the mind from dwelling on thoughts fraught with sadness, when once the chord of memory vibrates to the touch of grief! Mr. Rogers talked of Byron, and evinced a deep feeling of regard for his memory, He little knows the manner in which he is treated in a certain poem, written by him in one of his angry moods, and which I urged him, but in vain, to commit to the flames. The knowledge of it, however, would, I am convinced, excite no wrath in the heart of Rogers, who would feel more sorrow than anger that one he believed his friend could have written so bitter a diatribe against him. And, truth to say, the poem in question is more injurious to the memory of Byron than it could be painful to him who is the subject of it; but I hope that it may never be published, and I think no one who had delicacy or feeling would bring it to light. Byron read this lampoon to us one day at Genoa, and enjoyed our dismay at it like a froward boy who has achieved what he considers some mischievous prank. He offered us a copy, but we declined to accept it; for, being in the habit of seeing Mr. Rogers frequently beneath our roof, we thought it would be treacherous to him. Byron, however, found others less scrupulous, and three or four copies of it have been given away. The love of mischief was strong in the heart of Byron even to the last, but, while recklessly indulging it in trifles, he was capable of giving proofs of exalted friendship to those against whom he practised it; and, had Rogers stood in need of kindness, he would have found no lack of it in his brother poet, even in the very hour he had penned the malicious lampoon in question against him. Comte d'Orsay, with his frank _naÏveté_, observed, "I thought you were one of Mr. Rogers's most intimate friends, and so all the world had reason to think, after reading your dedication of the _Giaour_ to him." "Yes," answered Byron, laughing, "and it is our friendship that gives me the privilege of taking a liberty with him." "If it is thus you evince your friendship," replied Comte d'Orsay, "I should be disposed to prefer your enmity." "You," said Byron, "could never excite this last sentiment in my breast, for you neither say nor do spiteful things." Brief as was the period Byron had lived in what is termed fashionable society in London, it was long enough to have engendered in him a habit of _persiflage_, and a love of uttering sarcasms, (more from a desire of displaying wit than from malice,) peculiar to that circle in which, if every man's hand is not against his associates, every man's tongue is. He drew no line of demarcation between _uttering_ and _writing_ satirical things; and the first being, if not sanctioned, at least permitted in the society in which he had lived in London, he considered himself not more culpable in inditing his satires than the others were in speaking them. He would have laughed at being censured for putting on paper the epigrammatic malice that his former associates would delight in uttering before all except the person at whom it was aimed; yet the world see the matter in another point of view, and many of those who _speak_ as much evil of their _soi-disant_ friends, would declare, if not feel, themselves shocked at Byron's writing it. I know no more agreeable member of society than Mr. Luttrell. His conversation, like a limpid stream, flows smoothly and brightly along, revealing the depths beneath its current, now sparkling over the objects it discloses or reflecting those by which it glides. He never talks for talking's sake; but his mind is so well filled that, like a fountain which when stirred sends up from its bosom sparkling showers, his mind, when excited, sends forth thoughts no less bright than profound, revealing the treasures with which it is so richly stored. The conversation of Mr. Luttrell makes me think, while that of many others only amuses me. Lord John Russell has arrived at Paris, and sat with me a considerable time to-day. How very agreeable he can be when his reserve wears off, and what a pity it is he should ever allow it to veil the many fine qualities he possesses! Few men have a finer taste in literature, or a more highly cultivated mind. It seizes with rapidity whatever is brought before it; and being wholly free from passion or egotism, the views he takes on all subjects are just and unprejudiced. He has a quick perception of the ridiculous, and possesses a fund of dry caustic humour that might render him a very dangerous opponent in a debate, were it not governed by a good breeding and a calmness that never forsake him. Lord John Russell is precisely the person calculated to fill a high official situation. Well informed on all subjects, with an ardent love of his country, and an anxious desire to serve it, he has a sobriety of judgment and a strictness of principle that will for ever place him beyond the reach of suspicion, even to the most prejudiced of his political adversaries. The reserve complained of by those who are only superficially acquainted with him, would be highly advantageous to a minister; for it would not only preserve him from the approaches to familiarity, so injurious to men in power, but would discourage the hopes founded on the facility of manner of those whose very smiles and simple acts of politeness are by the many looked on as an encouragement to form the most unreasonable ones, and as an excuse for the indulgence of angry feelings when those unreasonable hopes are frustrated. Lord John Russell, Mr. Rogers, Mr. Luttrell, Monsieur Thiers, Monsieur Mignet, and Mr. Poulett Thomson, dined here yesterday. The party was an agreeable one, and the guests seemed mutually pleased with each other. Monsieur Thiers is a very remarkable person--quick, animated, and observant: nothing escapes him, and his remarks are indicative of a mind of great power. I enjoy listening to his conversation, which is at once full of originality, yet free from the slightest shade of eccentricity. Monsieur Mignet, who is the inseparable friend of Monsieur Thiers, reminds me every time I see him of Byron, for there is a striking likeness in the countenance. With great abilities, Monsieur Mignet gives me the notion of being more fitted to a life of philosophical research and contemplation than of action, while Monsieur Thiers impresses me with the conviction of his being formed to fill a busy and conspicuous part in the drama of life. He is a sort of modern Prometheus, capable of creating and of vivifying with the electric spark of mind; but, whether he would steal the fire from Heaven, or a less elevated region, I am not prepared to say. He has called into life a body--and a vast one--by his vigorous writings, and has infused into it a spirit that will not be soon or easily quelled. Whether that spirit will tend to the advancement of his country or not, time will prove; but, _en attendant_, its ebullitions may occasion as much trouble to the _powers that be_ as did the spirit engendered by Mirabeau in a former reign. The countenance of Monsieur Thiers is remarkable. The eyes, even through his spectacles, flash with intelligence, and the expression of his face varies with every sentiment he utters. Thiers is a man to effect a revolution, and Mignet would be the historian to narrate it. There is something very interesting in the unbroken friendship of these two men of genius, and its constancy elevates both in my estimation. They are not more unlike than are their respective works, both of which, though so dissimilar, are admirable in their way. The mobility and extreme excitability of the French, render such men as Monsieur Thiers extremely dangerous to monarchical power. His genius, his eloquence, and his boldness, furnish him with the means of exciting the enthusiasm of his countrymen as surely as a torch applied to gunpowder produces an explosion. In England these qualities, however elevated, would fail to produce similar results; for enthusiasm is there little known, and, when it comes forth, satisfies itself with a brief manifestation, and swiftly resigns itself to the prudent jurisdiction of reason. Napoleon himself, with all the glory associated with his name--a glory that intoxicated the French--would have failed to inebriate the sober-minded English. Through my acquaintance with the Baron de Cailleux, who is at the head of the Musée, I obtained permission to take Lord John Russell, Mr. Rogers, and Mr. Luttrell, to the galleries of the Louvre yesterday, it being a day on which the public are excluded. The Baron received us, did the honours of the Musée with all the intelligence and urbanity that distinguish him, and made as favourable an impression on my countrymen as they seemed to have produced on him. Rogers has a pure taste in the fine arts, and has cultivated it _con amore_; Luttrell brings to the study a practised eye and a matured judgment; but Lord John, nurtured from infancy in dwellings, the walls of which glow with the _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of the old masters and the best works of the modern ones, possesses an exquisite tact in recognizing at a glance the finest points in a picture, and reasons on them with all the _savoir_ of a connoisseur and the feeling of an amateur. It is a pleasant thing to view collections of art with those fully capable of appreciating them, and I enjoyed this satisfaction yesterday. The Baron de Cailleux evinced no little pleasure in conducting my companions from one masterpiece to another, and two or three hours passed away rapidly in the interesting study. The Marquis and Marquise de B----, Comte V----, and some others, dined here yesterday. The Marquise de B---- is very clever, has agreeable manners, knows the world thoroughly, and neither under nor overvalues it. A constant friction with society, while it smoothes down asperities and polishes manners, is apt to impair if not destroy much of the originality and raciness peculiar to clever people. To suit themselves to the ordinary level of society, they become either insipid or satirical; they mix too much water, or apply cayenne pepper to the wine of their conversation: hence that mind which, apart from the artificial atmosphere of the busy world, might have grown into strength and beauty, becomes like some poor child nurtured in the unhealthy precincts of a dense and crowded city,--diseased, stunted, rickety, and incapable of distinguishing itself from its fellows. As clever people cannot elevate the mass with which they herd to their own level, they are apt to sink to theirs; and persons with talents that might have served for nobler purposes are suffered to degenerate into _diseurs de bons mots_ and _raconteurs de société_, content with the paltry distinction of being considered amusing. How many such have I encountered, satisfied with being pigmies, who might have grown to be giants, but who were consoled by the reflection that in that world in which their sole aim is to shine, pigmies are more tolerated than giants, as people prefer looking down to looking up! Lord Allen and Sir Andrew Barnard dined here yesterday. They appear to enter into the gaiety of Paris with great zest, go the round of the theatres, dine at all the celebrated _restaurateurs_, mix enough in the _beau monde_ to be enabled to observe the difference between the Parisian and London one, and will, at the expiration of the term assigned to their _séjour_ here, return to England well satisfied with their trip and with themselves. Lord A---- has tasted all the _nouveaux plats à la mode_, for at Paris new dishes are as frequently invented as new bonnets or caps; and the proficiency in the culinary art which he has acquired will render him an oracle at his clubs, until the more recent arrival of some other epicurean from the French capital deposes his brief sovereignty. But it is not in the culinary art alone that Lord Allen evinces his good taste, for no one is a better judge of all that constitutes the _agrémens_ of life, or more _au fait_ of the [* omitted word?] of contributing to them. Sir A. B----, as devoted as ever to music, has heard all the new, and finds that the old, like old friends, loses nothing by comparison. It is pleasant to see that the advance of years impairs not the taste for a refined and innocent pleasure. CHAPTER XXI. Mr. Rogers and Mr. Luttrell spent last evening here. The minds of both teem with reflection, and their conversation is a high intellectual treat to me. There is a repose in the society of clever and refined Englishmen to be met with in no other: the absence of all attempts to shine, or at least of the evidence of such attempts; the mildness of the manners; the low voices, the freedom from any flattery, except the most delicate and acceptable of all to a fastidious person, namely, that implied by the subjects of conversation chosen, and the interest yielded to them;--yes, these peculiarities have a great charm for me, and Mr. Rogers and Mr. Luttrell possess them in an eminent degree. The mercurial temperaments of the French preclude them from this calmness of manner and mildness of speech. More obsequiously polite and attentive to women, the exuberance of their animal spirits often hurries them into a gaiety evinced by brilliant sallies and clever observations. They shine, but they let the desire to do so be too evident to admit of that quietude that forms one of the most agreeable, as well as distinguishing, attributes of the conversation of a refined and highly-intellectual Englishman. ---- and ---- spent last evening here. Two more opposite characters could not easily have encountered. One influenced wholly by his feelings, the other by his reason, each seemed to form a low estimate of the other; and this, _malgré_ all the restraint imposed by good breeding, was but too visible. Neither has any cause to be vain, for he becomes a dupe who judges with his heart instead of his head, and an egotist who permits not his heart to be touched by the toleration of his head. ---- is often duped, but sometimes liked for his good nature; while ----, if never duped, is never liked. I took Lord John Russell, Mr. Rogers, and Mr. Luttrell yesterday to La Muette to see M. Erard's fine collection of pictures, with which they were very much pleased. Our drive to the Bois de Boulogne was a very agreeable one, and was rendered so by their pleasant conversation. I have presented Mr. Rogers with some acquisitions for his cabinet of antique _bijouterie_, with which he appears delighted. I outbid M. Millingen, who was bargaining at Naples for these little treasures, and secured a diminutive Cupid, a Bacchus, and a small bunch of grapes of pure gold, and of exquisite workmanship, which will now be transferred to the museum of my friend, Mr. Rogers. He will not, I dare say, be more grateful for the gift of my Cupid than his sex generally are when ladies no longer young bestow their love on them, and so I hinted when giving him the little winged god; but, _n'importe_, the gift may please, though the giver be forgotten. Lord Pembroke dined here yesterday, he is peculiarly well-bred and gentlemanlike, and looks a nobleman from top to toe. He has acquired all the polish and _savoir-vivre_ of the best foreign society without having lost any of the more solid and fine qualities peculiar to the most distinguished portion of his countrymen. Lord Pembroke maintains the reputation of English taste in equipages by sporting horses and carriages that excite the admiration, if not the envy, of the Parisians, among whom he is, and deserves to be, very popular. The Duke of Hamilton paid me a long visit to-day. We talked over old times, and our mutual friend Dr. Parr, in whose society we formerly passed such agreeable hours in St. James's Square. The Duke is a very well-informed man, has read much, and remembers what he has read; and the ceremoniousness of his manners, with which some people find fault, I have got used to, and rather like than otherwise. The mixture of chivalric sentiments, Scotch philosophy, and high breeding of the old French school which meet in the Duke, render his conversation very piquant. He has, indeed, the dignity of his three dukedoms; the _fierté_ of that of Chatelherault, the reserve of that of England, and the spirit of that of Scotland: witness his dignified reproof to the Duc de Blacas at Rome, when that very unpopular personage, then Ambassador from the court of France, presumed to comment on the frequency of the Duke of Hamilton's visits to the Princess Pauline Borghese, who, being a Buonaparte, was looked on with a jealous eye by Blacas. Monsieur Mignet spent last evening here. The more I see of him the more I am pleased with his society. To a mind stored with knowledge he joins a happy facility of bringing forth its treasures, never as if ostentatious of his wealth, but in illustration of any topic that is discussed, on which he brings it to bear most aptly and appropriately. His countenance lights up with expression when he converses, and adds force to an eloquence always interesting and often instructive. Though Monsieur Mignet shines in monologue more than in dialogue, there is nothing either dictatorial or pedantic in his manner, he utters opinions new and original, which it is evident he has deeply reflected on, and elucidates them to the comprehension of his auditors with great felicity. I like listening to the conversation of such a man; and clever people, when they find an attentive listener, are incited to talk well. In general society, in which many persons of totally opposite tastes, pursuits, and opinions, are thrown together, a clever man has seldom an opportunity of bringing forth the treasures of his mind. He can only dispense the small coin, which is easily changed with those he comes in contact with; but the weighty and valuable, metal is not brought into use, because he knows the greater number of those, around him could give him no equivalent in exchange. ----, conversing with Lady ---- to-day, she observed that in early life conscience has less influence than in advanced life, and accounted for it by the nearer approach to death rendering people more alarmed, and consequently more disposed to listen to it. Some persons attribute all good impulses to fear, as if mortals were more governed by its influence than by that of love and gratitude. If conscience is less frequently heard in youth, it is that the tumultuous throbbing of the heart, and the wild suggestions of the passions, prevent its "still small voice" from being audible; but in the decline of life, when the heart beats languidly and the passions slumber, it makes itself heard, and on its whispers depends our happiness or misery. My old acquaintance, Lord Palmerston, has arrived at Paris, and dined here yesterday, to meet the Duc and Duchesse de Guiche, Count Valeski, and Mr. Poulett Thomson. Seven years have produced no change in Lord Palmerston. He is the same intelligent, sensible, and agreeable person that I remember him to have been for many years. Lord Palmerston has much more ability than people are disposed to give him credit for. He is, or used to be, when I lived in England, considered a good man of business, acute in the details, and quick in the comprehension of complicated questions. Even this is no mean praise, but I think him entitled to more; for, though constantly and busily occupied with official duties, he has contrived to find time to read every thing worth reading, and to make himself acquainted with the politics of other countries. Lively, well-bred, and unaffected, Lord Palmerston is a man that is so well acquainted with the routine of official duties, performs them so readily and pleasantly, and is so free from the assumption of self-importance that too frequently appertains to adepts in them, that, whether Whig or Tory government has the ascendant in England, his services will be always considered a desideratum to be secured if possible. Lord Castlereagh, Mr. Cutlar Fergusson, and Count Valeski dined here yesterday. Lord C. has just arrived from England, and is a good specimen of the young men of the present day. He reminds me of his uncle, the late Marquess of Londonderry, one of the most amiable and well-bred men I ever knew. Lord C---- is very animated and piquant in conversation, thinks for himself, and says what he thinks with a frankness not often met with in our times. Yet there is no _brusquerie_ in his manners; _au contraire_, they are soft and very pleasing; and this contrast between the originality and fearlessness of his opinions, and the perfect good-breeding with which they are expressed, lend a peculiar attraction to his manner. If Lord C---- were not a man of fashion he would become something vastly better, for he has much of the chivalrous spirit of his father and the tact of his uncle. Fashion is the gulf in whose vortex so many fine natures are wrecked in England; what a pity it is that they cannot be rescued from its dangers! Mr. Cutlar Fergusson is a clever and amiable man, mild, well-informed, and agreeable. The Baron and Baroness de Ruysch spent yesterday with us. They are an estimable couple, and very pleasant withal. His philosophy, which has nothing of the ascetic in it, harmonises very well with her vivacity, and her sprightliness never degenerates into levity. It is the gaiety of a mind at ease, pleased with others, and content with self. How unlike the exuberant spirits of ----, which always depress mine more than a day's _tête-à-tête_ with the moodiest hypochondriac could do! Nothing can be more dreary and cheerless than the weather; and a second winter's residence at Paris has convinced me that London is infinitely preferable at this season, except to those who consider gaiety an equivalent for comfort. The negligence and bad management of the persons whose duty it is to remove the snow or mud from the streets, render them not only nearly impassable for pedestrians but exceedingly disagreeable to those who have carriages. Previously to the heavy fall of snow that occurred a week ago, and which still encumbers the streets, a succession of wet days occasioned an accumulation of mud that gave forth most unsavoury odours, and lent a damp chilliness to the atmosphere which sent home to their sick chambers, assailed by sore throats and all the other miseries peculiar to colds, many of those who were so imprudent as to venture abroad. The snow, instead of being swept away, is piled up on each side of the streets, forming a wall that increases the gloom and chilliness that reigns around. The fogs, too, rise from the Seine, and hover over the Champs-Elysées and streets adjacent to it, rendering a passage through them a service of danger. Lord Castlereagh and Madame Grassini dined here last evening. He was much amused with the raciness and originality of her remarks; and she was greatly gratified by the polite attention with which he listened to them. At one moment, she pronounced him to be "_la vraie image de ce cher et bon Lord Castlereagh_," whom she had so much liked; and the next she declared him to be exactly like "_ce preux chevalier, son père_," who was so irresistible that no female heart, or, as she said, at least no Italian female heart, could resist him. Then she spoke of "_ce cher et excellent Duc de Wellington_," who had been so kind to her, asked a thousand questions about him, the tears starting into her brilliant eyes as she dwelt on the reminiscences of those days when, considered the finest singer and most beautiful woman of her time, she received a homage accorded to her beauty and talent never since so universally decreed to any other _prima donna_. The Grassini cannot be known without being liked, she is so warm-hearted, unaffected, and sincere. The prettiest sight imaginable was a party of our friends in sledges, who yesterday passed through the streets. This was the first time I had ever seen this mode of conveyance, and nothing can be more picturesque. The sledge of the Duc de Guiche, in which reclined the Duchesse, the Duc seated behind her and holding, at each side of her, the reins of the horse, presented the form of a swan, the feathers beautifully sculptured. The back of this colossal swan being hollowed out, admitted a seat, which, with the whole of the interior, was covered with fine fur. The harness and trappings of the superb horse that drew it were richly decorated, and innumerable silver bells were attached to it, the sound of which was pleasant to the ear. The Duchesse, wrapped in a pelisse of the finest Russian sable, never looked handsomer than in her sledge, her fair cheeks tinged with a bright pink by the cold air, and her luxuriant silken curls falling on the dark fur that encircled her throat. Count A. d'Orsay's sledge presented the form of a dragon, and the accoutrements and horse were beautiful; the harness was of red morocco, embroidered with gold. The Prince Poniatowski and Comte Valeski followed in sledges of the ordinary Russian shape, and the whole cavalcade had a most picturesque effect. The Parisians appeared to be highly delighted with the sight, and, above all, with the beautiful Duchesse borne along through the snow in her swan. My medical adviser pressed me so much to accede to the wishes of my friends and try the salutary effect of a drive in a sledge, that I yesterday accompanied them to St.-Cloud, where we dined, and returned at night by torch-light. Picturesque as is the appearance of the sledges by day-light, it is infinitely more so by night, particularly of those that have the form of animals or birds. The swan of the Duchesse de Guiche had bright lamps in its eyes, which sent forth a clear light that was reflected in prismatic colours on the drifted snow, and ice-gemmed branches of the trees, as we drove through the Bois de Boulogne. Grooms, bearing lighted torches, preceded each sledge; and the sound of the bells in the Bois, silent and deserted at that hour, made one fancy one's self transported to some far northern region. The dragon of Comte A. d'Orsay looked strangely fantastic at night. In the mouth, as well as the eyes, was a brilliant red light; and to a tiger-skin covering, that nearly concealed the cream-coloured horse, revealing only the white mane and tail, was attached a double line of silver gilt bells, the jingle of which was very musical and cheerful. The shadows of the tall trees falling on an immense plain of snow, the light flashing in fitful gleams from the torches and lamps as we were hurried rapidly along, looked strange and unearthly, and reminded me of some of the scenes described in those northern fictions perused in the happy days of childhood. This excursion and exposure to the wintry air procured me a good night's sleep,--the first enjoyed since the severity of the weather has deprived me of my usual exercise. This revival of an old fashion (for in former days sledges were considered as indispensable in the winter _remise_ of a grand seigneur in France as cabriolets or britchkas are in the summer) has greatly pleased the Parisian world, and crowds flock to see them as they pass along. The velocity of the movement, the gaiety of the sound of the bells, and the cold bracing air, have a very exhilarating effect on the spirits. Met the Prince Polignac at the Duchesse de G----'s today. His countenance is remarkably good, his air and manner _très-distingué_, and his conversation precisely what might be expected from an English gentleman--mild, reasonable, and unaffected. If I had not previously known him to be one or the most amiable men in the world, I should have soon formed this judgment of him, for every expression of his countenance, and every word he utters, give this impression. The Prince Polignac has lived much in England, and seems to me to be formed to live there, for his tastes are decidedly English. Twice married, both his wives were English; so that it is no wonder that he has adopted much of our modes of thinking. Highly as I am disposed to estimate him, I do not think that he is precisely the person calculated to cope with the difficulties that must beset a minister, and, above all, a minister in France, in times like the present. The very qualities that render him so beloved in private life, and which make his domestic circle one of the happiest in the world, are perhaps those which unfit him for so trying a post as the one he is now called on to hold--a post requiring abilities so various, and qualifications so manifold, that few, if any, could be found to possess the rare union. A spirit is rife in France that renders the position of _premier_ in it almost untenable; and he must unite the firmness of a stoic, the knowledge of a Machiavelli, and the boldness of a Napoleon, who could hope to stem the tide that menaces to set in and sweep away the present institutions. If honesty of intention, loyalty to his sovereign, personal courage, attachment to his country, and perfect disinterestedness could secure success, then might Prince Polignac expect it. CHAPTER XXII. May.--Some months have elapsed since I noted down a line in this book. Indisposition and its usual attendants, languor and lassitude, have caused me to throw it by. Time that once rolled as pleasantly as rapidly along, seems now to pace as slowly as sadly; and even the approach of spring, that joyous season never before unwelcomed, now awakens only painful recollections. Who can see the trees putting forth their leaves without a dread that, ere they have yet expanded into their full growth, some one may be snatched away who with us hailed their first opening verdure? When once Death has invaded our hearths and torn from us some dear object on whose existence our happiness depended, we lose all the confidence previously fondly and foolishly experienced in the stability of the blessings we enjoy, and not only deeply mourn those lost, but tremble for those yet spared to us. I once thought that I could never behold this genial season without pleasure; alas! it now occasions only gloom. Captain William Anson, the brother of Lord Anson, dined here yesterday. He is a very remarkable young man; highly distinguished in his profession, being considered one of the best officers in the navy, and possessing all the accomplishments of a finished gentleman. His reading has been extensive, and his memory is very retentive. He has been in most quarters of the globe, and has missed no opportunity of cultivating his mind and of increasing his stock of knowledge. He is, indeed, a worthy descendant of his great ancestor, who might well be proud of such a scion to the ancient stock. Devoted to the arduous duties of his profession, he studies every amelioration in it _con amore_; and, if a long life be granted to him, will prove one of its brightest ornaments. The Marquis and Marquise de B---- spent last evening here, and several people dropped in. Among them was the pretty Madame de la H----, as piquant and lively as ever, as content with herself (and she has reason to be so, being very good-looking and amusing) and as careless of the suffrages of others. I like the young and the gay of my own sex, though I am no longer either. Prince Paul Lieven and Captain Cadogan[8] dined here yesterday. The first is as _spirituel_ and clever as formerly, and the second is as frank, high-spirited, and well-bred--the very _beau idéal_ of a son of the sea, possessing all the attributes of that generous race, joined to all those said to be peculiar to the high-born and well-educated. I like the conversation of such men--men who, nursed in the lap of luxury, are sent from the noble dwellings of their sires to be "cabined, cribbed, confined," in (to my thinking) the most unbearable of all prisons--a ship; pass months and years exposed to hardships, privations, and dangers, from the endurance of which even the poor and lowly born often shrink, and bring back to society the high breeding and urbanity not to be surpassed in those whose lots have been exempt from such trials; and, what is still more precious, the experience and reflection acquired in their perilous profession, and in the many hours of solitude and anxiety that appertain to it. Sat a considerable time with the Duchesse de Guiche today. How amiable and kind-hearted she is, and how unspoilt by all the brilliancy of her position! While I was there the mother and son of a young page, for whom the Duc and Duchesse have obtained that office at court, came to thank her. The boy is a very fine youth, and the mother and sister seem to dote on him. They reminded me of the mother and sister that a sentimental writer would have created for the occasion, being exceedingly interesting in their appearance and manner. The boy was evidently as fond and proud of them as they were of him, and the group formed a charming picture. The warmth and gentleness of the manners of the Duchesse de G----, and the remarkable beauty of her face and figure, never appeared more captivating in my eyes than when I beheld her to-day, evincing such good nature to the youthful page and his mother and sister; and I saw by their eyes, when they took leave of her, that she sent away grateful hearts. _July_ 1830.--Indisposition has interrupted my journal for several weeks, and idleness has prolonged the chasm. The noting down the daily recurrence of uninteresting events is as dull as the endurance of them. If reports may be credited, we are on the eve of some popular commotion in France, and the present ministers are said to be either ignorant of the danger that menaces, or unprepared to meet it. The conquest of Algiers has produced much less exultation in the people than might have naturally been expected; and this indifference to an event calculated to gratify the _amour-propre_ which forms so peculiar a characteristic of the nation, is considered a bad sign by those who affect to be acquainted with the people. I have so often heard rumours of discontent and revolts that I have grown incredulous, and I think and hope the French are too wise to try any dangerous experiments. _26th July_.--This morning General E---- came to breakfast with us, and announced that the ordonnances were yesterday signed in council at St.- Cloud. This good man and brave soldier expressed the liveliest regret at this rash measure, and the utmost alarm at the consequences likely to result from it. Is Charles the Tenth ignorant of the actual state of things in Paris, and of the power of public opinion? or does he hope to vanquish the resistance likely to be offered to this act? I hope his majesty may not acquire this knowledge when it has become too late to derive advantage from it. The unpopularity of the present ministry, and above all of its leader, the Prince Polignac, is surprising, when one considers how estimable his private character is, and that theirs are irreproachable. They are rendered responsible for the will of the sovereign, who, if report speak truth, is very pertinacious in exacting a rigid fulfilment of it whenever it is exercised. The present are not times to try experiments how far the will of a monarch can be pushed; and it is not in France, as in England, where our law supposes that a king can do no wrong, for the French are prone to pay no more respect to sovereigns than to their supposed advisers, and both may suffer a heavy penalty for incurring the dislike of the people. The prosperity of France, which is acknowledged by all, has failed to silence the murmurs of discontent which, loud and deep, are heard every where save in the palace,--too frequently the last place where public opinion gets an impartial hearing. The success of the Algerine expedition has buoyed up the confidence of the ministry in their own strength; but, if I may credit what I hear, it has by no means really added to it. Concessions too long delayed come with a bad grace when at length extorted, and the change of ministry factiously demanded, even if complied with, would have placed the sovereign in any thing but a dignified position. The dissolution of the Chambers in March, after a session of only ten days, might be considered as a demonstration of discontent on the part of the monarch, as well as a want of power of quelling the spirit that evoked it. A circumstance, trivial in itself, added to this unpopularity, which was, that several of the deputies were on their route to Paris when the unexpected intelligence of the dissolution reached them, and they could not pardon the expense to which they had been put by this unnecessary _frais de route_, their places in the diligence being paid for. How frequently do trifles exercise a powerful influence over grave affairs! The portion of the public press that advocates the defence of the government is even more injudicious than that which assails it; and the monarchy has decidedly suffered in general opinion by the angry excitement produced by the recrimination of both parties. The prosecutions entered into against the editors of the liberal papers are considered by the party to which they belong to be persecutions; and the sentiments avowed by the _Gazette de France_ are received as those of not only the government but of the sovereign. The discussions occasioned by these prosecutions, as well as by the principles of monarchical absolutism maintained by the adverse party, have greatly extended the ranks of the liberals, who, looking on the editors who expound or promulgate their opinions as martyrs, become more exasperated against their opponents, and more reckless in the modes likely to be adopted for marking their disapprobation. _27th_.--On returning from a late drive last night we passed near the hôtel of the Minister _des Finances_, around which some fifty or sixty persons, chiefly youths, were assembled, crying out "_Vive la charte!_" "_A bas les ministres!_" A patrol passed close to these persons, but made no attempt to disperse them, which I think was rather unwise, for, encouraged by this impunity, their numbers, I am told, increased rapidly. I have just heard that the post of _gendarmes_ was tripled this morning, and that a crowd of persons have assembled around the hôtel of the Prince Polignac, where a cabinet council was held. It is said that the ministers were insulted as they entered. This looks ill; nevertheless, I trust that it is nothing more than a demonstration of the spirit that is rife in the people, and that no more violent ones will be resorted to. The visitors I have seen to-day seem much alarmed. The Duc de Guiche set off for St.-Cloud yesterday morning, the moment he had read the ordonnances. Had his counsel been listened to, they would never have been promulgated; for he is one of the few who, with a freedom from prejudice that enables him to judge dispassionately of the actual state of public opinion, has the moral courage to declare the truth to his sovereign, however unpalatable that truth might be, or however prejudicial to his own interests. I have this moment returned from a drive through the streets, and, though far from being an alarmist, I begin to think that affairs wear a more serious aspect than I dreaded. Already has a collision taken place between the populace and the soldiers, who attempted to disperse them near the Palais-Royal; and it required the assistance of a charge of cavalry to secure the dangerous victory to themselves. Crowds were hurrying through the streets, many of the shops were closed, and not above three or four carriages were to be seen. Never did so great a change take place in the aspect of a city in so few hours! Yesterday the business of life flowed on in its usual current. The bees and the drones of this vast hive were buzzing about, and the butterflies of fashion were expanding their gay wings in the sunshine. To-day the industrious and orderly seem frightened from their usual occupations, and scarcely a person of those termed fashionable is to be seen. Where are all the household of Charles the Tenth, that vast and well-paid crowd who were wont to fill the anterooms of the Tuileries on gala days, obsequiously watching to catch a nod from the monarch, whose slightest wish was to them as the laws of the Modes and Persians? Can it be that they have disappeared at the first cloud that has darkened the horizon of their sovereign, and increased the danger that menaces him by shewing that they have not courage to meet it? Heaven send, for the honour of France, that the _noblesse_ of the court of Charles the Tenth may not follow the disgraceful example furnished by that of his unfortunate brother, Louis the Sixteenth! In England how different would it be if danger menaced the sovereign! ---- has just been here, and, in answer to my question of where are the men on whose fidelity the king could count, and in whose military experience he might confide in such a crisis as the present, he told me that for the purposes of election interests all the general officers who could be trusted had unfortunately been sent from the court. The sound of firing has announced that order, far from being restored, seems less likely than ever to be so. People are rushing wildly through the streets proclaiming that several persons have been killed by the military. All is confusion and alarm, and every one appears to dread what the coming night may produce. Intelligence has just reached us that the mob are demolishing the lanterns, and that they have broken into the shops of the gunsmiths, and seized all the arms they could find. The Duc de Raguse commands the troops, and already several charges have taken place. This selection, under present circumstances, is not considered to be a good one. The people are forming barricades in various parts of the town, and some of our servants, who have been out to collect intelligence, assert that no hinderance seems to be opposed to this mischievous measure. Where are the civil authorities during all this commotion? is the natural question that suggests itself to one who knows how in London, under any disturbance, they would oppose themselves to check such proceedings. And why, if the civil authorities are too weak to resist the torrent, is there not a sufficient military force to stem it? is the next question that presents itself. No one seems to know where the blame lies, but every one foretells a dangerous result from this unaccountable state of things. The promulgation of the ordonnances which had led to this tumult, ought to have been accompanied by a display of force sufficient to maintain their enactment. If a government _will_ try the hazardous measure of a _coup d'état_, it ought to be well prepared to meet the probable consequences. I feel so little disposed to sleep that, instead of seeking my pillow, I occupy myself by noting down my impressions, occasionally looking out of my window to catch the sounds that break the stillness of the night. The heat is intense, but the sky is as pure and cloudless as if it canopied a calm and slumbering multitude instead of a waking and turbulent one, filled with the most angry emotions. Comtes d'Orsay and Valeski have just returned, and state that they have been as far as the Place de la Bourse, where they saw a scene of the utmost confusion. The populace had assembled there in great force, armed with every kind of weapon they could obtain, their arms bared up to the shoulders, and the whole of them presenting the most wild and motley appearance imaginable. They had set fire to the Corps-de-Garde, the flames of which spread a light around as bright as day. Strange to say, the populace evinced a perfect good-humour, and more resembled a mob met to celebrate a saturnalia than to subvert a monarchy. Comtes d'O---- and V---- were recognised by some of the people, who seemed pleased at seeing them. On returning, they passed through the Rue de Richelieu, which they found in total darkness, all the lanterns having been broken. Comte d'O---- luckily found his cabriolet in the Rue de Ménars, where he had left it, not being able to take it farther, owing to a portion of the pavement being broken up, and had only time to reach the club-house in the Rue de Gramont, in the court of which he placed his cab, before the populace rushed by, destroying every thing they met, among which was the carriage of the Prince Tufiakin. A considerable number of the members of the club were assembled, a few of whom witnessed, from the balcony on the Boulevart, the burning of the chairs placed there, the breaking of the lamps, and other depredations. Some gentlemen went to the battalion of the guards stationed in front of the Prince Polignac's, and suggested to the officer in command the propriety of sending a few men to arrest the progress of the insurgents, a thing then easily to be accomplished; but the officer, having no orders, declined to take any step, and the populace continued their depredations within three hundred yards of so imposing a force as a battalion of the guards! What may not to-morrow's sun witness, ere it goes down? But conjecture is vain in a crisis in which every thing appears to go on in a mode so wholly unaccountable. The exhibition of a powerful force might and would, I am persuaded, have precluded the collision that has occurred between the populace and the military. Blood has been shed on both sides, and this has rendered the breach between people and sovereign too wide to be repaired except by something almost miraculous, and alas! the time of miracles is past. I cannot help wondering at the calmness I feel on this occasion. I experience no personal alarm; but I am apprehensive for my friends, some of whom are deeply interested in this struggle. How may their destinies, lately so brilliant, be overclouded by the change that menaces to take place! Well may Monsieur Salvandy have observed at the ball so recently given by the Duc of Orléans to the royal families of France and Naples, "This may be termed a Neapolitan _fête_, for they are dancing over a volcano." CHAPTER XXIII. All now seems quiet, so I will go to bed. Heaven only knows if to-morrow night we may be allowed to seek our pillows in safety. _28th_.--My _femme-de-chambre_ undrew my curtains this morning, "with such a face--so faint, so spiritless, so dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone"--proclaiming that barricades had been erected during the night, and that the bodies of those killed in the encounter yesterday have been paraded through the streets in order to excite still more the angry feelings of the people. This last measure reminds one of the appalling exhibitions in the fearful and memorable Revolution of former days; and the reminiscences it awakens are not calculated to tranquillize the mind. She states that the shops are all closed, and that no provisions can be obtained; the cook complains that his stockpots want replenishing; and the _femme de charge_ hints that the larder is not so well supplied as it would have been had she known what was to occur. Each and all of these functionaries seem wholly occupied by the dread of not being able to furnish us with as copious repasts as usual, unmindful that a mighty throne is tottering to its foundation, and that a struggle is going on in which many lives may be sacrificed. The Duc de Raguse has incurred great blame for his intercourse with the supposed leaders of the Revolution. This conduct has had the effect of destroying the confidence of the troops in their chief, and of weakening their attachment to the cause they were to support. The Maréchal was the Commandant appointed by the King, and as such, bound to treat as rebels those who opposed themselves to his government; instead of which, he seemed more like the _confident_ of a party who, it is alleged, owe their victory to his supineness. The Duc de Guiche has not left his post, near the royal family, since the 26th, except to pass and repass with instructions from the King to the Duc de Raguse, twice or thrice a-day. He has been repeatedly recognised by the people, though in plain clothes, and experienced at their hands the respect so well merited by his honourable conduct and devotion to his sovereign. How often have I heard this noble-minded man censured for encouraging the liberal sentiments of the Dauphin; and heard this, too, from some of those who are now the first to desert Charles the Tenth in the emergency which is the result of the system they advocated! ---- has been here; he tells me that to Marshal Marmont the king has confided unlimited power, and that Paris has been declared in a state of siege. He says that the military dispositions are so defective, that there is not a young officer in the army capable of committing a similar mistake. The regiments are crowded into narrow streets, in which even children may become dangerous enemies, by throwing from the windows every missile within their reach on the heads of the soldiers. He is of opinion that, in twenty-four hours, the populace will be in possession of Paris. The tri-coloured flag is now floating from the towers of Notre-Dame; while the white flag of the luckless Bourbons, as often stained by the faithlessness of its followers, as by the blood of its foes, still waves from the column of the Place Vendôme,--that column erected to commemorate the glory of the great chief now calmly sleeping in his ocean-washed grave. The civil authorities seem paralyzed: the troops have been twelve hours on duly without any refreshment, except that afforded by the humanity of the people, who have brought them wine and bread; can it be hoped that these same soldiers will turn their arms against those who have supplied their necessities? The royal emblems are destroyed wherever they are found, and the bust of the king has been trampled on. The disgusting exhibition of the dead bodies has had the bad effect calculated upon, and all is tumult and disorder. Every one wonders where are the authorities, and why a sufficient military force does not appear, for there has been ample time, since the disposition to insurrection manifested by the people, to assemble the troops. Every visitor, and, notwithstanding the disturbed state of Paris, we have already had several to-day, announces some fresh disaster, each representing it according to the political creed to which he adheres. The Royalists assert that the outbreak is the result of a long and grave conspiracy, fomented by those who expect to derive advantage from it; while the Liberals maintain that it has arisen spontaneously and simultaneously from the wounded spirit of liberty, lashed into a frenzied resistance by the ordonnances. I pretend not to know which of these statements is the most correct; but I believe that the favourite opinion of the worthy Sir Roger de Coverley, that "much could be said on both sides of the question," might now fairly be urged; for, according to the march of events, it is but too probable that the melodrama now enacting before our eyes has not been an impromptu; and it is quite clear that the ordonnances have furnished the occasion, and the excuse (if such were required), for the performance. Well might a great Italian writer pronounce revolutions to be the carnivals of history. This one seems to be not only a carnival but Saturnalia, for the ebriety of the slaves of liberty is well calculated to disgust the friends; and those who witness this intoxication are reminded of the observation of Voltaire, that "_Les Français goûtent de la liberté comme des liqueurs fortes avec lesquelles ils s'enivrent."_ A revolution affected by physical instead of moral force, is a grave wound inflicted on social order and civilization--a wound which it takes ages to heal. When on the point of sitting down to our _déjeûner a la fourchette_ (for people will eat while thrones are crumbling), repeated knockings, at the _porte-cochère_ induced us to look from the window in order to see who the persons were who thus loudly demanded admittance, when it was discovered that they were Doctors Pasquier and De Guise. They had been dressing the wounded at the hospital in the Faubourg du Roule, and finding on their return that the Champs-Élysées and Rue St.-Honoré were the scenes of combat, had bethought themselves of our vicinity, and sought shelter. When our unexpected visitants, deeming themselves fortunate in having found a refuge, prepared to join our repast, it was ludicrous to observe the lengthened faces of our servants at this addition to our party. They, having previously lamented the paucity of provisions in the larder, and being aware of the difficulty, if not impossibility, of procuring a further supply, looked on the new-comers as interlopers, who would inevitably diminish the already too limited stock. We had not been seated above five minutes at table, when the report of fire-arms announced that hostilities were renewed, and we hurried to the drawing-room to observe what was going on. The servants looked as if they rather enjoyed the interruption to the morning's meal, thinking no doubt that it would preserve the provisions, now so precious in their eyes, and they prepared to remove the viands with unusual alacrity; but their visages lengthened when told to let them remain on the table, and became still longer when we shortly after resumed our places at the board. An Englishwoman, in the kitchen establishment, has just performed a feat that has elevated her into a heroine in the eyes of the rest of the servants. Finding the larder not sufficiently supplied, she sallied forth into the street, passed through the Rue St.-Honoré, while the fighting was going on, and returned bearing a basket of meat, obtained certainly at the risk of her life, as shots were flying around her. As none of the men offered to undertake this action, she is now considered little less than an amazon, and her _amour-propre_ being excited by the commendations bestowed on her courage, she declares that she will go forth for all that may be required, as she despises fear. We have now entrenched ourselves in the front drawing-rooms, with the external shutters, which are stuffed to exclude noise, closed, but which we open occasionally, in order to see what is going on. Sitting in darkness, with the sound of firing, and the shouts of the people, continually in our ears, I can hardly bring myself to think that all that is now passing is not a dream. The populace, ten minutes ago, rushed from the Rue St.-Honoré towards the Champs-Élysées, assailing the troops stationed in the latter place; and were in turn assailed by these last, and forced to retreat to the Rue St.-Honoré. The scene was one of the utmost confusion. The firing is going on; stragglers are rushing to and fro; a body of troops are stationed at the bottom of this street, and some pieces of cannon have been placed. A thousand rumours are afloat, each more improbable than the other. One moment it is announced that several regiments have fraternized with the people; another, that the royal family have fled to Belgium; the next, that Paris is to be fired by the insurgents; but it would be impossible to repeat one-half the wild rumours in circulation. There is a mixture of the sublime and of the ridiculous in the scenes now passing before my eyes that is quite extraordinary. Looking from my window, twenty minutes ago, I saw a troop of boys, amounting to about fifty, the eldest of whom could not be more than ten or eleven years old, and some who appeared under that age, march through our streets, with wooden swords, and lances pointed with sharp nails, flags flying, and crying, "_Vive la charte! Vive la liberté_!" The gravity and intrepidity of these _gamins de Paris_ would, at any other period, have elicited a smile; but now, this demonstration on the part of mere children creates the reflection of how profound and general must be the sympathy enlisted against the government and the sovereign in the hearts of the people. Many are those who, like their children, shout "_Vive la charte!_" and "_Vive, la liberté!_" who are as ignorant of the true sense and value of both as they are. Well might the victim, when being led to execution in the days of the past revolution in France, exclaim, "O Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!" One of our servants has this moment informal me that the children, whose warlike demeanour I was disposed to smile at an hour ago, have rendered (_not_ the state, but the popular cause) some service. The troops, more amused than surprised at the appearance of these mimic soldiers, suffered them to approach closer than prudence warranted, and the urchins, rushing among the horses, wounded several of the poor animals severely, and effected their retreat before the soldiers were aware of what had occurred. A fatality seems to prevail in the preset crisis that is little less than marvellous. A want of provisions for the troops is now added to the catalogue of excitements against the cause of royalty. Harassed by the repeated attacks of the populace, and exhausted by long exposure to the intense heat of a burning sun, they are little prone to consider as enemies those who approach them with food to allay the pangs of hunger, and drink to cool their scorching thirst. ----, and others who have mingled with the crowd, tell me that they have beheld repeated examples of soldiers throwing down their arms, to embrace those who came to seduce them with the most irresistible of all seductions--refreshment, when they were nearly exhausted by the want of it. I shall begin to consider myself half a heroine, after an exploit I performed this evening. The men who shared our dinner having gone out to observe what was passing, I determined, _coûte que coûte_, to pay a visit to my friend Madame Craufurd. I attired myself as simply as possible, and, attended by a _valet de pied_, sallied forth. Having traversed the short distance that separates this house from the Rue St.-Honoré, I arrived at the barricade erected in front of the entrance to the Rue Verte, and I confess this obstacle seemed to me, for the first minute or two that I contemplated it, insurmountable. My servant, too, expressed his belief of the difficulty, if not impossibility, of climbing over this mountain of loose stones, that I felt half disposed to retrace my steps. The shouts of a mob approaching along the Rue St.-Honoré quickly decided me on the course to pursue; I clambered up as best I could, not without considerable risk; nor was the danger and difficulty of the descent on the other side of this rude pyramid less imminent. The evening was more sultry than I ever experienced an evening to be, even in Italy; the houses were all closed, the streets deserted, except when a few occasional stragglers rushed along, glancing at me with surprise, and uttering their comments on my courage. Now and then a dog ran by, with a terrified air and drooping tail, keeping close to the houses as if for protection. One might have fancied oneself in some city ravaged by the plague, and the burning heat of the atmosphere, and lurid red of the clouds, might have strengthened the notion. It more than once occurred to me how singular it was for me, a woman and a stranger, to find myself with only one attendant in the streets, on foot, in a city declared to be in a state of siege, and with the noise of firing in the distance, and the shouts of the populace, continually breaking on my ears. Having passed the Rue de la Ville-l'Évêque, and entered the Rue d'Anjou, I soon reached the _porte-cochère_ of my friend. My servant knocked, and very loudly, but before the Swiss porter would open the door, he reconnoitred from the window in the _entresol_ of his lodge. He could hardly credit his eyes when he saw me; and while he unbolted and unchained the door, an operation which took him more time than I thought necessary, I could hear him muttering that, "_Les dames Anglaises n'ont peur de rien, positivement rien_." I was not sorry when I heard the massive door closed after me, with its bolts and chains again secured; but, as I crossed the courtyard, the different aspect of the house, with its closed windows, reminded me so forcibly of the change that had occurred since my last visit, only three days previously, that I felt more agitated than while traversing the streets. When I entered the drawing-room, in which a large circle were assembled, Madame Craufurd, though the servants announced my name, could hardly believe I was indeed come. She wept bitterly while embracing me, and observed on the hardship of a person so aged as herself being called on to witness two revolutions. All the horrors of the first are recalled vividly to her mind, and her terror of what may occur is proportioned to what she remembers to have formerly taken place. Nothing seemed to pacify her terror so much as the fact of my having been permitted to pass unmolested to her house, though she considered me little less than insane to have undertaken the task. "For myself," said Madame C----, "I have little fear (though her blanched cheek and trembling hand told another story); but for those dearer to me than life, what have I not to dread? You who know the chivalrous sentiments of the Duc de Guiche, and the attachment entertained by him and my granddaughter for the royal family, will understand how much I have to dread for them from the vengeance which their devotion to their sovereign may draw on their heads. _They_ are not, as you are aware, time-servers, like so many others, who will desert their king in his hour of need. No; they will brave death, I am assured, rather than forsake in adversity those whose prosperity they shared." The marquis d'Aligre, one of, it not the, richest landed proprietors in France, was among the circle at Madame Craufurd's, and evinced no little composure and courage in the circumstances in which we found ourselves. He joined me in endeavouring to soothe her fears; and probably the fact of his having so immense a stake to risk in the crisis now taking place, added not a little weight to the arguments he urged to quiet her alarms. When people have so much to lose, their calmness has an imposing effect; and the rhetoric of the most accomplished orator would have probably been less successful than was the composed manner of the marquis d'Aligre, in restoring the wonted courage of our amiable hostess. When I rose to take leave, Madame C---- tried all her efforts to persuade me to remain to sleep at her house, and I had no little difficulty to escape from her importunity. She would fain send all her men servants to escort me home, and the Marquis d'Aligre also pressingly offered his services; but I was obstinate in my refusal to allow anyone to accompany me, being convinced that there was even less danger in proceeding with a single servant than more numerously attended. I tore myself from the embraces of Madame C----, whose tears flowed afresh, and bedewed my cheeks, and I once more passed through the court-yard, followed to the porter's lodge by the _dames de compagnie, femmes de chambre_, and _valets de chambre_, wondering at my courage, offering up their prayers for my safety, and proclaiming that only an Englishwoman would have faced such danger. The old Swiss porter would not risk opening the gate until he had assured himself, from the window, that the coast was clear, and closed it so rapidly when I had passed it as almost to have endangered my heels. On returning, I found a cord drawn across the street in front of the barrack in the Rue Verte, and some forty or fifty ill-dressed and riotous men assembled, half-a-dozen of whom held the cord. Having approached close to it, I paused, and, looking calmly at those who held it, I appealed by looks to their politeness. Some of them laughed aloud, and asked me if I could not leap over the barrier that impeded my progress, drawing the rope still higher while they spoke. I answered, though I trembled at being exposed to their rude mirth, and still more rude gaze, "That I felt sure Frenchmen would not compel me to such an unfeminine exertion, or give me cause to tell my compatriots when I returned to England that deference to women no longer existed in France." "Let her pass! let her pass!" exclaimed nearly all the voices of the group; "she is courageous, and she speaks rightly, _Vivent les Anglaises! Vivent les Anglaises!_" and the cord was instantly lowered to the ground, and I hastily stepped over it, glad to get out of hearing of the rough compliments bestowed on me. My servant had attempted to address them before I spoke, but they one and all assailed him with a torrent of reproach, demanding if he was not ashamed to wear a livery, the badge of servitude, when all his countrymen were fighting for their liberty. I had again to clamber over the barricade, assisted by my servant, and, before I could cross the Rue St.-Honoré, encountered various groups of men rushing along, all of whom uttered such invectives against my footman that I determined not again to go out attended by this symbol of aristocracy. On reaching my home, the porter observed, with a self-complacency his prudence could not conceal, that he "knew Madame la Comtesse had nothing to dread from the people, they were brave and _bons enfans_, and would not injure a lady;"--a commendation that clearly indicated the state of his feelings. CHAPTER XXIV. I have observed a striking change in the manners of the servants during the last three days. They are more familiar, without, however, evincing the least insolence; their spirits seem unusually exhilarated, and they betray an interest in the struggle in which the people are engaged that leaves no doubt as to the side that excites their sympathy. Every rumour of the success of the insurgents is repeated by them with ill-suppressed animation and pleasure, and the power of the people is exaggerated far beyond the bounds of truth. I confess this folly on their part annoys me, and the more especially as the class to which they belong, are totally incapacitated by ignorance from being able to comprehend even the causes alleged for this popular outbreak. Misguided men! can they hope that servitude will be lightened by their being employed by some _parvenus_, elevated from the dregs of the people by a revolution which sets floating to the top the worst ingredients of the reeking caldron from which it is formed, instead of owning the more gentle and infinitely less degrading sway of those born to, and accustomed to rule? Comte ---- and ---- have just come in, and report that the last story current is, that fifty thousand men from Rouen are marching to Paris to espouse the cause of the _people_. They say there is no end to the desertions among the troops. The people--the people! I hear of nothing but the people; but those who speak of them as all and every thing, seem to me to mistake the populace for the people, yet surely the words are not synonymous. The people, according to my acceptation of the word, are the sober and respectable portion of the community of all countries, including the husbandmen who till the earth, and the artisans who fabricate the objects applicable to our positive wants, and superfluous luxuries. How different are these from the populace who fill the streets shouting for liberty, by which they mean license; fighting for a charter of the real meaning of which they are ignorant; and rendering themselves the blind instruments by which a revolution is to be accomplished, that will leave them rather worse off than it found them; for when did those who profit by such events remember with gratitude the tools by which it was effected? _Thursday_.--Repeated knocking at the gate drew me to the window ten minutes ago. The intruder presented a strange mixture of the terrible and the ridiculous, the former predominating. Wearing only his shirt and trousers, both stained with gore, and the sleeves of the former turned up nearly to the shoulder, a crimson handkerchief was bound round his head, and another encircled his waist. He brandished a huge sword with a black leather string wound round his wrist, with one hand, while with the other he assailed the knocker. Hearing the window opened, he looked up, and exclaimed, "Ah! madame, order the gate to be opened, that I may lay at the feet of my generous master the trophies I have won with this trusty sword," waving the said sword over his head, and pointing to a pair of silver-mounted pistols and a sabre that he had placed on the ground while he knocked at the gate. I recognised in this man a helper in the stables of Comte A. d'Orsay, of whom it had a short time previously been reported to us, that when a party of the populace had attempted to force the gate of the stable offices, which are situated in the Rue Verte, and the English grooms and coachman were in excessive alarm, this man presented himself at the window, sword in hand, declaring that he, though engaged in the same cause as themselves, would defend, to the last moment of his life, the horses of his master, and the Englishmen whom he considered to be under his protection. This speech elicited thunders of applause from the crowd who retreated, leaving the alarmed servants, whose protector he had avowed himself, impressed with the conviction that he is little short of a hero. This man--these same servants, only a few days ago, looked on as the stable drudge, who was to perform all the dirty work, while they, attired in smart liveries, and receiving triple the wages given to him, were far more ornamental than useful in the establishment of their employer. They offered him money as a reward for his spirited conduct (the English of all classes, but more especially of that to which they appertain, think that money pays all manner of debts), but he indignantly refused the proffered gift. This revolutionary hero had been fighting for several hours to-day, and is said to have evinced a courage and enthusiasm that remind one of all we read of the spirit of the old Imperial Guard, when animated by the presence of their mighty chief. ---- has just brought the intelligence, that the Tuileries and the Louvre are taken by the people! Comte A. d'O---- sent two of his servants (Brement, formerly drill-serjeant in the Guards, and now his porter, and Charles who was an hussar, and a brave soldier) to the Tuileries to endeavour to save the portrait of the Dauphin by Sir Thomas Lawrence--an admirable picture. His instructions as to its _emplacement_ were so correct, that the servants found it instantly, but torn in pieces, and the fragments strewed on the floor. These men report that even in this feat a strange mixture of the terrible and the comic was exhibited, for _while_ a dead body was placed on the throne of Charles the Tenth, some men appeared in the windows of the palace attired in the gold and silver tissue dresses of the Duchesse de Berri, with feathers and flowers in their heads, and fans in their hands, which they waved to the multitude beneath, with all the coquettish airs and graces of _would-be-fine_ ladies. The busts of Charles the Tenth were broken and trampled upon; the wardrobes of the royal family were scattered, torn, and thrown among the people, who seemed to regard them only as trophies of the victory they had achieved, and not for their intrinsic value. The palace of the Archbishop of Paris has been sacked, and every object in it demolished. ---- told me that the ribaldry and coarse jests of the mob on this occasion were disgusting beyond measure; and that they ceased not to utter the most obscene falsehoods, while they wreaked their vengeance on the property of this venerable prelate, against whom they can bring no charge, except the suspicion of jesuitical principles, and of having encouraged the king to issue the ordonnances. ---- and ---- have just been here. They state that Charles the Tenth sent a deputation to the provisional government offering to withdraw the ordonnances, and to form a new ministry. The offer came too late, and was rejected. Concessions from the vanquished are seldom valued; and to offer terms to those who are now in the position to dictate them is as unavailing as it is undignified. ---- and ---- say that the general opinion is, that if the Duchesse de Berri was now to present herself, with her son, to the people, her popularity, and his youth and innocence, would accomplish an event that would satisfy most parties; namely, the calling of the Duc de Bordeaux to the throne. The Duchesse de Berri has courage enough to take this step; what a pity it is that she has not wisdom enough to adopt it! While the fighting was going on in the streets, ---- and ---- met our ambassador, Lord Stuart de Rothesay, walking along as usual. The secretaries and _attachés_, too, of the English embassy have been continually seen in places where their presence evinced more courage and curiosity than caution; but fear is, I firmly believe, an unknown guest in the breast of English gentlemen. Comte ---- has just been here; he has been to the Collége of Ste.-Barbe to take charge of the sons of the Duc de Guiche, in order to conduct them to the country; a service of no little danger, as all connected with the court, and known to be faithful to the royal family are liable to be maltreated. How painful and trying a part is the Duc de Guiche now called on to act: compelled to leave his wife and family in a town in a state of siege, or to desert the monarch to whom he has sworn fealty! But he will perform it nobly; and if Charles the Tenth had many such men to rally round him in the present hour, his throne might still be preserved. The Duchesse de Guiche, in the trying situation in which she finds herself, has displayed a courage worthy of olden times. The devotion of her husband and self to the royal family is so well known that their house has been a marked one during the last three days, the mob repeatedly stopping before the gate uttering cries and menaces. All her friends have urged her to leave Paris, and to remove with her children to the country, for she would not consent to seek an asylum with her grandmother or brother; urging, as a reason, that, in the absence of the Duc, she felt it her duty to remain, that her presence might induce the household to a more strict discharge of theirs, in protecting the property of the Dauphin. ---- and ---- have been here, and have told us that the provisional government were installed in the Hôtel-de-Ville, General La Fayette at its head, and my old acquaintance Monsieur Alexandra de Laborde taking an active part. How all this is to end I cannot imagine; the cry for a republic, though strongly echoed, will, I think, be unavailing; and the reasonable part of the community cannot desire that it should be otherwise, inasmuch as the tyranny of the many must ever be more insupportable than that of one, admitting that even a despotic monarchy could in our day exercise a tyranny, which I am not disposed to admit. The tri-coloured flag now floats on many of the churches, while that of the _Fleur-de-lis_ still waves from the column in the Place Vendôme, on other public buildings, and the Tuileries. What a strange state of things! but every thing is strange in this eventful crisis. ---- has just been here, and reports that yesterday a meeting of the Deputies took place at the house of M. Casimir Périer, in order to consult on what measures they ought to pursue in the present state of affairs. He says, that pusillanimity, and want of decision consequent on it, marked the conduct of the assembly. They lost the time, so precious in a crisis like the actual one, in disputing about words, when deeds ought to have been had recourse to. They are accused of being influenced by a dread of offending the now tottering power, lest it should once more be solidly reinstated, and yet of being anxious to remain well with those opposed to it; and they are said to have temporised with both, allowing the time for serving either to have passed away. A bitter feeling towards the royal family seems to pervade the minds of the populace; and this has been fomented by the most gross and disgusting falsehoods dispensed around by the medium of obscene _brochures_, and songs which are sung and distributed through the streets. Even now beneath my window two men are offering, and crying aloud, the Amours of the Duchesse d'Angoulême and the Archbishop of Paris. The most spotless woman in France and the most devout man! The same hand that would pull down the throne would raze the altar! ---- and ---- have been among the fighting, and report wonders of the bravery of the populace. They fight with an enthusiasm and courage worthy of a better cause, and have evinced a humanity to their wounded adversaries that elicits admiration even from those who are the most opposed to the cause they have espoused. The citizens, and the women too, have come forth from the sanctuaries of their dwellings to dress the wounds, and administer refreshment to the combatants, without distinction with regard to the side on which they were engaged. This amalgamation of soldiers and people has been destructive to the cause of royalty, for the humanity experienced has induced the former to throw down their arms rather than use them against generous foes, and cries of "_Vive la Ligne_!" are often heard from those so lately opposed to it. All parties agree in stating that not a single example of pillage, except in the instances of the gunsmiths' shops, has occurred. Various houses have been entered by the people for the purpose of firing from the windows; and, having effected their object, they have retired without taking a single article of the many tempting ones scattered around in these dwellings. This revolution, if indeed the result should prove it to be such, will offer a striking contrast to that fearful one that has ever since left so black a stain on France, and Frenchmen. Heroic courage, great humanity, and a perfect freedom from cupidity, are the peculiar attributes that mark those who are now subverting the throne of the Bourbons; what a pity it is that such qualities should not have found a better cause for developing themselves! _29th_.--The subject now circulated and believed is, that Lafayette and his followers have placed themselves at the head of the people. This rumour has quieted the fears of many, for his name exercises a great influence. The fighting is still going on, and the report of the guns comes booming on the ear continually. Hearing a noise in the street, ten minutes ago, I looked forth, and beheld some four or five men covered with stains of blood, their faces blackened by gunpowder, and streaming with perspiration, endeavouring to draw away a piece of cannon, of which they had taken possession in the Champs-Élysées. Hearing the opening of my window, they entreated me, if there were any men in the house, to send them to their assistance, in order to draw away the gun from the reach of the enemy. "And if there are no men," continued the speaker, "let the women come out and help us in the good cause." While they yet spoke, a party of soldiers were seen rushing to the rescue of the gun, and its temporary conquerors were compelled to make a rapid retreat towards the Rue St.-Honoré. The name of M. Laffitte is now mixed with that of Lafayette among the crowds in the streets, and has a great effect on them. His vast wealth, and the frequent and extensive aid it has afforded to the working classes, have rendered him one of, if not the most popular man in Paris: so that those most conversant with the actual state of affairs, pronounce that with Lafayette and Laffitte now rest the destiny of France. How strange is the alteration which has occurred within so short a space of time! Five days ago, Charles the Tenth reigned in the Tuileries; at present, on Lafayette and Laffitte it depends whether he ever enters his palace again! The tocsin is now sounding! How strangely, how awfully it strikes on the ear! All this appears like a dream. The formation of a provisional government is to-day spoken of. The cry of "_Vive Napoleon!_" has been heard repeatedly shouted from one mass of people, while "_Vive la république!_" has been as loudly vociferated by another. Various persons connected with both the royalist and popular party, have been here to-day, so that I hear the opinions entertained by the adherents of both sides of the question. Which to credit I know not: there is but one point on which both agree, and that is in praising the bravery and forbearance of the people. When I look around on the precious objects that cover the tables, consoles, and cabinets in the salon where I am now writing, and reflect that these same people are not only in arms, but I may say masters of the town, I cannot help wondering at their total avoidance of pillage when such rich booties might be so easily acquired. Perhaps there is no European city in which so many and such splendid collections of rare and precious articles are to be found, as at Paris. In England, our nobility possess equal treasures, but they are contained in their country seats; whereas it is in the Parisian dwellings of the French noblesse, that their valuable possessions of rare objects are to be found, and at the present crisis, how soon could an armed mass seize them! _28th_.--The Duchesse de Guiche was exposed to considerable danger to day, and evinced a courage nearly allied to temerity in speaking her sentiments on the occasion. Alarmed for the safety of her eldest son, she was proceeding to his college in search of him, when she was stopped by a vast crowd of people assembled around the house of one of the tradespeople of the royal family, over whose door were the arms of France. The frightened tradesman was in the act of removing this badge, of which only a few days previously he had been so proud, when the duchesse, seeing him so employed, remarked aloud, that "after having so often solicited permission to place the royal arms over his door, he ought to have had the courage to defend them." The populace, enraged at this reproof, hissed and yelled; but seeing that she remained unmoved, the greater number cheered her, exclaiming "that young woman is as courageous as she is beautiful; let us shew her that we know how lo value courage, and protect her to her home," They placed themselves around her, and with every mark of respect, escorted her, to the gate of her dwelling. A person among the crowd who witnessed this incident, told me that never had he seen the Duchesse de Guiche look so dazzlingly beautiful, as when she was reproving the tradesman--her tall and majestic figure elevated even above its usual height by the indignation she experienced at the insult offered to the royal family, to whom in these their days of trial, she is even more chivalrously devoted than when they reigned with undisputed sway, and thousands of those who now desert, professed to worship them. Before the duchesse regained her abode, she encountered several skirmishing parlies in the streets who were absolutely fighting, and probably owed her safety lo the protection afforded her by those whom her courage had won to be her champions. The intelligence reached us two hours ago, that the populace had attacked the hotel of the Duc de Guiche, and placed two pieces of cannon before the gate. My terror may more easily be imagined than described, for the duchesse and her youngest children are in the house, and the duc is with the royal family. I hardly knew whether to be thankful or sorry, that her brother Count Alfred d'Orsay was not at home when this news reached us, for he would certainly have proceeded to her house, and would probably have, by his presence and interference, rendered her danger still greater. Fearful of compromising the safety of her children, the duchesse left the hotel by another gate, opening into the Rue de Montaigne, and is, I trust, ere this, safe on her route to St.-Germain, where her father-in-law, the Duc de Gramont, has a residence. How like a troubled dream all this appears! Would that it were but a dream, and that those whom I so much love, were not exposed to pay dearly for their fidelity to a sovereign, whose measures their enlightened minds are the last to approve, but whose misfortunes, if they cannot ameliorate, they will at least share! I know not a more painful position than that of the Duc and Duchesse de Guiche, at the present moment. With highly cultivated minds and liberal opinions, possessing a knowledge of the world, and of the actual state of public opinion in France, they must be aware of the utter hopelessness of the cause in which they find themselves embarked, yet such is their chivalrous sentiments of honour, that they will sacrifice every thing rather than abandon those whose prosperity they have partaken, and thus incur all the penalty of the acts of a government whose policy they did not approve. Had Charles the Tenth many such devoted adherents, he would not find himself deserted in his hour of need. CHAPTER XXV. I have but just returned from the Rue d'Anjou, and now that I find myself once more within the sanctuary of my home, I am surprised at my own courage in having ventured to pass through the streets, and _alone_, too, at such a moment. I do not think I should have risked it, had I not known how much my excellent friend Madame C---- stood in need of consolation, after having seen her grandchildren and great grandchildren driven from their late peaceful and happy dwelling, uncertain when she may behold them again, as they have determined on not forsaking the royal family. I had ascended nearly to the top of the barricade at the entrance to the Rue Verte when a head and shoulders rose from the opposite side so suddenly as to alarm me not a little. My trepidation was infinitely increased when I discovered that the individual to whom the said head and shoulders appertained, was in a state of extreme intoxication, and when with rolling eyes, flushed checks, and thick articulation he addressed me with a familiarity, yet good nature, that I would most willingly have dispensed with. "Give me your hand, _ma belle_, fear nothing, I am one of the _bons enfans_ of the revolution, take my arm and no one will molest you. We, _les braves des braves_, wage no war against women; _au contraire_, we love the pretty creatures. Here take my hand, and I will assist you over the barricades." Suiting his action to the word, he extended his hand towards me, and reaching forward lost his equilibrium and rolled over; at which moment, the proprietor of a wine shop at the corner of the Rue Verte came to my assistance, and leading me through his house, opened a door on the other side of the barricade, through which I hastily passed, he civilly offering to open the same door when I returned if I would knock at it. And here, _en passant_, let me render justice to the politeness I have invariably experienced from all classes of men, and on all occasions, in France--a politeness so general that I should be ungrateful if I did not record it. When I passed the barrack in the Rue Verte, it was in the possession of the people, who had seized it by the right of conquest an hour or two previously. Proud of the achievement, they were looking out of the windows, shouting, singing the Marseillaise, embracing each other, and proclaiming that they were _les bons enfans_, etc. They paid me many homely compliments as I passed, but not a single indelicate allusion escaped their lips; and I hurried on, not meeting a human being until I entered the courtyard of Madame C----'s hotel, into which I found considerable difficulty to penetrate, owing to the extreme caution of her Swiss porter who seemed to think it very dangerous to open even the little door to admit me. I found dear, good Madame C---- depressed and agitated. I rejoiced to find that she was ignorant of the scene that took place between her grand-daughter and the populace, for a knowledge of it would have served to increase her alarm. She was surrounded by the usual circle of _habitués_ who endeavoured in vain to calm her fears, but my presence re-assured her a little, and Count Valeski, who came in soon after, succeeded in mitigating her terror. Having witnessed the horrors of the former revolution, it is no wonder she should tremble at the thoughts of another, and she looks on my calmness and courage as little short of heroism. I remained a couple of hours with her, and having resisted all her persuasions to induce me to stay all night, I left the Rue d'Anjou, and had reached the Rue Verte, when I heard the report of guns, and saw a party of soldiers attacking the barracks, out of the windows of which the people, who had taken forcible possession of it some hours before, were firing on their assailants. I retraced my steps as hastily as possible, fear lending swiftness to my feet, and returned to the Rue de Matignon by the Faubourg du Roule and the Rue St.-Honoré. Our trusty porter, having heard the shots, and knowing they proceeded from the _quartier_ through which my route lay, was much alarmed for my safety, and evinced great pleasure when he saw me safe again within the portal under his charge, while I congratulated myself on having once more proved my friendship to my dear old friend, by a personal exertion entailing no more disagreeable consequences than a temporary alarm. ---- and ---- have just been here: they say that it is reported that a negotiation has been opened between the king and the provisional government, and that even still a reconciliation may be effected. I do not believe it, though I wish it were true. The blood that has flowed during the last days has, I fear, created an impassable gulf between the sovereign and the people. Each party has made discoveries fatal to the good understanding necessary to subsist between both: one having proved his want of power to carry his wishes into effect, and the other having but too well evinced its power of resistance. While the negotiations are pending, the royal cause becomes every hour more hopeless. Success has rendered the people less tractable; and the concession implied by the king's holding out terms to them, has less chance of producing a favourable result. The populace attempted to force an entrance into the _Hôtel des Pages_, and, having fired through the iron gate, killed a fine youth, the son of General Jacquinot, one of the royal pages, and a protégé of the Duc de Guiche. It was of this general that the Emperor Napoleon said--"_Celui-là est brave tous les jours, en mon absence comme sous mes yeux_." It is not more than ten days ago, since I met the mother and sister of this promising youth with him at the Duchesse de Guiche's. They came to return thanks to her and the duc for the generous protection they had afforded to him; they were elate with joy at his promotion, looked forward to his further advancement, and now--. My heart bleeds for the poor mother who doted on her son! Count Alfred d'Orsay, having heard that he had no relations in Paris at this moment, has gone to arrange for the interment of this poor youth, who yet scarcely more than a child, has lost his life at but a short distance from the threshold of that door where he had been so often received with kindness. How glad I am that the duchesse was spared the horror of being so near the scene of this murder, and that she and her children are safe from the reach of personal violence! The interesting countenance of this fine youth, as I lately saw it, haunts me. Beaming with affection towards his mother and sister, and with gratitude towards his friends, it was pleasant to behold it; and now,--how fearful is the change produced in so brief a space! That bereaved mother and fond sister will never more look on that face so dear;--before the fatal intelligence can have reached them, he will have been consigned to the grave, and will owe to a stranger those last rites which they little dream are now performing. The number of persons killed during the last three days has excited much less interest in my feelings than the death of this poor youth. I cannot picture to my mind's eye any other distinct image among the slain. They present only a ghastly mass, with all the revolting accompaniments of gaping wounds and blood-stained garments, I never saw them in life,--knew not the faces that will be steeped in tears, or convulsed in agony at their deaths; but this poor boy, so young, so fair, and so beloved, and his fond mother and gentle sister seem ever to stand before me! I remember reading, long years ago, the example given of a person recounting all the details of a great battle, in which hundreds were slain, and the listeners hearing the account unmoved, until the relater described one individual who had been killed, and drew a vivid picture, when those who had heard of the death of hundreds without any deeper emotion than general pity, were melted to tears. This is my case, with regard to the poor young page, cut off in the morning of his life; for, having his image present to my mind, his death seems more grievous to me than that of hundreds whom I have never seen. _30th_.--The last news is, that the Dauphin has been named Generalissimo, that he has placed himself at the head of the vast body of troops that still adhere to their allegiance, and that he is to advance on Paris. This determination has been adopted too late, and can now, in my opinion, avail but little. Comte d'O---- has just returned from seeing the last sad duties paid to the remains of the poor young page. He brings the intelligence that the royal family left St.-Cloud last night, and are now at Versailles. This step proves that they consider their case hopeless. Unhappy Bourbons! a fatality seems to impend over the race; and Charles the Tenth appears doomed to die, as he has lived the greater portion of his life, in exile. The absence of the Dauphine at this eventful period has been peculiarly unfortunate for her family; for, with her firmness of character and promptitude of decision, her counsel might have served, while her presence would have given an impetus to, their cause. I have just seen ----, who told me, that on the King's departure for Versailles he left the Dauphin in command of the troops that still adhered to their allegiance, and that the Prince placed himself at the head of a battalion of the _garde royale_, charged the enemy on the Pont de Sèvres, and took possession of it; but the troops, with the exception of a few officers, refused to follow, and left him to receive the fire of the insurgents, which it is wonderful that he escaped. With what feelings must he have bent his course to Versailles, deserted by troops on whom he had bestowed so many favours and acts of munificence, to meet his sovereign and father, with the sad news of their revolt! I have just had the gratifying intelligence that the Duchesse de Guiche and her children reached St.-Germain's in safety. This is a great relief to my mind. The royal arms on the carriage, and the liveries, were recognised at the Barrière, and the populace crowded around, many of them expressing their dissatisfaction at beholding these memorials of a family so lately respected, if not beloved. It had been represented to the Duchesse, previously to her leaving Paris, that she ran no inconsiderable risk in venturing out with the royal arms on her carriage;[9] but she declared that she would not consent to their being effaced. She courageously, and with a calm dignity, addressed the angry crowd, explained her sentiments and feelings to them in a few brief words, and they, won by her beauty and noble bearing, even perhaps still more than by her courage (though intrepidity has always a peculiar charm for Frenchmen), cheered her, and suffered the carriage to proceed unmolested. _July 30th_.--I am again alarmed for the safety of the Duchesse de Guiche. The populace having yesterday assembled at the Place St.-Germain, in which is the residence of her father-in-law, the Duc de Gramont, they evinced so hostile a feeling towards all attached to the royal family, that a friend, becoming apprehensive of violence, scaled the wall of the garden, and entering the house, implored the Duchesse, ere it was yet too late, to seek safety by flight. Alarmed for her children--for this noble-minded woman is a stranger to personal fear--she sought refuge with them in the Forest of St.-Germain, in the Château du Val, the abode of the Princesse de Poix, where she experiences all the kindness and hospitality which her amiable hostess can practise, in order to soothe the anxiety of her guest. What a change in the position of the Duchesse, and in so brief a space! A fugitive in that forest where, every year during the _Fête des Loges_, she dispensed kindness to the poor, and amiability to all, doing the honours of the Duc de Gramont's house, where her condescension and goodness were the themes of every tongue! And now, harassed in mind and body, terrified for the safety of her husband, who is with the royal family, and for her two eldest sons, who are in their college, in the Rue St.-Marceau, which is rendered inaccessible, owing to the barricades. _31st_.--Lafayette is now said to be the oracle of the provisional government, and the idol of the populace. Advanced far in the vale of life, his energies and vigour are gone, and his _name_ serves the party more than his counsel can; for with the republicans, at least, it is a guarantee for honest motives. What a strange destiny has his been--called on to perform so conspicuous a part in two revolutions! ---- has just been here, and announced that the Duc d'Orléans is named Lieutenant-general of France. It is asserted, that this appointment has been effected by the influence of General Lafayette over the provisional government; but how little in accordance is this measure with the well-known Utopian scheme of a republic, which has for years been the favourite dream of this venerable visionary? _August 1st_. ---- now has brought the intelligence that Charles the Tenth has nominated the Duc d'Orléans Lieutenant-general, so that his Royal Highness has been chosen by both sides--a flattering proof of the confidence reposed in him by each. Were he ambitious, here is an opportunity of indulging this "infirmity of noble minds," though at the expense of the elder branch of his family; but he will not, I am sure, betray the trust they have confided to him. Order seems now to be in a great measure restored; the people appear in good-humour; but there is a consciousness of power evident in their hilarity that too forcibly reminds one of their victory. The Duc of Orléans has been to the Hôtel-de-Ville, where he presented himself to the people from the balcony; embraced General Lafayette, who stood by his side; and was applauded with enthusiasm by the immense multitude who witnessed the _accolade_. _2nd_.--The news of the day is, that Charles the Tenth has abdicated the crown in favour of the Duc de Bordeaux, who is now styled Henri V. This act might, four or five days ago, have produced some salutary effect; but it now comes too late--at least, so think those who profess to know more on the subject than I do. The position of the Lieutenant-general, in this case, reminds me of that of a _confidante_ in a quarrel between lovers, in which the interest of the absent is too often sacrificed, owing to the dangerous opportunity furnished for forwarding that of the supposed friend. _3d_.--Again, considerable excitement has prevailed in the town, produced by the proclamation, that the dethroned sovereign had determined to take up his position, with the strong military force that still adheres to him, at Rambouillet. The publicity given to this news was a very injudicious measure, if conciliation, or even forbearance to the deposed family, was desired. The populace, that many-headed monster, only seen abroad when evil passions dictate violence, again rush through the streets, breathing vengeance against the poor old man, whose grey hairs, more exposed by the absence of the crown his _ci-devant_ subjects have wrested from his head, should have claimed more respect at their hands. Truly has the poet said, "He who has worn crown, When less than king is less than other men,-- A fallen star, extinguish'd, leaving blank Its place in heaven." This fickle people, or, at least, the dregs of them, for it would be unjust to confound all in their enormities, will efface the credit they have gained by the forbearance from crime that has as yet characterised this revolution, by some act of brutality towards the royal family. But even the very dregs of the people have not appeared desirous to adopt any such course, until excited into it by the wicked rumours set afloat, that Charles the Tenth had carried off all the crown jewels--a rumour peculiarly calculated to excite their ire and meet a ready credence, each individual of the motley train looking on himself as having an interest in these national riches, and judging from _self_, of the possibility--nay, more, probability, of so vile an action. How little can such minds identify themselves with the feelings of those who, sated with the gewgaws and trappings of grandeur, forget them in the deep, the powerful excitement of beholding a throne crumbling into ruin beneath them--a diadem rudely torn from their brows--the power they wielded, even that of doing good, wrested violently, with the sceptre, from their hands; and more than all, behold the loved, the _trusted_--those on whom they had showered benefits with prodigality, turn from them in their hour of need and join their foes! "If thou canst hate, as, oh! that soul must hate Which loves the virtuous and reveres the great; If thou canst loathe and execrate with me That gallic garbage of philosophy,-- That nauseous slaver of these frantic times, With which false liberty dilutes her crimes; If thou hast got within thy free-born breast One pulse that beats more proudly than the rest With honest scorn for that inglorious soul Which creeps and winds beneath a mob's control. Which courts the rabble's smile, the rabble's nod, And makes, like Egypt, every beast its God!" _August 4th_.--The King has left Rambouillot, alarmed by the report of the approach of the vast multitude who had left, or were leaving, Paris, with hostile intentions towards the royal family. The scenes that took place then, previously to his departure, are represented as being most affecting. An old man, overpowered by mental and bodily sufferings, remembering the terrible days of a former revolution, brought with a fearful vividness to his mind by the appalling change effected within the last few eventful days, he had lost all presence of mind, and with it his confidence in those whom he might have safely trusted, while he yielded it to those whose interests were wholly opposed to his. Nor is the deplorable effect produced on his mind by recent events to be wondered at. Adversity is the only school in which monarchs can acquire wisdom, and it almost always comes too late to enable them to profit by its bitter lessons. The defection of those hitherto supposed to be devoted friends, the altered looks of faces never before beheld without being dressed in smiles, the unceremoniousness of courtiers who never previously had dared to have an opinion before royalty had decided what it should be, might well have shook firmer nerves, and touched a sterner heart, than belonged to the old, grey-headed monarch, who saw himself betrayed without comprehending by whom, and who used his authority as sovereign and father, over his religiously obedient son, to extort an abdication of his right, as well as an approval of the resignation of his own. Like another Lear, this poor old man has been driven forth "to bide the pelting of the pitiless storm" of a revolution, followed by his widowed daughter-in-law and her helpless son, that child orphaned ere yet he saw the light, and by Frenchmen who now condemn him to exile! They have taken the route to Cherbourg, there to embark; and of those who lately bent the knee before them, how few have followed their now gloomy fortunes! One, at least, has not left, and will not forsake them. The Duc de Guiche, the kindest husband and father perhaps in France, sacrifices his feelings of domestic affection to his sense of duty, and accompanies the exiled family! CHAPTER XXVI. _August 5th_.--There are rumours today that the son of the Emperor Napoleon will be called to fill the vacant throne. This seems to me to be very improbable, when I reflect that General Lafayette, whose influence is omnipotent at present, appears wholly devoted to the Duc d'Orléans. The minds of the people are as yet wholly unsettled; a dread of how their late exploits may be looked on by the foreign powers allied to the deposed sovereign, pervades the multitude, and the republicans begin to discover that their Utopian schemes are little likely to be advanced by the revolution effected. I was forcibly struck this morning on reading, in an Italian writer, the following passage, which is strongly applicable to the present time: "When a revolution is ripe, men are always found who are ready to commence it, and make their bodies the steps to the throne of him who is to profit by their labours, without having shared their dangers." I have a presentiment that the truth of this axiom will be verified in France. _August 6th_.--Reports are now afloat that the crown of France has been offered to the Duke of Orléans, but that the offer was not unanimous, and that consequently he has not accepted it. Other rumours state, that if he should be induced to do so, it will only be to hold it as a sacred deposit to be restored to the rightful owner when, with safety to both parties, it can be transferred. Should this be the case, then will the Duke of Orleans deserve well of the elder branch of his family who have behaved so kindly towards him, but I confess I am not one of those who believe in the likelihood of such an abnegation of self, as this voluntary abdication would display. Rich possessions are seldom if ever willingly resigned, and a crown is one said to have such irresistible charms to the person who has once worn it, that history furnishes but few examples like that of Charles the Fifth, or Christina of Sweden. Time will prove whether Louis-Philippe d'Orléans will offer a _pendant_! I walked with Comte d'O---- this evening into the Champs-Elysees, and great was the change effected there within the last few days. It looks ruined and desolate, the ground cut up by the pieces of cannon, and troops as well as the mobs that have made it a thoroughfare, and many of the trees greatly injured, if not destroyed. A crowd was assembled around a man who was reading aloud for their edification a proclamation nailed to one of the trees. We paused for a moment to hear it, when some of the persons recognising my companion, shouted aloud, "_Vive le Comte d'Orsay! Vive le Comte d'Orsay!"_ and the cry being taken up by the mass, the reader was deserted, the fickle multitude directing ail their attention and enthusiasm to tho new comer. We had some difficulty in escaping from these troublesome and unexpected demonstrations of good will; and, while hurrying from the scene of this impromptu ovation to the unsought popularity of my companion, I made him smile by hinting at the danger in which he stood of being raised to the vacant throne by those who seem not to know or care who is to fill it. Comte d'O---- was as much puzzled as I was how to account for this burst of enthusiasm, for, taking no part in politics, and all his family being attached to the legitimate cause, this demonstration of regard appears more inexplicable. It seems, however, to establish one fact, and that is, that though the monarch has fallen into disrepute with the people, the aristocracy have not, and this alone proves how totally different are the feelings of those who have effected the present revolution with those of the persons who were engaged in the former one, a difference, perhaps, not more to be attributed to the change produced in the people by the extension of education, than in the _noblesse_ by the same cause, aided by the habits and feelings it engenders. Whatever may be the cause, the effect is salutary, for the good understanding evident between the two classes tends greatly to the amelioration and advantage of both. There is something very contagious in popular feeling. It resembles an epidemic from which few of the class more peculiarly exposed to it escape. Walked into the streets to-day, for a carriage cannot yet pass through them. Never did any town, not actually sacked, present a more changed aspect. Houses damaged by shots, windows smashed, pavements destroyed, and trees cut down or mutilated, meet the eye along the Boulevards. The destruction of the trees excited more regret in my mind than that of the houses. There, many of them lay on the ground shorn of their leafy honours, offering obstructions on the spots which they so lately ornamented, while others stood bare and desolate, their giant limbs lopped off, their trunks shattered by bullets, and retaining only a few slight branches oh high, to which still adhered the parched, discoloured, and withered leaves, sole remnants of their lately luxuriant foliage. The houses may be rebuilt and the streets newly paved, but how many years will it take before these trees can be replaced! Those who loved to repose beneath their shade, or who, pent in a city, were solaced by beholding them and thinking of the country of which they brought pleasant recollections, will grieve to miss them, and, like me, own with a sigh, while contemplating the ravages occasioned by the events of the last few days, that if good ever is effected by that most dangerous of all experiments, a revolution, it is too dearly bought. The people seem as proud and pleased as possible with the accomplishment of the task they took in hand. How long will they continue so? They are like a too-spirited horse who, having mastered his rider, requires a bolder and more expert hand to subjugate him again to obedience, and the training will be all the more painful from the previous insubordination. Of one thing the people may be proud, and that is, their having not stained this revolution with any of the crimes that have left so indelible a blot on the former one. How soon does the mind habituate itself to an unnatural state of excitement! My _femme de chambre_ positively looked blank and disappointed this morning, when, on entering my _chambre à coucher_, she answered in reply to my question, whether any thing new had occurred during the night, "_Non, miladi, positivement rien_." Strange to say, I too felt _désoeuvré_ by the want of having something to be alarmed or to hope about,--I, who meddle not with politics, and wish all the world to be as quiet and as calm as myself. Every one I see appears to experience this same flatness, just like the reaction produced on the spirits the first day or two after the Italian Carnival, when the cessation of gaiety, though felt to be a relief to the frame, leaves the mind unfitted for repose. I find this feeling is generally experienced, for several of the shop-keepers, whose profit,--nay, whose very bread, depends on the restoration of social order, confess it. One person, the wife of a jeweller, owned to me to-day that Paris was now beginning to be very _triste_. "To be sure they were no longer afraid to open their shops, and commerce they hoped would soon become active again, but there was no more the same interest continually awakened, as when every hour,--nay, every minute brought some new event, and she and her neighbours looked out to behold the fighting in the streets, the wounded and the dying dropping around, and trembled for their own lives, and for the safety of those dear to them." In short, as she admitted, the want of excitement was experienced by all those who had lately become accustomed to it, as much as it is felt by the habitual gamester who cannot live without play. This is a dangerous state for the people of a great city to find themselves in. Vastly more dangerous than if subdued by a long-continued excess of excitement, their moral as well as their physical force required repose, and they gladly resigned themselves to it. To a sober-minded denizen of England, the ungovernable pride, insatiable vanity, and love of fighting, inherent in the French, appear really little short of insanity, to so great an excess do they push these manias. This will always render them so difficult to be governed, that it will require no ordinary abilities and firmness in him who undertakes the arduous task of ruling them. Yet the very excess of these passions renders the French the most able, as they decidedly are the most willing, instruments to be employed in achieving the aims of the wildest ambition, or the most glorious enterprises. He will the longest and most securely govern them, who calls these passions into action, provided always that they meet no check, for the French not only bear adversity impatiently, but soon turn against him who has exposed them to it: witness their conduct to the Emperor Napoleon, who, while success frowned his banner, was their idol. Playing at soldiers is the favourite game of Frenchmen of every class and description, and every opportunity afforded them of indulging it is gladly seized. When I compare the reluctance with which the yeomanry of Ireland, or the local militia of England, leave their homes and their business to "assume the spear and shield," with the enthusiasm evinced by the _Garde Nationale_ when they are called to leave their _boutiques_ and don their uniforms, I am more than ever struck with the remarkable difference existing between two nations separated by so short a distance. The English local militia man will fight when occasion requires, and with determined courage, too, because he believes it to be his duty, but the French National Guard will combat for the mere love of combating, and forget home and interest in the pleasure of the excitement. The Duchesse de Guiche has returned to Paris, while her amiable and noble-minded husband has accompanied the royal family to Cherbourg, where they are to embark for England. Nothing can exceed the courage and dignity with which she supports her altered fortunes. She thinks only of those to whom the Duc and herself have been so long and so truly devoted; and in her chagrin for their sufferings forgets her own. The Duc has such a perfect confidence in her good sense and tact, that he has sent her his _procuration_ to act for him in his absence. No sooner had she arrived at her abode, than she sent to demand the protection of General Gérard[10] for the house and stables of the Dauphin, and ho immediately ordered a guard to be placed there. Heaven grant that she may not be exposed to any annoyance during the absence of her husband! The Duchesse de Guiche gave a new proof of her courage and presence of mind yesterday. Early in the morning, having heard a noise in the courtyard of her dwelling, she beheld from the window of her chamber an officer gesticulating with violence, and menacing the grooms of the Dauphin. The upper servant entered at the moment, and announced that the officer insisted on seizing six of the finest horses in the stable, by order of General Lafayette. The Duchesse descended to the courtyard, informed the officer that the whole establishment was under the protection of General Gérard, without whose orders no horse should leave the stables. He attempted to enforce his pretensions; but the Duchesse desired the head groom to call out his assistants, about thirty in number, who, armed with pitchforks and other implements of their calling, soon came forth; and the Duchesse assured the intruder that, unless he immediately retired, he should be forcibly expelled. Seeing the courage and determination of this high-spirited and beautiful woman, the officer withdrew, and the horses were saved. It has since been ascertained, as the Duchesse anticipated, that General Lafayette had never given any orders to the officer who had used his name. _7th_.--The Duke of Orleans has at length accepted the crown; and various are the conjectures and reports to which his doing so has given rise. Many of them, as may be easily imagined, are not creditable to him; but on this occasion, as on most others, the least charitable motives are generally assigned to those whose conduct is judged by the mass often wholly ignorant of the reasons on which it is based. The vast wealth of the Duke of Orleans has a powerful influence; and those who a few days ago exclaimed against royalty, and vaunted the superior advantages of a government without a king, are now reconciled to having one whose immense private fortune will exempt the nation from the necessity of furnishing funds for a civil list. Should the new sovereign hereafter demand one, his popularity will be endangered; and the King of the French, as he is styled, will be likely to find as little favour in the eyes of his subjects as the King of France experienced. Popularity, always, and in all countries, an unstable possession, is in France infinitely more so; and Louis-Philippe must have more luck, as well as more wisdom, than falls to the lot of mankind, to retain this fleeting good when the novelty of his reign has worn away. That he is a man of great ability no one seems to entertain a doubt; but his wisdom would, in my opinion at least, have been more surely manifested had he declined instead of accepting the crown. Those who profess to be best acquainted with his sentiments declare, that he only acceded to the wishes of the people in ascending the vacant throne, in order to preserve the charter, and to preclude the dangerous theoretical experiments into which the republican party was so desirous to plunge. It remains to be proved whether, in a few years hence, those who have subverted one monarchy by violence may not be tempted to have recourse to a similar measure in order to free themselves from the successor they have chosen; for even already it appears clear to me, that the expectations entertained, not only by the partisans of Louis-Philippe, but by the generality of the people, are such as he never can fulfil. He may be their idol for a brief space, but, like all other idols, he will be expected to perform miracles; and not having the sanctity with which time invests even false gods, he may be thrown from the pedestal to which he has been elevated as unceremoniously as he was raised to it. I saw General Lafayette to-day, and never felt more disappointed, as his appearance does not at all correspond with what I had imagined it to be. The "Lafayette _aux cheveux blancs_," as the popular song describes him to be, is, _au contraire_, a plain old man, with a dark brown scratch wig, that conceals his forehead, and, consequently, gives a very common and, to my thinking, a disagreeable expression to his countenance. The _cheveux blancs_ would be a great improvement; for, independently of the song thus describing him, one looks for the venerable mark of age in this Nestor of revolutions, who in his youth has seen his idol, Liberty, commit fearful crimes in France as well as great deeds in America, and who now, when on the threshold of the grave, in which ere long he must repose, beholds her regeneration in his native land, redeemed from the cruelty that formerly stained her course. "_Voilà le grand Lafayette_!" exclaimed one of the people as he passed to-day; "_Oui, la ganache des deux mondes_," replied the other. Such is popular favour! I walked in the Palais-Royal to-day; and felt much more disposed to pity than envy the King of the French, as Louis-Philippe is styled, when I beheld a crowd of idle miscreants, assembled in front of his dwelling, rudely and boisterously vociferating his name, and in a tone much more resembling command than entreaty, desiring his presence. He at length came forward, bowed repeatedly, pressed his hand to his heart, and then withdrew, looking, as I thought, rather ashamed of the _rôle_ he was called on to enact, while his riotous audience seemed elated at exhibiting his docility. The Queen was then called for, and, after some delay, was handed forward by Louis-Philippe. It made me sad to look on the altered countenance of this amiable woman, whom all parties allow to be a most faultless wife and mother. She is hardly to be recognised as the same being who only a very few months ago looked the personification of happiness. Already have deep care and anxiety left their furrows on her brow, proving that A diadem, howe'er so bright it be, Brings cares that frighten gentle sleep away, E'en when from buried ancestors it comes, Who bless'd when they bequeath it to their heir; For great is the responsibility Of those who wear the symbol of a king, In regular succession handed down From sire to son through long antiquity. But when th' anointed head that wore it once Sleeps not in death--but exiled, worse than death-- And scions legitimate live to claim Their birthright, oh! how heavy is that crown (Though loose it fits), which well the wearer knows, A people's breath may blow from of his brow, Sear'd by the burning weight, it yet would guard, E'n though it crush him. I am told that no day passes in which a crowd does not assemble beneath the windows of Louis-Philippe and loudly vociferate for his presence. M. Laffitte is not unfrequently seen with the king on these occasions, and when they embrace the crowd applauds. I cannot imagine a more painful position than that of the Queen of the French. Devotedly attached to her husband and family, she will have often to tremble for their safety, exposed, as it must be, to the inconstancy and evil passions _soi-disant_ subjects, who may, ere long, be disposed to pull down the throne they have erected for Louis-Philippe as rapidly as they raised the barricades for its elevation. Had the King of the French succeeded to the throne by the natural demise of those who stood between him and it, how different would be his position; for it is agreed by all who know him, that he has many qualities that eminently fit him to fill it with credit to himself and advantage to the people; but as it is, I foresee nothing but trouble and anxiety for him,--a melancholy change from the domestic happiness he formerly enjoyed. Any attempt to check the turbulence of the people will be resented as an act of the utmost ingratitude to those who placed the crown on his head; and if he suffers it with impunity, he will not only lose his empire over them, but incur the contempt of the more elevated of his subjects. I saw the King of the French walking through the Place Vendôme to-day, attended only by one person. He was recognised, and cheered, and returned the salutation very graciously. And there stood the column erected to commemorate the victories of one now sleeping in a foreign grave; one whose very name was once the talisman that excited all Parisian hearts into the wildest enthusiasm! Louis-Philippe passed near the base of the column, which seemed to return a sullen echo to the voices that cheered him; did he, or those around him, remember their vicinity to this striking memorial of the inconstancy of the nation? The scene awakened more reflections in my mind than I dare say it did in that of those whose voices rent the air; but though it might be only fancy, I thought the King of the French looked very grave. Monsieur Mignet spent last evening here; his conversation is full of interest, being the overflowing of a rich mind, free from prejudices, and his ideas, though methodically arranged and subjected to the ordeal of a sober judgment, bear the warm tint of a brilliant imagination, that might have rendered him a poet, had he not chosen to be a historian. The Revolution has produced no visible change in this clever and agreeable man, who, filling the office of Keeper of the Archives, devotes his time to studies and researches in harmony with the pursuits to which he has many years been accustomed, and hears the success of the popular cause, to which he has long been attached, with a moderation and equanimity highly indicative of a philosophical mind, allied to an amiable disposition. There is something so striking in the appearance of Monsieur Mignet, that all strangers, who meet him here, remark the fine character of his head and the expression of his countenance. The celebrated General Peppé dined here yesterday, and is very unlike the revolutionary hero I had pictured him to be. Mild, well-bred, and amiable in his manner, he seems much more suited to command a regiment in support of a legitimate monarchy, than to subvert one. Although liberty appears to be with him a monomania, the warmth with which he advocates it in conversation never urges him beyond the bounds of good breeding. It is a strange infatuation to suppose that as civilisation extends its influence, men will have faith in the Utopian schemes of well-meaning visionaries, and risk evils they know not, in exchange for a state which, if not quite faultless, has at least much of good. How many brave and honourable men become the dupes of heated imaginations and erroneous opinions, which, urging them to effect an amelioration of some grievances, incur the penalty of imparting greater ones! General Peppé is liked by all who know him, though all lament the monomania that has gained such an ascendency over his mind. His brother, General Florestan Peppé at Naples, whom we esteem so much, is one of the most excellent men I ever knew. The Duc de Guiche has returned to Paris, after having seen the royal family safely embarked at Cherbourg. The departure of the aged monarch presented a melancholy scene. At his time of life, he can never hope to behold his country again, and the sudden change from the throne of a great kingdom to a compelled exile in a foreign land is a reverse of fortune that demands a philosophy to support, with which few are blest. There is something touching in the attachment of the Duc and Duchesse de Guiche to this unfortunate family, and above all, to the Dauphin and Dauphine. Always aware of their affection for them, I never imagined the strength of it, until the adversity which has sent so many of those who had previously loudly professed their devotion to them away, but which has increased the feelings of reverence towards them in this estimable couple, by mingling with it a sentiment of deep commiseration, that induces a still greater display of respect, now that so many others dispense with evincing it. The Duc is charged with the disposal of the property of the Dauphin; and, when this task is accomplished, he and his family will follow the fallen fortunes of Charles the Tenth, and join him at Holyrood. Loving France as they do, and wishing their sons to be brought up in the land of their birth, strong indeed must be the affection that induces them to abandon it, in order to devote themselves to the exiled Bourbons. This devotion to the fallen is the more meritorious when the liberality of the Duc's political opinions is taken into consideration. How few sovereigns find such devotion in adversity! and how seldom are men to be met with capable of sacrificing their own interests and the future prospects of their children to a sense of duty! * * * * * A lapse in my journal.--All seems now settled. The foreign powers have acknowledged the King of the French; and this acknowledgment has not only delighted his subjects, but confirmed them in the belief of their own right to make or unmake sovereigns according to their will and pleasure. The English are very popular in Paris at this moment, and the ready recognition of Louis-Philippe by our government has increased this good feeling. A vast crowd escorted the carriage of Mr. Hamilton, the Secretary of the Embassy, to his door, as he returned from his first accredited audience of the new monarch, and cries of _Vivent les Anglais!_ filled the air. As Mr. Hamilton resides in the house next to the one I occupy, I had an opportunity of beholding this ovation offered to him, and the people certainly evinced very groat enthusiasm on the occasion. M. Thiers, M. Mignet, Count Valeski, and Mr. Francis Raring, dined here yesterday. M. Thiers was very brilliant and amusing. It is impossible to meet him even once without being struck with the remarkable talent that characterises every sentence he utters; and yet each observation comes forth with such spirit and vivacity, that it is easy to see it has been elicited at the moment by some remark from another, and not from meditation. There is a hardiness in his conceptions, and an epigrammatic terseness in the expression of them, that command attention; and the readiness with which he seizes, analyses, and disposes of a question, betrays such a versatility of mental power as to convey a conviction that he is a man who cannot fail to fill a distinguished place in France, where, at present, abilities furnish the master-key that opens the door to honours and fortune. M. Thiers appears to entertain a consciousness of his talents, but does not, I really think, overrate them. The Prince and Princess Soutzo with their family, spent yesterday with us. Their eldest daughter, the Princess Helena, is a beautiful girl, with captivating manners, and highly cultivated mind, and the little Mary, though still in infancy, is one of the cleverest children I ever saw. Never did I see young people better brought up than are the sons and daughters of this excellent couple, or a more united family. Mr. and Miss Poulter, and William Spencer the poet, I dined here yesterday. Mr. Poulter is a sensible man, and his sister is well informed and intelligent. It is now decided that we go to England! Two years ago I should have returned there with gladness, but now!--I dread it. How changed will all appear without _him_ whose ever-watchful affection anticipated every wish, and realised every hope! I ought to feel pleased at leaving Paris, where the heaviest trial of my life has occurred, but _here_ I have now learned to get inured to the privation of his society, while in England I shall have again to acquire the hard lesson of resignation. _November_, 1830.--This is the last entry I shall make in my journal in Paris, for to-morrow we depart for England. I have passed the day in taking leave of those dear to me, and my spirits have failed under the effort. Some of them I shall probably never again behold. The dear and excellent Madame Craufurd is among those about whom I entertain the most melancholy presentiments, because at her advanced age I can hardly hope to find her, should I again return to France. She referred to this to-day with streaming eyes, and brought many a tear to mine by the sadness of her anticipations. The Duc and Duchess de Guiche I shall soon see in England, on their route to Edinburgh, to join tho exiled family at Holyrood, for they are determined not to forsake them in adversity. Adieu a Paris! two years and a half ago I entered you with gladness, and the future looked bright; I leave you with altered feelings, for the present is cheerless and the future clouded. * * * * * NOTES [1: Now Baron d'Haussey.] [2: The hermitage was lent him by Madame d'Epinay, to whom his subsequent ingratitude forms a dark page in her _Mémoires_.] [3: The present Lord Abinger.] [4: Now Lord Glenelg.] [5: Now Lord Francis Egerton.] [6: Now Madame Émile de Girardin.] [7: "Where thou beholdest Genius, There thou beholdest, too, the martyr's crown."] [8: The present Earl of Cadogan.] [9: The Duc de Guiche, being _premier menin_ to the Dauphin, used, according to custom, the arms and liveries of that prince.] [10: Now Maréchal.] INDEX TO THE CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. NISMES. Antiquities of this City--The Hôtel du Midi--Articles of Merchandise--History of the Maison Carrée--Work of Poldo d'Albenas--The Building described--Origin of it--Now used as a Museum--Monument to Marcus Attius--Cardinal Alberoni--Barbarous Project--Removal of Antiquities--The Amphitheatre described--Charles Martel--Excellent Precaution in Roman Theatres--Inscription--Officious Cicerone--Gate of Augustus--La Tour-Magne--Excavations--Fine Fountain--Temple of Diana--Brevity of Human Life, 1. CHAPTER II. TOWN OF ARLES. Beaucaire--Wooden Houses--Castle of King René--Church of St. Martha--Fabulous Monster--The Hôtel described--The Hostess--Antique Furniture--Plentiful Dinner--Scrutiny--Visit to the Amphitheatre--The Prefect of Arles--Subterranean Excavations--Ancient Church of St. Anne--Altar to the Goddess of Good--Venus of Arles--Granite Obelisk--Primitive Manners--A Liberal Landlady, 14. CHAPTER III. ST.-RÉMY. Situation of the Town--Antiquities--The Triumphal Arch described--Male and Female Figures--The Mausoleum--Bassi-relievi of Battles, Infantry, etc.--Figure of a Winged Female--Latin Inscription--Variously explained--Interpretation of Monsieur P. Malosse--Respect for the Departed--On The Triumphal Arch and Mausoleum at St.-Remy, 21. CHAPTER IV. LYONS. The _Fête Dieu_--Procession through the Streets--Ecclesiastical and Military Pomp--Decorations in the Streets--Effect produced on the Mind by Sacred Music--Excitements to Religious Fervour--the _Miserere_, 30. CHAPTER V. PARIS. Fatiguing Journey--Landau Accident--The Hôtel de la Terrasse, in the Rue de Rivoli--Six Years' Absence--The Duc and Duchesse de Guiche--Joy of Meeting--Fashion at Paris--Visit to Herhault's Temple of Fashion--Mademoiselle La Touche--Extravagant Charges--Caution to Husbands--A Word, also, to Wives--Visit to Madame Craufurd--Her prepossessing Appearance--House-hunting--Residence of the Maréchal Lobau--Review in the Champ-de-Mars--Splendid _Coup d'oeil_--The Marchioness de Loulé--Restrictions at Court--Accident to the Comte de Bourmont--Alarm of the Ladies--Charles the Tenth, the Dauphin, and the Dauphine--Melancholy Physiognomy of Charles the First--The Duchesse d'Angoulème--Her Trials and Endurance--French Love of Country--The Duchesse de Berri--Dinner at the Duchesse de Guiche's--William Lock--The Comte de l'Espérance de l'Aigle--His high breeding--The Opera--_Début_ of Taglioni--Her Poetical Style of Dancing--The Duc de Cazes--French and English Manners contrasted--Attentions to the Fair Sex in France--The Comtesses de Bellegarde--Character of the Duc de Gramont--Lady Barbara Craufurd--Count Valeski--Anger of the Maréchal Lobau--Defect in French Houses--The _Muette de Portici_--Noblet--An old _Danseuse_--Gaiety at Tivoli--Similarity in the Exterior of Parisian Ladies--A Quadrille Party--_Demi-toilette_--Late Tea-Party--Luxurious Chair--Delightful House in the Rue de Bourbon--Its costly Decorations--Its Interior described--The Princesse de la Moskowa--Sad Interview--Maréchal Ney, 32. CHAPTER VI. Custom of letting out Furniture--The Prince and Princesse Castelcicala--Lady Hawarden--Lady Combermere--Tone of Society at Paris--Attentions paid by Young Men to Old Ladies--Flirtations at Paris--Ceremonious Decorum--Comic Charles de Mornay--Parisian Upholsterers--Rich Furniture--Lord Yarmouth--Elegant Suite of Apartments--Charles Mills--Warm Affections between Relatives in France, 56. CHAPTER VII. Domestic Arrangements--Changes in Young People--Pleasant Recollections--Lord Lilford--The Marquis and Marquise Zamperi--Comte Alexander de Laborde--The Marquis de Mornay--Mode of passing the Time--Evening Visits in France--Dinner-party--The Duc Dalberg--The Duc de Mouchy--Party to Montmorency--Rousseau's Hermitage--Sensibility, a Characteristic of Genius--Solitude--Letter of Rousseau to Voltaire--Church, of Montmorency--Baths at Enghien--The Comtesse de Gand--Colonel E. Lygon--The Marquis de Dreux-Brezé--Contrast between him and the Duc de Talleyrand--The Baron and Baroness de Ruysch--Mr. Douglas Kinnaird--Sir Francis Burdett--Colonel Leicester Stanhope--The Marquis Palavicini--Charms of Italian Women--Lords Darnley and Charlemont--Mr. Young, the Tragedian--Lord Lansdowne--Estimate of his Character--Sir Robert Peel--Respect for the Memory of Sir William Drummond--Lady Drummond--"Vivian Grey"--Mr. Standish--Intermarriages between the French and the English, 64. CHAPTER VIII. Charles Kemble--His Daughter's Tragedy of "Francis the First"--Recollections of John Kemble--The Opera--_Count Ory_--Sir A. Barnard--Secret of Happiness--Visit to Mademoiselle Mars--Her Residence described--Memorial of her Theatrical Career--The Duchesse de la Force--Madame Grassini--Anecdote of her--Visit to Orsay--Its Situation--The Princesse de Croy--Hamlet of Palaiseau--Drama of _La Pie Voteuse_--Family of the Duc de Guiche--The Vaudeville Théâtre--Scribe's _Avant, Pendant, el Après_--Its Dangerous Tendency--French Ambition--Parisian Shopkeepers--Their Officious Conduct, 78. CHAPTER IX. Lord and Lady Stuart de Rothesay--French Politeness--Mr. D---- and Mr. T---- --Study of Shakespeare--Attractions of Mrs. T---- --Lady Charlotte Llndsay and the Misses Berry--Sir William Gell--Mr. and Mrs. Hare--Female Amiability--Shopping--Hints on Female Dress--Brilliancy of French Conversation--Mr. J. Strangways--A severe Trial--The Plague-spot--Miraculous Escape--Dinner given by Comte A. de Maussion--Goethe's _Faust_--Character of "Margaret"--The witty Mr. M---- --Lord Byron--French Quickness of Apprehension--_Sept Heures_--Character of Charlotte Corday--Degenerate Taste of the Parisians--Hasty Conclusions, 91. CHAPTER X. The celebrated Dr. P---- --Society of Medical Men--Dr. Guthrie--Requisites for a Surgeon--Celebrity and Merit--The Road to Fortune, as related by Dr. P---- --Successful Stratagem--Fancied Illness--Superfluity of _Embonpoint_--Mode of Treatment--Another Patient--The Doctor à-la-mode--Mr. P. C. Scarlett--Lord Erskine--Mr. H.B---- --Visit to the Théâtre Italien--Madame Malibran's "Desdemona"--Defect in her Singing--The Princesse Pauline Borghese--The Family of Napoleon--Particulars of the Duchesse d'Abrantes--The Luxembourg Palace and Gardens--A Loving Couple--Holiness of Marriage--Story of the Old Bachelor and his Crafty Housekeeper, 105. CHAPTER XI. Groups of Children in the Gardens of the Luxembourg--Joyous Sounds--The Nurses--The Child of Noble Birth and that of the _Parvenu_--Joys of Childhood--Contrast between Youth and Age--Meeting with Dr. P---- --Arrival of General and the Comtesse d'Orsay--Attractions of the latter--Remark of Napoleon--Affection in Domestic Circles in France--The Duchesse de Guiche--The Comtesse d'Orsay--The Duc de Gramont--Madame Craufurd--The _ci-devant Jeune Homme_--Potter, the actor--Sir Francis Burdett--Advantages of French Society--Topics of Conversation--Pedigrees of Horses--French Politeness--Deferential Treatment of the Fair Sex--Domestic Duties of the Duchesse do Guiche--Influence of Courts--Visit to the Théâtre des Nouveautés--_La Maison du Rempart_--Inflammable Exhibitions--Mr. Cuthbert and M. Charles Lafitte--advance of Civilization--Lady Combermere--Mr. Charles Grant (now Lord Glenelg)--Curiosity Shops on the Quai Voltaire--Madame de Sévigné--Objects that have belonged to celebrated People--A Hint to the Ladies--Pincushion of Madame de Maintenon--The Marquis de Rambouillet--Molière's _Précieuses Ridicules_--Pangs of Jealousy--Julie d'Angennes--Brilliant Coterie, 120. CHAPTER XII. The Marquise de Pouleprie---The celebrated Madame du Barry--Anecdote--Mademoiselle Mars in _Valerie_--Her admirable Style of Acting--Playing to the Galleries--Exclusive Nature of Parisian Society--French Conversation--Quickness of Perception--Walk in the Gardens of the Tuileries--Comparative Beauty of French and English Ladies--Graceful Walking of the Former--Difference of Etiquette--Well-bred Englishmen--Flight of Time--Colonel Caradoc, son of Lord Howden--New Year's Day--Custom of making Presents--Gallery of the Louvre--The Statues therein--Works of Art--_Chefs-d'oeuvre_ of the Old Masters--Consolation for Men of Genius--Nicolas Poussin, 134. CHAPTER XIII. Visit to the Hotel d'Orsay--Sad Change in it--Mr. Millingon, the Antiquary--Liberality of Comte d'Orsay--A Fanciful Notion--General Or-nano--Unhappy Marriages accounted for--_La Gazza Ladra_--Mallbran's "Ninetta"--_The Calamities of Authors_--Mr. D'Israeli--The Princesse de Talleyrand--Her Person described--Her Dress and Manners--Amusing Story told by the Abbé Denon--Unexpected Arrival--_Yes and No_, by Lord Normanby--Lady Dysart-Comte Valeski--Influence of Agreeable Manners--Effects of opposite ones--Injudicious Friends--A Candid Admission--Lord ---- --Love of Contradiction--Remarks on the Novel of _Pelham_--Misery of receiving stupid Books--Malibran in _La Cenerentola_--French Customs--Proofs d'_Amilié_--Wedding Dresses, 146. CHAPTER XIV. Comte Charles de Mornay--His Wit and Good Nature--Mademoiselle Mars, in _Henri III_--Some Account of the Play--Love and Ambition--Curious Incident--Romantic Notions--Passion of Love--Wordsworth's Poems--Admiration of his Writings--Religion displayed by the Upper Classes--The Duc de Bordeaux--Piety of the Great--Popularity of the Duchesse de Berri--Anecdote of her--Walter Savage Landor--His _Imaginary Conversations_--Sir William Gell--The Duc d'Orléans--His Enviable Situation--The Duc de Chartres--Genius of Shelley--Beauty of his Writings--His Wild Theories--William Spencer the Poet--Melancholy Change in Him--French Prejudices towards the English--Example of it--Accomplishments of French Ladies--Talent for Conversation, 169. CHAPTER XV. Consequences of the Revolution in France--Corruption of the Regency--Sarcastic Verses of St.-Evremond--Reign of Louis the Fifteenth--Lessons taught by Affliction--Dangers of Anarchy--The _Haute Noblesse_ previously to the Revolution--Want of Affection between Parents and Children--Superficial Judgments erroneous--Power of Fashion--The Novel of _Devereux_--Infrequency of Elopements in France--Les Dames de B---- --Their Attachment to each other--Old Maids--Servitude in England and France contrasted--French Masters and Mistresses--Treatment of Servants--Avoidance of Politics--French Discontent--Charles the Tenth--National Prosperity--The Duchesse de Guiche and her two Sons--Position of the Duc de Guiche, 171. CHAPTER XVI. Approach of Spring--Fogs on the Seine--The Jardins des Tuileries--Impurity of the London Atmosphere--Exhilaration of the Spirits--Anecdote--The Catholic Question--Lord Rosslyn--The Duke of Wellington--Merits of a Cook--_Amour-propre_ of a Parisian Cook--English Sauce--A Gourmand and an Epicure--The Duc de Talleyrand--A perfect Dinner--The Marquis de L---- --House-hunting again--Letter from Lord B---- --The Hôtel Monaco--College of St.-Barbe--The Duchesse de Guiche and her Sons--A Mother's Triumph--Spirit of Emulation--The Quarter called the Pays Latin--An Author's Dress--Aspect of the Women--A Life of Study--Amable Tastu's Poems--Effect of Living much in Society--Mr. W. Spencer--His Abstraction--Disadvantages of Civilization--Confession of Madame de ---- --A Hint to Comte ---- on visiting London--Suspicion of Poverty--A _Diner Maigre_--Luxurious Bishops, 182. CHAPTER XVII. Romantic Feelings of Lady C---- --True Love--Disagreeable Neighbours--Credulity--Mademoiselle Delphine Gay--French Novels--French Critics--Eligible Mansions--Comforts of Seclusion--Genius of L.E.L.--The Comtesse d'O---- --A Brilliant Talker--Letter from Mrs. Hare--Extreme Hospitality--Longchamps--Exhibition of Spring Fashions--French Beauties--Animated Scene--Promenade at Longchamps--Extravagance of Mademoiselle Duthé--Modern Morals--_Cinq Mars_, by Comte Alfred de Vigny--His Style--Strictures on Mankind--The best Philosophy--Speech of Lord Grey--The Caterpillar--A Voracious Appetite--A Refined Lady--_La Chronique du temps de Charles IX_, by Prosper Merimée--Estimation of Sir Walter Scott--Jules Janin--Injudicious Praise--Renewal of Youth--Self-Deception--Grey Hairs, 194. CHAPTER XVIII. Victor Hugo's _Dernier Jour d'un Condamné_--Value of Common Sense--Conscience--Cunning--Curiosity Shops on the Quai d'Orsay--Expensive and Tasteful Gifts--An Avaricious Vender--A Moral--Anonymous Scribbler--Weakness of Mind--Poems of Mrs. Hemans--The Minds of Genius--Poetesses of England--Arrival of Lord D---- --The Catholic Question carried--Irish prejudices--Letters from Absent Friends--Sir William Gell--The Archbishop of Tarentum--Discoveries at Pompeii--Novel of _The Disowned_--Advantages to be derived from the Perusal of Works of Fiction--Politics--Charles the Tenth unpopular--Charles the First--The House of Bourbon--"Uneasy lies the Head that wears a Crown"--The Duc de T---- --Mr. Hook's _Sayings and Doings_--_Visit to the Hotel Monaco_, 207. CHAPTER XIX. A new Resilience--Consolation in Sickness--House in the Rue de Matignon--Its Interior described--The Library--Drive in the Bois de Boulogne--Atmospheric Influence--The Rocher de Cancale--A _Diner de Restaurant--_A Gay Sight--Good Taste in Dress innate in Frenchwomen--Well-appointed Carriages--Soldier-like Air of the Male Population--Observation of the Emperor Napoleon--Characteristics of the British Soldier--National Anthem--Changes in the Journey of Life--Captain Marryat's _Naval Officer_--Performance of _La Tour d'Auvergne_--Letter of Carnot--Distinction awarded to Merit by Napoleon--National Glory--Effect of Enthusiasm--Villa of the Duchesse de Montmorency--Residences on the Banks of the Thames--Bagatelle, the Seat of the Duc de Bordeaux--Earthly Happiness--Domestic Alterations--High Rents at Paris--Terrace and Aviary--Unsettled Slate, 219. CHAPTER XX. Unexpected Events--Mr. and Mrs. Mathews--Their son, Charles--Evening Party--Recitations and Songs--Pleasant Recollections--Visit to the _Jardin des Plantes_--Amusing Incident--Humorous Imitations--Intellectual Powers--Recourse to Reading--The Comte Montalembert--His Grief on the Death of his Daughter--Restraint imposed by Society--Fate of the Unfortunate--The Prince and Princess Soutzo--Particulars relative to them--Reverse of Fortune--Mr. Rogers and Mr. Luttrell--Memory of Lord Byron--His Lampoon on Rogers--Love of Sarcasm--Conversation of Mr. Luttrell--Lord John Russell--His Qualifications--Monsieur Thiers--Monsieur Mignet--His Vigorous Writings--Friendship between Thiers and Mignet--The Baron Cailleux--Visit to the Louvre--Taste for the Fine Arts--The Marquis and Marquise de B---- --Clever People--Lord Allen and Sir Andrew Barnard--The Culinary Art, 230. CHAPTER XXI. Mr. Rogers and Mr. Luttrell--Society of Refined Englishmen--Mercurial Temperament of the French--Opposite Characters--M. Erard's Collection of Pictures--Antique _Bijouterie_--Lord Pembroke--The Duke of Hamilton--Dr. Parr--Reproof of the Duc de Blacas--Monsieur Mignet--His great Knowledge--A Clever Man--Influence of Conscience--Abilities of Lord Palmerston--Lord Castlereagh--His Uncle, the late Marquess of Londonderry--Dangers of Fashion--Mr. Cutlar Fergusson--The Baron and Baroness de Ruysch--A Mind at Ease--Dreary Weather--Sad State of the Streets--Fogs--Fascination of Madame Grassini--Sledge Party--Sledge of the Duc de Guiche--That of Comte d'Orsay--Picturesque Night Scene--Revival of an Old Fashion--The Prince Polignac--His Amiable Manners--His Difficult Position, 242. CHAPTER XXII. Effects of Indisposition--Instability of Earthly Blessings--Captain William Anson (Brother of Lord Anson)--His varied Acquirements--The pretty Madame de la H---- --Prince Paul Lieven--Captain Cadogan (now Earl Cadogan)--Life at Sea--Visit to the Duchesse de Guiche--Her Warmth and Gentleness of Manner--Political Crisis--The Conquest of Algiers--General Excelmans--Rash Measure--Charles the Tenth--His Ministry unpopular--Prosperity of France--Extorted Concessions-- Dissolution of the Chambers--The Public Press--Controversy--Commotion before the Hôtel of the Ministre des Finances--The Ministers insulted--Counsel of the Duc de Guiche--Serious Aspect of Affairs--Crowds in the Streets--Household of Charles the Tenth--Noblesse of his Court--Confusion and Alarm--Riotous Conduct--Firing on the People--Formation of Barricades--Absence of the Civil Authorities--Nocturnal Impressions--Comtes d'Orsay and Valeski--Scene in the Place de la Bourse--The Corps-de-Garde set on Fire--Darkness in the Rue Richelleu.--Further disturbances--Continued Depredations--Breach between the People and the Sovereign--Anecdote of Monsieur Salvandy, 225. CHAPTER XXIII. The Dead paraded through the Streets to inflame the Populace--The Shops closed--The Duc de Raguse censured--His Supineness--Devotion of the Duc de Guiche to his Sovereign--The Military Dispositions defective--Flag of the Bourbons--Troops in Want of Refreshment-- Destruction of the Royal Emblems--Disgusting Exhibition--Rumours of Fresh Disasters--Opinion of Sir Roger de Coverley--Revolutions the Carnivals of History--Observation of Voltaire--Doctors Pasquier and de Guise--Report of Fire arms--Paucity of Provisions--Female Courage--Domestic Entrenchment--Further Hostilities--Conflicting Rumours--The Sublime and the Ridiculous--Juvenal Intrepidity--Fatality--The Soldiers and the populace--Visit to Madame Craufurd--Barricade in the Rue Verte--Approaching Mob--Safe Arrival in the Rue d'Anjou--Terror of Madame Craufurd--Her Anxiety for her Relatives--Composure of the Marquis d'Aligre--Riotous Assembly in the Rue Verte--Their Conduct towards the Author--Dangerous Symbol of Aristocracy--Arrival at Home, 282. CHAPTER XXIV. Familiarity of French Servants--Power of the People--Misguided Men--Further Rumours--Who are the People?--An Intruder--A Revolutionary Hero--The Tuileries and the Louvre taken--Sir Thomas Lawrence's Portrait of the Dauphin--The Terrible and the Comic--Trophies of Victory--The Palace of the Archbishop of Paris sacked--Concessions of Charles the Tenth--The Duchesse de Berri--Lord Stuart de Rothesay--Noble Conduct--The Duchesse de Guiche--Her trying Situation--The Provisional Government--The Tri-coloured Flag--Meeting of the Deputies--Bitter Feeling towards the Royal Family Bravery of the Populace--Lafayette and his followers--Scene in the Street--"The Good Cause"--The wealthy M. Laffitte--Valuable Collections at Paris--Courageous Conduct of the Duchesse de Guiche--Her Champions--Attack on the Hôtel of the Duc de Guiche--Comte Alfred d'Orsay--Painful Position, 272. CHAPTER XXV. Sanctuary of Home--Madame C---- --Intoxicated Revolutionist--His Good-Nature--the Proprietor of a Wine-Shop--Politeness of all Classes in France--Barracks in the Rue Verte--Difficulty of obtaining Admission--Agitation of Madame C---- --Comte Valeski--The Barracks attacked and taken--Dangerous Route--Impassable Gulf between the Sovereign and the People--The Royal Cause hopeless--A Fine Youth killed--Reflections on his Death--Number of Persons killed during the last Three Days--Details of a Battle--Rumour respecting the Dauphin--Interment of the Page--Fatality attending the Bourbons--Absence of the Dauphine--Revolt of the Troops--The Duchesse de Guiche at St.-Germain--Her noble Bearing--The Duc de Gramont--The Château du Val, the Residence of the Princesse de Poix--The Fugitive Duchess--Popularity of Lafayette--The duc d'Orléans named Lieut.-General of France--Order restored--Abdication of Charles the Tenth--Renewed Excitement--Clamour against the King--A Fickle People--Wicked Rumours--The King quits Rambouillet--School of Adversity--Desertion by Friends--Route to Cherbourg, 294. CHAPTER XXVI. Rumour relative to the Son of Napoleon--Unsettled State of Affairs--Conflicting Rumours--The Duke of Orleans--Charms of a Crown--Aspect of the Champs-Elysées--Unsought popularity--Comte d'Orsay--Scene of Destruction--Shattered Trees--Pride of the People--Re-action after Excitement--Anecdote--The Jeweller's Wife--Passion of the French--Playing at Soldiers--Enthusiasm of the _Garde Nationale_--Return to Paris of the Duchesse de Guiche--Confidence of the Duc--Courage of the Duchesse--General Gèrard--The Duke of Orleans accepts the Crown--Popularity, an unstable Possession--Abilities of Louis-Philippe--Expectations formed of him--Person of Lafayette--Appearance in Public of the new Sovereign--The Queen--Her painful Position--The King of the French in the Place Vendôme--Monsieur Mignet--His varied Acquirements--The celebrated General Peppé--Strange Infatuation--Charles the Tenth embarks at Cherbourg--Devotion to the exiled Bourbons--The English Popular at Paris--Mr. Hamilton, Secretary of the Embassy--Brilliant conversation of M. Thiers--The Prince and Princesse Soutzo--Mr. Poulter--Lesson of Resignation--Departure for England--Leave-taking--Adieu to Paris, 294. 
11994	----	A RESIDENCE IN FRANCE, DURING THE YEARS 1792, 1793, 1794, AND 1795; DESCRIBED IN A SERIES OF LETTERS FROM AN ENGLISH LADY; With General And Incidental Remarks On The French Character And Manners. Prepared for the Press By John Gifford, Esq. Author of the History of France, Letter to Lord Lauderdale, Letter to the Hon. T. Erskine, &c. Second Edition. _Plus je vis l'Etranger plus j'aimai ma Patrie._ --Du Belloy. London: Printed for T. N. Longman, Paternoster Row. 1797. 1794 January 6, 1794. If I had undertaken to follow the French revolution through all its absurdities and iniquities, my indolence would long since have taken the alarm, and I should have relinquished a task become too difficult and too laborious. Events are now too numerous and too complicated to be described by occasional remarks; and a narrator of no more pretensions than myself may be allowed to shrink from an abundance of matter which will hereafter perplex the choice and excite the wonder of the historian.--Removed from the great scene of intrigues, we are little acquainted with them--we begin to suffer almost before we begin to conjecture, and our solicitude to examine causes is lost in the rapidity with which we feel their effects. Amidst the more mischievous changes of a philosophic revolution, you will have learned from the newspapers, that the French have adopted a new aera and a new calendar, the one dating from the foundation of their republic, and other descriptive of the climate of Paris, and the productions of the French territory. I doubt, however, if these new almanack-makers will create so much confusion as might be supposed, or as they may desire, for I do not find as yet that their system has made its way beyond the public offices, and the country people are particularly refractory, for they persist in holding their fairs, markets, &c. as usual, without any regard to the hallowed decade of their legislators. As it is to be presumed that the French do not wish to relinquish all commercial intercourse with other nations, they mean possibly to tack the republican calendar to the rights of man, and send their armies to propagate them together; otherwise the correspondence of a Frenchman will be as difficult to interpret with mercantile exactness as the characters of the Chinese. The vanity of these philosophers would, doubtless, be gratified by forcing the rest of Europe and the civilized world to adopt their useless and chimerical innovations, and they might think it a triumph to see the inhabitant of the Hebrides date _"Vendemiaire,"_ [Alluding to the vintage.] or the parched West-Indian _"Nivose;"_ but vanity is not on this, as it is on many other occasions, the leading principle.--It was hoped that a new arrangement of the year, and a different nomenclature of the months, so as to banish all the commemorations of Christianity, might prepare the way for abolishing religion itself, and, if it were possible to impose the use of the new calendar so far as to exclude the old one, this might certainly assist their more serious atheistical operations; but as the success of such an introduction might depend on the will of the people, and is not within the competence of the bayonet, the old year will maintain its ground, and these pedantic triflers find that they have laboured to no more extensive a purpose, than to furnish a date to the newspapers, or to their own decrees, which no one will take the pains to understand. Mankind are in general more attached to customs than principles. The useful despotism of Peter, which subdued so many of the prejudices of his countrymen, could not achieve the curtailment of their beards; and you must not imagine that, with all the endurance of the French, these continual attempts at innovation pass without murmurs: partial revolts happen very frequently; but, as they are the spontaneous effect of personal suffering, not of political manoeuvre, they are without concert or union, of course easily quelled, and only serve to strengthen the government.--The people of Amiens have lately, in one of these sudden effusions of discontent, burnt the tree of liberty, and even the representative, Dumont, has been menaced; but these are only the blows of a coward who is alarmed at his own temerity, and dreads the chastisement of it.* * The whole town of Bedouin, in the south of France, was burnt pursuant to a decree of the convention, to expiate the imprudence of some of its inhabitants in having cut down a dead tree of liberty. Above sixty people were guillotined as accomplices, and their bodies thrown into pits, dug by order of the representative, Magnet, (then on mission,) before their death. These executions were succeeded by a conflagration of all the houses, and the imprisonment or dispersion of their possessors. It is likewise worthy of remark, that many of these last were obliged, by express order of Maignet, to be spectators of the murder of their friends and relations. This crime in the revolutionary code is of a very serious nature; and however trifling it may appear to you, it depends only on the will of Dumont to sacrifice many lives on the occasion. But Dumont, though erected by circumstances into a tyrant, is not sanguinary--he is by nature and education passionate and gross, and in other times might only have been a good natured Polisson. Hitherto he has contented himself with alarming, and making people tired of their lives, but I do not believe he has been the direct or intentional cause of anyone's death. He has so often been the hero of my adventures, that I mention him familiarly to you, without reflecting, that though the delegate of more than monarchical power here, he is too insignificant of himself to be known in England. But the history of Dumont is that of two-thirds of the Convention. He was originally clerk to an attorney at Abbeville, and afterwards set up for himself in a neighbouring village. His youth having been marked by some digressions from the "'haviour of reputation," his profession was far from affording him a subsistence; and the revolution, which seems to have called forth all that was turbulent, unprincipled, or necessitous in the country, naturally found a partizan in an attorney without practice.--At the election of 1792, when the King's fall and the domination of the Jacobins had spread so general a terror that no man of character could be prevailed upon to be a candidate for a public situation, Dumont availed himself of this timidity and supineness in those who ought to have become the representatives of the people; and, by a talent for intrigue, and a coarse facility of phrase-making, (for he has no pretensions to eloquence,) prevailed on the mob to elect him. His local knowledge, active disposition, and subservient industry, render him an useful kind of drudge to any prevailing party, and, since the overthrow of the Brissotines, he has been entrusted with the government of this and some of the neighbouring departments. He professes himself a zealous republican, and an apostle of the doctrine of universal equality, yet unites in his person all the attributes of despotism, and lives with more luxury and expence than most of the _ci-devant_ gentry. His former habitation at Oisemont is not much better than a good barn; but patriotism is more profitable here than in England, and he has lately purchased a large mansion belonging to an emigrant. * "Britain no longer pays her patriots with her spoils:" and perhaps it is matter of congratulation to a country, when the profession of patriotism is not lucrative. Many agreeable inferences may be made from it--the sentiment may have become too general for reward, Ministers too virtuous to fear, or even the people too enlightened to be deceived. --His mode of travelling, which used at best to be in the _coche d'eau_ [Passage-boat.] or the diligence, is now in a coach and four, very frequently accompanied by a led horse, and a party of dragoons. I fear some of your patriots behold this with envy, and it is not to be wondered at that they should wish to see a similar revolution in England. What a seducing prospect for the assertors of liberty, to have the power of imprisoning and guillotining all their countrymen! What halcyon days, when the aristocratic palaces* shall be purified by solacing the fatigues of republican virtue, and the levellers of all distinction travel with four horses and a military escort!--But, as Robespierre observes, you are two centuries behind the French in patriotism and information; and I doubt if English republicanism will ever go beyond a dinner, and toasting the manes of Hampden and Sydney. I would, therefore, seriously advise any of my compatriots who may be enamoured of a government founded on the rights of man, to quit an ungrateful country which seems so little disposed to reward their labours, and enjoy the supreme delight of men a systeme, that of seeing their theories in action. * Many of the emigrants' houses were bought by members of the Convention, or people in office. At Paris, crouds of inferior clerks, who could not purchase, found means to get lodged in the most superb national edifices: Monceaux was the villa of Robespierre--St. Just occasionally amused himself at Raincy--Couthon succeed the Comte d'Artois at Bagatelle-and Vliatte, a juryman of the Revolutionary Tribunal, was lodged at the pavillion of Flora, in the Tuilleries, which he seems to have occupied as a sort of Maitre d'Hotel to the Comite de Salut Public. _A propos_--a decree of the Convention has lately passed to secure the person of Mr. Thomas Paine, and place seals on his papers. I hope, however, as he has been installed in all the rights of a French citizen, in addition to his representative inviolability, that nothing more than a temporary retreat is intended for him. Perhaps even his personal sufferings may prove a benefit to mankind. He may, like Raleigh, "in his prison hours enrich the world," and add new proselytes to the cause of freedom. Besides, human evils are often only blessings in a questionable form--Mr. Paine's persecutions in England made him a legislator in France. Who knows but his persecutions in France may lead to some new advancement, or at least add another line to the already crouded title-pages that announce his literary and political distinctions! --Yours. January, 1794. The total suppression of all religious worship in this country is an event of too singular and important a nature not to have been commented upon largely by the English papers; but, though I have little new to add on the subject, my own reflections have been too much occupied in consequence for me to pass it over in silence. I am yet in the first emotions of wonder: the vast edifice which had been raised by the blended efforts of religion and superstition, which had been consecrated by time, endeared by national taste, and become necessary by habit, has now disappeared, and scarcely left a vestige of its ruins. To those who revert only to the genius of the Catholic religion, and to former periods of the history of France, this event must seem incredible; and nothing but constant opportunities of marking its gradual approach can reconcile it to probability. The pious christian and the insidious philosopher have equally contributed to the general effect, though with very different intentions: the one, consulting only his reason, wished to establish a pure and simple mode of worship, which, divested of the allurements of splendid processions and imposing ceremonies, should teach the people their duty, without captivating their senses; the other, better acquainted with French character, knew how little these views were compatible with it, and hoped, under the specious pretext of banishing the too numerous ornaments of the Catholic practice, to shake the foundations of Christianity itself. Thus united in their efforts, though dissimilar in their motives, all parties were eager at the beginning of the revolution for a reform in the Church: the wealth of the Clergy, the monastic establishments, the supernumerary saints, were devoted and attacked without pity, and without regret; and, in the zeal and hurry of innovation, the decisive measure, which reduced ecclesiastics to small pensions dependent on the state, was carried, before those who really meant well were aware of its consequences. The next step was, to make the receiving these pensions subject to an oath, which the selfish philosopher, who can coldly calculate on, and triumph in, the weakness of human nature, foresaw would be a brand of discord, certain to destroy the sole force which the Clergy yet possessed--their union, and the public opinion. Unfortunately, these views were not disappointed: conviction, interest, or fear, prevailed on many to take the oath; while doubt, worldly improvidence, or a scrupulous piety, deterred others. A schism took place between the jurors and nonjurors--the people became equally divided, and adhered either to the one or the other, as their habits or prepossessions directed them. Neither party, as it may be imagined, could see themselves deprived of any portion of the public esteem, without concern, perhaps without rancour; and their mutual animosity, far from gaining proselytes to either, contributed only to the immediate degradation and future ruin of both. Those, however, who had not taken the prescribed oath, were in general more popular than what were called the constitutionalists, and the influence they were supposed to exert in alienating the minds of their followers from the new form of government, supplied the republican party with a pretext for proposing their banishment.* *The King's exertion of the power vested in him by the constitution, by putting a temporary negative on this decree, it is well known, was one of the pretexts for dethroning him. At the King's deposition this decree took place, and such of the nonjuring priests as were not massacred in the prisons, or escaped the search, were to be embarked for Guiana. The wiser and better part of those whose compliances entitled them to remain, were, I believe, far from considering this persecution of their opponents as a triumph--to those who did, it was of short duration. The Convention, which had hitherto attempted to disguise its hatred of the profession by censure and abuse of a part of its members, began now to ridicule the profession itself: some represented it as useless--others as pernicious and irreconcileable with political freedom; and a discourse* was printed, under the sanction of the Assembly, to prove, that the only feasible republic must be supported by pure atheism. * Extracts from the Report of Anacharsis Cloots, member of the Committee of Public Instruction, printed by order of the National Convention: "Our _Sans-culottes_ want no other sermon but the rights of man, no other doctrine but the constitutional precepts and practice, nor any other church than where the section or the club hold their meetings, &c. "The propagation of the rights of man ought to be presented to the astonished world pure and without stain. It is not by offering strange gods to our neighbours that we shall operate their conversion. We can never raise them from their abject state by erecting one altar in opposition to another. A trifling heresy is infinitely more revolting than having no religion at all. Nature, like the sun, diffuses her light without the assistance of priests and vestals. While we were constitutional heretics, we maintained an army of an hundred thousand priests, who waged war equally with the Pope and the disciples of Calvin. We crushed the old priesthood by means of the new, and while we compelled every sect to contribute to the payment of a pretended national religion, we became at once the abhorrence of all the Catholics and Protestants in Europe. The repulsion of our religious belief counteracted the attraction of our political principles.--But truth is at length triumphant, and all the ill-intentioned shall no more be able to detach our neighbours from the dominion of the rights of man, under pretext of a religious dominion which no longer exists.--The purpose of religion is no how so well answered as by presenting carte blanche to the abused world. Every one will then be at liberty to form his spiritual regimen to his own taste, till in the end the invincible ascendant of reason shall teach him that the Supreme Being, the Eternal Being, is no other than Nature uncreated and uncreatable; and that the only Providence is the association of mankind in freedom and equality!-- This sovereign providence affords comfort to the afflicted, rewards the good, and punishes the wicked. It exercises no unjust partialities, like the providence of knaves and fools. Man, when free, wants no other divinity than himself. This god will not cost us a single farthing, not a single tear, nor a drop of blood. From the summit of our mountain he hath promulgated his laws, traced in evident characters on the tables of nature. From the East to the West they will be understood without the aid of interpreters, comments, or miracles. Every other ritual will be torn in pieces at the appearance of that of reason. Reason dethrones both the Kings of the earth, and the Kings of heaven.--No monarch above, if we wish to preserve our republic below. "Volumes have been written to determine whether or no a republic of Atheists could exist. I maintain that every other republic is a chimera. If you once admit the existence of a heavenly Sovereign, you introduce the wooden horse within your walls!--What you adore by day will be your destruction at night. "A people of theists necessarily become revelationists, that is to say, slaves of priests, who are but religious go-betweens, and physicians of damned souls. "If I were a scoundrel, I should make a point of exclaiming against atheism, for a religious mask is very convenient to a traitor. "The intolerance of truth will one day proscribe the very name of temple 'fanum,' the etymology of fanaticism. "We shall instantly see the monarchy of heaven condemned in its turn by the revolutionary tribunal of victorious Reason; for Truth, exalted on the throne of Nature, is sovereignly intolerant. "The republic of the rights of man is, properly speaking, neither theistical nor atheistical--it is nihilistical." Many of the most eminent conforming Prelates and Clergy were arrested, and even individuals, who had the reputation of being particularly devout, were marked as objects of persecution. A new calendar was devised, which excluded the ancient festivals, and limited public worship to the decade, or tenth day, and all observance of the Sabbath was interdicted. The prisons were crouded with sufferers in the cause of religion, and all who had not the zeal or the courage of martyrs, abstained from manifesting any attachment to the Christian faith. While this consternation was yet recent, the Deputies on mission in the departments shut up the churches entirely: the refuse of low clubs were paid and encouraged to break the windows and destroy the monuments; and these outrages, which, it was previously concerted, should at first assume the appearance of popular tumult, were soon regulated and directed by the mandates of the Convention themselves. The churches were again opened, an atheistic ritual, and licentious homilies,* were substituted for the proscribed service--and an absurd and ludicrous imitation of the Greek mythology was exhibited, under the title of the Religion of Reason.-- * I have read a discourse pronounced in a church at Paris, on the decade, so indecent and profane, that the most humble audience of a country-puppet show in England would not have tolerated it. On the principal church of every town was inscribed, "The Temple of Reason;" and a tutelary goddess was installed with a ceremony equally pedantic, ridiculous, and profane.* * At Havre, the goddess of Reason was drawn on a car by four cart-horses, and as it was judged necessary, to prevent accidents, that the horses should be conducted by those they were accustomed to, the carters were likewise put in requisition and furnished with cuirasses a l'antique from the theatre. The men, it seems, being neither martial nor learned, were not au fait at this equipment, and concluding it was only a waistcoat of ceremony, invested themselves with the front behind, and the back part laced before, to the great amusement of the few who were sensible of the mistake. Yet the philosophers did not on this occasion disdain those adventitious aids, the use of which they had so much declaimed against while they were the auxiliaries of Christianity.* * Mr. Gibbon reproaches the Christians with their adoption of the allurements of the Greek mythology.--The Catholics have been more hostilely despoiled by their modern persecutors, and may retort that the religion of reason is a more gross appeal to the senses than the darkest ages of superstition would have ventured on. Music, processions, and decorations, which had been banished from the ancient worship, were introduced in the new one, and the philosophical reformer, even in the very attempt to establish a religion purely metaphysical, found himself obliged to inculcate it by a gross and material idolatry.*-- * The French do not yet annex any other idea to the religion of reason than that of the female who performs the part of the goddess. Thus, by submitting his abstractions to the genius of the people, and the imperfections of our nature, perhaps the best apology was offered for the errors of that worship which had been proscribed, persecuted, and ridiculed. Previous to the tenth day, on which a celebration of this kind was to take place, a Deputy arrived, accompanied by the female goddess:* that is, (if the town itself did not produce one for the purpose,) a Roman dress of white satin was hired from the theatre, with which she was invested--her head covered with a red cap, ornamented with oak leaves-- one arm was reclined on a plough, the other grasped a spear--and her feet were supported by a globe, and environed by mutilated emblems of seodality. [It is not possible to explain this costume as appropriate.] * The females who personated the new divinity were usually selected from amongst those who "might make sectaries of whom they bid but follow," but who were more conspicuous for beauty than any other celestial attribute.--The itinerant goddess of the principal towns in the department de la Somme was the mistress of one Taillefer, a republican General, brother to the Deputy of the same name.--I know not, in this military government, whether the General's services on the occasion were included in his other appointments. At Amiens, he not only provided the deity, but commanded the detachment that secured her a submissive adoration. Thus equipped, the divinity and her appendages were borne on the shoulders of Jacobins "en bonnet rouge," and escorted by the National Guard, Mayor, Judges, and all the constituted authorities, who, whether diverted or indignant, were obliged to preserve a respectful gravity of exterior. When the whole cavalcade arrived at the place appointed, the goddess was placed on an altar erected for the occasion, from whence she harangued the people, who, in return, proffered their adoration, and sung the Carmagnole, and other republican hymns of the same kind. They then proceeded in the same order to the principal church, in the choir of which the same ceremonies were renewed: a priest was procured to abjure his faith and avow the whole of Christianity an imposture;* and the festival concluded with the burning of prayer-books, saints, confessionals, and every thing appropriated to the use of public worship.**-- *It must be observed, in justice to the French Clergy, that it was seldom possible to procure any who would consent to this infamy. In such cases, the part was exhibited by a man hired and dressed for the purpose.--The end of degrading the profession in the eyes of the people was equally answered. ** In many places, valuable paintings and statues were burnt or disfigured. The communion cups, and other church plate, were, after being exorcised in Jacobin revels, sent to the Convention, and the gold and silver, (as the author of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire invidiously expresses himself,) the pearls and jewels, were wickedly converted to the service of mankind; as if any thing whose value is merely fictitious, could render more service to mankind than when dedicated to an use which is equally the solace of the rich and the poor--which gratifies the eye without exciting cupidity, soothes the bed of sickness, and heals the wounds of conscience. Yet I am no advocate for the profuse decorations of Catholic churches; and if I seem to plead in their behalf, it is that I recollect no instance where the depredators of them have appropriated the spoil to more laudable purposes. The greater part of the attendants looked on in silent terror and astonishment; whilst others, intoxicated, or probably paid to act this scandalous farce, danced round the flames with an appearance of frantic and savage mirth.--It is not to be forgotten, that representatives of the people often presided as the high priests of these rites; and their official dispatches to the convention, in which these ceremonies were minutely described, were always heard with bursts of applause, and sanctioned by decrees of insertion in the bulletin.* * A kind of official newspaper distributed periodically at the expence of Government in large towns, and pasted up in public places--it contained such news as the convention chose to impart, which was given with the exact measure of truth or falsehood that suited the purpose of the day. I have now conducted you to the period in which I am contemplating France in possession of all the advantages which a total dereliction of religious establishments can bestow--at that consummation to which the labours of modern philosophers have so long tended. Ye Shaftesburys, Bolingbrokes, Voltaires, and must I add the name of Gibbon,* behold yourselves inscribed on the registers of fame with a Laplanche, a Chenier, an Andre Dumont, or a Fouche!**-- * The elegant satirist of Christianity will smile at the presumption of so humble a censurer.--It is certain, the misapplication only of such splendid talents could embolden me to mention the name of the possessor with diminished respect. ** These are names too contemptible for notice, but for the mischief to which they were instrumental--they were among the first and most remarkable persecutors of religion. Do not blush at the association; your views have been the same; and the subtle underminer of man's best comfort in the principles of his religion, is even more criminal than him who prohibits the external exercise of it. Ridicule of the sacred writings is more dangerous than burning them, and a sneer at the miracles of the gospel more mischievous than disfiguring the statues of the evangelists; and it must be confessed that these Anti-christian Iconoclasts themselves might probably have been content to "believe and say their prayers," had not the intolerance of philosophy made them atheists and persecutors.--The coarse legend of "death is the sleep of eternity,"* is only a compendium of the fine-drawn theories of the more elaborate materialist, and the depositaries of the dead will not corrupt more by the exhibition of this desolating standard, than the libraries of the living by the volumes which hold out the same oblivion to vice, and discouragement to virtue.-- * Posts, bearing the inscription "la mort est un sommeil eternel," were erected in many public burying-grounds.--No other ceremony is observed with the dead than enclosing the body in some rough boards, and sending it off by a couple of porters, (in their usual garb,) attended by a municipal officer. The latter inscribes on a register the name of the deceased, who is thrown into a grave generally prepared for half a score, and the whole business is finished. The great experiment of governing a civilized people without religion will now be made; and should the morals, the manners, or happiness of the French, be improved by it, the sectaries of modern philosophy may triumph. Should it happen otherwise, the Christian will have an additional motive for cherishing his faith: but even the afflictions of humanity will not, I fear, produce either regret or conviction in his adversary; for the prejudices of philosophers and systemists are incorrigible.* * _"Ce ne sont point les philosophes qui connoissent le mieux les hommes. Ils ne les voient qu'a travers les prejuges, et je ne fache aucun etat ou l'on en ait tant."_--J. J. Rousseau. ["It is not among philosophers that we are to look for the most perfect knowledge of human nature.--They view it only through the prejudices of philosophy, and I know of no profession where prejudices are more abundant."] Providence, Jan. 29. We are now quite domesticated here, though in a very miserable way, without fire, and with our mattresses, on the boards; but we nevertheless adopt the spirit of the country, and a total absence of comfort does not prevent us from amusing ourselves. My friend knits, and draws landscapes on the backs of cards; and I have established a correspondence with an old bookseller, who sends me treatises of chemistry and fortifications, instead of poetry and memoirs. I endeavoured at first to borrow books of our companions, but this resource was soon exhausted, and the whole prison supplied little more than a novel of Florian's, _Le Voyage du jeune Anarcharsis,_ and some of the philosophical romances of Voltaire.--They say it ennuyes them to read; and I observe, that those who read at all, take their books into the garden, and prefer the most crowded walks. These studious persons, who seem to surpass Crambe himself in the faculty of abstraction, smile and bow at every comma, without any appearance of derangement from such frequent interruptions. Time passes sorrowly, rather than slowly; and my thoughts, without being amused, are employed. The novelty of our situation, the past, the future, all offer so many subjects of reflection, that my mind has more occasion for repose than amusement. My only external resource is conversing with our fellow-prisoners, and learning the causes of their detention. These relations furnish me with a sort of "abstract of the times," and mark the character of the government better than circumstances of more apparent consequence; for what are battles, sieges, and political machinations, but as they ultimately affect the happiness of society? And when I learn that the lives, the liberty, and property of no class are secure from violation, it is not necessary one should be at Paris to form an opinion of this period of the revolution, and of those who conduct it. The persecution which has hitherto been chiefly directed against the Noblesse, has now a little subsided, and seems turned against religion and commerce. People are daily arrested for assisting at private masses, concealing images, or even for being possessors of religious books. Merchants are sent here as monopolizers, and retailers, under various pretexts, in order to give the committees an opportunity of pillaging their shops. It is not uncommon to see people of the town who are our guards one day, become our fellow-prisoners the next; and a few weeks since, the son of an old gentleman who has been some time here, after being on guard the whole day, instead of being relieved at the usual hour, was joined by his wife and children, under the escort of a couple of dragoons, who delivered the whole family into the custody of our keeper; and this appears to have happened without any other motive than his having presented a petition to Dumont in behalf of his father. An old man was lately taken from his house in the night, and brought here, because he was said to have worn the cross of St. Louis.--The fact is, however, that he never did wear this obnoxious distinction; and though his daughter has proved this incontrovertibly to Dumont, she cannot obtain his liberty: and the poor young woman, after making two or three fruitless journeys to Paris, is obliged to content herself with seeing her father occasionally at the gate. The refectory of the convent is inhabited by hospital nuns. Many of the hospitals in France had a sort of religious order annexed to them, whose business it was to attend the sick; and habit, perhaps too the association of the offices of humanity with the duties of religion, had made them so useful in their profession, that they were suffered to remain, even after the abolition of the regular monasteries. But the devastating torrent of the revolution at length reached them: they were accused of bestowing a more tender solicitude on their aristocratic patients than on the wounded volunteers and republicans; and, upon these curious charges, they have been heaped into carts, without a single necessary, almost without covering, sent from one department to another, and distributed in different prisons, where they are perishing with cold, sickness, and want! Some people are here only because they happened to be accidentally at a house when the owner was arrested;* and we have one family who were taken at dinner, with their guests, and the plate they were using! * It was not uncommon for a mandate of arrest to direct the taking "Citizen Such-a-one, and all persons found in his house." A grand-daughter of the celebrated De Witt, who resided thirty leagues from hence, was arrested in the night, put in an open cart, without any regard to her age, her sex, or her infirmities, though the rain fell in torrents; and, after sleeping on straw in different prisons on the road, was deposited here. As a Fleming, the law places her in the same predicament with a very pretty young woman who has lived some months at Amiens; but Dumont, who is at once the maker, the interpreter, and executor of the laws, has exempted the latter from the general proscription, and appears daily with her in public; whereas poor Madame De Witt is excluded from such indulgence, being above seventy years old-- and is accused, moreover, of having been most exemplarily charitable, and, what is still worse, very religious.--I have given these instances not as any way remarkable, and only that you may form some idea of the pretexts which have served to cover France with prisons, and to conduct so many of its inhabitants to the scaffold. It is impossible to reflect on a country in such a situation, without abhorring the authors of it, and dreading the propagation of their doctrines. I hope they neither have imitators nor admirers in England; yet the convention in their debates, the Jacobins, and all the French newspapers, seem so sanguine in their expectation, and so positive in their assertions of an English revolution, that I occasionally, and in spite of myself, feel a vague but serious solicitude, which I should not have supposed the apprehension of any political evil could inspre. I know the good sense and information of my countrymen offer a powerful resource against the love of change and metaphysical subtilties; but, it is certain, the French government have much depended on the spirit of party, and the zeal of their propagandistes. They talk of a British convention, of a conventional army, and, in short, all France seem prepared to see their neighbours involved in the same disastrous system with themselves. The people are not a little supported in this error by the extracts that are given them from your orators in the House of Commons, which teem with nothing but complaints against the oppression of their own country, and enthusiastic admiration of French liberty. We read and wonder--collate the Bill of Rights with the Code Revolutionnaire, and again fear what we cannot give credit to. Since the reports I allude to have gained ground, I have been forcibly stricken by a difference in the character of the two nations. At the prospect of a revolution, all the French who could conveniently leave the country, fled; and those that remained (except adventurers and the banditti that were their accomplices) studiously avoided taking any part. But so little are our countrymen affected with this selfish apathy, that I am told there is scarcely one here who, amidst all his present sufferings, does not seem to regret his absence from England, more on account of not being able to oppose this threatened attack on our constitution, than for any personal motive.--The example before them must, doubtless, tend to increase this sentiment of genuine patriotism; for whoever came to France with but a single grain of it in his composition, must return with more than enough to constitute an hundred patriots, whose hatred of despotism is only a principle, and who have never felt its effects.--Adieu. February 2, 1794. The factions which have chosen to give France the appellation of a republic, seem to have judged, and with some reason, that though it might answer their purpose to amuse the people with specious theories of freedom, their habits and ideas were far from requiring that these fine schemes should be carried into practice. I know of no example equal to the submission of the French at this moment; and if "departed spirits were permitted to review the world," the shades of Richelieu or Louvois might hover with envy round the Committee of Public Welfare, and regret the undaring moderation of their own politics. How shall I explain to an Englishman the doctrine of universal requisition? I rejoice that you can imagine nothing like it.--After establishing, as a general principle, that the whole country is at the disposal of government, succeeding decrees have made specific claims on almost every body, and every thing. The tailors, shoemakers,* bakers, smiths, sadlers, and many other trades, are all in requisition--carts, horses, and carriages of every kind, are in requisition--the stables and cellars are put in requisition for the extraction of saltpetre, and the houses to lodge soldiers, or to be converted into prisons. * In order to prevent frauds, the shoemakers were obliged to make only square-toed shoes, and every person not in the army was forbidden to wear them of this form. Indeed, people of any pretentions to patriotism (that is to say, who were much afraid) did not venture to wear any thing but wooden shoes; as it had been declared anti-civique, if not suspicious, to walk in leather. --Sometimes shopkeepers are forbidden to sell their cloth, nails, wine, bread, meat, &c. There are instances where whole towns have been kept without the necessaries of life for several days together, in consequence of these interdictions; and I have known it proclaimed by beat of drum, that whoever possessed two uniforms, two hats, or two pair of shoes, should relinquish one for the use of the army! Yet with all these efforts of despotism, the republican troops are in many respects ill supplied, the produce being too often converted to the use of the agents of government, who are all Jacobins, and whose peculations are suffered with impunity, because they are too necessary, or perhaps too formidable for punishment. These proceedings, which are not the less mischievous for being absurd, must end in a total destruction of commerce: the merchant will not import what he may be obliged to sell exclusively to government at an arbitrary and inadequate valuation.--Those who are not imprisoned, and have it in their power, are for the most part retired from business, or at least avoid all foreign speculations; so that France may in a few months depend only on her internal resources. The same measures which ruin one class, serve as a pretext to oppress and levy contributions on the rest.--In order to make this right of seizure still more productive, almost every village has its spies, and the domiciliary visits are become so frequent, that a man is less secure in his own house, than in a desert amidst Arabs. On these occasions, a band of Jacobins, with a municipal officer at their head, enter sans ceremonie, over-run your apartments, and if they find a few pounds of sugar, soap, or any other article which they choose to judge more than sufficient for immediate consumption, they take possession of the whole as a monopoly, which they claim for the use of the republic, and the terrified owner, far from expostulating, thinks himself happy if he escapes so well.--But this is mere vulgar tyranny: a less powerful despotism might invade the security of social life, and banish its comforts. We are prone to suffer, and it requires often little more than the will to do evil to give us a command over the happiness of others. The Convention are more original, and, not satisfied with having reduced the people to the most abject slavery, they exact a semblance of content, and dictate at stated periods the chastisement which awaits those who refuse to smile. The splendid ceremonies at Paris, which pass for popular rejoicings, merit that appellation less than an auto de fe. Every movement is previously regulated by a Commissioner appointed for the purpose, (to whom en passant these fetes are very lucrative jobs,) a plan of the whole is distributed, in which is prescribed with great exactness, that at such and such parts the people are to "melt into tears," at others they are to be seized with a holy enthusiasm, and at the conclusion of the whole they are to rend the air with the cry of "Vive la Convention!" --These celebrations are always attended by a military force, sufficient to ensure their observance, besides a plentiful mixture of spies to notice refractory countenances or faint acclamations. The departments which cannot imitate the magnificence of Paris, are obliged, nevertheless, to manifest their satisfaction. At every occasion on which a rejoicing is ordered, the same kind of discipline is preserved; and the aristocrats, whose fears in general overcome their principles, are often not the least zealous attendants. At the retaking of Toulon, when abandoned by our countrymen, the National Guards were every where assembled to participate in the festivity, under a menace of three days imprisonment. Those persons who did not illuminate their houses were to be considered as suspicious, and treated as such: yet, even with all these precautions, I am informed the business was universally cold, and the balls thinly attended, except by aristocrats and relations of emigrants, who, in some places, with a baseness not excused even by their terrors, exhibited themselves as a public spectacle, and sang the defeats of that country which was armed in their defence. I must here remark to you a circumstance which does still less honour to the French character; and which you will be unwilling to believe. In several towns the officers and others, under whose care the English were placed during their confinement, were desirous sometimes on account of the peculiar hardship of their situation as foreigners, to grant them little indulgences, and even more liberty than to the French prisoners; and in this they were justified on several considerations, as well as that of humanity.--They knew an Englishman could not escape, whatever facility might be given him, without being immediately retaken; and that if his imprisonment were made severe, he had fewer external resources and alleviations than the natives of the country: but these favourable dispositions were of no avail--for whenever any of our countrymen obtained an accommodation, the jealousy of the French took umbrage, and they were obliged to relinquish it, or hazard the drawing embarrassment on the individual who had served them. You are to notice, that the people in general, far from being averse to seeing the English treated with a comparative indulgence, were even pleased at it; and the invidious comparisons and complaints which prevented it, proceeded from the gentry, from the families of those who had found refuge in England, and who were involved in the common persecution.--I have, more than once, been reproached by a female aristocrat with the ill success of the English army; and many, with whom I formerly lived on terms of intimacy, would refuse me now the most trifling service.--I have heard of a lady, whose husband and brother are both in London, who amuses herself in teaching a bird to repeat abuse of the English. It has been said, that the day a man becomes a slave, he loses half his virtue; and if this be true as to personal slavery, judging from the examples before me, I conclude it equally so of political bondage.--The extreme despotism of the government seems to have confounded every principle of right and wrong, every distinction of honour and dishonour and the individual, of whatever class, alive only to the sense of personal danger, embraces without reluctance meanness or disgrace, if it insure his safety.--A tailor or shoemaker, whose reputation perhaps is too bad to gain him a livelihood by any trade but that of a patriot, shall be besieged by the flatteries of people of rank, and have levees as numerous as Choiseul or Calonne in their meridian of power. When a Deputy of the Convention is sent to a town on mission, sadness takes possession of every heart, and gaiety of every countenance. He is beset with adulatory petitions, and propitiating gifts; the Noblesse who have escaped confinement form a sort of court about his person; and thrice happy is the owner of that habitation at which he condescends to reside.--* * When a Deputy arrives, the gentry of the town contend with jealous rivalship for the honour of lodging him; and the most eloquent eulogist of republican simplicity in the Convention does not fail to prefer a large house and a good table, even though the unhallowed property of an aristocrat.--It is to be observed, that these Missionaries travel in a very patriarchal style, accompanied by their wives, children, and a numerous train of followers, who are not delicate in availing themselves of this hospitality, and are sometimes accused of carrying off the linen, or any thing else portable--even the most decent behave on these occasions as though they were at an inn. --A Representative of gallantry has no reason to envy either the authority of the Grand Signor, or the licence of his seraglio--he is arbiter of the fate of every woman that pleases him; and, it is supposed, that many a fair captive has owed her liberty to her charms, and that the philosophy of a French husband has sometimes opened the doors of his prison. Dumont, who is married, and has besides the countenance of a white Negro, never visits us without occasioning a general commotion amongst all the females, especially those who are young and pretty. As soon as it is known that he is expected, the toilettes are all in activity, a renovation of rouge and an adjustment of curls take place, and, though performed with more haste, not with less solicitude, than the preparatory splendour of a first introduction.--When the great man arrives, he finds the court by which he enters crowded by these formidable prisoners, and each with a petition in her hand endeavours, with the insidious coquetry of plaintive smiles and judicious tears, that brighten the eye without deranging the features, to attract his notice and conciliate his favour. Happy those who obtain a promise, a look of complacence, or even of curiosity!--But the attention of this apostle of republicanism is not often bestowed, except on high rank, or beauty; and a woman who is old, or ill dressed, that ventures to approach him, is usually repulsed with vulgar brutality--while the very sight of a male suppliant renders him furious. The first half hour he walks about, surrounded by his fair cortege, and is tolerably civil; but at length, fatigued, I suppose by continual importunity, he loses his temper, departs, and throws all the petitions he has received unopened into the fire. Adieu--the subject is too humiliating to dwell on. I feel for myself, I feel for human nature, when I see the fastidiousness of wealth, the more liberal pride of birth, and the yet more allowable pretensions of beauty, degraded into the most abject submission to such a being as Dumont. Are our principles every where the mere children of circumstance, or is it in this country only that nothing is stable? For my own part I love inflexibility of character; and pride, even when ill founded, seems more respectable while it sustains itself, than concessions which, refused to the suggestions of reason, are yielded to the dictates of fear.--Yours. February 12, 1794. I was too much occupied by my personal distresses to make any remarks on the revolutionary government at the time of its adoption. The text of this political phoenomenon must be well known in England--I shall, therefore, confine myself to giving you a general idea of its spirit and tendency,--It is, compared to regular government, what force is to mechanism, or the usual and peaceful operations of nature to the ravages of a storm--it substitutes violence for conciliation, and sweeps with precipitate fury all that opposes its devastating progress. It refers every thing to a single principle, which is in itself not susceptible of definition, and, like all undefined power, is continually vibrating between despotism and anarchy. It is the execrable shape of Milton's Death, "which shape hath none," and which can be described only by its effects.--For instance, the revolutionary tribunal condemns without evidence, the revolutionary committees imprison without a charge, and whatever assumes the title of revolutionary is exonerated from all subjection to humanity, decency, reason, or justice.--Drowning the insurgents, their wives and children, by boatloads, is called, in the dispatch to the Convention, a revolutionary measure--* * The detail of the horrors committed in La Vendee and at Nantes were not at this time fully known. Carrier had, however, acknowledged, in a report read to the Convention, that a boat-load of refractory priests had been drowned, and children of twelve years old condemned by a military commission! One Fabre Marat, a republican General, wrote, about the same period, I think from Angers, that the Guillotine was too slow, and powder scarce, so that it was concluded more expedient to drown the rebels, which he calls a patriotic baptism!--The following is a copy of a letter addressed to the Mayor of Paris by a Commissary of the Government: "You will give us pleasure by transmitting the details of your fete at Paris last decade, with the hymns that were sung. Here we all cried _"Vive la Republique!"_ as we ever do, when our holy mother Guillotine is at work. Within these three days she has shaved eleven priests, one _ci-devant_ noble, a nun, a general, and a superb Englishman, six feet high, and as he was too tall by a head, we have put that into the sack! At the same time eight hundred rebels were shot at the Pont du Ce, and their carcases thrown into the Loire!--I understand the army is on the track of the runaways. All we overtake we shoot on the spot, and in such numbers that the ways are heaped with them!" --At Lyons, it is revolutionary to chain three hundred victims together before the mouths of loaded cannon, and massacre those who escape the discharge with clubs and bayonets;* and at Paris, revolutionary juries guillotine all who come before them.--** * The Convention formally voted their approbation of this measure, and Collot d'Herbois, in a report on the subject, makes a kind of apostrophical panegyric on the humanity of his colleagues. "Which of you, Citizens, (says he,) would not have fired the cannon? Which of you would not joyfully have destroyed all these traitors at a blow?" ** About this time a woman who sold newspapers, and the printer of them, were guillotined for paragraphs deemed incivique. --Yet this government is not more terrible than it is minutely vexations. One's property is as little secure as one's existence. Revolutionary committees every where sequestrate in the gross, in order to plunder in detail.* * The revolutionary committees, when they arrested any one, pretended to affix seals in form. The seal was often, however, no other than the private one of some individual employed--sometimes only a button or a halfpenny, which was broken as often as the Committee wanted access to the wine or other effects. Camille Desmoulins, in an address to Freron, his fellow-deputy, describes with some humour the mode of proceeding of these revolutionary pilferers: _"Avant hier, deux Commissaires de la section de Mutius Scaevola, montent chez lui--ils trouvent dans la bibliotheque des livres de droit; et non-obstant le decret qui porte qu'on ne touchera point Domat ni a Charles Dumoulin, bien qu'ils traitent de matieres feodales, ils sont main basse sur la moitie de la bibliotheque, et chargent deux Chrocheteurs des livres paternels. Ils trouvent une pendule, don't la pointe de Paiguille etoit, comme la plupart des pointes d'aiguilles, terminee en trefle: il leur semble que cette pointe a quelque chose d'approchant d'une fleur de lys; et non-obstant le decret qui ordonne de respecter les monumens des arts, il confisquent la pendule.--Notez bien qu'il y avoit a cote une malle sur laquelle etoit l'adresse fleurdelisee du marchand.--Ici il n'y avoit pas moyen de aier que ce fut une belle et bonne fleur de lys; mais comme la malle ne valoit pas un corset, les Commissaires se contentent de rayer les lys, au lieu que la malheureuse pendule, qui vaut bien 1200 livres, est, malgre son trefle, emportee par eux-memes, qui ne se fioient pas aux Chrocheteurs d'un poid si precieux--et ce, en vertu du droit que Barrere a appelle si heureusement le droit de prehension, quoique le decret s'opposat, dans l'espece, a l'application de ce droit.--Enfin, notre decemvirat sectionnaire, qui se mettoit ainsi au-dessus des decrets, trouve le brevet de pension de mon beau-pere, qui, comme tous les brevets de pension, n'etant pas de nature a etre porte sur le grand livre de la republique, etoit demeure dans le porte-feuille, et qui, comme tous les brevets de pension possibles, commencoit par ce protocole; Louis, &c. Ciel! s'ecrient les Commissaires, le nom du tyran!--Et apres avoir retrouve leur haleine, suffoquee d'abord par l'indignation, ils mettent en poche le brevet de pension, c'est a dire 1000 livres de rente, et emportent la marmite. Autre crime, le Citoyen Duplessis, qui etoit premier commis des finances, sous Clugny, avoit conserve, comme c'etoit l'usage, la cachet du controle general d'alors--un vieux porte-feuille de commis, qui etoit au rebut, ouble au dessus d'une armoire, dans un tas de poussiere, et auquel il n'avoit pas touche ne meme pense depuis dix ans peutetre, et sur le quel on parvint a decouvrir l'empreinte de quelques fleurs de lys, sous deux doigts de crasse, acheva de completer la preuve que le Citoyen Duplessis etoit suspect--et la voila, lui, enferme jusqu'a la paix, et le scelle mis sur toutes les portes de cette campagne, ou, tu te souviens, mon cher Freroa--que, decretes tous deux de prise de corps, apres le massacre du Champ de Mars, nous trouvions un asyle que le tyran n'osoit violer."_ "The day before yesterday, two Commissaries belonging to the section of Mutius Scaevola, entered my father-in-law's apartments; they found some law-books in the library, and, notwithstanding the decree which exempts from seizure the works of Domat and Charles Dumouin, (although they treat of feudal matters,) they proceeded to lay violent hands on one half of the collection, and loaded two porters with paternal spoils. The next object that attracted their attention was a clock, the hand of which, like the hands of most other clocks, terminated in a point, in the form of a trefoil, which seemed to them to bear some resemblance to a fleur de lys; and, notwithstanding the decree which ordains that the monuments of the arts shall be respected, they immediately passed sentence of confiscation on the clock. I should observe to you, that hard by lay a portmanteau, having on it the maker's address, encircled with lilies.-- Here there was no disputing the fact, but as the trunk was not worth five livres, the Commissaries contented themselves with erasing the lilies; but the unfortunate clock, being worth twelve hundred, was, notwithstanding its trefoil, carried off by themselves, for they would not trust the porters with so precious a load.--And all this was done in virtue of the law, which Barrere aptly denominated the law of prehension, and which, according to the terms of the decree itself, was not applicable to the case in question. "At length our sectionary decemvirs, who thus placed themselves above the law, discovered the grant of my father-in-law's pension, which, like all similar grants, being excluded from the privilege of inscription on the great register of public debts, had been left in his port-folio; and which began, as all such grants necessarily must, with the words, Louis, &c. "Heaven!" exclaimed the Commissaries, "here is the very name of the tyrant!" And, as soon as they recovered their breaths, which had been nearly stopped by the violence of the indignation, they coolly pocketed the grant, that is to say, an annuity of one thousand livres, and sent off the porridge-pot. Nor did these constitute all the crimes of Citizen Duplessis, who, having served as first clerk of the revenue board under Clugny, had, as was usual, kept the official seal of that day. An old port-folio, which had been thrown aside, and long forgotten, under a wardrobe, where it was buried in dust, and had, in all probability, not been touched for ten years, but, which with much difficulty, was discovered to bear the impression of a fleur de lys, completed the proof that Citizen Duplessis was a suspicious character. And now behold him shut up in a prison until peace shall be concluded, and the seals put upon all the doors of that country seat, where, you may remember, my dear Freron, that at the time when warrants were issued for apprehending us both, after the massacre in the Champ de Mars, we found an asylum which the tyrant did not dare to violate." --In a word, you must generally understand, that the revolutionary system supersedes law, religion, and morality; and that it invests the Committees of Public Welfare and General Safety, their agents, the Jacobin clubs, and subsidiary banditti, with the disposal of the whole country and its inhabitants. This gloomy aera of the revolution has its frivolities as well as the less disastrous periods, and the barbarism of the moment is rendered additionally disgusting by a mixture of levity and pedantry.--It is a fashion for people at present to abandon their baptismal and family names, and to assume that of some Greek or Roman, which the debates of the Convention have made familiar.--France swarms with Gracchus's and Publicolas, who by imaginary assimilations of acts, which a change of manners has rendered different, fancy themselves more than equal to their prototypes.* * The vicissitudes of the revolution, and the vengeance of party, have brought half the sages of Greece, and patriots of Rome, to the Guillotine or the pillory. The Newgate Calendar of Paris contains as many illustrious names as the index to Plutarch's Lives; and I believe there are now many Brutus's and Gracchus's in durance vile, besides a Mutius Scaevola condemned to twenty years imprisonment for an unskilful theft.--A man of Amiens, whose name is Le Roy, signified to the public, through the channel of a newspaper, that he had adopted that of Republic. --A man who solicits to be the executioner of his own brother ycleps himself Brutus, and a zealous preacher of the right of universal pillage cites the Agrarian law, and signs himself Lycurgus. Some of the Deputies have discovered, that the French mode of dressing is not characteristic of republicanism, and a project is now in agitation to drill the whole country into the use of a Roman costume.--You may perhaps suspect, that the Romans had at least more bodily sedateness than their imitators, and that the shrugs, jerks, and carracoles of a French petit maitre, however republicanized, will not assort with the grave drapery of the toga. But on your side of the water you have a habit of reasoning and deliberating --here they have that of talking and obeying. Our whole community are in despair to-day. Dumont has been here, and those who accosted him, as well as those who only ventured to interpret his looks, all agree in their reports that he is in a "bad humour."--The brightest eyes in France have supplicated in vain--not one grace of any sort has been accorded--and we begin to cherish even our present situation, in the apprehension that it may become worse.--Alas! you know not of what evil portent is the "bad humour" of a Representant. We are half of us now, like the Persian Lord, feeling if our heads are still on our shoulders.--I could add much to the conclusion of one of my last letters. Surely this incessant solicitude for mere existence debilitates the mind, and impairs even its passive faculty of suffering. We intrigue for the favour of the keeper, smile complacently at the gross pleasantries of a Jacobin, and tremble at the frown of a Dumont.--I am ashamed to be the chronicler of such humiliation: but, "tush, Hal; men, mortal men!" I can add no better apology, and quit you to moralize on it.--Yours. [No date given.] Were I a mere spectator, without fear for myself or compassion for others, the situation of this country would be sufficiently amusing. The effects produced (many perhaps unavoidably) by a state of revolution--the strange remedies devised to obviate them--the alternate neglect and severity with which the laws are executed--the mixture of want and profusion that distinguish the lower classes of people--and the distress and humiliation of the higher; all offer scenes so new and unaccountable, as not to be imagined by a person who has lived only under a regular government, where the limits of authority are defined, the necessaries of life plentiful, and the people rational and subordinate. The consequences of a general spirit of monopoly, which I formerly described, have lately been so oppressive, that the Convention thought it necessary to interfere, and in so extraordinary a way, that I doubt if (as usual) "the distemper of their remedies" will not make us regret the original disease. Almost every article, by having passed through a variety of hands, had become enormously dear; which, operating with a real scarcity of many things, occasioned by the war, had excited universal murmurings and inquietude. The Convention, who know the real source of the evil (the discredit of assignats) to be unattainable, and who are more solicitous to divert the clamours of the people, than to supply their wants, have adopted a measure which, according to the present appearances, will ruin one half of the nation, and starve the other. A maximum, or highest price, beyond which nothing is to be sold, is now promulgated under very severe penalties for all who shall infringe it. Such a regulation as this, must, in its nature, be highly complex, and, by way of simplifying it, the price of every kind of merchandise is fixed at a third above what it bore in 1791: but as no distinction is made between the produce of the country, and articles imported--between the small retailer, who has purchased perhaps at double the rate he is allowed to sell at, and the wholesale speculator, this very simplification renders the whole absurd and inexecutable.--The result was such as might have been expected; previous to the day on which the decree was to take place, shopkeepers secreted as many of their goods as they could; and, when the day arrived, the people laid siege to them in crowds, some buying at the maximum, others less ceremonious, and in a few hours little remained in the shop beyond the fixtures. The farmers have since brought neither butter nor eggs to market, the butchers refuse to kill as usual, and, in short, nothing is to be purchased openly. The country people, instead of selling provisions publicly, take them to private houses; and, in addition to the former exorbitant prices, we are taxed for the risk that is incurred by evading the law. A dozen of eggs, or a leg of mutton, are now conveyed from house to house with as much mystery, as a case of fire-arms, or a treasonable correspondence; the whole republic is in a sort of training like the Spartan youth; and we are obliged to have recourse to dexterity and intrigue to procure us a dinner. Our legislators, aware of what they term the "aristocratie marchande,"-- that is to say, that tradesmen would naturally shut up their shops when nothing was to be gained--provided, by a clause in the above law, that no one should do this in less time than a year; but as the injunction only obliged them to keep the shops open, and not to have goods to sell, every demand is at first always answered in the negative, till a sort of intelligence becomes established betwixt the buyer and seller, when the former, if he may be trusted, is informed in a low key, that certain articles may be had, but not au maximum.--Thus even the rich cannot obtain the necessaries of life without difficulty and submitting to imposition--and the decent poor, who will not pillage nor intimidate the tradesmen, are more embarrassed than ever. The above species of contraband commerce is carried on, indeed, with great circumspection, and no avowed hostilities are attempted in the towns. The great war of the maximum was waged with the farmers and higlers, as soon as it was discovered that they took their commodities privily to such people as they knew would buy at any price, rather than not be supplied. In consequence, the guards were ordered to stop all refractory butter-women at the gates, and conduct them to the town-house, where their merchandize was distributed, without pity or appeal, au maximum, to those of the populace who could clamour loudest. These proceedings alarmed the peasants, and our markets became deserted. New stratagems, on one side, new attacks on the other. The servants were forced to supply themselves at private rendezvous in the night, until some were fined, and others arrested; and the searching all comers from the country became more intolerable than the vexations of the ancient Gabelle.--Detachments of dragoons are sent to scour the farm-yards, arrest the farmers, and bring off in triumph whatever the restive housewives have amassed, to be more profitably disposed of. In this situation we remain, and I suppose shall remain, while the law of the maximum continues in force. The principle of it was certainly good, but it is found impossible to reduce it to practice so equitably as to affect all alike: and as laws which are not executed are for the most part rather pernicious than nugatory, informations, arrests, imposition, and scarcity are the only ends which this measure seems to have answered. The houses of detention, before insupportable, are now yet more crouded with farmers and shopkeepers suspected of opposing the law.--Many of the former are so ignorant, as not to conceive that any circumstances ought to deprive them of the right to sell the produce of their farms at the highest price they can get, and regard the maximum much in the same light as they would a law to authorize robbing or housebreaking: as for the latter, they are chiefly small dealers, who bought dearer than they have sold, and are now imprisoned for not selling articles which they have not got. An informer by trade, or a personal enemy, lodges an accusation against a particular tradesman for concealing goods, or not selling au maximum; and whether the accusation be true or false, if the accused is not in office, or a Jacobin, he has very little chance of escaping imprisonment.--It is certain, that if the persecution of these classes of people continue, and commerce (already nearly annihilated by the war) be thus shackled, an absolute want of various articles of primary consumption must ensue; but if Paris and the armies can be supplied, the starving the departments will be a mere pleasurable experiment to their humane representatives! March 1, 1794. The freedom of the press is so perfectly well regulated, that it is not surprizing we are indulged with the permission of seeing the public papers: yet this indulgence is often, I assure you, a source of much perplexity to me--our more intimate associates know that I am a native of England, and as often as any debates of our House of Commons are published, they apply to me for explanations which it is not always in my power to give them. I have in vain endeavoured to make them comprehend the nature of an opposition from system, so that when they see any thing advanced by a member exactly the reverse of truth, they are wondering how he can be so ill informed, and never suspect him of saying what he does not believe himself. It must be confessed, however, that our extracts from the English papers often form so complete a contrast with facts, that a foreigner unacquainted with the tactics of professional patriotism, may very naturally read them with some surprize. A noble Peer, for example, (whose wisdom is not to be disputed, since the Abbe Mably calls him the English Socrates,*) asserts that the French troops are the best clothed in Europe; yet letters, of nearly the same date with the Earl's speech, from two Generals and a Deputy at the head of different armies intreat a supply of covering for their denudated legions, and add, that they are obliged to march in wooden shoes!** * It is surely a reflection on the English discernment not to have adopted this happy appellation, in which, however, as well as in many other parts of "the rights of Man and the Citizen," the Abbe seems to have consulted his own zeal, rather than the noble Peer's modesty. ** If the French troops are now better clothed, it is the effect of requisitions and pre-emptions, which have ruined the manufacturers. --Patriots of the North, would you wish to see our soldiers clothed by the same means? --On another occasion, your British Sage describes, with great eloquence, the enthusiasm with which the youth of France "start to arms at the call of the Convention;" while the peaceful citizen anticipates, with equal eagerness, the less glorious injunction to extract saltpetre.--The revolts, and the coercion, necessary to enforce the departure of the first levies (however fear, shame, and discipline, may have since made them soldiers, though not republicans) might have corrected the ardour of the orator's inventive talents; and the zeal of the French in manufacturing salpetre, has been of so slow a growth, that any reference to it is peculiarly unlucky. For several months the Convention has recommended, invited, intreated, and ordered the whole country to occupy themselves in the process necessary for obtaining nitre; but the republican enthusiasm was so tardy, that scarcely an ounce appeared, till a long list of sound penal laws, with fines and imprisonments in every line, roused the public spirit more effectually.* * Two years imprisonment was the punishment assigned to a Citizen who should be found to obstruct in any way the fabricating saltpetre. If you had a house that was adjudged to contain the materials required, and expostulated against pulling it down, the penalty was incurred.--I believe something of this kind existed under the old government, the abuses of which are the only parts the republic seems to have preserved. --Another cause also has much favoured the extension of this manufacture: the necessity of procuring gunpowder at any rate has secured an exemption from serving in the army to those who shall be employed in making it.--* * Many, under this pretext, even procured their discharge from the army; and it was eventually found requisite to stop this commutation of service by a decree. --On this account vast numbers of young men, whose martial propensities are not too vehement for calculation, considering the extraction of saltpetre as more safe than the use of it, have seriously devoted themselves to the business. Thus, between fear of the Convention and of the enemy, has been produced that enthusiasm which seems so grateful to Lord S____. Yet, if the French are struck by the dissimilitude of facts with the language of your English patriots, there are other circumstances which appear still more unaccountable to them. I acknowledge the word patriotism is not perfectly understood any where in France, nor do my prison-associates abound in it; but still they find it difficult to reconcile the love of their country, so exclusively boasted by certain senators, with their eulogiums on a government, and on men who avow an implacable hatred to it, and are the professed agents of its future destruction. The Houses of Lords and Commons resound with panegyrics on France; the Convention with _"delenda est Carthate"--"ces vils Insulaires"--"de peuple marchand, boutiquier"--"ces laches Anglois"--_ &c. &c. ("Carthage must be destroyed"--"those vile Islanders"--"that nation of shopkeepers"--"those cowardly Englishmen"--&c.) The efforts of the English patriots overtly tend to the consolidation of the French republic, while the demagogues of France are yet more strenuous for the abolition of monarchy in England. The virtues of certain people called Muir and Palmer,* are at once the theme of Mr. Fox and Robespierre,** of Mr. Grey and Barrere,***, of Collot d'Herbois**** and Mr. Sheridan; and their fate is lamented as much at the Jacobins as at St. Stephen's.***** * If I have not mentioned these gentlemen with the respect due to their celebrity, their friends must pardon me. To say truth, I did not at this time think of them with much complacence, as I had heard of them only from the Jacobins, by whom they were represented as the leaders of a Convention, which was to arm ninety thousand men, for the establishment of a system similar to that existing in France. **The French were so much misled by the eloquence of these gentlemen in their favour, that they were all exhibited on the stage in red caps and cropped heads, welcoming the arrival of their Gallic friends in England, and triumphing in the overthrow of the British constitution, and the dethronement of the King. *** If we may credit the assertions of Barrere, the friendship of the Committee of Public Welfare was not merely verbal. He says, the secret register of the Committee furnishes proofs of their having sent three frigates to intercept these distinguished victims, whom their ungrateful country had so ignominiously banished. **** This humane and ingenious gentleman, by profession a player, is known likewise as the author of several farces and vaudevilles, and of the executions at Lyons.--It is asserted, that many of the inhabitants of this unfortunate city expiated under the Guillotine the crime of having formerly hissed Collot's successful attempts on the stage. ***** The printing of a particular speech was interdicted on account of its containing allusions to certain circumstances, the knowledge of which might be of disservice to their unfortunate friends during their trial. --The conduct of Mr. Pitt is not more acrimoniously discussed at the Palais National than by a part of his colleagues; and the censure of the British government, which is now the order of the day at the Jacobins, is nearly the echo of your parliamentary debates.* * Allowing for the difference of education in the orators, a journeyman shoemaker was, I think, as eloquent, and not more abusive, than the facetious _ci-devant_ protege of Lord T____d. --All this, however, does not appear to me out of the natural order of things; it is the sorry history of opposition for a century and an half, and our political rectitude, I fear, is not increasing: but the French, who are in their way the most corrupt people in Europe, have not hitherto, from the nature of their government, been familiar with this particular mode of provoking corruption, nor are they at present likely to become so. Indeed, I must here observe, that your English Jacobins, if they are wise, should not attempt to introduce the revolutionary system; for though the total possession of such a government is very alluring, yet the prudence, which looks to futurity, and the incertitude of sublunary events, must acknowledge it is "Caesar or nothing;" and that it offers no resource in case of those segregations, which the jealousy of power, or the appropriation of spoil, may occasion, even amongst the most virtuous associates.--The eloquence of a discontented orator is here silenced, not by a pension, but by a mandat d'arret; and the obstinate patriotism, which with you could not be softened with less than a participation of authority, is more cheaply secured by the Guillotine. A menace is more efficacious than a bribe, and in this respect I agree with Mr. Thomas Paine,* that a republic is undoubtedly more oeconomical than a monarchy; besides, that being conducted on such principles, it has the advantage of simplifying the science of government, as it consults neither the interests nor weaknesses of mankind; and, disdaining to administer either to avarice or vanity, subdues its enemies by the sole influence of terror.--* * This gentleman's fate is truly to be pitied. After rejecting, as his friends assert, two hundred a year from the English Ministry, he is obliged now to be silent gratis, with the additional desagrement of occupying a corner in the Luxembourg. --Adieu!--Heaven knows how often I may have to repeat the word thus unmeaningly. I sit here, like Pope's bard "lulled by soft zephyrs through the broken pane," and scribbling high-sounding phrases of monarchy, patriotism, and republics, while I forget the humbler subject of our wants and embarrassments. We can scarcely procure either bread, meat, or any thing else: the house is crouded by an importation of prisoners from Abbeville, and we are more strictly guarded than ever. My friend ennuyes as usual, and I grow impatient, not having sang froid enough for a true French ennuie in a situation that would tempt one to hang one's self. March, 1794. The aspect of the times promises no change in our favour; on the contrary, every day seems to bring its attendant evil. The gentry who had escaped the comprehensive decree against suspected people, are now swept away in this and the three neighbouring departments by a private order of the representatives, St. Just, Lebas, and Dumont.* * The order was to arrest, without exception, all the ci-devant Noblessse, men, women, and children, in the departments of the Somme, North, and Pas de Calais, and to exclude them rigourously from all external communication--(mettre au secret). --A severer regimen is to be adopted in the prisons, and husbands are already separated from their wives, and fathers from their daughters, for the purpose, as it is alledged, of preserving good morals. Both this place and the Bicetre being too full to admit of more inhabitants, two large buildings in the town are now appropriated to the male prisoners.-- My friends continue at Arras, and, I fear, in extreme distress. I understand they have been plundered of what things they had with them, and the little supply I was able to send them was intercepted by some of the harpies of the prisons. Mrs. D____'s health has not been able to sustain these accumulated misfortunes, and she is at present at the hospital. All this is far from enlivening, even had I a larger share of the national philosophy; and did I not oftener make what I observe, than what I suffer, the subject of my letters, I should tax your patience as much by repetition, as I may by dullness. When I enumerated in my last letters a few of the obligations the French have to their friends in England, I ought also to have observed, with how little gratitude they behave to those who are here. Without mentioning Mr. Thomas Paine, whose persecution will doubtless be recorded by abler pens, nothing, I assure you, can be more unpleasant than the situation of one of these Anglo-Gallican patriots. The republicans, supposing that an Englishman who affects a partiality for them can be only a spy, execute all the laws, which concern foreigners, upon him with additional rigour;* and when an English Jacobin arrives in prison, far from meeting with consolation or sympathy, his distresses are beheld with triumph, and his person avoided with abhorrence. They talk much here of a gentleman, of very democratic principles, who left the prison before I came. It seems, that, notwithstanding Dumont condescended to visit at his house, and was on terms of intimacy with him, he was arrested, and not distinguished from the rest of his countrymen, except by being more harshly treated. The case of this unfortunate gentleman was rendered peculiarly amusing to his companions, and mortifying to himself, by his having a very pretty mistress, who had sufficient influence over Dumont to obtain any thing but the liberation of her protector. The Deputy was on this head inflexible; doubtless, as a proof of his impartial observance of the laws, and to show that, like the just man in Horace, he despised the clamour of the vulgar, who did not scruple to hint, that the crime of our countryman was rather of a moral than a political nature--that he was unaccommodating, and recalcitrant--addicted to suspicions and jealousies, which it was thought charitable to cure him of, by a little wholesome seclusion. In fact, the summary of this gentleman's history is not calculated to tempt his fellow societists on your side of the water to imitate his example.--After taking refuge in France from the tyranny and disappointments he experienced in England, and purchasing a large national property to secure himself the rights of a citizen, he is awakened from his dream of freedom, to find himself lodged in a prison, his estate under sequestration, and his mistress in requisition.--Let us leave this Coriolanus among the Volscians--it is a persecution to make converts, rather than martyrs, and _"Quand le malheur ne seroit bon, "Qu'a mettre un sot a la raison, "Toujours seroit-ce a juste cause "Qu'on le dit bon a quelque chose."_* * If calamity were only good to restore a fool to his senses, still we might justly say, "that it was good for some thing." Yours, &c. March 5, 1794. Of what strange influence is this word revolution, that it should thus, like a talisman of romance, keep inchained, as it were, the reasoning faculties of twenty millions of people! France is at this moment looking for the decision of its fate in the quarrels of two miserable clubs, composed of individuals who are either despised or detested. The municipality of Paris favours the Cordeliers, the Convention the Jacobins; and it is easy to perceive, that in this cafe the auxiliaries are principals, and must shortly come to such an open rupture, as will end in the destruction of either one or the other. The world would be uninhabitable, could the combinations of the wicked be permanent; and it is fortunate for the tranquil and upright part of mankind, that the attainment of the purposes for which such combinations are formed, is usually the signal of their dissolution. The municipality of Paris had been the iniquitous drudges of the Jacobin party in the legislative assembly--they were made the instruments of massacring the prisoners,* of dethroning and executing the king,** and successively of destroying the Brissotine faction,*** filling the prisons with all who were obnoxious to the republicans,**** and of involving a repentant nation in the irremidiable guilt of the Queen's death.--***** * It is well known that the assassins were hired and paid by the municipality, and that some of the members presided at these horrors in their scarfs of office. ** The whole of what is called the revolution of the 10th of August may very justly be ascribed to the municipality of Paris--I mean the active part of it. The planning and political part has been so often disputed by different members of the Convention, that it is not easy to decide on any thing, except that the very terms of these disputes fully evince, that the people at large, and more particularly the departments, were both innocent, and, until it took place, ignorant of an event which has plunged the country into so many crimes and calamities. *** A former imprisonment of Hebert formed a principal charge against the Brissotines, and, indeed, the one that was most insisted on at their trial, if we except that of having precipitated France into a war with England.--It must be difficult for the English Jacobins to decide on this occasion between the virtues of their dead friends and those of their living ones. **** The famous definition of suspected persons originated with the municipality of Paris. ***** It is certain that those who, deceived by the calumnies of faction, permitted, if not assented to, the King's death, at this time regretted it; and I believe I have before observed, that one of the reasons urged in support of the expediency of putting the Queen to death, was, that it would make the army and people decisive, by banishing all hope of peace or accommodation. See the _Moniteur_ of that time, which, as I have elsewhere observed, may be always considered as official. --These services being too great for adequate reward, were not rewarded at all; and the municipality, tired of the odium of crime, without the participation of power, has seized on its portion of tyranny; while the convention, at once jealous and timid, exasperated and doubtful, yet menaces with the trepidation of a rival, rather than with the security of a conqueror. Hebert, the Deputy-solicitor for the commune of Paris, appears on this occasion as the opponent of the whole legislature; and all the temporizing eloquence of Barrere, and the mysterious phraseology of Robespierre, are employed to decry his morals, and to reproach the ministers with the sums which have been the price of his labours.--* * Five thousand pounds, two thousand pounds, and other considerable sums, were paid to Hebert for supplying the army with his paper, called "La Pere Duchene." Let whoever has read one of them, conceive the nature of a government to which such support was necessary, which supposed its interests promoted by a total extinction of morals, decency, and religion. I could almost wish, for the sake of exhibiting vice under its most odious colours, that my sex and my country permitted me to quote one. --Virtuous republicans! the morals of Hebert were pure when he outraged humanity in his accusations of the Queen--they were pure when he prostrated the stupid multitude at the feet of a Goddess of Reason;* they were pure while his execrable paper served to corrupt the army, and to eradicate every principle which yet distinguished the French as a civilized people. * Madame Momoro, the unfortunate woman who exposed herself in this pageant, was guillotined as an accomplice of Hebert, together with the wives of Hebert and Camille Desmoulins. --Yet, atrocious as his crimes are, they form half the Magna Charta of the republic,* and the authority of the Convention is still supported by them. * What are the death of the King, and the murders of August and September, 1792, but the Magna Charta of the republicans? --It is his person, not his guilt, that is proscribed; and if the one be threatened with the scaffold, the fruits of the other are held sacred. He will fall a sacrifice--not to offended religion or morality, but to the fears and resentment of his accomplices! Amidst the dissentions of two parties, between which neither reason nor humanity can discover a preference, a third seems to have formed itself, equally inimical to, and hated by both. At the head of it are Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Philipeaux, &c.--I own I have no better opinion of the integrity of these, than of the rest; but they profess themselves the advocates of a system of mildness and moderation, and, situated as this country is at present, even the affectation of virtue is captivating.-- As far as they dare, the people are partial to them: bending beneath the weight of a sanguinary and turbulent despotism, if they sigh not for freedom, they do for repose; and the harassed mind, bereft of its own energy, looks up with indolent hope for relief from a change of factions. They forget that Danton is actuated by ambitious jealousy, that Camille Desmoulins is hacknied in the atrocities of the revolution, and that their partizans are adventurers, with neither honour nor morals. Yet, after all, if they will destroy a few of the guillotines, open our bastilles, and give us at least the security of servitude, we shall be content to leave these retrospections to posterity, and be thankful that in this our day the wicked sometimes perceive it their interest to do good. In this state of seclusion, when I remark to you the temper of the public at any important crisis, you are, perhaps, curious to know my sources of intelligence; but such details are unnecessary. I might, indeed, write you a manuel des prisons, and, like Trenck or Latude, by a vain display of ingenuity, deprive some future victim of a resource. It is enough, that Providence itself seems to aid our invention, when its object is to elude tyranny; besides that a constant accession of prisoners from all parts, who are too numerous to be kept separate, necessarily circulates among us whatever passes in the world. The Convention has lately made a sort of _pas retrogade_ [Retrogade movement.] in the doctrine of holy equality, by decreeing, that every officer who has a command shall be able to read and write, though it cannot be denied that their reasons for this lese democratie are of some weight. All gentlemen, or, as it is expressed here, noblesse, have been recalled from the army, and replaced by officers chosen by the soldiers themselves, [Under the rank of field-officers.] whose affections are often conciliated by qualities not essentially military, though sometimes professional. A buffoon, or a pot-companion, is, of course, often more popular than a disciplinarian; and the brightest talents lose their influence when put in competition with a head that can bear a greater number of bottles.* * Hence it happened, that a post was sometimes confided to one who could not read the parole and countersign; expeditions failed, because commanding officers mistook on the map a river for a road, or woods for mountains; and the most secret orders were betrayed through the inability of those to whom they were entrusted to read them. --Yet this reading and writing are a sort of aristocratic distinctions, and not among the primeval rights of man; so that it is possible your English patriots will not approve of any regulations founded on them. But this is not the only point on which there is an apparent discordance between them and their friends here--the severity of Messrs. Muir and Palmer's sentence is pathetically lamented in the House of Commons, while the Tribunal Revolutionnaire (in obedience to private orders) is petitioning, that any disrespect towards the convention shall be punished with death. In England, it is asserted, that the people have a right to decide on the continuation of the war--here it is proposed to declare suspicious, and treat accordingly, all who shall dare talk of peace.--Mr. Fox and Robespierre must settle these trifling variations at the general congress of republicans, when the latter shall (as they profess) have dethroned all the potentates in Europe! Do you not read of cart-loads of patriotic gifts,* bales of lint and bandages, and stockings, knit by the hands of fair citizens, for the use of the soldiers? * A sum of money was at this time publicly offered to the Convention for defraying the expences and repairs of the guillotine.--I know not if it were intended patriotically or correctionally; but the legislative delicacy was hurt, and the bearer of the gift ordered for examination to the Committee of General Safety, who most probably sent him to expiate either his patriotism or his pleasantry in a prison. --Do you not read, and call me calumniator, and ask if these are proofs that there is no public spirit in France? Yes, the public spirit of an eastern tributary, who offers, with apprehensive devotion, a part of the wealth which he fears the hand of despotism may ravish entirely.--The wives and daughters of husbands and fathers, who are pining in arbitrary confinement, are employed in these feeble efforts, to deprecate the malice of their persecutors; and these voluntary tributes are but too often proportioned, not to the abilities, but the miseries of the donor.* * A lady, confined in one of the state prisons, made an offering, through the hands of a Deputy, of ten thousand livres; but the Convention observed, that this could not properly be deemed a gift-- for, as she was doubtless a suspicious person, all she had belonged of right to the republic: _"Elle doit etre a moi, dit il, et la raison, "C'est que je m'appelle Lion "A cela l'on n'a rien a dire."_ -- La Fontaine. Sometimes these _dons patriotiques_ were collected by a band of Jacobins, at others regularly assessed by a Representative on mission; but on all occasions the aristocrats were most assiduous and most liberal: "Urg'd by th' imperious soldier's fierce command, "The groaning Greeks break up their golden caverns, "The accumulated wealth of toiling ages; . . . . . . . . "That wealth, too sacred for their country's use; "That wealth, too pleasing to be lost for freedom, "That wealth, which, granted to their weeping Prince, "Had rang'd embattled nations at their gates." -- Johnson. Or, what is still better, have relieved the exigencies of the state, without offering a pretext for the horrors of a revolution.--O selfish luxury, impolitic avarice, how are ye punished? robbed of your enjoyments and your wealth--glad even to commute both for a painful existence! --The most splendid sacrifices that fill the bulletin of the Convention, and claim an honourable mention in their registers, are made by the enemies of the republican government--by those who have already been the objects of persecution, or are fearful of becoming such.--Ah, your prison and guillotine are able financiers: they raise, feed, and clothe an army, in less time than you can procure a tardy vote from the most complaisant House of Commons!--Your, &c. March 17, 1794. After some days of agitation and suspense, we learn that the popularity of Robespierre is victorious, and that Hebert and his partizans are arrested. Were the intrinsic claims of either party considered, without regard to the circumstances of the moment, it might seem strange I should express myself as though the result of a contest between such men could excite a general interest: yet a people sadly skilled in the gradations of evil, and inured to a choice only of what is bad, learn to prefer comparatively, with no other view than that of adopting what may be least injurious to themselves; and the merit of the object is out of the question. Hence it is, that the public wish was in favour of Robespierre; for, besides that his cautious character has given him an advantage over the undisguised profligacy of Hebert, it is conjectured by many, that the more merciful politics professed by Camille Desmoulins, are secretly suggested, or, at least assented to, by the former.* * This was the opinion of many.--The Convention and the Jacobins had taken alarm at a paper called "The Old Cordelier," written by Camille Desmoulins, apparently with a view to introduce a milder system of government. The author had been censured at the one, expelled the other, and defended by Robespierre, who seems not to have abandoned him until he found the Convention resolved to persist in the sanguinary plan they had adopted. Robespierre afterwards sacrificed his friends to retrieve his influence; but could his views have been answered by humane measures, as certainly as by cruel ones, I think he would have preferred the first; for I repeat, that the Convention at large were averse from any thing like reason or justice, and Robespierre more than once risked his popularity by professions of moderation.--The most eloquent speech I have seen of his was previous to the death of Danton, and it seems evidently intended to sound the principles of his colleagues as to a change of system.--Camille Desmoulins has excited some interest, and has been deemed a kind of martyr to humanity. Perhaps nothing marks the horrors of the time more than such a partiality.--Camille Desmoulins, under an appearance of simplicity, was an adventurer, whose pen had been employed to mislead the people from the beginning of the revolution. He had been very active on the 10th of August; and even in the papers which have given him a comparative reputation, he is the panegyrist of Marat, and recommends "une Guillotine economique;" that is, a discrimination in favour of himself and his party, who now began to fear they might themselves be sacrificed by the Convention and deserted by Robespierre--after being the accomplices and tools of both. The vicissitudes of the revolution have hitherto offered nothing but a change of vices and of parties; nor can I regard this defeat of the municipality of Paris as any thing more: the event is, however, important, and will probably have great influence on the future. After having so long authorized, and profited by, the crimes of those they have now sacrificed, the Convention are willing to have it supposed they were themselves held in subjection by Hebert and the other representatives of the Parisian mob.--Admitting this to be true, having regained their independence, we ought naturally to expect a more rational and humane system will take place; but this is a mere hope, and the present occurrences are far from justifying it. We hear much of the guilt of the fallen party, and little of remedying its effects--much of punishment, and little of reform; and the people are excited to vengeance, without being permitted to claim redress. In the meanwhile, fearful of trusting to the cold preference which they owe to a superior abhorrence of their adversaries, the Convention have ordered their colleagues on mission to glean the few arms still remaining in the hands of the National Guard, and to arrest all who may be suspected of connection with the adverse party.--Dumont has performed this service here very diligently; and, by way of supererogation, has sent the Commandant of Amiens to the Bicetre, his wife, who was ill, to the hospital, and two young children to this place. As usual, these proceedings excite secret murmurs, but are nevertheless yielded to with perfect submission. One can never, on these occasions, cease admiring the endurance of the French character. In other countries, at every change of party, the people are flattered with the prospect of advantage, or conciliated by indulgences; but here they gain nothing by change, except an accumulation of oppression--and the success of a new party is always the harbinger of some new tyranny. While the fall of Hebert is proclaimed as the triumph of freedom, all the citizens are disarmed by way of collateral security; and at the instant he is accused by the Convention of atheism and immorality,* a militant police is sent forth to devastate the churches, and punish those who are detected in observing the Sabbath--_"mais plutot souffrir que mourir, c'est la devise des Francois."_ ["To suffer rather than die is the motto of Frenchmen."] * It is remarkable, that the persecution of religion was never more violent than at the time when the Convention were anathematizing Hebert and his party for athiesm. --Brissot and his companions died singing a paraphrase of my quotation: _"Plutot la mort que l'esclavage, "C'est la devise des Francois."_ ["Death before slavery, is the Frenchman's motto."] --Let those who reflect on what France has submitted to under them and their successors decide, whether the original be not more apposite. I hope the act of accusation against Chabot has been published in England, for the benefit of your English patriots: I do not mean by way of warning, but example. It appears, that the said Chabot, and four or five of his colleagues in the Convention, had been bribed to serve a stock-jobbing business at a stipulated sum,* and that the money was to be divided amongst them. * Chabot, Fabre d'Eglantine, (author of "l'Intrigue Epistolaire," and several other admired dramatic pieces,) Delaunay d'Angers, Julien de Toulouse, and Bazire, were bribed to procure the passing certain decrees, tending to enrich particular people, by defrauding the East India Company.--Delaunay and Julien (both re-elected into the present Assembly) escaped by flight, the rest were guillotined. --It is probable, that these little peculations might have passed unnoticed in patriots of such note, but that the intrigues and popular character of Chabot made it necessary to dispose of him, and his accomplices suffered to give a countenance to the measure. --Chabot, with great reason, insisted on his claim to an extra share, on account, as he expressed it, of having the reputation of one of the first patriots in Europe. Now this I look upon to be a very useful hint, as it tends to establish a tariff of reputations, rather than of talents. In England, you distinguish too much in favour of the latter; and, in a question of purchase, a Minister often prefers a "commodity" of rhetoricians, to one of "good names."--I confess, I am of Chabot's opinion; and think a vote from a member who has some reputation for honesty, ought to be better paid for than the eloquence which, weakened by the vices of the orator, ceases to persuade. How it is that the patriotic harangues at St. Stephen's serve only to amuse the auditors, who identify the sentiments they express as little with the speaker, as they would those of Cato's soliloquy with the actor who personates the character for the night? I fear the people reason like Chabot, and are "fools to fame." Perhaps it is fortunate for England, that those whose talents and principles would make them most dangerous, are become least so, because both are counteracted by the public contempt. Ought it not to humble the pride, and correct the errors, which too often accompany great genius, that the meanest capacity can distinguish between talents and virtue; and that even in the moment our wonder is excited by the one, a sort of intrinsic preference is given to the other?--Yours, &c. Providence, April 15, 1794. "The friendship of bad men turns to fear:" and in this single phrase of our popular bard is comprized the history of all the parties who have succeeded each other during the revolution.--Danton has been sacrificed to Robespierre's jealousy,* and Camille Desmoulins to support his popularity;** and both, after sharing in the crimes, and contributing to the punishment, of Hebert and his associates, have followed them to the same scaffold. * The ferocious courage of Danton had, on the 10th of August, the 2d of September, the 31st of May, and other occasions, been the ductile instrument of Robespierre; but, in the course of their iniquitous connection, it should seem, they had committed themselves too much to each other. Danton had betrayed a desire of more exclusively profiting by his crimes; and Robespierre's views been equally ambitious, though less daring, their mutual jealousies had risen to a height which rendered the sacrifice of one party necessary--and Robespierre had the address to secure himself, by striking the first blow. They had supped in the country, and returned together to Paris, on the night Danton was arrested; and, it may be supposed, that in this interview, which was intended to produce a reconciliation, they had been convinced that neither was to be trusted by the other. ** There can be no doubt but Robespierre had encouraged Camille Desmoulins to publish his paper, intitled "The Old Cordelier," in which some translations from Tacitus, descriptive of every kind of tyranny, were applied to the times, and a change of system indirectly proposed. The publication became highly popular, except with the Convention and the Jacobins; these, however, it was requisite for Robespierre to conciliate; and Camille Desmoulins was sacrificed, to prove that he did not favour the obnoxious moderation of his friend. I know not if one's heart gain any thing by this habitual contemplation of successive victims, who ought not to inspire pity, and whom justice and humanity forbid one to regret.--How many parties have fallen, who seem to have laboured only to transmit a dear-bought tyranny, which they had not time to enjoy themselves, to their successors: The French revolutionists may, indeed, adopt the motto of Virgil's Bees, "Not for ourselves, but for you." The monstrous powers claimed for the Convention by the Brissotines,* with the hope of exclusively exercising them, were fatal to themselves--the party that overthrew the Brissotines in its turn became insignificant--and a small number of them only, under the description of Committees of Public Welfare and General Safety, gradually usurped the whole authority. * The victorious Brissotines, after the 10th of August, availing themselves of the stupor of one part of the people, and the fanaticism of the other, required that the new Convention might be entrusted with unlimited powers. Not a thousandth portion of those who elected the members, perhaps, comprehended the dreadful extent of such a demand, as absurd as it has proved fatal.--_"Tout pouvoir sans bornes ne fauroit etre legitime, parce qu'il n'a jamais pu avoir d'origine legitime, car nous ne pouvons pas donner a un autre plus de pouvoir sur nous que nous n'en avons nous-memes"_ [Montesquieu.]:--that is, the power which we accord to others, or which we have over ourselves, cannot exceed the bounds prescribed by the immutable laws of truth and justice. The united voice of the whole French nation could not bestow on their representatives a right to murder or oppress one innocent man. --Even of these, several have already perished; and in the hands of Robespierre, and half a dozen others of equal talents and equal atrocity, but less cunning, center at present all the fruits of so many miseries, and so many crimes. In all these conflicts of party, the victory seems hitherto to have remained with the most artful, rather than the most able; and it is under the former title that Robespierre, and his colleagues in the Committee of Public Welfare, are now left inheritors of a power more despotic than that exercised in Japan.--Robespierre is certainly not deficient in abilities, but they are not great in proportion to the influence they have acquired him. They may, perhaps, be more properly called singular than great, and consist in the art of appropriating to his own advantage both the events of chance and the labours of others, and of captivating the people by an exterior of severe virtue, which a cold heart enables him to assume, and which a profligacy, not the effect of strong passions, but of system, is easily subjected to. He is not eloquent, nor are his speeches, as compositions,* equal to those of Collot d'Herbais, Barrere, or Billaud Varennes; but, by contriving to reserve himself for extraordinary occasions, such as announcing plots, victories, and systems of government, he is heard with an interest which finally becomes transferred from his subject to himself.** * The most celebrated members of the Convention are only readers of speeches, composed with great labour, either by themselves or others; and I think it is distinguishable, that many are manufactured by the same hand. The style and spirit of Lindet, Barrere, and Carnot, seem to be in common. ** The following passages, from a speech of Dubois Crance, who may be supposed a competent judge, at once furnish an idea of Robespierre's oratory, exhibit a leading feature in his character, and expose some of the arts by which the revolutionary despotism was maintained: _"Rapportant tout a lui seul, jusqu'a la patrie, il n'en parla jamais que pour s'en designer comme l'unique defenseur: otez de ses longs discours tout ce qui n'a rapport qu'a son personnel, vous n'y trouverez plus que de seches applications de prinipes connus, et surtout de phrases preparees pour amener encore son eloge. Vous l'avez juge timide, parce que son imagination, que l'on croyait ardente, qui n'etait que feroce, parassait exagerer souvent les maux de son pays. C'etait une jonglerie: il ne croyait ni aux conspirations don't il faisait tant d'etalage, ni aux poignards aux-quels il feignoit de sse devouer; mais il vouloit que les citoyens fusssent constamment en defiance l'un de l'autre," &c._ "Affecting to consider all things, even the fate of the country, as depending on himself alone, he never spoke of it but with a view to point himself out its principal defender.--If you take away from his long harangues all that regards him personally, you will find only dry applications of familiar principles, and, above all, those studied turns, which were artfully prepared to introduce his own eternal panegyric.--You supposed him timid because his imagination (which was not merely ardent, as was supposed, but ferocious) seemed often to exaggerate the misfortunes of his country.--This was a mere trick: he believed neither in the conspiracies he made so great a parade of, nor in the poignards to which he pretended to devote himself as a victim.--His real design was to infuse into the minds of all men an unceasing diffidence of each other." One cannot study the characters of these men, and the revolution, without wonder; and, after an hour of such scribbling, I wake to the scene around me, and my wonder is not a little increased, at the idea that the fate of such an individual as myself should be at all dependent on either.--My friend Mad. de ____ is ill,* and taken to the hospital, so that having no longer the care of dissipating her ennui, I am at full liberty to indulge my own. * I have generally made use of the titles and distinctions by which the people I mention were known before the revolution; for, besides that I found it difficult to habituate my pen to the republican system of levelling, the person to whom these letters were addressed would not have known who was meant by the new appellations. It is, however, to be observed, that, except in private aristocratic intercourse, the word Citizen was in general use; and that those who had titles relinquished them and assumed their family names. --Yet I know not how it is, but, as I have before observed to you, I do not ennuye--my mind is constantly occupied, though my heart is vacant-- curiosity serves instead of interest, and I really find it sufficiently amusing to conjecture how long my head may remain on my shoulders.--You will, I dare say, agree with me that any doubts on such a subject are very well calculated to remove the tranquil sort of indifference which produces ennui; though, to judge by the greater part of my fellow-prisoners, one would not think so.--There is something surely in the character of the French, which makes them differ both in prosperity and adversity from other people. Here are many amongst us who see little more in the loss of their liberty than a privation of their usual amusements; and I have known some who had the good fortune to obtain their release at noon, exhibit themselves at the theatre at night.--God knows how such minds are constituted: for my part, when some consolatory illusion restores me to freedom, I associate with it no idea of positive pleasure, but long for a sort of intermediate state, which may repose my harassed faculties, and in which mere comfort and security are portrayed as luxuries. After being so long deprived of the decent accommodations of life, secluded from the intercourse which constitutes its best enjoyments, trembling for my own fate, and hourly lamenting that of my friends, the very thoughts of tumult or gaiety seem oppressive, and the desire of peace, for the moment, banishes every other. One must have no heart, after so many sufferings, not to prefer the castle of Indolence to the palace of Armida. The coarse organs of an Argus at the door, who is all day employed in calling to my high-born companions by the republican appellations of _"Citoyen,"_ and _"Citoyenne,"_ has just interrupted me by a summons to receive a letter from my unfortunate friends at Arras.--It was given me open;* of course they say nothing of their situation, though I have reason to believe it is dreadful. * The opening of letters was now so generally avowed, that people who corresponded on business, and were desirous their letters should be delivered, put them in the post without sealing; otherwise they were often torn in opening, thrown aside, or detained, to save the trouble of perusing. --They have now written to me for assistance, which I have not the means of affording them. Every thing I have is under sequestration; and the difficulty which attends the negociating any drafts drawn upon England, has made it nearly impossible to procure money in the usual way, even if I were not confined. The friendship of Mad. de ____ will be little available to me. Her extensive fortune, before frittered to mere competency by the extortions of the revolution, now scarcely supplies her own wants; and her tenants humanely take the opportunity of her present distress to avoid paying their rent.* * In some instances servants or tenants have been known to seize on portions of land for their own use--in others the country municipalities exacted as the price of a certificate of civism, (without which no release from prison could be obtained,) such leases, lands, or privileges, as they thought the embarrassments of their landlords would induce them to grant. Almost every where the houses of persons arrested were pilfered either by their own servants or the agents of the republic. I have known an elegant house put in requisition to erect blacksmiths' forges in for the use of the army, and another filled with tailors employed in making soldiers' clothes.--Houses were likewise not unfrequently abandoned by the servants through fear of sharing the fate of their masters, and sometimes exposed equally by the arrest of those who had been left in charge, in order to extort discoveries of plate, money, &c. the concealment of which they might be supposed privy to. --So that I have no resource, either for myself or Mrs. D____, but the sale of a few trinkets, which I had fortunately secreted on my first arrest. How are we to exist, and what an existence to be solicitous about! In gayer moments, and, perhaps, a little tinctured by romantic refinement, I have thought Dr. Johnson made poverty too exclusively the subject of compassion: indeed I believe he used to say, it was the only evil he really felt for. This, to one who has known only mental suffering, appears the notion of a coarse mind; but I doubt whether, the first time we are alarmed by the fear of want, the dread of dependence does not render us in part his converts. The opinion of our English sage is more natural than we may at first imagine; or why is it that we are affected by the simple distresses of Jane Shore, beyond those of any other heroine?--Yours. April 22, 1794. Our abode becomes daily more crouded; and I observe, that the greater part of those now arrested are farmers. This appears strange enough, when we consider how much the revolutionary persecution has hitherto spared this class of people; and you will naturally enquire why it has at length reached them. It has been often observed, that the two extremes of society are nearly the same in all countries; the great resemble each other from education, the little from nature. Comparisons, therefore, of morals and manners should be drawn from the intervening classes; yet from this comparison also I believe we must exclude farmers, who are every where the same, and who seem always more marked by professional similitude than national distinction. The French farmer exhibits the same acuteness in all that regards his own interest, and the same stupidity on most other occasions, as the mere English one; and the same objects which enlarge the understanding and dilate the heart of other people, seem to have a contrary effect on both. They contemplate the objects of nature as the stock-jobber does the vicissitudes of the public funds: "the dews of heaven," and the enlivening orb by which they are dispelled, are to the farmer only objects of avaricious speculation; and the scarcity, which is partially profitable, is but too often more welcome than a general abundance.--They consider nothing beyond the limits of their own farms, except for the purpose of making envious comparisons with those of their neighbours; and being fed and clothed almost without intermediate commerce, they have little necessity for communication, and are nearly as isolated a part of society as sailors themselves. The French revolutionists have not been unobserving of these circumstances, nor scrupulous of profiting by them: they knew they might have discussed for ever their metaphysical definitions of the rights of man, without reaching the comprehension, or exciting the interest, of the country people; but that if they would not understand the propagation of the rights of man, they would very easily comprehend an abolition of the rights of their landlords. Accordingly, the first principle of liberty they were taught from the new code was, that they had a right to assemble in arms, to force the surrender of title-deeds; and their first revolutionary notions of equality and property seem to have been manifested by the burning of chateaux, and refusing to pay their rents. They were permitted to intimidate their landlords, in order to force them to emigration, and either to sell their estates at a low price, or leave them to the mercy of the tenants. At a time when the necessities of the state had been great enough to be made the pretext of a dreadful revolution, they were not only almost exempt from contributing to its relief, but were enriched by the common distress; and while the rest of their countrymen beheld with unavailing regret their property gradually replaced by scraps of paper, the peasants became insolent and daring by impunity, refused to sell but for specie, and were daily amassing wealth. It is not therefore to be wondered at, that they were partial to the new order of things. The prisons might have overflowed or been thinned by the miseries of those with whom they had been crowded--the Revolutionary Tribunal might have sacrificed half France, and these selfish citizens, I fear, would have beheld it tranquilly, had not the requisition forced their labourers to the army, and the "maximum" lowered the price of their corn. The exigency of the war, and an internal scarcity, having rendered these measures necessary, and it being found impossible to persuade the farmers into a peaceful compliance with them, the government has had recourse to its usual summary mode of expostulation--a prison or the Guillotine.* * The avarice of the farmers was doubtless to be condemned, but the cruel despotism of the government almost weakened our sense of rectitude; for by confounding error with guilt, and guilt with innocence, they habituated us to indiscriminate pity, and obliged us to transfer our hatred of a crime to those who in punishing it, observed neither mercy nor justice. A farmer was guillotined, because some blades of corn appeared growing in one of his ponds; from which circumstance it was inferred, he had thrown in a large quantity, in order to promote a scarcity--though it was substantially proved on his trial, that at the preceding harvest the grain of an adjoining field had been got in during a high wind, and that in all probability some scattered ears which reached the water had produced what was deemed sufficient testimony to convict him.-- Another underwent the same punishment for pursuing his usual course of tillage, and sowing part of his ground with lucerne, instead of employing the whole for wheat; and every where these people became the objects of persecution, both in their persons and property. "Almost all our considerable farmers have been thrown into prison; the consequence is, that their capital is eat up, their stock gone to ruin, and our lands have lost the almost incalculable effect of their industry. In La Vendee six million acres of land lie uncultivated, and five hundred thousand oxen have been turned astray, without shelter and without an owner." Speech of Dubois Crance, Sept. 22, 1794. --Amazed to find themselves the objects of a tyranny they had hitherto contributed to support, and sharing the misfortune of their Lords and Clergy, these ignorant and mistaken people wander up and down with a vacant sort of ruefulness, which seems to bespeak that they are far from comprehending or being satisfied with this new specimen of republicanism.--It has been a fatality attending the French through the whole revolution, that the different classes have too readily facilitated the sacrifice of each other; and the Nobility, the Clergy, the Merchant, and the Farmer, have the mortification of experiencing, that their selfish and illiberal policy has answered no purpose but to involve all in one common ruin. Angelique has contrived to-day to negotiate the sale of some bracelets, which a lady, with whom I was acquainted previous to our detention, has very obligingly given almost half their value for, though not without many injunctions to secresy, and as many implied panegyrics on her benevolence, in risking the odium of affording assistance to a foreigner. We are, I assure you, under the necessity of being oeconomists, where the most abundant wealth could not render us externally comfortable: and the little we procure, by a clandestine disposal of my unnecessary trinkets, is considerably diminished,* by arbitrary impositions of the guard and the poor,** and a voluntary tax from the misery that surrounds us. * I am aware of Mr. Burke's pleasantry on the expression of very little, being greatly diminished; but my exchequer at this time was as well calculated to prove the infinite divisibility of matter, as that of the Welch principality. ** The guards of the republican Bastilles were paid by the prisoners they contained; and, in many places, the tax for this purpose was levied with indecent rigour. It might indeed be supposed, that people already in prison could have little to apprehend from an inability or unwillingness to submit to such an imposition; yet those who refused were menaced with a dungeon; and I was informed, from undoubted authority, of two instances of the sort among the English--the one a young woman, the other a person with a large family of children, who were on the point of suffering this treatment, but that the humanity of some of their companions interfered and paid the sum exacted of them. The tax for supporting the imprisoned poor was more willingly complied with, though not less iniquitous in its principle; numbers of inoffensive and industrious people were taken from their homes on account of their religion, or other frivolous pretexts, and not having the wherewithal to maintain themselves in confinement, instead of being kept by the republic, were supported by their fellow-prisoners, in consequence of a decree to that purpose. Families who inherited nothing from their noble ancestors but their names, were dragged from obscurity only to become objects of persecution; and one in particular, consisting of nine persons, who lived in extreme indigence, but were notwithstanding of the proscribed class; the sons were brought wounded from the army and lodged with the father, mother, and five younger children in a prison, where they had scarcely food to support, or clothing to cover them. I take this opportunity of doing justice to the Comte d'Artois, whose youthful errors did not extinguish his benevolence--the unfortunate people in question having enjoyed a pension from him until the revolution deprived them of it. Our male companions are for the most part transferred to other prisons, and among the number are two young Englishmen, with whom I used sometimes to converse in French, without acknowledging our compatriotism. They have told me, that when the decree for arresting the English was received at Amiens, they happened to be on a visit, a few miles from the town; and having notice that a party of horse were on the road to take them, willing to gain time at least, they escaped by another route, and got home. The republican constables, for I can call the military employed in the interior by no better appellation, finding their prey had taken flight, adopted the impartial justice of the men of Charles Town,* and carried off the old couple (both above seventy) at whose house they had been. * "But they maturely having weigh'd "They had no more but him o'th'trade, "Resolved to spare him, yet to do "The Indian Hoghan-Moghan too "Impartial justice--in his stead did "Hang an old weaver that was bed-rid." The good man, who was probably not versed in the etiquette of the revolution, conceived nothing of the matter, and when at the end of their journey they were deposited at the Bicetre, his head was so totally deranged, that he imagined himself still in his own house, and continued for some days addressing all the prisoners as though they were his guests--at one moment congratulating them on their arrival, the next apologizing for want of room and accommodation.--The evasion of the young men, as you will conclude, availed them nothing, except a delay of their captivity for a few hours. A report has circulated amongst us to-day, that all who are not detained on specific charges are soon to be liberated. This is eagerly believed by the new-comers, and those who are not the "pale converts of experience." I am myself so far from crediting it, that I dread lest it should be the harbinger of some new evil, for I know not whether it be from the effect of chance, or a refinement in atrocity, but I have generally found every measure which tended to make our situation more miserable preceded by these flattering rumours. You would smile to see with what anxious credulity intelligence of this sort is propagated: we stop each other on the stairs and listen while our palled dinner, just arrived from the traiteur, is cooling; and the bucket of the draw-well hangs suspended while a history is finished, of which the relator knows as little as the hearer, and which, after all, proves to have originated in some ambiguous phrase of our keeper, uttered in a good-humoured paroxysm while receiving a douceur. We occasionally lose some of our associates, who, having obtained their discharge, _depart a la Francaise,_ forget their suffering, and praise the clemency of Dumont, and the virtue of the Convention; while those who remain still unconverted amuse themselves in conjecturing the channel through which such favours were solicited, and alleging reasons why such preferences were partial and unjust. Dumont visits us, as usual, receives an hundred or two of petitions, which he does not deign to read, and reserves his indulgence for those who have the means of assailing him through the smiles of a favourite mistress, or propitiating him by more substantial advantages.--Many of the emigrants' wives have procured their liberty by being divorced, and in this there is nothing blameable, for I imagine the greater number consider it only as a temporary expedient, indifferent in itself, and which they are justified in having recourse to for the protection of their persons and property. But these domestic alienations are not confined to those who once moved in the higher orders of society--the monthly registers announce almost as many divorces as marriages, and the facility of separation has rendered the one little more than a licentious compact, which the other is considered as a means of dissolving. The effect of the revolution has in this, as in many other cases, been to make the little emulate the vices of the great, and to introduce a more gross and destructive policy among the people at large, than existed in the narrow circle of courtiers, imitators of the Regent, or Louis the fifteenth. Immorality, now consecrated as a principle, is far more pernicious than when, though practised, it was condemned, and, though suffered, not sanctioned. You must forgive me if I ennuye you a little sententiously--I was more partial to the lower ranks of life in France, than to those who were deemed their superiors; and I cannot help beholding with indignant regret the last asylums of national morals thus invaded by the general corruption.--I believe no one will dispute that the revolution has rendered the people more vicious; and, without considering the matter either in a moral or religious point of view, it is impossible to assert that they are not less happy. How many times, when I was at liberty, have I heard the old wish for an accession of years, or envy those yet too young to be sensible of "the miseries of a revolution!"--Were the vanity of the self-sufficient philosopher susceptible of remorse, would he not, when he beholds this country, lament his presumption, in supposing he had a right to cancel the wisdom of past ages; or that the happiness of mankind might be promoted by the destruction of their morals, and the depravation of their social affections?--Yours, &c. April 30, 1794. For some years previous to the revolution, there were several points in which the French ascribed to themselves a superiority not very distant from perfection. Amongst these were philosophy, politeness, the refinements of society, and, above all, the art of living.--I have sometimes, as you know, been inclined to dispute these claims; yet, if it be true that in our sublunary career perfection is not stationary, and that, having reached the apex of the pyramid on one side, we must necessarily descend on the other, I might, on this ground, allow such pretensions to be more reasonable than I then thought them. Whatever progress might have been attained in these respects, or however near our neighbours might have approached to one extreme, it is but too certain they are now rapidly declining to the other. This boasted philosophy is become a horrid compound of all that is offensive to Heaven, and disgraceful to man--this politeness, a ferocious incivility--and this social elegance and exclusive science in the enjoyment of life, are now reduced to suspicious intercourse, and the want of common necessaries. If the national vanity only were wounded, perhaps I might smile, though I hope I should not triumph; but when I see so much misery accompany so profound a degradation, my heart does not accord with my language, if I seem to do either one or the other. I should ineffectually attempt to describe the circumstances and situation which have given rise to these reflections. Imagine to yourself whatever tyranny can inflict, or human nature submit to-- whatever can be the result of unrestrained wickedness and unresisting despair--all that can scourge or disgrace a people--and you may form some idea of the actual state of this country: but do not search your books for comparisons, or expect to find in the proscriptions and extravagancies of former periods any examples by which to judge the present.--Tiberius and Nero are on the road to oblivion, and the subjects of the Lama may boast comparative pretensions to rank as a free and enlightened nation. The frantic ebullitions of the revolutionary government are now as it were subsided, and instead of appearing the temporary resources of "despotism in distress," [Burke.] have assumed the form of a permanent and regular system. The agitation occasioned by so many unexampled scenes is succeeded by an habitual terror, and this depressing sentiment has so pervaded all ranks, that it would be difficult to find an individual, however obscure or inoffensive, who deems his property, or even his existence, secure only for a moment. The sound of a bell or a knocker at the close of the evening is the signal of dismay. The inhabitants of the house regard each other with looks of fearful interrogation--all the precautions hitherto taken appear insufficient-- every one recollects something yet to be secreted--a prayer-book, an unburied silver spoon, or a few assignats "a face royale," are hastily scrambled together, and if the visit prove nothing more than an amicable domiciliary one, in search of arms and corn, it forms matter of congratulation for a week after. Yet such is the submission of the people to a government they abhor, that it is scarcely thought requisite now to arrest any person formally: those whom it is intended to secure often receive nothing more than a written mandate* to betake themselves to a certain prison, and such unpleasant rendezvous are attended with more punctuality than the most ceremonious visit, or the most gallant assignation. * These rescripts were usually couched in the following terms:-- "Citizen, you are desired to betake yourself immediately to ------, (naming the prison,) under pain of being conveyed there by an armed force in case of delay." --A few necessaries are hastily packed together, the adieus are made, and, after a walk to their prison, they lay their beds down in the corner allotted, just as if it were a thing of course. It was a general observation with travellers, that the roads in France were solitary, and had rather the deserted appearance of the route of a caravan, than of the communications between different parts of a rich and populous kingdom. This, however, is no longer true, and, as far as I can learn, they are now sufficiently crowded--not, indeed, by curious itinerants, parties of pleasure, or commercial industry, but by Deputies of the Convention,* agents of subsistence,** committee men, Jacobin missionaries,*** troops posting from places where insurrection is just quelled to where it has just begun, besides the great and never-failing source of activity, that of conveying suspected people from their homes to prison, and from one prison to another.-- * Every department was infested by one, two, or more of these strolling Deputies; and, it must be confessed, the constant tendency of the people to revolt in many places afforded them sufficient employment. Sometimes they acted as legislators, making laws on the spot--sometimes, both as judges and constables--or, if occasion required, they amused themselves in assisting the executioner.--The migrations of obscure men, armed with unlimited powers, and whose persons were unknown, was a strong temptation to imposture, and in several places adventurers were detected assuming the character of Deputies, for various purposes of fraud and depredation.--The following instance may appear ludicrous, but I shall be excused mentioning it, as it is a fact on record, and conveys an idea of what the people supposed a Deputy might do, consistent with the "dignity" of his executive functions. An itinerant of this sort, whose object seems to have been no more than to procure a daily maintenance, arriving hungry in a village, entered the first farm-house that presented itself, and immediately put a pig in requisition, ordered it to be killed, and some sausages to be made, with all speed. In the meanwhile our mock-legislator, who seems to have acted his part perfectly well, talked of liberty, l'amour de la Patrie, of Pitt and the coalesced tyrants, of arresting suspicious people and rewarding patriots; so that the whole village thought themselves highly fortunate in the presence of a Deputy who did no worse than harangue and put their pork in requisiton.--Unfortunately, however, before the repast of sausages could be prepared, a hue and cry reached the place, that this gracious Representant was an impostor! He was bereft of his dignities, conveyed to prison, and afterwards tried by the Tribunal Revolutionnaire at Paris; but his Counsel, by insisting on the mildness with which he had "borne his faculties," contrived to get his punishment mitigated to a short imprisonment.--Another suffered death on a somewhat similar account; or, as the sentence expressed it, for degrading the character of a National Representative.--Just Heaven! for degrading the character of a National Representative!!! --and this too after the return of Carrier from Nantes, and the publication of Collot d'Herbois' massacres at Lyons! **The agents employed by government in the purchase of subsistence amounted, by official confession, to ten thousand. In all parts they were to be seen, rivalling each other, and creating scarcity and famine, by requisitions and exactions, which they did not convert to the profit of the republic, but to their own.--These privileged locusts, besides what they seized upon, occasioned a total stagnation of commerce, by laying embargoes on what they did not want; so that it frequently occurred that an unfortunate tradesman might have half the articles in his shop under requisition for a month together, and sometimes under different requisitions from deputies, commissaries of war, and agents of subsistence, all at once; nor could any thing be disposed of till such claims were satisfied or relinquished. *** Jacobin missionaries were sent from Paris, and other great towns, to keep up the spirits of the people, to explain the benefits of the revolution, (which, indeed, were not very apparent,) and to maintain the connection between the provincial and metropolitan societies.--I remember the Deputies on mission at Perpignan writing to the Club at Paris for a reinforcement of civic apostles, _"pour evangeliser les habitans et les mettre dans la voie de salut"_--("to convert the inhabitants, and put them in the road to salvation"). --These movements are almost entirely confined to the official travellers of the republic; for, besides the scarcity of horses, the increase of expence, and the diminution of means, few people are willing to incur the suspicion or hazard* attendant on quitting their homes, and every possible obstacle is thrown in the way of a too general intercourse between the inhabitants of large towns. * There were moments when an application for a passport was certain of being followed by a mandat d'arret--(a writ of arrest). The applicant was examined minutely as to the business he was going upon, the persons he was to transact it with, and whether the journey was to be performed on horseback or in a carriage, and any signs of impatience or distaste at those democratic ceremonies were sufficient to constitute _"un homme suspect"_--("a suspicious person"), or at least one _"soupconne d'etre suspect,"_ that is, a man suspected of being suspicious. In either case it was usually deemed expedient to prevent the dissemination of his supposed principles, by laying an embargo on his person.--I knew a man under persecution six months together, for having gone from one department to another to see his family. The committee of Public Welfare is making rapid advances to an absolute concentration of the supreme power, and the convention, while they are the instruments of oppressing the whole country, are themselves become insignificant, and, perhaps, less secure than those over whom they tyrannize. They cease to debate, or even to speak; but if a member of the Committee ascends the tribune, they overwhelm him with applauses before they know what he has to say, and then pass all the decrees presented to them more implicitly than the most obsequious Parliament ever enregistered an arrete of the Court; happy if, by way of compensation, they attract a smile from Barrere, or escape the ominous glances of Robespierre.* * When a member of the committee looked inauspiciously at a subordinate accomplice, the latter scarce ventured to approach his home for some time.--Legendre, who has since boasted so continually about his courage, is said to have kept his bed, and Bourdon de l'Oise, to have lost his senses for a considerable time, from frights, the consequence of such menaces. Having so far described the situation of public affairs, I proceed as usual, and for which I have the example of Pope, who never quits a subject without introducing himself, to some notice of my own. It is not only bad in itself, but worse in perspective than ever: yet I learn not to murmur, and derive patience from the certainty, that almost every part of France is more oppressed and wretched than we are.--Yours, etc. June 3, 1794. The individual sufferings of the French may perhaps yet admit of increase; but their humiliation as a people can go no farther; and if it were not certain that the acts of the government are congenial to its principles, one might suppose this tyranny rather a moral experiment on the extent of human endurance, than a political system. Either the vanity or cowardice of Robespierre is continually suggesting to him plots for his assassination; and on pretexts, at once absurd and atrocious, a whole family, with near seventy other innocent people as accomplices, have been sentenced to death by a formal decree of the convention. One might be inclined to pity a people obliged to suppress their indignation on such an event, but the mind revolts when addresses are presented from all quarters to congratulate this monster's pretended escape, and to solicit a farther sacrifice of victims to his revenge.-- The assassins of Henry the Fourth had all the benefit of the laws, and suffered only after a legal condemnation; yet the unfortunate Cecilia Renaud, though evidently in a state of mental derangement, was hurried to the scaffold without a hearing, for the vague utterance of a truth, to which every heart in France, not lost to humanity, must assent. Brooding over the miseries of her country, till her imagination became heated and disordered, this young woman seems to have conceived some hopeless plan of redress from expostulation with Robespierre, whom she regarded as a principal in all the evils she deplored. The difficulty of obtaining an audience of him irritated her to make some comparison between an hereditary sovereign and a republican despot; and she avowed, that, in desiring to see Robespierre, she was actuated only by a curiosity to "contemplate the features of a tyrant."--On being examined by the Committee, she still persisted that her design was "seulement pour voir comment etoit fait un tyrant;" and no instrument nor possible means of destruction was found upon her to justify a charge of any thing more than the wild and enthusiastic attachment to royalism, which she did not attempt to disguise. The influence of a feminine propensity, which often survives even the wreck of reason and beauty, had induced her to dress with peculiar neatness, when she went in search of Robespierre; and, from the complexion of the times, supposing it very probable a visit of this nature might end in imprisonment and death, she had also provided herself with a change of clothes to wear in her last moments. Such an attention in a beautiful girl of eighteen was not very unnatural; yet the mean and cruel wretches who were her judges, had the littleness to endeavour at mortifying, by divesting her of her ornaments, and covering her with the most loathsome rags. But a mind tortured to madness by the sufferings of her country, was not likely to be shaken by such puerile malice; and, when interrogated under this disguise, she still preserved the same firmness, mingled with contempt, which she had displayed when first apprehended. No accusation, nor even implication, of any person could be drawn from her, and her only confession was that of a passionate loyalty: yet an universal conspiracy was nevertheless decreed by the Convention to exist, and Miss Renaud, with sixty-nine others,* were sentenced to the guillotine, without farther trial than merely calling over their names. * It is worthy of remark, that the sixty-nine people executed as accomplices of Miss Renaud, except her father, mother, and aunt, were totally unconnected with her, or with each other, and had been collected from different prisons, between which no communication could have subsisted. --They were conducted to the scaffold in a sort of red frocks, intended, as was alleged, to mark them as assassins--but, in reality, to prevent the crowd from distinguishing or receiving any impression from the number of young and interesting females who were comprised in this dreadful slaughter.--They met death with a courage which seemed almost to disappoint the malice of their tyrants, who, in an original excess of barbarity, are said to have lamented that their power of inflicting could not reach those mental faculties which enabled their victims to suffer with fortitude.* * Fouquier Tinville, public accuser of the Revolutionary Tribunal, enraged at the courage with which his victims submitted to their fate, had formed the design of having them bled previous to their execution; hoping by this means to weaken their spirits, and that they might, by a pusillanimous behaviour in their last moments, appear less interesting to the people. Such are the horrors now common to almost every part of France: the prisons are daily thinned by the ravages of the executioner, and again repeopled by inhabitants destined to the fate of their predecessors. A gloomy reserve, and a sort of uncertain foreboding, have taken possession of every body--no one ventures to communicate his thoughts, even to his nearest friend--relations avoid each other--and the whole social system seems on the point of being dissolved. Those who have yet preserved their freedom take the longest circuit, rather than pass a republican Bastille; or, if obliged by necessity to approach one, it is with downcast or averted looks, which bespeak their dread of incurring the suspicion of humanity. I say little of my own feelings; they are not of a nature to be relieved by pathetic expressions: "I am e'en sick at heart." For some time I have struggled both against my own evils, and the share I take in the general calamity, but my mortal part gives way, and I can no longer resist the despondency which at times depresses me, and which indeed, more than the danger attending it, has occasioned my abandoning my pen for the last month.--Several circumstances have occurred within these few days, to add to the uneasiness of our situation, and my own apprehensions. Le Bon,* whose cruelties at Arras seem to have endeared him to his colleagues in the Convention, has had his powers extended to this department, and Andre Dumont is recalled; so that we are hourly menaced with the presence of a monster, compared to whom our own representative is amiable.-- * I have already noticed the cruel and ferocious temper of Le Bon, and the massacres of his tribunals are already well known. I will only add some circumstances which not only may be considered as characteristic of this tyrant, but of the times--and I fear I may add of the people, who suffered and even applauded them. They are selected from many others not susceptible of being described in language fit for an English reader. As he was one day enjoying his customary amusement of superintending an execution, where several had already suffered, one of the victims having, from a very natural emotion, averted his eyes while he placed his body in the posture required, the executioner perceived it, and going to the sack which contained the heads of those just sacrificed, took one out, and with the most horrible imprecations obliged the unhappy wretch to kiss it: yet Le Bon not only permitted, but sanctioned this, by dining daily with the hangman. He was afterwards reproached with this familiarity in the Convention, but defended himself by saying, "A similar act of Lequinio's was inserted by your orders in the bulletin with 'honourable mention;' and your decrees have invariably consecrated the principles on which I acted." They all felt for a moment the dominion of conscience, and were silent.--On another occasion he suspended an execution, while the savages he kept in pay threw dirt on the prisoners, and even got on the scaffold and insulted them previous to their suffering. When any of his colleagues passed through Arras, he always proposed their joining with him in a _"partie de Guillotine,"_ and the executions were perpetrated on a small square at Arras, rather than the great one, that he, his wife, and relations might more commodiously enjoy the spectacle from the balcony of the theatre, where they took their coffee, attended by a band of music, which played while this human butchery lasted. The following circumstance, though something less horrid, yet sufficiently so to excite the indignation of feeling people, happened to some friends of my own.--They had been brought with many others from a distant town in open carts to Arras, and, worn out with fatigue, were going to be deposited in the prison to which they were destined. At the moment of their arrival several persons were on the point of being executed. Le Bon, presiding as usual at the spectacle, observed the cavalcade passing, and ordered it to stop, that the prisoners might likewise be witnesses. He was, of course, obeyed; and my terrified friends and their companions were obliged not only to appear attentive to the scene before them, but to join in the cry of _"Vive la Republique!"_ at the severing of each head.-- One of them, a young lady, did not recover the shock she received for months. The Convention, the Committees, all France, were well acquainted with the conduct of Le Bon. He himself began to fear he might have exceeded the limits of his commission; and, upon communicating some scruples of this kind to his employers, received the following letters, which, though they do not exculpate him, certainly render the Committee of Public Welfare more criminal than himself. "Citizen, "The Committee of Public Welfare approve the measures you have adopted, at the same time that they judge the warrant you solicit unnecessary--such measures being not only allowable, but enjoined by the very nature of your mission. No consideration ought to stand in the way of your revolutionary progress--give free scope therefore to your energy; the powers you are invested with are unlimited, and whatever you may deem conducive to the public good, you are free, you are even called upon by duty, to carry into execution without delay.--We here transmit you an order of the Committee, by which your powers are extended to the neighbouring departments. Armed with such means, and with your energy, you will go on to confound the enemies of the republic, with the very schemes they have projected for its destruction. "Carnot. "Barrere. "R. Lindet." Extract from another letter, signed Billaud Varenne, Carnot, Barrere. "There is no commutation for offences against a republic. Death alone can expiate them!--Pursue the traitors with fire and sword, and continue to march with courage in the revolutionary track you have described." --Merciful Heaven! are there yet positive distinctions betwixt bad and worse that we thus regret a Dumont, and deem ourselves fortunate in being at the mercy of a tyrant who is only brutal and profligate? But so it is; and Dumont himself, fearful that he has not exercised his mission with sufficient severity, has ordered every kind of indulgence to cease, the prisons to be more strictly guarded, and, if possible, more crowded; and he is now gone to Paris, trembling lest he should be accused of justice or moderation! The pretended plots for assassinating Robespierre are, as usual, attributed to Mr. Pitt; and a decree has just passed, that no quarter shall be given to English prisoners. I know not what such inhuman politics tend to, but my contempt, and the conscious pride of national superiority; certain, that when Providence sees fit to vindicate itself, by bestowing victory on our countrymen, the most welcome "Laurels that adorn their brows "Will be from living, not dead boughs." The recollection of England, and its generous inhabitants, has animated me with pleasure; yet I must for the present quit this agreeable contemplation, to take precautions which remind me that I am separated from both, and in a land of despotism and misery! --Yours affectionately. June 11, 1794. The immorality of Hebert, and the base compliances of the Convention, for some months turned the churches into "temples of reason."--The ambition, perhaps the vanity, of Robespierre, has now permitted them to be dedicated to the "Supreme Being," and the people, under such auspices, are to be conducted from atheism to deism. Desirous of distinguishing his presidency, and of exhibiting himself in a conspicuous and interesting light, Robespierre, on the last decade, appeared as the hero of a ceremony which we are told is to restore morals, destroy all the mischiefs introduced by the abolition of religion, and finally to defeat the machinations of Mr. Pitt. A gay and splendid festival has been exhibited at Paris, and imitated in the provinces: flags of the republican colours, branches of trees, and wreaths of flowers, were ordered to be suspended from the houses--every countenance was to wear the prescribed smile, and the whole country, forgetting the pressure of sorrow and famine, was to rejoice. A sort of monster was prepared, which, by some unaccountable ingenuity, at once represented Atheism and the English, Cobourg and the Austrians--in short, all the enemies of the Convention.--This external phantom, being burned with proper form, discovered a statue, which was understood to be that of Liberty, and the inauguration of this divinity, with placing the busts of Chalier* and Marat in the temple of the Supreme Being, by way of attendant saints, concluded the ceremony.-- * Chalier had been sent from the municipality of Paris after the dethronement of the King, to revolutionize the people of Lyons, and to excite a massacre. In consequence, the first days of September presented the same scenes at Lyons as were presented in the capital. For near a year he continued to scourge this unfortunate city, by urging the lower classes of people to murder and pillage; till, at the insurrection which took place in the spring of 1793, he was arrested by the insurgents, tried, and sentenced to the guillotine. --The Convention, however, whose calendar of saints is as extraordinary as their criminal code, chose to beatify Chalier, while they executed Malesherbes; and, accordingly, decreed him a lodging in the Pantheon, pensioning his mistress, and set up his bust in their own Hall as an associate for Brutus, whom, by the way, one should not have expected to find in such company. The good citizens of the republic, not to be behind hand with their representatives, placed Chalier in the cathedrals, in their public-houses, on fans and snuff-boxes--in short, wherever they thought his appearance would proclaim their patriotism.--I can only exclaim as Poultier, a deputy, did, on a similar occasion--"Francais, Francais, serez vous toujours Francais?"--(Frenchmen, Frenchmen, will you never cease to be Frenchmen?) --But the mandates for such celebrations reach not the heart: flowers were gathered, and flags planted, with the scrupulous exactitude of fear;* yet all was cold and heavy, and a discerning government must have read in this anxious and literal obedience the indication of terror and hatred. * I have more than once had occasion to remark the singularity of popular festivities solemnized on the part of the people with no other intention but that of exact obedience to the edicts of government. This is so generally understood, that Richard, a deputy on mission at Lyons, writes to the Convention, as a circumstance extraordinary, and worthy of remark, that, at the repeal of a decree which was to have razed their city to the ground, a rejoicing took place, _"dirigee et executee par le peuple, les autorites constitutees n'ayant fait en quelque sorte qu'y assister,"_-- (directed and executed by the people, the constituted authorities having merely assisted at the ceremony). --Even the prisons were insultingly decorated with the mockery of colours, which, we are told, are the emblems of freedom; and those whose relations have expired on the scaffold, or who are pining in dungeons for having heard a mass, were obliged to listen with apparent admiration to a discourse on the charms of religious liberty.--The people, who, for the most part, took little interest in the rest of this pantomime, and insensible of the national disgrace it implied, beheld with stupid satisfaction* the inscription on the temple of reason replaced by a legend, signifying that, in this age of science and information, the French find it necessary to declare their acknowledgment of a God, and their belief in the immortality of the soul. * Much has been said of the partial ignorance of the unfortunate inhabitants of La Vendee, and divers republican scribblers attribute their attachment to religion and monarchy to that cause: yet at Havre, a sea-port, where, from commercial communication, I should suppose the people as informed and civilized as in any other part of France, the ears of piety and decency were assailed, during the celebration above-mentioned, by the acclamations of, _"Vive le Pere Eternel!"--"Vive l'etre Supreme!"_--(I entreat that I may not be suspected of levity when I translate this; in English it would be "God Almighty for ever! The Supreme Being for ever!") --At Avignon the public understanding seems to have been equally enlightened, if we may judge from the report of a Paris missionary, who writes in these terms:--"The celebration in honour of the Supreme Being was performed here yesterday with all possible pomp: all our country-folks were present, and unspeakably content that there was still a God--What a fine decree (cried they all) is this!" My last letter was a record of the most odious barbarities--to-day I am describing a festival. At one period I have to remark the destruction of the saints--at another the adoration of Marat. One half of the newspaper is filled with a list of names of the guillotined, and the other with that of places of amusement; and every thing now more than ever marks that detestable association of cruelty and levity, of impiety and absurdity, which has uniformly characterized the French revolution. It is become a crime to feel, and a mode to affect a brutality incapable of feeling--the persecution of Christianity has made atheism a boast, and the danger of respecting traditional virtues has hurried the weak and timid into the apotheosis of the most abominable vices. Conscious that they are no longer animated by enthusiasm,* the Parisians hope to imitate it by savage fury or ferocious mirth--their patriotism is signalized only by their zeal to destroy, and their attachment to their government only by applauding its cruelties.--If Robespierre, St. Just, Collot d'Herbois, and the Convention as their instruments, desolate and massacre half France, we may lament, but we can scarcely wonder at it. How should a set of base and needy adventurers refrain from an abuse of power more unlimited than that of the most despotic monarch; or how distinguish the general abhorrence, amid addresses of adulation, which Louis the Fourteenth would have blushed to appropriate?* * Louis the Fourteenth, aguerri (steeled) as he was by sixty years of adulation and prosperity, had yet modesty sufficient to reject a "dose of incense which he thought too strong." (See D'Alembert's Apology for Clermont Tonnerre.) Republicanism, it should seem, has not diminished the national compliasance for men in power, thought it has lessened the modesty of those who exercise it.--If Louis the Fourteenth repressed the zeal of the academicians, the Convention publish, without scruple, addresses more hyperbolical than the praises that monarch refused.--Letters are addressed to Robespierre under the appellation of the Messiah, sent by the almighty for the reform of all things! He is the apostle of one, and the tutelar deity of another. He is by turns the representative of the virtues individually, and a compendium of them altogether: and this monster, whose features are the counterpart of his soul, find republican parasites who congratulate themselves on resembling him. The bulletins of the Convention announce, that the whole republic is in a sort of revolutionary transport at the escape of Robespierre and his colleague, Collot d'Herbois, from assassination; and that we may not suppose the legislators at large deficient in sensibility, we learn also that they not only shed their grateful tears on this affecting occasion, but have settled a pension on the man who was instrumental in rescuing the benign Collot. The members of the Committee are not, however, the exclusive objects of public adoration--the whole Convention are at times incensed in a style truly oriental; and if this be sometimes done with more zeal than judgment, it does not appear to be less acceptable on that account. A petition from an incarcerated poet assimilates the mountain of the Jacobins to that of Parnassus--a state-creditor importunes for a small payment from the Gods of Olympus--and congratulations on the abolition of Christianity are offered to the legislators of Mount Sinai! Every instance of baseness calls forth an eulogium on their magnanimity. A score of orators harangue them daily on their courage, while they are over-awed by despots as mean as themselves and whom they continue to reinstal at the stated period with clamorous approbation. They proscribe, devastate, burn, and massacre--and permit themselves to be addressed by the title of "Fathers of their Country!" All this would be inexplicable, if we did not contemplate in the French a nation where every faculty is absorbed by a terror which involves a thousand contradictions. The rich now seek protection by becoming members of clubs,* and are happy if, after various mortifications, they are finally admitted by the mob who compose them; while families, that heretofore piqued themselves on a voluminous and illustrious genealogy,** eagerly endeavour to prove they have no claim to either. * _Le diplome de Jacobin etait une espece d'amulette, dont les inities etaient jaloux, et qui frappoit de prestiges ceux qui ne l'etaient pas_--"The Jacobin diploma was a kind of amulet, which the initiated were jealous of preserving, and which struck as it were with witchcraft, those who were not of the number." Rapport de Courtois sur les Papiers de Robespierre. ** Besides those who, being really noble, were anxious to procure certificates of sans-cullotism, many who had assumed such honours without pretensions now relinquished them, except indeed some few, whose vanity even surmounted their fears. But an express law included all these seceders in the general proscription; alledging, with a candour not usual, that those who assumed rank were, in fact, more criminal than such as were guilty of being born to it. --Places and employments, which are in most countries the objects of intrigue and ambition, are here refused or relinquished with such perfect sincerity, that a decree became requisite to oblige every one, under pain of durance, to preserve the station to which his ill stars, mistaken politics, or affectation of patriotism, had called him. Were it not for this law, such is the dreadful responsibility and danger attending offices under the government, that even low and ignorant people, who have got possession of them merely for support, would prefer their original poverty to emoluments which are perpetually liable to the commutation of the guillotine.--Some members of a neighbouring district told me to-day, when I asked them if they came to release any of our fellow-prisoners, that so far from it, they had not only brought more, but were not certain twelve hours together of not being brought themselves. The visionary equality of metaphysical impostors is become a substantial one--not constituted by abundance and freedom, but by want and oppression. The disparities of nature are not repaired, but its whole surface is levelled by a storm. The rich are become poor, but the poor still remain so; and both are conducted indiscriminately to the scaffold. The prisons of the former government were "petty to the ends" of this. Convents, colleges, palaces, and every building which could any how be adapted to such a purpose, have been filled with people deemed suspicious;* and a plan of destruction seems resolved on, more certain and more execrable than even the general massacre of September 1792. * Now multiplied to more than four hundred thousand!--The prisons of Paris and the environs were supposed to contain twenty-seven thousand. The public papers stated but about seven thousand, because they included the official returns of Paris only. --Agents of the police are, under some pretended accusation, sent to the different prisons; and, from lists previously furnished them, make daily information of plots and conspiracies, which they alledge to be carrying on by the persons confined. This charge and this evidence suffice: the prisoners are sent to the tribunal, their names read over, and they are conveyed by cart's-full to the republican butchery. Many whom I have known, and been in habits of intimacy with, have perished in this manner; and the expectation of Le Bon,* with our numbers which make us of too much consequence to be forgotten, all contribute to depress and alarm me. * Le Bon had at this period sent for lists of the prisoners in the department of the Somme--which lists are said to have been since found, and many of the names in them marked for destruction. --Even the levity of the French character yields to this terrible despotism, and nothing is observed but weariness, silence, and sorrow:-- _"O triste loisir, poids affreux du tems."_ [St. Lambert.] The season returns with the year, but not to us--the sun shines, but to add to our miseries that of insupportable heat--and the vicissitudes of nature only awaken our regret that we cannot enjoy them-- "Now gentle gales o'er all the vallies play, "Breathe on each flow'r, and bear their sweets away." [Collins.] Yet what are fresh air and green fields to us, who are immured amidst a thousand ill scents, and have no prospect but filth and stone walls? It is difficult to describe how much the mind is depressed by this state of passive suffering. In common evils, the necessity of action half relieves them, as a vessel may reach her port by the agitation of a storm; but this stagnant listless existence is terrible. Those most to be envied here are the victims of their religious opinions. The nuns, who are more distressed than any of us,* employ themselves patiently, and seem to look beyond this world; whilst the once gay deist wanders about with a volume of philosophy in his hand, unable to endure the present, and dreading still more the future. * These poor women, deprived of the little which the rapacity of the Convention had left them, by it subordinate agents, were in want of every thing; and though in most prisons they were employed for the republican armies, they could scarcely procure more than bread and water. Yet this was not all: they were objects of the meanest and most cruel persecution.--I knew one who was put in a dungeon, up to her waist in putrid water, for twelve hours altogether, without losing her resolution or serenity. I have already written you a long letter, and bid you adieu with the reluctance which precedes an uncertain separation. Uneasiness, ill health, and confinement, besides the danger I am exposed to, render my life at present more precarious than "the ordinary of nature's tenures." --God knows when I may address you again!--My friend Mad. de ____ is returned from the hospital, and I yield to her fears by ceasing to write, though I am nevertheless determined not to part with what I have hitherto preserved; being convinced, that if evil be intended us, it will be as soon without a pretext as with one.--Adieu. Providence, Aug. 11, 1794. I have for some days contemplated the fall of Robespierre and his adherents, only as one of those dispensations of Providence, which were gradually to pursue all who had engaged in the French revolution. The late change of parties has, however, taken a turn I did not expect; and, contrary to what has hitherto occurred, there is a manifest disposition in the people to avail themselves of the weakness which is necessarily occasioned by the contentions of their governors. When the news of this extraordinary event first became public, it was ever where received with great gravity--I might say, coldness.--Not a comment was uttered, nor a glance of approbation seen. Things might be yet in equilibrium, and popular commotions are always uncertain. Prudence was, therefore, deemed, indispensable; and, until the contest was finally decided, no one ventured to give an opinion; and many, to be certain of guarding against verbal indiscretion, abstained from all intercourse whatever. By degrees, the execution of Robespierre and above an hundred of his partizans, convinced even the most timid; the murmurs of suppressed discontent began to be heard; and all thought they might now with safety relieve their fears and their sufferings, by execrating the memory of the departed tyrants. The prisons, which had hitherto been avoided as endangering all who approached them, were soon visited with less apprehension; and friendship or affection, no longer exanimate by terror, solicited, though still with trepidation, the release of those for whom they were interested. Some of our associates have already left us in consequence of such intercessions, and we all hope that the tide of opinion, now avowedly inimical to the detestable system to which we are victims, will enforce a general liberation.--We are guarded but slightly; and I think I perceive in the behaviour of the Jacobin Commissaries something of civility and respect not usual. Thus an event, which I beheld merely as the justice which one set of banditti were made the instruments of exercising upon another, may finally tend to introduce a more humane system of government; or, at least, suspend proscription and massacre, and give this harassed country a little repose. I am in arrears with my epistolary chronicle, and the hope of so desirable a change will now give me courage to resume it from the conclusion of my last. To-morrow shall be dedicated to this purpose.-- Yours. August 12. My letters, previous to the time when I judged it necessary to desist from writing, will have given you some faint sketch of the situation of the country, and the sufferings of its inhabitants--I say a faint sketch, because a thousand horrors and iniquities, which are now daily disclosing, were then confined to the scenes where they were perpetrated; and we knew little more of them than what we collected from the reports of the Convention, where they excited a laugh as pleasantries, or applause as acts of patriotism. France had become one vast prison, executions were daily multiplied, and a minute and comprehensive oppression seemed to have placed the lives, liberty, and fortune of all within the grasp of the single Committee. Despair itself was subdued, and the people were gradually sinking into a gloomy and stupid obedience. * The words despotism and tyranny are sufficiently expressive of the nature of the government to which they are applied; yet still they are words rendered familiar to us only by history, and convey no precise idea, except that of a bad political system. The condition of the French at this time, besides its wretchedness, had something so strange, so original in it, that even those who beheld it with attention must be content to wonder, without pretending to offer any description as adequate. --The following extract from a speech of Bailleul, a member of the Convention, exhibits a picture nearer the original than I have yet seen-- _"La terreur dominait tous les esprits, comprimait tous les couers-- elle etait la force du gouvernement, et ce gouvernement etait tel, que les nombreux habitans d'un vaste territoire semblaient avoir perdu les qualites qui distinguent l'homme de l'animal domestique: ils semblaient meme n'avoir de vie que ce que le gouvernement voulait bien leur en accorder.--Le moi humain n'existoit plus; chaque individu n'etait qu'une machine, allant, venant, pensant ou ne pensant pas, felon que la tyrannie le pressait ou l'animait."_ Discours de Bailleul, 19 March 1795. "The minds of all were subdued by terror, and every heart was compressed beneath its influence.--In this consisted the strength of the government; and that government was such, that the immense population of a vast territory, seemed to have lost all the qualities which distinguish man from the animals attached to him.-- They appeared to exhibit no signs of life but such as their rulers condescended to permit--the very sense of existence seemed doubtful or extinct, and each individual was reduced to a mere machine, going or coming, thinking or not thinking, according as the impulse of tyranny gave him force or animation." Speech of Bailleul, 19 March 1795. On the twenty-second of Prairial, (June 10,) a law, consisting of a variety of articles for the regulation of the Revolutionary Tribunal, was introduced to the convention by Couthon, a member of the government; and, as usual adopted with very little previous discussion.--Though there was no clause of this act but ought to have given the alarm to humanity, "knocked at the heart, and bid it not be quiet;" yet the whole appeared perfectly unexceptionable to the Assembly in general: till, on farther examination, they found it contained an implied repeal of the law hitherto observed, according to which, no representative could be arrested without a preliminary decree for that purpose.--This discovery awakened their suspicions, and the next day Bourdon de l'Oise, a man of unsteady principles, (even as a revolutionist,) was spirited up to demand an explicit renunciation of any power in the Committee to attack the legislative inviolability except in the accustomed forms.--The clauses which elected a jury of murderers, that bereft all but guilt of hope, and offered no prospect to innocence but death, were passed with no other comment than the usual one of applause.*-- * The baseness, cruelty, and cowardice of the Convention are neither to be denied, nor palliated. For several months they not only passed decrees of proscription and murder which might reach every individual in France except themselves, but they even sacrificed numbers of their own body; and if, instead of proposing an article affecting the whole Convention, the Committee had demanded the heads of as many Deputies as they had occasion for by name, I am persuaded they would have met no resistance.--This single example of opposition only renders the convention still more an object of abhorrence, because it marks that they could subdue their pusillanimity when their own safety was menaced, and that their previous acquiescence was voluntary. --This, and this only, by involving their personal safety, excited their courage through their fears.--Merlin de Douay, originally a worthless character, and become yet more so by way of obviating the imputation of bribery from the court, seconded Bourdon's motion, and the obnoxious article was repealed instantaneously. This first and only instance of opposition was highly displeasing to the Committee, and, on the twenty-fourth, Robespierre, Barrere, Couthon, and Billaud, animadverted with such severity on the promoters of it, that the terrified Bourdon* declared, the repeal he had solicited was unnecessary, and that he believed the Committee were destined to be the saviours of the country; while Merlin de Douay disclaimed all share in the business-- and, in fine, it was determined, that the law of the twenty-second of Prairial should remain as first presented to the Convention, and that the qualification of the succeeding day was void. * It was on this occasion that the "intrepid" Bourdon kept his bed a whole month with fear. So dangerous an infringement on the privileges of the representative body, dwelt on minds insensible to every other consideration; the principal members caballed secretly on the perils by which they were surrounded; and the sullen concord which now marked their deliberations, was beheld by the Committee rather as the prelude to revolt, than the indication of continued obedience. In the mean while it was openly proposed to concentrate still more the functions of government. The circulation of newspapers was insinuated to be useless; and Robespierre gave some hints of suppressing all but one, which should be under particular and official controul.* * This intended restriction was unnecessary; for the newspapers were all, not indeed paid by government, but so much subject to the censure of the guillotine, that they had become, under an "unlimited freedom of the press," more cautious and insipid than the gazettes of the proscribed court. Poor Duplain, editor of the "Petit Courier," and subsequently of the "Echo," whom I remember one of the first partizans of the revolution, narrowly escaped the massacre of August 1792, and was afterwards guillotined for publishing the surrender of Landrecy three days before it was announced officially. A rumour prevailed, that the refractory members who had excited the late rebellion were to be sacrificed, a general purification of the Assembly to take place, and that the committee and a few select adherents were to be invested with the whole national authority. Lists of proscription were said to be made; and one of them was secretly communicated as having been found among the papers of a juryman of the Revolutionary Tribunal lately arrested.--These apprehensions left the members implicated no alternative but to anticipate hostilities, or fall a sacrifice; for they knew the instant of attack would be that of destruction, and that the people were too indifferent to take any part in the contest. Things were in this state, when two circumstances of a very different nature assisted in promoting the final explosion, which so much astonished, not only the rest of Europe, but France itself. It is rare that a number of men, however well meaning, perfectly agree in the exercise of power; and the combinations of the selfish and wicked must be peculiarly subject to discord and dissolution. The Committee of Public Welfare, while it enslaved the convention and the people, was torn by feuds, and undermined by the jealousies of its members. Robespierre, Couthon, and St. Just, were opposed by Collot and Billaud Varennes; while Barrere endeavoured to deceive both parties; and Carnot, Lindet, the two Prieurs, and St. Andre, laboured in the cause of the common tyranny, in the hope of still dividing it with the conquerors. For some months this enmity was restrained, by the necessity of preserving appearances, and conciliated, by a general agreement in the principles of administration, till Robespierre, relying on his superior popularity, began to take an ascendant, which alarmed such of his colleagues as were not his partisans, both for their power and their safety. Animosities daily increased, and their debates at length became so violent and noisy, that it was found necessary to remove the business of the Committee to an upper room, lest people passing under the windows should overhear these scandalous scenes. Every means were taken to keep these disputes a profound secret--the revilings which accompanied their private conferences were turned into smooth panegyrics of each other when they ascended the tribune, and their unanimity was a favourite theme in all their reports to the Convention.* * So late as on the seventh of Thermidor, (25th July,) Barrere made a pompous eulogium on the virtues of Robespierre; and, in a long account of the state of the country, he acknowledges "some little clouds hang over the political horizon, but they will soon be dispersed, by the union which subsists in the Committees;--above all, by a more speedy trial and execution of revolutionary criminals." It is difficult to imagine what new means of dispatch this airy barbarian had contrived, for in the six weeks preceding this harangue, twelve hundred and fifty had been guillotined in Paris only. The impatience of Robespierre to be released from associates whose views too much resembled his own to leave him an undivided authority, at length overcame his prudence; and, after absenting himself for six weeks from the Committee, on the 8th of Thermidor, (26th July,) he threw off the mask, and in a speech full of mystery and implications, but containing no direct charges, proclaimed the divisions which existed in the government.--On the same evening he repeated this harangue at the Jacobins, while St. Just, by his orders, menaced the obnoxious part of the Committee with a formal denunciation to the Convention.--From this moment Billaud Varennes and Collot d'Herbois concluded their destruction to be certain. In vain they soothed, expostulated with, and endeavoured to mollify St. Just, so as to avert an open rupture. The latter, who probably knew it was not Robespierre's intention to accede to any arrangement, left them to make his report. On the morning of the ninth the Convention met, and with internal dread and affected composure proceeded to their ordinary business.--St. Just then ascended the tribune, and the curiosity or indecision of the greater number permitted him to expatiate at large on the intrigues and guilt of every kind which he imputed to a "part" of the Committee.--At the conclusion of this speech, Tallien, one of the devoted members, and Billaud Varennes, the leader of the rival party, opened the trenches, by some severe remarks on the oration of St. Just, and the conduct of those with whom he was leagued. This attack encouraged others: the whole Convention joined in accusing Robespierre of tyranny; and Barrere, who perceived the business now deciding, ranged himself on the side of the strongest, though the remaining members of the Committee still appeared to preserve their neutrality. Robespierre was, for the first time, refused a hearing, yet, the influence he so lately possessed still seemed to protect him. The Assembly launched decrees against various of his subordinate agents, without daring to proceed against himself; and had not the indignant fury with which he was seized, at the desertion of those by whom he had been most flattered, urged him to call for arrest and death, it is probable the whole would have ended in the punishment of his enemies, and a greater accession of power to himself. But at this crisis all Robespierre's circumspection abandoned him. Having provoked the decree for arresting his person, instead of submitting to it until his party should be able to rally, he resisted; and by so doing gave the Convention a pretext for putting him out of the law; or, in other words, to destroy him, without the delay or hazard of a previous trial. Having been rescued from the Gens d'Armes, and taken in triumph to the municipality, the news spread, the Jacobins assembled, and Henriot, the commander of the National Guard, (who had likewise been arrested, and again set at liberty by force,) all prepared to act in his defence. But while they should have secured the Convention, they employed themselves at the Hotel de Ville in passing frivolous resolutions; and Henriot, with all the cannoneers decidedly in his favour, exhibited an useless defiance, by stalking before the windows of the Committee of General Safety, when he should have been engaged in arresting its members. All these imprudences gave the Convention time to proclaim that Robespierre, the municipality, and their adherents, were decreed out of the protection of the laws, and in circumstances of this nature such a step has usually been decisive--for however odious a government, if it does but seem to act on a presumption of its own strength, it has always an advantage over its enemies; and the timid, the doubtful, or indifferent, for the most part, determine in favour of whatever wears the appearance of established authority. The people, indeed, remained perfectly neuter; but the Jacobins, the Committees of the Sections, and their dependents, might have composed a force more than sufficient to oppose the few guards which surrounded the National Palace, had not the publication of this summary outlawry at once paralyzed all their hopes and efforts.--They had seen multitudes hurried to the Guillotine, because they were "hors de la loi;" and this impression now operated so forcibly, that the cannoneers, the national guard, and those who before were most devoted to the cause, laid down their arms, and precipitately abandoned their chiefs to the fate which awaited them. Robespierre was taken at the Hotel de Ville, after being severely wounded in the face; his brother broke his thigh, in attempting to escape from a window; Henriot was dragged from concealment, deprived of an eye; and Couthon, whom nature had before rendered a cripple, now exhibited a most hideous spectacle, from an ineffectual effort to shoot himself.--Their wounds were dressed to prolong their suffering, and their sentence being contained in the decree that outlawed them, their persons were identified by the same tribunal which had been the instrument of their crimes. --On the night of the tenth they were conveyed to the scaffold, amidst the insults and execrations of a mob, which a few hours before beheld them with trembling and adoration.--Lebas, also a member of the convention, and a principal agent of Robespierre, fell by his own hand; and Couthon, St. Just, and seventeen others, suffered with the two Robespierres.--The municipality of Paris, &c. to the number of seventy-two, were guillotined the succeeding day, and about twelve more the day after. The fate of these men may be ranked as one of the most dreadful of those examples which history vainly transmits to discourage the pursuits of ambition. The tyrant who perishes amidst the imposing fallaciousness of military glory, mingles admiration with abhorrence, and rescues his memory from contempt, if not from hatred. Even he who expiates his crimes on the scaffold, if he die with fortitude, becomes the object of involuntary compassion, and the award of justice is not often rendered more terrible by popular outrage. But the fall of Robespierre and his accomplices was accompanied by every circumstance that could add poignancy to suffering, or dread to death. The ambitious spirit which had impelled them to tyrannize over a submissive and defenceless people, abandoned them in their last moments. Depressed by anguish, exhausted by fatigue, and without courage, religion, or virtue, to support them, they were dragged through the savage multitude, wounded and helpless, to receive that stroke, from which even the pious and the brave sometimes shrink with dismay. Robespierre possessed neither the talents nor merits of Nicolas Riezi; but they are both conspicuous instances of the mutability of popular support, and there is a striking similitude in the last events of their history. They both degraded their ambition by cowardice--they were both deserted by the populace, whom they began by flattering, and ended by oppressing; and the death of both was painful and ignominious--borne without dignity, and embittered by reproach and insult.* * Robespierre lay for some hours in one of the committee-rooms, writhing with the pain of his wound, and abandoned to despair; while many of his colleagues, perhaps those who had been the particular agents and applauders of his crimes, passed and repassed him, glorying and jesting at his sufferings. The reader may compare the death of Robespierre with that of Rienzi; but if the people of Rome revenged the tyranny of the Tribune, they were neither so mean nor so ferocious as the Parisians. You will perceive by this summary that the overthrow of Robespierre was chiefly occasioned by the rivalship of his colleagues in the Committee, assisted by the fears of the Convention at large for themselves.--Another circumstance, at which I have already hinted, as having some share in this event, shall be the subject of my next letter. Providence, Aug. 13, 1794. _Amour, tu perdis Troye_ [Love! thou occasionedst the destruction of Troy.]:--yet, among the various mischiefs ascribed to the influence of this capricious Sovereign, amidst the wrecks of sieges, and the slaughter of battles, perhaps we may not unjustly record in his praise, that he was instrumental to the solace of humanity, by contributing to the overthrow of Robespierre. It is at least pleasing to turn from the general horrors of the revolution, and suppose, for a moment, that the social affections were not yet entirely banished, and that gallantry still retained some empire, when every other vestige of civilization was almost annihilated. After such an exordium, I feel a little ashamed of my hero, and could wish, for the credit of my tale, it were not more necessary to invoke the historic muse of Fielding, than that of Homer or Tasso; but imperious Truth obliges me to confess, that Tallien, who is to be the subject of this letter, was first introduced to celebrity by circumstances not favourable for the comment of my poetical text. At the beginning of the revolution he was known only as an eminent orator en plain vent; that is, as a preacher of sedition to the mob, whom he used to harangue with great applause at the Palais Royal. Having no profession or means of subsistence, he, as Dr. Johnson observes of one of our poets, necessarily became an author. He was, however, no farther entitled to this appellation, than as a periodical scribbler in the cause of insurrection; but in this he was so successful, that it recommended him to the care of Petion and the municipality, to whom his talents and principles were so acceptable, that they made him Secretary to the Committee. On the second and third of September 1792, he superintended the massacre of the prisons, and is alledged to have paid the assassins according to the number of victims they dispatched with great regularity; and he himself seems to have little to say in his defence, except that he acted officially. Yet even the imputation of such a claim could not be overlooked by the citizens of Paris; and at the election of the Convention he was distinguished by being chosen one of their representatives. It is needless to describe his political career in the Assembly otherwise than by adding, that when the revolutionary furor was at its acme, he was deemed by the Committee of Public Welfare worthy of an important mission in the South. The people of Bourdeaux were, accordingly, for some time harassed by the usual effects of these visitations--imprisonments and the Guillotine; and Tallien, though eclipsed by Maignet and Carrier, was by no means deficient in the patriotic energies of the day. I think I must before have mentioned to you a Madame de Fontenay, the wife of an emigrant, whom I occasionally saw at Mad. de C____'s. I then remarked her for the uncommon attraction of her features, and the elegance of her person; but was so much disgusted at a tendency to republicanism I observed in her, and which, in a young woman, I thought unbecoming, that I did not promote the acquaintance, and our different pursuits soon separated us entirely. Since this period I have learned, that her conduct became exceedingly imprudent, or at least suspicious, and that at the general persecution, finding her republicanism would not protect her, she fled to Bourdeaux, with the hope of being able to proceed to Spain. Here, however, being a Spaniard by birth, and the wife of an emigrant, she was arrested and thrown into prison, where she remained till the arrival of Tallien on his mission. The miscellaneous occupations of a deputy-errant, naturally include an introduction to the female prisoners; and Tallien's presence afforded Mad. de Fontenay an occasion of pleading her cause with all the success which such a pleader might, in other times, be supposed to obtain from a judge of Tallien's age. The effect of the scenes Tallien had been an actor in, was counteracted by youth, and his heart was not yet indifferent to the charms of beauty--Mad. de Fontenay was released by the captivation of her liberator, and a reciprocal attachment ensued. We must not, however, conclude, all this merely a business of romance. Mad. de Fontenay was rich, and had connexions in Spain, which might hereafter procure an asylum, when a regicide may with difficulty find one: and on the part of the lady, though Tallien's person is agreeable, a desire of protecting herself and her fortune might be allowed to have some influence. From this time the revolutionist is said to have given way: Bourdeaux became the Capua of Tallien; and its inhabitants were, perhaps, indebted for a more moderate exercise of his power, to the smiles of Mad. de Fontenay.--From hanging loose on society, he had now the prospect of marrying a wife with a large fortune; and Tallien very wisely considered, that having something at stake, a sort of comparative reputation among the higher class of people at Bourdeaux, might be of more importance to him in future, than all the applause the Convention could bestow on a liberal use of the Guillotine.--The relaxed system which was the consequence of such policy, soon reached the Committee of Public Welfare, to whom it was highly displeasing, and Tallien was recalled. A youth of the name of Julien, particularly in the confidence of Robespierre, was then sent to Bourdeaux, not officially as his successor, but as a spy, to collect information concerning him, as well as to watch the operations of other missionaries, and prevent their imitating Tallien's schemes of personal advantage, at the expence of scandalizing the republic by an appearance of lenity.--The disastrous state of Lyons, the persecutions of Carrier, the conflagrations of Maignet, and the crimes of various other Deputies, had obliterated the minor revolutionisms of Tallien:* The citizens of Bourdeaux spoke of him without horror, which in these times was equal to eulogium; and Julien transmitted such accounts of his conduct to Robespierre,** as were equally alarming to the jealousy of his spirit, and repugnant to the cruelty of his principles. * It was Tallien's boast to have guillotined only aristocrats, and of this part of his merit I am willing to leave him in possession. At Toulon he was charged with the punishment of those who had given up the town to the English; but finding, as he alledged, nearly all the inhabitants involved, he selected about two hundred of the richest, and that the horrid business might wear an appearance of regularity, the patriots, that is, the most notorious Jacobins, were ordered to give their opinion on the guilt of these victims, who were brought out into an open field for that purpose. With such judges the sentence was soon passed, and a fusillade took place on the spot.--It was on this occasion that Tallien made particular boast of his humanity; and in the same publication where he relates the circumstance, he exposes the "atrocious conduct" of the English at the surrender of Toulon. The cruelty of these barbarians not being sufficiently gratified by dispatching the patriots the shortest way, they hung up many of them by their chins on hooks at the shambles, and left them to die at their leisure.--See "Mitraillades, Fusillades," a recriminating pamphlet, addressed by Tallien to Collot d'Herbois.--The title alludes to Collot's exploits at Lyons. ** It is not out of the usual course of things that Tallien's moderation at Bourdeaux might have been profitable; and the wife or mistress of a Deputy was, on such occasions, a useful medium, through which the grateful offerings of a rich and favoured aristocrat might be conveyed, without committing the legislative reputation.--The following passage from Julien's correspondence with Robespierre seems to allude to some little arrangements of this nature: "I think it my duty to transmit you an extract from a letter of Tallien's, [Which had been intercepted.] to the National Club.--It coincides with the departure of La Fontenay, whom the Committee of General Safety have doubtless had arrested. I find some very curious political details regarding her; and Bourdeaux seems to have been, until this moment, a labyrinth of intrigue and peculation." It appears from Robespierre's papers, that not only Tallien, but Legendre, Bourdon de l'Oise, Thuriot, and others, were incessantly watched by the spies of the Committee. The profession must have improved wonderfully under the auspices of the republic, for I doubt if _Mons. le Noir's Mouchards_ [The spies of the old police, so called in derision.-- Brissot, in this act of accusation, is described as having been an agent of the Police under the monarchy.--I cannot decide on the certainty of this, or whether his occupation was immediately that of a spy, but I have respectable authority for saying, that antecedent to the revolution, his character was very slightly estimated, and himself considered as "hanging loose on society."] were as able as Robespierre's.--The reader may judge from the following specimens: "The 6th instant, the deputy Thuriot, on quitting the Convention, went to No. 35, Rue Jaques, section of the Pantheon, to the house of a pocket-book maker, where he staid talking with a female about ten minutes. He then went to No. 1220, Rue Fosse St. Bernard, section of the Sans-Culottes, and dined there at a quarter past two. At a quarter past seven he left the last place, and meeting a citizen on the Quay de l'Ecole, section of the Museum, near le Cafe Manoury, they went in there together, and drank a bottle of beer. From thence he proceeded to la Maison Memblee de la Providence, No. 16, Rue d'Orleans Honore, section de la Halle au Bled, whence, after staying about five-and-twenty minutes, he came out with a citoyenne, who had on a puce Levite, a great bordered shawl of Japan cotton, and on her head a white handkerchief, made to look like a cap. They went together to No. 163, Place Egalite, where after stopping an instant, they took a turn in the galleries, and then returned to sup.--They went in at half past nine, and were still there at eleven o'clock, when we came away, not being certain if they would come out again. "Bourdon de l'Oise, on entering the Assembly, shook hands with four or five Deputies. He was observed to gape while good news was announcing." Tallien was already popular among the Jacobins of Paris; and his connexion with a beautiful woman, who might enable him to keep a domestic establishment, and to display any wealth he had acquired, without endangering his reputation, was a circumstance not to be overlooked; for Robespierre well knew the efficacy of female intrigue, and dinners,* in gaining partizans among the subordinate members of the Convention. * Whoever reads attentively, and in detail, the debates of the Convention, will observe the influence and envy created by a superior style of living in any particular member. His dress, his lodging, or dinners, are a perpetual subject of malignant reproach. --This is not to be wondered at, when we consider the description of men the Convention is composed of;--men who, never having been accustomed to the elegancies of life, behold with a grudging eye the gay apparel or luxurious table of a colleague, who arrived at Paris with no other treasure but his patriotism, and has no ostensible means beyond his eighteen livres a day, now increased to thirty-six. Mad. de Fontenay, was, therefore, on her arrival at Paris, whither she had followed Tallien, (probably in order to procure a divorce and marry him,) arrested, and conveyed to prison. An injury of this kind was not to be forgiven; and Robespierre seems to have acted on the presumption that it could not. He beset Tallien with spies, menaced him in the Convention, and made Mad. de Fontenay an offer of liberty, if she would produce a substantial charge against him, which he imagined her knowledge of his conduct at Bourdeaux might furnish her grounds for doing. A refusal must doubtless have irritated the tyrant; and Tallien had every reason to fear she would soon be included in one of the lists of victims who were daily sacrificed as conspirators in the prisons. He was himself in continual expectation of being arrested; and it was generally believed Robespierre would soon openly accuse him.--Thus situated, he eagerly embraced the opportunity which the schism in the Committee presented of attacking his adversary, and we certainly must allow him the merit of being the first who dared to move for the arrest of Robespierre.--I need not add, that la belle was one of the first whose prison doors were opened; and I understand that, being divorced from Mons. de Fontenay, she is either married, or on the point of being so, to Tallien. This conclusion spoils my story as a moral one; and had I been the disposer of events, the Septembriser, the regicide, and the cold assassin of the Toulonais, should have found other rewards than affluence, and a wife who might represent one of Mahomet's Houris. Yet, surely, "the time will come, though it come ne'er so slowly," when Heaven shall separate guilt from prosperity, and when Tallien and his accomplices shall be remembered only as monuments of eternal justice. For the lady, her faults are amply punished in the disgrace of such an alliance-- "A cut-purse of the empire and the rule; "____ a King of shreds and patches." Providence, Aug. 14, 1794. The thirty members whom Robespierre intended to sacrifice, might perhaps have formed some design of resisting, but it appears evident that the Convention in general acted without plan, union, or confidence.*-- * The base and selfish timidity of the Convention is strongly evinced by their suffering fifty innocent people to be guillotined on the very ninth of Thermidor, for a pretended conspiracy in the prison of St. Lazare.--A single word from any member might at this crisis have suspended the execution of the sentence, but that word no one had the courage or the humanity to utter. --Tallien and Billaud were rendered desperate by their situation, and it is likely that, when they ventured to attack Robespierre, they did not themselves expect to be successful--it was the consternation of the latter which encouraged them to persist, and the Assembly to support them: "There is a tide in the affairs of men, "Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune." And to have been lucky enough to seize on this crisis, is, doubtless, the whole merit of the convention. There has, it is true, been many allusions to the dagger of Brutus, and several Deputies are said to have conceived very heroic projects for the destruction of the tyrant; but as he was dead before these projects were brought to light, we cannot justly ascribe any effect to them. The remains of the Brissotin faction, still at liberty, from whom some exertions might have been expected, were cautiously inactive; and those who had been most in the habit of appreciating themselves for their valour, were now conspicuous only for that discretion which Falstaff calls the better part of it.--Dubois Crance, who had been at the expence of buying a Spanish poniard at St. Malo, for the purpose of assassinating Robespierre, seems to have been calmed by the journey, and to have finally recovered his temper, before he reached the Convention.--Merlin de Thionville, Merlin de Douay, and others of equal note, were among the "passive valiant;" and Bourdon de l'Oise had already experienced such disastrous effects from inconsiderate exhibitions of courage, that he now restrained his ardour till the victory should be determined. Even Legendre, who is occasionally the Brutus, the Curtius, and all the patriots whose names he has been able to learn, confined his prowess to an assault on the club-room of the Jacobins, when it was empty, and carrying off the key, which no one disputed with him, so that he can at most claim an ovation. It is, in short, remarkable, that all the members who at present affect to be most vehement against Robespierre's principles, [And where was the all-politic Sieyes?--At home, writing his own eulogium.] were the least active in attacking his person; and it is indisputable, that to Tallien, Billaud, Louchet, Elie Lacoste, Collot d'Herbois, and a few of the more violent Jacobins, were due those first efforts which determined his fall.--Had Robespierre, instead of a querelous harangue, addressed the convention in his usual tone of authority, and ended by moving for a decree against a few only of those obnoxious to him, the rest might have been glad to compound for their own safety, by abandoning a cause no longer personal: but his impolicy, not his wickedness, hastened his fate; and it is so far fortunate for France, that it has at least suspended the system of government which is ascribed to him. The first days of victory were passed in receiving congratulations, and taking precautions; and though men do not often adapt their claims to their merits, yet the members of the Convention seemed in general to be conscious that none amongst them had very decided pretensions to the spoils of the vanquished.--Of twelve, which originally composed the Committee of Public Welfare, seven only remained; yet no one ventured to suggest a completion of the number, till Barrere, after previously insinuating how adequate he and his colleagues were to the task of "saving the country," proposed, in his flippant way, and merely as a matter of form, that certain persons whom he recommended, should fill up the vacancies in the government. This modest Carmagnole* was received with great coolness; the late implicit acquiescence was changed to demur, and an adjournment unanimously called for. * A ludicrous appellation, which Barrere used to give to his reports in the presence of those who were in the secret of his Charlatanry. The air of "La Carmagnole" was originally composed when the town of that name was taken by Prince Eugene, and was adapted to the indecent words now sung by the French after the 10th of August 1792. --Such unusual temerity susprised and alarmed the remains of the Committee, and Billaud Varennes sternly reminded the Convention of the abject state they were so lately released from. This produced retort and replication, and the partners of Robespierre's enormities, who had hoped to be the tranquil inheritors of his power, found, that in destroying a rival, they had raised themselves masters. The Assembly persisted in not adopting the members offered to be imposed upon them; but, as it was easier to reject than to choose, the Committee were ordered to present a new plan for this part of the executive branch, and the election of those to be entrusted with it was postponed for farther consideration. Having now felt their strength, they next proceeded to renew a part of the committee of General Safety, several of its members being inculpated as partizans of Robespierre, and though this Committee had become entirely subordinate to that of Public Welfare, yet its functions were too important for it to be neglected, more especially as they comprised a very favourite branch of the republican government, that of issuing writs of arrest at pleasure.--The law of the twenty-second of Prairial is also repealed, but the Revolutionary Tribunal is preserved, and the necessity of suspending the old jury, as being the creatures of Robespierre, has not prevented the tender solicitude of the Convention for a renovated activity in the establishment itself. This assumption of power has become every day more confirmed, and the addresses which are received by the Assembly, though yet in a strain of gross adulation,* express such an abhorrence of the late system, as must suffice to convince them the people are not disposed to see such a system continued. * A collection of addresses, presented to the Convention at various periods, might form a curious history of the progress of despotism. These effusions of zeal were not, however, all in the "sublime" style: the legislative dignity sometimes condescended to unbend itself, and listen to metrical compositions, enlivened by the accompaniment of fiddles; but the manly and ferocious Danton, to whom such sprightly interruptions were not congenial, proposed a decree, that the citizens should, in future, express their adorations in plain prose, and without any musical accessories. Billaud Varennes, Collot, and other members of the old Committee, view these innovations with sullen acquiescence; but Barrere, whose frivolous and facile spirit is incapable of consistency, even in wickedness, perseveres and flourishes at the tribune as gaily as ever.--Unabashed by detection, insensible to contempt, he details his epigrams and antitheses against Catilines and Cromwells with as much self-sufficiency as when, in the same tinsel eloquence, he promulgated the murderous edicts of Robespierre. Many of the prisoners at Paris continue daily to obtain their release, and, by the exertions of his personal enemies, particularly of our quondam sovereign, Andre Dumont, (now a member of the Committee of General Safety,) an examination into the atrocities committed by Le Bon is decreed.--But, amidst these appearances of justice, a versatility of principle, or rather an evident tendency to the decried system, is perceptible. Upon the slightest allusion to the revolutionary government, the whole Convention rise in a mass to vociferate their adherence to it:* the tribunal, which was its offspring and support, is anxiously reinstalled; and the low insolence with which Barrere announces their victories in the Netherlands, is, as usual, loudly applauded. * The most moderate, as well as the most violent, were always united on the subject of this irrational tyranny.--_"Toujours en menageant, comme la prunelle de ses yeux, le gouvernement revolutionnaire."_-- "Careful always of the revolutionary government, as of the apple of their eye." _Fragment pour servir a l'Hist. de la Convention, par J. J. Dussault_. The brothers of Cecile Renaud, who were sent for by Robespierre from the army to Paris, in order to follow her to the scaffold, did not arrive until their persecutor was no more, and a change of government was avowed. They have presented themselves at the bar of the Convention, to entreat a revisal of their father's sentence, and some compensation for his property, so unjustly confiscated.--You will, perhaps, imagine, that, at the name of these unfortunate young men, every heart anticipated a consent to their claims, even before the mind could examine the justice of them, and that one of those bursts of sensibility for which this legislature is so remarkable instantaneously accorded the petition. Alas! this was not an occasion to excite the enthusiasm of the Convention: Coupilleau de Fontenay, one of the "mild and moderate party", repulsed the petitioners with harshness, and their claim was silenced by a call for the order of the day. The poor Renauds were afterwards coldly referred to the Committee of Relief, for a pittance, by way of charity, instead of the property they have a right to, and which they have been deprived of, by the base compliance of the Convention with the caprice of a monster. Such relapses and aberrations are not consolatory, but the times and circumstances seem to oppose them--the whole fabric of despotism is shaken, and we have reason to hope the efforts of tyranny will be counteracted by its weakness. We do not yet derive any advantage from the early maturity of the harvest, and it is still with difficulty we obtain a limited portion of bad bread. Severe decrees are enacted to defeat the avarice of the farmers, and prevent monopolies of the new corn; but these people are invulnerable: they have already been at issue with the system of terror-- and it was found necessary, even before the death of Robespierre, to release them from prison, or risk the destruction of the harvest for want of hands to get it in. It is now discovered, that natural causes, and the selfishness of individuals, are adequate to the creation of a temporary scarcity; yet when this happened under the King, it was always ascribed to the machinations of government.--How have the people been deceived, irritated, and driven to rebellion, by a degree of want, less, much less, insupportable than that they are obliged to suffer at present, without daring even to complain! I have now been in confinement almost twelve months, and my health is considerably impaired. The weather is oppressively warm, and we have no shade in the garden but under a mulberry-tree, which is so surrounded by filth, that it is not approachable. I am, however, told, that in a few days, on account of my indisposition, I shall be permitted to go home, though with a proviso of being guarded at my own expence.--My friends are still at Arras; and if this indulgence be extended to Mad. de la F____, she will accompany me. Personal accommodation, and an opportunity of restoring my health, render this desirable; but I associate no idea of freedom with my residence in this country. The boundary may be extended, but it is still a prison.--Yours. Providence, Aug. 15, 1794. To-morrow I expect to quit this place, and have been wandering over it for the last time. You will imagine I can have no attachment to it: yet a retrospect of my sensations when I first arrived, of all I have experienced, and still more of what I have apprehended since that period, makes me look forward to my departure with a satisfaction that I might almost call melancholy. This cell, where I have shivered through the winter--the long passages, which I have so often traversed in bitter rumination--the garden, where I have painfully breathed a purer air, at the risk of sinking beneath the fervid rays of an unmitigated sun, are not scenes to excite regret; but when I think that I am still subject to the tyranny which has so long condemned me to them, this reflection, with a sentiment perhaps of national pride, which is wounded by accepting as a favour what I have been unjustly deprived of, renders me composed, if not indifferent, at the prospect of my release. This dreary epoch of my life has not been without its alleviations. I have found a chearful companion in Mad. de M____, who, at sixty, was brought here, because she happened to be the daughter of Count L____, who has been dead these thirty years!--The graces and silver accents of Madame de B____, might have assisted in beguiling severer captivity; and the Countess de C____, and her charming daughters (the eldest of whom is not to be described in the common place of panegyric), who, though they have borne their own afflictions with dignity, have been sensible to the misfortunes of others, and whom I must, in justice, except from all the imputations of meanness or levity, which I have sometimes had occasion to notice in those who, like themselves, were objects of republican persecution, have essentially contributed to diminish the horrors of confinement.--I reckon it likewise among my satisfactions, that, with the exception of the Marechalle de Biron,* and General O'Moran, none of our fellow-prisoners have suffered on the scaffold.-- * The Marechalle de Biron, a very old and infirm woman, was taken from hence to the Luxembourg at Paris, where her daughter-in-law, the Duchess, was also confined. A cart arriving at that prison to convey a number of victims to the tribunal, the list, in the coarse dialect of republicanism, contained the name of la femme Biron. "But there are two of them," said the keeper. "Then bring them both."-- The aged Marechalle, who was at supper, finished her meal while the rest were preparing, then took up her book of devotion, and departed chearfully.--The next day both mother and daughter were guillotined. --Dumont has, indeed, virtually occasioned the death of several; in particular the Duc du Chatelet, the Comte de Bethune, Mons. de Mancheville, &c.--and it is no merit in him that Mr. Luttrell, with a poor nun of the name of Pitt,* whom he took from hence to Paris, as a capture which might give him importance, were not massacred either by the mob or the tribunal. * This poor woman, whose intellects, as I am informed, appeared in a state of derangement, was taken from a convent at Abbeville, and brought to the Providence, as a relation of Mr. Pitt, though I believe she has no pretensions to that honour. But the name of Pitt gave her importance; she was sent to Paris under a military escort, and Dumont announced the arrival of this miserable victim with all the airs of a conqueror. I have been since told, she was lodged at St. Pelagie, where she suffered innumerable hardships, and did not recover her liberty for many months after the fall of Robespierre. --If the persecution of this department has not been sanguinary,* it should be remembered, that it has been covered with prisons; and that the extreme submission of its inhabitants would scarcely have furnished the most merciless tyrant with a pretext for a severer regimen.-- * There were some priests guillotined at Amiens, but the circumstance was concealed from me for some months after it happened. --Dumont, I know, expects to establish a reputation by not having guillotined as an amusement, and hopes that he may here find a retreat when his revolutionary labours shall be finished. The Convention have not yet chosen the members who are to form the new Committee. They were yesterday solemnly employed in receiving the American Ambassador; likewise a brass medal of the tyrant Louis the Fourteenth, and some marvellous information about the unfortunate Princess' having dressed herself in mourning at the death of Robespierre. These legislators remind me of one of Swift's female attendants, who, in spite of the literary taste he endeavoured to inspire her with, never could be divested of her original housewifely propensities, but would quit the most curious anecdote, as he expresses it, "to go seek an old rag in a closet." Their projects for the revival of their navy seldom go farther than a transposal in the stripes of the flag, and their vengeance against regal anthropophagi, and proud islanders, is infallibly diverted by a denunciation of an aristocratic quartrain, or some new mode, whose general adoption renders it suspected as the badge of a party.--If, according to Cardinal de Retz' opinion, elaborate attention to trifles denote a little mind, these are true Lilliputian sages.--Yours, &c. August, 1794. I did not leave the Providence until some days after the date of my last: there were so many precautions to be taken, and so many formalities to be observed--such references from the municipality to the district, and from the district to the Revolutionary Committee, that it is evident Robespierre's death has not banished the usual apprehension of danger from the minds of those who became responsible for acts of justice or humanity. At length, after procuring a house-keeper to answer with his life and property for our re-appearance, and for our attempting nothing against the "unity and indivisibility" of the republic, we bade (I hope) a long adieu to our prison. Madame de ____ is to remain with me till her house can be repaired; for it has been in requisition so often, that there is now, we are told, scarcely a bed left, or a room habitable. We have an old man placed with us by way of a guard, but he is civil, and is not intended to be a restraint upon us. In fact, he has a son, a member of the Jacobin club, and this opportunity is taken to compliment him, by taxing us with the maintenance of his father. It does not prevent us from seeing our acquaintance, and we might, I suppose, go out, though we have not yet ventured. The politics of the Convention are fluctuating and versatile, as will ever be the case where men are impelled by necessity to act in opposition to their principles. In their eagerness to attribute all the past excesses to Robespierre, they have, unawares, involved themselves in the obligation of not continuing the same system. They doubtless expected, by the fall of the tyrant, to become his successors; but the people, weary of being dupes, and of hearing that tyrants were fallen, without feeling any diminution of tyranny, have every where manifested a temper, which the Convention, in the present relaxed state of its power, is fearful of making experiments upon. Hence, great numbers of prisoners are liberated, those that remain are treated more indulgently, and the fury of revolutionary despotism is in general abated. The Deputies who most readily assent to these changes have assumed the appellation of Moderates; (Heaven knows how much they are indebted to comparison;) and the popularity they have acquired has both offended and alarmed the more inflexible Jacobins. A motion has just been made by one Louchet, that a list of all persons lately enlarged should be printed, with the names of those Deputies who solicited in their favour, annexed; and that such aristocrats as were thus discovered to have regained their liberty, should be re-imprisoned.--The decree passed, but was so ill received by the people, that it was judged prudent to repeal it the next day. This circumstance seems to be the signal of dissention between the Assembly and the Club: the former, apprehensive of revolting the public opinion on the one hand, and desirous of conciliating the Jacobins on the other, waver between indulgence and severity; but it is easy to discover, that their variance with the Jacobins is more a matter of expediency than principle, and that, were it not for other considerations, they would not suffer the imprisonment of a few thousand harmless people to interrupt the amity which has so long subsisted between themselves and their ancient allies.--It is written, "from their works you shall know them;" and reasoning from this tenet, which is our best authority, (for who can boast a science in the human heart?) I am justified in my opinion, and I know it to be that of many persons more competent to decide than myself. If I could have had doubts on the subject, the occurrences of the last few days would have amply satisfied them. However rejoiced the nation at large might be at the overthrow of Robespierre, no one was deceived as to the motives which actuated his colleagues in the Committee. Every day produced new indications not only of their general concurrence in the enormities of the government, but of their own personal guilt. The Convention, though it could not be insensible of this, was willing, with a complaisant prudence, to avoid the scandal of a public discussion, which must irritate the Jacobins, and expose its own weakness by a retrospect of the crimes it had applauded and supported. Laurent Lecointre,* alone, and apparently unconnected with party, has had the courage to exhibit an accusation against Billaud, Collot, Barrere, and those of Robespierre's accomplices who were members of the Committee of General Safety. He gave notice of his design on the eleventh of Fructidor (28th of August). * Lecointre is a linen-draper at Versailles, an original revolutionist, and I believe of more decent character than most included in that description. If we could be persuaded that there were any real fanatics in the Convention, I should give Lecointre the credit of being among the number. He seems, at least, to have some material circumstances in his favour--such as possessing the means of living; of not having, in appearance, enriched himself by the revolution; and, of being the only member who, after a score of decrees to that purpose, has ventured to produce an account of his fortune to the public. --It was received everywhere but in the Convention with applause; and the public was flattered with the hope that justice would attain another faction of its oppressors. On the succeeding day, Lecointre appeared at the tribune to read his charges. They conveyed, even to the most prejudiced mind, an entire conviction, that the members he accused were sole authors of a part, and accomplices in all the crimes which had desolated their country. Each charge was supported by material proof, which he deposited for the information of his colleagues. But this was unnecessary--his colleagues had no desire to be convinced; and, after overpowering him with ridicule and insult, they declared, without entering into any discussion, that they rejected the charges with indignation, and that the members implicated had uniformly acted according to their [own] wishes, and those of the nation. As soon as this result was known in Paris, the people became enraged and disgusted, the public walks resounded with murmurs, the fermentation grew general, and some menaces were uttered of forcing the Convention to give Lecointre a more respectful hearing.--Intimidated by such unequivocal proofs of disapprobation, when the Assembly met on the thirteenth, it was decreed, after much opposition from Tallien, that Lecointre should be allowed to reproduce his charges, and that they should be solemnly examined. After all this, Lecointre, whose figure is almost ludicrous, and who is no orator, was to repeat a voluminous denunciation, amidst the clamour, abuse, chicane, and derision of the whole Convention. But there are occasions when the keenest ridicule is pointless; when the mind, armed by truth and elevated by humanity, rejects its insidious efforts--and, absorbed by more laudable feelings, despises even the smile of contempt. The justice of Lecointre's cause supplied his want of external advantages: and his arguments were so clear and so unanswerable, that the plain diction in which they were conveyed was more impressive than the most finished eloquence; and neither the malice nor sarcasms of his enemies had any effect but on those who were interested in silencing or confounding him. Yet, in proportion as the force of Lecointre's denunciation became evident, the Assembly appeared anxious to suppress it; and, after some hours' scandalous debate, during which it was frequently asserted that these charges could not be encouraged without criminating the entire legislative body, they decreed the whole to be false and defamatory. The accused members defended themselves with the assurance of delinquents tried by their avowed accomplices, and who are previously certain of favour and acquittal; while Lecointre's conduct in the business seems to have been that of a man determined to persevere in an act of duty, which he has little reason to hope will be successful.* * It is said, that, at the conclusion of this disgraceful business, the members of the convention crouded about the delinquents with their habitual servility, and appeared gratified that their services on the occasion had given them a claim to notice and familiarity. Though the galleries of the Convention were more than usually furnished on the day with applauders, yet this decision has been universally ill received. The time is passed when the voice of reason could be silenced by decrees. The stupendous tyranny of the government, though not meliorated in principle, is relaxed in practice; and this vote, far from operating in favour of the culprits, has only served to excite the public indignation, and to render them more odious. Those who cannot judge of the logical precision of Lecointre's arguments, or the justness of his inferences, can feel that his charges are merited. Every heart, every tongue, acknowledges the guilt of those he has attacked. They are certain France has been the prey of numberless atrocities--they are certain, that these were perpetrated by order of the committee; that eleven members composed it; and that Robespierre and his associates being but three, did not constitute a majority. These facts are now commented on with as much freedom as can be expected among a people whose imaginations are yet haunted by revolutionary tribunals and Bastilles, and the conclusions are not favourable to the Convention. The national discontent is, however, suspended by the hostilities between the legislature and the Jacobin club: the latter still persists in demanding the revolutionary system in its primitive severity, while the former are restrained from compliance, not only by the odium it must draw on them, but from a certainty that it cannot be supported but through the agency of the popular societies, who would thus again become their dictators. I believe it is not unlikely that the people and the Convention are both endeavouring to make instruments of each other to destroy the common enemy; for the little popularity the Convention enjoy is doubtless owing to a superior hatred of the Jacobins: and the moderation which the former affect towards the people, is equally influenced by a view of forming a powerful balance against these obnoxious societies.--While a sort of necessity for this temporizing continues, we shall go on very tranquilly, and it is become a mode to say the Convention is "adorable." Tallien, who has been wrestling with his ill fame for a transient popularity, has thought it advisable to revive the public attention by the farce of Pisistratus--at least, an attempt to assassinate him, in which there seems to have been more eclat than danger, has given rise to such an opinion. Bulletins of his health are delivered every day in form to the Convention, and some of the provincial clubs have sent congratulations on his escape. But the sneers of the incredulous, and perhaps an internal admonition of the ridicule and disgrace attendant on the worship of an idol whose reputation is so unpropitious, have much repressed the customary ardour, and will, I think, prevent these "hair-breadth 'scapes" from continuing fashionable.--Yours, &c. [No Date Given] When I describe the French as a people bending meekly beneath the most absurd and cruel oppression, transmitted from one set of tyrants to another, without personal security, without commerce--menaced by famine, and desolated by a government whose ordinary resources are pillage and murder; you may perhaps read with some surprize the progress and successes of their armies. But, divest yourself of the notions you may have imbibed from interested misrepresentations--forget the revolutionary common-place of "enthusiams", "soldiers of freedom," and "defenders of their country"--examine the French armies as acting under the motives which usually influence such bodies, and I am inclined to believe you will see nothing very wonderful or supernatural in their victories. The greater part of the French troops are now composed of young men taken indiscriminately from all classes, and forced into the service by the first requisition. They arrive at the army ill-disposed, or at best indifferent, for it must not be forgotten, that all who could be prevailed on to go voluntarily had departed before recourse was had to the measure of a general levy. They are then distributed into different corps, so that no local connections remain: the natives of the North are mingled with those of the South, and all provincial combinations are interdicted. It is well known that the military branch of espionage is as extended as the civil, and the certainty of this destroys confidence, and leaves even the unwilling soldier no resource but to go through his professional duty with as much zeal as though it were his choice. On the one hand, the discipline is severe--on the other, licentiousness is permitted beyond all example; and, half-terrified, half-seduced, principles the most inimical, and morals the least corrupt, become habituated to fear nothing but the government, and to relish a life of military indulgence.--The armies were some time since ill clothed, and often ill fed; but the requisitions, which are the scourge of the country, supply them, for the moment, with profusion: the manufacturers, the shops, and the private individual, are robbed to keep them in good humour--the best wines, the best clothes, the prime of every thing, is destined to their use; and men, who before laboured hard to procure a scanty subsistence, now revel in luxury and comparative idleness. The rapid promotion acquired in the French army is likewise another cause of its adherence to the government. Every one is eager to be advanced; for, by means of requisitions, pillage and perquisites, the most trifling command is very lucrative.--Vast sums of money are expended in supplying the camps with newspapers written nearly for that purpose, and no others are permitted to be publicly circulated.--When troops are quartered in a town, instead of that cold reception which it is usual to accord such inmates, the system of terror acts as an excellent Marechal de Logis, and procures them, if not a cordial, at least a substantial one; and it is indubitable, that they are no where so well entertained as at the houses of professed aristocrats. The officers and men live in a familiarity highly gratifying to the latter; and, indeed, neither are distinguishable by their language, manners, or appearance. There is, properly speaking, no subordination except in the field, and a soldier has only to avoid politics, and cry "Vive la Convention!" to secure plenary indulgence on all other occasions.--Many who entered the army with regret, continue there willingly for the sake of a maintenance; besides that a decree exists, which subjects the parents of those who return, to heavy punishments. In a word, whatever can operate on the fears, or interests, or passions, is employed to preserve the allegiance of the armies to the government, and attach them to their profession. I am far from intending to detract from the national bravery--the annals of the French Monarchy abound with the most splendid instances of it--I only wish you to understand, what I am fully convinced of myself, that liberty and republicanism have no share in the present successes. The battle of Gemappe was gained when the Brissotin faction had enthroned itself on the ruins of a constitution, which the armies were said to adore with enthusiasm: by what sudden inspiration were their affections transferred to another form of government? or will any one pretend that they really understood the democratic Machiavelism which they were to propagate in Brabant? At the battle of Maubeuge, France was in the first paroxysm of revolutionary terror--at that of Fleurus, she had become a scene of carnage and proscription, at once the most wretched and the most detestable of nations, the sport and the prey of despots so contemptible, that neither the excess of their crimes, nor the sufferings they inflicted, could efface the ridicule which was incurred by a submission to them. Were the French then fighting for liberty, or did they only move on professionally, with the enemy in front, the Guillotine in the rear, and the intermediate space filled up with the licentiousness of a camp?--If the name alone of liberty suffices to animate the French troops to conquest, and they could imagine it was enjoyed under Brissot or Robespierre, this is at least a proof that they are rather amateurs than connoisseurs; and I see no reason why the same impulse might not be given to an army of Janizaries, or the the legions of Tippoo Saib. After all, it may be permitted to doubt, whether the sort of enthusiasm so liberally ascribed to the French, would really contribute more to their successes, than the thoughtless courage I am willing to allow them.--It is, I believe, the opinion of military men, that the best soldiers are those who are most disposed to act mechanically; and we are certain that the most brilliant victories have been obtained where this ardour, said to be produced by the new doctrines, could have had no influence.--The heroes of Pavia, of Narva, or those who administered to the vain-glory of Louis the Fourteenth, by ravaging the Palatinate, we may suppose little acquainted with it. The fate of battles frequently depends on causes which the General, the Statesman, or the Philosopher, are equally unable to decide upon; and the laurel, "meed of mighty conquerors," seems oftener to fall at the caprice of the wind, than to be gathered. It is sometimes the lot of the ablest tactician, at others of the most voluminous muster-roll; but, I believe, there are few examples where these political elevations have had an effect, when unaccompanied by advantages of situation, superior skill, or superior numbers.--_"La plupart des gens de guerre_ (says Fontenelle) _sont leur metier avec beaucoup de courage. Il en est peu qui y pensent; leurs bras agissent aussi vigoureusement que l'on veut, leurs tetes se reposent, et ne prennent presque part a rieu"_*-- * "Military men in general do their duty with much courage, but few make it a subject of reflection. With all the bodily activity that can be expected of them, their minds remain at rest, and partake but little of the business they are engaged in." --If this can be applied with truth to any armies, it must be to those of France. We have seen them successively and implicitly adopting all the new constitutions and strange gods which faction and extravagance could devise--we have seen them alternately the dupes and slaves of all parties: at one period abandoning their King and their religion: at another adulating Robespierre, and deifying Marat.--These, I confess are dispositions to make good soldiers, but convey to me no idea of enthusiasts or republicans. The bulletin of the Convention is periodically furnished with splendid feats of heroism performed by individuals of their armies, and I have no doubt but some of them are true. There are, however, many which have been very peaceably culled from old memoirs, and that so unskilfully, that the hero of the present year loses a leg or an arm in the same exploit, and uttering the self-same sentences, as one who lived two centuries ago. There is likewise a sort of jobbing in the edifying scenes which occasionally occur in the Convention--if a soldier happen to be wounded who has relationship, acquaintance, or connexion, with a Deputy, a tale of extraordinary valour and extraordinary devotion to the cause is invented or adopted; the invalid is presented in form at the bar of the Assembly, receives the fraternal embrace and the promise of a pension, and the feats of the hero, along with the munificence of the Convention, are ordered to circulate in the next bulletin. Yet many of the deeds recorded very deservedly in these annals of glory, have been performed by men who abhor republican principles, and lament the disasters their partizans have occasioned. I have known even notorious aristocrats introduced to the Convention as martyrs to liberty, and who have, in fact, behaved as gallantly as though they had been so.--These are paradoxes which a military man may easily reconcile. Independently of the various secondary causes that contribute to the success of the French armies, there is one which those persons who wish to exalt every thing they denominate republican seem to exclude--I mean, the immense advantage they possess in point of numbers. There has scarcely been an engagement of importance, in which the French have not profited by this in a very extraordinary degree.* * This has been confessed to me by many republicans themselves; and a disproportion of two or three to one must add considerably to republican enthusiasm. --Whenever a point is to be gained, the sacrifice of men is not a matter of hesitation. One body is dispatched after another; and fresh troops thus succeeding to oppose those of the enemy already harassed, we must not wonder that the event has so often proved favourable to them. A republican, who passes for highly informed, once defended this mode of warfare by observing, that in the course of several campaigns more troops perished by sickness than the sword. If then an object could be attained by such means, so much time was saved, and the loss eventually the same: but the Generals of other countries dare not risk such philosophical calculations, and would be accountable to the laws of humanity for their destructive conquests. When you estimate the numbers that compose the French armies, you are not to consider them as an undisciplined multitude, whose sole force is in their numbers. From the beginning of the revolution, many of them have been exercised in the National Guard; and though they might not make a figure on the parade at Potsdam, their inferiority is not so great as to render the German exactitude a counterbalance for the substantial inequality of numbers. Yet, powerfully as these considerations favour the military triumphs of France, there is a period when we may expect both cause and effect will terminate. That period may still be far removed, but whenever the assignats* become totally discredited, and it shall be found requisite to economize in the war department, adieu la gloire, a bas les armes, and perhaps bon soir la republique; for I do not reckon it possible, that armies so constituted can ever be persuaded to subject themselves to the restraints and privations which must be indispensible, as soon as the government ceases to have the disposal of an unlimited fund. * The mandats were, in fact, but a continuation of the assignats, under another name. The last decree for the emission of assignats, limited the quantity circulated to forty milliards, which taken at par, is only about sixteen hundred millions of pounds sterling! What I have hitherto written you will understand as applicable only to the troops employed on the frontiers. There are some of another description, more cherished and not less serviceable, who act as a sort of police militant and errant, and defend the republic against her internal enemies--the republicans. Almost every town of importance is occasionally infested by these servile instruments of despotism, who are maintained in insolent profusion, to overawe those whom misery and famine might tempt to revolt. When a government, after imprisoning some hundred thousands of the most distinguished in every class of life, and disarming all the rest, is yet obliged to employ such a force for its protection, we may justifiably conclude, it does not presume on the attachment of the people. It is not impossible that the agents of different descriptions, destined to the service of conciliating the interior to republicanism, might alone form an army equal to that of the Allies; but this is a task, where the numbers employed only serve to render it more difficult. They, however, procure submission, if they do not create affection; and the Convention is not delicate. Amiens, Sept. 30, 1794. The domestic politics of France are replete with novelties: the Convention is at war with the Jacobins--and the people, even to the most decided aristocrats, have become partizans of the Convention.--My last letters have explained the origin of these phaenomena, and I will now add a few words on their progress. You have seen that, at the fall of Robespierre, the revolutionary government had reached the very summit of despotism, and that the Convention found themselves under the necessity of appearing to be directed by a new impulse, or of acknowledging their participation in the crimes they affected to deplore.--In consequence, almost without the direct repeal of any law, (except some which affected their own security,) a more moderate system has been gradually adopted, or, to speak more correctly, the revolutionary one is suffered to relax. The Jacobins behold these popular measures with extreme jealousy, as a means which may in time render the legislature independent of them; and it is certainly not the least of their discontents, that, after all their labours in the common cause, they find themselves excluded both from power and emoluments. Accustomed to carry every thing by violence, and more ferocious than politic, they have, by insisting on the reincarceration of suspected people, attached a numerous party to the Convention, which is thus warned that its own safety depends on repressing the influence of clubs, which not only loudly demand that the prisons may be again filled, but frequently debate on the project of transporting all the "enemies of the republic" together. The liberty of the press, also, is a theme of discord not less important than the emancipation of aristocrats. The Jacobins are decidedly adverse to it; and it is a sort of revolutionary solecism, that those who boast of having been the original destroyers of despotism, are now the advocates of arbitrary imprisonment, and restraints on the freedom of the press. The Convention itself is divided on the latter subject; and, after a revolution of five years, founded on the doctrine of the rights of man, it has become matter of dispute--whether so principal an article of them ought really to exist or not. They seem, indeed, willing to allow it, provided restrictions can be devised which may prevent calumny from reaching their own persons; but as that cannot easily be atchieved, they not only contend against the liberty of the press in practice, but have hitherto refused to sanction it by decree, even as a principle. It is perhaps reluctantly that the Convention opposes these powerful and extended combinations which have so long been its support, and it may dread the consequences of being left without the means of overawing or influencing the people; but the example of the Brissotins, who, by attempting to profit by the services of the Jacobins, without submitting to their domination, fell a sacrifice, has warned their survivors of the danger of employing such instruments. It is evident that the clubs will not act subordinately, and that they must either be subdued to insignificance, or regain their authority entirely; and as neither the people nor Convention are disposed to acquiesce in the latter, they are politicly joining their efforts to accelerate the former. Yet, notwithstanding these reciprocal cajoleries, the return of justice is slow and mutable; an instinctive or habitual preference of evil appears at times to direct the Convention, even in opposition to their own interests. They have as yet done little towards repairing the calamities of which they are the authors; and we welcome the little they have done, not for its intrinsic value, but as we do the first spring flowers--which, though of no great sweetness or beauty, we consider as pledges that the storms of winter are over, and that a milder season is approaching.--It is true, the revolutionary Committees are diminished in number, the prisons are disencumbered, and a man is not liable to be arrested because a Jacobin suspects his features: yet there is a wide difference between such toleration and freedom and security; and it is a circumstance not favourable to those who look beyond the moment, that the tyrannical laws which authorized all the late enormities are still unrepealed. The Revolutionary Tribunal continues to sentence people to death, on pretexts as frivolous as those which were employed in the time of Robespierre; they have only the advantage of being tried more formally, and of forfeiting their lives upon proof, instead of without it, for actions that a strictly administered justice would not punish by a month's imprisonment.* * For instance, a young monk, for writing fanatic letters, and signing resolutions in favour of foederalism--a hosier, for facilitating the return of an emigrant--a man of ninety, for speaking against the revolution, and discrediting the assignats--a contractor, for embezzling forage--people of various descriptions, for obstructing the recruitment, or insulting the tree of liberty. These, and many similar condemnations, will be found in the proceedings of the Revolutionary Tribunal, long after the death of Robespierre, and when justice and humanity were said to be restored. A ceremony has lately taken place, the object of which was to deposit the ashes of Marat in the Pantheon, and to dislodge the bust of Mirabeau-- who, notwithstanding two years notice to quit this mansion of immortality, still remained there. The ashes of Marat being escorted to the Convention by a detachment of Jacobins, and the President having properly descanted on the virtues which once animated the said ashes, they were conveyed to the place destined for their reception; and the excommunicated Mirabeau being delivered over to the secular arm of a beadle, these remains of the divine Marat were placed among the rest of the republican deities. To have obliged the Convention in a body to attend and consecrate the crimes of this monster, though it could not degrade them, was a momentary triumph for the Jacobins, nor could the royalists behold without satisfaction the same men deploring the death of Marat, who, a month before, had celebrated the fall of Louis the Sixteenth! To have been so deplored, and so celebrated, are, methinks, the very extremes of infamy and glory. I must explain to you, that the Jacobins have lately been composed of two parties--the avowed adherents of Collot, Billaud, &c. and the concealed remains of those attached to Robespierre; but party has now given way to principle, a circumstance not usual; and the whole club of Paris, with several of the affiliated ones, join in censuring the innovating tendencies of the Convention.--It is curious to read the debates of the parent society, which pass in afflicting details of the persecutions experienced by the patriots on the parts of the moderates and aristocrats, who, they assert, are become so daring as even to call in question the purity of the immortal Marat. You will suppose, of course, that this cruel persecution is nothing more than an interdiction to persecute others; and their notions of patriotism and moderation may be conceived by their having just expelled Tallien and Freron as moderates.* * Freron endeavoured, on this occasion, to disculpate himself from the charge of "moderantisme," by alledging he had opposed Lecointre's denunciation of Barrere, &c.--and certainly one who piques himself on being the pupil of the divine Marat, was worthy of remaining in the fraternity from which he was now expelled.--Freron is a veteran journalist of the revolution, of better talents, though not of better fame, than the generality of his contemporaries: or, rather, his early efforts in exciting the people to rebellion entitle him to a preeminence of infamy. Amiens, October 4, 1794. We have had our guard withdrawn for some days; and I am just now returned from Peronne, where we had been in order to see the seals taken off the papers, &c. which I left there last year. I am much struck with the alteration observable in people's countenances. Every person I meet seems to have contracted a sort of revolutionary aspect: many walk with their heads down, and with half-shut eyes measure the whole length of a street, as though they were still intent on avoiding greetings from the suspicious; some look grave and sorrow-worn; some apprehensive, as if in hourly expectation of a _mandat d'arret;_ and others absolutely ferocious, from a habit of affecting the barbarity of the times. Their language is nearly as much changed as their appearance--the revolutionary jargon is universal, and the most distinguished aristocrats converse in the style of Barrere's reports. The common people are not less proficients in this fashionable dialect, than their superiors; and, as far as I can judge, are become so from similar motives. While I was waiting this morning at a shop-door, I listened to a beggar who was cheapening a slice of pumpkin, and on some disagreement about the price, the beggar told the old _revendeuse_ [Market-woman.] that she was _"gangrenee d'aristocratie."_ ["Eat up with aristocracy."] _"Je vous en defie,"_ ["I defy you."] retorted the pumpkin-merchant; but turning pale as she spoke, _"Mon civisme est a toute epreuve, mais prenez donc ta citrouille,"_ ["My civism is unquestionable; but here take your pumpkin."] take it then." _"Ah, te voila bonne republicaine,_ ["Ah! Now I see you are a good republican."] says the beggar, carrying off her bargain; while the old woman muttered, _"Oui, oui, l'on a beau etre republicaine tandis qu'on n'a pas de pain a manger."_ ["Yes, in troth, it's a fine thing to be a republican, and have no bread to eat."] I hear little of the positive merits of the convention, but the hope is general that they will soon suppress the Jacobin clubs; yet their attacks continue so cold and cautious, that their intentions are at least doubtful: they know the voice of the nation at large would be in favour of such a measure, and they might, if sincere, act more decisively, without risk to themselves.--The truth is, they would willingly proscribe the persons of the Jacobins, while they cling to their principles, and still hesitate whether they shall confide in a people whose resentment they have so much deserved, and have so much reason to dread. Conscious guilt appears to shackle all their proceedings, and though the punishment of some subordinate agents cannot, in the present state of things, be dispensed with, yet the Assembly unveil the register of their crimes very reluctantly, as if each member expected to see his own name inscribed on it. Thus, even delinquents, who would otherwise be sacrificed voluntarily to public justice, are in a manner protected by delays and chicane, because an investigation might implicate the Convention as the example and authoriser of their enormities.--Fouquier Tinville devoted a thousand innocent people to death in less time than it has already taken to bring him to a trial, where he will benefit by all those judicial forms which he has so often refused to others. This man, who is much the subject of conversation at present, was Public Accuser to the Revolutionary Tribunal--an office which, at best, in this instance, only served to give an air of regularity to assassination: but, by a sort of genius in turpitude, he contrived to render it odious beyond its original perversion, in giving to the most elaborate and revolting cruelties a turn of spontaneous pleasantry, or legal procedure.--The prisoners were insulted with sarcasms, intimidated by threats, and still oftener silenced by arbitrary declarations, that they were not entitled to speak; and those who were taken to the scaffold, after no other ceremony than calling over their names, had less reason to complain, than if they had previously been exposed to the barbarities of such trials.--Yet this wretch might, for a time at least, have escaped punishment, had he not, in defending himself, criminated the remains of the Committee, whom it was intended to screen. When he appeared at the bar of the Convention, every word he uttered seemed to fill its members with alarm, and he was ordered away before he could finish his declaration. It must be acknowledged, that, however he may be condemned by justice and humanity, nothing could legally attach to him: he was only the agent of the Convention, and the utmost horrors of the Tribunal were not merely sanctioned, but enjoined by specific decrees. I have been told by a gentleman who was at school with Fouquier, and has had frequent occasions of observing him at different periods since, that he always appeared to him to be a man of mild manners, and by no means likely to become the instrument of these atrocities; but a strong addiction to gaming having involved him in embarrassments, he was induced to accept the office of Public Accuser to the Tribunal, and was progressively led on from administering to the iniquity of his employers, to find a gratification in it himself. I have often thought, that the habit of watching with selfish avidity for those turns of fortune which enrich one individual by the misery of another, must imperceptibly tend to harden the heart. How can the gamester, accustomed both to suffer and inflict ruin with indifference, preserve that benevolent frame of mind, which, in the ordinary and less censurable pursuits of common life, is but too prone to become impaired, and to leave humanity more a duty than a feeling? The conduct of Fouquier Tinville has led me to some reflections on a subject which I know the French consider as matter of triumph, and as a peculiar advantage which their national character enjoys over the English--I mean that smoothness of manner and guardedness of expression which they call "aimable," and which they have the faculty of attaining and preserving distinctly from a correspondent temper of the mind. It accompanies them through the most irritating vicissitudes, and enables them to deceive, even without deceit: for though this suavity is habitual, of course frequently undesigning, the stranger is nevertheless thrown off his guard by it, and tempted to place confidence, or expect services, which a less conciliating deportment would not have been suggested. A Frenchman may be an unkind husband, a severe parent, or an arrogant master, yet never contract his features, or asperate his voice, and for this reason is, in the national sense, "un homme bien doux." His heart may become corrupt, his principles immoral, and his disposition ferocious--yet he shall still retain his equability of tone and complacent phraseology, and be "un homme bien aimable." The revolution has tended much to develope this peculiarity of the French character, and has, by various examples in public life, confirmed the opinions I had formed from previous observation. Fouquier Tinville, as I have already noticed, was a man of gentle exterior.--Couthon, the execrable associate of Robespierre, was mildness itself--Robespierre's harangues are in a style of distinguished sensibility--and even Carrier, the destroyer of thirty thousand Nantais, is attested by his fellow-students to have been of an amiable disposition. I know a man of most insinuating address, who has been the means of conducting his own brother to the Guillotine; and another nearly as prepossessing, who, without losing his courteous demeanor, was, during the late revolutionary excesses, the intimate of an executioner. *It would be too voluminous to enumerate all the contrasts of manners and character exhibited during the French revolution--The philosophic Condorcet, pursuing with malignancy his patron, the Duc de la Rochefoucault, and hesitating with atrocious mildness on the sentence of the King--The massacres of the prisons connived at by the gentle Petion--Collot d'Herbois dispatching, by one discharge of cannon, three hundred people together, "to spare his sensibility" the talk of executions in detail--And St. Just, the deviser of a thousand enormities, when he left the Committee, after his last interview, with the project of sending them all to the Guillotine, telling them, in a tone of tender reproach, like a lover of romance, "Vous avez fletri mon coeur, je vais l'ouvrir a la Convention."-- Madame Roland, in spite of the tenderness of her sex, could coldly reason on the expediency of a civil war, which she acknowledged might become necessary to establish the republic. Let those who disapprove this censure of a female, whom it is a sort of mode to lament, recollect that Madame Roland was the victim of a celebrity she had acquired in assisting the efforts of faction to dethrone the King--that her literary bureau was dedicated to the purpose of exasperating the people against him--and that she was considerably instrumental to the events which occasioned his death. If her talents and accomplishments make her an object of regret, it was to the unnatural misapplication of those talents and accomplishments in the service of party, that she owed her fate. Her own opinion was, that thousands might justifiably be devoted to the establishment of a favourite system; or, to speak truly, to the aggrandisement of those who were its partizans. The same selfish principle actuated an opposite faction, and she became the sacrifice.--"Oh even-handed justice!" I do not pretend to decide whether the English are virtually more gentle in their nature than the French; but I am persuaded this douceur, on which the latter pride themselves, affords no proof of the contrary. An Englishman is seldom out of humour, without proclaiming it to all the world; and the most forcible motives of interest, or expediency, cannot always prevail on him to assume a more engaging external than that which delineates his feelings. If he has a matter to refuse, he usually begins by fortifying himself with a little ruggedness of manner, by way of prefacing a denial he might otherwise not have resolution to persevere in. "The hows and whens of life" corrugate his features, and disharmonize his periods; contradiction sours, and passion ruffles him--and, in short, an Englishman displeased, from whatever cause, is neither "un homme bien doux," nor "un homme bien aimable;" but such as nature has made him, subject to infirmities and sorrows, and unable to disguise the one, or appear indifferent to the other. Our country, like every other, has doubtless produced too many examples of human depravity; but I scarcely recollect any, where a ferocious disposition was not accompanied by corresponding manners--or where men, who would plunder or massacre, affected to retain at the same time habits of softness, and a conciliating physiognomy. We are, I think, on the whole, authorized to conclude, that, in determining the claims to national superiority, the boasted and unvarying controul which the French exercise over their features and accents, is not a merit; nor those indications of what passes within, to which the English are subject, an imperfection. If the French sometimes supply their want of kindness, or render disappointment less acute at the moment, by a sterile complacency, the English harshness is often only the alloy to an efficient benevolence, and a sympathizing mind. In France they have no humourists who seem impelled by their nature to do good, in spite of their temperament--nor have we in England many people who are cold and unfeeling, yet systematically aimable: but I must still persist in not thinking it a defect that we are too impetuous, or perhaps too ingenuous, to unite contradictions. There is a cause, that doubtless has its effects in representing the English disadvantageously, and which I have never heard properly allowed for. The liberty of the press, and the great interest taken by all ranks of people in public affairs, have occasioned a more numerous circulation of periodical prints of every kind in England, than in any other country in Europe. Now, as it is impossible to fill them constantly with politics, and as the taste of different readers must be consulted, every barbarous adventure, suicide, murder, robbery, domestic fracas, assaults, and batteries of the lower orders, with the duels and divorces of the higher, are all chronicled in various publications, disseminated over Europe, and convey an idea that we are a very miserable, ferocious, and dissolute nation. The foreign gazettes being chiefly appropriated to public affairs, seldom record either the vices, the crimes, or misfortunes of individuals; so that they are thereby at least prevented from fixing an unfavourable judgement on the national character. Mercier observes, that the number of suicides committed in Paris was supposed to exceed greatly that of similar disasters in London; and that murders in France were always accompanied by circumstances of peculiar horror, though policy and custom had rendered the publication of such events less general than with us.--Our divorces, at which the Gallic purity of manners used to be so much scandalized, are, no doubt, to be regretted; but that such separations were not then allowed, or desired in France, may perhaps be attributed, at least as justly, to the complaisance of husbands, as to the discretion of wives, or the national morality.* * At present, in the monthly statement, the number of divorces in France, is often nearly equal to that of the marriages. I should reproach myself if I could feel impartial when I contemplate the English character; yet I certainly endeavour to write as though I were so. If I have erred, it has been rather in allowing too much to received opinions on the subject of this country, than in suffering my affections to make me unjust; for though I am far from affecting the fashion of the day, which censures all prejudices as illiberal, except those in disfavour of our own country, yet I am warranted, I hope, in saying, that however partial I may appear to England, I have not been so at the expence of truth.--Yours, &c. October 6, 1794. The sufferings of individuals have often been the means of destroying or reforming the most powerful tyrannies; reason has been convinced by argument, and passion appealed to by declamation in vain--when some unvarnished tale, or simple exposure of facts, has at once rouzed the feelings, and conquered the supineness of an oppressed people. The revolutionary government, in spite of the clamorous and weekly swearings of the Convention to perpetuate it, has received a check from an event of this nature, which I trust it will never recover.--By an order of the Revolutionary Committee of Nantes, in November 1793, all prisoners accused of political crimes were to be transferred to Paris, where the tribunal being more immediately under the direction of government, there would be no chance of their acquittal. In consequence of this order, an hundred and thirty-two inhabitants of Nantes, arrested on the usual pretexts of foederalism, or as suspected, or being Muscadins, were, some months after, conducted to Paris. Forty of the number died through the hardships and ill treatment they encountered on the way, the rest remained in prison until after the death of Robespierre. The evidence produced on their trial, which lately took place, has revealed but too circumstantially all the horrors of the revolutionary system. Destruction in every form, most shocking to morals or humanity, has depopulated the countries of the Loire; and republican Pizarro's and Almagro's seem to have rivalled each other in the invention and perpetration of crimes. When the prisons of Nantes overflowed, many hundreds of their miserable inhabitants had been conducted by night, and chained together, to the river side; where, being first stripped of their clothes, they were crouded into vessels with false bottoms, constructed for the purpose, and sunk.*-- * Though the horror excited by such atrocious details must be serviceable to humanity, I am constrained by decency to spare the reader a part of them. Let the imagination, however repugnant, pause for a moment over these scenes--Five, eight hundred people of different sexes, ages, and conditions, are taken from their prisons, in the dreary months of December and January, and conducted, during the silence of the night, to the banks of the Loire. The agents of the Republic there despoil them of their clothes, and force them, shivering and defenceless, to enter the machines prepared for their destruction--they are chained down, to prevent their escape by swimming, and then the bottom is detached for the upper part, and sunk.--On some occasions the miserable victims contrived to loose themselves, and clinging to the boards near them, shrieked in the agonies of despair and death, "O save us! it is not even now too late: in mercy save us!" But they appealed to wretches to whom mercy was a stranger; and, being cut away from their hold by strokes of the sabre, perished with their companions. That nothing might be wanting to these outrages against nature, they were escribed as jests, and called "Noyades, water parties," and "civic baptisms"! Carrier, a Deputy of the Convention, used to dine and make parties of pleasure, accompanied by music and every species of gross luxury, on board the barges appropriated to these execrable purposes. --At one time, six hundred children appear to have been destroyed in this manner;--young people of different sexes were tied in pairs and thrown into the river;--thousands were shot in the high roads and in the fields; and vast numbers were guillotined, without a trial!* * Six young women, (the _Mesdemoiselles la Meterie,_) in particular, sisters, and all under four-and-twenty, were ordered to the Guillotine together: the youngest died instantly of fear, the rest were executed successively.--A child eleven years old, who had previously told the executioner, with affecting simplicity, that he hoped he would not hurt him much, received three strokes of the Guillotine before his head was severed from his body. --Two thousand died, in less than two months, of a pestilence, occasioned by this carnage: the air became infected, and the waters of the Loire empoisoned, by dead bodies; and those whom tyranny yet spared, perished by the elements which nature intended for their support.* * Vast sums were exacted from the Nantais for purifying the air, and taking precautions against epidemical disorders. But I will not dwell on horrors, which, if not already known to all Europe, I should be unequal to describe: suffice it to say, that whatever could disgrace or afflict mankind, whatever could add disgust to detestation, and render cruelty, if possible, less odious than the circumstances by which it was accompanied, has been exhibited in this unfortunate city.--Both the accused and their witnesses were at first timid through apprehension, but by degrees the monstrous mysteries of the government were laid open, and it appeared, beyond denial or palliation, that these enormities were either devised, assisted, or connived at, by Deputies of the Convention, celebrated for their ardent republicanism and revolutionary zeal.--The danger of confiding unlimited power to such men as composed the majority of the Assembly, was now displayed in a manner that penetrated the dullest imagination, and the coldest heart; and it was found, that, armed with decrees, aided by revolutionary committees, revolutionary troops, and revolutionary vehicles of destruction,* missionaries selected by choice from the whole representation, had, in the city of Nantes alone, and under the mask of enthusiastic patriotism, sacrificed thirty thousand people! * A company was formed of all the ruffians that could be collected together. They were styled the Company of Marat, and were specially empowered to arrest whomsoever they chose, and to enter houses by night or day--in fine, to proscribe and pillage at their pleasure. Facts like these require no comment. The nation may be intimidated, and habits of obedience, or despair of redress, prolong its submission; but it can no longer be deceived: and patriotism, revolutionary liberty, and philosophy, are for ever associated with the drowning machines of Carrier, and the precepts and calculations of a Herault de Sechelles,* or a Lequinio.**-- * Herault de Sechelles was distinguished by birth, talents, and fortune, above most of his colleagues in the Convention; yet we find him in correspondence with Carrier, applauding his enormities, and advising him how to continue them with effect.--Herault was of a noble family, and had been a president in the Parliament of Paris. He was one of Robespierre's Committee of Public Welfare, and being in some way implicated in a charge of treachery brought against Simon, another Deputy, was guillotined at the same time with Danton. ** Lequinio is a philosopher by profession, who has endeavoured to enlighten his countrymen by a publication entitled "_Les Prejuges Detruits,_" and since by proving it advantageous to make no prisoners of war. --The ninety Nantais, against whom there existed no serious charge, and who had already suffered more than death, were acquitted. Yet, though the people were gratified by this verdict, and the general indignation appeased by an immediate arrest of those who had been most notoriously active in these dreadful operations, a deep and salutary impression remains, and we may hope it will be found impracticable either to renew the same scenes, or for the Convention to shelter (as they seemed disposed to do) the principal criminals, who are members of their own body. Yet, how are these delinquents to be brought to condemnation? They all acted under competent authority, and their dispatches to the Convention, which sufficiently indicated their proceedings, were always sanctioned by circulation, and applauded, according to the excess of their flagitiousness. It is worthy of remark, that Nantes, the principal theatre of these persecutions and murders, had been early distinguished by the attachment of its inhabitants to the revolution; insomuch, that, at the memorable epoch when the short-sighted policy of the Court excluded the Constituent Assembly from their Hall at Versailles, and they took refuge in the Jeu de Paume, with a resolution fatal to their country, never to separate until they had obtained their purposes, an express was sent to Nantes, as the place they should make choice of, if any violence obliged them to quit the neighbourhood of Paris. But it was not only by its principles that Nantes had signalized itself; at every period of the war, it had contributed largely both in men and money, and its riches and commerce still rendered it one of the most important towns of the republic.--What has been its reward?--Barbarous envoys from the Convention, sent expressly to level the aristocracy of wealth, to crush its mercantile spirit, and decimate its inhabitants.*-- * When Nantes was reduced almost to a state of famine by the destruction of commerce, and the supplies drawn for the maintenance of the armies, Commissioners were sent to Paris, to solicit a supply of provisions. They applied to Carrier, as being best acquainted with their distress, and were answered in this language:--_"Demandez, pour Nantes! je solliciterai qu'on porte le fer et la flamme dans cette abominable ville. Vous etes tous des coquins, des contre- revolutionnaires, des brigands, des scelerats, je ferai nommer une commission par la Convention Nationale.--J'irai moi meme a la tete de cette commission.--Scelerats, je serai rouler les tetes dans Nantes--je regenererai Nantes."_--"Is it for Nantes that you petition? I'll exert my influence to have fire and sword carried into that abominable city. You are all scoundrels, counter- revolutionists, thieves, miscreants.--I'll have a commission appointed by the Convention, and go myself at the head of it.-- Villains, I'll set your heads a rolling about Nantes--I'll regenerate Nantes." Report of the Commission of Twenty-one, on the conduct of Carrier. --Terrible lesson for those discontented and mistaken people, who, enriched by commerce, are not content with freedom and independence, but seek for visionary benefits, by becoming the partizans of innovation, or the tools of faction!* * The disasters of Nantes ought not to be lost to the republicans of Birmingham, Manchester, and other great commercial towns, where "men fall out they know not why;" and where their increasing wealth and prosperity are the best eulogiums on the constitution they attempt to undermine. I have hitherto said little of La Vendee; but the fate of Nantes is so nearly connected with it, that I shall make it the subject of my next letter. [No Date or Place Given.] It appears, that the greater part of the inhabitants of Poitou, Anjou, and the Southern divisions of Brittany, now distinguished by the general appellation of the people of La Vendee, (though they include those of several other departments,) never either comprehended or adopted the principles of the French revolution. Many different causes contributed to increase their original aversion from the new system, and to give their resistance that consistency, which has since become so formidable. A partiality for their ancient customs, an attachment to their Noblesse, and a deference for their Priests, are said to characterize the brave and simple natives of La Vendee. Hence republican writers, with self-complacent decision, always treat this war as the effect of ignorance, slavery, and superstition. The modern reformist, who calls the labourer from the plough, and the artizan from the loom, to make them statesmen or philosophers, and who has invaded the abodes of contented industry with the rights of man, that our fields may be cultivated, and our garments wove, by metaphysicians, will readily assent to this opinion.--Yet a more enlightened and liberal philosophy may be tempted to examine how far the Vendeans have really merited the contempt and persecution of which they have been the objects. By the confession of the republicans themselves, they are religious, hospitable, and frugal, humane and merciful towards their enemies, and easily persuaded to whatever is just and reasonable. I do not pretend to combat the narrow prejudices of those who suppose the worth or happiness of mankind compatible but with one set of opinions; and who, confounding the adventitious with the essential, appreciate only book learning: but surely, qualities which imply a knowledge of what is due both to God and man, and information sufficient to yield to what is right or rational, are not descriptive of barbarians; or at least, we may say with Phyrrhus, "there is nothing barbarous in their discipline."* *"The husbandmen of this country are in general men of simple manners, naturally well inclined, or at least not addicted to serious vices." Lequinio, Guerre de La Vendee. Dubois de Crance, speaking of the inhabitants of La Vendee, says, "They are the most hospitable people I ever saw, and always disposed to listen to what is just and reasonable, if proffered with mildness and humanity." "This unpolished people, whom, however, it is much less difficult to persuade than to fight." Lequinio, G. de La V. "They affected towards our prisoners a deceitful humanity, neglecting no means to draw them over to their own party, and often sending them back to us with only a simple prohibition to bear arms against the King or religion." Report of Richard and Choudieu. The ignorant Vendeans then could give lessons of policy and humanity, which the "enlightened" republicans were not capable of profiting by. --Their adherence to their ancient institutions, and attachment to their Gentry and Clergy, when the former were abolished and the latter proscribed, might warrant a presumption that they were happy under the one, and kindly treated by the other: for though individuals may sometimes persevere in affections or habits from which they derive neither felicity nor advantage, whole bodies of men can scarcely be supposed eager to risk their lives in defence of privileges that have oppressed them, or of a religion from which they draw no consolation. But whatever the cause, the new doctrines, both civil and religious, were received in La Vendee with a disgust, which was not only expressed by murmurs, but occasionally by little revolts, by disobedience to the constitutional authorities, and a rejection of the constitutional clergy. Some time previous to the deposition of the King, Commissioners were sent to suppress these disorders; and though I doubt not but all possible means were taken to conciliate, I can easily believe, that neither the King nor his Ministers might be desirous of subduing by force a people who erred only from piety or loyalty. What effect this system of indulgence might have produced cannot now be decided; because the subsequent overthrow of the monarchy, and the massacre or banishment of the priests, must have totally alienated their minds, and precluded all hope of reconcilement.--Disaffection, therefore, continued to increase, and the Brissotines are suspected of having rather fostered than repressed these intestine commotions,* for the same purpose which induced them to provoke the war with England, and to extend that of the Continent. * Le Brun, one of the Brissotin Ministers, concealed the progress of this war for six months before he thought fit to report it to the Convention. --It is impossible to assign a good motive to any act of this literary intriguer. --Perhaps, while they determined to establish their faction by "braving all Europe," they might think it equally politic to perplex and overawe Paris by a near and dangerous enemy, which would render their continuance in power necessary, or whom they might join, if expelled from it.* * This last reason might afterwards have given way to their apprehensions, and the Brissotins have preferred the creation of new civil wars, to a confidence in the royalists. These men, who condemned the King for a supposed intention of defending an authority transmitted to him through whole ages, and recently sanctioned by the voice of the people, did not scruple to excite a civil war in defence of their six months' sovereignty over a republic, proclaimed by a ferocious comedian, and certainly without the assent of the nation. Had the ill-fated Monarch dared thus to trifle with the lives of his subjects, he might have saved France and himself from ruin. When men gratify their ambition by means so sanguinary and atrocious as those resorted to by the Brissotines, we are authorized in concluding they will not be more scrupulous in the use or preservation of power, than they were in attaining it; and we can have no doubt but that the fomenting or suppressing the progress of civil discord, was, with them, a mere question of expediency. The decree which took place in March, 1793, for raising three hundred thousand men in the departments, changed the partial insurrections of La Vendee to an open and connected rebellion; and every where the young people refused going, and joined in preference the standard of revolt. In the beginning of the summer, the brigands* (as they were called) grew so numerous, that the government, now in the hands of Robespierre and his party, began to take serious measures to combat them. * Robbers--_banditti_--The name was first given, probably, to the insurgents of La Vendee, in order to insinuate a belief that the disorders were but of a slight and predatory nature. --One body of troops were dispatched after another, who were all successively defeated, and every where fled before the royalists. It is not unusual in political concerns to attribute to deep-laid plans and abstruse combinations, effects which are the natural result of private passions and isolated interests. Robespierre is said to have promoted both the destruction of the republican armies and those of La Vendee, in order to reduce the national population. That he was capable of imagining such a project is probable--yet we need not, in tracing the conduct of the war, look farther than to the character of the agents who were, almost necessarily, employed in it. Nearly every officer qualified for the command of an army, had either emigrated, or was on service at the frontiers; and the task of reducing by violence a people who resisted only because they deemed themselves injured, and who, even in the estimation of the republicans, could only be mistaken, was naturally avoided by all men who were not mere adventurers. It might likewise be the policy of the government to prefer the services of those, who, having neither reputation nor property, would be more dependent, and whom, whether they became dangerous by their successes or defeats, it would be easy to sacrifice. Either, then, from necessity or choice, the republican armies in La Vendee were conducted by dissolute and rapacious wretches, at all times more eager to pillage than fight, and who were engaged in securing their plunder, when they should have been in pursuit of the enemy. On every occasion they seemed to retreat, that their ill success might afford them a pretext for declaring that the next town or village was confederated with the insurgents, and for delivering it up, in consequence, to murder and rapine. Such of the soldiers as could fill their pocket-books with assignats, left their less successful companions, and retired as invalids to the hospitals: the battalions of Paris (and particularly "the conquerors of the Bastille") had such ardour for pillage, that every person possessed of property was, in their sense, an aristocrat, whom it was lawful to despoil.* * _"Le pillage a ete porte a son comble--les militaires au lieu de songer a ce qu'ils avoient a faire, n'ont pense qu'a remplir leurs sacs, et a voir se perpetuer une guerre aussi avantageuse a leur interet--beaucoup de simples soldats ont acquis cinquante mille francs et plus; on en a vu couverts de bijoux, et faisant dans tous les genres des depenses d'une produgaloite, monstreuse." Lequinio, Guerre de la Vendee._ "The most unbridled pillage prevailed--officers, instead of attending to their duty, thought only of filling their portmanteaus, and of the means to perpetuate a war they found so profitable.--Many private soldiers made fifty thousand livres, and they have been seen loaded with trinkets, and exercising the most abominable prodigalities of every kind." Lequinio, War of La Vendee. "The conquerors of the Bastille had unluckily a most unbridled ardour for pillage--one would have supposed they had come for the express purpose of plunder, rather than fighting. The stage coaches for Paris were entirely loaded with their booty." Report of Benaben, Commissioner of the Department of Maine and Loire. --The carriages of the army were entirely appropriated to the conveyance of their booty; till, at last, the administrators of some departments were under the necessity of forbidding such incumbrances: but the officers, with whom restrictions of this sort were unavailing, put all the horses and waggons of the country in requisition for similar purposes, while they relaxed themselves from the serious business of the war, (which indeed was nearly confined to burning, plundering, and massacring the defenceless inhabitants,) by a numerous retinue of mistresses and musicians. It is not surprizing that generals and troops of this description were constantly defeated; and their reiterated disasters might probably have first suggested the idea of totally exterminating a people it was found so difficult to subdue, and so impracticable to conciliate.--On the first of October 1793, Barrere, after inveighing against the excessive population of La Vendee, which he termed "frightful," proposed to the Convention to proclaim by a decree, that the war of La Vendee "should be terminated" by the twentieth of the same month. The Convention, with barbarous folly, obeyed; and the enlightened Parisians, accustomed to think with contempt on the ignorance of the Vendeans, believed that a war, which had baffled the efforts of government for so many months, was to end on a precise day--which Barrere had fixed with as much assurance as though he had only been ordering a fete. But the Convention and the government understood this decree in a very different sense from the good people of Paris. The war was, indeed, to be ended; not by the usual mode of combating armies, but by a total extinction of all the inhabitants of the country, both innocent and guilty--and Merlin de Thionville, with other members, so perfectly comprehended this detestable project, that they already began to devise schemes for repeopling La Vendee, when its miserable natives should be destroyed.* * It is for the credit of humanity to believe, that the decree was not understood according to its real intention; but the nation has to choose between the imputation of cruelty, stupidity, or slavery-- for they either approved the sense of the decree, believed what was not possible, or were obliged to put on an appearance of both, in spite of their senses and their feelings. A proclamation, in consequence, to the army, is more explicit--"All the brigands of La Vendee must be exterminated before the end of October." From this time, the representatives on mission, commissaries of war, officers, soldiers, and agents of every kind, vied with each other in the most abominable outrages. Carrier superintended the fusillades and noyades at Nantes, while Lequinio dispatched with his own hands a part of the prisoners taken at La Fontenay, and projected the destruction of the rest.--After the evacuation of Mans by the insurgents, women were brought by twenties and thirties, and shot before the house where the deputies Tureau and Bourbotte had taken up their residence; and it appears to have been considered as a compliment to these republican Molochs, to surround their habitation with mountains of the dead. A compliment of the like nature was paid to the representative Prieur de la Marne,* by a volunteer, who having learned that his own brother was taken amongst the enemy, requested, by way of recommending himself to notice, a formal permission to be his executioner.--The Roman stoicism of Prieur accepted the implied homage, and granted the request!! * This representative, who was also a member of the Committee of Public Welfare, was not only the Brutus, but the Antony of La Vendee; for we learn from the report of Benaben, that his stern virtues were accompanied, through the whole of his mission in this afflicted country, by a cortege of thirty strolling fiddlers! Fourteen hundred prisoners, who had surrendered at Savenay, among whom were many women and children, were shot, by order of the deputy Francastel, who, together with Hentz, Richard, Choudieu, Carpentier, and others of their colleagues, set an example of rapine and cruelty, but too zealously imitated by their subordinate agents. In some places, the inhabitants, without distinction of age or sex, were put indiscriminately to the sword; in others, they were forced to carry the pillage collected from their own dwellings, which, after being thus stripped, were consigned to the flames.* * "This conflagration accomplished, they had no sooner arrived in the midst of our army, than the volunteers, in imitation of their commanders, seized what little they had preserved, and massacred them.--But this is not all: a whole municipality, in their scarfs of office, were sacrificed; and at a little village, inhabited by about fifty good patriots, who had been uniform in their resistance of the insurgents, news is brought that their brother soldiers are coming to assist them, and to revenge the wrongs they have suffered. A friendly repast is provided, the military arrive, embrace their ill-fated hosts, and devour what they have provided; which is no sooner done, than they drive all these poor people into the churchyard, and stab them one after another." Report of Faure, Vice-President of a Military Commission at Fontenay. --The heads of the prisoners served occasionally as marks for the officers to shoot at for trifling wagers, and the soldiers, who imitated these heinous examples, used to conduct whole hundreds to the place of execution, singing _"allons enfans de la patrie."_* * Woe to those who were unable to walk, for, under pretext that carriages could not be found to convey them, they were shot without hesitation!--Benaben. The insurgents had lost Cholet, Chatillon, Mortagne, &c. Yet, far from being vanquished by the day appointed, they had crossed the Loire in great force, and, having traversed Brittany, were preparing to make an attack on Granville. But this did not prevent Barrere from announcing to the convention, that La Vendee was no more, and the galleries echoed with applauses, when they were told that the highways were impassable, from the numbers of the dead, and that a considerable part of France was one vast cemetery. This intelligence also tranquillized the paternal solicitude of the legislature, and, for many months, while the system of depopulation was pursued with the most barbarous fury, it was not permissible even to suspect that the war was yet unextinguished. It is only since the trial of the Nantais, that the state of La Vendee has again become a subject of discussion: truth has now forced its way, and we learn, that, whatever may be the strength of these unhappy people, their minds, embittered by suffering, and animated by revenge, are still less than ever disposed to submit to the republican government. The design of total extirpation, once so much insisted on, is at present said to be relinquished, and a plan of instruction and conversion is to be substituted for bayonets and conflagrations. The revolted countries are to be enlightened by the doctrines of liberty, fanaticism is to be exposed, and a love of the republic to succeed the prejudices in favour of Kings and Nobles.--To promote these objects, is, undoubtedly, the real interest of the Convention; but a moralist, who observes through another medium, may compare with regret and indignation the instructors with the people they are to illumine, and the advantages of philosophy over ignorance. Lequinio, one of the most determined reformers of the barbarism of La Vendee, proposes two methods: the first is, a general massacre of all the natives--and the only objection it seems susceptible of in his opinion is, their numbers; but as he thinks on this account it may be attended with difficulty, he is for establishing a sort of perpetual mission of Representatives, who, by the influence of good living and a company of fiddlers and singers, are to restore the whole country to peace.*-- *"The only difficulty that presents itself is, to determine whether recourse shall be had to the alternative of indulgence, or if it will not be more advantageous to persist in the plan of total destruction. "If the people that still remain were not more than thirty or forty thousand, the shortest way would doubtless be, to cut all their throats (egorger), agreeably to my first opinion; but the population is immense, amounting still to four hundred thousand souls.--If there were no hope of succeeding by any other methods, certainly it were better to kill all (egorger), even were there five hundred thousand. "But what are we to understand by measures of rigour? Is there no distinction to be made between rigorous and barbarous measures? The utmost severity is justified on the plea of the general good, but nothing can justify barbarity. If the welfare of France necessitated the sacrifice of the four hundred thousand inhabitants of La Vendee, and the countries in rebellion adjoining, they ought to be sacrificed: but, even in this case, there would be no excuse for those atrocities which revolt nature, which are an outrage to social order, and repugnant equally to feeling (sentiment) and reason; and in cutting off so many entire generations for the good of the country, we ought not to suffer the use of barbarous means in a single instance. "Now the most effectual way to arrive at this end (converting the people), would be by joyous and fraternal missions, frank and familiar harangues, civic repasts, and, above all, dancing. "I could wish, too, that during their circuits in these countries, the Representatives were always attended by musicians. The expence would be trifling, compared with the good effect; if, as I am strongly persuaded, we could thus succeed in giving a turn to the public mind, and close the bleeding arteries of these fertile and unhappy provinces." Lequinio, Guerre de La Vendee. And this people, who were either to have their throats cut, or be republicanized by means of singing, dancing, and revolutionary Pans and Silenus's, already beheld their property devastated by pillage or conflagration, and were in danger of a pestilence from the unburied bodies of their families.--Let the reader, who has seen Lequinio's pamphlet, compare his account of the sufferings of the Vendeans, and his project for conciliating them. They convey a strong idea of the levity of the national character; but, in this instance, I must suppose, that nature would be superior to local influence; and I doubt if Lequinio's jocund philosophy will ever succeed in attaching the Vendeans to the republic. --Camille Desmouins, a republican reformer, nearly as sanguinary, though not more liberal, thought the guillotine disgraced by such ignorant prey, and that it were better to hunt them down like wild beasts; or, if made prisoners, to exchange them against the cattle of their country!--The eminently informed Herault de Sechelles was the patron and confidant of the exterminating reforms of Carrier; and Carnot, when the mode of reforming by noyades and fusillades was debated at the Committee, pleaded the cause of Carrier, whom he describes as a good, nay, an excellent patriot.--Merlin de Thionville, whose philosophy is of a more martial cast, was desirous that the natives of La Vendee should be completely annihilated, in order to furnish in their territory and habitations a recompence for the armies.--Almost every member of the Convention has individually avowed principles, or committed acts, from which common turpitude would recoil, and, as a legislative body, their whole code has been one unvarying subversion of morals and humanity. Such are the men who value themselves on possessing all the advantages the Vendeans are pretended to be in want of.--We will now examine what disciples they have produced, and the benefits which have been derived from their instructions. Every part of France remarkable for an early proselytism to the revolutionary doctrines has been the theatre of crimes unparalleled in the annals of human nature. Those who have most boasted their contempt for religious superstition have been degraded by an idolatry as gross as any ever practiced on the Nile; and the most enthusiastic republicans have, without daring to murmur, submitted for two years successively to a horde of cruel and immoral tyrants.--A pretended enfranchisement from political and ecclesiastical slavery has been the signal of the lowest debasement, and the most cruel profligacy: the very Catechumens of freedom and philosophy have, while yet in their first rudiments, distinguished themselves as proficients in the arts of oppression and servility, of intolerance and licentiousness.--Paris, the rendezvous of all the persecuted patriots and philosophers in Europe, the centre of the revolutionary system, whose inhabitants were illumined by the first rays of modern republicanism, and who claim a sort of property in the rights of man, as being the original inventors, may fairly be quoted as an example of the benefits that would accrue from a farther dissemination of the new tenets. Without reverting to the events of August and September, 1792, presided by the founders of liberty, and executed by their too apt sectaries, it is notorious that the legions of Paris, sent to chastise the unenlightened Vendeans, were the most cruel and rapacious banditti that ever were let loose to afflict the world. Yet, while they exercised this savage oppression in the countries near the Loire, their fellow-citizens on the banks of the Seine crouched at the frown of paltry tyrants, and were unresistingly dragged to dungeons, or butchered by hundreds on the scaffold.--At Marseilles, Lyons, Bourdeaux, Arras, wherever these baleful principles have made converts, they have made criminals and victims; and those who have been most eager in imbibing or propagating them have, by a natural and just retribution, been the first sacrificed. The new discoveries in politics have produced some in ethics not less novel, and until the adoption of revolutionary doctrines, the extent of human submission or human depravity was fortunately unknown. In this source of guilt and misery the people of La Vendee are now to be instructed--that people, who are acknowledged to be hospitable, humane, and laborious, and whose ideas of freedom may be better estimated by their resistance to a despotism which the rest of France has sunk under, than by the jargon of pretended reformers.--I could wish, that not only the peasants of La Vendee, but those of all other countries, might for ever remain strangers to such pernicious knowledge. It is sufficient for this useful class of men to be taught the simple precepts of religion and morality, and those who would teach them more, are not their benefactors. Our age is, indeed, a literary age, and such pursuits are both liberal and laudable in the rich and idle; but why should volumes of politics or philosophy be mutilated and frittered into pamphlets, to inspire a disgust for labour, and a taste for study or pleasure, in those to whom such disgusts or inclinations are fatal. The spirit of one author is extracted, and the beauties of another are selected, only to bewilder the understanding, and engross the time, of those who might be more profitably employed. I know I may be censured as illiberal; but I have, during my abode in this country, sufficiently witnessed the disastrous effects of corrupting a people through their amusements or curiosity, and of making men neglect their useful callings to become patriots and philosophers.*-- *This right of directing public affairs, and neglecting their own, we may suppose essential to republicans of the lower orders, since we find the following sentence of transportation in the registers of a popular commission: "Bergeron, a dealer in skins--suspected--having done nothing in favour of the revolution--extremely selfish (egoiste,) and blaming the Sans-Culottes for neglecting their callings, that they may attend only to public concerns."--Signed by the members of the Commission and the two Committees. --_"Il est dangereux d'apprendre au peuple a raisonner: il ne faut pas l'eclairer trop, parce qu'il n'est pas possible de l'eclairer assez."_ ["It is dangerous to teach the people to reason--they should not be too much enlightened, because it is not possible to enlighten them sufficiently."]--When the enthusiasm of Rousseau's genius was thus usefully submitted to his good sense and knowledge of mankind, he little expected every hamlet in France would be inundated with scraps of the contrat social, and thousands of inoffensive peasants massacred for not understanding the Profession de Foi. The arguments of mistaken philanthropists or designing politicians may divert the order of things, but they cannot change our nature--they may create an universal taste for literature, but they will never unite it with habits of industry; and until they prove how men are to live without labour, they have no right to banish the chearful vacuity which usually accompanies it, by substituting reflections to make it irksome, and propensities with which it is incompatible. The situation of France has amply demonstrated the folly of attempting to make a whole people reasoners and politicians--there seems to be no medium; and as it is impossible to make a nation of sages, you let loose a horde of savages: for the philosophy which teaches a contempt for accustomed restraints, is not difficult to propagate; but that superior kind, which enables men to supply them, by subduing the passions that render restraints necessary, is of slow progress, and never can be general. I have made the war of La Vendee more a subject of reflection than narrative, and have purposely avoided military details, which would be not only uninteresting, but disgusting. You would learn no more from these desultory hostilities, than that the defeats of the republican armies were, if possible, more sanguinary than their victories; that the royalists, who began the war with humanity, were at length irritated to reprisals; and that more than two hundred thousand lives have already been sacrificed in the contest, yet undecided. Amiens, Oct. 24, 1794. Revolutions, like every thing else in France, are a mode, and the Convention already commemorate four since 1789: that of July 1789, which rendered the monarchical power nugatory; that of August the 10th, 1792, which subverted it; the expulsion of the Brissotins, in May 1793; and the death of Robespierre, in July 1794. The people, accustomed, from their earliest knowledge, to respect the person and authority of the King, felt that the events of the two first epochs, which disgraced the one and annihilated the other, were violent and important revolutions; and, as language which expresses the public sentiment is readily adopted, it soon became usual to speak of these events as the revolutions of July and August. The thirty-first of May has always been viewed in a very different light, for it was not easy to make the people at large comprehend how the succession of Robespierre and Danton to Brissot and Roland could be considered as a revolution, more especially as it appeared evident that the principles of one party actuated the government of the other. Every town had its many-headed monster to represent the defeat of the Foederalists, and its mountain to proclaim the triumph of their enemies the Mountaineers; but these political hieroglyphics were little understood, and the merits of the factions they alluded to little distinguished--so that the revolution of the thirty-first of May was rather a party aera, than a popular one. The fall of Robespierre would have made as little impression as that of the Girondists, if some melioration of the revolutionary system had not succeeded it; and it is in fact only since the public voice, and the interest of the Convention, have occasioned a change approaching to reform, that the death of Robespierre is really considered as a benefit. But what was in itself no more than a warfare of factions, may now, if estimated by its consequences, be pronounced a revolution of infinite importance. The Jacobins, whom their declining power only rendered more insolent and daring, have at length obliged the Convention to take decided measures against them, and they are now subject to such regulations as must effectually diminish their influence, and, in the end, dissolve their whole combination. They can no longer correspond as societies, and the mischievous union which constituted their chief force, can scarcely be supported for any time under the present restrictions.* * "All affiliations, aggregations, and foederations, as well as correspondences carried on collectively between societies, under whatever denomination they may exist, are henceforth prohibited, as being subversive of government, and contrary to the unity of the republic. "Those persons who sign as presidents or secretaries, petitions or addresses in a collective form, shall be arrested and confined as suspicious, &c. &c.--Whoever offends in any shape against the present law, will incur the same penalty." The whole of the decree is in the same spirit. The immediate and avowed pretext for this measure was, that the popular societies, who have of late only sent petitions disagreeable to the Convention, did not express the sense of the people. Yet the deposition of the King, and the establishment of the republic, had no other sanction than the adherence of these clubs, who are now allowed not to be the nation, and whose very existence as then constituted is declared to be subversive of government. It is not improbable, that the Convention, by suffering the clubs still to exist, after reducing them to nullity, may hope to preserve the institution as a future resource against the people, while it represses their immediate efforts against itself. The Brissotins would have attempted a similar policy, but they had nothing to oppose to the Jacobins, except their personal influence. Brissot and Roland took part with the clubs, as they approved the massacres of August and September, just as far as it answered their purpose; and when they were abandoned by the one, and the other were found to incur an unprofitable odium, they acted the part which Tallien and Freron act now under the same circumstances, and would willingly have promoted the destruction of a power which had become inimical to them.*-- * Brissot and Roland were more pernicious as Jacobins than the most furious of their successors. If they did not in person excite the people to the commission of crimes, they corrupted them, and made them fit instruments for the crimes of others. Brissot might affect to condemn the massacres of September in the gross, but he is known to have enquired with eager impatience, and in a tone which implied he had reasons for expecting it, whether De Morande, an enemy he wished to be released from, was among the murdered. --Their imitators, without possessing more honesty, either political or moral, are more fortunate; and not only Tallien and Freron, who since their expulsion from the Jacobins have become their most active enemies, are now in a manner popular, but even the whole Convention is much less detested than it was before. It is the singular felicity of the Assembly to derive a sort of popularity from the very excesses it has occasioned or sanctioned, and which, it was natural to suppose, would have consigned it for ever to vengeance or obloquy; but the past sufferings of the people have taught them to be moderate in their expectations; and the name of their representation has been so connected with tyranny of every sort, that it appears an extraordinary forbearance when the usual operations of guillotines and mandates of arrest are suspended. Thus, though the Convention have not in effect repaired a thousandth part of their own acts of injustice, or done any good except from necessity, they are overwhelmed with applauding addresses, and affectionate injunctions not to quit their post. What is still more wonderful, many of these are sincere; and Tallien, Freron, Legendre, &c. with all their revolutionary enormities on their heads, are now the heroes of the reviving aristocrats. Situated as things are at present, there is much sound policy in flattering the Convention into a proper use of their power, rather than making a convulsive effort to deprive them of it. The Jacobins would doubtless avail themselves of such a movement; and this is so much apprehended, that it has given rise to a general though tacit agreement to foment the divisions between the Legislature and the Clubs, and to support the first, at least until it shall have destroyed the latter. The late decrees, which obstruct the intercourse and affiliation of popular societies, may be regarded as an event not only beneficial to this country, but to the world in general; because it is confessed, that these combinations, by means of which the French monarchy was subverted, and the King brought to the scaffold, are only reconcileable with a barbarous and anarchical government. The Convention are now much occupied on two affairs, which call forth all their "natural propensities," and afford a farther confirmation of this fact--that their feelings and principles are always instinctively at war with justice, however they may find it expedient to affect a regard for it--_C'est la chatte metamorphosee en femme_ [The cat turned into a woman.]-- _"En vain de son train ordinaire" "On la veut desaccoutumer, "Quelque chose qu'on puisse faire "On ne fauroit la reformer."_ La Fontaine. The Deputies who were imprisoned as accomplices of the Girondists, and on other different pretexts, have petitioned either to be brought to trial or released; and the abominable conduct of Carrier at Nantes is so fully substantiated, that the whole country is impatient to have some steps taken towards bringing him to punishment: yet the Convention are averse from both these measures--they procrastinate and elude the demand of their seventy-two colleagues, who were arrested without a specific charge; while they almost protect Carrier, and declare, that in cases which tend to deprive a Representative of his liberty, it is better to reflect thirty times than once. This is curious doctrine with men who have sent so many people arbitrarily to the scaffold, and who now detain seventy-two Deputies in confinement, they know not why. The ashes of Rousseau have recently been deposited with the same ceremonies, and in the same place, as those of Marat. We should feel for such a degradation of genius, had not the talents of Rousseau been frequently misapplied; and it is their misapplication which has levelled him to an association with Marat. Rousseau might be really a fanatic, and, though eccentric, honest; yet his power of adorning impracticable systems, it must be acknowledged, has been more mischievous to society than a thousand such gross impostors as Marat. I have learned since my return from the Providence, the death of Madame Elizabeth. I was ill when it happened, and my friends took some pains to conceal an event which they knew would affect me. In tracing the motives of the government for this horrid action, it may perhaps be sufficiently accounted for in the known piety and virtues of this Princess; but reasons of another kind have been suggested to me, and which, in all likelihood, contributed to hasten it. She was the only person of the royal family of an age competent for political transactions who had not emigrated, and her character extorted respect even from her enemies. [The Prince of Conti was too insignificant to be an object of jealousy in this way.] She must therefore, of course, since the death of the Queen, have been an object of jealousy to all parties. Robespierre might fear that she would be led to consent to some arrangement with a rival faction for placing the King on the throne--the Convention were under similar apprehensions with regard to him; so that the fate of this illustrious sufferer was probably gratifying to every part of the republicans. I find, on reading her trial, (if so it may be called,) a repetition of one of the principal charges against the Queen--that of trampling on the national colours at Versailles, during an entertainment given to some newly-arrived troops. Yet I have been assured by two gentlemen, perfectly informed on the subject, and who were totally unacquainted with each other, that this circumstance, which has been so usefully enlarged upon, is false,* and that the whole calumny originated in the jealousy of a part of the national guard who had not been invited. * This infamous calumny (originally fabricated by Lecointre the linen draper, then an officer of the National Guard, now a member of the council of 500) was amply confuted by M. Mounier, who was President of the States-General at the time, in a publication intitled "_Expose de ma Conduite,_" which appeared soon after the event--in the autumn of 1789.--Editor. But this, as well as the taking of the Bastille, and other revolutionary falsehoods, will, I trust, be elucidated. The people are now undeceived only by their calamities--the time may come, when it will be safe to produce their conviction by truth. Heroes of the fourteenth of July, and patriots of the tenth of August, how will ye shrink from it!--Yours, &c. Amiens, Nov. 2, 1794. Every post now brings me letters from England; but I perceive, by the suppressed congratulations of my friends, that, though they rejoice to find I am still alive, they are far from thinking me in a state of security. You, my dear Brother, must more particularly have lamented the tedious confinement I have endured, and the inconveniencies to which I have been subjected; I am, however, persuaded that you would not wish me to have been exempt from a persecution in which all the natives of England, who are not a disgrace to their country, as well as some that are so, have shared. Such an exemption would now be deemed a reproach; for, though it must be confessed that few of us have been voluntary sufferers, we still claim the honour of martyrdom, and are not very tolerant towards those who, exposed by their situation, may be supposed to have owed their protection to their principles. There are, indeed, many known revolutionists and republicans, who, from party disputes, personal jealousies, or from being comprised in some general measure, have undergone a short imprisonment; and these men now wish to be confounded with their companions who are of a different description. But such persons are carefully distinguished;* and the aristocrats have, in their turn, a catalogue of suspicious people--that is, of people suspected of not having been suspicious. * Mr. Thomas Paine, for instance, notwithstanding his sufferings, is still thought more worthy of a seat in the Convention or the Jacobins, than of an apartment in the Luxembourg.--Indeed I have generally remarked, that the French of all parties hold an English republican in peculiar abhorrence. It is now the fashion to talk of a sojourn in a maison d'arret with triumph; and the more decent people, who from prudence or fear had been forced to seek refuge in the Jacobin clubs, are now solicitous to proclaim their real motives. The red cap no longer "rears its hideous front" by day, but is modestly converted into a night-cap; and the bearer of a diplome de Jacobin, instead of swinging along, to the annoyance of all the passengers he meets, paces soberly with a diminished height, and an air not unlike what in England we call sneaking. The bonnet rouge begins likewise to be effaced from flags at the doors; and, as though this emblem of liberty were a very bad neighbour to property, its relegation seems to encourage the re-appearance of silver forks and spoons, which are gradually drawn forth from their hiding-places, and resume their stations at table. The Jacobins represent themselves as being under the most cruel oppression, declare that the members of the Convention are aristocrats and royalists, and lament bitterly, that, instead of fish-women, or female patriots of republican external, the galleries are filled with auditors in flounces and anti-civic top-knots, femmes a fontanges. These imputations and grievances of the Jacobins are not altogether without foundation. People in general are strongly impressed with an idea that the Assembly are veering towards royalism; and it is equally true, that the speeches of Tallien and Freron are occasionally heard and applauded by fair elegantes, who, two years ago, would have recoiled at the name of either. It is not that their former deeds are forgotten, but the French are grown wise by suffering; and it is politic, when bad men act well, whatever the motive, to give them credit for it, as nothing is so likely to make them persevere, as the hope that their reputation is yet retrievable. On this principle the aristocrats are the eulogists of Tallien, while the Jacobins remind him hourly of the massacres of the priests, and his official conduct as Secretary to the municipality or Paris.* * Tallien was Seecretary to the Commune of Paris in 1792, and on the thirty-first of August he appeared at the bar of the Legislative Assembly with an address, in which he told them "he had caused the refractory priests to be arrested and confined, and that in a few days the Land of Liberty should be freed of them."--The massacres of the prisons began two days after! As soon as a Representative is convicted of harbouring an opinion unfavourable to pillage or murder, he is immediately declared an aristocrat; or, if the Convention happen for a moment to be influenced by reason or justice, the hopes and fears of both parties are awakened by suspicions that the members are converts to royalism.--For my own part, I believe they are and will be just what their personal security and personal interest may suggest, though it is but a sorry sort of panegyric on republican ethics to conclude, that every one who manifests the least symptom of probity or decency, must of course be a royalist or an aristocrat. Notwithstanding the harmony which appears to subsist between the Convention and the people, the former is much less popular in detail than in the gross. Almost every member who has been on mission, is accused of dilapidations and cruelties so heinous, that, if they had not been committed by Representans du Peuple, the criminal courts would find no difficulty in deciding upon them.--But as theft or murder does not deprive a member of his privileges, complaints of this nature are only cognizable by the Assembly, which, being yet in its first days of regeneration, is rather scrupulous of defending such amusements overtly. Alarmed, however, at the number, and averse from the precedent of these denunciations, it has now passed a variety of decrees, which are termed a guarantee of the national representation, and which in fact guarantee it so effectually, that a Deputy may do any thing in future with impunity, provided it does not affect his colleagues. There are now so many forms, reports, and examinations, that several months may be employed before the person of a delinquent, however notorious his guilt, can be secured. The existence of a fellow-creature should, doubtless, be attacked with caution; for, though he may have forfeited his claims on our esteem, and even our pity, religion has preserved him others, of which he should not be deprived.--But when we recollect that all these merciful ceremonies are in favour of a Carrier or a Le Bon, and that the King, Madame Elizabeth, and thousands of innocent people, were hurried to execution, without being allowed the consolations of piety or affection, which only a mockery of justice might have afforded them; when, even now, priests are guillotined for celebrating masses in private, and thoughtless people for speaking disrespectfully of the Convention--the heart is at variance with religion and principle, and we regret that mercy is to be the exclusive portion of those who were never accessible to its dictates.* * The denunciation being first presented to the Assembly, they are to decide whether it shall be received. If they determine in the affirmative, it is sent to the three Committees of Legislation, Public Welfare, and General Safety, to report whether there may be room for farther examination. In that case, a commission of twenty-one members is appointed to receive the proofs of the accuser, and the defence of the accused. These Commissioners, after as long a delay as they may think fit to interpose, make known their opinion; and if it be against the accused, the Convention proceed to determine finally whether the matter shall be referred to the ordinary tribunal. All this time the culprit is at large, or, at worst, and merely for the form, carelessly guarded at his own dwelling. I would not "pick bad from bad," but it irks one's spirit to see these miscreants making "assurance doubly sure," and providing for their own safety with such solicitude, after sacrificing, without remorse, whatever was most interesting or respectable in the country.--Yours, &c. Basse-ville, Arras, Nov. 6, 1794. Since my own liberation, I have been incessantly employed in endeavouring to procure the return of my friends to Amiens; who, though released from prison some time, could not obtain passports to quit Arras. After numerous difficulties and vexations, we have at length succeeded, and I am now here to accompany them home. I found Mr. and Mrs. D____ much altered by the hardships they have undergone: Mrs. D____, in particular, has been confined some months in a noisome prison called the Providence, originally intended as a house of correction, and in which, though built to contain an hundred and fifty persons, were crouded near five hundred females, chiefly ladies of Arras and the environs.--The superintendance of this miserable place was entrusted to a couple of vulgar and vicious women, who, having distinguished themselves as patriots from the beginning of the revolution, were now rewarded by Le Bon with an office as profitable as it was congenial to their natures. I know not whether it is to be imputed to the national character, or to that of the French republicans only, but the cruelties which have been committed are usually so mixed with licentiousness, as to preclude description. I have already noticed the conduct of Le Bon, and it must suffice to say, his agents were worthy of him, and that the female prisoners suffered every thing which brutality, rapaciousness, and indecency, could inflict. Mr. D____ was, in the mean time, transferred from prison to prison--the distress of separation was augmented by their mutual apprehensions and pecuniary embarrassments--and I much fear, the health and spirits of both are irretrievably injured. I regret my impatience in coming here, rather than waiting the arrival of my friends at home; for the changes I observe, and the recollections they give birth to, oppress my heart, and render the place hateful to me.--All the families I knew are diminished by executions, and their property is confiscated--those whom I left in elegant hotels are now in obscure lodgings, subsisting upon the superfluities of better days--and the sorrows of the widows and orphans are increased by penury; while the Convention, which affects to condemn the crimes of Le Bon, is profiting by the spoils of his victims. I am the more deeply impressed by these circumstances, because, when I was here in 1792, several who have thus fallen, though they had nothing to reproach themselves with, were yet so much intimidated as to propose emigrating; and I then was of opinion, that such a step would be impolitic and unnecessary. I hope and believe this opinion did not influence them, but I lament having given it, for the event has proved that a great part of the emigrants are justifiable. It always appeared to me so serious and great an evil to abandon one's country, that when I have seen it done with indifference or levity, I may perhaps have sometimes transferred to the measure itself a sentiment of disapprobation, excited originally by the manner of its adoption. When I saw people expatiate with calmness, and heard them speak of it as a means of distinguishing themselves, I did not sufficiently allow for the tendency of the French to make the best of every thing, or the influence of vanity on men who allow it to make part of the national characteristic: and surely, if ever vanity were laudable, that of marking a detestation for revolutionary principles, and an attachment to loyalty and religion, may justly be considered so. Many whom I then accused of being too lightly affected by the prospect of exile, might be animated by the hope of personally contributing to the establishment of peace and order, and rescuing their country from the banditti who were oppressing it; and it is not surprising that such objects should dazzle the imagination and deceive the judgment in the choice of measures by which they were to be obtained. The number of emigrants from fashion or caprice is probably not great; and whom shall we now dare to include under this description, when the humble artizan, the laborious peasant, and the village priest, have ensanguined the scaffold destined for the prince or the prelate?--But if the emigrants be justifiable, the refugees are yet more so. By Emigrants, I mean all who, without being immediately in danger, left their country through apprehension of the future--from attachment to the persons of the Princes, or to join companions in the army whom they might deem it a disgrace to abandon.--Those whom I think may with truth be styled Refugees, are the Nobility and Priests who fled when the people, irritated by the literary terrorists of the day, the Brissots, Rolands, Camille Desmoulins, &c. were burning their chateaux and proscribing their persons, and in whom expatriation cannot properly be deemed the effect of choice. These, wherever they have sought an asylum, are entitled to our respect and sympathy. Yet, I repeat, we are not authorized to discriminate. There is no reasoning coldly on the subject. The most cautious prudence, the most liberal sacrifices, and the meanest condescensions, have not insured the lives and fortunes of those who ventured to remain; and I know not that the absent require any other apology than the desolation of the country they have quitted. Had my friends who have been slaughtered by Le Bon's tribunal persisted in endeavouring to escape, they might have lived, and their families, though despoiled by the rapacity of the government, have been comparatively happy.* * The first horrors of the revolution are well known, and I have seen no accounts which exaggerate them. The niece of a lady of my acquaintance, a young woman only seventeen, escaped from her country-house (whilst already in flames) with her infant at her breast, and literally without clothes to cover her. In this state she wandered a whole night, and when she at length reached a place where she procured assistance, was so exhausted that her life was in danger.--Another lady, whom I knew, was wounded in the arm by some peasants assembled to force from her the writings of her husband's estates. Even after this they still remained in France, submitted with cheerfulness to all the demands of patriotic gifts, forced loans, requisitions and impositions of every kind; yet her husband was nevertheless guillotined, and the whole of their immense property confiscated. Retrospections, like these, obliterate many of my former notions on the subject of the Emigrants; and if I yet condemn emigration, it is only as a general measure, impolitic, and inadequate to the purposes for which it was undertaken. But errors of judgment, in circumstances so unprecedented, cannot be censured consistently with candour, through we may venture to mark them as a discouragement to imitation; for if any nation should yet be menaced by the revolutionary scourge, let it beware of seeking external redress by a temporary abandonment of its interests to the madness of systemists, or the rapine of needy adventurers. We must, we ought to, lament the fate of the many gallant men who have fallen, and the calamities of those who survive; but what in them has been a mistaken policy, will become guilt in those who, on a similar occasion, shall not be warned by their example. I am concerned when I hear these unhappy fugitives are any where objects of suspicion or persecution, as it is not likely that those who really emigrated from principle can merit such treatment: and I doubt not, that most of the instances of treachery or misconduct ascribed to the Emigrants originated in republican emissaries, who have assumed that character for the double purpose of discrediting it, and of exercising their trade as spies. The common people here, who were retained by Le Bon for several months to attend and applaud his executions, are still dissolute and ferocious, and openly regret the loss of their pay, and the disuse of the guillotine. --I came to Arras in mourning, which I have worn since the receipt of your first letter, but was informed by the lady with whom my friends lodge, that I must not attempt to walk the streets in black, for that it was customary to insult those who did so, on a supposition that they were related to some persons who had been executed; I therefore borrowed a white undress, and stole out by night to visit my unfortunate acquaintance, as I found it was also dangerous to be seen entering houses known to contain the remains of those families which had been dismembered by Le Bon's cruelties. We return to Amiens to-morrow, though you must not imagine so formidable a person as myself is permitted to wander about the republic without due precaution; and I had much difficulty in being allowed to come, even attended by a guard, who has put me to a considerable expence; but the man is civil, and as he has business of his own to transact in the town, he is no embarrassment to me. Amiens, Nov. 26, 1794. The Constituent Assembly, the Legislative Assembly, and the National Convention, all seem to have acted from a persuasion, that their sole duty as revolutionists was comprised in the destruction of whatever existed under the monarchy. If an institution were discovered to have the slightest defect in principle, or to have degenerated a little in practice, their first step was to abolish it entirely, and leave the replacing it for the present to chance, and for the future to their successors. In return for the many new words which they have introduced into the French language, they have expunged that of reform; and the havock and devastation, which a Mahometan conqueror might have performed as successfully, are as yet the only effects of philosophy and republicanism. This system of ignorance and violence seems to have persecuted with peculiar hostility all the ancient establishments for education; and the same plan of suppressing daily what they have neither leisure nor abilities to supply, which I remarked to you two years ago, has directed the Convention ever since. It is true, the interval has produced much dissertation, and engendered many projects; but those who were so unanimous in rejecting, were extremely discordant in adopting, and their own disputes and indecision might have convinced them of their presumption in condemning what they now found it so difficult to excel. Some decided in favour of public schools, after the example of Sparta-- this was objected to by others, because, said they, if you have public schools you must have edifices, and governors, and professors, who will, to a certainty, be aristocrats, or become so; and, in short, this will only be a revival of the colleges of the old government--A third party proposed private seminaries, or that people might be at liberty to educate their children in the way they thought best; but this, it was declared, would have a still greater tendency to aristocracy; for the rich, being better able to pay than the poor, would engross all the learning to themselves. The Jacobins were of opinion, that there should be no schools, either public or private, but that the children should merely be taken to hear the debates of the Clubs, where they would acquire all the knowledge necessary for republicans; and a few spirits of a yet sublimer cast were adverse both to schools or clubs, and recommended, that the rising generation should "study the great book of Nature alone." It is, however, at length concluded, that there shall be a certain number of public establishments, and that people shall even be allowed to have their children instructed at home, under the inspection of the constituted authorities, who are to prevent the instillation of aristocratic principles.* * We may judge of the competency of many of these people to be official censors of education by the following specimens from a report of Gregoire's. Since the rage for destruction has a little subsided, circular letters have been sent to the administrators of the departments, districts, &c. enquiring what antiquities, or other objects of curiosity, remain in their neighbourhood.--"From one, (says Gregoire,) we are informed, that they are possessed of nothing in this way except four vases, which, as they have been told, are of porphyry. From a second we learn, that, not having either forge or manufactory in the neighbourhood, no monument of the arts is to be found there: and a third announces, that the completion of its library cataloges has been retarded, because the person employed at them ne fait pas la diplomatique!"--("does not understand the science of diplomacy.") The difficulty as to the mode in which children were to be taught being got over, another remained, not less liable to dispute--which was, the choice of what they were to learn. Almost every member had a favourite article---music, physic, prophylactics, geography, geometry, astronomy, arithmetic, natural history, and botany, were all pronounced to be requisites in an eleemosynary system of education, specified to be chiefly intended for the country people; but as this debate regarded only the primary schools for children in their earliest years, and as one man for a stipend of twelve hundred livres a year, was to do it all, a compromise became necessary, and it has been agreed for the present, that infants of six years shall be taught only reading, writing, gymnastics, geometry, geography, natural philosophy, and history of all free nations, and that of all the tyrants, the rights of man, and the patriotic songs. --Yet, after these years of consideration, and days of debate, the Assembly has done no more than a parish-clerk, or an old woman with a primer, and "a twig whilom of small regard to see," would do better without its interference. The students of a more advanced age are still to be disposed of, and the task of devising an institution will not be easy; because, perhaps a Collot d'Herbois or a Duhem is not satisfied with the system which perfectioned the genius of Montesquieu or Descartes. Change, not improvement, is the object--whatever bears a resemblance to the past must be proscribed; and while other people study to simplify modes of instruction, the French legislature is intent on rendering them as difficult and complex as possible; and at the moment they decree that the whole country shall become learned, they make it an unfathomable science to teach urchins of half a dozen years old their letters. Foreigners, indeed, who judge only from the public prints, may suppose the French far advanced towards becoming the most erudite nation in Europe: unfortunately, all these schools, primary, and secondary, and centrical, and divergent, and normal,* exist as yet but in the repertories of the Convention, and perhaps may not add "a local habitation" to their names, till the present race** shall be unfit to reap the benefit of them. * _Les Ecoles Normales_ were schools where masters were to be instructed in the art of teaching. Certain deputies objected to them, as being of feudal institution, supposing that Normale had some reference to Normandy. ** This was a mistake, for the French seem to have adopted the maxim, "that man is never too old to learn;" and, accordingly, at the opening of the Normal schools, the celebrated Bougainville, now eighty years of age, became a pupil. This Normal project was, however, soon relinquished--for by that fatality which has hitherto attended all the republican institutions, it was found to have become a mere nursery for aristocrats. But this revolutionary barbarism, not content with stopping the progress of the rising generation, has ravaged without mercy the monuments of departed genius, and persecuted with senseless despotism those who were capable of replacing them. Pictures have been defaced, statues mutilated, and libraries burnt, because they reminded the people of their Kings or their religion; while artists, and men of science or literature, were wasting their valuable hours in prison, or expiring on the scaffold.--The moral and gentle Florian died of vexation. A life of abstraction and utility could not save the celebrated chymist, Lavoisier, from the Guillotine. La Harpe languished in confinement, probably, that he might not eclipse Chenier, who writes tragedies himself; and every author that refused to degrade his talents by the adulation of tyranny has been proscribed and persecuted. Palissot,* at sixty years old, was destined to expiate in a prison a satire upon Rousseau, written when he was only twenty, and escaped, not by the interposition of justice, but by the efficacity of a bon mot. * Palissot was author of "The Philosophers," a comedy, written thirty years ago, to ridicule Rousseau. He wrote to the municipality, acknowledged his own error, and the merits of Rousseau; yet, says he, if Rousseau were a god, you ought not to sacrifice human victims to him.--The expression, which in French is well tuned, pleased the municipality, and Palissot, I believe, was not afterwards molested. --A similar fate would have been awarded Dorat, [Author of "Les Malheurs de l'Inconstance," and other novels.] for styling himself Chevalier in the title-pages of his novels, had he not commuted his punishment for base eulogiums on the Convention, and with the same pen, which has been the delight of the French boudoir, celebrated Carrier's murders on the Loire under the appellation of "baptemes civiques." Every province in France, we are informed by the eloquent pedantry of Gregoire, exhibits traces of these modern Huns, which, though now exclusively attributed to the agents of Robespierre and Mr. Pitt,* it is very certain were authorized by the decrees of the Convention, and executed under the sanction of Deputies on mission, or their subordinates. * _"Soyez sur que ces destructions se sont pour la plupart a l'instigation de nos ennemis--quel triomphe pour l'Anglais si il eul pu ecraser notre commerce par l'aneantissement des arts dont la culture enrichit le sien."_--"Rest assured that these demolitions were, for the most part, effected at the instigation of our enemies --what a triumph would it have been for the English, if they had succeeded in crushing our commerce by the annihilation of the arts, the culture of which enriched their own." --If the principal monuments of art be yet preserved to gratify the national taste or vanity, it is owing to the courage and devotion of individuals, who obeyed with a protecting dilatoriness the destructive mandates of government. At some places, orangeries were sold by the foot for fire-wood, because, as it was alledged, that republicans had more occasion for apples and potatoes than oranges.--At Mousseaux, the seals were put on the hot-houses, and all the plants nearly destroyed. Valuable remains of sculpture were condemned for a crest, a fleur de lys, or a coronet attached to them; and the deities of the Heathen mythology were made war upon by the ignorance of the republican executioners, who could not distinguish them from emblems of feodality.* * At Anet, a bronze stag, placed as a fountain in a large piece of water, was on the point of being demolished, because stags are beasts of chace, and hunting is a feodal privilege, and stags of course emblems of feodality.--It was with some difficulty preserved by an amateur, who insisted, that stags of bronze were not included in the decree.--By a decree of the Convention, which I have formerly mentioned, all emblems of royalty or feodality were to be demolished by a particular day; and as the law made no distinction, it could not be expected that municipalities, &c. often ignorant or timid, should either venture or desire to spare what in the eyes of the connoisseur might be precious. "At St. Dennis, (says the virtuoso Gregoire,) where the National Club justly struck at the tyrants even in their tombs, that of Turenne ought to have been spared; yet strokes of the sword are still visible on it."--He likewise complains, that at the Botanic Garden the bust of Linnaeus had been destroyed, on a presumption of its being that of Charles the Ninth; and if it had been that of Charles the Ninth, it is not easy to discern how the cause of liberty was served by its mutilation.--The artist or moralist contemplates with equal profit or curiosity the features of Pliny or Commodus; and History and Science will appreciate Linnaeus and Charles the Ninth, without regarding whether their resemblances occupy a palace, or are scattered in fragments by republican ignorance.--Long after the death of Robespierre, the people of Amiens humbly petitioned the Convention, that their cathedral, perhaps the most beautiful Gothic edifice in Europe, might be preserved; and to avoid giving offence by the mention of churches or cathedrals, they called it a Basilique.--But it is unnecessary to adduce any farther proof, that the spirit of what is now called Vandalism originated in the Convention. Every one in France must recollect, that, when dispatches from all corners announced these ravages, they were heard with as much applause, as though they had related so many victories gained over the enemy. --Quantities of curious medals have been melted down for the trifling value of the metal; and at Abbeville, a silver St. George, of uncommon workmanship, and which Mr. Garrick is said to have desired to purchase at a very high price, was condemned to the crucible-- _"----Sur tant de tresors "Antiques monumens respectes jusqu'alors, "Par la destruction signalant leur puissance, "Las barbares etendirent leur stupide vengeance." "La Religion,"_ Racine. Yet the people in office who operated these mischiefs were all appointed by the delegates of the Assembly; for the first towns of the republic were not trusted even with the choice of a constable. Instead, therefore, of feeling either surprise or regret at this devastation, we ought rather to rejoice that it has extended no farther; for such agents, armed with such decrees, might have reduced France to the primitive state of ancient Gaul. Several valuable paintings are said to have been conveyed to England, and it will be curious if the barbarism of France in the eighteenth century should restore to us what we, with a fanaticism and ignorance at least more prudent than theirs, sold them in the seventeenth. The zealots of the Barebones' Parliament are, however, more respectable than the atheistical Vandals of the Convention; and, besides the benefit of our example, the interval of a century and an half, with the boast of a philosophy and a degree of illumination exceeding that of any other people, have rendered the errors of the French at once more unpardonable and more ridiculous; for, in assimilating their past presentations to their present conduct and situation, we do not always find it possible to regret without a mixture of contempt. Amiens, Nov. 29, 1794. The selfish policy of the Convention in affecting to respect and preserve the Jacobin societies, while it deprived them of all power, and help up the individuals who composed them to abhorrence, could neither satisfy nor deceive men versed in revolutionary expedients, and more accustomed to dictate laws than to submit to them.* * The Jacobins were at this time headed by Billaud Varenne, Collot, Thuriot, &c.--veterans, who were not likely to be deceived by temporizing. Supported by all the force of government, and intrinsically formidable by their union, the Clubs had long existed in defiance of public reprobation, and for some time they had braved not only the people, but the government itself. The instant they were disabled from corresponding and communicating in that privileged sort of way which rendered them so conspicuous, they felt their weakness; and their desultory and unconnected efforts to regain their influence only served to complete its annihilation. While they pretended obedience to the regulations to which the Convention had subjected them, they intrigued to promote a revolt, and were strenuously exerting themselves to gain partizans among the idle and dissolute, who, having subsisted for months as members of revolutionary committees, and in other revolutionary offices, were naturally averse from a more moderate government. The numbers of these were far from inconsiderable: and, when it is recollected that this description of people only had been allowed to retain their arms, while all who had any thing to defend were deprived of them, we cannot wonder if the Jacobins entertained hopes of success. The Convention, aware of these attempts, now employed against its ancient accomplices the same arts that had proved so fatal to all those whom it had considered as its enemies. A correspondence was "opportunely" intercepted between the Jacobins and the Emigrants in Switzerland, while emissaries insinuated themselves into the Clubs, for the purpose of exciting desperate motions; or, dispersed in public places, contrived, by assuming the Jacobin costume, to throw on the faction the odium of those seditious exclamations which they were employed to vociferate. There is little doubt that the designs of the Jacobins were nearly such as have been imputed to them. They had, however, become more politic than to act thus openly, without being prepared to repel their enemies, or to support their friends; and there is every appearance that the Swiss plots, and the insurrections of the _Palais Egalite,_ were the devices of the government, to give a pretext for shutting up the Club altogether, and to avert the real dangers with which it was menaced, by spreading an alarm of fictitious ones. A few idle people assembled (probably on purpose) about the _Palais Egalite,_ and the place where the Jacobins held their meetings, and the exclamation of "Down with the Convention!" served as the signal for hostilities. The aristocrats joined the partizans of the Convention, the Jacobins were attacked in their hall, and an affray ensued, in which several persons on each side were wounded. Both parties accused each other of being the aggressor, and a report of the business was made to the Assembly; but the Assembly had already decided--and, on the ninth of November, while the Jacobins were endeavouring to raise the storm by a recapitulation of the rights of man, a decree was passed, prohibiting their debates, and ordering the national seal to be put on their doors and papers. The society were not in force to make resistance, and the decree was carried into execution as quietly as though it had been levelled against the hotel of some devoted aristocrat. When the news of this event reached the departments, it occasioned an universal rejoicing--not such a rejoicing as is ordered for the successes of the French arms, (which always seems to be a matter of great indifference,) but a chearfulness of heart and of countenance; and many persons whom I do not remember to have ever seen in the least degree moved by political events, appeared sincerely delighted at this-- "And those smile now, who never smil'd before, "And those who always smil'd, now smile the more." Parnell's Claudian. The armies might proceed to Vienna, pillage the Escurial, or subjugate all Europe, and I am convinced no emotion of pleasure would be excited equal to that manifested at the downfall of the Jacobins of Paris. Since this disgrace of the parent society, the Clubs in the departments have, for the most part, dissolved themselves, or dwindled into peaceable assemblies to hear the news read, and applaud the convention.--The few Jacobin emblems which were yet remaining have totally disappeared, and no vestige of Jacobinism is left, but the graves of its victims, and the desolation of the country. The profligate, the turbulent, the idle, and needy, of various countries in Europe, have been tempted by the successes of the French Jacobins to endeavour to establish similar institutions; but the same successes have operated as a warning to people of a different description, and the fall of these societies has drawn two confessions from their original partizans, which ought never to be forgotten--namely, that they were formed for the purpose of subverting the monarchy, and that their existence is incompatible with regular government of any kind.--"While the monarchy still existed, (says the most philosophic Lequinio, with whose scheme of reforming La Vendee you are already acquainted,) it was politic and necessary to encourage popular societies, as the most efficacious means of operating its destruction; but now we have effected a revolution, and have only to consolidate it by mild and philosophic laws, these societies are dangerous, because they can produce only confusion and disorder."--This is also the language of Brissot, who admires the Jacobins from their origin till the end of 1792, but after that period he admits they were only the instruments of faction, and destructive of all property and order.* * The period of the Jacobin annals so much admired by Brissot, comprises the dethronement of the King, the massacres of the prisons, the banishment of the priests, &c. That which he reprobates begins precisely at the period when the Jacobins disputed the claims of himself and his party to the exclusive direction of the government.--See Brissot's Address to his Constituents. --We learn therefore, not from the abuses alone, but from the praises bestowed on the Jacobins, how much such combinations are to be dreaded. Their merit, it appears, consisted in the subversion of the monarchical government, and their crime in ceasing to be useful as agents of tyranny, the moment they ceased to be principals. I am still sceptical as to the conversion of the Assembly, and little disposed to expect good from it; yet whatever it may attempt in future, or however its real principles may take an ascendant, this fortunate concurrence of personal interests, coalition of aristocrats and democrats, and political rivalry, have likewise secured France from a return of that excess of despotism which could have been exercised only by such means. It is true, the spirit of the nation is so much depressed, that an effort to revive these Clubs might meet no resistance; but the ridicule and opprobrium to which they have latterly been subject, and finally the manner of their being sacrificed by that very Convention, of which they were the sole creators and support, will, I think, cool the zeal, and diminish the numbers of their partizans too much for them ever again to become formidable. The conduct of Carrier has been examined according to the new forms, and he is now on his trial--though not till the delays of the Convention had given rise to a general suspicion that they intended either to exonerate or afford him an opportunity of escaping; and the people were at last so highly exasperated, that six thousand troops were added to the military force of Paris, and an insurrection was seriously apprehended. This stimulated the diligence, or relaxed the indulgence, of the commission appointed to make the report on Carrier's conduct; and it being decided that there was room for accusation, the Assembly confirmed the decision, and he was ordered into custody, to be tried along with the Revolutionary Committee of Nantes which had been the instrument of his crimes. It is a circumstance worth noting, that most of the Deputies who explained the motives on which they thought Carrier guilty, were silent on the subject of his drowning, shooting, and guillotining so many thousands of innocent people, and only declared him guilty, as having been wanting in respect towards Trehouard, one of his colleagues, and of injuring the republican cause by his atrocities. The fate of this monster exhibits a practical exposition of the enormous absurdity of such a government. He is himself tried for the exercise of a power declared to be unbounded when entrusted to him. The men tried with him as his accomplices were obliged by the laws to obey him; and the acts of which they are all accused were known, applauded, and held out for imitation, by the Convention, who now declare those very acts to be criminal!--There is certainly no way of reconciling justice but by punishing both chiefs and subordinates, and the hour for this will yet come.--Adieu. Amiens. [No date given.] I do not yet venture to correspond with my Paris friends by the post, but whenever the opportunity of private conveyance occurs, I receive long and circumstantial letters, as well as packets, of all the publications most read, and the theatrical pieces most applauded. I have lately drudged through great numbers of these last, and bestowed on them an attention they did not in themselves deserve, because I considered it as one means of judging both of the spirit of the government and the morals of the people. The dramas produced at the beginning of the revolution were in general calculated to corrupt the national taste and morals, and many of them were written with skill enough to answer the purpose for which they were intended; but those that have appeared during the last two years, are so stupid and so depraved, that the circumstance of their being tolerated even for a moment implies an extinction both of taste and of morals.* * _"Dans l'espace d'un an ils ont failli detruire le produit de plusieurs siecles de civilization."_--("In the space of a year they nearly destroyed the fruits of several ages of civilization.") The principal cause of this is the despotism of the government in making the stage a mere political engine, and suffering the performance of such pieces only as a man of honesty or genius would not submit to write.* * The tragedy of Brutus was interdicted on account of these two lines: _"Arreter un romain sur de simple soupcons, "C'est agir en tyrans, nous qui les punissons."_ That of Mahomet for the following: _"Exterminez, grands dieux, de la terre ou nous sommes "Quiconque avec plaisir repand le sang des hommes."_ It is to be remarked, that the last lines are only a simple axiom of humanity, and could not have been considered as implying a censure on any government except that of the French republic. --Hence a croud of scribblers, without shame or talents, have become the exclusive directors of public amusements, and, as far as the noise of a theatre constitutes success, are perhaps more successful than ever was Racine or Moliere. Immorality and dulness have an infallible resource against public disapprobation in the abuse of monarchy and religion, or a niche for Mr. Pitt; and an indignant or impatient audience, losing their other feelings in their fears, are glad to purchase the reputation of patriotism by applauding trash they find it difficult to endure. The theatres swarm with spies, and to censure a revolutionary piece, however detestable even as a composition, is dangerous, and few have courage to be the critics of an author who is patronized by the superintendants of the guillotine, or who may retaliate a comment on his poetry by the significant prose of a mandat d'arret. Men of literature, therefore, have wisely preferred the conservation of their freedom to the vindication of their taste, and have deemed it better to applaud at the Theatre de la Republique, than lodge at St. Lazare or Duplessis.--Thus political slavery has assisted moral depravation: the writer who is the advocate of despotism, may be dull and licentious by privilege, and is alone exempt from the laws of Parnassus and of decency.--One Sylvan Marechal, author of a work he calls philosophie, has written a sort of farce, which has been performed very generally, where all the Kings in Europe are brought together as so many monsters; and when the King of France is enquired after as not being among them, a Frenchman answers,--"Oh, he is not here--we have guillotined him--we have cut off his head according to law."--In one piece, the hero is a felon escaped from the galleys, and is represented as a patriot of the most sublime principles; in another, he is the virtuous conductor of a gang of banditti; and the principal character in a third, is a ploughman turned deist and politician. Yet, while these malevolent and mercenary scribblers are ransacking past ages for the crimes of Kings or the abuses of religion, and imputing to both many that never existed, they forget that neither their books nor their imagination are able to furnish scenes of guilt and misery equal to those which have been presented daily by republicans and philosophers. What horror can their mock-tragedies excite in those who have contemplated the Place de la Revolution? or who can smile at a farce in ridicule of monarchy, that beholds the Convention, and knows the characters of the men who compose it?--But in most of these wretched productions the absurdity is luckily not less conspicuous than the immoral intention: their Princes, their Priests, their Nobles, are all tyrannical, vicious, and miserable; yet the common people, living under these same vicious tyrants, are described as models of virtue, hospitality, and happiness. If, then, the auditors of such edifying dramas were in the habit of reasoning, they might very justly conclude, that the ignorance which republicanism is to banish is desirable, and that the diffusion of riches with which they have been flattered, will only increase their vices, and subtract from their felicity. There are, however, some patriotic spirits, who, not insensible to this degeneracy of the French theatre, and lamenting the evil, have lately exercised much ingenuity in developing the cause. They have at length discovered, that all the republican tragedies, flat farces, and heavy comedies, are attributable to Mr. Pitt, who has thought proper to corrupt the authors, with a view to deprave the public taste. There is, certainly, no combating this charge; for as, according to the assertions of the Convention, Mr. Pitt has succeeded in bribing nearly every other description of men in the republic, we may suppose the consciences of such scribblers not less flexible. Mr. Pitt, indeed, stands accused, sometimes in conjunction with the Prince of Cobourg, and sometimes on his own account, of successively corrupting the officers of the fleet and army, all the bankers and all the farmers, the priests who say masses, and the people who attend them, the chiefs of the aristocrats, and the leaders of the Jacobins. The bakers who refuse to bake when they have no flour, and the populace who murmur when they have no bread, besides the merchants and shopkeepers who prefer coin to assignats, are notoriously pensioned by him: and even a part of the Representatives, and all the frail beauties, are said to be enlisted in his service.--These multifarious charges will be found on the journals of the Assembly, and we must of course infer, that Mr. Pitt is the ablest statesman, or the French the most corrupt nation, existing. But it is not only Barrere and his colleagues who suppose the whole country bribeable--the notion is common to the French in general; and vanity adding to the omnipotence of gold, whenever they speak of a battle lost, or a town taken, they conclude it impossible to have occurred but through the venal treachery of their officers.--The English, I have observed, always judge differently, and would not think the national honour sustained by a supposition that their commanders were vulnerable only in the hand. If a general or an admiral happen to be unfortunate, it would be with the utmost reluctance that we should think of attributing his mischance to a cause so degrading; yet whoever has been used to French society will acknowledge, that the first suggestion on such events is _"nos officiers ont ete gagnes,"_ [Our officers were bought.] or _"sans la trahison ce ne seroit pas arrive."_ [This could not have happened without treachery.]--Pope's hyperbole of "Just half the land would buy, and half be sold," is more than applicable here; for if we may credit the French themselves, the buyers are by no means so well proportioned to the sellers. As I have no new political intelligence to comment upon, I shall finish my letter with a domestic adventure of the morning.--Our house was yesterday assigned as the quarters of some officers, who, with part of a regiment, were passing this way to join the Northern army. As they spent the evening out, we saw nothing of them, but finding one was a Colonel, and the other a Captain, though we knew what republican colonels and captains might be, we thought it civil, or rather necessary, to send them an invitation to breakfast. We therefore ordered some milk coffee early, (for Frenchmen seldom take tea,) and were all assembled before the usual time to receive our military guests. As they did not, however, appear, we were ringing to enquire for them, when Mr. D____ entered from his morning walk, and desired us to be at ease on their account, for that in passing the kitchen, he had perceived the Captain fraternizing over some onions, bread, and beer, with our man; while the Colonel was in close conference with the cook, and watching a pan of soup, which was warming for his breakfast. We have learned since, that these heroes were very willing to accept of any thing the servants offered them, but could not be prevailed upon to approach us; though, you are to understand, this was not occasioned either by timidity or incivility, but by mere ignorance. --Mr. D____ says, the Marquise and I have not divested ourselves of aristocratic associations with our ideas of the military, and that our deshabilles this morning were unusually coquetish. Our projects of conquest were, however, all frustrated by the unlucky intervention of Bernardine's _soupe aux choux,_ [Cabbage-soup.] and Eustace's regale of cheese and onions. "And with such beaux 'tis vain to be a belle." Yours, &c. Amiens, Dec. 10, 1794. Your American friend passed through here yesterday, and delivered me the two parcels. As marks of your attention, they were very acceptable; but on any other account, I assure you, I should have preferred a present of a few pecks of wheat to all your fineries. I have been used to conclude, when I saw such strange and unaccountable absurdities given in the French papers as extracts from the debates in either of your Houses of Parliament, that they were probably fabricated here to serve the designs of the reigning factions: yet I perceive, by some old papers which came with the muslins, that there are really members so ill-informed or so unprincipled, as to use the language attributed to them, and who assert that the French are attached to their government, and call France "a land of republicans." When it is said that a people are republicans, we must suppose they are either partial to republicanism as a system, or that they prefer it in practice. A little retrospection, perhaps, will determine both these points better than the eloquence of your orators. A few men, of philosophic or restless minds, have, in various ages and countries, endeavoured to enlighten or disturb the world by examinations and disputes on forms of government; yet the best heads and the best hearts have remained divided on the subject, and I never heard that any writer was able to produce more than a partial conviction, even in the most limited circle. Whence, then, did it happen in France, where information was avowedly confined, and where such discussions could not have been general, that the people became suddenly inspired with this political sagacity, which made them in one day the judges and converts of a system they could scarcely have known before, even by name?--At the deposition of the King, the French, (speaking at large,) had as perspicuous a notion of republics, as they may be supposed to have of mathematics, and would have understood Euclid's Elements as well as the Social Contract. Yet an assemblage of the worst and most daring men from every faction, elected amidst massacres and proscription, the moment they are collected together, declare, on the proposal of Collot d'Herbois, a profligate strolling player, that France shall be a republic.--Admitting that the French were desirous of altering their form of government, I believe no one will venture to say such an inclination was ever manifested, or that the Convention were elected in a manner to render them competent to such a decision. They were not the choice of the people, but chiefly emissaries imposed on the departments by the Jacobins and the municipality of Paris; and let those who are not acquainted with the means by which the elections were obtained, examine the composition of the Assembly itself, and then decide whether any people being free could have selected such men as Petion, Tallien, Robespierre, Brissot, Carrier, Taillefer, &c. &c. from the whole nation to be their Representatives.--There must, in all large associations, be a mixture of good and bad; but when it is incontrovertible that the principal members of the Convention are monsters, who, we hope, are not to be paralleled-- that the rest are inferior rather in talents than wickedness, or cowards and ideots, who have supported and applauded crimes they only wanted opportunity to commit--it is not possible to conceive, that any people in the world could make a similar choice. Yet if the French were absolutely unbiassed, and of their own free will made this collection, who would, after such an example, be the advocates of general suffrage and popular representation?--But, I repeat, the people were not free. They were not, indeed, influenced by bribes--they were intimidated by the horrors of the moment; and along with the regulations for the new elections, were every where circulated details of the assassinations of August and September.* * The influence of the municipality of Paris on the new elections is well known. The following letter will show what instruments were employed, and the description of Representatives likely to be chosen under such auspices. "Circular letter, written by the Committee of Inspection of the municipality of Paris to all the departments of the republic, dated the third of September, the second day of the massacres: "The municipality of Paris is impatient to inform their brethren of the departments, that a part of the ferocious conspirators detained in the prisons have been put to death by the people: an act of justice which appeared to them indispensable, to restrain by terror those legions of traitors whom they must have left behind when they departed for the army. There is no doubt but the whole nation, after such multiplied treasons, will hasten to adopt the same salutary measure!"--Signed by the Commune of Paris and the Minister of Justice. Who, after this mandate, would venture to oppose a member recommended by the Commune of Paris? --The French, then, neither chose the republican form of government, nor the men who adopted it; and are, therefore, not republicans on principle.--Let us now consider whether, not being republicans on principle, experience may have rendered them such. The first effects of the new system were an universal consternation, the disappearance of all the specie, an extravagant rise in the price of provisions, and many indications of scarcity. The scandalous quarrels of the legislature shocked the national vanity, by making France the ridicule of all Europe, until ridicule was suppressed by detestation at the subsequent murder of the King. This was followed by the efforts of one faction to strengthen itself against another, by means of a general war--the leaders of the former presuming, that they alone were capable of conducting it. To the miseries of war were added revolutionary tribunals, revolutionary armies and committees, forced loans, requisitions, maximums, and every species of tyranny and iniquity man could devise or suffer; or, to use the expression of Rewbell, [One of the Directory in 1796.] "France was in mourning and desolation; all her families plunged in despair; her whole surface covered with Bastilles, and the republican government become so odious, that the most wretched slave, bending beneath the weight of his chains, would have refused to live under it!" Such were the means by which France was converted into a land of republicans, and such the government to which your patriots assert the French people were attached: yet so little was this attachment appreciated here, that the mere institutions for watching and suppressing disaffection amount, by the confession of Cambon, the financier, to twenty-four millions six hundred and thirty-one thousand pounds sterling a year! To suppose, then, that the French are devoted to a system which has served as a pretext for so many crimes, and has been the cause of so many calamities, is to conclude them a nation of philosophers, who are able to endure, yet incapable of reasoning; and who suffer evils of every kind in defence of a principle with which they can be little acquainted, and which, in practice, they have known only by the destruction it has occasioned. You may, perhaps, have been persuaded, that the people submit patiently now, for the sake of an advantage in perspective; but it is not in the disposition of unenlightened men (and the mass of a people must necessarily be so) to give up the present for the future. The individual may sometimes atchieve this painful conquest over himself, and submit to evil, on a calculation of future retribution, but the multitude will ever prefer the good most immediately attainable, if not under the influence of that terror which supersedes every other consideration. Recollect, then, the counsel of the first historian of our age, and "suspend your belief of whatever deviates from the laws of nature and the character of man;" and when you are told the French are attached to a government which oppresses them, or to principles of which they are ignorant, suppose their adoption of the one, and their submission to the other, are the result of fear, and that those who make these assertions to the contrary, are either interested or misinformed. Excuse me if I have devoted a few pages to a subject which with you is obsolete. I am indignant at the perusal of such falsehoods; and though I feel for the humiliation of great talents, I feel still more for the disgrace such an abuse of them brings on our country. It is not inapposite to mention a circumstance which happened to a friend of Mr. D____'s, some little time since, at Paris. He was passing through France, in his way from Italy, at the time of the general arrest, and was detained there till the other day. As soon as he was released from prison, he applied in person to a member of the Convention, to learn when he might hope to return to England. The Deputy replied, _"Ma soi je n'en sais rien_ [Faith I can't tell you.]--If your Messieurs (naming some members in the opposition) had succeeded in promoting a revolution, you would not have been in your cage so long--_mais pour le coup il faut attendre."_ [But now you must have patience.] It is not probable the members he named could have such designs, but Dumont once held the same language to me; and it is mortifying to hear these miscreants suppose, that factious or ambitious men, because they chance to possess talents, can make revolutions in England as they have done in France. In the papers which gave rise to these reflections, I observe that some of your manufacturing towns are discontented, and attribute the stagnation of their commerce to the war; but it is not unlikely, that the stagnation and failures complained of might have taken place, though the war had not happened.--When I came here in 1792, every shop and warehouse were over-stocked with English goods. I could purchase any article of our manufacture at nearly the retail price of London; and some I sent for from Paris, in the beginning of 1793, notwithstanding the reports of war, were very little advanced. Soon after the conclusion of the commercial treaty, every thing English became fashionable; and so many people had speculated in consequence, that similar speculations took place in England. But France was glutted before the war; and all speculations entered into on a presumption of a demand equal to that of the first years of the treaty, must have failed in a certain degree, though the two countries had remained at peace.--Even after a two years cessation of direct intercourse, British manufactures are every where to be procured, which is a sufficient proof that either the country was previously over supplied, or that they are still imported through neutral or indirect channels. Both these suppositions preclude the likelihood that the war has so great a share in relaxing the activity of your commerce, as is pretended. But whatever may be the effect of the war, there is no prospect of peace, until the efforts of England, or the total ruin of the French finances,* shall open the way for it. * By a report of Cambon's at this time, it appears the expences of France in 1792 were eighteen millions sterling--in 1793, near ninety millions--and, in the spring of 1794, twelve and a half millions per month!--The church bells, we learn from the same authority, cost in coinage, and the purchase of copper to mix with the metal, five or six millions of livres more than they produced as money. The church plate, which was brought to the bar of the Convention with such eclat, and represented as an inexhaustible resource, amounted to scarcely a million sterling: for as the offering was every where involuntary, and promoted by its agents for the purposes of pillage, part was secreted, a still greater part stolen, and, as the conveyance to Paris was a sort of job, the expences often exceeded the worth--a patine, a censor, and a small chalice, were sent to the Convention, perhaps an hundred leagues, by a couple of Jacobin Commissioners in a coach and four, with a military escort. Thus, the prejudices of the people were outraged, and their property wasted, without any benefit, even to those who suggested the measure. --The Convention, indeed, have partly relinquished their project of destroying all the Kings of the earth, and forcing all the people to be free. But, though their schemes of reformation have failed, they still adhere to those of extirpation; and the most moderate members talk occasionally of "vile islanders," and "sailing up the Thames."*-- * The Jacobins and the Moderates, who could agree in nothing else, were here perfectly in unison; so that on the same day we see the usual invectives of Barrere succeeded by menaces equally ridiculous from Pelet and Tallien-- _"La seule chose dont nous devons nous occuper est d'ecraser ce gouvernement infame."_ Discours de Pelet, 14 Nov. "The destruction of that infamous government is the only thing that ought to engage our attention." Pelet's Speech, 14 Nov. 1794. _"Aujourdhui que la France peut en se debarrassant d'une partie de ses ennemis reporter la gloire de ses armes sur les bordes de la Tamise, et ecraser le gouvernement Anglais." Discours de Tallien._ "France, having now the opportunity of lessening the number of her enemies, may carry the glory of her arms to the banks of the Thames, and crush the English government." Tallien's Speech. _"Que le gouvernement prenne des mesures sages pour faire une paix honorable avec quelques uns de nos ennemis, et a l'aide des vaisseaux Hollandais et Espagnols, portons nous ensuite avec vigueur sur les bordes de la Tamise, et detruisons la nouvelle Carthage." Discours de Tallien, 14 Nov._ "Let the government but adopt wise measures for making an honorable peace with a part of our enemies, and with the aid of the Dutch and Spanish navies, let us repair to the banks of the Thames, and destroy the modern Carthage." Tallien's Speech, 14 Nov. 1794. No one is here ignorant of the source of Tallien's predilection for Spain, and we may suppose the intrigue at this time far advanced. Probably the charms of his wife (the daughter of Mons. Cabarrus, a French speculator, formerly much encouraged by the Spanish government, afterwards disgraced and imprisoned, but now liberated) might not be the only means employed to procure his conversion. --Tallien, Clauzel, and those who have newly assumed the character of rational and decent people, still use the low and atrocious language of Brissot, on the day he made his declaration of war; and perhaps hope, by exciting a national spirit of vengeance against Great Britain, to secure their lives and their pay, when they shall have been forced to make peace on the Continent: for, be certain, the motives of these men are never to be sought for in any great political object, but merely in expedients to preserve their persons and their plunder. Those who judge of the Convention by their daily harangues, and the justice, virtue, or talents which they ascribe to themselves, must believe them to be greatly regenerated: yet such is the dearth both of abilities and of worth of any kind, that Andre Dumont has been successively President of the Assembly, Member of the Committee of General Safety, and is now in that of Public Welfare.--Adieu. Amiens, Dec. 16, 1794. The seventy-three Deputies who have been so long confined are now liberated, and have resumed their seats. Jealousy and fear for some time rendered the Convention averse from the adoption of this measure; but the public opinion was so determined in favour of it, that farther resistance might not have been prudent. The satisfaction created by this event is general, though the same sentiment is the result of various conclusions, which, however, all tend to one object--the re-establishment of monarchy. The idea most prevalent is, that these deputies, when arrested, were royalists.* * This opinion prevailed in many places where the proscribed deputies took refuge. "The Normans (says Louvet) deceived by the imputations in the newspapers, assisted us, under the idea that we were royalists: but abandoned us when they found themselves mistaken." In the same manner, on the appearance of these Deputies in other departments, armies were collecting very fast, but dispersed when they perceived these men were actuated only by personal fear or personal ambition, and that no one talked of restoring the monarchy. --By some it is thought, persecution may have converted them; but the reflecting part of the nation look on the greater number as adherents of the Girondists, whom the fortunate violence of Robespierre excluded from participating in many of the past crimes of their colleagues, and who have, in that alone, a reason for not becoming accomplices in those which may be attempted in future. It is astonishing to see with what facility people daily take on trust things which they have it in their power to ascertain. The seventy-three owe a great part of the interest they have excited to a persuasion of their having voted either for a mild sentence on the King, or an appeal to the nation: yet this is so far from being true, that many of them were unfavourable to him on every question. But supposing it to have been otherwise, their merit is in reality little enhanced: they all voted him guilty, without examining whether he was so or not; and in affecting mercy while they refused justice, they only aimed at conciliating their present views with their future safety. The whole claim of this party, who are now the Moderates of the Convention, is reducible to their having opposed the commission of crimes which were intended to serve their adversaries, rather than themselves. To effect the dethronement of the King, and the destruction of those obnoxious to them, they approved of popular insurrections; but expected that the people whom they had rendered proficients in cruelty, should become gentle and obedient when urged to resist their own authority; yet they now come forth as victims of their patriotism, and call the heads of the faction who are fallen--martyrs to liberty! But if they are victims, it is to their folly or wickedness in becoming members of such an assembly; and if their chiefs were martyrs, it was to the principles they inculcated. The trial of the Brissotins was justice, compared with that of the King. If the former were condemned without proof, their partizans should remember, that the revolutionary jury pretended to be influenced by the same moral evidence they had themselves urged as the ground on which they condemned the King; and if the people beheld with applause or indifference the execution of their once-popular idols, they only put in practice the barbarous lessons which those idols had taught them;--they were forbidden to lament the fate of their Sovereign, and they rejoiced in that of Brissot and his confederates.--These men, then, only found the just retribution of their own guilt; and though it may be politic to forget that their survivors were also their accomplices, they are not objects of esteem--and the contemporary popularity, which a long seclusion has obtained for them, will vanish, if their future conduct should be directed by their original principles.* * Louvet's pamphlet had not at this time appeared, and the subsequent events proved, that the interest taken in these Deputies was founded on a supposition they had changed their principles; for before the close of the Convention they were as much objects of hatred and contempt as their colleagues. Some of these Deputies were the hirelings of the Duke of Orleans, and most of them are individuals of no better reputation than the rest of the Assembly. Lanjuinais has the merit of having acted with great courage in defence of himself and his party on the thirty-first of May 1792; but the following anecdote, recited by Gregoire* in the Convention a few days ago will sufficiently explain both his character and Gregoire's, who are now, however, looked up to as royalists, and as men comparatively honest. * Gregoire is one of the constitutional Clergy, and, from the habit of comparing bad with worse, is more esteemed than many of his colleagues; yet, in his report on the progress of Vandalism, he expresses himself with sanguinary indecency--"They have torn (says he) the prints which represented the execution of Charles the first, because there were coats of arms on them. Ah, would to god we could behold, engraved in the same manner, the heads of all Kings, done from nature! We might then reconcile ourselves to seeing a ridiculous embellishment of heraldry accompany them." --"When I first arrived at Versailles, (says Gregoire,) as member of the Constituent Assembly, (in 1789,) I met with Lanjuinais, and we took an oath in concert to dethrone the King and abolish Nobility." Now, this was before the alledged provocations of the King and Nobility--before the constitution was framed--before the flight of the royal family to Varennes--and before the war. But almost daily confessions of this sort escape, which at once justify the King, and establish the infamy of the revolutionists. These are circumstances not to be forgotten, did not the sad science of discriminating the shades of wickedness, in which (as I have before noticed) the French have been rendered such adepts, oblige them at present to fix their hopes--not according to the degree of merit, but by that of guilt. They are reduced to distinguish between those who sanction murders, and those who perpetrated them--between the sacrificer of one thousand victims, and that of ten--between those who assassinate, and those who only reward the assassin.* * Tallien is supposed, as agent of the municipality of paris, to have paid a million and a half of livres to the Septembrisers or assassins of the prisons! I know not whether the sum was in assignats or specie.--If in the former, it was, according to the exchange then, about two and thirty thousand pounds sterling: but if estimated in proportion to what might be purchased with it, near fifty thousand. Tallien has never denied the payment of the money-- we may, therefore, conclude the charge to be true. --Before the revolution, they would not have known how to select, where all were objects of abhorrence; but now the most ignorant are casuists in the gradations of turpitude, and prefer Tallien to Le Bon, and the Abbe Sieyes to Barrere. The crimes of Carrier have been terminated, not punished, by death. He met his fate with a courage which, when the effect of innocence, is glorious to the sufferer, and consoling to humanity; but a career like his, so ended, was only the confirmation of a brutal and ferocious mind.* * When Carrier was arrested, he attempted to shoot himself, and, on being prevented by the Gens-d'armes, he told them there were members of the Convention who would not forgive their having prevented his purpose--implying, that they apprehended the discoveries he might make on his trial. While he was dressing himself, (for they took him in bed,) he added, "_Les Scelerats!_ (Meaning his more particular accomplices, who, he was told, had voted against him,) they deserved that I should be as dastardly as themselves." He rested his defence entirely on the decrees of the Convention. --Of thirty who were tried with him as his agents, and convicted of assisting at the drownings, shootings, &c. two only were executed, the rest were acquitted; because, though the facts were proved, the moral latitude of the Revolutionary Jury* did not find the guilt of the intention--that is, the culprits were indisputably the murderers of several thousand people, but, according to the words of the verdict, they did not act with a counter-revolutionary intention. * An English reader may be deceived by the name of Jury. The Revolutionary Jury was not only instituted, but even appointed by the Convention.--The following is a literal translation of some of the verdicts given on this occasion: "That O'Sulivan is author and accomplice of several noyades (drownings) and unheard-of cruelties towards the victims delivered to the waves. "That Lefevre is proved to have ordered and caused to be executed a noyade of men, women, and children, and to have committed various arbitrary acts. "That General Heron is proved to have assassinated children, and worn publicly in his hat the ear of a man he had murdered. That he also killed two children who were peaceably watching sheep. "That Bachelier is author and accomplice of the operations at Nantes, in signing arbitrary mandates of arrest, imposing vexatious taxes, and taking for himself plate, &c. found at the houses of citizens arrested on suspicion. "That Joly is guilty, &c. in executing the arbitrary orders of the Revolutionary Committee, of tying together the victims destined to be drowned or shot." There are thirty-one articles conceived nearly in the same terms, and which conclude thus--"All convicted as above, but not having acted with criminal or counter-revolutionary intentions, the Tribunal acquits and sets them at liberty." All France was indignant at those verdicts, and the people of Paris were so enraged, that the Convention ordered the acquitted culprits to be arrested again, perhaps rather for protection than punishment. They were sent from Paris, and I never heard the result; but I have seen the name of General Heron as being at large. The Convention were certainly desirous that the atrocities of these men (all zealous republicans) should be forgotten; for, independently of the disgrace which their trial has brought on the cause, the sacrifice of such agents might create a dangerous timidity in future, and deprive the government of valuable partizans, who would fear to be the instruments of crimes for which, after such a precedent, they might become responsible. But the evil, which was unavoidable, has been palliated by the tenderness or gratitude of a jury chosen by the Convention, who, by sacrificing two only of this mass of monsters, and protecting the rest, hope to consecrate the useful principle of indulgence for every act, whatever its enormity, which has been the consequence of zeal or obedience to the government. It is among the dreadful singularities of the revolution, that the greatest crimes which have been committed were all in strict observance of the laws. Hence the Convention are perpetually embarrassed by interest or shame, when it becomes necessary to punish them. We have only to compare the conduct of Carrier, le Bon, Maignet, &c. with the decrees under which they acted, to be convinced that their chief guilt lies in having been capable of obeying: and the convention, coldly issuing forth their rescripts of extermination and conflagration, will not, in the opinion of the moralist, be favorably distinguished from those who carried these mandates into execution. December 24, 1794. I am now at a village a few miles from Amiens, where, upon giving security in the usual form, we have been permitted to come for a few days on a visit to some relations of my friend Mad. de ____. On our arrival, we found the lady of the house in a nankeen pierrot, knitting grey thread stockings for herself, and the gentleman in a thick woollen jacket and pantaloons, at work in the fields, and really labouring as hard as his men.--They hope, by thus taking up the occupation and assuming the appearance of farmers, to escape farther persecution; and this policy may be available to those who have little to lose: but property is now a more dangerous distinction than birth, and whoever possesses it, will always be considered as the enemies of the republic, and treated accordingly. We have been so much confined the last twelve months, that we were glad to ride yesterday in spite of the cold; and our hosts having procured asses for the females of the party, accompanied us themselves on foot.-- During our ramble, we entered into conversation with two old men and a boy, who were at work in an open field near the road. They told us, they had not strength to labour, because they had not their usual quantity of bread--that their good lady, whose chateau we saw at a distance, had been guillotined, or else they should have wanted for nothing--_"Et ste pauvre Javotte la n'auroit pas travaille quant elle est qualsiment prete a mourir."_ ["And our poor Javotte there would not have had to work when she is almost in her grave."]--_"Mon dieu,"_ (says one of the old men, who had not yet spoke,) _"Je donnerais bien ma portion de sa terre pour la ravoir notre bonne dame."_ ["God knows, I would willingly give up my share of her estate to have our good lady amongst us again."]--_"Ah pour ca oui,"_ (returned the other,) _"mais j'crois que nous n'aurons ni l'une l'autre, voila ste maudite nation qui s'empare de tout."_ ["Ah truly, but I fancy we shall have neither one nor the other, for this cursed nation gets hold of every thing."] While they were going on in this style, a berline and four cabriolets, with three-coloured flags at the windows, and a whole troop of national guard, passed along the road. _"Vive la Republique!"_--"Vive la Nation!" cried our peasants, in an instant; and as soon as the cavalcade was out of sight, _"Voyez ste gueusaille la, quel train, c'est vraiment quelque depute de la Convention--ces brigands la, ils ne manquent de rien, ils vivent comme des rois, et nous autres nous sommes cent sois plus miserables que jamais."_ ["See there what a figure they make, those beggarly fellows--it's some deputy of the convention I take it. The thieves want for nothing, they live like so many kings, and we are all a hundred times worse off than ever."]--_"Tais toi, tais tois,"_ ["Be quiet, I tell you."] (says the old man, who seemed the least garrulous of the two.)--_"Ne crains rien,_ ["Never fear."] (replied the first,) _c'est de braves gens;_ these ladies and gentlemen I'm sure are good people; they have not the look of patriots."--And with this compliment to ourselves, and the externals of patriotism, we took our leave of them. I found, however, by this little conversation, that some of the peasants still believe they are to have the lands of the gentry divided amongst them, according to a decree for that purpose. The lady, whom they lamented, and whose estate they expected to share, was the Marquise de B____, who had really left the country before the revolution, and had gone to drink some of the German mineral waters, but not returning within the time afterwards prescribed, was declared an emigrant. By means of a friend, she got an application made to Chabot, (then in high popularity,) who for an hundred thousand livres procured a passport from the Executive Council to enter France. Upon the faith of this she ventured to return, and was in consequence, notwithstanding her passport, executed as an emigrant. Mrs. D____, who is not yet well enough for such an expedition, and is, besides, unaccustomed to our montures, remained at home. We found she had been much alarmed during our absence, every house in the village having been searched, by order of the district, for corn, and two of the horses taken to the next post to convey the retinue of the Deputy we had seen in the morning. Every thing, however, was tranquil on our arrival, and rejoicing it was no worse, though Mons. ____ seemed to be under great apprehension for his horses, we sat down to what in France is called a late dinner. Our host's brother, who left the army at the general exclusion of the Noblesse, and was in confinement at the Luxembourg until after the death of Robespierre, is a professed wit, writes couplets to popular airs, and has dramatized one of Plutarch's Lives. While we were at the desert, he amused us with some of his compositions in prison, such as an epigram on the Guillotine, half a dozen calembours on the bad fare at the _Gamelle,_ [Mess.] and an ode on the republican victory at Fleurus--the last written under the hourly expectation of being sent off with the next _fournee_ (batch) of pretended conspirators, yet breathing the most ardent attachment to the convention, and terminated by a full sounding line about tyrants and liberty.--This may appear strange, but the Poets were, for the most part, in durance, and the Muses must sing, though in a cage: hope and fear too both inspire prescriptively, and freedom might be obtained or death averted by these effusions of a devotion so profound as not to be alienated by the sufferings of imprisonment, or the menace of destruction. Whole volumes of little jeux d'esprit, written under these circumstances, might be collected from the different prisons; and, I believe, it is only in France that such a collection could have been furnished.* * Many of these poetical trifles have been published--some written even the night before their authors were executed. There are several of great poetical merit, and, when considered relatively, are wonderful.--Among the various poets imprisoned, was one we should scarcely have expected--Rouget Delille, author of the Marseillois Hymn, who, while his muse was rouzing the citizens from one end of the republic to the other to arm against tyrants, was himself languishing obscurely a victim to the worst of all tyrannies. Mr. D____, though he writes and speaks French admirably, does not love French verses; and I found he could not depend on the government of his features, while a French poet was reciting his own, but kept his eyes fixed on a dried apple, which he pared very curiously, and when that was atchieved, betook himself to breaking pralines, and extracting the almonds with equal application. We, however, complimented Monsieur's poetry; and when we had taken our coffee, and the servants were entirely withdrawn, he read us some trifles more agreeable to our principles, if not to our taste, and in which the Convention was treated with more sincerity than complaisance. It seems the poet's zeal for the republic had vanished at his departure from the Luxembourg, and that his wrath against coalesced despots, and his passion for liberty, had entirely evaporated. In the evening we played a party of reversi with republican cards,* and heard the children sing "Mourrons pour la Patrie." * The four Kings are replaced by four Genii, the Queens by four sorts of liberty, and the Knaves by four descriptions of equality. --After these civic amusements, we closed our chairs round the fire, conjecturing how long the republic might last, or whether we should all pass another twelve months in prison, and, agreeing that both our fate and that of the republic were very precarious, adjourned to rest. While I was undressing, I observed Angelique looked extremely discontented, and on my enquiring what was the matter, she answered, _"C'est que je m'ennuie beaucoup ici,"_ ["I am quite tired of this place."] "Mademoiselle," (for no state or calling is here exempt from this polite sensation.) "And why, pray?"--_"Ah quelle triste societe, tout le monde est d'un patriotisme insoutenable, la maison est remplie d'images republicaines, des Marat, des Voltaire, des Pelletier, que sais-moi? et voila jusqu'au garcon de l'ecurie qui me traite de citoyenne."_ ["Oh, they are a sad set--every body is so insufferably patriotic. The house is full from top to bottom of republican images, Marats, and Voltaires, and Pelletiers, and I don't know who--and I am called Citizen even by the stable boy."] I did not think it right to satisfy her as to the real principles of our friends, and went to bed ruminating on the improvements which the revolution must have occasioned in the art of dissimulation. Terror has drilled people of the most opposite sentiments into such an uniformity of manner and expression, that an aristocrat who is ruined and persecuted by the government is not distinguishable from the Jacobin who has made his fortune under it. In the morning Angelique's countenance was brightened, and I found she had slept in the same room with Madame's _femme de chambre,_ when an explanation of their political creeds had taken place, so that she now assured me Mad. Augustine was _"fort honnete dans le fond,"_ [A very good girl at heart.] though she was obliged to affect republicanism.--"All the world's a stage," says our great dramatic moralist. France is certainly so at present, and we are not only necessitated to act a part, but a sorry one too; for we have no choice but to exhibit in farce, or suffer in tragedy.--Yours, &c. December 27, 1794. I took the opportunity of my being here to go about four leagues farther to see an old convent acquaintance lately come to this part of the country, and whom I have not met since I was at Orleans in 1789. The time has been when I should have thought such a history as this lady's a romance, but tales of woe are now become familiar to us, and, if they create sympathy, they no longer excite surprize, and we hear of them as the natural effects of the revolution. Madame de St. E__m__d is the daughter of a gentleman whose fortune was inadequate both to his rank and manner of living, and he gladly embraced the offer of Monsieur de St. E__m__d to marry her at sixteen, and to relinquish the fortune allotted her to her two younger sisters. Monsieur de St. E__m__d, being a dissipated man, soon grew weary of any sort of domestic life, and placing his wife with her father, in less than a year after their marriage departed for Italy.--Madame de St. E__m__d, thus left in a situation both delicate and dangerous for a young and pretty woman, became unfortunately attached to a gentleman who was her distant relation: yet, far from adopting the immoral principles not unjustly ascribed to your country, she conducted herself with a prudence and reserve, which even in France made her an object of general respect. About three years after her husband's departure the revolution took place, and not returning, he was of course put on the list of emigrants. In 1792, when the law passed which sanctioned and facilitated divorces, her friends all earnestly persuaded her to avail herself of it, but she could not be prevailed upon to consider the step as justifiable; for though Monsieur de St. E__m__d neglected her, he had, in other respects, treated her with generosity and kindness. She, therefore, persisted in her refusal, and her lover, in despair, joined the republican army. At the general arrest of the Noblesse, Madame de St. E__m__d and her sisters were confined in the town where they resided, but their father was sent to Paris; and a letter from one of his female relations, who had emigrated, being found among his papers, he was executed without being able to see or write to his children. Madame de St. E__m__d's husband had returned about the same time to France, in the disguise of a post-boy, was discovered, and shared the same fate. These events reached her love, still at the army, but it was impossible for him to quit his post, and in a few days after, being mortally wounded, he died,* recommending Eugenie de St. E__m__d to the protection of his father.-- * This young man, who died gallantly fighting in the cause of the republic, was no republican: but this does not render the murder of his father, a deaf [There were people both deaf and dumb in the prisons as conspirators.] and inoffensive man, less abominable.--The case of General Moreau's father, though somewhat similar, is yet more characteristic of the revolution. Mons. Moreau was persuaded, by a man who had some interest in the business, to pay a debt which he owed an emigrant, to an individual, instead of paying it, as the law directed, to the use of the republic. The same man afterwards denounced him, and he was thrown into prison. At nine o'clock on the night preceding his trial, his act of accusation was brought him, and before he had time to sketch out a few lines for his defence, the light by which he wrote was taken away. In the morning he was tried, the man who had informed against him sitting as one of his judges, and he was condemned and executed the very day on which his son took the Fort de l'Ecluse!--Mons. Moreau had four sons, besides the General in the army, and two daughters, all left destitute by the confiscation of his property. --A brother officer, who engaged to execute this commission, wrote immediately to the old man, to inform him of his loss, and of his son's last request. It was too late, the father having been arrested on suspicion, and afterwards guillotined, with many other persons, for a pretended conspiracy in prison, the very day on which his son had fallen in the performance of an act of uncommon bravery. Were I writing from imagination, I should add, that Madame de St. E__m__d had been unable to sustain the shock of these repeated calamities, and that her life or understanding had been the sacrifice. It were, indeed, happy for the sufferer, if our days were always terminated when they became embittered, or that we lost the sense of sorrow by its excess: but it is not so--we continue to exist when we have lost the desire of existence, and to reason when feeling and reason constitute our torments. Madame de St. E__m__d then lives, but lives in affliction; and having collected the wreck of her personal property, which some friends had concealed, she left the part of France she formerly inhabited, and is now with an aunt in this neighbourhood, watching the decay of her eldest sister, and educating the youngest. Clementine was consumptive when they were first arrested, and vexation, with ill-treatment in the prison, have so established her disorder, that she is now past relief. She is yet scarcely eighteen, and one of the most lovely young women I ever saw. Grief and sickness have ravaged her features; but they are still so perfect, that fancy, associating their past bloom with their present languor, supplies perhaps as much to the mind as is lost by the eye. She suffers without complaining, and mourns without ostentation; and hears her father spoken of with such solemn silent floods of tears, that she looks like the original of Dryden's beautiful portrait of the weeping Sigismunda. The letter which condemned the father of these ladies, was not, it seems, written to himself, but to a brother, lately dead, whose executor he was, and of whose papers he thus became possessed. On this ground their friends engaged them to petition the Assembly for a revision of the sentence, and the restoration of their property, which was in consequence forfeited. The daily professions of the Convention, in favour of justice and humanity, and the return of the seventy-three imprisoned Deputies, had soothed these poor young women with the hopes of regaining their paternal inheritance, so iniquitously confiscated. A petition was, therefore, forwarded to Paris about a fortnight ago; and the day before, the following decree was issued, which has silenced their claims for ever: "La Convention Nationale declare qu'elle n'admettra aucune demande en revision des jugemens criminels portant confiscation de biens rendus et executes pendant la revolution."* * "The National Convention hereby declares that it will admit no petitions for the revisal of such criminal sentences, attended with confiscation of property, as have been passed and executed since the revolution." Yet these revolutionists, who would hear nothing of repairing their own injustice, had occasionally been annulling sentences past half a century ago, and the more recent one of the Chevalier La Barre. But their own executions and confiscations for an adherence to religion were to be held sacred.--I shall be excused for introducing here a few words respecting the affair of La Barre, which has been a favourite topic with popular writers of a certain description. The severity of the punishment must, doubtless, be considered as disgraceful to those who advised as well as to those who sanctioned it: but we must not infer from hence that he merited no punishment at all; and perhaps degradation, some scandalous and public correction, with a few years solitary confinement, might have answered every purpose intended. La Barre was a young etourdi, under twenty, but of lively talents, which, unfortunately for him, had taken a very perverse turn. The misdemeanour commonly imputed to him and his associates was, that they had mutilated a Christ which stood on the Pont-neuf at Abbeville: but La Barre had accustomed himself to take all opportunities of insulting, with the most wanton malignity, these pious representations, and especially in the presence of people, with whom his particular connections led him to associate, and whose profession could not allow them entirely to overlook such affronts on what was deemed an appendage to the established religion of the country. The people of Abbeville manifested their sense of the business when d'Etalonde, La Barre's intimate friend, who had saved himself by flight, returned, after a long exile, under favour of the revolution. He was received in the neighbourhood with the most mortifying indifference. The decree of the Convention too, by which the memory of this imprudent young man was re-established, when promulgated, created about as much interest as any other law which did not immediately affect the property or awaken the apprehensions of the hearers. Madame de St. E__m__d told me her whole fortune was now reduced to a few Louis, and about six or seven thousand livres in diamonds; that she was unwilling to burden her aunt, who was not rich, and intended to make some advantage of her musical talents, which are indeed considerable. But I could not, without anguish, hear an elegant young woman, with a heart half broken, propose to get her living by teaching music.--I know not that I ever passed a more melancholy day. In the afternoon we walked up and down the path of the village church-yard. The church was shut up, the roof in part untiled, the windows were broken, and the wooden crosses that religion or tenderness had erected to commemorate the dead, broken and scattered about. Two labourers, and a black-smith in his working garb, came while we were there, and threw a sort of uncouth wooden coffin hastily into a hole dug for the purpose, which they then covered and left without farther ceremony. Yet this was the body of a lady regretted by a large family, who were thus obliged to conquer both their affection and their prejudices, and inter her according to the republican mode.* * The relations or friends of the dead were prohibited, under severe penalties, from following their remains to the grave. I thought, while we traversed the walk, and beheld this scene, that every thing about me bore the marks of the revolution. The melancholy objects I held on my arm, and the feeble steps of Clementine, whom we could scarcely support, aided the impression; and I fear that, for the moment, I questioned the justice of Heaven, in permitting such a scourge to be let loose upon its works. I quitted Madame de St. E__m__d this morning with reluctance, for we shall not meet again till I am entirely at liberty. The village municipality where she now resides, are quiet and civil, and her misfortunes make her fearful of attracting the notice of the people in authority of a large place, so that she cannot venture to Amiens.--You must observe, that any person who has suffered is an object of particular suspicion, and that to have had a father or a husband executed, and to be reduced to beggary, are titles to farther persecution.--The politics of the day are, it is true, something less ferocious than they were: but confidence is not to be restored by an essay in the Orateur du Peuple,* or an equivocal harangue from the tribune; and I perceive every where, that those who have been most injured, are most timid. * _"L'Orateur du Peuple,"_ was a periodical paper published by Freron, many numbers of which were written with great spirit.-- Freron was at this time supposed to have become a royalist, and his paper, which was comparatively favourable to the aristocrats, was read with great eagerness. The following extract from the registers of one of the popular commissions will prove, that the fears of those who had already suffered by the revolution were well founded: "A. Sourdeville, and A. N. E. Sourdeville, sisters of an emigrant Noble, daughters of a Count, aristocrats, and having had their father and brother guillotined. "M. J. Sourdeville, mother of an emigrant, an aristocrat, and her husband and son having been guillotined. "Jean Marie Defille--very suspicious--a partizan of the Abbe Arnoud and La Fayette, has had a brother guillotined, and always shewn himself indifferent about the public welfare." The commissions declare that the above are condemned to banishment. I did not reach this place till after the family had dined, and taking my soup and a dish of coffee, have escaped, under pretext of the headache, to my own room. I left our poet far gone in a classical description of a sort of Roman dresses, the drawings of which he had seen exhibited at the Lyceum, as models of an intended national equipment for the French citizens of both sexes; and my visit to Madame de St. E__m__d had incapacitated me for discussing revolutionary draperies. In England, this is the season of festivity to the little, and beneficence in the great; but here, the sterile genius of atheism has suppressed the sounds of mirth, and closed the hands of charity--no season is consecrated either to the one or the other; and the once-varied year is but an uniform round of gloom and selfishness. The philosopher may treat with contempt the notion of periodical benevolence, and assert that we should not wait to be reminded by religion or the calendar, in order to contribute to the relief of our fellow creatures: yet there are people who are influenced by custom and duty, that are not always awake to compassion; and indolence or avarice may yield a too ready obedience to prohibitions which favour both. The poor are certainly no gainers by the substitution of philosophy for religion; and many of those who are forbidden to celebrate Christmas or Easter by a mass, will forget to do it by a donation. For my own part, I think it an advantage that any period of the year is more particularly signalized by charity; and I rejoice when I hear of the annual gifts of meat or firing of such, or such a great personage--and I never enquire whether they might still continue their munificence if Christianity were abolished.--Adieu. 
16445	----	Produced from images generously made available by gallica (Bibliothèque nationale de France) at http://gallica.bnf.fr. OBSERVATIONS AND REFLECTIONS MADE IN THE COURSE OF A JOURNEY THROUGH _FRANCE, ITALY, AND GERMANY_. By HESTER LYNCH PIOZZI. IN TWO VOLUMES Vol. I. LONDON: Printed for A. STRAHAN; and T. CADELL in the Strand, MDCCLXXXIX. PREFACE. I was made to observe at Rome some vestiges of an ancient custom very proper in those days--it was the parading of the streets by a set of people called _Preciæ_, who went some minutes before the _Flamen Dialis_ to bid the inhabitants leave work or play, and attend wholly to the procession; but if ill omens prevented the pageants from passing, or if the occasion of the show was deemed scarcely worthy its celebration, these _Preciæ_ stood a chance of being ill-treated by the spectators. A Prefatory introduction to a work like this, can hope little better usage from the Public than they had; it proclaims the approach of what has often passed by before, adorned most certainly with greater splendour, perhaps conducted too with greater regularity and skill: Yet will I not despair of giving at least a momentary amusement to my countrymen in general, while their entertainment shall serve as a vehicle for conveying expressions of particular kindness to those foreign individuals, whose tenderness softened the sorrows of absence, and who eagerly endeavoured by unmerited attentions to supply the loss of their company on whom nature and habit had given me stronger claims. That I should make some reflections, or write down some observations, in the course of a long journey, is not strange; that I should present them before the Public is I hope not too daring: the presumption grew up out of their acknowledged favour, and if too kind culture has encouraged a coarse plant till it runs to seed, a little coldness from the same quarter will soon prove sufficient to kill it. The flattering partiality of private partisans sometimes induces authors to venture forth, and stand a public decision; but it is often found to betray them too; not to be tossed by waves of perpetual contention, but rather to sink in the silence of total neglect. What wonder! He who swims in oil must be buoyant indeed, if he escapes falling certainly, though gently, to the bottom; while he who commits his safety to the bosom of the wide-embracing ocean, is sure to be strongly supported, or at worst thrown upon the shore. On this principle it has been still my study to obtain from a humane and generous Public that shelter their protection best affords from the poisoned arrows of private malignity; for though it is not difficult to despise the attempts of petty malice, I will not say with the Philosopher, that I mean to build a monument to my fame with the stones thrown at me to break my bones; nor yet pretend to the art of Swift's German Wonder-doer, who promised to make them fall about his head like so many pillows. Ink, as it resembles Styx in its colour, should resemble it a little in its operation too; whoever has been once _dipt_ should become _invulnerable_: But it is not so; the irritability of authors has long been enrolled among the comforts of ill-nature, and the triumphs of stupidity; such let it long remain! Let me at least take care in the worst storms that may arise in public or in private life, to say with Lear, --I'm one More sinn'd against, than sinning. For the book--I have not thrown my thoughts into the form of private letters; because a work of which truth is the best recommendation, should not above all others begin with a lie. My old acquaintance rather chose to amuse themselves with conjectures, than to flatter me with tender inquiries during my absence; our correspondence then would not have been any amusement to the Public, whose treatment of me deserves every possible acknowledgment; and more than those acknowledgments will I not add--to a work, which, such as it is, I submit to their candour, resolving to think as little of the event as I can help; for the labours of the press resemble those of the toilette, both should be attended to, and finished with care; but once complete, should take up no more of our attention; unless we are disposed at evening to destroy all effect of our morning's study. OBSERVATIONS AND REFLECTIONS MADE IN A JOURNEY THROUGH France, Italy, and Germany. * * * * * FRANCE. CALAIS. September 7, 1784. Of all pleasure, I see much may be destroyed by eagerness of anticipation: I had told my female companion, to whom travelling was new, how she would be surprized and astonished, at the difference found in crossing the narrow sea from England to France, and now she is not astonished at all; why should she? We have lingered and loitered six and twenty hours from port to port, while sickness and fatigue made her feel as if much more time still had elapsed since she quitted the opposite shore. The truth is, we wanted wind exceedingly; and the flights of shaggs, and shoals of maycril, both beautiful enough, and both uncommon too at this season, made us very little amends for the tediousness of a night passed on ship-board. Seeing the sun rise and set, however, upon an unobstructed horizon, was a new idea gained to me, who never till now had the opportunity. It confirmed the truth of that maxim which tells us, that the human mind must have something left to supply for itself on the sight of all sublunary objects. When my eyes have watched the rising or setting sun through a thick crowd of intervening trees, or seen it sink gradually behind a hill which obstructed my closer observation, fancy has always painted the full view finer than at last I found it; and if the sun itself cannot satisfy the cravings of a thirsty imagination, let it at least convince us that nothing on this side Heaven can satisfy them, and _set our affections_ accordingly. Pious reflections remind one of monks and nuns; I enquired of the Franciscan friar who attended us at the inn, what was become of Father Felix, who did the duties of the quête; as it is called, about a dozen years ago, when I recollect minding that his manners and story struck Dr. Johnson exceedingly, who said that so complete a character could scarcely be found in romance. He had been a soldier, it seems, and was no incompetent or mean scholar: the books we found open in his cell, shewed he had not neglected modern or colloquial knowledge; there was a translation of Addison's Spectators, and Rapin's Dissertation on the contending Parties of England called Whig and Tory. He had likewise a violin, and some printed music, for his entertainment. I was glad to hear he was well, and travelling to Barcelona on foot by orders of the superior. After dinner we set out to see Miss Grey, at her convent of Dominican Nuns; who, I hoped, would have remembered me, as many of the ladies there had seized much of my attention when last abroad; they had however all forgotten me, nor could call to mind how much they had once admired the beauty of my eldest daughter, then a child, which I thought impossible to forget: one is always more important in one's own eyes than in those of others; but no one is of importance to a Nun, who is and ought to be employed in other speculations. When the Great Mogul showed his splendour to a travelling dervise, who expressed his little admiration of it--"Shall you not often be thinking of me in future?" said the monarch. "Perhaps I might," replied the religieux, "if I were not always thinking upon God." The women spinning at their doors here, or making lace, or employing themselves in some manner, is particularly consolatory to a British eye; yet I do not recollect it struck me last time I was over: industry without bustle, and some appearance of gain without fraud, comfort one's heart; while all the profits of commerce scarcely can be said to make immediate compensation to a delicate mind, for the noise and brutality observed in an English port. I looked again for the chapel, where the model of a ship, elegantly constructed, hung from the top, and found it in good preservation: some scrupulous man had made the ship, it seems, and thought, perhaps justly too, that he had spent a greater portion of time and care on the workmanship than he ought to have done; so resolving no longer to indulge his vanity or fondness, fairly hung it up in the convent chapel, and made a solemn vow to look on it no more. I remember a much stronger instance of self-denial practised by a pretty young lady of Paris once, who was enjoined by her confessor to wring off the neck of her favourite bullfinch, as a penance for having passed too much time in teaching him to pipe tunes, peck from her hand, &c.--She obeyed; but never could be prevailed on to see the priest again. We are going now to leave Calais, where the women in long white camblet clokes, soldiers with whiskers, girls in neat slippers, and short petticoats contrived to show them, who wait upon you at the inn;--postillions with greasy night-caps, and vast jack-boots, driving your carriage harnessed with ropes, and adorned with sheep-skins, can never fail to strike an Englishman at his first going abroad:--But what is our difference of manners, compared to that prodigious effect produced by the much shorter passage from Spain to Africa; where an hour's time, and sixteen miles space only, carries you from Europe, from civilization, from Christianity. A gentleman's description of his feelings on that occasion rushes now on my mind, and makes me half ashamed to sit here, in Dessein's parlour, writing remarks, in good time!--upon places as well known as Westminster-bridge to almost all those who cross it at this moment; while the custom-house officers intrusion puts me the less out of humour, from the consciousness that, if I am disturbed, I am disturbed from doing _nothing_. CHANTILLY. Our way to this place lay through Boulogne; the situation of which is pleasing, and the fish there excellent. I was glad to see Boulogne, though I can scarcely tell why; but one is always glad to see something new, and talk of something old: for example, the story I once heard of Miss Ashe, speaking of poor Dr. James, who loved profligate conversation dearly,--"That man should set up his quarters across the water," said she; "why Boulogne would be a seraglio to him." The country, as far as Montreuil, is a coarse one; _thin herbage in the plains and fruitless fields_. The cattle too are miserably poor and lean; but where there is no grass, we can scarcely expect them to be fat: they must not feed on wheat, I suppose, and cannot digest tobacco. Herds of swine, not flocks of sheep, meet one's eye upon the hills; and the very few gentlemen's feats that we have passed by, seem out of repair, and deserted. The French do not reside much in private houses, as the English do; but while those of narrower fortunes flock to the country towns within their reach, those of ampler purses repair to Paris, where the rent of their estate supplies them with pleasures at no very enormous expence. The road is magnificent, like our old-fashioned avenue in a nobleman's park, but wider, and paved in the middle: this convenience continued on for many hundred miles, and all at the king's expence. Every man you meet, politely pulls off his hat _en passant_; and the gentlemen have commonly a good horse under them, but certainly a dressed one. Sporting season is not come in yet, but, I believe the idea of sporting seldom enters any head except an English one: here is prodigious plenty of game, but the familiarity with which they walk about and sit by our road-side, shews they feel no apprehensions. Harvest, even in France, is extremely backward this year, I see; no crops are yet got in, nor will reaping be likely to pay its own charges. But though summer is come too late for profit, the pleasure it brings is perhaps enhanced by delay: like a life, the early part of which has been wasted in sickness, the possessor finds too little time remaining for work, when health _does_ come; and spends all that he has left, naturally enough, in enjoyment. The pert vivacity of _La Fille_ at Montreuil was all we could find there worth remarking: it filled up my notions of French flippancy agreeably enough; as no English wench would so have answered one to be sure. She had complained of our avant-coureur's behaviour. "_Il parle sur le bant ton, mademoiselle_" (said I), "_mais il à le coeur bon_[A]:" "_Ouydà_" (replied she, smartly), "_mais c'est le ton qui fait le chanson_[B]." FOOTNOTES: [Footnote A: He sets his talk to a sounding tune, my dear, but he is an honest fellow.] [Footnote B: But I always thought it was the tune which made the musick.] The cathedral at Amiens made ample amends for the country we passed through to see it; the _Nef d'Amiens_ deserves the fame of a first-rate structure: and the ornaments of its high altar seem particularly well chosen, of an excellent taste, and very capital execution. The vineyards from thence hither shew, that either the climate, or season, or both, improve upon one: the grapes climbing up some not very tall golden-pippin trees, and mingling their fruits at the top, have a mighty pleasing effect; and I observe the rage for Lombardy poplars is in equal force here as about London: no tolerable house have I passed without seeing long rows of them; all young plantations, as one may perceive by their size. Refined countries always are panting for speedy enjoyment: the maxim of _carpe diem_[Footnote: Seize the present moment.] came into Rome when luxury triumphed there; and poets and philosophers lent their assistance to decorate and dignify her gaudy car. Till then we read of no such haste to be happy; and on the same principle, while Americans contentedly wait the slow growth of their columnal chesnut, our hot-bed inhabitants measure the slender poplar with canes, anxiously admiring its quick growth and early elegance; yet are often cut down themselves, before their youthful favourite can afford them either pleasure or advantage. This charming palace and gardens were new to neither of us, yet lovely to both: the tame fish, I remember so well to have fed from my hand eleven or twelve years ago, are turned almost all white; can it be with age I wonder? the naturalists must tell. I once saw a carp which weighed six pounds and an half taken out of a pond in Hertfordshire, where the owners knew it had resided forty years at least; and it was not white, but of the common colour: Quere, how long will they live? and when will they begin to change? The stables struck me as more magnificent this time than the last I saw them; the hounds were always dirtily and ill kept; but hunting is not the taste of any nation now but ours; none but a young English heir says to his estate as Goliah did to David, _Come to me, and I will give thee to the beasts of the field, and to the fowls of the air_; as some of our old books of piety reproach us. Every trick that money can play with the most lavish abundance of water is here exhibited; nor is the sight of a _jet d'eau_, or the murmur of an artificial cascade, undelightful in a hot day, let the Nature-mongers say what they please. The prince's cabinet, for a private collection, is not a mean one; but I was sorry to see his quadrant rusted to the globe almost, and the poor planetarium out of all repair. The great stuffed dog is a curiosity however; I never saw any of the canine species so large, and withal so beautiful, living or dead. The theatre belonging to the house is a lovely one; and the truly princely possessor, when he heard once that an English gentleman, travelling for amusement, had called at Chantilly too late to enjoy the diversion, instantly, though past twelve o'clock at night, ordered a new representation, that his curiosity might be gratified. This is the same Prince of Condè, who going from Paris to his country-seat here for a month or two, when his eldest son was nine years old, left him fifty louis d'ors as an allowance during his absence. At his return to town, the boy produced his purse, crying "_Papa! here's all the money safe, I have never touched it once_"--The Prince, in reply, took him gravely to the window, and opening it, very quietly poured all the louis d'ors into the street; saying, "Now, if you have neither virtue enough to give away your money, nor spirit enough to spend it, always _do this_ for the future, do you hear; that the poor may at least have a _chance for it_." PARIS. The fine paved road to this town has many inconveniencies, and jars the nerves terribly with its perpetual rattle; the approach however always strikes one as very fine, I think, and the boulevards and guingettes look always pretty too: as wine, beer, and spirits are not permitted to be sold there, one sees what England does not even pretend to exhibit, which is gaiety without noise, and a crowd without a riot. I was pleased to go over the churches again too, and re-experience that particular sensation which the disposition of St. Rocque's altars and ornaments alone can give. In the evening we looked at the new square called the Palais Royal, whence the Due de Chartres has removed a vast number of noble trees, which it was a sin and shame to profane with an axe, after they had adorned that spot for so many centuries.--The people were accordingly as angry, I believe, as Frenchmen can be, when the folly was first committed: the court, however, had wit enough to convert the place into a sort of Vauxhall, with tents, fountains, shops, full of frippery, brilliant at once and worthless, to attract them; with coffeehouses surrounding it on every side; and now they are all again _merry_ and _happy_, synonymous terms at Paris, though often disunited in London; and _Vive le Duc de Chartres_! The French are really a contented race of mortals;--precluded almost from possibility of adventure, the low Parisian leads a gentle humble life, nor envies that greatness he never can obtain; but either wonders delightedly, or diverts himself philosophically with the sight of splendours which seldom fail to excite serious envy in an Englishman, and sometimes occasion even suicide, from disappointed hopes, which never could take root in the heart of these unaspiring people. Reflections of this cast are suggested to one here in every shop, where the behaviour of the matter at first sight contradicts all that our satirists tell us of the _supple Gaul_, &c. A mercer in this town shews you a few silks, and those he scarcely opens; _vous devez choisir_[Footnote: Chuse what you like.], is all he thinks of saying, to invite your custom; then takes out his snuff-box, and yawns in your face, fatigued by your inquiries. For my own part, I find my natural disgust of such behaviour greatly repelled, by the recollection that the man I am speaking to is no inhabitant of A happy land, where circulating pow'r Flows thro' each member of th'embodied state-- S. JOHNSON. and I feel well-inclined to respect the peaceful tenor of a life, which likes not to be broken in upon, for the sake of obtaining riches, which when gotten must end only in the pleasure of counting them. A Frenchman who should make his fortune by trade tomorrow, would be no nearer advancement in society or situation: why then should he solicit, by arts he is too lazy to delight in the practice of, that opulence which would afford so slight an improvement to his comforts? He lives as well as he wishes already; he goes to the Boulevards every night, treats his wife with a glass of lemonade or ice, and holds up his babies by turns, to hear the jokes of _Jean Pottage_. Were he to recommend his goods, like the Londoner, with studied eloquence and attentive flattery, he could not hope like him that the eloquence he now bestows on the decorations of a hat, or the varnish of an equipage, may one day serve to torment a minister, and obtain a post of honour for his son; he could not hope that on some future day his flattery might be listened to by some lady of more birth than beauty, or riches perhaps, when happily employed upon a very different subject, and be the means of lifting himself into a state of distinction, his children too into public notoriety. Emulation, ambition, avarice, however, must in all arbitrary governments be confined to the great; the _other_ set of mortals, for there are none there of _middling_ rank, live, as it should seem, like eunuchs in a seraglio; feel themselves irrevocably doomed to promote the pleasure of their superiors, nor ever dream of sighing for enjoyments from which an irremeable boundary divides them. They see at the beginning of their lives how that life must necessarily end, and trot with a quiet, contented, and unaltered pace down their long, straight, and shaded avenue; while we, with anxious solicitude, and restless hurry, watch the quick turnings of our serpentine walk; which still presents, either to sight or expectation, some changes of variety in the ever-shifting prospect, till the unthought-of, unexpected end comes suddenly upon us, and finishes at once the fluctuating scene. Reflections must now give way to facts for a moment, though few English people want to be told that every hotel here, belonging to people of condition, is shut out from the street like our Burlington-house, which gives a general gloom to the look of this city so famed for its gaiety: the streets are narrow too, and ill-paved; and very noisy, from the echo made by stone buildings drawn up to a prodigious height, many of the houses having seven, and some of them even eight stories from the bottom. The contradictions one meets with every moment likewise strike even a cursory observer--a countess in a morning, her hair dressed, with diamonds too perhaps, a dirty black handkerchief about her neck, and a flat silver ring on her finger, like our ale-wives; a _femme publique_, dressed avowedly for the purposes of alluring the men, with not a very small crucifix hanging at her bosom;--and the Virgin Mary's sign at an alehouse door, with these words, Je suis la mere de mon Dieu, Et la gardienne de ce lieu[C]. [Footnote C: The mother of my God am I, And keep this house right carefully. ] I have, however, borrowed Bocage's Remarks upon the English nation, which serve to damp my spirit of criticism exceedingly: She had more opportunities than I for observation, not less quickness of discernment surely; and her stay in London was longer than mine in Paris.--Yet, how was she deceived in many points! I will tell nothing that I did not _see_; and among the objects one would certainly avoid seeing if it were possible, is the deformity of the poor.--Such various modes of warping the human figure could hardly be observed in England by a surgeon in high practice, as meet me about this country incessantly.--I have seen them in the galleries and outer-courts even of the palace itself, and am glad to turn my eyes for relief on the Duke of Orleans's pictures; a glorious collection! The Italian noblemen, in whose company we saw it, acknowledged with candour the good taste of the selection; and I was glad to see again what had delighted me so many years before: particularly, the three Marys, by Annibale Caracci; and Rubens's odd conceit of making Juno's Peacock peck Paris's leg, for having refused the apple to his mistress. The manufacture at the Gobelins seems exceedingly improved; the colouring less inharmonious, the drawing more correct; but our Parisians are not just now thinking about such matters; they are all wild for love of a new comedy, written by Mons. de Beaumarchais, and called, "Le Mariage de Figaro," full of such wit as we were fond of in the reign of Charles the Second, indecent merriment, and gross immorality; mixed, however, with much acrimonious satire, as if Sir George Etherege and Johnny Gay had clubbed their powers of ingenuity at once to divert and to corrupt their auditors; who now carry the verses of this favourite piece upon their fans, pocket-handkerchiefs, &c. as our women once did those of the Beggar's Opera. We have enjoyed some very agreeable society here in the company of Comte Turconi, a Milanese Nobleman who, desirous to escape all the frivolous, and petty distinction which birth alone bestows, has long fixed his residence in Paris, where talents find their influence, and where a great city affords that unobserved freedom of thought and action which can scarcely be expected by a man of high rank in a smaller circle; but which, when once tasted, will not seldom be preferred to the attentive watchfulness of more confined society. The famous Venetian too, who has written so many successful comedies, and is now employed upon his own Memoirs, at the age of eighty-four, was a delightful addition to our Coterie, _Goldoni_. He is garrulous, good-humoured, and gay; resembling the late James Harris of Salisbury in person not manner, and seems justly esteemed, and highly, by his countrymen. The conversation of the Marquis Trotti and the Abate Bucchetti is likewise particularly pleasing; especially to me, who am naturally desirous to live as much as possible among Italians of general knowledge, good taste, and polished manners, before I enter their country, where the language will be so very indispensable. Mean time I have stolen a day to visit my old acquaintance the English Austin Nuns at the Fossée, and found the whole community alive and cheerful; they are many of them agreeable women, and having seen Dr. Johnson with me when I was last abroad, enquired much for him: Mrs. Fermor, the Prioress, niece to Belinda in the Rape of the Lock, taking occasion to tell me, comically enough, "That she believed there was but little comfort to be found in a house that harboured _poets_; for that she remembered Mr. Pope's praise made her aunt very troublesome and conceited, while his numberless caprices would have employed ten servants to wait on him; and he gave one" (said she) "no amends by his talk neither, for he only sate dozing all day, when the sweet wine was out, and made his verses chiefly in the night; during which season he kept himself awake by drinking coffee, which it was one of the maids business to make for him, and they took it by turns." These ladies really live here as comfortably for aught I see as peace, quietness, and the certainty of a good dinner every day can make them. Just so much happier than as many old maids who inhabit Milman Street and Chapel Row, as they are sure not to be robbed by a treacherous, or insulted by a favoured, servant in the decline of life, when protection is grown hopeless and resistance vain; and as they enjoy at least a moral certainty of never living worse than they do to-day: while the little knot of unmarried females turned fifty round Red Lion Square _may_ always be ruined by a runaway agent, a bankrupted banker, or a roguish steward; and even the petty pleasures of six-penny quadrille may become by that misfortune too costly for their income.--_Aureste_, as the French say, the difference is small: both coteries sit separate in the morning, go to prayers at noon, and read the chapters for the day: change their neat dress, eat their little dinner, and play at small games for small sums in the evening; when recollection tires, and chat runs low. But more adventurous characters claim my present attention. All Paris I think, myself among the rest, assembled to see the valiant brothers, Robert and Charles, mount yesterday into the air, in company with a certain Pilâtre de Rosier, who conducted them in the new-invented flying chariot fastened to an air-balloon. It was from the middle of the Tuilleries that they set out, a place very favourable and well-contrived for such public purposes. But all was so nicely managed, so cleverly carried on somehow, that the order and decorum of us who remained on firm ground, struck me more than even the very strange sight of human creatures floating in the wind: but I have really been witness to ten times as much bustle and confusion at a crowded theatre in London, than what these peaceable Parisians made when the whole city was gathered together. Nobody was hurt, nobody was frighted, nobody could even pretend to feel themselves incommoded. Such are among the few comforts that result from a despotic government. My republican spirit, however, boiled up a little last Monday, when I had to petition Mons. de Calonne for the restoration of some trifles detained in the custom-house at Calais. His politeness, indeed, and the sight of others performing like acts of humiliation, reconciled me in some measure to the drudgery of running from subaltern to subaltern, intreating, in pathetic terms, the remission of a law which is at last either just or unjust; if just, no felicitation should, methinks, be permitted to change it; if unjust, what can be so grating as the obligation to solicit? We mean to quit Paris to-morrow; I therefore enquired this evening, what was become of our aërial travellers. A very grave man replied, "_Je crois, Madame, qu'ils sont dejá arrivès ces Messieurs là, au lieu ou les vents se forment_[D]." [Footnote D: I fancy, Ma'am, the gentlemen are gone to see the place where all the winds blow from.] LYONS. Sept. 25, 1784. We left the capital at our intended time, and put into the carriage, for amusement, a book seriously recommended by Mr. Goldoni; but which diverted me only by the fanfaronades that it contained. The author has, however, got the premium by this performance, which the Academy of Berlin promised to whoever wrote best this year on any Belles Lettres subject. This gentleman judiciously chose to give reasons for the universality of the French language, and has been so gaily insolent to every other European nation in his flimsy pamphlet, that some will probably praise, many reply to, all read, and all forget it. I will confess myself so seized on by his sprightly impertinence, that I wished for leisure to translate, and wit to answer him at first, but the want of one solid thought by which to recollect his existence has cured me; and I now find that he was deliciously cool and sharp, like the ordinary wine of the country we are passing through, which having _no body_, can neither keep its little power long, nor even use it while fresh to any sensible effect. The country is really beautiful; but descriptions are _so_ fallacious, one half despairs of communicating one's ideas as they are: for either well-chosen words do not present themselves, or being well-chosen they detain the reader, and fix his mind on _them_, instead of the things described. Certain it is that I had formed no adequate notion of the fine river called the Yonne, with cattle grazing on its fertile banks: those banks not clothed indeed with our soft verdure, but with royal purple, proceeding from an autumnal daisy of that colour that enamels every meadow at this season. Here small enclosures seem unknown to the inhabitants, who are strewed up and down expansive views of a most productive country; where vineyards swell upon the rising grounds, and young wheat ornaments the valleys below: while clusters of aspiring poplars, or a single walnut-tree of greater size and dignity unite in attracting attention, and inspiring poetical ideas. Here is no tedious uniformity to fatigue the eye, nor rugged asperities to disgust it; but ceaseless variety of colouring among the plants, while the cærulean willow, the yellow walnut, the gloomy beech, and silver theophrastus, seem scattered by the open hand of lavish Nature over a landscape of respectable extent, uniting that sublimity which a wide expanse always conveys to the mind, with that distinctness so desired by the eye; which cultivation alone can offer and fertility bestow. Every town that should adorn these lovely plains, however, exhibits, upon a nearer approach, misery; the more mortifying, as it is less expected by a spectator, who requires at least some days experience to convince him that the squallid scenes of wretchedness and dirt in which he is obliged to pass the night, will prove more than equivalent to the pleasures he has enjoyed in the day-time, derived from an appearance of elegance and wealth--elegance, the work of Nature, not of man; and opulence, the immediate gift of God, and not the result of commerce. He who should fix his residence in France, lives like Sir Gawaine in our old romance, whose wife was bound by an enchantment, that obliged her at evening to lay down the various beauties which had charmed admiring multitudes all day, and become an object of odium and disgust. The French do seem indeed an idle race; and poverty, perhaps for that reason, forces her way among them, through a climate that might tempt other mortals to improve its blessings; but, as the motto to the arms they are so proud of expresses it--"they _toil not, neither do they spin_." Content, the bane of industry, as Mandeville calls it, renders them happy with what Heaven has unsolicited shaken into their lap; and who knows but the spirit of blaming such behaviour may be less pleasing to God that gives, than is the behaviour itself? Let us not, mean time, be forward to suppose, that whatever one sees done, is done upon principle, as such fancies will for ever mislead one: much must be left to chance, when we are judging the conduct either of nations or individuals. And surely I never knew till now, that so little religion could exist in any Christian country as in this, where they drive their carts, and keep their little shops open on a Sunday, forbearing neither pleasure nor business, as I see, on account of observing that day upon which their Redeemer rose again. They have a tradition among the meaner people, that when Christ was crucified, he turned his head towards France, over which he pronounced his last blessing; but we must accuse them, if so, of being very ungrateful favourites. This stately city, Lyons, is very happily and finely situated; the Rhone, which flows by its side, inviting mills, manufactures, &c. seems resolved to contradict and wash away all I have been saying; but we must remember, it is five days journey from Paris hither, and I have been speaking only of the little places we passed through in coming along. The avenue here, which leads to one of the greatest objects in the nation, is most worthy of that object's dignity indeed: the marriage of two rivers, which having their sources at a prodigious distance from each other, meet here, and together roll their beneficial tribute to the sea. Howell's remark, "That the Saone resembles a Spaniard in the slowness of its current, and that the Rhone is emblematic of French rapidity," cannot be kept a moment out of one's head: it is equally observable, that the junction adds little in appearance to their strength and grandeur, and that each makes a better figure _separate_ than _united_. La Montagne d'Or is a lovely hill above the town, and I am told that many English families reside upon it, but we have no time to make minute enquiries. L'Hotel de la Croix de Malthe affords excellent accommodations within, and a delightful prospect without. The Baths too have attracted my notice much, and will, I hope, repair my strength, so as to make me no troublesome fellow-traveller. How little do those ladies consult their own interest, who make impatience of petty inconveniences their best supplement for conversation!--fancy themselves more important as less contented; and imagine all delicacy to consist in the difficulty of being pleased! Surely a dip in this delightful river will restore my health, and enable me to pass the mountains, of which our present companions give me a very formidable account. The manufacturers here, at Lyons, deserve a volume, and I shall scarcely give them a page; though nothing I ever saw at London or Paris can compare with the beauty of these velvets, or with the art necessary to produce such an effect, while the wrong side is smooth, not struck through. The hangings for the Empress of Russia's bed-chamber are wonderfully executed; the design elegant, the colouring brilliant: A screen too for the Grand Signor is finely finished here; he would, I trust, have been contented with magnificence in the choice of his furniture, but Mr. Pernon has added taste to it, and contrived in appearance to sink an urn or vase of crimson velvet in a back ground of gold tissue with surprising ingenuity. It is observable, that the further people advance in elegance, the less they value splendour; distinction being at last the positive thing which mortals elevated above competency naturally pant after. Necessity must first be supplied we know, convenience then requires to be contented; but as soon as men can find means after that period to make themselves eminent for taste, they learn to despise those paltry distinctions which riches alone can bestow. Talking of Taste leads one to speak of gardening; and having passed yesterday between two villas belonging to some of the most opulent merchants of Lyons, I gained an opportunity of observing the disposal of those grounds that are appropriated to pleasure; where the shade of straight long-drawn alleys, formed by a close junction of ancient elm trees, kept a dazzling sun from incommoding our sight, and rendering the turf so mossy and comfortable to one's tread, that my heart never felt one longing wish for the beauties of a lawn and shrubbery--though I should certainly think such a manner of laying out a Lancashire gentleman's seat in the north of England a mad one, where the heat of the sun ought to be invited in, not shut out; and where a large lake of water is wanted for his beams to sparkle upon, instead of a fountain to trickle and to murmur, and to refresh one with the idea of coolness which it excites. Here, however, where the Rhone is navigable up to the very house, I see not but it is rational enough to form jet d'eaux of the superfluous water, and to content one's self with a Bird Cage Walk, when we are sure at the end of it to find ourselves surrounded by an horizon, of extent enough to give the eye full employment, and of a bright colouring which affords it but little relief. That among the gems of Europe our island holds the rank of an _emerald_, was once suggested to me, and I could never part with the idea; surely France must in the same scale be rated as the _ruby_; for here is no grass, no verdure to repose the sight upon, except that of high forest trees, the vineyards being short cut, and supported by white sticks, the size of those which in our flower gardens support a favourite carnation; and these placed close together by thousands on a hill rather perplex than please a spectator of the country, who must wait till he recollects the superiority of their produce, before he prefers them to a Herefordshire orchard or a Kentish hop-ground. Well! well! it is better to waste no more words on places however, where the people have done so much to engage and to deserve our attention. Such was the hospitality I have here been witness to, and such the luxuries of the Lyonnois at table, that I counted six and thirty dishes where we dined, and twenty-four where we supped. Every thing was served up in silver at both places, and all was uniformly magnificent, except the linen, which might have been finer. We were not a very numerous company--from eighteen to twenty-two, as I remember, morning and evening; but the ladies played upon the pedal harp, the gentlemen sung gaily, if not sweetly after supper: I never received more kindness for my own part in any fortnight of my life, nor ever heard that kindness more pleasingly or less coarsely expressed. These are merchants, I am told, with whom I have been living; and perhaps my heart more readily receives and repays their caresses for having heard so. Let princes dispute, and soldiers reciprocally support their quarrels; but let the wealthy traders of every nation unite to pour the oil of commerce over the too agitated ocean of human life, and smooth down those asperities which obstruct fraternal concord. The Duke and Duchess of Cumberland lodge here at our hotel; I saw them treated with distinguished respect to-night at the theatre, where _a force de danser_[Footnote: By dint of dancing alone], I actually was moved to shed many tears over the distresses of _Sophie de Brabant_. Surely these pantomimes will very soon supplant all poetry, when, as Gratiano says, "Our words will suddenly become superfluous, and discourse grow commendable in none but parrots." Some conversation here, however, struck me as curious; the more so as I had heard the subject slightly touched upon at Paris; but faintly there, as the last sounds of an echo, while here they are all loud, all in earnest, and all their heads seemed turned, I think, about something, or nothing, which they call _animal magnetism_. I cannot imagine how it has seized them so: a man who undertakes to cure disorders by the touch, is no new thing; our Philosophical Transactions make mention of Gretrex the stroaker, in Charles the Second's reign. The present mountebank, it is true, seems more hardy in his experiments, and boasts of being able to cause disorders in the human frame, as well as to remove them. A gentleman at yesterday's dinner-party mentioned, that he took pupils; and, before I had expressed the astonishment I felt, professed himself a disciple; and was happy to assure us, he said, that though he had not yet attained the desirable power of putting a person into a catalepsy at pleasure, he could throw a woman into a deep swoon, from which no arts but his own could recover her. How difficult is it to restrain one's contempt and indignation from a buffoonery so mean, or a practice so diabolical!--This folly may possibly find its way into England--I should be very sorry. To-morrow we leave Lyons. I should have liked to pass through Switzerland, the Derbyshire of Europe; but I am told the season is too far advanced, as we mean to spend Christmas at Milan. ITALY TURIN. October 17, 1784. We have at length passed the Alps, and are safely arrived at this lovely little city, whence I look back on the majestic boundaries of Italy, with amazement at his courage who first profaned them: surely the immediate sensation conveyed to the mind by the sight of such tremendous appearances must be in every traveller the same, a sensation of fulness never experienced before, a satisfaction that there is something great to be seen on earth--some object capable of contenting even fancy. Who he was who first of all people pervaded these fortifications, raised by nature for the defence of her European Paradise, is not ascertained; but the great Duke of Savoy has wisely left his name engraved on a monument upon the first considerable ascent from Pont Bonvoisin, as being author of a beautiful road cut through the solid stone for a great length of way, and having by this means encouraged others to assist in facilitating a passage so truly desirable, till one of the great wonders now to be observed among the Alps, is the ease with which even a delicate traveller may cross them. In these prospects, colouring is carried to its utmost point of perfection, particularly at the time I found it, variegated with golden touches of autumnal tints; immense cascades mean time bursting from naked mountains on the one side; cultivated fields, rich with vineyards, on the other, and tufted with elegant shrubs that invite one to pluck and carry them away to where they would be treated with much more respect. Little towns flicking in the clefts, where one would imagine it was impossible to clamber; light clouds often sailing under the feet of the high-perched inhabitants, while the sound of a deep and rapid though narrow river, dashing with violence among the insolently impeding rocks at the bottom, and bells in thickly-scattered spires calling the quiet Savoyards to church upon the steep sides of every hill--fill one's mind with such mutable, such various ideas, as no other place can ever possibly afford. I had the satisfaction of seeing a chamois at a distance, and spoke with a fellow who had killed five hungry bears that made depredation on his pastures: we looked on him with reverence as a monster-tamer of antiquity, Hercules or Cadmus; he had the skin of a beast wrapt round his middle, which confirmed the fancy--but our servants, who borrowed from no fictitious records the few ideas that adorned their talk, told us he reminded _them_ of _John the Baptist_. I had scarce recovered the shock of this too sublime comparison, when we approached his cottage, and found the felons nailed against the wall, like foxes heads or spread kites in England. Here are many goats, but neither white nor large, like those which browze upon the steeps of Snowdon, or clamber among the cliffs of Plinlimmon. I chatted with a peasant in the Haute Morienne, concerning the endemial swelling of the throat, which is found in seven out of every ten persons here: he told me what I had always heard, but do not yet believe, that it was produced by drinking the snow water. Certain it is, these places are not wholesome to live in; most of the inhabitants are troubled with weak and sore eyes: and I recollect Sir Richard Jebb telling me, more than seven years ago, that when he passed through Savoy, the various applications made to him, either for the cure or prevention of blindness by numberless unfortunate wretches that crowded round him, hastened his quitting a province where such horrible complaints prevailed. One has heard it related that the goîstre or gozzo of the throat is reckoned a beauty by those who possess it; but I spoke with many, and all agreed to lament it as a misfortune. That it does really proceed merely from living in a snowy country, would be well confirmed by accounts of a similar sickness being endemial in Canada; but of an American goîstre I have never yet heard--and Wales, methinks, is snowy enough, and mountainous enough, God knows; yet were such an excrescence to be seen _there_, the people would never have done wondering, and blessing themselves. The mines of Derbyshire, however, do not very unfrequently exhibit something of the same appearance among those who work in _them_; and as Savoy is impregnated with many minerals, I should be apter to attribute this extension of the gland to their influence over the constitution, than to that of snow water, which can scarcely be efficacious in a degree of power equal to the producing so very violent an effect. The wolves do certainly come down from these mountains in large troops, just as Thomson describes them: Burning for blood; boney, and gaunt, and grim.-- But it is now the fashionable philosophy every where to consider this creature as the original of our domestic friend, the dog. It was a long time before my heart assented to its truth, yet surely their hunting thus in packs confirms it; and the Jackall's willingness to connect with either race, shews one that the species cannot be far removed, and that he makes the shade between the wolf and rough haired shepherd's cur. Of the longevity of man this district affords us no pleasing examples. The peasants here are apparently unhealthy, and they say--short-lived. We are told by travellers of former days, that there is a region of the air so subtle as to extinguish the two powers of taste and smell; and those who have crossed the Cordilleras of the Andes say, that situations have been explored among their points in South America, where those senses have been found to suffer a temporary suspension. Our _voyageurs aeriens_[Footnote: Our aerostatic travellers] may now be useful to settle that question among others, and Pambamarca's heights may remain untrodden. As for Mount Cenis, I never felt myself more hungry, or better enjoyed a good dinner, than I did upon it's top: but the trout in the lake there have been over praised; their pale colour allured me but little in the first place, nor is their flavour equal to that of trout found in running water. Going down the Italian side of the Alps is, after all, an astonishing journey; and affords the most magnificent scenery in nature, which varying at every step, gives new impression to the mind each moment of one's passage; while the portion of terror excited either by real or fancied dangers on the way, is just sufficient to mingle with the pleasure, and make one feel the full effect of sublimity. To the chairmen who carry one though, nothing can be new; it is observable that the glories of these objects have never faded--I heard them speak to each other of their beauties, and the change of light since they had passed by last time, while a fellow who spoke English as well as a native told us, that having lived in a gentleman's service twenty years between London and Dublin, he at length begged his discharge, chusing to retire and finish his days a peasant upon these mountains, where he first opened his eyes upon scenes that made all other views of nature insipid to his taste. If impressions of beauty remain, however, those of danger die away by frequent reiteration; the men who carried me seemed amazed that I should feel any emotions of fear. _Qu'est ce donc, madame_?[Footnote: What's the matter, my lady?] was the coldly-asked question to my repeated injunction of _prenez garde_[Footnote: Take care.]: not very apparently unnecessary neither, where the least slip must have been fatal both to them and me. Novalesa is the town we stopped at, upon entering Piedmont; where the hollow sound of a heavy dashing torrent that has accompanied us hitherto, first grows faint, and the ideas of common life catch hold of one again; as the noise of it is heard from a greater distance, its stream grows wider, and its course more tranquil. For compensation of danger, ease should be administered; but one's quiet is here so disturbed by insects, and polluted by dirt, that one recollects the conduct of the Lapland rein-deer, who seeks the summit of the hill at the hazard of his life, to avoid those gnats which sting him to madness in the valley. Suza shewed nothing that I took much interest in, except its name; and nobody tells me why it is honoured with that old Asiatick appellation. At the next town, called St. Andrè, or St. Ambroise, I forget which, we got an admirable dinner; and saw our room decorated with a large map of London, which I looked on with sensations different from those ever before excited by the same object, Amsterdam and Constantinople covered the other sides of the wall; and over the door of the chamber itself was written, as our people write the Lamb or the Lion, "_Les trois Villes Heretiques_[Footnote: The three Heretical Cities]." The avenue to Turin, most magnificently planted, and drawn in a wide straight line, shaded like the Bird-cage walk in St. James's Park, for twelve miles in length, is a dull work, but very useful and convenient in so hot a country; it has been completed by the taste, and at the sole expence, of his Sardinian majesty, that he may enjoy a cool shady drive from one of his palaces to the other. The town to which this long approach conveys one does not disgrace its entrance. It is built in form of a star, with a large stone in its centre, on which you are desired to stand, and see the streets all branch regularly from it, each street terminating with a beautiful view of the surrounding country, like spots of ground seen in many of the old-fashioned parks in England, when the etoile and vista were the mode. I think there is[5] still one subsisting even now, if I remember right, in Kensington Gardens. Such symmetry is really a soft repose for the eye, wearied with following a soaring falcon through the half-sightless regions of the air, or darting down immeasurable precipices, to examine if the human figure could be discerned at such a depth below one. Model of elegance, exact Turin! where Italian hospitality first consoled, and Italian arts first repaid, the fatigues of my journey: how shall I bear to leave my new-obtained acquaintance? how shall I consent to quit this lovely city? where, from the box put into my possession by the Prince de la Cisterna, I first saw an Italian opera acted in an Italian theatre; where the wonders of Porporati's hand shewed me that our Bartolozzi was not without a competitor; and where every pleasure which politeness can invent, and kindness can bestow, was held out for my acceptance. Should we be seduced, however, to waste time here, we should have reason in a future day to repent our choice; like one who, enamoured of Lord Pembroke's great hall at Wilton, should fail to afford himself leisure for looking over the better-furnished apartments. This charming town is the _salon_ of Italy; but it is a finely-proportioned and well-ornamented _salon_ happily constructed to call in the fresh air at the end of every street, through which a rapid stream is directed, that _ought_ to carry off all nuisances, which here have no apology from want of any convenience purchasable by money; and which must for that reason be the choice of inhabitants, who would perhaps be too happy, had they a natural taste for that neatness which might here be enjoyed in its purity. The arches formed to defend passengers from the rain and sun, which here might have even serious effects from their violence, deserve much praise; while their architecture, uniting our ideas of comfort and beauty together, form a traveller's taste, and teach him to admire that perfection, of which a miniature may certainly be found at Turin, when once a police shall be established there to prevent such places being used for the very grossest purposes, and polluted with smells that poison all one's pleasure. It is said, that few European palaces exceed in splendour that of Sardinia's king; I found it very fine indeed, and the pictures dazzling. The death of a dropsical woman well known among all our connoisseurs detained my attention longest: the value set on it here is ten thousand pounds. The horse cut out of a block of marble at the stairs-foot attracted me not a little; but we are told that the impression it makes will soon be effaced by the sight of greater wonders. Mean time I go about like Stephano and his ignorant companions, who longed for all the glittering furniture of Prospero's cell in the Tempest, while those who know the place better are vindicated in crying, "_Let it alone, thou fool, it is but trash_." Some letters from home directed me to enquire in this town for Doctor Charles Allioni, who kindly received, and permitted me to examine the rarities, of which he has a very capital collection. His fossil fish in slate--blue slate, are surprisingly well preserved; but there is in the world, it seems, a chrystalized trout, not flat, nor the flesh eaten away, as I understand, but round; and, as it were, cased in chrystal like our _aspiques_, or _fruit in jelly_: the colour still so perfect that you may plainly perceive the spots upon it, he says. To my enquiries after this wonderful petrefaction, he replied, "That it might be bought for a thousand pounds;" and added, "that if he were a _Ricco Inglese_[Footnote: Rich Englishman], he would not hesitate for the price:" "Where may I see it, Sir?" said I; but to that question no intreaties could produce an answer, after he once found I had no mind to buy. That fresh-water fish have been known to remain locked in the flinty bosom of Monte Uda in Carnia, the Academical Discourse of Cyrillo de Cremona, pronounced there in the year 1749, might have informed us; and we are all familiar, I suppose, with the anchor named in the fifteenth book of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Strabo mentions pieces of a galley found three thousand stadii from any sea; and Dr. Allioni tells me, that Monte Bolca has been long acknowledged to contain the fossils, now diligently digging out under the patronage of some learned naturalists at Verona.--The trout, however, is of value much beyond these productions certainly, as it is closed round as if in a transparent case we find, hermetically sealed by the soft hand of Nature, who spoiled none of her own ornaments in preserving them for the inspection of her favourite students. The amiable old professor from whom these particulars were obtained, and who endured my teizing him in bad Italian for intelligence he cared not to communicate, with infinite sweetness and patience grew kinder to me as I became more troublesome to him: and shewing me the book upon botany to which he had just then put the last line; turned his dim eyes from me, and said, as they filled with tears, "You, Madam, are the last visitor I shall ever more admit to talk upon earthly subjects; my work is done; I finished it as you were entering:--my business now is but to wait the will of God, and die; do you, who I hope will live long and happily, seek out your own salvation, and pray for mine." Poor dear Doctor Allioni! My enquiries concerning this truly venerable mortal ended in being told that his relations and heirs teized him cruelly to sell his manuscripts, insects, &c. and divide the money amongst _them_ before he died. An English scholar of the same abilities would be apt enough to despise such admonitions, and dispose at his own liking and leisure of what his industry alone had gained, his learning only collected; but there seems to be much more family fondness on the Continent than in our island; more attention to parents, more care for uncles, and nephews, and sisters, and aunts, than in a commercial country like ours, where, for the most part, each one makes his own way separate; and having received little assistance at the beginning of life, considers himself as little indebted at the close of it. Whoever takes a long journey, however he may at his first commencement be tempted to accumulate schemes of convenience and combinations of travelling niceties, will cast them off in the course of his travels as incumbrances; and whoever sets out in life, I believe, with a crowd of relations round him, will, on the same principle, feel disposed to drop one or two of them at every turn, as they hang about and impede his progress, and make his own game single-handed. I speak of _Englishmen_, whose religion and government inspire rather a spirit of public benevolence, than contract the social affections to a point; and co-operate, besides, to prompt that genius for adventure, and taste of general knowledge, which has small chance to spring up in the inhabitants of a feudal state; where each considers his family as himself, and having derived all the comfort he has ever enjoyed from his relations, resolves to return their favours at the end of a life, which they make happy, in proportion as it _is_ so: and this accounts for the equality required in continental marriages, which are avowedly made here without regard to inclination, as the keeping up a family, not the choice of a companion, is considered as important; while the lady bred up in the same notions, complies with her _first_ duties, and considers the _second_ as infinitely more dispensable. GENOA. Nov. 1, 1784. It was on the twenty-first of last month that we passed from Turin to Monte Casale; and I wondered, as I do still, to see the face of Nature yet without a wrinkle, though the season is so far advanced. Like a Parisian female of forty years old, dressed for court, and stored with such variety of well-arranged allurements, that the men say to each other as she passes.--"Des qu'elle à cessée d'estre jolie, elle n'en devient que plus belle, ce me semble[E]." [Footnote E: She's grown handsomer, I think, since she has left off being pretty.] The prospect from St. Salvadore's hill derives new beauties from the yellow autumn; and exhibits such glowing proofs of opulence and fertility, as words can with difficulty communicate. The animals, however, do not seem benefited in proportion to the apparent riches of the country: asses, indeed, grow to a considerable size, but the oxen are very small, among pastures that might suffice for Bakewell's bulls; and these are all little, and almost all _white_; a colour which gives unfavourable ideas either of strength or duration. The blanche rose among vegetables scatters a less powerful perfume than the red one; whilst in the mineral kingdom silver holds but the second place to gold, which imbibing the bright hues of its parent-sun, becomes the first and greatest of all metallic productions. One may observe too, that yellow is the earliest colour to salute the rising year, the last to leave it: crocuses, primroses, and cowslips give the first earnest of resuscitating summer; while the lemon-coloured butterfly, whose name I have forgotten, ventures out, before any others of her kind can brave the parting breath of winter's last storms; stoutest to resist cold, and steadiest in her manner of flying. The present season is yellow indeed, and nothing is to be seen now but sun-flowers and African marygolds around us; _one_ bough besides, on every tree we pass--_one_ bough at least is tinged with the golden hue; and if it does put one in mind of that presented to Proserpine, we may add the original line too, and say, Uno avulfo, non deficit alter[F]. [Footnote F: Pluck one away, another still remains. ] The sure-footed and docile mule, with which in England I was but little acquainted, here claims no small attention, from his superior size and beauty: the disagreeable noise they make so frequently, however, hinders one from wishing to ride them--it is not braying somehow, but worse; it is neighing out of tune. I have put nothing down about eating since we arrived in Italy, where no wretched hut have I yet entered that does not afford soup, better than one often tastes in England even at magnificent tables. Game of all sorts--woodcocks in particular. Porporati, the so justly-famed engraver, produced upon his hospitable board, one of the pleasant days we passed with him, a couple so exceedingly large, that I hesitated, and looked again, to see whether they were really woodcocks, till the long bill convinced me. One reads of the luxurious emperors that made fine dishes of the little birds brains, phenicopter's tongues, &c. and of the actor who regaled his guests with nightingale-pie, with just detestation of such curiosity and expence: but thrushes, larks, and blackbirds, are so _very_ frequent between Turin and Novi, I think they might serve to feed all the fantastical appetites to which Vitellius himself could give encouragement and example. The Italians retain their tastes for small birds in full force; and consider beccafichi, ortolani, &c. as the most agreeable dainties: it must be confessed that they dress them incomparably. The sheep here are all lean and dirty-looking, few in number too; but the better the soil the worse the mutton we know, and here is no land to throw away, where every inch turns to profit in the olive-yards, vines, or something of much higher value than letting out to feed sheep. Population seems much as in France, I think: but the families are not, in either nation, disposed according to British notions of propriety; all stuffed together into little towns and large houses, _entessées_, as the French call it; one upon another, in such a strange way, that were it not for the quantity of grapes on which the poor people live, with other acescent food enjoined by the church, and doubtless suggested by the climate, I think putrid fevers must necessarily carry off crowds of them at once. The head-dress of the women in this drive through some of the northern states of Italy varied at every post; from the velvet cap, commonly a crimson one, worn by the girls in Savoia, to the Piedmontese plait round the bodkin at Turin, and the odd kind of white wrapper used in the exterior provinces of the Genoese dominions. Uniformity of almost any sort gives a certain pleasure to the eye, and it seems an invariable rule in these countries that all the women of every district should dress just alike. It is the best way of making the men's task easy in judging which is handsomest; for taste so varies the human figure in France and England, that it is impossible to have an idea how many pretty faces and agreeable forms would lose and how many gain admirers in those nations, were a sudden edict to be published that all should dress exactly alike for a year. Mean time, since we left Deffeins, no such delightful place by way of inn have we yet seen as here at Novi. My chief amusement at Alexandria was to look out upon the _huddled_ marketplace, as a great dramatic writer of our day has called it; and who could help longing there for Zoffani's pencil to paint the lively scene? Passing the Po by moon-light near Casale exhibited an entertainment of a very different nature, not unmixed with ill-concealed fear indeed; though the contrivance of crossing it is not worse managed than a ferry at Kew or Richmond used to be before our bridges were built. Bridges over the rapid Po would, however, be truly ridiculous; when swelled by the mountain snows it tears down all before it in its fury, and inundates the country round. The drive from Novi on to Genoa is so beautiful, so grand, so replete with imagery, that fancy itself can add little to its charms: yet, after every elegance and every ornament have been justly admired, from the cloud which veils the hill, to the wild shrubs which perfume the valley; from the precipices which alarm the imagination, to the tufts of wood which flatter and sooth it; the sea suddenly appearing at the end of the Bocchetta terminates our view, and takes from one even the hope of expressing our delight in words adequate to the things described. Genoa la Superba stands proudly on the margin of a gulph crowded with ships, and resounding with voices, which never fail to animate a British hearer--the Tailor's shout, the mariner's call, swelled by successful commerce, or strengthened by newly-acquired fame. After a long journey by land, such scenes are peculiarly delightful; but description tangles, not communicates, the sensations imbibed upon the spot. Here are so many things to describe! such churches! such palaces! such pictures! one would imagine the Genoese possessed the empire of the ocean, were it not well known that they call but fix galleys their own, and seventy years ago suffered all the horrors of a bombardment. The Dorian palace is exceedingly fine; the Durazzo palace, for ought I know, is finer; and marble here seems like what one reads of silver in King Solomon's time, which, says the Scripture, "_was nothing counted on in the days of Solomon_" Casa Brignoli too is splendid and commodious; the terraces and gardens on the house-tops, and the fresco paintings outside, give one new ideas of human life; and exhibits a degree of luxury unthought-on in colder climates. But here we live on green pease and figs the first day of November, while orange and lemon trees flaunt over the walls more common than pears in England. The Balbi mansion, filled with pictures, detained us from the churches filled with more. I have heard some of the Italians confess that Genoa even pretends to vie with Rome herself in ecclesiastical splendour. In devotion I should think she would be with difficulty outdone: the people drop down on their knees in the street, and crowd to the church doors while the benediction is pronouncing, with a zeal which one might hope would draw down stores of grace upon their heads. Yet I hear from the inhabitants of other provinces, that they have a bad character among their neighbours, who love not the _base Ligurian_ and accuse them of many immoralities. They tell one too of a disreputable saying here, how there are at Genoa men without honesty, women without modesty, a sea with no fish, and a wood with no birds. Birds, however, here certainly are by the million, and we have eaten fish since we came every day; but I am informed they are neither cheap nor plentiful, nor considered as excellent in their kinds. Here is macaroni enough however!--the people bring in such a vast dish of it at a time, it disgusts one. The streets of the town are much too narrow for beauty or convenience--impracticable to coaches, and so beset with beggars that it is dreadful. A chair is therefore, above all things, necessary to be carried in, even a dozen steps, if you are likely to feel shocked at having your knees suddenly clasped by a figure hardly human; who perhaps holding you forcibly for a minute, conjures you loudly, by the sacred wounds of our Lord Jesus Christ, to have compassion upon _his_; shewing you at the same time such undeniable and horrid proofs of the anguish he is suffering, that one must be a monster to quit him unrelieved. Such pathetic misery, such disgusting distress, did I never see before, as I have been witness to in this gaudy city--and that not occasionally or by accident, but all day long, and in such numbers that humanity shrinks from the description. Sure, charity is not the virtue that they pray for, when begging a blessing at the church-door. One should not however speak unkindly of a people whose affectionate regard for our country shewed itself so clearly during the late war: a few days residence with the English consul here at his country seat gave me an opportunity of hearing many instances of the Republic's generous attachment to Great Britain, whose triumphs at Gibraltar over the united forces of France and Spain were honestly enjoyed by the friendly Genoese, who gave many proofs of their sincerity, more solid than those clamorous ones of huzzaing our minister about wherever he went, and crying _Viva il General_ ELIOTT; while many young gentlemen of high station offered themselves to go volunteers aboard our fleet, and were with difficulty restrained. We have been shewed some beautiful villas belonging to the noblemen of this city, among which Lomellino's pleased me best; as the water there was so particularly beautiful, that he had generously left it at full liberty to roll unconducted, and murmur through his tasteful pleasure grounds, much in the manner of our lovely Leasowes; happily uniting with English simplicity, the glowing charms that result from an Italian sky. My eyes were so wearied with square edged basons of marble, and jets d'eaux, surrounded by water nymphs and dolphins, that I felt vast relief from Lomellino's garden, who, like me, Tir'd with the joys parterres and fountains yield, Finds out at last he better likes a field. Such felicity of situation I never saw till now, when one looks upon the painted front of this gay mansion, commanding from its fine balcony a rich and extensive view at once of the sea, the city, and the snow-topt mountains; while from the windows on the other side the house, one's eye sinks into groves of cedar, ilex, and orange trees, not apparently cultivated with incessant care, or placed in pots, artfully sunk under ground to conceal them from one's sight, but rising into height truly respectable. The sea air, except in particular places where the land lies in some direction that counteracts its influence, is naturally inimical to timber; though the green coasts of Devonshire are finely fringed with wood; and here, at Lomellino's villa, in the Genoese state, I found two plane trees, of a size and serious dignity, that recalled to my mind the solemn oak before our duke of Dorset's seat at Knowle--and chesnuts, which would not disgrace the forests of America. A rural theatre, cut in turf, with a concealed orchestra and sod seats for the audience, with a mossy stage, not incommodious neither, and an admirable contrivance for shifting the scenes, and savouring the exits, entrances, &c. of the performers, gave me a perfect idea of that refined luxury which hot countries alone inspire--while another elegantly constructed spot, meant and often used for the entertainment of tenants and dependants who come to rejoice on the birth or wedding day of a kind landlord, make one suppress one's sighs after a free country--at least suspend them; and fill one's heart with tenderness towards men, who have skill to soften authority with indulgence, and virtue to reward obedience with protection. A family coming last night to visit at a house where I had the honour of being admitted as an intimate, gave me another proof of my present state of remoteness from English manners. The party consisted of an old nobleman, who could trace his genealogy unblemished up to one of the old Roman emperors, but whose fortune is now in a hopeless state of decay:--his lady, not inferior to himself in birth or haughtiness of air and carriage, but much impaired by age, ill health, and pecuniary distress; these had however no way lessened her ideas of her own dignity, or the respect of her cavalier servente and her son, who waited on her with an unremitted attention; presenting her their little dirty tin snuff-boxes upon one knee by turns; which ceremony the less surprised me, as having seen her train made of a dyed and watered lutestring, borne gravely after her up stairs by a footman, the express image of Edgar in the storm-scene of king Lear--who, as the fool says, "_wisely reserv'd a blanket, else had we all been 'shamed_." Our conversation was meagre, but serious. There was music; and the door being left at jar, as we call it, I watched the wretched servant who staid in the antichamber, and found that he was listening in spight of sorrow and starving. With this slight sketch of national manners I finish my chapter, and proceed to the description of, or rather observations and reflections made during a winter's residence at MILAN. For we did not stay at Pavia to see any thing: it rained so, that no pleasure could have been obtained by the sight of a botanical garden; and as to the university, I have the promise of seeing it upon a future day, in company of some literary friends. Truth to tell, our weather is suddenly become so wet, the roads so heavy with incessant rain, that king William's departure from his own foggy country, or his welcome to our gloomy one, where this month is melancholy even, to a proverb, could not have been clouded with a thicker atmosphere surely, than was mine to Milan upon the fourth day of dismal November, 1784. Italians, by what I can observe, suffer their minds to be much under the dominion of the sky; and attribute every change in their health, or even humour, as seriously to its influence, as if there were no nearer causes of alteration than the state of the air, and as if no doubt remained of its immediate power, though they are willing enough here to poison it with the scent of wood-ashes within doors, while fires in the grate seem to run rather low, and a brazier full of that pernicious stuff is substituted in its place, and driven under the table during dinner. It is surprising how very elegant, not to say magnificent, those dinners are in gentlemen's or noblemen's houses; such numbers of dishes at once; not large joints, but infinite variety: and I think their cooking excellent. Fashion keeps most of the fine people out of town yet; we have therefore had leisure to establish our own household for the winter, and have done so as commodiously as if our habitation was fixed here for life. This I am delighted with, as one may chance to gain that insight into every day behaviour, and common occurrences, which can alone be called knowing something of a country: counting churches, pictures, palaces, may be done by those who run from town to town, with no impression made but on their bones. I ought to learn that which before us lies in daily life, if proper use were made of my demi-naturalization; yet impediments to knowledge spring up round the very tree itself--for surely if there was much wrong, I would not tell it of those who seem inclined to find all right in me; nor can I think that a fame for minute observation, and skill to discern folly with a microscopic eye, is in any wise able to compensate for the corrosions of conscience, where such discoveries have been attained by breach of confidence, and treachery towards unguarded, because unsuspecting innocence of conduct. We are always laughing at one another for running over none but the visible objects in every city, and for avoiding the conversation of the natives, except on general subjects of literature--returning home only to tell again what has already been told. By the candid inhabitants of Italian states, however, much honour is given to our British travellers, who, as they say, _viaggiono con profitto_[Footnote: Travel for improvement], and scarce ever fail to carry home with them from other nations, every thing which can benefit or adorn their own. Candour, and a good humoured willingness to receive and reciprocate pleasure, seems indeed one of the standing virtues of Italy; I have as yet seen no fastidious contempt, or affected rejection of any thing for being what we call _low_; and I have a notion there is much less of those distinctions at Milan than at London, where birth does so little for a man, that if he depends on _that_, and forbears other methods of distinguishing himself from his footman, he will stand a chance of being treated no better than him by the world. _Here_ a person's rank is ascertained, and his society settled, at his immediate entrance into life; a gentleman and lady will always be regarded as such, let what will be their behaviour.--It is therefore highly commendable when they seek to adorn their minds by culture, or pluck out those weeds, which in hot countries will spring up among the riches of the harvest, and afford a sure, but no immediately pleasing proof of the soil's natural fertility. But my country-women would rather hear a little of our _interieur_, or, as we call it, family management; which appears arranged in a manner totally new to me; who find the lady of every house as unacquainted with her own, and her husband's affairs, as I who apply to her for information.--No house account, no weekly bills perplex _her_ peace; if eight servants are kept, we will say, six of these are men, and two of those men out of livery. The pay of these principal figures in the family, when at the highest rate, is fifteen pence English a day, out of which they find clothes and eating--for fifteen pence includes board-wages; and most of these fellows are married too, and have four or five children each. The dinners drest at home are, for this reason, more exactly contrived than in England to suit the number of guests, and there are always half a dozen; for dining _alone_ or the master and mistress _tête-à-tête_ as _we_ do, is unknown to them, who make society very easy, and resolve to live much together. No odd sensation then, something like shame, such as _we_ feel when too many dishes are taken empty from table, touches them at all; the common courses are eleven, and eleven small plates, and it is their sport and pleasure, if possible, to clear all away. A footman's wages is a shilling a day, like our common labourers, and paid him, as they are paid, every Saturday night. His livery, mean time, changed at least _twice a year_, makes him as rich a man as the butler and valet--but when evening comes, it is the comicallest sight in the world to see them all go gravely home, and you may die in the night for want of help, though surrounded by showy attendants all day. Till the hour of departure, however, it is expected that two or three of them at least sit in the antichamber, as it is called, to answer the bell, which, if we confess the truth, is no light service or hardship; for the stairs, high and wide as those of Windsor palace, all stone too, run up from the door immediately to that apartment, which is very large, and very cold, with bricks to set their feet on only, and a brazier filled with warm wood ashes, to keep their fingers from freezing, which in summer they employ with cards, and seem but little inclined to lay them down when ladies pass through to the receiving room. The strange familiarity this class of people think proper to assume, half joining in the conversation, and crying _oibò_[Footnote: Oh dear!], when the master affirms something they do not quite assent to, is apt to shock one at beginning, the more when one reflects upon the equally offensive humility they show on being first accepted into the family; when it is exposed that they receive the new master, or lady's hand, in a half kneeling posture, and kiss it, as women under the rank of Countess do the Queen of England's when presented at our court.--This obsequiousness, however, vanishes completely upon acquaintance, and the footman, if not very seriously admonished indeed, yawns, spits, and displays what one of our travel-writers emphatically terms his flag of abomination behind the chair of a woman of quality, without the slightest sensation of its impropriety. There is, however, a sort of odd farcical drollery mingled with this grossness, which tends greatly to disarm one's wrath; and I felt more inclined to laugh than be angry one day, when, from the head of my own table, I saw the servant of a nobleman who dined with us cramming some chicken pattés down his throat behind the door; our own folks humorously trying to choak him, by pretending that his lord called him, while his mouth was full. Of a thousand comical things in the same way, I will relate one:--Mr. Piozzi's valet was dressing my hair at Paris one morning, while some man sate at an opposite window of the same inn, singing and playing upon the violoncello: I had not observed the circumstance, but my perrucchiere's distress was evident; he writhed and twisted about like a man pinched with the cholic, and pulled a hundred queer faces: at last--What is the matter, Ercolani, said I, are you not well? Mistress, replies the fellow, if that beast don't leave off soon, I shall run mad with rage, or else die; and so you'll see an honest Venetian lad killed by a French dog's howling. The phrase of _mistress_ is here not confined to servants at all; gentlemen, when they address one, cry, _mia padrona_[Footnote: My mistress], mighty sweetly, and in a peculiarly pleasing tone. Nothing, to speak truth, can exceed the agreeableness of a well-bred Italian's address when speaking to a lady, whom they alone know how to flatter, so as to retain her dignity, and not lose their own; respectful, yet tender; attentive, not officious; the politeness of a man of fashion _here_ is _true_ politeness, free from all affectation, and honestly expressive of what he really feels, a true value for the person spoken to, without the smallest desire of shining himself; equally removed from foppery on one side, or indifference on the other. The manners of the men here are certainly pleasing to a very eminent degree, and in their conversation there is a mixture, not unfrequent too, of classical allusions, which strike one with a sort of literary pleasure I cannot easily describe. Yet is there no pedantry in their use of expressions, which with us would be laughable or liable to censure: but Roman notions here are not quite extinct; and even the house-maid, or _donna di gros_, as they call her, swears by _Diana_ so comically, there is no telling. They christen their boys _Fabius_, their daughters _Claudia_, very commonly. When they mention a thing known, as we say, to _Tom o'Styles and John o'Nokes_, they use the words, _Tizio and Sempronio_. A lady tells me, she was at a loss about the dance yesterday evening, because she had not been instructed in the _programma_; and a gentleman, talking of the pleasures he enjoyed supping last night at a friend's house, exclaims, _Eramo pur jeri sera in Appolline[G]!_ alluding to Lucullus's entertainment given to Pompey and Cicero, as I remember, in the chamber of Apollo. But here is enough of this--more of it, in their own pretty phrase, _seccarebbe pur Nettunno_[H]. It was long ago that Ausonius said of them more than I can say, and Mr. Addison has translated the lines in their praise better than I could have done. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote G: We passed yester evening as if we had been in the Apollo.] [Footnote H: Would dry up old Neptune himself.] "Et Mediolani mira omnia copia rerum: Innumeræ cultæque domus facunda virorum Ingenia et mores læti." Milan with plenty and with wealth overflows, And numerous streets and cleanly dwellings shows; The people, bless'd by Nature's happy force, Are eloquent and cheerful in discourse. What I have said this moment will, however, account in some measure for a thing which he treats with infinite contempt, not unjustly perhaps; yet does it not deserve the ridicule handed down from his time by all who have touched the subject. It is about the author, who before his theatrical representation prefixes an odd declaration, that though he names Pluto, and Neptune, and I know not who, upon the stage, yet he believes none of those fables, but considers himself as a Christian, a Catholick, &c. All this _does_ appear very absurdly superfluous to _us_; but as I observed, _they_ live nearer the original feats of paganism; many old customs are yet retained, and the names not lost among them, or laid up merely for literary purposes as in England. They swear _per Bacco_ perpetually in common discourse; and once I saw a gentleman in the heat of conversation blush at the recollection that he had said _barba Fove_, where he meant God Almighty. It is likewise unkind enough in Mr. Addison, perhaps unjust too, to speak with scorn of the libraries, or state of literature, at Milan. The collection of books at Brera is prodigious, and has been lately much increased by the Pertusanian and Firmian libraries falling into it: a more magnificent repository for learning, a more comfortable situation for students, so complete and perfect a disposition of the books, will scarcely be found in any other city not professedly a university, I believe; and here are professors worthy of the highest literary stations, that do honour to learning herself. I will not indulge myself by naming any one, where all deserve the highest praise; and it is so difficult to restrain one's pen upon so favourite a subject, that I shall only name some rarities which particularly struck me, and avoid further temptations, where the sense of obligation, and the recollection of partial kindness, inspire an inclination to praises which appear tedious to those readers who could not enter into my feelings, and of course would scarcely excuse them. Thirteen volumes of MS. Psalms, written with wonderful elegance and manual nicety, struck me as very curious: they were done by the Certosini monks lately eradicated, and with beautiful illuminations to almost every page. A Livy, printed here in 1418, fresh and perfect; and a Pliny, of the Parma press, dated 1472; are extremely valuable. But the pleasure I received from observing that the learned librarian had not denied a place to Tillotson's works, was counteracted by finding Bolingbroke's philosophy upon the same shelf, and enjoying exactly the same reputation as to the truth of the doctrine contained in either; for both were English, and of course _heretical_. But I must not live longer at Milan without mentioning the Duomo, first in all Europe of the Gothic race; whose solemn sadness and gloomy dignity make it a most magnificent cathedral; while the rich treasures it conceals below exceeded my belief or expectation. We came here just before the season of commemorating the virtues of the immortal Carlo Borromeo, to whose excellence all Italy bears testimony, and Milan _most_; while the Lazaretto erected by him remains a standing monument of his piety, charity, and peculiar regard to this city, which he made his residence during the dreadful plague that so devasted it; tenderly giving to its helpless inhabitants the consolation of seeing their priest, provider, and protector, all united under one incomparable character, who fearless of death remained among them, and comforted their sorrows with his constant presence. It would be endless to enumerate the schools, hospitals, infirmaries, erected by this surprising man. The peculiar excellence of his lazaretto, however, depends on each habitation being nicely separated from every other, so as to keep infection aloof; while uniformity of architecture is still preserved, being built in a regular quadrangle, with a chapel in the middle, and a fresh stream flowing round, so as to benefit every particular house, and keep out all necessity of connection between the sick. I am become better acquainted with these matters, as this is the precise time when the immortal Carlo Borromeo's actions are rehearsed, and his praises celebrated, by people appointed in every church to preach his example and record his excellence. A statue of solid silver, large as life, and resembling, as they hope, his person, decorated with rings, &c. of immense value, is now exposed in church for people to venerate; and the subterranean chapel, where his body lies, is all wainscoted, as I may say, with silver; every separate compartment chased, like our old-fashioned watch-cases, with some story out of his life, which lasted but forty-seven years, after having done more good than any other person in ninety-four; as a capuchin friar said this morning, who mounted the pulpit to praise him, and seemed to be well thought on by his auditors. The chanting tone in which he spoke displeased me, however, who can be at last no competent judge of eloquence in any language but my own. There is a national rhetoric in every country, dependant on national manners; and those gesticulations of body, or depressions of voice, which produce pity and commiseration in one place, may, without censure of the orator or of his hearers, excite contempt and oscitancy in another. The sentiments of the preacher I heard were just and vigorous; and if that suffices not to content a foreign ear, woe be to me, who now live among those to whom I am myself a foreigner; and who at best can but be expected to forgive, for the sake of the things said, that accent and manner with which I am obliged to express them. By the indulgence of private friendship, I have now enjoyed the uncommon amusement of seeing a theatrical exhibition performed by friars in a convent for their own diversion, and that of some select friends. The monks of St. Victor had, it seems, obtained permission, this carnival, to represent a little odd sort of play, written by one of their community chiefly in the Milanese dialect, though the upper characters spoke Tuscan. The subject of this drama was taken, naturally enough, from some events, real or fictitious, which were supposed to have happened in, the environs of Milan, about a hundred years ago, when the Torriani and Visconti families disputed for superiority. Its construction was compounded of comic and distressful scenes, of which the last gave me most delight; and much was I amazed, indeed, to feel my cheeks wet with tears at a friar's play, founded on ideas of parental tenderness. The comic part, however, was intolerably gross; the jokes coarse, and incapable of diverting any but babies, or men who, by a kind of intellectual privation, contrive to perpetuate babyhood, in the vain hope of preferring innocence: nor could I shelter myself by saying how little I understood of the dialect it was written in, as the action was nothing less than equivocal; and in the burletta which was tacked to it by way of farce, I saw the soprano fingers who played the women's parts, and who see more of the world than these friars, blush for shame, two or three times, while the company, most of them grave ecclesiastics, applauded with rapturous delight. The wearisome length of the whole would, however, have surfeited me, had the amusement been more eligible; but these dear monks do not get a holiday often, I trust; so in the manner of school-boys, or rather school-girls in England (for our boys are soon above such stuff), they were never tired of this dull buffoonery, and kept us listening to it till one o'clock in the morning. Pleasure, when it does come, always bursts up in an unexpected place; I derived much from observing in the faces of these cheerful friars, that intelligent shrewdness and arch penetration so visible in the countenances of our Welch farmers, and curates of country villages in Flintshire, Caernarvonshire, &c. which Howel (best judge in such a case) observes in his Letters, and learnedly accounts for; but which I had wholly forgotten till the monks of St. Victor brought it back to my remembrance. The brothers who remained unemployed, and clear from stage occupations, formed the orchestra; those that were left _then_ without any immediate business upon their hands, chatted gaily with the company, producing plenty of refreshments; and I was really very angry with myself for feeling so cynically disposed, when every thing possible was done to please me. Can one help however sighing, to think that the monastic life, so capable of being used for the noblest purposes, and originally suggested by the purest motives, should, from the vast diversity of orders, the increase of wealth and general corruption of mankind, degenerate into a state either of mental apathy, as among the sequestered monks, or of vicious luxury, as among the more free and open societies? Yet must one still behold both with regret and indignation, that rage for innovation which delights to throw down places once the retreats of Piety and Learning--Piety, who fought in vain to wall and fortify herself against those seductions which since have sapped the venerable fabric that they feared to batter; and Learning, who first opened the eyes of men, that now ungratefully begin to turn them only on the defeats of their benefactress. The Christmas functions here were showy, and I thought well-contrived; the public ones are what I speak of: but I was present lately at a private merrymaking, where all distinctions seemed pleasingly thrown down by a spirit of innocent gaiety. The Marquis's daughter mingled in country-dances with the apothecary's prentice, while her truly noble parents looked on with generous pleasure, and encouraged the mirth of the moment. Priests, ladies, gentlemen of the very first quality, romped with the girls of the house in high good-humour, and tripped it away without the incumbrance of petty pride, or the mean vanity of giving what they expressively call _foggezzione_, to those who were proud of their company and protection. A new-married wench, whose little fortune of a hundred crowns had been given her by the subscription of many in the room, seemed as free with them all, as the most equal distribution of birth or riches could have made her: she laughed aloud, and rattled in the ears of the gentlemen; replied with sarcastic coarseness when they joked her, and apparently delighted to promote such conversation as they would not otherwise have tried at. The ladies shouted for joy, encouraged the girl with less delicacy than desire of merriment, and promoted a general banishment of decorum; though I do believe with full as much or more purity of intention, than may be often met with in a polished circle at Paris itself. Such society, however, can please a stranger only as it is odd and as it is new; when ceremony ceases, hilarity is left in a state too natural not to offend people accustomed to scenes of high civilization; and I suppose few of us could return, after twenty-five years old, to the coarse comforts of _a roll and treacle._ Another style of amusement, very different from this last, called us out, two or three days ago, to hear the famous Passione de Metastasio sung in St. Celso's church. The building is spacious, the architecture elegant, and the ornaments rich. A custom too was on this occasion omitted, which I dislike exceedingly; that of deforming the beautiful edifices dedicated to God's service with damask hangings and gold lace on the capitals of all the pillars upon days of gala, so very perversely, that the effect of proportion is lost to the eye, while the church conveys no idea to the mind but of a tattered theatre; and when the frippery decorations fade, nothing can exclude the recollection of an old clothes shop. St. Celso was however left clear from these disgraceful ornaments: there assembled together a numerous and brilliant, if not an attentive audience; and St. Peter's part in the oratorio was sung by a soprano voice, with no appearance of peculiar propriety to be sure; but a satirical nobleman near me said, that "Nothing could possibly be more happily imagined, as the mutilation of poor St. Peter was continuing daily, and in full force;" alluding to the Emperor's rough reformations: and he does not certainly spare the coat any more than Jack in our Tale of a Tub, when he is rending away the embroidery. Here, however, the parallel must end; for Jack, though zealous, was never accused of burning the lace, if I remember right, and putting the gold in his pocket. It happened oddly, that chatting freely one day before dinner with some literary friends on the subject of coat armour, we had talked about the Visconti serpent, which is the arms of Milan; and the spread eagle of Austria, which we laughingly agreed ought to _eat double _ because it had _two necks_: when the conversation insensibly turned on the oppressions of the present hour; and I, to put all away with a joke, proposed the _fortes Homericæ_ to decide on their future destiny. Somebody in company insisted that _I_ should open the book--I did so, at the omen in the twelfth book of the Iliad, and read these words: Jove's bird on sounding pinions beat the skies; A bleeding serpent of enormous size His talons trussed; alive and curling round She stung the bird, whose throat receiv'd the wound. Mad with the smart he drops the fatal prey, In airy circles wings his painful way, Floats on the winds, and rends the heavens with cries: Amid the hosts the fallen serpent lies; They, pale with terror, mark its spires unroll'd, And Jove's portent with beating hearts behold. It is now time to talk a little of the theatre; and surely a receptacle so capacious to contain four thousand people, a place of entrance so commodious to receive them, a show so princely, so very magnificent to entertain them, must be sought in vain out of Italy. The centre front box, richly adorned with gilding, arms, and trophies, is appropriated to the court, whose canopy is carried up to what we call the first gallery in England; the crescent of boxes ending with the stage, consist of nineteen on a side, _small boudoirs_, for such they seem; and are as such fitted up with silk hangings, girandoles, &c. and placed so judiciously as to catch every sound of the fingers, if they do but whisper: I will not say it is equally advantageous to the figure, as to the voice; no performers looking adequate to the place they recite upon, so very stately is the building itself, being all of stone, with an immense portico, and stairs which for width you might without hyperbole drive your chariot up. An immense sideboard at the first lobby, lighted and furnished with luxurious and elegant plenty, as many people send for suppers to their box, and entertain a knot of friends there with infinite convenience and splendour. A silk curtain, the colour of your hangings, defends the closet from intrusive eyes, if you think proper to drop it; and when drawn up, gives gaiety and show to the general appearance of the whole: while across the corridor leading to these boxes, another small chamber, numbered like _that_ it belongs to, is appropriated to the use of your servants, and furnished with every conveniency to make chocolate, serve lemonade, &c. Can one wonder at the contempt shewn by foreigners when they see English women of fashion squeezed into holes lined with dirty torn red paper, and the walls of it covered with a wretched crimson fluff? Well! but this theatre is built in place of a church founded by the famous Beatrice de Scala, in consequence of a vow she made to erect one if God would be pleased to send her a son. The church was pulled down and the playhouse erected. The Arch-duke lost a son that year; and the pious folks cried, "A judgment!" but nobody minded them, I believe; many, however, that are scrupulous will not go. Meantime it is a beautiful theatre to be sure; the finest fabric raised in modern days, I do believe, for the purposes of entertainment; but we must not be partial. While London has twelve capital rooms for the professed amusement of the Public, Milan has but one; there is in it, however, a ridotto chamber for cards, of a noble size, where some little gaming goes on in carnival time; but though the inhabitants complain of the enormities committed there, I suppose more money is lost and won at one club in St. James's street during a week, than here at Milan in the whole winter. Every nation complains of the wickedness of its own inhabitants, and considers them as the worst people in the world, till they have seen others no better; and then, like individuals with their private sorrows, they find change produces no alleviation. The Mount of Miseries, in the Spectator, where all the people change with their neighbours, lay down an undutiful son, and carry away with them a hump-back, or whatever had been the source of disquiet to another, whom he had blamed for bearing so ill a misfortune thought trifling till he took it on himself, is an admirably well constructed fable, and is applicable to public as well as private complaints. A gentleman who had long practised as a solicitor, and was retired from business, stored with a perfect knowledge of mankind so far as his experience could inform him, told me once, that whoever died before sixty years old, if he had made his own fortune, was likely to leave it according as friendship, gratitude, and public spirit dictated: either to those who had served, or those who had pleased him; or, not unfrequently, to benefit some charity, set up some school, or the like: "but let a man once turn sixty," said he, "and his natural heirs _are sure of him_:" for having seen many people, he has likewise been disgusted by many; and though he does not love his relations better than he did, the discovery that others are but little superior to them in those excellencies he has sought about the world in vain for, he begins to enquire for his nephew's little boy, whom as he never saw, never could have offended him; and if he does not break the chain of a favourite watch, or any other such boyish trick, the estate is his for ever, upon no principle but this in the testator. So it is by those who travel a good deal; by what I have seen, every country has so much in it to be justly complained of, that most men finish by preferring their own. That neither complaints nor rejoicings here at Milan, however, proceed from affectation, is a choice comfort: the Lombards possess the skill to please you without feigning; and so artless are their manners, you cannot even suspect them of insincerity. They have, perhaps for that very reason, few comedies, and fewer novels among them: for the worst of every man's character is already well known to the rest; but be his conduct what it will, the heart is commonly right enough--_il luon cuor Lombardo_ is famed throughout all Italy, and nothing can become proverbial without an excellent reason. Little opportunity is therefore given to writers who carry the dark lanthorn of life into its deepest recesses--unwind the hidden wickedness of a Maskwell or a Monkton, develope the folds of vice, and spy out the internal worthlessness of apparent virtue; which from these discerning eyes cannot be cloked even by that early-taught affectation which renders it a real ingenuity to discover, if in a highly polished capital a man or woman has or has not good parts or principles--so completely are the first overlaid with literature, and the last perverted by refinement. * * * * * April 2, 1785. The cold weather continues still, and we have heavy snows; but so admirable is the police of this well-regulated town, that when over-night it has fallen to the height of four feet, no very uncommon occurrence, no one can see in the morning that even a flake has been there, so completely do the poor and the prisoners rid us of it all, by throwing immense loads of it into a navigable canal that runs quite round the city, and carries every nuisance with it clearly away--so that no inconveniencies can arise. Italians seem to me to have no feeling of cold; they open the casements--for windows we have none (now in winter), and cry, _che bel freschetto_![Footnote: What a fresh breeze!] while I am starving outright. If there is a flash of a few faggots in the chimney that just scorches one a little, no lady goes near it, but sits at the other end of a high-roofed room, the wind whistling round her ears, and her feet upon a perforated brass box, filled with wood embers, which the _cavalier fervente_ pulls out from time to time, and replenishes with hotter ashes raked out from between the andirons. How sitting with these fumes under their petticoats improves their beauty of complexion I know not; certain it is, they pity _us_ exceedingly for our manner of managing ourselves, and enquire of their countrymen who have lived here a-while, how their health endured the burning _fossils_ in the chambers at London. I have heard two or three Italians say, _vorrei anch' io veder quell' Inghilterra, ma questo carbone fossile_![Footnote: I would go see this same England myself I think, but that fuel made of minerals frights me!] To church, however, and to the theatre, ladies have a great green velvet bag carried for them, adorned with gold tassels, and lined with fur, to keep their feet from freezing, as carpets are not in use here. Poor women run about the streets with a little earthen pipkin hanging on their arm, filled with fire, even if they are sent on an errand; while men of all ranks walk wrapped up in an odd sort of white riding coat, not buttoned together, but folded round their body after the fashion of the old Roman dress that one has seen in statues, and this they call _Gaban_, retaining many Spanish words since the time that they were under Spanish government. _Buscar_, to seek, is quite familiar here as at Madrid, and instead of Ragazzo, I have heard the Milanese say _Mozzo_ di Stalla, which is originally a Castilian word I believe, and spelt by them with the _c con cedilla_, Moço. They have likewise Latin phrases oddly mingled among their own: a gentleman said yesterday, that he was going to Casa _Sororis_, to his sister's; and the strange word _Minga_, which meets one at every turn, is corrupted, I believe, from _Mica_, a crumb. _Piaz minga_, I have not a crumb of pleasure in it, &c. The uniformity of dress here pleases the eye, and their custom of going veiled to church, and always without a hat, which they consider as profanation of the _temple_ as they call it, delights me much; it has an air of decency in the individuals, of general respect for the place, and of a resolution not to let external images intrude on devout thoughts. The hanging churches, and even public pillars, set up in the streets or squares for purposes of adoration, with black, when any person of consequence dies, displeases me more; it is so very dismal, so paltry a piece of pride and expiring vanity, and so dirty a custom, calling bugs and spiders, and all manner of vermin about one so in those black trappings, it is terrible; but if they remind us of our end, and set us about preparing for it, the benefit is greater than the evil. The equipages on the Corso here are very numerous, in proportion to the size of the city, and excessively showy: the horses are long-tailed, heavy, and for the most part black, with high rising forehands, while the sinking of the back is artfully concealed by the harness of red Morocco leather richly ornamented, and white reins. To this magnificence much is added by large leopard, panther, or tyger skins, beautifully striped or spotted by Nature's hand, and held fast on the horses by heavy shining tassels of gold, coloured lace, &c. wonderfully handsome; while the driver, clothed in a bright scarlet dress, adorned and trimmed with bear's skin, makes a noble figure on the box at this season upon days of gala. The carnival, however, exhibits a variety unspeakable; boats and barges painted of a thousand colours, drawn upon wheels, and filled with masks and merry-makers, who throw sugar-plums at each other, to the infinite delight of the town, whose populousness that show evinces to perfection, for every window and balcony is crowded to excess; the streets are fuller than one can express of gazers, and general mirth and gaiety prevail. When the flashing season is over, and you are no longer to be dazzled with finery or stunned with noise, the nobility of Milan--for gentry there are none--fairly slip a check case over the hammock, as we do to our best chairs in England, clap a coarse leather cover on the carriage top, the coachman wearing a vast brown great coat, which he spreads on each side him over the corners of his coach-box, and looks as somebody was saying--like a sitting hen. The paving of our streets here at Milan is worth mentioning, only because it is directly contrary to the London method of performing the same operation. They lay the large flag stones at this place in two rows, for the coach wheels to roll smoothly over, leaving walkers to accommodate themselves, and bear the sharp pebbles to their tread as they may. In every thing great, and every thing little, the diversity of government must perpetually occur; where that is despotic, small care will be taken of the common people; where that is popular, little attention will be paid to the great ones. I never in my whole life heard so much of birth and family as since I came to this town; where blood enjoys a thousand exclusive privileges, where Cavalier and Dama are words of the first, nay of the only importance; where wit and beauty are considered as useless without a long pedigree; and virtue, talents, wealth, and wisdom, are thought on only as medals to hang upon the branch of a genealogical tree, as we tie trinkets to a watch in England. I went to church, twenty yards from our own door, with a servant to wait on me, three or four mornings ago; there was a lady particularly well dressed, very handsome, two footmen attending on her at a distance, took my attention. Peter, said I, to my own man, as we came out, _chi è quella dama? who is that lady? Non è dama_, replies the fellow, contemptuously smiling at my simplicity--_she is no lady_. I thought she might be somebody's kept mistress, and asked him whose? _Dio ne liberi_, returns Peter, in a kinder accent--for there _heart_ came in, and he would not injure her character--God forbid: _è moglie d'un ricco banchiere_--she is a rich banker's wife. You may see, added he, that she is no lady if you look--the servants carry no velvet stool for her to kneel upon, and they have no coat armour in the lace to their liveries: _she_ a lady! repeated he again with infinite contempt. I am told that the Arch-duke is very desirous to close this breach of distinction, and to draw merchants and traders with their wives up into higher notice than they were wont to remain in. I do not _think_ he will by that means conciliate the affection of any rank. The prejudices in favour of nobility are too strong to be shaken here, much less rooted out so: the very servants would rather starve in the house of a man of family, than eat after a person of inferior quality, whom they consider as their equal, and almost treat him as such to his face. Shall we then be able to refuse our particular veneration to those characters of high rank here, who add the charm of a cultivated mind to that situation which, united even with ignorance, would ensure them respect? When scholarship is found among the great in Italy, it has the additional merit of having grown up in their own bosoms, without encouragement from emulation, or the least interested motive. His companions do not think much the more of him--for _that_ kind of superiority. I suppose, says a friend of his, he must be fond of study; for _chi pensa di una maniera, chi pensa d' un altra, per me sono stato sempre ignorantissimo_[I]. [Footnote I: One man is of one mind, another of another: I was always a sheer dunce for my own part.] These voluntary confessions of many a quality, which, whether possessed or not by English people, would certainly never be avowed, spring from that native sincerity I have been praising--for though family connections are prized so highly here, no man seems ashamed that he has no family to boast: all feigning would indeed be useless and impracticable; yet it struck me with astonishment too, to hear a well-bred clergyman who visits at many genteel houses, say gravely to his friend, no longer ago than yesterday--that friend a man too eminent both for talents and fortune--"Yes, there is a grand invitation at such a place to-night, but I don't go, because _I am not a gentleman--perche non sono cavaliere_; and the master desired I would let you know that _it was for no other reason_ that you had not a card too, my good friend; for it is an invitation of none but _people of fashion you see_." At all this nobody stares, nobody laughs, and nobody's throat is cut in consequence of their sincere declarations. The women are not behind-hand in openness of confidence and comical sincerity. We have all heard much of Italian cicisbeism; I had a mind to know how matters really stood; and took the nearest way to information by asking a mighty beautiful and apparently artless young creature, _not noble_, how that affair was managed, for there is no harm done _I am sure_, said I: "Why no," replied she, "no great _harm_ to be sure: except wearisome attentions from a man one cares little about: for my own part," continued she, "I detest the custom, as I happen to love my husband excessively, and desire nobody's company in the world but his. We are not _people of fashion_ though you know, nor at all rich; so how should we set fashions for our betters? They would only say, see how jealous he is! if _Mr. Such-a-one_ sat much with me at home, or went with me to the Corso; and I _must_ go with some gentleman you know: and the men are such ungenerous creatures, and have such ways with them: I want money often, and this _cavaliere servente_ pays the bills, and so the connection draws closer--_that's all_." And your husband! said I--"Oh, why he likes to see me well dressed; he is very good natured, and very charming; I love him to my heart." And your confessor! cried I.--"Oh, why he is _used to it_"--in the Milanese dialect--_è assuefaà_. Well! we will not send people to Milan to study delicacy or very refined morality to be sure; but were the crust of British affectation lifted off many a character at home, I know not whether better, that is _honester_, hearts would be found under it than that of this pretty girl, God forbid that I should prove an advocate for vice; but let us remember, that the banishment of all hypocrisy and deceit is a vast compensation for the want of _one great virtue_.--The certainty that the worst, whatever that worst may be, meets your immediate inspection, gives great repose to the mind: you know there is no latent poison lurking out of sight; no colours to come out stronger by throwing water suddenly against them, as you do to old fresco paintings: and talking freely with women in this country, though you may have a chance to light on ignorance, you are never teized by folly. The mind of an Italian, whether man or woman, seldom fails, for ought I see, to make up in _extent_ what is wanted in _cultivation_; and that they possess the art of pleasing in an eminent degree, the constancy with which they are mutually beloved by each other is the best proof. Ladies of distinction bring with them when they marry, besides fortune, as many clothes as will last them seven years; for fashions do not change here as often as at London or Paris; yet is pin-money allowed, and an attention paid to the wife that no Englishwoman can form an idea of: in every family her duties are few; for, as I have observed, household management falls to the master's share of course, when all the servants are men almost, and those all paid by the week or day. Children are very seldom seen by those who visit great houses: if they _do_ come down for five minutes after dinner, the parents are talked of as _doting_ on them, and nothing can equal the pious and tender return made to fathers and mothers in this country, for even an apparently moderate share of fondness shewn to them in a state of infancy. I saw an old Marchioness the other day, who had I believe been exquisitely beautiful, lying in bed in a spacious apartment, just like ours in the old palaces, with the tester touching the top almost: she had her three grown-up sons standing round her, with an affectionate desire of pleasing, and shewing her whatever could sooth or amuse her--so that it charmed me; and I was told, and observed indeed, that when they quitted her presence a half kneeling bow, and a kind kiss of her still white hand, was the ceremony used. I knew myself brought thither only that she might be entertained with the sight of the foreigner--and was equally struck at her appearance--more so I should imagine than she could be at mine; when these dear men assisted in moving her pillows with emulative attention, and rejoiced with each other apart, that their mother looked so well to-day. Two or three servants out of livery brought us refreshments I remember; but her maid attended in the antichamber, and answered the bell at her bed's head, which was exceedingly magnificent in the old style of grandeur--crimson damask, if I recollect right, with family arms at the back; and she lay on nine or eleven pillows, laced with ribbon, and two large bows to each, very elegant and expensive in any country:--with all this, to prove that the Italians have little sensation of cold, here was no fire, but a suffocating brazier, which stood near the door that opened, and was kept open, into the maid's apartment. A woman here in every stage of life has really a degree of attention shewn her that is surprising:--if conjugal disputes arise in a family, so as to make them become what we call town-talk, the public voice is sure to run against the husband; if separation ensues, all possible countenance is given to the wife, while the gentleman is somewhat less willingly received; and all the stories of past disgusts are related to _his_ prejudice: nor will the lady whom he wishes to serve look very kindly on a man who treats his own wife with unpoliteness. _Che cuore deve avere!_ says she: What a heart he must have! _Io non mene fido sicuro_: I shall take care not to trust him sure. National character is a great matter: I did not know there had been such a difference in the ways of thinking, merely from custom and climate, as I see there is; though one has always read of it: it was however entertaining enough to hear a travelled gentleman haranguing away three nights ago at our house in praise of English cleanliness, and telling his auditors how all the men in London, _that were noble_, put on a clean shirt every day, and the women washed the street before his house-door every morning. "_Che schiavitù mai!_" exclaimed a lady of quality, who was listening: "_ma natural mente farà per commando del principe_."--"_What a land of slavery!_" says Donna Louisa, I heard her; "_but it is all done by command of the sovereign, I suppose_." Their ideas of justice are no less singular than of delicacy: but those are more easily accounted for; so is their amiable carriage towards inferiors, calling their own and their friends servants by tender names, and speaking to all below themselves with a graciousness not often used by English men or women even to their equals. The pleasure too which the high people here express when the low ones are diverted, is charming.--We think it vulgar to be merry when the mob is so; but if rolling down a hill, like Greenwich, was the custom here, as with us, all Milan would run to see the sport, and rejoice in the felicity of their fellow-creatures. When I express my admiration of such condescending sweetness, they reply--_è un uomo come un altro;--è battezzato come noi_; and the like--Why he is a man of the same nature as we: he has been christened as well as ourselves, they reply. Yet do I not for this reason condemn the English as naturally haughty above their continental neighbours. Our government has left so narrow a space between the upper and under ranks of people in Great Britain--while our charitable and truly Christian religion is still so constantly employed in raising the depressed, by giving them means of changing their situation, that if our persons of condition fail even for a moment to watch their post, maintaining by dignity what they or their fathers have acquired by merit, they are instantly and suddenly broken in upon by the well-employed talents, or swiftly-acquired riches, of men born on the other side the thin partition; whilst in Italy the gulph is totally impassable, and birth alone can entitle man or woman to the society of gentlemen and ladies. This firmly-fixed idea of subordination (which I once heard a Venetian say, he believed must exist in heaven from one angel to another) accounts immediately for a little conversation which I am now going to relate. Here were two men taken up last week, one for murdering his fellow-servant in cold blood, while the undefended creature had the lemonade tray in his hand going in to serve company; the other for breaking the new lamps lately set up with intention to light this town in the manner of the streets at Paris. "I hope," said I, "that they will hang the murderer." "I rather hope," replied a very sensible lady who sate near me, "that they will hang the person who broke the lamps: for," added she, "the first committed his crime only out of revenge, poor fellow! because the other had got his mistress from him by treachery; but this creature has had the impudence to break our fine new lamps, all for the sake of spiting _the Arch-duke_." The Arch-duke meantime hangs nobody at all; but sets his prisoners to work upon the roads, public buildings, &c. where they labour in their chains; and where, strange to tell! they often insult passengers who refuse them alms when asked as they go by; and, stranger still! they are not punished for it when they do. Here is certainly much despotic power in Italy, but, I fancy, very little oppression; perhaps authority, once acknowledged, does not delight itself always by the fatigue of exertion. _Sat est prostrasse leoni_ is an old adage, with which perhaps I may be the better acquainted, as it is the motto to my own coat of arms; and unless sovereignty is hungry, for ought I see, he does not certainly _devour_. The certainty of their irrevocable doom, softened by kind usage from their superiors, makes, in the mean time, an odd sort of humorous drollery spring up among the common people, who are much happier here at Milan than I expected to find them: every great house giving meat, broth, &c. to poor dependents with liberal good-nature enough, so that mighty little wandering misery is seen in the streets; unlike those of Genoa, who seem mocked with the word _liberty_, while sorrow, sickness, and the most pinching want, pine at the doors of marble palaces, whose owners are unfeeling as their walls. Our ordinary people here in Lombardy are well clothed, fat, stout, and merry; and desirous to divert themselves, and their protectors, whom they love at their hearts. There is however a degree of effrontery among the women that amazes me, and of which I had no idea, till a friend shewed me one evening from my own box at the opera, fifty or a hundred low shop-keepers wives, dispersed about the pit at the theatre, dressed in men's clothes, _per disimpegno_ as they call it; that they might be more _at liberty_ forsooth to clap and hiss, and quarrel and jostle, &c. I felt shocked. "_One who comes from a free government need not wonder so_," said he: "On the contrary, Sir," replied I, "where every body has hopes, at least possibility, of bettering his station, and advancing nearer to the limits of upper life, none except the most abandoned of their species will wholly lose sight of such decorous conduct as alone can grace them when they have reached their wish: whereas your people know their destiny, future as well as present, and think no more of deserving a higher post, than they think of obtaining it." Let me add, however, that if these women _were_ a little riotous during the Easter holidays, they are _dilletantes_ only. In this city no female _professors_ of immorality and open libertinage, disgraceful at once, and pernicious to society, are permitted to range the streets in quest of prey; to the horror of all thinking people, and the ruin of all heedless ones. With which observation, to continue the tour of Italy, we this day leave, for a twelvemonth at least, Milano il grande, after having spent, though not quite finished the winter in it; as there fell a very heavy snow last Saturday, which hindered our setting out a week ago, though this is the sixth of April; and exactly five months have now since last November been passed among those who have I hope approved our conduct and esteemed our manners. That they should trouble themselves to examine our income, report our phrases, and listen, perhaps with some little mixture of envy, after every instance of unshakable attachment shewn to each other, would be less pleasing; but that I verily believe they have at last dismissed us with general good wishes, proceeding from innate goodness of heart, and the hope of seeing again, in a year's time or so, two people who have supplied so many tables here with materials for conversation, when the fountain of talk was stopt by deficiencies, and the little stream of prattle ceased to murmur for want of a few pebbles to break its course. We are going to Venice by the way of Cremona, and hope for amusement from external objects: let us at least not deserve or invite disappointment by seeking for pleasure beyond the limits of innocence. FROM MILAN TO PADUA. The first evening's drive carried us no farther than Lodi, a place renowned through all Europe for its excellent cheese, as out well-known ballad bears testimony: Let Lodi or Parmesan bring up the rear. Those verses were imitated, I fancy, from a French song written by Monsieur des Yveteaux, of whose extraordinary life and death much has been said by his cotemporary wits, particularly how some of them found him playing at shepherd and shepherdess in his own garden with a pretty Savoyard wench, at seventy-eight years old, _en habit de berger, avec un chapeau couleur de rose_[Footnote: In a pastoral habit, and a hat turned up with pink], &c. when he shewed them the famous lines, _Avoir peu de parens, moins de train que de rente_, &c. which do certainly bear a very near affinity to our Old Man's Wish, published in Dryden's Miscellanies; who, among other luxuries, resolves to eat Lodi cheese, I remember. The town, however, bringing no other ideas either new or old to our minds, we went to the opera, and heard Morichelli sing: after which they gave us a new dramatic dance, made upon the story of Don John, or the Libertine; a tale which, whether true or false, fact or fable, has furnished every Christian country in the world, I believe, with some subject of representation. It makes me no sport, however; the idea of an impenitent sinner going to hell is too seriously terrifying to make amusement out of. Let mythology, which is now grown good for little else, be danced upon the stage; where Mr. Vestris may bounce and struggle in the character of Alcides on his funeral pile, with no very glaring impropriety; and such baubles serve beside to keep old classical stories in the heads of our young people; who, if they _must_ have torches to blaze in their eyes, may divert themselves with Pluto catching up Ceres's daughter, and driving her away to Tartarus; but let Don John alone. I have at least _half a notion_ that the horrible history is _half true_; if so, it is surely very gross to represent it by dancing. Should such false foolish taste prevail in England (but I hope it will not), we might perhaps go happily through the whole book of God's Revenge against Murder, or the Annals of Newgate, on the stage, as a variety of pretty stories may be found there of the same cast; while statues of Hercules and Minerva, with their insignia as heathen deities, might be placed, with equal attention to religion, costume, and general fitness, as decorations for the monuments of _Westminster Abbey_. The country we came through to Cremona is rich and fertile, the roads deep and miry of course; very few of the Lombardy poplars, of which I expected to see so many: but Phaeton's sisters seem to have danced all away from the odoriferous banks of the Po, to the green sides of the Thames, I think; meantime here is no other timber in the country but a few straggling ash, and willows without end. The old Eridanus, however, makes a majestic figure at Cremona, and frights the inhabitants when it overflows. There are not many to be frighted though, for the town is thinly peopled; but exquisitely clean, perhaps for that very reason; and the cathedral, of a mixed Grecian and Gothic architecture, has a respectable appearance; while two enormous lions, of red marble, frown at its door, and the crucifixion, painted by Pordenone, with a rough but powerful pencil, strikes one at the entrance: I have seen nothing finer than the figure of the Centurion upon the fore-ground, who seems to cry out, with soldier-like courage and apostolic fervour, Truly this is the Son of God. The great clock here too is very curious: having, besides the twenty-four hours, a minute and second finger, like a stop watch, and shews the phases of the moon, with her triple rotation clearly to all who walk across the piazza. Yet I trust the dwellers at Cremona are no better astronomers than those who live in other places; to what purpose then all these representations with which Italy is crowded; processions, paintings, &c. besides the moral dances, as they call them now? One word of solid instruction to the ear, conveys more knowledge to the mind at last, than all these marionettes presented to the eye. The tower of Cremona is of a surprising height and elegant form; we climbed, not without some difficulty, to its top, and saw the flat plains of Lombardy stretched out all round us. Prospects, however, and high towers have I seen; that in Mr. Hoare's grounds, dedicated to King Alfred, is a much finer structure than this, and the view from it much more variegated certainly; I think of greater extent; though there is more dignity in these objects, while the Po twists through them, and distant mountains mingle with the sky at the end of a lengthened horizon. What I have never seen till now, we were made to observe in the octagon gallery which crowns this pretty structure, where in every compartment there are channels cut in the stone to guide the eye or rest the telescope, that so a spectator need not be fruitlessly teized, as one almost always is, by those who shew one a prospect, with _Look there! See there!_ &c. At this place nothing needs be done but lay the glass or put the eye even with the lines which point to Bergamo, Mantua, or where you please; and _look there_ becomes superfluous as offensive. The bells in the tower amused us in another way: an old man who has the care of them, delighted much in telling us how he rung tunes upon them before the Duke of Parma, who presented him with money, and bid him ring again: and not a little was the good man amazed, when one of our company sate down and played on them himself: a thing he had never before been witness to, he said, except once, when a surprising musician arrived from England, and performed the like seat: by his description of the person, and the time of his passing through Cremona, we conjectured he meant Dr. Burney. The most dreadful of all roads carried us next morning to Mantua, where we had letters for an agreeable friend, who neglected nothing that could entertain or instruct us. He shewed me the field where it is supposed the house stood in which Virgil was born, and told me what he knew of the evidence that he was born there: certain it is that much care is taken to keep the place fenced, from an idea of its being the identical spot, and I hope it is so. The theatres here are beautiful beyond all telling: it is a shame not to take the model of the small one, and build a place of entertainment on the plan. There cannot surely be any plan more elegant. We had a concert of admirable music at the house of our new acquaintance, in the evening, and were introduced by his means to many people of fashion; the ladies were pretty, and dressed with much taste; no caps at all, but flowers in their heads, and earrings of silver fillagree finely worked; long, light, and thin: I never saw such before, but it would be an exceeding pretty fashion. They hung down quite low upon the neck and shoulders, and had a pleasing effect. Mantua stands in the middle of a deep swampy marsh, that sends up a thick foggy vapour all winter, a stench intolerable during the summer months. Its inhabitants lament the want of population; and indeed I counted but five carriages in the streets while we remained in the town. Seven thousand Jews occupy a third part of the city, founded by old Tiresias's daughter, where they have a synagogue, and live after their own fashion. The dialect here is closer to that Italian which foreigners learn, and the ladies speak more Tuscan, I think, than at Milan, but it is a _lady's_ town as I told them. "Ille etiam patriis agmen ciet Ocnus ab oris Fatidicæ _Mantûs_ et Tusci filius amnis, Qui muros matrisque dedit tibi. _Mantua_ nomen." Ocnus was next, who led his native train Of hardy warriors thro' the wat'ry plain, The son of Manto by the Tuscan stream, From whence the _Mantuan_ town derives its name. DRYDEN. The annual fair is what contributes most to keeping their folks alive though, for such are the roads it is scarce possible any strangers should come near them, and our people complain that the inns are very extortionate: here is one building, however, that promises wonders from its prodigious size and magnificence; I only wonder such accommodation should be thought necessary. The gentleman who shewed us the Ducal palace, seemed himself much struck with its convenience and splendour; but I had seen Versailles, Turin, and Genoa. What can be seen here, and here alone, are the numerous and incomparable works of Giulio Romano; of which no words that I can use would give my readers any adequate idea.--For such excellence language has no praise, and of such performances taste will admit no criticism. The giants could scarcely have been more amazed at Jupiter's thunder, than I was at their painted fall. If Rome is to exhibit any thing beyond this, I shall really be more dazzled than delighted; for imagination will stretch no further, and admiration will endure no more. * * * * * Sunday, April 10. Here is no appearance of spring yet, though so late in the year; what must it be in England? One almond and one plum tree have I seen in blossom; but no green leaf out of the bud: so cheerless has been the road between Mantua and Verona, which, however, makes amends for all on our arrival. How beautiful the entrance is of this charming city, how grand the gate, how handsome the drive forward, may all be read here in a printed book called _Verona illustrata_: but my felicity in finding the amphitheatre so well preserved, can only be found in my own heart, which began sensibly to dilate at the seeing an old Roman colisseum kept so nicely, and repaired so well. It is said that the arena here is absolutely perfect; and if the galleries are a little deficient, there can be no dispute concerning the _podium_, or lower seats, which remain exactly as they were in old times: while I have heard that the building of the same kind now existing at Nismes, shews the manner of entering exceeding well; and the great one built by Vespasian has every thing else: so that an exact idea of the old Circus may be obtained among them all. That something should always be left to conjecture, is however not unpleasing; various opinions animate the arguments on both sides, and bring out fire by collision with the understanding of others engaged in the same researches. A bull-feast given here to divert the Emperor as he passed through, must have excited many pleasing sensations, while the inhabitants sate on seats once occupied by the masters of the world; and what is more worth wonder, fate at the feet of a Transalpine _Cæsar_, for so the sovereign of Germany is even now called by his Milanese subjects in common discourse; and when one looks upon the arms of Austria, a spread eagle, and recollects that when the Roman empire was divided, the old eagle was split, one face looking toward the East, the other toward the West, in token of shared possession, it affects one; and calls up classic imagery to the mind. The collection of antiquities belonging to the Philharmonic society is very respectable; they reminded me of the Arundel marbles at Oxford, and I said so. "_Oh!_" replied the man who shewed these, "_that collection was very valuable to be sure, but the bad air, and the smoke of coal fires in England, have ruined them long ago_." I suspected that my gentleman talked by rote, and examining the book called _Verona illustrata_, found the remark there; but that is _malasede_, and a very ridiculous prejudice. I will confess however, if they please, that our original treaty between Mardonius and the Persian army, at the end of which the Greek general Aristides, although himself a Sabian, attested the fun as witness, in compliance with their religion who worshipped that luminary, at least held it in the highest veneration, as the residence of Oromasdes the good Principle, who was considered by the Magians as for ever clothed with light: I will consider _that_, I say, if they insist upon it, as a marble of less consequence than the last will and testament of an old inhabitant of Sparta which is shewn at Verona, and which _they say_ disposes of the iron money used during the first of many years that the laws of Lycurgus lasted. Here is a very fine palace belonging to the Bevi-l'acqua family, besides the Casa Verzi, as famous for its elegant Doric architecture, as the charming mistress of it for her Attic wit. St. Zeno is the church which struck me most: the eternal and all-seeing eye placed over the door; Fortune's wheel too, composed of six figures curiously disposed, and not unlike our man alphabet, two mounting, two sitting, and two tumbling, over against it: on the outside of the wheel this distich, En ego Fortuna moderor mortalibus usum, Elevo, depono, bona cunctis vel mala dono[J]-- this other on the inside of the wheel, less plainly to be read: Induo nudatos, denudo veste paratos, In me confidit, si quis derisus abibit[K]. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote J: Here I Madam Fortune my favours bestow, Some good and some ill to the high and the low. ] [Footnote K: The naked I clothe, and the pompous I strip; If in me you confide, I may give you the slip. ] This is a town full of beauties, wits, and rarities: numberless persons of the first eminence have always adorned it, and the present inhabitants have no mind to degenerate; while the Nobleman that is immediately descended from that house which Giambattista della Torre made famous for his skill in astronomy, employs himself in a much more useful, if not a nobler study; and is completing for the press a new system of education. It was very petulantly, and very spitefully said by Voltaire, that Italy was now no more than _la boutique_[Footnote: The old clothes shop.], and the Italians, _les merchands fripiers de l'Europe_[Footnote: The slop-sellers of Europe]. The Greek remains here have still an air of youthful elegance about them, which strikes one very forcibly where so good opportunity offers of comparing them with the fabrics formed by their destructive successors, the Goths; who have left some fine old black-looking monuments (which look as if they had stood in our _coal smoke_ for centuries) to the memory of the Scaligers; and surely the great critic of that name could not have taken a more certain method of proving his descent from these his barbarous ancestors, than that which his relationship to them naturally, I suppose, inspired him with--the avowed preference of birth to talents, of long-drawn genealogy to hardly-acquired literature. We will however grow less prejudiced ourselves; and since there are still whole nations of people existing, who consider the counting up many generations back as a felicity not to be exchanged for any other without manifest loss, we may possibly reconcile the opinion to common sense, by reflecting that one preconception of the sovereign good is, that it should certainly be _indeprivable_ and except birth, what is there earthly after all that may not drop, or else be torn from its possessor by accident, folly, force, or malice? James Harris says, that virtue answers to the character of indeprivability, but one is left only to wish that his position were true; the continuance of virtue depends on the continuance of reason, from which a blow on the head, a sudden fit of terror, or twenty other accidents may separate us in a moment. Nothing can make us not one's father's child however, and the advantages of _blood_, such as they are, may surely be deemed _indeprivable_. Gothic and Grecian architecture resembles Gothic and Grecian manners, which naturally do give their colour to such arts as are naturally the result of them. Tyranny and gloomy suspicion are the characteristics of the one, openness and sociability strongly mark the other--when to the gay portico succeeded the sullen drawbridge, and to the lively corridor, a secret passage and a winding staircase. It is difficult, if not impossible however, to withhold one's respect from those barbarians who could thus change the face of art, almost of nature; who could overwhelm courage and counteract learning; who not only devoured the works of wisdom and the labours of strength, but left behind them too a settled system of feudatorial life and aristocratic power, still undestroyed in Europe, though hourly attacked, battered by commerce, and sapped by civilization. When Smeathman told us about twelve years ago, how an immense body of African ants, which appeared, as they moved forwards, like the whole earth in agitation--covered and suddenly arrested a solemn elephant, as he grazed unsuspiciously on the plain; he told us too that in eight hours time no trace was left either of the devasters or devasted, excepting the skeleton of the noble creature neatly picked; a standing proof of the power of numbers against single force. These northern emigrants the Goths, however, have done more; they have fixed a mode of carrying on human affairs, that I think will never be so far exterminated as to leave no vestiges behind: and even while one contemplates the mischief they have made--even while one's pen engraves one's indignation at their success; the old baron in his castle, preceded and surrounded by loyal dependants, who desired only to live under his protection and die in his defence, inspires a notion of dignity unattainable by those who, seeking the beautiful, are by so far removed from the sublime of life, and affords to the mind momentary images of surly magnificence, ill exchanged perhaps by _fancy_, though _truth_ has happily substituted a succession of soft ideas and social comforts: knowledge, virtue, riches, happiness. Let it be remembered however, that if the theme is superior to the song, we always find those poets who live in the second class, celebrating the days past by those who had their existence in the first. These reflections are forced upon me by the view of Lombard manners, and the accounts I daily pick up concerning the Brescian and Bergamase nobility; who still exert the Gothic power of protecting murderers who profess themselves their vassals; and who still exercise those virtues and vices natural to man in his semi-barbarous state: fervent devotion, constant love, heroic friendship, on the one part; gross superstition, indulgence of brutal appetite, and diabolical revenge, on the other. In all hot countries, however, flowers and weeds shoot up to enormous growth: in colder climes, where poison can scarce be feared, perfumes can seldom be boasted. Verona is the gayest looking town I ever lived in; beautifully situated, the hills around it elegant, the mountains at a distance venerable: the silver Adige rolling through the Valley, while such a glow of blossoms now ornament the rising grounds, and such cheerfulness smiles in the sweet countenances of its inhabitants, that one is tempted to think it the birth-place of Euphrosyne, where Zephyr with Aurora playing, As he met her once a maying, &c. Fill'd her with thee a daughter fair, So buxom, blythe, and debonair-- as Milton says. Here are vines, mulberries, olives; of course, wine, silk, and oil: every thing that can seduce, every thing that ought to satisfy desiring man. Here then in consequence do actually delight to reside mirth and good-humour in their holiday dress. _A verona mezzi matti_[Footnote: The people at Verona are half out of their wits], say the Italians themselves of them, and I see nothing seemingly go forward here but Improvisatori, reciting stories or verses to entertain the populace; boys flying kites, cut square like a diamond on the cards, and called Stelle; men amusing themselves at a game called Pallamajo, something like our cricket, only that they throw the ball with a hollow stick, not with the hand, but it requires no small corporal strength; and I know not why our English people have such a notion of Italian effeminacy: games of very strong exertion are in use among them; and I have not yet felt one hot day since I left France. They shewed us an agreeable garden here belonging to some man of fashion, whose name I know not; it was cut in a rock, yet the grotto disappointed me: they had not taken such advantages of the situation as Lomellino would have done, and I recollected the tasteful creations in my own country, _Pains Hill_ and _Stour Head_. The Veronese nobleman shewed however the spirit of _his_ country, if we let loose the genius of _ours_. The emperor had visited his improvements it seems, and on the spot where he kissed the children of the house, their father set up a stone to record the honour. Our attendant related a tender story to _me_ more interesting, which happened in this garden, of an English gentleman, who having hired the house, &c. one season, found his favourite servant ill there, and like to die: the poor creature expressed his concern at the intolerant cruelty of that fact which denies Christians of any other denomination but their own a place in consecrated ground, and lamented his distance from home with an anxious earnestness that hastened his end: when the humanity of his master sent him to the landlord, who kindly gave permission that he might lie undisturbed under his turf, as one places one's lap-dog in England; and _there_, as our Laquais de place observed, _he did no harm_, though _he was a heretic_; and the English gentleman wept over his grave. I never saw cypress trees of such a growth as in this spot--but then there are no other trees; _inter viburna cypressi_ came of course into one's head: and this noble plant, rich in foliage, and bright, not dusky in colour, looked from its manner of growing like a vast evergreen poplar. Our equipages here are strangely inferior to those we left behind at Milan. Oil is burned in the conversation rooms too, and smells very offensively--but they _lament our suffocation in England, and black smoke_, while what proceeds from these lamps would ruin the finest furniture in the world before five weeks were expired; I saw no such used at Turin, Genoa, or Milan. The horses here are not equal to those I have admired on the Corso at other great towns; but it is pleasing to observe the contrast between the high bred, airy, elegant English hunter, and the majestic, docile, and well-broken war horse of Lombardy. Shall we fancy there is Gothic and Grecian to be found even among the animals? or is not that _too_ fanciful? That every thing useful, and every thing ornamental, first revived in Italy, is well known; but I was never aware till now, though we talk of Italian book-keeping, that the little cant words employed in compting-houses, took their original from the Lombard language, unless perhaps that of Ditto, which every moment recurs, meaning Detto or Sudetto, as that which was already said before: but this place has afforded me an opportunity of discovering what the people meant, who called a large portion of ground in Southwark some years ago a _plant_, above all things. The ground was destined to the purposes of extensive commerce, but the appellation of a _plant_ gave me much disturbance, from my inability to fathom the meaning of it. I have here found out, that the Lombards call many things a _plant_; and say of their cities, palaces, &c. in familiar discourse--_che la pianta è buona, la pianta è cattiva_[Footnote: The _plant_ is a good or a bad one], &c. Thus do words which carry a forcible expression in one language, appear ridiculous enough in another, till the true derivation is known. Another reflection too occurs as curious; that after the overthrow of all business, all knowledge, and all pleasure resulting from either, by the Goths, Italy should be the first to cherish and revive those money-getting occupations, which now thrive better in more Northern climates: but the chymists say justly, that fermentation acts with a sort of creative power, and that while the mass of matter is fermenting, no certain judgment can be made what spirit it will at last throw up: so perhaps we ought not to wonder at all, that the first idea of banking came originally from this now uncommercial country; that the very name of _bankrupt_ was brought over from their money-changers, who sat in the market-place with a bench or _banca_ before them, receiving and paying; till, unable sometimes to make the due returns, the enraged creditors broke their little board, which was called making _bancarotta_, a phrase but too well known in the purlieus, which because they first settled there in London was called _Lombard Street_, where the word is still in full force I believe. --oh word of fear! Unpleasing to commercial ear. A visit to the collection of Signor Vincenzo Bozza best assisted me in changing, or at least turning the course of my ideas. Nothing in natural history appears more worthy the consideration of the learned world, than does this repository of petrefactions, so uncommon that scarcely any thing except the testimony of one's own eyes could convince one that flying fish, natives, and intending to remain inhabitants, of the Pacific Ocean, are daily dug out of the bowels of Monte Bolca near Verona, where they must doubtless have been driven by the deluge, as no less than omnipotent power and general concussion could have sufficed to seize and fix them for centuries in the hollow cavities of a rock at least seventy-two miles from the nearest sea. Their learned proprietor, however, who was obligingly desirous to shew me every attention, answering a hundred troublesome questions with much civility, told us, that few of his numerous visitants gave that plain account of the phenomenon, shewing greater disposition to conjure up more difficult causes, and attribute the whole to the world's eternity: a notion not less contrary to found philosophy and common sense, than it is repugnant to faith, and the doctrines of Revelation; which prophesied long ago, that in the last days should come _scoffers, walking after their own lusts_, and saying, _Where is now the promise of his coming? for since the time that our fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation._ Well! these are unpleasant reflections: I would rather, before leaving the plains of Lombardy, give my country-women one reason for detaining them so long there: it cannot be an uninteresting reason to us, when we ref left that our first head-dresses were made by _Milaners_; that a court gown was early known in England by the name of a _mantua_, from _Manto,_ the daughter of Teresias, who founded the city so called; and that some of the best materials for making these mantuas is still named from the town it is manufactured in--a _Padua_ soy. We are going thither immediately through Vicenza; where the works of Palladio's immortal hand appear in full perfection; and nothing sure can add to the elegancies of architecture displayed in its environs. I fatigued myself to death almost by walking three miles out of town, to see the famous villa from whence Merriworth Castle in Kent was modelled; and drew incessant censures on his taste who built at the bottom of a deep valley the imitation of a house calculated for a hill. Here I pleased my eyes by glancing them over an extensive prospect, bounded by mountains on the one side, on another by the sea, at so prodigious a distance however as to be wholly undiscoverable by the naked eye; nor could I, or any other unaccustomed spectator, have seen, as my Italian companions did, the effect produced by marine vapours upon the intermediate atmosphere, which they made me remark from the windows of the palace, inferior in every thing _but_ situation to Merriworth, and with that patriotic consolation I leave Vincenza. Padua la dotta afforded me much pleasure, from the politeness of the Countess Ferres, born a German; of the House of Starenberg: she thought proper to shew me a thousand civilities, in consequence of a kind letter which we carried her from Count Wiltseck, the Austrian minister at Milan; called the literati of the town about us, and gave me the pleasure of conversing with the Abate Cefarotti, who translated Offian; and the Professor Statico, whose attentions I ought never to forget. I was surprised at length to hear kind inquiries after English acquaintance made in my native language by the botanical professor, who spoke much of Doctor Johnson, and with great regard: he had, it seems, spent much time in our island about thirty years before. When we were shewn the physic garden, nicely kept and excellently furnished, the Countess took occasion to observe, that transplanted trees never throve, and strongly expressed her unfaded attachment to her native soil: though she had more good sense than to neglect every opportunity of cultivating that in which fortune had placed her. The tomb of Antenor, supposed to be preserved in this town, has, I find, but slight evidence to boast with regard to its authenticity: whosever tomb it is, the antiquity of the monument, and dignity of the remains, are scarcely questionable; and I see not but it _may_ be Antenor's. There is no place assigned for it but the open street, because it could not (say they) have contained a baptized body, as there are proofs innumerable of its being fabricated many and many years before the birth of Jesus Christ: yet I never pass by without being hurt that it should have no better situation assigned it, till I recollect that the old Romans always buried people by the highway, which made the _siste viator_[Footnote: Stop traveller] proper for their tomb-stones, as Mr. Addison somewhere remarks; which are foolishly enough engraven upon ours: and till I consider too that the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the Patriarch of Antioch, where Christians were first called such, would lie no nearer a Christian Church than old Antenor does, were they unfortunate enough to die, and be put under ground at Padua. The shrine of St. Antonio is however sufficiently venerated; and the riches of his church really amazed me: such silver lamps! such votive offerings! such glorious sculpture! the bas relievos, representing his life and miracles, are beyond any thing we have yet seen; one compartment particularly, the workmanship, I think, of Sansovino, where an old woman is represented to a degree of finished nicety and curiosity of perfection which I knew not that marble could express. The hall of justice, which they oppose to our Westminster-hall, but between which there is no resemblance, is two hundred and fifty-six feet long, and eighty-six broad; the form, of it a _rhomboid_: the walls richly ornamented by Pietro d'Abano, who originally designed, and began to paint the figures round the sides: they have however been retouched by Giotto, who added the signs of the Zodiac to Peter's mysterious performances, which meant to explain the planetary influences, as he was a man deeply dipped in judicial astrology; and there is his own portrait among them, dressed like a Zoroastrian priest, with a planet in the corner. At the bottom of the hall hangs the famous crucifixion, for the purpose of doing which completely well, it is told that Giotto fastened up a real man, and justly incurred the Pope's displeasure, who coming one day unawares to see his painter work, caught the unhappy wretch struggling in the closet, and threatened immediately to sign the artist's death; who with Italian promptness ran to the picture, and daubed it over with his brush and colours;--by this method obliging his sovereign to delay execution till the work was repaired, which no one but himself could finish; mean time the man recovers of his wounds, and the tale ends, whether true or false, according to the hearer's wish. The debtor's stone at the opposite end of the hall has likewise many entertaining stories annexed to it: the bankrupt is obliged to sit there in presence of his creditors and judges, in a very disgraceful state; and many accounts are told one, of the various effects such distresses have had on the mind: but suicide is a crime rarely committed out of England, and the Italians look with just horror on our people for being so easily incited to a sin, which takes from him that commits it all power and possibility of repentance. A Frenchman whom I sent for once at Bath to dress my hair, gave me an excellent trait of his own national character, speaking upon that subject, when he meant to satirise ours. "You have lived some years in England, friend, said I, do you like it?"--"Mais non, madame, pas parfaitement bien[L]"--"You have travelled much in Italy, do you like that better?"--"Ah, Dieu ne plaise, madame, je n'aime guères messieurs les Italiens[M]." "What do they do to make you hate them so?"--"Mais c'est que les Italiens se tuent l'un l'autre (replied the fellow), et les Anglois se font un plaisir de se tuer eux mesmes: pardi je ne me sens rien moins qu'un vrai gout pour ces gentillesses la, et j'aimerois mieux me trouver a _Paris, pour rire un peu_."[N] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote L: Why no truly ma'am, not much.] [Footnote M: Oh, God forbid--no, I cannot endure those Italians.] [Footnote N: Why, really, the Italians have such a passion for murdering each other, ma'am, and the English such an odd delight in killing themselves, that I, who have acquired no taste for such agreeable amusements, grow somewhat impatient to return to Paris, and get a good laugh among my old acquaintance.] The Lucrezia Padovana, who has a monument erected here in this justice hall to her memory, is the only instance of self-murder I have been told yet; and her's was a very glorious one, and necessary to the preservation of her honour, which was endangered by the magistrate, who made that the barter for her husband's life, in defence of which she was pleading; much like the story of Isabella, Angelo, and Claudio, in Shakespear's Measure for Measure. This lady, whole family name I have forgotten, stabbed herself in presence of the monster who reduced her to such necessity, and by that means preserved her husband's life, by suddenly converting the heart of her hateful lover, who from that dreadful day devoted himself to penitence and prayer. The chastity of the Patavian ladies is celebrated by some old Latin poet, but I cannot recollect which. Lucrezia, however, was a Christian. I could not much regard the monument of Livy though, for looking at her's, which attracted and detained my attention more particularly. The University of Padua is a noble institution; and those who have excelled among the students, are recorded on tablets, for the most part brass, hung round the walls, made venerable by their arms and characters. It was pleasing to see so many British names among them--Scotchmen for the most part; though I enquired in vain for the admirable Crichton. Sir Richard Blackmore was there, but not one native of France. We were spiteful enough to fancy, that was the reason that Abbè Richard says nothing of the establishment. Besides the civilities shewn us here by Mr. Bonaldi and his agreeable lady, Signora Annetta, we were recommended by letters from the Venetian resident at Milan, to Abate Toaldo, professor of astronomy; who wished to do all in his power to oblige and entertain us. His observatory is a good one; but the learned amiable scholar, who resides in the first floor of it, complained to us that he was sickly, old, and poor; three bad qualifications, as he observed, for the amusement of travellers, who commonly arrive hungry for novelty, and thirsty for information. His quadrant was very fine, the planetarium or orrery quite out of repair; and his references of course were obliged to be made to a sort of map or chart of the heavenly bodies (a solar system at least with comets) that hung up in his room as a substitute. He had little reverence for the petrefactions of Monte Bolca I perceived, which he considered as mere _lufus naturæ_. He shewed me poor Petrarch's tomb from his observatory, bid me look on Sir Isaac's full-length picture in the room, and said, the world would see no more such men. Of our Maskelyne, however, no man could speak with more esteem, or expressions of generous friendship. His sitting chamber was a pleasant one; and I should not have left it so soon, but in compassion to his health, which our company was more likely to injure than assist. He asked me, if I did not find _Padua la dotta_ a very stinking nasty town? but added, that literature and dirt had long been intimately acquainted, and that this city was commonly called among the Italians, _"Porcil de Padua," Padua the pig-stye._ Fire is supposed to be the greatest purifier, and Padua has gone through that operation twice completely, being burned the first time by Attila; after which, Narses the famous eunuch rebuilt and settled it in the year 558, if my information is good: but after her protector's death, the Longobards burned her again, and she lay in ashes till Charlemagne restored her to more than original beauty. Under Otho she, like many other cities of Italy, was governed by her own laws, and remained a republic till the year 1237, when she received the German yoke, afterwards broken by the Scaligers; nor was their treacherous assassination followed by less than the loss both of Verona and this city, which was found in possession of the Emperor Maximilian some years after: but when the State of Venice recovered their dominion over it in 1409, they fortified it so strongly that the confederate princes united in the league of Cambray assaulted it in vain. Santa Giustina's church is the most beautiful place of worship I have ever yet seen; so regularly, so uniformly noble, uncrowded with figures too: the entrance strikes you with its simple grandeur, while the small chapels to the right and left hand are kept back behind a colonade of pillars, and do not distract attention and create confusion of ideas, as do the numerous cupolas of St. Anthony's more magnificent but less pleasing structure. The high altar here at Santa Giustina's church stands at the end, and greatly increases the effect on entering, which always suffers when the length is broken. Nothing, however, is to be perfect in this world, and Paul Veronese's fine view of the suffering martyr has not size enough for the place; and is beside crowded with small unconsequential figures, which cannot be distinguished at a distance. Some carvings round the altar, representing, in wooden bas-reliefs, the history of the Old and New Testament, are admirable in their kind; and I am told that the organ on which Bertoni, a blind nephew of Ferdinand, our well-known composer, played to entertain us, is one of the first in Italy: but an ordinary instrument would have charmed us had he touched it. I must not leave the Terra Firma, as they call it, without mentioning once more some of the animals it produces; among which the asses are so justly renowned for their size and beauty, that _come un afino di Padua_ is proverbial when speaking of strength among the Italians: how should it be otherwise indeed, where every herb and every shrub breathes fragrance; and where the quantity as well as quality of their food naturally so increases their milk, that I should think some of them. might yield as much as an ordinary cow? When I was at Genoa, I remember remarking something like this to Doctor Batt, an English physician settled there; and expressed my surprise that our consumptive country-folks, with whom the Italians never cease to reproach us, do not, when they come here for health, rely much on the beneficial produce of these asses for a cure; which, if it is hastened by their assistance in our island, must surely be performed much quicker in this. The answer would have been better recollected, I fancy, had it appeared to me more satisfactory; but he knew what he was talking of, and I did not; so conclude he despised me accordingly. The Carinthian bulls too, that do all the heavy work in this rich and heavy land, how wonderfully handsome they are! Such symmetry and beauty have I never seen in any cattle, scarcely in those of Derbyshire, where so much attention has been bestowed upon their breeding. The colour here is so elegant; they are almost all blue roans, like Lord Grosvenor's horses in London, or those of the Duke of Cestos at Milan: the horns longer, and much more finely shaped, than those of our bulls, and white as polished ivory, tapering off to a point, with a bright black tip at the end, resembling an ermine's tail. As this creature is not a native, but only a neighbour of Italy, we will say no more about him. A transplanted Hollander, carried thither originally from China, seems to thrive particularly well in this part of the world; the little pug dog, or Dutch mastiff, which our English ladies were once so fond of, that poor Garrick thought it worth his while to ridicule them for it in the famous dramatic satire called Lethe, has quitted London for Padua, I perceive; where he is restored happily to his former honours, and every carriage I meet here has a _pug_ in it. That breed of dogs is now so near extirpated among us, that I recoiled: only Lord Penryn who possesses such an animal; and I doubt not but many of the under-classes among brutes do in the same manner extinguish and revive by chance, caprice, or accident perpetually, through many tracts of the inhabited world, so as to remain out of sight in certain districts for centuries together. This town, as Abbé Toaldo observed, is old, and dirty, and melancholy-looking, _in itself_; but Terence told us long ago, and truly, "that it was not the walls, but the company, made every place delightful:" and these inhabitants, though few in number, are so exceedingly cheerful, so charming, their language is so mellifluous, their manners so soothing, I can scarcely bear to leave them without tears. Verona was the first place I felt reluctance to quit; but the Venetian state certainly possesses uncommon, and to me almost unaccountable, attractions. Be that as it will, we leave these sweet Paduans to-morrow; the coach is disposed of, and we are to set out upon our watry journey to their wonderfully-situated metropolis, or as they call it prettily, _La Bella Dominante_. VENICE. We went down the Brenta in a barge that brought us in eight hours to Venice, the first appearance of which revived all the ideas inspired by Canaletti, whose views of this town are most scrupulously exact; those especially which one sees at the Queen of England's house in St. James's Park; to such a degree indeed, that we knew all the famous towers, steeples, &c. before we reached them. It was wonderfully entertaining to find thus realized all the pleasures that excellent painter had given us so many times reason to expect; and I do believe that Venice, like other Italian beauties, will be observed to possess features so striking, so prominent, and so discriminated, that her portrait, like theirs, will not be found difficult to take, nor the impression she has once made easy to erase. British charms captivate less powerfully, less certainly, less suddenly: but being of a softer sort increase upon acquaintance; and after the connexion has continued for some years, will be relinquished with pain, perhaps even in exchange for warmer colouring and stronger expression. St. Mark's Place, after all I had read and all I had heard of it, exceeded expectation: such a cluster of excellence, such a constellation of artificial beauties, my mind had never ventured to excite the idea of within herself; though assisted with all the powers of doing so which painters can bestow, and with all the advantages derived from verbal and written description. It was half an hour before I could think of looking for the bronze horses, of which one has heard so much; and from which when one has once begun to look, there is no possibility of withdrawing one's attention. The general effect produced by such architecture, such painting, such pillars; illuminated as I saw them last night by the moon at full, rising out of the sea, produced an effect like enchantment; and indeed the more than magical sweetness of Venetian planners, dialect, and address, confirms one's notion, and realizes the scenes laid by Fenelon in their once tributary island of Cyprus. The pole set up as commemorative of their past dominion over it, grieves one the more, when every hour shews how congenial that place must have been to them, if every thing one reads of it has any foundation in truth. The Ducal palace is so beautiful, it were worth while almost to cross the Alps to see that, and return home again: and St. Mark's church, whose Mosaic paintings on the outside are surpassed by no work of art, delights one no less on entering, with its numberless rarities; the flooring first, which is all paved with precious stones of the second rank, in small squares, not bigger than a playing card, and sometimes less. By the second rank in gems I mean, carnelion, agate, jasper, serpentine, and verd antique; on which you place your feet without remorse, but not without a very odd sensation, when you find the ground undulated beneath them, to represent the waves of the sea, and perpetuate marine ideas, which prevail in every thing at Venice. We were not shewn the treasury, and it was impossible to get a sight of the manuscript in St. Mark's own hand-writing, carefully preserved here, and justly esteemed even beyond the jewels given as votive offerings to his shrine, which are of immense value. The pictures in the Doge's house are a magnificent collection; and the Noah's Ark by Bassano would doubtless afford an actual study for natural historians as well as painters, and is considered as a model of perfection from which succeeding artists may learn to draw animal life: scarcely a creature can be recollected which has not its proper place in the picture; but the pensive cat upon the fore-ground took most of my attention, and held it away from the meeting of the Pope and Doge by the other brother Bassano, who here proves that his pencil is not divested of dignity, as the connoisseurs sometimes tell us that he is. But it is not one picture, or two, or twenty, that seizes one's mind here; it is the accumulation of various objects, each worthy to detain it. Wonderful indeed, and sweetly-satisfying to the intellectual appetite, is the variety, the plenty of pleasures which serve to enchain the imagination, and fascinate the traveller's eye, keeping it ever on this _little spot_; for though I have heard some of the inhabitants talk of its vastness, it is scarcely bigger than our Portman Square, I think, not larger at the very most than Lincoln's-Inn-Fields. It is indeed observable that few people know how to commend a thing so as to make their praises enhance its value. One hears a pretty woman not unfrequently admired for her wit, a woman of talents wondered at for her beauty; while I can think on no reason for such perversion of language, unless it is that a small share of elegance will content those whose delight is to hear declamation; and that the most hackeyed sentiments will seem new, when uttered by a pair of rosy lips, and seconded by the expression of eyes from which every thing may be expected. To return to St. Mark's Place, whence _we have never strayed_: I must mention those pictures which represent his miracles, and the carrying his body away from Alexandria: events attested so as to bring them credit from many wise men, and which have more authenticity of their truth, than many stories told one up and down here. So great is the devotion of the common people here to their tutelar saint, that when they cry out, as we do _Old England for ever_! they do not say, _Viva Venezia_! but _Viva San Marco_! And I doubt much if that was not once the way with _us_; in one of Shakespear's plays an expiring prince being near to give all up for gone, is animated by his son in these words, "_Courage father_, cry _St. George_!" We had an opportunity of seeing _his_ day celebrated with a very grand procession the other morning, April 23, when a live boy personated the hero of the show; but fate so still upon his painted courser, that it was long before I perceived him to breathe. The streets were vastly crowded with spectators, that in every place make the principal part of the _spectacle_. It is odd that a custom which in contemplation seems so unlikely to please, should when put in practice appear highly necessary, and productive of an effect which can be obtained no other way. Were the houses in Parliament Street to hang damask curtains, worked carpets, pieces of various coloured silks, with fringe or lace round them, out of every window when the King of England goes to the House, with numberless well-dressed ladies leaning out to see him pass, it would give one an idea of the continental towns upon a gala day. But our people would be apt to cry out, _Monmouth Street!_ and look ashamed if their neighbours saw the same deckerwork counterpane or crimson curtain produced at Easter, which made a figure at Christmas the December before; so that no end would be put to expence in our country, were such a fancy to take place. The rainy weather beside would spoil all our finery at once; and _here_, though it is still cold enough to be sure, and the women wear sattins, yet still one shivers over a bad fire only because there is no place to walk and warm one's self; for I have not seen a drop of rain. The truth is, this town cannot be a wholesome one, for there is scarcely a possibility of taking exercise; nor have I been once able to circulate my blood by motion since our arrival, except perhaps by climbing the beautiful tower which stands (as every thing else does) in St. Mark's Place. And you may drive a garden-chair up _that_, so easy is the ascent, so broad and luminous the way. From the top is presented to one's sight the most striking of all prospects, water bounded by land--not land by water.--The curious and elegant islets upon which, and into which, the piles of Venice are driven, exhibiting clusters of houses, churches, palaces, every thing--started up in the midst of the sea, so as to excite amazement. But the horses have not been spoken of, though one pair drew Apollo's car at Delphos. The other, which we call modern, and laugh while we call them so, were made however before the days of Constantine the Great. They are of bright yellow brass, not black bronze, as I expected to find them, and grace the glorious church I am never weary of admiring; where I went one day on purpose to find out the red marble on which Pope Alexander III. sate, and placed his foot upon the neck of the Emperor: the stone has this inscription half legible round it, _Super aspidem et basiliscum ambulabis_[Footnote: Thou shalt tread on the asp and the basilisk]. How does this lovely Piazza di San Marco render a newly-arrived spectator breathless with delight! while not a span of it is unoccupied by actual beauty; though the whole appears uncrowded, as in the works of nature, not of art. It was upon the day appointed for making a new chancellor, however, that one ought to have looked at this lovely city; when every shop, adorned with its own peculiar produce, was disposed to hail the passage of its favourite, in a manner so lively, so luxuriant, and at the same time so tasteful--there's no telling. Milliners crowned the new dignitary's picture with flowers, while columns of gauze, twisted round with ribband, in the most elegant style, supported the figure on each side, and made the prettiest appearance possible. The furrier formed his skins into representations of the animal they had once belonged to; so the lion was seen dandling the kid at one door, while the fox stood courting a badger out of his hole at the other. The poulterers and fruiterers were by many thought the most beautiful shops in town, from the variety of fancies displayed in the disposal of their goods; and I admired at the truly Italian ingenuity of a gunsmith, who had found the art of turning his instruments of terror into objects of delight, by his judicious manner of placing and arranging them. Every shop was illuminated with a large glass chandelier before it, besides the wax candles and coloured lamps interspersed among the ornaments within. The senators have much the appearance of our lawyers going robed to Westminster Hall, but the _gentiluomini_, as they are called, wear red dresses, and remind me of the Doctors of the ecclesiastical courts in Doctors Commons. It is observable that all long robes denote peaceful occupations, and that the short cut coat is the emblem of a military profession, once the disgrace of humanity, now unfortunately become its false and cruel pride. When the enemies of King David meant to declare war against him, they cut the skirts of his ambassador's clothes off, to shew him he must prepare for battle; and the Orientals still consider short dresses as a disgraceful preparation for hostile proceedings; nor could any thing have reconciled Europe to the custom, except our horror of Turkish manners, and desire of being distinguished from the Saracens at the time of the Holy War. I have said nothing yet about the gondolas, which every body knows are black, and give an air of melancholy at first sight, yet are nothing less than sorrowful; it is like painting the lively Mrs. Cholmondeley in the character of Milton's Pensive Nun, devout and pure, Sober, stedfast, and demure-- As I once saw her drawn by a famous hand, to shew a Venetian lady in her gondola and zendaletto, which is black like the gondola, but wholly calculated like that for the purposes of refined gallantry. So is the nightly rendezvous, the coffee-house, and casino; for whilst Palladio's palaces serve to adorn the grand canal, and strike those who enter Venice with surprise at its magnificence; those snug retreats are intended for the relaxation of those who inhabit the more splendid apartments, and are fatigued with exertions of dignity, and necessity of no small expence. They breathe the true spirit of our luxurious Lady Mary, who probably learned it here, or of the still more dissolute Turks, our present neighbours; who would have thought not unworthy a Testa Veneziana, her famous stanza, beginning, But when the long hours of public are past, And we meet with champagne and a chicken at last; Surely she had then present to her warm imagination a favourite Casino in the Piazza St. Marco. That her learned and highly-accomplished son imbibed her taste and talents for sensual delights, has been long known in England; it is not so perhaps that there is a showy monument erected to his memory at Padua, setting forth his variety and compass of knowledge in a long Latin inscription. The good old monk who shewed it me seemed generously and reasonably shocked, that such a man should at last expire with somewhat more firm persuasions of the truth of the Mahometan religion than any other; but that he doubted greatly of all, and had not for many years professed himself a Christian of any sect or denomination whatever. So have I seen some youth set out, Half Protestant, half Papist; And wand'ring long the world about, Some new religion to find out, Turn Infidel or Atheist. We have been told much of the suspicious temper of Venetian laws; and have heard often that every discourse is suffered, except such as tends to political conversation, in this city; and that whatever nobleman, native of Venice, is seen speaking familiarly with a foreign minister, runs a risque of punishments too terrible to be thought on. How far that manner of proceeding may be wise or just, I know not; certain it is that they have preserved their laws inviolate, their city unattempted, and their republic respectable, through all the concussions that have shaken the rest of Europe. Surrounded by envious powers, it becomes them to be vigilant; conscious of the value of their unconquered state, it is no wonder that they love her; and surely the true _Amor Patriæ_ never glowed more warmly in old Roman bosoms than in theirs, who draw, as many families here do, their pedigree from the consuls of the Commonwealth. Love without jealousy is seldom to be met with, especially in these warm climates--let us then permit them to be jealous of a constitution which all the other states of Italy look on with envy not unmixed with malice, and propagate strange stories to its disadvantage. That suspicion should be concealed under the mask of gaiety is neither very new nor very strange: the reign of our Charles the Second was equally famous for plots, perjuries, and cruel chastisements, as for wanton levity and indecent frolics: but here at Venice there are no unpermitted frolics; her rulers love to see her gay and cheerful; they are the fathers of their country, and if they _indulge_, take care not to _spoil_ her. With regard to common chat, I have heard many a liberal and eloquent disquisition upon the state of Europe in general, and of Venice in particular, from several agreeable friends at their own Casino, who did not appear to have more fears upon them than myself, and I know not why they should. Chevalier Emo is deservedly a favourite with them, and we used to talk whole evenings of him and of General Elliott; the bombarding of Tunis, and defence of Gibraltar. The news-papers spoke of some fireworks exhibited in England in honour of their hero; they were "vrayment _feux de joye_" said an agreeable Venetian, they were not _feux d'artifice._ The deep secrecy of their councils, however, and unrelenting steadiness of their resolutions, cannot be better explained than by telling a little story, which will illustrate the private virtue as well as the public authority of these extraordinary people; for though the tale is now in abler hands (intending as I am told, to form a tragedy upon its basis), the summary may serve to adorn my little work; as a landscape painter refuses not to throw the story of Phaeton's petition for Apollo's car into his picture, for the purpose of illuminating the back ground, though Ovid has written the story and Titian has painted it. Some years ago then, perhaps a hundred, one of the many spies who ply this town by night, ran to the state inquisitor, with information that such a nobleman (naming him) had connections with the French ambassador, and went privately to his house every night at a certain hour. The _messergrando_, as they call him, could not believe, nor would proceed, without better and stronger proof, against a man for whom he had an intimate personal friendship, and on whose virtue he counted with very particular reliance. Another spy was therefore set, and brought back the same intelligence, adding the description of his disguise; on which the worthy magistrate put on his mask and bauta, and went out himself; when his eyes confirming the report of his informants, and the reflection on his duty stifling all remorse, he sent publicly for _Foscarini_ in the morning, whom the populace attended all weeping to his door. Nothing but resolute denial of the crime alleged could however be forced from the firm-minded citizen, who, sensible of the discovery, prepared for that punishment he knew to be inevitable, and submitted to the fate his friend was obliged to inflict: no less than a dungeon for life, that dungeon so horrible that I have heard Mr. Howard was not permitted to see it. The people lamented, but their lamentations were vain. The magistrate who condemned him never recovered the shock: but Foscarini was heard of no more, till an old lady died forty years after in Paris, whose last confession declared she was visited with amorous intentions by a nobleman of Venice whose name she never knew, while she resided there as companion to the ambassadress. So was Foscarini lost! so died he a martyr to love, and tenderness for female reputation! Is it not therefore a story fit to be celebrated by that lady's pen, who has chosen it as the basis of her future tragedy?--But I will anticipate no further. Well! this is the first place I have seen which has been capable in any degree of obliterating the idea of Genoa la superba, which has till now pursued me, nor could the gloomy dignity of the cathedral at Milan, or the striking view of the arena at Verona, nor the Sala de Giustizia at lettered Padua, banish her beautiful image from my mind: nor can I now acknowledge without shame, that I have ceased to regret the mountains, the chesnut groves, and slanting orange trees, which climbed my chamber window _there_, and at _this_ time too! when Young-ey'd Spring profusely throws From her green lap the pink and rose. But whoever sees St. Mark's Place lighted up of an evening, adorned with every excellence of human art, and pregnant with pleasure, expressed by intelligent countenances sparkling with every grace of nature; the sea washing its walls, the moon-beams dancing on its subjugated waves, sport and laughter resounding from the coffee-houses, girls with guitars skipping about the square, masks and merry-makers singing as they pass you, unless a barge with a band of music is heard at some distance upon the water, and calls attention to sounds made sweeter by the element over which they are brought--whoever is led suddenly I say to this scene of seemingly perennial gaiety, will be apt to cry out of Venice, as Eve says to Adam in Milton, With thee conversing I _forget all time_, All _seasons_, and their _change_--all please _alike_. For it is sure there are in this town many astonishing privations of all that are used to make other places delightful: and as poor Omai the savage said, when about to return to Otaheite--_No horse there! no ass! no cow, no golden pippins, no dish of tea!--Ah, missey! I go without every thing--I always so content there though_. It is really just so one lives at this lovely Venice: one has heard of a horse being exhibited for a show there, and yesterday I watched the poor people paying a penny a piece for the sight of a _stuffed one_, and am more than persuaded of the truth of what I am told here, That numberless inhabitants live and die in this great capital, nor ever find out or think of enquiring how the milk brought from Terra Firma is originally produced. When such fancies cross me I wish to exclaim, Ah, happy England! whence ignorance is banished by the diffusion of literature, and narrowness of notions is ridiculed even in the lowest class of life. Candour must however confess, that while the possessor of a Northern coal-mine riots in that variety of adulation which talents deserve and riches contrive to obtain, those who labour in it are often natives of the dismal region; where many have been known to be born, and work, and die, without having ever seen the sun, or other light than such as a candle can bestow. Let such dark recollections give place to more cheerful imagery. We have just now been carried to see the so justly-renowned arsenal, and unluckily missed the ship-launch we went thither chiefly to see. It is no great matter though! one comes to Italy to look at buildings, statues, pictures, people! The ships and guns of England have been such as supported her greatness, established her dominion, and extended her commerce in such a manner as to excite the admiration and terror of Europe, whose kingdoms vainly as perfidiously combined with her own colonies against that power which _they_ maintained, in spite of the united efforts of half the globe. I shall hardly see finer ships and guns till I go home again, though the keeping all together on one island so--that island walled in too completely with only a single door to come in and out at--is a construction of peculiar happiness and convenience; while dock, armoury, rope-walk, all is contained in this space, exactly two miles round I think. What pleased me best, besides the _whole_, which is best worth being pleased with, was the small arms: there are so many Turkish instruments of destruction among them quite new to me, and the picture commemorating the cruel death of their noble gallant leader Bragadin, so inhumanly treated by the Saracens in 1571. With infinite gratitude to his amiable descendant, who shewed me unmerited civility, dining with us often, and inviting us to his house, &c. I leave this repository of the Republic's stores with one observation, That however suspicious the Venetians are said to be, I found it much more easy for Englishmen to look over _their_ docks, than for a foreigner to find his way into ours. Another reflection occurs on examination of this spot; it is, that the renown attached to it in general conversation, is a proof that the world prefers convenience to splendour; for here are no superfluous ornaments, and I am apt to think many go away from it praising beauties by which they have been but little struck, and utilities they have but little understood. From this show you are commonly carried to the glass manufactory at Murano; once the retreat of piety and freedom, when the Altinati fled the fury of the Huns: a beautiful spot it is, and delightfully as oddly situated; but these are _gems which inlay the bosom of the deep_, as Milton says--and this perhaps, the prettiest among them, is walked over by travellers with that curiosity which is naturally excited, in one person by the veneration of religious antiquity; in another, by the attention justly claimed by human industry and art. Here may be seen a valuable library of books, and here may be seen glasses of all colours, all sorts, and all prices, I believe: but whoever has looked much upon the London work in this way, will not be easily dazzled by the lustre of Venetian crystal; and whoever has seen the Paris mirrors, will not he astonished at any breadth into which glass can be spread. We will return to Venice, the view of which from the Zueca, a word contracted from Giudecca, as I am told, would invite one never more to stray from it--farther at least than to St. George's church, on another little opposite island, whence the prospect is surely wonderful; and one sits longing for a pencil to repeat what has been so often exquisitely painted by Canaletti, just as foolishly as one snatches up a pen to tell what has been so much better told already by Doctor Moore. It was to this church I was sent, however, for the purpose of seeing a famous picture painted by Paul Veronese, of the marriage at Cana in Galilee--where our Saviour's first miracle was performed; in which immense work the artist is well known to have commemorated his own likeness, and that of many of his family, which adds value to the piece, when we consider it as a collection of portraits, besides the history it represents. When we arrived, the picture was kept in a refectory belonging to friars (of what order I have forgotten), and no woman could be admitted. My disappointment was so great that I was deprived even of the powers of solicitation by the extreme ill-humour it occasioned; and my few intreaties for admission were completely disregarded by the good old monk, who remained outside with me, while the gentlemen visited the convent without molestation. At my return to Venice I met little comfort, as every body told me it was my own fault, for I might put on men's clothes and see it whenever I pleased, as nobody then would stop, though perhaps all of them would know me. If such slight gratifications however as seeing a favourite picture, can be purchased no cheaper than by violating truth in one's own person, and encouraging the violation of it in others, it were better surely die without having ever procured to one's self such frivolous enjoyments; and I hope always to reject the temptation of deceiving mistaken piety, or insulting harmless error. But it is almost time to talk of the Rialto, said to be the finest single arch in Europe, and I suppose it is so; very beautiful too when looked on from the water, but so dirtily kept, and deformed with mean shops, that passing over it, disgust gets the better of every other sensation. The truth is, our dear Venetians are nothing less than cleanly; St. Mark's Place is all covered over in a morning with chicken-coops, which stink one to death; as nobody I believe thinks of changing their baskets: and all about the Ducal palace is made so very offensive by the resort of human creatures for every purpose most unworthy of so charming a place, that all enjoyment of its beauties is rendered difficult to a person of any delicacy; and poisoned so provokingly, that I do never cease to wonder that so little police and proper regulation are established in a city so particularly lovely, to render her sweet and wholesome. It was at the Rialto that the first stone of this fair town was laid, upon the twenty-fifth of March, as I am told here, with ideal reference to the vernal equinox, the moment when philosophers have supposed that the sun first shone upon our earth, and when Christians believe that the redemption of it was first announced to _her_ within whose womb it was conceived. The name of _Venice_ has been variously accounted for; but I believe our ordinary people in England are nearest to the right, who call it _Venus_ in their common discourse; as that goddess was, like her best beloved seat of residence, born of the sea's light froth, according to old fables, and partook of her native element, the gay and gentle, not rough and boisterous qualities. It is said too, and I fear with too much truth, that there are in this town some permitted professors of the inveigling arts, who still continue to cry _Veni etiam_, as their ancestors did when flying from the Goths they sought these sands for refuge, and gave their lion wings. Till once well fixed, they kindly called their continental neighbours round to share their liberty, and to accept that happiness they were willing to bestow and to diffuse; and from this call--this _Veni etiam_ it is, that the learned men among them derive the word _Venetia_. I have asked several friends about the truth of what one has been always hearing of in England, that the Venetian gondoliers sing Tasso and Ariosto's verses in the streets at night; sometimes quarrelling with each other concerning the merit of their favourite poets; but what I have been told since I came here, of their attachment to their respective masters, and secrecy when trusted by them in love affairs, seems far more probable; as they are proud to excess when they serve a nobleman of high birth, and will tell you with an air of importance, that the house of Memmo, Monsenigo, or Gratterola, has been served by their ancestors for these eighty or perhaps a hundred years; transmitting family pride thus from generation to generation; even when that pride is but reflected only like the mock rainbow of a summer sky.--But hark! while I am writing this peevish reflection in my room, I hear some voices under my window answering each other upon the Grand Canal. It is, it _is_ the gondolieri sure enough; they are at this moment singing to an odd sort of tune, but in no unmusical manner, the flight of Erminia from Tasso's Jerusalem. Oh, how pretty! how pleasing! This wonderful city realizes the most romantic ideas ever formed of it, and defies imagination to escape her various powers of enslaving it. Apropos to singing;--we were this evening carried to a well-known conservatory called the Mendicanti; who performed an oratorio in the church with great, and I dare say deserved applause. It was difficult for me to persuade myself that all the performers were women, till, watching carefully, our eyes convinced us, as they were but slightly grated. The sight of girls, however, handling the double bass, and blowing into the bassoon, did not much please _me_; and the deep-toned voice of her who sung the part of Saul, seemed an odd unnatural thing enough. What I found most curious and pretty, was to hear Latin verses, of the old Leonine race broken into eight and six, and sung in rhyme by these women, as if they were airs of Metastasio; all in their dulcified pronunciation too, for the _patois_ runs equally through every language when spoken by a Venetian. Well! these pretty syrens were delighted to seize upon us, and pressed our visit to their parlour with a sweetness that I know not who would have resisted. We had no such intent; and amply did their performance repay my curiosity, for visiting Venetian beauties, so justly celebrated for their seducing manners and soft address. They accompanied their voices with the forte-piano, and sung a thousand buffo songs, with all that gay voluptuousness for which their country is renowned. The school, however is running to ruin apace; and perhaps the conduct of the married women here may contribute to make such _conservatorios_ useless and neglected. When the Duchess of Montespan asked the famous Louison D'Arquien, by way of insult, as she pressed too near her, "_Comment alloit le metier_[O]?" "_Depuis que les dames sen mélent_" (replied the courtesan with no improper spirit,) "_il ne vaut plus rien_[P]." It may be these syrens have suffered in the same cause; I thought the ardency of their manners an additional proof of their hunger for fresh prey. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote O: How goes the profession?] [Footnote P: Why since the _quality_ has taken to it ma'am, it brings _us_ in very little indeed.] Will Naples, the original seat of Ulysses's seducers, shew us any thing stronger than this? I hardly expect or wish it. The state of music in Italy, if one may believe those who ought to know it best, is not what it was. The _manner of singing_ is much changed, I am told; and some affectations have been suffered to encroach upon their natural graces. Among the persons who exhibited their talents at the Countess of Rosenberg's last week, our country-woman's performance was most applauded; but when I name Lady Clarges, no one will wonder. It is said that painting is now but little cultivated among them; Rome will however be the place for such enquiries. Angelica Kauffman being settled there, seems a proof of their taste for living merit; and if one thing more than another evinces Italian candour and true good-nature, it is perhaps their generous willingness to be ever happy in acknowledging foreign excellence, and their delight in bringing forward the eminent qualities of every other nation; never insolently vaunting or bragging of their own. Unlike to this is the national spirit and confined ideas of perfection inherent in a Gallic mind, whose sole politeness is an _appliquè_ stuck _upon_ the coat, but never _embroidered into it_. The observation made here last night by a Parisian lady, gave me a proof of this I little wanted. We met at the Casino of the Senator Angelo Quirini, where a sort of literary coterïe assemble every evening, and form a society so instructive and amusing, so sure to be filled with the first company in Venice, and so hospitably open to all travellers of character, that nothing can _now_ be to me a higher intellectual gratification than my admittance among them; as _in future_ no place will ever be recollected with more pleasure, no hours with more gratitude, than those passed most delightfully by me in that most agreeable apartment. I expressed to the French lady my admiration of St. Mark's Place. "_C'est que vous n'avez jamais vue la foire St. Ovide_," said she; "_je vous assure que cela surpasse beaucoup ces trifles palais qu'on vantetant_[Q]." And _this could_ only have been arrogance, for she was a very sensible and a very accomplished woman; and when talked to about the literary merits of her own countrymen, spoke with great acuteness and judgment. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote Q: You admire it, says she, only because you never saw the fair at St. Ovid's in Paris; I assure you there is no comparison between those gay illuminations and these dismal palaces the Venetians are so fond of.] General knowledge, however, it must be confessed (meaning that general stock that every one recurs to for the common intercourse of conversation), will be found more frequently in France, than even in England; where, though all cultivate the arts of table eloquence and assembly-room rhetoric, few, from mere shyness, venture to gather in the profits of their plentiful harvest; but rather cloud their countenances with mock importance, while their hearts feel no hope beat higher in them, than the humble one of escaping without being ridiculed; or than in Italy, where nobody dreams of cultivating conversation at all--_as an art_; or studies for any other than the natural reason, of informing or diverting themselves, without the most distant idea of gaining admiration, or shining in company, by the quantity of science they have accumulated in solitude. _Here_ no man lies awake in the night for vexation that he missed recollecting the last line of a Latin epigram till the moment of application was lost; nor any lady changes colour with trepidation at the severity visible in her husband's countenance when the chickens are over-roasted, or the ice-creams melt with the room's excessive heat. Among the noble Senators of Venice, meantime, many good scholars, many Belles Lettres conversers, and what is more valuable, many thinking men, may be found, and found hourly, who employ their powers wholly in care for the state; and make their pleasure, like true patriots, out of _her felicity_. The ladies indeed appear to study but _one_ science; And where the lesson taught Is but to please, can pleasure seem a fault? Like all sensualists, however, they fail of the end proposed, from hurry to obtain it; and consume those charms which alone can procure them continuance or change of admirers; they injure their health too irreparably, and _that_ in their earliest youth; for few remain unmarried till fifteen, and at thirty have a wan and faded look. _On ne goute pas ses plaisirs icy, on les avale_[Footnote: They do not taste their pleasures here, they swallow them whole.], said Madame la Presidente yesterday, very judiciously; yet it is only speaking popularly that one can be supposed to mean, what however no one much refuses to assert, that the Venetian ladies are amorously inclined: the truth is, no check being put upon inclination, each acts according to immediate impulse; and there are more devotees, perhaps, and more doating mothers at Venice than any where else, for the same reason as there are more females who practise gallantry, only because there are more women there who _do their own way_, and follow unrestrained where passion, appetite, or imagination lead them. To try Venetian dames by English rules, would be worse than all the tyranny complained of when some East Indian was condemned upon the Coventry act for slitting his wife's nose; a common practice in _his_ country, and perfectly agreeable to custom and the _usage du pays_. Here is no struggle for female education as with us, no resources in study, no duties of family-management; no bill of fare to be looked over in the morning, no account-book to be settled at noon; no necessity of reading, to supply without disgrace the evening's chat; no laughing at the card-table, or tittering in the corner if a _lapsus linguæ_ has produced a mistake, which malice never fails to record. A lady in Italy is _sure_ of applause, so she takes little pains to obtain it. A Venetian lady has in particular so sweet a manner naturally, that she really charms without any settled intent to do so, merely from that irresistible good-humour and mellifluous tone of voice which seize the soul, and detain it in despite of Juno-like majesty, or Minerva-like wit. Nor ever was there prince or shepherd, Paris I think was both, who would not have bestowed his apple _here_. Mean while my countryman Howel laments that the women at Venice are so little. But why so? the diminutive progeny of _Vulcan_, the _Cabirs_, mysteriously adored of old, were of a size below that of the least living woman, if we believe Herodotus; and they were worshipped with more constant as well as more fervent devotion, than the symmetrical goddess of Beauty herself. A custom which prevails here, of wearing little or no rouge, and increasing the native paleness of their skins, by scarce lightly wiping the very white powder from their faces, is a method no Frenchwoman of quality would like to adopt; yet surely the Venetians are not behind-hand in the art of gaining admirers; and they do not, like their painters, depend upon _colouring_ to ensure it. Nothing can be a greater proof of the little consequence which dress gives to a woman, than the reflection one must make on a Venetian lady's mode of appearance in her zendalet, without which nobody stirs out of their house in a morning. It consists of a full black silk petticoat, sloped just to train, a very little on the ground, and flounced with gauze of the same colour. A skeleton wire upon the head, such as we use to make up hats, throwing loosely over it a large piece of black mode or persian, so as to shade the face like a curtain, the front being trimmed with a very deep black lace, or souflet gauze infinitely becoming. The thin silk that remains to be disposed of, they roll back so as to discover the bosom; fasten it with a puff before at the top of their stomacher, and once more rolling it back from the shape, tie it gracefully behind, and let it hang in two long ends. The evening ornament is a silk hat, shaped like a man's, and of the same colour, with a white or worked lining at most, and sometimes _one feather_; a great black silk cloak, lined with white, and perhaps a narrow border down before, with a vast heavy round handkerchief of black lace, which lies over neck and shoulders, and conceals shape and all completely. Here is surely little appearance of art, no craping or frizzing the hair, which is flat at the top, and all of one length, hanging in long curls about the back or sides as it happens. No brown powder, and no rouge at all. Thus without variety does a Venetian lady contrive to delight the eye, and without much instruction too to charm, the ear. A source of thought fairly cut off beside, in giving her no room to shew taste in dress, or invent new fancies and disposition of ornaments for to-morrow. The government takes all that trouble off her hands, knows every pin she wears, and where to find her at any moment of the day or night. Mean time nothing conveys to a British observer a stronger notion of loose living and licentious dissoluteness, than the sight of one's servants, gondoliers, and other attendants, on the scenes and circles of pleasure, where you find them, though never drunk, dead with sleep upon the stairs, or in their boats, or in the open street, for that matter, like over-swilled voters at an election in England. One may trample on them if one will, they hardly _can_ be awakened; and their companions, who have more life left, set the others literally on their feet, to make them capable of obeying their master or lady's call. With all this appearance of levity, however, there is an unremitted attention to the affairs of state; nor is any senator seen to come late or negligently to council next day, however he may have amused himself all night. The sight of the Bucentoro prepared for Gala, and the glories of Venice upon Ascention-day, must now put an end to other observations. We had the honour and comfort of seeing all from a galley belonging to a noble Venetian Bragadin, whose civilities to us were singularly kind as well as extremely polite. His attentions did not cease with the morning show, which we shared in common with numbers of fashionable people that filled his ship, and partook of his profuse elegant refreshments; but he followed us after dinner to the house of our English friends, and took six of us together in a gay bark, adorned with his arms, and rowed by eight gondoliers in superb liveries, made up for the occasion to match the boat, which was like them white, blue and silver, a flag of the same colours flying from the stern, till we arrived at the Corso; so they call the place of contention where the rowers exert their skill and ingenuity; and numberless oars dashing the waves at once, make the only agitation of which the sea seems capable; while ladies, now no longer dressed in black, but ornamented with all their jewels, flowers, &c. display their beauties unveiled upon the water; and covering the lagoons with gaiety and splendour, bring to one's mind the games in Virgil, and the galley of Cleopatra, by turns. Never was locality so subservient to the purposes of pleasure as in this city; where pleasure has set up her airy standard, and which on this occasion looked like what one reads in poetry of Amphitrite's court; and I ventured to tell a nobleman who was kindly attentive in shewing us every possible politeness, that had Venus risen from the Adriatic sea, she would scarcely have been tempted to quit it for Olympus. I was upon the whole more struck with the evening's gaiety, than with the magnificence in which the morning began to shine. The truth is, we had been long prepared for seeing the Bucentoro; had heard and read every thing I fancy that could have been thought or said upon the subject, from the sullen Englishmen who rank it with a company's barge floating up the Thames upon my Lord Mayor's day, to the old writers who compare it with Theseus's ship; in imitation of which, it is said, this calls itself the very identical vessel wherein Pope Alexander performed the original ceremony in the year 1171; and though, perhaps, not a whole plank of that old galley can be now remaining in this, so often careened, repaired, and adorned since that time, I see nothing ridiculous in declaring that it is the same ship; any more than in saying the oak I planted an acorn thirty years ago, is the same tree I saw spring up then a little twig, which not even a moderate sceptic will deny; though he takes so much pains to persuade plain folks out of their own existence, by laughing us out of the dull notion that he who dies a withered old fellow at fourscore, should ever be considered as the same person whom his mother brought forth a pretty little plump baby eighty years before--when, says he cunningly, you are forced yourself to confess, that his mother, who died four months afterwards, would not know him again now; though while she lived, he was never out of her arms. Vain wisdom all! and false Philosophy, Which finds no end, in wandering mazes lost. And better is it to travel, as Dr. Johnson says Browne did, from one place where he saw little, to another where he saw no more--than write books to confound common sense, and make men raise up doubts of a Being to whom they must one day give an account. We will return to the Bucentoro, which, as its name imports, holds two hundred people, and is heavy besides with statues, columns, &c. The top covered with crimson velvet, and the sides enlivened by twenty-one oars on each hand. Musical performers attend in another barge, while foreigners in gilded pajots increase the general show. Mean time, the vessel that contains the doge, &c. carries him slowly out to sea, where in presence of his senators he drops a plain gold ring into the water, with these words, _Desponfamus te mare, in fignum veri perpetuique dominii_.[Footnote: We espouse thee, O sea! in sign of true and perpetual dominion.] Our weather was favourable, and the people all seemed happy: when the ceremony is put off from day to day, it naturally damps their spirits, and produces superstitious presages of an unlucky year: nor is that strange, for the season of storms ought surely to be past in a climate so celebrated for mildness and equanimity. The praises of Italian weather, though wearisomely frequent among us, seem however much confined to this island for aught I see; who am often tired with hearing their complaints of their own sky, now that they are under it: always too cold or too hot, or a seiroc wind, or a rainy day, or a hard frost, _che gela fin ai pensieri_[Footnote: Which freezes even one's fancy.]; or something to murmur about, while their only great nuisances pass unnoticed, the heaps of dirt, and crowds of beggars, who infest the streets, and poison the pleasures of society. While ladies are eating ice at a coffee-house door, while decent people are hearing mass at the altar, while strangers are surveying the beauties of the place--no peace, no enjoyment can one obtain for the beggars; numerous beyond credibility, fancy and airy, and odd in their manners; and exhibiting such various lamenesses and horrible deformities in their figure, that I can sometimes hardly believe my eyes--but am willing to be told, what is not very improbable, that many of them come from a great distance to pass the season of ascension here at Venice. I never indeed saw any thing so gently endured, which it appeared so little difficult to remedy; but though I hope it would be hard to find a place where more alms are asked, or less are given, than in Venice; yet I never saw refusals so pleasingly softened, as by the manners of the high Italians towards the low. Ladies in particular are so soft-mouthed, so tender in replying to those who have their lot cast far below them, that one feels one's own harsher disposition corrected by their sweetness; and when they called my maid _sister_, in good time--pressing her hand with affectionate kindness, it melted me; though I feared from time to time there must be hypocrisy at bottom of such sugared words, till I caught a lady of condition yesterday turning to the window, and praying fervently for the girl's conversion to christianity, all from a tender and pious emotion of her gentle heart: as notwithstanding their caresses, no man is more firmly persuaded of a mathematical truth than they are of mine, and my maid's living in a state of certain and eternal reprobation--_ma fanno veramente vergogna a noi altri_[Footnote: But they really shame _even us_.], say they, quite in the spirit of the old Romans, who thought all nations _barbarous_ except their own. A woman of quality, near whom I sate at the fine ball Bragadin made two nights ago in honour of this gay season, enquired how I had passed the morning. I named several churches I had looked into, particularly that which they esteem beyond the rest as a favourite work of Palladio, and called the Redentore. "You do very right," says she, "to look at our churches, as you have none in England, I know--but then you have so many other fine things--such charming _steel buttons_ for example;" pressing my hand to shew that she meant no offence; for, added she, _chi pensa d'una maniera, chi pensa d'un altra_[Footnote: One person is of one mind you know, another of another.]. Here are many theatres, the worst infinitely superior to ours; the best, as far below those of Milan and Turin: but then here are other diversions, and every one's dependance for pleasure is not placed upon the opera. They have now thrown up a sort of temporary wall of painted canvass, in an oval form, within St. Mark's Place, profusely illuminated round the new-formed walk, which is covered in at top, and adorned with shops round the right hand side, with pillars to support the canopy; the lamps, &c. on the left hand. This open Ranelagh, so suited to the climate, is exceedingly pleasing:--here is room to sit, to chat, to saunter up and down, from two o'clock in the morning, when the opera ends, till a hot sun sends us all home to rest--for late hours must be complied with at Venice, or you can have no diversion at all, as the earliest Casino belonging to your soberest friends has not a candle lighted in it till past midnight. But I am called from my book to see the public library; not a large one I find, but ornamented with pieces of sculpture, whose eminence has not, I am sure, waited for my description: the Jupiter and Leda particularly, said to be the work of Phidias, whose Ganymede in the same collection they tell us is equally excellent. Having heard that Guarini's manuscript of the Pastor Fido, written in his own hand, was safely kept at this place, I asked for it, and was entertained to see his numberless corrections and variations from the original thought, like those of Pope's Homer preserved in the British Museum; some of which I copied over for Doctor Johnson to print, at the time he published his Lives of the English Poets. My curiosity led me to look in the Pastor Fido for the famous passage of _Legge humana_, _inhumana_, _&c._ and it was observable enough that he had written it three different ways before he pitched on that peculiar expression which caused his book to be prohibited. Seeing the manuscript I took notice, however, of the beautiful penmanship with which it was written: our English hand-writing cotemporary to his was coarse, if I recollect, and very angular;--but _Italian hand_ was the first to become elegant, and still retains some privileges amongst us. Once more, every thing small, and every thing great, revived after the dark ages--in Italy. Looking at the Mint was an hour's time spent with less amusement. The depuration of gold may be performed many ways, and the proofs of its purity given by various methods: I was gratified well enough upon the whole however, in watching the neatness of their process, in weighing the gold, &c. and keeping it more free from alloy than any other coin of any other state:--a zecchine will bend between your fingers from the malleability of the metal--we may try in vain at a guinea, or louis d'or. The operation of separating silver ore from gold by the powers of aqua fortis, precipitating the first-named metal by suspension of a copper plate in the liquid, and called _quartation_; was I believe wholly unknown to the ancients, who got much earlier at the art of weighing gold in water, testified by the old story of _King Hiero's crown_. Talking of kings, and crowns, and gold, reminds me of my regret for not seeing the treasure kept in St. Mark's church here, with the motto engraven on the chest which contains it: Quando questo scrinio s'aprirà, Tutto il mondo tremerà[R]. [Footnote R: When this scrutoire shall open'd be, The world shall all with wonder flee. ] Of this it was said in our Charles the First's time, that there was enough in it to pay six kings' ransoms: when Pacheco, the Spanish ambassador, hearing so much of it, asked in derision, If the chest had any _bottom_? and being answered in the affirmative, made reply, That _there_ was the difference between his master's treasures and those of the Venetian Republic, for the mines of Mexico and Potosi had _no_ bottom.--Strange! if all these precious stones, metals, &c. have been all spent since then, and nothing left except a few relics of no intrinsic value. It is well enough known, that in the year 1450, one of the natives of the island of Candia, who have never been men of much character, made a sort of mine, or airshaft, or rather perhaps a burrow, like those constructed by rabbits, down which he went and got quite under the church, stealing out gems, money, &c. to a vast amount; but being discovered by the treachery of his companion, was caught and hanged between the two columns that face the sea on the Piazzetta. It strikes a person who has lived some months in other parts of Italy, to see so very few clergymen at Venice, and none hardly who have much the look or air of a man of fashion. Milan, though such heavy complaints are daily made there of encroachments on church power and depredations on church opulence, still swarms with ecclesiastics; and in an assembly of thirty people, there are never fewer than ten or twelve at the very least. But here it should seem as if the political cry of _fuori i preti_[Footnote: Out with the clergy.], which is said loudly in the council-chamber before any vote is suffered to pass into a law, were carried in the conversation rooms too, for a priest is here less frequent than a clergyman at London; and those one sees about, are almost all ordinary men, decent and humble in their appearance, of a bashful distant carriage, like the parson of the parish in North Wales, or _le curé du village_ in the South of France; and seems no way related to an _Abate of Milan or Turin_ still less to _Monsieur l' Abbé at Paris_. Though this Republic has long maintained a sort of independency from the court of Rome, having shewn themselves weary of the Jesuits two hundred years before any other potentate dismissed them; while many of the Venetian populace followed them about, crying _Andate, andate, niente pigliate, emai ritornate_[Footnote: Begone, begone; nothing take, nor turn anon.]; and although there is a patriarch here who takes care of church matters, and is attentive to keep his clergy from ever meddling with or even mentioning affairs of state, as in such a case the Republic would not scruple punishing them as laymen; yet has Venice kept, as they call it, St. Peter's boat from sinking more than once, when she saw the Pope's territories endangered, or his sovereignty insulted: nor is there any city more eminent for the decency with which divine service is administered, or for the devout and decorous behaviour of individuals at the time any sacred office is performing. She has ever behaved like a true Christian potentate, keeping her faith firm, and her honour scrupulously clear, in all treaties and conventions with other states--fewer instances being given of Venetian falsehood or treachery towards neighbouring nations, than of any other European power, excepting only Britain, her truly-beloved ally; with whom she never had a difference, and whose cause was so warmly espoused last war by the inhabitants of this friendly state, that numbers of young nobility were willing to run a-volunteering in her defence, but that the laws of Venice forbid her nobles ranging from home without leave given from the state. It was therefore not an ill saying, though an old one perhaps, that the government of Venice was rich and consolatory like its treacle, being compounded nicely of all the other forms: a grain of monarchy, a scruple of democracy, a dram of oligarchy, and an ounce of aristocracy; as the _teriaca_ so much esteemed, is said to be a composition of the four principal drugs--but can never be got genuine except _here_, at the original _Dispensary_. Indeed the longevity of this incomparable commonwealth is a certain proof of its temperance, exercise, and cheerfulness, the great preservatives in every body, _politic_ as well _natural_. Nor should the love of peace be left out of her eulogium, who has so often reconciled contending princes, that Thuanus gave her, some centuries ago, due praise for her pacific disposition, so necessary to the health of a commercial state, and called her city _civilis prudentiæ officina_. Another reason may be found for the long-continued prosperity of Venice, in her constant adherence to a precept, the neglect of which must at length shake, or rather loosen the foundations of every state; for it is a maxim here, handed down from generation to generation, that change breeds more mischief from its novelty, than advantage from its utility:--quoting the axiom in Latin, it runs thus: _Ipsa mutatio consuetudinis magis perturbat novitate, quam adjuvat utilitate_. And when Henry the Fourth of France solicited the abrogation of one of the Senate's decrees, her ambassador replied, That _li decreti di Venezia rassomigli avano poca i Gridi di Parigi_[Footnote: The decrees of Venice little resemble the _edicts_ of Paris.], meaning the declaratory publications of the Grand Monarque,--proclaimed to-day perhaps, repealed to-morrow--"for Sire," added he, "our senate deliberates long before it decrees, but what is once decreed there is seldom or ever recalled." The patriotism inherent in the breads of individuals makes another strong cause of this state's exemption from decay: they say themselves, that the soul of old Rome has transmigrated to Venice, and that every galley which goes into action considers itself as charged with the fate of the commonwealth. _Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori_, seems a sentence grown obsolete in other Italian states, but is still in full force here; and I doubt not but the high-born and high-fouled ladies of this day, would willingly, as did their generous ancestors in 1600, part with their rings, bracelets, every ornament, to make ropes for those ships which defend their dearer country. The perpetual state of warfare maintained by this nation against the Turks, has never lessened nor cooled: yet have their Mahometan neighbours and natural enemies no perfidy to charge them with in the time of peace or of hostility: nor can Venice be charged with the mean vice of sheltering a desire of depredation, under the hypocritical cant of protecting that religion which teaches universal benevolence and charity to all mankind. Their vicinity to Turkey has, however, made them contract some similarity of manners; for what, except being imbued with Turkish notions, can account for the people's rage here, young and old, rich and poor, to pour down such quantities of coffee? I have already had seven cups to-day, and feel frighted lest we should some of us be killed with so strange an abuse of it. On the opposite shore, across the Adriatic, opium is taken to counteract its effects; but these dear Venetians have no notion of sleep being necessary to their existence I believe, as some or other of them seem constantly in motion; and there is really no hour of the four and twenty in which the town seems perfectly still and quiet; no moment in which it can be said, that Night! fable goddess! from her ebon throne, In rayless majesty here stretches forth Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumb'ring world. Accordingly I never did meet with any description of Night in the Venetian poets, so common with other authors; and I am persuaded if one were to live here (which could not be _long_ I think) he should forget the use of sleep; for what with the market folks bringing up the boats from Terra Firma loaded with every produce of nature, neatly arranged in these flat-bottomed conveyances, the coming up of which begins about three o'clock in a morning and ends about six;--the Gondoliers rowing home their masters and ladies about that hour, and so on till eight;--the common business of the town, which it is then time to begin;--the state affairs and _pregai_, which often like our House of Commons sit late, and detain many gentlemen from the circles of morning amusements--that I find very entertaining;--particularly the street orators and mountebanks in Piazza St. Marco;--the shops and stalls where chickens, ducks, &c. are sold by auction, comically enough, to the highest bidder;--a flourishing fellow, with a hammer in his hand, shining away in character of auctioneer;--the crowds which fill the courts of judicature, when any cause of consequence is to be tried;--the clamorous voices, keen observations, poignant sarcasms, and acute contentions carried on by the advocates, who seem more awake, or in their own phrase _svelti_ than all the rest:--all these things take up so much time, that twenty-four hours do not suffice for the business and diversions of Venice; where dinner must be eaten as in other places, though I can scarcely find a minute to spare for it, while such fish wait one's knife and fork as I most certainly did never see before, and as I suppose are not to be seen in any sea but this, in such perfection. Fresh sturgeon, _ton_ as they call it, and fresh anchovies, large as herrings, and dressed like sprats in London, incomparable; turbots, like those of Torbay exactly, and plentiful as there, with enormous pipers, are what one principally eats here. The fried liver, without which an Italian can hardly go on from day to day, is so charmingly dressed at Milan, that I grew to like it as well as they; but at Venice it is sad stuff, and they call it _fegao_. Well! the ladies, who never hardly dine at all, rise about seven in the evening, when the gentlemen are just got ready to attend them; and sit sipping their chocolate on a chair at the coffee-house door with great tranquillity, chatting over the common topics of the times: nor do they appear half so shy of each other as the Milanese ladies, who seldom seem to have any pleasure in the soft converse of a female friend. But though certainly no women can be more charming than these Venetian dames, they have forgotten the old mythological fable, _that the youngest of the Graces was married to Sleep._ By which it was intended we should consider that state as necessary to the reparation not only of beauty but of youth, and every power of pleasing. There are men here however who, because they are not quite in the gay world, keep themselves awake whole nights at study; and much has been told me, of a collection of books belonging to a private scholar, Pinelli, who goes very little out, as worthy attentive examination. All literary topics are pleasingly discussed at Quirini's Casino, where every thing may be learned by the conversation of the company, as Doctor Johnson said of his literary Club; but more agreeably, because women are always half the number of persons admitted here. One evening our society was amused by the entrance of a foreign nobleman, exactly what we should in London emphatically call a _Character_,--learned, loud, and overbearing; though of a carriage that impressed great esteem. I have not often listened to so well-furnished a talker; nor one more capable of giving great information. He had seen the Pyramids of Egypt, he told us; had climbed Mount Horeb, and visited Damascus; but possessed the art of detaining our attention more on himself, than on the things or places he harangued about; for conversation that can scarcely be called, where one man holds the company suspended on his account of matters pompously though instructively related. He staid here a very little while among us; is a native of France, a grandee of Spain, a man of uncommon talents, and a traveller. I should be sorry never to meet him more. The Abate Arteaga, a Spanish ecclesiastic of the same agreeable coterie, seemed of a very different and far more pleasing character;--full of general knowledge, eminent in particular scholarship, elegant in his sentiments, and sound in his learning. I liked his company exceedingly, and respected his opinions. Zingarelli, the great musical composer, was another occasional member of this charming society: his wit and repartie are famous, and his bons mots are repeated wherever one runs to. I cannot translate any of them, but will write one down, which will make such of my readers laugh as understand Italian.--The Emperor was at Milan, and asked Zingarelli his opinion of a favourite singer? "_Io penso maestà che non è cattivo suddito del principi,_" replied the master, "_quantunque farà gran nemico di giove._" "How so?" enquired the King.--"_Maestà,_" answered our lively Neapolitan, "_ella sà naturalmente che Giove_ tuona, _ma questo_ stuona." This we see at once was _humour_ not _wit_; and sallies of humour are scarcely ever capable of translation. An odd thing to which I was this morning witness, has called my thoughts away to a curious train of reflections upon the animal race; and how far they may be made companionable and intelligent. The famous Ferdinand Bertoni, so well known in London by his long residence among us, and from the undisputed merit of his compositions, now inhabits this his native city, and being fond of _dumb creatures_, as we call them, took to petting a pigeon, one of the few animals which can live at Venice, where, as I observed, scarcely any quadrupeds can be admitted, or would exist with any degree of comfort to themselves. This creature has, however, by keeping his master company, I trust, obtained so perfect an ear and taste for music, that no one who sees his behaviour, can doubt for a moment of the pleasure he takes in hearing Mr. Bertoni play and sing: for as soon as he sits down to the instrument, Columbo begins shaking his wings, perches on the piano-forte, and expresses the most indubitable emotions of delight. If however he or any one else strike a note false, or make any kind of discord upon the keys, the dove never fails to shew evident tokens of anger and distress; and if teized too long, grows quite enraged; pecking the offender's legs and fingers in such a manner, as to leave nothing less doubtful than the sincerity of his resentment. Signora Cecilia Giuliani, a scholar of Bertoni's, who has received some overtures from the London theatre lately, will, if she ever arrives there, bear testimony to the truth of an assertion very difficult to believe, and to which I should hardly myself give credit, were I not witness to it every morning that I chuse to call and confirm my own belief. A friend present protested he should feel afraid to touch the harpsichord before so nice a critic; and though we all laughed at the assertion, Bertoni declared he never knew the bird's judgment fail; and that he often kept him out of the room, for fear of his affronting of tormenting those who came to take musical instructions. With regard to other actions of life, I saw nothing particular in the pigeon, but his tameness, and strong attachment to his master: for though never winged, and only clipped a very little, he never seeks to range away from the house or quit his master's service, any more than the dove of Anacreon: While his better lot bestows Sweet repast and soft repose; And when feast and frolic tire, Drops asleep upon his lyre. All the difficulty will be indeed for us _other_ two-legged creatures to leave the sweet societies of charming Venice; but they begin to grow fatiguing now, as the weather increases in warmth. I do think the Turkish sailor gave an admirable account of a carnival, when he told his Mahometan friends at his return, That those poor Christians were all disordered in their senses, and nearly in a state of actual madness, while he remained among them, till one day, on a sudden, they luckily found out a certain grey powder that cured such symptoms; and laying it on their heads one Wednesday morning, the wits of all the inhabitants were happily restored at _a stroke_: the people grew sober, quiet, and composed; and went about their business just like other folks. He meant the ashes strewed on the heads of all one meets in the streets through many a Catholic country; when all masquerading, money-making, &c. subside for forty days, and give, from the force of the contrast, a greater appearance of devotion and decorous behaviour in Venice, than almost any where else during Lent. I do not for my own part think well of all that violence, that strong light and shadow in matters of religion; which requires rather an even tenour of good works, proceeding from sound faith, than any of these staring testimonials of repentance, as if it were a work to be done _once a year only_. But neither do I think any Christian has a right to condemn another for his opinions or practice; when St. Paul expressly says, that "_One man esteemeth one day above another, another man esteemeth every day alike; let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. But who art thou, that judgest another man's servant[Footnote: Romans, chap. xiv.]?_" The Venetians, to confess the truth, are not quite so strenuously bent on the unattainable felicity of finding every man in the same mind, as others of the Italians are; and one great reason why they are more gay and less malignant, have fewer strong prejudices than others of their countrymen, is merely because they are happier. Most of the second rank, and I believe _all_ of the first rank among them, have some share in governing the rest; it is therefore necessary to exclude ignorance, and natural to encourage social pleasures. Each individual feels his own importance, and scorns to contribute to the degradation of the whole, by indulging a gross depravity of manners, or at least of principles. Every person listed one degree from the lowest, finds it his interest as well as duty to love his country, and lend his little support to the general fabric of a state they all know how to respect; while the very vulgar willingly perform the condition exacted, and punctually pay obedience for protection. They have an unlimited confidence in their rulers, who live amongst them; and can desire only their utmost good. _How_ they are governed, comes seldom into their heads to enquire; "_Che ne pensa lù_[Footnote: Let _him_ look to that.]," says a low Venetian, if you ask him, and humourously points at a Clarissimo passing by while you talk. They have indeed all the reason to be certain, that where the power is divided among such numbers, one will be sure to counteract another if mischief towards the whole be intended. Of all aristocracies surely this is the most rationally and happily, as well as most respectably founded; for though one's heart revolts against the names of Baron and Vassal, while the petty tyrants live scattered far from each other, as in Poland, Russia, and many parts of Germany, like lions in the desert, or eagles in the rock, secure in their distance from equals or superiors; yet _here_ at Venice, where every nobleman is a baron, and all together inhabit one city, no subject can suffer from the tyranny of the rest, though all may benefit from the general protection: as each is separately in awe of his neighbour, and desires to secure his client's tenderness by indulgence, instead of wishing to disgust him by oppression: unlike the state so powerfully delineated by our incomparable poet in his Paulina, Where dwelt in haughty wretchedness a lord, Whose rage was justice, and whose law his word: Who saw unmov'd the vassal perish near, The widow's anguish, and the orphan's tear; Insensible to pity--stern he stood, Like some rude rock amid the Caspian flood, Where shipwreck'd sailors unassisted lie, And as they curse its barren bosom, die. And it is, I trust, for no deeper reason that the subjects of this republic resident in the capital, are less savage and more happy than those who live upon the Terra Firma; where many outrages are still committed, disgraceful to the state, from the mere facility offenders find, either in escaping to the dominion of other princes, or of finding shelter at home from the madly-bestowed protection these old barons on the Continent cease not yet to give, to ruffians who profess their service, and acknowledge dependence upon _them_. In the _town_, however, little is known of these enormities, and less is talked on; and what information has come to my ears of the murders done at Brescia and Bergamo, was given me at _Milan_; where Blainville's accounts of that country, though written so long ago, did not fail to receive confirmation from the lips of those who knew perfectly well what they were talking about. And I am told that _Labbia_, Giovanni Labbia, the new Podestà sent to Brescia, has worked wonderful reformation among the inhabitants of that territory; where I am ashamed to relate the computation of subjects lost to the state, by being killed in cold blood during the years 1780 and 1781. The following sonnet, addressed to the new Magistrate, by the elegant and learned Abbé Bettolini, will entertain such of my readers as understand Italian: No, Brenne, il popol tuo non è spietato, Colpa non è di clima, o fuol nemico: Ma gli inulti delitti, e'l vezzo antico D'impune andar coi ferro e fuoco a lato, Ira noi finor nudriro un branco irato D'Orsi e di lupi, il malaccorto amico Ti svenava un fellon sgherro mendico, E per cauto timor n'era onorato. Al primiero spuntar d'un fausto lume Tutto cangiò: curvansi in falci i teh, Mille Pluto perdè vittime usate. Viva l'Eroe, il comun padre, il nume Gridan le gentè a si bei dì ferbate. E sia ché ardisca dir che siam crudelé. _Imitation_. No, Brennus, no longer thy sons shall retain Of their founder ferocious, th'original stain; It cannot be natural cruelty sure, The reproaches for which from all men we endure; Nor climate nor soil shall henceforth bear the blame, 'Tis custom alone, and that custom our shame: While arm'd at all points men were suffer'd to rove, And brandish the steel in defence of their love; What wonder that conduct or caution should fail, And horrid Lycanthropy's terrors prevail? Now justice resumes her insignia, we find New light breaking in on each nebulous mind; While commission'd from Heaven, a parent, a friend Sees our swords at his nod into reaping-hooks bend, And souls snatch'd from death round the hero attend. From these verses, written by a native of Brescia, one may see how matters stood there very, _very_ little while ago: but here at Venice the people are of a particularly sweet and gentle disposition, good-humoured with each other, and kind to strangers; little disposed to public affrays (which would indeed be punished and put a sudden end to in an instant), nor yet to any secret or hidden treachery. They watch the hour of a Regatta with impatience, to make some merit with the woman of their choice, and boast of their families who have won in the manly contest forty or fifty years ago, perhaps when honoured with the badge and livery of some noble house; for here almost every thing is hereditary, as in England almost every thing is elective; nor had I an idea how much state affairs influence the private life of individuals in a country, till I left trusting to books, and looked a little about me. The low Venetian, however, knows that he works for the commonwealth, and is happy; for things go round, says he, _Il Turco magna St. Marco; St. Marco magna mi, mi magna ti, e ti tu magna un'altro_[S]. [Footnote S: The Turk feeds on St. Mark, St. Mark devours me; I eat thee, neighbour, and thou subsistest on somebody else.] Apropos to this custom of calling Venice (when they speak of it) San Marco; I heard so comical a story yesterday that I cannot refuse the pleasure of inserting it; and if my readers do not find it as pleasant as I did, they may certainly leave it out, without the smallest prejudice either to the book, the author, or themselves. The procurator Tron was at Padua, it seems, and had a fancy to drive forward to Vicenza that afternoon, but being particularly fond of a favourite pair of horses which drew his chariot that day, would by no means venture if it happened to rain; and took the trouble to enquire of Abate Toaldo, "Whether he thought such a thing likely to happen, from the appearance of the sky?" The professor, not knowing why the question was asked, said, "he rather thought it would _not_ rain for four hours at most." In consequence of this information our senator ordered his equipage directly, got into it, and bid the driver make haste to Vicenza: but before he was half-way on his journey, such torrents came down from a black cloud that burst directly over their heads, that his horses were drenched in wet, and their mortified master turned immediately back to Padua, that they might suffer no further inconvenience. To pass away the evening, which he did not mean to have spent there, and to quiet his agitated spirits by thinking on something else, he walked under the Portico to a neighbouring coffee-house, where fate the Abate Toaldo in company of a few friends; wholly unconscious that he had been the cause of vexing the Procuratore; who, after a short pause, cried out, in a true Venetian spirit of anger and humour oddly blended together, "_Mi dica Signor Professore Toaldo, chi è il più gran minchion di tutti i fanti in Paradiso?_" Pray tell me Doctor (we should say), who is the greatest blockhead among all the saints of Heaven? The Abbé looked astonished, but hearing the question repeated in a more peevish accent still, replied gravely, "_Eccelenza non fon fatto io per rispondere a tale dimande_"--My lord, I have no answer ready for such extraordinary questions. Why then, replies the Procuratore Tron, I will answer this question myself.--_St. Marco ved'ella--"e'l vero minchion: mentre mantiene tanti professori per studiare (che so to mi) delle stelle; roba astronomica che non vale un fico; è loro non sanno dirli nemmeno s'hà da piovere o nò._"--"Why it is St. Mark, do you see, that is the true blockhead and dupe, in keeping so many professors to study the stars and stuff; when with all their astronomy they cannot tell him whether it will rain or no." Well, _pax tibi, Marce!_ I see that I have said more about Venice, where I have lived five weeks, than about Milan, where I stayed five months; but Si placeat varios hominum cognoscere vultus, Area longa patet, sancto contermina Marco, Celsus ubi Adriacas, Venetus Leo despicit undas, Hic circum gentes cunctis e partibus orbis, Æthiopes, Turcos, Slavos, Arabésque, Syrósque, Inveniésque Cypri, Cretæ, Macedumque colonos, Innumerósque alios varia regione profectos: Sæpe etiam nec visa prius, nec cognita cernes, Quæ si cuncta velim tenui describere versu, Heic omnes citiùs nautas celeresque Phaselos, Et simul Adriaci pisces numerabo profundi. _Imitated loosely_. If change of faces please your roving sight, Or various characters your mind delight, To gay St. Mark's with eagerness repair; For curiosity may pasture there. Venetia's lion bending o'er the waves, There sees reflected--tyrants, freemen, slaves. The swarthy Moor, the soft Circassian dame, The British sailor not unknown to fame; Innumerous nations crowd the lofty door, Innumerous footsteps print the sandy shore; While verse might easier name the scaly tribe, } That in her seas their nourishment imbibe, } Than Venice and her various charms describe. } It is really pity ever to quit the sweet seducements of a place so pleasing; which attracts the inclination and flatters the vanity of one, who, like myself, has received the most polite attentions, and been diverted with every amusement that could be devised. Kind, friendly, lovely Venetians! who appear to feel real fondness for the inhabitants of Great Britain, while Cavalier Pindemonte writes such verses in its praise. Yet _must_ the journey go forward, no staying to pick every flower upon the road. On Saturday next then am I to forsake--but I hope not for ever--this gay, this gallant city, so often described, so certainly admired; seen with rapture, quitted with regret: seat of enchantment! head-quarters of pleasure, farewell! Leave us as we ought to be, Leave the Britons rough and free. It was on the twenty-first of May then that we returned up the Brenta in a barge to _Padua_, stopping from time to time to give refreshment to our conductors and their horse, which draws on the side, as one sees them at Richmond; where the banks are scarcely more beautifully adorned by art, than here by nature; though the Brenta is a much narrower river than the Thames at Richmond, and its villas, so justly celebrated, far less frequent. The sublimity of their architecture however, the magnificence of their orangeries, the happy construction of the cool arcades, and general air of festivity which breathes upon the banks of this truly _wizard stream_, planted with _dancing_, not _weeping_ willows, to which on a bright evening the lads and lasses run for shelter from the sun beams, Et fugit ad salices, et se cupit ante videri[T]; [Footnote T: While tripping to the wood my wanton hies, She wishes to be seen before she flies. ] are I suppose peculiar to itself, and best described by Monsieur de Voltaire, whose Pococurante the Venetian senator in Candide that possesses all delights in his villa upon the banks of the Brenta, is a very lively portrait, and would be natural too; but that Voltaire, as a Frenchman, could not forbear making his character speak in a very unItalian manner, boasting of his felicity in a style they never use, for they are really no puffers, no vaunters of that which they possess; make no disgraceful comparisons between their own rarities and the want of them in other countries, nor offend you as the French do, with false pity and hateful consolations. If any thing in England seem to excite their wonder and ill-placed compassion, it is our coal fires, which they persist in thinking strangely unwholesome--and a melancholy proof that we are grievously devoid of wood, before we can prevail upon ourselves to dig the bowels of old earth for fewel, at the hazard of our precious health, if not of its certain loss; nor could I convince the wisest man I tried at, that wood burned to chark is a real poison, while it would be difficult by any process of chemistry to force much evil out of coal. They are steadily of opinion, that consumptions are occasioned by these fires, and that all the subjects of Great Britain are consumptively disposed, merely because those who are so, go into Italy for change of air: though I never heard that the wood smoke helped their breath, or a brazierfull of ashes under the table their appetite. Mean time, whoever seeks to convince instead of persuade an Italian, will find he has been employed in a Sisyphean labour; the stone may roll to the top, but is sure to return, and rest at his feet who had courage to try the experiment. Logic is a science they love not, and I think steadily refuse to cultivate; nor is argument a style of conversation they naturally affect--as Lady Macbeth says, "_Question enrageth him_;" and the dialogues of Socrates would to them be as disgusting as the violence of Xantippe. Well, here we are at Padua again! where I will run, and see once more the places I was before so pleased with. The beautiful church of Santa Giustina, the ancient church adorned by Cimabue, Giotto, &c. where you fancy yourself on a sudden transported to Dante's Paradiso, and with for Barry the painter, to point your admiration of its sublime and extraordinary merits; but not the shrine of St. Anthony, or the tomb of Antenor, one rich with gold, the other venerable with rust, can keep my attention fixed on _them_, while an Italian _May_ offers to every sense, the sweets of nature in elegant perfection. One view of a smiling landschape, lively in verdure, enamelled with flowers, and exhilarating with the sound of music under every tree, Where many a youth and many a maid Dances in the chequer'd shade; And young and old come forth to play, On a sun-shine holiday; drives Palladio and Sansovino from one's head; and leaves nothing very strongly impressed upon one's heart but the recollection of kindness received and esteem reciprocated. Those pleasures have indeed pursued me hither; the amiable Countess Ferris has not forgotten us; her attentions are numerous, tender, and polite. I went to the play with her, where I was unlucky enough to miss the representation of Romeo and Juliet, which was acted the night before with great applause, under the name of _Tragedia Veronese_. Monsieur de Voltaire was then premature in his declarations, that Shakespear was unknown, or known only to be censured, except in his native country. Count Kinigl at Milan took occasion to tell me that they acted Hamlet and Lear when he was last at Vienna; and I know not how it is, but to an English traveller each place presents ideas originally suggested by Shakespear, of whom nature and truth are the perpetual mirrors: other authors remind one of things which one has seen in life--but the scenes of life itself remind one of Shakespear. When I first looked on the Rialto, with what immediate images did it supply me? Oh, the old long-cherished images of the pensive merchant, the generous friend, the gay companion, and their final triumph over the practices of a cruel Jew. Anthonio, Gratiano, met me at every turn; and when I confessed some of these feelings before the professor of natural history here, who had spent some time in London; he observed, that no native of our island could sit three hours, and not speak of Shakespear: he added many kind expressions of partial liking to our nation, and our poets: and l'Abate Cesarotti good-humouredly confessed his little skill in the English language when he translated their so much-admired Ossian; but he had studied it pretty hard since, he said, and his version of Gray's Elegy is charming. Gray and Young are the favourite writers among us, as far as I have yet heard them talked over upon the continent; the first has secured them by his residence at Florence, and his Latin verses I believe; the second, by his piety and brilliant thoughts. Even Romanists are disposed to think dear Dr. Young very _near_ to Christianity--an idea which must either make one laugh or cry, while Sweet peace, and heavenly hope, and humble joy, Divinely beam on _his_ exalted soul. But I must tell what I have been seeing at the theatre, and should tell it much better had not the charms of Countess Ferris's conversation engaged my mind, which would otherwise perhaps have been more seized on than it _was_, by the sight of an old pantomime, or wretched farce (for there was speaking in it, I remember), exploded long since from our very lowest places of diversion, and now exhibited here at Padua before a very polite and a very literary audience; and in a better theatre by far than our newly-adorned opera-house in the Hay-market. Its subject was no other than the birth of Harlequin; but the place and circumstances combined to make me look on it in a light which shewed it to uncommon advantage. The storm, for example, the thunder, darkness, &c. which is so solemnly made to precede an incantation, apparently not meant to be ridiculous, after which, a huge egg is somehow miraculously produced upon the stage, put me in mind of the very old mythologists, who thus desired to represent the chaotic state of things, when Night, Ocean, and Tartarus disputed in perpetual confusion; till _Love_ and _Music_ separated the elements, and as Dryden says, Then hot and cold, and moist and dry, In order to their stations leap, And music's power obey. For _Cupid_, advancing to a slow tune, steadies with his wand the rolling mass upon the stage, that then begins to teem with its _motley inhabitant_, and just representative of the _created world_, active, wicked, gay, amusing, which gains your heart, but never your esteem: tricking, shifting, and worthless as it is--but after all its _frisks_, all its _escapes_, is condemned at last to burn in _fire, and pass entirely away_. Such was, I trust, the idea of the person, whoever he was, that had the honour first to compose this curious exhibition, and model this mythological device into a pantomime! for the _mundane_, or as Proclus calls it, the _orphick_ egg, is possibly the earliest of all methods taken to explain the rise, progress, and final conclusion of our earth and atmosphere; and was the original _theory_ brought from Egypt into Greece by Orpheus. Nor has that prodigious genius, Dr. Thomas Burnet, scorned to adopt it seriously in his _Telluris Theoria sacra_, written less than a century ago, adapting it with wonderful ingenuity to the Christian system and Mosaical account of things; to which it certainly does accommodate itself the better, as the form of an egg well resembles that of our habitable globe; and the internal divisions, our four elements, leaving the central fire for the yolk. I therefore regarded our pantomime here at Padua with a degree of reverence I should have found difficult to excite in myself at Sadler's Wells; where ideas of antiquity would have been little likely to cross my fancy. Sure I am, however, that the original inventor of this old pantomime had his head very full at the time of some very ancient learning. Now then I must leave this lovely state of Venice, where if the paupers in every town of it did not crowd about one, tormenting passengers with unextinguishable clamour, and surrounding them with sights of horror unfit to be surveyed by any eyes except those of the surgeon, who should alleviate their anguish, or at least conceal their truly unspeakable distresses--one should break one's heart almost at the thoughts of quitting people who show such tenderness towards their friends, that less than ocular conviction would scarce persuade me to believe such wandering misery could remain disregarded among the most amiable and pleasing people in the world. His excellency Bragadin half promised me that some steps should be taken at Venice at least, to remove a nuisance so disgraceful; and said, that when I came again, I should walk about the town in white sattin slippers, and never see a beggar from one end of it to the other. On the twenty-sixth of May then, with the senator Quirini's letters to Corilla, with the Countess of Starenberg's letters to some Tuscan friends of her's; and with the light of a full moon, if we should want it, we set out again in quest of new adventures, and mean to sleep this night under the pope's protection:--may God but grant us his! FERRERA. We have crossed the Po, which I expected to have found more magnificent, considering the respectable state I left it in at Cremona; but scarcely any thing answers that expectation which fancy has long been fermenting in one's mind. I took a young woman once with me to the coast of Sussex, who, at twenty-seven years old and a native of England, had never seen the sea; nor any thing else indeed ten miles out of London:--And well, child! said I, are not you much surprised?--"It is a fine sight, to be sure," replied she coldly, "but,"--but what? you are not disappointed are you?--"No, not disappointed, but it is not quite what I expected when I saw the ocean." Tell me then, pray good girl, and tell me quickly, what did you expect to see? "_Why I expected_," with a hesitating accent, "_I expected to see a great deal of water_." This answer set me _then_ into a fit of laughter, but I have _now_ found out that I am not a whit wiser than Peggy: for what did I figure to myself that I should find the Po? only a great deal of water to be sure; and a very great deal of water it certainly is, and much more, God knows, than I ever saw before, except between the shores of Calais and Dover; yet I did feel something like disappointment too; when my imagination wandering over all that the poets had said about it, and finding earth too little to contain their fables, recollected that they had thought Eridanus worthy of a place among the constellations, I wished to see such a river as was worthy all these praises, and even then, says I, O'er golden sands let rich Pactolus flow. And trees weep amber on the banks of Po. But are we sure after all it was upon the _banks_ these trees, not now existing, were ever to be found? they grew in the Electrides if I remember right, and even there Lucian laughingly said, that he spread his garments in vain to catch the valuable distillation which poetry had taught him to expect; and Strabo (worse news still!) said that there were no Electrides neither; so as we knew before--fiction is false: and had I not discovered it by any other means, I might have recollected a comical contest enough between a literary lady once, and Doctor Johnson, to which I was myself a witness;--when she, maintaining the happiness and purity of a country life and rural manners, with her best eloquence, and she had a great deal; added as corroborative and almost incontestable authority, that the _Poets_ said so: "and didst thou not know then," replied he, my darling dear, that the _Poets lye_? When they tell us, however, that great rivers have horns, which twisted off become cornua copiæ, dispensing pleasure and plenty, they entertain us it must be confessed; and never was allegory more nearly allied with truth, than in the lines of Virgil; Gemina auratus taurino cornua vultu, Eridanus, quo non alius per pinguia culta, In mare purpureuin violentior influit amnis[U]; [Footnote U: Whence bull-fac'd, so adorn'd with gilded horns, Than whom no river through such level meads, Down to the sea in swifter torrents speeds. ] so accurately translated by Doctor Warton, who would not reject the epithet _bull-faced_, because he knew it was given in imitation of the Thessalian river Achelous, that fought for Dejanira; and Servius, who makes him father to the Syrens, says that many streams, in compliment to this original one, were represented with horns, because of their winding course. Whether Monsieur Varillas, or our immortal Addison, mention their being so perpetuated on medals now existing, I know not; but in this land of rarities we shall soon hear or see. Mean time let us leave looking for these weeping Heliades, and enquire what became of the Swan, that poor Phaeton's friend and cousin turned into, for very grief and fear at seeing him tumble in the water. For my part I believe that not only now he Eligit contraria flumina flammis, but that the whole country is grown disagreeably hot to him, and the sight of the sun's chariot so near frightens him still; for he certainly lives more to his taste, and sings sweeter I believe on the banks of the Thames, than in Italy, where we have never yet seen but _one_; and that was kept in a small marble bason of water at the Durazzo palace at Genoa, and seemed miserably out of condition. I enquired why they gave him no companion? and received for answer, "That it would be wholly useless, as they were creatures who never bred _out if their own country_." But any reply serves any common Italian, who is little disposed to investigate matters; and if you tease him with too much ratiocination, is apt to cry out, "_Cosa serve sosistieare cosi? ci farà andare tutti matti_[V]." They have indeed so many external amusements in the mere face of the country, that one is better inclined to pardon _them_, than one would be to forgive inhabitants of less happy climates, should they suffer _their_ intellectual powers to pine for want of exercise, not food: for here is enough to think upon, God knows, were they disposed so to employ their time; where one may justly affirm that, [Footnote V: What signifies all this minuteness of inquiry?--it will drive us mad.] On every thorn delightful wisdom grows, And in each rill, some sweet instruction flows; But some untaught o'erhear the murmuring rill, In spite of sacred leisure--blockheads still. The road from Padua hither is not a good one; but so adorned, one cares not much whether it is good or no: so sweetly are the mulberry-trees planted on each side, with vines richly festooning up and down them, as if for the decoration of a dance at the opera. One really expects the flower-girls with baskets, or garlands, and scarcely can persuade one's self that all is real. Never sure was any thing more rejoicing to the heart, than this lovely season in this lovely country. The city of Ferrara too is a fine one; Ferrara _la civile_, the Italians call it, but it seems rather to merit the epithet _solenne_; so stately are its buildings, so wide and uniform its streets. My pen was just upon the point of praising its cleanliness too, till I reflected there was nobody to dirty it. I looked half an hour before I could find one beggar, a bad account of poor Ferrara; but it brought to my mind how unreasonably my daughter and myself had laughed seven years ago, at reading in an extract from some of the foreign gazettes, how the famous Improvisatore Talassi, who was in England about the year 1770, and entertained with his justly-admired talents the literati at London; had published an account of his visit to Mr. Thrale, at a villa eight miles from Westminster-bridge, during that time, when he had the good fortune, he said, to meet many celebrated characters at his country-seat; and the mortification which nearly overbalanced it, to miss seeing the immortal Garrick then confined by illness. In all this, however, there was nothing ridiculous; but we fancied his description of Streatham village truly so; when we read that he called it _Luogo assai popolato ed ameno_[Footnote: A populous and delightful place.], an expression apparently pompous, and inadequate to the subject: but the jest disappeared when I got into _his_ town; a place which perhaps may be said to possess every other excellence but that of being _popolato ed ameno_; and I sincerely believe that no Ferrara-man could have missed making the same or a like observation; as in this finely-constructed city, the grass literally grows in the street; nor do I hear that the state of the air and water is such as is likely to tempt new inhabitants. How much then, and how reasonably must he have wondered, and how easily must he have been led to express his wonder, at seeing a village no bigger than that of Streatham, contain a number of people equal, as I doubt not but it does, to all the dwellers in Ferrara! Mr. Talassi is reckoned in his own country a man of great genius; in ours he was, as I recollect, received with much attention, as a person able and willing to give us demonstration that improviso verses might be made, and sung extemporaneously to some well-known tune, generally one which admits of and requires very long lines; that so alternate rhymes may not be improper, as they give more time to think forward, and gain a moment for composition. Of this power, many, till they saw it done, did not believe the existence; and many, after they had seen it done, persisted in _saying_, perhaps in _thinking_, that it could be done only in Italian. I cannot however believe that they possess any exclusive privileges or supernatural gifts; though it will be hard to find one who thinks better of them than I do: but Spaniards can sing sequedillas under their mistresses window well enough; and our Welch people can make the harper sit down in the church-yard after service is over, and placing themselves round him, command the instrument to go over some old song-tune: when having listened a while, one of the company forms a stanza of verses, which run to it in well-adapted measure; and as he ends, another begins: continuing the tale, or retorting the satire, according to the style in which the first began it. All this too in a language less perhaps than any other melodious to the ear, though Howell found out a resemblance between their prosody and that of the Italian writer in early days, when they held agnominations, or the inforcement of consonant words and syllables one upon the other, to be elegant in a more eminent degree than they do now. For example, in Welch, _Tewgris, todykris, ty'r derrin, gwillt_, &c. in Italian, _Donne, O danno che selo affronto affronta: in selva salvo a me_, with a thousand more. The whole secret of improvisation, however, seems to consist in this; that extempore verses are never written down, and one may easily conceive that much may go off well with a good voice in singing, which no one would read if they were once registered by the pen. I have already asserted that the Italians are not a laughing nation: were ridicule to step in among them, many innocent pleasures would soon be lost; and this among the first. For who would risque the making impromptu poems at Paris? _pour s'attirer persiflage_ in every _Coterie comme il faut_[Footnote: To draw upon one's self the ridicule of every polite assembly.]? Or in London, at the hazard of being _taken off, and held up for a laughing-stock at every print-seller's window_? A man must have good courage in England, before he ventures at diverting a little company by such devices: while one would yawn, and one would whisper, a third would walk gravely out of the room, and say to his friend upon the stairs, "Why sure we had better read our old poets at home, than be called together, like fools, to hear what comes uppermost in such-a-one's head, about his _Daphne_! In good time! Why I have been tired of _Daphne_ since I was fourteen years old." But the best jest of all would be, to see an ordinary fellow, a strolling player for example, set seriously to make or repeat verses in our streets or squares concerning his sweetheart's _cruelty_; when he would be in more danger from that of the mob and the magistrates; who, if the first did not throw dirt at him, and drive him home quickly, would come themselves, and examine into his sanity, and if they found him not _statutably mad_, commit him for a vagrant. Different amusements, like different sorts of food, suit different countries; and this is among the efforts of those who have learned to refine their _pleasures_ without so refining their _ideas_ as to be able no longer to hit on any pleasure subtle enough to escape their own power of ridiculing it. This city of Ferrara has produced some curious and opposite characters in times past, however empty it may now be thought: one painter too, and one singer, both super-eminent in their professions, have dropped their own names, and are best known to fame by that of _Il_ and _La Ferrarese_. Nor can I leave it without some reflections on the extraordinary life of Renée de France, daughter of Louis XII surnamed the Just, and Anne de Bretagne, his first wife. This lady having married the famous Hercules D'Este, one of the handsomest men in Europe, lived with him here in much apparent felicity as Duchess of Ferrara; but took such an aversion to the church and court of Rome, from the superstitions she saw practised in Italy, that though she resolved to dissemble her opinions during the life of her husband, whom she wished not to disgust, at the instant of his death she quitted all her dignities; and retiring to France, was protected by her father in the open profession of Calvinism, living a life of privacy and purity among the Huguenots in the southern provinces. This _Louis le Juste_ was he who gave the French what little pretensions they have ever obtained on which to fix the foundations of future liberty: he first established a parliament at Rouen, another at Aix; but while thus gentle to his subjects, he was a scourge to Italy, made his public entry into Genoa as Sovereign, and tore the Milanese from the Sforza family, somewhat before the year 1550. The well-known Franciscus Ferrariensis, whose name was Silvester, is a character very opposite to that of fair Renée: he wrote the best apology for the Romanists against Luther, and gained applause from both sides for his controversial powers; while the strictness of his life gave weight to his doctrine, and ornamented the sect which he delighted to defend. By a native of Ferrara too were first collected the books that were earliest placed in the Ambrosian library at Milan, Barnardine Ferrarius, whose deep erudition and simple manners gained him the favour of Frederick Borromeo, who sent him to Spain to pick up literary rarities, which he bestowed with pleasure on the place where he had received his education. His treatise on the rites of sepulture used by the ancients is in good estimation; and Sir Thomas Brown, in his _Urn Burial_, owes him much obligation. The custom of wearing swords here seems to proceed from some connection they have had with the Spaniards; and Dr. Moore has given us an admirable account of why the Highland broad-sword is still called an _Andrew Ferrara_. The Venetians, not often or easily intimidated by Papal power, having taken this city in the year 1303, were obliged to restore it, for fear of the consequences of Pope Boniface the Eighth's excommunications; his displeasure having before then produced dreadful effects in the conspiracy of Bajamonti Tiepulo; which was suppressed, and he killed, by a woman, out of a flaming zeal for the honour and tranquillity of her country: and so disinterested too was her spirit of patriotism, that the only reward she required for a service so essential, was that a constant memorial of it might be preserved in the dress of the Doge; who from that moment obliged himself to wear a woman's cap under the state diadem, and so his successors still continue to do. But Ferrara has other distinctions.--Bonarelli here, at the academy of gl'Intrepidi, read his able defence of that pastoral comedy so much applauded and censured, called _Filli di Sciro_; and here the great Ariosto lived and died. Nothing leads however to a less gloomy train of thought, than the tomb of a celebrated man; where virtue, wit, or valour triumph over death, and wait the consummation of all sublunary things, before the remembrance of such superiority shall be lost. Italy must be shaken from her deepest foundation, and England made a scene of general ruin, when Shakespear and Ariosto shall be forgotten, and their names confounded among deedless nobility, and worthless wasters of treasure, long ago passed from hand to hand, perhaps from the dwellers in one continent to the inhabitants of another. It has been equally the fate of these two heroes of modern literature, that they have pleased their countrymen more than foreigners; but is that any diminution of their merit? or should it serve as a reason for making disgraceful comparisons between Ariosto and Virgil, whom he scorned to imitate? A dead language is like common ground;--all have a right to pasture, and all a claim to give or to withhold admiration. Virgil is the old original trough at the corner of the road, where every passer-by pays, drinks, and goes on his journey well refreshed. But the clear spring in the meadow sure, though private property, and lately dug, deserves attention: and confers delight not only on the actual master of the ground, but on all his visitants who can climb the style, and lift the silver cup to their lips which hangs by the fountain-side. I am glad, however, to be gone from a place where they are thinking less of all these worthies just at present, than of a circumstance which cannot redound to their honour, as it might have happened to any other town, and could do great good to none: no less than the happy arrival of Joseph, and Leopold, and Maximilian of Austria, on the thirtieth of May 1775; and this wonderful event have they recorded in a pompous inscription upon a stone set at the inn door. But princes can make poets, and scatter felicity with little exertion on their own parts. At Tuillemont, an English gentleman once told me he had the misfortune to sleep one night where all the people's heads were full of the Emperor, who had dined there the day before; and some _wise_ fellow of the place wrote these lines under his picture: Ingreditur magnus magno de Cæsare Cæsar, Thenas, sub signo Cervi, sua prandia sumit. He immediately set down this distich under them: Our poor little town has no little to brag, The Emperor was here, and he dined at the Stag. The people of the inn concluding that this must be a high-strained compliment, it produced him many thanks from all, and a better breakfast than he would otherwise have obtained at Tuillemont. To-morrow we go forward to Bologna. BOLOGNA SEEMS at first sight a very sorrowful town, and has a general air of melancholy that surprises one, as it is very handsomely and regularly built; and set in a country so particularly beautiful, that it is not easy to express the nature of its beauty, and to express it so that those who inhabit other countries can understand me. The territory belonging to Bologna la Grassa concenters all its charms in a happy _embonpoint_, which leaves no wrinkle unfilled up, no bone to be discerned; like the fat figure of Gunhilda at Fonthill, painted by Chevalier Cafali, with a face full of woe, but with a sleekness of skin that denotes nothing less than affliction. From the top of the only eminence, one looks down here upon a country which to me has a new and singular appearance; the whole horizon appearing one thick carpet of the softest and most vivid green, from the vicinity of the broad-leaved mulberry trees, I trust, drawn still closer and closer together by their amicable and pacific companions the vines, which keep cluttering round, and connect them so intimately that no object can be separately or distinctly viewed, any more than the habitations formed by animals who live in moss, when a large portion of it is presented to the philosopher for speculation. One would not therefore, on a flight and cursory inspection, suspect this of being a painter's country, where no prominence of features arrests the sight, no expression of latent meaning employs the mind, and no abruptness of transition tempts fancy to follow, or imagination to supply, the sudden loss of what it contemplated before. Here however the great Caraccis kept their school; here then was every idea of dignity and majestic beauty to be met with; and if _I_ meet with nothing in nature near this place to excite such ideas, it is _my_ fault, not Bologna's. If vain the toil, We ought to blame the culture,--not the soil. Wonderful indeed! yet not at all distracting is the variety of excellence that one contemplates here; such matters! and such scholars! The sweetly playful pencil of Albano, I would compare to Waller among our English poets; Domenichino to Otway, and Guido Rheni to Rowe; if such liberties might be permitted on the old notion of _ut pictura poesis_. But there is an idea about the world, that one ought in delicacy to declare one's utter incapacity of understanding pictures, unless immediately of the profession.--And why so? No man protests, that he cannot read poetry, he can make no pleasure out of Milton or Shakespear, or shudder at the ingratitude of Lear's daughters on the stage. Why then should people pretend insensibility, when divine Guercino exerts his unrivalled powers of the pathetic in the fine picture at Zampieri palace, of Hagar's dismission into the desert with her son? While none else could have touched with such truth of expression the countenances of each; leaving him most to be pitied, perhaps, who issues the command against his will; accompanying it however with innumerable benedictions, and alleviating its severity with the softest tenderness. He only among our poets could have planned such a picture, who penned the Eloisa, and knew the agonies of a soul struggling against unpermitted passions, and conquering from the noblest motives of faith and of obedience. Glorious exertion of excellence! This is the first time my heart has been made really alive to the powers of this magical art. Candid Italians! let me again exclaim; they shewed us a Vandyke in the same palace, surrounded by the works of their own incomparable countrymen; and _there_ say they, "_Quasi quasi si può circondarla_[Footnote: You may almost run round her.]." You may almost run round it, was the expression. The picture was a very fine one; a single figure of the Madona, highly painted, and happily placed among those who knew, because they possessed his perfections who drew it. Were Homer alive, and acquainted with our language, he would admire that Shakespear whom Voltaire condemns. Twice in this town has Guido shewed those powers which critics have denied him: the power of grouping his figures with propriety, and distributing his light and shadow to advantage: as he has shewn it _but twice_, however, it is certain the connoisseurs are not very wrong, and even in those very performances one may read their justification: for Job, though surrounded by a crowd of people, has a strangely insulated look, and the sweet sufferer on the fore-ground of his Herodian cruelty seems wholly uninterested in the general distress, and occupies herself and every spectator completely and solely with her own particular grief. The boasted Raphael here does not in my eyes triumph over the wonders of this Caracci school. At Rome, I am told, his superiority is more visible. _Nous verrons_[Footnote: We shall see.]. The reserved picture of St. Peter and St. Paul, kept in the last chamber of the Zampieri palace, and covered with a silk curtain, is valued beyond any specimen of the painting art which can be moved from Italy to England. We are taught to hope it will soon come among us; and many say the sale cannot be now long delayed. Why Guido should never draw another picture like that, or at all in the same style, who can tell? it certainly does unite every perfection, and every possible excellence, except choice of subject, which cannot be happy I think, when the subject itself is left disputable. I will mention only one other picture: it is in an obscure church, not an unfrequented one by these pious Bolognese, who are the most devout people I ever lived amongst, but I think not much visited by travellers. It is painted by Albano, and represents the Redeemer of mankind as a boy scarce thirteen years old: ingenuous modesty, and meek resignation, beaming from each intelligent feature of a face divinely beautiful, and throwing out luminous rays round his sacred head, while the blessed Virgin and St. Joseph, placed on each side him, adore his goodness with transport not unmixed with wonder: the instruments of his future passion cast at his feet, directing us to consider him as in that awful moment voluntarily devoting himself for the sins of the whole world. This picture, from the sublimity of the subject, the lively colouring, and clear expression, has few equals; the pyramidal group drops in as of itself, unsought for, from the raised ground on which our Saviour stands; and among numberless wild conceits and extravagant fancies of painters, not only permitted but encouraged in this country, to deviate into what _we_ justly think profane representations of the deity:--this is the most pleasing and inoffensive device I have seen. The august Creator too is likewise more wisely concealed by Albano than by other artists, who daringly presume to exhibit that of which no mortal man can give or receive a just idea. But we will have done for a while with connoisseurship. This fat Bologna has a tristful look, from the numberless priests, friars, and women all dressed in black, who fill the streets, and stop on a sudden to pray, when I see nothing done to call forth immediate addresses to Heaven. Extremes do certainly meet however, and my Lord Peter in this place is so like his fanatical brother Jack, that I know not what is come to him. To-morrow is the day of _corpus domini_; why it should be preceded by such dismal ceremonies I know not; there is nothing melancholy in the idea, but we shall be sure of a magnificent procession. So it was too, and wonderfully well attended: noblemen and ladies, with tapers in their hands, and their trains borne by well-dressed pages, had a fine effect. All still in black. Black, but such as in esteem Prince Memnon's sister might beseem; With sable stole of cypress lawn, O'er their decent shoulders drawn. I never saw a spectacle so stately, so solemn a show in my life before, and was much less tired of the long continued march, than were my Roman Catholic companions. Our inn is not a good one; the Pellegrino is engaged for the King of Naples and his train: the place we are housed in, is full of bugs, and every odious vermin: no wonder, surely, where such oven-like porticoes catch and retain the heat as if constructed on set purpose so to do. The Montagnola at night was something of relief, but contrary to every other resort of company: the less it is frequented the gayer it appears; for Nature there has been lavish of her bounties, which seem disregarded by the Bolognese, who unluckily find out that there is a burying-ground within view, though at no small distance really; and planting themselves over against that, they stand or kneel for many minutes together in whole rows, praying, as I understand, for the souls which once animated the bodies of the people whom they believe to lie interred there; all this too even at the hours dedicated to amusement. Cardinal Buon Compagni, the legate, sent from Rome here, is gone home; and the vice-legate officiated in his place, much to the consolation of the inhabitants, who observed with little delight or gratitude his endeavours to improve their trade, or his care to maintain their privileges; while his natural disinclination to hypocritical manners, or what we so emphatically call _cant_, gave them an aversion to his person and dislike of his government, which he might have prevented by formality of look, and very trifling compliances. But every thing helps to prove, that if you would please people, it must be done _their_ way, not your own. Here are some charming manufactures in this town, and I fear it requires much self-denial in an Englishwoman not to long at least for the fine crapes, tiffanies, &c. which might here be bought I know not how cheap, and would make one _so_ happy in London or at Bath. But these Customhouse officers! these _rats de cave_, as the French comically call them, will not let a ribbon pass. Such is the restless jealousy of little states, and such their unremitted attention to keep the goods made in one place out of the gates of another. Few things upon a journey contribute to torment and disgust one more than the teasing enquiries at the door of every city, who one is, what one's name is? what one's rank in life or employment is; that so all may be written down and carried to the chief magistrate for his information, who immediately dispatches a proper person to examine whether you gave in a true report; where you lodge, why you came, how long you mean to stay; with twenty more inquisitive speeches, which to a subject of more liberal governments must necessarily appear impertinent as frivolous, and make all my hopes of bringing home the most trifling presents for a friend abortive. So there is an end of that felicity, and we must sit like the girl at the fair, described by Gay, Where the coy nymph knives, combs, and scissars spies, And looks on thimbles with desiring eyes. The Specola, so they call their museum here, of natural and artificial rarities, is very fine indeed; the inscription too denoting its universality, is sublimely generous: I thought of our Bath hospital in England; more usefully, if not more magnificently so; but durst not tell the professor, who shewed the place. At our going in he was apparently much out of humour, and unwilling to talk, but grew gradually kinder, and more communicative; and I had at last a thousand thanks to pay for an attention that rendered the sight of all more valuable. Nothing can surpass the neatness and precision with which this elegant repository is kept, and the curiosities contained in it have specimens very uncommon. The native gold shewed here is supposed to be the largest and most perfect lump in Europe; wonderfully beautiful it certainly is, and the coral here is such as can be seen nowhere else; they shewed me some which looked like an actual tree. It might reasonably lower the spirits of philosophy, and tend to restraining the genius of remote enquiry, did we reflect that the very first substance given into our hand as an amusement, or subject of speculation, as soon as we arrive in this great world of wonders, never gets fully understood by those who study hardest, or live longest in it. Coral is a substance, concerning which the natural historians have had many disputes, and settled nothing yet; knowing, as it should seem, but little more of its original, than they did when they sucked it first. Of gold we have found perhaps but too many uses; but when the professor told us here at Bologna, that silver in the mine was commonly found mixed with _arsenick_, a corroding poison, or _lead_, a narcotic one; who could help being led forward to a train of thought on the nature and use and abuse of money and minerals in general. _Suivez_ (as Rousseau says), _la chaine de tout cela_[Footnote: Follow this clue, and see where it will lead you to.]. The astronomical apparatus at this place is a splendid one; but the models of architecture, fortifications, &c. are only more numerous; not so exact or elegant I think as those the King of England has for his own private use at the Queen's house in St. James's Park. The specimens of a human figure in wax are the work of a woman, whose picture is accordingly set up in the school: they are reckoned incomparable of their kind, and bring to one's fancy Milton's fine description of our first parents: Two of far nobler kind--erect and tall. This University has been particularly civil to women; many very learned ladies of France and Germany have been and are still members of it;--and la Dottoressa Laura Bassi gave lectures not many years ago in this very spot, upon the mathematics and natural philosophy, till she grew very old and infirm; but her pupils always handed her very respectfully to and from the Doctor's chair, _Che brava donnetta ch'era!_[Footnote: Ah, what a fine woman was that!] says the gentleman who shewed me the academy, as we came out at the door; over which a marble tablet, with an inscription more pious than pompous, is placed to her memory; but turning away his eyes--while they filled with tears--_tutli muosono_[Footnote: All must die.], added he, and I followed; as nothing either of energy or pathos could be added to a reflection so just, so tender, and so true: we parted sadly therefore with our agreeable companion and instructor just where her cenotaph (for the body lies buried in a neighbouring church) was erected; and shall probably meet no more; for as he said and sighed--_tutti muosono_[Footnote: All must die.]. The great Cassini too, who though of an Italian family, was born at Nice I think, and died at Paris, drew his meridian line through the church of St. Petronius in this city, across the pavement, where it still remains a monument to his memory, who discovered the third and fifth satellites of Jupiter. Such was in his time the reputation of a mineral spring near Bologna, that Pope Alexander the Seventh set him to analyse the waters of it; and so satisfactory were his proofs of its very slight importance to health, that the same pope called him to Rome to examine the waters round that capital; but dying soon after his arrival, he had no time to recompence Cassini's labours, though a very elegantly-minded man, and a great encourager of learning in all its branches. The successor to this sovereign, Rospigliosi, had different employment found for _him_, in helping the Venetians to regain Candia from the Turks, his disappointment in not being able to accomplish which design broke his heart; and Cassini, returning to Bologna, found it less pleasing than it was before he left it, so went to Paris, and died there at ninety or ninety-one years old, as I remember, early in this present century, but not till after he had enjoyed the pleasure of hearing that Count Marsigli had founded an academy at the place where he had studied whilst his faculties were strong. Another church, situated on the only hill one can observe for miles, is dedicated to the Madonna St. Luc, as it is called; and a very beautiful and curiously covered way is made to it up the hill, for three miles in length, and at a prodigious expence, to guard the figure from the rain as it is carried in procession. The ascent is so gentle that one hardly feels it. Pillars support the roof, which defends you from a sun-stroke, while the air and prospect are let in between them on the right hand as you go. The left side is closed up by a wall, adorned from time to time with fresco paintings, representing the birth and most distinguished passages in the life of the blessed Virgin. Round these paintings a little chapel is railed in, open, airy, and elegantly, not very pompously, adorned; there are either seven or twelve of them, I forget which, that serve to rest the procession as it passes, on days particularly dedicated to her service. When you arrive at the top, a church of a most beautiful construction recompenses your long but not tedious walk, and there are some admirable pictures in it, particularly one of St. William laying down his armour, and taking up the habit of a Carthusian, very fine--but the figure of the Madonna is the prize they value, and before this I did see some men kneel with a truly idolatrous devotion. That it was painted by St. Luke is believed by them all. But if it _was_ painted by St. Luke, said I, what then? do you think _he_, or the still more excellent person it was done for, would approve of your worshipping any thing but God? To this no answer was made; and I thought one man looked as if he had grace enough to be ashamed of himself. The girls, who sit in clusters at the chapel doors as one goes up, singing hymns in praise of the Virgin Mary, pleased me much, as it was a mode of veneration inoffensive to religion, and agreeable to the fancy; but seeing them bow down to that black figure, in open defiance of the Decalogue, shocked me. Why all the _very very_ early pictures of the Virgin, and many of our blessed Saviour himself, done in the first ages of Christianity should be _black_, or at least tawny, is to me wholly incomprehensible, nor could I ever yet obtain an explanation of its cause from men of learning or from connoisseurs. We have in England a black Madonna, very ancient of course, and of immense value, in the cathedral of Wells in Somersetshire; it is painted on glass, and stands in the middle pane of the upper window I think, is a profile face, and eminently handsome. My mind tells me that I have seen another somewhere in Great Britain, but cannot recollect the spot, unless it were Arundel Castle in Sussex, but I am not sure: none was ever painted so since the days of Pietro Perugino I believe, so their antiquity is unquestionable: he and his few contemporaries drew her white, as Sir Joshua Reynolds and Pompeio Battoni. Whilst I perambulated the palaces of the Bolognese nobility, gloomy though spacious, and melancholy though splendid, I could not but admire at Richardson's judgment when he makes his beautiful Bigot, his interesting Clementina, an inhabitant of superstitious Bologna. The unconquerable attachment she shews to original prejudices, and the horror of what she has been taught to consider as heresy, could scarcely have been attributed so happily to the dweller in any town but this: where I hear nothing but the sound of people saying their rosaries, and see nothing in the street but people telling their beads. The Porretta palace is hourly presenting itself to my imagination, which delights in the assurance that genius cannot be confined by place. Dear Richardson at Salisbury Court Fleet Street, and Parson's Green Fulham, felt all within him that travelling can tell, or experience confirm: he had seen little, and Johnson has often told me that he had read little; but what he did read never forsook a memory that was not contented with retaining, but fermented all that fell into it, and made a new creation from the fertility of his own rich mind.--These are the men for whom monuments need not be erected. They in our pleasure and astonishment, Do build themselves a live long monument; as Milton says of a much greater writer still. But the King of Naples is arrived, and that attention which wits and scholars can retain for centuries, may not be unjustly paid to princes while they last. Our Bolognese have hit upon an odd method of entertaining him however: no other than making a representation of Mount Vesuvius on the Montagnuola, or place of evening resort, hoping at least to treat him with something new I trow. Were the King of England to visit these _cari Bolognese_, surely they would shew him Westminster Bridge, with a view of the Archbishop's palace at Lambeth on one side the river, and Somerset-house on the other. A pretty throne, or state-box, was soon got in order, _that it was_; and the motion excited by carrying the fire-works to have them prepared for the evening's show, gave life to the morning, which hung less heavily than usual; nor did the people recollect the church-yard at a distance, while the merry King of Naples was near them. His Majesty appeared perfectly contented and good-humoured, and happy with whatever was done for his amusement. I remember his behaviour at Milan though, too well to be surprised at his pleasantness of disposition, when my maid was delighted to see him dance among the girls at a Festa di Ballo, from whence I retired early myself, and sent her back to enjoy it all in my domino. He played at cards too when at Milan I recollect, in the common Ridotto Chamber at the Theatre, and played for common sums, so as to charm every one with his kindness and affability. I am glad however that we shall now be soon released from this upon the whole disagreeable town, where there is the best possible food too for body and mind; but where the inhabitants seem to think only of the next world, and do little to amuse those who have not yet quite done with this. If they are sincere mean time, God will bless them with a long continuance of the appellation they so justly deserve; and those travellers who pass through will find some amends in the rich cream and incomparable dinners every day, for the insects that devour them every night; and will, if they are wise, seek compensation from the company of the half animated pictures that crowd the palaces and churches, for the half dead inhabitants who kneel in the streets of Bologna. FLORENCE. We slept no-where, except perhaps in the carriage, between our last residence at Bologna and this delightful city, to which we passed apparently through a new region of the earth, or even air; clambering up mountains covered with snow, and viewing with amazement the little vallies between, where, after quitting the summer season, all glowing with heat and spread into verdure, we found cherry-trees in blossom, oaks and walnuts scarcely beginning to bud. These mountains are however much below those of Savoy for dignity and beauty of appearance, though high enough to be troublesome, and barren enough to be desolate. These Appenines have been called by some the Back Bone of Italy, as Varenius and others style the Mountains of the Moon in Africa, Back Bone of the World; and these, as they do, run in a long chain down the middle of the Peninsula they are placed in; but being rounded at top are supposed to be aquatick, while the Alps, Andes, &c. are of late acknowledged by philosophers to be volcanic, as the most lofty of _them_ terminate in points of granite, wholly devoid of horizontal strata, and without petrifactions contained in them, _Here_ the tracts around display How impetuous ocean's sway Once with wasteful fury spread The wild waves o'er each mountain's head. PARSONS. But the offspring of fire somehow _should_ be more striking than that of water, however violent might have been the concussion that produced them; and there is no comparison between the sensations felt in passing the Roche Melon, and these more neatly-moulded Appenines; upon whose tops I am told too no lakes have been formed, as on Mount Cenis, or even on Snowdon in North Wales, where a very beautiful lake adorns the summit of the rock; which affords trout precisely such as you eat before you go down to Novalesa, but not so large. Sir William Hamilton, however, is the man to be referred to in all these matters; no man has examined the peculiar properties and general nature of mountains, those which vomit fire in particular, with half as much application, inspired by half as much genius, as he has done. We arrived late at our inn, an English one they say it is; and many of the last miles were passed very pleasantly by my maid and myself, in anticipating the comforts we should receive by finding ourselves among our own country folks. In good time! and by once more eating, sleeping, &c. _all in the English way_, as her phrase is. Accordingly, here are small low beds again, soft and clean, and down pillows; here are currant tarts, which the Italians scorn to touch, but which we are happy and delighted to pay not ten but twenty times their value for, because a currant tart is so much _in the English way_: and here are beans and bacon in a climate where it is impossible that bacon should be either wholesome or agreeable; and one eats infinitely worse than one did at Milan, Venice, or Bologna: and infinitely dearer too; but that makes it still more completely _in the English way_. Mean time here we are however in Arno's Vale; the full moon shining over Fiesole, which I see from my windows. Milton's verses every moment in one's mouth, and Galileo's house twenty yards from one's door, Whence her bright orb the Tuscan artist view'd, At evening from the top of Fesole; Or in Val d'Arno to descry new lands, Rivers or mountains on her spotty globe. Our apartments here are better than we hoped for, situated most sweetly on the banks of this classical stream; a noble terrace underneath our window, broad as the south parade at Bath I think, and the fine Ponte della Santa Trinità within sight. Many people have asserted that this is the first among all bridges in the world; but architecture triumphs in the art of building bridges, and, though this is a most exquisitely beautiful fabric, I can scarcely venture to call it an unrivalled one: it shall, if the fine statues at the corners can assist its power over the fancy, and if cleanliness can compensate for stately magnificence, or for the fire of original and unassisted genius, it shall obliterate from my mind the Rialto at Venice, and the fine arch thrown over the Conway at Llanwrst in our North Wales. I wrote to a lady at Venice this morning though, to say, however I might be charmed by the sweets of Arno's side, I could not forbear regretting the Grand Canal. Count Manucci, a nobleman of this city, formerly intimate with Mr. Thrale in London and Mr. Piozzi at Paris, came early to our apartments, and politely introduced us to the desirable society of his sisters and his friends. We have in his company and that of Cavalier d'Elci, a learned and accomplished man, of high birth, deep erudition, and polished manners, seen much, and with every possible advantage. This morning they shewed us La Capella St. Lorenzo, where I could but think how surprisingly Mr. Addison's prediction was verified, that these slow Florentines would not perhaps be able to finish the burial-place of their favourite family, before the family itself should be extinct. This reflection felt like one naturally suggested to me by the place; Doctor Moore however has the original merit of it, as I afterwards found it in his book: but it is the peculiar property of natural thoughts well expressed, to sink into one's mind and incorporate themselves with it, so as to make one forget they were not all one's own. _Poets, as well as jesters, do oft prove prophets:_ Prior's happy prediction for the female wits in one of his epilogues is come true already, when he says, Your time, poor souls! we'll take your very money, Female _third nights_ shall come so thick upon ye, &c. and every hour gives one reason to hope that Mr. Pope's glorious prophecy in favour of the Negroes will not now remain long unaccomplished, but that liberty will extend her happy influence over the world; Till the _freed Indians_, in their native groves, Reap their own fruits, and woo their sable loves. I will not extend myself in describing the heaps of splendid ruin in which the rich chapel of St. Lorenzo now lies: since the elegant Lord Corke's letters were written, little can be said about Florence not better said by him; who has been particularly copious in describing a city which every body wishes to see copiously described. The libraries here are exceedingly magnificent; and we were called just now to that which goes under Magliabechi's name, to hear an eulogium finely pronounced upon our circumnavigator Captain Cook; whose character has attracted the attention, and extorted the esteem of every European nation: far less was the wonder that it forced my tears; they flowed from a thousand causes: my distance from England! my pleasure in hearing an Englishman thus lamented in a language with which he had no acquaintance! By strangers honoured, and by strangers mourn'd! Every thing contributed to soften my heart, though not to lower my spirits. For when a Florentine asked me, how I came to cry so? I answered, in the words of their divine Mestastasio: "Che questo pianto mio Tutto non è dolor; E meraviglia, e amore, E riverenza, e speme, Son mille affetti assieme Tutti raccolti al cor." 'Tis not grief alone, or fear, Swells the heart, or prompts the tear; Reverence, wonder, hope, and joy, Thousand thoughts my soul employ, Struggling images, which less Than falling tears can ne'er express. Giannetti, who pronounced the panegyric, is the justly-celebrated improvisatore so famous for making Latin verses _impromptu_, as others do Italian ones: the speech has been translated into English by Mr. Merry, with whom I had the honour here first to make acquaintance, having met him at Mr. Greatheed's, who is our fellow-lodger, and with whom and his amiable family the time passes in reciprocations of confidential friendship and mutual esteem. Lord and Lady Cowper too contribute to make the society at this place more pleasing than can be imagined; while English hospitality softens down the stateliness of Tuscan manners. Sir Horace Mann is sick and old; but there are conversations at his house of a Saturday evening, and sometimes a dinner, to which we have been almost always asked. The fruits in this place begin to astonish me; such cherries did I never yet see, or even hear tell of, as when I caught the Laquais de Place weighing two of them in a scale to see if they came to an ounce. These are, in the London street phrase, _cherries like plums_, in size at least, but in flavour they far exceed them, being exactly of the kind that we call bleeding-hearts, hard to the bite, and parting easily from the stone, which is proportionately small. Figs too are here in such perfection, that it is not easy for an English gardener to guess at their excellence; for it is not by superior size, but taste and colour, that _they_ are distinguished; small, and green on the outside, a bright full crimson within, and we eat them with raw ham, and truly delicious is the dainty. By raw ham, I mean ham cured, not boiled or roasted. It is no wonder though that fruits should mature in such a sun as this is; which, to give a just notion of its penetrating fire, I will take leave to tell my countrywomen is so violent, that I use no other method of heating the pinching-irons to curl my hair, than that of poking them out at a south window, with the handles shut in, and the glasses darkened to keep us from being actually fired in his beams. Before I leave off speaking about the fruit, I must add, that both fig and cherry are produced by standards; that the strawberries here are small and high-flavoured, like our _woods_, and that there are no other. England affords greater variety in _that_ kind of fruit than any nation; and as to peaches, nectarines, or green-gage plums, I have seen none yet. Lady Cowper has made us a present of a small pine-apple, but the Italians have no taste to it. Here is sun enough to ripen them without hot-houses I am sure, though they repeatedly told us at Milan and Venice, that _this_ was the coolest place to pass the summer in, because of the Appenine mountains shading us from the heat, which they confessed to be intolerable with _them_. _Here_ however, they inform us, that it is madness to retire into the country as English people do during the hot season; for as there is no shade from high timber trees, one is bit to death by animals, gnats in particular, which here are excessively troublesome, even in the town, notwithstanding we scatter vinegar, and use all the arts in our power; but the ground-floor is coolest, and every body struggles to get themselves a _terreno_ as they call it. Florence is full just now, and Mr. Jean Figliazzi, an intelligent gentleman who lives here, and is well acquainted with both nations, says, that all the genteel people come to take refuge _from_ the country to Florence in July and August, as the subjects of Great Britain run _to_ the country from the heats of London or Bath. The flowers too! how rich they are in scent here! how brilliant in colour! how magnificent in size! Wall-flowers perfuming every street, and even every passage; while pinks and single carnations grow beside them, with no more soil than they require themselves; and from the tops of houses, where you least expect it, an aromatic flavour highly gratifying is diffused. The jessamine is large, broad-leaved, and beautiful as an orange-flower; but I have seen no roses equal to those at Lichfield, where on one tree I recollect counting eighty-four within my own reach; it grew against the house of Doctor Darwin. Such a profusion of sweets made me enquire yesterday morning for some scented pomatum, and they brought me accordingly one pot impelling strong of garden mint, the other of rue and tansy. Thus do the inhabitants of every place forfeit or fling away those pleasures, which the inhabitants of another place think _they_ would use in a much wiser manner, had Providence bestowed the blessing upon _them_. A young Milanese once, whom I met in London, saw me treat a hatter that lives in Pallmall with the respect due to his merit: when the man was gone, "Pray, madam," says the Italian, "is this a _gran riccone[Footnote: Heavy-pursed fellow.]?"_ "He is perhaps," replied I, "worth twenty or thirty thousand pounds; I do not know what ideas you annex to a _gran riccone_" "_Oh santissima vergine!_" exclaims the youth, "_s'avessi io mai settanta mila zecchini! non so pur troppo cosa nesarei; ma questo é chiaro--non venderei mai cappelli_"--"Oh dear me! had I once seventy thousand sequins in my pocket, I would--dear--I cannot think myself _what_ I should do with them all: but this at least is certain, I would not _sell hats_" I have been carried to the Laurentian library, where the librarian Bandi shewed me all possible, and many unmerited civilities; which, for want of deeper erudition, I could not make the use I wished of. We asked however to see some famous manuscripts. The Virgil has had a _fac simile_ made of it, and a printed copy besides; so that it cannot now escape being known all over Europe. The Bible in Chaldaic characters, spoken of by Langius as inestimable, and brought hither, with many other valuable treasures of the same nature, by Lascaris, after the death of Lorenzo de Medici, who had sent him for the second time to Constantinople for the purpose of collecting Greek and Oriental books, but died before his return, is in admirable preservation. The old geographical maps, made out in a very early age, afforded me much amusement; and the Latin letters of Petrarch, with the portrait of his Laura, were interesting to me perhaps more than many other things rated much higher by the learned, among those rarities which adorn a library so comprehensive. Every great nation except ours, which was immersed in barbarism, and engaged in civil broils, seems to have courted the residence of Lascaris, but the university of Paris fixed his regard: and though Leo X. treated with favour, and even friendship, the man whom he had encouraged to intimacy when Cardinal John of Medicis; though he made him superintendant of a Greek college at Rome; it is said he always wished to die in France, whither he returned in the reign of Francis the First; and wrote his Latin epigrams, which I have heard Doctor Johnson prefer even to the Greek ones preserved in Anthologia; and of which our Queen Elizabeth, inspired by Roger Ascham, desired to see the author; but he was then upon a visit to Rome, where he died of the gout at ninety-three years old. * * * * * June 24, 1785. St. John the Baptist is the tutelary Saint of this city, and upon this day of course all possible rejoicings are made. After attending divine service in the morning, we were carried to a house whence we could conveniently see the procession pass by. It was not solemn and stately as that I saw at Bologna, neither was it gaudy and jocund like the show made at Venice upon St. George's day; but consisted chiefly in vast heavy pageants, or a sort of temporary building set on wheels, and drawn by oxen some, and some by horses; others carried upon things made not unlike a chairman's horse in London, and supported by men, while priests, in various coloured dresses, according to their several stations in the church, and to distinguish the parishes, &c. to which they belong, follow singing in praise of the saint. Here is much emulation shewed too, I am told, in these countries, where religion makes the great and almost the sole amusement of men's lives, who shall make most figure on St. John the Baptist's day, produce most music, and go to most expence. For all these purposes subscriptions are set on foot, for ornamenting and venerating such a picture, statue, &c. which are then added to the procession by the managers, and called a Confraternity, in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Angel Raphael, or who comes in their heads. The lady of the house where we went to partake the diversion, was not wanting in her part; there could not be fewer than a hundred and fifty people assembled in her rooms, but not crowded as we should have been in England; for the apartments in Italy are all high and large, and run in suits like Wanstead house in Essex, or Devonshire house in London exactly, but larger still: and with immense balconies and windows, not sashes, which move all away, and give good room and air. The ices, refreshments, &c. were all excellent in their kinds, and liberally dispensed. The lady seemed to do the honours of her house with perfect good-humour; and every body being full-dressed, though so early in a morning, added much to the general effect of the whole. Here I had the honour of being introduced to Cardinal Corsini, who put me a little out of countenance by saying suddenly, "_Well, madam! you never saw one of us red-legged partridges before I believe; but you are going to Rome I hear, where you will find such fellows as me no rarities_" The truth is, I had seen the amiable Prince d'Orini at Milan, who was a Cardinal; and who had taken delight in showing me prodigious civilities: nothing ever struck me more than his abrupt entrance one night at our house, when we had a little music, and every body stood up the moment he appeared: the Prince however walked forward to the harpsichord, and blessed my husband in a manner the most graceful and affecting: then sate the amusement out, and returned the next morning to breakfast with us, when he indulged us with two hours conversation at least; adding the kindest and most pressing invitations to his country-seat among the mountains of Brianza, when we should return from our tour of Italy in spring 1786. Florence therefore was not the first place that shewed me a Cardinal. In the afternoon we all looked out of our windows which faced the street,--not mine, as they happily command a view of the river, the Caseine woods, &c. and from them enjoyed a complete sight of an Italian horse-race. For after the coaches have paraded up and down some time to shew the equipages, liveries, &c. all have on a sudden notice to quit the scene of action; and all _do_ quit it, in such a manner as is surprising. The street is now covered with sawdust, and made fast at both ends: the starting-post is adorned with elegant booths, lined with red velvet, for the court and first nobility: at the other end a piece of tapestry is hung, to prevent the creatures from dashing their brains out when they reach the goal. Thousands and ten thousands of people on foot fill the course, that it is standing wonder to me still that numbers are not killed. The prizes are now exhibited to view, quite in the old classical style; a piece of crimson damask for the winner perhaps; a small silver bason and ewer for the second; and so on, leaving no performer unrewarded. At last come out the _concurrenti_ without riders, but with a narrow leathern strap hung across their backs, which has a lump of ivory fastened to the end of it, all set full of sharp spikes like a hedge-hog, and this goads them along while galloping, worse than any spurs could do; because the faster they run, the more this odd machine keeps jumping up and down, and pricking their sides ridiculously enough; and it makes one laugh to see that some of them are not provoked by it not to run at all, but set about plunging, in order to rid themselves of the inconvenience, instead of driving forward to divert the mob; who leap and shout and caper with delight, and lash the laggers along with great indignation indeed, and with the most comical gestures. I never saw horses in so droll a state of degradation before, for they are all striped or spotted, or painted of some colour to distinguish them each from other; and nine or ten often start at a time, to the great danger of lookers-on I think, but exceedingly to my entertainment, who have the comfort of Mrs. Greatheed's company, and the advantage of seeing all safely from her well-situated _terreno_, or ground-floor. The chariot-race was more splendid, but less diverting: this was performed in the Piazza, or Square, an unpaved open place not bigger than Covent Garden I believe, and the ground strangely uneven. The cars were light and elegant; one driver and two horses to each: the first very much upon the principle of the antique chariots described by old poets, and the last trapped showily in various colours, adapted to the carriages, that people might make their betts accordingly upon the pink, the blue, the green, &c. I was exceedingly amused with seeing what so completely revived all classic images, and seemed so little altered from the classic times. Cavalier D'Elci, in reply to my expressions of delight, told me that the same spirit still subsisted exactly; but that in order to prevent accidents arising from the disputants' endeavours to overturn or circumvent each other, it was now sunk into a mere appearance of contest; for that all the chariots belonged to one man, who would doubtless be careful enough that his coachmen should not go to sparring at the hazard of their horses. The farce was carried on to the end however, and the winner spread his velvet in triumph, and drove round the course to enjoy the acclamations and caresses of the crowd. That St. John the Baptist's birth-day should be celebrated by a horse or chariot race, appears to have little claim to the praise of propriety; but mankind seems agreed that there must be some excuse for merriment; and surely if any saint is to be venerated, he stands foremost whom Christ himself declared to be the greatest man ever born of a woman. The old Romans had an institution in this month of games to Neptune Equester, as they called their Sea God, with no great appearance of good sense neither; but the horse he produced at the naming of Athens was the cause assigned--these games are perhaps half transmitted ones from those in the ancient mythology. The evening concluded, and the night began with fire-works; the church, or duomo, as a cathedral is always called in Italy, was illuminated on the outside, and very beautiful, and very very magnificent was the appearance. The reflection of the cupola's lights in the river gave us back a faint image of what we had been admiring; and when I looked at them from my window, as we were retiring to rest; such, thought I, and fainter still are the images which can be given of a show in written or verbal description; yet my English friends shall not want an account of what I have seen; for Italy, at last, is only a fine well-known academy figure, from which we all sit down to make drawings according as the light falls; and our seat affords opportunity. Every man sees that, and indeed most things, with the eyes of his then present humour, and begins describing away so as to convey a dignified or despicable idea of the object in question, just as his disposition led him to interpret its appearance. Readers now are grown wiser, however, than very much to mind us: they want no further telling that one traveller was in pain, and one in love when the tour of Italy was made by them; and so they pick out their intelligence accordingly, from various books, written like two letters in the Tatler, giving an account of a rejoicing night; one endeavouring to excite majestic ideas, the other ludicrous ones of the very same thing. Well 'tis true enough, however, and has been often enough laughed at, that the Italian horses run without riders, and scamper down a long street with untrimmed heels, hundreds of people hooking them along, as naughty boys do a poor dog, that has a bone tied to his tail in England. This diversion was too good to end with the day. Dulness, dear Queen, repeats the jest again. We had another, and another just such a race for three or four evenings together, and they got an English _cock-tailed nag_, and set _him_ to the business, as they said _he was trained to it_; but I don't recollect his making a more brilliant figure than his painted and chalked neighbours of the Continent. We will not be prejudiced, however; that the Florentines know how to manage horses is certain, if they would take the trouble. Last night's theatre exhibited a proof of skill, which might shame Astley and all his rivals. Count Pazzi having been prevailed on to lend his four beautiful chesnut favourites from his own carriage to draw a pageant upon the stage, I saw them yesterday evening harnessed all abreast, their own master in a dancer's habit I was told, guiding them himself, and personating the Cid, which was the name of the ballet, if I remember right, making his horses go clear round the stage, and turning at the lamps of the orchestra with such dexterity, docility, and grace, that they seemed rather to enjoy than feel disturbance at the deafening noise of instruments, the repeated bursts of applause, and hollow sound of their own hoofs upon the boards of a theatre. I had no notion of such discipline, and thought the praises, though very loud, not ill bestowed: as it is surely one of man's earliest privileges to replenish the earth with animal life, and to subdue it. I have, for my own part, generally speaking, little delight in the obstreperous clamours of these heroic pantomimes;--their battles are so noisy, and the acclamations of the spectators so distressing to weak nerves, I dread an Italian theatre--it distracts me.--And always the same thing so, every and every night! how tedious it is! This want of variety in the common pleasures of Italy though, and that surprising content with which a nation so sprightly looks on the same stuff, and laughs at the same joke for months and months together, is perhaps less despicable to a thinking mind, than the affectation of weariness and disgust, where probably it is not felt at all; and where a gay heart often lurks under a clouded countenance, put on to deceive spectators into a notion of his philosophy who wears it; and what is worse, who wears it chiefly as a mark of distinction cheaply obtained; for neither science, wit, nor courage are _now_ found necessary to form a man of fashion, or the _ton_, to which may be said as justly as ever Mr. Pope affirmed it of silence, That routed reason finds her sure retreat in thee. Affectation is certainly that faint and sickly weed which is the curse of cultivated,--not naturally fertile and extensive countries; an insect that infests our forcing stoves and hot-house plants: and as the naturalists tell us all animals may be bred _down_ to a state very different from that in which they were originally placed; that _carriers_, and _fantails_, and _croppers_, are produced by early caging, and minutely attending to the common blue pigeon, flights of which cover the ploughed fields in distant provinces of England, and shew the rich and changeable plumage of their fine neck to the summer sun; so from the warm and generous Briton of ancient days may be produced, and happily bred _down_, the clay-cold coxcomb of St. James's-street. In Italy, so far at least as I have gone, there is no impertinent desire of appearing what one is _not_: no searching for talk, and torturing expression to vary its phrases with something new and something fine; or else sinking into silence from despair of diverting the company, and taking up the opposite method, contriving to impress them with an idea of bright intelligence, concealed by modest doubts of our own powers, and stifled by deep thought upon abstruse and difficult topics. To get quit of all these deep-laid systems of enjoyment, where To take our breakfast we project a scheme, Nor drink our tea without a stratagem, like the lady in Doctor Young; the surest method is to drop into Italy; where a conversazione at Venice or Florence, after the society of London, or _les petit soupers de Paris_, where, in their own phrase, _un tableau n'attend pas l'autre_[Footnote: One picture don't wait for another.], is like taking a walk in Ham Gardens, or the Leasowes, after _les parterres de Versailles ed i Terrazzi di Genoa_. We are affected in the house, but natural in the gardens. Italians are natural in society, affected and constrained in the disposition of their grounds. No one, however, is good or bad, or wise or foolish without a reason why. Restraint is made for man, and where religious and political liberty is enjoyed to its full extent, as in Great Britain, the people will forge shackles for themselves, and lay the yoke heavy on society, to which, on the contrary, Italians give a loose, as compensation for their want of freedom in affairs of church or state. It is, I think, observable of uncontradicted, homebred, and, as we say, spoiled children, that when a dozen of them get together for the purpose of passing a day in mutual amusement, they will make to themselves the strictest laws for their game, and rigidly punish whatever breach of rule has been made while the time allotted for diversion lasts: but in a school of girls, strictly kept, at _their_ hours of permitted recreation no distinct sounds can be heard through the general clamour of joy and confusion; nor does any thing come less into their heads than the notion of imposing regulations on themselves, or making sport out of the harsh sounds of _rule and government_. Ridicule too points her arrows only among highly-polished societies--_Paris_ and _London_, in the first of which all wit is comprised in the power of ridiculing one's neighbours, and in the other every artifice is put in practice to escape it. In Italy no such terrors restrain conversation; no public censure pursues that fantastical behaviour which leads to no public offence; and as it is only fear which can beget falsehood, these people seek such behavior as naturally suits them; and in our theatrical phrase, they let the character come to them, they do not go to the character. Let us not fail to remember after all, that such severity as we use, quickens the desire of pleasing, and deadens the diffusion of immoral sentiments, or indelicate language, in England; where, I must add, for the honour of my country, that if such liberties were taken upon the stage as are frequent in the first ranks of Italian society, they would be hissed by those who paid only a shilling for their entrance: so that affectation and a forced refinement may be considered as the bad leaden statues still left in our delicately-neat and highly-ornamented gardens; of which elegance and science are the white and red roses: but to be possessed of their _sweets_, one must venture a little through the _thorns_.--_Thorns_, though figurative, remind one of the _cicala_, a creature which leaves nothing else untouched here. Surely their clamours and depredations have no equal. I used to walk in the Boboli Gardens, defying the heat, till they had eaten up the little shade some hedges there afforded me; and till, by their incessant noise, all thought is disturbed, and no line presented itself to my memory but Sole sob ardenti resonant arbusta Cicadis[W]; [Footnote W: While in the scorching sun I trace in vain Thy flying footsteps o'er the burning plain, The creaking locusts with my voice conspire, They fried with heat, and I with fierce desire. DRYDEN. ] till Mr. Merry's sweet ode to summer here at Florence made one less discontented, To hear the light cicala's ceaseless din, That vibrates shrill; or the near-weeping brook That feebly winds along, And mourns his channel shrunk. MERRY. This animal has four wings, four eyes, and two membranes like parchment under the hard scales he is covered with; and these, it is said, create the uncommon noise he makes, by blowing them somewhat like bellows, to sharpen the sound; which, whatever it proceeds from, is louder than can be guessed at by those who have not heard it in Tuscany. He is of the locust kind, an inch and a half long, and wonderfully light in proportion; though no small feeder, I should imagine, by the total destruction his noisy tribe make amongst the leaves, which are now wholly stript by them of all their verdure, the fibres only being left; and I observed yesterday evening, as we returned from airing, another strange deprivation practised on the mulberry leaves round the city, which being all forcibly torn away for the use of the silk-worms, make an odd fort of artificial winter near the town walls; and remind one of the wretched geese in Lincolnshire, plucked once a year for their feathers by their truly unfeeling proprietors. I am told indeed, that both revegetate, though I trust neither tree nor bird can fail to experience fatal effects one day or other in consequence of so unnatural an operation. Here is some ivy of uncommon growth, but I have seen larger both at Beaumaris castle in North Wales, and at the abbey of Glastonbury in Somersetshire: but the great pines in the Caseine woods have, I suppose, no rival nearer than the Castagno a Cento Cavalli, mentioned by Mr. Brydone. They afford little shade or shelter from heat however, as their umbrella-like covering is strangely small in proportion to their height and size; some of them being ten, and some twelve feet in diameter. These venerable, these glorious productions of nature are all now marked for destruction however; all going to be put in wicker baskets, and feed the Grand Duke's fires. I saw a fellow hewing one down to-day, and the rest are all to follow;--the feeble Florentines had much ado to master it; Seemed the harmful hatchet to fear, And to wound holy Eld would forbear, as Spenser says: I did half hope they could not get it down; but the loyal Tuscans (evermore awed by the name _principe_) told us it was right to get rid of them, as one of the cones, of which they bore vast quantities, might chance to drop upon the head of a _Principettino_, or little Prince, as he passed along. I was observing that restraint was necessary to man; I have now learned a notion that noise is necessary too. The clatter made here in the Piazza del Duomo, where you sit in your carriage at a coffee-house door, and chat with your friends according to Italian custom, while _one_ eats ice, and _another_ calls for lemonade, to while away the time after dinner, the noise made then and there, I say, is beyond endurance. Our Florentines have nothing on earth to do; yet a dozen fellows crying _ciambelli_, little cakes, about the square, assisted by beggars, who lie upon the church steps, and pray or rather promise to pray as loud as their lungs will let them, for the _anime sante di purgatorio_[Footnote: Holy souls in purgatory.]; ballad-singers meantime endeavouring to drown these clamours in their own, and gentlemen's servants disputing at the doors, whose master shall be first served; ripping up the pedigrees of each to prove superior claims for a biscuit or macaroon; do make such an intolerable clatter among them, that one cannot, for one's life, hear one another speak: and I did say just now, that it were as good live at Brest or Portsmouth when the rival fleets were fitting out, as here; where real tranquillity subsists under a bustle merely imaginary. Our Grand Duke lives with little state for aught I can observe here; but where there is least pomp, there is commonly most power; for a man must have _something pour se de dommages_[Footnote: To make himself amends.], as the French express it; and this gentleman possessing the _solide_ has no care for the _clinquant_, I trow. He tells his subjects when to go to bed, and who to dance with, till the hour he chuses they should retire to rest, with exactly that sort of old-fashioned paternal authority that fathers used to exercise over their families in England before commerce had run her levelling plough over all ranks, and annihilated even the name of subordination. If he hear of any person living long in Florence without being able to give a good account of his business there, the Duke warns him to go away; and if he loiter after such warning given, sends him out. Does any nobleman shine in pompous equipage or splendid table; the Grand Duke enquires soon into his pretensions, and scruples not to give personal advice, and add grave reproofs with regard to the management of each individual's private affairs, the establishment of their sons, marriage of their sisters, &c. When they appeared to complain of this behaviour to _me_, I know not, replied I, what to answer: one has always read and heard that the Sovereigns ought to behave in despotic governments like the _fathers of their family_: and the Archbishop of Cambray inculcates no other conduct than this, when advising his pupil, heir to the crown of France. "Yes, Madam," replied one of my auditors, with an acuteness truly Italian; "but this Prince is _our father-in-law_." The truth is, much of an English traveller's pleasure is taken off at Florence by the incessant complaints of a government he does not understand, and of oppressions he cannot remedy. Tis so dull to hear people lament the want of liberty, to which I question whether they have any pretensions; and without ever knowing whether it is the tyranny or the tyrant they complain of. Tedious however and most uninteresting are their accounts of grievances, which a subject of Great Britain has much ado to comprehend, and more to pity; as they are now all heart-broken, because they must say their prayers in their own language and not in Latin, which, how it can be construed into misfortune, a Tuscan alone can tell. Lord Corke has given us many pleasing anecdotes of those who were formerly Princes in this land. Had they a sovereign of the old Medici family, they would go to bed when _he_ bid them quietly enough I believe, and say their prayers in what language _he_ would have them: 'tis in our parliamentary phrase, the _men_, not the _measures_ that offend them; and while they pretend to whine as if despotism displeased them, they detest every republican state, feel envy towards Venice, and contempt for Lucca. I would rather talk of their gallery than their government: and surely nothing made by man ever so completely answered a raised expectation, as the apparent contest between Titian's recumbent beauty, glowing with colour and animated by the warmest expression, and the Greek statue of symmetrical perfection and fineness of form inimitable, where sculpture supplies all that fancy can desire, and all that imagination can suggest. These two models of excellence seem placed near each other, at once to mock all human praise, and defy all future imitation. The listening slave appears disturbed by the blows of the wrestlers in the same room, and hearkens with an attentive impatience, such as one has often felt when unable to distinguish the words one wishes to repeat. You really then do not seem as if you were alone in this tribune, so animated is every figure, so full of life and soul: yet I commend not the representing of St Catharine with leering eyes, as she is here painted by Titian; that it is meant for a portrait, I find no excuse; some character more suited to the expression should have been chosen; and if it were only the picture of a saint, that expression was strangely out of character. An anachronism may be found in the Tobit over the door too, by acute observers, who will deem it ill-managed to paint the cross in the clouds, where it is an old testament story, and that story apocryphal beside; might I add, that Guido's meek Madonna, so divinely contrasted to the other women in the room, loses something of dignity by the affected position of the thumbs. I think I might leave the tribune without a word said of the St. John by Raphael, which no words are worthy to extol: 'tis all sublimity; and when I look on it I feel nothing but veneration pushed to astonishment. Unlike the elegant figure of the Baptist at Padua, covered with glass, and belonging to a convent of friars, who told me, and truly, That it had no equal; it is painted by Guido with every perfection of form and every grace of expression. I agree with them it has no equal; but in the tribune at Florence maybe found its superior. We were next conducted to the Niobe, who has an apartment to herself: and now, thought I, dear Mrs. Siddons has never seen this figure: but those who can see it or her, without emotions equally impossible to contain or to suppress, deserve the fate of Niobe, and have already half-suffered it. Their hearts and eyes are stone. Nothing is worth speaking of after this Niobe! Her beauty! her maternal anguish! her closely-clasped Chloris! her half-raised head, scarcely daring to deprecate that vengeance of which she already feels such dreadful effects! What can one do But drop the shady curtain on the scene, and run to see the portraits of those artists who have exalted one's ideas of human nature, and shewn what man can perform. Among these worthies a British eye soon distinguishes Sir Joshua Reynolds; a citizen of the world fastens his to Leonardo da Vinci. I have been out to dinner in the country near Prato, and what a charming, what a delightful thing is a nobleman's seat near Florence! How cheerful the society! how splendid the climate! how wonderful the prospects in this glorious country! The Arno rolling before his house, the Appenines rising behind it! a sight of fertility enjoyed by its inhabitants, and a view of such defences to their property as nature alone can bestow. A peasantry so rich too, that the wives and daughters of the farmer go dressed in jewels; and those of no small value. A pair of one-drop ear-rings, a broadish necklace, with a long piece hanging down the bosom, and terminated with a cross, all of set garnets clear and perfect, is a common, a _very_ common treasure to the females about this country; and on every Sunday or holiday, when they dress and mean to look pretty, their elegantly-disposed ornaments attract attention strongly; though I do not think them as handsome as the Lombard lasses, and our Venetian friends protest that the farmers at Crema in _their_ state are still richer. La Contadinella Toscana however, in a very rich white silk petticoat, exceedingly full and short, to shew her neat pink slipper and pretty ancle, her pink _corps de robe_ and straps, with white silk lacing down the stomacher, puffed shirt sleeves, with heavy lace robbins ending at the elbow, and fastened at the shoulders with at least eight or nine bows of narrow pink ribbon, a lawn handkerchief trimmed with broad lace, put on somewhat coquettishly, and finishing in front with a nosegay, must make a lovely figure at any rate: though the hair is drawn away from the face in a way rather too tight to be becoming, under a red velvet cushion edged with gold, which helps to wear it off I think, but gives the small Leghorn hat, lined with green, a pretty perking air, which is infinitely nymphish and smart. A tolerably pretty girl so dressed may surely more than vie with a _fille d' opera_ upon the Paris stage, even were she not set off as these are with a very rich suit of pearls or set garnets, that in France or England would not be purchased for less than forty or fifty pounds: and I am now speaking of the women perpetually under one's eye; not one or two picked from the crowd, like Mrs. Vanini, an inn-keeper's wife in Florence, who, when she was dressed for the masquerade two nights ago, submitted her finery to Mrs. Greatheed's inspection and my own; who agreed she could not be so adorned in England for less than a thousand pounds. It is true the nobility are proud of letting you see how comfortably their dependants live in Tuscany; but can any pride be more rational or generous, or any desire more patriotick? Oh may they never look with less delight on the happiness of their inferiors! and then they will not murmur at their prince, whose protection of _this_ rank among his subjects is eminently tender and attentive. Returning home from our splendid dinner and agreeable day passed at Conte Mannucci's country-seat, while our noble friends amused me with various chat, I thought some unaccountable sparks of fire seemed to strike up and down the hedges as if in perpetual motion, but checked the fancy concluding it a trick of the imagination only; till the evening, which shuts in strangely quick here in Tuscany, grew dark, and exhibited an appearance wholly new to me; whose surprise that no flame followed these wandering fires was not small, when I recollected the state of desiccation that nature suffered, and had done for some months. My dislike of interrupting an agreeable conversation kept me long from enquiring into the cause of this appearance, which however I doubted not was electrick, till they told me it was the _lucciola_, or fire-fly; of which a very good account is given in twenty books, but I had forgotten them all. As the Florence Miscellany has never been published, I will copy out what is said of it _there_, because the Abate Fontana was consulted when that description was given. "This insect then differs from every other of the luminous tribe, because its light is by no means continual, but emitted by flashes, suddenly striking out as it flies; when crushed it leaves a lustre on the spot for a considerable time, from whence one may conclude its nature is phosphorick." Oh vagrant insect, type of our short life, 'Tis thus we shine, and vanish from the view; For the cold season comes, And all our lustre's o'er. MERRY's Ode to Summer. It is said I think, that no animal affords an acid except ants, which are therefore most quickly destroyed by lime, pot-ash, &c. or any strong alkali of course; yet acid must the lucciola be proved, or she can never be phosphorick surely; as upon its analysis that strangest of all compositions appears to be a union of violent acid with inflammable matter, whence it may be termed an animal sulphur, and is actually found to burn successfully under a common glass-bell; and to afford flowers too, which, by attracting the humidity of the air, become a liquor like _oleum sulphuris per campanam_[Footnote: Oil of sulphur by the bell.]. The colour of the sky viewed, when one dares to look at it, through this pure atmosphere is particularly beautiful; of a much more brilliant and celestial blue I think, than it appeared from the tower of St. Mark's Place, Venice. Were I to affirm that the sea is of a more peculiar transparent brightness upon the coast of North Wales than elsewhere, it would seem prejudice perhaps, and yet is strictly true: I am not less persuaded that the sky appears of a finer tint in Tuscany than any other country I have visited:--Naples is however the vaunted climate, and that yet remains to be examined. I have been shewed, at the horse-race, the theatre, &c. the unfortunate grandson of King James the Second. He goes much into publick still, though old and sickly; gives the English arms and livery, and wears the garter, which he has likewise bestowed upon his natural daughter. The Princess of Stoldberg, his consort, whom he always called Queen, has left him to end a life of disappointment and sorrow by _himself_, with the sad reflection, that even conjugal attachment, and of course domestic comfort, was denied to _him_, and fled--in defiance of poetry and fiction--fled with the crown, to its powerful and triumphant possessors. The Duomo, or Cathedral, has engaged my attention all to-day: its prodigious size, perfect proportions, and exquisite taste, ought to have detained me longer. Though the outside does not please me as well as if it had been less rich and less magnificent. Superfluity always defeats its own purpose, of striking you with awe at its superior greatness; while simplicity looks on, and laughs at its vain attempts. This wonderful church, built of striped marbles, white, black, and red alternately, has scarcely the air of being so composed, but looks like painted ivory to _me_, who am obliged to think, and think again, before I can be sure it is of so ponderous and massy, as well as so inestimable a substance: nor can I, without more than equal difficulty, persuade myself to give its sudden view the decided preference over St. Paul's in London, which never, never misses its immediate effect on a spectator, But stands sublime in simplest majesty. The Battisterio is another structure close to the church, and of surprising beauty; Michael Angelo said the gates of it deserved to be those which open Paradise: and that speech was more the speech of a good workman, than of a man whose mind was exalted by his profession. The gates are of brass, divided into ninety-six compartments each, and carved with such variety of invention, such elaboration of art and ingenuity, that no praise except that which he gave them could have been too high. The font has not been used since the days when immersion in baptism was deemed necessary to salvation; a ceremony still considered by the Greek church as indispensable. Why the disputes concerning _this_ sacrament were carried on with more decency and less lasting rancour among Christians, than those which related to the other great pledge of our pardon, the communicating with our Saviour Christ in his last Supper, I know not, nor can imagine. Every page of ecclesiastical history exhibits the tenaciousness with which the smallest attendant circumstance on this last-mentioned sacrament has been held fast by the Romanists, who dropped the immersion at baptism of themselves; and in so warm a climate too! it moves my wonder; when nothing is more obvious to the meanest understanding, than that if the first sacrament is not rightly and duly administered, we never shall arrive at receiving the other at all. I hope it is impossible for any one less than myself to wish the continuance or revival of contentions so disgraceful to humanity in general; so peculiarly repugnant to the true spirit of Christianity, which consists chiefly in charity, and that brotherly love we know to have been cemented by the blood of our blessed Lord: yet very strange it is to think, that while other innovations have been resisted even to death, scarcely any among the many sects we have divided into, retain the original form in that ceremony so emphatically called _christening_. These observations suggested by the sight of the old font at Florence shall now be succeeded by lighter subjects of reflection; among which the first that presents itself is the superior elegance of the language; for till we arrive _here_, all is dialect; though by this word I would not have any one mistake me, or understand it as meant in the limited sense of a provincial jargon, such as Yorkshire, Derbyshire, or Cornwall, present us with; where every sound is corruption, barbarism, and vulgarity. The States of Italy being all under different rulers, are kept separate from each other, and speak a different dialect; that of Milan full of consonants and harsh to the ear, but abounding with classical expressions that rejoice one's heart, and fill one with the oddest but most pleasing sensations imaginable. I heard a lady there call a runaway nobleman _Profugo_ mighty prettily; and added, that his conduct had put all the town into _orgasmo grande_. All this, however, the Tuscans may possibly have in common with them. My knowledge of the language must remain ever too imperfect for me to depend on my own skill in it; all I can assert is, that the Florentines _appear_, as far as I have been competent to observe, to depend more on their own copious and beautiful language for expression, than the Milanese do; who run to Spanish, Greek, or Latin for assistance, while half their tongue is avowedly borrowed from the French, whose pronunciation, in the letter _u_, they even profess to retain. At Venice, the sweetness of the patois is irresistible; their lips, incapable of uttering any but the sweetest sounds, reject all consonants they can get quit of; and make their mouths drop honey more completely than it can be said by any eloquence less mellifluous than their own. The Bolognese dialect is detested by the other Italians, as gross and disagreeable in its sounds: but every nation has the good word of its own inhabitants; and the language which Abbate Bianconi praises as nervous and expressive, I would advise no person, less learned than himself, to censure as disgusting, or condemn as dull. I staid very little at Bologna; saw nothing but their pictures, and heard nothing but their prayers: those were superior, I fancy, to all rivals. Language can be never spoken of by a foreigner to any effect of conviction. I have heard our countryman. Mr. Greatheed himself, who perhaps possesses more Italian than almost any Englishman, and studies it more closely, refuse to decide in critical disputations among his literary friends here, though the sonnets he writes in the Tuscan language are praised by the natives, who best understand it, and have been by some of them preferred to those written by Milton himself. Mean time this is acknowledged to be the prime city for purity of phrase and delicacy of expression, which, at last, is so disguised to me by the guttural manner in which many sounds are pronounced, that I feel half weary of running about from town to town so, and never arriving at any, where I can understand the conversation without putting all the attention possible to their discourse. I am now told that less efforts will be necessary at Rome. Nothing can be prettier, however, than the slow and tranquil manners of a Florentine; nothing more polished than his general address and behaviour: ever in the third person, though to a blackguard in the street, if he has not the honour of his particular acquaintance, while intimacy produces _voi_ in those of the highest rank, who call one another Carlo and Angelo very sweetly; the ladies taking up the same notion, and saying Louisa, or Maddalena, without any addition at all. The Don and Donna of Milan were offensive to me somehow, as they conveyed an idea of Spain, not Italy. Here Signora is the term, which better pleases one's ear, and Signora Contessa, Signora Principessa, if the person is of higher quality, resembles our manners more when we say my Lady Dutchess, &c. What strikes me as most observable, is the uniformity of style in all the great towns. At Venice the men of literature and fashion speak with the same accent, and I believe the same quick turns of expression as their Gondolier; and the coachman at Milan talks no broader than the Countess; who, if she does not speak always in French to a foreigner, as she would willingly do, tries in vain to talk Italian; and having asked you thus, _alla capi?_ which means _ha ella capita?_ laughs at herself for trying to _toscaneggiare_, as she calls it, and gives the point up with _no cor altr._ that comes in at the end of every sentence, and means _non occorre altro_; there is no more occurs upon the subject. The Laquais de Place who attended us at Bologna was one of the few persons I had met then, who spoke a language perfectly intelligible to me. "Are you a Florentine, pray friend, said I?" "No, madam, but the _combinations_ of this world having led me to talk much with strangers, I contrive to _tuscanize_ it all I can for _their_ advantage, and doubt not but it will tend to my own at last." Such a sentiment, so expressed by a footman, would set a plain man in London a laughing, and make a fanciful Lady imagine he was a nobleman disguised. Here nobody laughs, nor nobody stares, nor wonders that their valet speaks just as good language, or utters as well-turned sentences as themselves. Their cold answer to my amazement is as comical as the fellow's fine style--_è battizzato_[Footnote: He has been baptized.], say they, _come noi altri_[Footnote: As well as we.]. But we are called away to hear the fair Fantastici, a young woman who makes improviso verses, and sings them, as they tell me, with infinite learning and taste. She is successor to the celebrated Corilla, who no longer exhibits the power she once held without a rival: yet to _her_ conversations every one still strives for admittance, though she is now ill, and old, and hoarse with repeated colds. She spares, however, now by no labour or fatigue to obtain and keep that superiority and admiration which one day perhaps gave her almost equal trouble to receive and to repay. But who can bear to lay their laurels by? Corilla is gay by nature, and witty, if I may say so, by habit; replete with fancy, and powerful to combine images apparently distant. Mankind is at last more just to people of talents than is universally allowed, I think. Corilla, without pretensions either to immaculate character (in the English sense), deep erudition, or high birth, which an Italian esteems above all earthly things, has so made her way in the world, that all the nobility of both sexes crowd to her house; that no Prince passes through Florence without waiting on Corilla; that the Capitol will long recollect her being crowned there, and that many sovereigns have not only sought her company, but have been obliged to put up with slights from her independent spirit, and from her airy, rather than haughty behaviour. She is, however, (I cannot guess why) not rich, and keeps no carriage; but enjoying all the effect of money, convenience, company, and general attention, is probably very happy; as she does not much suffer her thoughts of the next world to disturb her felicity in _this_, I believe, while willing to turn every thing into mirth, and make all admire _her wit_, even at the expence of _their own virtue_. The following Epigram, made by her, will explain my meaning, and give a specimen of her present powers of improvisation, undecayed by ill health; and I might add, _undismayed_ by it. An old gentleman here, one Gaetano Testa Grossa had a young wife, whose name was Mary, and who brought him a son when he was more than seventy years old. Corilla led him gaily into the circle of company with these words: "Miei Signori Io vi presento Il buon Uomo Gaetano; Che non sà che cosa sia Il misterio sovr'umano Del Figliuolo di Maria." Let not the infidels triumph however, or rank among them the truly-illustrious Corilla! 'Twas but the rage, I hope, of keeping at any rate the fame she has gained, when the sweet voice is gone, which once enchanted all who heard it--like the daughters of Pierius in Ovid. And though I was exceedingly entertained by the present improvisatrice, the charming Fantastici, whose youth, beauty, erudition, and fidelity to her husband, give her every claim upon one's heart, and every just pretension to applause, I could not, in the midst of that delight, which classick learning and musical excellence combined to produce, forbear a grateful recollection of the civilities I had received from Corilla, and half-regretting that her rival should be so successful; For tho' the treacherous tapster, Thomas, Hangs a new angel ten doors from us, We hold it both a shame and sin To quit the true old Angel Inn. Well! if some people have too little appearance of respect for religion, there are others who offend one by having too much, and so the balance is kept even. We were a walking last night in the gardens of Porto St. Gallo, and met two or three well-looking women of the second rank, with a baby, four or five years old at most, dressed in the habit of a Dominican Friar, bestowing the benediction as he walked along like an officiating Priest. I felt a shock given to all my nerves at once, and asked Cavalier D'Elci the meaning of so strange a device. His reply to me was, "_E divozione mal intesa, Signora_[Footnote: 'Tis ill-understood devotion, madam.];" and turning round to the other gentlemen, "Now this folly," said he, "a hundred years ago would have been the object of profound veneration and prodigious applause. Fifty years hence it would be censured as hypocritical; it is now passed by wholly unnoticed, except by this foreign Lady, who, I believe, thought it was done for a joke. I have had a little fever since I came hither from the intense heat I trust; but my maid has a worse still. Doctor Bicchierei, with that liberality which ever is found to attend real learning, prescribed James's powders to _her_, and bid me attend to Buchan's Domestick Medicine, and I should do well enough he said. Mr. Greatheed, Mr. Parsons, Mr. Biddulph, and Mr. Piozzi, have been together on a party of pleasure to see the renowned Vallombrosa, and came home contradicting Milton, who says the devils lay bestrewn Thick as autumnal leaves in Vallombrosa: Whereas, say they, the trees are all evergreen in those woods. Milton, it seems, was right notwithstanding: for the botanists tell me, that nothing makes more litter than the shedding of leaves, which, replace themselves by others, as on the plants stiled ever-green, which change like every tree, but only do not change all at once, and remain stript till spring. They spoke highly of their very kind and hospitable reception at the convent, where Safe from pangs the worldling knows, Here secure in calm repose, Far from life's perplexing maze, The pious fathers pass their days; While the bell's shrill-tinkling sound Regulates their constant round. And Here the traveller elate Finds an ever-open gate: All his wants find quick supply, While welcome beams from every eye. PARSONS. This pious foundation of retired Benedictines, situated in the Appenines, about eighteen miles from Florence, owes its original to Giovanni Gualberto, a Tuscan nobleman, whose brother Hugo having been killed by a relation in the year 1015, he resolved to avenge his death; but happening to meet the assassin alone and in a solitary place, whither he appeared to have been driven by a sense of guilt, and seeing him suddenly drop down at his feet, and without uttering a word produce from his bosom a crucifix, holding it up in a supplicating gesture, with look submissively imploring, he felt the force of this silent rhetoric, and generously gave his enemy free pardon. On further reflection upon the striking scene, Gualberto felt still more affected; and from seeing the dangers and temptations which surround a bustling life, resolved to quit the too much mixed society of mankind, and settle in a state of perpetual retirement. For this purpose he chose Vallombrosa, and there founded the famous convent so justly admired by all who visit it. Such stories lead one forward to the tombs of Michael Angelo and the great Galileo, which last I looked on to-day with reverence, pity, and wonder; to think that a change so surprising should be made in worldly affairs since his time; that the man who no longer ago than the year 1636, was by the torments and terrors of the Inquisition obliged formally to renounce, as heretical, accursed, and contrary to religion, the revived doctrines of Copernicus, should now have a monument erected to his memory, in the very city where he was born, whence he was cruelly torn away to answer at Rome for the supposed offence; to which he returned; and strange to tell, in which he lived on, by his own desire, with the wife who, by her discovery of his sentiments, and information given to the priests accordingly, had caused his ruin; and who, after his death, in a fit of mad mistaken zeal, flung into the fire, in company with her confessor, all the papers she could find in his study. How wonderful are these events! and how sweet must the science of astronomy have been to that poor man, who suffered all but actual martyrdom in its cause! How odd too, that ever Galileo's son, by such a mother as we have just described, should apply himself to the same studies, and be the inventor of the simple pendulum so necessary to every kind of clock-work! Religious prejudices however, and their effects--and thanks be to God their almost final conclusion too--may be found nearer home than Galileo's tomb; while Milton has a monument in the same cathedral with Dr. South, who perhaps would have given credit to no _human_ information, which should have told him that event would take place. We are now going soon to leave Florence, seat of the arts and residence of literature! I shall be sincerely sorry to quit a city where not a step can be taken without a new or a revived idea being added to our store;--where such statues as would in England have colleges founded, or palaces built for their reception, stand in the open street; the Centaur, the Sabine woman, and the Justice: Where the Madonna della Seggiola reigns triumphant over all pictures for brilliancy of colouring and vigour of pencil. It was the portrait of Raphaelle's favourite mistress, and his own child by her sate for the Bambino:--is it then wonderful that it should want that heavenly expression of dignity divine, and grace unutterable, which breathes through the school of Caracci? Connoisseurs will have all excellence united in one picture, and quarrel unkindly if merit of any kind be wanting: Surely the Madonna della Seggiola has nature to recommend it, and much more need not be desired. If the young and tender and playful innocence of early infancy is what chiefly delights and detains one's attention, it may be found to its utmost possible perfection in a painter far inferior to Raphael, Carlo Marratt. If softness in the female character, and meek humility of countenance, be all that are wanted for the head of a Madonna, we must go to Elisabetta Sirani and Sassoferrata I think; but it is ever so. The Cordelia of Mrs. Cibber was beyond all comparison softer and sweeter than that of her powerful successor Siddons; yet who will say that the actresses were equal? But I must bid adieu to beautiful Florence, where the streets are kept so clean one is afraid to dirty _them_, and not _one's self_, by walking in them: where the public walks are all nicely weeded, as in England, and the gardens have a homeish and Bath-like look, that is excessively cheering to an English eye:--where, when I dined at Prince Corsini's table, I heard the Cardinal say grace, and thought of the ceremonies at Queen's College, Oxford; where I had the honour of entertaining, at my own dinner on the 25th of July, many of the Tuscan, and many of the English nobility; and Nardini kindly played a solo in the evening at a concert we gave in Meghitt's great room:--where we have compiled the little book amongst us, known by the name of the Florence Miscellany; as a memorial of that friendship which does me so much honour, and which I earnestly hope may long subsist among us:--where in short we have lived exceeding comfortably, but where dear Mrs. Greatheed and myself have encouraged each other, in saying it would be particularly sad to _die_, not of the gnats, or more properly musquitoes, for they do not sting one quite to death, though their venom has swelled my arm so as to oblige me to carry it for this last week in a sling; but of the _mal di petto_, which is endemial in this country, and much resembling our pleurisy in its effects. Blindness too seems no uncommon misfortune at Florence, from the strong reverberation of the sun's rays on houses of the cleanest and most brilliant whiteness; kept so elegantly nice too, that I should despair of seeing more delicacy at Amsterdam. Apoplexies are likewise frequent enough: I saw a man carried out stone dead from St. Pancrazio's church one morning about noon-day; but nobody seemed disturbed at the event I think, except myself. Though this is no good town to take one's last leave of life in neither; as the body one has been so long taking care of, would in twenty-four hours be hoisted up upon a common cart, with those of all the people who died the same day, and being fairly carried out of Porto San Gallo towards the dusk of evening, would be shot into a hole dug away from the city, properly enough, to protect Florence, and keep it clear of putrid disorders and disagreeable smells. All this with little ceremony to be sure, and less distinction; for the Grand Duke suffers the pride of birth to last no longer than life however, and demolishes every hope of the woman of quality lying in a separate grave from the distressed object who begged at her carriage door when she was last on an airing. Let me add, that his liberality of sentiment extends to virtue on the one hand, if hardness of heart may be complained of on the other. He suffers no difference of opinions to operate on his philosophy, and I believe we heretics here should sleep among the best of his Tuscan nobles. But there is no comfort in the possibility of being buried alive by the excessive haste with which people are catched up and hurried away, before it can be known almost whether all sparks of life are extinct or no. Such management, and the lamentations one hears made by the great, that they should thus be forced to keep _bad company_ after death, remind me for ever of an old French epigram, the sentiment of which I perfectly recollect, but have forgotten the verses, of which however these lines are no unfaithful translation; I dreamt that in my house of clay, A beggar buried by me lay; Rascal! go stink apart, I cry'd, Nor thus disgrace my noble side. Heyday! cries he, what's here to do? I'm on my dunghill sure, as well as you. Of elegant Florence then, so ornamented and so lovely, so neat that it is said she should be seen only on holidays; dedicated of old to Flora, and still the residence of sweetness, grace, and the fine arts particularly; of these kind friends too, so amiable, so hospitable, where I had the choice of four boxes every night at the theatre, and a certainty of charming society in each, we must at last unwillingly take leave; and on to-morrow, the twelfth day of September 1785, once more commit ourselves to our coach, which has hitherto met with no accident that could affect us, and in which, with God's protection, I fear not my journey through what is left of Italy; though such tremendous tales are told in many of our travelling books, of terrible roads and wicked postillions, and ladies labouring through the mire on foot, to arrive at bad inns where nothing eatable could be found. All which however is less despicable than Tournefort, the great French botanist; who, while his works swell with learning, and sparkle with general knowledge; while he enlarges _your_ stock of ideas, and displays _his own_; laments pathetically that he could not get down the partridges caught for him in one of the Archipelagon islands, because they were not larded--_à la mode de Paris_. LUCCA. From the head-quarters of painting, sculpture, and architecture then, where art is at her acme, and from a people polished into brilliancy, perhaps a little into weakness, we drove through the celebrated vale of Arno; thick hedges on each side us, which in spring must have been covered with blossoms and fragrant with perfume; now loaded with uncultivated fruits; the wild grape, raspberry, and azaroli, inviting to every sense, and promising every joy. This beautiful and fertile, this highly-adorned and truly delicious country carried us forward to Lucca, where the panther sits at the gate, and liberty is written up on every wall and door. It is so long since I have seen the word, that even the letters of it rejoice my heart; but how the panther came to be its emblem, who can tell? Unless the philosophy we learn from old Lilly in our childhood were true, _nec vult panthera domari_[Footnote: That the panther will never be tamed.]. That this fairy commonwealth should so long have maintained its independency is strange; but Howel attributes her freedom to the active and industrious spirit of the inhabitants, who, he says, resemble a hive of bees, for order and for diligence. I never did see a place so populous for the size of it: one is actually thronged running up and down the streets of Lucca, though it is a little town enough for a capital city to be sure; larger than Salisbury though, and prettier than Nottingham, the beauties of both which places it unites with all the charms peculiar to itself. The territory they claim, and of which no power dares attempt to dispossess them, is much about the size of _Rutlandshire_ I fancy; surrounded and apparently fenced in on every side, by the Appenines as by a wall, that wall a hot one, on the southern side, and wholly planted over with vines, while the soft shadows which fall upon the declivity of the mountains make it inexpressibly pretty; and form, by the particular disposition of their light and shadow, a variety which no other prospect so confined can possibly enjoy. This is the Ilam gardens of Europe; and whoever has seen that singular spot in Derbyshire belonging to Mr. Port, has seen little Lucca in a convex mirror. Some writer calls it a ring upon the finger of the Emperor, under whose protection it has been hitherto preserved safe from the Grand Duke of Tuscany till these days, in which the interests of those two sovereigns, united by intimacy as by blood and resemblance of character, are become almost exactly the same. A Doge, whom they call the _Principe_, is elected every two months; and is assisted by ten senators in the administration of justice. Their armoury is the prettiest plaything I ever yet saw, neatly kept, and capable of furnishing twenty-five thousand men with arms. Their revenues are about equal to the Duke of Bedford's I believe, eighty or eighty-five thousand pounds sterling a year; every spot of ground belonging to these people being cultivated to the highest pitch of perfection that agriculture, or rather gardening (for one cannot call these enclosures fields), will admit: and though it is holiday time just now, I see no neglect of necessary duty. They were watering away this morning at seven o'clock, just as we do in a nursery-ground about London, a hundred men at once, or more, before they came home to make themselves smart, and go to hear music in their best church, in honour of some saint, I have forgotten who; but he is the patron of Lucca, and cannot be accused of neglecting his charge, that is certain. This city seems really under admirable regulations; here are fewer beggars than even at Florence, where however one for fifty in the states of Genoa or Venice do not meet your eyes: And either the word liberty has bewitched me, or I see an air of plenty without insolence, and business without noise, that greatly delight me. Here is much cheerfulness too, and gay good-humour; but this is the season of devotion at Lucca, and in these countries the ideas of devotion and diversion are so blended, that all religious worship seems connected with, and to me now regularly implies, _a festive show_. Well, as the Italians say, "_Il mondo è bello perche è variabile_[Footnote: The world is pleasant because it is various.]." We English dress our clergymen in black, and go ourselves to the theatre in colours. Here matters are reversed, the church at noon looked like a flower-garden, so gaily adorned were the priests, confrairies, &c. while the Opera-house at night had more the air of a funeral, as every body was dressed in black: a circumstance I had forgotten the meaning of, till reminded that such was once the emulation of finery among the persons of fashion in this city, that it was found convenient to restrain the spirit of expence, by obliging them to wear constant mourning: a very rational and well-devised rule in a town so small, where every body is known to every body; and where, when this silly excitement to envy is wisely removed, I know not what should hinder the inhabitants from living like those one reads of in the Golden Age; which, above all others, this climate most resembles, where pleasure contributes to sooth life, commerce to quicken it, and faith extends its prospects to eternity. Such is, or such at least appears to me this lovely territory of Lucca: where cheap living, free government, and genteel society, may be enjoyed with a tranquillity unknown to larger states: where there are delicious and salutary baths a few miles out of town, for the nobility to make _villeggiatura_ at; and where, if those nobility were at all disposed to cultivate and communicate learning, every opportunity for study is afforded. Some drawbacks will however always be found from human felicity. I once mentioned this place with warm expectations of delight, to a Milanese lady of extensive knowledge, and every elegant accomplishment worthy her high birth, _the Contessa Melzi Resla_. "Why yes," said she, "if you would find out the place where common sense stagnates, and every topic of conversation dwindles and perishes away by too frequent or too unskilful touching and handling, you must go to Lucca. My ill-health sent me to their beautiful baths one summer; where all the faculties of my body were restored, thank God, but those of my soul were stupified to such a degree, that at last I was fit to keep no other company but _Dame Lucchesi_ I think; and _our_ talk was soon ended, heaven knows, for when they had once asked me of an evening, what I had for dinner? and told me how many pair of stockings their neighbours sent to the wash, we had done." This was a young, a charming, a lively lady of quality; full of curiosity to know the world, and of spirits to bustle through it; but had she been battered through the various societies of London and Paris for eighteen or twenty years together, she would have loved Lucca better, and despised it less. "We must not look for whales in the Euxine Sea," says an old writer; and we must not look for great men or great things in little nations to be sure, but let us respect the innocence of childhood, and regard with tenderness the territory of Lucca: where no man has been murdered during the life or memory of any of its peaceful inhabitants; where one robbery alone has been committed for sixteen years; and the thief hanged by a Florentine executioner borrowed for the purpose, no Lucchese being able or willing to undertake so horrible an office, with terrifying circumstances of penitence and public reprehension: where the governed are so few in proportion to the governors; all power being circulated among four hundred and fifty nobles, and the whole country producing scarcely ninety thousand souls. A great boarding-school in England is really an infinitely more licentious place; and grosser immoralities are every day connived at in it, than are known to pollute this delicate and curious commonwealth; which keeps a council always subsisting, called the _Discoli_, to examine the lives and conduct, professions, and even _health_ of their subjects: and once o'year they sweep the town of vagabonds, which till then are caught up and detained in a house of correction, and made to work, if hot disabled by lameness, till the hour of their release and dismission. I wondered there were so few beggars about, but the reason is now apparent: these we see are neighbours, come hither only for the three days gala. I was wonderfully solicitous to obtain some of their coin, which carries on it the image of no _earthly_ prince; but his head only who came to redeem us from general slavery on the one side, _Jesus Christ_; on the other, the word _Libertas_. Our peasant-girls here are in a new dress to me; no more jewels to be seen, no more pearls; the finery of which so dazzled me in Tuscany: these wenches are prohibited such ornaments it seems. A muslin handkerchief, folded in a most becoming manner, and starched exactly enough to make it wear clean four days, is the head-dress of Lucchese lasses; it is put on turban-wise, and they button their gowns close, with long sleeves _à la Savoyarde_; but it is made often of a stiff brocaded silk, and green lapels, with cuffs of the same colour; nor do they wear any hats at all, to defend them from a sun which does undoubtedly mature the fig and ripen the vine, but which, by the same excess of power, exalts the venom of the viper, and gives the scorpion means to keep me in perpetual torture for fear of his poison, of which, though they assure us death is seldom the consequence among _them_, I know his sting would finish me at once, because the gnats at Florence were sufficient to lame me for a considerable time. The dialect has lost much of the guttural sound that hurt one's ear at the last place of residence; but here is an odd squeaking accent, that distinguishes the Tuscan of Lucca. The place appropriated for airing, showing fine equipages, &c. is beautiful beyond all telling; from the peculiar shadows on the mountains. They make the bastions of the town their Corso, but none except the nobles can go and drive upon one part of it. I know not how many yards of ground is thus let apart, sacred to sovereignty; but it makes one laugh. Our inn here is an excellent one, as far as I am concerned; and the sallad-oil green, like Irish usquebaugh, nothing was ever so excellent. I asked the French valet who dresses our hair, "_Si ce n'etait pas une republique mignonne?_[X]"--"_Ma foy, madame, je la trouve plus tôt la republique des rats et des souris[Y];_" replies the fellow, who had not slept all night, I afterwards understood, for the noise those troublesome animals made in his room. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote X: If it were not a dear little pretty commonwealth--this?] [Footnote Y: Faith, madam, I call it the republic of the rats and mice.] PISA. This town has been so often described that it is as well known in England as in Italy almost; where I, like others, have seen the magnificent cathedral; have examined the two pillars which support its entrance, and which once adorned Diana's temple at Ephesus, one of the seven wonders of the world. Their carving is indeed beyond all idea of workmanship; and the possession of them is inestimable. I have seen the old stones with inscriptions on them, bearing date the reign of Antoninus Pius, stuck casually, some with the letters reversed, some sloping, according to accident merely, as it appears to me, in the body of the great church: and I have seen the leaning tower that Lord Chesterfield so comically describes our English travellers eagerness to see. It is a beautiful building though after all, and a strange thing that it should lean so. The cylindrical form, and marble pillars that support each story, may rationally enough attract a stranger's notice, and one is sorry the lower stories have sunk from their foundations, originally defective ones I trust they were, though, God knows, if the Italians do not build towers well, it is not for want either of skill or of experience; for there is a tower to every town I think, and commonly fabricated with elaborate nicety and well-fixed bases. But as earthquakes and subterranean fires here are scarcely a wonder, one need not marvel much at seeing the ground retreat just _here_. It is nearer our hand, and quite as well worth our while to enquire, why the tower at _Bridgnorth_ in Shropshire leans exactly in the same direction, and is full as much out of the perpendicular as this at Pisa. The brazen gates here, carved by John of Bologna, at least begun by him, are a wonderful work; and the marbles in the baptistery beat those of Florence for value and for variety. A good lapidary might find perpetual amusement in adjusting the claims of superiority to these precious columns of jasper, granite, alabaster, &c. The different animals which support the font being equally admirable for their composition as for their workmanship. The Campo Santo is an extraordinary place, and, for aught I know, unparalleled for its power over the mind in exciting serious contemplations upon the body's decay, and suggesting consolatory thoughts concerning the soul's immortality. Here in three days, owing to quick-lime mixed among the earth, vanishes every vestige, every trace of the human being carried thither seventy hours before, and here round the walls Giotto and Cimabue have exhausted their invention to impress the passers-by with deep and pensive melancholy. The four stages of man's short life, infancy, childhood, maturity, and decrepit age, not ill represented by one of the ancient artists, shew the sad but not slow progress we make to this dark abode; while the last judgment, hell, and paradise inform us what events of the utmost consequence are to follow our journey. All this a modern traveller finds out to be _vastly ridiculous!_ though Doctor Smollet _(whose book I think he has read)_ confesses, that the spacious Corridor round the Campo Santo di Pisa would make the noblest walk in the world perhaps for a contemplative philosopher. The tomb of Algarotti produces softer ideas when one looks at the sepulchre of a man who, having deserved and obtained such solid and extensive praise, modestly contented himself with desiring that his epitaph might be so worded, as to record, upon a simple but lasting monument, that he had the honour of being disciple to the immortal _Newton_. The battle of the bridge here at Pisa drew a great many spectators this year, as it has not been performed for a considerable time before: the waiters at our inn here give a better account of it than one should have got perhaps from Cavalier or Dama, who would have felt less interested in the business, and seen it from a greater distance. The armies of Sant' Antonio, and I think San Giovanni Battista, but I will not be positive as to the last, disputed the possession of the bridge, and fought gallantly I fancy; but the first remained conqueror, as our very conversible _Camerieres_ took care to inform us, as it was on that side it seems that they had exerted their valour. Calling theatres, and ships, and running horses, and mock fights, and almost every thing so by the names of Saints, whom we venerate in silence, and they themselves publicly worship, has a most profane and offensive sound with it to be sure; and shocks delicate ears very dreadfully: and I used to reprimand my maids at Milan for bringing up the blessed Virgin Mary's name on every trivial, almost on every ludicrous occasion, with a degree of sharpness they were not accustomed to, because it kept me in a constant shivering. Yet let us reflect a moment on our own conduct in England, and we shall be forced candidly to confess that the Puritans alone keep their lips unpolluted by breach of the third commandment, while the common exclamation of _good God!_ scrupled by few people on the slightest occurrences, and apparently without any temptation in the world, is no less than gross irreverence of his sacred name, whom we acknowledge to be Father of all, in _every_ age In _every_ clime ador'd; By saint, by savage, and by sage, Jehovah, Jove, or Lord. Nor have the ladies at a London card-table Italian ignorance to plead in their excuse; as not instruction but docility is wanted among almost all ranks of people in Great Britain, where, if the Christian religion were practised as it is understood, little could be wished for its eternal, as little is left out among the blessings of its temporal welfare. I have been this morning to look at the Grand Duke's camels, which he keeps in his park as we do deer in England. There were a hundred and sixteen of them, pretty creatures! and they breed very well here, and live quite at their ease, only housing them the winter months: they are perfectly docile and gentle the man told me, apparently less tender of their young than mares, but more approachable by human creatures than even such horses as have been long at grass. That dun hue one sees them of, is, it seems, not totally and invariably the same, though I doubt not but it is so in their native deserts. Let it once become a fashion for sovereigns and other great men to keep and to caress them, we shall see camels as variegated as cats, which in the woods are all of the uniformly-streaked tabby--the males inclining to the brown shade--the females to blue among them;--but being bred _down_, become tortoise-shell, and red, and every variety of colour, which domestication alone can bestow. The misery of Tuscany is, that _all animals_ thrive so happily under this productive sun; so that if you scorn the Zanzariere, you are half-devoured before morning, and so disfigured, that I defy one's nearest friends to recollect one's countenance; while the spiders sting as much as any of their insects; and one of them bit me this very day till the blood came. With all this not ill-founded complaint of these our active companions, my constant wonder is, that the grapes hang untouched this 20th of September, in vast heavy clusters covered with bloom; and unmolested by insects, which, with a quarter of this heat in England, are encouraged to destroy all our fruit in spite of the gardener's diligence to blow up nests, cover the walls with netting, and hang them about with bottles of syrup, to court the creatures in, who otherwise so damage every fig and grape and plum of ours, that nothing but the skins are left remaining _by now. Here_ no such contrivances are either wanted or thought on; and while our islanders are sedulously bent to guard, and studious to invent new devices to protect their half dozen peaches from their half dozen wasps, the standard trees of Italy are loaded with high-flavoured and delicious fruits. Here figs sky-dy'd a purple hue disclose, Green looks the olive, the pomegranate glows; Here dangling pears exalted scents unfold, And yellow apples ripen into gold. The roadside is indeed hedged with festoons of vines, crawling from olive to olive, which they plant in the ditches of Tuscany as we do willows in Britain: mulberry trees too by the thousand, and some pollarded poplars serve for support to the glorious grapes that will now soon be gathered. What least contributes to the beauty of the country however, is perhaps most subservient to its profits. I am ashamed to write down the returns of money gained by the oil alone in this territory and that of Lucca, where I was much struck with the colour as well as the excellence of this useful commodity. Nor can I tell why none of that green cast comes over to England, unless it is, that, like essential oil of chamomile, it loses the tint by exposure to the air. An olive tree, however, is no elegantly-growing or happily-coloured plant: straggling and dusky, one is forced to think of its produce, before one can be pleased with its merits, as in a deformed and ugly friend or companion. The fogs now begin to fall pretty heavily in a morning, and rising about the middle of the day, leave the sun at liberty to exert his violence very powerfully. At night come forth the inhabitants, like dor-beetles at sunset on the coast of Sussex; then is their season to walk and chat, and sing and make love, and run about the street with a girl and a guittar; to eat ice and drink lemonade; but never to be seen drunk or quarrelsome, or riotous. Though night is the true season of Italian felicity, they place not their happiness in brutal frolics, any more than in malicious titterings; they are idle and they are merry: it is, I think, the worst we can say of them; they are idle because there is little for them to do, and merry because they have little given them to think about. To the busy Englishman they might well apply these verses of his own Milton in the Masque of Comus: What have we with day to do? Sons of Care! 'twas made for you. LEGHORN. Here we are by the sea-side once more, in a trading town too; and I should think myself in England almost, but for the difference of dresses that pass under my balcony: for here we were immediately addressed by a young English gentleman, who politely put us in possession of his apartments, the best situated in the town; and with him we talked of the dear coast of Devonshire, agreed upon the resemblance between that and these environs, but gave the preference to home, on account of its undulated shore, finely fringed with woodlands, which here are wanting: nor is this verdure equal to ours in vivid colouring, or variegated with so much taste as those lovely hills which are adorned by the antiquities of Powderham Castle, and the fine disposition of Lord Lisburne's park. But here is an English consul at Leghorn. Yes indeed! an English chapel too; our own King's arms over the door, and in the desk and pulpit an English clergyman; high in character, eminent for learning, genteel in his address, and charitable in every sense of the word: as such, truly loved and honoured by those of his own persuasion, exceedingly respected by those of every other, which fill this extraordinary city: a place so populous, that Cheapside alone can surpass it. It is not a large place however; one very long straight street, and one very large wide square, not less than Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, but I think bigger, form the whole of Leghorn; which I can compare to nothing but a _camera obscura,_ or magic lanthron, exhibiting prodigious variety of different, and not uninteresting figures, that pass and re-pass to my incessant delight, and give that sort of empty amusement which is _à la portée de chacun_[Footnote: Within every one's reach.] so completely, that for the present it really serves to drive every thing else from my head, and makes me little desirous to quit for any other diversion the windows or balcony, whence I look down now upon a Levantine Jew, dressed in long robes, a sort of odd turban, and immense beard: now upon a Tuscan contadinella, with the little straw hat, nosegay and jewels, I have been so often struck with. Here an Armenian Christian, with long hair, long gown, long beard, all black as a raven; who calls upon an old grey Franciscan friar for a walk; while a Greek woman, obliged to cross the street on some occasion, throws a vast white veil all over her person, lest she should undergo the disgrace of being seen at all. Sometimes a group goes by, composed of a broad Dutch sailor, a dry-starched puritan, and an old French officer; whose knowledge of the world and habitual politeness contrive to conceal the contempt he has of his companions. The geometricians tell us that the figure which has most angles bears the nearest resemblance to that which has no angles at all; so here at Leghorn, where you can hardly find forty men of a mind, dispute and contention grow vain, a comfortable though temporary union takes place, while nature and opinion bend to interest and necessity. The _Contorni_ of Leghorn are really very pretty; the Appenine mountains degenerate into hills as they run round the bay, but gain in beauty what in sublimity they lose. To enjoy an open sea view, one must drive further; and it really affords a noble prospect from that rising ground where I understand that the rich Jews hold their summer habitations. They have a synagogue in the town, where I went one evening, and heard the Hebrew service, and thought of what Dr. Burney says of their singing. It is however no credit to the Tuscans to tell, that of all the people gathered together here, they are the worst-looking--I speak of the _men_--but it is so. When compared with the German soldiery, the English sailors, the Venetian traders, the Neapolitan peasants, for I have seen some of _them_ here, how feeble a fellow is a genuine Florentine! And when one recollects the cottagers of Lombardy, that handsome hardy race; bright in their expression, and muscular in their strength; it is still stranger, what can have weakened these too delicate Tuscans so. As they are very rich, and might be very happy under the protection of a prince who lets slip no opportunity of preferring his plebeian to his patrician subjects; yet here at Leghorn they have a tender frame and an unhealthy look, occasioned possibly by the stagnant waters, which tender the environs unwholesome enough I believe; and the millions of live creatures they produce are enough to distract a person not accustomed to such buzzing company. We went out for air yesterday morning three or four miles beyond the town-walls, where I looked steadily at the sea, till I half thought myself at home. The ocean being peculiarly British property favoured the idea, and for a moment I felt as if on our southern coast; we walked forward towards the shore, and I stepped upon some rocks that broke the waves as they rolled in, and was wishing for a good bathing house that one might enjoy the benefit of salt-water so long withheld; till I saw our _laquais de place_ crossing himself at the carriage door, and wondering, as I afterwards found out, at my matchless intrepidity. The mind however took another train of thought, and we returned to the coach, which when we arrived at I refused to enter; not without screaming I fear, as a vast hornet had taken possession in our absence, and the very notion of such a companion threw me into an agony. Our attendant's speech to the coachman however, made me more than amends: "_Ora si vede amico_" (says he), "_cos'è la Donna; del mare istesso non hà paura è pur và in convulsioni per via d'una mosca_[Z]." This truly Tuscan and highly contemptuous harangue, uttered with the utmost deliberation, and added to the absence of the hornet, sent me laughing into the carriage, with great esteem of our philosophical _Rosso_, for so the fellow was called, because he had red hair. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote Z: Now, my friend, do but observe what a thing is a woman! she is not afraid even of the roaring ocean, and yet goes into fits almost at the sight of a fly.] In a very clear day, it is said, one may see Corsica from hence, though not less than forty or fifty miles off: the pretty island Gorgona however, whence our best anchovies are brought to England, lies constantly in view, Assurgit ponti medio circumflua Gorgon. RUTELIUS's Itinerary. How she came by that extraordinary name though, is not I believe well known; perhaps her likeness to one of the Cape Verd islands, the original Hesperides, might be the cause; for it was _there_ the daughters of Phorcus fixed their habitation: or may be, as Medusa was called _Gorgon par eminence_, because she applied herself to the enriching of ground, this fertile islet owes its appellation from being particularly manured and fructified. Here is an extraordinary good opera-house; admirable dancers, who performed a mighty pretty pantomime Comedie _larmoyante_ without words; I liked it vastly. The famous Soprano singer Bedini was at Lucca; but here is our old London favourite Signora Giorgi, improved into a degree of perfection seldom found, and from her little expected. Mr. Udney the British Consul is alone now; his lady has been obliged to leave him, and take her children home for health's sake; but we saw his fine collection of pictures, among which is a Danae that once belonged to Queen Christina of Sweden, and fell from her possession into that of some nobleman, who being tormented by scruples of morality upon his death-bed, resolved to part with all his undraped figures, but not liking to lose the face of this Danae, put the picture into a painter's hands to cut and clothe her: the man, instead of obeying orders he considered as barbarous, copied the whole, and dressed the copy decently, sending it to his sick friend, who never discerned the trick; and kept the original to dispose of, where fewer scruples impeded an advantageous sale. The gentleman who bought it then, died; when Mr. Udney purchased Danae, and highly values her; though some connoisseurs say she is too young and ungrown a female for the character. There is a Titian too in the same collection, of Cupid riding on a lion's back, to which some very remarkable story is annexed; but one's belief is so assailed by such various tales, told of all the striking pictures in Italy, that one grows more tenacious of it every day I think; so that at last the danger will be of believing too little, instead of too much perhaps. Happy for travellers would it be, were that disposition of mind confined to _painting_ only: but if it should prove extended to more serious subjects, we can only hope that the violent excess of the temptation may prove some excuse, or at least in a slight degree extenuate the offence: A wise man cannot believe half he hears in Italy to be sure, but a pious man will be cautious not to discredit it all. Our evening's walk was directed towards the burying-ground appointed here to receive the bodies of our countrymen, and consecrated according to the rites of the Anglican church: for _here_, under protection of a factory, we enjoy that which is vainly sought for under the auspices of a king's ambassador.--_Here_ we have a churchyard of our own, and are not condemned as at other towns in Italy, to be stuffed into a hole like dogs, after having spent our money among them like princes. Prejudice however is not banished from Leghorn, though convenience keeps all in good-humour with each other. The Italians fail not to class the subjects of Great Britain among the Pagan inhabitants of the town, and to distinguish themselves, say, "_Noi altri Christiani_[Footnote: We that are Christians.]:" their aversion to a Protestant, conceal it as they may, is ever implacable; and the last day only will convince them that it is criminal. _Coelum non animum mutant_[Footnote: One changes one's sky but not one's soul.], is an old observation; I passed this afternoon in confirming the truth of it among the English traders settled here: whose conversation, manners, ideas, and language, were so truly _Londonish_, so little changed by transmigration, that I thought some enchantment had suddenly operated, and carried me to drink tea in the regions of _Bucklersbury_. Well! it is a great delight to see such a society subsisting in Italy after all; established where distress may run for refuge, and sickness retire to prepare for lasting repose; whence narrowness of mind is banished by principles of universal benevolence, and prejudice precluded by Christian charity: where the purse of the British merchant, ever open to the poor, is certain to succour and to soothe affliction; and where it is agreed that more alms are given by the natives of our island alone, than by all the rest of Leghorn, and the palaces of Pisa put together. I have here finished that work which chiefly brought me hither; the Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson's Life. It is from this port they take their flight for England, while we retire for refreshment to the BAGNI DI PISA. But not only the waters here are admirable, every look from every window gives images unentertained before; sublimity happily wedded with elegance, and majestick greatness enlivened, yet softened by taste. The haughty mountain St. Juliano lifting its brown head over our house on one side, the extensive plain stretched out before us on the other; a gravel walk neatly planted by the side of a peaceful river, which winds through a valley richly cultivated with olive yards and vines; and sprinkled, though rarely, with dwellings, either magnificent or pleasing: this lovely prospect, bounded only by the sea, makes a variety incessant as the changes of the sky; exhibiting early tranquillity, and evening splendour by turns. It was perhaps particularly delightful to me, to obtain once more a cottage in the country, after running so from one great city to another; and for the first week I did nothing but rejoice in a solitude so new, so salutiferous, so total. I therefore begged my husband not to hurry us to Rome, but take the house we lived in for a longer term, as I would now play the English housewife in Italy I said; and accordingly began calling the chickens and ducks under my window, tasted the new wine as it ran purple from the cask, caressed the meek oxen that drew it to our door; and felt sensations so unaffectedly pastoral, that nothing in romance ever exceeded my felicity. The cold bath here is the most delicate imaginable; of a moderate degree of coldness though, not three degrees below Matlock surely; but omitting, simply enough, to carry a thermometer, one can measure the heat of nothing. Our hot water here seems about the temperature of the Queen's bath in Somersetshire; it is purgative, not corroborant, they tell me; and its taste resembles Cheltenham water exactly. These springs are much frequented by the court I find, and here are very tolerable accommodations; but it is not the season now, and our solitude is perfect in a place which beggars all description, where the mountains are mountains of marble, and the bushes on them bushes of myrtle; large as our hawthorns, and white with blossoms, as _they_ are at the same time of year in Devonshire; where the waters are salubrious, the herbage odoriferous, every trodden step breathing immediate fragrance from the crushed sweets of thyme, and marjoram, and winter savoury: while the birds and the butterflies frolick around, and flutter among the loaded lemon, and orange, and olive trees, till imagination is fatigued with following the charms that surround one. I am come home this moment from a long but not tedious walk, among the crags of this glorious mountain; the base of which nearly reaches, within half a mile perhaps, to the territories of Lucca. Some country girls passed me with baskets of fruit, chickens, &c. on their heads. I addressed them as natives of the last-named place, saying I knew them to be such by their dress and air; one of them instantly replied, "_Oh si, siamo Lucchesi, noi altri; già si può vedere subito una Reppubblicana, e credo bene ch'ella fe n' é accorta benissimo che siamo del paese della libertà_[AA]." [Footnote AA: Oh yes, we are Lucca people sure enough, and I am persuaded that you soon saw in our faces that we come from a land of liberty.] I will add that these females wear no ornaments at all; are always proud and gay, and sometimes a little fancy too. The Tuscan damsels, loaded with gold and pearls, have a less assured look, and appear disconcerted when in company with their freer neighbours--Let them tell why. Mean time my fairy dream of fantastic delight seems fading away apace. Mr. Piozzi has been ill, and of a putrid complaint in his throat, which above all things I should dread in this hot climate. This accident, assisted by other concurring circumstances, has convinced me that we are not shut up in measureless content as Shakespeare calls it, even under St. Julian's Hill: for here was no help to be got in the first place, except the useless conversation of a medical gentleman whose accent and language might have pleased a disengaged mind, but had little chance to tranquilize an affrighted one. What is worse, here was no rest to be had, for the multitudes of vermin up stairs and below. When we first hired the house, I remember my maid jumping up on one of the kitchen chairs while a ragged lad cleared _that_ apartment for her of scorpions to the number of seventeen. But now the biters and stingers drive me _quite wild_, because one must keep the windows open for air, and a sick man can enjoy none of that, being closed up in the Zanzariere, and obliged to respire the same breath over and over again; which, with a sore throat and fever, is most melancholy: but I keep it wet with vinegar, and defy the hornets how I can. What is more surprising than all, however, is to hear that no lemons can be procured for less than two pence English a-piece; and now I am almost ready to join myself in the general cry against Italian imposition, and recollect the proverb which teaches us Chi hà da far con Tosco, Non bisogna esser losco[AB]; [Footnote AB: Who has to do with Tuscan wight, Of both his eyes will need the light. ] as I am confident they cannot be worth even two pence a hundred here, where they hang like apples in our cyder countries; but the rogues know that my husband is sick, and upon poor me they have no mercy. I have sent our folks out to gather fruit at a venture: and now this misery will soon be ended with his illness; driven away by deluges of lemonade, I think, made in defiance of wasps, flies, and a kind of volant beetle, wonderfully beautiful and very pertinacious in his attacks; and who makes dreadful depredations on my sugar and currant-jelly, so necessary on this occasion of illness, and so attractive to all these detestable inhabitants of a place so lovely. My patient, however, complaining that although I kept these harpies at a distance, no sleep could yet be obtained;--I resolved when he was risen, and had changed his room, to examine into the true cause: and with my maid's assistance, unript the mattress, which was without exaggeration or hyperbole _all alive_ with creatures wholly unknown to me. Non-descripts in nastiness I believe they are, like maggots with horns and tails; such a race as I never saw or heard of, and as would have disgusted Mr. Leeuenhoeck himself. My willingness to quit this place and its hundred-footed inhabitants was quickened three nights after by a thunder storm, such as no dweller in more northern latitudes can form an idea of; which, afflicted by some few slight shocks of an earthquake, frighted us all from our beds, sick and well, and gave me an opportunity of viewing such flashes of lightning as I had never contemplated till now, and such as it appeared impossible to escape from with life. The tremendous claps of thunder re-echoing among these Appenines, which double every sound, were truly dreadful. I really and sincerely thought St. Julian's mountain was rent by one violent stroke, accompanied with a rough concussion, and that the rock would fall upon our heads by morning; while the agonies of my English maid and the French valet, became equally insupportable to themselves and me; who could only repeat the same unheeded consolations, and protest our resolution of releasing them from this theatre of distraction the moment our departure should become practicable. Mean time the rain fell, and such a torrent came tumbling down the sides of St. Juliano, as I am persuaded no female courage could have calmly looked on. I therefore waited its abatement in a darkened room, packed up our coach without waiting to copy over the verses my admiration of the place had prompted, and drove forward to Sienna, through Pisa again, where our friends told us of the damages done by the tempest; and shewed us a pretty little church just out of town, where the officiating priest at the altar was saved almost by miracle, as the lightning melted one of the chalices completely, and twisted the brazen-gilt crucifix quite round in a very astonishing manner. Here, however, is the proper place, if any, to introduce the poem of seventy-three short lines, calling itself an Ode to Society written in a state of perfect solitude, secluded from all mortal tread, as was our habitation at the Bagni di Pisa. ODE TO SOCIETY. I. SOCIETY! gregarious dame! Who knows thy favour'd haunts to name? Whether at Paris you prepare The supper and the chat to share, While fix'd in artificial row, Laughter displays its teeth of snow: Grimace with raillery rejoices, And song of many mingled voices, Till young coquetry's artful wile Some foreign novice shall beguile, Who home return'd, still prates of thee, Light, flippant, French SOCIETY. II. Or whether, with your zone unbound, You ramble gaudy Venice round, Resolv'd the inviting sweets to prove, Of friendship warm, and willing love; Where softly roll th' obedient seas, Sacred to luxury and ease, In coffee-house or casino gay Till the too quick return of day, Th' enchanted votary who sighs For sentiments without disguise, Clear, unaffected, fond, and free, In Venice finds SOCIETY. III. Or if to wiser Britain led, Your vagrant feet desire to tread With measur'd step and anxious care, The precincts pure of Portman square; While wit with elegance combin'd, And polish'd manners there you'll find; The taste correct--and fertile mind: Remember vigilance lurks near, And silence with unnotic'd sneer, Who watches but to tell again Your foibles with to-morrow's pen; Till titt'ring malice smiles to see Your wonder--grave SOCIETY. IV. Far from your busy crowded court, Tranquillity makes her report; Where 'mid cold Staffa's columns rude, Resides majestic solitude; Or where in some sad Brachman's cell, Meek innocence delights to dwell, Weeping with unexperienc'd eye, The death of a departed fly: Or in _Hetruria_'s heights sublime, Where science self might fear to climb, But that she seeks a smile from thee, And wooes thy praise, SOCIETY. V. Thence let me view the plains below, From rough St. Julian's rugged brow; Hear the loud torrents swift descending, Or mark the beauteous rainbow bending, Till Heaven regains its favourite hue, Æther divine! celestial blue! Then bosom'd high in myrtle bower, View letter'd Pisa's pendent tower; The sea's wide scene, the port's loud throng, Of rude and gentle, right and wrong; A motley groupe which yet agree To call themselves SOCIETY. VI. Oh! thou still sought by wealth and fame, Dispenser of applause and blame: While flatt'ry ever at thy side, With slander can thy smiles divide; Far from thy haunts, oh! let me stray, But grant one friend to cheer my way, Whose converse bland, whose music's art, May cheer my soul, and heal my heart; Let soft content our steps pursue, And bliss eternal bound our view: Pow'r I'll resign, and pomp, and glee, Thy best-lov'd sweets--SOCIETY. SIENNA. 20th October 1786. We arrived here last night, having driven through the sweetest country in the world; and here are a few timber trees at last, such as I have not seen for a long time, the Tuscan spirit of mutilation being so great, that every thing till now has been pollarded that would have passed twenty feet in height: this is done to support the vines, and not suffer their rambling produce to run out of the way, and escape the gripe of the gatherers. I have eaten too many of these delicious grapes however, and it is now my turn to be sick--No wonder, I know few who would resist a like temptation, especially as the inn afforded but a sorry dinner, whilst every hedge provided so noble a dessert. _Paffera pur la malattia_[Footnote: The disorder will die away though.], as these soft-mouthed people tell me; the sooner perhaps, as we are not here annoyed by insects, which poison the pleasure of other places in Italy; here are only _lizards_, lovely creatures! who being of a beautiful light green colour upon the back and legs, reside in whole families at the foot of every tree, and turn their scarlet bosoms to the sun, as if to display the glories of colouring which his beams alone can bestow. The pleasing tales told of this pretty animal's amical disposition towards man are strictly true, I hear; and it is no longer ago than yesterday I was told an odd anecdote of a young farmer, who, carrying a basket of figs to his mistress, lay down in the field as he crossed it, quite overcome with the weather, and fell fast asleep. A serpent, attracted by the scent, twined round the basket, and would have bit the fellow as well as robbed him, had not a friendly lizard waked, and given him warning of the danger. Swift says, that in the course of life he meets many asses, but they have not _lucky names_. I have met many _vipers, and so few lizards_, it is surprising! but they will not live in London. All the stories one has ever heard of sweetness in language and delicacy in pronunciation, fall short of Siennese converse. The girls who wait on us at the inn here, would be treasures in England, could one get them thither; and they need move nothing but their tongues to make their fortunes. I told Rosetta so, and said I would steal from them a poor girl of eight years old, whom they kept out of charity, and called Olympia, to be my language mistress, "_Battezata com' è, la lascieremo Christiana_[AC]," was the answer. It is impossible, without their manners, to express their elegance, their superior delicacy, graceful without diffusion, and terse without laconicism. You ask the way to the town of a peasant girl, and she replies, "_Passato'l Ponte, o pur barcato'l Fiume, eccola a Sienna_[AD]." And as we drove towards the city in the evening, our postillion sung improviso verses on his sweetheart, a widow who lived down at Pistoja, they told me. I was ashamed to think that no desk or study was likely to have produced better on so trite a subject. Candour must confess, however, that no thought was new, though the language made them for a moment seem so. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote AC: Being baptized as she is, we will leave her a Christian.] [Footnote AD: The bridge once passed, or the river crossed, Sienna lies before you.] This town is neat and cleanly, and comfortable and airy. The prospect from the public walks wants no beauty but water; and here is a suppressed convent on the neighbouring hill, where we half-longed to build a pretty cottage, as the ground is now to be disposed of vastly cheap; and half one's work is already done in the apartments once occupied by friars. With half a word's persuasion I should fix for life here. The air is so pure, the language so pleasing, the place so inviting;--_but we drive on_. There is, mean time, resident in the neighbourhood an English gentleman, his name Greenfield, who has formed to himself a mighty sweet habitation in the English taste, but not extensive, as his property don't reach far: he is however a sort of little oracle in the country I am told; gives money, and dispenses James's powders to the poor, is happy in the esteem of numberless people of fashion, and the comfort of his country people's lives beside; who, travelling to Sienna, as many do for the advantage of studying Italian to perfection, find a friend and companion where perhaps it is least expected. The cathedral here at Sienna deserves a volume, and I shall scarcely give it a page. The pavement of it is the just pride of Italy, and may challenge the world to produce its equal. St. Mark's at Venice floored with precious stones dies away upon the comparison; this being all inlaid with dove-coloured and white marbles representing historical subjects not ill told. Were this operation performed in mosaic work, others of rival excellence might be found. The pavement of Sienna's dome is so disposed by an effort of art one never saw but here, that it produces an effect most resembling that of a very fine and beautiful damask table-cloth, where the large patterns are correctly drawn. _Rome_ however is to be our next stage, and many of our English gentlemen now here, are with ourselves impatiently waiting for the numberless pleasures it is expected to afford us. I will here close this chapter upon our various desires; one wishing to see St. Peters; one setting his heart upon entering the Capitol: to-morrow's sun will light us all upon our search. ROME. The first sleeping place between Sienna and this capital shall not escape mentioning; its name is Radicosani, its title an inn, and its situation the summit of an exhausted volcano. Such a place did I never see. The violence of the mountain, when living, has split it in a variety of places, and driven it to a breadth of base beyond credibility, its height being no longer formidable. Whichever way you turn your eyes, nothing but portions of this black rock appear therefore; so here is extent without sublimity, and here is terror mingled with disgust. The inside of the house is worthy of the prospect seen from its windows; wild, spacious, and scantily provided. Never had place so much the appearance of a haunted hall, where Sir Rowland or Sir Bertrand might feel proud of their courage when The knight advancing strikes the fatal door, And hollow chambers send a sullen roar. MERRY To this truly dismal reposing place is however kindly added a little chapel; and few persons can imagine what a comfortable feel it gave me on entering it in the morning after hearing the winds howl all night in the black mountain. Here too we first made acquaintance with Signor Giovanni Ricci, a mighty agreeable gentleman, who was kindly assistant to us in a hundred little difficulties, afterwards occasioned by horses, postillions, &c. which at last brought us through a bad country enough to Viterbo, where we slept. The melancholy appearance of the Campagna has been remarked and described by every traveller with displeasure, by all with truth. The ill look of the very few and very unhealthy inhabitants confirms their descriptions; and beside the pale and swelled faces which shock one's sight, here is a brassy scent in the air as of verdigris, which offends one's smell; the running water is of an odd colour too, like that in which copper has been steeped. These are sad desolated scenes indeed, though this is not the season for _mal' aria_ neither, which, it is said, begins in May, and ends with September. The present sovereign is mending matters as fast as he can, we hear; and the road now cutting, will greatly facilitate access to his capital, but cannot be done without a prodigious expence. The first view of Rome is wonderfully striking. Ye awful wrecks of ancient times! Proud monuments of ages past Now mould'ring in decay. MERRY. But mingled with every crowding, every classical idea, comes to one's recollection an old picture painted by R. Wilson about thirty years ago, which I am now sure must have been a very excellent representation. Well, then! here we are, admirably lodged at Strofani's in the Piazza di Spagna, and have only to chuse what we will see and talk on first among this galaxy of rarities which dazzles, diverts, confounds, and nearly fatigues one. I will speak of the oldest things first, as I was earnest to see something of Rome in its very early days, if possible; for example the Sublician Bridge, defended by Cocles when the infant republic, like their favourite Hercules in his cradle, strangled the serpent despotism: and of this bridge some portion may yet be seen when the water is very low. The prison is more ancient still however; it was built by the kings; and by the solidity of its walls, and depth of its dungeon, seems built for eternity. Was it not this place to which Juvenal alludes, when he says, Felicia dicas Tempora quæ quondam sub regibus atque tribunis Viderunt uno contentam carcere Romam. And it is in this horrible spot they shew you the miraculous mark of St. Peter's head struck against the wall in going down, with the fountain which burst out of the ground for his refreshment. Antiquaries, however, assure us, that he could not have ever been confined there, as it was a place for state prisoners only, and those of the highest rank: they likewise tell us that Jugurtha passed seven months there, which is as difficult to believe as any miracle ever wrought; for the world was at least somewhat civilized in those days, and how it should be contented with looking quietly on whilst a Prince of Jugurtha's consequence should be so kept, appears incredible at the distance of 1900 years. That Christians should be treated still worse, if worse could be found for them, is less strange, when every step one treads is upon the bones of martyrs; and who dares say that the surrounding campagna, so often drenched in innocent blood, may not have been cursed with pestilence and sterility to all succeeding ages? I have examined the place where Sylla massacred 8000 fellow-citizens at once, and find that it produces no herb but thistles, a weed almost unknown in any other part of Italy; and one of the first punishments bestowed on sinful man. Marcellus's Theatre, an old fountain erected by Camillus when Dictator, and the Tarpeian rock, attract attention powerfully: the last particularly, Where brave Manlius stood, And hurl'd indignant decads down, And redden'd Tyber's flood. GREATHEED. People have never done contradicting Burnet, who says, in his travels, that a man might jump down it now and not do himself much harm: the truth is, its present appearance is not formidable; but I believe it is not less than forty feet high at this moment, though the ground is greatly raised. Of all things at Rome the Cloaca is acknowledged most ancient; a very great and a very useful work it is, of Ancus Martius, fourth king of Rome. The just and zealous detestation of Christians towards Pontius Pilate, is here comically expressed by their placing his palace just at its exit into the Tyber; and one who pretended to doubt of its being his residence, would be thought the worse of among them. I recollect nothing else built before the days of the Emperors, who, for the most part, were such disgracers of human nature and human reason, that one would almost wish their names expunged, and all their deeds obliterated from the face of the globe, which could ever tamely submit to such truly wretched rulers. The Capitol, built by Tarquin, stood till the days of Marius and Sylla it seems; that last-named Dictator erected a new one, which was overthrown in the contests about Vitellius; Vespasian set it up again, but his performance was burned soon after its author's death; and this we contemplate now, is one of the works of Domitian, and celebrated by Martial of course. Adrian however added one room to it, dedicated to Egyptian deities alone: as a matter of mere taste I fancy, like our introducing Chinese temples into the garden; but many hold that it was very serious and superstitious regard, inspired by the victory Canopus won over the Persian divinity of fire, by the subtlety of the Egyptian priests, who, to defend their idol from that all-subduing element, wisely set upon his head a vessel filled with water, and having previously made the figure of Terra Cotta hollow, and full of water, with holes bored at the bottom stopped only by wax to keep it in, a seeming miracle extinguished the flames, as soon as approached by Canopus; whose triumph was of course proclaimed, and he respected accordingly. The figure was a monkey, whose sitting attitude favoured the imposture: our antiquaries tell us the story after _Suidas_. As cruelty is more detestable than fraud, one feels greater disgust at the sight of captive monarchs without hands and arms, than even these idolatrous brutalities inspire; and no greater proof can be obtained of Roman barbarity, than the statues one is shewn here of kings and generals over whom they triumphed; being made on purpose for them without hands and arms, of which they were deprived immediately on their arrival at Rome. Enormous heads and feet, to which the other parts are wanting, let one see, or at least guess; what colossal figures were once belonging to them; yet somehow these celebrated artists seem to me to have a little confounded the ideas of _big_ and _great_ like my countryman Fluellyn in Shakespear's play: while the two famous demi-gods Castor and Pollux, each his horse in his hand, stand one on each side the stairs which lead to the Capitol, and are of a prodigious size--fifteen feet, as I remember. The knowing people tell us they are portraits, and bid us observe that one has pupils to his eyes, the other _not_; but our _laquais de place_, who was a very sensible fellow too, as he saw me stand looking at them, cried out, "Why now to be sure here are a vast many miracles in this holy city--that there are:" and I heard one of our own folks telling an Englishman the other day, how these two monstrous statues, horses and all I believe, _came out of an egg_: a very extraordinary thing certainly; but it is our business to believe, not to enquire. He saw my countenance express something he did not like, and continued, "_Eh basta! sarà stato un uovo strepitoso, è cosi sinisce l'istoria_[AE]." [Footnote AE: Well, well! it was a famous egg we'll say, and there's an end.] In this repository of wonders, this glorious _campidoglio_, one is first shewn as the most valuable curiosity, the two pigeons mentioned by Pliny in old mosaic; and of prodigious nicety is the workmanship, though done at such a distant period: and here is the very wolf which bears the very mark of the lightning mentioned by Cicero:--and here is the beautiful Antinous again; _he_ meets one at every turn, I think, and always hangs his head as if ashamed: here too is the dying gladiator; wonderfully fine! savage valour! mean extraction! horrible anguish! all marking, all strongly characteristical expressions--_all there_; yet all swallowed up, in that which does inevitably and certainly swallow up all things--approaching death. The collection of pictures here would put any thing but these statues out of one's head: Guido's Fortune flying over the globe, scattering her gifts; of which she gave him _one_, the most precious, the most desirable. How elegantly gay and airy is this picture! But St. Sebastian stands opposite, to shew that he could likewise excel in the pathetic. Titian's famous Magdalen, of which the King of France boasts one copy, a noble family at Venice another, is protested by the Roman connoisseurs to reside here only; but why should not the artist be fond of repeating so fine an idea? Guercino's Sybil however, intelligently pensive, and sweetly sensible, is the single figure I should prefer to them all. Before we quit the Capitol, it is pity not to name Marforio; broken, old, and now almost forgotten: though once companion, or rather respondent to Pasquin, and once, a thousand years before those days, a statue of the river _Nar_, as his recumbent posture testifies; not _Mars in the forum_, as has been by some supposed. The late Pope moved him from the street, and shut him up with his betters in the Capitol. Of Trajan and Antonine's Pillars what can one say? That St. Peter and St. Paul stand on the tops of each, setting forth that uncertainty of human affairs which they preached in their life-time, and shewing that _they_, who were once the objects of contempt and abhorrence, are now become literally _the head stones of the corner_; being but too profoundly venerated in that very city, which once cruelly persecuted, and unjustly put them to death. Let us then who look on them recollect their advice, and set our affections on a place of greater stability. The columns are of very unequal excellence, that of Trajan's confessedly the best; one grieves to think he never saw it himself, as few princes were less puffed up by well-deserved praise than he; but dying at Seleucia of a dysenteric fever, his ashes were brought home, and kept on the top of his own pillar in a gilt vase; which Sextus Quintus with more zeal than taste took down, I fear destroyed, and placed St. Peter there. Apollodorus was the architect of the elegant structure, on which, says Ammianus Marcellinus, the Gods themselves gazed with wonder, seeing that nothing but heaven itself was finer. "_Singularem sub omni cælo structuram etiam numinum ascensione mirabilem_." I know not whether this is the proper place to mention that the good Pope Gregory, who added to the possession of every cardinal virtue the exertion of every Christian one, having looked one day with peculiar stedfastness at this column, and being naturally led to reflect on his character to whose honour it was erected, felt just admiration of a mind so noble; and retiring to his devotions in a church not far off, began praying earnestly for Trajan's soul: till a preternatural voice, accompanied with rays of light round the altar he knelt at, commanded his forbearance of further solicitation; assuring him that Trajan's soul was secure in the care of his Creator. Strange! that those who record, and give credit to such a story, can yet continue as a duty their intercessions for the dead! But I have seen the Coliseo, which would swallow that of pretty Verona; it is four times as large I am told, and would hold fourscore thousand spectators. After all the depredations of all the Goths, and afterwards of the Farnese family, the ruin is gloriously beautiful; possibly more beautiful than when it was quite whole; there is enough left now for Truth to repose upon, and a perch for Fancy beside, to fly out from, and fetch in more. The orders of its architecture are easily discerned, though the height of the upper story is truly tremendous; I climbed it once, not to the top indeed, but till I was afraid to look down from the place I was in, and penetrated many of its recesses. The modern Italians have not lost their taste of a prodigious theatre; were they once more a single nation, they would rebuild _this_ I fancy; for here are all the conveniencies in _grande_, as they call it, that amaze one even in _piccolo_ at Milan and Turin: Here were supper-rooms, and taverns, and shops, and I believe baths; certainly long galleries big enough to drive a coach round, and places where slaves waited to receive the commands of masters and ladies, who perhaps if they did not wait to please them, would scarcely scruple to detain them in the cage of offenders, and keep them to make sport upon a future day. The cruelties then exercised on servants at Rome were truly dreadful; and we all remember reading that in Augustus's time, when he did a private friend the honour to dine with him, one of the waiters broke a glass he was about to present full of liquor to the King; at which offence the master being enraged, suddenly caused him to be seized by the rest, and thrown instantly out of the window to feed his lampreys, which lived in a pond on which the apartment looked. Augustus said nothing at the moment; to punish the nobleman's inhumanity however, he sent his officers next morning to break every glass in the house: A curious chastisement enough, and worthy of a nation who, being powerful to erect, populous to fill, and elegantly-skilful to adorn such a fabric as this Coliseum which I have just been contemplating, were yet contented and even happy to view from its well-arranged seats, exhibitions capable of giving nothing but disgust and horror;--lions rending unarmed wretches in pieces; or, to the still deeper disgrace of poor Humanity, those wretches armed unwillingly against each other, and dying to divert a brutal populace. These reflections upon Pagan days and classical cruelties do not disturb however the peace of an old hermit, who has chosen one of these close-concealed recesses for his habitation, and accordingly dwells, dismally enough, in a hole seldom visited by travellers, and certainly never enquired about by the natives. I stumbled on his strange apartment by mere chance, and asked him why he had chosen it? He had been led in early youth, he said, to reflect upon the miseries suffered by the original professors of Christianity; the tortures inflicted on them in this horrible amphitheatre, and the various vicissitudes of Rome since: that he had dedicated himself to these meditations: that he had left the world seventeen years, never stirring from his cell but to buy food, which he eat alone and sparingly, and to pay his devotions in the _Via Crucis_, for so the old Arena is now called; a simple plain wooden cross occupying the middle of it, and round the Circus twelve neat, not splendid chapels; a picture to each, representing the various stages of our Saviour's passion. Such are the meek triumphs of our meek religion! And that such substitutes should have replaced the African savages, tigers, hyænas, &c. and Roman gladiators, not less ferocious than their four-legged antagonists, I am quite as willing to rejoice at as the hermit: They must be better antiquarians too than I am, who regret that a nunnery now covers the spot where ambitious Tullia drove over the bleeding body of her murdered parent, Pressit et inductis membra paterna rotis: That nunnery, supported by the arch of Nerva, which is all that is now left standing of that Emperor's Forum. I must not however quit the Coliseum, without repeating what passed between the King of Sweden and his Roman _laquais de place_ when he was here; and the fellow, in the true cant of his Ciceroneship, exclaimed as they looked up, "_Ah Maesta!_ what cursed Goths those were that tore away so many fine things here, and pulled down such magnificent pillars, &c." "Hold, hold friend," replies the King of Sweden; "I am one of those cursed Goths myself you know: but what were your Roman nobles a-doing, I would ask, when they laboured to destroy an edifice like this, and build their palaces with its materials?" The baths of Livia are still elegantly designed round her small apartments; and one has copies sold of them upon fans; the curiosity of the original is to see how well the gilding stands; in many places it appears just finished. These baths are difficult of access somehow; I never could quite understand how we got in or out of them, but they did belong to the Imperial palace, which covered this whole Palatine hill, and here was Nero's golden house, by what I could gather, but of that I thank Heaven there is no trace left, except some little portion of the wall, which was 120 feet high, and some marbles in shades, like women's worsted work upon canvass, very curious, and very wonderful; as all are natural marbles, and no dye used: the expence must have surpassed credibility. The Temple of Vesta, supposed to be the _very_ temple to which Horace alludes in his second Ode, is a pretty rotunda, and has twenty pillars fluted of Parian marble: it is now a church, as are most of the heathen temples. Such adaptations do not please one, but then it must be allowed and recollected that one is very hard to please: finding fault is so easy, and doing right so difficult! The good Pope Gregory, who feared (by sacred inspiration one would think) all which should come to pass, broke many beautiful antique statues, "lest," said he, "induced by change of dress or name perhaps our Christians may be tempted to adore them:" and we say he was a blockhead, and burned Livy's decads, and so he did; but he refused all titles of earthly dignity; he censured the Oriental Patriarchs for substituting temporal splendours in the place of primitive simplicity; which he said ought _alone_ to distinguish the followers of Jesus Christ. He required a strict attention to morality from all his inferior clergy; observed that those who strove to be first, would end in being last; and took himself the title of servant to the servants of God. Well! Sabinian, his successor, once his favourite Nuncio, flung his books in the fire as soon as he was dead; so his injunctions were obeyed but while he lived to enforce them; and every day now shews us how necessary they were: when, even in these enlightened times, there stands an old figure that every Abate in the town knows to have been originally made for the fabulous God of Physic, Esculapius, is prayed to by many old women and devotees of all ages indeed, just at the Via Sacra's entrance, and called St. Bartolomeo. A beautiful Diana too, with her trussed-up robes, the crescent alone wanting, stands on the high altar to receive homage in the character of St. Agnes, in a pretty church dedicated to her _fuor delle Porte_, where it is supposed she suffered martyrdom; and why? Why for not venerating that _very Goddess Diana_, and for refusing to walk in her procession at the _New Moon_, like a good Christian girl. "_Such contradictions put one from one's self_" as Shakespear says. We are this moment returned home from Tivoli; have walked round Adrian's Villa, and viewed his Hippodrome, which would yet make an admirable open Manège. I have seen the Cascatelle, so sweetly elegant, so rural, so romantic; and I have looked with due respect on the places once inhabited, and ever justly celebrated by genius, wit, and learning; have shuddered at revisiting the spot I hastened down to examine, while curiosity was yet keen enough to make me venture a very dangerous and scarcely-trodden path to Neptune's Grotto; where, as you descend, the Cicerone shews you a wheel of some coarse carriage visibly stuck fast in the rock till it is become a part of it; distinguished from every other stone only by its shape, its projecting forward, and its shewing the hollow places in its fellies, where nails were originally driven. This truly-curious, though little venerable piece of antiquity, serves to assist the wise men in puzzling out the world's age, by computing how many centuries go to the petrifying a cart wheel. A violent roar of dashing waters at the bottom, and a fall of the river at this place from the height of 150 feet, were however by no means favourable to my arithmetical studies; and I returned perfectly disposed to think the world's age a less profitable, a less diverting contemplation, than its folly. We looked at the temple of the old goddess that cured coughs, now a Christian church, dedicated to _la Madonna della Tosse_; it is exactly all it ever was, I believe; and we dined in the temple of Sibylla Tiburtina, a beautiful edifice, of which Mr. Jenkins has sent the model to London in cork, which gives a more exact representation after all than the best-chosen words in the world. I would rather make use of _them_ to praise Mr. Jenkins's general kindness and hospitality to all his country-folks, who find a certain friend in him; and if they please, a very competent instructor. In order however to understand the meaning of some spherical _pots_ observed in the Circus of Caracalla, I chose above all men to consult Mr. Greatheed, whose correct taste, deep research, and knowledge of architecture, led me to prefer his account to every other, of their use and necessity: it shall be given in his own words, which I am proud of his permission to copy. "Of those _pots_ you mention, there are not any remaining in the Circus Maxiouis, as the walls, seats and apodium of that have entirely disappeared. They are to be seen in the Circus of Caracalla, on the Appian way; of this, and of this alone, enough still exists to ascertain the form, structure, and parts of a Roman course. It was surrounded by two parallel walls which supported the seats of the spectators. The exterior wall rose to the summit of the gallery; the interior one was much lower, terminated with the lowest rows, and formed the apodium. This rough section may serve to elucidate my description. From wall to wall an arch was turned which formed a quadrant, and on this the seats immediately rested: but as the upper rows were considerably distant from the crown of the arch, it was necessary to fill the intermediate space with materials sufficiently strong to support the upper stone benches and the multitude. Had these been of solid substance, they would have pressed prodigious and disproportionate weight on the summit of the arch, a place least able to endure it from its horizontal position. To remedy this defect, the architect caused _spherical pots_ to be baked; of these each formed of itself an arch sufficiently powerful to sustain its share of the incumbent weight, and the whole was rendered much less ponderous by the innumerable vacuities. [Illustration] "A similiar expedient was likewise used to diminish the pressure of their domes, by employing the scoriæ of lava brought for that purpose from the Lipari Islands. The numberless bubbles of this volcanic substance give it the appearance of a honeycomb, and answer the same purpose as the pots in Caracalla's Circus, so much so, that though very hard, it is of less specific gravity than wood, and consequently floats in water." Before I quit the Circus of Caracalla, I must not forbear mentioning his bust, which so perfectly resembles Hogarth's idle 'Prentice; but why should they not be alike? For black-guards are black-guards in every degree, I suppose, and the people here who shew one things, always take delight to souce an Englishman's hat upon his head, as if they thought so too. This morning's ramble let us to see the old grotto, sacred to Numa's famous nymph, Ægeria, not far from Rome even now. I wonder that it should escape being built round when Rome was so extensive as to contain the crowds which we are told were lodged in it. That the city spread chiefly the other way, is scarce an answer. London spreads chiefly the Marybone way perhaps, yet is much nearer to Rumford than it was fifty or sixty years ago. The same remark may be made of the Temple of Mars without the walls, near the Porta Capena: a rotunda it was on the road side _then_: it is on the road side _now_, and a very little way from the gate. Caius Cestius's sepulchre however, without the walls, on the other side, is one of the most perfect remains of antiquity we have here. Aurelian made use of that as a boundary we know: it stands at present half without and half within the limit that Emperor set to the city; and is a very beautiful pyramid a hundred and ten feet high, admirably represented in Piranesi's prints, with an inscription on the white marble of which it is composed, importing the name and office and condition of its wealthy proprietor: _C. Cestius, septem vir epulonum_. He must have lived therefore since Julius Caesar's time it is plain, as he first increased the number of epulones to seven, from three their original institution. It was probably a very lucrative office for a man to be Jupiter's caterer; who, as he never troubled himself with looking over the bills, they were such commonly, I doubt not, as made ample profits result to him who went to market; and Caius Cestius was one of the rich contractors of those days, who neglected no opportunity of acquiring wealth for himself, while he consulted the honour of Jupiter in providing for his master's table very plentiful and elegant banquets. That such officers were in use too among the Persians during the time their monarchy lasted, is plain from the apocryphal story of Bel and the Dragon in our Bibles, where, to the joy of every child that reads it, Daniel detects the fraud of the priests by scattering ashes or saw-dust in the temple. But I fear the critics will reprove me for saying that Julius Caesar only increased the number to seven, while many are of opinion he added three more, and made them a decemvirate: mean time Livy tells us the institution began in the year of Rome 553, during the consulate of Fulvius Purpurio and Marcellus, upon a motion of Romuleius if I remember. They had the privilege granted afterwards of edging the gown with purple like the pontiffs, when increased to seven in number; and they were always known by the name _Septemviratus,_ or _Septemviri Epulonum_, to the latest hours of Paganism. The tomb of Caius Cestius is supposed to have cost twelve thousand pounds sterling of our money in those days; and little did he dream that it should be made in the course of time a repository for the bones of _divisos orbe Britannos_: for such it is now appointed to be by government. All of us who die at Rome, sleep with this purveyor of the gods; and from his monument shall at the last day rise the re-animated body of our learned and incomparable Sir James Macdonald: whose numerous and splendid acquirements, though by the time he had reached twenty-four years old astonished all who knew him, never overwhelmed one little domestic virtue. His filial piety however; his hereditary courage, his extensive knowledge, his complicated excellencies, have now, I fear, no other register to record their worth, than a low stone near the stately pyramid of Jupiter's caterer. The tomb of Cæcilia Metella, wife of the rich and famous Crassus, claims our next attention; it is a beautiful structure, and still called _Capo di Bove_ by the Italians, on account of its being ornamented with the _oxhead and flowers_ which now flourish over every door in the new-built streets of London; but the original of which, as Livy tells us, and I believe Plutarch too, was this. That Coratius, a Sabine farmer, who possessed a particularly fine cow, was advised by a soothsayer to sacrifice her to Diana upon the Aventine Hill; telling him, that the city where _she_ now presided--_Diana_--should become mistress of the world, and he who presented her with that cow should become master over that city. The poor Sabine went away to wash in the Tyber, and purify himself for these approaching honours[AF]; but in the mean time, a boy having heard the discourse, and reported it to _Servius Tullius_, he hastened to the spot, killed Coratius's cow for him, sacrificed her to Diana, and hung her head with the horns on, and the garland just as she died, upon the temple door as an ornament. From that time, it seems, the ornament called _Caput Bovis_ was in a manner consecrated to Diana, and her particular votaries used it on their tombs. Nor could one easily account for the decorations of many Roman sarcophagi, till one recollects that they were probably adapted to that divinity in whose temple they were to be placed, rather than to the particular person occupying the tomb, or than to our general ideas of death, time, and eternity. It is probably for this reason that the immense sarcophagus lately dug up from under the temple of Bacchus without the walls, cut out of one solid piece of red porphyry, has such gay ornaments round it, relative to the sacrifices of Bacchus, &c.; and I fancy these stone coffins, if we may call them so, were often made ready and sold to any person who wished to bury their friend, and who chose some story representing the triumph of whatever deity they devoted themselves to. Were the modern inhabitants of Rome who venerate St. Lorenzo, St. Sebastiano, &c. to place, not uncharacteristically at all--a gridiron, or an arrow on their tombstone, it might puzzle succeeding antiquarians, and yet be nothing out of the way in the least. [Footnote AF: A circumstance alluded to and parodied by Ben Johnson in his Alchemist. See the conduct of Dapper, &c.] Of the Egyptian obelisks at Rome I will not strive to give any account, or even any idea. They are too numerous, too wonderful, too learned for me to talk about; but I must not forbear to mention the broken thing which lies down somewhere in a heap of rubbish, and is said to be the greatest rarity in Rome, column, or _obelisk_ and the greatest antiquity surely, if 1630 years before the birth of Christ be its date; as that was but two centuries after the invention of letters by _Memnon_, and just about the time that Joseph the favourite of Pharaoh died. There is a sphinx upon it, however, mighty clearly expressed; and some one said, how strange it was, if the world was no older than we think it, that they should, in so early a stage of existence, represent, or even imagine to themselves a compound animal[AG]: though the chimæra came in play when the world was pretty young too, and the Prophet Isaiah speaks of centaurs; but that was long after even Hesiod's time. [Footnote AG: The ornaments of the ark and tabernacle exhibit much improvement in the arts of engraving, carving, &c. Nor did it seem to cost Aaron any trouble to make a cast of Apis in the Wilderness for the Israelites' amusement, 1491 years before Christ; while the dog Anubis was probably another figure with which Moses was not unacquainted, and that was certainly composite: a cynopephalus I believe.] A modern traveller has however, with much ingenuity of conjecture, given us an excellent reason why the Sphinx was peculiar to Egypt, as the Nile was observed to overflow when the sun was in those signs of the Zodiack: The lion virgin Sphinx, which shows What time the rich Nile overflows. And sure I think, as people lived longer then than they do now; as Moses was contemporary with Cecrops, so that monarchy and a settled form of government had begun to obtain footing in Greece, and apparently migrated a little westward even then; that this column might have employed the artists of those days, without any such exceeding stretch of probability as our modern Aristotelians study to make out, from their zeal to establish his doctrine of the world's eternity. While, if conjecture were once as liberally permitted to believers as it is generously afforded to scepticks, I know not whether a hint concerning Sphinx's original might not be deduced from old Israel's last blessing to his sons; _The lion of Judah_, with the _head of a virgin_, in whose offspring that lion was one day to sink and be lost, except his hinder parts; might naturally enough grow into a favourite emblem among the inhabitants of a nation who owed their existence to one of the family; and who would be still more inclined to commemorate the mystical blessing, if they observed the fructifying inundation to happen regularly, as Mr. Savary says, when the Sun left Leo for Virgo. The broken pillar has however carried me too far perhaps, though every day passed in the Pope's Musæum confirms my belief, nay certainty, that they did mingle the veneration of Joseph with that of their own gods: The bushel or measure of corn on the Egyptian Jupiter's head is a proof of it, and the name _Serapis_, a further corroboration: the dream which he explained for Pharaoh relative to the event that fixed his favour in that country, was expressed by _cattle_; and _for apis_, the _ox's head_, was perfectly applicable to him for every reason. But we will quit mythology for the Corso. This is the first town in Italy I have arrived at yet, where the ladies fairly drive up and down a long street by way of shewing their dress, equipages, &c. without even a pretence of taking fresh air. At Turin the view from the place destined to this amusement, would tempt one out merely for its own sake; and at Milan they drive along a planted walk, at least a stone's throw beyond the gates. Bologna calls its serious inhabitants to a little rising ground, whence the prospect is luxuriantly verdant and smiling. The Lucca bastions are beyond all in a peculiar style of miniature beauty; and even the Florentines, though lazy enough, creep out to Porto St. Gallo. But here at Roma la Santa, the street is all our Corso; a fine one doubtless, and called the _Strada del Popolo_, with infinite propriety, for except in that strada there is little populousness enough God knows. Twelve men to a woman even there, and as many ecclesiastics to a lay-man: all this however is fair, when celibacy is once enjoined as a duty in one profession, encouraged as a virtue in all. Where females are superfluous, and half prohibited, it were as foolish to complain of the decay of population, as it was comical in Omai the South American savage, when he lamented that no cattle bred upon their island; and one of our people replying, That they left some beasts on purpose to furnish them; he answered, "Yes, but the idol worshipped at Bola-bola, another of the islands, insisted on the males and females living separate: so they had sent _him_ the cows, and kept only the bulls at home." _Au reste_, as the French say, we must not be too sure that all who dress like Abates are such. Many gentlemen wear black as the court garb; many because it is not costly, and many for reasons of mere convenience and dislike of change. I see not here the attractive beauty which caught my eye at Venice; but the women at Rome have a most Juno-like carriage, and fill up one's idea of Livia and Agrippina well enough. The men have rounder faces than one sees in other towns I think; bright, black, and somewhat prominent eyes, with the finest teeth in Europe. A story told me this morning struck my fancy much; of an herb-woman, who kept a stall here in the market, and who, when the people ran out flocking to see the Queen of Naples as she passed, began exclaiming to her neighbours--"_Ah, povera Roma! tempo fù quando passò qui prigioniera la regina Zenobia; altra cosa amica, robba tutta diversa di questa_ reginuccia[AH]!" [Footnote AH: "Ah, poor degraded Rome! time was, my dear, when the great Zenobia passed through these streets in chains; anotherguess figure from this little Queeney, in good time!"] A characteristic speech enough; but in this town, unlike to every other, the _things_ take my attention all away from the _people_; while, in every other, the people have had much more of my mind employed upon them, than the things. The arch of Constantine, however, must be spoken of; the sooner, because there is a contrivance at the top of it to conceal musicians, which added, as it passed, to the noise and gaiety of the triumph. Lord Scarsdale's back front at Keddlestone exhibits an imitation of this structure; a motto, expressive of hospitality, filling up the part which, in the original, is adorned with the siege of Verona, that to me seems well done; but Michael Angelo carried off Trajan's head they tell us, which had before been carried thither from the arch of Trajan himself. The arch of Titus Vespasian struck me more than all the others we have named though; less for its being the first building in which the Composite order of architecture is made use of, among the numberless fabrics that surround one, than for the evident completion of the prophecies which it exhibits. Nothing can appear less injured by time than the bas-reliefs, on one side representing the ark, and golden candlesticks; on the other, Titus himself, delight of human kind, drawn by four horses, his look at once serene and sublime. The Jews cannot endure, I am told, to pass under this arch, so lively is the _annihilation_ of their government, and utter _extinction_ of their religion, carved upon it. When reflecting on the continued captivity they have suffered ever since this arch was erected here at Rome, and which they still suffer, being strictly confined to their own miserable Ghetto, which they dare not leave without a mark upon their hat to distinguish them, and are never permitted to stir without the walls, except in custody of some one whose business it is to bring them back; when reflecting, I say, on their sorrows and punishments, one's heart half inclines to pity their wretchedness; the dreadful recollection immediately crosses one, that these are the direct and lineal progeny of those very Jews who cried out aloud--"_Let his blood be upon us, and upon our children!_"--Unhappy race! how sweetly does St. Austin say of them--"_Librarii nostri facti sunt, quemadmodum solent libros post dominos ferre_." The _arca degli orefici_ is a curious thing too, and worth observing: the goldsmiths set it up in honour of Caracalla and Geta; but one plainly discerns where poor Geta's head has been carried off in one place, his figure broken in another, apparently by Caracalla's order. The building is of itself of little consequence, but as a confirmation of historical truth. The fountains of Rome should have been spoken of long ago; the number of them is known to all though, and of their magnificence words can give no idea. One print of the Trevi is worth all the words of all the describers together. Moses striking the rock, at another fountain, where water in torrents tumble forth at the touch of the rod, has a glorious effect, from the happiness of the thought, and an expression so suitable to the subject. When I was told the story of Queen Christina admiring the two prodigious fountains before St. Peter's church, and begging that they might leave off playing, because she thought them occasional, and in honour of her arrival, not constant and perpetual; who could help recollecting a similar tale told about the Prince of Monaco, who was said to have expressed his concern, when he saw the roads lighted up round London, that our king should put himself to so great an expence on his account--in good time!--thinking it a temporary illumination made to receive him with distinguished splendour. These anecdotes are very pretty now, if they are strictly true; because they shew the mind's petty but natural disposition, of reducing and attributing all _to self_: but if they are only inventions, to raise the reputation of London lamps, or Roman cascades, one scorns them;--I really do hope, and half believe, that they are true. But I have been to see the two Auroras of Guido and Guercino. Villa Ludovisi contains the last, of which I will speak first for forty reasons--the true one because I like it best. It is so sensible, so poetical, so beautiful. The light increases, and the figure advances to the fancy: one expects Night to be waked before one looks at her again, if ever one can be prevailed upon to take one's eyes away. The bat and owl are going soon to rest, and the lamp burns more faintly as when day begins to approach. The personification of Night is wonderfully hit off. But Guercino is _such_ a painter! We were driving last night to look at the Colisseo by moon-light--there were a few clouds just to break the expanse of azure and shew the gilding. I thought how like a sky of Guercino's it was; other painters remind one of nature, but nature when most lovely makes one think of Guercino and his works. The Ruspigliosi palace boasts the Aurora of Guido--both are ceilings, but this is not rightly named sure. We should call it the Phoebus, for Aurora holds only the second place at best: the fun is driving over her almost; it is a more luminous, a more graceful, a more showy picture than the other, more universal too, exciting louder and oftener repeated praises; yet the other is so discriminated, so tasteful, so classical! We must go see what Domenichino has done with the same subject. I forget the name of the palace where it is to be admired: but had we not seen the others, one should have said this was divine. It is a Phoebus again, _this_ is; not a bit of an Aurora: and Truth is springing up from the arms of Time to rejoice in the sun's broad light. Her expression of transport at being set free from obscurity, is happy in an eminent degree; but there are faults in her form, and the Apollo has scarcely dignity enough in _his_. The horses are best in Guide's picture: Aurora at the Villa Ludovisi has but two; they are very spirited, but it is the spirit of three, not six o'clock in a summer morning. Surely Thomson had been living under these two roofs when he wrote such descriptions as seem to have been made on purpose for them; could any one give a more perfect account of Guercino's performance than these words afford? The meek-ey'd morn appears, mother of dews, At first faint-gleaming in the dappled East Till far o'er æther spreads the widening glow, And from before the lustre of her face White break the clouds away: with quicken'd step Brown Night retires, young Day pours in apace And opens all the lawny prospect wide. As for the Ruspigliosi palace I left these lines in the room, written by the same author, and think them more capable than any description I could make, of giving some idea of Guido's Phoebus. While yonder comes the powerful King of Day Rejoicing in the East; the lessening cloud, The kindling azure, and the mountains brow Illum'd with fluid gold, his near approach Betoken glad; lo, now apparent all He looks in boundless majesty abroad, And sheds the shining day. So charming Thomson wrote from his lodgings at a milliner's in Bond-street, whence he seldom rose early enough to see the sun do more than glisten on the opposing windows of the street: but genius, like truth, cannot be kept down. So he wrote, and so they painted! _Ut pictura poesis_. The music is not in a state so capital as we left it in the north of Italy; we regret Nardini of Florence, Alessandri of Venice, and Ronzi of Milan; and who that has heard Signior Marchesi sing, could ever hear a successor (for rival he has none), without feeling total indifference to all their best endeavours? The conversations of Cardinal de Bernis and Madame de Boccapaduli are what my countrywomen talk most of; but the Roman ladies cannot endure perfumes, and faint away even at an artificial rose. I went but once among them, when Memmo the Venetian ambassador did me the honour to introduce me _somewhere_, but the conversation was soon over, not so my shame; when I perceived all the company shrink from me very oddly, and stop their noses with rue, which a servant brought to their assistance on open salvers. I was by this time more like to faint away than they--from confusion and distress; my kind protector informed me of the cause; said I had some grains of marechale powder in my hair perhaps, and led me out of the assembly; to which no intreaties could prevail on me ever to return, or make further attempts to associate with a delicacy so very susceptible of offence. Mean time the weather is exceedingly bad, heavy, thick, and foggy as our own, for aught I see; but so it was at Milan too I well remember: one's eye would not reach many mornings across the Naviglio that ran directly under our windows. For fine bright Novembers we must go to Constantinople I fancy; certain it is that Rome will not supply them. What however can make these Roman ladies fly from _odori_ so, that a drop of lavenderwater in one's handkerchief, or a carnation in one's stomacher, is to throw them all into, convulsions thus? Sure this is the only instance in which they forbear to _fabbricare fu l'antico_[Footnote: Build upon the old foundations.], in their own phrase: the dames, of whom Juvenal delights to tell, liked perfumes well enough if I remember; and Horace and Martial cry "_Carpe rosas_" perpetually. Are the modern inhabitants still more refined than _they_ in their researches after pleasure? and are the present race of ladies capable of increasing, beyond that of their ancestors, the keenness of any corporeal sense? I should think not. Here are however amusements enough at Rome without trying for their conversations. The Barberini palace, whither I carried a distracting tooth-ach, amused even that torture by the variety of its wonders. The sleeping faun, praised on from century to century, and never yet praised enough; so drunk, so fast asleep, so like a human body! Modesty reproving Vanity, by Leonardo da Vinci, so totally beyond my expectation or comprehension, great! wise! and fine! Raphael's Mistress, painted by himself, and copied by Julio Romano; this picture gives little satisfaction though except from curiosity gratified, the woman is too coarse. Guido's Magdalen up stairs, the famous Magdalen, effacing every beauty, of softness mingled with distress. A St. John too, by dear Guercino, transcendent! but such was my anguish the very rooms turned round: I must come again when less ill I believe. Nothing can equal the nastiness at one's entrance to this magazine of perfection: but the Roman nobles are not disgusted with _all sorts_ of scents it is plain; these are not what we should call perfumes indeed, but certainly _odori_: of the same nature as those one is obliged to wade through before Trajan's Pillar can be climbed. That the general appearance of a city which contains such treasures should be mean and disgusting, while one literally often walks upon granite, and tramples red porphyry under one's feet, is one of the greatest wonders to me, in a town of which the wonders seem innumerable: that it should be nasty beyond all telling, all endurance, with such perennial streams of the purest water liberally dispersed, and triumphantly scattered all over it, is another unfathomable wonder: that so many poor should be suffered to beg in the streets, when not a hand can be got to work in the fields, and that those poor should be permitted to exhibit sights of deformity and degradations of our species to me unseen till now, at the most solemn moments, and in churches where silver and gold, and richly-arrayed priests, scarcely suffice to call off attention from their squallid miseries, I do not try to comprehend. That the palaces which taste and expence combine to decorate should look quietly on, while common passengers use their noble vestibules, nay flairs, for every nauseous purpose; that princes whose incomes equal those of our Dukes of Bedford and Marlborough, should suffer their servants to dress other men's dinners for hire, or lend out their equipages for a day's pleasuring, and hang wet rags out of their palace windows to dry, as at the mean habitation of a pauper; while looking in at those very windows, nothing is to be seen but proofs of opulence, and scenes of splendour, I will not undertake to explain; sure I am, that whoever knows Rome, will not condemn this _ebauche_ of it. When I spoke of their beggars, many not unlike Salvator Rosa's Job at the Santa Croce palace, I ought not to have omitted their eloquence, and various talents. We talked to a lame man one day at our own door, whose account of his illness would not have disgraced a medical professor; so judicious were his sentiments, so scientific was his discourse. The accent here too is perfectly pleasing, intelligible, and expressive; and I like their _cantilena_ vastly. The excessive lenity of all Italian states makes it dangerous to live among them; a seeming paradox, yet certainly most true; and whatever is evil in this way at any other town, is worst at Rome; where those who deserve hanging, enjoy almost a moral certainty of never being hanged; so unwilling is everybody to detect the offender, and so numerous the churches to afford him protection if found out. A man asked importunately in our antichamber this morning for the _padrone,_ naming no names, and our servants turned him out. He went however only five doors, further, found a sick old gentleman sitting in his lodging attended by a feeble servant, whom he bound, stuck a knife in the master, rifled the apartments, and walked coolly out again at noon-day: nor should we have ever heard of _such a trifle_, but that it happened just by so; for here are no newspapers to tell who is murdered, and nobody's pity is excited, unless for the malefactor when they hear he is caught. But the Palazzo Farnese is a more pleasing speculation; the Hercules faces us entering; Guglielmo della Porta made his legs I hear, and when the real ones were found, _his were better:_ and Michael Angelo said, it was not worth risquing the statue to try at restoring the old ones. There is another Hercules stands near, as a foil to Glycon's, I suppose; and the Italians tell you of our Mr. Sharp's acuteness in finding some fault till then undiscovered, a very slight one though, with some of the neck muscles: they tell it approvingly however, and make one admire their candour, even beyond their Flora, who carries that in her countenance which they possess in their hearts. Under a shed on the right hand you find the famous groupe called Toro Farnese. It has been touched and repaired, they tell you, till much of the spirit is lost; but I did not miss it. The Bull and the Brothers are greatness itself; but Dirce draws no compassion by her looks somehow, and the lady who comes to her relief, seems too cold a spectatress of the scene. There were several broken statues in the place, and while my companions were examining the groupe after I had done, the wench's conversation who shewed it made my amusement: as we looked together at an Egyptian _Isis_, or, as many call her, _the Ephesian Diana_, with a hundred breasts, very hideous, and swathed about the legs like a mummy at Cairo, or a baby at Rome, I said to the girl, "_They worshipped these filthy things formerly before Jesus Christ came; but he taught us better_," added I, "_and we are wiser now: how foolish was not it to pray to this ugly stone_?"--"The people were _wickeder_ then, very likely;" replied my friend the wench, "but I do not see that it _was foolish at all."_ Who says the modern Romans are degenerated? I swear I think them so like their ancestors, that it is my delight to contemplate the resemblance. A statue of a peasant carrying game at this very palace, is habited precisely in the modern dress, and shews how very little change has yet been made. The shoes of the low fellows too particularly attract my notice: they exactly resemble the ancient ones, and when Persius mentions his ploughman _peronatus arator_, one sees he would say so to-day. The Dorian palace calls however, and people must give way to things where the miraculous powers of Benvenuto Garofani are concerned; where Lodovico Caracci exhibits a _testa del redentore_ beyond all praise, uniting every excellence, and expressing every perfection; where, in the deluge represented by Bonati, one sees the eagle drooping from a weight of rain, majestic in his distress, and looking up to the luminous part of the picture as if hoping to discover some ray of that sun he never shall see again. How characteristic! how tasteful is the expression! The famous Virgin and Child too, so often engraved and copied. I will run away from this Doria; it is too full of beauty--it dazzles: and I will let them shew the pale green Gaspar Pouffins, so valuable, so curious, to whom they please, while Nature and Claude content my fancy and fill up every idea. At the Colonna palace what have I remarked? That it possesses the gayest gallery belonging to any subject upon earth: one hundred and thirty-nine feet long, thirty-four broad, and seventy high: profusely ornamented with pillars, pictures, statues, to a degree of magnificence difficult to express. The Herodias here by Guido, is the perfection of dancing grace. No Frenchman enters the room that does not bear testimony to its peculiar excellence. But here's Guercino's sweet returning Prodigal, and here is a _Madonna disperata_ bursting as from a cavern to embrace the body of her dead son and saviour.--Such a sky too! But it is treating too theatrically a subject which impresses one more at last in the simple _Pietà_[AI] d'Annibale Caracci at Palazzo Doria. [Footnote AI: The Christ in his mother's lap, after crucifixion, is always called in Italy a _Pietà_.] One wonderfully-imagined picture by Andrea Sacchi, of Cain flying from the sight of his murdered brother, shall alone detain me from mentioning here at Rome what certainly would never have been thought on by Englishmen had it remained at Windsor; no other than our old King Charles's cabinet, sold to the Colonna family by Cromwell, and set about in the old-fashioned way with gems, cameos, &c. one of which has been stolen. And now to the Borghese, which I am told is for a time to finish my fatigues, as after three days more we go to Naples. News perfectly agreeable to me, who never have been well here for two hours together. All the great churches remain yet unvisited: they are to be taken at our return in spring; mean while I will go see Mons Sacer in spite of connoisseurship, though the place it seems is nothing, and the prospect from it dull; but it produces thoughts, or what is next to thought,--recollection of books read, and events related in one's early youth, when names and stories make impression on a mind not yet hardened by age, or contracted by necessary duty, so as no longer to receive with equal relish the _tales of other times._ The lake too, with the floating islands, should be mentioned; the colour of which is even blue with venom, and left a brassy taste in my mouth for a whole day, after only observing how it boiled with rage on dropping in a stone, and incrusted a stick with its tartar in two minutes. One of our companions indeed leaped upon the little spots of ground which float in it, and deserved to feel some effect of his rashness; but it is sufficient to stand near, I think; one scarcely can escape contagion. The sudden and violent powers observable in this lake should at least check the computists from thinking they can gather the world's age from its petrefactions. But we are called to the Vatican, where the Apollo, Laocoon, Antinous, and Meleager, with others of less distinguished merit, suffer one to think on nothing but themselves, and of the artists who framed such models of perfection. Laocoon's agonies torment one. I was forced to recollect the observation Dr. Moore says was first made by Mr. Locke, in order to harden my heart against him who appears to feel only for himself, when two such youths are expiring close beside him. But though painting can do much, and sculpture perhaps more, at least one learns to think so here at Rome, the comfort is, that poetry beats them both. Virgil knew, and Shakespeare would have known, how to heighten even this distress, by adding paternal anguish:--here is distress enough however. Let us once more acknowledge the modesty and candour of Italians, when we repeat what has been so often recorded, that Michael Angelo refused adding the arm that was wanting to this chef d'oeuvre; and when Bernini undertook the task, he begged it might remain always a different colour, that he might not be suspected of hoping that his work could ever lie confounded with that of the Greek artist. Such is not the spirit of the French: they have been always adding to Don Quixote! a personage whose adventures were little likely to cross one's fancy in the Vatican; but perfection is perfection. Here stands the Apollo though, in whom alone no fault has yet been found. They tell you, he has just killed the serpent Python. "Let us beg of him," says one of the company, "just to turn round and demolish those cursed snakes which are devouring the poor old man and his boys yonder." This was like the speech of _Marchez donc_ to the fine bronze horse under the heavenly statue of Marcus Aurelius at the Capitol, and made me hope that story might be true. It is the fashion for every body to go see Apollo by torch light: he looks like _Phoebus_ then, the Sun's bright deity, and seems to say to his admirers, as that Divinity does to the presumptuous hero in Homer, Oh son of Tydeus, cease! be wise, and see How vast the difference 'twixt the gods and thee. Indeed every body finds the remark obvious, that this statue is of beauty and dignity beyond what human nature now can boast; and the Meleager just at hand, with the Antinous, confirm it; for all elegance and all expression, unpossessed by the Apollo, _they have_, while none can miss the inferiority of their general appearance to his. The Musæum Clementinum is altogether such though, that these singularly excellent productions of art are only proper and well-adapted ornaments of a gallery, so stately as, on the other hand, that noble edifice seems but the due repository of such inhabitants. Never were place and decorations so adapted: never perhaps was so refined a taste engaged on subjects so worthy its exertion. The statues are disposed with a propriety that charms one; the situation of the pillars so contrived, the colours of them so chosen to carry the eye forward--not fatigue it; the rooms so illuminated: Hagley park is not laid out with more judicious attention to diversify, and relieve with various objects a mind delighting in the contemplation of ornamented nature; than is the Pope's Musæum calculated to enchain admiration, and fix it in those apartments where sublimity and beauty have established their residence; and those would be worse than Goths, who could think of moving even an old torso from the place where Pius Sextus has commanded it to remain. The other parts of this prodigious structure would take up one's life almost to see completely, to remember distinctly, and to describe accurately. When the reader recollects that St. Peter's, with all its appurtenances, palace, library, musæum, every thing that we include in the word _Vatican_, is said by the Romans to occupy an equal quantity of space, to that covered by the city of Turin: the assertion need not any longer be thought hyperbolical. I will say no more about it till at our return from Naples we visit all the churches. Vopiscus said, that the statues in his time at Rome out-numbered the people; and I trust the remark is now almost doubly true, as every day and hour digs up dead worthies, and the unwholesome weather must surely send many of the living ones to their ancestors: upon the whole, the men and women of Porphyry, &c. please me best, as they do not handle long knives to so good an effect as the others do, "_qui aime bien a s'ègorger encore[Footnote: Who have still a taste to be cut-throats.],"_ says a French gentleman of them the other day. There is however an air of cheerfulness in the streets at a night among the poor, who fry fish, and eat roots, sausages, &c. as they walk about gaily enough, and though they quarrel too often, never get drunk at least. The two houses belonging to the Borghese family shall conclude my first journey to Rome, and with that the first volume of my observations and reflexions. Their town palace is a suite of rooms constructed like those at Wanstead exactly; and where you turn at the end to come back by another suite, you find two alabaster fountains of superior beauty, and two glass lustres made in London, but never wiped since they left Fleet-street certainly. They do not however _want_ cleaning as the fountains do; which, by the extraordinary use made of them, give the whole palace an offensive smell. Among the pictures here, the entombing our blessed Saviour by Rafaelle is most praised: It is supposed indeed wholly inestimable, and I believe is so, while Venus, binding Cupid's eyes, by Titian, engraved by Strange, is possibly one of the pleasantest pictures in Rome. The Christ disputing with the Doctors is inimitable, one of the wonderful works of Leonardo da Vinci: but here is Domenichino's Diana among her nymphs, very laboured, and very learned. Why did it put me in mind of Hogarth's strolling actresses dressing in a barn? Villa Borghese presents more to one's mind at once than it will bear, from the bas relief of Curtius over the door that faces you going in, to the last gate of the garden you drive out at;--large as the saloon is however, the figure of Curtius seems too near you; and the horse's hind quarters are heavy, and ill-suited to the forehand; but here are men and women enough, and odd things that are neither, at this house; so we may let the horse of Curtius alone. Nothing can be gayer or more happily expressed in its way than the Centaur, which Dr. Moore, like Dr. Young, finds _not_ fabulous; while the brute runs away with the man, and Cupid keeps urging him forward. The fawn nursing Bacchus when a baby, is another semi-human figure of just and high estimation; and that very famous composition for which Cavalier Bernini has executed a mattress infinitely softer to the eye than any real one I ever found in _his_ country, has here an apartment appropriated to itself. From monsters the eye turns of its own accord towards Nero, and here is an incomparable one of about ten years old, in whose face I vainly looked for the seeds of parricide, and murderous tyranny; but saw only a sturdy boy, who might have been made an honest man perhaps, had not the rod been spared by his old tutor, whose lenity is repaid by death here in the next room. It is a relief to look upon the smiling Zingara; her lively character is exquisitely touched, her face the only one perhaps where Bernini could not go beyond the proper idea of arch waggery and roguish cunning, adorned with beauty that must have rendered its possessor, while living, irresistible. His David is scarcely young enough for a ruddy shepherd swain; he seems too muscular, and confident of his own strength; _this_ fellow could have worn Saul's armour well enough. Æneas carrying his father, I understand, is by the other Bernini; but the famous groupe of Apollo and Daphne is the work of our Chevalier himself. There is a Miss Hillisberg, a dancer on the stage, who reminds every body of this graceful statue, when theatrical distress drives her to force expression: I mean the stage in Germany, not Rome, whence females are excluded. But the vases in this Borghese villa! the tables! the walls! the cameos stuck in the walls! the frames of the doors, all agate, porphyry, onyx, or verd antique! the enormous riches contained in every chamber, actually takes away my breath and leaves me stunned. Nor are the gardens unbecoming or inadequate to the house, where on the outside appear such bas-reliefs as would be treasured up by the sovereigns of France or England, and shewn as valuable rarities. The rape of Europa first; it is a beautiful antique. Up stairs you see the rooms constantly inhabited; in the princess's apartment, her chimney-piece is one elegant but solid amethyst: over the prince's bed, which changes with the seasons, hangs a Ganymede painted by Titian, to which the connoisseurs tell you no rival has yet been found. The furniture is suitably magnificent in every part of the house, and our English friends assured me, that they met the lady of it last night, when one gentleman observing how pretty she was, another replied he could not see her face for the dazzling lustre of her innumerable diamonds, that actually by their sparkling confounded his sight, and surrounded her countenance so that he could not find it. Among all the curiosities however belonging to this wealthy and illustrious family, the single one most prized is a well-known statue, called in Catalogues by the name of the Fighting Gladiator, but considered here at Rome as deserving of a higher appellation. They now dispute only what hero it can be, as every limb and feature is expressive of a loftier character than the ancients ever bestowed in sculpture upon those degraded mortals whom Pliny contemptuously calls _Hordiarij_, and says they were kept on barley bread, with ashes given in their drink to strengthen them. Indeed the statue of the expiring Gladiator at the Capitol, his rope about his neck, and his unpitied fate, marked strongly in his vulgar features, exhibits quite a separate class in the variety of human beings; and though Faustina's favourite found in the same collection was probably the showiest fellow then among them, we see no marks of intelligent beauty or heroic courage in his form or face, where an undaunted steadiness and rustic strength make up the little merit of the figure. This charming statue of the prince Borghese is on the other hand the first in Rome perhaps, for the distinguished excellencies of animated grace and active manliness: his head raised, the body's attitude, not studied surely, but the apparent and seemingly sudden effect of patriotic daring. Such one's fancy forms young Isadas the Spartan; who, hearing the enemy's approach while at the baths, starts off unmindful of his own defenceless state, snatches a spear and shield from one he meets, flies at the foe, performs prodigies of valour, is looked on by both armies as a descended God, and returns home at last unhurt, to be fined by the Ephori for breach of discipline, at the same time that a statue was ordered to commemorate his exploits, and erected at the state's expence. Monsignor Ennio Visconti, who saw that the figure reminded me of this story, half persuaded himself for a moment that this was the very Isadas; and that Jason, for whom he had long thought it intended, was not young enough, and less likely to fight undefended by armour against bulls, of whose fury he had been well apprised. Mr. Jenkins recollected an antique ring which confirmed our new hypothesis, and I remained flattered, whether they were convinced or no. END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 
16518	----	[Illustration: PRICE ONE SHILLING. CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY.] [Illustration] A DAY'S TOUR A Journey through France and Belgium BY _CALAIS, TOURNAY, ORCHIES, DOUAI, ARRAS, BETHUNE, LILLE, COMINES, YPRES, HAZEBROUCK, BERGUES, AND ST. OMER_ WITH A FEW SKETCHES BY PERCY FITZGERALD [Illustration] London CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY 1887 PREFACE. This trifle is intended as an illustration of the little story in 'Evenings at Home' called 'Eyes and No Eyes,' where the prudent boy saw so much during his walk, and his companion nothing at all. Travelling has become so serious a business from its labours and accompaniments, that the result often seems to fall short of what was expected, and the means seem to overpower the end. On the other hand, a visit to unpretending places in an unpretending way often produces unexpected entertainment for the contemplative man. Some such experiment was the following, where everything was a surprise because little was expected. The epicurean tourist will be facetious on the loss of sleep and comfort, money, etc.; but to a person in good health and spirits these are but trifling inconveniences. ATHENÆUM CLUB, _August, 1887_. CONTENTS. I. IN TOWN II. DOVER III. THE PACKET IV. CALAIS V. TOURNAY VI. DOUAI VII. ARRAS VIII. LILLE IX. YPRES X. BERGUES XI. ST. OMER XII. ST. PIERRE LES CALAIS A DAY'S TOUR. I. _IN TOWN._ It is London, of a bright sultry August day, when the flags seem scorching to the feet, and the sun beats down fiercely. It has yet a certain inviting attraction. There is a general air of bustle, and the provincial, trundled along in his cab, his trunks over his head, looks out with a certain awe and sense of delight, noting, as he skirts the Park, the gay colours glistening among the dusty trees, the figures flitting past, the riders, the carriages, all suggesting a foreign capital. The great city never looks so brilliant or so stately as on one of these 'broiling' days. One calls up with a sort of wistfulness the great and picturesque cities abroad, with their grand streets and palaces, ever a delightful novelty. We long to be away, to be crossing over that night--enjoying a cool fresh passage, all troubles and monotony left behind. On one such day this year--a Wednesday--these mixed impressions and longings presented themselves with unwonted force and iteration. So wistful and sudden a craving for snapping all ties and hurrying away was after all spasmodic, perhaps whimsical; but it was quickened by that sultry, melting air of the parks and the tropical look of the streets. The pavements seemed to glare fiercely like furnaces; there was an air of languid Eastern enjoyment. The very dogs 'snoozed' pleasantly in shady corners, and all seemed happy as if enjoying a holiday. How delightful and enviable those families--the father, mother, and fair daughters, now setting off gaily with their huge boxes--who to-morrow would be beside the ever-delightful Rhine, posting on to Cologne and Coblentz. What a welcome ring in those names! Stale, hackneyed as it is, there comes a thrill as we get the first glimpse of the silvery placid waters and their majestic windings. Even the hotels, the bustle, and the people, holiday and festive, all seem novel and gay. With some people this fairy look of things foreign never 'stales,' even with repetition. It is as with the illusions of the stage, which in some natures will triumph over the rudest, coarsest shocks. Well, that sweltering day stole by. The very cabmen on their 'stands' nodded in blissful dreams. The motley colours in the Park--a stray cardinal-coloured parasol or two added to the effect--glinted behind the trees. The image of the happy tourists in the foreign streets grew more vivid. The restlessness increased every hour, and was not to be 'laid.' Living within a stone's-throw of Victoria Station, I find a strange and ever new sensation in seeing the night express and its passengers starting for foreign lands--some wistful and anxious, others supremely happy. It is next in interest to the play. The carriages are marked 'CALAIS,' 'PARIS,' etc. It is even curious to think that, within three hours or so, they will be on foreign soil, among the French spires, sabots, blouses, gendarmes, etc. These are trivial and fanciful notions, but help to fortify what one has of the little faiths of life, and what one wise man, at least, has said: that it is the smaller unpretending things of life that make up its pleasures, particularly those that come unexpectedly, and from which we hope but little. When all these thoughts were thus tumultuously busy, an odd _bizarre_ idea presented itself. By an unusual concatenation, there was before me but a strictly-tightened space of leisure that could not be expanded. Friday must be spent at home. This was Wednesday, already three-quarters spent; but there was the coming night and the whole of Thursday. But Friday morning imperatively required that the traveller should be found back at home again. The whole span, the _irreducible maximum_, not to be stretched by any contrivance beyond about thirty hours. Something could be done, but not much. As I thought of the strict and narrow limits, it seemed that these were some precious golden hours, and never to recur again; the opportunity must be seized, or lost for ever! As I walked the sunshiny streets, images rose of the bright streets abroad, their quaint old towers, and town-halls, and marketplaces, and churches, red-capped fisherwomen--all this scenery was 'set,'--properties and decorations--and the foreign play seemed to open before my eyes and invite me. There is an Eastern story of a man who dipped his head into a tub of water, and who there and then mysteriously passed through a long series of events: was married, had children, saw them grow up, was taken prisoner by barbarians, confined long in gaol, was finally tried, sentenced, and led out to execution, with the scimitar about to descend, when of a sudden--he drew his head out of the water. And lo! all these marvels had passed in a second! What if there were to be magically crowded into those few hours all that could possibly be seen--sea and land, old towns in different countries, strange people, cathedrals, town-halls, streets, etc.? It would be like some wild, fitful dream. And on the Friday I would draw my head, as it were, out of the tub. But it would need the nicest balancing and calculation, not a minute to be lost, everything to be measured and jointed together beforehand. There was something piquant in this notion. Was not life short? and precious hours were too often wasted carelessly and dawdled away. It might even be worth while to see how much could be seen in these few hours. In a few moments the resolution was taken, and I was walking down to Victoria, and in two hours was in Snargate Street, Dover. II. _DOVER._ Dover has an old-fashioned dignity of its own; the town, harbour, ports, and people seem, as it were, consecrated to packets. There is an antique and reverend grayness in its old inns, old streets, old houses, all clustered and huddled into the little sheltered amphitheatre, as if trying to get down close by their pride, the packets. For centuries it has been the threshold, the _hall-door_, of England. It is the last inn, as it were, from which we depart to see foreign lands. History, too, comes back on us: we think of 'expresses' in fast sloops or fishing-boats; of landings at Dover, and taking post for London in war-time; how kings have embarked, princesses disembarked--all in that awkward, yet snug harbour. A most curious element in this feeling is the faint French flavour reaching across--by day the white hills yonder, by night the glimmering lights on the opposite coast. The inns, too, have a nautical, seaport air, running along the beach, as they should do, and some of the older ones having a bulging stern-post look about their lower windows. Even the frowning, fortress-like coloured pile, the Lord Warden, thrusts its shoulders forward on the right, and advances well out into the sea, as if to be the first to attract the arrivals. There is a quaint relish, too, in the dingy, old-fashioned marine terrace of dirty tawny brick, its green verandas and _jalousies_, which lend quite a tropical air. Behind them, in shelter, are little dark squares, of a darker stone, with glimpses of the sea and packets just at the corners. Indeed, at every point wherever there is a slit or crevice, a mast or some cordage is sure to show itself, reminding us how much we are of the packet, packety. Ports of this kind, with all their people and incidents, seem to be devised for travellers; with their flaring lights, _up-all-night_ hotels, the railway winding through the narrow streets, the piers, the stormy waters, the packets lying by all the piers and filling every convenient space. The old Dover of Turner's well-known picture, or indeed of twenty years ago, with its 'dumpy' steamers, its little harbour, and rude appliances for travel, was a very different Dover from what it is now. There was then no rolling down in luxurious trains to an Admiralty Pier. The stoutest heart might shrink, or at least feel dismally uncomfortable, as he found himself discharged from the station near midnight of a blowy, tempestuous night, and saw his effects shouldered by a porter, whom he was invited to follow down to the pier, where the funnel of the 'Horsetend' or Calais boat is moaning dismally. Few lights were twinkling in the winding old-fashioned streets; but the near vicinity of ocean was felt uncomfortably in harsh blasts and whistling sounds. The little old harbour, like that of some fishing-place, offered scarcely any room. The much-buffeted steamer lay bobbing and springing at its moorings, while a dingy oil-lamp marked the gangway. A comforting welcome awaited us from some old salt, who uttered the cheering announcement that it was 'agoin' to be a roughish night.' On this night there was an entertainment announced at the 'Rooms,' and to pass away the time I looked in. It was an elocutionist one, entitled 'Merry-Making Moments, or, Spanker's Wallet of Varieties,' with a portrait of Spanker on the bills opening the wallet with an expression of delight or surprise. This was his 'Grand Competition Night,' when a 'magnificent goblet' was competed for by all comers, which I had already seen in a shop window, a blue ribbon reposing in _dégagé_ fashion across it. If a tumbler of the precious metal could be called a magnificent goblet--it was scarcely bigger--it deserved the title. The poor operator was declaiming as I entered, in unmistakable Scotch, the history of 'Little Breeches,' and giving it with due pathos. I am bound to say that a sort of balcony which hung out at the end was well filled by the unwashed takers, or at least donees, of sixpenny tickets. There was a purpose in this, as will be seen. After being taken through 'The Raven,' and 'The Dying Burglar,' the competition began. This was certainly the most diverting portion of the entertainment, from its genuineness, the eagerness of the competitors, and their ill-disguised jealousy. There were four candidates. A doctor-looking man with a beard, and who had the air either of reading familiar prayers to his household with good parsonic effect, or of having tried the stage, uttered his lines with a very superior air, as though the thing were not in doubt. Better than he, however, was one, probably a draper's assistant, who competed with a wild and panting fashion, tossing his arms, now raising, now dropping his voice, and every _h_, too. But a shabby man, who looked as if he had once practised tailoring, next stepped on the platform, and at once revealed himself as the local poet. Encouraged by the generous applause, he announced that he would recite some lines 'he 'ad wrote on the great storm which committed such 'avoc on hour pier.' There were local descriptions, and local names, which always touched the true chord. Notably an allusion to a virtuous magnate then, I believe, at rest: 'Amongst the var'ous noble works, It should be widely known, 'Twas WILLIAM BROWN' _(applause)_ 'that gave _this_ town The Dover's Sailors' 'OME!' _(applause)_. Need I say that when the votes came to be taken, this poet received the cup? His joy and mantling smiles I shall not forget, though the donor gave it to him with unconcealed disgust; it showed what universal suffrage led to. The doctor and the other defeated candidates, who had been asked to retire to a private room during the process of decision, were now obliged to emerge in mortified procession, there being no other mode of egress. The doctor's face was a study. The second part was to follow. But it was now growing late, and time and mail-packets wait for no man. III. _THE PACKET._ As I come forth from the Elocution Contest, I find that night has closed in. Not a ripple is on the far-stretching blue waste. From the high cliffs that overhang the town and its amphitheatre can be seen the faintly outlined harbour, where the white-chimneyed packet snoozes as it were, the smoke curling upwards, almost straight. The sea-air blows fresh and welcome, though it does not beat on a 'fevered brow.' There is a busy hum and clatter in the streets, filled with soldiers and sailors and chattering sojourners. Now do the lamps begin to twinkle lazily. There is hardly a breath stirring, and the great chalk-cliffs gleam out in a ghostly fashion, like mammoth wave-crests. As it draws on to ten o'clock, the path to the Admiralty Pier begins to darken with flitting figures hurrying down past the fortress-like Lord Warden, now ablaze and getting ready its hospice for the night; the town shows itself an amphitheatre of dotted lights--while down below white vapours issue walrus-like from the sonorous 'scrannel-pipes' of the steamer. Gradually the bustle increases, and more shadowy figures come hurrying down, walking behind their baggage trundled before them. Now a faint scream, from afar off inland, behind the cliffs, gives token that the trains, which have been tearing headlong down from town since eight o'clock, are nearing us; while the railway-gates fast closed, and porters on the watch with green lamps, show that the expresses are due. It is a rather impressive sight to wait at the closed gates of the pier and watch these two outward-bound expresses arrive. After a shriek, prolonged and sustained, the great trains from Victoria and Ludgate, which met on the way and became one, come thundering on, the enormous and powerful engine glaring fiercely, flashing its lamps, and making the pier tremble. Compartment after compartment of first-class carriages flit by, each lit up so refulgently as to show the crowded passengers, with their rugs and bundles dispersed about them. It is a curious change to see the solitary pier, jutting out into the waves, all of a sudden thus populated with grand company, flashing lights, and saloon-like splendour--ambassadors, it may be, generals for the seat of war, great merchants like the Rothschilds, great singers or actors, princes, dukes, millionnaires, orators, writers, 'beauties,' brides and bridegrooms, all ranged side by side in those cells, or _vis-à-vis_. That face under the old-fashioned travelling-cap may be that of a prime minister, and that other gentlemanly person a swindling bank-director flying from justice. During the more crowded time of the travelling season it is not undramatic, and certainly entertaining, to stand on the deck of the little boat, looking up at the vast pier and platform some twenty or thirty feet above one's head, and see the flood of passengers descending in ceaseless procession; and more wonderful still, the baggage being hurled down the 'shoots.' On nights of pressure this may take nearly an hour, and yet not a second appears to be lost. One gazes in wonder at the vast brass-bound chests swooping down and caught so deftly by the nimble mariners; the great black-domed ladies' dress-baskets and boxes; American and French trunks, each with its national mark on it. Every instant the pile is growing. It seems like building a mansion with vast blocks of stone piled up on each other. Hat-boxes and light leather cases are sent bounding down like footballs, gradually and by slow degrees forming the mountain. What secrets in these chests! what tales associated with them! Bridal trousseaux, jewels, letters, relics of those loved and gone; here the stately paraphernalia of a family assumed to be rich and prosperous, who in truth are in flight, hurrying away with their goods. Here, again, the newly bought 'box' of the bride, with her initials gaudily emblazoned; and the showy, glittering chests of the Americans. There is a physiognomy in luggage, distinct as in clothes; and a strange variety, not uninteresting. How significant, for instance, of the owner is the weather-beaten, battered old portmanteau of the travelling bachelor, embrowned with age, out of shape, yet still strong and serviceable!--a business-like receptacle, which, like him, has travelled thousands of miles, been rudely knocked about, weighed, carried hither and thither, encrusted with the badges of hotels as an old vessel is with barnacles, grim and reserved like its master, and never lost or gone astray. Now the engines and their trains glide away home. The shadowy figures stand round in crowds. To the reflecting mind there is something bewildering and even mournful in the survey of this huge agglomeration and of its owners, the muffled, shadowy figures, some three hundred in number, grouped together, and who will be dispersed again in a few hours. A yacht-voyage could not be more tranquilly delightful than this pleasant moonlight transit. We are scarcely clear of the twinkling lights of the Dover amphitheatre, grown more and more distant, when those of the opposite coast appear to draw near and yet nearer. Often as one has crossed, the sense of a new and strange impression is never wanting. The sense of calm and silence, the great waste of sea, the monotonous 'plash' of the paddle-wheels, the sort of solitude in the midst of such a crowd, the gradually lengthening distance behind, with the lessening, as gradual, in front, and the always novel feeling of approach to a new country--these elements impart a sort of dreamy, poetical feeling to the scene. Even the calm resignation of the wrapped-up shadows seated in a sort of retreat, and devoted to their own thoughts or slumbers, add to this effect. With which comes the thought of the brave little vessels, which through day and night, year after year, dance over these uncertain waters in 'all weathers,' as it is termed. When the night is black as Erebus, and the sea in its fury boiling and raging over the pier, the Lord Warden with its storm-shutters up, and timid guests removed to more sheltered quarters, the very stones of the pier shaken from their places by the violence of the monster outside--the little craft, wrapping its mantle about its head, goes out fearlessly, and, emerging from the harbour to be flung about, battered with wild fury, forces her way on through the night, which its gallant sailors call, with truth, 'an awful one.' While busy with these thoughts I take note of a little scene of comedy, or perhaps of a farcical kind, which is going on near me, in which two 'Harrys' of the purest kind were engaged, and whose oddities lightened the tediousness of the passage. One had seen foreign parts, and was therefore regarded with reverence by his companion. They were promenading the deck, and the following dialogue was borne to me in snatches: First Harry (interrogatively, and astonished): 'Eh? no! Now, really?' Second Harry: 'Oh, Lord bless yer, yes! It comes quite easy, you know' (or 'yer know'). 'A little trouble at first; but, Lord bless yer' (this benediction was imparted many times during the conversation), 'it ain't such a difficult thing at all.' I now found they were speaking of acquiring the French language--a matter the difficulty of which they thought had been absurdly overrated. Then the second Harry: 'Of course it is! Suppose you're in a Caffy, and want some wine; you just call to the waiter, and you say--' First Harry (who seems to think that the secret has already been communicated): 'Dear me; yes, to be sure--to be sure! I never thought of that. A Caffy?' Second Harry: 'Oh, Lor' bless yer, it comes as easy as--that! Well, you go say to the fellow--just as you would say to an English waiter--"_Don-ny maw_"--(pause)--"_dee Vinne_."' First Harry (amazed): 'So _that's_ the way! Dear, dear me! Vinne!' Second Harry: 'O' course it is the way! Suppose you want yer way to the railway, you just go ask for the "_Sheemin--dee--Fur_." _Fur_, you know, means "rail" in French--_Sheemin_ is "the road," you know.' Again lost in wonder at the simplicity of what is popularly supposed to be so thorny, the other Harry could only repeat: 'So that's it! What is it, again? _Sheemin_--' _'Sheemin dee Fur.'_ Later, in the fuss and bustle of the 'eating hall,' this 'Harry,' more obstreperous than ever by contact with the foreigners, again attracted my attention. Everywhere I heard his voice; he was rampant. 'When the chap laid hold of my bag, "Halloo," says I; "hands off, old boy," says I. "'Eel Fo!" says he. '"Eel-pie!" says I. "Blow your _Fo_," says I, and didn't he grin like an ape? I declare I thought I'd have split when he came again with his "_Eel Fo_!"' He was then in his element. Everything new to him was 'a guy,' or 'so rum,' or 'the queerest go you ever.' One of the two declared that, 'in all his experience and in all his life he had never heard sich a lingo as French;' and further, that 'one of their light porters at Bucklersbury would eat half a dozen of them Frenchmen for a bender.' This strange, grotesque dialogue I repeat textually almost; and, it may be conceived, it was entertaining in a high degree. _'Sheemin dee Fur'_ was the exact phonetic pronunciation, and the whole scene lingers pleasantly in the memory. IV. _CALAIS._ But it is now close on midnight, and we are drawing near land; the eye of the French _phare_ grows fiercer and more glaring, until, close on midnight, the traveller finds the blinding light flashed full on him, as the vessel rushes past the wickerwork pier-head. One or two beings, whose unhappy constitution it is to be miserable and wretched at the very whisper of the word 'SEA,' drag themselves up from below, rejoicing that here is CALAIS. Beyond rises the clustered town confined within its walls. As we glide in between the friendly arms of the openwork pier, the shadowy outlines of the low-lying town take shape and enlarge, dotted with lamps as though pricked over with pin-holes. The fiery clock of the station, that sits up all night from year's end to year's end; the dark figures with tumbrils, and a stray coach waiting; the yellow gateway and drawbridge of the fortress just beyond, and the chiming of _carillons_ in a wheezy fashion from the old watch-tower within, make up a picture. [Illustration: HOGARTH'S GATE (CALAIS)] [Illustration: HALL OF THE STAPLE, (Calais)] Such, indeed, it used to be--not without its poetry, too; but the old Calais days are gone. Now the travellers land far away down the pier, at the new-fangled 'Calais Maritime,' forsooth! and do not even approach the old town. The fishing-boats, laid up side by side along the piers, are shadowy. It seems a scene in a play. The great sea is behind us and all round. It is a curious feeling, thinking of the nervous unrest of the place, that has gone on for a century, and that will probably go on for centuries more. Certainly, to a person who has never been abroad, this midnight scene would be a picture not without a flavour of romance. But such glimpses of poetry are held intrusive in these matter-of-fact days. There is more than an hour to wait, whilst the passengers gorge in the huge _salle_, and the baggage is got ashore. So I wander away up to the town. How picturesque that stroll! Not wholly levelled are the old yellow walls; the railway-station with its one eye, and clock that never sleeps, opens its jaws with a cheerful bright light, like an inn fire; dark figures in cowls, soldiers, sailors, flit about; curiously-shaped tumbrils for the baggage lie up in ordinary. Here is the old arched gate, ditch, and drawbridge; Hogarth's old bridge and archway, where he drew the 'Roast Beef of Old England.' Passing over the bridge into the town unchallenged, I find a narrow street with yellow houses--the white shutters, the porches, the first glance of which affects one so curiously and reveals France. Here is the Place of Arms in the centre, whence all streets radiate. What more picturesque scene!--the moon above, the irregular houses straggling round, the quaint old town-hall, with its elegant tower, and rather wheezy but most musical chimes; its neighbour, the black, solemn watch-tower, rising rude and abrupt, seven centuries old, whence there used to be strict look-out for the English. Down one of these side streets is a tall building, with its long rows of windows and shutters and closed door (Quillacq's, now Dessein's), once a favourite house--the 'Silver Lion,' mentioned in the old memoirs, visited by Hogarth, and where, twenty years ago, there used to be a crowd of guests. Standing in the centre, I note a stray roysterer issuing from some long-closed _café_, hurrying home, while the _carillons_ in their airy _rococo_-looking tower play their melodious tunes in a wheezy jangle that is interesting and novel. This chime has a celebrity in this quarter of France. I stayed long in the centre of that solitary _place_, listening to that midnight music. It is a curious, not unromantic feeling, that of wandering about a strange town at midnight, and the effect increases as, leaving the _place_, I turn down a little by-street--the Rue de Guise--closed at the end by a beautiful building or fragment, unmistakably English in character. Behind it spreads the veil of blue sky, illuminated by the moon, with drifting white clouds passing lazily across. This is the entrance to the Hôtel de Guise--a gate-tower and archway, pure Tudor-English in character, and, like many an old house in the English counties, elegant and almost piquant in its design. The arch is flanked by slight hexagonal _tourelles_, each capped by a pinnacle decorated with niches in front. Within is a little courtyard, and fragments of the building running round in the same Tudor style, but given up to squalor and decay, evidently let out to poor lodgers. This charming fragment excites a deep melancholy, as it is a neglected survival, and may disappear at any moment--the French having little interest in these English monuments, indeed, being eager to efface them when they can. It is always striking to see this on some tranquil night, as I do now--and Calais is oftenest seen at midnight--and think of the Earl of Warwick, the 'deputy,' and of the English wool-staple merchants who traded here. Here lodged Henry VIII. in 1520; and twelve years later Francis I., when on a visit to Henry, took up his abode in this palace. [Illustration: BELFRY, CALAIS.] Crossing the _place_ again, I come on the grim old church, built by the English, where were married our own King Richard II. and Isabelle of Valois--a curious memory to recur as we listen to the 'high mass' of a Calais Sunday. But the author of 'Modern Painters' has furnished the old church with its best poetical interpretation. 'I cannot find words,' he says in a noble passage,' to express the intense pleasure I have always felt at first finding myself, after some prolonged stay in England, at the foot of the tower of Calais Church. The large neglect, the noble unsightliness of it, the record of its years, written so vividly, yet without sign of weakness or decay; its stern vastness and gloom, eaten away by the Channel winds, and overgrown with bitter sea-grass. I cannot tell half the strange pleasures and thoughts that come about me at the sight of the old tower.' Most interesting of all is the grim, rusted, and gaunt watch-tower, before alluded to, which rises out of a block of modern houses in the _place_ itself. It can be seen afar off from the approaching vessel, and until comparatively late times this venerable servant had done the charity of lighthouse work for a couple of centuries at least. But one of the pleasantest associations connected with the town was the old Dessein's Hotel, which had somehow an inexpressibly old-fashioned charm, for it had a grace like some disused château. Some of the prettiest passages in Sterne's writings are associated with this place. We see the figures of the monk, the well-known host, the lady and the _petit-maître_: to say nothing of the old _désobligeante_. Even of late years it was impossible to look at the old building, which remained unchanged, without calling up the image of Mr. Sterne, and the curious airy conversation--sprinkled with what execrable French both in grammar and spelling!--that took place at the gate. An air of the old times pervaded it strongly: it was like opening an old _garde de vin_. You passed out of the _place_ and found yourself in the Rue Royale--newly named Rue Leveux--and there, Dessein's stood before you, with its long yellow wall, archway and spacious courts, on each side a number of quaint gables or _mansardes_, sharp-roofed. Over the wall was seen the foliage of tall and handsome trees. There is a coloured print representing this entrance, with the meeting of the 'little master' and the lady--painted by Leslie--and which gives a good idea of the place. In the last century the courtyard used to be filled with posting-carriages, and the well-known _remise_ lay here in a corner. Behind the house stretched large, well-stocked gardens, with which the guests at the hotel used to be recreated; while at the bottom of the garden, but opening into another street, was the theatre, built by the original Dessein, belonging to the hotel, and still used. This garden was wild and luxuriant, the birds singing, while the courtyard was dusty and weed-grown. This charming picture has ever been a captivating one for the traveller. It seemed like an old country-house transferred to town. There was something indescribable in the tranquil flavour of the place, its yellow gamboge tint alternated with green vineries, its spacious courtyard and handsome chambers. It was bound up with innumerable old associations. Thackeray describes, with an almost poetical affection and sympathy, the night he spent there. He called up the image of Sterne in his 'black satin smalls,' and talked with him. They used to show his room, regularly marked, as I have seen it, 'STERNES'S ROOM, NO. 31,' with its mezzotint, after Sir Joshua, hung over the chimney-piece. But this tradition received a shock some sixty years since. An inquisitive and sceptical traveller fancied he saw an inscription or date lurking behind the vine-leaves that so luxuriantly covered the old house, and sent up a man on a ladder to clear away the foliage. This operation led to the discovery of a tablet, dated two years too late for the authenticity of the building in which 'Sterne's room' was. The waiter, however, in nowise disconcerted, said the matter could be easily 'arranged' by selecting another room in an unquestioned portion of the building! To make up, however, there was a room labelled 'SIR WALTER SCOTT'S ROOM,' with his portrait; and of this there could be no reasonable question. +------+ | AD | | 1770 | +------+ In later years it did not flourish much, but gently decayed. Everything seemed in a state of mild sleepy abandonment and decay till about the year 1861, when the Desseins gave over business. The town, much straitened for room, and cramped within its fortifications, had long been casting hungry eyes on this spacious area. Strange to say, even in the prosaic pages of our own 'Bradshaw,' the epitaph of 'old Dessein's' is to be read among its advertisements: 'CALAIS. 'HÔTEL DESSEIN.--L. Dessein, the proprietor, has the honour to inform his numerous patrons, and travellers in general, that after the 1st of January his establishment will be transferred to the Hôtel Quillacq, which has been entirely done up, and will take the name of HÔTEL DESSEIN. The premises of the old Hôtel Dessein having been purchased by the town of Calais, it ceases to be an Hôtel for Travellers.' Still, in this new function it was 'old Dessein's,' and you were shown 'Sterne's room,' etc. I recall wandering through it of a holiday, surveying the usual museum specimens--the old stones, invariable spear-heads, stuffed animals; in short, the usual rather heterogeneous collection, made up of 'voluntary contributions,' prompted half by the vanity of the donor and half by his indifference to the objects presented. We had not, indeed, the 'old pump' or the parish stocks, as at Little Pedlington, but there were things as interesting. Here were a few old pictures given by the Government, and labelled in writing; the car of Blanchard's balloon, and a cutting from a newspaper describing his arrival; portraits of the 'Citizen King' in his white trousers; ditto of Napoleon III., name pasted over; the flagstone, with an inscription, celebrating the landing of Louis XVIII., removed from the pier--in deference to Republican sensitiveness--no doubt to be restored again in deference to monarchical feelings; and, of course, a number of the usual uninteresting cases containing white cards, and much cotton, pins, and insects, stuffed birds, and symmetrically-arranged dried specimens, the invariable Indian gourds, and arrows, and moccasins, which 'no gentlemanly collection should be without.' Never, during many a visit, did I omit wandering up to see this pleasing, old, but ghostly memorial. It may be conceived what a shock it was when, on a recent visit, I found it gone--razed--carted away. I searched and searched--fancied I had mistaken the street; but no! it was gone for ever. During M. Jules Ferry's last administration, when the rage for 'Communal schools' set in, this tempting site had been seized upon, the interesting old place levelled, and a factory-like red-brick pile rapidly erected in its place. It was impossible not to feel a pang at this discovery; I felt that Calais without its Dessein's had lost its charm. Madame Dessein, a grand-niece or nearly-related descendant of _le grand Dessein_, still directs at Quillacq's--a pleasing old lady. There is still a half hour before me, while the gorgers in 'Maritime Calais' are busy feeding against time; and while I stand in the _place_, listening to the wheezy old chimes, I recall a pleasant excursion, and a holiday that was spent there, at the time when the annual _fêtes_ were being celebrated. Never was there a brighter day: all seemed to be new, and the very quintessence of what was foreign--the gay houses of different heights and patterns were decked with streamers, their parti-coloured blinds, devices, and balconies running round the _place_, and furnishing gaudy detail. Here there used to be plenty of movement, when the Lafitte diligences went clattering by, starting for Paris, before the voracious railway marched victoriously in and swallowed diligence, horses, postilions--bells, boots and all! The gay crowd passing across the _place_ was making for the huge iron-gray cathedral, quite ponderous and fortress-like in its character. Here is the grand _messe_ going on, the Swiss being seen afar off, standing with his halbert under the great arch, while between, down to the door, are the crowded congregation and the convenient chairs. Overhead the ancient organ is pealing out with rich sound, while the sun streams in through the dim-painted glass on the old-fashioned costumes of the fish-women, just falling on their gold earrings _en passant_. There is a dreamy air about this function, which associated itself, in some strange way, with bygone days of childhood, and it is hard to think that about two or three hours before the spectator was in all the prose of London. For those who love novel and picturesque memories or scenes, there are few things more effective or pleasant to think of than one of these Sunday mornings in a strange unfamiliar French town, when every corner, and every house and figure--welcome novelty!--are gay as the costumes and colours in an opera. The night before it was, perhaps, the horrors of the packet, the cribbing in the cabin, the unutterable squalor and roughness of all things, the lowest depth of hard, ugly prose, together with the rudest buffeting and agitation, and poignant suffering; but, in a few hours, what a 'blessed' change! Now there is the softness of a dream in the bright cathedral church crowded to the door, the rites and figures seen afar off, the fuming incense, the music, the architecture! During these musings the fiercely glaring clock warns me that time is running out; but a more singular monitor is the great lighthouse which rises at the entrance of the town, and goes through its extraordinary, almost fiendish, performance all the night long. This is truly a phenomenon. Lighthouses are usually relegated to some pier-end, and display their gyrations to the congenial ocean. But conceive a monster of this sort almost _in_ the town itself, revolving ceaselessly, flashing and flaring into every street and corner of a street, like some Patagonian policeman with a giant 'bull's-eye.' A more singular, unearthly effect cannot be conceived. Wherever I stand, in shadow or out of it, this sudden flashing pursues me. It might be called the 'Demon Lighthouse.' For a moment, in picturesque gloom, watching the shadows cast by the Hogarthian gateway, I may be thinking of our great English painter sitting sketching the lean Frenchwomen, noting, too, the portal where the English arms used to be, when suddenly the 'Demon Lighthouse' directs his glare full on me, describes a sweep, is gone, and all is dark again. It suggests the policeman going his rounds. How the exile forced to sojourn here must detest this obtrusive beacon of the first class! It must become maddening in time for the eyes. Even in bed it has the effect of mild sheet-lightning. Municipality of Calais! move it away at once to a rational spot--to the end of the pier, where a lighthouse ought to be. V. _TOURNAY._ But now back to 'Maritime Calais,' down to the pier, where a strange busy contrast awaits us. All is now bustle. In the great 'hall' hundreds are finishing their 'gorging,' paying bills, etc., while on the platform the last boxes and chests are being tumbled into the waggons with the peculiar tumbling, crashing sound which is so foreign. Guards and officials in cloaks and hoods pace up and down, and are beginning to chant their favourite '_En voiture, messieurs_!' Soon all are packed into their carriages, which in France always present an old-fashioned mail-coach air with their protuberant bodies and panels. By one o'clock the signal is given, the lights flash slowly by, and we are rolling away, off into the black night. 'Maritime Calais' is left to well-earned repose; but for an hour or so only, until the returning mail arrives, when it will wake up again--a troubled and troublous nightmare sort of existence. Now for a plunge into Cimmerian night, with that dull, sustained buzz outside, as of some gigantic machinery whirling round, which seems a sort of lullaby, contrived mercifully to make the traveller drowsy and enwrap him in gentle sleep. Railway sleeping is, after all, a not unrefreshing form of slumber. There is the grateful 'nod, nod, nodding,' with the sudden jerk of an awakening; until the nodding becomes more overpowering, and one settles into a deep and profound sleep. Ugh! how chilly it gets! And the machinery--or is it the sea?--still roaring in one's ear. What, stopping! and by the roadside, it seems; the day breaking, the atmosphere cold, steel-blue, and misty. Rubbing the pane, a few surviving lights are seen twinkling--a picture surely something Moslem. For there, separated by low-lying fields, rise clustered Byzantine towers and belfries, with strangely-quaint German-looking spires of the Nuremberg pattern, but all dimly outlined and mysterious in their grayness. There was an extraordinary and original feeling in this approach: the old fortifications, or what remained of them, rising before me; the gloom, the mystery, the widening streak of day, and perfect solitariness. As I admired the shadowy belfry which rose so supreme and asserted itself among the spires, there broke out of a sudden a perfect _charivari_ of bells--jangling, chiming, rioting, from various churches, while amid all was conspicuous the deep, solemn BOOM! BOOM! like the slow baying of a hound. It is five o'clock, but it might be the middle of the night, so dark is it. This magic city, which seems like one of those in Albert Dürer's cuts, rises at a distance as if within walls. I stand in the roadside alone, deserted, the sole traveller set down. The train has flown on into the night with a shriek. The sleepy porter wonders, and looks at me askance. As I take my way from the station and gradually approach the city--for there is a broad stretch between it and the railway unfilled by houses--I see the striking and impressive picture growing and enlarging. The jangling and the solemn occasional boom still go on: meant to give note that the day is opening. Nothing more awe-inspiring or poetical can be conceived than this 'cock-crow' promenade. Here are little portals suddenly opening on the stage, with muffled figures darting out, and worthy Belgians tripping from their houses--betimes, indeed--and hurrying away to mass. Thus to make the acquaintance of that grandest and most astonishing of old cathedrals, is to do so under the best and most suitable conditions: very different from the guide and cicerone business, which belongs to later hours of the day. I stand in the open _place_, under its shadow, and lift my eyes with wonder to the amazing and crowded cluster of spires and towers: its antique air, and even look of shattered dilapidation showing that the restorer has not been at his work. There was no smugness or trimness, or spick-and-spanness, but an awful and reverent austerity. And with an antique appropriateness to its functions the Flemish women, crones and maidens, all in their becoming cashmere hoods, and cloaks, and neat frills, still hurry on to the old Dom. Near me rose the antique _beffroi_, from whose jaws still kept booming the old bell, with a fine clang, the same that had often pealed out to rouse the burghers to discord and tumult. It pealed on, hoarse and even cracked, but persistently melodious, disregarding the contending clamours of its neighbours, just as some old baritone of the opera, reduced and broken down, will exhibit his 'phrasing'--all that is left to him. Quaint old burgher city, indeed, with the true flavour, though beshrew them for meddling with the fortifications! That little scene in this _place_ of Tournay is always a pleasant, picturesque memory. I entered with the others. Within the cathedral was the side chapel, with its black oak screen, and a tawny-cheeked Belgian priest at the altar beginning the mass. Scattered round and picturesquely grouped were the crones and maidens aforesaid, on their wicker-chairs. A few surviving lamps twinkled fitfully, and shadowy figures crossed as if on the stage. But aloft, what an overpowering immensity, all vaulted shadows, the huge pillars soaring upward to be lost in a Cimmerian gloom! Around me I saw grouped picturesquely in scattered order, and kneeling on their _prie-dieux_, the honest burghers, women and men, the former arrayed in the comfortable and not unpicturesque black Flemish cloaks with the silk hoods--handsome and effective garments, and almost universal. The devotional rite of the mass, deeply impressive, was over in twenty minutes, and all trooped away to their daily work. There was a suggestion here, in this modest, unpretending exercise, in contrast to the great fane itself, of the undeveloped power to expand, as it were, on Sundays and feast-days, when the cathedral would display all its resources, and its huge area be crowded to the doors with worshippers, and the great rites celebrated in all their full magnificence. Behind the great altar I came upon an imposing monument, conceived after an original and comprehensive idea. It was to the memory of _all the bishops and canons_ of the cathedral! This wholesale idea may be commended to our chapters at home. It might save the too monotonous repetition of recumbent bishops, who, after being exhibited at the Academy, finally encumber valuable space in their own cathedrals. The suggestiveness of the great bell-tower, owing to the peculiar emphasis and purpose given to it, is constantly felt in the old Belgian cities. It still conveys its old antique purpose--the defence of the burghers, a watchful sentinel who, on the alarm, clanged out danger, the sound piercing from that eyry to the remotest lane, and bringing the valiant citizens rushing to the great central square. It is impossible to look up at one of these monuments, grim and solitary, without feeling the whole spirit of the Belgian history, and calling up Philip van Artevelde and the Ghentish troubles. In the smaller cities the presence of this significant landmark is almost invariable. There is ever the lone and lorn tower, belfry, or spire painted in dark sad colours, seen from afar off, rising from the decayed little town below; often of some antique, original shape that pleases, and yet with a gloomy misanthropical air, as of total abandonment. They are rusted and abrased. From their ancient jaws we hear the husky, jangling chimes, musical and melancholy, the disorderly rambling notes and tunes of a gigantic musical box. Towards the close of some summer evening, as the train flies on, we see the sun setting on the grim walls of some dead city, and on the clustered houses. Within the walls are the formal rows of trees planted in regimental order which fringe and shelter them; while rises the dark, copper-coloured tower, often unfinished and ragged, but solemn and funereal, or else capped by some quaint lantern, from whose jaws presently issue the muffled tones of the chimes, halting and broken, and hoarse and wheezy with centuries of work. Often we pass on; sometimes we descend, and walk up to the little town and wander through its deserted streets. We are struck with wonder at some vast and noble church, cathedral-like in its proportions, and nearly always original--such variety is there in these antique Belgian fanes--and facing it some rustic mouldering town-hall of surprising beauty. There are a few little shops, a few old houses, but the generality have their doors closed. There is hardly a soul to be seen, certainly not a cart. There are innumerable dead cities of this pattern. Coming out, I find it broad day. A few natives with their baskets are hurrying to the train. I note, rising above the houses, two or three other solemn spires and grim churches, which have an inexpressibly sad and abandoned air, from their dark grimed tones which contrast with the bright gay hues of the modern houses that crowd upon them. There is one grave, imposing tower, with a hood like a monk's. Then I wander to the handsome triangle-shaped _place_, with its statue to Margaret of Parma--erst Governor of the Netherlands, and whose memory is regarded with affection. Here is the old belfry, which has been so clamorous, standing apart, like those of Ghent, Dunkirk, and a few other towns; an effective structure, though fitted by modern restorers with an entirely new 'head'--not, however, ineffective of its kind. The day is now fairly opened. There is a goodly muster of market-women and labourers at the handsome station, which, like every station of the first rank in Belgium, bears its name 'writ large.' It is just striking five as we hurry away, and in some half an hour we arrive at ORCHIES--one of those new spick-and-span little towns, useful after their kind, but disagreeable to the æsthetic eye. Everything here is of that meanest kind of brick, 'pointed,' as it is called, with staring white, such as it is seen in the smaller Belgian stations. Feeling somewhat degraded by this contact, I was glad to be hurried away, and within an hour find we are approaching one of the greater French cities. VI. _DOUAI._ Now begin to flit past us signs unmistakable of an approaching fortified town. Here are significant green banks and mounds cut to angles and geometrical patterns, soft and enticing, enriched with luxuriant trees, but treacherous--smiling on the confiding houses and gardens which one day may be levelled at a few hours' notice. Next come compact masses of Vauban brick, ripe and ruddy, of beautiful, smooth workmanship; stately military gateways and drawbridges, with a patch of red trousering--a soldier on his fat Normandy 'punch' ambling lazily over; and the peaceful cart with its Flemish horses. The brick-work is sliced through, as with a cheese-knife, to admit the railway, giving a complete section of the work. We are, in short, at one of the great _places fortes_ of France, Douai, where the curious traveller had best avoid sketching, or taking notes--a serious offence. Here I lingered pleasantly for nearly three hours, and, having duly breakfasted, noted its air of snug comfort and prosperity. There is here a famous arsenal--ever busy--one of the most important in France, and it has besides some welcome bits of artistic architecture. It was when wandering down a darkish street, that I came on a most original building, the old _Mairie_, enriched with a belfry of delightfully graceful pattern. It might be a problem how to combine a bell-tower with offices for municipal work, and we know in our land how such a 'job' would be carried out by 'the architect to the Board.' But all over Flemish France and Belgium proper we find an inexhaustible fancy and fertility in such designs. It is always difficult to describe architectural beauties. This had its tower in the centre, flanked by two short wings. Everything was original--the disposition of the windows, the air of space and largeness. Yet the whole was small, I note that in all these Flemish bell-towers, the topmost portion invariably develops into something charmingly fantastic, into cupolas and short, little galleries and lanterns superimposed, the mixture of solidity and airiness being astonishing. It is appropriate and fitting that this grace should attend on what are the sweetest musical instruments conceivable. Mr. Haweis, who is the poet of Flemish bells, has let us into the secret. 'The fragment of aërial music,' he tells us, 'which floats like a heavenly sigh over the Belgian city and dies away every few minutes, seems to set all life and time to celestial music. It is full of sweet harmonies, and can be played in pianoforte score, treble and bass. After a week in a Belgian town, time seems dull without the music in the air that mingled so sweetly with all waking moods without disturbing them, and stole into our dreams without troubling our sleep. I do not say that such carillons would be a success in London. In Belgium the towers are high above the towns--Antwerp, Mechlin, Bruges--and partially isolated. The sound falls softly, and the population is not so dense as in London. Their habit and taste have accustomed the citizens to accept this music for ever floating in the upper air as part of the city's life--the most spiritual, poetical, and recreative part of it. Nothing of the kind has ever been tried in London. The crashing peals of a dozen large bells banged violently with clapper instead of softly struck with hammer, the exasperating dong, or ding, dong, of the Ritualist temple over the way, or the hoarse, gong-like roar of Big Ben--that is all we know about bells in London, and no form of church discipline could be more ferocious. Bell noise and bell music are two different things.' This fanciful tower had its four corner towerlets, suggesting the old burly Scotch pattern, which indeed came from France; while the vane on the top still characteristically flourishes the national Flemish lion. Most bizarre, not to say extravagant, was the great cathedral, which was laid out on strange 'lines,' having a huge circular chapel or pavilion of immense height in front, whose round roof was capped by a vast bulbous spire, in shape something after the pattern of a gigantic mangel-wurzel! This astonishing decoration had a quaint and extraordinary effect, seen, as it was, from any part of the city. Next came the nave, whilst the transepts straggled about wildly, and a gigantic fortress-like tower reared itself from the middle. Correct judges will tell us that all this is debased work, and 'corrupt style;' but, nevertheless, I confess to being both astonished and pleased. This was the great festival of the _Corpus Domini_, and, indeed, already all available bells in the place had been jangling noisily. It was now barely seven o'clock, yet on entering the vast nave I found that the 'Grand Mass' had begun, and the whole was full to the door, while in the great choir were ranged about a hundred young girls waiting to make their first Communion. A vast number of gala carriages were waiting at the doors to take the candidates home, and for the rest of the day they would promenade the city in their veils and flowers, receiving congratulations. There was a pleasant provincial simplicity in all this and in all that followed, which brought back certain old Sundays of a childhood spent on a hill overlooking Havre. I liked to see the stout red-cheeked choristers perspiring with their work, and singing with a rough stentoriousness, just as I had seen them in the village church of Sanvic. And there was the organist playing away at his raised seat in the body of the church, as if in a pew, visible to the naked eye of all; while two cantors in copes clapped pieces of wood together as a signal for the congregation to kneel or rise. Most quaint of all were the surpliced instrumentalists with their braying bassoon and ophicleide: not to forget the double-bass player who 'sawed' away for the bare life of him. The ever visible organist voluntarized ravishingly and in really fine style. I should like to have heard him at his own proper instrument, aloft, in the gallery yonder, quite an enormous structure of florid pipes in stories and groups, with angels blowing trumpets and flying saints. It seemed like the stern of one of the Armada vessels. How he would have made the pillars quiver! how the ripe old notes would have _twanged_ and brayed into the darkest recesses! The Mass being over, the Swiss, a tall, fierce fellow, arrayed in a feathered cocked-hat, rich _scarlet_ regimentals and boots, now showed an extra restlessness. The Bishop of Douai, a smooth, polished prelate, began his sermon, which he delivered from a chair, in clear tones and good elocution. When the ceremonies were over, the whole congregation gathered at the door to see the young ladies taken away by their friends. Then I resumed my exploring. On a cheerful-looking _place_, which, with its trees and kiosque, recalled the _Place Verte_ at Antwerp, I noticed a large building of the pattern so common in France for colleges and convents--a vast expanse of whiteness or blankness, and a yet vaster array of long windows. It appeared to be a cavalry barrack for soldiers. The bugles sounded through the archway, and orderlies were riding in and out. This monotonous building, I found, had once been the English college for priests, where the celebrated Douai or Douay Bible had been translated. This rare book--a joy for the bibliophile--was published about 1608, and, as is well known, was the first Catholic version in English of the Scriptures. Here, then, was the cradle of millions of copies distributed over the face of the earth. It was a curious sensation to pass by this homely-looking edifice, with the adjoining chapel, as it appeared to be--now apparently a riding-school. I also came upon many a fine old Spanish house, and toiled down in the sun to the Rue des Foulons, where there were some elaborate specimens. Short as had been my term of residence, I somehow seemed to know Douai very well. I had gathered what is called 'an idea of the place.' Its ways, manners, and customs seemed familiar to me. So I took my way from the old town with a sort of regret, having seen a great deal. VII. _ARRAS._ It is just eleven o'clock, and here we are coming to a charming town, which few travellers have probably visited, and of which that genial and experienced traveller, Charles Dickens, wrote in astonished delight, and where in 1862 he spent his birthday. 'Here I find,' he says, 'a grand _place_, so very remarkable and picturesque, that it is astonishing how people miss it.' This is old Arras; and I confess it alone seems worth a long day's, not to say night's, journey, to see. It is fortified, and, as in such towns, we have to make our way to it from the station by an umbrageous country road; for it is fenced, as a gentleman's country seat might be, and strictly enclosed by the usual mounds, ditches, and walls, but all so picturesquely disguised in rich greenery as to be positively inviting. Even low down in the deep ditches grew symmetrical avenues of straight trees, abundant in their leaves and branches, which filled them quite up. The gates seem monumental works of art, and picturesque to a degree; while over the walls--and what noble specimens of brickwork, or tiling rather, are these old Vauban walls!--peep with curious mystery the upper stories and roofs of houses with an air of smiling security. I catch a glimpse of the elegant belfry, the embroidered spires, and mosque-like cupolas, all a little rusted, yet cheerful-looking. Dickens's _place_, or two _places_ rather--for there is the greater and the less--display to us a really lovely town-hall in the centre, the roof dotted over with rows of windows, while an airy lace-work spire, with a ducal crown as the finish, rises lightly. On to its sides are encrusted other buildings of Renaissance order, while behind is a mansion still more astonishingly embroidered in sculptured stone, with a colonnade of vast extent. Around the _place_ itself stretches a vast number of Spanish mansions, with the usual charmingly 'escalloped' roof, all resting on a prolonged colonnade or piazza, strange, old-fashioned, and original, running round to a vast extent, which the sensible town has decreed is never to be interfered with. A more pleasing, refreshing, and novel collection of objects for the ordinary traveller of artistic taste to see without trouble or expense, it would be impossible to conceive. Yet everyone hurries by to see the somewhat stale glories of Ghent and Brussels. [Illustration: ARRAS.] There was a general fat contented air of _bourgeois_ comfort about the sleepy old-fashioned, handsome Prefecture--in short, a capital background for the old provincial life as described by Balzac. But the _place_, with its inimitable Spanish houses and colonnades--under which you can shop--and that most elegant of spires, sister to that of Antwerp, which it recalls, will never pass from the memory. A beautiful object of this kind, thus seen, is surely a present, and a valuable one too. A spire is often the expression of the whole town. How much is suggested by the well-known, familiar cathedral spire at Antwerp, as, of some fresh morning, we come winding up the tortuous Scheldt, the sad, low-lying plains and boulders lying on either hand, monotonous and dispiriting, yet novel in their way; the cream-coloured, lace-worked spire rising ever before us in all its elegant grace, pointing the way, growing by degrees, never for an instant out of sight. It seems a fitting introduction to the noble, historical, and poetical city to which it belongs. It _is_ surely ANTWERP! We see Charles V., and Philip, and the exciting troubles of the Gueux, the Dutch, the Flemings, the argosies from all countries in the great days of its trade. Such is the mysterious power of association, which it ever exerts on the 'reminiscent.' How different, and how much more profitable, too, is this mode of approaching the place, than the other more vulgar one of the railway terminus, with the cabs and omnibuses waiting, and the convenient journey to the hotel. These old cities--Lille, Douai, and Valenciennes--all boast their gateways, usually named after the city to which the road leads. Thus we have 'Porte de Paris,' 'Porte de Lille,' etc. I confess to a deep interest in all gateways of this kind; they have a sort of poetry or romance associated with them; they are grim, yet hospitable, at times and seasons having a mysterious suggestion. There are towns where the traveller finds the gate obdurately closed between ten o'clock at night and six in the morning. These old gates have a state and flamboyant majesty about them, as, in Lille, the Porte de Paris is associated with the glories of Louis XIV.; while in Douai there is one of an old pattern--it is said of the thirteenth century--with curious towers and spires. Even at Calais there is a fine and majestic structure, 'Porte de Richelieu,' on the town side, through which every market cart and carriage used to trundle. There are florid devices inscribed on it; but now that the walls on each side are levelled, this patriarchal monument has but a ludicrous effect, for it is left standing alone, unsupported and purposeless. The carts and tramcars find their way round by new and more convenient roads made on each side. How pleasant is that careless wandering up through some strange and unfamiliar place, led by a sort of instinct which habit soon furnishes! In some of the French 'Guides,' minute directions are given for the explorer, who is bidden to take the street to right or to left, after leaving the station, etc. But there is a piquancy in this uncertainty as compared with the odious guidance of the _laquais de place_. I loathe the tribe. Here was to be clearly noted the languid, lazy French town where nothing seemed to be doing, but everyone appeared to be comfortable--'the fat, contented, stubble goose'--another type of town altogether from your thriving Lilles and Rouens. The pleasure in surveying this extraordinary combination of beautiful objects, the richness and variety of the work, the long lines broken by the charming and, as they are called, 'escalloped' gables, the Spanish balconies, the pillars, light and shade, and shops, made it almost incredible that such a thing was to be found in a poor obscure French town, visited by but few travellers. On market-day, when the whole is filled up with country folks, their wares and their stalls sheltered from the sun by gaily-tinted awnings, the bustle and glinting colours, and general _va et vient_, impart a fitting dramatic air. Then are the old Spanish houses set off becomingly. This old town has other curious things to exhibit, such as the enormous old Abbey of St. Vaast--with its huge expansive roof, which somehow seems to dominate the place, and thrusts forward some fragment or other--where a regiment might lodge. Its spacious gardens are converted to secular uses. Then I find myself at the old-new cathedral, begun about a century ago, and finished about fifty years since--a 'poorish' heartless edifice in the bald Italian manner, and quite unsuited to these old Flemish cities. I come out on a terrace with a huge flight of steps which leads to a lower portion of the city. This, indeed, leads down from the _haute_ to the _basse ville_; and it is stated that a great portion of this upper town is supported upon catacombs or caves from which the white stone of the belfry and town-hall was quarried. It is a curious feeling to be shown the house in which Robespierre was born, which, for the benefit of the curious it may be stated, is to be found in the Rue des Rapporteurs, close to the theatre. Arras was a famous Jacobin centre, and from the balcony of this theatre, Lebon, one of the Jacobins, directed the executions, which took place abundantly on the pretty _place_. [Illustration: BETHUNE.] Thus much, then, for Arras, where one would have liked to linger, nay, to stay a week or a few days. But this wishing to stay a week at a picturesque place is often a dangerous pitfall, as the amiable Charles Collins has shown in his own quaint style. Has anyone, he asks, ever, 'on arriving at some place he has never visited before, taken a sudden fancy to it, committed himself to apartments for a month certain, gone on praising the locality and all that belongs to it, ferreting out concealed attractions, attaching undue importance to them, undervaluing obvious defects: has he gone on in this way for three weeks,' or rather three days, 'out of his month, then suddenly broken down, found out his mistake, and pined in secret for deliverance?' So it would be, as I conceive, at Bruges, or perhaps at St. Omer. There you indeed appreciate the dead-alive city 'in all its quiddity.' But a few days in a 'dead-alive' city, were it the most picturesque in the world, would be intolerable. By noon, when the sun has grown oppressively hot, I find myself set down at a sort of rural town, once flourishing, and of some importance--Bethune. A mile's walk on a parched road led up the hill to this languishing, decayed little place. It had its forlorn omnibus, and altogether suggested the general desolation of, say, Peterborough. Had it remained in Flemish hands, it would now have been flourishing. I doubt if any English visitor ever troubles its stagnant repose. Yet it boasts its 'grand' _place_, imposing enough as a memorial of departed greatness, and, as usual, a Flemish relic, in the shape of a charming belfry and town-hall combined. It was really truly 'fantastical' from the airiness of its little cupolas and galleries, and was in tolerable order. Like the old Calais watch-tower, it was caked round by, and embedded in, old houses, and had its four curious gargoyles still doing work. On this 'grand' _place_ I noticed an old house bearing date '1625,' and some wonderful feats in the way of red-tiled roofing, of which there were enormous stretches, all narrow, sinuous, and suggesting Nuremberg. I confess to having spent a rather weary hour here, and sped away by the next train. VIII. _LILLE._ Two o'clock. We are on the road again; the sun is shining, and we are speeding on rapidly--changing from Flanders to France--which is but an hour or so away. Here the bright day is well forward. Now the welcome fat Flemish country takes military shape, for here comes the scarp, the angled ditch, the endless brick walling and embankment--a genuine fortified town of the first class--LILLE. Here, too, many travellers give but a glance from the window and hurry on. Yet an interesting place in its way. Its bright main streets seem as gay and glittering as those of Paris, with the additional air of snug provincial comfort. To one accustomed for months to the solemn sobriety of our English capital, with its work-a-day, not to say dingy look, nothing is more exhilarating or gay than one of these first-class French provincial towns, such as Marseilles, Bordeaux, or this Lille. There is a glittering air of substantial opulence, with an attempt--and a successful one--at fine boulevards and fine trees. The approach to Lille recalled the protracted approach to some great English manufacturing town, the tall chimneys flying by the carriage-windows a good quarter of an hour before the town was reached. A handsome, rich, and imposing city, though content to accept a cast-off station from Paris, as a poor relative would accept a cast-off suit of clothes. The fine façade was actually transported here stone by stone, and a much more imposing one erected in its place. The prevailing one-horse tram-cars seem to suit the Flemish associations. The Belgians have taken kindly and universally to them, and find them to be 'exactly in their way.' The fat Flemish horse ambles along lazily, his bells jingling. No matter how narrow or winding the street, the car threads its way. The old burgher of the Middle Ages might have relished it. The old disused town-hall is quaint enough with its elaborately-carved _façade_, with a high double roof and dormers, and a lantern surmounting all. A bit of true 'Low-Countries' work; but one often forgets that we are in French Flanders. Entertaining hours could be spent here with profit, simply in wandering from spot to spot, eschewing the 'town valet' and professional picture guide. It is an extraordinary craze, by the way, that our countrymen will want always 'to see the pictures,' as though that were the object of travelling. [Illustration: BOURSE. LILLE.] One gazes with pleasure and some surprise at its handsome streets, where everyone seems to live and thrive. There is a general air of opulence. The new streets, built under the last empire on the Paris model, offer the same rich and effective detail of gilded inscriptions running across the houses, balconies and flowers, with the luxurious _cafés_ below, and languid _flaneurs_ sitting down to their _absinthe_ or coffee among the orange-trees. These imposing mansions, built with judicious loans--the 'OBLIGATIONS OF THE CITY OF LILLE' are quoted on the Exchanges--are already dark and rusted, and harmonize with the older portions. At every turn there is a suggestion of Brussels, and nowhere so much as on the fine _place_, where the embroidered old Spanish houses aforesaid are abundant. The old cathedral, imposing with its clustered apses and great length and loftiness, and restored façade, would be the show of any English town. The Lillois scarcely appreciate it, as a few years ago they ordered a brand-new one from 'Messrs. Clutton and Burgess, of London,' not yet complete, and not very striking in its modern effects and decorations. These vast old churches of the fourth or fifth class are always imposing from their size and pretensions and elaborateness of work, and are found in France and Belgium almost by the hundred. And so I wander on through the showy streets, thinking what stirring scenes this complacent old city has witnessed, what tale of siege and battle--Spaniard, Frenchman, and Fleming, Louis the Great, the refuge of Louis XVIII. after his flight. All the time there is the pleasant musical jangle going on of tramcars below and bell-chimes aloft. But of all things in Lille, or indeed elsewhere, there is nothing more striking than the old Bourse--the great square venerable block, blackened all over with age, its innumerable windows, high roof, and cornices, all elaborately and floridly wrought in decayed carvings. With this dark and venerable mass is piquantly contrasted the garish row of glittering shops filled with gaudy wares which forms the lowest story. Within is the noble court with a colonnade of pillars and arches in the florid Spanish style; in the centre a splendid bronze statue of the First Napoleon in his robes, which is so wrought as to harmonize admirably with the rest. In the same congenial spirit--a note of Belgian art which is quite unfamiliar to us--the walls of the colonnade are decorated with memorials of famous 'Stock Exchange' worthies and merchants, and nothing could be more skilful than the enrichment of these conventional records, which are made to harmonize by florid rococo decorations with the Spanish _genre_ and encrusted with bronzes and marbles. This admirable and original monument is in itself worth a journey to see. Who has been at Commines? though we are all familiar enough with the name of Philip of 'that ilk.' I saw how patriarchal life must be at Commines from a family repairing thither, who filled the whole compartment. This was a lady arrayed in as much jet-work as she could well carry, and who must have been an admirable _femme de ménage_, for she brought with her three little girls, and two obstreperous boys who kept saying every minute 'maman!' in a sort of whine or expostulation, and two _aides-de-camp_ maids in spotless fly-away caps. With these assistants she was on perfect terms, and the maids conversed with her and dissented from her opinions on the happiest terms of equality. When taking my ticket I was asked to say would I go to Commines in France or to Commines in Belgium, for it seems that, by an odd arrangement, half the town is in one country and half in the other! Each has a station of its own. This curious partition I did not quite comprehend at first, and I shall not forget the indignant style in which, on my asking 'was this the French Commines,' I was answered that '_of course_ it was Commines in Belgium.' Here was yet another piquant bell-tower seen rising above trees and houses, long before we even came near to it. I was pursued by these pretty monuments, and I could hear this one jangling away musically yet wheezily. It is past noon now as we hurry by unfamiliar stations, where the invariable _abbé_ waits with his bundle or breviary in hand, or peasant women with baskets stand waiting for other trains. There is a sense of melancholy in noting these strange faces and figures--whom you thus pass by, to whom you are unknown, whom you will never see again, and who care not if you were dead and buried. (And why should they?) Then we hurry away northwards. IX. _YPRES._ As the fierce heat of the sun began to relax and the evening drew on--it was close on half-past six o'clock--we found ourselves in Belgium once more. Suddenly, on the right, I noted, with some trees interposed, a sort of clustered town with whitened buildings, which suggested forcibly the view of an English cathedral town seen from the railway. The most important of the group was a great tower with its four spires. I knew instinctively that this was the famous old town-hall, the most astonishing and overpowering of all Belgian monuments. Here we halted half an hour. The sun was going down; the air was cool; and there was that strange tinge of sadness abroad, with which the air seems to be charged towards eventide, as we, strangers and pilgrims in a foreign country, look from afar off at some such unfamiliar objects. There were a number of Flemings here returning from some meeting where they had been contending at their national game--shooting at the popinjay. Near to every small town and village I passed, I had noted an enormously tall white post with iron rods projecting at the top. This was the target, and it was highly amusing and characteristic to watch these burghers gathered round and firing at the bird or some other object on the top. Now they were all returning carrying their bows, and in high good-humour. A young and rubicund priest was of the party, regarded evidently with affection and pride by his companions; for all that he seemed to say and do was applauded, and greeted with obstreperous Flemish laughter. When an old woman came to offer cakes from her basket for sale, he convulsed his friends by facetious remarks as he made his selection from the basket, depreciating or criticizing their quality with sham disgust, delighting none so much as the venerable vendor herself. Every one wore a curious black silk cap, as a gala headpiece. When they had gone their way, I set off on mine up to the old town. The approach was encouraging. A grand sweep faced me of old walls, rusted, but stout and vigorous, with corner towers rising out of a moat; then came a spacious bridge leading into a wide, encouraging-looking street of sound handsome houses. But, strange! not a single cab, restaurant, or hotel--nay, hardly a soul to be seen, save a few rustics in their blouses! It was all dead! I walked on, and at an abrupt turn emerged on the huge expanse of the _place_, and was literally dumbfoundered. Now, of all the sights that I have ever seen, it must be confessed that this offered the greatest surprise and astonishment. It was bewildering. On the left spread away, almost a city itself, the vast, enormous town-hall--a vista of countless arches and windows, its roof dotted with windows, and so deep, expansive, and capacious that it alone seemed as though it might have lodged an army. In the centre rose the enormous square tower--massive--rock-like--launching itself aloft into Gothic spires and towers. All along the sides ran a perspective of statues and carvings. This astonishing work would take some minutes of brisk motion to walk down from end to end. It is really a wonder of the world, and, in the phrase applied to more ordinary things, 'seemed to take your breath away.' It is the largest, longest, most massive, solid, and enduring thing that can be conceived. It has been restored with wonderful care and delicacy. By one of the bizarre arrangements--not uncommon in Flanders--a building of another kind, half Italian, with a round arched arcade, has been added on at the corner, and the effect is odd and yet pleasing. Behind rises a grim crag of a cathedral--solemn and mysterious--adding to the effect of this imposing combination, a sort of gloomy shadow overhanging all. The church, on entering, is found overpowering and original of its kind, with its vast arches and massive roof of groined stone. Truly an astonishing monument! The worst of such visits is that only a faint impression is left: and to gather the full import of such a monument one should stay for a few days at least, and grow familiar with it. At first all is strange. Every portion claims attention at once; but after a few visits the grim old monument seems to relax and become accessible; he lets you see his good points and treasures by degrees. But who could live in a Dead City, even for a day? Having seen these two wonders, I tried to explore the place, which took some walking, but nothing else was to be found. Its streets were wide, the houses handsome--a few necessary shops; but no cabs--no tramway--no carts even, and hardly any people. It was dead--all dead from end to end. The strangest sign of mortality, however, was that not a single restaurant or house of refection was to be found, not even on the spacious and justly called _Grande Place_! One might have starved or famished without relief. Nay, there was hardly a public-house or drinking-shop. [Illustration: YPRES] However, the great monument itself more than supplied this absence of vitality. One could never be weary of surveying its overpowering proportions, its nobility, its unshaken strength, its vast length, and flourishing air. Yet how curious to think that it was now quite purposeless, had no meaning or use! Over four hundred feet long, it was once the seat of bustle and thriving business, for which the building itself was not too large. The hall on the ground seems to stretch from end to end. Here was the great mart for linens--the _toiles flamandes_--once celebrated over Europe. Now, desolate is the dwelling of Morna! A few little local offices transact the stunted shrunken local business of the place; the post, the municipal offices, each filling up two or three of the arches, in ludicrous contrast to the unemployed vastness of the rest. It has been fancifully supposed that the name Diaper, as applied to linens, was supplied by this town, which was the seat of the trade, and _Toile d'Ypres_ might be supposed, speciously enough, to have some connection with the place. X. _BERGUES._ But _en route_ again, for the sands are fast running out. Old fortified towns, particularly such as have been protected by 'the great Vauban,' are found to be a serious nuisance to the inhabitants, however picturesque they may seem to the tourist; for the place, constricted and wrapped in bandages, as it were, cannot expand its lungs. Many of the old fortressed towns, such as Ostend, Courtrai, Calais, have recently demolished their fortifications at great cost and with much benefit to themselves. There is something picturesque and original in the first sight of a place like Arras, or St. Omer, with the rich and lavish greenery, luxuriant trees, banks of grass by which the 'fosse' and grim walls are masked. Others are of a grim and hostile character, and show their teeth, as it were. Dunkirk, a fortress of the 'first class,' fortified on the modern system, and therefore to the careless spectator scarcely appearing to be fortified at all--is a place of such extreme platitude, that the belated wayfarer longs to escape almost as soon as he arrives. There is literally nothing to be seen. But a few miles away, there is to be found a place which will indemnify the disgusted traveller, viz., BERGUES. As the train slackens speed I begin to take note of rich green banks with abundant trees planted in files, such as Uncle Toby would have relished in his garden. There is the sound as of passing over a military bridge, with other tokens of the fortified town. There it lies--close to the station, while the invariable belfry and heavy church rise from the centre, in friendly companionship. I have noted the air of sadness in these lone, lorn monuments, which perhaps arises from the sense of their vast age and all they have looked down upon. Men and women, and houses, dynasties and invaders, and burgomasters, have all passed away in endless succession; but _they_ remain, and have borne the buffetings of storms and gales and wars and tumults. As we turn out of the station, a small avenue lined with trees leads straight to the entrance. The bright snowy-looking _place_ basks in the setting sun, while the tops of the red-tiled roofs seem to peep at us over the walls. At the end of the avenue the sturdy gateway greets us cheerfully, labelled 'Porte de Biene,' flanked by two short and burly towers that rise out of the water; while right and left, the old brick walls, red and rusted, stretch away, flanked by corner towers. The moat runs round the whole, filled with the usual stagnant water. I enter, and then see what a tiny compact little place it is--a perfect miniature town with many streets, one running round the walls; all the houses sound and compact and no higher than two stories, so as to keep snug and sheltered under the walls, and not draw the enemy's fire. The whole seems to be about the size of the Green Park at home, and you can walk right across, from gate to gate, in about three minutes. It is bright, and clean 'as a new pin,' and there are red-legged soldiers drumming and otherwise employed. Almost at once we come on the _place_, and here we are rewarded with something that is worth travelling even from Dover to see. There stands the old church, grim, rusted, and weather-beaten, rising in gloomy pride, huge enough to serve a great town; while facing it is the belfry before alluded to, one of the most elegant, coquettish, and original of these always interesting structures. The amateur of Flemish architecture is ever prepared for something pleasing in this direction, for the variety of the belfries is infinite; but this specimen fills one with special delight. It rises to a great height in the usual square tower-shape, but at each corner is flanked by a quaint, old-fashioned _tourelle_ or towerlet, while in the centre is an airy elegant lantern of wood, where a musical peal of bells, hung in rows, chimes all day long in a most melodious way. Each of these towerlets is capped by a long, graceful peak or minaret. This elegant structure has always been justly admired by the architect, and in the wonderful folio of etchings by Coney, done more than fifty years ago, will be found a picturesque and accurate sketch. [Illustration: BERGUES.] It seemed a city of the dead. Now rang out the husky tinkling of the chimes which never flag, as in all Flemish cities, day or night. It supplies the lack of company, and has a comforting effect for the solitary man. From afar off comes occasionally the sound of the drum or the bugle, fit accompaniment for such surroundings. At the foot of the belfry was an antique building in another style, with a small open colonnade, which, though out of harmony, was still not inappropriate. The only thing jarring was a pretentious modern town-hall, in the style of one of our own vestry buildings, 'erected out of the rates,' and which must have cost a huge sum. It was of a genteel Italian aspect, so it is plain that French local administrators are, in matters of taste, pretty much as such folk are with us. One could have lingered long here, looking at this charming and graceful work, which its surroundings became quite as much as it did its surroundings. While thus engaged it was curious to find that not a soul crossed the _place_. Indeed, during my whole sojourn in the town, a period of about half an hour, I did not see above a dozen people. There were but few shops; yet all was bright, sound, in good condition. There was no sign of decay or decaying; but all seemed to sleep. It was a French 'dead city.' But it surely lives and will live, by its remarkable bell tower, which at this moment is chiming away, with a melodious huskiness, its gay tunes, repeated every quarter of an hour, while as the hour comes round there breaks out a general and clamorous _charivari_. XI. _ST. OMER._ After leaving this wonderful place, I was now speeding on once more back into France. In all these shifts and changes the _douanier_ farce was carefully gone through. I was regularly invited to descend, even though baggageless, and to pass through the searching-room, making heroic protest as I did so that '_I had nothing to declare_.' It was easy to distinguish the two nations in their fashion of performing this function, the French taking it _au sérieux_, and going through it histrionically, as it were; the Belgian being more careless and good-natured. There lingers still the habit of 'leading' or _plombé_-ing a clumsy, troublesome relic of old times. Such small articles as hat-cases, hand-bags, etc., are subjected to it; an officer devoted to the duty comes with a huge pair of 'pincers' with some neat little leaden discs, which he squeezes on the strings which have tied up the article. Now we fly past the flourishing Poperinghe--a bustling, thriving place, out of which lift themselves with sad solemnity a few tall iron-gray churches, and another--yet one more--elegant belfry. There seems something quaint in the name of Poperinghe, though it is hardly so grotesque as that of another town I passed by, 'Bully Greny.' As this long day was at last closing in, I noticed from the window a bright-looking town nestling, as it were, in rich green velvet and dark plantation, with a bright, snug-looking gate, drawbridge, etc. One of these gates was piquant enough, having a sort of pavilion perched on the top. Here there was a quaint sort of 'surprise' in a clock, the hours of which are struck by a mechanical figure known to the town as 'Mathurin.' There was something very tempting in the look of the place, betokening plenty of flowers and shaded walks and umbrageous groves. Most conspicuous, however, was the magnificent abbey ruin, suggesting Fountains Abbey, with its tall, striking, and wholly perfect tower. This is the Abbey of St. Bertin, one of the most striking and almost bewildering monuments that could be conceived. I look up at the superb tower, sharp in its details, and wonder at its fine proportions; then turn to the ruined aisles, and with a sort of grief recall that this, one of the wonders of France, had been in perfect condition not a hundred years ago, and at the time of the Revolution had been stripped, unroofed, and purposely reduced to its present condition! This disgrace reflects upon the Jacobins--Goths and Vandals indeed. The streets of this old town, as it is remarked by one of the Guide Books, 'want animation'--an amiable circumlocution. Nothing so deserted or lonely can be conceived, and the phenomenon of 'grass literally growing in the streets' is here to be seen in perfection. There appeared to be no vehicles, and the few shops carry on but a mild business. A few English families are said to repair hither for economy. I recognise a peculiar shabby shooting-coat which betokens the exile, accounted for by the pathetic fact that he clings to his superannuated garment, long after it is worn out, for the reason that it 'was made in London.' There is a rich and beautiful church here--Notre Dame--with a deeply embayed porch full of lavish detail. Here, too, rises the image of John Kemble, who actually studied for the priesthood at the English College. By this time the day has gone, and darkness has set in. It is time to think of journeying home. Yet on the way to Calais there are still some objects to be seen _en passant_. Most travellers are familiar with Hazebrouck, the place of 'bifurcation,' a frontier between France and Belgium. Yet this is known for a church with a most elegant spire rising from a tower, but of this we can only have a glimpse. And, on the road to Bergues, I had noted that strange, German-named little town--Cassel--perched on an umbrageous hill, which has its quaint mediæval town-hall. But I may not pause to study it. The hours are shrinking; but little margin is left. By midnight I am back in Calais once more, listening to its old wheezy chimes. It seems like an old friend, to which I have returned after a long, long absence, so many events have been crowded into the day. It still wants some interval to the hour past midnight, when the packet sails. XII. _ST. PIERRE LES CALAIS._ As I wandered down to the end of the long pier, which stretched out its long arm, bent like an elbow, looking, like all French piers, as if made of frail wickerwork, I thought of a day, some years ago, when that eminent inventor, Bessemer, conceived the captivating idea of constructing a steamboat that should abolish sea-sickness for ever! The principle was that of a huge swinging saloon, moved by hydraulic power, while a man directed the movement by a sort of spirit-level. Previously the inventor had set up a model in his garden, where a number of scientists saw the section of a ship rocking violently by steam. I recall that pleasant day down at Denmark Hill, with all the engineers assembled, who were thus going to sea in a garden. A small steam-engine worked the apparatus--a kind of a section of a boat--which was tossed up and down violently; while in the centre was balanced a small platform, on which we experimenters stood. On large tables were laid out the working plans of the grand Bessemer steamship, to be brought out presently by a company. A year and more passed away, the new vessel was completed, and nearly the same party again invited to see the result, and make trial of it. I repaired with the rest. Nothing more generous or hospitable could be conceived. There was to be a banquet at Calais, with a free ticket on to Paris. It was a gloomy iron-gray morning. The strange outlandish vessel, which had an engine at each end, was crowded with _connoisseurs_. But I was struck with the figure of the amiable and brilliant inventor, who was depressed, and received the premature congratulations of his friends somewhat ruefully. We could see the curious 'swinging saloon' fitted into the vessel, with the ingenious hydraulic leverage by which it could be kept nicely balanced. But it was to be noted that the saloon was braced firmly to the sides of its containing vessel; in fact, it was given out that, owing to some defect in its mechanism, the thing could not be worked that day. Nothing could be handsomer than this saloon, with its fittings and decorations. But, strange to say, it was at once seen that the principle was faulty, and the whole impracticable. It was obvious that the centre of gravity of so enormous a weight being brought to the side would imperil the stability of the vessel. The bulk to be moved was so vast, that it was likely to get out of control, and scarcely likely to obey the slight lever which worked it. There were many shakings of the engineering heads, and some smiles, with many an '_I told you so_.' Even to the outsiders it seemed Utopian. However, the gloomy voyage was duly made. One of the most experienced captains known on the route, Captain Pittock, had been chosen to pilot the venture. He had plainly a distrust of his charge and the new-fangled notion. Soon we were nearing Calais. Here was the lighthouse, and here the two embracing arms of the wickerwork pier. I was standing at the bows, and could see the crowds on the shore waiting. Suddenly, as the word was given to starboard or 'port,' the malignant thing, instead of obeying, took the reverse direction, and bore straight _into_ the pier on the left! Down crashed the huge flag-staff of our vessel in fragments, falling among us--and there were some narrow escapes. She calmly forced her way down the pier for nearly a hundred yards, literally crunching and smashing it up into fragments, and sweeping the whole away. I looked back on the disastrous course, and saw the whole clear behind us! As we gazed on this sudden wreck, I am ashamed to say there was a roar of laughter, for never was a _surprise_ of so bewildering a character sprung upon human nature. The faces of the poor captain and his sailors, who could scarcely restrain their maledictions on the ill-conditioned 'brute,' betrayed mortification and vexation in the most poignant fashion. The confusion was extraordinary. She was now with difficulty brought over to the other pier. This, though done ever so gently, brought fresh damage, as the mere contact crunched and dislocated most of the timbers. The ill-assured party defiled ashore, and we made for the banqueting-room between rows of half-jeering, half-sympathizing spectators. The speakers at the symposium required all their tact to deal with the disheartening subject. The only thing to be done was to 'have confidence' in the invention--much as a Gladstonian in difficulty invites the world to 'leave all to the skill of our great chief.' But, alas! this would not do just now. The vessel was, in fact, unsteerable; the enormous weight of the engines at the bows prevented her obeying the helm. The party set off to Paris--such as were in spirits to do so--and the shareholders in the company must have had aching hearts enough. Some years later, walking by the Thames bank, not far from Woolwich, I came upon some masses of rusted metal, long lying there. There were the huge cranks of paddle-wheels, a cylinder, and some boiler metal. These, I was informed, were the fragments of the unlucky steamship that was to abolish sea-sickness! As I now walked to the end of the solitary pier--the very one I had seen swept away so unceremoniously--the recollection of this day came back to me. There was an element of grim comedy in the transaction when I recalled that the Calais harbour officials sent in--and reasonably--a huge claim for the mischief done to the pier; but the company soon satisfied _that_ by speedily going 'into liquidation.' There was no resource, so the Frenchmen had to rebuild their pier at their own cost. Close to Calais is a notable place enough, flourishing, too, founded after the great war by one Webster, an English laceman. It has grown up, with broad stately streets, in which, it is said, some four or five thousand Britons live and thrive. As you walk along you see the familiar names, 'Smith and Co.,' 'Brown and Co.,' etc., displayed on huge brass plates at the doors in true native style. Indeed, the whole air of the place offers a suggestion of Belfast, these downright colonists having stamped their ways and manners in solid style on the place. Poor old original Calais had long made protest against the constriction she was suffering; the wall and ditch, and the single gate of issue towards the country, named after Richelieu, seeming to check all hope of improvement. Reasons of state were urged. But a few years ago Government gave way, the walls towards the country-side were thrown down, the ditch filled up, and some tremendous 'navigator' work was carried out. The place can now draw its breath. On my last visit I had attended the theatre, a music-hall adaptable to plays, concerts, or to 'les meetings.' It was a new, raw place, very different from the little old theatre in the garden of Dessein's, where the famous Duchess of Kingston attended a performance over a hundred and twenty years ago. This place bore the dignified title of the 'Hippodrome Theatre,' and a grand 'national' drama was going on, entitled 'THE CUIRASSIER OF REICHSHOFEN.' Here we had the grand tale of French heroism and real victory, which an ungenerous foe persisted in calling defeat. A gallant Frenchman, who played the hero, had nearly run his daring course, having done prodigies of valour on that fateful and fatal day. The crisis of the drama was reached almost as I entered, the cuirassier coming in with his head bound up in a bloody towel! After relating the horrors of that awful charge in an impassioned strain, he wound up by declaring that _'He and Death'_ were the only two left upon the field! It need not be said there were abundant groans for the Germans and cheers for the glorious Frenchmen. Now at last down to the vessel, as the wheezy chimes give out that it is close on two o'clock a.m. All seems dozing at 'Maritime Calais.' The fishing-boats lie close together, interlaced in black network, snoozing, as it were, after their labours. Afar off the little town still maintains its fortress-like air and its picturesque aspect, the dark central spires rising like shadows, the few lights twinkling. The whole scene is deliciously tranquil. The plashing of the water seems to invite slumber, or at least a temporary doze, to which the traveller, after his long day and night, is justly entitled. How strange those old days, when the exiles for debt abounded here! They were in multitudes then, and had a sort of society among themselves in this Alsatia. That gentleman in a high stock and a short-waisted coat--the late Mr. Brummell surely, walking in this direction? Is he pursued by this agitated crowd, hurrying after him with a low roaring, like the sound of the waves?... * * * * * I am roused up with a start. What a change! The whole is alive and bustling, black shadowy figures are hurrying by. The white-funnelled steamer has come up, and is moaning dismally, eager to get away. Behind is the long international train of illuminated chambers, fresh from Paris and just come in, pouring out its men and women, who have arrived from all quarters of the world. They stream on board in a shadowy procession, laden with their bundles. Lower down, I hear the _crashing_ of trunks discharged upon the earth! I go on board with the rest, sit down in a corner, and recall nothing till I find myself on the chill platform of Victoria Station--time, six o'clock a.m. It was surely a dream, or like a dream!--a dream a little over thirty hours long. And what strange objects, all blended and confused together!--towers, towns, gateways, drawbridges, religious rites and processions, pealing organs and jangling chimes, long dusty roads lined with regimental trees, blouses, fishwomen's caps, _sabots_, savoury and unsavoury smells, France dissolving into Belgium, Belgium into France, France into Belgium again; in short, one bewildering kaleidoscope! A day and two nights had gone, during all which time I had been on my legs, and had travelled nigh six hundred miles! Dream or no dream, it had been a very welcome show or panorama, new ideas and sights appearing at every turn. And here is my little _'orario'_: O'clock. 1. Victoria, depart 5.0 2. Dover, arrive 7.0 " depart 10.0 3. Calais, arrive 12.44 " depart 1.0 4. Tournay, arrive 4.13 " depart 5.1 5. Orchies, arrive 6.8 " depart 6.29 6. Douai, arrive 7.6 " depart 10.8 7. Arras, arrive 10.52 " depart 11.17 8. Bethune, arrive 12.6 " depart 1.1 9. Lille, arrive 2.44 " depart 4.40 10. Comines, arrive 5.19 " depart 5.57 11. Ypres 6.42 12. Hazebrouck 7.50 13. Cassel 8.18 14. Bergues, arrive 9.6 " depart 10.4 15. St. Omer 11.37 16. Calais 12.14 17. Dover 4.0 18. Victoria 6.0 Time on journey 37 hours This, of course, is more than a day, but it will be seen that eight hours were spent on English soil, and certainly nearly twelve in inaction. THE END. BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD. [Illustration: PEARS' SOAP A Specialty for Children] 
16485	----	A YEAR'S JOURNEY THROUGH FRANCE, AND PART OF SPAIN. BY PHILIP THICKNESSE. VOLUME I DUBLIN Printed by J. Williams, (No. 21.) Skinner-Row. M,DCC,LXXVII. +----------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Transcriber's Note: The long-s has been modernized to s. | | | +----------------------------------------------------------+ A JOURNEY, &c. * * * * * LETTER I CALAIS, June 20th, 1775 DEAR SIR, As you are kind enough to say, that those letters which I wrote from this kingdom, nine or ten years ago, were of some use to you, in the little tour you made through France soon after, and as they have been considered in some degree to be so to many other persons, (since their publication) who were unacquainted with the manners and customs of the French nation, I shall endeavour to bring together, in this second correspondence with you, not only some of the former hints I gave you, but such other remarks as a longer acquaintance with the country, and a more extensive tour, may furnish me with; but before I proceed any further, let me remind you, of one great fault I was then guilty of; for though your partiality to me might induce you to overlook it, the public did not, I mean that of writing when my temper was disturbed, either by cross incidents I met with upon the road, or disagreeable news which often followed me from my own country into this. I need not tell a man of your discernment, in what a different light all objects, whether animate, or inanimate, appear to those, whose temper is disturbed, either by ill health, ill treatment, or, what is perhaps more prevalent than either, the chagrin he may feel at not being rated in the estimation of others, according to that value he puts upon himself. Could Dr. Smollett rise from the dead, and sit down in perfect health, and good temper, and read his travels through France and Italy, he would probably find most of his anger turned upon himself. But, poor man! he was ill; and meeting with, what every stranger must expect to meet at most French inns, want of cleanliness, imposition, and incivility; he was so much disturbed by those incidents, that to say no more of the writings of an ingenious and deceased author, his travels into France, and Italy, are the least entertaining, in my humble opinion, of all his works. Indeed I have observed that most travellers fall into one extreme, or the other, and either are all panegyric or all censure; in which case, all they say cannot be just; for, as all nations are governed by men, and the bulk of men of all nations live by artifice of one kind or other, the few men who pass among them, without any sinister views, cannot avoid feeling, and but few from complaining of the ill treatment they meet with; not considering one of Swift's shrewd remarks; _I never_ said he, _knew a man who could not bear the misfortunes of another perfectly like a Christian_. Remember therefore, when I tell you how ill I have been treated either by _Lords_ or _Aubergists_, or how dirtily served by either, it is to prepare myself and you too, to be content with neighbours' fare. When a man writes remarks upon the manners and customs of other nations, he should endeavour to wean himself from all partiality for his own; and I need not tell you that I am in _full possession_ of that single qualification, which I hope will make you some amends for my defects in all the others; for it is certainly unjust, uncandid, and illiberal, to pronounce a custom or fashion absurd, because it does not coincide with our ideas of propriety. A Turk who travelled into England, would, upon his return to Constantinople, tell his countrymen, that at Canterbury; (bring out of _opium_,) his host did not know even what he demanded; and that it was with some difficulty he found out, that there were shops in the town where _opium_ was sold, and even then, it was with greater, he could prevail upon the vender of it to let him have above half an ounce: if he were questioned, why all these precautions? he would tell them, laughingly, that Englishmen believe _opium_ to be a deadly poison, and those people suspected that he either meant to kill himself, or to poison another man with it. A French gentleman, who travelled some years since into Spain, had letters of recommendation to a Spanish Bishop, who received him with every mark of politeness, and treated him with much hospitality: soon after he retired to his bedchamber, a priest entered it,[A] holding a vessel in his hand, which was covered with a clean napkin; he said something; but the Frenchman understanding but little Spanish, intimated by signs his thanks, and desired him to put it down, believing, that his friend, the Bishop, had sent him a plate of sweetmeats, fruit, iced cream, or some kind of refreshment to eat before he went to bed, or to refresh his exhausted spirits in the night; but his astonishment was great indeed, when he found the priest put the present under the side of the bed; and more so, when he perceived that it was only a _pot de chambre_;--for, says the Frenchman, "in Spain, they do not use the _chaise percee_!" The Frenchman is surprized at the Spaniard, for not using so convenient a vehicle; the Englishman is equally surprized, that the Frenchman does;--the Frenchman is always attentive to his own person, and scarce ever appears but clean and well dressed; while his house and private apartments are perhaps covered with litter and dirt, and in the utmost confusion;--the Englishman, on the other hand, often neglects his external dress; but his house is always exquisitely clean, and every thing in it kept in the nicest order; and who shall say, which of the two judge the best for their own ease and happiness? I am sure the Frenchman will not give up his powdered hair, and laced coat, for a clean house; nor do I believe those fineries would sit quietly upon the back of an Englishman, in a dirty one. In short, my dear sir, we must take the world, and the things in it, as they are; it is a dirty world, but like France, has a vast number of good things in it, and such as I meet with, in this my third tour, which shall be a long one, if I am not _stopped_ by the way, you shall have such an account of as I am able to convey to you: I will not attempt to _top the traveller_ upon you, nor raise monuments of wonder, where none are to be seen; there is real matter enough to be found upon this great continent, to amuse a man who travels slowly over it, to see what is to be seen, and who wishes not to be seen himself. My style of travelling is such, that I can never be disturbed in mind for want of respect, but rather be surprised when I meet with even common civility. And, after all, what does it signify, whether Monsieur _ou Tel_ travels in a laced coat _et très bien mis_, attended by half a dozen servants, or, as Pope says, "will run The Lord knows whither in a chaise and one." I am, your's &c. [A] The Bishops in Spain are attended and waited upon by inferior clergy. LETTER II. June 25th, 1766. Before I leave Calais, let me remind you, that an English guinea is worth more than a _Louis d'or_; and observe, that the first question _my friend Mons. Dessein_, at the _Hotel D'Angleterre_ will put to you, (after he has made his bow, and given you a side look, as a cock does at a barley-corn) is, whether you have any guineas to change? because he gets by each guinea, full weight, ten _Sols_. By this hint, you will conclude, he will not, upon your return, ask you for your French Gold; but in this too you will be mistaken, for he finds an advantage in that also; he will, not indeed give you guineas, but, in lieu thereof, he has always a large quantity of _Birmingham Shillings_, to truck with you for your _Louis d'ors_. I am afraid, when Lord North took into consideration the state of the gold coin, he did not know, that the better state it is put into in England, is the surest means of transporting it into France, and other countries; and that scarce a single guinea which travellers carry with them to France, (and many hundred go every week) ever returns to England: Beside this, the quantity of gold carried over to the ports of _Dunkirk_, _Boulogne_, and _Calais_, by the Smugglers, who always pay ready money, is incredible; but as money, and matters of that kind, are what I have but _little concern in_, I will not enlarge upon a subject no way interesting to me, and shall only observe, that my landlord, _Mons. Dessein_, who was behind-hand with the world ten years ago, is now become one of the richest men in _Calais_, has built a little Theatre in his garden, and has united the profitable business of a Banker, to that of a Publican; and by studying the _Gout_ of the English nation, and changing their gold into French currency, has made, they say, a _Demi Plumb_. Notwithstanding the contiguity of _Calais_ to England, and the great quantity of poultry, vegetables, game, &c. which are bought up every market-day, and conveyed to your coast, I am inclined to believe, there are not many parts of France where a man, who has but little money, can make it go further than in this town; nor is there any town in England, where the fishery is conducted with so much industry. Yesterday I visited my unfortunate daughter, at the convent at _Ardres_;--but why do I say unfortunate? She is unfortunate only, in the eyes of the world, not in her own; nor indeed in mine, because she assured me she is happy. I left her here, you know, ten years ago, by way of education, and learning the language; but the small-pox, which seized her soon after, made such havock on a face, rather favoured by nature, that she desired to hide it from the world, and spend her life in that retirement, which I had chosen only to qualify her _for_ the world. I left her a child; I found her a sensible woman; full of affection and duty; and her mangled and seamed face, so softened by an easy mind, and a good conscience, that she appeared in my partial eyes, rather an agreeable than a plain woman; but she did not omit to signify to me, that what others considered her misfortune, she considered (as it was not her fault) a happy circumstance; "if my face is plain (said she) my heart is light, and I am sure it will make as good a figure in the earth, as the fairest, and most beautiful." My only concern is, that I find the _Prieure_ of this convent, either for want of more knowledge, or more money, or both, had received, as parlour boarders, some English ladies of very suspicious characters. As the conversation of such women might interrupt, and disturb that peace and tranquillity of mind, in which I found my daughter, I told the _Prieure_ my sentiments on that subject, not only with freedom, but with some degree of severity; and endeavoured to convince her, how very unwarrantably, if not irreligiously she acted. An abandoned, or vicious woman, may paint the pleasures of this world in such gaudy colours, to a poor innocent Nun, so as to induce her to forget, or become less attentive to the professions she has made to the next. It was near this town, you know, that the famous interview passed between Henry the Eighth, and _Francis_ the First, in the year 1520; and though it lasted twenty-eight days, and was an event which produced at that time so many amusements to all present, and so much conversation throughout Europe, the inhabitants of this, town, or Calais, seem to know little of it, but that one of the bastions at _Ardres_ is called the Bastion of the Two Kings.--There still remains, however, in the front of one of the houses in _Calais_, upon an ornamented stone, cut in old letter, =God Save the King=; And I suppose that stone was put, where it now remains, by some loyal subject, before the King arrived, as it is in a street which leads from the gate (now stopped up) which Henry passed through. LETTER III. In a very few days I shall leave this town, and having procured letters of recommendation from some men of fashion, now in England, to their friends in _Spain_, I am determined to traverse this, and make a little tour into that kingdom; so you may expect something more from me, than merely such remarks as may be useful to you on any future tour you make in France; I mean to conduct you at least over the _Pyrenean_ hills to _Barcelona_; for, though I have been two or three times before in Spain, it was early in life, and when my mind was more employed in observing the _customs_ and _manors_ of the birds, and beasts of the field, than of their lords and masters, and made too, on the other side of that kingdom. Having seen as much of Paris as I desired, some years ago, I intend to pass through the provinces of _Artois_, _Champaigne_, _Bourgogne_, and so on to _Lyons_; by which route you will perceive, I shall leave the capital of this kingdom many leagues on my right hand, and see some considerable towns, and taste now and then of the most delicious wines, on the spots which produce them; beside this, I have a great desire to see the remains of a Roman subterranean town, lately discovered in _Champaigne_, which perhaps may gratify my curiosity in some degree, and thereby lessen that desire I have: long had of visiting _Herculaneum_, an _under-ground_ town you know, I always said I would visit, if a certain person happened to be put _under-ground_ before me; but the CAUSE, and the event, in all human affairs, are not to be fathomed by men; for though the event happened, the _cause_ frustrated my design; and I must cross the _Pyranean_ not the _Alpian_ hills. But lest I forget it, let me tell you, that as my travelling must be upon the frugal plan, I have sold my four-wheel post-chaise, to _Mons. Dessein_, for twenty-two guineas, and bought a French _cabriolet_, for ten, and likewise a very handsome English coach-horse, (a little touched in the wind indeed) for seven. This equipage I have fitted up with every convenience I can contrive, to carry me, my wife, two daughters, and all my _other_ baggage; you will conclude therefore, _light_ as the latter may be, we are _bien charge_; but as we move slowly, not above seven leagues a day, I shall have the more leisure to look about me, and to consider what sort of remarks may prove most worthy of communicating from time to time to you. I shall be glad to leave this town, though it is in one respect, something like your's,[B] everyday producing many _strange faces_, and some very agreeable acquaintance. The arrival of the packet-boats from Dover constitutes the principal amusement of this town. [B] BATH. The greater part of the English _transports_ who come over, do not proceed much further than to see the tobacco plantations near _St. Omer_'s; nor is their return home less entertaining than their arrival, as many of them are people of such _quick parts_, that they acquire, in a week's tour to _Dunkirk_, _Bologne_, and _St. Omer_'s, the _language_, dress and manners of the country. You must not, however, expect to hear again from me, till I am further _a-field_. But lest I forget to mention it in a future letter, let me refresh your memory, as to your conduct at Dover, at Sea, and at _Calais_. In the first of these three disagreeable places, (and the first is the worst) you will soon be applied to by one of the Captains of the packets, or bye-boats, and if you hire the boat to yourself, he will demand five guineas; if you treat with another, it is all one, because they are all, except one, partners and equally interested; and therefore will abate nothing. Captain Watson is the only one who _swims upon his own bottom_; and as he is a good seaman, and has a clean, convenient, nay an elegant vessel, I would rather turn the scale in his favour, because I am, as you will be, an enemy to all associations which have a tendency to imposition upon the public, and oppression to such who will not join in the general confederacy; yet I must, in justice to the Captains of the confederate party, acknowledge, that their vessels are all good; _well found_; and that they are civil, decent-behaved men. As it is natural for them to endeavour to make the most of each _trip_, they will, if they can, foist a few passengers upon you, even after you have taken the vessel to your own use only. If you are alone, this intrusion is not agreeable, but if you have ladies with you, never submit to it; if they introduce men, who appear like gentlemen upon your vessel, you cannot avoid treating them as such; if women, you cannot avoid them treating them with more attention than may be convenient, because they _are_ women; but were it only in consideration of the sea-sickness and its _consequences_, can any thing be more disagreeable than to admit people to _pot_ and _porringer_ with you, in a small close cabin, with whom you would neither eat, drink, or converse, in any other place? but these are not the only reasons; every gentleman going to France should avoid making new acquaintance, at Dover, at Sea, or at _Calais_: many _adventurers_ are always passing, and many honest men are often led into grievous and dangerous situations by such inconsiderate connections; nay, the best, and wisest men, are the most liable to be off their guard, and therefore you will excuse my pointing it out to you. I could indeed relate some alarming consequences, nay, some fatal ones, which have befallen men of honour and character in this country, from such unguarded connections; and such as they would not have been drawn into, on the other side of the "_invidious Streight_." When an Englishman leaves his own country, and is got no further from it than to this town, he looks back upon it with an eye of partial affection; no wonder then, if he feels more disposed to be kind to a countryman and a stranger he may meet in this.--I do not think it would be difficult to point out, what degree of intimacy would arise between two men who knew but little of each other, according to the part of the world they were to meet in.--I remember the time, when I only knew your person, and coveted your acquaintance; at that time we lived in the same town, knew each other's general character, but passed without speaking, or even the compliment of the hat; yet had we met in London, we should certainly have taken some civil notice of each other: had the interview been at York, it is five to one but it would have produced a conversation: at Edinburgh, or Dublin, we should have dined, or gone to the play together: but if we had met at Barbadoes, I should have been invited to spend a month at your PENN, and experienced many of those marks of hospitality, friendship, and generosity, I have found from the Creoles in general. When you get upon the French coast, the packet brings to, and is soon boarded by a French boat, to carry the passengers on shore; this passage is much longer than it appears to be, is always disagreeable, and sometimes dangerous; and the landing, if the water be very low, intolerable: in this case, never mind the advice of the Captain; his advice is, and must be regulated by his _own_ and his owner's interest, more than your convenience; therefore stay on board till there is water enough to sail up to the town, and be landed by a plank laid from the packet to the shore, and do not suffer any body to persuade you to go into a boat, or to be put on shore, by any other method, tho' the _packet-men_ and the _Frenchmen_ unite to persuade you so to do, because they are mutually benefited by putting you to more expence, and the latter are entertained with seeing your cloaths dirted, or the ladies _frighted_. If most of the packet-boats are in _Calais_ harbour, your Captain will use every argument in his power to persuade you to go on shore, in the French boat, because he will, in that case, return directly to Dover, and thereby save eight-and-twenty shillings port duty. When we came over, I prevailed upon a large company to stay on board till there was water enough to sail into the harbour: it is not in the power of the Captain to deceive you as to that matter, because there is a red flag hoisted gradually higher and higher, as the water flows into the harbour, at a little fort which stands upon _stilts_ near the entrance of it. When you are got on shore, go directly to _Dessein_'s; and be in no trouble about your baggage, horses, or coach; the former will be all carried, by men appointed for that purpose, safely to the Custom-house, and the latter wheeled up to your _Hotel_, where you will sit down more quietly, and be entertained more decently, than at Dover. LETTER IV. RHEIMS, in Champagne. Little or nothing occurred to me worth remarking to you on my journey hither, but that the province of _Artois_ is a fine corn country, and that the French farmers seem to understand that business perfectly well. I was surprised to find, near _St. Omer_'s, large plantations of tobacco, which had all the vigour and healthy appearance of that which I have seen grow in _poor_ America. On my way here, (like the countryman in London, in gazing about) I missed my road; but a civil, and, in appearance, a substantial farmer, conducted us half a league over the fields, and marked out the course to get into it again, without returning directly back, a circumstance I much hate, though perhaps it might have been the shorter way. However, before I gained the high road, I stumbled upon a private one, which led us into a little village pleasantly situated, and inhabited by none other but the poorest peasants; whose tattered habits, wretched houses, and smiling countenances, convinced me, that chearfulness and contentment shake hands oftener under thatched than painted roofs. We found one of these villagers as ready to boil our tea-kettle, provide butter, milk, &c. as we were for our breakfasts; and during the preparation of it, I believe every man, woman, and child of the hamlet, was come down to _look at us_; for beside that wonderful curiosity common to this whole nation, the inhabitants of this village had never before seen an Englishman; they had heard indeed often of the country, they said, and that it was _un pays très riche_. There was such a general delight in the faces of every age, and so much civility, I was going to say politeness, shewn to us, that I caught a temporary chearfulness in this village, which I had not felt for some months before, and which I intend to carry with me. I therefore took out my guittar, and played till I set the whole assembly in motion; and some, in spite of their wooden shoes, and others without any, danced in a manner not to be seen among our English peasants. They had "shoes like a sauce-boat," but no "steeple-clock'd hose." While we breakfasted, one of the villagers fed my horse with some fresh-mowed hay, and it was with some difficulty I could prevail upon him to be paid for it, because the trifle I offered was much more than his _Court of Conscience_ informed him it was worth. I could moralize here a little; but I will only ask you, in which state think you man is best; the untaught man, in that of nature, or the man whose mind is enlarged by education and a knowledge of the world? The behaviour of the inhabitants of this little hamlet had a very forcible effect upon me; because it brought me back to my earlier days, and reminded me of the reception I met with in America by what we now call the _Savage_ Indians; yet I have been received in the same courteous manner in a little hamlet, unarmed, and without any other protection but by the law of nature, by those _savages_;--indeed it was before the _Savages of Europe_ had instructed them in the art of war, or Mr. Whitfield had preached _methodism_ among them. Therefore, I only tell you what they _were_ in 1735, not what they _are at present_. When I visited them, they walked in the flowery paths of Nature; now, I fear, they tread the polluted roads of blood. Perhaps of all the uncivilized nations under the sun, the native Indians of America _were_ the most humane; I have seen an hundred instances of their humanity and integrity;--when a white man was under the lash of the executioner, at _Savannah in Georgia_, for using an Indian woman ill, I saw _Torno Chaci_, their King, run in between the offender and the corrector, saying, "_whip me, not him_;"--the King was the complainant, indeed, but the man deserved a much severer chastisement. This was a _Savage King_. Christian Kings too often care not who is whipt, so they escape the smart. LETTER V. RHEIMS. We arrived at this city before the bustle which the coronation of _Louis_ the 16th occasioned was quite over; I am sorry I did not see it, because I now find it worth seeing; but I staid at _Calais_ on purpose to avoid it; for having paid two guineas to see the coronation of George the Third, I determined never more to be put to any extraordinary expence on the score of _crowned heads_. However, my curiosity has been well gratified in hearing it talked over, and over again, and in reading _Marmontell_'s letter to a friend upon that subject; but I will not repeat what he, or others have said upon the occasion, because you have, no doubt, seen in the English papers a tolerably good one; only that the Queen was so overcome with the repeated shouts and plaudits of her new subjects, that she was obliged to retire. The fine Gothic cathedral, in which the ceremony was performed, is indeed a church worthy of such a solemnity; the portal is the finest I ever beheld; the windows are painted in the very best manner; nor is there any thing within the church but what should be there. I need not tell you that this is the province which produces the most delicious wine in the world; but I will assure you, that I should have drank it with more pleasure, had you been here to have partook of it. In the cellars of one wine-merchant, I was conducted through long passages more like streets than caves; on each side of which, bottled _Champaigne_ was piled up some feet higher than my head, and at least twelve deep. I bought two bottles to taste, of that which the merchant assured me was each of the best sort he had, and for which I paid him six livres: if he sells all he had in bottles at that time, and at the same price, I shall not exceed the bounds of truth if I say, I saw ten thousand pounds worth of bottled _Champaigne_ in his cellars. Neither of the bottles, however, contained wine so good as I often drank in England; but perhaps we are deceived, and find it more palatable by having sugar in it; for I suspect that most of the _Champaigne_ which is bottled for the use of English consumption, is so prepared. That you may know however, for the future, whether Champaigne or any other wine is so adulterated, I will give you an infallible method to prove:--fill a small long-necked bottle with the wine you would prove, and invert the neck of it into a tumbler of clear water; if the wine be genuine, it will all remain in the bottle; if adulterated, with sugar, honey, or any other sweet substance, the sweets will all pass into the tumbler of water, and leave the genuine wine behind. The difference between still _Champaigne_, and that which is _mousser_, is owing to nothing more than the time of the year in which it is bottled. I found in this town an English gentleman, from whom we received many civilities, and who made us acquainted with a French gentleman and lady, whose partiality to the English nation is so great, that their neighbours call their house "THE ENGLISH HOTEL." The partiality of such a family is a very flattering, as well as a very pleasing circumstance, to those who are so happy to be known to them, because they are not only the first people in the town, but the _best_; and in point of talents, inferior to none, perhaps, in the kingdom. I must not, after saying so much, omit to tell you, it is _Monsieur & Madame de Jardin_, of whom I speak; they live in the GRANDE PLACE, _vis-a-vis_ the statue of the King; and if ever you come to Rheims, be assured you will find it a GOOD PLACE. _Madame de Jardin_ is not only one of the highest-bred women in France, but one of the first in point of letters, and that is saying a great deal, for France abounds more with women of that turn than England. Mrs. Macaulay, Mrs. Carter, Miss Aikin, and Mrs. Montague, are the only four ladies I can recollect in England who are celebrated for their literary genius; in France, I could find you a score or two. To give you some idea of the regard and affection _Mons. de Jardin_ has for his wife,--for French husbands, now and then, love their wives as well as we Englishmen do,--I send you a line I found in his study, wrote under his lady's miniature picture: "Chaque instant à mes yeux la rend Plus estimable." This town stands in a vast plain, is of great extent, and enclosed within high walls, and a deep ditch. The public walks are of great extent, nobly planted, and the finest in the whole kingdom. It is, indeed, a large and opulent city, and abounds not only with the best wine, but every thing that is good; and every thing is plenty, and consequently cheap. The fruit market, in particular, is superior to every thing of the kind I ever beheld; but I will not tantalize you by saying any more upon that subject. Adieu! _P.S._ The Antiquarian will find amusement in this town. There are some Roman remains worthy of notice; but such as require the information of the inhabitant to be seen. LETTER VI. DIJON. You will laugh, perhaps, when I tell you, I could hardly refrain from tears when I took leave of the _De Jardin_ family at _Rheims_,--but so it was. Good-breeding, and attention, have so much the appearance of friendship, that they may, and often do, deceive the most discerning men;--no wonder, then, if I was unhappy in leaving a town, where I am sure I met with the first, and had some reason to believe I should have found the latter, had we staid to cultivate it. _Bourgogne_ is, however, a much finer province than Champaigne; and this town is delightfully situated; that it is a cheap province, you will not doubt, even to English travellers, when I tell you, that I had a good supper for four persons, three decent beds, good hay, and plenty of corn, for my horse, at an inn upon this road, and was charged only four livres ten sols! not quite four shillings. Nor was it owing to any mistake; for I lay the following night at just such another inn, and was charged just the same price for nearly the same entertainment. They were carriers' inns, indeed, but I know not whether they were not, upon the whole, better, and cleaner too, than some of the town _auberges_. I need not therefore tell you, I was straggled a little out of _le Route Anglois_, when I found such a _bon Marche_. Dijon is pleasantly situated, well built, and the country round about it is as beautiful as nature could well make it. The shady walks round the whole town are very pleasing, and command a view of the adjacent country. The excellence of the wine of this province, you are better acquainted with than I am; though I must confess, I have drank better burgundy in England than I have yet tasted here: but I am not surprized at that; for at Madeira I could not get wine that was even tolerable. I found here, two genteel English gentlemen, Mess. Plowden and Smyth, from whom we received many marks of attention and politeness.--Here, I imagined I should be able to bear seeing the execution of a man, whose crimes merited, I thought, the severest punishment. He was broke upon the wheel; so it is called; but the wheel is what the body is fixed upon to be exposed on the high road after the execution. This man's body, however, was burnt. The miserable wretch (a young strong man) was brought in the evening, by a faint torch light, to a chapel near the place of execution, where he might have continued in prayer till midnight; but after one hour spent there, he walked to, and mounted the scaffold, accompanied by his confessor, who with great earnestness continually presented to him, and bade him kiss, the crucifix he carried in his hand. When the prisoner came upon the scaffold, he very willingly laid himself upon his back, and extended his arms and legs over a cross, that was laid flat and fixed fast upon the scaffold for that purpose, and to which he was securely tied by the executioner and his mother, who assisted her son in this horrid business. Part of the cross was cut away, in eight places, so as to leave a hollow vacancy where the blows were to be given, which are, between the shoulder and elbow, elbow and wrist, thigh and knee, and knee and ancle. When the man was securely tied down, the end of a rope which was round his neck, with a running noose, was brought through a hole in and under the scaffold; this was to give the _Coup de Grace_, after breaking: a _Coup_ which relieved him, and all the agitated spectators, from an infinite degree of misery, except only, the executioner and his mother, for they both seemed to enjoy the deadly office. When the blows were given, which were made with a heavy piece of iron, in the form of a butcher's cleaver without an edge, the bones of the arms and legs were broke in eight places; at each blow, the sufferer called out, O God! without saying another word, or even uttering a groan. During all this time, the Confessor called upon him continually to kiss the cross, and to remember Christ, his Redeemer. Indeed, there was infinite address, as well as piety, in the conduct of the Confessor; for he would not permit this miserable wretch to have one moment's reflection about his bodily sufferings, while a matter of so much more importance was depending; but even those eight blows seemed nothing to two dreadful after-claps, for the executioner then untied the body, turned his back upwards, and gave him two blows on the small of the back with the same iron weapon; and yet even that did not put an end to the life and sufferings of the malefactor! for the finishing stroke was, after all this, done by the halter, and then the body was thrown into a great fire, and consumed to ashes. There were two or three executions soon after, but of a more moderate kind. Yet I hope I need not tell you, that I shall never attend another; and would feign have made my escape from this, but it was impossible.--Here, too, I saw upwards of fourscore criminals linked together, by one long chain, and so they were to continue till they arrived in the galleys at _Marseilles_. Now I am sure you will be, as I was, astonished to think, an old woman, the mother of the executioner, should willingly assist in a business of so horrid a nature; and I dare say, you will be equally astonished that the magistrates of the city permitted it. Decency, and regard to the sex, alone, one would think, should have put a stop to a practice so repugnant to both; and yet perhaps, not one person in the town considered it in that light. Indeed, no other person would have assisted, and the executioner must have done all the business himself, if his mother had not been one of that part of the _fair sex_, which Addison pleasantly mentions, "_as rakers of cinders_;" for the executioner could not have found a single person to have given him any assistance. There was a guard of the _Marechaussee_, to prevent the prisoners' escape; but none that would have lifted up a little finger towards forwarding the execution; the office is hereditary and infamous, and the officer is shut out of all society. His perquisites, however, were considerable; near ten pounds, I think, for this single execution; and he had a great deal more business coming on. I would not have given myself the pain of relating, nor you the reading, the particulars of this horrid affair, but to observe, that it is such examples as these, that render travelling in France, in general, secure. I say, in general; for there are, nevertheless, murders committed very frequently upon the high roads in France; and were those murders to be made known by news-papers, as ours are in England, perhaps it would greatly intimidate travellers of their own, as well as other nations. But as the murdered, and murderers, are generally foot-travellers, though the dead body is found, the murderer is escaped; and as nobody knows either party, nobody troubles themselves about it. All over France, you meet with an infinite number of people travelling on foot, much better dressed than you find, in general, the stagecoach gentry in England. Most of these foot-travellers are young expensive tradesmen, and artists, who have paid their debts by a light pair of heels; when their money is exhausted, the stronger falls upon the weaker, knocks out his brains, and furnishes himself with a little money; and these murders are never scarce heard of above a league from the place where they are committed; for which reason, you never meet a foot-traveller in France, without arms, of one kind or other, and carried for one _purpose_, or the _other_. Gentlemen, however, who travel only in the day-time, and who are armed, have but little danger to apprehend; yet it is necessary to be upon their guard when they pass through great woods, and to keep in the _middle_ of the road, so as not to be too suddenly surprized; because a _convenient_ opportunity may induce two or three _honest_ travellers to embrace a favourable occasion of replenishing their purses; and as they always murder those whom they attack, if they can, those who are attacked should never submit, but defend themselves to the utmost of their power. Though the woods are dangerous, there are, in my opinion, plains which are much more so; a high hill which commands an extensive plain, from which there is a view of the road some miles, both ways, is a place where a robber has nothing to fear but from those whom he attacks; and he is morally certain of making his escape one way or the other: but in a wood, he may be as suddenly surprized, as he is in a situation to surprize others; for this reason, I have been more on my guard when I have seen people approach me on an extensive plain, than when I have passed through deep woods; nor would I ever let any of those people come too near my chaise; I always shewed them the _utmost distance_, and made them return the compliment, by bidding them, if they offered to come out of their line, to keep off: this said in a peremptory manner, and with a stern look, is never taken ill by honest men, and has a forcible effect upon rascals, for they immediately conclude you think yourself superior to them, and then they will think so too: whatever comes unexpected, is apt to dismay; whole armies have been seized with a panic from the most trifling artifice of the opposite general, and such as, by a minute's reflection, would have produced a contrary effect: the King's troops gave way at Falkirk; the reason was, they were dismayed at seeing the rebels (_I beg pardon_) come down _pell mell_ to attack them with their broad swords! it was a new way of fighting, and, they weakly thought, an invincible one; but had General Cope previously rode through the ranks, and apprised the troops with the manner of their fighting, and assured them how feeble the effect of such weapons would be upon men armed with musket and bayonet, which is exactly the truth, not a man would have retired; yet, _trim-tram_, they all ran, and the General, it is said, gave the earliest notice of his own defeat! But I should have observed, above, that the laws of France being different, in different provinces, have the contrary effect in the southern parts, to what they were intended. The _Seigneur_ on whose land a murdered body is found, is obliged to pay the expence of bringing the criminal to justice. Some of these lordships are very small; and the prosecuting a murderer to punishment, would cost the lord of the manor more than his whole year's income; it becomes his interest, therefore, to hide the dead body, rather than pursue the living villain; and, as whoever has property, be it ever so small, has peasants about him who will be glad to obtain his favour, he is sure that when any of these peasants see a murdered body, they will give him the earliest notice, and the same night the body is for ever hid, and no enquiry is made after the offender. I saw hang on the road side, a family of nine, a man, his wife, and seven children, who had lived many years by murder and robberies; and I am persuaded that road murders are very common in France; yet people of any condition may nevertheless, travel through France with great safety, and always obtain a guard of the _Marechaussee_, through woods or forests, or where they apprehend there is any danger. _P.S._ The following method of buying and selling the wine of this province, may be useful to you. To have good Burgundy, that is, wine _de la premiere tete_, as they term it, you must buy it from 400 to 700 livres. There are wines still dearer, up to 1000 or 1200 livres; but it is allowed, that beyond 700 livres, the quality is not in proportion to the price; and that it is in great measure a matter of fancy. The carriage of a queue of wine from Dijon to Dunkirk, or to any frontier town near England, costs an hundred livres, something more than four sols a bottle; but if sent in the bottle, the carriage will be just double. The price of the bottles, hampers, package, &c. will again increase the expence to six sols a bottle more; so that wine which at first cost 600 livres, or 25 sols a bottle, will, when delivered at Dunkirk, be worth 29 sols a bottle, if bought in cask; if in bottles, 39 sols.--Now add to this the freight, duties, &c. to London; and as many pounds sterling as all these expences amount to upon a queue of wine, just so many French sols must be charged to the price of every bottle. The reduction of French sols to English sterling money is very plain, and of course the price of the best burgundy delivered in London, easily calculated. If the wine be sent in casks, it is adviseable to choose rather a stronger wine, because it will mellow, and form itself in the carriage. It should be double casked, to prevent as much as possible, the frauds of the carriers. This operation will cost six or eight livres per piece; but the great and principal object is, whom to trust to buy the best; and convey it safely. I doubt, it must not pass through the hands of Mons. C----, if he deals in wine as he does in drapery, and bills of exchange. LETTER VII. LYONS. Upon our arrival at _Chalons_, I was much disappointed; as I intended to have embarked on the _Soane_, and have slipped down here in the _coche d'eau_, and thereby have saved my horse the fatigue of dragging us hither: but I could only spare him that of drawing my heaviest baggage. The _coche d'eau_ is too small to take horses and _cabriolets_ on board at _Chalons_; but at _Lyons_, they will take horses, and coaches, or houses, and churches, if they could be put on board, to descend the Rhone, to _Pont St. Esprit_, or _Avignon_. So after we have taken a fortnight's rest here, I intend rolling down with the rapid current, which the united force of those two mighty rivers renders, as I am assured, a short, easy, and delightful passage. Nothing can be more beautiful than the country we passed through from _Chalons_ hither. When we got within a few leagues of this great city, we found every mountain, hill, and dale, so covered with _chateaux_, country houses, farms, &c. that they appeared like towns, villages, and hamlets. Nothing can be a stronger proof of the great wealth of the citizens of _Lyons_, than that they can afford to build such houses, many of which are more like palaces, than the country retreat of _bourgeois_. The prospect from the highest part of the road, a league or two from Lyons, is so extensive, so picturesque, and so enchantingly beautiful, that, impatient as I was to enter into the town, I could not refrain stopping at a little shabby wine-house, and drinking coffee under their mulberry-trees, to enjoy the warm day, the cooling breeze, and the noble prospects which every way surrounded us. The town of _Lyons_, too, which stands nearly in the center of Europe, has every advantage for trade, which men in trade can desire. The _Soane_ runs through the centre of it, and is covered with barges and boats, loaded with hay, wood, corn, and an infinite variety of goods from all parts of the kingdom; while the _Rhone_, on the other side, is still more serviceable; for it not only supplies the town with all the above necessaries of life, but conveys its various manufactures down to the ports of the _Mediterranean_ sea expeditiously, and at little expence. The small boats, which ply upon the Soane as ours do upon the Thames, are flat bottomed, and very meanly built; they have, however, a tilt to shelter them from the heat, and to preserve the complexion, or hide the _blushes_ of your female _Patronne_:--yes, my dear Sir, Female!--for they are all conducted by females; many of whom are young, handsome, and neatly dressed. I have, more than once, been disposed to blush, when I saw a pretty woman sitting just opposite me, labouring in an action which I thought would have been more becoming myself. I asked one of these female _sculls_, how she got her bread in the winter? Oh, Sir, said she giving me a very significant look, such a one as you can better conceive, than I convey, _dans l'hiver J'ai un autre talent_. And I assure you I was glad she did not exercise _both her talents_ at the same time of the year; yet I could not refrain from giving her a double fee, for a single fare, as I thought there was something due to her _winter_ as well as summer abilities. But I must not let my little _Bateliere's_ talents prevent me, while I think of it, telling you, that I did visit, and stay some days at the Roman town lately discovered in Champaigne, which I mentioned to you in a former letter: it stood upon a mountain, now called the _Chatelet_, the foot of which is watered by a good river, and its sides with _good wine_. _Monsieur Grignon_, whose house stands very near it, and who has there an iron manufacture, first discovered the remains of this ancient town; his men, in digging for iron ore, found wrought gold, beside other things, which convinced _Mons. Grignon_ (who is a man of genius) that it was necessary to inform the King with what they had discovered; in consequence of which, his Majesty ordered the foundations to be laid open; and I had the satisfaction of seeing in _Mons. Grignon_'s cabinet an infinite number of Roman utensils, such as weights, measures, kitchen furniture, vases, busts, locks, swords, inscriptions, pottery ware, statues, &c. which afforded me, and would you, a great deal of pleasure, as well as information. _Mons. Grignon_ the elder, was gone to Paris; a circumstance which gave me great concern to hear before I went to his house, but which was soon removed by the politeness, and hospitable manner I was received by his son: yet, my only recommendation to either, was my being a stranger; and being a stranger is, in general, a good recommendation to a Frenchman, for, upon all such occasions, they are never shy, or backward in communicating what they know, or of gratifying the curiosity of an inquisitive traveller; their houses, cabinets, and gardens, are always open; and they seem rather to think they receive, than grant a favour, to those who visit them. How many fine gardens, valuable cabinets, and curiosities, have we in England, so shut up, that the difficulty of access renders them as unentertaining to the public, as they are to the sordid and selfish possessors! I am thoroughly satisfied that the town I am speaking of was destroyed by fire, and not, as has been imagined, by any convulsion of the earth, as I found, among a hundred other strong proofs of it, an infinite number of pieces of melted glass, lead, &c. But though I examined the cellars of eight hundred Roman citizens, the selfish rogues had not left a single bottle of wine.--I longed to taste the _old Falernian_ wine, of seventeen hundred years. I write from time to time to you; but not without often thinking it is a great presumption in me to suppose I can either entertain or instruct you; but I proceed, upon your commands, and the authority of Lord Bacon, who says, he is surprised to find men make diaries in sea voyages, where nothing is to be seen but sky and sea, and for the most part omit it in land travels, where so much is to be observed; as if chance were better to be registered than observation. When you are tired of my register, remember, I can _take_ as well as _give a hint_. LETTER VIII. PORT ST. ESPRIT. After a voyage of one whole, and one half day, without sail or oar, we arrived here from Lyons. The weather was just such as we could wish and such as did not drive us out of the seat of my _cabriolet_ into the cabbin, which was full of priests, monks, friars, milleners, &c. a motley crew! who were very noisy, and what they thought, I dare say, very good company; the deck, indeed, afforded better and purer air; three officers, and a priest; but it was not till late the first day before they took any civil notice of us; and if a Frenchman shews any backwardness of that sort, an Englishman, I think, had better _hold up_; this rule I always religiously observe. When the night came on, we landed in as much disorder as the troops were embarked at _St. Cas_, and lodged in a miserable _auberge_. It was therefore no mortification to be called forth for embarkation before day-light. The bad night's lodging was, however, amply made up to us, by the beautiful and picturesque objects and variety which every minute produced. For the banks of this mighty river are not only charged on both sides with a great number of towns, villages, castles, _chateaux_, and farm-houses; but the ragged and broken mountains above, and fertile vales between and beneath, altogether exhibit a mixture of delight and astonishment, which cannot be described, unless I had Gainsborough's elegant pencil, instead of my own clumsy pen. Upon comparing notes, we found that the officers, (and no men understand the _etiquette_ of travelling better than they do,) had not fared much better than we had; one of them therefore proposed, that we should all sup together that night at _Pont St.-Esprit_, where, he assured us, there was one of the best cooks in France, and he would undertake to regulate the supper at a reasonable price. This was the first time we had eat with other company, though it is the general practice in the southern parts of France. Upon entering the house, where this _Maitre Cuisinier_ and prime minister of the kitchen presided, I began to conceive but an indifferent opinion of the Major's judgment; the house, the kitchen, the cook, were, in appearance, all against it; yet, in spite of all, I never sat down to so good a supper; and should be sorry to sit often at table, where such a one was set before me. I will not--nay, I cannot tell you what we had; but you will be surprised to know what we paid,--what think you of three livres each? when I assure you, such a supper, if it were to be procured in London, could not be provided for a guinea a head! and we were only seven who sat down to it. I must not omit to tell you, that all the second day's voyage we heard much talk of the danger there would be in passing the Bridge of _Pont St. Esprit_; and that many horses and men landed some miles before we arrived there, choosing rather to walk or ride in the hot sun, than swim through _so much danger_. Yet the truth is, there was none; and, I believe, seldom is any. The _Patron_ of the barge, indeed, made a great noise, and affected to shew how much skill was necessary to guide it through the main arch, for I think the bridge consists of thirty; yet the current itself must carry every thing through that approaches it, and he must have skill, indeed, who could avoid it. There was not in the least degree any fall; but yet, it passed through with such violence, that we run half a league in a minute; and very soon after landed at the town of Pont. St. Esprit, which has nothing in it very remarkable, but this long bridge, the good cook, and the first olive tree we had seen. This is Lower _Languedoc_, you know, and the province in which ten thousand pounds were lately distributed by the sagacious Chancellor of England, among an hundred French peasants; and though I was _weak enough_ to think it _my property_, I am not wicked enough to envy them their good fortune. If the decision made one man wretched; it made the hearts of many glad; and I should be pleased to drink a bottle of wine with any of my fortunate cousins, and will if I can find them out; for they are my cousins; and I would shake an honest cousin by the hand tho' he were in wooden shoes, with more pleasure than I would the honest Chancellor, who put them _so unexpectedly_ upon a better footing. I think, by the _laws_ of England, no money is to be transported into other kingdoms; by the JUSTICE of it, it may, and is;--if so, law and justice are still at variance; which puts me in mind of what a great man once said upon reading the confirmation of a decree in the House of Lords, from an Irish appeal:--"It is (said he) so very absurd, inconsistent, and intricate, that, in truth, I am afraid it is really made according to law." LETTER IX. NISMES. On our way here we eat an humble meal; which was, nevertheless, a most grateful _repas_, for it was under the principal arch of the _Pont du Gard_. It will be needless to say more to you of this noble monument of antiquity, than that the modern addition to it has not only made it more durable, but more useful: in its original state, it conveyed only horse and man, over the River _Gordon_, (perhaps _Gardon_) and water, to the city of _Nismes_. By the modern addition, it now conveys every thing over it, but water; as well as an high idea of Roman magnificence; for beside the immense expence of erecting a bridge of a triple range of arches, over a river, and thereby uniting the upper arches to the mountains on each side, the source from whence the water was conveyed, is six leagues distant from _Nismes_. The bridge is twenty-four _toises_ high, and above an hundred and thirty-three in length, and was _my sole property_ for near three hours; for during that time, I saw neither man nor beast come near it; every thing was so still and quiet, except the murmuring stream which runs gently under two or three of the arches, that I could almost have persuaded myself, from the silence, and rude scenes which every way presented themselves, that all the world were as dead as the men who erected it. That side of the bridge where none of the modern additions appear, is nobly fillagreed by the hand of time; and the other side is equally pleasing, by being a well executed support to a building which, without its aid, would in a few ages more have fallen into ruins. I was astonished to find so fine a building standing in so pleasant a spot, and which offers so many invitations to make it the abode of some hermit, quite destitute of such an inhabitant; but it did not afford even a beggar, to tell the strange stories which the common people relate; tho' it could not fail of being a very lucrative post, were it only from the bounty of strangers, who visit it out of curiosity; but a Frenchman, whether monk, or mumper, has no idea of a life of solitude: yet I am sure, were it in England, there are many of our, _first-rate beggars_, who would lay down a large sum for a money of _such a walk_. If a moiety of sweeping the kennel from the Mews-gate to the Irish coffee-house opposite to it, could fetch a good price, and I was a witness once that it did, to an unfortunate beggar-woman, who was obliged by sickness to part with half of it; what might not a beggar expect, who had the _sweeping_ of the _Pont du Gard_; or a monk, who erected a confessional box near it for the benefit of _himself_, and the fouls of poor travellers? After examining every part of the bridge, above and below, I could not find the least traces of any ancient inscription, except three initial letters, C, P, A; but I found cut in _demi relief_ very extraordinary kind of _priapus_, or rather group of them; the country people, for it is much effaced, imagine it to be dogs in pursuit of a hare; but if I may be permitted to _imagine_ too perhaps, indeed, with no better judgment, might not the kind of representations be emblematical of the populousness, of the country? though more probably the wanton fancies of the master mason, or his journeymen; for they are too diminutive pieces of work to bear any proportion to the whole, and are therefore blemishes, not ornaments, even allowing that in those ages such kind of works were not considered in the light they would be in these days of more delicacy and refinement. LETTER X. NISMES. I have now been here some time, and have employed most of it, in visiting daily the _Maison Carree_, the _Amphitheatre_, the Temple of _Diana_, and other Roman remains, which this town abounds with above all others in France, and which is all the town affords worthy of notice, (for it is but a very indifferent one.) The greater part of the inhabitants are Protestants, who meet publicly between two rocks, at a little distance from the city, every Sunday, sometimes not less than eighteen thousand, where their pastors, openly and audibly, perform divine service, according to the rites of the reformed church: Such is the difference between the mild government of _Louis_ the 16th, and that which was practised in the reign of his great grandfather. But reason and philosophy have made more rapid strides in France, within these few years, than the arts and sciences. It is, however, a great and mighty kingdom, blest with every convenience and comfort in life, as well as many luxuries, beside good wine; and good wine, drank in moderation (and _here_ nobody drinks it otherwise) is not only an excellent cordial to the nerves, but I am persuaded it contributes to long life, and good health. Here, where wine and _eau de vie_ is so plenty, and so cheap too, you seldom meet a drunken peasant, and never see a gentleman (_except he be a stranger_) in that shameful situation. Perhaps there is not, on any part of the Continent, a city or town which has been so frequently sacked by foreign invaders, nor so deeply stained with human blood, by civil and religious wars, as this: every street and ancient building within its walls still exhibit many strong marks of the excesses committed by the hands of domestic as well as foreign barbarians, except only the Temple now called, and so called from its form, the _Maison Carree_, which has stood near eighteen hundred years, without receiving any other injuries than the injuries of time; and time has given it rather the face of age, than that of ruins, for it still stands firm and upright; and though not quite perfect in every part, yet it preserves all its due proportions, and enough of its original and lesser beauties, to astonish and delight every beholder, and that too in a very particular manner. It is said, and I have felt the truth of it in part, that there does not exist, at this day, any building, ancient or modern, which conveys so secret a pleasure, not only to the _connoisseur_, but to the clown also, whenever, or how often soever they approach it. The proportions and beauties of the whole building are so intimately united, that they may be compared to good breeding in men; it is what every body perceives, and is captivated with, but what few can define. That it has an irresistible beauty which delights men of sense, and which _charms_ the eyes of the vulgar, I think must be admitted; for no other possible reason can be assigned why this building alone, standing in the very centre of a city, wherein every excess which religious fury could inspire, or barbarous manners could suggest, has stood so many ages the only uninsulted monument of antiquity, either within or without the walls; especially, as a very few men might, with very little labour, soon tumble it into a heap of rubbish. The _Amphitheatre_ has a thousand marks of violences committed upon it, by fire, sledges, battering rams, &c. which its great solidity and strength alone resisted. The _Temple of Diana_ is so nearly destroyed, that, in an age or two more no vestige of it will remain; but the _Maison Carree_ is still so perfect and beautiful, that when _Cardinal Alberoni_ first saw it, he said it wanted only _une boete d'or pour le defendre des injures de l'air_; and it certainly has received no other, than such as rain, and wind, and heat, and cold, have made upon it; and those are rather marks of dignity, than deformity. What reason else, then, can be assigned for its preservation to this day; but that the savage and the saint have been equally awed by its superlative beauty. Having said thus much of the perfections of this edifice, I must however confess, it is not, nor ever was, perfect, for it has some original blemishes, but such as escape the observation of most men, who have not time to examine the parts separately, and with a critical eye. There are, for example, thirty modillions on the cornice, on one side and thirty-two on the other; there are sixty-two on the west side, and only fifty-four on the east; with some other little faults which its aged beauty justifies my omitting; for they are such perhaps as, if removed, would not add any thing to the general proportions of the whole. No-body objected to the moles on Lady Coventry's face; those specks were too trifling, where the _tout ensemble_ was so perfect. _Cardinal Richlieu_, I am assured, had several consultations with builders of eminence, and architects of genius, to consider whether it was practicable to remove all the parts of this edifice, and re-erect it at _Versailles_: and, I have no doubt, but Lewis the 14th might have raised this monument to his fame there, for half the money he expended in murdering and driving out of that province sixty thousand of his faithful and ingenious subjects, merely on the score of Religion; an act, which is now equally abhorred by Catholics, as well as Protestants. But, Lord Chesterfield justly observes, that there is no brute so fierce, no criminal so guilty, as the creature called a Sovereign, whether King, Sultan, or Sophy; who thinks himself, either by divine or human right, vested with absolute power of destroying his fellow-creatures. _Louis_ the XIth of France caused the Duke of _Nemours_, a descendant of King _Clovis_, to be executed at Paris, and placed his children under the scaffold, that the blood of their father might run upon their heads; in which bloody condition they were returned to the Bastile, and there shut up in iron cages: and a King of SIAM, having lost his daughter, and fancying she was poisoned, put most of his court, young and old, to death, by the most exquisite torture; by this horrid act of cruelty, near two thousand of the principal courtiers suffered the most dreadful deaths; the great Mandarins, their wives, and children, being all scorched with fire, and mangled with knives, before they were admitted to his last favour,--that of being thrown to the elephants. But to have done with sad subjects.--It was not till the year 1758 that it was certainly known at what time, or for what purpose, the _Maison Carree_ was erected; but fortunately, the same town which produced the building so many ages ago, produced in the latter end of the last, a Gentleman, of whom it may be justly said, he left no stone unturned to come at the truth. This is _Mons. Seguier_, whose long life has been employed in collecting a cabinet of Roman antiquities, and natural curiosities, and whose penetrating genius alone could have discovered, by the means he did, an inscription, of which not a single letter has been seen for many ages; but this _habile observateur_, perceiving a great number of irregular holes upon the frontal and frize of this edifice, concluded that they were the cramp-holes which had formerly held an inscription, and which, according to the practice of the Romans, were often composed of single letters of bronze. _Mons. Seguier_ therefore erected scaffolding, and took off on paper the distances and situation of the several holes, and after nicely examining the disposition of them, and being assisted by a few faint traces of some of the letters, which had been impressed on the stones, brought forth, to the full satisfaction of every body, the original inscription, which was laid before _l'Academie des Inscriptions & de Belles Lettres de Paris_ of which he is a member, and from whom he received their public thanks; having unanimously agreed that there was not a doubt remained but that he had produced the true reading: which is as follows: +-------------------------------------------------+ | TAUROBOLIO MATRIS DEUM MAGNÆ IDÆÆ | | QUOD FACTUM EST EX IMPERIO | | MATRIS IDÆÆ DEUM | | PRO SALUTE IMPERATORIS CÆSARIS | | TITI ÆLII | | ADRIANI ANTONINI AUGUSTI PII PATRIS PATRIÆ | | LIBERORUMQUE EJUS | | ET STATUS COLONIÆ LUGDUNENSIS | | LUCIUS ÆMILIUS CARPUS SEXTUMVIS | | AUGUSTALIS ITEM DENDROPHORUS | | | | VIRES EXCEPIT ET A VATICANO | | TRANSTULIT ARAMET BUCRANIUM | | SUO IMPENDIO CONSECRAVIT | | SACERDOTE | | QUINTO SAMMIO SECUNDO AB QUINDECEMVIRIS | | OCCABO ET CORONA EXORNATO | | CUI SANCTISSIMUS ORDO LUGDUNENSIS | | PERPETUITATEM SACERDOTIS DECREVIT | | APPIO ANNIA ATILIO BRADUA TITO | | CLODIO VIBIO VARO CONSULIBUS | | LOCUS DATUS DECRETO DECURIONUM. | +-------------------------------------------------+ The _Maison Carree_ is not however, quite square, being something more in length than breadth; it is eighty-two feet long and thirty-seven and a half high, exclusive of the square socle on which it stands, and which is, at this time, six feet above the surface; it is divided into two parts, one enclosed, the other open; the facade is adorned with six fluted pillars of the Corinthian order, and the cornice and front are decorated with all the beauties of architecture. The frize is quite plain, and without any of those bas-reliefs or ornaments which are on the sides, where the foliage of the olive leaf is exquisitely finished. On each side over the door, which opens into the enclosed part, two large stones, like the but-ends of joists, project about three feet, and these stones are pierced through with two large mortices, six inches long, and three wide; they are a striking blemish, and must therefore have been fixed, for some very necessary purpose--for what, I will not risque my opinion; it is enough to have mentioned them to you. As to the inside, little need be said; but, that, being now consecrated to the service of GOD, and the use of the order of _Augustines_, it is filled up with altars, _ex votos_, statues, &c. but such as we may reasonably conclude, have not, exclusive of a religious consideration, all those beauties which were once placed within a Temple, the outward structure of which was so highly finished. Truth and concern compel me to conclude this account of the _Maison Carree_, in lamenting, that the inhabitants of Nismes (who are in general a very respectable body of people) suffer this noble edifice to be defiled by every species of filth that poverty and neglect can occasion. The approach to it is through an old ragged kind of barn door: it is surrounded with mean houses, and disgraced on every side with filth, and the _offerings_ of the nearest inhabitants. I know not any part of London but what would be a better situation for it, than where it now stands: I will not except even Rag-fair, nor Hockly in the Hole. LETTER XI. NISMES. The state in which that once-superb edifice, the Temple of Diana, now appears; with concern, I perceived that there remains only enough to give the spectator an idea of its former beauty; for though the roof has been broken down, and every part of it so wantonly abused yet enough remains, within, and without, to bear testimony that it was built, not only by the greatest architect, but enriched also by the hands of other great artists: indeed, the mason's work alone is, at this day, wonderful; for the stones with which it is built, and which are very large, are so truly worked, and artfully laid, without either cement or mortar, that many of the joints are scarce visible; nor is it possible to put the point of a penknife between those which are most open. This Temple too is, like the _Maison Carree_, shut up by an old barn-door: a man, however, attends to open it; where, upon entering, you will find a striking picture of the folly of all human grandeur; for the area is covered with broken statues, busts, urns, vases, cornices, frizes, inscriptions, and various fragments of exquisite workmanship, lying in the utmost disorder, one upon another, like the stript dead in a field of battle. Here, the ghost of Shakespeare appeared before my eyes, holding in his hand a label, on which was engraven those words you have so often read in his works, and now see upon his monument. I have often wondered, that some man of taste and fortune in England, where so much attention is paid to gardening, never converted one spot to an _Il Penseroso_, and another to _L'Allegro_. If a thing of that kind was to be done, what would not a man of such a turn give for an _Il Penseroso_, as this Temple now is?--where sweet melancholy sits, with a look "That's fastened to the ground, A tongue chain'd up, without a sound." The modern fountain of _Nismes_ or rather the Roman fountain recovered, and re-built, falls just before this Temple; and the noble and extensive walks, which surround this pure and plentiful stream, are indeed very magnificent: what then must it have been in the days of the Romans, when the Temple, the fountain, the statues, vases, &c. stood perfect, and in their proper order? Though this building has been called the Temple of Diana, by a tradition immemorial, yet it may be much doubted, whether it was so. The Temples erected, you know, to the daughter of Jupiter, were all of the Ionic order, and this is a mixture of the Corinthian, and Composit. Is it not, therefore, more probable, from the number of niches in it to contain statues, that it was, in fact, a Pantheon? Directly opposite to the entrance door, are three great tabernacles; on that of the middle stood the principal altar; and on the side walls were twelve niches, six on the right-hand are still perfect. The building is eleven _toises_ five feet long, and six _toises_ wide, and was thrown into its present ruinous state during the civil wars of Henry the Third; and yet, in spite of the modern statues, and gaudy ornaments, which the inhabitants have bestrewed to decorate their matchless fountain, the Temple of Diana is still the greatest ornament it has to boast of. LETTER XII. MONTPELLIER. Never was a traveller more disappointed than I was upon entering into this renowned city; a city, the name of which my ears have been familiar to, ever since I first heard of disease or medicine. I expected to find it filled with palaces; and to perceive the superiority of the soft air it is so celebrated for, above all other places; instead of which, I was accompanied for many miles before I entered it with thousands of Moschettos, which, in spite of all the hostilities we committed upon them, made our faces, hands and legs, as bad in appearance as persons just recovering from a plentiful crop of the small-pox, and infinitely more miserable. Bad as these flies are in the West-Indies, I suffered more in a few days from them at, and near Montpellier, than I did for some years in Jamaica. However fine and salubrious the air of this town might have been formerly, it is far otherwise now; and it may be naturally accounted for; the sea has retired from the coast, and has left three leagues of marshy ground between it and the town, where the hot sun, and stagnated waters, breed not only flies, but distempers also; beside this, there is, and ever was, something very peculiar in the air of the town itself: it is the only town in France where verdigris is made in any great quantity; and this, I am inclined to think, is not a very favourable circumstance; where the air is so disposed to cankerise, and corrode copper, it cannot be so pure, as where none can be produced; but here, every cave and wine-cellar is filled with sheets of copper, from which such quantities of verdigris are daily collected, that it is one of the principal branches of their trade. The streets are very narrow, and very dirty; and though there are many good houses, a fine theatre, and a great number of public edifices beside churches, it makes altogether but an indifferent figure. Without the walls of the town, indeed, there stands a noble equestrian statue of Louis the XIVth, surrounded with spacious walks, and adorned with a beautiful fountain. Their walks command a view of the Mediterranean Sea in front, and the Alps and Pyrenees on the right and left. The water too is conducted to a most beautiful _Temple d' Eau_ over a triple range of arches, in the manner of the _Pont du Gard_, from a very considerable distance. The modern arches over which it runs, are indeed, a great and mighty piece of work; for they are so very large, extended so far, and are so numerous, that I could find no person to inform me of their exact number; however, I speak within the bounds of truth, I hope, when I say there are many hundred; and that it is a work which the Romans might have been proud of, and must therefore convey an high idea of the riches and mightiness of a kingdom, wherein one province alone could bear, and be willing too to bear, so great an expence, and raise so useful, as well as beautiful a monument; for beside the immense expence of this triple range of arches, the source from whence the water is conveyed is, I think, three leagues distant from the town, by which means every quarter of it is plentifully supplied with fountains which always run, and which in hot climates are equally pleasing, refreshing, and useful. The town abounds with apothecaries' shops, and I met a great many physical faces; so that if the air is not good, I conclude the physic is, and therefore laid out two _sols_ for a pennyworth of ointment of _marsh-mallows_ which alleviated a little the extreme misery we all were in, during our stay at this celebrated city. If, however, it still has a reputation for the cure of a _particular disorder_, perhaps that may arise from the impurity of the air,--and that the air which is so prone to engender verdigris, may wage war with other subtile poisons; yet, as I found some of my countrymen there, who had taken a longer trial of the air, and more of the physic, than I had occasion for, who neither admired one, nor found benefit from the other, I will not recommend _Montpellier_ as having any peculiar excellencies within its walls, but good wine, and some good actors. It is a dear town, even to the natives, and a very imposing one to strangers; and therefore I shall soon leave it, and proceed southward. Perhaps you will expect me to say something of the _Sweets_ which this town is so famed for: there are indeed some sweet shops of that sort; and they are _bien places_. At these shops they have ladies' silk pockets, sachels for their shifts, letter cases, and a multitude of things of that kind, quilted and _larded_ with something, which does indeed give them a most pleasing and lasting perfume. At these shops too, beside excellent lavender water, essence of bergamot, &c. they sell _eau de jasmin de pourri, de cedre, de girofle, sans pareille, de mille fleurs, de zephir, de oiellet, de sultan_ and a hundred other sorts; but the _essence of bergamot_ is above all, as a single drop is sufficient to perfume a handkerchief; and so it ought to be, for it is very dear. LETTER XIII. CETTE. I was very impatient till I had drove my horse from the British to the Mediterranean coast, and looked upon a sea from _that land_ which I had often, with longing eyes, viewed _from the sea_, in the year 1745, when I was on board the Russel, with Admiral Medley. I have now compleatly crossed this mighty kingdom and great continent, and it was for that reason I visited _Cette_. This pretty little sea-port, though it is out of my way to _Barcelona_, yet it proves to be in _the way_ for my poor horse; as I found here a Spanish bark, upon which I put part of my baggage. I was obliged to have it, however, opened and examined at the Custom-house; and as the officer found in it a bass viol, two guittars, a fiddle, and some other musical instruments, he very naturally concluded I was a musician, and very kindly intimated to me his apprehensions, that I should meet with but very little _encouragement in Spain_: as I had not any better reason to assign for going there, but to fiddle, I did not undeceive this good-natured man till the next morning, when I owned, I was not sufficiently _cunning_ in the art of music to get my bread by it; and that I had unfortunately been bred to a worse profession, that of arms; and if I got time enough to _Barcelona_ to enter a volunteer in the _Walloon_ guards, and go to _Algiers_, perhaps I might get from his Catholic Majesty, by my services, more than I could acquire from his Britannic--something to live upon in my old age: but I had no better encouragement from this Frenchman as an adventurer in arms, than in music; he assured me, that Spain was a _vilain pays_, and that France was the only country in the world for a _voyageur_. But as I found that France was the only country he had _voyaged_ in, and then never above twenty leagues from that spot, I thanked him for his advice, and determined to proceed; for though it is fifteen miles from _Montpellier_, we are not got out of the latitude of the _Moschettos_. On the road here, we met an infinite number of carts and horses, loaded with ripe grapes; the gatherers generally held some large bunches (for they were the large red grape) in their hands, to present to travellers; and we had some from people, who would not even stay to receive a trifling acknowledgment for their generosity and politeness. Nothing could be more beautiful than the prospects which every way surrounded us, when we came within three or four miles of this town; both sides of the road were covered with thyme and lavender shrubs, which perfumed the air; the sea breeze, and the hot sun, made both agreeable; and the day was so clear and fine, that the snow upon the _Alps_ made them appear as if they were only ten leagues from us; and I could have been persuaded that we were within a few hours drive of the _Pyrenees_; yet the nearest of them was at least a hundred miles distant. The great Canal of _Languedoc_ has a communication with this town, where covered boats, neatly fitted up for passengers, are continually passing up and down that wonderful and artificial navigation. It is a convenient port to ship wine at; but the people have the reputation of playing tricks with it, before and after it is put on board; and this opinion is a great baulk to the trade it is so happily situated to carry on, and of great benefit to the free port of _Nice_. LETTER XIV. PERPIGNAN. DEAR SIR, Before I leave this kingdom, and enter into that of Spain, let me trouble you with a letter on a subject which, though no ways interesting to yourself, may be very much so _to a young Gentleman of your acquaintance_ at Oxford, for whose happiness I, as well as you, am a little anxious. It is to apprize you, and to warn him, when he travels, to avoid the _gins and man-traps_ fixed all over this country; traps, which a thorough knowledge of Latin and Greek, combined even with father and mother's wit, will not be sufficient to preserve him from, unless he is first shewn the manner in which they are set. These traps are not made to catch the legs, but to ruin the fortunes and break the hearts of those who unfortunately step into them. Their baits are artful, designing, wicked men, and profligate, abandoned, and prostitute women. Paris abounds with them, as well as Lyons, and all the great towns between London and Rome; and are principally set to catch the young Englishman of fortune from the age of eighteen to five and twenty; and what is worse, an honest, sensible, generous young man, is always in most danger of setting his foot into them. You suspect already, that these traps are made only of paper, and ivory, and that cards and dice are the destructive engines I mean. Do you know that there are a set of men and women, in _Paris_ and _Lyons_, who live elegantly by lying in wait and by catching every _bird of passage_?--but particularly the English _gold-finch_. I have seen and heard of such wicked artifices of these people, and the fatal consequences to the unfortunate young men they have ensnared, that I really think I could never enjoy a single hour of contentment, if I had a large fortune, while a son of mine was making what is called the tour of Europe. The minute one of these young men arrive, either at _Paris_ or _Lyons_, some _laquais de place_, who is paid for it, gives the earliest notice to one of the confederacy, and he is instantly way-laid by a French _Marquis_, or an English _Chevalier d'Industrie_, who, with a most insinuating address, makes him believe, he is no sooner arrived at _Paris_ than he has found a sincere friend. The _Chevalier_ shews him what is most worthy of notice in _Paris_, attends him to _Versailles_ and _Marly_, cautions him against being acquainted with the honest part of the French nation, and introduces him to the knaves only of his own and this country; carries him to see French Ladies of the _first distinction_, (and such who certainly _live in that style_) and makes the young man giddy with joy. But alas! it is but a short-lived one!--he is invited; to sup with the _Countess_; and is entertained not only voluptuously, but they play after supper, and he wins too. What can be more delightful to a young man, in a strange country, than to be flattered by the French, courted by the English, entertained by _the Countess_, and cheered with success?--Nay, he flatters himself, from the particular _attention_ the _Countess_ shews him, above all other men admitted to her toilet, that she has even some _tendre_ for his person:--just at this _critical moment_, a _Toyman arrives_, to shew _Madame la Comtesse_ a new fashioned trinket; she likes it, but has not money enough in her pocket to pay for it:--here is a fine opportunity to make Madame la Comtesse a present;--and why should not he?--the price is not above four or five guineas more than his last night's winnings;--he offers it; and, with _great difficulty_ and much persuasion, she accepts it; but is quite _ashamed_ to think of the trouble he has given himself:--but, says she, you Englishmen are so charming,--so generous,--and so--so--and looks so sweet upon him, that while her tongue faulters, _egad_ he ventures to cover her confusion by a kiss;--when, instead of giving him the two broad sides of her cheek, she is so _off her guard_, and so overcome, as to present him _unawares_, with a pretty handsome dash of red pomatum from her lovely pouting lips,--and insists upon it that he sups with her, _tete a tete_, that very evening,--when all this happiness is compleated. In a few nights after, he is invited to meet the _Countess_, and to sup with _Monsieur le Marquis_, or _Monsieur le Chevalier Anglais_; he is feasted with high meat, and inflamed with delicious wines;--they play after supper, and he is stript of all his money, and gives--drafts upon his Banker for all his credit. He visits the Countess the next day; she receives him with a civil coolness,--is very sorry, she says,--and wished much last night for a favourable opportunity to give him a hint, not to play after he had lost the first thousand, as she perceived luck ran hard against him:--she is extremely mortified;--but; as a friend, advises him to go to _Lyons_, or some provincial town, where he may study the language with more success, than in the hurry and noise of so great a city as _Paris_, and apply for further credit. His _new friends_ visit him no more; and he determines to take the Countess's advice, and go on to _Lyons_, as he has heard the South of France is much cheaper, and there he may see what he can do, by leaving Paris, and an application to his friends in England. But at _Lyons_ too, some artful knave, of one nation or the other, accosts him, who has had notice of his _Paris_ misfortunes;--he pities him;--and, rather than see a countryman, or a gentleman of fashion and character in distress, he would lend him fifty or a hundred pounds. When this is done, every art is used to debauch his principles; he is initiated into a gang of genteel sharpers, and bullied, by the fear of a gaol, to connive at, or to become a party in their iniquitous society. His good name gives a sanction for a while to their suspected reputations; and, by means of an hundred pounds so lent to this honest young man, some thousands are won from the _birds of passage_, who are continually passing thro' that city to the more southern parts of _France_, or to _Italy_, _Geneva_, or _Turin_. This is not an imaginary picture; it is a picture I have seen, nay, I have seen the traps set, and the game caught; nor were those who set the snares quite sure that they might not put a stop to my peregrination, for they _risqued a supper at me_, and let me win a few guineas at the little play which began before they sat down to table. Indeed, my dear Sir, were I to give you the particulars of some of those unhappy young men, who have been ruined in fortune and constitution too, at _Paris_ and _Lyons_, you would be struck with pity on one side, and horror and detestation on the other; nor would ever risque such a _finished part_ of your son's education. Tell my Oxonian friend, from me, when he travels, never to let either Lords or Ladies, even of his own country, nor _Marquises_, _Counts_, or _Chevaliers_, of this, ever draw him into play; but to remember that shrewd hint of Lord Chesterfield's to his son;--"When you play with men (says his Lordship) know with _whom_ you play; when with women, _for what_ you play."--But let me add, that the only SURE WAY, is never to play at all. At one of these towns I found a man, whose family I respected, and for whom I had a personal regard; he loaded me with civilities, nay, made me presents, before I had the most distant suspicions _how_ he became in a situation to enable him so to do. He made every profession of love and regard to me; and I verily believed him sincere; because I knew he had been obliged by a part of my family; but when I found a coach, a country-house, a good table, a wife, and servants, were all supported by the _chance_ of a gaming-table, I withdrew myself from all connections with him; for, I fear, he who lives to play, may _play_ to _live_. Upon the whole, I think it is next to an impossibility for a young man of fortune to pass a year or two in _Paris_, the southern parts of France, Italy, &c. without running a great risque of being beggared by sharpers, or seduced by artful women; unless he has with him a tutor, who is made wise by years, and a frequent acquaintance with the customs and manners of the country: an honest, learned Clergyman tutor, is of less use to a young man in that situation, than a trusty _Valet de Chambre_. A travelling tutor must know men; and, what is more difficult to know, he must know women also, before he is qualified to guard against the innumerable snares that are always making to entangle strangers of fortune. It is certainly true, that the nearer we approach to the sun, the more we become familiar with vices of every kind. In the _South of France_, and _Italy_, sins of the blackest dye, and many of the most unnatural kind, are not only committed with impunity, but boasted of with audacity; and, as one proof of the corruption of the people, of a thousand I could tell you, I must tell you, that seeing at _Lyons_ a shop in which a great variety of pictures were hung for sale, I walked in, and after examining them, and asking a few questions; but none that had the least tendency to want of decorum, the master of the shop turned to his wife, (a very pretty woman, and dressed even to a _plumed_ head)--shew _Monsieur_ the little miniature, said he; she then opened a drawer and took out a book, (I think it was her mass-book) and brought me a picture, so indecent, that I defy the most debauched imagination to conceive any thing more so; yet she gave it me with a seeming decent face, and only observed that it was _bien fait_. After examining it with more attention than I should, had I received it from the hands of her husband, I returned it to her prayer-book, made my bow, and was retiring; but the husband called to me, and said, he had a magazine hard by, where there was a very large collection of pictures of great value, and that his wife would attend me. My curiosity was heightened in more respects than _one_: I therefore accepted the offer, and was conducted up two pair of stairs in a house not far off, where I found a long suite of rooms, in which were a large number of pictures, and some, I believe, of great value. But I was a little surprised on entering into the furthermost apartment, as that had in it an elegant _chintz_ bed, the curtains of which were festooned, and the foliages held up by the paintings of two naked women, as large as life, and as indecent as nakedness could be painted; they were painted, and well painted too, on boards, and cut out in human shape; that at first I did not know whether I saw the shadow or the substance; however, as this room was covered with pictures, I began to examine them also, with the fair attendant at my elbow; but in the whole collection I do not remember there was one picture which would not have brought a blush in the face of an English Lady, even of the most easy virtue. Yet, all this while, when I asked the price of the several parts and pieces, she answered me with a gravity of countenance, as if she attended me to sell her goods like other shopkeepers, and in the way of business; however, before I left the room, I could not, I thought, do less than ask her--her own price. She told me, she was worth nothing; and immediately invited me to take a peep through a convex glass at a picture which was laid under, on the table, for that purpose:--it was a picture of so wicked a tendency, that the painter ought to have been put upon a pillory, and the exhibitor in the stocks. The Lady observed to me again, that it was well painted; but, on the contrary, the only merit it had, was, being quite otherwise, I therefore told her, that the subject and idea only was good; the execution bad. Just at this time, several French Gentlemen came in to look at the pictures, and my surprise became infinitely greater than ever; they talked with her about the several pieces, without betraying the least degree of surprise at the subjects, or the woman who shewed them; nor did they seem to think it was a matter of any to me; and I verily believe the woman was so totally a stranger to sentiment or decency, that she considered herself employed in the ordinary way of shopkeepers, that of shewing and selling her goods: as her shop was almost opposite to the General Post-office, where I went every day for my letters, I frequently saw women of fashion at this shop; whether they visited the magazine, or not, I cannot say, but I think there is no doubt but they might borrow the _mass-book_ I mentioned above. I shall leave you to make your own comments upon this subject; and then I am sure you will tremble for the fatal consequences which your son, or any young man, may, nay must be led into, in a country where Vice is painted with all her bewitching colours, in the fore-ground of the picture; and where Virtue, if there be any, is thrown so far behind in the back shade, that it is ten to one but it escapes the notice of a youthful examiner. I cannot help adding another instance of the profligacy of this town. Lord P---- being invited by a French Gentleman to spend a day at his _Chateau_, in this country, took occasion to tell his Lordship, that in order to render the day as agreeable as possible to his company, he had provided some young people of _both sexes_ to attend, and desired to know his Lordship's _gout_. The young Nobleman concealed his surprise, and told his _generous_ host, that he was not fashionable enough to walk out of the paths of nature. The same question was then put to the other company, in the order of their rank; and the last, an _humble Frenchman_, replied, it was to him _egal l'un, et l'autre_, just as it proved most convenient. This is not a traveller's story; it is a fact; and I dare say the Nobleman, who was of the party, will give it the sanction of his name, though I cannot with any degree of propriety. LETTER IV. JONQUIRE. I have now crossed the _Pyrenees_, and write this from the first village in Spain. These mountains are of such an enormous height, as well as extent, that they seem as if they were formed even by nature to divide nations. Nor is there any other pass by land into this kingdom but over them; for they extend upwards of thirty leagues from the _Mediterranean_ Sea, near _Perpignan_ in _Rousillon_ to the city of _Pompelina_ in _Navarre_; I should have said, extend _into_ the _Mediterranean_ Sea, for there the extremity projects its lofty head, like a noble fortress of nature, into the ocean, far beyond the low lands on either side. Indeed the extensive plains on both side these lofty mountains (so unusual in the Southern parts of Europe) would almost make one suspect, that nature herself had been exhausted in raising such an immense pile, which, as if it were the back-bone of an huge animal, was made to hold, and bind together, all the parts of the western world. There are, I think, nine passes over these hills into _Spain_, two or three of which are very commodious, and wonderfully _picturesque_: others are dreadful, and often dangerous; the two best are at the extremities; that which I have just passed, and the other near _Bayonne_; the former is not only very safe, except just after very heavy and long-continued rains, but in the highest degree pleasing, astonishing, and wonderfully romantic, as well as beautiful. At _Boulon_, the last village in France, twelve long leagues from _Perpignan_, and seemingly under the foot of the _Pyrenees_, we crossed a river, for the first time, which must be forded three or four times more, before you begin to ascend the hills; but if the river can be safely crossed at _Boulon_, there can be no difficulty afterwards, as there alone the stream is most rapid, and the channel deepest. At this town there are always a set of fellows ready to offer their service, who ford the river, and support the carriage; nor is it an easy matter to prevent them, when no such assistance is necessary; and I was obliged to handle my pistols, to make them _unhandle_ my wheels; as it is more than probable they would have overset us in shallow water, to gain an opportunity of shewing their _politeness_ in picking us up again. The stream, indeed, was very rapid; and I was rather provoked by the rudeness of the people, to pass through it without assistance, than convinced there needed none. Having crossed the river four or five times more, and passed between rocks, and broken land, through a very uncultivated and romantic vale, we began to ascend the _Pyrenees_ upon a noble road, indeed! hewn upon the sides of those adamantine hills, of a considerable width, and an easy ascent, quite up to the high _Fortress of Bellegarde_, which stands upon the pinnacle of the highest hill, and which commands this renowned pass. You will easier conceive than I can describe the many rude and various scenes which mountains so high, so rocky, so steep, so divided, and, I may add too, so fertile, exhibit to the traveler's eyes. The constant water-falls from the melted snow above, the gullies and breaches made by water-torrents during great rains, the rivulets in the vale below, the verdure on their banks, the herds of goats, the humble, but picturesque habitations of the goat-herds, the hot sun shining upon the _snow-capt_ hills above, and the steep precipices below, all crowd together so strongly upon the imagination, that they intoxicate the passenger with delight. The French nation in no instance shew their greatness more than in the durable and noble manner they build and make their high-roads; here, the expence was not only cutting the hard mountain, and raising a fine road on their sides, but building arches of an immense height from mountain to mountain, and over breaks and water-falls, with great solidity, and excellent workmanship. The invalide guard at this fortress take upon themselves, very improperly, and I am sure very unwarrantably, to examine strangers who pass, with an impertinent curiosity; for they must admit all who come with a proper _passa-porte_ into _Spain_, and durst not admit any without it. On my arrival at the Guard-house, they seized my horse's head, and called for my _passa-porte_, in terms very unlike the usual politeness of French guards; and while my pass was carried into a little office, hard by, to be registered, those who remained on the side of my chaise took occasion to ask me of what country I was: I desired to refer them to my _passa-porte_, (where I knew no information of that kind was given,) as it was a question I could not very well answer; but upon being further urged, I at length told them, I was an _Hottentot_.--"_Otentot_--_Otentot_--pray what king governs that country?" said one of them. No king governs the _Hottentots_ replied I. "What then, is your country without a king?" said another, with astonishment! No; not absolutely so, neither; for the _Hottentots_ have a king; but he always keeps a number of ambitious and crafty men about his Court, who govern him; and those men, who are generally knaves, feed the people with guts, and entrails of beasts, give the king now and then a little bit of the main body, and divide the rest among themselves, their friends, their favourites, and sycophants. But I soon found, these were questions leading to a more important one; and that was, what _countryman_ my horse was;--for, suspecting him to be an _Englishman_, they would perhaps, if I had been weak enough to have owned it, have made me pay a considerable duty for his admission into _Spain_; though I believe it cannot legally be done or levied upon any horse, French, or English, (to use an act of parliament phrase) but such "as are not actually in harness, nor drawing in a carriage." The Spaniards too have done their duty, as to the descent of the _Pyrenees_ from _Bellegarde_, but no further; from thence to this village, is about the same distance that _Boulon_ is from the foot of the mountains on the other side; but though this road is quite destitute of art it is adorned highly by nature. But, before I left _Bellegarde_, I should have told you, that near that Fortress the arms of France and Spain, cut on stone pillars, are placed _vis-a-vis_ on each side of the road; a spot where some times an affair of _honour_ is decided by two men, who engage in personal combat; each standing in a different kingdom; and where, if one falls, the other need not run; for, by the Family Compact, it is agreed, not to give up deserters or murderers. The road is not less romantic on the Spanish, than on the French side of the _Pyrenees_; the face of the country is more beautiful, and the faces of all things, animate and inanimate, are quite different; and one would be apt to think, that instead of having passed a few hills, one had passed over a large ocean: the hogs, for instance, which are all white on the French side, are all black on this. We arrived here upon a Sunday, when the inhabitants had on their best apparel: but instead of high head-dresses, false curls, plumes of feathers, and a quantity of powder, the women had their black hair combed tight from their foreheads and temples, and tied behind, in either red, blue, or black nets, something like the caul of a peruke, from which hang large tassels down to the middle of their back; the men's hair was done up in nets in the same manner, but not so gaudy. Before we arrived here, I overtook a girl with a load of fresh hay upon her head, whom (_at the request of my horse_) I entreated to spare me a little, but, till she had called back her brother, who had another load of the same kind, would not treat with me; they soon agreed, however, that my request was reasonable; and so was their demand; and there, under the shade of a noble grove of large cork-trees, we and our horse eat a most luxurious meal: appetite was the sauce; and the wild scenes, and stupendous rocks, which every way surrounded our _salle a manger_, were our dessert. And that you may not be alarmed about this mighty matter, (as it is by many thought) of parting from _France to Spain_, by the way of _Perpignan_, it may not be amiss to say, that I left the last town about seven o'clock in the morning, in a heavy French _cabriolet_, drawn by one strong English horse, charged with four persons, and much baggage; yet we arrived here about three o'clock the same day; where at our supper, we had a specimen of Spanish cookery, as well as Spanish beds, bills, and custom-house officers: to the latter, a small donative is better bestowed, than the trouble of unpacking all your baggage, and much better relished by them: as to the host, he was neither rude, nor over civil; the cookery more savoury than clean; the window frames without glass, the rooms without chimneys. The demand for such entertainment is rather dearer than in France. Before I left _Perpignan_, I found it necessary to exchange some French gold for Spanish, and to be well informed of the two kingdoms. There were many people willing to change my money; though but few, indeed, who would give the full value. Formerly, you know, the _Pyrenees_ were charged with gold, from whence the Phoenicians fetched great quantities every year. In the time of the Romans, much of the _Pyrenean_ gold was sent to Rome; and a King of Portugal, so lately as the year 1512, had a crown and sceptre made of the gold washed from those hills into the _Tagus_; their treasures were known, you may remember, even to Ovid. "Quod suo Tagus amne vehit fluit Ignibus aurum." But as I did not expect to find a gold mine on my passage into Spain, I thought it best to carry a little with me, and leave nothing to chance; and I should have been content to have found, by the help of my gun, the bird vulgarly called the _Gelinotte des Pyrenees_; it has a curved bill like a hawk, and two long feathers in the tail; but though I saw a great number of different birds, I was not fortunate enough to find the _Ganga_, for that is the true name of a bird, so beautiful in feather, and of so delicate a flavour, that it is even mentioned by Aristotle, and is a native of these hills. P.S. I forgot to tell you, that the day we left _Cette_ we stopped, according to custom, to eat our cold dinner, in an olive grove; from whence we had a noble view of the Mediterranean Sea, and a most delightfully situated _Chateau_, standing upon the banks of a salt-water lake, at least twenty miles in circumference, "clear as the expanse of heaven;" and that while we were preparing to spread our napkin, a gentleman of genteel appearance came out from a neighbouring vineyard, and asked us if any accident had happened, and desired, if we wanted any thing, that we would command him, or whatever his house afforded, pointing to the _Chateau_, which had so attracted our notice: we told him, our business was to eat our little repast, with his leave, under, what we presumed, was his shade also, and invited him to partake with us. He had already captivated us by his polite attention, and by his agreeable conversation: we lamented that we had not better pretensions to have visited his lovely habitation. We found he was well acquainted with many English persons of fashion, who have occasionally resided at Montpellier; and I am sure, his being a winter inhabitant of that city, must be one of the most favourable circumstances the town affords. These little attentions to strangers, are never omitted by the well-bred part of the French nation. I could not refill asking the name of a gentleman, to whom I felt myself so much obliged, nor avoid telling him my own, and what had passed at the town of _Cette_, relative to the musical instruments, as one of the largest was still with us.--He seemed astonished, that I preferred the long and dangerous journey by land, as he thought it, to _Barcelona_, when I might, he said, have run down to it over a smooth sea, in the same bark I had put my baggage on board. LETTER XVI. GIRONE. From _Jonquere_ to _Figuere_ (about four hours journey, so they reckon in Spain) the road is intolerable, and the country beautiful; over which the traveller may, as nature has done, repose himself upon a flowery bed, indeed; for nature surely could not do more for the pleasure and profit of man, than she has done from _Jonquere_ to _Girone_. The town of _Figuere_ is, properly speaking, the first town in Spain; for _Jonquere_ is rather a hamlet; but _Figuere_ has a decent, comfortable appearance, abounds with merchants and tradesmen, and at a little distance from it stands the strongest citadel in Spain; indeed it is the frontier town of the kingdom. The quietness of the people, and seeming tranquility of all ranks and orders of men in Spain, is very remarkable to a person who has just left a kingdom in every respect so different. Strangers as we were, and as we must be known to be, we passed unnoticed; and when we stopped near a cottage to eat our hedge dinner, neither man, woman, or child came near us, till I asked for water, and then they brought with it, unasked, dried grapes, and chesnuts, but instantly retired. I was charmed with the Arcadian inhabitants, and visited the inside of their cabin; but its situation upon a little _tump_, on the bank of a brook, shaded by ever-green oaks, and large spreading fig-trees, was all it had to boast of; it had nothing within but straw beds, Indian corn, dried grapes, figs, &c. From _Figuere_ to _Girone_, which is a good day's journey, the country is enclosed, and the hedgerows, corn fields, &c. had in many places the appearance of the finest parts of England, only warmed by a hotter sun, and adorned with woods and trees of other species; instead of the hawthorn, I found the orange and the pomegranate, the myrtle and the cypress; in short, all nature seemed to rejoice here, but man alone. From many parts of this road we had a view of the _Mediterranean_ Sea, and the Golfe _de Royas_, a fine bay, over which the heads of the _Pyrenees_ hang; and on the banks of which there seemed to be, not only villages, but large towns; the situations of which appeared so enchanting, that I could hardly resist the temptation of visiting them;--and now wonder why I did not; but at that time, I suppose I did not recollect I had nothing else to do. We entered this town rather too late, and were followed to our inn by an armed soldier, who demanded, in harsh terms, my attendance upon the Governor; I enquired whether it was customary for a Gentleman, just off a journey, to be so called upon, and was assured it was not; that my _passa-porte_ was sufficient. I therefore gave that to my conductor, and desired him to take it, and return it, which he did, in about half an hour; but required to be paid for his trouble--a request I declined understanding. This is a fortified city, well built, but every house has the appearance of a convent. I went into the market, where fruit, flesh, and vegetables, were to be sold in abundance; but instead of that noise which French and English markets abound with, a general silence and gravity reigned throughout; which, can hardly be thought possible, where so many buyers and sellers were collected together. I bought a basket of figs, but the vender of them spoke to me as softly as if we had been engaged in a conspiracy, but she did not attempt to impose; I dare say, she asked me no more than she would have demanded of a Spaniard. The manners of people are certainly infectious; my spirits sunk in this town; and I wanted nothing but the language, and a long cloak, to make me a compleat Spaniard. Our inn was the Golden Fountain; and, considering it was in Spain, not a bad one. If the town, however, was gloomy, the country round about it exhibited all the beauties nature can boast of. In climates, says some writer, where the earth seems to be the pride and masterpiece of nature, rags, and dirt, ghastly countenances, and misery under every form, are oftener met with, than in those countries less favoured by nature; and the forlorn and wretched condition of the people in general seemed to belie and disgrace their native soil. Certain it is, that the natives of the southern parts of Europe have neither the beauty, the strength, nor comeliness of men born in more northern climates. I have seen in the South of France, in Spain, and Portugal, the aged especially of both sexes, who hardly appeared human! nor do you see, in general, even among the youthful, much more beauty than that which youth alone must give; for youth itself is beauty. Whoever compares the natives of Switzerland, England, Ireland, and Scotland, with those of Spain, Portugal, or other Southern climates, will find, that men born among cold, bleak mountains, are infinitely superior to those of the finest climates under the sun. Perhaps, however, this difference may arise more from the want of Liberty than the power of climate. Oh Liberty! sweet Liberty! without thee life cannot be enjoyed! Thou parent of comfort, whose children bless thee, though they dwell among the barren rocks, or the most surly regions of the earth! Thou blessest, in spite of nature; and in spite of nature, tyranny brings curses. LETTER. XVII. MARTORY. After we left _Girone_ we passed thro' a fine country, but not equal to that which is between _Jonquire_ and that town; we lay the first night at a _veritiable_ Spanish _posada_; it was a single house, called the _Grenade_. We arrived there early in the afternoon; and though the inside of the house was but so-so, every thing without was charming, and our host and his two daughters gave us the best they had, treated us with civility enough; and gave us good advice in the prosecution of our journey to Barcelona; for about four leagues from this house, we found two roads to that city, one on the side of the Mediterranean Sea, the other inland. He advised us to take the former, which exactly tallied with my inclination, for wherever the sea-coast affords a road in hot climates, that must be the pleasantest; and I was very impatient till we got here. After we had left the high inland road, we had about three leagues to the sea side, and the village on its margin where we were to lie; this road was through a very wild, uncultivated country, over-run with underwood and tall firs. We saw but few houses and met with fewer people. When we came near the sea, the country, however, improved upon us; and the farms, churches, convents, and beacons, upon the high lands, rendered the prospects every way pleasing. We crossed a shallow river several times, adorned on both sides with an infinite quantity of tall beeches, on one of which trees (boy like) I cut my name, too high for _other boys_, without a ladder, to cut me _out_ again. At length we arrived at the village, and at a _posada_, than which nothing could be more dreadful, after the day-light was gone; for beside the rudest mistress, and the dirtiest servants that can be conceived, there lay a poor Frenchman dying in the next room to us; nay, I may almost say, in the same room with us, for it could hardly be called a door which parted us. This poor man, who had not a shilling in his pocket, had lain twenty days ill in that house; but was attended by the priests of the town with as much assiduity as if he had been a man of fashion: he had been often exhorted by them, it seems, to confess, but had refused. The night we came, he feared would be his last, and he determined to make his confession; I was in the room when he signified his desire so to do; and all the people were dismissed by the parish priest. I returned to my room, and could now and then hear what the priest said: but the sick man's voice was too low: his crimes however, I fear, were of an high nature, for we heard the priest say, with a voice of impatience and seeming horror, _Adonde--adonde--adonde_?--Where--where--where? You may imagine, a bad supper, lighted by stinking oil, burning in an iron lamp hung against the side of a wall, (for there were no candles to be had) and while the sick man was receiving the last sacrament, would have been little relished had it been good; that our dirty straw beds were no very comfortable retreat; and that day-light the next morning was what we most wanted and wished for. Indeed, I never spent a more miserable night; but it was amply made up to us by this day's journey to _Martory_, for we coasted it along the sea, which sometimes washed the wheels of my chaise At others, we crossed over high head-lands, which afforded such extensive views over both elements, as abundantly overpaid us for the sufferings of the preceding evening. The roads, indeed, over these head-lands were bad enough, in some places dangerous; but between walking and riding, with a steady horse, we got on very well. On this coast, we found a village at every league, inhabited by rich fishermen, and wealthy ship-builders, and found all these artificers busy enough in their professions; in some places, there were an hundred men dragging in, by bodily strength, the _Saine_; at others, still more surprising, ships of two hundred tons were building on the dry land, where no tide rises to launch them! These villages are built close to the sea; nothing intervenes between their houses and the ocean but their little gardens, in which, under the shade of their orange, lemon, and vine trees, which were loaded with fruit, sat the wives and daughters of the fishermen, making black silk lace. Though I call them villages, and though they are in reality so, yet the houses were such, in general, as would make a good figure even in a fine city; for they were all well built, and many adorned on the outside with no contemptible paintings. The town, indeed, from which I write, is situated in the same manner, but is a little city, and affords a _posada_, (I speak by comparison, remember) comfortable enough; and the sea a fish, they call the red fish, than which nothing can be more delicious; I may venture almost to call it the sea woodcock, for it is eaten altogether in the same manner. We fared better than my poor horse, for not a grain of oats or barley did this city afford; nor has he tasted, or have I seen, a morsel of hay since I parted from my little _Dona_, near the foot of the _Pyrenees_. Tomorrow we have seven hours to _Barcelona_; I can see the high cape under which it stands, and from under which, you shall soon hear again from me. LETTER XVIII. BARCELONA. Upon our arrival at this town, we were obliged to wait at the outward gate above half an hour, no person being admitted to enter from twelve till one, tho' all the world may go out; that hour being allotted for the guards, &c. to eat their dinner. As I had no letter to any person in this city, but to the French Consul, I had previously wrote to a Mr. Ford, a merchant at Barcelona, with whom I had formerly travelled from London to Bath, to beg the favour of him to provide lodgings for me; I therefore enquired for Mr. Ford's house, and found myself conducted to that of a Mr. Curtoys; Mr. Ford, unfortunately for me, was dead; but the same house and business is carried on by Messrs. Adams and Curtoys, who had received and opened my letter. After this family had a little _reconnoitred_ mine, Mr. Curtoys came down, and with much civility, and an hospitable countenance, told me his dinner was upon the table, and in very pressing terms desired that we would partake of it. We found here a large family, consisting of his wife, a motherly good-looking woman; Mrs. Adams, her daughter by a former husband, a jolly dame; and several children. Mrs. Adams spoke fluently the Catalan, French, English, and Spanish tongues; all which were necessary at a table where there were people who understood but one only of each language. Mr. Curtoys pressed us to dine with him a few days after, a favour which I, only, accepted; when he told me, he was nominated, but not absolutely fixed in his Consulship of this city; that he had obtained it by the favour of Lord Rochford, who had spent some days at his house, on his way to Madrid, when his Lordship was Ambassador to this Court; and before I went from him, he desired I and my family would dine with him at his country-house the next day: instead of which, I waited upon him in the morning, and told him, that I had formerly received civilities from his friend, Lord Rochford, and believed him once to have been mine; but that, unfortunately, I found now it was much otherwise; and observed, that perhaps his politeness to me might injure him with his Lordship; and that I thought it right to say so much, that he might be guided by his own judgment, and not follow the bent of his inclination, if he thought it might be prejudicial to his interest; and by the way of a little return for the hospitable manner in which he had received and entertained me, and my family, I took out an hundred and twenty-five pound in Banknotes, and desired him to send them to England; adding, that I had about thirty pounds in my pocket, which I hoped would be sufficient for my expences, till he had an account of their safe arrival. But instead of his wonted chearful countenance, I was _contunded_ with an affected air of the man of business; my bank notes were shined against the window, turned and twisted about, as if the utmost use they could be of were to light the Consul's pipe after supper. I asked him whether he had any doubts of their authenticity; and shewed him a letter to confirm my being the person I said I was, written to me but a short time before, from his friend Lord Rochford, from whom he too had just received a letter: he then observed; that a burnt child dreads the fire; that their House had suffered; that a Moor had lately passed thro' France, who had put off a great number of false Bank notes, and that I might indiscreetly have taken some of them; but assuring him that I had received all mine from the hands of Messrs. Hoare, and that I would not call upon him for the money till he had received advice of their being good, I took my leave, and left my notes. But as there was a possibility, nay, a probability, that Mr. Curtoys might not have very early advice from England, or might not give it to me if he had, (for all his hospitality of countenance and civility was departed) I thought it was necessary to secure a retreat; for I should have informed you, that I found at his table a Mr. Wombwell, whose uncle I had lived in great intimacy with many years before at Gibraltar, and who left this man (now a Spanish merchant) all his fortune. Indeed, I should have said, that Mr. Wombwell had visited me, and even had asked me to dine with him; and as he appeared infinitely superior both in understanding, address, and knowledge of the world to good Mr. Curtoys, I went to him, with that confidence which a good note, and a good cause, gives to every man. I told him the Consul's fears, and my own, lest I might want money before Mr. Curtoys was ready to supply me; in which case, and which only, I asked Mr. Wombwell if he would change me a twenty pound Bank note, and shewed him one which I then took out of my pocket; but Mr. Wombwell too examined my notes, with all the attention of a cautious tradesman, and put on all that imperiousness which riches, and the haughty Spanish manners to an humble suitor, could suggest. I tell you, my dear Sir, what passed between us, more out of pity than resentment towards him; he said I will recollect it as nearly as I can, "that if you are Mr. Thicknesse, you must have lived a great deal in the world; it is therefore unfortunate, you are not acquainted with Sir Thomas Gascoyne, a gentleman of fashion, well known in England, and now in the same auberge with you." I confessed that I had seen, and conversed with Sir Thomas Gascoyne there, and that it was very true, he was to me, and I to him, utter strangers; but I observed, that Sir Thomas had been ten years upon his travels, and that I had lived fourteen years in retirement before he set out, and therefore that was but a weak circumstance of my being an impostor; I observed too, that impostors travelled singly, not with a wife and children; and that though I by no means wished to force his money out of his pocket, I coveted much to remove all suspicions of my being an adventurer, for many obvious reasons. This reply opened a glimpse of generosity, though sullied with arrogance and pride. "I should be sorry (said he) to see a countryman, who is an honest man, in want of money; and therefore, as I think it is probable you are Mr. Thicknesse, I will, when you want your note changed, change it;" adding, however, that "he thanked God! if he lost the money, he could afford it." I then told him, he had put it in my power to convince him I was Mr. Thicknesse, by declining, as I did, the boon he offered me; I declined it, indeed, with an honest indignation, because I am sure he did not doubt my being Mr. Thicknesse, and that _he_, not _I_, was the REAL PRETENDER. I had before told him, that I had some letters in my pocket written by a Spanish Gentleman of fashion, whose hand-writing must be well known in that town;--but to this he observed, that there was not a Moor in Spain who could not write Spanish;--he further remarked, that if I was Mr. Thicknesse, I had, in a publication of my travels, spoke of Sir John Lambert, a Parisian Banker, in very unhandsome terms, and, for aught he knew, I might take the same liberty with his name, in future. I acknowledged that his charge was very true, and that his suggestion might be so; that I should always speak and publish such truths as I thought proper, either for the information of others, or the satisfaction of myself. Mr. Wombwell, however, acknowledged, that Mr. Curtoys, to whom I shewed Lord Rochford's letter to me, ought to have been quite satisfied whether I was, or was not an impostor; but I still left him under real or pretended doubts, with a resolution to live upon bread and water, or the bounty of a taylor, my honest landlord; for, tho' a Spaniard, I am sure he had that perception, and that humanity too, which Mess. Curtoys and Wombwell have not, or artfully concealed from me: yet, in spite of all the unkind behaviour of the latter, I could not help shewing him my share of vanity too; I therefore sent him a letter, and enclosed therein others written to me by the late Lord Holland, the Duke of Richmond, Lord Oxford, and many other people of rank; and desired him to give me credit, at least, for _that_ which he could lose nothing by--that of my being, if I was an impostor, an ingenuous one. He sent the letters, handsomely sealed up, back again, without any answer; and there finished for ever, our correspondence, unless _he should renew it_. I am ashamed of saying so much about these men and myself, where I could find much better subjects, and some, perhaps, of entertainment; but it is necessary to shew how very proper it is for a stranger to take with him letters of recommendation when he travels, not only to other kingdoms, but to every city where he proposes to reside, even for a short time; for, as Mr. Wombwell justly observed, when I have a letter of recommendation from my friend, or correspondent, I can have no doubt who the bearer is; and I had rather take that recommendation than Bank notes.--I confess, that merchants cannot be too cautious and circumspect; I can, and do forgive Mr. Curtoys, for reasons he shall shew you under his own hand: but I have too good an opinion of Mr. Wombwell's perception to so readily forget his shrewd reprisals; though I must, I cannot refrain from telling you what a flattering thing he said to me: I had shewn him a printed paper, signed _Junius_; said he, "If you wrote this, you may be, for aught I know, really JUNIUS." I assured him that I was not; for being in Spain, and out of the reach of the inquisitorial court of Westminster-Hall, I would instantly avow it, for fear I should die suddenly, and carry that secret, like _Mrs. Faulkner_, to the grave with me. LETTER XIX. BARCELONA. You will, as I am, be tired of hearing so much about Messrs. Wombwell, Curtoys, Adams, and Co.--but as there are some other persons here, which my last letter must have put you in some pain about, I must renew the subject. I had, you know, some letters of recommendation to the _Marquis of Grimaldi_, which I had reserved to deliver into his Excellency's hands at _Madrid_; but which I found necessary to send away by the post, and to request the honour of his Excellency to write to some Spaniard of fashion here, to shew me countenance, and to clear up my suspected character. I accordingly wrote to the _Marquis_, and sent him my letters of recommendation, but sixteen days was the soonest I could expect an answer. I therefore, in the mean time, wrote myself to the _Intendant_ of _Barcelona_, a man of sense, and high birth; I told him my name, and that I had letters in my pocket from a Spanish Gentleman of fashion, whom he knew, which would convince him who I was, and desired leave to wait upon him. The Intendant fixed six o'clock the same evening. I was received, and conducted into his apartment, for he was ill, by one of his daughters; the only woman I had seen in Barcelona that had either beauty or breeding;--this young Lady had both in a high degree. After shewing my letters, and having conversed a little with the Intendant, a Lady with a red face, and a nose as big as a brandy bottle, accosted me in English: "Behold, Sir, (said she) your countrywoman." This was Madam O'Reilly, wife to the Governor of _Monjuique_ Castle, and brother to the Gentleman of that name, so well known, and so amply provided for, by the late and present King of Spain. She was very civil, and seemed sensible. Her husband, the Governor, soon after came in, and the whole family smiled upon me. I then began to think I should escape both goal and inquisition. Mrs. O'Reilly visited my family. Mr. O'Reilly borrowed a house for me, and a charming one too; I say borrowed it, for no Spaniard letts his house; I was only to make him some _recompense for his politeness and generosity_. The Intendant even sent Gov. O'Reilly to know why Mr. Curtoys had not presented me, on the court-day, to the Captain-General. Mr. Consul Curtoys was obliged to give his reasons in person; had they been true, they were good: the Intendant accepted them, and said he would present me himself. Things seemed now to take a favourable turn: Mr. Curtoys visited me on his way back from the Intendant's; assured me he had told him that I was a man of character, and an honest man; and that though he could not _see me_ as _Consul Curtoys_, he should be glad to see me as _Merchant Curtoys_. On the other hand, the _Marquis of Grimaldi_, with the politeness of a minister, and the feelings of humanity, wrote me a very flattering letter indeed, and sent it by a special _courier_, who came in four days from _Madrid_. Now, thought I, a fig for your Wombwells, Curtoys, &c. The first minister's favour, and the _shining countenance_ of Madam O'Reilly, must carry me through every thing. But alas! it was quite otherwise;--the _courier_ who brought my letter had directions to deliver it into my own hands; but either by _his blunder_, or _Madam O'Reilly's_, I did not get it till _nine hours_ after it arrived, and then _from the hands_ of _Madam O'Reilly's_ servant. The contents of this letter were soon known: the favour of the minister at _Madrid_ did not shine upon me at the _Court of Barcelona_! I visited Madam O'Reilly, who looked at me,--if I may use such a coarse expression,--"like God's revenge against murder." I could not divine what I had done, or what omitted to do. I could get no admittance at the Intendant's, neither. I proposed going to _Montserrat_, and asked my _fair_ countrywoman for a letter to one of the monks; but--_she knew nobody there, not she_:--Why then, madam, said I, perhaps I had better go back to France:--Oh! but, says she, perhaps the _Marquis of Grimaldi_ will not let you; adding, that the laws of France and Spain were very different.--But, pray, madam, said I, what have the laws of either kingdom to do with me, while I violate none of them? I am a citizen of the world, and consequently free in every country.--Now, Sir, to decypher all this, which I did by the help of some _characters_ an honest Spaniard gave me:--Why, says he, they say you are a _great Captain_; that you have had an attention shewn you by the _Marquis of Grimaldi_, which none of the O'Reilly's ever obtained; and they are afraid that you are come here to take the eldest brother's post from him, and that you are to command the troops upon the second expedition to _Algiers_; for every body is much dissatisfied with his conduct on the first; adding, that the Spaniards do not love him.--I told him, that might arise from his being a stranger; but I had been well assured, and I firmly believed it, that he is a gallant, an able, and a good officer; but, said I, that cannot be the reason of so much shyness in the _Intendant_, even if it does raise any uneasiness in the O'Reilly's family:--Yes, said he, it does; for the Captain-General O'Reilly is married lately to one of the Intendant's daughters. So you see here was another mine sprung under me; and I determined to set out in a day or two for _Montserrat_. I had but one card more to play, and that was to carry the open letter I had to the French Consul, and which, I forgot to tell you, I had shewn to the acute, discerning, and sagacious merchant Wombwell. It was written by _Madame de Maigny_, the Lady of the _Chevalier de Maigny_, of the regiment _d'Artois_, one of the Gentlemen with whom I had eat that voluptuous supper in company at _Pont St. Esprit_; but, as Mr. Wombwell shrewdly observed, my name was not even mentioned in that letter, it was the _bearer only_ who was recommended; and how could that Lady, any more than Mr. Wombwell, tell, but that I had murdered the first bearer, and robbed him of his recommendatory letter, and dressed myself in his scarlet and gold-laced coat, to practise the same wicked arts upon their lives and fortunes? Now, you will naturally wish to know how Sir Thomas Gascoyne, my _vis-a-vis_ neighbour in the same _Hotel_, conducted himself. I had, before all this fuss, eat, drank, and conversed with him: he is a sensible, genteel, well-bred man; and there was with him Mr. Swinburne, who was equally agreeable: no wonder, therefore, if I endeavoured to cultivate an acquaintance with two such men, so much superior, in all respects, to what the town afforded. Sir Thomas, however, became rather reserved; perhaps not more so than good policy made necessary for a man who was only just entering upon a grand tour through the whole kingdom, from Barcelona to Cadiz, Madrid, &c. &c. I perceived this shyness, but did not resent it, because I could not censure it. He had no suspicion of me at first; and if he had afterwards, I could not tell what circumstances might have been urged against me; and I considered, that if a man of his fortune and figure could have been suspected, there was much reason for him to join with others in suspecting me. The Moor, it seems, who had put off the counterfeit bank notes, had been advertised in all the foreign papers; his person was particularly described; and as application had been made to the Courts of France and Spain, to stop the career of such a villain, the Governor of _Barcelona_ had, upon Sir Thomas Gascoyne's first arrival, stopped him, and sent for the Consul, verily believing he had got the offender. The Moor was described as a short, plump, black man; and as Sir Thomas has black eyes, and is rather _en bon point_, the plain, honest Governor had not discernment enough to see that ease and good breeding in Sir Thomas, which no Moor, however well he may imitate Bank notes, can counterfeit. But as Sir Thomas had letters of credit upon Mr. Curtoys, which ascertained his person and rank, this adventure became a laughable one to him. It is, indeed, from his mouth I relate it, though, perhaps, not with all the circumstances he told me.--Now, had my person tallied as well as Sir Thomas's did with that of the itinerant Moor, I should certainly have been in one of the round towers, which stick pretty thick in the walls of the fortification of this town. You will tremble--I assure you, I do--when I think of another escape I had; and I will tell you how:--The day after I left _Cette_, I came to a spot where the roads divide; here I asked two men, which was mine to _Narbonne_? one of them answered me in English; he was a shabby, but genteel-looking young man, said he came from _Italy_, and was going to _Barcelona_; that he had been defrauded of his money at _Venice_ by a parcel of sharpers, and was going to _Spain_ to get a passage to Holland, of which country he was a native; he was then in treaty, he said, with the other man to sell him a pair of breeches, to furnish him with money to carry him on; and as I had no servant at that time, he earnestly intreated me to take him into my service: I would not do that, you may be sure; but lest he might be an unfortunate man, like myself, I told him, if he could contrive to lie at the inns I did, I would pay for his bed and supper. He accepted an offer, I soon became very sorry I had made; and when we arrived at _Perpignan_, I gave him a little money to proceed, but absolutely forbad him either to walk near my chaise, or to sleep at the same inns I did; for as I knew him not, he should not enter into another kingdom as one in my _suite_; and I saw no more of him till some days after my arrival at Barcelona, where he accosted me in a better habit, and shewed me some real, or counterfeit gold he had got, he said, of a friend who knew his father at Amsterdam. He was a bold, daring fellow; and it was with some difficulty I could prevail upon him not to walk _cheek by jole_ with me along the ramparts. Soon after this I was informed, that a fine-dressed, little black-eyed man was arrived in a bark from Italy. This man proved to be, as Mr. Curtoys informed me, the very Moor whom Sir Thomas Gascoyne was suspected to be: he was apprehended, and committed to one of the round towers. But what will you say, or what would have been my lot, had I taken the other man into my service?--for the minute _my white man_, for he was a _whitish_ Moor, saw the black one arrive, he decamped; they were afraid of each other, and both wanted to escape; my man went off on foot; the black man was apprehended, while he was in treaty with the master of the same bark he came in, to carry him to some other sea-port. Now had I come in with such a servant, and with my suspected Bank notes, without letters of credit, or recommendation; had the Moor arrived, who is the real culprit, and who had been connected with my man, what would have become of his master, your unfortunate humble servant?--I doubt the _abilities_ of his Britannic Majesty's Consul would not have been able to have divided our degrees of _guilt_ properly; and that I should have experienced but little charity on my straw bed, from the humanity of Mr. Wombwell. However, I had still one card more to play to reinforce my purse; it was one, I thought could not fail, and the money was nearer home:--I had lent, while I was at Calais, thirty guineas to a French officer, for no other reason but because he wanted it: I knew the man; and as he promised to pay me in three months, and as that time was expired, I applied to Mr. Harris, a Scotch merchant, at his house at Barcelona, on whom the London Bankers of the same name give letters of credit to travellers. I begged the favour of him to send the note to his correspondents at Paris, and to procure the money for me, and when it was paid, that he would give it to me at Barcelona; but Mr. Harris too, begged to be excused: he started some difficulties, but at length did give me a receipt for the note, and promised, reluctantly enough, to send it. I began now to think that I should starve indeed. Every article of life is high in Spain, and my purse was low. I therefore wrote to Mr. Curtoys, to know if he had any tidings of the Bank bills; for I had immediately wrote to Messrs. Hoare, to beg the favour of them to send Mr. Curtoys the numbers of those which I received at their house; and they very politely informed me, they had so done. Mr. Consul Curtoys favoured me with the following answer: "Mr. Curtoys presents his compliments to Mr. Thicknesse; no ways doubts the Bank bills _to be good_, from London this post under the 24th past, they _accuse_ receipt thereof, &c. _Barcelona_, 12th of December, 1775." As Mr. Curtoys's correspondent had _accused receipt thereof_, I thought I might too, and accordingly I went and desired my money. The cashier was sick, they said, and I was desired to call again the next morning, _when he would be much better_;--I did so, and received my money; and shall set off immediately for _Montserrat_, singing, and saying what I do not exactly agree to; but, being at Rome, I would do as they do there: I therefore taught my children to repeat the following Spanish proverb: "Barcelonaes Buéno, Si la Bolsa fuéno; Suéno ô no fuéno; Barcelonaes Buéno." I will not translate what, I am sure, you will understand the sense of much better than you will think I experienced the truth. I hope, however, to have done with my misfortunes; for I am going to visit a spot inhabited by virtuous and retired men; a place, according to all reports, cut out by nature for such who are able to sequester themselves from all worldly concerns; and from such strangers as they are I am sure I shall meet with more charity for they deal in nothing else than I met with humanity or politeness at Barcelona. _P.S._ I should have told you, that before Sir Thomas Gascoyne left this town, he sent a polite message, to desire to take leave of me and my family: I therefore waited upon him; and as he proposed visiting Gibraltar, I troubled him with a letter to my son, then on that duty; and was sorry soon after to find that my son had left the garrison before Sir Thomas could arrive at it. If you ask me how Sir Thomas Gascoyne ventured to make so great a tour through a country so aukwardly circumstanced for travellers in general, and strangers in particular, I can only say, that when I saw him he had but just began his long journey, and that he had every advantage which _religion_ and fortune could give him. I had none: he travelled with two coaches, two sets of horses, two saddle mules, and was protected by a train of servants. I had religion, (but it was a bad one in that country) and only one footman, who strictly maintained his character, for he always walked. Indeed, it is the fashion of all Spanish gentlemen to be followed by their servant on foot. I therefore travelled like a Spaniard; Sir Thomas like an Englishman. The whole city of _Barcelona_ was in an uproar the morning Sir Thomas's two coaches set off; and I heard, with concern, that they both broke down before they got half way to _Valencia_; but, with pleasure, by a polite letter soon after from Mr. Swinburne, that they got so far in perfect health. I am, dear Sir, &c. _P.S._ Before I quit Barcelona, it will be but just to say, that it is a good city, has a fine mole, and a noble citadel, beside _Monjuique_, a strong fort, which stands on a high hill, and which commands the town as well as the harbour. The town is very large and strongly fortified, stands in a large plain, and is encompassed with a semi-circular range of high hills, rather than mountains, which form _un coup-d'oeil_, that is very pleasing, as not only the sides of the hills are adorned with a great number of country houses, but the plain also affords a great many, beside several little villages. The roads too near the town are very good. As to the city itself, it is rather well built in general, than abounding with any particular fine buildings. The Inquisition has nothing to boast of now, either within or without, having (fortunately for the public) lost a great part of its former power: it, however, still keeps an awe upon all who live within its verge. I never saw a town in which trade is carried on with more spirit and industry; the indolent disposition of the Spaniards of _Castile_, and other provinces, has not extended ever into this part of Spain. They have here a very fine theatre; but those who perform upon the stage are the refuse of the people, and are too bad to be called by the name of actors. They have neither libraries nor pictures worthy of much notice, though they boast of one or two paintings in their churches by natives of the town, François _Guirro_, and John _Arnau_. In the custom-house hangs a full-length of the present King, so execrable, that one would wonder it was not put, with the painter, into the Inquisition, as a libel on royalty and the arts. I am told, at _La Fete Dieu_ there are some processions of the most ridiculous nature. The fertility of the earth in and about the town is wonderful; the minute one crop is off the earth, another is put in; no part of the year puts a stop to vegetation. In the coldest weather, the market abounds with a great variety of the choicest flowers; yet their sweets cannot over-power the intolerable smell which salt fish, and stinking fish united, diffuse over all that part of the city; and rich as the inhabitants are, you will see the legs, wings, breasts, and entrails of fowls, in the market, cut up as joints of meat are in other countries, to be sold separately: nor could I find in this great city either oil, olives, or wine, that were tolerable. I paid a guinea a day at the _Fontain d'Or_ for my table; yet every thing was so dirty, that I always made my dinner from the dessert; nor was there any other place but the stable of this dirty inn to put up my horse, where I paid twelve livres a week for straw only; and whoever lodges at this inn, must pay five shillings a day for their dinner, whether they dine there or not. _Catalonia_ is undoubtedly the best cultivated, the richest, and most industrious province, or principality, in Spain; and the King, who has the SUN FOR HIS HAT, (for it always shines in some part of his dominions) has nothing to boast of, equal to _Catalonia_. As I have almost as much abhorrence to the Moors, as even the Spaniards themselves, (having visited that coast two or three times, many years ago) you may be sure I was grieved to meet, every time I went out, so many maimed and wounded officers and soldiers, who were not long returned from the unsuccessful expedition to _Algiers_. There are no troops in the world more steady than the Spaniards; it was not for want of bravery they miscarried, but there was some sad mismanagement; and had the Moors followed their blows, not a man of them would have returned. My servant, (a French deserter) who was upon that expedition, says, Gen. O'Reilly was the first who landed, and the last who embarked;--but it is the HEAD, not the _arm_ of a commander in chief, which is most wanted. The Moors at _le point du jour_, advanced upon the Spaniards behind a formidable _masked and moving battery_ of camels: the Spaniards, believing them, by a faint light, to be cavalry, expended a great part of their strength, spirits, and ammunition, upon those harmless animals; and it was not till _this curtain_ was removed that the dreadful carnage began, in which they lost about nine thousand men. There seems to have been some strange mismanagement; it seems probable that there was no very good understanding between the marine and the land officers. The fleet were many days before the town, and then landed just where the Moors expected they would land. There is nothing so difficult, so dangerous, nor so liable to miscarriage, as the war of _invading_: our troops experienced it at _St. Cas_; and they either have, or will experience it in America. The wild negroes in Jamaica, to whom Gov. Trelawney wisely gave, what they contended for, (LIBERTY) were not above fifteen hundred fit to bear arms. I was in several skirmishes with them, and second in command under Mr. Adair's brother, a valiant young man who died afterwards in the field, who made peace with them; yet I will venture to affirm, that though five hundred disciplined troops would have subdued them in an open country, the united force of France and England could not have extirpated them from their fast holds in the mountains. Did not a Baker battle and defeat two Marshals of France in the Cevennes? And is it probable, that all the fleets and armies of Great-Britain can conquer America?--England may as well attempt moving that Continent on this side the Atlantic. LETTER XX. MONTSERRAT. I never left any place with more secret satisfaction than I did _Barcelona_; exclusive of the entertainment I was prepared to expect, by visiting this holy mountain; nor have I been disappointed; but on the contrary, found it, in every respect, infinitely superior to the various accounts I had heard of it;--to give a perfect description of it is impossible;--to do that it would require some of those attributes which the Divine Power by whose almighty handy it was raised, is endowed with. It is called _Montserrat_, or _Mount-Scie_,[C] by the _Catalonians_, words which signify a cut or _sawed mountain_; and so called from its singular and extraordinary form; for it is so broken, so divided, and so crowned with an infinite number of spiring cones, or PINE heads, that it has the appearance, at distant view, to be the work of man; but upon a nearer approach, to be evidently raised by HIM alone, to whom nothing is impossible. It looks, indeed, like the first rude sketch of GOD's work; but the design is great, and the execution such, that it compels all men who approach it, to lift up their hands and eyes to heaven, and to say,--Oh GOD!--HOW WONDERFUL ARE ALL THY WORKS! [C] The arms of the Abbey are--A saw in the middle of a rock. It is no wonder then, that such a place should be fixed upon for the residence of holy and devout men; for there is not surely upon the habitable globe a spot so properly adapted for retirement and contemplation; it has therefore, for many ages, been inhabited only by monks and hermits, whose first vow is, never to forsake it;--a vow, without being either a hermit or a monk, I could make, I think, without repenting. If it be true, and some great man has said so, that "_whosoever delighteth in solitude, is either a wild beast, or a God_;" the inhabitants of this spot are certainly more than men; for no wild beast dwells here. But it is the _place_, not the people, I mean at present to speak of. It stands in a vast plain, seven leagues they call it, but it is at least thirty miles from _Barcelona_, and nearly in the center of the principality of _Catalonia_. The height of it is so very considerable, that in one hour's slow travelling towards it, after we left _Barcelona_, it shewed its pointed steeples, high over the lesser mountains, and seemed so very near, that it would have been difficult to have persuaded a person, not accustomed to such deceptions, in so clear an atmosphere to believe, that we had much more than an hour's journey to arrive at it; instead of which, we were all that day in getting to _Martorel_, a small city, still three leagues distant from it, where we lay at the Three Kings, a pretty good inn, kept by an insolent imposing Italian. _Martorel_ stands upon the steep banks of the river _Lobregate_, over which there is a modern bridge, of a prodigious height, the piers of which rest on the opposite shore, against a Roman triumphal arch of great solidity, and originally of great beauty. I think I tell you the truth when I say, that I could perceive the convent, and some of the hermitages, when I first saw the mountain, at above twenty miles distance. From _Martorel_, however, they were as visible as the mountain itself, to which the eye was directed, down the river, the banks of which were adorned with trees, villages, houses, &c. and the view terminated by this the most glorious monument in nature. When I first saw the mountain, it had the appearance of an infinite number of rocks cut into _conical_ forms, and built one upon another to a prodigious height. Upon a nearer view, each cone appeared of itself a mountain; and the _tout ensemble_ compose an enormous mass of the _Lundus Helmonti_, or plumb-pudding stone, fourteen miles in circumference, and what the Spaniards _call_ two leagues in height. As it is like unto no other mountain, so it stands quite unconnected with any, though not very distant from some very lofty ones. Near the base of it, on the south side, are two villages, the largest of which is _Montrosol_; but my eyes were attracted by two ancient towers, which flood upon a hill near _Colbaton_, the smallest, and we drove to that, where we found a little _posada_, and the people ready enough to furnish us with mules and asses, for we were now become quite impatient to visit the hallowed and celebrated convent, _De Neustra Senora_; a convent, to which pilgrims resort from the furthest parts of Europe, some bearing, by way of penance, heavy bars of iron on their backs, others cutting and slashing their naked bodies with wire cords, or crawling to it on all-fours, like the beasts of the field, to obtain forgiveness of their sins, by the intercession of _our Lady of Montserrat_. When we had ascended a steep and rugged road, about one hour, and where there was width enough, and the precipices not too alarming, to give our eyes the utmost liberty, we had an earnest of what we were to expect above, as well as the extensive view below; our impatience to see more was encreased by what we had already seen; the majestic convent opened to us a view of her venerable walls; some of the hermits' cells peeped over the broken precipices still higher; while we, glutted with astonishment, and made giddy with delight and amazement, looked up at all with a reverential awe, towards that God who raised the PILES, and the holy men who dwell among them.--Yes, Sir,--we caught the holy flame; and I hope we came down better, if not wiser, than we went up. After ascending full two hours and a half more, we arrived on a flat part on the side, and about the middle of the mountain, on which the convent is built; but even that flat was made so by art, and at a prodigious expence. Here, however, was width enough to look securely about us; and, good God! what an extensive field of earth, air, and sea did it open! the ancient towers, which at first attracted my notice near _Colbaton_, were dwindled into pig-sties upon a _mounticule_. At length, and a great length it was, we arrived at the gates of the _Sanctuary_; on each side of which, on high pedestals, stand the enormous statues of two saints; and nearly opposite, on the base of a rock, which leans in a frightful manner over the buildings, and threatens destruction to all below, a great number of human sculls are fixed in the form of a cross. Within the gate is a square cloister, hung round with paintings of the miracles performed by the Holy Virgin, with votive offerings, &c. It was Advent week, when none of the monks quit their apartments, but one whose weekly duty it was to attend the call of strangers; nor did the whole community afford but a single member (_pere tendre_, a _Fleming_) who could speak French. It was _Pere Pascal_, by whom we were shewn every mark of politeness and attention, which a man of the world could give, but administered with all that humility and meekness, so becoming a man who had renounced it. He put us in possession of a good room, with good beds; and as it was near night, and very cold, he ordered a brazier of red-hot embers into our apartment; and having sent for the cook of the strangers' kitchen, (for there are four public kitchens) and ordered him to obey our commands, he retired to evening _vespers_; after which he made us a short visit, and continued to do so, two or three times every day, while we staid. Indeed, I began to fear we staid too long, and told him so; but he assured me the apartment was ours for a month or two, if we pleased. During our stay, he admitted me into his apartments, and filled my box with delicious Spanish snuff, and shewed us every attention we would wish, and much more than, as _unrecommended_ strangers, we could expect. All the poor who come here are fed gratis for three days, and all the sick received in the hospital. Sometimes, on particular festivals, seven thousand arrive in one day; but people of condition pay a reasonable price for what they eat. There was before our apartment a long covered gallery; and tho' we were in a deep recess of the rocks, which projected wide and high on our right and left, we had in front a most extensive view of the _world below_, and the more distant Mediterranean Sea. It was a moon-light night; and, in spite of the cold, it was impossible to be shut out of the enchanting lights and shades which her silver beams reflected on the rude rocks above, beneath, and on all sides of us.--Every thing was as still as death, till the sonorous convent bell warned the Monks to midnight prayer. At two o'clock, we heard some of the tinkling bells of the hermits' cells above give notice, that they too were going to their devotion at the appointed hour: after which I retired to my bed; but my mind was too much awakened to permit me to sleep; I was impatient for the return of day-light, that I might proceed still higher; for, miser like, tho' my _coffers were too full_, I coveted more; and accordingly, after breakfast, we eagerly set our feet to the first _round_ of the _hermit's ladder_; it was a stone one indeed, but stood in all places dreadfully steep, and in many almost perpendicular. After mounting up a vast chasm in the rock, yet full of trees and shrubs, about a thousand paces, fatigued in body, and impatient for a safe resting place, we arrived at a small hole in the rock, through which we were glad to crawl; and having got to the secure side of it, prepared ourselves, by a little rest, to proceed further; but not, I assure you, without some apprehensions, that if there was no better road down, we must have become _hermits_. After a second clamber, not quite so dreadful as the first, but much longer, we got into some flowery and serpentine walks, which lead to two or three of the nearest hermitages then visible, and not far off, one of which hung over so horrible a precipice, that it was terrifyingly picturesque. We were now, however, I thought, certainly in the garden of Eden! Certain I am, Eden could not be more beautifully adorned; for God alone is the gardener here also; and consequently, every thing prospered around us which could gratify the eye, the nose and, the imagination. "Profuse the myrtle spread unfading boughs, Expressive emblem of eternal vows." For the myrtle, the eglantine, the jessamin, and all the smaller kind of aromatic shrubs and flowers, grew on all sides thick and spontaneously about us; and our feet brushed forth the sweets of the lavender, rosemary and thyme, till we arrived at the first, and peaceful hermitage of _Saint Tiago_. We took possession of the holy inhabitants little garden, and were charmed with the neatness, and humble simplicity, which in every part characterised the possessor. His little chapel, his fountain, his vine arbor, his stately cypress, and the walls of his cell, embraced on all sides with ever-greens, and adorned with flowers, rendered it, exclusive of its situation, wonderfully pleasing. His door, however, was fast, and all within was silent; but upon knocking, it was opened by the venerable inhabitant: he was cloathed in a brown cloth habit, his beard was very long, his face pale, his manners courteous; but he seemed rather too deeply engaged in the contemplation of the things of the next world, to lose much of his time with _such things_ as _us_. We therefore, after peeping into his apartments, took his benediction, and he retired, leaving us all his worldly possessions, but his straw bed, his books, and his beads. This hermitage is confined between two pine heads, within very narrow bounds; but it is artfully fixed, and commands at noon day a most enchanting prospect to the East and to the North. Though it is upwards of two thousand three hundred paces from the convent, yet it hangs so directly over it, that the rocks convey not only the sound of the organ, and the voices of the monks singing in the choir, but you may hear men in common conversation from the piazza below. This is a long letter; but I know you would not willingly have left me in the midst of danger, or before I was safe arrived at the first stage towards heaven, and seen one humble host on GOD's high road. _P.S._ At two o'clock, after midnight, these people rise, say mass, and continue the remainder of the night in prayer and contemplation. The hermits tell you, it was upon high mountains that God chose to manifest his will:--_fundamenta ejus in montibus sanctis_, say they;--they consider these rocks as symbols of their penitence, and mortifications; and their being so beautifully covered with fine flowers, odoriferous and rare plants, as emblems of the virtue and innocence of the religious inhabitants; or how else, say they, could such rocks produce spontaneously flowers in a desart, which surpass all that art and nature combined can do, in lower and more favourable soils? They may well think so; for human reason cannot account for the manner by which such enormous quantities of trees, fruits, and flowers are nourished, seemingly without soil. But that which established a church and convent on this mountain, was the story of a hermit who resided here many years; this was _Juan Guerin_, who lived on this mountain alone, the austerity of whose life was such, that the people below believed he subsisted without eating or drinking. As some very extraordinary circumstances attended this man's life, all which are universally believed here, it may not be amiss to give you some account of him:--You must know, Sir, then, that the devil envying the happiness of this good man equipped himself in the habit of a hermit, and possessed himself of a cavern in the same mountain, which still bears the name of the _Devil's Grot_; after which he took occasion to throw himself in the way of poor _Guerin_, to whom he expressed his surprize at seeing one of his own order dwell in a place he thought an absolute desert; but thanked God, for giving him so fortunate a meeting. Here the devil, and _Guerin_ became very intimate, and conversed much together on spiritual matters; and things went on well enough between them for a while, when another devil chum to the first, possessed the body of a certain Princess, daughter of a Count of _Barcelona_, who became thereby violently tormented with horrible convulsions. She was taken to the church by her afflicted father. The dæmon who possessed her, and who, spoke for her, said, that nothing could relieve her from her sufferings but the prayers of a devout and pious hermit, named _Guerin_, who dwelt on _Montserrat_. The father, therefore, immediately repaired to _Guerin_, and besought his prayers and intercession for the recovery of his daughter. It so happened (for so the devil would have it) that this business could not be perfectly effected in less than nine days; and that the Princess must be left that time alone with _Guerin_ in his cave. Poor _Guerin_, conscious of his frail nature, opposed this measure with all his might; but there was no resisting the argument and influence of the devil, and she was accordingly left. Youth, beauty, a cave, solitude, and virgin modesty, were too powerful not to overcome even the chaste vows and pious intentions of poor _Guerin_. The devil left the virgin, and possessed the saint. He consulted his false friend, and told him how powerful this impure passion was become, and his intentions of flying from the danger; but the devil advised him _to return to his cell_, and pray to God to protect him from sin. _Guerin_ took his council, returned and fell into the fatal snare. The devil then persuaded him to kill the Princess, in order to conceal his guilt, and to tell her father she had forsaken his abode while he was intent on prayer. _Guerin_ did so; but became very miserable, and at length determined to make a pilgrimage to Rome, to obtain a remission of his complicated crimes. The Pope enjoined him to return to _Montserrat_, on all fours, and to continue in that state, without once looking up to heaven, for the space of seven years, or 'till a child of three months old told him, his sins were forgiven: all which _Guerin_ chearfully complied with, and accordingly crawled back to the defiled mountain. Soon after the expiration of the seven years Count _Vifroy_, the father of the murdered Princess, was hunting on the mountain of _Montserrat_, and passing near _Guerin's_ cave, the dogs entered, and the servant seeing a hideous figure concluded they had found the wild beast they were in pursuit of: they informed the Count of what they had seen, who gave directions to secure the beast alive, which was accordingly done; for he was so over-grown with hair, and so deformed in shape, that they had no idea of the creature being human. He was therefore kept in the Count's stable at _Barcelona_, and shewn to his visitors as a wonderful and singular wild beast. During this time, while a company were examining this extraordinary animal, a nurse with a young child in her arms looked upon it, and the child after fixing his eyes stedfastly for a few minutes on _Guerin_, said, "_Guerin, rise, thy sins are forgiven thee_!"--_Guerin_ instantly rose, threw himself at the Count's feet, confessed the crimes he had been guilty of, and desired to receive the punishment due to them, from the hands of him whom he had so highly injured; but the Count, perceiving that God had forgiven him, forgave him also. I will not trouble you with all the particulars which attended this miracle; it will be sufficient to say, that the Count and _Guerin_ went to take up the body of the murdered Princess, for burial with her ancestors; but, to their great astonishment found her there alive, possessing the same youth and beauty she had been left with, and no alteration of any kind, but a purple streak about her neck where the cord had been twisted, and wherewith _Guerin_ had strangled her. The father desired her to return to _Barcelona_; but she was enjoined by the Holy Virgin, she said, to spend her days on that miraculous spot; and accordingly a church and convent was built there, the latter inhabited by Nuns, of which the Princess (who had risen from the dead) was the Abbess. It was called the Abbey _des Pucelles_, of the order of _St. Benoit_, and was founded in the year 801. But such a vast concourse of people, of both sexes, resorted to it, from all parts of the world, that at length it was thought prudent to remove the women to a convent at _Barcelona_, and place a body of _Benedictine_ monks in their place. Strange as this story is, it is to be seen in the archives of this holy house; and in the street called _Condal_, at _Barcelona_, may be seen in the wall of the old palace of the Count's, an ancient figure, cut in stone, which represents the nurse with the child in her arms, and a strange figure, on his knees, at her feet, and that is Friar _Guerin_. Now, whether you will believe all this story, or not, I cannot take upon me to say; but I will assure you, that when you visit this spot, it will be necessary to _say you do_; or you would appear in their eyes a much greater wonder than any thing which I have related, of the Devil, the Friar, the Virgin, and the Count. LETTER XXI. The second hermitage, for I give them in the order they are usually visited, is that of _St. Catharine_, situated in a deep and solitary vale: it however commands a most extensive and pleasing prospect, at noon-day, to the East and West. The buildings, garden, &c. are confined within small limits, being fixed in a most picturesque and secure recess under the foot of one of the high pines. Though this hermit's habitation is the most retired and solitary abode of any, and far removed from the _din_ of men, yet the courteous, affable, and sprightly inhabitant, seems not to feel the loss of human society, though no man, I think, can be a greater ornament to human nature. If he is not much accustomed to hear the voice of men, he is amply recompensed by the notes of birds; for it is their sanctuary as well as his; for no part of the mountain is so well inhabited by the feathered race of beings as this delightful spot. Perhaps indeed, they have sagacity enough to know that there is no other so perfectly secure. Here the nightingale, the blackbird, the linnet, and an infinite variety of little songsters greater strangers to my eyes, than fearful of my hands, dwell in perfect security, and live in the most friendly intimacy with their holy protector, and obedient to his call; for, says the hermit, "Haste here, ye feather'd race of various song, Bring all your pleasing melody along! O come, ye tender, faithful, plaintive doves, Perch on my hands, and sing your absent loves!"-- When instantly the whole _vocal band_ quit their sprays, and surround the person of their daily benefactor, some settling upon his head, others entangle their feet in his beard, and in the true sense of the word, take his bread even out of his mouth; but it is freely given: their confidence is so great, (for the holy father is their bondsman) that the stranger too partakes of their familiarity and caresses. These hermits are not allowed to keep within their walls either dog, cat, bird, or any living thing, lest their attention should be withdrawn from heavenly to earthly affections. I am sorry to arraign this good man; he cannot be said to transgress the law, but he certainly _evades_ it; for though his feathered band do not live within his walls, they are always attendant upon his _court_; nor can any prince or princess on earth boast of heads so _elegantly plumed_, as may be seen at the court of St. _Catharine_; or of vassals who pay their tributes with half the chearfulness they are given and received by the humble monarch of this sequestered vale. If his meals are scanty, his dessert is served up with a song, and he is hushed to sleep by the nightingale; and when we consider, that he has but few days in the whole year which are inferior to some of our best in the months of May and June, you may easily conceive, that a man who breathes such pure air, who feeds on such light food, whose blood circulates freely from moderate exercise, and whose mind is never ruffled by worldly affairs, whose short sleeps are sweet and refreshing, and who lives confident of finding in death a more heavenly residence; lives a life to be envied, not pitied.--Turn but your eyes one minute from this man's situation, to that of any monarch or minister on earth, and say, on which side does the balance turn?--While some princes may be embruing their hands in the blood of their subjects, this man is offering up his prayers to God to preserve all mankind:--While some ministers are sending forth fleets and armies to wreak their own private vengeance on a brave and uncorrupted people, this solitary man is feeding, from his own scanty allowance, the birds of the air.--Conceive him, in his last hour, upon his straw bed, and see with what composure and resignation he meets it!--Look in the face of a dying king, or a plundering, and blood-thirsty minister,--what terrors the sight of their velvet beds, adorned with crimson plumage, must bring to their affrighted imagination!--In that awful hour, it will remind them of the innocent blood they have spilt;--nay, they will perhaps think, they were dyed with the blood of men scalped and massacred, to support their vanity and ambition!--In short, dear Sir, while kings and ministers are torn to pieces by a thirst after power and riches, and disturbed by a thousand anxious cares, this poor hermit can have but one, _i.e._ lest he should be removed (as the prior of the convent has a power to do) to some other cell, for that is sometimes done, and very properly. The youngest and most hardy constitutions are generally put into the higher hermitages, or those to which the access is most difficult; for the air is so fine, in the highest parts of the mountain, that they say it often renders the respiration painful. Nothing therefore can be more reasonable than, that as these good men grow older, and less able to bear the fatigues and inconveniencies the highest abodes unavoidably subject them to, should be removed to more convenient dwellings, and that the younger and stouter men should succeed them. As the hermits never eat meat, I could not help observing to him, how fortunate a circumstance it was for the safety of his little feathered friends; and that there were no boys to disturb their young, nor any sportsman to kill the parent.--God forbid, said he, that one of them should fall, but by his hands who gave it life!--Give me your hand, said I, and bless me!--I believe it did; _but it shortened my visit_:--so I stept into the _grot_, and _stole_ a pound of chocolate upon his stone table, and myself away. If there is a happy man upon this earth, I have seen that extraordinary man, and here he dwells!--his features, his manners, all his looks and actions, announce it;--yet he had not even a single _maravedi_ in his pocket:--money is as useless to him, as to one of his black-birds. Within a gun-shot of this _remnant_ of _Eden_, are the remains of an ancient hermitage, called _St. Pedro_. While I was there, my hermit followed me; but I too _coveted retirement_. I had just bought a fine fowling-piece at _Barcelona_; and when he came, I was availing myself of the hallowed spot, to make _my vow_ never to use it. In truth, dear Sir, there are some sorts of pleasures too powerful for the body to bear, as well as some sort of pain: and here I was wrecked upon the wheel of felicity; and could only say, like the poor criminal who suffered at _Dijon_,--O God! O God! at every _coup_. I was sorry my host did not understand English, nor I Spanish enough, to give him the sense of the lines written in poor _Shenstone_'s alcove. "O you that bathe in courtlye bliss, "Or toyle in fortune's giddy spheare; "Do not too rashly deeme amisse "Of him that hides contented here. I forgot the other lines; but they conclude thus: "For faults there beene in busye life From which these peaceful glennes are free." LETTER XXII. I know you will not like to leave _St. Catherine_'s harmonious cell so soon;--nor should I, but that I intend to visit it again. I will therefore conduct you to _St. Juan_, about four hundred paces distant from it, on the east side of which, you look down a most horrid and frightful precipice,--a precipice, so very tremendous, that I am persuaded there are many people whose imagination would be so intoxicated by looking at it, that they might be in danger of throwing themselves over: I do not know whether you will understand my meaning by saying so; but I have more than once been so bewildered with such alarming _coup d'oeil_ on this mountain, that I began to doubt whether my own powers were sufficient to protect me:--Horses, from sudden fright, will often run into the fire; and man too, may be forced upon his own destruction, to avoid those sensations of danger he has not been accustomed to look upon. Perhaps I am talking non-sense; and you will attribute what I say to lowness of spirits; on the contrary, I had those feelings about me only during the time my eyes were employed upon such frightful objects; for my spirits were enlivened by pure air, exercise, and temperance:--nay, I remember to have been struck in the same manner, when the grand explosion of the fireworks was played off, many years ago, upon the conclusion of peace! The blast was so great, that it appeared as if it were designed to take with it all earthly things; and I felt almost forced by it, and summoned from my seat, and could hardly refrain from jumping over a parapet wall which stood before me. The building of this hermitage, however, is very secure; nothing can shake or remove it, but that which must shake or remove the whole mountain. At this cell, small as it is, King Philip the Third dined on the eleventh of July 1599;--a circumstance, you may be sure, the inhabitant will never forget, or omit to mention. It commands at noon-day a fine prospect eastward, and is approached by a good stage of steps. Not far from it, on the road side, is a little chapel called St. Michael, a chapel as ancient as the monastery itself; and a little below is the grotto, in which the image of the Virgin, now fixed in the high altar of the church, was found. The entrance of this grotto is converted into a chapel, where mass is said every day by one of the monks. All the hermitages, even the smallest, have their little chapel, the ornaments for saying mass, their water cistern, and most of them a little garden. The building consists of one or two little chambers, a little refectory, and a kitchen; but many of them have every convenience within and without that a single man can wish or desire, except he should wish for or desire _such things_ as he was obliged to renounce when he took possession of it. From hence, by a road more wonderful than safe or pleasing, you are led on a ridge of mountains to the lofty cell of _St. Onofre_. It stands in a cleft in one of the pine heads, six and thirty feet (I was going to say) above the earth; its appearance is indeed astonishing, for it seems in a manner hanging in the air; the access to it is by a ladder of sixty steps, extremely difficult to ascend, and even then you have a wooden bridge to cross, fixed from rock to rock, under which is an aperture of so terrifying an appearance, that I still think a person, not over timid, may find it very difficult to pass over, if he looks under, without losing in some degree that firmness which is necessary to his own preservation. The best and safest way is, to look forward at the building or object you are going to.--Fighting, and even courage, is mechanical; a man may be taught it as readily as any other science; and I would _pit_ the little timid hermit of _St. Onofre_ to a march, on the margin of the precipices on this mountain, against the bravest general we have in America. The man that would not wince at the whistle of a cannon-ball over his head, may find his blood retire, and his senses bewildered, at a dreadful precipice under his feet. _St. Onofre_ possesses no more space than what is covered in by the tiling, nor any prospect but to the South. The inhabitant of it says, he often sees the islands of _Minorca_, _Mallorca_, and _Ivica_, and the kingdoms of _Valencia_ and _Murcia_. The weather was extremely fine when I visited it, but there was a distant haziness which prevented my seeing those islands; indeed, my eyes were better employed and entertained in examining objects more interesting, as well as more pleasing. Going from this hermitage, you have a view of the vale of _St. Mary_, formerly called la _Vallee Amere_, through which the river _Lobregate_ runs, and which divides the bishoprick of Barcelona from that of _De Vic_. Lest you should think I am rather too tremendously descriptive of this _upland_ journey, hear what a French traveller says, who visited this mountain about twenty years ago. After examining every thing curious at the convent, he says, "_Il ne me restoit plus rien a voir que l'hermitage qui est renomme, il est dans la partie la plus elevee de la montagne, & partage en treize habitations, pour autant d'hermites. Le plaisir de le voir devoit me dedommager de la peine qu'il me falloit prendre pour y monter, en grimpant pendant plus de heux heures. J'aurois pre me servir de ma mule, mais il m'auroit fallu prendre un chemin ou j'aurois mis le double du tems. Je m'armai donc de courage, & entre dans une enceinte par une porte que l'on m'ouvrit avec peine au dehors du monastere, je commencai a monter par des degres qui sembloient perpendiculaires, tant ils etoient roides; & je fus oblige de m'agraffer a des barres qui y font placees expres: ensuite, je me trainai par-dessous de grosses pierres, qui sont comme des voutes ruinees, dont les ouvertures sont le seul passage qu'il y ait pour quiconque a la temerite de s'engager dans ces defiles; apres avoir grimpe, environ mille pas, je trouvai un petit terrein uni ou je me laissai tomber tout etendu afin de reprendre ma respiration qui commencoit a me manquer_." And yet this was only the Frenchman's first stage on his way to the first and nearest hermitage; and who I find clambered up the very road we did, rather than take the longer route on mule-back; and, for aught I know, a route still more dangerous, for there are many places where the precipice is perpendicular on both sides of a ridge, and where the road is too narrow even to turn the mule; so he that sets out, must proceed. After ascending a ladder fixed in the same pine where _St. Onofre_ is situated, at an hundred and fifty paces distant, is the fifth hermitage of the penitent _Madalena_; it stands between two lofty pines, and on some elevated rocks, and commands a beautiful view, towards noon-day, to the East and West; and near to it, in a more elevated pine, stands its chapel, from whence you look down (dreadful to behold) a rugged precipice and steep hills, upon the convent at two miles distance where are two roads, or rather passages, to this cell, both exceedingly difficult; by one you mount up a ladder of at least an hundred steps; the other is of stone steps, and pieces of timber to hold by; that the hermit who dwells there says, the whistling of the wind in tempestuous nights sounds like the roaring of baited bulls. LETTER XXIII. I must now lead you up to the highest part of the mountain; it is a long way up, not less than three thousand five hundred paces from _St. Madalena_, and over a very rugged and disagreeable road for the feet, which leads, however, to the cell of _St. Geronimo_; from the two turrets of which, an immense scene is opened, too much for the head of a _low-lander_ to bear; for it not only takes in a view of a great part of the mountain beneath, but of the kingdoms of _Arragon_, _Valencia_, the Mediterranean Sea, and the islands; but as it were, one half of the earth's orbit. The fatigue to clamber up to it is very great; but the recompense is ample. This hermitage looks down upon a wood above a league in circumference, in which formerly some hermits dwelt; but at present it is stocked with cattle belonging to the convent, who have a fountain of good water therein. Near this hermitage, in a place they call _Poza_, the snow is preserved for the use of the _Religieux_. The inhabitant either was not within, or would not be disturbed; so that after feasting my eyes on all sides, my conductor led me on eastward to the seventh hermitage, called _St. Antonio_, the father of the Anchorites; it stands under one of the highest PINES, and the access to it is so difficult and dangerous, that very few strangers visit it;--a circumstance which whetted my curiosity; so, like the boy after a bird's-nest, I _risqued it_, especially as I was pretty sure I should _take the old bird sitting_. This hermit had formerly been in the service; and though he had made great intercession to the Holy Virgin and saints in heaven, as well as much interest with men on earth, he was not, I think, quite happy in his exalted station; his turret is so small, that it will not contain above two men; the view from it, to the East and North, is very fine; but it looks down a most horrible and dreadful precipice, above one hundred and eighty toises perpendicular, and upon the river _Lobregate_. No man, but he whom custom has made familiar to such a tremendous _eye-ball_, can behold this place but with horror and amazement; and I was as glad to leave it, as I was pleased to have seen it. At about a gun-shot distance from it rises the highest pine-head of the mountain, called _Caval Hernot_, which is eighty toises higher than any other _cone_, and three thousand three hundred paces from the convent below. Keeping under the side of the same hill, and along the base of the same pine-head, you are led to the hermitage of _St. Salvador_, eight hundred paces from _St. Antonio_, which hermitage has two chapels, one of which is hewn out of the heart of the PINE, and consequently has a natural as well as a beautiful cupola; the access to this cell is very difficult, for the crags project so much, that it is necessary to clamber over them on all-four; the prospects are very fine to the southward and eastward. The inhabitant was from home; but as there was no fastening to his doors, I examined all his worldly goods, and found that most of them were the work of his own ingenious hands. A little distant from hence stands a wooden cross, at which the road divides; one path leads to _St. Benito_, the other to the _Holy_ Trinity. By the archives of the convent, it appears, that in the year 1272, _Francis Bertrando_ died at the hermitage of _St. Salvador_, after having spent forty-five years in it, admired for his sanctity and holy life, and that he was succeeded therein by _François Durando Mayol_, who dwelt in it twenty-seven years. Descending from hence about six or seven hundred paces, you arrive at the ninth hermitage, _St. Benito_; the situation is very pleasing, the access easy, and the prospects divine. It was founded by an _Abbot_, whose intentions were, that it should contain within a small distance, four other cells, in memory of the five wounds made in the body of Christ. This hermit has the privilege of making an annual entertainment on a certain day, on which day all the other hermits meet there, and receive the sacrament from the hands of the mountain vicar; and after divine service, dine together. They meet also at this hermitage on the day of each titular saint, to say mass, and commune with each other. LETTER XXIV. I cannot say a word to you on any other subject, till you have taken a turn with me in the shrubberies and gardens of the glorious (so they call it) hermitage of _St. Ana_. Coming from _St. Benito_, by a brook which runs down the middle of the mountain, six hundred paces distant from it, stands _St. Ana_, in a spacious situation, and much larger than any other, and is nearly in the center of them all. The chapel here is sufficiently large for the whole society to meet in, and accordingly they do so on certain festivals and holidays, where they confess to their mountain vicar, and receive the sacrament, This habitation is nobly adorned with large trees; the ever-green oak, the cork, the cypress, the spreading fig-tree, and a variety of others; yet it is nevertheless dreadfully exposed to the fury of some particular winds; and the buildings are sometimes greatly damaged, and the life of the inhabitant endangered, by the boughs which are torn off and blown about his dwelling. The foot-road from it to the monastery is only one thousand three hundred paces, but it is very rugged and unsafe; the mule-road is above four times as far: it was built in 1498, and is the hermitage where all the pilgrims pay their ordinary devotion. Eight hundred and fifty paces distant, on the road which leads to the hermitage of _St. Salvador_, stands, in a solitary and deep wood, the hermitage of the _Holy Trinity_. Every part of the building is neat, and the simplicity of the whole prepares you to expect the same simplicity of manners from the man who dwells within it: and a venerable man he is; but he seemed more disposed to converse with his neighbours, _Messrs. Nature_, than with us. His trees, he knows, never flatter or affront him; and after welcoming us more by his humble looks than civil words, he retired to his long and shady walk; a walk, a full gun-shot in length, and nothing in nature certainly can be more beautiful; it forms a close arbour, though composed of large trees, and terminates in a view of a vast range of pines, which are so regularly placed side by side, and which, by the reflection of the sun on their yellow and well burnished sides, have the appearance of the pipes of an organ a mile in circumference. The Spaniards say that the mountain is a block of coarse jasper, and these _organ pipes_, it must be confessed, seem to confirm it; for they are so well polished by the hand of time, that were it not too great a work for man, one would be apt to believe they had been cut by an artist. Five hundred and sixty paces from the hermitage of the Holy Trinity, stands _St. Cruz_; it is built under the foot of one of the smaller pines; this is the nearest cell of any to the convent, and consequently oftenest visited, being only six hundred and sixty steps from the bottom of the mountain. LETTER XXV. I am now come to _St. Dimas_, the last, and most important, if not the most beautiful of all the hermits' habitations. This hermitage is surrounded on all sides by steep and dreadful precipices, some of which lead the eyes straight down, even to the river _Lobregate_; it can be entered only on the east side by a draw-bridge, which, when lifted up, renders any access to it almost impossible. This hermitage was formerly a strong castle, and possessed by a _banditti_, who frequently plundered and ravaged the country in the day-time, and secured themselves from punishment, by retiring to this fast hold by night. As it stands, or rather hangs over the buildings and convent below, they would frequently lower baskets by cords, and demand provisions, wine, or whatever necessaries or luxuries the convent afforded; and if their demands were not instantly complied with, they tumbled down rocks of an immense size, which frequently damaged the buildings, and killed the people beneath: indeed, it was always in their power to destroy the whole building, and suffer none to live there; but that would have been depriving themselves of one safe means of subsistence:--at length the monks, by the assistance of good glasses, and a constant attention to the motion of their troublesome _boarders_, having observed that the greater part were gone out upon the _marauding_ party, persuaded seven or eight stout farmers to believe, that heaven would reward them if they could scale the horrid precipices, and by surprise seize the castle, and secure the few who remained in it;--and these brave men accordingly got into it unobserved, killed one of the men, and secured the others for a public example. The castle was then demolished, and a hermitage called _St. Dimas_, or the Good Thief, built upon the spot. The views from it are very extensive and noble to the south and eastward. And now, Sir, having conducted you to make a short visit to each of these wonderful, though little abodes, I must assure you, that a man well versed in _author craft_ might write thirteen little volumes upon subjects so very singular. But as no written account can give a perfect idea of the particular beauties of any mountain, and more especially of one so unlike all others, I shall quit nature, and conduct you to the works of art, and treasures of value, which are within the walls of the holy sanctuary below; only observing, what I omitted to mention, that the great rains which have fallen since the creation of all things, down the sides of this steep mount, have made round the whole base a prodigious wide and deep trench, which has the appearance of a vast river course drained of its water. In this deep trench lie an infinite number of huge blocks of the mountain, which have from age to age caved down from its side, and which renders the _tout au tour_ of the mountain below full as extraordinary as the pointed pinnacles above: beside this, there are many little recesses on the sides of the hill below, so adorned by stately trees and natural fountains, that I know not which part of the enchanted spot is most beautiful. I found in one of these places a little garden, fenced in by the fallen rocks, a spring of so clear and cool a water, and the whole so shaded by, oaks, so warmed by the sun, and so superlatively romantic, that I was determined to find out the owner of it, and have set about building a house or a hut to the garden, and to have made it my abode; but, alas! upon enquiry, I found the well was a holy one, and that the water, the purest and finest I ever saw or tasted could only be used for holy purposes. And here let me observe, that the generality of strangers who visit this mountain, come prepared only to stay one day;--but it is not a day, nor a week, that is sufficient to see half the smaller beauties which a mountain, so great and wonderful of itself, affords on all sides, from the highest pinacle above, to the foundation stones beneath. But I should have told you, that there are other roads to some of the hermitages above, which, by twisting and turning from side to side, are every week clambered up by a blind mule, who, being loaded with thirteen baskets containing the provision for the hermits, goes up without any conductor, and taking the hermitages in their proper order, goes as near as he can to each, and waits till the hermit has taken his portion; and proceeds till he has discharged his load, and his trust, and then returns to his stable below. I did not see this animal on the road, but I saw some of his _offerings there_, and you may rely upon the truth of what I tell you. Before I quit the hermits, however, I must tell you, that the hardships and fatigues which some of them voluntarily inflict upon themselves, are almost incredible: they cannot, like the monks in _Russia_, sit in water to their chins till they are froze up, but they undergo some penances almost as severe. LETTER XXVI. _Pere Pascal_ having invited me to high mass, and to hear a Spanish sermon preached by one of their best orators, we attended; and though I did not understand the language sufficiently to know all I heard, I understood enough to be entertained, if not edified. The decency of the whole congregation too, was truly characteristic of their profession. There sat just before us a number of lay-brothers, bare-headed, with their eyes fixed the whole time upon the ground; and tho' they knew we were strangers, and probably as singular in their eyes as they could be in ours, I never perceived one of them, either at or after the service was over, to look, or even glance an eye at us. The chapel, or church of this convent, is a very noble building; and high over the great altar is fixed the image of the Virgin, which was found eight hundred years ago in a deep cave on the side of the mountain: they say the figure is the work of St. Luke; if that be true, St. Luke was a better carver than a painter, for this figure is the work of no contemptible artist; it is of wood, and of a dark-brown it is of wood, and of a dark-brown or rather black colour, about the size of a girl of twelve years of age; her garments are very costly, and she had on a crown richly adorned with _real_ jewels of great value; and I believe, except our Lady of _Loretto_, the paraphernalia of her person is superior to all the saints or crowned heads in Europe. She holds on her knees a little Jesus, of the same complexion, and the work of the same artist. The high altar is a most magnificent and costly structure, and there constantly burn before it upwards of fourscore large silver lamps. The balustrades before the altar were given by King Philip the Third, and cost seven thousand crowns; and it cost fourteen thousand more to cut away the rock to lay the foundation of this new church, the old one being so small, and often so crowded by pilgrims and strangers, that many of the monks lost their lives in it every year. The whole expence of building the new one, exclusive of the inward ornaments, is computed at a million of crowns; and the seats of the choir, six and thirty thousand livres. The old church has nothing very remarkable in it but some good ancient monuments, one of which is of _Bernard Villomarin_, Admiral of Naples; a man (as the inscription says) illustrious in peace and war. There is another of _Don John d'Arragon, Dux Lunæ_, who died in 1528; he was nephew to King Ferdinand. But the most singular inscription in this old church is one engraven on a pillar, under which _St. Ignatius_ spent a whole night in prayer before he took the resolution of renouncing the world, which was in the year 1522. After mass was over, we were shewn into a chamber behind the high altar, where a door opened to the recess, in which the Virgin is placed, and where we were permitted, or rather required to kiss her hand. At the same time, I perceived a great many pilgrims entering the apartments, whose penitential faces plainly discovered the reverence and devotion with which they approached her sacred presence. When we returned, we were presented to the Prior; a lively, genteel man, of good address; who, with _Pere Tendre_, the Frenchman, shewed us an infinite quantity of jewels, vessels of gold and silver, garments, &c. which have been presented by Kings, Queens, and Emperors, to the convent, for the purpose of arraying this miraculous image. I begin to suspect that you will think I am become half a Catholic;--indeed, I begin to think so myself; and if ever I publicly renounce that faith which I now hold, it shall be done in a pilgrimage to _Montserrat_; for I do not see why God, who delights so much in variety, as all his mighty works testify; who has not made two green leaves of the same tint,--may not, nay, ought not to be worshipped by men of different nations, in variety of forms. I see no absurdity in a set of men meeting as the Quakers do, and sitting in silent contemplation, reflecting on the errors of their past life, and resolving to amend in future. I think an honest, good Quaker, as respectable a being as an Archbishop; and a monk, or a hermit, who think they merit heaven by the sacrifice they make for it, will certainly obtain it: and as I am persuaded the men of this society think so, I highly honour and respect them: I am sure I feel myself much obliged to them. They have a good library, but it is in great disorder; nor do I believe they are men of much reading; indeed, they are so employed in confessing the pilgrims and poor, that they cannot have much time for study. I forgot to tell you, that at _Narbonne_ I had been accosted by a young genteel couple, a male and female, who were upon a _pilgrimage_; they were dressed rather neat than fine, and their garments were adorned with cockle and other marine shells; such, indeed, all the poorer sort of pilgrims are characterised with. They presented a tin box to me, with much address, but said nothing, nor did I give them any thing; indeed, I did not _then_ know, very well, for what purpose or use the charity they claimed was to be applied. This young couple were among the strangers who were now approaching the sacred image. I was very desirous of knowing their story, who they were, and what sins people so young, and who looked so good, had been guilty of, to think it necessary to come so far for absolution. _Their sins on the road_, I could be at no loss to guess at; and as they were such as people who love one another are very apt to commit, I hope and believe, they will obtain forgiveness of them.--They were either people of some condition, or very accomplished _Chevaliers d'Industrie_; though I am most inclined to believe, they were _brother and sister_, of some condition. After visiting the Holy Virgin, I paid my respects to the several monks in their own apartments, under the conduct of _Pere Pascal_, and was greatly entertained.--I found them excellently lodged; their apartments had no finery, but every useful convenience; and several good harpsichords, as well as good performers, beside an excellent organist. The Prior, in particular, has so much address, of the polite world about him, that he must have lived in it before he made a vow to retire from it. I never saw a more striking instance of national influence than in the person of _Pere Tendre_, the Frenchman!--In spite of his holy life, and living among Spaniards of the utmost gravity of manners, I could have known him at first sight to have been a Frenchman. I never saw, even upon the _Boulevards_ at Paris, a more lively, animated, or chearful face. Indeed, one must believe, that these men are as good as they appear to be; for they have reason enough to believe, that every hour may be their last, as there hangs over their whole building such a terrifying mass of rock and pine heads, so split and divided, that it is difficult to perceive by what powers they are sustained: many have given way, and have no other support than the base they have made by slipping in part down, among the smaller rocks and broken fragments. About an hundred years ago, one vast block fell from above, and buried under it the hospital, and all the sick and their attendants; and where it still remains, a dreadful monument, and memento, to all who dwell near it!--I should fear (God avert the day!) that the smallest degree of an earthquake would bury all the convent, monks, and treasure, by one fatal _coup_. LETTER XXVII. Before I bring forth the treasures of this hospitable convent, and the jewels of _Neustra Senora_, it may be necessary to tell you, that they could not be so liberal, were not others liberal to them; and that they have permission to ask charity from every church, city, and town, in the kingdoms of France and Spain, and have always lay-brothers out, gathering money and other donations. They who feed all who come, must, of course, be fed themselves; nor has any religious house in Europe (_Loretto_ excepted) been more highly honoured by Emperors, Kings, Popes, and Prelates, than this: nay, they have seemed to vie with each other, in bestowing rich and costly garments, jewels of immense value, and gold and silver of exquisite workmanship, to adorn the person of _Neustra Senora_; as the following list, though not a quarter of her _paraphernalia_, will evince: but before I particularize them, it may be proper to mention, the solemn manner in which the Virgin was moved from the old to the new church, by the hands of King Philip the Third, who repaired thither for that purpose privately as possible, to prevent the prodigious concourse of people who would have attended him had it been generally known. He staid at the convent four days, in which time he visited all the hermitages above, in one; but returned, greatly fatigued, and not till ten o'clock at night. After resting himself the next day, he heard mass, and being confessed, assisted at the solemnity of translating the Virgin, in the following manner:--After all the monks, hermits, and lay-brothers had heard mass, and been confessed, the Virgin was brought down and placed upon the altar in the old church, and with great ceremony, reverence, and awe, they cloathed her in a rich gold mantle, the gift of the Duke of _Branzvick_, the sleeves of which were so costly, that they were valued at eighteen thousand ducats. The Abbots, Monks, hermits, &c. who were present, wore cloaks of rich gold brocade, and in the procession sung the hymn _Te Deum Laudamus_; one of whom bore a gold cross, of exquisite workmanship, which weighed fifty marks, and which was set with costly jewels. The procession consisted of forty-three lay-brothers, fifteen hermits, and sixty-two monks, all bearing wax-tapers; then followed the young scholars, and a band of music, as well as an infinite number of people who came from all parts of the kingdom to attend the solemnity; for it was impossible to keep an act of so extraordinary a nature very private. When the Virgin was brought into the new church, she was placed on a tabernacle by four of the most ancient monks; the King held also a large lighted taper, on which his banner and arms were emblazoned, and being followed by the nobles and cavaliers of his court, joined in the procession; and having placed themselves in proper order in the great cloyster of the church, the monks sung a hymn, addressed to the Virgin, accompanied by a noble band of music: this being over, the King taking the Virgin in his arms, placed her on the great altar; and having so done, took his wax taper, and falling on his knees at her feet, offered up his prayers near a quarter of an hour: this ceremony being over, the monks advanced to the altar, and moved the Virgin into a recess in the middle of it, where she now stands: after which, the Abbot, having given his pontifical benediction, the King retired to repose himself for a quarter of an hour, and then set off for _Martorell_, where he slept, and the next day made his entry into _Barcelona_. Among an infinite number of costly materials which adorn this beautiful church, is a most noble organ, which has near twelve hundred pipes. In the _Custodium_ you are shewn three crowns for the head of the Infant Jesus, two of which are of pure gold, the third of silver, gilt, and richly adorned with diamonds; one of the gold crowns is set with two hundred and thirty emeralds, and nineteen large brilliants; the other has two hundred and thirty-eight diamonds, an hundred and thirty pearls, and sixteen rubies; it cost eighteen thousand ducats. There are four crowns also for the head of the Virgin; two of plated gold, richly set with diamonds, two of solid gold; one of which has two thousand five hundred large emeralds in it, and is valued at fifty thousand ducats; the fourth, and richest, is set with one thousand one hundred and twenty-four diamonds, five of which number are valued at five hundred ducats each; eighteen hundred large pearls, of equal size; thirty-eight large emeralds, twenty-one zaphirs, and five rubies; and at the top of this crown is a gold ship, adorned with diamonds of eighteen thousand dollars value. The gold alone of these crowns weighs twenty-five pounds, and, with the jewels and setting, upwards of fifty. These crowns have been made at _Montserrat_, from the gold and separate jewels presented to the convent from time to time by the crowned heads and princes of Europe. There is also another small crown, given by the Marquis de _Aytona_, set with sixty-six brilliants. The Infanta gave four silver candlesticks, which cost two thousand four hundred ducats. Ann of Austria, daughter to Philip the third, gave a garment for the Virgin, which cost a thousand ducats. There are thirty chalices of gilt plate, and one of solid gold, which cost five thousand ducats. Prince Charles of Austria, with his consort Christiana of Brunswick, visited _Montserrat_ in the year 1706, and having kissed the Virgin's hand, left at her feet his gold-hilted sword, set with seventy-nine large brilliants. This sword was given the Emperor by Anne, Queen of England. In the church are six silver candlesticks, nine palms high, made to hold wax flambeaux. There are diamonds and jewels, given by the Countess de Aranda, Count Alba, Duchess of Medina, and forty other people of high rank, from the different courts of Europe, to the value of more than an hundred thousand ducats.--But were I to recite every particular from the list of donations, which my friend, _Pere Pascal_, gave me, and which now lies before me, with the names of the donors, they would fill a volume instead of a letter. LETTER XXVIII. I know you will expect to hear something of the Ladies of Spain; but I must confess I had very little acquaintance among them: when they appear abroad in their coaches, they are dressed in the modern French fashion, but not in the extreme; when they walk out, their head and shape is always covered with a black or white veil, richly laced; and however fine their gowns are, they must be covered with a very large black silk petticoat; and thus holding the fan in one hand, and hanging their _chapelets_ over the wrist of the other, they walk out, preceded by one or two shabby-looking servants, called pages, who wear swords, and always walk bare-headed. I have already told you, that the most beautiful, indeed the only beautiful woman, I saw at _Barcelona_, was the Intendant's daughter; and I assure you, her, black petticoat and white veil could not conceal it; nor, indeed, is the dress an unbecoming one. Among the peasants, and common females, you never see any thing like beauty, and, in general, rather deformity of feature. No wonder then, where beauty is scarce, and to be found only among women of condition, that those women are much admired, and that they gain prodigious influence over the men.--In no part of the world, therefore, are women more caressed and attended to, than in Spain. Their deportment in public is grave and modest; yet they are very much addicted to pleasure; nor is there scarce one among them that cannot, nay, that will not dance the _Fandango_ in private, either in the decent or indecent manner. I have seen it danced both ways, by a pretty woman, than which nothing can be more _immodestly agreeable_; and I was shewn a young Lady at _Barcelona_, who in the midst of this dance ran out of the room, telling her partner, she could _stand it_ no longer;--he ran after her, to be sure, and must be answerable for the consequences. I find in the music of the _Fandango_, written under one bar, _Salida_, which signifies _going out_; it is where the woman is to part a little from her partner, and to move slowly by herself; and I suppose it was at _that bar_ the lady was so overcome, as to determine not to return. The words _Perra Salida_ should therefore be placed at that bar, when the ladies dance it in the high _gout_. The men dress as they do in France and England, except only their long cloak, which they do not care to give up. It is said that Frenchmen are wiser than, from the levity of their behaviour, they seem to be; and I fancy the Spaniards look wiser from their gravity of countenance, than they really are; they are extremely reserved; and make no professions of friendship till they feel it, and know the man, and then they are friendly in the highest degree. I met with a German merchant at _Barcelona_, who told me he had dealt for goods to the value of five thousand pounds a year with a Spaniard in that town; and though he had been often at _Barcelona_ before, that he had never invited him to dine or eat with him, till that day. The farrier who comes to shoe your horse has sometimes a sword by his side; and the barber who shaves you crosses himself before he _crosses your chin_. There is a particular part of the town where the ladies of easy virtue live; and if a friend calls at the apartment of one of those females, who happens to _be engaged_, one of her neighbours tells you, she is _amancebados y casarse a mediacarta_; _i.e._ that she is half-married.--If you meet a Spanish woman of any fashion, walking alone without the town, you may join her, and enter into whatever _sort of conversation_ you chuse, without offence; and if you pass one without doing so, she will call you _ajacaos_, and contemn you: this is a custom so established at Madrid, that if a footman meets a lady of quality alone, he will enter into some indecent conversation with her; for which reason, the ladies seldom walk but with their husbands, or a male friend by their side, and a foot-boy before, and then no man durst speak, or even look towards them, but with respect and awe:--a blow in Spain can never be forgiven; the striker must die, either _privately_ or publicly. No people on earth are less given to excess in eating or drinking, than the Spaniards; the _Olio_, or _Olla_, a kind of soup and _Bouilli_, is all that is to be found at the table of some great men: the table of a _Bourgeois_ of Paris is better served than many _grandees_ of Spain; their chocolate, lemonade, iced water, fruits, &c. are their chief luxuries; and the chocolate is, in some houses, a prodigious annual expense, as it is offered to every body who comes in, and some of the first houses in Madrid expend twenty thousand _livres_ a year in chocolate, iced waters, &c. The grandees of Spain think it beneath their dignity to look into accounts, and therefore leave the management of their household expenses to servants, who often plunder and defraud them of great sums of money. Unlike the French, the Spaniards (like the English) very properly look upon able physicians and surgeons in a very respectable light:--Is it not strange, that the French nation should trust their health and lives in the hands of men, they are apt to think unworthy of their intimacy or friendship?--Men, who must have had a liberal education, and who ought not to be trusted in sickness, if their society was not to be coveted in health. Perhaps the Spanish physicians, who of all others have the least pretensions, are the most caressed. In fevers they encourage their patients to eat, thinking it necessary, where the air is so subtile, to put something into the body for the distemper to feed upon; they bleed often, and in both arms, that the blood may be drawn forth _equally_; the surgeons do not bleed, but a set of men called _sangerros_ perform that office, and no other; the surgeons consider it dishonourable to perform that operation. They seldom trepan; a surgeon who attempted to perform it, would himself be perhaps in want of it. To all flesh wounds they apply a powder called _coloradilla_, which certainly effects the cure; it is made of myrrh, mastic, dragon's blood, bol ammoniac, &c.--When persons of fashion are bled, their friends send them, as soon as it is known, little presents to amuse them all that day; for which reason, the women of easy virtue are often bled, that their lovers may shew their attention, and be _bled too_.--The French disease is so ignorantly treated, or so little regarded, that it is very general; they consider a _gonorrhoea_ as health to the reins; and except a tertian ague, all disorders are called the _calentura_, and treated alike, and I fear very injudiciously; for there is not, I am told, in the whole kingdom, any public academy for the instruction of young men, in physic, surgery, or anatomy, except at Madrid. Notwithstanding the sobriety, temperance, and fine climate of Spain, the Spaniards do not, in general, live to any great age; they put a prodigious quantity of spice into every thing they eat; and though sobriety and temperance are very commendable, there are countries where eating and drinking are carried to a great excess, by men much more virtuous than those, where temperance, perhaps, is their principal virtue. LETTER XXIX. I forgot to tell you that, though I left the Convent, I had no desire to leave the spot where I had met with so cordial a reception; nor a mountain, every part of which afforded so many scenes of wonder and delight. I therefore hired two rooms at a wretched _posada_, near the two ancient towers below, and where I had left my horse, that I might make my daily excursions on and about the mountain, as well as visit those little solitary habitations above once more. My host, his wife, and their son and daughter, looked rather cool upon us; they liked our money better than our company; and though I made their young child some little presents, it scarce afforded any return, but prevented rudeness, perhaps. The boys of the village, though I distributed a little money every day to the poor, frequently pelted me with stones, when they gained the high ground of me; and I found it necessary, when I walked out, to take my fuzee. I would have made a friend of the priest, if I could have found him, but he never appeared!--It was a poor village, and you may easily conceive our residence in such a little place, where no stranger ever staid above an hour, occasioned much speculation. My servant too (a French deserter) had neither the politeness nor the address so common to his countrymen; but I knew I was _within a few hours_ of honest _Pere Pascal_; and while the hog, mule, and ass of my host continued well, I flattered myself I was not in much danger; had either of those animals been ill, I should have taken my leave; for if a suspicion had arose that an heretic was under their roof, they would have been at no loss to account for the cause or the calamity which had, or might befall them.--During my residence at this little _posada_, I saw a gaudy-dressed, little, ugly old man, and a handsome young woman, approach it; the man smiled in my face, which was the only smile I had seen in the face of a stranger for a fortnight; he told me, what he need not, that he was a Frenchman, and a noble Advocate of _Perpignan_; that his name was _Anglois_, and that his ancestors were English; that he had walked on foot, with his maid, from _Barcelona_, in order to pay his devotions to the Holy Virgin of _Montserrat_, though he had his own chaise and mules at _Barcelona_: he seemed much fatigued, so I gave him some chocolate, for he was determined, he said, to get up to the convent that night. During this interview, he embraced me several times, professed a most affectionate regard for me and my whole family; and I felt enough for him, to desire he would fix the day of his return, that I might not be out upon my rambles, and that he would dine and spend the evening with me; in which case, I would send him back to _Barcelona_ in my _cabriolet_; all which he chearfully consented to; and having lent him my _couteau de chasse_, as a more convenient weapon on ass-back than his fine sword, we parted, reluctantly, for five days; that was the time this _noble Advocate_ had allotted for making his peace with the Holy Virgin;--I say, his peace with the Holy Virgin; for he was very desirous of leaving _his_ virgin with us, as she was an excellent cook, and a most faithful and trusty servant, both which he perceived we wanted; yet in spite of his encomiums, there was nothing in the behaviour of the girl that corresponded with such an amiable character: she had, indeed a beautiful face, but strongly marked with something, more like impudence than boldness, and more of that of a pragmatic mistress than an humble servant; and therefore we did not accept, what I was very certain, she would not have performed. I impatiently, however, waited their return, and verily believed the old man had bought his crimson velvet breeches and gold-laced waistcoat in honour of the Virgin, and that his visit to her was a pious one.--He returned to his time, and to a sad dinner indeed! but it was the best we could provide. He had lost so much of that vivacity he went up with, that I began to fear I had lost his friendship, or he the benediction of the Holy Virgin. Indeed, I had lost it in some measure, but it was transferred but a little way off; for he took the first favourable occasion to tell my wife, no woman had ever before made so forcible an impression upon him, and said a thousand other fine things, which I cannot repeat, without losing the esteem I still have for my countryman; especially as he did not propose staying only _one night_ with us, nay, that he would depart the next morning _de bon matin_. During the evening, all his former spirits returned, as well as his affection for me: he told me, he suspected I wanted money, and if that was the case, those wants should be removed; so taking out a large parcel of gold _duras_, he offered them, and I am persuaded too, he would have lent or given them to me. I arose early, to see that my man and chaise were got in good order, to conduct so good a friend to _Barcelona_; but not hearing any thing of _Monsieur Anglois_, I directed my servant to go into his chamber, to enquire how he did;--my man returned, and said, that _Madame_ was awake, but that _Monsieur_ still sleeps. Madame! what Madame? said I!--Is it the young woman who came with him? I then found, what I had a little suspected, that the mountain virgin was not the _only_ virgin to whom _Monsieur Anglois_ made his vows. He soon after, however, came down, drank chocolate with us, and making a thousand professions of inviolable regard, he set off in my chaise for _Barcelona_; but I should have told you, not till he had made me promise to visit him at _Perpignan_, where he had not only a town, but country house, at my service.--All these professions were made with so much openness, and seeming sincerity, that I could not, nor did doubt it; and as I was determined then to leave that unhospitable country, and return to France, I gave him my _passa-porte_, to get it _refreshed_ by the Captain-General at _Barcelona_, that I might return, and pass _by_ the walls only of a town I can never think of but with some degree of pain, and should with horror, but that I now know there is one man lives in it, and did then,[D] who has lamented that he had not an opportunity to shew me those acts of hospitality his nature and his situation often give him occasion to exercise; but the _etiquette_ is, for the stranger to visit first; and I found but little encouragement to visit a German Gentleman, though married to an English Lady, after the hostile manners I had experienced from my _friends_ and _countrymen_, Messrs. _Curtoys_, _Wombwell_, &c. [D] Mr. THALDITZER. LETTER XXX. In the archives of _Montserrat_ they shew you a letter written to the Abbe by King Philip the second, who begins, "venerable and devout _Religieux_," and tells him, he approves of his zeal, of his building a new church at _Montserrat_, charges him to continue his prayers for him, and, to shew his zeal for that holy house, informs him, that the bearer of his letter is _Etienne Jordan_, the most famous sculptor then in Spain, who is to make the new altar-piece at the King's expence, and they agreed to pay _Jordan_ ten thousand crowns for the design he laid before them: the altar was made at _Valladolid_, and was brought to _Montserrat_ on sixty-six waggons; and as Jordan did much more to the work than he had engaged to perform, the King gave him four thousand crowns over and above his agreement, and afterwards gave nine thousand crowns more, to gild and add further ornaments to it. At the death of Philip the Second, his son, Philip, the Third, assisted in person to remove the image of the Virgin from the old to the new church; which I shall hereafter mention more fully. Before this noble altar, in which the figure of the Virgin stands in a nitch about the middle of it, are candlesticks of solid silver, each of which weighs eighty pounds; they are a yard and a half high; and yet these are mere trifles, when compared to the gold and jewels which are shewn occasionally. The monks observe very religiously their statutes; nor is there a single hour in the day that you find the church evacuated.--I always heard at least two voices chanting the service, when the monks retire from the church, which is not till seven o'clock at night; the pilgrims continue there in prayer the greater part of the night. I should have told you, that beside the superior among the hermits, there are two sorts of them, neither of which can possess a hermitage till they have spent seven years in the monastery, and given proofs of their holy disposition, by acts of obedience, humility, and mortification; during, which they spend most of their time, night as well as day, in the church, but they never sing or chant. After the expiration of the seven years, the Abbot takes the advice of his brethren, and if they think the probationer's manners and life entitle him to a solitary life above, he is sent,--but not, perhaps, without being enjoined to wait upon some old hermit, who is past doing the necessary offices of life for himself.--Their habit, as I said before, is brown, and they wear their long beards; but sometimes the hermits are admitted into holy orders, and then they wear black, and shave their beards: however, they are not actually fixed to the lonely habitations at first, but generally take seven or eight months trial. Many of the abbes, whose power, you may be sure, is very great, and who receive an homage from the inferiors, very flattering, have, nevertheless, often quitted their power for a retirement above. They observe religiously their abstinence from all sorts of flesh; nor are they permitted to eat but within their cells. When any of them are very ill, they are brought down to the convent; and all buried in one chapel, called St. Joseph. The lay-brothers are about fourscore in number; they wear a brown habit, and are shaved; their duty is to distribute bread, wine, and other necessaries, to the poor and the pilgrims, and lodge them according to their condition: and many of them are sent into remote parts of the kingdom, as well as France and other Catholic countries, to collect charity; while those who continue at home assist in getting in their corn, and fetching provisions from the adjacent towns, for which purposes they keep a great number, upwards of fifty mules.--These men too have a superior among them, to whom they are all obedient. There are also a number of children and young students, educated at the convent who are taken in at the age of seven or eight years, many of whom are of noble families; they all sleep in one apartment, but separate beds, where a lamp constantly burns, and their decent deportment is wonderful. Dom Jean de Cardonne, admiral of the galleys, who succoured Malta when it was besieged by the Turks, was bred at _Montserrat_, and when he wrote to the Abbe, "Recommend me," he said, "to the prayers of my little brethren." As I have already told you of the miracle of a murdered and violated virgin coming to life, and of a child of three months old saying, _Guerin, rise, thy sins are forgiven thee_; perhaps you will not like to have further proofs of what miracles are wrought here, or I could give you a long list, and unanswerable arguments to prove them. _Frere Benoit d'Arragon_ was a hermit on this mountain, whose sanctity of life has made his name immortal in the hermitage of St. Croix. The following sketch of his life is engraven. "Occidit hac sacrã Frater Benedictus in sede, Inclytus & sama, & religione sacer, Hic sexaginta & septem castissimus annos, Vixit in his saxis, te, Deus alme, peccans Usque senex, senio mansit curvatus & annis Corpus humo retulit, venerat unde prius Ast anima exultans, clarum repetivit olympum, Nunc sedet in summo glorificata throno." It appears, that Louis the Fourteenth, King of France, gave a certain sum to this convent, to say mass and pray for the soul of his deceased mother; the sum however was not large, being something under fifty pounds; and the donation is recorded in the chapel of _St. Louis_, upon a brass lamp. _P.S._ The time that this wonderful mountain became the habitation of a religious community, may be pretty nearly ascertained by the following singular epitaph, on a beautiful monument, still legible in the great church of _Tarragona_. "_Hic quiescit Corpus sanctæ memoriæ Domini Joannis filii Domini Jacobi, Regis Arragonum, qui decimo septimo anno ætatis suæ factus Archiepiscopus Toletanus, sic dono scientiæ infusus Divinitus & gratia prædicationis floruit, quod nullus ejusdem ætatis in hoc ei similis crederetur. Carnem suam jejuniis & ciliciis macerans, in vigesimo octavo anno ætatis suæ factus Patriarcha Alexandrinus & Administrator Ecclesiæ Tarraconensis ordinato per eum, inter multa alia bona opera_ novo Monasterio scalæ Dei _Diacessis Tarraconensis, ut per ipsam scalam ad Coelum ascenderet reddidit spiritum Creatori XIV. kalendas Septembris, anno Domini MCCCXXXIV. anno vero ætatis suæ XXXIII. pro quo Deus tam in vita, quam post mortem ejusdem est multa miracula operatus_." This very young Bishop was the son of James the second, and his Queen _Dona Blanca_; and that he was Prior of the monastery of Montserrat, appears in their archives; for I find the names of several hermits of this mountain, that came down to pay homage to him.--_Dederunt obedientiam domino Joanni Patriarchæ Alexandrino, & administratori prioratus Montis Serrati_, &c.--It is therefore probable, that he was the first Prior, and that the convent was built about the year 1300; but that the mountain was inhabited by hermits, or men who retired from the world many ages before, cannot be doubted. LETTER XXXI. DEAR SIR, I have had (since I mentioned the Spanish Ladies in a former letter) an opportunity of seeing something more of them; what they may be at _Madrid_, I cannot take upon me to say; but I am inclined to believe, that notwithstanding what you have heard of Spanish beauty, you would find nature has not been over liberal as to the persons of either sex in Spain; and though tolerable good features upon a brown complexion, with very black hair finely combed and pinned up with two or three gold bodkins, may be very pleasing, as a _new object_, yet a great deficiency would appear, were you to see the same women dressed in the high fashion of England or France. England, for real and natural female beauty, perhaps surpasses all the world; France, for dress, elegance, and ease. The Spanish women are violent in their passions, and generally govern every body under their roof; husbands who contend that point with them, often finish their days in the middle of a street, or in a prison; on the other hand, I am told, they are very liberal, compassionate, and charitable. They have at _Barcelona_ a fine theatre, and tolerable good music; but the actors of both sexes are execrable beyond all imagination: their first woman, who they say is rich by means of one _talent or other_, (for me, like my little Lyons water girl, has _two talents_) is as contemptible in her person as in her theatrical abilities: it is no wonder, indeed; for these people are often taken from some of those gipsey troops, I mentioned in a former letter, and have, consequently, no other qualifications for the stage but impudence instead of confidence, and ignorance instead of a liberal education. Perhaps you will conclude, that the theatre at _Madrid_ affords much better entertainment; on the contrary, I am well assured it is in general much worse: a Gentleman who understands the language perfectly, who went to _Madrid_ with no other view but to gratify his curiosity, in seeing what was worthy of notice there, went only once to the theatre, where the heat of the house, and the wretchedness of the performance, were equally intolerable; nor are the subjects very inviting to a stranger, as they often perform what they call "_Autos Sacramentales_"--_sacramental representations_. The people of fashion, in general, have no idea of serving their tables with elegance, or eating delicately; but rather, in the stile of our fore-fathers, without spoon or fork, they use their own fingers, and give drink from the glass of others; foul their napkins and cloaths exceedingly, and are served at table by servants who are dirty, and often very offensive. I was admitted, by accident, to a Gentleman's house, of large fortune, while they were at dinner; there were seven persons at a round table, too small for five; two of the company were visitors; yet neither their dinner was so good, nor their manner of eating it so delicate, as may be seen in the kitchen of a London tradesman. The dessert (in a country where fruit is so fine and so plenty) was only a large dish of the seeds of _pomegranates_, which they eat with wine and sugar. In truth, Sir, an Englishman who has been in the least accustomed to eat at genteel tables, is, of all other men, least qualified to travel into either kingdoms, and particularly into Spain; especially, if what Swift says be true, that "a nice man is a man of dirty ideas,"--I know not the reason, whether it proceeds from climate, or food, or from the neglect of the poorer order of the people; but _head combing_ seems to be a principal part of the day's business among the women in Spain; and it is generally done rather publicly.--The most lively, chearful, neat young woman, I saw in Spain, lived in the same house I did at _Barcelona_; she had a good complexion, and, what is very uncommon, rather light hair; and though perfectly clean and neat in her apparel, yet I observed a woman, not belonging to the house, attended every morning to comb this girl's head, and I believe it was _necessary_ to be combed. I could not very well ask the question; but I suspect that there are people by profession called _headcombers_; every shop door almost furnishes you with a specimen of that business; and if it is so common in _Barcelona_, among a rich and industrious people, you may imagine, it is infinitely more so among the slothful part of the inland cities and smaller towns;--but this is not the only objection a stranger (and especially an English Protestant) will find to Spain; the common people do not look upon an Englishman as a Christian; and the life of a man, not a Christian, is of no more importance in their eyes than the life of a dog: it is not therefore safe for a protestant to trust himself far from the maritime cities, as an hundred unforeseen incidents may arise, among people so ignorant and superstitious, to render it very unsafe to a man known to be a Protestant. If it be asked, how the Consuls, English merchants, &c. escape?--I can give no other reason than what a Spaniard gave me, when I put that question to him:--"Sir," said he, "we have men here, (meaning Barcelona) who are Protestants all day, and Papists all night; and we have a chapel where they go, into which no other people are admitted." However, I was convinced, before I went into Spain this time, from what I remembered formerly, that it was necessary to appear a good Catholic; so that I always carried a little crucifix, or two, some beads, and other _accidental_ marks of my faith; and where I staid any time, or, indeed, where I slept upon the road, I took occasion to let some of those _powerful protectors_ be seen, as it were, by chance;--it is very necessary to avail one's self of such innocent frauds, in a country where innocence itself may not be sufficient to shield you from the fury of religious bigotry, where people think they are serving God, by destroying men: The best method to save yourself, is by serving God in the same manner they do, till you are out of their power. I really thought, that Philosophy and Reason entered into Spain at the same gate that the Jesuits were turned out of the kingdom; and, I suppose, some did; but it must be many years before it is sufficiently diffused over the whole nation, to render it a country like France; where men, who behave with decency and decorum, may live, or pass through, without the least apprehension or inconvenience on the score of religion; if they do not meddle with politics or fortifications. That you may not imagine my suspicions of the danger of passing thro' Spain are ill founded, I will relate what happened to two English Gentlemen of fashion at _Marcia_ as I had it from the mouth of one of them lately:--they had procured letters of recommendation from some friends to the _Alguazile_, or chief magistrate of that town; and as there were some unfavourable appearances at their first entering _Marcia_, and more so at their _posada_, they thought it right to send their letters directly to the _Alguazile_; who, instead of asking them to his house, or visiting them, sent a servant to say he was ill, and who was directed to invite them to go that night to the comedy: they thought it right, however, to accept the invitation, extraordinary as it was: the _Alguazile_'s servant conducted them to the theatre, and paid (for he was directed so to do, he said) for their admittance; and having conducted his strangers into the pit, he retired. The comedy was then begun; but, nevertheless, the eyes of the whole house were turned upon them, and their's, to their great astonishment, upon the _sick Alguazile_ with his whole family. Those near whom they at first stood, retired to some distance: they could not, he said, consider the manner in which they were looked at, and retired from, but to arise from disgust or dislike, more than from curiosity. This reception, and the manner in which they had been sent there, deprived them of all the amusement the house afforded; for though the performers had no great excellence, there was, among the female part of the audience, more beauty than they expected. Mr. B----, one of the Gentlemen, at length discovered near him in the pit a man whom he knew to be an Irishman, and in whole countenance he plainly perceived a desire to speak, but he seemed with-held by prudence. At length, however, he was got near enough to his countryman to hear him say, without appearing to address himself to any body, "_Go hence! go hence_!" They did so; and the next morning, tho' it was a fine town, which they wished to examine, and to spend some time in, set off early for _Carthagena_, where they had some particular friends, to whom they related the _Alguazile_'s very extraordinary behaviour, as well as that of the company at the theatre. It was near the time of the Carnival at _Carthagena_: the conduct of _Don Marco_ to the two gentlemen strangers, became the subject of conversation, and indeed of indignation, among the Spaniards of that civilized city; and the _Alguazile_, who came to the Carnival there soon after, died by the hands of an assassin; he was stabbed by a mask in the night. Now suppose this man lost his life at _Carthagena_, for his ill behaviour to the two strangers at _Marcia_, or for any other cause, it is very certain, if natives are so liable to assassination, strangers are not more secure. P.S. To give you some idea of the address of the pulpit oratory in Spain, about sixty or seventy years ago, (and it is not in general much better at present) take the following specimen, which I assure you, is strictly true:-- A preacher holding forth in the place called _Las_ Mancanas at Madrid, after informing his auditors of the sufferings of Jesus Christ, added,--and is it not strange, that we still continue to sin on, and live without repentance? O Lord God! said he, why sufferest thou such ungrateful and wretched sinners to live?--And instantly giving himself a violent box on the ear, the whole assembly followed his example, and four thousand _soufflets_ were given and received in the twinkling of an eye.--The French Embassador, from whose _memoires_ I take this story, was upon that instant bursting out in laughter at the pious ceremony, had he not been checked by one of his friends, who happened to stand near, and who assured him, that his rank and character would not have saved him, had he been so indiscreet, for the enraged populace would have cut him in a thousand pieces; whereupon he hid his face in his handkerchief, and boxed his own ears more for the love of himself than from gratitude to his Redeemer. LETTER XXXII. There are in Spain twelve councils of state, viz. of _War_, of _Castile_, of the _Inquisition_, of the royal orders of _St. Iago_, of _Arragon_, of the _Indies_, of the chamber of _Castile_, of the _Croisade_, of the _State_, of _Italy_, of the _Finances and Treasure_, and lastly, that (of no use) of _Flanders_. The council of _War_ is composed of experienced men of various orders, who are thought capable of advising upon that subject, and not of any determinate number. That of _Castile_ has a president and sixteen other members, beside a secretary and inferior officers; it is the first of all the councils, and takes cognizance of civil as well as criminal matters. The King calls this council only OUR council, to mark its superiority to all others. The president is a man of great authority, and is treated with the utmost respect; nor does he ever visit any body. The council of the _Inquisition_, established by _Don Fernando_ in 1483, has an inquisitor general for its president, who is always a _Grandee_ of the first condition; he has six counsellors, who are called apostolic inquisitors. This court, (the power of which has, fortunately for mankind, been of late years greatly abridged) has a great number of inferior officers, as well as _holy spies_, all over the kingdom, particularly at _Seville_, _Toledo_, _Valladolid_, _Barcelona_, and other places, where these horrid tribunals are fixed; each is governed by three counsellors, who, however, are dependant on that of Madrid; and to whom they are obliged every month to give a particular account of what has passed through their hands. These men have not power to imprison a priest, a religious, nor even a gentleman, without obtaining the consent of the supreme court above; they meet at _Madrid_ twice every day, and two of the King's council always attend at the afternoon meeting. Of the council of the three royal orders of Spain; that of _Santiago_ is the first; the other two are _Calatrava_ and _Alcantara_. It is composed of a president, six counsellors, and other officers. The president of the council of _Arragon_ is called the vice chancellor; who is assisted by nine counsellors, and inferior officers. This council attend to the public state of the kingdom of _Arragon_, as well as to the islands of _Majorca_, _Ivica_, &c. The council of the _Indies_ was established in 1511, for the conservation and augmentation of the new kingdoms discovered by _Columbus_ in South America, in 1492; and where the Spaniards have at this time four thousand nine hundred leagues of land, including _Mexico_ and _Peru_; land divided into many kingdoms and provinces, in which they had built, in the year 1670, upwards of eight thousand churches, and more than a thousand convents. They have there a patriarch, six arch-bishops, and thirty-two bishops, and three tribunals of the inquisition. This council is composed of a president, a grand chancellor, and twelve counsellors, a treasurer, secretary, advocates, agents, and an infinite number of inferior officers. They meet twice a week, to regulate all the affairs, both by land and sea, relative to that part of the King's dominions. The council of the _Croisade_ is composed of a president, who is called the commissary general, and who has great privileges. The clergy are obliged to pay something annually to it; and if any one finds a purse of money in the streets, they are obliged to deliver it to the secretary of this council. The council of _State_ is composed of men of the first birth and understanding about the court. The King presides, and is assisted by the archbishop of _Toledo_. This council is not confined to any certain number; they meet three times a week, to deliberate on the most important affairs of the kingdom. The council of _Italy_ attends to the affairs of _Naples_, _Sicily_, and _Milan_; it is composed of a president, and six counsellors, three of whom are Spaniards, one Neapolitan, one Italian, and one Sicilian; each of which have their separate charge on the affairs of those countries. The council of _Finances and Treasure_ is composed of a president, who is called _presidente de hazienda_, that is, superintendant of the finances; eight counsellors, and a great number of other officers, beside treasurers, controllers, &c, who have a great share of the most important affairs of the nation to regulate; they hear causes, and are not only entrusted with the treasures of the kingdom, but with administration of justice to all the king's subjects. You may easily judge what a number of officers compose this council, when I tell you, that they have twenty-six treasurers. The council of _Flanders_ have now only the _name_; as the King of England bears that of France.--The formal manner which men, high in office or blood, observe in paying or receiving visits, is very singular: the inquisitor-general, for instance, has several black lines marked upon the floor of his anti-chamber, by which he limits the civilities he is to shew to men, according to the rank or office they bear: he has his _black_ marks for an embassador, an envoy, &c. When people of condition at Madrid propose to make a visit, it is previously announced by a page, to know the day and hour they can be received; and this ceremony is often used on ordinary visits, as well as those of a more public nature: the page too has his coach to carry him upon these errands. I have seen the account of a visit made by the Cardinal of _Arragon_ to the Admiral of _Castile_, the train of which filled the whole street; he was carried by six servants in a magnificent chair, and followed by his body coach drawn by eight mules, attended by his gentlemen, pages, esquires, all mounted on horseback, and arrayed in a most sumptuous manner. Every order of men assume an air of importance in Spain. I have been assured, that when a shoemaker has been called upon to make a pair of shoes, he would not undertake the work till he had first enquired of _Dona_, his wife, whether there was any money in the house? if she answered in the affirmative, he would not work. Even the beggars do not give up this universal privilege, as the following instance will evince:--A foreigner of fashion, who was reading in a bookseller's shop in Madrid, was accosted by one of the town beggars, who in an arrogant manner asked his charity, in terms which implied a demand rather than a favour. The stranger made no reply, nor did he take the least notice, but determined to continue reading, and dismiss the insolent beggar by his silent contempt: this encreased the beggar's hardiness; he told him, he might find time enough to read after he had attended to his request, and what he had to say. But still the gentleman read on, and disregarded his rudeness. At length, the beggar stept up to him, and with an air of the utmost insolence, at the same time taking him hold by the arm, added, What! neither charity, nor courtesy? By this time, the stranger lost all patience, and was going to correct him for his temerity:--Stop, Sir, (said the beggar, in a lower tone of voice) hear me;--pardon, me, Sir; do you not know me? No, certainly; replied the stranger, But, said he, you ought, for I was secretary to an embassy in a certain capital, where we lived together in intimacy; and then told him his name, and the particular misfortunes which had reduced him to that condition; he expressed himself with art, address, and eloquence, and succeeded in getting money from the gentleman, though he could not convince him that he was his old acquaintance. There are in Spain an infinite number of such sort of beggars, who are men of sense and letters, and so _au fait_ in the art, that they will not be denied. The grand secret of the art of begging is in perseverance; and all the _well-bred_ part of beggars do not despair, though they have ten refusals. But the worst sort of beggars in Spain, are the troops of male and female gipsies: these are the genuine breed, and differ widely from all other human beings. In Spain I often met troops of these people; and when that interview happens in roads very distant from towns or dwellings, the interview is not very pleasing; for they ask as if they knew they were not to be refused; and, I dare say, often commit murders, when they can do it by surprize. Whenever I saw any of these people at a distance, I walked with a gun in my hand, and near to the side of my chaise, where there were pistols visible; and by shewing them I was not afraid, or, at least, making them believe so, they became afraid of us. They are extremely swarthy, with hair as black as jet; and form a very picturesque scene under the shade of those rocks and trees, where they spend their evenings; and live in a manner by no means disagreeable, in a climate so suitable to that style, where bread, water, and idleness is certainly preferable to better fare and hard labour. It is owing to this universal idleness that the roads, the inns, and every thing, but what is absolutely necessary, is neglected; yet, bad as the roads are, they are better than the _posada_, or inns. _El salir de la posada, es la mejor jornada_,--"_the best part of the journey_, say the Spaniards, _is the getting_ _out of the posada_." For as neither king nor people are at much expence to make or mend the high ways, except just about the capital cities, they are dry or wet, rough or smooth, steep or rugged, just as the weather or the soil happens to favour or befoul them.--Now, here is a riddle for your son; I know he is an adept, and will soon overtake me. I'm rough, I'm smooth, I'm wet, I'm dry; My station's low, my title's high; The King my lawful master is; I'm us'd by all, though only his: My common freedom's so well known, I am for that a proverb grown. The roads in Spain are, like those in Ireland, very _narrow_, and the leagues very long. When I complained to an Irish soldier of the length of the miles, between Kinsale and Cork, he acknowledged the truth of my observation; but archly added, that though they were _long_, they were but _narrow_.--Three Spanish leagues make nearly twelve English miles; and, consequently, seventeen Spanish leagues make nearly one degree. The bad roads, steep mountains, rapid rivers, &c. occasion most of the goods and merchandize, which are carried from one part of the kingdom to the other, to be conveyed on mule-back, and each mule has generally a driver; and as these drivers have their fixed stages from _posada_ to _posada_, so must the gentlemen travellers also, because there are no other accommodations on the roads but such houses; the stables therefore at the _posadas_ are not only very large, but the best part of the building, and is the lodging-room of man and beast; all the muleteers sleep there, with their cloaths on, upon a bundle of straw: but while your supper is preparing, the kitchen is crowded with a great number of these dirty fellows, whose cloaths are full of vermin; it would be impossible, therefore, for even a good cook to dress a dish with any decency or cleanliness, were such a cook to be found; for, exclusive of the numbers, there is generally a quarrel or two among them, and at all times a noise, which is not only tiresome, but frequently alarming. These people, however, often carry large sums of money, and tho' they are dirty, they are not poor nor dishonest.--I was told in France, to beware of the _Catalans_; yet I frequently left many loose things in and about my chaise, where fifty people lay, and never lost any thing. When I congratulated myself in a letter to my brother, upon finding in Wales a Gentleman of the name of Cooke, whose company, conversation, and acquaintance, were so perfectly pleasing to me; my brother observed, however, that my Welch _friend_ was not a _Welchman_, for, said he, "there are no COOKS in Wales;"--but this observation may be with more justice applied to Spain; for I think there are no COOKS in Spain; but there are, what is better, a great number of honest, virtuous men: I look upon the true, genuine Spaniards to be as respectable men as any in Europe; and that, among the lower order of them there is more honour and honesty than is to be found among more polished nations; and, I dare say, there were an hundred Spaniards at _Barcelona_, had they been as well informed about my identity as Messrs. Curtoys and Wombwell, that would have changed my notes, or lent me money without. _P.S._ The tour through Spain and Portugal by UDAL ap RHYS, grandfather to the now Mr. Price of Foxley in Herefordshire, abounds with more falshoods than truths; indeed I have been told it was written, as many modern travels are, over a pipe in a chimney corner: and I hope Mr. Udal never was in Spain, as "_one fib is more excusable than a thousand_." LETTER XXXIII. NISMES. _Monsr Anglois_ having sent me back my _passa-porte_, signed by _Don Philipe Cabine_, the Captain-General of _Barcelona_, accompanied by a very kind and friendly letter, I determined to quit the only place in Spain which had afforded me pleasure, amusement, and delight. We accordingly sat off the next day for _Martorel_, and went to the Three Kings, where our Italian host, whose extortions I had complained of before, received us with a face of the utmost disdain; and though he had no company in his house, put us into much worse apartments than those we had been in before. I ordered something for supper, and left it to him, as he had given us a very good one before; but he was not only determined to punish us in lodging, but in eating also, and sent only four little mutton cutlets, so small, that they were not sufficient for one, instead of four persons; we pretended, however, not to perceive his insolence, that he might not enjoy our punishment; and the next day, as I was desirous of looking about me a little, we removed to another _posada_, where, about noon, a Canon of great ecclesiastical preferment arrived, with a coach, six mules, and a large retinue, to dinner: the Canon had no more the marks of a gentleman than a muleteer; and he had with him two or three persons, of no better appearance. While his dinner, a kind of _olla_, was preparing, I went into the kitchen, where the smell of the rancid oil with which it was dressed, would have dined two or three men of moderate or tender stomachs; nor had he any other dish. There was behind his coach a great quantity of bedding, bed-steads, &c. so you will perceive he travelled _comme il faut_. His livery servants were numerous, and had on very short livery coats, with large sleeves, and still shorter waists. After he had eat a dinner, enough to poison a pack of hounds, he sat off in great pomp for _Barcelona_, a city I passed the next day with infinite pleasure, without entering its inhospitable gates; which I could not have done, had not _Mons. Anglois_ saved me that mortification by getting my _passa porte refreshed_. I confess, Sir, that while I passed under the fortifications of that city, which the high road made necessary, I felt, I knew not why, a terror about me, that my frame is in general a stranger to; and rather risqued two hours' night travelling, bad and dangerous as the roads were, than sleep within four leagues of it; so that it was ten o'clock before we got to _Martereau_, a little city by the sea side, where we had lodged on our way to _Barcelona_. The next day, we proceeded on the same delightful sea coast we had before passed, and through the same rich villages, on our way to _Girone_, _Figuiere_, &c. and avoided that horrid _posada_ where the Frenchman died, by lying at a worse house, but better people: but having bought a brace of partridges, and some _red fish_ on the road, we fared sumptuously, except in beds, which were straw mattrasses, very hard, and the room full of wet Indian corn; but we were no sooner out of our _posada_, than the climate and the beautiful country made ample amends for the town and _posada_ grievances. It is contrary to the law of Spain to bring more than a certain quantity of Spanish gold or silver out of the kingdom, and I had near an hundred pounds in gold _duras_, about the size of our quarter guineas. I endeavoured to change them at _Figuiere_, but I found some very artful, I may say roguish, schemes laid, to defraud me, by a pretended difficulty to get French money, and therefore determined to proceed with it to _Jonquiere_, the last village, where it was not probable I could find so much French money. I therefore had a very large French _queue_ made up, within which the greater part of my Spanish gold was bound; and as the weight _made_ me hold up my _tete d'or_, the custom-house officers there, who remembered my entrance into Spain, found half-a-crown put into their hands less trouble than examining my baggage gratis; they accordingly _passed_ me on my way to _Bellegarde_, without even opening it; and we found the road up to that fortress, though in the month of December, full as good as when we had passed it in the summer; and after descending on the French side, and crossing the river, got to the little _auberge_ at _Boulon_, the same we had held too bad when we went into Spain, even to eat our breakfast at; but upon our return, worthy of a place of rest, and we accordingly staid there a week: beds with curtains, rooms with chimnies, and paper windows, though tattered and torn, were luxuries we had been unaccustomed to.--But I must not omit to tell you, that on our road down on the French side of the _Pyrenees_, two men, both armed with guns, rushed suddenly out of the woods, and making towards us, asked, whether we wanted a guard? I was walking, perhaps fortunately at that time, with my fuzee in my hand, and my servant had a double barrelled pistol in his; and therefore forbid them to approach us, and told them, we had nothing else to lose but our lives, and that if they did not retire I should look upon them as people who meant to plunder, rather than protect us: they accordingly retired into the woods, and I began to believe they had no evil intent; but finding an _Exempt_ of the _Marechaussee_ at _Boulon_, I told him what had passed, and asked him whether his men attended upon that road, in coloured cloaths, or any others were allotted, to protect or guard travellers? He assured me there were no such people of any kind; that his men always moved on horseback, in their proper character, and suspected _our guard_ would have been very troublesome, had they found us _off our guard_; but he did not offer, nor did I ask him, to send after them, though he was a very civil, sensible man, who had been three years on duty in _Corsica_; and, consequently, his company, for the week I staid in such a poor town, was very agreeable. And as _Mons. Bernard_, or some officer of the _Marechaussee_, is always in duty at this town, I would advise those who enter into Spain, by that route, to procure a couple of those men to escorte them up to _Bellegarde_--an attention that no officer in France will refuse to shew, when it is not incompatible with his duty. The rapid water at this town, which I had passed going into Spain, was now lower than usual. Here too my horse, as well as his master, lived truly _in clover_; and though our habitation was humble, a habitation at the very foot of the _Pyrenees_ could not but be very beautiful; no part of France is more so; it is indeed a beautiful and noble sight, to see the hanging plantations of vines, olives, and mulberry-trees, warmed by a hot sun on the sides of those mountains, the upper parts of which are covered with a perpetual snow. But beautiful as all that part of the country is, there was not a single gentleman's house in the environs. After a compleat week's refreshment, we proceeded to _Perpignan_ to spend our Christmas, where we found the _Chevalier de Maigny_ and his Lady, who had given us the letter of recommendation to the French Consul at _Barcelona_; who shewed us those marks of civility and politeness, French officers in general shew to strangers. There we staid a fortnight; and _Mons. de Maigny_ got me a considerable profit, in changing my Spanish gold for French. In this town, I found an unfortunate young Irishman; he had been there three months, without a friend or a shilling in his pocket; and as he was a man of education and good breeding, I could not so soon forget my own situation at _Barcelona_, not to pity his: but what most induced me to assist him a little, was, what he feared might have had a contrary effect. When I asked him his name, he readily answered, "R--h; an unfortunate name!" said he;--"but, as it is my name, I will _wear it_."--He had a well-wisher in the town, a French watch-maker, to whom he imparted the little kindness I had shewn him; and as it was not enough to conduct him on foot to the north side of this kingdom, the generous, but poor watch-maker, gave him as much as I had done, and he sat off with a light heart, though a _thin pair of breeches_, for his own country. He had been to visit a rich relation at Madrid; and, I believe, did not meet with so cordial a reception there as he expected. At this town I drank, at a private gentleman's house, part of a bottle of the wine made at a little village hard by, called _Rios Alto_; the most delicious wine I ever tasted: but as the spot produces but a small quantity, that which is really of the growth is very scarce, as well as dear: it has the strength of full port, with a flavour superior to burgundy. _Perpignan_ is the principal city of _Rosillein_; it is well fortified, but the works are in a ruinous condition: the streets are narrow and dirty, but the Governor's, and the botanic gardens are worthy of notice: the climate is remarkably fine, and the air pure. The _Pyrenees_, which are at least fifteen miles distant, appear to hang in a manner over the town: to see so much snow, and feel so much sun, is very singular. Wood is very scarce and dear in that town: I frequently saw mules and asses loaded with rosemary and lavender bushes, to sell for firing. The barbarous language of the common people of this province, is very convenient, as they understand French, and can make themselves understood thro' a great part of Spain: from which kingdom not a day passes but mules and carriages arrive, except when the heavy rains or snow obstruct the communication.--The mules and asses of Spain, and this part of France, are not only very useful but valuable beasts: the only way to get a valuable one of either sort from Spain, is, to fix upon the beast, and promise a round sum to one of the religious mendicants to smuggle it out of the kingdom, who covers the animal with bags, baskets, and a variety of trumpery, as if he was going into France to collect charity: and passes either by _not_ being suspected, or by being a _Religieux_ if he is suspected. As we took exactly the same route from _Perpignan_ to this town as we went, except leaving _Cette_ a few leagues on our left; I shall say nothing of our return, but that we relished our reception at the French inns, and the good cheer we found there, infinitely more than as we went: and that we were benighted for some hours before we got into _Montpellier_, and caught in the most dreadful storm of rain, thunder and lightning I ever was exposed to. I was obliged for two hours to hold my horse's bridle on one side, as my man did on the other, and feel with sticks for the margin of the road, as it was elevated very high above the marshy lands, and if the heel had slipped over on either side, it must have overset the chaise into the lowlands: besides which, the roaring of the water-streams was so great, that I very often thought we were upon the margin of some river or high bridge: nor was my suffering quite over even after I got into the city: I could not find my former _auberge_, nor meet with any body to direct me: and the water-spouts which fell into the middle of those narrow streets almost deluged us.--My poor horse, too, found the steep streets, slippery pavement, and tons of water which fell upon him, as much as he could well bear: but, as the old song says, "Alas! by some degree of woe, We every bliss obtain;" So we found a good fire and good cheer an ample recompence for our wet jackets. It was so very dark, that though I led my horse by the head above a league, I could but seldom see him: nor do I remember in my whole life to have met with any difficulty which so agitated my mind:--no: not even at the _bar of the House of Lords_, I did not dread the danger so much, as the idea of tumbling my family over a precipice, without the power to assist them; or, if they were _gone_, resolution enough to _follow them_. END _of the_ FIRST VOLUME. 
16994	----	page images generously made available by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (http://gallica.bnf.fr/) Note: Project Gutenberg also has Volume I of this work. See http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/16485 Images of the original pages are available through the Bibliothèque nationale de France. See http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/Visualiseur?Destination=Gallica&O=NUMM-102009 A YEAR'S JOURNEY THROUGH FRANCE, AND PART OF SPAIN. by PHILIP THICKNESSE. VOLUME II Dublin Printed by J. Williams, (No. 21.) Skinner-Row. M,DCC,LXXVII. A JOURNEY, &c. LETTER XXXIV. NISMES SIR, I am very certain that a man may travel twice through Spain, and half through France, before he sees a woman of so much beauty, elegance, and breeding, as the mistress of the house I lodge in near this city. I was directed to the house, and recommended to the lady, as a lodger; but both were so fine, and superior in all respects to any thing I had seen out of Paris, that I began to suspect I had been imposed upon. The lady who received me appeared to be (it was candle-light) about eighteen, a tall, elegant figure, a beautiful face, and an address inferior to none: I concluded she was the daughter, till she informed me, that _Mons. Saigny_, her husband, was gone to _Avignon_. What added, perhaps, to this lady's beauty in my eyes, or rather ears, was her misfortune,--she could not speak louder than a gentle whisper. After seeing her sumptuous apartments, I told her I would not ask what her price was, but tell her what I could afford only to give; and observed, that as it was winter, and the snow upon the ground, perhaps she had better take my price than have none. She instantly took me by the hand and said, she had so much respect for the English nation, that my price was her's; and with a still softer whisper, and close to my ear, said, I might come in as soon as I pleased--"_Quand vous voudrez, Monsieur_," said she. We accordingly took possession of the finest apartments, and the best beds I ever lay on. The next day, I saw a genteel stripling about the house, in a white suit of cloaths, dressed _en militaire_, and began to suspect the virtue of my fair hostess, not perceiving for some hours that it was my hostess herself; in the afternoon she made us a visit in this horrid dress,--(for horrid she appeared in my eyes)--her cloaths were white, with red cuffs and scarlet _lappels_; and she held in her straddling lap a large black muff, as big as a porridge-pot. By this visit she lost all that respect her superlative beauty had so justly entitled her to, and I determined she should visit me no more in man's apparel. When I went into the town I mentioned this circumstance, and there I learnt, that the real wife of _Mons. Saigny_ had parted from him, and that the lady, my hostess, was his mistress. The next day, however, the master arrived; and after being full and finely dressed, he made me a visit, and proffers of every attention in his power: he told me he had injured his fortune, and that he was not rich; but that he had served in the army, and was a gentleman: he had been bred a protestant, but had just embraced the true faith, in order to qualify himself for an employment about the court of the Pope's _Legate_ at _Avignon_. After many expressions of regard, he asked me to dine with him the next day; but I observed that as he was not rich, and as I paid but a small rent in proportion to his noble apartments, I begged to be excused; but he pressed it so much, that I was obliged to give him some _other reasons_, which did not prove very pleasing ones, to the lady below. This fine lady, however, continued to sell us wood, wine, vinegar, sallad, milk, and, in short, every thing we wanted, at a very unreasonable price. At length, my servant, who by agreement made my soup in their kitchen, said something rude to my landlord, who complained to me, and seemed satisfied with the reprimand I had given the man; but upon a repetition of his rudeness, _Mons. Saigny_ so far forgot himself as to speak equally rude to me: this occasioned some warm words, and so much ungovernable passion in him, that I was obliged to tell him I must fetch down my pistols; this he construed into a direct challenge, and therefore retired to his apartments, wrote a card, and sent it to me while I was walking before the door with a priest, his friend and visitor, and in sight of the _little female captain his second_, and all the servants of the house; on this card was wrote, "_Sir, I accept your proposition_;" and before I could even read it, he followed his man, who brought it in the true stile of a butler, rather than a butcher, with a white napkin under his arm. You may be sure, I was no more disposed to fight than _Mons. Saigny_; indeed, I told him I would not; but if any man attacked me on my way to or from the town, where I went every day, I would certainly defend myself: and fortunately I never met _Mons. Saigny_ in the fortnight I staid after in his house; for I could not bear to leave a town where I had two or three very agreeable acquaintance, and one (_Mons. Seguier_) whose house was filled as full of natural and artificial curiosities, as his head is with learning and knowledge. Here too I had an opportunity of often visiting the Amphitheatre, _the Maison Carree_, (so Mons. Seguier writes it) and the many remains of Roman monuments so common in and about _Nismes_. I measured some of the stones under which I passed to make the _tout au tour_ of the Amphitheatre, they were seventeen feet in length, and two in thickness; and most of the stones on which the spectators sat within the area, were twelve feet long, two feet ten inches wide, and one foot five inches deep; except only those of the sixth row of seats from the top, and they alone are one foot ten inches deep; probably it was on that range the people of the highest rank took their seats, not only for the elevation, but the best situation for sight and security; yet one of these great stones cannot be considered more, in comparison to the whole building, than a single brick would be in the construction of Hampton-Court Palace. When I had the sole possession (and I had it often) of this vast range of seats, where emperors, empresses, Roman knights, and matrons, have been so often seated, to see men die wantonly by the hands of other men, as well as beasts for their amusement, I could not but with pleasure reflect, how much human nature is softened since that time; for notwithstanding the powerful prevalency of custom and fashion, I do not think the ladies of the present age would _plume_ their towering heads, and curl their _borrowed_ hair, with that glee, to see men murdered by missive weapons, as to die at their feet by deeper, tho' less visible wounds. If, however, we have not those cruel sports, we seem to be up with them in prodigality, and to exceed them in luxury and licentiousness; for in Rome, not long before the final dissolution of the state, the candidates for public employments, in spite of the penal laws to restrain it, _bribed openly_, and were chosen sometimes _by arms_ as well as money. In the senate, things were conducted no better; decrees of great consequence were made when very few senators were present; the laws were violated by private knaves, under the colour of public necessity; till at length, _Cæsar_ seized the sovereign power, and tho' he was slain, they omitted to recover their liberty, forgetting that "A day, an hour, of virtuous Liberty Is worth a whole eternity of bondage." _Addison's_ CATO. I can almost think I read in the parallel, which I fear will soon be drawn between the rise and fall of the British and Roman empire, something like this;--"Rome had her CICERO; Britain her CAMDEN: Cicero, who had preserved Rome from the conspiracy of _Catiline_, was banished: CAMDEN, who would have preserved Britain from a bloody civil war, removed." The historian will add, probably, that "those who brought desolation upon their land, did not mean that there should be no commonwealth, but that right or wrong, they should continue to controul it: they did not mean to burn the capitol to ashes, but to bear absolute sway in the capitol:--The result was, however, that though they did not mean to overthrow the state, yet they risqued all, rather than be overthrown themselves; and they rather promoted the massacre of their fellow-citizens, than a reconciliation and union of parties,"--THUS FELL ROME--Take heed, BRITAIN! LETTER XXXV. ARLES. I left _Nismes_ reluctantly, having formed there an agreeable and friendly intimacy with Mr. _D'Oliere_, a young gentleman of Switzerland; and an edifying, and entertaining acquaintance, with Mons. _Seguier_. I left too, the best and most sumptuous lodgings I had seen in my whole tour; but a desire to see _Arles_, _Aix_, and _Marseilles_, &c. got the better of all. But I set out too soon after the snow and rains, and I found part of the road so bad, that I wonder how my horse dragged us through so much clay and dirt. When I gave you some account of the antiquities of _Nismes_, I did not expect to find _Arles_ a town fraught with ten times more matter and amusement for an antiquarian; but I found it not only a fine town now, but that it abounds with an infinite number of monuments which evince its having once been an almost second Rome. There still remains enough of the Amphitheatre to convince the beholder what a noble edifice it was, and to wonder why so little, of so large and solid a building, remains. The town is built on the banks of the Rhone, over which, on a bridge of barges, we entered it; but it is evident, that in former days, the sea came quite up to it, and that it was a haven for ships of burden; but the sea has retired some leagues from it, many ages since; beside an hundred strong marks at _this_ day of its having been a sea-port formerly, the following inscription found a century or two ago, in the church of _St. Gabriel_, will clearly confirm it: M. FRONTONI EVPOR IIIIIIVIR AVG. COL. JVLIA. AVG. AQVIS SEXTIIS NAVICVLAR. MAR. AREL. CVRAT EJVSD. CORP. PATRONA NAVTAR DRVENTICORVM. ET VTRICVLARIORVM. CORP. ERNAGINENSIUM. JULIA NICE VXOR. CONJVGI KARISSIMO. Indeed there are many substantial reasons to believe, that it was at this town _Julius Cæsar_ built the twelve gallies, which, from the cutting of the wood to the time they were employed on service, was but thirty days.--That it was a very considerable city in the time of the first Emperors, is past all doubt. _Constantine_ the Great held his court, and resided at _Arles_, with all his family; and the Empress _Faustina_ was delivered of a son here (_Constantine_ the younger) and it was long before so celebrated for an annual fair held in the month of August, that it was called _le Noble Marche de Gaules_. And _Strabo_, in his dedication of his book to the Emperor, called it "_Galliarum Emporium non Parvum_;" which is a proof that it was celebrated for its rich commerce, &c. five hundred years before it became under the dominion of the Romans. But were I capable of giving you a particular description of all the monuments of antiquity in and near this town, it would compose a little book, instead of a sheet or two of paper. I shall therefore only pick out a few things which have afforded me the most entertainment, and I hope may give you a little; but I shall begin with mentioning what must first give you concern, in saying that in that part of the town called _la Roquette_, I was shewn the place where formerly stood an elevated Altar whereon, three young citizens were sacrificed annually, and who were fattened at the public expence during a whole year, for the horrid purpose! On the first of May their throats were cut in the presence of a prodigious multitude of people assembled from all parts; among whom the blood of the victims was thrown, as they imagined all their sins were expiated by that barbarous sacrifice; which horrid practice was put a stop to by the first Bishop of _Arles_, ST. TROPHIME. The Jews, who had formerly a synagogue in _Arles_, were driven out in the year 1493, when that and their celebrated School were demolished. There were found about an hundred after, among the stones of those buildings some Hebrew characters neatly cut, which were copied and sent to the Rabbins of Avignon, to be translated, and who explained them then thus: Chodesh: Elvl. Chamescheth, lamech, nav. Nislamv. Bedikoth. Schradai. i.e. they say, "In the month of August five thousand and thirty--the Visitation of God ceased." Perhaps the plague had visited them.--There was also another Hebrew inscription, which was on the tomb of a famous Rabbin called Solomon, surnamed the grandson of David. The Amphitheatre of _Arles_ was of an oval form, composed of three stages; each stage containing sixty arches; the whole was built of hewn stone of an immense size, without mortar, and of a prodigious thickness: the circumference above, exclusive of the projection of the architecture, was 194 toises three feet, the frontispiece 17 toises high and the area 71 toises long and 52 wide; the walls were 17 toises thick, which were pierced round and round with a gallery, for a convenience of passing in and out of the seats, which would conveniently contain 30,000 men, allowing each person three feet in depth and two in width; and yet, there remain at this day only a few arches quite complete from top to bottom, which are of themselves a noble monument. Indeed one would be inclined to think that it never had been compleated, did we not know that the Romans left nothing unfinished of that kind; and read, that the Emperor _Gallus_ gave some superb spectacles in the Amphiteatre of _Arles_, and that the same amusements were continued by following Emperors. Nothing can be a stronger proof than these ruins, of the certain destruction and corruption of all earthly things; for one would think that the small parts which now remain of this once mighty building would, endure as long as the earth itself; but what is very singular is, that this very Amphitheatre was built upon the ruins of a more mighty building, and perhaps one of a more substantial structure. _Tempus edax rerum, tuque invidiosa vetustas omnia destruis_. In the street called _St. Claude_, stood a triumphal arch which was called _L'Arche admirable_; it is therefore natural to conclude, that the town contained many others of less beauty. There are also within the walls large remains of the palace of _Constantine_. A beautiful antique statue of _Venus_ was found here also, about an hundred and twenty years ago.--That a _veritable_ fine woman should set all the beaux and _connoisseurs_ of a whole town in a flame, I do not much wonder; but you will be surprized when I tell you that this cold trunk of marble, (for the arms were never found) put the whole town of _Arles_ together by the ears; one _Sçavant_ said it was the goddess _Diana_, and wrote a book to prove it; another insisted upon it, that it was the true image of _Venus_; then starts up an Ecclesiastic, who _you know has nothing to do with women_, and he pronounced in dogmatical terms, it was neither one nor the other; at length the wiser magistrates of the town agreed to send it as a present to their august monarch Lewis the XIVth; and if you have a mind to see an inanimate woman who has made such a noise in the world, you will find her at _Versailles_, without any other notice taken of her or the quarrels about her, than the following words written (I think) upon her pedestal, _La Venus d'Arles_. This ended the dispute, as I must my letter. LETTER XXXVI. I have not half done with _Arles_. The more I saw and heard in this town, the more I found was to be seen. The remains of the Roman theatre here would of itself be a sufficient proof that it was a town of great riches and importance. Among the refuse of this building they found several large vases of baked earth, which were open on one side, and which were fixed properly near the seats of the audience to receive and convey the sounds of the instruments and voices of the actors distinctly throughout the theatre, which had forty-eight arches, eleven behind the scenes of ten feet wide, three grand arches of fourteen feet wide, and thirty-one of twelve feet; the diameter was thirty-one canes, and the circumference seventy-nine; and from the infinite number of beautiful pieces of sculpture, frizes, architraves, pillars of granite, &c. which have been dug up, it is very evident that this theatre was a most magnificent building, and perhaps would have stood firm to this day, had not a Bishop of _Arles_, from a principle of more piety than wisdom, stript it of the finest ornaments and marble pillars, to adorn the churches. Near the theatre stood also the famous temple of _Diana_; and, as the famous statue mentioned in my former letter was found beneath some noble marble pillars near that spot, it is most likely _La Venus d'Arles_ is nevertheless the Goddess _Diana_. I never wish more for your company than when I walk, (and I walk every day) in the Elysian fields. The spot is beautiful, the prospect far and near equally so: in the middle of this ancient _Cimetiere_ stands a motly building, from the middle of which however rises a cupola, which at the first view informs you it is the work of a Roman artist; and here you must, as it were, thread the needle between an infinite number of Pagan and Christian monuments, lying thick upon the surface in the utmost disorder and confusion, insomuch, that one would think the Day of Judgment was arrived and the dead were risen. Neither _Stepney_ church-yard, nor any one in or near a great city, shew so many headstones as this spot does stone coffins of an immense size, hewn out of one piece; the covers of most of which have been broken or removed sufficiently to search for such things as were usually buried with the dead. Some of these monuments, and some of the handsomest too, are still however unviolated. It is very easy to distinguish the Pagan from the Christian monnments, without opening them, as all the former have the Roman letters DM (_Diis Manibus_) cut upon them. It is situated, according to their custom, near the high-way, the water, and the marshes. You know the ancients preferred such spots for the interment of the dead. The tombs of _Ajax_ and _Hector_, HOMER says, were near the sea, as well as other heroes of antiquity; for as they considered man to be composed of earth and water, his bones ought to be laid in one, and near the other. I will now give you a few of the most curious inscriptions; but first I will mention a noble marble monument, moved from this spot into the _Cimetiere_ of the great Hospital. This tomb is ornamented with Cornucopiæ, _Pateræ_, &c. and in a shield the following inscription: CABILIAE D.F. APPRVLLAE FLAM D DESIGNATAE COL. DEA. AUG. VOC. M O. ANNOS XIIII, MENS II. DIES V. MARITVS VXORI PIENTISSIMAE. POSUIT. This poor girl was not only too young to die, but too young to marry, one would think; I wish therefore her afflicted husband had told us how many years he had been married to a wife who died at the age of fourteen, two months, and five days. The cornucopiæ, I suppose, were to signify that this virtuous wife, I was going to say maid, was the source of all his pleasure and happiness. The _Pateræ_ were vases destined to receive the blood of the victims. Supponunt alij cultros, tepidumque cruorem Suscipiunt Pateris,--_Says the Poet_. On each side of the tomb are the symbols of sacrifice. It is very evident from the fine polish of this monument, that her husband had obtained the Emperor's particular leave to finish it highly. Rogum _ascia ne Polito_ says the law of the twelve tables. On another tomb, which is of common stone, in the middle of a shield supported by two Cupids, is the following inscription: M IVNIO MESSIANO ----VTRICI. CORP. ARELAT. D EIVS D. CORP. MAG. III. F M QUI VIXIT ANN. XXVIII. M. V. D. X. IVNIA VALERIA. ALVMNO CLARISSIMO. The first word of the second line is much obliterated. There are an infinite number of other monuments with inscriptions; but those above, and this below, will be sufficient for me to convey to you, and you to my friend at _Winchester_. L DOMIT. DOMITIANI EX TRIERARCHI CLASS. GERM. D PECCOCEIA VALENTINA M CONIUGI PIENTISSIMA. Before I leave _Arles_, and I leave it reluctantly, whatever you may do, I must not omit to mention the principal monument, and pride of it, at this day, i.e. their Obelisque. I will not tell you where nor when it was dug up; it is sufficient to say, it was found here, that it is a single piece of granite, sixty-one feet high, and seven feet square below; yet it was elevated in the Market-place, upon a modern pedestal, which bears four fulsome complimentary inscriptions to _Lewis_ the XIV. neither of which will I copy. In elevating this monstrous single stone, the inhabitants were very adroit: they set it upright in a quarter of an hour, in the year 1676, just an hundred years ago, amidst an infinite number of joyful spectators, who are now all laid in their lowly graves; for though it weighed more than two thousand hundred weight, yet by the help of capsterns, it was raised without any difficulty. The great King _Harry_ the IVth had ordered the houses in the arena of the Amphitheatre to be thrown down, and this obelisk to be fixed in the center of it; but his death, and _Lewis_'s vanity, fixed it where it now stands; it has no beauty however to boast of but its age and size, for it bears neither polish, characters, nor hieroglyphicks, but, as it seems to have been an Egyptian monument, the inhabitants of _Arles_ have, like those people, consecrated it below to their King, and above to the sun: on the top is fixed a globe of azure, sprinkled with _fleurs de lis d'or_, and crowned with a radiant sun, that is to say, as the sun was made by GOD to enlighten the world, so LEWIS LE GRAND was made to govern it. I am sure now, you will excuse my mentioning what is said of this great man _below_; but speaking of light, I must not omit to mention, that there are men of veracity now living in this town, who affirm, that they have seen, upon opening some of the ancient monuments here, the eternal lamps burning. The number of testimonies we have of this kind puts the matter past a doubt, that a flame has appeared at the lip of these lamps when first the tombs have been opened; one was found, you know, on the _Appian_ way, in the tomb of _Cicero_'s daughter, which had burnt more than seventeen centuries; another at _Padua_, which had burnt eight hundred years, and which was found hanging between two little phials, one of gold, the other of silver, which were both quite full of liquor, extremely clear, as well as many others; but as it is impossible to believe that flame can exist, and not consume that which feeds it, is it not more natural to conclude that those lamps, phials, &c. contained a species of phosphorus, which became luminous upon the first opening of the tombs and the sudden rushing in of fresh air; and that the reverse of what is generally supposed is the fact, that they are not extinguished, but illuminated by the fresh air they receive? I have seen several of these lamps here and elsewhere, most of which are of baked earth. It has been said, that there is an oil to be extracted from gold, which will not consume, and that a wick of _asbestos_ has burnt many years in this oil, without consumption to either. I have seen a book written by a German Jesuit, to confirm this fact; so there is authority for you, if not conviction. As I know your keen appetite after antiquities, I will send you a few other inscriptions, and leave you to make your own comments; and _voila_. D M L. HOSTIL. TER. SILVANI. ANN. XXIIII. M. II. D. XV MATER FIL PIJSSIMI MISERA ET IN LVCIV. AETERNALI BENIFICI. O NOVERCAE. The following inscription is cut upon a marble column, which stands near the Jesuits' church: SALVIS D.D.N.N. THEODOSIO, ET VALENTINIANO. P.F.V. AC TRIVM. SEMPER AUG. XV. CONS. VIR. INL. AUXILIARIS PRÆ. PRÆT, GALLIA. DE ARELATE MA, MILLIARIA PONI. S. M.P.S. In the ancient church of _St. Honore_, which stands in the center of all these Heathen and Christian monuments, are to be seen nine Bacchanalians of very ancient workmanship; where also is the tomb of _St. Honore_, employed as the altar of the church; and beneath the church are catacombs, where the first Christians retired to prayer during the persecution by the Emperors, and where is still to be seen their altar and seven ancient sepulchres, of beautiful marble, and exquisitely worked; the first is the tomb of _St. Genet_; the second of _St. Roland_, Archbishop of _Arles_; the third of _St. Concord_, with an epitaph, and two doves with olive branches in their beaks, cut in bass relief, and underneath are the two letters X and P; on this tomb is the miraculous cross seen in the heavens by _Constantine_, who is represented before it on his knees; and on the cover of this tomb are the heads of _Constantine_, _Faustina_, and his son; and they say the Emperor saw this miracle in the heaven from the very _Cimetiere_ in which this monument stands, i.e. in the year 315; the fifth is the tomb of _St. Dorothy_, Virgin and Martyr of _Arles_; the sixth _St. Virgil_, and the seventh _St. Hiliare_, (both Archbishops of _Arles_,) who has borrowed a Pagan sepulchre, for it is adorned with the principal divinities of the ancients in bass relief.--It seems odd to see on a Christian Bishop's tomb _Venus_, and the three Destinies. The people here say, that this tomb represents human life, as the ancients believed that each God contributed something towards the being. Be that as it may, the tomb is a very curious one, and much admired by the _Connoisseurs_, for its excellent workmanship; but what is more extraordinary than all these, is, that this catacomb, standing in the middle of the others, with its cover well and closely fixed, has always water in it, and often is quite full, and nobody can tell (_but one of the priests perhaps_) from what source it comes. There is also in this church the tomb and a long Latin Epitaph of _St. Trophime_, their first Bishop; but the characters are very Gothic, and the Cs are square, [Image: E E with no mid bar]; he came here in the year 61, and preached down that abominable practice of sacrificing three young men annually. He died in the year 61, at 72 years of age. On the front of the Metropolitan church of _Arles_, called _St. Trophime_, are the two following lines, in Gothic characters, cut above a thousand years: Cernitur eximius vir Christi Discipulorum, De Numero Trophimus, hic Septuaginta duorum. This church was built in the year 625, by _St. Virgil_, and is a curious piece of antiquity within, and particularly without; but I will not omit to give you one of its singularities within; it is an ancient and curious inscription in large Gothic letters, near the organ: Terrarum Roma Gemina de luce majistrA. Ros Missus Semper Aderit: velut incola IoseP Olim Contrito Letheo Contulit OrchO. To read this you will see you must take the first letter of each verse: TRO, _Trophemus_; GAL, _Galliæorum_; and APO, _Apostolus_. The letter H, belonging to the word _Joseph_, must be carried to the word _Orcho_, and the P must stand by itself. _Trophimus Galliarum Apostolus, ut ros missus est, ex urbe Romæ rerum Dominæ Gemina de luce, scilicet a Petro et Paulo, Ecclesiæ luminaribus; Contrito orcho Letheo, nempe statim post Christi Passionem qua Dæmonis & orchi caput contrivit, semper animos nostras nutriet, cibo illo, divinæ fidei quem nobis contulit: ut alter Joseph qui olim Ægypti populum same pereuntem liberavit._ LETTER XXXVII. MARSEILLES. Soon after we left the town of _Arles_, on our way to _Aix_, and this city, we entered upon a most extraordinary and extensive plain; it is called the _Crau_, and is a principal and singular domain, belonging to and situated on the south side of that city; it is ten leagues in diameter; on which vast extent, scarce a tree, shrub, or verdure is visible; the whole spot being covered with flint stones of various sizes, and of singular shapes. _Petrarch_ says, as _Strabo_, and others have said before him, that those flint stones fell from Heaven like hail, when _Hercules_ was fighting there against the giants, who, finding he was likely to be overcome, invoked his father _Jupiter_, who rained this hard shower of flint stones upon his enemies, which is confirmed by _Æschylus_. "Jupiter Alcidem quando respexit inormem, Illachrymans, Ligures saxoso perpluit imbre." But as this account may not be quite satisfactory to you, who I know love truth more than fable, I am inclined to think you will consider _Possidonius_'s manner of accounting for it more feasible: He says, that it was once a great lake, and having a bed of gravel at the bottom, those pebble stones, by a succession of ages, have grown to the size they now appear; but whether stones grow which lie upon the surface of the earth and out of their proper strata, I must leave you and other naturalists to determine, without repeating to you what _Aristotle_, and others, have said upon that subject; and therefore, instead of telling you either what they say, or I think, I will tell you what I know, which is, that barren as the _Crau_ appears to be, it not only feeds, but fattens an infinite number of sheep and cattle, and produces such excellent wine too in some parts of it, that it is called _Vin de Crau_, by way of pre-eminence: it has a poignant quality, is very bright, and is much esteemed for its delicious flavour. The herb which fattens the sheep and feeds such quantities of cattle is a little plant which grows between and under the flint stones, which the sheep and other animals turn up with their feet, to come at the bite; beside which, there grows a plant on this _Crau_ that bears a vermilion flower, from which the finest scarlet dye is extracted; it is a little red grain, about the size of pea, and is gathered in the month of May; it has been sold for a crown a pound formerly; and a single crop has produced eleven thousand weight. This berry is the harvest of the poor, who are permitted to gather it on a certain day, but not till the Lord of the Manor gives notice by the sound of a horn, according to an ancient custom and privilege granted originally by King RENE.--On my way over it, I _gathered_ only a great number of large larks by the help of my gun, though I did not forget my _Montserrat_ vow: It was a fine day, and therefore I did not find it so tedious as it must be in winter or bad weather; for if any thing can be worse than sea, in bad weather, it must be this vast plain, which is neither land or sea, though not very distant from the latter, and in all probability was many ages since covered by the ocean. The first town we came to after passing this vast plain, I have forgot the name of; but it had nothing but its antiquity and a noble and immense old castle to recommend it, except a transparent agate statue of the Virgin in the church, as large as the life, with a _tin crown_ upon her head. Neither the town nor the inhabitants had any thing of the appearance of French about them; every thing and every body looked so wild, and the place was in such a ruinous condition, that I could scarce believe I was not among the Arabs in _Egypt_, or the ruins of _Persepolis_. Without the town, in a fine beautiful lawn stands a most irregular high and rude rock, perpendicular on all sides, and under one side of it are ruins of a house, which I suppose was inhabited by the first _Seigneur_ in the province. I looked in, and found the ruins full of miserable inhabitants, I fancy many families; but it exhibited such a scene of woe, that I was glad to get out again; and upon inquiry, I found it had been in that state ever since it had been used as an hospital during the last plague. LETTER XXXVIII. MARSEILLES. As the good and evil, which fall within the line of a road, as well as a worldly traveller, are by comparison, I need not say what a heavenly country _France_ (with all its untoward circumstances) appeared to us _after_ having journeyed in _Spain_: what would have put me out of temper before, became now a consolation. _How glad I should I have been, and how perfectly content, had it been thus in Spain_, was always uppermost, when things ran a little cross in France. Travellers and strangers in France, in a long journey perhaps, have no connection with any people, but such who have a design upon their purse. At every _Auberge_ some officious coxcomb lies in wait to ensnare them, and under one pretence or other, introduces himself; he will offer to shew you the town; if you accept it, you are saddled with an impertinent visiter the whole time you stay; if you refuse it, he is affronted; so let him; for no gentleman ever does that without an easy or natural introduction; and then, if they are men of a certain age, their acquaintance is agreeable and useful. An under-bred Frenchman is the most offensive civil thing in the world: a well-bred Frenchman, quite the reverse.--Having dined at the table of a person of fashion at _Aix_, a pert priest, one the company, asked me many questions relative to the customs and manners of the English nation; and among other things, I explained to him the elegance in which the tables of people of the first fashion were served; and told him, that when any one changed his dish, that his plate, knife and fork, were changed also, and that they were as perfectly bright and clean as the day they came from the silver-smith's shop. After a little pause, and a significant sneer,--Pray Sir, (said he) and do you not change your napkins also? I was piqued a little, and told him we did not, but that indeed I had made a little mistake, which I would rectify, which was, that though I had told him the plate, knife, and fork, were so frequently changed at genteel tables in England, there was one exception to it; for it sometimes happened that low under-bred priests (especially on a Sunday) were necessarily admitted to the tables of people of fashion, and that the butler sometimes left them to wipe their knife upon their bread, as I had often seen _Lewis_ the Fifteenth do, even after eating fish with it.--As it was on a Sunday I had met with this fop of divinity, at a genteel table, I thought I had been even with him, and I believe he thought so too, for he asked me no more questions; yet he assured me at his going out, "_he had the honour to be my most obedient humble servant_." This over-strained civility, so unlike good-breeding, puts me in mind of what was said of poor Sir WM. ST. Q----N, after his death, by an arch wag at _Bath_: Sir William, you know, was a polite old gentleman, but had the manners and breeding rather of the late, than the present age, and though a man deservedly esteemed for his many virtues, was by some thought too ceremonious. Somebody at the round table at _Morgan_'s Coffee-house happened to say, alas! poor Sir William! he is gone; but he was a good man, and is surely gone to Heaven, and I can tell you what he said when he first entered the holy gates! the interrogation followed of course: Why, said he, seeing a large concourse of departed souls, and not a soul that he knew, he bowed to the right and left, said he begged pardon,--he feared he was troublesome, and if so, he would instantly retire.--So the Frenchman, when he says he would cut himself in four pieces to serve you, only means to be very civil, and he will be so, if it does not put him to any expence. _Aix_ is a well built city; the principal street called the _Course_, is very long, very broad, and shaded by stately trees; in the middle of it are four or five fountains, constantly running, one of which is of very hot water, at which man and beast are constantly drinking. The city abounds with a great deal of good company, drawn to it from all parts of Europe by the efficacy of the waters, and to examine its antiquities, for it has in and about it many Greek as well as Roman monuments. Some part of the country between _Aix_ and this populous city is very beautiful, but near the town scarce any vegetation is seen; on all sides high hills and broken rocks present themselves; and one wonders how a city so large and so astonishingly populous is supported. When I first approached the entrance gate, it opened a perspective view of the _Course_, a street of great extent, where the heads of the people were so thick together, that I concluded it was a FAIR day, and that the whole country was collected together; but I found it was every day the same. I saw a prodigious quantity of game and provisions of all kinds, not only in the shops, but in the streets, and concluded it was not only a cheap, but a plentiful country; but I soon found my mistake, it was the evening before Lent commenced, and I could find no provisions of any kind very easily afterwards, and every thing very dear. You may imagine the price of provisions at _Marseilles_ when I tell you that they have their poultry from _Lyons_; it is however a noble city, crouded with men of all nations, walking in the streets in the proper habits of their country. The harbour is the most secure sea-port in Europe, being land-locked on all sides, except at a verry narrow entrance; and as there is very little rise or fall of water, the vessels are always afloat. Many of the galley slaves have little shops near the spot where the galleys are moored, and appear happy and decently dressed; some of them are rich, and make annual remittances to their friends. In the _Hotel de Ville_ are two fine large pictures, which were taken lately from the Jesuits' college; one represents the dreadful scenes which were seen in the _Grand Course_ during the great plague at _Marseilles_; the other, the same sad scene on the Quay, before the doors of the house in which it now hangs. A person cannot look upon these pictures one minute before he becomes enthralled in the woes which every way present themselves. You see the good Bishop confessing the sick, the carts carrying out the dead, children sucking at the breasts of their dead mothers, wives and husbands bewailing, dead bodies lowering out of the higher windows by cords, the slaves plundering, the Priests exhorting, and such a variety of interesting and afflicting scenes so forcibly struck out by the painter, that you seem to hear the groans, weepings, and bewailings, from the dying, the sick and the sound; and the eye and mind have no other repose on these pictures but by fixing it on a dead body. The painter, who was upon the spot, has introduced his own figure, but armed like a serjeant with a halberd. The pictures are indeed dreadfully fine; one is much larger than the other; and it is said the town Magistrates cut it to fit the place it is in; but it is impossible to believe any body of men could be guilty of such an act of _barbarism_! There is still standing in this town, the house of a Roman senator, now inhabited by a shoe-maker. In the cathedral they have a marble-stone, on which there is engraved, in Arabic characters, a monumental inscription to the following effect: "GOD is alone permanent. This is the Sepulchre of his servant and Martyr, who having placed his confidence in the Most High, he trusts that his sins will be forgiven." JOSEPH, son of ABDALLAH, of the town of _Metelin_, died in the moon _Zilhage_. I bought here an Egyptian household _God_, or _Lar_ of solid metal, which was lately dug up near the city walls; it is about nine inches high, and weighs about five pounds. Several of the hieroglyphic characters are visible on the breast and back, and its form is that of an embalmed mummy. By a wholesome law of this city, the richest citizen must be buried like the poorest, in a coffin of nine livres value, and that coffin must be bought at the general Hospital. The sale of these coffins for the dead, goes a great way towards the support of the poor and the sick. At this town I experienced the very reverse in every respect of what I met with at _Barcelona_, though I had no better recommendation to Mr. BIRBECK, his Britannick Majesty's Agent here, than I had to the Consul of _Barcelona_; he took my word, at first sight, nay, he took my notes and gave me money for them, and shewed me and my family many marks of friendly attention: Such a man, at such a distance from ones own country, is a cordial to a troubled breast, and an acquisition to every Englishman who goes there either for health or curiosity. Mr. _Birbeck_ took me with him to a noble Concert, to which he is an annual subscriber, and which was performed in a room in every respect suitable to so large a band, and so brilliant an assembly: He and his good wife were the only two British faces I had seen for many months, who looked like Britons. I shall, indeed I must, soon leave this town, and shall take _Avignon_ on my way to _Lyons_, from whence you shall soon hear from me again. I had forgot to mention, when I was speaking of _Montpellier_, that the first gentry are strongly impressed with the notion of the superiority of the English, in every part of philosophy, more especially in the science of physic; and I found at _Montpellier_, that these sentiments so favourable to our countrymen, had been much increased by the extraordinary knowledge and abilities of Dr. MILMAN, an English physician, who resided there during the winter 1775. This gentleman, who is one of Doctor RADCLIFFE'S travelling physicians, had performed several very astonishing cures, in cases which the French Physicians had long treated without success: And indeed the French physicians, however checked by interest or envy, were obliged to acknowledge this gentleman's uncommon sagacity in the treatment of diseases. What I say of this ingenious traveller, is for your sake more than his; for I know nothing more of him than the fame he has left behind him at _Montpellier_, and which I doubt not will soon be verified by his deeds among his own countrymen. LETTER XXXIX. AVIGNON. There is no dependence on what travellers say of different towns and places they have visited, and therefore you must not lay too much stress upon what I say. A Lady of fashion, who had travelled all over France, gave the preference to the town I wrote last to you from (_Marseilles_); to me, the climate excepted, it is of all others the most disagreeable; yet that Lady did not mean to deceive; but people often prefer the town for the sake of the company they find, or some particular or local circumstance that attended their residence in it; in that respect, I too left it reluctantly, having met with much civility and some old friends there; but surely, exclusive of its fine harbour, and favourable situation for trade, it has little else to recommend it, but riot, mob, and confusion; provisions are very dear, and not very good. On our road here we came again through _Aix_. The _Mule blanche_ without the town, is better than any auberge within, and Mons. _L'Abbe Abrard Prætor, de la ordre de St. Malta_, is not only a very agreeable, but a very convenient acquaintance for a stranger, and who is always ready to shew the English in particular, attention, and who had much attention shewn him by Lord A. PERCY and his Lady. From _Aix_ we passed through _Lambresque_, _Orgon_, and _Sencage_, a fine country, full of almond trees, and which were in full blossom on the 7th of March. At _Orgon_ the post-house was so bad, that after my horse was in the stable, I was obliged to put him to, and remove to the _Soleil d'Or_, without the town, and made a good move too. The situation of _Notre Dame de St. Piere_, a convent on a high hill, is worthy of notice, and the antiquity of the town also.--Five leagues from _Orgon_ we crossed a very aukward passage in a ferry-boat, and were landed in the Pope's territories, about five miles from _Avignon_. The castle, and higher part of the town, were visible, rising up in the middle of a vast plain, fertile and beautiful as possible. If we were charmed with the distant view, we were much more so upon a nearer approach; nothing can be more pleasing than the well-planted, and consequently well-shaded coach and foot roads all round this pretty little city; all shut in with the most beautiful ancient fortification walls I ever beheld, and all in perfect repair; nor were we asked any questions by the Pope's soldiers, or Custom-house Officers. I had a letter to Dr. POWER, an English Physician in this town, who received me with great civity, and made me known to LORD MOUNTGARRET, and Mr. BUTLER, his son, with whom I had the honour to spend some very agreeable hours: his Lordship has an excellent house here, and keeps a table, truly characteristic of the hospitality of his own country.--And now I cannot help telling you of a singular disorder which attacked me the very day I arrived; and the still more singular manner I got well: the day before I arrived, we had been almost blown along the road to _Orgon_ by a most violent wind; but I did not perceive that I had received any cold or injury from it, till we arrived here, and then, I had such an external soreness from head to foot, that I almost dreaded to walk or stir, and when I did, it was as slow as my feet could move; after continuing so for some days, I was much urged to dine with Lord MOUNTGARRET, on St. Patrick's day; I did so, and by drinking a little more than ordinary, set nature to work, who, without any other Doctor, did the business, by two or three nights' copious sweats. I would not have mentioned this circumstance, but it may be the _mal du pais_, and ought to be mentioned for the _method of cure_. There was not quite so good an understanding between the Pope's _Legate_ and the English residing here, as could be wished; some untoward circumstance had happened, and there seemed to be faults on both sides; it was carried, I think, to such a length, that when the English met him, they did not pull off their hats; but as it happened before I came, and as in our walks and rides we often met him airing in his coach, we paid that respect which is everywhere due to a first magistrate, and he took great pains to return it most graciously; his livery, guards, &c. make a very splendid appearance: he holds a court, and is levee'd every Sunday, though not liked by the French. At the church of St. _Didier_, in a little chapel, of mean workmanship, is the tomb of the celebrated _Laura_, whose name _Petrarch_ has rendered immortal; the general opinion is, that she died a virgin; but it appears by her tomb, that she was the wife of _Hugues de Sade_, and that she had many children. About two hundred years after her death, some curious people got permission to open her tomb, in which they found a little box, containing some verses written by _Petrarch_, and a medallion of lead, on one side of which was a Lady's head and on the reverse, the four following letters, M.L.M.E. _Francis_ the First, passing thro' _Avignon_, visited this tomb, and left upon it the following epitaph, of his own composition: "En petit lien compris vous pouvez voir Ce qui comprend beaucoup par renommèe Plume, labour le langue & le devoir Furent vaincus par l'aimant de l'aimée O gentille ame, etant tant estimée Qui le pourra louer quen se laissant? Car la parole est toujours reprimée Quand le sujet surmonte le disant." This town is crowded with convents and churches. The convent of the _Celestines_, founded by _Charles_ the VIth, is richly endowed, and has noble gardens: there are not above fourteen or fifteen members, and their revenue is near two thousand pounds sterling a year. In their church is a very superb monument of Pope _Clement_ the VIIth, who died here in the year 1394, as a long Latin inscription upon it announces. They shew in this house a picture, painted by King _Renee_; it represents the frightful remains of his beloved mistress, whose body he took out of the grave, and painted it in the state he then found it, i.e. with the worms crawling about it: it is a hideous figure, and hideously painted; the stone coffin stands on a line with the figure, but is above a foot too short for the body; and on the other side is a long scrole of verses, written in Gothic characters, which begin thus: "_Une fois fus sur toutes femmes belle Mais par la mort suis devenue telle Machair estoit tres-belle fraische & tendre O'r est elle toute tournee en cendre._" There follow at least forty other such lines. There is also in this convent, a fine monument, on which stands the effigies of _St. Benezet_, a shepherd of _Avignon_, who built (they say) the bridge from the town over the Rhone, in consequence of a dream, in the year 1127: some of the noble arches are still standing, and part of a very pretty chapel on it, nearly in the middle of the river; but a great part of the bridge has been carried away, many years since, by the violence of the river, which often not only overflows its banks, but the lower part of the town. In 1755, it rose seventeen feet higher than its usual flowing, and I saw marks in many of the streets, high above my head, against the sides of houses, which it had risen to; but with all my industry, I could find no _mark upon the house where Lady Mary Wortley Montagu dwelt_, though she resided some time here, and though I endeavoured to find it. I need not describe the celebrated fountain of _Vaucluse_, near this town, where _Petrarque_ composed his works, and established Mount Parnassus. This is the only part of France in which there is an Inquisition, but the Officers seem content with their profits and honours, without the power. One part of the town is allotted to the Jews, where about six or seven hundred live peaceably and have their synagogue; and it was here the famous rabbin _Joseph Meir_ was born; he died in the year 1554; he was author, you know, of _Annals des Rois de France_, and _de la Maison Ottomane_. Not far from _Avignon_, on the banks of the same rapid river, stands _Beaucaire_, famous for its annual FAIR, where merchandize is brought from all parts of Europe, free of all duties: it begins on the 22d of July; and it is computed that eight million of livres are annually expended there in eight days. _Avignon_ is remarkable for the No. Seven, having seven ports, seven parishes, seven colleges, seven hospitals, and seven monasteries; and I may add, I think, seven hundred bells, which are always making a horrid jingle, for they have no idea of ringing bells harmoniously in any part of France. LETTER XL. LYONS. After a month's residence at _Avignon_, where I waited till the weather and roads amongst the high _Dauphine_ mountains were both improved, I sat out for this city. I had, you know, outward bound, dropt down to _Port St. Esprit_ by water, so it was a new scene to us by land, and I assure you it was a fine one; the vast and extensive rich vales, adorned on all sides with such romantic mountains, could not be otherwise, in such a climate. Our first stage was only four leagues to _Orange_; this is the last town in the Pope's territories; and within a quarter of a mile of it stands, in a corn field, a beautiful Roman triumphal arch, so great in _ruins_, that it would be an ornament even in Rome. The _Palais Royal_ at this town, has nothing to recommend it, but that it affords a prospect of this rich morsel of antiquity. From _Orange_ we passed through _Pierlaite, Donzeir_, and several smaller towns, and we lay one night at a single house, but an excellent auberge, called _Souce_, kept by an understanding sensible host. At a little village called _A'tang_, on the banks of the Rhone, we stopped a day or two, to enjoy the sweet situation. Just opposite to it, on the other side of the river, stands a large town, (_Tournau_,) which added to the beauty of our village, over which hangs a very high mountain, from whence the best Hermitage wine is collected: I suppose it is called _Hermitage_, from a Hermit's cell on the top of it; but so unlike the _Montserrat_ Hermitages, that I contented myself with only tasting the Hermit's wine; it was so good indeed, that though I did not see how it was possible to get it safe to the north side of France, I could not withstand the temptation of buying a cask, for which I was to pay twelve guineas, and did pay one as earnest, to a very sensible, and I believe honest and opulent wine merchant, who, however, made me a present of two bottles when I came away, almost worth my guinea; it is three livres a bottle on the spot; and he shewed me orders he had received from men of fashion in England, for wine; among which was one from Mr. _Ryder_, Sir _Dudley Ryder_'s son I fancy, who, I found, was well satisfied with his former dealings. Do you know that Claret is greatly improved by a mixture of Hermitage, and that the best Claret we have in England is generally so _adulterated_? The next towns we passed were _Pevige_ and _Vienne_, the latter only five leagues from this city. It is a very ancient town, and was formerly a Roman colony. The cathedral is a large and noble Gothic structure, and in it is a fine tomb of Cardinal _Mountmoin_, said to be equal in workmanship to _Richlieu_'s in the _Sorbonne_, but said to be so, by people no ways qualified to judge properly; it is indeed an expensive but a miserable performance, when put in competition with the works of _Girrardeau_. About half a mile without the town is a noble pyramidal Roman monument, said to have stood in the center of the Market-place, in the time of the Romans. There is also to be seen in this town, a Mosaic pavement discovered only a few years since, wonderfully beautiful indeed, and near ten feet square, though not quite perfect, being broken in the night by some malicious people, out of mere wantonness, soon after it was discovered. At this town I was recommended to the _Table Round_; but as there are two, the _grande_ and the _petit_, I must recommend you to the _petit_ where I was obliged to move; for, of all the dreadful women I ever came near, Madam _Rousillion_ has the _least mellifluous_ notes; her ill behaviour, however, procured me the honour of a very agreeable acquaintance, the _Marquis DeValan_, who made me ashamed, by shewing us an attention we had no right to expect; but this is one, among many other agreeable circumstances, which attend strangers travelling in France. French gentlemen never see strangers ill treated, without standing forth in their defence; and I hope English gentlemen will follow their example, because it is a piece of justice due to strangers, in whatever country they are, or whatever country they are from; it is doing as one would be done by. That prejudice which prevails in England, even among some people of fashion, against the French nation is illiberal, in the highest degree; nay, it is more, it is a national disgrace.--When I recollect with what ease and uninterruption I have passed through so many great and little towns, and extensive provinces, without a symptom of wanton rudeness being offered me, I blush to think how a Frenchman, if he made no better figure than I did, would have been treated in a tour through Britain.--My Monkey, with a pair of French jack boots, and his hair _en queue_, rode postillion upon my sturdy horse some hours every day; such a sight, you may be sure, brought forth old and young, sick and lame, to look at him and his master. _Jocko_ put whole towns in motion, but never brought any affront on his master; they came to look and to laugh, but not to deride or insult. The post-boys, it is true, did not like to see their fraternity _taken off_, in my _little Theatre_; but they seldom discovered it, but by a grave salutation; and sometimes a good humoured fellow called him comrade, and made _Jocko_ a bow; they could not laugh at his bad seat, for not one of them rode with more ease; or had a handsomer laced jacket. Mr. _Buffon_ says, the Monkey or _Maggot_, (and mine is the latter, for he has no tail) make their grimace or chattering equally to shew their anger or to make known their appetite. With all due deference to this great naturalist, I must beg leave to say, that his observation is not quite just; there is as much difference between the grimace of my _Jocko_, when he is angry or hungry, and when he grins to shew delight, as there is in a man, when he gnashes his teeth in wrath, or laughs from mirth. Between _Avignon_ and this town I met a dancing bear, mounted by a _Maggot_: as it was upon the high road, I desired leave to present _Jocko_ to his grandfather, for so he appeared both in age and size; the interview, though they were both males, was very affecting; never did a father receive a long-lost child with more seeming affection than the _old gentleman_ did my _Jocko_; he embraced him with every degree of tenderness imaginable, while the _young gentleman_ (like other young gentlemen of the present age) betrayed a perfect indifference. In my conscience I believe it, there was some consanguinity between them, or the reception would have proved more mutual. Between you and me, I fear, were I to return to England, I might find myself a sad party in such an interview. It is a sad reflection; but perhaps Providence may wisely ordain such things, in order as men grow older, to wean them from the objects of their worldly affections, that they may resign more readily to the decree of fate. That good man, Dr. ARBUTHNOT, did not seem to dread the approach of death on his own account, so much as from the grievous affliction HE had reason to fear it would bring upon his children and family. LETTER XLI. LYONS, _The Harangue of the_ Emperor CLAUDIUS, _in the_ SENATE. _Copied from the original Bronze plate in the Hotel de Ville, of_ Lyons. FIRST TABLE. MOERERUM . NOSTR ::::: SII ::::::::: Equidem · primam · omnium · illam · cogitationem · hominum · quam · maxime · primam · occursuram · mihi · provideo · deprecor · ne · quasi · novam · istam · rem · introduci · exhorrescatis · sed · illa · potius · cogitetis · quam · multa · in · hac · civitate · novata · sint · et · quidem · statim · ab · origine · vrbis · nostræ · in · quod · formas · statusque · res · P · nostra · diducta · sit. Quandam · reges · hanc · tenuere · vrbem · nec tamen · domesticis · successoribus · eam · tradere · contigit · supervenere · alieni · et · quidam · externi · vt · Numa · Romulo · successerit · ex. Sabinis · veniens · vicinus · quidem · se · tunc. Sed · tunc · externus · ut · Anco · Marcio · Priscus · Tarquinius · propter · temeratum · sanguinem · quod · Patre · Demaratho · Corinthio · natus · erat · et · Tarquiniensi · Matre · generoso · sed · inopi · ut · quæ · tali · marito · necesse · habuerit · succumbere · cum · domi · repelleretur. A · gerendis · honoribus · postquam · Roman · migravit · regnum · adeptus · est · huic · quoque · et · filio · nepotive · ejus · nam · et · hoc · inter · auctores · discrepat · insertus · Servius · Tullius · si · nostros · sequimur · captiva · natus · ocresia · si · tuscos · coeli · quandam · vivennæ · sodalis · fidelissimus · omnisque · ejus · casus · comes · post · quam · varia · fortuna · exactus · cum · omnibus · reliquis · cæliani · exercitus · Etruria · excepit · mentem · cælium · occupavit · et · a · duce · suo · cælio · ita · appellitatus · mutatoque · nomine · nam · Tusce · mostrana · ei · nomen · erat · ita · appellatus · est · ut · dixi · et · regnum · summa · cum · rei · p · utilitate · optinuit · deinde · postquam · Tarquini · superbi · mores · invisi · civitati · nostræ · esse · coeperunt · qua · ipsius · qua · filiorum · ejus · nempe · pertæsum · est · mentes · regni · et · ad·consules. Annuos · magistratus · administratio · rei · p · translata · est · quid · nunc · commemorem · dictatu · valentius · repertum · apud · majores · nostros · quo · in · asperioribus · bellis · aut · in · civili · motu · difficiliore · uterentur · aut · in · auxilium · plebis · creatos · tribunos · plebei · quid · a · latum · imperium · solutoque · postea · Decemvirali · regno · ad · consules · rursus · reditum · quid · indecoris · distributum · consulare · imperium · tribunosque · militum · consulari · imperio · appellatos · qui · seni · et · sæpe · octoni · crearentur · quid · communicatos · postremo · cum · plebe · honores · non · imperi · solum · sed · sacerdotiorum · quoque · jam · si · narrem · bella p · quibus · coeperint · majores · nostri · et · quo · processerimus · vereor · ne · nimio · insolentior · esse · videar · et · quæsisse · jactationem · gloria · prolati · imperi · ultra · oceanum · sed · illoc · potius · revertor · civitatem. SECOND TABLE. :::::::::::::::::: SANE ::: NOVO :: DIVVS :: AUG ::: LVS. et · Patruus · Ti · Cæsar · omnem · florem · ubisque · coloniarum · ac · municipiorum · bonorum · scilicet · virorum · et · locupletium · in · hac curia · esse · voluit · quid · ergo · non · Italicus · senator · Provinciali · potior · est · jam · vobis · cum · hanc · partem · censuræ · meæ · ad · probare · coepero · quid · de · ea · re · sentiam · rebus · ostendam · sed · ne · provinciales · quidem · si · modo · ornare · curiam · poterint · rejiciendos · puto. Ornatissimæ · ecce · colonia · volentissimaque Viennensium · quam · longo · jam · tempore · senatores · huic · curiæ · confert · ex · qua · colonia · inter · paucas · equestris · ordinis · ornamentum L · vestinum · familiarissime · diligo · et · hodieque · in · rebus · meis · detineo · cujus · liberi · tiorum · gradu · post · modo · cum · annis · promoturi · dignitatis · suæ · incrementa · ut · dirum · nomen · latronis · taceam · et · odi · illud · palæstricum · prodigium · quod · ante · in · domum · consulatum · intulit · quam · colonia · sua · solidum civitatis · Romanæ · beneficium · consecuta · est idem · de · patre · ejus · possum · dicere · miserabili · quidem · invtilis · senator · esse · non · possit tempus · est · jam · ri · CÆSAR · Germanice · detegere · te · patribus · conscriptis · quo · tendat · oratio · tua · jam · enim · ad · extremos · fines · Galliæ · Narbonensis · venisti. Tot · ecce · insignes · juvenes · quot · intuetor · non · magis · sunt · poenitendi · senatores · quam · ænitet · Persicum · nobilissimum · virum · amicum · meum · inter · imagines · majorum · suorum · Allobrogici · nomen · legere · quod · SL · hæc · ita · esse · consentitis · quid · ultra · desideratis · quam · ut · vobis · digito · demonstrem · solum · ipsum · ultra · fines · provinciæ · Narbonensis · jam · vobis · senatores · mittere · quando · ex · Luguduno · habere · nos · nostri · ordinis · viros · non · poenitet · timide · quidem · P · C · vobis · provinciarum · terminos · sum · sed · destricte · jam · comatæ · Galliæ · causa · argenda · est · in · qua · si · quis · hoc · intuetur · quod · bello · per · decem · anno · exercuerunt · divom · Julium · diem · opponat · centum · armorum · immobilem · fidem · obsequiumque · multis · trepidis · rebus · nostris · plusquam · expertum · illi · patri · meo · druso · Germaniam · subi · genti · tutam · quiete · sua · securamque · a · tergo · pacem · præstiterunt · et · quidem · cum · AD · census · novo · tum · opere · et in · adsueto · gallis · ad · bellum · avocatus · esset · quod · opus · quam · arduum · sit · nobis · nunc · maxime · quam · vis · nihil · ultra · quam · ut · publice · notæ · sint · facultates · nostræ · exquiratur · nimis · magno · experimento · cognoscimus. The above harangue, made by CLAUDIUS, in favor of the LYONOISE, and which he pronounced in the Senate, is the only remains of the works of this Emperor, though he composed many. _Suetonius_ says he composed forty-three books of a history, and left eight compleat of his own life; and adds, that he wrote more elegantly than judiciously. LETTER XLII. LYONS. I have now spent a month in my second visit to this great and flourishing city, and fortunately took lodgings in a _Hotel_, where I found the lady and sister of _Mons. Le Marquis De Valan_, whose politeness to us I mentioned in a former letter at _Vienne_, and by whose favour I have had an opportunity of seeing more, and being better informed, than I could have been without so respectable an acquaintance. At _Vienne_ I only knew his rank, here I became acquainted with his good character, and fortune, which is very considerable in _Dauphine_, where he has two or three fine seats. His Lady came to _Lyons_ to lye-in, attended by the Marquis's sister, a _Chanoinesse_, a most agreeable sensible woman, of a certain age; but the Countess is young and beautiful. You may imagine that, after what I said of _Lyons_, on my way _to_ Spain, I did not associate much with my own country-folks. On my return, indeed, my principal amusement was to see as much as I could, in a town where so much is to be seen; and in relating to you what I have seen, I will begin with the _Hotel De Ville_; if it had not that name, I should have called it a Palace, for there are few palaces so large or so noble; on the first entrance of which, in the vestibule, you see, fixed in the wall, a large plate of Bronze, bearing stronger marks of fire than of age; on which were engraven, seventeen hundred years ago, two harangues made by the Emperor _Claudius_ in the senate, in favour of the _Lyonoise_, and which are not only legible at this day, but all the letters are sharp and well executed; the plate indeed is broke quite through the middle, but fortunately the fraction runs between the first and second harangues, so as to have done but little injury among the the letters. As I do not know whether you ever saw a copy of it, I inclose it to you, and desire you will send it as an agreeable exercise, to be well translated by my friend at Oxford. On the other side of the vestibule is a noble stair-case, on which is well painted the destruction of the city, by so dreadful a fire in the time of the Romans, that _Seneca_, who gives an account of it in a letter to his friend, says, "_Una nox fuit inter urbem maximam et nullum._" i.e. One night only intervened between a great city and nothing. There is something awful in this scene, to see on one side of the stair-case the conflagration well executed; on the other, strong marks of the very fire which burnt so many ages ago; for there can be no doubt, but that the Bronze plate then stood in the _Roman Hotel de Ville_, and was burnt down with it, because it was dug up among the refuse of the old city on the mountain called _Fourvire_, on the other side of the river, where the original city was built.--In cutting the letters on this large plate of Bronze, they have, to gain room, made no distance between the words, but shewn the division only by a little touch thus < with the graver; and where a word eroded with a C, or G, they have put the touch within the concavity of the letter, otherwise it is admirably well executed. Upon entering into the long gallery above stairs, you are shewn the late King and Queen's pictures at full length, surrounded with the heads of some hundred citizens; and in one corner of the room an ancient altar, the _Taurabolium_, dug up in 1704, near the same place where _Claudius's_ harangue was found; it is of common stone, well executed, about four feet high, and one foot and a half square; on the front of it is the bull's head, in demi relief, adorned with a garland of corn; on the right side is the _victimary_ knife[A] of a very singular form; and on the left the head of a ram, adorned as the bull's; near the point of the knife are the following words, _cujus factum est_; the top of the altar is hollowed out into the form of a shallow bason, in which, I suppose, incense was burnt and part of the victims. [A] The knife, which is cut in demi relief, on the _Taurobolium_, is crooked upon the back, exactly in the same manner, and form, as may be seen on some of the medals of the Kings of Macedonia. The Latin inscription under the bull's head, is very well cut, and very legible, by which it appears, that by the express order of CYBELE, the reputed mother of the Gods, for the honour and health of the Emperor _Antoninus Pius_, father of his country, and for the preservation of his children, children, _Lucius Æmilius Carpus_[B] received the horns of the bull, by the ministration of _Quintus Samius Secundus_, transported them to the Vatican, and consecrated, at his own expence, this altar and the head of the bull[C]; but I will send the inscription, and a model[D] of the altar, as soon as I can have it made, as I find here a very ingenious sculptor and modeller; who, to my great serprize, says no one has hitherto been taken from it. And here let me observe, lest I forget it, to say, that _Augustus_ lived three years in this city. [B] _Lucius Æmilius Carpus_ was a Priest, and a man of great riches: he was of the quality of _Sacrovir_, and probably one of the six Priests of the temple of Angustus.--_Sextumvir Augustalii_. [C] Several inscriptions of this kind have been found both in Italy and Spain, but by far the greater number among the Gauls; and as the sacrifices to the Goddess Cybele were some of the least ancient of the Pagan rites, so they were the last which were suppressed on the establishment of Christianity. Since we find one of the Taurobolian inscriptions, with so recent a date as the time of the Emperor Valentinian the third. The silence of the Heathen writers on this head is very wonderful; for the only one who makes any mention of them is Julius Firmicus Maternus, in his dissertation on the errors of the Pagan religion; as Dalenius, in his elaborate account of the Taurobolium, has remarked. The ceremony of the consecration of the High Priest of Cybele, which many learned men have mistaken for the consecration of the Roman Pontifex Maximus; which dignity, from the very earliest infancy of the Roman Empire, was always annexed to that of the Emperor himself. The Priests who had the direction of the Taurobola, wore the same vestments without washing out the bloody stains, as long as they would hold together. By these rites and baptisms by blood, they thought themselves, as it were re-born to a life eternal. Sextilius Agefilaus Ædesius says, that he was born a-new, to life eternal, by means of the Taurobolium and Criobolium. Nor were the priests alone initiated in this manner, but also others, who were not of that order; in particular cases the regenerations were only promised for twenty years. Besides the Taurobolia and Criobolia, which were erected at the expence of whole cities and provinces, there were others also, which were founded by the bounty of private people. We often meet with the names of magistrates and priests of other Gods, who were admitted into these mysteries, and who erected Taurobolia as offerings for the safety of the Emperor, or their own. The rites of the Taurobolia lasted sometimes many days. The inscription, on the Taurobolium, which is on the same side with the head of the bull, we have endeavoured to explain by filling up the abbreviations which are met with in the Roman character. TAUROBOLIO MATRIS DEUM MAGNÆ IDÆÆ QUOD FACTUM EST EX IMPERIO MATRIS IDÆÆ DEUM PRO SALUTE IMPERATORIS CÆSARIS TITI ÆLII ADRIANI ANTONINI AUGUSTI PII PATRIS PATRIÆ LIBERORUMQUE EJUS ET STATUS COLONIÆ LUGDUNENSIS LUCIUS ÆMILIUS CARPUS SEXTUMVIR AUGUSTALIS ITEM DENDROPHORUS VIRES EXCEPIT ET A VATICANO TRANSTULIT ARAM ET BUCRANIUM SUO IMPENDIO CONSECRAVIT SACERDOTE QUINTO SAMMIO SECUNDO AB QUINDECEMVIRIS OCCABO ET CORONA EXORNATO CUI SANCTISSIMUS ORDO LUGDUNENSIS PERPETUITATEM SACERDOTIS DECREVIT APPIO ANNIA ATILO BRADUA TITO CLODIO VIBIO VARO CONSULIBUS LOCUS DATUS DICRETO DECURIONUM. [D] _The Model is now in the possession of the ingenious_ Dr. HARRINGTON _at Bath_. The _Taurobolium_ was one of the great mysteries, you know, of the Roman religion, in the observance of which, I think, they dug a large hole in the earth, and covered it with planks, laid at certain distances, so as to give light into the subterranean temple. The person who was to receive the _Taurobolio_ then descended into the theatre, and received on his head and whole body, the smoaking hot blood of the bull, which was there sacrificed for that purpose. If a single bull was only sacrificed, I think they call it a simple _Taurabolio_, if a ram was added to it, as was sometimes done, it was then called a _Torobolia_, and _Criobolio_; sometimes too, I believe a goat was also slain. After all the blood of the victim animals was discharged, the Priests and Cybils retired beneath the theatre, and he who had received the bloody sacrifice, came forth and exposed himself, besmeared with blood, to the people, who all prostrated themselves before him, with reverential awe, as one who was thereby particularly sanctified, and whose person ought to be regarded with the highest veneration, and looked upon with holy horror; nor did this sanctification, I think, end with the ceremony, but rendered the person of the sanctified holy for twenty years. An inscription cited by _Gruter_, seems to confirm this matter, who, after speaking of one _Nepius Egnatius Faventinus_, who lived in the year of Christ 176, says, _"Percepto Taurobolio Criobolioque feliciter,_" Concludes with these words, _"Vota Faventinus bis deni suscipit orbis, Ut mactet repetens aurata fronte bicornes._" The _bis denus orbis_ seems to imply, the space of twice ten years. And here I cannot help making a little comparison between the honours paid by the Roman citizens to their Emperors, and those of the present times to the Princes of the Blood Royal. You must know that the present King's brother, came to _Lyons_ in the year 1775, and thus it is recorded in letters of gold upon their quay: LOUIS XVI. REGNANT. EN MEMOIRE DE L'HEUREUX JOUR CINQ. SEPTEMBRE M,DCC,LXXV. OU MONSIEUR FRERE DU ROI ET MADAME SONT ARRIVES EN CETTE VILLE CE QUAI DE L'AGREMENT DU PRINCE ET PAR ORDONNANCE DU CONSULAT DU DOUZE DU MEME MOIS A ETE NOMME A PERPETUITE QUAI MONSIEUR. If the _Bourgeoise_ of _Lyons_, however, are not men of genius, they are ingenious men, and they have a most delightful country to dwell in. I think I may say, that from the high hills which hang about this city, and taking in the rivers, fertile vales, rude rocks, vine-yards, and country seats, far and near, that _Lyons_ and its environs, afford a greater variety of natural and artificial beauties, than any spot in Europe. It is, however, by no means a place for the winter residence of a stranger. Most of the natives advanced in years, were carried off last winter. The surly winds which come down the Rhone, with impetuous blasts, are very disagreeable and dangerous. I found the cold intolerable in the beginning of May, out of the sunshine, and the sun intolerable in it. In England I never wore but one under waistcoat; in Spain, and in the south of France, I found two necessary. The Spaniards wear long cloaks, and we laugh at them; but the laugh would come more properly from them. There is in those climates a _vifness_ in the air that penetrates through and through; and I am sure that such who travel to the southward for the recovery of their health, ought to be ten times more upon their guard, to be well secured against the keen blasts the south of France, than even against an easterly wind in England. The disorder which carried off so many last winter at _Lyons_, was called the Gripe. In a large hotel only one person escaped it, an English Lady. They called it the _Gripe_, from the fast hold it took of the person it seized; nor did it let them go till April. On my way here, I found it sometimes extremely hot; it is now the first of May, and I am shaking by the side of a good fire, and have had one constantly every day for this fortnight. LETTER XLIII. LYONS. The _Lyonoise_ think their town was particularly honoured by the _Taurobolium_; but it was a common practice to offer that sacrifice not only for the Emperor's health, but for the preservation of a city. There are two of these altars in the town of _Letoure_; one consecrated for the preservation of the Emperor _Gordian_, on which is the following inscription: PRO SALVTE IMP. ANTONINI GORDIANO PII FEL. AVG. TOTIVSQVE DOMVS DIVINÆ PROQVE STATV CIVIT. LACTOR TOROPOLIVM FECIT ORDO LACTOR D.N. GORDIANO II ET POMPLIANO COS VI ID DEC CVRANTIS M EROTIO ET FESTO CANINIS SACERD. And in a little village near _Marseilles_, called _Pennes_, there is a stone, on which is engraven, MATRI DEVM MAGNÆ IDEÆ And on another, in the same town, MATRI DEVM TAVROPOLIVM. I must not omit to give you a copy of a singular inscription on the tomb of a mint-master which was found in _Lyons_, and is preserved entire: NOBILIS TIB. CÆSARIUS AVG. SER ÆQ. MONET HIC AD QVI LOCIT JVLIA ADEPTA CONJUNX ET PERPETUA FILIA D.S.D. The most ancient money which has been found in and about this city, is the little coin of _Mark Antony_; on one side of which is represented the Triumvirate; on the other, a Lion, with the word _Lugudani_ under it; on each side of the Lion are the letters A and XL. The antiquarians here think those letters marked the value of the piece, and that it was about forty _sous_; but is it not more probable, that this was only the mint-master's touch? Nothing can be a stronger proof of the importance of this city in the time of the Romans, than the immense expence they were at in erecting such a number of grand aquæducts, one of which was eighteen leagues in length; many parts of them are still visible; and it appears that they spent for the reparation of them at _one_ time, near one thousand talents; and here it was that the four grand Roman highways divided; one of which went directly to the sea, and another to the _Pyrenees_. _Agrippa_, who was the constructor of most of these noble monuments of Roman grandeur, would not permit the _Lyonoise_ to erect any monument among them to his memory; and yet, his memory is, in a very particular manner, preserved to this day in the very heart of the city, for in the front of a house on the quay _de Villeroy_, is a medallion of baked earth, which, I think, perfectly resembles him; sure I am it is an unquestionable antique; it is a little disfigured indeed, and disgraced by his name being written upon it in modern characters. But there is another monument of _Agrippa_ here; it is part of the epitaph of an officer or soldier of the third cohort, whose duty it was to take an account of the expence of each day for the subsistence of the troops employed to work on the high-ways, and this officer was called _A. Rationibus Agrippæ_. There are an infinite number of Roman inscriptions preserved at _Lyons_, among which is the following singular one: DIIS INIQVIS QUI ANIMVLAM TVAM RAPVERVNT. I have already told you of a modern monument erected by the _Lyonoise_, and now, with grief and concern, I must tell you of an ancient one which they have demolished! it was a most beautiful structure, called the tomb of the Two Lovers; that, however, was a mistake; it was the tomb of a brother and sister named _Amandas_, or _Amans_, for near where it stood was lately found the following monumental inscription: D M ET MEMORIAE ÆTERNÆ OLIÆ TRIBVTÆ FEMINÆ SANCTISSIME ARVESCIVS AMANDVS FRATER SORORI KARISSMÆ SIBIQVE AMANTISSIMÆ P.C. ET SVB OSCIA DEDICAVIT. I have seen a beautiful drawing of this fine monument, which stood near the high road, a little without the town; the barbarian _Bourgeoises_ threw it down about seventy years ago, to search for treasure. But enough of antiquities; and therefore I will tell you truly my sentiments with respect to the south of France, which is, that _Lyons_ is quite southward enough for an Englishman, who will, if he goes farther, have many wants which cannot be supplied. After quitting _Lyons_, he will find neither good butter, milk, or cream. At _Lyons_, every thing, which man can wish for, is in perfection; it is indeed a rich, noble, and plentiful town, abounding with every thing that is good, and more _finery_ than even in _Paris_ itself. They have a good theatre, and some tolerable actors; among whom is the handsomest Frenchman I ever beheld, and, a little stiffness excepted, a good actor. Any young gentleman traveller, particularly _of the English nation_, who is desirous of _replenishing his purse_, cannot, even in _Paris_, find more convenient occasions to throw himself in _fortune's way_, than at the city of _Lyons_. An English Lady, and two or three gentlemen, have lately been so _fortunate there_, as to find lodgings _at a great Hotel_, gratis; and I desire you will particularly _recommend a long stay at_ Lyons _to my Oxonian friend_; where he may _see the world_ without looking out at a window. LETTER XLIV. I find I omitted to give you before I left _Nismes_, some account of Monsieur _Seguier_'s cabinet, a gentleman whose name I have before mentioned, and whose conversation and company were so very agreeable to me. Among an infinite number of natural and artificial curiosities, are many ancient Roman inscriptions, one of which is that of _T. Julius Festus_, which _Spon_ mentions in his _Melanges D'Antiquite_. There are also a great number of Roman utensils of bronze, glass, and earthen-ware. The Romans were well acquainted with the dangerous consequences of using copper vessels[E] in their kitchens, as may be seen in this collection, where there are a great many for that purpose; but all strongly gilt, not only within, but without, to prevent a possibility of _verdigris_ arising. There is also a bronze head of a Colossal statue, found not many years since near the fountain of _Nismes_, which merits particular attention, as well as a great number of Roman and Greek medals and medallions, well preserved, and some which are very rare. The natural curiosities are chiefly composed of fossils and petrifications; among the latter, are an infinite number of petrified fish _embalmed_ in solid stones; and where one sees the finest membranes of the fins, and every part of the fish, delineated by the pencil of nature, in the most exquisite manner; the greater part of these petrifications were collected by the hands of the possessor, some from _Mount Bola_, others from _Mount Liban_, _Switzerland_, _&c._ [E] See Dr. FALCONER, of _Bath_, his Treatise on this subject. Mr. _Seguier_'s _Herbary_ consists of more than ten thousand plants; but above all, Mr. _Seguier_ himself, is the first, and most valuable part of his cabinet, having spent a long life in rational amusements; and though turned of four-score, he has all the chearfulness of youth, without any of the garrulity of old age. When he honoured me with a visit, at my country lodgings, he came on foot, and as the waters were out, I asked him how he _got at me_, so dry footed? He had walked upon the wall, he said; a wall not above nine inches thick, and of a considerable length! And here let me observe that a Frenchman eats his _soup_ and _bouille_ at twelve o'clock, drinks only _with_, not _after_ his dinner, and then mixes water with his _genuine_ wine; he lives in a fine climate, where there is not as with us, for six weeks together, easterly winds, which stop the pores, and obstruct perspiration. A Frenchman eats a great deal, it is true, but it is not all _hard meat_, and they never sit and drink after dinner or supper is over.--An Englishman, on the contrary, drinks much stronger, and a variety of fermented liquors, and often much worse, and sits _at it_ many hours after dinner, and always after supper. How then can he expect such health, such spirits, and to enjoy a long life, free from pain, as most Frenchmen do; When the negro servants in the West-Indies find their masters call _after_ dinner for a bowl of punch extraordinary they whisper them, (if company are present) and ask, "_whether they drink for drunk_, or _drink for dry_?" A Frenchman never drinks for _drunk_.--While the Englishman is earning disease and misery at his bottle, the Frenchman is embroidering a gown, or knitting a handkerchief for his mistress. I have seen a Lady's sacque finely _tamboured_ by a Captain of horse, and a Lady's white bosom shewn through mashes netted by the man who made the snare, in which he was himself entangled; though he made it he did not perhaps know the powers of it till she _set it_. LETTER XLV. I write to you just as things come into my head, having taken very few notes, and those, as you must perceive, often without much regard to _unison_ or _time_. It has this minute occurred to me, that I omitted to tell you on my journey onwards, that I visited a little town in _Picardie_, called _Ham_, where there is so strong a castle, that it may be called a _petit Bastile_, and which was then and still is, full of state prisoners and debtors. To this castle there is a monstrous tower, the walls of which are thirty six feet thick, and the height and circumference are proportionable thereto; it was built by the _Conetable de St. Paul_, in order to shut up his master, _Charles_ the VIth, King of France, and contemporary, I think, with our _Henry_ the Vth; but such are the extraordinary turns of all human affairs, that _Mons. le Conetable_ was shut up in it himself many years, and ended his days there.--The fate of this constable brings to my mind a circumstance that happened under my _administration_, at _Land-Guard Fort_, when the King was pleased to trust me with the command of it. I had not been twenty-four hours in possession of what I thought a small sovereignty, before I received a letter in the following terms: "SIR, Having observed horses grazing on the covered way, that _hath_ done apparent damage, and may do more, I think it my duty to inform you, that his Majesty does not permit horses to feed thereon, &c. &c. (Signed) "ANTHONY GOODE, Overseer of the Works." I never was more surprized, than to find my wings were to be thus clipt, by a civil officer of the board of ordnance; however wrong I or my horses had acted, I could not let Mr. GOODE _graze_ so closely upon my authority, without a reprimand; I therefore wrote him an answer in terms as follow: "that having seen a fat impudent-looking strutting fellow about the garrison, it was my order that when his duty led him to communicate any thing to me relative to the works thereof, that he came himself, instead of writing impertinent letters." Mr. _Goode_ sent a copy of his letter and mine to Sir _Charles Frederick_; and the post following, he received from the Office of Ordnance, several printed papers in the King's name, forbidding horses grazing on the WORKS, and _ordering Mr. Goode_ to nail those orders up in different parts of the garrison! but as I had not then learnt that either he, or his _red ribband master_, had any authority to give out, even the King's orders, in a garrison I commanded, but through my hands, I took the liberty, while Mr. _Goode_ and his assistant-son were nailing one up _opposite to my parlour window_, to send for a file of men and put them both into the Black-hold, an apartment Mr. _Goode_ had himself built, being a Master-Mason. By the time he had been ten minutes _grazing_ under this _covered way_, he sent me a message, that he was _asthmatic_, that the place was too close, and that if he died within a _year and a day_, I must be deemed accessary to his death. But as I thought Mr. _Goode_ should have considered, that some of the poor invalids too might now and then be as subject to the asthma as he, it was a proper punishment, and I kept him there till he knew the duty of a soldier, as well as that of a mason; and as I would _his betters_, had they come down and ventured to have given out orders in a garrison under my command; but instead of getting me punished as a _certain gentleman_ aimed at, that able General _Lord Ligonier_ approved my conduct, and removed the man to another garrison, and would have dismissed him the ordnance service, had I not become a petitioner in his favour; for he was too fat and old to work, too proud and arrogant to beg, and he and _his advisers_ too contemptible to be angry with.--But I must return to the castle of _Ham_, to tell you what a dreadful black-hold there is in that tower; it is a trap called by the French _des Obliettes_, of so horrible a contrivance, that when the prisoners are to suffer in it, the mechanical powers are so constructed, as to render it impossible to be again opened, nor would it signify, but to see the body _molue_, i.e. ground to pieces. There were formerly two or three _Obliettes_ in this castle; one only now remains; but there are still several in the _Bastile_.--When a criminal suffers this frightful death, (for perhaps it is not very painful) he has no previous notice, but being led into the apartment, is overwhelmed in an instant. It is to be presumed, however, that none but criminals guilty of high crimes, suffer in this manner; for the state prisoners in the _Bastile_ are not only well lodged, but liberal tables are kept for them. An Irish officer was lately enlarged from the _Bastile_, who had been twenty-seven years confined there; and though he found a great sum of money in the place he had concealed it in a little before his confinement, he told Colonel C----, of Fitz-James's regiment, that "having out-lived his acquaintance with the world, as well as with men, he would willingly return there again." At _Ham_ the prisoners for debt are quite separated from the state prisoners; the latter are in the castle, the former in the tower. The death of _Lewis_ the XVth gave liberty to an infinite number of unhappy people, and to many who would have been enlarged before, but had been forgotten. When one of these unhappy people (a woman of fashion) was told she might go out; then, (said she) I am sure _Lewis_ the XVth is dead; an event she knew nothing of, tho' it was a full year after the King's death.--Things are otherwise conducted now than in his reign; a wicked vain woman then commanded with unlimited power, both in war and domestic concerns. In this reign, there are able, and I believe virtuous ministers. I suppose you think as I did, that Madame _Pompadour_ governed by her own powerful charms; but that was not the case; she governed as many other women do, by borrowed charms; she had a correspondence all over the kingdom, and offices of intelligence, where _youth_, _beauty_, and _innocence_, were registered, which were sent to her according to order; upon the arrival of the _goods_, they were dressed, and trained for _use_, under her inspection, till they were fit to be _shewn up_. She had no regard to birth, for a shoe-maker's daughter of great beauty, belonging to one of the Irish brigades, being introduced to the King, he asked her whether she knew him? No: she did not: But did you ever see me before, or any body like me? She had not, but thought him very like the face on the _gros Eccuis_ of France. Madame _Pompadour_ soon found out which of these girls proved most agreeable to the King, and such were retained, the others dismissed.--The expence of this traffick was immense. I am assured where difficulties of birth or fashion fell in the way, ten thousand pounds sterling have been given. Had _Lewis_ the XVth lived a few years longer, he would have ruined his kingdom. _Lewis_ the XVIth bids fair to aggrandize it. LETTER XLVI. POST-HOUSE, ST GEORGE, six leagues from LYONS. I am particular in dating this letter, in hopes that every English traveller may avoid the place I write from, by either stopping short, or going beyond it, as it is the only house of reception for travellers in the village, and the worst I have met with in my whole journey. We had been scurvily treated here as we went; but having arrived at it after dark, and leaving it early, I did not recollect it again, till the mistress by her sour face and sorry fare betrayed it; for she well remembered _us_. As a specimen of French auberge cookery, I cannot help serving up a dish of spinnage to you as it was served to me at this house. We came in early in the afternoon, and while I was in the court-yard, I saw a flat basket stand upon the ground, the bottom of which was covered with boiled spinnage; and as my dog, and several others in the yard, had often put their noses into it, I concluded it was put down for _their_ food, not _mine_, till I saw a dirty girl patting it up into round balls, and two children, the eldest of them not above three years old, slavering in and playing with it, one of whom, _to lose no time_, was performing _an office_ that none could _do for her_. I asked the maid what she was about, and what it was she was so preparing? for I began to think I had been mistaken, till she told me it was spinnage;--not for me, I hope, said I,--'_oui, pour vous et le monde_.' I then forbad her bringing any to my table, and putting the little girl _off her center_, by an angry push, made her almost as dirty as the spinnage; and I could perceive her mother, the hostess, and some French travellers who were near, looked upon me as a brute, for _disturbing la pauvre enfant_; nevertheless, with my _entree_ came up a dish of this _delicate spinnage_, with which I made the girl a very pretty _Chapeau Anglois_, for I turned it, dish and all, upon her head; this set the house in such an uproar, that, if there had not come in an old gentleman like _Bourgeois_ of _Paris_, at that instant, I verily believe I should have been turned out; but he engaged warmly in my defence, and insisted upon it that I had treated the girl just as he would have done, had she brought such a dirty dish to him after being cautioned not to do so; nor should I have got any supper, had I not prevailed on this good-natured man, who never eat any, to order a supper for himself, and transfer it to me. He was a native of _Lyons_, and had been, for the first time after thirty years absence, to visit his relations there. My entertainment at this house, _outward-bound_, was half a second-hand roasted turkey, or, what the sailors call a _twice-laid_ dish, i.e. one which is _done over_ a second time. I know the French in general will not like to see this dirty charge, brought even against an _aubergiste_, and much less to hear it said, that this disregard to cleanliness is almost general in the public inns; but truth justifies it, and I hope the publication may amend it. A modern French anonymous traveller, who I conclude by the company he kept in England, is a man of fashion, gives in general a just account of the English nation, their customs and manners; and acknowledges, in handsome terms, the manner he was received by some of the first families in England. He owns, however, he does not understand English, yet he has the temerity to say, that _Gulliver's_ travels are the _chef d'oeuvre_ of _Dean Swift_; but observes, that those travels are greatly improved by passing through the hands of _Desfontaines_.--This gentleman must excuse me in saying, that _Desfontaines_ neither understood English, nor _Dean Swift_, better than he does. He also concludes his first volume, by observing, that what a French Ambassador to England said of that nation, in the year 1523, constitutes their character at this day! 'Alas! poor England! thou _be'st_ so closely situated, and in such daily conversation with the polite and polished nation of France, thou hast gained nothing of their ease, breeding, and compliments, in the space of two hundred and fifty years!'--What this gentleman alludes to, is the Ambassador's letter to the _Conetable Montmorency_, previous to the meeting of _Henry_ the Eighth and _Francis_ the First, near _Ardres_; for, (says the Ambassador) _sur-tout je vous prie, que vous ostiez de la Cour, ceux qui unt la reputation d'etre joyeux & gaudisseur, car c'est bien en ce monde, la chose la plus haie de cette nation_. And in a few lines after, he foists in an extract from a Scotchman, one _Barclay_, who, in his _Examen of Nations_, says, _Jenenc connoit point de plus aimable creature, qui un François chez qui l'enjoument est tempore par le judgment, & par discretion_; to all which I subscribe: but such men are seldom to be met with in any kingdom. This gentleman says, the most remarkable, or rather the only act of gaiety he met with in _London_, was an harangue made for an hour in the House of Lords, previous to the trial of Lord _Byron_; and that, as he afterwards understood, it was made by a drunken member of parliament. He says it made him and every body laugh exceedingly; but he laughed only (I presume) because every body else did, and relates the story, I fear, merely to make it a national laugh; for the harangue was certainly very ill placed, and the mirth it produced, very indecent, at a time a Peer of the realm was to be brought forth, accused of murder; and the untimely death of a valuable and virtuous young man, revived in every body's memory. This is the unfavourable side of what the gentleman says of the first people in England. Of the peasants and lower order, he observes, that, though they are well fed, well cloathed, and well lodged, yet they are all of a melancholy turn.--The French have no idea of what we call _dry humour_; and this gentleman, perhaps, thought the English clown melancholy, while he was laughing in his sleeve at the foppery of his _laquais_. These observations put me in mind of another modern traveller, a man of sense and letters too, who observes, that the ballustrades at _Westminster_ bridge are fixed very close together, to prevent the English getting through to drown themselves: and of a Gentleman at _Cambridge_, who, having cut a large pigeon-hole under his closet door, on being asked the use of it, said, he had it cut for an old cat which had kittens, to go in and out; but added, _that he must send for the carpenter, to cut little holes for the young ones_. His _acute visitor_ instantly set up a _horse_ laugh, and asked him whether the little cats could not come out at the same hole the big one did? The other laughing in his turn, said, he did not _think of that_. Though I have spoken with freedom of this French traveller's remarks, yet I must own that, in general, he writes and thinks liberally, and speaks highly of the English nation, and very gratefully of many individuals to whom he was known; and, I dare say, a Frenchman will find many more mistakes of mine, which I shall be happy to see pointed out, or rectified: but were I to pick out the particular objects of laughter, pity, and contempt, which have fallen in my way, in twice crossing this great continent, I could make a second _Joe Miller_ of one, and a _Jane Shore_ of the other. If this traveller could have understood the _Beggars' Opera_, the _humour_ of _Sam. Foote_, or the pleasantry among English sailors, watermen, and the lower order of the people, he would have known, that, though the English nation have not so much vivacity as the French, they are behind-hand with no nation whatever, where true wit and genuine humour are to be displayed. What would he have said, could he have seen and entered into the spirit of the procession of the _miserable Scalds_, or Mr. _Garrick_ in _Scrub_; _Shuter_, _Woodward_, Mrs. _Clive_, or even our little _Edwin_ at _Bath_? Had he seen any of these things, he must have laughed with the multitude, as he did in the House of Lords, though he had not understood it, and must have seen how inimitably the talents of these men were formed, to excite so much mirth and delight, even to a heavy _unpolished_ English audience. LETTER XLVII. From _St. George_ to _Macon_ is five leagues. Nothing on earth can be more beautiful than the face of this country, far and near. The road lies over a vast and fertile plain, not far distant from the banks of the _Soane_ on one side, and adorned with mountains equally fertile, and beautiful, on the other. It is very singular, that all the cows of this part of the country are white, or of a light dun colour, and the dress of all the _Maconoise_ peasants as different from any other province in France, as that of the Turkish habit; I mean the women's dress, for I perceived no difference among the men, but that they are greater clowns, than any other French peasants. The women wear a broad bone lace ruff about their necks, and a narrow edging of the same sort round their caps, which are in the form of the charity girls' caps in England; but as they must not bind them on with any kind of ribband, they look rather _laid upon_ their heads, than _dressed upon them_; their gowns are of a very coarse light brown woollen cloth, made extremely short-waisted, and full of high and thick plaits over the hips, the sleeves are rather large, and turned up with some gaudy coloured silk; upon the shoulders are sewed several pieces of worsted livery lace, which seem to go quite under their arms, in the same manner as is sometimes put to children to strengthen their leading-strings; upon the whole, however, the dress is becoming, and the very long petticoat and full plaits, have a graceful appearance. At _Lyons_ I saw a _Macinoise_ girl of fashion, or fortune, in this dress; her lace was fine, her gown silk, and her shoulder-straps of silver; and, as her head had much more of the _bon gout_ than the _bon ton_, I thought her the most inviting object I had seen in that city, my delicate landlady at _Nismes_ always excepted. I think France cannot produce such another woman _for beauty_ as _Madame Seigny_. I bought a large quantity of the _Macon_ lace, at about eight-pence English a yard, which, at a little distance, cannot easily be distinguished from fine old _pointe_. Between _St. George_ and _Macon_, at a time we wanted our breakfast, we came to a spot where two high roads cross each other, and found there a little _cabbin_, not unlike the Iron House, as to whim, but this was built, sides, top, and bottom, with sawed boards; and as a little bit of a board hung out at the door informed us they sold wine, I went in, and asked the mistress permission to boil my tea-kettle, and to be permitted to eat our breakfast in her pretty _cabbin_? The woman was knitting; she laid down her work, rose up, and with the ease and address of a woman of the first fashion, said we did her honour, that her house, such as it was, and every thing in it, were at our service; she then sent a girl to a farmer's hard by, for milk, and to a village a quarter of a league distant, for hot bread; and while we breakfasted, her conversation and good breeding made up a principal part of the _repas_; she had my horse too brought to the back part of her _cabbin_, where he was well fed from a portable manger. I bought of her two bottles of white wine, not much inferior to, and much wholesomer than, Champaigne, and she charged me for the whole, milk, bread, fire, _conversation_, and wine, thirty six _sols_, about seventeen pence English! Though this gentlewoman, for so I must call her, and so I believe she is, lived in such a small hut, she seemed to be in good circumstances, and had _liqueurs_, tea, and a great variety of _bons choses_ to sell. This was the only public house, (if it maybe called by that name,) during my whole journey _out_ and _in_, where I found perfect civility; not that the publicans in general have not civility _in their possession_, but they will not, either from _pride_ or _design_, _produce it_, particularly to strangers. My _wooden-house landlady_ indeed, was a prodigy; and it must be confessed, that no woman of the lower order in England, nor even of the middling class, have any share of that ease and urbanity which is so common among the lower order of the _people_ of this kingdom: but the woman I now speak of, had not, you will perceive, the least design even upon my purse; I made no previous agreement with her for my good fare, and she scorned to take any advantage of my confidence; and I shewed my sense of it, by giving her little maid eight times more than she ever received for such services before--an English shilling. Let not this single, and singular woman, however, induce you to trust to the confidence of a French _aubergiste_ especially a _female_; you may as well trust to the conscience of an itinerant Jew. Frenchmen are so aware of this, that have heard a traveller, on a _maigre_ day, make his bargain for his _aumlet_ and the number of eggs to be put in it, with an exactness scarce to be imagined; and yet the upshot was only two pence English. The easy manner in which a French officer, or gentleman, can traverse this mighty kingdom, either for pleasure or business, is extremely agreeable, and worthy of imitation among young British officers.--In England, if an Ensign of foot is going a journey, he must have two horses, and a groom, though he has nothing but a regimental suit of cloaths, and half a dozen shirts to carry; his horses too must _set both ends well_ because he is a _Captain_ upon the road! and he travels at about five times the expence of his pay. The French officer buys a little _biddet_, puts his shirts and best regimental coat into a little _portmanteau_, buckles that behind his saddle, and with his sword by his side, and his _croix_ at his button-hole, travels at the expence of about three shillings a day, and often less, through a kingdom where every order of people shew him attention, and give him precedence. I blush, when I recollect that I have _rode_ the risque of being wet to the skin because I would not _disgrace my saddle_, nor load my back with a great coat; for I have _formerly_, as well as _latterly_, travelled without a servant. I have a letter now before me, which I received a few days ago from a French Captain of foot, who says, _sur le champ j'ay fait seller ma petite Rossinante (car vous scavez que j'ay achete un petit cheval de 90 livres selle et bride) et me voila a Epernay chez Monsieur Lechet_, &c. This gentleman's whole pay does not amount to more than sixty pounds a year, yet he has always five guineas in his pocket, and every convenience, and some luxuries about him; he assists now and then an extravagant brother, appears always well dressed; and last year I bought him a ticket in the British lottery: he did not consider that he employed an unfortunate man to buy it, and I _forgot_ to remind him of it. After saying thus much of a virtuous young man (_though a Frenchman_) there will be no harm in telling you his name is _Lalieu_, a Captain in the regiment _du Maine_.--Before I took my last leave of him, talking together of the horrors of war, I asked him what he would do if he were to see me _vis-a-vis_ in an hostile manner? He embraced me, and said, "turn the but end of my fusee towards you, my friend." I thank God that neither his _but-end_, nor my _muzzle_ can ever meet in that manner, and I shall be happy to meet him in any other. _P.S._ I omitted to say, that the _Maconoise_ female peasants wear black hats, in the form of the English straw or chip hats; and when they are tied on, under the chin, it gives them with the addition of their round-eared laced cap, a decent, modest appearance which puts out of countenance all the borrowed plumage, dead hair, black wool, lead, grease, and yellow powder, which is now in motion between _Edinburgh_ and _Paris_. It is a pity that pretty women, at least, do not know, that the simplicity of a Quaker's head-dress, is superior to all that art can contrive: and those who remember the elegant _Miss Fide_, a woman of that persuasion, will subscribe to the truth of my assertion. And it is still a greater pity, that plain women do not know, that the more they adorn and _artify_ their heads, the more conspicuous they make their natural defects. LETTER XLVIII. At _Challons sur la Soane_, (for there is another town of the same name in _Champaigne_) I had the _honor_ of a visit from _Mons. le Baron Shortall_, a gentleman of an ancient family, _rather in distress at this time_, by being _kept out_ of six and thirty thousand a year, his legal property in Ireland; but as the Baron made his visit _ala-mode de capuchin Friar_, without knocking, and when only the female part of my family were in the apartment, he was dismissed _rather abruptly_ for a man of _his high rank_ and _great fortune in expectation_. This dismission, however, did not dismay him; he rallied again, with the reinforcement of _Madame la Baroness_, daughter, as he positively affirmed, of _Mons. le Prince de Monaco_; but as I had forbad his being _shewn up_, he desired me to _come down_, a summons curiosity induced me to obey. Never, surely, were two people _of fashion_ in a more pitiable plight! he was in a _russet brown black_ suit of cloaths; Madame _la Baroness_ in much the same colour, wrapt up in a tattered black silk capuchin; and I knew not which to admire most, their folly or their impudence; for surely never did an _adventurer_ set out with less _capabilities_ about him; his whole story was so flagrant a fib, that in spite of the _very respectable certificates of My Lord Mayor, John Wilkes, and Mr. Alderman Bull_, I was obliged to tell him plainly, that I did not believe him to be a gentleman, nor his wife to be a relation of the Prince of _Monaco_. All this he took in good part, and then assured me they were both very hungry, and without meat or money; I therefore ordered a dinner at twenty _sols_ a head; and, as I sat by while they eat it, I had reason to believe that he told me _one plain truth_, for in truth they eat as if they had never eaten before. After dinner the Baron did me the honour to consult with me _how_ he should get down to _Lyons_? I recommended to him to proceed by _water_; but, said he, my dear Sir, I have no money;--an evil I did not chuse to redress; and, after several unsuccessful attempts at my purse, and some at my person,--he whispered me that even six livres would be acceptable; but I held out, and got off, by proposing that the Baroness should write a letter to the Prince her father, to whom I had the honour to be known, and that I would carry him the letter, and enforce their prayer, by making it my own. This measure she instantly complied with, and addressed her father _adorable Prince_; but concluded it with a name which could not belong to her either as maid, wife, or widow. I remarked this to the _Baron_, who acknowledged at once _the mistake_, said she had signed a false name, and she should write it over again; but when I observed to him that, as the Prince knew the handwriting of his _own_ dear child, and as the name of women is _often varying by marriage_, or _miscarriage_, it was all one: to this he agreed; and I brought off the letter, and my purse too, for forty _sols_; yet there was so much falshood, folly, and simplicity in this _simple pair of adventurers_, that I sorely repented I did not give them their passage in the _coche d'eau_ to _Lyons_; for he could not speak a word of French, nor _Madame la Baroness_ a word of English; and the only _insignia_ of distinction between them, was, a vast clumsy brass-hilted sword which the Baron, instead of wearing at his side, held up at his nose, like a Physician's gold-headed cane.--When I took my leave of this _Sir James Shortall_, (for he owned _at last_ he was _only a Baronet_) he promised to meet me _next time_ dressed in his blue and silver. I verily believe my Irish _adventurer_ at _Perpignan_, is a gentleman, and therefore I relieved him; I am thoroughly persuaded my _Challons_ adventurer is not, yet perhaps he was a real object of charity, and his true tale would have produced him better success than his _borrowed story_. _Sir James_ was about sixty, _Lady Shortall_ about fifty.--_Sir James_ too had a pretty large property in America, and would have visited his estates on that continent, had I not informed him of the present unhappy differences now subsisting between that and the mother country, of which he had not heard a single syllable. After having said thus much, I think I must treat you with a copy of _Lady Shortall's_ letter, a name very applicable to their unhappy situation, for they did indeed seem short of every thing;--so here it is, _verbatim et literatim_: "_Monsieur Thickness gentilhomme anglaise_ "Adorable preince de monaco que tout mordonne deme, lise au de fus de cette lette le non deun digne homme qui me randu ser visse, je suis malade, le convan; serois preferable a mon bouneur je veux sepandant sauve non marij mais je me meure tre seve mon derinier soupire, je ne le doit qua vous. "JULIE BARONNE DE CHATTERRE. _le 18 May 1776._" "_A sont altess ele preince de Monaco, dans sont hautelle rue de Vareinne a Paris_." LETTER XLIX. From _Challons_ to _Bonne_, is five leagues. _Bonne_ is a good town, well walled-in, pleasantly situated, and remarkable for an excellent and well-conducted Hospital, where the poor sick are received _gratis_, without distinction, and where the rich sick are accommodated with nurses, physicians, medicines, food, and lodging, with every assistance that can be wanted, for four livres a day. The apartments in which the poor are received, are so perfectly clean and sweet, that they are fit for people of any condition; but those provided for the better sort, are indeed sumptuously furnished. The women who act as nurses, are of a religious order, and wear a particular, decent, and uniform habit, to which their modest deportment exactly coincides; yet most of them are young, and many of them very beautiful. Between these two towns we met an English servant, in a rich laced livery, conducting, behind a post-chaise, a large quantity of baggage; and soon after, a second servant, in the same uniform; this excited our curiosity, and we impatiently proceeded, in hopes of meeting the equipage, which it was natural to expect would soon follow; instead of which, it was an old English four-wheel chaise, the _contents_ of which were buckled close up behind a pair of dirty leather curtains; and on the coach-box sat, by the side of the driver, a man who had the appearance of an English farmer. This contrast rather increased than lessened our curiosity; and, therefore, at _Bonne_, I made some enquiry about them of the post-master; who told me they came in, and set off, separately, just as I had met them; but that one servant paid for the horses to all the carriages, and that the woman _behind the curtain, according to custom, did not chuse to shew herself_. Just as I was returning with this blind account, an English servant, who I had not perceived, but who stood near, told me, he was sure _as how_ it was either the _Duchess_ of _Kingston_ or _Mrs Rudd_, for that he _seed_ her very plain. I was much surprized at finding an Englishman so near me; and the singularity of the man's observation had a very forcible effect upon me. When the mirth which it unavoidably occasioned, was a little subsided, I could not help correcting, in gentle terms, (though I was otherwise glad to see even an English footman so far from _English land_) a man in his station for speaking of people of high rank with so much indecent levity, and then told him, that there was no such person living as the _Duchess_ of _Kingston_, but that it was probable the Lady he thought he had seen might be _Lady Bristol_; that there was not however, the least resemblance between the person of her Ladyship and the other Lady he had mentioned, the latter being young, thin, and rather handsome; whereas _Lady Bristol_ was very fat, and advanced in years; I therefore suspected, I told him, that he had confounded the trials of those two Ladies, and fancied he saw a likeness in their persons, by an association of ideas; but in reality, there was as much difference in their crimes as in their persons. _Crimes_! did I say? that is an improper expression, because I am informed _Mrs. Rudd_ has been acquitted; but that, if the foreign papers might be relied on, _Lady Bristol_ had been found guilty of BIGAMY: But as he seemed not to understand what I meant by _Bigamy_, or the _association of ideas_, I was unavoidably led into a conversation, and explanation, with this young man; which nothing but my pride, and his ignorance, could justify; but as the fellow was overjoyed to see me, I could not help giving him something to drink, and with it a caution never to speak of people of high rank and condition, even behind their backs, but under their proper names or titles, and with decency and respect: he then begged my pardon, and assured me, if he had known that either of the Ladies had been a friend of mine, he would not have coupled them so improperly together; and I am thoroughly convinced, the man left me with a resolution, never to hazard a conjecture without a better foundation than that he started to me, and which I rather believe he hit off _extempore_, to speak to me, and shew himself my countryman, than from really suspecting that the woman behind the curtain was either _Lady Bristol_, or _Mrs. Rudd_; though I was inclined to think it very probable, for I had seen _Lord Bristol_ on his way through _Lyons_ from _Italy_ to _England_, and had been informed, _Lady Bristol_ was then on her road to _Italy_; in which case, I, like the footman, had my conjectures, and accounted for the leather curtains being so _closely buckled to_. These are trifling remarks, you will say; but if a sign-painter can paint only a bear, those who employ him must have a bear for their sign; nevertheless, we have all a certain curiosity to know even the most trifling actions, or movements of people, who by their virtues or vices, especially if they are people of rank or condition, have occasioned much talk in the world; and therefore, ridiculous as this incident is, yet as we have long known one of the Ladies, and often _admired_ both, I could not let either one or the other pass me unnoticed, on a road too, where even an English Duchess (if she would own the truth) would feel a secret delight in meeting of a Hyde-park-corner groom. I have already mentioned what partiality and degree of notice, countrymen take of each other when they meet far from home. That notice is always in proportion to the distance. Had my _Bonne_ footman spoke of _Lady Bristol_, or _Mrs. Rudd_, in such free terms as _how he seed 'em_, &c. &c. at Hyde-park-corner, or in Tyburn-road, I should have knocked him down with the but end of my whip; but at _Bonne_ (five hundred miles from either of those places) he and I were _quatre cousins_; and I could not help treating him with a bottle of _vin de pais_. LETTER L. From _Bonne_ we intended to have taken the high road to _Dijon_; but being informed that there was another, though not much frequented, by way of _Autun_, and that _that_ town, which was a Roman colony, still contained many curious monuments worthy of notice, we pursued the latter, which twisted in between a vast variety of small, but fertile valleys, watered with brooks, bounded by romantic hills, and some high mountains, most of which were covered with vines, which _did_ produce the most delicious red wine in the world; I say _did produce_, for the high _gout_ and flavour of the Burgundy grape has for many years failed, and perhaps so as never to return again. We, however, missed the road to _Autun_, and, after four leagues' journey through a most delightful country, we arrived at a miserable auberge in a dirty village called _Yozy_, which stands upon the margin of a large forest, in which, some years since, the _diligence_ from _Lyons_ to _Paris_ was attacked by a banditti, and the whole party of travellers were murdered: ever since that fatal day, a guard of the _Marechaussee_ always escort the _diligence_ through this deep and dreadful forest, (so they called it), and we were persuaded it was right to take a couple of the _Marechaussee_, and did so; but as we found the forest by no means so long, deep, or dreadful, as it had been represented, we suspected that the advice given us, was more for the sake of the men who _guarded us_, than from any regard _to us_, two men could have made no great resistance against a banditti; and a single man would hardly have meddled with us. The next day we passed thro' _Arnay-le-Duc_, a pretty country village, three leagues from _Yozy_, and it being their annual fair-day, we had an opportunity of seeing all the peasantry, dressed in their best, and much chearfulness, not only in the town, but upon the road before we arrived, and after we passed it. Amongst the rest of the company, were a bear and a monkey, or rather what _Buffon_ calls the _maggot_. I desired the shew-man to permit my _maggot_, as he was the least, the youngest, and the _stranger_, to pay a visit to _Mons. Maggot_, the elder, who embraced the _young gentleman_ in a manner which astonished and delighted every body, myself only excepted; but as _my young gentleman_ seemed totally indifferent about the _old one_, I suspected he had _really met his father_, and I could not help moralizing a little. From _Arnay-le-Duc_ we passed through _Maupas_, _Salou_, _Rouvray_, _Quisse la forge_, and _Vermanton_ to _Auxerre_, the town where the French nobleman _was said_ to live, whom Dr. _Smollett_ treated so very roughly, and who, in return, was so _polite_ as to _help to tie_ the Doctor's baggage behind his coach! About a quarter of a mile without this town, stands a royal convent, richly endowed, and delightfully situated; the walls of which take in near twenty acres of land, well planted on the banks of a river; and here I left my two daughters, to perfect themselves in the French language, as there was not one person within the convent, nor that I could find, within the town, who could speak a word of English. And here I must not omit to tell you, how much I was overcome with the generosity of this virtuous, and I must add amiable, society of _religieux_. Upon my first inquiry about their price for board, lodging, washing, cloaths, and in short, every thing the children did, or might want, they required a sum much beyond the limits of my scanty income to give; but before we left them, they became acquainted with _some circumstances_, which induced them to express their concern that the price I had offered (not half what they had demanded) could not be taken. We therefore retired, and had almost fixed the children in a cheaper convent, but much inferior in all respects, within the town, when we received a polite letter from the Lady Abbess, to say, that after consulting with her sister-hood, they had come to a resolution to take the children at our _own_ price, rather than not shew how much they wished to oblige us. Upon this occasion, we were _all_ admitted within the walls of the convent; and I had the pleasure of seeing my two daughters joined to an elegant troop of about forty genteel children, and of leaving them under the care of the same number of _religieux_. And yet these good people knew nothing of us, but what we ourselves communicated to them, not being known, nor knowing any person in the town.--The Lady-Abbess of this convent is a woman of high rank, about twenty-four years of age, and possesses as large a share of beauty as any reasonable woman, even on the _outside_ of a convent, could wish for. _Auxerre_ is a good town, pleasantly situated, and in a plentiful and cheap country. From _Auxerre_ to _Ioigni_ is five leagues. The _Petit bel Vue_ on the banks of the river is very pleasantly situated, but a dreadful one within side, in every respect, being a mixture of dirt, ignorance, and imposition; but it is the only inn for travellers, and therefore travellers should avoid it. In order to put my old hostess in good humour, I called early for a bottle of Champaigne; and in order to put me into a bad humour, she charged me the next day for two; but I _charged her_ with _Mons. Le Connetable_, who behaved like a gentleman, though I think he was only a _marchand de tonneau_: but then he was a _wine_ not _beer_ cooper, who hooped the old Lady's barrel. Where-ever I was ill-used or imposed upon, I always sent a pretty heavy packet by the post, after I had run down a hundred miles or two, by way of _draw-back_, upon my host, and recompence to the King's high road; for in France, _"Like the Quakers' by-way, 'Tis plain without turnpikes, so nothing to pay"_ An old witch, who had half starved us at _Montpellier_, for want of provisions, when we went, and for want of fire to dry us, when we came back, left a piece of candle in my budget, which I did not omit to return by the post, _well packed up_, lest it should grease other packets of more importance, by riding an hundred leagues; besides this it was accompanied by a very civil _letter of advice_, under another cover. LETTER LI. The next town of any note is _Sens_, a large, _ragged_, ancient city; but adorned with a most noble Gothic cathedral, more magnificent than even that of _Rheims_, and well worthy of the notice of strangers; it is said to have been built by the English: With the relicks and _custodiums_ of the host, are shewn the sacerdotal habits, in which Archbishop _Becket_ (who resided there many years) said mass, for it was his head-quarters, when he _left_ Britain, as well as _Julius Cæsar_'s before he went there. The silver hasps, and some of the ornaments of these garments, are still perfect, though it has undergone so many darnings, as to be little else. _Becket_ was a very tall man; for though it has many tucks in it, yet it is generally too long for the tallest priest in the town, who constantly says mass in it on _St. Thomas_'s day. How times and men are changed! This town, which resisted the arms of _Cæsar_ for a considerable time, was put in the utmost consternation by _Dr. Smollett_'s causing his travelling blunderbuss to be only fired in the air, a circumstance "which greatly terrified all the _petit monde!_" It is very singular, that the Doctor should have frightened a French nobleman of _Burgundy_, by shaking his cane at him, and even made him assist in the most servile offices; and in the next town, terrify all the common people, by only firing a blunderbuss in the air! I would not willingly arraign a dead man with telling two fibbs so close upon the back of each other; but I am sure there was but that single French nobleman, in this mighty kingdom, who would have submitted to such insults as the Doctor _says_ he treated him with; nor any other town but _Sens_, where the firing of a gun would have so terrified the inhabitants; for, drums, guns, and noise of every sort, seem to afford the common French people infinite pleasure. I spent in this town a day or two, and part of that time with a very agreeable Scotch family, of the name of _Macdonald_, where Lieutenant Colonel _Stuart_ was then upon a visit. I have some reason to think that _Sens_ is a very cheap town. Several English, Scotch, and Irish families reside in it. From _Sens_ to _Port sur Yonne_ is three leagues, and from _Yonne_ to _Foussart_ the same distance. At the three Kings at _Foussart_, suspecting there was a cat behind the bed in wait for my bird, I found, instead thereof, a little _narrow door_, which was artfully hid, and which opened into another room; and as I am sure the man is a cheat, I suspect too, that upon a _good occasion_, he would have made some _use_ of his little door. _Foussart_ is a small place, consisting only of three or four public houses. From thence to _Morret_, is three leagues, on which road is erected a noble pillar of oriental marble, in memory of the marriage of _Lewis_ the XVth. Soon after we passed this monument, we entered into the delightful forest of _Fontainbleau_; and passing three leagues to the center of it, we arrived at that ancient royal palace: it stands very low, and is surrounded by a great many fine pieces of water, which, however, render the apartments very damp. The King and royal family had been there six weeks, and were gone but ten days, and with them, all the furniture of the palace was also gone, except glasses, and a few pictures, of no great value. In a long, gallery are placed, on each side of the wall, a great number of stags' heads, carved in wood, and upon them are fixed the horns of stags and bucks, killed by the late, and former Kings; some of which are very _outre_, others singularly large and beautiful. _Fontainbleau_ is a good town, stands adjacent to the palace; and as the gardens, park, &c. are always open, it is a delightful summer residence. We staid a few days there, to enjoy the shady walks, and to see the humours of a great annual fair, which commenced the day after we arrived. All sorts of things are sold at this fair; but the principal business is done in the _wine way_, many thousand pieces of the inferior Burgundy wine being brought to this market. We made two little days' journey from _Fontainbleau_ to _Paris_, a town I entered with concern, and shall leave with pleasure.--As I had formerly been of some service to _Faucaut_ who keeps the _Hotel d'York_, when he lived in _Rue de Mauvais Garçon_ I went to this _famous Hotel_, which would have been more in character, if he had given it the name of his former street, and called it, _L'Hotel de Mauvais Garçon_ for it is an hospital of bugs and vermin: the fellow has got the second-hand beds of _Madame Pompadour_, upon his first floor, which he _modestly_ asks thirty _louis d'ors_ a month for! All the rest of the apartments are pigeon-holes, filled with fleas, bugs, and dirt; and should a fire happen, there is no way of escaping. Nothing should be more particularly attended to in _Paris_ than the security from fire, where so many, and such a variety of strangers, and their servants, are shut up at night, within one _Porte Cochere_. LETTER LII. PARIS. I found no greater alteration in _Paris_, after ten years' absence from it, than the prodigious difference of expence; most articles, I think, are one-third dearer, and many double; a horse is not half so well fed or lodged at _Paris_ as at _London_; but the expence is nearly a guinea a week, and a stranger may drive half round the city before he can lodge himself and his horses under the same roof.[F] [F] _Paul Gilladeau_ who lately left the Silver Lion, at _Calais_, has, I am informed, opened a Livery Stable at _Paris_, upon the _London_ plan, in partnership with _Dessein_, of the _Hotel d'Angleterre_ at _Calais_: a convenience much wanted, and undertaken by a man very likely to succeed. The beauties, the pleasures, and variety of amusements, which this city abounds with, are, without doubt, the magnets which attract so many people of rank and fortune of all nations to it; all which are too well known to be pointed out by me.--To a person of great fortune in the _hey-day_ of life, _Paris_ may be preferable even to _London_; but to one of my age and walk in life, it is, and was ten years ago, the least agreeable place I have seen in France.--Walking the streets is extremely dangerous, riding in them very expensive; and when those things which are worthy to be seen, (and much there is very worthy) have been seen, the city of _Paris_ becomes a melancholy residence for a stranger, who neither plays at cards, dice, or deals in the principal manufacture of the city; i.e. _ready-made love_, a business which is carried on with great success, and with more decency, I think, that even in _London_. The English Ladies are _weak_ enough to attach themselves to, and to love, one man. The gay part of the French women love none, but receive all, _pour passer le tems_.--The _English_, unlike the _Parisian_ Ladies, take pains to discover _who_ they love; the French women to dissemble with those they hate. It is extremely difficult for even strangers of rank or fortune, to get among the first people, so as to be admitted to their suppers; and without that, it is impossible to have any idea of the luxury and stile in which they live: quantity, variety, and show, are more attended to in France, than neatness. It is in England alone, where tables are served with real and uniform elegance; but the appetite meets with more provocatives in France; and the French _cuisine_ in that respect, certainly has the superiority. Ten years ago I had the honour to be admitted often to the table of a Lady of the first rank. On _St. Ann's-day_, (that being her name-day) she received the visits of her friends, who all brought either a valuable present, a poesy, or a compliment in verse: when the dessert came upon the table, which was very magnificent, the middle plate seemed to be the finest and fairest fruit (_peaches_) and I was much surprized, that none of the Ladies, were helped by the gentlemen from _that_ plate: but my surprize was soon turned into astonishment! for the peaches suddenly burst forth, and played up the Saint's name, (_St. Ann_) in artificial fire-works! and many pretty devices of the same kind, were whirled off, from behind the coaches of her visitors, to which they were fixed, as the company left the house, which had a pretty effect, and was no indelicate way of _taking a French leave_. There is certainly among the French people of fashion an ease and good-breeding, which is very captivating, and not easily obtained, but by being bred up with them, from an early age; the whole body must be formed for it, as in dancing, while there is the pliability of youth; and where there is, as in France, a constant, early, and intimate correspondence between the two sexes. Men would be fierce and savage, were it not for the society of the other sex, as may be seen among the Turks and Moors, who must not visit their own wives, when other men's wives are with them. In France, the Lady's bed-chamber is always open, and she receives visits in bed, or up, with perfect ease. A noble Lord, late ambassador to this country, told me, that when he visited a young and beautiful woman of fashion, (I think too it was a first visit after marriage) she received him sitting up in her bed; and before he went, her _fille de chambre_ brought his Lordship _Madame le Comtesse_'s shift elegantly festooned, which his Lordship had the honour to put over the Lady's head, as she sat in bed!--nor was there, by that favour, the least indecency meant; it was a compliment intended; and, as such only, received. Marks of favour of _that_ sort, are not marks of _further favours_ from a French Lady. In this vast city of amusements, among the _other arts_, I cannot help pointing out to your particular notice, _Richlieu_'s monument in the _Sorbonne_, as an inimitable piece of modern sculpture[G] by _Girardeau_; and _Madame la Valliere's_ full-length portrait by _le Brun_: She was, you know, mistress to _Lewis_ the XIVth, but retired to the convent, in which the picture now is, and where she lived in repentance and sorrow above thirty years.[H] [G] VOLTAIRE says, this monument is not sufficiently noticed by strangers. [H] MADAME VALLIERE, during her retirement, being told of the death of one of her sons, replied, "I should rather grieve for his birth, than his death." The _connoisseurs_ surely can find no reasonable fault with the monumental artist; but they do, I think, with _le Brun_; the drapery, they say, is too full, and that she is overcharged with garments; but fulness of dress, adds not only dignity, but decency, to the person of a fine woman, who meant (or the painter for her) to hide, not to expose her charms. If fulness be a fault, it is a fault that _Gainsborough_, _Hoare_, _Pine_, _Reynolds_, and many other of our modern geniuses are _guilty of_; and if it be _sin_, the best judges will acquit them for committing it, where dignity is to be considered. _Madame Valliere_ appears to have been scattering about her jewels, is tearing her hair, crying, and looking up to the heavens, which seem bursting forth a tempest over her head. The picture is well imagined, and finely executed. I found upon the bulk of a _portable shop_ in _Paris_, a most excellent engraving from this picture,[I] and which carried me directly to visit the original; it is indeed stained and dirty, but it is infinitely superior to a later engraving which now hangs up in all the print shops, and I suppose is from the first plate, which was done soon after the picture was finished. Under it are written the following ingenious, tho' I fear, rather impious lines: Magdala dam gemmas, baccisque monile coruscum Projicit, ac formæ detrahit arma suæ: Dum vultum lacrymis et lumina turbat; amoris Mirare insidias! hac capit arte Deum. [I] In the possession of Mr. GAINSBOROUGH. Shall I attempt to unfold this writer's meaning? Yes, I will, that my friend at _Oxford_ may laugh, and do it as it ought to be done. I. The pearls and gems, her beauty's arms, See sad VALLIERE foregoes; And now assumes far other charms Superior still to those. II. The tears that flow adown her cheek, Than gems are brighter things; For these an earthly Monarch seek, But those the KING of Kings. This seems to have been the author's thought, if he thought _chastely_.--Shall I try again? The pearls and gems her beauty's arms, See sad VALLIERE foregoes: Yet still those tears have other charms, Superior far to those: With those she gained an earthly Monarch's love: With these she wins the KING of Kings above. Yet, after all, I do suspect, that the author meant more than even _to sneer_ a little at _poor Madam Valliere_; but, as I dislike common-place poetry, (and poetry, as you see, dislikes _me_) I will endeavour to give you the literal meaning, according to my conception, and then you will see whether our _joint wits_ jump together. While MAGDALENE throws by her bracelets, adorned with gems and pearls, and (thus) disarms her beauty: while tears confound her countenance and eyes, With wonder mark the stratagems of love, With this she captivates the GOD above. The impious insinuation of the Latin lines, is the reason, I suppose, why they were omitted under the more modern impression of this fine print, and very middling French poetry superseding them. LETTER LIII. PARIS. If you do not use _Herreis_' bills, I recommend to you at _Paris_, a French, rather than an English banker; I have found the former more profitable, and most convenient. I had, ten years since, a letter of credit on _Sir John Lambert_, for £300, from _Mess. Hoares_. The _Knight_ thought proper, however, to refuse the payment of a twenty pound draft I gave upon him; though I had not drawn more than half my credit out of his hands. _Mons. Mary_, on whom I had a draft from the same respectable house, this year will not do _such things_; but on the contrary, be ready to serve and oblige strangers to the utmost of his power: he speaks and writes English very well, and will prove an agreeable and useful acquaintance to a stranger in _Paris_. His sister too, who lives with him, will be no less so to the female part of your family. His house is in _Rue Saint Sauveur_. The English bankers pay in silver, and it is necessary to take a wheel-barrow with you to bring it away; a small bag will do at the French bankers'. There is as much difference between the bankers of _London_ and bankers in _Paris_, as between a rotten apple and a sound one. You can hardly get a word from a London banker, but you are sure of getting your money; in _Paris_, you will get _words_ enough, and civil ones too. Remember, however, I am speaking only of the treatment I have experienced. There may be, and are, no doubt, English bankers at _Paris_ of great worth, and respectable characters. It is not reckoned very decent to frequent coffee-houses at _Paris_; but the politeness of _Monsieur_ and _Madame Felix, au caffe de Conti_, opposite the _Pont neuf_, and the English news-papers, render their house a pleasant circumstance to me; and it is by much the best, and best situated, of any in _Paris, au vois le monde_. I am astonished, that where such an infinite number of people live in so small a compass, (for _Paris_ is by no means so large as _London_) that they should suffer the dead to be buried in the manner they do, or within the city. There are several burial pits in _Paris_, of a prodigious size and depth, in which the dead bodies are laid, side by side, without any earth being put over them till the ground tier is full; then, and not till then, a small layer of earth covers them, and another layer of dead comes on, till by layer upon layer, and dead upon dead, the hole is filled with a mass of human corruption, enough to breed a plague; these places are enclosed, it is true, within high walls; but nevertheless, the air cannot be _improved_ by it; and the idea of such an assemblage of putrifying bodies, in one grave, so thinly covered, is very disagreeable. The burials in churches too, often prove fatal to the priests and people who attend; but every body, and every thing in _Paris_, is so much alive, that not a soul thinks about the dead. I wish I had been born a Frenchman.--Frenchmen live as if they were never to die. Englishmen die all _their lives_; and yet as _Lewis_ the XIVth said, "I don't think it is so difficult a matter to die, as men generally imagine, when they try in earnest." I must tell you before I leave _Paris_, that I stept over to _Marli_, to see the Queen; I had seen the King nine years ago; but he was not then a King over eight millions of people, and the finest country under the sun; yet he does not seem to lay so much stress upon his mighty power as might be expected from so young a prince, but appears grave and thoughtful. I am told he attends much to business, and endeavours to make his subjects happy. His resolution to be inoculated, immediately after succeeding to such a kingdom, is a proof of his having a great share of fortitude. In England such a determination would have been looked upon with indifference; but in France, where the bulk of the people do not believe that it secures the patient from a second attack; where the clergy in general consider it unfavourable, even in a religious light; and where the physical people, for want of practice, do not understand the management of the distemper, so as it is known in England; I may venture to say, without being charged with flattery, that it was an heroic resolution: add to this, the King knowing, that if his subjects followed his example, it must be chiefly done by their own surgeons and physicians, he put himself under their management alone, though I think _Sutton_ was then at _Paris_. The Queen is a fine figure, handsome, and very sprightly, dresses in the present _gout_ of head dress, and without a handkerchief, and thereby displays a most lovely neck. I saw in a china shop at _Paris_, the figure of the King and Queen finely executed, and very like, in china: the King is playing on the harp, and the Queen dropping her work to listen to the harmony. The two figures, about a foot high, were placed in an elegant apartment, and the _toute ensemble_ was the prettiest toy I ever beheld: the price thirty guineas. I shall leave this town in a few days, and take the well-known and well-beaten _route Anglois_ for _Calais_, thro' _Chantilly_, _Amiens_, and _Boulogne_, and then I shall have twice crossed this mighty kingdom. LETTER LIV. CALAIS. I am now returned to the point from whence I sat out, and rather within the revolution of one year; which, upon the whole, though I met with many untoward circumstances, has been the most interesting and entertaining year of my whole life, and will afford me matter of reflection for the little which remains unfinished of that journey we must all take sooner or later, a journey from whence no traveller returns.--And having said so much of myself, I am sure you will be glad to change the subject from man to beast, especially to such a one as I have now to speak of. I told you, when I set out, that I had bought a handsome-looking English horse for seven guineas, but a little touched in his wind; I can now inform you, that when I left this town, he was rather thin, and had a sore back and shoulder; both which, by care and caution; were soon healed, and that he is returned fair and fat, and not a hair out of its place, though he drew two grown persons, two children, (one of thirteen the other ten years old) a very heavy French cabriolet, and all our baggage, nay, almost all my goods, chattels, and worldly property whatever, outward and homeward, except between _Cette_ and _Barcelona_, _going_, and _Lyons_ and this town _returning!_ I will point out to you one of his day's work, by which you will be able to judge of his general power of working: At _Perpignan_, I had, to save him, hired post-horses to the first town in Spain, as I thought it might be too much for him to ascend and descend the _Pyrenees_ in one day; beside sixteen miles to the foot of them, on this side, and three to _Jonquire_ on the other; but after the horses were put to, the post-master required me to take two men to _Boulou_, in order to hold the chaise, and to prevent its overturning in crossing the river near the village. Such a flagrant attempt to impose, determined me to take neither horses nor men; and at seven o'clock I set off with _Callee_ (that is my houyhnhnm's name) and arrived in three hours at _Boulou_, a paltry village, but in a situation fit for the palace of AUGUSTUS! So far from wanting men from _Perpignan_ to conduct my chaise over the river, the whole village were, upon our arrival, in motion after the JOB. We, however, passed it, without any assistance but our own weight to keep the wheels down, and the horse's strength and sturdiness, to drag us through it. In about three hours more we passed over the summit of this great chain of the universe; and in two more, arrived at _Jonquire_: near which village my horse had a little bait of fresh mown hay, the first, and last, he eat in that kingdom. And when I tell you that this faithful, and (for a great part of my journey) only servant I had, never made a _faux pas_, never was so tired, but that upon a pinch, he could have gone a league or two farther; nor ever was ill, lame, physicked, or bled, since he was mine; you will agree, that either he is an uncommon good horse, or that his master is a good groom! Indeed I will say that, however fatigued, wet, hundry, or droughty I was, I never partook of any refreshment till my horse had every comfort the inn could afford. I carried a wooden bowl to give him water, and never passed a brook without asking him to drink.--And, as he has been my faithful servant, I am now his; for he lives under the same roof with me, and does nothing but eat, drink, and sleep.--As he never sees me nor hears my voice, without taking some affectionate notice of me, I ventured to ask him _tenderly_, whether he thought he should be able to draw two of the same party next year to _Rome?_ No tongue could more plainly express his willingness! he answered me, _in French_, indeed, _we-we-we-we-we_, said he; so perhaps he might not be sincere, tho' he never yet deceived me. If, however, he should not go, or should out-live me, which, is very probable, my dying request to you will be, to procure him a peaceful walk for the remainder of his days, within the park-walls of some humane private gentleman; though I flatter myself the following petition will save _you_ that trouble, and _me_ the concern of leaving him without that comfort which his faithful services merit. _To_ SIR JAMES TYLNEY LONG, _Bart._ _A Faithful Servant's humble Petition_, SHEWETH, That your petitioner entered into the service of his present master, at an advanced age, and at a time too, that he laboured under a pulmonic disorder, deemed incurable; yet by gentle exercise, wholesome food, and kind usage, he has been enabled to accompany his master from _Calais_ to _Artois_. _Cambray_, _Rheims_, _St. Dezier_, _Dijon_, _Challons_, _Macon_, _Lyons_, _Pont St. Esprit_, _Pont du Garde_, _Nismes_, _Montpellier_, _Cette_, _Narbonne_, _Perpignan_ the _Pyrenees_ _Barcelona_, _Montserrat_, _Arles_, _Marseilles_, _Toulouse_, _Avignon_, _Aix_, _Valence_, _Paris_, and back to _Calais_, in the course of one year: And that your petitioner has acquitted himself so much to his master's satisfaction, that he has promised to take him next year to _Rome_; and upon his return, to get him a _sine-cure_ place for the remainder of his days; and, as your petitioner can produce a certificate of his honesty, sobriety, steadiness, and obedience to his master; and wishes to throw himself under the protection of a man of fortune, honour and humanity, he is encouraged by his said master to make this his humble prayer to you, who says that to above three hundred letters he has lately written, to ask a small boon for himself, he did not receive above three answers that gave him the pleasure your's did though he had twenty times better pretensions to an hundred and fifty. And as your petitioner has _seen a great deal of the world, as well as his master_, and has always observed, that such men who are kind to their fellow-creatures, are kind also to brutes; permit an humble brute to throw himself at your feet, and to ask upon his return from _Rome_ a _lean-to_ shed, under your park-wall, that he may end his days in his native country, and afford a _repas_, at his death, to the dogs of a Man who feeds the poor, cloaths the naked, and who knows how to make use of the noblest privilege which a large fortune can bestow,--that of softening the calamities of mankind, and making glad the hearts of those who are oppressed with misfortunes.--Your petitioner, therefore, who has never, been upon his _knees before_ to any man living, humbly prays that he may be admitted within your park-pail, and that he may partake of that bounty which you bestow in common to your own servants, who, by age or misfortunes are past their labour; in which request your petitioner's master impowers him to use his name and joint prayer with CALLEE. I do hereby certify, that nothing is advanced in the above petition, but what is strictly true, and that if the petitioner had been able to express himself properly, his merits and good qualities would have appeared to much greater advantage, as well as his services; as he has omitted many towns he attended his master to, besides a variety of smaller journies; that he is cautious, wary, spirited, diligent, faithful, and honest; that he is not nice, but eats, with appetite, and good temper, whatever is set before him; and that he is in all respects worthy of that asylum he asks, and which his master laments more on his account than his own, that he cannot give him. PHILIP THICKNESSE. _Calais, the 4th of Nov._ 1776. LETTER LV. CALAIS. On our way here, we spent two or three days at _Chantilly_, one, of fifty _Chatteaus_ belonging to the PRINCE OF CONDE: for, though we had visited this delightful place, two or three times, some years ago, yet, beside its natural beauties, there is always something new. One spot we found particularly pleasing, nay flattering to an Englishman; it is called _l'Isle d'Amour_, in which there are some thatched cottages, a water-mill, a garden, shrubbery, &c. in the English taste, and the whole is, in every respect, well executed. The dairy is neat, and the milkmaid not ugly, who has her little villa, as well as the miller. There is also a tea-house, a billiard-room, an eating-room, and some other little buildings, all externally in the English village stile, which give the lawn, and serpentine walks that surround them, a very pastoral appearance. The eating-room is particularly well fancied, being covered within, and so painted as to produce a good idea of a close arbor; the several windows, which are pierced through the sides, have such forms, as the fantastic turn of the bodies of the painted trees admit of; and the building is in a manner surrounded with natural trees; the room, when illuminated for the Prince's supper, has not only a very pleasing effect, but is a well executed deception, for the real trees falling into perspective with those which are painted, through the variety of odd-shaped windows, has a very natural, and consequently a very pleasing effect; but what adds greatly to the deception, is, that at each corner of the room the floor is opened, and lumps of earth thrown up, which bear, in full perfection, a great variety of flowers and flowering shrubs. We had the honour to be admitted while the Prince of _Conde_, the Duke and Duchess of _Bourbon_, the Princess of _Monaco_, and two or three other ladies and gentlemen were at supper; a circumstance which became rather painful to us, as it seemed to occasion some to the company, and particularly to the Prince, who inquired who we were, and took pains to shew every sort of politeness he could to strangers he knew nothing of. The supper was elegantly served on plate; but there seemed to me too many servants round the table. The conversation was very little, and very reserved. I do not recollect that I saw scarce a smile during the whole time of supper. The Prince is a sprightly, agreeable man, something in person like _Lord Barrington_; and the _Duke_ of _Bourbon_ so like his father, that it was difficult to know the son from the father. The _Duchess_ of _Bourbon_ is young, handsome, and a most accomplished lady. During the supper, a good band of music played; but it was all wind instruments. Mr. _Lejeune_, the first bassoon, is a most capital performer indeed. After the dessert had been served up about ten minutes, the Princess of _Monaco_ rose from the table, as did all the company, and suddenly turning from it, each lady and gentleman's servant held them a water glass, which they used with great delicacy, and then retired. The Princess of _Monaco_ is separated from the Prince her husband; yet she has beauty enough for any Prince in Europe, and brought fortune enough for two or three. The Duchess of _Bourbon_ had rather a low head-dress, and without any feather, or, that I could perceive, _rouge_; the Princess of _Monaco's_ head-dress was equally plain; the two other ladies, whose rank I do not recollect, wore black caps, and hats high dressed. There were eight persons sat down to table, and I think, about twenty-five servants, in and out of livery, attended. The next day, we were admitted to see the Prince's cabinet of natural and artificial curiosities; and as I intimated my design of publishing some account of my journey, the Prince was pleased to allow me as much time as I chose, to examine his very large and valuable collection; among which is a case of gold medallions,(72) of the Kings of France, in succession, a great variety of birds and beasts, ores, minerals, petrifactions, gems, cameos, &c. There is also a curious cabinet, lately presented to the Prince by the King of Denmark; and near it stood a most striking representation, in wax, of a present said to be _served up_ to a late unfortunate Queen; it is the head and right hand of _Count Struensee_, as they were taken off after the execution; the head and hand lie upon a silver dish, with the blood and blood vessels too, well executed; never surely was any thing so _sadly_, yet so finely done. I defy the nicest eye, however near, to distinguish it (suppose the head laid upon a pillow in a bed) from nature; nor must Mrs. _Wright_, or any of the workers in wax I have ever yet seen, pretend to a tythe of the perfection in that art, with the man who made this head.--Sad as the subject is, I could not withstand the temptation of asking permission to take a copy of it; and fortunately, I found the man who made it was then at _Paris_,--nor has he executed his work for me less perfect than that he made for the Prince.--I have been thus particular in mentioning this piece of art, because, of the kind, I will venture to say, it is not only _deadly_ fine, but one of the most perfect deceptions ever seen. When you, or any of the ladies and gentlemen who have honoured this poor performance of mine with their names, or their family or friends, pass this way, I shall be happy to embrace that occasion, to shew, that I have not said more of this inimitable piece of art, than it merits; nor do I speak thus positively from my own judgment, but have the concurrent opinion of many men of unquestionable judgment, that it is a master-piece of art; and among the rest, our worthy and valuable friend Mr. _Sharp_, of the _Old Jewry_. Before we left _Chantilly_, we had a little concert, to which _my train_ added one performer; and as it was the only string instrument, it was no small addition. The day we left this charming place, we found the Prince and all his company under tents and pavilions on the road-side, from whence they were preparing to follow the hounds. At _Amiens_, there is in the _Hotel de Ville_, a little antique god in bronze, which was found, about four years ago, near a Roman urn, in the earth, which is very well worthy of the notice of a _connoisseur_; but it is such as cannot decently be described; the person in whose custody it is, permitted me to take an impression from it in wax; but I am not _quite so good_ a hand at waxwork as the artist mentioned above, and yet my little houshold-god has some merit, a merit too that was not discovered till three months after it had been fixed in the _Hotel de Ville_; and the discovery was made by a female, not a male, _connoisseur_. It is said, that a Hottentot cannot be so civilized, but that he has always a hankering after his savage friends, and _dried chitterlins_; and, that gypsies prefer their roving life, to any other, a circumstance that once did, but now no longer surprizes me; for I feel such a desire to wander again, that I am impatient till the winter is past, when I intend to visit _Geneva_, and make the tour of Italy; and if you can find me cut a sensible valetudinarian or two, of either sex, or any age, who will travel as we do, to see what is to be seen, to make a little stay, where _the place_, or _the people_ invite us to do so, who can dine on a cold partridge, in a hot day, under a shady tree; and travel in a _landau and one_, we will keep them a _table d'hote_, that shall be more pleasant than expensive, and which will produce more health and spirits, than half the drugs of Apothecary's Hall. If God delights so much in variety, as all things animate and inanimate sufficiently prove, no wonder that man should do so too: and I have now been so accustomed to move, though slowly, that I intend to creep on to my _journey's end_, by which means I may live to have been an inhabitant of every town almost in Europe, and die, as I have lately (and wish I had always) lived, a free citizen of the whole world, slave to no sect, nor subject to any King. Yet, I would not be considered as one wishing to promote that disposition in others; for I must confess, that it is in England alone, where an innocent and virtuous man can sit down and enjoy the blessings of liberty and his own chearful hearth, in full confidence that no earthly power can disturb it; and the best reason which can be offered in favour of Englishmen visiting other kingdoms, is, to enable them, upon their return, to know how to enjoy the inestimable blessings of their own. LETTER LVI. For what should I cross the streight which divides us, though it were but _half_ seven leagues? we should only meet to part again, and purchase pleasure, as most pleasures are purchased, too dearly; I have dropt some heavy tears, (ideally at least) over poor BUCKLE'S[J] grave, and it is all one to a man, now with GOD! on what King's soil such a _tribute as that_ is paid: had some men of all nations known the goodness of his heart as we did, some men of all nations would grieve as we do. When I frequented _Morgan's_[K] I used him as a touch-stone, to try the hearts of other men upon; for, as he was not rich, he was out of the walk of knaves and flatterers, and such men, who were moot prejudiced in his favour at first sight, and coveted not his company after a little acquaintance, I always avoided as beings made of base metal. It was for this reason I despised that ****** ****, (you know who I mean) for you too have seen him _snarl_, _and bite_, _and play the dog_, even to BUCKLE! [J] WILLIAM BUCKLE, Esq. [K] MORGAN'S Coffee-House, Grove, BATH. Our Sunday night's tea club, round his chearful hearth, is now for ever dissolved, and SHARPE and RYE have administered their last friendly offices with a potion of sorrow. Were I the hermit of _St. Catharine_, I would chissel his name as deeply into one of my pine-heads, as his virtues are impressed on my memory. Though I have lost _his guinea_, I will not lose his name; he looked down with pity upon me when here; who can say he may not do so still? I should be an infidel, did not a few such men as he _keep me back_. And now, my dear Sir, after the many trifling subjects in this very long correspondence with you, I will avail myself of this good one, to close it, on the noblest work of GOD, AN HONEST MAN. The loss of such a friend, is sufficient to induce one to lay aside all pursuits, but that of following his example, and to prepare to follow him. If you should ever follow me _here_, I flatter myself you will find, that I have, to the best of my poor abilities, made such a sketch of _men and things_ on this side of the water, that you will be able to discover some likeness to the originals. A bad painter often hits the general features, though he fall ever so short of the graces of _Titian_, or the _Morbidezza_ of _Guido_. I am sure, therefore, you and every man of candour, will make allowances for the many inaccuracies, defects, &c. which I am sensible these letters abound with, tho' I am incapable of correcting them. My journey, you know was not made, as most travellers' are, to indulge in luxury, or in pursuit of pleasures, but to soften sorrow, and to recover from a blow, which came from a mighty hand indeed; but a HAND still MORE MIGHTY, has enabled me to resist it, and to return in health, spirits, and with that peace of mind which no _earthly power_ can despoil me of, and with that friendship and regard for you, which will only cease, when I cease to be PHILIP THICKNESSE. _Calais, Nov. 4, 1776._ P.S. I found _Berwick's_ regiment on duty in this town: it is commanded by _Mons. le Duc de Fitz-James_, and a number of Irish gentlemen, my countrymen, (for so I will call them.) You may easily imagine, that men who possess the natural hospitality of their own country, with the politeness and good-breeding of this, must be very agreeable acquaintance in general: But I am bound to go farther, and to say, that I am endeared to them by marks of true friendship. The King of France, nor any Prince in Europe, cannot boast of troops better disciplined; nor is the King insensible of their merit, for I have lately seen a letter written by the King's command from _Comte de St. Germain_, addressed to the officers of one of these corps, whereby it appears, that the King is truly sensible of their distinguished merit; for braver men there are not in any service:--What an acquisition to France! what a loss to Britain! As the _Marquis_ of _Grimaldi_ is retired from his public character, I am tempted to send you a specimen of his private one, which flattering as it is to me, and honourable to himself, I should have withheld, had his Excellency continued first minister of Spain; by which you will see, that while my own countrymen united to set me in a suspicious light, (though they thought otherwise) the ministers politeness and humanity made them tremble at the duplicity of their conduct; and had I been disposed to have acted the same sinister part they did, some of them might have been reminded of an old Spanish proverb, "_A las màlas lénguas tigéras_" "Muy S^or. mio. Por la carta de I^o del corr^te. veo su feliz llegada a esta ciudad, en donde habia tomado una casa, y por las cartas que me incluye, y debuelbo, reconosco los terminos honrados y recomendables con que ha efectuado su salida de Inglaterra, cosa que yo nunca podria dudar. "Deseo que a V.S. le va' ya muy bien en este Reyno, y espero que me avifara el tiempo que se propusiere detener en Barcelona, y tambien quando se verificara su yda a Valencia: cuyo Pais se ha creydo el mas propio para su residencia estable, por la suavidad del clima y demas circunstantias.--V.S. me hallara pronto a complacerle y sevirle en lo que se le ofrezca: que es quendo en el dia puedo decirle, referiendome ademas a mis cartas precedentes communicadas por medio de ... Dios quiere a V.S. M^o c^o d^o S^r el 14 Nov^re. de 1775. "B L.M. en. S. Su mayor fer^or. El Marq^s de GRIMALDI, _A Don Felipe Thickness_." _A Madame_ THICKNESSE. Voila, Madame, quelques amusemens de ma plume, vous avez paru les desirer, mon empressement a vous obeir sera le merite de ces legeres productions; la premiere a eu assez de succes en France, je doute qu'elle puisse en avoir un pareil en Angleterre, parce que le mot n'a peut-etre pas la meme signification ce que nous appellons Grelot est une petite cochette fermee que l'on attache aux hochets des enfans pour les amuser; dans le sens metaphysique on en fait un des attributs de la folie: Ice je l'employe comme embleme de gaiete et d'enfance. Le Pritems est une Epitre ecrite de la campagne a un de mes amis; j'etois sous le charme de la creation, pour ainsi dire; les vers en font d'une mesuretres difficile. La description de Courcelles est celle d'une terre qu'avoit ma mere, et ou j'ai passe toute ma jeunesse; enchantee de son paysage, et de la vie champetre que j'aime passion, je l'adressois a un honnete homme de Rheims que j'appellois par plaisanterie mon Papa: ce que j'ai de meilleur dans mon porte-feuille, ce sont des chansons pour mon mari; comme je l'aime parfaitement mon coeur m'a servi de muse: mais cette tendresse toujours si delicieuse aux interesses ne peut plaire a ceux qui ne le sont pas. Quand j'auri l'honneur de vous revoir, Madame, je vous communiquerai mon recueil, et vous jugerez. Recevez les hommages respectueux de mon mari, et daignezfaire agreér nos voeux a Mons. Tiennerse; je n'ai point encore reçu les jolies poches, je pars demain pour la campagne, et j'y resterai quinze jours; nous avons des chaleurs cruelles, Messrs. les Anglois qui sont ici en souffrent beaucoup, j'ai l'honneur d'etre avec le plus inviolable attachement, Madame, Votre tres humble et tres obeissante servante, _De Courcelles Desjardins._ 28 Juillet, 1776. _Epitre au Grelot._ De la folie aimable lot Don plus brillant que la richesse, Et que je nommerai sagesse Si je ne craignois le fagot, C'est toi que je chante ô Grelot! Hochet heureux de tous les ages L'homme est à toi dès le maillot, Mais dans tes nombreux appanages Jamais tu ne comptas le sot: De tes sons mitigés le sage En tapinois se rejouït Tandis que l'insensé jouït Du plaisir de faire tapage. Plus envié que dédaigné Par cette espece atrabilaire Qui pense qu'un air refrogné La met au dessus du vulgaire, La privation de tes bienfaits Seule fait naître sa satyre; Charmante idole du François Chez lui réside ton empire: Tes détracteurs font les pedans, Les avares et les amans De cette gloire destructive Qui peuple l'infernale rive, Et remplit l'univers d'excès. L'ambitieux dans son délire N'eprouve que de noirs accès, Le genre-humain seroit en paix, Si les conquérans savoient rire. Contre ce principe évident C'est en vain qu'un censeur declame, Le mal ne se fait en riant. Si de toi provient l'epigrame, Son tour heureux ne'est que plaisant Et ne nuit jamais qu'au méchant Que sa conscience décèle. Nomme t-on la rose cruelle Lorsqu'un mal-adroit la cueillant Se blesse lui-même au tranchant De l'epine qu'avec prudence Nature fit pour sa défense. Tes simples et faciles jeux Prolongent dit-on notre enfance Censeur, que te faut-il de mieux! Des abus, le plus dangereux, Le plus voisin de la démence Est de donner trop d'importance A ces chiméres dont les cieux Ont composé notre existence Notre devoir est d'être heureux A moins de frais, à moins de voeux De l'homme est toute la science. Par tes sons toujours enchanteurs Tu fais fuir la froide vieillesse Ou plutôt la couvrant de fleurs Tu lui rends l'air de la jeunesse. Du temps tu trompes la lenteur, Par toi chaque heure est une fête _Démocrite_ fut ton Docteur _Anacréon_ fut ton Prophête; Tous deux pour sages reconnus, L'un riant des humains abus Te fit sonner dans sa retraite L'autre chantant à la guingette Te donna pour pomme à _Venus_ Après eux ma simple musette T'offre ses accens ingénus Charmant Grelot, sur ta clochette Je veux moduler tous mes vers, Sois toujours la douce amusette Source de mes plaisirs divers Heureux qui te garde en cachette Et se passe l'univers. _Le Printems._ Epitre à Mons. D---- Déjà dans la plaine On ressent l'haleine Du léger Zephir; Déja la nature Sourit au plaisir, La jeune verdure A l'eclat du jour Oppose la teinte Que cherit l'amour Fuyant la contrainte, Au pied des ormeaux; Ma muse naïve Reprend ses pipeaux; Sur la verte rive Aux tendres echos Elle dit ces mots. Volupté sure Bien sans pareil! O doux réveil De la nature! Que l'ame pure Dans nos guérets Avec yvresse Voit tes attraits; De la tendresse Et de la paix Les doux bienfaits Sur toute espéce Vont s'epandant, Et sont l'aimant Dont la magie Enchaîne et lie Tout l'univers L'homme pervers Dans sa malice Ferme son coeur A ces delices, Et de l'erreur Des goûts factices Fait son bonheur La noire envie Fille d'orgueil, Chaque furie Jusqu'au circueil, Tisse sa vie. Les vains désirs Les vrais plaisirs Sont antipodes; A ces pagodes Culte se rend, L'oeil s'y méprend Et perd de vuë Felicité, La Déité La plus couruë La moins connuë Simple réduit Et solitaire Jadis construit Par le mystére Est aujourd'hui Sa residencei La bienveillance. Au front serein De la déesse Est la Prêtresse; Les ris badins Sont sacristains, Joyeux fidelles, De fleurs nouvelles Offrent les dons. Tendres chansons Tribut du Zele, Jointes au sons De Philoméle, De son autel Sont le rituel Dans son empire Telle est la loi, "Aimer et rire De bonne foy." Cet Evangile Peu difficile Du vrai bonheur Seroit auteur Si pour apôtre Il vous avoit; En vain tout autre Le prêcheroit. La colonie Du double mont Du vraie génie Vous a fait don, Sans nul caprice Entrez en lice, Et de Passif Venant actif Pour la Déesse Enchanteresse Qui dans ces lieux Nous rend heureux Donnez moi rose Nouvelle éclose: Du doux Printems Hâtez le tems Il etincelle En vos écrits, Qu'il renouvelle Mes Esprits. Adieu beau Sire, Pour ce délire Le sentiment Est mon excuse. S'il vous amuse Un seul moment, Et vous rapelle Un coeur fidelle Depuis cent ans, Comme le vôtre En tous les tems N'ai désir autre. FABLE _Les Aquilons et l'Oranger._ De fougeux Aquilons une troupe emportée Contre un noble Oranger éxhaloit ses fureurs Ils soufflerent en vain, leur rage mutinée De l'arbre aux fruits dorés n'ôta que quelques fleurs. MADRIGAL Du tumulte, du bruit, des vaines passions Fuyons l'eclat trompeur: à leurs impressions Préférons les douceurs de ce sejour paisible, Disoit un jour _Ariste_ à la tendre _Délos_. Soit, repart celle-ci; mais las! ce doux repos N'est que le pis-aller d'une ame trop sensible. QUATRAIN Telle que ce ruisseau qui promene son onde Dans des lieux ecartés loin du bruit et du monde Je veux pour peu d'amis éxister desormais C'est loin des faux plaisirs que l'on trouve les vrais. REVERIE SUR UNE LECTURE. Aux froids climats de l'ourse, et dans ceux du midi, L'homme toujours le même est vain, foible, et crédule, Sa devise est partout _Sottise et Ridicule_. Le célébre Chinois, le François étourdi De la raison encore n'ont que le crepuscule Jadis au seul hazard donnant tout jugement, Par les effets cuisans du fer rougi qui brule On croyoit discerner le foible et l'innocent; A Siam aujourd'hui pareille erreur circule, Et l'on voit même esprit sous une autre formule: Quand quelque fait obscur tient le juge en suspens On fait aux yeux de tous à chaque contendant D'Esculape avaler purgative pillule, Celui dont l'estomac répugne à pareil mets Est réputé coupable et paye tous les frais. Du pauvre genre-humain telles sont les annales: Rome porta le deuil de l'honneur des vestales, Du Saint Pere à présent, elle baise l'ergot: Plus gais, non plus sensés dans ce siécle falot Nous choisissons au moins l'erreur la plus jolie: De l'inquisition, le bal, la comédie Remplacent parmi nous le terrible fagot; Notre légéreté détruit la barbarie Mais nous n'avons encore que changé de folie. ENVOI A MON MARI. Tandis, mon cher, que tes travaux Me procurent ce doux repos. Et cette heureuse insouciance But incertain de l'opulence; Mon ame l'abeille imitant Aux pays d'esprit élancée Cueille les fleurs de la pensée Et les remet aux sentiment. Mais helas! dans ce vaste champ En vain je cherche la sagesse, Près de moi certain Dieu fripon Me fait quitter l'école de _Zenon_ Pour le charme de la tendresse; "L'homme est crée pour être bon Et non savant, dit il, qu'il aime, Du bonheur c'est le vrai systême" Je sens, ma foi, qu'il a raison. DESCRIPTION _De la terre dans laquelle j'habitois, adressée à un homme très respectable que j'appellois mon Papa._ Que vous êtes aimable, mon cher Papa, de me demander une description de ma solitude. Votre imagination est gênée de ne pouvoir se la peindre. Vous voulez faire de _Courcelles_ une seconde étoile du matin, et y lier avec moi un de ces commerces d'ames réservés aux favoris de Brama. Votre idée ne me perdra plus de vue, j'en ferai mon génie tutélaire. Je croirai à chaque instant sentir sa présence, ah! elle ne peut trop tôt arriver, montrons lui donc le chemin. Quittant votre cité Rhémoise, Ville si fertil en bons Vins, En gras moutons, en bons humains, Après huit fois trois mille toises Toujours suivant le grand chemin, On découvre enfin le village Où se trouve notre hermitage. Là rien aux yeux du voyageur Ne presente objet de surprise, Petit ruisseau, des maisons, une Eglise Tout à côté la hutte du Pasteur; Car ces Messieurs pour quelques Patenôtres. Pour un surplis, pour un vêtement noir En ce monde un peu plus qu'en l'autre Ont droit près du bon dieu d'établir leur manoir. Ce début n'est pas fort seduisant; aussi ne vous ai-je rien promis de merveilleux. Je pourrois cependant pour embellir ma narration me perdre dans de brillantes descriptions, et commencer par celle de notre clocher; mais malheureusement nous n'en avons point; car je ne crois pas que l'on puisse appeller de ce nom l'endroit presque souterrain où logent trois mauvaises cloches. Elles m'étourdissent par fois au point que sans leur baptême, je les enverrois aux enfers sonner les diners de _Pluton_ et de _Proserpine_. On apperçoit près de l'Eglise, entre elle et le curé, une petite fenêtre grillée, ceci est une vraie curiosité; c'est un sépulcre bâti par _Saladin d'Anglure_, ancien Seigneur de _Courcelles_ il vivoit du tems des croisades, et donna comme les autres dans la manie du siécle. Il ne fut pas plus heureux que ses confreres. Son sort fut d'être prisonnier du vaillant Saladin dont il conserva le surnom. Sa captivité l'ennuyant, il fit voeu, si elle finissoit bientôt, de bàtir dans sa Seigneurie un sépulcre, et un calvaire à même distance l'un de l'autre qu'ils le sont à Jérusalum. C'est aussi ce qu'il fit. Quand par une aventure heureuse, Des fers du Vaillant _Saladin_ Il revint chez lui sauf et sain; Mais la chronique scandaleuse Qui daube toujours le prochain, Et ne se repâit que de blame Pretend que trop tôt pour Madame, Et trop tard pour le Pelerin Dans son Châtel il s'en revint. Ce fut, dit on, le lendemain, La veille, ou le jour que la Dame, Croyant son mari très benin Parti pour la gloire éternelle Venoit de contracter une hymenée nouvelle. La tradition étoit en balance sur ces trois dates; mais la malignité humaine a donné la préférence à la derniére, ensorte qu'il paroit trés sur que l'Epoux n'arriva que le lendemain. Quel affront pour un chef couronné de lauriers! Tel est pourtant le sort des plus fameux guerriers; Ceux d'aujourd'hui n'en font que rire Mais ceux du tems passé mettoient la chose au pis, Ils n'avoient pas l'esprit de dire Nous sommes quitte, et bons amis. Pendant que vous êtes en train de visiter nos antiquités courcelloises, il me prend envie de vous faire entrer dans notre réduit. Quoique du titre de château, Pompeusement on le decore, Ne vous figurez pas qu'il soit vaste ni beau. Tel que ces Grands que l'on honore Pour les vertus de leurs ayeux Pour tout mérite il n'a comme eux Qu'un nom qui se conserve encore. Ainsi pour vous en former une juste idée, ne cherchez votre modéle ni dans les romans, ni dans les miracles de féerie. Ce n'est pas même un vieux château fort, comme il en éxiste encore quelques uns dàns nos entours. Point, on n'y voit fossé ni bastion Ni demi-lune ni Dongeon, Ni beaux dehors de structure nouvelle, Mais bien une antique Tourelle Flanquant d'assez, vieux bâtimens Dont elle est l'unique ornement. Un Poëte de nos cantons a dit assez plaisamment en parlant de ceci. Sur les bords de la Vesle est un château charmant N'allez pas chicaner, Lecteur impertinent) (Le bâtiment à part, la Dame qui l'habite Par ses rares vertus en fait tout le mérite. Vous verrez tout-à l'heure s'il avoit raison. Je ne m'arrêterai point à vous peindre la ferme quoi qu'elle tienne au château, ni l'attirail des animaux de toute espèce qu'elle renferme. Ces spectacles vraiment rustiques Offrent pourtant plus de plaisirs A des regards philosophiques, Que ce que l'art et les desirs De notre insatiable espèce Inventent tous les jours aidés par la mollesse. Je vous ferai entrer tout de suite dans une grande cour de gazon où effectivement je voudrois bien vous voir. Deux manieses de Perrons y conduisent, l'un aux appartemens, l'autre à la cuisine. Commençons par ce dernier quoique ce ne soit pas trop la coutume. Là chaque jour, tant bien que mal, On apprete deux fois un repas très frugal, Mais que l'appétit assaisonne. Loin, bien loin, ces bruyans festins, Toujours suivis des médecins Où le poison dans cent ragoûts foisonne Nous aimons mieux peu de mets bien choisis De la Santé, moins de plats, plus de ris. Voilà notre devise, mon cher Papa, je crois qu'elle est aussi la vôtre; notre réz de chaussée consiste en cuisine, office, salle à manger, chambre et cabinets, rien de tout cela n'est ni élegant ni commode. Nos devanciers fort bonnes gens N'entendoient rien aux ornemens Et leurs désirs ne passoient guére Les bornes du seul necessaire. Ils étoient plus heureux et plus sages que nous, car la vraie sagesse n'est autre chose que la modération des desirs. D'après cette definition on pourroit, je crois, loger tout notre siécle aux petites maisons. Ce qu'il y a de plus agréable dans la notre est la vuë du grand chemin. De ce chemin où chacun trotte Où nous voyons soirs et matins Passer toute espece d'humains; Tantôt la gent portant calote, Et tantôt de jeunes plumets, Les rusés disciples d'Ignace Puis ceux de la grace efficace, Des piétons, des cabriolets Tant d'Etres à deux pieds, sots, et colifichets, Enfin cent sortes d'équipages Et mille sortes de visages. Ce tableau mouvant est par fois fort récréatif, il me paroit assez plaisant d'y juger les gens sur la mine, et de deviner leur motif, et le sujet de leurs courses. Mais, Papa, qu'il est consolant Voyant leurs soins et leur inquiétude De jouir du repos constant Qu'on goute dans la solitude. A dire vrai, le spectacle du grand chemin, est celui qui m'occupe le moins; j'aime mille fois mieux nos promenades champêtres; avant de yous y conduire, il faut en historien fidelle vous rendre compte de notre chaumiére. Vous croyez peut-être trouver un premier étage au dessus de la façade dont je vous ai parlé? Point du tout. Ne vous ai-je pas dit que nos péres préferoient l'utile à l'agréable: aussi ont ils mieux aimé construire de grands greniers que de jolis appartemens; mais en revanche ils out jetté quantité de petites mansardes sur un autre côté du logis. Ce dernier donne sur un verger qui fait mes délices, il est précédé d'un petit parterre, et finit par un bois charmant. Une onde toujours claire et pure Y vient accorder souo murmure Au son mélodieux de mille et mille oiseaux Que cachent en tous tems nos jeunes arbrisseaux. C'est là que votre fille se plait à rêver à vous, mon cher Papa, c'est dans ce réduit agréable qu'elle s'occupe tour à tour de morale et de tendresse. _Epictete, Pope, Zénon._ Et _Socrate_, et surtout l'ingenieux _Platon_, Viennent dans ces lieux solitaires Me prêter le secours de leurs doctes lumiéres: Mais plus souvent la soeur de l'enfant de Cypris Ecartant sans respect cette foule de sages Occupe seule mes esprits En y gravant de mes amis Les trop séduisantes images. Je n'entreprendrai pas de vous peindre nos autres promenades, elles sont toutes charmantes; un paysage coupé, quantité de petits bosquets, mille jolis chemins, nous procurent naturellement des beautés auxquelles l'art ne sauroit atteindre. La Vesle borde nos prairies Sur sa rive toujours fleurie Regne un doux air de bergerie Dangereux pour les tendres coeurs. Là, qui se sent l'ame attendrie S'il craint de l'amour les erreurs Doit vite quitter la partie. Quittons la donc, mon cher Papa; aussi bien ai-je seulement oublié de vous montrer la plus piéce de l'hermitage. C'est un canal superbe. Il a cent vingt toises de long sur douze de large, une eau courante et crystalline en rend la surface toujours brillante, cest la digne embléme d'un coeur ami, jugez si cette vuë me fait penser à vous. De grands potagers terminent l'enclos de la maison. Si j'étois méchante je continuerois ma description, et ne vous ferois pas grace d'une laitue, mais je me contenteraide vous dire que le ciel fit sans doute ce canton pour des Etres broutans. Si les Israëlites en eussent mangé jadis, ils n'auroient ni regretté l'Egypte ni desiré la terre promise. Voilà mon cher Papa une assez mauvaize esquisse du pays Courcellois. L'air m'en seroit plus doux et le ciel plus serein Si quelque jour, moins intraitable Et se laissant flechir, le farouche Destin Y conduisoit ce _trio_ tant aimable Que j'aime, et chérirai sans fin Mais las! j'y perds tout mon latin, Et ce que de mieux je puis faire Est d'espérer et de me taire * * * * * I should have stopt here, and finished my present correspondence with you by leaving your mind harmonized with the above sweet stanzas of _Madame des Jardins_, but that it may seem strange, to give a specimen of one French Lady's literary talents, without acknowledging, that this kingdom abounds with many, of infinite merit.--While England can boast only of about half a dozen women, who will immortalize their names by their works, France can produce half an hundred, admired throughout Europe, for their wit, genius, and elegant compositions.--Were I to recite the names and writings only of female authors of eminence, which France has produced, since the time of the first, and most unfortunate _Heloise_, who died in 1079, down to _Madame Riccoboni_, now living, it would fill a volume. We have, however, a CARTER, and a BARBAULD, not less celebrated for their learning and genius than for their private virtues; and I think it may, with more truth be said of women, than of men, that the more knowledge, the more virtue; the more understanding, the less courage. Why then is the _plume elevated to the head_? and what must the present mode of female education and manners end in, but in more ignorance, dissipation, debauchery and luxury? and, at length, in national ruin. Thus it was at ROME, the mistress of the world; they became fond of the most vicious men, and such as meant to enslave them, who corrupted their hearts, by humouring and gratifying their follies, and encouraging, on all sides, idleness and dissolute manners, blinded by CÆSAR's complaisance; from his _almsmen_, they became his _bondmen_; he charmed them in order to enslave them. When the tragedy of _Tereus_ was acted at ROME, _Cicero_ observed, what plaudits the audience gave with their hands at some severe strokes in it against tyranny; but he very justly lamented, that they employed their hands, _only in the Theatre_, not in defending that liberty which they seemed so fond of. And now, as BAYES says, "let's have a Dance." ---- GENERAL HINTS TO STRANGERS WHO TRAVEL IN FRANCE. GENERAL HINTS, &c. I. If you travel post, when you approach the town, or bourg where you intend to lie, ask the post-boy, which house he recommends as the best? and never go to that, if there is any other.--Be previously informed what other inns there are in the same place. If you go according to the post-boy's recommendation, the aubergiste gives him two or three livres, which he makes you pay the next morning. I know but one auberge between _Marseilles_ and _Paris_, where this is not a constant practice, and that is at _Vermanton_, five leagues from _Auxerre_, where every English traveller will find a decent landlord, _Monsieur Brunier_, _a St. Nicolas_; good entertainment, and no imposition, and consequently an inn where no post-boy will drive, if he can avoid it. II. If you take your own horses, they must be provided with head-pieces, and halters; the French stables never furnish any such things; and your servant must take care that the _Garçon d'Ecurie_ does not buckle them so tight, that the horses cannot take a full bite, this being a common practice, to save hay. III. If the _Garçon d'Ecurie_ does not bring the halters properly rolled up, when he puts your horses to, he ought to have nothing given him, because they are so constantly accustomed to do it, that they cannot forget it, _but in hopes you may too_. IV. Direct your servant, not only to see your horses watered, and corn given them, but to _stand by_ while they eat it: this is often necessary in England, and always in France. V. If you eat at the _table d'Hote_, the price is fixed, and you cannot be imposed upon. If you eat in your own chamber, and order your own dinner or supper, it is as necessary to make a previous bargain with your host for it, as it would be to bargain with an itinerant Jew for a gold watch; the _conscience_ and _honour_ of a _French Aubergiste_, and a travelling Jew, are always to be considered alike; and it is very remarkable, that the publicans in France, are the only people who receive strangers with a cool indifference! and where this indifference is most shewn, there is most reason to be cautious. VI. Be careful that your sheets are well aired, otherwise you will find them often, not only damp, but perfectly wet.--Frenchmen in general do not consider wet or damp sheets dangerous, I am sure French _Aubergistes_ do not. VII. Young men who travel into France with a view of gaining the language, should always eat at the _table d'Hote_.--There is generally at these tables, an officer, or a priest, and though there may be none but people of a middling degree, they will shew every kind of attention and preference to a stranger. VIII. It is necessary to carry your own pillows with you; in some inns they have them; but in villages, _bourgs_, &c. none are to be had. IX. In the wine provinces, at all the _table d'Hotes_, they always provide the common wine, as we do small beer; wine is never paid for separately, unless it is of a quality above the _vin du Pays_; and when you call for better, know the price _before_ you drink it. X. When fine cambrick handkerchiefs, &c. are given to be washed, take care they are not trimmed round two inches narrower, to make borders to _Madame la Blanchisseuse's_ night caps: this is a little _douceur_ which they think themselves entitled to, from my Lord _Anglois_, whom they are sure is _tres riche_, and consequently ought to be plundered by the poor. XI. Whenever you want honest information, get it from a French officer, or a priest, provided they are on the _wrong_ side of forty; but in general, avoid all acquaintance with either, on the _right_ side of thirty. XII. Where you propose to stay any time, be very cautious with whom you make an acquaintance, as there are always a number of officious forward Frenchmen, and English adventurers, ready to offer you their services, from whom you will find it very difficult to disengage yourself, after you have found more agreeable company.--Frenchmen of real fashion, are very circumspect, and will not _fall in love with you_ at first sight; but a designing knave will exercise every species of flattery, in order to fix himself upon you for his dinner, or what else he can get, and will be with you before you are up, and after you are in bed. XIII. Wherever there is any cabinet of curiosities, medals, pictures, &c. to be seen, never make any scruple to send a card, desiring permission to view them; the request is flattering to a Frenchman, and you will never be refused; and besides this you will in all probability thereby gain a valuable acquaintance.--It is generally men of sense and philosophy, who make such collections, and you will find the collector of them, perhaps, the most pleasing part of the cabinet. XIV. Take it as a maxim, unalterable as the laws of the Medes and Persians, that whenever you are invited to a supper at _Paris_, _Lyons_, or any of the great cities, where a _little_ trifling play commences before supper, that GREAT PLAY is intended after supper; and that you are the marked pigeon to be plucked. Always remember _Lord Chesterfield's_ advice to his son: "If you play with men, know with _whom_ you play; if with women, for _what_:" and don't think yourself the more secure, because you see at the same table some of your own countrymen, though they are Lords or Ladies; a _London_ gambler would have no chance in a _Parisian_ party. XV. Dress is an essential and most important consideration with every body in France. A Frenchman never appears till his hair is well combed and powdered, however slovenly he may be in other respects.--Not being able to submit every day to this ceremony, the servant to a gentleman of fashion at whose house I visited in _Marseilles_, having forgot my name described me to his master, as the gentleman whose hair was _toujours mal frise_.--Dress is a foolish thing, says _Lord Chesterfield_; yet it is a foolish thing not to be well dressed. XVI. You cannot dine, or visit after dinner, in an undress frock, or without a bag to your hair; the hair _en queue_, or a little cape to your coat, would be considered an unpardonable liberty. Military men have an advantage above all others in point of dress, in France; a regimental or military coat carries a man with a _bonne grace_ into all companies, with or without a bag to his hair; it is of all others the properest dress for a stranger in France, on many accounts. XVII. In France it is not customary to drink to persons at table, nor to drink wine after dinner: when the dessert is taken away, so is the wine;--an excellent custom, and worthy of being observed by all nations. XVIII. It is wrong to be led into any kind of conversation, but what is absolutely necessary, with the common, or indeed the middling class of people in France. They never fail availing themselves of the least condescension in a stranger, to ask a number of impertinent questions, and to conclude, you answer them civilly, that they are your equals.--Sentiment and bashfulness are not to be met with, but among people of rank in France: to be free and easy, is the etiquette of the country; and some kinds of that free and easy manner, are highly offensive to strangers, and particularly to a shy Englishman. XIX. When well-bred people flatter strangers, they seldom direct their flattery to the object they mean to compliment, but to one of their own country:--As, what a _bonne grace_ the English have, says one to the other, in a whisper loud enough to be heard by the whole company, who all give a nod of consent; yet in their hearts they do not love the English of all other nations, and therefore conclude, that the English in their hearts do not love them. XX. No gentleman, priest, or servant, male or female, ever gives any notice by knocking before they enter the bed-chamber, or apartment of ladies or gentlemen.--The post-man opens it, to bring your letters; the capuchin, to ask alms; and the gentleman to make his visit. There is no privacy, but by securing your door by a key or a bolt; and when any of the middling class of people have got possession of your apartment, particularly of a stranger, it is very difficult to get them out. XXI. There is not on earth, perhaps, so curious and inquisitive a people as the lower class of French: noise seems to be one of their greatest delights. If a ragged boy does but beat a drum or sound a trumpet, he brings all who hear it about him, with the utmost speed, and most impatient curiosity.--As my monkey rode postillion, in a red jacket laced with silver, I was obliged to make him dismount, when I passed thro' a town of any size: the people gathered so rapidly about me at _Moret_, three leagues from _Fontainbleau_, while I stopped only to buy a loaf, that I verily believe every man, woman, and child, except the sick and aged, were paying their respects to my little groom; all infinitely delighted; for none offered the least degree of rudeness. XXII. The French never give coffee, tea, or any refreshment, except upon particular occasions, to their morning or evening visitors. XXIII. When the weather is cold, the fire small, and a large company, some young Frenchman shuts the whole circle from receiving any benefit from it, by placing himself just before it, laying his sword genteely over his left knee, and flattering himself, while all the company wish him at the devil, that the ladies are admiring his legs: when he has gratified his vanity, or is thoroughly warm, he sits down, or goes, and another takes his place. I have seen this abominable ill-breeding kept up by a set of _accomplished_ young fops for two hours together, in exceeding cold weather. This custom has been transplanted lately into England. XXIV. Jealousy is scarce known in France; by the time the first child is born, an indifference generally takes place: the husband and wife have their separate acquaintance, and pursue their separate _amusements_, undisturbed by domestic squabbles: when they meet in the evening, it is with perfect good humour, and in general, perfect good breeding.--When an English wife plays truant, she soon becomes abandoned: it is not so with the French; they preserve appearances and proper decorum, because they are seldom attached to any particular man. While they are at their toilet, they receive the visits of their male acquaintance, and he must be a man of uncommon discernment, who finds out whom it is she prefers at that time.--In the southern parts of France, the women are in general very _free_ and _easy_ indeed. XXV. It is seldom that virgins are seduced in France; the married women are the objects of the men of gallantry. The seduction of a young girl is punished with death; and when they fall, it is generally into the arms of their confessor,--and that is seldom disclosed. Auricular confession is big with many mischiefs, as well as much good. Where the penitent and the confessor happen both to be young, he makes her confess not only all her sins, but sinful thoughts, and then, I fear he knows more than his prudence can absolve _decently_, and even when the confessor is old, the penitent may not be out of danger. XXVI. Never ask a Frenchman his age; no question whatever can be more offensive to him, nor will he ever give you a direct, though he may a civil answer.--_Lewis_ the XVth was always asking every man about him, his age. A King may take that liberty, and even then, it always gives pain.--_Lewis_ the XIVth said to _Comte de Grammont_, "_Je sais votre age, l'Eveque de Senlis qui a 84 ans, m'a donne pour epoque, que vous avez etudie ensemble dans la meme classe_." _Cet Eveque, Sire_, (replied the _Comte,) n'accuse pas juste, car ni lui, ni moi n'avons jamais Etudie_.--Before I knew how offensive this question was to a Frenchman, I have had many equivocal answers,--such as, _O! mon dieu_, as old as the town, or, I thank God, I am in good health, &c. XXVII. A modern French author says, that the French language is not capable of the _jeux de mots_. _Les jeux de mots_, are not, says he, in the genius _de notre langue, qui est grave, de serieuse_. Perhaps it maybe so; but the language, and the men, are then so different, that I thought quite otherwise,--though the following beautiful specimen of the seriousness of the language ought, in some measure; to justify his remark: Un seul est frappé, & tous sont delivrés, Dieu frappe sons fils innocent, pour l'amour Des hommes coupables, & pardonne aux hommes Coupables, pour l'amour de son fils innocent. XXVIII. All English women, as well as women of other nations, prefer France to their own country; because in France there is much less restraint on their actions, than there is, (should I not say, than there _was_?) in England. All Englishmen, however, who have young and beautiful wives, should, if they are not indifferent about their conduct, avoid a trip to _Paris_, &c. tho' it be but for "_a six weeks tour_." She must be good and wise too, if six weeks does not corrupt her mind and debauch her morals, and that too by her own sex, which is infinitely the most dangerous company. A French woman is as great an adept at laughing an English-woman into all contempt of fidelity to her husband, as married English-women are in general, in preparing them during their first pregnancy, for the touch of a man-midwife,--and both from the same motive; _i.e._ to do, as they have done, and bring all the sex upon a level. XXIX. The French will not allow their language to be so difficult to speak properly, as the English language; and perhaps they are in the right; for how often do we meet with Englishmen who speak French perfectly? how seldom do we hear a Frenchman speak English without betraying his country by his pronunciation? It is not so with the Spaniards; I conversed with two Spaniards who were never twenty miles from _Barcelona_, that spoke English perfectly well.--How, for instance, shall a Frenchman who cannot pronounce the English, be able to understand, (great as the difference is) what I mean when I say _the sun is an hour high_? May he not equally suppose that I said _the sun is in our eye_? XXX. When you make an agreement with an _aubergiste_ where you intend to lie, take care to include beds, rooms, &c. or he will charge separately for these articles. XXXI. After all, it must be confessed, that _Mons. Dessein's a l'Hotel d'Angleterre_ at _Calais_, is not only the first inn strangers of fashion generally go to, but that it is also the first and best inn in France. _Dessein_ is the decoy-duck, and ought to have a salary from the French government: he is always sure of a good one from the English. XXXII. In frontier or garrison towns, where they have a right to examine your baggage, a twenty-four _sols_ piece, and assuring the officer that you are a gentleman, and not a merchant, will carry you through without delay. XXXIII. Those who travel post should, before they set out, put up in parcels the money for the number of horses they use for one post, two posts, and a post _et demi_, adding to each parcel, that which is intended to be given to the driver, or drivers, who are intitled by the King's ordinance to five _sols_ a post; and if they behave ill, they should be given no more; when they are civil, ten or twelve _sols_ a post is sufficient. If these packets are not prepared, and properly marked, the traveller, especially if he is not well acquainted with the money, cannot count it out while the horses are changing, from the number of beggars which surround the carriage and who will take no denial. XXXIV. People of rank and condition, either going to, or coming from the continent, by writing to PETER FECTOR, Esq; at _Dover_, will find him a man of property and character, on whom they may depend. LASTLY, Valetudinarians, or men of a certain age, who travel into the southern parts of France, Spain, or Italy, should never omit to wear either a callico or fine flannel waistcoat under their shirts: strange as it may seem to say so, this precaution is more necessary in the south of France, than in England. In May last it was so hot at _Lyons_, on the side of the streets the sun shone on, and so cold on the shady side, that both were intolerable. The air is much more _vif_ and penetrating in hot climates, than in cold. A dead dog, thrown into the streets of Madrid at night, will not have a bit of flesh upon his bones after it has been exposed to that keen air twenty-four hours. FINIS. [List of possible typos or transcriber changes:] Ltr. 34 para. 2: monnments [monuments?] Several inscriptions were blurred or missing in this source. Educated guesses were made in a few cases. Ltr. 36: This is what was visible to the transcriber: L DOMIT. DOMITIANI EX TRIERARCHI CLASS. GERM. D PECCO****A VALENTINA M CO*****ENTISSIMA. Some characters blurred or missing. The full transcription was entered from other sources. Some of this looks wrong--e.g. the third line should probably begin P F, rather than PE--but it matches the text as printed. Ltr. 52 para. 2: Typo: that [than?] Ltr. 54 para. 3: Typo: hundry [hungry?] 
16224	----	images generously made available by gallica (Bibliothèque nationale de France) at http://gallica.bnf.fr. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL Antiquarian AND PICTURESQUE TOUR. PRINTED BY WILLIAM NICOL, AT THE Shakespeare Press. [Illustration: T. F. DIBDIN, D.D. Engraved by James Thomson from the Original Painting by T. Phillips Esq. R.A. London. Published June 1829 by R. Jennings, Poultry.] A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL Antiquarian AND PICTURESQUE TOUR IN FRANCE AND GERMANY. BY THE REVEREND THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN, D.D. MEMBER OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY AT ROUEN, AND OF THE ACADEMY OF UTRECHT. SECOND EDITION. VOLUME I. LONDON: PUBLISHED BY ROBERT JENNINGS, AND JOHN MAJOR. 1829. TO THE REVEREND JOHN LODGE, M.A. FELLOW OF MAGDALEN COLLEGE, AND LIBRARIAN TO THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE. MY DEAR FRIEND, Most grateful it is to me, at all times, to bear in remembrance those pleasant discussions in which we were wont so frequently to indulge, relating to the LIBRARIES upon the Continent:--but more than ordinarily gratifying to me was _that_ moment, when you told me, that, on crossing the Rhine, you took the third volume of my Tour under your arm, and on reaching the Monasteries of Mölk and Göttwic, gave an off-hand translation to the venerable Benedictine Inmates of what I had recorded concerning their MSS. and Printed Books, and their hospitable reception of the Author. I studiously concealed from You, at the time, the whole of the gratification which that intelligence imparted; resolving however that, should this work be deemed worthy of a second edition, to dedicate that republication to YOURSELF. Accordingly, it now comes forth in its present form, much enhanced, in the estimation of its Author, by the respectability of the name prefixed to this Dedication; and wishing you many years enjoyment of the honourable public situation with which you have been recently, and so deservedly, invested, allow me to subscribe myself, Your affectionate and obliged Friend, T.F. DIBDIN. Wyndham Place, June 30, 1829. CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. CONTENTS. VOLUME I. LETTER I. _Passage to Dieppe_ LETTER II. DIEPPE. _Fisheries. Streets. Churches of St. Jacques and St. Remy. Divine Worship. Military Mass_ LETTER III. _Village and Castle of Arques. Sabbath Amusements. Manners and Customs. Boulevards_ LETTER IV. ROUEN. _Approach. Boulevards. Population. Street-Scenery_ LETTER V. _Ecclesiastical Architecture. Cathedral. Monuments. Religious Ceremonies. The Abbey of St. Ouen. The Churches of St. Maclou, St. Vincent, St. Vivien, St. Gervais, and St. Paul_ LETTER VI. _Halles de Commerce. Place de la Pucelle d'Orleans. (Jeanne d'Arc). Basso-Rilievo of the Champ de Drap d'Or. Palace and Courts of Justice_ LETTER VII. ROUEN. _The Quays. Bridge of Boats. Rue du Bac. Rue de Robec. Eaux de Robec et d'Aubette. Mont Ste. Catherine. Hospices--Générale et d'Humanité_, LETTER VIII. _Early Typography at Rouen. Modern Printers. Chap Books. Booksellers. Book Collectors_ LETTER IX. _Departure from Rouen. St. George de Boscherville. Duclair. Marivaux. The Abbey of Jumieges. Arrival at Caudebec_, LETTER X. _Caudebec. Lillebonne. Bolbec. Tankarville. Montmorenci Castle. Havre de Grace_ LETTER XI. _Havre de Grace. Honfleur. Journey to Caen_ LETTER XII. CAEN. _Soil. Society. Education. A Duel. Old houses. The Abbey of St. Stephen. Church of St. Pierre de Darnetal. Abbé de la Sainte Trinité. Other Public Edifices_ LETTER XIII. CAEN. _Literary Society. Abbé de la Rue. Messrs. Pierre-Aimé. Lair and Lamouroux. Medal of Malherbe. Booksellers. Memoir of the late M. Moysant, Public Librarian. Courts of Justice_ LETTER XIV. BAYEUX. _Cathedral. Ordination of Priests and Deacons. Crypt of the Cathedral_ LETTER XV. BAYEUX. _Visit near St. Loup. M. Pluquet, Apothecary and Book-Vendor. Visit to the Bishop. The Chapter Library. Description of the Bayeux Tapestry. Trade and Manufacture_ LETTER XVI. _Bayeux to Coutances. St. Lo. The Cathedral of Coutances. Environs. Aqueduct. Market-Day. Public Library. Establishment for the Clergy_ LETTER XVII. _Journey to Granville. Granville. Ville Dieu. St. Sever. Town and Castle of_ VIRE LETTER XVIII. VIRE. _Bibliography. Monsieur Adam. Monsieur de la Renaudiere. Olivier Basselin. M. Séguin. The Public Library_ LETTER XIX. _Departure from Vire. Condé. Pont Ouilly. Arrival at_ FALAISE. _Hotel of the Grand Turc. Castle of Falaise. Bibliomaniacal Interview_ LETTER XX. _Mons. Mouton. Church of Ste. Trinité, Comte de la Fresnaye. Guibray Church. Supposed head of William the Conqueror. M. Langevin, Historian of Falaise. Printing Offices_ LETTER XXI. _Journey to Paris. Dreux. Houdan. Versailles. Entrance into Paris_ LIST OF PLATES. VOL. I. Portrait of the Author Fille de Chambre, Caen Portrait of the Abbé de la Rue VOL. II. Anne of Brittany Medal of Louis XII Pisani Denon Comte de Brienne Stone Pulpit, Strasbourg Cathedral VOL. III. Fille de Chambre, Manheim Monastery of Saints Ulric and Afra Prater, Vienna LIST OF AUTOGRAPHS. Vol. Page. Artaria, Dom. Manheim iii. 470 Barbier, Antoine Alexandre; Paris ii. 204 Bartsch, Adam de; Vienna iii. 394 Beyschlag, Recteur; Augsbourg iii. 104 Brial, Dom; Paris ii. 254 Brunet, Libraire; Paris ii. 235 Bure, De, Freres; Paris ii. 220 Chateaugiron, Marquis de; Paris i. xxxviii Dannecker; Stuttgart iii. 54 Denon; Paris ii. 293 Gaertner, Corbinian; Salzburg iii. 201 Gail; Paris ii. 259 Hartenschneider, Udalricus; Chremsminster Monastery iii. 229 Henri II. ii. 151 Hess, C.E.; Munich iii. 165 Lamouroux; Caen i. 137 Lançon, Durand de; Paris i. xxxviii Langevin; Falaise i. 341 Langlès, L.; Paris ii. 268 Larenaudiere, De; Vire i. 309 Lebret, F.C.; Stuttgart iii. 56 May, Jean Gottlob; Augsbourg iii. 104 Millin, A.L.; Paris ii. 264 Pallas, Joachim; Mölk Monastery iii. 254 Peignot, Gabriel; Dijon i. xxvii Poitiers, Diane de ii. 151 Renouard, Ant. Aug.; Paris ii. 227 Schlichtegroll, Frederic; Munich iii. 161 Schweighæuser, Fils; Strasbourg ii. 426 Van Praet; Paris ii. 278 Veesenmeyer, G.; Ulm iii. 71 Willemin; Paris ii. 320 Young,.T.; Vienna iii. 390 PREFACE. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. If I had chosen to introduce myself to the greatest possible advantage to the reader, in this Preface to a Second Edition of the "_Bibliographical, Antiquarian, and Picturesque Tour_," I could not have done better than have borrowed the language of those Foreigners, who, by a translation of the Work (however occasionally vituperative their criticisms) have, in fact, conferred an honour upon its Author. In the midst of censure, sometimes dictated by spite, and sometimes sharpened by acrimony of feeling, it were in my power to select passages of commendation, which would not less surprise the Reader than they have done myself: while the history of this performance may be said to exhibit the singular phenomenon, of a traveller, usually lauding the countries through which he passes, receiving in return the reluctant approbation of those whose institutions, manners, and customs, have been praised by him. It is admitted, by the most sedulous and systematic of my opponents--M. CRAPELET--that "considering the quantity and quality of the ornaments and engravings of this Tour, one is surprised that its cost is so moderate."[1] "Few books (says the Bibliographer of Dijon) have been executed with greater luxury. It is said that the expenses of printing and engraving amounted to 6000 l.--to nearly 140,000 franks of our money. It must be admitted that England is the only country in which such an undertaking could be carried into effect. Who in France would dare to risk such a sum--especially for three, volumes in octavo? He would be ruined, if he did."[2] I quote these passages simply to shew under what extraordinary obliquity of feeling those gentlemen must have set down to the task of translation and abuse--of THAT VERY WORK, which is here admitted to contain such splendid representations of the "bibliographical, antiquarian, and picturesque" beauties of their country. A brief account of this foreign _travail_ may be acceptable to the curious in literary history. MONS. LICQUET, the successor of M. Gourdin, as Chief Librarian to the Public Library at Rouen, led the way in the work of warfare. He translated the ninth Letter relating to that Public Library; of which translation especial mention is made at p. 99, post. This version was printed in 1821, for private, distribution; and only 100 copies were struck off. M. Crapelet, in whose office it was printed, felt the embers of discontent rekindled in his bosom as it passed through his press; and in the following year HE also stepped forward to discharge an arrow at the Traveller. Like his predecessor, he printed but a limited number; and as I have more particularly remarked upon the spirit of that version by way of "Introduction" to the original letter, in vol. ii. 209, &c. I shall not waste the time of the Reader by any notice of it in the present place. These two partial translators united their forces, about two years afterwards, and published the whole of the Tour, as it related to FRANCE, in four octavo volumes, in 1825. The ordinary copies were sold for 48 francs, the large paper for 112 francs per copy. The wood-cuts only were republished by them. Of this conjoint, and more enlarged production, presently. Encouraged by the examples of Messrs. Licquet and Crapelet, a Bookbinder of the name of LESNÉ (whose poem upon his "Craft," published in 1820, had been copiously quoted and _commended_ by me in the previous edition) chose to plant his foot within this arena of controversy; and to address a letter to me; to which his model, M. Crapelet, was too happy to give circulation through the medium of his press.[3] To that letter the following metrical lines are prefixed; which the Reader would scarcely forgive me if I failed to amuse him by their introduction in this place. "_Lesné, Relieur Français, à Mons. T.F. Dibdin, Ministre de la Religion, &c._" Avec un ris moqueur, je crois vous voir d'ici, Dédaigneusement dire: Eh, que veut celui-ci? Qu'ai-je donc de commun avec un vil artiste? Un ouvrier français, un _Bibliopégiste_? Ose-t-on ravaler un Ministre à ce point? Que me veut ce _Lesné_? Je ne le connais point. Je crois me souvenir qu'à mon voyage en France, Avec ses pauvres vers je nouai connaissance. Mais c'est si peu de chose un poète à Paris! Savez-vous bien, Monsieur, pourquoi je vous écris? C'est que je crois avoir le droit de vous écrire. Fussiez-vous cent fois plus qu'on ne saurait le dire, Je vois dans un Ministre un homme tel que moi; Devant Dieu je crois même être l'égal d'un roi. The Letter however is in prose, with some very few exceptions; and it is just possible that the indulgent Reader may endure a specimen or two of the prose of M. Lesné, as readily as he has that of his poetry. These specimens are equally delectable, of their kind. Immediately after the preceding poetical burst, the French Bibliopegist continues thus: D'après cet exorde, vous pensez sans doute que, bien convaincu de ma dignité d'homme, je me crois en droit de vous dire franchement ma façon de penser; je vous la dirai, Monsieur. Si vous dirigiez un journal bibliographique; que vous fissiez, en un mot, le métier de journaliste, je serai peu surpris de voir dans votre Trentième Lettre, une foule de choses hasardées, de mauvais calembourgs, de grossièretés, que nous ne rencontrons même pas chez nos journalistes du dernier ordre, en ce qu'ils savent mieux leur monde, et que s'ils lancent une epigramme, fût-elle fausse, elle est au moins finement tournée. Mais vous êtes ANGLAIS, et par cela seul dispensé sans doute de cette politesse qui distingue si heureusement notre nation de la vôtre, et que vos compatriotes n'acquièrent pour la plupart qu'après un long séjour en France." p. 6. Towards the latter part of this most formidable "Tentamen Criticum," the irritable author breaks out thus--"C'est une maladie Française de vouloir toujours imiter les Anglais; ceux-ci, à leur tour, commencent à en être atteints." p. 19. A little farther it is thus: "Enfin c'est _en imitant_ qu'on reussit presque toujours mal; vous en êtes encore, une preuve évidente. J'ai vu en beaucoup d'endroits de votre Lettre, que vous avez voulu imiter _Sterne_;[4] qu'est-il arrivé? Vous êtes resté au-dessous de lui, comme tous les Imitateurs de nôtre bon La Fontaine sont restés en deçà de l'immortel Fabuliste." p. 20. But most especially does the sensitive M. Lesné betray his surprise and apprehension, on a gratuitous supposition--thrown out by me, by way of pleasantry--that "Mr. Charles Lewis was going over to Paris, to establish there a modern School of Bookbinding." M. Lesné thus wrathfully dilates upon this supposition: "Je me garderai bien de passer sous silence la dernière partie de votre Lettre; _un bruit assez étrange est venu jusqu'à vous_; et Charles Lewis doit vous quitter pour quelque temps pour établir en France une école de reliure d'apres les principes du gôut anglais; mais vous croyez, dites-vous, que ce projet est sûrement chimérique, ou que, si on le tentait, il serait de courte durée. Pour cette fois, Monsieur, votre pronostic serait très juste; cette demarche serait une folie: il faudrait s'abuser sur l'engouement des amateurs français, et ceux qui sont atteints de cette maladie ne sont pas en assez grand nombre pour soutenir un pareil établissement. Oui, l'on aime votre genre de reliure; mais on aime les reliures, façon anglaise, faites par les Français. Pensez-vous done, ou Charles Lewis pense-t-il, qu'il n'y ait plus d'esprit national en France? Allez, le sang Française coule encore dans nos veines; Nous pourrons éprouver des malheurs et des peines, Que nous devrons peut être à vous autres Anglais; Mais nous voulons rester, nous resterons, Français! Ainsi, que Charles Lewis ne se dérange pas; qu'il cesse, s'il les a commencés, les préparatifs de sa descente; qu'il ne prive pas ses compatriotes d'un artiste soi-disant inimitable. Nous en avons ici qui le valent, et qui se feront un plaisir de perpéteur parmi nous le bon gôut, l'élégance, et la noble simplicité. p. 25.[5] So much for M. Lesne. I have briefly noticed M. Peignot, the Bibliographer of Dijon. That worthy wight has made the versions of my Ninth and Thirtieth Letters (First Edition) by M.M. Licquet and Crapelet, the substratum of his first brochure entitled _Variétés, Notices et Raretés Bibliographiques_, _Paris_, 1822: it being a supplement to his previous Work of _Curiosités Bibliographiques_."[6] It is not always agreeable for an Author to have his Works reflected through the medium of a translation; especially where the Translator suffers a portion, however small, of his _own_ atrabiliousness, to be mixed up with the work translated: nor is it always safe for a third person to judge of the merits of the original through such a medium. Much allowance must therefore be made for M. Peignot; who, to say the truth, at the conclusion of his labours, seems to think that he has waded through a great deal of _dirt_ of some kind or other, which might have been better avoided; and that, in consequence, some general declaration, by way of _wiping, off_ a portion of the adhering mud, is due to the original Author. Accordingly, at the end of his analysis of M. Licquet's version, (which forms the second Letter in the brochure) he does me the honour to devote seven pages to the notice of my humble lucubrations:--and he prefaces this "_Notice des Ouvrages de M. Dibdin"_, by the following very handsome tribute to their worth: Si, dans les deux Lettres où nous avons rendu compte des traductions partielles du voyage de M.D., nous avons partagé l'opinion des deux estimable traducteurs, sur quelques erreurs et quelques inconvenances échappées a l'auteur anglais, nous sommes bien éloigné d'envelopper dans le même blame, tout ce qui est sorté de sa plume; car il y auroit injustice a lui refuser des connaissances très étendues en histoire littéraire, et en bibliographie: nous le disons franchement, il faudroit fermer les yeux à la lumière, ou être d'une partialité revoltante, pour ne pas convenir que, juste appréciateur de tous les trésors bibliographiques qu'il a le bonheur d'avoir sous la main, M. Dibdin en a fait connoitre en détail toute la richesse dans de nombreux d'ouvrages, ou très souvent le luxe d'érudition se trouve en harmonie avec le luxe typographique qu'il y a étalé. At the risk of incurring the imputation of vanity, I annex the preceding extract; because I am persuaded that the candid Reader will appreciate it in its proper light. I might, had I chosen to do so, have lengthened the extract by a yet more complimentary passage: but enough of M. Peignot--who, so far from suffering ill will or acerbity to predominate over a kind disposition, hath been pleased, since his publication, to write to me a very courteous Letter,[7] and to solicit a "continuance of my favours." Agreeably to the intimation expressed in a preceding page, I am now, in due order, to notice the labours of my translators M.M. LICQUET and CRAPELET. Their united version appeared in 1825, in four octavo volumes, of which the small paper was but indifferently well printed.[8] The preface to the first two volumes is by M. Licquet: and it is not divested of point and merit. It begins by attacking the _Quarterly Review_, (June 1821, p. 147.) for its severity of animadversion on the supposed listlessness and want of curiosity of the French in exploring the architectural antiquities of their country; and that, in consequence of such supineness, the English, considering them as their own property, have described them accordingly. "The decision (says the French translator) is severe; happily it is without foundation." After having devoted several pages to observations by way of reply to that critical Journal, M. Licquet continues thus:--unless I have unintentionally misrepresented him. The Englishman who travels in Normandy, meets, at every step, with reminiscences of his kings, his ancestors, his institutions, and his customs. Churches yet standing, after the lapse of seven centuries; majestic ruins; tombs--even to the very sound of the clock--all unite in affecting, here, the heart of a British subject: every thing seems to tell him that, in former times, HERE was his country; here the residence of his sovereigns; and here the cradle of his manners. This was more than sufficient to enflame the lively imagination of Mr. D. and to decide him to visit, in person, a country already explored by a great number of his countrymen; but he conceived that his narrative should embody other topics than those which ordinarily appeared in the text of his predecessors. "His work then is not only a description of castles, towns, churches, public monuments of every kind:--it is not only a representation of the general aspect of the country, as to its picturesque appearances--but it is an extended, minute, though occasionally inexact, account of public and private libraries; with reflections upon certain customs of the country, and upon the character of those who inhabit it. It is in short the personal history of the author, throughout the whole length of his journey. Not the smallest incident, however indifferent, but what has a place in the letters of the Bibliographer. Thus, he mentions every Inn where he stops: recommends or scolds the landlord--according to his civility or exaction. Has the author passed a bad night? the reader is sure to know it on the following morning. On the other hand, has he had a good night's rest in a comfortable bed? [dans un lit _comfortable_?] We are as sure to know this also, as soon as he awakes:--and thus far we are relieved from anxiety about the health of the traveller. Cold and heat--fine weather and bad weather--every variation of atmosphere is scrupulously recorded. What immediately follows, is unworthy of M. Licquet; because it not only implies a charge of a heinous description--accusing me of an insidious intrusion into domestic circles, a violation of confidence, and a systematic derision of persons and things--but because the French translator, exercising that sense and shrewdness which usually distinguish him, MUST have known that such a charge _could_ not have been founded in FACT. He must have known that any gentleman, leaving England with those letters which brought me in contact with some of the first circles on the Continent, MUST have left it without leaving his character _behind_ him; and that such a character could not, in the natural order of things--seen even through the sensitive medium of a French critic--have been guilty of the grossness and improprieties imputed to me by M. Licquet. I treat therefore this "damnation in wholesale" with scorn and contempt: and hasten to impress the reader with a more favourable opinion of my Norman translator. He _will_ have it that "the English Traveller's imagination is lively and ardent--and his spirit, that of raillery and lightness. He examines as he runs along; that is to say, he does not give himself time to examine; he examines ill; he deceives himself; and he subjects his readers to be deceived with him. He traverses, at a hard trot, one of the most ancient towns in France; puts his head out of his carriage window--and boldly decides that the town is of the time of Francis I."![9] p. xviij. There is pleasantry, and perhaps some little truth, in this vein of observation; and it had been better, perhaps, for the credit of the good taste and gentleman-like feeling of Mons. Licquet, if he had uniformly maintained his character in these respects. I have however, in the subsequent pages,[10] occasionally grappled with my annotator in proving the fallacy, or the want of charity, of many of his animadversions: and the reader probably may not be displeased, if, by way of "avant propos," I indulge him here with a specimen of them--taken from his preface. M. Licquet says, that I "create scenes; arrange a drama; trace characters; imagine a dialogue, frequently in French--and in what French--gracious God!--in assigning to postilions a ridiculous language, and to men of the world the language of postilions." These be sharp words:[11] but what does the Reader imagine may be the probable "result" of the English Traveller's inadvertencies?... A result, ("gracious Heaven!") very little anticipated by the author. Let him ponder well upon the awful language which ensues. "What (says M. Licquet) will quickly be the result, with us, of such indiscretions as those of which M. Dibdin is guilty? The necessity of SHUTTING OUR PORTS, or at least of placing a GUARD UPON OUR LIPS!" There is some consolation however left for me, in balancing this tremendous denunciation by M. Licquet's eulogy of my good qualities--which a natural diffidence impels me to quote in the original words of their author. "A Dieu ne plaise, toutefois, que j'accuse ici LE COEUR de M. Dibdin. Je n'ai jamais eu l'honneur de le voir: je ne le connais que par ses ecrits; principalement par son _Splendid Tour_, et je ne balance pas à déclarer que l'auteur doit être doué d'une ame honnête, et de ces qualités fondamentales qui constituent l'homme de bien. Il préfère sa croyance; mais il respecte la croyance des autres; son érudition parait....[12] variée. Son amour pour les antiquités est immense; et par antiquités j'entends ici tout ce qui est _antique_ ou seulement _ancien_, quellesque soient d'ailleurs la nature et la forme des objets." Pref. p. xv. xvij. Once more; and to conclude with M. Licquet. After these general observations upon the _Text_ of the Tour, M. Licquet favours us with the following--upon the _Plates_. "These plates (says he) are intended to represent some of the principal monuments; the most beautiful landscapes, and the most remarkable persons, comprehending even the servants of an inn. If _talent_ be sought in these Engravings, it will doubtless be found in them; but strangers must not seek for _fidelity_ of representation from what is before their eyes. The greater number of the Designs are, in some sort, ideal compositions, which, by resembling every thing, resemble nothing in particular: and it is worthy of remark that the Artist, in imitation of the Author, seems to have thought that he had only to shew himself _clever_, without troubling himself to be _faithful_." To this, I reply in the very words of M. Licquet himself: "the decision is severe; luckily it is unjust." The only portions of the designs of their skilful author, which may be taxed with a tendency to extravagance, are the _groups_: which, when accompanied by views of landscapes, or of monuments, are probably too profusely indulged in; but the _individuals_, constituting those groups, belong precisely to the _country_ in which they are represented. In the first and second volumes they are _French_; in the third they are _Germans_--all over. Will M. Licquet pretend to say that the churches, monasteries, streets, and buildings, with which the previous Edition of this Tour is so elaborately embellished, have the slightest tendency to IMAGINED SCENERY? If he do, his optics must be peculiarly his own. I have, in a subsequent page, (p. 34, note) slightly alluded to the cost and risk attendant on the Plates; but I may confidently affirm, from experience, that two thirds of the expense incurred would have secured the same sale at the same price. However, the die is cast; and the voice of lamentation is fruitless. I now come to the consideration of M. Licquet's coadjutor, M. CRAPELET. Although the line of conduct pursued by that very singular gentleman be of an infinitely more crooked description than that of his Predecessor, yet, in this place, I shall observe less respecting it; inasmuch as, in the subsequent pages, (pp. 209, 245, 253, 400, &c.) the version and annotations of M. Crapelet have been somewhat minutely discussed. Upon the SPIRIT which could give rise to such a version, and such annotations, I will here only observe, that it very much resembles that of searchers of our street-pavements; who, with long nails, scrape out the dirt from the interstices of the stones, with the hope of making a discovery of some lost treasure which may compensate the toil of perseverance. The love of lucre may, or may not, have influenced my Parisian translator; but the love of discovery of latent error, and of exposure of venial transgression, has undoubtedly, from beginning to end, excited his zeal and perseverance. That carping spirit, which shuts its eyes upon what is liberal and kind, and withholds its assent to what is honourable and just, it is the distinguished lot--and, perhaps, as the translator may imagine, the distinguished felicity--of M. Crapelet to possess. Never was greater reluctance displayed in admitting even the palpable truths of a text, than what is displayed in the notes of M. Crapelet: and whenever a concurring sentiment comes from him, it seems to exude like his heart's life-blood. Having already answered, in detail, his separate publication confined to my 30th Letter[13]--(the 8th of the second volume, in _this_ edition) and having replied to those animadversions which appear in his translation of the whole of the second volume, in this edition--it remains here only to consign the Translator to the careful and impartial consideration of the Reader, who, it is requested, may be umpire between both parties. Not to admit that the text of this Edition is in many places improved, from the suggestions of my Translators, by corrections of "Names of Persons, Places, and Things," would be to betray a stubbornness or obtuseness of feeling which certainly does not enter into the composition of its author. I now turn, not without some little anxiety, yet not wholly divested of the hope of a favourable issue, to the character and object of the Edition HERE presented to the Public. It will be evident, at first glance, that it is greatly "shorn of its beams" in regard to graphic decorations and typographical splendour. Yet its garb, if less costly, is not made of coarse materials: for it has been the wish and aim of the Publishers, that this impression should rank among books worthy of the DISTINGUISHED PRESS from which it issues. Nor is it unadorned by the sister art of _Engraving_; for, although on a reduced scale, some of the repeated plates may even dispute the palm of superiority with their predecessors. Several of the GROUPS, executed on _copper_ in the preceding edition, have been executed on _wood_ in the present; and it is for the learned in these matters to decide upon their relative merits. To have attempted portraits upon wood, would have inevitably led to failure. There are however, a few NEW PLATES, which cannot fail to elicit the Purchaser's particular attention. Of these, the portraits of the _Abbé de la Rue_ (procured through the kind offices of my excellent friend Mr. Douce), and the _Comte de Brienne_, the _Gold Medal of Louis XII_. the _Stone Pulpit of Strasbourg Cathedral,_ and the _Prater near Vienna_--are particularly to be noticed.[14] This Edition has also another attraction, rather popular in the present day, which may add to its recommendation even with those possessed of its precursor. It contains fac-similes of the AUTOGRAPHS of several distinguished Literati and Artists upon the Continent;[15] who, looking at the text of the work through a less jaundiced medium than the Parisian translator, have continued a correspondence with the Author, upon the most friendly terms, since its publication. The accuracy of these fac-similes must be admitted, even by the parties themselves, to be indisputable. Among them, are several, executed by hands.. which now CEASE to guide the pen! I had long and fondly hoped to have been gratified by increasing testimonies of the warmth of heart which had directed several of the pens in question--hoped ... even against the admonition of a pagan poet ... "Vitae summa brevis SPEM nos vetat inchoare LONGAM." But such hopes are now irretrievably cut off; and the remembrance of the past must solace the anticipations of the future. So much respecting the _decorative_ department of this new edition of the Tour. I have now to request the Reader's attention to a few points more immediately connected with what may be considered its _intrinsic_ worth. In the first place, it may be pronounced to be an Edition both _abridged_ and _enlarged_: abridged, as regards the lengthiness of description of many of the MSS. and Printed Books--and enlarged, as respects the addition, of many notes; partly of a controversial, and partly of an obituary, description. The "Antiquarian and Picturesque" portions remain nearly as heretofore; and upon the whole I doubt whether the amputation of matter has extended beyond _an eighth_ of what appeared in the previous edition. It had long ago been suggested to me--from a quarter too high and respectable to doubt the wisdom of its decision--that the Contents of this Tour should be made known to the Public through a less costly medium:--that the objects described in it were, in a measure, new and interesting--but that the high price of the purchase rendered it, to the majority of Readers, an inaccessible publication. I hope that these objections are fully met, and successfully set aside, by the Work in its PRESENT FORM. To have produced it, _wholly divested_ of ornament, would have been as foreign to my habits as repugnant to my feelings. I have therefore, as I would willingly conclude, hit upon the happy medium--between sterility and excess of decoration. After all, the greater part of the ground here trodden, yet continues to be untrodden ground to the public. I am not acquainted with any publication which embraces all the objects here described; nor can I bring myself to think that a perusal of the first and third volumes may not be unattended with gratification of a peculiar description, to the lovers of antiquities and picturesque beauties. The second volume is rather the exclusive province of the Bibliographer. In retracing the steps here marked out, I will not be hypocrite enough to dissemble a sort of triumphant feeling which accompanies a retrospection of the time, labour, and money devoted.. in doing justice, according to my means, to the attractions and worth of the Countries which these pages describe. Every such effort is, in its way, a NATIONAL effort. Every such attempt unites, in stronger bonds, the reciprocities of a generous feeling between rival Nations; and if my reward has not been in _wealth_, it has been in the hearty commendation of the enlightened and the good: "Mea me virtute involvo."[16] I cannot boast of the commendatory strains of public Journals in my own country. No intellectual steam-engine has been put in motion to manufacture a review of unqualified approbation of the Work now submitted to the public eye--at an expense, commensurate with the ordinary means of purchase. With the exception of an indirect and laudatory notice of it, in the immortal pages of the Author of Waverley, of the Sketch book, and of Reginald Dalton, this Tour has had to fight its way under the splendour of its own banners, and in the strength of its own cause. The previous Edition is now a scarce and a costly book. Its Successor has enough to recommend it, even to the most fastidious collector, from the elegance of its type and decorations, and from the reasonableness of its price; but the highest ambition of its author is, that it may be a part of the furniture of every Circulating Library in the Kingdom. If he were not conscious that GOOD would result from its perusal, he would not venture upon such an avowal. "FELIX FAUSTUMQUE SIT!" [1] M. Crapelet is of course speaking of the PREVIOUS edition of the Tour. He continues thus: "M. Dibdin, dans son voyage en France, a visité nos départemens de l'ouest et de l'est, toutes leurs principales villes, presque tous les lieux remarquables par les antiquités, par les monumens, par les beautés du site, ou par les souvenirs historiques. Il a visité les châteaux, les églises, les chapelles; il a observé nos moeurs, nos coutumes; nos habitudes; il a examiné nos Musées et nos premiers Cabinets de curiosité; il s'est concentré dans nos Bibliothéques. Il parle de notre littérature et des hommes de lettres, des arts et de nos artistes; il critique les personnes comme les choses; il loue quelquefois, il plaisante souvent; la vivacité de son esprit l'égare presque toujours." A careful perusal of the notes in THIS edition will shew that my veracity has not "almost always led me astray." [2] GABRIEL PEIGNOT; _Variétés, Notices et Raretés Bibliographiques, 1822, 8vo. p. 4_. [3] _Lettre d'un Relieur Francais à un Bibliographe Anglais; à Paris, de l'Imprimerie de Crapelet_, 1822, 8vo. p.p. 28. [4] It is a little curious that M. Lesné has not been singular in this supposition. My amiable and excellent friend M. Schweighæuser of Strasbourg had the same notion: at least, he told me that the style of the Tour very frequently reminded him of that of Sterne. I can only say--and say very honestly--that I as much thought of Sterne as I did of ... William Caxton! [5] Copious as are the above quotations, from the thoroughly original M. Lesné, I cannot resist the risking of the readers patience and good opinion, by the subjoining of the following passage--with which the brochure concludes. "D'après la multitude de choses hasardées que contient votre Lettre, vous en aurez probablement recu quelques unes de personnes que vous aurez choquées plus que moi, qui vous devrais plutôt des remercimens pour avoir pris la peine de traduire quelques pages de mon ouvrage; mais il n'en est pas de même de bien des gens, et cela ne doit pas les engager à être autant communicatif avec vous, si vous reveniez en France. Je souhaite, dans ce dernier cas, que tous les typographes, les bibliothècaires, les bibliognostes, les bibliographes, les bibliolathes, les bibliomanes, les biblophiles, les bibliopoles, ceux qui exercent la bibliuguiancie et les bibliopégistes même, soient pour vous autant de bibliotaphes; vous ne seriez plus à même de critiquer ce que vous sauriez et ce que vous ne sauriez pas, comme vous l'aviez si souvent fait inconsidérément: Mais tous vos procédés ne nous étonnent pas, C'est le sort des Français de faire DES INGRATS; On les voit servir ceux qui leur furent nuisibles; Je crois que sur ce point ils sont incorrigibles. Je vous avouerai cependant que je suis loin d'être fâché de vous voir en agir ainsi envers mes compatriotes: je désirerais que beaucoup d'Anglais fissent de même; cela pourrait désangliciser ou désanglomaniser les Français. Vous, Monsieur, qui aimez les mots nouveaux, aidez-moi, je vous prie, à franciser, à purifier celui-ci. Quant à moi Je ne fus pas nourri de Grec et de Latin, J'appris à veiller tard, à me lever matin, La nature est le livre où je fis mes études, Et tous ces mots nouveaux me semblent long-temps rudes; Je trouve qu'on ne peut très bien les prononcer Sans affectation, au moins sans grimacer; Que tous ces mots tirés des langues étrangères, Devraient être l'objet de critiques sévères. Faites donc de l'esprit en depit du bon sens, On vous critiquera; quant à moi j'y consens. Je terminerai cette longue Lettre de deux manières: à l'anglaise, en vous souhaitant le bon jour ou le bon soir, suivant l'heure à laquelle vous la recevrez; à la française, en vous priant de me croire, Monsieur, Votre très humble serviteur, LESNÉ. [6] The above brochure consists of two Letters; each to an anonymous bibliographical "Confrere:" one is upon the subject of M. Crapelet's version--the other, upon that of M. Licquet's version--of a portion of the Tour. The notice of the Works of the Author of the Tour; a list of the prices for which the Books mentioned in it have been sold; a Notice of the "Hours of Charlemagne" (see vol. ii. 199) and some account of the late Mr. Porson "Librarian of the London Institution"--form the remaining portion of this little volume of about 160 pages. For the "Curiosités Bibliographiques," consult the _Bibliomania_, pp. 90, 91, &c. &c. [7] This letter accompanied another Work of M. Peignot, relating to editions and translations of the Roman Classics:--and as the reader will find, in the ensuing pages, that I have been sometime past labouring under the frightful, but popular, mania of AUTOGRAPHS, I subjoin with no small satisfaction a fac-simile of the Autograph of this enthusiastic and most diligent Bibliographer. [Autograph: Votre tres humble et obéissant serviteur, G. Peignot] [8] See page xviii.--ante. [9] M. Licquet goes on to afford an exemplification of this precipitancy of conjecture, in my having construed the word _Allemagne_--a village near to Caen--by that of _Germany_. I refer the reader to p. 168 post, to shew with what perfect frankness I have admitted and corrected this "_hippopotamos_" error. [10] More especially at pages 82, 100, 367. [11] "Sharp" as they may be, they are softened, in some measure, by the admission of my bitterest annotator, M. Crapelet, that "I speak and understand the French language well." vol. ii. p. 253. It is painful and unusual with me to have recourse to such apparently self-complimentary language; but when an adversary drives one into a corner, and will not allow of fair space and fair play, one must fight with feet as well as with hands ... "manibus pedibusque" ... [12] This _hiatus_ must not be filled by the Author: ... "haud equidem tali me dignor honore." [13] See vol. ii. p. 210-11. [14] See vol. i. p. 186, vol. ii. pp. 49, 296, 392. The other fresh plates are, _Portrait of the Author_, frontispiece; Bird's-eye views of the _Monasteries of St. Peter's, Salzburg, and of Molk:_ vol. iii. pp. 195, 248, 381, _Black Eagle Inn_, Munich, p. 156. But the Reader will be pleased to examine the _List of Plates prefixed_--in a preceding page. [15] Among these distinguished Literati, I here enrol with peculiar satisfaction the names of the MARQUIS DE CHATEAUGIRON and Mons. DURAND DE LANCON. No opportunity having occurred in the subsequent pages to incorporate fac-similes of the Autographs of these distinguished _Bibliophiles_, they are annexed in the present place. [Autographs: M. de Chateaugiron, D. de Lancon] [16] It is more than a negative consolation to me, to have lived to see the day, that, although comparatively impoverished, _others_ have been enriched by my labours. When I noticed a complete set of my lucubrations on LARGE PAPER, valued at 250_l_. in a bookseller's catalogue, (Mr. Pickering's) and afterwards learnt that this set had found a PURCHASER, I had reason to think that I had "deserved well" of the Literature of my country: and I resolved to live "mihi carior" in consequence. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL Antiquarian AND PICTURESQUE TOUR. The Notes peculiar to THIS EDITION are distinguished by being inserted between brackets: as thus:--[] *** The Index is placed at the end of the First Volume, for the purpose of equalising the size of the Volumes. [Illustration] LETTER I. PASSAGE TO DIEPPE. _Dieppe, April 20, 1818_. At length then, my dear Friend, the long projected "_Bibliographical, Antiquarian_,[17] and _Picturesque Tour"_ is carried into execution; and the Tourist is safely landed on the shores of Normandy. "Vous voilà donc, Monsieur à Dieppe!"--exclaimed the landlord of the Grand Hôtel d'Angleterre--as I made my way through a vociferating crowd of old and young, of both sexes, with cards of addresses in their hands; entreating me to take up my abode at their respective hotels.... But I know your love of method, and that you will be angry with me if I do not "begin at the beginning." It was surely on one of the finest of all fine days that I left my home, on the 14th of this present month, for the land of castles, churches, and ancient chivalry. The wind from the south-east was blowing pretty smartly at the time; but the sky was without a cloud, and I could not but look upon the brilliancy of every external object as a favourable omen of the progress and termination of my tour. Adverse winds, or the indolence or unwillingness of the Captain, detained us at Brighton two whole days--instead of sailing, as we were led to expect, on the day following our arrival. We were to form the first ship's company which had visited France this season. On approaching our gallant little bark, the _Nancy_,[18] commanded by Captain BLABER, the anchor was weighed, and hoisting sail, we stood out to sea. The day began to improve upon us. The gloomy appearances of the morning gradually brightened up. A host of black clouds rolled heavily away. The sun at length shone in his full meridian splendour, and the ocean sparkled as we cut through its emerald waves. As I supposed us to near the French coast, I strained my eyes to obtain an early glimpse of something in the shape of cliff or jettie. But the wind continued determinedly in the south east: the waves rose in larger masses; and our little vessel threw up a heavy shower of foam as we entered on the various tacks. It is a grand sight--that vast, and apparently interminable ocean-- .... maria undique et undique coelum! We darted from Beechy Head upon a long tack for the French coast: and as the sun declined, we found it most prudent to put the Captain's advice, of going below, into execution. Then commenced all the miseries of the voyage. The moon had begun to assert her ascendancy, when, racked with torture and pain in our respective berths, a tremendous surge washed completely over the deck, sky-light, and binnacle: and down came, in consequence, drenched with the briny wave, the hardiest of our crew, who, till then, had ventured to linger upon deck. That crew was various; and not without a few of the natives of those shores which we were about to visit. To cut short my ship-narrative, suffice it only farther to say, that, towards midnight, we heard our Captain exclaim that he saw "the lights of Dieppe"--a joyful sound to us miserable wretches below. I well remember, at this moment, looking up towards the deck with a cheerless eye, and perceiving the light of the moon still lingering upon the main-sail,--but I shall never forget how much more powerfully my sensations were excited, when, as the dawn of day made objects visible, I looked up, and saw an old wrinkle-visaged sailor, with a red night cap on begirt with large blue, puckered, short petticoats--in possession of the helm--about to steer the vessel into harbour![19] About seven we were all upon deck. The sea was yet swoln and agitated, and of a dingy colour: while .... heavily with clouds came on the day, as we slowly approached the outward harbour of DIEPPE. A grey morning with drizzling rain, is not the best accompaniment of a first visit to a foreign shore. Nevertheless every thing was new, and strange, and striking; and the huge crucifix, to the right, did not fail to make a very forcible impression. As we approached the, inner harbour, the shipping and the buildings more distinctly presented themselves. The harbour is large, and the vessels are entirely mercantile, with a plentiful sprinkling of fishing smacks: but the manner in which the latter harmonized with the tint and structure of the houses--the bustle upon shore--the casks, deal planks, ropes, and goods of every description upon the quays,--all formed a most animated and interesting scene. The population seemed countless, and chiefly females; whose high caps and enormous ear-rings, with the rest of their paraphernalia, half persuaded me that instead of being some few twenty-five leagues only from our own white cliffs, I had in fact dropt upon the Antipodes! What a scene (said I to my companion) for our CALCOTT to depict![20] It was a full hour before we landed--saluted, and even assailed on all sides, with entreaties to come to certain hotels. We were not long however in fixing our residence at the _Hotel d'Angleterre_, of which the worthy Mons. De La Rue[21] is the landlord. [17] [Mons. Licquet, my translator, thinks, that in using the word "_Antiquaire_"--as appears in the previous edition of this work, incorporated in the gallicised sentence of "_Voyage Bibliographique Antiquaire_, &c."--I have committed an error; as the word "_Archéologique_" ought, in his opinion, to have been adopted--and he supposes that he best expresses my meaning by its adoption. Such a correction may be better French; but "Archaeological" is not exactly what is usually meant--in our language--by "Antiquarian."] [18] This smart little vessel, of about 70 tons burden, considered to be the fastest sailing packet from Dieppe, survived our voyage only about eighteen months. Her end had nearly proved fatal to every soul on board of her. In a dark night, in the month of September, when bound for Dieppe, she was struck by a heavy London brig. The crew was with difficulty saved--and the vessel went down within about twenty-five minutes after the shock. [19] The English are not permitted to bring their own vessels into harbour--for obvious reasons. [20] [This "scene" has been, in fact, subsequently depicted by. the masterly pencil of J.M.W.TURNER, Esq. R. A: and the picture, in which almost all the powers of that surprising Artist are concentrated, was lately offered for sale by public auction. How it was suffered to be _bought in_ for three hundred and eighty guineas, is at once a riddle and a reproach to public taste.] [21] [I learn that he is since DECEASED. Thus the very first chapter of this second edition has to record an instance of the casualties and mutabilities which the short space of ten years has effected. Mons. De la Rue was a man of worth and of virtue.] LETTER II. DIEPPE. FISHERIES. STREETS. CHURCHES OF ST. JAQUES AND ST. REMY. DIVINE WORSHIP. MILITARY MASS. The town of Dieppe contains a population of about twenty-thousand souls.[22] Of these, by much the greater _stationary_ part are females; arising from one third at least of the males being constantly engaged in the FISHERIES. As these fisheries are the main support of the inhabitants, it is right that you should know something about them. The _herring_ fishery takes place twice a year: in August and October. The August fishery is carried on along the shores of England and the North. From sixty to eighty vessels, of from twenty-five to thirty tons burthen each, with about fifteen men in each vessel, are usually employed. They are freighted with salt and empty barrels, for seasoning and stowing the fish, and they return about the end of October. The herrings caught in August are considerably preferable to those caught in October. The October fishery is carried on with smaller vessels, along the coast of France from Boulogne to Havre. From one hundred and twenty, to one hundred and thirty vessels, are engaged in this latter navigation; and the fish, which is smaller, and of inferior flavour to that caught upon the English coasts, is sent almost entirely to the provinces and to Paris, where it is eaten fresh. So much for the herring.[23] The _Mackarel_ fishery usually commences towards the month of July, along the coast of Picardy; because, being a sort of fish of passage, it gets into the channel in the month of April. It then moves towards the straits of Dover, as summer approaches. For this fishery they make use of large decked-vessels, from twenty to fifty tons burthen, manned with from twelve to twenty men. There are however Dieppe boats employed in this fishery which go as far as the Scilly Islands and Ushant, towards the middle of April. They carry with them the salt requisite to season the fish, which are afterwards sent to Paris, and to the provinces in the interior of France. The _cod fishery_ is divided into the fresh and dried fish. The former continues from the beginning of February to the end of April--and the vessels employed, which go as far as Newfoundland, are two deckers, and from one hundred to one hundred and fifty tons burthen--although, in fact, they rarely carry more than fifteen tons for fear of spoiling the fish. The dried-cod fishery is carried on in vessels of all sizes; but it is essential that they be of a certain depth, because the fish is more cumbersome than weighty. The vessels however usually set sail about the month of March or April, in order that they may have the advantage of the summer season, to dry the fish. There are vessels which go to Newfoundland laden with brandy, flour, beans, treacle, linen and woollen cloths, which they dispose of to the inhabitants of the French colonies in exchange for dried cod. This latter species of commerce may be carried on in the summer months--as late as July. In the common markets for retail trade, they are not very nice in the quality or condition of their fish; and enormous conger eels, which would be instantly rejected by the middling, or even lower classes in England, are, at Dieppe, bought with avidity and relished with glee. A few francs will procure a dish of fish large enough for a dozen people. The quays are constantly crowded, but there seems to be more of bustle than of business. The town is certainly picturesque, notwithstanding the houses are very little more than a century old, and the streets are formal and comparatively wide. Indeed it should seem that the houses were built expressly for Noblemen and Gentlemen, although they are inhabited by tradesmen, mechanics, and artizans, in apparently very indifferent circumstances. I scarcely saw six private houses which could be called elegant, and not a gentleman's carriage has been yet noticed in the streets. But if the _Dieppois_ are not rich, they seem happy, and are in a constant state of occupation. A woman sells her wares in an open shop, or in an insulated booth, and sits without her bonnet (as indeed do all the tradesmen's wives), and works or sings as humour sways her. A man sells gingerbread in an open shed, and in the intervals of his customer's coming, reads some popular history or romance. Most of the upper windows are wholly destitute of glass; but are smothered with clothes, rags, and wall flowers. The fragrance emitted from these flowers affords no unpleasing antidote to odors of a very different description; and here we begin to have a too convincing proof of the general character of the country in regard to the want of cleanliness. A little good sense, or rather a better-regulated police, would speedily get rid of such nuisances. The want of public sewers is another great and grievous cause of smells of every description. At Dieppe there are fountains in abundance; and if some of the limpid streams, which issue from them, were directed to cleansing the streets, (which are excellently well paved) the effect would be both more salubrious and pleasant--especially to the sensitive organs of Englishmen. We had hardly concluded our breakfasts, when a loud and clattering sound was heard; and down came, in a heavy trot, with sundry ear-piercing crackings of the whip, the thundering _Diligence_: large, lofty, and of most unwieldy dimensions: of a structure, too, strong enough to carry a half score of elephants. The postilion is an animal perfectly _sui generis_: gay, alert, and living upon the best possible terms with himself. He wears the royal livery, red and blue; with a plate of the fleur de lis upon his left arm. His hair is tied behind, in a thick, short, tightly fastened queue: with powder and pomatum enough to weather a whole winter's storm and tempest.[24] As he never rises in his stirrups,[25] I leave you to judge of the merciless effects of this ever-beating club upon the texture of his jacket. He is however fond of his horses: is well known by them; and there is all flourish and noise, and no sort of cruelty, in his treatment of them. His spurs are of tremendous dimensions; such as we see sticking to the heels of knights in illuminated Mss. of the XVth century. He has nothing to do with the ponderous machine behind him. He sits upon the near of the two wheel horses, with three horses before him. His turnings are all adroitly and correctly made; and, upon the whole, he is a clever fellow in the exercise of his office. You ought to know, that, formerly, this town was greatly celebrated for its manufactures in _Ivory_; but the present aspect of the ivory-market affords only a faint notion of what it might have been in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I purchased a few subordinate articles (chiefly of a religious character) and which I shall preserve rather as a matter of evidence than of admiration. There is yet however a considerable manufacture of _thread lace_; and between three and four thousand females are supposed to earn a comfortable livelihood by it.[26] My love of ecclesiastical architecture quickly induced me to visit the CHURCHES; and I set out with two English gentlemen to pay our respects to the principal church, St. JAQUES. As we entered it, a general gloom prevailed, and a sort of premature evening came on; while the clatter of the sabots was sufficiently audible along the aisles. In making the circuit of the side chapels, an unusual light proceeded from a sort of grated door way. We approached, and witnessed a sight which could not fail to rivet our attention. In what seemed to be an excavated interior, were several figures, cut in stone, and coloured after life, (of which they were the size) representing the _Three Maries, St. John, and Joseph of Arimathea_.. in the act of entombing Christ: the figure of our Saviour being half sunk into the tomb. The whole was partially illuminated by some two dozen of shabby and nearly consumed tallow candles; affording a striking contrast to the increasing darkness of the nave and the side aisles. We retired, more and more struck with the novelty of every object around us, to our supper and beds, which were excellent; and a good night's rest made me forget the miseries of the preceding evening. The next morning, being Sunday, we betook ourselves in good time to the service of ST. JAQUES:[27] but on our way thither, we saw a waxen figure of Christ (usually called an "Ecce Homo") enclosed within a box, of which the doors were opened. The figure and box are the property of the man who plays on a violin, close to the box; and who is selling little mass books, supposed to be rendered more sacred by having been passed across the feet and hands of the waxen Christ. Such a mongrel occupation, and such a motley group, must strike you with astonishment--as a Sunday morning's recreation. [Illustration] By half past ten the congregation had assembled within the Church; and every side-chapel (I think about twelve in number) began to be filled by the penitent flocks: each bringing, or hiring, a rush-bottomed chair--with which the churches are pretty liberally furnished, and of which the _Tarif_ (or terms of hire) is pasted upon the walls. There were, I am quite sure, full eighteen women to one man: which may in part be accounted for, by the almost uniform absence of a third of the male population occupied in the fisheries. I think there could not have been fewer than two thousand souls present. But what struck me as the most ludicrously solemn thing I had ever beheld, was a huge tall figure, dressed like a drum-major, with a large cocked hat and three white plumes, (the only covered male figure in the congregation,) a broad white sash upon a complete suit of red, including red stockings;--representing what in our country is called a _Beadle_. He was a sturdy, grim-looking fellow; bearing an halberd in his right hand, which he wielded with a sort of pompous swing, infusing terror into the young, and commanding the admiration of the old. I must not, however, omit to inform you, that half the service was scarcely performed when the preacher mounted a pulpit, with a black cap on, and read a short sermon from a printed book. I shall long have a distinct recollection of the figure and attitude of the _Verger_ who attended the preacher. He followed him to the pulpit, fastened the door, became stationary, and rested his left arm over the railings of the stairs. Anon, he took out his snuff-box with his right hand, and regaled himself with a pinch of snuff in the most joyous and comfortably-abstracted manner imaginable. There he remained till the conclusion of the discourse; not one word of which seemed to afford him half the satisfaction as did the contents of his snuff-box. _Military Mass_ was performed about an hour after, at the church of ST. REMY, whither I strolled quietly, to witness the devotion of the congregation previous to the entry of the soldiers; and I will not dissemble being much struck and gratified by what I saw. There was more simplicity: a smaller congregation: softer music: a lower-toned organ; less rush of people; and in very many of the flock the most intense and unfeigned expression of piety. At the elevation of the host, from the end of the choir, (near which was suspended a white flag with the portrait of the present King[28] upon it) a bell was rung from the tower of the church; the sound, below, was soft and silver-toned--accompanied by rather a quick movement on the organ, upon the diapason stop; which, united with the silence and prostration of the congregation, might have commanded the reverence of the most profane. There is nothing, my dear friend, more gratifying, in a foreign land, than the general appearance of earnestness of devotion on a sabbath day; especially within the HOUSE OF GOD. However, I quickly heard the clangor of the trumpet, the beat of drums, the measured tramp of human feet, and up marched two or three troops of the national guard to perform military mass. I retired precipitately to the Inn, being well pleased to have escaped this strange and distracting sight: so little in harmony with the rites and ceremonies of our own church, and in truth so little accordant with the service which I had just beheld. [22] [Mons. Licquet says that there were about 17,000 souls in 1824; so that the above number may be that of the amount of its _present_ population. "Several changes (says my French translator) have taken place at Dieppe since I saw it: among the rest, there is a magnificent establishment of BATHS, where a crowd of people, of the first distinction, every year resort. Her Royal Highness, the Duchesse de Berri, may be numbered among these Visitors.] [23] [The common people to this day call a _herring_, a _child of Dieppe._ LICQUET.] [24] ["Sterne reproaches the French for their hyperbolical language: the air of the country had probably some influence on M. Dibdin when he adopted this phrase." LICQUET.] [25] ["Signifying, that the French postilions do not ride like the English." LICQUET.] [26] ["Dieppe for a long time was the rival of Argentan and Caen in the lace-manufactory: at the present day, this branch of commerce is almost annihilated there."--LICQUET.] [27] [In a note attached to the previous edition--I have said, "Here also, as well as at Rouen; they will have it that the ENGLISH built the Churches." Upon which M. Licquet remarks thus: "M. Dibdin's expression conveys too general an idea. It is true that _popular_ opinion attributes the erection of our gothic edifices to the ENGLISH: but there exists _another_ opinion, which is not deceptive upon this subject." What is meant to be here conveyed? Either the popular opinion is true or false; and it is a matter of perfect indifference to the author whether it be one or the other. For Mons. Licquet's comfort, I will freely avow that I believe it to be _false_.] [28] [Louis XVIII.] LETTER III. VILLAGE AND CASTLE OF ARQUES. SABBATH AMUSEMENTS. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. BOULEVARDS. As I had received especial injunctions from our friend P--- not to leave Dieppe without paying a visit to the famous _Chateau d'Arques_[29], in its neighbourhood, I resolved to seize the opportunity of a tolerably fair, or rather gray-looking day, to go and pay due homage to those venerable remains of antiquity. The road thither is completely rural: apple-trees, just beginning to burst their blossoms; hamlets, small farm-houses: a profusion of rich herbage of various kinds--delighted and regaled me as I pursued my tranquil walk. The country is of a gently-undulating character; but the flats or meadows, between the parallel ranges of hills, are subject to constant inundation from the sea; and in an agricultural point of view are consequently of little use, except for summer grazing of the cattle. It was drawing on to vespers as I approached the _Village of Arques_. The old castle had frequently peeped out upon me, in my way thither, from its elevated situation; but being resolved to see "all that could be seen," a French village, for the first time, was not to be overlooked. For a country church, I know of few finer ones than that of Arques.[30] The site of the castle is admirable. My approach was to the western extremity; which, as you look down, brings the village and church of Arques in the back ground. If the eye were to be considered as a correct judge, this venerable pile, composed of hard flint-stone, intermixed with brick, would perhaps claim precedence, on the score of antiquity, over most of the castles of the middle ages. A deep moat, now dry pasture land, with a bold acclivity before you, should seem to bid defiance, even in times of old, to the foot and the spear of the invader. There are circular towers at the extremities, and a square citadel or donjon within. To the north, a good deal of earth has been recently thrown against the bases of the wall. The day harmonised admirably with the venerable object before me. The sunshine lasted but for a minute: when afterwards a gloom prevailed, and not a single catch of radiant light gilded any portion of the building. All was quiet, and of a sombre aspect,--and what _you_, in your admiration of art, would call in perfectly "fine keeping." I descended the hill, bidding a long adieu to this venerable relic of the hardihood of other times, and quickened my pace towards Dieppe. In gaining upon the town, I began to discern groups of rustics, as well as of bourgeoises, assembling and mingling in the dance. The women never think of wearing bonnets, and you have little idea how picturesquely the red and blue[31] (the colours of Raffaelle's Madonnas) glanced backwards and forwards amidst the fruit trees, to the sound of the spirit-stirring violin. The high, stiff, starched cauchoise, with its broad flappers, gave the finishing stroke to the novelty and singularity of the scene; and to their credit be it spoken, the women were much more tidily dressed than the men. The couples are frequently female, for want of a sufficient number of swains; but, whether correctly or incorrectly paired, they dance with earnestness, if not with grace. It was a picture à la Teniers, without its occasional grossness. This then, said I to myself, is what I have so often heard of the sabbath-gambols of the French--and long may they enjoy them! They are surely better than the brutal orgies of the pot-house, or the fanatical ravings of the tabernacle.[32] A late plain dinner, with my favourite vin ordinaire, recruited my strength, and kept me in perfectly good humour with Dieppe. The deportment of the _Dieppois_[33] towards the English, is, upon the whole, rather gracious than otherwise; because the town profits by the liberality and love of expense of the latter. Yet the young ones, as soon as they can lisp, are put in training for pronouncing the _G---- d----_; and a few horribly-deformed and importunate beggars are for ever assailing the doors of the hotels. But beggary is nothing like so frightful an evil as I had anticipated. The general aspect of the town seems to indicate the poverty of the inhabitants; their houses being too large to be entirely occupied. Bonaparte appears to have been anxious about the strengthening of the harbour; the navigation into which is somewhat difficult and intricate. The sides of the walls, as you enter, are lofty, steep, and strong; and raised batteries would render any hostile approach extremely hazardous to the assailants. There is no ship-building at this moment going on: the ribs of about half a dozen, half rotted, small merchant-craft, being all that is discernible. But much is projected, and much is hoped from such projects. Dieppe has questionless many local advantages both by land and by sea; yet it will require a long course of years to infuse confidence and beget a love of enterprise. In spite of all the _naval zeal_, it is here exhibited chiefly as affording means of subsistence from the fisheries. I must not however conclude my Dieppe journal without telling you that I hunted far and near for a good bookseller and for some old books--but found nothing worth the search, except a well-printed early _Rouen Missal_, and _Terence_ by _Badius Ascensius_. The booksellers are supplied with books chiefly from Rouen; the local press being too insignificant to mention. [29] The French Antiquaries have pushed the antiquity of this castle to the 11th century, supposing it to have been built by _William d'Arques_, Count of Tallon, son of the second marriage of Richard Duke of Normandy. I make no doubt, that, whenever built, the sea almost washed its base: for it is known to have occupied the whole of what is called the _Valley of Arques_, running as far as _Bouteilles_. Its position, in reference to the art of war, must have been almost impregnable. Other hypotheses assign its origin to the ninth or tenth century. Whenever built, its history has been fertile in sieges. In 1144, it was commanded by a Flemish Monk, who preferred the spear to the crosier, but who perished by an arrow in the contest. Of its history, up to the sixteenth century, I am not able to give any details; but in the wars of Henry IV. with the League, in 1589, it was taken by surprise by soldiers in the disguise of sailors: who, killing the centinels, quickly made themselves masters of the place. Henry caused it afterwards to be dismantled. In the first half of the eighteenth century it received very severe treatment from pillage, for the purpose of erecting public and private buildings at Dieppe. At present (in the language of the author of the _Rouen Itinerary_) "it is the abode of silence--save when that silence is interrupted by owls and other nocturnal birds." The view of it in Mr. Cotman's work is very faithful. [30] The _Itinéraire de Rouen_, 1816, p. 202, says, absurdly, that this church is of the XIth century. It is perhaps with more truth of the beginning of the XIVth century. A pleasing view of it is in Mr. Dawson Turner's elegant Tour in Normandy, 1818, 8vo. 2 vol. It possessed formerly a bust of Henry IV., which is supposed to have been placed there after the famous battle of Arques gained by Henry over the Duke of Mayenne in 1589. [31] The blue gown and red petticoat; or vice versa. [32] [I am anxious that the above sentence should stand precisely as it appeared in the first edition of this work; because a circumstance has arisen from it, which could have been as little in the anticipation, as it is in the comprehension, of the author. A lady, of high connections, and of respectable character, conceived the passage in question to be somewhat indecorous; or revolting to the serious sense entertained by all Christians, and especially by CHRISTIAN MINISTERS, of the mode of devoting the Sabbath day. In consequence, being in possession of a copy of this work, she DIVIDED it into two; not being willing to sully the splendour of the plates by the supposed impurity of such a passage:--and the prints were accordingly bound APART. The passage--as applied to the FRENCH PEOPLE--requires neither comment nor qualification; and in the same unsophisticated view of religious duties, the _latter_ part may be as strictly applied to the ENGLISH.] [33] The dress of the _sailors_ is the same as it was in the XIVth century; and so probably is that of the women. The illuminations in Froissard and Monstrelet clearly give us the Norman cauchoise. LETTER IV. ROUEN. APPROACH. BOULEVARDS. POPULATION. STREET SCENERY. Here I am, my excellent good friend, in the most extraordinary city in the world. One rubs one's eyes, and fancies one is dreaming, upon being carried through the streets of this old-fashioned place: or that, by some secret talismanic touch, we are absolutely mingling with human beings, and objects of art, at the commencement of the sixteenth century: so very curious, and out of the common appearance of things, is almost every object connected with ROUEN. But before I commence my observations upon the _town_, I must give you a brief sketch of my _journey_ hither. We had bespoke our places in the cabriolet of the Diligence, which just holds three tolerably comfortable; provided there be a disposition to accommodate each other. This cabriolet, as you have been often told, is a sort of a buggy, or phaeton seat, with a covering of leather in the front of the coach. It is fortified with a stiff leathern apron, upon the top of which is a piece of iron, covered with the leather, to fasten firmly by means of a hook on the perpendicular supporter of the head. There are stiffish leathern curtains on each side, to be drawn, if necessary, as a protection against the rain, &c. You lean upon the bar, or top of this leathern apron, which is no very uncomfortable resting-place. And thus we took leave of Dieppe, on the 4th day after our arrival there. As we were seated in the cabriolet, we could hardly refrain from loud laughter at the novelty of our situation, and the grotesqueness of the conveyance. Our Postilion was a rare specimen of his species, and a perfectly _unique copy_. He fancied himself, I suppose, rather getting "into the vale of years," and had contrived to tinge his cheeks with a plentiful portion of rouge.[34] His platted and powdered hair was surmounted with a battered black hat, tricked off with faded ribband: his jacket was dark blue velvet, with the insignia of his order (the royal arms) upon his left arm. What struck me as not a little singular, was, that his countenance was no very faint resemblance of that of _Voltaire_, when he might have been verging towards his sixtieth year. Most assuredly he resembled him in his elongated chin, and the sarcastic expression of his mouth. We rolled merrily along--the horses sometimes spreading, and sometimes closing, according to the size of the streets through which we were compelled to pass. The reins and harness are of _cord_; which, however keep together pretty well. The postilion endeavours to break the rapidity of the descent by conducting the wheels over small piles of gravel or rubbish, which are laid at the sides of the road, near the ditch; so that, to those sitting in the cabriolet, and overlooking the whole process, the effect, with weak nerves, is absolutely terrific. They stop little in changing horses, and the Diligence is certainly well managed, and in general no accidents occur. The road from Dieppe to Rouen is wide, hard, and in excellent condition. There are few or no hedges, but rows of apple-trees afford a sufficient line of demarkation. The country is open, and gently undulating; with scarcely any glimpses of what is called forest-scenery, till you get towards the conclusion of the first stage. Nothing particularly strikes you till you approach _Malaunai_, within about half a dozen miles of Rouen, and of course after the last change of horses. The environs of this beautiful village repay you for every species of disappointment, if any should have been experienced. The rising banks of a brisk serpentine trout stream are studded with white houses, in which are cotton manufactories that appear to be carried on with spirit and success. Above these houses are hanging woods; and though the early spring would scarcely have coated the branches with green in our own country, yet _here_ there was a general freshness of verdure, intermingled with the ruddy blossom of the apple; altogether rejoicing the eye and delighting the heart. Occasionally there were delicious spots, which the taste and wealth of an Englishman would have embellished to every possible degree of advantage. But wealth, for the gratification of picturesque taste, is a superfluity that will not quickly fall to the lot of the French. The Revolution seems to have drained their purses, as well as daunted their love of enterprise. Along the road-side there were some few houses of entertainment; and we observed the emptied cabriolet and stationary voiture, by the side of the gardens, where Monsieur and Madame, with their families, tripped lightly along the vistas, and tittered as John Bull saluted them. Moving vehicles, and numerous riding and walking groups, increased upon us; and every thing announced that we were approaching a _great and populous city_. The approach to ROUEN is indeed magnificent. I speak of the immediate approach; after you reach the top of a considerable rise, and are stopped by the barriers. You then look down a strait, broad, and strongly paved road, lined with a double row of trees on each side. As the foliage was not thickly set, we could discern, through the delicately-clothed branches, the tapering spire of the CATHEDRAL, and the more picturesque tower of the ABBAYE ST. OUEN--with hanging gardens, and white houses, to the left--covering a richly cultivated ridge of hills, which sink as it were into the _Boulevards_, and which is called the _Faubourg Cauchoise_. To the right, through the trees, you see the river SEINE (here of no despicable depth or breadth) covered with boats and vessels in motion: the voice of commerce, and the stir of industry, cheering and animating you as you approach the town. I was told that almost every vessel which I saw (some of them of two hundred, and even of three hundred tons burthen) was filled with brandy and wine. The lamps are suspended from the centre of long ropes, across the road; and the whole scene is of a truly novel and imposing character. But how shall I convey to you an idea of what I experienced, as, turning to the left, and leaving the broader streets which flank the quay, I began to enter the _penetralia_ of this truly antiquated town? What narrow streets, what overhanging houses, what bizarre, capricious ornaments! What a mixture of modern with ancient art! What fragments, or rather ruins, of old delicately-built Gothic churches! What signs of former and of modern devastation! What fountains, gutters, groups of never-ceasing men, women, and children, all gay, all occupied, and all apparently happy! The _Rue de la Grosse Horloge_ (so called from a huge, clumsy, antiquated clock which goes across it) struck me as being not among the least singular streets of Rouen. In five minutes I was within the court-yard of the _Hôtel Vatel_, the favourite residence of the English. It was evening when I arrived, in company with three Englishmen. We were soon saluted by the _laquais de place_--the leech-like hangers-on of every hotel--who begged to know if we would walk upon the Boulevards. We consented; turned to the right; and, gradually rising, gained a considerable eminence. Again we turned to the right, walking upon a raised promenade; while the blossoms of the pear and apple trees, within a hundred walled gardens, perfumed the air with a delicious fragrance. As we continued our route along the _Boulevard Beauvoisine_, we gained one of the most interesting and commanding views imaginable of the city of Rouen--just at that moment lighted up by the golden rays of a glorious sun-set--which gave a breadth and a mellower tone to the shadows upon the Cathedral and the Abbey of St. Ouen. The situation of Rouen renders it necessarily picturesque, view it from what spot you will. The population of Rouen is supposed to be full one hundred thousand souls. In truth, there is no end to the succession of human beings. They swarm like bees, and like bees are busy in bringing home the produce of their industry. You have all the bustle and agitation of Cheapside and Cornhill; only that the ever-moving scene is carried on within limits one-half as broad. Conceive Bucklersbury, Cannon-street, and Thames-street,--and yet you cannot conceive the narrow streets of Rouen: filled with the flaunting cauchoise, and echoing to the eternal tramp of the sabot. There they are; men, women, and children--all abroad in the very centre of the streets: alternately encountering the splashing of the gutter, and the jostling of their townsmen--while the swift cabriolet, or the slow-paced cart, or the thundering _Diligence_, severs them, and scatters them abroad, only that they may seem to be yet more condensely united. For myself, it is with difficulty I believe that I am not living in the times of our Henry VIII. and of their Francis I.; and am half disposed to inquire after the residence of _Guillaume Tailleur_ the printer--the associate, or foreign agent of your favourite _Pynson_.[35] [34] [Mons. Licquet here observes, "This is the first time I have heard it said that our Postilions put on rouge." What he adds, shall be given in his own pithy expression.--"Où la coquetterie va-t-elle se nicher?" What, however is above stated, was stated from a _conviction_ of its being TRUE] [35] [The third English Printer.] See the _Bibliographical Decameron_, vol. ii. p. 137, 8. LETTER V. ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE. CATHEDRAL. MONUMENTS. RELIGIOUS CEREMONIES. THE ABBEY OF ST. OUEN. THE CHURCHES OF ST. MACLOU, ST. VINCENT, ST. VIVIEN, ST. GERVAIS, AND ST. PAUL. I have now made myself pretty well acquainted with the geography of Rouen. How shall I convey to you a summary, and yet a satisfactory, description of it? It cannot be done. You love old churches, old books, and relics of ancient art. These be my themes, therefore: so fancy yourself either strolling leisurely with me, arm in arm, in the streets--or sitting at my elbow. First for THE CATHEDRAL:--for what traveller of taste does not doff his bonnet to the _Mother Church_ of the town through which he happens to be travelling--or in which he takes up a temporary abode? The west-front,[36] always the _forte_ of the architect's skill, strikes you as you go down, or come up, the principal street--_La Rue des Carmes_,--which seems to bisect the town into equal parts. A small open space, (which however has been miserably encroached upon by petty shops) called the _Flower-garden_, is before this western front; so that it has some little breathing room in which to expand its beauties to the wondering eyes of the beholder. In my poor judgment, this western front has very few elevations comparable with it[37]--including even those of _Lincoln_ and _York_. The ornaments, especially upon the three porches, between the two towers, are numerous, rich, and for the greater part entire:--in spite of the Calvinists,[38] the French revolution, and time. Among the lower and smaller basso-relievos upon these porches, is the subject of the daughter of Herodias dancing before Herod. She is manoeuvering on her hands, her feet being upwards. To the right, the decapitation of St. John is taking place. The southern transept makes amends for the defects of the northern. The space before it is devoted to a sort of vegetable market: curious old houses encircle this space: and the ascent to the door, but more especially the curiously sculptured porch itself, with the open spaces in the upper part--light, fanciful and striking to a degree--produce an effect as pleasing as it is extraordinary. Add to this, the ever-restless feet of devotees, going in and coming out--the worn pavement, and the frittered ornaments, in consequence--seem to convince you that the ardour and activity of devotion is almost equal to that of business.[39] As you enter the cathedral, at the centre door, by descending two steps, you are struck with the length and loftiness of the nave, and with the lightness of the gallery which runs along the upper part of it. Perhaps the nave is too narrow for its length. The lantern of the central large tower is beautifully light and striking. It is supported by four massive clustered pillars, about forty feet in circumference;[40] but on casting your eye downwards, you are shocked at the tasteless division of the choir from the nave by what is called a _Grecian screen_: and the interior of the transepts has undergone a like preposterous restoration. The rose windows of the transepts, and that at the west end of the nave, merit your attention and commendation. I could not avoid noticing, to the right, upon entrance, perhaps the oldest side chapel in the cathedral: of a date, little less ancient than that of the northern tower; and perhaps of the end of the twelfth century. It contains by much the finest specimens of stained glass--of the early part of the XVIth century. There is also some beautiful stained glass on each side of the Chapel of the Virgin,[41] behind the choir; but although very ancient, it is the less interesting, as not being composed of groups, or of historical subjects. Yet, in this, as in almost all the churches which I have seen, frightful devastations have been made among the stained-glass windows by the fury of the Revolutionists.[42] Respecting the MONUMENTS, you ought to know that the famous ROLLO lies in one of the side-chapels, farther down to the right, upon entering; although his monument cannot be older than the thirteenth century. My attachment to the bibliomanical celebrity of JOHN, DUKE OF BEDFORD, will naturally lead me to the notice of his interment and monumental inscription. The latter is thus; _Ad dextrum Altaris Latus_ _Jacet_ IOANNES DUX BETFORDI _Normanniæ pro Rex_ _Obiit Anno_ MCCCCXXXV. The Duke's tomb will be seen engraved in Sandford's Genealogical History,[43] p. 314; which plate, in fact, is the identical one used by Ducarel; who had the singularly good fortune to decorate his Anglo-Norman Antiquities without any expense to himself![44] There is a curious chapter in Pommeraye's _Histoire de l'Eglise Cathedrale de Rouen_, p. 203, respecting the Duke's taking the habit of a canon of the cathedral. He attended, with his first wife, ANNE OF BURGUNDY, and threw himself upon the liberality and kindness of the monks, to be received by them as one of their order: "il les prioit d'être receu parmy eux comme un de leurs frères, et d'avoir tous les jours distribution de pain et de vin, et pour marque de fraternité d'être vétu du surplis et de l'aumusse: comme aussi d'être associé, luy et sa très généreuse et très illustre épouse, aux suffrages de leur compagnie, et à la participation de tous les biens qu'il plaira à Dieu leur donner la grace d'opérer," p. 204. A grand procession marked the day of the Duke's admission into the monkish fraternity. The whole of this, with an account of the Duke's superb presents to the sacristy, his dining with his Duchess, and receiving their portion of "eight loaves and four gallons of wine," are distinctly narrated by the minute Pommeraye. As you approach the _Chapel of the Virgin_, you pass by an ancient monument, to the left, of a recumbent Bishop, reposing behind a thin pillar, within a pretty ornamented Gothic arch.[45] To the eye of a tasteful antiquary this cannot fail to have its due attraction. While however we are treading upon hallowed ground, rendered if possible more sacred by the ashes of the illustrious dead, let us move gently onwards towards the _Chapel of the Virgin_, behind the choir. See, what bold and brilliant monumental figures are yonder, to the right of the altar! How gracefully they kneel and how devoutly they pray! They are the figures of the CARDINALS D'AMBOISE--uncle and nephew:--the former, minister of Louis XII.[46] and (what does not necessarily follow, but what gives him as high a claim upon the gratitude of posterity) the restorer and beautifier of the glorious building in which you are contemplating his figure. This splendid monument is entirely of black and white marble, of the early part of the sixteenth century. The figures just mentioned are of white marble, kneeling upon cushions, beneath a rich canopy of Gothic fretwork. They are in their professional robes; their heads are bare, exhibiting the tonsure, with the hair in one large curl behind. A small whole-length figure of _St. George_, their tutelary saint, is below them, in gilded marble: and the whole base, or lower frieze, of the monument, is surrounded by six delicately sculptured females, about three feet high, emblematic of the virtues for which these cardinals were so eminently distinguished. These figures, representing Faith, Charity, Prudence, Force, Justice, and Temperance, are flanked by eight smaller ones, placed in carved niches; while, above them, are the twelve Apostles, not less beautifully executed.[47] On gazing at this splendid monument of ancient piety and liberality--and with one's mind deeply intent upon the characters of the deceased--let us fancy we hear the sound of the GREAT BELL from the south-west tower ... called the _Amboise Tower_ ... erected, both the bell and the tower, by the uncle and minister AMBOISE. Know, my dear friend, that there was _once_ a bell, (and the largest in Europe, save one) which used to send forth its sound, for three successive centuries, from the said tower. This bell was broken about thirty years ago, and destroyed in the ravages of the immediately succeeding years.[48] The south-west tower remains, and the upper part of the central tower, with the whole of the lofty wooden spire:--the fruits of the liberality of the excellent men of whom such honourable mention has been made. Considering that this spire is very lofty, and composed of wood, _it is surprising that it has not been destroyed by tempest, or by lightning_.[49] The taste of it is rather capricious than beautiful. I have not yet done with the monuments, or rather have only commenced the account of them.[50] Examine yonder recumbent figure, to the left of the altar, opposite the splendid monument upon which I have just been dilating. It is lying upon its back, with a ghastly expression of countenance, representing the moment when the last breath has escaped from the body. It is the figure of the Grand SENESCHAL DE BREZE,[51]--Governor of Rouen, and husband of the celebrated DIANE DE POICTIERS--that thus claims our attention. This figure is quite naked, lying upon its back, with the right hand placed on the stomach, but in an action which indicates _life_--and therefore it is in bad taste, as far as truth is concerned; for the head being fallen back, much shrunken, and with a ghastly expression of countenance--indicating that some time has elapsed since it breathed its last--the hand could not rest in this position. The cenotaph is of black marble, disfigured by the names of idle visitors who choose to leave such impertinent memorials behind. The famous GOUJON is supposed to be the sculptor of the figure, which is painfully clever, but it strikes me as being too small. At any rate, the arms and body seem to be too strong and fleshy for the shrunken and death-stricken expression of the countenance. Above the Seneschal, thus prostrate and lifeless, there is another and a very clever representation of him, on a smaller scale, on horseback. On each side of this figure (which has not escaped serious injury) are two females in white marble; one representing the VIRGIN, and the other DIANE DE POICTIERS:[52] they are little more than half the size of life. The whole is in the very best style of the sculpture of the time of Francis I. These precious specimens of art, as well as several other similar remains, were carried away during the revolution, to a place of safety. The choir is spacious, and well adapted to its purposes; but who does not grieve to see the Archbishop's stall, once the most curious and costly, of the Gothic order, and executed at the end of the XVth century, transformed into a stately common-place canopy, supported by columns of chestnut-wood carved in the Grecian style? The LIBRARY, which used to terminate the north transept, is--not gone--but transferred. A fanciful stair-case, with an appropriate inscription,[53] yet attest that it was formerly an appendage to that part of the edifice. Before I quit the subject of the cathedral, I must not fail to tell you something relating to the rites performed therein. Let us quit therefore the dead for the living. Of course we saw, here, a repetition of the ceremonies observed at Dieppe; but previously to the feast of the _Ascension_ we were also present at the confirmation of three hundred boys and three hundred girls, each very neatly and appropriately dressed, in a sort of sabbath attire, and each holding a lighted wax taper in the hand. The girls were dressed in white, with white veils; and the rich lent veils to those who had not the means of purchasing them. The cathedral, especially about the choir, was crowded to excess. I hired a chair, stood up, and gazed as earnestly as the rest. The interest excited among the parents, and especially the mothers, was very striking. "Voila la petite--qu'elle a l'air charmant!--le petit ange!"....A stir is made ... they rise... and approach, in the most measured order, the rails of the choir ... There they deposit their tapers. The priests, very numerous, extinguish them as dexterously as they can; and the whole cathedral is perfumed with the mixed scent of the wax and frankincense. The boys, on approaching the altar, and giving up their tapers, kneel down; then shut their eyes, open their mouths; and the priests deposit the consecrated wafer upon their tongues. The procession now took a different direction. They all went into the nave, where a sermon was preached to the young people, expressly upon the occasion, by a Monsieur Quillebeuf, a canon of the cathedral, and a preacher of considerable popularity. He had one of the most meagre and forbidding physiognomies I ever beheld, and his beard was black and unshaven. But he preached well; fluently, and even eloquently: making a very singular, but not ungraceful, use of his left arm--and displaying at times rather a happy familiarity of manner, wholly exempt from vulgarity, and well suited to the capacities and feelings of his youthful audience. His subject was "belief in Christ Jesus;" on which he gave very excellent proofs and evidences. His voice was thin, but clear, and distinctly heard. And now, my dear Friend, if you are not tired with this détour of the CATHEDRAL, suppose we take a promenade to the next most important ecclesiastical edifice in the city of Rouen. What say you therefore to a stroll to the ABBEY of ST. OUEN? "Willingly," methinks I hear you reply. To the abbey therefore let us go. Leaving the Cathedral, you pass a beautifully sculptured fountain (of the early time of Francis I.) which stands at the corner of a street, to the right; and which, from its central situation, is visited the live-long day for the sake of its limpid waters. Push on a little further; then, turning to the right, you get into a sort of square, and observe the ABBEY--or rather the _west-front_ of it, full in face of you. You gaze, and are first struck with its matchless window: call it rose, or marygold, as you please. I think, for delicacy and richness of ornament, this window is perfectly unrivalled. There is a play of line in the mullions, which, considering their size and strength, may be pronounced quite a master-piece of art. You approach, regretting the neglected state of the lateral towers, and enter, through the large and completely-opened centre doors, the nave of the Abbey. It was towards sun-set when we made our first entrance. The evening was beautiful; and the variegated tints of sun-beam, admitted through the stained glass of the window, just noticed, were perfectly enchanting. The window itself, as you look upwards, or rather as you fix your eye upon the centre of it, from the remote end of the Abbey, or the _Lady's Chapel_, was a perfect blaze of dazzling light: and nave, choir, and side aisles, seemed magically illumined ... Seemed all on fire--within, around; Deep sacristy and altar's pale; Shone every pillar foliage-bound.... _Lay of the Last Minstrel_. We declared instinctively that the ABBEY OF ST. OUEN could hardly have a rival;--certainly not a superior. [Illustration] As the evening came on, the gloom of almost every side chapel and recess was rendered doubly impressive by the devotion of numerous straggling supplicants; and invocations to the presiding spirit of the place, reached the ears and touched the hearts of the bystanders. The grand western entrance presents you with the most perfect view of the choir--a magical circle, or rather oval--flanked by lofty and clustered pillars, and free from the surrounding obstruction of screens, &c. Nothing more airy and more captivating of the kind can be imagined. The finish and delicacy of these pillars are quite surprising. Above, below, around--every thing is in the purest style of the XIVth and XVth centuries. The central tower is a tower of beauty as well as of strength. Yet in regard to further details, connected with the interior, it must be admitted that there is very little more which is deserving of particular description; except it be _the gallery_, which runs within the walls of the nave and choir, and which is considerably more light and elegant than that of the cathedral. A great deal has been said about the circular windows at the end of the south transept, and they are undoubtedly elegant: but compared with the one at the extremity of the nave, they are rather to be noticed from the tale attached to them, than from their positive beauty. The tale, my friend, is briefly this. These windows were finished (as well as the larger one at the west front) about the year 1439. One of them was executed by the master-mason, the other by his apprentice; and on being criticised by competent judges, the performance of the _latter_ was said to eclipse that of the former. In consequence, the master became jealous and revengeful, and actually poniarded his apprentice. He was of course tried, condemned, and executed; but an existing monument to his memory attests the humanity of the monks in giving him Christian interment.[54] On the whole, it is the absence of all obtrusive and unappropriate ornament which gives to the interior of this building that light, unencumbered, and faery-like effect which so peculiarly belongs to it, and which creates a sensation that I never remember to have felt within any other similar edifice. Let me however put in a word for the _Organ_. It is immense, and perhaps larger than that belonging to the Cathedral. The tin pipes (like those of the organ in the Cathedral) are of their natural colour. I paced the pavement beneath, and think that this organ cannot be short of forty English feet in length. Indeed, in all the churches which I have yet seen, the organs strike me as being of magnificent dimensions. You should be informed however that the extreme length of the interior, from the further end of the Chapel of the Virgin, to its opposite western extremity, is about four hundred and fifty English feet; while the height, from the pavement to the roof of the nave, or the choir, is one hundred and eight English feet. The transepts are about one hundred and forty feet in length. The central tower, upon the whole, is not only the grandest tower in Rouen, but there is nothing for its size in our own country that can compare with it. It rises upwards of one hundred feet above the roof of the church; and is supported below, or rather within, by four magnificent cluster-pillared bases, each about thirty-two feet in circumference. Its area, at bottom, can hardly be less than thirty-six feet square. The choir is flanked by flying buttresses, which have a double tier of small arches, altogether "marvellous and curious to behold." I could not resist stealing quietly round to the porch of the _south transept_, and witnessing, in that porch, one of the most chaste, light, and lovely specimens of Gothic architecture, which can be contemplated. Indeed, I hardly know any thing like it.[55] The leaves of the poplar and ash were beginning to mantle the exterior; and, seen through their green and gay lattice work, the traceries of the porch seemed to assume a more interesting aspect. They are now mending the upper part of the façade with new stone of peculiar excellence--but it does not harmonise with the old work. They merit our thanks, however, for the preservation of what remains of this precious pile. I should remark to you that the eastern and north-eastern sides of the abbey of St. Ouen are surrounded with promenades and trees: so that, occasionally, either when walking, or sitting upon the benches, within these gardens, you catch one of the finest views imaginable of the abbey. At this early season of the year, much company is assembled every evening in these walks: while, in front of the abbey, or in the square facing the western end, the national guard is exercised in the day time--and troops of fair nymphs and willing youths mingle in the dance on a sabbath evening, while a platform is erected for the instrumental performers, and for the exhibition of feats of legerdemain. You must not take leave of St. Ouen without being told that, formerly, the French Kings used occasionally to "make revel" within the Abbot's house. Henry II, Charles IX, and Henry III, each took a fancy to this spot--but especially the famous HENRI QUATRE. It is reported that that monarch sojourned here for four months--- and his reply to the address of the aldermen and sheriff of Rouen is yet preserved both in MS. and by engravings. "The King having arrived at St. Ouen (says an old MS.)[56] the keys of the tower were presented to him, in the presence of M. de Montpensier, the governor of the province, upon a velvet-cushion. The keys were gilt. The King took them, and replacing them in the hands of the governor, said--"Mon cousin, je vous les baille pour les rendre, qu'ils les gardent;"--then, addressing the aldermen, he added, "Soyez moi bons sujets et je vous serai bon Roi, et le meilleur Roi que vous ayez jamais eu." Next to the Abbey of St. Ouen, "go by all means and see the church _St. Maclou_"--say your friends and your guides. The Abbé Turquier accompanied me thither. The great beauties of St. Maclou are its tower and its porch. Of the tower, little more than the lantern remains. This is about 160 English feet in height. Above it was a belfry or steeple, another 110 feet in height, constructed of wood and lead--but which has been nearly destroyed for the sake of the lead,--for the purpose of slaughter or resistance during the late revolution.[57] The exteriors of the porches are remarkable for their elaborate ornaments; especially those in the _Rue Martainville._ They are highly praised by the inhabitants, and are supposed to be after the models of the famous Goujon. Perhaps they are rather encumbered with ornament, and want that quiet effect, and pure good taste, which we see in the porches of the Cathedral and of the Abbey St. Ouen. However, let critics determine as they will upon this point--they must at least unite in reprobating the barbarous edict which doomed these delicate pieces of sculptured art to be deluged with an over-whelming tint of staring yellow ochre! Of the remaining churches, I shall mention only four: two of them chiefly remarkable for their interior, and two for their extreme antiquity. Of the two former, that of _St. Vincent_ presents you with a noble organ, with a light choir profusely gilded, and (rarer accompaniment!) in very excellent taste. But the stained glass is the chief magnet of attraction. It is rich, varied, and vivid to a degree; and, upon the whole, is the finest specimen of this species of art in the present ecclesiastical remains of the city. _St. Vivien_ is the second of these two former. It is a fine open church, with a large organ, having a very curious wooden screen in front, elaborately carved, and, as I conceive, of the very earliest part of the sixteenth century. I ascended the organ-loft; and the door happening to be open, I examined this screen (which has luckily escaped the yellow-ochre edict) very minutely, and was much gratified by the examination. Such pieces of art, so situated, are of rare occurrence. For the first time, within a parish church, I stepped upon the pavement of the choir: walked gently forwards, to the echo of my own footsteps, (for not a creature was in the church) and, "with no unhallowed hand" I would hope, ventured to open the choral or service book, resting upon its stand. It was wide, thick, and ponderous: upon vellum: beautifully written and well executed in every respect, with the exception of the illuminations which were extremely indifferent. I ought to tell you that the doors of the churches, abroad, are open at all times of the day: the ancient or more massive door, or portal, is secured from shutting; but a temporary, small, shabby wooden door, covered with dirty green baize, opening and shutting upon circular hinges, just covers the vacuum left by the absence of the larger one. Of the two ancient churches, above alluded to, that of _St. Gervais_, is situated considerably to the north of where the _Boulevards Cauchoise_ and _Bouvreuil_ meet. It was hard by this favourite spot, say the Norman historians, that the ancient Dukes of Normandy built their country-houses: considering it as a _lieu de plaisance._ Here too it was that the Conqueror came to breathe his last--desiring to be conveyed thither, from his palace in the city, for the benefit of the pure air.[58] I walked with M. Le Prevost to this curious church: having before twice seen it. But the _Crypt_ is the only thing worth talking about, on the score of antiquity. The same accomplished guide bade me remark the extraordinary formation of the capitals of the pillars: which, admitting some perversity of taste in a rude, Norman, imitative artist, are decidedly of Roman character. "Perhaps," said M. Le Prevost, "the last efforts of Roman art previous to the relinquishment of the Romans." Among these capitals there is one of the perfect Doric order; while in another you discover the remains of two Roman eagles. The columns are all of the same height; and totally unlike every thing of the kind which I have seen or heard of. We descended the hill upon which _St. Gervais_ is built, and walked onward towards _St. Paul_, situated at the further and opposite end of the town, upon a gentle eminence, just above the Banks of the Seine.[59] M. Le Prevost was still our conductor. This small edifice is certainly of remote antiquity, but I suspect it to be completely Norman. The eastern end is full of antiquarian curiosities. We observed something like a Roman mask as the centre ornament upon the capital of one of the circular figures; and Mr. Lewis made a few slight drawings of one of the grotesque heads in the exterior, of which the hair is of an uncommon fashion. The _Saxon whiskers_ are discoverable upon several of these faces. Upon the whole, it is possible that parts of this church may have been built at the latter end of the tenth century, after the Normans had made themselves completely masters of this part of the kingdom; yet it is more probable that there is no vestige left which claims a more ancient date than that of the end of the eleventh century. I ought just to notice the church of _St. Sever_,[60] supposed by some to be yet more ancient: but I had no opportunity of taking a particular survey of it. Thus much, or rather thus little, respecting the ECCLESIASTICAL ANTIQUITIES of Rouen. They merit indeed a volume of themselves. This city could once boast of upwards of _thirty parish churches_; of which very nearly a _dozen_ have been recently (I mean during the Revolution) converted into _warehouses_. It forms a curious, and yet melancholy mélange--this strange misappropriation of what was formerly held most sacred, to the common and lowest purposes of civil life! You enter these warehouses, or offices of business, and see the broken shaft, the battered capital, and half-demolished altar-piece--the gilded or the painted frieze--in the midst of bales of goods--casks, ropes, and bags of cotton: while, without, the same spirit of demolition prevails in the fractured column, and tottering arch way. Thus time brings its changes and decays--premature as well as natural: and the noise of the car-men and injunctions of the clerk are now heard, where formerly there reigned a general silence, interrupted only by the matin or evening chaunt! I deplored this sort of sacrilegious adaptation, to a respectable-looking old gentleman, sitting out of doors upon a chair, and smoking his pipe--"c'est dommage, Monsieur, qu'on a converti l'église à"--He stopped me: raised his left hand: then took away his pipe with his right; gave a gentle whiff, and shrugging up his shoulders, half archly and half drily exclaimed--"Mais que voulez vous, Monsieur?--ce sont des événemens qu'on ne peut ni prévoir ni prévenir. Voilà ce que c'est!" Leaving you to moralize upon this comfortable morceau of philosophy, consider me ever, &c. [36] A most ample and correct view of this west front will be found in Mr. _Cotman's Norman Antiquities_. [37] It is about 180 English feet in width, by about 150 in the highest part of its elevation. The plates which I saw at Mr. Frere's, bookseller, upon the Quai de Paris, from the drawings of Langlois, were very inadequate representations of the building. [38] The ravages committed by the Calvinists throughout nearly the whole of the towns in Normandy, and especially in the cathedrals, towards the year 1560, afford a melancholy proof of the effects of RELIGIOUS ANIMOSITY. But the Calvinists were bitter and ferocious persecutors. Pommeraye, in his quarto volume, _Histoire de l'Eglise Cathedrale de Rouen_, 1686, has devoted nearly one hundred pages to an account of Calvinistic depredations. [39] [Mr. Cotman has a plate of the elevation of the front of this south transept; and a very minute and brilliant one will be found in the previous edition of this Tour--by Mr. Henry le Keux: for which that distinguished Artist received the sum of 100 guineas. The remuneration was well merited.] [40] [Mons. Licquet says each clustered pillar contains thirty-one columns.] [41] This chapel is about ninety-five English feet in length, by thirty in width, and sixty in heighth. The sprawling painting by Philippe de Champagne, at the end of it, has no other merit than that of covering so many square feet of wall. The architecture of this chapel is of the XIVth century: the stained glass windows are of the latter end of the XVth. On completing the circuit of the cathedral, one is surprised to count not fewer than _twenty-five_ chapels. [42] [Mons. Licquet is paraphrastically warm in his version, here. He renders it thus: "les atteintes effroyables du vandalisme révolutionaire," vol. i. p. 64.] [43] Sandford, after telling us that he thinks there "never was any portraiture" of the Duke, thus sums up his character. "He was justly accounted one of the best generals that ever blossomed out of the royal stem of PLANTAGENET. His valour was not more terrible to his enemies than his memory honourable; for (doubtful whether with more glory to him, or to the speaker) King Lewis the Eleventh being counselled by certain envious persons to deface his tomb (wherein with him, saith one, was buried all English men's good fortune in France) used these indeed princely words: 'What honour shall it be to us, or you, to break this monument, and to pull out of the ground the bones of HIM, whom, in his life time, neither my father nor your progenitors, with all their puissance, were once able to make flie a foot backwarde? who, by his strength, policy and wit kept them all out of the principal dominions of France, and out of this noble duchy of Normandy? Wherefore, I say first, GOD SAVE HIS SOUL; and let his body now lie in rest, which when he was alive, would have disquieted the proudest of us all. And for THIS TOMB, I assure you it is not so worthy or convenient as his honour and acts have deserved.'" p. 314-5, Ed. 1707[A] The famous MISSAL, once in the possession of this celebrated nobleman, and containing the only authenticated portrait of him (which is engraved in the _Bibliog. Decameron_, vol. i. p. cxxxvii.) is now the property of John Milner, Esq. of York Place, Portman Square, who purchased it of the Duke of Marlborough. The Duke had purchased it at the sale of the library of the late James Edwards, Esq. for 687l. 15s. [A] [Upon this, Mons. Licquet, with supposed shrewdness and success, remarks,--"All very well: but we must not forget that the innocent Joan of Arc was burnt alive--thanks to this said Duke of Bedford, as every one knows!"] [44] [A different tale may be told of ONE of his Successors in the same Anglo-Norman pursuit. The expenses attending the graphic embellishments alone of the previous edition of this work, somewhat exceeded the sum of _four thousand seven hundred pounds._ The risk was entirely my own. The result was the loss of about 200l.: exclusively of the expences incurred in travelling about 2000 miles. The _copper-plates_ (notwithstanding every temptation, and many entreaties, to _multiply_ impressions of several of the subjects engraved) were DESTROYED. There may be something more than a mere negative consolation, in finding that the work is RISING in price, although its author has long ceased to partake of any benefit resulting from it.] [45] A plate of this Monument is published in the Tour of Normandy by Dawson Turner, Esq. [46] The Cardinal died in his fiftieth year only; and his funeral was graced and honoured by the presence of his royal master. Guicciardini calls him "the oracle and right arm of Louis." Of eight brothers, whom he left behind, four attained to the episcopal rank. His nephew succeeded him as Archbishop. See also _Historia Genealogica Magnatum Franciae_; vol. vii. p. 129; quoted in the _Gallia Christiana_, vol. xi. col. 96. It was during the archiepiscopacy of the successor of the nephew of Amboise--namely, that of CHARLES of BOURBON--that the _Calvanistic persecution_ commenced. "Tunc vero coepit civitas, dioecesis, universaque provincia lamentabilem in modum conflictari, saevientibus ob religionis dissidia plusquam civilibus bellis," &c. But then the good Archbishop, however bountiful he might have been towards the poor at _Roncesvalles_, (when he escorted Philip II.'s first wife Elizabeth, daughter of Henry II. to the confines of Spain, after he had married her to that wretched monarch) should not have inflamed the irritated minds of the Calvinists, by BURNING ALIVE, in 1559, _John Cottin_, one of their most eminent preachers, by way of striking terror into the rest! Well might the Chronicler observe, as the result, "novas secta illa in dies acquirebat vires." About 1560-2, the Calvinists got the upper hand; and repaid the Catholics with a vengeance. Charles of Bourbon died in 1590: so that he had an arduous and agitated time of it. [47] How long will this monument--(matchless of its kind)--continue unrepresented by the BURIN? If Mr. Henry Le Keux were to execute it in his best style, the world might witness in it a piece of Art entirely perfect of its kind. But let the pencils of Messrs. Corbould and Blore be first exercised on the subject. In the mean while, why is GALLIC ART inert? [48] The choir was formerly separated from the surrounding chapels, or rather from the space between it and the chapels, by a superb brass grating, full of the most beautiful arabesque ornaments--another testimony of the magnificent spirit of the Cardinal and Prime Minister of Louis XII.: whose arms, as well as the figure of his patron, St. George, were seen in the centre of every compartment ... The Revolution has not left a vestige behind! [49] [In this edition, I put the above passage in _Italics_,--to mark, that, within three years of writing it, the spire was consumed by LIGHTNING. The newspapers of both France and England were full of this melancholy event; and in the year 1823, Monsieur Hyacinthe Langlois, of Rouen, published an account of it, together with some views (indifferently lithographised) of the progress of the burning. "It should seem (says Mons. Licquet) that the author had a presentiment of what was speedily to take place:--for the rest, the same species of destruction threatens all similar edifices, for the want of conductors." I possess a fragment of the lead of the roof, as it was collected after a state of _fusion_--and sent over to me by some friend at Rouen. The fusion has caused portions of the lead to assume a variety of fantastic shapes--not _altogether_ unlike a gothic building.] [50] Let me add that the whole length of the cathedral is about four hundred and forty feet; and the transept about one hundred and seventy-five; English measure. The height of the nave is about ninety, and of the lantern one hundred and sixty-eight feet, English. The length of the nave is two hundred and twenty-eight feet. [51] He died in 1531. Both the ancient and yet existing inscriptions are inserted by Gilbert, from Pommeraye and Farin; and formerly there was seen, in the middle of the monument, the figure of the Seneschal habited as a Count, with all the insignia of his dignity. But this did not outlive the Revolution. [52] It must be admitted that Diana, when she caused the verses _Indivulsa tibi quondam et fidissima conjux Vt fuit in thalamo, sic erit in tumulo_. to be engraved upon the tomb of the Seneschal, might well have "moved the bile" of the pious Benedictine Pommeraye, and have excited the taunting of Ducarel, when they thought upon her subsequent connexion, in the character of mistress, with Henry the Second of France. Henry however endeavoured to compensate for his indiscretions by the pomp and splendor of his processions. Rouen, so celebrated of old for the entries of Kings and Nobles, seems to have been in a perfect blaze of splendor upon that of the Lover of Diana--"qui fut plus magnifique que toutes celles qu'on avoit vu jusqu'alors:" see _Farin's Hist. de la Ville de Rouen_, vol. i. p. 121, where there is a singularly minute and gay account of all the orders and degrees of citizens--(with their gorgeous accoutrements of white plumes, velvet hats, rich brocades, and curiously wrought taffetas) of whom the processions were composed. It must have been a perfectly dramatic sight, upon the largest possible scale. It was from respect to the character or the memory of DIANA, that so many plaster-representations of her were erected on the exteriors of buildings: especially of those within small squares or quadrangles. In wandering about Rouen, I stumbled upon several old mansions of this kind. [53] The inscription is this: _Si quem sancta tenet meditandi in lege voluntas, Hic poterit residens, sacris intendere libris_. Pommeraye has rather an interesting gossiping chapter [Chap. xxii.] "De la Bibliothêque de la Cathédrale;" p. 163: to which FRANÇOIS DE HARLAY, about the year 1630, was one of the most munificent benefactors. [54] _Christian interment_.]--"Les Religieux de Saint Ouen touchez de compassion envers ce malheureux artisan, obtinrent son corps de la justice, et pour reconnoissance des bons services qu'il leur avoit rendus dans la construction de leur église, nonobstant sa fin tragique, ne laissèrent pas de luy fair l'honneur de l'inhumer dans la chapelle de sainte Agnes, ou sa tombe se voit encore auec cet Epitaphe: _Cy gist_ M. ALEXANDRE DE BERNEUAL, _Maistre des oeuvres de Massonnerie._ [55] Even Dr. Ducarel became warm--on contemplating this porch! "The porch at the south entrance into the church (says he) is much more worthy of the spectator's attention, being highly enriched with architectonic ornaments; particularly two beautiful cul de lamps, which from the combination of a variety of spiral dressings, as they hang down from the vaulted roof, produce a very pleasing effect." p. 28. [56] Consult the account given by M. Le Prevost in the "_Précis Analytique des Travaux de l'Academie, &c. de Rouen_," for the year 1816, p. 151, &c. [57] Farin tells us that you could go from the top of the lantern to the cross, or to the summit of the belfry, "outside, without a ladder; so admirable was the workmanship." "Strangers (adds he) took models of it for the purpose of getting them engraved, and they were sold publicly at Rome." _Hist. de la Ville de Rouen_, 1738, 4to. vol. ii. p. 154. There are thirteen chapels within this church; of which however the building cannot be traced lower than quite the beginning of the XVIth century. The extreme length and width of the interior is about 155 by 82 feet English. Even in Du Four's time the population of this parish was very great, and its cemetery (adds he) was the first and most regular in Rouen. He gives a brief, but glowing description of it--"on va tout autour par des galeries couvertes et pavées; et, deux de ces galeries sont decorées de deux autels," &c. p. 150. Alas! time--or the revolution--has annihilated all this. Let me however add that M. COTMAN has published a view of the _staircase_ in the church of which I am speaking. [58] Ordericus Vitalis says, that the dying monarch requested to be conveyed thither, to avoid the noise and bustle of a populous town. Rouen is described to be, in _his_ time, "populosa civitas." Consult Duchesne's _Historiæ Normannor. Scrip. Antiq._ p.656. [59] A view of it is published by M. Cotman. [60] _St. Sever_. This church is situated in the southern fauxbourgs, by the side of the Seine, and was once surrounded by gardens, &c. As you cross the bridge of boats, and go to the race-ground, you leave it to the right; but it is not so old as _St. Paul_--where, Farin says, the worship of ADONIS was once performed! LETTER VI. HALLES DE COMMERCE. PLACE DE LA PUCELLE D'ORLEANS (JEANNE D'ARC.) BASSO-RILIEVO OF THE CHAMP DE DRAP D'OR. PALACE AND COURTS OF JUSTICE. You must make up your mind to see a few more sights in the city of Rouen, before I conduct you to the environs, or to the summit of _Mont St. Catherine_. We must visit some relics of antiquity, and take a yet more familiar survey of the town, ere we strive ... superas evadere ad auras. Indeed the information to be gained well merits the toil endured in its acquisition. The only town in England that can give you any notion of Rouen, is CHESTER; although the similitude holds only in some few particulars. I must, in the first place then, make especial mention of the HALLES DE COMMERCE. The _markets_ here are numerous and abundant, and are of all kinds. Cloth, cotton, lace, linen, fish, fruit, vegetables, meat, corn, and wine; these for the exterior and interior of the body. Cattle, wood, iron, earthenware, seeds, and implements of agriculture; these for the supply of other necessities considered equally important. Each market has its appropriate site. For picturesque effect, you must visit the _Vieux Marché_, for vegetables and fish; which is kept in an open space, once filled by the servants and troops of the old Dukes of Normandy, having the ancient ducal palace in front. This is the fountain head whence the minor markets are supplied. Every stall has a large old tattered sort of umbrella spread above it, to ward off the rain or rays of heat; and, seen from some points of view, the effect of all this, with the ever-restless motion of the tongues and feet of the vendors, united to their strange attire, is exceedingly singular and interesting. Leaving the old market place, you pass on to the _Marché Neuf_, where fruits, eggs, and butter are chiefly sold. At this season of the year there is necessarily little or no fruit, but I could have filled one coat pocket with eggs for less than half a franc. While on the subject of buying and selling, let us go to the _Halles_ of _Rouen_; being large public buildings now exclusively appropriated to the sale of cloths, linen, and the varied _et-ceteras_ of mercery. These are at once spacious and interesting in a high degree. They form the divisions of the open spaces, or squares, where the markets just mentioned are held; and were formerly the appurtenances of the palaces and chateaux of the old Dukes of Normandy: the _latter_ of which are now wholly demolished. You must rise betimes on a Friday morning, to witness a sight of which you can have no conception in England: unless it be at a similar scene in _Leeds_. By six o'clock the busy world is in motion within these halls. Then commences the incessant and inconceivable vociferation of buying and selling. The whole scene is alive, and carried on in several large stone-arched rooms, supported by a row of pillars in the centre. Of these halls, the largest is about three hundred and twenty English feet in length, by fifty-five in width. The centre, in each division, contains tables and counters for the display of cloth, cotton, stuff, and linen of all descriptions. The display of divers colours--the commendations bestowed by the seller, and the reluctant assent of the purchaser--the animated eye of the former, and the calculating brow of the latter--the removal of one set of wares, and the bringing on of another--in short, the never-ceasing succession of sounds and sights astonishes the gravity of an Englishman; whose astonishment is yet heightened by the extraordinary good humour which every where prevails. The laugh, the joke, the équivoque, and reply, were worth being recorded in pointed metre;--and what metre but that of Crabbe could possibly render it justice? By nine of the clock all is hushed. The sale is over: the goods are cleared; and both buyers and sellers have quitted the scene. From _still_, let me conduct you to _active_ life. In other words, let us hasten to take a peep at the _Horse and Cattle Market_; which is fixed in the very opposite part of the town; that is, towards the northern Boulevards. The horses are generally entire: and indeed you have scarcely any thing in England which exceeds the _Norman horse_, properly so understood. This animal unites the hardiness of the mule with the strength of his own particular species. He is also docile, and well trained; and a Norman, from pure affection, thinks he can never put enough harness upon his back. I have seen the face and shoulders of a cart-horse almost buried beneath a profusion of ornament by way of collar; and have beheld a farmer's horse, led out to the plough, with trappings as gorgeous and striking as those of a General's charger brought forward for a review. The carts and vehicles are usually balanced in the centre upon two wheels, which diminishes much of the pressure upon the horse. Yet the caps of the wheels are frightfully long, and inconveniently projecting: while the eternally loud cracking of the whip is most repulsive to nervous ears. On market days, the horses stand pretty close to each other for sale; and are led off, for shew, amidst boys, girls, and women, who contrive very dexterously to get out of the way of their active hoofs. The French seem to have an instinctive method of doing that, which, with ourselves, seems to demand forethought and deliberation. Of the STREETS, in this extraordinary city, that of the _Great Clock--(Rue de la Grosse Horloge)_ which runs in a straight line from the western front of the Cathedral, at right angles with the _Rue des Carmes_, is probably the most important, ancient, and interesting. When we were conveyed, on our entrance, (in the cabriolet of the Diligence) beneath the arch to the upper part of which this old fashioned clock is attached, we were lost in admiration at the singularity of the scene. The inhabitants saw, and enjoyed, our astonishment. There is a fountain beneath, or rather on one side of this arch; over which is sculptured a motley group of insipid figures, of the latter time of Louis XIV. The old tower near this clock merits a leisurely survey: as do also some old houses, to the right, on looking at it. It was within this old tower that a bell was formerly tolled, at nine o'clock each evening, to warn the inhabitants abroad to return within the walls of the city.[61] Turning to the left, in this street, and going down a sharp descent, we observed a stand of hackney coaches in a small square, called _La Place de la Pucelle_: that is, the place where the famous JEANNE D'ARC[62] was imprisoned, and afterwards burnt. What sensations possess us as we gaze on each surrounding object!--although, now, each surrounding object has undergone a palpable change! Ah, my friend--what emotions were _once_ excited within this small space! What curiosity, and even agony of mind, mingled with the tumults of indignation, the shouts of revenge, and the exclamations of pity! But life now goes on just the same as if nothing of the kind had happened here. The past is forgotten. This hapless Joan of Arc is one of the many, who, having been tortured as heretics, have been afterwards reverenced as martyrs. Her statue was, not very long after her execution, almost _adored_ upon that very spot where her body had been consigned with execrations to the flames. The square, in which this statue stands, contains probably one of the very oldest houses in Rouen--and as interesting as it is ancient. It is invisible from without: but you open a wooden gate, and quickly find yourself within a small quadrangle, having three of its sides covered with basso-rilievo figures in plaster. That side which faces you is evidently older than the left: indeed I have no hesitation in assigning it to the end of the XVth century. The clustered ornaments of human figures and cattle, with which the whole of the exterior is covered, reminds us precisely of those numerous little wood-cut figures, chiefly pastoral, which we see in the borders of printed missals of the same period. The taste which prevails in them is half French and half Flemish. Not so is the character of the plaster figures which cover the _left_ side on entering. These, my friend, are no less than the representation of the procession of Henry VIII. and Francis I. to the famous CHAMP DE DRAP D'OR: of which Montfaucon[63] has published engravings. Having carefully examined this very curious relic, of the beginning of the sixteenth century, I have no hesitation in pronouncing the copy of Montfaucon (or rather of the artist employed by him) to be most egregiously faithless. I visited it again and again, considering it to be worth all the "huge clocks" in Rouen put together. I hardly know how to take you from this interesting spot--from this exhibition of beautiful old art--especially too when I consider that Francis himself once occupied the mansion, and held a Council here, with both English and French; that his bugles once sounded from beneath the gate way, and that his goblets once sparkled upon the chestnut tables of the great hall. I do hope and trust that the Royal Academy of Rouen, will not suffer this architectural relic to perish, without leaving behind a substantial and faithful representation of it.[64] While upon the subject of ancient edifices, let me return; and, crossing the _Rue de la Grosse Horloge_, contrive to place you in the centre of the square which is formed by the PALAIS DE JUSTICE. The inhabitants consider this building as the principal _lion_ in their city. It has indeed claims to notice and admiration, but will not bear the severe scrutiny of a critic in Gothic architecture. It was partly erected by Louis XII. at the entreaty of the provincial States, through the interest of the famous Cardinal d'Amboise, and partly by Francis I. This building precisely marks the restoration of Gothic taste in France, and the peculiar style of architecture which prevailed in the reign of Francis I. To say the truth, this style, however sparkling and imposing, is objectionable in many respects: for it is, in the first place, neither pure Gothic nor pure Grecian--but an injudicious mixture of both. Greek arabesque borders are running up the sides of a portal terminating in a Gothic arch; and the Gothic ornaments themselves are not in the purest, or the most pleasing, taste. Too much is given to parts, and too little to the whole. The external ornaments are frequently heavy, from their size and elaborate execution; and they seem to be _stuck on_ to the main building without rhyme or reason. The criminal offences are tried in the hall to the right, and the prisoners are confined in the lower part of the building to the left: above which you mount by a flight of stone steps, which conducts you to a singularly curious hall,[65] about one hundred and seventy-five English feet in length--roofed by wooden ribs, in the form of an arch, and displaying a most curious and exact specimen of carpenter's work. This is justly shewn and commented upon to the enquiring traveller. Parts of the building are devoted to the courts of assize, and to tribunals of audience of almost every description. The first Presidents of the Parliament lived formerly in the building which faces you upon entrance, but matters have now taken a very different turn. Upon the whole, this _Town Hall_, or call it what you will, is rather a magnificent structure; and certainly superior to most provincial buildings of the kind which we possess in England. I should tell you that the courts for commercial causes are situated near the quays, at the south part of the town: and Monsieur Riaux, who conducted me thither, (and who possesses the choicest library[66] of antiquarian books, of all descriptions, relating to Rouen, which I had the good fortune to see) carried me to the _Hall of Commerce_, which, among other apartments, contains a large chamber (contiguous to the Court of Justice) covered with _fleurs de lys_ upon a light blue ground. It is now however much in need of reparation. Fresh lilies and a new ground are absolutely necessary to harmonise with a large oil-painting at one end of it, in which is represented the reception of Louis XVI. at Rouen by the Mayor and Deputies of the town, in 1786. All the figures are of the size of life, well painted after the originals, and appear to be strong resemblances. On enquiring how many of them were now living, I was told that--ALL WERE DEAD! The fate of the _principal_ figure is but too well known. They should have this interesting subject--interesting undoubtedly to the inhabitants--executed by one of their best engravers. It represents the unfortunate Louis quite in the prime of life; and is the best whole length portrait of him which I have yet seen in painting or in engraving. It is right however that you should know, that, in the Tribunal for the determination of commercial causes, there sits a very respectable Bench of Judges: among whom I recognised one that had perfectly the figure, air, and countenance, of an Englishman. On enquiry of my guide, I found my supposition verified. He _was_ an Englishman; but had been thirty years a resident in _Rouen_. The judicial costume is appropriate in every respect; but I could not help smiling, the other morning, upon meeting my friend the judge, standing before the door of his house, in the open street--with a hairy cap on--leisurely smoking his pipe--And wherein consisted the harm of such a _delassement_? [61] [I apprehend this custom to be prevalent in fortified towns:--as Rouen _formerly_ was--and as I found such custom to obtain at the present day, at Strasbourg. Mons. Licquet says that the allusion to the curfew--or _couvre-feu_--as appears in the previous edition--and which the reader well knows was established by the Conqueror with us--was no particular badge of the slavery of the English. It had been _previously_ established by William in NORMANDY. Millot is referred to as the authority.] [62] _the famous_ JEANNE D'ARC.] Goube, in the second volume of his _Histoire du Duché de Normandie_, has devoted several spiritedly written pages to an account of the trial and execution of this heroine. Her history is pretty well known to the English--from earliest youth. Goube says that her mode of death had been completely prejudged; for that, previously to the sentence being passed, they began to erect "a scaffold of plaster, so raised, that the flames could not at first reach her--and she was in consequence consumed by a slow fire: her tortures being long and horrible." Hume has been rather too brief: but he judiciously observes that the conduct of the Duke of Bedford "was equally barbarous and dishonourable." Indeed it were difficult to pronounce which is entitled to the greatest abhorrence--the imbecility of Charles VII. the baseness of John of Luxembourg, or the treachery of the Regent Bedford? The _identical_ spot on which she suffered is not now visible, according to Millin; that place having been occupied by the late _Marché des Veaux_. It was however not half a stone's throw from the site of the present statue. In the _Antiquités Nationales_ of the last mentioned author (vol. iii. art. xxxvi.) there are three plates connected with the History of JOAN of ARC. The _first_ plate represents the _Porte Bouvreuil_ to the left, and the circular old tower to the right--in which latter Joan was confined, with some houses before it; the middle ground is a complete representation of the rubbishing state by which many of the public buildings at Rouen are yet surrounded; and French taste has enlivened the foreground with a picture of a lover and his mistress, in a bocage, regaling themselves with a flagon of wine. The old circular tower ("qui vit gémir cette infortunée," says Millin) exists no longer. The second plate represents the fountain which was built in the market-place upon the very spot where the Maid suffered, and which spot was at first designated by the erection of a cross. From the style of the embellishments it appears to have been of the time of Francis I. Goube has re-engraved this fountain. It was taken down or demolished in 1755; upon the site of which was built the present tasteless production--resembling, as the author of the _Itinéraire de Rouen_ (p. 69) well observes, "rather a Pallas than the heroine of Orleans." The name of the author was STODTS. Millin's _third_ plate--of this present existing fountain, is desirable; in as much as it shews the front of the house, in the interior of which are the basso-rilievos of the _Champ de drap d'Or_: for an account of which see afterwards. Millin allows that all PORTRAITS of her--whether in sculpture, or painting, or engraving--are purely IDEAL. Perhaps the nearest, in point of fidelity, was that which was seen in a painted glass window of the church of the _Minimes_ at Chaillot: although the building was not erected till the time of Charles VIII. Yet it might have been a copy of some coeval production. In regard to oil paintings, I take it that the portrait of JUDITH, with a sword in one hand, and the head of Holofernes in the other, has been usually copied (with the omission of the latter accompaniment) as that of JEANNE D'ARC. I hardly know a more interesting collection of books than that which may be acquired respecting the fate of this equally brave and unfortunate heroine. [63] Far be it from me to depreciate the labours of Montfaucon. But those who have not the means of getting at that learned antiquarian's _Monarchie Françoise_ may possibly have an opportunity of examining precisely the same representations, of the procession above alluded to, in _Ducarel's Anglo-Norman Antiquities_, Plate XII. Till the year 1726 this extraordinary series of ornament was supposed to represent the _Council of Trent_; but the Abbé Noel, happening to find a salamander marked upon the back of one of the figures, supposed, with greater truth, that it was a representation of the abovementioned procession; and accordingly sent Montfaucon an account of the whole. The Abbé might have found more than one, two, or three salamanders, if he had looked closely into this extraordinary exterior; and possibly, in his time, the surfaces of the more delicate parts, especially of the human features, might not have sustained the injuries which time and accident now seem to have inflicted on them. [A beautiful effort in the graphic way representing the entire interior front of this interesting mansion, is said to be published at Rouen.] [64] In the previous edition of this work, there appeared a facsimile of a small portion of this bas-relief, representing--as I imagine--the setting out of Francis to meet Henry. Nothing, as far as correctness of detail goes, can give a more faithful resemblance of the PRECISE STATE in which the original appears: the defaced and the entire parts being represented with equal fidelity. Mons. Langlois has given a plate of the entire façade or front--in outline--with great ability; but so small as to give little or no notion of the character of the original. [65] In Ducarel's time, "the ground story consisted of a great quadrangle surrounded with booksellers shops. On one side of it a stone staircase led to a large and lofty room, which, in its internal as well as external appearance, resembled, though in miniature, Westminster Hall. Here (continues Ducarel) I saw several gentlemen of the long robe, in their gowns and bands, walking up and down with briefs in their hands, and making a great show of business." _Anglo-Norman Antiquities_, p. 32. [According to Mons. Licquet, this "singularly curious hall" was begun to be built in 1493. It was afterwards, and is still called, _la Salle des Procureurs_.] [66] _the choicest library_] Monsieur Riaux, Archiviste de la Chambre de Commerce. This amiable man unites a love of literature with that of architectural antiquities. The library of M. Le Prevost is however as copious as that of Mons. R. LETTER VII. THE QUAYS. BRIDGE OF BOATS. RUE DU BAC. RUE DE ROBEC. EAUX DE ROBEC ET D'AUBETTE. MONT STE. CATHARINE. HOSPICES--GÉNÉRAL ET D'HUMANITÉ. Still tarrying within this old fashioned place? I have indeed yet much to impart before I quit it, and which I have no scruple in avowing will be well deserving of your attention. Just letting you know, in few words, that I have visited the famous chemical laboratory of M. Vitalis, (_Rue Beauvoisine_) and the yet more wonderful spectacle exhibited in M. Lemere's machine for sawing wood of all descriptions, into small or large planks, by means of water works--I must take you along THE QUAYS for a few minutes. These quays are flanked by an architectural front, which, were it finished agreeably to the original plan, would present us with one of the noblest structures in Europe. This stone front was begun in the reign of Louis XV. but many and prosperous must be the years of art, of commerce, and of peace, before money sufficient can be raised for the successful completion of the pile. The quays are long, broad, and full of bustle of every description; while in some of the contiguous squares, ponderous bales of goods, shawls, cloth, and linen, are spread open to catch the observing eye. In the midst of this varied and animated scene, walks a well-known character, in his large cocked hat, and with his tin machine upon his back, filled with lemonade or coffee, surmounted by a bell--which "ever and anon" is sounded for the sake of attracting customers. He is here copied to the life. [Illustration] As you pass along this animated scene, by the side of the rapid Seine, and its _Bridge of Boats_, you cannot help glancing now and then down the narrow old-fashioned streets, which run at right angles with the quays--with the innumerable small tile-fashioned pieces of wood, like scales, upon the roofs--which seem as if they would be demolished by every blast. The narrowness and gloom of these streets, together with the bold and overwhelming projections of the upper stories and roofs, afford a striking contrast to the animated scene upon the quays:--where the sun shines with full freedom, as it were; and where the glittering streamers, at innumerable mast-heads, denote the wealth and prosperity of the town. If the day happen to be fine, you may devote half a morning in contemplating, and mingling with, so interesting a scene. We have had frequent thunder-storms of late; and the other Sunday evening, happening to be sauntering at a considerable height above the north-west Boulevards, towards the _Faubourg Cauchoise_, I gained a summit, upon the edge of a gravel pit, whence I looked down unexpectedly and precipitously upon the town below. A magnificent and immense cloud was rolling over the whole city. The Seine was however visible on the other side of it, shining like a broad silver chord: while the barren, ascending plains, through which the road to Caen passes, were gradually becoming dusk with the overshadowing cloud, and drenched with rain which seemed to be rushing down in one immense torrent. The tops of the Cathedral and of the abbey of St. Ouen were almost veiled in darkness, by the passing storm; but the lower part of the tower, and the whole of the nave of each building, were in one stream of golden light--from the last powerful rays of the setting sun. In ten minutes this magically-varied scene settled into the sober, uniform tint of evening; but I can never forget the rich bed of purple and pink, fringed with burnished gold, in which the sun of that evening set! I descended--absorbed in the recollection of the lovely objects which I had just contemplated--and regaled by the sounds of a thousand little gurgling streamlets, created by the passing tempest, and hastening to precipitate themselves into the Seine. Of the different trades, especially retail, which are carried on in Rouen with the greatest success, those connected with the _cotton manufactories_ cannot fail to claim your attention; and I fancied I saw, in some of the shop-windows, shawls and gowns which might presume to vie with our Manchester and Norwich productions. Nevertheless, I learnt that the French were extremely partial to British manufactures: and cotton stockings, coloured muslins, and what are called ginghams, are coveted by them with the same fondness as we prize their cambric and their lace. Their best articles in watches, clocks, silver ornaments, and trinkets, are obtained from Paris. But in respect to upholstery, I must do the Rouennois the justice to say, that I never saw any thing to compare with their _escrutoires_ and other articles of furniture made of the walnut tree. These upright escrutoires, or writing desks, are in almost every bed-room of the more respectable hotels: but of course their polish is gone when they become stationary furniture in an inn--for the art of rubbing, or what is called _elbow-grease_ with us--is almost unknown on either side of the Seine. You would be charmed to have a fine specimen of a side board, or an escrutoire, (the latter five or six feet high) made by one of their best cabinet-makers from choice walnut wood. The polish and tone of colour are equally gratifying; and resemble somewhat that of rose wood, but of a gayer aspect. The _or-molu_ ornaments are tastefully put on; but the general shape, or contour, of the several pieces of furniture, struck me as being in bad taste. He who wishes to be astonished by the singularity of a scene, connected with _trade_, should walk leisurely down the RUE DE ROBEC. It is surely the oddest, and as some may think, the most repulsive scene imaginable: But who that has a rational curiosity could resist such a walk? Here live the _dyers of clothes_--and in the middle of the street rushes the precipitous stream, called _L'Eau de Robec_[67]--receiving colours of all hues. To-day it is nearly jet black: to-morrow it is bright scarlet: a third day it is blue, and a fourth day it is yellow! Meanwhile it is partially concealed by little bridges, communicating with the manufactories, or with that side of the street where the work-people live: and the whole has a dismal and disagreeable aspect--especially in dirty weather: but if you go to one end of it (I think to the east--as it runs east and west) and look down upon the descending street, with the overhanging upper stories and roofs--the foreshortened, numerous bridges--the differently-coloured dyed clothes, suspended from the windows, or from poles--the constant motion of men, women, and children, running across the bridges--with the rapid, _camelion_ stream beneath--you cannot fail to acknowledge that this is one of the most singular, grotesque, and uncommon sights in the wonder-working city of Rouen. I ought to tell you that the first famous Cardinal d'Amboise (of whom the preceding pages have made such frequent honourable mention) caused the _Eau de Robec_ to be directed through the streets of Rouen, from its original channel or source in a little valley near _St. Martin du Vivien_. Formerly there was a much more numerous clan of these "teinturiers" in the Rue de Robec--but they have of late sought more capacious premises in the fauxbourgs _de St. Hilaire_ and _de Martainville_. The neighbouring sister-stream, _l'Eau d'Aubette_, is destined to the same purposes as that of which I have been just discoursing; but I do not at this moment recollect whether it be also dignified, in its course, by turning a few corn mills, ere it empties itself into the Seine. Indeed the thundering noise of one of these mills, turned by the Robec river, near the church of St. Maclou, will not be easily forgotten. Thus you see of what various, strange, and striking objects the city of Rouen is composed. Bustle, noise, life and activity, in the midst of an atmosphere unsullied by the fumes of sea coal:--hilarity and apparent contentment:--the spruce bourgeoise and the slattern fille de chambre:--attired in vestments of deep crimson and dark blue--every thing flits before you as if touched by magic, and as if sorrow and misfortune were unknown to the inhabitants. "Paullò majora canamus." In other words, let us leave the Town for the Country. Let us hurry through a few more narrow and crowded alleys, courts, and streets--and as the morning is yet beautiful, let us hasten onwards to enjoy the famous Panorama of Rouen and its environs from the MONT STE. CATHARINE.... Indeed, my friend, I sincerely wish that you could have accompanied me to the summit of this enchanting eminence: but as you are far away, you must be content with a brief description of our little expedition thither.[68] The Mont Ste. Catharine, which is entirely chalk, is considered the highest of the hills in the immediate vicinity of Rouen; or rather, perhaps, is considered the point of elevation from which the city is to be viewed to the greatest possible advantage. It lies to the left of the Seine, in your way from the town; and the ascent begins considerably beyond the barriers. Indeed it is on the route to Paris. We took an excellent _fiacre_ to carry us to the beginning of the ascent, that our legs might be in proper order for scrambling up the acclivities immediately above; and leaving the main road to the right, we soon commenced our ambulatory operations in good earnest. But there was not much labour or much difficulty: so, halting, or standing, or sitting, on each little eminence, our admiration seemed to encrease--till, gaining the highest point, looking towards the west, we found ourselves immediately above the town and the whole of its environs.... "Heavens, what a goodly prospect spread around!" The prospect was indeed "goodly--" being varied, extensive, fertile, and luxuriant ... in spite of a comparatively backward spring. The city was the main object, not only of attraction, but of astonishment. Although the point from which we viewed it is considered to be exactly on a level with the summit of the spire of the Cathedral, yet we seemed to be hanging, as it were, in the air, immediately over the streets themselves. We saw each church, each public edifice, and almost each street; nay, we began to think we could discover almost every individual stirring in them. The soldiers, exercising on the parade in the Champ de Mars, seemed to be scarcely two stones' throw from us; while the sounds of their music reached us in the most distinct and gratifying manner. No "Diable boiteux" could ever have transported a "Don Cleophas Léandro Perez Zambullo" to a more favourable situation for a knowledge of what was passing in a city; and if the houses had been unroofed, we could have almost discerned whether the _escrutoires_ were made of mahogany or walnut-wood! This wonder-working effect proceeds from the extraordinary clearness of the atmosphere, and the absence of sea-coal fume. The sky was perfectly blue--the generality of the roofs were also composed of blue slate: this, added to the incipient verdure of the boulevards, and the darker hues of the trunks of the trees, upon the surrounding hills--the lengthening forests to the left, and the numerous white "maisons de plaisance"[69] to the right--while the Seine, with its hundred vessels, immediately below, to the left, and in face of you--with its cultivated little islands--and the sweeping meadows or race-ground[70] on the other side--all, or indeed any, of these objects could not fail to excite our warmest admiration, and to make us instinctively exclaim "that such a panorama was perfectly unrivalled!" We descended Mont Ste. Catharine on the side facing the _Hospice Général_: a building of a very handsome form, and considerable dimensions. It is a noble establishment for foundlings, and the aged and infirm of both sexes. I was told that not fewer than twenty-five hundred human beings were sheltered in this asylum; a number, which equally astonished and delighted me. The descent, on this side the hill, is exceedingly pleasing; being composed of serpentine little walks, through occasional alleys of trees and shrubs, to the very base of the hill, not many hundred yards from the hospital. The architecture of this extensive building is more mixed than that of its neighbour the _Hospice d'Humanité_, on account of the different times in which portions of it were added: but, upon the whole, you are rather struck with its approach to what may be called magnificence of style. I was indeed pleased with the good order and even good breeding of its motley inhabitants. Some were strolling quietly, with their arms behind them, between rows of trees:--others were tranquilly sitting upon benches: a third group would be in motion within the squares of the building: a fourth appeared in deep consultation whether the _potage_ of to day were not inferior to that of the preceding day?--"Que cherchez vous, Monsieur?" said a fine looking old man, touching, and half taking off, his cocked hat; "I wish to see the Abbé Turquier,"--rejoined I. "Ah, il vient de sortir--par ici, Monsieur." "Thank you." "Monsieur je vous souhaite le bon jour--au plaisir de vous revoir!" And thus I paced through the squares of this vast building. The "Portier" had a countenance which our Wilkie would have seized with avidity, and copied with inimitable spirit and fidelity. [67] Bourgueville describes this river, in the sixteenth century, as being "aucune fois iaulne, autrefois rouge, verte, bleüe, violée & autres couleurs, selon qu'vn grand nombre de teinturiers qui sont dessus, la diuersifient par interualles en faisant leurs maneures." _Antiquitez de Caen_, p. 36. [68] _expedition thither_.]--When John Evelyn visited this neighbourhood, in 1644, "the country so abounded with _wolves_, that a shepherd, whom he met, told him that one of his companions was strangled by one of them the day before--and that, in the midst of the flock! The fields (continues he) are mostly planted with pears and apples and other cider fruits. It is plentifully furnished with quarries of stone and slate, and hath iron in abundance." _Memoirs of the Life and Writings of John Evelyn_, vol. i. p. 50. Edit. 1818. My friend Mr. J. H. Markland visited Mont St. Catharine the year after the visit above described. He was of course enchanted with the view; and told me, that a friend whom he met there, and who had travelled pretty much in Italy, assured him there was nothing like it on the banks of either the _Arno_ or the _Po_. In short, it is quite peculiar to itself--and cannot be surpassed. [69] It is thus prettily observed in the little _Itineraire de Rouen_ --"Ces agréables maisons de plaisance appartiennent à des habitants de Rouen qui y viennent en famille, dans la belle saison, se délasser des embarras de la ville et des fatigues du commerce." p. 153. [70] _race-ground_]--When the English cavalry were quartered here in 1814-5, the officers were in the frequent habit of racing with each other. These races were gaily attended by the inhabitants; and I heard, from more than one mouth, the warmest commendations bestowed upon the fleetness of the coursers and the skill of the riders. LETTER VIII. EARLY TYPOGRAPHY AT ROUEN. MODERN PRINTERS. CHAP BOOKS. BOOKSELLERS. BOOK COLLECTORS. Now for a little gossip and chit-chat about _Paper, Ink, Books, Printing-Offices_, and curiosities of a GRAPHIC description. Perhaps the most regular method would be to speak of a few of the principal _Presses_, before we take the _productions_ of these presses into consideration. And first, as to the antiquity of printing in Rouen.[71] The art of printing is supposed to have been introduced here, by a citizen of the name of MAUFER, between the years 1470 and 1480. Some of the specimens of Rouen _Missals_ and _Breviaries_, especially of those by MORIN, who was the second printer in this city, are very splendid. His device, which is not common, and rather striking, is here enclosed for your gratification. [Illustration] Few provincial towns have been more fertile in typographical productions; and the reputation of TALLEUR, GUALTIER, and VALENTIN, gave great respectability to the press of Rouen at the commencement of the sixteenth century. Yet I am not able to ascertain whether these presses were very fruitful in Romances, Chronicles, and Old Poetry. I rather think, however, that they were not deficient in this popular class of literature, if I am to judge from the specimens which are yet lingering, as it were, in the hands of the curious. The gravity even of an archiepiscopal see could never repress the natural love of the French, from time immemorial, for light and fanciful reading. You know with what pertinacity I grope about old alleys, old courts, by-lanes, and unfrequented corners--in search of what is curious, or precious, or rare in the book way. But ere we touch that enchanting chord, let us proceed according to the plan laid down. First therefore for printing-offices. Of these, the names of PÉRIAUX, (_Imprimeur de l'Academie_,) BAUDRY, (_Imprimeur du Roi_) MÉGARD, (_Rue Martainville_) and LECRENE-LABBEY, (_Imprimeur-Libraire et Marchand de Papiers_) are masters of the principal presses; but such is the influence of Paris, or of metropolitan fashions, that a publisher will sometimes prefer getting his work printed at the capital.[72] Of the foregoing printers, it behoves me to make some mention; and yet I can speak personally but of two: Messieurs Périaux and Mégard. M. Periaux is printer to the _Académie des Sciences, Belles-Lettres et Arts de Rouen_, of which academy, indeed, he is himself an accomplished member. He is quick, intelligent, well-bred, and obliging to the last degree; and may be considered the _Henry Stephen_ of the Rouen Printers. He urged me to call often: but I could visit him only twice. Each time I found him in his counting house, with his cap on--shading his eyes: a pen in his right hand, and a proof sheet in his left. Though he rejoiced at seeing me, I could discover (much to his praise) that, like Aldus, he wished me to "say my saying quickly,"[73] and to leave him to his _deles_ and _stets_! He has a great run of business, and lives in one of those strange, old-fashioned houses, in the form of a square, with an outside spiral staircase, so common in this extraordinary city. He introduced me to his son, an intelligent young man--well qualified to take the labouring oar, either upon the temporary or permanent retirement of his parent.[74] Of Monsieur MÉGARD, who may be called the ancient _Jenson_, or the modern _Bulmer_, of Rouen, I can speak only in terms of praise--both as a civil gentleman and as a successful printer. He is doubtless the most elegant printer in this city; and being also a publisher, his business is very considerable. He makes his regular half yearly journeys among the neighbouring towns and villages, and as regularly brings home the fruits of his enterprise and industry. On my first visit, M. Mégard was from home; but Madame, "son épouse, l'attendoit à chaque moment!" There is a particular class of women among the French, which may be said to be singularly distinguished for their intelligence, civility, and good breeding. I mean the wives of the more respectable tradesmen. Thus I found it, in addition to a hundred similar previous instances, with Madame Mégard. "Mais Monsieur, je vous prie de vous asseoir. Que voulez vous?" "I wish to have a little conversation with your husband. I am an enthusiastic lover of the art of printing. I search every where for skilful printers, and thus it is that I come to pay my respects to Monsieur Mégard." We both sat down and conversed together; and I found in Madame Mégard a communicative, and well-instructed, representative of the said ancient Jenson, or modern Bulmer. "Enfin, voilà mon mari qui arrive"--said Madame, turning round, upon the opening of the door:--when I looked forward, and observed a stout man, rather above the middle size, with a countenance perfectly English--but accoutred in the dress of the _national guard_, with a grenadier cap on his head. Madame saw my embarrassment: laughed: and in two minutes her husband knew the purport of my visit. He began by expressing his dislike of the military garb: but admitted the absolute necessity of adopting such a measure as that of embodying a national guard. "Soyez le bien venu; Ma foi, je ne suis que trop sensible, Monsieur, de l'honneur que vous me faites--vû que vous êtes antiquaire typographique, et que vous avez publié des ouvrages relatifs à notre art. Mais ce n'est pas ici qu'il faut en chercher de belles épreuves. C'est à Paris." I parried this delicate thrust by observing that I was well acquainted with the fine productions of _Didot_, and had also seen the less aspiring ones of himself; of which indeed I had reason to think his townsmen might be proud. This I spoke with the utmost sincerity. My first visit concluded with two elegant little book-presents, on the part of M. Megard--one being _Heures de Rouen, à l'usage du Diocese_, 1814, 12mo. and the other _Etrennes nouvelles commodes et utiles_; 1815, 12mo.--the former bound in green morocco; and the latter in calf, with gilt leaves, but printed on a sort of apricot-tinted paper--producing no unpleasing effect. Both are exceedingly well executed. My visits to M. Mégard were rather frequent. He has a son at the Collége Royale, or Lycée, whither I accompanied him, one Sunday morning, and took the church of that establishment in the way. It is built entirely in the Italian style of architecture: is exceedingly spacious: has a fine organ, and is numerously attended. The pictures I saw in it, although by no means of first-rate merit, quite convince me that it is in churches of _Roman_, and not of _Gothic_ architecture, that paintings produce the most harmonious effect. This college and church form a noble establishment, situated in one of the most commanding eminences of the town. From some parts of it, the flying buttresses of the nave of the Abbey of St. Ouen, with the Seine at a short distance, surmounted by the hills and woods of Canteleu as a back ground, are seen in the most gloriously picturesque manner. But the printer who does the most business--or rather whose business lies in the lower department of the art, in bringing forth what are called _chap books_--is LECRENE-LABBEY--_imprimeur-libraire et marchand de papiers_. The very title imports a sort of _Dan Newberry's_ repository. I believe however that Lecrêne-Labbey's business is much diminished. He once lived in the _Rue de la Grosse-Horloge_, No. 12: but at present carries on trade in one of the out-skirting streets of the town. I was told that the premises he now occupies were once an old church or monastery, and that a thousand fluttering sheets are now suspended, where formerly was seen the solemn procession of silken banners, with religious emblems, emblazoned in colours of all hues. I called at the old shop, and supplied myself with a dingy copy of the _Catalogue de la Bibliothéque Bleue_--from which catalogue however I could purchase but little; as the greater part of the old books, several of the _Caxtonian stamp_, had taken their departures. It was from this Catalogue that I learnt the precise character of the works destined for common reading; and from hence inferred, what I stated to you a little time ago, that _Romances, Rondelays_, and chivalrous stories, are yet read with pleasure by the good people of France. It is, in short, from this lower, or _lowest_ species of literature--if it must be so designated--that we gather the real genius, or mental character of the ordinary classes of society. I do assure you that some of these _chap_ publications are singularly droll and curious. Even the very rudiments of learning, or the mere alphabet-book, meets the eye in a very imposing manner--as in the following facsimile. [Illustration] _Love, Marriage_, and _Confession_, are fertile themes in these little farthing chap books. Yonder sits a fille de chambre, after her work is done. She is intent upon some little manual, taken from the _Bibliothèque Bleue_. Approach her, and ask her for a sight of it. She smiles, and readily shews you _Catéchisme à l'usage des Grandes Filles pour être Mariées; ensemble la manière d'attirer les Amans_. At the first glance of it, you suppose that this is entirely, from beginning to end, a wild and probably somewhat indecorous manual of instruction. By no means; for read the _Litanies_ and _Prayer_ with which it concludes, and which I here send; admitting that they exhibit a strange mixture of the simple and the serious. LITANIES. _Pour toutes les Filles qui désirent entrer en menage_. _Kyrie,_ je voudrois, _Christe_, être mariée. _Kyrie_, je prie tous les Saints, _Christe_, que ce soin demain. _Sainte Marie_, tout le Monde se marie. _Saint Joseph_, que vous ai-je fait? _Saint Nicolas_, ne m'oubliez pas. _Saint Médérie_, que j'aie un bon mari. _Saint Matthieu_, qu'il craigne Dieu. _Saint Jean_, qu'il m'aime tendrement. _Saint Bruno_, qu'il soit juli & beau. _Saint Francois_, qu'il me soit fidele. _Saint André_, qu'il soit à mon gré. _Saint Didier_, qu'il aime à travailler. _Saint Honoré_, qu'il n'aime pas à jouer. _Saint Severin_, qu'il n'aime pas le vin. _Saint Clément_, qu'il soit diligent. _Saint Sauveur_, qu'il ait bon coeur. _Saint Nicaise_, que je sois à mon aise. _Saint Josse_, qu'il me donne un carrosse. _Saint Boniface_, que mon mariage se fasse, _Saint Augustin_, dès demain matin. ORAISON. Seigneur, qui avez formé Adam de la terre, et qui lui avez donné Eve pour sa compagne; envoyez-moi, s'il vous plait, un bon mari pour compagnon, non pour la volupté, mais pour vous honorer & avoir des enfants qui vous bénissent. Ainsi soit il. Among the books of this class, before alluded to, I purchased a singularly amusing little manual called "_La Confession de la Bonne Femme_." It is really not divested of merit. Whether however it may not have been written during the Revolution, with a view to ridicule the practice of auricular confession which yet obtains throughout France, I cannot take upon me to pronounce; but there are undoubtedly some portions of it which seem so obviously to satirise this practice, that one can hardly help drawing a conclusion in the affirmative. On the other hand it may perhaps be inferred, with greater probability, that it is intended to shew with what extreme facility a system of _self-deception_ may be maintained.[75] Referring however to the little manual in question, among the various choice morceaus which it contains, take the following extracts: exemplificatory of a woman's _evading the main points of confession_. _Confesseur_. Ne voulez vous pas me répondre; en un mot, combien y a-t-il de temps que vous ne vous êtes confessée? _La Pénitente._ Il y a un mois tout juste, car c'étoit le quatrième jour du mois passé, & nous sommes au cinquième du mois courant; or comptez, mon pere, & vous trouverez justement que ... C. C'est assez, ne parlez point tant, & dites moi en peu de mots vos péchés. _Elle raconte les péchés d'autrui._ _La Pénitente_. J'ai un enfant qui est le plus méchant garçon que vous ayez jamais vu: il jure, bat sa soeur, il fuit l'école, dérobe tout ce qu'il peut pour jouer; il suit de méchans fripons: l'autre jour en courant il perdit son chapeau. Enfin, c'est un méchant garçon, je veux vous l'amener afin que vous me l'endoctriniez un peu s'il vous plaît. C. Dites-moi vos péchés. P. Mais, mon père, j'ai une fille qui est encore pire. Je ne la peux faire lever le matin: Je l'appelle cent fois: _Marguerite: plait-il ma Mere? lève-toi promptement et descends: j'y vais_. Elle ne bouge pas. _Si tu ne viens maintenant, tu seras battue._ Elle s'en moque. Quand je l'envoie à la Ville, je lui dis _reviens promptement, ne t'amuse pas_. Cependant, elle s'arrête à toutes les portes comme l'âne d'un meûnier, elle babille avec tous ceux qu'elle rencontre; & quand elle me fait cela, je la bats: ne fais-je pas bien, mon père? C. Dites-moi _vos_ péchés et non pas ceux de _vos enfans_. P. Il se trouve, mon père, que nous avons dans notre rue une voisine qui est la plus méchante de toutes les femmes: elle jure, elle querelle tous ceux qui passent, personne ne la peut souffrir, ni son mari, ni ses enfans, & bien souvent elle s'enivre, & vous me dites, mon père, quelle est celle-la? c'est ... C. Ah gardez-vous bien de la nommer; car à la confession il ne faut jamais fair connoitre les personnes dont vous déclarez les péchés. P. C'est elle qui vient se confesser après moi: grondez-la bien, car vous ne lui en sauriez trop dire. C. Taisez-vous donc, & ne parlez que de _vos_ péchés, non pas de ceux _des autres_. _Elle s'accuse de ce qui n'est point péché._ _Pénitente_.--Ah! mon père, j'ai fait un grand péché, ah! le grand péché! Hélas je serai damnée, quoique mon confesseur m'ait defendu de le dire j'amais, néanmoins mon père je vais vous le declarer. C. Ne le dites point, puisque votre confesseur vous l'a defendu, je ne veux point l'entendre. P. Ah! n'importe; je veux vous le dire, c'est un trop grand péché: J'ai battu ma mère. C. Vous avez battu votre mère! Ah! misérable, c'est un cas réservé & un crime qui mérite la potence. Et quand l'avez-vous battue? P. Quand j'étois petite de l'âge de quatre ans. C. Ah! simple, ne savez-vous pas que tout ce que les enfans font avant l'âge de raison, qui est environ l'âge de sept ans, ne sauroit être un péché. There is however one thing, which I must frankly declare to you as entitled to distinct notice and especial commendation. It is, the method of teaching "catechisms" of a different and higher order: I mean the CHURCH CATECHISMS. Both the Cathedral and the Abbey of St. Ouen have numerous side chapels. Within these side chapels are collected, on stated days of the week, the young of both sexes. They are arranged in a circle. A priest, in his white robes, is seated, or stands, in the centre of them. He examines, questions, corrects, or commends, as the opportunity calls for it. His manner is winning and persuasive. His action is admirable. The lads shew him great respect, and are rarely rude, or seen to laugh. Those who answer well, and pay the greater attention, receive, with words of commendation, gentle pats upon the head--and I could not but consider the blush, with which this mark of favour was usually received, as so many presages of future excellence in the youth. I once witnessed a most determined catechetical lecture of girls; who might be called, in the language of their matrimonial catechism, "de grandes filles." It was on an evening, in the Chapel of Our Lady in St. Ouen's Abbey, that this examination took place. Two elderly priests attended. The responses of the females were as quick as they were correct; the eye being always invariably fixed on the pavement, accompanied with a gravity and even piety of expression. A large group of mothers, with numerous spectators, were in attendance. A question was put, to which a supposed incorrect response was given. It was repeated, and the same answer followed. The priest hesitated: something like vexation was kindling in his cheek, while the utmost calmness and confidence seemed to mark the countenance of the examinant. The attendant mothers were struck with surprise. A silence for one minute ensued. The question related to the "Holy Spirit." The priest gently approached the girl, and softly articulated--"Mais, ma chère considerez un peu,"--and repeated the question. "Mon pere, (yet more softly, rejoined the pupil) j'ai bien considerée, et je crois que c'est comme je vous l'ai déjà dit." The Priest crossed his hands upon his breast ... brought down his eyebrows in a thoughtful mood ... and turning quickly round to the girl, addressed her in the most affectionate tone of voice--"Ma petite,--tu as bien dit; et j'avois tort." The conduct of the girl was admirable: She curtsied, blushed... and with eyes, from which tears seemed ready to start, surveyed the circle of spectators ... caught the approving glance of her mother, and sunk triumphantly upon her chair--with the united admiration of teachers, companions, parents and spectators! The whole was conducted with the most perfect propriety; and the pastors did not withdraw till they were fairly exhausted. A love of truth obliges me to confess that this reciprocity of zeal, on the part of master and pupil, is equally creditable to both parties; and especially serviceable to the cause of religion and morality. Let me here make honourable mention of the kind offices of _Monsieur Longchamp_, who volunteered his friendly services in walking over half the town with me, to shew me what he justly considered as the most worthy of observation. It is impossible for a generous mind to refuse its testimony to the ever prompt kindness of a well-bred Frenchman, in rendering you all the services in his power. Enquire the way,--and you have not only a finger quickly pointing to it, but the owner of the finger must also put himself in motion to accompany you a short distance upon the route, and that too uncovered! "Mais, Monsieur, mettez votre chapeau ... je vous en prie ... mille pardons." "Monsieur ne dites pas un seul mot ... pour mon chapeau, qu'il reste à son aise." Among book-collectors, Antiquaries, and Men of Taste, let me speak with becoming praise of the amiable and accomplished M. AUGUSTE LE PREVOST--who is considered, by competent judges, to be the best antiquary in Rouen.[76] Mr. Dawson Turner, (a name, in our own country, synonymous with all that is liberal and enlightened in matters of virtù) was so obliging as to give me a letter of introduction to him; and he shewed me several rare and splendid works, which were deserving of the commendations that they received from their owner. M. Le Prevost very justly discredits any remains of Roman masonry at Rouen; but he will not be displeased to see that the only existing relics of the castle or town walls, have been copied by the pencil of a late travelling friend. What you here behold is probably of the fourteenth century. [Illustration] The next book-collector in commendation of whom I am bound to speak, is MONSIEUR DUPUTEL; a member, as well as M. Le Prevost, of the _Academy of Belles-Lettres_ at Rouen. The Abbé Turquier conducted me thither; and I found, in the owner of a choice collection of books, a well-bred gentleman, and a most hearty bibliomaniac. He has comparatively a small library; but, withal, some very curious, scarce, and interesting volumes. M. Duputel is smitten with that amiable passion,--the love of printing for _private distribution_--thus meriting to become a sort of Roxburghe Associate. He was so good as to beg my acceptance of the "nouvelle édition" of his "_Bagatelles Poétiques,"_ printed in an octavo volume of about 112 pages, at Rouen, in 1816. On taking it home, I discovered the following not infelicitous version of our Prior's beautiful little Poem of _the Garland_. _La Guirlande_. _Traduction de l'Anglais de Prior_. Pour orner de Chloé les cheveux ondoyans, Parmi les fleurs nouvellement écloses J'avais choisi les lis les plus brillans, Les oeillets les plus beaux, et les plus fraîches roses. Ma Chloé sur son front les plaça la matin: Alors on vit céder sans peine, Leur vif éclat à celui de son teint, Leur doux parfum à ceux de son haleine. De ses attraits ces fleurs paraissaient s'embellir, Et sur ses blonds cheveux les bergers, les bergères Les voyaient se faner avec plus de plaisir Qu'ils ne les voyaient naître au milieu des parterres. Mais, le soir, quand leur sein flétri Eut cessé d'exhaler son odeur séduisante, Elle fixa, d'un regard attendri, Cette guirlande, hélas! n'aguères si brillante. Des larmes aussi-tôt coulent de ses beaux yeux. Que d'éloquence dans ces larmes! Jamais pour l'exprimer, le langage des dieux, Tout sublime qu'il est, n'aurait assez de charmes. En feignant d'ignorer ce tendre sentiment; "Pourquoi," lui dis-je, "ô ma sensible amie, Pourquoi verser des pleurs? et par quel changement Abandonner ton ame à la melancholie?" "Vois-tu comme ces fleurs languissent tristement?" Me dit, en soupirant, ce moraliste aimable, "De leur fraîcheur, en un moment, S'est éclipsé le charme peu durable. Tel est, hélas! notre destin; Fleur de beauté ressemble à celles des prairies; On les voit toutes deux naître avec le matin, Et dès le soir être flétries. Estelle hier encor brillait dans nos hameaux, Et l'amour attirait les bergers sur ses traces; De la mort, aujourd'hui, I'impitoyable faulx A moissonné sa jeunesse et ses graces. Soumise aux mêmes lois, peut-être que demain, Comme elle aussi, Damon, j'aurai cessé de vivre.... Consacre dans tes vers la cause du chagrin Auquel ton amante se livre." p. 92. The last and not the least of book-collectors, which I have had an opportunity of visiting, is MONSIEUR RIAUX. With respect to what may be called a ROUENNOISE LIBRARY, that of M. Riaux is greatly preferable to any which I have seen; although I am not sure whether M. Le Prevost's collection contain not nearly as many books. M. Riaux is himself a man of first-rate book enthusiasm; and unites the avocations of his business with the gratification of his literary appetites, in a manner which does him infinite honour. A city like Rouen should have a host of such inhabitants; and the government, when it begins to breathe a little from recent embarrassments, will, I hope, cherish and support that finest of all patriotic feelings,--a desire to preserve the RELICS, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS of PAST AGES. Normandy is fertile beyond conception in objects which may gratify the most unbounded passion in this pursuit. It is the country where formerly the harp of the minstrel poured forth some of its sweetest strains; and the lay and the fabliaux of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which delight us in the text of Sainte Palaye, and in the versions of Way, owed their existence to the combined spirit of chivalry and literature, which never slumbered upon the shores of Normandy. Farewell now to ROUEN.[77] I have told you all the tellings which I thought worthy of communication. I have endeavoured to make you saunter with me in the streets, in the cathedral, the abbey, and the churches. We have, in imagination at least, strolled together along the quays, visited the halls and public buildings, and gazed with rapture from Mont Ste. Catharine upon the enchanting view of the city, the river, and the neighbouring hills. We have from thence breathed almost the pure air of heaven, and surveyed a country equally beautified by art, and blessed by nature. Our hearts, from that same height, have wished all manner of health, wealth, and prosperity, to a land thus abounding in corn and wine, and oil and gladness. We have silently, but sincerely prayed, that swords may for ever be "turned into plough-shares, and spears into pruning-hooks:"--that all heart-burnings, antipathies, and animosities, may be eternally extinguished; and that, from henceforth, there may be no national rivalries but such as tend to establish, upon a firmer footing, and upon a more comprehensive scale, the peace and happiness of fellow-creatures, of whatever persuasion they may be:--of such, who sedulously cultivate the arts of individual and of national improvement, and blend the duties of social order with the higher calls of morality and religion. Ah! my friend, these are neither foolish thoughts nor romantic wishes. They arise naturally in an honest heart, which, seeing that all creation is animated and upheld by ONE and the SAME POWER, cannot but ardently hope that ALL may be equally benefited by a reliance upon its goodness and bounty. From this eminence we have descended somewhat into humbler walks. We have visited hospitals, strolled in flower-gardens, and associated with publishers and collectors of works--both of the dead and of the living. So now, fare you well. Commend me to your family and to our common friends,--especially to the Gorburghers should they perchance enquire after their wandering Vice President. Many will be the days passed over, and many the leagues traversed, ere I meet them again. Within twenty-four hours my back will be more decidedly turned upon "dear old England"--for that country, in which her ancient kings once held dominion, and where every square mile (I had almost said _acre_) is equally interesting to the antiquary and the agriculturist. I salute you wholly, and am yours ever. [71] The reader may possibly not object to consult two or three pages of the _Bibliographical Decameron_, beginning at page 137, vol. ii. respecting a few of the early Rouen printers. The name of MAUFER, however, appears in a fine large folio volume, entitled _Gaietanus de Tienis Vincentini in Quatt. Aristot. Metheor. Libros_, of the date of 1476--in the possession of Earl Spencer. See _Æd. Althorp_. vol. ii. p. 134. From the colophon of which we can only infer that Maufer was a _citizen of Rouen_. [According to M. Licquet, the first book printed at Rouen--a book of the greatest rarity--was entitled _Les Croniques de Normandie, par Guillaume Le Talleur_, 1487, folio.] [72] [Since the publication of the first edition of this Tour, I have had _particular_ reason to become further acquainted with the partiality of the Rouennois for Parisian printing. When M. Licquet did me the honour to translate my IXth Letter, subjoining notes, (which cut their own throats instead of that of the author annotated upon) he employed the press of Mons. Crapelet, at Paris: a press, as eminently distinguished for its beauty and accuracy, as its Director has proved himself to be for his narrow-mindedness and acrimony of feeling. M.L. (as I learnt from a friend who conversed with him, and as indeed I naturally expected) seemed to be sorry for what he had done.] [73] _like Aldus, "say my saying" quickly_.] Consult Mr. Roscoe's _Life of Leo X._ vol. i. p. 169-70, 8vo. edit. Unger, in his Life of Aldus, _edit. Geret._ p. xxxxii. has a pleasant notice of an inscription, to the same effect, put over the door of his printing-office by Aldus. [It has been quoted to satiety, and I therefore omit it here.] [74] [Mons. Périaux has lately published a Dictionary of the Streets of Rouen, in alphabetical order; in two small, unostentatious, and useful octavo volumes.] [75] [Mons. Licquet translates the latter part of the above passage thus:--"avec quelle facilité nous parvenons à nous abuser nous-mêmes,"--adding, in a note, as follows: "J'avais d'abord vu un tout autre sens dans la phrase anglaise. Si celui que j'adopte n'était pas encore le veritable, j'en demande sincèrement pardon à l'auteur." In turn, I may not be precisely informed of the meaning and force of the verb "_abuser_"--used by my translator: but I had been better satisfied with the verb _tromper_--as more closely conveying the sense of the original.] [76] M. Le Prevost is a belles-lettres Antiquary of the highest order. His "Mémoire faisant suite à l'Essai sur les Romans historiques du moyen âge" may teach modern Normans not to despair when death shall have laid low their present oracle the ABBE DE LA RUE. [I am proud, in this second edition of my Tour, to record the uninterrupted correspondence and friendship of this distinguished Individual; and I can only regret, in common with several friends, that M. Le Prevost will not summon courage sufficient to visit a country, once in such close connexion with his own, where a HEARTY RECEPTION has long awaited him.] [77] [The omission, in this place, of the entire IXth Letter, relating to the PUBLIC LIBRARY at Rouen, must be accounted for, and it is hoped, approved, on the principle laid down at the outset of this undertaking; namely, to omit much that was purely bibliographical, and of a secondary interest to the general Reader. The bibliography, in the original IXth Letter, being of a partial and comparatively dry description--as relating almost entirely to ancient volumes of Church Rituals--was thought to be better omitted than abridged. Another reason might be successfully urged for its omission. This IXth Letter, which comprehends 22 pages in the previous impression, and about 38 pages in the version, having been translated and _separately_ published in 1821, by Mons. Licquet (who succeeded M. Gourdin as Principal Librarian of the Library in question) I had bestowed upon it particular attention, and entered into several points by way of answer to his remarks, and in justification or explanation of the original matter. In consequence, any _abridgement_ of that original matter must have led to constant notice of the minute remarks, and pigmy attacks, of my critical translator: and the stream of intelligence in the text might have been diverted, or rendered unpalatable, by the observations, in the way of controversy, in the notes. If M. Licquet considers this avowal as the proclaiming of his triumph, he is welcome to the laurels of a Conqueror; but if he can persuade any COMMON FRIENDS that, in the translation here referred to, he has defeated the original author in one essential position--or corrected him in one flagrant inaccuracy--I shall be as prompt to thank him for his labours, as I am now to express my astonishment and pity at his undertaking. When M. Licquet put forth the brochure in question--(so splendidly executed in the press of M. Crapelet--to harmonise, in all respects, with the large paper copies of the original English text) he had but recently occupied the seat of his Predecessor. I can commend the zeal of the newly-appointed Librarian in Chief; but must be permitted to question alike his judgment and his motives. One more brief remark in this place. My translator should seem to commend what is only laudatory, in the original author, respecting his countrymen. Sensitively alive to the notice of their smallest defects, he has the most unbounded powers of digestion for that of their excellences. Thus, at the foot of the ABOVE PASSAGE, in the text, Mons. Licquet is pleased to add as follows--in a note: "Si M. Dibdin ne s'était livré qu'à des digressions de cette nature, il aurait trouvé en France un chorus universel, un concert de voeux unanimes:" vol. i. p. 239. And yet few travellers have experienced a more cordial reception, and maintained a more _harmonious_ intercourse, than HE, who, from the foregoing quotation, is more than indirectly supposed to have provoked opposition and _discord!_] LETTER IX. DEPARTURE FROM ROUEN. ST. GEORGE DE BOSCHERVILLE. DUCLAIR. MARIVAUX. THE ABBEY OF JUMIEGES. ARRIVAL AT CAUDEBEC. _May_, 1818. MY DEAR FRIEND. In spite of all its grotesque beauties and antiquarian attractions, the CITY OF ROUEN must be quitted--and I am about to pursue my route more in the character of an independent traveller. No more _Diligence_, or _Conducteur_. I have hired a decent cabriolet, a decent pair of horses, and a yet more promising postilion: and have already made a delightfully rural migration. Adieu therefore to dark avenues, gloomy courts, overhanging roofs, narrow streets, cracking whips, the never-ceasing noise of carts and carriages, and never-ending movements of countless masses of population:--Adieu!--and in their stead, welcome be the winding road, the fertile meadow, the thickly-planted orchard, and the broad and sweeping Seine! Accordingly, on the 4th of this month, between the hours of ten and eleven, A.M. the rattling of horses' hoofs, and the echoes of a postilion's whip, were heard within the court-yard of the _Hôtel Vatel_. Monsieur, Madame, Jacques--and the whole fraternity of domestics, were on the alert--"pour faire les adieux à Messieurs les Anglois." This Jacques deserves somewhat of a particular notice. He is the prime minister of the Hôtel Vatel.[78] A somewhat _uncomfortable_ detention in England for five years, in the character of "prisoner of war," has made him master of a pretty quick and ready utterance of common-place phrases in our language; and he is not a little proud of his attainments therein. Seriously speaking, I consider him quite a phenomenon in his way; and it is right you should know that he affords a very fair specimen of a sharp, clever, French servant. His bodily movements are nearly as quick as those of his tongue. He rises, as well as his brethren, by five in the morning; and the testimonies of this early activity are quickly discovered in the unceasing noise of beating coats, singing French airs, and scolding the boot-boy. He rarely retires to rest before mid-night; and the whole day long he is in one eternal round of occupation. When he is bordering upon impertinence, he seems to be conscious of it--declaring that "the English make him saucy, but that naturally he is very civil." He always speaks of human beings in the _neuter_ gender; and to a question whether such a one has been at the Hotel, he replies, "I have not seen _it_ to-day." I am persuaded he is a thoroughly honest creature; and considering the pains which are taken to spoil him, it is surprising with what good sense and propriety he conducts himself. About eleven o'clock, we sprung forward, at a smart trot, towards the barriers by which we had entered Rouen. Our postilion was a thorough master of his calling, and his spurs and whip seemed to know no cessation from action. The steeds, perfectly Norman, were somewhat fiery; and we rattled along the streets, (for the _chaussé_ never causes the least abatement of pace with the French driver) in high expectation of seeing a thousand rare sights ere we reached Havre--equally the limits of our journey, and of our contract with the owner of the cabriolet. That accomplished antiquary M. Le Prevost, whose name you have often heard, had furnished me with so dainty a bill of fare, or carte de voyage; that I began to consider each hour lost which did not bring us in contact with some architectural relic of antiquity, or some elevated position--whence the wandering Seine and wooded heights of the adjacent country might be surveyed with equal advantage. You have often, I make no doubt, my dear friend, started upon something like a similar expedition:--when the morning has been fair, the sun bright, the breeze gentle, and the atmosphere clear. In such moments how the ardour of hope takes possession of one!--How the heart warms, and the conversation flows! The barriers are approached; we turn to the left, and commence our journey in good earnest. Previously to gaining the first considerable height, you pass the village of _Bapeaume_. This village is exceedingly picturesque. It is studded with water-mills, and is enlivened by a rapid rivulet, which empties itself, in a serpentine direction, into the Seine. You now begin to ascend a very commanding eminence; at the top of which are scattered some of those country houses which are seen from Mont Ste. Catharine. The road is of a noble breadth. The day warmed; and dismounting, we let our steeds breathe freely, as we continued to ascend leisurely. Our first halting-place, according to the instructions of M. Le Prevost, was _St. George de Boscherville_; an ancient abbey established in the twelfth century, This abbey is situated about three French leagues from Rouen. Our route thither, from the summit of the hill which we had just ascended, lay along a road skirted by interminable orchards now in full bloom. The air was perfumed to excess by the fragrance of these blossoms. The apple and pear were beautifully conspicuous; and as the sky became still more serene, and the temperature yet more mild by the unobstructed sun beam, it is impossible to conceive any thing more balmy and genial than was this lovely day. The minutes seemed to fly away too quickly--when we reached the village of _Boscherville_; where stands the CHURCH; the chief remaining relic of this once beautiful abbey. We surveyed the west front very leisurely, and thought it an extremely beautiful specimen of the architecture of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; for certainly there are some portions more ancient than others. A survey of the chapter-house filled me with mingled sorrow and delight: sorrow, that the Revolution and a modern cotton manufactory had metamorphosed it from its original character; and delight, that the portions which remained were of such beautiful forms, and in such fine preservation. The stone, being of a very close-grained quality, is absolutely as white and sound as if it had been just cut from the quarry. The room, where a parcel of bare-legged girls and boys were working the respective machineries, had a roof of the most delicate construction.[79] The very sound of a _Monastery_ made me curious to examine the disposition of the building. Accordingly, I followed my guide through suites of apartments, up divers stone stair-cases, and along sundry corridors. I noticed the dormitories with due attention, and of course inquired eagerly for the LIBRARY:--but the shelves only remained--either the fear or the fury of the Revolution having long ago dispossessed it of every thing in the shape of a _book_. The whole was painted white. I counted eleven perpendicular divisions; and, from the small distances between the upper shelves, there must have been a very considerable number of _duodecimos_. The titles of the respective classes of the library were painted in white letters upon a dark-blue ground, at top. _Bibles_ occupied the first division, and the _Fathers_ the second: but it should seem that equal importance was attached to the works of _Heretics_ as to those called _Litterae Humaniores_--for each had a division of equal magnitude. On looking out of window, especially from the back part of the building, the eye rests entirely upon what had once been fruitful orchards, abundant kitchen gardens, and shady avenues. Yet in England, this spot, rich by nature, and desirable from its proximity to a great city, would, ere forty moons had waned, have grown up into beauty and fertility, and expanded into luxuriance of condition. The day was now, if possible, more lovely than before. On looking at my instructions I found that we had to stop to examine the remains of an old castle at _Delafontaine_--about two English miles from _St. George de Boscherville_. These remains, however, are but the fragments of a ruin, if I may so speak; yet they are interesting, but somewhat perilous: for a few broken portions of a wall support an upper chamber, where appears a stone chimney-piece of very curious construction and ornament. On observing a large cavity or loop-hole, about half way up the outer wall, I gained it by means of a plentiful growth of ivy, and from thence surveyed the landscape before me. Here, having for some time past lost sight of the Seine, I caught a fine bold view of the sweep of that majestic river, now becoming broader and broader--while, to the left, softly tinted by distance, appeared the beautiful old church we had just quitted: the verdure of the hedges, shrubs, and forest trees, affording a rich variety to the ruddy blossoms of the apple, and the white bloom of the pear. I admit, however, that this delicious morceau of landscape was greatly indebted, for its enchanting effect, to the blue splendour of the sky, and the soft temperature of the air; while the fragrance of every distended blossom added much to the gratification of the beholder. But it is time to descend from this elevation; and to think of reaching Duclair. DUCLAIR is situated close to the very borders of the Seine, which has now an absolute lake-like appearance. We stopped at the auberge to rest our horses; and I commenced a discourse with the master of the inn and his daughter; the latter, a very respectable-looking and well-behaved young woman of about twenty-two years of age. She was preparing a large crackling wood-fire to dress a fish called the _Alose_, for the passengers of the _diligence_--who were expected within half an hour. The French think they can never _butter_ their victuals sufficiently; and it would have produced a spasmodic affection in a thoroughly bilious spectator, could he have seen the enormous piece of butter which this active young _cuisinière_ thought necessary to put into the pot in which the '_Alose_' was to be boiled. She laughed at the surprise I expressed; and added "qu'on ne peut rien faire dans la cuisine sans le beurre." You ought to know, by the by, that the _Alose_, something like our _mackerel_ in flavour, is a large and delicious fish; and that we were always anxious to bespeak it at the table-d'hôte at Rouen. Extricated from the lake of butter in which it floats, when brought upon table, it forms not only a rich, but a very substantial dish. I took a chair and sat in the open air, by the side of the door--enjoying the breeze, and much disposed to gossip with the master of the place. Perceiving this, the landlord approached, and addressed me with a pleasant degree of familiarity. "You are from London, then, Sir?" "I am." "Ah Sir, I never think of London but with the most painful sensations." "How so?" "Sir, I am the sole heir of a rich banker who died in that city before the Revolution. He was in partnership with an English gentleman. Can you possibly advise and assist me upon the subject?" I told him that my advice and assistance were literally not worth a sous; but that, such as they were, he was perfectly welcome to both. "Your daughter Sir, is not married?"--"Non, Monsieur, elle n'est pas encore épousée: mais je lui dis qu'elle ne sera jamais _heureuse_ avant qu'elle le soit." The daughter, who had overheard the conversation, came forward, and looking archly over her shoulder, replied--"ou _malheureuse_, mon père!" A sort of truism, expressed by her with singular epigrammatic force, to which there was no making any reply. Do you remember, my dear friend; that exceedingly cold winter's night, when, for lack of other book-entertainment, we took it into our heads to have a rummage among the _Scriptores Historiae Normannorum_ of DUCHESNE?--and finding therein many pages occupied by _Gulielmus Gemeticensis_, we bethought ourselves that we would have recourse to the valuable folio volume yeleped _Neustria Pia_:--where we presently seemed to hold converse with the ancient founders and royal benefactors of certain venerable establishments! I then little imagined that it would ever fall to my lot to be either walking or musing within the precincts of the Abbey of Jumieges;--or rather, of the ruins of what was once not less distinguished, as a school of learning, than admired for its wealth and celebrity as a monastic establishment. Yes, my friend, I have seen and visited the ruins of this Abbey; and I seem to live "mihi carior" in consequence. But I know your love of method--and that you will be in wrath if I skip from _Duclair_ to JUMIEGES ere the horses have carried us a quarter of a league upon the route. To the left of _Duclair_, and also washed by the waters of the Seine, stands _Marivaux_; a most picturesque and highly cultivated spot. And across the Seine, a little lower down, is the beautiful domain of _La Mailleraye_;--where are hanging gardens, and jets d'eaux, and flower-woven arbours, and daisy-sprinkled meadows--for there lives and occasionally revels _La Marquise_.... I might have been not only a spectator of her splendor, but a participator of her hospitality; for my often-mentioned valuable friend, M. Le Prevost, volunteered me a letter of introduction to her. What was to be done? One cannot be everywhere in one day, or in one journey:--so, gravely balancing the ruins of still life against the attractions of animated society, I was unchivalrous enough to prefer the former--and working myself up into a sort of fantasy, of witnessing the spectered forms of DAGOBERT and CLOVIS, (the fabled founders of the Abbey) I resolutely turned my back upon _La Mailleraye_, and as steadily looked forwards to JUMIEGES. We ascended very sensibly--then striking into a sort of bye-road, were told that we should quickly reach the place of our destination. A fractured capital, and broken shaft, of the late Norman time, left at random beneath a hedge, seemed to bespeak the vicinity of the abbey. We then gained a height; whence, looking straight forward, we caught the first glance of the spires, or rather of the west end towers, of the Abbey of Jumieges.[80] "La voilà, Monsieur,"--exclaimed the postilion--increasing his speed and multiplying the nourishes of his whip--"voilà la belle Abbaye!" We approached and entered the village of Jumieges. Leaving some neat houses to the right and left, we drove to a snug auberge, evidently a portion of some of the outer buildings, or of the chapter-house, attached to the Abbey. A large gothic roof, and central pillar, upon entering, attest the ancient character of the place.[81] The whole struck us as having been formerly of very great dimensions. It was a glorious sun-shiny afternoon, and the villagers quickly crowded round the cabriolet. "Voilà Messieurs les Anglois, qui viennent voir l'Abbaye--mais effectivement il n'y a rien à voir." I told the landlady the object of our visit. She procured us a guide and a key: and within five minutes we entered the nave of the abbey. I can never forget that entrance. The interior, it is true, has not the magical effect, or that sort of artificial burst, which attends the first view of _Tintern_ abbey: but, as the ruin is larger, there is necessarily more to attract attention. Like Tintern also, it is unroofed--yet this unroofing has proceeded from a different cause: of which presently. The side aisles present you with a short flattened arch: the nave has none: but you observe a long pilaster-like, or alto-rilievo column, of slender dimensions, running from bottom to top, with a sort of Roman capital. The arched cieling and roof are entirely gone. We proceeded towards the eastern extremity, and saw more frightful ravages both of time and of accident. The latter however had triumphed over the former: but for _accident_ you must read _revolution_. The day had been rather oppressive for a May morning; and we were getting far into the afternoon, when clouds began to gather, and the sun became occasionally obscured. We seated ourselves upon a grassy hillock, and began to prepare for dinner. To the left of us lay a huge pile of fragments of pillars and groinings of arches--the effects of recent havoc: to the right, within three yards, was the very spot in which the celebrated AGNES SOREL, Mistress of Charles VII, lay entombed:[82]--not a relic of mausoleum now marking the place where, formerly, the sculptor had exhibited the choicest efforts of his art, and the devotee had repaired to Breathe a prayer for her soul--and pass on! What a contrast to the present aspect of things!--to the mixed rubbish and wild flowers with which every spot is now well nigh covered! The mistress of the inn having furnished us with napkins and tumblers, we partook of our dinner, surrounded by the objects just described, with no ordinary sensations. The air now became oppressive; when, looking through the few remaining unglazed mullions of the windows, I observed that the clouds grew blacker and blacker, while a faint rumbling of thunder reached our ears. The sun however yet shone gaily, although partially; and as the storm neared us, it floated as it were round the abbey, affording--by means of its purple, dark colour, contrasted with the pale tint of the walls,--one of the most beautiful painter-like effects imaginable. In an instant almost--and as if touched by the wand of a mighty necromancer--the whole scene became metamorphosed. The thunder growled, but only growled; and the threatening phalanx of sulphur-charged clouds rolled away, and melted into the quiet uniform tint which usually precedes sun-set. Dinner being dispatched, I rose to make a thorough examination of the ruins which had survived ... not only the Revolution, but the cupidity of the present owner of the soil--who is a _rich_ man, living at Rouen--and who loves to dispose of any portion of the stone, whether standing or prostrate, for the sake of the lucre, however trifling, which arises from the sale. Surely the whole corporation of the city of Rouen, with the mayor at their head, ought to stand between this ruthless, rich man, and the abbey--the victim of his brutal avarice and want of taste.[83] The situation of the abbey is delightful. It lies at the bottom of some gently undulating hills, within two or three hundred yards of the Seine. The river here runs gently, in a serpentine direction, at the foot of wood-covered hills--and all seemed, from our elevated station, indicative of fruitfulness, of gaiety, and of prosperity,--all--save the mournful and magnificent remains of the venerable abbey whereon we gazed! In fact, this abbey exists only as a shell. I descended, strolled about the village, and mingled in the conversation of the villagers. It was a lovely approach of evening--and men, women, and children were seated, or sauntering, in the open air. Perceiving that I was anxious to gain information, they flocked around me--and from one man, in particular, I obtained exact intelligence about the havoc which had been committed during the Revolution upon the abbey, The roof had been battered down for the sake of the _lead_--to make bullets; the pews, altars, and iron-work, had been converted into other destructive purposes of warfare; and the great bell had been sold to some speculators in a cannon-foundery at Rouen.[84] The revolutionary mania had even brutalized the Abbot. This man, who must be considered as ....damned to everlasting fame, had been a monk of the monastery; and as soon as he had attained the headship of it, he disposed of every movable piece of furniture, to gratify the revolutionary pack which were daily howling at the gates of the abbey for entrance! Nor could he plead _compulsion_ as an excuse. He seemed to enjoy the work of destruction, of which he had the uncontrouled direction. But enough of this wretch. The next resting-place was CAUDEBEC: a very considerable village, or rather a small town. You go down a steep descent, on entering it by the route we came. As you look about, there are singular appearances on all sides--of houses, and hanging gardens, and elaborately cut avenues--upon summits, declivities, and on the plain. But the charm of the view, at least to my old-fashioned feelings, was a fine old gothic church, and a very fine spire of what _appeared_ to belong to another. As the evening had completely set in, I resolved to reserve my admiration of the place till the morrow. [78] [I am ignorant of his present destination; but learn that he has quitted the above situation a long time.] [79] [Mr. COTMAN has published views of the West Front, the South East, the West Entrance, and the South Transept, with sculptured capitals and basso-relievos, &c. In the whole, seven plates.] [80] [Mr. Cotman has published etchings of the West Front: the Towers, somewhat fore-shortened; the Elevation of the Nave--and doorway of the Abbey: the latter an extremely interesting specimen of art. A somewhat particular and animated description of it will be found in _Lieut. Hall's Travels in France_, 8vo. p. 57, 1819. [In the first edition, I had called the west end towers of the Abbey--"small." Mons. Licquet has suggested that I must have meant "_comparatively_" small;--in contradistinction to the centre-tower, which would have been larger. We learn also from M. Licquet that the spire of this central tower was demolished in 1573, by the Abbé le Veneur, Bishop of Evreux. What earthly motive could have led to such a brutal act of demolition?] [81] ["I know perfectly well, says M. Licquet, the little Inn of which the author here speaks. I can assure him that it never formed any portion of the "chapter house." It was nevertheless une _dependance exterieure_ (I will not attempt a version of this phrase) of the abbey. Dare I venture to say it was the _cowhouse_? (étable aux vaches). Thank you, good Mons. Licquet; but what is a cow-house but "an _outer building_ attached to the Abbey?" Vide supra.] [82] [The heart and entrails only of this once celebrated woman were, according to M. Licquet, buried in the above spot. The body was carried to Loches: and BELLEFOREST _(Cosmog._ vol. i. Part ii. col. 31-32. edit. 1575, folio) gives a description of the mausoleum where it was there entombed: a description, adds M. Licquet, which may well serve for the mausoleum that was at Jumieges.] [83] [Not the smallest portion or particle of a sigh escapes us, on being told, as my translator has told us, that the "soil" in question has become the property of another Owner. "Laius EST MORT"--are the emphatic words of M. Licquet.] [84] [One of the bells of the Abbey of Jumieges is now in the Tower of that of St. Ouen, at Rouen. LICQUET.] LETTER X. CAUDEBEC. LILLEBONNE. BOLBEC. TANKARVILLE. MONTMORENCI CASTLE. HAVRE DE GRACE. My last concluded with our entrance into Caudebec. The present opens with a morning scene at the same place. For a miracle I was stirring before nine. The church was the first object of attraction. For the size of the place, it is really a noble structure: perhaps of the early part of the sixteenth, or latter part of the fifteenth century.[85] I speak of the exterior generally, and of a great portion of the interior. A little shabby green-baise covered door (as usual) was half open, and I entered with no ordinary expectations of gratification. The painted glass seemed absolutely to warm the place--so rich and varied were its colours. There is a great abundance of it, and especially of figures of family-groups kneeling--rather small, but with great appearance of portrait-like fidelity. They are chiefly of the first half of the sixteenth century: and I own that, upon gazing at these charming specimens of ancient painting upon glass, I longed to fix an artist before every window, to bear away triumphantly, in a portfolio of elephantine dimensions, a faithful copy of almost every thing I saw. In some of the countenances, I fancied I traced the pencil of LUCAS CRANACH--and even of HANS HOLBEIN. This church has numerous side chapels, and figures of patron-saints. The entombment of Christ in white marble, (at the end of the chapel of the Virgin,) is rather singular; inasmuch as the figure of Christ itself is ancient, and exceedingly fine in anatomical expression; but the usual surrounding figures are modern, and proportionably clumsy and inexpressive. I noted one mural monument, to the memory of _Guillaume Tellier_, which was dated 1484.[86] Few churches have more highly interested me than this at Caudebec.[87] From the church I strolled to the _Place_, where stood the caffé, by the banks of the Seine. The morning view of this scene perfectly delighted me. Nothing can be more picturesque. The river cannot be much less than a mile in width, and it makes a perfect bend in the form of a crescent. On one side, that on which the village stands, are walks and gardens through which peep numerous white villas--and on the other are meadows, terminating in lofty rising grounds--feathered with coppice-wood down to the very water's edge. This may be considered, in fact, only a portion of the vast _Forest de Brotonne_, which rises in wooded majesty on the opposite heights. The spirit and the wealth of our countrymen would make Caudebec one of the most enchanting summer-residences in the world. The population of the town is estimated at about five thousand. Judge of my astonishment, when, on going out of doors, I saw the river in a state of extreme agitation: the whole mass of water rising perpendicularly, as it were, and broad rippling waves rolling over each other. It was the _coming in of the tide_.... and within a quarter of an hour it appeared to have risen upwards of three feet. You may remember that, in our own country, the Severn-tides exhibit the same phenomenon; and I have seen the river at Glocester rise _at once_ to the height of eight or ten feet, throwing up a shower of foam from the gradually narrowing bed of the river, and causing all the craft, great and small, to rise up as if by magic, and to appear upon a level with the meadows. The tide at Caudebec, although similar in kind, was not so in degree; for it rose gradually yet most visibly--and within half an hour, the elevation could not have been less than _seven_ or _eight_ feet. Having walked for some time on the heights of the town, with which I was much gratified, I returned to my humble auberge, ordered the cabriolet to be got ready, and demanded the reckoning:--which, considering that I was not quite at an hôtel-royale, struck me as being far from moderate. Two old women, of similar features and age, presented themselves as I was getting into the carriage: one was the mistress, and the other the fille de chambre. "Mais, Monsieur (observed one of them) n'oubliez pas, je vous prie, la fille-de-chambre--rappellez-vous que vos souliers ont été supérieurement décrottés." I took out a franc to remunerate the supposed fille-de-chambre--but was told it was the _mistress_. "N'importe, Monsieur, c'est à ce moment que je suis fille-de-chambre--quand vous serez parti, je serai la maitresse." The postilion seemed to enjoy this repartee as much as ourselves. I was scarcely out of the town half a mile, when I began to ascend. I found myself quickly in the middle of those rising grounds which are seen from the promenade or _Place du Caffé_, and could not look without extraordinary gratification upon the beautiful character of spring in its advanced state. The larch was even yet picturesque: the hazel and nut trees were perfectly clothed with foliage, of a tender yet joyous tint: the chestnut was gorgeously in bloom; the lime and beech were beginning to give abundant promise of their future luxuriance--while the lowlier tribes of laburnum and box, with their richly clad branches, covered the ground beneath entirely from view. The apple and pear blossoms still continued to variegate the wide sweep of foliage, and to fill the air with their delicious perfume. It might be Switzerland in miniature--or it might not. Only this I know--that it seemed as though one could live embosomed and enchanted in such a wilderness of sweets--reading the _fabliaux_ of the old Norman bards till the close of human existence! I found myself on a hard, strait, chalky old road--evidently Roman: and in due time perceived and entered the town of LILLEBONNE. But the sky had become overcast: soft and small rain was descending, and an unusual gloom prevailed ... when I halted, agreeably to my instructions, immediately before the gate of the ancient _Castle_. Venerable indeed is this Norman castle, and extensive are the ruins which have survived. I have a perfect recollection how it peeped out upon me--through the light leaf of the poplar, and the pink blossom of the apple. It lies close to the road, on the left. An old round tower, apparently of the time of William the Conqueror, very soon attracts your attention. The stones are large, and the interstices are also very considerable. It was here, says a yet current report, that William assembled the Barons of Normandy, and the invasion of England was determined upon. Such a spot therefore strikes an English beholder with no ordinary emotions. I alighted; sent the cabriolet to the inn, and wished both postilion and horses to get their dinners without delay. For myself, I had resolved to reserve my appetite till I reached _Bolbec_; and there was food enough before me of a different description, to exercise my intellectual digestion for at least the next hour. Knocking at the massive portals, I readily obtained admittance. The area, entirely a grass-plat, was occupied by several cows. In front, were evidently the ruins of a large chapel or church--perhaps of the XIVth century. The outer face of the walls went deeply and perpendicularly down to the bottom of a dry fosse; and the right angle portion of the building was covered with garden ground, where the owner showed us some peas which he boasted he should have at his table within five days. I own I thought he was very likely to carry his boast into execution; for finer vegetables, or a finer bed of earth, I had scarcely ever beheld. How things, my dear friend, are changed from their original character and destination! "But the old round tower," say you!--To "the old round tower" then let us go. The stair-case is narrow, dark, and decayed. I reached the first floor, or circular room, and noticed the construction of the window seats--all of rough, solid, and massive stone. I ascended to the second floor; which, if I remember rightly, was strewn with a portion of the third floor--that had fallen in from sheer decay. Great must have been the crash--as the fragments were huge, and widely scattered. On gaining a firm footing upon the outer wall; through a loop-hole window, I gazed around with equal wonder and delight. The wall of this castle could not be less than ten feet in thickness. A young woman, the shepherdess of the spot, attended as guide. "What is that irregular rude mound, or wall of earth, in the centre of which children are playing?" "It is the _old Roman Theatre_, Sir." I immediately called to mind M. Le Prevost's instructions--and if I could have borrowed the wings of a spirit, I should have instantly alighted upon the spot--but it was situated without the precincts of the old castle and its appurtenances, and a mortal leap would have been attended with a mortal result. "Have you many English who visit this spot?" said I to my guide.--"Scarcely _any_, Sir--it is a frightful place--full of desolation and sadness.." replied she. Again I gazed around, and in the distance, through an aperture in the orchard trees, saw the little fishing village of _Quillebeuf_,[88] quite buried, as it were, in the waters of the Seine. An arm of the river meanders towards Lillebonne. Having gratified my picturesque and antiquarian propensities, from this elevated situation, I retrod, with more difficulty than toil, my steps down the stair-case. A second stroll about the area, and along the skirts of the wall, was sufficient to convince me only--how slight and imperfect had been my survey! On quitting the portal through which I entered, and bidding adieu to my Shepherdess and guide, I immediately hastened towards the Roman Theatre.[89] The town of Lillebonne has a very picturesque appearance from the old mound, or raised terrace, along the outer walls of the castle. In five minutes I mingled with the school boys who were amusing themselves within the ruins of all that is left of this probably once vast and magnificent old theatre. It is only by clearing away a great quantity of earth, with which these ruins are covered, that you can correctly ascertain their character and state of preservation. M. Le Prevost bade me remark that the walls had much swerved from their original perpendicularity,--and that there was much irregularity in the laying of the bricks among the stones. But time, design, and accident, have each in turn (in all probability) so contributed to decompose, deface, and alter the original aspect of the building, that there is no forming a correct conjecture as to its ancient form. Earth, grass, trees, flowers, and weeds, have taken almost entire possession of some low and massive outer walls; so that the imagination has full play to supply all deficiencies which appear to the eye. From the whole of this interesting spot I retreated--with mixed sensations of melancholy and surprise--to the little auberge of the _Three Moors_, in the centre of the town. It had begun to rain smartly as we took shelter in the kitchen; where, for the first time since leaving England, I saw a display of utensils which might have vied with our own, or even with a Dutch interior, for neatness and order of disposition. Some of the dishes might have been as ancient as--not the old round Tower--but as the last English Duke of Normandy who might have banquetted there. The whole was in high polish and full display. On my complimenting the good _Aubergiste_ upon so creditable a sight, she laughed, and replied briskly--"Ce n'est rien, ceci: Pentecôte est tout près, et donc vous verrez, Monsieur!"--It should seem that Whitsuntide was the season for a general household purification. Some of her furniture had once belonged to the Castle: but she had bought it, in the scramble which took place at the dispersion and destruction of the movables there, during the Revolution. I recommend all travellers to take a lunch, and enjoy a bottle of vin ordinaire, at _Les Trois-Nègres._ I was obliged to summon up all my stock of knowledge in polite phraseology, in order to decline a plate of soup. "It was delicious above every thing"--"but I had postponed taking dinner till we got to Bolbec." "Bon--vous y trouverez un hôtel superbe." The French are easily pleased; and civility is so cheap and current a coin abroad, that I wish our countrymen would make use of it a little more frequently than they appear to do. I started about two for Bolbec. The rain continued during the whole of my route thither; but it did not prevent me from witnessing a land of plenty and of picturesque beauty on all sides. Indeed it is scarcely possible to conceive a more rich and luxuriant state of culture. To the left, about half a league from Lillebonne, I passed the domain of a once wealthy, and extremely extensive abbey. They call it the _Abbey of Valasse._ A long rambling bare stone wall, and portions of a deserted ruin, kept in sight for full half an English mile. The immediate approach to BOLBEC is that of the entrance to a modern and flourishing trading town, which seems to be beginning to recover from the effects of the Revolution. After Rouen, and even Caudebec, it has a stiff modernized air. I drove to the principal inn, opposite the church, and bespoke dinner and a bed. The church is perfectly, modern, and equally heavy and large. Crowds of people were issuing from _Vespers_, when, ascending a flight of steps, (for it is built on ground considerably above the ground-floor of the inn) I resolved to wait for the final departure of the congregation, and to take a leisurely survey of the interior, while dinner was getting ready. The sexton was a perfect character in his way; old, shrewd, communicative, and civil. There were several confessionals. "What--you confess here pretty much?" "Yes, Sir; but chiefly females, and among them many widows." I had said nothing to provoke this ungallant reply. "In respect to the _sacrament_, what is the proportion between the communicants, as to sex?" "Sir, there are one hundred women to twelve men." I wish I could say that this disproportion were confined to _France_. Quitting this heavy and ugly, but large and commodious fabric, I sought the inn and dinner. The cook was in every respect a learned professor in his art, and the produce of his skill was equally excellent and acceptable. I had scarcely finished my repast, and the _Gruyere_ cheese and nuts yet lingered upon the table, when the soft sounds of an organ, accompanied by a youthful voice, saluted my ears in a very pleasing manner. "C'est LE PAUVRE PETIT SAVOYARD, Monsieur"--exclaimed the waiter--"Vous allez entendre un air touchant! Ah, le pauvre petit!"--"Comment ça?" "Monsieur, il n'a ni père ni mère; mais pour le chant--oh Dieu, il n'y a personne qui chante comme le pauvre petit Savoyard!" I was well disposed to hear the song, and to admit the truth of the waiter's observation. The little itinerant stopped opposite the door, and sung the following air:-- _Bon jour, Bon soir_. Je peindrai sans détour Tout l'emploi de ma vie: C'est de dire _bon jour_ Et _bon soir_ tour-à-tour. _Bon Jour_ à mon amie, Lorsque je vais la voir. Mais au fat qui m'ennuie, _Bon soir_. _Bon jour_ franc troubadour, Qui chantez la bombance; La paix et les beaux jours; Bacchus et les amours. Qu'un rimeur en démence Vienne avec vous s'asseoir, Pour chanter la Romance, _Bon soir_. _Bon jour_, mon cher voisin, Chez vous la soif m'entraîne: _Bonjour_--si votre vin Est de Beaune ou du Rhin; Mon gosier va sans peine Lui servir d'entonnoir; Mais s'il est de Surêne, _Bon soir_. I know not how it was, but had the "petit Savoyard" possessed the cultivated voice of a chorister, I could not have listened to his notes with half the satisfaction with which I dwelt upon his history, as stated by the waiter. He had no sooner concluded and made his bow, than I bought the slender volume from which his songs had been chanted, and had a long gossip with him. He slung his organ upon his back, and "ever and anon" touching his hat, expressed his thankfulness, as much for the interest I had taken in his welfare, as for the trifling piece of silver which I slipt into his hand at parting. Meanwhile all the benches, placed on the outsides of the houses, were occupied--chiefly by females--to witness, it should seem, so novel and interesting a sight as an Englishman holding familiar discourse with a poor wandering Savoyard! My friend the sexton was among the spectators, and from his voice and action, appeared especially interested. "Que le bon Dieu vous bénisse!" exclaimed the Savoyard, as I bade him farewell. On pursuing my route for a stroll upon the heights near the town, I had occasion to pass these benches of spectators. The women, almost without any exception, inclined their heads by way of a gracious salute; and Monsieur _le Sacristain_ pulled off his enormous cock'd hat with the consequence of a drum-major. He appeared not to have forgotten the donation which he had received in the church. Continuing my pursuit, I gained an elevated situation: whence, looking down upon the spot where I had left the Savoyard, I observed him surrounded by the females--each and every one of them apparently convulsed with laughter! Even the little musician appeared to have forgotten his "orphan state." The environs of _Bolbec_, especially in the upper part, are sufficiently picturesque. At least they are sufficiently fruitful: orchards, corn and pasture land--intermixed with meadows, upon which cotton was spread for bleaching--produced altogether a very interesting effect. The little hanging gardens, attached to labourer's huts, contributed to the beauty of the scene. A warm crimson sun-set seemed to envelope the coppice wood in a flame of gold. The road was yet reeking with moisture--and I retraced my steps, through devious and slippery paths, to the hôtel. Evening had set in: the sound of the Savoyard's voice was no longer heard: I ordered tea and candles, and added considerably to my journal before I went to bed. I rose at five; and before six the horses were harnessed to the cabriolet. Having obtained the necessary instructions for reaching _Tancarville_, (the ancient and proud seat of the MONTMORENCIS) I paid my reckoning, and left Bolbec. As I ascended a long and rather steep hill, and, looking to the right and left, saw every thing in a state of verdure and promise, I did all I could to persuade myself that the journey would be agreeable, and that the castle of Montmorenci could not fail to command admiration. I was now in the high and broad "_roúte royale_" to Havre le Grace; but had scarcely been a league upon it, when, looking at my instructions, we struck out of the high road, to the left, and followed a private one through flat and uninteresting arable land. I cannot tell how many turns were taken, or how many pretty little villages were passed--till, after a long and gradual ascent, we came upon a height, flanked the greater part by coppice wood, through one portion of which--purposely kept open for the view--was seen at a distance a marvellously fine group of perpendicular rocks (whose grey and battered sides were lighted up with a pink colour from the morning sun) in the middle, as it were, of the _Seine_--which now really assumed an ocean-like appearance. In fact, these rocks were at a considerable distance, and appeared to be in the broadest part of the embouchure of that river. I halted the cabriolet; and gazed with unfeigned delight on this truly magnificent and fascinating scene!... for the larks were now mounting all around, and their notes, added to those of the "songsters of the grove," produced an effect which I even preferred to that from the organ and voice of the "pauvre petit Savoyard." The postboy partook of my rapture. "Voilà, Monsieur, des rochers terriblement perpendiculiers--eh, quelle belle vue de la rivière, et du paysage!" Leaving this brilliant picture, we turned rather to the left, and then found our descent proportionably gradual with the ascent. The Seine was now right before us, as hasty glimpses of it, through partial vistos, had enabled us to ascertain. Still _Tancarville_ was deemed a terrible way off. First we were to go up, and then we were to go down--now to turn to the right, and afterwards to the left--a sort of [Greek: polla d'ananta katanta] route--when a prepossessing young paysanne told the postilion, that, after passing through such a wood, we should reach an avenue, from the further end of which the castle of _Montmorenci_ would be visible.. "une petite lieue de distance." Every thing is "une petite lieue!" It is the answer to every question relating to distance. Though the league be double a German one, still it is "une petite!" Here however the paysanne happened to be right. We passed through the wood, gained the avenue, and from the further end saw--even yet towering in imposing magnitude--the far-famed _Chateau de Montmorenci_. It might be a small league off. I gained spirits and even strength at the sight: told the postilion to mend his pace--of which he gave immediate and satisfactory demonstration, while the echoes of his whip resounded along the avenue. A closer road now received us. Knolls of grass interwoven with moss, on the summits of which the beech and lime threw up their sturdy stems, now enclosed the road, which began to widen and to improve in condition. At length, turning a corner, a group of country people appeared--"Est-ce ici la route de Tancarville?"--"Tancarville est tout près: c'est là, où on voit la fumée des cheminées." Joyful intelligence! The post-boy increased his speed: The wheels seemed to move with a readier play: and in one minute and a half I was upon the beach of the river Seine, and alighted at the door of the only auberge in the village. I know you to be both a lover of and connoisseur in Rembrandt's pictures: and especially of those of his _old_ characters. I wish you could have seen the old woman, of the name of _Bucan_, who came out of this same auberge to receive us. She had a sharp, quick, constantly moving black eye; keen features, projecting from a surface of flesh of a subdued mahogany tint; about her temples, and the lower part of her cheeks, were all those harmonizing wrinkles which become old age--_upon canvas_--while, below her chin, communicating with a small and shrunken neck, was that sort of concavity, or dewlap, which painters delight to express with a minuteness of touch, and mellowness of tint, that contribute largely to picturesque effect! This good old woman received us with perfect elasticity of spirits and of action. It should seem that we were the first Englishmen who had visited her solitude this year. Her husband approached, but she soon ordered him "to the right about"--to prepare fuel, coffee, and eggs. I was promised the best breakfast that could be got in Normandy, in twenty minutes. The inn being sufficiently miserable, I was anxious for a ramble. The tide was now coming up, as at Caudebec; but the sweep and breadth of the river being, upon a considerably larger scale, its increase was not yet so obvious--although I am quite sure that all the flats, which I saw on my arrival as a bed of mud, were, within a quarter of an hour, wholly covered with the tide: and, looking up to the right, I perceived the perpendicular walls of _Montmorenci Castle_ to be washed by the refluent wave. It was a sort of ocean in miniature before me. A few miserable fishing boats were moored upon the beach; while a small number of ill-clad and straggling villagers lingered about the same spot, and seemed to look upon the postboy and myself as beings dropt from the sky! On ascending a considerable elevation, I had the gratification of viewing _Quillebeuf_ a little more nearly. It was almost immediately opposite: while, to the right, contemplating the wide sweep of the river towards its embouchure, I fancied that I could see _Havre_. The group of rocks, which had so charmed us on our journey, now assumed a different character. On descending, I could discover, although at a considerable distance, the old woman standing at the door of the auberge--apparently straining her eyes to catch a glimpse of us; and she was almost disposed to scold for having put her reputation of giving good breakfasts to so hazardous a trial. The wood was blazing, and the room was almost filled by smoke--but a prolonged fast, and a stage of sixteen or eighteen miles, in a keen morning air, made Mr. Lewis and myself only think of allaying our hunger. In every public house, however mean, you see the white metal fork, and the napkin covering the plate. A dozen boiled eggs, and a coffee pot and cups of perfectly Brobdignagdian dimensions, with tolerable bread and indifferent butter, formed the _materiél_ of our breakfast. The postboy, having stabled and refreshed his horses, was regaling himself in the kitchen--but-how do you think he was regaling himself?--Truly, in stretching himself upon a bench, and reading, as old Ascham expresses it, "a merry tale in Boccace." In other words, he was reading a French version of the Decameron of that celebrated author. Indeed, I had already received sufficient proof of the general propensity of the common people to _read_--whether good or bad books ... but let us hope and believe the former. I left the bibliomaniacal postboy to his Boccaccio, and prepared to visit the CASTLE... the once proud and yet commanding residence of the family of MONTMORENCI. I ascended--with fresh energies imparted from my breakfast. The day grew soft, and bright, and exhilarating ... but alas! for the changes and chances of every thing in this transitory world. Where was the warder? He had ceased to blow his horn for many a long year. Where was the harp of the minstrel? It had perished two centuries ago, with the hand that had struck its chords. Where was the attendant guard?--or pursuivants--or men at arms? They had been swept from human existence, like the leaves of the old limes and beech trees by which the lower part of the building was surrounded. The moat was dry; the rampart was a ruin:--the rank grass grew within the area... nor can I tell you how many relics of halls, banqueting rooms, and bed-rooms, with all the magnificent appurtenances of old castellated architecture, struck the eager eye with mixed melancholy and surprise! The singular half-circular, and half square, corner towers, hanging over the ever-restless wave, interested me exceedingly. The guide shewed me where the prisoners used to be kept--in a dungeon, apparently impervious to every glimmer of day-light, and every breath of air. I cannot pretend to say at what period even the oldest part of the Castle of Montmorenci was built: but I saw nothing that seemed to be more ancient than the latter end of the fifteenth century.[90] Perhaps the greater portion may be of the beginning of the sixteenth; but, amidst the unroofed rooms, I could not help admiring the painted borders, chiefly of a red colour, which run along the upper part of the walls, or wainscoats--giving indication not only of a good, but of a splendid, taste. Did I tell you that this sort of ornament was to be seen in some parts of the eastern end of the Abbey of Jumieges? _Here_, indeed, they afforded evidence--an evidence, mingled with melancholy sensations on reflection--of the probable state of magnificence which once reigned throughout the castle. Between the corner towers, upon that part which runs immediately parallel with the Seine, there is a noble terrace, now converted into garden ground--which commands an immediate and extensive view of the embouchure of the river. It is the property of a speculator, residing at Havre. The cabriolet meeting me at the bottom of the mound upon which the castle is built, (having paid the reckoning before I left the inn), I had nothing to do but to step in, and push forward for _Havre_. Retracing the road through which we came, we darted into the _Route Royale_, and got upon one of the noblest high roads in France. Between _Tancarville_ and _Havre_ lie _Hocher_ and _Harfleur_; each almost at the water's edge. I regretted I could not see the former; but on our approach to Harfleur I observed, to the right, some delightfully situated, and not inelegantly built, country villas or modern chateaux. The immediate run down to Harfleur is exceedingly pleasing; and though we trotted sharply through the town, the exquisite little porch of the church was not lost upon me. Few places, I believe, for its dimensions, have been more celebrated in the middle ages than Harfleur. The Seine to the left becomes broader and bolder; and, before you, beneath some wooded heights, lies HAVRE. Every thing gives indication of commerce and prosperity as you gain upon the town. The houses increase in number and respectability of appearance--"Voyez-vous là, Monsieur, à droite, ces belles maisons de plaisance?--(exclaimed the charioteer)--"C'est la où demeurent Messieurs vos compatriotes: ma foi, ils ont un joli gout." The first glance upon these stone houses confirmed the sagacity of the postilion. They are gloriously situated--facing the ocean; while the surrounding country teems with fish and game of every species. Isaac Walton might have contrived to interweave a pretty ballad in his description of such trout-streams as were those before us. But we approach the town. The hulls of hundreds of vessels are seen in the commodious docks; and the flags of merchantmen, from all quarters of the globe, appear to stream from the mast-heads. It is a scene of bustle, of business, and variety; and perfectly English. What a contrast to the gloomy solitude of Montmorenci! The outer and inner gates are passed. _Diligences_ issue from every quarter. The centinels relieve guard. The sound of horns, from various packet-boats immediately about to sail, echoes on all sides.... Driving up the high street, we approached the hôtel of the _Aigle d'Or,_[91] kept by Justin, and considered to be the best. We were just in time for the table d'hôte, and to bespeak excellent beds. Travellers were continually arriving and departing. What life and animation!... We sat down upwards of forty to dinner: and a good dinner it was. Afterwards, I settled for the cabriolet, and bade the postboy adieu!--nor can I suppress my feelings in saying that, in wishing him farewell, I felt ten times more than I had ever felt upon taking leave of a postilion. [85] The nave was begun in 1416. LICQUET. [86] Corrected by Mons. Licquet: with thanks from the Author. It was, before, 1184. [87] Lieutenant Hall has well described it. I did not see his description till more than a twelvemonth after my own had been written. A part may be worth extracting.... "The principal object of attraction is the CHURCH, the gothic spire of which is encircled by fillets of roses, beautifully carved in stone, and continued to the very summit of the steeple. The principal portal too is sculptured with no less richness and delicacy than that of St. Maclou at Rouen. Its interior length is about 250 feet by 72 of width. The central aisle [nave] is flanked on either side by ten massive circular columns, the capitals of which represent vine leaves and other decorations, more fanciful, and not less rich, than the Corinthian acanthus.... In one of the chapels there is a rude monumental effigy of the original architect of this church. It consists of a small skeleton, drawn in black lines, against a tablet in the wall: a mason's level and trowel, with the plan of a building, are beside it, and an inscription in gothic characters, relating that the architect endowed the church he had built with certain lands, and died Anno 1484." _Travels in France_, p. 47, 1819, 8vo. I take this to be GUILLAUME TELLIER--mentioned above: but in regard to the lands with which Tellier endowed the church, the inscription says nothing. LICQUET. [88] Small as may be this village, and insignificant as may be its aspect, it is one of the most important places, with respect to navigation, in the whole course of the river Seine. Seven years ago there were not fewer than _four-score_ pilots settled here, by order of government, for the purpose of guarding against accidents which arise from a want of knowledge of the navigation of the river. In time of peace this number would necessarily be increased. In the year 1789 there were upwards of 250 English vessels which passed it--averaging, in the whole, 19,000 tons. It is from _Quillebeuf_ to _Havre_ that the accidents arise. The author of a pompous, but very instructive memoir, "_sur la Topographie et la Statistique de la Ville de Quillebeuf et de l'embouchure de la Seine, ayant pour objet-principal la navigation et la pêché_," (published in the Transactions of the Rouen Society for the year 1812, and from which the foregoing information has been obtained) mentions three or four _wrecks_ which have taken place in the immediate vicinity of Quillebeuf: and it should seem that a _calm_ is, of all things, the most fatal. The currents are strong, and the vessel is left to the mercy of the tides in consequence. There are also rocks and sand banks in abundance. Among the wrecks, was one, in which a young girl of eighteen years of age fell a victim to the ignorance of the pilot. The vessel made a false tack between _Hode_ and _Tancarville_, and running upon a bank, was upset in an instant. An English vessel once shared the same calamity. A thick fog suddenly came on, when the sloop ran upon a bank near the _Nez de Tancarville_, and the crew had just time to throw themselves into the boat and escape destruction. The next morning, so sudden and so decisive was the change wrought by the sand and current, that, of the sloop, there remained, at ebb-tide, only ten feet of her mast visible! It appears that the _Quillebois_, owing to their detached situation, and their peculiar occupations, speak a very barbarous French. They have a sort of sing-song method of pronunciation; and the _g_ and _j_ are strangely perverted by them. Consult the memoir here referred to; which occupies forty octavo pages: and which forms a sequel to a previous communication (in 1810) "upon the Topography and Medical properties of Quillebeuf and its adjacent parts." The author is M. Boismare. His exordium is a specimen of the very worst possible taste in composition. One would suppose it to be a prelude to an account of the discovery of another America! [89] ["The Roman Circus (says M. Licquet) is now departmental property. Many excavations have already taken place under the directions of Mons. Le Baron de Vanssay, the present Prefect of the Department. The most happy results may be anticipated. It was in a neighbouring property that an ANTIQUE BRONZE GILT STATUE, of the size of life, was lately found," vol. i. 194. Of this statue, Mr. Samuel Woodburn, (with that spirit of liberality and love of art which have uniformly characterised his purchases) became the Owner. The sum advanced for it was very considerable; but, in one sense, Mr. W. may be said to have stood as the Representative of his country; for the French Government declining to give the Proprietor the sum which he asked, Mr. Woodburn purchased it--solely with the view of depositing it, on the same terms of purchase, in a NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, of which the bequest of Mr. Payne Knight's ancient bronzes and coins, and the purchase of Mr. Angerstein's pictures, might be supposed to lay the foundation. This statue was accordingly brought over to England, and freely exhibited to the curious admirers of ancient art. It is the figure of an APOLLO--the left arm, extended to hold the lyre, being mutilated. A portion of the limbs is also mutilated; but the torso, head and legs, are entire: and are, of their kind, of the highest class of art. Overtures were made for its purchase by government. The Trustees of the British Museum were unanimous both in their admiration and recommendation of it: it was indeed "strongly recommended" by them to the Treasury. Several months however elapsed before an answer could be obtained; and that answer, when it _did_ come, was returned in THE NEGATIVE. The disappointment of reasonably indulged hopes of success, was the least thing felt by its owner. It was the necessity of transporting it, in consequence, to enrich a _rival capital_--which, were its means equal to its wishes and good taste, it must be confessed, makes us frequently blush for the comparative want of energy and liberality, at home, in matters relating to ANCIENT ART.] [90] Mr. Cotman has a view of the gateway of Tancarville, or Montmorenci Castle. [91] I am not sure whether this inn be called the _Armes de France_, or as above. LETTER XI HAVRE DE GRACE. HONFLEUR. JOURNEY TO CAEN. _Caen, May_, 1818. Well, my friend!... I have at length visited the interior of the Abbey of St. Stephen, and have walked over the grave of WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR and of MATHILDA his wife. But as you dearly love the gossip of a travelling journal, I shall take up the thread of my narrative from the place in which I last addressed you:--particularly as our route hither was marked by some circumstances worthy of recital. First, however, for _Havre_. I staid there only long enough to express my regret that the time of my residence could not be extended. It happened to be a fine afternoon, and I took a leisurely stroll upon the docks and ramparts.[92] The town was full of animation--whether relating to business or to pleasure. For the former, you must visit the quays; for the latter, you must promenade the high street, and more especially the _Boulevards_, towards the heights. The sun shone merrily, as it were, upon the thousands of busy, bustling, and bawling human creatures.. who were in constant locomotion in this latter place. What a difference between the respective appearances of the quays of Dieppe and Havre? Although even _here_ things would assume a rubbishing and littered aspect compared with the quays at _Liverpool_ or at _Hull_, yet it must be admitted, for the credit of Gallico-Norman commerce, that the quays of Havre make a very respectable appearance. You see men fiddling, dancing, sleeping, sitting, and of course talking _à pleine gorge_, in groups without end--but no drunkenness!.. not even an English oath saluted my ear. The Southampton packets land their crews at Havre. I saw the arrival of one of these packets; and was cruel enough to contrast the animated and elastic spirits of a host of French _laqnais de place_, tradespeople, &c.--attacking the passengers with cards of their address--with the feeble movements and dejected countenances of the objects of their attack. From the quays, I sauntered along the ramparts, which are flanked by broad ditches--of course plentifully supplied with water; and passing over the drawbridge, by which all carriages enter the town--and which absolutely trembles as if about to sink beneath you, as the _diligence_ rolls over it.--I made for the boulevards and tea-gardens; to which, business being well nigh over, the inhabitants of Havre flock by hundreds and by thousands. A fine afternoon throws every thing into "good keeping"--as the artists say. The trees, and meadows, and upper lands, were not only bright with the sun-beam, but the human countenance was lighted up with gladness. The occupations partook of this joyful character. Accordingly there was dancing and singing on all sides; a little beyond, appeared to sit a group of philosophers, or politicians, upon a fantastically cut seat, beneath laburnums streaming with gold; while, still further, gradually becoming invisible from the foliage and winding path, strolled pairs in more gentle discourse! Meanwhile the whoop and halloo of school-boys, in rapid and ceaseless evolutions, resounded through the air, and heightened the gratification of the scene.... And young and old came out to play Upon a sun-shine holiday. Gaining a considerable ascent, I observed knolls of rich verdure, with fine spreading trees, and elegant mansions, to be in the foreground--in the middle-ground, stood the town of Havre:--in the distance, rolled and roared the expansive ocean! The sun was visibly going to rest; but his departing beams yet sparkled upon the more prominent points of the picture. There was no time for finishing the subject. After a stroll of nearly a couple of hours, on this interesting spot, I retraced my steps over the draw-bridge, and prepared for objects of _still_ life; in other words, for the examination of what might be curious and profitable in the shape of a _boke_. The lamps were lighted when I commenced my _Bibliomaniacal Voyage_ of discovery among the BOOKSELLERS. But what poverty of materials, for a man educated in the schools of Fust and Caxton! To every question, about rare or old books, I was told that I should have been on the Continent when the allies first got possession of Paris. In fact, I had not a single _trouvaille_. The packet was to sail by nine the next morning, precisely. For a wonder, (or rather no wonder at all, considering what had occurred during the last twenty-four hours) I had an excellent night's rest, and was prepared for breakfast by eight. Having breakfasted, I accompanied my luggage to the inner harbour, and observed the _Honfleur_ packet swarming with passengers, and crammed with every species of merchandize: especially tubs, casks, trunks, cordage, and earthenware. We went on board, and took our stations near the helm; and after experiencing a good deal of _uncomfortable_ heaving of the ocean, got clear from the mouth of the harbour, and stood out to sea. The tide was running briskly and strongly into the harbour. We were in truth closely stowed; and as these packets are built with flattish bottoms, and low sides, a rough sea would not fail to give to a crew, thus exposed, the appearance of half-drowned rats. Luckily the wind began to subside, and by degrees old ocean wore a face of undisturbed serenity. Our crew was a motley one; but among them, an Abbess, with a visage of parchment-like rigidity, and with her broad streaming bands, seemed to experience particular distress. She was surrounded by some hale, hearty market women, whose robust forms, and copper-tinted countenances, formed a striking contrast to her own. A little beyond was an old officer or two, with cocked hats of the usually capacious dimensions. But the poor Abbess was cruelly afflicted; and in a gesture and tone of voice, of the most piteous woe, implored the steward of the vessel for accommodation below. Fortunately, as I was not in the least annoyed by sickness, I had leisure to survey the heights of Honfleur before we landed; and looking towards the course of the River Seine, as it narrowed in its windings, I discovered _Harfleur_ and _Hocher_ nearly opposite; and, a good deal lower down, the little fishing town of _Quillebeuf_, apparently embedded in the water. Honfleur itself is surely among the most miserable of fishing towns[93]--or whatever be the staple commodity that supports it. But the environs make amends for the squalidness of the town. A few years of peace and plenty would work wonders even in the improvements of these environs. Perhaps no situation is more favourable for the luxury of a summer retirement.[94] I paid only eight sous for my passage; and having no passport to be _viséd_ (which indeed was the case at Havre,) we selected a stout lad or two, from the crowds of lookers on, as we landed, to carry our luggage to the inn from which the diligence sets off for CAEN. It surprised us to see with what alacrity these lads carried the baggage up a steep hill in their trucks, or barrows; but we were disgusted with the miserable forms, and miserable clothing, of both sexes, which we encountered as we proceeded. I was fortunate to be in time to secure my place in the Diligence. The horses were in the very act of being put to, as I paid my reckoning beforehand. Judge of our surprise and gratification on seeing two well-dressed, and apparently well-bred Englishmen, securing their places at the same time. It is not always that, at first sight, Englishmen associate so quickly, and apparently so cordially, as did these gentlemen with ourselves. They were the Messrs. D*** of _L_**** _Hall_ in Yorkshire: the elder brother an Oxford man of the same standing with myself. The younger, a Cantab. We were all bound for Caen; and right gladly did we coalesce upon this expedition. We proceeded at a good sharp pace; and as we ascended the very high hill on the direct road to Caen, with fine leafy trees on each side, and upon a noble breadth of road, I looked out of the diligence to enjoy the truly magnificent view of the Seine--with glimpses of _Harfleur_ and _Havre_ on the opposite coast. The cessation of the rain, and the quick movement of the vehicle, enabled me to do this in a tolerably commodious manner. The ground however seemed saturated, and the leaves glistened with the incumbent moisture. There was a sort of pungent freshness of scent abroad--and a rich pasture land on each side gave the most luxuriant appearance to the landscape. Nature indeed seemed to have fructified every thing in a manner at once spontaneous and perfect. The face of the country is pasture-land throughout; that is to say, there are comparatively few orchards and little arable. I was told to pay attention to the cattle, for that the farmers prided themselves on their property of this kind. They may pride themselves--if they please: but their pride is not of a lofty cast of character. I have been in Lincolnshire, Herefordshire, and Gloucestershire--and have seen and enjoyed, in these counties, groups of cattle which appeared calculated for the land and the table of giants, compared with the Lilliputian objects, of the bucoline species, which were straying, in thin flocks, through the luxuriant pastures of Normandy. That triumphant and immutable maxim of "small bone and large carcase" seems, alas! to be unknown in these regions. However, on we rode--and gazed on all sides. At length we reached _Pont L'Eveque_, a pretty long stage; where we dined (says my journal) upon roast fowl, asparagus, trout, and an excellent omelette, with two good bottles of vin ordinaire--which latter, for four Englishmen, was commendably moderate. During dinner the rain came down again in yet heavier torrents--the gutters foamed, and the ground smoked with the unceasing fall of the water. In the midst of this aquatic storm, we toasted Old England right merrily and cordially; and the conducteur, seeing us in good humour, told us that "we need not hurry, for that he preferred a dry journey to a wet one." We readily assented to this position; but within half an hour, the weather clearing, we remounted: and by four o'clock, we all got inside--and politics, religion, literature, and the fine arts, kept us in constant discourse and good humour as we rolled on for many a league. All the way to _Troarn_ (the last stage on this side of Caen) the country presents a truly lovely picture of pasture land. There are occasionally some wooded heights, in which English wealth and English taste would have raised villas of the prettiest forms, and with most commanding views. Yet there is nothing to be mentioned in the same breath with the country about Rodwell in Glocestershire. Nor are the trees of the same bulk and luxuriant foliage as are those in our own country. A fine oak is as rare as an uncut _Wynkyn de Worde_:[95] but creeping rivulets, rich coppice wood, avenues of elms and limes, and meadows begemmed with butter-cups--these are the characteristics of the country through which we were passing. It is in vain however you look for neat villas or consequential farm houses: and as rarely do you see groups of villagers reposing, or in action. A dearth of population gives to French landscape a melancholy and solitary cast of character. It is in cities that you must look for human beings--and _for_ cities the French seem to have been created. It was at _Troarn_, I think, or at some halting place beyond, that our passports were demanded, and the examination of our trunks solicited. We surrendered our keys most willingly. The gentlemen, with their cocked hats and blue jackets--having a belt from which a sword was suspended--consulted together for a minute only--returned our keys--and telling us that matters would be thoroughly looked into at Caen, said they would give us no trouble. We were of course not sorry at this determination--and the Messrs. D---and myself getting once more into the cabriolet, (a postboy being secured for the leaders) we began to screw up our spirits and curiosity for a view of the steeples of CAEN. Unluckily the sun had set, and the horizon had become gloomy, when we first discovered the spires of _St. Stephen's Abbey_--the principal ecclesiastical edifice at Caen. It was hard upon nine o'clock; and the evening being extremely dusky, we had necessarily a very indistinct view of the other churches--but, to my eye, as seen in a lengthened view, and through a deceitful atmosphere, Caen had the appearance of OXFORD on a diminutive scale. The town itself, like our famous University, is built in a slanting direction; though the surrounding country is yet flatter than about Oxford. As we entered it, all the population seemed collected to witness our arrival. From solitude we plunged at once into tumult, bustle, and noise. We stopped at the _Hotel d'Espagne--_a large, but black and begrimed mansion. Here our luggage was taken down; and here we were assailed by garçons de place, with cards in their hands, intreating us to put up at their respective hotels. We had somehow got a recommendation to the _Hotel Royale, Place Royale_, and such a union of _royal_ adjuncts was irresistible. Accordingly, we resolved upon moving thither. In a trice our trunks were placed upon barrows: and we marched behind, "in double quick time," in order to secure our property. The town appeared to improve as we made our different turnings, and gained upon our hotel. "Le voilà, Messieurs"--exclaimed our guides and baggage-conductors--as we got into a goodly square, and saw a fair and comely mansion in front. The rush of landlord, waiting maids, and garçons de place, encountered us as we entered. "Messieurs, je vous salue,"--said a huge, ungracious looking figure:--which said figure was nothing less than the master of the hotel--Mons. Lagouelle. We were shown into a small room on the ground floor, to the right--and ordered tea; but had scarcely begun to enjoy the crackling blaze of a plentiful wood fire, when the same ungracious figure took his seat by the side of us ... to tell us "all about THE DUEL." I had heard (from an English gentleman in the packet boat from Havre to Honfleur) something respecting this most extraordinary duel between a young Englishman and a young Frenchman: but as I mean to reserve my _Caen budget_ for a distinct dispatch, and as I have yet hardly tarried twenty hours in this place, I must bid you adieu; only adding that I dreamt, last night, about some English antiquaries trying to bend the bow of William the Conqueror!--Can this be surprising? Again farewell. [92] Evelyn, who visited Havre in 1644, when the Duke de Richlieu was governor, describes the citadel as "strong and regular, well stored with artillery, &c. The works furnished with faire brass canon, having a motto, "_Ratio ultima Regum_." The haven is very spacious." _Life and Writings of John Evelyn_, edit. 1818, vol. i. p. 51. Havre seems always to have been a place of note and distinction in more senses than one. In Zeiller's _Topographia Galliae,_ (vol. iii.) there is a view of it, about the period in which Evelyn saw it, by Jacques Gomboust, Ingénieur du Roy, from which it appears to have been a very considerable place. Forty-two principal buildings and places are referred to in the directions; and among them we observe the BOULEVARDS DE RICHELIEU. [93] It was so in Evelyn's time: in 1644, "It is a poore fisher towne (says he) remarkable for nothing so much as the odd yet usefull habites which the good women weare, of beares and other skinns, as of raggs at Dieppe, and all along these coasts." _Life and Writings of J. Evelyn_; 1818, 4to. vol. i. p. 51. [94] [It is near a chapel, on one of the heights of this town, that Mr. Washington Irving fixes one of his most exquisitely drawn characters, ANNETTE DELABRE, as absorbed in meditation and prayer respecting the fate of her lover; and I have a distinct recollection of a beautiful piece of composition, by one of our most celebrated artists, in which the _Heights of Honfleur_, with women kneeling before a crucifix in the foreground, formed a most beautiful composition. The name of the artist (was it the younger Mr. Chalon?) I have forgotten.] [95] [My translator says, "un Wynkyn de Worde non coupé:" Qu. Would not the _Debure_ Vocabulary have said "non rogné?"] LETTER XII. CAEN. SOIL. SOCIETY. EDUCATION. A DUEL. OLD HOUSES. THE ABBEY OF ST. STEPHEN. CHURCH OF ST. PIERRE DE DARNETAL. ABBÉ DE LA SAINTE TRINITÉ. OTHER PUBLIC EDIFICES. I have now resided upwards of a week at Lagouelle's, the _Hotel Royale_, and can tell you something of the place and of the inhabitants of CAEN. Caen however is still-life after Rouen: but it has been, and yet is, a town exceedingly well-deserving the attention of the lounging traveller and of the curious antiquary. Its ecclesiastical edifices are more ancient, but less vast and splendid, than those of Rouen; while the streets and the houses are much more wide and comfortable. This place is the capital of the department of CALVADOS, or of LOWER NORMANDY: and its population is estimated at forty thousand souls. It has a public library, a school of art, a college, mayoralty, and all the adjuncts of a corporate society.[96] But I must first give you something in the shape of political economy intelligence. Caen with its arrondissemens of _Bayeux, Vire, Falaise, Lisieux, Pont L'Eveque_, is the country of pasturage and of cattle. It is also fertile in the apple and pear; and although at _Argences_ there have been vineyards from time immemorial, yet the produce of the grape, in the character of _wine_,[97] is of a very secondary description. There are beautiful and most abundant market gardens about Caen; and for the last seventy years they have possessed a garden for the growth and cultivation of foreign plants and trees. It is said that more than nine hundred species of plants and trees are to be found in the department of CALVADOS, of which some (but I know not how many or how few) are considered as indigenous. Of forests and woods, the number is comparatively small; and upon that limited number great injuries were inflicted by the Revolution. In the arrondissement of Caen itself, there are only 344 _hectares_.[98] The truth is, that in the immediate neighbourhood of populous towns, the French have no idea of PLANTING. They suffer plain after plain, and hill after hill, to be denuded of trees, and make no provision for the supply of those who are to come after them. Thus, not only a great portion of the country about Rouen--(especially in the direction of the road leading to Caen--) is gradually left desolate and barren, but even here, as you approach the town, there is a dreary flatness of country, unrefreshed by the verdure of foliage: whereas the soil, kind and productive by nature, requires only the slightest attention of man to repay him a hundred fold. What they will do some fifty years hence for _fuel_, is quite inconceivable. It is true that the river Orne, by means of the tide, and of its proximity to the sea, brings up vessels of even 200 tons burthen, in which they may stow plenty of wood; but still, the expenses of carriage, and duties of a variety of description--together with the _dependence_ of the town upon such accidental supply--would render the article of fuel a most expensive concern. It is also true that they pretend that the soil, in the department of Calvados, contains _coal_; but the experiments which were made some years ago at _Littry_, in the arondissement of _Bayeux_, should forbid the Caennois to indulge any very sanguine expectations on that score. In respect to the trade of the town, the two principal branches are _lace_ and _cap_ making. The former trade is divided with Bayeux; and both places together give occupation to about thirty thousand pairs[99] of hands. People of all ages may be so employed; and the annual gross receipts have been estimated at four millions of francs. In _cap_ making only, at Caen, four thousand people have been constantly engaged, and a gross produce of two millions of francs has been the result of that branch of trade. A great part of this manufacture was consumed at home; but more than one half used to be exported to Spain, Portugal, and the colonies belonging to France. They pretend to say, however, that this article of commerce is much diminished both in profit and reputation: while that of _table linen_ is gaining proportionably in both.[100] There were formerly great _tanneries_ in Caen and its immediate vicinity, but lately that branch of trade has suffered extremely. The revolution first gave it a violent check, and the ignorance and inattention of the masters to recent improvements, introduced by means of chemistry, have helped to hasten its decay. To balance this misfortune, there has of late sprung up a very general and judiciously directed commercial spirit in the article of _porcelaine_; and if Caen be inferior to its neighbouring towns, and especially to Rouen and Lisieux, in the articles of cloth, stuffs, and lace, it takes a decided lead in that which relates to _pottery_ and _china_: no mean articles in the supply of domestic wants and luxuries. But it is in matters of higher "pith and moment" that Caen may claim a superiority over the towns just noticed. There is a better spirit of _education_ abroad; and, for its size, more science and more literature will be found in it. This place has been long famous for the education of Lawyers. There are two distinct academies--one for "Science and the Belles-Lettres"--the other for agriculture and commerce. The _Lycée_ is a noble building, close to the Abbey of St. Stephen: but I wish its façade had been Gothic, to harmonise with the Abbey. Indeed, Caen has quite the air of Oxford, from the prevalent appearance of _stone_ in its public buildings. The environs of the town afford quarries, whence the stone is taken in great blocks, in a comparatively soft state--and is thus cut into the several forms required with the greatest facility. It is then exposed, and every succeeding day appears to add to its white tint and durable quality. I saw some important improvements making in the outskirts of the town,[101] in which they were finishing shafts and capitals of columns in a manner the most correct and gratifying. Still farther from the immediate vicinity of Caen, they find stone of a closer grain; and with this they make stair-cases, and pavements for the interior of buildings. Indeed the stone stair-cases in this place, which are usually circular, and projecting from the building, struck me as being equally curious and uncommon. It is asserted that they have different kinds of _marble_ in the department of Calvados, which equal that of the south of France. At _Basly_ and _Vieux_ white marble is found which has been judged worthy of a comparison with Parian; but this is surely a little presumptuous. However, it is known that Cardinal Richelieu brought from Vieux all the marble with which he built the chapel in the college of the Sorbonne. Upon the whole, as to general appearance, and as to particular society, Caen may be preferable to Rouen. The costume and manners of the common people are pretty much, if not entirely, the same; except that, as to dress, the _cauchoise_ is here rather more simple than at Dieppe and Rouen. The upper fille-de-chambre at our hotel displays not only a good correct model of national dress, but she is well-looking in her person, and well-bred in her manners. Mr. Lewis prevailed upon this good-natured young woman to sit for her likeness, and for the sake of her costume. The girl's eyes sparkled with more than ordinary joy at the proposal, and even an expression of gratitude mingled itself in her manner of compliance. I send you the figure and dress of the fille-de-chambre at the _Hotel Royale_ of Caen.[102] [Illustration: FILLE DE CHAMBRE, CAEN.] Caen is called the dépôt of the English.[103] In truth there is an amazing number of our countrymen here, and from very different causes. One family comes to reside from motives of economy; another from those of education; a third from those of retirement; and a fourth from pure love of sitting down, in a strange place, with the chance of making some pleasant connection, or of being engaged in seeking some strange adventure: Good and cheap living, and novel society, are doubtless the main attractions. But there is desperate ill blood just now between the _Caennois_ (I will not make use of the enlarged term _Francois_) and the English; and I will tell you the cause. Do you remember the emphatic phrase in my last, "all about the duel?" Listen. About three weeks only before our arrival,[104] a duel was fought between a young French law-student, and a young Englishman; the latter the son of a naval captain. I will mention no names; and so far not wound the feelings of the friends of the parties concerned. But this duel, my friend, has been "THE DUEL OF DUELS"--on the score of desperation, and of a fixed purpose to murder. It is literally without precedent, and I trust will never be considered as one. You must know then, that Caen, in spite of all the "bouleversemens" of the Revolution, has maintained its ancient reputation of possessing a very large seminary, or college for students at law. These students amount to nearly 600 in number. Most young gentlemen under twenty years of age are at times riotous, or frolicsome, or foolish. Generally speaking, however, the students conduct themselves with propriety: but there had been a law-suit between a French and English suitor, and the Judge pronounced sentence in favour of our countryman. The hall was crowded with spectators, and among them was a plentiful number of law-students. As they were retiring, one young Frenchman either made frightful faces, or contemptible gestures, in a very fixed and insulting manner, at a young Englishman--the son of this naval captain. Our countryman had no means or power of noticing or resenting the insult, as the aggressor was surrounded by his companions. It so happened that it was fair time at Caen; and in the evening of the same day, our countryman recognised, in the crowd at the fair, the physiognomy of the young man who had insulted him in the hall of justice. He approached him, and gave him to understand that his rude behaviour should be noticed at a proper time and in a proper place: whereupon the Frenchman came up to him, shook him violently by the arm, and told him to "fix his distance on the ensuing morning." Now the habit of duelling is very common among these law-students; but they measure twenty-five paces, fire, and of course ... MISS--and then fancy themselves great heroes ... and there is an end of the affair. Not so upon the present occasion. "Fifteen paces," if you please--said the student, sarcastically, with a conviction of the backwardness of his opponent to meet him. "FIVE, rather"--exclaimed the provoked Englishman--"I will fight you at FIVE paces:"--and it was agreed that they should meet and fight on the morrow, at five paces only asunder. Each party was under twenty; but I believe the English youth had scarcely attained his nineteenth year. What I am about to relate will cause your flesh to creep. It was determined by the seconds, as _one_ must necessarily _fall_, from firing at so short a distance, that only _one_ pistol should be loaded with _ball_: the other having nothing but _powder_:--and that, as the Frenchman had challenged, he was to have the choice of the pistols. They parted. The seconds prepared the pistols according to agreement, and the fatal morning came. The combatants appeared, without one jot of abatement of spirit or of cool courage. The pistols lay upon the grass before them: one loaded only with powder, and the other with powder and ball. The Frenchman advanced: took up a pistol, weighed and balanced it most carefully in his hand, and then ... laid it down. He seized the other pistol, and cocking it, fixed himself upon the spot from whence he was to fire. The English youth was necessarily compelled to take the abandoned pistol. Five paces were then measured ... and on the signal being given, they both fired ... and the Frenchman fell ... DEAD UPON THE SPOT! The Frenchman had in fact _taken up_, but afterwards _laid down_, the very pistol which was loaded with the fatal _ball_--on the supposition that it was of too light a weight; and even seemed to compliment himself upon his supposed sagacity on the occasion. But to proceed. The ball went through his heart, as I understood. The second of the deceased on seeing his friend a reeking corpse at his feet, became mad and outrageous ... and was for fighting the survivor immediately! Upon which, the lad of mettle and courage replied, that he would not fight a man without a _second_--"But go," said he, (drawing his watch coolly from his fob). I will give you twenty minutes to come back again with your second." He waited, with his watch in his hand, and by the dead body of his antagonist, for the return of the Frenchman; but on the expiration of the time, his own second conjured him to consult his safety and depart; for that, from henceforth, his life was in jeopardy. He left the ground; obtained his passport, and quitted the town instantly ... The dead body of his antagonist was then placed on a bier: and his funeral was attended by several hundreds of his companions--who, armed with muskets and swords, threatened destruction to the civil and military authorities if they presumed to interfere. All this has necessarily increased the ill-blood which is admitted to exist between the English and French ... but the affair is now beginning to blow over.[105] A truce to such topics. It is now time to furnish you with some details relating to your favourite subjects of ARCHITECTURAL ANTIQUITIES and BIBLIOGRAPHY. The former shall take precedence. First of the _streets_; secondly of the _houses_; and thirdly of the _public buildings_; ecclesiastical and civil. To begin with the STREETS. Those of _St. Pierre, Notre Dame_, and _St. Jean_ are the principal for bustle and business. The first two form one continuous line, leading to the abbey of St. Stephen, and afford in fact a very interesting stroll to the observer of men and manners. The shops are inferior to those of Rouen, but a great shew of business is discernible in them. The street beyond the abbey, and those called _Guilbert_, and _des Chanoines_, leading towards the river, are considered among the genteelest. Ducarel pronounced the _houses_ of Caen "mean in general, though usually built of stone;" but I do not agree with him in this conclusion. The open parts about the _Lycée_ and the _Abbey of St. Stephen_, together with the _Place Royale_, where the library is situated, form very agreeable spaces for the promenade of the ladies and the exercise of the National Guard. The _Courts_ are full of architectural curiosities, but mostly of the time of Francis I. Of _domestic_ architecture, those houses, with elaborate carvings in wood, beneath a pointed roof, are doubtless of the greatest antiquity. There are a great number of these; and some very much older than others. A curious old house is to the right hand corner of the street _St. Jean_: as you go to the Post Office. But I must inform you that the residence of the famous MALHERBE yet exists in the street leading to the Abbey of St. Stephen. This house is of the middle of the sixteenth century: and what Corneille is to _Rouen_, Malherbe is to _Caen_. "ICI NAQUIT MALHERBE," &c. as you will perceive from the annexed view of this house, inscribed upon the front of the building. Malherbe has been doomed to receive greater honours. His head was first struck, in a series of medals, to perpetuate the resemblances of the most eminent literary characters (male and female) in France: and it is due to the amiable Pierre-Aimé Lair to designate him as the FATHER of this medallic project. [Illustration] In perambulating this town, one cannot but be surprised at the absence of _Fountains_--those charming pieces of architecture and of street embellishment. In this respect, Rouen has infinitely the advantage of Caen: where, instead of the trickling current of translucent water, we observe nothing but the partial and perturbed stream issuing from ugly _wells_[106] as tasteless in their structure as they are inconvenient in the procuring of water. Upon one or two of these wells, I observed the dates of 1560 and 1588. The PUBLIC EDIFICES, however, demand a particular and appropriate description: and first of those of the ecclesiastical order. Let us begin therefore with the ABBEY OF ST. STEPHEN; for it is the noblest and most interesting on many accounts. It is called by the name of that Saint, inasmuch as there stood formerly a chapel, on the same site, dedicated to him. The present building was completed and solemnly dedicated by William the Conqueror, in the presence of his wife, his two sons Robert and William, his favourite Archbishop Lanfranc, John Archbishop of Rouen, and Thomas Archbishop of York--towards the year 1080: but I strongly suspect, from the present prevailing character of the architecture, that nothing more than the west front and the towers upon which the spires rest, remain of its ancient structure. The spires (as the Abbé De La Rue conjectures, and as I should also have thought) are about two centuries later than the towers. The outsides of the side aisles appear to be of the thirteenth, rather than of the end of the eleventh, century. The first exterior view of the west front, and of the towers, is extremely interesting; from the grey and clear tint, as well as excellent quality, of the stone, which, according to Huet, was brought partly from Vaucelle and partly from Allemagne.[107] One of the corner abutments of one of the towers has fallen down; and a great portion of what remains seems to indicate rapid decay. The whole stands indeed greatly in need of reparation. Ducarel, if I remember rightly,[108] has made, of this whole front, a sort of elevation, as if it were intended for a wooden model to work by: having all the stiffness and precision of an erection of forty-eight hours standing only. The central tower is of very stunted dimensions, and overwhelmed by a roof in the form of an extinguisher. This, in fact, was the consequence of the devastations of the Calvinists; who absolutely sapped the foundation of the tower, with the hope of overwhelming the whole choir in ruin--but a part only of their malignant object was accomplished. The component parts of the eastern extremity are strangely and barbarously miscellaneous. However, no good commanding exterior view can be obtained from the _place_, or confined square, opposite the towers. But let us return to the west-front; and opening the unfastened green-baize covered door, enter softly and silently into the venerable interior--sacred even to the feelings of Englishmen! Of this interior, very much is changed from its original character. The side aisles retain their flattened arched roofs and pillars; and in the nave you observe those rounded pilasters--or alto-rilievo-like pillars--running from bottom to top, which are to be seen in the abbey of Jumieges. The capitals of these long pillars are comparatively of modern date. To the left on entrance, within a side chapel, is the burial place of MATILDA, the wife of the Conqueror. The tombstone attesting her interment is undoubtedly of the time. Generally speaking, the interior is cold, and dull of effect. The side chapels, of which not fewer than sixteen encircle the choir, have the discordant accompaniments of Grecian balustrades to separate them from the choir and nave. There is a good number of _Confessionals_ within them; and at one of these I saw, for the first time, _two_ women, kneeling, in the act of confession to the _same priest_. "C'est un peu fort," observed our guide in an under-voice, and with a humourous expression of countenance! Meanwhile Mr. Lewis, who was in an opposite direction in the cathedral, was exercising his pencil in the following delineation of a similar subject. [Illustration] To the right of the choir (in the sacristy, I think,) is hung the huge portrait, in oil, within a black and gilt frame, of which Ducarel has published an engraving, on the supposition of its being the portrait of WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. But nothing can be more ridiculous than such a conclusion. In the first place, the picture itself, which is a palpable copy, cannot be older than a century; and, in the second place, were it an original performance, it could not be older than the time of Francis I:--when, in fact, it purports to have been executed--as a faithful copy of the figure of King William, seen by the Cardinals in 1522, who were seized with a sacred phrenzy to take a peep at the body as it might exist at that time! The costume of the oil-painting is evidently that of the period of our Henry VIII.; and to suppose that the body of William--even had it remained in so surprisingly perfect a state as Ducarel intimates, after an interment of upwards of four hundred years--could have presented such a costume, when, from Ducarel's own statement, another whole-length representation of the same person is _totally different_--and more decidedly of the character of William's time--is really quite a reproach to any antiquary who plumes himself upon the possession even of common sense. In the middle of the choir, and just before the high altar, the body of the Conqueror was entombed with great pomp; and a monument erected to his memory of the most elaborate and costly description. Nothing now remains but a flat black marble slab, with a short inscription, of quite a recent date. In the present state of the abbey,[109] and even in that of Ducarel's time, there is, and was, a great dearth of sepulchral monuments. Indeed I know not whether you need be detained another minute within the interior; except it be, to add your share of admiration to that which has been long and justly bestowed on the huge organ[110] at the west end of the nave, which is considered to be the finest in all France. But Normandy abounds in church decorations of this kind. Leaving therefore this venerable pile, endeared to the British antiquary by a thousand pleasing associations of ideas, we strike off into an adjoining court yard, and observe the ruins of a pretty extensive pile of building, which is called by Ducarel the _Palace of the Conqueror_. But in this supposed palace, in its _present_ state, most assuredly William I. _never_ resided: for it is clearly not older than the thirteenth century: if so ancient. Ducarel saw a great deal more than is now to be seen; for, in fact, as I attempted to gain entrance into what appeared to be the principal room, I was stopped by an old woman, who assured me "qu'il n'y avoit rien que du chauffage." It was true enough: the whole of the untenanted interior contained nothing but wood fuel. Returning to the principal street, and making a slight digression to the right, you descend somewhat abruptly by the side of a church in ruins, called _St. Etienne le Vieil_. In Ducarel's time this church is described as entire. On the exterior of one of the remaining buttresses is a whole length figure, about four English feet in height (as far as I could guess by the eye) of a man on horseback--mutilated--trampling upon another man at its feet. It is no doubt a curious and uncommon ornament. But, would you believe it? this figure also, in the opinion of Bourgueville,[111] was intended for William the the Conqueror--representing his triumphant entry into Caen! As an object of art, even in its present mutilated state, it is highly interesting; and I rejoice that Mr. Cotman is likely to preserve the little that remains from the hazard of destruction by the fidelity of his own copy of it.[112] It is quite clear that, close to the figure, you discover traces of style which are unequivocally of the time of Francis I. The interior of what remains of this consecrated edifice is converted "horresco referens" into a receptacle for ... carriages for hire. Not far from this spot stood formerly a magnificent CROSS--demolished during the memorable visit of the Calvinists.[113] In the way to the abbey of the Trinity, quite at the opposite or eastern extremity of the town, you necessarily pass along the _Rue St. Pierre_, and enter into the market-place, affording an opening before the most beautiful church in all Normandy. It is the church of _St. Pierre de Darnetal_ of which I now speak, and from which the name of the street is derived. The tower and spire are of the most admirable form and workmanship.[114] The extreme delicacy and picturesque effect of the stone tiles, with which the spire is covered, as well as the lightness and imposing consequence given to the tower upon which the spire rests, are of a character peculiar to itself. The whole has a charming effect. But severe criticism compels one to admit that the body of the church is defective in fine taste and unity of parts. The style is not only florid Gothic, but it is luxuriant, even to rankness, if I may so speak. The parts are capriciously put together: filled, and even crammed, with ornaments of apparently all ages: concluding with the Grecian mixture introduced in the reign of Francis I. The buttresses are, however, generally, lofty and airy. In the midst of this complicated and corrupt style of architecture, the tower and spire rise like a structure built by preternatural hands; and I am not sure that, at this moment, I can recollect any thing of equal beauty and effect in the whole range of ecclesiastical edifices in our own country. Look at this building, from any part of the town, and you must acknowledge that it has the strongest claims to unqualified admiration.[115] The body of the church is of very considerable dimensions. I entered it on a Sunday morning, about eleven o'clock, and found it quite filled with a large congregation, in which the _cauchoise_, as usual, appeared like a broad white mass--from one end to the other. The priests were in procession. One of the most magnificent organs imaginable was in full intonation, with every stop opened; the voices of the congregation were lustily exercised; and the offices of religion were carried on in a manner which would seem to indicate a warm sense of devotion among the worshippers. There is a tolerably good set of modern paintings (the best which I have yet seen in the interior of a church) of the _Life of Christ_, in the side chapels. The eastern extremity, or the further end of _Our Lady's Chapel_, is horribly bedaubed and over-loaded with the most tasteless specimens of what is called Gothic art, perhaps ever witnessed! The great bell of this church, which has an uncommonly deep and fine tone, is for ever Swinging slow with solemn roar! that is to say:--it is tolling from five in the morning till ten at night; so incessantly, in one side-chapel or another, are these offices carried on within this maternal parish church.[116] I saw, with momentary astonishment, the leaning tower of a church in the _Rue St. Jean_,[117] which is one of the principal streets in the town: and which is terminated by the _Place des Cazernes_, flanked by the river Orne. In this street I was asked, by a bookseller, two pounds two shillings, for a thumbed and cropt copy of the _Elzevir-Heinsius Horace_ of 1629; but with which demand I did not of course comply. In fact, they have the most extravagant notions of the prices of Elzevirs, both here and at Rouen. You must now attend me to the most interesting public building, perhaps all things considered, which is to be seen at Caen. I mean, the _Abbey of the Holy Trinity_, or L'ABBAYE AUX DAMES.[118] This abbey was founded by the wife of the Conqueror, about the same time that William erected that of St. Stephen. Ducarel's description of it, which I have just seen in a copy of the _Anglo-Norman Antiquities_, in a bookseller's shop, is sufficiently meagre. His plates are also sufficiently miserable: but things are strangely altered since his time. The nave of the church is occupied by a manufactory for making cordage, or twine; and upwards of a hundred lads are now busied in their _flaxen_ occupations, where formerly the nun knelt before the cross, or was occupied in auricular confession. The entrance at the western extremity is entirely stopped up: but the exterior gives manifest proof of an antiquity equal to that of the Abbey of St. Stephen. The upper part of the towers are palpably of the fifteenth, or rather of the early part of the sixteenth century. I had no opportunity of judging of the neat pavement of the floor of the nave, in white and black marble, as noticed by Ducarel, on account of the occupation of this part of the building by the manufacturing children; but I saw some very ancient tomb-stones (one I think of the twelfth century) which had been removed from the nave or side aisles, and were placed against the sides of the north transept. The nave is entirely _walled up_ from the transepts, but the choir is fortunately preserved; and a more perfect and interesting specimen of its kind, of the same antiquity, is perhaps no where to be seen in Normandy. All the monuments as well as the altars, described by Ducarel, are now taken away. Having ascended a stone staircase, we got into the upper part of the choir, above the first row of pillars--and walked along the wall. This was rather adventurous, you will say: but a more adventurous spirit of curiosity had nearly proved fatal to me: for, on quitting daylight, we pursued a winding stone staircase, in our way to the central tower--to enjoy from hence a view of the town. I almost tremble as I relate it. There had been put up a sort of temporary wooden staircase, leading absolutely to ... nothing: or, rather, to a dark void space. I happened to be foremost in ascending, yet groping in the dark--with the guide luckily close behind me. Having reached the topmost step, I was raising my foot to a supposed higher or succeeding step ... but there was _none_. A depth of eighteen feet at least was below me. The guide caught my coat, as I was about to lose my balance--and roared out "Arrêtez--tenez!" The least balance or inclination, one way or the other, is sufficient, upon these critical occasions: when luckily, from his catching my coat, and pulling me in consequence slightly backwards, my fall ... and my LIFE ... were equally saved! I have reason from henceforth to remember the ABBAYE AUX DAMES at Caen. I gained the top of the central tower, which is not of equal altitude with those of the western extremity, and from thence surveyed the town, as well as the drizzling rain would permit. I saw enough however to convince me that the site of this abbey is fine and commanding. Indeed it stands nearly upon the highest ground in the town. Ducarel had not the glorious ambition to mount to the top of the tower; nor did he even possess that most commendable of all species of architectural curiosity, a wish to visit the CRYPT. Thus, in either extremity--I evinced a more laudable spirit of enterprise than did my old-fashioned predecessor. Accordingly, from the summit, you must accompany me to the lowest depth of the building. I descended by the same (somewhat intricate) route, and I took especial care to avoid all "temporary wooden stair-cases." The crypt, beneath the choir, is perhaps of yet greater interest and beauty than the choir itself. Within an old, very old, stone coffin--at the further circular end--are the pulverized remains of one of the earliest Abbesses.[119] I gazed around with mixed sensations of veneration and awe, and threw myself back into centuries past, fancying that the shrouded figure of MATILDA herself glided by, with a look as if to approve of my antiquarian enthusiasm! Having gratified my curiosity by a careful survey of this subterraneous abode, I revisited the regions of day-light, and made towards the large building, now a manufactory, which in Ducarel's time had been a nunnery. The revolution has swept away every human being in the character of a nun; but the director of the manufactory shewed me, with great civility, some relics of old crosses, rings, veils, lachrymatories, &c. which had been taken from the crypt I had recently visited. These relics savoured of considerable antiquity. Tom Hearne would have set about proving that they _must_ have belonged to Matilda herself; but I will have neither the presumption nor the merit of attempting this proof. They seemed indeed to have undergone half a dozen decompositions. Upon the whole, if our Antiquarian Society, after having exhausted the cathedrals of their own country, should ever think of perpetuating the principal ecclesiastical edifices of Normandy, by means of the _Art of Engraving_, let them begin their labours with the ABBAYE AUX DAMES at Caen. The foregoing, my dear friend, are the principal ecclesiastical buildings in this place. There are other public edifices, but comparatively of a modern date. And yet I should be guilty of a gross omission were I to neglect giving you an account, however superficial, of the remains of an apparently CASTELLATED BUILDING, a little beyond the Abbaye aux Dames--or rather to the right, upon elevated ground, as you enter the town by the way we came. As far as I can discover, this appears to have escaped Ducarel.[120] It is doubtless a very curious relic. Running along the upper part of the walls, there is a series of basso-relievo heads, medallion-wise, cut in stone, evidently intended for portraits. They are assuredly not older than the reign of Francis I. and may be even as late as that of Henry II. Among these rude medallions, is a female head, with a ferocious-looking man on each side of it, either saluting the woman, or whispering in her ear. But the most striking objects are the stone figures of two men, upon a circular tower, of which one is in the act of shooting an arrow, and the other as if holding a drawn sword. I got admittance within the building; and ascending the tower, found that these were only the _trunks_ of figures,--and removable at pleasure. I could only stroke their beards and shake their bodies a little, which was of course done with impunity. Whether the present be the _original_ place of their destination may be very doubtful. The Abbé de la Rue, with whom I discoursed upon the subject yesterday morning, is of opinion that these figures are of the time of Louis XI.: which makes them a little more ancient than the other ornaments of the building. As to the interior, I could gather nothing with certainty of the original character of the place from the present remains. The earth is piled up, here and there, in artificial mounds covered with grass: and an orchard, and rich pasture land (where I saw several women milking cows) form the whole of the interior scenery. However the _Caennois_ are rather proud of this building. Leaving you to your own conclusions respecting the date of its erection, and "putting the colophon" to this disquisition respecting the principal public buildings at Caen, it is high time to assure you how faithfully I am always yours. [96] ["Besides her numerous public schools, Caen possesses two Schools of Art--one for design, the other for Architecture and Ornament--where the Students are _gratuitously_ instructed." LICQUET.] [97] It is called _Vin Huet_--and is the last wine which a traveller will be disposed to ask for. When Henry IV. passed through the town, he could not conceive why such excellent grapes should produce such execrable wine. I owe this intelligence to Mons. LICQUET. [98] Somewhere about 150 English acres. [99] [I had before said _twenty_--but Mons. Licquet observes, I might have said--thirty thousand pairs of hands.] [100] Caen was celebrated for its table linen three centuries ago. Consult BOURGUEVILLE: _Antiquitez de Caen_; 1588, 8vo. p. 26. [101] The fauxbourgs of Caen, in the present day, wear a melancholy contrast to what they appear to have done in the middle of the XVIth century. Consult the pleasantly penned description of these fauxbourgs by the first topographer of the place, BOURGUEVILLE: in his _Antiquitez de Caen_, pp. 5, 6, 26. It may be worth subjoining, from the same interesting authority, that long after the time even of the publication just referred to, the town of Caen was surrounded by lofty and thick stone walls--upon the tops of which three men could walk a-breast: and from thence the inhabitants could discern, across those large and beautiful gardens, "the vessels sailing in the river Orne, and unloading their cargoes by the sides of walls." It appears indeed to have been a sort of lounge, or fashionable promenade--by means of various ladders for the purposes of ascent and descent. Among the old prints and bird's-eye views of Caen, which I saw in the collection of DE BOZE at the Royal Library at Paris, there is one accompanied by three pages of printed description, which begins with the lines of Guillaume Breton "Villa potens, opulenta, situ spatiosa decora." See First Edition, vol. i. p. 274. Evelyn, in 1644, thus describes the town of Caen. "The whole town is handsomely built of that excellent stone so well knowne by that name in England. I was lead to a pretty garden, planted with hedges of Alaternus, having at the entrance, at an exceeding height, accurately cut in topiary worke, with well understood architecture, consisting of pillars, niches, freezes, and other ornaments, with greate curiosity, &c. _Life and Writings of J. Evelyn_, 1818, 4to. vol. i. p. 52. [102] See the OPPOSITE PLATE. [103] It was a similar dépôt in Ducarel's time. [104] The story was in fact told us the very first night of our arrival, by M. Lagouelle, the master of the hotel royale. He went through it with a method, emphasis, and energy, rendered the more striking from the obesity of his figure and the vulgarity of his countenance. But he frankly allowed that "Monsieur l'Anglois se conduisait bien." [105] [The affair is now scarcely remembered; and the successful champion died a natural death within about three years afterwards. Mons. Licquet slenderly doubts portions of this tragical tale: but I have good reason to believe that it is not an exaggerated one. As to what occurred _after_ the death of one of the combatants, I am unwilling to revive unpleasant sensations by its recapitulation.] [106] Bourgueville seems bitterly to lament the substitution of wells for fountains. He proposes a plan, quite feasible in his own estimation, whereby this desirable object might be effected: and then retorts upon his townsmen by reminding them of the commodious fountains at _Lisieux, Falaise and Vire_--of which the inhabitants "n'ont rien espargné pour auoir ceste decoration et commodité en leurs villes."--spiritedly adding--"si j'estois encore en auctorité, j'y ferois mon pouuoir, et ie y offre de mes biens." p. 17. [107] [I am most prompt to plead guilty to a species of _Hippopotamos_ error, in having here translated the word _Allemagne_ into GERMANY! Now, although this translation, per se, be correct, yet, as applicable to the text, it is most incorrect--as the _Allemagne_ in question happens to be a _Parish in the neighbourhood of Caen_! My translator, in turn, treats me somewhat tenderly when he designates this as "une méprise fort singulière." vol. ii. p. 25.] [108] The plate of Ducarel, here alluded to, forms the fourth plate in his work; affording, from the starch manner in which it is engraved, an idea of one of the most disproportioned, ugly buildings imaginable. Mr. Cotman has favoured us with a good bold etching of the West Front, and of the elevation of compartments of the Nave; The former is at once faithful and magnificent; but the lower part wants characteristic markings. [109] It should be noticed that, "besides the immense benefactions which William in his life time conferred upon this abbey, he, on his death, presented thereto the _crown_ which he used to wear at all high festivals, together with his _sceptre and rod_: a cup set with precious stones; his candlesticks of gold, and all his regalia: as also the ivory bugle-horn which usually hung at his back." _Anglo-Norman Antiquities_, p. 51. note. The story of the breaking open of the coffin by the Calvinists, and finding the Conqueror's remains, is told by Bourgueville--who was an _eye witness_ of these depredations, and who tried to "soften the obdurate hearts" of the pillagers, but in vain. This contemporaneous historian observes that, in his time "the abbey was filled with beautiful and curious stained-glass windows and harmonious organs, which were all broken and destroyed--and that the seats, chairs, &c. and all other wooden materials were consumed by fire," p.171. Huet observes that a "Dom Jean de Baillehache and Dom Matthieu de la Dangie," religious of St. Stephen's, took care of the monument of the Conqueror in the year 1642, and replaced it in the state in which it appeared in Huet's time." _Origines de Caen_; p.248. The revolution was still more terrible than the Calvinistic fury;--for no traces of the monument are now to be seen. [110] The west window is almost totally obscured by a most gigantic organ built close to it, and allowed to be the finest in all France. This organ is so big, as to require eleven large bellows, &c. _Ducarel_, p.57. He then goes on to observe, that "amongst the plate preserved in the treasury of this church, is a curious SILVER SALVER, about ten inches in diameter, gilt, and inlaid with antique medals. Tradition assures us, that it was on this salver, that king William the conqueror placed the foundation charter of the abbey when he presented it, at the high altar, on the dedication of the church. The edges of this salver, which stands on a foot stalk of the same metal, are a little turned up, and carved. In the centre is inlaid a Greek medal; on the obverse whereof is this legend, [Greek: Ausander Aukonos] but it being fixed in its socket, the reverse is not visible. The other medals, forty in number, are set round the rim, in holes punched quite through; so that the edges of the holes serve as frames for the medals. These medals are Roman, and in the highest preservation." [111] Yet Bourgueville's description of the group, as it appeared in his time, trips up the heels of his own conjecture. He says that there were, besides the two figures above mentioned, "vn autre homme et femme à genoux, comme s'ils demandoient raison de la mort de leur enfant, qui est vne antiquité de grand remarque dont je ne puis donner autre certitude de l'histoire." _Antiquitez de Caen_; p.39. Now, it is this additional portion of the group (at present no longer in existence) which should seem to confirm the conjecture of my friend Mr. Douce--that it is a representation of the received story, in the middle ages, of the Emperor Trajan being met by a widow who demanded justice against the murderer of her son. The Emperor, who had just mounted his horse to set out upon some hostile expedition, replied, that "he would listen to her on his return." The woman said, "What, if you never return?" "My successor will satisfy you"--he replied--"But how will that benefit you,"--resumed the widow. The Emperor then descended from his horse, and enquiring into the woman's case, caused justice to be done to her. Some of the stories say that the murderer was the Emperor's own son. [112] [Since the publication of the first edition of this work, the figure in question has appeared from the pencil and burin of Mr. Cotman; of which the only fault, as it strikes me, is, that the surface is too rough--or the effect too sketchy.] [113] Bourgueville has minutely described it in his _Antiquities_; and his description is copied in the preceding edition of this work. [114] Bourgueville is extremely particular and even eloquent in his account of the tower, &c. He says that he had "seen towers at Paris, Rouen, Toulouse, Avignon, Narbonne, Montpelier, Lyons, Amiens, Chartres, Angiers, Bayeux, Constances, (qu. Coutances?) and those of St. Stephen at Caen, and others, in divers parts of France, which are built in a pyramidal form--but THIS TOWER OT ST. PETER exceeded all the others, as well in its height, as in its curious form of construction." _Antiq. de Caen_; p.36. He regrets, however, that the _name of the architect_ has not descended to us. [It is right to correct an error, in the preceding edition, which has been committed on the authority of Ducarel. That Antiquary supposed the tower and spire to have been built by the generosity of one NICHOLAS, an ENGLISHMAN." Mons. Licquet has, I think, reclaimed the true author of such munificence, as his _own_ countryman.--NICOLAS LANGLOIS:--whose name thus occurs in his epitaph, preserved by Bourgueville. _Le Vendredi, devant tout droict_ _La Saint Cler que le temps n'est froit,_ _Trespassa_ NICOLLE L'ANGLOIS, _L'an Mil Trois Cens et Dix Sept._] &c. &c. Reverting, to old BOURGUEVILLE, I cannot take leave of him without expressing my hearty thanks for the amusement and information which his unostentatious octavo volume--entitled _Les Recherches et Antiquitez de la Ville et Université de Caen, &c_. (à Caen, 1588, 8vo.) has afforded me. The author, who tells us he was born in 1504, lived through the most critical and not unperilous period of the times in which he wrote. His plan is perfectly artless, and his style as completely simple. Nor does his fidelity appear impeachable. Such ancient volumes of topography are invaluable--as preserving the memory of things and of objects, which, but for such record, had perished without the hope or chance of recovery. [115] [Ten years have elapsed since this sentence was written, and the experience gained in those years only confirms the truth (according to the conception of the author) of the above assertion. Such a tower and spire, if found in England, must be looked for in Salisbury Cathedral; but though this latter be much loftier, it is stiff, cold, and formal, comparatively with that of which the text makes mention.] [116] [For six months in the year--that is to say, from Lady Day till Michaelmas Day--this great Bell tolls, at a quarter before ten, as a curfew.] [117] A plate of it may be found in the publication of Mr. Dawson Turner, and of Mr. Cotman. [118] Of this building Mr. Cotman has published the West front, east end, exterior and interior; great arches under the tower; crypt; east side of south transept; elevation of the North side of the choir: elevation of the window; South side exterior; view down the nave, N.W. direction. [119] Bourgueville describes the havoc which took place within this abbey at the memorable visit of the Calvinists in 1562. From plundering the church of St. Stephen (as before described p. 172,) they proceeded to commit similar ravages here:--"sans auoir respect ni reuerence à la Dame Abbesse, ni à la religion et douceur feminine des Dames Religieuses."--"plusieurs des officiers de la maison s'y trouucrent, vsans de gracieuses persuasions, pour penser flechir le coeur de ces plus que brutaux;" p. 174. [120] Unless it be what he calls "the FORT OF THE HOLY TRINITY of Caen; in which was constantly kept a garrison, commanded by a captain, whose annual pay was 100 single crowns. This was demolished by Charles, king of Navarre, in the year 1360, during the war which he carried on against Charles the Dauphin, afterwards Charles V., &c." _Anglo-Norman Antiquities_, p. 67. This castle, or the building once flanked by the walls above described, was twice taken by the English; once in 1346, when they made an immense booty, and loaded their ships with the gold and silver vessels found therein; and the second time in 1417, when they established themselves as masters of the place for 33 years. _Annuaire du Calvados_; 1803-4; p. 63. LETTER XIII. LITERARY SOCIETY. ABBÉ DE LA RUE. MESSRS. PIERRE-AIMÉ LAIR AND LAMOUROUX. MEDAL OF MALHERBE. BOOKSELLERS. MEMOIR OF THE LATE M. MOYSANT, PUBLIC LIBRARIAN. COURTS OF JUSTICE. From the dead let me conduct you to the living. In other words, prepare to receive some account of _Society_,--and of things appertaining to the formation of the intellectual character. Caen can boast of a public Literary Society, and of the publication of its memoirs.[121] But these "memoirs" consist at present of only six volumes, and are in our own country extremely rare. [Illustration: ABBÉ DE LA RUE AEtat. LXXIV.] Among the men whose moral character and literary reputation throw a sort of lustre upon Caen, there is no one perhaps that stands upon _quite_ so lofty an eminence as the ABBÉ DE LA RUE; at this time occupied in publishing a _History of Caen_.[122] As an archaeologist, he has no superior among his countrymen; while his essays upon the _Bayeux Tapestry_ and the _Anglo-Norman Poets_, published in our _Archæologia_, prove that there are few, even among ourselves, who could have treated those interesting subjects with more dexterity or better success. The Abbé is, in short, the great archaeological oracle of Normandy. He was pleased to pay me a Visit at Lagouelle's. He is fast advancing towards his seventieth year. His figure is rather stout, and above the mean height: his complexion is healthful, his eye brilliant, and a plentiful quantity of waving white hair adds much to the expression of his countenance.[123] He enquired kindly after our mutual friend Mr. Douce; of whose talents and character he spoke in a manner which did equal honour to both. But he was inexorable, as to--_not_ dining with me; observing that his Order was forbidden to dine in taverns. He gave me a list of places which I ought to visit in my further progress through Normandy, and took leave of me more abruptly than I could have wished. He rarely visits Caen, although a great portion of his library is kept there: his abode being chiefly in the country, at the residence of a nobleman to whose son he was tutor. It is delightful to see a man, of his venerable aspect and widely extended reputation, enjoying, in the evening of life, (after braving such a tempest, in the noon-day of it, as that of the Revolution) the calm, unimpaired possession of his faculties, and the respect of the virtuous and the wise. The study of _Natural History_ obtains pretty generally at Caen; indeed they have an Academy in which this branch of learning is expressly taught--and of which MONSIEUR LAMOUROUX[124] is at once the chief ornament and instructor. This gentleman (to whom our friend Mr. Dawson Turner furnished me with a letter of introduction) has the most unaffected manners, and a countenance particularly open and winning. He is "a very dragon" in his pursuit. On my second call, I found him busied in unpacking some baskets of seaweed, yet reeking with the briny moisture; and which he handled and separated and classed with equal eagerness and facility. The library of M. Lamouroux is quite a workman-like library: filled with sensible, solid, and instructive books--and if he had only accepted a repeated and strongly-pressed invitation to dine with me at Lagouelle's, to meet his learned brother PIERRE-AIMÉ LAIR, nothing would have been wanting to the completion of his character! You have just heard the name of Pierre-Aimé Lair. Prepare to receive a sketch of the character to which that name appertains. This gentleman is not only the life and soul of the society--but of the very town--in which he moves. I walked with him, arm in arm, more than once, through very many streets, passages, and courts, which were distinguished for any relic of architectural antiquity. He was recognised and saluted by nearly one person out of three, in our progress. "Je vous salue"--"vous voilà avec Monsieur l'Anglois"--"bon jour,"--"comment ca va-t-il:"--The activity of Pierre-Aimé Lair is only equalled by his goodness of heart and friendliness of disposition. He is all kindness. Call when you will, and ask for what you please, the object solicited is sure to be granted. He never seems to rise (and he is a very early riser) with spleen, ill-humour, or untoward propensities. With him, the sun seems always to shine, and the lark to tune her carol. And this cheerfulness of feeling is carried by him into every abode however gloomy, and every society however dull. But more substantial praise belongs to this amiable man. Not only is Pierre-Aimé Lair a lover and collector of tangible antiquities--such as glazed tiles, broken busts, old pictures, and fractured capitals--all seen in "long array", up the windings of his staircase--but he is a critic, and a patron of the _literary_ antiquities of his country. Caen (as I told you in my last despatch) is the birth-place of MALHERBE; and, in the character now under discussion, it has found a perpetuator of the name and merits of the father of French verse. In the year 1806 our worthy antiquary put forth a project for a general subscription "for a medal in honour of _Malherbe_,"[125] which project was in due time rewarded by the names of _fifteen hundred_ efficient subscribers, at five francs a piece. The proposal was doubtless flattering to the literary pride of the French; and luckily the execution of it surpassed the expectations of the subscribers. The head is undoubtedly of the most perfect execution. Not only, however, did this head of Malherbe succeed--but a feeling was expressed that it might be followed up by a _Series of Heads_ of the most illustrious, of both sexes, in literature and the fine arts. The very hint was enough for Lair: though I am not sure whether he be not the father of the _latter_ design also. Accordingly, there has appeared, periodically, a set of heads of this description, in bronze or other metal, as the purchaser pleases--which has reflected infinite credit not only on the name of the projector of this scheme, but on the present state of the fine arts in France. Yet another word about Pierre-Aimé Lair. He is not so inexorable as M. Lamouroux: for he _has_ dined with me, and quaffed the burgundy and champagne of Lagouelle, commander in chief of this house. Better wines cannot be quaffed; and Malherbe and the Duke of Wellington formed the alternate subjects of discourse and praise. In return, I have dined with our guest. He had prepared an abundant dinner, and a very select society: but although there was no wand, as in the case of Sancho Panza, to charm away the dishes, &c. or to interdict the tasting of them, yet it was scarcely possible to partake of one in four... so unmercifully were they steeped and buried in _butter!_ The principal topic of discourse, were the merits of the poets of the respective countries of France and England, from which I have reason to think that Pope, Thomson, and Young, are among the greatest favourites with the French. The white brandy of Pierre-Aimé Lair, introduced after dinner, is hardly to be described for its strength and pungency. "Vous n'avez rien comme ca chez vous?" "Je le crois bien, (I replied) c'est la liquéfaction même du feu." We broke up before eight; each retiring to his respective avocations--but did not dine till five. I borrowed, however, "an hour or twain" of the evening, after the departure of the company, to enjoy the more particular conversation of our host; and the more I saw and conversed with him; the greater was my gratification. At parting, he loaded me with a pile of pamphlets, of all sizes, of his own publication; and I ventured to predict to him that he would terminate his multifarious labours by settling into consolidated BIBLIOMANIACISM. "On peut faire pire!"--was his reply--on shaking hands with me, and telling me he should certainly meet me again at _Bayeux_, in my progress through Normandy.[126] My acquaintance with this amiable man seemed to be my security from insults in the streets. Education here commences early, and with incitements as alluring as at Rouen. POISSON in the _Rue Froide_ is the principal, and indeed a very excellent, printer; but BONNESERRE, in the same street, has put forth a vastly pretty manual of infantine devotion, in a brochure of eight pages, of which I send you the first, and which you may compare with the specimen transmitted in a former letter.[127] [Illustration] Chapolin, in the _Rue-Froide-Rue,_ has recently published a most curious little manual, in the cursive secretary gothic, entitled "_La Civilité honnête pour les enfans qui commence par la maniere d'apprendre et bien lire, prononcer et écrire_." I call it "curious," because the very first initial letter of the text, representing C, introduces us to the _bizarrerie_ of the early part of the XVIth century in treatises of a similar character. Take this first letter, with a specimen also of those to which it appertains. [Illustration] This work is full of the old fashioned (and not a bit the worse on that account) precepts of the same period; such as we see in the various versions of the "De Moribus Juvenum," of which the "_Contenance de la Table,"_ in the French language, is probably the most popular. It is executed throughout in the same small and smudged gothic character; and, as I conceive; can have few purchasers. The printers of Caen must not be dismissed without respectful mention of the typographical talents of LE ROY; who ranks after Poisson. Let both these be considered as the Bulmer and Bensley of the place. But among these venders of infantine literature, or of cheap popular pieces, there is no man who "drives such a trade" as PICARD-GUERIN, _Imprimeur en taille-douce et Fabricant d'Images_," who lives in the _Rue des Teinturiers,_ no.175. I paid him more than one visit; as, from, his "fabrication," issue the thousands and tens of thousands of broadsides, chap-books, &c. &c. which inundate Lower Normandy. You give from _one_ to _three_ sous, according as the subject be simple or compound, upon wood or upon copper:--Saints, martyrs, and scriptural subjects; or heroes, chieftains, and monarchs, including the Duke of Wellington and Louis XVIII. le Désiré--are among the taille-douces specified in the imprints. Madame did me the honour of shewing me some of her choicest treasures, as her husband was from home. Up stairs was a parcel of mirthful boys and girls, with painting brushes in their hands, and saucers of various colours before them. Upon enquiry, I found that they received four sous per dozen, for colouring; but I will not take upon me to say that they were over or under paid--of so _equivocal_ a character were their performances. Only I hoped to be excused if I preferred the plain to the coloured. In a foreign country, our notice is attracted towards things perhaps the most mean and minute. With this feeling, I examined carefully what was put before me, and made a selection sufficient to shew that it was the produce of French soil. Among the serious subjects were _two_ to which I paid particular attention. The one was a metrical cantique of the _Prodigal Son,_ with six wood cuts above the text, exhibiting the leading points of the Gospel-narrative. I will cut out and send you the _second_ of these six: in which you will clearly perceive the military turn which seems to prevail throughout France in things the most minute. The Prodigal is about to mount his horse and leave his father's house, in the cloke and cock'd hat of a French officer. [Illustration] The _fourth_ of these cuts is droll enough. It is entitled, "_L'Enfant Prodigue est chassé par ses maîtresses."_ The expulsion consists in the women driving him out of doors with besoms and hair-brooms. It is very probable, however, that all this character of absurdity attaches to some of our own representations of the same subject; if, instead of examining (as in Pope's time) ... the walls of Bedlam and Soho, we take a survey of the graphic broadsides which dangle from strings upon the wall at Hyde Park Corner. Another subject of a serious character, which I am about to describe to you, can rarely, in all probability, be the production of a London artist. It is called "_Notre-Dame de la bonne Délivrande_," and is necessarily confined to the religion of the country. You have here, first of all, a reduced form of the original: probably about one-third--and it is the more appropriate, as it will serve to give you a very correct notion of the dressing out of the figures of the VIRGIN and CHILD which are meant to grace the altars of the chapels of the Virgin in most of the churches in Normandy. Is it possible that one spark of devotion can be kindled by the contemplation of an object so grotesque and so absurd in the House of God? [Illustration: SAINTE MARIE, MÈRE DE DIEU, priez pour nous] To describe all the trumpery which is immediately around it, in the original, would be a waste of time; but below are two good figures to the right, and two wretched ones to the left. Beneath the whole, is the following _accredited_ consoling piece of intelligence: L'AN 830, _des Barbares descendent dans les Gaules, massacrent les Fidèles, profanent et brûlent les Eglises. Raoul, Duc de Normandie, se joint à eux; l'image de la Ste. Vierge demeure ensevelie sous les ruines de l'ancienne chapelle jusqu'au règne de Henri I. l'an 1331. Beaudouin, Baron de Douvres, averti par son berger qu'un mouton de son troupeau fouillait toujours dans le même endroit, fit ouvrir la terre, et trouva ce trésor caché depuis tant d'années. Il fit porter processionnellement cette sainte image dans l'Eglise de Douvres: mais Dieu permit qu'elle fut transportée par un Ange dans l'endroit de la chapelle où elle est maintenant révérée. C'est dans cette chapelle que, par l'intercession de Marie, les pécheurs reçoivent leur conversion, les affligés leur consolation, les infirmes la santé, les captifs leur delivrance, que ceux qui sont en mer échappent aux tempêtes et au naufrage, et que des miracles s'opèrent journellement sur les pieux Fidèles_. A word now for BIBLIOPOLISTS--including _Bouquinistes_, or venders of "old and second-hand books." The very morning following my arrival in Caen, I walked to the abbey of St. Stephen, before breakfast, and in the way thither stopped at a book stall, to the right,--and purchased some black letter folios: among which the French version of _Caesar's Commentaries,_ printed by Verard, in 1488, was the most desirable acquisition. It is reserved for Lord Spencer's library;[128] at a price which, freight and duty included, cannot reach the sum of twelve shillings of our money. Of venders of second hand and old books, the elder and younger MANOURY take a decisive lead. The former lives in the _Rue Froide_; the latter in the _Rue Notre Dame._ The father boasts of having upwards of thirty thousand volumes, but I much doubt whether his stock amount to one half of that number. He unhesitatingly asked me two _louis d'or_ for a copy of the _Vaudevires_ of OLIVIER BASSELIN, which is a modern, but privately printed, volume; and of which I hope to give you some amusing particulars by and by. He also told me that he had formerly sold a paper copy of _Fust's Bible of 1462,_ with many of the illuminated initials cut out, to the library of the Arsenal, at Paris, for 100 louis d'or. I only know that, if I had been librarian, he should not have had one half the money. Now for Manoury the younger. Old and young are comparative terms: for be it known that the son is "agé de soixante ans." Over his door you read an ancient inscription, thus: "_Battu, percé, lié, Je veux changer de main_." This implies either (like Aladdin's old lamps for new) that he wishes to give new books in exchange for old ones, or that he can smarten up old ones by binding, or otherwise, and give them a renovated appearance. But the solution is immaterial: the inscription being as above. The interior of the younger Manoury's book repository almost appalled me. His front shop, and a corridor communicating with the back part of the house, are rank with moisture; and his books are consequently rotting apace. Upon my making as pitiable a statement as I was able of this melancholy state of things--and pleading with all my energies against the inevitable destruction which threatened the dear books--the obdurate bibliopolist displayed not one scintillation of sympathy. He was absolutely indifferent to the whole concern. In the back parlour, almost impervious to day-light, his daughter, and a stout and handsome bourgeoise, with rather an unusually elevated cauchoise, were regaling themselves with soup and herbs at dinner. I hurried through, in my way to the upper regions, with apologies for the intrusion; but was told that none were necessary--that I might go where, and stay as long, as I pleased--and that any explanation would be given to my interrogatories in the way of business. I expressed my obligations for such civility; and gaining an upper room, by the help of a chair, made a survey of its contents. What piles of interminable rubbish! I selected, as the only rational or desirable volume--half rotted with moisture--_Belon's Marine Fishes_, 1551, 4to; and placing six francs (the price demanded) upon the table, hurried back, through this sable and dismal territory, with a sort of precipitancy amounting to horrour. What struck me, as productive of a very extraordinary effect--was the cheerfulness and _gaieté de coeur_ of these females, in the midst of this region of darkness and desolation. Manoury told me that the Revolution had deprived him of the opportunity of having the finest bookselling stock in France! His own carelessness and utter apathy are likely to prove yet more destructive enemies. But let us touch a more "spirit-stirring" chord in the book theme. Let us leave the _Bouquiniste_ for the PUBLIC LIBRARY: and I invite you most earnestly to accompany me thither, and to hear matters of especial import. This library occupies the upper part of a fine large stone building, devoted to the public offices of government. The plan of the library is exceedingly striking; in the shape of a cross. It measures one hundred and thirty-four, by eighty, French feet; and is supposed, apparently with justice, to contain 20,000 volumes. It is proportionably wide and lofty. M. HÉBERT is the present chief librarian, having succeeded the late M. Moysant, his uncle. Among the more eminent benefactors and Bibliomaniacs, attached to this library, the name of FRANCOIS MARTIN is singularly conspicuous. He was, from all accounts, and especially from the information of M. Hébert, one of the most raving of book-madmen: but he displayed, withal, a spirit of kindness and liberality towards his favourite establishment at Caen, which could not be easily shaken or subdued. He was also a man of letters, and evinced that most commendable of all literary propensities--a love of the LITERATURE OF HIS COUNTRY. He amassed a very large collection of books, which was cruelly pillaged during the Revolution; but the public library became possessed of a great number of them. In those volumes, formerly belonging to him, which are now seen, is the following printed inscription: "_Franciscus Martin, Doctor Theologus Parisiensis, comparavit. Oretur pro co_." He was head of the convent of Cordeliers, and Prefect of the Province: but his mode of collecting was not always that which a public magistrate would call _legitimate_. He sought books every where; and when he could not _buy_ them, or obtain them by fair means, he would _steal_ them, and carry them home in the sleeves of his gown! He flourished about a century ago; and, with very few exceptions, all the best conditioned books in the library belonged to this magisterial book-robber. Among them I noted down with singular satisfaction the Aldine edition of _Stephanus de Urbibus_, 1502, folio--in its old vellum binding: seemly to the eye, and comfortable to the touch. Nor did his copy of the _Repertorium Statutorum Ordinis Cartusiensis_, printed by _Amerbach, at Basil_, in a glorious gothic character, 1510, folio, escape my especial notice--also the same Bibliomaniac's beautiful copy of the _Mentz Herbal_, of 1484, in 4to. But the obliquities of Martin assume a less questionable aspect, when we contemplate a noble work, which he not only projected, but left behind ready for publication. It is thus entitled: _Athenæ Normannorum veteres ac recentes, seu syllabus Auctorum qui oriundi è Normannia, &c._ It consists of one volume, in MS., having the authority of government, to publish it, prefixed. There is a short Latin preface, by Martin, followed by two pages of Latin verses beginning thus: _In Auctorum Normannicorum Syllabum. Prolusio metrica. En Syllabus prodit palàm Contextus arte sedula Ex litteratæ Neustriæ Auctoribus celebribus._ &c. &c. Among the men, the memories of whom throw a lustre upon Caen,[129] was the famous SAMUEL BOCHART; at once a botanist, a scholar, and a critic of distinguished celebrity. He was a native of Rouen, and his books (many of them replete with valuable ms. notes) are among the chief treasures of the public library, here. Indeed there is a distinct catalogue of them, and the funds left by their illustrious owner form the principal support of the library establishment. Bochart's portrait, with those of many other benefactors to the library, adorns the walls; suspended above the books: affording a very agreeable coup-d'oeil. Indeed the principal division of the library, the further end of which commands a pleasant prospect, is worthy of an establishment belonging to the capital of an empire. The kindness of M. Hébert, and of his assistant, rendered my frequent sojournings therein yet more delectable. The portrait of his uncle, M. MOYSANT, is among the ornaments of the chief room. Though Moysant was large of stature, his lungs were feeble, and his constitution was delicate. At the age of nineteen, he was appointed professor of grammar and rhetoric in the college of Lisieux. He then went to Paris, and studied under Beau and Batteux; when, applying himself more particularly to the profession of physic, he returned to Caen, in his thirtieth year, and put on the cap of Doctor of medicine; but he wanted either nerves or stamina for the successful exercise of his profession. He had cured a patient, after painful and laborious attention, of a very serious illness; but his patient chose to take liberties too soon with his convalescent state. He was imprudent: had a relapse; and was hurried to his grave. Moysant took it seriously to heart, and gave up his business in precipitancy and disgust. In fact, he was of too sanguine and irritable a temperament for the display of that cool, cautious, and patient conduct, which it behoveth all young physicians to adopt, ere they can possibly hope to attain the honours or the wealth of the _Halfords_ and _Matons_ of the day! Our Moysant returned to the study of his beloved belles-lettres. At that moment, luckily, the Society of the Jesuits was suppressed; and he was called by the King, in 1763, to fill the chair of Rhetoric in one of the finest establishments of that body at Caen. He afterwards successively became perpetual Secretary of the Academy of Sciences, and Vice-President of the Society of Agriculture. He was next dubbed by the University, Dean of the faculty of arts, and was selected to pronounce the public oration upon the marriage of the unfortunate Louis XVI. with Marie Antoinette. He was now a marked and distinguished public character. The situation of PUBLIC LIBRARIAN was only wanting to render his reputation complete, and _that_ he instantly obtained upon the death of his predecessor. With these occupations, he united that of instructing the English (who were always in the habit of visiting Caen,) in the French language; and he obtained, in return, from some of his adult pupils, a pretty good notion of the laws and liberties of Old England. The Revolution now came on: when, like many of his respectable brethren, he hailed it at first as the harbinger of national reformation and prosperity. But he had soon reason to find that he had been deceived. However, in the fervour of the moment, and upon the suppression of the monastic and other public libraries, he received a very wide and unqualified commission to search all the libraries in the department of _Calvados_, and to bring home to Caen all the treasures he might discover. He set forth upon this mission with truly public spirited ideas: resolving (says his nephew) to do for Normandy what Dugdale and Dodsworth had done for England--and a _Monasticum Neustriacum_ was the commendable object of his ambition. He promised much, and perhaps did more than he promised. His curious collection (exclusively of the cart-loads of books which were sent to Caen) was shewn to his countrymen; but the guillotine was now the order of the day--when Moysant "resolved to visit England, and submit to the English nobility the plan of his work, as that nation always attached importance to the preservation of the monuments, or literary materials, of the middle ages."--He knew (continues the nephew) how proud the English were of their descent from the Norman nobles, and it was only to put them in possession of the means of preserving the unquestionable proofs of their origin. Moysant accordingly came over with his wife, and they were both quickly declared emigrants; their return was interdicted; and our bibliomaniac learnt, with heart-rending regret, that they had resolved upon the sale of the national property in France. He was therefore to live by his wits; having spiritedly declined all offer of assistance from the English government. In this dilemma he published a work entitled "_Bibliothèque des Ecrivains Français, ou choix des meilleurs morceaux en prose et en vers, extraits de leurs ouvrages_,"--a collection, which was formed with judgment, and which was attended with complete success. The first edition was in four octavo volumes, in 1800; the second, in six volumes 1803; a third edition, I think, followed, with a pocket dictionary of the English and French languages. It was during his stay amongst us that he was deservedly admitted a member of the Society of Antiquaries; but he returned to France in 1802, before the appearance of the second edition of his _Bibliothèque_; when, hawk-like, soaring or sailing in suspense between the book-atmospheres of Paris and Caen, he settled within the latter place--and again perched himself (at the united call of his townsmen) upon the chair destined for the PUBLIC LIBRARIAN! It was to give order, method, and freedom of access, to the enormous mass of books, which the dissolution of the monastic libraries had caused to be accumulated at Caen, that Moysant and his colleagues now devoted themselves with an assiduity as heroic as it was unintermitting. But the health of our generalissimo, which had been impaired during his residence in England, began to give way beneath such a pressure of fatigue and anxiety. Yet it pleased Providence to prolong his life till towards the close of the year 1813: when he had the satisfaction of viewing his folios, quartos, octavos, and duodecimos, arranged in regular succession, and fair array; when his work was honestly done; and when future visitors had only to stretch forth their hands and gather the fruit which he had placed within their reach. His death (we are told)[130] was gentle, and like unto sleep. Religion had consoled him in his latter moments; and after having reposed upon its efficacy, he waited with perfect composure for the breathing of his last sigh! Let the name of MOYSANT be mentioned with the bibliomaniacal honours which, are doubtless its due!... From Librarians, revert we to books: to the books in the PUBLIC LIBRARY of Caen. The oldest printed volume contained in it, and which had been bound with a MS, on the supposition of its being a manuscript also, is Numeister's impression of _Aretinus de Bella adversus Gothós_, 1470, folio; the first book from the press of the printer. I undeceived M. Hébert, who had supposed it to be a MS. The lettering is covered with horn, and the book is bound in boards; "all proper." The oldest _Latin Bible_ they possess, is of the date of 1485; but there is preserved one volume of Sweynheym and Pannartz's impression of _De Lyra's Commentary upon the Bible_, of the date of 1471-2, which luckily contains the list of books printed by those printers in their memorable supplicatory letter to Pope Sixtus IV. The earliest Latin Classic appears to be the _Juvenal_ of 1474, with the _Commentary of Calderinus_, printed at Rome; unless a dateless impression of _Lucan_, in the earliest type of Gering, with the verses placed at a considerable distance from each other, claim chronological precedence. There is also a _Valerius Maximus_ of 1475, by Cæsaris and Stol, but without their names. It is a large copy, soiled at the beginning. Of the same date is Gering's impression of the _Legenda Sanctorum_; and among the Fifteeners I almost coveted a very elegant specimen of _Jehan du Pré's_ printing (with a device used by him never before seen by me,) of an edition of _La Vie des Peres_, 1494, folio, in its original binding. I collected, from the written catalogue, that they had only FORTY-FIVE works printed in the FIFTEENTH CENTURY; and of these, none were of first-rate quality. Among the MSS., I was much struck with the beautiful penmanship of a work, in three folio volumes, of the middle of the sixteenth century, entitled; _Divertissemens touchant le faict de la guerre, extraits des livres de Polybe, Frontin, Vegece, Cornazzan, Machiavel, et autres bons autheurs."_ It has no illuminations, but the scription is beautiful. A _Breviary of the Church Service of Lisieux_, of the fifteenth century, has some pretty but common illuminations. It is not however free from injury. Of more intrinsic worth is a MS. entitled _Du Costentin_, (a district not far from Caen,) with the following prefix in the hand-writing of Moysant. "Ces mémoires sont de M. Toustaint de Billy, curé du Mesnil au-parc, qui avoit travaillé toute sa vie à l'histoire du Cotentin. Ils sont rares et m'ont été accordes par M. Jourdan, Notaire, auquel ils appartenoient. Le p. (Père) le Long et Mons. Teriet de fontette ne les out pas connu. Moysantz." It is a small folio, in a neat hand-writing. Another MS., or rather a compound of ms. and printed leaves, of yet considerably more importance, in 3 folio volumes, is entitled _Le Moreri des Normans, par Joseph Andrié Guiat de Rouen:_ on the reverse of the title, we read, "_Supplément au Dictionnaire de Moreri pour ce qui concerne la province de Normandie, et ses illustres_." A short preface follows; then an ode "aux Grands Hommes de Normandie." It is executed in the manner of a dictionary, running in alphabetical order. The first volume extends to the letter I, and is illustrated with scraps from newspapers, and a few portraits. It is written pretty fully in double columns. The portrait and biography of _Bouzard_ form an admirable specimen of biographical literary memoirs. The second volume goes to Z. The third volume is entitled "_Les trois Siècles palinodiques, ou Histoire Générale des Palinods de Rouen, Dieppe, &c._--by the same hand, with an equal quantity of matter. It is right that such labours should be noticed, for the sake of all future BLISS-like editors of provincial literature. There is another similar work, in 2 folio ms. volumes, relating to _Coutance_. Before we again touch upon printed books, but of a later period, it may be right to inform you that the treasures of this Library suffered materially from the commotions of the Calvinists. Those hot-headed interpreters of scripture destroyed every thing in the shape of ornament or elegance attached to book-covers; and piles of volumes, however sacred, or unexceptionable on the score of good morals, were consigned to the fury of the flames. Of the remaining volumes which I saw, take the following very rapid sketch. Of _Hours_, or _Church Services_, there is a prodigiously fine copy of an edition printed by _Vostre_, in 4to., upon paper, without date. It is in the original ornamented cover, or binding, with a forest of rough edges to the leaves--and doubtless the finest copy of the kind I ever saw. Compared with this, how inferior, in every respect is a cropt copy of _Kerver's_ impression of a similar work, printed upon vellum! This latter is indeed a very indifferent book; but the rough usage it has met with is the sole cause of such inferiority. I was well pleased with a fair, sound copy of the _Speculum Stultorum_, in 4to., bl. letter, in hexameter and pentameter verses, without date. Nor did I examine without interest a rare little volume entitled "_Les Origines de quelques Coutumes anciennes, et de plusieurs façons de parler triviales. Avec un vieux Manuscrit en vers, touchant l'Origine des Chevaliers Bannerets_; printed at Caen in 1672, 12mo.: a curious little work. They have a fine (royal) copy of _Walton's Polyglot_, with an excellent impression of the head; and a large paper copy of _Stephen's Greek Glossary_; in old vellum binding, with a great number of ms. notes by Bochart. Also a fine large paper _Photius_ of 1654, folio. But among their LARGE PAPERS, few volumes tower with greater magnificence than do the three folios of _La Sainte Bible_, printed by the Elzevirs at Amsterdam, in 1669. They are absolutely fine creatures; of the stateliest dimensions and most attractive forms. They also pretend that their large paper copy of the first edition of _Huet's Praeparatio Evangelica_, in folio, is unique. Probably it is, as the author presented it to the Library himself. The _Basil Eustathius_ of 1559, in 3 volumes folio, is as glorious a copy as is Mr. Grenville's of the Roman edition of 1542.[131] It is in its pristine membranaceous attire--the vellum lapping over the fore-edges, in the manner of Mr. Heber's copy of the first Aldine Aristotle,--most comfortable to behold! There is a fine large paper copy of _Montaigne's Essays_, 1635, folio, containing two titles and a portrait of the author. It is bound in red morocco, and considered by M. Hébert a most rare and desirable book. Indeed I was told that one Collector in particular was exceedingly anxious to obtain it. I saw a fine copy of the folio edition of _Ronsard_, printed in 1584, which is considered rare. There is also a copy of the well known _Liber Nanceidos_, from Bochart's library, with a few ms. notes by Bochart himself. Here I saw, for the first time, a French metrical version of the works of _Virgil, by Robert and Anthony Chevaliers d'Agneaux freres, de Vire, en Normandie_; published at Paris in 1582, in elegant italic type; considered rare. The same translators published a version of Horace; but it is not here. You may remember that I made mention of a certain work (in one of my late letters) called _Les Vaudevires d'Olivier Basselin_. They preserve here a very choice copy of it, in 4to., large paper; and of which size only ten copies are said to be in existence. The entire title is "_Les Vaudevires Poesies du XVme. siècle, par Olivier Basselin, avec un Discours sur sa Vie et des Notes pour l'explication de quelques anciens Mots: Vire, 1811_." 8vo. There are copies upon pink paper, of which this is one--and which was in fact presented to the Library by the Editors. Prefixed to it, is an indifferent drawing, in india ink, representing the old castle of Vire, now nearly demolished, with Basselin seated at a table along with three of his boosing companions, chaunting his verses "à pleine gorge." This Basselin appears in short to have been the French DRUNKEN BARNABY of his day. "What! (say you:) "not _one_ single specimen from the library of your favourite DIANE DE POICTIERS? Can this be possible?"--No more of interrogatory, I beseech you: but listen attentively and gratefully to the intelligence which you are about to receive--and fancy not, if you have any respect for my taste, that I have forgotten my favourite Diane de Poictiers. On looking sharply about you, within this library, there will be found a magnificent copy of the _Commentaries of Chrysostom upon the Epistles of St. Paul_, printed by _Stephanus et Fratres a Sabio, at Verona_, in 1529, in three folio volumes. It is by much and by far the finest Greek work which I ever saw from the _Sabii_ Press.[132] No wonder Colbert jumped with avidity to obtain such a copy of it: for, bating that it is "un peu rogné," the condition and colour are quite enchanting. And then for the binding!--which either Colbert, or his librarian Baluze, had the good sense and good taste to leave _untouched_. The first and second volumes are in reddish calf, with the royal arms in the centre, and the half moon (in tarnished silver) beneath: the arabesque ornaments, or surrounding border is in gilt. The edges are gilt, stamped; flush with the fore edges of the binding. In the centre of the sides of the binding, is a large H, with a fleur de lis at top: the top and bottom borders presenting the usual D and H, united, of which you may take a peep in the _Bibliographical Decameron._ The third volume is in dark blue leather, with the same side ornaments; and the title of the work, as with the preceding volumes, is lettered in Greek capitals. The H and crown, and monogram, as before; but the edges of the leaves are, in this volume, stamped at bottom and top with an H, surmounted by a crown. The sides of the binding are also fuller and richer than in the preceding volumes. This magnificent copy was given to the Library by P. Le Jeune. It is quite a treasure in its way. Another specimen, if you please, from the library of our favourite Diana. It is rather of a singular character: consisting of a French version of that once extremely popular work (originally published in the Latin language) called the _Cosmography of Sebastian Munster._ The edition is of the date of 1556, in folio. This copy must have been as splendid as it is yet curious. It contains two portraits of Henry the Second ("HENRICVS II. GALLIARVM REX INVICTISS. PP.") and four of Holofernes ("OLOFARNE.") on each side of the binding. In the centre of the sides we recognise the lunar ornaments of Diane de Poictiers; but on the back, are five portraits of her, in gilt, each within the bands--and, like all the other ornaments, much rubbed. Two of these five heads are facing a different head of Henry. There are also on the sides two pretty medallions of a winged figure blowing a trumpet, and standing upon a chariot drawn by four horses: there are also small fleur de lis scattered between the ornaments of the sides of the binding. The date of the medallion seems to be 1553. The copy is cruelly cropt, and the volume is sufficiently badly printed; which makes it the more surprising that such pains should have been taken with its bibliopegistic embellishments. Upon the whole, this copy, for the sake of its ornaments, is vehemently desirable. And now, my dear friend, you must make your bow with me to M. Hébert, and bid farewell to the PUBLIC LIBRARY at Caen. Indeed I am fully disposed to bid farewell to every thing else in the same town: not however without being conscious that very much, both of what I have, and of what I have not, seen, merits a detail well calculated to please the intellectual appetites of travellers. What I have seen, has been indeed but summarily, and even superficially, described; but I have done my best; and was fearful of exciting ennui by a more parish-register-like description. For the service performed in places of public worship, I can add nothing to my Rouen details--except that there is here an agreeable PROTESTANT CHURCH, of which M. MARTIN ROLLIN, is the Pastor. He has just published a "_Mémoire Historique sur l'Etat Eclésiastique des Protestans François depuis François Ler jusqu'à Louis XVIII_:" in a pamphlet of some fourscore pages. The task was equally delicate and difficult of execution; but having read it, I am free to confess that M. Rollin has done his work very neatly and very cleverly. I went in company with Mrs. and Miss I---- to hear the author preach; for he is a young man (about thirty) who draws his congregation as much from his talents as a preacher, as from his moral worth as an individual. It was on the occasion of several young ladies and gentlemen taking the sacrament for the first time. The church is strictly, I believe, according to the Geneva persuasion; but there was something so comfortable, and to me so cheering, in the avowed doctrine of Protestantism, that I accompanied my friends with alacrity to the spot. Many English were present; for M. Rollin is deservedly a favourite with our countrymen. The church, however, was scarcely half filled. The interior is the most awkwardly adapted imaginable to the purposes either of reading or of preaching: for it consists of two aisles at right angles with each other. The desk and pulpit are fixed in the receding angle of their junction; so that the voice flies forth to the right and left immediately as it escapes the preacher. After a very long, and a very tediously sung psalm, M. Rollin commenced his discourse. He is an extemporaneous preacher. His voice is sweet and clear, rather than sonorous and impressive; and he is perhaps, occasionally, too metaphorical in his composition. For the first time I heard the words "_Oh Dieu!_" pronounced with great effect: but the sermon was made up of better things than mere exclamations. M. Rollin was frequently ingenious; logical, and convincing; and his address to the young communicants, towards the close of his discourse, was impressive and efficient. The young people were deeply touched by his powerful appeal, and I believe each countenance was suffused with tears. He guarded them against the dangers and temptations of that world upon which they were about to enter, by setting before them the consolations of the religion which they had professed, in a manner which indicated that he had really their interests and happiness at heart. A word only about COURTS OF JUSTICE. "A smack of the whip" will tingle in my ears through life;[133] and I shall always attend "_Nisi Prius_" exhibitions with more than ordinary curiosity. I strolled one morning to the _Place de Justice_--which is well situated, in an airy and respectable neighbourhood. I saw two or three barristers, en pleine costume, pretty nearly in the English fashion; walking quickly to and fro with their clients, in the open air before the hall; and could not help contrasting the quick eye and unconcerned expression of countenance of the former, with the simple look and yet earnest action of the latter. I entered the Hall, and, to my astonishment, heard only a low muttering sound. Scarcely fifteen people were present, I approached the bench; and what, think you, were the intellectual objects upon which my eye alighted? Three Judges ... all fast asleep! Five barristers, two of whom were nodding: one was literally addressing _the bench_ ... and the remaining two were talking to their clients in the most unconcerned manner imaginable. The entire effect, on my mind, was ridiculous in the extreme. Far be it from me, however, to designate the foregoing as a generally true picture of the administration of Justice at Caen. I am induced to hope and believe that a place, so long celebrated for the study of the law, yet continues occasionally to exhibit proofs of that logic and eloquence for which it has been renowned of old. I am willing to conclude that all the judges are not alike somniferous; and that if the acuteness of our GIFFORDS, and the rhetoric of our DENMANS, sometimes instruct and enliven the audience, there will be found Judges to argue like GIBBS and to decide like SCOTT.[134] Farewell. [121] _Mémoires de l'Academie des Belles Lettres de Caen. Chez Jacques Manoury, 1757, 4 vols. crown 8vo. Rapport générale sur les travaux de l'Academie des Sciences, Arts, et Belles Lettres de la ville de Caen, jusqu'au premier Janvier, 1811. Par P.F.T. Delariviere, Secrétaire. A Caen, chez Chalopin_. An. 1811-15. 2 vols. on different paper, with different types, and provokingly of a larger form than its precursor. [122] [On consulting the Addenda of the preceding edition, it will be seen that this work appeared in the year 1820, under the title of _Essais Historiques sur la Ville de Caen et son Arondissement_, in 2 small octavo volumes. With the exception of two or three indifferent plates of relics of sculpture, and of titles with armorial bearings, this work is entirely divested of ornament. There are some useful historical details in it, taken from the examination of records and the public archives; but a HISTORY of CAEN is yet a desideratum.] [123] [By the favour of our common friend Mr. Douce, I have obtained permission to enrich these pages with the PORTRAIT of this distinguished Archaeologist, from an original Drawing in the possession of the same friend. See the OPPOSITE PLATE.] [124] He has recently (1816) published an octavo volume entitled "_Histoire des Polypiers, Coralligènes Flexibles, vulgairement nommés Zoophytes. Par J.V.F. Lamouroux_. From one of his Epistles, I subjoin a fac-simile of his autograph. [Illustration: Lamouroux] [125] The medallic project here alluded to is one which does both the projector, and the arts of France, infinite honour; and I sincerely wish that some second SIMON may rise up among ourselves to emulate, and if possible to surpass, the performances of GATTEAUX and AUDRIEU. The former is the artist to whom we are indebted for the medal of Malherbe, and the latter for the series of the Bonaparte medals. [Has my friend Mr. Hawkins, of the Museum, abandoned all thoughts of his magnificent project connected with such a NATIONAL WORK?] [126] See post--under the running title Bayeux. [127] See page 172 ante. [128] It is described in the 2d vol. of the ÆDES ALTHORPIANÆ; forming the Supplement to the BIBLIOTHECA SPENCERIANA: see page 94. [129] Goube, in his _Histoire du Duché de Normandie_, 1815, 8vo. has devoted upwards of thirty pages to an enumeration of these worthies; vol. iii. p. 295. But in _Huet's Origines de la Ville de Caen;_ p. 491-652, there will be found much more copious and satisfactory details. [130] I am furnished with the above particulars from a _Notice Historique_ of Moysant. [131] [A copy of this Roman Edition of 1542, of equal purity and amplitude, is in the library of the Rev. Mr Hawtrey of Eton College: obtained of Messrs. Payne and Foss.] [132] When I was at Paris in the year 1819, I strove hard to obtain from Messrs. Debure the copy of this work, UPON VELLUM, which they had purchased at the sale of the Macarthy Library. But it was destined for the Royal Library, and is described in the _Cat. des Livres Imp. sur Vélin_, vol. i. p. 263. [133] [Twenty-eight years have passed away since I kept my terms at Lincoln's Inn with a view of being called to THE BAR; and at this moment I have a perfect recollection of the countenances and manner of Messrs. Bearcroft, Erskine, and Mingay,--the pitted champions of the King's Bench--whom I was in the repeated habit of attending within that bustling and ever agitated arena. Their wit, their repartee--the broad humour of Mingay, and the lightning-like quickness of Erskine, with the more caustic and authoritative dicta of Bearcroft--delighted and instructed me by turns. In the year 1797 I published, in one large chart, an _Analysis of the first volume of Blackstone's Commentaries_--called THE RIGHTS OF PERSONS. It was dedicated to Mr. (afterwards Lord) Erskine; and published, as will be easily conceived, with more zeal than discretion. I got out of the scrape by selling the copper plate for 50 shillings, after having given 40 guineas for the engraving of the Analysis. Some fifty copies of the work were sold, and 250 were struck off. Where the surplus have lain, and rotted, I cannot pretend to conjecture: but I know it to be a VERY RARE production!] [134] [So in the preceding Edition. He who writes notes on his own performances after a lapse of ten years, will generally have something to add, and something to correct. Of the above names, the FIRST was afterwards attached to the _Master of the Rolls_, and to a _Peerage_: with the intervening honour of having been _Chief Justice of the Common Pleas_. My admiration of this rapid elevation in an honourable profession will not be called singular; for, after an acquaintance of twenty years with Lord Gifford, I can honestly say, that, while his reputation as a Lawyer, and his advancement in his profession, were only what his friends predicted, his character as a MAN continued the same:--kind hearted, unaffected, gentle, and generous. He died, 'ere he had attained his 48th year, in 1826.] LETTER XIV. BAYEUX. CATHEDRAL. ORDINATION OF PRIESTS AND DEACONS. CRYPT OF THE CATHEDRAL. _Bayeux, May 16_, 1818. Two of the most gratifying days of my Tour have been spent at this place. The Cathedral (one of the most ancient religious places of worship in Normandy)[135] has been paced with a reverential step, and surveyed with a careful eye. That which scarcely warmed the blood of Ducarel has made my heart beat with an increased action; and although this town be even dreary, as well as thinly peopled, there is that about it which, from associations of ideas, can never fail to afford a lively interest to a British antiquary. The Diligence brought me here from Caen in about two hours and a half. The country, during the whole route, is open, well cultivated, occasionally gently undulating, but generally denuded of trees. Many pretty little churches, with delicate spires, peeped out to the right and left during the journey; but the first view of the CATHEDRAL of BAYEUX put all the others out of my recollection. I was conveyed to the _Hôtel de Luxembourg_, the best inn in the town, and for a wonder rather pleasantly situated. Mine hostess is a smart, lively, and shrewd woman; perfectly mistress of the art and craft of innkeeping, and seems to have never known sorrow or disappointment. Knowing that Mr. Stothard, Jun. had, the preceding year, been occupied in making a fac-simile of the "famous tapestry" for our Society of Antiquaries, I enquired if mine hostess had been acquainted with that gentleman: "Monsieur," "je le connois bien; c'est un brave homme: il demeura tout près: aussi travailla-t-il comme quatre diables!" I will not disguise that this eulogy of our amiable countryman[136] pleased me "right well"--though I was pretty sure that such language was the current (and to me somewhat _coarse_) coin of compliment upon all occasions: and instead of "vin ordinaire" I ordered, rather in a gay and triumphant manner, "une bouteille du vin de Beaune"--"Ah! ça," (replied the lively landlady,) "vous le trouverez excellent, Monsieur, il n'y a pas du vin comme le vin de Beaune." Bespeaking my dinner, I strolled towards the cathedral. There is, in fact, no proper approach to this interesting edifice. The western end is suffocated with houses. Here stands the post-office; and with the most unsuspecting frankness, on the part of the owner, I had permission to examine, with my own hands, within doors, every letter--under the expectation that there were some for myself. Nor was I disappointed. But you must come with me to the cathedral: and of course we must enter together at the western front. There are five porticos: the central one being rather large, and the two, on either side, comparatively small. Formerly, these were covered with sculptured figures and ornaments; but the Calvinists in the sixteenth, and the Revolutionists in the eighteenth century, have contrived to render their present aspect mutilated and repulsive in the extreme. On entering, I was struck with the two large transverse Norman arches which bestride the area, or square, for the bases of the two towers. It is the boldest and finest piece of masonry in the whole building. The interior disappointed me. It is plain, solid, and divested of ornament. A very large wooden crucifix is placed over the screen of the choir, which has an effect--of its kind: but the monuments, and mural ornaments, scarcely deserve mention. The richly ornamented arches, on each side of the nave, springing from massive single pillars, have rather an imposing effect: above them are Gothic ornaments of a later period, but too thickly and injudiciously applied. Let me now suppose that the dinner is over, and the "vin de Beaune" approved of--and that on a second visit, immediately afterwards, there is both time and inclination for a leisurely survey. On looking up, upon entering, within the side aisle to the left, you observe, with infinite regret, a dark and filthy green tint indicative of premature decay--arising from the lead (of that part of the roof,) having been stript for the purpose of making bullets during the Revolution. The extreme length of the interior is about 320 English feet, by 76 high, and the same number of feet in width. The transepts are about 125 feet long, by 36 wide. The western towers, to the very top of the spires, are about 250 English feet in height. One of the most curious objects in the Cathedral, is the CRYPT; of which, singularly enough, all knowledge had been long lost till the year 1412. The circumstance of its discovery is told in the following inscription, cut in the Gothic letter, upon a brass plate, and placed just above the southern entrance: _En lan mil quatre cens et douze Tiers iour d'Auril que pluye arrouse Les biens de la terre, la journee Que la Pasques fut celebree Noble homme et Reverend Pere Jehan de Boissey, de'la Mere Eglise de Bayeux Pasteur Rendi l'ame a son Createur Et lors enfoissant la place Devant la grand Autel de grace Trova l'on la basse Chapelle Dont il n'avoit ete nouvelle Ou il est mis en sepulture Dieu ueuille avoir son ame en cure. Amen_. It was my good fortune to visit this crypt at a very particular juncture. The day after my arrival at Bayeux, there was a grand _Ordination_. Before I had quitted my bed, I heard the mellow and measured notes of human voices; and starting up, I saw an almost interminable procession of priests, deacons, &c., walking singly behind each other, in two lines, leaving a considerable space between them. They walked bareheaded, chanting, with a book in their hands; and bent their course towards the cathedral. I dressed quickly; and, dispatching my breakfast with equal promptitude, pursued the same route. On entering the western doors, thrown wide open, I shall never forget the effect produced by the crimson and blue draperies of the Norman women:--a great number of whom were clustered, in groups, upon the top of the screen, about the huge wooden crucifix;--witnessing the office of ordination going on below, in the choir. They seemed to be suspended in the air; and considering the piece of sculpture around which they appeared to gather themselves--with the elevation of the screen itself--it was a combination of objects upon which the pencil might have been exercised with the happiest possible result. An ordination in a foreign country, and especially one upon such an apparently extensive scale, was, to a professional man, not to be slighted; and accordingly I determined upon making the most of the spectacle before me. Looking accidentally down my favourite crypt, I observed that some religious ceremony was going on there. The northern grate, or entrance, being open, I descended a flight of steps, and quickly became an inmate of this subterraneous abode. The first object that struck me was, the warm glow of day light which darted upon the broad pink cross of the surplice of an officiating priest: a candle was burning upon the altar, on each side of him: another priest, in a black vesture, officiated as an assistant; and each, in turn, knelt, and bowed, and prayed ... to the admiration of some few half dozen casual yet attentive visitors--while the full sonorous chant, from the voices of upwards of one hundred and fifty priests and deacons, from the choir above, gave a peculiar sort of solemnity to the mysterious gloom below. I now ascended; and by the help of a chair, took a peep at the ceremony through the intercolumniations of the choir: my diffidence, or rather apprehension of refusal, having withheld me from striving to gain admittance within the body. But my situation was a singularly good one: opposite the altar. I looked, and beheld this vast clerical congregation at times kneeling, or standing, or sitting: partially, or wholly: while the swell of their voices, accompanied by the full intonations of the organ, and the yet more penetrating notes of the _serpent_, seemed to breathe more than earthly solemnity around. The ceremony had now continued full two hours; when, in the midst of the most impressive part of it, and while the young candidates for ordination were prostrate before the high altar (the diapason stop of the organ, as at Dieppe,[137] sending forth the softest notes) the venerable Bishop placed the glittering mitre (apparently covered with gold gauze) upon his head, and with a large gilt crosier in his right hand, descended, with a measured and majestic step, from the floor of the altar, and proceeded to the execution of the more mysterious part of his office. The candidates, with closed eyes, and outstretched hands, were touched with the holy oil--and thus became consecrated. On rising, each received a small piece of bread between the thumb and forefinger, and the middle and third fingers; their hands being pressed together--and, still with closed eyes, they retired behind the high altar, where an officiating priest made use of the bread to rub off the holy oil. The Bishop is an elderly man, about three score and ten; he has the usual sallow tint of his countrymen, but his eye, somewhat sunk or retired, beneath black and overhanging eyebrows, is sharp and expressive. His whole mien has the indication of a well-bred and well-educated gentleman. When he descended with his full robes, crosier, and mitre, from the high altar, me-thought I saw some of the venerable forms of our WYKEHAMS and WAYNEFLETES of old--commanding the respect, and receiving the homage, of a grateful congregation! At the very moment my mind was deeply occupied by the effects produced from this magnificent spectacle, I strolled into _Our Lady's Chapel_, behind the choir, and beheld a sight which converted seriousness into surprise--bordering upon mirth. Above the altar of this remotely situated chapel, stands the IMAGE OF THE VIRGIN with the infant Jesus in her arms. This is the usual chief ornament of Our Lady's Chapel. But what drapery for the mother of the sacred child!--stiff, starch, rectangularly-folded, white muslin, stuck about with diverse artificial flowers--like unto a shew figure in Brook Green Fair! This ridiculous and most disgusting costume began more particularly at Caudebec. Why is it persevered in? Why is it endured? The French have a quick sensibility, and a lively apprehension of what is beautiful and brilliant in the arts of sculpture and painting ... but the terms "joli," "gentil," and "propre," are made use of, like charity, to "cover a multitude of sins" ... or aberrations from true taste. I scarcely stopped a minute in this chapel, but proceeded to a side one, to the right, which yet affords proof of its pristine splendour. It is covered with gold and colours. Two or three supplicants were kneeling before the crucifix, and appeared to be so absorbed in their devotions as to be insensible of every surrounding object. To them, the particular saint (I have forgotten the name) to whom the little chapel was dedicated, seemed to be dearer and more interesting than the general voice of "praise and thanksgiving" with which the choir of the cathedral resounded. Before we quit the place you must know that fourscore candidates were ordained: that there are sixty clergy attached to the cathedral;[138] and that upwards of four hundred thousand souls are under the spiritual cognizance of the BISHOP OF BAYEUX. The treasures of the Cathedral were once excessive,[139] and the episcopal stipend proportionably large: but, of late years, things are sadly changed. The Calvinists, in the sixteenth century, began the work of havoc and destruction; and the Revolutionists in the eighteenth, as usual, put the finish to these devastations. At present, from a very respectable source of information, I learn that the revenues of the Bishop scarcely exceed 700_l_. per annum of our own money. I cannot take leave of the cathedral without commending, in strong terms of admiration, the lofty flying buttresses of the exterior of the nave. The perpendicular portions are crowned with a sculptured whole length figure, from which the semi-arch takes its spring; and are in much more elegant taste than any other part of the building. Hard by the cathedral stood formerly a magnificent EPISCOPAL PALACE. Upon this palace the old writers dearly loved to expatiate. There is now however nothing but a good large comfortable family mansion; sufficient for the purposes of such hospitality and entertainment as the episcopal revenues will afford. I have not only seen, but visited, this episcopal residence. In other words, my friend Pierre-Aimé Lair having promised to take his last adieu of me at Bayeux, as he had business with the Bishop, I met him agreeably to appointment at the palace; but his host, with a strong corps of visitors, having just sate down to dinner--it was only one o'clock--I bade him adieu, with the hope of seeing the Bishop on the morrow--to whom he had indeed mentioned my name. Our farewell was undoubtedly warm and sincere. He had volunteered a thousand acts of kindness towards me without any possible motive of self interest; and as he lifted up his right hand, exclaiming "adieu, pour toujours!" I will not dissemble that I was sensibly affected by the touching manner in which it was uttered ... and PIERRE AIMÉ LAIR shall always claim from me the warmest wishes for his prosperity and happiness.[140] I hurried back through the court-yard--at the risk of losing a limb from the ferocious spring of a tremendous (chained) mastiff--and without returning the salute of the porter, shut the gate violently, and departed. For five minutes, pacing the south side of the cathedral, I was lost in a variety of painful sensations. How was I to see the LIBRARY?--where could I obtain a glimpse of the TAPESTRY?--and now, that Pierre Aimé Lair was to be no more seen, (for he told me he should quit the place on that same evening) who was to stand my friend, and smooth my access to the more curious and coveted objects of antiquity? Thus absorbed in a variety of contending reflections, a tall figure, clad in a loose long great coat, in a very gracious manner approached and addressed me. "Your name, Sir, is D----?" "At your service, Sir, that is my name." "You were yesterday evening at Monsieur Pluquet's, purchasing books?" "I was, Sir." "It seems you are very fond of old books, and especially of those in the French and Latin languages?" "I am fond of old books generally; but I now seek more particularly those in your language--and have been delighted with an illuminated, and apparently coeval, MS. of the poetry of your famous OLIVIER BASSELIN, which..." "You saw it, Sir, at Monsieur Pluquet's. It belonged to a common friend of us both. He thinks it worth..." "He asks _ten louis d'or_ for it, and he shall have them with all my heart." "Sir, I know he will never part with it even for that large sum." I smiled, as he pronounced the word "large." "Do me the honour, Sir, of visiting my obscure dwelling, in the country--a short league from hence. My abode is humble: in the midst of an orchard, which my father planted: but I possess a few books, some of them curious, and should like to _read_ double the number I _possess_." I thanked the stranger for his polite attention and gracious offer, which I accepted readily.... "This evening, Sir, if you please." "With all my heart, this very evening. But tell me, Sir, how can I obtain a sight of the CHAPTER LIBRARY, and of the famous TAPESTRY?" "Speak softly, (resumed the unknown) for I am watched in this place. You shall see both--but must not say that Monsieur ---- was your adviser or friend. For the present, farewell. I shall expect you in the evening." We took leave; and I returned hastily to the inn, to tell my adventures to my companion. There is something so charmingly mysterious in this little anecdote, that I would not for the world add a syllable of explanation. Leaving you, therefore, in full possession of it, to turn and twist it as you please, consider me as usual, Yours. [135] [Mons. Licquet supposes the crypt and the arcades of the nave to be of the latter end of the eleventh century,--built by Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, and Brother of William the Conqueror; and that the other portions were of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. I have very great doubts indeed of any portion being of a date even so early as 1170.] [136] [Another demonstration of the fickleness and changeableness of all mundane affairs. Mr. Stothard, after a successful execution of his great task, has ceased to be among us. His widow published his life, with an account of his labours, in a quarto volume in 1823. Mr. Stothard's _Monumental Effigies_, now on the eve of completion, is a work which will carry his name down to the latest posterity, as one of the most interesting, tasteful, and accurate of antiquarian productions. See a subsequent note.] [137] See page 12, ante. [138] ["That was true, when M. Dibdin wrote his account; now, the number must be reduced one half." LICQUET, vol. ii. p. 121.] [139] Cette église ... étoit sans contredit une des plus riches de France en vases d'or, d'argent, et de pierreries; en reliques et en ornemens. Le procès-verbal qui avoit été dressé de toutes ses richesses, en 1476, contient un détail qui va presque à l'infini." Bezières, _Hist. Sommaire_, p. 51. [140] [But ONE letter has passed between us since this separation. That letter, however, only served to cement the friendliness of our feelings towards each other. M. Pierre Aimé Lair had heard of the manner in which his name had been introduced into these pages, and wished a copy of the work to be deposited in the public library at Caen. Whether it be so deposited, I have never learnt. In 1827, this amiable man visited England; and I saw him only during the time of an ordinary morning visit. His stay was necessarily short, and his residence was remote. I returned his visit--but he was away. There are few things in life more gratifying than the conviction of living in the grateful remembrance of the wise and the good; and THAT gratification it is doubtless my happiness to enjoy--as far as relates to Mons. PIERRE AIMÉ LAIR!] LETTER XV. VISIT NEAR ST. LOUP. M. PLUQUET, APOTHECARY AND BOOK-VENDER. VISIT TO THE BISHOP. THE CHAPTER LIBRARY. DESCRIPTION OF THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY. TRADE AND MANUFACTURE. Well, my good friend! the stranger has been visited: his library inspected: his services accepted: and his character partly unfolded. To this I must add, in the joy of my heart, (as indeed I mentioned slightly in my last) that both the Chapter LIBRARY and the famous TAPESTRY have been explored and examined in a manner, I trust, worthy of British curiosity. I hardly know what sort of order to adopt in this my second and last epistle from Bayeux; which will be semi-bibliomaniacal and semi-archaeological: and sit down, almost at random, to impart such intelligence as my journal and my memory supply. The last was almost a purely _ecclesiastical_ dispatch: as I generally first take off my cap to the towers and turrets of a cathedral. Now then for THE STRANGER! ... for it would be cruel to prolong the agony of expectation. Mr. Lewis having occupied himself, almost exclusively, with his pencil during the whole morning, I persuaded him to accompany me to _St. Loup_. After dinner we set out upon our expedition. It had rained in the interim, and every tree was charged with moisture as we passed them ... their blossoms exhaling sweets of the most pungent fragrance. The road ran in a straight line from the west front of the cathedral, which, on turning round, as we saw it irradiated by partial glimpses of sunshine, between masses of dark clouds, assumed a very imposing and venerable aspect. I should tell you, however, that the obliging Monsieur ---- came himself to the Hôtel de Luxembourg, to conduct us to his humble abode: for "humble" it is in every sense of the word. About two-thirds of the way thither, we passed the little church of _St. Loup_: a perfect Gothic toy of the XIIth century--with the prettiest, best-proportioned tower that can be imagined.[141] It has a few slight clustered columns at the four angles, but its height and breadth are truly pigmy. The stone is of a whitish grey. We did not enter; and with difficulty could trace our way to examine the exterior through the high grass of the church yard, yet _laid_ with the heavy rain. What a gem would the pencil of BLORE make of this tiny, ancient, interesting edifice! At length we struck off, down a lane slippery with moisture--when, opening a large swinging gate--"here (exclaimed our guide)--lived and died my father, and here his son hopes to live and die also. Gentlemen, yonder is my hermitage." It was a retirement of the most secluded kind: absolutely surrounded by trees, shrubs, hay-stacks, and corn-stacks--for Monsieur ---- hath a fancy for farming as well as for reading. The stair-case, though constructed of good hard Norman stone, was much worn in the middle from the frequent tread of half a century. It was also fatiguingly steep, but luckily it was short. We followed our guide to the left, where, passing through one boudoir-like apartment, strewn with books and papers, and hung with a parcel of mean ornaments called _pictures_, we entered a second--of which portions of the wainscoat were taken away, to shew the books which were deposited behind. Row after row, and pile upon pile, struck my wondering eye. Anon, a closet was opened--and there again they were stowed, "thick and threefold." A few small busts, and fractured vases, were meant to grace a table in the centre of the room. Of the books, it is but justice to say that _rarity_ had been sacrificed to _utility_. There were some excellent, choice, critical works; a good deal of Latin; some Greek, and a sprinkle of Hebrew--for Monsieur ---- is both a general and a sound scholar. On pointing to _Houbigant's Hebrew Bible_, in four folio volumes, 1753, "do you think this copy dear at fourteen francs?" said he!--"How, Sir," (replied I, in an exstacy of astonishment)--you mean to say fourteen _louis_?" "Not at all, Sir. I purchased it at the price just mentioned, nor do I think it too dear at that sum"--resumed he, in the most unsuspecting manner. I then told him, as a sort of balsamic consolation, that a late friend (I alluded to poor Mr. Ormerod) rejoiced on giving £12. for a copy by no means superior. "Ah, le bon Dieu!...." was his only observation thereupon. When about to return to the boudoir, through which we had entered, I observed with mingled surprise and pleasure, the four prettily executed English prints, after the drawings of the present Lady Spencer, called "_New Shoes"--"Nice Supper_" &c. Monsieur ---- was pleased at my stopping to survey them. "Ce sont là, Monsieur (observed he), les dames qui me font toujours compagnie:"--nor can you conceive the very soft and gentlemanly manner, accompanied by a voice subdued even to sadness of tone, with which he made this, and almost every observation. I found, indeed, from the whole tenor of his discourse, that he had a mind in no ordinary a state of cultivation: and on observing that a great portion of his library was THEOLOGICAL, I asked him respecting the general subjects upon which he thought and wrote. He caught hold of my left arm, and stooping (for he is much taller than myself, ... which he easily may be, methinks I hear you add...) "Sir, said he, I am by profession a clergyman ... although now I am designated as an _ex-Curé_. I have lived through the Revolution... and may have partaken of some of its irregularities, rather, I should hope than of its atrocities. In the general hue-and-cry for reform, I thought that our church was capable of very great improvement, and I think so still. The part I took was influenced by conscientious motives, rather than by a blind and vehement love of reform;... but it has never been forgiven or forgotten. The established clergy of the place do not associate with me; but I care not a farthing for that--since I have here (pointing to his books) the very best society in the world. It was from the persuasion of the clergy having a constantly-fixed eye upon me, that I told you I was watched ... when walking near the precincts of the cathedral. I had been seeking you during the whole of the office of ordination." In reply to my question about his _archaeological_ researches, he said he was then occupied in writing a disquisition upon the _Bayeux Tapestry_, in which he should prove that the Abbé de la Rue was wrong in considering it as a performance of the XIIth century. "He is your great antiquarian oracle"--observed I. "He has an over-rated reputation"--replied he--"and besides, he is too hypothetical." Monsieur ---- promised to send me a copy of his dissertation, when printed; and then let our friend N---- be judge "in the matter of the Bayeux Tapestry." From the open windows of this hermitage, into which the branches absolutely thrust themselves, I essayed, but in vain, to survey the surrounding country; and concluded a visit of nearly two hours, in a manner the most gratifying imaginable to honest feelings. A melancholy, mysterious air, seemed yet, however, to mark this amiable stranger, which had not been quite cleared up by the account he had given of himself. "Be assured (said he, at parting) that I will see you again, and that every facility shall be afforded you in the examination of the Bayeux Tapestry. I have an uncle who is an efficient member of the corporation." On my way homeward from this ramble, I called again upon M. Pluquet, an apothecary by profession, but a book lover and a book vender[142] in his heart. The scene was rather singular. Below, was his _Pharmacopeia_; above were his bed-room and books; with a broken antique or two, in the court-yard, and in the passage leading to it. My first visit had been hasty, and only as a whetter to the second. Yet I contrived to see from a visitor, who was present, the desirable MS. of the vulgar poetry of OLIVIER BASSELIN, of which I made mention to M.----. The same stranger was again present. We all quietly left the drugs below for drugs of a different description above--books being called by the ancients, you know, the "MEDICINE OF THE SOUL." We mounted into the bed-room. M. Pluquet now opened his bibliomaniacal battery upon us. "Gentlemen you see, in this room, all the treasures in the world I possess: my wife--my child--my books--my antiquities. "Yes, gentlemen, these are my treasures. I am enthusiastic, even to madness, in the respective pursuits into which the latter branch out; but my means are slender--and my aversion to my _business_ is just about in proportion to my fondness for _books_. Examine, gentlemen, and try your fortunes." I scarcely needed such a rhetorical incitement: but alas! the treasures of M. Pluquet were not of a nature quite to make one's fortune. I contrived, with great difficulty, to pick out something of a _recherché_ kind; and expended a napoleon upon some scarce little grammatical tracts, chiefly Greek, printed by Stephen at Paris, and by Hervagius at Basil: among the latter was the _Bellum grammaticale_ of E. Hessus. M. Pluquet wondered at my rejecting the folios, and sticking so closely to the duodecimos; but had he shewn me a good _Verard Romance_ or a _Eustace Froissart_, he would have found me as alert in running away with the one as the other. I think he is really the most enthusiastic book-lover I have ever seen: certainly as a Bibliopolist. We concluded a very animated conversation on all sides: and upon the whole, this was one of the most variously and satisfactorily spent days of my "voyage bibliographique." On the morrow, the mysterious and amiable M. ---- was with me betimes. He said he had brought a _basket of books_, from his hermitage, which he had left at a friend's house, and he entreated me to come and examine them. In the mean while, I had had not only a peep at the Tapestry, but an introduction to the mayor, who is chief magistrate for life: a very Cæsar in miniature. He received me stiffly, and appeared at first rather a priggish sort of a gentleman; observing that "my countryman, Mr. STOTHARD,[143] had been already there for six months, upon the same errand, and what could I want further?" A short reply served to convince him "that it would be no abuse of an extended indulgence if he would allow another English artist to make a fac-simile of a different description, from a very small portion only."[144] I now called upon the Abbé Fétit, with a view to gain admission to the _Chapter Library_, but he was from home--dining with the Bishop. In consequence, I went to the palace, and wrote a note in pencil to the Bishop at the porter's lodge, mentioning the name of M. Lair, and the object of my visit. The porter observed that they had just sat down to dinner--but would I call at three? It seemed an age to that hour; but at length three o'clock came, and I was punctual to the minute. I was immediately admitted into the premises, and even the large mastiff seemed to know that I was not an unexpected visitor--for he neither growled, nor betrayed any symptoms of uneasiness. In my way to the audience chamber I saw the crosier and robes which the Bishop had worn the preceding day, at the ceremony of ordination, lying picturesquely upon the table. The audience chamber was rather elegant, adorned with Gobeleins tapestry, quite fresh, and tolerably expressive: and while my eyes were fastened upon two figures enacting the parts of an Arcadian shepherd and shepherdess, a servant came in and announced the approach of MONSEIGNEUR l'EVEQUE. I rose in a trice to meet him, between doubt and apprehension as to the result. The Bishop entered with a sort of body-guard; being surrounded by six or seven canons who had been dining with him, and who peeped at me over his shoulder in a very significant manner. The flush of good cheer was visible in their countenances--but for their Diocesan, I must say that he is even more interesting on a familiar view. He wore a close purple dress, buttoned down the middle from top to bottom. A cross hung upon his breast. His countenance had lost nothing of its expression by the absence of the mitre, and he was gracious even to loquacity. I am willing to hope that I was equally prudent and brief in the specification of the object I had in view. My request was as promptly as it was courteously granted. "You will excuse my attending you in person; (said the Bishop) but I will instantly send for the Abbé Fétit, who is our librarian; and who will have nothing to do but to wait upon you, and facilitate your researches." He then dispatched a messenger for the Abbé Fétit, who quickly arrived with two more trotting after him--and enlivened by the jingling music of the library keys, which were dangling from the Abbé's fingers, I quickened my steps towards the Chapter Library. We were no sooner fairly within the library, than I requested my chief conductor to give me a brief outline of its history. "Willingly" he replied. "This library, the remains of a magnificent collection, of from 30, to 40,000 volumes, was originally placed in the Chapter-house, hard by. Look through the window to your left, and you will observe the ruins of that building. We have here about 5000 volumes: but the original collection consisted of the united libraries of defunct, and even of living, clergymen--for, during the revolution, the clergy, residing both in town and country, conveyed their libraries to the Chapter-house, as a protection against private pillage. Well! in that same Chapter-house, the books, thus collected, were piled one upon another, in layers, flat upon the floor--reaching absolutely, to the cieling ... and for ten long years not a creature ventured to introduce a key into the library door. The windows also were rigidly kept shut. At length the Revolutionists wanted lead for musket balls, and they unroofed the chapter-house with their usual dexterity. Down came the rain upon the poor books, in consequence; and when M. Moysant received the orders of government to examine this library, and to take away as many books as he wanted for the public library at Caen... he was absolutely horror-struck by the obstacles which presented themselves. From the close confinement of every door and window, for ten years, the rank and fetid odour which issued, was intolerable. For a full fortnight every door and window was left open for ventilation, ere M. Moysant could begin his work of selection. He selected about 5000 volumes only; but the infuriated Revolutionists, on his departure, wantonly plundered and destroyed a prodigious number of the remainder ... "et enfin (concluded he) vous voyez, Monsieur, ce qu'ils nous out laissé." You will give me credit for having listened to every word of such a tale. The present library, which is on the first floor, is apparently about twenty-five feet square. The Abbé made me observe the XIIIth. volume of the _Gallia Christiana_,[145] in boards, remarking that "it was of excessive rarity;" but I doubt this. On shewing me the famous volume of _Sanctius_ or _Sanches de Matrimonio Sacramentario_, 1607, folio, the Abbé observed--"that the author wrote it, standing with his bare feet upon marble." I was well pleased with a pretty _illuminated ms. Missal_, in a large thick quarto volume, with borders and pictures in good condition; but did not fail to commend right heartily the proper bibliomaniacal spirit of M. Fétit in having kept concealed the second volume of _Gering's Latin Bible_--being the first impression of the sacred text in France--when M. Moysant came armed with full powers to carry off what treasures he pleased. No one knows what has become of the first volume, but this second is cruelly imperfect--it is otherwise a fair copy. Upon the whole, although it is almost a matter of _conscience_, as well as of character, with me, to examine every thing in the shape of a library, and especially of a public one, yet it must be admitted that the collection under consideration is hardly worthy of a second visit: and accordingly I took both a first and a final view of it. From the Chapter I went to the COLLEGE LIBRARY. In other words, there is a fine public school, or Lycée, or college, where a great number of lads and young men are educated "according to art." The building is extensive and well-situated: the play-ground is large and commodious; and there is a well-cultivated garden "tempting with forbidden fruit." Into this garden I strolled in search of the President of the College, who was not within doors. I found him in company with some of the masters, and with several young men either playing, or about to play, at skittles. On communicating the object of my visit, he granted me an immediate passport to the library--"mais, Monsieur, (added he) ce n'est rien: il y avoit autrefois _quelque chose_: maintenant, ce n'est qu'un amas de livres très communs." I thanked him, and accompanied the librarian to the Library; who absolutely apologized all the way for the little entertainment I should receive. There was indeed little enough. The room may be about eighteen feet square. Of the books, a great portion was in vellum bindings, in wretched condition. Here was _Jay's Polyglot_, and the matrimonial _Sanctius_ again! There was a very respectable sprinkling of _Spanish and French Dictionaries_; some few not wholly undesirable _Alduses_; and the rare Louvain edition of _Sir Thomas More's Works_, printed in 1566, folio.[146] I saw too, with horror-mingled regret, a frightfully imperfect copy of the _Service of Bayeux Cathedral_, printed in the Gothic letter, UPON VELLUM. But the great curiosity is a small brass or bronze crucifix, about nine inches high, standing upon the mantlepiece; very ancient, from the character of the crown, which savours of the latter period of Roman art--and which is the only crown, bereft of thorns, that I ever saw upon the head of our Saviour so represented. The eyes appear to be formed of a bright brown glass. Upon the whole, as this is not a book, nor a fragment of an old illumination, I will say nothing more about its age. I was scarcely three quarters of an hour in the library; but was fully sensible of the politeness of my attendant, and of the truth of his prediction, that I should receive little entertainment from an examination of the books. It is high time that you should be introduced in proper form to the famous BAYEUX TAPESTRY. Know then, in as few words as possible, that this celebrated piece of Tapestry represents chiefly the INVASION OF ENGLAND by WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR, and the subsequent death of Harold at the battle of Hastings. It measures about 214 English feet in length, by about nineteen inches in width; and is supposed to have been worked under the particular superintendance and direction of Matilda, the wife of the Conqueror. It was formerly exclusively kept and exhibited in the Cathedral; but it is now justly retained in the Town Hall, and treasured as the most precious relic among the archives of the city. There is indeed every reason to consider it as one of the most valuable historical monuments which France possesses. It has also given rise to a great deal of archaeological discussion. Montfaucon, Ducarel, and De La Rue, have come forward successively--but more especially the first and last: and Montfaucon in particular has favoured the world with copper-plate representations of the whole. Montfaucon's plates are generally much too small: and the more enlarged ones are too ornamental. It is right, first of all, that you should have an idea how this piece of tapestry is preserved, or rolled up. You see it here, therefore, precisely as it appears after the person who shews it, takes off the cloth with which it is usually covered. [Illustration] The first portion of the needle-work, representing the embassy of Harold, from Edward the Confessor to William Duke of Normandy, is comparatively much defaced--that is to say, the stitches are worn away, and little more than the ground, or fine close linen cloth, remains. It is not far from the beginning--and where the colour is fresh, and the stitches are, comparatively, preserved--that you observe the PORTRAIT OF HAROLD.[147] You are to understand that the stitches, if they may be so called, are threads laid side by side--and bound down at intervals by cross stitches, or fastenings--upon rather a fine linen cloth; and that the parts intended to represent _flesh_ are left untouched by the needle. I obtained a few straggling shreds of the _worsted_ with which it is Worked. The colours are generally a faded or bluish green, crimson, and pink. About the last five feet of this extraordinary roll are in a yet more decayed and imperfect state than the first portion. But the designer of the subject, whoever he was, had an eye throughout to Roman art--as it appeared in its later stages. The folds of the draperies, and the proportions of the figures, are executed with this feeling. I must observe that, both at top and at bottom of the principal subject, there is a running allegorical ornament;[148] of which I will not incur the presumption to suppose myself a successful interpreter. The constellations, and the symbols of agriculture and of rural occupation, form the chief subjects of this running ornament. All the inscriptions are executed in capital letters of about an inch in length; and upon the whole, whether this extraordinary and invaluable relic be of the latter end of the XIth, or of the beginning or middle of the XIIth century[149] seems to me a matter of rather a secondary consideration. That it is at once _unique_ and important, must be considered as a position to be neither doubted nor denied, I have learnt, even here, of what importance this tapestry-roll was considered in the time of Bonaparte's threatened invasion of our country: and that, after displaying it at Paris for two or three months, to awaken the curiosity and excite the love of conquest among the citizens, it was conveyed to one or two _sea-port_ towns, and exhibited upon the stage as a most important _materiel_ in dramatic effect.[150] I think you have now had a pretty good share of Bayeux intelligence; only that I ought not to close my despatches without a word or two relating to habits, manners, trade, and population. This will scarcely occupy a page. The men and women here are thoroughly Norman. Stout bodies, plump countenances, wooden shoes, and the cauchoise--even to exceedingly _tall copies_ of the latter! The population may run hard upon ten thousand. The chief articles of commerce are _butter_ and _lace_. Of the former, there are two sorts: one, delicate and well flavoured, is made during winter and spring; put up into small pots, and carried from hence in huge paniers, not only to all the immediately adjacent parts of the country, but even to Paris--and is shipped in large quantities for the colonies. They have made as much as 120,000 lb. weight each season; but _Isigny_, a neighbouring village, is rather the chief place for its production. The other sort of butter, which is eaten by the common people, and which in fact is made throughout the whole of Lower Normandy, (the very butter, in short, in which the huge _alose_ was floating in the pot of the lively cuisiniere at Duclair[151]) is also chiefly made at Isigny; but instead of a delicate tint, and a fine flavour, it is very much the contrary: and the mode of making and transporting it accords with its qualities. It is salted, and packed in large pots, and even barrels, for the sake of exportation; and not less than 50,000 lb. weight is made each week. The whole profit arising from butter has been estimated at not less than two millions of francs: add to which, the circulation of specie kept up by the payment of the workmen, and the purchase of salt. As to _lace_, there are scarcely fewer than three thousand females constantly employed in the manufacture of that article. The mechanics here, at least some of them, are equally civil and ingenious. In a shop, in the high or principal street, I saw an active carpenter, who had lost the fore finger of his right hand, hard at work--alternately whistling and singing--over a pretty piece of ornamental furniture in wood. It was the full face of a female, with closely curled hair over the forehead, surmounted by a wreath of flowers, having side curls, necklace, and platted hair. The whole was carved in beech, and the form and expression of the countenance were equally correct and pleasing. This merry fellow had a man or two under him, but he worked double tides, compared with his dependants. I interrupted him singing a French air, perfectly characteristic of the taste of his country. The title and song were thus: TOU JOURS. TOUJOURS, toujours, je te serai fidèle; Disait Adolphe à chaque instant du jour; Toujours, toujours je t'aimerai, ma belle, Je veux le dire aux échos d'alentour; Je graverai sur l'écorce d'un hètre, Ce doux serment que le dieu des amours, Vient me dieter, en me faisant connaître; Que mon bonheur est de t'aimer toujours. _Bis_. Toujours, toujours, lui répondit Adèle, Tu régneras dans le fond de mon coeur; Toujours, toujours, comme une tourterelle, Je promets bien t'aimer avec ardeur; Je pense à toi quand le soleil se lève, J'y pense encore à la tin de son cours; Dans le sommeil si quelquefois je reve, C'est au bonheur de te chérir toujours. He was a carver on wainscoat wood: and if I would give myself "la peine d'entrer," he would shew me all sorts of curiosities. I secured a favourable reception, by purchasing the little ornament upon which he was at work--for a napoleon. I followed the nimble mechanic (ci-devant a soldier in Bonaparte's campaigns, from whence he dated the loss of his finger) through a variety of intricate passages below and up stairs; and saw, above, several excellently well finished pieces of furniture, for drawers or clothes-presses, in wainscoat wood:--the outsides of which were carved sometimes with clustered roses, surrounding a pair of fond doves; or with representations of Cupids, sheep, bows and arrows, and the various _emblemata_ of the tender passion. They would have reminded you of the old pieces of furniture which you found in your grandfather's mansion, upon taking possession of your estate: and indeed are of themselves no despicable ornaments in their way. I was asked from eight to twelve napoleons for one of these pieces of massive and elaborately carved furniture, some six or seven feet in height. In all other respects, this is a town deserving of greater antiquarian research than appears to have been bestowed upon it; and I cannot help thinking that its ancient ecclesiastical history is more interesting than is generally imagined. In former days the discipline and influence of its See seem to have been felt and acknowledged throughout nearly the whole of Normandy. Adieu. In imagination, the spires of COUTANCES CATHEDRAL begin to peep in the horizon. [141] [Mr. Cotman has an excellent engraving of it.] [142] He has since established himself at Paris, near the Luxembourg palace, as a _bookseller_; and it is scarcely three months since I received a letter from him, in which he told me that he could no longer resist the more powerful impulses of his heart--and that the phials of physic were at length abandoned for the volumes of Verard and of Gourmont. My friend, Mr. Dawson Turner, who knew him at Bayeux, has purchased books of him at Paris. [The preceding in 1820.] [143] Mr. Stothard, Jun. See page 221 ante. Mr. S's own account of the tapestry may be seen in the XIXth volume of the Archæologia. It is brief, perspicuous, and satisfactory. His fac-simile is one half the size of the original; executed with great neatness and fidelity; but probably the touches are a _little_ too artist-like or masterly. [144] [The facsimile of that portion of the tapestry which is supposed to be a portrait of Harold, and which Mr. Lewis, who travelled with me, executed, is perhaps of its kind, one of the most perfect things extant. In saying this, I only deliver the opinions of very many competent judges. It must however be noticed, that the Society of Antiquaries published the whole series of this exceedingly curious and ancient Representation of the Conquest of our Country by William I. Of this publication, the figures measure about four inches in height: but there is also a complete, and exceedingly successful fac-simile of the first two figures of this series--of the size of the originals (William I. and the Messenger coming to announce to him the landing of Harold in England) also published from the same quarter. The whole of these Drawings were from the pencil of the late ingenious and justly lamented THOS. STOTHARD, Esq. Draftsman to the Society of Antiquaries.] [145] A complete copy is of rarity in our own country, but not so abroad. It is yet, however, an imperfect work. [146] There have been bibliographers, and there are yet knowing book-collectors, who covet this edition in preference to the Leipsic impression of Sir T. More's Works of 1698; in folio. But this must proceed from sheer obstinacy; or rather, perhaps, from ignorance that the latter edition contains the _Utopia_--whereas in the former it is unaccountably omitted to be reprinted--which it might have been, from various previous editions. [147] This figure is introduced with pursuivants and dogs: but great liberties, as a nice eye will readily discern, have been taken by Montfaucon, when compared with the original--of which the fac-simile, in the previous edition of this work, may be pronounced to be PERFECT. [148] Something similar may be seen round the border of the baptismal vase of St. Louis, in Millin's _Antiquités Nationales_. A part of the border in the Tapestry is a representation of subjects from Aesop's Fables. [149] Of a monument, which has been pronounced by one of our ablest antiquaries to be "THE NOBLEST IN THE WORLD RELATING TO OUR OLD ENGLISH HISTORY," (See _Stukely's Palæog. Britan._ Number XI. 1746, 4to. p. 2-3) it may be expected that some archæological discussion should be here subjoined. Yet I am free to confess that, after the essays of Messrs. Gurney, Stothard, and Amyot, (and more especially that of the latter gentleman) the matter--as to the period of its execution--may be considered as well nigh, if not wholly, at rest. These essays appear in the XVIIIth and XIXth volumes of the Archæologia. The Abbé de la Rue contended that this Tapestry was worked in the time of the second Matilda, or the Empress Maud, which would bring it to the earlier part of the XIIth century. The antiquaries above mentioned contend, with greater probability, that it is a performance of the period which it professes to commemorate; namely, of the defeat of Harold at the battle of Hastings, and consequently of the acquiring of the Crown of England, by conquest, on the part of William. This latter therefore brings it to the period of about 1066, to 1088--so that, after all, the difference of opinion is only whether this Tapestry be fifty years older or younger, than the respective advocates contend. But the most copious, particular, and in my humble judgment the most satisfactory, disquisition upon the date of this singular historical monument, is entitled, "_A Defence of the early Antiquity of the Bayeux Tapestry_," by Thomas Amyot, Esq. immediately following Mr. Stothard's communication, in the work just referred to. It is at direct issue with all the hypotheses of the Abbé de la Rue, and in my opinion the results are triumphantly established. Whether the _Normans_ or the _English_ worked it, is perfectly a secondary consideration. The chief objections, taken by the Abbé, against its being a production of the XIth century, consist in, first, its not being mentioned among the treasures possessed by the Conqueror at his decease:--secondly, that, if the Tapestry were deposited in the church, it must have suffered, if not have been annihilated, at the storming of Bayeux and the destruction of the Cathedral by fire in the reign of Henry I., A.D. 1106:--thirdly, the silence of _Wace_ upon the subject,--who wrote his metrical histories nearly a century after the Tapestry is supposed to have been executed." The latter is chiefly insisted upon by the learned Abbé; who, which ever champion come off victorious in this archæological warfare, must at any rate receive the best thanks of the antiquary for the methodical and erudite manner in which he has conducted his attacks. At the first blush it cannot fail to strike us that the Abbé de la Rue's positions are all of a _negative_ character; and that, according to the strict rules of logic, it must not be admitted, that because such and such writers have _not_ noticed a circumstance, therefore that circumstance or event cannot have taken place. The first two grounds of objection have, I think, been fairly set aside by Mr. Amyot. As to the third objection, Mr. A. remarks--"But it seems that Wace has not only _not_ quoted the tapestry, but has varied from it in a manner which proves that he had never seen it. The instances given of this variation are, however, a little unfortunate. The first of them is very unimportant, for the difference merely consists in placing a figure at the _stern_ instead of the _prow_ of a ship, and in giving him a bow instead of a trumpet. From an authority quoted by the Abbé himself, it appears that, with regard to this latter fact, the Tapestry was right, and Wace was wrong; and thus an argument is unintentionally furnished in favour of the superior antiquity of the Tapestry. The second instance of variation, namely, that relating to Taillefer's sword, may be easily dismissed; since, after all, it now appears, from Mr. Stothard's examination, that neither Taillefer nor his sword is to be found in the Tapestry," &c. But it is chiefly from the names of ÆLFGYVA and WADARD, inscribed over some of the figures, that I apprehend the conclusion in favour of the Tapestry's being nearly a contemporaneous production, may be safely drawn. It is quite clear that these names belong to persons living when the work was in progress, or within the recollection of the workers, and that they were attached to persons of some particular note or celebrity, or rather perhaps of _local_ importance. An eyewitness, or a contemporary only would have introduced them. They would not have lived in the memory of a person, whether mechanic or historian, who lived a _century_ after the event. No antiquary has yet fairly appropriated these names, and more especially the second. It follows therefore that they would not have been introduced had they not been in existence at the time; and in confirmation of that of WADARD, it seems that Mr. Henry Ellis (Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries) "confirmed Mr. Amyot's conjecture on that subject, by the references with which he furnished him to _Domesday Book_, where his name occurs in no less than six counties, as holding lands of large extent under _Odo_, Bishop of Bayeux, the tenant in capite of those properties from the crown. That he was not a _guard_ or _centinel,_ as the Abbé de la Rue supposes, but that he held an _office of rank_ in the household of either William or Odo, seems now decided beyond a doubt." Mr. Amyot thus spiritedly concludes:--alluding to the successful completion of Mr. Stothard's copy of the entire original roll.--"Yet if the BAYEUX TAPESTRY be not history of the first class, it is perhaps something better. It exhibits general traits, elsewhere sought in vain, of the costume and manners of that age, which, of all others, if we except the period of the Reformation, ought to be the most interesting to us;--that age, which gave us a new race of monarchs, bringing with them new landholders, new laws, and almost a new language." Mr. Amyot has subjoined a specimen of his own poetical powers in describing "the Minstrel TAILLEFER'S achievements," in the battle of Hastings, from the old Norman lays of GAIMAR and WACE. I can only find room for the first few verses. The poem is entitled, THE ONSET OF TAILLEFER. Foremost in the bands of France, Arm'd with hauberk and with lance, And helmet glittering in the air, As if a warrior knight he were, Rush'd forth the MINSTREL TAILLEFER Borne on his courser swift and strong, He gaily bounded o'er the plain, And raised the heart-inspiring song (Loud echoed by the warlike throng) Of _Roland_ and of _Charlemagne_, Of _Oliver_, brave peer of old, Untaught to fly, unknown to yield, And many a Knight and Vassal bold, Whose hallowed blood, in crimson flood, Dyed _Roncevalle's_ field. [150] M. Denon told me, in one of my visits to him at Paris, that by the commands of Bonaparte, he was charged with the custody of this Tapestry for three months; that it was displayed in due form and ceremony in the Museum; and that after having taken a hasty sketch of it, (which he admitted could not be considered as very faithful) he returned it to Bayeux--as it was considered to be the peculiar property of that place. [151] See p. 109 ante. LETTER XVI. BAYEUX TO COUTANCES. ST. LO. THE CATHEDRAL OF COUTANCES. ENVIRONS. AQUEDUCT. MARKET-DAY. PUBLIC LIBRARY. ESTABLISHMENT FOR THE CLERGY. I send you this despatch close to the very Cathedral, whose spires, while yet at Bayeux, were already glimmering in the horizon of my imagination. The journey hither has been in every respect the most beautiful and interesting that I have experienced on _this_ side the Seine. I have seen something like undulating pasture-lands, wooded hills, meandering streams, and well-peopled villages; and an air of gaiety and cheerfulness, as well as the charm of picturesque beauty, has accompanied me from one cathedral to the other. I left the _Hôtel de Luxembourg_, at Bayeux, in a hired cabriolet with a pair of horses, about five in the afternoon, pushing on, at a smart trot, for ST. LO: which latter place I entered by moon-light. The road, as usual, was broad and bold, and at times undulating; flanked by beech, elm, and fir. As I just observed to you, I entered St. Lo by moon-light: the double towers of the great cathedral-like looking church having a grand and even romantic effect on approaching the town. An old castle, or rather a mere round-tower relic of one, appeared to the left, upon entering it. Passing the porch, or west end of the church, sometimes descending, at others ascending--midst close streets and overhanging roofs of houses, which cast a deep and solemn shadow, so as to shut out the moon beams for several hundred yards--and pursuing a winding route, I at length stopped at the door of the principal hôtel--_au Grand Coq!_ I laughed heartily when I heard its name; for with the strictest adherence to truth the adjective ought to have been _petit!_ However, the beds seemed to be in good order, and the coffee, with which I was quickly served, proved to be excellent. I strolled out, on a _reconnoissance_, about half-past nine; but owing to the deep shadows from the moon, arising from the narrowness of the streets, I could make out nothing satisfactory of the locale. The church, however, promised a rich treat on the morrow. As soon as the morrow came, I betook myself to the church. It was Sunday morning. The square, before the west front of the church, was the rendezvous both of townsmen and countryfolks: but what was my astonishment on observing in one corner of it, a quack doctor vending powder for the effectual _polishing of metals_. He had just beaten his drum, in order to collect his audience; and having got a good assemblage, was full of the virtues of his wares--which were pronounced to be also "equally efficacious for _complaints in the stomach!_" This man had been preceded, in the situation which he occupied, by a rival charlatan, on horseback, with _powders to kill rats_. The latter stood upon the same eminence, wearing a hat, jacket, and trowsers, all white--upon which were painted _black rats_ of every size and description; and in his harangue to the populace he took care to tell them that the rats, painted upon his dress, were _exact portraits_ of those which had been destroyed by means of his powders! This, too, on a Sunday morning. But remember Dieppe.[152] Having despatched my breakfast, I proceeded to survey the church, from which the town takes its name. First, for the exterior. The _attached_ towers demand attention and admiration. They are so slightly attached as to be almost separated from the body or nave; forming something of that particular character which obtains more decidedly at the cathedral of Coutances. I am not sure whether this portion of the church at St. Lo be not preferable, on the score of regularity and delicacy, to the similar portion at this latter place. The west front is indeed its chief beauty of exterior attraction; and it was once rendered doubly interesting by a profusion of alto-rilievo statues, which _disappeared_ during the commotions of the revolution. You ascend rather a lofty flight of steps to this entrance; and into which the whole town seemed to be pouring the full tide of its population. I suffered myself to be carried away along, with the rest, and almost startled as I entered the nave.[153] To the left, is a horribly-painted statue of the Virgin, with the child in her arms. The countenance is even as ugly, old, and repulsive, as the colouring is most despicable. I never saw such a daub: and what emotions, connected with tenderness of feeling, or ardour of devotion, can the contemplation of such an object excite? Surely the parish must have lost its wits, as well as its taste, to endure such a monstrous exhibition of art. As I advanced towards the choir, I took especial notice of the very singular, and in my opinion very ugly, formation both of the pillars and arches which sustain the roof. These pillars have _no capitals_, and the arch springs from them in the most abrupt manner. The arch itself is also very short and sharp pointed; like the tops of lancet windows. This mode obtains pretty generally here; but it should be noted that, in the right side aisle, the pillars have capitals. There is something unusual also in the row of pillars which spring up, flanking the choir, half way between the walls of the choir and the outward wall of the church. Nor am I sure that, destitute of a graceful, superadded arch, such massive perpendicular lines have either meaning or effect. Whether St. Lo were the _first_ church upon which the architect, who built both _that_ and the cathedral at _Coutances_, tried his talents--or whether, indeed, both churches be the effort of the same hand--I cannot pretend to determine; but, both outwardly and inwardly, these two churches have a strong resemblance to each other. Like many other similar buildings in France, the church of St. Lo is closely blocked up by surrounding houses. I prepared to leave St. Lo about mid-day, after agreeing for a large heavy machine, with a stout pair of horses, to conduct me to this place. There are some curious old houses near the inn, with exterior ornaments like those of the XVIth century, in our own country. But on quitting the town, in the road to Coutances,--after you come to what are called the old castle walls, on passing the outer gate--your eye is struck by rather an extraordinary combination of objects. The town itself seems to be built upon a rock. Above, below, every thing appears like huge scales of iron; while, at the bottom, in a serpentine direction, runs the peaceful and fruitful river _Aure_.[154] The country immediately around abounds in verdant pasture, and luxuriantly wooded heights. Upon the whole, our sortie from St. Lo, beneath a bright blue sky and a meridian sun, was extremely cheerful and gratifying. A hard road (but bold and broad, as usual) soon convinced me of the uncomfortableness of the conveyance; which, though roomy, and of rather respectable appearance, wanted springs: but the increasing beauty of the country, kept my attention perfectly occupied, till the beautiful cathedral, of COUTANCES caught my notice, on an elevated ground, to the left. The situation is truly striking, gaze from what quarter you will. From that of St. Lo, the immediate approach to the town is rendered very interesting from the broad _route royale_, lined with birch, hazel, and beech. The delicacy, or perhaps the peculiarity of the western towers of the cathedral, struck me as singularly picturesque; while the whole landscape was warmed by the full effulgence of an unclouded sun, and animated by the increasing numbers and activity of the _paysannes_ and _bourgeoises_ mingling in their sabbath-walks. Their bright dark _blues_ and _crimsons_ were put on upon the occasion; and nought but peace, tranquillity, and fruitfulness seemed to prevail on all sides. It was a scene wherein you might have placed Arcadian shepherds--worthy of being copied-by the pencil of Claude. We entered the town at a sharp trot. The postilion, flourishing his whip, and causing its sound to re-echo through the principal street, upon an ascent, drove to the chief inn, the _Hôtel d'Angleterre_, within about one hundred yards of the cathedral. Vespers were just over; and I shall not readily forget the rush and swarm of the clergy who were pouring out, from the north door, and covering the street with one extensive black mass. There could not have been fewer than two hundred young Ecclesiastics--thus returning from vespers to their respective homes; or rather to the College, or great clerical establishment, in the neighbourhood. This College, which has suffered from violence and neglect, through the revolution and Bonaparte's dynasty, is now beginning to raise its head in a very distinguished and commanding manner. It was a singular sight--to see such a crowd of young men, wearing cocked hats, black robes, and black bands with white edging! The women were all out in the streets; sitting before their doors, or quietly lounging or walking. The afternoon was indeed unusually serene. I ordered a late dinner, and set out for the cathedral. It was impossible to visit it at a more favorable moment. The congregation had departed; and a fine warm sun darted its rays in every surrounding direction. As I looked around, I could not fail to be struck with the singular arrangement of the columns round the choir: or rather of the double aisle between the choir and the walls, as at St. Lo; but here yet more distinctly marked. For a wonder, an _unpainted_ Virgin and child in Our Lady's chapel, behind the choir! There is nothing, I think, in the interior of this church that merits particular notice and commendation, except it be some beautifully-stained glass windows; with the arms, however, of certain noble families, and the regal arms (as at Bayeux) obliterated. There is a deep well in the north transept, to supply the town with water in case of fire. The pulpit is large and handsome; but not so magnificent as that at Bayeux. The organ is comparatively small. Perhaps the thirteenth century is a period sufficiently remote to assign for the completion of the interior of this church, for I cannot subscribe to the hypothesis of the Abbé de la Rue, that this edifice was probably erected by Tancred King of Sicily at the end of the eleventh, or at the beginning of the twelfth century. The exterior of this Church is indeed its chief attraction.[155] Unquestionably the style of architecture is very peculiar, and does not, as far as I know, extend beyond St. Lo, in Normandy. My great object was to mount upon the roof of the central tower, which is octagonal, containing fine lofty lancet windows, and commanding from its summit a magnificent panorama. Another story, one half the height of the present erection from the roof of the nave, would put a glorious finish to the central tower of NOTRE DAME at COUTANCES. As I ascended this central tower, I digressed occasionally into the lateral galleries along the aisles. To look down, was somewhat terrific; but who could help bewailing the wretched, rotten, green-tinted appearance of the roof of the north aisle?--which arose here, as at Bayeux, from its being stripped of the lead (during the Revolution) to make _bullets_--and from the rain's penetrating the interior in consequence. As I continued to ascend, I looked through the apertures to notice the fine formation and almost magical erection of the lancet windows of the western towers: and the higher I mounted, the more beautiful and magical seemed to be that portion of the building. At length I reached the summit; and concentrating myself a little, gazed around. The view was lovely beyond measure. Coutances lies within four miles of the sea, so that to the west and south there appeared an immense expanse of ocean. On the opposite points was an extensive landscape, well-wooded, undulating, rich, and thickly studded with farm-houses. _Jersey_ appeared to the north-west, quite encircled by the sea; and nearly to the south, stood out the bold insulated little rock of _Granville_, defying the eternal washing of the wave. Such a view is perhaps no where else to be seen in Normandy; certainly not from any ecclesiastical edifice with which I am acquainted. The sun was now declining apace, which gave a wanner glow to the ocean, and a richer hue to the landscape. It is impossible to particularize. All was exquisitely refreshing and joyous. The heart beats with a fuller pulsation as the eye darts over such an expansive and exhilarating scene! Spring was now clad in her deepest-coloured vesture: and a prospect of a fine summer and an abundant harvest infused additional delight into the beholder. Immediately below, stood the insulated and respectable mansion or Palace of _the Bishop_; in the midst of a formal garden--begirt with yet more formally clipt hedges. As the Prelate bore a good character, I took a pleasure in gazing upon the roof which contained an inhabitant capable of administering so much good to the community. In short, I shall always remember the view from the top of the central tower of the cathedral of Coutances! I quitted such a spot with reluctance; but time was flying away, and the patience of the cuisinier at the Hôtel d'Angleterre had already been put somewhat to the test. In twenty minutes I sat down to my dinner, in a bed-room, of which the furniture was chiefly of green silk. The females, even in the humblest walks, have generally fine names; and _Victorina_ was that of the fille de chambre at the Hôtel d'Angleterre. After dinner I walked upon what may be called the heights of Coutances; and a more delightful evening's walk I never enjoyed. The women of every description--ladies, housekeepers, and servant maids--were all abroad; either sitting upon benches, or standing in gossiping groups, or straying in friendly pairs. The comeliness of the women was remarkable; a certain freshness of tint, and prevalence of the embonpoint, reminded me of those of our own country; and among the latter, I startled--as I gazed upon a countenance which afforded but too vivid a resemblance to that of a deceased relation! Certainly the Norman women are no where more comely and interesting than they are at Coutances. The immediate environs of this place are beautiful and interesting: visit them in what direction you please. But there is nothing which so immediately strikes you as the remains of an _ancient Aqueduct_; gothicised at the hither end, but with three or four circular arches at the further extremity, where it springs from the opposite banks. Fine as was yesterday, this day has not been inferior to it. I was of course glad of an opportunity of visiting the market, and of mingling with the country people. The boulevards afforded an opportunity of accomplishing both these objects. Corn is a great article of trade; and they have noble granaries for depositing it. Apparently there is a great conflux of people, and much business stirring. I quickly perceived, in the midst of this ever-moving throng, my old friend the vender of rat-destroying powders--busied in the exercise of his calling, and covered with his usual vestment of white, spotted or painted with black rats. He found plenty of hearers and plenty of purchasers. All was animation and bustle. In the midst of it, a man came forward to the edge of a bank--below which a great concourse was assembled. He beat a drum, to announce that a packet boat, would sail to Jersey in the course of the afternoon; but the people seemed too intent upon their occupations and gambols to attend to him. I sat upon a bench and read one of the little chap books--_Richard sans peur_--which I had purchased the same morning. While absorbed in reflections upon the heterogeneous scene before me--and wishing, for some of my dearest friends in England to be also spectators of it--the notes of an hand-organ more and more distinctly stole upon my ear. They were soft; and even pleasing notes. On looking round, I observed that the musician preceded a person, who carried aloft a Virgin, with the infant Jesus, in wax; and who, under such a sign, exhorted the multitude to approach and buy his book-wares. I trust I was too thorough-bred a _Roxburgher_ to remain quiet on the bench: and accordingly starting up, and extending two sous, I became the fortunate purchaser of a little _chap_ article--of which my friend BERNARDO will for ever, I fear, envy me the possession! The vender of the tome sang through his nose, as the organ warbled the following _Cantique Spirituelle_. EN L'HONNEUR DU TRÈS-SAINT SACREMENT, _Qui est exposé dans la grande Eglise cathédrale de St. Pierre et St. Paul de Rome, pour implorer la miséricorde de Dieu_. Air: du Théodore Français. APPROCHEZ-VOUS, Chrétiens fidèles, Afin d'entendre réciter: Ecoutez tous avec un grand zèle, Avec ferveur et piété, Le voeu que nous avons fait, D'aller au grand Saint Jacques; Grace à Dieu nous l'avons accompli, Pour l'amour de Jésus Christ. Dieu créa le ciel et la terre, Les astres et le firmament; Il fit la brillante lumière, Ainsi que tous les autres élémens, Il a tiré tout du néant, Ce qui respire sur la terre: Rendons hommage à la grandeur De notre divin Créateur. [156]Tous les jours la malice augmente, Il y a très-peu de religion; La jeunesse est trop petulante, Les enfans jurent le saint Nom. Et comment s'étonneroit-on Si tant de fléaux nous tourmentent? Et si l'on voit tant de malheurs, C'est Dieu qui punit les pécheurs. Souvent on assiste à l'Office, C'est comme une manière d'acquit, Sans penser au saint Sacrifice; Ou s'est immolé Jesus Christ. On parle avec ses amis, De ses affaires temporelles, Sans faire aucune attention Aux mystères de la religion. Réfléchissez bien, pères et mères, Sur ces morales et vérités: C'est la loi de Dieu notre Père; C'est lui qui nous les a dictées: Il faut les suivre et les pratiquer, Tant que nous serons sur la terre. N'oublions point qu'après la mort, Nos ames existeront encore. The day was beginning to wear away fast, and I had not yet accomplished the favourite and indispensable object of visiting the PUBLIC LIBRARY. I made two unsuccessful attempts; but the third was fortunate. I had no letter of introduction, and every body was busied in receiving the visits of their country friends. I was much indebted to the polite attention of a stranger: who accompanied me to the house of the public librarian, his friend, who, not being at home, undertook the office of shewing me the books. The room in which they are contained--wholly detached--and indeed at a considerable distance from the cathedral--is about sixty English feet long, low, and rather narrow. It is absolutely crammed with books, in the most shameful state of confusion. I saw, for the first time in Normandy, and with absolute gladness of heart, a copy of the _Complutensian Polyglot Bible_; of which the four latter volumes, in vellum binding, were tall and good: the earlier ones, in calf, not so desirable. For the first time too, since treading Norman soil, I saw a tolerably good sprinkle of _Italian_ books. But the collection stands in dreadful need of weeding. Indeed, this observation may apply to the greater number of public collections throughout Normandy. I thanked my attendant for his patient and truly friendly attention, and took my leave. In my way homewards, I stopped at M. Joubert's, the principal bookseller, and "beat about the bush" for bibliographical game. But my pursuit was not crowned with success. M.J. told me, in reply to black-letter enquiries, that a Monsieur A----, a stout burly man, whom he called "un gros papa"--was in the habit of paying yearly visits from Jersey, for the acquisition of the same black-letter treasures; and that he swept away every thing in the shape of an ancient and _equivocal_ volume, in his annual rounds. I learnt pretty nearly the same thing from Manoury at Caen. M. Joubert is a very sensible and respectable man; and is not only "_Seul Imprimeur de Monseigneur l'Evêque"_ (PIERRE DUPONT-POURSAT), but is in fact almost the only bookseller worth consulting in the place. I bought of him a copy of the _Livre d'Eglise ou Nouveau Paroissien à l'usage du Diocèse de Coutances_, or the common prayer book of the diocese. It is a very thick duodecimo, of 700 double columned pages, printed in a clear, new, and extremely legible character, upon paper of sufficiently good texture. It was bound in sheepskin, and I gave only _thirty sous_ for it new. How it can be published at such a price, is beyond my conception. M. Joubert told me that the compositor or workman received 20 francs for setting up 36 pages, and that the paper was 12 francs per ream. In our own country, such prices would be at least doubled. It is impossible not to be struck here with the great number of YOUNG ECCLESIASTICS. In short, the establishment now erecting for them, will contain, when completed, (according to report) not fewer than four hundred. It is also impossible not to be struck with the extreme simplicity of their manners and deportment. They converse with apparent familiarity with the very humblest of their flock: and seem, from the highest to the lowest, to be cordially received. They are indifferent as to personal appearance. One young man carries a bundle of linen to his laundress, along the streets: another carries a round hat in his hand, having a cocked one upon his head: a kitchen utensil is seen in the hand of a third, and a chair, or small table, in that of a fourth. As these Clergymen pass, they are repeatedly saluted. Till the principal building be finished, many of them are scattered about the town, living quite in the upper stories. In short, it is the _profession_, rather than the particular candidate, which seems to claim the respectful attention of the townsmen. [152] See page 13 ante. [153] Mr. Cotman has a view of this church, in his work on Normandy. [154] I suspect that the "peaceful" waters of this stream were frequently died with the blood of Hugonots and Roman Catholics during the fierce contests between MONTGOMERY and MATIGNON, towards the latter half of the sixteenth century. At that period St. Lo was one of the strongest towns in the Bocage; and the very pass above described, was the avenue by which the soldiers of the captains, just mentioned, alternately advanced and retreated in their respective attacks upon St. Lo: which at length surrendered to the victorious army of the _latter_; the leader of the Catholics. SEGUIN: _Histoire Militaire des Bocains_; _p. 340-384_; 1816, _12 mo_. [155] The reader will be doubtless gratified by the artist-like view of this cathedral, by Mr. Cotman, in his _Architectural Antiquities of Normandy_. [156] It cannot fail to be noticed that the following sentences are in fact _rhyming verse_, though printed prose-wise. LETTER XVII. JOURNEY TO GRANVILLE. GRANVILLE. VILLE DIEU. ST. SEVER. TOWN AND CASTLE OF VIRE. _Vire_. Since my last, I have been as much gratified by the charms of nature and of art, as during any one period of my tour. Prepare, therefore, for miscellaneous intelligence; but such as, I will make bold to predict, cannot fail to afford you considerable gratification. Normandy is doubtless a glorious country. It is fruitful in its soil, picturesque in the disposition of its land and water, and rich in the architectural relics of "the olden time." It is also more than ordinarily interesting to an Englishman. Here, in the very town whence I transmit this despatch--within two hundred and fifty yards of the hotel of the _Cheval Blanc_, which just now encloses me within its granite walls--here, I say, lived and revelled the illustrious family of the DE VERES.[157] Hence William the Conqueror took the famous AUBREY DE VERE to be a spectator of his prowess, and a sharer of his spoils, in his decisive subjugation of our own country. It is from this place that the De Veres derive their name. Their once-proud castle yet towers above the rushing rivulet below, which turns a hundred mills in its course: but the warder's horn has long ceased to be heard, and the ramparts are levelled with the solid rock with which they were once, as it were, identified. I left Coutances with something approaching to reluctance; so completely _anglicised_ seemed to be the scenery and inhabitants. The evening was beautiful in the extreme: and upon gaining the height of one of the opposite hills, within about half a league of the town, on the high Granville route, I alighted--walked, stopped, and gazed, alternately, upon the lovely landscape around--the cathedral, in the mean time, becoming of one entire golden tint from the radiance of the setting sun. It was hardly possible to view a more perfect picture of its kind; and it served as a just counterpart to the more expansive scene which I had contemplated, but the preceding evening, from the heights of that same cathedral. The conducteur of the Diligence rousing me from my rapturous abstraction, I remounted, and descended into a valley; and ere the succeeding height was gained, a fainter light floated over the distant landscape ... and every object reminded me of the accuracy of those exquisite lines of Collins--descriptive of the approach of evening's ... gradual, dusky veil. For the first time, I had to do with a drunken conducteur. Luckily the road was broad, and in the finest possible condition, and perfectly well known to the horses. Every turning was successfully made; and the fear of upsetting began to give way to the annoyance experienced from the roaring and shouting of the conducteur. It was almost dark when I reached GRANVILLE--about twelve miles from Coutances; when I learnt that the horses had run six miles before they started with us. On entering the town, the road was absolutely solid rock: and considering what a _house_ we carried behind us (for so the body of the _diligence_ seemed) and the uncertain footing of the horses, in consequence of the rocky surface of the road, I apprehended the most sinister result. Luckily it was moon-light; when, approaching one of the sorriest looking inns imaginable, whither our conducteur (in spite of the better instructions of the landlord of the Hôtel d'Angleterre at Coutances) had persuaded us to go, the passengers alighted with thankful hearts, and bespoke supper and beds. Granville is fortified on the land side by a deep ravine, which renders an approach from thence almost impracticable. On every other side it is defended by the ocean, into which the town seems to have dropt perpendicularly from the clouds. At high water, Granville cannot be approached, even by transports, nearer than within two-thirds of a league; and of course at low water it is surrounded by an extent of sharply pointed rock and chalk: impenetrable--terrific--and presenting both certain failure and destruction to the assailants. It is a GIBRALTAR IN MINIATURE. The English sharply cannonaded it a few years since, but it was only a political diversion. No landing was attempted. In the time of the civil wars, and more particularly in those of the League, Granville, however, had its share of misery. It is now a quiet, dull, dreary, place; to be visited only for the sake of the view from thence, looking towards _St. Malo_, and _Mont St. Michel_; the latter of which I give up--as an hopeless object of attainment. Granville is in fact built upon rock;[158] and the houses and the only two churches are entirely constructed of granite. The principal church (I think it was the principal) is rather pretty within, as to its construction; but the decidedly gloomy effect given to it by the tint of the _granite_--the pillars being composed of that substance--renders it disagreeable to the eye. I saw several confessionals; and in one of them, the office of confession was being performed by a priest, who attended to two penitents at the same time; but whose physiognomy was so repulsively frightful, that I could not help concluding he was listening to a tale which he was by no means prepared to receive. An hour's examination of the town thoroughly satisfied me. There was no public conveyance to _Vire_, whither I intended immediately departing, and so I hired a voiture to be drawn by one sturdy Norman horse. To a question about springs, the conducteur replied that I should find every thing "très propre." Having paid the reckoning, I set my face towards VIRE. The day, for the season of the year, turned out to be gloomy and cold beyond measure: and the wind (to the east) was directly in my face. Nevertheless the road was one of the finest that I had seen in France, for breadth and general soundness of condition. It had all the characteristics, in breadth and straitness, of a Roman route; and as it was greatly undulating, I had frequently some gratifying glimpses of its bold direction. The surrounding country was of a quietly picturesque but fruitful aspect; and had my seat been comfortable, or after the fashion of those in my own country, my sensations had been more agreeable. But in truth, instead of _springs_, or any thing approximating to "très propre," I had to encounter a _hard plank_, suspended at the extremities, by a piece of leather, to the sides; and as the road was but too well bottomed, and the conveyance was open in front to the bitter blast of the east, I can hardly describe (as I shall never forget) the misery of this conveyance. Fortunately the first stage was _Ville Dieu_. Here I ordered a voiture and post horses: but the master of the Poste Royale, or rather of the inn, shook his head--"Pour les chevaux, vous en aurez des meilleurs: mais, pour la voiture il n'y en a pas. Tenez, Monsieur; venez voir." I followed, with miserable forebodings--and entering a shed, where stood an old tumble-down-looking phaeton--"la voilà, c'est la seule que je possède en ce moment"--exclaimed the landlord. It had never stirred from its position since the fall of last years' leaf. It had been--within and without--the roosting place for fowls and other of the feathered tribe in the farm yard; and although literally covered with the _evidences_ of such long and undisturbed possession, yet, as there was no appearance of rain, and as I discovered the wished for "_ressorts_" (or _springs_) I compromised for the repulsiveness of the exterior, and declared my intention of taking it onward. Water, brooms, brushes, and cloths, were quickly put in requisition; and two stately and well fed horses, which threatened to fly away with this slender machine, being fastened on, I absolutely darted forward at a round rattling gallop for _St. Sever_. Blessings ever wait upon the memory of that artisan who invented ... _springs_! The postilion had the perfect command of his horses, and he galloped, or trotted, or ambled, as his fancy--or rather our wishes--directed. The approach to our halting place was rather imposing. What seemed to be a monastery, or church, at St. Sever, had quite the appearance of Moorish architecture; and indeed as I had occasional glimpses of it through the trees, the effect was exceedingly picturesque. This posting town is in truth very delightfully situated. While the horses were being changed, I made our way for the monastery; which I found to be in a state rather of dilapidation than of ruin. It had, indeed, a wretched aspect. I entered the chapel, and saw lying, transversely upon a desk, to the left--a very clean, large paper, and uncut copy of the folio _Rouen Missal_ of 1759. Every thing about this deserted and decaying spot had a melancholy appearance: but the surrounding country was rich, wooded, and picturesque. In former days of prosperity--such as St. Sever had seen before the Revolution--there had been gaiety, abundance, and happiness. It was now a perfect contrast to such a state. On returning to the "_Poste Royale_" I found two fresh lusty horses to our voiture--but the postilion had sent a boy into the field to catch a _third_. Wherefore was this? The tarif exacted it. A third horse "réciproquement pour l'année"--parce qu'il faut traverser une grande montagne avant d'arriver à Vire"--was the explanatory reply. It seemed perfectly ridiculous, as the vehicle was of such slender dimensions and weight. However, I was forced to yield. To scold the postboy was equally absurd and unavailing: "parce que la tarif l'exigea." But the "montagne" was doubtless a reason for this additional horse: and I began to imagine that something magnificently picturesque might be in store. The three horses were put a-breast, and off we started with a phaeton-like velocity! Certainly nothing could have a more ridiculous appearance than my pigmy voiture thus conveyed by three animals--strong enough to have drawn the diligence. I was not long in reaching this "huge mountain," which provoked my unqualified laughter--from its insignificant size--and upon the top of which stands the town of VIRE. It had been a _fair_-day; and groups of men and women, returning from the town, in their blue and crimson dresses, cheered somewhat the general gloom of the day, and lighted up the features of the landscape. The nearer I approached, the more numerous and incessant were these groups. Vire is a sort of _Rouen_ in miniature--if bustle and population be only considered. In architectural comparison, it is miserably feeble and inferior. The houses are generally built of granite, and look extremely sombre in consequence. The old castle is yet interesting and commanding. But of this presently. I drove to the "_Cheval Blanc_," and bespoke, as usual, a late dinner and beds. The first visit was to the _castle,_ but it is right that you should know, before hand, that the town of Vire, which contains a population of about ten thousand souls, stands upon a commanding eminence, in the midst of a very beautiful and picturesque country called the BOCAGE. This country was, in former times, as fruitful in civil wars, horrors, and devastations, as the more celebrated Bocage of the more western part of France during the late Revolution. In short, the Bocage of Normandy was the scene of bloodshed during the Calvinistic or Hugonot persecution. It was in the vicinity of this town, in the parts through which I have travelled--from Caen hitherwards--that the hills and the dales rang with the feats of arms displayed in the alternate discomfiture and success of COLIGNY, CONDÉ, MONTMOGERY, and MATIGNON.[159] But for the Castle. It is situated at the extremity of an open space, terminated by a portion of the boulevards; having, in the foreground, the public library to the left, and a sort of municipal hall to the right: neither of them objects of much architectural consequence. Still nearer in the foreground, is a fountain; whither men, women, and children--but chiefly the second class, in the character of _blanchisseuses_--regularly resort for water; as its bason is usually overflowing. It was in a lucky moment that Mr. Lewis paid a visit to this spot; which his ready pencil transmitted to his sketch-book in a manner too beautiful and faithful not to be followed up by a finished design. I send you a portion of this prettily grouped picture; premising, that the woman to the right, in the foreground, begged leave purposely to sit--or rather stand--for her portrait. The artist, in a short time, was completely surrounded by spectators of his graphic skill. [Illustration] The "_Cheval Blanc_"--the name of the hotel at which I reside--should be rather called the "_Cheval Noir_;" for a more dark, dingy, and even dirty residence, for a traveller of any _nasal_ or _ocular_ sensibility, can be rarely visited. My bed room is hung with tapestry; which, for aught I know to the contrary, may represent the daring exploits of MONTGOMERY and MATIGNON: but which is so begrimed with filth that there is no decyphering the subjects worked upon it. On leaving the inn--and making your way to the top of the street--you turn to the left; but on looking down, again to the left, you observe, below you, the great high road leading to _Caen_, which has a noble appearance. Indeed, the manner in which this part of Normandy is intersected with the "_routes royales_" cannot fail to strike a stranger; especially as these roads run over hill and dale, amidst meadows, and orchards, equally abundant in their respective harvests. The immediate vicinity of the town is as remarkable for its picturesque objects of scenery as for its high state of cultivation; and a stroll upon the heights, in whatever part visited, will not fail to repay you for the certain disappointment to be experienced within the streets of the town. Portions of the scenery, from these heights, are not unlike those in Derbyshire, about Matlock. There is plenty of rock, of shrubs, and of fern; while another _Derwent_, less turbid and muddy, meanders below. Thus much for a general, but hasty sketch of the town of Vire. My next shall give you some detail of the _interior_ of a few of the houses, of which I may be said to have hitherto only contemplated the _roofs_. And yet I must not close my despatch without performing my promise about the CASTLE; of which indeed (as you will see by the subjoined miniature view) only a sort of ruinous shell remains. Its age may be a little towards the end of the thirteenth century. The stone is of a deep reddish tint: and although what remains is only a portion of the _keep_, yet I can never suppose it, even in its state of original integrity, to have been of very capacious dimensions. Its site is most commanding. [Illustration] [157] The reader will find the fullest particulars relating to this once-distinguished family, in _Halstead's Genealogical Memoirs of Noble Families, &c_.: a book it is true, of extreme scarcity. In lieu of it let him consult _Collin's Noble Families_. [158] [Mons. Licquet tells us, that in 1439, a Seigneur of Gratot, ceded the rock of Granville to an English Nobleman, on the day of St. John the Baptist, on receiving the homage of a hat of red roses. The Nobleman intended to build a town there; but Henry VI. dispossessed him of it, and built fortifications in 1440. Charles VII. in turn, dispossessed Henry; but the additional fortifications which he built were demolished by order of Louis XIV. &c.] [159] An epitomised account of these civil commotions will be found in the _Histoire Militaire des Bocains, par_ M. RICHARD SEGUIN; _a Vire_, 1816; 12mo. of which work, and of its author, some notice will be taken in the following pages. LETTER XVIII. BIBLIOGRAPHY. MONSIEUR ADAM. MONSIEUR DE LARENAUDIERE. OLIVIER BASSELIN. M. SÉGUIN. THE PUBLIC LIBRARY. It is a sad rainy day; and having no temptation to stir abroad, I have shut myself up by the side of a huge wood fire--(surrounded by the dingy tapestry, of which my last letter did not make very honourable mention) in a thoroughly communicative mood--to make you acquainted with all that has passed since my previous despatch. Books and the Bibliomania be the chief "burden of my present song!" You may remember, in my account of the public library at Caen, that some mention was made of a certain OLIVIER BASSELIN--whom I designated as the DRUNKEN BARNABY _of Normandy_. Well, my friend--I have been at length made happy, and comforted in the extreme, by the possession of a copy of the _Vaudevires_ of that said Olivier Basselin--and from the hands, too, of one of his principal editors ... Monsieur Lanon de Larenaudiere, Avocat, et Maire, de Tallevende-le-Petit. This copy I intend (as indeed I told the donor) for the beloved library at Althorp. But let me tell my tale my own way. Hard by the hotel of the _Cheval Blanc_, (the best, bad as it is--and indeed the only one in the town) lives a printer of the name of ADAM. He is the principal, and the most respectable of his brethren in the same craft. After discoursing upon sundry desultory topics--and particularly examining the _books of Education_, among which I was both surprised and pleased to find the _Distichs of Muretus_[160]--I expressed my regret at having travelled through so many towns of Normandy without meeting with one single copy of the _Vaudevires of Olivier Basselin_ for sale. "It is not very surprising, Sir, since it is a privately printed book, and was never intended for sale. The impression too is very limited. You know, Sir, that the book was published here--and--" "Then I begin to be confident about obtaining it"--replied I. "Gently, Sir;--" resumed Monsieur Adam--"it is not to be bought, even here. But do you know no one...?" "Not a creature." "Well, Sir, take courage. You are an Englishman. One of its principal editors--a very gallant _Bibliomaniac_--who is a great collector and lover of the literature of your country--(here I picked up courage and gaiety of heart) lives in this town. He is President of the Tribunal. Go to him." Seeing me hesitate, in consequence of not having a letter of introduction--"Ce n'est rien (said he) allez tout-droit. Il aime vos compatriotes; et soyez persuadé de l'accueil le plus favorable." Methought Monsieur Adam spake more eloquently than I had yet heard a Norman speak.[161] In two seconds I quitted his shop, (promising to return with an account of my reception) and five minutes brought me into the presence of Monsieur Lanon de Larenaudiere, Président du Tribunal, &c. It is not possible for me to convey to you a notion of the warmth, cordiality, and joyousness of heart, that marked the reception which this gentleman instantly gave me: and I will frankly own that I was as much "abashed" as ever our ancient friend Caxton had been--in the presence of his patroness the Duchess of Burgundy. I followed my new bibliomaniacal acquaintance rapidly up stairs; and witnessed, with extreme pleasure, a few bundles of books (some of them English) lying upon the window seats of the first landing-place; much after the fashion followed in a certain long, rambling, and antique residence, not quite three quarters of a mile from the towers of Westminster Abbey. On gaining the first floor, mine host turned the keys of the doors of two contiguous rooms, and exclaimed, "VOILA MA BIBLIOTHEQUE!" The air of conscious triumph with which these words were uttered, delighted me infinitely; but my delight was much increased on a leisurely survey of one of the prettiest, most useful, and commendable collections of books, chiefly in the department of the Belles-Lettres, which I had ever witnessed. Monsieur de Larenaudiere has a library of about 9000 volumes, of which _eight hundred are English_. But the owner is especially fond of poetical archaeology; in other words, of collecting every work which displays the progress of French and English poetry in the middle and immediately following ages; and talks of _Trouveurs_ and _Troubadours_ with an enthusiasm approaching to extacy. Meanwhile he points his finger to our Warton, Ellis, Ritson, and Southey; tells you how dearly he loves them; but yet leads you to conclude that he _rather_ prefers _Le Grand, Ginguené, Sismondi_, and _Raynouard_. Of the venerable living oracle in these matters, the Abbé de la Rue, he said he considered him as "un peu trop systématique." In short, M. de Larenaudiere has almost a complete critical collection, in our tongue, upon the subject of old poetry; and was most anxious and inquisitive about the present state of cultivation of that branch of literature in England: adding, that he himself meditated a work upon the French poetry of the XIIth and XIIIth centuries. He said he thought his library might be worth about 25,000 francs: nor did I consider such a valuation overcharged. He talks rapidly, earnestly, and incessantly; but he talks well: and spoke of the renown of a certain library in _St. James's Place_, in a manner which could not fail to quicken the pulse and warm the blood of its Librarian. I concluded an interview of nearly two hours, by his compliance with my wish to dine with me on the following day: although he was quite urgent in bargaining for the previous measure of my tasting his _pôtage_ and _vol au vent_. But the shortness and constant occupation of my time would not allow me to accede to it. M. de Larenaudiere then went to a cabinet-like cupboard, drew forth an uncut copy, stitched in blue spotted paper, of his beloved _Vaudevires_ of OLIVIER BASSELIN:[162] and presenting it to me, added "Conservez le, pour l'amour de moi." You may be assured that I received such a present in the most gracious manner I was capable of--but instantly and honestly added--"permettez qu'il soit déposé dans la bibliothèque de Milord S...? "C'est la même chose"--rejoined he; and giving me the address of the public librarian, we separated in the most cordial manner till the morrow. I posted back to Monsieur Adam, the printer and bookseller, and held aloft my blue-covered copy of the _Vaudevires_ as an unquestionable proof of the successful result of my visit to Monsieur La Renaudiere. Leaving the precious cargo with him, and telling him that I purposed immediately visiting the public library, he seemed astonished at my eagerness about books--and asked me if I had ever _published_ any thing _bibliographical_? "Car enfin, Monsieur, la pluspart des _Virois_ ne savent rien de la litérature angloise"--concluded he ... But I had just witnessed a splendid exception to this sweeping clause of censure. I then sought the residence of the Abbé Du MORTUEUX, the public librarian. That gentleman was from home, at a dinner party. I obtained information of the place where he might be found; and considering _two_ o'clock to be rather too early an hour (even in France) to disturb a gentleman during the exercise of so important a function, I strolled in the neighbourhood of the street, where he was regaling, for a full hour and half: when, at the expiration of that time, I ventured to knock at the door of a very respectable mansion, and to enquire for the bibliographical Abbé. "He is here, Sir, and has just done dinner. May I give him your name?" "I am a stranger: an Englishman; who, on the recommendation of Monsieur Larenaudiere, wishes to see the public library. But I will call again in about an hour." "By no means: by no means: the Abbé will see you immediately." And forthwith appeared a very comely, tall, and respectable-looking gentleman, with his hair en plein costume, both as to form and powder. Indeed I had rarely before witnessed so prepossessing a figure. His salutation and address were most gracious and winning; and he told me that I had nothing to do but to accompany him to the place which I wished to visit. Without even returning to his friends, he took his hat--and in one minute, to my surprise, I found myself in the street with the Abbé de Mortueux, in the high way to the PUBLIC LIBRARY. In our way thither our discourse was constant and unrestrained. "You appear here; Monsieur l'Abbé, to be partial to literature;... but allow me first to congratulate you on the beautiful environs of your town." "For literature in general, we are pretty well disposed. In regard to the beauties of the immediate neighbourhood of Vire, we should be unworthy inhabitants indeed, if we were not sensible of them." In five minutes we reached the Library. The shutters of the room were fastened, but the worthy Abbé opened them in a trice; when I saw, for the first time in Normandy, what appeared to be a genuine, old, unmutilated, unpillaged library. The room could be scarcely more than twenty-two feet square. I went instantly to work, with eyes and hands, in the ardent hope, and almost full persuasion, of finding something in the shape of a good old Greek or Roman Classic, or French Chronicle, or Romance. But, alas, I looked, and handled the tomes in vain! The history of the library is this:--The founder was a Monsieur PICHON; who, on being taken prisoner by the English, at the capture of Louisburg in 1758, resided a long time in England under the name of TYRREL, and lived in circumstances of respectability and even of opulence. There--whether on the dispersion of the libraries of our Meads, Foulkes', and Rawlinsons, I know not--he made his collection; took his books over with him to Jersey, where he died in 1780: and bequeathed them, about 3000 in number, to his native town of Vire. M. du Mortueux, who gave me these particulars, has drawn up a little memorial about Pichon. His portrait, executed by an English artist, (whilst he lived among us) adorns the library; with which I hope it will go down to a distant and grateful posterity. The colouring of this portrait is faded: but it is evident that Monsieur Pichon had an expressive and sensible physiognomy. Wonderful to relate, this collection of books was untouched during the Revolution; while the neighbouring library of the _Cordeliers_ was ransacked without mercy. But I regret to say that the books in the cupboards are getting sadly damp. Do not expect any thing very marvellous in the details of this collection; The old-fashioned library doors, of wood, are quite in character with what they protect. Among the earlier printed books, I saw a very bad copy of _Sweynheym and Pannartz's_ edition of the _De Civitate Dei_ of St. Austin, of the date of 1470; and a large folio of _Gering's_ impression of the _Sermons of Leonard de Utino_ printed about the year 1478. This latter was rather a fine book. A little black-letter Latin Bible by Froben, of the date of 1495, somewhat tempted me; but I could not resist asking, in a manner half serious and half jocose, whether a napoleon would not secure me the possession of a piquant little volume of black-letter tracts, printed by my old friend Guido Mercator?[163] The Abbé smiled: observing--"mon ami, on fait voir les livres ici; on les lit même: mais on ne les vend pas." I felt the force of this pointed reply: and was resolved never again to ask an Ecclesiastic to part with a black-letter volume, even though it should be printed by "my old friend Guido Mercator." Seeing there was very little more deserving of investigation, I enquired of my amiable guide about the "LIBRARY OF THE CORDELIERS," of which he had just made mention. He told me that it consisted chiefly of canon and civil law, and had been literally almost destroyed: that he had contrived however to secure a great number of "rubbishing theological books," (so he called them!) which he sold for _three sous_ a piece--and with the produce of which he bought many excellent works for the library. I should like to have had the sifting of this "theological rubbish!" It remained only to thank the Abbé most heartily for his patient endurance of my questions and searches, and particularly to apologise for bringing him from his surrounding friends. He told me, beginning with a "soyez tranquille," that the matter was not worth either a thought or a syllable; and ere we quitted the library, he bade me observe the written entries of the numbers of students who came daily thither to read. There were generally (he told me) from fifteen to twenty "hard at it"--and I saw the names of not fewer than _ninety-two_ who aspired to the honour and privilege of having access to the BIBLIOTHECA PICHONIANA. For the third time, in the same day, I visited Monsieur Adam; to carry away, like a bibliomaniacal Jason, the fleece I had secured. I saw there a grave, stout gentleman--who saluted me on my entrance, and who was introduced to me by Monsieur A. by the name of SÉGUIN. He had been waiting (he said) full three quarters of an hour to see me, and concluded by observing, that, although a man in business, he had aspired to the honour of authorship. He had written, in fact, two rather interesting--but wretchedly, and incorrectly printed--duodecimo volumes, relating to the BOCAGE,[164] in the immediate vicinity of Vire; and was himself the sole vender and distributer of his publications. On my expressing a wish to possess these books, he quitted the premises, and begged I would wait his return with a copy or two of them. While he was gone, M. Adam took the opportunity of telling me that he was a rich, respectable tradesman; but that, having said some severe things of the manufactures of Vire in his _first_ publication,[165] relating to the _civil_ history of the Bocains, his townsmen sharply resented what they considered as reflections thrown out against them; and M. Séguin was told that perhaps his personal safety was endangered ... He wanted not a second hint--but fled from home with precipitancy: and in his absence the populace suspended his effigy, and burnt it before the door of his house. This, however, did not _cool_ the ardour of authorship in M. Séguin. He set about publishing his _military_ history of the Bocains; and in the introductory part took occasion to retort upon the violence of his persecutors. To return to M. Séguin. In about ten minutes he appeared, with two copies in his hand--which I purchased, I thought dearly, at five francs each volume; or a napoleon for the four books. After the adventures of this day, I need hardly tell you that I relished a substantial dinner at a late hour, and that I was well satisfied with Vire. Yesterday M. de Larenaudiere made good his engagement, and dined with me at five, in the salle à manger. This is a large inn; and if good fare depended upon the number and even elegance of female cooks, the traveller ought to expect the very best at the _Cheval Blanc_. The afternoon was so inviting--and my guest having volunteered his services to conduct me to the most beautiful points of view in the immediate neighbourhood--that we each seemed to vie with the other in quickly dispatching what was placed before us; and within thirty-five minutes, from the moment of sitting down, we were in the outskirts of Vire. Never shall I forget that afternoon's ramble. The sun seemed to become more of a golden hue, and the atmosphere to increase in clearness and serenity. A thousand little songsters were warbling in the full-leaved branches of the trees; while the mingled notes of the _blanchisseuses_ and the milk-maids, near the banks of the rippling stream below, reached us in a sort of wild and joyous harmony--as we gazed down from the overhanging heights. The meadows were spotted with sheep, and the orchards teemed with the coming fruit. You may form some notion of the value of this rich and picturesque scenery, when I tell you that M. de Larenaudiere possesses land, in the immediate vicinity of Vire, which lets per acre at the rate of _6l._ _6s._ English. My guide was all gaiety of heart, and activity of step. I followed him through winding paths and devious tracks, amidst coppice-wood and fern--not however till I had viewed, from one particular spot upon the heights, a most commanding and interesting panorama of the town of Vire. In our perambulation, we discoursed of English poetry; and I found that THOMSON was as great a favourite with my guide as with the rest of his countrymen. Indeed he frankly told me that he had translated him into French verse, and intended to publish his translation. I urged him to quote specimens; which he did with a readiness and force, and felicity of version, that quite delighted me. He thoroughly understands the original; and in the description of a cataract, or mountain torrent, from the Summer, he appeared to me almost to surpass it. My guide then proceeded to quote Young and Pope, and delivered his opinion of our two great Whig and Tory Reviews. He said he preferred the politics and vivacity of the _Edinburgh_, but thought the _Quarterly_ more instructive and more carefully written. "Enfin (he concluded) j'aime infiniment votre gouvernement, et vos écrivains; mais j'aime moins le peuple Anglois." I replied that he had at least very recently shewn an exception to this opinion, in his treatment of _one_ among this _very_ people. "C'est une autre chose"--replied he briskly, and laughingly--"vous allez voir deux de vos compatriotes, qui sont mes intimes, et vous en serez bien content!" So saying, we continued our route through a delightful avenue of beech-trees, upon the most elevated part within the vicinity of the town; and my companion bade me view from thence the surrounding country. It was rich and beautiful in the extreme; and with perfect truth, I must say, resembled much more strongly the generality of our own scenery than what I had hitherto witnessed in Normandy. But the sun was beginning to cast his shadows broader and broader, and where was the residence of Monsieur and Madame S----? It was almost close at hand. We reached it in a quarter of an hour--but the inmates were unluckily from home. The house is low and long, but respectable in appearance both within and without. The approach to it is through a pretty copse, terminated by a garden; and the surrounding grounds are rather tastefully laid out. A portion of it indeed had been trained into something in the shape of a labyrinth; in the centre of which was a rocky seat, embedded as it were in moss--and from which some fine glimpses were caught of the surrounding country. The fragrance from the orchard trees, which had not yet quite shed their blossoms, was perfectly delicious; while the stillness of evening added to the peculiar harmony of the whole. We had scarcely sauntered ten minutes before Madame arrived. She had been twelve years in France, and spoke her own language so imperfectly, or rather so unintelligibly, that I begged of her to resume the French. Her reception of us was most hospitable: but we declined cakes and wine, on account of the lateness of the hour. She told us that her husband was in possession of from fourscore to a hundred acres of the most productive land; and regretted that he was from home, on a visit to a neighbouring gentleman; assuring us, if we could stay, that he would be heartily glad to see us--"especially any of his _countrymen_, when introduced by Monsieur de Larenaudiere." It was difficult to say who smiled and bowed with the greater complacency, at this double-shotted compliment. I now pressed our retreat homewards. We bade this agreeable lady farewell, and returned down the heights, and through the devious paths by which we had ascended, While talk of various kind deceived the road. A more active and profitable day has not yet been devoted to Norman objects, whether of art or of nature. Tomorrow I breakfast with my friend and guide, and immediately afterwards push on for FALAISE. A cabriolet is hired, but doubts are entertained respecting the practicability of the route. My next epistle will be therefore from Falaise--where the renowned William the Conqueror was born, whose body we left entombed at Caen. The day is clearing up; and I yet hope for a stroll upon the site of the castle. [160] "_Les Distiques de Muret, traduits en vers Français, par Aug. A_. Se vend à Vire, chez Adam imprimeur-lib. An. 1809. The reader may not be displeased to have a specimen of the manner of rendering these distichs into French verse: 1. Dum tener es, MURETE, avidis hæc auribus hauri: Nec memori modò conde animo, sed et exprime factis. 2. Imprimis venerare Deum; venerare parentes: Et quos ipsa loco tibi dat natura parentum. &c. 1. _Jeune encore, ô mon fils! pour être homme de bien, Ecoute, et dans ton coeur grave cet entretien_. 2. _Sers, honors le Dieu qui créa tous les êtres; Sois fils respectueux, sois docile à tes maîtres. &c_. [161] [Smartly and felicitously rendered by my translator Mons. Licquet; "Jamais bouche Normande ne m'avait paru plus éloquente que celle de M. Adam." vol. ii. p. 220.] [162] The present seems to be the proper place to give the reader some account of this once famous Bacchanalian poet. It is not often that France rests her pretensions to poetical celebrity upon such claims. Love, romantic adventures, gaiety of heart and of disposition, form the chief materials of her minor poems; but we have here before us, in the person and productions of OLIVIER BASSELIN, a rival to ANACREON of old; to our own RICHARD BRAITHWAIT, VINCENT BOURNE, and THOMAS MOORE. As this volume may not be of general notoriety, the reader may be prepared to receive an account of its contents with the greater readiness and satisfaction. First, then, of the life and occupations of Olivier Basselin; which, as Goujet has entirely passed over all notice of him, we can gather only from the editors of the present edition of his works. Basselin appears to have been a _Virois_; in other words, an inhabitant of the town of Vire. But he had a strange propensity to rusticating, and preferred the immediate vicinity of Vire--its quiet little valleys, running streams, and rocky recesses--to a more open and more distant residence. In such places, therefore, he carried with him his flasks of cider and his flagons of wine. Thither he resorted with his "boon and merry companions," and there he poured forth his ardent and unpremeditated strains. These "strains" all savoured of the jovial propensities of their author; it being very rarely that tenderness of sentiment, whether connected with friendship or love, is admitted into his compositions. He was the thorough-bred Anacreon of France at the close of the fifteenth century. The town of Vire, as the reader may have already had intimation, is the chief town of that department of Normandy called the BOCAGE; and in this department few places have been, of old, more celebrated than the _Vaux de Vire_; on account of the number of manufactories which have existed there from time immemorial. It derives its name from two principal valleys, in the form of a T, of which the base (if it may be so called--"jambage") rests upon the _Place du Chateau de Vire_. It is sufficiently contiguous to the town to be considered among the fauxbourgs. The rivers _Vire_ and _Viréne_, which unite at the bridge of Vaux, run somewhat rapidly through the valleys. These rivers are flanked by manufactories of paper and cloth, which, from the XVth century, have been distinguished for their prosperous condition. Indeed, BASSELIN himself was a sort of cloth manufacturer. In this valley he passed his life in fulling his cloths, and "in composing those gay and delightful songs which are contained in the volume under consideration." _Discours Préliminaire_, p. 17, &c. Olivier Basselin is the parent of the title _Vaudevire--_which has since been corrupted into _Vaudeville_. From the observation of his critics, Basselin appears to have been the FATHER of BACCHANALIAN POETRY in France. He frequented public festivals, and was a welcome guest at the tables of the rich; where the Vaudevire was in such request, that it is supposed to have superseded the "Conte, or Fabliau, or the Chanson d'Amour."[B] p. xviij: Sur ce point-là, soyez tranquille: Nos neveux, j'én suis bien certain, Se souviendront de BASSELIN, _Pere joyeux du Vaudeville:_ p. xxiij. I proceed to submit a few specimens of the muse of this ancient ANACREON of France; and must necessarily begin with a few of those that are chiefly of a bacchanalian quality. _VAUDEVIRE II_. AYANT le doz au feu et le ventre à la table, Estant parmi les pots pleins de vin délectable, Ainsi comme ung poulet Je ne me laisseray morir de la pepie, Quant en debvroye avoir la face cramoisie Et le nez violet; QUANT mon nez devendra de couleur rouge ou perse, Porteray les couleurs que chérit ma maitresse. Le vin rent le teint beau. Vault-il pas mieulx avoir la couleur rouge et vive, Riche de beaulx rubis, que si pasle et chétive Ainsi qu'ung beuveur d'eau. _VAUDEVIRE XI_. CERTES _hoc vinum est bonus_: Du maulvais latin ne nous chaille, Se bien congru n'estoit ce jus, Le tout ne vauldroit rien que vaille. Escolier j'appris que bon vin Aide bien au maulvais latin. CESTE sentence praticquant, De latin je n'en appris guère; Y pensant estre assez sçavant, Puisque bon vin aimoye à boire. Lorsque maulvais vin on a beu, Latin n'est bon, fust-il congru. Fy du latin, parlons françois, Je m'y recongnois davantaige. Je vueil boire une bonne fois, Car voicy ung maistre breuvaige; Certes se j'en beuvoye soubvent, Je deviendroye fort éloquent. _VAUDEVIRE XXII_. HE! qu'avons-nous affaire Du Turc ny du Sophy, Don don. Pourveu que j'aye à boire, Des grandeurs je dis fy. Don don. Trincque, Seigneur, le vin est bon: _Hoc acuit ingenium._ QUI songe en vin ou vigne, Est ung présaige heureux, Don don. Le vin à qui réchigne Rent le coeur tout joyeux, Don don. Trincque, Seigneur, le vin est bon: _Hoc acuit ingenium_. &c. The poetry of Basselin is almost wholly devoted to the celebration of the physical effects of wine upon the body and animal spirits; and the gentler emotions of the TENDER PASSION are rarely described in his numbers. In consequence, he has not invoked the Goddess of Beauty to associate with the God of Wine: to "Drop from her myrtle one leaf in his bowl;" or, when he does venture to introduce the society of a female, it is done after the following fashion--which discovers however an extreme facility and melody of rhythm. The burden of the song seems wonderfully accordant with a Bacchanalian note. _VAUDEVIRE XIX_. En ung jardin d'ombraige tout couvert, Au chaud du jour, ay treuvé Madalaine, Qui près le pié d'ung sicomorre vert Dormoit au bort d'une claire fontaine; Son lit estoit de thin et marjolaine. Son tetin frais n'estoit pas bien caché: D'amour touché, Pour contempler sa beauté souveraine Incontinent je m'en suys approché. Sus, sus, qu'on se resveille, Voicy vin excellent Qui faict lever l'oreille; Il faict mol qui n'en prent. Je n'eus pouvoir, si belle la voyant, De m'abstenir de baizotter sa bouche; Si bien qu'enfin la belle s'esveillant, Me regardant avec ung oeil farouche, Me dit ces mots: Biberon, ne me touche. Belle fillette à son aize ne couche Avecq celuy qui ne faict qu'yvrongner, &c. &c. The preceding extracts will suffice. This is a volume in every respect interesting--both to the literary antiquary and to the Book-Collector. A NEW EDITION of this work has appeared under the editorial care of M. Louis Dubois, published at Caen in 1821, 8vo. obtainable at a very moderate price. [B] The host, at these public and private festivals, usually called upon some one to recite or sing a song, chiefly of an amatory or chivalrous character; and this custom prevailed more particularly in Normandy than in other parts of France: Usaige est en Normandie, Que qui hebergiez est qu'il die Fable ou Chanson à son oste. See the authorities cited at page XV, of this Discours préliminaire. [163] Some account of this printer, together with a fac-simile of his device, may be seen in the _Bibliographical Decameron_, vol. ii. p. 33-6. [164] The first publication is entitled "_Essai sur l'Histoire de l'Industrie du Bocage en Général et de la Ville de Vire sa capitale en particulier, &c._" Par M. RICHARD SEGUIN. _A Vire, chez Adam, Imprimeur, an_ 1810, 12mo. It is not improbable that I may have been the only importer of this useful and crowdedly-paged duodecimo volume; which presents us with so varied and animated a picture of the manners, customs, trades, and occupations of the Bocains and the Virois. [165] I subjoin an extract which relates to the DRESS AND CHARACTER OF THE WOMEN. "Quant au COSTUME DES FEMMES d'aujourd'hui, comme il faudrait un volume entier pour le décrire, je n'ai pas le courage de m'engager dans ce labyrinte de ridicules et de frivolités. Ce que j'en dirai seulement en général, c'est qu'autant les femmes du temps passé, etaient décentes et chastes, et se faisaient gloire d'être graves et modestes, autant celles de notre siècle mettent tout en oeuvre pour paraître cyniques et voluptueuses. Nous ne sommes plus au temps où les plus grandes dames se faisaient honneur de porter la cordélière.[C] Leurs habillemens étaient aussi larges et fermés, que celui des femmes de nos jours sont ouverts et légers, et d'une finesse que les formes du corps, au moindre mouvement, se dessinent, de manière à ne laisser rien ignorer. A peine se couvrent-elles le sein d'un voile transparent très-léger ou de je ne sais quelle palatine qu'elles nomment point-à-jour, qui, en couvrant tout, ne cache rien; en sorte que si elles n'étalent pas tous leurs charmes à découvert, c'est que les hommes les moins scrupuleux, qui se contentent de les persifler, en seraient révoltés tout-à-fait. D'ailleurs, c'est que ce n'est pas encore la mode; plusieurs poussent même l'impudence jusqu'à venir dans nos temples sans coiffure, les cheveux hérissés comme des furies; d'autres, par une bizarrerie qu'on ne peut expliquer se dépouillent, autant qu'il est en leur pouvoir, des marques de leur propre sexe, sembleut rougir d'être femmes, et deviennent ridicules en voulant paraitre demi-hommes. "Après avoir deshonoré l'habit des femmes, elles ont encore voulu prostituer CELUI DES HOMMES. On les a vues adopter successivement les chapeaux, les redingotes, les vestes, les gilets, les bottes et jusqu'aux boutons. Enfin si, au lieu de jupons, elles avaient pu s'accommoder de l'usage de la culotte, la métamorphose était complette; mais elles ont préféré les robes traînantes; c'est dommage que la nature ne leur ait donné une troisième main, qui leur serait nécessaire pour tenir cette longue queue, qui souvent patrouille la boue ou balaye la poussière. Plût à Dieu que les anciennes lois fussent encore en vigueur, ou ceux et celles qui portaient des habits indécent étaient obligés d'aller à Rome pour en obtenir l'absolution, qui ne pouvait leur être accordée que par le souverain pontife, &c. "Les femmes du Bocage, et sur-tout les Viroises, joignent à un esprit vif et enjoué les qualités du corps les plus estimables. Blondes et brunes pour le plus grand nombre, elles sont de la moyenne taille, mais bien formées: elles ont le teint frais et fleuri, l'oeil vif, le visage vermeil, la démarche leste, un air étoffé et très élégantes dans tout leur maintien. Si on dit avec raison que les Bayeusines sont belles, les filles du Bocage, qui sont leurs voisines, ne leur cèdent en aucune manière, car en général le sang est très-beau en ce pays. Quant aux talens spirituels, elles les possèdent à un dégré éminent. Elles parlent avec aisance, ont le repartie prompte, et outre les soins du ménage, ou elles excellent de telle sorte qu'il n'y a point de contrées ou il y ait plus de linge, elles entendent à merveille, et font avec succès tout le détail du commerce." p. 238. These passages, notwithstanding the amende honorable of the concluding paragraph, raised a storm of indignation against the unsuspecting author! Nor can we be surprised at it. This publication is really filled with a great variety of curious historical detail--throughout which is interspersed much that relates to "romaunt lore" and romantic adventures. The civil wars between MONTGOMERY and MATIGNON form alone a very important and interesting portion of the volume; and it is evident that the author has exerted himself with equal energy and anxiety to do justice to both parties--except that occasionally he betrays his antipathies against the Hugonots.[D] I will quote the concluding passage of this work. There may be at least half a score readers who may think it something more than merely historically curious: "Je finirai donc ici mon Histoire. Je n'ai point parlé d'un grand nombre des faits d'armes et d'actions glorieuses, qui se sont passés dans la guerre de l'indépendance des Etats-Unis d'Amérique où beaucoup de Bocains ont eu part; mais mon principal dessein a été de traiter des guerres qui ont eu lieu dans le Bocage; ainsi je crois avoir atteint mon but, qui était d'écrire l'Histoire Militaire des Bocains par des faits et non par des phrases, je ne peux cependant omettre une circonstance glorieuse pour le Bocage; c'est la visite que le bon et infortuné Louis XVI. fit aux Bocains en 1786. Ce grand Monarque dont les vues étaient aussi sages que profondes, avait résolu de faire construire le beau Port de Cherbourg, ouvrage vraiment Royal, qui est une des plus nobles entreprises qui aient été faites depuis l'origine de la Monarchie. Les Bocains sentirent l'avantage d'un si grand bienfait. Le Roi venant visiter les travaux, fut accueilli avec un enthousiasme presqu'impossible à décrire, ainsi que les Princes qui l'accompagnaient. Sa marche rassemblait à un triomphe. Les peuples accouraient en foule du fond des campagnes, et bordaient la route, faisant retentir les airs de chants d'alégresse et des cris millions de fois répétés de Vive le Roi! Musique, Processions, Arcs de triomphe, Chemins jonchés de fleurs; tout fut prodigué. Les villes de Caen, de Bayeux, de Saint-Lo, de Carentan, de Valognes, se surpassérent dans cette occasion, pour prouver à S.M. leur amour et leur reconnaissance; mais rien ne fut plus brillant que l'entrée de ce grand Roi à Cherbourg. Un peuple immense, le clergé, toute la noblesse du pays, le son des cloches, le bruit du canon, les acclamations universelles prouvérent au Monarque mieux encore que la pompe toute Royale et les fêtes magnifiques que la ville ne cessa de lui donner tous les jours, que les coeurs de tous les Bocains étaient à lui." p. 428. [C] "Ceinture alors regardée comme le symbole de la continence. La reine de France en décorait les femmes titrées dont la conduite était irréprochable." _Hist. de la réun. de Bretagne a la France par l'abbé Irail_. [D] "Les soldats Huguenots commirent dans cette occasion, toutes sortes de cruautés, d'infamies et de sacrilèges, jusqu'à mêler les Saintes Hosties avec l'avoine qu'ils donnaient à leurs chevaux: mais Dieu permit qu'ils n'en voulurent pas manger." p. 369. LETTER XIX. DEPARTURE FROM VIRE. CONDÉ. PONT OUILLY. ARRIVAL AT FALAISE. HOTEL OF THE GRAND TURC. THE CASTLE OF FALAISE. BIBLIOMANIACAL INTERVIEW. _Falaise_. Here I am--or rather, here I have been--my most excellent friend, for the last four days--and from hence you will receive probably the last despatch from NORMANDY--- from the "land (as I told you in my first epistle) of "castles, churches, and ancient chivalry." An old, well-situated, respectably-inhabited, and even flourishing, town--the birth-place too of our renowned FIRST WILLIAM:--weather, the most serene and inviting--and hospitality, thoroughly hearty, and after the English fashion:--these have all conspired to put me in tolerably good spirits. My health, too, thank God, has been of late a little improved. You wish me to continue the thread of my narrative unbroken; and I take it up therefore from the preparation for my departure from Vire. I breakfasted, as I told you I was about to do, with my friend and guide Mons. de Larenaudiere; who had prepared quite a sumptuous repast for our participation. Coffee, eggs, sweetmeats, cakes, and all the comfortable paraphernalia of an inviting breakfast-table, convinced us that we were in well-furnished and respectable quarters. Madame did the honours of the meal in perfectly good taste; and one of the loveliest children I ever saw--a lad, of about five or six years of age--with a profusion of hair of the most delicate quality and colour, gave a sort of joyous character to our last meal at Vire. The worthy host told me to forget him, when I reached my own country;[166] and that, if ever business or pleasure brought me again into Normandy, to remember that the Maire de Tallevende-le-Petit would-be always happy to renew his assurances of hospitality. At the same time, he entreated me to pay attention to a list of English books which he put into my hands; and of which he stood considerably in need. We bade farewell in the true English fashion, by a hearty shake of the hands; and, mounting our voiture, gave the signal for departure. "Au plaisir de vous revoir!"--'till a turning of the carriage deprived us of the sight of each other. It is not easy--and I trust it is not natural--for me to forget the last forty-eight hours spent in the interesting town of VIRE! Our route to this place was equally grand and experimental; grand, as to the width of the road, and beauty of the surrounding country--but experimental, inasmuch as a part of the _route royale_ had been broken up, and rendered wholly impassable for carriages of any weight. Our own, of its kind, was sufficiently light; with a covering of close wicker-work, painted after the fashion of some of our bettermost tilted carts. One Norman horse, in full condition of flesh, with an equal portion of bone and muscle, was to convey us to this place, which cannot be less than twenty-two good long English miles from Vire. The carriage had no springs; and our seat was merely suspended by pieces of leather fastened at each end. At _Condé_, about one-third of the distance, we baited, to let both man and horse breathe over their dinners; while, strolling about that prettily situated little town, we mingled with the inhabitants, and contemplated the various faces (it being market-day) with no ordinary degree of gratification. Amidst the bustle and variety of the scene, our ears were greeted by the air of an itinerant ballad-singer: nor will you be displeased if I send you a copy of it:--since it is gratifying to find any thing like a return to the good old times of the sixteenth century. VIVE LE ROI, VIVE L'AMOUR. François Premier, nous dit l'histoire, Etoit la fleur des Chevaliers, Près d'Etampes aux champs de gloire Il recueillit myrtes et lauriers; Sa maîtresse toujours fidèle, Le payant d'un tendre retour, Lui chantant cette ritournelle; _Vive le Roi, vive l'Amour_. Henri, des princes le modèle, Ton souvenir est dans nos coeurs, Par la charmante Gabrielle Ton front fut couronné de fleurs; De la Ligue domptant la rage, Tu sus triompher tour-à-tour, Par la clémence et ton courage: _Vive le Roi, vive l'Amour_. Amant chéri de la Vallière, Des ennemis noble vainqueur, LOUIS savoit combattre et plaire, Guidé par l'Amour et l'honneur; A son retour de la Victoire, Entouré d'une aimable cour, Il entendoit ce cri de gloire: _Vive le Roi, vive l'Amour_. &c. There was a freshness of tint, and a comeliness of appearance, among the bourgeoises and common people, which were not to be eclipsed even by the belles of Coutances. Our garçon de poste and his able-bodied quadruped having each properly recruited themselves, we set forward--by preference--to walk up the very long and somewhat steep hill which rises on the other side of Conde towards _Pont Ouilly_--in the route hither. Perhaps this was the most considerable ascent we had mounted on foot, since we had left Rouen. The view from the summit richly repaid the toil of using our legs. It was extensive, fruitful, and variegated; but neither rock nor mountain scenery; nor castles, nor country seats; nor cattle, nor the passing traveller--served to mark or to animate it. It was still, pure nature, upon a vast and rich scale: and as the day was fine, and my spirits good, I was resolved to view and to admire. _Pont Ouilly_ lies in a hollow; with a pretty winding river, which seems to run through its centre. The surrounding hills are gently undulating; and as we descended to the Inn, we observed, over the opposite side of the town, upon the summit of one of the hills, a long procession of men and women--headed by an ecclesiastic, elevating a cross--who were about to celebrate, at some little distance, one of their annual festivals. The effect--as the procession came in contact with a bright blue sky, softened by distance--was uncommonly picturesque ... but the day was getting on fast, and there was yet a considerable distance to perform,--while, in addition, we had to encounter the most impassable part of the road. Besides, I had not yet eaten a morsel since I had left Vire. Upon holding a consultation, therefore, it was resolved to make for the inn, and to dine there. A more sheltered, rural, spot cannot be conceived. It resembled very many of the snug scenes in South Wales. Indeed the whole country was of a character similar to many parts of Monmouthshire; although with a miserable draw-back in respect to the important feature of _wood_. Through the whole of Normandy, you miss those grand and overshadowing masses of oak, which give to Monmouthshire, and its neighbouring county of Glocester, that rich and majestic appearance which so decidedly marks the character of those counties. However, we are now at the inn at Pont Ouilly. A dish of river fish, gudgeons, dace, and perch, was speedily put in requisition. Good wine, "than which France could boast no better!" and a roast fowl, which the daughter of the hostess "knew how to dress to admiration" ... was all that this humble abode could afford us." "But we were welcome:"--that is, upon condition that we paid our reckoning.... The dinner would be ready in a "short half hour." Mr. Lewis, went to the bridge, to look around, for the purpose of exercising his pencil: while I sauntered more immediately about the house. Within five minutes a well-looking, and even handsome, young woman--of an extremely fair complexion--her hair cut close behind--her face almost smothered in a white cap which seemed of crape--and habited in a deep black--passed quickly by me, and ascended a flight of steps, leading to the door of a very humble mansion. She smiled graciously at the _aubergiste_ as she passed her, and quickly disappeared. On enquiry, I was told that she was a nun, who, since the suppression of the convent to which she had belonged, earned her livelihood by teaching some of the more respectable children in the village. She had just completed her twentieth year. I was now addressed by a tall, bluff, shabby-looking man--who soon led me to understand that he was master of the inn where my "suite" was putting up;--that I had been egregiously deceived about the nature of the road--for that it was totally impossible for _one_ horse:--even the very best in Normandy--(and where will you find better? added he, parenthetically--as I here give it to you) to perform the journey with such a voiture and such a weight of luggage behind." I was struck equally with amazement and woe at this intelligence. The unpitying landlord saw my consternation. "Hark you, sir... (rejoined he) if you _must_ reach Falaise this evening, there is only one method of doing it. You must have _another horse_." "Willingly," I replied. "Yes, sir--but you can have it only upon _one_ condition." "What is that?" "I have some little business at Falaise myself. Allow me to strap about one hundred weight of loaf-sugar at the back of your conveyance, and I myself will be your garçon de poste thither." I own I thought him about the most impudent fellow I had yet seen in Normandy: but there was no time for resistance. Necessity compelled acquiescence. Accordingly, the dinner being dispatched--which, though good, was charged at six francs a-head--we prepared for our departure. But judge of my surprise and increased consternation, when the fellow ordered forth a little runt of a quadruped--in the shape of a horse--which was hardly higher than the lower part of the chest of the animal which brought us from Vire! I remonstrated. The landlord expostulated. I resisted--but the fellow said it was a bargain; and proceeded quietly to deposit at least _two_ hundred weight of his refined sugar at the back of the carriage. This Lilliputian horse was made the leader. The landlord mounted on the front seat, with our Vire post-boy by the side of him; and sounding his whip, with a most ear-piercing whoop and hollow, we sprung forward for Falaise--which we were told we should reach before sunset. You can hardly conceive the miseries of this cross-road journey. The route royale was, in fact, completely impassable; because they were repairing it. Alarmed at the ruggedness of the cross-road, where one wheel was in a rut of upwards of a foot deep, and the other elevated in proportion--we got out, and resolved to push on a-foot. We walked for nearly two leagues, before our conveyance overtook us--so harassing and so apparently insurmountable seemed to be the road. But the cunning aubergiste had now got rid of his leader. He said that it was only necessary to use it for the first two or three leagues--which was the most difficult part of the route--and that, for the remainder, about five English miles, our "fine Norman horse" was perfectly sufficient. This fine Norman horse was treated most unmercifully by him. He flogged, he hallooed, he swore ... the animal tript, stumbled, and fell upon his knees--more than once--from sheer fatigue. The charioteer hallooed and flogged again: and I thought we must have taken up our night quarters in the high-way;--when suddenly, to the left, I saw the fine warm glow of the sun, which had set about twenty minutes, lighting up one of the most perfect round towers, of an old castle, that I had yet seen in Normandy. Voilà FALAISE!--exclaimed the ruthless charioteer; ... and in a quarter of an hour we trotted hard down a hill (after the horse had been twice again upon his knees) which terminated in this most interesting place. It will be difficult for me to forget--after such a long, wearisome, and in part desperate journey--our approach to Falaise:--and more especially the appearance of the castle just mentioned. The stone seemed as fresh, and as perfectly cemented, as if it had been the work of the preceding year. Moreover, the contiguous parts were so fine and so thoroughly picturesque--and the superadded tradition of its being, according to some, the birth place--and according to others, the usual residence--of WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR ... altogether threw a charm about the first glimpse of this venerable pile, which cannot be easily described. I had received instructions to put up at the "_Grand Turc_"--as the only hotel worthy an Englishman's notice. At the door of the Grand Turk, therefore, we were safely deposited: after having got rid of our incumbrances of two postilions, and two hundred weight of refined sugar. Our reception was gracious in the extreme. The inn appeared "tout-à-fait à la mode Anglaise"--and no marvel ... for Madame the hostess was an Englishwoman. Her husband's name was _David_. Bespeaking a late cup of tea, I strolled through the principal streets,--delighted with the remarkably clear current of the water, which ran on each side from the numerous overcharged fountains. Day-light had wholly declined; when, sitting down to my souchong, I saw, with astonishment--a _pair of sugar-tongs_ and a _salt-spoon_--the first of the kind I had beheld since I left England! Madame David enjoyed my surprise; adding, in a very droll phraseology, that she had "not forgotten good English customs." Our beds and bed rooms were perfectly comfortable, and even elegant. The moat which encircles, not only the castle, but the town--and which must have been once formidable from its depth and breadth, when filled with water--is now most pleasingly metamorphosed. Pasture lands, kitchen gardens, and orchards, occupy it entirely. Here the cattle quietly stray, and luxuriously feed. But the metamorphosis of the _castle_ has been, in an equal degree, unfortunate. The cannon balls, during the wars of the League--and the fury of the populace, with the cupidity or caprice of some individuals, during the late revolution--helped to produce this change. After breakfast, I felt a strong desire to survey carefully the scite and structure of the castle. It was a lovely day; and in five minutes I obtained admission at a temporary outer gate. The first near view within the ramparts perfectly enchanted me. The situation is at once bold, commanding, and picturesque. But as the opposite, and immediately contiguous ground, is perhaps yet a little higher, it should follow that a force, placed upon such eminence--as indeed was that of Henry the Fourth, during the wars of the League--would in the end subdue the garrison, or demolish the castle. I walked here and there amidst briars and brushwood, diversified with lilacs and laburnums; and by the aid of the guide soon got within an old room--of which the outer walls only remained--and which is distinguished by being called the _birth-place_ of WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. Between ourselves, the castle appears to be at least a century later than the time of William the Conqueror; and certainly the fine round tower, of which such frequent mention has been made, is rather of the fourteenth, if not of the beginning of the fifteenth century;[167] but it is a noble piece of masonry. The stone is of a close grain and beautiful colour, and the component parts are put together with a hard cement, and with the smallest possible interstices. At the top of it, on the left side, facing the high road from Vire,--and constructed within the very walls themselves, is a _well_--which goes from the top apparently to the very bottom of the foundation, quite to the bed of the moat. It is about three feet in diameter, measuring with the eye; perhaps four: but it is doubtless a very curious piece of workmanship. We viewed with an inquisitive eye what remained of the _Donjon_: sighed, as we surveyed the ruins of the _chapel_--a very interesting little piece of ecclesiastical antiquity: and shuddered as we contemplated the enormous and ponderous portcullis--which had a _drop of_ full twenty feet ... to keep out the invading foe. I was in truth delighted with this first reconnoissance of FALAISE--beneath one of the brightest and bluest skies of Normandy! and--within walls, which were justly considered to be among the most perfect as well as the most ancient of those in Normandy. Leaving my companion to take a view of the upper part of this venerable building, I retreated towards the town--resolved to leave no church and no street unexplored. On descending, and quitting the gate by which I had entered, a fine, robust, and respectable figure, habited as an Ecclesiastic, met and accosted me. I was most prompt to return the salutation. "We are proud, Sir, of our castle, and I observe you have been visiting it. The English ought to take an interest in it, since it was the birth-place of William the Conqueror." I readily admitted it was well worth a minute examination: but as readily turned the conversation to the subject of LIBRARIES. The amiable stranger (for he was gaining upon me fast, by his unaffected manners and sensible remarks) answered, that "their _own_ public library existed no longer--having been made subservient to the inquisitorial visit of M. Moysant of Caen[168]: that he had himself procured for the Bishop of Bayeux the _Mentz Bible_ of 1462--and that the Chapter-Library of Bayeux, before the Revolution, could not have contained fewer than 40,000 volumes. "But you are doubtless acquainted, Sir, with the COMTE DE LA FRESNAYE, who resides in yonder large mansion?"--pointing to a house upon an elevated spot on the other side of the town. I replied that I had not that honour; and was indeed an utter stranger to every inhabitant of Falaise. I then stated, in as few and precise words as possible, the particular object of my visit to the Continent. "Cela suffit"--resumed the unknown--"nous irons faire visite à Monsieur le Comte après le diné; à ce moment il s'occupe avec le pôtage--car c'est un jour maigre. Il sera charmé de vous recevoir. Il aime infiniment les Anglois, et il a resté long-temps chez vous. C'est un brave homme--et même un grand antiquaire." My pulse and colour increased sensibly as the stranger uttered these latter words: and he concluded by telling me that he was himself the Curé of _Ste. Trinité_ one of the two principal churches of the town--and that his name was MOUTON. Be assured that I shall not lose sight of the Comte de la Fresnaye, and Monsieur Mouton. [166] [Only ONE letter has passed between us since my departure; and that enables me to subjoin a fac-simile of its author's autograph. [Autograph: de Larenaudiere] [167] [It was in fact built by the famous Lord Talbot, about the year 1420. A similar castle, but less strong and lofty, may be seen at Castor, near Yarmouth in Norfolk--once the seat of the famous Sir JOHN FASTOLF, (a contemporary with Talbot) of whom Anstis treats so fully in his _Order of the Garter_, vol.i. p.142.] [168] See p. 205 ante. LETTER XX. MONS. MOUTON. CHURCH OF STE. TRINITÉ. COMTE DE LA FRESNAYE. GUIBRAY CHURCH. SUPPOSED HEAD OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. M. LANGEVIN, HISTORIAN OF FALAISE. PRINTING OFFICES. I lose no time in the fulfilment of my promise. The church of SAINTE TRINITÉ, of which Monsieur Mouton is the Curé, is the second place of worship in rank in the town. During the Revolution, Mons. Mouton was compelled, with too many of his professional brethren, to fly from the general persecution of his order. One solitary and most amiable creature only remained; of the name of LANGEVIN--of whom, by and by, Monsieur Mouton did me the honour of shewing me the interior of his church. His stipend (as he told me) did not exceed 1500 francs per annum; and it is really surprising to observe to what apparent acts of generosity towards his flock, this income is made subservient. You shall hear. The altar consists of two angels of the size of life, kneeling very gracefully, in white glazed plaister: in the centre, somewhat raised above, is a figure of the Virgin, of the same materials; above which again, is a representation of the TRINITY--in a blaze of gilt. The massive circular columns surrounding the choir--probably of the fourteenth century--were just fresh painted, at the expense of the worthy Curé, in alternate colours of blue and yellow--imitative of marble;--that is to say, each column, alternately, was blue and yellow. It was impossible to behold any thing more glaring and more tasteless. I paid my little tribute of admiration at the simplicity and grace of the kneeling figure of the Virgin--but was stubbornly silent about every thing else. Monsieur Mouton replied that "he intended to grace the brows of the angels by putting a _garland_ round each." I felt a sort of twinge upon receiving this intelligence; but there is no persuading the French to reject, or to qualify, their excessive fondness for flower ornaments. Projecting from the wall, behind the circular part of the choir, I observed a figure of _St. Sebastian_--precisely of that character which we remark in the printed missals of the fifteenth century,--and from which the engravers of that period copied them: namely, with the head large, the body meagre, and the limbs loose and muscular. It was plentifully covered, as was the whole surface of the wall, with recent white wash. On observing this, my guide added: "oui, et je veux le faire couvrir d'une teinte encore plus blanche!" Here I felt a second twinge yet more powerful than the first. I noticed, towards the south-side door, a very fine crucifix, cut in wood, about three feet high; and apparently of the time of Goujon. It was by much the finest piece of sculpture, of its kind, which I had seen in Normandy; but it was rather in a decaying state. I wished to know whether such an object of art--apparently of no earthly importance, where it was situated--might be obtained for some honourable and adequate compensation. Monsieur Mouton replied that he desired to part with it--but that it must be replaced by another "full six feet high!" There was no meeting this proposition, and I ceased to say another word upon the subject. Upon the whole, the church of the Holy Trinity is rather a fine and capacious, than a venerable edifice; and although I cannot conscientiously approve of the beautifying and repairing which are going on therein, yet I will do the _planner_ the justice to say, that a more gentlemanly, liberally-minded, and truly amiable clergyman is perhaps no where to be found,--within or without the diocese to which he belongs. Attached to the north transept or side door, parallel with the street, is a long pole. "What might this mean?" "Sir, this pole was crowned at the top by a garland, and by the white flag of _St. Louis_,[169]--which were hoisted to receive me on my return from my long expatriation"--and the eyes of the narrator were suffused with tears, as he made the answer! It is of no consequence how small the income of an unmarried minister, may be, when he thus lives so entirely in the HEARTS OF HIS FLOCK. This church bears abundant evidence, within and without, of what is called the restoration of the Gothic order during the reign of Francis I.: although the most essential and the greater portion is evidently of the latter part of the fourteenth century.[170] Having expressed my admiration of the manufacture of wax candles (for religious purposes) which I had frequently observed in the town, Monsieur Mouton, upon taking me into the sacristy (similar to our vestry-room) begged I would do him the honour to accept of any which might be lying upon the table. These candles are made of the purest white wax: of a spiral, or twisted, or square, or circular form; of considerable length and width. They are also decorated with fillagree work, and tinsel of various colours. Upon that which I chose, there were little rosettes made of wax. The moderate sum for which they are obtained, startles an Englishman who thinks of the high price of this article of trade in his own country. You see frequently, against the walls and pillars of the choir, fragments of these larger wax candles, guttering down and begrimed from the uses made of them in time of worship. In this sacristy there were two little boys swinging _wooden_ censers, by way of practice for the more perfect use of them, when charged with frankincense, at the altar. To manage these adroitly--as the traveller is in the constant habit of observing during divine worship--is a matter of no very quick or easy attainment. From the Curé we proceed to the Comte DE LA FRESNAYE; whose pleasantly situated mansion had been pointed out to me, as you may remember, by the former. Passing over one of the bridges, leading towards _Guibray_, and ascending a gentle eminence to the left, I approached the outer lodge of this large and respectable-looking mansion. The Count and family were at dinner: but at _three_ they would rise from table. "Meanwhile," said the porter, it might give me pleasure to walk in the garden." It was one of the loveliest days imaginable. Such a sky--blue, bright, and cloudless--I had scarcely before seen. The garden was almost suffocated with lilacs and laburnums, glittering in their respective liveries of white, purple, and yellow. I stepped into a berceau--and sitting upon a bench, bethought me of the strange visit I was about to make--as well as of all the pleasing pastoral poetry and painting which I had read in the pages of De Lille, or viewed upon the canvas of Watteau. The clock of the church of _St. Gervais_ struck three; when, starting from my reverie, I knocked at the hall-door, and was announced to the family, (who had just risen from dinner) above stairs. A circle of five gentlemen would have alarmed a very nervous visitor; but the Count, addressing me in a semi-British and semi-Gallic phraseology, immediately dissipated my fears. In five minutes he was made acquainted with the cause of this apparent intrusion. Nothing could exceed his amiable frankness. The very choicest wine was circulated at his table; of which I partook in a more decided manner on the following day--when he was so good as to invite me to dine. When I touched upon his favourite theme of Norman Antiquities, he almost shouted aloud the name of INGULPH,--that "cher ami de Guillaume le Conquérant!" I was unwilling to trespass long; but I soon found the advantage of making use of the name of "Monsieur Mouton--l'estimable Curé de la Sainte Trinité." [Illustration] In a stroll to Guibray, towards sunset the next day, I passed through a considerable portion of the Count's property, about 300 acres, chiefly of pasture land. The evening was really enchanting; and through the branches of the coppice wood the sun seemed to be setting in a bed of molten gold. Our conversation was animated and incessant. In the old and curious church of Guibray, the Count shewed us his family pew with the care and particularity of an old country squire. Meanwhile Mr. Lewis was making a hasty copy of one of the very singular ornaments--representing _Christ bearing his cross_--which was suspended against the walls of the altar of a side chapel. You have it here. It is frightfully barbarous, and characteristic of the capricious style of art which frequently prevailed about the year 1520: but the wonder is, how such a wretched performance could obtain admission into the sanctuary where it was deposited. It was however the pious gift of the vestry woman--who shewed us the interior--and who had religiously rescued it, during the Revolution, from the demolition of a neighbouring abbey. The eastern end of this church is perhaps as old as any ecclesiastical edifice in Normandy;[171] and its exterior (to which we could only approach by wading through rank grass as high as our knees) is one of the most interesting of its kind. During our admiration of all that was curious in this venerable edifice, we were struck by our old friends, the _penitents_,--busy in making confession. In more than one confessional there were two penitents; and towards one of these, thus doubly attended, I saw a very large, athletic, hard-visaged priest hastening, just having slipt on his surplice in the vestry. Indeed I had been cursorily introduced to him by the Count. It was Saturday evening, and the ensuing Sunday was to be marked by some grand procession. The village-like town of Guibray presents a most singular sight to the eye of a stranger. There are numerous little narrow streets, with every window closed by wooden shutters, and every door fastened. It appears as if the plague had recently raged there, and that the inhabitants had quitted it for ever. Not a creature is visible: not a sound is heard: not a mouse seems to be stirring. And yet Guibray boasts of the LARGEST FAIR in France, save one![172] This, my friend, precisely accounts for the aspect of desolation just described. During the intervals of these _triennial_ fairs, the greater part of the village is uninhabited: venders and purchasers flocking and crowding by hundreds when they take place. In a short, narrow street--where nothing animated was to be seen--the Count assured me that sometimes, in the course of one morning, several millions of francs were spent in the purchase of different wares. We left this very strange place with our minds occupied by a variety of reflections: but at any rate highly pleased and gratified by the agreeable family which had performed the part of guides on the occasion. In the evening, a professor of music treated us with some pleasing tunes upon the guitar--which utterly astonished the Count--and it was quite night-fall when we returned homewards, towards our quarters at the hotel of the _Grand Turc_. A memorable incident occurred in our way homewards; which, when made known, will probably agitate the minds and shake the faith of two-thirds of the members of our Society of Antiquaries. You may remember that I told you, when at Caen, that the Abbe De la Rue had notified to me what were the objects more particularly deserving of attention in my further progress through Normandy. Among these, he particularly mentioned a figure or head of William the Conqueror at Falaise. In the _Place St. Gervais_, this wonderful head was said to exist--and to exist there only. It was at the house of an Innkeeper--certainly not moving in the highest circle of his calling. I lost little time in visiting it; and found it situated at the top of a dark narrow staircase, projecting from the wall, to the right, just before you reach the first floor. Some sensation had been excited by the enquiries, which I had previously set on foot; and on a second visit, several people were collected to receive us. Lights, warm water, towels, soap and brushes, were quickly put in requisition. I commenced operations with a kitchen knife, by carefully scraping away all the layers of hardened white and ochre washes, with which each generation had embedded and almost obliterated every feature. By degrees, the hair became manifest: then followed the operation of soap and water--which brought out the features of the face; and when the eyes fully and distinctly appeared, the exclamation of "_Mon Dieu_!" by the spectators, was loud and unremitting. The nose had received a serious injury by having its end broken off. Anon, stood forth the mouth; and when the "whiskered majesty" of the beard became evident, it was quite impossible to repress the simultaneous ejaculation of joy and astonishment ... "_Voilà le vrai portrait de Guillaume le Conquérant_! The whiskers apparently denote it to be rather _Saxon_ than _Norman_. The head is nearly eleven inches in length, by seven and a half in width: is cut upon a very coarse, yet hard-grained stone--and rests upon a square, unconnected stone:--embedded within the wall. If it ever had shoulders and body, those shoulders and body were no part of the present appendages of the head. What then, is the Abbé de la Rue in error? The more liberal inference will be, that the Abbé de la Rue had never seen it. As to its antiquity, I am prepared to admit it to be very considerable; and, if you please, even before the period of the loves of the father and mother of the character whom it is supposed to represent. In the morning, Madame Rolle seemed disposed to take ten louis (which I freely offered her) for her precious fragment: but the distinct, collected view of whiskers, mouth, nose, eyes, and hair, instantaneously raised the quicksilver of her expectations to "_quinze_ louis pour le moins!" That was infinitely "trop fort"--and we parted without coming to any terms. Perhaps you will laugh at me for the previous offer. The church of St. Gervais is called the mother church of the town: and it is right that you should have some notion of it. It stands upon a finely elevated situation. Its interior is rather capacious: but it has no very grand effect-arising from simplicity or breadth of architecture. The pillars to the right of the nave, on entering from the western extremity, are doubtless old; perhaps of the beginning of the thirteenth century. The arches are a flattened semicircle; while those on the opposite side are comparatively sharp, and of a considerably later period. The ornaments of the capitals of these older pillars are, some of them, sufficiently capricious and elaborate; while others are of a more exceptionable character on the score of indelicacy. But this does not surprise a man who has been accustomed to examine ART, of the middle centuries, whether in sculpture or in painting. The side aisles are comparatively modern. The pillars of the choir have scarcely any capitals beyond a simple rim or fillet; and are surmounted by sharp low arches, like what are to be seen at St. Lo and Coutances. The roof of the left side aisle is perfectly green from damp: the result, as at Coutances, of thereof having been stripped for the sake of the lead to make bullets, &c. during the Revolution. I saw this large church completely filled on Sunday, at morning service--about eleven: and, in the congregation, I observed several faces and figures, of both sexes, which indicated great intelligence and respectability. Indeed there was much of the air of a London congregation about the whole. From the Church, we may fairly make any thing but a digression--in discoursing of one of its brightest ornaments, in the person of Monsieur LANGEVIN:--a simple priest--as he styles himself in an octavo volume, which entitles him to the character of the best living HISTORIAN OF FALAISE. He is a mere officiating minister in the church of Mons. Mouton; and his salary, as he led me to infer, could be scarcely twenty louis per annum. Surely this man is among the most amiable and excellent of God's creatures! But it is right that you should know the origin and progress of our acquaintance. It was after dinner, on one of the most industriously spent of my days here--and the very second of my arrival,--that the waiter announced the arrival of the Abbé Langevin, in the passage, with a copy of his History beneath his arm. The door opened, and in walked the stranger--habited in his clerical garb--with a physiognomy so benign and expressive, and with manners so gentle and well-bred,--that I rose instinctively from my seat to give him the most cordial reception. He returned my civility in a way which shewed at once that he was a man of the most interesting simplicity of character. "He was aware (he said) that he had intruded; but as he understood "Monsieur was in pursuit of the antiquities of the place, he had presumed to offer for his acceptance a copy of a work upon that subject--of which he was the humble author." This work was a good sized thick crown octavo, filling five hundred closely and well-printed pages; and of which the price was _fifty sous_! The worthy priest, seeing my surprise on his mentioning the price, supposed that I had considered it as rather extravagant. But this error was rectified in an instant. I ordered _three copies_ of his historical labours, and told him my conscience would not allow me to pay him less than _three francs_ per copy. He seemed to be electrified: rose from his seat:--and lifting up one of the most expressive of countenances, with eyes apparently suffused with tears--raised both his hands, and exclaimed.... "Que le bon Dieu vous bénisse--les Anglois sont vraiement généreux!" For several seconds I sat riveted to my seat. Such an unfeigned and warm acknowledgment of what I had considered as a mere matter-of-course proposition, perfectly astounded me: the more so, as it was accompanied by a gesture and articulation which could not fail to move any bosom--not absolutely composed of marble. We each rallied, and resumed the conversation. In few but simple words he told me his history. He had contrived to weather out the Revolution, at Falaise. His former preferment had been wholly taken from him; and he was now a simple assistant in the church of Mons. Mouton. He had yielded without resistance; as even _remonstrance_ would have been probably followed up by the guillotine. To solace himself in his afflictions, he had recourse to his old favourite studies of _medicine_ and _music_;--and had in fact practised the former. "But come, Sir, (says he) come and do me the honour of a call--when it shall suit you." I settled it for the ensuing day. On breaking up and taking leave, the amiable stranger modestly spoke of his History. It had cost him three years' toil; and he seemed to mention, with an air of triumph, the frequent references in it to the _Gallia Christiana_, and to _Chartularies_ and _Family Records_ never before examined. On the next day I carried my projected visit into execution--towards seven in the evening. The lodgings of M. Langevin are on the second floor of a house belonging to a carpenter. The worthy priest received me on the landing-place, in the most cheerful and chatty manner. He has three small rooms on the same floor. In the first, his library is deposited. On my asking him to let me see what _old books_ he possessed, he turned gaily round, and replied--"Comment donc, Monsieur, vous aimez les vieux livres? A ça, voyons!" Whereupon he pulled away certain strips or pieces of wainscot, and shewed me his book-treasures within the recesses. On my recognising a _Colinæus_ and _Henry Stephen_, ere he had read the title of the volumes, he seemed to marvel exceedingly, and to gaze at me as a conjuror. He betrayed more than ordinary satisfaction on shewing his _Latin Galen_ and _Hippocrates_; and the former, to the best of my recollection, contained Latin notes in the margin, written by himself. These tomes were followed up by a few upon _alchymy_ and _astrology_; from which, and the consequent conversation, I was led to infer that the amiable possessor entertained due respect for those studies which had ravished our DEES and ASHMOLES of old. In the second room stood an upright piano forte--the _manufacture_, as well as the property, of Monsieur Langevin. It bore the date of 1806; and was considered as the first of the kind introduced into Normandy. It was impossible not to be struck with the various rational sources of amusement, by means of which this estimable character had contrived to beguile the hours of his misfortunes. There was a calm, collected, serenity of manner about him--a most unfeigned and unqualified resignation to the divine will--which marked him as an object at once of admiration and esteem. There was no boast--no cant--no formal sermonising. You _saw_ what religion had done for him. Her effects _spake_ in his discourse and in his life.... Over his piano hung a portrait of himself; very indifferently executed--and not strongly resembling the original. "We can do something more faithful than this, sir, if you will allow it"--said I, pointing to Mr. Lewis: and it was agreed that he should give the latter a sitting on the morrow. The next day M. Langevin came punctually to his appointment, for the purpose of having his portrait taken. On telling this original that the pencil drawing of Mr. Lewis (which by the bye was executed in about an hour and a half) should be _engraved_--inasmuch as he was the modern _Historian of Falaise_--he seemed absolutely astonished. He moved a few paces gently forwards, and turning round, with hands and eyes elevated, exclaimed, in a tremulous and heart-stricken tone of voice, "Ah, mon Dieu!" I will not dissemble that I took leave of him with tears, which were with difficulty concealed. "Adieu, pour toujours!"--were words which he uttered with all the sincerity, and with yet more pathos, than was even shewn by Pierre Aimé Lair at Caen. The landlord and landlady of this hotel are warm in their commendations of him: assuring me that his name is hardly ever pronounced without the mention of his virtues. He has just entered his sixty-second year.[173] It remains only to give an account of the progress of Printing and of Literature in this place: although the latter ought to precede the former. As a literary man, our worthy acquaintance the Comte de la Fresnaye takes the lead: yet he is rather an amateur than a professed critic. He has written upon the antiquities of the town; but his work is justly considered inferior to that of Monsieur Langevin. He quotes _Wace_ frequently, and with apparent satisfaction; and he promises a French version of his beloved _Ingulph_. Falaise is a quiet, dull place of resort, for those who form their notions of retirement as connected with the occasional bustle and animation of Caen and Rouen. But the situation is pleasing. The skies are serene: the temperature is mild, and the fruits of the earth are abundant and nutritious. Many of the more respectable inhabitants expressed their surprise to me that there were so few English resident in its neighbourhood--so much preferable, on many accounts to that of Caen. But our countrymen, you know, are sometimes a little capricious in the objects of their choice. Just now, it is the _fashion_ for the English to reside at Caen; yet when you consider that the major part of our countrymen reside there for the purpose of educating their children--and that Caen, from its numerous seminaries of education, contains masters of every description, whose lessons are sometimes as low as a frank for each--it is not surprising that Falaise is deserted for the former place. For myself--and for all those who love a select society, a sweet country, and rather a plentiful sprinkle of antiquarian art,--for such, in short, who would read the fabliaux of the old Norman bards in peace, comfort, and silence--there can be no question about the preference to be given to the spot from which I send this my last Norman despatch. I have before made mention of the fountains in this place. They are equally numerous and clear. The inn in which we reside has not fewer than three fountains--or rather of _jets d'eau_--constantly playing. Those in the _Place St. Trinité Grand Rue_, and _Place St. Gervais_, are the largest; but every gutter trickles with water as if dissolved from the purest crystal. It has been hot weather during the greater part of our stay; and the very sight of these translucent streams seems to refresh one's languid frame. But I proceed chiefly to the productions of the PRESS. They do a good deal of business here in the way of ephemeral publications. Letellier, situated in the Grande Rue, is the chief printer of _chap books_: and if we judge from the general character of these, the _Falaisois_ seem to be marvellously addicted to the effusions of the muse. Indeed, their ballads, of all kinds, are innumerable. Read a few--which are to be found in the very commonest publications. There is something rather original, and of a very pleasingly tender cast, in the first two: LE BAISER D'ADIEUX. Pres de toi l'heuré du mystère Ne m'appellera plus demain, Vers ta demeure solitaire Mes pas me guideront en vain; J'ai respiré ta douce haleine, Et des pleurs ont mouillé mes yeux, J'ai tout senti, plaisir et peine, ) J'ai reçu ton baiser d'adieux. ) _bis._ Tu pars, et malgré ta promesse Rien ne m'assure de ta foi, Nul souvenir de ta tendresse Ne vient me dire: Pense à moi. Ton amour qu'envain je réclame Ne me laisse, en quittant ces lieux, Que Phumide et brulante flamme De ton dernier baiser d'adieux. Puisse au moins ton indifférence Te garder d'un nouvel amour. Et le veuvage de l'absence Hâter ton fortuné retour! Puisse alors l'amant qui t'adore, Te revoyant aux mêmes lieux, Sur tes lèvres vierges encore Retrouver son baiser d'adieux! * * * * * L'IMAGE DE LA VIE. Nous naissons et dans notre coeur, A peine aux portes de la vie, Tout au plaisir, tout au bonheur, Et nous invite et nous convie; D'abord, simples amusements Savent contenter notre enfance; Mais bientòt aux jeux innocens, L'amour nous prend ... sans qu'on y pense. Fillette à l'âge de quinze ans, Offre l'image de la rose, Qui dès l'approche du printemps, Entr'ouvre sa feuille mi-close; Bientôt l'aiguillon du désir Vient ouvrir fleur d'innocence, Et sous la bouche du plaisir, Elle s'éclôt ... sans qu'elle y pense. Vous, qui pendant vos jeunes ans, Ne courtisez pas la folie, Songez donc que cet heureux temps Ne dure pas toute la vie, Assez vite il nous faut quitter Tendres ardeurs, vives jouissances; Et dans uu coeur qui sait aimer, La raison vient ... sans qu'on y pense. Mais enfin, sur l'âile du temps, On arrive au but du voyage, Et l'on voit la glace des ans, Couronner nos fronts à cet âge; S'il fut sensible à la pitié, S'il cultiva la bienfaisance, Entre les bras de l'amitié L'homme finit ... sans qu'il y pense You must know that they are here great lovers of royalty, and of course great supporters of the Bourbon Family. The King's printer is a Mons. BRÉE l'Ainé. He is a very pleasant, well-bred man, and lives in the _Place Trinité_. I have paid him more than one visit, and always felt additional pleasure at every repetition of it. My first visit was marked with a somewhat ludicrous circumstance. On entering the compositors' room, I observed, pasted upon the walls, in large capital letters, the following well known words: GOD SAVE THE KING. Both Monsieur Brée l'Ainé--and his workmen were equally gratified by my notice and commendation of this sentiment. "It is the favourite sentiment, Sir, of your country,"--remarked the master. To this I readily assented. "It is also, Sir, the favourite one of our own," replied M. Brée l'Ainé--and his men readily attested their concurrence in the same reply. "Ah, Sir, if you would only favour us by _singing the air_, to which these words belong, you would infinitely oblige us all" ... said a shrewd and intelligent-looking compositor. "With all my heart"--rejoined I--"but I must frankly tell you, that I shall sing it rather with heart than with voice--being neither a vocal nor an instrumental performer." "No matter: give us only a notion of it." They all stood round in a circle, and I got through two stanzas as gravely and as efficiently as I was able. The usual "charmant!" followed my exertions. It was now my turn to ask a favour. "Sing to me your favourite national air of ROBERT and ARLETTE." "Most willingly, Sir," replied the forementioned "shrewd and intelligent-looking compositor." "Tenez: un petit moment: je vais chercher mon violon. Ca ira mieux." He left the house in search of his violin. The tune of the National air which he sung was both agreeable and lively: and upon the whole it was difficult to say which seemed to be the better pleased with the respective national airs. M. Brée shewed me his premises in detail. They had been formerly a portion of an old church; and are situated on the edge of the great fosse which encircles the town. A garden, full of sweet blooming flowers, is behind them; and the view backwards is cheerful and picturesque. There are generally five presses at work; which, for a provincial printing office, shews business to be far from slack. Mons. B. sells a great number of almanacks, and prints all the leading publications connected with the town. In fact, his title, as _Imprimeur du Roi_, supposes him to take the principal lead as a printer. This agreeable man has a brother who is professor of rhetoric in the Collège Royale at Paris. Of _Bouquinistes_, or dealers in old books, there are scarcely any. I spent three or four fruitless hours in a search after old chronicles and old poetry: and was compelled, almost from pure civility, to purchase of DUFOURS a _Petit's Virgil_ of 1529, folio--which will be hardly worth the carriage. I tried hard for a fine copy of _Fauchet's Origines de la Poésie Françoise_, 1581, 4to. with the head of the author, but in vain; yet endeavoured to console myself by an old blue morocco copy of _Les regrets et tristes lamentations du Comte de Montgomery_, by _Demorenne_, Rouen, 1574, 8vo. as well as a clean, fresh, and almost crackling copy of _Amoureuses occupations de la Taysonniere_, Lyon, 1555, 8vo.--for two francs each--and both destined for the rich and choice library of our friend.... Thus much for FALAISE: for a spot, which, from the uniform serenity of the weather since I have been here--from the comfort of the inn--from the extreme civility and attention of the townspeople--and from the yet more interesting society of the Comte de la Fresnaye, the _Curés_ Mouton and Langevin--together with the amenity of the surrounding country, and the interesting and in part magnificent remains of antiquity--can never be erased from my recollection. It is here that the tourist and antiquary may find objects for admiration and materials for recording. I have done both: admired and recorded--happy, if the result of such occupations shall have contributed to the substantial gratification of yourself and of our common friends. And now, farewell; not only to Falaise, but to NORMANDY. I shall leave it, from this delightful spot, in the most thorough good humour, and with more than ordinary regret that my stay has necessarily been short. I have taken my place in the Diligence, direct for PARIS. "Il n'y a qu'un Paris"--said the Comte de la Fresnaye to me the other day, when I told him I had never been there--to which I replied, "Are there then TWO Londons?" Thirty-six hours will settle all this. In the mean time, adieu. [169] On the return of Louis the XVIII. the town of Falaise manifested its loyalty in the most unequivocal manner. COUPLETS _Chantés par les Elèves du Collége de Falaise, en arborant le Drapeau Blanc_. Air: _Un Soldat par un coup funeste_. Loin de nous la sombre tristesse, Mars a déposé sa fureur; Enfin la foudre vengeresse Vient de terrasser _l'opresseur,_ L'aigle sanguinaire Succombe à l'aspect de ces LYS. Peuple français, tu vas revoir ton Père! Vive le Roi! Vive LOUIS! Drapeau, que d'horribles tempêtes Avoient éloigné de ces lieux, Tu reviens embellir nos Fêtes, Plus brillant et plus radieux! Ta douce présence Ramène les jeux et les ris; Sois à jamais l'Etendard de la France, Vive le Roi! vive LOUIS! O Dieu! vengeur de l'innocence, Protège ces LYS glorieux! Conserve long-temps à la France LE ROI que tu rends à nos voeux! Si la perfidie De nouveau troubloit ton bonheur Viens nous guider, ô Bannière chérie! Nous volerons au champ d'honneur. [170] The worthy historian of Falaise, quoted in a preceding page, is exceedingly anxious to make us believe that there are portions of this church--namely, four stones--in the eastern and western gable ends--which were used in the consecration of it, by MATHILDA, the wife of our first William. Also, that, at the gable end of the south transept, outside, an ancient grotto,--in which the Gallic priests of old purified themselves for the mysteries of their religion--is now converted into the sacristy, or vestry, or robing room. But these are surely mere antiquarian dreams. The same author more sagaciously informs us that the exact period of the commencement of the building of the nave, namely in 1438, is yet attested by an existing inscription, in gothic letters, towards the chief door of entrance. The inscription also testifies that in the same year, "there reigned DEATH, WAR, and FAMINE." The _chancel of the choir_, with the principal doors of entrance, &c. were constructed between the years 1520, and 1540. It may be worth remarking that the stalls of the choir were brought from the Abbey of St. John--on the destruction of that monastic establishment in 1729; and that, according to the _Gallia Christiana_, vol. xi. p. 756, these stalls were carved at the desire of Thomas II. de Mallebiche, abbot of that establishment in 1506-1516. In a double niche of the south buttress are the statues of HERPIN and his WIFE; rich citizens of Falaise, who, by their wealth, greatly contributed to the building of the choir. (Their grandson, HERPIN LACHENAYE, together with his mistress were killed, side by side, in fighting at one of the gates of Falaise to repel the successful troops of Henry IV.) The _Chapel of the Virgin_, behind the choir, was completed about the year 1631. LANGEVIN, p. 81-128-131. [171] We have of course nothing to do with the first erection of a place of worship at Guibray in the VIIIth century. The story connected with the earliest erection is this. The faubourg of Guibray, distant about 900 paces from Falaise, was formerly covered with chestnut and oak trees. A sheep, scratching the earth, as if by natural instinct (I quote the words of M. Langevin the historian of Falaise) indicated, by its bleatings, that something was beneath. The shepherd approached, and hollowing out the earth with his crook, discovered a statue of the Virgin, with a child in its arms. The first church, dedicated to the Virgin, under the reign of Charles Martel, called the Victorious, was in consequence erected--on this very spot--in the centre of this widely spreading wood of chestnut and oak. I hasten to the construction of a second church, on the same site, under the auspices of Mathilda, the wife of the Conqueror: with the statue of a woman with a diadem upon her head--near one of the pillars: upon which statue Langevin discourses learnedly in a note. But neither this church nor the statue in question are now in existence. On the contrary, the oldest portions of the church of Guibray, now existing--according to the authors of the _Gallia Christiana_, vol. xi. p. 878, and an ancient MS. consulted by M. Langevin--are of about the date of 1222; when the church was consecrated by the Bishop of Coutances. The open space towards the south, now called _La Place aux Chevaux_, was the old burying ground of the church. There was also a chapel, dedicated to St. Gervais, which was pillaged and destroyed by the Hugonots in 1562. I should add, that the South-East exterior (behind the chancel) of this very curious old church at Guibray, resembles, upon a small scale, what M. Cotman has published of the same portion of St. Georges de Bocherville. _Recherches sur Falaise_, p. 49-53. Monsieur le Comte de la Fresnaye, in his _Notice Historique sur Falaise_, 1816, 8vo. will have it, that "the porch of this church, the only unmutilated portion remaining of its ancient structure, demonstrates the epoch of the origin of Christianity among the Gauls." "At least, such is the decision of M. Deveze, draftsman for Laborde; the latter of whom now Secretary to the Count d'Artois, instituted a close examination of the whole fabric." p. 5-6. I hope there are not many such conclusions to be found in the magnificent and meritorious productions of LABORDE. [172] This fair lasts full fifteen days. The first eight days are devoted to business of a more important nature--which they call the GREAT WEEK: that is to say, the greatest number of merchants attend during the earlier part of it; and contracts of greater extent necessarily take place. The remaining seven days are called the LITTLE WEEK--in which they make arrangements to carry their previous bargains into effect, and to return home. Men and merchandise, from all quarters, and of all descriptions, are to be seen at this fair. Even Holland and Germany are not wanting in sending their commercial representatives. Jewellery and grocery seem to be the chief articles of commerce; but there is a prodigious display of silk, linen, and cotton, &c.: as well as of hides, raw and tanned; porcelaine and earthen ware. The live cattle market must not be forgotten. Langevin says that, of horses alone, they sometimes sell full four thousand. Thus much for the buyer and seller. But this fair is regularly enlivened by an immense confluence of nobility and gentry from the adjacent country--to partake of the amusements, which, (as with the English,) form the invariable appendages of the scene. Langevin mentions the minor fairs of _Ste. Croix, St. Michel_, and _St. Gervais_, which help to bring wealth into the pockets of the inhabitants. _Recherches Historiques sur Falaise_; p. 199, &c. [173] [Since the publication of this Tour, the amiable Mons. Langevin has published "additions" to his historical account of Falaise; and in those additions, he has been pleased to notice the account which is HERE given of his labours and character. It would be bad--at least hardly justifiable--taste, to quote that notice: yet I cannot dissemble the satisfaction to find that there is _more_ than ONE sympathising heart in Normandy, which appreciates this record of its excellence. I subjoin, therefore, with the greatest satisfaction, a fac-simile of the autograph of this amiable and learned man, as it appears written (at my request) in the title-page of a copy of his "Researches." [Illustration: Langevin ptre.] LETTER XXI. JOURNEY TO PARIS. DREUX. HOUDAN. VERSAILLES. ENTRANCE INTO PARIS. _Paris, Rue Faubourg Poissonière, May_ 30, 1819. "Time and the hour runs through the roughest day." They must be protacted miseries indeed which do not, at some period or other, have something like a termination. I am here, then my good friend--safe and sound at last; comfortably situated in a boarding house, of which the mistress is an agreeable Englishwoman and the master an intelligent Swiss. I have sauntered, gazed, and wondered--and exchanged a thousand gracious civilities! I have delivered my epistolary credentials: have shaken hands with Monsieur Van Praet; have paced the suite of rooms in which the renowned BIBLIOTHEQUE DU ROI is deposited: have traversed the _Thuileries_ and the _Louvre_; repeatedly reconnoitred the _Boulevards_; viewed the gilt dome of the _Hôtel des Invalides_, and the white flag upon the bronze-pillar in the _Place Vendome_; seen crowds of our countrymen at _Meurice's_ and in the hotels about the _Rue de la Paix;_ partaken of the rival ices of _Tortoni_ and the _Caffé des Mille Colonnes_; bought old French poetry at a Bouquiniste's: and drank Chambertin and Champagne at the richly garnished table of our ----. These are what may be called good _foreground objects_ in the composition of a Parisian picture. Now for the filling up of the canvas with appropriate and harmonizing detail. A second reflection corrects however the precipitancy of such a proposal; for it cannot be, in this my _first_ despatch, that you are to receive any thing like an adequate notion of the topics thus hastily thrown together on the first impulse of Parisian inspiration. Wait patiently, therefore: and at least admire the methodical precision of my narrative. My last letter left me on the eve of departure from Falaise; and it is precisely from that place that I take up the thread of my journal. We were to leave it, as I told you, in the Diligence--on the evening of the Sunday, immediately following the date of the despatch transmitted. I shall have reason to remember that journey for many a day to come; but, "post varios casus, &c." I am thankful to find myself safely settled in my present comfortable abode. The Sabbath, on the evening of which the Diligence usually starts for Paris, happened to be a festival. Before dawn of day I heard incessant juvenile voices beneath the window of my bedroom at the Grand Turc; What might this mean? Between three and four, as the day began to break, I rose, and approaching the window, saw, from thence, a number of little boys and girls busied in making artificial flower-beds and sand-borders, &c. Their tongues and their bodily movements were equally unintermitting. It was impossible for a stranger to guess at the meaning of such a proceeding; but, opening the window, I thought there could be no harm in asking a very simple question--which I will confess to you was put in rather an irritable manner on my part ... for I had been annoyed by their labours for more than the last hour. "What are you about, there?" I exclaimed--"Ha, is it you Sir?" replied a little arch boy--mistaking me for some one else. "Yes, (resumed I) tell me what you are about there?" "in truth, we are making _Réposoirs_ for the FETE-DIEU: the Host will pass this way by and bye. Is it not a pretty thing, Sir?" exclaimed a sweetly modulated female voice. All my irritability was softened in a moment; and I was instantly convinced that Solomon never delivered a wiser sentiment than when he said--"A soft answer turneth away wrath!" I admitted the prettiness of the thing without comprehending a particle of it: and telling them to speak in a lower key, shut the window, and sought my bed. But sleep had ceased to seek me: and the little urchins, instead of lowering their voices, seemed to break forth in a more general and incessant vociferation. In consequence, I was almost feverish from restlessness--when the fille de chambre announced that "it was eight o'clock, and the morning most beautiful." These _réposoirs_ are of more importance than you are aware of. They consist of little spots, or spaces in the streets, garnished with flowers, and intersected by walks, marked with fine gravel, in the centre of which the Host rests, on its passing to and fro from the several parishes. When I rose to dress, I observed the work of art--which had been in progress during the night--perfectly complete. Passengers were forbidden to trespass by pieces of string fastened to different parts by way of a fence--or, whoever chose to walk within, considered themselves bound to deposit a sous as the condition of gratifying their curiosity. Upon the whole, this réposoir might be about sixteen feet square. Towards eleven o'clock the different religious ceremonies began. On one side the noise of the drum, and the march of the national guard, indicated that military mass was about to be performed; on the other, the procession of priests, robed and officiating--the elevation of banners--and the sonorous responses of both laity and clergy--put the whole town into agitation, and made every inmate of every mansion thrust his head out of window, to gaze at the passing spectacle. We were among the latter denomination of lookers on, and recognised, with no small gratification, our clerical friends Messieurs Mouton, Langevin, and the huge father confessor at Guibra, followed by a great number of respectable citizens, among whom the Comte de la Fresnaye and his amiable and intelligent son (recently married) made most respectable figures; They approached the réposoir in question. The priests, with the Host, took their station within it; silence followed; one officiating clergyman then knelt down; shut, what seemed to be, the wooden covers of a book,--with, considerable violence--rose--turned round, and the procession being again put in motion--the whole marched away to the church of the Holy Trinity;--whither I followed it; and where I witnessed what I was unable to comprehend, and what I should not feel much disposed to imitate. But let every country be allowed to reverence and respect its own particular religious ceremonies. We may endure what we cannot commend ... and insult and disrespect are among the last actions which a well regulated mind will shew in its treatment of such matters. I should add, that these réposoirs, a few hours after the performance of the ceremony just described, are indiscriminately broken up: the flowers and the little sand banks falling equally a prey to the winds and the feet of the passenger. Opposite to the inn was an hospital for the female sick. It had been formerly an establishment of very considerable extent and celebrity; but whether it was originally connected with the hospital of the _Léproserie de Saint Lasare_, (about which the Abbé Langevin's History of Falaise is rather curious) the _Hôtel-Dieu_, or the _Hôpital Général_, I cannot take upon me to pronounce. Certain it is, however, that this establishment does great credit to those who have the conduct of it. As foreigners, and particularly as Englishmen, we were permitted to see the whole, without reserve. On my return from witnessing the ceremony at the church of the Trinity, I visited this hospital: my companion having resumed his graphic operations before the Castle. I shall not easily forget the face and figure of the matron. To a countenance of masculine feature, and masculine complexion--including no ordinary growth of beard, of a raven tint--she added a sturdy, squat, muscular figure--which, when put into action, moved in a most decided manner. A large bunch of massive keys was suspended from a girdle at her side; and her dress, which was black, was rendered more characteristic and striking, by the appearance of, what are yet called, _bustles_ above her hips. As she moved, the keys and the floor seemed equally to shake beneath her steps. The elder Smirke would have painted this severe Duenna-like looking matron with inimitable force and truth. But ... she no sooner opened her mouth, than all traits of severity vanished. Her voice was even musical, and her "façon de parler" most gracious. She shewed me the whole establishment with equal good humour and alertness; and I don't know when I ever made such a number of bows (to the several female patients in the wards) within such limited time and space. The whole building has the air of a convent; and there were several architectural relics, perhaps of the end of the fifteenth century, which I only regretted were not of portable dimensions; as, upon making enquiry, little objection seemed to be made to the gratuitous disposal of them. The hour for departure, after sun-set, having arrived, we were summoned to the Diligence when, bidding adieu to the very worthy host and hostess of the _Grand Turc_, (whom I strongly recommend all Englishmen to visit) I made up my mind for a thirty-six hour's journey--as I was to reach Paris on Tuesday morning. The day had been excessively hot for the season of the year; and the night air was refreshing. But after a few snatches of sleep--greatly needed--there appeared manifest symptoms of decay and downfall in the gloomy and comfortless machine in which we took our departure. In other words, towards daylight, and just as we approached _L'Aigle_, the left braces (which proved to be thoroughly rotted leather) broke in two: and down slid, rather than tumbled, the Falaise Diligence! There were two French gentlemen, and an elderly lady, besides ourselves in the coach. While we halted, in order to repair the machine, the Frenchmen found consolation in their misfortune by running to a caffé, (it was between four and five in the morning), rousing the master and mistress, and as I thought, peremptorily and impertinently asking for coffee: while they amused themselves with billiards during its preparation. I was in no humour for eating, drinking, or playing: for here was a second sleepless night! Having repaired this crazy vehicle, we rumbled on for _Verneuil_; where it was exchanged for a diligence of more capacious dimensions. Here, about eleven o'clock, we had breakfast; and from henceforth let it not be said that the art of eating and drinking belongs exclusively to our country:--for such manifestations of appetite, and of attack upon substantials as well as fluids, I had scarcely ever before witnessed. I was well contented with coffee, tea, eggs, and bread--as who might not well be?... but my companions, after taking these in flank, cut through the centre of a roast fowl and a dish of stewed veal: making diversions, in the mean while, upon sundry bottles of red and white wine; the fingers, during the meal, being as instrumental as the white metal forks. We set off at a good round trot for _Dreux_: and, in the route thither, we ascended a long and steep hill, having _Nonancourt_ to the left. Here we saw some very pretty country houses, and the whole landscape had an air of English comfort and picturesque beauty about it. Here, too, for the first time, I saw a VINEYARD. At this early season of the year it has a most stiff and unseemly look; presenting to the eye scarcely any thing but the brown sticks, obliquely put into the ground, against which the vine is trained. But the sloping banks, on each side of the ascending road, were covered with plantations of this precious tree; and I was told that, if the _autumn_ should prove as auspicious as appeared the _spring_, there would be a season of equal gaiety and abundance. I wished it with all my heart. Indeed I felt particularly interested in the whole aspect of the country about _Nonancourt_. The sun was fast descending as we entered the town of _Dreux_--where I had resolved upon taking leave both of the diligence and of my companions; and of reaching Paris by post. At seven we dined, or rather perhaps made an early supper; when my fellow travellers _sustained_ their reputation for their powers of attack upon fish, flesh, and fowl. Indeed the dinner was equally plentiful and well cooked; and the charge moderate in proportion. But there is nothing, either on the score of provision of reasonableness of cost, like the _table d'hôte_ throughout France; and he who cannot accommodate himself to the hour of dining (usually about one) must make up his mind to worse fare and treble charges. After dinner we strolled in the town, and upon the heights near the castle. We visited the principal church, _St. Jean_, which is very spacious, and upon the whole is a fine piece of architecture. I speak more particularly of the interior--where I witnessed, however, some of the most horrible devastations, arising from the Revolution, which I had yet seen. In one of the side chapels, there _had been_ a magnificent monument; perhaps from sixteen to twenty feet in height--crowded with figures as large as life, from the base to the summit. It appeared as if some trenchant instrument of an irresistible force, had shaved away many of the figures; but more especially the heads and the arms. This was only one, but the most striking, specimen of revolutionary Vandalism. There were plenty of similar proofs, on a reduced scale. In the midst of these traces of recent havoc, there was a pleasure mingled with melancholy, in looking up and viewing some exceedingly pretty specimens of old stained glass:--which had escaped the destruction committed in the lower regions, and had preserved all their original freshness. Here and there, in the side chapels, the priests were robing themselves to attend confession; while the suppliants, in kneeling attitudes, were expecting them by the side of the confessionals. From the church I bent my steps to the principal bookseller of the place, whom I found to be an intelligent, civil, and extremely good-natured tradesman. But his stock was too modern. "Donnez vous la peine de monter"--exclaimed he precipitately; begging me to follow him. His up-stairs collection was scarcely of a more ancient character than that below. There were more copies of _Voltaire_ and _Rousseau_ than I should have supposed he could sell in six years--but "on the contrary" (said he) "in six months' time, not a single copy will remain unsold!" I marvelled and grieved at such intelligence; because the poison was not extracted from the nourishment contained in these works. To an enquiry about my old typographical friends, _Verard, Pigouchet_, and _Eustace_, the worthy bibliopole replied "qu'il n'avoit jamais entendu parler de ces gens-la!" Again I marvelled; and having no temptation to purchase, civilly wished him good evening. Meanwhile Mr. L. had attained the castle heights, and was lost in a sort of extacy at the surrounding scene. On entering the outer walls, and directing your steps towards the summit, you are enchanted with a beautiful architectural specimen--in the character of a zigzag early Norman arch--which had originally belonged to a small church, recently taken down: The arch alone stands insulated ... beyond which, a new, and apparently a very handsome, church is erecting, chiefly under the care and at the expence of the present Duke of Orleans;--as a mausoleum for his family--and in which, not many days before our arrival, the remains of one of his children had been deposited. I wished greatly for a perfect drawing of this arch ... but there was no time ... and my companion was exercising his pencil, on the summit, by a minute, bird's eye of the sweep of country to be seen from this elevated situation--through the greater part of which, indeed, the diligence from _Verneuil_ had recently conducted us. I should add, that not a relic of that CASTLE, which had once kept the town and the adjacent country in awe, is now to be seen: but its outer walls enclose a space hardly less than twenty acres:--the most considerable area which I had yet witnessed. To give a more interesting character to the scenery, the sun, broad and red, was just hiding the lower limb of his disk behind the edge of a purple hill. A quiet, mellow effect reigned throughout the landscape. I gazed on all sides; and (wherefore, I cannot now say) as I sunk upon the grass, overwhelmed with fatigue and the lassitude of two sleepless nights, wished, in my heart, I could have seen the effect of that glorious sun-set from, the heights of Dover. Now and then, as when at school, one feels a little home-sick; but the melancholy mood which then possessed me was purely a physical effect from a physical cause. The shadows of evening began to succeed to the glow of sun-set--when, starting from my recumbent position, (in which sleep was beginning to surprise me) I hastened down the heights, and by a nearer direction sought the town and our hotel. We retired betimes to rest--but not until, from an opposite coach maker, we had secured a phaeton-like carriage to convey us with post horses, the next day, to Paris. Excellent beds and undisturbed slumber put me in spirits for the grand entrée into the metropolis of France. Breakfasting a little after nine--before ten, a pair of powerful black horses, one of which was surmounted by a sprucely-attired postilion--with the phaeton in the rear--were at the door of the hotel. Seeing all our baggage properly secured, we sprung into the conveyance and darted forward at a smart gallop. The animals seemed as if they could fly away with us--and the whip of the postilion made innumerable circular flourishes above their heads. The sky was beautifully clear: and a briskly-stirring, but not unpleasantly penetrating, south-east wind, played in our faces as we seemed scarcely to be sensible of the road. What a contrast to the heat, vexation, and general uncomfortableness of the two preceding days of our journey! We felt it sensibly, and enjoyed it in proportion. Our first place of halting, to change horses, was at HOUDAN; which may be about four leagues from Dreux; and I verily believe we reached it in an hour. The route thither is through a flat and uninteresting country; except that every feature of landscape (and more especially in our previous journeys through Normandy) seems to be thrown to a greater distance, than in England. This may account for the flatness of views, and the diminutiveness of objects. Houdan is a village-like town, containing a population of about 2000 inhabitants; but much business is done on market days; and of _corn_, in particular, I was told that they often sold several thousand sacks in a day. Its contiguity to Paris may account for the quantity of business done. In the outskirts of the town,--and flanked, rather than surrounded, by two or three rows of trees, of scarcely three years growth--stands the "stiff and stower" remains of the _Castle of Houdan_. It is a very interesting relic, and to our eyes appeared of an unusual construction. The corner towers are small and circular; and the intermediate portion of the outer wall is constructed with a swell, or a small curvature outwards. I paced the outside, but have forgotten the measurement. Certainly, it is not more than forty feet square. I tried to gain admittance into the interior, but without success, as the person possessing the key was not to be found. I saw enough, however, to convince me that the walls could not be less than twelve feet in thickness. The horses had been some time in readiness, and the fresh postilion seemed to be lost in amazement at the cause of our loitering so long at so insignificant a place. The day warmed as we pushed on for the far-famed "proud Versailles." The approach, from Houdan, is perhaps not the most favourable; although we got peeps of the palace, which gave us rather elevated notions of its enormous extent. We drove to the _Hôtel de Bourbon_, an excellent, clean mansion, close to the very façade of the palace, after passing the Hôtel de Ville; and from whence you have an undisturbed view of the broad, wide, direct road to Paris. I bespoke dinner, and prepared to lounge. The palace--of which I purposely declined visiting the interior--reserving Versailles for a future and entire day's gratification--is doubtless an immense fabric--of which the façade just mentioned is composed of brick, and assumes any thing but a grand and imposing air: merely because it wants simplicity and uniformity of design. I observed some charming white stone houses, scattered on each side of this widely extended chaussée--or route royale--and, upon the whole, Versailles appeared to us to be a magnificent and rather interesting spot. Two or three rows of trees, some forty or fifty generations more ancient than those constituting the boulevards at Houdan, formed avenues on each side of this noble road; and all appeared life and animation--savouring of the proximity of the metropolis. Carriages without number--chiefly upon hire, were going and returning; and the gaits and dresses of individuals were of a more studied and of a gayer aspect. At length, we became a little impatient for our dinner, and for the moment of our departure. We hired one of these carriages; which for nine francs, would convey us to the place of our destination. This appeared to me very reasonable; and after being extravagant enough to drink Champagne at dinner, to commemorate our near approach to the metropolis, we set forward between five and six o'clock, resolving to strain our eyes to the utmost, and to be astonished at every thing we saw!--especially as _this_ is considered the most favourable approach to the capital. The _Ecole Militaire_, to the left, of which Marshal Ney had once the chief command, struck me as a noble establishment. But it was on approaching _Sèvre_ that all the bustle and population, attendant upon the immediate vicinity of a great metropolis, became evident. Single-horsed vehicles--in many of which not fewer than nine persons were pretty closely stowed--three upon a bench, and three benches under the roof--fiacres, barouches, and carriages of every description, among which we discovered a great number from our own country--did not fail to occupy our unremitting attention. _Sèvre_ is a long, rambling, and chiefly single-street town; but picturesquely situated, on a slope, and ornamented to the left by the windings of the Seine. We were downright glad to renew our acquaintance with our old, and long-lost friend, the river Seine; although it appeared to be sadly shorn of its majestic breadth since we had parted with it before the walls of Montmorenci castle, in our route to Havre. The new nine-arch bridge at Sèvre is a sort of Waterloo bridge in miniature. Upon the heights, above it, I learnt that there was a beautiful view of the river in the foreground with Paris in the distance. We passed over the old bridge, and saw _St. Cloud_ to the left: which of course interested us as the late residence of Bonaparte, but which, in truth, has nothing beyond the air of a large respectable country-gentleman's mansion in England. We pushed on, and began to have distinct perceptions of the great city. Of all the desirable places of retreat, whether for its elevated situation, or respectable appearance, or commodious neighbourhood, nothing struck me more forcibly than the village of PASSY, upon a commanding terrace, to the left; some three or four English miles from Paris--and having a noble view both of the river and of the city. It is also considered to be remarkably healthy; and carriages of every description, are constantly passing thither to and from Paris. The dome of the _Pantheon_, and the gilded one of the _Hôtel des Invalides_, together with the stunted towers of _Notre Dame_, were among the chief objects to the right: while the accompaniment of the Seine, afforded a pleasing foreground to this architectural picture in the distance. But, my friend, I will frankly own to you, that I was disappointed ... upon this first glimpse of the GREAT city. In the first place, the surrounding country is flat; with the exception of _Mount Calvary,_ to the left, which has nothing to do with the metropolitan view from this situation. In the second place, what are the _Pantheon_ and _Notre Dame_ compared with _St. Paul's_ and _Westminster Abbey_?--to say nothing of the vicinity of London, as is connected with the beautifully undulating ground about Camberwell, Sydenham, Norwood, and. Shooter's Hill--and, on the other side of the water, Hampstead, Highgate and Harrow: again, Wimbledon and Richmond!... What lovely vicinities are these compared with that of _Mont Martre_? And if you take river scenery into the account, what is the _Seine_, in the neighbourhood of Paris, compared with the _Thames_ in that of London? If the almost impenetrable smoke and filth from coal-fires were charmed away--shew me, I beseech you, any view of Paris, from this, or from any point of approach, which shall presume to bear the semblance of comparison with that of London, from the descent from _Shooter's Hill_! The most bewitched Frenchified-Englishman, in the perfect possession of his eye sight, will not have the temerity to institute such a comparison. But as you near the barriers, your admiration increases. Having got rid of all background of country--as you approach the capital--the foregoing objections vanish. Here the officers of police affected to search our luggage. They were heartily welcome, and so I told them. This disarmed all suspicion. Accordingly we entered Paris by one of the noblest and one of the most celebrated of its Boulevards--the _Champs Elysées_. As we gained the _Place Louis Quinze_, with the _Thuileries_ in front, with the _Hôtel des Invalides_ (the gilded dome of which latter reflected the strong rays of a setting sun) to the right--we were much struck with this combination of architectural splendour: indisputably much superior to any similar display on the entrance into our own capital.[174] Turning to the left, the _Place Vendome_ and the _Rue de la Paix_, with the extreme height of the houses, and the stone materials of their construction, completed our admiration. But the _Boulevards Italiens_--after passing the pillars of the proposed church of _Ste. Madelaine_, and turning to the right--helped to prolong our extreme gratification, till we reached the spot whence I am addressing you. Doubtless, at first glance, this is a most splendid and enchanting city. A particular detail must be necessarily reserved, for the next despatch. I shall take all possible pains to make you acquainted with the treasures of PAST TIMES--in the shape of Manuscripts and printed Books. THE ROYAL LIBRARY has as much astonished me, as the CURATORS of it have charmed me by their extreme kindness and civility.[175] [174] [The above was written in 1818-19. Now, what would be said by a foreigner, of his first drive from Westminster Bridge, through Regent Street to the stupendous Pantheon facing the termination of Portland Place?] [175] At this point, the labours of Mons. LICQUET, as my translator, cease; and I will let him take leave of his task of translation in his own words. "Ici se termine la tache qui m'a été confiée. Après avoir réfuté franchement tout ce qui m'a semblé digne de lêtre, je crois devoir déclarer, en finissant, que mes observations n'ont jamais eu _la personne_ pour objet. Je reste persuadé, d'ailleurs, que le coeur de M.D. est tout-à-fait innocent des écarts de son esprit. Si l'on peut le condamner pour le fait, il faudra toujours l'absoudre pour l'intention...." The _concluding_-sentence need not be copied: it is bad taste to re-echo the notices of one's own good qualities. My Norman translator at least takes leave of me with the grace of a gentleman: although his thrusts have been occasionally direct and severely intended. The foil which he has used has not always had the button covered. The candid reader will, however, judge how these thrusts have been parried; and if the "hits" on the part of my adversary, have been sometimes "palpable," those of the original author will not (it is presumed) be deemed feeble or unimpressive. After all, the sum total of "Errata" scarcely includes THREE of _substantial moment_: and wishing Mons Licquet "a very good day," I desire nothing better than to renew our critical coqueting on the floor of that Library of which he is the "Bibliothècaire en Chef." END OF VOL. I. London: Printed by W. Nicol, Cleveland-row, St. James's. SUPPLEMENT TO VOL. I. OLD POEM ON THE SIEGE OF ROUEN. The city of Rouen makes too considerable a figure in the foregoing pages, and its history, as connected with our own country in the earlier part of the fifteenth century, is too interesting, to require any thing in the shape of apology for the matter which the Reader is about to peruse. This "matter" is necessarily incidental to the _present_ edition of the "Tour;" as it is only recently made public. An "_Old English Poem_" on our Henry the Fifth's "_Siege of Rouen_" is a theme likely to excite the attention of the literary Antiquary on _either_ side of the Channel. The late erudite, and ever to be lamented Rev. J.J. Conybeare, successively Professor of the Saxon language, and of English Poetry in the University of Oxford, discovered, in the exhaustless treasures of the Bodleian Library, a portion of the Old English Poem in question: but it was a portion only. In the 21st. vol. of the Archæologia, Mr. Conybeare gave an account of this fortunate discovery, and subjoined the poetical fragment. Mr. Frederick Madden, one of the Librarians attached to the MS. department in the British Museum, was perhaps yet more fortunate in the discovery of the portion which was lost: and in the 22d. vol. of the _Archæologia_, just published, (pp. 350-398), he has annexed an abstract of the remaining fragment, with copious and learned notes. This fragment had found its way, in a prose attire, into the well-known English MS. Chronicle, called the BRUTE:--usually (but most absurdly) attributed to Caxton. It is not however to be found in _all_ the copies of this Chronicle. On the contrary, Mr. Madden, after an examination of several copies of this MS. has found the poem only in four of them: namely, in two among the Harleian MSS. (Nos. 753; 2256--from which _his_ transcript and collation have been made) in one belonging to Mr. Coke of Holkham, and in a fourth belonging to the _Cotton_ Collection:--Galba E. viii. This latter MS. has a very close correspondence with the _second_ Harl. MS. but is often faulty from errors of the Scribe, See _Gentleman's Magazine, May_, 1829. So much for the history of the discovery of this precious old English Poem--which is allowed to be a contemporaneous production of the time of the Siege--namely, A.D. 1418. A word as to its intrinsic worth--from the testimony of the Critic most competent to appreciate it. "It will be admitted, I believe, (says Mr. Madden) by all who will take the trouble to compare the various contemporary narratives of the Siege of Rouen, that in point of simplicity, clearness, and minuteness of detail, there is NO existing document which can COMPARE with the Poem before us. Its authenticity is sufficiently established, from the fact of the Author's having been an EYEWITNESS of the whole. If we review the names of those Historians who lived at the same period, we shall have abundant reason to rejoice at so valuable an accession to our present stock of information on the subject." _Archæologia_, vol. xxii. p. 353. The reader shall be no longer detained from a specimen or two of the poem itself, which should seem fully to justify the eulogy of the Critic. "On the day after the return of the twelve delegates sent by the City of Rouen to treat with Henry, the Poet proceeds to inform us, that the King caused two tents to be pitched, one for the English Commissioners, and the other for the French. On the English side were appointed the Earl of Warwick, the Earl of Salisbury, the Lord Fitzhugh, and Sir Walter Hungerford, and on the French side, twelve discreet persons were chosen to meet them. Then says the writer, 'It was a sight of solempnity, For to behold both party; To see the rich in their array, And on the walls the people that lay, And on our people that were without, How thick that they walked about; And the heraudis seemly to seene, How that they went ay between; The king's heraudis and pursuivants, In coats of arms _amyantis_. The English a beast, the French a flower, Of Portyngale both castle and tower, And other coats of diversity, As lords bearen in their degree.' "As a striking contrast to this display of pomp and splendour is described the deplorable condition of those unfortunate inhabitants who lay starving in the ditches without the walls of the City, deprived both of food and clothing. The affecting and simple relation of our Poet, who was an eye-witness, is written with that display of feeling such a scene must naturally have excited, and affords perhaps one of the most favourable passages in the Poem to compare with the studied narratives of Elmham or Livius. In the first instance we behold misery literally in rags, and hiding herself in silence and obscurity, whilst in the other she is ostentatiously paraded before our eyes: 'There men might see a great pity, A child of two year or three Go about, and bid his bread, For Father and mother both lay dead, And under them the water stood, And yet they lay crying after food. Some _storven_ to the death, And some stopped both eyen and breath, And some crooked in the knees, And as lean as any trees, And women holding in their arm A dead child, and nothing warm, And children sucking on the pap Within a dead woman's lap.' On Friday the 20th of January, King Henry V. made his public entry into Rouen. His personal appearance is thus described: 'He rode upon a brown steed, Of black damask was his weed, A _Peytrelle_ of gold full bright About his neck hung down right, And a pendant behind him did honge Unto the earth, it was so long. And they that never before him did see, They knew by the cheer which was he.' "With the accustomed, but mistaken, piety for which Henry was ever distinguished, he first proceeded to the monastery, where he alighted from his charger, and was met by the chaplains of his household, who walked before him, chanting _Quis est magnus Dominus?_ After the celebration of mass, the king repaired to the Castle, where he took up his abode. By this termination of a siege, which, for its duration and the horrors it produced, is perhaps without a parallel in ancient or modern times, the city was again plentifully supplied with provisions, and recovered the shock so tedious and afflicting a contest had occasioned: 'And thus our gracious liege Made an end of his siege; And all that have heard this reading, To his bliss Christ you bring, That for us died upon a tree, Amen say we all, _pur charite!_' The Duke of Exeter is appointed Governor of the City, and ordered by Henry to take possession of it the same night. The Duke mounts his horse, and rides strait to the Port de Bevesyne or Beauvais, attended by a retinue, to carry the commands of his sovereign into execution. His Entré, and the truly miserable condition of the besieged, together with the imposing appearance of Henry, shall now be described in the language of the poet. Thanne the duke of Excestre withoute bode Toke his hors and forth he rode, To bevesyne[E] that porte so stronge, That he hadde ley bifore so longe, To that gate sone he kam,[F] And with hym many a worthy[G] manne. There was neying of many a stede, And schynyng of many a gay wede, There was many a getoun[H] gay, With mychille[I] and grete aray. And whanne the gate was openyd there, And thay weren[J] redy into fare, Trumpis[K] blewgh her bemys[L] of bras, Pipis and clarionys forsothe ther was, And as thay entrid thay gaf a schowte With her[M] voyce that was fulle stowte, 'Seint George! seint George!' thay criden[N] on height, And seide, 'welcome oure kynges righte.' The Frensshe pepulle of that Cite Were gederid by thousandes, hem to see. Thay criden[N] alle welcome in fere, 'In siche tyme mote ye entre here, Plesyng to God that it may be, And to vs pees and vnyte.' And of that pepulle, to telle the trewthe, It was a sighte of fulle grete ruthe. Mykelle of that folke therynne Thay weren[O] but verrey bonys and skynne. With eyen holowgh and[P] nose scharpe, Vnnethe thay myght brethe or carpe, For her colowris was[Q] wan as lede, Not like to lyue but sone ben dede. Disfigurid pateronys[R] and quaynte, And as[S] a dede kyng thay weren paynte. There men myght see an[T] exampleyre, How fode makith the pepulle faire.[U] In euery strete summe lay dede, And hundriddis krying aftir brede. And aftir long many a day, Thay deyde as[V] faste as[W] they myght be lad away. Into[X] that way God hem wisse, That thay may come to his blisse! amen. Now[Y] wille y more spelle, And of the duke of exestre to[Z] telle. To that Castelle firste he rode, And sythen[AA] the Cite alle abrode; Lengthe and brede he it mette, And rich baneris he[AB] vp sette. Vpon the porte seint Hillare A Baner of the Trynyte. And at[AC] the port Kaux he sette evene A baner of the quene of heven. And at[AD] port martvile he vppyght Of seint George a baner bryght. He sette vpon the Castelle to[AE] stonde The armys of Fr[a]unce and Englond. And on the Friday in the mornynge Into that Cite come oure kynge. And alle the Bisshoppis in her aray, And vij. abbottis with Crucchis[AF] gay; xlij.[AG] crossis ther were of Religioune[AH], And seculere, and alle thay went a precessioun, Agens that prince withoute the toune, And euery Cros as thay stode He blessid hem with milde mode, And holy water with her hande Thay gaf the prince of oure lande. And at[AI] the porte Kaux so wide He in passid withoute[AJ] pride; Withoute pipe or bemys blaste, Our kyng worthyly he in paste. And as a conquerour in his righte Thankyng[AK] euer god almyghte; And alle the pepulle in that Citie 'Wilcome our[AL] lorde,' thay seide, 'so fre! Wilcome into[AM] thyne owne righte, As it is the[AN] wille of[AO] god almyght.' With that thay kryde alle _'nowelle!_' Os[AP] heighe as thay myght yelle. He rode vpon a browne stede, Of blak damaske was his wede. A peytrelle[AQ] of golde fulle bryght Aboute his necke hynge[AR] doun right, And a pendaunte behynd him dide[AS] honge Vnto the erthe, it was so longe, And thay that neuer before hym dide[AT] see, Thay knew by chere[u] wiche was he. To the mynster dide he fare, And of his horse he lighte there. His chapelle[AU] mette hym at[AV] the dore there, And wente bifore[AW] hym alle in fere, And songe a response[AX] fulle glorivs, _Quis est magnus dominus_. Messe he hirde and offrid thoo, And thanne to the Castelle dide he goo. That is a place of rialte, And a paleis of grete beaute. There he hym[AY] loggid in the Toune, With rialle and grete renoune. And the[AZ] cite dide faste encrece Of brede and wyne, fisshe, and fflesshe.[BA] And thus oure gracious liege Made an ende of his seege. And alle that[BB] haue hirde this redynge[BC] To his[BD] blisse criste you brynge, That for vs deide vpon[BE] a tre, Amen sey[BF] we alle, pur cherite! _There was many a getoun gay_.] The following particulars relative to the _getoun_ appear in MS. Harl. 838. "Euery baronet euery estat aboue hym shal have hys baner displeyd in y'e field yf he be chyef capteyn, euery knyght his penoun, euery squier or gentleman hys _getoun_ or standard." "Item, y'e meyst lawfully fle fro y'e standard and _getoun_, but not fro y'e baner ne penon.". "Nota, a stremer shal stand in a top of a schyp or in y'e fore-castel: a stremer shal be slyt and so shal a standard as welle as a _getoun_: a _getoun_ shal berr y'e length of ij yardes, a standard of iii or 4 yardes, and a stremer of xii. xx. xl. or lx. yardes longe." This account is confirmed by MS. Harl. 2258, and Lansd. 225. f. 431. as quoted by Mr. Nicholas, in the Retrosp. Rev. vol. i. N.S. The former of these MSS. states: Euery standard and _Guydhome_ [whence the etymology of the word is obvious] to have in the chief the crosse of St. George, to be slitte at the ende, and to conteyne the creste or supporter, with the posey, worde, and devise of the owner." It adds, that "a guydhome must be two yardes and a halfe, or three yardes longe." This rule may sometimes have been neglected, at least by artists, for in a bill of expences for the Earl of Warwick, dated July 1437, and printed by Dugdale, (Warw. p. 327.) we find the following entry; "Item, a _gyton_ for the shippe of viij. yerdis long, poudrid full of raggid staves, for the lymnyng and workmanship, ijs." The Grant of a _guydon_ made in 1491 to Hugh Vaughan, is preserved in the College of Arms. It contains his crest placed longitudinally. _Retrospective Review, New Series_, vol. i. p. 511. [E] _bewesyns_. [F] _came_. [G] _worthy_ deest. [H] A species of banner or streamer. See Note. [I] _noble_. [J] _were_. [K] Trumpeters. [L] Trumpets. [M] _that_. [N] cryed. [O] _were_. [P] _with nose_. [Q] _were_. [R] _patrons_.--Workmens' models or figures. _Patrone_, forme to werke by. _Prompt. Parvul_. MS. Harl. 221. There is probably here an allusion to the waxen or wooden effigies placed on the hearse of distinguished personages. [S] _as dede thyng they were peynte_. [T] _in_. [U] _to fare_. [V] as _deest_. [W] _as cartes led awey_. [X] _Vnto_. [Y] In MS. Harl. 753, a break is here made, and a large capital letter introduced. [Z] _to_ deest. [AA] _sithe_. [AB] _vp he_. [AC] _atte porte kauxoz_. [AD] _atte_ porte. [AE] _that stounde_. [AF] Crosses. [AG] xliiij. [AH] _religiouns_. [AI] _atte porte hauxoz_. [AJ] The remainder, of this, and the two following lines are omitted. [AK] _Thanked_. [AL] _they seyde our lord so free_. [AM] _vnto_. [AN] _the_ deest. [AO] _to_. [AP] _As_. [AQ] Poitrell, breast plate. [AR] _hangyng_. [AS] _dide_ deest. [AT] _the_ chere. [AU] The chaplains of his household. Lat. _capella_. [AV] _atte_ dore, _there_ deest. [AW] _afore_. [AX] _respon._ [AY] _logged hym._ [AZ] _his cite fast encrest_. [BA] _beste_. [BB] _that_ deest. [BC] _tydyng_. [BD] _his_ deest. [BE] on. [BF] _seyde all for charitee_. BRONZE GILT ANTIQUE STATUE AT LILLEBONNE, p. 127-8. This Statue, as the above reference will testify, is now in the possession of Mr. Samuel Woodburn, of St. Martin's Lane. When the note relating to it was written, I could, not place my hand upon a Brochure (in my possession) published at Rouen in 1823,[176] containing an archaeological description of this Statue by M. Revet, and a scientific account of its component parts, by M. Houton La Billardière, Professor of Chemistry at Rouen. The former embodied his remarks in two letters addressed to the Prefect of the Lower Seine. A print of the figure in its then extremely mutilated state, is prefixed; but its omission would have been no great drawback to the publication--which, in its details, appears to be ingenious, learned, and satisfactory. The highest praise is given to the Statue, as a work of art of the second century.[177] Its _identity_ seems to be yet a subject of disputation:--but M. Revet considers it as "the representation of some idolatrous divinity." The opinion of its being a representation of Bacchus, or of Apollo, or of a Constellation, he thinks might be regulated by a discovery of some emblem, or attribute, found in the vicinity of the Statue. Two other plates--lithographised--relating to explanations of the pieces of the Statue, close this interesting performance. [176] "_Description de la, Statue Fruste, en Bronze Doré, trouvée a Lillebonne &c. Suivie de l'Analyse du Métal, avec le dessein de la Statue, et les Tracés de quelques particularités relatives à la Confection de cette Antique." Rouen,_ 1823. pp. 56. [177] Other details induce me to fix the period of its completion towards the end of the second century: and after the unheard of difficulties which the artist had to overcome, one would scarcely be believed if one said that every thing is executed in a high state of perfection." p. 34. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INDEX. INDEX OF MANUSCRIPTS, AND OF PRINTED BOOKS, DESCRIBED, QUOTED, OR REFERRED TO. Vol Page _Æneas Sylvius de Duobus Amantibus_, no date, 4to.--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 315 _Æsopus, Gr_. 4to. Edit. prin.--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 308 ---- _Lat_. 1481, folio--in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 141 ---- _Ital_. 1485, _Tuppi_, in the same library at Paris, ii 142 ---- _Ital_. 1491 and 1492, 4to.--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 308 ---- _Hispan_. 1496, folio--in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 142 ---- _Germ. Without Date, &c_., in the same library ii 142 ---- ---- in the same library, ii 142 _Alain Chartier, paraboles de, Verard_, 1492, folio--UPON VELLUM--in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 134 _Albert Durer_; original drawings of, in a Book of Prayers, in the Public Library at Munich, iii 132 _Alcuinus de Trinitate, Monast. Utimpurrha_, 1500, folio--in the Public Library at Augsbourg, iii 101 _Aldine Classics_, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 145 ---- ----, in the Library of St. Geneviève, ii 177 ---- ----, in the King's Private Library at Stuttgart, iii 41 ---- ----, in the Public Library at Munich, iii 146 _Alexandrus Gallus_, vulgo _de Villa Dei Doctrinale V de Spira_, folio--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 315 _Almanac historique--le Messager Boiteux_--a chap book, extracts from, iii 73 _Anti-Christ--block book_--in the Public Library at Landshut, iii 181 _Ambrosii Hexameron_, 1472, folio--in the Public Library at Augsbourg, iii 99 ---- ---- in the Public Library at Nuremberg, _Supplement_, iii 430 _Amours, chasse et départ, Verard_, 1509, folio--UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 132 _Anthologia Græca_, 1498, 4to.--UPON VELLUM, in the Library of Ste. Geneviève, at Paris, ii 176 ---- ---- 1503, _Aldus_, UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 145 _Antonii Archpi Opera Theologica_, 1477, _Koberger_, folio--in the Public Library at Strasbourg, ii 407 _Apocalypse, block book_, in the Royal Library at Stuttgart, iii 26 ---- ---- in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 331 _Apostles Creed_, in German, _block book_, with fac simile--in the Public Library at Munich, iii 137 _Appianus, Lat. Ratdolt_, 1478, folio--in the library of the Monastery of St. Florian, iii 236 _Apuleius_, 1469, folio--in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 128 ---- ----, in the Library of the Monastery of Closterneuburg, iii 397 ---- ----, imperfect, in the Public Library at Munich, iii 142 ---- ----, UPON VELLUM, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 308 ---- ----, 1472, _Jenson_, folio--in the last mentioned library, iii 308 _Aquinas, T., Sec. Secundæ, Schoeffher_, 1467, folio--UPON VELLUM, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 316 ----, _Opus Quartiscript. Schoeffher_. 1469, folio--UPON VELLUM, in the same Library, iii 316 ----, _In Evang. Matt, et Marc_. 1470, _S. and Pannartz_, folio--in the same library, iii 316 ---- _de virtut. et vitiis. Mentelin_--in the Public Library at Munich, iii 141 _Arbre des Batailles, Verard_, 1493, folio--UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 132 _Aretinus de Bella Gothico_, 1470, folio--in the Public Library at Caen, i 208 _Aristotelis Opera, Gr. Aldus_, 1495, 6 vols. Two copies UPON VELLUM (the first volume in each copy wanting) in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 136 ---- _Ethica Nichomachea. Gr. (Aldus)--_ remarkably splendid copy of, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 138 _Ars Memorandi_, &c.--_block book_: five copies of, in the Public Library at Munich, iii 135 ---- ---- in the Public Library at Landshut, iii 181 ---- ---- in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 332 ---- -----in the Library of Göttwic Monastery, iii 428 _Ars Moriendi, Germanicé--4to_.-- in the Royal Library at Stuttgart, iii 26 ---- _Lat. block book_--two editions, in the Public Library at Munich, iii 136 _Art de bien Mourir, Verard_, no date, folio--UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 133 _Art and Crafte to know well to dye, Caxton_, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 124 ARTUS LE ROY; MS. xiith century,--in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 94 Another MS. of the same Romance, in the same Library, ii 94 _Artaxani Summa_, (1469) folio--in the Public Library at Augsbourg, iii 232 _Augustinus Sts. De Civitate Dei_, 1467, folio--in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 113 ---- ---- in the Library of Ste. Geneviève at Paris, ii 173 ---- ---- in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 301 ---- ---- in the Library of Closterneuburg Monastery, iii 397 ---- ---- _Sweynheym and Pannartz_, 1470, folio, in the Public Library at Vire, i 297 _Augustinus Sts. De Civitate Dei_, 1467, folio, UPON VELLUM, late in the Library of Chremsminster Monastery, iii 221 ---- ---- in the Public Library at Landshut, iii 181 ---- ---- _Schoeffher_, 1473; folio--in the Library of the Monastery of Chremsminster, iii 221 ---- ---- _Jenson_, 1475, folio--UPON VELLUM, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 301 ---- _Confessionum Libri XIII_. 1475. 4to.--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 301 ---- ---- _de singularitate Clericorum_, 1467, 4to. in the King's Private Library at Stuttgart, iii 40 AUGUSTINI STI. IN PSALMOS, MS. xvth century--formerly in the library of Corvinus, King of Hungary, and now in the Royal Library at Stuttgart, iii 36 ---- ---- _Yppon. de Cons. Evang_. 1473, folio--in the Public Library at Augsbourg, iii 101 _Aulus Gellius_, 1469, folio--in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 127 ---- ---- UPON VELLUM, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 308 Aurbach's Meditations upon the Life of Christ, 1468, Printed by Gunther Zeiner. _Pub. Lib. Augsbourg_, iii 100 _Ausonius_, 1472, folio--in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 128 ---- ---- in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 309 ---- ---- _Aldus_, 1517, 8vo. Grolier's copy, on large paper, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 148 _Aymon, les quatre filz_, 1583, 4to.--in the Library of the Arsenal, at Paris, ii 163 B. BALLADS; _Bon Jour, Bon Soir_: i 132 --_Toujours_, 389 various, from the _Vaudevires of Olivier Basselin_, 292 -293 -294 _Vive Le Roi, Vive L'Amour_, i 310 _en arborant le drapeau blanc, at Falaise_, i 324 _le Baiser d'Adieu_, i 343 _L'Image de la Vie_, i 344 _Bartholi Lectura de Spira_, 1471. Folio. In the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 316 _Bartsch, I. Adam de--Catalogue des Estampes, par, &c_. 1818. 8vo. iii 393 _Bella (La) Mano_, 1474, 4to.--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 321 _Bellovacensis Vinc. Spec. Hist_. 1473, folio--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 317 _Berlinghieri, Geografia_, folio--in the Imperial Library (Prince Eugene's copy) at Vienna, iii 321 _Berinus et Aygres de Lamant, Bonfons_, no date, in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, ii 165 _Bessarionis Epistolæ_, (1469) folio--in the Royal Library at Stuttgart, iii 24 BIBLIA LATINA, MS. ixth century, of Charles the Bald--in the Royal Library at Paris, with a copper-plate engraving of that Monarch's portrait, ii 65 ------ ------ XIIth century, in the same library, ii 67 ------ ------ XVth century, of the _Emperor Wenceslaus_--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 290 BIBLIA HIST. PARAPHRASTICA, MS. XVth century, ii 69 _Biblia Polyglotta Complut_. 1516, &c. in the Public Library at Coutances, i 270 ------ ------ copy belonging to Diane de Poictiers, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 149 ------ ------ 1521, in the Public Library at Landshut, iii 181 ------ ------ copy of Demetrius Chalcondylas, afterwards that of Eckius, in the Public Library at Landshut, iii 181 ------ ------ _Walton_; royal copy, in the Public Library at Caen, i 211 ------ ------ with the original dedication, in the Public Library at Stuttgart, iii 22 ------ ------ in the Library of the Monastery of St. Florian, in Austria, iii 237 _Biblia Polyglotta, Le Jay_: in the Library of the Lycée at Bayeux i 245 ------ _Hebraica, edit. Soncini_, 1488, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 303 _Biblia Hebraica edit. Houbigant_, 1753, in a Private Collection near Bayeux, i 235 ---- ---- _Hahn_, 1806, in the Library of the Monastery of Closterneuburg, iii 396 ---- _Græca, Aldus_, 1518, folio--Francis Ist's copy, upon thick paper, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 148 ---- ---- _Aldus_, upon thick paper, in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, ii 157 ---- ---- the usual copy, in the King's Private Library at Stuttgart, iii 39 _Biblia Latina_, (_edit. Maz. 1455_) folio, 2 vols., two copies of, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 106 ---- ---- a copy in the Mazarine Library at Paris, ii 190 ---- ---- a copy in the Public Library at Munich, iii 139 ---- ---- a copy in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 302 ---- ---- _Pfister_, (1461) folio, 3 vols. in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 108 ---- two copies, 1592, 1603, in the Royal Library at Stuttgart, iii 39 ---- ---- in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 302 ---- _Fust und Schoeffher_, 1462: folio--three copies, (two UPON VELLUM, and a third on paper) in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, ii 154 ---- ---- VELLUM COPY, in the Library of Ste. Geneviève, ii 173 ---- VELLUM COPY, in the Mazarine Library at Paris, ii 190 ---- ---- in the Public Library at Stuttgart, iii 22 ---- ---- (imperfect) in the Public Library at Landshut, iii 181 ---- ---- in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 302 _Biblia Latina Mentelin_--in the Public Library at Strasbourg, ii 404 _Biblia Latino Mentelin_, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 302 ---- _Eggesteyn_, (ms. date, 1468) in the Public Library at Strasbourg, ii 404 ---- ---- (ms. date, 1466) in the Public Library at Munich, iii 141 ---- _Sweynheym and Pannartz_, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 302 ---- supposed edition of Eggesteyn, in the Public Library at Strasbourg, iii 55 ---- 1475, folio, _Frisner_, &c.--in the Public Library at Augsbourg, iii 96 ---- (1475 _edit. Gering_) imperfect copy in the Chapter Library at Bayeux, i 244 ---- _Hailbrun_, 1476, folio: two copies, of which one is UPON VELLUM, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 303 ---- ---- _Jenson_, 1479, folio, in the Public Library at Strasbourg, ii 405 ---- ---- UPON VELLUM, in the Imperial Library at Vienna--and a second copy upon paper, iii 303 ---- ---- 1485, folio, in the Public Library at Caen, i 208 ---- ---- _Froben_, 1495, 8vo. in the Public Library at Vire, i 298 BIBLIA GERMANICA, MS. of the Emperor Wenceslaus, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 290 _Biblia Germanica, Mentelin_, folio--in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 108 ---- ---- in the Public Library at Strasbourg, ii 403 ---- ---- two copies, in the Public Library at Stuttgart, iii 21 ---- ---- two copies in the Public Library at Munich, iii 140 ---- ---- in the Public Library at Landshut, iii 180 _Biblia Germanica, Mentelin_, folio, in the Library at Closterneuburg Monastery, iii 397 ---- ---- in the Public Library at Ratisbon, _Supplement_, iii 418 ---- ---- in the Public Library at Nuremberg, _Supplement_, iii 431 ---- ---- _supposed first edition_, in the Public Library at Landshut, iii 180 ---- ---- _supposed first edition_, folio, in the Library of Closterneuburg Monastery, iii 397 _Biblia Germanica, Sorg. Augsbourg_, 1477, folio, in the Library of the Monastery of St. Florian, iii 236 ---- ---- _Peypus_, 1524, folio--UPON VELLUM, in the Public Library at Stuttgart, iii 22 _Biblia Italica; Kalend. Augusti_, 1471--folio--in the Mazarine Library, at Paris, ii 191 ---- ---- imperfect copy, in the Public Library at Stuttgart, iii 22 ---- ---- _Kalend. Octobris_, 1471, folio--in the Library of Ste. Geneviève, at Paris, ii 173 ---- ---- in the Public Library at Stuttgart, iii 22 ---- ---- in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 303 _Bibl. Hist, Venet_. 1492, folio--copy purchased of M. Fischeim at Munich, iii 154 _Biblia Bohemica_, 1488, folio--in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 109 ---- _Polonica_, 1563, folio--in the same Library, ii 109 ---- ---- in the Public Library at Stuttgart, iii 22 ---- ---- copy purchased by the Author at Augsbourg, iii 96 ---- ---- in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 304 ---- ---- 1599; folio--in the Library of Ste. Geneviève, ii 174 _Biblia Hungarica_, 1565, folio--incomplete, in the King's Private Library at Stuttgart, iii 39 ---- _Sclavonica_, 1581, folio, in the Royal Library at Stuttgart, iii 22 ---- ---- 1587, folio--in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 109 _Bible, La Sainte_, 1669, folio; large paper copy in the Public Library of Caen, i 211 BIBLIA-HISTORICA, _MS. versibus germanicis_, Sec. XIV.--in the Royal Library at Stuttgart, iii 29 ---- _Aurea. Lat. I. Zeiner_, 1474, folio--in the Library of Chremsminster Monastery, iii 222 ---- _Pauperum, block book_: in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 108 ---- ---- _block book_, German,--in the Public Library at Stuttgart iii 26 ---- ---- _Latine_, first edition, in the same Library, iii 27 ---- ---- _block book_--one German, and two Latin editions, in the Public Library at Munich, iii 136 ---- ---- in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 331 BIOGRAPHY, ROYAL, OF FRANCE;--XVIth century--magnificent MS. in the Royal Library at Paris. ii 87 BLAZONRY OF ARMS, BOOK OF--XIVth century, with fac-simile portrait of _Leopold de Sempach_ in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 299 _Block books_; at Paris, ii 208, at Stuttgart, iii 26, at Munich, iii 134; at Landshut, iii 181; at Vienna, iii 331. BOCACE, DES CAS DES NOBLES HOMMES ET FEMMES, MS. XVth century, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 84 ---- ---- two more MSS. of the same work, in the same Library, ii 85 _Boccace Ruines des-Nobles Hommes_, &c. 1476, _Colard Mansion_, folio, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 126 _Boccaccio Il Decamerone_, 1471, _Valdarfer_, folio--in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 125 ---- ---- 1472, _A. de Michaelibus_, folio, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 126 _Boccaccio II Decamerone_, in the Public Library at Nuremberg, _Supplement_, iii 431 ---- ---- 1476, _Zarotus_, folio, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 321 ---- ---- _Deo Gracias, Sine Anno: forsan edit. prin_. in the Public Library at Munich, iii 143 ---- _Nimphale_, 1477, 4to., in the Royal Library at Stuttgart, iii 26 _Boetius, F. Johannes_, 1474, 4to. in the Library of Ste. Genevieve. at Paris, ii 176 _Bonifacii Papæ Libr. Decret_, 1465, folio, UPON VELLUM, in the Library of Mölk Monastery, iii 252 ---- UPON VELLUM, in the Public Library at Nuremberg, _Supplement_, iii 430 _Bonnie vie, ou Madenie, Chambery_, 1485, folio, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 326 Book of the Gospels of the Emperor Lotharius, Royal Library at Paris, ii 67 BREVIAIRE DE BELLEVILLE, MS. xivth century, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 72 BREVIARY OF JOHN DUKE OF BEDFORD, MS. xvth century--in the Royal Library at Paris--with copper plate fac-simile of a portion of the Adoration of the Magi, from the same, ii 73 BREVIARE DE M. DE MONMORENCY, MS. xvith century--in the Emperor of Austria's private collection at Vienna, iii 386 BREVIARIUM ECCL. Liss. MS.; in the Public Library at Caen i 209 BRUT D'ANGLETERE, MS. xivth century--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 300 _Budæi Comment, in Ling. Gr_. 1529, folio--Francis 1st. copy, UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 140 _Burtrio, Anthon. de, Adam Rot_, 1472, folio, in the Library of Closterneuburg Monastery, iii 399 C. _Cæsar_, 1469, folio--in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 128 _Cæsar_, 1460, folio, in the Mazarine Library, ii 192 ---- ---- in the Public Library at Munich, iii 142 ---- ---- UPON VELLUM, in the Imperial Library, iii 309 ---- 1471. _Jenson_, in the library of Göttwic Monastery, iii 430 ---- 1472. _S. and Pannartz_, folio, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 309 _Calderi Opus Concilior. Adam Rot_.--1472. Folio, in the library of Closterneuburg Monastery, iii 399 CALENDARIUM, MS., xvith century in the Public Library at Munich iii 128 ---- ---- _Regiomontani, block book_ in the Public Library at Munich iii 138 _Cantica Canticorum, Edit. Prin_. three copies in the Public Library at Augsbourg, iii 138 _Castille et Artus d'Algarbe_, 1587. 4to., in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris ii 160 _Catéchisme à l'usage des grandes filles pour êtres mariés_ i 89 _Caterina da Bologna_, no Date. 4to. in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 332 ---- _da Sienna_, 1477, 4to., in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 322 ---- _de Senis_, 1500, folio, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 149 _Catholicon_, 1460, folio, UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library Paris, ii 114 ---- ---- 1460, folio, in the Imp. Lib. at Vienna, iii 317 ---- ---- UPON VELLUM, in the Public Library at Munich, iii 143 ---- _G, Zeiner_, 1469, UPON VELLUM, in the Public Library at Munich, iii 143 ---- ---- in the Monastic Library of Chremsminster, iii 221 ---- ---- UPON VELLUM, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 317 _Catullus, Tibullus, et Propertius_, 1472, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 128 _Catullus, Tibullus, et Propertius_, in the Mazarine Library, ii 193 ---- ---- in the Public Library at Strasbourg, ii 409 _Caxton, books printed by_, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 102 ---- ---- in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 331 _Celestina Commedia de, Anvers_, 18mo., in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, ii 162 _Chaucer's Book of Fame, Caxton_, folio, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 332 CHESS, GAME OF, _metrical German version of_, MS., sec. xv., in the Royal Library at Stuttgart, iii 154 _Chevalier Delibre_, 1488, 4to., in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 326 CHEVALIER AU LION, MS., 1470, in the Public Library at Stuttgart, iii 33 _Chivalry_; see _Tournaments_. _Chrétien de Mechel_, Cat. des Tableaux de la Galerie imp. et roy. de Vienne, 1781, 8vo., iii 371 ---- _Foresii, Lat_. 1474, folio, _printed by Gotz_, in the Public Library at Strasbourg, ii 405 ---- _Hungariæ_, 1485, 4to., in the Public Library at Augsbourg, iii 99 _Chronicon Gottwicense_, 1732, folio, 2 vols., some account of this rare and valuable work, iii 436 ---- ---- referred to, iii 271 _Chrysostomi Comment., Gr_. 1529, folio, copy of Diane de Poictiers, in the Public Library at Caen, i 213 _Cicero, de Officiis_ 1465, 4to., two copies UPON VELLUM, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 309 ---- ---- 1466, 4to., upon paper, in the Mazarine Library at Paris, iii 192 ---- ---- 1466, 4to., UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Stuttgart, iii 24 ---- ---- 1466, 4to., UPON VELLUM, in the Imp. Lib. at Vienna, iii 309 ---- ---- (_Aldus_), 8vo., UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 146 _Cicero, Epistolæ ad Familiares_, 1467, Cardinal Bessarion's copy in the Imperial Library, at Vienna, iii 310 ---- ---- 1469, _S. and Pannartz_, folio, in the same Library, iii 310 ---- ---- 1469, _S: and Pannartz_, folio, in the Public Library at Augsbourg, iii 98 ---- ---- 1469, _I. de Spira_, in the Royal Library at Stuttgart, iii 24 ---- ---- 1502, Aldus, 8vo., UPON VELLUM, in the possession of M. Renouard, bookseller, ii 222 _Cicero, de Oratore, Monast. Soubiac_., folio, in the Library of Ste. Geneviève, at Paris, ii 173 ---- ---- _V. de Spira_, folio, in the Public Library at Strasbourg, ii 408 ---- _Opera Philosophica, Ulric Han_, folio, in the Public Library at Munich, iii 142 ---- _De Natura Deorum, V. de Spira_. 1471, folio, in the Mazarine Library, at Paris, ii 192 ---- _Rhetorica Vetus, Jenson_, 1470, folio, UPON VELLUM, in the Library of Ste. Genevieve, at Paris, ii 175 ---- ---- UPON VELLUM, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 310 ---- _Orationes, S. and Pannartz_, 1471, folio, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 310 ---- ---- _Valdarfer_, 1471, folio, UPON VELLUM, (wanting one leaf) in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 141 ---- ---- 1519, _Aldus_, 8vo, UPON VELLUM, first volume only, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 146 ---- ---- perfect copy, UPON VELLUM, in the Library of St. Geneviève, ii 177 ---- _Opera Omnia_, 1498, folio, 4 vols., in the Library of Ste. Geneviève, at Paris, ii 176 ---- ---- in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 310 ---- ---- 1534, _Giunta_, folio, singular copy in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 152 _Cid el Cavalero_, 1627, 4to., in the Library of the Arsenal, at Paris: bound with _Seys Romances del Cid Ruy Diaz de Bevar_, 1627, 4to. ii 161 CITÉ DE DIEU, MS., in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 82 _Cité des Dames, (Verard)_ folio, UPON VELLUM, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 327 _Codex Ebnerianus_, referred to iii 447 _Compendium Morale_, folio, UPON VELLUM, unique copy, late in the possession of the Baron Derschau, at Nuremberg, _Supplement_, iii 443 COSTENTIN DU, MS., in the Public Library at Caen, i 209 COUTANCES, MS., biographical details connected with, in the Public Library at Caen, i 210 _Coutumes Anciennes_, 1672, 12mo. at Caen, i 211 _Cronica del Cid. Seville_. 4to., in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 327 Cronique de France, 1493, _Verard_, UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 130 ---- _de Florimont_, 1529, 4to.--in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, ii 164 ---- _de Cleriadus_, 1529, 4to.,--in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, ii 166 D. _Daigremont et Vivian_, 1538, 4to., in the Library of the Arsenal, at Paris, ii 166 _Dante Numeister_, 1472, folio, in the Mazarine Library at Paris, ii 193 ---- ---- in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 322 ---- _Petrus Adam_, 1472, folio, in the Library of Ste. Geneviève, at Paris, ii 176 ---- ---- _Neapoli, Tuppi,_ folio, in the Public Library at Stuttgart, iii 25 ---- ---- _Milan_, 1478, with, the comments of G. Tuzago, folio, in the same collection, iii 25 ---- 1481, folio, perfect copy, with twenty copper plates, in the Public Library at Munich, iii 144 ---- 1481, folio, with xx copper-plates, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 323 _Decor Puellarum, Jenson_, 1461, 4to., in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 323 _Defensio Immac. Concept. B.V.M_. 1470, _block book_, in the Public Library at Munich, iii 139 _Delphin Classics_, fine set of, in the library of Chremsminster Monastery, iii 222 _Der Veis Ritter_, 1514, folio, unique copy, in the Public Library at Landshut, iii 183 _Dion Cassius_, 1548, Gr. folio, edit. prin., Diane de Poictiers' copy, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 152 _Dio Chrysostom. de Regno, Valdarfer_, 4to. UPON VELLUM, in the Emperor's private collection at Vienna, iii 388 DIOSCORIDES, GRÆCE, MS., VIth century, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 296 DIVERTISSMENTS TOUCHANT LA GUERRE, MS., in the Public Library at Caen, i 209 _Doolin de Mayence, Paris, Bonfons_, 4to. in the Library of the Arsenal, ii 167 _Durandi Rationale_, 1459, folio, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 108 ---- ---- in the Imperial Library, Vienna, iii 317 _Durandi Rationale_, 1459, folio, in the Public Library at Nuremberg, _Supplement_, iii 430 ---- ---- 1474, _I. Zeiner_, folio, in the Library of Chremsminster Monastery, iii 222 E. ECHECS AMOREUX. MS. folio--with copper-plate fac-simile in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 83 _Echec Jeu de, (Verard)_ no date--UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 132 _Ein nuizlich büchlin, Augs_., 1498, 4to.--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 327 _Erasmus expurgatus iuxta cens. Acad. Lovan_. 1579, folio, in the Public Library at Augsbourg. See _Testament. Novum,_ 1516. iii 102 EVANGELIA QUATUOR, Lat. MS. VIth century, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 64 ---- ---- VIIIth century, in the Library at Chremsminster Monastery, iii 224 ---- ---- IXth century--in the Public Library at Munich, iii 123 ---- ---- XIth century, in the same Library, iii 124 ---- ---- Xth century, in the Public Library at Landshut, iii 179 ---- ---- XIth century--in the Public Library at Stuttgart, iii 27 ---- ---- XIVth century, in the Imperial Library at Vienna iii 291 EVANGELIUM STI. IOHANNIS, MS. Lat. XIth century, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 71 _Evangelia cum Epistolis: Ital_. folio--in the Library of Göttwic Monastery, iii 428 Evangelistarium, of Charlemagne, MS. folio, in the Private Library of the King, at Paris, ii 199 _Euclides_, 1482, folio, UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 139 ---- ---- four varying copies of, in the Public Library at Munich, iii 143 ---- Ratdolt. 1485, in the Library of the Monastery of St. Florian, iii 236 _Euripides, Gr_., 1503, _Aldus_--UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 145 _Eustathius in Homerum_, 1542--folio, UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 138 ---- ---- upon paper, in the same collection, ii 151 ---- ---- 1559, folio, fine copy, upon paper, in the Public Library at Caen, i 211 _Eutropius_, 1471, _Laver_, folio--in the King's Private Library at Stuttgart, iii 39 _Exhortation against the Turks_ (1472) in the Public Library at Munich, iii 135 F. _Fait de la Guerre C. Mansion_, folio--in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 127 _Fazio Dita Mundi_, 1474, folio--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 323 _Ficheti Rhetorica--Gering_--4to.--UPON VELLUM, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 317 _Fiorio e Biancifiore, Bologna_, 1480, folio--in the Library of the Arsenal, at Paris, ii 161 _Fierbras_, 1486, folio--Prince Eugene's copy, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 327 _Fortalitium Fidei_--folio--no date--in the Public Library, at Munich: curious printed advertisement in this copy, iii 145 _Frezzi Il Quadriregio_, 1481, folio--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 323 _Fulgosii Anteros_--1496--folio--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 323 FUNERAILES DES REINES DE FRANCE, MS. folio--in the Emperor's Private Collection at Vienna, iii 387 G. _Galenus, Gr_. 1525, folio. _Aldus_--large paper, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 148 _Galien et Jaqueline_, 1525, folio--in the Library of the Arsenal, at Paris, ii 163 _Gallia Christiana_, 1732, folio, in the Chapter Library at Bayeux, ii 244 _Games of Chess, Caxton_, folio, 2d. edit.--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 332 GENESIS--MS. of the _ivth century--fragments of Chapters of_, account of--with fac-simile Illuminations, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 289 _Gerard Comte de Nevers_, 1526, 4to.--in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, ii 164 _Geyler, Navic. Fat_. 1511, 4to.--in the Public Library at Augsbourg, iii 102 _Gloria Mulierum Jenson_, 4to.--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 324 _Godfrey of Boulogne, Caxton_, folio--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 333 _Gospels_, folio--MS. xiiith century--in the Emperor's Private Library at Vienna, iii 386 _Grammatica Rythmica_, 1466, folio--in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 114 _Gratian Opus. Decret. Schoeffher_, 1472, folio, UPON VELLUM, in the Library of Closterneuburg Monastery, iii 398 _Guillaume de Palerne_, 1552, 4to, in the Library of the Arsenal: another edition, 1634, 4to., ii 166 _Guy de Warwick_, no date, 4to., in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, ii 159 _Gyron Le Courtoys_, no date, _Verard_, UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 130 H. _Hartlieb's Chiromancy, block book_, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 115 ---- ---- in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 332 _Helayne La Belle_, 1528, 4to., in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, ii 166 _Hecuba et Iphigenia in Aulide_, Gr. et Lat. 1507, UPON VELLUM, 8vo. ii 145 _Hector de Troye, Arnoullet_, 4to., in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, ii 167 _Heures, printed by Vostre_, fine copy of, in the Public Library at Caen, i 210 _Herodotus, Gr_. 1502, _Aldus_, folio, large paper copy in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 150 HISTORIA B.M. VIRGINIS, MS., folio, xvth century, in the Public Library at Paris, ii 76 ---- ---- _block book_, folio, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 116 ---- ---- in the Public Library at Stuttgart, iii 26 ---- ---- in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 331 _Historiæ Augusta Scriptores_, 1475, folio, _P. de Lavagna_, in the Public Library at Strasbourg, ii 408 ---- ---- _Aldus_, 1521, 8vo., UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 147 _History of Bohemia_, _by Pope Pius II_, 1475, in the Public Library at Augsbourg, iii 99 HISTOIRE ROMAINE, MS, xvth century; folio, 3 vols. in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 87 _Homeri Opera, Gr_., 1488, folio, UNCUT, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 129 ---- ---- in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 311 ---- ---- in the Public Library at Nuremberg, _Supplement_, iii 432 ---- ---- _No date_, _Aldus_, 8vo., UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 145 ---- ---- in the Library of Ste. Genevieve, ii 177 ---- ---- 1808, _Bodoni_, folio, UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 129 ---- ---- _Batrachomyomachia_, _Gr._ 4to., edit. prin. in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 311 HORÆ B.M. VIRGINIS, MS., 8vo., in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 74 ---- ---- folio, belonging to ANN OF BRITANNY, with copper plate engraving of her portrait therefrom, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 78 ---- ---- belonging to Pope Paul III. in the same Library, ii 80 ---- ---- MS., XVth century, in the Royal Private Library at Stuttgart, iii 37 ---- ---- 8vo., in the Emperor's private collection at Vienna, iii 386 ---- STI. LUDOVICI, MS., XIIIth century, in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, ii 157 ---- ---- _Gr._ 1497, 12mo. _printed by Aldus_, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 103 -147 ---- ---- purchase of a copy from Mr. Stöger, at Munich, iii 151 HORATIUS, M. S., XIIth century in the Mölk Monastery, iii 258 ---- Edit. Prin. 4to., in the Public Library at Augsbourg, iii 96 ---- _Venet_. 1494, 4to., purchased of Mr. Fischeim, at Munich, iii 154 ---- 1501, _Aldus_, 8vo., UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 146 ---- ---- UPON VELLUM, in the Public Library at Munich, iii 143 _Horloge de Sapience, Verard_, 1493, folio, UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 131 HORTUS DELICIARUM, MS., XIIth century, in the Public Library at Strasbourg, ii 401 HORTULUS ANIMÆ, MS., XVth century, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 294 ---- ---- 1498, 12mo., in the King's Private Library at Stuttgart, iii 38 ---- _Rosarum, &c_., 1499, 8vo., in the Public Library at Augsbourg, iii 101 _Huet, Demonstrat. Evang_. 1690, (1679?) folio, unique copy in the Public Library at Caen, i 211 _Huon de Bourdeaux_, four editions of, in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, ii 163 I. _Isocrates, Gr., Aldus_, 1534, folio, large paper copy in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 148 ---- ---- Printed at Milan, 1493, folio, ii 149 _Jason, Roman de, printed by Caxton_, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 103 ---- ---- _same edition_, in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, ii 155 _Jason, printed by Caxton_, in the Imp. Lib. at Vienna, iii 332 _Iehan de Saintré, Bonfons_, no date, 4to., in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, ii 165 ---- _Paris, Bonfons_, no date, 4to., in the same collection, ii 165 JEROME, ST., VIE, MORT, ET MIRACLES DE, MS., XVth century, in the Public Library of Stuttgart, iii 31 _Ieronimi Epistolæ_, 1468, UPON VELLUM, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 304 ---- ---- 1470, _S. and Pannartz_, folio, in the Library of Closterneuburg Monastery, iii 398 ---- ---- in the Public Library at Nuremberg, _Supplement_, iii 431 ---- ---- 1470, _Schoeffher_, in the Public Library at Strasbourg, ii 406 ---- ---- in the Public Library at Nuremberg, _Supplement_, iii 431 ---- ---- _Parmæ_, 1480, folio, in the Public Library at Augsbourg, iii 98 _Josephus, Lat_. 1480, folio, in the Library of the Monastery of St. Florian, iii 236 ---- _Gallicè_, 1492, folio, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 328 _Jourdain de Blave, Paris, Chretien, no date_, 4to., in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, ii 166 _Jouvencel le_, 1497, _Verard_, folio, UPON VELLUM, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 328 _Juvenalis_, folio, _V. de Spira_, edit. prin. in the Public Library at Strasbourg, ii 409 ---- _Ulric. Han. typ. grand_, folio, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 311 ---- 1474, folio, in the Public Library at Caen, i 208 --- _I. de Fivizano_, folio, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 311 L. _Lactantii Institutiones_, 1465, folio, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 112 ---- ---- in the Library of Ste. Geneviève, ii 172 ---- ---- in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 305 ---- ---- 1470, _S. and Pannartz_, folio, in the Mazarine Library at Paris, ii 192 ---- ---- _Rostoch_, 1476, UPON VELLUM, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 305 LANCELOT DU LAC, MS., XIVth century, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 88 ---- ---- another MS. of about the same period, in the same Library, ii 89 ---- ---- another manuscript in the same library, ii 89 ---- ---- 1488, _Verard_, folio, in the Imperial Library (Prince Eugene's copy) at Vienna, iii 328 ---- ---- 1494, _Verard_, folio, UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Paris, iii 130 ---- ---- 1496, _Verard,_ folio, UPON VELLUM, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 328 _Lascaris Gram. Græc_. 1476, 4to., in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 127 LEGES BAVARICÆ, MS., XIIIth century, in the Public Library at Landshut, iii 179 _Legenda Aurea, (seu Sanctorum) Ital. Jenson_, 1476, folio, in the Mazarine Library at Paris, ii 191 ---- ---- UPON VELLUM, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 324 ---- ---- 1475, _Gering_, folio, in the Public Library at Caen, i 208 _Les Deux Amans, Verard_, 1493, 4to., in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 328 LIBER GENERATIONIS IES. XTI. MS. VIIth century: in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 70 _Liber Modorum significandi_, 1480, _St. Albans_,--in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 125 _Liber Moralisat. Bibl_. 1474, Ulm, folio--copy purchased of M. Fischeim, at Munich, iii 154 LIBER PRECUM, _cum not. et cant_. MS. _pervet_. in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 71 ---- ---- MS. xvth century, in the Public Library at Munich, iii 131 _Liber Regum, seu Vita Davidis--block books_--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 331 _Life of Christ, block book_--in the Public Library at Munich, iii 134 _Littleton's Tenures, Lettou_, &c. folio--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 333 LIVIUS, MS. XVth century--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 298 ---- 1469, folio,--in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 122 ---- ---- in the Public Library at Munich, iii 142 ---- 1470, _V. de Spira_, folio, UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 122 ---- ---- upon paper, in the same Library, ii 122 ---- ---- in the Library of Closterneuburg Monastery, iii 397 ---- 1472, _S. and Pann_., folio, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 123 _Lombardi Petri Sentent. (Eggesteyn)_, folio, in the Library of Closterneuburg Monastery, iii 399 _Lucanus_, 1469, folio--in the Public Library at Munich, iii 142 ---- 1475, folio, cum comment. Omniboni--in the Public Library at Stuttgart, iii 24 _Luciani Opera_, Gr. 1496, folio--fine copy, in the possession of M. Renouard, at Paris, ii 230 ---- ---- 1503, _Aldus_, folio--large paper copy, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 151 ---- ---- _Opusc. Quæd. Lat_. 1494--4to.--UPON VELLUM, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 311 _Lucretius_, 1486, folio--in the King's Private Collection at Stuttgart, iii 39 ---- _Aldus_, 1515, 8vo.--UPON VELLUM, (supposed to be unique) in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 146 _Luctus Christianorum, Jenson_, 4to.--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 324 _Ludolphus Vita Christi (Eggesteyn)_, 1474, folio, in the Public Library at Nancy, ii 363 ---- ---- _De Terra Sancta_, &c. 4to.--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 317 M. _Mabrian_, 1625, 4to.--in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, ii 163 _Maguelone, La Belle_, 1492, _Trepperel_, 4to.--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 328 _Maius, de propriet. prisc. verb_. 1477. folio--_B. de Colonia_--in the Public Library at Strasbourg, ii 407 _Mammotrectus, Schoeffher_, 1470--folio--UPON VELLUM, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 317 ---- ---- in the Library of Closterneuburg, iii 398 ---- ---- _H. de Helie_, 1470, folio--in the Public Library at Landshut, iii 181 MANDEVILLE, MS. _German_--in the Public Library at Stuttgart, iii 32 _Manilius_, 1474, folio,--in the King's Private Library at Stuttgart, iii 39 _Marco Polo, Germ_. 1477, folio--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 329 _Marsilius Ficinus: In Dionysium Areopagitam_, no Date, folio, in the Library of Ste. Geneviève at Paris, ii 176 _Martialis_, 1475, folio--in the Library of a Capuchin Monastery, near Vienna, iii 403 ---- ---- _Aldus_, 1502, 8vo. two copies UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 146 MAYNI IASONIS EPITALAMION, MS. 4to.--in the Emperor's Private Library at Vienna, iii 387 _Mayster of Sentence, Caxton_, folio--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 332 _Meinart, St. Life of, block book_: in the Public Library at Munich, iii 137 _Melusina, Historie von der, Germ_. no date, folio, in the King's Private Library at Stuttgart, iii 41 _Melusine, P. Le Noir_, 4to.--in the Library of the Arsenal ii 167 _Memoirs of the Transactions of the Society of Belles Lettres &c. at Rouen_, vol. i. page 49, of a _similar_ Society at Caen, i 185 _Messer Nobile Socio, Miserie de li Amante di_, 1533, 4to. in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, ii 159 _Meurin Fils d'Oger, Paris, Bonfons_, 4to.--in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, ii 167 _Milles et Amys, Verard_, no date, folio--UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 131 ---- ---- _Rouen_, 4to.--in the Library of the Arsenal at ditto, ii 162 _Mirabilia Urbis Romæ, block book_,--in the Public Library at Munich, iii 137 MISSALE, MS. XIVth century, in the Public Library at Stuttgart, iii 30 ---- ---- XVth century, two in the Public Library at Stuttgart, iii 31 ---- ---- of Charles the Bold, XVth century--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, with fac-simile, iii 292 ---- ---- XVth century,--in the Public Library at Munich, iii 129 ---- ---- 8vo.--belonging to Sigismund, King of Poland, in the Public Library at Landshut, iii 180 ---- _Herbipolense_ (1479), folio, UPON VELLUM, in the imperial Library at Vienna, iii 306 ---- ---- _Venet_. 1488, folio,--UPON VELLUM, in the Emperor's Private Collection at Vienna, iii 388 ---- _Pro. Patav. Eccl. Ritu_, 1494, folio, in the Library of a Capuchin Monastery, near Vienna, iii 403 ---- _Mozarabicum_, 1500, folio--with the Breviary 1502, in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, ii 156 ---- ---- in the Library of Ste. Geneviève, ii 178 ---- ---- in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 305 ---- _Parisiense_, 1522, folio--UPON VELLUM, in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, ii 156 _Missal of Henry IV_. XVIth century, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 81 _Missa Defunctorum, Viennæ_, 1499, folio, in the Library of a Capuchin Monastery, near Vienna, iii 403 _Montaigne's Essays_, 1635, folio, large paper, in the Library at Caen, i 212 _Monte Sancto di Dio_, 1477, folio,--in the Royal Library, at Paris, ii 134 _Monte Sancto di Dio_, 1477, folio, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 324 _Moreri des Normans; par I.A. Guiat_, MS. in the Public Library at Caen, i 209 _Morgant le Géant_, 1650, 4to.--in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, ii 164 _Mori Thomæ Opera, edit. Lovan_. 1566, folio, in the Library of the Lycée at Bayeux, i 245 _Munsteri Cosmographia_, 1556, folio, copy of, belonging to D. de Poictiers, in the Public Library at Caen, ii 214 _Mureti Disticha_, Lat. and Fr. _chap book_, at Vire, i 286 N. _Nanceidos Liber_, 1518, folio; copy of, with ms. notes of Bochart, in the Public Library at Caen, i 212 ---- ---- two copies of, one upon large paper, in the Public Library at Nancy, ii 362 ---- ---- one, UPON VELLUM, in the possession of Messrs. Payne and Foss, ii 362 _Nef des Folz du Monde_, Verard, no date, folio--UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 133 ---- ---- Printed by the same, UPON VELLUM, in the same library, ii 133 _Nef des Dames, Arnollet, à Lyon_, 4to.--in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, ii 160 _Niger P., contra perfidos Judæos_, 1475, folio--in the King's Private Library at Stuttgart, iii 41 _Nonius Marcellus_, 1471, folio,--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 318 _Nova Statuta, Machlinia_, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 125 _Novelas, por de Maria Zayas_, 1637, 4to.--in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, ii 160 ---- _Amorosas_, 1624, 4to. in the same Library, ii 160 O. OFFICIUM B.M. VIRGINIS, MS., XVth century, in the Emperor's private collection at Vienna, iii 386 ---- ---- MS., XVIth century, in the Public Library at Munich, iii 129 OFFICIUM B.M. VIRGINIS, MS., in the same library, iii 130 _Ogier le Danois_, 1525, folio, in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, ii 162 _Ovidii Opera Omnia, Azoguidi_, 1471, wanting two leaves, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 141 ---- _Fasti, Azoguidi_, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 312 ---- _Opera Omnia, S. and Pannartz_, 1471, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 312 ---- _Epistolæ et Fasti_, folio, in the same collection, iii 312 P. _Paris et Vienne, Paris_, no date, 4to., in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, ii 164 _Pentateuch, Hebr._ 1491, folio, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 111 _Petrarcha Sonetti_, 1470, Prince Eugene's copy in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 325 ---- ---- 1473, _Zarotus_, folio, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 325 ---- ---- _Jenson_, 1473, folio, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 325 ---- ---- _Comment. Borstii, Bologn_., 1475, folio, two copies in the Imperial Library at Vienna, of which one belonged to Prince Eugene, iii 325 ---- ---- _Bolog._, 1476, folio, (_Azoguidi_[178]) with the comment of Philelphus, in the Public Library at Stuttgart, iii 25 ---- _Aldus_, 1501, 8vo., UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 147 ---- ---- 1514, 8vo., UPON VELLUM, in the possession of M. Renouard, bookseller, ii 229 ---- ---- 1521, 12mo., in the King's Private Library at Stuttgart, iii 41 ---- _Sonetti cum Comment. Velutelli_, 1546, 8vo., iii 41 ---- _Hist. Griseldis, Lat_., 1473, folio,--Prince Eugene's copy in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 318 _Phalaris Epist_., 1471, 4to., in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 318 ---- ---- _Ulric Han_, folio, in the same collection, iii 319 PHILOSTRATUS, _Lat_., MS., XVth century in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 297 _Pierre de Provence et la belle Maguelonne_, 1490, 4to. in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, ii 165 _Pindarus, Gr_. 1502, _Aldi_, 12mo., in the Library of the Monastery of St. Florian, iii 237 _Plautus_, 1472, folio, edit. prin. in the Mazarine Library at Paris, ii 192 ---- 1522, _Aldus_, 4to., Grolier's copy, apparently _large paper_, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 148 _Plinius Senior_, 1469, folio, one copy, UPON VELLUM, and another upon paper, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 120 ---- ---- in the Library of Ste. Geneviève, ii 174 ---- ---- UPON VELLUM, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 312 ---- ---- _Jenson_, 1472, folio, UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 120 ---- ---- _Jenson_, 1472, folio, UPON VELLUM, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 313 ---- ---- upon paper, in the Library of Closterneuburg Monastery, iii 398 ---- ---- _Ital_. 1476, _Jenson_, folio, UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 121 ---- ---- upon paper, in the same collection, ii 121 ---- ---- upon paper, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 313 _Plutarchi Vitæ; Parallellæ, Ital_., folio, Litt. R., in the Public Library at Strasbourg, ii 409 ---- ---- the same edition in the Monastic Library at Closterneuburg, iii 398 _Plutarchi Opuscula Moralia, Gr_, 1509, _Aldus_, UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 137 _Poetæ Græci Principes, Gr_., 1556, folio, large paper, De Thou's copy in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 152 _Pogii Facetiæ, Monast. Euseb_., folio, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 319 ---- _Hist. Fiorent._, 1476, folio, UPON VELLUM and paper, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 325 POLYBIUS, _Gr_. MS., sec. XVI., Diane de Poictiers's copy, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 99 _Polybius, Lat., S. and Pannartz_, 1473, folio, in the Library of Closterneuburg Monastery, iii 398 PRAYER BOOK OF CHARLES THE BALD, Ill. MS. 4to, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 67 _Priscianus_, 1470, _V. de Spira_, folio, UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 139 ---- ---- in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 319 ---- ---- _Ulric Han_, folio--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 319 ----, _Aldus_, 1527, 8vo., Grolier's copy, upon large paper, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 148 ----, _Printed by V. de Spira_, UPON VELLUM, in the Library of Ste. Geneviève, ii 175 PSALTERIUM, MS., IXth century, of Charles the Bald; in the Public Library at Paris; ii 66 ---- ----, Sti. Ludovici, XIIIth century, in the same library, ii 68 ---- ----, XIth century, in the Public Library at Stuttgart iii 27 ---- ----, XIIth century, in the same Collection, iii 28 ---- ----, XIIth century, in the Royal Private Library at Stuttgart, iii 36 ---- ----, XIIth century, in the Public Library at Munich, iii 125 ---- ----, with most splendid illuminations, of the XVIth century, in the same library, iii 133 ---- ----, St. Austin, XVth century, in the Public Library at Stuttgart, iii 33 ---- ---- _Latine_, 1457, _Fust and Schoeffher_, folio, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 104 ---- ----, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 306 _Psalterium Latine_, 1459, folio--in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 105 ---- ----, 1490, folio, _Schoeffher_, UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 105 ---- ----, 1502, folio, _Schoeffher_, in the same library, -- 106 ---- ----, UPON VELLUM, _Printed by Schoeffher's Son_, 1516, folio, ii 106 ---- ----, without date--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 307 ---- ----, _Lips_. 1486, 4to.--in the Public Library at Landshut, iii 181 PTOLEMÆUS, _Lat_. MS. folio--in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 85 ---- ---- MS. folio, in the Public Library at Strasbourg, ii 59 ---- ----, 1462, folio, in the Public Library at Munich, iii 142 ---- ----, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 319 ---- ----, _Printed by Buckinck_, 1478, folio, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 320 Q. _Quintilianus, I. de Lignam_, 1470, folio, in the Library of Ste. Geneviève, at Paris, ii 175 ---- ----, 1471, _Jenson_, folio, in the Public Library at Nuremberg, _Supplement_, iii 431 R. _Ratdolt_, specimens of the types from his press, in the Public Library at Munich, iii 144 _Recueil des Histoires de Troye, printed by Caxton_, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 102 ---- ---- _printed by Verard_, UPON VELLUM, in the same Library, ii 102 _Regnars, les, &c. Verard_, 4to. Prince Eugene's copy in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 329 _Regulæ, Confitend. peccata sua. Ital_., 1473, 4to., in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 326 _Repertorium Statut. Ord. Carth_. 1510, folio, in the Public Library at Caen, i 202 _Richard sans Peur, Janot, no date_, 4to., in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, ii 158 ---- _Bonfons, no date_, 4to., in the same library, ii 158 _Robert le Diable, Janot, no date_, 4to., in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, ii 158 _Romances, MS_., in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 88 ---- ----, _printed_, in the same Library, ii 131 ---- ----, in the Public Library at Strasbourg, ii 407 ---- ----, in the Public Library at Munich, iii 126 _Ronsard_, 1584, folio, in the Public Library at Caen, i 212 ROSE, ROMAN DE LA, MS. XIVth century, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 95 ---- ---- MS. XIVth century, in the Public Library at Stuttgart, iii 31 ---- ---- _Verard_, no date, UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 131 _Rossei opus elegans, &c., Pynson_, 1523, 4to., the author's copy, afterwards that of Sir Thomas More, in the Public Library at Landshut, iii 183 S. SACRAMENTARIUM, SEU MISSA _Pap. Greg_., MS., VIth century, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 290 _Sanchez de Matrim. Sacram_., copy in the chapter Library at Bayeux, i. 244, in the Library of the Lycée at Bayeux, i 245 _Sannazarii Arcadia_, 1514, _Aldus_, 8vo., Grolier's copy, on large paper, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 148 _Sannazarius de partu Virginis, Aldi_, 1527, 12mo. in the King's Private Library at Stuttgart, iii 41 SCHAKZABEL, DER, MS. 1400 or 1450, in the Public Library at Stuttgart, iii 32 _Séguin, Histore Militaire des Bocains_, quoted, i 300, 301, 302, _sur l'histoire de l'industrie du Bocage, en général, et de la ville de Vire sa capitale en particulière_, 1810, 8vo., i 303 _Servius in Virgilium_, see _Virgilius_. _Sforziada La_, 1480, folio, UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 134 _Shyppe of Fools_, 1509, 8vo. _printed by W. Worde_, UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 103 _SIBILÆ, &c_., MS., xvth century, in the Public Library at Munich, iii 127 _Silius Italicus, Laver_, 1471, folio, in the Mazarine Library at Paris, ii 193 ---- ---- in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 313 ---- ---- _S. and Pannartz_, 1471, folio, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 313 ---- ---- in the Public Library at Stuttgart, iii 26 ---- ---- in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 332 _Spec. Hum, Salv_, 1476, folio, _printed by Richel_, in the Public Library at Strasbourg, ii 407 _Spec. Morale P. Bellovacensis_, 1476, folio, ii 405 ---- _Judiciale Durandus_, Printed by Hussner and Rekenhub, 1473, folio, ii 405 _Speculum Stultorum_, _no date_, 4to., in the Public Library at Caen, i 211 _Statius in usum Delphini_, 4to., two copies, in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, ii 156 ---- ---- beautiful copy in the Library of Chremsminster monastery, iii 222 _Statutes of Richard III. Machlinia_, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 124 ---- ---- in the King's Private Library at Stuttgart, iii 41 _Stephani, H. Gloss. Græc_. 1573, &c., folio--_cum notis mss: Bocharti_, copy of, in the Public Library at Caen, i 211 _Successos y Prodigos de Amor_, 1626, 4to., in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, ii 161 _Suetonius I. de Lignamine_, 1470, folio--in the Library of Ste. Geneviève, at Paris, ii 175 _Suetonius S. and Pannartz_, 1470, folio--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 313 ---- _Jenson_, 1471, 4to.,--in the same collection, iii 313 ---- _Reisinger_, 4to.,--_without date_, in the private royal collection at Stuttgart, iii 39 _Suidas, Gr_., 1499, folio--Lambecius's copy, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 314 ---- 1503, folio, _Aldus_--large paper copy, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 151 _Sypperts de Vinevaulx, Paris, no date_, 4to.--in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, ii 159 T. _Tacitus, I. de Spira_, folio, edit. prin. in the Public Library at Stuttgart, iii 24 ----, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 314 _Tasso, Gerusalemme Conquistata_, the author's autograph--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 300 _Terentius, Mentelin_, folio--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 314 ----, _Ulric Han_, folio--in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 136 ----, _Reisinger_, folio--in the Public Library at Stuttgart, iii 23 _Testamentum Novum, Hollandicè et Russ_., 1717, folio, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 110 ---- ----, _Bohemice, Sec_. xv--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 307 ---- ----, _Græcè Erasmi_, in the King's Private Library at Stuttgart, iii 39 ---- ----, _R. Stephani_, 1550, folio--Diane de Poictiers's copy--in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 150 _Tewrdanckhs_, 1517, folio--UPON VELLUM, in the Library of Ste. Geneviève, at Paris, ii 179 ---- ----, two copies of, in the Public Library at Munich, iii 147 _Tewrdanckhs_, 1517, folio, UPON VELLUM, two copies of, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 329 ---- ----, in the Library of the Monastery of St. Florian, iii 238 _Theophrastus_, 1497, Gr. _Aldus_,--Diane de Poictiers's copy, in the possession of M. Renouard at Paris, ii 231 _Thucydide, Gourmont_, folio, _Verard_--UPON VELLUM, in the Imperial Library at Vienna--Prince Eugene's copy, iii 330 TITE LIVE, MS. folio--in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 86 _Tityrell and Pfartzival_, 1477, folio--in the Public Library at Landshut, iii 181 ---- ---- in the Library of the Monastery of St. Florian, iii 236 TOURNAMENTS, BOOK OF, MS. xvth century--in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 95 ---- ---- duplicate and more recent copy of ii 99 _Tracts_, Printed by Pfister, at Bamberg, folio, ii 111 _Trebisond, Paris_, 4to.--in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris, ii 167 TRISTAN, MS. xivth century, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 91 ---- ----, another MS. in the same library, ii 91 ---- ----, a third MS. in the same library, ii 92 ---- _Gall_. Sec. XIII., in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 299 ---- ----, another MS. in the same Collection, iii 300 _Tristran, Verard_, folio--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 330 _Trithemii Annales Hirsaugienses_, 1690, folio--in the Library of the Monastery of Chremsminster, iii 227 ---- ----, in the Library of a Capuchin Monastery, near Vienna, iii 403 _Troys filz de Roys_, Paris, no date, 4to.--in the Library of the Arsenal, ii 164 _Tully of Old Age, Caxton_--in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 124 _Turrecremata I. de Meditationes, Ulric Han_, 1467, folio--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 320 ---- ---- in the Public Library at Nuremberg, _Supplement_, iii 430 ---- ----, 1473, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 307 V. VALERIUS MAXIMUS, MS. xvth century--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 298 ---- ---- _Mentelin_, folio--two copies in the Public Library at Strasbourg, ii 408 ---- ---- in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 314 ---- ---- in the Royal Library at Stuttgart, iii 24 ---- ---- 1475, _Coes & Stol_, folio--in the Public Library at Caen, i 208 ---- ---- _Aldus_, 1534, 8vo. Grolier's copy, on large paper, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 148 _Valturius De Re Militari_, 1472, folio--in the Imperial Library (Prince Eugene's copy) at Vienna, iii 321 _Vaudevires, Basselin_, 1811, i 212 -289 _Vie des Peres_, 1494, folio, at Caen, i 208 _Virgilius, S. & Pannartz_, (1469) folio--in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 116 ---- ---- in the Public Library at Strasbourg--incomplete, ii 408 ---- ---- in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 314 ---- 1470, _V. de Spira_, UPON VELLUM, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 117 ---- ---- upon paper, in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 117 ---- ---- in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 314 ---- 1471, _S. and Pannartz_, folio--in the Royal Library at Paris, iii 118 _Virgilius_, 1471, _S. and Pannartz_, late in the Public Library at Stuttgart, iii 23 ---- ---- 1471, _V. de Spira_, folio--in the Imperial Library at Vienna, iii 315 ---- ---- 1471, _Adam_, folio--late in the Public Library at Stuttgart, iii 23 ---- _Servius in Virgilium_. _Ulric Han_, folio--Diane de Poictiers's copy, in the Mazarine Library at Paris, ii 191 ---- ---- _Valdarfer_, 1471, folio--in the Public Library at Strasbourg, ii 408 ---- ---- 1478, _Gering_, 4to., in the Royal Library at Paris, ii 119 ---- _Aldus_, 1501, 8vo.--UPON VELLUM, in the Public Library at Munich, iii 146 ---- ---- 1505, 8vo.--in the possession of M. Renouard, bookseller, ii 230 ---- _S. and Pannartz_, (1469) folio--in the Library of Ste. Geneviève, ii 174 ---- _Gallicè_, 1582, folio--in the Public Library at Caen, i 212 VITÆ SANCTORUM, MS. Sec. XII.--in the Public Library at Stuttgart, iii 29 _Vitruvius Giuntæ_, 1513, 8vo.--UPON VELLUM, in the Library of Ste. Geneviève at Paris, ii 178 Vocabularius, Bechtermuntze, 1467, 4to. ii 115 U. _Utino, T. de, Sermones_, _printed by Gering_--in the Public Library at Vire, i 297 W. WILLIBROODI STI. VITA. AUCT. ALCUINO. MS. xith century, in the Private Royal Library at Stuttgart, iii 38 [178] In the page referred to, I have conjectured it to be printed by Ulric Han-or Reisinger. To these names I add the above. PRINTED BY WILLIAM NICOL, AT THE Shakspeare Press. 
16943	----	Distributed Proofreaders Europe at http://dp.rastko.net PARIS: WITH PEN AND PENCIL ITS PEOPLE AND LITERATURE, ITS LIFE AND BUSINESS BY DAVID W. BARTLETT AUTHOR OF "WHAT I SAW IN LONDON;" "LIFE OF LADY JANE GRAY;" "LIFE OF JOAN OF ARC," ETC. ETC. ILLUSTRATED. NEW YORK: HURST & CO., PUBLISHERS, 122 NASSAU STREET. PREFACE. The contents of this volume are the result of two visits to Paris. The first when Louis Napoleon was president of the Republic; and the second when Napoleon III. was emperor of France. I have sketched people and places as I saw them at both periods, and the reader should bear this in mind. I have not endeavored to make a hand-book to Paris, but have described those places and objects which came more particularly under my notice. I have also thought it best, instead of devoting my whole space to the description of places, or the manners of the people--a subject which has been pretty well exhausted by other writers--to give a few sketches of the great men of Paris and of France; and among them, a few of the representative literary men of the past. There is not a general knowledge of French literature and authors, either past or present, among the mass of readers; and Paris and France can only be truly known through French authors and literature. My object has been to add somewhat to the general reader's knowledge of Paris and the Parisians,--of the people and the places, whose social laws are the general guide of the civilized world. [Illustration: CHURCH OF ST. SULSPICE.] CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. LONDON TO PARIS, HISTORY OF PARIS, CHAPTER II. RESTAURANTS, A WALK AND GOSSIP, THE BOURSE, CHAPTER III. LAFAYETTE'S TOMB, THE RADICAL, A COUNTRY WALK, CHAPTER IV. THE CHURCHES, NOTRE DAME, L'AUXERROIS, SAINT CHAPELLE, EXPIATOIRE, MADELEINE, ST. FERDINAND, VINCENT DE PAUL, &C. CHAPTER V. LAMARTINE, VERNET, GIRARDIN, HUGO, JANIN, CHAPTER VI. PLACES OF BLOOD, PLACE DE LA CONCORDE, CHAPTER VII. THE LOUVRE, PUBLIC GARDENS, THE LUXEMBOURG PALACE AND GARDENS, THE GOBELINS, CHAPTER VIII. THE PEOPLE, CLIMATE, PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS, HOTEL DE INVALIDES, JARDIN D'HIVER, CHAPTER IX. M. GUIZOT, ALEXANDER DUMAS, EUGENE SUE, M. THIERS, GEORGE SAND, CHAPTER X. PERE LA CHASE, THE PRISONS, FOUNDLING HOSPITALS, CHARITABLE INSTITUTIONS, LA MORGUE, NAPOLEON AND EUGENIA, THE BAPTISM OF THE PRINCE, CHAPTER XI. MEN OF THE PAST, THE FATHER OF FRENCH TRAGEDY, THE GREAT JESTER, THE DRAMATIST, CHAPTER XII. THE FABULIST, THE INFIDEL, THE GREAT COMIC WRITER, WHAT I SAW IN PARIS. CHAPTER I. LONDON TO PARIS--HISTORY OF PARIS. LONDON TO PARIS. Few people now-a-days go direct to Paris from America. They land in Liverpool, get at least a birds-eye view of the country parts of England, stay in London a week or two, or longer, and then cross the channel for Paris. The traveler who intends to wander over the continent, here takes his initiatory lesson in the system of passports. I first called upon the American minister, and my passport--made out in Washington--was _vise_ for Paris. My next step was to hunt up the French consul, and pay him a dollar for affixing his signature to the precious document. At the first sea-port this passport was taken from me, and a provisional one put into my keeping. At Paris the original one was returned! And this is a history of my passport between London and Paris, a distance traversed in a few hours. If such are the practices between two of the greatest and most civilized towns on the face of the earth, how unendurable must they be on the more despotic continent? The summer was in its first month, and Paris was in its glory, and it was at such a time that I visited it. We took a steamer at the London bridge wharf for Boulogne. The day promised well to be a boisterous one, but I had a very faint idea of the gale blowing in the channel. If I could have known, I should have waited, or gone by the express route, _via_ Dover, the sea transit of which occupies only two hours. The fare by steamer from London to Boulogne was three dollars. The accommodations were meager, but the boat itself was a strong, lusty little fellow, and well fitted for the life it leads. I can easily dispense with the luxurious appointments which characterize the American steamboats, if safety is assured to me in severe weather. The voyage down the Thames, was in many respects very delightful. Greenwich, Woolwich, Margate, and Ramsgate lie pleasantly upon this route. But the wind blew so fiercely in our teeth that we experienced little pleasure in looking at them. When we reached the channel we found it white with foam, and soon our little boat was tossed upon the waves like a gull. In my experience crossing the Atlantic, I had seen nothing so disagreeable as this. The motion was so quick and so continual, the boat so small, that I very soon found myself growing sick. The rain was disagreeable, and the sea was constantly breaking over the bulwarks. I could not stay below--the atmosphere was too stifling and hot. So I bribed a sailor to wrap about me his oil-cloth garments, and lay down near the engines with my face upturned to the black sky, and the sea-spray washing me from time to time. Such sea-sickness I never endured, though before I had sailed thousands of miles at sea, and have done the same since. From sundown till two o'clock the next morning I lay on the deck of the sloppy little boat, and when at last the Boulogne lights were to be seen, I was as heartily glad as ever in my life. Thoroughly worn out, as soon as I landed upon the quay I handed my keys to a _commissaire_, gave up my passport, and sought a bed, and was soon in my dreams tossing again upon the channel-waves. I was waked by the _commissaire_, who entered my room with the keys. He had passed my baggage, got a provisional passport for me, and now very politely advised me to get up and take the first train to Paris, for I had told him I wished to be in Paris as soon as possible. Giving him a good fee for his trouble, and hastily quitting the apartment and paying for it, I was very soon in the railway station. My trunks were weighed, and I bought baggage tickets to Paris--price one sou. The first class fare was twenty-seven francs, or about five dollars, the distance one hundred and seventy miles. This was cheaper than first class railway traveling in England, though somewhat dearer than American railway prices. The first class cars were the finest I have seen in any country--very far superior to American cars, and in many respects superior to the English. They were fitted up for four persons in each compartment, and a door opened into each from the side. The seat and back were beautifully cushioned, and the arms were stuffed in like manner, so that at night the weary traveler could sleep in them with great comfort. The price of a third class ticket from Boulogne to Paris was only three dollars, and the cars were much better than the second class in America, and I noticed that many very respectably dressed ladies and gentlemen were in them--probably for short distances. It is quite common, both in England and France, in the summer, for people of wealth to travel by rail for a short distance by the cheapest class of cars. I entered the car an utter stranger--no one knew me, and I knew no one. The language was unintelligible, for I found that to _read_ French in America, is not to _talk_ French in France. I could understand no one, or at least but a word here and there. But the journey was a very delightful one. The country we passed through was beautiful, and the little farms were in an excellent state of cultivation. Flowers bloomed everywhere. There was not quite that degree of cultivation which the traveler observes in the best parts of England, but the scenery was none the less beautiful for that. Then, too, I saw everything with a romantic enthusiasm. It was the France I had read of, dreamed of, since I was a school-boy. A gentleman was in the apartment who could talk English, having resided long in Boulogne, which the English frequent as a watering place, and he pointed out the interesting places on our journey. At Amiens we changed cars and stopped five minutes for refreshments. I was hungry enough to draw double rations, but I felt a little fear that I should get cheated, or could not make myself understood; but as the old saw has it, "Necessity is the mother of invention," and I satisfied my hunger with a moderate outlay of money. A few miles before we reached Paris, we stopped at the little village of Enghein, and it seemed to me that I never in my life had dreamed of so fairy-like a place. Beautiful lakes, rivers, fountains, flowers, and trees were scattered over the village with exquisite taste. To this place, on Sundays and holidays, the people of Paris repair, and dance in its cheap gardens and drink cheap wines. When we reached Paris my trunks were again searched and underwent a short examination, to see that no wines or provisions were concealed in them. A tax is laid upon all such articles when they enter the city, and this is the reason why on Sunday the people flock out of town to enjoy their _fetes_. In the country there are no taxes on wine and edibles, and as a matter of economy they go outside of the walls for their pleasure. When my baggage was examined, I took an omnibus to the hotel Bedford, Rue de l'Arcade, where I proposed to stay but a few days, until I could hunt up permanent apartments. My room was a delightful one and fitted up in elegant style. I was in the best part of Paris. Two minutes walk away were the _Champs Elysees_--the Madeleine church, the Tuileries, etc., etc. But I was too tired to go out, and after a French dinner and a lounge in the reading-room, I went to sleep, and the next morning's sun found me at last entirely recovered from my wretched passage across the channel. My second trip to Paris was in many respects different from the first--which I have just described. The route was a new one, and pleasanter than that _via_ Boulogne. Our party took an express train from the London bridge terminus for Newhaven, a small sea-port. The cars were fitted up with every comfort, and we made the passage in quick time. At three P.M. we went on board a little steamer for Dieppe, where we arrived at nine o'clock. After a delay of an hour we entered a railway carriage fitted up in a very beautiful and luxurious style. At Dieppe we had no trouble with our passports, keeping the originals, and simply showing them to the custom-house officials. Our ride to Paris was in the night, yet was very comfortable. In coming back to London, we made the trip to Dieppe in the daytime, and found it to be very beautiful. From Paris to Rouen the railway runs a great share of the way in sight of the river Seine, and often upon its banks. Many of the views from the train were romantic, and some of them wildly grand. Upon the whole, this route is the pleasantest between Paris and London, as it is one of the cheapest. There is one objection, however, and that is the length of the sea voyage--six hours. Those who dislike the water will prefer the Dover route. * * * * * HISTORY OF PARIS. The origin of Paris is not known. According to certain writers, a wandering tribe built their huts upon the island now called _la Cite_. This was their home, and being surrounded by water, it was easily defended against the approach of hostile tribes. The name of the place was Lutetia, and to themselves they gave the name of _Parisii_, from the Celtic word _par_, a frontier or extremity. This tribe was one of sixty-four which were confederated, and when the conquest of Gaul took place under Julius Caesar, the _Parisii_ occupied the island. The ground now covered by Paris was either a marsh or forest, and two bridges communicated from the island to it. The islanders were slow to give up their Druidical sacrifices, and it is doubtful whether the Roman gods ever were worshiped by them, though fragments of an altar of Jupiter have been found under the choir of the cathedral of Notre Dame. Nearly four hundred years after Christ, the Emperor Julian remodeled the government and laws of Gaul and Lutetia, and changed its name to _Parisii_. It then, too, became a city, and had considerable trade. For five hundred years Paris was under Roman domination. A palace was erected for municipal purposes in the city, and another on the south bank of the Seine, the remains of which can still be seen. The Roman emperors frequently resided in this palace while waging war with the northern barbarians. Constantine and Constantius visited it; Julian spent three winters in it; Valentian and Gratian also made it a temporary residence. The monks have a tradition that the gospel was first preached in Paris about the year 250, by St. Denis, and that he suffered martyrdom at Montmartre. A chapel was early erected on the spot now occupied by Notre Dame. In 406 the northern barbarians made a descent upon the Roman provinces, and in 445 Paris was stormed by them. Before the year 500 Paris was independent of the Roman domination. Clovis was its master, and marrying Clotilde, he embraced Christianity and erected a church. The island was now surrounded by walls and had gates. The famous church of St. German L'Auxerrois was built at this time. For two hundred and fifty years, Paris retrograded rather than advanced in civilization, and the refinements introduced by the Romans were nearly forgotten. In 845 the Normans sacked and burnt Paris. Still again it was besieged, but such was the valor of its inhabitants that the enemy were glad to raise the siege. Hugues Capet was elected king in 987, and the crown became hereditary. In his reign the Palace of Justice was commenced. Buildings were erected on all sides, and new streets were opened. Under Louis le Gros the Louvre was rebuilt, it having existed since the time of Dagobert. Bishop Sully began the foundations of Notre Dame in 1163, and about that time the Knights Templars erected a palace. Under the reign of Philip Augustus many of the public edifices were embellished and new churches and towers were built. In 1250 Robert Serbon founded schools--a hospital and school of surgery were also about this time commenced. Under Charles V. the city flourished finely, and the Bastille and the Palace de Tourvelles were erected. The Louvre also was repaired. Next came the unhappy reign of Charles VI., who was struck with insanity. In 1421 the English occupied Paris, but under Charles VII. they were driven from it and the Greek language was taught for the first time in the University of Paris. It had then twenty-five thousand students. Under the reign of successive monarchs Paris was, from famine and plague, so depopulated that its gates were thrown open to the malefactors of all countries. In 1470 the art of printing was introduced into the city and a post-office was established. In the reign of Francis I. the arts and literature sprang into a new life. The heavy buildings called the Louvre were demolished, and a new palace commenced upon the old site. In 1533 the Hotel de Ville was begun, and many fine buildings were erected. The wars of the sects, or rather religions, followed, and among them occurred the terrible St. Bartholomew massacre. Henry IV. brought peace to the kingdom and added greatly to the beauty and attractiveness of Paris. Under Louis XIII. several new streets were opened, and the Palais Royal and the palace of the Luxembourg begun. Under the succeeding king the wars of the Fronde occurred, but the projects of the preceding king were carried out, and more than eighty new streets were opened. The planting of trees in the Champs Elysees, also took place under the reign of Louis XIV. The palace of the Tuileries was enlarged, the Hotel des Invalides, a foundling hospital, and several bridges were built. Louis XV. established the manufactory of porcelain at Sevres, and also added much to the beauty of Paris. He commenced the erection of the Madeleine. Theaters and comic opera-houses were speedily built, and water was distributed over the city by the use of steam-engines. Then broke out the revolution, and many fine monuments were destroyed. But it was under the Directory that the Museum of the Louvre was opened, and under Napoleon the capital assumed a splendor it had never known before. Under the succeeding kings it continued to increase in wealth and magnificence, until it is unquestionably the finest city in the world. I have now in a short space given the reader a preliminary sketch of Paris, and will proceed at once to describe what I saw in it, and the impressions I received, while a resident in that city. CHAPTER II. RESTAURANTS--A WALK AND GOSSIP. [Illustration: Boulevard du Temple.] RESTAURANTS, CAFES, ETC. The first thing the stranger does in Paris, is of course to find temporary lodging, and the next is to select a good _restaurant_. Paris without its _restaurants, cafes, estaminets_, and _cercles_, would be shorn of half its glory. They are one of its most distinguished and peculiar features. Between the hours of five and eight, in the evening of course, all Paris is in those _restaurants_. The scene at such times is enlivening in the highest degree. The Boulevards contain the finest in the city, for there nearly all the first-class saloons are kept. There are retired streets in which are kept houses on the same plan, but with prices moderate in the extreme. You can go on the Boulevards and pay for a breakfast, if you choose, fifty or even sixty francs, or you can retire to some quiet spot and pay one franc for your frugal meal. It is of course not common for any one to pay the largest sum named, but there are persons in Paris who do it, young men who with us are vulgarly denominated "swells," and who like to astonish their friends by their extravagance. [Illustration: PARIS & ARCH OF TRIUMPH.] Out of curiosity I went one day with a friend to one of the most gorgeous of the _restaurants_ on the Boulevards. Notwithstanding the descriptions I had read and listened to from the lips of friends, I was surprised at the splendor and style of the place. We sat down before a fine window which was raised, looking into the street. Indeed, so close sat we to it that the fashionable promenaders could each, if he liked, have peeped into our dishes. But Parisians never trouble strangers with their inquisitiveness. We sat down before a table of exquisite marble, and a waiter dressed as neatly, and indeed gracefully, as a gentleman, handed us a bill of fare. It was long enough in itself to make a man a dinner, if the material were only palatable. Including dessert and wines, there were one hundred specifications! There were ten kinds of meat, and fourteen varieties of poultry. Of course there were many varieties of game, and there were eight kinds of pastry. Of fish there were fourteen kinds, there were ten side dishes, a dozen sweet dishes, and a dozen kinds of wine. The elegance of the apartment can scarcely be imagined, and the savory smell which arose from neighboring tables occupied by fashionable men and women, invited us to a repast. We called, however, but for a dish or two, and after we had eaten them, we had coffee, and over our cups gazed out upon the gay scene before us. It was novel, indeed, to the American eye, and we sat long and discussed it. In this _restaurant_ there were private rooms, called _Cabinets de Societe_, and into them go men and women at all hours, by day and night. It is also a common sight to see the public apartments of the _restaurants_ filled with people of both sexes. Ladies sit down even in the street with gentlemen, to sup chocolate or lemonade. There is not much eaves-dropping in Paris, and you can do as you please, nor fear curious eyes nor scandal-loving tongues. This is very different from London. There, if you do any thing out of the common way, you will be stared at and talked about. _There_, if you take a lady into a public eating-house, _her_ position, at least, will not be a very pleasant one. There are many places in the Palais Royal, the basement floor of which, fronting upon the court of the palace, is given up to shops, where for two or three francs a dinner can be purchased which will consist of soup, two dishes from a large list at choice, a dessert, and bread and wine. There are places, indeed, where for twenty-five sous a dinner sufficient to satisfy one's hunger can be purchased, but I must confess that while in Paris I could never yet make up my mind to patronize a cheap _restaurant_. I knew too well, by the tales of more experienced Parisians, the shifts to which the cook of one of these cheap establishments is sometimes reduced to produce an attractive dish. The material sometimes would not bear a close examination--much less the _cuisine_. [Illustration: JARDIN DU PALAIS ROYAL.] I was astonished to see the quantities of bread devoured by the frequenters of the eating-houses, but I soon equaled my neighbors. Paris bread is the best in the world, or at least, it is the most palatable I ever tasted. It is made in rolls six feet long, and sometimes I have seen it eight feet long. Before now, I have seen a couple dining near the corner of a room, with their roll of bread thrown like a cane against the wall, and as often as they wanted a fresh slice, the roll was very coolly brought over and decapitated. The Frenchman eats little meat, but enormously of the staff of life. The chocolate and coffee which are to be had in the French _cafes_, are very delicious, and though after a fair and long trial I never could like French cookery as well as the English, yet I would not for a moment pretend that any cooks in the world equal those of Paris in the art of imparting exquisite flavor to a dish. It is quite common for the French to use brandy in their coffee. People who take apartments in Paris often prefer to have their meals sent to their private rooms, and by a special bargain this is done by any of the restaurants, but more especially by a class of houses called _traiteurs_, whose chief business is to furnish cooked dishes to families in their own homes. In going to a hotel in Paris, the stranger never feels in the slightest degree bound to get his meals there. He hires his room and that is all, and goes where he pleases. The _cafes_ are in the best portions of the town, magnificent places, often exceeding in splendor the restaurants. They furnish coffee, chocolate, all manner of ices and fruits, and cigars. At these places one meets well-dressed ladies, and more than once in them I have seen well-dressed women smoking cigarettes. Love intrigues are carried on at these places, for a Paris lady can easily steal from her home to such a place under cover of the night. A majority, however, of the women to be seen at such places, are those who have no position in society, the wandering nymphs of the night, or the poor grisettes. It is not strange that the poor shop-girl is easily attracted to such gorgeous places by men far above her in station. Outside of all the cafes little tables are placed on the pavement, with chairs around them. These places are delightful in the summer evenings, and are always crowded. A promenade through some of the best streets of a summer night is a brilliant spectacle, and more like a promenade through a drawing-room than through an American street. The proprietors of those places do not intend to keep restaurants, but quite a variety of food, hot or cold, is always on hand, and wines of all kinds are sold. I well remember my first visit to a French _cafe_. It was when Louis Napoleon was president, not emperor of France, and when there was more liberty in Paris than there is now. I dropped into one near the Boulevards, which, while it contained everything which could add to one's comfort, still was not one of the first class. Several officers were dining in it, and in some way I came in contact with one of them in such a manner that he discovered I was an American. At once his conduct toward me was of the most cordial kind, and his fellows rose and bade me welcome to France. The simple fact that I was a republican from America aroused the enthusiasm of all. I found, afterward, that the regiment to which these officers belonged was suspected by the president of being democratic in its sympathies. The reading-rooms of Paris are one of its best institutions. They are scattered all over the city, but the best is Galignani's, which contains over twenty thousand volumes in all languages. The subscription price for a month is eight francs, for a fortnight five francs, and for a day ten sous. There are reading-rooms furnished only with newspapers, where for a small sum of money one can read the papers. These places are few in comparison with their numbers in the days of the republic, however. Under the despotic rule of Louis Napoleon, the newspaper business has drooped. An anonymous writer in one of Chambers' publications, tells a good story, and it is a true one, of Pere Fabrice, who amassed a fortune in Paris. The story is told as follows: "He had always a turn for speculation, and being a private soldier he made money by selling small articles to his fellow soldiers. When his term of service had expired, he entered the employ of a rag-merchant, and in a little while proposed a partnership with his master, who laughed at his impudence. He then set up an opposition shop, and lost all he had saved in a month. He then became a porter at the _halles_ where turkeys were sold. He noticed that those which remained unsold, in a day or two lost half their value. He asked the old women how the customers knew the turkeys were not fresh. They replied that the legs changed from a bright black to a dingy brown. Fabrice went home, was absent the next day from the _halles_, and on the third day returned with a bottle of liquid. Seizing hold of the first brown-legged turkey he met with, he forthwith painted its legs out of the contents of his bottle, and placing the thus decorated bird by the side of one just killed, he asked who now was able to see the difference between the fresh bird and the stale one? The old women were seized with admiration. They are a curious set of beings, those _dames de la halle_; their admiration is unbounded for successful adventurers--witness their enthusiasm for Louis Napoleon. They adopted our friend's idea without hesitation, made an agreement with him on the principle of the division of profits; and it immediately became a statistical puzzle with the curious inquirers on these subjects, how it came to pass that stale turkeys should have all at once disappeared from the Paris market? It was set down to the increase of prosperity consequent on the constitutional _regime_ and the wisdom of the citizen-king. The old women profited largely; but unfortunately, like the rest of the world, they in time forgot both their enthusiasm and their benefactor, and Pere Fabrice found himself involved in a daily succession of squabbles about his half-profits. Tired out at last, he made an arrangement with the old dames, and, in military phrase, sold out. Possessed now of about double the capital with which he entered, he recollected his old friend, the rag-merchant, and went a second time to propose a partnership. 'I am a man of capital now,' he said; 'you need not laugh so loud this time.' The rag-merchant asked the amount of his capital; and when he heard it, whistled _Ninon dormait_, and turned upon his heel. 'No wonder,' said Fabrice afterward; 'I little knew then what a rag-merchant was worth. That man could have bought up two of Louis Philippe's ministers of finance.' At the time, however, he did not take the matter so philosophically, and resolved, after the fashion of his class, not to drown himself, but to make a night of it. He found a friend, and went with him to dine at a small eating-house. While there, they noticed the quantity of broken bread thrown under the tables by the reckless and quarrelsome set that frequented the place; and his friend remarked, that if all the bread so thrown about were collected, it would feed half the _quartier_. Fabrice said nothing; but he was in search of an idea, and he took up his friend's. The next day, he called on the restaurateur, and asked him for what he would sell the broken bread he was accustomed to sweep in the dustpan. The bread he wanted, it should be observed, was a very different thing from the fragments left upon the table; these had been consecrated to the marrow's soup from time immemorial. He wanted the dirty bread actually thrown under the table, which even a Parisian restaurateur of the Quartier Latin, whose business it was to collect dirt and crumbs, had hitherto thrown away. Our restaurateur caught eagerly at the offer, made a bargain for a small sum; and Master Fabrice forthwith proceeded to about a hundred eating-houses of the same kind, with all of whom he made similar bargains. Upon this he established a bakery, extending his operations till there was scarcely a restaurant in Paris of which the sweepings did not find their way to the oven of Pere Fabrice. Hence it is that the fourpenny restaurants are supplied; hence it is that the itinerant venders of gingerbread find their first material. Let any man who eats bread at any very cheap place in the capital take warning, if his stomach goes against the idea of a _rechauffe_ of bread from the dust-hole. Fabrice, notwithstanding some extravagances with the fair sex, became a millionaire; and the greatest glory of his life was--that he lived to eclipse his old master, the rag-merchant." The same writer also gives a graphic description of one class of restaurants in Paris--the pot-luck shops: "Pot-luck, or the _fortune de pot_, is on the whole the most curious feeding spectacle in Europe. There are more than a dozen shops in Paris where this mode of procuring a dinner is practiced, chiefly in the back streets abutting on the Pantheon. About two o'clock, a parcel of men in dirty blouses, with sallow faces, and an indescribable mixture of recklessness, jollity, and misery--strange as the juxtaposition of terms may seem--lurking about their eyes and the corners of their mouths, take their seats in a room where there is not the slightest appearance of any preparation for food, nothing but half-a-dozen old deal-tables, with forms beside them, on the side of the room, and one large table in the middle. They pass away the time in vehement gesticulation, and talking in a loud tone; so much of what they say is in _argot_, that the stranger will not find it easy to comprehend them. He would think they were talking crime or politics--not a bit of it; their talk is altogether about their mistresses. Love and feeding make up the existence of these beings; and we may judge of the quality of the former by what we are about to see of the latter. A huge bowl is at last introduced, and placed on the table in the middle of the room. At the same time a set of basins, corresponding to the number of the guests, are placed on the side-tables. A woman, with her nose on one side, good eyes, and the thinnest of all possible lips, opening every now and then to disclose the white teeth which garnish an enormous mouth, takes her place before it. She is the presiding deity of the temple; and there is not a man present to whom it would not be the crowning felicity of the moment to obtain a smile from features so little used to the business of smiling, that one wonders how they would set about it if the necessity should ever arise. Every cap is doffed with a grim politeness peculiar to that class of humanity, and a series of compliments fly into the face of Madame Michel, part leveled at her eyes, and part at the laced cap, in perfect taste, by which those eyes are shrouded. Mere Michel, however, says nothing in return, but proceeds to stir with a thick ladle, looking much larger than it really is, the contents of the bowl before her. These contents are an enormous quantity of thick brown liquid, in the midst of which swim numerous islands of vegetable matter and a few pieces of meat. Meanwhile, a damsel, hideously ugly--but whose ugliness is in part concealed by a neat, trim cap--makes the tour of the room with a box of tickets, grown black by use, and numbered from one to whatever number may be that of the company. Each of them gives four sous to this Hebe of the place, accompanying the action with an amorous look, which is both the habit and the duty of every Frenchman when he has anything to do with the opposite sex, and which is not always a matter of course, for Marie has her admirers, and has been the cause of more than one _rixe_ in the Rue des Anglais. The tickets distributed, up rises number one--with a joke got ready for the occasion, and a look of earnest anxiety, as if he were going to throw for a kingdom--takes the ladle, plunges it into the bowl, and transfers whatever it brings up to his basin. It is contrary to the rules for any man to hesitate when he has once made his plunge, though he has a perfect right to take his time in a previous survey of the _ocean_--a privilege of which he always avails himself. If he brings up one of the pieces of meat, the glisten of his eye and the applauding murmur which goes round the assembly give him a momentary exultation, which it is difficult to conceive by those who have not witnessed it. In this the spirit of successful gambling is, beyond all doubt, the uppermost feeling; it mixes itself up with everything done by that class of society, and is the main reason of the popularity of these places with their _habitues_; for when the customers have once acquired the habit, they rarely go anywhere else." [Illustration: Omnibus.] A WALK AND GOSSIP. One of my first days in Paris I sauntered out to find some American newspapers, that I might know something of what had transpired in America for weeks previous. I directed my steps to the office of Messrs. Livingston, Wells & Co., where I had been informed a reading-room was always kept open for the use of American strangers in Paris. The morning was a delightful one, and I could but contrast it with the usual weather of London. During months of residence in the English metropolis I had seen no atmosphere like this, and my spirits, like the sky, were clear and bright. On my way I saw a novel sight, and to me the first intimation that the people of Paris, so widely famed for their politeness, refinement, and civilization, are yet addicted to certain practices for which the wildest barbarian in the far west would blush. I saw men in open day, in the open walk, which was crowded with women as well as men, commit nuisances of a kind I need not particularize but which seemed to excite neither wonder nor disgust in the by-passers. Indeed I saw they were quite accustomed to such sights, and their nonchalance was only equaled by that of the well-dressed gentlemen who were the guilty parties. I very soon learned more of Paris, and found that not in this matter alone were its citizens deficient in refinement, but in still weightier matters. I soon reached the American reading-room, and walked in. My first act was to look at the register where all persons who call inscribe their names, and I was surprised to notice the number of Americans present in Paris. It only proved what I long had heard, that Americans take more naturally to the French than to the sturdy, self-sufficient Englishman. As it is in the matter of fashions, so it is regarding almost everything else, save morals, and I doubt if the tone of fashionable society in New York is any better than in Paris. I was heartily rejoiced to take an American newspaper in my hand again. There were the clear open face of the plain-spoken _Tribune_, the sprightly columns of the _Times_, and the more dignified columns of the Washington journals. There were also many other familiar papers on the table, and they were all touched before I left. It was like a cool spring in the wide desert. For I confess that I love the newspaper, if it only be of the right sort. From early habit, I cannot live without it. Let any man pursue the vocation of an editor for a few years, and he will find it difficult, after, to live without a good supply of newspapers, and they must be of the old-fashioned home kind. I did not easily accustom myself to the Paris journals. Cheap enough some of them were, but still the strange language was an obstacle. They are worse printed than ours, and are by no means equal to such journals as the _Times_ and _Tribune_. They publish continued stories, or novels, and racy criticisms of music, art, and literature. The political department of the French newspaper at the present day is the weakest part of the sheet. It is lifeless. A few meager facts are recorded, and there is a little tame comment, and that is all. There was a time when the political department of a French newspaper was its most brilliant feature. During the exciting times which presaged the downfall of Louis Philippe, and also during the early days of the republic, the Paris press was in the full tide of success, and was exceedingly brilliant. The daily journals abounded, and their subscription lists were enormous. Where there is freedom, men and women _will_ read--and where there is unmitigated despotism, the people care little to read the sickly journals which are permitted to drag out an existence. There is one journal published in Paris in the English language, "_Galignani's Messenger_." It is old, and in its way is very useful, but it is principally made up of extracts from the English journals. It has no editorial ability or originality, and of course never advances any opinion upon a political question. On my return home I passed through a street often mentioned by Eugene Sue in his Mysteries of Paris--a street formerly noted for the vile character of its inhabitants. It was formerly filled with robbers and cut-throats, and even now I should not care to risk my life in this street after midnight, with no policemen near. It is exceedingly narrow, for I stood in the center and touched with the tips of my fingers the walls of both sides of the street. It is very dark and gloomy, and queer-looking passages run up on either side from the street. Some of them were frightful enough in their appearance. To be lost in such a place in the dead of night, even now, would be no pleasant fate, for desperate characters still haunt the spot. Possibly the next morning, or a few mornings after, the stranger's body might be seen at _La Morgue._ That is the place where all dead bodies found in the river or streets are exhibited--suicides and murdered men and women. Talking of this street and its reputation in Eugene Sue's novels, reminds me of the man. When I first saw it he had just been elected to the Chamber of Deputies by an overwhelming majority. It was not because Sue was the favorite candidate of the republicans, but he stood in such a position that his defeat would have been considered a government victory, and consequently he was elected. I was glad to find the man unpopular among democrats of Paris, for his life, like his books, has many pages in it that were better not read. At that time he was living very quietly in a village just out of Paris, and though surrounded with voluptuous luxuries, he was in his life strictly virtuous. He was the same afterward, and being very wealthy, gave a great deal to the poor. His novels are everywhere read in France. I was not a little surprised during my first days in Paris to see the popularity of Cooper as a novelist. His stories are for sale at every book-stall, and are in all the libraries. They are sold with illustrations at a cheap rate, and I think I may say with safety that he is as widely read in France as any foreign novelist. This is a little singular when it is remembered how difficult it is to convey the broken Indian language to a French reader. This is one of the best features of Cooper's novels--the striking manner in which he portrays the language of the North American Indian and his idiomatic expressions. Yet such is the charm of his stories that they have found their way over Europe. The translations into the French language must be good. Another author read widely in Paris, as she is all over Europe, is Mrs. Stowe. _Uncle Tom_ is a familiar name in the brilliant capital of France, and even yet his ideal portraits hang in many shop windows, and the face of Mrs. Stowe peeps forth beside it. _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ was wonderfully popular among all classes, and to very many--what a fact!--it brought their first idea of Jesus Christ as he is delineated in the New Testament. But Mrs. Stowe's _Sunny Memories_ was very severely criticised and generally laughed at--especially her criticisms upon art. Walking one evening in the Champs Elysees, I found a little family of singers from the Alps, underneath one of the large trees. You should have heard them sing their native songs, so plaintive and yet so mild. Father and mother, two little sisters and a brother, were begging their bread in that way. They were dressed very neatly, although evidently extremely poor. The father had a violin which he played very sweetly, the mother sang, the two little girls danced, and the boy put in a soft and melancholy tenor. I hardly ever listened to sadder music. It seemed as if their hearts were in it, saddened at the thought of exile from their native mountains. After singing for a long time, they stopped and looked up appealingly to the crowd--but not a sou fell to the ground. Once more they essayed to sing, with a heavier sorrow upon their faces, for they were hungry and had no bread. They stopped again--not a solitary sou was given to them. A large tear rolled down the cheek of the father--you should have seen the answering impulse of the crowd--how the sous rattled upon the ground. They saw instantly that it was no common beggar before them, but one who deserved their alms. At once, as if a heaven full of clouds had divided and the sunshine flashed full upon their faces, the band of singers grew radiant and happy. Such is life--a compound of sorrow and gayety. The Parisian omnibus system is the best in the world, and I found it very useful and agreeable always while wandering over the city. The vehicles are large and clean, and each passenger has a chair fastened firmly to the sides of the carriage. Six sous will carry a person anywhere in Paris, and if two lines are necessary to reach the desired place, a ticket is given by the conductor of the first omnibus, which entitles the holder to another ride in the new line. The omnibus system is worked to perfection only in Paris, and is there a great blessing to people who cannot afford to drive their own carriages. THE BOURSE--GALIGNANI'S, ETC., ETC. The Paris Exchange is on the Rue Vivienne, and is approached from the Tuileries from that street or _via_ the Palais National, and a succession of the most beautiful arcade-shops in Paris or the world. If the day be rainy, the stranger can thread his way to it under the long arcades as dry as if in his own room at the hotel. I confess to a fondness for wandering though such places as these arcades, where the riches of the shops are displayed in their large windows. In America it is not usual to fill the windows of stores full of articles with the price of each attached, but it is always so in London and Paris. A jewelry store will exhibit a hundred kinds of watches with their different prices attached, and the different shops will display what they contain in like manner. There are, too, in Paris and London places called "Curiosity shop". The first time I ever saw one of these shops with its green windows and name over the door, memory instantly recalled a man never to be forgotten. Will any one who has read Charles Dickens ever forget his "Curiosity Shop," the old grandfather and little Nell? When I entered the shop--the windows filled with old swords, pistols, and stilettos--it seemed to me that I must meet the old gray-haired man, or gentle Nell, or the ugly Quilp and Dick Swiveller. But they were not there. [Illustration: Palais de la Bourse] But I have been stopping in a curiosity shop when I should be on my way to the Bourse. The Paris Bourse, or Exchange, is perhaps the finest building of its kind on the continent. Its magnificence is very properly of the most solid and substantial kind. For should not the exchange for the greatest merchants of Paris be built in a stable rather than in a slight and beautiful manner? The form of the structure is that of a parallelogram, and it is two hundred and twelve by one hundred and twenty-six feet. It is surrounded by sixty-six Corinthian columns, which support an entablature and a worked attic. It is approached by a flight of steps which extend across the whole western front. Over the western entrance is the following inscription--BOURSE ET TRIBUNAL DE COMMERCE. The roof is made of copper and iron. The hall in the center of the building where the merchants meet is very large--one hundred and sixteen feet long and seventy-six feet broad. Just below the cornice are inscribed the names of the principal cities in the world, and over the middle arch there is a clock, which on an opposite dial-plate marks the direction of the wind out of doors. The hall is lighted from the roof--the ceiling is covered with fine paintings, or as they are styled "monochrane drawings." Europe, Asia, Africa, and America are represented in groups. In one, the city of Paris is represented as delivering her keys to the God of Commerce, and inviting Commercial Justice to enter the walls prepared for her. The hall is paved with a fine marble, and two thousand persons can be accommodated upon the central floor. There is a smaller inclosure at the east end, where the merchants and stockholders transact their daily business. The hours are from one o'clock to three for the public stocks, and till half past five for all others. The public is allowed to visit the Bourse from nine in the morning till five at night. A very singular regulation exists in reference to the ladies. No woman is admitted into the Bourse without a special order from the proper authorities. The cause for this is the fact that years ago, when ladies were admitted to the Bourse, they became very much addicted to gambling there, and also enticed the gentlemen into similar practices. It is not likely that the old stockholders were tempted into any vicious practices, but the presence of women was enough to attract another class of men--idlers and fashionable gamblers--until the exchange was turned into a gambling-saloon. The matter was soon set to rights when women were shut out. Paris was formerly without an Exchange, and the merchants held their meetings in an old building which John Law, the celebrated financier, once occupied. They afterward met in the Palais Royal, and still later, in a comparatively obscure street. The first stone of the Bourse was laid on the 28th of March, 1808, and the works proceeded with dispatch till 1814, when they were suspended. It was completed in 1826. The architect who designed it died when it was half completed, but the plan was carried out, though by a new architect. It is now a model building of its kind, and cost nearly nine millions of francs. In comprehensive magnificence it has no rival in Paris--perhaps not in the world. The Royal Exchange of London, though a fine building, is a pigmy beside this massive and colossal structure. The best view can be obtained from the Rue Vivienne. From this street one has a fine view of the fine marble steps ascending to it, and which stretch completely across the western part. The history of all the great panics which have been experienced on the Paris Exchange would be an excellent history of the fortunes of France. The slightest premonition of change is felt at once at the Bourse, and as each successive revolution has swept over the country, it has written its history in ineffaceable characters on Change. Panic has followed panic, and the stocks fly up or down according to the views outside. The breath of war sets all its interests into a trembling condition, and an election, before now, has sent the thrill to the very center of that grand old money-palace. On my way home from the Bourse, I stopped to go over Galignani's Reading Room. It is a capital collection of the best books of all countries, some of them in French, some in English, and others in German. I found on the shelves many American republications, but Cooper was always first among these. For a small sum the stranger can subscribe to this library, either for a month or a year, and supply himself with reading and the newspapers of the world. The Messrs. Galignani publish an English journal in Paris. It is a daily, and has no opinions of its own. Of course, an original and independent journal could not be allowed to exist in Paris. For this reason _Galignani's Messenger_ is a vapid concern. It presents no thoughts to the reader. It is interesting to the Englishman in Paris, because it gathers English news, and presents it in the original language. As there are always a great many Englishmen in Paris, the journal is tolerably well supported. Then, again, the Paris shop-keepers and hotel-owners know very well that the English are among their best customers, and they advertise largely in it. So far as my experience has gone, I have found the _Messenger_ quite unfair to America. It quotes from the worst of American journals, and is sure to parade anything that may be for the disadvantage of American reputation. It also is generally sure of showing by its quotations its sympathy with "the powers that be." This may all be natural enough, for it is for their interest to stand well with the despot who rules France, but to an American, and a republican, it excites only disgust. At present the _Messenger_ is as good, or nearly so, as any of the French journals, but when the latter had liberty to write as they pleased, the contrast between the French and English press in Paris was ludicrous. In one you had fearless political writing, wit, and spice. In the other, nothing but selections. Once, while in Paris, during the days of the republic, I called upon the editor of one of the prominent French journals. It was a journal which had again and again paid government fines for the utterance of its honest sentiments, both under Louis Philippe and the presidency of Louis Napoleon. Before the revolution it had a very great influence over the people, and in the days of the so-called republic. The struggle between it and the government, at that time was continued. Its editor's great aim was to express as much truth as was possible and escape the government line, which in the end would suppress the journal. As I entered the building in which this journal was printed and published, I felt a kind of awe creeping over me, as if coming into the presence of a great mind. We entered the editor's office; a little green baize-covered table by a window, pen and ink, and scissors, indicated the room. One might indeed tremble in such a place. What greater place is there in this world than an editor's office, if his journal be one which sells by tens of thousands and sways a vast number of intelligent men? A throne-room is nothing in comparison to it. Thrones are demolished by the journals. Especially in Paris has such been the case. The liberal press has in past years controlled the French people to a wonderful extent. Kings and queens have physical power, but here in this little room was the throne-room of intellect. A door opened out of it into the printing-room, where the thoughts were stamped upon paper, afterward to be impressed upon a hundred thousand minds. The editor sat over his little desk, an earnest, care-worn, yet hopeful man. His fingers trembled with nervousness, yet his eye was like an eagle's. He did not stir when we first entered, did not even see us, he was so deeply absorbed in what lay before him upon his table. I was glad to watch him for a moment, unobserved. He was no fashionable editor, made no play of his work. He felt the responsibility of his position, and endeavored honestly to do his duty. His forehead was high, his eye black, and his face was very pale. Suddenly he looked up and saw us, and recognized my friend. It was enough that I was a republican, from America, and unlike some Americans, abated not a jot of my radicalism when in foreign countries. I looked around the room when the first words were spoken, and saw everywhere files of newspapers, old copy and that which was about to be given to the printers. It was very much like an editorial apartment in an American printing office, though in some respects it was different. It was a gloomy apartment, and it seemed to me that the writings of the editor must partake somewhat of the character of the room. We went into the printing-office, where a hundred hands were setting the "thought-tracks." It seemed as if everyone in the building, from editor-in-chief down to the devil, was solemn with the thought of his high and noble avocation. There was a half sadness on every countenance, for the future was full of gloom. I was struck with the fact that the office did not seem to me to be a _French_ office. There was a gravity, a solemnity, not often seen in Paris. The usual politeness of a Parisian was there, but no gayety, no recklessness. Anxiety trouble, or fixedness of purpose were written upon almost every countenance. In one corner lay piled up to the ceilings copies of the journal, and I half expected to see a band of the police walk in and seize them. It seemed as if _they_ half expected some such thing, but they worked on without saying a word. I became at that moment convinced that a portion of the French people had been wronged by foreigners. There is a large class who are not only intellectual, but they are earnest and grave. They do not wish change for the sake of it. They love liberty and would die for it. Many of this class were murdered in cold blood by Louis Napoleon. Others were sent to Cayenne, to fall a prey to a climate cruel as the guillotine, or were sent into strange lands to beg their bread. These men were the real glory of France, and yet they were forced to leave it. CHAPTER III. LAFAYETTE'S TOMB--THE RADICAL--A COUNTRY WALK. LAFAYETTE'S TOMB. I am fond of being at perfect liberty to ramble where my fancy may lead. If the sun shine pleasantly this morning, and I would like to hear the birds sing and smell the flowers, I go to some pleasant garden and indulge my mood. Or, if I am sad, I go to the grave of genius, and lean over the tomb of Abelard and Heloise. When I lived in Paris, I had no regularity in my wanderings, no method in my sight-seeing, following a perhaps wayward fancy, and enjoying myself the better for it. One beautiful morning I sauntered out from my hotel, with a friend, who was also a stranger in Paris. "Where shall we go?" he asked. "To a little cemetery called Picpus, far away from here." "Will it be worth our while to go so far to see a small cemetery?" "You shall see when we get there." We went part of the way by an omnibus, and walked the rest, and when the morning was nearly spent, we stood before No. 15, Rue de Picpus. The place was once a convent of the order of St. Augustine, but is now occupied by the "Women of the Sacred Heart." Within the convent, which we entered, there is a pretty Doric chapel with an Ionic portal. There was an air of privacy about, the little chapel which pleased me, and a chasteness in its architecture which could not fail to please any one who loves simple beauty. Within the walls of the court, there is a very small private cemetery, but though private, the porter, if you ask him politely, will let you enter, especially if you tell him you are from America. "Here is the cemetery which we have come to see," I said to my friend. "Certainly, it is a very pretty one," he replied; "still I see nothing to justify our coming so far to behold it." "Wait a little while and you will not say so." The first group of graves before which we stopped, was that of some victims of the reign of terror--poor slaughtered men and women. The grass was growing pleasantly above them, and all was calm, and sunny, and beautiful around. Perhaps the sun shone as pleasantly when, on the "_Place de la Concorde_," they walked up the steps of the scaffold to die--for _Liberty_! Oh shame! One--two--three--four--there were eight graves we counted, all victims of the reign of terror. For a moment I forgot where I was; the graves were now at my feet, but I saw the poor victims go slowly up to their horrible death. The faces of grinning, scowling devils, male and female, were before me, all clamoring for blood. I could see the tiger-thirst for human flesh in every countenance--the fierce eye--the flushed face--and yet, how still were the winds, how cheerful the sky. Yet, though every pure-hearted man or woman must detest the horrible cruelties of the great revolution must shudder at the bare mention of the names of the leaders in it, is it not an eternal law of God, that oppression at last produces madness? Have not tyrants this fact always to dream over--_though you_ may escape the vengeance of outraged humanity, yet your children, your children's children shall pay the terrible penalty. Louis XVI. was a gentle king; unwise, but never at heart tyrannical; but alas! he answered not merely for his own misdeeds, but for the misdeeds, the tyrannical conduct of centuries of kingcraft. It was an inevitable consequence--and it will ever be so. But I am moralizing. "You came to see these graves?" remarked my friend. "They are interesting places to ponder and dream over." "Not to see these, though, did I come," I replied. We soon came to the graves of nobility. There was the tomb of a Noailles, a Grammont, a Montagu. Plain, all of them, and yet with an air at once chaste and artistic. There was the tomb of Rosambo and Lemoignon amid the tangled grass. All of these names were once noble and great in France, and as I bent over them, I could but call up France in the days of the _ancien regime_, when all these names called forth bows and fawnings from the people. Dead and buried nobility--what is it? The nobility goes--names die with the body. "You came out to see buried nobility," said my companion. "Me! Did I ever go out of my way to see even buried _royalty_? Never, unless the ashes had been something more than a mere king. To see the grave of genius or goodness, but not empty, buried names!" We went on a little farther--to a quiet spot, where the sun shone in warmly, where the grass was mown away short, but where it was green and bright. The song of a plaintive bird just touched our ears--where it was we could not tell, only we heard it. It was a still, beautiful spot, and there was a grave before us--yet how very plain! A pure, white marble, a simple tomb. Now my companion asked no questions, but I saw that his lips quivered. The name on the simple tomb was that of "LAFAYETTE." Here, away from the noise of the city, amid silence chaste and sweet, without a monument, lie the remains of one of the greatest men of France. Not in Pere la Chaise, amid grandeur and fashion, but in a little private cemetery, with a cluster of extinguished nobles on one side, and a band of victims of the reign of terror on the other! We sat down beside his tomb, grateful to the dust beneath our feet for the noble assistance which it gave to the sinking "Old Thirteen," when the soul of Lafayette animated it. How vividly were the days of our long struggle before us. We saw Bunker Hill alive with battalions, and Charlestown lay in flames. Step by step we ran over the bitter struggle, with so much power on one side, and on the other such an amount of determination, but after all so many dark and adverse circumstances, so little physical power in comparison with the hosts arrayed against us. It was when the heart of the nation drooped with an accumulation of misfortune, that Lafayette came and turned the balance in the scales. And we were grateful to him; not so much for what he really accomplished, as for what he attempted--for the daring spirit, the noble generosity! Then, too, I thought how Lafayette stood between the king and the people, before and after the reign of terror--thought of his devotion to France--of his stern patriotism, which would neither tremble before a king nor an infuriated rabble. Yet he was obliged to fly for life from Paris--from France. He lay in a felon's dungeon in a foreign land, for lack of devotion to kingcraft, and could not return to France because he loved humanity too well. Was it not hard? France has never been just to her great men. She welcomes to her bosom her most dangerous citizens, and casts out the true and the noble. She did so when she sent Lafayette away. She did so in refusing Lamartine and accepting Louis Napoleon. * * * * * THE RADICAL. When I first visited Paris, while Louis Napoleon was president of the republic instead of emperor, I became acquainted with a young man from America who had lived seventeen years in Paris. He was thoroughly acquainted with every phase of Parisian life, from the highest to the lowest, and knew the principal political characters of the country. He was a thorough radical, and an enthusiast. He came to Paris for an education, and when he had finished it, he had imbibed the most radical opinions respecting human liberty, and as his native town was New Orleans, and his father a wealthy slaveholder, he concluded to remain in Paris. When I found him, he was living in the Latin quarter, among the students, at a cheap, though very neat hotel. He was refined, modest, and highly educated, and was busy in political writing and speculations. At that time he showed me a complete constitution for a "model republic" in France, and a code of laws fit for Paradise rather than France. The documents exhibited great skill and learning, but the impress of an enthusiast was upon them all. By his conduct or manner, the stranger would never have supposed that my friend was enthusiastic. He never indulged in any flights of indignation at the existing state of things, never was thrown off his guard so as to show by his speech or his manner that he was passionately attached to liberal principles. It was only after I had come to know him well, that I discovered this fact--that he was a great enthusiast, and so deeply attached to the purest principles respecting human freedom and happiness, that he would willingly have died for them. Living in Paris, one of the most dissolute cities of the world, he was pure in his morals, and as rigidly honest as any Puritan in Cromwell's day. But with all his own purity he possessed unbounded charity for others. His friends were among all classes, and were good and bad. One day I saw him walking with one of the most distinguished men of France. A few days after, while he was taking a morning walk, he met a university student with a grisette upon his arm--his mistress. The student wished to leave Paris for the day on business, and asked my friend to accompany his mistress back to their rooms. With the utmost composure and politeness the radical offered his arm, and escorted the frail woman to her apartments. Of course, this man was carefully watched by the police. He was well known, and the eye of the secret police was constantly upon him. He still clung to his old American passport, for it had repeatedly caused him to be respected when other reasons were insufficient. I one day wrote a note to a friend in a distant part of the city, and was going to drop it into the post-office when my friend, who was with me, remonstrated. "You can walk to the spot and deliver it yourself," said he, "and you will have saved the two sous postage. I am going that way; let _me_ have the postage and I will deliver it." "I will go with you," I said, at the same time giving him the two sous. He took them without any remonstrance. On the way we met a poor old family, singing and begging in the streets. "They must live," said my friend, "and we will give them our mite in partnership." So he added two sous to those I had given him, and tossed them to the beggars. This was genuine charity, given not for ostentation, but to relieve suffering and administer comfort. I found him at all times entirely true to his principles, and became very much interested in him. We took a walk together one evening, to hear music in the Luxembourg Gardens. As we approached them, the clock on the old building of the Chamber of Peers struck eight, and at once the band commenced playing some operatic airs of exquisite beauty. Now a gay and enlivening passage was performed, and then a mournful air, or something martial and soul-stirring. The music ceased at nine, and a company of soldiers marched to the drum around the frontiers of the gardens, to notify all who were in it that the gates must soon close. "What very fine drumming," I said to my companion. "Yes," he replied, "but you should hear a night _rappel_. I heard it often in the days of the June fight. One morning I heard it at three o'clock, calling the soldiers together for battle. You cannot know what a thrill of horror it sent through every avenue of this great city. I got up hastily, and dressed myself and ran into the streets. It was not for me to shrink from the conflict. But the alarm was a false one. Soldiers were in every street, but there was no fighting that day." A few months before, my friend ventured to publish a pamphlet on the subject of French interference in Italy. He condemned in unequivocal terms the expedition to Italy, and showed how it violated the feelings of the French nation. A few days afterward, he received the following laconic note: "M. Blank is invited to call on the prefect of the police, at his office, to-morrow, Friday, at eleven o'clock." M. Blank sat down, first, and wrote an able letter to the minister for the interior, for he well knew that the note signified the suppression of the pamphlet, and very likely his ejection from France. He sent the same letter to the American minister, and the next day answered the summons of the prefect. This is the account of the interview which he gave me from a journal he was in the habit of keeping at that time: "I read the word '_Refugies_' over the door, and it reminded me of the inscription on the gates of hell--'Leave all hope far behind.' Everyone knows that the very reason that ghosts are dreaded, is that ghosts were _never seen_. It is the same for policemen--those 'Finders out of Occasions,' as Othello styles them--those 'rough and ready' to choke ideas, as the bud is bit by the venomous worm 'ere it can spread its sweet leaves to the air.' I was about to encounter the assailing eyes of knavery. A gentleman of the administration welcomed me in. 'Sir,' I said, coldly, 'I was invited to meet the _prefect of the police_. I wish to know what is deemed an outrage to the established government of France?' "The reply, was, 'The procureur-general noticed several portions of your book; sit down and we will read them!' "I listened to several extracts, where there were allusions to _princes_, (Louis Napoleon had been formerly a prince, and this was objected to,) and remarked to them that France recognized _no princes_--that what I had written about the expedition to Italy, I had the right, as a publicist, to write. The world had universally repudiated that expedition, and the president had tacitly done the same in his letter to Colonel Ney, and in dismissing the ministers who planned the expedition. The president being quoted as authority, the agent of the executive thought it useless to hold the argument any longer, and backed out. The gentlemen of the police knew nothing of bush-fighting, and might have exclaimed with the muse in Romeo, 'Is this poultice for my aching bones?'" The upshot of the examination was, that the pamphlet was untouched, and M. Blank remained in Paris. But he was watched closer than ever. When I left him, he was waiting in daily expectation of a _coup de etat_ on the part of Louis Napoleon. I asked him what hopes there were for France. He shook his head sadly--he despaired of success. It might be that Napoleon would be beaten down by the populace, if he attempted to erect a throne, but he had faint hopes of it, for he had got the army almost completely under his influence. Or it was possible that Napoleon might not violate his solemn oaths to support the republic--not for lack of disposition, but fearing the people. I could see, however, that my friend had little faith in the immediate future of "poor France," as he called her, as if she were his mother. He thought the reason why the republic would be overthrown, was from the conduct of those who had been at its head in the early part of its history. The republicans, soon after Louis Philippe's flight, acted, he thought, with great weakness. If strong men had been at the helm, then no such man as Louis Napoleon would have been allowed afterward to take the presidential chair. I think he was more right than wrong. A vigorous and not too radical administration, might have preserved the republic for years--possibly for all time. Louis Napoleon should not have been allowed to enter France, nor any like him, who had proved themselves disturbers of the peace. About a year after the time I have been describing, while walking down Nassau street, in New York, I very suddenly and unexpectedly met my friend, the radical! "Aha!" said I, "you have left Paris. Well, you have shown good taste." "No! no!" he replied, "I did not leave it till Louis Napoleon forced me to choose exile or imprisonment. I had no choice in the matter." He seemed to feel lost amid the bustle of New York. His dream was over, and at thirty-five he found himself amid the realities of a money-seeking nation. The look upon his face was sad, almost despairing. I certainly never pitied a man more than I did him. Pure, guileless generous--and poor, what could he do in New York? A WALK INTO THE COUNTRY. The summer and autumn are the seasons one should spend in Paris, to see it in its full glory. The people of Paris live out of doors, and to see them in the winter, is not to know them thoroughly. The summer weather is unlike that of London. The air is pure, the sky serene, and the whole city is full of gardens and promenades. The little out-of-door theaters reap harvests of money--the tricksters, the conjurors, the street fiddlers, and all sorts of men who get their subsistence by furnishing the people with cheap amusements, are in high spirits, for in these seasons they can drive a fine business. Not so in the winter. Then they are obliged either to wander over the half-deserted _places_, gathering here and there a sou, or shut themselves up in their garret or cellar apartments, and live upon their summer gains. To the stranger who must be economical, Paris in the winter is not to be desired, for fuel is enormously high in that city. A bit of wood is worth so much cash, and a log which in America would be thrown away, would there be worth a little fortune to a poor wood-dealer. The country around Paris is scarcely worth a visit in the winter or early spring months, but in the summer it is far different. I remember a little walk I took one day past the fortifications. When I came to the walls of the city, I was obliged to pass through a narrow gate. All who enter the city are inspected, for there is a heavy duty upon provisions of nearly all kinds which are brought from the provinces into Paris. The duty upon wines is very heavy. Upon a bottle of cheap wine, which costs in the country but fifteen sous, there is a gate-duty of five sous. This is one reason why the poor people of Paris on _fete_ days, crowd to the country villages near Paris. There they can eat and drink at a much cheaper rate than in town, besides having the advantage of pure air and beautiful scenery. I witnessed an amusing sight at this gate. A man was just entering from the country. He was very large in the abdominal regions, so much so that the gate-keeper's suspicions were aroused, and he asked the large traveler a few leading questions. He protested that he was innocent of any attempt to defraud the revenues of Paris. The gate-keeper reached out his hand as if to examine the unoffending man, and he grew very angry. His face assumed a scarlet hue, and his voice was hoarse with passion, probably from the fact that he was sensitive about his obesity. But the gate-keeper saw in his conduct only increased proof of his guilt, and finally insisted upon laying his hand upon the suspicious part, when with a poorly-concealed smile, but a polite "beg your pardon," he let the man pass on his way. It is probable the gate-keeper was more rigid in his examinations, from the fact that not long before a curious case of deception had occurred at one of the other gates, or rather a case of long-continued deception was exposed. A man who lived in a little village just outside of the walls, became afflicted with the dropsy in the abdominal regions. He then commenced the business of furnishing a certain hotel in Paris with fresh provisions, and for this purpose he visited it twice a day with a large basket on his head or arm. The basket, of course, was always duly examined, and the man passed through. He became well-known to the gate-keeper, and thus weeks and months passed away, until one day the keeper was sure he smelt brandy, and searched the basket more carefully than usual. Nothing was discovered, but the fragrance of the brandy grew stronger, and his suspicions were directed to the man. He was examined, and it was found that his dropsy could easily be cured, for it consisted in wearing something around his body which would contain several gallons, for the man was really small in size, though tall, and he had made it his business to carry in liquors to the city, and evade the taxes. But at last, unfortunately, the portable canteen sprung a leak, and this was the cause which led to the discovery. At another gate, a woman was detected in carrying quantities of brandy under her petticoats, and only passing for a large woman. I knew of a woman who, in passing the Liverpool custom house, sewed cigars to a great number into her skirt, but was, to her great chagrin, detected, and also to the dismay of her husband, whom she intended to benefit. Such taxes would not be endured in any American city, but the old world is used to taxation. In the very out-skirts of London there are toll-gates in the busiest of streets, but that is not so bad as the local tariff system. I soon came, in my walk, to the fortifications of Paris. They were constructed by Louis Phillippe, and are magnificent works of defense. There is one peculiar feature of this chain of defense which has excited a great deal of remark. It is quite evident that a part of the fortifications were constructed with a view to defend one's self from enemies _within_, as well as without. Louis Phillippe evidently remembered the past history of Paris, and felt the possibility of a future in which he might like to have the command of Paris with his guns, as well as an enemy outside the wall. But the fortifications and the cannon were of no manner of use to him. So, very possibly, the grand army which Louis Napoleon has raised may be of no use to him, and the little prince, the young king of Algeria, may end his days a wanderer in the United States, as his father was before him. It is to be hoped, if he does, that he will pay his bills. The fortifications of Paris extend entirely around the city, and are seventeen miles in length. I went to the top of them, but I had not stood there five minutes before the soldiers warned me off. The approach to the city side of the wall is very gradual, by means of a grass-covered bank. While standing upon the summit, a train of cars--came whizzing along at a fine rate. I saw for the first time people riding on the tops of cars as on a coach. The train was bound to Versailles, and as the distance is short, and probably the speed attained not great, seats are attached to the tops of the cars, and for a very small sum the poorer classes can ride in them. In fine weather it is said that this kind of riding is very pleasant. I passed out through the gates beyond the fortifications, and was in the open country--among the trees, the birds and flowers, and the cultivated fields. The contrast between what I saw and the city, was great. Here, all was beautiful nature. There, all that is grand and exquisite in art. The fields around me were green with leaves and plants; the branches of the trees swayed to and fro in the restless breeze; the little peasant huts had a picturesque appearance in the distance, and the laborers at work seemed more healthy than the artisans of Paris. I approached a peasant who was following the plow. I was surprised to find the plow he used to be altogether too heavy for the use to which it was put. Yet I was in sight of Paris, the city of the arts and sciences. Such a plow could not have been found in all New England. I looked at the man, too, and compared him with an American farmer or native workman. He was miserably dressed, and wore shoes which might have been made in the twelfth century. He had no look of intelligence upon his face, but stared at me with a dull and idiotic eye. This was the peasant under the walls of Paris--what must he be in the provincial forests? Leaving the plowman, I walked on, following a pretty little road, until I came to a large flock of sheep in the care of a shepherd-boy and a dog. While I stood looking at them, the boy started them off across the fields and through the lawns to some other place. All that he did was to follow the sheep, but I certainly never saw a dog so capable and intelligent as that one. He seemed to catch from his master the idea of their destination at once, and kept continually running around the flock, now stirring them into a faster gait, then heading off some wayward fellow who manifested a strong disposition to sheer off to the right or left, and again turning the whole body just where the master wished. It was an amusing sight, and well worth the walk from the city. To be sure, the dog was rather egotistical and ostentatious. He knew his smartness, and was quite willing that bystanders should know it too, for he pawed, and fawned, and barked at a tremendous rate. The flock seemed to know his ways, and while they obeyed his voice, they were not particularly frightened at it. Leaving the flock and their master, I soon came to a little inn, and sat down to dine. It was not much like the restaurants on the Boulevard, or even like those within the city on retired streets, but I got a very comfortable meal, and for a very small sum of money. I found that the mere mention that I was an American, in all such places as this, insured me polite attention, and I could often notice, instantly, the change of manners after I had informed my entertainers of my country. It is but a slight fact from which to draw an inference, but yet I could not help inferring that the more intelligent of the common people of Paris are yet, notwithstanding the despotism which hovers over France, in their secret hearts longing for the freedom of a just republic. A young American was a few months since visiting Paris with a much younger brother. The latter went out one day into the country, alone, and seeing that a party of people from Paris were enjoying themselves in the gardens connected with a small public house, he drew near to witness their gayety. They were artisans, but of the most intelligent class. They were neatly dressed, and their faces were bright and intelligent. Whole families were there, down to the little children, and they were enjoying a holiday. Seeing a young man (he was but sixteen years' old) gazing upon them, and judging him to be a stranger, one of the party approached him, and with great politeness asked if he would not come into the garden and drink a glass of wine. The act was a spontaneous one, and arose from good-nature and high spirits. The young American entered, and in the course of a conversation told the company that he was an American. Instantly the scene changed. He was loudly cheered, and one man remarked, with very significant gestures and looks, that "_he came from a republic_!" Nothing would do but that the guest must sit down and accept of food and wine to an alarming extent. He was, in fact, made so much of, that he became somewhat alarmed, for he was young and inexperienced. I may as well finish the story by saying what was the truth, that so many of the party begged the privilege of drinking with him, that he became somewhat giddy and unfit to retrace his steps. He was unused to wine, and the moment the Parisians saw it, they urged him to drink no more, and asking his hotel, they took him carefully and kindly to it in a carriage, after an hour or two had passed away and he had pretty much recovered from his dissipation. Now there can be no doubt that the enthusiastic politeness of the artisans, arose from the fact that he was a republican, and from a great republican country, and such facts which I have repeatedly witnessed, or heard of, assure me that the old republican fire is not extinguished in the hearts of the common people of Paris. After a frugal dinner at the inn, I sauntered still further into the country, so as, if possible, to get a glimpse of the farm-houses. But one cannot get any fair idea of French agriculture so near Paris. A great deal of the land is used in cultivating vegetables for the Paris markets, and this land is scarcely a specimen of the farms of France, it is more like gardens. I found a few buildings which were occupied by these gardeners, and one or two genuine farmers, and while there was evidently scientific culture bestowed upon the land, the tools were generally clumsy, and altogether too heavy for convenience and dispatch. It struck me as very singular. Paris excels in the manufacturing of light and graceful articles of almost every kind. Certainly, in jewelry, cutlery, and all manner of ornamental articles, it is the first city in the world. How comes it, then, that so near Paris, agricultural implements are so far behind the age? I would by no means have the reader infer that the best of agricultural tools are not manufactured in France. Such is not the fact, as the Paris Exhibition proved, but _who buys them_? Now is it not a significant fact, that within a bow-shot of Paris I found tools in use, which would be laughed at in the free states of America? The true reason for this, is to be found in the condition of the French agricultural laborer. He is ignorant and unambitious. Where the laborer is intelligent, he will have light and excellent tools to work with. This is a universal fact. The slaves of the southern states are in a state of brutal ignorance, and their agricultural implements are heavy and large. Such is the fact with all those men and women who are in a condition somewhat similar. After looking upon the plowman I have before alluded to, I could easily believe what reliable Frenchmen told me--that in the famous (shall I call it _in_famous?) election, very many of the farmers of the interior supposed they were voting for Napoleon the Great, instead of Louis Napoleon! I passed, in returning to my hotel, one of the finest buildings in Paris--the _Palace d' Orsay_. It was begun in the time of Napoleon, and is a public building. [Illustration: Palais de Quai D'Orsay.] [Illustration: CHURCH OF NOTRE DAME.] CHAPTER IV. CHURCHES--NOTRE DAME--L'AUXERROIS--SAINT CHAPELLE--ST. FERDINAND--EXPIATOIRE--MADELEINE, ETC. NOTRE DAME. The churches of Paris are full of gorgeous splendor--how much vital religion they contain, it is not, perhaps, my province to decide. But in beauty of architecture, in the solemnity and grandeur of interior, no city in the world, except Rome, can excel them. The church of the Madeleine is the most imposing of all; indeed, it seemed to me that in all Paris there was no other building so pretentious. But Notre Dame has that mellow quality which beautifies all architecture--hoary age. I started out one morning to see it, crossing on my way one of the bridges to _Isle la Cite_, and was soon in sight of the two majestic towers of the old cathedral. You can see them, in fact, from all parts of Paris, rising magnificently from the little island city, like beacons for the weary sailor. The morning was just such an one as Paris delights to furnish in the month of June--fair, clear, and exhilarating--no London fog, mud, or rain, but as soft a sky as ever I saw in America. We stopped a moment before the church, to gaze at the high-reaching columns, and admire the general architecture of the church. Workmen were scattered over different portions of the building and towers, (this was on my first visit to Paris,) engaged in renewing their ancient beauty. My first emotion upon entering, was one of disappointment, for although externally Notre Dame is the finest church in Paris, internally it is gloomy, exceedingly simple, and has an air of faded beauty. Still, the "long-drawn aisles" were very fine. Gazing aloft, the eye ached to watch the beautiful arches meet far above. Then to look away horizontally on either hand through the graceful aisles, filled one with pleasure. I scarcely know how, but as I was passing a little altar where a priest was saying mass, I unaccountably put my cap upon my head. I was instantly required to take it off. I was reminded of the fact that but a few days before, when entering a Jewish synagogue, upon taking off my hat, I was instantly required to replace it. Such is the difference between the etiquette of a Catholic church and a Jewish synagogue. I noticed that the threshold of Notre Dame, like that of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, was very much worn away by the feet of the crowds who have crossed it during many centuries. The organ is an excellent one. It is forty-five feet high, thirty-six broad, and has three thousand four hundred and eighty-four pipes. Its power is great, and as the organist touched some of the lower notes, the cathedral walls reverberated with the sound. The _Porte Rouge_ is a splendidly sculptured door-way. Under the arch-way there is a sculpture of Jesus Christ and the Virgin crowned by an angel. Behind it there are bas-reliefs representing the death of the Virgin--Christ surrounded by angels, the Virgin at the feet of Christ in agony, and a woman selling herself to the Devil. The interior of the church abounds with sculpture of every description, and some of it was executed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. There now remains only one of the old peal of bells which used to exist in Notre Dame--but one has escaped the fury of French revolutions. It was hung in the year 1682, and was baptized in the presence of Louis XIV. and Queen Theresa. Its weight is thirty-two thousand pounds--the clapper alone weighing a thousand pounds. A clock in one of the towers is world-renowned for the intricacy and curiosity of its mechanism. The feats it performs every time it strikes the hour and quarter-hour, can hardly be credited by one who has not seen them. It is supposed that the first foundations of a church on this spot were laid in the year 365, in the reign of Valentian I. It was subsequently several times rebuilt, a portion of the work which was executed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries still remaining. The other portions were built in 1407, by the duke of Burgundy, and are of a deep red color. The _Porte Rouge_ was built under his special superintendence. He assassinated the duke of Orleans, and built this red portal as an expiation for his crime. In 1831, when the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois was sacked, the mob crowded into Notre Dame and completely destroyed everything within its reach, including, among other things, the coronation robes of Napoleon. The archbishop's palace was next attacked, and in one short hour all its rich stores of ancient and modern literature were thrown into the Seine. The palace itself was so completely ruined, that the government afterward removed every vestige of it. Nothing is more terrible in this world than a mob of maddened people. And though such Vandal acts as these cannot be defended, still it be hooves us to remember, that the conduct of the inhabitants of these palaces was such as to bring down on their heads the just indignation and censure of the people. Slowly passing through the aisles of the cathedral, I passed again the threshold into the street. The majestic towers and turrets were bright beneath the gaze of the sun, and it seemed to me that I could stand for hours to look at them. It is not so with the Madeleine. Its architectural beauty is great, but it is new--it has no age. Notre Dame has seen centuries, and is full of historical associations, and I could have lingered about it and dreamed over them till the sunlight faded into night. * * * * * ST. GERMAIN L'AUXERROIS. The oldest church in Paris, is called the St. Germain l'Auxerrois. It is one of the quaintest specimens of architecture I ever saw. A church was founded on the spot, many centuries ago, by Childebert. It was of a circular form, and was destroyed by the Normans, in 886. A monastery was established here in 998, and the church at that time was dedicated to St. Germain l'Auxerrois. The ecclesiastics were formed into a college, to which were attached upwards of forty clergymen. It was for many years one of the most celebrated schools in France. In 1744 the college was united to that of Notre Dame, and it was considered to be the college of the royal parish. This church passed through the terrible scenes of the revolution unscathed, and it would have been perfectly preserved until now, but for a foolish attempt of the royalists to celebrate in it the death of the duke de Berry. This occurred on the 13th of February, 1831. A great tumult arose, and the interior of the church was entirely destroyed. It was with the greatest difficulty that the furious mob was prevented from tearing it down. On the same day, the palace of the archbishop was also completely devastated. St. Germain l'Auxerrois was now closed, and remained so until 1838. It was then restored, and reopened for public worship. At one time it was one of the finest interiors in Paris, the royal painters and artists vying with each other in its adornment. It is now, however, only as a third-rate church in its decoration. It is cruciform in shape, with an octagonal termination. At one corner there is a tower which was built in 1649, and some portions of the building were erected in 1400. The western front has a finely sculptured portico, with five low, but rich Gothic arches. The three central ones are higher than the others, and crowned with a parapet The porch was built in 1431, by Jean Gossel. The other parts of the church were built before the regency of the duke of Bedford. The door-ways are splendidly sculptured, and the church has a rich and ancient appearance. We entered at one of the little side doors, the friend who was with me remarking, "See how the feet of centuries have worn away these solid stones." It was true. A path two feet deep had been worn into the stepping-stone at the entrance. It was a striking exhibition of the power of time. The interior of this church afforded me one of the most impressive sights I ever witnessed. It had recently been painted in the Byzantine style, and the fresco paintings were as varied and beautiful as the traceries of the frost upon our autumnal woods. You can scarcely conceive the effect it had upon me, just emerged from the ever busy street. The beauty overwhelmed me. There was a large fresco painting of Christ upon the cross, which particularly arrested my attention. You saw in it every feature of the man, united with the holiness and majesty of the Divine. The face expressed every shade of sweetness and agony; yet it was only a fresco painting. Another represents Christ preaching on the Mount of Olives, with his disciples and the people gathered about him. I was struck with a series of frescoes which were executed to illustrate the most important precepts of Christ. One is that of a warrior, sheathing his sword in the presence of his deadly enemy. It would well grace the walls of a non-resistant, but not those of a French church, which ever reverberate to the music of the drum. The church has generally illustrated that precept of Christ by pictures, not by works. Another of the frescoes represents two brothers embracing each other. Still another, a beautiful young woman giving alms in secret to a poor old blind man. A painting to the right represents Christ issuing the command, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." The Magdalen kneels below, in devout admiration, and still lower is the Virgin surrounded by a group of pious women. On the keystone of one of the vaults, "The Last Supper" is sculptured in solid stone; on another, "The Ordination of the Shepherd." Within the church there are several chapels. The first in the southern aisle contains a magnificent fresco by M. Duval, representing Christ crowning the Virgin. Not far from it there is a fine fresco by Guichard, representing the descent from the cross. The windows upon this side are magnificently decorated with figures of saints and stained glass. In the center of one transept there is a marble basin for holy water, surmounted by a finely sculptured group of three children supporting a cross. The design is by the donor--the wife of Alphonso de Lamartine, the poet. I noticed in one compartment some admirable traceries in solid oak, and before the high altar an elaborate gilt-bronze lamp--the gift of the wife of Louis Phillippe; but the most brilliant portion of the ulterior is the fresco painting. As we walked slowly from chapel to chapel, and transept to transept, I could see men and women--principally the latter--with great apparent devotion kneeling before the altar, or at the confessional. It was not Sunday, yet many people were constantly passing in and out. I might perhaps infer from this fact, that the French possess much religious feeling--but I cannot believe it. Art and literature swallow up religion. The war-spirit soon eats out vital religion--and revolution and blood sap the morals of any people. The reader will remember that even our revolution rapidly dissipated the good morals of the nation. Never was there a time in the history of New England when vice of every sort made such progress as in the time of the revolution. This is not strange, for war necessarily blunts the religious sensibilities, and opens the door of almost every vice. We left the interior of the church and stood upon its steps. The Louvre in all its magnificence stood before me. I looked up at the tower of the church, and listened to the very bell which, more than three hundred years ago, gave the signal for the commencement of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. While I stood there it seemed to me that I could go back to the past--to that night of horror when the Protestants were gathered at the fete of St. Bartholomew. When twelve had struck, in the dead of night, the bell in St. Germain l'Auxerrois gave out the solemn signal, and there ensued a scene of horrible atrocity, such as the world has rarely witnessed, and which will make the names of its perpetrators infamous so long as the world lives. It was in the house of the dean of St. Germain l'Auxerrois that the beautiful Gabriel d'Estrees lived for awhile and died. * * * * * SAINTE CHAPELLE. The Sainte Chapelle is one of the finest specimens of florid Gothic architecture in the world, and I went with a Frenchman one day to see it. It is impossible to give the reader any adequate idea of its peculiar beauty, but I can briefly sketch it, and at least point out some of its most striking features. It was erected by St. Louis in 1248, and set apart for the reception of relics bought of the emperor of Constantinople. The Chapelle consists of an upper and a lower chapel--the upper communicating with the old palace of the ancient kings of France. It was formerly appropriated to the king and court. The lower chapel opens into the lower courts of the palace, and was appropriated to the use of the common people in and around the palace. The interior has of late undergone extensive repairs, and it is now thoroughly restored. The entrance is unpleasant, for it is very narrow--so much so that a good view of the front cannot be had. It has a portico of three Gothic arches with intersecting buttresses, and in connection with lateral buttresses there are two spiral towers with spiral stair-cases. Between the towers there is a splendid circular window, which was constructed by Charles VIII. The spires of the church are octagonal, and are adorned with mouldings and traceries, and also at about half-height with a crown of thorns. The different sides of the Chapelle are in the same style--with buttresses between the windows, gables surmounting these, and a fine open parapet crowning all. The roof is sloping, and the height is over a hundred feet. The spire measures, from the vaulting, seventy feet. We entered by a stair-case the upper chapel, and an exquisite view presented itself. A single apartment, a half-circular chair, with fine, large windows, detached columns with bases and capitals, and fine groining--these all strike the eye of the visitor as he crosses the threshold. The whole is gorgeously painted and interspersed with _fleur de lis_. In the nave there is a carved wooden stair-case of the thirteenth century. The windows are filled with stained glass of 1248, which has escaped destruction during two great revolutions. Near the altar there is a side chapel, to which access is had from below. Here Louis XI. used to come, amid the choicest relics, and say his prayers. Some of the relics are still preserved, and consist of a crown of thorns, a piece of the cross upon which Christ was crucified, and many antique gems. The Chapelle and the relics cost Louis two millions eight hundred thousand francs--the relics alone costing an enormous amount. There was a richly endowed chapter in connection with the Chapelle and what is a little singular, the head of it became renowned for his litigous disposition. The poet Boileau, in _Lutrin_, satirized this character--and was, after death, buried in the lower chapel. At the time of the great revolution, this ancient and beautiful building escaped destruction by its conversion by the government into courts of justice. The internal decorations were, however, many of them destroyed. The church, as it exists now, in a state of complete restoration, is one of the finest church interiors in Paris, and the best specimen of its peculiar kind of architecture in the world. My friend was a little surprised at the enthusiasm I manifested. _He_ seemed to look as coolly upon the exquisite architectural beauty, and to contemplate the age of the building as quietly, as a farmer would survey his promising wheat-field. I reminded him that I came from a land where such things do not abound, and where one cannot gratify the desire to look upon that which is not only ancient, but around which cluster the choicest historical associations. * * * * * CHAPELLE EXPIATOIRE. While wandering one day though the Rue d'Anjou St. Honore, I came unexpectedly upon one of the most beautiful chapels my eyes ever beheld--the _Chapelle Expiatore_. It was originally a burial-ground in connection with the Madeleine church, but was afterward set apart to commemorate the sad fate of the elder Bourbons. When Louis XVI. and his queen were executed, in 1793, they were obscurely buried on this spot. A friend, M. Descloseaux, at once cared for their remains, else they would have been lost amid other victims of the bloody revolution. It is a singular fact, that Danton, Herbert, and Robespierre were also buried in this same place, together with the Swiss Guard. An early entry in the parish records of the Madeleine, still shows to any one who has the curiosity to see, the plainness with which the queen was buried. It is as follows: "_Paid seven francs for a coffin for the Widow Capet_." M. Descloseaux watched carefully over the graves of the king and queen, purchased the place containing their bodies, and converted it into an orchard, with the view of shielding them from the fury of the populace. His plan was successful, and it is said that he sent every year a beautiful bouquet of flowers to the duchess d'Angouleme, which were gathered from the ground beneath which her royal parents were sleeping. The restoration came, and the orchard was purchased from M. Descloseaux. The bodies were transferred to St. Denis, with great pomp. The earth which had surrounded the coffins was preserved, as also were all remains of the Swiss Guards, and buried on the spot. Over it an expiatory chapel was built, with buildings adjoining, the whole forming a very beautiful structure. An inscription on the front informs the gazer of the principal facts I have enumerated. The adjoining garden is filled with cypresses. The interior of the chapel is simple, but gives a pleasant impression. It contains two statues, one of Louis XVI., and the other of Marie Antoinette. Each is supported by an angel, and on the pedestal of the king his will is inscribed in letters of gold, upon a black marble slab. On the pedestal of the queen's statue are extracts, executed in a like manner, from her last letter to Mme. Elizabeth. There are several niches in the chapel which contain very fine candelebra, and on a bas-relief the funeral procession to St. Denis is represented. I was struck while here (as indeed I was in many other places) with the fact, that the whole past history of Paris and France is written in her chapels and churches. The stranger cannot, if he would, shut out the fact from his sight. It glares in upon him from every street. The revolutions of France have imprinted themselves upon Paris in ineffaceable characters. As I stood in this chapel, the sad history of Marie Antoinette came into my thoughts, and she stood before me as she stood before the crowd on the day of her execution. Her downfall, the wretched neglect with which her poor body was treated, and the obscure burial, were all before me. Only "seven francs," for the coffin of "Widow Capet!" What a contrast to the pomp and ceremony of her second burial, aye what a contrast to her life! I had seen enough for that day, and set out sadly on my way back to my apartments. The gayety in the streets, the bright and balmy air, could not take the hue of melancholy from my thoughts. For always to me the history of Marie Antoinette has been one of the most sorrowful I ever read. I have few sympathies for kings, and much less for kingly tyrants, but I could never withhold them from her, queen though she was. And I never wish to become so fierce a democrat that I can contemplate such sorrows as were hers, such a terrible downfall as she experienced, with a heartless composure. THE MADELEINE. [Illustration: Eglise de la Madeleine.] The Madeleine looks little like a church to the stranger, but more like a magnificent Grecian temple. Its impression upon me was by no means a pleasant one, for the style of its architecture is not sufficiently solemn to suit my ideas of a place where God is publicly worshiped. It is, however, one of the finest specimens of modern architecture in the world, and is so widely known that I can hardly pass it over without a slight sketch of it. An edifice was erected on the spot where the Madeleine stands, in 1659, by Mademoiselle d'Orleans. That building was soon found to be too small for the accommodation of the people in its neighborhood, and in 1764, the present building was commenced by the architect of the duke of Orleans. The revolution put an end for a time to the work upon the church, but Napoleon, after his Prussian campaign, determined to dedicate the Madeleine as a Temple of Glory, "to commemorate the achievements of the French arms, and to have on its columns engraved the names of all those who had died fighting their country's battles." The necessary funds were given and architects were set at work immediately upon it. But Napoleon's plans were frustrated, and in 1815 Louis XVIII. restored the building to its original destination, and ordered that monuments should be erected in it to Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, Louis XVII., and Mme. Elizabeth. The revolution of 1830, however, interrupted this work, and it was not till the reign of Louis Phillippe, that it was completed. The entire cost of the Madeleine was two millions six hundred and fifteen thousand and eight hundred dollars. It stands on a raised platform, three hundred and twenty-eight feet long and one hundred and thirty-eight broad, and has at each end an approach consisting of twenty-eight steps, the entire length of the facade. The architecture is Grecian, a colonnade of fifty-two Corinthian columns entirely surrounding the building, giving to it a grandeur of appearance to which few structures in Europe attain. Between the columns there are niches, and a row of colossal statues stand in them. They represent St. Bernard, St. Raphael, and a score of others. The colonnade is surmounted by a beautiful piazza, and a cornice adorned with lion's heads and palm leaves. The pediment of the southern end contains a large altorelievo by Lemaire. It is one hundred and twenty-six feet long and twenty-four feet high. In the center is a figure of Christ; the Magdalene is beneath in a suppliant attitude; while HE is pardoning her sins. On the right hand the angel of Pity gazes down upon the poor woman, with a look of deep satisfaction. On the other hand is the figure of Innocence, surrounded by the angels, Faith, Hope, and Charity. In the angle of the pediment is the figure of an angel greeting the new-born spirit, and raising his hand, points to the place prepared for him in heaven. On the left of the pediment the angel of Vengeance is repelling the Vices. Hatred is there with swollen features; Unchastity, with disheveled hair and negligent dress, clings to her guilty paramour; Hypocrisy, with the face of a young woman, a mask raised to her forehead, looks down upon the spectator; and Avarice is represented as an old man clinging to his treasures. The pediment is filled completely by the figure of a demon, which is forcing a damned soul into the abyss of woe. This is the largest sculptured pediment in the world, and occupied more than two years in its execution. The figure of Christ is eighteen feet in length, which will give the reader an idea of the size of the sculpture. The doors of the Madeleine are worthy of particular notice. They are of bronze, measuring more than thirty feet by sixteen. They are divided into compartments each of which illustrates one of the Ten Commandments. In the first, Moses commands the tables to be obeyed; in the second, the blasphemer is struck; in the third, God reposes after the creation; in the fourth, Joshua punishes the theft of Acham, after the taking of Jericho, etc. etc. The doors were cast in France, and are only surpassed in size by the doors of St. Peter's. On entering the Madeleine, the magnificent organ meets the eye of the visitor. On the right, there is a chapel for marriages, with a sculptural group upon it, representing the marriage of the Virgin. On the left, there is a baptismal font, with a sculptured group, representing Christ and St. John at the waters of the Jordan. There are twelve confessionals along the chapels, which, together with the pulpit, are carved out of oak. The walls of the church are lined with the finest marbles, and each chapel contains a statue of the patron saints. The architecture of the interior it is useless for me to attempt to sketch, it is in such a profusely ornamented style. Fine paintings adorn the different chapels. One represents Christ preaching, and the conversion of Mary Magdalene; another the Crucifixion; still another, the supper at Bethany, with the Magdalene at the feet of her Lord. Over the altar there is a very fine painting by Ziegler, which intends to illustrate, by the representation of persons, the events which, in the world's history, have added most to propagate the christian religion, and to exhibit its power over men. The Magdalene, in a penitent attitude, stands near Christ, while three angels support the cloud upon which she kneels, and a scroll, upon which is written, "_She loved much_." The Savior holds in his right hand the symbol of redemption, and is surrounded by the apostles. On his left, the history of the early church is illustrated. St. Augustine, the Emperor Constantine, and other personages, are painted. Then follow the Crusades, with St. Bernard and Peter the Hermit, with a group of noblemen following, filled with holy enthusiasm. Near the Magdalene there is a group of men who figured in early French history--the Constable Montmorenci, Godefroy de Bouillon, and Robert of Normandy. The struggles of the Greeks to throw off Mussulman rule, are represented by a young Grecian warrior, with his companions in arms. On the left of the Savior, some of the early martyrs are painted--St. Catherine and St. Cecelia. The Wandering Jew's ghostly form is upon the canvas, and, to come down to a later day, Joan of Arc, Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Dante each occupies a place in the mammoth picture. The choir of the Madeleine forms a half-circle, and is very richly ornamented. The great altar is splendidly sculptured. The principal group represents the Magdalene in a rapturous posture, borne to heaven on the wings of angels. A tunic is wrapped around her body, and the long hair with which she wiped her Savior's feet. This group of sculpture alone cost one hundred and fifty thousand francs. I have thus given the reader a sketch of the most gorgeous church in Paris, that he may get an idea of the style of religion which obtains at present there. It is like this church. It is pretentious, imposing, in bad taste, without simplicity and a real sanctity. I was disgusted with the Madeleine from the moment I knew it to be a church. At first I saw it only as a fine building--an imitation of the Parthenon--and I was struck with admiration. But when I was told that it was a temple for the warship of God, I was shocked, and still more so when I entered it. The interior, as a collection of fine paintings and statues, as a specimen of gorgeous Gothic architecture, is one of the best in the world; but I would as soon think of attending public worship amid the nakedness of the Louvre, as in the Madeleine. Had Napoleon's idea been carried out, and this modern Parthenon been dedicated to Mars, it would adorn Paris, and add much to the pleasure of the stranger; but as it is now, it only serves to illustrate one of the weak points in the French character. The genuine Parisian is so fond of appearance, that he cares little for the substance. The churches of Paris, therefore, abound with all that can impress the eye, however repugnant to a refined taste. For I dare to hold, that the French love not the true refinement in matters of religion. Having little vital piety, it is impossible for them to judge of church architecture. Solemn old St. Paul's in London, will always linger in my memory as a fit temple of the living God. Its impressive grandeur contrasts strongly with the rich magnificence of the Madeleine. The latter inspires only admiration, as the figure of a Greek warrior, but St. Paul's inspires awe; and that is just the difference between them. * * * * * CHAPEL OF ST. FERDINAND. The interior of this chapel is one of the most beautiful in Paris. It was the scene of the death of the duke of Orleans in 1842. He left Paris in the forenoon of the 13th of July, in an open carriage, with but one postillion, intending to call upon the royal family at Neuilly, and proceed to the camp at St. Omer. As he approached Porte Maillot, the horses became frightened. The driver began to lose his control of the horses. "Are you master of your horses?" asked the duke. "Sir, I guide them," was the reply. "I am afraid you cannot hold them," again cried the duke. "I cannot, sir," was the reply. The duke then endeavored to get out of the carriage, but his feet became entangled in his cloak, and he was thrown with great force to the ground, his head striking first. It was dreadfully fractured, and he was carried into the house of a grocer near at hand, where he expired at four o'clock the same day, entirely unconscious. The royal family were with him when he died. The house with the adjacent property was bought, and two distinguished architects were commanded to erect a commemorative chapel on the place. In July, 1843, it was consecrated by the archbishop, in the presence of the royal family. The building is fifty feet long, twenty in height, is built in the Lombard-Gothic style, and resembles an ancient mausoleum. Opposite the entrance there stands an altar to the Virgin, on the very spot where the duke breathed his last, and over it there is a strikingly beautiful statue of the Virgin and child. Beyond, there is a Descent from, the Cross in marble. On the left, is another altar dedicated to St. Ferdinand, and on the right a marble group, which represents the duke on his death-bed. An angel kneels at his head, as if imploring the Divine Mercy upon the sufferer. It is a fine figure, and is doubly interesting from the fact that the Princess Marie, sister of the duke, with her own hands wrought it, long before he was still in death. Beneath this marble group there is a bas-relief, representing France leaning over, and near, the French flag drooping at her feet. There are four circular windows of stained glass, with St. Raphael, Hope, Faith, and Charity, upon them. There are fourteen pointed windows, stained with the patron saints of the royal family. Behind the altar the very room is preserved in which the duke died--the sacristy of the chapel now. The oaken presses, chairs, and prayer-desk are all clothed in black, giving an air of gloom to the whole apartment. Opposite the entrance there is a large painting by Jacquard, representing the death of the duke. He is lying upon a couch with his head supported by physicians; his father is opposite, apparently stupefied by his deep emotions. On the left is a group, consisting of the queen and Princess Clementine, the Dukes Aumale, and Montpensier, Marshals Soult, Gerard, and the cure of Mery. The picture is a touching one. There is a small apartment detached from the chapel, which was fitted up for the accommodation of the royal family--the family now exiled from the land. In another room there is a clock with a black marble case, on which France is represented as mourning for the death of the duke. The hands of the clock mark ten minutes to twelve, the exact moment when the prince fell; and in another apartment there is a clock with the pointers at ten minutes past four, the moment when he died. The interior of this chapel impressed me as the saddest I ever was in. Everything in it was in perfect keeping with the sentiment of complete melancholy, though it was rather too luxurious to express deep grief. Sorrow which is poignant, is not expressed in so sensuous a manner. But the chapel is unique; there is nothing else like it in the world, and that is quite a recommendation. ST. VINCENT DE PAUL. In my enumeration of the splendid churches of Paris, it would never do to omit that of St. Vincent de Paul. It is in the Rue Lafayette, and is now a Protestant church. The approaches to the building are fine, and the structure forms a parallelogram of two hundred and forty-three feet by one hundred and eighty. At the southern end, there are two large towers with Corinthian pilasters. The church stands upon the brow of a hill, and presents a striking appearance from the streets Lafayette or Hauteville. The interior of this church is profusely decorated, and is, in fact, so richly ornamented as to detract from its beauty. Over the portal, there is a stained window representing St. Paul surrounded by the sisters of charity. The choir is semi-circular, and has a fine skylight. A richly sculptured arch, over sixty feet in height, gives access to it. The altar-piece is a crucifix on wood. Behind it is a stained window, representing the Virgin and the Savior. The chapels have also beautifully stained windows. There are no oil-paintings in St. Vincent de Paul, but in other respects it is as faulty as the Madeleine. It may be the result of early education, but I sickened of this excess of ornament. It was too forced--too unnatural. If I had never entered the church I should have received a good impression, for its exterior is everything of which the Ionic order is capable, and its situation is the finest of any church in Paris. I will simply allude to a few of the other churches in Paris. The _Notre Dame de Lorette_, is a very beautiful church in the street _Fountain St. George_. It is built in the renaissance style, and the sculptures of the interior are of the highest order. The gorgeous decorations of the church are unsurpassed. The interior is one blaze of splendor, and the feelings inspired by a contemplation of it, are not the ones appropriate for a place of worship. The choir of the church is fitted up with stalls, a gilt balustrade separating it from the rest of the nave. The walls are adorned with rich marbles. The altar is executed in the highest style of magnificence. Behind it is a piece entitled "The Crowning of the Virgin," wrought on a background of pure gold. The Parisians boast a great deal of this church, as a gem of the renaissance style, and with reason, when it is regarded simply as a work of art, but the less they boast of it as _a church_, the better. The cost was one million eight hundred thousand francs. _St. Roch_, in the _Rue St. Honore_, was built under the patronage of Louis XIV. and Anne of Austria, in 1653. The renowned financier, Law, gave one hundred thousand livres toward its completion. The steps are high, and from them crowds of people during the revolution saw the executions which took place but a short distance away. A mob once filled the steps, and were cleared away by Napoleon's cannon. The duke of Orleans, and Corneille, the poet, lie buried in it, together with other distinguished persons. St. Roch is not beautiful in its architectural decorations, but is, nevertheless, the richest church in Paris. _St. Eustache_ is the largest church, except Notre Dame, in Paris, and is very old. The style is a mixed Gothic. The _St. Paul et St. Louis_, is a church built in the Italian style, and is a fine edifice. All the churches of Paris are open every day of the week, from early in the morning till five or six o'clock. They have bare pews or slips, and no seats. There are a plenty of chairs which may be had on Sundays and festival days, for two cents each, of an old woman who attends them. This custom is a singular one to the American, accustomed as he is to well-cushioned, and even luxurious pews. The pulpits, too, are nothing but upright boxes, with a spiral stair-case leading to them--not like our broad platforms, with rich sofas and tables in front. [Illustration: Church of St. Eustache.] CHAPTER V. LAMARTINE--HORACE VERNET--GIRARDIN--HUGO--JANIN LAMARTINE [Illustration: LAMARTINE.] Lamartine is a poet, a historian, and a statesman. He has not been successful in the last-mentioned capacity, but take his qualities together, he is, perhaps, the most distinguished of living French authors. Alphonse de Lamartine was born on the 21st of October, 1791, at Mecon. His father was captain in a regiment of cavalry. Refusing to join with the terrorists in 1794, he fled from Paris into the country with his wife and two children. But he did not escape the spies of his enemies, who arrested and put him at once into a dungeon. Some months after, the terrorists having lost power, he was released. Resolving to provide for the future peace of his family, he purchased the chateau of Milly, a spot in the open, and nearly wild country. Lamartine gives us sketches of his life here. His mother was a good, pious soul, and taught him out of the old family bible lessons from the sacred scriptures. She often made visits to the poor, and Alphonse accompanied her on these benevolent errands, and thus very early in life learned to be gentle and good. He left the grounds of Milly at eight years of age, to enter the school of Belley, under the care of the Jesuits. He took the prizes with ease, and his teachers discovering that he had a talent for poetry, encouraged it. His parents took counsel as to what should be done with their son. The father wished to make a soldier of him, but the mother was opposed to this plan--she did not care to make a human butcher of her boy. He paused some time at Lyons, on his return from school, and afterward he traveled over Italy. He here met a young man who was an excellent singer, and became quite intimate with him, so much so, that he often slept upon his shoulder. When the two friends had arrived at Rome, Lamartine was called down to the breakfast-room one morning, to behold--_not_ his male companion, but a young woman of beauty, who greeted him familiarly. It was his friend who had been traveling in male costume, and who now said blushingly, "Dress does not change the heart." Lamartine went to Naples and his purse ran low, when he chanced to meet an old classmate who had plenty of money, and together the young men enjoyed their good fortune. At Naples, Graziella, the daughter of a poor fisherman, fell in love with the poet. The story of this girl he tells very touchingly. When he returned home he was welcomed very warmly. The family had removed to Macon. His mother grew pale and trembling, to see how long absence and agony of heart had changed her son. She told him that their fortune had been considerably affected by his travels and imprudences, and she spoke not by way of reproach, for said she, "You know that if I could change my tears into gold, I would gladly give them all into your hands." He wished to go to Paris, and his father gave him, for his maintenance, the moderate sum of twelve hundred francs a year. The mother pitied her son, and going to her room, she took her last jewel and put it into his hands, saying, "Go and seek glory!" He took a plenty of recommendations with him, but was resolved to accept nothing from the emperor. When a young man he had dreamed of a republic, but now, after coming to Paris, he became a Bonapartist. He entered the most aristocratic circles, and changed again to a legitimist. He now made a second voyage to Italy, following the inclinations of his dreamy nature. During his stay there, he composed the first volume of his _Meditations_, which afterward won him so much fame. He was on the borders of the gulf of Naples, when he heard of the establishment of the Bourbon dynasty, and he hastened home and solicited a place in the army, to the great joy of his father. During the Hundred Days he threw aside the sword, and would not take it again when Louis XVIII. regained the throne. Lamartine now loved a young woman devotedly, but she died, to his excessive grief. He was severely ill from this cause, and it wrought a great change in his character. When recovered from his illness, he destroyed his profane poetry, and kept only that which bore the impress of faith and religion. He published his first volume of _Meditations_ in 1820. He sought in vain two years for a publisher, until at last a man by the name of Nicoll, as a personal favor, issued the volume. It made his fortune. France welcomed the new poet as a redeemer, who had dispelled the materialism of Voltaire. He became an _attache_ of the ambassador in Tuscany, and there met a young English woman, who was in love with him before she saw him, from reading his _Meditations_. This woman he shortly married. She brought him beauty, goodness, and a large fortune. In 1823 the second volume of _Meditations_ appeared, and had the same success as the first. An uncle died at this time, leaving him a fortune, and he was now independent of the world. He lived alternately in London and in Paris, occasionally accepting the post of secretary to a foreign ambassador, and finally becoming charge d'affaires at an Italian court. Like almost all the distinguished authors of France, Lamartine fought his duel. He had written something disparaging to modern Italy, and one Colonel Pepe, an Italian, challenged him to fight a duel. He accepted the challenge and was wounded. For six months he hung between life and death. All Florence condemned with severity the brutal colonel, who had taken offense at one of the poet's verses, and they came to inquire for his health every hour of the day, as if he had been a monarch. When he left Florence, great was their sorrow. In the midst of his diplomatic labors he continued to write poetry, and on his return to Paris in the month of May, 1829, he published "_Harmonies Poetiques et Reliegieuses_," and this book created for him such a reputation, and gave him so much honor, that in 1830 he was elected a member of the Academy. The government about this time was resolved upon sending a minister plenipotentiary to Greece, and Lamartine was chosen as the man; but at the juncture the revolution broke out, and the project fell to the ground. The poet was discouraged, and went to live in the country, on an estate bequeathed to him by one of his uncles. He soon became tired of his quiet life, and took ship at Marseilles, with his wife and his daughter Julia, for the Orient. The vessel was his own, and he sailed at pleasure. France lost for a time her brilliant son, but gained there-for a beautiful book--_Le Voyage en Orient_. It achieved a great success, and if he would have been content with literary renown, he now could have wished for nothing more to add to his happiness. While he was absent in the East, he kept an eye upon the politics of home. His daughter Julia was taken very ill at Beyrout, and died. She was brought back to Marseilles in her coffin. This was a terrible blow to the poet, who possessed as soft a heart as ever throbbed in the breast of woman. During his absence, the electors of Dunkirk decided to offer Lamartine a seat in the Chamber of Deputies, and he was elected. Well had it been for the poet if he had rested satisfied with his literature, but he entered the field of politics to become distinguished, but to win no laurels. He was unsuccessful, at first, in the Chamber. He became a radical, and that party flattered him. They were poor--he was rich and generous. He gave freely for his party, and found himself almost penniless. He gave to all who needed, so long as he had anything to give. At this time a man wrote to him--"I die of hunger." The poet sent five hundred francs, and begged pardon for not sending more, adding--" You have all my heart." At this time the _History of the Girondins_ appeared, and had a remarkable success. Lamartine was severely blamed by many for writing it, but none disputed the wonderful literary merit of the work. The next revolution came--and Louis Phillippe fled from France. The people flocked around Lamartine. They had been charmed by his grand words for humanity; they were now fascinated by his commanding mien and noble countenance. They thought because he sang sweetly, wrote nobly, that he was a statesman. They mistook. The author had no talents for statesmanship, and he fell. He was too ideal--not sufficiently practical; and he could not hold the position which the populace had given him. For a short time his ambition--never an impure one--was gratified, for he saw France turn toward him as a deliverer; but he has ever since had the bitter reflection that he was unequal to the occasion, and that he had acted wisely never to have invaded the domain of politics. The history of Lamartine during the revolution of 1848 is everywhere known, and we need not repeat it. He soon gave up politics forever. Since that time he has attended only to literature. Recently, he ventured into speculations, and lost his fortune. I had the good luck to meet him last June, in the office of the editor of _L'Illustration_, in the Rue Richelieu. He was in good health, and I was much struck with his general appearance. He looks to be what he has always been--one of nature's noblemen. His hair is almost white, but his figure is erect and noble. He is tall and dignified, and his manners are pleasing. Lamartine has struggled hard to save from the hands of his creditors his estate of Saint Point, where the bones of his ancestors lie. Every autumn he repairs thither with Madame Lamartine, and spends a few months in the golden quiet of the country. His wife is the angel of his household, and has proved a treasure far above earthly riches. Both husband and wife are exceedingly generous. A friend of theirs, who was very intimate with the family, was so angered at their liberality, that he one morning entered the house, demanding all the keys, and declaring that he would for a time take charge of their expenses. They willingly acceded to his demand. He locked up everything valuable, and left the house. Soon a sister of charity came, and sought alms for the poor. Madame Lamartine tried the desk for money--it was locked. She called the valet and had it broken open, and gave the sister eight hundred francs. Lamartine smiled, and kissed her for the generous act. The friend returned and found that there was not money enough left for dinner! Lamartine possesses a noble heart, a conscience, and is a christian. He is a bright example, but alas! a rare one, among the authors of France. HORACE VERNET [Illustration: HORACE VERNET.] Horace Vernet, the great modern painter of France, was born in the Louvre on the 30th of June, 1789. The kings of France were in the habit of giving to distinguished artists a domicile in the Louvre, and the father of Horace Vernet, at the time of his birth, had apartments in the palace. He is descended from a dynasty of artists. Antoine Vernet, the great-grandfather of Horace, lived in the time of Mademoiselle de L'Enclos, a very celebrated courtesan, and it is said by some that he was the author of the portrait of her which exists at this day, but it is proved that he never left Argnon, where he lived as an artist. The grandfather of the subject of this sketch--Claude-Joseph Vernet--studied in Rome, and became a distinguished marine painter under the reign of Louis XV., who commissioned him to paint a series of pictures. Carle Vernet, the father of Horace Vernet, was also an artist. When quite young, he fell violently in love with the daughter of an opulent furnisher. The marriage was impossible, and his friends, to wean him from his love, sent him to Italy, where he studied the art of painting, and took a high prize--but he could not forget the woman he had loved. In his grief he resolved to give himself up to a monastic life, and his letters from Italy apprised his friends of that fact. His father hastened to Italy and brought him back to France, where he at once acquired distinction as a painter, and was elected a member of the Academy of Painting. He painted several grand battle-scenes under the empire, and in 1789 became the father of the Horace Vernet, so justly distinguished in modern times. Horace was taught the art of his father, and he learned to draw at the same time that he learned to read. In 1793 the family of artists experienced many dangers, and on the 18th of August, while his father and Horace were crossing the court of the Tuileries palace, Horace was shot through the hat, while a ball pierced the clothes of the father. Carle Vernet was about to hasten from France when new terrors detained him. His sister had married M. Chalgrin, an architect, who adhered to the fortunes of the court of Provence. For this, the mob had revenge upon his beautiful wife, who was thrown into the Abbaye prison. Carle Vernet hastened to his brother artist, David, who was in favor with the revolutionists, and who could easily save his sister's life. He besought David to save his sister, but he coolly replied: "She is an aristocrat, and I will not trouble myself about her." She perished, and the reason was, that in early life she had refused the matrimonial offers of the painter. The youthful Horace was reckoned very beautiful by all his friends, and especially by his father. He was a model, in fact, and as he grew up, he showed that he had inherited the artist-genius of his father, and added to it a wit peculiarly his own. His sallies were often exceedingly amusing to the people in whose company he chiefly spent his time. He entered college, and as soon as he had quitted it he was already distinguished as an artist. Instead of going back to ancient times, he painted his own age. He was enthusiastic in all his efforts, and catching the spirit of the times, grew rapidly popular. He did not live in the past, but in the living present, and endeavored to glorify the men, deeds, and places of to-day. The figure of Vernet was small, his face was fine-looking, his hand white, and his foot very small. He went to masked balls and arrayed himself as a woman, and was constantly importuned by suitors. On one occasion a marshal of France was so pressing in his suit, that he put himself under the care of his wife, who took the supposed lady home with her in the family carriage! From 1811 to 1815 Vernet appeared at court and was quite popular. He painted portraits of the different members of the royal family. He was so celebrated for his drawings, that the editors disputed for them, and paid him the highest prices. In 1814 he was decorated with the cross of the Legion of Honor. At the restoration, he for a time was under a cloud. He was not idle, but such were his subjects that he was shut out of the Louvre. He, however, executed many paintings, which subsequently became celebrated. Disgusted with the treatment he received, he journeyed with his father into Italy. The Louvre continued shut against Vernet's pictures, but the peers took up his cause with great unanimity and enthusiasm. A list of his best pictures was published and warmly eulogized, and as they could be seen at his studio, the crowd of artists and critics, and others, wended their way thither. The painter was recompensed. In the midst of this crowd, and the confusion necessarily consequent upon their visit, Horace Vernet went on quietly in his work, in their presence, and executed that series of grand paintings, which in after years brought him so wide a renown. The duke of Orleans was his warm friend. He bought many pictures of him, and ordered himself painted in every style. Charles X. grew jealous, and concluded it wise to withdraw his persecution of the artist. He ordered a portrait of himself, and the Louvre was open to him. He now wrought a revolution in the art of painting in Paris, and established a new school. It was his desire to triumph over David, and he boasted that he would do so. The public pronounced him the first painter of the age. Some of his best pictures at this time were painted at Rome. Upon his return he found his old friend king, under the title of Louis Philippe. He was, of course, a favorite at court. The king gave him the use of a studio at Versailles, of a magnificent description, in which he wrought at great national pictures. He was an indefatigable worker. He never hesitated to make the longest journey to study the scene of his pictures. He traveled up and down the Mediterranean, visited Arabia, Africa, and other distant spots, lived in tents, put up with privation and suffering, that he might paint from nature. His memory was so excellent that having once looked upon a spot, nothing was afterward forgotten; every characteristic of the place was sure to reappear upon the canvas. The least detail of position or gesture, he remembered for years with ease. Indeed, his faculty for daguerreotyping such things upon his mind, was wonderful. He met his friend, the marquis de Pastorel, one day, who said: "How are you, Horace; where have you kept yourself for these two years? I have not met you for years." "You are mistaken," replied the artist; "I met you six months since in the garden of the Tuileries." "You are dreaming," said the marquis. "No," said Vernet, "a lady was with you--wait a moment and I will sketch her face." He drew a few hasty lines upon a bit of paper, and lo! the marquis beheld the face of an intimate lady friend of his, and at the same instant remembered that he had escorted her across the Tuileries gardens six months before. "It is well for you that you live _now_" said the marquis, "for two centuries earlier they would have burned you for a sorcerer." Horace Vernet has been a great student of the scriptures, and he maintains that in painting historical scenes from the bible, the costumes should be such as the Arabians use at this time, and in his scripture paintings he has followed out this plan. In 1834 and 1835 he was principally on the coast of Africa, engaged in painting. But he returned to his studio at Versailles, and in 1836 produced several grand battle-pictures. The king desired that he should fill an entire gallery with his pictures at Versailles, and Vernet went at his giant work. He occupied six years, and the gallery was called _la Galerie de Constentine_. The king came into his studio one day, and offered to make Vernet a peer. The painter declined the honor, saying "the _bourgeois_ rise--the nobles fall--leave me with the arts." He was one day painting _the Siege of Valenciennes_ for the king, when the latter requested that the painter would represent Louis XIV. as prominent in the siege. Vernet consulted history, and found that during the siege the king was three leagues away with one of his mistresses. He therefore utterly refused to lie upon canvas. The king was very angry, and several persons were sent to persuade Vernet to consent, _for pay_, to make the concession. He however remained firm, and picking up his effects and selling his pictures, started for St. Petersburgh, where he was received with open arms by Nicholas. While at the Russian court, Vernet spoke freely his sentiments, and condemned the taking of Poland. "Bah!" said the Czar, "you look from a French point of view--I from the Russian. I dare say, now, you would refuse to paint me _the taking of Warsaw_." "No, sire," replied the painter, sublimely; "every day we represent Christ upon the cross!" Louis Philippe sent by his ambassador for Vernet to return to Paris. "You may paint the Siege of Valenciennes without any Louis XIV. in it, if you please," he said. The painter was received warmly, and the old quarrel was forgotten. He at once commenced a picture of immense size--the taking of Smala, which in eight months he finished. The repose of Horace Vernet is in his travels, and he is one of the greatest of modern travelers. It is said that the Arabian tribes love and respect him, and that he returns gladly to their society whenever duty requires it. Horace Vernet has been blessed with but one child, a daughter, who married Paul Delaroche, a distinguished artist. This only child died in 1846. In the later revolutions which have passed over France, Vernet has not participated. He has lived only in his profession and among his personal friends. He resided for years at Versailles, where he had a splendid mansion, but he removed to Paris a few years since. He is one of the greatest of modern artists, and is revered as an honor to the nation. EMILE DE GIRARDIN. [Illustration: EMILE DE GIRARDIN.] Girardin has been for so many years one of the leading minds of Paris, has been so distinguished as a journalist, that I have thought a slight sketch of his life and character would be acceptable to my readers. It is said that he never knew the day of his birth, but it occurred in the year 1802. He does not appear to be as old as he in reality is, for his forehead is unwrinkled, his eye sparkles with a fascinating fire, and his hair is not gray. He carries almost always an eye-glass, which gives him the reputation--undeserved--of impertinence. His manners are those of a gentleman of the most refined cast, and, as editor of _La Presse_, he has long wielded a powerful influence over a class of minds. Girardin was the illegitimate child of a count of the empire; his mother, taking advantage of the absence of her husband from France, conducted herself in a shameful manner with her lovers, and before her husband had returned, she had presented one of them with the subject of this sketch. Many scandalous stories have been coined by the enemies of Girardin respecting his birth, but the facts we have stated are undeniable. He was placed out at nurse with a woman named Choiseul, who took illegitimate children to the number of ten, from the wealthy and high-born, to care for and nurse. Had it not been for the shrewdness of this old nurse, Girardin would never have known his parents. For a time they came to see their child, in stolen visits, but gradually their visits died away, and were finally given up altogether. But the nurse in her walks about the streets met and recognized the familiar faces of the parents, and ascertained their condition in life. The father was at this time unmarried, but at the instigation of his master, Napoleon, he wedded a young wife, and soon neglected his illegitimate child. Fearing that his wife would discover his secret, and take revenge upon him, he had the boy secretly removed to the care of an old servant of his, who was furnished with the means to take care of him and teach him all he knew himself, which was but little. He was strictly enjoined to call the child _Emile Delamothe_. This occurred in 1814. The father now thought that he had acquitted himself of his duty to the boy, and cared no more for him. But he was not blessed in his union--he had no legitimate children. The man into whose care Emile was given, was a harsh man, and gave the youth no rest from his severe discipline. He allowed him none of the pastimes of other children, and under this regime he suffered. At fourteen he had bad health, and a bilious color overspread his face, which never left it. Seeing that his health was suffering, the master sent him, under the care of his brother, into Normandy. This brother was a kind old soul, and gave the boy pleasant words, and a healthy, homely fare. In the country Emile enjoyed himself heartily. He wandered among the fields, played among the animals, and slept at night upon a litter of straw, and grew well again. In his ramblings he was oftenest alone, and pondered over his wretched fortunes. At eighteen he left the country for Paris. His first care was to visit his old nurse, and try to discover the condition of his parents. She could only give him a clew, but there had been such great changes since he left Paris, that she had no idea where his father dwelt, if he was alive. Emile then went to see the old man who first had care of him--his guardian--and plied him with questions. But he was impenetrable, and would reveal nothing. More than this--he read the law respecting illegitimate children, to Emile. It was a heavy blow upon his hopes. His guardian showed him proof of his birth, and a paper which gave to him, at twenty-one, the command of a small sum of money, the interest of which had heretofore supported him. In his anger he tore up the proof of his birth. Perhaps naturally, he at once took up against the laws of marriage, and became a bitter reformer. He frequented a reading-room, where he met several literary men who were in the habit of speaking of their books with pride. Emile was excited to try his own capabilities, and soon presented to his friends the manuscript of _Emile_, a story, the principal parts of which were true records of his own life. The literary friends were at variance in their criticisms upon the manuscript. Some declared it worthless, and advised him to get a style, while others praised the effort. Finding no publisher, our hero learned from a court directory the secret he had struggled after so long--the address of his father--and sent to him his story, written in a manner calculated to move the paternal heart. He received no direct reply, but eight days after, he was presented with an excellent situation with the secretary of Louis XVIII. Undoubtedly he was indebted to his father's recommendation for the place. So his story--afterward published--though it did not appear as he had intended when he wrote it, was not without its effect. His time not being wholly occupied in the bureau, Girardin employed his spare moments in writing one or two novels, which appeared some time afterward. He has not been a voluminous author, _Emile_ being his principal book. But his career has been that of a journalist, and though he has been everything by turns, yet he has had fame and influence. By a turn in the wheel of fortune Girardin lost his place with the secretary, and went upon the exchange and solicited an humble office for the purpose of studying the chances there. As soon as he considered himself fit to decide, he ventured in buying very heavily certain stocks, and lost nearly all his little property. He was in despair and wrote to his father, who sent back an unfeeling letter. It is told of him that he presented himself before his father with a loaded pistol in either hand, and threatened to shoot him, and then himself, if he would not give him his name. This tale was undoubtedly invented by his enemies. He tried to enter the army but was rejected on account of his sickly appearance. He was go discouraged at this, that he attempted to commit suicide, and was saved from death as it were by a miracle. He resolved never again to give way to a similar rashness, and tried once more to succeed in life. He boldly took the name of Girardin, and though it was against law, yet his father feared scandal too much to institute legal measures against him. He now offered his book--_Emile_--to the publishers. It was eagerly caught up and sold rapidly. In the midst of his success he went to the minister and demanded employment, naming his father as reference! This bold application was successful, and he had a sinecure given him, as a kind of inspector of the fine arts. He started a weekly journal with a friend, which was made up of selections. It was called _The Voleur_, and at the end of a month had a circulation of ten thousand. It was a dishonest mode of getting money, as no original writing was given. The name, _Voleur_, means thief. One of the authors whose writings were often quoted from in the _Voleur_, loudly remonstrated against the injustice of the procedure, and gaining no satisfaction, he fought a duel with Girardin, who was wounded in the shoulder, but the wound was not dangerous. It was not his first duel--he had fought with pistols in 1825. He withdrew from the conductorship of the _Voleur_, and under the patronage of the duchess de Berri, started a new journal, called _la Mode_. It had a great success, but as it waxed more and more liberal, the duchess repented her patronage, and finally withdrew it. The act gave the journal three thousand new subscribers. He foresaw the revolution of 1830, and sold out both his journals, thus taking excellent care of his property. Under the new _regime_ he started a weekly paper, which acquired a circulation of one hundred and twenty thousand copies. He soon fell in love with Madamoiselle Delphine Gay, a talented and beautiful young woman, and married her. After his marriage Girardin for several years turned his attention more particularly to philanthropic projects, which should benefit the people. He advocated savings banks, and gave much of his time to their establishment. He also founded an agricultural school. His wife turned him somewhat from his political and speculative plans, to more practical ones of this kind. In 1833 he started _le Musee des Familles_, and to get subscribers, he placarded the walls of Paris with monstrous bills, initiating a nuisance which has ever since been used by all kinds of impostors. In 1834 he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies, and a year later he fought his third duel. In 1836 _La Presse_ was established, the journal with which his greatest fame is connected. In starting this new paper Girardin intended to ruin all the other Paris journals. His plan was to furnish more matter for one-half the ordinary price of a journal than the usual dailies gave to their readers. He made, as he might have expected, bitter enemies out of his contemporaries. They attacked him, and with such unfairness, and in such a personal manner, that he flew to the courts for relief, or revenge. The journalists then accused him of cowardice--of fearing to trust his reputation to public discussion. It was at this time that he had his sad and fatal quarrel with Armand Carrel--a brother editor. Girardin shot Carrel in the groin. He died the next day. Girardin was wounded in the thigh. The loss of Carrel was deeply felt, and his funeral was attended by multitudes of the Parisians. For a time Girardin was exceedingly unpopular in Paris, and his enemies knew well how to make use of his unpopularity. They attacked him with redoubled severity and criticised all his questionable acts. He, however, replied to their fire with so much spirit, and with such terrible bitterness, that they were in the end if not conquered, willing to let him alone. In his journal Girardin defended the throne, and was generally the friend of good morals. He is accused of signing his own name to all the most brilliant articles which appeared in his journal, whether he was in reality the author or not, for the sake of his reputation. He made enemies in all quarters, but his paper gained an immense circulation. His wife became his disciple, and rendered him great assistance in his literary labors. She has rendered her own name illustrious in France by her writings. She was entirely devoted to her husband, and not only loved the man but espoused his cause and principles. Whenever her husband was attacked she resented it, and often used a bitter and witty pen in his defense. Her verses upon Cavaignac are yet remembered in Paris. When that general arrested her husband, she flew to his house and demanded if she were living in the reign of terror. "No," replied Cavaignac, "but under the reign of the sword." "Attach a cord to your sword and you will be a guillotine!" replied the intrepid woman. The drawing-rooms of Madame Girardin were among the most celebrated of the French capital. There might be seen the most distinguished authors, political celebrities, and soldiers of the time, and she was the leading spirit among them. Her husband rarely condescended to attend their _reunions_, as he had no taste for society and conversation. In the late revolutions which have swept over France, Girardin continued to save himself from exile or imprisonment. The truth is, he always loved money and power too well to make a sacrifice of himself for the cause of the people, and his course has been too much that of a demagogue from the first. His great object, during the latter part of his life, seems to have been to gain the portfolio of a minister--and without success, for from the days of the 1848 revolution, his influence rapidly declined. VICTOR HUGO [Illustration: VICTOR HUGO.] France has given birth to few men, in modern times, who exceed Victor Hugo in all that is noble and great. He is not simply a man of genius, a poet, and an orator, he is in its full sense _a man_. Too many of the brilliant men of France have lacked principle, have been ready to sell themselves to the highest bidder. It has not been so with Victor Hugo, and for that reason he is now an exile from the shores of his native land. His passionately eloquent orations, delivered on various sad occasions since he was exiled, have awakened the interest of the world, and people who cared little for him as the successful author, feel a deep sympathy for the noble exile. Victor Hugo was born at Besancon in 1803, and of a rich family. His father was a general in the service of Joseph Bonaparte, who was then king of Naples. He followed him into Spain, where he distinguished himself by his valor. He returned in 1814, and journeyed through Italy. Victor was then very young, but accompanied his father on his Italian tour. When but fourteen years old, Victor wrote a poem, to compete with many older persons for a prize, and though his poem was undoubtedly deserving of the reward, yet from his extreme youth, only honorable mention was made of his effort. This early poetical ambition, however, was an indication of his future career. When he was twenty-two years of age, Charles X. gave him an audience, and Victor Hugo presented his majesty with some of his poetry. The king handed it to Chateaubriand, who was near, and demanded his opinion. "Sire," said he, "the youth has a sublime genius!" Hugo was displeased with the judgment of the Academy, which had not given him the prize for his first verses, and he wrote for an Academy at Toulouse, won several prizes, and was honored with a degree in the presence of Chateaubriand. He lived during this time in Paris, with his mother, who loved him to idolatry, and the affection was as warmly returned on the part of her son. She was a royalist and suggested his first poems. When she died he was overwhelmed with grief, and wrote a sad romance entitled _Han d' Glande_, which was severely attacked by the critics, many of whom knew his youth. But he triumphed over them all, as genuine genius is always sure to do. He now fell in love with a beautiful young girl, named Mademoiselle Foucher, and they married. He was twenty, and she was but fifteen years of age. They loved each other fondly, and if they were poor in gold, they were "very rich in virtues." The publisher who brought out Hugo's romance, says that he visited the young family to purchase the second edition, and found them living in a pleasant little dwelling with two children to grace their fireside. Here came troops of friends, for Hugo had already made them among the wise and great. The politicians of the day, Thiers and others, were his companions. He often took his wife and children and went out to saunter in the public gardens or on the Boulevards, and wherever they went they carried happiness with them. Hugo was still a royalist. It was more a sentiment than a principle with him, for he had not yet regarded politics with conscientious study. In 1826 a publisher made a collection of his poems, and issued them in one volume. It brought him wealth and renown. But though all this while Hugo was very happy in his family, yet the critics were bitter in their attacks upon him. He was accused of plagiarism, and especially when a new romance of his came out, he was accused of stealing it from Walter Scott. The poet lost his first-born, and Madame Hugo took it so much to heart that he thought it wise to close their residence. Besides, changes had been made in the street so as to render it less pleasant as a residence. After one or two changes he finally settled down in the Place Royale, where he spent many years of his life. This dwelling was furnished to suit the taste of a poet, and was beautiful in every respect. It was filled with statues, paintings, and exquisite furniture, and his study, especially, was a charming apartment. Here his friends came--and they were numerous as the leaves upon a tree. Young authors flocked to his rooms and received counsel, and old men came to enjoy his conversation. He next published _The Last days of the Condemned, and Notre Dame de Paris_, which had a fine success, and covered his name with glory in France. He now wrote _Marion Delorme_ for the theater, but the censor would not allow it to be played. The king himself was appealed to, and confirmed the decision of his officer, and it appeared after his fall. This was the play which Dumas stole. When this play was rejected by the censor, Hugo wrote another for the theatrical manager who had engaged it, entitled _Hernani_, which had a splendid success. The opposition which he met from the actors and actresses was at first great, but he conquered all obstacles. The king, as if to appease him for the conduct of his censor, gave him a pension of six thousand francs a year, but he nobly refused to take a franc of it. The success of _Delorme_ was very great, and the Parisian public wept over it in dense crowds. One peculiarity of Hugo has been, that having once written a book or play he never recalls a sentence. Not to please managers, censors, or friends even, has he ever recalled a line, though it were to save himself from severe penalties. He has always been too proud and too conscientious to stoop in this way to either the populace or the government. In the meantime his house was besieged with publishers and theatrical managers, who besought him to use his pen for them. He wrote, when once at a piece of work, with rapidity, and applied himself very closely. In writing _Notre Dame_, he was occupied for six months, and during that time he did not leave his house for a day, such were the urgent demands of his publisher upon him. He wrote for his publishers and for the managers and constantly increased his reputation. _Lucretia Borgia_ appeared on the stage and had an almost unheard of success. It eclipsed all of his plays which had preceded it. He also published two or three volumes of songs at this time, which were enthusiastically received by the French people. He was always the warm friend of the poor. In 1834 he petitioned the duke of Orleans in favor of a poor family he chanced to know, and the duke gave a hundred louis to relieve them. In return the poet addressed the duke in song. The manager who had brought out _Lucretia Borgia_ offered him ten thousand francs for another, and very soon _Marie Tudor_ made its appearance. There seems to have been trouble in its representation, from quarrels between rival actors. The manager acted dishonorably toward the poet. He announced his new play in an objectionable manner. Hugo complained, and he promised amendment the next day. But when the next day's announcement came Hugo saw no change, and what was worse still, the manager tried to deceive him by asserting that the bills were altered according to his wish. Hugo upbraided him for his falsehood, and demanded the play back. The manager would not give it up, for he had announced it. Said he: "To-morrow your play will appear, and I will cause it to prove a failure." "Instead of that," replied Hugo, "I will make your theater bankrupt." The representation came on, and it proved eminently successful. But Hugo would not forgive such deception and insolence. He wrote a new play--_Angelo_--for a rival theater. In vain the old manager offered a high price for it. In a few months he and his theater were bankrupt, and he found, too late, that it was unwise to attempt to deceive and insult a man like Victor Hugo. It is said that M. Hugo has a talent of high order for music, and also for drawing. During the cholera of 1832, he filled an album with caricatures to amuse his wife and children, and draw their attention from the dreadful ravages of the epidemic. In 1841 Victor Hugo was elected a member of the Academy. Two years later he was raised to the dignity of peer of the realm. The duke of Orleans congratulated him upon the event. A short time previous to this, Barbes was condemned to death. An application for a reprieve had been made to the king without being granted. A sister of Barbes came to Hugo, and besought him to use his influence with the king. Marie Wirtemburg had just died and the count de Paris was but a few weeks old. Hugo addressed a few touching lines of poetry to the king, and with allusions to the dead and the newly born, besought a pardon. It was instantly granted. The history of Hugo from this time forward the whole world knows. He was an honest and hearty reformer. He was not content with glory as a man of letters--he wished to be of service to his suffering fellow-men. He was to a certain extent a communist, and a thorough republican. He hated the man Louis Napoleon, and was exiled. Belgium would not hold him, nor London--the latter was too full of smoke and fog to be endured. He said, after trying London, "The good Lord will not take the sunshine, too, from us." He lives now in the island of Jersey, in a simple English mansion, but very comfortable. Behind it there is a beautiful garden terminated by a terrace, upon which the sea lashes its foam when the wind is high. From the window the sad exile beholds the distant shores of his native France. In his retreat he has occupied himself with literary labors. He has been writing a volume of poetry to appear in the epic form. He has also been busy upon a volume of philosophy, a drama of five acts in which Mazarin is to figure as the principal character, two volumes of lyrical poetry, and a romance upon a modern subject, for which he has been offered one hundred and twenty thousand francs. Madame Hugo and the children partake of exile with Victor Hugo, together with ten grandchildren. Charles Hugo, his son, who is with him, is distinguished as an author, but busies himself principally on the island in taking daguerreotype views. He has already made a hundred different pictures of his illustrious father, and sent them to his admirers in France. Victor Hugo is a little over fifty years of age, and is full of life and animation. Let us hope that by political changes, or the clemency of the tyrant who sits upon the French throne, that he may soon return to the land he loves so well. JULES JANIN [Illustration: JULES JANIN.] "Oh! what a year in which to be born!" exclaims Janin of the year 1804--the year in which Napoleon, conqueror at the Pyramids and Marengo, placed upon his head the imperial crown--and the year which gave birth to the prince of French critics--Jules Janin. His parents were poor and humble, but honest and intelligent, and resided in Saint Etienne, near Lyons. At Lyons he entered school and became distinguished. At fifteen he imagined himself well versed in Greek and Latin, and in short, was a young egotist. His family fostered this self love. An uncle said, "Let me send the prodigy to college in Paris!" An aunt paid the expenses of the first year--for he entered the college of Louis-le-Grand. This aunt loved the boy dearly, and for a week before he left, could not see him, such was her tenderness. The whole family expected great things of him, and thought that his talents would be immediately recognized. But they were doomed to disappointment. He gained no prize in college, and no honors. His aunt had expected that after one year, such were his talents, that the college would gladly give him the rest of his education, but she was obliged to support him for two years more. He made himself unpopular with his teachers in college from fighting the Jesuits. When he left college he would not return to Saint Etienne, where his companions would mock him. He resolved to stay in Paris, even if he starved. He wrote to his kind old aunt, who at once came to Paris and made a quiet home for him. But this would not do--the rent of the house was half her income. He first took a class of pupils and taught them Latin, Greek, and history. This was a slight addition to their income. Summer came and his pupils left. He now was forced to engage with a professor of a boarding-school, at the rate of ten dollars a month, to teach. The professor was unfortunate and his furniture was attached, he, at the time, owing Jules for three months' work. He was an honest and good man, and Jules offered to give him the sum due, though he had not money enough left to get him a dinner. But he contrived a plan by which he cheated the law officers of a part of their goods, and got his pay. He was noted at this time more for his appetite than anything else, and would sacrifice more for a good dinner, probably, than for aught else. But in the absence of good living he took to solitary reading, and acquired a taste for literature. He one day chanced to meet a college-friend who was a journalist. "I am miserable," said Janin. "Become a journalist, then," the friend replied, "if you have not an income" That very night he was invited to dine with his friend, and made his resolution to live by his pen. He commenced his articles in the journals, writing at first criticisms upon theatrical performances. He at once commenced his system of flattering those who paid him well either in praise or gold, and denouncing authors and actors who were independent of him. His kind aunt now died, after having expended her last franc, and Janin took up a new residence. He soon acquired such fame in his critical writings, that he was at ease. He engaged with the _Figaro_ journal, and contributed powerfully to its success. He was, of course, well paid for his services. He fell in love with a young girl in humble life. An artist did the same. The two men quarreled about her, and Janin wrote a book in which the woman was the heroine. But he was unsuccessful--the young woman married the painter and was happy. Janin rose to the highest position as a fashionable critic in Paris, and still he has never acquired beyond France the reputation of a profound critic and scholar. In October, 1841, he was married, and instead of spending a pleasant evening, he celebrated his marriage by going to his room and writing a newspaper article, greatly to his prejudice amongst his friends. Of late it has been remarked, that Jules Janin is less imperious in his criticisms than he was formerly. He has been very severely reviewed by Dumas and Roqueplan, and has behaved more wisely since. We have not sketched Jules Janin as a great man, but as a man who makes great pretensions, and who has long been acknowledged, in Paris and France, as the prince of critics. CHAPTER VI. PLACES OF BLOOD--PLACE DE LA CONCORDE. Almost every fine square in Paris has a high-sounding name, For instance, that spot which has been the theater of so much tragedy, upon which so much human blood has been poured, is called the _Place de la Concorde_. It much more appropriately might be called the Place of Blood. So there are other, many other spots in Paris, which deserve a scarlet title, and when wandering a stranger through its streets, whenever I came to one of these, I was strongly inclined to stop and indulge in reverie. The past history of France and Paris arose before my mind, and I could not, if I would, away with it. The characters who acted parts in Paris and perished in those places were before me, and their histories lent a powerful interest to the spot upon which they suffered and died. The reader can have no adequate idea of the feelings with which a stranger visits these places of sad memories, unless he recalls them to mind, nor will it be out place for me to do so. A prison was often pointed out to me in which the celebrated Madame Roland was confined, and the spot upon which she suffered death. I gazed long at the grim walls which shut out the sunlight from that noble woman--long upon the stones which drank her blood in the Place de la Concorde. Her whole history was as vividly before me as if I were living in the terrible days of blood. Her maiden name was Manon Philipon, and her father was an engraver. They lived in Paris, where she grew up with the sweetest of dispositions, and one of the finest of intellects. Her mother was a woman of refinement and culture. She was excessively fond of books and flowers, so much so that many years later she wrote, "I can forget the injustice of men and my sufferings, among books and flowers." Her parents gave her good masters, and she applied herself to her studies with ardor and delight. They were never harsh in their treatment of her, but always gentle and kind. She acted nearly as she pleased, but seems not to have been spoiled by such a discipline as we might have expected. When she was only nine years old, Plutarch fell into her hands, and she was intensely interested in it--more so than with all the fairy tales she had ever read. From him she drank in republicanism at that early age. She also read Fenelon and Tasso. She spent nearly the whole of her time in reading, though she assisted her mother somewhat in her household duties. The family belonged to the middle-classes, and despised the debaucheries of the higher and lower orders of the people. The mother was pious, and Manon was placed for a year in a convent. She then spent a year with her grandparents, and returned to her father's house. Her course of reading was very much enlarged, and her attention was now specially directed to philosophical works. She was thus a great deal alone, and gave little of her time to gossip and promenade. She went, however, once to Versailles, and saw the routine of court, but returned with a great delight to her old books and the heroes in them. She was dissatisfied with France and Frenchmen. She says: "I sighed as I thought of Athens, where I could have equally admired the fine arts without being wounded by the spectacle of despotism. I transported myself in thought to Greece--I was present at the Olympic games, and I grew angry at finding myself French. Thus struck by all of grand which is offered by the republics of antiquity, I forgot the death of Socrates, the exile of Aristides, the sentence of Phocion." She began, at last, to repine at her situation. She felt conscious of her abilities, and that her thoughts were high and noble, and she longed for a higher position, in which she might use her talents. Her father grew more and more poor and unable to care for his family, and her mother was anxious that she should be married. She did not lack offers. She was beautiful and accomplished, and many suitors presented themselves, but not one whom she could love. Her mother now died, to her great sorrow. She now persuaded her father to retire from the business which he was ruining, and save the little property he had left, and she retired to a little convent. She prepared her own food, lived very simply, and saw only her own relations. It was about this time that Manon became acquainted, through a school-friend, with M. Roland, who was the younger son of a poor, but noble family, and whose lot in life was not an easy one. He was now considerably advanced in years, and was superintendent of the manufactories at Rouen and Amiens. He had written several works upon these subjects, and was somewhat celebrated. She took great pleasure in his society, and after five years of friendship, respected, and perhaps loved him. He offered himself and was finally accepted. She says: "In short, if marriage was as I thought, an austere union, an association in which the woman usually burdens herself with the happiness of two individuals, it were better that I should exert my abilities and my courage in so honorable a task, than in the solitude in which I lived." The married couple visited Switzerland and England, and then settled down near Lyons, with her husband's relations. She had one child--a daughter--and her life and happiness consisted in taking care of her and her husband. She thus gives a beautiful picture of her life: "Seated in my chimney corner at eleven, before noon, after a peaceful night and my morning tasks--my husband at his desk, and his little girl knitting--I am conversing with the former, and overlooking the work of the latter; enjoying the happiness of being warmly sheltered in the bosom of my dear little family, and writing to a friend, while the snow is falling on so many poor wretches overwhelmed by sorrow and penury. I grieve over their fate, I repose on my own, and make no account of those family annoyances which appeared formerly to tarnish my felicity." The revolution came amid all their sweet and quiet pleasure, but found her ready for it. M. Roland was elected to the National Assembly, to represent Lyons. The family at once repaired to Paris, and the house of Roland was at once the rendezvous for the talented, the men of genius, but more especially the Girondists, as the more conservative of the republicans were called. The genius and beauty of Madame Roland soon became known, and made her house the fashionable resort of the _elite_ of Paris. The arrest of the king filled her with alarm. She was not willing to push matters to such extremes. She was one of the noblest of republicans, out she was merciful and moderate in some of her views. Her husband again retired to the country--to-Lyons. Amid the solitude of their own home she grew discontented. She could not, having tasted the sweets of life in Paris, abandon it without a pang of sorrow. The following winter a new ministry was formed of the Girondists, and her husband was named minister for the interior. They again returned to Paris, and now in greater state. Roland was one of the most honest men of the revolution, but was so precise and methodical in his papers which were prepared for the public, that without the assistance of his wife, his success would have been far less than it was. M. Roland wishing to save the king, if possible, determined upon remonstrating with him upon his course. Madame Roland wrote the letter of remonstrance, though, of course, it appeared in his name. It was bold and severe, and accomplished no good. The result of it was, that Roland was dismissed from the office, and retired to private life. Soon after, however, he was recalled under the republic, and endeavored to do his duty. Madame Roland writes in September of this year: "We are under the knife of Marat and Robespierre. These men agitate the people and endeavor to turn them against the National Assembly." She and her husband were heartily and zealously for the republic, but they were moderate, and entirely opposed to those brutal men who were in favor of filling Paris and France with blood. Madame Roland writes, later: "Danton leads all; Robespierre is his puppet; Marat holds his torch and dagger: this ferocious tribune reigns, and we are his slaves until the moment when we shall become his victims. You are aware of my enthusiasm for the revolution: well, I am ashamed of it; it is deformed by monsters and become hideous." Madame Roland now struggled to overthrow the Jacobins--but was only overthrown herself. She was at this time celebrated for her wit and beauty. A writer of that time says of her: "I met Madame Roland several times in former days: her eyes, her figure, and hair, were of remarkable beauty; her delicate complexion had a freshness and color which, joined to her reserved yet ingenuous appearance, imparted a singular air of youth. Wit, good sense, propriety of expression, keen reasoning, _naive_ grace, all flowed without effort from her roseate lips." During the horrible massacres of September Roland acted with great heroism. While the streets of Paris ran with human blood, he wrote to the mayor, demanding him to interfere in behalf of the sufferers. Marat denounced him as a traitor, and from that moment his life was in danger. Madame Roland was charged with instigating the unpopular acts of her husband by the radicals, and she was in equal danger with her husband. After the execution of the king, Roland became discouraged, and convinced that he could do no more for France, and he retired with his wife to the country. Here they lived in constant danger of arrest. Roland finding the danger so great, made good his escape, but she was arrested a short time after. She had retired to rest at night, when suddenly her doors were burst open and the house filled with a hundred armed men. She was instantly parted from her child and sent off to Paris. One of the men who had her in charge, cried out, "Do you wish the window of the carriage to be closed?" "No, gentlemen," she replied, "innocence, however oppressed, will never assume the appearance of guilt. I fear the eyes of no one, and will not hide myself." She was shut up in prison at once. She asked for books--for Plutarch, and Thompson's Seasons. On the 24th of June she was liberated, and then suddenly rearrested. This deception was more than cruel, it was infamous. She was placed in the prison of St. Pelaige--a filthy and miserable place. The wife of the jailor pitied her and gave her a neat, upper apartment, and brought her books and flowers, and she was comparatively happy again. It was in this prison that she wrote her own memoirs. She usually kept a stout heart, but at times when thoughts of her husband and child came over her, she was overwhelmed with grief. The chief Girondists now began to fall under the stroke of the guillotine, and her turn was quickly coming. The day that her friend Brissot perished, she was transferred to the _Conciergerie_ the prison which suggested this sketch of her to my mind. I went over this prison, and the very apartment was pointed out to me in which Madame Roland was confined. Here she spent her last days, and wretched days they were, indeed. But she conducted herself nobly and courageously through all. The mockery of a trial was held, and she wrote her own defense, a most eloquent production. She was sentenced to death in twenty-four hours. Twenty-two victims had just poured out their blood, and she was to follow their example. A French writer speaks of her at that time as "full of attractions, tall, of an elegant figure, her physiognomy animated, but sorrow and long imprisonment had left traces of melancholy on her face that tempered her natural vivacity. Something more than is usually found in the eyes of woman, beamed in her large, dark eyes, full of sweetness and expression. She often spoke to me at the grate, with the freedom and courage of a great man. This republican language falling from the lips of a pretty French woman, for whom the scaffold was prepared, was a miracle of the revolution. We gathered attentively around her in a species of admiration and stupor. Her conversation was serious, without being cold. She spoke with a purity, a melody, and a measure which rendered her language a soul of music of which the ear never tired. She spoke of the deputies who had just perished with respect, but without effeminate pity; reproaching them even for not having taken sufficiently strong measures. Sometimes her sex had mastery, and we perceived that she had wept over the recollection of her daughter and husband." She was led out to execution on the 10th of November, on that place of blood--_La Concorde_. She was dressed in white, and inspired the multitudes who saw her with admiration. Another victim accompanied her. She exhorted him to ascend first, that his courage might not be shaken by witnessing her death. She turned to the statue of Liberty, exclaiming, "Oh, Liberty! how many crimes are committed in thy name." She was thirty-nine years of age, and though she ended her life thus young, she had achieved immortality. M. Roland was at this time in safety in Rouen, but when he heard of the death of his noble wife, he resolved to give himself up at once to the authorities. The interests of his child, however, tempted him to another course. Should he give himself up he would certainly perish, and by the law of France his possessions would be confiscated, and would not, therefore, descend to his child. Were he to die, even by his own hand, the case would be different--he would save the property for his child. Five days after his wife perished upon the scaffold, he fell upon his sword on a high road near Rouen. The following lines were found upon his person: "The blood that flows in torrents in my country dictates my resolve: indignation caused me to quit my retreat. As soon as I heard of the murder of my wife, I determined no longer to remain on an earth tainted by crime." I had occasion often while in Paris to cross the street of the _Ecole de Medicine_. It is a rather pleasant street, and leads into the street of _Ancienne Comedie_, named so after the _Theater Francaise_, which was formerly located upon it. Just opposite it is a _cafe_ which Voltaire used to frequent, and I have stopped to take a cup of chocolate in it. But one day I hunted up number eighteen of the street of _Ecole de Medicine_. The house was one which Marat used to occupy in the time of the great revolution. We paused a moment upon the threshold, and then passed up a flight of stairs and entered the room where Marat used to write so many of his blood-thirsty articles. A little room at that time opened out of it, and in the apartment was a bath-room. He often wrote in his bath in this room. The last day Marat lived, was the 13th of July, 1793, and it was spent in this little room. He was the monster of the revolution, loved the sight of blood as a tiger does, and his influence over the multitude gave him power to sacrifice whoever he pleased. If he but pointed his long finger at a man or woman, it was death to the victim. No one was safe. Under his devilish prompting, already some of the truest republicans in France had been beheaded, and every hour some unfortunate man or woman fell beneath his hellish ferocity. Should a fiend be allowed to personate liberty longer? Should a wretch whose very touch scorched and blistered, whose breath was that of the lake of fire, any longer be allowed to pollute France with his presence? These were the questions which presented themselves to the mind of a young country-girl. Who would have thought that the young and beautiful Charlotte Corday would have taken it upon herself to answer these questions and avenge the murdered innocents? She had learned to love, to adore liberty, among the forests and hills of her native country. She saw Marat perpetrating murders of the blackest die in the name of liberty. He went further still, he sacrificed her friends--the friends of liberty. She resolved that _the wretch should die_. No one could suspect the dark-haired girl. Enthusiastic to madness, she flew to Paris with but one thought filling her breast--that she was amid the terrors of that time, in the absence of all just law, commanded by God to finish the course of Marat. Everything bent to this idea. She cared nothing for her own life--nothing for her own happiness. She came to the threshold of the house many a time and was turned away--she could not gain admittance. Marat's mistress was jealous of him, and Charlotte Corday had heard of this and feared that it would be impossible to see him alone. She therefore wrote to the monster, and with great eloquence demanded a private interview. The request was granted. On the morning of the 13th of July she came in person, and Marat ordered that she be shown into his room. He lay in his bath, with his arms out of water, writing. He looked up at her as she entered, and asked her business. She used deception with him, declaring that some of his bitterest enemies were concealed in the neighborhood of her country home. She named, with truth, some of her dearest friends as these enemies. "They shall die within forty-eight hours," said Marat. This was enough--in an instant she plunged a dagger, which she had concealed about her person, to the center of his heart. She was executed for this deed upon the _Place de la Concorde_. They tell the story in France, to show how modest she was, that after her head had fallen from the body a rough man pushed it one side with his foot, _and her cheeks blushed scarlet_. Marat was interred with great pomp in the Pantheon, but a succeeding generation did better justice to his remains, for they were afterward, by order of government, disinterred and thrown into a common sewer. I scarcely ever stopped on the _Place de la Concorde_ without thinking of Charlotte Corday, and bringing up the dreadful scene in Marat's house, and her own execution. I fancied her as she appeared that day--a smile upon her face, a wild enthusiastic joy in her eyes, as if she had executed her task, and was willing, glad, to leave such a horror-stricken land. No man can doubt the purity of Charlotte Corday's character. She was no ordinary murderer. She did not act from the promptings of anger, or to avenge private wrongs. She felt it to be her duty to rid France of such an unnatural monster, and undoubtedly thought herself God's minister of vengeance. Another spot which may justly be denominated a place of blood, is the Conciergerie. It is yet as grim and awful as ever, in its appearance. The spot is still shown in the stones where the blood ran from the swords of the human butchers. If the history of this prison were written, it would make a dozen books, and some of the most heart-rending tragedies would be unfolded to the world. The great and good, and the wretchedly vile, have together lived within its walls and lost their hopes of life, or their desire for it. I could never pass it without a shudder, for though it was not so much a place of execution as a prison, yet so terrible a place was it that many a prisoner has joyfully emerged from its dark walls to the scaffold. It has witnessed the death of many a poor man and woman, stifled with its foul air, its horrid associations, and the future with which it terrified its inmates. Many a noble heart has been broken in its damp and dimly-lighted cells, for it has existed for many centuries. As early as 1400 it was the scene of wholesale butchery, and on St. Bartholomew's night, its bells rang out upon the shuddering air, to add their voice with the others, which filled every heart with fear. Paris is one of the most singular cities in the civilized world for one thing--for the atrocities which it has witnessed. Certainly, in modern times no city in the world has been the scene of such hideous acts as the city of the fine arts. Deeds have been done within a century, which would put a savage to the blush. The place is still pointed out where a poor girl was burned by a slow fire. She had wounded a soldier, and as a punishment, she was stripped naked, her breasts cut off, her skin slashed by red hot sabres, while she was being burned. Her yells could be heard over half Paris. Think, too, of later times--when Louis Napoleon aimed his cannon at the houses of inoffensive people, and shot down, in cold blood, some of the best inhabitants of Paris. A more hellish act was never perpetrated in this world of ours than that--yet he is the patron of modern civilization, and is on excellent terms with the amiable Queen Victoria. I do not wonder that Rousseau argued that the primitive and savage condition of man is to be preferred to French civilization. This is one phase of Paris life as it is to-day, and as it always has been, and it is right that the stranger should not pass it by. Paris is crowded with such places as these I have been describing--spots to which bloody histories cling. The paving-stones are, as it were, red to this day with the blood they drank in the times of the revolution. * * * * * PLACE DE LA CONCORDE. There is no public square or place in the world, which in broad magnificence surpasses the _Place de la Concorde_. The stranger can form little idea of it, except by personal inspection. Stand in the center and look which way you will, something grand or beautiful greets the eye. Look toward the south, and see the fine building which contains the senate chamber, the bridge over the Seine, and the _Quai de Orsay_. To the north, and see the row of buildings named Place de la Concorde, with their grand colonnades and the pretentious Madeleine. To the east, and there the green forest of the Tuileries gardens, with its rich array of flowers and statuary--and the palace--greets you, and farther away the grand towers of Notre Dame. Or look where the sun sets--the Elysian fields are all before you with their music and dancing and shows; their two long promenades, and in the distance Napoleon's grand triumphal arch. To look at the Place de la Concorde itself, you should stand upon the bridge across the Seine--from its center look down upon the great open _plaza_, see the wonderful fountains, gaze up at the obelisk of Luxor in the center, and you will be struck with admiration of the grand scene before you. But I confess that I was attracted to the Place de la Concorde more by the historical associations connected with it, than by its present magnificence. Leaning upon the parapet of the bridge and looking down upon the Seine, a pleasant July morning was present to my imagination, and a crowd was gathered upon the place to witness an execution. The slight form of a beautiful woman passes up yonder winding steps to the block. Her hair is dark--not so dark, though, as her genius-lighted eyes -and her forehead is white and nobly pure. She kneels, bows down her head to the block, and is forever dead. It was Charlotte Corday, the enthusiast, who assassinated Marat in his bath. I have seen the place where she killed him--have looked at the very threshold where she waited so long before she gained admittance. The house is standing yet, and the room where Marat lay in his bath writing--where he looked up from his manuscript at Charlotte Corday and promised death to some of her dearest friends in a provincial town--where she plunged her dagger to the center of his black heart! It was on the Place de la Concorde that Louis XVI expiated the crimes of his ancestors upon the scaffold. One still October day the sweet though proud Marie Antoinette came here, also, to die. The agony that she suffered during her trial, and the day that she perished upon the scaffold, no human thought can reckon. The French revolution taught a fearful lesson to kings and queens; that if they would rule safely, it must be through the hearts of their subjects, otherwise the vengeance of an insulted and oppressed people will be sure to overtake them. One April day, amid sunshine and rain, that man of dark eyes, lofty brow, and proud stature, the magnificent Danton, walked up the fatal steps and knelt down to death. How strange! The man before whose nod all Paris had trembled as if he had been a god--the man whose eloquence could thrill the heart of France, was now a weak creature beneath the iron arm of Robespierre. He had sentenced hundreds to death upon this spot, and was now condemned himself, by his old associate, to taste the same bitter cup which he had so often held to the lips of others. This act alone will fix the stain of ferocious cruelty upon the character of Robespierre, however conscientious he may have been. And here, too, on that same day, Camille Desmoulins, the mad author and revolutionist-editor, ended his young life. Many a time with his comic--yet sometimes awfully tragic--pen, had he pointed with laughter to the Place de la Concorde, and its streams of human blood. And now the strange creature who one day laughed wildly in his glee and another was all tears and rage, followed Danton, the man he had worshiped, to the block. Robespierre was his old friend, he had written his praises upon many a page, yet now he stood aloof, and raised not a hand to save the poor editor, though he besought his aid with passionate eloquence. Three months later, and the Place de la Concorde witnessed the closing scene of the revolution. On the 28th of the following July, Robespierre and St. Just perished together on the scaffold. He whose very name, articulated in whispers, had made households tremble as with a death-ague, had lost his power, and was a feeble, helpless being. Cruel, stern, without a feeling of mercy in his heart, awful to contemplate in his steel severity, he was, after all, almost the only man of the revolution who was strictly, sternly, rigidly honest. No one can doubt his integrity. He might have been dictator if he would, and saved his life, but the principles which were a part of his very nature, would not allow him to accept such power, even from the people. His friends plead with streaming eyes; it was a case of life or death; but he said, "Death, rather than belie my principles!" and he perished. As I looked down upon the very spot where stood the scaffold, and saw that all around was so peaceful, I could hardly realize that within half a century such a terrible drama had been enacted there--a drama whose closing acts illustrate the truth of that scripture which saith, "Whoso taketh the sword shall perish by the sword." Louis XVI. first ascends the scaffold, looking mournfully at Danton, but saying never a word; and then Vergniaud, the pure of heart, executed by his friend Danton; then Danton, thinking remorsefully of Vergniaud and cursing Robepierre; and last, Robespierre! The Place de la Concorde was originally an open spot, where were collected heaps of rubbish, but in 1763 the authorities of the city of Paris determined to clear it up and erect upon it a statue in honor of Louis XV. The statue was destroyed by the populace in 1792, and the place named _Place de la Revolution_. In 1800 it took the name it at present retains. In 1816 Louis XVIII. caused the statue of Louis XV. to be replaced, though still later that of Louis XVI. was erected here, and the former placed in the Champs Elysees. The obelisk of Luxor is perhaps the most prominent feature of the place. It is a magnificent relic of Egypt, and is one of two obelisks which stood in front of the temple of Thebes. It was erected fifteen hundred and fifty years before Christ, by Sesostris, in the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty. Mehemet Ali made a present of the obelisk to the French government. On account of its enormous size, great difficulty was experienced in removing it to Paris. A road was constructed from the obelisk to the Nile, and eight hundred men were occupied three months in removing it to the banks of the river, where was a flat-bottomed vessel built expressly for it. A part of the vessel had to be sawed off to receive it, so great was its size. It descended the Nile, passed the Rosetta bar, and with great care was towed to Cherbourg. It must be remembered that the obelisk is a single stone, seventy-two feet high, and weighs five hundred thousand pounds. On the 16th of August, 1836, it was drawn up an inclined plane to the top of the pedestal where it now stands. In the following October, the public ceremony of placing it occurred, in the presence of the royal family, and more than a hundred and fifty thousand other persons. [Illustration: Place de la Concorde.] The cost of removal from Thebes to Paris was two millions francs, but not a life was lost from the beginning to the end of the transaction. It stands upon a single block of gray granite, the total height of obelisk and pedestal being about a hundred feet. There are two fountains upon the Place, dedicated, one to Maritime, the other to Fluvial navigation. The basin of each is fifty feet in diameter, out of which rise two smaller ones, the latter inverted. Six tall figures are seated around the larger basins, their feet resting on the prows of vessels, separated from each other by large dolphins which spout water into the higher basins. But the beauty of the Place de la Concorde is not so much the result of any one feature as the combination of the whole, and as such it is unequaled in Europe. From the Place de la Concorde one has a fine view of the Arch of Triumph, which was erected by Napoleon in honor of his great victories. CHAPTER VII. THE LOUVRE--PUBLIC GARDENS--LUXEMBOURG PALACE AND GARDENS--THE GOBELINS. THE LOUVRE. The subject is hackneyed and old--what can _I_ say about the Louvre which will be new to the reader? However, to write a book on Paris, and make no mention of the Louvre, would be like acting the play of Hamlet, with Hamlet omitted. I make no pretensions to critical skill in reference to paintings or architecture, I only give the impressions of a man who loves both when they seem beautiful to him. I am no such art enthusiast that I love to wander through galleries of naked and sensual pictures, though they do show great genius. Nor can the glitter and grandeur of a thousand public buildings hide from my eyes the squalor and wretchedness of the common people. I will not give a precise description of the Louvre, but record the things which struck me most forcibly. The foreigner by showing his passport is admitted any day into the Louvre, though certain days are specified for the public to enter, and upon others the artists of Paris are busy in studying and copying the works of the masters. [Illustration: THE LOUVRE.] It was one of those days, when the Louvre was occupied by the artists, that I presented my American passport at one of the entrances, and was politely invited to pass in. My companion was a French artist, who had kindly offered to guide me over the renowned collection of paintings. The visit was much pleasanter to me from the fact that no crowd of visitors was present, and it was a novel sight to behold the young artists of Paris engaged in their work. I have mentioned in another part of this book that no pictures of living artists are allowed a place in the Louvre. The Luxembourg Gallery is the place for all such, and the Louvre collection is therefore made up of paintings from the hands of all the old masters. It is for this reason that the Parisian artists fill the rooms of the Louvre so constantly--either to copy some gem in the vast collection, or by practice, to catch some of the genius of the master-hand. The first picture-room we entered is represented to be the finest for the exhibition of pictures in the world. Its splendor was really very great. The pictures in it are of immense size, and they require a strong and clear light. It is called the Grand Saloon, and is divided by projecting arcades which are supported by fine marble columns. The length is one thousand three hundred and twenty-two feet, and the breadth forty-two feet. The ceilings and the walls are completely covered by pictures, the number of them being one thousand four hundred. Those by French masters number three hundred and eighty, by the Flemish and German five hundred and forty, and by the Italian four hundred and eighty. The greater part of the collection was made by Napoleon, and though many of the finest pictures were taken away by the allies in 1815, yet it is still one of the largest collections in the world. To stand in this room and gaze at leisure upon some of the finest paintings in the world, was a delight I had never before felt. It is indescribable, yet it was none the less real. I could not, as my friend the artist did, point out the peculiar excellences of each, and the faults, nor compare one with another critically, but I could feel the same thrill of pleasure which he did, and I found that the picture which he declared to be the finest, was that before which I delayed longest. It certainly is no more necessary for a man to be an art-critic to love pictures, than it is to be a botanist to love flowers. I admit that one must be a critic, to a degree, to _thoroughly_ appreciate the art of painting, but that is another thing. The common people in France are universally fond of pictures, much more so than the English. The Americans are next to the French in ideality, notwithstanding their great practicality. The common people of England are far behind those of America in their fondness for the beautiful--at least I judge so from a pretty fair experience. America as yet, to be sure, can show few works of art, but the vast number of enlightened Americans who continually visit Europe, and many for the purpose of seeing the grand and beautiful in art, tells the story. The English upper-classes are undoubtedly well-educated in art, but not the other classes. But I must not digress. The second room we visited was the _Salle des Bijoux_, and was entirely occupied by vases, jewels, and rare and costly cups. I was much pleased with an Arabian basin of splendid workmanship. There were also articles of toilette given by the ancient republic of Venice to Marie de Medicis, one casket alone being worth many thousands of dollars. The next apartment we entered contains copies of Raphael's frescoes in the Vatican at Rome; but the next room interested me more, for it contains Grecian statuary and antiquities. The southern part of Italy and Etruria, Herculaneum and Pompeii, are all represented in the collection. One striking feature of this hall is, that the ceilings are covered with paintings of the best artists. One represents Vesuvius receiving fire from Jupiter to consume Herculaneum and Pompeii; another, Cybele protecting the two cities from the fires of Vesuvius. The _Hall du Trone_, which we next visited, contained a great variety of beautiful pictures. One is a representation of the Genius of Glory supported by Virtue, with a scroll on which are written the names of the heroes of France--the warriors, statesmen, and great writers. There are in this apartment many exquisite vases, and among them four of Sevres porcelain, and one of Berlin porcelain, a present from the king of Prussia. There are, also, two very fine Chinese side-boards and specimens of Chinese sculpture. We next looked into the _Musee Egyptian_, which contains Egyptian curiosities, and the ceilings are painted, but, of course, by modern authors, as they are executed not upon canvas, but upon the hard ceiling. One of the paintings represents Egypt as being saved by Joseph--another, and one of the finest of the ceiling decorations in the Louvre, is by Horace Vernet. It represents Julian II. giving orders to Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Bramante to construct St. Peters. The _Galerie Francaise_ is filled with paintings of the French school, but none of them are by living painters. Many of them are unquestionably fine specimens of art, but as they were principally portraits of men more distinguished by their position than by any genius, I was not interested in the collection. Very near the French gallery, there is an alcove in which Henry IV. used often to sleep, and where he at last died. His portrait is now exhibited in it. In another little recess the suit of armor which Henry II. wore on the day of his death, is shown to the stranger. It was in the year 1559. The day was very hot and the king let down his helmet for fresh air. The royal party were engaged in a tournament, when the tilting-spear of the count de Montgomerie pierced the king's eye, and through it his brain, and he died. The Spanish gallery contains many fine specimens of the works of the Spanish masters, Velasquez, Murillo, and others. The Standish Collection is so called, because it was given to Louis Phillippe in 1838, by an Englishman by the name of Standish. It includes many first-class paintings, and a bible once owned by Cardinal Ximenes, now valued at twenty-five thousand francs. Before Louis Phillippe died, he claimed this collection as his private property. He had no intention of taking it away, but wished to test his claim to it. It was acknowledged, and he then bequeathed it to the Louvre. It is impossible for me in a brief sketch to even mention _all_ the apartments in the Louvre, and I must pass by many. The upper floor is devoted to a Marine museum. It contains fourteen rooms, all well-filled with curiosities. Among them I noticed some excellent models of brigs, ships, men-of-war, Chinese junks, etc. There is in this suite of rooms a fine display of American curiosities. It first struck me that Colton's collection must be before me, but I soon discovered my mistake. The Louvre contains a spacious museum of antiquities beneath the painting-galleries. There is also a museum of modern sculpture on the ground-floor. It contains the finest specimens of French sculpture, as well as the master-pieces of foreign sculptors. In the first room there is one of Michael Angelo's best pieces--the Master and his Slave. It is, indeed, a master-piece. One of Canova's pieces--a Cupid and a Psyche--thrilled me with its exceeding beauty. But I must say a few words respecting the building of the Louvre. The eastern facade is one of the finest specimens of architecture that any age can boast. The colonnade is composed of twenty-eight Corinthian columns. There is a gallery behind them in which you may promenade, looking out upon the streets below. The southern front of the Louvre, seen from one of the bridges of the river, with its forty Corinthian pilasters and sculptures, is a magnificent sight. The building of the Louvre forms a perfect square, and after visiting the different galleries, the stranger will find that he has completed the circuit. The gateways are fine and richly ornamented with sculptures, and the court is a pleasant one. Each side of the building measures four hundred and eight feet. In the year 1200, Phillip Augustus used a castle which existed on the present site of the Louvre, for a state prison. Charles V. made additions to the building and placed the Royal Library in it. The present building was begun by Francis I., in 1528, and the southern side of the Louvre as it now exists was his work. Henry II., Henry IV., and Louis XIII., successively added to it, and in still later time, Louis XIV., Louis XV., Charles X., Louis Phillippe, and Napoleon III., have done the same. Charles X. stood in one of the windows of the Louvre overlooking the Seine, and fired upon the poor victims of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. In July, 1830, the people made a terrible attack upon it, and it was courageously defended by the Swiss Guards, until everyone of them perished. The Louvre is one of the noblest piles in Europe, and as a painting-gallery, it reflects great credit upon France. I used to frequent it, yet I must, to be honest, confess that many of its pictures are too sensual and licentious to suit my taste. Are such pictures as can be found in the French gallery, pictures which express sensuality and debauchery, productive of good? Is it well to look at so much nakedness, even if it be executed with the highest art? In portions of the Louvre there is altogether too much nakedness, and I humbly hope that American ladies will never get so accustomed to such sights that they can stare at them in the presence of gentlemen without a blush. I now allude to the most licentious pictures in the collection. I saw French women stop and criticise pictures which I could not look at, in their presence, at least--pictures which exhibited the human form in a state of nudity, and at the same time expressed the most shameful sensuality and portrayed the most licentious attitudes. I cannot believe a woman of perfectly pure mind can delight to look at such pictures in a public gallery. But this nakedness is all of a piece with many other things which characterize French society, and but shows the corrupt state of the morals of the French people. [Illustration: JARDIN DES TUILLERIES.] PUBLIC GARDENS. The gardens of Paris are almost numberless. Some of them are free, and others are open only to those who pay an entrance fee. The latter class is great in numbers, from the aristocratic _Jardin d' Hiver_ down to La Chaumiere. In the first you meet the fashionable and rich, and in the last, the students with their grisettes, and the still poorer classes. But I will not describe this class of gardens in this article. The Tuileries gardens are perhaps as aristocratic as any in Paris, if that term can be appropriately applied to a _free_ garden, and they are certainly among the finest in the world. They are filled with statues and fountains, trees and flowers. The western part is entirely devoted to trees, almost as thickly planted as our American forests. The care which is taken of this grove of trees surprised me, and I think would any new-world visitor. The trees grow closely to the southern wall of the gardens, yet do not protrude their branches over the line of the wall. The sight is a singular one from the banks of the Seine, outside the walls of the garden, for the whole grove looks exactly as if it had been _sheared_ like a hedge. The branches have been so cared for and trimmed, that the side presented is perfectly even and a mass of green. Still this, though curious, is not beautiful. Trees need to grow naturally for that. Art cannot surpass nature in this way. The grove is full of beauty. Walks run every way over it, and the trees are so trimmed and cultivated that beautiful arches are formed over nearly all the paths. This constitutes the forest, one of the most singular in Paris, and it is a novel sight to the stranger. On the north side of the groves there is a collection of orange trees, and in among them are set a large quantity of chairs, which are rented by a person in attendance for two sous an hour. So for two cents, a man can sit and rest himself in one of the most delicious spots in Paris. This is a peculiar feature of all the gardens of Paris. No free seats are furnished, but an old woman is sure to select some shady and enchanting spot whereon to arrange her chairs, which are for rent. Indeed, there are many places on the Boulevard where this practice obtains, to the great joy of numberless tired pedestrians. In front of the _Tuileries palace_ there is a choice garden of flowers and plants enclosed by an iron railing. The flowers were in bloom when last I saw it, and were exceedingly beautiful. Directly in front of this garden a fine fountain is always playing, and scattered in every direction is a profusion of statuary. There are some magnificent groups, but again others are disgusting in their sensuality. There are several pieces of statuary scattered among the trees of the grove. One of them, a statue of Venus, is an exquisite conception, and so very pure that I wondered it should have found a place in a French garden. But not far from it there were two nude figures which were so shockingly sensual, and so clearly were intended by the sculptor to be so, that I turned away half indignant. Yet while I walked in the grove more than one French lady stopped leisurely to look at them through her glass. When the weather is warm, the fashionable pedestrians flock to the trees of the Tuileries gardens, and among its cool recesses sit and talk the hours away. When the weather is colder and sunshine is desirable, the grounds immediately in front of the palace are more pleasant, as there the cold winds come not. The Luxembourg gardens I have spoken of with some particularity in another place. The _Jardin d' Hiver_ is a winter garden, and contains many roofed hot-houses. The public are admitted by the payment of one franc. There are occasional displays of flowers and plants. The _Champs Elysees_ form one of the most delightful promenades in Paris. They contain no plants or flowers, but are so thickly planted with trees, that they may be called gardens. It was originally a promenade for Marie de Medici. It runs along the banks of the Seine, from the Place de la Concorde to the Triumphal Arch. The length is a mile and a quarter, the breadth three hundred and seventy-three yards. All the public fetes take place on these fields. On the right is the promenade, and on the left under the trees and in open spaces are fairs, instrumental performances, shows, etc. etc. It is one of the most dazzling scenes in the night that ever eye beheld. I well remember that on my first visit to Paris, I wandered out of my hotel and saw the Champs Elysees in the evening. The sight was almost overpowering. The whole place was a scene of splendor. The trees and grounds were one blaze of lamps. Scattered over it were little theaters, concerts in the open air, every kind of show, coffee-houses, restaurants, and every kind of amusement. The concerts charge nothing. But if you enter within the ring you pay for a seat a trifle, and also for your refreshments. Almost everyone who entered, (it was all in the open air,) bought a glass of something to drink, and sat down to enjoy it with the music. Fiddlers and mountebanks abounded in every direction, and beggars were more numerous if possible than the spectators. But not one _solicited_ alms. It would jar too coarsely upon the Parisian refinement. A beggar sings, looks piteously, plays his flageolet or harp, but never _asks_ for money! The whole scene presented to me was one of the most brilliant I ever witnessed, and it probably impressed me more from the fact that I was unprepared for it. I have often since frequented it in the evening, but never wearied of it. The _Jardin des Plantes_ is the most beautiful free garden in the world. It was founded in 1635 by Louis XIII. Buffon was its most celebrated superintendent. He devoted himself enthusiastically to its cultivation and development. It was at periods, during the revolutionary times, much neglected, but it continued to prosper through everything, unlike many of the other gardens. It consists of a botanical garden with several large hot-houses and green-houses attached; several galleries with scientific natural collections; a gallery of anatomy; a menagerie of living animals; a library of natural history; and lastly, a theater for public lectures. Everything is open to the people--lectures and all--and take it altogether, it is the finest and noblest garden in the world. The _Jardin des Plantes_ in the summer is one of the favorite resorts of Parisians, and although I frequented the spot, I never left it without a wonder that so much is thrown open free to the public. This is a remarkable feature of Paris and French institutions and public buildings. If possible, that which the people wish to see they can see for nothing. Painting-galleries, gardens, churches, and lectures are open to the crowd. This is in striking contrast with London. There nothing is free. The stranger pays to go over Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's. He cannot see anything without paying half a crown for the sight. To _look_ at a virgin or butler is worth at least a shilling. [Illustration: JARDIN DES PLANTES.] The stranger usually enters the _Jardin des Plantes_ by the eastern gate. The gallery of zoology is seen at the other end of the garden, while on either hand are beautiful avenues of lime trees. Beyond, on the right, is the menagerie, and on the left is a large collection of forest trees. Scattered all around in the open space, are beds containing all manner of medicinal and other plants from all parts of the earth. This part of the garden is to the botanist a very interesting spot. The flowering-shrubs are surrounded by a rail fence, and the level of the ground is sunk beneath that of other parts of the garden. There is a special "botanical garden," which is much frequented by students. On another avenue there are plantations of forest shrubs, and near them a cafe to accommodate visitors. Then stretching still further on, are new geological, mineralogical, and botanical galleries, all warmed in winter and summer, if necessary, by hot water, and capable of receiving the tallest tropical plants. Between the conservatories there are two beautiful mounds--one a labyrinth, and the other a collection of fir-trees. The labyrinth is one of the best and most beautiful I ever saw, far surpassing the celebrated one at Hampton court. The mound is of a conical shape, and is completely covered by winding and intricate paths. The whole is surmounted by a splendid cedar of Lebanon. On the summit there are also seats covered with a bronze pavilion, and taking one of them the visitor can look over all the garden portions of Paris, and several of the villages near Paris. It is an exquisite view, and I know of no greater pleasure in the hot months than after walking over the garden to ascend the labyrinth and sit down in the cool shade of the pavilion, and watch the people wandering over the gardens, Paris, and the country. The western mound is a nursery of fir-trees, every known kind being collected there. There is another inclosure entered by a door at the foot of this mound, which in warm weather contains some of the most beautiful trees of New Holland, the Cape of Good Hope, Asia Minor, and the coast of Barbary. The amphitheater is here, also, where all the lectures are delivered. It will hold twelve hundred students but more than that number contrive to hear the lectures. In the enclosure there are twelve thousand different kinds of plants, and at the door stand two very beautiful Sicilian palms more than twenty-five feet in height. The menagerie of the garden is one of the finest in the world, and is in some respects like the menagerie in London, though arranged with more taste. The cages are scattered over a large inclosure, and it seems like wandering over a forest and meeting the animals in their native wilds. After passing beneath the boughs of dark trees, it is startling to look up and see a Bengal tiger within a few feet of you, though he is caged, or to walk on further still, and confront a leopard. This part of the garden is a continual source of amusement to the younger portions of the community of Paris, to say nothing of the children of larger growth. The cabinet of comparative anatomy is one of the finest parts of the garden, and we owe its excellence mainly to the great exertions of Cuvier. Every department is scientifically arranged, and the whole form, perhaps, the best collection of anatomical specimens in the world. In the first room are skeletons of the whale tribe, and many marine animals; in the next, are skeletons of the human species from every part of the globe. A suite of eleven rooms is taken up for the anatomy of birds, fishes, and reptiles. Several rooms are taken up with the exhibition of the muscles of all animals, including man. Others exhibit arms and legs; others still, brains and eyes, and the different organs of the body all arranged together, distinct from the remaining parts of the frame. In one room there is a singular collection of skulls of men from all countries, of all ages, and conditions. Celebrated murderers here are side by side with men of ancient renown. The gallery of zoology is three hundred and ninety feet in length, and fronts the east end of the garden. The other galleries are all equally spacious and well arranged. The library is composed of works on natural history, and it is an unrivaled collection. It contains six thousand drawings, thirty thousand volumes, and fifteen thousand plants. This fine library is free on certain days to the world. The good which results from such _free_ exhibitions as that of the _Jardin des Plantes_ is incalculable. The _people_ become educated, enlightened to a degree they can never attain, upon the subjects illustrated, without them. This is one reason why Parisians are universally intelligent, even to the artisans. The poorer classes can scarcely help understanding botany, anatomy, zoology, and geology, with such a garden free of access. This is but a specimen of many like places in Paris. Lectures upon the sciences and arts are free to all who will hear, and whoever will may learn. THE LUXEMBOURG PALACE AND GARDENS. When France was governed by Louis Phillippe, the Palace Luxembourg was occupied by the Chamber of Peers, and it is now occupied by the Senate. It is a fine old building, and the impression it makes upon the stranger is an agreeable one. There is nothing in its history of particular interest, though its architecture is ancient. I was better pleased with the Luxembourg gardens than with the palace. They are more beautiful than the Tuileries gardens and are much more democratic. Trees, plants, and flowers seemed to me to abound in them to a greater extent than in any other garden in Paris. On beautiful days they are full of women and children. Troops of the latter, beautiful as the sky which covers them, come to this place and play the long hours of a summer afternoon away, with their mothers and nurses following them about or sitting quietly under the shade of the trees, engaged in the double employment of knitting and watching the frolicsome humors of their children. I was very fond of going to these gardens in the afternoon, just to look at the array of mothers and children, and it was as pretty a sight as can be seen in all Paris. It is a sight which New York--be it spoken to her shame--does not furnish. [Illustration: JARDIN ET PALAIS DU LUXEMBOURG.] In the summer evenings a band of music plays for an hour to a vast multitude. Four of the finest bands in Paris take turns in playing at seven o'clock, four evenings in the week, and their music is of the highest order. Perhaps fifty thousand people are gathered at once, men, women, and children, to listen to the delicious music and the gathering in itself is a sight worth seeing. The great majority promenade slowly around the band, some stand still, and a very few rent chairs and sit. Nearly all the men smoke, and occasionally a woman does the same. But the flavor of the tobacco is execrable. What substitute the French use I know not, but the villainous smells which come from the cigars smoked by the majority of Frenchmen indicate something very bad. Cabbage leaves--so extensively used to make cigars with in England--do not give forth so vile a stench. I always noticed in the Luxembourg gardens many fine looking men, and some elegantly dressed and lady-like women, but the majority of the latter were grisettes, or mistresses. Many students were promenading with their little temporary wives, not in the least ashamed to make such a public display of their vices. The women present might be divided into four classes; the gay but not vicious, students' mistresses, ordinary strumpets, and the poor but virtuous, by far the majority belonging to those classes which have a poor reputation. Yet the conduct of those women was in every respect proper. There were no indecent gestures, and not a loud word spoken which would have been out of place in a drawing-room. Not a woman addressed one of the opposite sex. Directly in front of the Luxembourg palace there is a bower of orange trees and statues railed off from other portions of the garden. It presents an extremely beautiful appearance. In front of it there is a fine basin of water and a fountain. Four nude marble boys support a central basin, from which the water pours. The ground directly in front of the palace is lower than it is on either side, and a row of fine orange trees extends out on either hand from the palace, and flowers of every description mingle their fragrance with that of the orange blossoms. Groves of trees extend far to the right and left, and to the south, there are fine gardens devoted to the cultivation of rare plants and every variety of fruit trees. The best thing I know about the Luxembourg palace is, that it has a gallery of paintings. It formerly was used to exhibit paintings by the old masters, but now nothing is allowed a place in the Luxembourg gallery but pictures of living artists. As soon as the artist dies, his pictures which hang in the Luxembourg, and which have been purchased by the government, are at once removed to the Louvre, where only paintings of men now dead are on exhibition. The collection in the Luxembourg is in many respects a very fine one, but it has the fault of all the modern French and continental pictures--there is too much sensuality exhibited upon the canvas. The school is too voluptuous--too licentious. I can put up with anything not positively indecent for the sake of art, but I cannot put up with French pictures. Their nakedness is too disgusting, for it is not relieved by sentiment, unless of the basest kind. This remark of course does not apply to all the pictures I saw. Some of them are very fine, especially those of Delaroche and the war pictures of Horace Vernet. Near the entrance there is a beautiful group by Delaistre, representing Cupid and Psyche. One of the pictures in this gallery haunts me still. It is an illustration of one of Dante's immortal verses--his visit to the lake of Brimstone. The poet with a wreath of laurel round his brow stands in the center of a little boat, while his conductor in the stream propels the craft with one oar over the boiling and surging sea of hell. His countenance is filled with mingled astonishment and horror, yet he preserves his wits and observes very critically all that is about him. One poor wretch lifts his head from the liquid fire, and fastens his jaws upon the rim of the boat in his terrible agony, while one of the attendants of the boat with an oar endeavors to beat him back. On the other side a ghostly wretch has fastened his long teeth into a fellow-sufferer. The shades of light and darkness are so mingled that the effect is very striking. It is the most horrible picture I ever looked at, and I would much rather sleep in Madame Tassaud's chamber of horrors, than look at it again. In the next apartment there is a picture of Christ, which struck me as the best I ever looked at. The divine sweetness of the human and the grandeur of the God were united with wonderful skill. The face was half-sorrowful, as if the heart were filled with thoughts of a sinful, suffering world, and still upon the brow the very sunshine of heaven rested. The impression which that face made upon me will never be entirely obliterated, and its effect was far different from the illustration of Dante. The two pictures, it seemed to me, teach a useful lesson. It is that men are to be saved through love, and not through fear. Let men see God's beauty and loveliness, and you will more surely win them from error than by showing them the horrors of hell. The origin of the Luxembourg palace was as follows: about the middle of the sixteenth century, one Robert de Harley erected a large house in the middle of the gardens. In 1583 the house was bought and enlarged by the duke of Luxembourg, and in 1612 Marie de Medicis bought it for ninety thousand francs, and then commenced the present palace. During the first year of the revolution it was used for a prison; then for an assembly-room for the consuls; still later as the chamber for the peers, and now the French senate meet in it. It contains a large library, but the people cannot have access to its well-stored shelves. Students can, however, by making proper application, consult the library. One evening while walking in the Luxembourg gardens, the band playing exquisite music, and the crowd promenading to it, I met a friend, an American, who has resided in Paris for seventeen years. Taking his arm we fell into the current of people, and soon met a couple of quite pretty looking ladies arm-in-arm. They were dressed exactly alike and their looks were very much of the same pattern, and as to their figures, I certainly could not tell one from the other with their faces turned away. "They are sisters," said my friend, "and you will scarcely believe me when I tell you that I saw them in this very garden ten years ago." I replied that I could hardly credit his story, for the couple still looked young, and I could hardly think that so many years ago they would have been allowed by their anxious mamma to promenade in such a place. I told my friend so, and a smile overspread his countenance. He then told me their history. Ten years ago and they were both shop-girls, very pretty and very fond of the attentions of young men. As shop-girls, they occasionally found time to come and hear the music in the gardens of an evening, and cast glances at the young students. Soon they were student's mistresses. Their paramours were generous and wealthy young men, and they fared well. For four years they were as faithful, affectionate, and devoted to the young men as any wives in all France. They indulged in no gallantries or light conduct with other men, and among the students were reckoned as fine specimens of the class. Four happy years passed away, when one morning the poor girls awoke to a sad change. The collegiate course was through, and the young collegians were going back to their fathers' mansions in the provinces. Of course the grisettes could not be taken with them, and the ties of years were suddenly and rudely to be snapped asunder. At first they were frantic in their grief. When they entered upon their peculiar relations with the students, they well knew that this must be the final consummation, but then it looked a great way off. That they really loved the young men, no one can doubt. It would not be strange for a little shop-girl to even adore a talented university student, however insignificant he might be to other people. To her he is everything that is great and noble. These girls knew well that they were not wives, but mistresses, yet when the day of separation came, it was like parting husband and wife. But there was no use in struggling with fate, and they consoled themselves by transferring their affections to two more students. Again after a term of years they were forsaken, until the flower of their youth was gone, and no one desired to support them as mistresses. Then a downward step was taken. Nothing but promiscuous prostitution was before them--except starvation. And still they could not forget their old life, and came nightly to this public promenade to see the old sights, and possibly with the hope of drawing some unsophisticated youth into their net. While my friend repeated their story, the couple frequently passed us, and I could hardly believe that persons whose deportment was so modest and correct, could be what he had designated them; but as the twilight deepened, and we were walking away, I noticed that they were no longer together, and one had the arm of a man, and was walking, like us, away from the gardens. I do not know as I could give the reader a better idea of a great class of women in Paris, than by relating the brief history of these girls, and certainly I could not sketch a sadder picture. To the stranger the social system of France may seem very pleasant and gay, but it is in reality a sorrowful one. While the mistress is young, she has a kind of happiness, but when she loses her beauty, then her wretchedness begins. But I will dwell upon this whole subject more fully in another place. THE GOBELINS. One of the interesting places which I visited in Paris, is the famous Tapestry and Carpet Manufactory in the Rue Mouffetard. The walk is quite a long one from the Garden of Plants, but the wonders of art and industry which are shown to the visitor, amply repay for the trouble and toil in getting to the manufactory. I first passed through several rooms, upon the walls of which were hung some of the finest of the tapestries which are finished. I was astonished to see the perfection to which the art is carried. Some of the tapestries, were quite as beautiful as some of the paintings in the Louvre. Each piece was a picture of some spot, scene, or character, and the workmanship is of such an exquisite kind, that it is extremely difficult to believe that real paintings of the highest order are not before you. Yet all the shades and expressions are wrought into the web, by the hands of the skillful workmen. I visited six of the work-rooms, where the men were manufacturing the tapestries. It was a wonderful sight. The workman stands immediately behind the web, and a basket containing woolen yarn, or a thread of every variety or color, is at his feet. The design, usually an exquisite picture, stands behind him in a good light. A drawing of the part of the landscape or figure first to be made is sketched by pencil upon the web, and with the picture to be copied constantly in sight, the workman or artist, as he should be called, works slowly upon his task, glad if in a day he can work into the tapestry a branch, a hand, or an eye. In some of the work-rooms, the finest tapestries were being manufactured, and in others only very fine rugs and carpets. In 1450 a man by the name of Jean Gobelin acquired considerable property in the region of Rue Mouffetard by dyeing and making carpets. His sons carried on the business in his name, and the manufactory was celebrated; hence the name, Gobelins. Louis XIV. erected it into a royal manufactory, and it has continued such ever since. Between one and two hundred men are constantly in the employ of the government, in the manufactory, and as men of great skill and refined tastes are required, a good rate of wages is paid. The workmen seemed to be very intelligent, and were dressed, many of them, at least, like gentlemen. The tapestries, carpets, &c. &c., which are manufactured at this place, are intended for the emperor, the palaces, and for other monarchs to whom they may be presented in the name of the French emperors. They are the finest specimens of their kind in the world. There is another manufactory connected with the Gobelins, for dyeing wools, and they are dyed better than in any other place, or at least none can be purchased elsewhere so fitted for the wants of the tapestry workers. There is also a school of design connected with it, and a course of lectures is delivered by able and accomplished men. The carpet manufactory is one of the best, and perhaps _the_ best, in the world. The Parisian carpets are not equal to those manufactured here. It often takes five and ten years to make a carpet, and the cost is as high sometimes as thirty thousand dollars. None are ever sold. One was one made for the Louvre gallery, consisting of seventy-two pieces, and being over thirteen hundred feet in length. I have never been more astonished with any exhibition of the fruits of industry and art, than with the carpets and tapestries in the Rue Mouffetard. Some of the latter excel in beauty the best pictures in Europe, and when one reflects that each tint is of wool, worked into the web by the careful fingers of the workman, that every line, every muscle, is wrought as distinctly and beautifully as upon canvas, it excites admiration and wonder. The rooms are open for four Hours two days in the week, and they were crowded when I was there, and principally by foreigners. On my way back, I stopped in the Garden of Plants, and seated myself upon the benches beneath the shade of the trees. After resting awhile, I entered a restaurant and ordered dinner, as I could scarcely wait to return to the hotel, and in Paris, where a bargain is made at so much per day for hotel charges, including meals, if one is absent at dinner the proper sum is deducted from the daily charges. I did not succeed in getting a good dinner for a fair price, which I always could do at the hotel. It was so poor that a little while after, I tried a cup of coffee and a roll upon the _Champs Elysees_, which were delicious enough to make up for the poor dinner. In front of me there was an orchestra, and some singers, who discoursed very good music for the benefit of all persons who patronized the restaurant. A multitude of ladies and gentlemen were ranged under the trees before them, sipping coffee, wine, or brandy. The sight was a very gay one, but not uncommon in Paris. I went one day outside the walls of Paris, and took dinner in a beautiful spot where the sun was almost entirely excluded by the trees and shrubs, in gardens attached to a restaurant. I had a capital dinner, too, for a small price, better than I could have had for double the money at a London hotel. CHAPTER VIII. THE PEOPLE--CLIMATE--PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS--HOTEL DES INVALIDES. THE PEOPLE. The French people, so far as one may judge from Paris, are very difficult to study and understand. They are easy of access, but it is difficult to account for the many and strange anomalies in their character. The intense love of gayety and the amount of elegant trifling which shows itself everywhere as a national characteristic, does not prepare one to believe that some of the greatest of mathematicians, philosophers, and scientific men are Frenchmen and Parisians; but such is the fact. The French are fickle, love pleasure, and one would think that these qualities would unfit men for coolness, perseverance, and prolonged research; and I am sometimes inclined to think that the proficiency of the French in philosophy, the arts, and sciences, is not so much the result of patient investigation and laborious and continued study, as a kind of intuition which amounts to genius. The French mind is quick, and does not plod slowly toward eminence; it leaps to it. Certainly, in brilliancy of talents the French surpass every other nation. I will not do them the injustice to speak of them as they are at this moment--crushed under the despotism of Louis Napoleon--but as they have been in the last few years, and indeed for centuries. Paris is a city of brilliant men and women. A French orator is one of the most eloquent speakers, one of the most impressive men, any country can furnish. The intelligence of the Paris artisans would surprise many people in America. We have only to examine the journals which before the advent of the empire were almost exclusively taken by the working-classes of Paris, to see the proof of this. Their leaders were written in the best essay-style, and were the result of careful thought and application. Such journals could never have gained a fair support from the artisans of New York. They were not mere news journals, nor filled up with love-stories. They contained articles of great worth, which required on the part of the reader a love of abstract truth and the consideration of it. Such journals sold by thousands in Paris before Napoleon III. throttled the newspapers. These very men were fond of pleasure and pursued it, and I have been told by residents, that often persons of a foppish exterior and fashionable conduct, are also celebrated for the extent of their learning. At home we rarely look for talent or learning among the devotees of fashion, or at least, among those who exalt fashion above all moral attributes. It seems to me that the French are more gifted by nature than the English. The English mind is more sluggish, but in all that is practical, it gains the goal of success, while the French mind often fails of it. In theory, the French have always had the most delightful of republics--in fact, a wretched despotism. So, too, they have had an idea of liberty, such as is seldom understood even in America, but real liberty has existed rarely in France. The laboring men of Paris perhaps never saw the inside of a school-room, but they are educated. They know how to read, and through the newspapers, the library, the popular lecture and exhibition, they have gained what many who spend most of their earlier years in school never gain. From an experience which justifies it, I believe the soberest part of Paris is its class of artisans. They may possess many wrong and foolish opinions, but they are a noble class of men. They are a majority of them republicans, and though they consent to the inevitable necessity--obedience to the monarch and endurance of a monarchy--yet they indulge in hopes of a brilliant future for France. They know very well how their rights are trampled upon, and feel keenly what a disgraceful condition Paris and all France occupies at the present time, but are by no means satisfied with it. They well know that there is no real liberty in Paris to-day; that no journal dares to speak the whole truth for fear of losing its existence; and that the noblest men of the republic are in exile. The trouble is, that the lower classes of the provinces are grossly ignorant, and do not desire a republic, nor care for liberty. Thus, those who are intelligent and have aspirations after freedom, are borne down by the ignorant. One of the characteristics of the people of Paris, for which they are known the world over, is their politeness. I noticed this in all circles and in all places. In England John Bull stares at your dress if it differs from his own, and hunts you to the wall. Or if anything in your speech or manners pleases him, he laughs in your face. But in Paris, the Frenchman never is guilty of so ill-bred an action as to laugh at anybody in his presence, however provoking the occasion. If you are lost and inquire the way, he will run half a mile to show you, and will not even hear of thanks, I remember once in Liverpool asking in a barber's-shop the way to the Waterloo hotel. A person present, who was so well-dressed that I supposed him a gentleman, said that he was going that way and would show me. I replied that I could find the spot, the street having been pointed out by the barber. The "gentleman" persisted in accompanying me. When we reached the hotel I thanked him, but he was not to be shaken off. He raised his hat and said, "I hope I may have the happiness of drinking wine with you!" I was angry at such meanness, and I gave him a decided negative. "But," he persisted, "you will drink ale with me?" I replied, "I never drink ale." "But," said he, "you will give _me_ a glass?" This persistence was so disgusting that I told the man I would give him in charge of the police as an impostor if he did not leave, which he did at this hint, instantly. The only time that I ever experienced anything but politeness in Paris, was when in a great hurry I chanced to hit a workman with a basket upon his head. The concussion was so great that the basket was dashed to the pavement. He turned round very slowly, and with a grin upon his countenance said, "Thank you, sir!" This was politeness with a little too much sarcasm. It was spoken so finely that I burst into a laugh, and the Frenchman joined me in it. The shop-keepers of Paris are a very polite class, and are as avaricious as they are polite. The habit which they have of asking a higher price than they expect to get is a bad one. It is a notorious fact that foreigners in Paris can rarely buy an article so cheaply as a native. There are always quantities of verdant Englishmen visiting Paris, and the temptation to cheat them is too great to be resisted by the wide-awake shop-keepers. Besides, it satisfies a grudge they all have against Englishmen. I always found it an excellent way not to buy until the shop keeper had lowered his price considerably. Sometimes I state my country, and the saleswoman would roguishly pretend that for that reason she reduced the price. I remember stopping once in the Palais Royal to gaze at some pretty chains in the window. A black-eyed little woman came to the door, and I asked the price of a ring which struck my fancy. She gave it, and I shook my head, telling her that in the country which I came from I could get such a ring for less money. She wanted to know the name of my country, and when I told her it was America, she said in a charming manner, "Oh! you come from the grand republic! you shall have the ring for so many francs," naming a sum far less than she had at first asked. Of course, I did not suppose she sacrificed a _sou_ for the sake of my country, but it showed how apt are the Paris shop-keepers at making excuses. An Englishman or American would have solemnly declared he would not take a penny less--and then very coolly give the lie to his assertion; at any rate, I have seen English and American tradesman do so. A majority of the shop-keepers of Paris are women, and many of them young and pretty. I certainly have seen more beauty of face in the shops than on the Boulevards of Paris. Young girls from the ages of fifteen to twenty-five, are usually the clerks in all the shops, which are often presided over by a grown-up woman who is mistress of the establishment, her husband being by no means the first man in the establishment, but rather a silent partner. The grisettes are often girls of industry and great good-nature, but the morals of the class are lamentably low. They are easily seduced from the path of right, and are led to form temporary alliances with men, very often the students of the Latin Quarter. They rarely degrade themselves for money or for such considerations, but it is for love or pleasure that they fall. They are given to adventures and intrigues, until they become the steady paramours of men, and then they are true and constant. Often they are kept and regarded more like wives than mistresses. I should not do entire justice to this class if I were to convey the idea that all of them are thus debauched. Many marry poor young men, but such is not usually the case; a poor young man seeks a wife with a small dowry. They have little hope of wedded life--it will never offer itself to them. Their shop-life is dreary, monotonous, and sometimes exacting. If they will desert it, pleasure presents an enticing picture; a life of idleness, dancing, and a round of amusements. I was very much struck by a remark made to me by one of the purest men in France--that a Frenchman is more apt to be jealous of his mistress than his wife, and that as a general rule, a mistress is more true to her lover than a wife is to her husband. This is horrible, yet to a certain extent I am convinced it is true. And it may be so, and women be no more to blame in the matter than the other sex. To-day, in the fashionable society of our great cities, how much does it injure a wealthy young man's prospects for matrimony, if it is a well-known fact that he is a libertine? And how long can such a state of things continue without dragging down the women who marry such men? If a lady cares not if her lover is a libertine, she cannot possess much of genuine virtue. The fashionable men of Paris keep mistresses--so do those of all classes, the students, perhaps, according to their numbers, being worse in this respect than all others. It is not strange, such being the case, that the women are frail. One thing is specially noticeable among the ladies of Paris--the care with which they are guarded before marriage, and the freedom of their conduct after. In countries where there is almost universal virtue among women, the faith in them is strong, and a freedom of intercourse between the sexes is allowed previous to marriage, which is never tolerated in such a place as Paris. In New England it is not thought improper for a young gentleman and lady to enjoy a walk together in the country, and alone, but in France it would ruin the reputation of a woman. A friend of mine in London warmly invited a young friend of his in Paris to come over and make his family a visit on some special occasion. The Parisian wrote back that he should like nothing better than such a trip, but that business would not allow of it. "Then," wrote back my friend, "let your sister come." The reply was decided: "Oh, no! it would never do for the young lady to make such a trip alone, for the sake of her reputation." It would have struck this Frenchman as a very singular fact, if he had known that in America a young lady will travel thousands of miles alone, without the slightest harm to her reputation. But when the French woman _marries_, the tables are turned. Then she possesses a freedom such as no American lady, thank heaven, wishes to enjoy. She may have half a dozen open lovers, and society holds its tongue. Her husband probably has as many mistresses. It is not considered improper in Paris either for a husband and father to love his mistress, or a wife and mother to love her acknowledged lover, and that man not her husband. The intrigues which are carried on by married people in Paris, would shock sober people in America, or at least, outside our largest and wickedest cities. The social state of France is exceedingly bad, and when American religious writers profess to be shocked at the theories of the French Socialists, I am inclined to ask them what they think of the _actual condition_ of the French people. Some of the Socialists have been driven to extremes, because Paris has no conception of the home and the family. The enemies of Socialism in France are, in practice, worse than their enemies in theory. Who is the man now ruling France? Does the world not know him to have long been an open and thoroughly debauched libertine? The same is true of other distinguished friends of "law and order." The outward condition of the streets of Paris often deceives the stranger as to the morality of the city. Said one gentleman to me, who had spent several weeks at a fashionable Paris hotel, "Paris is one of the quietest, pleasantest towns in the world, and as for its morals, I can see nothing which justifies its bad reputation abroad." After a week's stay in it, such was my own opinion. Things which are tolerated in London and New York streets, are not permitted in the streets of Paris. A street-walker ventured to accost an Englishman in Paris at night, and was taken in charge by the police. But this outward fairness only indicates that in Paris, even the vices are regulated by the state. Bad women cannot make a display and accost men in the street, but they abound, and what is far worse, in all the circles and gradations of society. It is society which is corrupt there. One need but to look at the morals of its great men, to see this at once. What is the moral character of the first men in the empire? Bad, as no Frenchman will deny. Some of the very men who have won in America golden opinions for their noble and eloquent advocacy of liberty, have been in their private lives devoid of all virtue. It only shows the social condition of the country. Some writers deny these allegations against Paris, but no man will who has lived in it, and is honest and candid. Paris abounds with illegitimate children. The statistics tell the story. Ten thousand illegitimate children are born every year in that city! What can be the morality of any town, while such facts exist in reference to its condition? I hate all cant, but am satisfied that the chief reason why France does not succeed better in her revolutions is, because she lacks the steadiness which a sincere devotion to religion gives to a nation. The country needs less man-worship and more God-worship. It needs less adulation of beautiful women, and more real appreciation of true womanhood. There is a great deal of art-worship in Paris, but it does not seem to really elevate the condition of the people. The pictures and the statues are generally of the most sensuous kind. Do these things improve the morals of a city or nation? If so, why is it that wherever naked pictures and sensual statuary abound, the people are licentious and depraved? In America such things are not tolerated by the mass of the people, and there prevails a higher style of virtue than in any other land. But in France and in Italy, the beauty of the human form upon canvas or in marble, in however offensive a manner, is adored--and in those countries the people have little morality. The French _home_ is not the home of England or America. The genuine Parisian lives on the street, or in the theater or ball-room. He never lives at home. Hence, the mothers and daughters of England and America are not there to be found. "Comparisons are odious" but I cannot express my meaning so plainly without making them, and I state but the simple truth. Young men and women are not taught to seek their pleasure at the family fireside, but beyond it, and a man marries not to make a home, but to make money or a position in society. Women, too, often marry simply to attain liberty of action. Another characteristic of the French, and especially of Parisians, is that they educate their sons to no such independence as is everywhere common in America. The young Parisian is dependent upon his father--he cannot support himself; and men of thirty and forty, who are helpless, are to be seen in all classes throughout the great cities of France. Whether there is just ground for expecting that France will very soon throw off the despotism which now weighs her down, I am incompetent, perhaps, to judge; but I fear not. There is a very noble class of men in Paris--I know this by experience--who hate all despotism and love freedom, but I fear they will for centuries be overcome by ignorance and the love of pleasure, on the part of the people, and knavery and brute force on the part of rulers. CLIMATE--POPULATION--POLICE, ETC. The weather of Paris during the summer months is warm and usually delightful, but in winter it is very cold--much colder than it is in London. But Paris escapes the horrible fogs which envelop London in November and December. The weather, too, though cold, is wholesome and often conducive to health. The two months of fog in London are often termed the suicidal months, because of the number of persons who destroy their own lives in those months. The people of Paris with their mercurial temperaments would never endure it for a long time, at least. Fuel is exceedingly dear in Paris, and the buildings are not made for in-door comfort. If they were as warmly made as the houses of New York, they would be comfortable in winter, but such not being the case, and fuel being costly, comfort in private apartments is rarely to be had by any but the rich. Coal is not used to any great extent, though charcoal is burned in small quantities, but wood is the fuel principally used. It is sold in small packages, and is principally brought up from the distant provinces by the canals. The amount of wood required to make what a Frenchman would call a glowing fire, would astonish an American. A half a dozen sticks, not much larger or longer than his fingers, laid crosswise in a little hearth, is sufficient for a man's chamber. A log which one of our western farmers would think nothing of consuming in a winter's evening, would bring quite a handsome sum in Paris on any winter day. The truth is, the economical traveler had better not spend his winter in Paris, for comfort at that time costs money. The houses admit such volumes of cold air, the windows are so loose and the doors such wretched contrivances, and that, too, in the best of French cities, that the stranger sighs for the comforts of home. Nowhere in the world is so much taste displayed as in Paris, in the furnishing of apartments. This is known as far as Paris is, but it is always the _outside appearance_ which is attended to, and nothing more. It is like the Parisian dandy who wears a fine coat, hat, and false bosom, but has no shirt. The homes of Paris are got up, many of them at least, upon this principle. The rooms are elegantly furnished, and in pleasant weather are indeed very pleasant to abide in, but let a cold day come, and they are as uncomfortable as can be, and the ten thousand conveniences which a New York or London household would think it impossible to be without, are wanting. The longest day in Paris is sixteen hours, the shortest eight. The cities of Europe are distant from it as follows: Brussels, one hundred and eighty-nine miles; Berlin, five hundred and ninety-three; Frankfort, three hundred and thirty-nine; Lisbon, one thousand one hundred and four; Rome, nine hundred and twenty-five; Madrid, seven hundred and seventy-five; Constantinople, one thousand five hundred and seventy-four; St. Petersburgh, one thousand four hundred and five. These places are all easily reached from Paris in these modern days of railways and steamers. The situation of Paris is much more favorable to health than that of London. London is a low plain--Paris is upon higher ground; yet London is the healthiest city. The reason is, that the latter is so thoroughly drained, and the tide of the Thames sweeping through it twice a day, carries away all the impurities of the sewers. Paris might surpass London in its sewerage easily, but as it is, some of its narrow streets in warm weather are fairly insupportable, from the intolerable stench arising in them. The population of Paris is considerably more than a million. The number of births in a year is a little more than thirty thousand, and of these, ten thousand are illegitimate. This fact speaks volumes in reference to the morals of Paris. The deaths usually fall short of the births by about four thousand. The increase of population in France is great, though it is now a very populous country. The increase in forty years is more than nine millions. The births in France in one year are about eight hundred and ninety-seven thousand, and the deaths eight hundred and sixty-five thousand. Of the births, more than seventy thousand are illegitimate. This fact shows that the morals of Paris, in one respect, are worse than those of the provinces. It is calculated that one-half of the inhabitants of Paris are _working_ men; the rest are men who live by some trade or profession, or have property and live upon it. Paris has more than eighty thousand servants, and at least seventy thousand paupers. The latter class, as a matter of course, varies with the character of the times; sometimes, a bad season enlarging the number by many thousands. There is an average population of fifteen thousand in the hospitals; five thousand in the jails; and at least, twenty thousand foundlings are constantly supported in the city. The annual number of suicides in France is nearly six thousand. Yet the French are a very gay people! The police regulations of Paris are very good, but not so good as those of London, though New York might learn from her many useful lessons. Rogues thrive better in Paris than in London. The Paris policeman wears no distinctive dress, and there are streets in which if you are attacked by night, your cries will call no officer to the rescue. The police have been proved often to be in league with bad men and bad women, and these cases are occurring from day to day. I should not like to walk alone on a winter's night, after midnight, anywhere for half a mile on the southern side of the Seine. Some of the streets are exceedingly narrow, and are tenanted by strange people. Still, one might have many curious adventures in them, and escape safely--but _La Morgue_ tells a mysterious tale every day of some dark deed--a suicide or a murder, perhaps. Getting lost after midnight in one of the narrow streets of Paris, is not particularly pleasant, especially if every person you meet looks like a thief. The police system of Paris is in one respect far more strict than that of London--in political matters. Every stranger, or native, suspected in the least of tendencies to republicanism, is continually watched and dogged wherever he moves. While in Paris, my whereabouts was constantly known to the police, and though I made several changes in my abode, I was followed each time, and my address taken; yet I was but an in offensive republican from America. A man must be careful to whom he talks of French despots, or despotism. For speaking against Louis Napoleon in an omnibus, a Frenchman was sentenced to two years imprisonment, and men have been exiled for a less offense. The police are everywhere to detect conspiracy or radicalism, but are more slack in reference to the safety of people in the streets. One pleasant feature of Paris is its great number of baths, public and private. The artisan who has little money to spare can go to the Seine any day, and for six cents take a bath under a large net roofing. A gentleman, to be sure, would hardly like to try such a place, but the working people are not particular. It is cheap, and in the hot weather it is a great luxury to bathe, to say nothing of the necessity of the thing. To take a bath in a first-rate French hotel is quite another matter. Every luxury will be afforded, and the price will be quite as high as the bath is luxurious. Pleasure trips are getting to be quite common in France, in imitation of the English, on a majority of the railways. The fares for these pleasure trips are very much reduced. I noticed the walls one day covered with advertisements of a pleasure trip to Havre and back for only seven francs. The second and third class carriages on the French railroads are quite comfortable, but the first are very luxurious. Trains run from Paris to all parts of the country, at almost all hours of the day and night. PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS. There is no city in the world so blessed with educational institutions of the first class as Paris, and no government fosters the arts and sciences to such an extent as the French government, whether under the administration of king, president, or emperor. The government constantly rewards discoveries, holds out prizes to students and men of genius. The educational colleges are without number, and the lectures are free. There is one compliment which the stranger is forced to pay the French government--it encourages a republicanism among men of genius in learning, the arts and sciences, if it does put its heel upon the slightest tendency toward political republicanism. And not Paris, or France alone, reaps the advantage of this liberality--the whole civilized world does the same. Go into the university region, and you will always see great numbers of foreigners who have come to take advantage of the public institutions of Paris. The English go there to study certain branches of medicine, which are more skillfully treated in the French medical schools than anywhere else in the world. Many young Americans are in Paris, at the present time, studying physic or law. The difference between the cost of education in England and France is great. Three hundred dollars a year would carry a French student in good style through the best French universities. To go through an English college five times that sum would be necessary. [Illustration: Palais de l'Institut.] The _Institut de France_ lies upon the southern branch of the Seine, just opposite the Louvre, which is north of the river. The _Institute_ is divided into five academies, and the funds which support the institution are managed by a committee of ten members, two from an academy, and the minister of public instruction, who presides over the committee. The academies are--first the _Academie Francaise_; second, the _Academie Royale des Inscriptions et Belle-Lettres_; third, the _Academie Royale des Sciences_; fourth, the _Academie Royale des Beaux Arts_; and fifth, the _Academie Royale des Sciences Morales et Politiques_. Members of one academy are eligible to the other four, and each receives a salary of three hundred dollars. The Institute has a library common to the five academies, the whole number of members amounting to two hundred and seventeen. If a member does not attend the proceedings and discussions, and cannot give a good reason for his absence, he is liable to expulsion. The _Academie Francaise_ consists of forty members, who are devoted to the composition of the dictionary and the purification of the French language. An annual prize is awarded of two thousand francs for poetry, a prize of ten thousand francs for the best work of French history and fifteen hundred francs is given every other year to some deserving but poor student, for his attainments. The Belle-Lettres Academy is composed of forty members, and ten free academicians--the latter receive no salary. It has many foreign associates or honorary members. Its members pursue the study of the learned languages, antiquities, etc. etc. A yearly prize of ten thousand francs is awarded by it for memoirs, and another for medals. The Academy of Sciences has sixty-five members, beside ten free academicians. It is divided into eleven sections, as follows: six members are devoted to geometry, six to mechanics, six to astronomy, six to geography and navigation, three to general philosophy, six to chemistry, six to minerology, six to botany, six to rural economy and the veterinary art, six to anatomy and geology, six to medicine and surgery. Prizes are awarded by this academy, yearly, for physical sciences, statistics, physiology, mechanics, improvements in surgery and medicine; for improvements in the art of treating patients, for rendering any art or trade less insalubrious, for discoveries, for mathematical studies, and also a prize to the best scholar in the Polytechnic school. The Academy of Fine Arts has forty members, who are divided into five sections--painting, sculpture, architecture, engraving, and musical composition. It awards prizes to the best students in the arts, and sends to the French Academy at Rome, free of all expense, the successful students, who are educated at the expense of the state. The Academy of _Sciences Morales et Politiques_ has thirty members, divided into the following sections: philosophy, moral philosophy, legislation, jurisprudence, political economy, history, and the philosophy of history. The building of the Institute is surmounted by a splendid dome, and it presents a striking appearance to the stranger. It immediately fronts the foot-bridge which crosses the Seine to the Louvre. The university of France it is supposed was founded by Charlemagne. It is a magnificent and truly liberal institution, and is under the authority of the minister of public instruction. It has five departments, an immense library and funds for aged or infirm teachers. The Academy of Paris consists of five faculties--science letters, theology, law, and medicine. In the department of sciences, which includes that of mathematical astronomy, Leverrier occupies a professor's chair--the man who demonstrated the existence of another planet by mathematical Calculations, and pointed out the place where it must be found. The Faculty of Law has seventeen professors. Four years of study are necessary to gain the highest honors, or the title of _Docteur en droit_. The Faculty of Medicine has twenty-six professorships, with salaries varying from two thousand to ten thousand francs a year. Every student before taking his degree must serve the government one year, at least, in a hospital. This is an admirable regulation. The lectures are all gratuitous, and what is better still, they are open to the people and the world. Any foreigner can attend the course of lectures of the most celebrated men in France, and indeed in the world, for nothing. The law students number about three thousand; those studying medicine about three thousand; and those studying the sciences about fifteen hundred. Foreign students are admitted upon the same terms as French, and a diploma given by an American college, if it be of high repute, will put the student upon the same footing as a French _bachelier et lettres_ when the object is to study law or medicine. The College Royal has twenty-eight professors, who give gratuitous lectures on astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, medicine, chemistry, natural history, law, ethics, etc. etc. There is a college of Natural History, connected with the _Jardin des Plantes_, with fifteen professors. The _Ecole Normale_ is an institution for the education of students who intend to become candidates for professorships. There are in Paris besides these, five royal colleges where a student is boarded as well as educated. The charge for board is two hundred dollars a year; the additional charges, educational and otherwise, are only twenty dollars, which the published terms state, "_does not include music or dancing!_" Among the literary and scientific societies is the _Institut Historique_, where public and gratuitous lectures are given. A journal is published, and all that members pay for it, and the advantages of the institution, is about four dollars a year. There is a flourishing agricultural society, a society for the encouragement of national industry, one for the improvement of national horticulture, one for the civilization and colonization of Africa, one for the promotion of commercial knowledge, etc. etc. Besides the many colleges to which I have barely alluded, and the societies, there are twenty or thirty literary and scientific societies of note in Paris. It will not be necessary to be more particular to convince the reader that no other city in the world has the educational advantages of Paris. What a privilege it must be to a poor Parisian to live near such schools and colleges, we can at once perceive. If a young man has talents or genius, his poverty need be no bar to his advancement. He is taken up at once. He is not the charity student of America, for the very fact that without money and friends he has by sheer force of native genius made his way into the places given only to students poor and talented, adds to his fame, and he is quite as well if not better liked for it. What an advantage the many kinds of lectures, which are given to all who please to attend gratuitously, must be to all inquiring minds in Paris, we can feel at once. The artisan if he can spare an hour can listen to one of the most brilliant lectures upon history, either of the sciences, or medicine, side by side with the young aristocrat. Nothing higher in character is to be had in Paris or out of it than that which he listens to without cost. The effect of this vast system of public instruction is very great, and the influence of the colleges and learned societies upon society is wonderful. There is no spirit of exclusiveness, such as characterizes the English and some of the American colleges, and the people are not prejudiced against them. This system of instruction is almost perfect, _of its kind_ but France lacks one thing which America has--a system of common schools, which shall educate _the children_. Far better have this system and lack the one she has now, but if she only had our common school system together with her colleges and academies, she would surpass, by far, any other nation. America very much needs such a system. It is free, broad, and liberal, and with ordinary care will make any country glorious in the sciences and arts. Certainly until America cares less for mere cash and more for the arts and sciences, until she is generous enough to foster them and appropriate money to help young men of genius, and offer prizes to men of talent, the fine arts will not prosper with us. Only the arts which in a pecuniary sense _pay_, will thrive, and the rest will live a starveling life. Can we rest content with such a prospect? No country is better able to be generous in such matters than America. While in Paris I made the acquaintance of several students of law and medicine from America, and from them I learned that the professors in all the different institutions are exceedingly polite and kind to foreign students, and especially to Americans. Foreign diplomas are granted by the different colleges, and no difference is made between a native and a foreign scholar. The students of Paris are an intellectual class, and as a body are inclined at all times to be democratic. In England and in America learning seems always to incline to conservatism. The great schools and colleges are opposed to radicalism. This is generally true in America, in the old institutions of learning, and it is emphatically true of England. Cambridge and Oxford are the strong-holds of the blindest toryism. They are two hundred years behind the age. But in Paris this is not the case. The colleges are reformatory and radical. The Academies have the same disposition, only it is modified. Many of the members of the French academy are sincere republicans. I cannot account for this singular fact, unless it be that the French mind is so active and so brilliant that it easily arrives at the truth. A Frenchman, if he considers the matter of government and politics, very soon arrives at his conclusion--that man has rights, and that a form of government which comes least in collision with them is the best. It is entirely a matter of theory with him. Everything tends to theory. The practical is ignored. Hence, while Paris abounds with theoretical democrats and republicans, there are few men in it capable of administering the affairs of a democratic republic. [Illustration: HOTEL DES INVALIDES] The Hotel des Invalides is visited by a vast crowd of people, Parisians, provincials, and foreigners, for it is the final resting place of Napoleon the Great. It is an imposing structure, and aside from the interest felt in it as the receptacle of the remains of Napoleon, it is well worth a visit. It is situated on the south side of the Seine, not far from the chamber of deputies, its front facing the south. It presents a magnificent appearance from the street, perhaps the finest of any like building in Europe. It has long been a celebrated military hospital for the reception of disabled and superannuated soldiers. Under Louis XIV. the present hospital was instituted, and building after building was added, together with a fine church, until the vast pile covers sixteen acres of ground, and encloses fifteen courts. At the time of the revolution, the hospital was called the Temple of Humanity, under Napoleon the Temple of Mars, and now the Hotel des Invalides. It is under the control of the minister of war, has a governor and a multiplicity of inferior officers. It is divided into fourteen sections, over each of which an officer is appointed. All soldiers who are disabled, or who have served thirty years in the army, are entitled to the privileges of the institution, and are boarded, clothed, and lodged. For breakfast they have soup, beef, and vegetables, for dinner, meat, vegetables, and cheese. They have but two meals a day. They also receive pay at the rate of two francs a day, and the officers higher in proportion to their rank. Before the northern face of the building there is a large open space, in which many trophies of war are placed, and there are beds of flowers interspersed among them. On the southern front there is a fine statue of Napoleon. The library of the hospital contains fourteen thousand volumes, and is of course open to all the inmates. The church is a very important part of the great pile of buildings, and is filled with statues of great military men, trophies of different campaigns, etc. etc. The dome of this church is one of the finest in Paris, and is decorated in the interior in a gorgeous style. Beneath the dome lies the tomb of Napoleon, the great attraction of the place. It is, for a wonder, simple and massive in its style, and upon it are laid Napoleon's hat, sword, imperial crown, etc. etc. To this tomb thousands of admirers have come and will come to the latest generations, for whatever were the faults of the great military hero, he had the faculty of making passionate admirers. The old soldiers in the institution seem to regard the tomb as an object of adoration, and guard it as carefully as they would the living body of the hero. Across the Seine from the Hotel des Invalides, on the avenue des Champs Elysees, is the fashionable Jardin d'Hiver, a roofed garden of hot-houses, and which is open in winter as a flower-garden. The admittance is not free, but costs a franc. It often contains very fine collections of the costliest and rarest of plants and flowers. The French exquisites in the cold and chilly weather are fond of frequenting its exhibitions, and to the stranger who would like to see the higher classes of Paris, in a public garden, it is an interesting place. [Illustration: Jardin d'Hiver.] CHAPTER IX. GUIZOT--DUMAS--SUE--THIERS--SAND. [Illustration: M. GUIZOT.] M. GUIZOT Pierre Francois Guillaume Guizot, was born at Nismes in 1787. At the age of seven years he saw his own father guillotined during the reign of terror, and without doubt this fact made a deep impression upon his heart, and led him ever after instinctively to dislike the people and a popular government. His mother took refuge in Switzerland. She was a strong Calvinist, and from her the son imbibed his rigid Calvinistic sentiments. He had no youth, properly speaking, for he was apparently devoid of youthful feeling and passions. He was educated in the strict and formal school of Geneva, and his education, together with his nature, made him a stoic, a man with no sympathies for the people, lacking heart, possessing a great intellect, and rigidly honest. At the age of nineteen he left Geneva for Paris, to study law, and his poverty was such that he was obliged to seek employment. M. Stopper, an old minister of the Helvetic confederation, took him as a tutor for his children. His pride rebelled against his situation, for the children of the minister were spoiled, and whenever he went into the street they made him stop before every confectioner's shop to satisfy their depraved appetites. This he refused to do, and the children made loud complaints, the result of which was, that Guizot left his place, declaring that it was not his mission to buy candies for the minister's children! In endeavoring to teach these children the grammar of their language, M. Guizot made a _Dictionary of Synonymes_, which he sold to a bookseller for a reasonable price. This was his first attempt at authorship. He made the acquaintance of M. Luard, who was the chief censor of new books, before whom his little dictionary came. M. Luard discovering in the young Guizot great talents and capacity, prevailed upon him to give up writing of synonymes, and devote himself to more honorable and lucrative labors. Recommended by his friend, he wrote for nearly all the public journals in turn, giving them specimens of his cold, unimpassioned style, which was never after changed. He wrote _himself_ upon his paper, and like himself was his style--cold and dignified. But his style had admirers, though not many readers. He was accorded genius and an exalted intellect, but he was not loved. His first books were the _Annals of Education_, _Lives of the French Poets of the Age of Louis XIV._, and a translation of _Gibbon's Fall of the Roman Empire_. These volumes were noticed in a flattering manner by all scholars and critics, and the young author very soon occupied a high position in Paris. After this he did not seem to succeed, and he wrote a couple of pamphlets upon the condition of French literature and fine arts. He failed as a critic, and was appointed to the chair of modern history in the university. His political fortunes now commenced. His manners, his dress, which was severe in style, and his pale face, all combined to make him for the time a lion, and he drew crowds to his lectures. This was in 1812. M. Guizot was one of the first to foresee and prepare for the restoration. M. Guizot met in society a Mademoiselle Meulan, a literary woman of note, and fancied her. She was utterly poor, and during a severe fit of illness he wrote articles which she signed, and thus earned enough for her support. When she had recovered, she gave him her heart and hand in marriage, though she had not a _sou_ of dowry. She was older than he, but was a woman of many virtues. Madame Guizot was an intimate friend of the Abbe Montesquieu, who was the principal secret agent of Louis XVIII. As soon as Guizot was married, he was let into these secrets, and became private secretary to the abbe. He was in the habit of meeting the friends of the restoration every evening at a club, and he did not hesitate to take a bold part in its proceedings. Royer-Collard said to him after one of these meetings, "Guizot, you will rise high." Guizot demanded an explanation He replied, "You have ambition; you have much head but no heart; you will rise high. When the restoration comes the abbe will be minister, and he will make you secretary-general." Such was the fact eighteen months after. The Calvinistic religion of Guizot was no bar to his promotion, so long as his conscience permitted him to serve with unquestioned zeal his master, and he was never troubled on that score. The return of Napoleon from Elba was a sudden blow to the fortunes of Guizot, and he became the friend of the new minister, who kept him provisionally in office. He was suddenly dismissed, however, because, he declares, he would not sign an additional act to the constitution, but the minister denied this. He returned to Ghent, where in the _Moniteur_ he published bitter articles against Napoleon and his government. The columns were filled with criticisms of this nature. He endeavored afterward to disown some of these articles, but the authorship clung to him. Napoleon was vanquished, but Guizot continued to write books. Some of them were as follows: _"Some Ideas upon the Liberty of the Press;" "Of the Representative Government;" "Essay upon the state of Public Instruction."_ He was a _busy_ man--he was never idle. This is in his favor, and undoubtedly he honestly sought the good of the nation, though mixed with this desire there was a strong love of fame, and great ambition. He wrote a book upon the elections, and the king created a new department for him--that of director-general of the communes and departments. He made use of his position to extend his influence. He became chief of the doctrinaire school, which included many eminent men of that time, and acquired great political power. It occupied a kind of middle ground between the _ancien regime_ and pure liberalism. There came a reaction, and Guizot again took to his pen, leaving office and emolument. The king did not like his writings, and even his office of professor of history in the university was taken from him. He was a man who was not dejected through misfortune, and grew stronger as he was persecuted. His wife was taken very ill, and finally died. The Catholic priests endeavored to gain access to her bed-side, but were not permitted. She died a convert to Protestantism. Guizot was to her a good husband, but she always felt keenly the fact that she was older than her husband. He married a young and beautiful English woman, of whom he was passionately fond, if so cold a man ever possessed passions. His first wife, it is said, knew who was to succeed her. He now wrote a _History of Representative Government_, in which he gave the administration repeated blows. He issued new books often enough to keep his name constantly before the public, and these volumes were loudly praised by the opposition journals. The administration modified its conduct toward him, and he again participated in public affairs. But he foresaw the great change which was coming, and this time made sure to make no blunders. Perhaps, indeed, it is probable that he was honest in desiring a government like that of Louis Phillippe--at any rate, he saw with great shrewdness the revolution, and profited by his foresight. Guizot became the minister of Louis Phillippe. He commenced a system of corruption which long after ruined his fortunes and those of his master. It is, perhaps, difficult to say who was the soul of this system--the king or the minister; but both were heartily in it and approved it, and M. Guizot, of course, is responsible for it. He did not forget his friends during his good fortune, but imitating Louis Phillippe, he gave place to all his old companions. His _valet de chambre_, even, was made _sous-prefet_, but this appointment raised such a storm that the king made a change in the ministry. But during his short retirement from office he never for a moment lost the ear of his royal master, who well knew the capabilities of the man--and too well to spare his services for any great length of time. The two men were suited to each other, and united their fortunes. The queen was conscious of Guizot's ambition, and it is said spoke of it to the king. But Louis Phillippe could not have expected pure devotion without hope of reward. He ruled through bribery, and could not blame a minister for being animated in his service by personal considerations. The plan of Guizot seemed to be to buy up all malcontents who could not be awed into subjection, or in fact, all who were _worth_ buying. This corrupt system he carried as far as it was possible, and avoid too much scandal. He bought up constituencies for the king, and with his fellows he successfully silenced the opposition. One of his enemies was M. Thiers, who constantly persecuted him through a long course of years. The bearing of Guizot while minister, was dignified, calm, and indeed grand. He could never, by passionate attacks or bitter persecutions, be tempted into any undignified displays of temper. He was a stoic everywhere--in politics as well as in his religion, and at home. It is a singular fact that M. Guizot, who was a great minister of corruption, who bought votes by the wholesale, never allowed himself to profit pecuniarily, in the slightest degree, by his position. He did not amass a franc save by his honest earnings, and so well was his character known in this respect, that he was above all suspicion. He did not love money--but power. He was economical in his habits, caring nothing for idle pomp or extravagant show. While ambassador in London he walked the streets with a plain umbrella, instead of riding in his carriage, and such were his general habits of economy that he amassed a fine property. His second wife now died, and it is said that after the event, he carried on intrigues with women; it is certain that he was very susceptible to female beauty and accomplishments. He was thought fine-looking by the ladies, and did not lack admirers among them. It is said by his enemies that he greatly admires himself, and that his home abounds with portraits of himself from chamber to kitchen. It is also told of him, to illustrate his hatred of M. Thiers, that when he was ambassador in London, he would not receive his instructions from his enemy, who was the minister in power, but received secret notes from Louis Phillippe, and in the king's own hand. But the system adopted by the king and M. Guizot, ended in ruin. The latter saved himself by ignominious flight. He clothed himself as a peasant, and in this manner crossed the frontier. He afterward gave an eloquent description of his escape. So hurried was his departure from Paris, that he could not even bid his mother good-bye. He loved her fondly; indeed his affection for her was the strongest sentiment of his heart. It was the link which connected him with humanity. His mother set out to rejoin him in London, and died on the way. It was unquestionably the hardest trial, the most dreadful shock of his life, but he was true to his stoical nature, and manifested not the sign of an emotion when the news came to him. The king and the minister were together in England, in exile, but they did not visit each other. They had had both learned a lesson--that a system of corruption will in the end defeat itself. Since his flight to London, M. Guizot has written two or three works, but they have not had a marked success, and only prove that he clings tenaciously to his old conservative opinions. ALEXANDER DUMAS. [Illustration: Alexander Dumas.] Alexander Dumas, one of the most celebrated authors of France, was born on the 24th of July, 1802, in the village of Villars-Coterets. His grandfather, the marquis de la Pailletrie, was governor of the island of St. Domingo, and married a negress called Tiennette Dumas. Some declare that this woman was his mistress, and not his wife, but we will not pronounce upon this point. The marquis returned to France, bringing with him a young mulatto--the father of the subject of this sketch. The youth took the name of his mother, and entered the army as a private soldier. He soon achieved renown and rose step by step to the rank of general of a division. Under the empire, he died without fortune, leaving his son--Alexander Dumas--to the care of his widow, who was quite poor. Alexander commenced his studies under the Abbe Gregoire, who found it impossible to teach him arithmetic, and with great difficulty beat a little Latin into him. This arose, not from the boy's stupidity, but because he did not apply himself. He was exceedingly fond of out-door sports and exercise, and to such an extent did he follow his inclinations in this particular, that he laid the foundation for a vigorous health, that years of labor have never impaired. He was very handsome when a boy, with long, curling hair, blue eyes, and a skin a little tinged with the tropical hue, to denote his African descent. At the age of eighteen, he entered a notary's office in his native village, with the purpose of studying law. Leuven, exiled from Paris until the return of the Bourbons, resided in the village, and forming the acquaintance of young Dumas and noticing that he was ambitious, he counseled him to write dramas, and he would make money. Dumas followed his advice--wrote three, which were offered to the directors of the Paris theaters, and were each rejected by all. But Dumas was made of stuff of the better sort, and was not thus to be discouraged. Leuven soon returned to Paris, and Dumas longed to follow him there. But he was too poor. He formed a plan, however, of gaining his point, for he was anxious to see and know the actors of Paris, and with a fellow-clerk he set out on foot for the great city. The two young men were without money, but each carried a gun. They shot hares and partridges as they journeyed toward Paris, and sold them to dealers in game, and thus paid their expenses from day to day. Leuven received him with open arms, and gave the delighted youth a ticket to hear Talma. He was privileged to go behind the scenes between the acts, and converse with the actors. He was filled with delight. Talma saw him, and at once pronounced him a genius. In his memoirs, he declares that he said, "Alexander Dumas, I baptize you a poet, in the name of Shakspeare, Corneille, and Schiller. Return to your native village, enter your study, and the angel of Poesy will find you there, and will raise you by the hair, like the Prophet Habakkuk, and transport you to the spot where duty lies before you." Alexander soon came to Paris again, not this time supporting himself by his gun, but with money which his mother gave him. He had letters of recommendation to some of the old generals of the empire, and installed himself comfortably in the _Place des Italiens_. Some of the men to whom he had letters received him coldly, but in General Foy he found a warm friend and protector. He introduced him to the notice of the duke of Orleans, who finding that the young man possessed a good hand-writing, which, by the way, he preserves to this day, he made him one of his secretaries, and gave him a salary of twelve hundred francs. Alexander now considered himself on the high road to fortune. He was in Paris--and with a salary! It was small, to be sure, but he was where he could frequent the theaters, and his patron was a man of eminence. He had little to do, and read Shakspeare, Scott, Goethe, and Schiller. He said to General Foy, "I live now by my hand-writing, but I assure you that one day I will live by my pen." This shows that he looked forward to a literary life--that he foresaw, in a measure, his after success in literature. He soon began to write, and some of his plays were so well liked by the managers of different theaters, that they bought them and brought them out. He had already, while a secretary, begun to receive money for his writings. He wrote for his mother who came up to Paris, and the couple took up their residence in a humble apartment in the faubourg St. Denis. For a time after this, his efforts were attended with poor success, but he had the good fortune to please the director-general of the theaters by a tragedy, and he promised him that it should be brought out. Before this was done the director left for the east, and in his absence the man who took his place refused to bring out the play. Dumas made loud complaint. The censor asked him if he had money, and he replied that he had not a _sou_. He demanded of him what he depended upon for his support, Dumas referred to his salary of twelve hundred francs, as secretary to the duke of Orleans. The censor advised him to stick to his writing-desk. This was not only cruel, but very unjust treatment of an author of great promise. In this play, it is but right to state, Dumas exhibited the weakness which has almost uniformly characterized his career--that of plagiarism. His situations, and sometimes his language, were stolen from Goethe, Scott, etc., etc. His next play was entitled _Henry III._, and was brought out under the protection of the duke of Orleans. It was very successful, and he received for it the sum of fifty thousand francs. It was, like the play which preceded it, filled with stolen passages and scenes, but this did not detract from its success. He now left his humble lodgings and took up his residence in the Rue de l'University, where he lived in splendid style. He was not a man to hoard his money, but to enjoy it as it was earned. His life at this time was almost a ludicrous one. He lived in the most luxurious manner, dressed fantastically, and loved a great number of women. After the great success of _Henry III._, the play--_Christine_--which had previously been rejected, was brought forward with success. In the revolution of July Dumas acted bravely, and has himself told the story of his conduct with not a little boasting. He brought out the drama of _Napoleon Bonaparte_, and that of _Charles VII._, after Louis Phillippe was upon the throne. These dramas he had the fame of writing, but other persons wrote largely in them. He adopted the plan of employing good writers upon the different parts of a drama, and while himself superintending the whole and writing prominent parts, yet entrusting to his assistants a great portion of the composition. It was his genius which arranged the plot and guided the selection of characters, but the glory should have often been divided with his humbler co-laborers. Victor Hugo wrote a play which the censors would not allow to be brought out. He read it to Dumas. The latter soon issued a play which was so very like that of Hugo, that when sometime after the interdict was taken off from the play of Hugo, he was accused of stealing from Dumas. But the truth was easily to be proved--that Hugo's play was _first_ written--and Dumas declared in the public newspapers that if there was any plagiarism in anybody, himself was the guilty party! A new play now appeared which was principally written by assistants, and which was also defaced by plagiarisms. Like some of those which preceded it, it made light, indeed glorified, vices of the darkest dye. A person by the name of Gillardet wrote a play, and presented it to the manager of a theater, who not liking it, asked Jules Janin, the critic, to revise it. Not liking it any better after the work of Janin upon it, he handed it over to Dumas for a similar revision. He rearranged it and brought it out as his own play! M. Gillardet went to law upon the matter and recovered his rights. A duel was the result of the quarrel. Many plays after this were written, until at last Janin, the critic, wrote a severe article upon one of Dumas' plays. The author was wroth, and replied. Janin made a second attack, and Paris laughed at the author. Dumas swore that he would have blood, and author and critic went on to the field for combat. Dumas demanded to fight with the sword--Janin with the pistol--and finally not coming to agreement upon this point, the parties made up their quarrel and became friends. The reader will have seen by this time where Dumas' genius lies--it is in the arrangements for a drama--in working a subject up for the stage. It is not so much in the matter, as the manner. Give him incidents, and he will group them so as to produce a great effect. This is his power. Dumas' income grew large, and he took a new and more princely residence. He associated himself with the great, and even went so far as to take an actress to a ball given by his patron, the duke of Orleans. The woman acted in his plays, and his relations with her were too intimate, but he soon afterward married her. They lived so extravagantly that a separation soon followed, and though Dumas' income was two hundred thousand francs a year, yet he was constantly in debt from his astonishing extravagance. He built at St. Germain his villa of Monte Christo, which required enormous sums of money. He imported two architects from Algiers, to decorate at a great expense one room after the fashion of the east, and pledged them not to execute any similar work in Europe. He has twelve reception-rooms in his house, and it is magnificently furnished throughout. He keeps birds, parrots, and monkeys, and a collection of fine horses. From 1845 to 1846 he issued sixty volumes, the majority, of course, written _for_, not by him. As a matter of course, if these volumes sold successfully, his income was enormous, and his name upon the cover of a book seemed to insure its success. A theater was erected for the express purpose of representing his plays alone, called the Theater of History. He now visited Spain, and was present at the marriage of the duke of Montpensier. Coming home, he made a short tour in Africa, where he engaged in rare sports. He was accompanied by his son Alexander, who is a distinguished author. After the revolution of 1848 Dumas appeared among the people, who welcomed him as a pure democrat. He started a journal which soon died. A good story is told of him about this time. A great admirer said to him that there was a gross historical error in one of his romances. "Ah!" said Dumas, "in what book?" The volume and error were pointed out, when he exclaimed, "Ah! I have not read the book. Let me see--the little Augustus wrote it. I will cut his head off!" He got so rapidly in debt soon after' this, that he left France for Brussels. Monte Christo was seized to pay his debts. He broke off with one of the most eminent of his assistants, and since then, his romances and plays have lacked much of the interest and ability which they formerly possessed, and he is not regarded to-day as he once was in Paris. This may be owing in part to the sickly condition of literature under the despotism of Louis Napoleon. In his personal appearance he is burly; he has large, red cheeks, his hair is crisped and piled high upon his forehead. His eyes are dark, his mouth a sensuous one; his throat is generally laid bare, and in short, he is a good looking man. It is said that he has thought of visiting the United States, and would do so, were it not for the prejudice against color in America. EUGENE SUE. [Illustration: EUGENE SUE.] Marie-Joseph Sue, was born on the first day of January, 1801, in Paris. His family was from Provence. His great-grandfather, Pierre Sue, was a professor of medicine in the faculty of Paris, and was the author of several excellent works, but died poor. His grandfather was not a learned man, but was exceedingly wealthy. He was physician to the family of Louis XVI. His father was professor of anatomy, and was appointed by Napoleon surgeon of the Imperial Guard, and was, later, physician to the family of Louis XVIII. He was married three times, and his wives each bore him children. The second wife was the mother of the great novelist, and she died soon after giving birth to her child. The Prince Eugene and the Empress Josephine stood sponsors at the baptism of the child, and in after life he relinquished his two given names for that of Eugene--after the prince--by which he is now universally known. While at school, Eugene and an intimate companion were noted for the mischief they wrought. One of their mischievous acts was, to raise Guinea pigs and then turn them loose in the botanical garden of the elder Sue, where, of course, they destroyed many of the plants. A tutor was engaged to school the refractory boys--one that was very poor, and who dreaded above all things else, to lose his situation. Whenever the tutor required that the boys should study their Latin, they threatened him with a dismissal from his place, and so intimidated him by this and other means, that he was content to let them alone. The elder Sue asked him how the boys progressed in their Latin. He was compelled to reply that they were excellent scholars, whereupon the old gentleman demanded a specimen of the Latin they had acquired. They at once manufactured a torrent of atrocious sentences, and palmed them off upon him as genuine Latin, he not knowing enough to detect the imposition, but the remorseful tutor had to listen to it in silence! The father was delighted. The elder Sue was a very easy, good-natured man, but had no learning, though he was reckoned a _savan_ of the first water. Eugene knew this, and wickedly took advantage of it. His father--the doctor--was in the habit of delivering a course of botanical lectures to a circle of very select ladies, and Eugene suspected that his father, notwithing his voluble discourse, had little knowledge of botany. He, therefore, with one or two of his companions, took occasion (as it was their task to prepare plants and flowers in vases, with their names written upon the vases for examination) to insert new and unheard of names to puzzle the old man. He entered the hall one day, smiling to the ladies on either hand, and stood before them. He took up a vase, and for an instant was staggered by the name, but it would not do to let his ignorance be known, so he very coolly said, "This, ladies, is the _concrysionisoides_." He hemmed a little, and then for more than an hour descanted upon the character and nature of the fabulous plant, it is needless to add, fabricating all the way through. Eugene was unkind enough not only to enjoy the scene, but to go and tell the ladies of the joke. About this time, the since celebrated Dr. Veron became a fellow-pupil of Sue's, and made the fourth of this band of youthful jokers. They were now assistant surgeons in one of the Paris hospitals. Eugene one day made the discovery that in his father's cabinet there was an apartment in which he kept a very choice collection of wines, which were presents from the allied sovereigns, when they were in Paris. There were among others, sixty bottles of delicate Johannisberg, a present from Prince Metternich. The students soon found the way, led by Eugene, to this wine, and drank time after time. The question came up as to what should be done with the bottles. Eugene proposed that the empty ones be concealed, but Dr. Veron remarked that their absence would bring detection. So a plan was hit upon which was far better--the bottles were half-filled with wine and then water was added. The doctor was fond on great occasions of bringing out this old wine and telling the story connected with it, and drinking a few bottles. He thus ordered it on the table one day, and prepared his guests to expect a remarkable wine. They drank in silence, while the doctor exclaimed, "Delicious!--but _it is time it was drunk_." Eugene was present and drank his wine and water without any emotion. But not long after, while the students were drinking the pure wine, the old doctor entered the cabinet and caught them at their wicked work. It was an act never to be forgotten by him, and he was astounded beyond measure. About this time he also discovered that Eugene had been borrowing money at usurious interest to pay debts he had contracted, and he was so indignant that he ordered him to leave his house. Eugene joined the army and went to Spain. His father became anxious for his safety, and had him attached to the staff of the duke of Augouleme. But young Sue took good care not to expose himself to much danger. He passed through the siege of Cadiz, the taking of Trocadero, and returned to Paris in safety. His father was delighted to see him, and received him kindly. But the doctor did not open his purse. Young Sue found his old companion faring sumptuously, being attached to a liberal man named De Forges, who also supplied Sue occasionally with money. Dr. Veron drove a fine horse and tilbury, and Sue was not content until he could do the same. He applied to the Jewish money-lenders, who replied that if he would sell a lot of wines for them, they would allow him a handsome commission. As a last resort he sold the wine, and procured a fine horse and phaeton. Driving out one day very rapidly in the streets, he ran down a pedestrian, and looking at the unfortunate man he discovered that it was his own father! The old man was exceedingly angry and caned him on the spot. He demanded an explanation of his son for this apparent wealth, and commanded him at once to go to Toulon and enter the military hospital there, in the practice of his profession. In Toulon his personal appearance was so fascinating that the women fell in love with him, and he carried on many shameful intrigues. In 1825 he returned to Paris, and found an old friend of his the director of a little journal. He commenced writing articles for this little journal, some of them light and others of a _spirituel_ character, which were highly admired. In Paris he was also given to intrigues with women. In 1826 he made many aristocratic conquests, and frequented the home of a celebrated female novelist. In his first romances, his high-born mistresses figure as his principal characters. The elder Sue now formally declared that he would pay no more debts of his son, and he was again reduced to poverty. He had recourse to the Jews, who lent him money upon his expectations from his grandfather. He plunged again into extravagance, and this time his father placed him as surgeon in the navy, and in this capacity he made voyages round the world. Soon after his return, his maternal grandfather died, and his father a little later left him a large fortune, and he commenced a life of gorgeous extravagance and sensuality, which has often been described. From 1831 to 1833, he published a series of sea-romances, which had a great success, and the French critics called him the French Cooper. He was very proud, frequented the most gay and fashionable circles, and assumed airs above his station. He was, however, one day excessively mortified by the sarcastic allusion of one of his noble friends to the business or profession of his father. He once more tried the pen to achieve a name for himself, and this time in history. For the Naval History of France which he wrote, he received eighty thousand francs, an enormous price for a poor book. The more renown he acquired, the less pains he took with his books, but he always made good any losses incurred by publishers in publishing his works. Finding himself in years, he bethought himself of marriage, and turned his attention to a relative of Madam de Maintenon, who refused him upon the pretext of the disparity in their ages. He had his revenge in writing against marriage, and against all aristocracies in his romances. His _Mysteries of Paris_ appeared in the _Debats_, and the _Wandering Jew_ in the _Constitutionel_. He endeavored through his fiction to teach Socialistic doctrines, and so far carried them into practice that he appeared in the streets in a blouse. There can be no question that his later novels were written with a far higher aim than the early ones, which were reeking with a refined, yet none the less loathsome sensuality. An enormous price was paid for the _Wandering Jew_ by the editor of the _Constitutionel_, who was none other than his old companion of the wine-closet--Dr. Veron. The latter made a bargain with the author to write ten small volumes a year for fourteen consecutive years, for which he agreed to pay one hundred thousand francs a year, or nearly a million and a half for the whole engagement. He presented Dr. Veron with the manuscript of the _Seven Capital Sins_, when the worthy editor found himself drawn to the life, under the title of the Gourmand. He protested against it, but Sue pleading the bargain, would not abate one sentence. Dr. Veron would not, of course, publish it, and finally the contract was annulled. The Gourmand--Dr. Veron--was published in the _Seicle_, and the others of the _Capital Sins_, were published in the _Presse_. Sue had at this time a splendid chateau in the environs of Orleans--the chateau des Bordes. Here he lived in great luxury and splendor. In the days of the republic he was elected a member of the legislative assembly, which office at first he was backward in assuming. In 1852 Sue sold his Orleans property, and removed to a beautiful place in Savoy, where his life was described as follows: "He rises in the morning and receives from a servant a long bamboo cane, and walks in the region of his house until breakfast. A pretty house-keeper waits upon him while he partakes of a sumptuous meal, and when it is finished, he enters his study to write. The servant presents him with a spotless pair of kid gloves in which he always writes. At each chapter a new and perfumed pair is presented him. He writes five or six hours steadily, without correcting or reading. His income is from sixty to eighty thousand francs a year from these writings. After laborious writing, Sue makes his toilet in the best style, and prepares for dinner, which is everything that an epicure might desire. After dinner he mounts a fine horse and rides among the hills which surround his home, until his digestion is completed. He returns, smokes tobacco from an amber pipe, and enjoys himself at his leisure." Of Eugene Sue's character it is, perhaps, needless for me to make any criticisms. He has many admirers in all parts of the world--and also many enemies. That he is a romancer of astonishing powers nobody will deny, but we well may question the use he has made of those powers. Nearly all of his earlier romances are unfit for the eyes of pure men and women, and now that he is dead, let us hope that they too will perish. In later years, M. Sue has endeavored to advocate the cause of the poor, and with great eloquence, in his fictions. But he has probably caused as much harm by the licentiousness of his style, as he has accomplished good by his pleas for the poor. It is stated that he has given very liberally to the poor, and in practice exemplified his doctrine. His books give an indication of the present fashionable morality of Paris and France, and though they have sold largely in America, their influence cannot be good. M. THIERS [Illustration: M. THIERS.] M. Thiers has figured prominently in French politics, was a minister of Louis Phillippe, and is a historian. He is a man of a singular nature, witty and eccentric, rather than profound and dignified, and it will not do to pas him by without a notice. He was born in Marseilles, in the year 1797. His father was a common workman, but his mother was of a commercial family which had been plunged into poverty by a reverse of fortune. The young Thiers was educated through the bounty of the state, at the school of Marseilles, and was, when a boy, known principally for his rogueries. He sold his books to get apples and barley-sugar. Punishments seemed never to have any terror for him. At one time he concealed a tom-cat in his desk in the school, with its claws confined in walnut shells, and suddenly in school hours let him loose, to the great astonishment and anger of his teachers. He was condemned to a dungeon for eight days, and received a terrible reprimand. The effect of either the lecture or the imprisonment was decided. He became docile and obedient, and paid attention to his studies. For seven years he studied with unremitting attention, and during all that time took the first prizes of his class. He now went to Aix to study law, where his old habits returned to him, and he became wild and mischievous in his ways. At eighteen Adolphe Thiers was a favorite with the liberals and a terror to the royalists, and was the leader of a party at Aix. He already showed fine powers of oratory and composition, which later conducted him to power. He spoke and wrote in the interest of the enemies of the restoration. He wrote for the newspapers whose columns were open to him, and increased the vigor and eloquence of his style by this constant practice. There was at Aix an academy which awarded prizes to the best writers upon given subjects. Thiers wrote for the prize, but was foolish enough to reserve a copy of his treatise and read it to his companions, who loudly proclaimed that he must win. The persons who were to award the prizes were royalists, and hated Thiers for his liberalism, and when they heard the vauntings of Thiers' friends, they were prepared to decide against him, which they did when the day of examination came. The prize was reserved, and another trial was instituted. Thiers put in his old treatise, and this time the judges awarded to it the second prize, and gave _the first_ for a treatise which came to them from Paris. Judge of their chagrin when they found that this treatise was written by Thiers! The little student had fairly taken them in his net. Great were the rejoicings of the liberals in Aix. Among the friends of Thiers was Mignet, since a historian, and the young men full of hope came together to Paris, where, poor as they were hopeful, they took lodgings in a miserable street. Mignet determined to follow literature and by it gain a living and fame, but Thiers resolved upon intrigue. He made himself known to the liberal leaders, and with great tact exhibited his abilities. He was instantly offered employment of various kinds, and chose that of editor. He took charge of the _Constitutionel_, and plunged into the heat and strife of party politics. His witty, hornet-like nature fitted him well for the position. He attained great influence and power, and the great men of the time, even Talleyrand, came to him, while he exclaimed bombastically and blasphemously, "Suffer little children to come unto me." He went into society, made the acquaintance of the old men of the revolution, and gathered the materials for the _History of the Revolution_, which afterward carried him to the height of his popularity. He fought two duels about this time--one with the father of a young lady whom he had seduced. He started a new journal called the _National_, which should be more fully under his control than the _Constitutionel_ had been, and which should entirely meet his views of what a journal should be. But the new journal seriously offended the government, the officers of which attempted to put it down, for on the morning of the 26th of July, they nearly destroyed the presses of the establishment. The opposition journalists had a meeting to express their opinions upon this outrage upon the rights of the press. During the three troublous days of fighting, Thiers left Paris for the suburbs, and came back in time to make his fortune, for he was soon named secretary-general to the government. He had the principal management of the finances, which at that time were in a state of great disorder. Thiers delivered a public speech upon the law of mortgages, and Royer-Collard approached him with open arms, exclaiming, "Your fortune is made!" In the meantime, M. Thiers, as the holidays were approaching, thought it wise to run down to Aix, which he represented in the chamber of deputies. Since he was last there he had changed his course upon many of the important questions of the day. Formerly he was extremely liberal, but for the sake of power he had deserted the cause of Poland and Italy. He let the inhabitants of Aix know that he was coming, that no excuse might be wanting for a grand reception. Surely the people of Aix would feel proud of their fellow-citizen who had been so highly honored by the government! He arrived before the gates of the town and was surprised at the silence everywhere. No crowd came out to greet him--the people were about their business. A few officials alone met and welcomed him back to the scene of his early triumphs. He went to his hotel, and when night came, it was told him that crowds of people were gathered in the street below. He went to the window--ah! now the people were come to do him honor! What was his chagrin to hear the multitudes commence a serenade of the vilest description. Tin horns were blown, tin pans were pounded, and every species of execrable noise was made, and M. Thiers came to the conclusion that the people of Aix did not admire his late political conduct. To satisfy him, the leaders cried aloud, "Traitor to Poland, to Italy, and France!" He was satisfied, and hurried back to Paris, where Louis Phillippe met him, and as if to console him for his reception in Aix, gave him a portfolio--and he was the king's minister. One of his first acts was to destroy the character of the duchess of Berri, who pretended that the French throne belonged to her son. Louis Phillippe gave him almost unlimited power to accomplish this object, and he set to work coolly and with deliberate calculation. It is said he bribed an intimate friend of the duchess, who knew where she was, with a million of francs to betray her, and she was thrown into prison. Once there, he found means to ruin her fame and destroy her influence, though the measures he took excited the indignation of France. He extorted from her a secret confession, under the promise that it should always remain strictly secret, and then coolly published it in the government organ. Under M. Thiers the finances of the country improved, and many of the public works were completed. The splendid Quai d'Orsay and the Place Vendome were finished, and the Madeleine begun. At the ceremonies which attended the inauguration of the column upon the Place Vendome, a good thing was said in the ears of the minister by a Parisian wit. Thiers was at the foot of the column--the statue of Napoleon at the top. The height of the column is one hundred and thirty-two feet. Said the wit aloud, "There are just one hundred and thirty-two feet from the ridiculous to the sublime!" But M. Thiers was not in reality a ridiculous man. Under his management France saw prosperity. He developed its resources and exhibited great abilities. He was constantly subjected to attacks from his old radical associates and he deserved them. The great quarrel of his life, however, was with Guizot. These two men were constantly by the ears with each other, and the king gave one a certain office and the other another. He changed these officers from time to time, until at last both saw that one alone must triumph. Guizot was the triumphant man, and Thiers fell. He became more radical as he lost office, and published (in 1845) two volumes of his _History of the Consulate_. They had a splendid success; he sold the whole work for five hundred thousand francs--an enormous price. But the concluding volumes were not forthcoming, and the publisher demanded them--but in vain. For the last thirty years M. Thiers has lived in a beautiful house in the place Saint Georges. He is wealthy, and has always lived in good style. It is currently reported that M. Thiers has been guilty of treating certain members of his family with great meanness, and in society many scandalous stories have been repeated illustrating his miserly economy. When the revolution of 1848 broke out, M. Thiers ran away from Paris, but afterward returned, and has since lived a very quiet life. GEORGE SAND [Illustration: GEORGE SAND.] One of the most distinguished of the living writers of France is Madam Dudevant, or GEORGE SAND, which is her _nom de plume_. She is by no means a woman either after my ideal or the American ideal, but is a woman of great genius. Her masculinity, and, indeed, her licentious style, are great faults: but in sketching some of the most brilliant of French writers, it would not do to omit her name. The maiden name of George Sand was Amantine Aurore Dupin, and she is descended from Augustus the Second, king of Poland. Her ancestors were of king's blood, and the more immediate of them were distinguished for their valor and high birth. She was born in the year 1804. She was brought up by her grandmother, at the chateau Nahant, situated in one of the most beautiful valleys of France. The old countess of Horn, her grandmother, was a woman of brilliant qualities, but not a very safe guide for a young child. Her ideas were anti-religious, and she was a follower of Rousseau rather than of Christ. When Aurore was fifteen years old, she knew well how to handle a gun, to dance, to ride on horseback, and to use a sword. She was a young Amazon, charming, witty, and yet coarse. She was fond of field sports, yet knew not how to make the sign of the cross. When she was twenty years old she was sent to a convent in Paris, to receive a religious education. She loved her grandmother to adoration, and the separation cost her a great deal of suffering. She often alludes in her volumes to this grandparent, in terms of warm love and veneration. In her "_Letters of a Traveller_" she gives us some details of her life with her grandmother at the chateau de Nahant. She says: "Oh, who of us does not recall with delight the first, books he devoured! The cover of a ponderous old volume that you found upon the shelf of a forgotten closet--does it not bring back to you gracious pictures of your young years? Have you not thought to see the wide meadow rise before you, bathed in the rosy light of the evening when you saw it for the first time? Oh! that the night should fall so quickly upon those divine pages, that the cruel twilight should make the words float upon the dim page! "It is all over; the lambs bleat, the sheep are shut up in their fold, the cricket chirps in the cottage and field It is time to go home. "The path is stony, the bridge narrow and slippery, and the way is difficult. "You are covered with sweat, but you have a long walk, you will arrive too late, supper will have commenced. "It is in vain that the old domestic whom you love will retard the ringing of the bell as long as possible; you will have the humiliation of entering the last one, and the grandmother, inexorable upon etiquette, will reprove you in a voice sweet but sad--a reproach very light, very tender, which you will feel more deeply than a severe chastisement. But when, at night, she demands that you account for your absence, and you acknowledge, blushing, that in reading in the meadow you forgot yourself, and when you are asked to give the book, you draw with a trembling hand from your pocket--what? _Estelle et Nemorin_. "Oh then the grandmother smiles! "You regain your courage, your book will be restored to you, but another time you must not forget the hour of supper. "Oh happy days! O my valley Noire! O Corinne! O Bernardin de Saint Pierre! O the Iliad! O Milleroye! O Atala! O the willows by the river! O my departed youth! O my old dog who could not forget the hour of supper, and who replied to the distant ringing of the bell by a dismal howl of regret and hunger!" In other portions of her books George Sand refers to her early life, and always in this enthusiastic manner. Her grandmother exercised no surveillance upon her reading--she perused the pages of Corinne, Atala, and Lavater, and the two former would raise strange dreams in the head of a girl only fourteen years old. She read everything which fell in her way. In reading Lavater's essays upon Physiogomy, she noticed the array of ridiculous, hideous, and grotesque pictures, and wished to know what they were for. She saw underneath them the words--drunkard--idler--glutton, etc. etc. She very soon remarked that the drunkard resembled the coachman, the cross and meddling person the cook, the pedant her own teacher, and thus she proved the infallibility of Lavater! Once, when in the convent at Paris, she was misled by the poetry of Catholicism, and abandoned herself to the highest transports of religious fervor. She passed whole hours in ecstasy at the foot of the altar. This shows the susceptibility of her imagination. About this time her grandmother died, and she left the convent to close the eyes of her much-loved grandparent. She returned, with the full determination of becoming religious. All the authority of her family was required to break this resolution, and, six months after, to prevail upon her to marry M. le baron Dudevant, the man they had sought out to be her husband. He was a retired soldier and a gentleman farmer. The union was a very unhappy one. She was sensitive, proud, and passionate, while he was cold, and entirely swallowed up in his agricultural pursuits. The dowry of Aurore amounted to one hundred thousand dollars, and this money M. Dudevant spent with a lavish hand upon his farm, but bestowed little attention upon his wife. At first she endured this life, for two children were given to her to alleviate her sorrows. But finding her lot grow more sad, and her health failing, she was ordered to taste the waters of the Pyrenees, whither she went, but without her husband. She rested at Bordeaux, and there made her entrance into society, through some kind friends residing in that city. She was received with praises. A wealthy shipping merchant fell deeply in love with her; she did not give way to it, however, but returned to her family, where she found no affection to welcome her. Jules Sandeau, a student of law, spent one of his vacations at the chateau Nahant, and was the first person who turned Madame Dudevant's attention to literary pursuits. He returned to Paris profoundly in love with the lady, though he had not dared to mention it. M. Nerard, a botanist, came also to the chateau, to give lessons to M. Dudevant, and his wife was charmed with him, and they spent happy hours together. But in time love grew out of the intimacy--a love which of course was wicked, but which according to French ideas, was innocent. The husband was justly suspicious, and a voluntary separation took place, he retaining all her property in exchange for her liberty, which he gave her, and she set out for Bordeaux. She recounts a part of her subsequent history in "_Indiana_." She found her lover in Bordeaux, but he had changed, and was on the eve of marriage, and she went to Paris. She returned to the same convent where she had spent a part of her youth, to weep over her lot. She soon left the convent for an attic in the Quai St. Michel, where Jules Sandeau, the law-student, soon discovered her. She was in very destitute circumstances, and Sandeau was also very poor. She knew a little of painting, and obtained orders of a toyman to paint the upper part of stands for candlesticks, and the covers of snuff-boxes. This was fatiguing but not remunerative, and they wrote to the editor of the _Figaro_ newspaper. He replied, and invited them to visit him at his home, where he received them with kindness. When Aurore spoke of her snuff-boxes, he laughed heartily; "but," said he to Sandeau, "why do not you become a journalist? It is less difficult than You think." Sandeau replied, "I am too slow for a journalist." "Good!" replied Aurore; "but I will help you!" "Very good!" replied the editor; "but work, and bring me your articles as soon as you can." Madame Dudevant laid aside her pencil and took up the pen--not to lay it down again. She commenced a series of articles which puzzled the Parisian press. The editor liked them, but desired that she should try her hand at romance. In about six weeks Madame Dudevant and Jules Sandeau had completed a volume entitled "_Rose and Blanche, or the Comedian and the Nun_;" but they could find no publisher. The editor came to their aid, and persuaded an old bookseller to give them four hundred francs for the manuscript. When the book was to be published, they deliberated upon the name of the author. _She_ disliked the scandal of authorship--_he_ feared his father's curse; and the editor advised that the name of the law-student should be divided, and no friend would recognize the name. So the story came out as written by Jules Sand. The young people thought their fortunes made--that the four hundred francs were inexhaustible. Madame Dudevant now adopted a man's costume for the first time, that she might go to the theater with advantage--at least this was her excuse. The young couple visited the theater at night, and Sandeau slept the days away. The money soon was gone, and Madame Dudevant in her new extremity was advised to return to the chateau Nahant, and endeavor to get a legal separation from her husband, and an annual allowance. When she set out, she left with Sandeau the plan of "_Indiana_." They were to divide the chapters of the new story; but when she came back he had not written a line of his task. To his great surprise Aurore put into his hands the whole of the manuscript of the book. "Read," said she, "and correct!" He read the first chapter, and was full of praise. "It needs no revision," he said; "it is a master-piece!" He then declared that as he had not written any of the book, he would not allow the common name to be used. She was greatly troubled, and had recourse to the editor. He proposed that she still keep the name of Sand, but select another first name. "Look in the calendar," said he; "to-morrow is the day of St. George; take the name of George--call yourself George Sand!" And this is the origin of that distinguished name. "_Indiana_" was purchased for six hundred francs, but it sold so well that the publisher afterwards gave her a thousand francs more. The editor of _Figaro_ put two of his critics upon the book to review it. They both condemned it as mediocre and without much interest. But the book had a wonderful success, and Paris was thrown into a state of excitement about the author. The journals added fuel to the fire by their remarks and criticisms, and at once Madame Dudevant was a great authoress. She took elegant apartments, where she received the artists and authors of the gay city, herself arrayed in a man's costume, and she astonished her male friends by smoking and joking with them like a man. She was known only by the name of George Sand, and preferred to be called simply George. She walked the Boulevards in a close fitting riding coat, over the collar of which fell her dark, luxuriant curls. She carried in one hand her riding whip and in the other her cigar, which from time to time she would raise to her mouth. Jules Sandeau was forgotten, and fled to Italy. In after years George Sand bitterly repented her neglect of this friend, and she has written very touchingly in one of her books her repentance. She now wrote two or three other stories which were caught up eagerly by the publishers. She wrote against the institution of marriage and the critics at once attacked her, and with justice. Story followed story from 1835 to 1837--each filled with passionate, magnificent writing, and selling with great rapidity. Her style was brilliant and elegant, and appealed to the French taste with great success. In 1836 George Sand assumed her old name, that she might demand from her husband her fortune and children. It was proved upon trial that he had treated her with brutality in the presence of her children, and in her absence had lived shamefully, and the judge gave back to Madame Dudevant her children and her fortune. The children accompanied their mother to Paris, where she superintended their education. She now became intimate with M. Lamnenais and went so far as to repudiate the bad sentiments of many of her books. An end however soon came to her friendship for Lamnenais, and they separated in anger, and hating each other heartily. She now wrote and published several Socialistic novels, which met with a poor sale in comparison with that of some of her previous works. In fact, for the last ten years, her works have been decreasing in sale. In the revolution of 1848, George Sand took side with the republicans. At present she resides almost entirely at the chateau Nahant, where she has erected a little theater in which her pieces (for she wrote for the stage) are acted previous to their being brought out in Paris. Her income is from ten to twelve thousand francs a year, and her life is pleasant and patriarchal. She gathers the villagers round her, invites them to her table, and instructs them. She once took into her house a woman covered with leprosy, who was cast off by all others, and with her own hand ministered to her wants, dressed her sores, and nursed her until she was cured. George Sand lives in a plain style, clinging to everything which recalls her early life and her love of early friends. She sleeps but five or six hours. At eleven the breakfast bell rings. Her son Maurice presides at the table in her absence. She eats little, taking coffee morning and evening. The most of her time she devotes to literary labors. After breakfast she walks in the park; a little wood bordering upon a meadow is her favorite promenade. After half an hour's walk she returns to her room, leaving everyone to act as he pleases. Dinner takes place at six, which is a scene of more careful etiquette than the breakfast table. She walks again after dinner, and returns to the piano, for she is fond of music. The evening is spent in pleasant intercourse with her guests. Sunday is given up to a public theatrical representation for the people. Such is a specimen of the life of this woman. CHAPTER X. PURE LA CHAISE--PRISONS--FOUNDLINGS--CHARITABLE INSTITUTIONS--LA MORGUE--NAPOLEON AND EUGENIA--THE BAPTISM. PERE LA CHAISE. Pere la Chaise is not a cemetery which suits my taste, but it is unquestionably the grandest in all France, and I ought not to pass it by without a few remarks upon it. I visited it but once, and then came away displeased with its magnificence. It seems to me that a cemetery should not be so much a repository of art, as a place of great natural beauty and quiet, where one would long to rest after "life's fitful fever." The cemetery is beyond the eastern limits of the city, upon the side of a hill which commands a very fine view of the country, and is surrounded by beautiful hills and valleys. It was much celebrated in the fourteenth century, and during the reign of Louis XIV. Pere la Chaise resided upon the spot, and for a century and a half it was the country-seat of the Jesuits. Hence its name. It was purchased by the prefect of the Seine for one hundred and sixty thousand francs, for a cemetery, it then containing forty-two acres of ground. It was put into competent hands, and was very much improved by the planting of trees, laying out of roads, etc. etc. In 1804 it was consecrated, and in May of that year the first grave was made in it. It is now filled with the graves of some of the most distinguished men of Paris and France, and is by far the most fashionable cemetery in France. It is distinguished for the size, costliness, and grandeur of its monuments. There are temples, sepulchral chapels, mausoleums, pyramids, altars, and urns. Within the railings which surround many of the graves, are the choicest of flowers, which are kept flourishing in dry seasons by artificial supplies of water. A canal conducts water from a distance to the cemetery. The day was fine, the sky cloudless when I visited the spot, and though I could not but contrast it with Mount Auburn near Boston, or Greenwood near New York, yet I was much impressed with the natural beauty of the situation. Art is, however, too profusely displayed upon the spot, and the original beauty is covered up to a certain extent. The gateway struck me as being rather pretentious. Passing through it and by the guardian's lodge, which is at its side, one of the first spots I sought was the grave of Abelard and Heloise. The stranger always asks first for it, and visits it last when returning from the cemetery. It is the most beautiful monument in the cemetery. It consists of a chapel formed out of the ruins of the Abbey of Paraclete, which was founded by Abelard, and of which Heloise was the first abbess. It is fourteen feet in length, by eleven in breadth, and is twenty-four feet in height. A pinnacle rises out of the roof in a cruciform shape, and four smaller ones exquisitely sculptured stand between the gables. Fourteen columns, six feet high, support beautiful arches, and the cornices are wrought in flowers. The gables of the four fronts have trifoliate windows, and are exquisitely decorated with figures, roses, and medalions of Abelard and Heloise. In the chapel is the tomb built for Abelard by Peter the Venerable, at the priory of St. Marcel. He is represented as in a reclining posture, the head a little inclined and the hands joined. Heloise is by his side. On one side of the tomb, at the foot, are inscriptions, and in other unoccupied places. I lingered long at this tomb, and thought of the singular lives of that couple whose history will descend to the latest generations. It seemed strange that two lovers who lived in the middle of the twelfth century, should, simply by the astonishing force of their passions, have made themselves famous "for all time." It seemed wonderful that the story of their love and shame should have so burned itself into the forehead of Time, that he carries it still in plain letters upon his brow, that the world may read. It shows how much the heart still controls the world. Love is the master-passion, and so omnipotent is it, that yet in all hearts the story of a man or woman who simply _loved each other_ hundreds of years ago, calls forth our tears to-day, as if it occurred but yesterday. Bad as Abelard's character must seem to be to the careful reader--cruel as was his treatment of Heloise--he must have had depths of love and goodness of which the world knew not. Such a woman as Heloise could not have so adored any common man, nor a wonderful man who had a hard heart. She saw and knew the recesses of his heart, and pardoned his occasional acts of cruelty. Having known what there was of good and nobleness in his nature, she was willing to die, nay, to live in torture for his sake. The tomb is constantly visited, and flowers and immortalities are heaped always over it. Had it no history to render the spot sacred, the beauty of the monument alone would attract visitors, and I should have been repaid for my visit. The French, who magnify the passion of love, or pretend to do so, at all times above all others keep the history of Abelard and Heloise fresh in their hearts. One of the best monuments in Pere la Chaise, is that erected in memory of Casimir Perier, prime minister in 1832. It consists of an excellent statue of the statesman, placed upon a high and noble pedestal. There is a path which winds round the foot of the slope, which is by far the most beautiful in the cemetery. It is full of exquisite views, and is lined with fine monuments. Ascending the hill west of the avenue, I soon was among the tombs of the great. One of the first which struck my eye was the column erected to the memory of viscount de Martignac, who is celebrated for the defense of his old enemy, the Prince Polignac, at the bar of the chamber of peers, after the 1830 revolution. Next to it, or but a short distance from it, I saw the tomb of Volney, the duke Decres, and the abbe Sicard, the celebrated director of the deaf and dumb school of Paris, and whose fame is wide as the world. Many others follow, each commemorating some great personage, but the majority of the names were unfamiliar to me. Among those which were known, were those of the Russian countess Demidoff. It is a beautiful temple of white marble, the entablature supported by ten columns, under which is a sarcophagus with the arms of the princes engraved upon it. Manuel, a distinguished orator in the chamber of deputies, and General Foy, have splendid monuments. Benjamin Constant has a plain, small tomb, as well as Marshal Ney. West of these tombs lie the remains of marchioness de Beauharnais, sister-in-law of the Empress Josephine. Moliere has also near to it a fine monument; La Fontaine a cenotaph with two bas-reliefs in bronze, illustrating two of his fables. Madame de Genlis has a tomb in this quarter. Her remains were transported here by Louis Phillippe. Laplace, the great astronomer, has a beautiful tomb of white marble. An obelisk is surmounted by an urn, which is ornamented with a star encircled by palm-branches. The marquis de Clermont has a fine monument--he who gallantly threw himself between Louis XVI. and the mob, to save his sovereign. In one part of the cemetery I noticed many English tombs, of persons, I suppose, who were residents of Paris, or who visiting it were stricken by death. One of the most superb monuments in the cemetery is that of M. Aguado, a great financier, but it smacks too strongly of money to suit my taste. He was a man of enormous wealth, therefore he has a magnificent monument. According to this method, the rich men of the world shall have monuments which pierce the skies, while the men of genius and of great and noble character, shall go without a slab to indicate their final resting-place. This plan of turning a cemetery into a field for the display of splendid marbles, is certainly not consonant with good taste. It is calculated that in forty years not less than one hundred millions of francs have been spent in the erection of monuments in Pere la Chaise, the number of tombs already amounting to over fifteen thousand. In 1814, when the allied forces were approaching Paris, heavy batteries were planted in Pere la Chaise, commanding the plain which extends to Vincennes. The walls had loop-holes, and the scholars of Alfort occupied it and defended it against three Russian attacks. The last was successful, and the Russians were masters of the field. The city of Paris capitulated that very evening, and the Russian troops encamped among the tombs. [Illustration: PARIS FROM MONTMARTRE.] [Illustration: COLUMN OF JULY 8--PLACE JUILLET.] In coming back from Pere la Chaise, I saw the Column of July, erected in memory of the victims of the July of the great revolution. Upon this spot the old Bastille stood, and the column indicates it. THE PRISONS. The public prisons of Paris are nine in number: for persons upon whom a verdict has not been pronounced, and against whom an indictment lies; for debt; for political offenses; for persons sentenced to death or the hulks; for criminals of a young age; for females; and for offenders in the army. In the penal prisons, the inmates are allowed books and the privilege of writing, but are all obliged to labor, each, if he wishes, choosing the trade in which he is fitted best to succeed. The men receive a pound and a half of bread per day, and the women a fraction less. The prison La Force is in the Rue du Roi de Sicile. The buildings of which it is composed were once the hotel of the duke de La Force--hence the name. It was converted into a prison in 1780. A new prison for prostitutes was erected about the same time, and was called La Petite Force. In 1830 the two prisons were united, and put under one management, and the whole prison is given up to males committed for trial. The prisoners are divided into separate classes; the old offenders into one ward, the young and comparatively innocent into another; the old men into one apartment, and the boys into another. The prisoners sleep in large and well ventilated chambers, and the boys have each a small apartment which contains a single bed. The prisoners have the privilege of working if they wish, but they are not obliged to do so, inasmuch as they are not yet _convicted_ of crime. There is a department for the sick, a bathing-room, a parlor, and an advocate's room, where the prisoners can hold conversations with their legal defenders. The number of prisoners is very great--ten thousand being under the annual average confined in the prisons. St. Lazare is a prison for women under indictment and those who have been sentenced to a term less than one year. One department of the prison, which is entirely separated from the rest, is devoted to prostitutes, and another distinct department is devoted to girls under sixteen years of age. Each department has its own infirmary, and a new plan has been adopted to stimulate the inmates to industry. They are allowed two-thirds pay for all the work they will perform in the prison. Every kind of manufacture is carried on in the prison--the preparation of cashmere yarn, hooks and eyes, etc. etc. The number confined in this prison in a year, is over ten thousand. The service of the prison is carried on by the sisters of charity. La Nouvelle Force is a new prison in a healthier quarter than La Force, and is used for the same purposes. It contains twelve hundred and sixty separate cells. Depot de Condemnes is in the Rue de la Roquette, and is a prison for the confinement of persons condemned to forced labor and to death. It is a very healthy prison and one of the strongest in the world. A double court surrounds the prison, in which sentinels are constantly kept on guard; the walls are very thick and solid, and each prisoner has a separate cell. A fountain in the center dispenses water to all parts of the prison. The number of the inmates is at least four hundred on the average. The Prison of Correction, situated also in Rue de la Roquette, is for the confinement and correction of offenders under the age of sixteen, who have been pronounced by the judge incapable of judgment. They are subjected to a strict, but not cruel discipline, in this prison. It is very healthy, and all its appointments are such as to facilitate the education of the morals and intellect of the inmates. It is well supplied with water and wholesome diet, and books and religious teachers. It is divided into separate departments, and one grade of boys is never allowed intercourse with another. This is a very wise regulation, as under it a fresh, ignorant, and wicked inmate cannot have influence over those who have long been under the discipline of the place. The Conciergerie is used to confine persons before trial, and it is one of the most famous (or infamous) prisons in the world. Its historical associations are full of interest. Its entrance is on the Quai de l'Horloge. In visiting this prison, the stranger from the new world is struck with the terrible outlines of some of the apartments. The Salle des Gardes of St. Louis, has a roof which strikes terror into the heart, it is so old and grim. In one part of the building there is a low prison-room, where those persons condemned to death spend their last hours, fastened down to a straight waistcot. The little room in which Marie Antoinette was confined, is still shown to the visitor. There are now three paintings in it which represent scenes in the last days of her life. The prison-room which confined Lourel, who stabbed the duke de Barry, and the dungeons in which Elizabeth, the sister of Louis XVI., was imprisoned, are shut up and cannot be seen. There are many histories connected with this old prison, which to repeat, would fill this volume. The Prison de l'Abbaye is a military prison, and is situated close to St. Germain des Pres. It was formerly one of the most famous in Paris, and the horrors which it witnessed during the bloody revolution were never surpassed in any city of the world. Many of the atrocities which were committed in it are now widely known through the histories of those times of blood. Many of its dungeons are still under ground, and wear an aspect of gloom sufficient to terrify a man who spends but a few moments in them. The discipline of this prison is very rigid, as it contains only military offenders. The prison for debtors is in Rue de Clichy, and is in an airy situation, is well constructed, and holds three or four hundred persons. The officers of this prison still remember the modest-faced American editor, who spent a few memorable days in it--I mean Horace Greeley of the _Tribune_. France is not sufficiently enlightened yet to abolish imprisonment for debt, but the time will soon come. Such a barbarity cannot for any great length of time disgrace the history of any civilized nation. The prison of St. Pelagie, in Rue de la Chef, was formerly a prison for debtors, but is now used for the imprisonment of persons committed for trial, or those persons sentenced for short terms. Nearly six hundred persons are confined in it. Connected with the prisons of Paris are two benevolent institutions, the object of which is to watch over and educate the young prisoners of both sexes during their terms of imprisonment, and after they have left prison. As soon as they have left prison they are cared for, and if they conduct themselves well, they are generally furnished with good places. Prisoners are also taken from the Correctional House before their terms have expired, in cases of excellent conduct, and the government pays the society a sum toward the expenses of such persons until the time of their sentence shall have expired. Lamartine, the poet, was at one time president of one of these truly benevolent societies. The prisons of Paris, take them as a whole, compare favorably with those of any city in the world. Their administration is characterized by an enlightened liberality and philanthropy, and though it may seem strange, yet it is true, that Paris abounds with the most self-sacrificing philanthropists. The prisoner, the deaf and dumb, the blind and the idiotic, are cared for with a generosity and skill not surpassed in any other land. * * * * * FOUNDLING HOSPITALS. There are at least one hundred and fifty foundling hospitals in France, and Paris has a celebrated one in the Rue d'Enfer. It was established by St. Vincent de Paul, in 1638, but has been very much improved since. The buildings are not remarkable for their architectural beauty, for they are very plain. The chapel contains a statue of the founder. It is now necessary for a mother who desires to abandon her child, to make a certificate to that effect before the magistrate. The latter is obliged to grant the desire of the woman, though it is a part of his duty to remonstrate with her upon her unnatural conduct, and if she consents to keep the child, he is empowered to help her to support it from a public fund. The infants received at the hospital are, if healthy, put out at once to nurse in the country, and the parentage of the child is recorded. Unhealthy children are kept under hospital treatment. Nurses from the country constantly present themselves for employment, and do not usually receive more than one or two dollars a month for their trouble. After two years of nursing, the child is returned and transferred to the department for orphans. There are a little short of three hundred children in the hospital, and as many as thirteen thousand constantly out at nurse in the country. The internal arrangements of the hospital are very ingenious and good. Every convenience which can add to the comfort of the infants is at hand, and the deserted little beings are rendered much more comfortable than one would naturally suppose to be within the range of possibility. The hospital for orphans is in the same building, and is well arranged. The orphan department and the foundling hospital, are under the special care of the sisters of charity. There is, perhaps, no more strange sight in all Paris, than the assemblage of babies in the apartments of the Foundling Hospital. To see them ranged around the walls of the rooms in cradles, attended by the nurses, will excite a smile, and yet, when we reflect how sad is the lot of these innocents, the smile will vanish. They are deprived of that to which, by virtue of existence, every human being is entitled--a home, and the affectionate care of father and mother. To be entirely shut out from all these blessings, really makes existence a curse, and it were better if these thousands had never been born. On visiting the hospital, I rang a bell and was admitted by a polite porter, and a female attendant conducted us through the various apartments. I was at once struck with the exceeding tidiness of everything. The floors were of polished oak, and the walls of plaster polished like glass. One of the first rooms we were shown into contained forty or fifty babies, ranged in rows along the wall. The cradles were covered with white drapery, and their appearance was very neat. Four long rows stretched across the apartment, and in the center there was a fire, round which the nurses were gathered, attending to the wants of the hungry and complaining babies. But if the sight of the cradles was pleasant, the noise which greeted my ear was far otherwise. At least twenty-five of the children were crying all at once, and _one_ is as much as I can usually endure, and not that for any length of time. Among the children round the fire, there was one which was very beautiful. It had black hair and eyes, and when we stopped before it, it laughed and crowed at a great rate. I could not help wondering that any human mother could have abandoned so beautiful a babe--one that would have been "a well-spring of pleasure" in many a home. I was next shown into the apartment for children afflicted with diseases of the eye. The room was carefully shaded, and the cradles were covered with blue or green cloth. There was quite a number of children in this department, and all of them seemed to be well cared for. I was shown into another apartment devoted entirely to the sick children, and its appointments were excellent. It was wholesome and clean, the air was pure as that of the country, and the rooms were high and commodious. Other apartments are shown to the visitor which contain the linen used in the hospital, and where all kinds of work are performed, and finally, the pretty little chapel which I have alluded to before. In former times the government made it easy for any mother to resign her infant to the care of the state. This was done properly and with a good object in view, which was to prevent infanticide. It was intended that mothers should not only find it easy to cast off their children in this manner, but that it might be done with secrecy. A box was placed outside of the hospital and a bell-handle was near it, and all that the mother had to do was, to place her babe in the box and pull the bell. No one saw her, no questions could be asked, and the box sliding upon grooves was drawn inside the wall. The mother could leave some mark upon the dress of the child, or if this was not done, an exact inventory of the effects of the little stranger was always recorded in the hospital, that in after years the child might be identified by its parents if they wished. The numbers that were deposited in the Paris hospital were very great under those pleasant regulations. It is not strange, and one cannot escape the conviction, that such a system afforded a temptation to the women, and indeed men of the good classes to sin. A woman might escape to a great extent the penalty of a wicked deed. It held out a premium to immorality. But on the other hand it prevented infanticide to a great extent. The reasons why the government revoked the regulations were, first, that they encouraged the increase of illegitimate children, and second, the great expense to the state, and the last consideration was the one which had most weight. It was found upon trying the new system, that infanticide increased with considerable rapidity, as the morning exhibitions at La Morgue greatly indicated. When we consider, too, that the majority of the infanticides are unquestionably not detected, the body of the child being hid from the sight, and the vast amount of injury which results to the mothers from the attempt to destroy unborn children, we cannot wonder that French philanthropists have been inclined to return to the old system. Infanticide is one of the most horrible of crimes, and its growth among a people is accompanied by as rapid a growth of vice of every other kind. In England where a foundling hospital could not be endured for a moment, the crime of infanticide is increasing every year, and the number of murdered children is already an army of martyrs. The safest way is, perhaps, for the government to leave the whole matter with the people, and not either encourage illegitimacy or attempt to prevent infanticide, except by punishment. Upon the heads of the guilty ones be their own blood. But there certainly should be asylums for those children who cannot be supported by their poverty-stricken parents. * * * * * CHARITABLE INSTITUTIONS. Paris abounds with charitable societies and institutions. Until the latter part of the last century, the city was full of objects of compassion, the blind, the deaf and dumb, the sick and suffering. The prisons too, and the madhouses, were scenes of cruelty and violence. But a controversy arose upon the whole matter, and under Louis XVI. four new hospitals were ordered to be erected, but in the excitement which preceded the great revolution, they were not completed. After the revolution the subject came up from time to time to the consideration of the governing powers, and new hospitals were erected, and great improvements made in the old ones. At the beginning of this century, they were placed under the direction of a general administration. All the civil hospitals and the different institutions connected with them, are under the control of an administrative committee. The regulations of the hospitals are nearly the same as they are in London and New York. In cases of severe wounds, persons are admitted into the hospitals without any order, by simply presenting themselves at the doors. Medical advice is given at some of the hospitals on certain days to poor persons. The hospitals of Paris are of three kinds; the general, open to all complaints for which a special hospital is not provided; the special hospitals, for the treatment of special diseases; and the alms-houses. The hospitals support more than twelve thousand aged men and women, receive more than eighty thousand patients, and have constantly under treatment six thousand persons. Among the hospitals I may mention Bricetre, situated on the road to Fontainbleau. It is upon very high ground, and is the healthiest of all the hospitals from its position and arrangements. It is used as an asylum for poor old men, and for male lunatics. The old men have every encouragement to work, for they receive pay for their labor, slight, of course, and the money is devoted to giving them better food and clothes than the usual hospital allowance, which is some soup, one pound and a quarter of bread, four ounces of meat, vegetables, cheese, and a pint of wine each day. When seventy years old, the quantity of wine is doubled, and when a person has been thirty years an inmate of the house, the quantity of everything is doubled. Three thousand beds are made up for the indigent, and eight hundred for lunatics. The latter, of course, occupies a distinct part of the building. There are two hospitals appropriated entirely to the use of men who have no hope of immediate cure, and are troubled with chronic ailments. The buildings are large and airy, and will accommodate four or five hundred. The hospital of St. Louis, in Rue des Recollets, is very large, containing eight hundred beds. It is used for the special treatment of scrofula and cutaneous diseases. Persons able to pay, do so, but the poor are received without. It has very spacious bath accommodations, and it is estimated that as many as one hundred and forty thousand baths have been served in the establishment in the course of a year. The baths are in two large rooms, each containing fifty baths. The water is conducted to them in pipes, and every variety of mineral and sulphurous bath is given, as well as vapor and all kinds of water baths. The institution is very well managed, its work being all done within its walls, and so far is this principle carried, that the leeches needed for the diseased are cultivated in an artificial pond upon the premises. In the Rue de Sevres is a hospital for incurable women It will accommodate six hundred women and seventy children. There are a few pictures in this establishment which are worth noticing. The Annunciation, the Flight into Egypt, and a Guardian Angel, possess great beauty. The Louecine Hospital is for the reception of all females suffering with syphilitic diseases. It makes up three hundred beds, fifty of which are for children. The number of persons treated in Paris is more than two thousand every year, and the mortality is very slight. Medical men dislike this hospital, for the diseases are such as to render their duties very unpleasant, but to insure proper attendance, a regulation exists that every physician before making an application for a place in any of the hospitals, shall serve in the Louecine. The Rouchefoucald Hospital is principally for the reception of old and worn-out servants, and is of course not kept up by state funds, though it is overseen by the government. Persons who enter the institution pay a sum of money, and are entitled to a room, fire, and food, so long as they live, and some enter even as young as the age of twenty. There is another establishment in Paris where only the middling classes are received, and who pay for the attention they receive. Single men who have no homes of their own, when attacked by violent diseases, can by paying a moderate sum enter this institution and be well cared for. I cannot even mention a tenth part of the hospitals or charitable institutions of Paris, and will only allude to one or two more which are a little peculiar. There are, for example, _nurseries_, where poor women who must leave home for work in factories or similar places, can in the morning leave their babies, return occasionally to nurse them, and take them away at night. If a child is weaned, it has a little basket of his own. A very small sum of money is paid for this care, and as the nurseries have the best of medical attention, some mothers bring them for that purpose alone. There are public soup establishments to which any person with a soup-ticket can go and demand food. The tickets are dispensed with some care to persons in needy circumstances. In each of the twelve arrondissements of Paris there is a bureau for the relief of poor women having large families. When proper representations are made by such females struggling to keep from the alms-house, an allowance is made of bread, firing, meat, and clothing, and sometimes money is given. There are sometimes as many as thirty thousand dependent in this manner for a part of their income upon the state. Hence, bureaus are excellent institutions, inasmuch as prevention is always easier than cure. To save struggling families from the humiliation of a complete downfall to the poor-house, small weekly allowances are made, and in such a way that their pride need not be touched, for it is often done with such secrecy that even the intimate friends of the recipients are unaware of the relation existing between them and the state. Such an arrangement as this is needed in all the great cities of the world. London suffers from the want of it. In some places the parish authorities are at liberty to make grants to poor families, but it is nowhere done with such a system and with such a delicacy as in Paris. Another of the charitable institutions of Paris lends money upon movable effects, the interest charged being very low. This is an excellent provision for emergencies in the lives of poor persons. There are at least a million and a half of articles pledged at this institution yearly, and its receipts are from twenty-six to twenty-eight millions a year. In winters of famine the public are sometimes allowed to pledge property without paying any interest upon it when redeemed. The Mont de Pietie, is the name of this institution, and it has branches all over Paris, and has in its employ, as clerks and otherwise, three hundred persons. There are savings' banks in Paris specially adapted to the wants of the poor, and to encourage in them the habit of accumulating property, though in very small sums. A deposit of one franc is received, and one person cannot hold but two thousand francs at one time in one bank of the kind. This institution, however, is not superior to those of its kind in many other countries. * * * * * LA MORGUE. On the southern side of Isle la Cite, there is a small stone building which is certainly one of the "sights" of Paris. I saw it one day when I had been to look at Notre Dame, and was on my way home. I was filled with admiration of the magnificence of the great city, for with Notre Dame and the Louvre in sight, I could not easily entertain other sentiments. A little building arrested my attention, and I saw quite a crowd of persons standing in front of it. It was _La Morgue_. I entered it, not that I have a penchant for horrors, but to see a sight strangely contrasting with all I had heretofore seen in Paris. It was a long, low interior, and one end of the room was fenced off from the rest, and in it a row of dead bodies was arranged against the wall. Jets of water were playing constantly upon them, and upon hooks the garments of the deceased were hung. The use of _La Morgue_ is to exhibit, for twenty-four hours, the dead bodies which are found in the streets and the river. If no friend in this time recognizes and claims the body, it is buried. There were five bodies when I was there--four men and one woman. The men were evidently suicides and the woman was probably murdered, as there were marks of violence upon her body, which could not have been self-inflicted. There are several hundred persons exhibited in La Morgue in the course of a year, and they tell strange stories of the misery and crime which abound in the finest city in the world. The majority of the bodies which are found, are suicides, but many are those of persons who have been murdered. The French commit suicide for reasons which appear frivolous to the American or Englishman. The loss of a favorite mistress, an unsuccessful love-intrigue, the bursting of a bubble of speculation, and sometimes a mere trifle is enough to induce self-destruction. Sometimes a man and his mistress, or a whole family shut themselves up in a room with burning charcoal, which is a favorite method of committing suicide. A great many bodies are fished out of the Seine, for it is very easy for a poor and wretched man or woman to leap into it in the darkness of night. The next day the body lies for recognition in La Morgue, and if no good friend claims it it is borne by careless hands to a pauper burial. [Illustration: LE PONT-NEUF] I crossed the Seine by the Pont Neuf--a fine bridge, completed in 1604 by Henry IV. Near the center of it, standing upon a platform and pedestal of white marble, is a splendid bronze statue of Henry IV. upon horseback. The height of the statue is fourteen feet, and its cost, somewhat above sixty thousand dollars, was defrayed by public subscription in 1818. The Place Vendome, too, lay in my path, so called from having been the site of a hotel belonging to the Duke de Vendome, illegitimate son of Henry IV. and Gabrielle d'Estrees. The Place is now ornamented by a magnificent pillar, erected by Napoleon in honor of his German campaign. I passed also the beautiful Fountain des Innocents, whose sculptor, the celebrated Jean Goujon was shot during the massacre of St. Bartholomew, while working at one of the figures. [Illustration: Fontaine des Innocents.] * * * * * NAPOLEON AND EUGENIA. On my second visit to Paris, I found that many changes had taken place, and some of them striking ones. It was especially true of the architectural condition of Paris. In the years which elapsed between my visits, the Louvre had assumed a new appearance, and was now connected with the Tuilleries Palace. Other changes of a similar character had occurred. [Illustration: COLUMN DE PLACE VENDOME.] When I was first in Paris, Louis Napoleon was president, but he was preparing for the empire, and there was in reality no more liberty in France than now, and in many respects a residence in Paris was then more uncomfortable than at present. Everybody was expecting a change, and Louis Napoleon, as president, was actually more despotic in little things than he is as emperor. He was then ready to hunt down any man against whom a suspicion could lie, while now his rule is, after a manner, established. He has as fair prospects to remain emperor of France till he dies, for aught that I can see, as any European monarch has of retaining his throne. When I entered Paris, under the presidency, I was more closely watched than under the empire. As an American, from a republic, I was, perhaps, naturally an object of suspicion to the spies of a man who was planning a _coup d'etat_; at any rate I was tracked everywhere I stirred, by the police, while on my last visit I experienced nothing of the sort. The people of Paris are divided into many classes in politics--some are the friends of Louis Napoleon, while others are his enemies. But he has few distinguished friends in Paris. The shop-keepers are pleased with the pomp and magnificence of his court, for it gives them custom and money. Many of the wealthy business men desire him to live and rule because they want a stable government, and they deprecate above all things else, change. They are more for money, as we may expect, than for freedom. Then there are the partisans of the Orleans and Bourbon families, who fear the republicans and accept Napoleon as a temporary ruler, and who much prefer him to anarchy. So that there is a strong body of men in Paris and in France--a majority of the people--who upon the whole prefer that the rule of a man they all dislike should be perpetuated for years to come. And there is something in the character of Louis Napoleon which excites admiration. He is intensely selfish, but he is a very capable man. He understands the French people thoroughly, and rules them shrewdly. He is one of the ablest statesmen in Europe, and the world knows that he lead England in the late war with Russia. Yet he possesses some ridiculous qualities, as his conduct previous to his last entrance into France shows. He relies upon his destiny in the blindest manner, and is not possessed of genuine courage of the highest character. He is so reckless that he will never flinch from the prosecution of any of his schemes, either from personal danger or the dread of shedding human blood. He seems to have no heart, and his countenance is like adamant, for it gives no clue to the thoughts which fill his brain. He is certainly a very remarkable character and one worth studying. His early history is laughable. His various descents upon France were too ridiculous for laughter, and they only excited the pity of the world. His private conduct, too, was such as to disgust moral people. There seems to have come over the man a great change about the time of the Louis Phillippe revolution. I well remember that in the spring of 1848 I saw him parading one of the streets of London, arm-in-arm with a son of Sir Robert Peel, both sworn in as special constables to put down the chartists should they attempt a riot. It was, on that memorable first of April, quite fashionable for members of the best families to be sworn in as special constables to preserve order, and Louis Napoleon who was living with his mistress and children in London, had so far put away the democratic opinions which he once held, that he was ready and eager to show where his sympathies were in the Chartist agitation. That Louis Napoleon was very shrewd in entering France, and seating himself in the presidential chair, no one will deny, but it is equally true that in violating his oath and shooting down the people of Paris as he did, that he might gain a throne, he also proved himself to be a great villain. The mere fact that he was successful will not atone for perjury and murder with people of common morality. But aside from these atrocities, his shameful censorship of the press, and conduct toward some of the noblest men of France, he has acted for the best interests of the country. He has understood the wants of the people, and his decrees and provisions have met the wishes of the nation. France has not had the material prosperity for many years that she has at this time. But the press is dumb. Literature is in a sickly condition. Many of the first men of France are either in exile or are silent at home. It is astonishing to see how few of the really eminent men of France are the friends of Louis Napoleon. Lamartine does not like him; Eugene Sue was his enemy; the same is true in a modified sense of Alexander Dumas; George Sand dislikes him; Arago while living did the same; and Jules Janin the brilliant critic is no friend of the administration. Victor Hugo, Ledru Rollin, Louis Blanc, and a score of other brilliant men are in exile, and of course hate the man who exiled them. It is certainly one of the most singular facts of modern history that Louis Napoleon has few friends, yet is firmly seated upon his throne. His enemies are so divided, and so hate anarchy, that they all unite in keeping him where he is. But Paris laughs in its sleeve at all the baptismal splendors over the prince and the sober provisions for the regency made by the emperor. No one that I could find has the faintest expectation that the baby-boy will rule France, or sit upon a throne. When the emperor is shot or dies a violent death, then chaos will come, or something better, but not Napoleon IV. I am confident that this is the universal sentiment, at least throughout Paris, if not over France. I have asked many a Frenchman his opinion, and the same reply has been given by republican and monarchist. This is one secret of Napoleon's strength. It is thought that with his death great changes must come, and very likely confusion and bloodshed. No one believes in a Napoleon succession, and therefore all bear his despotism with equanimity. Those who hate him say his rule will not last forever, while those who wish to advance their own political interests through other royal families, bide their time. It is possible that Louis Napoleon will live many years yet, or at least die a natural death, but there are those who have a reputation for shrewdness who do not believe it. They think that as he has taken the sword so he will perish by the sword, or in other words that a bullet will one day end his life. It would not be strange, for he has many bitter enemies, and there would be poetic justice in such a fate, to say the least. The empress is quite popular in France, but not so much so as the journalists and letter-writers would make out. She is exceedingly handsome, and this fact goes a great way with the Parisians. Her conduct since her marriage has been irreproachable, which should always be mentioned to her credit. But that she is naturally a very lovely woman, gentle, and filled with all the virtues, few who know her early history will believe. She is, like the emperor, shrewd, and acts her part well. She is certainly equal to her position, and in goodness is satisfactory to the French people. It has been thought by many that if Louis Napoleon had married a French woman it would have better satisfied the people, but this is by no means certain. The emperor and empress seem to live together happily, or at least rumor hath nothing to the contrary; and he would be a brute not to be satisfied with the woman who has presented him with what he desired above everything else--a male heir. Portraits of the empress abound in all the shops and in private houses. Her great beauty is the passport to the French heart. It is not of the dashing, bold style, but is delicate and refined. Louis Napoleon has in his provisions for the prince calculated largely upon the popularity of the empress, in case of his own death. He confides the boy-prince to the Empress Eugenia, and thinks her popularity is such, and the gallantry of the people so great, that they will gather round her in the day of trouble. But though the French are a gallant people they estimate some things higher than politeness or gallantry. There is no loyalty in France. The only feeling which approaches to it is the veneration which is felt in some of the provinces for the elder Napoleon. But that sentiment of loyalty which is felt in all ranks and circles in England is unknown to France. Who carries in his bosom that sentiment towards the man who procured his throne by perjury? Not a single Frenchman. Many admire his intellect, his daring, and many others accept his rule with pleasure, but nobody has the feeling of loyalty toward him. It has died out in France, and I must confess that this is a good sign. While it is true, France cannot really _like_ a monarchical despotism, though she may for a long time endure it. THE BAPTISM OF THE PRINCE. The 14th of June was a great day in Paris, for it witnessed the baptism of the prince and heir to the French throne. It was not because Paris was or is devoted to the present Napoleonic dynasty, not because the birth of an heir to Louis Napoleon was or is regarded with any remarkable enthusiasm, but simply for this reason: Paris loves gayety, and above all things is fond of a public _fete_. Louis Napoleon well knew how to make the day memorable. All that was wanting was money--a prodigious pile of Napoleons. With this he could easily make a pageant. The young baby-prince was baptized in the ancient church of Notre Dame, which was fitted up in a magnificent style expressly for the occasion. On each side of the grand nave, between the main columns hung with gold and crimson drapery, a series of seats were erected, also covered with crimson velvet and gold decorations. Around the altar seats were erected for the legislative body, the senate, the diplomatic corps, and officers of state. Above these, galleries were formed, hung with drapery, for the occupation of ladies. The appearance of the interior was grand in the extreme, but it needed the splendid concourse soon to be present, to add a wonderful beauty to it. A few minutes past six o'clock a burst of drums announced the arrival of the grand cortege in the ancient city, and the archbishop of Paris, with his assistants, went to the door or grand entrance of Notre Dame, to receive Napoleon and Eugenia. The princes and princesses had already alighted, and were ready with the clergy to receive the emperor and empress. The procession was in something like the following order: First came the cross, followed by the archbishop and his vicar-generals. Next came the military officers of the imperial household. Then what are called the honors of the imperial infant, as follows--the wax taper of the Countess Montebello; the crimson cloth of Baroness Malaret; and the salt-cellar of the Marquess Tourmanbourg. Then came the sponsorial honors. These ladies all walked in couples, and were dressed in blue, veiled in white transparent drapery. The grand duchess of Baden and Prince Oscar of Sweden immediately preceded the prince. The royal babe wore a long ermine mantile, and was carried by a gouvernante with two assistants, one on each side of her. The nurse followed, clad in her native costume--that of Burgundy. Marshals Canrobert and Bosquet followed the infant, and their majesties next appeared under a moving canopy. The cardinal-legate had appeared and been welcomed before, and took his seat upon a throne erected expressly for him. Immediately in front of the altar there was erected a crimson platform, on which two crimson chairs were placed for the accommodation of Napoleon and Eugenia. Far above there was a crimson canopy lined with white, and spotted with golden bees. Napoleon advanced up the aisle on the right of Eugenia, and a pace in advance. He did not offer her his arm, as that is considered improper in a church, according to Parisian notions of propriety. Eugenia was dressed in a light blue, covered with an exquisite lace, and she was covered with dazzling diamonds. The jewels she wore were worth nearly five millions of dollars. The blue color worn by nearly all the ladies present, was considered the appropriate color for the ruder sex of the baby. Napoleon wore the uniform of a general officer, but with white knee pants and silk stockings. He wore several orders. Everything being ready, the cardinal-legate left his throne, went to the foot of the altar, and commenced the _Veni Creator_, which was taken up and executed by the fine orchestra. The music was inexpressibly grand. When it was concluded the masters of ceremonies saluted the altar and their majesties, and then waited upon the legate, who at once catechised the sponsors. He then conducted the royal babe to the font, holding the baptismal robe. Napoleon and Eugenia ascended the throne. The duchess of Baden, representing the god-mother, advanced to the font. The god-father was the pope, represented by the legate. The baptism was then proceeded with. When the rite was performed, the gouvernante presented the babe to its mother, who at once handed it over to its royal papa, who held it up to the crowd of gazers, and then the cries of "_Vive le Prince Imperial!_" came near destroying the solid masonry of Notre Dame. After this the royal pair soon took their departure, though there were many ceremonies after they had left. A magnificent banquet was at once given to their majesties by the city of Paris, in the _Hotel de Ville_, and it was probably one of the most luxurious the world ever witnessed. All the male guests were in official costume, and the ladies were dressed with great richness. The next day--Sunday--was the great day for out-door _fetes_, though this was widely celebrated. The day was given up to all kinds of enjoyment, and the emperor gave immense sums to make the people good-humored and enthusiastic. There was a display of fire-works in the evening rarely equaled, and probably never surpassed. The theaters were all open, free to all who came, and could gain entrance. In the course of the day more than three hundred balloons were sent up, laden with confectionary and things to tickle the palate, and showered down upon the multitude. The whole of Paris was gay, and the stranger had a fine sample of a grand Parisian _fete_, and Sabbath--both in one! CHAPTER XI. THE FATHER OF FRENCH TRAGEDY--THE JESTER--THE DRAMATIST. MEN OF THE PAST. During my residence in Paris I became very much interested in the history of the great men of France, not only in the present day, but in past years. I was not so well acquainted with the great French masters in literature, especially of the past, as with the great men of English history. I believe this to be the fact with most Americans. I soon found that to know France, to know Paris to-day, I needed to have by heart the history of her heroes of to-day and yesterday, and especially of those great men who made Paris their home and final resting-place. The influence of these men over the minds, manners, and even the morals of the people of Paris, is still very great. Nowhere is genius more praised, or adored with a greater devotion, than in Paris. Rank must there doff its hat to genius, which is the case in no other country but the American republic. It will then not be out of place for me to sketch a very few of the most brilliant men who in the years which have fled away lighted with their smiles the saloons of Paris. I will commence with THE FATHER OF FRENCH TRAGEDY. In the Rue d'Argenteuil, number 18, there is a small quiet house, in which Corneille, the father of French tragedy, breathed his last. It has a black marble slab in front, and a bust in the yard with the following inscription: "_Je ne dois qu'a moi seul toute ma renommee_." The great man lies buried in the beautiful church of St. Roch, where a tablet is erected to his memory. Corneille was the son of Pierre Corneille, master of forests and waters in the viscounty of Rouen. His mother was of noble descent, but the couple were somewhat poor. The dramatist was born in 1606, and early became a pupil of the Jesuits of Rouen. He was educated for the law, but had no taste for that profession, and although he attempted to practice it he was unsuccessful. It was well for France that such was the fact, for had it been otherwise, she would have lost one of her most brilliant names. When Corneille entered upon life, there was no theater in France, though there were exhibitions of various kinds. At last a few wretched plays were written by inferior men, and they were acted upon the stage by inferior actors. Corneille, while vainly endeavoring to win success at the bar, was incited to write a comedy, and produced one under the title of "_Melite_." The plot was suggested by an incident in his own life. A friend of his was very much in love with a lady, and introduced him to her, that he might, after beholding her charms, indite a sonnet to her in the name of his friend. The poet found great favor in the eyes of the lady, and the original lover was cast into the shade. This incident was the reason Why Corneille wrote "_Melite_." The success of the piece was very great, a new company of players was established in Paris, and at that time it was fully equal to any comedy which had been written in the French language, though it reads dull enough at the present day. The poet traveled up to Paris to witness his play upon the stage, and was so well pleased with its reception, that he went on writing plays. They were without merit, however. He had not yet struck the key-note of his after greatness. With four other authors, Corneille was appointed to correct the plays of Richelieu. Parties quickly sprung into existence in the _salons_ of Paris. Some of them espoused the cause of Corneille--others openly traduced his plays and were his enemies. He had the independence to correct one of Richelieu's plays without the consent of his comrades, and Richelieu reprimanded him for it. He became disgusted and left Paris for Rouen. He was quite willing, too, to return to the lady who had inspired his sonnet. She was very beautiful, and he continued to love her until his death, and this may be said to be the only lasting passion of his life. The poet was not much of a scholar, though well informed. He next wrote a tragedy entitled "_Media_," and then another comedy called "_The Illusion_." But he had not yet hit upon the note of success. Soon after, when about thirty years of age, he commenced the study of the Spanish language. An Italian secretary of the queen counseled him to this course, and advised him to read the "_Cid_" of de Castro, with an idea of making it a subject for a drama. Corneille followed his advice, and produced a tragedy which roused all France to enthusiasm. Paris was one prolonged storm of applause, and when one praised an object, he said "It is fine as the _Cid!_" The play was translated into the different languages of all the civilized nations. Fontenelle says: "I knew two men, a soldier and a mathematician, who had never heard of any other play that had ever been written, but the name of Cid had penetrated even the barbarous state in which they lived." The dramatist had enemies--no man can quickly achieve renown without making them--and some of them were exceedingly bitter in their attacks upon him. Richelieu, the cardinal, was excessively annoyed that the man he had reprimanded should have achieved success, and the French Academy of Criticism, which was deeply under his influence, after discussions decided somewhat against "The Cid." This suited the cardinal, but the poet kept a wise silence, making no reply. The next effort of Corneille was that resulting in the tragedy of "_Horace_," which was a master-piece, and was received with unbounded applause. He surpassed this effort, however, in his next piece, called "_Cinna_." After this--which many consider his best drama--came "_Polyeceute"_, a beautiful piece. In it the Christian virtues are illustrated, and when read before a conclave of learned men, they deputied Voiture to the poet, to induce him, if possible, to withdraw it, for the christianity in it the people would not endure. But the play went to the people without amendment, and so beautiful was its character, and so delightful the acting, that it carried away the hearts of the listeners. Corneille now tried again to write comedy, but did not succeed so well as in tragedy. He triumphed, however, over a rival, and that to him was something, though the play is an inferior one. From this time the poet wrote no better, but in truth worse and worse. He did not fail to write beautiful scenes, but failed in selecting good subjects. He established himself in Paris, and could do so with comfort, for the king bestowed a pension upon him. Before this he had resided at Rouen, running up to Paris quite often. In 1642 he was elected a member of the French Academy. He was never a courtier, and was not fitted to shine in gay Parisian circles. His tastes were very simple, and he was in his manners like a rustic. To see him in a drawing-room you would not think the man a genius, nor even a bright specimen of his kind. Some of his friends remonstrated with him, and tried to rouse him from his sluggishness in society. He always replied, "I am not the less Pierre Corneille." La Bruyere says of him, "He is simple and timid; tiresome in conversation--using one word for another--he knows not how to recite his own verses." It is strange that he came to Paris, for he loved the country better, and many attribute the remove to his brother, who was also winning success as a dramatist. It had been well if after this Corneille had been content to write no more plays, for everyone he now produced only proved that his genius had decayed. The old cunning was gone. A young rival sprung up, the graceful Racine, and for awhile the old favorite was forgotten, or laughed at. Racine took a line from one of his pieces and used it in such a manner as to excite laughter. Corneille said: "It ill becomes a young man to make game of other people's verses." Unfortunately he was tempted into a duel with Racine. The latter triumphed as a writer for the time, and Corneille stopped his pen, as he should have done a long time before. But often he had the pleasure of seeing some of his best pieces enacted upon the stage, and they always excited great enthusiasm. He also knew that the refined and critical loved his best plays--the better the more they read them. The conduct of the poet through his whole life was, in the main, such as to excite great admiration in after generations. He was no sycophant in that age of fawning courtiers. He was simple and manly. He was always melancholy and cared little for the vanities of life. Though poor in early life, he cared but little about money. The king gave him a pension of two thousand francs, which at that time was a good income. He was generous and died utterly poor. One evening when age had bowed his form he entered a Paris theater. The great _Conde_ was present, and prince and people as one man rose in honor of the great dramatist. He died in his seventy-ninth year, and Racine pronounced a high eulogy upon him, before the academy. Such was its beauty that the king caused it to be recited before him. In it he extolled the genius of the man who had at one time been his rival, and he taught his children to revere his memory. In France, much more in Paris, the name of Corneille is to-day half sacred. The house he lived and died in has many visitors, and to his tomb many a pilgrim comes. And it is not strange that Parisians adore him, for he was the father of comedy as well as tragedy. It was his plays that caused the erection of commodious theaters. His plays have continued to hold their place in the affections of the nation, and he is reverenced more to-day than he was while living. The foreigner cannot understand fully the character of modern French dramatists, and that of their works, without knowing something of Corneille, nor can he wander long among the streets of Paris, without becoming aware of the estimation in which he is held at the present time by the intelligent classes. THE GREAT JESTER Rabelais was born in 1483. He was a learned scholar, a physician, and a philosopher. He was called "the great jester of France," by Lord Bacon. Many buffooneries are ascribed to him unjustly, and he was a greater man than certain modern writers make him out to be. His place of birth was Chinon, a little town of Touraine. His father was a man of humble means. He received his early education in a convent near his home. His progress was very slow and he was removed to another. He promised poorly for future distinction, but at the second convent he was fortunate in making the acquaintance of Du Ballay who afterward became a bishop and cardinal, and whose friendship he retained to the day of his death. He was again removed to another convent, where he applied himself to the cultivation of his talents. There was, however, no library in the place. Rabelais soon took to preaching, and with the money he was paid for it, he purchased books. His brother monks hated him for his eloquence in preaching, and for his evident learning. He was persecuted by these men and suffered a great deal, principally because he knew Greek. For some alleged slight offered against the rules of the convent, they wreaked their vengeance upon him by condemning him to the prison cell, and to a diet of bread and water. They also applied their hempen cords thoroughly, and this course of treatment soon reduced Rabelais to a very weak condition. His friends were by this time powerful and they obtained his release, and a license from the Pope for him to pass from this convent to another. But he was thoroughly disgusted with convent life, and fled from it, wandering over the provinces as a secular priest. He next gave up this employment altogether, and took to the study of medicine. He went through the different steps of promotion and was made a professor. He delivered medical lectures, and a volume of his--an edition of Hippocrates--was long held in high estimation by the medical faculty of France. A medical college of Montpellier had been deprived for some reason of its privileges, and Rabelais was deputed to Chancellor Duprat to solicit a restoration of them. The story is told--to illustrate his learning--that when he knocked at the chancellor's house he addressed the person who came to the door in Latin, who could not understand that language; a man shortly presented himself who could, and Rabelais addressed him in Greek. Another map was sent for, and he was addressed in Hebrew, and so on. The singularity of the circumstance arrested the attention of the chancellor, and Rabelais was at once invited to his presence. He succeeded in restoring the lost honors to the college, and such was the enthusiasm of the students that ever after, when taking degrees, they wore Rabelais scarlet gowns. This usage continued till the revolution. Rabelais now went to Lyons, and still later to Rome as the physician to Du Ballay, who was ambassador at that court. Some writers claim that he went as buffoon instead of physician, but this is unsupported by evidence. Many stories are told of his buffooneries at the court of Rome, but unquestionably the majority were entirely untrue. One story told, however, is good enough to be true. The pope expressed his willingness to grant Rabelais a favor. The wit replied that if such was the fact, he begged his holiness to excommunicate him. The pope wished to know the reason. The wit replied that some very honest gentlemen of his acquaintance in Touraine had been burned, and finding it a common saying in Italy when a fagot would not burn "that it had been excommunicated by the pope's own mouth," he wished to be rendered incombustible by the same process. It is asserted that Rabelais offended the pope by his buffooneries, but the assertion can scarcely be believed. When he had resided for a time in Rome, Rabelais went to Lyons, then returned to the holy city, and after a second visit went to Paris, where he entered the family of Cardinal du Bellay, who had also returned from Rome. He confided to Rabelais the government of his household, and persuaded the pope to secularize the abbey of St. Maurdes-Fosses, and conferred it upon the wit. He next bestowed upon him the cure of Meudon, which he retained while he lived. One of the first of Rabelais' books was entitled "_Lives of the great Giant Garagantua and his Son Pantagruel"_. To it he owes a great deal of his reputation and popularity. It created a vast deal of talk, and was both highly praised and bitterly attacked. The champions of the church criticised his book with great severity. Calvin the reformer also wrote against it with much earnestness. The Sorbonne attacked it for teaching heresy and atheism, and it was condemned by the court of parliament. The subjects held up for ridicule were the vices of the popes, the avarice of the prelates, and the universal debaucheries of the monastic orders. It was a wonderful book for the times, and it required great courage in Rabelais to venture upon its publication. He would have lost position, and perhaps his liberty, had it not been for the monarch Francis I., who sent for the volume, read it, and declared it to be innocent and good reading, and protected the author. The sentence against the book amounted to nothing after this, and it was everywhere read and admired. Rabelais was set down as the first wit and scholar of his age. The character of the book we have noticed cannot be defended. Its irreverent use of scripture quotations, and loose wit, are not to be overlooked, but there was no advocacy of atheism in it. Indeed we must look upon Rabelais as acting the part of a reformer. If he had sought simply popularity and the favor of the court and church, he would certainly not have written a book which is a scathing attack upon pope, prelate, and monk. The book is full of dirty expressions--but the age was a very impure one, and we should not judge him too severely. He was a Frenchman, and French wit in all ages has taken great liberties with decency. Among the other books which Rabelais wrote, we may mention "_Several Almanacs_," "_The Powers of Chevalier de Longery_," "_Letters from Italy_," "_The Philosophical Cream_," etc. etc. His greatest book, which we have mentioned, went through a great number of editions and had a tremendous sale. It was republished in several foreign states. Rabelais was a scholar, for he knew well fourteen languages, and wrote with facility Greek, Latin, and Italian. He was a good physician, an accomplished naturalist, a correct mathematician, an astronomer, an architect, a painter, a musician, and last of all, a wit and philosopher. He was a good pastor over the parishioners of Meudon, and acted as physician to their bodies as well as souls. There are idle tales to the effect that he made his will as follows: "I have nothing--I owe much--I leave the rest to the poor." And also that he sent a message as follows, to Cardinal du Ballay. "Tell the cardinal I am going to try the great 'perhaps'--you are a fool--draw the curtain--the farce is done." These were fictions invented by the very pious Catholics, who hated him for his satires upon the church. Rabelais must have been a great man. Even his learning alone would have made him the most distinguished man in France at the time he lived. Those who hated him have tried to cover his memory with shame, and have represented him as merely a buffoon, but such was not the truth. He did often descend to buffooneries and to almost obscene sayings, and these things have had their influence upon France, and have contributed to make the French people what they are to-day--a nation of professed Catholics, but really a nation of infidels and atheists. But Rabelais was more than a wit. He was a public benefactor. He improved medical science, and was as much a reformer in his laughable attacks upon the fat and lazy monks, as was Calvin himself. Rabelais died at the age of seventy, and was buried in the churchyard of St. Paul, Rue des Jardins, at the foot of a beautiful tree which was preserved in his memory. No monument was ever placed over his grave, but he did not need one to perpetuate his memory. THE DRAMATIST. One of the men of the past who exerted and still exerts a wide influence over French literature, is Racine. He was born in 1639, in the small town Ferte-Milon, in Valois. The parents died while he was in infancy, and he and a sister, their only children, were left orphans in the care of their maternal grandfather. This sister remained in Ferte-Milon during her life, which was not long. Racine was not happy while young, and being neglected by his grandparents felt it keenly. He was a scholar at Beauvais, and attached himself to one of the political parties which at that time always sprang up in schools and colleges. He was in one of their contests wounded upon his forehead, and bore the scar through life. Racine was transferred from Beauvais to the school of the convent of Port Royal, and the Jesuits noticing his natural quickness, bestowed careful attention upon his education. He was so wretchedly poor that he could not buy copies of the classics, and he was obliged to use those owned by others, and which were much inferior to copies he could have purchased had he possessed money. He was early struck with the beauty of the Greek writers--and more especially the Greek tragedians. He wandered in the woods with Sophocles and Euripides in his hands, and many years after could recite their chief plays from memory. He got hold of the Greek romance of Theogines and Chariclea, but the priests would not tolerate such reading and committed the volume to the flames. He got another copy and it shared the same fate. He concluded to purchase another, kept it till he learned it by heart, and then took it to the priests and told them they might have that also. At Port Royal Racine was happy. He was a gentle-hearted boy and his masters loved him. He early began to compose verses and showed an intense love of poetry. At nineteen he left Port Royal for the college of Harcour, at Paris. When he was twenty-one Louis XIV. was married, and invited every versifier in the kingdom to write in honor of the occasion. Racine was an obscure student and was unknown as a poet. He wrote a poem on the marriage, and it was shown to M. Chapelain, who was the poetical critic of Paris at that time. He thought it showed a good deal of promise and suggested a few alterations. It was carried to the patron of the critic, who sent him a hundred louis from the king, and a pension of six hundred livres. The poet's friends were anxious that he should choose a profession, and that of the bar was strongly urged upon him. He objected. An uncle who had a benefice at Uzes, wished to resign it to his nephew. Racine concluded to visit his uncle in the provinces. He remained for some time there, but he found there was little hope of advancement and grew restless. The scenery around him was magnificent, yet, though he was a poet, he had no eye for the grand and impressive in scenery. He was too much of a Parisian for that. A Parisian is all art--and cares nothing for nature. He prefers fine buildings and paintings to fields, mountains, and majestic rivers. Racine wrote a poem entitled "_The Bath of Venus_," and began a play upon the Greek one of Theogines and Chariclea, which had delighted him so much when he was young. He returned to Paris somewhat discouraged, after an absence of only three months. Here, through the rivalry of two play-writers, he was persuaded to write very hastily a new play. He consented, and produced one which was well received by the Parisians. It did not do justice to his powers, however, and he soon after wrote "_Alexandre_," which was an advance upon the previous performance. He was unacquainted with the English or Spanish drama, and had studied only the French of Corneille, and the Greek. He attempted the Greek drama, and of course found it very difficult to render dramas founded upon Grecian national subjects, and with Grecian manners, interesting to a Parisian audience. "_Alexandre_" was not successful upon the stage, but the best critics did not hesitate to award the premium of great dramatic genius to Racine, and he was encouraged to go on. While the dramatist was writing "_Andromaque_" he was bitterly attacked by the leader of a sect of religionists for the wretched morality of his play. He felt the attack keenly, and that it was just, no American will deny, though Frenchmen will. The poet replied to the attack in a witty and satirical letter. The "_Andromaque_" of Racine had a fine success, and one character was so full of passion and was so well represented upon the stage, that it cost the life of the actor who fell dead from excitement. Then followed in quick succession "_Brittonicus_" and "_Berenice_," which were also successful. His plays were full of intense passion and eloquence, and it would not give the reader a fair idea of their influence over the French, did we not admit that their representations of human life were such as to undermine the morality of those who listened to them. The plays of Racine have exerted a prodigious influence over the intelligent classes of Paris, and their wretched morality poisoned the nation. For my part, when I consider the literature of France--and no one can judge of a people without knowing its literature--I do not wonder that a very low morality exists throughout the country, but more especially in Paris. The great plays of past and modern times are saturated with licentiousness--the great romances of past and present years, are foul with impurities. Racine, living in an age of licentiousness, reflects it in his plays, and his plays are admired to-day in Paris, as of yore; hence it follows that those who go and see them acted must be somewhat affected by their immorality. Madame Rachel has made the characters of Racine familiar to all France, and has revived all his blemishes as well as beauties. The poet met with much severe criticism after the representation of the last mentioned of his plays. Madame Sevigne was one of Corneille's warmest admirers, and did not join the company of Racine worshipers. A benefice was now given the poet, but soon after it was disputed by a priest; lawsuits began, and finally he relinquished it in disgust. Racine, Moliere, Boileau, and others were in the habit of meeting and having convivial suppers together, and on such occasions Racine projected new plays, and characters were often suggested to him by his fellow authors. In one of his after plays, which was not successful, he showed a talent for comedy far above mediocrity. It was once represented before the king, who laughed so hard that his courtiers were astonished. Racine was elected member of the Academy in 1673, and made a very modest speech when the honor was conferred upon him. He brought out one after another, "_Bajazet_," "_Mithridates_," "_Phoedra_," and "_Iphigenia_," all of which had an excellent reception. The day "_Phoedra_" was brought out, another dramatist brought out a drama with the same title. He had powerful friends who went so far as to pack his theater, and buy boxes at the theater upon the stage of which Racine's play was to be enacted, and leave them empty. This incident shows us the fierceness of rivalry between authors at that time. To such an extent was the quarrel carried by the friends of the respective authors, that Racine, who was a very sensitive man, resolved to renounce the drama. His early religious education tended to strengthen his resolution. He soon became a severe and stern religionist, undergoing penances to expiate the guilt incurred for his life of sin. His confessor advised him to marry some woman of piety, to help him on in his good work, and he therefore married. The woman was Catherine de Romenet. She was of a higher position, and was wealthy. She knew nothing of the drama, was not fond of poetry, and was a very strict religious woman. She was sincere and affectionate, and wrought a wonderful change in Racine. Under her quiet tuition he became very narrow in his religious convictions, but quite happy in his mind. He brought up his children with the same views, and they all took monastic vows. His daughters were, one after another, given to the convent. He had seven children in all, and found it difficult to meet all his family expenses. At this time he was made historiographer to the king, and witnessed many important battles. His life at court was very pleasant to him, and though he was a little too much inclined to be servile, yet he was generally an upright man. The story is told of him, that once when in the bosom of his little family, an attendant of the great duke came to invite him to dinner at the Hotel de Conde. He sent back the reply, "I cannot go; I have returned to my family after an absence of eight days; they have got a fine carp for me, and would be much disappointed if I did not share it with them." Boileau and Racine were very intimate friends, and many anecdotes are related of them. Boileau had wit--Racine humor, and a natural turn for raillery. The contests of the two were often amusing. The king was much pleased with the dramatist, and gave him a suit of apartments in the palace, and the privilege of attending his parties. Madame de Maintenon made a great favorite of him. He could recite poetry freely, and was asked to declaim before a young princess. He found that she had been learning some of his own plays. One of the best of his plays was performed in the presence of Madame de Maintenon, who liked it so well that she beseeched him to write a play which should contain no offensive sentiments. Racine was in agony, for he feared to injure his reputation. His vow prevented his return to his old employment, yet he feared to refuse the request. He compromised the matter by dramatising the touching bible history of Esther. At court the play had a wonderful success, and the poet tried again upon the story of Atheliah of the house of Judah; and in "_Athalie_" we have the best of all his dramas. Singular as it may seem, this play was not well received at court, and Racine felt mortified. Boileau told him, however, that posterity would declare it the best of all his plays, and he was right. It was about this time that the dramatist received the keenest blow which he had experienced hi his lifetime, and which broke his heart. Madame de Maintenon was his warm friend, and was extremely fond of his society. The country was at that time in great distress, and she conversed with the poet upon the subject. She was much pleased with his observations, and asked him to commit them to paper, promising that what he should write should be seen by no eye but her own. He complied with her request, and while she was one day reading his essay, the king suddenly entered, and casting his eye upon the paper, demanded the name of the author. Madame de Maintenon broke her promise, and gave the name of the writer. The king was very angry, and asked, "Does he think that he knows everything because he writes verses?" Madame de Maintenon saw at once that the king was much displeased, and felt it to be her duty to inform the poet, that he might stay away from court for a while, until the monarch's anger died away. Racine was plunged into the deepest distress, and grew daily weak and ill. He wandered over the park of Versailles, hoping to accidentally meet Madame de Maintenon, for she did not dare to receive him publicly. He at length met her, and she promised that she would yet bring pleasanter days to the poet--that the cloud would soon pass away. He replied with great melancholy that no fair weather would return for him. One day, while in his study, he was seized with a sudden illness, and was obliged to take at once to his bed. An abscess in his liver had closed, though this was not known at the time. His disease grew very painful, and he became more patient and resigned. As death drew near, his original sweetness of disposition came back to him, and his deep melancholy fled away. The nobles of the court gathered around his bed-side, and the king sent to make inquiries as to his condition. He arranged all his pecuniary affairs. Boileau was with him, and when he bade him farewell, he said, "I look on it as a happiness that I die before you." When the physicians had discovered the abscess in his liver, they resolved upon an operation, and he consented, though with no hope of saving his life. He said, "The physicians try to give me hope, and God could restore me; but the work of death is done." In three more days he expired, in his sixtieth year. Thus lived and died one of the most brilliant men in the history of France. CHAPTER XII THE FABULIST--THE INFIDEL--THE COMIC WRITER THE FABULIST. La Fontaine, the fabulist, was buried by the side of Moliere, who died long before him. He was born July 8th, 1621, at Chateau Thierry. His father was keeper of the royal domains. While young, La Fontaine gave no promise of his after distinction. His teachers declared him to be a dunce. His father, who seems to have been an admirer of poetry, persuaded him to attempt to write verses, but he could not make a rhyme. Seeing at nineteen that he could not make a poet of his son, the old man resolved to make a priest of him. After eighteen months of trial the young man returned to society. His father then proposed that he should take the keepership of the royal domains, and marry Marie d'Hericart, the daughter of his friend. La Fontaine made no objection, though we have no evidence that he loved the girl. She was both beautiful and talented, however. The father still clung to the idea that his son could write poetry, and with a kind of prophetic instinct. When La Fontaine was twenty-two, a French officer visited him, who was a great admirer of poetry, and who brought the poems of Malherbe. La Fontaine became excited by the poetry, or the passionate recitation, and for days did nothing but read and recite poetry. He commenced writing odes in imitation of Malherbe, and when his father beheld his first attempt, he cried for joy. The character of the poetry was certainly different from that which afterward gave him his fame. He soon discovered the secret of success. By studying the old authors, he improved his taste, and acquired a disrelish for French literature. He was very fond of the Italian authors, but not knowing Greek, he only read the Greek authors through translations made by others. He was exceedingly fond of Plato, and his favorite copy was entirely filled with annotations. La Fontaine remained for several years at Thierry, indolent, except in his reading, and neglecting his business and his family. His "_Adonis_" was written at this time. His good nature and simplicity are well illustrated by an anecdote which is told of him. An officer was in the constant habit of visiting his house, and his friends told him that the reputation of Madame La Fontaine was compromised, and that nothing was left but for him to challenge the officer to a duel. Now the fabulist cared little for madame, and less for his own reputation in connection with hers; but he believed his friends, and so after a great effort shook off his indolence, and early one morning went to the officer, who was in bed, and demanded that he should rise at once and go out to mortal combat. The officer rose and followed him, and easily disarmed him. An explanation followed. The friends of La Fontaine had been joking him, and when the officer declared that he would never cross the threshold of Thierry again, La Fontaine told him that thenceforth he should come more frequently than ever. But though Madame La Fontaine was guiltless in this affair, her character was by no means above reproach. She was giddy and thoughtless, and fond of the society of gentlemen, and made a poor wife for the poet. But she had an excuse. La Fontaine bestowed upon her no attention, deserted her for weeks together, and was guilty of amours with other women. He possessed a wretched memory, and was given to astonishing absences of mind. The duchess of Bouillon left him one morning walking in the open air, with a favorite book in his hand. At night he was still there, though it had been raining hard for some time. His acquaintance with the duchess of Bouillon was of great service to him. Had it not been for her he would probably never have left Thierry. She was at that time in the country, being disgraced and exiled from court. She was gay, witty, and fond of poetry. Chancing to read some lines of La Fontaine, she sent for him, and at once saw his genius, and suggested that he should write tales and fables. When the duchess was allowed to return to Paris she took La Fontaine with her, and he was at once introduced into the most brilliant society. The duchess of Mazarin, sister to the duchess of Bouillon, was also his warm friend; and with the friendship of the two sisters he had no lack of attention. He became acquainted with Moliere, Boileau, and Racine, and was warmly attached to them until death invaded the circle. The circles which La Fontaine frequented were amused by his great eccentricities. He was often seized with his absences of mind, and great sport was made of him. But Moliere was in the habit of saying at such times, "The good man will take a flight beyond them,"--a prediction which proved perfectly true, for the name of La Fontaine will live longer than that of any of his companions. Boileau and Racine remonstrated with La Fontaine for having separated from his wife. Simple as he was, he believed what they told him--that it was his duty to return to her. He very soon came back, and when he was asked why he came back so soon, he replied, "I did not see her!" "How," they asked, "was she from home?" "Yes," he replied; "she was gone to prayers, and the servant not knowing me, would not let me stay in the house until she returned." The fabulist and his wife were so extravagant and careless in their habits, that in a very short time the property of La Fontaine was wasted away. Foquet, the minister, pensioned him, and he remembered him always after. When Foquet was banished, La Fontaine solicited his pardon, but the king was incapable of forgiving an enemy, and changed the sentence to solitary confinement for life. The succeeding minister took away La Fontaine's pension, as might have been expected. In 1664 La Fontaine published his first collection of fables, and it gave him immediately the very highest rank as a fabulist. Shortly after, he published a tale entitled "_Psyche and Cupid_." He was now without money and a home. The duchess of Orleans added him to her suite, and gave him a pension. She soon died, however, and he was again left homeless. A woman by the name of de la Sabliere now invited him to her house, and with her he lived the next twenty years. She was a woman of great refinement and taste, but was singularly situated. She lived apart from her husband, and had her lover. She gave parties which the most distinguished men in France attended, and La Fontaine was very happy while in her house. He was oppressed by no care or anxiety, and had nothing to do but to read and write when it suited him. He wrote several operas, and actually fell asleep during the first performance of one of them at the theater! In 1683 he was elected a member of the French Academy. He had forgotten his old friends at Thierry, and indeed did not know his own son. He attended the funeral of a friend, one day, and ten days after it had so completely escaped his memory, that he called to visit the man. He was lionized, greatly to his displeasure. Attending one day at a dinner given by somebody who cared nothing for his genius, but wished the _eclat_ that would result from entertaining a great man, La Fontaine talked little, eat very heartily, and when dinner was over, got his hat to go. The host remonstrated: "The distance is short--you will be too early," he said. "I'll take the longest road," replied La Fontaine. After twenty years of easy existence, La Fontaine was suddenly deprived of his home. Madame de la Sabliere had been living all this time with her lover. He now deserted her. At the same time her husband was deserted by his mistress, which so affected him that he took poison and died. These events had so great an effect upon Madame de la Sabliere that she also died. The duchess of Bouillon was now in England, and she invited La Fontaine to join her there; but he was now too old, and could not undertake such a journey. Madame d'Hevvart, the wife of a rich man, gave him an apartment in her house, where he remained during the rest of his days. He was now getting infirm, and the Jesuits turned their eyes toward him. He had thus far lived without a profession of religion, and a life of loose morality. The Jesuits cared little for his want of good morals, but in many of his books he had ridiculed the church and the clergy. It was important, therefore, to make him confess his sins. Father Poujet, a shrewd and subtle Jesuit, was sent to converse with him. In a very short time he contrived to insinuate himself into the confidence of the simple poet. He acknowledged, one after another, the truths of religion, and he was called on to make expiations and a public confession. He was easily persuaded to burn his operas, and to give up all the profits resulting from the sale of a volume of his worst tales; but he rebelled against public confession. Three doctors of the Sorbonne were sent to him, and they argued long and well, but to no purpose. An old man who was angered by their bull-dog pertinancy, said, "Don't torment him, my reverend fathers; it is not ill will in him, but stupidity, poor soul; and God Almighty will not have the heart to damn him for it." That La Fontaine finally made some kind of a confession, there is little doubt; but that he made the shameful confession which Catholic writers declare he did, no one now believes. He was probably worn out with their entreaties, and came to a compromise with them. He added nothing to his reputation after this, but rather detracted from it. He lived very quietly and devotedly, and died in 1695, in the seventy-fourth year of his age. It was found after his death that he was in the habit of mortifying himself with a shirt of sackcloth. La Fontaine was unquestionably the greatest fabulist of his or any other time, and he has been exceedingly popular throughout France. His tales and fables and light poems are full of beauty and grace. But we cannot speak highly of their morality. They are, like almost all French literature, corrupt. They took their character from the times, and have had a bad influence upon later generations of France. THE INFIDEL. Perhaps no man has existed in the past history of France, who has had such a wonderful influence over succeeding generations, as Voltaire. I name him the _infidel_, not because his infidelity was the most prominent characteristic, but because he is known more widely in America for his scoffing skepticism. The effect of Voltaire's skeptical writings is more perceptible in Paris than in the provinces, but in the capital an amount of infidelity obtains which is perfectly frightful; and even among those who frequent the church, and sometimes ostentatiously parade an affection for it, this skepticism fills the intellects. No one writer of past years unsettled the already shallow-rooted faith of the people to such an extent as Voltaire. Yet he was by no means the man many of his enemies suppose him to have been. No mere scoffer or reviler of the bible could have obtained such an influence in France as Voltaire did. He was really a great man, and gained the affections of the people by his advocacy of liberty. It is more than probable that under a system of religion as pure as now exists in America, Voltaire would never have been an infidel. The condition of the Catholic church in France, in his time, was sufficiently shocking to have startled every intelligent mind into skepticism. It was filled with hypocrites and knaves, who professed to be filled with the spirit of God, but who in reality were very sensual and wicked men. The slightest independence in religious opinions was punished by exile or imprisonment. How could a man with an independent intellect succumb to such a church? And was it not very natural for it to jump from belief to infidelity? This should be borne in mind when we estimate the character of Voltaire. Voltaire's real name was Francois-Marie Arouet, and he was born at Chatenay, on the 20th of February, 1694. His father was a notary, and had a lucrative situation. His mother was of noble extraction. When a babe, he was so feeble that it was not expected he would live. An abbe in the family educated him, and it is a singular fact, that when he was a boy, a deistical ode was put into his hands. He entered the college of Louis-le-Grand, and his, talents rendered him a general favorite with the teachers. One of his tutors, however, in a religious argument found himself so incompetent to defend the Catholic church, that in his anger he exclaimed, "You will become the Coryphaeus of Deism." On leaving college the young man entered into Paris society. Louis XIV. was in his dotage, and at this time paid little attention to men of genius. Arouet soon became popular in the highest circles for his wit and genius. He resolved, much against his father's will, to devote himself to a literary life. One of the first acts of the young man was to fall in love with a rich but desperate woman's daughter, and amid much opposition he by stealth kept up an intercourse with her; but he was at last obliged to give way before so much ill will. His father was very angry with him--so much so, that he consented at last to study the law. He entered a law-office in Paris, and pursued his studies with industry. He frequented society, but he could not content himself with the prospect of an attorney's life. He beseeched his father to release him from his course of study, and he consented that he should return to the country-seat of a friend, and consider the matter. Here Arouet found a large library, and fed upon it. He staid there until the death of the king, when he went up to Paris to witness the joy of the people. Some verses were printed which were attributed to him, and he was instantly thrown into the Bastille. He passed a year in prison, without society, books, or pen and ink. While imprisoned, the idea occurred to him of writing a great French epic, and he actually composed in his dungeon two cantos of it, which afterwards were not altered. The poem was called "_Henriade_," and was regarded with admiration by his contemporaries. Arouet was finally set free, his innocence being satisfactorily proved. He now issued the tragedy of "_Oedipus_," which had a great success. This success was only deserved in part. He still later wrote several letters upon the tragedies of Sophocles, which gave him at once a high position as a man of learning, and as a critic. His life alternated between work and pleasure. He quarreled with Rosseau about this time, and a little later visited England. He remained away from France three years. Upon his return to Paris he again brought out plays, and was everywhere admired and worshiped. But the priesthood hated him. He now bought the small estate of Voltaire, and took the name for his own, as was customary at that time. His writings occasionally made light of religion and the priests, and scoffed at their practices. An actress in Paris was refused the rites of burial by the priests, because of her life and profession. Voltaire thereupon wrote her apotheosis, and in consequence was obliged to conceal himself for several months in a little village in Normandy. When it was safe for him to emerge from his retirement, he wrote a book on England, which raised another storm about his head. He spoke too highly of English liberty in religious matters, and took occasion to speak sarcastically of all religion. The volume was burned in public, and Voltaire concealed himself in the country. He now retired to the house of Madam du Chatelet in the country, where he remained for several years. She was a woman of fine intellect, but a harsh nature, and worshipped Voltaire. He here wrote several plays; labored at his essay "_On the Manners and Spirit of Nations_;" collected materials for his "_History of the Age of Louis XIV_;" and wrote the famous "_Pucelle d'Orleans_." It was while at this house that Voltaire commenced the celebrated correspondence with Frederick the Great. Each had the highest admiration for the other. The great king wrote to him as follows: "See in me only, I entreat you, a zealous citizen, a somewhat skeptical philosopher, but a truly faithful friend. For God's sake write to me simply as a man; join with me in despising titles, names, and all exterior splendor." Voltaire replied; "This is a command after my own heart. _I know not how to treat a king_; but I am quite at my ease with a man whose head and heart are full of love for the human race." The two men met at Cleave. The king had been very anxious for Voltaire to visit the court of Prussia, but he would not without Madame du Chatelet; and Frederic cared not for the acquaintance of a French court lady. Some time after this, Voltaire was sent on a secret mission to Prussia, and startled Frederic by his sudden appearance. He tried to persuade him to take up his abode with him, but the philosopher would not consent. He sighed for his home, and the applause of a Parisian audience. He brought out other plays, which were well received. A minister dying at this time, who had been a bitter enemy of his, he ventured more boldly before the world. He sought to be elected a member of the Academy. A violent opposition arose. He had fought his enemies to the death, never sparing sarcasm or ridicule, and these things could not be forgotten. He lost his election, but was compensated by the success of a new tragedy, which set all Paris into transports of delight. He was chosen by the duke de Richelieu to negotiate with the king of Prussia in reference to a treaty. He was honored in the highest degree by Frederic--was feted, praised, and made as much of as if he had been a king. He succeeded in his negotiations, manifesting great subtlety and tact. He returned to the house of Madame du Chatelet. For a time he lived either here or at Paris--until Madame du Chatelet died, when he went to Paris to spend all his time. He was deeply affected by the death of the only woman he ever loved with sincerity. He propitiated the mistress of Louis XV.--Madame Pompadour--and was appointed to a place in the court; and was also made historiographer of France. Soon after, he was elected a member of the Academy, thus triumphing over his old enemies at last. For a time he sacrificed his manly independence, and was not unlike any other court flatterer. He had a rival in Crebillon; and disgusted with the state of things, he accepted the invitation of Frederic, and made him a visit. He was received with the greatest joy by the monarch--who even kissed the poet's hand in a transport of admiration. The king's cook awaited his orders when he wished to eat in his own rooms, and the king's coach was ready for him when he would ride. He spent two hours each day in studying with the king, correcting his works, etc. etc. He was tempted by so much attention to accept of the king a pension and the office of chamberlain; and was obliged to resign his places at the French court. He wrote to a friend in France: "How can I forget the barbarous manner with which I have been treated in my own country? You know what I have gone through. I enter port after a storm that has lasted thirty years." He had a salary of twenty thousand francs for himself, and four thousand for his niece, who bitterly opposed the acceptance of Frederick's offer. She prophesied that in the end it would be his death. He went at work correcting his tragedies and writing new plays. He soon thought he discovered deceit in the king, and learned that he was despotic. The keen remarks of each were treasured up. Voltaire heard from a friend that the king had said of him: "I shall not want him more than a year longer--one squeezes the orange and throws away the peel." The remark caused him much sorrow. The king also treasured up a remark sarcastically made by Voltaire, which was as follows: "When I correct the royal poems I am washing the king's dirty linen." They soon lost their attachment for each other. Voltaire watched in vain for a way to escape from Prussia. At last it came, and he was once more a free man in Switzerland. He went into a Protestant region, where there were no Catholics, and bought him a pretty estate, and determined to live in complete independence. Persecution however followed him here, and he took up his abode in a retired part of France. He wrote his "_Encyclopedia_" which was severely condemned. In 1788, in his eighty-fourth year, he returned to Paris, bringing with him a newly-written tragedy. His new life in Paris was not good for him, and he died at the end of May. This was the man who, in the years that followed him, ruled, as it were, the intellect of Paris and France. He was a mighty man, and the fact that he was bitterly persecuted, gave him a hold upon the sympathies of succeeding generations. The conduct of the church toward him was shameful, and he made the sad mistake of rejecting all religion, the true as well as the false. His plays and writings abound with shocking sentiments, and some of his writings are exceedingly coarse. These scoffs, coming from an ordinary man, would have wrought little harm; but from the great Voltaire, who was worshiped by the French people, they possessed an astonishing power to work iniquity. A New Englander can scarcely credit his senses in Paris when he finds the estimation in which Voltaire and his writings are held by a vast class of the most intelligent Parisians. In religious America he is regarded as a monster of iniquity; in France as a great poet, philosopher, and advocate of human liberty. * * * * * THE GREAT COMIC WRITER. The place where Moliere, the great comic writer of France, lived in Paris, was pointed out to me one day while near the Rue St. Honore; and I have often noticed on one of the prominent streets a very neat monument to the memory of the great man. It is a niche, with two Corinthian columns, surmounted by a half-circular pediment, which is richly ornamented. A statue of Moliere is placed in the niche in a sitting posture, and in a meditative mood. In front of the columns on each side, there are allegorical figures--one representing his serious, the other his comic plays. Each bears a scroll which contains--one, his comic plays, arranged in chronological order; and the other, his serious plays, arranged in like manner. The basement is beautifully sculptured. The inscriptions are as follows: "_A. Moliere. Ne a Paris, le 15 Jauvier, 1622, et mort a Paris, le 17 Fevrier, 1673_." The monument is over fifty feet in height, and cost one hundred and sixty-eight thousand francs. It was erected in 1844, with a great deal of attendant ceremony when it was finished. Moliere is one of the names of which France is justly proud, and in Paris his memory is half-worshiped. Not to know him well, would be in the eyes of a Parisian the sure sign of intolerable stupidity. He was the greatest comic writer of France, and perhaps of the world. It will not be out of place, therefore, to give a slight sketch of his life. The real name of Moliere was Jean Baptiste Poguelin, and he was born in a little house in the Rue St. Honore, in the year 1622. His father was a carpet-furnisher to the king, and he was brought up to the same business by his father. His mother died when he was only ten years old, and his father was left with a large family of children to educate. The boy passed his early days in his father's warehouse, but his grandfather was accustomed to take him often to the play-house, where he listened to some of the great Corneille's plays, to his thorough delight. Thus in his youth, even while a mere boy, the taste for the drama was created. His father at one time remonstrated with the old man for taking the boy thus early to the theater, and asked, "Do you mean to make an actor of him?" Nothing daunted by this question, the grandfather replied, "Yes, if it please God to make him as good a one as Bellerose"--who was the best tragic actor of that time. The boy was discontented as he grew older, and panted for knowledge. As he contemplated a life given up to trade, he grew melancholy. He was finally sent as an out-student to the college of Clermont, and afterward to the college of Louis-le-Grand, which was under the direction of the Jesuits. The young prince of Conti was at school at that time. Gassendi, the private tutor to the natural son of a man of fortune, named Chapelle--the son at that time at school with Poguelin--discovered the boy's talents, and taught him the philosophy of Epicurus, and gave him lessons in morals. Another of his fellow-students was one de Bergerac, of fine talents but wild disposition. Chapelle and de Bergerac became afterward distinguished. As soon as he was through college, Poguelin entered into the king's service as _valet de chambre_, and made the journey with his majesty to Narbonne. After this he studied law in Orleans, and commenced practice in Paris as an advocate. He here became associated with a few friends in getting up a series of plays. The age was one full of enthusiasm for the stage, and plays were enacted upon the stage and off of it, in private circles. The club of young men who acted together for the amusement of their friends, were so successful that they resolved to take to the public stage; and as was the custom, each took an assumed name. Poguelin assumed the name of Moliere, a name which he immortalized, and by which he was ever afterward known. His father was very much displeased with his course, and sent a friend to persuade him to relinquish it, but the deputy was so fascinated by Poguelin's acting, that he became a convert to him, and was not fitted to urge the arguments of the father. The family for a time refused in a manner to acknowledge their son, being ashamed of his new profession; but they are now known only through him. The masters under whom Moliere principally studied were Italians, and he imbibed a love for the Italian comic art. He also read the Spanish comedies, and learned to admire them. Moliere and his little band left Paris for the provinces. The times were unpropitious, for the wars of the Fronde at that time made the whole country a scene of confusion and danger. They had visited Bordeaux, and were protected by the governor of Guienne. While here, Moliere wrote and brought out a tragedy, which had so poor a success that he gave up tragedy. After a short provincial tour he returned to Paris, and renewed the acquaintance of the prince of Conti. The latter caused Moliere and his fellows to bring out plays at his palace. But Paris was too full of strife, and Moliere went to Lyons, where he wrote and brought out his first comedy, "_L'Etouedi_." It met with a great success. There is an English translation, entitled "Sir Martin Marplot." The next piece was entitled "_Depit Amourex_," and its genuine humor gave it a fine reputation. The moral character of Moliere at this time was exceedingly bad. The times were such that a band of players found every temptation before them. The French biographers give an account of some of his "gallantries," but they only lead the reader to feel disgust rather than admiration. That plays written by such a man, and during times which corrupted the whole people, should be pure, one could not expect. Moliere's plays, therefore, bear the same character, in this respect, as all the great performances of authors of France in those and succeeding times. They were altogether loose in their morals. The company of players were invited to Paynas by the prince of Conti, who was staying there at the time. They acted before him, and Moliere wrote several little interludes for the special amusement of the prince, which were afterward the ground-work of some of his best comedies. The prince was so pleased with the comedian, that he invited him to become his secretary. He declined, but whether from love of comedy, or fear of the prince, we do not know. The prince possessed an awful temper, and actually killed his former secretary by throwing the tongs at him. Paris at length became more quiet, and Moliere turned his steps toward it. He obtained the protection of the king's brother, was introduced to the king, and obtained permission to establish himself in the capital. There was a rival theater at the Hotel de Bourgogue, at which Corneille's tragedies were played. Moliere and his company acted before Louis XIV. and his mother, in the Louvre. The play was that of "Nicomede," and the success was very great. The play was a tragedy, but Moliere knew very well that they could not rival the other tragedy-theater, in that line; and he therefore introduced the custom that night of concluding a tragedy with a farce. The farce acted was one of his own, and was so well received that the custom was ever after kept up. The company finally settled down in the Palais Royal, which the king had granted them. The next poem which Moliere wrote and brought out, was aimed at a society of men, including many of the most talented in Paris, called the "_Society of the Hotel de Rambouillet_." The peculiarities of this society were too ridiculous to describe at this day, and Moliere's comedy, which was aimed at them, was wonderfully successful. Paris at once was in an uproar of laughter, and in the midst of the piece an old man rose in the theater, crying out, "Courage, Moliere; this is a true comedy!" The next piece was entitled "_Sganarelle_," and although it was quite successful, it was inferior to those which preceded it. Moliere now tried tragedy, but with no success. It was not his _forte_. He returned to comedy, and brought out a piece entitled "_L'Ecoledes Maris_," which achieved a brilliant success. At this time Foquet was the minister of finance, and gave a fete in honor of the king; indeed he entertained the king at his villa. He was in some respects another Cardinal Wolsey, in his magnificence and recklessness of display. Foquet loved a beautiful girl, who rejected him. He discovered that the girl loved the king, and that the passion was reciprocated. In his anger he charged it upon the girl, who ran with the secret to the king. Louis was resolved on the downfall of his minister. The fete took place upon a scale of almost unparalleled splendor. Le Brun painted the scenes, La Fontaine wrote verses for it, and Moliere prepared a ballet for the occasion. The king concealed his wrath at this display of wealth, and very much enjoyed Moliere's amusements; and suggested a new comedy to the comedian, while talking with him at the minister's. Foquet soon fell. Moliere was by this time so distinguished that he had troops of friends among the wise, learned, and great. Among the warmest of them was the great Conde, who was always pleased with his society. He told the comedian that he feared to trespass by sending for him on peculiar occasions, and therefore requested him to come to him whenever he had a leisure hour; and at such times he would dismiss all other matters, and give himself up to pleasant conversation. The king invariably defended Moliere. A duke once attacked him, and the king reproved the noble. He still attended to his duties as _valet de chambre_ to the king, and was constantly subjected to annoyance on account of his profession. The other officers of the king's chamber would not eat with him, such was their petty meanness and pride. The king determined to give them a lesson, so one morning he addressed Moliere as follows: "I am told you have short commons here, Moliere, and that the officers of my chamber think you unworthy of sharing their meals. You are probably hungry; I got up with a good appetite. Sit down at that table where they have placed my refreshments." The king sat down with him, and the two went heartily at a fowl. The doors were opened, and the most prominent members of the court entered. "You see me," said Louis, "employed in giving Moliere his breakfast, as my people do not find him good enough company for themselves." From this time Moliere had no trouble on the score of treatment from his fellow _valets_. Everywhere except at court, before this, Moliere was treated with the greatest consideration on account of his brilliant genius. He was intimate with Racine and with Boileau. The story for a time was believed that Moliere married his natural daughter, but it has been proved a falsehood. He became attached to the sister of Madeleine Bejaet, a very witty and graceful woman, and married her; but he soon found that she was too fond of admiration to make him happy. She was coquettish, and without principle, and though Moliere bore with her long, they at length separated. He said: "There is but one sort of love, and those who are more easily satisfied, do not know what true love is." Moliere went on with the management of his theater, and writing and bringing out new plays. One of them--"_L'Ecole des Femmes_"--was translated and amended into the English by Wycherly, and was altogether more licentious in plot than in the original language. It was very popular in England, but not so much so in France. The next piece of Moliere's was entitled "_Impromptu de Versailles_," and was written at the command of the king. The king and his courtiers were accustomed to take parts in the ballets in those days, and Louis and his court took parts in the ballets of Moliere's construction. The soldiers who guarded the king were accustomed to go into the theater free. They took up a large space, and Moliere represented his loss to the king, who abolished the privilege. The soldiers were very angry, and the next night they cut the door-keeper to pieces with their swords, and forced their way into the house. Moliere made them a speech, and peace was restored. The king offered to punish with severity the lawless soldiery, but Moliere requested him not to do so, and the new order was ever after obeyed without trouble. One of his next acts was to hold up to ridicule, in a comedy, the medical faculty. The condition of the medical art at that time was such that it richly deserved ridicule. But no man can thus attack great bodies of men without making enemies, and Moliere had them without number. The comedian was now at the height of his prosperity, and still he was unhappy. Separated from his wife, whose conduct was now shameful, he had no domestic happiness. He spent much of his time at his country-house at Antenil, where an apartment was always kept for his old school-fellow, Chapelle, for whom he always retained a warm affection. He was often alone, and preferred solitude, shutting himself away from society. A supper was once given by him to all his brother wits. He alone was indisposed, and as he took no wine or animal food, he went early to bed, leaving his friends merry over their wine. At last they grew so affected by the wine they had drank, that they were ready to follow a leader into any absurdity. Chapelle was, when tipsy, always melancholy, and on this occasion he addressed his companions in a strain of bathos which, had they been free from the effects of wine, would only have excited their laughter. But now they were in the same condition as himself. Chapelle finally wound up by proposing that they all proceed to a neighboring river, and end life together by plunging into it. He expiated upon the heroism of the act, and the immortality it would give them, and they all agreed to it. Moliere overheard them quitting the house, and suspecting something wrong, followed them. He came up with them upon the bank of the river, when they besought him also to die with them. He professed to be struck with the heroism of their plan, but demanded that it should be executed in the broad day. They fell in with his suggestion, and returned to the house. Of course, the next morning they were ashamed to look upon each other's faces. Moliere wrote many new plays and farces, but his days were fast drawing to a close. He was overworked, and took little care of his health. The king asked him one day what he did with his doctor. "We converse together," he replied--"he writes prescriptions, which I do not take, and I recover." He had a weak chest, and a constant cough. About this time his friends persuaded him to invite his wife again to his house, and she urged him to a more generous diet, but he grew the worse for it. He now brought out a new play, and could not be prevented from taking a prominent part in it. On the fourth night he was much worse, and friends gathered around him, beseeching him not to go on the stage longer. He replied, "There are fifty poor workmen whose bread depends on the daily receipts. I should reproach myself if I deprived them of it." But while making others laugh, he was actually dying. He was, while in the ballet, seized with a fit of coughing, and burst a blood-vessel. A priest was sent for, but such was their antipathy to the comedian, that it was long before one could be found willing to attend him. He expired with but few friends around him. Two sisters of charity whom he had been in the habit of receiving in his house while they were collecting alms during Lent, remembered his generosity, and attended his death-bed. The archbishop of Paris refused the rites of burial to the body. His wife was much moved by this act, and exclaimed, "What! refuse burial to one who deserves that altars should be erected to him!" She ran to the king, who being offended by some indiscretion of hers, refused to interfere in the matter, though he privately ordered the archbishop to take off the interdiction. When the funeral took place, a mob of low people, excited by their priestly advisers, attended, intending to offer insult to the body, but the comedian's widow propitiated them by throwing a thousand francs among them. We see by this shameful treatment of a man whom France honored, and who, though not irreproachable in character, was as pure as those who persecuted him. Moliere was almost universally honored--always excepting those bodies which he had ridiculed. He was very generous, and would, long before his death, have given up acting on the stage, were it not for his companions whose subsistence depended upon his appearance with them. Very many years after, the eulogy of Moliere was made the subject of a prize; and when it was delivered, two persons by the name of Poguelin were honored by a seat on the stage. At his death the band of comedians was broken up. His widow received a pension, in after years, of one thousand livres. But one of his children survived, and that one had no issue--so the race soon became extinct. THE END. 
17107	----	A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL _Antiquarian_ AND PICTURESQUE TOUR. PRINTED BY WILLIAM NICOL, AT THE Shakespeare Press. [Illustration: ANN OF BRITTANY. From an Illustrated Missal in the Royal Library at Paris.] London. Published June 1829. by R. Jennings. Poultry. A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL _Antiquarian_ AND PICTURESQUE TOUR IN FRANCE AND GERMANY. BY THE REVEREND THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN, D.D. MEMBER OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY AT ROUEN, AND OF THE ACADEMY OF UTRECHT. SECOND EDITION. VOLUME II. DEI OMNIA PLENA. LONDON: PUBLISHED BY ROBERT JENNINGS, AND JOHN MAJOR. 1829. CONTENTS OF VOLUME II. CONTENTS. VOLUME II. LETTER I. PARIS. _The Boulevards. Public Buildings. Street Scenery. Fountains_. 1 LETTER II. _General Description of the Bibliothèque du Roi. The Librarians_. 42 LETTER III. _The same subject continued_. 64 LETTER IV. _The same subject continued_. 82 LETTER V. PARIS. _Some Account of the early printed and rare Books in the Royal Library_. 101 LETTER VI. _Conclusion of the Account of the Royal Library. The Library of the Arsenal_. 144 LETTER VII. _Library of Ste. Geneviève. The Abbé Mercier St. Léger. Library of the Mazarine College, or Institute. Private Library of the King. Mons. Barbier, Librarian_. 169 _Introduction to Letter VIII_. 209 LETTER VIII. _Some Account of the late Abbé Rive. Booksellers. Printers. Book Binders_. 214 LETTER IX. _Men of Letters. Dom Brial. The Abbé Bétencourt. Messrs. Gail, Millin, and Langlès. A Roxburghe Banquet_. 251 LETTER X. _The Collections of Denon, Quintin Craufurd, and the Marquis de Sommariva_. 279 LETTER XI. _Notice of M. Willemin's Monumens Français inédits. Miscellaneous Antiquities. Present State of the Fine Arts. General Observations upon the National Character_. 317 LETTER XII. _Paris to Strasbourg. Nancy_. 343 LETTER XIII. STRASBOURG. _Establishment of the Protestant Religion. The Cathedral. The Public Library_. 374 LETTER XIV. _Society. Environs of Strasbourg. Domestic Architecture. Manners and Customs. Literature. Language_. 413 [Illustration] _LETTER I._ PARIS. THE BOULEVARDS. PUBLIC BUILDINGS. STREET SCENERY. FOUNTAINS.[1] _Paris, June 18, 1818_. You are probably beginning to wonder at the tardiness of my promised Despatch, in which the architectural minutiæ of this City were to be somewhat systematically described. But, as I have told you towards the conclusion of my previous letter, it would be to very little purpose to conduct you over every inch of ground which had been trodden and described by a host of Tourists, and from which little of interest or of novelty could be imparted. Yet it seems to be absolutely incumbent upon me to say _something_ by way of local description. Perhaps the BOULEVARDS form the most interesting feature about Paris. I speak here of the _principal_ Boulevards:--of those, extending from _Ste. Madelaine_ to _St. Antoine_; which encircle nearly one half the capital. Either on foot, or in a carriage, they afford you singular gratification. A very broad road way, flanked by two rows of trees on each side, within which the population of Paris seems to be in incessant agitation--lofty houses, splendid shops, occasionally a retired mansion, with a parterre of blooming flowers in front--all manner of merchandize exposed in the open air--prints, muslins, _kaleidoscopes_, (they have just introduced them[2]) trinkets, and especially watch chains and strings of beads, spread in gay colours upon the ground--the undulations of the chaussée--and a bright blue sky above the green trees--all these things irresistibly rivet the attention and extort the admiration of a stranger. You may have your boots cleaned, and your breakfast prepared, upon these same boulevards. Felicitous junction of conveniences! This however is only a hasty sketch of what may be called a morning scene. AFTERNOON approaches: then, the innumerable chairs, which have been a long time unoccupied, are put into immediate requisition: then commences the "high exchange" of the loungers. One man hires two chairs, for which he pays two sous: he places his legs upon one of them; while his body, in a slanting position, occupies the other. The places, where these chairs are found, are usually flanked by coffee houses. Incessant reports from drawing the corks of beer bottles resound on all sides. The ordinary people are fond of this beverage; and for four or six sous they get a bottle of pleasant, refreshing, small beer. The draught is usually succeeded by a doze--in the open air. What is common, excites no surprise; and the stream of population rushes on without stopping one instant to notice these somniferous indulgences. Or, if they are not disposed to sleep, they sit and look about them: abstractedly gazing upon the multitude around, or at the heavens above. Pure, idle, unproductive listlessness is the necessary cause of such enjoyment. Evening approaches: when the Boulevards put on their gayest and most fascinating livery. Then commences the bustle of the _Ice Mart_: in other words, then commences the general demand for ices: while the rival and neighbouring _caffés_ of TORTONI and RICHE have their porches of entrance choked by the incessant ingress and egress of customers. The full moon shines beautifully above the foliage of the trees; and an equal number of customers, occupying chairs, sit without, and call for ices to be brought to them. Meanwhile, between these loungers, and the entrances to the caffés, move on, closely wedged, and yet scarcely in perceptible motion, the mass of human beings who come only to exercise their eyes, by turning them to the right or to the left: while, on the outside, upon the chaussée, are drawn up the carriages of visitors (chiefly English ladies) who prefer taking their ice within their closed morocco quarters. The varieties of ice are endless, but that of the _Vanille_ is justly a general favourite: not but that you may have coffee, chocolate, punch, peach, almond, and in short every species of gratification of this kind; while the glasses are filled to a great height, in a pyramidal shape, and some of them with layers of strawberry, gooseberry, and other coloured ice--looking like pieces of a Harlequin's jacket--are seen moving to and fro, to be silently and certainly devoured by those who bespeak them. Add to this, every one has his tumbler and small water-bottle by the side of him: in the centre of the bottle is a large piece of ice, and with a tumbler of water, poured out from it, the visitor usually concludes his repast. The most luxurious of these ices scarcely exceeds a shilling of our money; and the quantity is at least half as much again as you get at a certain well-known confectioner's in Piccadilly. It is getting towards MIDNIGHT; but the bustle and activity of the Boulevards have not yet much abated. Groups of musicians, ballad-singers, tumblers, actors, conjurors, slight-of-hand professors, and raree-shew men, have each their distinct audiences. You advance. A little girl with a raised turban (as usual, tastefully put on) seems to have no mercy either upon her own voice or upon the hurdy-gurdy on which she plays: her father shews his skill upon a violin, and the mother is equally active with the organ; after "a flourish"--not of "trumpets"--but of these instruments--the tumblers commence their operations. But a great crowd is collected to the right. What may this mean? All are silent; a ring is made, of which the boundaries are marked by small lighted candles stuck in pieces of clay. Within this circle stands a man--apparently strangled: both arms are extended, and his eyes are stretched to their utmost limits. You look more closely--and the hilt of a dagger is seen in his mouth, of which the blade is introduced into his stomach! He is almost breathless, and ready to faint--but he approaches, with the crown of a hat in one hand, into which he expects you should drop a sous. Having made his collection, he draws forth the dagger from its carnal sheath, and, making his bow, seems to anticipate the plaudits which invariably follow.[3] Or, he changes his plan of operations on the following evening. Instead of the dagger put down his throat, he introduces a piece of wire up one nostril, to descend by the other--and, thus self-tortured, demands the remuneration and the applause of his audience. In short, from one end of the Boulevards to the other, for nearly two English miles, there is nought but animation, good humour, and, it is right to add, good order;--while, having strolled as far as the Boulevards _de Bondy_, and watched the moon-beams sparkling in the waters which play there within the beautiful fountain so called,--I retread my steps, and seek the quiet quarters in which this epistle is penned. The next out-of-door sources of gratification, of importance, are the _Gardens of the Thuileries_, the _Champs Elysées_, and the promenade within the _Palais Royal_; in which latter plays a small, but, in my humble opinion, the most beautifully constructed fountain which Paris can boast of. Of this, presently. The former of these spots is rather pretty than picturesque: rather limited than extensive: a raised terrace to the left, on looking from the front of the Thuileries, is the only commanding situation--from which you observe the Seine, running with its green tint, and rapid current, to the left--while on the right you leisurely examine the rows of orange trees and statuary which give an imposing air of grandeur to the scene. At this season of the year, the fragrance of the blossoms of the orange trees is most delicious. The statues are of a colossal, and rather superior kind ... for garden decoration. There are pleasing vistas and wide gravel walks, and a fine evening usually fills them with crowds of Parisians. The palace is long, but rather too low and narrow; yet there is an air of elegance about it, which, with the immediately surrounding scenery, cannot fail to strike you very agreeably. The white flag of St. Louis floats upon the top of the central dome. The _Champs Elysées_ consist of extensive wooded walks; and a magnificent road divides them, which serves as the great attractive mall for carriages-- especially on Sundays--while, upon the grass, between the trees, on that day, appear knots of male and female citizens enjoying the waltz or quadrille. It is doubtless a most singular, and animated scene: the utmost order and good humour prevailing. The _Place Louis Quinze_, running at right angles with the Thuileries, and which is intersected in your route to the _Rue de la Paix_, is certainly a most magnificent front elevation; containing large and splendid houses, of elaborate exterior ornament. When completed, to the right, it will present an almost matchless front of domestic architecture, built upon the Grecian model. It was in this place, facing his own regal residence of the Thuileries, that the unfortunate Louis--surrounded by a ferocious and bloodthirsty mob--was butchered by the guillotine. Come back with me now into the very heart of Paris, and let us stroll within the area of the _Palais Royal_. You may remember that I spoke of a fountain, which played within the centre of this popular resort. The different branches, or _jets d'eau_, spring from a low, central point; and crossing each other in a variety of angles, and in the most pleasing manner of intersection, produce, altogether, the appearance of the blossom of a large flower: so silvery and transparent is the water, and so gracefully are its glassy petals disposed. Meanwhile, the rays of the sun, streaming down from above, produce a sort of stationary rainbow: and, in the heat of the day, as you sit upon the chairs, or saunter beneath the trees, the effect is both grateful and refreshing. The little flower garden, in the centre of which this fountain seems to be for ever playing, is a perfect model of neatness and tasteful disposition: not a weed dare intrude: and the earth seems always fresh and moist from the spray of the fountain-- while roses, jonquils, and hyacinths scatter their delicious fragrance around. For one minute only let us visit the _Caffé des Mille Colonnes_: so called (as you well know) from the number of upright mirrors and glasses which reflect the small columns by which the ceiling is supported. Brilliant and singular as is this effect, it is almost eclipsed by the appearance of the Mistress of the House; who, decorated with rich and rare gems, and seated upon a sort of elevated throne--uniting great comeliness and (as some think) beauty of person--receives both the homage and (what is doubtless preferable to her) the _francs_ of numerous customers and admirers. The "wealth of either Ind" sparkles upon her hand, or glitters upon her attire: and if the sun of her beauty be somewhat verging towards its declension, it sets with a glow which reminds her old acquaintance of the splendour of its noon-day power. It is yet a sharply contested point whether the ice of this house be preferable to that of Tortoni: a point, too intricate and momentous for my solution. "Non nostrum est ... tantas componere lites." Of the _Jardin des Plantes_, which I have once visited, but am not likely to revisit--owing to the extreme heat of the weather, and the distance of the spot from this place--scarcely too much can be said in commendation: whether we consider it as a _dépôt_ for live or dead animals, or as a school of study and instruction for the cultivators of natural history. The wild animals are kept, in their respective cages, out of doors, which is equally salutary for themselves and agreeable to their visitors. I was much struck by the perpetual motion of a huge, restless, black bear, who has left the marks of his footsteps by a concavity in the floor:--as well as by the panting, and apparently painful, inaction of an equally huge white or gray bear--who, nurtured upon beds of Greenland ice, seemed to be dying beneath the oppressive heat of a Parisian atmosphere. The same misery appeared to beset the bears who are confined, in an open space, below. They searched every where for shade; while a scorching sun was darting its vertical rays upon their heads. In the Museum of dead, or stuffed animals, you have every thing that is minute or magnificent in nature, from the creeping lizard to the towering giraffe, arranged systematically, and in a manner the most obvious and intelligible: while Cuvier's collection of fossil bones equally surprises and instructs you. It is worth all the _catacombs_ of all the capitals in the world. If we turn to the softer and more beauteous parts of creation, we are dazzled and bewildered by the radiance and variety of the tribes of vegetables--whether as fruits or flowers; and, upon the whole, this is an establishment which, in no age or country, hath been surpassed. It is not necessary to trouble you with much more of this strain. The out-of-door enjoyments in Paris are so well known, and have been so frequently described--and my objects of research being altogether of a very different complexion--you will not, I conclude, scold me if I cease to expatiate upon this topic, but direct your attention to others. Not however but that I think you may wish to know my sentiments about the principal ARCHITECTURAL BUILDINGS of Paris--as you are yourself not only a lover, but a judge, of these matters--and therefore the better qualified to criticise and correct the following remarks--which flow "au bout de la plume"--as Madame de Sévigné says. In the first place, then, let us stop a few minutes before the THUILERIES. It hath a beautiful front: beautiful from its lightness and airiness of effect. The small central dome is the only raised part in the long horizontal line of this extended building: not but what the extremities are raised in the old fashioned sloping manner: but if there had been a similar dome at each end, and that in the centre had been just double its present height, the effect, in my humble opinion, would have harmonised better with the extreme length of the building. It is very narrow; so much so, that the same room contains windows from which you may look on either side of the palace: upon the gardens to the west, or within the square to the east. Adjoining to the Thuileries is the LOUVRE: that is to say, a long range of building to the south, parallel with the Seine, connects these magnificent residences: and it is precisely along this extensive range that the celebrated _Gallery of the Louvre_ runs. The principal exterior front, or southern extremity of the Louvre, faces the Seine; and to my eye it is nearly faultless as a piece of architecture constructed upon Grecian and Roman models. But the interior is yet more splendid. I speak more particularly of the south and western fronts: that facing the north being more ancient, and containing female figure ornaments which are palpably of a disproportionate length. The Louvre quadrangle (if I may borrow our old college phrase) is assuredly the most splendid piece of ornamental architecture which Paris contains. The interior of the edifice itself is as yet in an unfinished condition;[4] but you must not conclude the examination of this glorious pile of building, without going round to visit the _eastern_ exterior front--looking towards Notre-Dame. Of all sides of the square, within or without, this colonnade front is doubtless the most perfect of its kind. It is less rich and crowded with ornament than any side of the interior--but it assumes one of the most elegant, airy, and perfectly proportionate aspects, of any which I am just now able to recollect. Perhaps the basement story, upon which this double columned colonnade of the Corinthian Order runs, is somewhat too plain--a sort of affectation of the rustic. The alto-relievo figures in the centre of the tympanum have a decisive and appropriate effect. The advantage both of the Thuileries and Louvre is, that they are well seen from the principal thoroughfares of Paris: that is to say, along the quays, and from the chief streets running from the more ancient parts on the south side of the Seine. The evil attending our own principal public edifices is, that they are generally constructed where they _cannot_ be seen to advantage. Supposing one of the principal entrances or malls of London, both for carriages and foot, to be on the _south_ side of the Thames, what could be more magnificent than the front of _Somerset House_, rising upon its hundred columns perpendicularly from the sides of a river... three times as broad as the Seine, with the majestic arches of _Waterloo Bridge!_--before which, however, the stupendous elevation of _St. Paul's_ and its correspondent bridge of _Black Friars_, could not fail to excite the wonder, and extort the praise, of the most anti-anglican stranger. And to crown the whole, how would the venerable nave and the towers of _Westminster Abbey_--with its peculiar bridge of Westminster ... give a finish to such a succession of architectural objects of metropolitan grandeur! Although in the very heart, of Parisian wonder, I cannot help, you see, carrying my imagination towards our own capital; and suggesting that, if, instead of furnaces, forges, and flickering flames--and correspondent clouds of dense smoke--which give to the southern side of the Thames the appearance of its being the abode of legions of blacksmiths, and glass and shot makers--we introduced a little of the good taste and good sense of our neighbours--and if ... But all this is mighty easily said--though not quite so easily put in practice. The truth however is, my dear friend, that we should _approximate_ a little towards each other. Let the Parisians attend somewhat more to our domestic comforts and commercial advantages--and let the Londoners sacrifice somewhat of their love of warehouses and manufactories--and then you will have hit the happy medium, which, in the metropolis of a great empire, would unite all the conveniences, with all the magnificence, of situation. Of other buildings, devoted to civil purposes, the CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES, the HÔTEL DES INVALIDES, with its gilded dome (a little too profusely adorned,) the INSTITUTE, and more particularly the MINT, are the chief ornaments on the south side of the Seine. In these I am not disposed to pick the least hole, by fastidious or hypercritical observations. Only I wish that they would contrive to let the lions, in front of the façade of the Institute, (sometimes called the _Collège Mazarin_ or _des Quatre Nations_--upon the whole, a magnificent pile) discharge a good large mouthful of water-- instead of the drivelling stream which is for ever trickling from their closed jaws. Nothing can be more ridiculous than the appearance of these meagre and unappropriate objects: the more to be condemned, because the French in general assume great credit for the management of their fountains. Of the four great buildings just noticed, that of the Mint, or rather its façade, pleases me most. It is a beautiful elevation, in pure good taste; but the stone is unfortunately of a coarse grain and of a dingy colour. Of the BRIDGES thrown across the Seine, connecting all the fine objects on either side, it must be allowed that they are generally in good taste: light, yet firm; but those, in iron, of Louis XVI. and _des Arts_, are perhaps to be preferred. The _Pont Neuf_, where the ancient part of Paris begins, is a large, long, clumsy piece of stone work: communicating with the island upon which _Notre Dame_ is built. But if you look eastward, towards old Paris, from the top of this bridge--or if you look in the same direction, a little towards the western side, or upon the quays,--you contemplate, in my humble opinion, one of the grandest views of street scenery that can be imagined! The houses are very lofty--occasionally of six or even eight stories--the material with which they are built is a fine cream-coloured stone: the two branches of the river, and the back ground afforded by _Notre Dame_, and a few other subordinate public buildings, altogether produce an effect--especially as you turn your back upon the sun, sinking low behind the _Barrière de Neuilly_--which would equally warm the hearts and exercise the pencils of the TURNERS and CALCOTS of our own shores. Indeed, I learn that the former distinguished artist has actually made a drawing of this picture. But let me add, that my own unqualified admiration had preceded the knowledge of this latter fact. Among other buildings, I must put in a word of praise in behalf of the HALLE-AUX-BLÉ'S--built after the model of the Pantheon at Rome. It is one hundred and twenty French feet in diameter; has twenty-five covered archways, or arcades, of ten feet in width; of which six are open, as passages of ingress and egress--corresponding with the like number of opposite streets. The present cupola (preceded by one almost as large as that of the Pantheon at Rome) is built of iron and brass--of a curious, light, and yet sufficiently substantial construction--and is unassailable by fire. I never passed through this building without seeing it well stocked with provender; while its area was filled with farmers, who, like our own, assemble to make the best bargain. Yet let me observe that, owing to the height of the neighbouring houses, this building loses almost the whole of its appropriate effect. Nor should the EXCHANGE, in the _Rue des Filles St. Thomas_, be dismissed without slight notice and commendation. It is equally simple, magnificent, and striking: composed of a single row, or peristyle, of Corinthian pillars, flanking a square of no mean dimensions, and presenting fourteen pillars in its principal front. At this present moment, it is not quite finished; but when completed, it promises to be among the most splendid and the most perfect specimens of public architecture in Paris.[5] Beautiful as many may think _our_ Exchange, in my humble opinion it has no pretensions to compete with that at Paris. The HÔTEL DE VILLE, near the _Place de Grève_, is rather in the character of the more ancient buildings in France: it is exceedingly picturesque, and presents a noble façade. Being situated amidst the older streets of Paris, nothing can harmonise better with the surrounding objects. Compared with the metropolis, on its present extended scale, it is hardly of sufficient importance for the consequence usually attached to this kind of building; but you must remember that the greater part of it was built in the sixteenth century, when the capital had scarcely attained half its present size. The _Place de Grève_ during the Revolution, was the spot in which the guillotine performed almost all its butcheries. I walked over it with a hurrying step: fancying the earth to be yet moist with the blood of so many immolated victims. Of other HÔTELS, I shall mention only those of DE SENS and DE SOUBISE. The entrance into the former yet exhibits a most picturesque specimen of the architecture of the early part of the XVIth century. Its interior is devoted to every thing ... which it ought _not_ to be. The Hôtel de Soubise is still a consequential building. It was sufficiently notorious during the reigns of Charles V. and VI.: and it owes its present form to the enterprising spirit of Cardinal Rohan, who purchased it of the Guise family towards the end of the XVIIth century. There is now, neither pomp nor splendour, nor revelry, within this vast building. All its aristocratic magnificence is fled; but the antiquary and the man of curious research console themselves on its possessing treasures of a more substantial and covetable kind. You are to know that it contains the _Archives of State_ and the _Royal Printing Office_. Paris has doubtless good reason to be proud of her public buildings; for they are numerous, splendid, and commodious; and have the extraordinary advantage over our own of not being tinted with soot and smoke. Indeed, when one thinks of the sure invasion of every new stone or brick building in London, by these enemies of external beauty, one is almost sick at heart during the work of erection. The lower tier of windows and columns round St. Paul's have been covered with the dirt and smoke of upwards of a century: and the fillagree-like embellishments which distinguish the recent restorations of Henry the VIIth's chapel, in Westminster Abbey, are already beginning to lose their delicacy of appearance from a similar cause. But I check myself. I am at Paris--and not in the metropolis of our own country. A word now for STREET SCENERY. Paris is perhaps here unrivalled: still I speak under correction--having never seen Edinburgh. But, although _portions_ of that northern capital, from its undulating or hilly site, must necessarily present more picturesque appearances, yet, upon the whole, from the superior size of Paris, there must be more numerous examples of the kind of scenery of which I am speaking. The specimens are endless. I select only a few--the more familiar to me. In turning to the left, from the _Boulevard Montmartre_ or _Poissonière_, and going towards the _Rue St. Marc_, or _Rue des Filles St. Thomas_ (as I have been in the habit of doing, almost every morning, for the last ten days--in my way to the Royal Library) you leave the _Rue Montmartre_ obliquely to the left. The houses here seem to run up to the sky; and appear to have been constructed with the same ease and facility as children build houses of cards. In every direction about this spot, the houses, built of stone, as they generally are, assume the most imposing and picturesque forms; and if a Canaletti resided here, who would condescend to paint without water and wherries, some really magnificent specimens of this species of composition might be executed--equally to the credit of the artist and the place. If you want old fashioned houses, you must lounge in the long and parallel streets of _St. Denis_ and _St. Martin_; but be sure that you choose dry weather for the excursion. Two hours of heavy rain (as I once witnessed) would cause a little rushing rivulet in the centre of these streets--and you could only pass from one side to the other by means of a plank. The absence of _trottoirs_--- or foot-pavement--is indeed here found to be a most grievous defect. With the exception of the _Place Vendome_ and the _Rue de la Paix_, where something like this sort of pavement prevails, Paris presents you with hardly any thing of the kind; so that, methinks, I hear you say, "what though your Paris be gayer and more grand, our London is larger and more commodious." Doubtless this is a fair criticism. But from the _Marché des Innocens_--a considerable space, where they sell chiefly fruit and vegetables,[6]--(and which reminded me something of the market-places of Rouen) towards the _Hôtel de Ville_ and the _Hôtel de Soubise_, you will meet with many extremely curious and interesting specimens of house and street scenery: while, as I before observed to you, the view of the houses and streets in the _Isle St. Louis_, from the _Pont des Ars_, the _Quai de Conti_, the _Pont Neuf_, or the _Quai des Augustins_--or, still better, the _Pont Royal_--is absolutely one of the grandest and completest specimens of metropolitan scenery which can be contemplated. Once more: go as far as the _Pont Louis XVI._, cast your eye down to the left; and observe how magnificently the Seine is flanked by the Thuileries and the Louvre. Surely, it is but a sense of justice and a love of truth which compel an impartial observer to say, that this is a view of regal and public splendor--without a parallel in our own country! The _Rue de Richelieu_ is called the Bond-street of Paris. Parallel with it, is the _Rue Vivienne_. They are both pleasant streets; especially the former, which is much longer, and is rendered more striking by containing some of the finest hotels in Paris. Hosiers, artificial flower makers, clock-makers, and jewellers, are the principal tradesmen in the Rue de Richelieu; but it has no similarity with Bond-street. The houses are of stone, and generally very lofty--while the _Academie de Musique_[7] and the _Bibliothèque du Roi_ are public buildings of such consequence and capacity (especially the former) that it is absurd to name the street in which they are situated with our own. The Rue Vivienne is comparatively short; but it is pleasing, from the number of flowers, shrubs, and fruits, brought thither from the public markets for sale. No doubt the _Place Vendome_ and the _Rue de la Paix_ claim precedence, on the score of magnificence and comfort, to either of these, or to any other streets; but to my taste there is nothing (next to the Boulevards) which is so thoroughly gratifying as the Rue de Richelieu. Is it because some few hundred thousand _printed volumes_ are deposited therein? But of all these, the _Rue St. Honoré_, with its faubourg so called, is doubtless the most distinguished and consequential. It seems to run from west to east entirely through Paris; and is considered, on the score of length, as more than a match for our Oxford street. It may be so; but if the houses are loftier, the street is much narrower; and where, again, is your foot-pavement--to protect you from the eternal movements of fiacre, cabriolet, voiture and diligence? Besides, the undulating line of our Oxford-street presents, to the tasteful observer, a sight--perfectly unrivalled of its kind--especially if it be witnessed on a clear night, when its thousand gas-lighted lamps below emulate the starry lustre of the heavens above! To an inexperienced eye, this has the effect of enchantment. Add to the houses of Oxford-street but two stories, and the appearance of this street, in the day time, would be equally imposing: to which add--what can never be added--the atmosphere of Paris! You will remark that, all this time, I have been wholly silent about the _Palace de Luxembourg_, with its beautiful though flat gardens--of tulips, jonquils, roses, wall flowers, lilac and orange trees--its broad and narrow walks--its terraces and statues. The façade, in a line with the _Rue Vaugirard_, has a grand effect--in every point of view. But the south front, facing the gardens, is extremely beautiful and magnificent; while across the gardens, and in front,--some short English mile--stands the OBSERVATORY. Yet fail not to visit the interior square of the palace, for it is well worth your notice and admiration. This building is now the _Chambre des Pairs_. Its most celebrated ornament was the famous suite of paintings, by Rubens, descriptive of the history of Henry IV. These now adorn the gallery of the Louvre. It is a pity that this very tasteful structure--which seems to be built of the choicest stone--should be so far removed from what may be called the fashionable part of the city. It is in consequence reluctantly visited by our countrymen; although a lover of botany, or a florist, will not fail to procure two or three roots of the different species of _tulips_, which, it is allowed, blow here in uncommon luxuriance and splendor. The preceding is, I am aware, but a feeble and partial sketch--compared with what a longer residence, and a temperature more favourable to exercise (for we are half scorched up with heat, positive and reflected)--would enable me to make. But "where are my favourite ECCLESIASTICAL EDIFICES?" methinks I hear you exclaim. Truly you shall know as much as I know myself; which is probably little enough. Of NOTRE-DAME, the west front, with its marygold window, is striking both from its antiquity and richness. It is almost black from age; but the alto-relievos, and especially those above the doors, stand out in almost perfect condition. These ornaments are rather fine of their kind. There is, throughout the whole of this west front, a beautiful keeping; and the towers are, _here_, somewhat more endurable--and therefore somewhat in harmony. Over the north-transept door, on the outside, is a figure of the Virgin--once holding the infant Jesus in her arms. Of the latter, only the feet remain. The drapery of this figure is in perfectly good taste: a fine specimen of that excellent art which prevailed towards the end of the XIIIth century. Above, is an alto-relievo subject of the slaughter of the Innocents. The soldiers are in quilted armour. I entered the cathedral from the western door, during service-time. A sight of the different clergymen engaged in the office, filled me with melancholy--and made me predict sad things of what was probably to come to pass! These clergymen were old, feeble, wretchedly attired in their respective vestments--and walked and sung in a tremulous and faltering manner. The architectural effect in the interior is not very imposing: although the solid circular pillars of the nave--the double aisles round the choir--and the old basso-relievo representations of the life of Christ, upon the exterior of the walls of the choir--cannot fail to afford an antiquary very singular satisfaction. The choir appeared to be not unlike that of St. Denis. The next Gothic church, in size and importance, is that of St. GERVAIS-- situated to the left, in the Rue de Monceau. It has a very lofty nave, but the interior is exceedingly flat and divested of ornament. The pillars have scarcely any capitals. The choir is totally destitute of effect. Some of the stained glass is rich and old, but a great deal has been stolen or demolished during the Revolution. There is a good large modern picture, in one of the side chapels to the right: and yet a more modern one, much inferior, on the opposite side. In almost every side chapel, and in the confessionals, the priests were busily engaged in the catechetical examination of young people previous to the first Communion on the following sabbath, which was the Fête-Dieu. The western front is wholly Grecian--perhaps about two hundred years old. It is too lofty for its width--but has a grand effect, and is justly much celebrated. Yet the _situation_ of this fine old Gothic church is among the most wretched of those in Paris. It is preserved from suffocation, only by holding it head so high. Next in importance to St. Gervais, is the Gothic church of St. EUSTACHE: a perfect specimen, throughout, of that adulterated style of Gothic architecture (called its _restoration!_) which prevailed at the commencement of the reign of Francis I. Faulty, and even meretricious, as is the whole of the interior, the choir will not fail to strike you with surprise and gratification. It is light, rich, and lofty. This church is very large, but not so capacious as St. Gervais--while situation is, if possible, still more objectionable. Let me not forget my two old favourite churches of ST. GERMAIN DES PRÈS, _and St. Geneviève_; although of the latter I hardly know whether a hasty glimpse, both of the exterior and interior, be not sufficient; the greater part having been destroyed during the Revolution.[8] The immediate vicinity of the former is sadly choaked by stalls and shops--and the west-front has been cruelly covered by modern appendages. It is the church dearest to antiquaries; and with reason.[9] I first visited it on a Sunday, when that part of the Service was performed which required the fullest intonations of the organ. The effect altogether was very striking. The singular pillars-- of which the capitals are equally massive and grotesque, being sometimes composed of human beings, and sometimes of birds and beasts, especially towards the choir--the rising up and sitting down of the congregation, and the yet more frequent movements of the priests--the swinging of the censers--and the parade of the vergers, dressed in bag wigs, with broad red sashes of silk, and silk stockings--but, above all, the most scientifically touched, as well as the deepest and loudest toned, organ I ever heard-- perfectly bewildered and amazed me! Upon the dispersion of the congregation--which very shortly followed this religious excitation--I had ample leisure to survey every part of this curious old structure; which reminded me, although upon a much larger scale, of the peculiarities of St. Georges de Bocherville, and Notre Dame at Guibray. Certainly, very much of this church is of the twelfth century--and as I am not writing to our friend P*** I will make bold to say that some portions of it yet "smack strongly" of the eleventh. Nearer to my residence, and of a kindred style of architecture, is the church of ST. GERMAIN AUX AUXERROIS. The west front or porch is yet sound and good. Nothing particularly strikes you on the entrance, but there are some interesting specimens of rich old stained glass in the windows of the transepts. The choir is completely and cruelly modernised. In the side chapels are several good modern paintings; and over an altar of twisted columns, round which ivy leaves, apparently composed of ivory, are creeping, is a picture of three figures in the flames of purgatory. This side-chapel is consecrated to the offering up of orisons "_for the souls in purgatory_." It is gloomy and repulsive. Death's heads and thigh bones are painted, in white colours, upon the stained wall; and in the midst of all these fearful devices, I saw three young ladies intensely occupied in their devotions at the railing facing the altar. Here again, I observed priests examining young people in their catechism; and others in confessionals, receiving the confessions of the young of both sexes, previous to their taking the first sacrament on the approaching _Fête-Dieu_. Contiguous to the Sorbonne church, there stands, raising its neatly constructed dome aloft in air, the _Nouvelle Eglise Ste. Geneviève_, better known by the name of the PANTHEON. The interior presents to my eye the most beautiful and perfect specimen of Grecian architecture with which I am acquainted. In the crypt are seen the tombs of French warriors; and upon the pavement above, is a white marble statue of General Leclerc (brother in law of Bonaparte,) who died in the expedition to St. Domingo. This, statue is too full of conceit and affectation both in attitude and expression. The interior of the building is about 370 English feet in length, by 270 in width; but it is said that the foundation is too weak. From the gallery, running along the bottom of the dome--the whole a miniature representation of our St. Paul's--you have a sort of Panorama of Paris; but not, I think, a very favourable one. The absence of sea-coal fume strikes you very agreeably; but, for picturesque effect, I could not help thinking of the superior beauty of the panorama of Rouen from the heights of Mont Ste. Catharine. It appears to me that the small lantern on the top of the dome wants a finishing apex.[10] Yonder majestic portico forms the west front of the church called St. SULPICE ... It is at once airy and grand. There are two tiers of pillars, of which this front is composed: the lower is Doric; the upper Ionic: and each row, as I am told, is nearly forty French feet in height, exclusively of their entablatures, each of ten feet. We have nothing like this, certainly, as the front of a parish church, in London. When I except St. Paul's, such exception is made in reference to the most majestic piece of architectural composition, which, to my eye, the wit of man hath yet devised. The architect of the magnificent front of St. Sulpice was SERVANDONI; and a street hard by (in which Dom Brial, the father of French history, resides) takes its name from this architect. There are two towers--one at each end of this front,--about two hundred and twenty feet in height from the pavement: harmonising well with the general style of architecture, but of which, that to the south (to the best of my recollection) is left in an unaccountably, if not shamefully, unfinished state.[11] These towers are said to be about one _toise_ higher than those of Notre Dame. The interior of this church is hardly less imposing than its exterior. The vaulted roofs are exceedingly lofty; but for the length of the nave, and more especially the choir, the transepts are disproportionably short. Nor are there sufficiently prominent ornaments to give relief to the massive appearance of the sides. These sides are decorated by fluted pilasters of the Corinthian order; which, for so large and lofty a building, have a tame effect. There is nothing like the huge, single, insulated column, or the clustered slim pilasters, that separate the nave from the side aisles of the Gothic churches of the early and middle ages. The principal altar, between the nave and the choir, is admired for its size, and grandeur of effect; but it is certainly ill-placed, and is perhaps too ornamental, looking like a detached piece which does not harmonise with the surrounding objects. Indeed, most of the altars in French churches want simplicity and appropriate effect: and the whole of the interior of the choir is (perhaps to my fastidious eye only,) destitute of that quiet solemn character, which ought always to belong to places of worship. Rich, minute, and elaborate as are many of the Gothic choirs of our own country, they are yet in harmony; and equally free from a frivolous or unappropriate effect. Behind the choir, is the Chapel of Our Lady: which is certainly both splendid and imposing. Upon the ceiling is represented the Assumption of the Virgin, and the walls are covered with a profusion of gilt ornament, which, upon the whole, has a very striking effect. In a recess, above the altar, is a sculptured representation of the Virgin and Infant Christ, in white marble, of a remarkably high polish: nor are the countenances of the mother and child divested of sweetness of expression. They are represented upon a large globe, or with the world at their feet: upon the top of which, slightly coiled, lies the "bruised" or dead serpent. The light, in front of the spectator, from a concealed window, (a contrivance to which the French seem partial) produces a sort of magical effect. I should add, that this is the largest parochial church in Paris; and that its organ has been pronounced to be matchless. The rival churches of St. Sulpice--rival ones, rather from similarity of structure, than extent of dimensions--are the ORATOIRE and St. ROCH: both situated in the Rue St. Honoré. St. Roch is doubtless a very fine building--with a well-proportioned front--and a noble flight of steps; but the interior is too plain and severe for my taste. The walls are decorated by unfluted pilasters, with capitals scarcely conformable to any one order of architecture. The choir however is lofty, and behind it, in Our Lady's Chapel if I remember rightly, there is a striking piece of sculpture, of the Crucifixion, sunk into a rock, which receives the light from an invisible aperture as at St. Sulpice. To the right, or rather behind this chapel, there is another--called the _Chapel of Calvary_,--in which you observe a celebrated piece of sculpture, of rather colossal dimensions, of the entombment of Christ. The dead Saviour is borne to the sepulchre by Joseph of Arimathea, St. John, and the three Maries. The name of the sculptor is _Deseine_. Certainly you cannot but be struck with the effect of such representations--which accounts for these two chapels being a great deal more attended, than the choir or the nave of the church. It is right however to add, that the pictures here are preferable to those at St. Sulpice: and the series of bas-reliefs, descriptive of the principal events in the life of Christ, is among the very best specimens of art, of that species, which Paris can boast of. Very different from either of these interiors is that of _St. Philippe du Roule_; which presents you with a single insulated row of fluted Ionic pillars, on each side of the nave; very airy, yet impressive and imposing. It is much to my taste; and I wish such a plan were more generally adopted in the interiors of Grecian-constructed churches. The choir, the altar ... the whole is extremely simple and elegant. Nor must the roof be omitted to be particularly mentioned. It is an arch, constructed of wood; upon a plan originally invented by Philibert Delorme--so well known in the annals of art in the sixteenth century. The whole is painted in stone colour, and may deceive the most experienced eye. This beautiful church was built after the designs of Chalgrin, about the year 1700; and is considered to be a purer resemblance of the antique than any other in Paris. This church, well worth your examination, is situated in a quarter rarely visited by our countrymen--in the _Rue du Faubourg du Roule_, not far from the barriers. Not very remotely connected with the topic of CHURCHES, is that of the SABBATHS ... as spent in Paris. They are nearly the same throughout all France. As Bonaparte had no respect for religion itself, so he had less for the forms connected with the upholding of it. Parades, battles, and campaigns--were all that he cared about: and the Parisians, if they supplied him with men and money--the _materiel_ for the execution of these objects--were left to pray, preach, dance, or work, just as they pleased on the Sabbath day. The present King,[12] as you well know, attempted the introduction of something like an _English Sabbath_: but it would not do. When the French read and understand GRAHAME[13] as well as they do THOMSON, they will peradventure lend a ready and helping hand towards the completion of this laudable plan. At present, there is much which hurts the eye and ear of a well-educated and well-principled Englishman. There is a partial shutting up of the shops before twelve; but after mid-day the shop-windows are uniformly closed throughout Paris. Meanwhile the cart, the cabriolet, the crier of herbs and of other marketable produce--the sound of the whip or of the carpenter's saw and hammer--the shelling of peas in the open air, and the plentiful strewing of the pod hard by--together with sundry, other offensive and littering accompaniments--all strike you as disagreeable deviations from what you have been accustomed to witness at home. Add to this, the half-dirty attire--the unshaven beard of the men, and the unkempt locks of the women--produce further revolting sensations. It is not till past mid-day that the noise of labour ceases, and that the toilette is put into a complete state for the captivation of the beholder. By four or five o'clock the streets become half thinned. On a Sunday, every body rushes into the country. The tradesman has his little villa, and the gentleman and man of fortune his more capacious rural domain; and those, who aspire neither to the one or the other, resort to the _Bois de Boulogne_ and the _Champs Elysées_, or to the gardens of _Beaujon_, and _Tivoli_--or to the yet more attractive magnificence of the palace and fountains of _Versailles_--where, in one or the other of these places, they carouse, or disport themselves--in promenades, or dancing groups--till ... Majores.. cadunt de montibus umbræ. This, generally and fairly speaking, is a summer Sabbath in the metropolis of France. Unconscionable as you may have deemed the length of this epistle, I must nevertheless extend it by the mention of what I conceive to be a very essential feature both of beauty and utility in the street scenery of Paris. It is of the FOUNTAINS that I am now about to speak; and of some of which a slight mention has been already made. I yet adhere to the preference given to that in the _Palais Royal_; considered with reference to the management of the water. It is indeed a purely aqueous exhibition, in which architecture and sculpture have nothing to do. Not so are the more imposing fountains of the MARCHÉ DES INNOCENS, DE GRENELLE, and the BOULEVARD BONDY. For the first of these,[14] the celebrated _Lescot_, abbé de Clagny, was the designer of the general form; and the more celebrated Jean Goujon the sculptor of the figures in bas-relief. It was re-touched and perfected in 1551, and originally stood in the angle of the two streets, of _aux Fers_ and _St. Denis_, presenting only two façades to the beholder. It was restored and beautified in 1708; and in 1788 it changed both its form and its position by being transported to the present spot-- the _Marché des Innocens_--the market for vegetables. Two other similar sides were then added, making it a square: but the original performances of Goujon, which are considered almost as his master-piece, attract infinitely more admiration than the more recent ones of Pajou. Goujon's figures are doubtless very delicately and successfully executed. The water bubbles up in the centre of the square, beneath the arch, in small sheets, or masses; and its first and second subsequent falls, also in sheets, have a very beautiful effect. They are like pieces of thin, transparent ice, tumbling upon each other; but the _lead_, of which the lower half of the fountain is composed--as the reservoir of the water--might have been advantageously exchanged for _marble_. The lion at each corner of the pedestal, squirting water into a sarcophagus-shaped reservoir, has a very absurd appearance. Upon the whole, this fountain is well deserving of particular attention. The inscription upon it is FONTIVM NYMPHIS; but perhaps, critically speaking, it is now in too exposed a situation for the character of it's ornaments. A retired, rural, umbrageous recess, beneath larch and pine-- whose boughs Wave high and murmur in the hollow wind-- seems to be the kind of position fitted for the reception of a fountain of this character. The FONTAINE DE GRENELLE is almost entirely architectural; and gives an idea of a public office, rather than of a conduit. You look above--to the right and the left--but no water appears. At last, almost by accident, you look down, quite at its base, and observe two insignificant streams trickling from the head of an animal. The central figure in front is a representation of the city of Paris: the recumbent figures, on each side, represent, the one the Seine, the other the Marne. Above, there are four figures which represent the four Seasons. This fountain, the work of Bouchardon, was erected in 1739 upon the site of what formed a part of an old convent. A more simple, and a more striking fountain, to my taste, is that of the ECOLE DE CHIRURGIE; in which a comparatively large column of water rushes down precipitously between two Doric pillars--which form the central ones of four--in an elegant façade. Yet more simple, more graceful, and more capacious, is the fountain of the BOULEVARD BONDY--which I first saw sparkling beneath the lustre of a full moon. This is, in every sense of the word, a fountain. A constant but gentle undulation of water, from three aqueous terraces, surmounted by three basins, gradually diminishing in size, strike you with peculiar gratification--view it from whatever quarter you will: but seen in the neighbourhood of _trees_, the effect, in weather like this, is absolutely heart-refreshing. The only objectionable part of this elegant structure, on the score of art, are the lions, and their positions. In the first place, it is difficult to comprehend why the mouth of a _lion_ is introduced as a channel for the transmission of water; and, in the second place, these lions should have occupied the basement portion of the structure. This beautiful fountain, of which the water is supplied by the _Canal d'Ourcq_, was finished only about seven or eight years ago. Nor let the FOUNTAIN OF TRIUMPH or VICTORY, in the _Place du Châtelet_, be forgotten. It is a column, surmounted by a gilt statue of Victory, with four figures towards its pedestal. The four jets-d'eau, from its base,--which are sufficiently insignificant--empty themselves into a circular basin; but the shaft of the column, to my eye, is not free from affectation. The names of some of Bonaparte's principal victories are inscribed upon that part of the column which faces the Pont au Change. There is a classical air of elegance about this fountain, which is fifty feet in height. But where is the ELEPHANT Fountain?--methinks I hear you exclaim. It is yet little more than in embryo: that is to say, the plaster-cast of it only is visible--with the model, on a smaller scale, completed in all its parts, by the side of it. It is really a stupendous affair.[15] On entering the temporary shed erected for its construction, on the site of the Bastille, I was almost breathless with astonishment for a moment. Imagine an enormous figure of the unwieldy elephant, _full fifty feet high!_ You see it, in the front, foreshortened--as you enter; and as the head is the bulkiest portion of the animal, you may imagine something of the probable resulting effect. Certainly it is most imposing. The visitor, who wishes to make himself acquainted with the older, and more original, national character of the French--whether as respects manners, dresses, domestic occupations, and public places of resort--will take up his residence in the _Rue du Bac_, or at the _Hotel des Bourbons_; within twenty minutes walk of the more curious objects which are to be found in the Quartiers Saint André des Arcs, du Luxembourg, and Saint Germain des Près. Ere he commence his morning perambulations, he will look well at his map, and to what is described, in the route which he is to take, in the works of Landon and of Legrand, or of other equally accurate topographers. Two things he ought invariably to bear in mind: the first, not to undertake too much, for the sake of saying how _many_ things he has seen:--and the second, to make himself thoroughly master of what he _does_ see. All this is very easily accomplished: and a fare of thirty sous will take you, at starting, to almost any part of Paris, however remote: from whence you may shape your course homewards at leisure, and with little fatigue. Such a visitor will, however, sigh, ere he set out on his journey, on being told that the old Gothic church of _St. André-des-Arcs_--the Abbey of _St. Victor_--the churches of the _Bernardins_, and of _St. Etienne des Près_, the _Cloisters_ of _the Cordeliers_, and the _Convent of the Celestins_ ... exist no longer ... or, that their remains are mere shadows of shades! But in the three quarters of Paris, above mentioned, he will gather much curious information--in spite of the havoc and waste which the Revolution has made; and on his return to his own country he will reflect, with pride and satisfaction, on the result of his enterprise and perseverance. To my whimsically formed taste, OLD PARIS has in it very much to delight, and afford valuable information. Not that I would decry the absolute splendor, gaiety, comfort, and interminable variety, which prevail in its more modern and fashionable quarters. And certainly one may fairly say, that, on either side the Seine, Paris is a city in which an Englishman,-- who is resolved to be in good humour with all about him, and to shew that civility to others which he is sure to receive from the better educated classes of society here--cannot fail to find himself pleased, perfectly at ease, and well contented with his fare. Compared with the older part of London, the more ancient division of Paris is infinitely more interesting, and of a finer architectural construction. The conical roofs every now and then remind you of the times of Francis I.; and the clustered arabesques, upon pilasters, or running between the bolder projections of the façades, confirm you in the chronology of the buildings. But time, caprice, fashion, or poverty, will, in less than half a century, materially change both the substance and surfaces of things. It is here, as at Rouen--you bewail the work of destruction which has oftentimes converted cloisters into workshops, and consecrated edifices into warehouses of every description. Human nature and the fate of human works are every where the same. Let two more centuries revolve, and the THUILERIES and the LOUVRE may possibly be as the BASTILLE and the TEMPLE. Such, to my feelings, is Paris--considered only with reference to its _local_: for I have really done little more than perambulate its streets, and survey its house-tops--with the important exceptions to be detailed in the succeeding letters from hence. Of the treasures contained _beneath_ some of those "housetops"--more especially of such as are found in the shape of a BOOK--whether as a MS. or a Printed Volume--prepare to receive some particulars in my next. [1] [Several Notes in this volume having reference to MONS. CRAPELET, a Printer of very considerable eminence at Paris, it may be proper to inform the Reader that that portion of this Tour, which may be said to have a more exclusive reference to France, usually speaking--including the notice of Strasbourg--was almost entirely translated by Mons. Crapelet himself. An exception however must be made to those parts which relate to the _King's Private Library_ at Paris, and to _Strasbourg_: these having been executed by different pens, evidently in the hands of individuals of less wrongheadedness and acrimony of feeling than the Parisian Printer. Mons. Crapelet has prefixed a Preface to his labours, in which he tells the world, that, using my more favourite metaphorical style of expression, "a CRUSADE has risen up against the INFIDEL DIBDIN." Metaphorical as may be this style, it is yet somewhat alarming: for, most assuredly, when I entered and quitted the "beau pays" of France, I had imagined myself to have been a courteous, a grateful, and, under all points of view, an ORTHODOX Visitor. It seems however, from the language of the French Typographer, that I acted under a gross delusion; and that it was necessary to have recourse to his sharp-set sickle to cut away all the tares which I had sown in the soil of his country. Upon the motive and the merit of his labours, I have already given my unbiassed opinion.[A] Here, it is only necessary to observe, that I have not, consciously, falsified his opinions, or undervalued his worth. Let the Reader judge between us. [A] Vide Preface. [2] [They have now entirely lost the recollection, as well as the sight, of them.] [3] ["The Parisians would doubtless very willingly get rid of such a horrid spectacle in the streets and places of the Metropolis: besides, it is not unattended with danger to the Actors themselves."--CRAPELET.] [4] ["And will continue to be so, it is feared--to the regret of all Frenchmen--for a long time. It is however the beginning of a new reign. The building of some new Edifices will doubtless be undertaken. But if the King were to order the _finishing_ of all the public Buildings of Paris, the epoch of the reign of Charles X. would assuredly be the most memorable for Arts, and the embellishment of the Capital." CRAPELET. 1825.] [5] [It is now completed: but seven years elapsed, after the above description, before the building was in all respects considered to be finished.] [6] [A most admirable view of this Market Place, with its picturesque fountain in the centre, was painted by the younger Mr. Chalon, and exhibited at Somerset House. A well executed _print_ of such a thoroughly characteristic performance might, one would imagine, sell prosperously on either side of the channel.] [7] [This building, which may perhaps be better known as that of the _Opera_, is now rased to the ground--in consequence of the assassination of the Duke de Berri there, in February, 1820, on his stepping into his carriage on quitting the Opera. But five years were suffered to elapse before the work of demolition was quite completed. And when will the monument to the Duke's memory be raised?--CRAPELET.] [8] [It is now entirely demolished, to make way for a large and commodious Street which gives a complete view of the church of St. Stephen. CRAPELET.] [9] The views of it, as it appeared in the XVIth century, represent it nearly surrounded by a wall and a moat. It takes its name as having been originally situated _in the fields_. [10] [Two years ago was placed, upon the top of this small lantern, a gilt cross, thirty-eight feet high: 41 of English measurement: and the church has been consecrated to the Catholic service. CRAPELET. Thus, the criticism of an English traveller, in 1818, was not entirely void of foundation.] [11] [Our public buildings, which have continued long in an unfinished state, strike the eyes of foreigners more vividly than they do our own: but it is impossible to face the front of St. Sulpice without partaking of the sentiment of the author. CRAPELET.] [12] [Louis XVIII.] [13] [_read and understand_ GRAHAME.]--Mr. Grahame is both a very readable and understandable author. He has reason to be proud of his poem called the SABBATH: for it is one of the sweetest and one of the purest of modern times. His _scene_ however is laid in the country, and not in the metropolis. The very opening of this poem refreshes the heart--and prepares us for the more edifying portions of it, connected with the performance of the religious offices of our country. This beautiful work will LIVE as long as sensibility, and taste, and a virtuous feeling, shall possess the bosoms of a British Public. [14] See the note p. 20, ante. [15] It is now completed. _LETTER II._ GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE BIBLIOTHÈQUE DU ROI. THE LIBRARIANS. _Hôtel des Colonies, Rue de Richelieu_. The moment is at length arrived when you are to receive from me an account of some of the principal treasures contained in the ROYAL LIBRARY of Paris. I say "_some_":--because, in an epistolary communication, consistently with my time, and general objects of research--it must be considered only as a slight selection, compared with what a longer residence, and a more general examination of the contents of such a collection, might furnish. Yet, limited as my view may have been, the objects of that view are at once rich and rare, and likely to afford all true sons of BIBLIOMANIA and VIRTU the most lively gratification. This is a bold avowal: but I fear not to make it, and: the sequel shall be the test of its modesty and truth. You observe, I have dated my letter from a different quarter. In fact, the distance of my former residence from the Bibliothèque du Roi--coupled with the oppressive heat of the weather--rendered my morning excursions thither rather uncomfortable; and instead of going to work with elastic spirits, and an untired frame, both Mr. Lewis and myself felt jaded and oppressed upon our arrival. We are now, on the contrary, scarcely fifty yards from the grand door of entrance into the library. But this is only tantalizing you. To the LIBRARY, therefore, at once let us go. The exterior and interior, as to architectural appearance, are rather of a sorry description: heavy; comparatively low, without ornament, and of a dark and dingy tint. Towards the street, it has the melancholy air of a workhouse. But none of the apartments, in which the books are contained, look into this street; so that, consequently, little inconvenience is experienced from the incessant motion and rattling of carts and carriages--the Rue de Richelieu being probably the most frequented in Paris. Yet, repulsive as may be this exterior, it was observed to me--on my suggesting what a fine situation the quadrangle of the Louvre would make for the reception of the royal library--that, it might be questioned whether even _that_ quadrangle were large enough to contain it;--and that the present building, however heavy and ungracious of aspect, was better calculated for its present purpose than probably any other in Paris. In the centre of the edifice--for it is a square, or rather a parallelogram-shaped building--stands a bronze naked figure of Diana; stiff and meagre both in design and execution. It is of the size of life; but surely a statue of _Minerva_ would have been a little more appropriate? On entering the principal door, in the street just mentioned, you turn to the right, and mount a large stone staircase--after attending to the request, printed in large characters, of "_Essuyez vos Souliers_"--as fixed against the wall. This entrance goes directly to the collection of PRINTED BOOKS. On reaching the first floor, you go straight forward, within folding doors; and the first room, of considerable extent, immediately receives you. The light is uniformly admitted by large windows, to the right, looking into the quadrangle before mentioned. You pass through this room--where scarcely any body lingers--and enter the second, where are placed the EDITIONES PRINCIPES, and other volumes printed in the fifteenth century. To an _experienced_ eye, the first view of the contents of this second room is absolutely magical; Such copies of such rare, precious, magnificent, and long-sought after impressions!... It is fairy-land throughout. There stands the _first Homer_, unshorn by the binder; a little above, is the first _Roman edition of Eustathius's_ Commentary upon that poet, in gorgeous red morocco, but printed UPON VELLUM! A Budæus _Greek Lexicon_ (Francis I.'s own copy) also UPON VELLUM! The _Virgils, Ovids, Plinies_ ... and, above all, the _Bibles_--But I check myself; in order to conduct you regularly through the apartments, ere you sit down with me before each volume which I may open. In this second-room are two small tables, rarely occupied, but at one or the other of which I was stationed (by the kind offices of M. Van Praet) for fourteen days--with almost every thing that was exquisite and rare, in the old book-way, behind and before me. Let us however gradually move onwards. You pass into the third room. Here is the grand rendezvous of readers. Six circular or rather oval tables, each capable of accommodating twelve students, and each generally occupied by the full number, strike your eye in a very pleasing manner, in the centre of this apparently interminable vista of printed volumes. But I must call your particular attention to the _foreground_ of this magical book-view. To the left of this third room, on entering, you observe a well-dressed Gentleman (of somewhat shorter stature than the author of this description) busied behind a table; taking down and putting up volumes: inscribing names, and numbers, and titles, in a large folio volume; giving orders on all sides; and putting several pairs of legs into motion in consequence of those orders--while his own are perhaps the least spared of any. This gentleman is no less a personage than the celebrated Monsieur VAN PRAET; one of the chief librarians in the department of the printed books. His aspect is mild and pleasant; while his smart attire frequently forms a striking contrast to habiliments and personal appearances of a very different, and less conciliating description, by which he is surrounded.[16] M. Van Praet must be now approaching his sixtieth year; but his age sits bravely upon him--for his step is rapid and firm, and his physiognomical expression indicative of a much less protracted period of existence.[17] He is a Fleming by birth; and, even in shewing his first Eustathius, or first Pliny, UPON VELLUM, you may observe the natural enthusiasm of a Frenchman tempered by the graver emotions of a native of the Netherlands. This distinguished Bibliographer (of whom, somewhat more in a future epistle) has now continued nearly forty years in his present situation; and when infirmity, or other causes, shall compel him to quit it, France will never replace him by one possessing more appropriate talents! He doats upon the objects committed to his trust. He lives almost entirely among his dear books ... either on the first floor or on the ground floor: for when the hour of departure, two o'clock, arrives, M. Van Praet betakes him to the quieter book realms below--where, surrounded by _Grolier, De Thou_, and _Diane de Poictiers_, copies, he disports him till his dinner hour of four or five--and 'as the evening shades prevail,' away hies he to his favourite '_Théatre des Italiens_,' and the scientific treat of Italian music. This I know, however--and this I will say--in regard to the amiable and excellent gentleman under description--that, if I were King of France, Mons. Van Praet should be desired to sit in a roomy, morocco-bottomed, mahogany arm chair--not to stir therefrom--but to issue out his edicts, for the delivery of books, to the several athletic myrmidons under his command. Of course there must be occasional exceptions to this rigid, but upon the whole salutary, "Ordonnance du Roy." Indeed I have reason to mention a most flattering exception to it--in my own favour: for M. Van Praet would come into the second room, (just mentioned) and with his own hands supply me with half a score volumes at a time--of such as I wished to examine. But, generally speaking, this worthy and obliging creature is too lavish of his own personal exertions. He knows, to be sure, all the bye-passes, and abrupt ascents and descents; and if he be out of sight--in a moment, through some secret aperture, he returns as quickly through another equally unseen passage. Upon an average, I set his bibliomaniacal peregrinations down at the rate of a full French league per day. It is the absence of all pretension and quackery--the quiet, unobtrusive manner in which he opens his well-charged battery of information upon you--but, more than all, the glorious honours which are due to him, for having assisted to rescue the book treasures of the Abbey of St. Germain des Près from destruction, during the horrors of the Revolution--that cannot fail to secure to him the esteem of the living, and the gratitude of posterity. [Illustration: GOLD MEDAL OF LOUIS XII. From the Cabinet des Medailles at Paris.] We must now leave this well occupied and richly furnished chamber, and pass on to the fourth room--in the centre of which is a large raised bronze ornament, representing Apollo and the Muses--surrounded by the more eminent literary characters of France in the seventeenth century. It is raised to the glory of the grand monarque Louis XIV. and the figure of Apollo is intended for that of his Majesty. The whole is a palpable failure: a glaring exhibition of bad French taste. Pegasus, the Muses, rocks, and streams, are all scattered about in a very confused manner; without connection, and of course without effect. Even the French allow it to be "mesquin, et de mauvais goût." But let me be methodical. As you enter this fourth room, you observe, opposite--before you turn to the right--a door, having the inscription of CABINET DES MEDAILLES. This door however is open only twice in the week; when the cabinet is freely and most conveniently shewn. Of its contents--in part, precious beyond comparison--this is the place to say only one little word or two: for really there would be no end of detail were I to describe even its most remarkable treasures. Francis I. and his son Henry II. were among its earliest patrons; when the cabinet was deposited in the Louvre. The former enriched it with a series of valuable gold medals, and among them with one of Louis XII., his predecessor; which has not only the distinction of being beautifully executed, but of being the largest, if not the first of its kind in France.[18] The specimens of Greek art, in coins, and other small productions, are equally precious and select. Vases, shields, gems, and cameos--the greater part of which are described in Caylus's well-known work--are perfectly enchanting. But the famous AGAT of the STE. CHAPELLE--supposed to be the largest in the world, and which has been engraved by Giradet in a manner perfectly unrivalled--will not fail to rivet your attention, and claim your most unqualified commendation. The sardonyx, called the VASE of PTOLEMY, is another of the great objects of attraction in the room where we are now tarrying--and beautiful, and curious, and precious, it unquestionably is. Doubtless, in such a chamber as this, the classical archæologist will gaze with no ordinary emotions, and meditate with no ordinary satisfaction. But I think I hear the wish escape him--as he casts an attentive eye over the whole--"why do they not imitate us in a publication relating to them? Why do they not put forth something similar to what we have done for our _Museum Marbles_? Or rather, speaking more correctly, why are not the _Marlborough Gems_ considered as an object of rivalry, by the curators of this exquisite cabinet? Paris is not wanting both in artists who design, and who engrave, in this department, with at least equal skill to our own."[19] Let us now return to the Books. In the fourth book-room there is an opening in the centre, to the left, nearly facing the bronze ornament--through which, as you enter, and look to the left, appear the upper halves of two enormous GLOBES. The effect is at first, inconceivably puzzling and even startling: but you advance, and looking down the huge aperture occasioned by these gigantic globes, you observe their bases resting on the ground floor: both the upper and ground floor having the wainscots entirely covered by books. These globes are the performance of Vincent Coronelli, a Venetian; and were presented to Louis XIV. by the Cardinal d'Etrées, who had them made for his Majesty. You return back into the fourth room--pace on to its extremity, and then, at right angles, view the fifth room--or, comprising the upper and lower globe rooms, a seventh room; the whole admirably well lighted up from large side windows. Observe further--the whole corresponding suite of rooms, on the ground floor, is also nearly filled with printed books, comprising the _unbound copies_--and one chamber, occupied by the more exquisite specimens of the presses of the _Alduses_, the _Giuntæ_, the _Stephens_, &c. UPON VELLUM, or on _large paper_. Another chamber is exclusively devoted to large paper copies of _all_ descriptions, from the presses of all countries; and in one or the other of these chambers are deposited the volumes from the Library of _Grolier_ and _De Thou_--names, dear to Book-Collectors; as an indifferent copy has hardly ever yet been found which was once deposited on the shelves of either. You should know that the public do not visit this lower suite of rooms, it being open only to the particular friends of the several Librarians. The measurement of these rooms, from the entrance to the extremity of the fifth room, is upwards of 700 feet. Now, my good friend, if you ask me whether the interior of this library be superior to that of our dear BODLEIAN, I answer, at once, and without fear of contradiction--it is very much _inferior_. It represents an interminable range of homely and commodious apartments; but the Bodleian library, from beginning to end--from floor to ceiling--is grand, impressive, and entirely of a bookish appearance. In that spacious and lofty receptacle--of which the ceiling, in my humble opinion, is an unique and beautiful piece of workmanship--all is solemn, and grave, and inviting to study: yet echoing, as it were, to the footsteps of those who once meditated within its almost hallowed precincts--the _Bodleys_, the _Seldens_, the _Digbys_, the _Lauds_ and _Tanners_, of other times![20] But I am dreaming: forgetting that, at this moment, you are impatient to enter the _MS. Department_ of the Royal Library at Paris. Be it so, therefore. And yet the very approach to this invaluable collection is difficult of discovery. Instead of a corresponding lofty stone stair-case, you cross a corner of the square, and enter a passage, with an iron gate at the extremity--leading to the apartments of Messrs. Millin and Langlès. A narrow staircase, to the right, receives you: and this stair-case would appear to lead rather to an old armoury, in a corner-tower of some baronial castle, than to a suite of large modern apartments, containing probably, upon the whole, the finest collection of _Engravings_ and of _Manuscripts_, of all ages and characters, in Europe. Nevertheless, as we cannot mount by any other means, we will e'en set footing upon this stair-case, humble and obscure as it may be. You scarcely gain the height of some twenty steps, when you observe the magical inscription of CABINET DES ESTAMPES. Your spirits dance, and your eyes sparkle, as you pull the little wire--and hear the clink of a small corresponding bell. The door is opened by one of the attendants in livery-- arrayed in blue and silver and red--very handsome, and rendered more attractive by the respectful behaviour of those who wear that royal costume. I forgot to say that the same kind of attendants are found in all the apartments attached to this magnificent collection--and, when not occupied in their particular vocation of carrying books to and fro, these attendants are engaged in reading, or sitting quietly with crossed legs, and peradventure dosing a little. But nothing can exceed their civility; accompanied with a certain air of politeness, not altogether divested of a kind of gentlemanly deportment. On entering the first of those rooms, where the prints are kept, you are immediately struck with the narrow dimensions of the place--for the succeeding room, though perhaps more than twice as large, is still inadequate to the reception of its numerous visitors.[21] In this first room you observe a few of the very choicest productions of the burin, from the earliest periods of the art, to the more recent performances of _Desnoyer_, displayed within glazed frames upon the wainscot. It really makes the heart of a connoisseur leap with ecstacy to see such _Finiguerras, Baldinis, Boticellis, Mantegnas, Pollaiuolos, Israel Van Meckens, Albert Durers, Marc Antonios, Rembrandts, Hollar, Nanteuils, Edelincks, &c._; while specimens of our own great master engravers, among whom are _Woollet_ and _Sharp_, maintain a conspicuous situation, and add to the gratification of the beholder. The idea is a good one; but to carry it into complete effect, there should be a gallery, fifty feet long, of a confined width, and lighted from above:[22] whereas the present room is scarcely twenty feet square, with a disproportionably low ceiling. However, you cannot fail to be highly gratified--and onwards you go--diagonally--and find yourself in a comparatively long room--in the midst of which is a table, reaching from nearly one end to the other, and entirely filled (every day) with visitors, or rather students--busied each in their several pursuits. Some are quietly turning over the succeeding leaves, on which the prints are pasted: others are pausing upon each fine specimen, in silent ecstacy--checking themselves every instant lest they should break forth into rapturous exclamations!... "silence" being rigidly prescribed by the Curators--and, I must say, as rigidly maintained. Others again are busied in deep critical examination of some ancient ruin from the pages of _Piranesi_ or of _Montfaucon_--now making notes, and now copying particular parts. Meanwhile, from the top to the bottom of the sides of the, room, are huge volumes of prints, bound in red morocco; which form indeed the materials for the occupations just described.[23] But, hanging upon a pillar, at the hither end of this second room, you observe a large old drawing of a head or portrait, in a glazed frame; which strikes you in every respect as a great curiosity. M. Du Chesne, the obliging and able director of this department of the collection, attended me on my first visit. He saw me looking at this head with great eagerness. "Enfin voilà quelque chose qui mérite bien vôtre attention"--observed he. It was in fact the portrait of "their good but unfortunate KING JOHN"--as my guide designated him. This Drawing is executed in a sort of thick body colour, upon fine linen: the back-ground is gold: now almost entirely tarnished--and there is a sort of frame, stamped, or pricked out, upon the surface of the gold--as we see in the illuminations of books of that period. It should also seem as if the first layer, upon which the gold is placed, had been composed of the white of an egg--or of some such glutinous substance. Upon the whole, it is an exceedingly curious and interesting relic of antient graphic art. To examine minutely the treasures of such a collection of prints--whether in regard to ancient or modern art--would demand the unremitted attention of the better part of a month; and in consequence, a proportionate quantity of time and paper in embodying the fruits of that attention.[24] There is only one other curiosity, just now, to which I shall call your attention. It is the old wood cut of ST. CHRISTOPHER--of which certain authors have discoursed largely.[25] They suppose they have an impression of it here-- whereas that of Lord Spencer has been hitherto considered as unique. His Lordship's copy, as you well know, was obtained from the Buxheim monastery, and was first made public in the interesting work of Heineken.[26] The copy now under consideration is not pasted upon boards, as is Lord Spencer's-- forming the interior linings in the cover or binding of an old MS.--but it is a loose leaf, and is therefore subject to the most minute examination, or to any conclusion respecting the date which may be drawn from the _watermark_. Upon _such_ a foundation I will never attempt to build an hypothesis, or to draw a conclusion; because the same water-mark of Bamberg and of Mentz, of Venice and of Rome, may be found within books printed both at the commencement and at the end of the fifteenth century. But for the print--as it _is_. I have not only examined it carefully, but have procured, from M. Coeuré, a fac-simile of the head only--the most essential part--and both the examination and the fac-simile convince me... that the St. Christopher in the Bibliothèque du Roi is NOT an impression from the _same block_ which furnished the St. Christopher now in the library of St. James's Place. The general character of the figure, in the Royal Library here, is thin and feeble compared with that in Lord Spencer's collection; and I am quite persuaded that M. Du Chesne,--who fights his ground inch by inch, and reluctantly (to his honour, let me add) assents to any remarks which may make his own cherished St. Christopher of a comparatively modern date-- will, in the end, admit that the Parisian impression is a _copy_ of a later date--and that, had an opportunity presented itself of comparing the two impressions with each other,[27] it would never have been received into the Library at the price at which it was obtained--I think, at about 620 francs. However, although it be not THE St. Christopher, it is a graphic representation of the Saint which may possibly be as old as the year 1460. But we have tarried quite long enough, for the present, within the cabinet of Engravings. Let us return: ascend about a dozen more steps; and enter the LIBRARY OF MANUSCRIPTS. As before, you are struck with the smallness of the first room; which leads, however, to a second of much larger dimensions--then to a third, of a boudoir character; afterwards to a fourth and fifth, rather straitened--and sixthly, and lastly, to one of a noble length and elevation of ceiling--worthy in all respects of the glorious treasures which it contains. Let me, however, be more explicit. In the very first room you have an earnest of all the bibliomaniacal felicity which these MSS. hold out. Look to the left--upon entering--and view, perhaps lost in a very ecstacy of admiration--the _Romances_ ... of all sizes and character, which at first strike you! What _Launcelot du Lacs, Tristans, Leonnois, Arturs, Ysaises_, and feats of the _Table Ronde_, stand closely wedged within the brass-wired doors that incircle this and every other apartment! _Bibles, Rituals, Moralities_, ... next claim your attention. You go on--_History, Philosophy, Arts and Sciences_ ... but it is useless to indulge in these rhapsodies. The fourth apartment, of which I spake, exhibits specimens of what are seen more plentifully, but not of more curious workmanship, in the larger room to which it leads. Here glitter, behind glazed doors, old volumes of devotion bound in ivory, or gilt, or brass, studded with cameos and precious stones; and covered with figures of all characters and ages--some of the XIIth--and more of the immediately following centuries. Some of these bindings (among which I include _Diptychs_) may be as old as the eleventh--and they have been even carried up to the tenth century. Let us however return quickly back again; and begin at the beginning. The first room, as I before observed, has some of the most exquisitely illuminated, as well as some of the most ancient MSS., in the whole library. A phalanx of _Romances_ meets the eye; which rather provokes the courage, than damps the ardor, of the bibliographical champion. Nor are the illuminated _Bibles_ of less interest to the graphic antiquary. In my next letter you shall see what use I have made of the unrestrained liberty granted me, by the kind-hearted Curators, to open what doors, and examine what volumes, I pleased. Meanwhile let me introduce you to the excellent MONSIEUR GAIL, who is sitting at yonder desk--examining a beautiful Greek MS. of Polybius, which once belonged to Henry II. and his favourite Diane de Poictiers. M. Gail is the chief Librarian presiding over the Greek and Latin MSS., and is himself Professor of the Greek language in the royal college of France. Of this gentleman I shall speak more particularly anon. At the present moment it may suffice only to observe that he is thoroughly frank, amiable, and communicative, and dexterous in his particular vocation: and that he is, what we should both call, a hearty, good fellow-- a natural character. M. Gail is accompanied by the assistant librarians MM. De. l'EPINE, and MÉON: gentlemen of equal ability in their particular department, and at all times willing to aid and abet the researches of those who come to examine and appreciate the treasures of which they are the joint Curators. Indeed I cannot speak too highly of these gentlemen-- nor can I too much admire the system and the silence which uniformly prevail. Another principal librarian is M. LANGLÈS:[28] an author of equal reputation with Monsieur Gail--but his strength lies in Oriental literature; and he presides more especially over the Persian, Arabic, and other Oriental MSS. To the naïveté of M. Gail, he adds the peculiar vivacity and enthusiasm of his countrymen. To see him presiding in his chair (for he and M. Gail take alternate turns) and occupied in reading, you would think that a book worm could scarcely creep between the tip of his nose and the surface of the _Codex Bombycinus_ over which he is poring. He is among the most short-sighted of mortals--as to _ocular_ vision. But he has a bravely furnished mind; and such a store of spirits and of good humour--talking withal unintermittingly, but very pleasantly---that you find it difficult to get away from him. He is no indifferent speaker of our own language; and I must say, seems rather proud of such an acquirement. Both he and M. Gail, and M. Van Praet, are men of rather small, stature-- _triplicates_, as it were, of the same work[29]--but of which M. Gail is the tallest copy. One of the two head librarians, just mentioned, sits at a desk in the second room--and when any friends come to see, or to converse with him--the discussion is immediately adjourned to the contiguous boudoir-like apartment, where are deposited the rich old bindings of which you have just had a hasty description. Here the voices are elevated, and the flourishes of speech and of action freely indulged in. In the way to the further apartment, from the boudoir so frequently mentioned, you pass a small room--in which there is a plaster bust of the King--and among the books, bound, as they almost all are, in red morocco, you observe two volumes of tremendously thick dimensions; the one entitled _Alexander Aphrodiæsus, Hippocrates, &c._--the other _Plutarchi Vitæ Parallelæ et Moralia, &c._ They contain nothing remarkable for ornament, or what is more essential, for intrinsic worth. Nevertheless you pass on: and the last--but the most magnificent--of _all_ the rooms, appropriated to the reception of books, whether in ms. or in print, now occupies a very considerable portion of your attention. It is replete with treasures of every description: in ancient art, antiquities, and both sacred and profane learning: in languages from all quarters, and almost of all ages of the world. Here I opened, with indescribable delight the ponderous and famous _Latin Bible of Charles the Bald_--and the religious manual of his brother the _Emperor Lotharius_--composed chiefly of transcripts from the Gospels. Here are ivory bindings, whether as diptychs, or attached to regular volumes. Here are all sorts and sizes of the uncial or capital-letter MSS-- in portions, or entire. Here, too, are very precious old illuminations, and specimens--almost without number--admirably arranged, of every species of BIBLIOGRAPHICAL VIRTÙ, which cannot fail to fix the attention, enlarge the knowledge, and improve the judgment, of the curious in this department of research. Such, my dear friend, is the necessarily rapid--and, I fear, consequently imperfect--sketch which I send you of the general character of the BIBLIOTHÈQUE DU ROI; both as respects its dead and its living treasures. It remains to be seen how this sketch will be completed.--- and I hereby give you notice, that my next letter will contain some account of a few of the more ancient, curious, and splendid MANUSCRIPTS--to be followed by a second letter, exclusively devoted to a similar account of the PRINTED BOOKS. If I execute this task according to my present inclinations--and with the disposition which I now feel, together with the opportunities which have been afforded me--it will not, I trust, be said that I have been an idle or unworthy visitor of this magnificent collection. [16] [Mons. Crapelet takes fire at the above passage: simply because he misunderstands it. In not one-word, or expression of it, is there any thing which implies, directly or indirectly, that "it would be difficult to find another public establishment where the officers are more active, more obliging, more anxious to satisfy the Public than in the above." I am talking only of _dress_--and commending the silk stockings of Mons. Van Praet at the expense of those by whom he is occasionally surrounded.] [17] So, even NOW: 1829. [18] In the year 1814, the late M. Millin published a dissertation upon this medal, to which he prefixed an engraving of the figure of Louis. There can indeed be but one opinion that the Engraving is unworthy of the Original. [For an illustration of the _Medallic History of France_, I scarcely recollect any one object of Art which would be more gratifying, as well as apposite, than a faithful Engraving of such a Medal: and I call upon my good friend M. DU CHESNE to set such a History on foot. There is however another medal, of the same Monarch, of a smaller size, but of equal merit of execution, which has been selected to grace the pages of this second edition--in the OPPOSITE PLATE. The inscription is as follows: LUDOVICO XII. REGNANTE CÆSARE ALTERO. GAUDET OMNIS NATIO: from which it is inferred that the Medal was struck in consequence of the victory of Ravenna, or of Louis's triumphant campaigns in Italy. A short but spirited account is given of these campaigns in Le Noir's _Musée des Monumens Français_, tome ii. p. 145-7.] [19] ["And it is Mr. DIBDIN who makes this confession! Let us render justice to his impartiality on this occasion. Such a confession ought to cause some regret to those who go to seek engravings in London." CRAPELET, vol. ii. p. 89. The reader shall make his own remark on the force, if there be any, of this gratuitous piece of criticism of the French Translator.] [20] [And, till within these few months, those of the REV. DR. NICOLL, Regius Professor of the Hebrew Language! That amiable and modest and surprisingly learned Oriental Scholar died in the flower of his age (in his 36th year) to the deep regret of all his friends and acquaintances, and, I had well nigh said, to the irreparable loss of the University.] [21] ["This observation is just; and it is to be hoped that they will soon carry into execution the Royal ordonance of October, 1816, which appropriates the apartments of the Treasury, contiguous, to be united to the establishment, as they become void. However, what took place in 1825, respecting some buildings in the Rue Neuve des Petits Champs, forbids us to suppose that this wished for addition will take place." CRAPELET, p. 93.] [22] [M. Crapelet admits the propriety of such a suggested improvement; and hopes that government will soon take it up for the accommodation of the Visitors--who sometimes are obliged to wait for a _vacancy_, before they can commence these researches.] [23] [Mons. Crapelet estimates the number of these splendid volumes (in 1825,) at "more than six thousand!"] [24] [M. Crapelet might have considered this confession as a reason, or apology, sufficient for not entering into all those details or descriptions, which he seems surprised and vexed that I omitted to travel into.] [25] _An enquiry into the History of Engraving upon Copper and in Wood_, 1816, 4to. 2 vol. by W.Y. Ottley. Mr. Ottley, in vol. i. p. 90, has given the whole of the original cut: while in the first volume p. iii. of the _Bibliotheca Spenceriana_, only the figure and date are given. [26] _Idée générale d'une Collection complette des Estampes. Leips._ 1771. 8vo. [27] Since the above was written, the RIVAL ST. CRISTOPHER have been placed _side by side_. When Lord Spencer was at Paris, last year, (1819,) on his return from Italy--he wrote to me, requesting I would visit him there, and bring St. Christopher with me. That Saint was therefore, in turn, carried across the water--and on being confronted with his name-sake, at the Royal Library ... it was quite evident, at the first glance, as M. Du Chesne admitted--that they were impressions taken from _different blocks_. The question therefore, was, after a good deal of pertinacious argument on both sides--which of the two impressions was the MORE ANCIENT? Undoubtedly it was that of Lord[B] Spencer's. [B] [The reasons, upon which this conclusion was founded, are stated at length in the preceding edition of this work: since which, I very strongly incline to the supposition that the Paris impression is a _proof_--of one of the _cheats_ of DE MURR.] [28] He died in 1824 and a notice of his Life and Labours appeared in the _Annales Encyclopèdiques_. [29] "M. Dibdin may well make the _fourth_ copy--as to size." CRAPELET, p. 115. _LETTER III._ THE SAME SUBJECTS CONTINUED. _Paris, June 14, 1818_. As I promised, at the conclusion of my last, you shall accompany me immediately to the ROYAL LIBRARY; and taking down a few of the more ancient MANUSCRIPTS relating to _Theology_--especially those, which, from age, art, or intrinsic worth, demand a more particular examination--we will both sit down together to the enjoyment of what the librarians have placed before us. In other words, I shall proceed to fill up the outline (executed with a hurrying pencil) which was submitted to you in my previous letter. First, therefore, for BIBLES, LITURGIES, RITUALS, LEGENDS, MORAL TREATISES, &C. _Quatuor Evangelia. "Codex Membranaceus, Olim Abbatiæ S. Medardi Suessionensis in uncialibus litteris et auricis scriptus. Sæc. VI."_ The preceding is written in an old hand, inserted in the book. It is a folio volume of unquestionably great antiquity; but I should apprehend that it is _antedated_ by at least _two_ centuries. It is full of embellishment, of a varied and splendid character. The title to each Gospel is in very large capital letters of gold, upon a purple ground: both the initial letter and the border round the page being elaborately ornamented. The letter prefixed to St. Matthew's Gospel is highly adorned, and in very good taste. Each page consists of two columns, in capital letters of gold, throughout: within borders of a quiet purple, or lilac tint, edged with gold. It has been said that no two borders are alike altogether. A portrait of each Evangelist is prefixed to the title; apparently coeval with the time: the composition is rather grotesque; the colours are without any glaze, and the perspective is bad. LATIN BIBLE OF CHARLES THE BALD. Folio. When this volume was described by me, on a former occasion,[30] from merely printed authorities, of course it was not in my power to do it, if I may so speak, "after the life,"--for although nearly ten centuries have elapsed since this Bible has been executed, yet, considering its remote age, it may be said to be fresh and in most desirable condition. The authority, just hinted at, notices that this magnificent volume was deposited in the library by _Baluze_, the head librarian to Colbert; but a note in that eminent man's hand writing, prefixed, informs us that the Canons of the Cathedral church at Metz made Colbert a present of it. The reverse of the last leaf but one is occupied by Latin verses, in capital letters of gold, at the top of which, in two lines, we make out--" _Qualiter uiuian monachus sci martini consecrat hanc bibliam Karolo ipatorj_," &c. The ensuing and last leaf is probably, in the eye of an antiquarian virtuoso, more precious than either of its decorative precursors. It exhibits the PORTRAIT OF CHARLES THE BALD; who is surrounded by four attendants, blended, as it were, with a group of twelve below--in the habits of priests--listening to the oration of one, who stands nearly in the centre.[31] This illumination, in the whole, measures about fourteen inches in height by nearly ten and a half in width: the purple ground being frequently faded into a greenish tint. The volume itself is about twenty inches in height by fifteen wide. PSALTER OF CHARLES THE BALD. This very precious volume was also in the library of the Great Colbert. It is a small quarto, bound in the most sumptuous manner. The exterior of the first side of the binding has an elaborate piece of sculpture, in ivory, consisting of small human figures, beasts, &c.; and surrounded with oval and square coloured stones. The exterior of the other, or corresponding, side of the binding has the same species of sculpture, in ivory; but no stones. The text of the volume is in gold capitals throughout; but the ornaments, as well as the portrait of Charles, are much inferior to those in that just described. However, this is doubtless a valuable relic. PRAYER BOOK OF CHARLES THE BALD; in small 4to. This is rather an _Evangelistarium_, or excerpts from the four Gospels. The writing is a small roman lower-case. The illuminations, like those in the Bible, are rubbed and faded, and they are smaller. The exterior ornament of the binding, in the middle, contains a group of ivory figures--taken from the _original_ covering or binding. BOOK OF THE GOSPELS, OF THE EMPEROR LOTHARIUS. Although it is very probable that this book may be of a somewhat earlier date than the MS. just described, yet as its original possessor was brother to _Charles the Bald_, it is but courtesy to place him in the second rank after the French monarch; and accordingly I have here inserted the volume in the order which I apprehend ought to be observed. An ancient ms. memorandum tells us that this book was executed in the 855th year of the Christian era, and in the 15th of the Emperor's reign. On the reverse of the first leaf is the portrait of the Emperor, with an attendant on each side. The text commences on the recto of the second leaf. On the reverse of the same leaf, is a representation of the Creator. Upon the whole, this book may be classed among the most precious specimens of early art in this library. On the cover are the royal arms. LATIN BIBLE. Fol. This MS. of the sacred text is in four folio volumes, and undoubtedly cannot be later than the thirteenth century. The text is written with three columns in each page. Of the illuminations, the figures are sketches, but freely executed: the colouring coarse and slightly put on: the wings of some of the angels reminded me of those in the curious _Hyde-Book_, belonging to the Marquis of Buckingham at Stowe; and of which, as you may remember, there are fac-similes in _the Bibliographical Decameron_.[32] The group of angels (on the reverse of the fourth leaf of the first volume), attending the Almighty's commands, is cleverly managed as to the draperies. The soldiers have quilted or net armour. The initial letters are sometimes large, in the fashion of those in the Bible of Charles the Bald, but very inferior in execution. In this MS. we may trace something, I think, of the decline of art. PSALTERIUM LATINÈ, 8vo. If I were called upon to select any one volume, of given octavo dimensions, I do not know whether I should not put my hand upon the _present_--for you are hereby to know that this was the religious manual of ST. LOUIS:--his own choice copy--selected, I warrant, from half a score of performances of rival scribes, rubricators, and illuminators. Its condition is absolutely wonderful--nor is the history of its locomotiveness less surprising. First, for an account of its contents. On the reverse of the first fly-leaf, we read the following memorandum--in red: "_Cest psaultier fu saint loys. Et le dona la royne Iehanne deureux au roy Charles filz du roy Iehan, lan de nres' mil troys cens soissante et neuf. Et le roy charles pnt filz du dit Roy charles le donna a madame Marie de frace sa fille religieuse a poissi. le iour saint michel lan mil iiij^c._" This hand writing is undoubtedly of the time. A word now about the history of this volume. As this extract indicates, it was deposited in a monastery at Poissy. When that establishment was dissolved, the book was brought to M. Chardin, a bookseller and a bibliomaniac. He sold it, some twenty-five years ago, to a Russian gentleman, from whom it was obtained, at Moscow, by the Grand Duke Nicholas.[33] The late King of France, through his ambassador, the Count de Noailles, obtained it from the Grand Duke--who received, in return, from his Majesty, a handsome present of two Sèvre vases. It is now therefore safely and judiciously lodged in the Royal Library of France. It is in wooden covers, wrapped in red velvet. The vellum is singularly soft, and of its original pure tint. HISTORICAL PARAPHRASE OF THE BIBLE. Lat. and Fr. Folio. If any MS. of the sacred text were to be estimated according to the _number of the illuminations_ which it contained, the present would unquestionably claim precedence over every other. In short, this is the MS. of which Camus, in the _Notices et Extraits des MSS. de la Bibliothèque Nationale_, vol. vi. p. 106, has given not only a pretty copious account, but has embellished that account with fac-similes--one large plate, and two others--each containing four subjects of the illuminations. After an attentive survey of the various styles of art observable in these decorations, I am not disposed to allow the antiquity of the MS. to go beyond the commencement of the XVth century. A sight of the frontispiece causes a re-action of the blood in a lover of genuine large margins. The book is cropt--not _quite_ to the quick!... but then this frontispiece displays a most delicate and interesting specimen of graphic art. It is executed in a sort of gray tone:--totally destitute of other colour. According to Camus, there are upwards of five thousand illuminations; and a similar work, in his estimation, could not _now_ be executed under 100,000 francs. A SIMILAR MS. This consists but of one volume, of a larger size, of 321 leaves. It is also an historical Bible. The illuminations are arranged in a manner like those of the preceding; but in black and white only, delicately shaded. The figures are tall, and the females have small heads; just what we observe in those of the _Roman d'Alexandre_, in the Bodleian library. It is doubtless a manuscript of nearly the same age, although this may be somewhat more recent. LIBER GENERATIONIS IHI XTI. Of all portions of the sacred text--not absolutely a consecutive series of the Gospels, or of any of the books of the Old Testament--the present is probably, not only the oldest MS. in that particular department, but, with the exception of the well known _Codex Claromontanus_, the most ancient volume in the Royal Library. It is a folio, having purple leaves throughout, upon which the text is executed in silver capitals. Both the purple and the silver are faded. On the exterior of the binding are carvings in ivory, exceedingly curious, but rather clumsy. The binding is probably coeval with the MS. They call it of the ninth century; but I should rather estimate it of the eighth. It is undoubtedly an interesting and uncommon volume. EVANGELIUM STI. IOHANNIS. This is a small oblong folio, bound in red velvet. It is executed in a very large, lower-case, coarse gothic and roman letter, alternately:--in letters of gold throughout. The page is narrow, the margin is large, and the vellum soft and beautiful. There is a rude portrait of the Evangelist prefixed, on a ground entirely of gold. The capital initial letter is also rude. The date of this manuscript is pushed as high as the eleventh century: but I doubt this antiquity. LIBER PRECUM: CUM NOTIS, CANTICIS ET FIGURIS. I shall begin my account of PRAYER BOOKS, BREVIARIES, &C. with the present: in all probability the most ancient within these walls. The volume before me is an oblong folio, not much unlike a tradesman's day-book. A ms. note by Maugerard, correcting a previous one, assigns the composition of this book to a certain Monk, of the name of _Wickingus_, of the abbey of Prum, of the Benedictin order. It was executed, as appears on the reverse of the forty-eighth leaf, "_under the abbotships of Gilderius and Stephanus_." It is full of illuminations, heavily and clumsily done, in colours, which are now become very dull. I do not consider it as older than the twelfth century, from the shield with a boss, and the depressed helmet. There are interlineary annotations in a fine state of preservation. In the whole, ninety-one leaves. It is bound in red morocco. BREVIARE DE BELLEVILLE: Octavo. 2 volumes. Rich and rare as may be the graphic gems in this marvellous collection, I do assure you, my good friend, that it would be difficult to select two octavo volumes of greater intrinsic curiosity and artist-like execution, than are those to which I am now about to introduce you:--especially the first. They were latterly the property of Louis XIV. but had been originally a present from Charles VI. to our Richard II. Thus you see a good deal of personal history is attached to them. They are written in a small, close, Gothic character, upon vellum of the most beautiful colour. Each page is surrounded by a border, (executed in the style of the age--perhaps not later than 1380) and very many pages are adorned by illuminations, especially in the first volume, which are, even now, as fresh and perfect as if just painted. The figures are small, but have more finish (to the best of my recollection) than those in our Roman d'Alexandre, at Oxford. At the end of the first volume is the following inscription--written in a stiff, gothic, or court-hand character: the capital letters being very tall and highly ornamented. "_Cest Breuiare est a l'usaige des Jacobins. Et est en deux volumes Dont cest cy Le premier, et est nomme Le Breuiaire de Belleville. Et le donna el Roy Charles le vj^e. Au roy Richart Dangleterre, quant il fut mort Le Roy Henry son successeur L'envoya a son oncle Le Duc de Berry, auquel il est a present."_ This memorandum has the signature of "Flamel," who was Secretary to Charles VI. On the opposite page, in the same ancient Gothic character, we read: "_Lesquelz volumes mon dit Seigneur a donnez a ma Dame Seur Marie de France. Ma niepce."_ Signed by the same. The Abbé L'Epine informs me that Flamel was a very distinguished character among the French: and that the royal library contains several books which belonged to him. BREVIARY OF JOHN DUKE OF BEDFORD. Pursuing what I imagine to be a tolerably correct chronological order, I am now about to place before you this far-famed _Breviary_: companion to the MISSAL which originally belonged to the same eminent Possessor, and of which our countrymen[34] have had more frequent opportunities of appreciating the splendour and beauty than the Parisians; as it is not likely that the former will ever again become the property of an Englishman. Doubtless, at the sale of the Duchess of Portland's effects in 1786, some gallant French nobleman, if not Louis XVI. himself, should have given an unlimited commission to purchase it, in order that both _Missal_ and _Breviary_ might have resumed that close and intimate acquaintance, which no doubt originally subsisted between them, when they lay side by side upon the oaken shelves of their first illustrious Owner. Of the _two_ performances, however, there can be no question that the superiority lies decidedly with the _Missal_: on the score of splendour, variety, and skilfulness of execution. The last, and by much the most splendid illumination, is _that_ for which the artists of the middle age, and especially the old illuminators, seem to have reserved all their powers, and upon which they lavished all their stock of gold, ultramarine, and carmine. You will readily anticipate that I am about to add--the _Assumption of the Virgin_. One's memory is generally fallacious in these matters; but of all the exquisite, and of all the minute, elaborate, and dazzling works of art, of the illuminatory kind, I am quite sure that I have not seen any thing which _exceeds_ this. To _equal_ it--there may be some few: but its superior, (of its own particular class of subject) I think it would be very difficult to discover. HORÆ BEATÆ MARIÆ VIRGINIS. This may be called either a large thick octavo, or a very small folio. Probably it was originally more decidedly of the latter kind. It is bound in fish skin; and a ms. note prefixed thus informs us. "_Manuscrit aqui du C^{en} Papillon au commencement du mois de Frimaire de lan XII. de la République."_ This is without doubt among the most superb and beautiful books, of its class, in the Royal Library. The title is ornamented in an unusual but splendid manner. Some of the larger illuminations are elaborately executed; especially the first--representing the _Annunciation_. The robe of the Angel, kneeling, is studded with small pearls, finished with the minutest touches. The character of ART, generally throughout, is that of the time and manner of the volume last described: but the present is very frequently inferior in merit to what may be observed in the Bedford Breviary. In regard to the number of decorations, this volume must also be considered as less interesting: but it possesses some very striking and very brilliant performances. Thus, _St. Michael and the Devil_ is absolutely in a blaze of splendor; while the illumination on the reverse of the same leaf is not less remarkable for a different effect. A quiet, soft tone--from a profusion of tender touches of a grey tint, in the architectural parts of the ornaments--struck me as among the most pleasing specimens of the kind I had ever seen. The latter and larger illuminations have occasionally great power of effect, from their splendid style of execution--especially that in which the central compartment is occupied by _St. George and the Dragon_. Some of the smaller illuminations, in which an Angel is shewing the cruelties about to be inflicted on the wicked, by demons, are terrific little bits! As for the vellum, it is "de toute beauté." HISTORIA BEATÆ MARIÆ VIRGINIS. Folio. This is briefly described in the printed catalogue, under number 6811. It is a large and splendid folio, in a very fine state of preservation; but of which the art is, upon the whole, of the ordinary and secondary class of merit. Yet it is doubtless a volume of great interest and curiosity. Even to English feelings, it will be gratifying to observe in it the portrait of _Louisa of Savoy_, mother of Francis I. That illustrious lady is sitting in a chair, surrounded by her attendants; and is in all probability a copy from the life. The performance is a metrical composition, in stanzas of eleven verses. I select the opening lines, because they relate immediately to the portrait in question. _Tres excellente illustre et magnificque Fleur de noblesse exquise et redolente Dame dhonneur princesse pacifique Salut a ta maieste precellente Tes seruiteurs par voye raisonnable Tant iusticiers que le peuple amyable. De amyens cite dicte de amenite Recomandant sont par humilite Leur bien publicque en ta grace et puissance Toy confessant estre en realite Mere humble et franche au grant espoir de France_. The text is accompanied by the common-place flower Arabesques of the period. HOURS OF ANNE OF BRITTANY. The order of this little catalogue of a few of the more splendid and curious ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPTS, in the Royal Library of France, has at length, my worthy friend, brought me in contact with the magical and matchless volume usually designated by the foregoing title. You are to know--in the first place--that, of ALL the volumes in this most marvellous Library, the present is deemed THE MOST PRECIOUS. Not even the wishes and regulations of Royalty itself allow of its migration beyond the walls of the public library. There it is kept: there it is opened, and shewn, and extolled beyond any limits fixed to the admiration of the beholder. It is a rare and bewitching piece of art, I do assure you: and so, raising your expectations to their highest pitch, I will allow you to anticipate whatever is wonderful in FRANCESCO VERONESE and gorgeous in GIROLAMO DEI LIBRI.[35] Perhaps, however, this is not the most happy illustration of the art which it displays. The first view of this magical volume is doubtless rather disheartening: but the sight of the original silver clasps (luckily still preserved) will operate by way of a comforter. Upon them you observe this ornament: [Illustration.] denoting, by the letter and the ducal crown, that the book belonged to Anne, Duchess of Brittany. On the reverse of the second leaf we observe the _Dead Christ_ and the _three Maries_. These figures are about six inches in height. They are executed with great delicacy, but in a style somewhat too feeble for their size. One or two of the heads, however, have rather a good expression. Opposite to this illumination is the _truly invaluable_ PORTRAIT OF ANNE herself: attended by two females, each crowned with a glory; one is displaying a banner, the other holding a cross in her hand. To the left of these attendants, is an old woman, hooded, with her head encircled by a glory. They are all three sweetly and delicately touched; but there are many evident marks of injury and ill usage about the surface of the colouring. Yet, as being _ideal_ personages, my eye hastily glided off them to gaze upon the illustrious Lady, by whose orders, and at whose expense, these figures were executed. It is upon the DUCHESS that I fix my eye, and lavish my commendations. Look at her[36] as you here behold her. Her gown is brown and gold, trimmed with dark brown fur. Her hair is brown. Her necklace is composed of coloured jewels. Her cheek has a fresh tint; and the missal, upon which her eyes are bent, displays highly ornamented art. The cloth upon the table is dark crimson. The _Calendar_ follows; in which, in one of the winter months, we observe a very puerile imitation of flakes of snow falling over the figures and the landscape below. The calendar occupies a space of about six inches by four, completely enclosed by a coloured margin. Then begins a series of the most beautiful ornaments of FLOWERS, FRUITS, INSECTS, &C. for which the illuminators of this period were often eminently distinguished. These ornaments are almost uniformly introduced in the fore-edges, or right-side margins, of the leaves; although occasionally, but rarely, they encircle the text. They are from five to six inches in length, or height; having the Latin name of the plant at top, and the French name at the bottom. Probably these titles were introduced by a later hand. It is really impossible to describe many of them in terms of adequate praise. The downy plum is almost bursting with ripeness: the butterfly's wings seem to be in tremulous motion, while they dazzle you by their varied lustre: the hairy insect puts every muscle and fibre into action, as he insinuates himself within the curling of the crisped leaves; while these leaves are sometimes glittering with dew, or coated with the finest down. The flowers and the vegetables are equally admirable, and equally true to nature. To particularise would be endless. Assuredly these efforts of art have no rival--of their kind. _Scripture Subjects. Saints, Confessors, &c._ succeed in regular order, with accompaniments of fruits and flowers, more or less exquisitely executed:--the whole, a collection of peculiar, and, of its kind, UNRIVALLED ART. This extraordinary volume measures twelve inches by seven and a half. HOURS BELONGING TO POPE PAUL III. 8vo. The portrait of the Pope is at the bottom of the first ornament, which fixes the period of its execution to about the middle of the sixteenth century. Towards the end the pages are elaborately ornamented in the arabesque manner. There are some pleasing children: of that style of art which is seen in the Missal belonging to Sir M.M. Sykes, of the time of Francis I.[37] The scription is very beautiful. The volume afterwards belonged to Pius VI., whose arms are worked in tambour on the outside. It is kept in a case, and is doubtless a fine book. MISSALS: numbers 19-4650. Under this head I shall notice two pretty volumes of the devotional kind; of which the subjects are executed in red, blue, &c.--and of which the one seems to be a copy of the other. The borders exhibit a style of art somewhat between that of Julio Clovio and what is seen in the famous Missal just mentioned. MISSAL OF HENRY IV. No. 1171. This book is of the end of the XVIth century. The ground is gold, with a small brilliant, roman letter for text. The subjects are executed in a pale chocolate tint, rather capricious than tasteful. It has been cropt in the binding. The name and arms of Henry are on the exterior. Thus much, my dear friend, for the SACRED TEXT--either in its original, uninterrupted state--or as partially embodied in _Missals_, _Hours_, or _Rituals_. I think it will now be but reasonable to give you some little respite from the toil of further perusal; especially as the next class of MSS. is so essentially different. In the mean while, I leave you to carry the image of ANNE OF BRITTANY to your pillow, to beguile the hours of languor or of restlessness. A hearty adieu. [30] _Bibliographical Decameron_, vol. i. p. xxxi. [31] Earl Vivian, and eleven monks, in the act of presenting the volume to Charles. [32] Vol. i. p. lvi.-vii. [33] The present Emperor of Russia. [34] A very minute and particular description of this Missal, together with a fac-simile of the DUKE OF BEDFORD kneeling before his tutelary SAINT GEORGE, will be found in the _Bibliographical Decameron_, vol. i. p. cxxxvi-cxxxix. [35] For an account of these ancient worthies in the art of illumination, consult the _Bibliographical Decameron_, vol. i. p. cxlii.-clxiv. [36] See the OPPOSITE PLATE. [The beautiful copy of the Original, by Mr. G. Lewis, from which the Plates in this work were taken, is now in the possession of Thomas Ponton, Esq.] [37] [It was bought at Sir Mark's sale, by Messrs. Rivington and Cochrane. See a fac-simile of one of the illuminations in the _Bibliographical Decameron_, vol. i. p. clxxix.] _LETTER IV._ THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. Are you thoroughly awake, and disenchanted from the magic which the contents of the preceding letter may have probably thrown around you? Arouse--to scenes of a different aspect, but of a not less splendid and spirit-stirring character. Buckle on your helmet, ... for the trumpet sounds to arms. The _Knights of the Round Table_ call upon you, from their rock-hewn, or wood-embowered, recesses, to be vigilant, faithful, enterprising, and undaunted. In language less elevated, and somewhat more intelligible, I am about to place before you a few illuminated MSS. relating to HISTORY and ROMANCE; not without, in the first place, making a digression into one or two volumes of MORALITIES, if they may be so called. Prepare therefore, in the first place, for the inspection of a couple of volumes--which, for size, splendor, and general state of preservation, have no superior in the Royal Library of France. CITÉ DE DIEU: No. 6712: folio. 2 vols. These are doubtless among the most magnificent _shew-books_ in this collection; somewhat similar, in size and style of art, to the MS. of _Valerius Maximus_, in our British Museum--of which, should you not have forgotten it, some account may be read in the _Bibliographical Decameron_.[38] At the very first page we observe an assemblage of Popes, Cardinals, and Bishops, with a King seated on his throne in the midst of them. The figures in the fore-ground are from four to five inches high; and so in gradation upwards. The colouring of some of the draperies is in a most delightful tone. The countenances have also a soft and quiet expression. The arms of _Graville_ (Grauille?) are in the circular border. Three leaves beyond, a still larger and more crowded illumination appears--in a surprising state of freshness and beauty; measuring nearly a foot and a half in height. It is prefixed to the _First Book_, and is divided into a group in the clouds, and various groups upon the earth below. These latter are representations of human beings in all situations and occupations of life--exhibiting the prevalence both of virtues and vices. They are encircled at bottom by a group of Demons. The figures do not exceed two inches in height. Nothing can exceed the delicacy and brilliancy of this specimen of art about the middle of the fifteenth century:---a ms. date of 1469 shewing the precise period of its execution. This latter is at the end of the first volume. Each book, into which the work is divided, has a large illumination prefixed, of nearly equal beauty and splendor. LES ECHECS AMOUREUX. Folio. No. 6808. The title does not savour of any moral application to be derived from the perusal of the work. Nevertheless, there are portions of it which were evidently written with that view. It is so lovely, and I had almost said so matchless, a volume, that you ought to rejoice to have an account of it in any shape. On the score of delicate, fresh, carefully-executed art, this folio may challenge comparison with any similar treasure in the Bibliothèque du Roi. The subjects are not crowded, nor minute; nor of a very wonderful and intricate nature; but they are quietly composed, softly executed, and are, at this present moment, in a state of preservation perfectly beautiful and entire. BOCCACE; DES CAS DES NOBLES HOMMES ET FEMMES: No. 6878. The present seems to be the fit place to notice this very beautiful folio volume of one of the most popular works of Boccaccio. Copies of it, both in ms. and early print--are indeed common in foreign libraries. There is a date of 1409 at the very commencement of the volume: but I take the liberty to question whether that be the date of its actual execution. The illuminations in this manuscript exhibit a fine specimen of the commencement of that soft, and as some may think woolly, style of art, which appears to so much advantage in the _Bedford Missal and Bedford Breviary_; and of which, indeed, a choice specimen of circular ornaments is seen round the first large illumination of the creation and expulsion of Adam and Eve. These illuminations are not of first rate merit, nor are they all by the same hand. THE SAME WORK: with the same date--but the hand-writing is evidently more modern. Of the illuminations, it will be only necessary to mention the large one at fol. iij.c. (ccc.) in which the gray tints and the gold are very cleverly managed. At the end is seen, in a large sprawling character, the following inscription: "_Ce Livre est A Le Harne. Fille Et Seur de Roys de France, Duchesse de Bourbonnois et dauuergne. Contesse de Clermont et de Tourez. Dame de Beaujeu."_ This inscription bears the date of 1468; not very long before which I suspect the MS. to have been executed. THE SAME: of the same date--which date I am persuaded was copied by each succeeding scribe. The illuminations are here generally of a very inferior character: but the first has much merit, and is by a superior hand. The text is executed in a running secretary Gothic. There are two other MSS. of the same work which I examined; and in one of which the well known subject of the _wheel of fortune_ is perhaps represented for the first time. It usually accompanied the printed editions, and may be seen in that of our Pynson, in 1494,[39] folio. I suspect, from one of the introductory prefaces, that the celebrated _Laurent le Premier Fait_ was the principal scribe who gave a sort of fashion to this MS. in France. PTOLEMÆUS, _Latinè_. A magnificent MS.--if size and condition be alone considered. It is however precious in the estimation of Collectors of portraits, as it contains one of Louis XII;[40]--This portrait is nearly in the centre of the frontispiece to the book. Behind the monarch stand two men; one leaning upon his staff. A large gothic window is above. A crucifix and altar are beneath it. There is but one other similar illumination in the volume; and each nearly occupies the whole of the page--which is almost twenty-three inches long by fourteen wide. The other illumination is hardly worth describing. This noble volume, which almost made the bearer stoop beneath its weight, is bound in wood:--covered with blue velvet, with a running yellow pattern, of the time of Louis--but now almost worn away. TITE-LIVE. Fol. A noble and magnificent MS. apparently of the beginning of the XVth. century. It seems to point out the precise period when the artists introduced those soft, full-coloured, circular borders--just after the abandonment of the sharp outline, and thin coat of colour--discoverable in the illuminations of the XIIIth and XIVth centuries. The first grand illumination, with a circular border, is an interesting illustration of this remark. The backgrounds to the pictures are the well-known small bright squares of blue and gold. The text is in a firm square and short gothic character. L'HISTOIRE ROMAINE: No. 6984: Folio, 3 vols. written in the French language. These are among the _shew books_ of the library. The exterior pattern of the binding is beautiful in the extreme. Such a play of lines, in all directions, but chiefly circular, I never before saw. The date, on the outside, is 1556. The writing and the illuminations are of the latter part of the XVth century; and although they are gorgeous, and in a fine state of preservation, yet is the character of the art but secondary, and rather common. ROYAL BIOGRAPHY OF FRANCE. Fol. This exquisite volume may be justly designated as the _nonpareil_ of its kind. It is rather a book of PORTRAITS, than a MS. with intermixed illuminations. The scription, in a sort of cursive, secretary gothic character, merits not a moment's attention: the pencil of the artist having wholly eclipsed the efforts of the scribe. Such a series of exquisitely finished portraits, of all the Kings of France (with the unaccountable omission, unless it has been taken out, of that of Louis XII.) is perhaps no where else to be seen. M. Coeuré, the French artist employed by me, stood in ecstasies before it! These portraits are taken from old monuments, missals, and other ancient and supposed authentic documents. They are here touched and finished in a manner the most surprisingly perfect. The book appears to have been executed expressly for CHARLES IX.--to whom it was in fact presented by _Dutilliet_, (the artist or the superintendant of the volume) in his proper person. The gilt stamp of the two reversed C's are on the sides of the binding. I should add, that the portraits are surrounded by borders of gold, shaded in brown, in the arabesque manner. All the portraits are whole lengths; and if my time and pursuits had permitted it, I should, ere this, have caused M. Coeuré to have transfused a little of his enthusiasm into faithful facsimiles of those of Francis I.--my avowed favourite--of which one represents him in youth, and the other in old age. Why do not the Noblesse of France devote some portion of that wealth, which may be applied to worse purposes, in obtaining a series of engravings executed from this matchless volume?! ROMANCES, BOOKS OF TOURNAMENT, &c. LANCELOT DU LAC shall lead the way. He was always considered among the finest fellows who ever encircled the _Table Ronde_--and _such_ a copy of his exploits, as is at this moment before me, it is probably not very easy for even Yourself to conceive. If the height and bulk of the knight were in proportion to this written record of achievements, the plume of his helmet must have brushed the clouds. This enormous volume (No. 6783) is divided into three books or parts: of which the first part is illuminated in the usual coarse style of the latter end of the XIVth century. The title to this first part, in red ink, is the most perfect resemblance of the earliest type used by Caxton, which I remember to have seen in an ancient manuscript. The other titles do not exhibit that similarity. The first part has ccxlviij. leaves. The second part has no illuminations: if we except a tenderly touched outline, in a brownish black, upon the third leaf--which is much superior to any specimen of art in the volume. This second part has cccj. leaves. At the end:-- _Sensuit le liure du saint graal_. The spaces for illuminations are regularly preserved, but by what accident or design they were not filled up remains to be conjectured. The third part, or book, is fully illuminated like the first. There is a very droll illumination on folio vij.^{xx}. xij. At the end of the volume, on folio ccxxxiij., recto, is the following date: "_Aujourduy iiij. Jour du Jullet lan mil ccc. soixante dix a este escript ce livre darmes par Micheaugatelet prestre demeurant en la ville de Tournay_." Just before the colophon, on the reverse of the preceding leaf, is a common-place illumination of the interment of a figure in a white sheet--with this incription: ICI: GIST. LECORS: GALAHAVT: SEIGNEVR DES. LOINTENES. ILES. ET. AVECQVES. LVI. REPOVSE: MESIRE LANCELOT. DVLAC. MELLIEVR. CHRL. DV. MVDE. APRES. GVALEAT. There are two or three more illuminated MSS. of our well-beloved Lancelot. One, in six volumes, has illuminations, but they are of the usual character of those of the fifteenth century. LANCELOT DU LAC, &C. This MS. is in three volumes. The first contains only, as it were, an incipient illumination: but there is preserved, on the reverse of the binding, and written in the same character with the text, three lines--of which the private history, or particular application, is now forgotten--although we learn, from the word _bloys_ being written at top, that this MS. came from the library of Catherine de Medici--when she resided at Blois. The second volume of this copy is in quite a different character, and much older than the first. The colophon assigns to it the date of 1344. The volume is full of illuminations, and the first leaf exhibits a fair good specimen of those drolleries which are so frequently seen in illuminated MSS. of that period. The third volume is in a still different hand-writing: perhaps a little more ancient. It has a few slight illuminations, only as capital initials. LANCELOT DU LAC: No. 6782. This MS. is executed in a small gothic character, in ink which has now become much faded. From the character of the illuminations, I should consider it to be much more ancient than either of the preceding--even at the commencement of the thirteenth century. Among the illuminations there is a very curious one, with this prefix; _Vne dame venant a.c. chr. q dort en son lit & ele le volt baisier. mais vne damoiselle li deffendi_ You will not fail to bear in mind that the history of Lancelot du Lac will be also found in those of Tristan and Arthur. I shall now therefore introduce you to a MS. or two relating to the former. TRISTAN. No. 6957, 2 vols. _folio_. This is a very fine old MS. apparently of the middle of the XIVth century. The writing and the embellishments fairly justify this inference. The first volume contains three hundred and fifty-one leaves. On the reverse of the last leaf but one, is the word "_anne_" in large lower-case letters; but a ms. memorandum, in a later hand, at the end, tells us that this copy was once the property of "_the late Dame Agnes" &c_. The second volume is written in more of the secretary gothic character--and is probably somewhat later than the first. It is executed in double columns. The illuminations are little more than outlines, prettily executed upon a white ground--or rather the vellum is uncoloured. This volume seems to want a leaf at the commencement, and yet it has a title at top, as if the text actually began there. The colophon is thus: _Explicit le Romat de. T. et de yseut qui fut fait lan mille. iijc. iiijxx. et xix. la veille de pasques grans._ TRISTAN, FILS DE MELIADUS. No. 6773. A folio of almost unparalleled breadth of back;--measuring more than six inches and a quarter, without the binding. A beautiful illumination once graced the first leaf, divided into four compartments, which is now almost effaced. In the third compartment, there are two men and two women playing at chess, in a vessel. What remains, only conveys an imperfect idea of its original beauty. The lady seems to have received check-mate, from the melancholy cast of her countenance, and her paralised attitude. The man is lifting up both hands, as if in the act of exultation upon his victory. The two other figures are attendants, who throw the dice. Upon the whole, this is among the prettiest bits I have yet seen. It is worth noticing that the yellow paint, like our Indian yellow, is here very much used; shaded with red. The generality of the illuminations are fresh; but there is none of equal beauty with that just described. From the scription, and the style of art, I should judge this MS. to have been executed about the year 1400 or 1420; but a memorandum, apparently in a somewhat later hand, says it was finished in 1485:--_Par Michean gonnot de la brouce pstre demeurant a croysant._ Some lines below have been scratched out. The colophon, just before, is on the recto of the last leaf: _Explicit le romans de tristan et de la Royne Yseult la blonde Royne de cornoalle._ TRISTAN: No. 6774. _Folio._ 2 vols. The illuminations are magnificent, but lightly coloured and shaded. The draperies are in good taste. The border to the first large illumination, in four parts, is equally elegant in composition and colouring, and a portion of it might be worth copying. There is a pretty illumination of two women sitting down. A table cloth, with dinner upon it, is spread upon the grass between them:--a bottle is plunged into a running stream from a fountain, with an ewer on one side in the fore-ground. One woman plays upon the guitar while the other eats her dinner. The second volume has a fine illumination divided into four parts, with a handsome border--not quite perhaps so rich as the preceding. Among the subjects, there is a singular one of Lancelot du Lac helping a lady out of a cauldron in a state of nudity: two gentlemen and a lady are quietly looking on. The text appertaining to this subject runs thus: "_Et quant elle voit lancelot si lui dist hoa sire cheualiers pour dieu ostes moy de ceste aure ou il a eaue qui toute mait Et lancelot vint a la aure et prent la damoiselle par la main et lentrait hors. Et quant elle se voit deliure elle luy chiet aux pies et lui baise la iambe et lui dist sire benoite soit leure que vous feustes oncques nes, &c_." The top of the last leaf is cut off: and the date has been probably destroyed. The colophon runs thus: _Cy fenist le livre de tristan et de la royne yseult de cornouaille et le graal que plus nen va_. The present is a fine genuine old copy: in faded yellow morocco binding-- apparently not having been subjected to the torturing instruments of De Rome. LE ROY ARTUS. No. 6963. Folio. I consider this to be the oldest illuminated MS. of the present Romance which I have yet seen. It is of the date of 1274, as its colophon imports. It is written in double columns, but the illuminations are heavy and sombre;--about two inches in height, generally oblong. There are grotesques, attached to letters, in the margin. The backgrounds are thick, shining gold. At the end: _Explicit de lanselot. del lac[41] Ces Roumans fu par escris. En lan del Incarnation nostre Segnor. mil deus cens et sixante et quatorse le semedi apres pour ce li ki lescrist_. It is in a fine state of preservation. Mons. Méon shewed me a manuscript of the ST. GRAAL, executed in a similar style, and written in treble columns. LE MEME. This is a metrical MS of the XIIIth century: executed in double columns. The illuminations are small but rather coarse. It is in fine preservation. Bound in green velvet. Formerly the outsides of this binding had silver gilt medallions; five on each side. These have been latterly stolen. I also saw a fine PERCEFOREST, in four large folio volumes upon vellum, written in a comparatively modern Gothic hand. The illuminations were to be _supplied_--as spaces are left for them. There is also a paper MS. of the same Romance, not illuminated. ROMAN DE LA ROSE: No. 6983. I consider this to be the oldest MS. of its subject which I have seen. It is executed in a small Gothic character, in two columns, with ink which has become much faded: and from the character, both of the scription and the embellishments, I apprehend the date of it to be somewhere about the middle of the XIVth century. The illuminations are small, but pretty and perfect; the backgrounds are generally square, diamond-wise, without gold; but there are backgrounds of solid shining gold. The subjects are rather quaintly and whimsically, than elegantly, treated. In the whole, one hundred and sixty leaves. From Romances, of all and of every kind, let us turn our eyes towards a representation of subjects intimately connected with them: to wit, A BOOK OF TOURNAMENTS. No. 8351. Folio. This volume is in a perfect blaze of splendour. Hither let PROSPERO and PALMERIN resort--to choose their casques, their gauntlets, their cuirasses, and lances: yea, let more than one-half of the Roxburghers make an annual pilgrimage to visit this tome!-- which developes, in thirteen minutes, more chivalrous intelligence than is contained even in the mystical leaves of the _Fayt of Arms and Chyvalrye_ of our beloved Caxton. Be my pulse calm, and my wits composed, as I essay the description of this marvellous volume. Beneath a large illumination, much injured, of Louis XI. sitting upon his throne--are the following verses: _Pour exemple aulx nobles et gens darmes Qui appetent les faitz darmes hautes Le Sire de gremthumsé duyt es armes Volut au roy ce livre presenter_. Next ensue knights on horseback, heralds, &c.--with a profusion of coat-armours: each illumination occupying a full page. On the reverse of the ninth leaf, is a most interesting illumination, in which is seen the figure of _John Duke of Brittany_. He is delivering a sword to a king at arms, to carry to his cousin, the Duke of Bourbon; as he learns, from general report, that the Duke is among the bravest champions in Christendom, and in consequence he wishes to break a lance with him. The illumination, where the Duke thus appears, is quite perfect, and full of interest: and I make no doubt but the countenance of the herald, who is kneeling to receive the sword, is a faithful portrait. It is full of what may be called individuality of character. The next illumination represents the _Duke of Bourbon accepting the challenge_, by receiving the sword. His countenance is slightly injured. The group of figures, behind him, is very clever. The ensuing illumination exhibits the herald offering the Duke de Bourbon the choice of eight coats of armour, to put on upon the occasion. A still greater injury is here observable in the countenance of the Duke. The process of conducting the tournay, up to the moment of the meeting of the combatants, is next detailed; and several illuminations of the respective armours of the knights and their attendants, next claim our attention. On the reverse of the xxxijnd, and on the recto of the xxxiijd leaf, the combat of the two Dukes is represented. The seats and benches of the spectators are then displayed: next a very large illumination of the procession of knights and their attendants to the place of contest. Then follows an interesting one of banners, coat armours, &c. suspended from buildings--and another, yet larger and equally interesting, of the entry of the judges. I am yet in the midst of the emblazoned throng. Look at yonder herald, with four banners in his hand. It is a curious and imposing sight. Next succeeds a formal procession--preparing for the combat. It is exceedingly interesting, and many of the countenances are full of natural expression. This is followed by a still more magnificent cavalcade, with judges in the fore-ground; and the "dames et damoiselles," in fair array to the right. We have next a grand rencontre of the knights attendant--carried on beneath a balcony of ladies whose bright eyes Reign influence, and decide the prize. These ladies, thus comfortably seated in the raised balcony, wear what we should now call the _cauchoise_ cap. A group of grave judges is in another balcony, with sundry mottos spread below. In the rencontre which takes place, the mace seems to be the general instrument of attack and defence. Splendid as are these illuminations, they yield to those which follow; especially to that which _immediately_ succeeds, and which displays the preparation for a tournament to be conducted upon a very large scale. We observe throngs of combatants, and of female spectators in boxes above. These are rather more delicately touched. Now comes ... the mixed and stubborn fight of the combatants. They are desperately engaged with each other; while their martial spirit is raised to the highest pitch by the sharp and reverberating blasts of the trumpet. The trumpeters blow their instruments with all their might. Every thing is in animation, bustle, energy, and confusion. A man's head is cut off, and extended by an arm, to which--in the position and of the size we behold--it would be difficult to attach a body. Blood flows copiously on all sides. The reward of victory is seen in the next and _last_ illumination. The ladies bring the white mantle to throw over the shoulders of the conqueror. In the whole, there are only lxxiiij. leaves. This is unquestionably a volume of equal interest and splendor; and, when it was fresh from the pencil of the illuminator, its effect must have been exquisite.[42] BOOK OF TOURNAMENTS: No. 8204. 8vo. We have here a sort of miniature exhibition of the chief circumstances displayed in the previous and larger MS. It is questionless a very precious book; but has been cruelly cropt. The text and ornaments are clearly of the end of the fifteenth century; perhaps about 1470. Nothing can well exceed the brilliancy and power of many of the illuminations, which are very small and very perfect. The knight, with a representation of the trefoil, (or what is called club, in card playing) upon a gold mantle, kills the other with a black star upon a white mantle. This mortal combat is the last in the book. Each of the knights, praying before going to combat, is executed with considerable power of expression. The ladies have the high (cauchoise) cap or bonnet. The borders, of flowers, are but of secondary merit. POLYBIUS, _Græcè_. Folio. M. Gail placed before me, in a sly manner--as if to draw off my attention from the volumes of chivalry just described,--the present beautiful MS. of Polybius. It is comparatively recent, being of the very commencement of the sixteenth century: but the writing exhibits a perfect specimen of that style or form of character which the Stephenses and Turnebus, &c. appear to have copied in their respective founts of the Greek letter. It has also other, and perhaps stronger, claims to notice. The volume belonged to Henry II. and Diane de Poictiers, and the decorations of the pencil are worthy of the library to which it was attached. The top ornament, and the initial letter,--at the beginning of the text--are each executed upon a blue ground, shaded in brown and gold, in the most exquisitely tasteful manner. This initial letter has been copied "ad amussim" by old Robert Stephen. Upon the whole, this is really an enchanting book, whether on the score of writing or of ornament. Farewell, now, therefore--to the Collection of MSS. in the _Bibliothèque du Roi_ at Paris. Months and years may be spent among them, and the vicissitudes of seasons (provided fires were occasionally introduced) hardly felt. I seem, for the last fortnight, to have lived entirely in the "olden time;" in a succession of ages from that of Charles the Bald to that of Henri Quatre: and my eyes have scarcely yet recovered from the dazzling effects of the illuminator's pencil. "II faut se reposer un peu." [38] Vol. i. p. ccxx-i. [39] See _Bibl. Spenceriana_, vol. iv p. 421. [40] The fac-simile drawing of this portrait, by M. Coeuré--from which the print was taken, in the previous edition of this work--is also in the possession of my friend Mr. Ponton. See note, page 79 ante. [41] The words "del lac" are in a later hand. [42] What is rather singular, there is a duplicate of this book: a copy of every illumination, done towards the beginning of the sixteenth century; but the text is copied in a smaller hand, so as to compress the volume into lxviij. leaves. Unluckily, the copies of the illuminations are not only comparatively coarse, but are absolutely faithless as to resemblances. There is a letter prefixed, from a person named _Le Hay_, of the date of 1707, in which the author tells some gentleman that he was in hopes to procure the volume for 100 crowns; but afterwards, the owner obstinately asking 200, _Le Hay_ tells his friend to split the difference, and offer 150. This book once belonged to one "_Hector Le Breton Sievr de la Doynetrie_"--as the lettering upon the exterior of the binding implies--and as a letter to his son, of the date of 1660, within the volume, also shows. This letter is signed by Le Breton. _LETTER V._ SOME ACCOUNT OF EARLY PRINTED AND RARE BOOKS IN THE ROYAL LIBRARY. As the ART of PRINTING rather suddenly, than gradually, checked the progress of that of writing and illuminating--and as the pressman in consequence pretty speedily tripped up the heels of the scribe--it will be a natural and necessary result...that I take you with me to the collection of PRINTED BOOKS. Accordingly, let us ascend the forementioned lofty flight of stone steps, and paying attention to the affiche of "wiping our shoes," let us enter: go straight forward: make our obeisance to Monsieur Van Praet, and sit down doggedly but joyfully to the glorious volumes...many of them Rough with barbaric gold, which, through his polite directions, are placed before us. To come to plain matter of fact. Receive, my good friend, in right earnest and with the strictest adherence to truth, a list of some of those rarer and more magnificent productions of the ancient art of printing, which I have been so many years desirous of inspecting, and which now, for the first time, present themselves to my notice and admiration. After the respectable example of M. Van Praet,[43] I shall generally, add the sizes, or measurement[44] of the respective books examined--not so much for the sake of making those unhappy whose copies are of less capacious dimensions, as for the consolation of those whose copies may lift up their heads in a yet more aspiring attitude. One further preliminary remark. I send you this list precisely in the order in which chance, rather than a preconcerted plan, happened to present the books to me. RECUEIL DES HISTOIRES DE TROYE. _Printed by Caxton_. Folio. The late M. De La Serna Santander, who was Head Librarian of the public Library at Brussels, purchased this book for the Royal Library for 150 francs.[45] It is in the finest possible state of preservation; and is bound in red morocco, with rather a tawdry lining of light blue water-tabby silk. THE SAME WORK. _Printed by Verard, without date_. Folio. This copy is UPON VELLUM; in the finest possible condition both for size and colour. It is printed in Verard's small gothic type, in long lines, with a very broad margin. The wood-cuts are coloured. The last leaf of the first book is MS.: containing only sixteen lines upon the recto of the leaf. This fine copy is bound in red morocco. HORÆ BEATÆ VIRGINIS, Gr. _Printed by Aldus_. 1497. 12mo. Perhaps the rarest Aldine volume in the world:--when found in a perfect state. M. Renouard had not been able to discover a copy to enrich his instructive annals of the Aldine typography.[46] The present copy is four inches and five eighths, by three inches and a half. It is in its original clasp binding, with stamped leather-outsides.[47] THE SHYPPE OF FOOLES. _Printed by Wynkyn de Worde_. 1509. 8vo. At length this far-famed and long talked of volume has been examined. It is doubtless a prodigious curiosity, and unique--inasmuch as this copy is UPON VELLUM. The vellum is stout but soft. I suspect this copy to be rather cropt. It is bound in red morocco, and is perfectly clean and sound throughout. ROMAN DE JASON. In French. _Printed by Caxton_. Folio. A little history is attached to the acquisition of this book, which may be worth recital. An unknown, and I may add an unknowing, person, bought this most exceedingly rare volume, with the _Qudriloge of Alain Chartier_, 1477, Folio, in one and the same ancient wooden binding, for the marvellously moderate sum of-- _one louis_! The purchaser brought the volume to M. de La Serna Santander, and asked him if he thought _two_ louis too much for their value. That wary Bibliographer only replied, "I do not think it is." He became the purchaser; and instantly and generously consigned the volumes to their present place of destination.[48] You may remember that the collection of Anthony Storer, in the library of Eton College, also possesses this book-- at present wanting in Lord Spencer's library. The present copy contains one hundred and thirty-two leaves, including a blank leaf; and is in a perfect state of preservation. PSALTERIUM, Latinè. _Printed by Fust and Schoiffher_. 1457. Folio. EDITIO PRINCEPS. This celebrated volume is a recent acquisition. It was formerly the copy of Girardot de Préfond, and latterly that of Count M'Carthy; at whose sale it was bought for 12,000 francs. It is cruelly cropt, especially at the side margins; and is of too sombre and sallow a tint. Measurement-- fourteen inches, by nine and a half. It is doubtless an absolutely necessary volume in a collection like the present. Only SEVEN known copies in the world. PSALTERIUM, Latinè. _Printed by the same_. 1459: Folio. _Editio Secunda_. The first six leaves have been evidently much thumbed; and the copy, from the appearance of the first leaf alone, is as evidently cropt. For the colophon, both of this and of the preceding edition, examine the catalogue of Lord Spencer's library.[49] Upon the whole, it strikes me, as far as recollection may serve, that his Lordship's copy of each edition is preferable to those under consideration.[50] This copy measures sixteen inches and a quarter, by twelve and one-eighth. PSALTERIUM, Latinè. _Printed by Schoiffher_. 1490. Folio. A magnificent volume: and what renders it still more desirable, it is printed UPON VELLUM. Lord Spencer's copy is upon paper. The _previous_ editions are _always_ found upon vellum. Fine and imposing as is the copy before me, it is nevertheless evident--from the mutilated ancient numerals at top--that it has been somewhat cropt. This fine book measures sixteen inches and five eighths, by eleven inches and seven eighths. PSALTERIUM, Latinè. _Printed by Schoiffher_. 1502. Folio. This book (wanting in the cabinet at St. James's Place) is upon paper. As far as folio Cxxxvij. the leaves are numbered: afterwards, the printed numerals cease. A ms. note, in the first leaf, says, that the text of the first sixteen leaves precisely follows that of the first edition of 1457. The present volume will be always held dear in the estimation of the typographical antiquary. It is THE LAST in which the name of _Peter Schoiffher_, the son-in-law of Fust, appears to have been introduced. That printer died probably a short time afterwards. It measures fifteen inches and one eighth in height, by ten inches and seven eighths in width. PSALTERIUM, Latinè. _Printed by Schoiffher's Son_. 1516. Folio. A fine and desirable copy, printed UPON VELLUM. It is tolerably fair: measuring fifteen inches, by ten inches and three quarters. I have little hesitation in estimating _these five copies_ of the earlier editions of the Psalter, to be worth, at least, one thousand pounds. BIBLIA LATINA. (_Supposed to have been printed in 1455.)_ Folio. This is the famous edition called the MAZARINE BIBLE, from the first known copy of it having been discovered in the library of that Cardinal, in the college founded by himself. Bibliography has nearly exhausted itself in disquisitions upon it. But this copy--which is upon paper--is THE COPY _of all copies_; inasmuch as it contains the memorable inscription, or coeval ms. memorandum, of its having been illuminated in 1456.[51] In the first volume, this inscription occurs at the end of the printed text, in three short lines, but to the best of my recollection, the memorandum resembles the printed text rather more than the fac-simile of it formerly published by me. In the second volume, this inscription is in three long lines and is well enough copied in the M'Carthy catalogue. It may be as well to give you a transcript of this celebrated memorandum, as it proves unquestionably the impression to have been executed before any known volume with a printed date. It is taken from the end of the second volume.[52] THE SAME EDITION.--This is a sound and desirable copy, printed UPON VELLUM; but much inferior in every respect, to another similar copy in the possession of Messrs. G. and W. Nicol, booksellers to his Majesty.[53] It measures fifteen inches and three-fourths, by nearly eleven and six eighths. BIBLIA LATINA. _Printed by Pfister, at Bamberg_. Folio. Three volumes. The rarest of all Latin Bibles, when found in a perfect state. This was Lord Oxford's copy, and is not to be equalled for its beauty and soundness of condition. What renders it precious and unique, is an undoubted coeval ms. date, in red ink, of 1461. Some of the leaves in the first volume are wholly uncut. It is in handsome, substantial russia binding. DURANDI RATIONALE DIV. OFF. _Printed by Fust and Schoiffher_. 1459. Folio. Here are not fewer than _three_ copies of this early, and much coveted volume: all of course UPON VELLUM. The tallest of them measures sixteen inches and a half, by twelve and one eighth; and is in red morocco binding. BIBLIA GERMANICA. _Supposed to be printed by Mentelin_. _Without date_. Folio. If we except the earlier leaves--of which the first is in ms., upon vellum, and the three succeeding, which are a little tender and soiled-- this is a very fine copy; so large, as to have many bottom rough margins. At the end of the second volume an ancient ms. memorandum absurdly assigns the printing of this edition to Fust, and its date to 1472. The paper of this impression is certainly not very unlike that of the _Catholicon_ of 1460. BIBLIA PAUPERUM. A block-book. This is a cropt, but clean and uncoloured copy. I suspect, however, that it has been washed in some parts. It is in red morocco binding. BIBLIA POLONICA. 1563. Folio. This is the famous Protestant Polish Bible, put forth under the patronage of Prince Radziwill; and concerning which a good deal has been already submitted to the public attention.[54] But the copy under consideration was a _presentation_ copy from a descendant of Prince Radziwill--to the public Library of Sedan, to be there deposited through the intervention of Lord James Russell; as the following memorandum, in the Prince's own hand writing, attests: "_Hoc sacrarum Literarum Veteris Nouique Testamenti opus, fidelissima Cura Maiorum meorum vetustis Typis Polonicis excusum, In Bibliothecam Sedanensem per Nobilem Virum Dominum Jacobum Russelium, Ill^{mi} Principis Friderici Mauritii Bullionei ad me exlegatum inferendum committo_. _H. Radziwill_." It is nevertheless an imperfect copy, as it wants the title-page. M. Van Praet thinks it otherwise complete, but I suspect that it is not so. BIBLIA SCLAVONICA; 1587. Folio. Of this exceedingly scarce volume--which M. Van Praet placed before me as almost unique--the present is a fine and desirable copy: in its original binding--with a stamped ornament of the Crucifixion on each side. One of these ornaments is quite perfect: the other is somewhat injured. BIBLIA BOHEMICA. _Printed in 1488_. Folio. Among the rarest of the early-printed versions of the sacred text: and this copy happens to be a most beautiful and desirable one. It is wanting in Lord Spencer's collection; which renders a minute description of it the more desirable. The first signature, _a i_, appears to be blank. On _a ii_ begins a prologue or prefatory proheme, ending on the reverse of _a vj_. It has a prefix, or title, in fifteen lines, printed in red. The text is uniformly printed in double columns, in a sharp secretary-gothic character, with ink sufficiently black, upon paper not remarkably stout, but well manufactured. There are running titles, throughout. The last eight leaves upon signature _i_ are printed in red and black lines alternately, and appear to be an index. The colophon, in nineteen lines, is at the bottom of the second column, on the reverse of _mm viij_. This book is thought to have been printed at _Prague_. The present copy is bound in blue morocco. NEW TESTAMENT: _in the Dutch and Russian languages_. This volume, which is considered to be unique, and of which indeed I never saw, or heard of, another copy, bears the imprint of "_'T Gravenhage--Iohannes Van Duren, Boecverkoper_. MDCCXVII." Folio. The Dutch text is uniformly printed in capital letters; the Russian, in what I conceive to be lowercase, and about two-thirds the size of the Dutch. The cause of the scarcity of perfect copies is, that very nearly the whole of the impression was _lost at sea_. The present copy undoubtedly affords decided demonstrations of a marine soaking: parts of it being in the most piteous condition. The first volume contains 255 leaves: the second, 196 leaves. The copy is yet in boards, in the most tender condition. M. Van Praet thinks it _just_ possible that there may be a _second_ similar copy. The _third_ (if there be a second) is known to have perished in the flames at Moscow. THE PENTATEUCH: _in Hebrew_. _Printed in 1491_. _Folio_. A very fine copy, printed UPON VELLUM. The press work has a rich and black appearance; but the vellum is rather soiled. One leaf presents us with the recto covered by ms. of a brown tint--and the reverse covered by printed text. The last page is certainly ms. This however is a rare and costly tome. TRACTS PRINTED BY PFISTER, _at Bamberg_; Folio. This is really a matchless volume, on the score of rarity and curiosity. It begins with a tract, or moral treatise, upon death. The wood cuts, five in number, are very large, filling nearly the whole page. One of them presents us with death upon a white horse; and the other was immediately recognised by me, as being the identical subject of which a fac-simile of a portion is given to the public in Lord Spencer's Catalogue[55]--but which, at that time, I was unable to appropriate. This tract contains twenty-four leaves, having twenty-eight lines in a full page. In all probability it was the _first_ of the tracts printed by Pfister in the present volume. The FOUR HISTORIES, so fully detailed in the work just referred to, immediately follow. This is of the date of 1462. Then the BIBLIA PAUPERUM, also fully described in the same work. This treatise is without date, and contains seventeen leaves; with a profusion of wood cuts, of which fac-similes have been given by me to the public. These three copies are in remarkably fine preservation; and this volume will be always highly treasured in the estimation of the typographical antiquary. The Latin Bible, by Pfister, has been just described to you. There was a yet MORE PRECIOUS typographical gem ... in this very library; by the same printer--with very curious wood cuts,--of one of which Heineken has indulged us with a fac-simile. I mean the FABLES ... with the express date of 1461. But recent events have caused it to be restored to its original quarters.[56] LACTANTII INSTITUTIONES, &C. _Printed in the Soubiaco Monastery_. 1465. Folio. This was Lord Oxford's copy, and may be called almost uncut. You are to learn, that copies of this beautifully printed book are by no means very uncommon--although formerly, if I remember rightly, De Bure knew but of one copy in France--but copies in a fine state, and of such dimensions as are Mr. Grenville's and the one now before me, must be considered as of extremely rare occurrence. This copy measures thirteen inches, one-eighth, and one-sixteenth--by very nearly nine inches one-eighth. You will smile at this particularity; but depend upon it there are ruler-carrying collectors who will thank me heartily for such a rigidly minute measurement. STS. AUGUSTINUS DE CIVITATE DEI. _Printed in the Soubiaco Monastery_. 1467. Folio. It always does the heart of a bibliographer good to gaze upon a fine copy of this resplendent volume. It is truly among the master-pieces of early printing: but what will be your notions of the copy NOW under description, when I tell you, not only that it once belonged to our beloved FRANCIS I., but that, for amplitude and condition, it rivals the copy in the library at _St. James's Place_? In short, it was precisely between _this very copy_, and that of my Lord Spencer, that M. Van Praet paused-- ("J'ai balancé" were, I think, the words used to me by that knowing bibliographer) and pondered and hesitated ... again and again ... ere he could decide upon which of the two was to be parted with! But, supposing the size and condition of each to be fairly "balanced" against the other, M. Van Praet could not, in honour and conscience, surrender the copy which had been formerly in the library of one of the greatest of the French monarchs ... and so the spirit of Francis I. rests in peace ... as far as the retention of this copy may contribute to its repose. It is doubtless more brilliant and more attractive than Lord Spencer's--which, however, has no equal on the _other_ side of the channel: but it is more beaten, and I suspect, somewhat more cropt. I forgot to say, that there are several capital initials in this copy tolerably well illuminated, apparently of the time of Francis--who, I am persuaded, loved illuminators of books to his heart. I shall now continue literally as I began:--without any regard to dates, or places where printed. CATHOLICON. _Printed by Gutenburg_: 1460. Folio. 2 vols. This copy is UPON VELLUM; but yet much inferior to the absolutely unrivalled membranaceous copy in Mr. Grenville's precious library. This copy measures fifteen inches one eighth, by eleven inches one eighth. It is bound in red morocco. GRAMMATICA RHYTHMICA. _Printed by Fust and Schoiffher_; 1466. Folio. How you would start back with surprise--peradventure mingled with indignation-- to be told that, for this very meagre little folio, somewhat cropt, consisting but of eleven leaves cruelly scribbled upon ... not fewer than _three thousand three hundred livres_ were given--at the sale of Cardinal Lomenie's library, about thirty years ago! It is even so. And wherefore? Because only _one_ other copy of it is known:--and that "other" is luckily reposing upon the mahogany shelves in St. James's Place. The present copy measures ten inches seven eighths, by eight inches. VOCABULARIUS. _Printed by Bechtermuntze_; 1467. Quarto. EDITIO PRINCEPS-- one of the rarest books in the world. Indeed I apprehend this copy to be absolutely UNIQUE. This work is a Latin and German Vocabulary, of which a good notion may be formed by the account of the _second_ edition of it, in 1469, in a certain descriptive catalogue.[57] To be perfect, there should be 215 leaves. A full page has thirty-five lines. This copy is in as fine, clean, and crackling condition, as is that of Lord Spencer of the second impression. It is eight inches and a half in height, by five inches and five eighths in width. HARTLIEB'S BOOK OF CHIROMANCY. _Supposed to have been printed with wooden blocks_. Folio. You may remember the amusement which you said was afforded you by the account of, and the fac-similes from, this very strange and bizarre production--in the _Bibliographical Decameron_. The copy before me is much larger and finer than that in Lord Spencer's collection. The figure of the Doctor and of the Princess Anna are also much clearer in their respective impressions; and the latter has really no very remote resemblance to what is given in the _Bibl. Spenceriana_[58] of one of the Queens of Hungary. If so, perhaps the period of its execution may not be quite so remote as is generally imagined: for the Hungarian Chronicle, from which that regal figure was taken, is of the date of 1485. HISTORIA BEATÆ VIRGINIS. _Without date_. This is doubtless rather an extraordinary volume. The text is printed only on one side of the leaf: so as to leave, alternately, the reverses and rectos blank--facing each other. But this _alone_ is no proof of its antiquity; for, from the character both of the wood cuts and the type, I am quite persuaded that this volume could not have been executed much before the year 1480. It is not improbable that this book might have been printed at _Ulm_. It is a very beautiful copy, and bound in blue morocco. VIRGILIUS. _Printed by Sweynheym and Pannartz_. 1469. Folio. EDITIO PRINCEPS. The enormous worth and rarity of this exceedingly precious volume may be estimated from this very copy having been purchased, at the sale of the Duke de la Valliere's library, in 1783, for four thousand one hundred and one livres. The first leaf of the _Bucolics_, of which the margin of the page is surrounded by an ancient illumination, gives unfortunate evidence of the binding of Chamot.[59] In other words, this copy, although in other respects white and sound, has been too much cropt. It measures eleven inches and six eighths, by nearly seven inches and five eighths. VIRGILIUS. _Printed by Vindelin de Spira_. 1470. Here are not fewer than _two_ delicious copies of this exceedingly rare impression--and the most delicious happens to be UPON VELLUM. "O rare felicity!... (you exclaim) to spend so many hours within scarcely more than an arm's length of such cherished and long-sought after treasures!" But it is true nevertheless. The vellum copy demands our more immediate attention. It is very rarely, indeed, that this volume can be obtained in any state, whether upon vellum or paper;[60] but in the condition in which it is here found, it is a very precious acquisition. Some few leaves are a little tawny or foxy, and the top of the very first page makes it manifest that the volume has suffered a slight degree of amputation. But such defects are only as specks upon the sun's disk. This copy, bound in old yellow morocco binding of the Gaignat period, measures very nearly twelve inches and three quarters, by eight inches and five eighths. The SAME EDITION. A copy upon paper: in the most unusual condition. The pages are numbered with a pen, rather neatly: but these numerals had better have been away. A frightful (gratuitous) ms. title--copied in a modern hand, from another of the date of 1474--strikes us; on opening the volume, in a very disagreeable manner. At top we read "_Ad usum H.D. Henrici E.C.M.C._" The first page of the text is surrounded by an old illumination: and the title to the Bucolics is inserted, by the hand, in gold capital letters. From the impression appearing on the six following leaves, it should seem that this illuminated border had been stamped, after the book was bound. The condition of this classical treasure may be pronounced, upon the whole, to be equally beautiful and desirable. Perhaps there has been the slightest possible cropping; as the ancient ms. numerals are occasionally somewhat invisible. However, this is a most lovely book: measuring thirteen inches and one quarter, in height, by nine inches and very nearly one quarter in width. VIRGILIUS. _Printed by Sweynheym and Pannartz_. 1471. Folio. SECOND ROMAN EDITION; of yet greater scarcity than the first. This was Politian's own copy, and is so large as to be almost _uncut_: having the margins filled with Scholia, and critical observations, in almost the smallest hand-writing to be met with: supposed to be also from the pen of Politian. The autograph and subscription of that eminent scholar meet our eye at the top of the very first fly leaf. Of all ancient editions of Virgil, this is probably not only the most estimable, but is so scarce as to have been, till lately, perfectly unknown. According to the ancient ms. numerals in this copy, there should be 225 leaves--to render the volume perfect. In our own country, it is-- with a sigh I speak it!--only to be found (and _that_, in an _imperfect_ state) in the library of Dr. Wm. Hunter at Glasgow.[61] This invaluable volume is preserved in good, sound, characteristic old binding. VIRGILIUS. _Printed by Ghering_. 1478. _Quarto_. This impression is perhaps rather rare than valuable; although I am free to admit it is yet a desideratum in the Spencerian collection. It commences with an address by the famous Beroaldus to I. Francus, his pupil, on the reverse of the first leaf--in which the tutor expresses his admiration of Virgil in the following manner: "te amantissime mi Johannes hortor, te moneo, et si pateris oro, ut VIRGILIUM lectites. Virgilio inhies: Illum colas; illum dies noctesque decates. Ille sit semper in manibus. Et ut præceptoris fungar officio, illud potissimum tibi pecipia et repetens iterumque iterumque monebo: ut humanitatis studia ac masuetiores musas avidissime complectaris." This edition is executed in the printer's second (handsome) fount of roman type, upon very thick paper.[62] The present copy, although apparently cropt, is sound and desirable. PLINII HIST. NATURALIS. _Printed by J. de Spira_. 1469. Folio. EDITIO PRINCEPS:--but oh,! marvellous specimen--a copy UPON VELLUM! Fair is the colour and soft is the texture of this exquisite production--bound in two volumes. I examined both volumes thoroughly, and am not sure that I discovered what might be fairly called one discoloured leaf. It is with equal pain and difficulty that one withdraws one's eyes from such a beautiful book-gem. This copy measures fifteen inches and a half, by ten inches and three-eighths. The SAME EDITION. Upon paper. A remarkably fine copy: well beaten however-- and, I should be loth to assert positively, not free from some washing--for the ancient red numerals, introduced by the pencil of the rubricator, and designating the several books and chapters, seem to have faded and been retouched. I observe also, that some of the ancient illuminated letters, which had probably faded during the process of washing or cleaning, have been retouched, and even painted afresh--especially in the blue back-grounds. The first page is prettily illuminated; but there are slight indications of the worm at the end of the volume. Upon the whole, however, this is a magnificent book, and inferior only to Lord Spencer's unrivalled copy--upon paper. It measures sixteen inches and five eighths, by eleven inches and one sixteenth, and is handsomely bound in red morocco. PLINII HISTORIA NATURALIS. _Printed by Jenson_, 1472. Folio. A copy UPON VELLUM: but, upon the whole, I was disappointed in the size and condition of this book. The vellum has not had justice done to it in the binding, being in parts crumpled. The first page is however beautifully illuminated. This copy measures sixteen inches, by ten and three eighths. PLINII HIST. NAT. Italicè. _Printed by Jenson_. 1476. Folio. A copy UPON VELLUM. About the first forty leaves are cruelly stained at top. The last eight or ten leaves are almost of a yellow tint. In other parts, where the vellum is white, (for it is of a remarkably fine quality) nothing can exceed the beauty of this book: but it has been, I suspect, very severely cropt--if an opinion may be formed from its companion upon paper, about to be described. It is fifteen inches in height, by ten and a quarter in width. THE SAME EDITION. _Printed by the same Printer_. I suspect this to be perhaps the finest paper copy in the world: as perfect as Lord Spencer's copy of the first edition of the same author. Every thing breathes of its pristine condition: the colour and the substance of the paper: the width of the margin, and the purity of the embellishments:[63] This copy will also serve to convince the most obstinate, that, when one catches more than a glimpse of the ms. numerals at top, and ms. signatures at bottom, one has hopes of possessing the book in its primitive plenitude. It is sixteen inches and three quarters in height, by nearly eleven inches and a quarter in width. LIVIUS. _Printed by Sweynheym and Pannartz_. 1469. Folio. EDITIO PRINCEPS. A fine copy, in three thin volumes. The margins, however, are not free from ms. notes, and there are palpable evidences of a slight truncation. Yet it is a fine copy: measuring fifteen inches and very nearly three quarters, by eleven inches one eighth. In red morocco binding. LIVIUS. _Printed by Ulric Han_. _Without Date_. Folio. In three thin volumes. A large copy, but evidently much washed, from the faint appearance of the marginal notes. Some leaves are very bad--especially the earlier ones of the preface and the text. The latter, however, have a very pretty ancient illumination. This copy measures fifteen inches five eighths, by ten seven eighths.[64] LIVIUS. _Printed by Vindelin de Spira_. 1470. Fol. A magnificent copy, in two volumes: much preferable to either of the preceding. The first page of text has a fine old illumination. It is clean and sound throughout: measuring fifteen inches five eighths, by eleven inches--within an eighth. THE SAME EDITION. Printed UPON VELLUM. This copy, if I remember rightly, is considered to be unique.[65] It is that which was formerly preserved in the public library at Lyons, and had been lent to the late Duke de la Vallière during his life only--to enrich his book-shelves--having been restored to its original place of destination upon the death of the Duke. It is both in an imperfect and lacerated condition: the latter, owing to a cannon ball, which struck it during the siege of Lyons. The first volume, which begins abruptly thus: "ex parte altera ripe, &c." is a beautiful book; the vellum being of a uniform, but rather yellow tint. It measures fourteen inches five eighths, by nine and six eighths. The second volume makes a kind-hearted bibliographer shudder. The cannon ball took it obliquely, so as to leave the first part of the volume less lacerated than the latter. In the latter part, however, the direction of the destructive weapon went, capriciously enough, across the page. This second volume yet exhibits a fine old illumination on the first page. LIVIUS. _Printed by Sweynheym and Pannartz_. 1472. Fol. 2 vols. A fine copy, and larger than either of the preceding: but the beginning of the first volume and the conclusion of the second are slightly wormed. There is a duplicate leaf of the beginning of the text, which is rather brown, but illuminated in the ancient manner. This copy measures fifteen inches and a half, by eleven one eighth. Let me now vary the bibliographical theme, by the mention of a few copies of works of a miscellaneous but not unamusing character. And first, for a small cluster of CAXTONS and MACHLINIAS. TULLY OF OLD AGE, &C. _Printed by Caxton_, 1481. A cropt and soiled copy; whereas copies of this Caxtonian production are usually in a clean and sound condition. The binding is infinitely too gaudy for the state of the interior. It appears to want the treatise upon Friendship. This book once belonged to William Burton the Leicestershire historian; as we learn from this inscription below the colophon: "_Liber Willmi Burton Lindliaci Leicestrensis socij inter. Templi, ex dono amici mei singularis M^{ri}. Iohanis Price, socij Interioris. Templi, 28. Jan. 1606. Anno regni regis Iacobi quarto_." On the reverse is a fac-simile of the same subscription, beneath an exceedingly well executed head of Burton, in pen and ink. ART AND CRAFTE TO KNOW WELL TO DYE. _Printed by Caxton_. 1490. Folio. This book was sold to the Royal Library of France, many years ago, by Mr. Payne, for the moderate sum of £10. 10s. It is among the rarest of the volumes from the press of Caxton. Every leaf of this copy exhibits proof of the skill and care of Roger Payne; for every leaf is inlaid and mounted, with four lines of red ink round each page--not perhaps in the very best taste. The copy is also cramped or choked in the back. STATUTES OF RICHARD III. _Printed by Machlinia_. Folio. _Without Date_. A perfect copy for size and condition; but the binding is much too gay. I refer you to the Typographical Antiquities[66] for an account of this edition: NOVA STATUTA. _Printed by the Same_. Folio. You must examine the pages last referred to, for a description of this elaborately executed volume; printed upon paper of an admirable quality. The present is a sound, clean, and desirable copy: but why in such gay, red morocco, binding? LIBER MODORUM SIGNIFICANDI. _Printed at St. Alban's_; 1480. Quarto. The only copy of this rare volume I have ever seen. It appears to be bound in what is called the old Oxford binding, and the text is preceded by a considerable quantity of old coeval ms. relating to the science of arithmetic. A full page has thirty-two lines. The signatures _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_, _e_, run in eights: _f_ has six leaves. On the recto of _f_ vj is the colophon: This copy had belonged successively to Tutet and Wodhull. A ms. treatise, in a later hand, concludes the volume. The present is a sound and desirable copy. BOCCACCIO. IL DECAMERONE. _Printed by Valdarfer_. 1471. Folio. This is the famous edition about which all the Journals of Europe have recently "rung from side to side." But it wants much in value of THE yet more famous COPY[67] which was sold at the sale of the Duke of Roxburghe's library; inasmuch as it is defective in the first leaf of the text, and three leaves of the table. In the whole, according to the comparatively recent numerals, there are 265 leaves. This copy measures eleven inches and a half, by seven inches and seven eighths. It is bound in red morocco, with inside marble leaves. THE SAME WORK. _Printed by P. Adam de Michaelibus_. _Mantua_, 1472. An edition of almost equal rarity with the preceding; and of which, I suspect, there is only one perfect copy (at Blenheim) in our own country. The table contains seven leaves; and the text, according to the numbers of this copy, has 256 leaves. A full page has forty-one lines. The present is a sound, genuine copy; measuring, exclusively of the cover, twelve inches three eighths, by eight seven eighths. BOCCACE. RUINES DES NOBLES HOMMES & FEMMES. _Printed by Colard Mansion, at Bruges_. 1476. Folio. This edition is printed in double columns, in Mansion's larger type, precisely similar to what has been published in the Bibliotheca Spenceriana.[68] The title is in red--with a considerable space below, before the commencement of the text, as if this vacuum were to be supplied by the pencil of the illuminator. The present is a remarkably fine copy. The colophon is in six lines. FAIT DE LA GUERRE. _Printed by Colard Mansion_. _Without Date_. Folio. This rare book is printed in a very different type from that usually known as the type of Colard Mansion: being smaller and closer--but decidedly gothic. A full page has thirty-two lines. There are neither numerals, signatures, nor catchwords. On the recto of the twenty-ninth and last leaf, we read _Impressum brugis per Colardum Mansion._ The reverse is blank. This is a fine genuine copy, in red morocco binding. LASCARIS GRAMMATICA GRÆCA. 1476. Quarto. The first book printed in the Greek language; and, as such, greatly sought after by the curious. This is a clean, neat copy, but I suspect a little washed and cropt. Nevertheless, it is a most desirable volume.[69] AULUS GELLIUS. _Printed by Sweynheym and Pannartz_. 1469. Folio. Editio Princeps. A sound and rather fine copy: almost the whole of the old ms. numerals at top remaining. It is very slightly wormed at the beginning. This copy measures thirteen inches by nine. CÆSAR. _Printed by Sweynheym and Pannartz_. 1469. Folio. Editio Princeps: with ms. notes by Victorius. A large sound copy, but the first few leaves are soiled or rather thumbed. The marginal edges are apparently uncut. It measures twelve inches seven eighths by nine inches one eighth. APULEIUS. _Printed by the Same_. 1469. Folio. Editio Princeps. All these FIRST EDITIONS are of considerable rarity. The present copy is, upon the whole, large and sound: though not free from marginal notes and stains. The first few leaves at top are slightly injured. It measures thirteen inches one eighth, by nine inches.[70] AUSONIUS. 1472. Folio: with all the accompanying pieces.[71] Editio Princeps; and undoubtedly much rarer than either of the preceding volumes. Of the present copy, the first few leaves are wormed in the centre, and a little stained. The first illuminated leaf of the text is stained; so is the second leaf, not illuminated. In the whole, eighty-six leaves. The latter leaves are wormed. This copy is evidently cropt. CATULLUS, TIBULLUS & PROPERTIUS. 1472. Folio. Editio Princeps. Of equal, if not greater, rarity than even the Ausonius. This is a sound and very desirable copy--displaying the ancient ms. signatures. The edges of the leaves are rather of a foxy tint. After the Catullus, a blank leaf. This copy measures eleven inches one eighth, by very nearly seven inches five eighths. HOMERI OPERA. Gr. 1488. Folio. Editio Princeps. When you are informed that this copy is ... UNCUT ... you will necessarily figure to yourself a volume of magnificent, as well as pristine, dimensions. Yet, without putting on spectacles, one discovers occasionally a few foxy spots towards the edges; and the first few leaves are perhaps somewhat tawny. Upon the whole, however, the condition is wonderful: and I am almost ashamed of myself at having talked about foxy spots and tawny tints. This copy is bound in red morocco, in a sensible, unassuming manner. For the comfort of such, whose copies aspire to the distinction of being _almost_ uncut, I add, that this volume measures fourteen inches, by about nine inches and five eighths. HOMERI OPERA. Gr. 1808. _Printed by Bodoni_. Folio. 2 volumes. This grand copy is printed UPON VELLUM, and is the presentation copy to Bonaparte--to whom this edition was dedicated, by Bodoni.[72] Splendid, large, and beautiful, as is this typographical performance, I must candidly own that there is something about it which "likes me not." The vellum, however choice, and culled by Bodoni's most experienced foragers, is, to my eye, too white--which arises perhaps from the text occupying so comparatively small a space in the page. Nor is the type pleasing to my taste. It is too cursive and sparkling; and the upper strokes are uniformly too thin. In short, the whole has a cold effect. However, this is questionless one of the most magnificent productions of the modern press. The volumes measure two feet in length. CRONIQUES DE FRANCE. _Printed by Verard_. 1493. Folio. Three vols. A glorious copy--printed UPON VELLUM! The wood-cuts are coloured. It is bound in red morocco. LAUNCELOT DU LAC. _Printed by Verard_. 1494. Folio. 3 vols. Also UPON VELLUM. In red morocco binding. There is yet another copy of the same date, upon vellum, but with different illuminations: equally magnificent and covetable. In red morocco binding. GYRON LE COURTOYS: auecques la devise des armes de tous les cheualiers de la table ronde. _Printed by Verard_. _Without Date_. Folio. Printed UPON VELLUM. This was once a fine thumping fellow of a copy!--but it has lost somewhat of its stature by the knife of the binder--or rather from the destruction of the Library of St. Germain des Près: whence it was thrown into the streets, and found next day by M. Van Praet. Many of the books, from the same library, were thrown into cellars. It is evident, from the larger illuminations, and especially from the fourth, on the recto of _d vj_, that this volume has suffered in the process of binding. In old blue morocco. ROMAN DE LA ROSE. _Printed by Verard_. _Without Date_. Small folio. In double columns, in prose. This superbly bound volume--once the property of H. Durfé, having his arms in the centre, and corner embellishments, in metal, on which are the entwined initials T.C.--is but an indifferent copy. It is printed UPON VELLUM; and has been, as I suspect, rather cruelly cropt in the binding. Much of the vellum is also crumpled and tawny. L'HORLOGE DE SAPIENCE. _Printed by Verard_. 1493. Folio. One of the loveliest books ever opened, and printed UPON VELLUM. Every thing is here perfect. The page is finely proportioned, the vellum is exceedingly beautiful, and the illuminations have a brilliance and delicacy of finish not usually seen in volumes of this kind. The borders are decorated by the pencil, and the second may be considered quite perfect of its kind. This book is bound by Bradel l'Ainé. MILLES ET AMYS. _Printed by Verard_. _Without Date_. Folio. A copy UPON VELLUM. From the same library as the copy of the Roman de la Rose, just described; and in the same style of binding. It is kept in the same case; but, although cropt, it is a much finer book. The cuts are coloured, and the text is printed in double columns. I do not at this present moment remember to have seen another copy of this edition of the work. IEU DES ESCHEZ. _Without name of Printer (but probably by Verard) or Date_. Folio.[73] This is one of the numerous French originals from which Caxton printed his well known moralised work, under the title of the _Game and Play of the Chesse_. This fine copy is printed UPON VELLUM, in a large gothic letter, in double columns. The type has rather an uneven appearance, from the thickness of the vellum. There are several large prints, which, in this copy, are illuminated. L'ARBRE DES BATAILLES. _Printed by Verard_. 1493. Folio. Another fine volume, printed UPON VELLUM. With the exception only of one or two crumpled or soiled leaves, this copy is as perfect as can be desired. Look from _d iiij_. to _ej_, for a set of exquisitely printed leaves upon vellum, which cannot be surpassed. The cuts are here coloured in the usually bold and brilliant style. LA CHASSE ET LE DEPART D'AMOURS. _Printed by Verard_. 1509. Folio. This volume of interesting old French poetry, UPON VELLUM, which is printed in double columns, formerly belonged to the abbey of St. Germain des Près--as an inscription upon the title denotes. The work abounds with very curious, and very delectable old French poetry. Look, amongst a hundred other similar things, at the _"Balade ioyeuse des taverniers_," on the reverse _Q_. i: each stanza ending with _Les tauerniers qui brouillent nostre vin._ LA NEF DES FOLZ DU MONDE. _Printed by Verard. Without Date_. Folio. A most magnificent copy; printed UPON VELLUM. Every page is highly illuminated, with ample margins. What is a little extraordinary, the reverse of the sixth leaf has ms. text above and below the large illumination; while the recto of the same leaf has printed text. The present noble volume, which has the royal arms stamped on the exterior, is one of the few old books which has not suffered amputation by recent binding. THE SAME WORK. _Printed by the Same_. Folio. The poetry is in double columns, and the cuts are coloured. I apprehend this copy to be much cropt. It is UPON VELLUM: rather tawny, but upon the whole exceedingly sound and desirable. L'ART DE BIEN MOURIR. _Printed for Verard_. _Without Date_. Folio. A fragment only of the Work. In large gothic type; double columns: cuts coloured. There are two cuts of demons torturing people in a cauldron, such as may be seen in the second volume of my Typographical Antiquities.[74] Some of these cuts, in turn, may be taken from the older ones in block books. The present copy is UPON VELLUM, rather tawny: but it is large and sound. In calf binding. PARABOLES [de] MAISTRE ALAIN [De Lille] _Printed by Verard_, 1492. Folio. A magnificent volume, for size and condition. It is printed in Verard's large type, in long lines. The illuminations are highly coloured. This copy is UPON VELLUM.[75] Suppose, now, I throw in a little variety from the preceding, by the mention of a rare _Italian_ book or two? Let me place before you a choice copy of the MONTE SANCTO DI DIO. _Printed in 1477_. Folio. This, you know, is the volume about which the collectors of early copper-plate engraving are never thoroughly happy until they possess a perfect copy of it: perhaps a copy of a more covetable description than that which is now before me. There is a duplicate of the first cut: of which one impression is faint, and miserably coloured, and the other is so much cut away to the left, as to deprive the man, looking up, of his left arm. There is an exceedingly well executed duplicate of the large Christ, drawn with a pen. In the genuine print there is too much of the burr. The impression of the Devil eating human beings, within the lake of fire, is a good bold one. This copy is bound in red morocco, but in a flaunting style of ornament. LA SFORZIADA. _Printed in 1480_. Folio. It is just possible you may not have forgotten the description of a copy of this work--like the present, struck off UPON VELLUM--which appears in the _Bibliographical Decameron_.[76] That copy, you may remember, adorns the choice collection of our friend George Hibbert, Esq.[77] The book before me is doubtless a most exquisite one; and the copy is of large dimensions. The illuminated first page very strongly resembles that in the copy just mentioned. The portraits appear to be the same: but the Cardinal is differently habited, and his phisiognomical expression is less characteristic here than in the same portrait in Mr. Hibbert's copy. The head of Duke Sforza, his brother, seems to be about the same. The lower compartment of this splendidly illuminated page differs materially from that of Mr. Hibbert's copy. There are two figures kneeling, apparently portraits; with the sea in the distance. The figure of St. Louis appears in the horizon--very curious. To the right, there are rabbits within an enclosure, and human beings growing into trees. The touch and style of the whole are precisely similar to what we observe in the other copy so frequently mentioned. The capital initials are also very similar. It is a pity that, during the binding, (which is in red morocco) the vellum has been so very much crumpled. This copy measures thirteen inches and seven eighths, by nine inches and three eighths. I must now lay before you a few more Classics, and conclude the whole with miscellaneous articles. TERENTIUS. _Printed by Ulric Han_. Folio. _Without date_. In all probability the first edition of the author by Ulric Han, and perhaps the second in chronological order; that of Mentelin being considered the first. It is printed in Ulric Han's larger roman type. This may be considered a fine genuine copy--in old French binding, with the royal arms. ARISTOTELIS OPERA. _Printed by Aldus_. 1495, &c. 6 vols. Would you believe it--here are absolutely TWO copies of this glorious effort of the Aldine Press, printed UPON VELLUM!? One copy belonged to the famous _Henri II. and Diane de Poictiers_, and is about an eighth of an inch taller and wider than the other; but the other has not met with fair play, from the unskilful manner in which it has been bound--in red morocco. Perhaps the interior of this second copy may be preferred to that of Henri II. The illuminations are ancient, and elegantly executed, and the vellum seems equally white and beautiful. Probably the tone of the vellum in the other copy may be a _little_ more sombre, but there reigns throughout it such a sober, uniform, mellow and genuine air--that, brilliant and captivating as may be the red morocco copy--_he_ ought to think more than _once_ or _twice_ who should give it the preference. The arms of the morocco copy, in the first page of the Life of Aristotle, from Diogenes Laertius, have been cut out. This copy came from the monastery of St. Salvador; and the original, roughly stamped, edges of the leaves are judiciously preserved in the binding. Both copies have the _first_ volume upon _paper_. Indeed it seems now clearly ascertained that it was never printed upon vellum.[78] The copy of Henri II. measures twelve inches and a quarter, by eight and an eighth. PLUTARCHI OPUSCULA MORALIA. _Printed by Aldus_. 1509. Folio. 2 vols. Another, delicious MEMBRANACEOUS treasure from the fine library of Henri II. and Diane de Poictiers; in the good old original coverture, besprinkled with interlaced D's and H's. It is in truth a lovely book--measuring ten inches and five eighths, by seven inches and three eighths; but I suspect a little cropt. Some of the vellum is also rather tawny--especially the first and second leaves, and the first page of the text of Plutarch. These volumes reminded me of the first Aldine Plato, also UPON VELLUM, in the library of Dr. W. Hunter; but I question if the Plato be _quite_ so beautiful a production. EUSTATHIUS IN HOMERUM. 1542. Folio. 4 vols. Printed UPON VELLUM--and probably unique. A set of matchless volumes--yet has the binder done them great injustice, by the manner in which the backs are cramped or choked. The exteriors, in blazing red morocco, are not in the very best taste. A good deal of the vellum is also of too yellow a tint, but it is of a most delicate quality. ARISTOTELIS ETHICA NICHOMACHEA. Gr. This volume forms a part only of the first Aldine edition of the Nichomachean ethics of Aristotle. The margins are plentifully charged with the Scholia of Basil the Great, as we learn from an original letter of "Constantinus Palæocappa, grecus" to Henry the Second--whose book it was, and who shewed the high sense he entertained of the Scholia, by having the volume bound in a style of luxury and splendour beyond any thing which I remember to have seen--as coming from his library. The reverse of the first leaf exhibits a beautiful frame work, of silver ornaments upon a black ground--now faded; with the initials and devices of Henry and Diane de Poictiers. Their arms and supporters are at top. Within this frame work is the original and beautifully written letter of Constantine Palæocappa. On the opposite page the text begins--surrounded by the same brilliant kind of ornament; having an initial H of extraordinary beauty. The words, designating the Scholia, are thus: [Greek: META SCHOLIÔN BASILEIOU TOU MEGALOU.] These Scholia are written in a small, close, and yet free Greek character, with frequent contractions. Several other pages exhibit the peculiar devices of Henry and Diana--having silver crescents and arrow-stocked quivers. This book is bound in boards, and covered with dark green velvet, now almost torn to threads. In its original condition, it must have been an equally precious and resplendent tome. It measures twelve inches and a quarter, by eight inches and three eighths. EUCLIDES. _Printed by Ratdolt_. 1482. Folio. A copy UPON VELLUM. The address of Ratdolt, as it sometimes occurs, is printed in golden letters; but I was disappointed in the view of this book. Unluckily the first leaf of the text is ms. but of the time. At the bottom, in an ancient hand, we read "_Monasterii S. Saluatoris bonon. signatus In Inuentario numero 524._" It is a large copy, but the vellum is rather tawny. PRISCIANUS. _Printed by V. de Spira_. 1470. Folio. First edition, UPON VELLUM. This is a book, of which, as you may remember, some mention has been previously made;[79] and I own I was glad to turn over the membranaceous leaves of a volume which had given rise, at the period of its acquisition, to a good deal of festive mirth. At the first glance of it, I recognised the cropping system. The very first page of the text has lost, if I may so speak, its head and shoulders: nor is such amputation to be wondered at, when we read, to the left, "_Relié par_ DEROME dit le Jeune." Would you believe it--nearly one half of the illumination, at top, has been sliced away? The vellum is beautifully delicate, but unluckily not uniformly white. Slight, but melancholy, indications of the worm are visible at the beginning--which do not, however, penetrate a great way. Yet, towards the end, the ravages of this book-devourer are renewed: and the six last leaves exhibit most terrific evidences of his power. This volume is bound in gay green morocco--with water-tabby pink lining. BUDÆUS. COMMENT. GR. LING. 1529. Folio. Francis the First's own copy--and UPON VELLUM! You may remember that this book was slightly alluded to at the commencement of a preceding letter. It is indeed a perfect gem, and does one's heart good to look at it. Budæus was the tutor of Francis, and I warrant that he selected the very leaves, of which this copy is composed, for his gallant pupil. Old Ascensius was the printer: which completes the illustrious trio. The illuminations, upon the rectos of the first and second leaves, are as beautiful as they are sound. Upon the whole, this book may fairly rank with any volume in either of the vellum sets of the Aldine Aristotle. It is bound in red morocco; a little too gaudily. CICERONIS ORATIONES. _Printed by Valdarfer_. 1471: Folio. Still revelling among VELLUM copies of the early classics. This is a fine book, but it is unluckily imperfect. I should say that it was of large and genuine dimensions, did not a little close cropping upon the first illuminated page tell a different tale. It measures twelve inches and six eighths, by eight inches and a half. Upon the whole, though there be a few uncomfortably looking perforations of the worm, this is a very charming copy. Its imperfections do not consist of more than the deficiency of one leaf, which contains the table. OVIDII OPERA OMNIA. _Printed by Azoguidi_. 1471. Folio. 3 vols. The supposed FIRST EDITION, and perhaps (when complete)[80] the rarest Editio Princeps in existence. The copy before me partakes of the imperfection of almost every thing earthly. It wants two leaves: but it is a magnificent, and I should think unrivalled, copy--bating such imperfection. It measures very nearly thirteen inches and a quarter, by little more than eight inches three quarters. It is bound in red morocco. ÆSOPUS. Latinè. _Printed by Dom. de Vivaldis, &c_. 1481. Folio. A most singular volume--in hexameter and pentameter, verses. To every fable is a wood cut, quite in the ballad style of execution, with a back-ground like coarse mosaic work. The text is printed in a large clumsy gothic letter. The present is a sound copy, but not free from stain. Bound in blue morocco. ÆSOPUS. Italicè. _Edited by Tuppi_. 1485. Folio. A well known and highly coveted edition: but copies are very rare, especially when of goodly dimensions. This is a large and beautiful book; although I observe that the border, on the right margin of the first leaf, is somewhat cut away. The graphic art in this volume has a very imposing appearance. ---- Germanicè. _Without Date or Name of Printer_. Folio. This edition is printed in a fine large open gothic type. There is the usual whole length cut of Æsop. The other cuts are spirited, after the fashion of those in Boccacio De Malis Mulier. Illust.--printed by John Zeiner at Ulm in 1473. The present is a fine, sound copy: in red morocco binding. ÆSOPUS. Germanicè. _Without Date, &c_. Folio. This impression, which, like the preceding, is destitute of signatures and catchwords, is printed in a smaller gothic type. The wood cuts are spirited, with more of shadow. Some of the initial letters are pretty and curious. Some of the pages (see the last but fifteen) contain as many as forty-five lines. The present is a fine, large copy. ---- Hispanicè. _Printed at Burgos._ 1496. Folio. This is a beautiful and interesting volume, full of wood cuts. The title is within a broad bold border, thus: "_Libro del asopo famoso fabulador historiado en romace_." On the reverse is the usual large wood cut of Æsop, but his mouth is terribly diminished in size. The leaves are numbered in large roman numerals. A fine clean copy, in blue morocco binding. And now, my dear friend, let us both breathe a little, by way of cessation from labour: yourself from reading, and your correspondent from the exercise of his pen. I own that I am fairly tired ... but in a few days I shall resume the BOOK THEME with as much ardour as heretofore. [43] In his meditated Catalogue raisonné of the books PRINTED UPON VELLUM in the Royal Library. [This Catalogue is now printed, in 8vo. 5 vols. 1822. There are copies on LARGE PAPER. It is a work in all respects worthy of the high reputation of its author. A _Supplement_ to it--of books printed UPON VELLUM in _other_ public, and many distinguished _private_ libraries, appeared in 1824, 8vo. 3 vols.--with two additional volumes in 1828. These volumes are the joy of the heart of a thorough bred Bibliographer.] [44] The measurement is necessarily confined to the leaves--_exclusively_ of the binding. [45] See the Art. "_Roman de Jason_" [46] [There are, now, ten known _perfect_ copies of this book, of which six are in England. M. Renouard, in his recent edition of the _Annals of the Aldine Press_, vol. i. p. 36, has been copious and exact.] [47] [Since bound in blue morocco by Thouvenin.] [48] [This anecdote, in the preceding Edition of the Tour, was told, inaccurately, as belonging to the Caxton's edition of the _Recueil des Hist. de Troye_: see p. 102 ante. I thank M. Crapelet for the correction.] [49] _Bibl. Spenceriana_, vol. i. p. 107, &c. [50] [The finest copy in the world of the second edition, as to amplitude, is, I believe, that in the Bodleian library at Oxford. A very singular piece of good fortune has now made it PERFECT. It was procured by Messrs. Payne and Foss of M. Artaria at Manheim.] [51] Nine years ago I obtained a fac-simile of this memorandum; and published an Essay upon the antiquity of the date of the above Bible, in the _Classical Journal_, vol. iv. p. 471-484. of Mr. J.A. Valpy. But latterly a more complete fac-simile of it appeared in the Catalogue of Count M'Carthy's books. [52] "_Iste liber illuminatus, ligatus & completus est per Henricum Cremer vicariu ecclesie sancti Stephani Maguntini sub anno dni Millesimo quatringentesimo quinquagesimo sexto, festo Assumptionis gloriose virginis Marie. Deo gracias. Alleluja_." [53] [This copy having one leaf of MS.--but executed with such extraordinary accuracy as almost to deceive the most experienced eye--was sold in 1827, by public auction, for 504_l_. and is now in the collection of Henry Perkins, Esq.] [54] _Bibl. Spenceriana_; vol. i. p. 85-89. [55] _Bibl. Spenceriana_; vol. i. p. 103-4; where there is also an account of the book itself--from the description of Camus. The work is entitled by Camus, The ALLEGORY OF DEATH. [56] This subject is briefly noticed in the _Bibliographical Decameron_, vol. i. 371; and the book itself is somewhat particularly described there. I think I remember Lord Spencer to have once observed, that more than a slight hope was held out to him, by the late Duke of Brunswick, of obtaining this typographical treasure. This was before the French over-ran Prussia. [57] See _Bibl. Spenceriana_; vol. iii. p. 129, vol. iv. p. 500. [58] Vol. iii. p. 484. [59] [I had said "De Rome"--incorrectly--in the previous edition. "M. Dibdin poursuit partout d'un trait vengeur le coupable Derome: mais ici c'est au relieur CHAMOT qu'il doit l'addresser." CRAPELET; vol. iii. p. 268.] [60] [The very sound copy of it, upon paper, belonging to the late Sir M.M. Sykes, Bart. was sold at the sale of his library for 100 guineas.] [61] That sigh has at length ceased to rend my breast. It will be seen, from the sequel of this Tour, that a good, sound, perfect copy of it, now adorns the shelves of the _Spencerion Library_. The VIRGILS indeed, in that library, are perfectly unequalled throughout Europe. [62] [There is a fine copy of this very rare edition in the Public Library at Cambridge.] [63] [Fine as is this book, it is yet inferior in _altitude_ to the copy in the Public Library at Cambridge.] [64] [There was another copy of this edition, free from the foregoing objections, which had escaped me. This omission frets M. Crapelet exceedingly; but I can assure him that it was unintentional; and that I have a far greater pleasure in describing _fine_, than _ordinary_, copies--be they WHOSE they may.] [65] [Not so. There was another copy upon vellum, in the library of Count Melzi, which is now in that of G.H. Standish, Esq. I _know_ that 500 guineas were once offered for this most extraordinary copy, bound in 3 volumes in foreign coarse vellum.] [66] Vol. ii. p. 11: or to the _Bibliotheca Spenceriana_; vol. iv. p. 385. [67] Now in Lord Spencer's Collection. [68] Vol. i. p. 281-2. [69] [To the best of my recollection and belief, the finest copy of this most estimable book, is that in the Library of the Rt. Hon. Thomas Grenville.] [70] [The finest copy of this valuable edition, which I ever saw, is that in the Public Library at Cambridge.] [71] _See Bibl. Spenceriana_; vol. i. page 272. [72] [I had called it a UNIQUE copy; but M. Crapelet says, that there was a second similar copy, offered to the late Eugene Beauharnais.] [73] [It is the Edition of Verard, of the date of 1504. The copy looks as if it had neither Printer's name or date, because the last lines of the colophon have been defaced. See _Cat. des Livr. Iniprim. sur Vèlin de la Bibl. du Roi_. vol. iii. p. 35. CRAPELET.] [74] At page 599, &c. [75] [See _Cat. des Livr. sur Vélin_, vol. iv. No. 236.] [76] Vol. iii. p. 176. [77] [Mr. Hibbert's beautiful copy, above referred to, is about to be sold at the sale of his library, in the ensuing Spring; and is fully described in the Catalogue of that Library, at p. 414: But the fac-simile portrait of Francis Sforza, prefixed to the Catalogue, wants, I suspect, the high finished brilliancy, or force, of the original.] [78] [Not so: see the _Introduction to the Classics_, vol. 1. p. 313. edit. 1827 The _only known_ copy of the first volume, UPON VELLUM, is that in the Library of New College, Oxford.] [79] See the _Bibliographical Decameron_; vol. iii. p. 165. [80] [The only ENTIRELY PERFECT copy in Europe, to my knowledge, is that in the library of the Right Hon. Thomas Grenville.] _LETTER VI._ CONCLUSION OF THE ACCOUNT OF THE ROYAL LIBRARY. THE LIBRARY OF THE ARSENAL. My last letter left me on the first floor of the Royal Library. I am now about to descend, and to take you with me to the ground floor--where, as you may remember I formerly remarked, are deposited the _Aldine Vellums_ and _Large Papers_, and choice and curious copies from the libraries of _Grolier, Diane de Poictiers_, and _de Thou_. The banquet is equally delicious of its kind, although the dishes are of a date somewhat more remote from the time of Apicius. Corresponding with the almost interminable suite of book-rooms above, is a similar suite below stairs: but the general appearance of the latter is comparatively cold, desolate, and sombre. The light comes in, to the right, less abundantly; and, in the first two rooms, the garniture of the volumes is less brilliant and attractive. In short, these first two lower rooms may be considered rather as the depot for the cataloguing and forwarding of all modern books recently purchased. Let me now conduct you to the _third room_ in this lower suite, which may probably have a more decided claim upon your attention. Here are deposited, as I just observed, the VELLUM ALDUSES and other curious and choice old printed volumes. I will first mention nearly the whole of the former. HOMERI OPERA. Gr. _Printed by Aldus. Without Date_. 8vo. 2 vols. A white and beautiful copy--with large, and genuine margins--printed UPON VELLUM. In its original binding, with the ornaments tolerably entire:--and what binding should this be, but that of Henry the Second and Diane de Poictiers? Let me just notice that this copy measures six inches and a half, by three inches and six eighths. EURIPIDIS OPERA. Gr. 1503. 8vo. 2 vols. A fair and desirable copy UPON VELLUM; but a little objectionable, as being ruled with red lines rather unskilfully. It is somewhat coarsely bound in red morocco, and preserved in a case. This vellum treasure is among the desiderata of Earl Spencer's library; and I sincerely wish his Lordship no worse luck than the possession of a copy like that before me.[81] HECUBA, ET IPHIGENIA IN AULIDE. Gr. and Lat. 1507. 8vo. A very rare book, and quite perfect, as far as it goes. This copy, also UPON VELLUM, is much taller than the preceding of the entire works of Euripides; but the vellum is not of so white a tint. ANTHOLOGIA GRÆCA. Gr. 1503. 8vo. A very fine genuine copy, upon excellent VELLUM. I suspect this copy to be a little broader, but by no means taller, than a similar copy in Lord Spencer's collection. HORATIUS. 1501. 8vo. UPON VELLUM: a good, sound copy; although inferior to Lord Spencer's. MARTIALIS. 1502. 8vo. Would you believe it?--here are _two_ copies UPON VELLUM, and _both_ originally belonged to Grolier. They are differently illuminated, but the tallest--measuring six inches three eighths, by three inches six eighths--is the whitest, and the preferable copy, notwithstanding one may discern the effects of the nibbling of a worm at the bottom corner. It is, however, a beautiful book, in every respect. The initial letters are gold. In the other copy there are the arms of Grolier, with a pretty illumination in the first page of the text. It is also a sound copy. LUCRETIUS. 1515. 8vo. This copy, UPON VELLUM, is considered to be unique. It is fair, sound, and in all respects desirable. CICERO DE OFFICIIS. _Without Date_. 8vo. This is but a moderate specimen of the Aldine VELLUM, if it be not a counterfeit--which I suspect.[82] CICERONIS ORATIONES. 1519. 8vo. UPON VELLUM. Only the first volume, which however is quite perfect and desirable--measuring six inches and a quarter, by very nearly four inches. But prepare for an account of a perfect, and still more magnificent, vellum copy of the Orations of Cicero--when I introduce you to the _Library of St. Geneviève_. HIST. AUGUST. SCRIPTORES. 1521. 8vo. 2 vols. A sound and fair copy--of course UPON VELLUM--but too much cropt in the binding. The foregoing are all the _Aldine, Greek and Latin Classics_, printed UPON VELLUM, which the liberal kindness of M. Van Praet enabled me to lay my hands upon. But here follows another membranaceous gem of the Aldine Family. PETRARCHA. 1501. 8vo. A beautiful, white copy, measuring six inches and a half, by three and three quarters. It is, however, somewhat choked in the binding, (in blue morocco) as too many of Bozerian's performances usually are.[83] Close to this book is the Giunta reprint of 1515--ALSO UPON VELLUM: but of a foxy and unpleasing tint. Now for a few LARGE PAPER ALDUSES--of a variety of forms and of characters. But I must premise that the ensuing list of those upon vellum, is very far indeed from being complete. HORÆ. Gr. 1497. 12mo. A beautiful copy, among the very rarest of books which have issued from the Aldine press. Here is also _one_ volume of the Aldine ARISTOTLE, upon _large paper_: and only one. Did the _remaining_ volumes ever so exist? I should presume they did. BIBLIA GRÆCA. 1518. Folio. Upon _thick paper_. Francis the First's own copy. A glorious and perhaps matchless copy. Yet it is rebacked, in modern binding, in a manner ... almost shameful! PLAUTUS. 1522. Small quarto. A very fine copy; in all appearance large paper, and formerly belonging to Grolier. AUSONIUS. 1517. 8vo. Large paper; very fine; and belonging to the same. VALERIUS MAXIMUS. 1534. 8vo. The same--in _all_ respects. PRISCIANUS. 1527. 8vo. Every characteristic before mentioned. SANNAZARII ARCADIA. _Ital_. 1514. 8vo. The same. ---- _De Partu Virginis_. 1533. 8vo. An oblong, large paper Grolier, like most of the preceding. ISOCRATES. Gr. 1534. Folio. EUSTRATIUS IN ARISTOT. Gr. 1536. Both upon _large paper_, of the largest possible dimensions, and in the finest possible condition; add to which--rich and rare old binding! Both these books, upon large paper, are wanting in Lord Spencer's collection; but then, as a pretty stiff set-off, his Lordship has the THEMISTIUS of 1534-- which, for size and condition, may challenge either of the preceding--and which is here wanting. GALENUS. 1525. Gr. Folio. 5 vols. A matchless set, upon _large paper_. The binding claims as much attention, before you open the volumes, as does a finely-proportioned Greek portico--ere you enter the temple or the mansion. The foregoing are all, doubtless, equally splendid and uncommon specimens of the beauty and magnificence of the press of the _Alduses_: and they are also, with very few exceptions, as intrinsically valuable as they are fine. I shall conclude my survey of these lower-book-regions by noticing a few more uncommon books of their kind. CATHARIN DE SIENA. 1500. Folio. This volume is also a peculiarity in the Aldine department. It is, in the first place, a very fine copy--and formerly belonged to Anne of Brittany. In the second place, it has a wood-cut prefixed, and several introductory pieces, which, if I remember rightly, do not belong to Lord Spencer's copy of the same edition. ISOCRATES. Gr. _Printed at Milan_. 1493. Folio. What is somewhat singular, there is another copy of this book which has a title and imprint of the date of 1535 or 1524; in which the old Greek character of the body of the work is rather successfully imitated.[84] BIBLIA POLYGLOTTA COMPLUTENSIA. 1516-22. Fol. 6 vols. I doubt exceedingly whether this be not the largest and finest copy in existence. It may possibly be even _large paper_--but certainly, if otherwise, it is among the most ample and beautiful. The colour, throughout, is white and uniform; which is not the usual characteristic of copies of this work. It measures fourteen inches and three quarters in height, and belonged originally to Henry II. and Diane de Poictiers. It wanted only _this_ to render it unrivalled; and it now undoubtedly _is_ so. TESTAMENTUM NOVUM. Gr. _Printed by R. Stephen_. 1550. Folio. Another treasure from the same richly-fraught collection. It is quite a perfect copy; but some of the silver ornaments of the sides have been taken off. Let me now place before you a few more testimonies of the splendour of that library, which was originally the chief ornament of the _Chateau d'Anet_,[85] and not of the Louvre. HERODOTUS. Gr. _Printed by Aldus_, 1502. Folio. I had long supposed Lord Spencer's copy--like this, upon LARGE PAPER--to be the finest first Aldine Herodotus in existence: but the first glimpse only of the present served to dissipate that belief. What must repeated glimpses have produced? LUCIANUS. Gr. _Printed by the Same_. 1503. Folio. Equally beautiful--large, white, and crackling--with the preceding. SUIDAS. Gr. _Printed by the Same_. 1503. Folio. The same praise belongs to this copy; which, like its precursors, is clothed in the first mellow and picturesque binding. EUSTATHIUS IN HOMERUM. 1542. Folio. 3 vols. A noble copy--eclipsed perhaps, in amplitude only, by that in the collection of Mr. Grenville. DION CASSIUS. Gr. 1548. Folio. APPIANUS. Gr. 1551. Folio. DIONYSIUS HALICARNASSENSIS. 1546. Folio. These exquisitely well printed volumes are from the press of the Stephens. The present copies, clothed in their peculiar bindings, are perhaps the most beautiful that exist. They are from the library of the Chateau d'Anet. Let it not be henceforth said that the taste of Henri II. was not _well_ directed by the influence of Diane de Poictiers, in the choice of BOOKS. CICERONIS OPERA OMNIA. _Printed by the Giunti_, 1534. Folio. 4 vols. I introduce this copy to your notice, because there are four leaves of _Various Readings_, at the end of the fourth volume, which M. Van Praet said he had never observed, nor heard of, in any other copy.[86] I think also that there are two volumes of the same edition upon LARGE PAPER:--the rest being deficient. Does any perfect copy, of this kind, exist? POETÆ GRÆCI HEROICI. 1556. _Printed by H. Stephen._ Folio. De Thou's own copy--and, upon the whole, perhaps MATCHLESS. The sight of this splendid volume would repay the toil of a pilgrimage of some fourscore miles, over Lapland snows. There is another fine copy of the same edition, which belonged to Diana and her royal slave; but it is much inferior to De Thou's. The frequent mention of DE THOU reminds me of the extraordinary number of copies, which came from his library, and which are placed upon the shelves of the _fourth_ or following room. Perhaps no other library can boast of such a numerous collection of similar copies. It was, while gazing upon these interesting volumes along with M. Van Praet, that the latter told me he remembered seeing the ENTIRE LIBRARY of De Thou--before it was dispersed by the sale of the collection of the Prince de Soubise in 1788--in which it had been wholly embodied, partly by descent, and partly by purchase. And now farewell ... to the BIBLIOTHÈQUE DU ROI. We have, I think, tarried in it a good long time; and recreated ourselves with a profusion of RICH AND RARE GEMS in the book-way--whether as specimens of the pencil, or of the press. I can never regret the time so devoted--nor shall ever banish from my recollection the attention, civility, and kindness which I have received, from all quarters, in this magnificent library. It remains only to shake hands with the whole _Corps Bibliographique_, who preside over these regions of knowledge, and whose names have been so frequently mentioned--and, making our bow, to walk arm in arm together to the LIBRARY OF THE ARSENAL. The way thither is very interesting, although not very short. Whether your hackney coachman take you through the _Marché des Innocents_, or straight forward, along the banks of the Seine--passing two or three bridges--you will be almost equally amused. But reflections of a graver cast will arise, when you call to mind that it was in his way to THIS VERY LIBRARY--to have a little bibliographical, or rather perhaps political, chat with his beloved Sully--that Henry IV. fell by the hand of an Assassin.[87] They shew you, at the further end of the apartments--distinguished by its ornaments of gilt, and elaborate carvings--the _very boudoir_ ... where that monarch and his prime minister frequently retired to settle the affairs of the nation. Certainly, no man of education or of taste can enter such an apartment without a diversion of some kind being given to the current of his feelings. I will frankly own that I lost, for one little minute, the recollection of the hundreds and thousands of volumes-- including even those which adorn the chamber wherein the head librarian sits--which I had surveyed in my route thither. However, my present object must be exclusively confined to an account of a very few choice articles of these hundreds and thousands of volumes. BIBLIA LATINA. _Printed by Fust and Schoiffher_, 1462. 2 vols. There are not fewer than _three_ copies of this edition, which I shall almost begin to think must be ranked among books of ordinary occurrence. Of these three, two are UPON VELLUM, and the third is upon paper. The latter, or paper copy, is cruelly cropt, and bad in every respect. Of the two upon vellum, one is in vellum binding, and a fair sound copy; except that it has a few initials cut out. The other vellum copy, which is bound in red morocco-- measuring full fifteen inches and a half, by eleven inches and a quarter-- affords the comfortable evidence of ancient ms. signatures at bottom. There are doubtless some exceptionable leaves; but, upon the whole, it is a very sound and desirable copy. It was obtained of the elder M. Brunet, father of the well-known author of the Manuel du Libraire. M. Brunet senior found it in the garret of a monastery, of which he had purchased the entire library; and he sold it to the father of the present Comte d'Artois for six hundred livres ... only! ROMAUNT DE JASON, _Supposed to be printed by Caxton_. Folio. _Without date_. This is a finer copy than the one in the Royal Library; but it is imperfect, wanting two leaves. Here is a copy of the very rare edition of the MORLINI _Novella Comoediæ et Fabulæ_, printed in 1520 in 4to.:--also of the _Teatro Jesuitico--impresso en Coimbra_, 1634, 4to.:--and of the _Missa Latina_, printed by Mylius in 1557, 8vo. which latter is a satire upon the mass, and considered exceedingly rare. I regretted to observe so very bad a copy of the original _Giunta_ Edition of the BOCCACCIO of 1527, 4to. MISSALE PARISIENSE. 1522. Folio. A copy UPON VELLUM. I do not think it possible for any library, in any part of the world, to produce a more lovely volume than that upon which, at this moment, I must be supposed to be gazing! In the illuminated initial letters, wood-cuts, tone and quality of the vellum, and extreme skilfulness of the printer--it surely cannot be surpassed. Nor is the taste of the binding inferior to its interior condition. It is habited in the richly-starred morocco livery of Claude d'Urfé: in other words, it came from that distinguished man's library. Originally it appears to have been in the "_Bibliothèque de l'Eglise à Paris_." _Mozarabic Missal and Breviary_. 1500, 1502. Folio. Original Editions. These copies are rather cropt, but sound and perfect. THE DELPHIN STATIUS. Two copies: of which that in calf is the whitest, and less beaten: the other is in dark morocco. The Abbé Grosier told me that De Bure had offered him forty louis for one of them: to which I replied, and now repeat the question, "where is the use of keeping _two_?" Rely upon it, that, within a dozen years from hence, it will turn out that these Delphin Statiuses have never been even _singed_ by a fire![88] I begin to suspect that this story may be classed in the number of BIBLIOGRAPHICAL DELUSIONS-- upon which subject our friend * * could publish a most interesting crown octavo volume: meet garniture for a Bibliomaniac's breakfast table. Here is the ALDINE BIBLE of 1518, in Greek, upon _thick paper_, bound in red morocco. Also a very fine copy of the _Icelandic Bible_ of 1644, folio, bound in the same manner. Among the religious formularies, I observed a copy of the _Liturgia Svecanæ Ecclesiæ catliolicæ et orthodoxæ conformis_, in 1576, folio--which contains only LXXVI leaves, besides the dedication and preface. It has a wood-cut frontispiece, and the text is printed in a very large gothic letter. The commentary is in a smaller type. This may be classed among the rarer books of its kind. But I must not forget a MS. of _The Hours of St. Louis_--considered as _contemporaneous_. It is a most beautiful small folio, or rather imperial octavo; and is in every respect brilliant and precious. The gold, raised greatly beyond what is usually seen in MSS. of this period, is as entire as it is splendid. The miniature paintings are all in a charming state of preservation, and few things of this kind can be considered more interesting. This library has been long celebrated for its collection of _French Topography_ and of early _French_ and _Spanish Romances_; a great portion of the latter having been obtained at the sale of the Nyon Library. I shall be forgiven, I trust, if I neglect the former for the latter. Prepare therefore for a list of some choice articles of this description--in every respect worthy of conspicuous places in all future _Roxburghe_ and _Stanley_ collections. The books now about to be described are, I think, almost all in that apartment which leads immediately into Sully's boudoir. They are described just as I took them from the shelves. RICHARD-SANS PEUR, &c. "_A Paris Par Nicolas et Pierre Bonfons_," &c. _Without Date_. 4to. It is executed in a small roman type, in double columns. There is an imposing wood-cut of Richard upon horseback, in the frontispiece, and a very clumsy one of the same character on the reverse. The signatures run to E in fours. An excellent copy. LE MEME ROMANT. "_Imprime nouuelement a Paris_." At the end, printed by "_Alain Lotrain et Denis Janot_." 4to. _Without Date_. The title, just given is printed in a large gothic letter, in red and black lines, alternately, over a rude-wood cut of Richard upon horseback. The signatures A, B, C, run in fours: D in eight, and E four. The text is executed in a small coarse gothic letter, in long lines. The present is a sound good copy. ROBERT LE DYABLE. "La terrible Et merueilleuse vie de Robert Le Dyable iiii C." 4to. _Without Date_. The preceding is over a large wood-cut of Robert, with a club in his hand, forming the frontispiece. The signatures run to D, in fours; with the exception of A, which has eight leaves. The work is printed in double columns, in a small gothic type. A sound desirable copy. SYPPERTS DE VINEUAULX. "Lhystoire plaisante et recreative faisant metion des prouesses et vaillaces du noble Sypperts de Vineuaulx Et de ses dix septs filz Nouuellement imprime." At the end: printed for "_Claude veufue de feu Iehan sainct denys_," 4to. _Without Date_. On the reverse of this leaf there is a huge figure of a man straddling, holding a spear and shield, and looking over his left shoulder. I think I have seen this figure before. This impression is executed in long lines, in a small gothic letter. A sound copy of a very rare book.[89] GUY DE VVARWICH. "Lhystoire de Guy de vvarwich Cheualier dagleterre &c. 4to. _No Date_. The preceding is over a wood-cut of the famous Guy and his fair Felixe. At bottom, we learn that it is executed in a small gothic type, in double columns. The colophon is on the reverse of V. six. MESSER NOBILE SOCIO. "Le Miserie de li Amanti di Messer Mobile Socio." Colophon: "_Stampata in Vinegia per Maestro Bernardino de Vitali Veneciano_ MDXXXIII." 4to. This impression is executed in long lines, in a fair, good, italic letter. The signatures, from _a_ to _y_ inclusively, run in fours. The colophon, just given, is on the reverse of _z_ i. Of this romance I freely avow my total ignorance. CASTILLE ET ARTUS D'ALGARBE. 4to. This title is over what may be called rather a spirited wood-cut. The date below is 1587. It is printed in double columns, in a small roman type. In the whole, forty-eight leaves. A desirable copy. LA NEF DES DAMES. 4to, _Without Date_. This title is composed of one line, in large lower-case gothic, in black, (just as we see in some of the title pages of Gerard de Leeu) with the rest in four lines, in a smaller gothic letter, printed in red. In this title page is also seen a wood-cut of a ship, with the virgin and child beneath. This book exhibits a fine specimen of rich gothic type, especially in the larger fount--with which the poetry is printed. There is rather an abundant sprinkling of wood cuts, with marginal annotations. The greater part of the work is in prose, in a grave moral strain. The colophon is a recapitulation of the title, ending thus: "_Imprime a Lyon sur le rosne par Iaques arnollet_." This is a sound but somewhat soiled copy. In torn parchment binding. NOVELAS FOR MARIA DE ZAYAS, &c. _En Zaragoça, en el Hospital Real_, &c. _Ano 1637_." 4to. These novels are ten in number; some of them containing Spanish poetry. An apparently much enlarged edition appeared in 1729. 4to. "_Corregidas y enmendadas en esta ultima impression_." NOVELAS AMOROSAS. _Madrid_, 1624. 4to. Twelve novels, in prose: 192 leaves. Subjoined in this copy, are the "Heroydas Belicas, y Amoras, &c." _En Barcelona_, &c. 1622. 4to. The whole of these latter are in three-line stanzas: 109 leaves. SVCESSOS Y PRODIGOS DE AMOR. _En Madrid_. 1626. 4to. 166 leaves. At the end: "Orfeo, en lengva Castellana. A la decima Mvsa." By the same author: in four cantos: thirty-one leaves. EL CAVALLERO CID. "El Cid rvy Diez de Viuar." The preceding title is over a wood-cut of a man on horseback, trampling upon four human bodies. At bottom: _Impresso con licencia en Salamanca, Ano de 1627_." 4to.: 103 pages. At the end are, the "_Seys Romances del Cid Ruy Diaz de Biuar_." The preceding is on A (i). Only four leaves in the whole; quite perfect, and, as I should apprehend, of considerable rarity. This slender tract appears to have been printed at _Valladolid por la viuda de Francisco de Cordoua, Ano de 1627_." 4to. FIORIO E BIANCIFIORE. "_Impressa, &c. ne bologna, Delanno del nostro signore m.cccclxxx. adi. xxiii. di decembre. Laus deo."_ Folio. Doubtless this must be the _Prima Edizione_ of this long popular romance; and perhaps the present may be a unique copy of it. Caxton, as you may remember, published an English prosaïc version of it in the year 1485; and no copy of _that_ version is known, save the one in the cabinet at St. James's Place. This edition has only eight leaves, and this copy happens unluckily to be in a dreadfully shattered and tender state. At the end: _Finito e il libra del fidelissimo Amore Che portorno insieme Fiorio e Biancifiore_ Subjoined to the copy just described is another work, thus entitled: SECRETO SOLO e in arma ben amaistrato Sia qualunqua nole essere inamorato. Got gebe ir eynen guten seligen mogen. The preceding, line for line, is printed in a large gothic type: the rest of the work in a small close gothic letter. Both pieces, together, contain sixty-three leaves. COMMEDIA DE CELESTINA. "_Vendese la presente obra en la ciudad de Anuers_," &c. 18mo. _Without Date_. I suspect however that this scarce little volume was _printed_ as well as "_sold_" at Paris. MILLES ET AMYS. "_A Rouen chez la Veufue de Louys Costé_." 4to. Without Date. The frontispiece has a wood-cut of no very extraordinary beauty, and the whole book exhibits a sort of ballad-style of printing. It is executed in a roman letter, in double columns. OGIER LE DANOIS. "_On les vend a Lyon_, &c." Folio. At the end is the date of 1525, over the printer's device of a lion couchant, and a heart and crown upon a shield. It is a small folio, printed in a neat and rather brilliant gothic type, with several wood-cuts. GALIEN ET JAQUELINE. "_Les nobles prouesses et vaillances de Galien restaure_," &c. 1525, Folio. The preceding is over a large wood-cut of a man on horseback; and this romance is printed by the same printer, in the same place, and, as you observe, in the same year--as is that just before described. HUON DE BOURDEAUX. Here are four editions of this Romance:--to which I suspect fourscore more might be added. The first is printed at _Paris_ for _Bonfons_, in double columns, black letter, with rude wood-cuts. A fine copy: from the Colbert Collection. The second edition is of the date of 1586: in long lines, roman letter, approaching the ballad-style of printing. The third edition is "_A Troyes, Chez Nicolas Oudot_, &c. 1634." 4to. in double columns, small roman letter. No cuts, but on the recto and reverse of the frontispiece. The fourth edition is also "_A Troyes Chez Pierre Garnier_, 1726," 4to. in double columns, roman letter. A very ballad-like production. LES QUATRE FILZ AYMON, Two. editions. One. "_à Lyon par Benoist Rigaud_, 1583," 4to. The printing is of the ballad-kind, although there are some spirited wood-cuts, which have been wretchedly pulled. The generality are as bad as the type and paper. MABRIAN. &c. "_A Troyes, Chez Oudot_, 1625," 4to. A vastly clever wood-cut frontispiece, but wretched paper and printing. From the _Cat. de Nyon_; no. 8135. MORGANT LE GEANT. "_A Troyes, Chez Nicholas Oudot_, 1650, 4to." A pretty wood-cut frontispiece, and an extraordinary large cut of St. George and the Dragon on the reverse. There was a previous Edition by the same Printer at Rouen, in 1618, which contains the second book--wanting in this copy. GERARD COMTE DE NEVERS, &C. 1526, 4to. The title is over the arms of France, and the text is executed in a handsome gothic letter, in long lines. At the end, it appears to have been printed for _Philip le Noir_. It is a very small quarto, and the volume is of excessive rarity. The present is a fine copy, in red morocco binding. CRONIQUE DE FLORIMONT, &C. At "_Lyons--par Olivier Arnoullet_," 4to. At the end is the date of 1529. This impression is executed in a handsome gothic type, in long lines. TROYS FILZ DE ROYS. Printed for "_Nicolas Chrestien--en la Rue neufue nostre Dame_," &c. Without date, 4to. The frontispiece displays a large rude wood cut; and the edition is printed in the black letter, in double columns. All the cuts are coarse. The book, however, is of uncommon occurrence. PARIS ET VIENNE:--"_à Paris, Chez Simon Caluarin rue St. Jacques_." Without date: in double columns; black letter, coarsely printed. A pretty wood-cut at the beginning is repeated at the end. This copy is from the Colbert Library. PIERRE DE PROVENCE ET LA BELLE MAGUELONNE. 1490. 4to. The title is over a large wood-cut of a man and woman, repeated on the reverse of the leaf. The impression is in black letter, printed in long lines, with rather coarse wood-cuts. I apprehend this small quarto volume to be of extreme rarity. JEHAN DE SAINTRE--"_Paris, pour Jehan Bonfons_," &c. 4to. _Without date_. A neatly printed book, in double columns, in the gothic character. There is no cut but in the frontispiece. A ms. note says, "This is the first and rarest edition, and was once worth twelve louis." The impression is probably full three centuries old. BERINUS ET AYGRES DE LAYMANT. At bottom: sold at "_Paris par Jehan de Bonfons_, 4to. _No date._ It is in double columns, black letter, with the device of the printer on the reverse of the last leaf. A rare book. JEAN DE PARIS. "Le Romat de Iehan de Paris, &c. _à Paris, par Jehan Bonfons_, 4to. _Without date_. In black letter, long lines: with rather pretty wood-cuts. A ms. note at the end says: "Ce roman que jay lu tout entier est fort singulier et amusant--cest de luy douvient le proverbe "_train de Jean de Paris_." Cest ici la plus ancienne edition. Elle est rare." The present is a sound copy. There are some pleasing wood-cuts at the end. CRONIQUE DE CLERIADUS, &C. "_On les vend à Lyon au pres de nostre dame de confort cheulx Oliuier Arnoullet_. At the end; 1529. 4to. This edition, which is very scarce, is executed in a handsome gothic type, in long lines. The present is a cropt but sound copy. GUILLAUME DE PALERNE, &C. At bottom--beneath a singular wood-cut of some wild animal (wolf or fox) running away with a child, and a group of affrighted people retreating--we read: "_On les vent a Lyon aupres Dame de Confort chez Oliuier Arnoulle_." At the end is the date of 1552. ---- Another edition of the same romance, _printed at Rouen, without date, by the widow of Louis Costé_, 4to. A mere ballad-style of publication: perhaps not later than 1634.--the date of our wretched and yet most popular impression of the Knights of the Round Table. DAIGREMONT ET VIVIAN. _Printed by Arnoullet, at Lyons_, in 1538, 4to. It is executed in a handsome gothic letter, in long lines. This copy is bound up with the _first_ edition of the Cronique de Florimont--for which turn to a preceding page[90]. In the same volume is a third romance, entitled LA BELLE HELAYNE, 1528, 4to.:--_Printed by the same printer_, with a singular wood-cut frontispiece; in a gothic character not quite so handsome as in the two preceding pieces. JOURDAIN DE BLAVE. _A Paris, par Nicolas Chrestien_," 4to. _Without date_. Printed in double columns, in a small coarse gothic letter. DOOLIN DE MAYENCE. _A Paris--N. Bonfons_. _Without date_, 4to. Probably towards the end of the sixteenth century; in double columns, in the roman letter. Here is another edition, _printed at Rouen_, by _Pierre Mullot_; in roman letter; in double columns. A coarse, wretched performance. MEURVIN FILS D'OGER, &C. _A Paris;--Nicolas Bonfons_." 4to. _Without date_. In the roman letter, in double columns. A fine copy. MELUSINE. Evidently by _Philip le Noir_, from his device at the end. It is executed in a coarse small gothic letter; with a strange, barbarous frontispiece. Another edition, having a copy of the same frontispiece,-- "_Nouuellement Imprimee a Troyes par Nicolas Oudot. 1649."_ 4to. Numerous wood-cuts. In long lines, in the roman letter. TREBISOND. At the end: for "_Iehan Trepperel demourat en la rue neufue nostre dame A lenseigne de lescu de frac_. Without date, 4to. The device of the printer is at the back of the colophon. This impression is executed in the black letter, in double columns, with divers wood-cuts. HECTOR DE TROYE. The title is over a bold wood-cut frontispiece, and _Arnoullet_ has the honour of being printer of the volume. It is executed in the black letter, in long lines. After the colophon, at the end, is a leaf containing a wood-cut of a man and woman, which I remember to have seen more than once before. And now, methinks, you have had a pretty liberal assortment of ROMANCES placed before you, and may feel disposed to breathe the open air, and quit for a while this retired but interesting collection of ancient tomes. Here, then, let us make a general obeisance and withdraw; especially as the official announce of "deux heures viennent de sonner" dissipates the charm of chivalrous fiction, and warns us to shut up our volumes and begone. [81] [The only copy of it in England, UPON VELLUM, is that in the Royal Library in the British Museum.] [82] [It seems that it is a production of the GIUNTI Press. Cat. _des Livr. &c. sur Vélin_, vol. ii. p. 59.] [83] [I learn from M. Crapelet that this book is a _Lyons Counterfeit_ of the Aldine Press; and that the _genuine_ Aldine volume, upon vellum, was obtained, after my visit to Paris, from the Macarthy Collection.] [84] [I had blundered sadly, it seems, in the description of this book in the previous edition of this work: calling it a _Theocritus_, and saying there was a second copy on _large paper_. M. Crapelet is copious and emphatic in his detection of this error.] [85] [I thank M. Crapelet for the following piece of information--from whatever source he may have obtained it: "The library of Henri II. and Diane de Poictiers was sold by public auction in 1724, after the death of Madame La Princesse Marie de Bourbon, wife of Louis-Joseph, Duc de Vendome, who became Proprietor of the Chateau d'Anet. The Library, was composed of a great number of MSS. and Printed Books, exceedingly precious. The sale catalogue of the Library, which is a small duodecimo of 50 pages, including the addenda, is become very scarce." CRAPELET; vol. iii. 347. My friend M. GAIL published a very interesting brochure, about ten years ago, entitled _Lettres Inedites de Henri II. Diane de Poitiers, Marie Stuart, François, Roi Dauphin &c_. Amongst these letters, there was only ONE specimen which the author could obtain of the _united_ scription, or rather signatures, of Henry and Diana. Of these signatures he has given a fac-simile; for which the Reader, in common with myself, is here indebted to him. Below this _united_ signature, is one of Diana HERSELF--from a letter entirely written in her own hand. It must be confessed that she was no Calligraphist. [Autographs: Henri II, Diane de Poitiers] [86] [My friend Mr. Drury possessed a similar copy.] [87] It may not be generally known that one of the most minute and interesting accounts of this assassination is given in _Howell's Familiar Letters_. The author had it from a friend who was an eye-witness of the transaction. [88] As for the "_singeing_."--or the reputed story of the greater part of them having been _burnt_--my opinion still continues to be as implied above: I will only now say that FORTUNATE is that _Vendor_ who can obtain _25l._ for a copy--be that copy brown or fair. [89] [My friend, the late Robert Lang, Esq. whose extraordinary Collection of Romances was sold at the close of the preceding year, often told me, that THE ABOVE was the _only_ Romance which he wanted to complete his Collection.] [90] Page 164, ante. _LETTER VII._ LIBRARY OF STE. GENEVIÈVE. THE ABBÉ MERCIER ST. LÉGER. LIBRARY OF THE MAZARINE COLLEGE, OR INSTITUTE. PRIVATE LIBRARY OF THE KING. MONS. BARBIER, LIBRARIAN. It is just possible that you may not have forgotten, in a previous letter, the mention of STE. GENEVIÈVE--situated in the old quarter of Paris, on the other side of the Seine; and that, in opposition to the _ancient_ place or church, so called, there was the _new_ Ste. Geneviève--or the Pantheon. My present business is with the _old_ establishment: or rather with the LIBRARY, hard by the old church of Ste. Geneviève. Of all interiors of libraries, this is probably the most beautiful and striking; and it is an absolute reproach to the taste of antiquarian art at Paris, that so beautiful an interior has not been adequately represented by the burin. There is surely spirit and taste enough in this magnificent capital to prevent such a reproach from being of a much longer continuance. But my business is with the _original_, and not with any _copy_ of it--however successful. M. Flocon is the principal librarian, but he is just now from home[91]. M. Le Chevalier is the next in succession, and is rarely from his official station. He is a portly gentleman; unaffected, good-natured, and kind-hearted. He has lived much in England, and speaks our language fluently: and catching my arm, and leaning upon it, he exclaimed, with a sort of heart's chuckle--in English, "with all my soul I attend you to the library." On entering that singularly striking interior, he whispered gently in my ear "you shall be consigned to a clever attendant, who will bring you what you want, and I must then leave you to your occupations." "You cannot confer upon me a greater favour," I replied. "Bon, (rejoined he) je vois bien que vous aimez les livres. A ça, marchons." I was consigned to a gentleman who sat at the beginning of the left rectangular compartment--for the library is in the form of a cross--and making my bow to my worthy conductor, requested he would retire to his own more important concerns. He shook me by the hand, and added, in English--"Good day, God bless you, Sir." I was not wanting in returning a similar salutation. The LIBRARY OF STE. GENEVIÈVE exhibits a local of a very imposing, as well as extensive, appearance. From its extreme length,--which cannot be less than two hundred and thirty feet, as I should conjecture--it looks rather low. Yet the ceiling being arched, and tolerably well ornamented, the whole has a very harmonious appearance. In the centre is a cupola: of which the elder Restout, about ninety years ago, painted the ceiling. They talk much of this painting, but I was not disposed to look at it a second time. The charm of the whole arises, first, from the mellow tone of light which is admitted from the glazed top of this cupola; and, secondly, from the numerous busts, arranged along the sides, which recal to your remembrance some of the most illustrious characters of France--for arts, for arms, for learning, and for public spirit. These busts are at the hither end, as you enter. Busts of foreigners continue the suite towards the other extremities. A good deal of white carved ornament presents itself, but not unpleasantly: the principal ground colour being of a sombre tint, harmonising with that of the books. The floor is of glazed tile. It was one of the hottest of days when I first put my foot within this interior; and my very heart seemed to be refreshed by the coolness--the tranquillity--the congeniality of character--of every thing around me! In such a place, "hours" (as Cowper somewhere expresses it) may be "thought down to moments." A sort of soft, gently-stealing, echo accompanies every tread of the foot. You long to take your place among the studious, who come every day to read in the right compartment of the cross; and which compartment they as regularly _fill_. Meanwhile, scarcely a whisper escapes them. The whole is, indeed, singularly inviting to contemplation, research, and instruction. But it was to the left of the cupola--and therefore opposite the studious corps just mentioned--that M. Le Chevalier consigned me to my bibliographical attendant. I am ignorant of his name, but cannot be forgetful of his kind offices. The MS. Catalogue (they have no printed one) was placed before me, and I was requested to cater for myself. Among the _Libri Desiderati_ of the fifteenth century, I smiled to observe the _Naples Horace of_ 1474 ... but you wish to be informed of the _acquired_, and not of the _desiderated_, treasures. Prepare, therefore, for a treat-- of its kind. LACTANTIUS. _Printed in the Soubiaco Monastery_. 1465. Folio. This was Pope Pius the Sixth's copy. Indeed the greater number of the more valuable early books belonged to that amiable Pontiff; upon whom Audiffredi (as you may well remember) has passed so warm and so well merited an eulogium[92]. The papal copy, however, has its margins scribbled upon, and is defective in the leaf which contains the errata. AUGUSTINUS DE CIVITATE DEI. _Printed in the same Monastery_. 1467. Folio. The margins are broad, but occasionally much stained. The copy is also short. From the same papal collection. CICERO DE ORATORE. _Printed in the same Monastery_. _Without Date_. Folio. A sound copy, but occasionally scribbled upon. The side margins are rather closely cropt. BIBLIA LATINA. 1462. Folio. 2 vols. I saw only the first volume, which displays a well-proportioned length and breadth of margin. The illuminations appear to be nearly coeval, and are of a soft and pleasing style of execution. Yet the margins are rather deformed by the designation of the chapters, in large roman numerals, of a sprawling character. BIBLIA ITALICA. _Kalend. de Octobrio_. 1471. Folio. 2 vols. A perfectly magnificent copy (measuring sixteen inches three eighths, by ten and six eighths) of this very rare edition; of which a minute and particular account will be found in the Catalogue of Earl Spencer's Library.[93] After a careful inspection--rather than from actual comparison--I incline to think that these noble volumes came from the press of _Valdarfer_. The copy under description is bound in brown calf, with red speckled edges to the leaves. This is a copy of an impression of which the library may justly be proud. BIBLIA POLONICA. 1599. Folio. In style of printing and embellishment like our Coverdale's Bible of 1535. Whether it be a reprint (which is most probable) of the famous Polish Bible of 1563, I am unable to ascertain. VIRGILIUS. _Printed by Sweynheym and Pannartz_. (1469.) Folio. FIRST EDITION; of the greatest rarity. Probably this is the finest copy (once belonging to Pius VI.) which is known to exist; but it must be considered as imperfect--wanting the Priapeia. And yet it may be doubted whether the latter were absolutely printed by Sweynheym and Pannartz for their _first_ edition? This copy, bound in white calf, with the papal arms on the sides, measures twelves inches and a quarter in length, by eight inches and five eighths in width: but the state of the illumination, at the beginning of the Bucolics, shews the volume to have been cropt--however slightly. All the illuminations are quiet and pretty. Upon the whole, this is a very precious book; and superior in most respects to the copy in the Royal Library.[94] PLINIUS SENIOR. 1469. Folio. EDITIO PRINCEPS. A copy from the same papal library; very fine, both as to length and width.--You rarely meet with a finer copy. _The Jenson edition_ of 1472 is here comparatively much inferior. CICERO. RHETORICA VETUS. _Printed by Jenson_. 1470. Folio. A great curiosity: inasmuch as it is a copy UPON VELLUM. It has been cruelly cut down, but the vellum is beautiful. It is also choked in the back, in binding. From the collection of the same Pope. SUETONIUS. _Printed by I.P. de Lignamine_. 1470. Folio. A magnificent copy; measuring thirteen inches and one eighth in height. The first leaf is, however, objectionable. From the same collection. QUINTILIANUS. INSTITUTIONES. _By the same Printer_. 1470. Folio. This and the preceding book are FIRST EDITIONS. A copy of equal beauty and equal size with the Suetonius. From the same Collection. PRISCIANUS. _Printed by V. de Spira_. 1470. Folio. First Edition. We have here a truly delicious copy--UPON VELLUM--and much superior to a similar copy in the Royal Library[95] I ought slightly to notice that a few of the leaves, following the date, are tawny, and others mended. Upon the whole, however, this is a book which rejoices the eye and warms the heart of a classical bibliographer. It is bound in pale calf, with gilt stamped edges, and once belonged to the Pontiff from whose library almost every previously-described volume was obtained. DANTE. _Printed by Petrus [Adam de Michaelibus.] Mantua_. 1472. Folio. A large and fair copy of an exceedingly rare edition. It appears to be quite perfect. BOETIUS. _Printed by Frater Iohannes_ 1474. 4to. It is for the first time that I open the leaves of this scarce edition. It is printed in a sharp and rather handsome roman type, and this copy has sixty-three numbered leaves. ANTHOLOGIA GRÆCA. 1498. 4to. We have here a most desirable copy--UPON VELLUM, which is equally soft and white. It has been however peppered a little by a worm, at the beginning and end; especially at the end. It is coated in a goodly sort ofGaignat binding. CICERONIS OPERA OMNIA. _Milan_. 1498. Folio. 4 vols. This is the finest copy of this rare set of volumes which it has been my lot yet to examine; but the dedication of the printer, Minutianus, to I.I. Trivulcius, on the reverse of the first leaf of the first volume, is unluckily wanting. There are, who would call this a _large paper_ copy. MARSILIUS FICINUS: IN DIONYSIUM AREOPAGITAM. _Printed by Laurentius, the Son of Franciscus a Venetian; at Florence. Without Date_. Folio. This is certainly a very beautiful and genuine book, in this particular condition-- UPON VELLUM--but the small gothic type, in which it is printed, is a good deal blurred. The binding is in its first state: in a deep red-coloured leather, over boards. I should apprehend this impression to be chiefly valuable on the score of rarity and high price, when it is found upon vellum. The foregoing are what I selected from the _Fifteeners_; after running an attentive eye over the shelves upon which the books, of that description are placed. In the same case or division where these Fifteeners are lodged, there happen to be a few _Alduses_, UPON VELLUM--so beautiful, rare, and in such uncommon condition, that I question whether M. Van Praet doth not occasionally cast an envious eye upon these membranaceous treasures-- secretly, and perhaps commendably, wishing that some of them may one day find their way into the Royal Collection!... You shall judge for yourself. HOMERI OPERA. Gr. _Printed by Aldus. Without date_. 12mo. 2 vols. First Aldine impression; and this copy perhaps yields only to the one in the Royal Library.[96] These volumes are differently bound; but of the two, that containing the _Iliad_, gains in length what it loses in breadth. The vellum is equally soft, white, and well-conditioned; and perhaps, altogether, the copy is only one little degree inferior to that in the Royal Library. The Odyssey is bound in old red morocco, with stampt gilt edges. This copy was purchased from the Salviati Library. CICERONIS ORATIONES. _Printed at the Aldine Press_. 1519. 8vo. 3 vols. Surely this copy is the _ne plus ultra_ of a VELLUM ALDUS! In size, condition, and colour, nothing can surpass it. When I say this, I am not unmindful of the Royal copies here, and more particularly of the _Pindar and Ovid_ in St. James's Place. But, in truth, there reigns throughout the rectos and reverses of each of these volumes, such a mellow, quiet, and genuine tone of colour, that the most knowing bibliographer and the most fastidious Collector cannot fail to express his astonishment on turning over the leaves. They are bound in old red morocco, with the arms of a Cardinal on the exterior; and (with the exception of the first volume, which is some _very_ little shorter) full six inches and a half, by four inches. Shew me its like if you can! I shall mention only three more volumes; but neither of them Aldine; and then take leave of the library of Ste. Geneviève. MISSALE MOZARABICUM. 1500. Folio. A fine copy for size and colour; but unluckily much wormed at the beginning, though a little less so at the end. It measures nearly thirteen inches one quarter, by nine three eighths. From the stamped arms of three stars and three lizards, this copy appears to have belonged to the _Cardinal Juigné_, Archbishop of Paris; who had a fine taste for early printed books. VITRUVIUS, _Printed by the Giunti_, 1513. 8vo. A delicious copy; upon white, soft, spotless VELLUM. I question if it be not superior to Mr. Dent's;[97] as it measures six inches and three-quarters, by four. A cruel worm, however, has perforated as far as folio 76; leaving one continued hole behind him. The binding of this exquisite book is as gaudy as it is vulgar. TEWERDANCKHS. _Printed in 1517_. Folio. First Edition. This is doubtless a fine copy--upon thick, but soft and white, VELLUM. Fortunately the plates are uncoloured, and the copy is quite complete in the table. It measures fifteen inches in length, by nine inches three quarters in width. Such appeared to me, on a tolerably careful examination of the titles of the volumes, to be among the chief treasures in the early and more curious department of books belonging to the STE. GENEVIÈVE LIBRARY. Without doubt, many more may be added; but I greatly suspect that the learned in bibliography would have made pretty nearly a similar selection; Frequently, during the progress of my examinations, I looked out of window upon the square, or area, below--which was covered at times by numerous little parties of youths (from the College of Henry IV.) who were partaking of all manner of amusements, characteristic of their ages and habits. With, and without, coats--walking, sitting, or running,--there they were! All gay, all occupied, all happy:--unconscious of the alternate miseries and luxuries of the _Bibliomania_!--unknowing in the nice distinctions of type from the presses of _George Laver_, _Schurener de Bopardia_, and _Adam Rot_: uninitiated in the agonising mysteries of rough edges, large margins, and original bindings! But ... Where ignorance is bliss 'Tis folly to be wise. This is soberly quoted--not meaning thereby to scratch the cuticle, or ruffle the temper, of a single Roxburgher. And now, my friend, as we are about to quit this magnificent assemblage of books, I owe it to myself--but much more to your own inextinguishable love of bibliographical history--to say "one little word, or two"--ere we quit the threshold--respecting the Abbé MERCIER SAINT LÉGER ... the head librarian, and great living ornament of the collection, some fifty years ago. I am enabled to do this with the greater propriety, as my friend M. Barbier is in possession of a number of literary anecdotes and notices respecting the Abbé--and has supplied me with a brochure, by Chardon De La Rochette, which contains a notice of the life and writings of the character in question. I am sure you will be interested by the account, limited and partial as it must necessarily be: especially as I have known those, to whose judgments I always defer with pleasure and profit, assert, that, of all BIBLIOGRAPHERS, the Abbé Mercier St. Léger was the FIRST, in eminence, which France possessed, I have said so myself a hundred times, and I repeat the asseveration. Yet we must not forget Niceron. Mercier Saint Léger was born on the 1st of April, 1734. At fifteen years of age, he began to consider what line of life he should follow. A love of knowledge, and a violent passion for study and retirement, inclined him to enter the congregation of the _Chanoines Réguliers_--distinguished for men of literature; and, agreeably to form, he went through a course of rhetoric and philosophy, before he passed into divinity, as a resident in the Abbey _de Chatrices_ in the diocese of _Chalons sur Marne_. It was there that he laid the foundation of his future celebrity as a literary bibliographer. He met there the venerable CAULET, who had voluntarily resigned the bishopric of Grenoble, to pass the remainder of his days in the abbey in question--of which he was the titular head--in the midst of books, solitude, and literary society. Mercier Saint Léger quickly caught the old man's eye, and entwined himself round his heart. Approaching blindness induced the ex-bishop to confide the care of his library to St. Léger--who was also instructed by him in the elements of bibliography and literary history. He taught him also that love of order and of method which are so distinguishable in the productions of the pupil. Death, however, in a little time separated the master from the scholar; and the latter scarcely ever mentioned the name, or dwelt upon the virtues, of the former, without emotions which knew of no relief but in a flood of tears. The heart of Mercier St. Léger was yet more admirable than his head. St. Léger, at twenty years of age, returned to Paris. The celebrated Pingré was chief librarian of the Ste. GENEVIEVE COLLECTION; and St. Léger attached himself with ardour and affection to the society and instructions of his Principal. He became joint SECOND LIBRARIAN in 1759; when Pingré, eminent for astronomy, departing for India to observe the transit of Venus over the sun's disk, St. Léger was appointed to succeed him as CHIEF--and kept the place till the year 1772. These twelve years were always considered by St. Léger as the happiest and most profitable of his life. During this period he lent a helping hand in abridging the _Journal de Trevoux_. In September, 1764, Louis XV. laid the foundation-stone, with great pomp and ceremony, of the new church of Ste. Geneviève. After the ceremony, he desired to see the library of the old establishment--in which we have both been so long tarrying. Mercier spread all the more ancient and curious books upon the table, to catch the eye of the monarch: who, with sundry Lords of the bed-chamber, and his _own_ librarian BIGNON, examined them with great attention, and received from Mercier certain information respecting their relative value, and rarity. Every now and then Louis turned round, and said to Bignon, "Bignon, have I got that book in my library?" The royal librarian ... answered not a word--but hiding himself behind CHOISEUL, the prime minister, seemed to avoid the sight of his master. Mercier, however, had the courage and honesty to reply, "No, Sire, that book is _not_ in your library." The king spent about an hour in examining the books, chatting with the librarian, (Mercier) and informing himself on those points in which he was ignorant. It was during this conversation, that the noble spirit of Mercier was manifested. The building of the library of St. Victor was in a very crazy state: it was necessary to repair it, but the public treasury could not support that expense. "I will tell your Majesty, (said Mercier) how this may be managed without costing you a single crown. The headship of the Abbey of St. Victor is vacant: name a new Abbot; upon condition, each year, of his ceding a portion of his revenue to the reparation of the Library." If the king had had one spark of generous feeling, he would have replied by naming Mercier to the abbey in question, and by enjoining the strict fulfilment of his own proposition. But it was not so. Yet the scheme was carried into effect, although others had the glory of it. However, the king had not forgotten Mercier, nor the bibliographical lesson which he had received in the library of Ste. Geneviève. One of these lessons consisted in having the distinctive marks pointed out of the famous _Bible of Sixtus V_. published in 1590. A short time after, on returning from mass, along the great gallery of Versailles, Louis saw the head librarian of Ste. Geneviève among the spectators.. and turning to his prime minister, exclaimed "Choiseul, how can one distinguish the _true_ Bible of Sixtus V.?" "Sire, (replied the unsuspecting minister) I never was acquainted with that book." Then, addressing himself to Mercier, the king repeated to him--without the least hesitation or inaccuracy--the lesson which he had learnt in the library of Ste. Geneviève. There are few stories, I apprehend, which redound so much to this king's credit. Louis gave yet more substantial proofs of his respect for his bibliographical master, by appointing him, at the age of thirty-two, to the headship of the abbey of _St. Léger de Soissons_--and hence our hero derives his name. In 1772 Mercier surrendered the Ste. Geneviève library to Pingré, on his return from abroad--and in the privacy of his own society, set about composing his celebrated _Supplément à l'Histoire de l'Imprimerie par Prosper Marchand_--of which the second edition, in 1775, is not only more copious but more correct. The Abbé Rive, who loved to fasten his teeth in every thing that had credit with the world, endeavoured to shake the reputation of this performance.. but in vain. Mercier now travelled abroad; was received every where with banqueting and caresses; a distinction due to his bibliographical merits--and was particularly made welcome by Meerman and Crevenna. M. Ochéda, Earl Spencer's late librarian--and formerly librarian to Crevenna--has often told me how pleased he used to be with Mercier's society and conversation during his visit to Crevenna. On his return, Mercier continued his work, too long suspended, upon the LATIN POETS OF THE MIDDLE AGE. His object was, to give a brief biography of each; an analysis of their works, with little brilliant extracts and piquant anecdotes; traits of history little known; which, say Chardon De La Rochette and M. Barbier, (who have read a great part of the original MS.) "are as amusing as they are instructive." But the Revolution was now fast approaching, and the meek spirit of Mercier could ill sustain the shock of such a frightful calamity. Besides, he loved his country yet dearer than his books. His property became involved: his income regularly diminished; and even his privacy was invaded. In 1792 a decree passed the convention for issuing a "Commission for the examination of monuments." Mercier was appointed one of the thirty-three members of which the commission was composed, and the famous Barrère was also of the number. Barrère, fertile in projects however visionary and destructive, proposed to Mercier, as a _bright thought_, "to make a short extract from every book in the national library: to have these extracts superbly printed by Didot;--and to ... BURN ALL THE BOOKS FROM WHICH THEY WERE TAKEN!" It never occurred to this revolutionising idiot that there might be a _thousand_ copies of the _same work_, and that some hundreds of these copies might be OUT of the national library! Of course, Mercier laughed at the project, and made the projector ashamed of it.[98] Robespierre, rather fiend than man, now ruled the destinies of France. On the 7th of July, 1794, Mercier happened to be passing along the streets when he saw _sixty-seven human beings_ about to undergo the butchery of the GUILLOTINE. Every avenue was crowded by spectators--who were hurrying towards the horrid spectacle. Mercier was carried along by the torrent; but, having just strength enough to raise his head, he looked up ... and beheld his old and intimate friend the ex-abbé ROGER ... in the number of DEVOTED VICTIMS! That sight cost him his life. A sudden horror ... followed by alternate shiverings, and flushings of heat ... immediately seized him. A cold perspiration hung upon his brow. He was carried into the house of a stranger. His utterance became feeble and indistinct, and it seemed as if the hand of death were already upon him. Yet he rallied awhile. His friends came to soothe him. Hopes were entertained of a rapid and perfect recovery. He even made a few little visits to his friends in the vicinity of Paris. But ... his fine full figure gradually shrunk: the colour as gradually deserted his cheek--and his eye sensibly lacked that lustre which it used to shed upon all around. His limbs became feeble, and his step was both tremulous and slow. He lingered five years ... and died at ten at night, on the 13th of May 1799, just upon the completion of his jubilee of his bibliographical toil. What he left behind, as annotations, both in separate papers, and on the margins of books, is prodigious. M. Barbier shewed me his projected _third_ edition of the _Supplément to Marchand_, and a copy of the _Bibliothèque Françoise of De La Croix du Maine_, &c. covered, from one end to the other, with marginal notes by him.[99] That amiable biographer also gave me one of his little bibliographical notices, as a specimen of his hand writing and of his manner of pursuing his enquiries.[100] Such are the feelings, and such the gratifications; connected with a view of the LIBRARY of STE. GENEVIÈVE. Whenever I visit it, I imagine that the gentle spirit of MERCIER yet presides there; and that, as it is among the most ancient, so is it among the most interesting, of BOOK LOCALS in Paris. Come away with me, now, to a rival collection of books--in the MAZARINE COLLEGE, or Institute. Of the magnificence of the exterior of this building I have made mention in a previous letter. My immediate business is with the interior; and more especially with that portion of it which relates to _paper_ and _print_. You are to know, however, that this establishment contains _two Libraries_; one, peculiar to the Institute, and running at right angles with the room in which the members of that learned body assemble: the other, belonging to the College, to the left, on entering the first square--from the principal front. The latter is the _old_ collection, of the time of Cardinal Mazarin, and with _that_ I begin. It is deposited chiefly on the first floor; in two rooms running at right angles with each other: the two, about 140 feet long. These rooms may be considered very lofty; certainly somewhat more elevated than those in the Royal Library. The gallery is supported by slender columns, of polished oak, with Corinthian capitals. The general appearance is airy and imposing. A huge globe, eight feet in diameter, is in the centre of the angle where the two rooms meet. The students read in either apartment: and, as usual, the greatest order and silence prevail. But not a _Fust and Schoiffher_--nor a _Sweynheym and Pannartz_--nor an _Ulric Han_--in this lower region ... although they say the collection contains about 90,000 volumes. What therefore is to be done? The attendant sees your misery, and approaches: "Que desirez vous, Monsieur?" That question was balm to my agitated spirits. "Are the old and more curious books deposited here?" "Be seated, Sir. You shall know in an instant." Away goes this obliging creature, and pulls a bell by the side of a small door. In a minute, a gentleman, clothed in black--the true bibliographical attire--descends. The attendant points to me: we approach each other: "A la bonne heure--je suis charmé...." You will readily guess the remainder. "Donnez vous la peine de monter." I followed my guide up a small winding stair-case, and reached the topmost landing place. A succession of small rooms--(I think _ten_ in number) lined with the _true_ furniture, strikes my astonished eye, and makes warm my palpitating heart. "This is charming"--exclaimed I, to my guide, Monsieur Thiebaut--"this is as it should be." M. Thieubaut bowed graciously. The floors are all composed of octagonal, deeply-tinted red, tiles: a little too highly glazed, as usual; but cool, of a good picturesque tint, and perfectly harmonising with the backs of the books. The first little room which you gain, contains a plaster-bust of the late Abbé HOOKE,[101] who lived sometime in England with the good Cardinal----. His bust faces another of Palissot. You turn to the right, and obtain the first foreshortened view of the "ten little chambers" of which I just spoke. I continued to accompany my guide: when, reaching the _first_ of the last _three_ rooms, he turned round and bade me remark that these last three rooms were devoted exclusively to "books printed in the _Fifteenth Century_: of which they possessed about fifteen hundred." This intelligence recruited my spirits; and I began to look around with eagerness. But alas! although the crop was plentiful, a deadly blight had prevailed. In other words, there was number without choice: quantity rather than quality. Yet I will not be ill-natured; for, on reaching the third of these rooms, and the last in the suite, Monsieur Thiebaut placed before me the following select articles. BIBLIA LATINA. _Printed by Fust and Schoiffher: Without Date, but supposed to be in the year 1455 or 1456_. Folio. 2 vols. For the last dozen years of my life, I had earnestly desired to see this copy: not because I had heard much of its beauty, but because it is the _identical_ copy which gave rise to the calling of this impression the MAZARINE BIBLE.[102] Certainly, all those copies which I had previously seen--and they cannot be fewer than ten or twelve--were generally superior; nor must this edition be henceforth designated as "of the very first degree of rarity." BIBLIA LATINA. _Printed by the Same_, 1462. Folio. 2 vols. A fair, sound, large copy: UPON VELLUM. The date is printed in red, at the end of each volume--a variety, which is not always observable. This copy is in red morocco binding. BIBLIA ITALICA. _Printed by Vindelin de Spira, Kalend. August. 1471_. Folio. 2 vols. A fine copy of an extremely rare edition; perhaps the rarest of all those of the early Italian versions of the Bible. It is in calf binding, but cropt a little. LEGENDA SANCTORUM. Italicè. "_Impresse per Maestro Nicolo ienson, &c. Without Date_. Folio. The author of the version is _Manerbi_: and the present is the _first impression_ of it. It is executed in double columns, in the usually delicate style of printing by Jenson: and this volume is doubtless among the rarer productions of the printer. SERVIUS IN VIRGILIUM. _Printed by Ulric Han. Without Date_. Folio. This is a volume of the most unquestionable rarity; and _such_ a copy of it as that now before me, is of most uncommon occurrence.[103] Can this be surprising, when I tell you that it once belonged to Henri II. and Diane de Poictiers! The leaves absolutely talk to you, as you turn them over. Yet why do I find it in my heart to tell you that, towards the middle, many leaves are stained at the top of the right margin?! There are also two worm holes towards the end. But what then? The sun has its spots. PLAUTUS. 1472. Folio. Editio Princeps. Although _this_ volume came also from the collection of the _illustrious Pair_ to whom the previous one belonged, yet is it unworthy of such owners. I suspect it has been cropt in its second binding. It is stained all through, at top, and the three introductory leaves are cruelly repellent. CÆSAR. 1469. Folio. Editio Princeps. A very fine, genuine copy; in the original binding--such as all Sweynheym and Pannartz's _ought_ to be. It is tall and broad: but has been unluckily too much written upon. LACTANTIUS. 1470. _By the same Printers_. Perhaps, upon the whole, the finest copy of this impression which exists. Yet a love of truth compels me to observe--only in a very slight sound, approaching to a whisper--that there are indications of the ravages of the worm, both at the beginning and end; but very, very trivial. It is bound like the preceding volume; and measures thirteen inches and nearly three quarters, by about nine inches and one eighth. CICERO DE OFFICIIS. 1466. 4to. Second Edition, upon paper; and therefore rare. But this copy is sadly stained and wormed. CICERO DE NATURA DEORUM, &c. _Printed by Vindelin de Spiraa_. 1471. Folio. A fine sound copy, in the original binding. SILIUS ITALICUS. _Printed by Laver_. 1471. Folio. A good, sound copy; and among the very rarest books from the press of Laver, in such condition. CATULLUS, TIBULLUS, ET PROPERTIUS. 1472. Folio. The knowing, in early classical bibliography, are aware that this _Editio Princeps_ is perhaps to be considered as only _one_ degree below the first impressions of Lucretius and Virgil in rarity. The longest life may pass away without an opportunity of becoming the purchaser of such a treasure. The present is a tall, fair copy; quite perfect. In red morocco binding. DANTE. _Printed by Numeister_. 1472. Folio. Considered to be the earliest impression. This is rather a broad than a tall copy; and not free from stain and the worm. But it is among the very best copies which I have seen. * * * * * It will not be necessary to select more flowers from this choice corner of the tenth and last room of the upper suite of apartments: nor am I sure that, upon further investigation, the toil would be attended with any very productive result. Yet I ought not to omit observing to you that this Library owes its chief celebrity to the care, skill, and enthusiasm of the famous _Gabriel Naudé_, the first librarian under the Cardinal its founder. Of Naudé, you may have before read somewhat in certain publications;[104] where his praises are set forth with no sparing hand. He was perhaps never excelled in activity, bibliographical _diplomacy_, or zeal for his master; and his expressive countenance affords the best index of his ardent mind. He purchased every where, and of all kinds, of bodies corporate and of individuals. But you must not imagine that the _Mazarine Library_, as you now behold it, is precisely of the same dimensions, or contains the same books, as formerly. If many rare and precious volumes have been disposed of, or are missing, or lost, many have been also procured. The late librarian was LUCAS JOSEPH HOOKE, and the present is Mons. PETIT RADEL.[105] We will descend, therefore, from these quiet and congenial regions; and passing through the lower rooms, seek the _other_ collection of books attached to this establishment. The library, which is more immediately appropriated to the INSTITUTE OF FRANCE, may consist of 20,000 volumes,[106] and is contained in a long room--perhaps of one hundred feet--of which the further extremity is supposed to be _adorned_ by a statue of VOLTAIRE. This statue is raised within a recess, and the light is thrown upon it from above from a concealed window. Of all deviations from good taste, this statue exhibits one of the most palpable. Voltaire, who was as thin as a hurdle, and a mere bag of bones, is here represented as an almost _naked_ figure, sitting: a slight mantle over his left arm being the only piece of drapery which the statue exhibits. The poet is slightly inclining his head to the left, holding a pen in his right hand. The countenance has neither the fire, force, nor truth, which Denon's terra-cotta head of the poet seems to display. The extremities are meagre and offensive. In short, the whole, as it appears to me, has an air approaching the burlesque. Opposite to this statue are the colossal busts of LA-GRANGE and MALESHERBES; while those of PEIRESC and FRANKLIN are nearly of the size of nature. They are all in white marble. That of Peiresc has considerable expression. This may be called a collection of _Books of Business_; in other words, of books of almost every day's reference--which every one may consult. It is particularly strong in _Antiquities_ and _History_: and for the latter, it is chiefly indebted to Dom Brial--the living father of French history[107]--that excellent and able man (who is also one of the Secretaries of the Institute) having recommended full two-thirds of the _long sets_ (as they are called) which relate to ancient history. The written catalogue is contained in fourteen folio volumes, interleaved; there being generally only four articles written in a page, and those four always upon the recto of each leaf. This is a good plan: for you may insert your acquisitions, with the greatest convenience, for a full dozen years to come. No _printed_ catalogue of either of these libraries, or of those of the Arsenal and Ste. Geneviève, exists: which I consider to be a _stain_--much more frightful than that which marks the copy of the "_Servius in Virgilium_," just before described! It remains now to make mention of a _third_ Collection of Books--which may be considered in the light both of a public and a private Library. I mean, the Collection appropriated more particularly for the _King's private use_,[108] and which is deposited beneath the long gallery of the Louvre. Its local is as charming as it is peculiar. You walk by the banks of the Seine, in a line with the south side of the Louvre, and gain admittance beneath an archway, which is defended by an iron grating. An attendant, in the royal livery, opens the door of the library--just after you have ascended above the entresol. You enquire "whether Monsieur BARBIER, the chief Librarian, be within?" "Sir, he is never absent. Be pleased to go straight forward, as far as you can see."[109] What a sight is before me! Nothing less than _thirteen_ rooms, with a small arched door in the centre, through which I gaze as if looking through a tube. Each of these rooms is filled with books; and in one or the other of them are assembled the several visitors who come to read. The whole is perfectly magical. Meanwhile the nephew of M. Barbier walks quickly, but softly, from one room to another, to take down the several volumes enquired after. At length, having paced along upwards of 200 feet of glazed red tile, and wondering when this apparently interminable suite of apartments will end, I view my estimable friend, the HEAD LIBRARIAN deeply occupied in some correction of Bayle or of Moreri--sitting at the further extremity. His reception of me is more than kind. It is hearty and enthusiastic. "Now that I am in this magical region, my good friend, allow me to inspect the famous PRAYER BOOK of CHARLEMAGNE?"--was my first solicitation to Mons. Barbier. "Gently,"--said my guide. "You are almost asking to partake of forbidden fruit. But I suppose you must not be disappointed." This was only sharpening the edge of my curiosity--for "wherefore this mystery, good M. Barbier?" "_That_ you may know another time. The book is here: and you shall immediately inspect it."--was his reply. M. Barbier unlocked the recess in which it is religiously preserved; took off the crimson velvet in which it is enveloped; and springing backward only two feet and a half, exclaimed, on presenting it, "Le voilà--dans toute sa beauté pristine." I own that I even forgot _Charles the Bald_--and eke his imperial brother _Lotharius_,[110]--as I gazed upon the contents of it. With these contents it is now high time that you should be made acquainted. EVANGELISTARIUM, or PRAYER BOOK--once belonging to CHARLEMAGNE. Folio. The subject-matter of this most precious book is thus arranged. In the first place, there are five large illuminations, of the entire size of the page, which are much discoloured. The first four represent the _Evangelists_: each sitting upon a cushion, not unlike a bolster. The fifth is the figure of our SAVIOUR. The back ground is purple: the pillow-like seat, upon which Christ sits, is scarlet, relieved by white and gold. The upper garment of the figure is dark green: the lower, purple, bordered in part with gold. The foot-stool is gold: the book, in the left hand, is red and gold: the arabesque ornaments, in the border, are blue, red, and gold. The hair of our Saviour is intended to be flaxen. The text is in double columns, upon a purple ground, within an arabesque border of red, purple, yellow, and bluish green. It is uniformly executed in letters of gold, of which the surface is occasionally rather splendid. It consists of a series of gospel extracts, for the whole year, amounting to about two hundred and forty-two. These extracts terminate with "_Et ego resuscitabo eum in novissimo die. Amen_" Next comes a Christian Calendar, from the dominical year Dcclxxv. to Dccxcvii. On casting the eye down these years, and resting it on that of Dcclxxxi, you observe, in the columns of the opposite leaf, this very important entry, or memorandum--in the undoubted writing of the time: "_In isto Anno ivit Dominus_, REX KAROLUS, _ad scm Petrvm et baptisatus est filius eius_ PIPPINUS _a Domino Apostolico_;" from which I think it is evident (as is observed in the account of this precious volume in the _Annales Encyclopédiques_, vol. iii. p. 378) that this very book was commanded to be written chiefly to perpetuate a notice of the baptism, by Pope Adrian, of the emperor's son PIPPIN.[111] There is no appearance whatever of fabrication, in this memorandum. The whole is coeval, and doubtless of the time when it is professed to have been executed. The last two pages are occupied by Latin verses, written in a lower-case, cursive hand; but contemporaneous, and upon a purple ground. From these verses we learn that the last scribe, or copyist, of the text of this splendid volume, was one GODESCALE, or GODSCHALCUS, a German. The verses are reprinted in the _Décades Philosophiques_. This MS. was given to the _Abbey of St. Servin_, at Toulouse; and it was religiously preserved there, in a case of massive silver, richly embossed, till the year 1793; when the silver was stolen, and the book carried off, with several precious relics of antiquity, by order of the President of the Administration, (Le Sieur S*****) and thrown into a magazine, in which were many other vellum MSS. destined ... TO BE BURNT! One's blood curdles at the narrative. There it lay--- expecting its melancholy fate; till a Monsieur de Puymaurin, then detained as a prisoner in the magazine, happened to throw his eye upon the precious volume; and, writing a certain letter about it, to a certain quarter--(which letter is preserved in the fly leaves, but of which I was denied the transcription, from motives of delicacy--) an order was issued by government for the conveyance of the MS. to the metropolis. This restoration was effected in May 1811.[112] I think you must admit, that, in every point of view, THIS MS. ranks among the most interesting and curious, as well as the most ancient, of those in the several libraries of Paris. But this is the _only_ piece of antiquity, of the book kind, in the Library. Of modern performances, I ought to mention a French version of OSSIAN, in quarto, which was the favourite reading book of the ex-Emperor; and to which Isabey, at his express command, prefixed a frontispiece after the design of Gérard. This frontispiece is beautifully and tenderly executed: a group of heroes, veiled in a mist, forms the back-ground. The only other modern curiosity, in this way, which I deem it necessary to notice, is a collection of ORIGINAL DRAWINGS of flowers, in water colours, by RÉDOUTÉ, upon vellum: in seven folio volumes; and which cost 70,000 francs.[113] Nothing can exceed--and very few efforts of the pencil can equal--this wonderful performance. Such a collection were reasonable at the fore-mentioned price. And now, my good friend, suppose I furnish you with an outline of the worthy head-librarian himself? A.A. BARBIER has perhaps not long "turned the corner" of his fiftieth year. Peradventure he may be fifty three.[114] In stature, he is above the middle height, but not very tall. In form, he is robust; and his countenance expressive of great conciliatoriness and benignity. There is a dash of the "old school" about the attire of M. Barbier, which I am Goth enough to admire: while his ardour of conversation, and rapidity of utterance, relieved by frequent and expressive smiles, make his society, equally agreeable and instructive. He is a literary bibliographer to the very back bone; and talks of what he has done, and of what he purposes to do, with a "gaieté de coeur" which is quite delightful. He is now engaged in an _Examen Critique et Complément des Dictionnaires Historiques les plus repandus_;[115] while his _Dictionnaire des Auteurs Anonymes et Pseudonymes_, in 4 vols. 8vo., and his _Bibliothéque d'un Homme de gout_," in five similar volumes, have already placed him in the foremost rank of French bibliographers. Such is his attention to the duties of his situation, as Librarian, that from one year's end to the other, with the exception of Sundays, he has _no holiday_. His home-occupations, after the hours of public employment (from twelve to four) are over, are not less unintermitting--in the pursuits of literary bibliography. It was at this home, that M. Barbier shewed me, in his library, some of the fruits of his long and vigorously pursued "travail." He possesses Mercier Saint Léger's own copy of his intended _third_ edition of the _Supplement to Marchand's History of Printing_. It is, in short, the second edition, covered with ms. notes in the hand-writing of Mercier himself.[117] He also possesses (but as the property of the Royal Library) the same eminent bibliographer's copy of the _Bibliothèque Française De La Croix du Maine_, in six volumes, covered in like manner with ms. notes by the same hand. To a man of M. Barbier's keen literary appetite, this latter must prove an inexhaustible feast. I was shewn, in this same well-garnished, but unostentatious collection, GOUJET'S own catalogue of his own library. It is in six folio volumes; well written; with a ruled frame work round each page, and an ornamental frontispiece to the first volume. Every book in the catalogue has a note subjoined; and the index is at once full and complete.[118] M. Barbier has rather a high notion, and with justice, of Goujet: observing to me, that _five_ volumes, out of the _ten_ of the last edition of Moreri's Dictionary--which were edited by Goujet--as well as his _Bibliothéque Française_, in eighteen duodecimo volumes--entitled him to the lasting gratitude of posterity. On my remarking that the want of an index, to this _latter_ work, was a great drawback to the use which might be derived from it, M.B. readily coincided with me--and hoped that a projected new edition would remedy this defect. M.B. also told me that Goujet was the editor of the _Dictionnaire de Richelet_, of 1758, in three folio volumes--which had escaped my recollection. My first visit to M. Barbier was concluded by his begging my acceptance of a copy of the _first edition of Phædrus_, in 1596, 12mo.; which contained, bound up with it, a copy of the _second_ edition of 1600; with various readings to the _latter_, from a MS. which was burnt in 1774. This gift was expressly intended for Lord Spencer's library, and in a few months from hence (as I have previously apprized his Lordship) it shall "repose upon the shelves" of his Collection.[119] It is now high time to relieve you; as you must begin to be almost wearied with BIBLIOGRAPHY. You have indeed, from the tenor of these five last letters, been made acquainted with some of the chief treasures in the principal libraries of Paris. You have wandered with me through a world of books; and have been equally, with myself, astonished and delighted with what has been placed before you. Here, then, I drop the subject of bibliography--only to be resumed as connected with an account of book-men. [91] [Because I have said that M. FLOCON was "from home" at the time I visited the library, and that M. Le CHEVALIER was rarely to be found abroad, M. Crapelet lets loose such a tirade of vituperation as is downright marvellous and amusing to peruse. Most assuredly I was not to know M. Flocon's bibliographical achievements and distinction by _inspiration_; and therefore I hasten to make known both the one and the other--in a version of a portion of the note of my sensitive translator: "M. Flocon is always at work; and one of the most zealous Librarians in Paris: he has worked twenty years at a Catalogue of the immense Library of Ste. Geneviève, of which the fruits are, twenty-four volumes--ready for press. Assuredly such a man cannot be said to pass his life away from his post." CRAPELET, vol iv. p. 3, 4. Most true--and who has said that HE DOES? Certainly not the Author of this Work. My translator must have here read without his spectacles.] [92] _Editiones Italicæ_; 1793. _Præf._ [93] Vol. i. p. 63-7. It is there observed that "there does not seem to be any reason for assigning this edition, to a _Roman_ press." [94] See page 116 ante [95] See page 139 ante. [96] See page 145 ante. [97] [Now the property of the Right Hon. T. Grenville; having been purchased at the sale of Mr. Dent's Library for 107_l_.] [98] M. Crapelet doubts the truth of this story. He need not. [99] [See the account of M. Barbier, post.] [100] It is on a small piece of paper, addressed to M. Barbier: "Cherchez dans les depôts bien soigneusement, tous les ouvrages d'ANDRE CIRINE: entr'autres ses _De Venatione libri ii: Messanæ_ 1650. 8vo. _De natura et solertia Canum; Panormi_, 1653. 4to. _De Venatione et Natura Animalium Libri V. ibid_, 1653. 3 vol. in 4to.--tous avec figures gravées en bois. Peut être dans la _Bibl. des Théatres_ y étoient-ils. Je me recommande toujours à M, Barbier pour la _Scala Coeli_, in folio, pour les _Lettres de Rangouge_, et pour les autres livres qu'il a bien voulu se charger de rechercher pour moy." ST. LEGER. [101] The Abbé Hooke preceded the abbé Le Blond; the late head librarian. The present head librarian M. PETIT RADEL, has given a good account of the Mazarine Library in his _Recherches sur les Bibliotheques_, &c. 1819, 8vo.; but he has been reproached with a sort of studied omission of the name of Liblond--who, according to a safe and skilful writer, may be well considered the SECOND FOUNDER of the Mazarine Library. The Abbé Liblond died at St. Cloud in 1796. In M. Renouard's Catalogue of his own books, vol. ii. p. 253, an amusing story is told about Hooke's successor, the Abbé Le Blond, and Renouard himself. [102] _Bibl. Spenceriana_, vol. i. p. 3, &c. and page 154 ante. [103] When Lord Spencer was at Paris in 1819, he told MM. Petit Radel and Thiebaut, who attended him, that it was "the finest copy he had ever seen." Whereupon, one of these gentlemen wrote with a pencil, in the fly-leaf, "Lord Spencer dit que c'est le plus bel exemplaire qu'il ait vu." And well might his Lordship say so. [104] _Bibliomania_, p. 50. _Bibliographical Decameron_, vol. ii. p. 493. [105] Mons. Petit-Radel has lately (1819) published an interesting octavo volume, entitled "_Recherches sur les Bibliothéques anciennes et modernes,&c._ with a "_Notice Historique sur la Bibliothéque Mazarine_: to which latter is prefixed a plate, containing portraits in outline, of Mazarin, Colbert, Naudé and Le Blond." At the end, is a list of the number of volumes in the several public libraries at Paris: from which the following is selected. ROYAL LIBRARY _Printed Volumes_ about 350,000 _Ditto, as brochures_, &c. 350,000 Manuscripts 50,000 LIBRARY OF THE ARSENAL Printed Volumes 150,000 Manuscripts 5,000 LIBRARY OF ST. GENEVIEVE Printed Volumes 110,000 Manuscripts 2,000 MAZARINE LIBRARY Printed Volumes 90,000 Manuscripts 3,500 LIBRARY OF THE PREFECTURE (Hotel de la Ville) Printed Volumes 15,000 ------- INSTITUTE Printed Volumes 50,000 This last calculation I should think very incorrect. M. Petit Radel concludes his statement by making the WHOLE NUMBER OF ACCESSIBLE VOLUMES IN Paris amount to _One Million, one hundred and twenty-five thousand, four hundred and thirty-seven_. In the several DEPARTMENTS OF FRANCE, collectively, there is _more_ than that number. But see the note ensuing. [106] [Mons. Crapelet says, 60,000 volumes: but I have more faith in the first, than in the second, computation: not because it comes from myself, but because a pretty long experience, in the numbering of books, has taught me to be very moderate in my numerical estimates. I am about to tell the reader rather a curious anecdote connected with this subject. He may, or he may not, be acquainted with the Public Library at Cambridge; where, twenty-five years ago, they boasted of having 90,000 volumes; and now, 120,000 volumes. In the year 1823, I ventured to make, what I considered to be, rather a minute and carefull calculation of the whole number: and in a sub note in the _Library Companion_, p. 657, edit. 1824, stated my conviction of that number's not exceeding 65,000 volumes, including MSS. In the following year, a very careful estimate was made, by the Librarians, of the whole number:--and the result was, that there were only.... 64,800 volumes!] [107] Now, numbered with THE DEAD. Vide post. [108] [The translation of the whole of the concluding part of this letter, beginning from above, together with the few notes supplied, as seen in M. Crapelet's publication, is the work of M. Barbier's nephew.] [109] [For M. Barbier Junior's note, which, in M. Crapelet's publication, is here subjoined, consult the end of the Letter.] [110] See pages 65-7 ante. [111] [This conclusion is questioned with acuteness and success by M. Barbier's nephew. It seems rather that the MS. was finished in 781, to commemorate the victories of Charlemagne over his Lombardic enemies in 774.] [112] [This restoration, in the name of the City of Toulouse, was made in the above year--on the occasion of the baptism of Bonaparte's son. But it was not placed in the King's private library till 1814. BARBIER Jun.] [113] [Now complete in 8 volumes--at the cost of 80,000 francs!] [114] [The latter was the true guess: for M. Barbier died in 1825, in his 60th year.] [115] It was published in 1821. In one of his recent letters to me, the author thus observes--thereby giving a true portraiture of himself-- "Je sais, Monsieur, quelle est votre ardeur pour le travail: je sais aussi que c'est le moyen d'être heureux: ainsi je vous félicite d'être constamment occupé." M. Barbier is also one of the contributors to the _Biographie Universelle_,[116] and has written largely in the _Annales Encyclopédiques_. Among his contributions to the latter, is a very interesting "_Notice des principaux écrits relatifs à la personne et aux ouvrages de J.J. Rousseau_." His "_Catalogue des livres dans la Bibliothéque du Conseil d'Etat_, transported to Fontainbleau in 1807, and which was executed in a handsome folio volume, in 1802, is a correct and useful publication. I boast with justice of a copy of it, on fine paper, of which the author several years ago was so obliging as to beg my acceptance. [From an inscription in the fly-leaf of this Catalogue, I present the reader with a fac-simile of the hand-writing of its distinguished author.] [Autograph] [116] [I "ALONE am responsible for this Sin. _Suum Cuique_." BARBIER, Jun.] [117] [These volumes form the numbers 1316 and 1317 of the Catalogue of M. Barbier's library, sold by auction in 1828.] [118] [Consult _Bibl. Barbier_: Nos. 1490, 1491, 1861.] [119] [The agreeable and well instructed Bibliographer, to the praises of whom, in the preceding edition of this work, I was too happy to devote the above few pages, is now NO MORE. Mons. Barbier died in 1825, and his library--the richest in literary bibliography in Paris,--was sold in 1828. On referring to page 197 ante, it will be seen that I have alluded to a note of M. Barbier's nephew, of which some mention was to be made in this place. I will give that note in its _original language_, because the most felicitous version of it would only impair its force. It is subjoined to these words of my text: "Be pleased to go strait forward as far as you can see." "L'homme de service lui-même ne ferait plus cette rêponse aujourd'hui. Peu de temps après l'impression du Voyage de M. Dibdin, ce qu'on appelle une _organisation_ eut lieu. Après vingt-sept ans de travaux consacrés à la bibliographique et aux devoirs de sa place, M. Barbier, que ses fonctions paisibles avoient protégés contre les terribles dénonciations de 1815, n'a pu régister, en 1822, aux délations mensongères de quelque commis sous M. Lauriston. _Insere nunc, Meliboee, pyros; pone ordine vites_! J'ai partagé pendant vingt ans les travaux de mon oncle pour former la bibliothéque de la couronne, et j'ai du, ainsi que lui, être mis a la retraite au moment de la promotion du nouveau Conservateur." CRAPELET, vol. iv. p. 45. I will not pretend to say _what_ were the causes which led to such a disgraceful, because wholly unmerited, result. But I have reason to BELIEVE that a dirty faction was at work, to defame the character of the Librarian, and in consequence, to warp the judgment of the Monarch. Nothing short of infidelity to his trust should have moved SUCH a Man from the Chair which he had so honourably filled in the private Library of Louis XVIII. But M. Barbier was beyond suspicion on this head; and in ability he had perhaps, scarcely an equal--in the particular range of his pursuits. His _retreating_ PENSION was a very insufficient balm to heal the wounds which had been inflicted upon him; and it was evident to those, who had known him long and well, that he was secretly pining at heart, and that his days of happiness were gone. He survived the dismissal from his beloved Library only five years: dying in the plenitude of mental vigour. I shall always think of him with no common feelings of regret: for never did a kinder heart animate a well-stored head. I had hoped, if ever good fortune should carry me again to Paris, to have renewed, in person, an acquaintance, than which none had been more agreeable to me, since my first visit there in 1818: But ... "Diis aliter visum est." There is however a mournful pleasure in making public these attestations to the honour of his memory; and, in turn, I must be permitted to quote from the same author as the nephew of M. Barbier has done.... His saltem accumulem donis, et fungar inani Munere.... Perhaps the following anecdote relating to the deceased, may be as acceptable as it is curious. Those of my readers who have visited Paris, will have constantly observed, on the outsides of houses, the following letters, painted in large capitals: MACL: implying--as the different emblems of our Fire Offices imply-- "M[aison] A[ssurée] C[ontre] L'[incendie]:" in plain English, that such houses are insured against fire. Walking one afternoon with M. Barbier, I pointed to these letters, and said, "You, who have written upon _Anonymes_ and _Pseudonymes_, do you know what those letters signify?" He replied, "Assuredly--and they can have but _one_ meaning." "What is that?" He then explained them as I have just explained them. "But (rejoined I) since I have been at Paris, I have learnt that they also imply _another_ meaning." "What might that be?" Stopping him, and gently touching his arm, and looking round to see that we were not overheard, I answered in a suppressed tone:-- "M[es] A[mis] C[hassez] L[ouis]." He was thunderstruck. He had never heard it before: and to be told it by a stranger! "Mais (says he, smiling, and resuming his steps) "voila une chose infiniment drole!" Let it be remembered, that this HERETICAL construction upon these Initial Capitals was put at a time when the _Bonaparte Fever_ was yet making some of the pulses of the Parisians beat 85 strokes to the minute. _Now_, his Majesty Charles X. will smile as readily at this anecdote as did the incomparable Librarian of his Regal Predecessor. [INTRODUCTION TO LETTER VIII.] Before entering upon the perusal of this memorable Letter--which, in the previous edition, was numbered LETTER XXX,--(owing to the Letters having been numbered consecutively from the beginning to the end) I request the Reader's attention to a few preliminary remarks, which may possibly guide him to form a more correct estimate of its real character. MONS. LICQUET having published a French version of my Ninth Letter, descriptive of the Public Library at Rouen, (and to which an allusion has been made in vol. i. p. 99.) MONS. CRAPELET (see p. 1, ante) undertook a version of the _ensuing_ Letter: of which he printed _one hundred copies_. Both translations were printed in M. Crapelet's office, to arrange, in type and form of publication, as much as possible with my own; so that, if the _intrinsic_ merit of these versions could not secure purchasers, the beauty of the paper and of the press work (for both are very beautiful) might contribute to their circulation. To the version of M. Crapelet[120] was prefixed a _Preface_, combining such a mixture of malignity and misconception, that I did not hesitate answering it, in a privately printed tract, entitled "A ROLAND FOR AN OLIVER." Of this Tract, "only _thirty-six copies were printed_." "So much the better for the Author"--says M. Crapelet. The sequel will shew. In the publication of the _entire_ version of my Tour, by M.M. Licquet and Crapelet, the translation of this VIIIth Letter appears as it did in the previous publication--with the exception of the omission of the _Preface_: but in lieu of which, there is another and a short preface, by M. Crapelet, to the third volume, where, after telling his readers that his previous attempt had excited my "holy wrath," he seems to rejoice in the severity of those criticisms, which, in certain of our _own_ public Journals, have been passed upon my subsequent bibliographical labours. With these criticisms I have here nothing to do. If the authors of them can reconcile them to their own good sense and subsequent reflections, and the Public to their own INDEPENDENCE of JUDGMENT, the voice of remonstrance will be ineffectual. Time will strike the balance between the Critic and the Author: and without pretending to explore the mysteries of an occasional _getting-up_ of Reviews of particular articles, I think I can speak in the language of justice, as well as of confidence, of the Author of ONE of these reviews, by a quotation from the _Ajax Flagellifer_ of SOPHOCLES. [Greek: Blepô gar echthron phôta, kai tach' an kakois Gelôn, ha dê kakourgos exikoit' anêr.--] To return to M. Crapelet; and to have done with him. The _motive_ for his undertaking the version of this memorable Letter, about "BOOKSELLERS, PRINTERS, and BOOKBINDERS at Paris," seems to be wholly inconceivable; since the logic of the undertaking would be as follows. BECAUSE I have spoken favourably of the whole typographical fraternity--and because, in particular, of M. Crapelet, his _Ménage_, and Madame who is at the head of it--_because_ I have lauded his Press equally with his Cellar--THEREFORE the "_un_holy wrath" of M. Crapelet is excited; and he cannot endure the freedom taken by the English traveller. It would be abusing the confidence reposed in me by written communications, from characters of the first respectability, were I to make public a few of the sentiments contained in them--expressive of surprise and contempt at the performance of the French typographer. But in mercy to my adversary, he shall be spared the pain of their perusal. [120] [A young stranger, a Frenchman--living near the mountainous solitudes between Lyons and the entrance into Italy--and ardently attached to the study of bibliography--applied himself, under the guidance of a common friend--dear to us both from the excellence of his head and heart--to a steady perusal of the _Bibliographical Decameron_, and the _Tour_. He mastered both works within a comparatively short time. He then read _A Roland for an Oliver_--and voluntarily tendered to me his French translation of it. How successfully the whole has been accomplished, may be judged from the following part--being the version of my preface only. OBSERVATION PRELIMINAIRE. "La production de M. Crapelet rappelée, dans le titre précédent, sera considérée comme un phénomène dans son genre. Elle est, certes, sans antécédent et, pour l'honneur de la France, je desire qu'elle n'ait pas d'imitateurs. Quiconque prendra la peine de lire la trentième lettre de mon voyage, soit dans l'original, soit dans la version de M. Crapelet, en laissant de coté les notes qui appartiennent an traducteur, conviendra facilement que cette lettre manifeste les sentimens les plus impartiaux et les plus honorables à l'état actuel de la librairie et de l'imprimerie à Paris. Dans plusieurs passages, où l'on compare l'éxécution typographique, dans les deux pays, la supériorité est décidée en faveur de la France. Quant a _l'esprit_ qui a dicté cette lettre, je déclare, comme homme d'honneur, ne l'avoir pas composée, dans un systême d'opposition, envers ceux qu'elle concerne plus particulièrement. "Cependant, il n'en a pas moins plu à M. Crapelet, imprimeur de Paris, l'un de ceux dont il y est fait plus spécialement l'éloge, d'accompagner sa traduction de cette lettre, de notes déplacées et injurieuses pour le caractère de l'auteur et de son ouvrage. Par suite probablement du peu d'étendue de ses idées et de l'organisation vicieuse de ses autres sens, ce typographe s'est livré a une séries d'observations qui outragent autant la raison que la politesse, et qui décèlent hautement sa malignité et sa noirceur. Les formes de son procédé ne sont pas moins méprisables que le fond. Avec la prétention avouée de ne répandre que partiellement sa version, (Voulant blesser et cependant timide pour frapper) il s'est servi de ses propres presses et il a imprimé le texte et les notes avec des caractères et sur un papier aussi semblables que possible à ceux de l'ouvrage qu'il venait de traduire. Il en a surveillé, a ce qu'on assure, l'impression, avec l'attention personelle la plus scrupuleuse, en sorte qu'il n'est aucune _epreuvé égarée_, qui ait été soumise à d'autres yeux que les siens. Il a prit soin, en outre, d'en faire tirer, au moins, cent exemplaires, et de les répandre.[C] Comme ces cent exemplaires seront probablement lus par dix fois le même nombre de personnes, il y aurait eu plus de franchisé et peut-être plus de bon sens de la part de M. Crapelet à diriger publiquement ses coups contre moi que de le faire sous la couverture d'un _pamphlet privé_. Il a fait choix de ce genre d'attaque; il ne me reste plus qu'à adopter une semblable méthode de défense: si ce n'est, qu'au lieu de cent exemplaires, ces remarques ne seront véritablement imprimée qu'a _trente six_. Ce procédé est certes plus délicat que celui de mon adversaire; mais soit que M. Crapelet ait préféré l'obscurité à la lumière, il n'en est pas moins évident que son intention a été d'employer tous ses petits moyens, a renverser la réputation d'un ouvrage, dont il avoue lui-même avoir à peine lu la cinquantième partie! "Par le contenu de ses notes, on voit qu'il a cherché, avec une assiduité condamnable, a recueillir le mal qu'il me suppose avoir eu l'intention de dire des personnes que j'ai citées, et cependant, après tout ce travail, a peine a-t-il pû découvrir l'ombre d'une seule allusion maligne. Jamais on ne fit un usage plus déplorable de son tems et de ses peines, car toutes les phrases de cette production sont aussi obscures que tirées de loin. "Il est difficile, ainsi que je l'ai déjà observé, de se rendre compte des motifs d'une telle conduite. Mais M. Crapelet n'a fait part de son secret à personne, et d'après l'échantillon dont il s'agit ici, je n'ai nulle envie de le lui demander. T.F.D. "J'avais eu d'abord l'intention de relever chacunes des notes de M. Crapelet, mais de plus mûres réfléxions m'ont fait connaitre l'absurdité d'une telle enterprise. Je m'en suis donc tenu à la préface, sans toutefois, ainsi que le lecteur pourra s'en appercevoir, laisser tomber dans l'oubli le mérite des notes. Encore un mot; M. Crapelet m'a attaqué et je me suis défendu. Il peut récommencer, si cela lui fait plaisir; mais désormais je ne lui répondrai que par le silence et le mépris." [C] "M. Crapelet, en sa qualité de critique, a mis ici du raffinement; car je soupçonne qu'il y a eu au moins vingt cinq exemplaires tirés sur papier vélin. C'est ainsi qu'il sait dorer sa pillule, pour la rendre plus présentable aux dignes amis de l'auteur, les bibliophiles de Paris. Mais ces Messieurs ont trop bon gout pour l'accepter. _LETTER VIII._ SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LATE ABBÉ RIVE. BOOKSELLERS. PRINTERS. BOOK-BINDERS. I make no doubt that the conclusion of my last letter has led you to expect a renewal of the BOOK THEME: but rather, I should hope, as connected with those Bibliographers, Booksellers, and Printers, who have for so many years shed a sort of lustre upon _Parisian Literature_. It will therefore be no unappropriate continuation of this subject, if I commence by furnishing you with some particulars respecting a Bibliographer who was considered, in his life time, as the terror of his acquaintance, and the pride of his patron: and who seems to have never walked abroad, or sat at home, without a scourge in one hand, and a looking-glass in the other. Droll combination!-- you will exclaim. But it is of the ABBÉ RIVE of whom I now speak; the very _Ajax flagellifer_ of the bibliographical tribe, and at the same time the vainest and most self-sufficient. He seems, amidst all the controversy in which he delighted to be involved, to have always had _one_ never-failing source of consolation left:--that of seeing himself favourably reflected-- from the recollection of his past performances--in the mirror of his own conceit! I have before[121] descanted somewhat upon probably the most splendid of his projected performances, and now hasten to a more particular account of the man himself. It was early one morning--before I had even commenced my breakfast--that a stranger was announced to me. And who, think you, should that stranger turn out to be? Nothing less than the _Nephew_ of the late Abbé Rive. His name was MORENAS. His countenance was somewhat like that which Sir Thomas More describes the hero of his Utopia to have had. It was hard, swarthy, and severe. He seemed in every respect to be "a travelled man." But his manners and voice were mild and conciliating. "Some one had told him that I had written about the Abbé Rive, and that I was partial to his work. Would I do him the favour of a visit? when I might see, at his house, (_Rue du Vieux Colombier, près St. Sulpice_) the whole of the Abbé's MSS. and all his projected works for the press. They were for sale. Possibly I might wish to possess them?" I thanked the stranger for his intelligence, and promised I would call that same morning. M. Morenas has been indeed a great traveller. When I called, I found him living up two pair of stairs, preparing for another voyage to Senegal. He was surrounded by _trunks_ ... in which were deposited the literary remains of his uncle. In other words, these remains consisted of innumerable _cards_, closely packed, upon which the Abbé had written all his memoranda relating to ... I scarcely know what. But the whole, from the nephew's statement, seemed to be an encyclopædia of knowledge. In one trunk, were about _six thousand_ notices of MSS. of all ages; and of editions in the fifteenth century. In another trunk, were wedged about _twelve thousand_ descriptions of books in all languages, except those of French and Italian, from the sixteenth century to his own period: these were professed to be accompanied with critical notes. In a third trunk was a bundle of papers relating to the _History of the Troubadours_; in a fourth, was a collection of memoranda and literary sketches, connected with the invention of Arts and Sciences, with Antiquities, Dictionaries, and pieces exclusively bibliographical. A fifth trunk contained between _two and three thousand_ cards, written upon on each side, respecting a collection of prints; describing the ranks, degrees, and dignities of all nations--of which eleven folio _cahiers_ were published, in 1779--without the letter-press-- but in a manner to make the Abbé extremely dissatisfied with the engraver. In a sixth trunk were contained his papers respecting earthquakes, volcanoes, and geographical subjects: so that, you see, the Abbé Rive at least fancied himself a man of tolerably universal attainments. It was of course impossible to calculate the number, or to appreciate the merits, of such a multifarious collection; but on asking M. Morenas if he had made up his mind respecting the _price_ to be put upon it, he answered, that he thought he might safely demand 6000 francs for such a body of miscellaneous information. I told him that this was a sum much beyond my means to adventure; but that it was at least an object worthy of the consideration of the "higher powers" of his own government. He replied, that he had little hopes of success in those quarters: that he was anxious to resume his travels; talked of another trip to Senegal; for that, after so locomotive a life, a sedentary one was wearisome to him.... ... "trahit sua quemque voluptas!" Over the chimney-piece was a portrait, in pencil, of his late uncle: done from the life. It was the only one extant. It struck me indeed as singularly indicative of the keen, lively, penetrating talents of the original. On the back of the portrait were the lines which are here subjoined: _Dès sa plus tendre enfance aux études livré, La soif de la science l'a toujours dévoré. Une immense lecture enrichit ses écrits, Et la critique sure en augmente le prix._ These lines are copied from the _Journal des Savans_ for October 1779. Iean Joseph Rive was born at Apt, in 1730, and died at Marseilles in 1791. He had doubtless great parts, natural and acquired: a retentive memory, a quick perception, and a vast and varied reading. He probably commenced amassing his literary treasures as early as his fourteenth year; and to his latest breath he pursued his researches with unabated ardour. But his career was embittered by broils and controversies; while the frequent acts of kindness, and the general warmth of heart, evinced in his conduct, hardly sufficed to soften the asperity, or to mitigate the wrath, of a host of enemies--which assailed him to the very last. But Cadmus-like, he sowed the seeds from which these combatants sprung. Whatever were his defects, as a public character, he is said to have been, in private, a kind parent, a warm friend, and an excellent master. The only servant which he ever had, and who remained with him twenty-four years, mourned his loss as that of a father. Peace to his ashes! From bibliography let me gently, and naturally, as it were, conduct you towards BIBLIOPOLISM. In other words, allow me to give you a sketch of a few of the principal Booksellers in this gay metropolis; who strive, by the sale of instructive and curious tomes, sometimes printed in the black letter of _Gourmont_ and _Marnef_, to stem the torrent of those trivial or mischievous productions which swarm about the avenues of the Palais Royal. In ancient times, the neighbourhood of the SORBONNE was the great mart for books. When I dined in this neighbourhood, with my friend M. Gail, the Greek Professor at the College Royale, I took an opportunity of leisurely examining this once renowned quarter. I felt even proud and happy to walk the streets, or rather tread the earth, which had been once trodden by _Gering_, _Crantz_, and _Fiburger_.[122] Their spirits seemed yet to haunt the spot:--but no volume, nor even traces of one--executed at their press-- could be discovered. To have found a perfect copy of _Terence_, printed in their first Roman character, would have been a _trouvaille_ sufficiently lucky to have compensated for all previous toil, and to have franked me as far as Strasbourg. The principal mart for booksellers, of old and second hand books, is now nearer the Seine; and especially in the _Quai des Augustins_. _Messrs. Treuttel and Würtz, Panckoucke, Renouard_, and _Brunet_, live within a quarter of a mile of each other: about a couple of hundred yards from the _Quai des Augustins_. Further to the south, and not far from the Hotel de Clugny, in the _Rue Serpente_, live the celebrated DEBURE. They are booksellers to the King, and to the Royal Library; and a more respectable house, or a more ancient firm, is probably not to be found in Europe. Messrs. Debure are as straight-forward, obliging, and correct, in their transactions, as they are knowing in the value, and upright in the sale, of their stock in trade. No bookseller in Paris possesses a more judicious stock, or can point to so many rare and curious books. A young collector may rely with perfect safety upon them; and accumulate, for a few hundred pounds, a very respectable stock of _Editiones principes_ or _rarissimæ_. I do not say that such young collector would find them _cheaper there_, or _so cheap_ as in _Pall-Mall_; but I do say that he may rest assured that Messieurs Debure would never, knowingly, sell him an imperfect book. Of the Debure, there are two brothers: of whom the elder hath a most gallant propensity to _portrait-collecting_--and is even rich in portraits relating to _our_ history. Of course the chief strength lies in French history; and I should think that Monsieur Debure l'ainé shewed me almost as many portraits of Louis XIV. as there are editions of the various works of Cicero in the fifteenth century.[123] But my attention was more particularly directed to a certain boudoir, up one pair of stairs, in which Madame Debure, their venerable and excellent mother, chooses to deposit some few very choice copies of works in almost every department of knowledge. There was about _one_ of the _best_ editions in each department: and whether it were the Bible, or the History of the Bucaineers--whether a lyrical poet of the reign of Louis XIV. or the ballad metres of that of François Premier ... there you found it!--bound by Padaloup, or Deseuille, or De Rome. What think you, among these "choice copies," of the _Cancionero Generale_ printed at Toledo in 1527, in the black letter, double columned, in folio? Enough to madden even our poet-laureat--for life! I should add, that these books are not thus carefully kept together for the sake of _shew_: for their owner is a fair good linguist, and can read the Spanish with tolerable fluency. Long may she yet read it.[124] The Debure had the selling, by auction, of the far-famed M'CARTHY LIBRARY; and I saw upon their shelves some of the remains of that splendid membranaceous collection. Indeed I bought several desirable specimens of it: among them, a fine copy of _Vindelin de Spira's_ edition (1471) of _St. Cyprians Epistles_, UPON VELLUM.[125] Like their leading brethren in the neighbourhood, Messieurs Debure keep their country house, and there pass the Sabbath. The house of TREUTTEL and WURTZ is one of the richest and one of the most respectable in Europe. The commerce of that House is chiefly in the wholesale way; and they are, in particular, the publishers and proprietors of all the great classical works put forth at _Strasbourg_. Indeed, it was at this latter place where the family first took root: but the branches of their prosperity have spread to Paris and to London with nearly equal luxuriance. They have a noble house in the _Rue de Bourbon_, no. 17: like unto an hotel; where each day's post brings them despatches from the chief towns in Europe. Their business is regulated with care, civility, and dispatch; and their manners are at once courteous and frank. Nothing would satisfy them but I must spend a Sabbath with them, at their country house at _Groslai_; hard by the village and vale of Montmorenci. I assented willingly. On the following Sunday, their capacious family coach, and pair of sleek, round, fat black horses, arrived at my lodgings by ten o'clock; and an hour and three quarters brought me to Groslai. The cherries were ripe, and the trees were well laden with fruit: for Montmorenci cherries, as you may have heard, are proverbial for their excellence. I spent a very agreeable day with mine hosts. Their house is large and pleasantly situated, and the view of Paris from thence is rather picturesque. But I was most struck with the conversation and conduct of Madame Treuttel. She is a thoroughly good woman. She has raised, at her own expense, an alms-house in the village for twelve poor men; and built a national school for the instruction of the poor and ignorant of both sexes. She is herself a Lutheran Protestant; as are her husband and her son-in-law M. Würtz. At first, she had some difficulties to encounter respecting the _school_; and sundry conferences with the village Curé, and some of the head clergy of Paris, were in consequence held. At length all difficulties were surmounted by the promise given, on the part of Madame Treuttel, to introduce only the French version of the Bible by _De Sacy_. Hence the school was built, and the children of the village flocked in numbers to it for instruction. I visited both the alms-house and the school, and could not withhold my tribute of hearty commendation at the generosity, and thoroughly Christian spirit, of the foundress of such establishments. There is more good sense and more private and public virtue, in the application of superfluous wealth in this manner, than in the erection of a hundred palaces like that at _Versailles!_[126] A different, and a more touching object presented itself to my view in the garden. Walking with Madame, we came, through various détours, into a retired and wooded part: where, on opening a sort of wicket gate, I found myself in a small square space, with hillocks in the shape of _tumuli_ before me. A bench was at the extremity. It was a resting place for the living, and a depository of the dead. Flowers, now a good deal faded, were growing upon these little mounds--beneath which the dead seemed to sleep in peace. "What might this mean?" "Sir," replied Madame Treuttel, "this is consecrated ground. My son-in-law sleeps here--and his only and beloved child lies by the side of him. You will meet my daughter, his wife, at dinner. She, with myself, visit this spot at stated seasons--when we renew and indulge our sorrows on the recollection of those who sleep beneath. These are losses which the world can never repair. We all mean to be interred within the same little fenced space.[127] I have obtained a long lease of it--for some fifty years: at the expiration of which time, the work of dissolution will be sufficiently complete with us all." So spake my amiable and enlightened guide. The remainder of the day--during which we took a stroll to Montmorenci, and saw the house and gardens where Rousseau wrote his _Emile_--was spent in a mixed but not irrational manner: much accordant with my own feelings, and most congenial with a languid state of body which had endured the heats of Paris for a month, without feeling scarcely a breath of air the whole time. ANTOINE-AUGUSTIN RENOUARD, living in the _Rue St. André des Arts_, is the next bibliopolist whom I shall introduce to your attention. He is among the most lynx-eyed of his fraternity: has a great knowledge of books; a delightful ALDINE LIBRARY;[128]--from which his Annals of the Aldine Press were chiefly composed--and is withal a man in a great and successful line of business. I should say he is a rich man; not because he has five hundred bottles of Burgundy in his cellar, which some may think to be of a more piquant quality than the like number of his _Alduses_--but because he has published some very beautiful and expensive editions of the Latin and French Classics, with equal credit to himself and advantage to his finances.[129] He _debuted_ with a fine edition of _Lucan_ in 1795, folio; and the first catalogue of his books was put forth the following year. From that moment to the present, he has never slackened head, hand, or foot, in the prosecution of his business; while the publication of his _Annals of the Aldine Press_ places him among the most skilful and most instructive booksellers in Europe. It is indeed a masterly performance: and as useful as it is elegantly printed.[130] M. Renouard is now occupied in an improved edition of _Voltaire_, which he means to adorn with engravings; and of which he shewed me the original drawings by Moreau, with many of the plates.[131] He seems in high spirits about the success of it, and leans with confidence upon the strength of a host of subscribers. Nor does a rival edition, just struggling into day, cause him to entertain less sanguine expectations of final success. This enterprising bookseller is now also busily occupied about a _Descriptive Catalogue of his own library_, in which he means to indulge himself in sundry gossipping notes, critical disquisitions, and piquant anecdotes. I look forward with pleasure to its appearance; and turn a deaf ear to the whispers which have reached me of an intended _brush_ at the Decameron.[132] M. Renouard has allowed me free access to his library; which also contains some very beautiful copies of books printed in the fifteenth century. Among these latter, his VELLUM VALDARFER is of course considered, by himself and his friends, as the _keimelion_ of the collection. It is the edition of the _Orations of Cicero_, printed by Valdarfer, at Venice, in 1471, folio: a most exquisite book--which may be fairly considered as perfect throughout. It is in its second binding, but _that_ may be as old as the time of Francis I.: perhaps about the middle of the sixteenth century. This copy measures thirteen inches in height, by eight inches and seven-eighths in width:--almost, I conceive, in its original state of amplitude. I will frankly own that I turned over the leaves of this precious book, again and again--"sighed and looked, &c." "But would no price tempt the owner to part with it?" "None. It is reserved as the bijou of my catalogue, and departs not from hence." Severe, but just decree! There is only one other known copy of it upon vellum, which is in the Royal Library[133]--but which wants a leaf of the table; an imperfection, not belonging to the present copy. The other "great guns," as VELLUM BOOKS, in the collection of M. Renouard, are what is called the _Familiar Epistles of Cicero_ printed by _Aldus_ in 1502, 12mo: and the _Petrarch_ of 1514, 8vo. also printed by Aldus. Of these, the _latter_ is by much the preferable volume. It is almost as large as it can well be: but badly bound in red morocco.[134] The Cicero is short and sallow-looking. It was on the occasion of his son starting for the first time on a bibliographical tour, and, on crossing the Rhine, and finding this Cicero and the almost equally rare _Aldine Virgil_ of 1505, that a relation of this "fortunate youth" invoked his muse in some few verses, which he printed and gave to me.[135] These are little "plaisanteries" which give a relish to our favourite pursuits; and which may at some future day make the son transcend the father in bibliographical renown. Perhaps the father has already preferred a prayer upon the subject, as thus: [Greek: Zeu, alloi te Theoi, dote dê kai tonde genesthai Paid emon ôs kai egô per, ....] There are some few noble volumes, from the press of _Sweynheym and Pannartz_, in this collection; and the finest copy of the FIRST LUCIAN in Greek, which perhaps any where exists.[136] It was obtained at a recent sale, (where it was coated in a lapping-over vellum surtout) at a pretty smart price; and has been recently clothed in blue morocco. M. Renouard has also some beautiful copies from the library of _De Thou_, and a partly uncut _Aldine Theophrastus_ of 1497, which belonged to Henry the Second and Diane de Poictiers; as well as a completely uncut copy of the first _Aldine Aristotle_.[137] Few men probably have been luckier in obtaining several of their choice articles; and the little anecdotes which he related to me, are such as I make no doubt will appear in the projected catalogue raisonné of his library. He is just now briskly engaged in the pursuit of _uncut Elzevirs_ ... and coming to breakfast with me, the other morning, he must needs pick up a beautiful copy of this kind, in two small volumes, neatly half bound, (of which I have forgotten the title,) and of which he had been for some time in the pursuit. M. Renouard also took occasion to tell me that, in his way to my chambers, he had sold, or subscribed, of a forthcoming work to be published by him--just _nine hundred and ninety-nine copies!_ Of course, after such a _trouvaille_ and such a subscription, he relished his breakfast exceedingly. He is a man of quick movements, of acute perceptions, of unremitting ardour and activity of mind and body-- constantly engaged in his business, managing a very extensive correspondence, and personally known to the most distinguished Collectors of Italy. Like his neighbours, he has his country-house, or rather farm, in Picardy[138] whither he retires, occasionally to view the condition and growing strength of that species of animal, from the backs of which his beloved Aldus of old, obtained the _matériel_ for his vellum copies. But it is time to wish M. Renouard a good morning, and to take you with me to his neighbour-- MONS. BRUNET, THE YOUNGER. This distinguished bibliographer, rather than bookseller, lives hard by--in the _Rue Gît-Le-Coeur_. He lives with his father, who superintends the business of the shop. The Rue Gît-Le-Coeur is a sorry street--very diminutive, and a sort of cropt copy--to what it should have been, or what it might have been. However, there lives JACQ. CH. BRUNET, FILS: a writer, who will be known to the latest times in the bibliographical world. He will be also thanked as well as known; for his _Manuel du Libraire_ is a performance of incomparable utility to all classes of readers and collectors. You mount up one pair of stairs:--the way is gloomy, and might well lead to a chamber in the monastery of La Trappe. You then read an incription, which tells you that "in turning the button you pull the bell." The bell sounds, and _Mons. Brunet, Pere_, receives you--with, or without, a silken cap upon his head. He sits in a small room, sufficiently well filled with books. "Is the Son at home?" "Open that door, Sir, you will find him in the next room." The door is immediately opened--and there sits the son, surrounded by, and almost imprisoned in, papers and books. His pen is in his hand: his spectacles are upon his nose: and he is transcribing or re-casting some precious little bit of bibliographical intelligence; while, on looking up and receiving you, he seems to be "full of the labouring God!" In short, he is just now deeply and unintermittingly engaged in a new and _third_ edition of his _Manuel_.[139] The shelves of his room almost groan beneath the weight of those writers from whom he gathers his principal materials. "Vous voilà, Mons. Brunet, bien occupé!;" "Oui, Monsieur, cela me fait autant de plaisir que de peine." This is a very picture of the man.... "The labour we delight in physics pain,"--said Lady Macbeth of old; and of a most extraordinary kind must the labour of Mons. Brunet be considered, when the pleasure in the prosecution of it balances the pain. We talked much and variously at our first interview: having previously interchanged many civilities by letter, and myself having been benefitted by such correspondence, in the possession of a _large paper_ copy of his first edition--of which he was pleased to make me a present, and of which only twenty copies were struck off. I told him that I had given Charles Lewis a carte blanche for its binding, and that I would back _his_ skill--the result of such an order--against any binding at that time visible in any quarter of Paris! Mons. B. could not, in his heart, have considered any other binding superior. He told me, somewhat to my astonishment, and much to my gratification, that, of the first edition of his _Manuel_, he had printed and sold _two thousand_ copies. This could never have been done in our country: because, doubting whether it would have been so accurately printed, it could never have been published, in the same elegant manner, for the same price. The charges of our printers would have been at least double. In the typographical execution of it, M. Crapelet has almost outdone himself. Reverting to the author, I must honestly declare that he has well merited all he has gained, and will well merit all the gains which are in store for him. His application is severe, constant, and of long continuance. He discards all ornament,[140] whether graphic or literary. He is never therefore digressive; having only a simple tale to tell, and that tale being almost always _well_ and _truly_ told.[141] In his opinions, he is firm and rational, and sometimes a little pugnacious in the upholding of them. But he loves only to breathe in a bibliographical element, and is never happier than when he has detected some error, or acquired some new information; especially if it relate to an _Editio Princeps_.[142] There is also something very naïf and characteristic in his manner and conversation. He copies no one; and may be said to be a citizen of the world. In short, he has as little _nationality_ in his opinions and conversation, as any Frenchman with whom I have yet conversed. Thus much for the leading booksellers of Paris on the south side of the Seine: or, indeed, I may say in the whole city. But, because the south is a warm and genial aspect in the bringing forth of all species of productions, it does not necessarily follow that ... there should be _no_ bibliopolistic vegetation on the _north_ side of the Seine. Prepare therefore to be introduced to MONS. CHARDIN, in the _Rue St. Anne_, no. 19; running nearly at right angles with the _Rue St. Honoré_, not far from the _Eglise St. Roq._ M. Chardin is the last surviving remains of the OLD SCHOOL of booksellers in Paris; and as I love antiquities of almost all kinds, I love to have a little occasional gossip with M. Chardin. A finer old man, with a more characteristic physiognomy, hath not appeared in France from the time of Gering downwards. M. Chardin is above the mean height; is usually attired in a rocquelaure; and his fine flowing grey locks are usually surmounted by a small black silk cap. His countenance is penetrating, but mild: and he has a certain air of the "Old School" about him, which is always, to my old-fashioned taste, interesting and pleasing. In his youth he must have been handsome, and his complexion is yet delicate. But good old M. Chardin is an oddity in his way. He physics "according to the book"--that is, according to the Almanack; although I should think he had scarcely one spare ounce of blood in his veins. Phlebotomy is his "dear delight." He is always complaining, and yet expects to be always free from complaint. But Madame will have it so, and Monsieur is consenting. He lives on the floor just above the entresol, and his two or three small apartments are gaily furnished with books. The interior is very interesting; for his chief treasures are locked up within glazed cabinets, which display many a rich and rare article. These cabinets are beautifully ornamented: and I do assure you that it is but justice to their owner to say, that they contain many an article which does credit to his taste. This taste consists principally in a love of ornamented MSS. and printed books UPON VELLUM, in general very richly bound.[143] It is scarcely seven years ago since M. Chardin published an octavo catalogue, of nearly two hundred pages, of MSS. and printed books ... all upon vellum. He has been long noted for rarities of this kind. "Il n'y a que des livres rares" is his constant exclamation--as you open his glazed doors, and stretch forth your hand to take down his treasures. He is the EDWARDS of France, but upon a smaller scale of action. Nor does he push his _wares_, although he does his _prices_. You may buy or not, but you must _pay_ for what you _do_ buy. There is another oddity about this courteous and venerable bibliopolist. He has a great passion for making his _Alduses_ perfect by means of _manuscript_; and I must say, that, supposing this plan to be a good one, he has carried it into execution in a surprisingly perfect manner: for you can scarcely, by candle-light, detect the difference between what is printed and what is executed with a pen. I think it was the whole of the _Scholia_ attached to the Aldine _Discorides_, in folio, and a great number of leaves in the _Grammatical Institutes of Urbanus_, of 1497, 4to. with several other smaller volumes, which I saw thus rendered perfect: How any scribe can be sufficiently paid for such toil, is to me inconceivable: and how it can answer the purpose of any bookseller so to complete his copies, is also equally unaccountable: for be it known, that good M. Chardin leaves _you_ to make the _discovery_ of the MS. portion; and when you _have_ made it,--he innocently subjoins--"Oui, Monsieur, n'est il pas beau?" In a sort of passage, between his principal shew-room and his bed room, is contained a very large collection of tracts and printed volumes relating to the FAIR SEX: being, in fact, nothing less than a prodigious heap of publications "FOR and AGAINST" the ladies. M. Chardin will not separate them--adding that the "bane and antidote must always go together." This singular character is also vehemently attached to antiquarian _nick-knackery_. Old china, old drawings, old paintings, old carvings, and old relics--of whatever kind--are surveyed by him with a curious eye, and purchased with a well-laden purse. He never speaks of GOUJIN but in raptures. We made an exchange the other day. M. Chardin hath no small variety of walking canes. He visited me at the Hôtel one morning, leaning upon a fine dark bamboo-stick, which was _headed_ by an elaborately carved piece of ivory--the performance of the said Goujon. It consisted of a recumbent female, (with a large flapped hat on) of which the head was supported by a shield of coat armour.[144] We struck a bargain in five minutes. He presented me the _stick_, on condition of my presenting him with a choice copy of the _Ædes Althorpianæ_. We parted well satisfied with each other; but I suspect that the purchase of about four-score pounds worth of books, added much to the satisfaction on his part. Like all his brethren of the same craft, M. Chardin disports himself on Saturdays and Sundays at his little "ferme ornée," within some four miles of Paris-- having, as he gaily told me "nothing now to do but to make poesies for the fair sex."[145] With Chardin I close my bibliopolistic narrative; not meaning thereby to throw other booksellers into the least degree of shade, but simply to transmit to you an account of such as I have seen and have transacted business with. And now, prepare for some account of PRINTERS ... or rather of _three presses_ only,--certainly the most distinguished in Paris. I mean those of the DIDOT and that of M. CRAPELET. The name of Didot will last as long as learning and taste shall last in any quarter of the globe: nor am I sure, after all, that what _Bodoni, Bensley_, and _Bulmer_ have done, collectively, has redounded _more_ to the credit of their countries than what Didot has achieved for France. In ancient classical literature, however, Bodoni has a right to claim an exception and a superiority. The elder, _Pierre Didot_, is Printer to his Majesty. But when Pierre Didot l'ainé chose to adopt his _own_ fount of letter--how exquisitely does his skill appear in the folio _Virgil_ of 1798, and yet more, perhaps, in the folio Horace of 1799!? These are books which never have been, and never _can_ be, eclipsed. Yet I own that the Horace, from the enchanting vignettes of _Percier_, engraved by Girardais, is to my taste the preferable volume.[146] FIRMIN DIDOT now manages the press in the _Rué Jacob;_ and if he had never executed any thing but the _Lusiad_ of _Camoens_, his name would be worthy to go down to posterity by the side of that of his uncle. The number of books printed and published by the Didots is almost incredible; especially of publications in the Latin and French languages. Of course I include the _Stereotype_ productions: which are very neat and very commodious--but perhaps the page has rather too dazzling an effect. I paid a visit the other day to the office of Firmin Didot; who is a letter founder "as well as a printer.[147] To a question which I asked the nephew, (I think) respecting the number of copies and sizes, of the famous _Lusiad_ just mentioned, he answered, that there were only _two hundred_ copies, and those only of _one size_. Let that suffice to comfort those who are in terror of having the small paper, and to silence such as try to depreciate the value of the book, from the supposed additional number of copies struck off. I wished to know the costs and charges of _printing_, &c.--from which the comparative price of labour in the two countries might be estimated. M. Didot told me that the entire charges for printing, and pulling, one thousand copies of a full octavo size volume--containing thirty lines in a page, in a middle-size-letter--including _every thing_ but _paper_--was thirty-five francs per sheet. I am persuaded that such a thing could not be done at home under very little short of double the price:--whether it be that our printers, including the most respectable, are absolutely more extravagant in their charges, or that the wages of the compositors are double those which are given in France. After Didot, comes CRAPELET--in business, skill, and celebrity. He is himself a very pleasant, unaffected man; scarcely thirty-six; and likely, in consequence, to become the richest printer in Paris. I have visited him frequently, and dined with him once--when he was pleased to invite some agreeable, well-informed, and gentlemanly guests to meet me. Among them was a M. REY, who has written "_Essais Historiques et Critiques sur Richard III. Roi d'Angleterre_," just printed in a handsome octavo volume by our Host. Our conversation, upon the whole; was mixed; agreeable, and instructive. Madame Crapelet, who is at this moment (as I should conjecture) perhaps pretty equally divided between her twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth year, and who may be classed among the prettier ladies of Paris, did the honours of the fête in a very agreeable manner: nor can it be a matter of surprise that the choicest Chambertin and Champagne sparkled upon the table of _one_--who, during the libations of his guests; had the tympans and friskets of _twenty-two Presses_ in full play![148] We retired, after dinner, into a spacious drawing room to coffee and liqueurs: and anon, to a further room, wherein was a BOOK-CASE filled by some of the choicest specimens of the press of its owner, as well as of other celebrated printers. I have forgotten what we took down or what we especially admired: but, to a question respecting the _present_ state of business, as connected with _literature_ and _printing_, at Paris, M. Crapelet replied (as indeed, if I remember rightly, M. Didot did also) that "matters never went on better." Reprints even of old authors were in agitation: and two editions of _Montaigne_ were at that moment going on in his own house. I complimented M. Crapelet--and with equal sincerity and justice--upon the typographical execution of M. Brunet's _Manuel du Libraire_. No printer in our own country, could have executed it more perfectly. "What might have been the charge per sheet?" My host received the compliment very soberly and properly; and gave me a general item about the expense of printing and paper, &c., which really surprised me; and returned it with a warm eulogy upon the paper and press-work of a recent publication from the _Shakspeare press_--which, said he, "I despair of excelling." "And then (added he), your prettily executed vignettes, and larger prints! In France this branch of the art is absolutely not understood[149]--and besides, we cannot publish books at _your_ prices!" We must now bid adieu to the types of M. Crapelet below stairs, and to his "good cheer" above; and with him take our leave of Parisian booksellers and printers.[150] What then remains, in the book way, worthy of especial notice? Do you ask this question? I will answer it in a trice--BOOK-BINDING. Yes ... some few hours of my residence in this metropolis have been devoted to an examination of this _seductive_ branch of book commerce. And yet I have not seen--nor am I likely to see--one single binder: either _Thouvenin, or Simier, or Braidel, or Lesné_. I am not sure whether Courteval, or either of the Bozérians, be living: but their _handy works_ live and are lauded in every quarter of Paris. The restorer, or the Father, (if you prefer this latter appellative) of modern Book-binding in France, was the Elder Bozérian: of whose productions the book-amateurs of Paris are enthusiastically fond. Bozérian undoubtedly had his merits;[151] but he was fond of gilt tooling to excess. His ornaments are too minute and too profuse; and moreover, occasionally, very unskilfully worked. His choice of morocco is not always to my taste; while his joints are neither carefully measured, nor do they play easily; and his linings are often gaudy to excess. He is however hailed as the legitimate restorer of that taste in binding, which delighted the purchasers in the Augustan age of book-collecting. One merit must not be denied him: his boards are usually square, and well measured. His volumes open well, and are beaten ... too unmercifully. It is the reigning error of French binders. They think they can never beat a book sufficiently. They exercise a tyranny over the leaves, as bad as that of eastern despots over their prostrate slaves. Let them look a little into the bindings of those volumes before described by me, in the lower regions of the Royal Library[152]--and hence learn, that, to hear the leases crackle as they are turned over, produces _nearly_ as much comfort to the thorough-bred collector, as does the prattling of the first infant to the doating parent. THOUVENIN[153] and SIMIER are now the morning and evening stars in the bibliopegistic hemisphere. Of these, Thouvenin makes a higher circle in the heavens; but Simier shines with no very despicable lustre. Their work is good, substantial, and pretty nearly in the same taste. The folio Psalter of 1502, (I think) in the Royal Library, is considered to be the _ne plus ultra_ of modern book-binding at Paris; and, if I mistake not, Thouvenin is the artist in whose charcoal furnace, the tools, which produced this _êchantillon_, were heated. I have no hesitation in saying, that, considered as an extraordinary specimen of art, it is a failure. The ornaments are common place; the lining is decidedly bad; and there is a clumsiness of finish throughout the whole. The head-bands--as indeed are those of Bozérian--are clumsily managed: and I may say that it exhibits a manifest inferiority even to the productions of Mackinlay, Hering, Clarke, and Fairbairn. Indeed either of these artists would greatly eclipse it. I learn that Thouvenin keeps books in his possession as long as does a _certain_ binder with us--- who just now shall be nameless. Of course Charles Lewis would smile complacently if you talked to _him_ about rivalling such a performance![154] There is a book-binder of the name of LESNÉ--just now occupied, as I learn, in writing a poem upon his Art[155]--who is also talked of as an artist of respectable skill. They say, however, that he _writes_ better than he _binds_. So much the worse for his little ones, if he be married. Indeed several very sensible and impartial collectors, with whom I have discoursed, also seem to think that the art of book-binding in France is just now, if not retrograding, at least stationary--and apparently incapable of being carried to a higher pitch of excellence. I doubt this very much. They can do what they have done before. And no such great conjuration is required in going even far beyond it. Let Thouvenin and Simier, and even the _Poet_ himself, examine carefully the choice of tools, and manner of gilding, used by our more celebrated binders, and they need not despair of rivalling them. Above all, let them look well to the management of the backs of their books, and especially to the headbands. The latter are in general heavy and inelegant. Let them also avoid too much choking and beating, (I use technical words--- which you understand as well as any French or English bookbinder) and especially to be square, even, and delicate in the bands; and the "Saturnia regna" of book-binding in France may speedily return. [121] _Bibliomania_; p. 79. _Bibliographical Decameron_; vol. i. p. xxii. [122] See the _Bibliographical Decameron_; vol. ii. p. 20. [123] [Consistently with the plan intended to be pursued in this edition, I annex a fac-simile of their autograph.] [Illustration] [124] [Madame Debure died a few years ago at an advanced age.] [125] [Mr. Hibbert obtained this volume from me, which will be sold at the sale of his Library in the course of this season.] [126] [Nothing can be more perfectly ridiculous and absurd than the manner in which M. Crapelet flies out at the above expression! He taunts us, poor English, with always drawing comparisons against other nations, in favour of the splendour and opulence of our own Hospitals and Charitable Foundations--a thought, that never possessed me while writing the above, and which would require the peculiar obliquity, or perversity of talents, of my translator to detect. I once thought of _dissecting_ his petulant and unprovoked note--but it is not worth blunting the edge of one's pen in the attempt.] [127] [In a few years afterwards, the body of the husband of Madame Treuttel was consigned to _this_, its _last_ earthly resting-place. M. JEAN-GEORGE TREUTTEL, died on the 14th Dec. 1825, not long after the completion of his 82d year: full of years, full of reputation, and credit, and of every sublunary comfort, to soothe those who survived him. I have before me a printed Memoir of his Obsequies--graced by the presence and by the orations of several excellent Ministers of the Lutheran persuasion: by all the branches of his numerous family; and by a great concourse of sympathising neighbours. Few citizens of the world, in the largest sense of this expression, have so adorned the particular line of life in which they have walked; and M. Treuttel was equally, to his country and to his family, an ornament of a high cast of character. "O bon et vertueux ami, que ne peut tu voir les regrets de tous ceux qui t' accompagnent à ta derniere demeure, pour te dire encore une fois à REVOIR!" _Discours_ de M. COMARTIN _Maire de Groslai_: Dec. 17.] [128] ["Delightful" as was this Library, the thought of the money for which it might sell, seems to have been more delightful. The sale of it-- consisting of 1028 articles--took place in the spring of last year, under the hammer of Mr. Evans; and a surprisingly prosperous sale it was. I would venture to stake a good round sum, that no one individual was _more_ surprized at this prosperous result than the OWNER of the Library himself. The gross produce was £2704. 1s. The net produce was such... as ought to make that said owner grateful for the spirit of competition and high liberality which marked the biddings of the purchasers. In what country but OLD ENGLAND could such a spirit have been manifested! Will Mons. Renouard, in consequence, venture upon the transportation of the _remaining_ portion of his Library hither? There is a strong feeling that he _will_. With all my heart--but let him beware of his MODERN VELLUMS!!] [129] [I shall _now_ presume to say, that M. Renouard is a "VERY rich man;" and has by this time added _another_ 500 bottles of high-flavoured Burgundy to his previous stock. The mention of M. Renouard's Burgundy has again chafed M. Crapelet: who remarks, that "it is useless to observe how ridiculous such an observation is." Then why _dwell_ upon it--and why quote three verses of Boileau to bolster up your vapid prose, Mons. G.A. Crapelet.?] [130] [The _second_ edition of this work, greatly enlarged and corrected, appeared in 1825, in 3 volumes: printed very elegantly at the son's (Paul Renouard's) office. Of this improved edition, the father was so obliging as to present me with a copy, accompanied by a letter, of which I am sure that its author will forgive the quotation of its conclusion--to which is affixed his autograph. "Quoiqu'il en soit, je vous prie de vouloir bien l'agréer comme un témoignage de nos anciennes liaisons, et d'être bien persuadé du dévouement sincere et amical avec lequel je n'ai jamais cessé d'être. Votre très humble Serviteur, [Autograph: AulAug. Renouard] [131] [Now completed in 60 volumes 8vo.: and the most copious and correct of ALL the editions of the author. It is a monument, as splendid as honourable, of the Publisher's spirit of enterprise. For particulars, consult the _Library Companion_, p. 771, edit. 1824.] [132] The year following the above description, the Catalogue, alluded to, made its appearance under the title of "_Catalogue de la Bibliothèque d'un Amateur_," in four not _very_ capacious octavo volumes: printed by CRAPELET, who finds it impossible to print--_ill_. I am very glad such a catalogue has been published; and I hope it will be at once a stimulus and a model for other booksellers, with large and curious stocks in hand, to do the same thing. But I think M. Renouard might have conveniently got the essentials of his bibliographical gossipping into _two_ volumes; particularly as, in reading such a work, one must necessarily turn rapidly over many leaves which contain articles of comparatively common occurrence, and of scarcely common interest. It is more especially in regard to _modern_ French books, of which he seems to rejoice and revel in the description--(see, among other references, vol. iii. p. 286-310) that we may be allowed to regret such dilated statements; the more so, as, to the fastidious taste of the English, the engravings, in the different articles described, have not the beauty and merit which are attached to them by the French. Yet does M. Renouard narrate pleasantly, and write elegantly. In regard to the "_brush_ at the Decameron," above alluded to, I read it with surprise and pleasure--on the score of the moderate tone of criticism which it displayed--and shall wear it in my hat with as much triumph as a sportsman does a "brush" of a different description! Was it _originally_ more _piquan?_ I have reason not only to suspect, but to know, that it WAS. Be this as it may, I should never, in the first place, have been backward in returning all home thrusts upon the aggressor--and, in the second place, I am perfectly disposed that my work may stand by the test of such criticism. It is, upon the whole, fair and just; and _justice_ always implies the mention of _defects_ as well as of excellencies. It may, however, be material to remark, that the _third_ volume of the Decameron is hardly amenable to the tribunal of French criticism; inasmuch as the information which it contains is almost entirely national--and therefore partial in its application. [133] [Not so. Messrs. Payne and Foss once shewed me a yet _larger_ copy of it upon vellum, than even M. Renouard's: but so many of the leaves had imbibed an indelible stain, which no skill could eradicate, that it was scarcely a saleable article. It was afterwards bought by Mr. Bohn at a public auction.] [134] [It was sold at the Sale of his Aldine Library for £68. 15s. 8d. and is now, I believe, in the fine Collection of Sir John Thorold, Bart, at Syston Park. The Cicero did not come over for sale.] [135] [In the previous edition I had supposed, erroneously, that it was the Father, M. Renouard himself, who had invoked his name on the occasion. The verses are pretty enough, and may as well find a place _here_ as in M. Crapelet's performance. Je l'ai vu ce fameux bouquin Qui te fait un titre de gloire: Tout Francois qui passe le Rhin Doit remporter une Victoire.] [136] [M. Renouard obtained it at a public sale in Paris, against a very stiff commission left for it by myself. A copy of equal beauty is in the Library of the Right Hon. T. Grenville.] [137] [The Theophrastus was sold for £12 1s. 6d. and the Aristotle for £40. The latter is in the Library of the Rt. Hon. T. Grenville, having been subsequently coated in red morocco by C. Lewis.] [138] [It seems that I have committed a very grave error, in the preceding edition, by making Mons. Renouard "superintend the gathering in of his VINTAGE," at his country-house (St. Valerie) whereas there are no Vineyards in Picardy. France and Wine seemed such synonymes, that I almost naturally attached a vineyard to every country villa.] [139] [It was published in 1820.] [140] "The luxurious English Bibliographer is astonished at the publication of the "Manuel" without the accompaniment of Plates, Fac-similes, Vignettes, and other graphic attractions. It is because _intrinsic merit_ is preferable to form and ornament: _that_ at once establishes its worth and its success." CRAPELET, vol. iv. p. 88. This amiable Translator and sharp-sighted Critic never loses an opportunity of a _fling_ at the "luxurious English Bibliographer!" [141] [My translator again brandishes his pen in order to draw _good-natured_ comparisons. "It would be lucky for him, if, to the qualities he possesses, M. Dibdin would unite those which he praises in M. Brunet: his work and the public would be considerable gainers by it: his books would not be so costly, and would be more profitable. The English Author describes nothing in a _sang-froid_ manner: he is for ever _charging_: and, as he does not want originality in his vivacity, he should seem to wish to be the CALLOT of Bibliography." CRAPELET. _Ibid_. I accept the title with all my heart.] [142] When he waited upon Lord Spencer at Paris, in 1819, and was shewn by his Lordship the _Ulric Han Juvenal_ (in the smallest character of the printer) and the _Horace_ of 1474, by _Arnoldus de Bruxella_, his voice, eyes, arms, and entire action ... gave manifest proofs how he FELT upon the occasion! [It only remains to dismiss this slight and inadequate account of so amiable and well-versed a bibliographer, with the ensuing-fac-simile of his autograph.] [Autograph: Brunet, Libraire, rue Gît-le-Couer, No 10.] [143] Chardin passe surtout parmi les amateurs Pour le plus vétilleux de tous les connaisseurs; Il fait naître, encourage, anime l'industrie; LES BEAUX LIVRES font seul le CHARME DE SA VIE. LA RELIURE, _poëme didactique_. Par LESNE'. 1820, 8vo. p. 31. [144] [This curiosity is now in the limited, but choice and curious, collection of my old and very worthy friend Mr. Joseph Haslewood. The handle of the stick is decorated by a bird's head, in ivory, which I conjectured to be that of an _Eagle_; but my friend insisted upon it that it was the head of an _Hawk_. I knew what this _meant_--and what it would _end_ in: especially when he grasped and brandished the Cane, as if he were convinced that the sculptor had anticipated the possession of it by the Editor of Juliana Barnes. It is whispered that my friend intends to surprise the ROXBURGHE CLUB (of which he is, in all respects a most efficient member) with proofs of an _Engraving_ of this charming little piece of old French carving.] [145] Mons. Chardin is since dead at a very advanced age. His mental faculties had deserted him a good while before his decease: and his decease was gentle and scarcely perceptible. The portrait of him, in the preceding edition of this work, is literally the MAN HIMSELF. M. Crapelet has appended one very silly, and one very rude, if not insulting, note, to my account of the deceased, which I will not gratify him by translating, or by quoting in its original words. [146] [A copy of the Horace UPON VELLUM (and I believe, the _only_ one) with the original drawings of Percier, will be sold in the library of Mr. Hibbert, during the present season.] [147] ["And unquestionably the best Letter Founder. His son, M. Amb. Firmin Didot; who has for a long time past cut the punches for his father, exhibits proof of a talent worthy, of his instructor." CRAPELET.] [148] [The translation of the above passage runs so smoothly and so evenly upon "all fours," that the curious reader may be gratified by its transcription: "On ne doit pas être surpris que le meilleur vin de Champagne et de Chambertin ait été servi sur la tablé de celui qui, au milieu des toasts de ses convives, avait pour accompagnement le bruit agréable. des frisquettes et des tympans de vingt-deux presses.".Vol. ii. 102.] [149] ["Would one not suppose that I had told M. Dibdin that it was impossible for the French to execute as fine plates as the English? If so, I should stand alone in that opinion. I only expatiated on the beauty of the wood-cut vignettes which adorn many volumes of the 4to. Shakspeare by Bulmer. (N.B. Mr. Bulmer never printed a Shakspeare in 4to. or with wood cuts; but Mr. Bensley _did_--in an 8vo. form.) Their execution is astonishing. Wood engraving, carried to such a pitch of excellence in England, is, in fact, very little advanced in France: and on this head I agree with M. Dibdin." CRAPELET, iv. 104.] [150] ["How can M. Dibdin forget the respect due to his readers, to give them a recital of dinners, partaken of at the houses of private persons, as if he were describing those of a tavern? How comes it that he was never conscious of the want of good taste and propriety of conduct, to put the individuals, of whom he was speaking, into a sort of dramatic form, and even the MISTTRESSES OF THE HOUSE! CRAPELET: Vol. iv. 106. I have given as unsparing a version as I could (against myself) in the preceding extract; but the _sting_ of the whole matter, as affecting M. Crapelet, may be drawn from the concluding words. And yet, where have I spoken ungraciously and uncourteously of Madame?] [151] [_Bozérian undoubtedly had his merits_.]--Lesné has been singularly lively in describing the character of Bozérian's binding. In the verse ... Il dit, et secouant le joug de la manie.... he appears to have been emulous of rivalling the strains, of the Epic Muse; recalling, as it were, a sort of Homeric scene to our recollection: as thus--of Achilles rushing to fight, after having addressed his horses: [Greek: E ra, kai en prôtois iachôn eche mônuchas hippos] [152] Some account of French bookbinders may be also found in the _Bibliographical Decameron_, vol. ii. p. 496-8. [153] Cependant Thouvenin est un de ces hommes extraordinaires qui, semblables à ces _corps lumineux_ que l'on est convenu d'appeler _cometes_, paraissent une fois en un siècle. Si, plus ambitieux de gloire que de fortune, il continue à, se surveiller; si, moins ouvrier qu'artiste, il s'occupe sans relache du perfectionnement de la reliure, il fera époque dans son art comme ces grands hommes que nous admirons font époque dans la littérature. p. 117. [154] [In the year 1819, Lord Spencer sent over to the Marquis de Chateaugiron, a copy of the _Ovid De Tristilus, translated by Churchyard_, 1578, 4to. (his contribution to the Roxburghe Club) as a present from ONE President of Bibliophiles to ANOTHER. It was bound by Lewis, in his very best style, in morocco, with vellum linings, within a broad border of gold, and all other similar seductive adjuncts. Lewis considered it as a CHALLENGE to the whole bibliopegistic fraternity at Paris:--a sort of book-gauntlet;--thrown down for the most resolute champion to pick up--if he dare! Thouvenin, Simier, Bozérian (as has been intimated to me) were convened on the occasion:--they looked at the gauntlet: admired and feared it: but no man durst pick it up! Obstupuere animi:---- Ante omnes stupet ipse Dares[D].... In other words, the Marquis de Chateaugiron avowed to me that it was considered to be the _ne plus ultra_ of the art. What say you to this, Messrs. Lesné and Crapelet? [D] _Thouvenin_. [155] This poem appeared early in the year 1820, under the following title. "_La Reliure, poème didactique en six chants_; précédé d'une idée analytique de cet art, suivi de notes historiques et critiques, et d'un Mémoire soumis à la Société d'Encouragement, ainsi qu'au Jury d'exposition de 1819, relatif à des moyens de perfectionnement, propres à retarder le renouvellement des reliures. PAR LESNÉ. Paris, 1820. 8vo. pp. 246. The motto is thus: Hâtez-vous lentement, et sans perdre courage, Vingt fois sur le métier remettez votre ouvrage; Polissez-le sans cesse et le repolissez. _Boileau Art. Poét._ ch. 1. This curious production is dedicated to the Author's Son: his first workman; seventeen years of age; and "as knowing, in his business at that early period of life as his father was at the age of twenty-seven." The dedication is followed by a preface, and an advertisement, or "Idée analytique de la Reliure." In the preface, the author deprecates both precipitate and severe criticism; "He is himself but a book-binder--and what can be expected from a muse so cultivated?" He doubts whether it will be read all through; but his aim and object have been to fix, upon a solid basis, the fundamental principles of his art. The subject, as treated in the Dictionary of Arts and Trades by the French Academy, is equally scanty and inaccurate. The author wishes that all arts were described by artists, as the reader would gain in information what he would lose in style. "I here repeat (says he) what I have elsewhere said in bad verse. There are amateur collectors who know more about book-binding, than even certain good workmen; but there are also others, of a capricious taste, who are rather likely to lead half-instructed workmen astray, than to put them in the proper road." In the poetical epistle which concludes the preface, he tells us that he had almost observed the Horatian precept: his poem having cost eight years labour. The opening of it may probably be quite sufficient to give the reader a proper notion of its character and merits. Je célèbre mon art; je dirai dans mes vers, Combien il éprouva de changemens divers; Je dirai ce que fut cet art en sa naissance; Je dirai ses progrès, et, de sa décadence. Je nommerai sans fard les ineptes auteurs: Oui, je vais dérouler aux yeux des amateurs: Des mauvais procédés la déplorable liste. Je nommerai le bon et le mauvais artiste; _LETTER IX._ MEN OF LETTERS. DOM BRIAL. THE ABBÉ BÉTENCOURT. MESSRS. GAIL, MILLIN, AND LANGÈS. A ROXBURGHE BANQUET. _Paris, June 20, 1818_. MY DEAR FRIEND, We have had of late the hottest weather in the memory of the oldest Parisian: but we have also had a few flying thunder showers, which have helped to cool the air, and to refresh both the earth and its inhabitants. In consequence, I have made more frequent visits; and have followed up my morning occupations among BOOKS, by the evening society of those who are so capable, from their talents, of adding successfully to their number. Among the most eminent, as well as most venerable of historical antiquaries, is the celebrated Dom BRIAL, an ex-Benedictin. He lives in the _Rue Servandoni_, on the second-floor, in the very bosom, as it were, of his library, and of city solitude. My first visit to him, about three weeks ago, was fortified by an introductory letter from our friend * * *. The old gentleman (for he is about seventy four) was busily occupied at his dinner--about one o'clock; and wearing a silk night cap, and habited en rocquelaure, had his back turned as his servant announced me. He is very deaf; but on receiving the letter, and recognising the hand-writing of our friend, he made me heartily welcome, and begged that I would partake of his humble fare. This I declined; begging, on the other hand that he would pursue his present occupation, and allow me to examine his library. "With the greatest pleasure (replied he); but you will find it a very common-place one." His books occupy each of the four rooms which form the suite of his dwelling. Of course I include the bed room. They are admirably selected: chiefly historical, and including a very considerable number in the ecclesiastical department. He has all the historians relating to our own country. In short, it is with tools like these, and from original MSS. lent him from the Royal Library--which his official situation authorizes--- that he carries on the herculean labour of the _Recueil des Historiens des Gaules, &c._ commenced by BOUQUET and other editors, and of which he shewed me a great portion of the XVIIth volume--as well as the commencement of the XVIIIth--already printed. Providence may be graciously pleased to prolong the life of this learned and excellent old man till the _latter_ volume be completed; but _beyond_ that period, it is hardly reasonable or desirable to wish it; for if he die, he will then have been gathered to his fathers in a good old age.[156] But the labours of Dom Brial are not confined to the "Recueil," just mentioned. They shine conspicuous in the "_Histoire Littéraire de la France_," of which fifteen goodly quarto volumes are already printed; and they may be also traced in the famous work entitled _L'Art de, Verifier les Dates_, in three large folio volumes, published in 1783, &c. "Quand il est mort, il n'a point son élevè"[157]--says his old and intimate friend the ABBÉ BÉTENCOURT; an observation, which, when I heard it, filled me with mingled regret and surprise--for why is this valuable, and most _patriotic_ of all departments of literature, neglected _abroad_ as well as _at home_? It is worth all the _digamma_ disquisitions in the world; and France, as well as Italy, was once rich in historical Literati. Dom Brial is very little above the mean height. He stoops somewhat from age; but, considering his years, and incessantly sedentary labours, it is rather marvellous that he does not exhibit more striking proofs of infirmity. His voice is full and strong; his memory is yet retentive, and his judgment sound. His hand-writing is extremely firm and legible. No man ever lived, or ever will, or can live, more completely devoted to his labours. They are his meat and drink--as much as his "bouilli et petites poies:"--of which I saw him partaking on repeated visits. Occupied from morning till night in the prosecution of his studies--in a quarter of Paris extremely secluded--he appears to be almost unconscious of passing occurrences without;[158] except it be of the sittings of the _Institute_, which he constantly attends, on Fridays, as one of the Secretaries. I have twice dined with him; and, each time, in company with the Abbé Bétencourt, his brother Secretary at the Institute; and his old, long-tried, and most intimate friend. The Abbé BÉTENCOURT was not unknown to me during his late residence in England, as an Emigré: but he is still-better known to our common friend * * *, who gave me the letter of introduction to Dom Brial. That mutual knowledge brought us quickly together, and made us as quickly intimate. The Abbé is above the middle height; wears his own grey hair; has an expressive countenance, talks much; and well, and at times drolly. Yet his wit or mirth is well attempered to his years. His manner of _rallying_ his venerable friend is very amusing; for Dom Brial, from his deafness, (like most deaf men) drops at times into silence and abstraction. On each of my dinner-visits, it was difficult to say which was the hotter day. But Dom Brial's residence, at the hour of dinner, (which was four--for my own accommodation) happened luckily to be in the _shade_. We sat down, three, to a small circular table, (in the further or fourth room) on the tiled floor of which was some very ancient wine, within the immediate grasp of the right hand of the host. An elderly female servant attended in the neighbouring room. The dinner was equally simple, relishing, and abundant; and the virtues of the "old wine" were quickly put into circulation by the Benedictin founder of the feast. At six we rose from table, and walked in the Luxembourg gardens, hard by. The air had become somewhat cooler. The sun was partially concealed by thin, speckled clouds: a gentle wind was rising; and the fragrance of innumerable flowers, from terraces crowded with rose-trees, was altogether so genial and refreshing, that my venerable companions--between whom I walked arm in arm--declared that "they hardly knew when the gardens had smelt so sweetly." We went straight onward--towards the _Observatoire_, the residence of the Astronomer Royal. In our way thither we could not avoid crossing the _Rue d' Enfer_, where Marshal Ney was shot. The spot, which had been stained with his blood, was at this moment covered by skittles, and groups of stout lads were enjoying themselves in all directions. It should seem that nothing but youthful sports and pastimes had ever prevailed there: so insensibly do succeeding occupations wear away all traces of the past. I paused for half a minute, casting a thoughtful eye towards the spot. The Abbé Bétencourt moralised aloud, and Dom Brial seemed inwardly to meditate. We now reached the Observatory. The Sub-Principal was at home, and was overjoyed to receive his venerable visitors. He was a fellow-townsman of Dom Brial, and we were shewn every thing deserving of notice. It was nearly night-fall, when, on reaching the Rue Servandoni, I wished my amiable companions adieu, till we met again. I have before mentioned the name of M. GAIL. Let me devote a little more time and attention to him. He is, as you have been also previously told, the curator of the Greek and Latin MSS. in the Royal Library, and a Greek Professor in the Collège Royale. There is no man, at all alive to a generous and kind feeling, who can deny M. Gail the merit of a frank, benevolent, and hearty disposition. His Greek and Latin studies, for the last thirty-five years, have neither given a severe bias to his judgment, nor repressed the ebullitions of an ardent and active imagination. His heart is yet all warmth and kindness. His fulfilment of the duties of his chair has been exemplary and beneficial; and it is impossible for the most zealous and grateful of her sons, to have the prosperity of the Collège Royale more constantly in view, than my friend I.B. Gail has that of the University of Paris. His labours, as a scholar, have been rather useful than critical. He has edited _Anacreon_ more than once: and to the duodecimo edition of 1794, is prefixed a small portrait--medallion-wise--of the editor; which, from the costume of dress and juvenility of expression, does not much remind me of the Editor as he now is. M. Gail's great scholastic work is his Greek, Latin, and French, editions of _Xenophon_ and _Thucydides_, in twenty-four quarto volumes; but in the execution of this performance he suffered himself to be rather led astray by the attractions of the _Bibliomania_. In other words, he chose to indulge in membranaceous propensities; and nothing would serve M. Gail's turn but he must have a unique COPY UPON VELLUM! in a quarto form.[159] Twenty four quarto volumes upon vellum!.. enough to chill the ardour and drain the purse of the most resolute and opulent publisher. When I dined with the Editor, the other day, I was shewn these superb volumes with all due form and solemnity: and I must say that they do very great credit to the press of the Elder Didot. Yet I fear that it will be a long time before the worthy M. Gail is remunerated for his enterprising and speculative spirit. In all the duties attached to his situation in the Royal Library, this worthy character is equally correct and commendable. He is never so fully occupied with old Greek and Latin MSS., but that he will immediately attend to your wants; and, as much as depends upon himself, will satisfy them most completely. Anacreon has left behind some little deposit of good humour and urbanity, which has continued to nourish the heart of his Translator; for M. Gail is yet jocose, and mirth-loving; fond of a lively repartee, whether in conversation or in writing. He may count some sixty-two years. But it is high time to introduce you to another of these "Confrères" at the Bibliothèque du Roi; of whom indeed, hitherto, I have made but a slight mention. You will readily guess that this must be the well-known AUBIN LOUIS MILLIN--the Head of the department of Antiquities; or the principal _Archaeologist_ of the establishment. My friend Mr. Dawson Turner having furnished me with introductory credentials, I called upon M. Millin within twenty-four hours of my arrival at Paris. In consequence, from that time to this, I have had frequent intercourse with him. Indeed I am willing to hope that our acquaintance has well nigh mellowed into friendship. He is a short, spare, man; with a countenance lighted up by intelligence rather than moulded by beauty. But he is evidently just now (and indeed, as I learn, has been for some time past) labouring under severe indisposition. He is the thorough Frenchman both in figure and manners: light, cheerful, active, diligent, and exceedingly good natured and communicative. His apartments are admirably furnished: and his LIBRARY does him infinite honour--considering the limited means by which it has been got together. His abode is the constant resort of foreigners, from all countries, and of all denominations; and the library is the common property of his friends, and even of strangers--when they are well recommended to him. Millin has been a great traveller; but, if the reports which have reached me prove true, his second voyage to Italy, recently accomplished, have sown the seeds of incurable disease in his constitution. Indeed: when I look at him, at times, I fancy that I discover _that_ in his countenance ... which I wish were not so palpable ... to my observation. His collection of drawings, of fac-similes of all descriptions--of prints and of atlasses--is immense. They are freely laid open to the inspection of any curious observer: and I have already told you how heartily M. Millin begged that Mr. Lewis would consider his house as his _home_--for the prosecution of his drawings from the illuminated MSS. in the Royal Library, when the regular time of attendance in that place was closed. The other day, we had a superb déjeuné à la fourchette at M. Millin's--about three o'clock. It was attended by two Marchionesses, of the _bas bleu_ order; and by the whole corps of the confrères bibliographiques of the Royal Library. Several other literary _distingués_ were of the party: and we sat down, a very agreeable mélange, both to gossip and to eat and drink. M. Langlès was all animation and all intelligence; and M. Van Praet seemed for a time to have forgotten VELLUM ARISTOTLES and VIRGILS in alternate libations of champagne and noyeau. Meanwhile, the worthy Gail, by his playful sallies and repartees, afforded a striking contrast to the balanced attitude and grave remarks of the respectable Caperonnier, the senior Librarian. Poor Millin himself had no appetite, but picked a little here and there. We sat down about fourteen; rose at six--to coffee and conversazione; and retired shortly after: some to the theatre, and others to their country houses. This is pretty nearly a correct picture of the bettermost society of Paris at this time of the year. In regard to the literary reputation of MILLIN, I well know that, in England, it is rather the fashion to sneer at him; but this sneer may proceed as often from ignorance, as from superiority of information. The truth is, M. Millin does _too much_ to do every thing _well_. At one moment, he is busied with a dyptych: at another, he is examining a coin or a medal: during the third, he is lost in admiration over a drawing of a tomb or statue:--his attendant enters with a proof-sheet to engage his fourth moment--and so it goes on--from sunrise to sunset; with pen in hand, or blank or printed paper before him, he is constantly occupied in the pursuit of some archaeological enquiry or other. THIS praise, however--and no mean or unperishable praise it is--most indisputably belongs to him. He was almost the ONLY ONE in France; who, during the reign of terror, bloodshed, and despotism--cherished and kept alive a taste for NATIONAL ANTIQUITIES. But for _his_ perseverance, and the artists employed by _him_, we should not now have had those _graphic_ representations of many buildings, and relics of art, which have since perished irretrievably. Another praise also belongs to him; of no very insignificant description. He is among the most obliging and communicative of literary Parisians; and does not suffer his good nature to be soured, or his activity to abate, from the influence of _national_ prejudice. He has a large acquaintance among foreigners; and I really think that he loves the English next best to his own countrymen. But whoever applies to him with civility, is sure to be as civilly received. So much for MILLIN.[160] This group of literary _whole lengths_ would however be imperfect without the introduction of Monsieur LANGLÈS. The _forte_ of M. Langlès consists in his cultivation of, and enthusiastic ardor for, _oriental literature_. He presides, in fact, over the Persian, Arabic, and other Oriental MSS. and he performs the duties of his office, as a public librarian, with equal punctuality and credit. He has also published much upon the languages of the East, but is considered less profound than DE SACY: although both his conversation and his library attest his predilection for his particular studies. M. Langlès is eclipsed by no one for that "gaieté de coeur" which, when joined with good manners and honourable principles, renders a well-bred Frenchman an exceedingly desirable companion. He loves also the arts; as well of sculpture as of painting and of engraving. His further room affords unquestionable evidence of his attachment to _English Prints_. Wilson, West, and Wilkie--from the burins of Woollett, Raimbach, and Burnet--struck my eye very forcibly and pleasingly. M. Langlès admires and speaks our language. "Your charming Wilkie (says he) pleases me more and more. Why does he not visit us? He will at least find here some _good proofs_ of my respect for his talents." Of course he could not mean to pun. I was then told to admire his impression of Woollett's _Battle of La Hogue_; and indeed I must allow that it is one of the very best which I have seen. He who possesses _that_, need not distress himself about any of the impressions of the _Death of Wolfe_; which is also in the collection of Langlès. His library is probably less extensive than Millin's; but it is not less choice and valuable. His collection of books (in which are a great number of our best Voyages and Travels) relating to Asia--and particularly his philological volumes, as connected with the different languages of that country, cannot be too much commended. I saw Sir John Malcolm's _History of Persia_ lying upon his table. "How do you like that work, M. Langlès?" "Sir (replied he) I more than like it--I love it: because I love the author." In fact, I knew that Sir John and he were well acquainted with each other, and I believe that the copy in question bore the distinctive mark of being "ex dono auctoris." I have had a good deal of interesting conversation with M. Langlès about the history of books during the Revolution; or rather about that of the ROYAL LIBRARY. He told me he was appointed one of the commissioners to attend to the distribution of those countless volumes which were piled up in different warehouses, as the produce of the _ransacked monasteries_. I am not sure, whether, within the immediate neighbourhood of the Royal Library, he did not say that there were at least _half a million of books_. At that time, every public meeting of Parisians--whatever might be the professed object--was agitated, and often furious. One of the red-hot demagogues got up in the assembly, and advised "mangling, maiming, or burning the books: they were only fit for cartridges, wadding, or fuel: they were replete with marks of feudalism and royalty--for they had arms or embellishments on them, which denoted them to belong to Aristocrats." This speech made some impression: his comrades were for carrying the motion immediately into execution, by sword and faggot.... But M. Langlès rose ... calm, collected, and actuated by feelings a little more accordant with the true spirit of patrotism. "Citizens," said the Orientalist, "we must not do mischief, in the desire of doing good. Let the books remain where they are. If you set fire to them, can you say how far the flames shall extend? Our own great national library, so renowned and celebrated throughout Europe! may become the prey of the devouring element, and _then_ how will you be reproached by posterity! Again--if you convert them to _other_ purposes of destruction, how can you hope to prevent the same example from being followed in other places? The madness of the multitude will make no distinction; and as many pikes and swords may be carried within the great library, as within the various depositories of the monastic books. Pause awhile. Respect those collections of books, and you will both respect yourselves and preserve the great national library. In due time, we shall make a proper selection from them, and enrich the book stores of the capital!" So spake M. Langlès; and the Assembly assented to his contre-projet--luckily for Paris and themselves.[161] But nearly all these worthy characters, of whom I have just made mention, had an opportunity of exhibiting their social qualities, of whatever description, at a sort of FESTIVAL which I gave the other day (last Wednesday) in honour of the _Roxburghe Club_--which met on that same day, I presume, at the Clarendon Hotel. This Parisian Roxburghe Banquet went off upon the whole with flying colours. You shall know as much about it as is likely to interest you. Having secured my guests, (Messrs. DENON, GAIL, LANGLÈS, VAN PRAET and MILLIN) and fixed both the place and hour of repast, I endeavoured to dress out a little bill of fare of a _bibliomaniacal_ description--to rival, in its way, that of _Mons. Grignon_, in the _Rue Neuve des Petits Champs_, (within two minutes walk of the Royal Library,) where we were to assemble, at five o'clock. I knew that Millin would put my toasts or sentiments into good French, and so I took courage against the hour of meeting. I had secured a ground-floor apartment, looking upon a lawn, with which it communicated by open doors. The day was unusually hot and oppressive. After finishing my labours at the Royal Library, I returned to my hotel, arranged my little matters connected with the by-play of the festival--dressed--and resorted to Grignon's. Every thing looked well and auspiciously. Our room was in the shade; and a few lingering breezes seemed to play beneath the branches of an acacia. The dark green bottles, of various tapering shapes, were embedded in pails of ice, upon the table: and napkins and other goodly garniture graced the curiously woven cloth. I hung up, in the simplicity of my heart--over the seat which I was to occupy,-- the portrait of _John King of France_, which M. Coeuré had just finished;-- not considering that this said John had been beaten and taken prisoner, at the battle of Poictiers by our Black Prince! Never was a step more injudicious, or an ornament more unappropriate. However, there it hung throughout the day. A dinner of the very best description, exclusively of the wine, was to be served up for _twelve francs_ a head. I make no doubt but the Club paid a _little_ more where they assembled in London! At length came the hour of dinner, and with the hour the guests. I requested Brother Van Praet to be deputy chairman; and taking my seat beneath the unfortunate John King of France, gave the signal for a general attack--upon whatever was placed before the guests. Monsieur Denon, however, did not arrive till after the first course. He had been detained by a visit from the Duke of Bedford. M. Millin sat at my right hand, and M. Gail at my left. The first course consisted chiefly of fruit, and slices of anchovy, crossed. A large paper copy of a _melon_ cut a magnificent appearance in the centre; but all this quickly gave way to fish, flesh, and fowl of a various but substantial description. Poor Millin had no appetite, and would only carve. He looked particularly ill. The rest ate, drank, and were merry. The desert was of the very best quality: and this was succeeded by the introduction of a little of English fashion and manners. We drank toasts, connected with the object of the day's festival; and never were a set of guests more disposed to relish both the wine and the sentiment which accompanied each glass. They even insisted upon a "three times three" for "Lord Spencer and the Club!" But if we were merry, we were wise. Shortly after dinner, M. Gail rose, as if in a moment of inspiration, from his seat--and recited the Latin verses which are here enclosed.[162] They will at least make you admire the good humour of thé poet. He afterwards chanted a song: his own literal version of thé XIXth ode of Anacreon, beginning [Greek: Hê gê melaina pinei]. The guests declared that they had never sat so long at table, or were more happy. I proposed a stroll or a seat upon the lawn. Chairs and benches were at hand; and we requested that the coffee might be brought to us out of doors. It was now after sun-set; and a lurid sky was above our head. Our conversation was desultory as to topics, but animated as to manner. I had never witnessed M. Van Praet more alive to social disquisition. We talked of books, of pictures, and of antiquities... and I happened, with the same witless simplicity which had pinned the portrait of King John over my seat at dinner, to mention that volume, of almost unparalleled rarity, ycleped _the Fables of Pfister, printed at Bamberg_ in 1461:--which they had recently RESTORED to the Wolfenbuttel Library! It was "more than enough" for the acute feelings of the devoted head-librarian. M. Van Praet talked with legs and arms, as well as with tongue, in reply to my observations upon the extraordinary worth and singular rarity of that singular volume. "Alas, Sir, nothing pained me more. Truly--"Here a smart flash of lightning came across us--which illumined our countenances with due effect: for it had been sometime past almost wholly dark, and we had been talking to each other without perceiving a feature in our respective faces. M. Langlès joined in M. Van Praet's lamentation; and the Baron Denon, who (as I learnt) had been the means of obtaining that identical precious volume, united his tones of commiseration with those of his brethren. The lightning now became more frequent, and in larger flashes--but neither sharp nor very dazzling. Meanwhile the notes of a skilfully touched harp were heard from one of the windows of a neighbouring house, with a mingled effect which it was difficult to describe. _Pfister_, books, busts, and music, now wholly engrossed our attention--and we were absolutely enveloped in blue lightning. We had continued our discourse till towards midnight, had not the rain come down in a manner equally sudden and severe. It was one of the heaviest showers which I remember to have witnessed. The storm was directly in the centre of Paris, and over our heads. We retreated precipitately to the deserted banqueting room; and had a reinforcement of coffee. After such a series of melting hot weather, I shall not easily forget the refreshing sweetness emitted from every shrub upon the lawn. About ten o'clock, we thought of our respective homes.[163] I went into another room to pay the reckoning; liberated King John from his second confinement; shook hands very heartily with my guests--and returned to my lodgings by no means out of humour or out of heart with the day's entertainment. Whether they have been more rational, or more _economical_, in the celebration of the same festival, AT HOME, is a point, which I have some curiosity, but no right, to discuss. Certainly they could not have been happier. Having come to the conclusion of my account of the ROXBURGHE BANQUET, and it being just now hard upon the hour of midnight, I must relinquish my correspondent for my pillow. A good night. [156] He died on the 24th of May, 1828; on the completion of his 85th year. See the next note but one. [157] The reader may be amused with the following testy note of my vigilant translator, M. Crapelet: the very Sir Fretful Plagiary of the minor tribe of French critics! "Cette phrase, qui n'est pas Française, est ainsi rapportée par l'auteur. M. l'Abbé Bétencourt, aura dit a peu près: "Il mourra sans laisser d'élève." M. Dibdin qui parle et entend fort bien le Français, EST IL EXCUSABLE DE FAIRE MAL PARLER UN ACADEMICIEN FRANÇAIS, et surtout de rendre vicieuses presque toutes les phrases qu'il veut citer textuellement? L'exactitude! l'exactitude! C'est la première vertu du bibliographe; on ne saurait trop le répéter a M. Dibdin." CRAPELET. vol. iv. 124. Quære tamen? Ought not M. Crapelet to have said "il mourrira?" The sense implies the future tense: But ... how inexpiable the offence of making a French Academician speak bad French!!--as if every reader of common sense would not have given _me_, rather than the _Abbé Bétencourt_, credit for this bad speaking? [158] [In a short, and pleasing, memoir of him, in the _Révue Encyclopédique, 115th livraison, p. 277, &c._ it is well and pleasantly observed, that, "such was his abstraction from all surrounding objects and passing events, he could tell you who was Bishop of such a diocese, and who was Lord of such a fief, in the XIIth century, much more readily, and with greater chance of being correct, than he would, who was the living Minister of the Interior, or who was the then Prefect of the department of the Seine?" By the kindness of a common friend, I have it in my power to subjoin a fac-simile of the autograph of this venerable Departed:] [Autograph] [159] The _Thucydides_ was published first; in twelve volumes 8vo. VOL. II. 1807; with various readings, for the first time, from thirteen MSS. not before submitted to the public eye. The French version, in four volumes, with the critical notes of the Editor, may be had separately. The VELLUM 4to. copy of the Thucydides consists of fourteen volumes; but as the volumes are less bulky than those of the Xenophon, they may be reduced to seven. The _Xenophon_ was published in 1809, in seven volumes, 4to. The Latin version is that of Leunclavius; the French version and critical notes are those of M. Gail. The vellum copy, above alluded to, is divided into ten volumes; the tenth being an Atlas of fifty-four maps. Some of these volumes are very bulky from the thickness of the vellum. Upon this unique copy, M. Gail submitted to me, in writing, the following remarks. "Of the Xenophon, two vellum copies were printed; but of these, one was sent to the father of the present King of Spain, and received by him in an incomplete state--as the Spanish Ambassador told M. Gail: only six volumes having reached the place of their destination. The Editor undertakes to give authenticated attestations of this fact." "If," say M. Gail's written observations, "one considers that each sheet of vellum, consisting of eight pages, cost five francs ten sous, and three more francs in working off--and that skins of vellum were frequently obliged to be had from foreign countries, owing to the dearth of them at Paris--whereby the most extravagant demands were sometimes obliged to be complied with--add to which, that fifteen years have passed away since these sums were paid down in hard cash,--the amount of the original expenses is doubled." The volumes are in stout boards, and preserved in cases. In one of his letters to me, respecting the sale of his vellum copy--the worthy Professor thus pleasantly remarks: "Je ne veux pas m'enricher avec ce livre qui, lorsque je serai cendres, aura un bien grand prix. Je n'ai que le desir de me débarrasser d'une richesse qui m'est à charge, et ne convient nullement à un modeste et obscur particulier, comme moi." I subjoin the autograph of this worthy and learned Professor: hoping yet to shake the hand heartily which guided the pen. [Autograph] [160] M. Millin DIED about the middle of the following month, ere I had reached Vienna. His library was sold by auction in May 1819, under the superintendence of Messrs. Debure, who compiled the sale catalogue. It produced 53,626 francs. The catalogue contained 2556 articles or numbers; of which several were very long sets. One article alone, no. 866., consisted of 326 volumes in folio, quarto, and octavo. It is thus designated, "RECUEIL DE PIECES SUR LES ARTS, LA LITTE'RATURE, LES ANTIQUITE'S, _en Latin, en Italien, et en François_. This article produced 4501 francs, and was purchased by the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Millin had brought up from boyhood, and rescued from poverty and obscurity, a lad of the name of _Mention_. This lad lived with him many years, in the capacity of a valet and private secretary. In his second and last voyage to Italy, Millin declined taking him with him, but left him at home, in his house, with a salary of fifty francs per month. Five months after his departure, in February, 1812, a great quantity of smoke was seen issuing from the windows of Millin's apartments. Several people rushed into the room. They found the drawings and loose papers taken from the portfolios, rolled up lightly, and the room on fire at the four corners! A lighted candle was placed in the middle of the room. Suspicion immediately fell upon Mention. They ran to his bed chamber: found the door fastened: burst it open--and saw the wretched valet weltering in his blood ... yet holding, in his-right hand, the razor with which he had cut his throat! He was entirely dead. Millin's collection of Letters from his numerous Correspondents perished in the flames. This accident, which also deprived Millin of a fund of valuable materials that he was preparing for a _Dictionary of the Fine Arts_, and for a _Recueil de Pièces gravées Inédites_--might have also had an infinitely more fatal tendency: as it occurred _within_ the walls which contain the ROYAL LIBRARY! Millin received the news of this misfortune, in Italy, with uncommon fortitude and resignation. But this second voyage, as has been already intimated, (see p. 260) hastened his dissolution. He planned and executed infinitely too much; and never thoroughly recovered the consequent state of exhaustion of body and mind. As he found his end approaching, he is reported to have said--"I should like to have lived longer, in order to have done more good--but God's will be done! I have lived fifty-nine years, the happiest of men--and should I not be ungrateful towards Providence, if I complained of its decrees?!" And when still nearer his latter moments--he exclaimed: "I have always lived, and I die, a Frenchman: hating no one: complaining only of those who retard the cause of reason and truth. I have never, intentionally, hurt a single creature. If I have injured any one, I ask pardon of him for the error of my understanding." He died on the 18th of August, and his body was interred in the churchyard of Père la Chaise. His old friend and colleague, M. GAIL, pronounced a funeral discourse over his grave--in which, as may be well supposed, his feelings were most acutely excited. I subjoin a facsimile of Millin's autograph: from the richly furnished collection of Mr. Upcott, of the London Institution. [Autograph: A.L. Millin] [161] [Mons. Langlès survived the above account between five and six years; dying January 28, 1824. His Library was sold by auction in March, 1825. It was copious and highly creditable to his memory. From the source whence the preceding autograph was derived, I subjoin the following autograph. [Autograph: L Langlès] [162] Monsieur Millin had been before hand in his description of this day's festival, but his description was in prose. It appeared in the _Annales Encyclopédiques_, for the ensuing month, July, 1818, and was preceded by a slight historical sketch of the Club, taken chiefly from the Bibliographical Decameron. His account of the festival may amuse some of my readers, who have not been accustomed to peruse _English toasts_ cloathed in French language. It is briefly thus: "Pendant que les membres du Roxburghe Club célébroient le 17 juin 1818 la mémoire des premiers imprimeurs de Boccace, à Venise et en Angleterre, sous la présidence de sa grâce lord Spencer; M. Dibdin, vice-président, s'unissoit à ce banquet bibliographique par une répétition qu'il en faisoit à Paris. Il avoit appelé à ce banquet M. DENON, à qui la France doit encore une grande partie des manuscrits et des éditions rares dont elle s'est enrichie, et plusieurs conservateurs de la bibliothèque royale, MM. VANPRAET, LANGLE'S, GAIL, et MILLIN. On pense bien que l'histoire littéraire, la bibliographie, devinrent un inépuisable sujet pour la conversation. L'entretien offrit un mélange de gaïté et de gravité qui convient aux banquets des muses; et selon l'adage antique, les convives étoient plus que trois et moins que neuf. M. Gail lut sur cette réunion des vers latins, dont les toasts bruyans ne permirent pas de savourer d'abord tout le sel et l'esprit. Ils doivent être imprimés dans _l'Hermes Romanus_. "M.D., amphitryon et président du festin, porta, comme il convenoit, les premiers toasts: 1°. A la santé de milord Spencer et des honorables membres du Roxburghe Club. 2°. A la mémoire de Christophe Valdarfer, inprimeur du Boccace de 1471; livre dont l'acquisition fait par le duc de Marlborough, fut l'occasion de la fondation du Roxburghe Club. 3°. A la mémoire immortelle de Guillaume Caxton, premier imprimeur anglois. 4°. A la gloire de la France. 5°. A l'union perpétuelle de la France et de l'Angleterre. 6°. A la prospérité de la bibliothèque royale de France. 7°. A la santé de ses dignes conservateurs, dont le savoir est inépuisable, et dont l'obligeance ne se lasse jamais. 8°. A la propagation des sciences, des arts, des lettres, et de la bibliomanie. 9°. Au désir de se revoir le même jour chaque année. "Les convives ont rendu ces toasts par un autre qu'ils ont porté, avec les hurras et les trois fois d'usage en Angleterre, au vice-président du Roxburghe-Club, qui leur avoit fait l'honneur de les rassembler. "La Séance a fini à l'heure où le président du Roxburghe-Club lève celle de Londres; et le vice-président, M. Dibdin, a soigneusement réuni les bouchons, pour les porter en Angleterre comme un signe commémoratif de cet agréable banquet."[E] The verses of Monsieur Gail were as follow:--but I should premise that he recited them with zest and animation. Auspice jam Phæbo, SPENCEROQUE AUSPICE, vestrum Illa renascentis celebravit gaudia lucis Concilium, stupuit quondam quâ talibus emptus Boccacius cunctorum animis, miratus honores Ipse suos, atque ipsa superbiit umbra triumpho. Magna quidem lux illa, omni lux tempore digna. Cui redivivus honos et gloria longa supersit _Atque utinam ex vobis unus, vestræque fuissem_ Lætitiæ comes, et doctæ conviva _trapezæ_. Sed nune invitorque epulis, interque volentes Gallus Apollineâ sedeo quasi lege Britannos. Arridet D***: habet nos una voluptas. Me quoque librorum meministis amore teneri, Atque virûm studiis, quos Gallia jactat alumnos: Nam si _Caxtonio_ felix nunc Anglia gaudet, Non minus ipsa etiam _Stephanorum_ nomina laudat. Hic nonnulla manent priscæ vestigia famæ. Nobis Thucydides, Xenophon quoque pumice et auro, Quem poliit non parca manus; felicior ille Si possit ...[F] melius conjungere Musas! [Greek: Koina ta panta philôn] perhibent: at semper amici Quidquid doctorum est: tantis ego lætor amicis. Æternum hæc vigeat concordia pocula firment Artesque et libri, quæ nectant foedera reges, Utramque et socient simul omnia vincula gentem. CECINIT JOAN. B. GAIL, Lector regius in biblioth. regiâ codd. gr. et lat. præfectus. While one of the London morning newspapers (which shall be here nameless) chose to convert this harmless scene of festive mirth into a coarse and contemptible attack upon its author, the well-bred Bibliomanes of Paris viewed it with a different feeling, and drew from it a more rational inference. It was supposed, by several gentlemen of education and fortune, that a RIVAL SOCIETY might be established among themselves--partaking in some degree of the nature of that of the ROXBURGHE, although necessarily regulated by a few different laws. Taking the regulations of the ROXBURGHE CLUB (as laid down in the _Ninth Day_ of the _Decameron_) as the basis, they put together a code of laws for the regulation of a similar Society which they chose, very aptly, to call LES BIBLIOPHILES. Behold then, under a new name, a _Parisian Roxburghe Society_. When I visited Paris, in the summer, of 1819, I got speedily introduced to the leading Members of the club, and obtained, from M. DURAND DE LANÇON, (one of the most devoted and most efficient of the members) that information--which is here submitted to the public: from a persuasion that it cannot be deemed wholly uninteresting, or out of order, even by the most violent enemies of the _cause_." The _object_ of this Society of the BIBLIOPHILES must be expressed in the proper language of the country. It is "_pour nourrir, reléver, et faire naître méme la passion de la_ _Bibliomanie_." I put it to the conscience of the most sober-minded observer of men and things--if any earthly object can be more orthodox and legitimate? The Society meet, as a corporate body, twice in the year: once in April, the second time in December; and date the foundation of their Club from the 1st of January 1820. Whatever they print, bears the general title of "_Mélanges_;"[G] but whether this word will be executed in the black-letter, lower-case, or in roman capitals, is not yet determined upon. One or two things, however, at starting, cannot fail to be premised; and indeed has been already observed upon--as a species of _heresy_. The Society assemble to a "déjeuné à la fourchette," about twelve o'clock: instead of to a "seven o'clock dinner," as do the London Roxburghers: whereby their constitutions and pockets are less affected. The other thing, to observe upon, is, that they do not print (and publish among themselves) such very strange, and out-of-the way productions, as do the London Roxburghers. For truly, of _some_ of the latter, it may be said with the anonymous poet in the _Adversaria_ of Barthius, Verum hæc nee puer edidici, nee tradita patre Accepi, nee Aristotelis de moribus umquam Librum, aut divini Platonis dogmata legi. _Edit. Fabri_. 1624, col. 345, vol. i. And why is it thus? Because these reprints are occasionally taken (quoting Caspar Barthius himself, in the xxth chapter of his iid book of Adversaria, _Edit. Ead_.) "ex libro egregiè obscuro et a blattis tineisque fere confecto." But, on the other hand, they are perfectly harmless: Sweet without soure, and honny without gall: as Spenser observes in his _Colin Clout's come home again: edit._ 1595: sign. E.F. Or, as is observed in _Les Illustrations de France, edit_. 1513, 4to. litt. goth.: Le dedens nest, ne trop cler, ne trop brun, Mais delectable a veoir...comme il me semble. _Sign. Cii. rev_. A genuine disciple of the Roxburghe Club will always exclaim "delectable a veoir" let the contents of the book be "cler," or "brun." Nor will such enthusiastic Member allow of the epithets of "hodg-podge, gallimaufry, rhapsody," &c. which are to be found in the "Transdentals General," of Bishop Wilkins's famous "_Essay towards a real character and a philosophical language:"_ edit. 1668, fol. p. 28--as applicable to his beloved reprints! I annex the names of the Members of the Societé des Bibliophiles, as that club was first established. 1. Le Marquis de Chateaugiron, _Président_. 2. Guilbert de Pixérécours, _Secrétaire_. 3. Le Chevalier Walckenaer, _Membre de l'Institut, Trésorier._ 4. Alph. de Malartic, _Maître des Requêtes._ 5. Durand de Lançon. 6. Edouard de Chabrol. 7. Berard, _Maître des Requêtes_. 8. Le Vcte. de Morel-Vindé, _Pair de France._ 9. Madame la Duchesse de Raguse, (_par courtoisie_.) 10. Pensier. 11. Comte Juste de Noailles. 12. Le Baron Hely d'Oisel, _Conseiller d'etat._ 13. Le Marquis Scipion du Nocere, _Officier Superieur du Garde du Corps_. 14. Hippolyte de la Porte. 15. De Monmerqué, _Conseiller à la Cour Royale_. 16. Coulon, _à Lyon._ 17. Le Duc de Crussol. 18. Le Comte d'Ourches, _à Nancy._ 19. Le Chevalier Langlès, _Membre de l'Institut._ 20. Duriez, _à Lille._ 21. Le Marquis Germain Garnier, _Pair de France_. 22. Monsieur le Chevalier Artaud, _Secrétaire d' Ambass. à Rome_. It remains to conclude this, I fear unconscionably long, note, as the above letter is concluded, with the mention of ANOTHER BANQUET. This banquet was given by the Bibliophiles to the NOBLE PRESIDENT of the Roxburghe Club, when the latter was at Paris in the Spring of the year 1820. The Vice-President of the Roxburghe Club, who happened at the same time to be at Paris, also received the honour of an invitation. The festival took place at _Beauvilliers'_, the modern Apicius of Parisian restorateurs. About twelve guests sat down to table. The Marquis de Chateaugiron was in the chair. They assembled at six, and separated at half-past nine. All that refinement and luxury could produce, was produced on the occasion. Champagnes of different tints, and of different qualities--_lively_ like M. Langlès, or _still_ like Monsieur ****; fish, dressed as they dress it à la Rocher de Cancale-- poultry, and pastry--varied in form, and piquant in taste--but better, and more palatable than either, conversation--well regulated and instructive--mingled with the most respectful attention to the ILLUSTRIOUS GUEST for whom the banquet had been prepared--gave a charm and a "joyaunce" to the character of that festival--which will not be easily effaced from the tablets of the narrator's memory. Where all shine pretty equally, it seems invidious to particularise. Yet I may be allowed to notice the hearty urbanity of the Marquis, the thorough good humour and bibliomaniacal experience of the Comte d'Ourches, (who, ever and anon, would talk about an edition of _Virgil's Pastorals printed by Eggesteyn_) the vivacious sallies of the Chevalier Langlès, the keen yet circumspect remarks of the Comte Noailles, the vigilant attention and toast-stirring propensities of M.D. de Lançon, the _Elzevirian_ enthusiasm of M. Berard, the ... But enough ... "Claudite jam rivos pueri--sat prata biberunt." [E] These Corks are yet (1829) in my possession: preserved in an old wooden box, with ribs of iron, of the time of Louis XI. [F] The word here in the original is not clear. [G] [They have now published FOUR VOLUMES, in royal 8vo. of singular beauty and splendour: but the fourth vol. falls far short of its precursors in the intrinsic value of its contents. The first volume is so scarce, as to have brought £20. at a sale in Paris. I possess the three latter vols. only, by the kindness of the Society, in making me, with Earl Spencer, an Honorary Associate.] [163] [The Reader must not break up with the party, until he has cast his eye upon the autograph of an Individual, of as high merit and distinction in the department which he occupies, as any to which he has yet been introduced. It only remains to say--it is the autograph of Mons. [Autograph] _LETTER X._ THE COLLECTIONS OF DENON, QUINTIN CRAUFURD, AND THE MARQUIS DE SOMMARIVA. All the world has heard of the famous DENON, the Egyptian traveller; and editor of the great work of the _Antiquities of Egypt_, published in 1802, in two sumptuous folio volumes. As you possess a copy of the French work,[164] with choice impressions of the plates, I need say nothing further upon the subject--except that I believe it to be one of the very finest works of the kind, which has ever appeared ... on the score of art. But the author has other claims to attention and popularity. He was an intimate friend--and certainly the confidential adviser--of Buonaparte, in all public schemes connected with the acquisition of pictures and statues: and undoubtedly he executed the task confided to him with _ability_. He was verging oh his sixtieth year, when he started with his master upon the Egyptian expedition--a proof at least of energy, as well as of good disposition, in the cause. But Denon has been a great European traveller: he has had access to private, as well as to public, cabinets; and has brought home some rich fruits of his enterprise and taste. His house, on the _Quai Malaquais_, is the rendezvous of all the English of any taste--who have respectable letters of introduction; and I must do him the justice to say, that, never did a man endure the _inconveniences_ which must frequently result from keeping such open house, with greater adroitness and good humour than does the Baron Denon. I have sometimes found his principal rooms entirely filled by my countrymen and countrywomen; and I once, from the purest accident, headed a party of _twenty-two_ ... in which were three British officers, and more than that number of members of either University. I will fairly own that, on receiving us, he drew me quietly aside, and observed:--"Mon ami, quand vous viendrez une autre fois, ne commandez pas, je vous prie, une armée si nombreuse. Je m'imaginois encore en Egypte." What was still more perplexing, we found there a party of English as numerous as ourselves. It was thus, however, that he rebuked my indiscretion. We had twice exchanged visits and cards before we met. The card of Denon was worth possessing, from the simple, unaffected modesty which it evinced. You merely read the word DENON upon it!... The owner of the collection which I am about to describe, is certainly "un peu passé" as to years; but he has a cheerful countenance, with the tint of health upon it; small, gray, sparkling eyes, and teeth both regular and white.[165] He is generally dressed in black, and always as a gentleman. His figure, not above the middle height, is well formed; and his step is at once light and firm. There is doubtless a good deal which is very prepossessing in his manners. As he understands nothing of the English language, he can of course neither read nor speak it. It is now time to give you some idea of this curious collection. You ascend a lofty and commodious stone staircase (not very common in Paris) and stop at the _first_ floor:--another comfort, also very rare in Paris. This collection is contained in about half a dozen rooms: lofty, airy, and well furnished. The greater number of these rooms faces the Seine. The first contains a miscellaneous assemblage of bronze busts, and pictures of Teniers, Watteau, and of the more modern School of Paris. Of these, the Watteau is singular, rather than happy, from its size.[166] The two Teniers are light, thin, pictures; sketches of pigs and asses; but they are very covetable morsels of the artist.[167] In a corner, stands the skeleton of a female mummy in a glass case, of which the integuments are preserved in a basket. This is thought to be equally precious and uncommon. M. Denon shews the foot of the figure (which is mere bone and muscle) with amazing triumph and satisfaction. He thinks it is as fine as that of the Venus de Medicis, but there is no accounting for tastes. Among the busts is one of West, of Neckar, and of Denon himself: which latter I choose here to call "_Denon the First_." The second room contains a very surprising, collection of Phoenician, Egyptian, and other oriental curiosities: and in a corner, to the left, is a set of small drawers, filled with very interesting medals of eminent characters, of all descriptions, chiefly of the sixteenth century. Above them is a portrait of the owner of the collection--which I choose to call "_Denon the Second_." This room exhibits a very interesting mélange. Over the fire place are some busts; of which the most remarkable are those of _Petrarch_ and _Voltaire_; the former in bronze, the latter in terra-cotta; each of the size of life. Voltaire's bust strikes me as being the best representation of the original extant. It is full of character; a wonderful mixture of malignity, wit, and genius.[168] The third room is the largest, and the most splendidly hung with pictures. Of these, the circular little Guercino--a holy family--is, to my poor judgment, worth the whole.[169] The Rysdael and Both are very second rate. As you approach the fire-place, your attention is somewhat powerfully directed to a small bronze whole length figure of Buonaparte--leaning upon a table, with his right hand holding a compass, and his left resting upon his left thigh.[170] Some charts, with a pair of compasses, are upon the table; and I believe this represents him in his cabin, on his voyage to Egypt. Is there any representation of him, in the same situation, upon his _return_? However, it is an admirable piece of workmanship. In this room is also (if I remember rightly) the original colossal head of the ex-emperor, when a young man, in white marble, by CANOVA. But I must not omit informing you that here is also another portrait, in oil, of the owner of the collection--which, if you please, we will call "_Denon the Third_." You next enter a narrow, boudoir-shaped apartment, which contains, to my taste, the most curious and precious morsels of art which the Baron Denon possesses. They are specimens of the earlier schools of painting, commencing with what are called _Giottos_ and _Cimabues_--down to a very striking modern picture of a group of children, by a late French artist, just before the time of our Reynolds. This latter you would really conceive to have been the production of Sir Joshua himself. Of the specimens of the earlier schools, I was most struck with the head of PISANI, the inventor of medals--of the fifteenth century--painted by _Antonello da Messina_, a pupil of John Van Eyk. It is full of nature and of character. I could not get away from it. "Is it possible to obtain a copy of this picture?"--said I to its owner. "I understand you, (replied Denon) you wish to carry that copy to your own country. And to have it engraved there?" ... "Most unquestionably"--resumed I. "It is at your service (he rejoined); Laurent will copy it admirably." I hardly knew how to thank Mons. Denon sufficiently.[171] [Illustration: PISANI.] [Illustration: DENON.] There was another head ...but "non omnia possumus omnes." I mean, one of a female in profile, by MASACCIO. It was full of expression.[172] "What, (said its owner,) must you have an engraving of _that_ head also? It is bespoke; by myself. In short, every thing which you behold in these rooms (including even your favourite Pisani) will be _lithographised_ for the publication of my own collection." Of course, after this declaration, I was careful of what I did or said. "But there was yet _one_ thing in this collection--of which, as I saw such a variety, he could not refuse me a copy." "What might that be?" "A portrait of HIMSELF: from marble, from oil, or from enamel." "Take your choice: he replied: "faites ce que vous voulez,"--and it was agreed that M. Laguiche should make a drawing of the bust, in white marble, (I think the sculptor's name is Bosio) which is indeed very like him.[173] There is also a large and beautiful enamel of Denon, full dressed with all his orders, by Augustin; perhaps the most perfect specimen of that artist which France possesses. It is the work of several years past, when Denon had more flesh upon his cheek, and more fire in his eye. We may therefore say that this room contains "_Denon the Fourth, and Denon the Fifth_!" In the same room you observe a very complete specimen of a papyrus inscription; brought from Egypt. Indeed the curiosities brought from that country (as might naturally be supposed) are numerous and valuable. But my attention was directed to more _understandable_ objects of art. Opposite to the bust of Denon, is one of his late master, the ex-Emperor, in bronze: and above this latter, is a small picture, by _Lucas Cranach_, of a man with a bag of money tempting a young woman: full of character, and singularly striking. This room--or the one adjoining, I have forgotten which--contains M. Denon's collection of the prints of MARC ANTONIO or of REMBRANDT--or of both; a collection, which is said to be _unequalled_.[174] Whether the former be more precious than the latter, or whether both be superior to what our British Museum contains of the same masters, is a point which has not yet been fairly determined. But I asked, one morning, for a glimpse of the Rembrandts. We were alone; just after we had breakfasted together. M. Denon commenced by shewing me two different states of the _Coach Landscape_, and the two _great Coppinols_ with _white grounds_--each varying somewhat!!! "Enough," cried I--holding up both hands,--"you beat all in England and all in France!" From hence you pass into a fourth room, which is M. Denon's bed-chamber. About the fire-place are numerous little choice bits of the graphic art. Two small _Watteaus_, in particular, are perfectly delicious;[175] as well as a very small _Sebastian Bourdon_; of a holy family. In a corner, too much darkened, is a fine small portrait of _Parmegiano_ in profile: full of expression--and, to the best of my recollection, never engraved. These are, I think, the chief bijoux in the bed-room; except that I might notice some ancient little bronzes, and an enamel or two by Petitot. You now retrace your steps, and go into a fifth room, which has many fair good pictures, of a comparatively modern date; and where, if I mistake not, you observe at least _one_ portrait in oil of the master of the premises. This therefore gives us "_Denon the Seventh_!" It is here that the master chiefly sits: and he calls it his workshop. His drawers and port-folios are, I think, filled with prints and old-drawings: innumerable, and in the estimation of the owner, invaluable. You yet continue your route into a further room,-- somewhat bereft of furniture, or en dishabille. Here, among other prints, I was struck with seeing that of _the late Mr. Pitt_; from Edridge's small whole length. The story attached to it is rather singular. It was found on board the first naval prize (a frigate) which the French made during the late war; and the Captain begged Monsieur Denon's acceptance of it. Here were also, if I remember rightly, prints of Mr. Fox and Lord Nelson; but, as objects of _art_, I could not help looking with admiration--approaching to incredulity--upon three or four large prints, after Rembrandt and Paul Potter, which M. Denon assured me were the production of _his_ burin! I could scarcely believe it. Whatever be the merits of Denon, as a critical judge of art, ancient or modern, there is no person, not wholly blinded by prejudice, or soured by national antipathies, that can deny him great zeal, great talent, and great feeling ... in the several pursuits of art, of which his apartments furnish such splendid evidence. But, you may be disposed to add, "has this celebrated man no collection of Books?--no LIBRARY? At least he must have a _missal_ or two?" 'Tis even so, my friend. Library, he has none: for as "one swallow does not make a summer," so three or four pretty little illuminated volumes do not constitute a library. However, what he has of this kind, has been freely exhibited to me; and I here send you a transscript of some notes taken upon the spot. I was first shewn a small missal, prettily executed in a gothic type, of the Italian form, after the models of those of Jenson and Hailbrun. The calendar has the paintings injured. On the reverse of the last leaf of the Calendar, we read, in roman capitals, the following impressive annotation: DEUM TIME, PAUPERES SUSTINE, MEMENTO FINIS. On the reverse of the ensuing leaf, is a large head of Christ, highly coloured: but with the lower part of the face disproportionately short: not unlike a figure of a similar kind, in the Duke of Devonshire's Missal, described on a former occasion.[176] The crucifixon, on the next leaf but one, is full of spirit and effect. Then commence the _Drolleries_: or a series of subjects most whimsically conceived, but most sweetly touched and finished. You cannot imagine any thing more perfect of their kind and for their size, than are the beasts, birds, insects, fruits, and flowers. The vellum harmonises admirably, from its colour and quality. There are several comparatively large illuminations: some with very small figures; and two (one of St. John the Baptist, and the other of Christ mocked) are of great beauty in respect to force of colour. The initial capitals are executed with equal attention to taste in composition, and delicacy in colouring. This diminutive volume is only four inches high, by about two inches and three quarters wide. It is bound in red velvet, and mounted with silver knobs, with heads of cherubim upon them. It is fastened by a silver clasp; upon which is painted, and glazed, a head of Christ--of the time, as I conceive. M. Denon told me he bought this little gem of a bookseller in Italy, for 400 francs. He has another Missal, about half an inch wider and taller, in the binding of the time, with stamped ornaments. This exhibits flowers, fruits, and birds, in the margins; touched with great delicacy and truth. Some of the borders have a gold ground, shaded with brown, upon which the fruit is richly brought out in relief: others have human figures; and the border, encircling the temptation of our first Parents, has nothing superior to it--and is really worth an engraved fac-simile: but not in _lithography!_ It is on the forty-fifth leaf. One of the heads, in the border, is like that of our Edward VI. The third illuminated ms. volume, in M. Denon's possession, is probably the most valuable. It is a quarto, written in the Spanish language, and bearing the date of 1553. The scription is in red and black letters, alternately. This book contains several large illuminations, and coloured borders; and I was told, by its owner, that it was the _very book_ upon which the OATHS OF INITIATION INTO THE SPANISH INQUISITION were administered. Its condition is most perfect. The first large illumination represents a Saint, with his scull divided by a sword, and blood streaming copiously from him: a palm, with three crowns, is in his right hand; a book is in his left: at top we read "_Exsurge Domine, et judica Causam tuam_." The Saint is surrounded by a border of fruits and flowers. It is the principal embellishment in the volume. This book is in its original, black leather, stamped binding, with knobs and clasps. A marginal note thus remarks: "_ynoscan obligados asseruier cargome off^o. de ella salbo si de su voluntad loquisier en servi_." In my last visit to Denon,[177] I met with ANDRIEU; a name which reflects lustre upon the Fine Arts. As a medallist, he has no equal, nor perhaps ever had any, among the French. Our own SIMON enables us to oppose to him a rival of great and unquestionable talents; but we have slept soundly, both in the _medallic_ and _numismatic_ art, since the time of Cromwell: except that we were shook a little out of our slumbers during the reigns of Anne and George I. Andrieu has more of the pure Greek feeling about him, than Simon ever evinced: and prefers executing his _hair_ more in masses than in detail. He is therefore on this head, a copyist; but he transfuses into the countenance that soul and intelligence which we delight to contemplate, and which we are prompt to own, in the countenances upon Greek coins. The series of _Bonaparte-Medals_ are, almost entirely, I believe, the work of his hand. But _every_ head is _safe_ with Andrieu. He had just brought a medal of the present King (Louis XVIII.) to shew Denon. It was about the size of our half crown, in bronze. The countenance was in profile:--an admirable, and a very strong resemblance. The reverse was the equestrian statue of Henri IV., upon the Pont-Neuf.[178] Upon the whole, quite as good, as an effort of _art_, as what has been done for Bonaparte. The artist had well nigh succeeded in drawing me into a sort of half temptation to bespeak an impression of the medal _in gold_. "It was but a trifling sum--some twenty louis, or thereabouts. It would look so sharp and splendid in gold! and...." "I thank you much Sir, (replied I) but twenty louis will carry me almost to _Strasbourg_, whither I am to proceed in about a week or ten days." One thing I must add, much to his good sense and pure patriotic feeling:--he had been indirectly solicited to strike some medals, commemorative of the illustrious achievements of our WELLINGTON: but this he pointedly declined. "It was not, Sir, for _me_ to perpetuate the name of a man who had humbled the power, and the military glory, of my _own country_." Such was his remark to me. What is commendable in MUDIE,[179] would have been ill-timed, if not disgraceful, in Andrieu. Come with me, now, to a very different exhibition: to a unique collection, of its kind: to a collection, not frequently visited: as little known; but undoubtedly well deserving both of being often visited and described. It is of the _Collection of Paintings_ belonging to MR. QUINTIN CRAUFURD, living in the _Rue d'Anjou_, no. 21, that I am about to speak:--the fruits of a long residence (upwards of thirty years) in France; during the alternate commotions of republicanism and despotism. A letter of introduction procured me every facility of access to make repeated examinations of these treasures; and during my sojournings I fancied myself holding converse alternately with some of the grandees of the time of Francis I. and Louis XIV. Such a collection of _French portraits_--almost entirely of characters who have cut a figure in _history_--is no where else to be seen in Paris. In my estimation, it is beyond all price. Facing you, as you enter, stands--firmly upon his legs, and looking you manfully in the face--- the gallant and faithful _Comte De Brienne, Grand Master of the Ceremonies to Francis I. and Henry II._ A fine picture; and quite perfect.[180] To the left, is a charming whole length portrait, by _Velasquez_: a tender and exquisitely careful specimen of art. Of other whole lengths, but subordinately executed, you should notice one of _Christine, Duchesse de Savoie_, daughter of Henry II. and Catherine de Medicis; very curious, and in perfect preservation. There is a duplicate of this picture in the Louvre. A much more curious picture is a whole length, supposed to be of _Agnes Sorel_, mistress of Charles VII. One minute's reflection will correct this designation of the portrait. In the time of Agnes Sorel, portrait painting, in oil, was unknown--at least in France. The costume betrays the misnomer: for it is palpably not of the time of Agnes Sorel. Here is also a whole length of _Isabella, daughter of Philip II._ and Governess of the Low Countries. There are several small fancy pictures; among which I was chiefly, and indeed greatly struck, with a woman and two children by _Stella_. 'Tis a gem of its kind. [Illustration: COMTE DE BRIENNE, From an original Painting in the Collection of the late Quintin Crauford Esq. London, Published June 1829, by R. Jennings, Poultry.] Leaving this room, you turn, to the left--into a small room, but obscurely lighted. Here is a Virgin and Child, by _Sasso Ferrato_, that cannot be surpassed. There is a freedom of design, a crispness of touch, and a mellowness of colouring, in this picture, that render it a performance very much above the usual representations of this subject. In the same room is a spirited, but somewhat singular, picture of the _birth of Venus_. It exhibits the conception and touch of a master. The colouring is very sober. The name of the artist is not upon the frame, and as I was generally alone when I made my memoranda, I had no one to instruct me. You leave this room, and pass on--catching a glimpse of a lawn richly bedecked with flowers and shrubs--into a long and lofty room, which unites the two enviable distinctions of LIBRARY and GALLERY. Here you are bewildered for an instant: that is to say, you are divided in your attention between the admiration of the proportion and structure of the room, and the alternate captivation of books, busts, and pictures. But as you have had enough of _paper_ and _print_ in former despatches, I shall confine myself here exclusively to the _pencil_ and the _chisel_. Let us first walk leisurely about the ground floor, ere we mount the gallery. To begin with the busts. That of the late _Abbé Barthelemi_, in white marble, immediately strikes you.[181] It is full of nature and of character; and the hair has just enough of the antique gusto about it to render the toute ensemble equally classical and individualised--if you will allow this latter expression. Here is a terra-cotta head of _Corneille_, of very indifferent workmanship; and much inferior to a similar representation of him at Rouen. The terra-cotta head of _Rousseau_ is considerably better. But the marble bust of _Voltaire_, by Houdon, throws every thing about it into tameness. It is as fine as is the terra-cotta bust of the same person which Denon possesses. Here, however, the poet is in a peruque, or dress-wig. His eyes sparkle with animation. Every feature and every muscle seems to be in action: and yet it is perfectly free from caricature or affectation. A surprising performance. This head and that of Barthelemi are quite perfect of their kind. And yet I am not sure whether I should not have preferred the fine bronze bust of _Henri II._, somewhat larger than life, to either of the preceding. But I must not forget the colossal head of _Bonaparte_, when a young man, by Canova. It is of white marble: considered to be the original. Denon has a similar head, by the same artist. I am not sure if I do not prefer Mr. Craufurd's. Of paintings, on this floor, the head of _Francis I_. by Titian--(which may be called rather a finished sketch, and which is retouched in parts) is a very desirable performance; but it is inferior to the same head, by the same artist, in the Louvre. Here is a charming portrait of a Lady in the time of Louis XV., who chose to lead the life of a _Réligieuse_: sweetly and naturally touched. A fine portrait of _Grotius_ is also here; well deserving a conspicuous place in any cabinet of learning.[182] We will now walk up stairs to the gallery. Of course, in the confined space between the balustrade and the wainscot (not much more than three feet), it is barely possible to appreciate the full effect of the paintings; but I here send you a list of the greater part of them, with brief remarks, upon the general accuracy of which you may rely. _Madame Scarron_, with the _Duc du Maine_; apparently by Mignard: in a very fresh and perfect state. A fine head of _Racine_, and similar one of _De La Motte_. _Mademoiselle de Guiche, Princesse de Monaco_; in all probability by Mignard. Good. _Mademoiselle Hamilton, Comtesse de Grammont_; by Mignard. If the Comte de Grammont chose to fall in love only with beautiful women, he could scarcely, upon his own principles, (which indeed were any thing but moral) have found any one so lovely as was his WIFE. Yet I have seen handsomer portraits of her than this. _Anne de Gonzague_. She was Princess Palatine, and daughter of Charles Duke of Nevers. This is a half length portrait. A garland is in her right hand. A gay and pleasing picture. _Le Chancelier d'Aguesseau_. By Rigaud. A fine mellow portrait. _Louis XI_. A whole length; supposed to be by Leonardo da Vinci. Not very credible. It is a fine, bold, horribly-looking portrait: not in the very best state of preservation. _Blaise Pascal_. Very fine. The artist's name is not inscribed; but there is a Murillo-like effect about this portrait, which is very striking. Pascal holds a letter in his hand. Next to Pascal is a prodigiously fine oval portrait (is it of _Fontaine_?) by Rigaud. No name is subjoined. _Comtesse de la Fayette_. A fine countenance: hands apparently recoloured. In yellow drapery. _Julie-Lucie d'Augennes, Duchesse de Montausier._ She died in 1671. The portrait is by Mignard. It represents this celebrated female, when young, _encadred_ by flowers. The carnation tints of the flesh, and the blue lustre of the eye, have nothing finer in the whole circle of Mignard's performances. This is a picture from which the eye is withdrawn with no common reluctance. It is clear, bright, fresh, and speaking.[183] The _Wife of P. de Champagne_. She holds a small oval portrait of the mother of her husband, the famous painter, in her lap. The picture is by P. de Champagne himself. The head of the mother is very clever: but the flesh has perhaps too predominant a tint of pinkish-purple throughout. _Madame de la Sabliere_. Oval: very clever. _Madame Deshoulieres_. Similar, in both repects. _Madame Cornuel_. Oval: a stiff performance. _Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans_. She is represented as Hebe. A pretty picture; but a little too much "frenchified." _Madame de Staal_. Oval. Beautiful and perfect. _Madame la Marquise de Rambouillet_. A° 1646. A most beautiful picture. The head and shoulders are worthy of Vandyke. The curtain, in the background, is flowered; and perhaps too hard. _Madame la Duchesse de la Valliere, mère du dernier duc de ce nom_. She was the mother of the Duke de la Valliere who had the celebrated library; and died in 1782, within three months of reaching her hundredth year! She was an old woman, but yet very handsome, when this portrait was painted. Her colour is yet tender, and her features are small and regular. The eyes have unusual intelligence, for so protracted a period of life. It is a half length, and I should think by Rigaud. She is sitting in a chair, holding a tea spoon in her right hand, and a tea cup in her left. This may have some allusion, of which I am ignorant. The whole picture is full of nature, and in a fine tone of colour. The _Duke of Monmouth_. He is sitting: holding a truncheon in his right hand. A helmet and plume are before him. He wears a white sash. This is a dark, but may be called a finely painted, picture. Yet the Duke is not represented as a handsome man. _Turenne_. By P. de Champagne. Fine. _Bossuet_. By Rigaud. This is not only considered as the chef-d'oeuvre of Rigaud, but it has been pronounced to be the finest portrait ever executed within the last century of the French School.[184] It is a whole length; and is well known to you from the wonderful print of it by Drevet. The representation is worthy of the original; for Bossuet was one of the last of the really great men of France. He had a fine capacity and fine scholarship: and was as adroit in polemics as Richelieu was in politics. He resembled somewhat our Horsley in his pulpit eloquence,--and was almost as pugnacious and overbearing in controversy. He excelled in quickness of perception, strength of argument, and vehemence of invective; yet his sermons are gradually becoming neglected--while those of Fenelon, Massillon, and Saurin are constantly resorted to ... for the fine taste, pure feeling, and Christianlike consolation which breathe throughout them. One thing, in this fine whole length portrait of Bossuet, cannot fail to be noticed by the curious. The head seems to have been separately painted, on a small square piece of canvass, and _let into_ the picture. There is certainly a _rifacimento_ of some kind or other; which should denote the head to have been twice painted. _C. Paulin_. By Champagne. Paulin was first confessor to Louis XIV.; and had therefore, I should apprehend, enough upon his hands. This is a fine portrait. _William III_. Harsh and stiff. It is a performance (as most of those of William seem to be) for the model of a head of a ship. _Colbert, Evéque de Montpellier_. A fine head. _Fléchier, Evéque de Nismes_. A very fine portrait. The name of the painter does not appear. A fine half length portrait of a _Marshal of France_, with a truncheon in his hand. Both the hands are beautifully drawn and coloured. _Maréchal duc d'Harcourt_. By Rigaud. _Eliz. Angelique de Montmorenci, Duchesse de Chatillon_. She died in 1695 in her 69th year. This is a fine picture, but injured and retouched. The left hand rests upon a lion's head. _F. Marie de Bourbon, fille de Madame de Montespan, et femme du Régent_. A stiffish picture; but the countenance is pleasing. _Madame la Duchesse de Névers, fille de Madame de Thianges, et nièce de Madame de Montespan_. A bow is in her right hand, and a dog in her left. The countenance is beautiful and well painted. The eyes and mouth in particular have great sweetness of expression. _Duc de Montausier_; in a hat and red feather. By Rigaud. _Madame la Duchesse de Sforce: fille cadette de Madame de Thianges_. A small whole length, sitting: with two greyhounds in her lap, and a third at her side. _Le Ministre Colbert_. By Mignard. A fine picture.[185] _Marie Leezinska, femme de Louis XV_. A cleverly painted head. _Le Cardinal Mazarin_. By P. de Champagne. Whole length. A fine portrait-- which I never contemplate without thinking of the poor unfortunate "man in an iron mask!" _Madame de Motteville_. She died in her 74th year, in 1689. This is merely the head and shoulders; but in the Vandyke style of execution. _Charles Paris d'Orleans, dernier Duc de Longueville._ He was killed in the famous passage of the Rhine, at Tolhuys, in 1672. _Charles I_. By Vandyke. A beautiful half length portrait. Perhaps too highly varnished. _Le Marquis de Cinq-Mars_. He was beheaded at the age of twenty-two, in September 1642. There is also a whole length of him, in a rich, white, flowered dress. A genuine and interesting picture. _Mary Queen of Scots_. Whole length: in a white dress. A copy; or, if an old picture, repainted all over. _Don Carlos_, the unfortunate son of Philip II. of Spain. A beautiful youth; but this picture, alleged to have been painted by Alfonso Sanchez Coello, must be a copy. The foregoing are the principal decorations along the gallery of this handsome and interesting room. In an adjoining closet, where were once two or three portraits of Bonaparte, is a beautiful and highly finished small whole length of _Philip Duke of Orleans_, Regent of France. Also a whole length of _Marmontel_, sitting; executed in crayon. The curiously carved frame, in a brown-coloured wood, in which this latter drawing is contained, is justly an object of admiration with visitors. I have scarcely seen a more appropriate ornament, for a choice cabinet, than this estimable portrait of Marmontel. Here are portraits of _Neckar_, and _Clement Marot_, in crayons: the latter a copy. Here is, too, a cleverly painted portrait of _L. de Boulogne_. We descend--to a fourth room, or rather to a richly furnished cabinet-- below stairs. Every thing here is "en petit." Whether whole lengths, or half lengths, they are representations in miniature. What is this singular portrait, which strikes one to the left, on entering? Can it be so? Yes ... DIANE DE POICTIERS again! She yet lives every where in France. 'Tis a strange performance; but I have no hesitation in calling it AN ORIGINAL ... although in parts it has been palpably retouched. But the features--and especially the eyes--(those "glasses of the soul," as old Boiastuau calls them[186]) seem to retain their former lustre and expression. This highly curious portrait is a half length, measuring only ten inches by about eight. It represents the original without any drapery, except a crimson mantle thrown over her back. She is leaning upon her left arm, which is supported by a bank. A sort of tiara is upon her head. Her hair is braided. Above her, within a frame, is the following inscription, in capital roman letters: "_Comme le Cerf brait après le décours des Eaues; ainsi brait mon Ame, après Toy, ô Dieu_." Ps. XLII. Upon the whole, this is perhaps the most legitimate representation of the original which France possesses.[187] In the same boudoir is a small and beautifully coloured head of _Francis I._ Here is a portrait of the famous _Duchess of Portsmouth_, on horseback, in red; and another of the _Duchess of Nevers_, in a blue riding jacket. But much more estimable, and highly to be prized--as works of art--- are the TWO MURILLOS: one, apparently of St. Francis, which was always religiously preserved in the bed-chamber of Madame de Maintenon, having been given to her by Louis XIV. The other, although fine, has less general interest. I could hardly sufficiently admire the whole length of _Jacques Callot_, painted by himself. It is delicious, of its kind. There is a very curious and probably coeval picture representing whole length portraits of the _Cardinals of Guise and Lorraine_, and the _Dukes of Guise and Mayenne_,[188] The figures are very small, but appear to be faithful representations. An old portrait of _Louis Roi de Sicile, Père de Réné_,--a small head, supposed to be of the fifteenth century--is sufficiently singular, but I take this to be a copy. Yet the likeness may be correct. A whole length of _Washington_, with a black servant holding his horse, did not escape my attention. Nor, as an antiquary, could I refuse bestowing several minutes attention upon the curious old portrait (supposed to be by _Jean de Bruges_) of _Charlotte, Wife of Louis XI._ It is much in the style of the old illuminations. In one of the lower rooms, I forget which, is a portrait of Bonaparte; the upper part of the same representation of him which appeared in London from the pencil of David. He is placed by the side of a portrait (of the same dimensions) of his conqueror, Wellington: but I am not much disposed to admire the style of execution of our hero. It is a stiff, formal, and severely executed picture. Assuredly the present school of French portrait painters is most egregiously defective in expression; while ours, since the days of Reynolds, has maintained a most decided superiority. I believe I have now noticed every thing that is more particularly deserving of attention in the Collection of Mr. Quintin Craufurd ... But I cannot retrace my steps without again expressing my admiration of the _local_ of this little domain. The garden, offices, and neighbourhood render it one of the most desirable residences in Paris.[189] As I happen to be just now in the humour for gossiping about the fine arts, suppose I take you with me to the collection of paintings of the MARQUIS DE SOMMARIVA, in the _Rue du Bas Rempart_? It is among the most distinguished, and the most celebrated, in Paris; but I should say it is rather eminent for sculpture than for painting. It is here that Canova reigns without a rival. The early acquaintance and long tried friend of the Marquis, that unrivalled sculptor has deposited here what he considers to be the _chef-d'oeuvre_ of his art, as a single figure. Of course, I speak of his _Magdalen_. But let me be methodical. The open day for the inspection of his treasures is _Friday_. When I entered, not a creature was in the rooms. The general effect was splendid and imposing. I took out my memorandum-book, and went directly to work; noticing only those subjects which appeared, on one account or other, to be more particularly deserving of attention. There is a pretty picture of CUPID AND PSYCHE, by _Carlo Cignani_; the simple and quiet effect of which is much heightened by being contrasted with the very worst representation of the _same subject_, which I ever saw, by _David_: painted last year at Brussels. How the Marquis can afford so many square yards of his walls for the reception of such a performance, is almost marvellous. It is, throughout, in the worst possible taste. The countenance of Cupid, who is sitting on the bed or couch with the vacant grin of an ideot, is that of a negro. It is dark, and of an utterly inane expression. The colouring is also too ruddy throughout. Near to this really heartless picture, is one of a woman flying; well drawn, and rather tenderly coloured. Opposite, is a picture of Venus supported in the air by a group of Cupids. The artist is _Prudhon_. In the general glare of colour, which distinguishes the French school, it is absolutely refreshing to have the eye soothed by something like an attempt, as in this picture, at a mellow chiaro-oscuro. It has undoubted merit. It is, upon the whole, finely coloured; but the countenance of Venus is so pale as to have an almost deathly effect. It is intended to represent her as snatched away from the sight of her dead Adonis. In common courtesy I must make but brief mention of a very clumsy, and ill-drawn child, by De Broisefremont: and hasten, in the next room, to the magnificent picture of _Diana and Endymion_, painted by Guerin in 1810, and lately engraved. This picture is a very fair illustration of the merits and demerits of the FRENCH SCHOOL OF PAINTING. The drawing of Endymion is, upon the whole, good; but a palpable copy of the antique. This necessarily gives it somewhat an air of affectation. The shepherd lies upon a bed of clouds, (terminated by an horizon which is warmed by the rays of a setting sun) very gracefully and perhaps naturally. He seems to sleep soundly. His whole figure and countenance glow with the warmth of beauty and youth. I will not disturb his slumbers by finding the least fault--even with the disposition of the extremities. But his nightly visitor--the enamoured goddess--is, of all female figures which I have ever seen upon canvass, one of the most affected, meagre, and uninteresting. Diana has been exchanged for an opera dancer. The waist is pinched in, the attitude is full of conceit, and there is a dark shadow about the neck, as if she had been trying some previous experiment with a _rope_! Endymion could never open his eyes to gaze upon a figure so utterly unworthy of the representation of an enamoured deity.[190] The Cupids must also be condemned; for they are poor in form, and indifferent in execution. The back ground has considerable merit: but I fear the picture is too highly glazed. In this room also is the famous picture of _Belisarius_, engraved with so much éclat by Desnoyers. I own that I like the engraving better than the painting; for I see no occasion for such a disproportionate quantity of warm colouring as this picture exhibits. Pope (in his Epistle to Jarvis, I think) says of artists, that, "to paint the naked is their dear delight." No artists ever delighted so much in this branch of painting as the French. Does not this taste argue a want--not only of respect, but--of _feeling?_ It was therefore pleasing to me, my dear friend, to turn my attention from the studied display of naked goddesses, in the collection of the worthy Marquis of Sommariva, towards objects a little more qualified to gratify the higher feelings connected with art:--and the first thing which soothed me, when I _had_ so turned my attention, was, the _Terpsichore_ of _Canova_. You know it from the print by Morghen. The countenance, to my eye, is the perfection of female beauty:--yet it is a countenance which seems to be the abstract--the result of study, and of combination--rather than of beauty, as seen "in mortal race which walks the earth." The drapery appears to be studiously neglected--giving it the appearance of the antique, which had been battered and bruised by the casualties of some two thousand years. By this, I mean that the folds are not only numerous, but the intermediate parts are not marked by that degree of precision and finish, which, in my opinion, they ought to have received. Yet the whole has an enchantingly simple air: at once classical, pure, and impressive. The Marquis has indeed great reason to be proud of it. But if I pat the right cheek of Canova with one hand, I must cuff his left cheek with the other. Here is a Cupid by him, executed in 1787. It is evidently the production of a mind not ripened to its fullest powers. In other words, I should call it "a poor, flat thing." We approach the far-famed MAGDALEN. Immediately opposite the boudoir, where the last mentioned treasures are deposited, you observe a door, or aperture, half covered with silken drapery of a greyish brown tint. There was something mysterious in the appearance, and equally so in the approach. I had no intimation of what it led to; for, as I told you, not a creature besides myself was in the rooms. With a gently raised hand I drew the drapery aside, entered ... and looked before me. There stood the MAGDALEN. There she was, (more correctly speaking) kneeling; in anguish and wretchedness of soul--her head hanging down--contemplating a scull and cross, which were supported by her knees. Her dishevelled hair flowed profusely over her back and shoulders. Her cheeks were sunk. Her eyes were hollow. Her attitude was lowly and submissive. You could not look at her without feeling pity and compassion. Such, in few words, is the Magdalen of Canova. For the first five minutes I was lost in surprise and admiration. The windows are hid by white curtains; and the interior is hung all over with the same grey silk drapery, before noticed. A glass, placed behind the figure, affords you a view of the back while you are contemplating the front. This is very ingenious; but it is probably too artificial. The effect of the room, however--from the silken drapery with which it is entirely covered--is, although studied, upon the whole excellent. Of course the minutes flew away quickly in such a place, and before such an object; and I think I viewed the figure, in every possible direction, for full three quarters of an hour. The result of that view--after the first feelings of admiration had subsided--I proceeded forthwith to impart: and shall be most happy to be set right if I have erred, in the conclusion which I draw. In truth, there can be only one or two little supposed impeachments of the artist's judgment, in the contemplation of this extraordinary figure. The Magdalen has probably too much of the abject expression of _mendicity_ in her attitude; and, for a creature thus poor and prostrate, one is surprised to find her gazing upon a _golden_ cross. It is a piece of finery ill placed in the midst of such wretchedness. But Canova is fond of gilt; yet what is appropriate in _Hebe_ may be discordant in the _Magdalen_. This penitent creature, here so touchingly expressed, is deeply wrapped in meditation upon her crucified Master. She has forsaken the world ... to follow the cross!--but surely this idea would have been more powerfully expressed, if the cross had _not_ been _visible_?. Was this object necessary to tell the tale?--or, rather, did not the sculptor deem it necessary to _balance_ (as is called) the figure? Nor am I over well satisfied with the scull. It is common-place. At any rate, if scull and cross must be there, I wish the cross had been simply of stone--as is the scull. My next objection relates to a somewhat more important point. I think the _face_ and _figure_ do not seem to belong to the _same_ human being: the former is shrunken, ghastly, and indicative of extreme constitutional debility: the latter is plump, well formed, and bespeaks a subject in the enjoyment of full health. Can such an union, therefore, be quite correct? In the different views of this figure, especially in profile, or behind, you cannot fail to be struck with the general beauty of the form; but this beauty arises from its fulness and just proportion. In gazing upon it, in front, you are pained by the view of a countenance shrunk almost to emaciation! Can this be in nature? And do not mental affliction and bodily debility generally go together? The old painters, even as far back as the time of illuminators of books, used to represent the Magdalen as plump, even to fatness,--and stout in all respects; but her _countenance_ usually partook of this vigour of stamina. It was full, rosy, and healthful. The older artists sometimes placed the Magdalen in a very awkward, and perhaps impossible, situation; and she was even made to be buried up to the bosom in earth--still exercising her devotions. Canova has doubtless displayed great pathos in the wretched aspect, and humiliated attitude, of his Magdalen; but he has, at the same time, not been inattentive to beauty of form. I only wish she appeared to be in as good condition as the _torso_ indicates. A fastidious observer might say the figure was not _quite balanced_, and that she must fall backward--if she retained such an attitude for a quarter of an hour. But this is hyper-criticism. The date of the execution of this figure is 1796: and parts of it clearly indicate that, if the sculptor were now to re-execute it, he would have paid even yet more attention to the finishing of the hair. Upon the whole, however, it is a masterly effort of modern art. It is almost fixed that we leave Paris within a week or ten days from hence:--and then, for green fields, yellow corn, running streams, ripened fruit, and all the rural evidences of a matured summer. [164] It was translated into English, and published in this country on a reduced scale, both as to text and engravings--but a reprint of it, with a folio volume of plates, &c. had appeared also in 1802. At the time, few publications had such a run; or received a commendation, not more unqualified than it was just. See an account of this work in the _Library Companion_, p. 442. edit. 1824. [165] [M. Denon DIED in 1825, aged 78. The sale of his _Marbles, Bronzes, Pictures, Engravings, &c._ took place in 1826.] [166] [It was sold at the sale of M. Denon's pictures for 650 francs, and is numbered 187 in the Catalogue.] [167] [One of these pictures brought 1,400, and the other 220 francs: prices, infinitely below their real worth. They should have been sold HERE!] [168] [M. Crapelet says--this bust was modelled after the life by PIGALLE: and was, in turn, the model of that belonging to the figure of Voltaire in the library of the Institute: see p. 195 ante.] [169] [The result--judging from the comparative prices obtained at the sale--has confirmed the propriety of my predilection. It brought 5000 francs. In the sale catalogue, is the following observation attached: "On admire dans ce précieux tableau de chevalet la facilité surprenante de pinceau et cette harmonic parfaite de couleur qui faisaient dire au Tiarini, peintre contemporain, "Seigneur Guerchin, vous faites ce que vous voulez, et nous autres ce que nous pouvons." No. 14.] [170] ["This figure was cast from a model made by Montoni in 1809. There were ONLY six copies of it, of which four were in _bronze_ and two in _silver_." _Cat._ No. 717. I have not been able to learn the price for which it was sold.] [171] The OPPOSITE PLATE will best attest the truth of the above remark. It exhibits a specimen of that precise period of art, when a taste for the gothic was beginning somewhat to subside. The countenance is yet hard and severely marked; but the expression is easy and natural, and the _likeness_ I should conceive to be perfect. As such, the picture is invaluable. [So far in the preceding edition. The sequel is a little mortifying. The above picture, an undoubted _original_--and by a master (the supposed pupil of John Van Eyk) who introduced the art of oil-painting into Italy--was sold for only 162 francs: whereas the _copy_ of it, in oil, by Laurent, executed expressly for the accompanying plate (and executed with great skill and fidelity) cost 400 francs!] [172] [What a taste have the Virtuosi at Paris! This interesting picture was allowed to be sold for 162 francs only. Who is its fortunate Possessor?] [173] [The OPPOSITE PLATE, which exhibits the head in question, is a sufficient confirmation of the above remark.] [174] [First, of the MARC ANTONIOS. Since the sale of the _Silvestre_ Collection, in 1810, nothing had been seen at Paris like that of M. Denon. It was begun to be formed in the eighteenth century: from which it is clear, that, not only was every proof at least an hundred years old, but, at that period, ZANETTI, the previous possessor of this Collection, sought far and wide, and with unremitting diligence, for the acquisition of the choicest impressions of the engraver. In fact, this Collection, (contained in an imperial folio volume, bound in morocco--and of which I necessarily took but a hasty glance) consisted of 117 _original_ impressions, and of 26 of such as were executed in the _school_ of M. Antonio. Of the original impressions, the whole, with the exception of four only, belonged to Zanetti. "If, says the compiler of the Catalogue, (1826, 8vo. p. ij.) some of the impressions have a dingy tint, from the casualties of time, none have been washed, cleaned, or passed through chemical experiments to give them a treacherous look of cleanliness." This is sound orthodoxy. The whole was put up in one lot, and ... BOUGHT IN. Secondly, for the REMBRANDTS. The like had never been before submitted to public auction. The Collections of _Silvestre_ and _Morel de Vindé_ out and out eclipsed! _Zanetti_ again--the incomparable--the felicitous--the unrivalled Zanetti had been the possessor of THIS Collection also. But yet more ... John Peter Zoomer, a contemporary (and peradventure a boon companion) of Rembrandt, was the original former of the Collection. It is therefore announced as being COMPLETE in all respects--"exhibiting all the changes, retouches, beautiful proofs, on India and other paper: ample margins, unstained, uninjured; and the impressions themselves, in every stage, bright, rich, and perfect. The result of all the trouble and expence of 50 years toil of collection is concentrated in this Collection." So says John Peter Zoomer, the original collector and contemporary of Rembrandt. It consisted of 394 original pieces: 3, attributed to Rembrandt, without his name: 11, of John Lievens, Ferdinand Bol, and J.G. Villet: 11 copies: and 9 engraved in the manner of Rembrandt. The whole contained in 3 large folio volumes, bound in red morocco. No reasonable man will expect even a précis of the treasures of this marvellous Collection: A glance of the text will justify every thing to follow: but the "Advertisement" to the Catalogue prepares the purchaser for the portrait of _Rembrandt with the bordered cloak_-- Ditto, _with the Sabre--Ephraim Bonus_ with the _black ring_--the _Coppinol_, as above described--the _Advocate Tolling_--the _Annunciation of Christ's Nativity to the Shepherds--the _Resurrection of Lazarus--Christ healing the Sick_; called the _Hundred Guilders_[H]--the _Astrologer asleep_--and several _Landscapes_ not elsewhere to be found--of which one, called the _Fishermen_ (No. 456) had escaped Bartsch, &c. &c. The descriptions of the several articles of which this Collection was composed, occupy 47 pages of the Catalogue. The three volumes were put up to sale--as a SINGLE LOT--at the price of 50,000 francs:--and there was _no purchaser_. Of its present destiny, I am ignorant: but there are those in this country, who, to my knowledge, would have given 35,000 francs. I ought to add, that M. Denon's collection of CALLOT'S WORKS, in three large folio volumes,--bound in calf--also once the property of Zanetti--and than which a finer set is supposed never to have been exhibited for sale--produced 1000 francs: certainly a moderate sum, if what Zanetti here says of it (in a letter to his friend Gaburri, of the date of 1726) be true. "If ever you do this country (Venice) the honour of a visit, you will see in my little cabinet a collection of CALLOTS, such as you will not see elsewhere--not in the royal collection at Paris, nor in the Prince Eugene's, at Vienna--where the finest and rarest impressions are supposed to be collected. I possess _every_ impression of the plates which Callot executed; many of them containing first proofs, retouched and corrected by the engraver himself in red chalk. I bought this Collection at Paris, and it cost me 1950 francs. They say it was formed by the engraver himself for his friend M. Gérard an Amateur of Prints." "It should seem that Zanetti's description was a little overcharged; but in _his_ time there was no complete catalogue of the artists." Cat. p. 153. [H] It formed No. 345 of the Catalogue; where it is described as being "a magnificent proof upon India paper, with a margin of 15 lines all round it. It was with the bur, and before the cross-hatchings upon the mane of the Ass." The finest copy of this subject, sold in this country, was that formerly in the collection of M. Bernard; and recently purchased by T. Wilson, Esq. Will the reader object to disporting himself with some REMBRANDTIANA, in the _Bibliomania_ p. 680-2.? [175] One of those pictures (No. 188 in the Catalogue) produced 3015 francs: the other, only 180 francs. The Sebastian Bourdon (No. 139,) was sold for 67 francs, and the Parmegiano, (No. 34) for 288 francs. [176] See the _Bibliographical Decameron_; vol. i. p. clvii. &c. [M. Denon's Missal was purchased by an English amateur, and sold at the sale of the Rev. Theodore Williams's Library for £143. 17s.] [177] [Ere we take leave of this distinguished Frenchman, let us dwell for two seconds on his autograph. [Autograph: Denon] [178] There has been recently struck (I think, in 1819) a medal with the same obverse and reverse, of about the size between an English farthing and halfpenny. The statue of Henry is perhaps the MIRACLE OF ART: but it requires a microscopic glass to appreciate its wonders. Correctly speaking, probably, such efforts are not in the purest good taste. Simplicity is the soul of numismatic beauty. [179] The Artist who struck the series of medals to commemorate the campaigns of the Duke of Wellington, from his landing in Portugal to the battle of Waterloo. [180] [See the OPPOSITE PLATE, which represents the upper part of the Picture.] [181] [I sent a commission for it, for a friend, at the sale of Mr. Craufurd's effects, but lost it.] [182] [Purchased by myself: and now at Hodnet.] [183] [This picture was purchased for the gallery at ALTHORP. There is an exquisite drawing of it by Wright, for the purpose of a stipling engraving.] [184] It was purchased by the late King of France for 10,000 francs. [185] [Purchased for the gallery at ALTHORP.] [186] The above quotation is incomplete; for the passage alluded to runs thus.--"Where is the painter so well sorting his colours, that could paint these faire eyes that are the _windows of the body, and glasses of the soul_." The continuation is in a very picturesque style. See the _Theatre or Rule of the World_, p. 236-7, quoted in a recent (1808) edition of _More's Utopia_, vol. ii. p. 143. But _Primaudaye's French Academy_, Lond. 1605, 4to. runs very much in the same strain. [187] A little graphic history belongs to this picture. I obtained a most beautiful and accurate copy of it by M. Le Coeuré, on a reduced scale: from which Mr. J. Thomson made an Engraving, as a PRIVATE PLATE, and only 75 copies were struck off. The plate was then destroyed; the impressions selling for a guinea. They are now so rare as to be worth treble that sum: and proofs upon India paper, before the letter, may be worth £5. 5s. Three proofs only were struck off of the plate in its _mutilated_ state; of which my friends Mr. Haslewood and Mr. G. H. Freeling rejoice in their possession of a copy. The drawing, by Coeuré, was sold for 20 guineas at the sale of my drawings, by Mr. Evans, in 1822, but it has been subsequently sold for only _nine_ guineas; and of which my worthy friend A. Nicholson, Esq.--"a good man, and a true"--is in the possession. Subsequently, the ABOVE ORIGINAL picture was sold; and I was too happy to procure it for the gallery at Althorp for _twelve_ guineas only! [188] [A magnificent whole length portrait of this first DUKE DE GUISE, painted by PORBUS--with a warmth and vigour of touch, throughout, which are not unworthy of Titian--now adorns the very fine gallery at Althorp: where is also a whole length portrait of ANNE OF AUSTRIA, by Mignard. Both pictures are from the same Collection; and are each probably the masterpiece of the artist. They are of the size of life.] [189] [Mr. Craufurd died at Paris in 1821.] [190] ["Amateurs, connaisseurs, examinateurs, auteurs de revues du Salon, parodistes même, vous n'entendez rien à ce genre de critique; prenez M. Dibdin pour modèle: voila' la _bonne école_!" CHAPELET, vol. iv. p. 200. My translator shall here have the full benefit of his own bombastical nonsense.] _LETTER XI._ NOTICE OF M. WILLEMIN'S MONUMENS FRANÇAIS INÉDITS. MISCELLANEOUS ANTIQUITIES. PRESENT STATE OF THE FINE ARTS. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS UPON THE NATIONAL CHARACTER. _July 8, 1818_. I rejoice that it is in my power once more--and certainly for the last time, from hence--to address you upon a few subjects, which, from your earlier replies to my Paris letters, you seem to think that I have lost sight of. These subjects, relate chiefly to ANTIQUITIES. Be assured that I have never, for one moment, been indifferent to them; but in the vast bibliographical field which the public libraries of this place held out for my perambulation, it was impossible, in the first instance, not to take advantage of the curious, and probably useful information, to be derived from thence. I must begin therefore by telling you that I had often heard of the unassuming and assiduous author of the _Monumens Français Inédits_, and was resolved to pay him a visit. I found him in the _Rue Babile_ towards the eastern end of the Rue St. Honoré, living on the third floor. Several young females were in the ante-room, colouring the plates of that work; which are chiefly in outline and in aqua-tint. Each livraison contains six plates, at twelve francs the livraison. The form is folio, and about twenty-eight numbers are printed.[191] There is something in them of every thing: furniture, dresses, houses, castles, churches, stained glass, paintings, and sculpture. Illuminated MSS. are as freely laid under contribution as are the outsides and insides of buildings, of whatsoever description. Indeed I hardly ever visited the Public Library without finding M. Willemin busied, with his pencil and tracing paper, with some ancient illuminated MS. The style of art in the publication here noticed, is, upon the whole, feeble; but as the price of the work is moderate, no purchaser can reasonably complain. The variety and quantity of the embellishments will always render M. Willemin's work an acceptable inmate in every well-chosen library. I recommend it to you strongly; premising, that the author professedly discards all pretension to profound or very critical antiquarian learning. For himself, M. Willemin is among the most enthusiastic, but most modest, of his antiquarian brethren. He has seen better days. His abode and manners afford evidence that he was once surrounded by comparative affluence and respectability. A picture of his deceased wife hung over the chimney-piece. The back-ground evinced a gaily furnished apartment. "Yes, Sir, (said M.W.--on observing that I noticed it) such was _once_ my room, and its _chief ornament_"--Of course I construed the latter to be his late wife. "Alas! (resumed he) in better days, I had six splendid cabinets filled with curiosities. I have now--not a single one! Such is life." He admitted that his publication brought him a very trifling profit; and that, out of his own country, he considered the _London_ market as the most advantageous to him. A large broken phial, containing water and a fleur-de-lis in full bloom, was the only, ornament of his mantle piece. "Have you no curiosities of any kind--(said I to him) for sale?" "None--" replied he; but he had _drawings_ of a few. "Have the kindness to shew me some of these drawings"--and forthwith appeared the case and _pocket-knife of Diane de Poictiers_, drawn from the original by Langlois. "Where is the original?" observed I, hastily. "Ha, Sir, you are not singular in your question. A nobleman of your country was almost losing his wits because he could not purchase it:--and yet, this original was once to be obtained for _twenty louis_!" I confess I was glad to obtain the drawing of Langlois for two napoleons. It is minutely and prettily executed, and apparently with great fidelity. M. Willemin proceeded to shew me a few more drawings for his national work, telling me precisely what he _meant_, and what he did _not_ mean, to publish. His own drawings with a pen are, some of them, of a masterly execution; and although of a less brilliant and less classical style than those of LE NOIR, M. Willemin is still an artist of whom his country will always have reason to be proud. I bought several drawings of him.[192] One represents the sculptured figures upon the outside of the _grand portal_ of the _Cathedral of Chartres._ These figures seem to be of the thirteenth century. The other drawing is of a rich piece of _fayence_, or of painted and glazed earthenware dish, and about the middle of the sixteenth century: of which I remember to have seen some very curious specimens at Denon's. But nothing can be more singular, and at the same time more beautiful of its kind, than the present specimen--supposed to be the work of the famous Bernard Palissy. Paris is full of such treasures. Of all cities, PARIS is probably that which abounds with rich and curious relics of ancient art. Its churches, its palaces, its public buildings-- sometimes grotesque and sometimes magnificent--furnish alike subjects for admiration and materials for collection. But the genius of the French does not lie in this pursuit. From the commencement of the sixteenth century, the ANTIQUITIES OF PARIS might have supplied a critical antiquary with matter for a publication which could have been second only to the immortal work of Piranesi. But with the exception of Montfaucon, (which I admit to be a most splendid exception) and recently of MILLIN and LE NOIR, France hardly boasts of an indigenous Antiquary. In our own country, we have good reason to be proud of this department of literature. The names of Leland, Camden, Cotton, Dugdale, Gibson, Tanner, Gough, and Lysons, place us even upon a level with the antiquarians of Italy. It was only the other day that M. Willemin was urging me, on my return to England, to take _Beauvais_ in my way, in order to pay a visit to Madame la Comtesse de G., living at a chateau about three leagues from that place. She possesses a collection of carved wood, in bas-reliefs, porches, stair-cases, &c. all from a neighbouring dilapidated abbey; and, among other things, one singular piece of sculpture, descriptive of the temptation of St Anthony. He had reason to think that the Countess might be more successfully tempted than was the Saint just mentioned; in other words, that these things were to be had rather for "money" than for "love." For specimens of the costume of the lower classes, the _south_ side of the Seine must be chiefly visited. The great streets which lead thither are those of _St. Victor, St. Jaques_, and _De La Harpe_. Mr. Lewis had frequently strolled to this quarter of Paris; and his attention was one morning particularly directed to a group of _Blanchisseuses_--who were halting beneath their burdens to have a little gossip with each other. See how characteristically he has treated the subject. [Illustration] One of the causes of the want of encouragement in NATIONAL ANTIQUITIES, among the French, may arise from the natural love of the people for what is gay and gaudy, rather than for what is grave and instructive. And yet, when will nations learn that few things tend so strongly to keep alive a pure spirit of PATRIOTISM as _such_ a study or pursuit? As we reverence the past, so do we anticipate the future. To love what our forefathers have done in arts, in arms, or in learning, is to lay the surest foundation for a proper respect for our own memories in after ages. But with Millin, I fear, the study of Archaeology will sleep soundly, if not expire, among the Parisians. VISCONTI has doubtless left a splendid name behind him here; but Visconti was an Italian. No; my friend--the ARTS have recently taken an exclusive turn for the admiration, even to adoration, of portrait and historical painters: No LYSONSES, no BLORES, no MACKENZIES are patronised either at Paris or in the other great cities of France. I must however make an honourable exception in favour of the direction given to the splendid talents of MADAME JAQUOTOT. And I cannot, in common justice, omit, on this occasion, paying a very sincere tribute of respect to the PRESENT KING[193]--who has really been instrumental to this direction. I have lately paid this clever lady a morning visit, with a letter of introduction from our common friend M. Langlès. As I was very courteously received, I begged that I might only see such specimens of her art as would give her the least possible trouble, and afford me at the same time an opportunity of judging of her talents. Madame Jaquotot was as liberal in the display of her productions, as she was agreeable and polite in her conversation. I saw all her performances. Her copies of Leonardo da Vinci and Guido, in black crayons, are beautiful of their kind; but her enamel copies, upon porcelaine, of the _Portraits of the more celebrated Characters of France_--executed at the desire and expense of his Majesty--perfectly delighted me. The plan is as excellent as its execution is perfect. But such performances have not been accomplished without a heavy previous expense, on the score of experiments. I was told that the artist had sunk a sum little short of five or six hundred pounds sterling, in the different processes for trying and fixing her colours. But she seems now to walk upon firm ground, and has nothing but an abundant harvest to look forward to. Indeed, for every portrait, square, or oval, (although scarcely more than _three inches_ in height) she receives a hundred louis d'or. This is a truly princely remuneration: but I do not consider it overpaid. Some of the earlier portraits are taken from illuminated manuscripts; and, among them, I quickly recognised that of my old friend _Anne of Brittany_,--head and shoulders only: very brilliant and characteristic--but Mr. Lewis is "yet a painter." As all these bijoux (amounting perhaps to twelve or fifteen in number) were displayed before me, I fancied I was conversing with the very Originals themselves. The whole length of _Henri IV_., of the same size as the original in the Louvre, is probably the chef d'oeuvre of Madame Jaquotot. It is exquisitely perfect. When she comes down to the reign of Louis XIV., she has necessarily recourse to the originals of PETITOT; of which the Louvre contains a precious glazed case, enclosing about four or five dozen, of them. Here again the copyist treads closely upon the heels of her predecessor; while her portrait of _Anne of Austria_ comes fully up to every thing we discover in the original. Upon the whole, I spent a pleasant and most instructive hour with this accomplished lady; and sincerely wish that all talents, like hers, may receive a similar direction and meet with an equally liberal reward. You must not fail to bear in mind that, in my humble judgment, this department of art belongs strictly to NATIONAL ANTIQUITIES. For _one_, who would turn his horse's head towards Madame Jaquotot's dwelling, in the _Rue Jacob_, fifty would fly with rapture to view a whole length by GÉRARD, or a group by DAVID. In portrait painting, and historical composition, these are the peculiar heroes. None dare walk within their circle: although I think GIRODET may sometimes venture to measure swords with the latter. Would you believe it? The other day, when dining with some smart, lively, young Parisians, I was compelled to defend RAFFAELLE against David? the latter being considered by them _superior_ to the Italian artist in a _knowledge of drawing_. Proh pudor! This will remind you of Jervas's celebrated piece of nonsensical flattery to himself--when, on Pope's complimenting that artist upon one of his portraits, he compassionately exclaimed "_Poor little Tit_!"--Surely all these national prejudices are as unwise as they are disgusting. Of Gérard, I would wish to speak with respect; but an artist, who receives from fifteen to twenty thousand francs for the painting of a whole length portrait, stands upon an eminence which exposes him to the observation of every man. In the same degree, also, does his elevation provoke the criticism of every man. But, however respectfully I may wish to speak of Gérard, I do not, in my conscience, consider him superior to what may be called the _second rate_ class of portrait-painters in England.[194] His outline is often hard, and full of affectation of a knowledge of drawing: his colouring is as frequently severe and metallic, and there is rarely any expression of mind or soul in his faces. I saw at Laugier's the other day, his portrait of Madame de Stael--painted from _recollection_. He certainly had _forgotten_ how to _colour_ when he executed it. Forster (a very clever, sensible, and amiable young man) is busied, or rather has just finished, the engraving of a portrait of the Duke of Wellington, by the same painter. What has depended upon _him_ has been charmingly done: but the figure of the great Original--instead of giving you the notion of the FIRST CAPTAIN OF HIS AGE[195]--is a poor, trussed-up, unmeaning piece of composition: looking-out of the canvas with a pair of eyes, which, instead of seeming to anticipate and frustrate (as they _have_ done) the movements of his adversary, as if by magic, betray an almost torpidity or vacancy of expression! The attitude is equally unnatural and ungraceful. Another defect, to my eye, in Gérard's portraits, is, the quantity of flaunting colour and glare of varnish with which his canvas is covered. The French cognoscenti swear by "the _swearing of the Horatii_" of David. I saw a reduced copy of the large picture at the Luxembourg, by the artist himself--at Didot's: and it was while discussing the comparative merits and demerits of this famous production, that I ventured to observe that Raffaelle would have drawn the hands better. A simultaneous shout of opposition followed the remark. I could scarcely preserve common gravity or decorum: but as my antagonists were serious, I was also resolved to enact a serious part. It is not necessary to trouble you with a summary of my remarks; although I am persuaded I never talked so much French, without interruption, for so long a space of time. However, my opponents admitted, with a little reluctance, that, if the hands of the Horatii were not ill drawn, the _position_ of them was sufficiently affected. I then drew their attention, to the _Cupid and Psyche_ of the same master, in the collection of the Marquis of Sommariva, (in the notice of which my last letter was pretty liberal) but I had here a less obstinate battle to encounter. It certainly appeared (they admitted) that David did not improve as he became older. Among the Painters of eminence I must not forget to mention LAURENT. The French are not very fond of him, and certainly they under-rate his talents. As a colourist, some of his satins may vie with those of Vanderwerf. He paints portraits, in small, as well as fancy-subjects. Of the former, that of his daughter is beautifully executed. Of the latter, his _Young Falconer_ is a production of the most captivating kind. But it is his _Joan of Arc_ which runs away with the prize of admiration. The Government have purchased the house in which that celebrated female was born,[196] and over the door of which an ancient statue of her is to be seen. Laurent's portrait is also purchased to be placed over the chimney-piece of the room; and it is intended to supply furniture, of the character which it originally might have possessed. But if France cannot now boast her Mignard, Rigaud, or the Poussins, she has reason to be proud of her present race of _Engravers_. Of these, DESNOYERS evidently takes the lead. He is just now in Italy, and I shall probably not see him--having twice called in vain. I own undisguisedly that I am charmed with all his performances; and especially with his sacred subjects from Raffaelle:--whom, it is just possible, he may consider to be a somewhat better draftsman than David. There is hardly any thing but what he adorns by his touch. He may consider the whole length portrait of _Bonaparte_ to be his chef-d'oeuvre; but his _Vierge au Linge, Vierge dite la Belle Jardinière_,--and perhaps, still finer, that called _au Donataire_--are infinitely preferable, to my taste. The portrait has too much of detail. It is a combination of little parts; of flowered robes, with a cabinet-like background: every thing being almost mechanical, and the shield of the ex-Emperor having all the elaborate minutiæ of Grignion. I am heretic enough to prefer the famous whole length of poor Louis XVI, by Bervic after Callet: there is such a flow of line and gracefulness of expression in this latter performance! But Desnoyers has uncommon force, as well as sweetness and tenderness, in the management of historical subjects: although I think that his recent production of _Eliezer and Rebecca_, from _Nicolo Poussin_, is unhappy--as to choice. His females have great elegance. His line never flows more freely than in the treatment of his female figures; yet he has nothing of the style of finishing of our STRANGE. His _Francis_ I, and _Marguerite de Valois_ is, to my eye, one of the most finished, successful, and interesting of his performances. It is throughout a charming picture, and should hang over half the mantle pieces in the kingdom. His portrait of _Talleyrand_ is brilliant; but there are parts very much too black. It will bear no comparison with the glorious portrait of our _John Hunter_, by Sharp--from Sir J. Reynolds. Desnoyers engraves only for himself: that is to say, he is the sole proprietor of his performances, and report speaks him to be in the receipt of some twenty-five thousand francs per annum. He deserves all he has gained--both in fortune and reputation. MASSARD works in the same school with Desnoyers. He is harder in his style of outline as well as of finishing; but he understands his subject thoroughly, and treats it with skill and effect. ANDOUIN is lately come out with a whole length portrait of the present king: a palpable copy, as to composition, of that of his late brother. There are parts of the detail most exquisitely managed, but the countenance is rather too severely marked. LIGNON is the prince of portrait-engravers. His head of _Mademoiselle Mars_--though, upon the whole, exhibiting a flat, and unmeaning countenance, when we consider that it represents the first comic actress in Europe--is a master-piece of graphic art. It is wrought with infinite care, brilliancy, and accuracy. The lace, over the lady's shoulder, may bid defiance even to what Drevet and Masson have effected of the like kind. The eyes and the gems of Mademoiselle Mars seem to sparkle with a rival lustre; but the countenance is too flat, and the nose wants elevation and beauty. For this latter, however, neither Gérard nor Lignon are amenable to criticism. Upon the whole, it is a very surprising performance. If I were called upon to notice Lignon's chef d'oeuvre, I would mention the frontispiece to the magnificent impression of _Camoens' Lusiad_, containing the head of the author, surrounded by an arabesque border of the most surprising brilliancy of composition and execution. You must however remember, that it is in the splendid work entitled LE MUSÉE FRANÇAIS, that many fine specimens of all the artists just mentioned are to be found. There is no occasion to be more particular in the present place. I must not omit the notice of FORSTER and LAUGIER: both of whom I have visited more than once. At the same time, I beg it may be distinctly understood that the omission of the names of _other_ engravers is no implication that they are passed over as being unworthy of regard. On the contrary, there are several whom I could mention who might take precedence even of the two last noticed. Some of Forster's academic figures, which gained him the prize, are very skilfully treated; both as to drawing and finishing. His print of _Titian's Mistress_ exhibits, in the face and bosom of the female, a power and richness of effect which may contend with some of the best efforts of Desnoyers's burin. The reflex-light, in the mirror behind, is admirably managed; but the figure of Titian, and the lower parts of his Mistress--especially the arms and hands--are coarse, black, and inharmonious. His _Wellington_ is a fine performance, as to mechanical skill. M. Bénard, the well-known print-seller to his Majesty, living on the _Boulevards Italiens_, laughed with me the other day at the rival Wellington--painted by Lawrence, and engraved by Bromley,--as a piece of very inferior art! But men may laugh on the wrong side of the face. I consider, however, that what has depended upon Forster, has been done with equal ability and truth. Undoubtedly the great failing of the picture is, that it can hardly be said to have even a faint resemblance of the original. M. Laugier has not yet reached his full powers of maturity; but what he has done is remarkable for feeling and force. His _Daphne and Chloe_, and _Hero and Leander_ are early performances, but they are full of promise, and abound in excellences. Colour and feeling are their chief merit. The latter print has the shadows too dark. The former is more transparent, more tender, and in better keeping. The foreground has, in some parts, the crispness and richness of Woollett. They tell me that it is a rare print, and that only 250 copies were struck off--at the expense of the Society of Arts. Laugier has recently executed a very elaborate print of Leander, just in the act of reaching the shore--(where his mistress is trembling for his arrival in a lighted watch-tower) but about to be buried in the overwhelming waves. The composition of the figure is as replete with affectation, as its position is unnatural, if not impossible. The waves seem to be suspended over him--on purpose to shew off his limbs to every degree of advantage. He is perfectly canopied by their "gracefully-curled tops." The engraving itself is elaborate to excess: but too stiff, even to a metallic effect. It can never be popular with us; and will, I fear, find but few purchasers in the richly garnished repertoire of the worthy Colnaghi. Indeed it is a painful, and almost repulsive, subject. Laugier's portrait of _Le Vicomte de Chateaubriand_ exhibits his prevailing error of giving blackness, rather than depth, to his shadows. Black hair, a black cravat, and black collar to the coat--with the lower part of the background almost "gloomy as night"--are not good accessories. This worthy engraver lives at present with his wife, an agreeable and unaffected little woman, up four pair of stairs, in the _Rue de Paradis_. I told him--and as I thought with the true spirit of prediction--that, on a second visit to Paris I should find him descended--full two stories: in proportion as he was ascending in fortune and fame. The French are either not fond of, or they do not much patronise, engraving in the _stippling_ manner: "_au poinctilliet_"--as they term it. Roger is their chief artist in this department. He is clever, undoubtedly; but his shadows are too black, and the lighter parts of his subjects want brilliancy. What he does "en petit," is better than what he does upon a larger scale." In _mezzotint_ the Parisians have not a single artist particularly deserving of commendation. They are perhaps as indifferent as we are somewhat too extravagantly attached, to it. Speaking of the FRENCH SCHOOL OF ENGRAVING, in a general and summary manner--especially of the line engravers--one must admit that there is a great variety of talent; combined with equal knowledge of drawing and of execution; but the general effect is too frequently hard, glittering, and metallic. The draperies have sometimes the severity of armour; and the accessories, of furniture or other objects, are frequently too highly and elaborately finished. Nor is the flesh always free from the appearance of marble. But the names I have mentioned, although not entirely without some of these defects, have great and more than counter-balancing excellences. In the midst of all the graphic splendour of modern Paris, it was delightful music to my ears to hear WILKIE and RAIMBACH so highly extolled by M. Bénard. "Ha, votre _Wilkie_--voilà un génie distingué!" Who could say "nay?" But let BURNET have his share of graphic praise; for the _Blind Fiddler_ owes its popularity throughout Europe to _his_ burin. They have recently copied our friend Wilkie's productions on a small scale, in aqua-tint; cleverly enough--for three francs a piece. I told Benard that the Duke of Wellington had recently bespoke a picture from Mr. Wilkie's pencil. "What is the subject to be?"--demanded he, quickly. I replied, in the very simplicity of my heart, "Soldiers regaling themselves, on receiving the news of the victory of Waterloo." Mons. Bénard was paralised for one little moment: but rallying quickly, he answered, with perfect truth, as I conceive "_Comment donc_, TOUT EST WATERLOO, _chez vous!_" M. Bénard spoke very naturally, and I will not find fault with him for such a response; for he is an obliging, knowing, and a very pleasant tradesman to do business with. He admits, readily and warmly, that we have great artists, both as painters and engravers; and pointing to Sharpe's _John Hunter_ and _The Doctors of the Church_--which happened to be hanging just before us--he observed that "these, efforts had never been surpassed by his own countrymen." I told him (while conversing about the respective merits of the British and French Schools of Engraving) that it appeared to me, that in France, there was no fine feeling for LANDSCAPE ENGRAVING; and that, as to ANTIQUARIAN art, what had been produced in the publications of Mr. Britton, and in the two fine topographical works--Mr. Clutterbuck's Hertfordshire," and. Mr. Surtees' Durham--exhibited such specimens of the burin, in that department, as could scarcely be hoped to be excelled.[197] M. Bénard did not very strenuously combat these observations. The great mart for _Printselling_ is the Boulevards; and more especially that of the _Boulevards Italiens_. A stranger can have no conception of the gaiety and brilliance of the print-shops, and print-stalls, in this neighbourhood. Let him first visit it in the morning about nine o'clock; with the sun-beams sparkling among the foliage of the trees, and the incessant movements of the populace below, who are about commencing another day's pilgrimage of human life. A pleasant air is stirring at this time; and the freshness arising from the watering of the footpath--but more particularly the fragrance from innumerable bouquets, with mignonette, rose trees, and lilacs--extended in fair array--is altogether quite charming and singularly characteristic. But my present business is with prints. You see them, hanging in the open air--framed and not framed--for some quarter of a mile: with the intermediate space filled by piles of calf-bound volumes and sets of apparently countless folios. Here are _Moreri, Bayle_, the _Dictionnaire de Trévoux, Charpentier_, and the interminable _Encyclopédie_: all very tempting of their kind, and in price:--but all utterly unpurchasable--on account of the heavy duties of importation, arising from their weight. However--again I say--my present business is with _Prints_. Generally speaking, these prints are pleasing in their manner of execution, reasonable in price, and of endless variety. But the perpetual intrusion of subjects of studied nudity is really at times quite disgusting. It is surprising (as I think I before remarked to you) with what utter indifference and apathy, even females, of respectable appearance and dress, will be gazing upon these subjects; and now that the art of _lithography_ is become fashionable, the print-shops of Paris will be deluged with an inundation of these odious representations, which threaten equally to debase the art and to corrupt morals. This cheap and wholesale circulation of what is mischievous, and of really most miserable execution, is much to be deplored. Even in the better part of art, lithography will have a pernicious effect. Not only a well-educated and distinguished engraver will find, in the long run his business slackening from the reduced prices at which prints. are sold, but a _bad taste_ will necessarily be the result: for the generality of purchasers, not caring for comparative excellence in art, will be well pleased to give _one_ franc, for what, before, they could not obtain under _three_ or _five_. Hence we may date the decline and downfall of art itself. I was surprised, the other day, at hearing DENON talk so strongly in favour of lithography. I told him "it was a bastard art; and I rejoiced, in common with every man of taste or feeling, that _that_ art had not made its appearance before the publication of his work upon Egypt." It may do well for "The whisker'd pandour and the fierce hussar"-- or it may, in the hands of such a clever artist as VERNET, be managed with good effect in representations of skirmishes of horse and foot--groups of banditti--a ruined battlement, or mouldering tower--overhanging rocks-- rushing torrents--or umbrageous trees--but, in the higher department of art, as connected with portrait and historical engraving, it cannot, I apprehend, attain to any marked excellence.[198] Portraits however--of a particular description--_may_ be treated with tolerable success; but when you come to put lithographic engraving in opposition to that of _line_--the _latter_ will always and necessarily be ... velut inter ignes LUNA minores! I cannot take leave of A CITY, in which I have tarried so long, and with so much advantage to myself, without saying one word about the manners, customs, and little peculiarities of character of those with whom I have been recently associating. Yet the national character is pretty nearly the same at Rouen and at Caen, as at Paris; except that you do not meet with those insults from the _canaille_ which are but too frequent at these first-mentioned places. Every body here is busy and active, yet very few. have any thing _to do_--in the way of what an Englishman would call _business_. The thoughtful brow, the abstracted, look, the hurried step.. which you see along Cheapside and Cornhill ... are here of comparatively rare appearance. Yet every body is "sur le pavé." Every body seems to live out of doors. How the _ménage_ goes on--and: how domestic education is regulated--strikes the inexperienced eye of an Englishman as a thing quite inconceivable. The temperature of Paris is no doubt very fine, although it has been of late unprecedentedly hot; and a French workman, or labourer, enjoys, out of doors--from morning till night those meals, which, with us, are usually partaken of within. The public places of entertainment are pretty sure to receive a prodigious proportion of the population of Paris every evening. A mechanic, or artisan, will devote two thirds of his daily gains to the participation of this pleasure. His dinner will consist of the most meagre fare--at the lowest possible price--provided, in the evening, he can hear _Talma_ declaim, _or Albert_ warble, or see _Pol_ leap, or _Bigotini_ entrance a wondering audience by the grace of her movements, and the pathos of her dumb shew, in _Nina._ The preceding strikes me as the general complexion of character of three fourths of the Parisians: but then they are gay, and cheerful, and apparently happy. If they have not the phlegm of the German, or the thoughtfulness of ourselves, they are less cold, and less insensible to the passing occurrences of life. A little pleases them, and they give in return much more than they receive. One thing, however, cannot fail to strike and surprise an attentive observer of national character. With all their quickness, enthusiasm, and activity, the mass of French people want that admirable quality which I unfeignedly think is the particular characteristic of ourselves:--I mean, _common sense_. In the midst of their architectural splendor--while their rooms are refulgent with gilding and plate-glass; while their mantle-pieces sparkle with or-molu clocks; or their tables are decorated with vases, and artificial flowers of the most exquisite workmanship--and while their carpets and curtains betray occasionally all the voluptuousness of eastern pomp ... you can scarcely obtain egress or ingress into the respective apartments, from the wretchedness of their _locks_ and _keys!_ Mechanical studies or improvements should seem to be almost entirely uncultivated--for those who remember France nearly half a century ago, tell me that it was pretty much then as it is now. Another thing discomposes the sensitive nerves of the English; especially those of our notable housewives. I allude to the rubbishing appearance of their _grates_--and the dingy and sometimes disgusting aspect of carpets and flowered furniture. A good mahogany dining table is a perfect rarity[199]--and let him, who stands upon a chair to take down a quarto or octavo, beware how he encounter a broken shin or bruised elbow, from the perpendicularity of the legs of that same chair. The same want of common-sense, cleanliness, and convenience--is visible in nearly the whole of the French ménage. Again, in the streets--their cabriolet drivers and hackney coachmen are sometimes the most furious of their tribe. I rescued, the other day, an old and respectable gentleman-- with the cross of St. Louis appendant to his button-hole--from a situation, in which, but for such a rescue, he must have been absolutely knocked down and rode over. He shook his cane at the offender; and, thanking me very heartily for my protection, observed, "these rascals improve daily in their studied insult of all good Frenchmen." The want of _trottoirs_ is a serious and even absurd want; as it might be so readily supplied. Their carts are obviously ill-constructed, and especially in the caps of the wheels; which, in a narrow street--as those of Paris usually are--unnecessarily occupy a _foot_ of room, where scarcely an _inch_ can be spared. The rubbish piled against the posts, in different parts of the street, is as disgusting as it is obviously inconvenient. A police "ordonnance" would obviate all this in twenty-four hours. Yet in many important respects the Parisian multitude read a lesson to ourselves. In their public places of resort, the French are wonderfully decorous; and along the streets, no lady is insulted by the impudence of either sex. You are sure to walk in peace, if you conduct yourself peaceably. I had intended to say a word upon morals: and religion; but the subject, while it is of the highest moment, is beyond the reach of a traveller whose stay is necessarily short, and whose occupations, upon the whole, have been confined rather among the dead than the living. Farewell, therefore, to PARIS. I have purchased a very commodious travelling carriage; to which a pair of post-horses will be attached in a couple of days--and then, for upwards of three hundred miles of journey--towards STRASBOURG! No schoolboy ever longed for a holiday more ardently than I do for the relaxation which this journey will afford me. A thousand hearty farewells! [191] [The work is now perfect in 3 volumes.] [192] [I here annex a fac-simile of his autograph from the foot of the account for these drawings.] [Illustration] [193] Then, Louis XVIII. [194] ["Sir T. Lawrence, who painted the portrait of the late Duke de Richlieu, which was seen at the last exhibition, is undoubtedly of the first class of British Portrait painters; but, according to Mr. Dibdin's judgment, many artists would have preferred to have sided with our Gérard." CRAPELET. vol. iv. 220. I confess I do not understand this reasoning: nor perhaps will my readers.] [195] [Here, Mons. Crapelet drily and pithily says, "Translated from the English." What then? Can there be the smallest shadow of doubt about the truth of the above assertion? None--with Posterity.] [196] At Domremi, in Lorraine. [197] When Desnoyers was over here, in 1819, he unequivocally expressed his rapture about our antiquarian engravings--especially of Gothic churches. Mr. Wild's _Lincoln Cathedral_ produced a succession of ecstatic remarks. "When your fine engravings of this kind come over to Paris we get little committees to sit upon them"--observed Desnoyers to an engraver--who communicated the fact to the author. [198] [The experience of ten years has confirmed THE TRUTH of the above remark.] [199] [Not so now! Mahogany, according to M. Crapelet, is every where at Paris, and at the lowest prices.] _LETTER XII._ PARIS TO STRASBOURG. _Hotel de l'Esprit, Strasbourg, July 20, 1818_. I can hardly describe to you the gratification I felt on quitting the "trein-trein".of Paris for the long, and upon the whole interesting, journey to the place whence I date this despatch. My love of rural sights, and of rural enjoyments of almost every kind, has been only equalled by my admiration of the stupendous Cathedral of this celebrated city. But not a word about the city of Strasbourg itself, for the present. My description, both of _that_ and of its _curiosities_, will be properly reserved for another letter; when I shall necessarily have had more leisure and fitter opportunities for the execution of the task. On the eleventh of this month, precisely at ten o'clock, the rattling of the hoofs of two lusty post horses--together with the cracking of an _experimental_ flourish or two of the postilion's whip--were heard in the court-yard of the Hôtel des Colonies. Nothing can exceed the punctuality of the Poste Royale in the attendance of the horses at the precise hour of ordering them. Travellers, and especially those from our _own_ country, are not _quite_ so punctual in availing themselves of this regularity; but if you keep the horses for the better part of an hour before you start, you must pay something extra for your tardiness. Of all people, the _English_ are likely to receive the most useful lesson from this wholesome regulation. By a quarter past ten, Mr. Lewis and myself having mounted our voiture, and given the signal for departure, received the "derniers adieux" of Madame the hostess, and of the whole corps of attendants. On leaving the gates of the hotel, the postilion put forth all his energies in sundry loud smackings of his whip; and as we went at a cautious pace through the narrower streets, towards the _Barriers of St. Martin_, I could not but think, with inward satisfaction, that, on visiting and leaving a city, so renowned as Paris, for the _first_ time, I had gleaned more intellectual fruit than I had presumed to hope for; and that I had made acquaintances which might probably ripen into a long and steady friendship. In short, my own memoranda, together with the drawings of Messrs. Lewis and Coeuré, were results, which convinced me that my time had not been mispent, and that my objects of research were not quite undeserving of being recorded. Few reflections give one so much pleasure, on leaving, a city--where there are so many thousand temptations to abuse time and to destroy character. The day of our departure was very fine, tending rather to heat. In a little half hour we cleared the barrier of St. Martin, and found ourselves on the broad, open, route royale--bordered by poplars and limes. To the right, was the pretty village of _Belleville:_ to the left, at the distance of some six or eight English miles, we observed _Montmorenci, St. Germain en Laye_, and, considerably nearer, _St. Denis_. All these places, together with _Versailles,_ I had previously visited--Montmorenci and St. Denis twice-- and intended to have given you an account of them; but you could have received from me scarcely any thing more than what the pages of the commonest tour would have supplied you with. We first changed horses at _Bondy_, the forest of which was once very extensive and much celebrated. You now behold little more than a formal avenue of trees. The _Castle of Raincy_, situated in this forest, is to the right, well-wooded--and the property of the Duke of Orleans. _Ville-Parisis_ was the next prettiest spot, in our route to _Claye_, where we again changed horses. The whole route, from _Ville-Parisis_ to _Meaux_, was exceedingly pleasing and even picturesque. At Meaux we dined, and have reason to remember the extravagant charges of the woman who kept the inn. The heat of the day was now becoming rather intense. While our veal-cutlet was preparing, we visited the church; which had frequently, and most picturesquely, peeped out upon us during our route. It is a large, cathedral-like looking church, without transepts, Only one tower (in the west front), is built--with the evident intention of raising another in the same aspect. They were repairing the west front, which is somewhat elaborately ornamented; but so intensely hot was the sun--on our coming out to examine it--that we were obliged to retreat into the interior, which seemed to contain the atmosphere of a different climate. A tall, well-dressed, elderly priest, in company with a middle-aged lady, were ascending the front steps to attend divine service. Hot as it was, the priest saluted us, and stood a half minute without his black cap--with the piercing rays of the sun upon a bald head. The bell tolled softly, and there was a quiet calm about the whole which almost invited, us to _postpone_ our attack upon the dinner we had ordered. Ten francs for a miserable cutlet--and a yet more wretchedly-prepared fricandeau--with half boiled artichokes, and a bottle of undrinkable vin ordinaire--was a charge sufficiently monstrous to have excited the well known warmth of expostulation of an English traveller--but it was really too hot to talk aloud! The landlady pocketed my money, and I pocketed the affront which so shameful a charge may be considered as having put upon me. We now rolled leisurely on towards _La Ferté-sous-Jouarre:_ about five French-leagues from Meaux--not without stopping to change horses at _St. Jean,_ &c. The heat would not even allow of the exercise of the postilion's whip. Every body, and every thing seemed to be oppressed by it. The labourer was stretched out in the shade, and the husbandman slept within the porch of his cottage. We had no sooner entered the little town of La Ferté-sous-Jouarre, and driven to the post-house, when not fewer than four blacksmiths came rushing out of their respective forges, to examine every part of the carriage. "A nail had started here: a screw was wanting there: and a fracture had taken place in another direction: even the perch was given way in the centre!" "Alas, for my voiture de voyage!" exclaimed I to my companion. Meanwhile, a man came forward with a red-hot piece of iron, in the shape of a cramp, to fix round the perch--which hissed as the application was made. And all this--before I could say wherefore! or even open my mouth to express astonishment! They were absolutely about to take off the wheels of the carriage; to examine, and to grease them--but it was then for the first time, that I opened a well-directed fire of expostulation; from which I apprehend that they discovered I was not perfectly ignorant either of their language or of their trickery. However, the rogues had _four_ francs for what they had the impudence to ask _six_; and considering my vehicle to be now proof against the probability of an accident, I was resolved to leave the town in the same good humour in which I had entered it. On quitting, we mounted slowly up a high ascent, and saw from thence the village of _Jouarre_, on a neighbouring summit, smothered with trees. It seemed to consist of a collection of small and elegant country houses, each with a lawn and an orchard. At the foot of the summit winds the unostentatious little stream of _Le Petit Morin_ The whole of this scenery, including the village of _Montreuil-aux-Lions_--a little onwards--was perfectly charming, and after the English fashion: and as the sky became mellowed by the rays of the declining sun, the entire landscape assumed a hue and character which absolutely refreshed our spirits after the heat of the previous part of the journey. We had resolved to sleep at _Chateau-Thierry_, about seven leagues off, and the second posting-place from where we had last halted. Night was coming on, and the moon rose slowly through a somewhat dense horizon, as we approached our rendezvous for the evening. All was tranquil and sweet. We drove to the inn called the _Sirène_, situated in the worst possible part of the town: but we quickly changed our determination, and bespoke beds for the night, and horses for the following morning, at the _Poste Royale_. The landlady of the Inn was a tartar--of her species. She knew how to talk civilly; and, for her, a more agreeable occupation--how to charge! We had little rest, and less sleep. By a quarter past five I was in the carriage; intending to breakfast at _Epernay_, about twenty-five miles off. The first post-station is _Parois_. It is a beautiful drive thither, and the village itself is exceedingly picturesque. From _Parois_ to _Dormans_, the next post village, the road continues equally interesting. We seemed to go each post like the wind; and reached _Epernay_ by nine o'clock. The drive from Dormans to Epernay is charming; and as the sky got well nigh covered by soft fleecy clouds when we reached the latter place, our physical strength, as well as animal spirits, seemed benefited by the change. I was resolved to _bargain_ for every future meal at an inn: and at Epernay I bespoke an excellent breakfast of fruit, eggs, coffee and tea, at three francs a head. This town is the great place in France for the manufacture of _Vin de Champagne_. It is here where they make it in the greatest quantities; although _Sillery_, near Rheims, boasts of champagne of a more delicate quality. I learnt here that the Prussians, in their invasion of France in 1814, committed sad havoc with this tempting property. They had been insulted, and even partially fired upon--as they passed through the town,--and to revenge themselves, they broke open the cellars of M ..., the principal wine merchant; and drank the contents of only--_one hundred thousand bottles of champagne_!" "But," said the owner of these cellars, (beyond the reach of the hearing of the Prussians, as you may be well assured!) "they did not break open my _largest vault_ ... where I had _half as much again!_. "Indeed, I was told that the wine vaults of Epernay were as well worth inspection, as the catacombs of Paris. I should observe to you that the river _Marne_, one of the second-rate rivers, of France, accompanies you pretty closely all the way from Chateau Thierry to Chalons--designated as _Chalons-sur-Marne._ From Epernay to Chalons you pass through nothing but corn fields. It is a wide and vast ocean of corn--with hardly a tree, excepting those occasionally along the road, within a boundary of ten miles. Chalons is a large and populous town; but the churches bear sad traces of revolutionary fury. Some of the porches, once covered with a profusion of rich, alto-relievo sculpture, are absolutely treated as if these ornaments had been pared away to the very quick! Scarcely a vestige remains. It is in this town where the two great roads to STRASBOURG--one by _Metz_, and the other by _Nancy_--unite. The former is to the north, the latter to the south. I chose the latter; intending to return to Paris by the former. On leaving Chalons, we purposed halting to dine at _Vitry-sur-Marne_--distant two posts, of about four leagues each. _La Chaussée,_ which we reached at a very smart trot, was the first post town, and is about half way to Vitry. From thence we had "to mount a huge hill"--- as the postilion told us; but it was here, as in Normandy--these huge hills only provoked our laughter. However, the wheel was subjected to the drag-chain--and midst clouds of white dust, which converted us into millers, we were compelled to descend slowly. Vitry was seen in the distance, which only excited our appetite and made us anxious to increase our pace. On reaching Vitry, I made my terms for dinner with the landlady of the principal inn--who was literally as sharp as a razor. However, we had a comfortable room, a good plain dinner, with an excellent bottle of _Vin de Beaune_, for three francs each. "Could Monsieur refuse this trifling payment?" He could not. Before dinner I strolled to the principal church-- which is indeed a structure of a most noble appearance--like that of St. Sulpice in form, and perhaps of a little more than half its size. It is the largest parish church which I have yet seen; but it is comparatively modern. It was Sunday; and a pleasing spectacle presented itself on entering. A numerous group of young women, dressed almost entirely in white, with white caps and veils, were singing a sort of evening hymn-- which I understood to be called the _Chaplet of the Virgin_. Their voices, unaccompanied by instrumental music, sounded sweetly from the loftiness of the roof; and every singer seemed to be touched with the deepest sense of devotion. They sang in an attitude with the body leaning forward, and the head gently inclined. The silence of the place--its distance from the metropolis--the grey aspect of the heavens--and the advanced hour of the day ... all contributed to produce in our minds very pleasing and yet serious sensations. I shall not easily forget the hymn called THE CHAPLET OF THE VIRGIN, as it was sung in the church of Vitry. After leaving this place we successively changed horses at _Longchamp_ and at _St. Dizier_. To our great comfort, it began to threaten rain. While the horses were being changed at the former place, I sat down upon a rough piece of stone, in the high road, by the side of a well dressed paysanne, and asked her if she remembered the retreat of Bonaparte in the campaign of 1814--and whether he had passed there? She said she remembered it well. Bonaparte was on horseback, a little in advance of his troops--and ambled gently, within six paces of where we were sitting. His head was rather inclined, and he appeared to be very thoughtful. _St. Dizier_ was the memorable place upon which Bonaparte made a rapid retrograde march, in order to get into the rear of the allied troops, and thus possess himself of their supplies. But this desperate movement, you know, cost him his capital, and eventually his empire. St. Dizier is rather a large place, and the houses are almost uniformly white. Night and rain came on together as we halted to change horses. But we were resolved upon another stage--to _Saudrupt_: and were now about entering the department of LORRAINE. The moon struggled through a murky sky, after the cessation of rain, as we entered _Saudrupt_: which is little better than a miserable village. Travellers seldom or never sleep here; but we had gone a very considerable distance since five in the morning, and were glad of any thing in the shape of beds. Not an inn in Normandy which we had visited, either by day or by night, seemed to be more sorry and wretched than this, where we--stretched our limbs, rather than partook of slumber. At one in the morning, a young and ardent lover chose to serenade his mistress, who was in the next house, with a screaming tune upon a half-cracked violin--which, added to the never-ceasing smacking of whips of farmers, going to the next market town-- completed our state of restlessness and misery. Yet, the next morning, we had a breakfast ... so choice, so clean, and so refreshing--in a place of all others the least apparently likely to afford it--that we almost fancied our strength had been recruited by a good night's sleep. The landlord could not help his miserable mansion, for he was very poor: so I paid him cheerfully and liberally for the accommodation he was capable of affording, and at nine o'clock left Saudrupt in the hope of a late dinner at NANCY-- the capital of Lorraine. The morning was fresh and fair. In the immediate neighbourhood of Saudrupt is the pretty village of _Brillon_, where I noticed some stone crosses; and where I observed that particular species of domestic architecture, which, commencing almost at Longchamps, obtains till within nearly three stages of Strasbourg. It consists in having rather low or flat roofs, in the Italian manner, with all the beams projecting _outside_ of the walls: which gives it a very unfinished and barbarous look. And here too I began to be more and more surprised at the meagreness of the population of the _country_. Even on quitting Epernay, I had noticed it to my companion. The human beings you see, are chiefly females--ill-featured, and ill complexioned-- working hard beneath the rays of a scorching sun. As to that sabbath-attire of cleanliness, even to smartness among our _own_ country people, it is a thing very rarely to be seen in the villages of France. At Brillon, we bought fine cherries, of a countrywoman for two sous the pound. _Bar-le Duc_ is the next post-town. It is a place of considerable extent and population: and is divided into the upper and lower town. The approach to it, along hilly passes, covered with vineyards, is pleasant enough. The driver wished to take us to the upper town--to see the church of St. Peter, wherein is contained "a skeleton perforated with worm-holes, which was the admiration of the best connoisseurs." We civilly declined such a sight, but had no objection to visit the church. It was a Saint's day: and the interior of the church was crowded to excess by women and lads. An old priest was giving his admonition from the high altar, with great propriety and effect: but we could not stay 'till the conclusion of the service. The carriage was at the door; and, reascending, we drove to the lower town, down a somewhat fearful descent, to change horses. It was impossible to avoid noticing the prodigious quantity of fruit--especially of currants and strawberries. _Ligny_ was our next halting place, to change horses. The route thither was sufficiently pleasant. You leave the town through rather a consequential gateway, of chaste Tuscan architecture, and commence ascending a lofty hill. From hence you observe, to the left, an old castle in the outskirts of the town. The road is here broad and grand: and although a very lively breeze was playing in our faces, yet we were not insensible to the increasing heat of the day. We dined at _St. Aubin_. A hearty good-humoured landlady placed before us a very comfortable meal, with a bottle of rather highly-flavoured vin ordinaire. The inn was little better than a common ale house in England: but every thing was "très propre." On leaving, we seemed to be approaching high hills, through flat meadows--where very poor cattle were feeding. A pretty drive towards _Void_ and _Laye_, the next post-towns: but it was still prettier on approaching _Toul_, of which the church, at a distance, had rather a cathedral-like appearance. We drank tea at Toul--but first proceeded to the church, which we found to be greatly superior to that of Meaux. Its interior is indeed, in parts, very elegant: and one lancet-shaped window, in particular, of stained glass, may even vie with much of what the cathedral of this place affords. At Toul, for the first time since quitting Paris, we were asked for our passports; it being a fortified town. Our next stage was _Dommartin_; behind which appeared to be a fine hilly country, now purpled by the rays of a declining sun. The church of Toul, in our rear, assumed a more picturesque appearance than before. At _Velaine_, the following post-town, we had a pair of fine mettlesome Prussian horses harnessed to our voiture, and started at a full swing trot--through the forest of Hayes, about a French league in length. The shade and coolness of this drive, as the sun was getting low, were quite refreshing. The very postilion seemed to enjoy it, and awakened the echoes of each avenue by the unintermitting sounds of numberless flourishes of his whip. "How tranquil and how grand!" would he occasionally exclaim. On clearing the forest, we obtained the first glimpse of something like a distant mountainous country: which led us to conclude that we were beginning to approach the VOSGES--or the great chain of mountains, which, running almost due north and south, separates France from ALSACE. Below, glittered the spires of _Nancy_--as the sun's last rays rested upon them. A little distance beyond, shot up the two elegant towers of _St. Nicholas_; but I am getting on a little too fast.... The forest of Hayes can be scarcely less than a dozen English miles in breadth. I had never before seen so much wood in France. Yet the want of water is a great draw-back to the perfection of rural scenery in this country. We had hardly observed one rivulet since we had quitted the little glimmering stream at Chateau-Thierry. We now gained fast upon NANCY, the capital of Lorraine. It is doubtless among the handsomest provincial towns in Europe; and is chiefly indebted for its magnificence to Stanislaus, King of Poland, who spent the latter part of his life there, and whose daughter was married to Louis XV. The annexation of Lorraine to France has been considered the masterpiece of Louis's policy. Nancy may well boast of her broad and long streets: running chiefly at right angles with each other: well paved, and tolerably clean. The houses are built chiefly of stone. Here are churches, a theatre, a college, a public library--palace-like buildings--public gardens-- hospitals, coffee houses, and barracks. In short, Nancy is another Caen; but more magnificent, although less fruitful in antiquities. The _Place de la Liberté_ et _d'alliance_ et _de la Carriére_ may vie with the public buildings of Bath; but some of the sculptured ornaments of the _former_, exhibit miserable proofs of the fury of the Revolutionists. Indeed Nancy was particularly distinguished by a visit of the Marseillois gentry, who chose to leave behind pretty strong proofs of their detestation of what was at once elegant and harmless. The headless busts of men and women, round the house of the governor, yet prove the excesses of the mob; and the destruction of two places of worship was the close of their devastating labours. Nancy is divided into the _Old_ and the _New Town_. The four principal streets, dividing the latter nearly at right angles, are terminated by handsome arches, in the character of _gateways_. They have a noble appearance. On the first evening of our arrival at Nancy, we walked, after a late cup of tea, into the public garden--at the extremity of the town. It was broad moon light; and the appearance of the _Caffés_, and several _Places_, had quite a new and imposing effect; they being somewhat after the Parisian fashion. After a day of dust, heat, and rapid motion, a seat upon one of the stone-benches of the garden--surrounded by dark green trees, of which the tops were tipt with silver by the moon beam--could not fail to refresh and delight me: especially as the tranquillity of the place was only disturbed by the sounds of two or three groups of _bourgeoises_, strolling arm in arm, and singing what seemed to be a popular, national air--of which the tune was somewhat psalm-like. The broad walks abounded with bowers, and open seats; and the general effect was at once singular and pleasing. The Hotel-Royal is an excellent inn; and the owners of it are very civil people. My first visits were paid to churches and to bookseller's shops. Of churches, the _Cathedral_ is necessarily the principal. It is large, lofty, and of an elegant construction, of the Grecian order: finished during the time of Stanislaus. The ornamental parts are too flaunting; too profuse, and in bad taste. This excess of decoration pervades also the house of the Governor; which, were it not so, might vie with that of Lord Burlington; which it is not unlike in its general appearance. In the Cathedral, the monument of Stanislaus, by Girardon, is _considered_ to be a chef-d'ouvre. There was a Girardet--chief painter to Stanislaus, who is here called "the rival of Apelles:" a rival with a vengeance! From thence I went to an old church--perhaps of the thirteenth, but certainly of the fourteenth century. They call it, I think, _St. Epreuve._ In this church I was much struck with a curious old painting, executed in distemper, upon the walls of a side aisle, which seemed to be at least three hundred years old. It displayed the perils and afflictions of various Saints, on various emergencies, and how they were all eventually saved by the interposition of the Virgin. A fine swaggering figure, in the foreground, dressed out in black and yellow-striped hose, much delighted me. Parts of this curious old picture were worth copying. Near to this curiosity seemed to be a fine, genuine painting, by Vandyke, of the Virgin and Child--the first exhibition of the kind which I had seen since leaving Paris. It formed a singular contrast to the picture before described. On quitting this old church, I could not help smiling to observe a bunch of flowers, in an old mustard pot--on which was inscribed "_Moutarde Fine de Nageon, à Dijon_--" placed at the feet of a statue of the Virgin as a sacred deposit! On leaving the church, I visited two booksellers: one of them rather distinguished for his collection of _Alduses_--as I was informed. I found him very chatty, very civil, but not very reasonable in his prices. He told me that he had plenty of old books--_Alduses_ and _Elzevirs, &c_.--with lapping-over vellum-bindings. I desired nothing better; and followed him up stairs. Drawer after drawer was pulled out. These M. Renouard had seen: those the Comte d'Ourches had wished to purchase; and a third pile was destined for some nobleman in the neighbourhood. There was absolutely nothing in the shape of temptation--except a _Greek Herodian_, by Theodore Martin of Louvain, and a droll and rather rare little duodecimo volume, printed at Amsterdam in 1658, entitled _La Comédie de Proverbes_. The next bookseller I visited, was a printer. "Had he any thing old and curious?" He replied, with a sort of triumphant chuckle, that he "once had _such_ a treasure of this kind!" "What might it have been?" "A superb missal--for which a goldsmith had offered him twelve sous for each initial letter upon a gold ground--but which he had parted with, for 100 francs, to the library of a Benedictin monastery--now destroyed. It had cost him twelve sous." "But see, Sir, (continued he) is not this curious?" "It is a mere reprint, (replied I) of what was first published three hundred years ago." "No matter--buy it, and read it--it will amuse you--and it costs only five sous." I purchased two copies, and I send you here the title and the frontispiece. "_Le Dragon Rouge, ou l'art de commander les Esprits Célestes, Aériens, Terrestres, Infernaux. Avec le vrai Secret de faire parler les Morts; de gagner toutes les fois qu'on met aux Lotteries; de découvrir les Trésors," &c_. [Illustration] The bookseller told me that he regularly sold hundreds of copies of this work, and that the country people yet believed in the efficacy of its contents! I had been told that it was in this very town that a copy of _the Mazarine Bible_ had been picked up for some _half_ _dozen francs!_--and conveyed to the public library at Munich. Towards the evening, I visited the public library by appointment. Indeed I had casually met the public librarian at the first Bouquiniste's: and he fixed the hour of half-past six. I was punctual almost to the minute; and on entering the library, found a sort of BODLEY in miniature: except that there was a great mass of books in the middle of the room--placed in a parallelogram form--which I thought must have a prodigiously heavy pressure upon the floor. I quickly began to look about for _Editiones Principes_; but, at starting, my guide placed before me two copies of the celebrated _Liber Nanceidos_:[200] of which _one_ might be fairly said to be _large paper_. On continuing my examination, I found civil and canon law-- pandects, glosses, decretals, and commentaries--out of number: together with no small sprinkling of medical works. Among the latter was a curious, and _Mentelin_-like looking, edition of _Avicenna_. But _Ludolphus's Life of Christ_, in Latin, printed in the smallest type of _Eggesteyn_, in 1474, a folio, was a volume really worth opening and worth coveting. It was in its original monastic binding--large, white, unsullied, and abounding with rough marginal edges. It is supposed that the library contains 25,000 volumes. Attached to it is a Museum of Natural History. But alas! since the revolution it exhibits a frightful picture of decay, devastation, and confusion. To my eye, it was little better than the apothecary's shop described by Romeo. It contained a number of portraits in oil, of eminent Naturalists; which are palpable copies, by the same hand, of originals ... that have probably perished. The museum had been gutted of almost every thing that was curious or precious. Indeed they want funds, both for the museum and the library. It was near night-fall when I quitted the library, and walked with the librarian in a pleasant, open space, near one of the chief gates or entrances before mentioned. The evening was uncommonly sweet and serene: and the moon, now nearly full, rose with more than her usual lustre ... in a sky of the deepest blue which I had yet witnessed. I shall not readily forget the conversation of that walk. My companion spoke of his own country with the sincerity of a patriot, but with the good sense of an honest, observing, reflecting man. I had never listened to observations better founded, or which seemed calculated to produce more beneficial results. Of _our_ country, he spoke with an animation approaching to rapture. It is only the exercise of a grateful feeling to record this--of a man--whose name I have forgotten, and whose person I may never see again. On quitting each other, I proceeded somewhat thoughtfully, to an avenue of shady trees, where groups of men and women were sitting or strolling--beneath the broad moon beam--and chanting the popular airs of their country. The next morning I quitted Nancy. The first place of halting was _St. Nicholas_--of which the elegant towers had struck us on the other side of Nancy. It was no post town: but we could not pass such an ecclesiastical edifice without examining it with attention. The village itself is most miserable; yet it could once boast of a _press_ which gave birth to the _Liber Nanceidos_.[201] The space before the west front of the church is absolutely choked by houses of the most squalid appearance--so that there is hardly getting a good general view of the towers. The interior struck us as exceedingly interesting. There are handsome transepts; in one of which is a large, circular, central pillar; in the other, an equally large one, but twisted. One is astonished at finding such a large and beautiful building in such a situation; but formerly the place might have been large and flourishing. The west front of this church may rival two-thirds of similar edifices in France. _Domballe_ was the next post: the drive thither being somewhat picturesque. _Luneville_ is the immediately following post town. It is a large and considerable place; looking however more picturesque at a distance than on its near approach: owing to the red tiles of which the roofs are composed. Here are handsome public buildings; a fountain, with eight jets d'eau-- barracks, a theatre, and the castle of Prince Charles, of Lorraine. A good deal of business is carried on in the earthenware and cotton trade--of both which there is a manufactory--together with that of porcelaine. This place is known in modern history from the _Treaty of Luneville_ between the Austrians and French in 1801. From hence we went to _Bénaménil_, the next stage; and in our way thither, we saw, for the first time since leaving Paris, a _flock of geese!_ Dined at _Blamont_--the succeeding post town. While our cutlets were preparing we strolled to the old castle, now in a state of dilapidation. It is not spacious, but is a picturesque relic. Within the exterior walls is a fine kitchen garden. From the top of what might have been the donjon, we surveyed the surrounding country--at that moment rendered hazy by an atmosphere of dense, heated, vapour. Indeed it was uncommonly hot. Upon the whole, both the village and _Castle of Blamont_ merit at least the leisurely survey of an entire day. On starting for _Héming_, the next post, we were much pleased by the sight of a rich, verdant valley, fertilized by a meandering rivulet. The village of _Richeval_ had particular attractions; and the sight of alternate woods and meadows seemed to mitigate the severity of the heat of the day. At Héming we changed horses, opposite a large fountain where cattle were coming to drink. The effect was very picturesque; but there was no time for the pencil of Mr. Lewis to be exercised. In less than five minutes we were off for _Sarrebourg_. Evening came on as we approached it. Here I saw _hops_ growing, for the first time; and here, for the first time, I heard the _German language_ spoken--and observed much of the German character in the countenances of the inhabitants. The postilion was a German, and could not speak one word of French. However, he knew the art of driving--for we seemed to fly like the wind towards _Hommarting_--which we reached in half an hour. It was just two leagues from Sarrebourg. We stopped to change horses close to what seemed to be a farm house; and as the animals were being "yoked to the car," for another German Phaeton, I walked into a very large room, which appeared to be a kitchen. Two long tables were covered with supper; at each of which sat--as closely wedged as well could be--a great number of work-people of both sexes, and of all ages. Huge dogs were moving backwards and forwards, in the hope of receiving some charitable morsel;, and before the fire, on a littered hearth, lay stretched out two tremendous mastiffs. I walked with fear and trembling. The cooks were carrying the evening meal; and the whole place afforded such an _interior_--as Jan Steen would have viewed with rapture, and Wilkie have been delighted to copy. Meanwhile the postilion's whip was sounded: the fresh horses were neighing: and I was told that every thing was ready. I mounted with alacrity. It was getting dark; and I requested the good people of the house to tell the postilion that I did not wish him to _sleep_ upon the road. The hint was sufficient. This second German postilion seemed to have taken a leaf out of the book of his predecessor: for we exchanged a sharp trot for a full swing canter--terminating in a gallop; and found ourselves unexpectedly before the gates of _Phalsbourg_. Did you ever, my dear friend, approach a fortified town by the doubtful light of a clouded moon, towards eleven of the clock? A mysterious gloom envelopes every thing. The drawbridge is up. The solitary centinel gives the pass-word upon the ramparts; and every footstep, however slight, has its particular echo. Judge then of the noise made by our heavy-hoofed coursers, as we neared the drawbridge. "What want you there?" said a thundering voice, in the French language, from within. "A night's lodging," replied I. "We are English travellers, bound for Strasbourg." "You must wait till I speak with the sub-mayor." "Be it so." We waited patiently; but heard a great deal of parleying within the gates. I began to think we should be doomed to retrace our course--when, after a delay of full twenty minutes, we heard ... to our extreme satisfaction ... the creaking of the hinges (but not as "harsh thunder") of the ponderous portals--which opened slowly and stubbornly--and which was succeeded by the clanking of the huge chain, and the letting down of the drawbridge. This latter rebounded slightly as it reached its level: and I think I hear, at this moment, the hollow rumbling noise of our horses' feet, as we passed over the deep yawning fosse below. Our passports were now demanded. We surrendered them willingly, on the assurance given of receiving them the following morning. The gates were now closed behind us, and we entered the town in high glee. "You are a good fellow," said I to the gatesman: come to me at the inn, to-morrow morning, and you shall be thanked in the way you like best." The landlord of the inn was not yet a-bed. As he heard our approach, he called all his myrmidons about him--and bade us heartily welcome. He was a good-looking, sleek, jolly-faced man: civilly spoken, with a ready utterance, which seemed prepared to touch upon all kinds of topics. After I had bespoken tea and beds, and as the boiling water was getting ready, he began after the following fashion: "Hé bien Mons. Le Comte ... comment vont les affaires en Angleterre? Et votre grand capitaine, le DUC DE VELLINGTON, comment se porte il? Ma foi, à ce moment, il joue un beau rôle." I answered that "matters were going on very well in England, and that our great Captain was in perfectly good health." "Vous le connoissez parfaitement bien, sans doute?"--was his next remark. I told him I could not boast of that honour. "Neanmoins, (added he) il est connu par-tout." I readily admitted the truth of this observation. Our dialogue concluded by an assurance on his part, that we should find our beds excellent, our breakfast on the morrow delicious--and he would order such a pair of horses (although he strongly recommended _four_,) to be put to our carriage, as should set all competition at defiance. His prediction was verified in every particular. The beds were excellent; the breakfast, consisting of coffee, eggs, fruit, and bread and butter, (very superior to what is usually obtained in France) was delicious; and the horses appeared to be perfect of their kind. The reckoning was, to be sure, a little severe: but I considered this as the payment or punishment of having received the title of _Count_ ... without contradiction. It fell on my ears as mere words of course; but it shall not deceive me a second time. We started a little time after nine; and on leaving the place I felt more than usual anxiety and curiosity to catch the first glimpse of the top of _Strasbourg Cathedral_,--a building, of which I had so long cherished even the most extravagant notions. The next post town was _Saverne_; and our route thither was in every respect the most delightful and gratifying of any, and even of all the routes, collectively, which we had yet experienced. As you approach it, you cross over a part of the famous chain of mountains which divide OLD FRANCE from Germany, and which we thought we had seen from the high ground on the other side of Nancy. The country so divided, was, and is yet, called ALSACE: and the mountains, just mentioned, are called the _Vosges_. They run almost due north and south: and form a commanding feature of the landscape in every point of view. But for Saverne. It lies, with its fine old castle, at the foot of the pass of these mountains; but the descent to it--is glorious beyond all anticipation! It has been comparatively only of late years that this road, or pass, has been completed. In former times, it was almost impassable. As the descent is rapid and very considerable, the danger attending it is obviated by the high road having been cut into a cork-screw-shape;[202] which presents, at every spiral turn (if I may so speak) something new, beautiful, and interesting. You continue, descending, gazing on all sides. To the right, suspended almost in the air--over a beetling, perpendicular, rocky cliff-- feathered half way up with nut and beech--stands, or rather nods, an old castle in ruins. It seems to shake with every breeze that blows: but there it stands--and has stood--for some four centuries: once the terror of the vassal, and now ... the admiration of the traveller! The castle was, to my eye, of all castles which I had seen, the most elevated in its situation, and the most difficult of access. The clouds of heaven seemed to be resting upon its battlements. But what do I see yonder? "Is it the top of the spire of Strasbourg Cathedral?" "It _is,_ Sir," replied the postilion. I pulled off my travelling cap, by way of doing homage; and as I looked at my watch, to know the precise time, found it was just ten o'clock. It was worth making a minute of. Yet, owing to the hills before--or rather to those beyond, on the other side of the Rhine, which are very much loftier--the first impression gives no idea of the extraordinary height of the spire. We continued to descend, slowly and cautiously, with _Saverne_ before us in the bottom. To the left, close to the road side, stands an obelisk: on which is fixed, hi gilt letters, this emphatic inscription: _ALSATIA._ Every thing, on reaching the level road, bespoke a distinct national character. It was clear that we had forsaken French costume, as well as the French language, among the common people: so obvious is it, as has been remarked to me by a Strasbourgeois, that "mountains, and not rivers, are the natural boundaries of countries." The women wore large, flat, straw hats, with a small rose at the bottom of a shallow crown; while their throats were covered, sometimes up to the mouth, with black, silk cravats. Their hair was platted, hanging down in two equal divisions. The face appeared to be flat. The men wore shovel hats, of which the front part projected to a considerable distance; and the perpetually recurring response of "_yaw yaw_"--left it beyond all doubt that we had taken leave of the language of "the polite nation." At length we reached Saverne, and changed horses. This town is large and bustling, and is said to contain upwards of four thousand inhabitants. We did not stop to examine any of its wonders or its beauties; for we were becoming impatient for Strasbourg. The next two intermediate post towns were _Wasselonne_ and _Ittenheim_--and thence to Strasbourg: the three posts united being about ten leagues. From Ittenheim we darted along yet more swiftly than before. The postilion, speaking in a germanised French accent, told us, that "we were about to visit one of the most famous cities in the world--and _such_ a CATHEDRAL!" The immediate approach to Strasbourg is flat and uninteresting; nor could I, in every possible view of the tower of the cathedral, bring myself to suppose it--what it is admitted to be--the _loftiest ecclesiastical edifice in the world_! The fortifications about Strasbourg are said to afford one of the finest specimens of the skill of Vauban. They may do so; but they are very flat, tame, and unpicturesque. We now neared the barriers: delivered our passports; and darted under the first large brick arched way. A devious paved route brought us to the second gate;--and thus we entered the town; desiring the post-boy to drive to the _Hôtel de l'Esprit_. "You judge wisely, Sir, (replied he) for there is no Hotel, either in France or Germany, like it." So saying, he continued, without the least intermission, to make circular flourishes with his whip--accompanied by such ear-piercing sounds, as caused every inhabitant to gaze at us. I entreated him to desist; but in vain. "The English always enter in this manner," said he-- and having reached the hotel, he gave _one_ super-eminent flourish--which threw him off his balance, and nearly brought him to the ground. When I paid him, he pleaded hard for an _extra five sous_ for this concluding flourish! I am now therefore safely and comfortably lodged in this spacious hotel, by the side of the river _Ill_--of which it is pleasing to catch the lingering breezes as they stray into my chamber. God bless you. * * * * * P.S. One thing I cannot help adding--perhaps hardly deserving of a postscript. All the way from Paris to Strasbourg, I am persuaded that we did not meet _six_ travelling equipages. The lumbering diligence and steady Poste Royale were almost the only vehicles in action besides our own. Nor were _villas_ or _chateaux_ visible; such as, in our own country, enliven the scene and put the traveller in spirits. [200] A folio volume, printed at St. Nicolas, a neighbouring village, in 1518. It is a poem, written in Latin hexameter verse by P. Blaru [P. de Blarrovivo]--descriptive of the memorable siege of Nancy in 1476, by CHARLES THE RASH, Duke of Burgundy: who perished before the walls. His death is described in the sixth book, _sign_. t. iiij: the passage relating to it, beginning "Est in Nanceijs aratro locus utilis aruis:" A wood cut portrait of the commanding French general, Renet, is in the frontispiece. A good copy of this interesting work should always grace the shelves of an historical collector. Brunet notices a copy of it UPON VELLUM, in some monastic library in Lorraine. [Three days have not elapsed, since I saw a similar copy in the possession of Messrs. Payne and Foss, destined for the Royal Library at Paris. A pretty, rather than a magnificent, book.] [201] See page 362. [202] When this 'chaussée,' or route royale, was completed, it was so admired, that the ladies imitated its cork-screw shape, by pearls arranged spirally in their hair; and this head dress was called _Coiffure à la Saverne_. _LETTER XIII._ STRASBOURG. ESTABLISHMENT OF THE PROTESTANT RELIGION. THE CATHEDRAL. THE PUBLIC LIBRARY. _Hôtel de l'Esprit, July 26, 1818_. MY DEAR FRIEND; It is Sunday; and scarcely half an hour ago, I heard, from a Lutheran church on the other side of the water, what I call good, hearty, rational psalm-singing: without fiddles or trombones or serpents. Thus, although considerably further from home, I almost fancied myself in old England. This letter will touch chiefly upon topics of an antiquarian cast, but of which I venture to anticipate your approbation; because I have long known your attachment to the history of ALSACE--and that you have Schoepflin's admirable work[203] upon that country almost at your finger's ends. The city of Strasbourg encloses within its walls a population of about fifty thousand souls. I suspect, however, that in former times its population was more numerous. At this present moment there are about two hundred-and fifty streets, great and small; including squares and alleys. The main streets, upon the whole, are neither wide nor narrow; but to a stranger they have a very singular appearance, from the windows being occasionally covered, on the outside, with _iron bars_, arranged after divers fashions. This gives them a very prison-like effect, and is far from being ornamental. The glazing of the windows is also frequently very curious. In general, the panes of glass are small, and circular, confined in leaden casements. The number of houses in Strasbourg is estimated at three thousand five hundred. There are not fewer than forty-seven bridges in the interior of the town. These cross the branches of the rivers _Ill_ and _Bruche_--which empty themselves into the _Rhine_. The fortifications of Strasbourg are equally strong and extensive; but they assumed formerly a more picturesque, if not a more powerful aspect.[204] There are _seven parishes_; of which four are catholic, and three protestant. This brings me to lay before you a brief outline of the rise and progress of PROTESTANTISM in this place. Yet, as a preliminary remark, and as connected with our mutual antiquarian pursuits, you are to know that, besides parish churches, there were formerly _fourteen convents_, exclusively of chapelries. All these are minutely detailed in the recent work of M. Hermann,[205] from which indeed I have gleaned the chief of the foregoing particulars. A great many of these convents were suppressed in the sixteenth century, upon the establishment of the protestant religion. But for a brief outline of the rise and progress of this establishment. It must indeed be brief; but if so, it shall at least be clear and faithful. The forerunner of Luther (in my opinion) was JOHN GEYLER; a man of singular intrepidity of head and heart. He was a very extraordinary genius, unquestionably; and the works which he has bequeathed to posterity evince the variety of his attainments. Geyler preached boldly in the cathedral against the lax manners and doubtful morality of the clergy. He exhorted the magistrates to do their duty, and predicted that there must be an alteration of religious worship ere the general morals of the community could be amended. They preserve a stone chair or pulpit, of very curious workmanship, but which had nearly been destroyed during the Revolution, in which Geyler used to deliver his lectures. He died in 1510; and within a dozen years after his death the doctrines of LUTHER, were sedulously inculcated. The ground had been well prepared for such seed. The court of Rome looked on with uneasiness; and the Pope sent a legate to Strasbourg in 1522, to vent his anathemas, and to raise a strong party against the growth of this new heresy--as it was called. At this time, the reformed doctrine was even taught in the cathedral; and, a more remarkable thing to strike the common people, the RECTOR of the church of St. Thomas (the second religious establishment of importance, after that of the cathedral) VENTURED TO MARRY! He was applauded both by the common people and by many of the more respectable families. His example was followed: and the religious of both sexes were allowed to leave their establishments, to go where they would, and to enter upon the married state. In 1530 the mass was generally abolished: and the protestant religion was constantly exercised in the cathedral. The spirit both of Geyler and of Luther might have rejoiced to find, in 1550, the chapter of St. Thomas resolutely avowing its determination to perform the protestant--and nothing but the protestant--religion within its own extensive establishment. The flame of the new religion seemed now to have reached all quarters, and warmed all hearts. But a temporary check to its progress was given by the cautious policy of Charles V. That wary and heartless monarch (who had even less religion than he had of the ordinary feelings of humanity) interfered with the weight of his power, and the denunciations of his vengeance. Yet he found it necessary neither wholly to suppress, nor wholly to check, the progress of the protestant religion: while, on the other hand, the Strasbourgeois dreaded too much the effects of his power to dispute his will by any compact or alliance of opposition. In 1550, therefore, the matter stood thus. The cathedral, and the collegiate and parish churches of St. Peter the Elder and St. Peter the Younger, as well as the Oratory of all Saints, adopted the _catholic_ form of worship. The other parish churches adopted that of the _protestant_. Yet in 1559 there happened such a serious affray in the cathedral church itself--between the Catholics and Protestants--as taught the former the obvious necessity of conceding as much as possible to the latter. It followed, that, towards the end of the same century, there were, in the cathedral chapter, _seventeen protestant_, and _eight catholic_ canons. Among the _latter_, however, was the celebrated Cardinal de Lorraine:--one of the most powerful, the most furious, and the most implacable of the enemies of Protestantism. The part he took in the massacre of St. Bartholomew's day, consigns his name to everlasting ignominy and detestation. In 1610 a league was formed for the adjustment of the differences between the Catholics and Protestants: but the unfortunate thirty years war breaking out in 1618, and desolating nearly the whole of Germany, prevented the permanent consolidation of the interests of either party. All this time Strasbourg was under the power, as it even now speaks the language, and partakes of the customs and manners, of GERMANY: but its very situation rendered it the prey of both the contending powers of Germany and France. At length came the memorable, and as I suspect treacherous, surrender of Strasbourg to the arms of Louis XIV, in September 1681; when the respective rights and privileges of the Catholics and Protestants were placed upon a definite footing: although, before this event, the latter had considerably the ascendancy. These rights were endeavoured to be shaken by the revocation of the edict of Nantes in 1685--not however before the Jesuits had been striving to warp the feelings of the latter in favour of the former. The catholic religion was, by the articles of the surrender of the city, established in the cathedral, in the subordinate churches of St. Peter the Elder and St. Peter the Younger, and in the Oratory of All Saints: and it has continued to be exercised pretty much in the same proportion unto this day. The majority of the inhabitants are however decidedly Protestants. Such is a succinct, but I believe not unfaithful, account of the establishment of the PROTESTANT RELIGION at Strasbourg. This subject therefore naturally brings me to notice the principal _Temple of Worship_ in which the rites of either religion seem, for a long time, to have been alternately exercised; and this temple can be no other than _the Minster_--or, as we should say, the _Cathedral._ Ere I assume the office of the historian, let me gratify my inclinations as a spectator. Let me walk round this stupendous structure. At this moment, therefore, consider me as standing in full gaze before its west front--from which the tower springs. This tower seems to reach to heaven. Indeed the whole front quite overwhelms you with alternate emotions of wonder and delight. Luckily there is some little space before it, in which trees have been recently planted; and where (as I understand) the fruit and vegetable market is held. At the further end of this space in approaching the Cathedral, and in running the eye over the whole front, the first thing that strikes you is, the red or copperas colour of the stone--which I presume to be a species of sand stone. This gives a sort of severe metallic effect. However you are riveted to the spot wherein you command the first general survey of this unparalleled front. The delicacy, the finish, the harmonious intricacy, and faery-like lightness, of the whole--even to the summit of the spire;--which latter indeed has the appearance of filigree work, raised by enchantment, and through the interstices of which the bright blue sky appears with a lustre of which you have no conception in England--all this, I say, perfectly delights and overwhelms you. You want words to express your ideas, and the extent of your gratification. You feel convinced that the magnificent edifice before you seems to be the _ne plus ultra_ of human skill in ornamental gothic architecture. Undoubtedly one regrets here, as at Antwerp, the absence of a corresponding tower; but you are to form your judgment upon what is _actually_ before you, and, at the same time, to bear in mind that this tower and spire--for it partakes of both characters--is full _four hundred and seventy four_ English feet in height![206]--and, consequently, some twenty or thirty feet only lower than the top of St. Peter's at Rome. One is lost in astonishment, on bearing such an altitude in mind, considering the delicacy of the spire. There is no place fitting for a satisfactory view of it, within its immediate vicinity.[207] This western front, or facade, is divided into three stages or compartments. The bottom or lower one is occupied by three magnificent porches; of which the central is by far the loftiest and most ornamental. The period of their execution is from the year 1270 to 1320: a period, when gothic architecture was probably at its highest pitch of perfection. The central porch is divided into five compartments on each side--forming an angle of about forty-five degrees with the door-way. The lower parts of these divisions contain each a statue, of the size of life, upon its respective pediment. The upper parts, which blend with the arch-like construction, are filled with small statues, upon pediments, having a sort of brilliant, fretted appearance. All these figures are representations of characters in Scripture. Again, above this archway, forming the central ornaments of the sharper angles, are the figures of the Almighty, the Virgin and Child, and Solomon. In front, above the door way, upon a flat surface, are four sculptured compartments; devoted to scriptural subjects. The same may be said of the right and left porch. They are equally elaborate, and equally devoted to representations of scriptural subjects. They will have it, that, according to tradition, the daughter of Ervin de Steinbach, the chief architect of the western front, worked a great deal at this central porch, and even sculptured several of the figures. However this may be, the _tout ensemble_ is really beyond any thing which could be satisfactorily conveyed by a written description. We now cast our eye upon the second division of this stupendous facade; and here our attention is almost exclusively devoted to the enormous circular or marygold window, in the central compartment. It is filled with stained glass--and you are to know that the circumference of the outer circle is one hundred and sixty-English feet: or about fifty-three feet in diameter; and I challenge you to shew me the like--in any building of which you have any knowledge! Perhaps the most wonderful part of this structure is the open filigree work of the tower, immediately above the platform: though I admit that the _spiral_ part is exceedingly curious and elaborate. Of course there was no examining such a wonder without mounting to the platform, and ascending the tower itself. The platform is about three hundred feet from the pavement. We quitted this tenement, and walked straight forward upon the platform. What a prospect was before us. There flowed the RHINE! I felt an indescribable joy on my first view of that majestic river. There it flowed ... broad and rapid ... and apparently peaceful, within its low banks. On the other, or eastern side of it, was a range of lofty hills, of a mountainous character. On the opposite side of the town ran the great chain of hills--called the VOSGES--which we had crossed in our route hither; and of which we had now a most extensive and unobstructed view. These hills were once the abode of adventurous chieftains and powerful nobles; and there was scarcely an eminence but what had been formerly crowned by a baronial castle.[208] Below, appeared the houses of Strasbourg ... shrunk to rabbit-hutches--and the people ... to emmets! It remained to ascend the opposite tower. At each of the four corners there is a spiral stair-case, of which the exterior is open work, consisting of slender but lofty pillars; so that the ascending figure is seen at every convolution. It has a fearful appearance to the adventurer: but there is scarcely the possibility of danger. You go round and round, and observe three distinct terminations of the central work within--forming three roofs--of which, the _third_ is eminently beautiful. I could not help expressing my astonishment at some of the exterior columns, which could not be much less than threescore feet in height, and scarcely twelve inches in diameter! Having gained the top of one of these corner spiral stair-cases, I breathed and looked around me. A new feature presented itself to my view. About one hundred feet beneath, was the body of this huge cathedral. Immediately above, rose the beautifully-tapering and curiously ornamented SPIRE--to the height of probably, one hundred and twenty-five feet! It seemed indeed as if both tower and spire were direct ladders to the sky. The immortal artist who constructed them, and who lived to witness the completion of his structure, was JOAN HÜLTZ, a native of Cologne. The date of their completion is 1449. Thus, on the continent as well as in England, the period of the most florid style of gothic architecture was during the first half of the fifteenth century. I essayed to mount to the very pinnacle; or _bouton_ of the spire; but the ascent was impracticable--owing to the stair-case being under repair. On the summit of this spire, there once stood a _statue of the Virgin,_ above a cross. That statue was taken down at the end of the fifteenth century, and is now placed over the south porch. But, what do you think supplied its place during the late Revolution, or in the year of our Lord 1794, on the 4th day of May? Truly, nothing less than a large cap, made of tin, and painted red--called the _Cap of Liberty!_ Thank heaven, this latter was pulled down in due time--and an oblong diamond-shaped stone is now the finishing piece of masonry of this wonderful building. In descending, I stopped again at the platform, and was requested to see the GREAT BELL; of which I had heard the deep-mouthed roar half a dozen times a day, since my arrival. It is perhaps the finest toned bell in Europe, and appeared to me terrifically large--being nearer eight than seven feet high.[209] They begin to toll it at four or five o'clock in the summer-mornings, to announce that the gates of the town are opened. In case of fire at night, it is very loudly tolled; and during a similar accident in the day time, they suspend a pole, with a red flag at the end of it, over that part of the platform which is in a line with the direction of the fire. A grand defect in the structure of this Cathedral, as it strikes me, is, that the nave and transepts do not seem to belong to such a western front. They sink into perfect insignificance. Nor is the style of their exterior particularly deserving of description. Yet there is _one_ feature in the external architecture of this Cathedral--namely, a series or suite of DROLLERIES ... of about four or five feet high ... which cannot fail to attract the antiquary's especial notice. These figures are coarsely but spiritedly cut in stone. They are placed upon the bracket which supports the galleries, or balcony, of the eastern side of the facade of the tower, and are about sixty-five English feet from the ground. They extend to thirty-two feet in length. Through the kind offices of my friend Mr. Schweighæuser, junior, (of whom by and by) I have obtained drawings of these droll subjects,[210] and I am sure that, in common with many of our friends, you will be amused with the sight of a few of them. They are probably of the date of 1370; [Illustration] [Illustration] The common people call this series the _Sabbath of Demons,_ or _the Dance of the Witches_. You are to know, however, that on the opposite side of the cathedral there is a series of figures, of the same size, and executed nearly in the same style of art, descriptive of scriptural events, mixed with allegorical subjects. Having now pointed out what appears to me to be chiefly interesting in the _exterior_ of this marvellous building, it is right that I give you some notion of its _interior_: which will however occupy but a short portion of your attention. Indeed--I grieve to speak it--both the exterior and interior of the _nave_ are wholly unworthy of such a magnificent west-front. The nave and choir together are about three hundred and fifty-five English feet in length; of which the nave is two hundred and forty-four--evidently of too scanty dimensions. The width of the nave and side aisles is one hundred and thirty-two feet: the height of the nave is only seventy-two feet. The larger of the nine clustered columns is full seventy-two feet in circumference; the more delicate, thirty feet. There is really nothing striking in this nave; except that, on turning round, and looking up to the painted glass of the circular or marygold window, you observe the colours of it, which are very rich, and absolutely gay, compared with those of the other windows. There is a profusion of painted glass in almost all the windows; but generally of a sombre tint, and of a correspondent gloomy effect. Indeed, in consequence of this profusion, the cathedral absolutely wants light. The choir is sixty-seven feet wide, without side aisles, and is much lower than the nave. It is impossible to speak of this choir without indignation. My good friend--the whole of this interior has recently undergone rather a martyrdom than a metamorphosis. The sides are almost entirely covered with _Grecian_ pilasters and pillars; and so are the ornaments about the altar. What adds to the wretched effect of the whole, is, a coat of _white-wash_, which was liberally bestowed upon it some forty years ago; and which will require at least the lapse of another century to subdue its staring effect. There are only three chapels in this cathedral. Of _altars_ there are not fewer than twelve: the principal being in the chapels of St. Lawrence and St. Catharine. It was near the chapel of _St. Catharine_, that, on the morning of our first visit, we witnessed a group of country people, apparently from the neighbourhood of _Saverne_--from their huge, broad, flat hats--engaged in devotion before the image of some favourite saint. The rays of a bright sun darted through the windows, softened by the varied tints of the stained glass, upon their singular countenances and costumes; and the effect was irresistibly striking and interesting. In the centre of the south transept, there rises a fine, slender, clustered column, reaching to its very summit. On the exterior of this column--placed one above another, but retreating or advancing, or in full view, according to the position of the spectator--are several figures, chiefly females; probably five feet high, with labels or scrolls, upon each of which is an inscription. I never saw any thing more elegant and more striking of its kind. These figures reach a great way up the pillar--probably to the top-- but at this moment I cannot say decidedly. It is here, too, that the famous Strasbourg _Clock_, (about which one Dasypodius hath published a Latin treatise in a slim quarto volume[211]) is placed. This, and the tower, were called the _two great wonders of Germany_. This clock may be described in few words: premising, that it was preceded by a clock of very extraordinary workmanship, fabricated in the middle of the fourteenth century--of which, the _only_ existing portion is, a _cock_, upon the top of the left perpendicular ornament, which, upon the hourly chiming of the bells, used to flap his wings, stretch out his neck, and crow twice; but being struck by lightning in the year 1640, it lost its power of action and of sending forth sound. No modern skill has been able to make this cock crow, or to shake his wings again. The clock however is now wholly out of order, and should be placed elsewhere. It is very lofty; perhaps twenty feet high: is divided into three parts, of which the central part represents _Our Saviour_ and _Death_, in the middle, each in the act as if to strike a bell. When, in complete order, Death used to come forward to strike the _quarters_; and, having struck them, was instantly repelled by our Saviour. When he came forward to strike the _hour_, our Saviour in turn retreated:-- a whimsical and not very comprehensible arrangement. But old clocks used to be full of these conceits. Upon throwing an eye over what I have just written, I find that I have omitted to notice the celebrated STONE PULPIT, in the nave, enriched with small figures--of the latter end of the fifteenth century. In fact, the date of 1485, in arabic numerals, (if I remember rightly) is at the bottom of it, to the right of the steps. This pulpit, my good friend, is nothing less than the very ecclesiastical rostrum from which the famous _John Geyler_ thundered his anathemas against the monkish clergy. You may remember that some slight notice was taken of it at the beginning of this letter, in which the progress of Protestantism at Strasbourg was attempted to be traced. I will frankly own to you, that, of all pulpits, throughout Normandy, or in Paris--as yet examined by me--I have seen none which approaches to THIS; so rich, varied, and elaborate are its sculptured ornaments.[212] The Revolutionists could only contrive to knock off the figure which was upon the top of the canopy, with other contiguous ornaments; all of which might be easily restored. [Illustration: STONE PULPIT, STRASBOURG CATHEDRAL.] A word now about the great _Organ_. If Strasbourg have been famous for architects, masons, bell-founders, and clock-makers, it has been not less so for organ builders. As early as the end of the thirteenth century, there were several organs in this cathedral: very curious in their structure, and very sonorous in their notes. The present great organ, on the _left side_ of the nave, on entering at the western door, was built by Silbermann about a century-ago: and is placed about fifty feet above the pavement. It has six bellowses, each bellows being twelve feet long and six wide: but they are made to act by a very simple and sure process. The tone is tremendous-- when all the stops are pulled out--as I once heard it, during the performance of a particularly grand chorus! Yet is this tone mellow and pleasing at the same time. Notwithstanding the organ could be hardly less than three hundred feet distant from the musicians in the choir, it sent forth sounds so powerful and grand--as almost to overwhelm the human voice, with the accompaniments of trombones and serpents. Perhaps you will not be astonished at this, when I inform you that it contains not fewer than two thousand two hundred and forty-two pipes. This is not the first time you have heard me commend the organs upon the Continent. One of the most remarkable features belonging to the history of Strasbourg cathedral, is, the number of _shocks of earthquakes_ which have affected the building. It is barely possible to enumerate all these frightful accidents; and still more difficult to give credence to one third of them. They seem to have happened two or three times every century; and, latterly, yet more frequently. Take one recital as a specimen: and believe it--if you can. In the year 1728, so great was the agitation of the earth, that the tower was moved one foot out of its perpendicular direction--but recovered its former position presently. "What however is _quite certain_--(says Grandidier)--the holy water, contained in a stone reservoir or basin, at the bottom of a column, near the pavement, was thrown by this same agitation, to upwards of _half the height of a man_--and to the distance of _eighteen feet!_ The record of this marvellous transaction is preserved in a Latin inscription, on a slab of black marble, fastened to the lower part of the tower, near the platform."[213] In 1744 a severe tempest of thunder and lightning occasioned some serious injuries to portions of the cathedral; but in 1759 it suffered still more from a similar cause. Indeed the havoc among the slighter ornamental parts, including several delicately carved figures, is recorded to have been dreadful. Of the subordinate churches of Strasbourg, the principal, both for size and antiquity, is that of _St. Thomas_. I visited it several times. The exterior is one of the most tasteless jumbles of all styles and ages of art that can be imagined; and a portion of it is covered with brick. But I question if there be not parts much older than the cathedral. The interior compensates somewhat for the barbarism of the outside. It is large and commodious, but sadly altered from its original construction; and has recently been trimmed up and smartened in the true church-warden style. The great boast of this church is its MONUMENTS; which, it must be confessed, are upon the whole exceedingly interesting. As to their antiquity, I noticed two or three of the thirteenth century; but they pretend to run up as high as the tenth. Indeed I saw one inscription of the eleventh century--executed in gothic letters, such as we observe of the latter end of the sixteenth. This could not be a coeval inscription; for I doubt whether there exist, any where, a monumental tablet of the eleventh century executed in _coeval gothic_ letters. The service performed here is after the confession of Augsbourg; in other words, according to the reformed Lutheran church. A small crucifix, placed upon an altar between the nave and the choir, delicately marks this distinction; for Luther, you know, did not wage an interminable war against crucifixes. Of _modern_ monuments, the boast and glory of this church is that of the famous MARSHAL SAXE; who died at the age of 55, in the year 1755. While I was looking very intently at it, the good verger gently put a printed description of it into my hands, on a loose quarto sheet. I trust to be forgiven if I read only its first sentence:--_Cette grande composition réunit aux richesse de l'art des Phidias et des Bouchardon, les traits de la grande poésie._" "Take any shape but this"--thought I to myself--and, folding it up as gently as it had been delivered to me, I put it into my pocket. My good friend, I do beseech you to hear me out--when I preface my remarks by saying, that, of all monuments, _this_ is one of the most tasteless and uninteresting. Listen to a brief but faithful description of it. An immense pyramidal-shaped gray marble forms the background. Upon such a back-ground there might have been a group of a _dozen_ figures at least. However, there happen to be only _four_ of the human species, and three of animals. These human figures are, the Marshal; a woman weeping lustily--I had almost said blubbering; (intended to represent France) Hercules; and a little child--of some order or degree, not less affected than the female. The animals are, a lion, a leopard, (which latter has a bear-like form) and an eagle. I will now tell you what they are all doing. Before the Marshal, is an opened grave; into which this illustrious hero, clad in complete armour, is about to march with a quiet, measured step--as unconcernedly, as if he were descending a flight of steps which led to a conservatory. The woman--that is France--is, in the meantime, weeping aloud; pointing to the grave, and very persuasively intreating the Marshal to enter--as his mortal moments have expired. I should add that death--a large formidable-looking figure, veiled by a piece of drapery, is also at hand: seeming to imply that hesitation and reluctance, on the part of the hero, are equally unavailing. Next comes Hercules; who is represented as stationary, thoughtful, and sorrow-stricken, as France is agitated and in motion. The lion and leopard (one representing Holland, and the other England-- intending to convey the idea that the hero had beaten the armies of both countries) are between the Marshal and Hercules: the leopard is lying upon his back--in a very frolicksome attitude. The lion is also not less abstracted from the general grief of the figures. And this large, ugly, unmeaning composition--they have the temerity to call the union of art by Phidias and Bouchardon--with the inspiration of sublime poetry! I will make no comments.[214] It is one of those _felicitous_ efforts which have the enviable distinction of carrying its own text and commentary. Below this vast mural monument, is a vault, containing the body of the Marshal. I descended into it, and found it well ventilated and dry. The coffin is immediately obvious: it contains the body of the chieftain enclosed in two cases--of which the first is _silver_, and the second _copper_. The heart is, I believe, elsewhere. Forming a strikingly happy contrast to this huge, unmeaning production--are the modest and unassuming monuments of _Schoepflin_, _Oberlin_, and _Koch_: men, of whom Strasbourg has good reason to be proud. Nor let the monument of old _Sebastian Schmidt_ escape the notice and commendation of the pensive observer. These were all "fine fellows in their day:" and died, including the illustrious Marshal, steady in the faith they had espoused-- that is, in the belief and practice of the tenets of the reformed church. I have no time for a particular description of these monuments. Schoepflin's consists of a bronze bust of himself placed in the front of a white marble urn, between two cinnamon-colour columns, of the Corinthian order--of free stone. The head is thought to be very like. Oberlin's is in better taste. You see only his profile, by Ohmacht, in white marble--very striking. The accompaniments are figures in white marble, of which a muse, in rilievo, is larger than life. The inscriptions, both for Schoepflin and Oberlin, are short and simple, and therefore appropriate. The monument of Koch is not less simple. It consists of his bust--about to be crowned with a fillet of oaken leaves--by a figure representing the city of Strasbourg. Below the bust is another figure weeping--and holding beneath its arms, a scroll, upon which the works of the deceased are enumerated. Koch died in his seventy-sixth year, in the year 1813. Ohmacht is also the sculptor of Koch's monument. Upon the whole, I am not sure that I have visited any church, since the cathedral of Rouen, of which the interior is more interesting, on the score of monuments, than that of St. Thomas at Strasbourg. I do not know that it is necessary to say any thing about the old churches of St. Stephen and St. Martin: except that the former is supposed to be the most ancient. It was built of stone, and said to be placed upon a spot in which was a Roman fort--the materials of which served for a portion of the present building. St. Martin's was erected in 1381 upon a much finer plan than that of _St. Arbogaste_--which is said to have been built in the middle of the twelfth century. Among the churches, now no longer _wholly_ appropriated to sacred uses, is that called the _New Temple_--attached to which is the Public Library. The service in this church is according to the Protestant persuasion. I say this Church is not _wholly_ devoted to religious rites: for what was once the _choir_, contains, at bottom, the BOOKS belonging to the public University; and, at top, those which were bequeathed to the same establishment by Schoepflin. The general effect-- both from the pavement below, and the gallery above--is absolutely transporting. Shall I tell you wherefore? This same ancient choir--now devoted to _printed tomes_--contains some lancet-shaped windows of _stained glass_ of the most beautiful and exquisite pattern and colours!... such as made me wholly forget those at _Toul_, and _almost_ those at _St. Owen_. Even the stained glass of the cathedral, here, was recollected... only to suffer by the comparison! It should seem that the artist had worked with alternate dissolutions of amethyst, topaz, ruby, garnet, and emerald. Look at the first three windows, to the left on entering, about an hour before sun-set:--they seem to fill the whole place with a preternatural splendor! The pattern is somewhat of a Persian description, and I should apprehend the antiquity of the workmanship to be scarcely exceeding three hundred years. Yet I must be allowed to say, that these exquisitely sparkling, if not unrivalled, specimens of stained glass, do not belong to a place now _wholly_ occupied by _books_. Could they not be placed in the chapel of St. Lawrence, or of St. Catharine, in the cathedral? As I am now at the close of my account of ecclesiastical edifices--and as this last church happens to be closely connected with a building of a different description--namely, The PUBLIC LIBRARY--you will allow me to _colophonise_ my first Strasbourg epistle with some account of the _contents_ of this library. The amiable and excellent younger Schweighæuser, who is head librarian, and one of the Professors in this Gymnase, was so obliging as to lend me the key of the library, to which I had access at all hours of the day. The public hours are from two till four, Sundays excepted. I own that this accommodation was extremely agreeable and convenient to me. I was under no restraint, and thus left to my own conscience alone not to abuse the privilege conceded. That conscience has never given me one "prick" since the conclusion of my researches.[215] My researches were usually carried on above stairs, at the table where the visitors sat. Of the MSS. I did not deem it worth while to take any particular account; but there was _one_, so choice, so splendid, so curious, so interesting, and in such an extraordinary state of preservation, that you may as well know it is called the famous _Hortus Deliciarum_ of _Herarde, Abbess of Landsberg_. The subjects are miscellaneous; and most elaborately represented by illuminations. Battles, sieges, men tumbling from ladders which reach to the sky--conflagrations, agriculture--devotion, penitence--revenge, murder,--in short, there is hardly a passion, animating the human breast, but what is represented here. The figures in armour have _nasals_, and are in quilted mail: and I think there can be little doubt but that both the text and the decorations are of the latter end of the twelfth century. It is so perfect in all its parts, and so rich of its particular description, that it not only well merits the labour which has been bestowed upon it by its recent editor Mr. Engleheardt, but it may probably vie with any similar production in Europe.[216] However, of other MSS. you will I am sure give me credit for having examined the celebrated _Depositions in the law-suit between Fust and Gutemberg_--so intimately connected with the history of early printing, and so copiously treated upon by recent bibliographers.[217] I own that I inspected these depositions (in the German language) with no ordinary curiosity. They are doubtless most precious; yet I cannot help suspecting that the _character_ or letter is _not_ of the time; namely of 1440. It should rather seem to be of the sixteenth century. Perhaps at the commencement of it. These documents are written in a small folio volume, in one uniform hand--a kind of law-gothic--from beginning to end. The volume has the following title on the exterior; "_Dicta Testium magni consilij Anno dni m^o. cccc^o. Tricesimo nono_. The paper is strong and thick, and has a pair of scales for the water-mark. The younger Schweighæuser thinks my doubts about its age not well founded; conceiving it to be a coeval document. But this does not affect its authenticity, as it may have been an accurate and attested copy--of an original which has now perished. Certainly the whole book has very much the air of a _Copy_: and besides, would not the originals have been upon separate rolls of parchment?[218] I now come to the PRINTED BOOKS: of which, according to the MS. catalogue by Oberlin, (who was head librarian here) there are not fewer _than four thousand three hundred, printed before the year 1520_:--and of these, again, upwards of _eleven hundred without dates_. This, at first hearing, sounds, what the curious would call, promising; but I must say, that of the _dated_ and _dateless_ books, printed before the year 1500, which I took down, and carefully opened--and this number could not be less than four or five hundred--there was scarcely one in five which repaid the toil of examination: and this too, with a thermometer frequently standing at eighty-nine and ninety, in the shade in the open air! Fortunately for my health, and for the exertion of physical strength, the public library happened to be very cool--while all the windows were opened, and through the openings was frequently heard the sound of young voices, practising the famous _Martin Luther's Hymn_--as it is called. This latter was particularly grateful to me. I heard the master first sing a stave, and he was in general accurately followed by his pupils--who displayed the well-known early tact of Germans in the science of music. But to revert to the early printed books. FIRST GERMAN BIBLE; supposed to have been _printed by Mentelin_; without date: Folio. Towards the latter half of this copy, there are some interesting embellishments, in outline, in a bistre tint. The invention and execution of many of them are admirable. Where they are _coloured_, they lose their proper effect. An illumination, at the beginning of the book of _Esther_, bears the unequivocal date of 1470: but the edition was certainly four or five years earlier. This Bible is considered to be the earliest German version: but it is not so. LATIN BIBLE, BY MENTELIN: in his second character. This Bible I saw for the first time; but Panzer is decidedly wrong in saying that the types resemble the larger ones in Mentelin's _Valerius Maximus_, _Virgil_ and _Terence_: they may be nearly as tall, but are not so broad and large. From a ms. note, the 402d leaf appears to be wanting. This copy is a singularly fine one. It is white, and large, and with rough edges throughout. It is also in its first binding, of wood. LATIN BIBLE; _printed by Eggesteyn_. Here are several editions, and a duplicate of the first--which is printed in the second smallest character of Eggesteyn.[219] The two copies of this first edition are pretty much alike for size and condition: but _one_ of them, with handsome illuminations at the beginning of each volume, has the precious coeval ms. date of 1468--as represented by the fac-simile of it in _Schoepflin's Vind. Typog. Tab. V._ Probably the date of the printing might have been at least a year earlier. LATIN BIBLE: _printed by Jenson_, 1479. Folio. A fine copy, upon paper. The first page is illuminated. To this list of impressions of the SACRED TEXT, may be added a fine copy of the SCLAVONIAN BIBLE of 1584, folio, with wood cuts, and another of the HUNGARIAN Bible of 1626, folio: the latter in double columns, with a crowdedly-printed margin, and an engraved frontispiece. As to books upon miscellaneous subjects, I shall lay before you, without any particular order, my notes of the following: Of the _Speculum Morale_ of P. Bellovacensis, here said to be printed by Mentelin in 1476, in double columns, roman type, folio--there is a copy, in one volume, of tremendously large dimensions; as fine, clean, and crackling as possible. Also a copy of the _Speculum Judiciale_ of Durandus, _printed at Strasbourg by Hussner and Rekenhub_, in 1473, folio. Hussner was a citizen of Strasbourg, and his associate a priest at Mentz. Here is also a perfect copy of the Latin PTOLEMY, of the supposed date of 1462, with a fine set of the copper-plates. But I must make distinct mention of a _Latin Chronicle, printed by Gotz de Sletztat_ in 1474, in folio. It is executed in a coarse, large gothic type, with many capital roman letters. At the end of the alphabetical index of 35 leaves, we read as follows: DEO GRATIAS. _A tpe ade vsqz ad annos cristi 1474 Acta et gesta hic suffitienter nuclient Sola spes mea. In virginis gracia Nicholaus Gotz. De Sletzstat._ The preceding is on the recto; on the reverse of the same leaf is an account of Inventors of _arts_: no mention is made of that of _printing_. Then the prologue to the Chronicle, below which is the device of Gotz;[220] having his name subjoined. The text of the Chronicle concludes at page CCLXXX--printed numerals--with an account of an event which took place in the year 1470. But the present copy contains another, and the concluding leaf--which may be missing in some copies--wherein there is a particular notice of a splendid event which took place in 1473, between Charles Duke of Burgundy, and Frederick the Roman Emperor, with Maximilian his Son; together with divers dukes, earls, and counts attending. The text of this leaf ends thus; _SAVE GAIRT VIVE BVRGVND._ Below, within a circle, "Sixtus quartus." This work is called, in a ms. prefix, the _Chronicle of Foresius_. I never saw, or heard of, another copy. The present is fine and sound; and bound in wood, covered with leather. Here are two copies of St. _Jerom's Epistles, printed by Schoeffher_ in 1470; of which that below stairs is one of the most magnificent imaginable; in two folio volumes. Hardly any book can exceed, and few equal it, in size and condition--unless it be the theological works of ARCHBISHOP ANTONIUS, _printed by Koeberger_, in 1477, in one enormous folio volume. As a specimen of Koeberger's press, I am unable at the present moment to mention any thing which approaches it. I must also notice a copy of the _Speculum Humanæ Salvationis, printed at Basle, by Richel_, in 1476, folio. It is a prodigious volume, full of wood cuts, and printed in double columns in a handsome gothic type. This work seems to be rather a _History of the Bible_; having ten times the matter of that which belongs to the work with this title usually prefixed. The copy is in its original wooden binding. JUNIANUS MAIUS. _De Propriet. Priscor. Verborum, printed at Treviso by Bernard de Colonia_, 1477, folio. I do not remember to have before seen any specimen of this printer's type: but what he has done here, is sufficient to secure for him typographical immortality. This is indeed a glorious copy--perfectly large paper--of an elegantly printed book, in a neat gothic type, in double columns. The first letter of the text is charmingly illuminated. I shall conclude these miscellaneous articles by the notice of two volumes, in the list of ROMANCES, of exceedingly rare occurrence. These romances are called _Tyturell_ and _Partzifal_. The author of them was _Wolfram von Escenbach_. They are each of the date of 1477, in folio. The Tyturell is printed prose-wise, and the Partzifal in a metrical form. We now come to the Roman CLASSICS, (for of the Greek there are _few or none_)--before the year 1500. Let me begin with _Virgil_. Here is _Mentelin's_ very rare edition; but cropt, scribbled upon, and wanting several leaves. However, there is a most noble and perfect copy of Servius's Commentary upon the same poet, _printed by Valdarfer_ in 1471, folio, and bound in primitive boards. There are two perfect copies of _Mentelin's_ edition (which is the first) of VALERIUS MAXIMUS, of which one is wormed and cropt. The _other_ Mentelin copy of the Valerius Maximus, without the Commentary, is perhaps the largest I ever saw--with the ancient ms. signatures at the bottom-corners of the leaves. Unluckily, the margins are rather plentifully charged with ms. memoranda. Of CICERO, there are of course numerous early editions. I did not see the _De Officiis_ of 1465, or of 1466, of which Hermann speaks, and to which he affixes the _novel_ date of 1462:--but I did see the _De Oratore_, printed by _Vindelin de Spira_ without date; and _such_ a copy I shall probably never see again! The colour and substance of the paper are yet more surprising than the size. It is hardly possible to see a finer copy of the _Scriptores Hist. Augustæ, printed by P. de Lavagna_ in 1475, folio. It possesses all the legitimate evidences of pristine condition, and is bound in its first coat of oak. Here is a very fine copy of the _Plutarchi Vitæ Paralellæ_, printed in the letter R, in two large folio volumes, bound in wood, covered by vellum of the sixteenth century. But, if of _any_ book, it is of the first edition of _Catullus Tibullus et Propertius_, of 1472, folio--that this Library has just reason to be proud. Here are in fact _two_ copies, equally sound, pure and large: but in _one_ the _Propertius_ is wanting;[221] in lieu of which, however, there is the first edition of JUVENAL and PERSIUS by V. de Spira-- in equal purity of condition. The perfect copy has the SYLVÆ of STATIUS subjoined. It should seem, therefore, that the Juvenal and Persius had supplied the place of the Propertius and Statius, in one copy. You are well aware of the extreme rarity of this first edition of Catullus Tibullus et Propertius. I now take leave of the _Public Library of Strasbourg_; not however without mentioning rather an amusing anecdote connected with some of the books just described; nor without an observation or two upon the present state of the library. The anecdote is thoroughly bibliographical. After having examined some of the finer books before mentioned, and especially having dwelt upon the Latin Bible of Mentelin, and a few copies of the rarer Classics, I ventured to descant upon the propriety of _parting_ with those for which there was _no use_, and which, without materially strengthening their own collection, might, by an advantageous sale, enable them to enrich their collection by valuable modern books: of which they obviously stood in _need_. I then proposed so many hundred francs, for such and such volumes. Messrs. Schweighæuser, jun. Dahler, and several other professors were standing round me--when I made this proposition. On the conclusion of it, professor Dahler put his hand upon my shoulder--stooped down--(for I was sitting the whole time)--and looking half archly, replied thus: "Monsieur le Bibliographe, vous raisonnez bien: mais--nous conserverons nos anciens livres." These sturdy conservators were not to be shaken; and none but _duplicates_ were to be parted with.[222] The next observation relates to the collection. Never did a collection stand in greater need of being weeded. There are medical books sufficient to supply six copies for the library of every castellated mansion along the Vosges[223]--should any of them ever be repaired and put in order. Schoepflin's library furnishes many duplicates both in history and theology; and in _Classics_ they should at least make good their series of the more important _first Editions_. The want of a perfect _Virgil_ by _Mentelin_, and the want of a _first Terence_, by the same printer--their boasted townsman--are reproachful wants. At any rate, they should not let slip any opportunity of purchasing the first _Ovid, Horace, Ausonius_, and _Lucretius_. No man is more deeply impressed with a conviction of these wants, than the present chief librarian, the younger Schweighæuser; but, unfortunately, the pecuniary means of supplying them are slender indeed. I find this to be the case wherever I go. The deficiency of funds, for the completion of libraries, may however be the cry of _other_ countries besides _France_. As to booksellers, for the sale of modern works, and for doing, what is called "a great stroke of business," there is no one to compare with the house of TREUTTEL and WÜRTZ--of which firm, as you may remember, very honourable mention was made in one of my latter letters from Paris. Their friendly attention and hospitable kindness are equal to their high character as men of business. It was frequently in their shop that I met with some of the savants of Strasbourg; and among them, the venerable and amiable LICHTENBERGER, author of that very judicious and pains taking compilation entitled _Initia Typographica_. I was also introduced to divers of the learned, whose names I may be pardoned for having forgotten. The simplicity of character, which here marks almost every man of education, is not less pleasing than profitable to a traveller who wishes to make himself acquainted with the literature of the country through which he passes. [203] _Alsatia Illustrata_, 1751-61, folio, two volumes. [204] In the middle of the fifteenth century there were not fewer than nine principal gates of entrance: and above the walls were built, at equal distances, fifty-five towers--surmounted, in turn, by nearly thirty towers of observation on the exterior of the walls. But in the beginning of the sixteenth century, from the general adoption of gunpowder in the art of war, a different system of defence was necessarily adopted; and the number of these towers was in consequence diminished. At present there are none. They are supplied by bastions and redoubts, which answer yet better the purposes of warfare. [205] This work is entitled "_Notices Historiques, Statistiques et Littéraires, sur la Ville de Strasbourg_." 1817, 8vo. A second volume, published in 1819, completes it. A more judicious, and, as I learn, faithful compilation, respecting the very interesting city of which it treats, has not yet been published. [206] I had before said 530 English feet; but a note in M. Crapelet's version (supplied, as I suspect, by my friend M. Schweighæuser,) says, that from recent strict trigonometrical measurement, it is 437 French feet in height. [207] The _Robertsau_, about three quarters of a mile from Strasbourg, is considered to be the best place for a view of the cathedral. The Robertsau is a well peopled and well built suburb. It consists of three nearly parallel streets, composed chiefly of houses separated by gardens--the whole very much after the English fashion. In short, these are the country houses of the wealthier inhabitants of Strasbourg; and there are upwards of seventy of them, flanked by meadows, orchards, or a fruit or kitchen garden. It derives the name of _Robertsau_ from a gentleman of the name of _Robert,_ of the ancient family of _Bock_. He first took up his residence there about the year 1200, and was father of twenty children. Consult _Hermann_; vol. i. p. 209. [208] "The engineer Specklin, who, in order to complete his MAP of ALSACE, traversed the whole chain of the VOSGES, estimates the number of these castles at little short of _two hundred_: and pushes the antiquity of some of them as far back as the time of the Romans." See _Hermann_; vol. i. p. 128, note 20: whose compressed account of a few of these castellated mansions is well worth perusal, I add this note, from something like a strong persuasion, that, should it meet the eye of some enterprising and intelligent English antiquary, it may stimulate him--within the waning of two moons from reading it, provided those moons be in the months of Spring--to put his equipage in order for a leisurely journey along the VOSGES! [209] This was formerly called the bell of the HOLY GHOST. It was cast in 1427, by John Gremp of Strasbourg. It cost 1300 florins; and weighs eighty quintals;, or 8320 lb.: nearly four tons. It is twenty-two French feet in circumference, and requires six men to toll it. In regard to the height, I must not be supposed to speak from absolute data. Yet I apprehend that its altitude is not much over-rated. Grandidier has quite an amusing chapter (p. 241, &c.) upon the thirteen bells which are contained in the tower of this cathedral. [210] It was necessary, on the part of my friend, to obtain the consent of the Prefect to make these drawings. A moveable scaffold was constructed, which was suspended from the upper parts--and in this _nervous_ situation the artist made his copies--of the size of the foregoing cuts. The expense of the scaffold, and of making the designs, was very inconsiderable indeed. The worthy Prefect, or Mayor, was so obliging as to make the scaffold a mere gratuitous affair; six francs only being required for the men to drink! [Can I ever forget, or think slightly of, such kindness? Never.] Cicognara, in his _Storia della Scultura_, 1813, folio, has given but a very small portion of the above dance; which was taken from the upper part of a neighbouring house. It is consequently less faithful and less complete. [In the preceding edition of this work, there are not fewer than _eleven_ representations of these Drolleries.] [211] I think this volume is of the date of 1580. CONRAD DASYPODIUS was both the author of the work, and the chief mechanic or artisan employed in making the clock--about which he appears to have taken several journeys to employ, and to consult with, the most clever workmen in Germany. The wheels and movements were made by the two HABRECHTS, natives of Schaffhausen. [212] [The Reader may form some notion of its beauty and elaboration of ornament, from the OPPOSITE PLATE: taken from a print published about a century and a half ago.] [213] See Grandidier, p. 177: where the Latin inscription is given. The _Ephémérides de l'Académie des Curieux de la Nature_, vol. ii. p. 400, &c. are quoted by this author--as a contemporaneous authority in support of the event above mentioned. [214] My French translator will have it, that, "this composition, though not without its faults, is considered, in the estimation of all connoisseurs, as one of the finest funereal monuments which the modern chisel has produced." It may be, in the estimation of _some_--but certainly of a _very small_ portion of--Connoisseurs of first rate merit. Our Chantry would sicken or faint at the sight of such allegorical absurdity. [215] [This avowal has subjected me to the gentle remonstrance of the Librarian in question, and to the tart censure of M. Crapelet in particular. "Voilà le Reverend M. Dibdin (exclaims the latter) qui se croit obligé de déclarer qu'il n'a rien derobé!" And he then quotes, apparently with infinite delight, a passage from the _Quarterly Review_, (No. LXIII. June 1825) in which I am designated as having "extraordinary talents for ridicule!" But how my talents "for ridicule" (of which I very honestly declare my unconsciousness) can be supposed to bear upon the above "prick of conscience," is a matter which I have yet to learn. My amiable friend might have perhaps somewhat exceeded the prescribed line of his duty in letting me have the key of the Library in question--but, can a declaration of such confidence not having been MISPLACED, justify the flippant remarks of my Annotator?] [216] [It is now published in an entire state by the above competent Editor.] [217] See the authorities quoted, and the subject itself handled, in the _Bibliographical Decameron_, vol. i. p. 316, &c. [218] [Here again my sensitive Annotator breaks out into something little short of personal abuse, for my DARING to _doubt_ what all the world before had held in solemn _belief_! Still, I will continue to doubt; without wishing this doubt to be considered as "paroles d'Evangile"-- as M. Crapelet expresses it.] [219] Fully described in the _Bibl. Spenceriana_, vol. i. p. 39, with a fac-simile of the type. [220] A fac-simile of this device appears in a Latin Bible, without name of printer, particularly described in the _Ædes Althorpianæ_; vol. ii. p. 41. Hence we learn that the Bible in question, about the printer of which there appears to be some uncertainty among bibliographers, was absolutely printed by Gotz. [221] The imperfect copy, being a duplicate, was disposed of for a copy of the _Bibl. Spenceriana_; and it is now in the fine library of the Rt. Hon. T. Grenville. The very first glance at this copy will shew that the above description is not overcharged. [222] "These Duplicates related to some few articles of minor importance belonging to the library of the Public School, and which had escaped a former revision. The cession was made with due attention to forms, and with every facility." Such (as I have reason to believe) is the remark of M. Schweighæuser himself. What follows--evidently by the hand of M. Crapelet--is perfectly delicious ... of its kind. "That M. Dibdin should have preferred such an indiscreet request to the Librarians in question--impelled by his habitual vivacity and love of possessing books--is conceivable enough: but, that he should _publish_ such an anecdote--that he should delight in telling us of the rudeness which he committed in SITTING while the gentlemen about him were STANDING, is to affect a very uncommon singularity"!!! [Greek: Ô popoi!] [223] There are yet libraries, and rare books, in the district. I obtained for my friend the Rev. H. Drury, one of the finest copies in England of the first edition of _Cicero's Offices_, of 1465, 4to. UPON VELLUM--from the collection of a physician living in one of the smaller towns near the Vosges. This copy was in its ancient oaken attire, and had been formerly in a monastic library. For this acquisition my friend was indebted to the kind offices of the younger M. Schweighæuser. _LETTER XIV._ SOCIETY. ENVIRONS OF STRASBOURG. DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE, MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. LITERATURE. LANGUAGE. My last letter, however copious, was almost wholly confined to _views of interiors_; that is to say, to an account of the Cathedral and of the Public Library. I shall now continue the narrative with views of interiors of a different description; with some slight notices of the _society_ and of the city of Strasbourg; concluding the whole, as well as closing my Strasbourg despatches, with a summary account of manners, customs, and literature. The great _Greek luminary_, not only of this place, but perhaps of Germany--the ELDER SCHWEIGHÆUSER--happens to be absent. His son tells me that he is at _Baden_ for the benefit of the waters, and advises me to take that "enchanting spot" (as he calls it) in my way to Stuttgart. "'Twill be only a trifling détour." What however will be the _chief_ temptation--as I frankly told the younger Schweighæuser--would be the society of his Father; to whom the son has promised a strong letter of introduction. I told you in my last that I had seen LICHTENBERGER at Treuttel and Würtz's. I have since called upon the old gentleman; and we immediately commenced a bibliographical parley. But it was chiefly respecting Lord Spencer's copies of the _Letters of Indulgence of Pope Nicolas V._ of the date of 1455, that he made the keenest enquiries. "Was the date legitimate?" I assured him there could be no doubt of it; and that what Hæberlin had said, followed by Lambinet, had no reference whatever to his Lordship's copies--for that, in _them_, the final units were compressed into a V and not extended by five strokes, thus--_iiiij_. As he was unacquainted with my account of these copies in the _Bibliotheca Spenceriana_, I was necessarily minute in the foregoing statement. The worthy old bibliographer was so pleased with this account, that he lifted up his eyes and hands, and exclaimed, "one grows old always to learn something." M. Haffner, who was one of the guests at a splendid, but extremely sociable dinner party at _Madame Franc's_[224] the principal banker here--is a pleasing, communicative, open-countenanced, and open-hearted gentleman. He may be about sixty years of age. I viewed his library with admiration. The order was excellent; and considering what were his _means_, I could not but highly compliment him upon his prudence and enthusiasm. This was among the happiest illustrations of the _Bibliomania_ which I had ever witnessed. The owner of this well chosen collection shewed me with triumph his copy of the first Greek Testament by _Erasmus_, and his copies of the same sacred book by _R. Stephen_ and _Wetstein_, in folio. Here too I saw a body of philological theology (if I may use this term) headed by _Walchius_ and _Wolff_, upon the possession of a similar collection of which, my late neighbour and friend, Dr. Gosset, used to expatiate with delight. Let me now take you with me out of doors. You love architecture of all descriptions: but "the olden" is always your "dear delight." In the construction of the streets of Strasbourg, they generally contrive that the corner house should _not_ terminate with a right angle. Such a termination is pretty general throughout Strasbourg. Of the differently, and sometimes curiously, constructed iron bars in front of the windows, I have also before made mention. The houses are generally lofty; and the roofs contain two or three tiers of open windows, garret-fashioned; which gives them a picturesque appearance; but which, I learn, were constructed as granaries to hold flour--for the support of the inhabitants, when the city should sustain a long and rigorous siege. As to _very ancient_ houses, I cannot charge my memory with having seen any; and the most ancient are those on the other side of the _Ill_; of which several are near the convent before mentioned. The immediate environs of Strasbourg (as I have before remarked) are very flat and poor, in a picturesque point of view. They consist chiefly of fields covered with the _tobacco plant_, which resembles that of our horse-radish; and the trade of tobacco may be considered the staple, as well as the indigenous, commodity of the place. This trade is at once extensive and lucrative; and regulated by very wholesome laws. The outskirts of the town, considered in an architectural point of view, are also very indifferent. As to the general character, or rather appearance, of the Strasbourgeois, it is such as to afford very considerable satisfaction. The manners and customs of the people are simple and sober. The women, even to the class of menial servants, go abroad with their hair brushed and platted in rather a tasteful manner, as we even sometimes observe in the best circles of our own country. The hair is dressed _à la grecque_, and the head is usually uncovered: contrary to the broad round hats, and depending queues, of the women inhabiting the neighbourhood of _Saverne_. But you should know that the farmers about Strasbourg are generally rich in pocket, and choice and dainty in the disposition of their daughters--with respect to wedlock. They will not deign to marry them to bourgeois of the ordinary class. They consider the blood running in their families' veins to be polluted by such an intermixture; and accordingly they are oftentimes saucy, and hold their heads high. Even some of the fair dames coming from the high "countre," whom we saw kneeling the other day, in the cathedral, with their rural attire, would not commute their circular head pieces for the most curiously braided head of hair in the city of Strasbourg. The utmost order and decency, both in dress and conduct, prevail in the streets and at spectacles. There seems to be that sober good sense among the Strasbourgeois--which forms a happy medium between the gaiety of their western, and the phlegm of their eastern, neighbours; and while this general good order obtains, we may forgive "officers for mounting guard in white silk stockings, or for dancing in boots at an assembly--and young gentlemen for wearing such scanty skirts to their coats:"--subjects, which appear to have ruffled the good temper of the recent historian of Strasbourg.[225] It seems clear that the morals of the community, and especially of the female part, were greatly benefited by the Reformation,[226] or establishment of the protestant religion. In alluding to manners and customs, or social establishments of this place, you ought to know that some have imagined the origin of _Free-masonry_ may be traced to Strasbourg; and that the first _lodges_ of that description were held in this city. The story is this. The cathedral, considered at the time of its erection as a second _Solomon's temple_, was viewed as the wonder of the modern world. Its masons, or architects, were the theme of universal praise. Up rose, in consequence, the cathedrals of _Vienna, Cologne, Landshut_ and others: and it was resolved that, on the completion of such stately structures, those, whose mechanical skill had been instrumental to their erection, should meet in one common bond, and chant together, periodically, at least their _own_ praises. Their object was to be considered very much above the common labourer, who wore his apron in front, and carried his trowel in his hand: on the contrary, _they_ adopted, as the only emblems worthy of their profession, the level, the square, and the compass. All the lodges, wherever established, considered that of Strasbourg as the common parent; and at a meeting held at Ratisbon in 1459, it was agreed that the ARCHITECT OF STRASBOURG CATHEDRAL should be the _Grand Master of Free-masons_; and one DOTZINGER of Worms, who had succeeded Hulz in 1449, (just after the latter, had finished the spire) was acknowledged to be the FIRST GRAND MASTER. I own my utter ignorance in the lore of free-masonry; but have thought it worth while to send you these particulars: as I know you to be very "curious and prying" in antiquarian researches connected with this subject. Strasbourg has been always eminent for its literary reputation, from the time of the two STURMII, or rather from that of GEYLER, downwards. It boasts of historians, chroniclers, poets, critics, and philologists. At this present moment the public school, or university, is allowed to be in a most flourishing condition; and the name of SCHWEIGHÆUSER alone is sufficient to rest its pretensions to celebrity on the score of _classical_ acumen and learning. While, within these last hundred years, the names of SCHOEPFLIN, OBERLIN, and KOCH, form a host in the department of _topography_ and _political economy_. In _Annals_ and _Chronicles_, perhaps no provincial city in Europe is richer; while in _old Alsatian poetry_ there is an almost inexhaustible banquet to feast upon. M. Engelhardt, the brother in law of M. Schweighæuser junr. is just now busily engaged in giving an account of some of the ancient love poets, or _Minne-Singers_; and he shewed me the other day some curious drawings relating to the same, taken from a MS. of the XIIIth century, in the public library. But Oberlin, in 1786, published an interesting work "_De Poetis Alsatiæ eroticis medii ævi_"--and more lately in 1806; M. Arnold in his "_Notice littéraire et historique sur les poëtes alsaciens_," 1806, 8vo.--enriched by the previous remarks of Schoepflin, Oberlin, and Frantz--has given a very satisfactory account of the achievements of the Muses who seem to have inhabited the mountain-tops of Alsatia--from the ninth to the sixteenth century inclusively. It is a fertile and an interesting subject. Feign would I, if space and time allowed, give you an outline of the same; from the religious metres of _Ottfried_ in the ninth--to the charming and tender touches which are to be found in the _Hortus deliciarum_[227] of _Herade_ Abbess of Landsberg, in the twelfth-century: not meaning to pass over, in my progress, the effusions of philology and poetry which distinguished the rival abbey of _Hohenbourg_ in the same century. Indeed; not fewer than three Abbesses-- _Rélinde, Herade, and _Edelinde_--cultivated literature at one and the same time: when, in Arnold's opinion, almost the whole of Europe was plunged in barbarism and ignorance. Then comes _Günther_, in the fifteenth century; with several brave geniuses in the intervening period: and, latterly, the collection of the _Old Troubadour Poetry of Alsace_, by _Roger Maness_--of which there is a MS. in the Royal Library at Paris; and another (containing matter of a somewhat later period) in the Public library here; of which latter not a specimen, as I understand, has seen the light in the form of a printed text. In later times, _Brandt, Wimphelin, Locher, Baldus, Pfeffel_, and _Nicolay_, are enough to establish the cause of good poetry, and the celebrity of this city in the production of such poets. As to the _Meister-Sængers_ (or Master-Singers) who composed the strains which they sang, perhaps the cities of Mentz and Nuremberg may vie with that of Strasbourg, in the production of this particular class. _Hans Sachs_ of Nuremberg, formerly a cobler, was considered to be the very _Coryphoeus_ of these Master-Singers. At the age of fourscore he is said to have composed four thousand three hundred and seventy verses. A word or two only respecting the language spoken at Strasbourg. From the relative situation of the town, this language would necessarily be of a mixed character: that is to say, there would be intermarriages between the Germans and French--and the offspring of such marriages would necessarily speak a _patois_. This seems to be generally admitted. The ancient language of Strasbourg is said to have been the pure dialect of _Suabia_; but, at present, the dialect of _Saxony_, which is thought to be purer as well as more fashionable, is carefully taught in the schools of both sexes, and spoken by all the ministers in the pulpit. Luther wrote in this dialect, and all protestant preachers make use of it as a matter of course. Yet Hermann labours to prove how much softer the dialect of High Germany is than that of High Saxony. There have lately appeared several small brochures in the _common language_ of the town--such, of course, as is ordinarily spoken in the shops and streets: and among others, a comedy called; _Der Pfingst-Montag_, written (says Hermann) with much spirit; but the author of this latter work has been obliged to mark the pronunciation, which renders the perusal of it somewhat puzzling. It is also accompanied with a glossary. But that you, or your friends, may judge for yourselves, I send you a specimen of the _patois_, or common language spoken in the street--in the enclosed ballad: which I purchased the other day, for about a penny of our money, from an old goody, who was standing upon a stool, and chanting it aloud to an admiring audience. I send you the first four stanzas.[228] Im Namen der allerheiligsten Dreifaltigkeit das goldene ABC, Neu verfasst für Jedermann, dass er mit Ehr' bestehen kann. Alles ist an Gottes Segen, Was wir immer thun, gelegen, Arbeit aber bleibt doch unsre Pflicht: Der Träge hat den segen Gottes nicht. Behalt' ein weises Maass in allen Stücken; Das Uebertriebne kann dich nicht beglücken. Dies Sprichwort trifft in allen Dingen ein: Das Gute selbst muss eingeschränket seyn. Christ! sey der Rache nicht ergeben, Der Zorn verbittert nur das Leben; Und wer dem Feinde gern verzeiht, Geniesst schon hier der Seligkeit. Der wird verachtet von der Welt, Der das gegebne Wort nicht hält: Drum gieb dein Wort nich leicht von dir; Hast du's gethan, so steh' dafür. _In the name of the most Holy Trinity._ THE GOLDEN A B C. _Newly set forth to enable every man to stand fast in honour._ _Howe'er employed, we ev'ry nerve should strain On all our works God's blessings to obtain. Whilst here on earth to labour we're ordain'd; The lazy never yet God's blessing gain'd._ _In all things strive a medium to procure; Redundance never can success insure: This proverb will in all things be found true, That good itself, should have its limits due. Christian! avoid revenge and strife, For anger tends to embitter life: And he who readily forgives his foe, Ev'n here on earth true happiness shall know. He who the promise he hath given denies, Will find the world most justly him despise; Be cautious then how thou a promise make, But, having made it, ne'er that promise break_. DANNBACH is the principal Greek printer of this place; his Greek type (which I cannot too much commend) is precisely that used in the _Bipont Thucydydes_ and _Plato_. The principal printers, for works in which the Greek type is not introduced, is LEVRAULT _Pere et Fils_: and I must say that, if even a fastidious author, a resident Strasbourgeois,--whose typographical taste had been formed upon the beautifully executed volumes of Bodoni, Didot, or Bulmer--chose to publish a fine book, he need not send it to _Paris_ to be printed; for M. Levrault is both a skilful, intelligent, and very able printer and publisher. I visited him more than once. He has a considerable commercial establishment. His shop and warehouses are large and commodious; and Madame Levrault is both active and knowing in aiding and abetting the concerns of her husband. I should consider their house to be a rich one. M. Levrault is also a very fair typographical antiquary. He talked of Fust and Jenson with earnestness, and with a knowledge of their productions; and told me that he had, up stairs, a room full of old books, especially of those printed by _Aldus_--and begged I would walk up and inspect them. You will give me credit for having done so readily. But it was a "poor affair,"--for the fastidious taste of an Englishman. There was literally nothing in the way of temptation; and so I abstained from tempting the possessor by the offer of napoleons or golden ducats. We had a long and a very gratifying interview; and I think he shewed me (not for the purpose of sale) a copy of the famous tract of St. Austin, called _De Arte prædicandi_, printed by _Fust_ or by _Mentelin_; in which however, as the copy was imperfect, he was not thoroughly conversant. They are all proud at Strasbourg of their countryman Mentelin, and of course yet more so of Gutenberg; although this latter was a native of Mentz. Mr. Levrault concluded his conversation by urging me, in strong terms, to visit _Colmar_ ere I crossed the Rhine; as that place abounded with "DES INCUNABLES TYPOGRAPHIQUES." I told him that it was impossible; that I had a great deal on my hands to accomplish on the other side of the Rhine; and that my first great stroke, in the way of BOOK-ACQUISITIONS, must be struck at _Stuttgart_. M. Levrault seemed surprised--"for truly," (added he) "there are no _old_ books there, save in the _Public Library_." I smiled, and wished him a good day. Upon the whole, my dear friend, I have taken rather an affection for this place. All classes of people are civil, kind, and communicative: but my obligations are due, in a more especial manner, to the younger Mr. Schweighæuser and to Madame Francs. I have passed several pleasant evenings with the former, and talked much of the literature of our country with him and his newly married spouse: a lively, lady-like, and intelligent woman. She is warm in commendation of the _Mary Stuart_ of Schiller; which, in reply to a question on my part, she considers to be the most impassioned of that Dramatist's performances. Of English she knows nothing; but her husband is well read in Thomson, Akenside, and Pope; and of course is sufficiently well acquainted with our language. A more amiable and zealous man, in the discharge of his duties as a teacher of youth, the town of Strasbourg does not possess. His little memoir of Koch has quite won my heart.[229] You have heard me mention the name of OHMACHT, a sculptor. He is much caressed by the gentry of this place. Madame Francs shewed me what I consider to be his best performance; a profile, in white marble, of her late daughter, who died in childbed, in her twenty-first year. It is a sweet and tender production: executed upon the Greek model--and said to be a strong resemblance of the deceased. Madame Francs shewed it to me, and expatiated upon it with tears in her eyes: as she well might--for the _character_ of the deceased was allowed to have been as attractive as her countenance.[230] I will candidly confess that, in other respects, I am a very _qualified_ admirer of the talents of Ohmacht. His head of Oberlin is good; but it is only a profile. I visited his _Studio_, and saw him busy upon a colossal head of Luther--in a close-grained, but coarse-tinted, stone. I liked it as little as I have always liked heads of that celebrated man. I want to see a resemblance of him in which vulgarity shall be lost in energy of expression. Never was there a countenance which bespoke greater intrepidity of heart. I am hastening to the close of this despatch, and to take leave of this place. Through the interposition of Messrs. Treuttel and Würtz, I have hired a respectable servant, or laquais, to accompany me to Vienna, and back again to Manheim. His name is _Rohfritsch_; and he has twice visited the Austrian capital in the rear of Napoleon's army,--when he was only in his sixteenth or seventeenth year--as a page or attendant upon one of the Generals. He talks the French and German languages with equal fluency. I asked him if we needed fire arms; at which he smiled--as if wondering at my simplicity or ignorance. In truth, the question was a little precipitate; for, the other evening, I saw two or three whiskered Bavarian travellers, starting hence for Munich, in an open, fourgon-shaped travelling carriage, with two benches across it: on the front bench sat the two gentlemen, wrapped round with clokes: on the hinder bench, the servant took his station--not before he had thrown into the carriage two huge bags of _florins_, as unconcernedly as if they had been bags of _pebbles_. They were to travel all night--without sabre, pistol, or carbine, for protection. I own this gave me a very favourable opinion of the country I was about to visit; and on recollecting it, had good reason to acquiesce in the propriety of the smiles of Rohfritsch. Every thing, therefore, is now settled: gold ducats and silver florins have been obtained from Madame Francs; and to morrow we start. My next will be from _Stuttgart_--where a "deed of note" will, I trust, be accomplished. Fare you well. [224] [This dinner party is somewhat largely detailed in the preceding edition of this work; but it scarcely merits repetition here; the more so, since the presiding Hostess is NO MORE!] [225] _Hermann_; vol. i. p. 154. [226] _greatly benefited by the Reformation_.]--Among the benefactors to the cause of public morality, was the late lamented and ever memorable KOCH. Before the year 1536, it should seem, from Koch's statement, that even whole streets as well as houses were occupied by women of a certain description. After this year, there were only two houses of ill fame left. The women, of the description before alluded to, used to wear black and white hats, of a sugar-loaf form, over the veil which covered their faces; and they were confined strictly to this dress by the magistrates. These women were sometimes represented in the sculptured figures about the cathedral. Hermann says that there may yet be seen, over the door of a house in the _Bickergase_ (one of the streets now called _Rue de la fontaine_, which was formerly devoted to the residence of women of ill fame) a bas-relief, representing two figures, with the following German inscription beneath: _Diss haus steht in Gottes Hand Wird zu deu freud'gen kindern gennant._ which he translates thus: _Cette maison; dans la main de Dieu, S'appelle aux enfans bien joyeux_. It should seem, therefore, (continues Hermann) that this was one of the houses in which a public officer attended, to keep order, prevent quarrels, and exact municipal rights. The book, in which the receipt of this tax was entered, existed during the time of the Revolution, and is thought to be yet in existence. Hermann, vol. i. p. 156. [227] See p. 401 ante. [228] For the English metrical version I am indebted to "an old hand at these matters." [229] Since the publication of this Tour, I have received several pleasant and thoroughly friendly letters from the above excellent Individual: and I could scarcely forgive myself if I omitted this opportunity of annexing his autograph:--as a worthy companion to those which have preceded it. [Autograph: Schweighæuser] [230] [Madame Francs, whose kind and liberal conduct towards me can never be forgotten, has now herself become the subject of a monumental effigy. She DIED (as I learn) in the year 1826.] END OF VOL. II. * * * * * London: Printed by W. Nicol, Cleveland-row, St. James's. 
17760	----	Distributed Proofreaders Europe at http://dp.rastko.net +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Transcriber's Note: There are inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation which have been left as they were originally printed. +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ HOW TO ENJOY PARIS IN 1842, INTENDED TO SERVE AS A COMPANION AND MONITOR Indicating all that is useful and interesting IN THE FRENCH METROPOLIS, Containing HISTORICAL, POLITICAL, COMMERCIAL, ARTISTICAL, THEATRICAL AND STATISTICAL INFORMATION. AS ALSO A DESCRIPTION Of the manners and customs of the Parisians of the present day; WITH INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE STRANGER. In Respect to Economy, and Advice to his general proceedings with the French. _By F. Hervé_ Author of _A Residence in Turkey and Greece_, etc, etc. ILLUSTRATED BY LITHOGRAPHIC ENGRAVINGS. PARIS, PUBLISHED BY AMYOT, 6, RUE DE LA PAIX; AND BY G. BRIGGS, 421, STRAND, LONDON, SUCCESSOR TO LEIGH & CO. 1842. PREFACE. In offering the following pages to the public, the author has been principally influenced by a desire of uniting _useful_ information with that which he hopes may prove amusing to the reader, endeavouring as much as possible to keep in view the spirit of the title "_How to enjoy Paris;_" and having been accustomed to hear such constant and bitter murmurings from the English, in consequence of their having been so frequently imposed upon by the Paris shopkeepers, considerable pains and attention have been devoted to guard the reader against his being subjected to a similar evil; much development has therefore been afforded towards recommending those establishments where the author feels confident that the stranger will meet with fair dealing and due civility. It may, perhaps, be thought by many that he has been rather too prolix on the subject, but in order to know "_How to enjoy Paris_" to its full extent, the first object, is to be informed of the best means of dispensing one's modicum of lucre to the greatest advantage, which will enable the visitor to stay the longer and see the more, just in proportion as he avoids useless expenditure in suffering himself to be victimised by over charges. As the present work includes the different subjects of History, Antiquities, Politics, Manners, Customs, Army, Navy, Literature, Painting, Music, Theatres, Performers, etc., etc., the author flatters himself that readers of every taste will find a chapter which treats upon some subject that may interest them, hoping that in the endeavour to play the rôle of the Miller and his Ass, his efforts to please may be more happy than those of that unfortunate individual. CHAPTER I. Hints to the English visiting Paris as to their demeanour towards the Parisians, and advice as to the best mode of proceeding in various transactions with them. An appeal to candour and justice against national prejudice. Happiness is the goal for which mankind is ever seeking, but of the many roads which the imagination traces as the surest and nearest to that _desideratum_, few, perhaps none, ever chance upon the right; too many pursue a shadow instead of a substance, influenced by a phantom of their own creation, engendered in most instances by pride, vanity, or ambition. Although I do not presume to hope that I can pilot my readers to the wished-for haven, yet I flatter myself I can afford them such counsel as will greatly contribute towards their happiness during their sojourn at Paris or in other parts of France. Patriotism is certainly a most exalted virtue, but however praiseworthy it may be in Englishmen to cherish within their own breasts the recollection that their fleets and armies have ever prevailed, that their wealth and commerce surpass those of every other nation, etc. etc. it is not absolutely necessary that they should in their outward demeanour towards foreigners, bear the semblance of constantly arrogating to themselves a superiority, of which however conscious and assured they may be, they never can teach others to feel, and least of any a Frenchman, who possesses an equal degree of national predilection as the Englishman, and the moment that sentiment is attacked, or that our Gallic neighbours conceive that an attempt is made to insinuate that they are regarded in the light of inferiority, as compared with any other nation, hatred to the individual who seeks to humiliate them or their country is instantly engendered, and in all their transactions and communications with their _soi-disant_ superior, they will either take some advantage, behave with sullenness, or avail themselves of some opportunity of displaying the ascerbid feeling which has been created: not that I would wish an Englishman to subdue that just and natural pride which he must ever feel when he reflects on the pinnacle of greatness which his country has attained, through the genius, industry, and valour of her sons; yet it is a _suaviter in modo_ which I wish him to preserve in his outward bearing towards the French, without ever compromising the _fortiter in re_. I shall now endeavour to illustrate the above theory by citing some instances wherein its axioms were brought into practice under my own observation, and which I trust will convince my readers that it is not from visionary ideas I have formed my conclusions, and that the conduct I recommend to the traveller in France must in a great degree tend to the promotion of his happiness, whilst traversing or residing in foreign climes; as although in other countries the same degree of sensitiveness will not be found as that which exists amongst the French, a mild and unassuming deportment is always appreciated on the Continent, where tradespeople and even servants are not accustomed to be treated in that haughty dictatorial manner, too often adopted by my countrymen towards those to whom they are in the habit of giving their orders. It is now about twelve years since, whilst I was staying at the Hôtel de Bourbon, at Calais, that I was much struck by the very opposite traits of countenance and difference of demeanour of two gentlemen at the table d'hôte, who appeared nevertheless to be most intimate friends; it was evident they were both English and proved to be brothers. Ever accustomed to study the physiognomies of those around me, I contemplated theirs with peculiar attention, having discovered by their conversation that they were to be my companions on my journey to Paris; and it required no great powers of penetration to perceive that the elder was decided upon viewing all with a jaundiced eye, whilst the younger was disposed to be pleased and in good humour, with all around him. The conducteur announcing that the Diligence was ready and that we must speedily take our seats, abruptly interrupted all my physiognomical meditations, and we quickly repaired to the heavy lumbering vehicle in which we were destined to be dragged to the gay metropolis. Our names being called over in rotation, I found that the brothers had engaged places in the coupé as well as myself, but having priority of claim, had wisely chosen the two corners, the vacant seat in the middle falling to my lot; and I believe, as it proved, it was not a bad arrangement, as I acted as a sort of sand-bag between two jars, which prevented their _jarring_; in fact I formed a sort of _juste milieu_ between two extremes, and no sooner were we installed in our respective places, than my mediating powers were called into operation, as the following dialogue will exemplify. "They gave us a very nice dinner, sir," said the good humoured brother who sat on my left. I replied that I was very well satisfied with it. "But you don't know what their messes are made of. For my part I like to know what, I eat," observed the discontented brother on my right, "and you don't mean surely, sir, to say that such as they gave us was anything to compare to a good English dinner." That, I remarked, was entirely an affair of taste; that I myself was most partial to the simpler mode of living of the English, but not so the high aristocracy of our country, with whom French cooks are in the greatest estimation. "I was very much pleased with the _vin ordinaire_, as they call it, and found it a pleasant light wine, particularly agreeable when one is thirsty," said Good Humour. "_Light_ enough at any rate," returned Discontent, "and well named _vin ordinaire_, for ordinary it is in every sense of the word, pretty much like themselves for that; but if you like to have any when we are in England, I'll make you some; take a little port wine, put some vinegar and a good deal of water with it and there you have it at once; is not that your opinion, sir?" I replied, that I considered it a beverage well adapted for a sort of draught wine, but that it certainly had not the body that foreign wines have that we are in the habit of drinking in England. Good Humour not appearing to relish his brother's receipt for making _vin ordinaire_, changed the subject, by observing that a woman who was standing at the door of an _auberge_ where we were stopping had a very fine expression of countenance, although rather thin and pale, but that there was a pensive cast which prevailed throughout her features and rendered the _tout ensemble_ interesting. "Oh very _fine_, indeed," said Discontent, with a sarcastic smile, "as complete a picture of skin and grief as one could wish to see. Pray, sir, is she one of your beauties?" I admitted that her appearance was rather pleasing, but that beauty was out of the question, nor did I understand his brother to have made any remark conveying the idea that she possessed that charm so truly rare. "What a delightful house and garden," exclaimed. Good Humour, as we passed by a residence, that had rather an inviting appearance; "now, is it not an agreeable spot to live in," he continued, as he turned to me with a look, so assured of confirmation on my part, that I could not find it in my heart to disappoint him. But as I was about to answer, Discontent grumbled out a few words, which I think were to the effect, that where the country was so hideously frightful, that any thing that was decent attracted notice, but that the same object in England would not have been regarded; asking me if I had ever travelled through a more ugly country in my life. However I felt inclined to check his tendency to condemn all he beheld, yet I could not in truth otherwise than acknowledge that it was as uninteresting as it was possible to be, of which every one must be aware who has travelled from Calais to Boulogne. Good Humour, however, was still undaunted, and a rather jolly, and very rosy, looking young female passing at the moment, elicited from him the exclamation of "Oh, what a pretty girl, and good natured!" "The very type of fat contented ignorance," interrupted Discontent, without allowing his brother to finish his sentence. Soon after we entered Boulogne, where the white houses, lively green shutters, and cleanly appearance of the Grande Rue attracted the admiration of Good Humour, who observed with his usual energetic manner, "What a cheerful pleasant looking town, and how very pretty the houses are!" "For outside show, well enough, which may be said of most things in France," murmured Discontent; "but see the inside of those houses, and you will find there is not a single window or door that shuts or fits as it ought; and if they are inhabited by French people, you will find cobwebs and dirt in almost every corner. Am I not right, sir," said he, turning to me with a triumphant air. But before I could answer, Good Humour took up the cause, observing, "Really, brother, you cannot speak from what you have seen, as the Hôtel Bourbon is the only house we have yet entered, and it was impossible to exceed the cleanliness observed within it; therefore your remarks can only proceed from reports you have had from others, whose vision, perhaps, was as clouded as your own appears to be, by a pre-determination to view everything in France in the most unfavourable light." Perceiving that Discontent, by the angry look which he assumed, was about to reply in a bitter tone to his brother, I thought the best means of averting the storm would be to interpose a sort of middle course between them, and remarked that the gentleman's observation, as to the windows and doors not fitting well, was very correct, but with regard to the dirtiness of the French it had been greatly exaggerated. Discontent declared that he had received his account of France from persons who had lived long in the country, and on whose judgment he could rely; "whereas," added he, "you perhaps have seen but little either of the nation or of the people." I replied that I had known France nearly fourteen years. "Then," said he, "if you have known France so long as that, I suppose you have become Frenchified yourself." I was about to make a sharp reply, but was prevented by the younger brother remarking, "After you have said so much against the French, your observation to the gentleman was anything but complimentary, and savoured much of rudeness." "I merely said I was sure that his brother did not _mean_ to be rude, and therefore I should not consider his observation in that light." "Rough and rude I always was, but I did not mean to give offence," added Discontent in a somewhat softened tone. A fine looking old man, with a profusion of white hair, who was standing at a cottage door, attracted the notice of Good Humour, who bid us observe how benevolent was his expression, and what a fine venerable head he presented. "As hoary headed an old sinner as ever existed, I'll be bound," said Discontent, with a sarcastic smile, as he looked scornfully at his brother. In this manner we continued to the end of our journey, Discontent viewing all he encountered with an air of disgust and contempt, appearing restless, miserable, unhappy and disagreeable, a burthen to himself and an annoyance to others, whilst Good Humour saw every thing en _couleur de rose_, was lively, amused, looking the picture of kindness, and although pleased with a trifle, 'tis true, yet how much wiser was his course, as it promoted his own happiness and was calculated to cheer his fellow travellers. At length we arrived at Abbeville, and I soon perceived the effect that the knitted brow and curling lip of Discontent had upon the girls that waited at the table, who seemed but half disposed to attend, to his demands; whereas the good natured confiding expression of his brother, with his pleasing address, won all hearts, and he was served with alacrity and scarcely needed to express his wants; it really is astonishing how much influence suavity of manners has in France, in procuring civility and attention, and how opposite is the case with a repulsive mien. Before I quit the subject, I must relate one more instance, most powerfully attesting the veracity of the assertion, which occurred to myself; after having engaged apartments at the house belonging to a female, named Fournier, at Boulogne, I was informed by several English families who had preceded me in the same lodgings, that I had taken up my abode with the most disagreeable people, who would impose upon us and annoy us in every possible manner. One exception, however, to this general report I met with in the account that was given me of our hostess and family by a Colonel Barry, who with his lady and children had resided some time with Madame Fournier, and they assured me that we should find we had chanced upon most worthy people, who would do all in their power to make us comfortable; but it so happened that the Colonel and his family were persons of most conciliating manners, devoid of hauteur in their demeanour, possessing in fact the very qualities calculated to propitiate a good feeling on the part of the French. After we had been in the house some time, we observed to those persons who assured us we should be so ill treated, that we found the case quite the reverse; and, the answer was, wait until the time comes when, you are about to depart, and then when you are called upon to produce the plates, crockery, glasses, knives, forks, etc., you will see who you have to deal with; if there be any thing in the slightest degree chipped, they will make you pay extravagantly for damages. But when at last the awful day of departure arrived, I had every thing collected of the description alluded to, and Madame Fournier would not even look at them, and observed if there were any thing injured she was sure it was to so trifling an amount that it was not worth noticing. But it was not so with an English lady who was our fellow lodger; towards her they certainly were neither obliging in their manner nor disposed to render her any kind of accommodation beyond the strict letter of their agreement; and the reason was, because she always addressed them as if she was speaking to her servants; in short, with an arrogance of manner that they could not brook. Thus whilst they were continually practising little civilities and attentions towards us, which greatly contributed to our _comfort_, they were following a totally opposite system towards her, which rendered her very _uncomfortable_; therefore, had that lady properly studied her happiness, she would have conducted herself towards her hostess and family in a very different manner, and I hope my readers who visit France will take advantage of the hint; yet I must admit that the lady in question was a very amiable personage in every other respect, but she detested the French, and liked, as she observed, to pull down their pride, to make them feel their inferiority, and let them know that the English were their masters. Madame Fournier, however, was of a class superior to the generality of persons who let lodgings in England; she was possessed of an independent property, her eldest daughter was married to a Colonel, and her son a lieutenant in the navy, but like many of the French, having a house considerably larger than she could occupy, she let a part of it. I should always however recommend the English when they are taking a house or apartment for any length of time, or in fact entering into any engagement of importance with the French, to have an agreement in writing, in case of misunderstanding, which may arise from the English not comprehending, or not expressing themselves in French so well as they imagine. It is always a document to refer to which settles all differences, and is a check upon all bad memories, either on the one side or the other; and as there are bad people in France as well as other countries, it prevents strangers becoming victims to those who are disposed to take advantage, when they are aware that there is no legal instrument to hold them to their contract. I have lodged in eighteen different houses in France, and never had any other than a verbal agreement, and certainly had not in any one instance cause to regret; but was fortunate enough, with one exception, always to have met with good people; but as I wish my readers during their sojourn in France to be secured from any unpleasant discussions or altercations, I recommend them to be on the safe side. I must now appeal to my two most powerful allies, candour and justice, against that invincible demon national prejudice. I am perfectly aware that it is a hopeless attempt even to imagine that there is the slightest chance of ameliorating its force. I consider it more immoveable than a rock, because by dint of time you may cut that away, or you may blast it with gunpowder; but I know of no means which can soften the adamantine strength of national prejudice. One might naturally suppose that a long communication between the two countries, a mutual interchange of kindnesses, the number of intermarriages by which the two nations have become so connected with each other, would have contributed in some degree to diminish the asperity of that bitter feeling against the French which we acquire in our school-boy days, but which reason and commerce with the world, it might be expected, would correct. As there is no argument so powerful as exemplification, I will here cite two instances amongst the hundreds that have come within my knowledge, of the extreme incorrigibility of the baneful sentiment to which I allude. I once travelled with a Mr. Lewis from Paris to Dieppe, and found him a man of considerable information, very gentlemanly in his address and manners, and possessing such colloquial powers as contributed to render the journey particularly agreeable; he was an enthusiastic admirer of the arts, and was very fond of drawing, and certainly excelled in that accomplishment, from the very beautiful sketches he showed me which he had made in different parts of France, and in fact was an amateur artist of considerable merit. He gave me a very interesting account of his tour through France and of the kindness he had met with from the inhabitants; that in many instances when he had been sketching the chateaux of the nobility and gentry, how often it had occurred that the proprietors had come out and invited him to breakfast or dinner, according to the hour, or at any rate to take some refreshment; and several sent for his portemanteau from the inn where he had put up (sometimes without his knowledge), compelling him to pass the night at their chateau. On my making some remark as to the urbanity of the French, "Oh! don't think," he exclaimed, "that I am praising them as a nation, for I hate them; I only speak of facts as they happened." I then asked him how he was treated at the inns in the different provinces, and whether he was much imposed upon. "I cannot say I was," he replied, "or in any instance that I had reason to complain of my treatment." From this gentleman's account of the reception he had met with in France, would not any rational being have imagined that he would speak well of the French? instead of which, I soon had the most powerful proofs to the contrary. When we arrived at Dieppe we found a party assembled at the _table d'hôte_, at the _hôtel_ at which we alighted, consisting of a few French but, more of English; the former left the room as soon as the cloth was withdrawn, and the latter remaining, the conversation became general and very patriotic; and as the merits of England and the English rose in the discussion, so did the demerits of France and the French sink, and at last bumpers were drank to old England for ever, in which we all joyously joined. This was all very natural and proper, but this ebullition of national and praiseworthy feeling had hardly subsided, when Mr. Lewis, the very man who had admitted that he had been received with kindness and hospitality wherever he had been in France, arose, and said, "Now, gentlemen, I have another toast to propose to you, which I hope will be drank with the same enthusiasm as the last; so "Here's a curse for France and the French." All immediately drank it but myself and an elderly gentleman, who declared he would not invoke a curse upon any land or any people. A silent pause intervened; every one appeared to look at the other, as to how they ought to act on their toast being refused, none caring to assume the initiative. At last, one rising from his chair, who perhaps began to view the affair temperately, observed, "Well, I think we had better see about the packet-boat for Brighton before it is too late," and they all quitted the room, except the elderly gentlemen and myself, and he did certainly animadvert most severely against what he termed their unchristianlike toast. Although it was impossible for me, feeling as I did, otherwise than to agree with him on the principal points of his argument, yet I observed that we might hope that it was merely in words that the gentlemen would evince the violence of their prejudices, as I felt convinced, from the general amiability of character so apparent in the person who proposed the toast, that if he saw a Frenchman in danger of his life, and that an exertion could save him, that Mr. Lewis would use every effort to preserve a human being from destruction, whatever might be his country. The other circumstance to which I am about to advert was less his surprising, though equally powerful, in illustrating the strong tendency towards prejudice against the French on the part of the English people, the hero of my tale being a regular country squire, extremely kind hearted, but whose fund of information did not extend much beyond his estate, his horses and his hounds; not any consideration would have induced him to quit England, but that of saving the life of an individual, for whom, however worthless and ungrateful, he still retained a sentiment of pity; a young man, whom he had brought up and educated, in return for his kindness forged his name, and the evidence of the squire was all that was requisite to hang him, therefore, as an effectual means of avoiding to be forced to appear against him, he quitted England; and, as France was the nearest, he there took up his abode. A friend of mine, a Capt. W., who had resided long in France, received a letter of introduction to the squire; although living at a considerable distance from his residence, he took an opportunity of presenting it. Having heard that the captain had been in France many years, the Squire was not disposed to receive him very cordially, considering that so doing was disgraceful on the part of an Englishman unless he was forced to do so by circumstances such as had compelled himself to quit his native country. The consequence was, that he eyed the Captain in a manner that was far from flattering to his feelings; but when he had read the highly recommendatory panegyric contained within the letter, the Squire softened, and soon greeted the stranger with a true hearty English welcome, and their respective families afterwards became most intimately acquainted: the Squire, delighted to find a countryman to whom he could communicate his execrations against France and the French, whilst the Captain did all in his power to defend them from all unjust attacks, having himself had favourable experience of their urbanity and kindness. Some time after the Squire's arrival the Captain removed to Boulogne, and as some grand ceremony was to be there celebrated with military and ecclesiastical pomp and parade, in the presence of the royal family, he invited the Squire and his family to pass a few days with him, that they might witness so grand a spectacle; adding, that there would be twenty thousand troops assembled for the purpose. The Squire immediately flew into a violent passion, and vowed he would accept the invitation on no other terms than that he could take with him thirty thousand Englishman to cut their rascally French throats. At length he gave his consent that his daughter should pass a few days with the family of Capt. W., and at the same time accompany them, to see the ceremony which was to take place. Partaking of her father's feelings, all the way on the road she launched out abusing every thing that was French and in fact all that she encountered until the moment that she witnessed the imposing spectacle. She was then standing within the church with the Captain amongst the crowd, but some officers perceiving an English lady of genteel appearance, invited her to join the circle composed of the Duchesses of Angoulême, of Berri, and the ladies of the court, which she gladly accepted; and several fine looking young men in their brilliant uniforms paying her the greatest attentions, and taking the utmost pains that she should have the best possible view of the sight, her heart was completely won, and when she was re-conducted to Capt. W., her first exclamation was, "Well, as long as I live, I never will speak against Frenchmen again; for I never was treated with so much politeness and attention in my own country as I have been here." But when she expressed the same feeling to her father, his rage knew no bounds, and at the first moment he swore he would take her off to England instanter, adding "I suppose I shall have my family disgraced by your running off with some French mustachioed scoundrel or another." The poor girl dared not say another word, and in a little time the father recovered his equanimity. However furious the Squire was in expressions against the French, yet his actions towards them were of a contrary bearing, having a well stocked medicine chest, from which he liberally dispensed the contents amongst the neighbouring poor, according to their different maladies, until he received the cognomen of the English doctor who would never take a fee. The people at last became so grateful for his kindness, that when there was a report that war was likely to take place between the two countries, as he displayed some uneasiness as to his being able to return home, they assured him he should always be certain of cattle to convey him to Calais, as, if he could not procure post horses, they would find some in the neighbourhood for him, and if none could be found, they would draw him themselves to the spot he desired. After residing a few years in France, the Squire returned to his own country, little enlightened by his trip, cursing the French before he came amongst them, cursing them whilst he was living with them, and at the same time whilst he was doing them every possible good, and cursing them after his return to England; not that he could give any reason why, but because it had become a habit with him since his childhood, and he had been accustomed to hear his father and grandfather do so before him, and I suppose he liked to keep up that which no doubt he thought a good old custom. Having now, I trust, given sufficient examples of how the deep roots of national prejudice defy every effort and circumstance to eradicate them, I shall hope that my readers will endeavour to banish from their minds any early impressions they may have received inimical to the French, and resolve only to judge them as they find them, as reason must suggest that all prepossessions cherished against any people must powerfully militate against the traveller's happiness during his sojourn amongst them. I fear that I may have been considered rather prolix upon the subject, but besides the motive to which I have already alluded, I always have cherished a most anxious desire to soften as much as possible all national animosities. CHAPTER II. Different routes from London to Paris.--Aspect of the city as first presented to the English traveller, according to the road by which he may enter.--Its extent, population, etc. The first measure to be adopted after any one has decided upon visiting Paris, is to provide himself with a passport, which he will procure at the French Ambassador's office in Poland street, for which there is no charge, but it is requisite to state by which port you mean to proceed; but in order to leave some latitude for caprice, you may mention two places, as Calais or Boulogne, or Dieppe or Havre, etc. There are now many different means of travelling to Paris; that which was once the most frequently adopted was by coach to Dover, then embarking for Calais, as those are the two ports which present the shortest distance between the two countries, being only about twenty-one miles apart; many however prefer embarking at Dover at once for Boulogne, thus avoiding about twenty-five miles by land from Calais to Boulogne, which certainly does not afford a single object of interest, and the distance by sea is only increased eight miles. Another route is by railway to Brighton, then crossing to Dieppe, and which is certainly the straightest line of any of the routes from London to Paris; but on account of there being more sea, the distance is not generally performed in so short a period as the other routes, from the uncertainty of the Ocean. It is not therefore so much frequented by travellers as those on which they can reckon with more accuracy; the same may be said of the route by Southampton, which is performed by railway to that town, and afterwards by steam-packet to Havre, which includes above a hundred miles by sea, consequently but little resorted to as compared with the former routes. There was another means of reaching Paris, and that was from London to St. Vallery by sea; which being near Abbeville and only 33 leagues from Paris, there was the least of land travelling, consequently it was the cheapest if all went smoothly, and this line was often adopted by strict economists, who however have frequently found themselves much disappointed, as sometimes it happened they could not make the port, and have either been obliged to put back and lie off Ramsgate, or lay to, for some hours, and perhaps after having landed, have been detained at St. Vallery, from not having been able to find places in the diligences for Paris. This means, however, of proceeding to Paris no longer exists, as the steamers have been sold, but it is thought that they will be replaced by others. The route which is by far the most frequented is that of embarking from London direct for Boulogne, and is on the long run the most economical, and maybe comfortably performed, living included, for three pounds, at the present prices, which are 1_l._ in the best Cabin from London to Boulogne, then about 1_l._ 4_s._, in the inside from Boulogne to Paris; and the other expenses will amount to about fifteen or sixteen shillings; with respect to the charges on the other routes, they are so often varying that it might only deceive the reader by stating them as they at present exist, when in a few weeks they may be higher or lower as circumstances may arise. Some persons choose, the route by Southampton and Havre as being the most picturesque, as from the latter town to Rouen such exquisite scenery is presented by the banks of the Seine, as you pass in the steamer between them, that the passenger is at a loss on which side to bestow his attention, whilst rapidly hurried through so delightful and fertile a country; in fact, he is tempted for once to regret the velocity of steam conveyance, in not permitting him to tarry awhile to contemplate the beautiful scenes by which he is environed. Rouen, where the traveller should at least remain some days, is an object of great attraction. As my work is especially devoted to Paris, I cannot afford much space to the description of towns on the road; but as the city of Rouen is the largest, the most interesting, and the most connected with history and English associations of any upon the routes to Paris, I cannot pass it over without some comment. Its boulevards first strike the English, as being not only most picturesque and beautiful, but as presenting a scene to them wholly novel, the noble vistas formed by towering trees, mingling their branches, shading beneath their foliage many a cheerful group, the merchant's stone villas, seen amongst their bowers, the high shelving grassy banks, and the lively bustle that is ever going forward, has so animated an effect that the beholder cannot but catch the infection and feel his spirits elevated by the enlivening spectacle. But what a contrast on entering the city; the streets narrow, dark, and with no foot pavement, have a mean and gloomy appearance, but many of them being built mostly of wood, carved into fantastic forms, offer a rich harvest to the artist, and those of our own country have amply profited by the innumerable picturesque objects which Rouen presents. The cathedral, built by William the Conqueror, is one of the most interesting monuments of France; the Church of St.-Ouen is at least as beautiful, and there are several others which well repay the visiter for the time he may expend in visiting them. The statue of the Maid of Orleans stands in the _Marché aux Veaux_, on the spot where she was burnt as a sorceress under the sanction of the Duke of Bedford in 1431. Above all, the traveller must not fail to visit Mount Catherine, which rises just above the city, and commands a view equally beautiful and extensive. The delightful environs of Rouen are displayed before him, comprising almost every scenic beauty that a country can afford; even the factories, which in most places rather deform the view than otherwise, are here so constructed as to contribute to its ornament, more resembling villas than buildings solely for utility. Hills, wood, water, bridges, chateaux, cottages, corn fields and meadows are so picturesquely intermingled, that every object which can give charm to a landscape is here united. There are several hills round Rouen which present prospects nearly equal to that which is witnessed from Mount Catherine, and in fact it is difficult to imagine any situation which affords so many pleasant walks and such enchanting scenery. Indeed, all the way to Paris by this route (that is by what is called the lower road) which for a considerable distance runs within sight of the Seine, the country is most highly interesting, passing through Louvier, Gaillon, Vernon, Mantes and St. Germains. Calais, as being the nearest point to the English coast, and at which we so often obtain our first peep at France, merits some notice, and although it offers but few attractions, and is surrounded by a flat cheerless country, yet there are connected with it some associations which are replete with interest; as who that has ever read Sterne's Sentimental Journey can forget the simple but impressive description he gives of the poor friar and other objects which he there met, and which he has engraven on the minds of his readers, in his own peculiar style, in characters never to be erased; for my part, as I first approached Calais I thought but of Sterne and his plain, unvarnished tale, of the trifles he encountered, around which he contrived to weave an interest which is felt even by the inhabitants of Calais to this day; although they knew his works but through the spoiling medium of translation, still they never fail to exhibit to the Englishman the alcove in which he is said to have written his adventures in Calais. As I entered the town, instantly the works of Hogarth appeared before me, for who is there that does not remember his excellent representation of the Gates of Calais, with the meagre sentinel and still more skinny cook bending under the weight of a dish crowned with an enormous sirloin of beef, no doubt intended to regale some newly-arrived John Bull, whilst a fat monk scans it with a longing eye. Next the bust of Eustache de St. Pierre awakes the attention, and the surrender of Calais and his devoted patriotism rises in one's memory. Another souvenir also must not be forgotten, namely, the print of the foot of Louis the Eighteenth, which is cut in the stone, and a piece of brass let in where he first stepped on shore, and undoubtedly represents a very pretty little foot; but when a Frenchman who was no amateur of the Bourbon dynasty was asked to admire its symmetry, he observed it was very well, but that it would look much better if it was turned t'other way, that is to say, going out of the kingdom instead of coming into it. If the traveller have time, it is worth while to mount a tower, at the top of which is a sort of lantern capable of containing about a dozen persons, and commanding a most extensive view over the sea, and on the opposite side the country is visible for a considerable distance, bearing a most uninviting appearance. There are a great number of hôtels at Calais, and I have been at many of them, but have found that kept by M. Derhorter, called the Hôtel Bourbon, the most comfortable and economical, and the civility of the master cannot anywhere be surpassed. Dessin's, for the nobility and those who have equipages, is still the favourite and has been for time immemorial. Nothing worthy of note presents itself between Calais and Boulogne, except the little village of Wimille, which made some impression upon my mind, as being so much prettier and so much more village-like than any other through which we had passed, and near here perished the unfortunate æronauts Pilatre and Romain, falling from their balloon when at a prodigious height from the ground and in sight of many spectators. They were buried in the churchyard, in which a monument has been erected commemorative of the event. About two miles from this hamlet Boulogne appears in sight, cheering the spectator by its gay and animated aspect, the numerous groups of genteel-looking persons constantly promenading the streets, pier and port, give it a most lively appearance, which is enhanced by the extreme cleanliness which is observed in all the principal streets, and the cheerful air afforded by the white stone houses with their green balconies and shutters. But the numerously well-dressed portion of the population, which so greatly contribute towards enlivening the scene, consists almost wholly of English, as the few French families which still reside in Boulogne, above the rank of the tradespeople, keep themselves very close and retired as in all other provincial towns in France; and in Boulogne they are very suspicious of the English, having had such numbers of bad characters who at first preserved a very respectable appearance but ultimately proved to be swindlers. The higher French families, therefore, decline any association with the English, unless with persons who have come highly-recommended, or have resided many years in the town with an unimpeachable character. It so happened that circumstances brought me in contact with two or three of these exclusive personages, and their remarks about the English afforded me much amusement, and may be taken as types of the general observations of the provincial French upon our country-people. The worthy matrons of families have often said to me, "How is it, Sir, that the wives and mothers of your country can manage their domestic concerns, when they are seen almost continually walking about the streets at hours when we find it indispensable to attend to our household affairs." I replied, that after having given their orders they relied in a great degree upon their servants executing them with punctuality. "Indeed!" was the exclamation; "how fortunate they must be to have such immaculate servants that they can so entirely depend upon them: we should be very happy if we could have such as did not require looking after, but unfortunately French servants partake too much of human nature for mistresses to be able to leave them wholly to themselves." I observed that perhaps English servants generally being more humble, obedient, and subservient to their superiors, greater reliance might be placed upon them, and undoubtedly more certainty as to their obeying the instructions they received. "Then it is surprising," said the ladies, "that your country people do not always bring servants with them, and very unlucky that in so many instances when they have done so, that their domestics should so often be brought before the Tribunals of Correction for different irregularities." I replied, that many good and regular servants did not like to quit their native land, and of those who were brought over, certainly in many instances their employers had been disappointed; that in a foreign country all was new to them, and they forgot their former regular habits, and certainly in too many instances had misbehaved themselves. "Consequently," returned my interlocutors, "requiring a more vigilant eye to superintend them. But there is another subject which affords us much surprise, and that is the manner in which English parents permit their daughters to go alone about the streets, or to walk with a gentleman who is neither their father nor brother." I assigned as a reason for our allowing them so much liberty, that we had such perfect confidence in them that we felt assured we could trust to their own firmness and discretion to prevent any improper consequences arising from the freedom they were permitted to enjoy. "Unfortunately, that confidence is but too frequently abused," rejoined one of the ladies, "if we are to judge from several lamentable occurrences which have latterly taken place in this town amongst the English young ladies." I felt the rebuke, as I knew to what circumstances they alluded, and observed that the English society inhabiting Boulogne were by no means what could, be termed the _élite_ of the nation, although there were many families of the highest respectability. The ladies, perceiving by my manner that I was somewhat nettled, endeavoured to soften what they had said, by observing that certainly it would not be just to estimate the English people by the samples which came to reside at Boulogne, as they had generally understood that they were persons of indifferent reputation, who fled from their own country because they could no longer live there in credit, but that amongst the number there undoubtedly were some very quiet people. A stranger would not appreciate the degree of praise which is contained in the word quiet when used by the French, who appear to consider it as comprising all the cardinal virtues; when seeking a house or apartments, if you say any thing favourable or unfavourable of them, they never fail to remind you that they are so quiet. The same eulogy they will pronounce on their daughters with peculiar pride and energy, when they wish to extol them to the skies, and in good truth their _demoiselles_ are quiet enough in all conscience, for it requires often a considerable degree of ingenuity to extract from them more than monosyllables. We have been accustomed to consider the French as a restless, capricious, volatile people, and so I suppose they might have been formerly, but now they are undoubtedly the reverse, being a quiet routine plodding sort of people, particularly as regards the provincials; and even amongst the Parisians there are thousands that reside in one quarter of the city, which they seldom quit, never approaching what they consider the gay portion of Paris, but live amongst each other, visiting only within their own circle, consisting almost entirely of their relations and family connexions. This feeling is certainly exemplified still farther at Boulogne, as I knew an old couple who lived in the upper town, which joins the lower town except by the separation of the wall of the fortifications, and had not been in the latter for five years, because they considered it was too bustling and too much a place of pleasure for such quiet, homely, and orderly folk as they professed to be and certainly were, in every sense of the word. At Bordeaux I knew three old ladies who were born in that city, and never had been in any other town during their whole lives, nor ever desired to pass the walls of their native place. Many persons who have been accustomed to spend their days in the provinces have a sort of horror of Paris; I remember an old gentleman at Rouen, who with his antiquated spouse lived a sort of Darby and Joan kind of life, their only daughter being married and living elsewhere; and on my once asking him if he had ever been to Paris, he replied that he was once so situated as to be compelled to go upon urgent business that rendered his presence indispensable, but that he saw very little of the place, because he had always heard that it was a city replete with vice and dissipation, and that during the few days his affairs compelled him to stay he kept close to his apartment, only quitting it to proceed to the house wherein he had to transact business, and then he went in a _fiacre_, as, if he had walked perhaps he might have been jostled, run over, robbed, or something unpleasant might have occurred. "Ah! that's very true, you did quite right, and acted very prudently, my dear," observed his wife, "and nobody knows the anxiety I felt till you came back again." Although the rising generation of the French is not quite so dormant in their ideas as that which is passing, yet there is not even with them the same spirit of travel and enterprise which exist in the English. That France has had, a reputation for restlessness, love of change, and tumult, can only be explained by stating that until the present time for the last two centuries, with the exception of Louis the Eighteenth, she has been most unfortunate in her rulers, who have been supporting a state of extravagant splendour which could alone be sustained by being wrung from the middle and the lower classes; hence the revolution in 1789, which might be considered as the ripened fruit which the preceding reigns had been nurturing. Of the affair of the three days in 1830, few I believe will deny the intensity of the provocation, but then it will be said how do you account for their having been so turbulent and discontented during the present reign? To which I should answer in the same manner as an officer, who, defending the character of his regiment, observed that it was composed of a thousand men, of which nine hundred and fifty were peaceable and quiet subjects, but the other fifty being very noisy they were constantly heard of, and his corps had obtained the appellation of the noisy regiment, as no one bestowed a thought upon the 'nine hundred and fifty men who were orderly' because no one ever heard of them: thus it may be said of France, the population may be estimated at about thirty-five millions, of which perhaps one million may be discontented, and amongst them are many persons connected with the press, who not only contrive by that means to extend their war-whoop to every corner of France, but as newspapers are conveyed to all the civilised parts of the world, and the only medium by which a country is judged by those who have not an opportunity of visiting it and making their own observations by a residence amongst the people, it naturally is inferred in England and in other nations that the French are a most dissatisfied and refractory people. But a case in point may be cited, which proves that the dissatisfaction is not general, nor has ever been during the present reign. From the time that Louis-Philippe accepted the throne in 1830, until June the 6th, 1832, a number of young men in the different colleges at Paris occupied themselves constantly with the affairs of the state, each forming a sort of political utopia, and however different were their various theories, they all united in one object, and that was to overthrow the existing government, and secretly took measures for arming themselves, and mustering what strength they could collect in point of numbers, which was but very insignificant compared to the importance of the blow they intended to strike; but they counted on the rising of the people, and the event proved they counted without their host. June the 6th, 1832, being the day appointed for the funeral of General Lamarque, they chose it for the development of their project, and although the misguided youths fought with skill, constancy and courage, even with a fanatic devotion to their cause, yet the populace took no part with them, and the National Guard were the first to fire upon them; and after two days hard fighting in the barricades they had raised, scarcely any remained who were not either killed or wounded. Since that, no attempt of the slightest importance has been made to overthrow the government, and in fact I have ever found that ninety-nine Parisians out of a hundred exclaim "_Tranquillité à tout prix_," that is quiet at all prices, and all classes are interested in cherishing this wish, the nobles and gentry that they may tranquilly enjoy what they possess, the tradesman that he may obtain a sale for his goods, and the workman that he may procure work. It is only a set of political enthusiasts, to be found amongst the students, whose wild republican schemes have dazzled others and induced the different outbreaks which have occurred since the event of the three days, and having been treated with lenity in the first instance, unprecedented in the annals of every other government, they were emboldened to repeat their daring attempts. But let any one traverse the provinces of France, get acquainted with the people, make inquiries around him and penetrate into their habits and customs, and he will find that the predominant feeling is love of the spot on which they are born; the farmer will keep on the farm his ancestors tilled before him for ages, and if offered a better farm, if it be far removed from his home and that of his fathers he will reject it; with the same tenacity the labourer clings to his cottage and the little bit of land he has always delved. But it is with the landed proprietor that one finds the most powerful example of the durability of their adhesion to the cradle of their birth. There are many persons possessed of estates of no great extent, from eight to fifteen hundred a year, which have regularly descended to them from their ancestors, to whom they have been granted, at as remote a period as the time of Charlemagne, and have descended to the present possessors from generation to generation, whilst there does not appear to have been in all that period any great elevation or depression in their circumstances. The habit of living up to their incomes as in England is very rare in France; if they have daughters, from the day they are born the parents begin to save for their dowry; even the peasant will follow that practice if he can only put by a sou a day. I have known many landed proprietors of from fifteen hundred to two thousand a year that did not support any thing like the style that a person with a similar fortune would in England; if a Frenchman has more than two or three children, he seldom spends half his income if it be possible to live upon a quarter, his object is that he may leave all his children in an equal pecuniary position without dividing his land; as although the law of primogeniture does not exist, yet parents like that one son should keep up the estate intact, and the one fixed upon for that purpose is generally the eldest, the others receive their portions in money from the father's savings, and are usually brought up to one of the liberal professions, and in many instances are sufficiently fortunate as to realize by promotion or their talents, emoluments equal with what portion they inherit to place them in as favourable a position as the brother on whom devolves the estate. In other instances the son who holds the land is taxed to pay from it a certain amount to his brothers and sisters, in order to render their situation in life somewhat upon a par; but it so happens that very large families are not so frequent in France as in England. A system of frugality is prevalent amongst all classes of the French, and a habit of contenting themselves with but little as regards their daily expenses; nor have they that ambition to step out of their class so general throughout England. A farmer in France works much the same as his men, dresses in a plain decent manner, and considers himself very little superior to his men, whilst his wife goes to market with her butter and eggs upon one of the farm horses; and without any education herself she thinks she does wonders in having her daughters taught to read, write and cypher, but invariably economises to give them a marriage portion. This applies to most of the farmers throughout France, and will be found descriptive of those inhabiting the country from Calais to Paris; but in Normandy they are frequently what is in French estimation considered very rich, and their habits and expenses are in proportion; and about Melun and some few parts of France where the farms are very large, the occupiers would even in England be termed wealthy. The extreme of poverty or what may be designated misery is but little known; the traveller is deceived by the number of beggars which infest the high roads, and is induced to imagine that the lowest orders must be in a most wretched state, but the fact is otherwise, and begging is no other than a trade on the most frequented roads. Turn into the by-lanes, penetrate the interior of the country and in the villages distant from the highways and but few beggars are to be found, nor could I ever hear of an instance of any one in the country parts of France perishing from want; yet there are no forced poor rates, the landed proprietors however regularly give so much a month voluntarily to those who are past labour and have no relations to provide for them, and houseless and pennyless wanderers are received and sheltered for a night by the higher farmers and people of property, the mendicant having soup and bread given him at night and the same when he starts in the morning. Of these there are great numbers within the last few years, being refugees from Spain, Italy and even Poland, driven to seek shelter where they can find it by the political convulsions of their countries. In this manner, the French have recently been severely taxed, but they appear never to have the heart to deny shelter and food, although they carry economy to such a height as would be styled by many of my affluent countrymen absolute parsimony; which is perceptible in all their transactions, and is in a great degree the cause of the miserable state of their agriculture, which is also in some measure owing to the utter ignorance of the farmers, who in all that tends towards improvement display the stupidity of asses with the obstinacy of mules. There can be no doubt that, generally speaking, the soil of France is capable of producing half as much more than it at present yields; they still persevere in the same system as existed in England in the year 1770, when Arthur Young wrote his Agricultural Tour, describing the various practices in the different counties throughout the kingdom. Two white crops and a summer fallow is the usual course in France, sometimes varied by a crop of clover, and very often they fallow for two years together; they have no idea of leguminous crops as winter provision for their cattle, and of the advantage to be derived from stall feeding they are quite ignorant, except in a few provinces, as a part of Normandy and Brittany. The same with regard to the drill system; they mostly plough very shallow, and do not keep their land very clean, with a few exceptions; the consequence is their crops are generally very light. Thanks to the natural richness of their meadows in Normandy, they do certainly produce some beasts of an immense weight for the exhibition annually held on Shrove Tuesday. There are generally about a dozen brought to Paris, and the finest is the one selected to be led about the streets; the one chosen last year weighed 3,800 French pounds, and as there are two ounces more than in the English pound the immense size of the animal may be imagined. In the winter, they fatten their beasts with hay, clover and corn, but oilcake is not known except in a few instances, when beasts are fattened for prizes or exhibitions. Their agricultural implements are in keeping with the rest of their system; I have seen them ploughing even in the lightest land, with the great old heavy turnwrest ploughs and four bulky horses, which might have been effected just as well with a light Rotherham plough and one horse. Recently, however, I have seen some slight ameliorations, and those parts of France which are nearest England one might expect would improve the soonest. The farming servants are generally a hard-working, quiet, sober people, contented with very little, their living costing them a mere trifle; in harvest-time an Englishman will pour beer down his throat that will cost as much as would keep a whole French family; there is a natural economy in their habits that tends to making their wages more than equal to their demand. An Englishman must have the best wheaten bread, and when he gets a pound of meat he is ready to eat it all himself; the Frenchman is contented with a cheap brown bread, quite as wholesome as the finest, and to his portion of meat he adds some vegetables with which soup is made, and it gives comfort to the whole family; and it is quite a mistake to imagine that beer and animal food produce greater physical strength, as I have in several instances proved that the French porter will carry much more than the English. I remember when lodging in Salisbury Street, in the Strand, having packed up my things for my departure for Paris, when a porter came to carry them to the Golden Cross, he said it was impossible that any man could take them at once, and the people of the house joined in saying that it was far beyond one man's load, consisting of a moderate sized trunk, a large portmanteau, and a well-stuffed carpet bag; when I declared that the first porter I should meet with at Paris would take them all the same distance without raising an objection, a sort of smile of incredulity passed from one to the other, expressive of how absurd they thought such an assertion. On arriving at Paris, however, the very first porter I spoke to in the Diligence-yard took them all, without a question as to their weight. In several cases, when persons have been quitting London for Paris with me, I have proved to them how much heavier a burthen the French porters will carry than the English. I believe the cause arises in a great degree from the latter not being addicted to drinking ardent spirits, which is ruinous to the strength and constitutions of such numbers of the lower classes in London. But the Greek and Turkish porters will carry twice as much as the French, and their beverage is nothing but water and their food principally rice. In almost every description of labour the Englishman has the advantage when what may be styled knack or method be required; the consequence is, that they make the most of what physical strength they possess; hence he will plough, mow, or reap more in a day than a Frenchman. Not only is the machinery which the Englishman employs much better, but he is what may be termed more handy in making use of it; in every thing which relates to husbandry or mechanism the Frenchman is generally awkward; a more powerful instance cannot be cited than that of their always employing two men to shoe a horse, one man being occupied to hold up the horse's leg, whilst the farrier performs his part of the work; is it not astonishing that after an uninterrupted communication with England for twenty-seven years, that they should never have observed, that an English farrier, by taking the animal's leg between his own, is able to effect his purpose just as well as if two men were employed; but the French must have remarked that custom in England; only, the besotted prejudice that exists in that class against every species of innovation causes them to persevere in their old habits. The agricultural population in France are more wealthy and generally better clothed than ours, particularly as regards the women; they pride themselves much upon their stocks of linen and their bedding; instead of the men expending their money in drink, what little they can save beyond their daily wants they lay out in contributing to their solid comforts, and as spinning and knitting are the constant occupation of the women in their leisure hours, when their children marry they are enabled to furnish them with a portion of the fruits of their industry; even the peasant girl has a trousseau, as it is called, that is, some stock of linen at her marriage, and a trifle of money wherewith to begin the world. Thus take France throughout; it will be found, that, in consequence of temperance and a persevering industry, the peasantry are generally passively happy; there is a great difference in respect to their wages and comforts, according to the province to which they belong; but although the intention of this work is especially to treat upon Paris and its population, yet as my readers must pass through a considerable portion of France before they can arrive at Paris, I judged it right to give them some information of the manners and habits of the population, with which they must meet in the course of their journey; but without farther delay will now at once conduct them to the Grand Capital, and as I consider the first impressions are the most permanent, I will introduce them by that entrance which presents so grand an appearance, as to surpass that of any other country in Europe. In coming from England, they may enter Paris at this point by the Rouen road. The first object that strikes the traveller, as he approaches Paris, is the Triumphal Arch, erected with the view of commemorating the victories of Napoleon, but as those victories were ultimately crowned by defeat, it is more consistent to consider the Triumphal Arch as a triumph of art than of arms; as certainly the magnificence and sublimity of the design is only to be equalled by the exquisite beauty of the execution. Having passed this noble monument and splendid specimen of architectural talent, the Champs Elysées extend in all their beauty to the view of the beholder, presenting a fine broad road with rows of lofty trees on either side, whilst handsome buildings and superb fountains are occasionally visible from behind the foliage; and one of the latter, which rises exactly in the centre, has a most happy effect; from this circle several roads diverge in different directions, displaying various objects of interest, but none of so high an order as that of the Hospital of Invalids, for aged and wounded soldiers, the whole expanse of which is seen in the distance at the end of a long wide avenue of trees. From the Triumphal Arch on either side extends a row of ornamental lamps for nearly a mile, which when lighted have the most brilliant effect; and when it is considered how very small the distances are between each lamp, I believe the assertion to be correct, that there is not another such display of gas anywhere to be found. Arrived at the Place Louis Quinze, or Place de la Concorde, as it is now called, such a coup d'oeil is presented as remains unrivalled in Europe, or indeed, in any part of the world. On one side, at the end of a handsome and regular street, called the Rue Royale, rises in majestic height the Madeleine, with its noble columns crowned by its sculptured entablature in mezzo relievo, and adorned by its numerous statues, yet preserving a chaste simplicity throughout the whole. On the opposite side facing it, in a direct line at the end of a bridge, is the Chamber of Deputies, resembling a Roman temple; its style is severe and its _tout ensemble_ has an air of heavy grandeur, which is consistent with an edifice in which are to be discussed the affairs of so great a nation. In the centre of the Place is an Egyptian column, which was with much difficulty brought from Egypt, and raised with considerable ingenuity where it now stands, without any accident; gorgeous fountains of bronze and gold are constantly playing, whilst colossal statues, being allegorical representations of the principal towns of France, are placed at regular distances, and appear as it were in solemn contemplation of the splendid scene by which they are surrounded. Two noble buildings, the Garde Meuble and the Hôtel de la Marine, which may be styled palaces, adorn each side of the Rue Royale, and form one side of the magnificent square, whilst another is occupied by the Elysian Fields, and that immediately opposite to the Tuileries gardens; but so beautiful, so wonderful is the whole combined, that accustomed as I have been to frequent it for upwards of twenty years, I cannot now traverse it without remaining some time to admire the extraordinary combination of so many beautiful objects centering in one vast area. Here no mean or unseemly building meets the eye, but all is made tributary to one grand effect; even the lamps with their supporters are of bronze and gold, whilst in the distance the gilded dome of the Invalides peers above all, and gives a brilliant termination to the sublimity of the scene. [Illustration: Champin del. Lith. Rigo Frères et Cie Triumphal Arch. Published by F. Sinnett. 15, Grande rue Verle.] Thus much for the only entrance of Paris which has aught to boast, but having, in fact, so many charms that it must be considered by the visiter as compensating for the deficiencies of every other. In entering from Boulogne or Calais, nothing can be conceived more discouraging than the first appearance of Paris as you are borne through the Faubourg St. Denis; the street, it is true, is wide and the houses large, but they have a dirty gloomy forlorn aspect, which gives them an uninhabited appearance, or as if the inmates did not belong to them; as no care appears to have been taken to give them some degree of neatness and comfort; in fact, to bestow upon them an air of home; the stranger continues rattling over the stones between these great lumbering-looking dwellings, until his eye is attracted by the Porte St. Denis, which is a triumphal arch built by Louis the Fourteenth, and certainly presents a most imposing mass of sculpture, which, although blackened by time, is an object well worthy the attention of the observing traveller; and here he crosses the Boulevards, by which he gets a little peep at the inspiring gaiety of Paris, but is soon hurried into noisy streets until his brain feels in a whirl; and on his arrival at the Diligence-yard, when he hopes to obtain a little repose, he is annoyed by being asked for the keys of his trunks, for the Custom House officers, to make believe to look into them to ascertain that you have not smuggled any liquors or other material within the walls of Paris. Those who are fortunate enough to travel in their own carriages, are exempted from such tiresome ceremony. Some of the other entries to Paris are somewhat better, but none of them sufficiently so, to be worthy notice; perhaps the best amongst the bad is by the Faubourg St. Antoine, the Barrières du Trône, at the commencement and summit of the street, presenting a most noble appearance; indeed, as far as the barriers are concerned, there are many which are well worthy of notice, being mostly handsome stone buildings with columns that give them an imposing effect, particularly when we recollect the little turnpike gates at the principal entrances of London, with the exception of the recent erections at Knightsbridge, which sink into nothingness when compared to the Triumphal Arch at the entrance already described; and, except foreigners, particularly the English, enter by that quarter, the first aspect of Paris mostly excites disappointment; the generality of the streets wanting that straight line of regularity so prevalent throughout London, the French capital has an incongruous patchy sort of effect, and its beauties and objects of interest have to be sought, but to the eye of an artist it is much more gratifying than that dull sameness which reigns throughout London, which Canova very justly designated as consisting of walls with square holes in them; for what otherwise can be said of our houses in general, but that they are literally upright walls, with square holes for doors and windows. Regent Street and a few others, which have been recently erected, form an exception to the rule. But in almost every street in Paris a draftsman finds subject for his pencil; their richly carved gateways, their elaborately wrought iron balconies, their ornamented windows, and even their protruding signs, all help to break the formal straight line and afford ample food for sketching; and in many of their old and least fashionable streets, an ancient church with its gothic doorway, adorned by rich and crumbling sculpture, invites the artist to pause and exercise his imitative art. Paris at first strikes a stranger as still more bustling and noisy than London, as the streets being narrower and hack vehicles more used in proportion, the circulation gets sooner choked up, and the rattling over the stones of the carriages is still more deafening, being within so confined a space; hence also the confusion is greater; then there is always a sort of bewilderment when one first arrives in a large city, that makes it appear much more astounding than is found to be the case as soon as the visiter becomes accustomed to its apparent labyrinth. According to comparative calculations, and taking the medium, Paris is about twenty-two miles round, and the population, foreigners included, one million; many estimate it at eleven hundred thousand, which I have no doubt it may be, if several villages be included which absolutely join Paris; such as Passy, Belleville, etc. The extreme height of the houses would induce a belief, that a more, dense mass of people inhabited the same space of ground than could be the case in London; but to counterbalance that circumstance, it must be taken into consideration that there are such an immense number of large gardens and court-yards in Paris, which occupy a great extent of ground. I have often been surprised to find, that in nasty dirty narrow streets, the back windows of the houses looked over extensive gardens, with lofty trees; these are oftener to be found in the old parts of Paris than in the modern quarters. A much greater proportion of the population consists of foreigners, than is the case in London, consequently it is more moving and changeable. It is the great post town for almost all Europeans who visit England, and hundreds of thousands come to Paris, who never think of going to London, deterred by an exaggerated idea of the expense; hence it will be found that very few persons from the Continent visit London who have not already been to Paris, although, now that steam conveyance affords such facilities of accommodation between London and many of the large cities in Europe, the case is somewhat altered. But Paris has been long regarded as the Museum of the Continent, and few men possessing good fortunes from civilised countries, if gifted with enquiring minds, consider their education complete if they have not sojourned some time at Paris, which has for time immemorial had the reputation of being the seat of the polite arts. Nearly a third of the houses in Paris are designated hôtels, many of which do not provide meals but merely furnished lodgings, and most of their inmates are foreigners, others, persons from the provinces, consequently at least one quarter of the population of Paris is constantly changing. But perhaps no city is anywhere to be found where a stranger can sooner accommodate himself in every respect, as the customs are such that a person may live as he likes, go where he likes, and do as he likes, provided he do no harm. In London, if a lady and gentleman from the country arrive for the purpose of passing a day, and have no acquaintances, there are no houses as in Paris where one can take a wife, sister, or daughter to breakfast or dine, without being subject to remark, unless indeed you can draw up to the door of a hôtel with an equipage; then certainly every attention and accommodation is to be found, but only such as will suit a very limited number of purses; whereas, at Paris a family may find in most of the restaurateurs small apartments where they can dine by themselves if they object to the public room, but even in the latter they might take their meal very undisturbed and without exciting the slightest observation, at various prices that will either suit the economist or the wealthy individual. This is amongst many of the conveniences of Paris; as also that of the libraries being open to the public, any one having the privilege to call for the book he wishes, where he may read as quietly as in his own house. This is extremely useful to studious and literary men, as there are so many works of reference too expensive to be within the compass of a small private library, which may be found in the liberal establishments in which Paris abounds. Museums, exhibitions, academies, gardens, public buildings, etc., are, with a very few exceptions, accessible to the foreigner merely on the exhibition of his passport. CHAPTER III. TO AN HISTORIAN. A very brief account of the foundation of Paris, its progress during the most remarkable epochs, and under the reigns of some of its most celebrated monarchs with its, gradual advance in civilisation to the present period. Some allusions also to the customs which existed in the earlier ages, and a statement of the different dates as regards the erection and foundation of the various monuments and institutions still extant. [Illustration: Paris in the 16th Century. View taken from the towers of Notre Dame.] France, under the ancient appellation of Gaul, is cited in history as early as 622 years before the Christian era, when Belloveaus, a celebrated leader from that country, defeated the Hetrurians and made himself master of Piedmont and Lombardy, by crossing the Rhone and the Alps with his army, which at that period had never before been attempted. Increasing in power, we find, 180 years after, the Gauls, headed by Brennus, sacking and burning Rome; and the same chief, after having been defeated and cut off by Camillus, the Roman general, with the loss of 40,000 men, again appears in the year 387 before Christ at the head of 150,000 foot and 60,000 horse, invading Macedonia, and after ravaging the country and being ultimately defeated in Greece, to have put an end to his existence. Some idea may be formed of the ferocious and obdurate spirit of the Gauls, from the circumstance of the women fighting as bravely as the men against Marius, who successfully defended Italy against them; and when these desperate amazons found that they were overpowered, they slew themselves and their children rather than surrender. This occurred 101 years anterior to the birth of our Saviour, and from that period scarcely a century has passed in which history does not record many instances of heroic devotion of Frenchwomen, often wrong in its object, but ever displaying a determined courage, reckless of all selfish consideration. The names of Joan of Arc, Jeanne Hachette, Charlotte Corday, and the Chevalier d'Eon are known to all, and hundreds of others must live in the memory of those who are familiar with the history of France. After numerous encounters between the Romans and the Gauls, the latter were at length wholly subdued about 50 years before Christ, and although the records of this ancient people date nearly as far back as the foundation of Rome, yet our first accounts of Paris are derived from Cæsar and Strabo, who allude to it under the name of Lutetia, the principal city of the Parisii; and from the most probable statements which could be collected from aged persons at that period, it is presumed that its foundation must have occurred not more than half a century antecedent. It is supposed that the ground which Paris now occupies formerly consisted of a number of small hills, which in the process of time, building, paving, etc., have been somewhat reduced, by the summits having been in a degree levelled; and the houses upon them being generally not so high as those in the lower parts, the eminences are not now so apparent. These hillocks were called by the French _buttes_, and some of them are still very perceptible, such as in the _rue des Saints-Pères_, by the _rue St-Guillaume_, the _rue Meslay_, the _rue de l'Observance_, near the _École de Médecine_, and several other places; indeed, on each side of the Seine Paris rises as you proceed to the _Faubourgs_. Some of these little hills still bear the name of _butte_, as _les Buttes St-Chaumont, la rue des Buttes_, etc., but the most ancient part of Paris is that which is now termed La Cité and is confined to an island formed by the Seine, and which is joined to the opposite banks by the _Pont-Neuf_ (or New-Bridge), but certainly no longer meriting that title, having been built in the reign of Henry the Third about the year 1580. There are many histories of Paris which have been handed down by oral record to some of the earliest authors amongst the Gauls, but so ill authenticated that they do not merit repetition, having being reputed as fabulous by most writers to whom credit can be attached. There is, however, one account of the foundation of Paris which may be cited more for its comic ingenuity than for its veracity, beginning by tracing the Trojans to Samothès, the son of Japhet and grandson of Noah; then following in the same line, they endeavour to prove that at the destruction of Troy, Francus, the son of Hector, fled to Gaul, of which he became king and no doubt bestowed upon it the name of France, as the French have a most happy knack of cutting off the _us_ at the end of names as, Titus Livius and Quintus Curtius they have metamorphosed into Tite-Live and Quinte-Curce, and in fact with one or two exceptions they have abbreviated the terminations of the ancient Greek and Roman appellations entirely according to their own fashion. This fortunate youth, Francus, at length fixed his abode in Champagne, and built the town of Troyes, calling it after his native place, which having accomplished, he repaired to the borders of the Seine and ever partial to Trojan associations, built a city which he called Paris after his uncle. However agreeable it may prove to the feelings of the Parisians to trace their origin to the remotest antiquity, yet common sense suggests that the account of the foundation of their city which is the most rational, is that which is deduced from the Commentaries of Julius Cæsar, he having been at some pains to ascertain from whence the Parisii sprung, and was informed by persons who remembered the epoch, that they were a people who had emigrated from their native country in consequence of the persecutions and massacres of their enemies, and that they were supposed to have belonged to some of the petty nations known under the common appellation of the Belgæ, and arriving on the borders of the Seine requested permission of the Senones, a powerful people of the Gauls, to establish themselves on the frontiers of their territory, and place themselves under their protection, agreeing at the same time to conform to the laws of those whose hospitality they sought. That they were but a very inconsiderable people on the arrival of Cæsar is proved by the small contingent of warriors they were required to supply by the Gauls, in their struggles against the Romans. The territory accorded to the Parisii could not have exceeded more than ten or twelve leagues, adjoining to the lands of a people termed Silvanectes on the one side, and to those of the Carnutes on the other. It is conjectured that the name of Parisii received its etymology from their being a people who inhabited the borders, as Par and Bar are synonymous from the P and the B having had the same signification, and which are often confused together at the present time by the Germans; and Barisii or Barrisenses, signifying a people inhabiting a space between other nations, hence it is inferred that the Parisii received that appellation from their occupying a spot on the frontiers of the Senones, separating them from the Silvanectes and the Carnutes. Amongst the many suppositions which have been formed as to the origin of the name of the Parisii, perhaps the above is the most rational. Paris, or Lutetia, soon after the conquest by Cæsar became a place of importance, as he selected that city for a convocation of the different powers of Gaul when he required of them supplies for his cavalry; and a short time after, when the Gallic nation revolted from Cæsar's dominion, one of the most decided battles which was fought was within sight of Paris, under Labienus, the Roman general, whilst the chief of the Gauls, Camulogene, perished in the combat with a considerable portion of his men, but the greater number saved themselves by taking shelter in Paris, which was not attacked, Labienus himself retreating to Agedineum. But although Cæsar fixed upon Paris as the most convenient locality for the meeting of the Gallic chiefs, yet it was little more than a fort like all the other towns in Gaul, into which the natives retreated in the time of war with their females, children, cattle and moveables; as they were accustomed in time of peace to live in detached habitation in the midst of their flocks, their pastures and their cornfields, only retreating within their forts or cities for security when attacked. After the fall of Camulogene, Gaul soon returned to the Roman yoke and Paris subsequently became the residence of their prefects, governors and even emperors. In 1818, in digging deeply in the streets of Monceau and Martroi, near the church of Saint Gervais, an ancient cemetery was discovered. In one of the tombs was found a silver medal, in which a head was visible on one side, and a head crowned on the other, having this inscription, _Antonius Pius Aug._, who reigned from the years 138 to 161. It is inferred from this circumstance, that the burying-place was of coeval antiquity, but notwithstanding the many battles which occurred between the Gauls and the Romans, Paris is not cited in history until the fourth century, when Julian the Apostate appears to have there fixed his residence, and in his Misopogon, which he wrote during his residence at Antioch, often alludes to it under the name of his dear Lutetia, although complaining that the cold was such during one winter as to compel him to have a fire in his bed-room, expressing much dissatisfaction at the odour emitted by the burning charcoal, to the effects of which he was nearly falling a victim. His abode was what it is now and has been for many ages, the Palace of Thermes, of which there are still the remains, now converted into a museum for relics of the Ancient Gauls; the entrance is in the Rue de la Harpe. Between the numbers 61 and 65. Julian there resided with his wife Helen, sister of the emperor Constantius, and in his address to the senate and people of Athens speaks of the arrival of foreign auxiliary troops at Paris, and of their tumultuously rising and surrounding his palace; and that it was in a chamber adjoining that of his wife wherein he meditated on the means of appeasing them. According to various historians, this circumstance occurred in the year 360. Soon after this period, the same palace was inhabited by the Emperors Valentinian and Valens. It is supposed to have been built in the year 292, the evidence of which is tolerably well authenticated. Whatever errors might fall to the share of Julian, it is certain he rendered great service to Gaul, and particularly to Paris: he cleared the adjacent country entirely of a set of ferocious barbarians, who were eternally overrunning the different states of Gaul. But the Parisians were not long doomed to enjoy the quiet and prosperity which had been obtained for them by the equitable laws instituted by Julian. In 406, hordes of enemies suddenly appeared in all parts of Gaul, swarming in from different barbarous nations, in such numbers that they swept all before them for ten successive years, and about 465 the Franks succeeded in permanently establishing themselves in Gaul, and of course Paris shared the fate of the surrounding country; by them at length the Roman government was overthrown, and that which was substituted was far less equitable or calculated for the happiness of the people. The Franks were a powerful maritime people, coming from the north-west of Germany, obtaining possession of the different towns which they met with in their course, until they arrived at Tournai, which was constituted their capital; and Childeric their king is reported to have laid siege to Paris, which resisted for several years; but dying in the year 481, he was succeeded by Clovis his son, who, at the head of a numerous army defeated the Roman governor Seyagrius, gained possession of his capital, and was styled the first King of Gaul. Many authors assert that Pharamond was the first monarch who reigned over the Gallic states, but Lidonius Appolinarus, who wrote only fifty years after the death of Pharamond persists that he and his three successors, who were all predecessors of Clovis, were only kings reigning over a portion of Gaul, and resigned their sovereignties at the retirement of the Romans. Clovis was celebrated as one of the greatest warriors of the period in which he lived; in the year 500 he slew Alaric King of the Visigoths in single combat in the plain of Vouillé, near Poitou, and afterwards several other petty kings, thereby adding considerably to his dominions. In 508 he fixed his residence in Paris, and died there in 511, and was buried in a church called St. Peter and St. Paul, since styled St. Genevieve. He was called the Most Christian King. The Pope having no confidence in the professions of any other monarch at that time, Clovis is synonymous with the name of Louis, as the latter was formerly written Llouis, the double l signifying in the Celtic language cl, and pronounced in that manner at present in Welsh, as Llandovery, Llandilo, etc., have the sound of Clandovery, Clandilo, etc., whilst the v in Clovis has in more modern times been transformed into a u, as in all old writings the u and the v had the same signification; hence it will be found that Clovis and Llouis are the same word. His government being divided amongst his four sons, Childebert received the portion in which Paris was situated, and was styled King of Paris, which was only retained by a few of his successors, who assumed that of King of Gaul, or of France. The power of the monarch at that period was much restrained, by a class of men called Leudes, Anstrutions, or faithful, being companions in arms of the king, and sharing with him whatever lands or booty might be gained by conquest. As a proof of the tenacity of these gentry as to an equitable division of the spoil, when Clovis had taken Rheims, he demanded as an act of grace from his companions in arms, that they would grant him a precious vase for which he had conceived a peculiar predilection; his request was accorded by his associates, except one, who gave the vase a violent blow with his hatchet, saying, "No, thou shalt not have any thing beyond what thy lot awards thee." Even under the dominion of the Romans there were dukes who had a certain number of troops or armed men in the district where they governed, and their power was arbitrary and they had counts under them who also had a certain number of men subjected to their orders; sometimes these nobles carried rapine, pillage and slaughter into each other's territories, when the government had devolved upon the Franks; and the king took no notice of their misdeeds, as long as they observed a certain fealty towards him, and in some instances they put aside the monarch if he acted in such a manner as to trench upon what they considered their privileges. A third power soon began to assume a high authority, which consisted of the bishops, who had greatly aided the Francs in their invasion of Gaul by their influence and intrigues, and obtained as reward considerable grants of lands and temporal power; and in their dioceses they exercised a sovereign will, and on account of their possessing some instruction they maintained a certain influence over the ignorant nobility who had in some degree a sort of superstitious awe of them, as they were regarded as the emissaries of saints. Under the Romans the Gauls were considered a moral people, having become Christians in consequence of the persevering endeavours of the missionary prelates, whilst churches were founded and a purity of faith disseminated; taught by the Romans, a love of the arts and sciences was engendered amongst the Gauls, and much talent was elicited from them, philosophy, physic, mathematics, jurisprudence, poetry, and above all eloquence, had their respective professors of no mean abilities from amongst the natives; one named Julius Florens is styled by Quintilian the Prince of Eloquence. In fact a brilliant era appeared as if beginning to dawn throughout the greater portion of Gaul, academies were establishing, learning was revered, when suddenly every spark of refinement and civilisation was banished, by the successful aggression and permanent occupation of the country by hordes of barbarians; the natives being obliged to have recourse to arms for their defence against the common enemy, and the constant excitement of continued hostility with their ferocious oppressors, afforded no time for study nor cultivation of the arts. Clovis, however, during his reign improved Paris, and was converted to christianity by St. Vedast. Clotilda, his wife, and niece to Gondebaud, king of Burgundy, was principally instrumental to the conversion of her husband. Indeed, amidst their ferocity and barbarism some of the early Frank kings showed much respect for religion and morality, as is proved by an ordonnance of Childebert in the year 554; commanding his subjects to destroy wherever they might be found all idols dedicated to the devil; also forbidding all disorderly conduct committed in the nights of the eves of _fêtes_, such as Christmas and Easter, when singing, drinking, and other excesses were committed; women were also ordered to discontinue going about the country dancing on a Sunday, as it was a practice offensive to God. It appears certainly very singular that a comparatively barbarous king in the sixth century should prohibit dancing of a Sunday as a desecration of the Sabbath, and that in the nineteenth century there should be more dancing on a Sunday than on any other day in the week, at a period which is arrived at the highest state of civilisation, and under the reign of a most enlightened monarch. But although Clovis and Childebert displayed much enthusiasm in the cause of christianity, their career was marked with every cruelty incidental to conquest, as wherever they bore their victorious arms, murder, rapine, and robbery stained their diabolical course; but they thought that they expiated their crimes by building churches. Hence Clovis in 508 founded the first erected in Paris dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul, afterwards called St. Genevieve, and on its site now stands the Pantheon. Childebert in 558 built the church of St. Germain des Près, which is still standing and much frequented; it was at first called St. Vincent and St. Croix, and he endowed it so richly with the treasures he had stolen from other countries, that it was called the golden palace of St. Germain. Chilperic imitating his predecessors, hoping to absolve himself of his enormous crimes, in the year 606 founded the very interesting and curious church of St. Germain, opposite the Louvre, and still an object of admiration to the lover of antiquity. His wife Fredegonde, imagining no doubt by that act he had made his peace for the other world, thought that the sooner he went there the better, before he committed any farther sins, and had him assassinated that she might the more conveniently pursue her own course of iniquity; perhaps never was the page of history blackened by such a list of atrocities committed by woman as those perpetrated by her and her rival Queen Brunehault, who was ultimately tied to the tail of a wild horse and torn to pieces in 613. Paris, however, notwithstanding the wickedness, injustice, and cruelty of its rulers, continued to increase, and would no doubt have become a prosperous city, had it not been for the incursions of the Normands, who in the ninth century entered Paris, burnt some of the churches, and meeting with scarcely any resistance, made themselves masters of all they could find, whilst the Emperor Charles the Bald, at the head of an army, had the pusillanimity to treat with them, and finally to give them seven thousand pounds of silver to quit Paris, which was only an encouragement for them to return, which they did in a few years after, carrying devastation wherever they appeared, the poor citizens of Paris being obliged to save their lives by flight, leaving all their property to the mercy of the brigands. At length, the Parisians finding that there was no security either for themselves or their possessions, prevailed on Charles the Bald to give the requisite orders for fortifying the city, which was so far accomplished that it resisted the attacks of the Normans for thirteen months, who as constantly laid siege to the grand tower which was its principal defence, without being able to take it; when at last Charles the Fat in 887 proved as weak as his predecessors, and although he was encamped with his army at Montmartre, consented to give the barbarians fourteen thousand marks of silver to get rid of them, and they quitted Paris to go and pillage other parts of France, but as by the treaty they were not allowed to pass the bridges, in order to ascend the Seine they were obliged to carry their vessels over the land for about two thousand yards and again launch them for the purpose of committing farther depredations. From this period Paris was freed from the attacks of the the Normans, yet commerce made but slow progress having constant obstructions arising, to impede its prosperity. Paris having for a long time ceased to be the royal residence, was no longer considered as the capital, Charlemagne passed but a very short period of time there, residing mostly at Aix-la-Chapelle and Ratisbon, and although he founded many noble institutions in different parts of France, Paris derived but little benefit from his talents, and his immediate successors displayed such imbecility of purpose that they suffered their kingdom to become the prey to marauders. Learning advanced but slowly, although there were some schools at Paris which, elicited a few authors; amongst the rest one named Abbon, who wrote a poem in latin upon the siege of Paris by the Normans, which was not otherwise other-worthy of remark than for its rarity at the epoch when it was written. Whilst the kings of France continued to reside in other cities, Paris was confided to the governments Counts, who held not a very high rank amongst the nobility in the first instance, but gradually increased their power until Eudes, Count of Paris, in 922 ultimately became King of France, which also was the destiny of two other nobles who held the same title, Robert the brother of Eudes, and Hugh Capet. The progress of Paris and indeed the whole of France was retarded continually by famine, fourteen seasons of scarcity happening in the course of twenty-three years; in fact, from 843 to 899 such was often the state of desolation, that hunger impelled human beings to murder each other to feed upon the flesh of their bodies, which in many instances were sold, and bought with eagerness by those who were famishing with want. Unwholesome food caused thousands to be afflicted with a disease which was called the sacred fire, the ardent malady, and the infernal evil, the sufferers feeling as if they were devoured by an internal flame. To give some idea of the luxury of costume which existed in those days at Paris, it is but requisite to quote an address of Abbon the poet to the Parisians, written about the year 890, wherein hen observes: "An _agraffe_ (a clasp) of gold fastens the upper part of your dress; to keep off the cold you cover yourselves with the purple of Tyre, you will have no other cloak than a chlamyde embroidered with gold, your girdle must be ornamented with precious stones, and gold must sparkle even upon your shoes, and on the cane which you carry. O France! if you do not abandon such luxurious extravagance, you will lose your courage and your country." Hugh Capet, who became king of France in 987, fixed his residence at Paris, thus again constituting it the capital of the kingdom, and his son and successor Robert, being a strict devotee, built and repaired several churches which had been greatly injured by the Normans, and Paris began in his reign to assume an appearance of improvement, which continued until it received a check from an ill-timed joke of Philippe the First, who made a satirical remark upon William the Conqueror of England having become rather unwieldy, which so provoked that choleric monarch that he laid waste a great portion of Philippe's dominions; when his progress was checked by his falling from his horse, which occasioned his death and thus delivered Philippe from a most powerful enemy. In the following reign, that of Lewis the Fat, learning began to make considerable progress, and the colleges of Paris to acquire a high celebrity, and amongst the professors whose reputation was of the highest, was Abelard, no one before having succeeded in attracting so many pupils. In 1118 he established a school in Paris, but from a variety of persecutions which he endured, he was frequently obliged to retire to different parts of France; his unfortunate attachment to Heloise is but too well known, and she ultimately became the abbess of a convent which Abelard founded at Nogent-sur-Seine, and which he called Paraclet. The number of pupils at one time are stated to have been three thousand, and he instructed them in the open air; it is also asserted that of his followers fifty became either bishops or archbishops, twenty cardinals, and one pope, Celestin II. In fact the fame of Abelard had arrived at such an altitude that he was the means of giving a new era to Paris, which was designated the city of letters; other professors became highly celebrated, and some authors pretend that the immense concourse of students who ultimately flocked to Paris, exceeded the number of the inhabitants, and there was much difficulty in finding the means of lodging them; how great must have been the anxiety for learning, as the masters were exceedingly brutal and imparted their knowledge to the pupil by the force of blows, which at length deterred many students from placing themselves under the charge of such preceptors. This extraordinary desire for obtaining education appears to have been almost a sudden impulse, as the immediate descendants of Hugh Capet could not read or write, but were obliged to make a mark as the signature to their edicts, whilst those who possessed that accomplishment were styled clerks. Although much brilliance was shed over the reign of Louis the Sixth by the learning of Abelard and the professors who followed him, yet soon after the barbarous custom was introduced of trial by combat; the idea might probably have been suggested by Louis having challenged Henry the First of England to decide their differences in a single encounter. Although Lewis the Fat was so bulky as to have obtained the cognomen by which he was always designated, he was one of the most active kings of France; constantly harrassed by perpetual wars with his neighbours and nobles, which he carried on personally and generally successfully, he first undertook the fortifying of Paris and is supposed to have constructed the greater and the lesser Châtelet, two towers on the opposite sides of the Seine, although many authors pretend that they were of a much more ancient date; he also built walls round a certain portion of the suburbs, which by that time had become part of Paris. It was said of Lewis VI, "He might have been a better king, a better man he could not." He died in 1137. In the succeeding reign of Louis VII, surnamed the Younger, many privileges were granted to the Parisians which greatly increased the prosperity of the city; several public buildings were erected, amongst the rest an hospital which was the first ever built in Paris. But according to the descriptions of all authors who wrote at that period upon the subject, the streets were in a filthy condition in many parts of the city, and the names which have long since been changed were as dirty and indecent; some were absolutely ridiculous; as Did you find me Hard, Bertrand Sleeps, Cut Bread, John Bread Calf (alluding to the leg); the last still exists, as also Bad Advice, Bad Boys, etc. It was in this reign that the first crusade from France took place, and Louis VII was followed by 200,000 persons, and after various encounters with the Saracens, he owed his preservation to his own personal prowess; he was divorced from his Queen Eleanor, who afterwards married Henry II of England, and proved herself a detestable character in both kingdoms. Louis VII abolished one law which had long disgraced France, allowing the officers of the King on his arrival in Paris or other towns in his dominions, to enter any private house and take for the monarch's use such bedding or other articles of furniture as his Majesty might require. Louis also by force of arms compelled his nobles to desist from robbing the merchants, dealers, and the poor of their property. At this period the _Fête des Fous_, or feast of madmen was celebrated to its full extent, and anything more absurd, more farcical, or more irreverential cannot well be imagined. Dulaure, in his voluminous History of Paris, gives a most detailed account of this extraordinary mockery, of which I will give my readers a very brief abridgment. On the first of January the clergy went in procession to the bishop who had been elected as the grand master of the fête, conducting him solemnly to the church with all the ecclesiastical banners usually borne on important occasions, amidst the ringing of bells; when arrived at the choir, he was placed in the episcopal seat, and mass was performed with the most extravagant gesticulations. The priests figuring away in the most ridiculous dresses; some in the costume of buffoons, others in female attire with their faces daubed with soot, or covered with hideous masks, some dancing, others jumping, or playing different games, drinking, and eating puddings, sausages, etc., offering them to the high-priest whilst he was celebrating high mass; also burning old shoes in the chalice, instead of incense, to produce a disagreeable scent; at length, elevated by wine, their orgies began to have the appearance of those of demons, roaring, howling, singing, and laughing until the walls of the church echoed with their yells. This was often carried on until they worked themselves up to a pitch of madness, and then they began boxing each other until the floor of the church would be smeared with blood; upon which most severe expiations were exacted from them; as, however, much has been shed in the cause of the church, it was not to be permitted that the holy sanctuary should ever be stained with aught so impure. The ecclesiastics at last quitting the church, got into carts filled with mud and filth, amusing themselves with flinging it upon the crowds who followed them in such streets as were wide enough for a cart to pass. It is conjectured that these festivities, with their nonsensical ceremonies, were of pagan origin, and probably the celebration of the Carnival is derived from the same source; many attempts were made to abolish so disgraceful a custom as the continuance of the Fêtes des Fous, with the absurdities incidental to its revelries, but it was not until the Parisians became more enlightened that any monarch could succeed in its entire suppression. In 1180 Philippe Auguste succeeded his father, and did more for Paris than all the works of his predecessors united; he reconstructed Notre Dame, and made it such as it now is with respect to the grand body of the building; but the variety of little chapels contained within it, and the elaborate workmanship, with the bas, mezzo and alto relievos with which it abounds, occupied two centuries. On the exterior of the building on the south side, about three feet and a half from the ground, is an inscription in raised letters nearly two inches long, and the date being perfectly distinct is 1257 written thus, MCCLVII. The two last characters have dropped, but the impression of them is clearly visible; the inscription itself is difficult to decypher, it is in Latin, and some of the letters are missing, others so curiously formed as to render them doubtful exactly as to their import. The greater part of the characters are Roman, the others resemble more the Saxon, yet are not quite so; at all events I recommend the inscription to the attention of the curious. A vast space, which is now covered with streets, commencing at the Rue des Saints Pères, and extending to the Invalids, consisted entirely of meadows, and was called the Pré aux Clercs, or the Clerks' Field, from the students and a number of young men who possessed some education, usually enjoying their recreations in this spot, but certainly not in the most innocent manner, in fact, the disorders committed in this privileged piece of ground, which the students considered as their own, were such as to be often named in history, and to have formed the subject of a favourite Melo Drama; it retained its character as being the scene of turbulence and disorder even to the time of Louis XIV. Amongst other useful undertakings effected by Philippe Auguste was that of establishing markets with covered stalls, and he it was that first conceived the idea of paving Paris, which he partially effected, and surrounded the town with a wall, part of which is still standing in the Rue Clovis. Paris increased and flourished under his reign; he in fact did all that was possible to augment its prosperity, and amongst other measures he granted the utmost protection in his power to the students, knowing that the more the population of the city increased, the more flourishing was its condition; by such means he induced scholars to come in numbers from the most distant parts to study in the colleges of Paris, two of which he erected, as well as three hospitals; he also instituted many good laws, which protected the tradespeople and repressed the robberies and extortions of the nobles. But Paris was still subject to calamities, a flood having occurred from the overflowing of the Seine, which reached as high as the second floor windows of some houses. A great part of Paris was occupied with monasteries and convents, which with their gardens covered an immense space; in the course of time, however, the monks found it advantageous to dispose of their lands for the purpose of building dwelling-houses, and in the Revolution numbers were suppressed; and in some quarters of the city there are warehouses in the occupation of different tradesmen, which formerly formed part of the old monasteries. Many of the streets by their names still indicate the order of the convents by which they were occupied, as the Rue Blanc Manteaux (White Cloaks), Rue des Saints Pères (Holy Fathers), Filles de Dieu (Daughters of God), which now is one of the narrowest and dirtiest streets in Paris, and inhabited by daughters of a very different description. Such are the extraordinary changes which time effects. Philippe Auguste dying in 1223, was succeeded by his son Louis VIII, surnamed the Lion, whose short reign of four years was occupied by war, leaving no leisure for effecting any great improvement in Paris; but under his successor Lewis IX, styled Saint-Louis, much was effected, although his efforts were principally directed towards the erection of religious institutions, being much under the dominion of the priests, and naturally possessing a fanatic zeal. Churches at that period were too often but monuments of superstition for the celebration of mummery, for sheltering criminals, receptacles for pretended relics, and in fact instruments for maintaining the power of priestcraft. This same Saint Louis, so lauded by some authors, had some excellent notions of his own, and was very fond of practising summary justice, recommending to his nobles that whenever they met with any one who expressed any doubts regarding the Christian religion, never to argue with the sceptist, but immediately plunge their swords into his body. Rhetoric at this period was a study much followed and admired, but the logic of Saint-Louis, I suspect, was the most forcible and best calculated to remove all doubts, having a great objection to language that was what some persons would style far too energetic; where an oath was suffered to escape, he ordered the intemperate orator's tongue to be pierced with a hot iron and his lips burnt; hence many of his subjects were compelled to endure that operation; but this was considered in those days all very saint-like. They had strange ideas in some instances, in days of yore, according to our present notion of words and things. Louis the First, surnamed the _Débonnaire_ (the gentle), had his nephew Bernard's eyes bored out; this act was certainly very like a _gentle_ man. Hugh the Great, so called on account of his splendid virtues, in the year 1014 thought it proper that he should be present at the burning of a few heretics, and his lady, with her ardent religious zeal, stepped forward and poked out the eye of her confessor, who was one of the victims, with her walking cane, before he was committed to the flames. Louis however had some redeeming qualities; he founded the Hospital of the Quinze-Vingts, which still exists; he also enlarged and improved the Hôtel Dieu, the principal hospital in those days, in which he even exceeded the munificence of his predecessor, Philippe Auguste, who published an ordonnance commanding that all the straw which had been used in his chamber should be given to the Hôtel Dieu, whenever he quitted Paris and no longer wanted it; such overpowering kindness one would imagine must have had the effect of curing some of the invalids who were capable of appreciating the high honour conferred upon them, in being suffered to lie upon straw which had been trodden by royal feet. Saint Louis also founded the celebrated College of the Sorbonne, which is still existing, and maintains a high character; he also built the curious and interesting chapel adjoining the Palais de Justice, which is well worth the amateur's attention; he founded the Hospital of Les Filles de Dieu, for the purpose of reclaiming women of improper conduct. The Mendicant Monks, the Augustines, and the Carmes were established in France during his reign, and he founded the convents of the Beguines, Mathurins, Jacobins, Carthusians, Cordeliers, and several others of minor importance, in Paris, with the chapels attached to them; besides different churches with which I shall not tire my reader with recapitulating, as there are none of them now standing, except the chapel belonging to the Palais de Justice; he also added several fountains, contributing to the comforts of the Parisians, as well as embellishing their city. The number of churches which have been demolished in Paris within the last fifty years, exceeds the number of those which are now standing, many of them during the Revolution, which might have been expected; but an equal number under the Restoration in the reigns of Louis the Eighteenth and Charles the Tenth, who being rather devotees, one would have imagined might have been induced to repair and preserve all religious monuments, also highly interesting as specimens of the architecture of the different ages in which they were founded. Louis Philippe has better kept up the spirit of the _restoration_ in having rescued from demolition the ancient and beautiful church of St Germain l'Auxerrois; which was to have been pulled down to make way for a new street, according to the plan projected by his predecessor; instead of which, it has been repaired with the greatest judgment, carefully preserving the original style of the building wherever ornaments or statues required to be renewed. Thus this noble edifice has been preserved to the public, which would not have been the case had the Revolution of the Three Days not occurred, as its doom was sealed prior to that period. In fact, since the accession to the throne of Louis Philippe, I do not believe that any church has been pulled down, though several others have been built, and others finished, which have greatly added to the embellishments of the city. The memory of Louis IX has ever been cherished as that of a Saint, and if a man be judged by the number of religious establishments he instituted, certainly he deserved to be canonised; but however grand may be the reputation of having founded and erected so many public monuments, yet when it is considered that numbers of the inmates of the different convents and monasteries erected by this Saint were obliged to demand alms from house to house, and of persons passing along the streets, it will be proved that the grand result of Saint Louis' operations was to fill Paris with beggars; although it certainly must be admitted that some of his other acts in a great degree compensated for those into which he was led by superstition and religious fanaticism: he was succeeded by his son Philippe the Bold in 1270, who suffered himself to be governed by his favourite, La Brosse, formerly a barber, in which it must be admitted that Philippe displayed rather a _barbarous_ taste, which ended in his pet being hanged; his reign, however, was signalised by the establishment of a College of Surgeons, who were designated by the appellation of Surgeons of the Long Robe, whilst the barbers were styled Surgeons of the Short Robe; he also recalled the Jews, whom his father, after having persecuted in divers manners, banished and confiscated their property; amongst other indignities which were put upon them by Saint Louis, was that of forcing them to wear a patch of red cloth on their garment both before and behind, in the shape of a wheel, that they might be distinguished from Christians, and marked as it were for insult. In Philippe's reign, however, merit found its reward, no matter how low the origin from whence it sprang, and several authors, particularly poets, wrote boldly against the extreme hypocrisy which existed in the preceding reign, and literature made great progress. In 1285 Philippe the Fair, so named on account of his handsome person, succeeded to the throne of his father; in his ardent thirst for money he changed the value of the coinage three times, and caused a riot which ended by his hanging twenty-eight of the conspirators at the different entrances of Paris, and had numbers of persons accused of crimes in order to have them executed that he might obtain possession of their property; thus hundreds were burned alive and tortured in various manners. One act, however, threw a degree of lustre on his reign, and that was the organisation of the Parliament at Paris, establishing it as a sovereign court, their sittings being held in the Palais de Justice, the residence at that period of the kings of France. For several succeeding reigns Paris appeared to make but little progress; some churches were built as also other establishments, but none which are now standing, except some portions of them which may have escaped destruction and are now in the occupation of different tradespeople. The government became exceedingly poor, and several measures were adopted in order to repair the finances of the state; amongst others, that of suffering serfs to purchase their emancipation, of which many availed themselves, but not sufficient effectually to replenish the exhausted treasury. For the same reason the property of the Lombards was confiscated, next recourse was had to the Jews, and even the exactions imposed upon them were inadequate to the wants of the nation. The succession of several weak kings had brought affairs into this state, when Philippe the Sixth of Valois crowned the misfortunes of the country by entering into a war with England, at a time when the funds of his kingdom were at the lowest ebb; constantly engaged in hostilities, he had not leisure or the means of attending to the welfare of the Parisians, and the disasters he encountered caused his reign to be remembered as a series of misfortunes. Several colleges, however, were founded in his reign; amongst others, that of the Collége des Ecossais (Scotch College) then in the Rue des Amandiers, but now existing in the Rue des Fossés St. Victor. It was first instituted by David, Bishop of Murray, in Scotland, but the present building was erected by Robert Barclay in 1662. The Collége des Lombards was founded by a number of Italians, and was some years afterwards deserted, but in 1633 was given by the government to two Irish priests, and has from that period become an Irish seminary; and several other colleges, which have either been abandoned or their locality changed, and often united to other colleges, some of which are still existing. On the death of Philippe, John, surnamed the Good, ascended a throne of trouble in 1350, and encountered a succession of misfortunes of which Paris had its share; from the immense number of churches, monasteries, colleges, hospitals, and other public edifices, the wall which surrounded Paris, built by Philippe-Auguste, enclosed too limited a space to contain the houses of the increased population, which continued to augment, notwithstanding all the impediments which bad government could create. A more extended wall therefore became necessary to protect those inhabitants who resided beyond the limits of the first, and whose position was likely to be compromised by the position in which France was placed by the battle of Poitiers, by a band of ruffians called the Companions, who carried desolation wherever they appeared, and by what was termed La Jacquerie, hordes of peasants who were armed and levied contributions upon the peaceable inhabitants as they traversed the country, in groups too numerous to be withstood by the tranquil residents. The extension of the wall was erected under the superintendence of Etienne Marcel, called _Prévôt des Marchands_; what might be termed Mayor or Chief Magistrate of the tradespeople, a man of extraordinary energy, which he exerted to the utmost for the benefit of his fellow citizens, and at this period first began the custom of putting chains at night across the streets as a measure of security, as notwithstanding that Paris was menaced on all sides by enemies from without, insurrections of the most violent nature took place within its walls, commencing on account of the Dauphin, who was governor of Paris and regent of the kingdom (in consequence of the imprisonment of his father John in England), issuing a coinage consisting of base metal which he was compelled to recall; but the fire-brand was kindled, other grievances were mooted, thirty thousand armed Parisians assembled headed by Etienne Marcel, who himself stabbed Robert de Clermont, Marshal of Normandy, and Jean de Conflans, Marshal of Champagne, in the presence of the Dauphin; but to save the latter from the fury of the people, Marcel changed hats with the Prince, thus affording him a passport, by causing him to wear a hat that bore the colours of the people, blue and red. After a tremendous slaughter, Marcel and his principal friends were themselves dispatched by the partisans of the Dauphin. During all these convulsions in the interior of Paris, it was surrounded on one side by the troops of the King of Navarre, whilst the forces of the Dauphin were hovering under the walls, the different parties skirmishing with each other, and all living upon the pillage and contributions levied on the inhabitants of the adjacent country. Meantime famine thinned the population of Paris, cut off from any means of receiving provisions from without; but on account of the wall constructed by Marcel, Edward III of England found it impossible to make any progress in the siege, and having exhausted the country for some leagues of extent, was obliged to retreat for want of food to maintain his army. The scarcity of money was such in Paris at that period, that they were compelled to have a circulation of leather coin, with a little nail of gold or silver stuck in the middle; yet when John returned from his captivity in England, the streets were hung with carpets wherever he had to pass, and a cloth of gold borne over his head, the fountains poured forth wine, and the city made him a present of a silver buffet weighing a thousand marcs. At this period schools existed in Paris sanctioned by the government, when the pay for each scholar was so contemptible that they must have been for the use of the middle classes, whose means were very confined; they were called _Petites Écoles_ (Little Schools), and paid a certain sum for having the privilege to teach; the number in the reign of John was sixty-three, of which forty-one were under masters, and twenty-two under mistresses. In some of the streets of Paris it was the custom to have two large doors or gates, which were closed at night, and the names of several streets still bear evidence of that practice, as the _Rue des deux Portes_; the _Rue des Deux-Portes-Saint-Jean_, _des Deux-Portes-Saint-Sauveur_, etc. During the reign of John, about 1350, a poem appeared, which contained advice as to the conduct ladies ought to observe who wished to act with propriety, and as my fair countrywomen are generally willing to _listen_ to good counsel, no matter how remote the period from which it is derived, I cannot resist giving them the benefit of some of the recommendations of the sapient poet to the Parisian belles, some of which are certainly highly commendable. The verses were written by a monk, whose name I have forgotten. "In walking to church never trot or run, salute those you meet upon the way, and even return the salutations of the poor; when at church it is not proper to look either to the right or the left, neither to speak nor to laugh out loud, but to rise to the Gospel and courteously make the sign of the cross, to go to the offering without either laughing or joking, at the moment of the elevation also to rise; then kneel and pray for all Christians; to recite by heart her prayers, and _if she can read_, to pray from her psalmody. "A courteous lady ought to salute all in going out of church, both great and small. "Those whom nature have endowed with a good voice ought not to refuse to sing when they are asked. "Cleanliness is so necessary for ladies, that it is an obligation for them to cut their nails. "It is not proper for a lady to stop in passing the house of a neighbour, to look into the interior, because people may be doing things that they do not wish others to know. "When you go and visit a person, never enter abruptly, nor take any one by surprise, but announce your coming by coughing. "At table, a lady should not speak nor laugh too much, and should always turn the biggest and the best pieces to her guests, and not choose them for herself. "Every time a lady has drank wine she should wipe her mouth with the table-cloth, but not her eyes or her nose, and she should take care not to soil and grease her fingers in eating, more than she can possibly help." The reader must remember that forks were not used until the reign of Henry III. The author also cautions the ladies to be very careful not to drink to excess, observing that a lady loses talent, wit, beauty, and every charm, when she is elevated with wine; they are also recommended not to swear. He continues: "Ladies should not veil their faces before nobles; they may do so when they are on horseback or when they go to church, but on entering they should show their countenances, and particularly before people of quality. "Ladies should never receive presents from gentlemen of jewels or other things, except from a well intentioned near relation, otherwise it is very blameable. "It is not becoming for ladies to wrestle with men, and they are also cautioned not to lie or to steal." Then follow certain instructions for ladies as to the answers they should make and the manner they should conduct themselves when they receive a declaration. I hope English ladies will be much edified by the above instructions. The cries of Paris at this period were constant and absolutely stunning; Guillaume de la Villeneuve observes that the criers were braying in the streets of Paris from morning to night. Amongst the vegetables, garlick was the most prevalent, which was then eaten with almost every thing, people being in the habit of rubbing their bread with it: the flour of peas and beans made into a thick paste was sold all hot; onions, chervil, turnips, aniseed, leeks, etc., a variety of pears and apples of sorts that are now scarcely known, except Calville, services, medlers, hips and other small fruits now no longer heard of; nuts, chesnuts of Lombardy, Malta grapes, etc.; for beverage, wine at about a farthing a quart; mustard vinegar, verjuice, and walnut oil; pastry, fresh and salted meat, eggs and honey. Others went about offering their services to mend your clothes, some to repair your tubs, or polish your pewter; candles, cotton for lamps, foreign soup, and almost every article that can be imagined was sold in the streets, sometimes the price demanded was a bit of bread. The millers also went bawling about to know if you had any corn to grind, and amongst those that demanded alms were the scholars, the monks, the nuns, the prisoners and the blind. It was the custom in those days, when a person wished to be revenged upon another, to make an image of him in wax or mud, as much resembling as possible. They then took it to a priest and had it named after the person they wished to injure, with all the ceremonies of the church, and anointed it, and lastly had certain invocations pronounced over the unfortunate image. It was then supposed that the figure had some degree of identity with the prototype, and any injury inflicted upon it would be felt by the person they wished to harm; they therefore then set to work to torture it according to their fancy, and at last would plunge a sharp instrument into that part where the heart should be placed, feeling quite satisfied they had wreaked their revenge on their enemy. Sometimes persons were severely punished for the performance of this farce, and when any individuals experienced some great misfortune, they often imagined that it had arisen in consequence of their image having been made by their enemy, and maltreated in the manner described. When Charles V ascended the throne in 1364, he soon began to display his taste for civilisation by collecting books to form a library in the Louvre, and rewarding merit, however humble the station of the individual by whom it was possessed; and although he received the reins of government at a period when France was surrounded with enemies, and her finances in a ruined state, such was the prudence of his measures that he completely retrieved her losses, and well earned the appellation he received of Charles the Wise; he built several churches, colleges, and hotels, none of which if standing are now appropriated to the purposes originally intended; he also had several bridges constructed, and embellished Paris with many edifices that were both useful and ornamental. But all his efforts were paralysed in the following reign of Charles VI, justly called the Simple, partly mad, partly imbecile, and coming to the throne at twelve years of age, every misfortune that might have been expected from a country surrounded by foreign enemies without, and torn by intestine broils within, happened in the fullest force. The English and the Burgundians united together in besieging Paris, which was ultimately entered by both their armies; what with riots amongst the Parisians, the intrigues of the Queen Isabeau de Baviere, the dissensions of the King's uncles, and the brigandage of the nobility who overran the country, never was a nation reduced to a more pitiable condition; yet some monuments were added to Paris even during this turbulent reign, the Church of St. Gervais being entirely reconstructed in 1420, and that of St. Germain l'Auxerrois so considerably repaired as to be almost rebuilt in 1425, besides several colleges, hospitals and bridges; companies of archers, cross-bow men and armourers were also established. Theatrical representations were first performed in this reign in the grand hall of the Hospital of the Trinity, _Rue Saint-Denis_, corner of the _Rue Grenetat_. The theatrical company styled themselves "Masters, Governors and Brethren of the Passion and Resurrection of our Lord." Under the reign of Charles VII, surnamed the Victorious, France regained all she had lost, and was much indebted for her success to the Maid of Orleans, and the gallant Dunois, who entered Paris and defeated the English who retreated to the Bastille and ultimately were allowed to retire to Rouen. But although more was effected in this reign for the prosperity and glory of France, Paris received no additions or embellishments: the King being wholly occupied in vanquishing the enemies of his country; his son Lewis XI, who is supposed to have conspired against the life of his father, ascended the throne in 1461; notwithstanding his reign was disturbed by a series of wars, he found time to occupy himself with useful institutions, and founded that of the first society of printers in Paris; he also established the School of Medicine, and the Post Office. Superstitious and cruel, he first used iron cages as prisons, then instituted the prayer styled the Angelus. Although he increased the power of France, his tyranny, injustice, dissimulation, and avarice caused him to be hated by his subjects. His successor Charles VIII was but thirteen when called to the throne in 1483, inheriting the few virtues without the many vices of his father, but showed much weakness in the administration of his affairs; in the early part of his reign Anne his mother was the person who principally governed as Regent, until he was of age, when he passed the rest of his life in war, but was so beloved that two of his servants died of grief for the loss of their master, who was surnamed the Affable. He was succeeded by his cousin Lewis XII in 1498, who obtained the title of Father of his People, certainly the most virtuous monarch that ever swayed the sceptre of France; he observed that he preferred seeing his courtiers laugh at his savings than to see his people weep for his expenses. The Hôtel de Cluny and _Le Pont_ (the bridge) _Notre-Dame_ were constructed in his reign and are still standing; being the most ancient bridge in Paris. He died much regretted, in 1515, and all France felt deeply the loss of a monarch, whose measures were such as must have ensured the happiness of his people could he have been spared to have accomplished the good work he had begun. Francis I, his great nephew, succeeded him and was considered the _beau idéal_ of chivalry; he had been conspicuous for his accomplishments whilst Duke de Valois, although only twenty-one when he ascended the throne, upon which he was no sooner installed than compelled to quit his capital to oppose the enemies of France, leaving the management of the state to his mother Louisa of Savoy, who was not destitute of talent, but vain and intriguing, Francis, after performing prodigies of valour, and killing many foes with his own hand at the battle of Pavia, was taken prisoner and conveyed to Madrid. On returning to France he was received with the utmost joy by his subjects; in this reign the principles of protestantism were first promulgated and several persons were burnt for subscribing to the tenets of Luther. Francis was occupied constantly with war, from the commencement of his reign until the year of his death. He had many virtues but they were sullied by infidelity to his engagements, and his persecution of the protestants whom he sacrificed as heretics. Notwithstanding that his time was so much occupied by his enemies that a very short period of his reign was passed at Paris, he found means to embellish that city; the Church of St-Merri in the _Rue St-Martin_ was built by his orders, precisely as it now stands, in the year 1520. The style is Sarrasenzic, much richness of sculpture is displayed, particularly over and around the middle door, well meriting the close attention of an amateur. At the same period were many of the churches now standing extensively repaired and nearly rebuilt, amongst which St. Eustache, St. Gervais, St. Jacques-la-Boucherie, of which the tower only remains, St. Germain-l'Auxerrois, etc., several colleges and hospitals were instituted, fountains and hotels erected, but scarcely any of them are now to be seen, or at any rate very few as constructed in their original form. He was succeeded by his son Henry II in 1547, who like his predecessors was constantly occupied with war, but gained one point, that of taking the last place which the English retained in France, being Calais, which surrendered to the Duke de Guise; after a reign of thirteen years Henry was killed at a tournament held in the _Rue St-Antoine_, by Montgomery, the captain of his guard. The cruelties of which he was guilty towards the protestants entirely eclipse whatever good qualities he possessed, which principally consisted in desperate courage with extraordinary prowess; he was also zealous in his friendships. According to Dulaure, that part of the Louvre which is the oldest, was built by Henry II from the design of Pierre Lescot. I have found other authors attribute the erection of a portion of the Louvre to Francis, but it appears that his son had all pulled down which was then standing, and had it built as it now remains, except the wing in which the pictures are exhibited, which is of a more recent date, and was not terminated until the time of Louis XIV. The augmentation of some few colleges and hospitals were the only acts of this reign from which any advantages to Paris were derived. In 1559, at the age of sixteen, Francis II ascended the throne; his name is familiar to us as the first husband of the unfortunate Mary, Queen of Scots; his mother, Catherine de Medici, of infamous memory, took the reigns of government in her hands and wreaked all her fury upon the protestants. Francis, too young to have displayed any decided tone of character, expired in 1560; the persecution of the huguenots, as the followers of the Reformed Church were styled, seems to have exclusively occupied the whole time during this short reign, therefore no attention was devoted to the improving of Paris, which was next brought under the dominion of the young monster, Charles IX, or rather the continued reign of his sanguinary mother, Catherine, he being but ten years of age. The massacre of the night of St. Bartholomew is known to all. Charles certainly had some revulsive feelings on the subject, and several times would have given orders to stop it, but Catherine bade him assert the claims of heaven, and be the noble instrument of its vengeance, "Go on, then," exclaimed the King, "and let none remain to reproach me with the deed," and after all, when daylight appeared, he placed himself at a window of the Louvre, which overlooks the Seine, and with a carbine he fired at the unfortunate fugitives who tried to save themselves by swimming across the river. In his reign was built the Tuileries, he himself laying the first stone; it was intended for the Queen Mother, but Catherine did not inhabit it long, her conscience not permitting her to enjoy repose anywhere. Charles died a few months after the dreadful massacre of the protestants, a prey to all the pangs of remorse, and was succeeded in 1574 by his brother Henry III. Brought up in the same pernicious school, under the same infamous mother as his predecessor, little could be hoped from such a being; he was inclined, however, to be somewhat more tolerant than his brother, but was frightened into persecuting the protestants; his mother died at the age of seventy, goaded by the consciousness of the crimes she had committed; civil war raged during the reign of Henry, and he was obliged to quit his capital and join the protestants, whom he soon, however, betrayed; without energy to adopt any certain line of conduct, he balanced between the two parties of catholics and protestants, until both sects despised him, and at length he was stabbed by a fanatic friar, named Jacques Clement. Several convents and religious establishments were founded in his reign, amongst the rest the Feuillans, which was extensive and had a church attached, but in 1804 the whole was demolished, and on its site, and that of the monastery of the Capucins, were built the Rue Rivoli, Castiglione, and Monthabor, and a terrace of the gardens of the Tuileries is still called the Feuillans. The Pont Neuf was also built in this reign. In 1589, Henry IV, surnamed the Great, succeeded to the throne; he was of the house of Bourbon, and descended from Robert, the second son of Louis the Ninth. He was compelled to begin his reign by laying siege to his own capital, which was in the hands of his enemies, who defended it with 58,000 troops, and 1,500 armed priests, scholars and monks, and after three years' vain endeavours he was obliged to renounce the protestant religion, and conform to the catholic ceremonies, which produced a truce, and Henry at last entered Paris. By his mild and judicious conduct he regenerated the prosperity of France, and published the famous edict of Nantes in favour of the protestants, and acted with considerable wisdom under the difficult circumstances in which he was placed, by the intemperate zeal of the catholics and huguenots. At last, after many unsuccessful attempts upon his life, he was stabbed in his own carriage by Ravaillac, a religious fanatic, who conceived that the King was not sufficiently zealous in the cause of catholicism; he was regretted by every worthy character throughout his realms, for, although he had many of the faults common to men, yet he had such redeeming qualities that he well merited the title of _Great_. During his reign Paris was considerably embellished, the improvement of the city being with him a favourite object. The Hospital of Saint Louis was built by his orders, himself laying the first stone; it is still standing, and is generally filled with patients, who receive the most humane treatment. It is situated in the Rue Carême Prenant, near the Barrière du Combat. He established a manufactory of Persian carpets, on the _Quai de Billy_, No. 30. The Rue and Place Dauphine, the Place Royale, which still exhibits a square of houses unaltered in style since the day they were built, owed their construction to his mania for building and passion for augmenting and improving his capital. Several other streets were extended and in part rebuilt under his reign, besides which he founded different institutions, had divers fountains and gates erected, as well as bridges, and some other public edifices, which having since disappeared or become the houses of individuals, workshops, warehouses, etc., it is not worthwhile to recapitulate them, as they cease to be objects of interest. Several theatres were established at this period for the first time, the performers having merely given representations in large rooms belonging to public buildings where they could get accommodation, particularly in the Hôtel de Bourgoyne, in the Rue Mauconseil, which at last acquired the name of a theatre; but a company of Italians received such encouragement from Henry IV, that they were enabled, in a situation assigned them regularly, to establish a theatre in the Hôtel d'Argent, Rue de la Poterie, corner of the Rue de la Verrerie. He was equally the patron of literature, and of the arts and sciences; the Tuileries and Louvre, under his directions, received the material and superintendence which was requisite for their completion, as far as the design extended at that epoch. In 1610 Louis XIII, but nine years of age, became heir to the throne, and Marie de Medici, his mother and widow of Henry IV, was nominated Regent; her first act was to call into power all her husband's enemies, which consisted of her own favourites, through whom she governed, and when her regency ceased, her son followed her example and became the instrument of others, until the power of governing was exclusively acquired by Cardinal Richelieu, who devoted his extraordinary talents in a degree to the interests of his country, but more especially to the gratification of his vanity, and the promotion of his ambitious projects; descending to the extremes of injustice, dissimulation, and cruelty, to accomplish his object, he became the persecutor of Mary, who had raised him from comparative obscurity, and caused her exile, in which she died in poverty, which she certainly merited by her misconduct, but not by the instigation of her _protégé_ Richelieu. But with all his sins, he effected much good; he founded the Royal Printing establishment, the French Academy, also the Garden of Plants; he built the _Palais-Royal_ and rebuilt the Church and College of the Sorbonne. In this reign more religious establishments were founded than in any preceding, amongst which were the Convent of the _Carmes Déchaussés_, No. 70, _Rue de Vaugirard_, the monks of which possessed a secret for making a particular kind of liquid which is called _Eau des Carmes_, and is still in demand; the church and building belonging to the establishment are now standing, and were recently occupied by nuns. The Convent of _Jacobins_ between the _Rues du Bac_ and _St-Dominique_, with its Church, which still remains and is called _St-Thomas d'Aquin_, is well worth notice, and the monastery is now occupied by the armoury which is one of the most interesting sights of Paris. The _Bénédictines Anglaises_, No. 269, _Rue St-Jacques_, was formerly occupied by English monks, who fled their country on account of some persecution in the reign of Henry VIII. In 1674, Father Joseph Shirburne, the prior of monastery, pulled down the old building, and erected another in its place more commodious, also a church attached to it in which James the Second of England was buried, as also his daughter Mary Stuart. It has now become the property of an individual, and is at present occupied as a factory of cotton. The Oratoire in the _Rue Saint-Honoré_, since devoted to protestant worship, was built in the year 1621 by M. de Berulle, since Cardinal, on the site of the _Hôtel du Bouchage_, once the residence of Gabrielle d'Estrées, the favourite mistress of Henry IV. The Convent of the Capucins, situated in the _Place des Capucins_, at present an Hospital. _Séminaire des Oratoriens_, _Rue du Faubourg Saint-Jacques_, 254, now occupied by the Deaf and Dumb. _Collége des Jésuites_, at present College of _Louis-le-Grand_. Convent of _Petits-Pères_: the church of which still remains and is situated at the corner of the _Rue Notre-Dame-des-Victoires_. The Monk Fiacre, called a Saint, was buried in this church; thinking that his sanctity was a preservative against evil, they stuck his portrait on all the hackney coaches, which was the cause of their ever after being called Fiacre. A further recapitulation of these establishments would only be tedious to the reader, particularly as they are now for the most part become private houses; suffice it to say, that in the reign of Louis XIII twenty monasteries were established at Paris. The nunnery of _Ursulines_; No. 47, _Rue Sainte-Avoye_, now a Jews' synagogue. The Convent of the Visitation of St. Mary, _Rue Saint-Antoine_, Nos. 214 and 216; the church, still standing, was built in 1632 after the model of _Notre-Dame-de-la-Rotonde_ at Rome, and is called _Notre-Dame-des-Anges_. Another convent of the same order was built in 1623 in the _Rue Saint-Jacques_, Nos. 193 and 195, and is I believe still occupied by nuns, as it was so very recently. The convent of _Filles-de-la-Madeleine_, _Rue des Fontaines_, between the Nos. 14 and 16, which has now become a house of seclusion for women who have been convicted of offences. The Convent of the Annonciades Celestes or Filles Bleues, founded by the Marchioness de Verneuil, mistress of Henry IV, is now in spite of all its pompous titles a waggon office in the _Rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine_, No. 29. The Assumption, a convent for nuns, of which the church is still standing in the _Rue Saint-Honoré_, between the Nos. 369 and 371, is remarkable for its large dome, but appears out of proportion with the rest of the building, which is otherwise not destitute of merit. The _Val-de-Grâce_, a Benedictine Abbey, _Rue Faubourg Saint-Jacques_, between the Nos. 277 and 279. The Queen Anne of Austria founded the establishment in 1621; the church is still preserved in perfect order, and is of very rich architecture, too profuse in ornament. The rest of the building, once inhabited by Benedictine nuns, is now an asylum for sick or wounded soldiers, being a military hospital. _Port-Royal_, a convent for nuns, established in 1625 in the _Rue de la Bourbe_, is now a lying-in hospital. The Convent of the _Filles de Sainte-Elisabeth_; the first stone was laid by Marie de Medici in 1628, but was, like a multitude of others, suppressed in 1790, the church only remaining; it is situated in the _Rue du Temple_, between Nos. 107 and 109. A Convent for Benedictine Nuns founded in 1636 in the _Rue de Sèvres_, No. 3, being suppressed in 1778, was converted into the more useful purpose of an hospital, and as such it still remains. The Convent of the _Filles de la Ste-Croix_, situated No. 86, _Rue de Charonne_, was occupied as recently as 1823 by nuns; it was founded in 1639. The noble church of _St-Roch, Rue St-Honoré_, was commenced as a chapel in 1587, and in 1622 was converted into a parish church, but was not entirely finished until 1740. It is now the church attended by the royal family, and is an object of interest to every one who visits Paris. The church of _Ste-Marguerite_ was erected in 1625 in the _Rue St-Bernard_, Nos. 28 and 30, _Faubourg St-Antoine_, and is still attended by the inhabitants of that quarter. _Maison de Scipion_ was founded in a street of the same name in the year 1622 by an Italian gentleman named Scipio Sardini, and is now the bakehouse for making bread for all the hospitals in Paris. Such were the principal edifices instituted in Paris, during the reign of Louis XIII, either as Convents, Monasteries, or Nunneries, with churches attached to them; I have cited the most conspicuous of those of which any vestiges remain, indicating their different localities, besides a number of hospitals, most of which I have stated; that of the _Incurables_ certainly merits attention, it was founded in 1632 in the _Rue de Sèvres_, and is now a refuge for those women of whom no hopes can be cherished of ultimate recovery. The Palace of the _Luxembourg_ was one of the most important edifices erected in this reign by Mary de Medici whilst she was regent in 1615, in the _Rue Vaugirard_, at present the Chamber of Peers, after having served the purpose of a prison, for which a portion of it is still appropriated for criminals against the state; but with its large and beautiful gardens it merits a more detailed description, which will be given under the head of public monuments. The whole number of religious establishments of all descriptions built in the reign of Louis XIII, amount to forty-nine, besides many Bridges, Fountains, Hôtels, Statues, etc., etc.; which altogether so augmented Paris that it became requisite to have another wall, affording the capital more extended dimensions, which was accordingly constructed. Notwithstanding all these improvements the streets of Paris were in a most filthy condition, constantly emitting a disagreeable odour; they were very narrow and the greater portion of them very ill paved, besides which they were infested with thieves, and complaints were continually arising against the hosts of pages and lackeys who insulted people in the streets, and were continually committing some disorders, both during the day and the night, when persons were frequently killed in the skirmishes that were constantly taking place. Ordinances and edicts were continually appearing, forbidding the pages and lackeys to wear arms, but all of no avail; when any one was arrested, he was rescued by his companions, and the officers of police sometimes killed. Louis XIII, ever feeble in mind, and probably in constitution, died at the age of 42; it was supposed from a premature decay. The history of the reign of Louis the Fourteenth and those which follow to the present day are so well known to the English, that whatever I might state respecting them would only be to my readers a repetition of that of which they are already informed, as the continual wars for the last two centuries between England and France have brought the nations in constant contact; but prior to that period, even the most prominent events of the French history are but little known to the English, and in order to enhance the enjoyment of examining the old buildings in Paris, I conceived it necessary to give a slight sketch of the monarchs under whom they were erected, with the dates as accurately as could be ascertained, but consider that it would be useless to do so as regards those edifices constructed since the reign of Louis XIII, as they can only afford pleasure as regards their utility or beauty; as if not two hundred years old, the age of their date ceases to excite interest, although I shall describe them in due course. I have often been surprised that in all schools, although they give the history of Rome, of Greece, and of course of England, yet of France, which is the country the nearest to us, we are suffered to remain ignorant as to its history. We have all heard of the battles of Cressy, Poitiers and Agincourt, and remember that they were gained by the Edwards and Henry the Fifth, but few persons know anything about who were the French kings under whom they were lost; the only instances where the history of the French is brought to our minds, is when any connexion by marriage has occurred between the families of the sovereigns of the two nations. CHAPTER IV. Paris as it is, being a general survey of the place itself, its attractions, its demerits, the inhabitants, their manners to strangers, towards each other, their customs, and occupations. [Illustration: Church of the Madeleine. Published by F. Sinnett, 15, Grande rue Verte.] I know no better means of obtaining a first general view of Paris and its inmates, than by taking a walk upon the Boulevards, I therefore will invite the reader to imagine himself promenading with me, we will begin at the Madeleine, and occupy a short time in surveying that noble and majestic building; it greatly reminds me of the Temple of Theseus, at Athens; it is perhaps one of the most perfect monuments, as regards its exterior, in Europe, the statues and sculpture are fine as to their general effect, but the lofty handsome pillars lose much of their beauty from the joins of the stones being too conspicuous, and having become black, the fine broad mass is cut up, and gives one an idea of so many cheeses placed one upon another, or rather they resemble the joints of a caterpillar: the interior is certainly most gorgeous, and at first strikes the beholder as a most splendid display of rich magnificence; but a moment's reflection, and instantly he feels how inconsistent is all that gilded mass and profusion of ornament with the beautiful and chaste simplicity of the exterior. I never can conceive that all that glitter of gold is in good keeping with the calm repose and dignity which ought to reign throughout a church. The Madeleine was begun in the reign of Louis the Fifteenth, and was intended for different purposes as it slowly progressed through the different reigns which have since occurred. Louis Philippe at length decided upon completing it with the energy that had ever before been wanting. Several public monuments had been suffered to remain dormant during the two preceding reigns, or their operations were carried on with so sparing a hand, that whilst a few workmen were employed at one end of a building, weeds and moss began to grow on the other. This pigmy style of proceeding was well-satirised during the reign of Charles X in one of the papers, which announced in large letters, "the workmen at the Madeleine have been doubled! where there was one, there are now two!" But soon after the present King came to the throne, capital was found, and the industrious employed. Thus much for this splendid work of art; let us turn round and look about us: Ah! see, there are the works of nature, how gay and cheerful those flowers appear so tastefully arranged in Madame Adde's shop, whilst she herself looks as fresh and healthy as her plants which are blooming around her; yet with that robust and country air she is a Parisian, but, as she justly remarked to me, she was always brought up to work hard, and as her labours have been well rewarded, health and content have followed. She and her flowers have already been noticed in Mrs. Gore's Season in Paris, who used to pay her frequent visits, for who indeed would go anywhere else who had once dealt with her, for what more can one desire than civility, good nature, reasonable charges, and a constant variety of the choicest articles; I therefore can conscientiously recommend all my readers who come to Paris, and are amateurs of Flora, to call now and then on Madame Adde, No. 6, _Place de la Madeleine_. Now having contemplated the beauties of art and of nature, let us observe some animated specimens of her works: what a moving mass is before us, 'tis a merry scene, the laughing children running after, and dodging each other, rolling on the ground with the plenitude of their mirth, the neat looking _bonnes_ (nursery maids) still smiling while they chide, the jovial coachmen wrestling on their stands and playing like boys together, but all in good humour, and content seems to sit on every brow, and even the aged as they meet, greet each other with a smile. How infectious is cheerfulness, when I have the blue devils I always go and take a walk on the _Boulevards_; and what makes these people so happy? is the natural question; because they are content with a little, and pleased with a trifle; then they are a trifling people is the reply. What boots it I would ask? happiness is all that we desire, and I persist that those are the best philosophers who can obtain happiness with the least means. But how the green trees, the white stone houses, the gay looking shops, the broad road with the equipages rolling along all contribute to heighten the animation of the scene. We are now at the _Rue de la Paix_; it is certainly a noble street, and we will turn down it to look at the statue of Napoleon on the column in the _Place Vendôme_; the pillar, which was cast from the cannon taken from the enemies of France, is decidedly a work of extraordinary merit and beauty, and requires a good deal of study to appreciate the exquisite workmanship displayed in its execution. But if it were not for the reminiscences associated with the character of Napoleon, who could ever admire his statue on the top of the column, in a costume so contrary to all that is graceful and dignified; a little cocked hat with its horrid stiff angles, a great coat with another angle sticking out, the _tout ensemble_ presenting a deformity rather than an ornament: however there he stands on the pinnacle of what he and men in general would call the monument of his glory, a memento of blood, of tears of widows and orphans. Could the names of those ruined and heart broken beings be inscribed upon it, whose misery was wrought by his triumphs, it would indeed tell a tale of woe. The _Place Vendôme_, in which the column stands, has a very noble appearance, being a fine specimen of the style of building of Louis the Fourteenth, in whose reign it was erected; and he too fed his ambition with wholesale flow of blood, and with treasure wreaked from the hard earned labour of his subjects, and the abridgments of their comforts, but both were ultimately destined to chew the bitter cud of mortification, and however bright the sun by which they rose to imaginary glory, they were doomed to set in a starless night. But let us turn from these lugubrious images of war, and regain the _Boulevards_ and enjoy the pleasure of beholding a peaceful people. Do not let us fail to observe that beautiful mansion at the corner of the _rue Lafitte_; it is called the _Cité Italienne_, and can only be compared to a palace, the richness of the carve-work surpassing any thing of the description throughout the whole capital; although it has recently become so much the mode to adorn their houses with sculpture, yet none have arrived at the same degree of perfection displayed in the _Maison d'or_: carved out on the solid stone is a boar hunt, which is really executed with considerable talent; to give an accurate description of all its beauties would much exceed the space I could afford it in justice to other objects; it is very extensive, and is I believe three houses united in one. I have understood that the sum total expended upon it was 1,600,000 _francs_, or 64,000_l._ But that my readers may form some idea of the interior, I recommend them to enter the _Ancien Café Hardy_, which is established as a _Restaurant_ within this beautiful building, and however interested my countrymen may feel in all that is intellectual, yet at the same time they possess that much of the sensual, as to have a very strong predilection for a good dinner, of the quality of which few are better judges; but with them it is not only as regards the excellence of the viands, but also they have their peculiar tastes as to how and where it is served; knowing so well their ideas in this respect, I can recommend them with confidence to _Messieurs Verdier and Dauzier_, convinced that all their different fancies will be gratified. If they wish to be exclusive, to enjoy their meal tête-a-tête with their friend, they will find an elegant little apartment suited to their wishes; if they be three or four or more persons, they will still find they can be accommodated in such a manner that they may always imagine themselves at home; in fact there are about twenty apartments of different sizes, which are decorated in the most handsome style, yet all varying with regard to the pattern of the furniture, and all uniting an appearance of comfort and elegance, the sofa, chairs, and curtains of each little cabinet being of the richest silk, and the other decorations are consistently luxurious. The view from the windows presents all that can be imagined that is amusing and animating, overlooking the most agreeable part of the _Boulevards_, being that which is designated the _Boulevard Italien_, and is the most fashionable resort in Paris. By the aid of a _calorifère_, the whole establishment is heated to an agreeable degree of warmth, but for those who like to see a cheering blaze there are chimneys which afford them the means of having that indulgence. If they prefer dining in the public saloon, for the sake of seeing the variety of visiters by which it is frequented, they will find a most splendid apartment brilliantly fitted up, being entirely of white and gold, where every thing that is useful will be found, but always so arranged as to be rendered ornamental; in the elegant chandeliers by which the apartment is adorned, oil on a purified principle is burned; no attention in short has been omitted which could tend towards rendering the establishment an attraction for the English. I happened to be there when an apartment was arranged for a wedding party, and nothing could exceed the taste and elegance with which the table was disposed, presenting a perfect picture, where splendour and luxury abounded, but yet where a certain degree of consistency was preserved. With regard to the superior quality of the different delicacies which are provided, and the culinary talent displayed in their preparation, even Vatel himself might be more than satisfied. I have visited all the most celebrated _Restaurants_ in Paris, and should certainly say, that for the good quality of the articles of the table, for the comfortable arrangements of the apartments, and attentive civility of the attendants, there is not any that can surpass the _Café Hardy_, although many there are which are infinitely more expensive. Continuing our walk upon the _Boulevards_, it is worthy of remark how richly some of the new houses in and about the _Rue Richelieu_ are sculptured, so as to present the appearance of a succession of palaces, we next arrive at the _Boulevard Montmartre_, where the influx of people is the greatest: we pass by the _Passage des Panoramas_ but do not enter it just now, although it contains some of the handsomest shops in Paris, but it is too crowded, we prefer keeping our course on the _Boulevards_ where we can look about us at our ease and contemplate the physiognomies of the varied groups before us; let us halt a while at the Theatre _des Variétés_ and remark with what eagerness numbers stop to scan the programme of the entertainments for the evening, amongst them are all ages, all classes, the common soldier, porter, and servant girl, all possessing a high idea of their judgment in theatrical affairs; passing on a little further the Theatre _du Gymnase_ arrests the observer's notice, where _Bouffé_ has so long displayed his comic powers, which certainly in my recollection have never been surpassed, and I doubt if they ever have been equalled; there is ever a chasteness in his acting, from which he never departs, and keeps the audience in a roar of laughter without ever having recourse to grimace or buffoonery. The stupendous _Porte_ (gate) _St Denis_ next strikes the eye, and has a most imposing effect; it was built by Louis XIV in commemoration of his victories, as I have before stated; the _bas-reliefs_ with which it is adorned represent pyramids, and colossal allegorical figures of Holland and the Rhine, the capture of Maestricht, the passage of the Rhine at Tolhuys, which with two lions are its most conspicuous ornaments. Whilst the mind is still occupied in reflecting upon this noble monument, another awakens attention at a short distance from the last; it is the _Porte St-Martin_, _Boulevard St-Martin_, which has been represented as a copy of that of St-Severus at Rome; it owes its erection to the same founder and was raised for the same purpose, that of publishing to posterity the fame of his victories; he is allegorically represented as Hercules defeating the Germans, the taking of Limburg, Besançon, etc. I shall not attempt to enter into a minute detail of these objects, it would only tire me to do so, and perhaps fatigue my reader still more; I shall therefore content myself by stating that, taken as a whole, it has an extremely fine effect. A few paces farther is the Theatre of the _Porte St-Martin_, which was never a fashionable resort, but has often produced me much entertainment, particularly when the celebrated Mademoiselle George afforded it the benefits of her talents; proceeding a few hundred yards distance, the Theatre of the _Ambigu-Comique_ presents itself as worthy of remark; although of a minor rank, I remember being much amused at the long trains of persons waiting, according to the custom in France, at the doors of this Theatre for admission when a popular piece was played, called Nostradamus; as two persons can only pay at once no more are suffered to enter at a time; hence they form in pairs behind each other until they extend sometimes, the length of a furlong; they remain very quiet occasionally for hours, the first comers standing close to the doors, and as others arrive they regularly take their station behind the last persons of the _queue_, as it is styled. I remember an Englishman coming up when the tail had attained rather an inconvenient length, and he did not relish placing himself at the end of it, and endeavoured to slip into one of the joints as it was much nearer the door; but a _gendarme_, perceiving his drift, very unceremoniously marched him to the end of the queue, as precedence is allotted to persons in proportion as they arrive earlier or later and the most perfect order is by that means preserved; how much better is such an arrangement than that which prevails in England at the entering of the theatres, where physical strength alone gives priority, and the bigger the brute the sooner he enters, whilst screams and murmurs attest the treading upon toes, squeezing of ribs, etc. The fountain of _St-Martin_ in front of the _Ambigu-Comique_ is one of the most beautiful objects in Paris; a handsome font rises in the middle from which the water falls in sheets of silvery profusion, whilst around, lions disgorge liquid streams which all unite in the _grand basin_; this sight is most beautiful to behold by the light of the moon. We next enter the _Boulevard du Temple_, where there is such a number of theatres and coffee-houses all joining each other, that there is really some difficulty of ascertaining which is the one or the other. The Theatre _de la Gaieté_, the resort principally of the middle or lower classes, is one of the most conspicuous, as also the _Cirque Olympique_, or Franconi's Theatre, where the performances resemble those at Astley's. There is always an immense crowd on these _Boulevards_ amusing themselves around a number of shows; or playing or looking at various games which are constantly going forward, singers, musicians, conjurors, merry andrews, fortune tellers, orators, dancers, tumblers, etc., are all exerting their powers, to gain a little coin from the easily pleased multitude; these _boulevards_ have in fact the appearance of a perpetual _fête_ or fair, but the curious ideas that appear to me to have entered the heads of these people in the nature of their performances, are such as I should imagine none would ever have thought of but the French; nor any lower orders but of that nation could have been found to appreciate such singular exhibitions. One of this description particularly excited my notice; a man came up with another man in his arms and popped him down just as if he was a block; he had no sooner deposited his burden than he began a long harangue upon the talents of the individual whom he had just deposited before us, in acting a machine or automaton, he then to prove his assertion gave him a knock on the back of the head, when it fell forward just as if it had belonged to a figure made with joints; he then gave it a chuck of the chin so violent that it sent the head back so as to lean on the coat collar; at last he put it in its proper position, he then operated upon the arms and legs of the image actor in the same manner, and so perfectly lifeless did he appear, that many new comers who had not heard the introductory speech of the showman, absolutely thought that it was on inanimate figure made to imitate a man that was before them, as the orator always designated his piece of still life his _mécanique_, which means _machine_; in order to afford every one the benefit of a close examination, he lifted up his automaton, then flumped him directly opposite and close to the persons who formed part of the circle and whom he judged were most likely to throw a sou, bidding us observe that even the eye never winked and that there was not the slightest breathing perceptible, and in justice I must say I never saw an actor better play his part, for watch him as closely as you would there never was the least symptom of life visible. I had often before seen images made to imitate men, but never had till then seen a man imitate an image: a few paces farther was a man acting a variety of parts with extraordinary humour, an old nurse out of place, then a young lover entreating his mistress to have pity on him, next a man in a violent passion, presently, an epicure eating _bonbons_ on the verge of the grave; the inexhaustible force of lungs, the incessant supply of words and ideas that many of them appeared to possess, to me was quite a matter of wonderment. At a short distance is a fort with cannon, whilst persons take a cross-bow and shoot at it; if they can hit one of the guns it naturally goes off; for the privilege of having a shot, a sou is paid if he do not hit the cannon, but if he succeed in so doing, he receives a sou; the reader may suppose that a miss takes place at the rate of about seven times to a hit; and after several young countrymen had been trying in vain, and had lost a good many pence, they began to grumble and declare that it was next to impossible to hit the cannon more than once in a hundred times, upon which the proprietor himself took the cross-bow and at the same distance as the others stood, hit the cannon five times running with the most perfect apparent ease, which certainly silenced the grumblers, but convinced them of their own awkwardness. My attention was next attracted by a pretty little building surrounded by moss and trees, at the top of a large glass globe which contained water with several gold and silver fish swimming in it, while some canary birds, who were sometimes perching on the house, the moss, or the trees, ever and anon flew to the bottom of the globe and were seen fluttering about amongst the fish, then ascend to their little building without having wetted a feather; the effect is very pretty and the deception is pleasing, inasmuch as the birds require no torturing tuition to perform their little parts; the secret consists in one globe being placed in another considerably larger, the outer being filled with water in which are the fish, whilst the inner wherein the birds are seen is dry and empty. A fortress where canary birds are again the performers is a sight which is extremely curious, as a proof of what these little creatures are capable of executing under the management of a master, where I fear gentleness has not only been exercised; a number of little cannon are placed to which the birds apply a substance at the end of a little stick which causes them to go off, when some fall and pretend to die and the victors advance with their muskets, and strutting about give you to understand that the fort is taken and that they are conquerors. To recapitulate all the curious manoeuvres which are constantly going forward on the _Boulevards_ would swell a volume, we will therefore pass on to the more retired parts, where the fine vistas of high trees have been spared the havoc of the Three Days; these once extended throughout the whole course of the _Boulevards_, but so many trees were cut down to form barricades, that those beautiful arches formed by rows of lofty elms, which were merely trained on the inner side, the outer being suffered to grow in the wild luxuriance of nature, are only now to be met with "few and far between." Near the spot where formerly stood the much dreaded Bastille, now rises to the view the column erected to commemorate the Revolution of 1830; inclining to the right, the _Boulevards_ then lead to the Seine. In many parts of these delightful promenades, double rows of chairs are placed, and persons of the highest respectability come from different quarters and sit for hours in them, amused with observing the happy moving scene around them; the seats on the _Boulevard Italien_ are often occupied by persons of fashion, who arrive in their equipages, then take chairs for an hour or two, whilst their carriages wait for them; the charge for each chair is one sou, but every one takes two, one for the purpose of resting the feet, and generally takes ices which are served from Tortoni's, long celebrated for the supply of that cooling refreshment. It is by night that the _Boulevards_ are seen to the greatest advantage, the innumerable lights blazing from the different theatres, the lamps placed before the coffee-houses, the brilliant shops, the trees, the equipages, the sound of music and singing, the houses, which resemble palaces, the gilded cafés all united has the air of a fairy scene to any one brought suddenly upon them. Some of the handsomest shops and coffee-houses are to be found on the _Boulevards_, and dwellings where many of the most respectable persons reside. There is always an humble traffic going on from an immense number of stalls, in which various commodities are sold, and although the assortment consists of a hundred different descriptions of articles, yet all are at one price, consisting of everything that can well be imagined, from a comb to a pair of bellows, the vender singing out the price with stentorian lungs, perhaps twenty-five sous, more or less, and as there is a great deal of opposition with these itinerant merchants, they often try who can cry out the loudest, and succeed in raising a terrific din, which amuses the mob, who consider that all is life and spirit as long as there is noise and fun going forward; these _Boulevards_, therefore, are just such as suit the Parisian lower classes. Those on the south side of the Seine are an exact contrast, most of them being so deserted, that in viewing the long lines of tall arched elms, with scarcely an individual moving beneath them, one could imagine that they were a hundred miles from any capital; but there is something pleasing in retiring to these lone green shades, when fatigued with the bustle and rattling noises of the city. The only individuals usually to be met with in these quiet _Boulevards_ are now and then a nursery-maid with a child, an old lady of the gone-by school, and her female servant of the same era, who jog on at a slow and solemn pace as they moan over the good old times that are passed, and sympathise in expressions of horror at the vices of the present day; a tall thin battered looking beau, whose youth was passed in the last century, meets the antiquated pair, mutual salutations take place, the gentleman doffs his hat, and with a graceful sort of turn and wave of the hand, at the same time bows his body full half way to the ground, which, although rather stiffened with age, still retains a shadow of the elegance of former times. Madame makes a very pretty reverence, somewhat ceremonious, according to the flippant ideas of the present day, entreats Monsieur would put on his hat, would be in despair if he should catch cold; he obeys, is enchanted to see her look so well, but desolated to hear she has a little cold, and after expressing the most fervent hopes for her getting better, he takes his leave, having too good a notion of propriety to join the lady in her walk lest a _liaison_ between them might be suspected. How different this worn-out remnant of the days of Louis the Sixteenth from _la jeune France_ of the present day, when the usual greeting between the young men would be a nod of the head, "_Bon jour, ca va bien?_" adieu, and away, which is tantamount to "How do, quite well, good bye," and off; with a lady the abruptness would be a little softened, but any politeness that gives much trouble is quite at a discount with such young men of the present day in France. A solitary workman, a sentinel, and an old soldier, if near the Hospital of the Invalids, are probably the only persons you will usually meet on the southern _Boulevards_, except now and then I have seen a ladies' boarding-school thread its course beneath the thick foliage, whose mistress perchance selects a retired spot for giving her pupils a little air and exercise, removed from the gaze of the city throng. Whatever pleasing impressions these shady retreats may have made upon the mind, on re-entering Paris they are soon dissipated; if by the public streets, the variety of noises which assail the ear, and the confusion of so many people bustling along upon a little bit of pavement not two feet wide, gives you plenty of occupation both to make your way, and get out of the way; when, compelled to give place to some lady, you descend from the narrow flags into the road, and whilst you are manoeuvring to escape a cart you see coming towards you, "_Gare_" is bawled out with stunning roar; you look round and find the pole of a coach within an inch of your shoulder, you scramble out of the way as fast as you can through mud and puddle, and are glad to clap your back against a house to make room for some lumbering vehicle, where the naves of the wheels stick out with menacing effect, happy to congratulate yourself that there is just room enough for it to pass without jamming you quite flat, and that you are quit of the danger at the expense of being smeared with a little mud from the wheel; this is the case in many of the streets in that part of Paris called the _Cité_, and others which cross from the _Rue Saint-Denis_ to the _Rue Saint-Martin_ and _du Temple_ etc. Happily for my readers, it is not very probable that many of them will ever be called into those neighbourhoods, or if they be, it will probably be in a carriage, when they will not stand near the same chance of being crushed to death; but as I explore all parts and am thereby the better enabled to give a faithful picture of Paris, I consider it incumbent on me to inform my country people that there are such streets that they may better know how to enjoy Paris by keeping out of the way of them. To see Paris to the best advantage it is requisite to get up early, that is about three o'clock in the morning in the months of June or July, before any one is stirring; this indeed is pretty much the case with all cities, but particularly the French capital, because the streets being very narrow and crowded, you have not room to look up and look about. Paris in the old quarters at that hour, or in a bright moonlight when all are at rest, has the effect of a city composed of chateaux or castles joined together, the height of the houses, the great heavy _porte cochères_, the castellated style of the attic windows and often projecting turrets, with the profusion of iron work, combine in giving a degree of gloom that appears to tell a tale of olden time, and many of the houses date as far back as Charles the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh, which is coeval with our Henry the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth. There is one house of which the ancient staircase still remaining is as old as the year 1220; it is situated in the _Rue du Four_, near the _Rue de la Harpe_, and called the _Maison Blanche_, having been inhabited by the mother of _Saint-Louis_, but there is no doubt that the only part now standing that could have been built at that period is the staircase; in the same neighbourhood are many objects that would interest the antiquary, to which I shall hereafter allude. Paris is encircled by a double row of _Boulevards_, the north inner circle is that which is the most frequented; the outer circle runs all along the walls which encompass Paris, where the barriers are situated, of which there are fifty-six, all rather handsome buildings than otherwise, and no two of them quite alike. Many of the streets as you approach the farthest _Boulevards_ of Paris have a very dull appearance, consisting in many instances of high walls and habitations separated from each other, with market gardens behind, but which cannot be seen from the street as they are all enclosed, and grass growing here and there in patches give them more the appearance of roads which have been abandoned than of inhabited streets. Some of the modern parts of Paris are extremely handsome and indeed all which has been built within the last five-and-twenty years. The _Chaussée-d'Antin_ is the favourite quarter; there the streets are of a fair width and are well paved, and some very recently built are really beautiful, especially one just finished called the _Rue Tronchet_, just behind the _Madeleine_. The quarter round the _Place Vendôme_ is certainly one of the finest in Paris, and most decidedly the dearest. I know persons who pay fourteen thousand francs a year for unfurnished lodgings in the _Place Vendôme_, that is 600_l._ a year; a whole house in a fashionable quarter of London may be had for the same money; indeed on the _Boulevards_, in some of the _Passages_ and the most fashionable streets in Paris, shops let for more money than in any part of London; there is an instance of a single shop letting for 600_l._ per annum, and not one of particularly extensive dimensions, but situated on the _Boulevard Montmartre_, which is perhaps the best position in Paris. One of the greatest attractions is the _Passages_, something in the style of the Burlington Arcade but mostly superior; of these there are from twenty to thirty, so that in wet weather you may walk a considerable distance under cover. The _Palais-Royal_, the favourite resort of foreigners and provincials, also affords that convenience. Although Paris on the whole is not so regularly built as London, yet there is a sombre grandeur about it which has a fine effect, owing in some degree to the large lofty houses of which it is composed; the straightness, width, and neatness of the streets of London form its beauty, but it is astonishing how foreigners when they first behold it, are struck with the small size of the houses. I remember entering London with an Italian gentleman who had ever before been accustomed to the large massive palaces of Genoa, Florence, etc., and the first remark he made upon our grand metropolis was that it looked like a city of baby houses; another feature in our dwellings does not please the foreign eye, and that is the dingy colour of our bricks, which certainly has not so light an appearance as stone, of which the houses on the Continent are generally built. The irremediable defect in Paris is certainly the narrowness of the streets, although every opportunity is turned to advantage by the government when houses are taken down to compel the proprietors to rebuild them in such a manner as to afford a yard more width to the public, whilst those streets that are at present constructing are on a magnificent plan. The great beauty of Paris consists in its public monuments, which certainly are not only very numerous, but some upon the grandest scale, independent of those which are generally conspicuous in a city; the Barriers and Fountains form a considerable feature in Paris amongst its ornaments. The Parisians generally are a remarkably persevering and industrious people, amongst the trading classes, particularly the women, who often take as ostensible a part in business as their husbands; except that it is an establishment upon a very large scale, the wife is usually the cashier, and you will find her as stationary at the counter almost as the counter itself. The idea that exists in England with respect to married women in France is quite erroneous, for more domestic and stay at home is impossible to be, that is amongst the middle classes; the same remark applies to the lower orders. As to the higher classes they never can be cited as forming a characteristic in any country; receiving a highly finished education, they are all brought to the same degree of polish, and the primitive features are entirely effaced. Good nature is a very conspicuous trait in the French character, and that is continually displayed towards any foreigner; ask your way in the street in a polite manner, and generally the persons become interested in your finding the place you want, and if they do not know themselves, they will go into a shop and enquire for you, and not feel easy until they have ascertained it for you, but it depends much upon the manner in which you address them. A Doctor Smith related to me a circumstance which proves how different is the effect of a courteous and an uncourteous mode of speaking to a Frenchman; the Doctor had with him a friend who was a regular John Bull, and they wishing to know their way to some place, the latter stepped up to a butcher who was standing at his door and asked him in a very rough manner, and received an evasive reply; the Doctor then put the same question to the man but in a more polite form, the butcher replied, "If you will wait a minute, Sir, I will put on my coat and show you the way," which he did in the most good humoured manner, but remarked to the Doctor that every one in France liked to be treated as a fellow man, and not to be spoken to as if they were brutes. Thus it appears that even butchers in France expect to be treated with some degree of politeness. The women are still more tenacious in that respect than the men; they consider, even down to a housemaid, that their sex demands a certain tone of deference, however humble their position, and if a nobleman did not touch his hat to them when they open or shut the door for them, with the usual salutation of good day or good morning, they would pronounce his manners brutal, and say, that although he was a man of title he was not a gentleman; hence the very unceremonious manner that an Englishman has of addressing servants, whether male or female, has kept them very much out of favour with that class of the French community. A scullion, or what may be termed a girl of all work, that has not met with that degree of respect from some of our countrymen to which she considered herself entitled, will remark, that the English may be very rich, but they certainly are not enlightened as we are, with a little drawing up of the head, implying their consciousness of superiority over us semi-barbarians; your charwoman, your washerwoman's drudge, fishwoman, or girl that cries turf about the streets, are all Madame and Mademoiselle when they speak of each other, and with them there is no such word as woman; if a female, she must be a lady, even if her occupation be to pick up rags in the street. The French women certainly excel in the art of dress and everything which appertains to the decoration of the person, but the devotion which exists amongst them to that passion tends greatly towards frivolising the mind; hence I find their inferiority, generally speaking, to English women; in the latter you will often meet, even amongst the middle classes, with a girl who has received a good education; forming her pleasures from pursuits which are purely intellectual, she will not only find enjoyment in that light reading merely calculated to amuse, or that kind of music which consists of pretty quadrilles, a few trifling songs, and two or three lessons adapted for the display of execution, or that style of poetry and of painting which is something of the same nature, just fit to please the fancy without touching the heart; no, you will find that she enters into the very soul of those mental recreations, nor does that interfere with her domestic virtues; she is equally capable of performing every social duty, but she devotes not so considerable a portion of her time and thoughts to dress, nor is she so totally absorbed in the anticipation and retrospection of balls and soirées, to the exclusion of every other feeling, as long as the season for parties continues, which is but too much the case with females in Paris, except with those whose business or occupations prevent them from participating otherwise than very sparingly in the gaieties of that description; but the class I allude to in France, is that which consists of persons of independent fortune, who have never been connected with anything in the shape of trade or even professions, except army or navy, yet whose property is too small to estimate them as belonging to the higher classes, whilst they would consider themselves as degraded by an association with even the richer tradespeople, generally coming under the denomination of middle classes. This grade, immediately below the highest classes and above the middle, is very numerous in Paris, their incomes varying from four hundred to a thousand a-year; with the females in this class there is an exact resemblance to those of the class above, only the sphere is more confined; their education finished, they retain but little of what they have learned, except dancing, singing, and music, because they are calculated for display, and tell in society; drawing is laid aside, even after much proficiency had been acquired, reading confined to the reviews of the popular works of the day, the inexhaustible subjects of conversation are the toilet, which is pre-eminent, balls, soirées, and public places; if literature be introduced, you will find their knowledge of it sufficient to escape the charge of ignorance, particularly in history, as great pains are now taken with their education, and which certainly is of the best description, whilst there is a grace and sweetness of manner which is highly captivating; yet when you become well acquainted with these ladies, whose surface was enchanting, you find at last a want of soul. As a proof how seldom I have found French females express any delight in beholding all the phenomena of an extensive and beautiful country, and if the mind be dead to that charm, how must it be lost to the enjoyments of descriptive poetry and painting, as if the reality afford not pleasure how little can be derived from the representation; I have found in France many exceptions to this rule, women, in fact, whose society afforded a highly intellectual treat. But they are rare, and when one speaks of a people generally, the mass must be stated and not the exceptions. In England, even amongst the classes of the highest fashion, many women are to be met with, who, notwithstanding that they are whirled about in London for months together to parties every night, sometimes to three or four in an evening, to hear and say the nothings that pass current in assemblages of that description, both deteriorating to health and mind, yet on returning to their seats in the country, whilst the husband is following the sports of the field, the females will have recourse to intellectual occupations, and cultivate those seeds of knowledge which had been instilled into their minds during their early youth, thus conferring upon them those companionable powers, which are the great charm of life; the rural scenes around them call their pencils into practice, whilst the true spirit of poetry constantly appears to their feelings in the forms of those beauties of nature which in fact are its life and soul. Embosomed in the calm retirement found in such retreats, the various objects in view engender the love of reading; hence the Englishwoman recruits her mental powers after the frivolizing effects of a season in town. The Frenchwoman goes into the country for the purpose of enjoying the fresh air, she reads a little to kill time, and occupies much of it with her embroidery and other fancy works, and after a short period passed amongst the vine-clad hills, sighs once more to return to her dear Paris, complains of ennui, wonders what the fashions will be at the next Longchamp, and whether they will be such as become her or not, but feeling herself bound to wear whatever may be pronounced the modes, and trusts to her taste to arrange it in such a manner as to set her off to the best advantage. My countrywomen are not so much slaves to fashion and do not care to put on every thing that comes out, if they think it does not suit them, but it must be admitted that they have not the same taste as the French in regard to costume; it is a quality that is peculiar to them, and acknowledged by all the civilised world; in England, Russia, even Greece, ladies of the high ton must send to Paris for their hats and bonnets, and have them from Madame de Barennes, in the _Place Vendôme_, which is not merely an idea, but a fact that they really are replete with that exquisite taste for which they are so justly famed; even the manner in which her lofty and noble saloons are arranged display an elegance of conception, there is a chasteness which pervades the whole, the furniture as Well as the decorations of the room are either of white or ebony and gold, preserving that degree of keeping which is inseparable from a truly classical taste. I must confess that the most refined, the most charming and fascinating women that I ever met with, were some English and Irish ladies who had been some years in France, still retaining all those intellectual qualities which are the brightest gems of the British female character, united with that quiet grace which has so much of dignity and ease, and that pleasing affability appearing but as nature in a truly elegant Frenchwoman; at the same time I think my fair countrywomen are also much improved when they have acquired the same degree of taste in the arrangement of their costume for which the Parisian females have so well merited a reputation. Of course in this comparison I am speaking of the most well-bred females of both countries. Although I do not find the French ladies possessing those high intellectual qualities, which are in a great degree engendered and fostered by certain habits and early associations, I do not conceive that the germs of talent are in the least deficient, but on the contrary, we find them excelling in literature and the arts, in ingenuity, and where exertion is required in trying circumstances, that they are capable of heroism, but there is a natural life and vivacity in the French character that inclines not to study, nor strict application, unless the position in life renders it necessary. The English very frequently are by nature disposed to reflection and even like often to be alone, consequently are undoubtedly a more thinking nation, although not so brilliant, but experience has proved that patient and undeviating perseverance, ultimately, outsteps the more showy and sparkling quality of genius. For the sympathies of the heart I have found the French females most keenly alive, no mothers can be more devotedly attached to their children than they are, and it is repaid to them with interest by their offspring, as a devotional affection towards parents is carried to an extreme; in some instances I should say to a fault, as a daughter in general looks up entirely to them, in regard to the man that they may choose with whom she is to pass the rest of her life, without presuming that she ought to make a selection for herself, considering that her marriage is the affair of her parents, and that she has but to obey their wishes in that, as well as in all other cases; hence it is rarely found that a French young lady has aught of romance in her composition, but is on the contrary the mild, docile, obedient, and affectionate pupil, and often imitator of her mother. The English young lady is a little more rebellious; possessing a more independent spirit, she very soon takes the liberty of thinking for herself, particularly on that subject; and could she totally have her will would act for herself also. Families are much more united in France than in England, and agree together in a most astonishing manner; thus when a daughter marries, instead of quitting her home, the husband arranges his affairs so as to go and live with her parents, and in many cases several families live together and form one little community, which spares the pain of separation of parent and child. The numerous offspring of the celebrated Marquis de Lafayette was a remarkable instance of how whole families can live and agree under the same roof; at his seat called La Grange, his married children and their children and grandchildren were all residing together, whilst he, like one of the ancient patriarchs, was the revered head of his people. I know a case at Boulogne, where in one house there are living together, two great grandfathers, one grandfather and grandmother, two fathers and two mothers and their four children, and what renders it more curious is that they are half English and half French, but all connected by their sons and daughters intermarrying; but strange to say that the English could not agree to live together in that manner, and it is a most extraordinary circumstance much remarked by the French, that wherever the English are settled in any town in France, they always contrive to quarrel with each other, and find employment for the French lawyers; at Boulogne they have at least twice as much practice for the English as for the natives. With regard to the conduct of the French towards foreigners, speaking from the long experience which I have had, I should certainly state that it was kind and attentive when brought into contact in travelling or from any other circumstances, provided that a person does not attempt to support a haughty or supercilious air. I do not consider that, generally speaking, the French are so hospitable as the English, not only as regards foreigners but even amongst themselves; it is not so much their habit. In many houses you may pass an hour or two of an evening, and there will never be any question regarding refreshments; not having the custom of taking tea of an evening, that social bond which unites the family together at a certain hour in England not existing in France, little domestic evening parties seldom occur. I have been to a few amongst what I call the very quiet families of Paris, which are styled the _demi fortunes_, and cakes, beer, wine, sugar and water, etc., were given; in the high fashionable parties tea now is always introduced at about twelve. To ask a friend to a family dinner is not so much the practice in France as in England, as the custom existing in the former of having so many dishes with such a trifle in each, the platters are often pretty well cleared by the usual inmates of the establishment, and they are not prepared for an additional person. With the English who are accustomed to large joints, if two or three additional guests suddenly enter, they are still prepared. The French have also an idea that if they ask you to dinner that they must provide so great a variety, which entails infinitely more trouble than the more simple and more wholesome repast, I should say, of the English. There is a great sympathy in France towards each other in their respective classes; if a quarrel take place in the street between one of the lower and one of the middle class, all that pass by of the former description will take the part of the individual of his own level; the same will be the case with the other classes, often without inquiring into the merits of the case. The impulse of feeling exists to a great degree amongst the French, which is instantly displayed if a person falls or is taken ill in the street, and much feeling is developed if any little accident or misfortune occurs to a poor person passing by. I remember an instance of a woman who was trudging away with a basket of crockery and some eggs at the top, a poor man who was carrying a load slipped, and in his fall upset the woman and broke the greater part of her brittle goods; in this case both being poor persons, it became a knotty point for the French to decide; very long and very warm were the arguments adduced on both sides by the mob which had assembled, the man declared he was too poor to have it in his power to pay for the damage which he had caused, that he had hurt himself very much in the fall and found that quite misfortune enough for him. The woman cried and vowed she could not afford to lose the value of the articles broken, and the eggs belonged to another person who had given her the money to buy them, and persisted that the man ought to pay for what he had broken, although she admitted it was a very hard case for him; what was to be done? a subscription it was decided was the only means of settling the affair, and one person giving half a franc by way of example, engaged to be collector, and from the different bystanders, each giving a few sous, the sum required was soon produced, and all parties departed with the conviction that the affair had been equitably arranged. The French are in the habit of rising extremely early, especially the lower classes, and even amongst the middle and higher ranks they are rarely so late in all their operations as the English. Persons in easy circumstances amongst the French generally take coffee, with a piece of bread, as soon as they are up, and then breakfast _à la fourchette_ about twelve, which consists of soup, meat, vegetables, fruit, and wine; they dine about six or seven, which is a repetition of the breakfast, with greater variety and more abundance. Wine is drank throughout the dinner, and never after; but light as their _vin ordinaire_ generally is, they always dilute it with water. Immediately after dinner, coffee, without milk or cream, is taken, and lastly a glass of liqueur; no other repast is thought of until the following day, as they neither take tea nor supper, in their usual family habits. But in cases of invitation it is quite another affair, several different wines of superior quality are handed about at dinner, with which they do not mix water, and always Champagne of course is drank without being diluted. When they give a _soirée_, a variety of refreshments are produced, as different descriptions of cakes, ices, orgeat and water, punch, warm wine, limonade, etc., according to the season of the year; and often a supper is given on a very liberal scale. Dancing, music, singing, and cards form the amusements of the evening; the games which are played are generally écarté and whist. The passion for dancing pervades all classes, and even amongst the lowest orders they always find the means of gratifying themselves with that pleasure, but in all their enjoyments down to the public-houses in the worst quarters of Paris, there is a degree of decorum which surprises an Englishman accustomed to the extreme grossness of similar classes in our own country. Determined to see as much of life as I could in all its stages during a carnival, accompanied by a countryman I visited many of the lowest order of wine houses where balls were going forward; the only payment required for entrance was the purchase of a bottle of wine, costing six sous. We expected to see a good deal of uproarious mirth and all kinds of pranks going forward, but were quite astonished to find the order that prevailed; the men appeared as if they were in such a hurry for a dance that they had not waited until they washed their hands and faces, but had just come directly from their work, although several of them had slipped on masquerade dresses; the women were cleaner (I suspect they were not of the most immaculate description), and were amusing themselves with quadrilles and waltzes alternately. Being of course very differently attired from the rest of the assemblage, we were very conspicuous, but they took no notice of us whatever; if they happened to run against us whilst waltzing and whirling about, they always said "Je vous 'mande pardon, Monsieur," and nothing farther. We observed that the men paid for the musicians two sous each dance and the women one, and we came away rather disappointed at finding things so much more insipid than we expected; we visited several houses of the same description and found the same sort of scene going forward in them all. The working people in Paris are extremely frugal in their mode of living; bread being full seven-eighths of their food, what they eat with it varies according to the season; if in summer, mostly such fruit as happens to be ripe, and perhaps once in the day they take a bit of soft white-looking cheese with their bread. In winter they often add instead, a little morsel of pork or bacon, but more frequently stewed pears or roasted apples. On Sundays they always put the _pot-au-feu_, as they call it, which means that they make soup, or literally translated, that they put the pot on the fire. Henry IV declared that he should not feel satisfied until he had so ameliorated the condition of the poor, that every peasant should be able to have a fowl in his pot every Sunday; had he not suddenly been cut off by assassination, he might have lived to have seen his benevolent wish accomplished. Many of the wives of the working people contrive to muster some soup for their husbands when they get home at night, and almost all manage to have a little wine in the course of the day. On the Sunday in the summer time they contrive to have a degree of pleasure, and go to one of the houses round Paris called _guinguettes_, something in the nature of the tea-gardens about London, but in Paris and most parts of France the husband takes his wife and even his children with him if they are old enough; indeed, you generally see the whole train together. At these houses they mostly take beer which is not very strong, but they make it less so by mixing it with water, as they do almost every beverage; sometimes they have wine, lemonade, or currant juice, which is called _groseille_, and that from the black currant _cassis_; there they will sit looking at the dances, in which they sometimes join, and return home about ten o'clock. This is pretty much the routine of a _regularly conducted_ working-man in Paris, and it must be admitted that they form by far the greater number, particularly those who are married. Amongst the middle-classes, both husband and wife keep very steadily to business, particularly the latter, and as they live frugally, they generally calculate upon retiring from business in ten or twelve years, and mostly effect their object, as they are perfectly contented when they have amassed enough capital to produce three or four hundred a year, which is the case with the major part of them; many are not satisfied until four or five times that sum; but they are seldom ambitious, nor care to get out of their class, as the persons with whom they associate and are intimate, are mostly relations and connexions to whom they are attached, and do not seem to fancy any pleasure in extending their acquaintances. But before they retire from business they have their occasional recreations; in fine weather they are very fond of spending their Sundays in the country; in the winter they frequently visit the theatres, but very rarely have company at home or pay visits, except on the New Year, and in the Carnival they give one ball, and go to several others given by their relations; this description alludes to what may be termed the respectable class of shopkeepers. They have one means of communication with each other, of which they avail themselves for the advantages of business or for the purpose of recreation, if they choose, which consists of what they term _Cercles_, much the same as we should call clubs; they are establishments composed of perhaps 150 members, more or less, who meet in a suite of apartments fitted up for the purpose, and certainly most elegantly, both as regards the decoration of the rooms and the furniture they contain. A clerk is employed, whose business it is to collect information as to the different merchants who arrive at Paris from the various parts of France and other countries; they find out the particular branch in which he deals, and that member whose business it is to vend the commodity likely to be demanded, sends him a programme of his goods and his terms. If any one receive a commission from any country which is not in his department, he proclaims it to the Cercle, and gives a fellow-member the benefit of the order; thus they play into each other's hands and greatly promote their mutual interests. Billiard-tables are fitted up for the amusement of the members, who also occupy themselves with other games, whilst refreshments are to be had the same as in a coffee-house. There are many of these establishments in Paris, which afford great facilities for the promotion of business. Although the extraordinary increase of trade in Paris is almost incredible, yet the bankrupts are more numerous than they were formerly; one reason is, on account of the number of persons in each business having so much increased, and the immense expenses which they incur in the embellishment of their shops to try and outvie each other. A person taking a place in the Palais Royal about three years since, first gave the occupier 40,000 francs (1,600_l._) to quit, and then expended 110,000 francs (4,400_l._) in fitting it up as a restaurateur's; the rent being high in proportion, the success was not commensurate with the expenditure and the speculation failed. This is one of the many instances which have recently occurred at Paris, causing bankruptcy; yet some persons have laid out more than double the amount in the decorations for restaurateurs and coffee-houses, and yet have succeeded. The occupations of the higher classes in Paris are much the same as they are in other capitals; both sexes are more fond of taking baths than they are in London, and even when they have that convenience in their own houses, the men often prefer lounging to the most fashionable public baths. The young sparks of fashion are very fond of sumptuous breakfasts at the most stylish coffee-houses in Paris, and often begin by taking a few dozen of oysters by way of giving them an appetite; beefsteaks dressed in the English style, a few choice French dishes, two or three sorts of wine, desert, and coffee, generally compose the repast until the dinner hour. The time is filled up with walking, riding, driving, practising gymnastic exercises, pistol-shooting, fencing, etc. After dinner, which usually terminates about eight, and is in fact the same thing as the breakfast on a more extensive scale, they proceed to the theatres; those most in vogue with the beau monde are the Italian Opera, the French Opera or Académie de Musique, the Comic Opera, and the Théâtre Français. After the performances are over, they generally lounge into some favourite coffee-house, and then close the day to recommence another, following much the same course, with some trifling variation. But now the favourite pursuit amongst young men of fashion, is that of riding and every thing which is connected with horses, such as racing, leaping, steeple chasing, and discussing their different qualities and the various modes of breaking them in, in England and in France. But there is no subject upon which there is so much difference of opinion between the two nations as upon that of equestrian exercises and the management and training of horses. Our bold fox-hunters and daring steeple chasers, I am aware, will not for an instant imagine that there are any riders to be found equal to Englishmen, whilst the French, although they give us credit for doing many things better than themselves, do not at all admire our horsemanship. They admit that our good riders are not easily thrown, and keep their seat under many difficult and dangerous circumstances, but they contend that the English generally have not sufficient command over their horses in making them obey every wish of the rider, whilst the accomplished French cavalier will make his horse go backwards, sideways, right, or left, in a direct line, will cause him to stop in an instant whilst at full speed, will make him bear on his near or off leg just as he chooses, or make him place either foot on a five franc piece, and in fact have the same command over his horse as if it were his child. There are many riding-masters now in Paris of superior talent, but for rendering his pupils dauntless horsemen, capable of mounting any animal however restive, I do not think that any can be found to surpass M. de Fitte. I have seen him place his best pupils upon a horse, which upon signals given, will rear upon his hind or his forelegs, changing from one to the other with such rapidity and in such constant succession that the rider cannot the least foresee what prank the horse is about to play, and therefore cannot be prepared for what he has to encounter, whilst he is seated on a saddle without stirrups or bridle, as with folded arms he defies every manoeuvre his steed essays to throw him. The riding-school of Mr. Fitte is at No. 113, rue Montmartre, next to the great establishment of the Messageries royales, from whence depart the diligences for all parts of France. He has always about forty horses of different countries and descriptions; amongst them are some especially trained for ladies, and such as will be found well adapted to the most bold and the most timid rider, which he lets out at very moderate terms. Any person must feel gratified at being present when he gives his evening lessons to his pupils, as amongst other exercises he practises them in what is called the _jeu de bague_, which consists of rings loosely suspended from a post, whilst the rider carries a lance, and in passing by at full gallop endeavours to run it through the ring, which is about two inches in diameter, and is hung in such a manner that it yields to the lance and remains upon it whilst the rider, without stopping, proceeds at full speed and takes off the next. Two persons are generally exercised together at this game, and he who takes off the most rings wins. It is a useful practice now adopted in almost all the riding-schools in Paris, as it teaches the pupil to forget his seat, giving him another object to occupy his mind, till at last the young pupil feels as easy upon a horse at full gallop as seated in his chair, his whole attention being directed towards taking off more rings with his lance than his competitor. Mr. Fitte during the lesson also himself displays what can be done with different horses, in giving them that sort of motion which he thinks proper, which is principally produced by operating upon the animal with the muscles of the calves of the legs, of which the French avail themselves much more in the management of a horse than the English. It appears quite a new era in the annals of horsemanship that an approved English riding-master should come over to France to place himself for two years under a French riding-master, yet such I know to be the case. Mr. F.W., the person to whom I allude, had long been accustomed to mount horses of all descriptions, with the full confidence of always being able to keep his seat; but when at Paris he met with a master who could not only defy any horse to throw him, but under all circumstances could always preserve a graceful position, even while baffling every attempt of a horse to floor him. In order to try the capabilities of Mr. W., the French master placed him on all kinds of horses, and amongst the rest those which had been taught all sorts of tricks to fling their riders, but W. resisted all their attempts, but it was by keeping his seat in his own way, which he knew had an awkward air, when compared to the graceful mien the Frenchman preserved throughout the same evolutions. Another art he strove also to acquire from his master, that of dominating the most vicious horse to a degree that shall render it so docile that any moderate horseman may mount it in safety. This was effected by the French riding-master (with whom W. placed himself), under the most extraordinary circumstances; a horse was offered him of extreme beauty, but so totally unmanageable that it had been given up by three rough riders of regiments in England, and was almost considered as worthless, as no one could be found to ride it; the Frenchman undertook in one year so to tame its restive spirit as to render it a valuable horse for any rider. The owner quitted France, but agreed to return in a twelvemonth, when they were to divide the amount of what the horse might sell for; but it so happened that the owner did not return for eighteen months, and when the twelvemonth had expired the riding-master considered the horse his own and sold it to Franconi for 20,000 francs (800_l._), having so completely taught the horse to obey its master, as to make it dance to music, to bear upon which leg he chose to dictate, and in fact to do more than I shall venture to state, as were I to give an accurate description it must appear an exaggeration, having met with several Englishmen who with myself have declared they never could have believed, had they not had ocular demonstration, that a horse could have been taught to do that which the animal in question has nightly exhibited at Franconi's. When the owner did return, he claimed the half of the value the horse had fetched, but the riding-master pleaded that the contract was annulled by his not making his claim at the time agreed upon between them; the other persisting in his demand, the affair was referred to a Court of Justice, and decided in favour of the riding-master, and it is said that Franconi has since refused 40,000 francs for the horse. There is one peculiarity in the English style of riding which is remarked all over the Continent, and that is, the rising in the saddle, or what is termed, adopting one's own motion, instead of that of the horse, which is certainly much rougher and not so agreeable, and for my own part I have found it a great relief when upon a long journey; of course it is never adopted by our cavalry, and the French contend that to sit as close as possible, partaking of the motion of the horse, as soon as the rider is accustomed to it he will travel farther, and with less fatigue than by what is termed the English method. M. de Fitte however thinks differently from his countrymen in that respect. It is also considered that in both our riding and driving we rein in our horses far too much, the consequence being that the animal, accustomed to be held up by the rider or driver, depends upon it, as what is called his fifth leg, and if there be any negligence in thus sustaining him, he immediately trips and often comes to the ground; whereas the horse who is habituated to a looser rein goes more boldly, depending on the powers nature has given him, and carries his head lower, and of course sees his ground better, avoiding that which might occasion a false step; and certainly the horses in France very seldom fall, except in frost or snow, when strange to say the French have never had the wit to have them rough-shod. Notwithstanding all that is said upon the subject I have found the advantage of keeping a tighter rein upon my horse than they are in the habit of practising in Turkey, as although in a journey which I had of seven hundred miles on horseback in that country they found great fault with my riding, yet I kept my seat, and my horse upon his legs, without once coming to the ground, when the Tatar, the Surdjee, and my travelling companion were alternately prostrated from the falling of their horses, which I attribute to their not being able to check them in time when they tripped, to prevent their totally sprawling; it is true that some parts of the road could only be compared to a street having been unpaved and all the stones left loose upon the ground over which we had to ride, consequently I took the greatest care, never for an instant neglecting any precaution to keep my hack from stumbling. But where a horse is liable to come upon his knees, certainly the system of rising in the saddle is most unsafe, and I never met with any one who could better teach his pupils to sit close and firm even with the roughest trot than M. de Fitte, who, not content with precept, himself furnishes the example. Amongst his pupils, are many of the fair sex as the French ladies are now beginning to imitate the gentlemen in their passion for equestrian exercises, and frequently in the Champs-Élysées and Bois de Boulogne display the progress they have made in the art. Although their pursuits are not so numerous nor so various as those of the men, yet their opportunities of killing time are greater; as shopping alone employs often some hours of the day, the importance attached to a bonnet, a cap, a turban and above all to a dress, causes many and long dissertations. Exhibitions and morning concerts frequently occupy also much of the ladies' leisure, a little walking in the Tuileries gardens at a certain hour and in a certain part whilst their carriage waits for them, an airing in it, or a turn on horseback, fill up the rest of the day, and after dinner, if not at the theatre, they either receive or pay visits, as it is the fashion to do so of an evening in Paris. I must not quit this sketch of the Parisians and their occupations without giving my readers some idea of what is called _La Jeune France_, which consists of a number of young men, who wear comical shaped hats, their hair very long hanging below their ears, and let the greater part of their beards grow; they also have their throats bare and their shirt collars turned down; they have rather a wild look, and their political theories are somewhat wilder than their looks; they are republican in principle, and in manner, adopting a sort of rough abrupt style, as far from courteous as can well be imagined. They amount to perhaps a few thousands in Paris, comprising a number of the students in law and medicine, many of the painters, musical professors, and at least half the literary characters in Paris; some of them are either the editors their subs or the communicators to two-thirds of the newspapers at Paris. I must do them the justice to say that I believe they mean well, and that they are actuated by pure principles of patriotism, full of candour and of courage, but mistaken in their views, led away by false notions imbibed from an enthusiastic admiration of the deeds of heroes, recorded in the histories of Rome and Greece, until they imagine that they are bound in modern days to re-enact the glorious examples of their progenitors in their self devotion for their country; hence the wonderful resistance that they made in 1832, which although in a bad cause, proved their contempt for life, and how ready they were to risk it in what they falsely thought their country's cause. But as they get older and reflect more, they become more temperate in their mode of reasoning, at present, and indeed for some time past, they have been more calm and one hears less of them. CHAPTER V. Anecdotes illustrative of the ideas, feelings, and characters of the Parisians, also narrating some of their most striking national peculiarities. The French generally have been celebrated for possessing no inconsiderable share of conceit, but in regard to a most exalted respect for themselves, the Parisians far surpass all their provincial brethren; the very circumstance of their happening to be born in Paris, they imagine at once confers upon them a diploma of the very highest acme of civilisation, causing them to feel a sort of pity for a person who is born elsewhere; however, as one of these enlightened spirits once observed to me, that a person might by coming to live at Paris in the course of time imbibe the same tone of refinement. Now this was said in all the true spirit of human kindness; he knew that I was not born in Paris, and conceiving that I might feel the bitterness of that misfortune, though it might afford me a degree of consolation to be assured, that there were some means of repairing the disadvantages under which I laboured, from not having made my entrance to the world in the grand metropolis of France. It matters not how low may be the calling of a Parisian, he will still flatter himself that the manner in which he acquits himself in the department in which he is placed, evinces a degree of superiority over his fellow labourer, and gratifies his _amour propre_ with the thought. Even a scavenger would endeavour to persuade you that he has a peculiar manner of sweeping the streets exclusively his own, and that his method of shovelling up the mud and pitching it into the cart is quite unique, and in fact that his innate talent is such that, it has eventually placed him at the summit of his profession. This may appear, perhaps, to some of my readers rather overdrawn, but the following instance which came under my own observation is not much less extravagant. A man who was in the habit of cleaning my boots, had a most incorrigible propensity for garrulity, and as I like in a foreign country to obtain some insight into the ideas and feelings of all classes, I did not care to check the poor fellow in the indulgence of his favourite _penchant_, particularly as his remarks were always proffered with a tone of the most profound respect for my august person. Finding one morning that my boots had not been polished quite so well as usual, the next time I saw the shoeblack I mentioned the circumstance to him. "_Ah! Sir_," he exclaimed with a deep sigh, "that is one of the many instances of the ingratitude of human nature; I confided those boots to the boy whom you must have seen come with me to fetch yours and the other gentlemen's shoes or clothes for brushing, etc. Well, sir, that young urchin is a protégé of mine; I took him, sir, from the lowest obscurity and made him what he is; I taught him my profession, I endowed him with all the benefit of my experience, and with respect to blacking shoes, I have initiated him into all the little mysteries of the art, and can declare that there is not one in the business throughout all Paris that can surpass him, when he chooses to exert his talents; and therefore it renders it the more unpardonable that he should slight one of my best customers." Judging, I suppose, from the expression of my countenance that I did not appear to be deeply infused with a very exalted idea of what he termed the mysteries of his art, he continued, "You may think as you please, sir, but there is much more ability required in blacking shoes than you may imagine, and that boy is well aware of it; he knows how I began by first instructing him in all the fundamental principles of the art; and gradually led him on until I accomplished him in giving the last polish, and can now proudly say he is a true artist in the profession." On entering a diligence once at Lyons, I found two persons in it, of very decent aspect; the one a middle aged man, the other a youth of about eighteen or nineteen; the former soon found an opportunity of informing me that he was a Parisian, but lest that should not adequately impress me with a sufficiently high idea of his importance, he added that he was _chef de cuisine_ to the Duke of ----, and that Monsieur, pointing to the youth opposite, was an _aspirant_, who had been placed under his auspices. The young man bowed assent, and appeared most sensibly to feel the vast magnitude of the honours to which he was aspiring; but the whole was announced with such an air of solemnity and consequence, that a minister of state with his secretary would never have attempted to assume. An Englishman under the same circumstances would have merely said, "I am head cook to the Duke of ---- and that young man is my 'prentice." However, my travelling companions were overpoweringly civil, and I of course was deeply awed by finding myself in company with such elevated personages, of which they no doubt were sensible, and where we stopped for dinner they gave us the benefit of their professional talent, by entering the kitchen, giving the inmates to understand who they were, and the advantage of advice gratis, as to the arrangement of such dishes for which they were still in time to superintend; and when we sat down at the table d'hôte, the _chef de cuisine_ did not fail to inform me that he had done as much as laid in his power to ensure our having a good dinner, as my being a foreigner he was particularly anxious that France should sustain her high reputation for the culinary art in my estimation; but regretted that in the first place he arrived too late to effect much good, and indeed, had he come before it would have been but of little avail; for the provincials were such complete barbarians, that it was difficult for an enlightened person to commune with them: that absolutely he and they appeared to be quite of another species. It is a happy circumstance for the French, that their pride does not consist in a desire to get out of their station, but an extreme anxiety to exaggerate the importance of the station in which they are placed; a cook, for example, has the most exalted idea of the art of cookery, and wishes to impress everyone with the same idea of its high importance, and all his ambition is to be considered a cook of the first-rate talent. In England it is different, one of the great objects with a tradesman is the hope, that by making his fortune he shall be enabled to get out of his class and take a higher walk in society. For this purpose they bring their sons up to the liberal professions, and often retire into the country at a distance from London, where they flatter themselves that the circumstance of their having been in business may not travel; their plan seldom succeeds, but has in several instances when they have come over to France, as being rich, appearing respectable, and their children highly educated, they have obtained the _entrée_ to French society, which has ultimately led to that of the English. I remember one instance of a hatter marrying his five daughters to persons of the higher classes, three to English and two to French, who now with their father have that position in society, into which at one period he never could have dreamed of entering; had they remained in England, they would have had but little chance of emerging from their original station, even with the aid of all their wealth. Street scenes often afford amusing exhibitions of natural characteristics; I remember one which I witnessed, which developed a feeling truly French; two common-looking men had been disputing for some time, when one upbraided the other with want of delicacy and not having a nice sense of honour, but finding his reproaches made but little impression upon the accused, at last said, "As I see you are destitute of any mental susceptibility, I must try if you have any bodily feeling, and thrash you as I would a dog or any other brute." So saying, he advanced to put his threat into execution, but the assailed proving far the strongest, soon overcame the assailant and laid him prostrate; rising from the ground, he regarded the conqueror with a dignified air, and said, "Yes! you have the physical force, but I have the force of reason," and with a flourish of the head he strutted off with as triumphant a demeanour as if he had vanquished a host of enemies. The French are exceedingly fond of moralizing; a few days before the Revolution occurred, whilst a man was driving me through the Place de la Concorde, I observed a scaffolding in the middle, and asked what it was for, and having informed me that it was for the purpose of erecting a statue of Louis the Sixteenth, being the spot in which he was beheaded, he exclaimed, "What an absurdity! but those Bourbons are incorrigible; would it not be much better to let such events as those sink as much as possible into oblivion, instead of endeavouring to perpetuate them. One would have thought," continued he, "that the adversity and exile which that besotted family had endured would have operated upon them as a lesson, but they will never benefit from any lessons; one, however, will be tried upon them very soon, if they do not mind what they are about, and we shall see what impression that will make." The man's words came to pass, they did indeed receive a severe lesson, which involved them in ruin and disgrace. Having observed a number of persons assembled on the Boulevards, I asked the cause, and was told that some cavalry was expected to pass in a few minutes, for which the people were waiting. I took my station amongst them, which happened to be next to two bakers' boys, who were in earnest conversation, when I was edified by the following observations. "Do you know why Alphonse left his place?" "Yes," replied the other, "because his master gave him a cuff on the head." "That certainly was a very great indignity;" observed the younger; "to receive a blow is very humiliating." "That is true," replied the other, "but figure to yourself the folly of a lad, for the sake of a paltry thump, to sacrifice all his future prospects; in a few years, had he put up with the insult, he might have been head man in a bakehouse in the Rue St. Denis, which is one of the most populous quarters in Paris." "True," said the younger, "it would have been wiser to have sayed; but when excited, reason does not always come to one's aid." I have translated the discourse as literally as I could, that I might preserve as nearly as possible the expressions which the boys used, as it has often struck me how much more refined they are, than those to which lads of the same age and class would have had recourse in England. Some of the scenes at the tribunals are very amusing; I remember a very rough ferocious-looking man having been brought up for returning to Paris, from which he had been sent away on account of some offences which he had committed, and was ordered to some small obscure town in the provinces, under _surveillance_. Finding his banishment very irksome, an irresistible impulse brought him back to Paris, and repairing to his old haunts, he sought the Rue de la Mortellerie, which had in part been pulled down, on account of some improvements which were going forward; whilst he was gaping about, looking in vain for his dear Rue de la Mortellerie, he was recognised by a Serjeant of police and very unwillingly lodged in the _Corps de Garde_ (guard-house), and brought before the Tribunal of Correction; he was interrogated as to his having dared, in defiance of the law, to return to Paris. He replied, "indeed, Monsieur le President, I was so overcome with ennui, that I found it impossible to exist there any longer; now, only imagine for an instant, M. le President, the idea of a Parisian, as I am, to be sent to a little bit of a place where there was no theatre, no promenade, not even a public monument." He was interrupted by the President telling him, that whatever the place might have been, there he should have staid to the end of his time, and must be punished for returning to Paris. "But," continued the delinquent, "the vile little hole to which I was exiled contained no society whatever, the inhabitants were merely a set of illiterate beings, and how could any enlightened person vegetate amongst such a mic-mac of semi-barbarians; but tell me, M. le President, what has become of the Rue de la Mortellerie?" Without deigning to answer, the President was proceeding to condemn the prisoner, when interrupted by his exclaiming, "Now I intreat, M. le President, that you who are no doubt a very enlightened personage, would only place yourself in my position, and conceive how it was possible to exist buried alive as it were among such a set of Goths, and above all do tell me what has become of my Rue de la Mortellerie?" The President, out of all patience, sentenced him to imprisonment in one of the goals of Paris for three years. "Well," said the garrulous and incorrigible offender, "I shall have one satisfaction, that of knowing that I am still in Paris, that seat of the arts, that centre of civilisation, and terrestrial paradise; but pray tell me, M. le President, before we part, do tell me what have they done with my dear Rue de la Mortellerie?" Without affording him time to occupy the court any longer with his irrelevant questions and explanations, they hurried him away, whilst he continued to murmur what could possibly have gone with his dear Rue de la Mortellerie which was no other than a little narrow filthy street which it would be difficult to match in the worst neighbourhoods in London. I also recollect an instance of the deliberate coolness of a man who was tried and found guilty of the robbery and murder of a farmer; being asked if he knew his accomplice, he observed "As to knowing him, M. le President, that is more than I can say; you must be aware that it is extremely difficult to _know_ a person, you may have seen a person often, and even conversed with him for years, and yet never _know_ him." "Are you acquainted with him," was the next question. "As to that," continued the prisoner, "I am a man who has very few acquaintances, being naturally of a reserved character and rather diffident in my nature, I shrink from entering much into society; being of a reflecting habit, I like often to pass my hours alone, having rather an indifferent opinion of human nature." How long he would have gone on in the same strain, it is impossible to say, when he was imperatively demanded if he knew him by name, by sight, and had talked, or walked, or ate, or drank with him. "Really you put so many questions to me at once that you tax my memory beyond its means; I never was celebrated for having a very retentive memory, my mother used to say." The court out of patience again interrupted him, but with all their efforts could never elicit from him a direct answer; but the circumstantial and testimonial evidence being perfectly convincing, he and his accomplice were condemned to death. When he heard the sentence he very coolly asked which would be guillotined first; he was answered that the other would, and that it was to be hoped that the sight of his companion's fate might bring him to some sense of his awful situation. When the time arrived for their execution, he displayed the same imperturbable audacity; as his accomplice was about to suffer, he elbowed the person who was standing next to him, and pointing to his fellow criminal, he smiled and said, "Look, poor wretch, he is afraid, I declare he even trembles." When it came to his turn he mounted the ladder with as cheerful an air as if he was merely going to his breakfast, and to the last moment preserved the same sang-froid. A brutal sort of fellow, who was once condemned for an assault, in an instant snatched off his wooden shoes and threw them at the head of the President, who it appears had a good eye for avoiding a shot, and managed to escape the missiles. Sometimes the avocats (barristers) avail themselves of causes in which they are engaged, so as to render them vehicles for displaying their wit or humour, and afford much amusement to the court; a case some time since occurred which excited much interest and some mirth and entertainment; the parties concerned were a Madame Dumoulin who had invented stays of a peculiar nature. Another person who was English styling herself the inventor, and making them in the same manner, notwithstanding the former had been granted a patent, an action was the consequence. It was observed that the hostile parties in this instance, although French and English, were neither decked with helmets nor armed with pistols, swords, nor muskets, but entered the scene of combat in long shawls and velvet bonnets, announcing themselves without the aid of heralds, the one representing the French army the other the English host. The champion on the side of the former being a Monsieur Ch. Ledru, against whom Monsieur Ducluseau entered the lists on the British side of the question; what made it more remarkable, was, that the belligerents resided in the same street, the residence of M. Ducluseau, the advocate for the English defendant, merely separating the mansions of the two combatants. Victory declared for Madame Dumoulin after many subtle and learned arguments were adduced on both sides, and an English lady, the mother of several daughters, tells me if I have any regard for my fair countrywomen I must recommend to their notice the stays of Madame Dumoulin, truly observing that as the object of my work was to render every possible service to all my readers, certainly the ladies must have a pre-eminent claim, and although there are certain articles of the toilet with which it might be observed man should never meddle, as he could not be any judge of such habiliments as ought only to be worn by the ladies, and a few dandies who are neither one thing nor the other, yet when three scientific societies condescend to award medals to the inventor and patentee of the articles alluded to, I trust I shall be pardoned if with an intention to serve the fair sex I trench upon their privilege in calling their attention to the useful and ornamental corsets, which have caused so much controversy. These stays are so contrived as to be totally without gussets, and adapt themselves to the form with such perfect facility, that there is not that restraint which, instead of bestowing grace to the female figure, is rather calculated to deform, that, which, if left in a degree to nature, would have displayed both elegance and ease. As an artist accustomed to contemplate the beauty of feature and of form, I have often regretted that common error into which such numbers of females fall, by torturing themselves in tightening the waist to such an unnatural degree, confining the person as it were in a vice, and totally preventing that movement in the person, which is indispensable in giving that elasticity in walking which alone can produce a graceful carriage, devoid of that stiffness which is ever occasioned by too great a restraint. The stays invented by Madame Dumoulin are universally admired as aiding nature, in affording the utmost freedom to the wearer, at the same time that they improve the figure. These stays, have not only received the approbation of the scientific world by the presentation of three medals, but have also been recommended by several distinguished members of the faculty, who consider they are calculated rather to improve than deteriorate the health of those who wear them. The action which Madame Dumoulin was obliged to bring against her competitor has been of the utmost service to her, not only by the triumph she has received and the confirmation of her patent, but in giving her that vogue that not only the influential Parisian ladies, but Russian, German and Spanish princesses have patronised her ingenuity; her residence is Rue du 29 Juillet, no 5. In the Courts of Justice in France and particularly in Paris, I have found that both the prisoners and the witnesses have far more self possession than in the tribunals in England; they are not so soon embarrassed by the brow-beating and examination of the counsel, and sometimes give such replies as turn the sting upon their examiners; having like the Irish a sort of tact for repartee, they are not often to be taken aback; the lower classes in Paris are naturally extremely shrewd and penetrating, they recognise a foreigner instantly, before he speaks, as a friend of mine found to his cost, who although an Englishman would anywhere in his own country be set down for a Frenchman from his external appearance. On the Saturday following the three glorious days, he was standing amongst one of the groups near the Hôtel-de-Ville, when a man of a very rough appearance with his arms bare and besmeared with proofs that he had been in the strife, turned to him and asked what he thought of the Revolution. My friend, who was in feeling a thorough bred John Bull, neither liking France, the French, nor any of their proceedings, did not think it was exactly the moment to give vent to all his feelings, answered that it was very fine. "Oh!" said the Frenchman, "you find it very fine, do you, you're a foreigner, what countryman are you?" "I am an Englishman," was the reply. "An Englishman! eh!" muttered the Frenchman scanning him with a very scrutinising eye, "and you find our Revolutionary fine, eh! well," added he! "will you come and take a glass of wine with me?" The invitation was declined on the plea of business. "Business," repeated the Frenchman, "there can be no business to-day, it is a day of fête;" upon which the Englishman, not seeing any means by which he could well get off of it, said he would be happy to take wine with him and should also have great pleasure in paying for it. "Pay for it," sternly said the Frenchman, "what do you talk of paying for it, when you are invited, follow me;" the Englishman obeyed, but wished himself well out of the scrape; his conductor took him to one of the lowest sort of wine-houses and they entered a large room where there were above twenty seated, drinking round a table. His new acquaintance introduced him in due form, saying, I have brought you an Englishman who finds our Revolution very fine; there was a degree of order amongst them and they had a president and vice president, but were very much such rough looking fellows as the one who announced him; as a stranger, he was awarded the seat of honour to the right of the president, but had no sooner been seated, than one man addressed him, saying, "I have been in England, I was a prisoner and very ill treated." "I am sorry for that," replied the Englishman. "I was almost starved," added the other. "That was not the fault of the people or the intention of the government," observed my friend, "but was caused by a few rascally contractors who received a handsome sum for the supply of the prisoners, and to make the greater profit they provided bad articles." "Well," said another, "I have seen extracts from the English papers and they speak very highly of our revolution, particularly the Times." They next proceeded to give accounts of the share they had taken in the struggle which had just terminated, and some began to state the number that they killed, all of which was far from edifying to my friend, who sat upon thorns notwithstanding they all drank his health, hitting the glasses together according to the custom of olden time. At several periods he made an effort to go, but they assured him that they could not part with him so soon, called him a _bon anglais_, now and then giving him a smack on the shoulder as a proof of their friendly feeling towards him. The Englishman began at last to wish himself anywhere but where he was, and in that manner they kept him for three hours in durance vile; at last he made a bold push for a retreat, declaring he could not stay a minute longer. "Then," said his conductor, "I shall see you safe home to your door;" now that was the very thing that my friend did not want, as he was particularly desirous of dropping the acquaintance as soon as possible, therefore did not wish him to know where he lived; so at last he thought of a person with whom he dealt, and said he must go, and see a friend there with whom he had an appointment; and the Frenchman accompanied him to the door, always carrying his drawn sword with him, and when taking leave asked the Englishman when and where he should see him again; my friend answered he was going to England. "Going to England," repeated the other, "what are you going to England for, if you find our Revolution so very fine, what do you want to go away from it for, not to abuse it to your country people, I hope?" "Oh no," replied the Englishman, "I am only going to England for a little while, on business, and shall be back soon, and shall have it in my power to tell my countrymen all about the Revolution, and what an heroic struggle it was." "Ah!" said the Frenchman; then holding out his great rough hand, bade the Englishman "bon soir," and "bon voyage." My friend declared that it was impossible for him to describe to what a degree he was rejoiced at seeing his new acquaintance depart, although, however rough his appearance, the man might have been perfectly harmless, except when called upon to fight for what he considered his country's cause. I was myself living in Paris during the struggle of the Three Days, and can bear witness to the humanity and moderation of the people during the contest, and of their forbearance after their victory; they came to the house at which I was living and asked for wine; but they brought with them pails of water into which they threw what was given them, thereby proving their extreme temperance and forbearance, but certainly a band of a more ruffianlike looking set of fellows, it would be difficult to imagine, and the manner in which they were at first armed, had something in it of the horrible, and at the same time of the ludicrous; iron bars, pokers, pitchforks, and in fact anything that could be converted into a weapon was taken possession of by the unwashed horde, who swarmed towards the centre of Paris from the manufacturing suburbs; soon, however, the public armouries, and the gunsmiths' shops, the musquetry, and other arms taken from the soldiers during the battle, contributed to arm them more formidably. But in justice to the Parisians I must cite two circumstances; the one is, that whatever they seized upon in the public institutions, as instruments of offence and defence, were restored when the contest was over; the librarian at the Royal Library told me that they took all the ancient and modern arms from their establishment, but with the exception of seven they were all brought back, and most likely the bearers of those which were missing had been killed. The other instance which does high credit to the Parisian mob, is that they would not permit of any robbing or pillage in any house or building which they might enter, but, as might be expected, some of the regular thieves of Paris mixed amongst the people; one at length being caught purloining an image in the palace of the Tuileries, they formed a circle round the thief, tried him in an instant, and shot him; this was summary justice with a vengeance, and certainly not exactly what ought to have been done, but it showed the principle which existed. In fact honesty is undoubtedly a quality existing in France to a most extraordinary degree, a greater proof of it cannot be adduced than the fact that when any person quits a theatre with the idea of returning in a few minutes they leave their handkerchiefs on their seats by way of retaining their places, which custom is even practised at the lowest theatres, where the admittance is only half a franc. Ingenuity and a tact for invention are certainly features peculiar to the French character, but they are far behind the English in their methods of transacting business; this remark is applicable even to most of the public offices; that France is extremely flourishing, and Paris more particularly so, cannot be denied, but were it in the hands of the English there is no doubt their produce, manufactures, and commerce, both home and foreign, would be considerably greater than it now is. France has been most peculiarly favoured by nature, her soil produces everything that can be grown in England, and besides three commodities which are not genial to our climate, and are of immense value, oil, silk and wine; hence the products of the soil of France amount annually to the immense sum of 240,000,000_l._, or 6,000,000,000 francs; having such a basis, or one may even say such a capital to work upon, to what an incalculable extent might business be carried on, with the amazing industry that exists in France, as in the first place their population exceeds ours by nearly six millions; then their general temperance is such, there is not so much time nor labour lost as there is in England, consequently there are more hands available, and those generally for a longer period of time, as every one who is familiar with many manufacturing and even agricultural districts in England must be aware that there are numbers of workmen who never appear on the Monday, vulgarly called St. Monday, but spend it at the public houses. I myself have had farming men whom I hired by the day in Kent, who did not appear until Wednesday morning, but that, however, is some years since, and the evil is now correcting. The great deficiency in France is not only want of great capitalists, but men of enterprise, who are not afraid to enter upon colossal undertakings; and now, looking at the speculative works of the greatest magnitude which exist in France, it will be found that Englishmen are concerned in them, either as partners in a firm, or the principal shareholders in any company or association. The promptness of the English for adventuring their funds in all sorts of schemes is the wonderment of all Europe; whenever there is any discovery which may be rendered available for trade, an Englishman is on the spot with his capital in his hand and his calculation in his head. Recently a vein of coal was found near the coast of Brittany, three Englishmen were there as if they had dropped from the clouds, quite prepared to enter into all the arrangements requisite for working the mine and rendering it productive of profit. But although the French are deficient in those qualities requisite for commencing and conducting gigantic enterprises, yet they are rapidly improving in every point that is necessary for the management of business and augmenting their foreign commerce to a great extent, particularly with America; from the town of New Orleans alone, last summer, there were eighty merchants in Paris at one time, and the amount from all the United States was estimated at two thousand; in fact if France remain at peace, the increase of her prosperity in every branch of industry must be certain, as if she obtain English machinery, which she must ultimately, with those who know how to set it in motion also, as provisions are cheaper, and always will be than with us, because she needs not so much taxation, her debt being so much smaller than that of England, labour must be lower, therefore she will have an advantage over us which it will be impossible for England, with all her talents, to circumvent. Already the Americans purchase, not only silks and fancy articles in France, but also even cotton goods of the superior qualities; the only obstacle which prevents the French from making still more rapid advancement than is at present the case, is first timidity of capitalists, deficiency of knowledge of the higher order of business, and extreme slowness in proceeding with any grand national operation, as for instance, her railroads, in which she has not only seen England surpass her tenfold, but other neighbouring countries; but as there is a sort of system of centralization in favour of the metropolis, Paris improves more rapidly in proportion than the rest of France. CHAPTER VI. The monuments of Paris, the gardens, promenades, markets, libraries, etc. In order to facilitate the progress of the reader in viewing the monuments and different objects of interest in Paris, I shall classify them within certain limits, so that they may be viewed in the shortest possible time, stating those which are contiguous to each other, so that a greater number may be visited in a day, than if the traveller went from one distant quarter of Paris to the other promiscuously, as he happened to hear of any building or monument he wished to see, and thus have to return perhaps two or three times to the same neighbourhood instead of finishing with one district first, then taking the others in rotation; as I shall suppose that some of my readers can only afford ten days or a fortnight to view Paris, I shall be as chary of their time as possible; having been accustomed to show the lions to many different friends or acquaintances from England, I trust I am tolerably _au fait_ at that operation. I shall begin with that part of Paris denominated La Cité, because it is the most central and the most ancient; we will therefore proceed to it by the Pont-Neuf, which as I have already stated was built by Henry III about 1580. There are several shops upon it contained within small stone buildings, which, when viewing the bridge at a short distance, have rather a picturesque effect; it is ornamented with a number of heads according to the taste of that day, and which now give it rather an antique appearance. When well upon the bridge which rises as it approaches the centre, I would advise the spectator to look around him, as the view well repays the trouble, the quays having a most noble appearance, adorned by the Louvre, the Tuileries, the Institute, and other public buildings. Now let us look about us at more immediate objects; what a noisy bustling scene it is at present, and has been for centuries past, as in the reign of Henry IV it is described as absolutely stunning; now you are assailed by the hissing of fried potatoes, fish, and fritters, which are bought up as fast as they are supplied, women and men are seated with their little apparatus for shearing cats and dogs, and clipping their tails and ears if required, which is a calling that appears to be followed by numbers in Paris who all seem to take their stations on the bridges; situated amongst them are several shoeblacks, who appear to take their posts in uniform array with the trimmers of cats and dogs; they operate upon your boots and shoes as you stand, therefore if you wish to patronise them you may take that opportunity of looking about and getting disburthened of some of the Paris mud, quite certain if it be wet weather that you will soon get more. Fruit in all its variety, books, prints, blacking, and nick-knacks of every description offer themselves to your notice. But let us direct our attention to a more interesting object; the fine bronze equestrian statue of Henry IV: one could almost think the good and merry monarch was going to utter some of his witty sallies. Now let us turn round and behold those antique looking houses which face us and were built in his reign, at a distance they have a sort of castellated appearance: before we quit the bridge let us look down on the Baths Vigier with their pretty garden; we will enter the place Dauphine, and then take one look at the bust of Desaix, the victim of the battle of Marengo, and next we will turn on to the Quai de l'Horloge and view the north side of the Palais de Justice; it presents two round towers, which have the appearance of being very old, and I was assured by an architect who employed much of his time in poking about after such morsels of antiquity as he could find, that they were built by the Romans, but I doubt it. We must not miss the Tour de l'Horloge, which is certainly of the middle ages, and the clock is I believe considered the oldest in Paris; turning to the right we view the grand front of the Palais de Justice, a very handsome iron grating in part gilded, decorates the entrance to the front court, and you ascend a bold flight of steps to the principal door; four doric pillars with figures representing Justice, Fortitude, Plenty, and Prudence, adorn the grand façade of the building; an immense hall to the right, in which is a noble statue of the good and venerable Malesherbes, well worth attention, and is the apartment where formerly ambassadors were received and the nuptial ceremonies of princes were celebrated, but now the rendez-vous of lawyers, barristers, and their clients. Several other halls, chambers, galleries, corridors, etc, are worth notice, and that which is beneath them, has a shuddering kind of interest; it is called the Conciergerie, and if its victims were there consigned by the harsh decree of rigid justice, surely mercy and charity were not allowed to enter, whilst it formed the prison of the hapless Marie Antoinette and the brave Pichegru, but we will draw a veil over those scenes which are but fraught with sad reminiscences. Many of these dark covered alleys, belonging to this extraordinary building, have been long occupied by venders of shoes, slippers and a variety of articles which remind one of the old Exeter Change. This singular edifice which almost resembles a town is considered to have been founded by Eudes, count of Paris, about the year 890, but the most ancient part now standing, was built by Saint Louis who founded the chapel, which is considered to be a complete type of the _pure_ gothic architecture, and which in that respect is not exceeded by any other in Europe; it has the most decided air of antiquity, with a richness and elegance which certainly characterise it as the beau idéal of that period. It is termed the Holy Chapel and now appropriated to the conservation of ancient records. From this interesting monument we turn with regret, but a new scene bursts upon us; it is the flower market, which is held under trees and furnished with large bassins constantly supplied with water; the numerous display of flowers mostly in pots done up in such a manner with white paper so that it forms the background, gives much light and life to the colours, buds, and blossoms, which bloom on this enlivening spot. Wednesdays and Saturdays are the market days, and I recommend the reader not to miss so pleasing a spectacle. On the Quai du Marché-Neuf, on the southern bank of the island, a very opposite sight may be seen, being the Morgue, a little building for receiving all dead bodies found, and not owned. We now proceed to Notre-Dame, which is in the form of a cross; it was began about the year 1150, in the reign of Louis the Seventh, but continued in that of Philippe-Auguste, and completed under Saint-Louis in 1257, which date, as I have already stated, it now distinctly bears. Its magnitude and extent surpasses every other church in Paris, it is in the arabic style, and being now totally detached from any other building has a most grand effect; it is only in the present reign that this great improvement has been effected, as it was formerly joined on one side to the archiepiscopal palace. The immense number of grotesque figures which surround and surmount the doorway, give it a most rich appearance, although they are in the rudest style of barbarism; above is a large window called the rose, which is a most beautiful and curious object. The interior at the first view has a most striking effect; one hundred and twenty pillars supporting a range of arches afford a most splendid _coup d'oeil_, the middle aisle presenting an uninterrupted view of the whole church, which being very lofty has a most majestic appearance; the sumptuous altar, the fine gloom pervading the pictures, the curious Gobelin tapestry which decorate the sides, combine in affording a rich effect which is still heightened by the chapels which are perceptible between the columns. Although it might be urged that there is rather a profusion of decoration with the bas-reliefs, and other ornaments, yet the edifice is on so colossal a scale that it still presents so broad a mass, that a tone of simplicity pervades the whole. The beautiful choir is after a design by De Goste, the altar and sanctuary are of marble and porphyry, whilst tesselated pavements and variegated shrines adorn the numerous chapels. The pictures are good in general; as to the tapestry, I think it had better be removed, which I dare say it will be as taste refines. It is to be regretted that the towers of Notre-Dame have so heavy and black appearance, which is increased by a parcel of dark unseemly shutters. On the outside towards the north, there are some pieces of sculpture well worth examination; they are beautifully executed although much deteriorated by time, and appear to be works of about the thirteenth century. There are some curious brasses which would be very interesting to persons capable of decyphering them, one in particular to the left on entering, but so much in the dark that it is difficult to make it out, especially as the characters at best are not easy to understand, but I recommend them to the inspection of those persons who have time and inclination to study such subjects. The view of the city from the towers affords an ample panorama, and displays the positions of the principal monuments. The Hôtel Dieu is one of the finest establishments of the kind in Europe, it is an hospital for the sick, in which they can make up 1,500 beds, but there is nothing in its external appearance that is very striking. The Archiepiscopal Palace had not a very attractive exterior, but now, as they are partly demolishing and rebuilding it all, remarks must be suspended until it be finished. No other object presents itself particularly worth notice on this island, once the celebrated Lutetia, but many of the houses have a very old appearance, and are some of them probably of three or four hundred years standing; the curious observer inspecting them will here and there find indications of the middle ages. If the reader like to pass over to the Isle St. Louis, it will but take him a few minutes, which is about as much as it is worth; the only object exciting attention is the Hôtel Chamisot, No. 45, Rue St. Louis, and the church of St. Louis, built in 1664. In this edifice there are some pictures worthy remark and a curious spire. The Hôtel Lambert, No. 2, Rue St. Louis, also merits attention, being most richly adorned with paintings, gilded mouldings, frescos, etc. Voltaire lived in it, and Napoleon had a long conversation in the gallery in 1815 with his minister, Montalivet, when he found all was lost. I shall now conduct my reader from the little Isle St. Louis by the Pont de Tournelle to the Quay de Tournelle, from which we proceed to that of St. Bernard, where every one must be struck with the Halles aux Vins, or Wine Halls; they are all arranged with extreme regularity, and forming altogether a whole, have a most singular effect; the neatness of the appearance is remarkable; and the extent is such that they might contain sufficient inhabitants to people a small town. As we proceed along the quay, we have a good view of the Pont d'Austerlitz, it is quite flat, built of iron, and is extremely light and handsome. Upon our right is the great attraction, so interesting to all nations, the Garden of Plants; the first view of it through the iron railing is most striking, rows of sable looking trees, forming a fine contrast to the broad expansive beds of flowers, their gay colours blooming forth so thickly as to resemble at some distance the brightest and richest carpet; broad walks are between these brilliant masses; at the end of which is the building which contains the Museum of natural History; to give the reader anything like an accurate idea of this establishment, it is necessary to exercise one's ability in condensing to the utmost degree, as to furnish a comprehensive analysis of the wonders of this institution would require a folio volume. I knew an English couple who took lodgings in the immediate neighbourhood for three months that they might go every day and study the numberless interesting objects this establishment contains. The long promenades are formed by picturesque trees and shrubs which have been collected from every clime; the immense number of labels, as one approaches more closely, rather disfigure the display of flowers, but as usefulness is the object, it is impossible otherwise than to approve the extreme order and regularity with which every plant, according to its genus, is classified, affording a most delectable treat to a regular botanist. This arrangement has been effected under the superintendence of Monsieur du Jussieu himself, no doubt one of the most scientific botanists thatever has appeared; his residence and that of his family was in the gardens, when I was in Paris twenty years back, and I believe some of them still are concerned in the botanical arrangements of the institution. The tremendous vocabulary of long latin names inscribed on the labels is really enough to appal the most retentive memory that ever existed, and to a person who has never dipped at all into the mysteries of botany I can imagine the terms are rather alarming, words with nineteen letters in them are but trifles compared to others, and a regular John Bull who was scanning them very justly remarked, pointing to the flowers, that it was certainly a favoured spot of Flora, and then alluding to the fruits observed the same of Pomona, but added, he should like very much to know who was the goddess of hard words as he would recommend her to descend upon the same beds, as she would there find a more numerous progeny than either of her rival goddesses. I believe that there are now nearly 10,000 plants arranged according to the system of De Jussieu, in the most simple and perfect manner, so that the student is enabled at once to comprehend the plan, and numbers of both sexes attend even as early as six in the morning copying the names of plants and studying their classification. Although this establishment is called the Garden of Plants, it has many other objects of the highest interest besides what its name indicates. It is at the same time a most extensive menagerie, which first gave the idea that has since been adopted of the Zoological Gardens in Regent's Park; formerly the arrangement exceedingly interested and delighted the English visiter, but now that he has the same thing at home, it has ceased to be a novelty. Each animal having plenty of room to walk about in, was certainly a beautiful thought, and great improvement on confining them in cages, which is now only found necessary with ferocious animals. The bears form a great source of amusement to the people, they are in large square pits about ten or twelve feet below the level of the promenades, and each has a large pole in the middle, with several branches upon which they climb, whilst the visiters throwing bread to them are exceedingly diverted at their successful or unsuccessful attempts to catch it. It would be superfluous to enter upon a description of the great variety of animals assembled in this collection, suffice it to say that I believe there is no living animal who can exist in a Parisian climate, that is not to be found in this garden; generally there are several of a kind, and in case one dies it is immediately replaced by another. The monkeys are the principal objects of attraction, and as soon as they are let out into their little paddock in front of their dwellings, which is only when the day is considered sufficiently warm, crowds of people assemble to witness their grimaces and gambols; they and the bears may be considered as the principal dramatis personæ of the menagerie, and who certainly perform their parts most admirably, never failing to afford the utmost entertainment to the audience: and it is indeed a sort of rivalry between Jocko and Bruin which should play their _rôle_ the best; for my own part I really think I give the preference to the latter, there is something at once so comic and so good natured-looking in the bears, that I feel almost inclined to descend into their pits and caress and pet them as I would a favourite dog, but am only deterred by fearing they would give me a reception rather too warm, and their friendly hug be too overpowering for me to sustain. There are several buildings in this garden which are applied to various purposes, amongst the rest an Amphitheatre where lectures on all the branches of natural history are delivered. A Cabinet of Anatomy most richly stored occupies one mansion; dissections of the human form, as well as those of almost every animal are here found, besides numerous other curiosities. Amongst other things the progress of a chicken in the egg is exemplified, from its first speck until it has life, which is imitated with the most extraordinary exactness in wax, as also are several fishes which cannot be preserved, besides a numerous collection of foeti and monsters. To see these things properly; would require to pass several days in these rooms; but a week would not suffice to do justice to the grand Museum, every description of bird and beast that has been known to exist in our days may be found here stuffed, and preserved in glass cases with the nicest care; it appears strange to see an enormous elephant and a tall ostrich within a glass case. Here also are to be found every species of fungus, chrysalis, sea-weed, eggs, and nests. But the shells, minerals, and fossils, form so extraordinary and numerous a collection that they are the subject of admiration of every beholder; the polish of the shells, the brilliance of the colours of the plumage of the birds, and the glossy smoothness of the skins of the beasts are as perfect as if they were living, but the same cannot exactly be said of the fishes. The marbles, porphyry, and granite, the lava, basaltes, barks of trees, bones of animals known and unknown, some within stones, are arranged by the celebrated Cuvier, whilst the ores, crystals, jaspers, and extraordinary varieties of ornamental articles formed of these materials occupy several apartments. In addition to all these objects of high interest, there is a most excellent library, giving every possible information regarding the contents of this delightful establishment; a statue of the great illustrator of the wonders of nature, Buffon, is here most appropriately placed, as also some paintings of plants and animals. Hence it may be easily imagined that persons who have much leisure, and are fond of the study of natural history, may well choose to take up their abode in the neighbourhood, for the convenience of long poring over the beauties of this wonderful Museum. From hence other schools of botany are supplied with seeds, cuttings, suckers, etc., whilst the hospitals of Paris are gratuitously furnished with whatever is requisite for the purposes of medicine; nor must I omit to state that there is a most beautiful aviary, the birds of which are choice selections of the finest of their species, and for those of an aquatic nature, there is a basin of water from the Seine. Even specimens of soils, manures, ditches, ha-has, palisades, frames, and every thing necessary for forming fences are to be found here in every variety. Even to persons who have no scientific information nor desire to obtain knowledge, to walk in the Jardin-des-Plantes (Garden of Plants) affords delight, the number of attractions are such, and of so varied a description that even the dullest mind must be awakened to a sense of pleasure, yet some persons I have seen who regarded all the phenomena collected here with the most stoical indifference; the fact is, that a number of people will not take the trouble to think, and lose the enjoyment they might receive from the wonders of nature; how different if they would but devote to them a little reflexion. With our minds still deeply impregnated with the impression of the objects we have just contemplated, we will leave the garden, and turning round to the right, we find ourselves upon the Boulevard de l'Hôpital, just facing the Hôpital de la Salpêtrière, which makes up 500 beds for females, who are lunatics, idiots, otherwise diseased, or 70 years of age; it is of immense extent, and conducted with so much order, and such cleanliness prevails both with regard to the inmates and the establishment itself, that it may be considered one of the most gratifying sights in Paris; in fact I have heard many English ladies, much to their credit, declare that not any of the interesting objects which they had seen in the French capital, afforded them more pleasure and satisfaction. Just near it is the terminus for the Orleans railway, which is worthy of observation, and then we will cross over to the horse and dog market and observe the regular system with regard to the stalls and other arrangements which are adopted; it is principally for draught-horses, Wednesdays and Saturdays are the market days, and Sundays for dogs. We must next glance at the Hôpital de la Pitié, founded in 1612 for paupers, it has been since annexed to the Hôtel-Dieu, and contains 600 beds; it is situated No. 1, rue Copeau. Sainte-Pélagie being just by in the Rue de la Clef, we ought to afford it a half hour; it was formerly a convent of nuns, political prisoners are now here confined when committed for trial, or if sentenced to but short terms of imprisonment; it is also appropriated for other offenders whose sentence of confinement is of brief duration, but the military surveillance within and around it is very strict. The Fountain Cuvier, at the corner of the street of that name, and the Rue St. Victor, must claim a few minutes' attention; it is certainly one amongst those of modern erection possessing great merit. In the Rue Scipion we will cast one look at the great bakehouse for all the hospitals in Paris, to which I have before alluded. The Amphitheatre of Anatomy must occupy some attention, being a suite of anatomical schools only recently built, on a most commodious scale; it forms a corner of the Rues du Fer and Fossés St. Marcel. One thought in passing the ancient Cimetière de Ste. Catherine, closed in 1815, must be devoted to Pichegru, who lies buried there; we then hurry on without loss of time to the manufacture of the Gobelin tapestry. As the little river Bièvre is considered to be peculiarly adapted for dyeing, that process has been carried on from a very remote period on the spot where the present establishment now stands, which owes its foundation to Jean Gobelin in 1450, and under Louis the Fourteenth it was formed into a royal manufactory. To me this is indeed one of the greatest wonders of Paris, how such beautiful specimens of art can be produced when the work is all done behind the frame, so that the artist cannot see the effect of what he is doing, is to me most miraculous; the material used is woollen and silken threads, so woven together, that a perfectly smooth surface is produced, having all the softness and gradation of tints to be found in the finest oil painting, without that glare which varnish produces; the execution of these works is attended by a most tedious application, requiring sometimes six years to complete one piece, which, at 18,000 francs, about seven hundred pounds, is not adequate to recompensing the workmen equal to their merit and perseverance; about 120 men are constantly employed, principally for the Government or the Royal Family. Attached to this establishment is the Royal Carpet Manufactory; such as are here produced are considered superior to those of Persia, with regard to the evenness of the surface, the strength, durability, and fineness of the workmanship, the beauty of the designs, and the brilliance of the colours, which are such as can never be surpassed, but if they were ever allowed to be sold, the price would be so enormous that some would amount to 150,000 francs (6000_l._) The accuracy with which the pictures of Rubens have been copied is most extraordinary, as it may be said that the operative works in the dark. One carpet has been produced for the Gallery of the Louvre, consisting of seventy-two pieces, forming a total exceeding 1,300 feet which is supposed to be the largest carpet ever made. The same facility exists for foreigners seeing this exhibition, as with all others, the passport being presented, Wednesdays and Saturdays, from one to three in winter, and from two to four in the summer. A curious old house, termed the Maison de St. Louis or de la Reine Blanche, is worth notice, in the Rue des Marmouzets; it may have been inhabited by a queen of that name, but certainly not the mother of St. Louis, as it is not sufficiently ancient, being of about the time of Charles the Seventh, when it was the rage to build houses in that style of architecture, about the period of from 1440 to 1460. The church of St. Medard, in the Rue Mouffetard, offers nothing remarkable, but a mixture of different styles of architecture, according to the epochs at which it was repaired and embellished; in 1561 a tremendous attack was made upon it by the Calvinists, when several of the congregation were killed, and the Abbé Paris, having been buried in the cemetery attached in 1727, his tomb, it is pretended, had certain convulsions in 1730, and was the origin of the sect called convulsionists, and the scenes which occurred caused the cemetery to be closed in 1732. A picture of St. Genenieve, by Watteau, in the chapel of that saint, must be admired, having much merit. In the Rue de l'Oursine, No. 95, is an hospital which is a refuge for sinning and afflicted females (something in the nature of the Magdalen, in London), containing 300 beds. To the fountain of Bacchus, at the corner of the Rue Censier, we will give a look _en passant_, as also to the School of Pharmacy, formerly a convent, in the garden of which was formed the first botanical garden, in 1580; there is here a cabinet of specimens of drugs and a collection of mineralogy worthy of examination; it is situated in the Rue de l'Arbalète, No. 13. The Hôpital Militaire and Church of the Val de Grâce is in the Rue St. Jacques (vide page 96) and is one which particularly merits attention of the visiter; the vault of the dome is painted upon the stone by Mignard, and is justly celebrated as one of the most splendid frescos in France; the heart of Anne of Austria, the foundress of it, was sent here, as also those of many succeeding members of the Royal Family. The interior of the church is much admired for the richness of its architecture. At No. 3, Rue de la Bourbe, is the Lying-in Hospital, formerly the Abbey of Port Royal, containing 445 beds; any woman, eight months advanced in pregnancy, is admitted, if there be room to receive her, without an inquiry, if she be in distress; she enters into an engagement to support the child, and if she cannot fulfil it, she must make a declaration and it is sent to the Foundling Hospital, but if she retain it, clothing and a small sum of money is given her on quitting the hospital. A school for midwifery is established here, the practitioners being females, who, when considered competent, receive a diploma from the physicians who are appointed judges. Just by this establishment is the Observatory, erected in the reign of Louis XV; it is a most curious piece of architecture, having in it neither wood nor iron; it is not a large building, but has a fine appearance, and Perrault was the architect; it is vaulted throughout, and a geometrical staircase, having a vacuity of 170 feet deep, merits particular notice. There is a circular universal chart upon the pavement of one of the apartments. By means of mechanical arrangements the roof and cupola open, and every night, the weather permitting, astronomical observations are taken. M. Arago, the most celebrated astronomer of France, lectures here, where there is every facility, and every instrument to be found requisite for the promotion of the science of astronomy; there are two pluvia-meters, for ascertaining the quantity of rain that falls in Paris during a year. There is a general map of France, called the Carte de Cassini, containing 182 sheets, a marble statue of Cassini (the author of the work) attests the high estimation in which he was held; he died in 1712, aged eighty-seven. This institution is the just admiration of all scientific men from every civilized part of the world, but it is an astronomer alone who can thoroughly appreciate its merits. The little hospital, founded by M. Cochin, in 1780, being just by No. 45, Rue du Faubourg St. Jacques, may claim our hasty look, it contains 114 beds, and the patients receive the attendance of the Soeurs de St. Marthe. At No. 9, Rue des Capucins, Faubourg St. Jacques, is an hospital for men and youths above fifteen, whose excesses have brought on disease; it is styled Hôpital des Vénériens, and contains 300 beds; the attendants are all males. Near to the Barrière d'Enfer is the entrance to the Catacombs, containing the bones of 3,000,000 persons which are all systematically arranged so as to have the most extraordinary effect; they are formed into galleries of an immense length, and occupy a considerable space of ground under a great portion of Paris, on the south side of the Seine; but now they cease to be such objects of interest as they formerly were, as the public are not now permitted to visit them; they were formerly large quarries from which the stone was drawn for building most part of ancient Paris, and when it was decided to clear many of the cemeteries within the capital, the bones were placed in these quarries in 1784, and the operation of piling them as they now are was effected in 1810. In the Rue d'Enfer, No. 86, is the Infirmary of Marie Thérèse, founded by Madame la Vicomtesse de Chateaubriand, in 1819, named after the Duchess d'Angoulême, its protectress; it is destined for females who have moved in respectable society, the accommodations and food being far better than are found in the generality of hospitals; the establishment consists of fifty beds. At the Barrière of St. Jacques, the guillotine is erected when criminals are to be executed. Beyond the Barrière d'Enfer, on the Orleans road, No. 15, is the Hôpital de la Rochefoucauld; it is devoted to the reception of old servants of hospitals, and other aged persons, it also receives poor persons on their paying, according to circumstances, 200 francs a-year, or upwards, or on paying a sum on entering varying from 700 to 3000 francs. The number of beds is 213. As we descend the Rue d'Enfer, we find, at No. 74, the Foundling Hospital, founded by the good and celebrated St. Vincent de Paule, in 1632. Any child is received at this institution on the mother making a declaration that she has not the means of supporting it, when she receives a certificate signed by a commissary of police; the average number admitted in the last two or three years is rather over three thousand; they are attended by the Soeurs de Charité (Sisters of Charity) in the most praiseworthy manner; in the same building is the Orphans' Hospital, where the children are placed when two years of age, and of poor persons who fall ill and are obliged to go to an hospital, the children may be sent here until the parents are cured. The children are all taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, and are placed to various trades at the proper ages; they are treated with the greatest care and kindness, it is open to visiters, and the sight of it produces the most heartfelt gratification; many of the most respectable members of society have come from this institution. Turning into the Rue de Faubourg St. Jacques, at the corner of the Rue des Deux Eglises, is the institution for the Deaf and Dumb, founded by the benevolent Abbé de l'Epée, who, with only 500_l._ a-year, took the charge of maintaining and educating forty deaf and dumb pupils, whom he taught to write and read, even on the most abstruse subjects. The Abbé Sicard followed up the plan to the highest perfection; 80 pupils are now admitted gratis and are brought up to different trades, others pay according to their means; the Chambers grant generally 4,000_l._ a year to this institution. At No. 67, Rue d'Enfer, is the Convent of the Carmelites, where Mademoiselle de La Vallière, the beautiful favourite of Louis XIV, took the veil. The church of St. Jacques-du-Haut-Pas, which is at the opposite corner, offers nothing very remarkable, the first stone was laid in 1630, by Gaston of Orleans, brother to Louis XIII. Four fine paintings of Saints however are worthy of notice. The Pantheon, formerly the church of Sainte Genevieve, stands to the left as we descend the rue St. Jacques, and strikes upon the eye as a most noble and imposing building; it was Louis XV who laid the first stone in 1764, near the spot where stood the ancient but ruined church of St. Genevieve. It is affirmed that he was persuaded by Madame de Pompadour to erect this monument as a thanksgiving after his having had a severe illness. The architect was Soufflot, the style is purely Grecian. Twenty-two fluted Corinthian columns, 60 feet in height and 6 in diameter, sustain the portico, and 32 the great dome, above which is a lantern terminated by a figure in bronze 17 feet high. There is a great deal of sculpture about the building, some allegorical, others portraiture; its total height is 282 feet. The exterior is in the form of a Grecian cross. The paintings are by the Barons Gros, and Gerard; although a most noble structure, yet it is not consistently grand in all its bearings. Monuments of the great men of France are now erected here; and amongst the rest the immortal Lafayette. The stranger is recommended to ascend the dome, from which a most amusing view is afforded. The vaults beneath are extremely curious and interesting; whatever the faults of this edifice may be, there is a solemnity about it which takes great possession of the mind, particularly when there is a funeral and the light of the torches are seen glimmering amongst the priests in the "long drawn aisle," as they slowly and solemnly wend their way. In the Rue des Postes, No. 26, is the seminary for young men destined for missionaries to the colonies; a bas relief representing a missionary preaching, above the pediment of the church, is the only striking object. At No. 3, Rue de Fourcy, is the Irish college, rather a handsome building, with some trees about it which add to the effect. Many Irish of distinction are buried here and it is still kept up, there being about 100 students; the regulations are the same as in the English Universities, about 25 priests are sent out from here to their own country every year. In the rue des Fossés St. Victor is the Scotch College (vide page 78), it is now a sort of school, but the tablet over the door with Collége des Ecossais inscribed still remains, and there are many interesting monuments of Scotch nobility. Next door is the Convent of English Augustin Nuns, the only religious house never molested during the Revolution; it contains a small chapel with some English tombs, the inmates now occupy themselves with the education of their young countrywomen. At the back of the Pantheon, rather to the south-east, is the very curious and interesting church of St. Etienne-du-Mont; it is an odd mixture of styles of architecture, a tower and circular turret which are detached from the church, are supposed to be of the date 1222; a staircase of most singular construction and of peculiar lightness is the first object which strikes the spectator on entering; there is a great deal of richness and scroll work, with some Arabic, Greek and Gothic styles intermingled. Some of the pictures in this church are exceedingly good, and are by Lebrun and Lesueur. The pulpit is supported by Sampson, and there are other smaller figures, the whole having a beautiful effect; the design is by La Hire, and executed by Lestocard, it is altogether a church of high interest, often the subject of the modern artists' pencils. There is a tomb which was found in the vaults beneath, which is said to be that of St. Genevieve, and bears the date of 511. The library of St. Genevieve is close by, and besides containing 200,000 volumes, and 2,500 manuscripts, it possesses other objects of interest, being a series of portraits from Philippe the Bold to Louis the XV, and one of Mary Queen of Scots. This library belongs to the Collége Henry IV, which on the side towards the Rue Clovis is very modern, but the lower part of the curious old tower is supposed to have been built in the reign of Clovis. The young princes of the reigning family in France were educated at this College, there are 907 pupils, of whom 500 are boarders. The École de Droit which stands in front of the Pantheon was also erected in the reign of Louis XV, and Souflot, the architect. At No. 123, is the Collége de Louis-le-Grand, formerly the Collége de Clermont, founded in 1560, but the present building was erected in 1618; it contains 1,180 pupils, of whom 520 are boarders. It possesses a large library, and a good collection of philosophical instruments. Behind this College, in the Rue de Rheims, at the corner of the Rue des Chollets, a gateway and building of the time of Francis I. is worth attention, supposed to belong to the old Collége des Chollets. The Royal College of France, situated No. 1, Place Cambrai, was founded in 1529, by Francis I, but the present edifice was erected in 1774. It is a spacious building and very commodious, 23 professors attend and give gratuitous lectures upon almost every subject, whether scientific or literary, and particularly upon languages, both ancient and modern, Oriental and European. In a court opposite the college is a very curious square tower of the 12th century, called la Tour Bichat, or la Tour de St. Jean-de-Latran; it is all that is remaining of the Hall of Knights Hospitaliers, established in 1171, afterwards called Chevaliers de Malte. The remains of a chapel of very ancient date will be found in the adjoining Cour de la Vacherie, in the far corner to the right, now occupied as a charcoal depot. We will next proceed to the rue de la Montagne St. Genevieve, and view the Polytechnic School, formerly the Collége de Navarre, and where still remain a hall and chapel of the 14th century; a new façade much less interesting has been recently added, and the establishment is altogether badly situated. There are many emblematical bas-reliefs which possess no extraordinary merit. But the institution itself is one that deserves the highest encomiums, the young men are received at from 17 to 20, after they have passed the ordeal of a very severe examination in Paris or their respective departments. They are instructed in every branch of education connected with military science, and are afterwards admissible in the engineers, artillery, pontooners, miners, inspectors of highways, public works, etc; they pay 1,000 francs a year, find their own uniforms, and whatever may be requisite for their studies; they remain two or three years, as circumstances may demand. Strangers wishing to view this establishment must have a permission from the Minister of War. The Rue des Carmes has an interesting appearance as containing some of the old colleges, now otherwise appropriated. One was the College de Lisieux; the buildings remain with a curious chapel, which fronts the Marché des Carmes, but its entrance is at No. 5, Rue St. Jean-de-Beauvais. In the Market there is a fountain in the middle built in 1818; this Market is now designated la Place Maubert, and occupies the site of the Convent des Carmes. Mounting a few steps in the Rue St. Victor, we arrive at the church of St. Nicholas-du-Chardonnet; the body of the building was completed in 1709, but the lower is of the 16th century. The general effect of the interior is fine, but the paintings in different chapels, on either side, are highly interesting; some of them are extremely good, of the schools of Lesueur, Moise Valentin, and Mignard, the ceiling of the chapel of St. Charles is painted by Lebrun; there is also a monument of himself and his mother. At No. 68, Rue St-Victor is the Royal Institution for the juvenile Blind, founded by M. Haüy in 1791. There are here maintained 60 boys and 30 girls, at the expense of the State, and as boarders, any blind children may be admitted, either French or foreign; they are taught reading, music, arithmetic, and writing, by means of characters raised in relief. Admittance is freely accorded to strangers, but the establishment is about to be removed to the corner of the Rue de Sèvres, on the Boulevard des Invalides, where 250 pupils will be accommodated. At No. 18, Rue de Pontoise, is the seminary of St. Nicholas du Chardonnet, and at No. 76, the ancient College of Cardinal Lemoine, founded in 1300; some parts of the original building exist, and on the doors are still seen a cardinal's hat and arms, and numerous iron spear-heads. Close by, in the Marché aux Veaux, is still one of the dormitories of the Convent of the Bernardins, which must be of the 13th century, as also some remains of their chapel, in a house adjoining the Market. On the Quai de la Tournelle, No. 35, is the Hôtel de Nesmond, of the reign of Henry IV, and at No. 5, the Pharmacie Centrale, for keeping all the drugs and chemical preparations for the hospitals of Paris. The Rue de Fouarre, by which we will pass, is one of the meanest and filthiest in Paris, but has been cited by Petrarch, Dante and Rabelais, as in it were several of the schools where public disputations were held; the Rue Galande, the Rue des Rats, and many other dirty streets of the same description is the quarter where existed the old University, and still known by the name of the Quartier Latin. Thus having completed our survey, which I shall call the south-east division, we will proceed to the south-west, and begin by the church of St. Severin at No. 3, in the street of the same name, called after a hermit who died in the year 530, but had on this spot an oratory and cells, where he conferred the monastic habit on St. Cloud. The present building was erected in 1210, in the reign of Philippe Auguste, has been repaired and enlarged at several different periods, which is perceptible by the different styles displayed in the architecture; there is a great deal of elaborate workmanship about this church that is exceedingly beautiful and interesting, the lower part of the tower is coeval with its first erection; a few good pictures of the old French school are amongst the attractive objects contained within this edifice. Ascending the little unseemly streets des Prétres and Boutebrie, we find ourselves in the Rue du Foin, No. 18, being called the Hôtel de la Reine Blanche; she was living about the year 1210, when the church of St. Severin close by was founded in the reign of her father-in-law, and very probably resided in the neighbourhood, perhaps on the very spot where the house stands which is now called after her, but evidently not in the same building which is now shown as such, although the staircase is of a very ancient appearance. In the same street, at the corner of the Rue Boutebrie, is the old Collége de Maître Gervais, founded in 1370, at present appropriated as a barrack for infantry. The visiter now must prepare for a grand treat, as we turn round into the Rue de la Harpe, and at No. 63, we find the venerable and crumbling remains of the Palais des Thermes (vide page 55). Julian, who was born in 332, inhabited it for some time, and many imagine it was built by his grandfather, but others state that it was alluded to at a still earlier period. Of what now remains there is principally a large hall and a smaller, forming together one room; the architecture is simple but noble, the walls are adorned by three grand arcades, the middle being the loftiest. The vaulting of the roof rests upon supports, representing the sterns of ships; human figures may be distinguished in one of them. Beneath the hall are vaulted apartments extending under most of the neighbouring houses. An aqueduct is traced as having been brought from some leagues, for the purpose it is supposed principally of supplying the baths. The masonry is alternately of stone and brick, in parts covered with a thick stucco. It seems almost incredible that a monument so ancient, and of such high interest should have been for so long a period totally disregarded by the government, and suffered to be occupied by a printer, a traiteur, and a cooper. The Municipality of Paris have now however purchased it, and intend to convert it into a museum for the reception of antiquities that can be collected of the ancient Gauls. After the overthrow of the Roman yoke, the Palais des Thermes was inhabited by the earliest kings of France. To view these ruins the stranger must apply to the concierge, No. 68, Rue de la Harpe, directly opposite, and a trifle should be given to the party showing them. The Hôtel de Cluny which is almost adjoining, is also an object highly meriting the attention of the observer. It is one of those edifices of the middle ages, of which there are so few remaining. In 1505, in the reign of Louis the Twelfth, this curious building was erected by Jacques d'Amboise, Abbot of Cluny, on the site and with a part of the ruins of the Palais des Thermes. There is a richness about the architecture and the ornaments around the windows, that is particularly striking; the chapel is most highly interesting, and in it was married Princess Mary, the widow of Louis the Twelfth, and sister of Henry VIII, to the duke of Suffolk, as also James V of Scotland to Magdalen, daughter of Francis I. Having at length become the property of M. Sommérard, all the value of his acquisition is duly appreciated, and he has formed within this curious and beautiful edifice, a collection of specimens of the middle ages, which are arranged chronologically; he is the author of a most interesting work on the subject which may be procured upon the premises. The stranger will find a visit to the Hôtel de Cluny one of the most gratifying of any he can bestow, and on writing to M. Sommérard, he may be certain of procuring admission. Following the Rue St. Benoît, we arrive at the Theatre du Pantheon, Rue St. Jacques, opened in 1832; it is partly formed by the church St. Benoît anciently that of St. Benedict built in 1517, much famed during the ligue, where the assassination of Henri III was applauded by Jean Boucher in his sermons. The performances are vaudevilles and melodramas. Highest price two shillings, lowest six-pence. We now re-enter the Rue de la Harpe, and notice the Royal College St. Louis, originally founded by Raoul Harcourt in 1280; the present building was erected in 1675, but part of the ancient edifice exists, the greater portion of the structure was built in 1814; and the college opened in 1820. There is a chapel attached, and at the lower end a gateway, formerly the entrance to the Collége de Bayeux, founded in 1308, which bears an inscription to that effect, and probably of the same date. A very few steps bring us to the Collége de la Sorbonne, built on the site of a school founded by Robert Sorbon in 1253; it is filled with historical associations, the church and all about it has a very gloomy appearance, it is cruciform and of the corinthian order, surmounted by a dome the interior of which is painted by Philippe de Champagne. The tomb of Cardinal de Richelieu, in the southern transept, is the chef-d'oeuvre of Gérardon. The college is a plain building of sombre aspect, but the accommodation for the professors is on a handsome scale; the lectures delivered are all gratuitous. We will now proceed to the School of Medicine in the street bearing the same name. The first stone was laid by Louis XV, in 1769, it is a truly elegant building, a peristyle of the ionic order with a quadruple range of columns unite the two wings and support the library, and a fine cabinet of anatomy. The grand court is 66 feet in length by 96 in breadth, the amphitheatre which is opposite the entrance is capable of containing 1,400 people; there are several allegorical and emblematical bas-reliefs, and on the whole it is a building which excites much admiration both in an ornamental and in a useful point of view, there not being a single object that can in any manner facilitate the study of medicine that is not to be found within this institution. At No. 5, in the same street, is a gratuitous school of drawing, established in the ancient amphitheatre of surgery, chiefly intended for artisans, to instruct them in the principles of drawings and architecture, and lectures are given on geometry, mensuration, etc. Opposite to the École de Médecine, is the Hôpital clinique de la Faculté de Médecine, established in the cloister of the Cordeliers, of which there are some remains still visible; it is rather a handsome building and contains 140 beds. The body of the building is in the Rue de l'Observance. In the same street as the École de Médecine; is the Musée Dupuytren, being the valuable pathological collection of that celebrated anatomist, bought by the University of his heirs, and placed in the refectory of the Cordeliers which has been fitted up in the style of the 15th century, the date of its erection. Adjoining to this Museum is the School of practical Anatomy, being a set of dissecting rooms for the use of the students. As we are so near I must conduct the visiter to the Rue Hautefeuille; on the west side is a house of the 16th century, which once belonged to a society of Premonstratensian monks. In the same street, Nos. 23, 13, 9 and 5, and at the corner of the Rue du Paon and Rue de l'École de Médecine, the houses have ancient turrets, and are stated to have been built in the reign of Charles VII. In the house, No. 18, of the latter street, in a dirty backroom, Charlotte Corday stabbed that beau idéal of monsters, Marat. We will now make our way to the Rue d'Enfer, and at No. 34 is the Hôtel de Vendôme, at present the royal School of Mines; this noble mansion was erected in 1707 by the Carthusian monks, but being purchased by the Duchess of Vendôme was called after her. Every description of tool or instrument used in mining will here be found, and perhaps the extensive mineralogical collection is unrivalled anywhere in Europe, and arranged in the most scientific manner by M. Haüy, with a ticket attached to each explanatory of their quality and locality. The geological specimens have been collected by Messrs. Cuvier and Bronguiart; weeks might be passed in this museum by those partial to studying mineralogy, geology, and conchology, and subjects for examination and meditation would still not be exhausted. We will now turn into the gardens of the Luxembourg Palace; they are in the true French stiff style, but look at them in a slanting direction and all the formality is lost; the statues are seen intermingled with the trees, shrubs, flowers, parterres, walks, vases, fountains, etc. and the coup-d'oeil has a most beautiful effect, and some of the retired walks amongst the high trees have a very inviting though solitary appearance. The Palace (vide page 98) was erected by Marie de Medicis, and is now with the recent additions a very extensive building, and taken in a general sense is decidedly a very fine monument, but I certainly think the pillars being in such bad taste with large square knobs sticking out all the way up the columns, in a degree spoil the effect of the whole edifice, still there is a heavy grandeur in the ensemble which has an imposing appearance. After having been occupied by various royal personages, it was given by Louis the Sixteenth to his brother afterwards Louis XVIII, who resided in it until he quitted France in 1791; it has since been appropriated to many different purposes, and is now used as the Chamber of Peers; for their discussions a new apartment has been constructed 92 feet in diameter, the form is semi-circular. In the middle of the axis is a recess in which the president's and secretaries' seats are placed; above are a range of statues in recesses, the chairs of the peers are arranged in an amphitheatrical manner and occupy the space in front of the president; the peer who speaks takes his place below the president's desk. There are altogether in this palace so many statues, apartments, sculpture and galleries to describe, that it would monopolise far too much space in my little volume if I were to attempt to do it justice. I must therefore content myself with advising the reader to take the first opportunity of viewing it with its beautiful gallery of pictures, many of which are the chefs-d'oeuvre of the best living French artists. In the new divisions which have been lately constructed there are some fine specimens of painting from the pencils of Messrs. Delaroche, Scheffer, Boulanger, Roqueplan, etc., and the chambers voted 800,000 fr. (32,000_l._) for the artistical decorations of the recent erections added to the original building. Le Petit Luxembourg is a large hotel contiguous and may be considered as a dependency of the great palace, it was built by Cardinal Richelieu who made it his residence whilst the Palais Royal was building, when he afterwards gave it to his niece the Duchess d'Aiguillon. It is now occupied by the Chancellor of France, as President of the House of Peers; it also contains a small prison for persons committed for political offences, and tried by the Court of Peers: the ministers of Charles X were here confined in 1830. In the same street, No. 70, is the Convent of the Carmelite Sisters, already mentioned, a portion of the building is still devoted to sacred purposes, the chapel is dedicated to St. Joseph, and of the Tuscan order, it was founded by Marie de Medicis. Here first began the massacres in Paris of the 2nd of September, 1792, when a number of priests here imprisoned were murdered. This is the convent which has long been famed for the _Eau de Mélisse_ and _Blanc des Carmes_, which are still sold here. At the southern gate of the Garden of the Luxembourg is the _Jardin botanique de l'École de Médecine_, where every medicinal plant agreeing with the climate is raised, and ticketed as classified by Jussieu. The Odéon Theatre which is near the Luxembourg has been twice burnt down, but was finally restored in 1820; it is situated fronting the street, and in the _place_ of the same name; it is certainly a very handsome building both as to the exterior and the interior, which is fitted up in a most superior style, but all exertions to render it successful seem in vain, although the present director has it rent free from the government; dramatic pieces in general are here represented, but its situation prevents its ever being much frequented; the principal front having a portico of eight doric columns ascended by nine steps has a fine effect; it is capable of containing 1,600 persons. A very few steps bring us to the magnificent church of St. Sulpice. Although the first stone was laid by Anne of Austria, in 1655, it was not totally finished until 1777. The portico, by Servadoni, is splendid; the two towers not being similar, rather spoil the effect, but the interior baffles all description to do it justice; a simplicity and grandeur pervades the whole, which is heightened by a soft light thrown upon the Virgin directly behind the altar, who appears to be descending midst the lightest clouds upon the earth, to which she presents her son. The corinthian order prevails throughout the interior, the statues are bold and finely conceived, some of the paintings are exquisite, that of the ceiling, particularly. Two immense shells, placed within the entrance, for containing holy water, resting on rocks of marble, were presented to Francis I, by the Republic of Venice. The pulpit is supported by two flights of steps, with the figures of Faith, Hope, and Charity, producing a most splendid appearance. The organ is ornamented with no less than seventeen figures playing on musical instruments, or sustaining cornucopies carved in the most perfect manner. The pillars on the different sides of this edifice comprise the four orders of doric, ionic, corinthian, and composite. I cannot conceive a more sublime and delightful sensation than that which is caused when the first low notes of the organ begin to swell; the aisles being extremely lofty and vaulted, the sound appears gradually to peal through the building with a degree of softness which seems as if it came from a considerable distance, and has a most extraordinary and enchanting effect. We will now quit this noble edifice by the grand front, and looking to the left cast an instant's glance upon a large plain building, which is the Seminary of St. Sulpice, and has 210 students. Descending the Rue Mabillon a few paces, we come to the Market St. Germains, where formerly flourished the great fair under the same name. It was built in 1811 on a most commodious plan, and has every requisite that can be thought of for the convenience of a market, with an extremely handsome fountain in the middle, which the visiter should not omit to observe. Quitting the Market by the Rue Montfaucon brings us in front of the prison of the Abbaye, in the Rue St. Marguerite, now only used for confining military offenders; here it was that some of the greatest horrors were committed during the Revolution, it has a small turret at each corner, and seems to be a building of about two hundred years standing. Not many yards off is the very ancient church of St. Germain des Près (vide page 61), which has often been pillaged, burnt, and otherwise injured, but the lower part of the tower is coeval with the foundation, 558. The document relative to the establishment of the monastery and church is still preserved amongst the archives of the kingdom, and bears the date 561. The nave is simple and of the time of Abbot Modardus, in the year 900; additions and repairs have been made at different periods, but in many instances the style of architecture displays its early date, the capitals of the pillars are remarkable for the grotesqueness of the devices. There are some pictures of merit, and many interesting tombs, one of Casimir, the King of Poland, who abdicated his throne in 1668, and died abbot of the monastery attached to the church in 1672, also of the Duke and Earls of Douglas and Angus. The Abbot's palace still stands at the east of the church, in the Rue de l'Abbaye, directly facing the Rue Furstemberg; it was built in the year 1586 by Cardinal Bourbon. It is a large heavy-looking red brick building faced with stone, with a large garden behind; it is at present let out to different tenants. We shall now descend the Rue Furstemberg, and taking the Rue Jacob, to the right shall get into the Rue de Seine, and mounting the little Passage du Pont-Neuf, one of the oldest in Paris, we find ourselves opposite the Rue Guénégaud cited by Sterne, as also the Quai Conti, on which stands the Mint or Hôtel des Monnaies, a very extensive building and rather handsome; it was built in the reign of Louis XV in 1771, after designs furnished by M. Antoine; an entablature supported by ionic columns forms the principal front, with six statues of Peace, Commerce, Prudence, Fortitude, Plenty and Law. On the right is a noble staircase ascending to apartments fitted up with the splendour of a palace. The collection of coins and medals here are extremely interesting, the first are two of Childebert, the dates being 511-568, and they are nearly complete of the respective kings up to the present day, amongst others are some of the gold pieces of 10 louis, each of the reign of Louis XIII, very large and beautiful. A medal of Charlemagne of most exquisite execution, and others of almost every country or celebrated monarch or chief, with a collection of the ores in their mineral state, every instrument used for coining and in fact every object appertaining to such an establishment, which would demand much space and time to describe, and a work is written solely on the subject. This interesting museum is open to foreigners with their passports on Mondays and Thursdays, from twelve till three. Contiguous and on the western side stands the Palais of the Institute, or as we should call it the Royal Academy. It was founded by Cardinal Mazarin in 1661, from designs by Levau. The segment of a circle describes the front, whilst pavillions upon open arcades terminate the extremities, a portico in the centre with corinthian colums surmounted by a pediment, whilst a dome crowns the summit, and vases upon the entablature combine to give it a fine effect. In the great hall of this building the members of the Academy hold their sittings; the vestibules are adorned by marble statues of men whose intellectual powers have rendered their names renowned throughout the world, as Montesquieu, Molière, Corneille, Racine, Sully, etc., etc. The Mazarine library is attached to this institution and contains 120,000 printed volumes besides 4,500 manuscripts. There is also under the same establishment the library of the Institute, which includes 115,000 volumes; in the gallery in which they are contained is a marble statue of Voltaire, by Pigale, highly celebrated for its execution. This building was for some time called the Palais des Quatre-Nations, as the founder at first designed it for natives of Roussillon, Pignerol, Alsace, and Flanders. The subjects discussed within the halls of this institution are the Belles-Lettres, the fine Arts, moral and political Sciences, etc. Persons desiring tickets for the meetings of the members must inscribe their names at the office of the secretary of the Institute. Directly opposite is a light elegant bridge, called the Pont-des-Arts, it is constructed of iron and is merely for foot passengers. Passing to the Quai Voltaire we turn into the Rue des Petits-Augustins, and stop before the front of the Palais and École des Beaux-Arts, or School of fine Arts; this is one of the many institutions which exist in Paris requiring a volume to describe all its beauties and utility, there are a great number of professors belonging to the establishment which is divided into two sections, the one for sculpture and painting, the other for architecture, both of which the pupils are taught, and when they excel, receive annual prizes. The present building was erected upon the garden of the Convent of the Petits Augustins, but there are still some remains of antiquity, which are rather strangely intermingled with the modern erection, as the front of a château at Gaillon built in 1,500 and transported here by M. Lenoir, who collected together on this spot relicks of the middle ages, which are now again dispersed to the great regret of every resident or visiter in Paris. There is also the portal of the Château-d'Anet built by Henri II for Diana of Poitiers, with many other objects extremely curious; amongst the rest a large stone basin from the Abbey of St. Denis, 12 feet in diameter, ornamented with grotesque heads, said to be a single piece of stone, some letters upon it prove that it must be of the 13th century, and many other fragments over which the antiquary likes to pore. Here every aid is given to the young artist, that can facilitate his progress in his art, and he who is adjudged to have painted the best piece upon a subject given, is sent to Rome to study three years, at the expense of the government. The visiter will here find paintings, sculpture, models, and in fact, every thing connected with the fine arts. He must also visit the ancient chapel of the convent, containing a most beautiful screen of stone and marble, and on the walls are some very good paintings: Mr. Ingres, perhaps the most celebrated draftsman now existing, made a present to this institution of fifty pictures, copies he had executed at his expense in the Vatican, from Raphael. Foreigners must apply with their passports for admission at the office to the right on entering. We return on the Quay and remark the Pont du Carousel, an iron bridge of three arches of an elegant construction, it was built by a company, who have laid a toll both on foot and carriage passengers. No. 1, Rue de Beaune, on the same quay, is the hôtel where Voltaire resided, and died in 1788. His nephew, M. de Villette, and afterwards Madame de Montmorenci, kept his apartments closed for forty-seven years. We must now ascend the Rue des Saints Pères, and in passing by, notice the Hôpital de la Charité, at the corner of the Rue Jacob, which has such a dismal appearance outside, that it almost makes one ill to look at it; indeed, to pass it often, one would soon be in a fit state to become one of its inmates; it was founded by Marie de Medicis, as a religious community, called Brothers of Charity, who were all surgeons and apothecaries, administering relief both for body and soul; it contains 426 beds. Besides those belonging to the medical and chemical school attached to it, there are several gardens in which the patients are allowed to walk; the same diseases are here treated as at the Hôtel Dieu, de la Pitié, etc. Turning to the right into the Rue St. Dominique, at the end of the second street on the north we shall see the church of St. Thomas d'Aquin; it was formerly a convent of Jacobins, founded by Cardinal Richelieu. The present front was built in 1787, by Brother Claude, one of the monks; it has two ranges of columns, doric and ionic, surmounted by a pediment with a bas-relief representing Religion, terminating with a cross. The interior is decorated with corinthian pilasters, the effect is altogether fine, the high altar is of white marble, and some of the pictures are extremely good; the nobility attend much at this church, and it is rather famed for its preachers. The Musée d'Artillerie is adjoining, and contains the armour worn from the earliest ages, as also the weapons which have been used, and those of different countries. Here will be found the armour of many heroes famed in the annals of chivalry, as Bayard, Dunois, Duguesclin, etc., and an equestrian figure of Francis I. There is also the helmet of Attila, who was slain by Clovis, in 453; another, on which are some verses from the Koran, of Abderama, killed by Charles Martel. The dagger with which Ravillac assassinated Henri IV, having a black crape round it. There are, besides, models of all kinds of machines connected with war; the armour of Joan of Arc will be regarded with interest, as also of many others whose names have been celebrated in history; a catalogue descriptive of every object is to be had at the door for one franc. There is a military library attached to the establishment, with naval charts, etc. Strangers are admitted on Thursdays and Saturdays, from twelve till four, with their passports. A few steps take us into the Rue du Bac, which we will ascend to the Rue de Grenelle, and observe one of the finest fountains in Paris, erected after the designs of Bouchardon, in the reign of Louis XV, began 1739 and finished in 1745; it is most richly adorned by statues and allegorical subjects. At No. 120, Rue du Bac, is the church of St. Francois Xavier, or of Foreign Missionaries, it was built in 1683, consisting of two parts, one on the ground floor, and the other above, the lower is perfectly plain, the upper is of the ionic order; there are some good paintings of the French school of the period. Behind is the seminary for the instruction of young men intended as missionaries in the requisite sciences and languages. The worthy Abbé Edgeworth, the attendant of Louis XVI in his last moments, was one of the members of this institution. Just by in the Rue de Babylone is a barrack for infantry, famed for the attack and defence carried on in the Revolution of the three days. In the rue Vanneau is a recently built house, a complete type of the style of Francis I. In the Rue de Varennes are several grand hôtels of the nobility of France, with their family names inscribed over the immense gateways; it is in fact one of the most interesting streets in Paris; amongst others, at No. 23, is the hôtel of the late Duchess de Bourbon, now belonging to Mme Adélaïde d'Orléans. No. 35, is the hôtel d'Orsay, recently restored and embellished, and several others of the same description. At the north-west corner of the street stands the hôtel de Biron, now converted into the celebrated convent and seminary of the Sacré Coeur (Sacred Heart), where so many daughters of the French, English and Irish catholic nobility have been brought up. No. 16, the offices of the Minister of Commerce, and No. 10, Rue Hillerin-Bertin, is the École royale des Ponts-et-Chaussées, established in 1747. The pupils, who are all taken from the Polytechnique, are instructed in every thing connected with the projection and construction of bridges, canals, ports and public works. Their collection of plans, maps, and models relative to these operations is very rich. But a few paces southward bring us facing the ancient convent of Panthémont, now used as a barrack for cavalry, forming the corner of the Rue de Belle-Chasse and that of the Rue de Grenelle; the chapel, which has a dome, is an interesting architectural object. This is one of the aristocratic streets of Paris, where the most ancient families of France have their town residences; the Rue St. Dominique is of the same description, and many others in this neighbourhood, but in too many cases immense gateways and high walls are all that are to be seen in the streets, as the hotels are situated behind them at the end of large court-yards, similar to several houses in Piccadilly the most of which are now pulled down: on the west side of Cavendish square one is still standing (I believe Lord Harcourt's), and several others in different parts of the west end of the town. The most conspicuous hotels in the Rue St. Dominique, are those of the Duke de Lynes, No. 33, the hotel of the late Duchess Dowager of Orléans, No. 58, formerly inhabited by Cambacérès. The Hôtel de Grammont, No. 103, and the Hôtel de Périgord, No. 105. At 82 and 86, are the residence and offices of the Minister of War, where there is a very valuable library, with a most interesting collection of plans, maps, and drawings. We will now return to the Rue du Bac, and at No. 132, we shall notice the Hôtel Châtillon, now occupied by the sisters of St. Vincent de Paule, better known as the Sisters of Charity. At the top of the street we find the Rue de Sèvres, and turning to the left we shall view, at the corner of the Rue de la Chaise, the old Hospital entitled Hospices des Ménages; it was built in 1554 on the site of an old establishment for afflicted children, and is now appropriated to the reception of the aged, whether married couples or single; there are 264 beds, and an extensive garden attached to the establishment. Strangers may visit this hospital every day, and will find the detail of the regulations very interesting. A few yards eastward bring us to the Abbaye-aux-Bois, so called when it was founded in 1202 from being in the midst of the woods; this church possesses a few good pictures, amongst which are a Virgin and dead Christ, by Lebrun, and a portrait of Mlle de la Vallière. Opposite is the Maison du Noviciat des Religieuses Hospitalières de St. Thomas de Villeneuve. Still continuing in the Rue de Sèvres, at No. 54, is the hospital for women who are incurable; it was founded in 1634 by Cardinal de la Rochefoucault, which is indicated by an inscription over the door; it contains 600 beds. There is a large chapel attached, in which there are some pictures, and one bearing the date of 1404 with a handsome monument of the founder. The Egyptian fountain in this street is well worth attention, it was built in 1806, and is a very handsome monument. At No. 104, corner of the Boulevards, is the convent of the Dames de St. Thomas de Villeneuve, with a very pretty little gothic chapel. At No. 95 is that of the Lazarists, with a small chapel fronting the street. At the corner of the Boulevard on the north side are new buildings, erected for the reception of the juvenile blind. No. 149 is the Hôpital des Enfants malades; it is wholly appropriated to the reception of sick children, who are admitted from 2 to 15 years of age; it contains 500 beds, which number is to be considerably increased. Next door is an hospital founded by Madame Necker in a building which formerly was a convent of Benedictine nuns; it is for the reception of the sick in general, and contains 300 beds; the chapel attached has two fine statues of Aaron and Melchizedek, in marble, discovered in digging the foundations of a house; a short distance farther on, is an Artesian well, which after many long, expensive, and most laborious attempts, at last emits water from the enormous depth of nearly 1800 feet; it rises to the height of 65 feet, and falls into the respective conduits destined to receive it. It is situated at the entrance of the Abattoir de Grenelle which is one of the extensive slaughter-houses at the outskirts of Paris, all of which are justly celebrated for the regularity of the buildings, the order with which every thing is conducted, and the great convenience of their being situated where they cannot be any source of annoyance to the inhabitants of the interior of the capital. The École Militaire stands at the end of an avenue of trees, just before us; it was founded by Louis XV, in 1751, for educating gratuitously 500 young gentlemen, the sons of poor nobility, but it is now converted into barracks for 4,000 men, either cavalry, artillery, or infantry. One front, looking to the Champ de Mars, is adorned with ten corinthian pillars, sustaining a pediment decorated with bas-reliefs, whilst a quadrangular dome, rises from behind, with figures of Time and Astronomy; there are besides in other parts of the edifice, rows of tuscan, doric, and ionic pillars, the buildings surround two spacious court-yards; on the first floor is the Salle de Conseil, embellished with pictures and military emblems. The chapel attached to the establishment is most splendid, the roof is supported by thirty fluted corinthian columns: the entrance to the École Militaire is by the Place de Fontenoy. The Champ-de-Mars is a most extensive oblong piece of ground, in which has been celebrated many extraordinary epochs in the history of France; the sloping embankments on each side were formed by the people of Paris; as many as 60,000 persons of both sexes kept working at them until they were finished, when the fête de la Fédération took place on the 14th July, 1790. It was also the scene of several other public demonstrations, and in 1837, on the 14th of June, during the rejoicings for the celebration of the marriage of the Duke of Orléans, 24 persons lost their lives by being either suffocated or trodden to death in passing through the gates. The Paris races are held here in May and September, as also the military reviews, inspections, manoeuvres, etc. Proceeding by an avenue from the north-cast corner of the Champ-de-Mars we arrive at the Hôtel des Invalides, which is certainly the grandest monument that exists of the reign of Louis XIV. It is a most delightful asylum for crippled or worn-out old soldiers, it was built after the designs of Bruant, begun in 1671, and completed in 1700. The façade towards the Seine, though heavy, is grand and imposing, adorned by the statue of Louis the XIV, and colossal figures of Mars, Minerva, Justice and Prudence, in bas-relief, and at the sides by emblematical representations of the four nations conquered by the founder. The first court has the most pleasing appearance, the arcades render it light and elegant, and although ornamented with figures, arms, horses, and trophies, they are not exuberant, and its simplicity is not deteriorated. The church is a most magnificent structure, presenting an extraordinary mixture of military and religious decorations. The dome, which has an effect truly noble, is adorned by paintings of the twelve Apostles by Jouvenet, surmounted by a glory from the pencil of Lafosse, with a beautiful tesselated pavement beneath; there are some other good paintings, but many very bad. The gilding, although extremely gorgeous, harmonises well with the varied colouring which prevails throughout this beautiful edifice, and has not a gaudy appearance. There are monuments of several of the governors of the hospital; numbers of portraits, and banners taken from different countries, which amounted to as many as 3,000, but on the evening prior to the allies entering Paris, Joseph Bonaparte ordered them to be burnt. To give any thing like a comprehensive idea of this wonderful building, would require many pages, there is such an immense number of interesting objects, the description of which would compel the omission of other matter equally important; but, whether taken for its exterior or its interior, it certainly is one of the grandest monuments extant. The approaches to it are particularly fine, being by long vistas of high trees, with a most noble esplanade in front. A library belongs to the establishment which was founded by Napoleon; it consists of 30,000 volumes, and his portrait by Ingres is one of its valuable ornaments. It is gratifying to see so many of the Invalids constantly in the library, amusing themselves with reading; it is a pleasing sight to be there at meal-time to witness the cleanliness and comfort which prevails. Besides board and lodging, every soldier receives 2 francs a month, and officers and non-commissioned officers in proportion; 5,000 is the number the establishment can contain. In quitting this extraordinary building, the visiter must notice the Hôtel du Châtelet at the corner of the Rue de Grenelle, now occupied by the Austrian ambassador, being a fine specimen of the days of Louis XIV. We then pass into the Rue St. Dominique, and at No. 185 find the Hospice Leprince, so called after the founder, erected in 1819; it contains 10 beds for men and 10 for women; almost opposite is the church of St. Pierre-du-Gros-Caillou, which was built in 1822, and is much admired for its beautiful symmetry; the whole is consistently of the tuscan order. Farther to the west is the military hospital founded by the Duke de Biron for the French guards, containing 700 beds and erections for 500 more are to be added shortly. Directly opposite is the Fountain of Mars built in 1813, a monument very well worth the visiter's attention. Continuing a few yards farther to the west, we enter the Avenue de la Bourdonnaye, and turning to the right we come to the Atteliers de Sculpture, consisting of two handsome buildings where sculptors employed by government on public monuments may proceed with their operations; stone-yards, sheds, a house for the director, and the whole arrangement is most complete for the attainment of the object; visiters may obtain tickets from the Director of public Monuments, Palais du Quai d'Orsay. The royal Manufactory of Tobacco, Snuff, and Cigars is at a short distance eastward, No. 57, Quai d'Orsay, an extensive establishment for the preparation of the articles, with a handsome modern house for the offices, and residence for the director. The profits of this establishment in 1839 to the government were 66,001,841 francs, upwards of 2,500,000£. We will now proceed along the quai, and notice the bridges; first the Pont de Iena, terminated in 1813, it is completely in a horizontal line, and is certainly a perfect structure, uniting elegance, beauty, and simplicity. The Pont des Invalides is a handsome suspension bridge for carriages as well as foot passengers; a toll is paid in passing over it. Pursuing our course eastward we arrive at the Palais Bourbon, and Chamber of Deputies, which was erected by the dowager Duchess of Bourbon, in 1722, begun by the Italian architect Girardini, and continued by Mansard. It was afterwards much enlarged when possessed by the Prince de Condé, but not completed when the Revolution of 1789 occurred. In 1795 it was appropriated as the Chamber for the sittings of the Council of Five Hundred, and next occupied by the Corps Legislatif. At the Restoration in 1814 the Prince de Condé retook possession, but so arranged that the portion which had been converted into a locality for the sittings of the Legislative Assembly, and which had been partly rebuilt, should be appropriated to the use of the Deputies, and finally was bought by government for 5,500,000 francs. At the death of the Duke de Bourbon this palace devolved upon the Duke d'Aumale, and is leased to the Chamber of Deputies for the residence of the President, but will soon become the property of the country by a negociation at present pending. The entrance of the Palais Bourbon is by the Rue de l'Université, and being approached by a long avenue of trees has the air of a country seat; formerly the apartments were gorgeously furnished, now simple beauty and utility alone prevail; there are a few good pictures, and one room decorated with bucks' horns, and different emblems of the chase; there is a large garden laid out in the English style. The grand front of the portion styled the Chamber of Deputies is exactly opposite the handsome bridge called the Pont de la Concorde, and is from thence seen to the best advantage; it is a noble massive building with colossal statues of Sully, Colbert, l'Hôpital, and d'Aguesseau, there are besides several allegorical figures, and 12 noble corinthian columns, supporting a fine bas-relief recently completed, approached by a flight of 29 steps; for so much weight as there appears in this building, I should say there was not sufficient height, and the breadth is immense, still the effect is dignified and imposing. The Chamber itself is a semi-circular hall with 24 white marble ionic columns and bronze capitals gilt. The president's chair and the tribune form the centre of the axis of the semi-circle, from whence the seats rise of the 459 deputies, in the shape of an amphitheatre. A spacious double gallery capable of containing 700 persons surrounds the semi-circular part of the Chamber, arranged with tribunes for the royal family, the corps diplomatique, officers of state and the public. There are a number of very fine statues, as well as some extremely clever pictures by the first French artists, and there, is a library of 50,000 volumes. Anyone with a passport may visit the Chamber, but for the debates a letter post-paid must be addressed to M. le Questeur de la Chambre des Députés, who will send a ticket of admission. A short distance to the east is the Palace of the Legion of Honour, erected in 1786 after designs by Rousseau for the Prince de Salm, after whom it was called. The entrance is by a triumphal arch, and a colonnade of the ionic order with two pavillions. At the end of a court yard is the principal front consisting of a fine portico, adorned with large corinthian pillars. The side which fronts the Seine is particularly light and graceful, having a circular projection adorned with columns supporting a balustrade with six statues. When the Prince de Salm was beheaded in 1793, the hôtel was put up to lottery, and won by a journey man hairdresser, and in 1803 it was appropriated to its present object; strangers are admitted without any difficulty. The Palais du Quai D'Orsay is almost adjoining, and although one of the most magnificent, yet one of the most chaste edifices in Paris; it has never received any decided name. It was begun under Napoleon, and then remained dormant until 1830, and in the present reign has been finished in the most perfect style. The grand front which faces the river presents a long series of windows formed by arches beneath a tuscan colonnade on the ground-floor; the one above is similar, except being of the ionic order, surmounted by a sort of corinthian attic; the court is surrounded by a double series of Italian arcades, there are four staircases, placed at each corner, one styled the escalier d'honneur, is absolutely splendid, both as regards the construction and the richness of its ornaments. The chief entrance is in the Rue de Lille, and there are side gateways into other streets. The ground-floor is appropriated to the Council of State and the offices attached, the first floor to the Cour des Comptes, and the third to the conservation of the Archives of these two public bodies. This noble structure has cost upwards of twelve million francs. We will now cast one glance at the Hôtel Praslin, which also has its entrance in the Rue de Lille, No. 54; its terrace is perceptible from the quay, it is one of the most extensive and grandest mansions of the old nobility. The next building is a barrack for cavalry, which is totally devoid of any ornament or beauty. We now arrive at the Pont Royal, an old but substantial bridge, built by a Dominican friar in 1684. The river here was formerly crossed by a ferry (bac), which gave the name to the Rue du Bac. I shall now advise that we take a boat and see how Paris looks from the water, affording us a good view of the quays as we pass between them; we also get an excellent sight of the Point Neuf already described, and which has a very fine effect as we approach it. We next come to the Pont au Change, formerly a wooden bridge; in 1141 Louis VII fixed the residence of the money changers upon it, hence it derived its name; the present structure was built in 1639. The Pont Notre Dame soon after arrests the eye (vide page 87), it was begun 1499 and finished in 1507, after the designs of Jean Joconde; on the western side is an engine called Pompe du Pont Notre Dame, consisting of a square tower erected upon piles, having a reservoir into which water is elevated, by machinery impelled by the current of the water. We next pass under the Pont d'Arcole, built in 1828; it is a suspension bridge, and there is a toll upon it. The circumstances from which it derives its name are very singular. A young man, in 1830, during the murderous conflict which here took place between the royal guard and the people, rushed on the bridge with a flag in his hand, heading the patriots, and was killed under the archway in the middle; his name was Arcole, and the same trait of courage was displayed by Napoleon on the bridge of Arcola; hence its present designation. A little farther on we pass close to the house where it is pretended lived Fulbert, uncle of Heloise; the outward part of the building does not bear the impression of being as old as the period when Abelard lived, as he was born in 1080, and died in 1142; the cellars, however, have a very ancient appearance; visiters are admitted, on applying to the owner of the dwelling, which is situated No. 1, Rue des Chantres, on the north-eastern side of the Isle de Paris, not far from Notre Dame. [Illustration: Paris in the 19th Century. Published by F. Sinnett, 15, Grande rue Verte.] Resuming our course upon the water we come to the Pont Louis-Philippe, a fine suspension bridge constructed in 1834, of iron wire, with two bold arches of stone. The next bridge is called the Pont Marie, and was built in 1641, but had two arches; and 22 houses, out of 50, which stood upon it, were carried away by a flood in 1648. We now arrive at the Pont de Damiette, another suspension bridge connecting the north and southern quays of the Seine with the Ile Louviers, until very recently an immense dépôt for fire wood, but now many handsome residences are being erected, with which the whole of the little island will soon be covered. We shall now land on the Quay des Célestins, and explore the north-east quarter of Paris, beginning with the Arsenal which contains a library of 200,000 printed volumes, and 6,000 manuscripts, amongst which are some beautiful missals. Henri IV having appointed Sully grand-master of the artillery, he resided in the buildings constructed on this spot purposely for him, and they now show a bed-room and a cabinet in which he used to receive his royal visiter; they are richly gilt according to the style of that period, and may be seen with passport by applying to the Director. Close to the Arsenal on the Quai des Célestins are the remains of the once celebrated Convent of the Célestins, and of their small church which after that of St. Denis contained more tombs of illustrious individuals than any in Paris. It was particularly remarked for the chapel d'Orléans, which enclosed the remains of the brother of Charles VI and his descendants. The architecture is interesting as being a specimen of the pointed style prevailing in Paris in the 14th century, a part of the convent buildings are converted into cavalry barracks, and the rest are in a state of dilapidation. Facing the Arsenal is the Grenier de Reserve, on the Boulevard Bourdon, which is an immense storehouse for corn, grain and flour requisite for the consumption of Paris for four months. It was began by Napoleon in 1807, it is 2,160 feet in length and 64 in breath. Every baker in Paris is obliged to have constantly deposited here 20 full sacks of flour, and as many more as he pleases by paying a trifle for warehouse room. Just a few steps northward is the Government Dépôt of powder and saltpetre. At a short distance in the Rue St. Antoine, No. 216, is the small church of the Visitation built by Mansard in 1632, for the Sisters of the Visitation. It has a dome supported by Corinthian pillars, and the interior is richly ornamented with scroll work, wreaths of flowers, etc. It is now appropriated to the protestant worship, and there is service on Sundays, and festivals at half past 12. On the southern side of the Boulevard St. Antoine is the Theatre St. Antoine, erected in 1836; the performances are vaudevilles, little melodrama, and farces. The admission is from 6_d._ to 2_s._ 6_d._ It contains 1,226 places. The Place de la Bastille is now before us, and still may be seen the desolate remains of the great plaster cast of the enormous elephant, intended by Napoleon to have been placed on this spot, which is now decorated with what is called the Column of July. The capital is said to be the largest piece of bronze ever cast, the height is 163 feet, and it is surmounted by an orb on which is placed the figure of Liberty; and is ornamented with lions, heads, cocks, children bearing garlands and other emblematical objects, but the effect of the whole is not happy, there is a sort of indescribable deficiency, although the cost was 1,200,000f., besides an immense outlay, years before, for the foundation. The ceremony of its inauguration took place on the 28th of July, 1840, when fifty coffins, each containing twelve patriots, were placed in the vaults for them underneath. Many persons descend to view the arrangements where the sarcophagi are stationed, which are 14 feet in length, and the trouble is well repaid; as also for ascending to the summit of the monument, but the staircase is not considered to be as solid and secure as could be wished. At No. 38, Rue de Charenton, will be found the Hôpital Royal des Quinze Vingts, devoted to the reception of the blind. This establishment was originally founded by St. Louis, at the corner of the Rue St. Nicaise, in the Rue St. Honoré, and ultimately removed to the present building. There are as many as 300 families living in this Hospital, as the blind are suffered to bring with them their wives and children, and encouraged to marry, if single; there are besides 600 out-door pensioners. There is a chapel attached to the institution, which was built in 1701, but possesses no particular interest. At No. 128, Rue Faubourg St. Antoine, is a building founded in 1660 by M. Aligre and his lady, for orphans, but the children having been sent to another establishment, it is intended to be formed into a Hospice for 400 old men. Just by, is the Marché Beauveau, built in 1799, and is a sort of rag fair, well appropriated to the neighbourhood in which it stands. At no 206, Rue Faubourg St. Antoine, is the Hôpital St. Antoine, formerly the Abbey of St. Antoine; the present building was erected in 1770, the number of beds is 270, it is appropriated for the reception of the sick in general, and may be visited by strangers upon any day. Some little distance to the north, in the Rue St. Bernard, is the Church of St. Marguerite, erected in 1625; it has no other attractions than that of its pictures, which are numerous and some of them beautiful, and would well repay the visiter for turning out of his way to view them, they are principally of the old French school, but there are no records to state how they ever came there. A few streets to the south-west, lead to the Rue de Reuilly, where some barracks will be found in a large pile of buildings, established by Colbert, for the Royal Glass Manufactory of Mirrors (removed to 313, Rue St. Denis); a little further on, at the south-eastern corner of the Rue Faubourg St. Antoine and that of Picpus, is a great market for forage, and at No. 8 in the latter street, is the Maison d'Enghien, founded by the mother of the unfortunate Duke of that name, the Duchess of Bourbon, in 1819, and now supported by Madame Adélaïde d'Orléans; it contains fifty beds, of which eighteen are for women, and the utmost cleanliness and order prevail. At No. 18 is the Hôpital Militaire de Picpus. Somewhat farther on, at No. 16, was once a Convent of the Order of St. Augustin, now a boarding-school, but the chapel still remains; attached to it is a cemetery, where rest the remains of some of the noblest families of France, as de Grammont, de Montaigu, de Noailles, and that purest and most perfect of private and public characters, Lafayette, in a spot hardly known, in a quiet corner, beneath a very simple tomb, beside his wife, and in the midst of his relations. We shall now return westward, and view the Barrière du Trône, which is still unfinished, but consisting of two noble lofty columns; very conspicuous from their height, with a fine open circular space, on which festivals are celebrated on public days, and plans are now pursuing for finishing and embellishing this spot. A pleasant walk along the Boulevards will bring us to the celebrated cemetery of Père-La-Chaise, on which there has been so much written by tourists, poets, and even novelists; thus I fear all I can state upon the subject will appear but tame, after such choice spirits have favoured the public with their inspirations on so interesting a retreat, I shall, therefore, only attempt to give a few matter of fact indications. It consists of a large tract of ground on the slope of a hill, was celebrated for the beauty of its situation in the fourteenth century, and under Louis the XIV as the abode of Père-La-Chaise, having for 150 years been the favourite country house of the Jesuits, and at present the favourite burying place of the Parisians. In the 14th century a house was erected on the spot by a rich grocer, named Regnault, and was by the people named La Folie Regnault; after belonging to different parties, it was purchased for 160,000 francs, for its present purpose. Its extent is nearly 100 acres; all that trees, shrubs, plants, and flowers can avail towards embellishing a spot, has been effected; the sculptor's hand has also been contributed in a most eminent degree, and fancy seems to have exhausted her caprices in conceptions of forms and fashions with regard to the monuments here assembled, and some are as highly picturesque as can be well imagined; others are grand and imposing, whilst a few there are, whose simplicity render them the most interesting, so much is there in association that perhaps none is more touching than that of Abelard and Heloïse; it is formed of stones gathered from the ruins of the Abbey of Paraclete, founded by Abelard, of which Heloïse was the first abbess. Amongst the number of monuments here assembled, there will be found those whose names have lived and will live in history: marshals, admirals, generals, authors, travellers, senators, and celebrated characters of all nations, in fact what with the extreme beauty of the scene, the splendid view that expands before one, and the tone of reflexions that are engendered by the many affecting appeals there are to the heart, upon the different monuments, I know of no spot that one can visit, calculated to excite deeper impressions. We have imitated near London the same description of cemetery, but they will be long before they can arrive at the same beauty; it has been observed, that Père-La-Chaise is not kept in such nice order as those in England, and the remark is just, but I am not quite sure but that I prefer the degree of wildness which there is in the former, and although it may not be so neat and trim as the latter, yet on the whole there is infinitely more of the sublime, aided no doubt from the extreme beauty of the position, and the greater number of splendid monuments, than an infant establishment can be expected to possess. On quitting this delightful spot, we must pass by the Prison de la Roquette, destined for the reception of prisoners condemned to the galleys or to death; the excellent system that is here followed with regard to the airiness, cleanliness, and strict order, is such that it is styled the model prison; 318 is the number of prisoners that it can contain. Just opposite to it is the Prison pour les jeunes Détenus, or for juvenile offenders, and is a most extraordinary establishment; its exterior has the air of a baronial castle, and the interior is so arranged that it might answer the purpose of an hospital, as well as that of correction; it has circular turrets at the angles, and the central building is isolated from the others, and only approachable by iron bridges; the whole of the upper part of the building is a chapel, so contrived, that when the prisoners enter it from the different divisions, although they are all together, they can only see the individuals composing their own section, and the pulpit and altar; the prisoners are arranged in the different wings, according to their ages, and the degree of morality; there are about 500, and the different regulations are so meritorious, and the plan of the building so curious and ingenious, that the stranger will derive much pleasure from visiting this singular establishment. Just by, is the Abattoir de Popincourt, or de Ménilmontant, which is considered to be the largest and finest of all the five immense slaughter-houses round Paris, and for those who are curious of regarding such buildings, this should be the one they ought to visit. At a few steps from the Abattoir, in the Rue Popincourt, is the church of St. Ambroise, which was built for a convent of nuns called the Annonciades in 1639; some tolerable pictures are the only attractions it possesses for a stranger; a few doors from it is a large barrack, and an ornamented Fountain. We must now descend the Rue du Chemin-Vert, until we come to the Canal St. Martin, and just pause a minute and notice its neat quays, and the good order in which its locks are kept, and all arrangements connected with it, and then proceed to the Boulevards: a short street, called Rue de la Mule, will take us into the Place Royale, which stands upon the site of the celebrated Palais de Tournelle, the court and offices of which extended to the Rue St. Antoine, and over several of the neighbouring streets, but was pulled down by order of Catherine de Medicis in 1565, on account of her husband Henry II having been killed in one of the courts in a tournament. The Place Royale, as it now stands, was built in 1604, under Henri IV (vide page 92), it is now inhabited by persons of small incomes who like to have spacious and lofty apartments without incurring the expence of such; in the more fashionable quarters, the arcades all round the square, the fountains, the trees, and the handsome railing, give it a very fine though curious appearance, and the houses have a most venerable aspect. We will now leave the Place Royale by the southern gateway, and enter the Rue St. Antoine, and nearly opposite to No. 143, is the Hôtel de Sully; being the work of the celebrated architect Ducerceau, and the residence of the noble character whose name it bears. It is well preserved, and its court is richly adorned with sculpture. At No. 120, in the same street, is the Collége de Charlemagne, formerly a college of the Jesuits, founded in 1582, the buildings are only remarkable for their extent. The Passage Charlemagne, No. 102, leads through the court of the Hôtel de Jassau, or d'Aguesseau, 22, Rue des Prêtres St. Paul, said to be the site of a palace, and a turret of the time of Francis I still remains at the corner of the court, as also some ornaments and figures. At the corner of the Rue St. Paul, and the Rue des Lions, is a small square turret of the time of Henri IV, and a little eastward, part of the church of St. Paul embodied in the house, No. 29, Rue St. Paul. By the side of the College of Charlemagne is the church of St. Paul and St. Louis, it was began in 1627, and finished in 1641, and within it Cardinal Richelieu performed the first mass in the presence of Louis XIII and his court. The noble front rising from a flight of steps, is adorned with three ranges of corinthian and composite columns, and the interior is decorated with ornaments even to profusion; a fine dome with figures of the Evangelists and four kings of France give it altogether a very handsome appearance. Opposite the College of Charlemagne, is the Fontaine de Birague; consisting of a pentagonal tower, with a dome and lantern. Above a pediment supported by doric pilasters is an attic with a naiad. At the corner of the Rue Culture Ste. Catherine, is the Hôtel de Carnavalet, where resided Madame de Sévigné and her daughter, a fine mansion of the 16th century, having been erected in 1544; most of the sculpture is from the chisel of the celebrated Jean Goujon, and is of a most interesting description; the cabinet in which the letters of that highly gifted woman were written is still shown, also a marble table upon which she and her daughter used to dine under the sycamores in the garden, two of which remain. M. Viardot occupies this Hôtel, and with pleasure shows it to strangers; he keeps an academy and has written a history of the edifice, which may be had of the porter. It was at the corner of this street that the Constable de Clisson was assailed and severely wounded by 20 ruffians, headed by Pierre de Graon, Chamberlain of the Duke of Orleans, who was murdered by the Duke of Burgundy. In the Rue du Roi de Sicile is the prison of La Force, containing 700 prisoners, and excellent regulations, but another, in a more retired part of Paris, is soon to be constructed. This building was formerly the Hôtel of the Duc de la Force, hence the origin of its name. In the Rue Pavée, which is on one side of the prison, will be found, at No. 3, the Hôtel de la Houze, and in the same street stood the Hôtels de Gaucher, de Châtillon, and d'Herbouville, or de Savoisi. We will now go a little out of our way to see the fine long and broad street of St. Louis, which we shall soon reach by keeping straight on along the Rue Payenne, and then turning to the east by the Rue Parc Royal, shall proceed to one of the ornaments of the Rue St. Louis, the Church of St. Denis du Sacrement; it is quite modern, but is conceived according to good taste; the order is ionic, which is consistently preserved both throughout the exterior and the interior, much chasteness of design, in fact has been observed in the construction of this simple but elegant edifice. The Fountain of St. Louis is worthy of attention _en passant_. Formerly this street was filled with nobility, as even so late as the beginning of the reign of Louis XV it was rather a fashionable quarter, at present it is the cheapest in Paris. We must now retrace our steps, which will bring us to the Rue Francs Bourgeois; No. 25 is an hôtel of the time of Henri IV, No. 7, Hôtel de Jeanne d'Abret, of Louis XV's days, and No. 12, the former residence of the Dukes de Roquelaure, and at the corner will be observed a little turret belonging to a house, one side of which is in the Vieille Rue du Temple; there is some curious work upon it, and it is supposed to have been standing at the time the Duke of Orleans was murdered by order of the Duke of Burgundy, which was just about this spot, in 1407. At No. 51, Rue Franc Bourgeois, is the Hôtel de Hollande, so called from its having belonged to the Dutch Ambassador, in the reign of Louis XIV; amongst the sculpture is perceived the date of 1660; this handsome hôtel was once the residence of Beaumarchais. At the corner of the Rue Pavée is the Hôtel de Lamoignon, one of the handsomest mansions of the ancient nobility. It is of the sixteenth century, some of the carved work is most curious, and merits attentive examination; a picturesque turret and balcony must excite the attention of every observer. A few steps further is the large central establishment of the Mont de Pieté, No. 18, Rue des Blancs Manteaux, lending money on pledges, much the same as our pawnbrokers, only on more advantageous terms for the borrowers. In the same street is Notre Dame des Blancs Manteaux, once the chapel of a religious house, so called from their dress consisting of white garments; there was formerly a monastery here, of which there may be discovered some remains to the east, and evidently in the left wing of a house at No. 25; the chapel remaining has a plain exterior, but the corinthian style of the interior is handsome, and worth attention; there is also a very admired picture of the Burial of St. Petronilla, which is eighteen feet by eight, it is of the school of Guercini, but it is not known by what means it came to be placed in this church. Facing this street is the Market des Blancs Manteaux. At the corner of the Rue Vieille du Temple, and that of the Rue de Quatre Fils, is the Palais Cardinal, now the Imprimerie Royale; it was erected in 1712, and is named after its owner, the Cardinal de Rohan, whose intriguing spirit so much involved Marie Antoinette; in this hôtel the scenes occurred concerning that extraordinary affair; the front of the building is quite plain, towards the garden it is ornamented by columns, and as a mansion, is one of the largest in Paris. It is now occupied as the Royal Printing Establishment, and it is impossible to surpass the order and regularity with which it is conducted; 750 men, women, and children, are employed in it. It is considered to possess the richest collection in the world of matrices and fonts of types, having them in every written language, and when Pope Pius VII visited the establishment, he was presented the Lord's Prayer in 150 languages. A library with specimens of typography, executed on the premises, is an object of the highest gratification to every visiter, even if they be not connaisseurs in the art. For admission to this establishment, application must be made a few days beforehand to M. le Directeur de l'Imprimerie Royale, who appoints a fixed hour on Thursdays. Almost facing one part of the Imprimerie Royale, in the Rue d'Orléans, is the Church of St. François d'Assise. Neither the exterior nor the interior possess any striking beauty; it was founded and erected in 1623. It contains some very good paintings, and the kneeling figure of the saint of the church in his monastic dress; the hands and head are of white marble, and it is supposed to be Egyptian; one of St. Denis is opposite to it. Adjoining to the Imprimerie Royale, is the Hôtel des Archives du Royaume, which is entered by the Rue du Chaume, No. 12. It was formerly a palace of the Prince de Soubise and the family of the Rohans. The south and western part of the edifice is of the 15th century, the turret is probably what belonged to the gatehouse. The decorations of the apartments are extremely rich with gilt cornices and paintings, some of them possessing great merit. In the _petits appartements_ is a boudoir which belonged to the Duchess de Guise, with a window looking into the Rue du Chaume, from whence it is asserted that her lover precipitated himself at the approach of the Duke. A new building has been added, the first stone having been laid in 1838, which has cost a million of francs. Under Napoleon the whole edifice was appropriated to the preservation of the national archives. Amongst them are documents of diplomas granted to different monastic institutions, by Childebert, Dagobert, Clothaire and Clovis II. The collections of the different acts, deeds, charters, administrative, domanial, historical, judicial, legislative, etc., fill 60,000 portfolios. There is besides a library of 14,000 volumes, amongst which are the _Records Commission_ of England, presented by the British Government. There are also in an iron chest, the golden bulls and papal decrees, most of the keys of the Bastille, the wills of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, with his journal, autograph letters of Napoleon, one written by him to Louis XVIII, with a variety of other most interesting objects. For admission apply (post paid) to M. le Garde General des Archives du Royaume, No. 12, Rue du Chaume. The Fontaine de la Naiade in the same street, has a clever bas-relief by Mignot. By the Rue des Vieilles-Haudriettes we pass into the Rue Ste-Avoye; No. 63 is worth notice, several of the houses here having been the hôtels of nobility. No. 57 is the Hôtel St. Aignan, built by Le Muet; on its site stood the Hôtel de Montmorency, it is an extensive noble building, but has been spoiled by having had two stories added. Henry II often resided in it when it was called Hôtel de Montmorency. Taking the Rue Ste. Croix de la Bretonnerie, we shall find that the first turning in it is the Rue des Billettes, where stand the Lutheran Church; it was built in 1745, and belonged to the Carmelite Friars. In 1808, it was bought by the city of Paris, and given about four years after to the Protestants of the Augsburgh confession. It is a plain neat building. The Duchess of Orléans attends service here when in Paris, which is in German at 2 and in French at 12. From hence we cross the Rue de la Verrerie, and proceeding by the Rue des Mauvais Garçons, we arrive at the Church St. Gervais; an inscription under the first arch of the northern aisle of the choir, states the church to have been dedicated in 1420, although other parts of the building would indicate a more recent construction, but with all its incongruities, from its having been built at various periods, it excites a deep interest; the light gleaming through the painted glass gives a rich though rather sombre effect, the windows behind the altar have a most imposing appearance. The western front was began in 1616, Louis the XIII laying the first stone, and is not equal to other parts of the building; some of the chapels of this church are particularly fine. Amongst the pictures, of which there are many very good, is one by Albert Durer, with the date upon it of 1500. Scarron, the husband of Mme. de Maintenon, lies buried here, as also the celebrated painter Philippe de Champagne, and one of his performances is amongst the pictures which decorate the church, being that of Jesus with Martha and Mary in the chapel of Ste. Genevieve; there are several other objects in this noble edifice so interesting, that no person who visits Paris should omit seeing it. We may now take the Rue de la Tixéranderie where at the corner of the Rue du Coq is a house and turret of the 15th and 16th century, most probably the former, according to the statements of M. Dulaure. [Illustration: The Hôtel de Ville. Published by F. Sinnett, 15. Grande rue Verte.] We now arrive at the Hôtel-de-Ville, Place de Grève; the first stone of this interesting and venerable pile was laid in 1533, but was not completely finished until 1606, in the reign of Henry IV. The style of architecture is that which the French call La Renaissance des Arts, it is rich, rather heavy, and has an antique appearance; it is exactly according to the taste which prevailed in the 16th century, and was brought into vogue by Italian architects. There is a great deal of ornament about the building, and a profusion of statues, still they appear consistent with the style of the building, and have not the effect of redundancy. Over the doorway is a bronze equestrian statue of Henry IV. Along the principal front is a flight of steps, and an arcade and portico with ionic columns, between the arches facing the entrance is a fine bronze statue of Louis XIV. The Grande Salle or Salle du Trône is a most splendid apartment, and has been the scene of many most important events, being the room where Robespierre held his council and in which he attempted to destroy himself, and from which Louis XVI addressed the people with the cap of liberty upon his head. Most extensive additions and alterations have recently been effected, the original façade having been doubled in length and the whole body of the building nearly quadrupled, forming an immense quadrangle, preserving the same style of architecture as the original. The expense of these additions and improvements is estimated at four millions of francs, and they have been effected with a rapidity that is quite surprising, notwithstanding the number of public buildings in progress at the same time in Paris. The multitude of apartments, the richness of their decorations, and tasteful manner with which they are arranged, are only to be equalled by the careful attention which has been devoted to their distribution with regard to convenience and comfort. As Louis-Philippe justly observed when he recently inspected the exterior of the whole building, that it should no longer be called the Hôtel-de-Ville, but for the future the City Palace, as the splendour within it is not exceeded in any of the other palaces in Paris. The library belonging to this establishment consists of 55,000 volumes, and is very rich in manuscripts. The Place de Grève has been the scene of more sanguinary tragedies than perhaps any spot of the same extent in Europe, and could the stones but speak, each could tell a tale of blood. In the north-west corner is still to be seen a relic of the middle ages, in a curious turret attached to one of the houses. Taking the Rue Poterie, we shall get into the Rue de la Verrerie, and proceeding westward will bring us to the church St. Merri, but to view it properly must enter the Rue St. Martin, and stand facing it, and well examine its curious and beautiful sculpture (vide page 88), presenting all the minute and singular characteristics of the period of its construction (1520); the carve-work is quite like lace, so minutely elaborate. The interior possesses several interesting objects in architecture, and some inconsistencies, the pulpit is extremely curious, and its effect is very striking. There are also some pictures above mediocrity, principally by French artists of the past school. The tower of this church is famed from the desperate resistance which was made from it by a few young men in 1832 against the king's troops. We must follow the course of the Rue St. Martin, and observe No. 151, a fine hôtel of the time of Louis XIV, with a front adorned by ionic pilasters, and handsome entrance: a few paces farther on the opposite side, is the church of St. Nicolas-des-Champs, the west front was erected in 1420, as it now stands, and in 1576, the choir and chapels behind were constructed, and the tower probably at that period or since. A church has existed on the same spot ever since 1119, then standing as the name indicates in the fields, but it is doubtful whether any part of the old fabric remains. There is something fine and imposing in the interior, with regard to its general effect, although there is not any thing particularly remarkable in its architecture; the pictures it contains form its most striking feature, some of which are very good; many celebrated persons lie buried here, and amongst the rest Mademoiselle Scuderi. A few steps to the north is the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers. This edifice was formerly the ancient abbey of St. Martin-des-Champs, the chapel and refectory of which were built about the year 1240, and are still standing, the latter is in excellent preservation, and is one of the most curious and perfect specimens of the architecture of the period at which it was built; at the eastern end of the chapel are the remains of a building still more ancient, which is plain, and has not any thing striking in its appearance. In this establishment is to be found every description of machinery, and in fact all that ever can be imagined relative to the promotion of industry; scarcely any invention has been made public, of which there is not a model to be found in this curious museum, with specimens of all the various mechanical contrivances which Europe possesses. The celebrated Vaucanson, who was one of the greatest contributors to this institution, having quarrelled with the people of Lyons, vowed he would teach an ass to do what they did, and he absolutely invented machinery of such a description that it could be worked by that humble animal, and a piece of drugget with flowers is shown, which was produced by the united ingenuity of M. Vaucanson and the patient labour of the ass. Models of potteries, breweries, smelting-houses, steam engines, railways, etc. are amongst the number of interesting objects, and the names of our countrymen appear prominent, as Watt, Maudsley, Barker, Atkins, etc., who have benefited the world by their inventions. On ascending a very handsome staircase, the visiter finds a range of apartments, with a wonderful collection of models of pulpits (which in France are generally most ornamental objects), mills, turning machines, engineering and surveying instruments, with an immense number of others far too many to recapitulate, and an assortment of coloured papers stamped, and some exquisitely cut out; fans of mother of pearl of most elaborate workmanship, with other objects equally ingenious and beautiful. This venerable abbey appears to advantage from the garden, as a plain substantial old fashioned building, part of which is used as the Mairie of the 6th Arrondissement, and lecture rooms for the professors of the institution. A short distance from it, is the Fontaine St. Martin, which is erected against a tower formerly belonging to the old abbey with which it was connected by a wall with a series of towers, but there is now no other remaining. Close by, is the market St. Martin, with 400 stalls, formerly the abbey gardens; there is a handsome fountain in the middle, of bronze, with three allegorical figures of the genii of hunting, fishing, and agriculture, there are also smaller fountains, and at the back of the market a little promenade planted with trees. From hence we pass eastward by the Rue Royale, and turning to the left, we shall see the Rue des Fontaines, in which we shall find the Maison d'Arrêt des Madelonnettes, formerly belonging to nuns called the Filles de la Madeleine, now appropriated to the temporary detention of 500 men and boys. A few steps farther, and the Temple appears before us in the Rue du Temple, now a nunnery occupied by the Dames Benedictines de l'Adoration perpetuelle du St. Sacrement. It formerly belonged to the society of Knights Templars, and afterwards to those of Malta; the palace of the grand prior is all that now remains of the ancient building, which was erected by Jacques de Souvré in 1566. The front has a portico formed of doric colums, and on each side a fountain with a colossal statue (by Pujol), upon a pedestal. The front towards the court is adorned with eight coupled ionic columns, and above are figures of Justice, Prudence, Hope and Abundance. A new chapel was built in 1823, which belongs to the convent, it is of the ionic order throughout, and though not particularly striking, is not inelegant, and remarkably neat; it may be seen on application at the porter's lodge, but from the nunnery strangers are most rigidly excluded. There was a tower belonging to this building, where the unfortunate Louis XVI was confined, as also Sir Sydney Smith and Toussaint-Louverture, but it was demolished in 1805. Behind the Temple is an immense space of ground called the Marché du Vieux Linge, containing 1888 shops or stalls, where old clothes, linen, shoes, tools, hats, old iron, and a variety of other articles are sold at low prices, and behind is an oval-formed arcaded building, with shops erected on the site of the ancient Temple and its dependencies. The Fontaine Vendôme, named after the Chevalier de Vendôme, grand prior of France, was attached to the old wall of the Temple, it has a cupola and a military trophy. At No. 107, Rue du Temple, is the church of Ste. Élisabeth (vide page 96), which has had so many modern repairs and additions, that there is not much left of the first construction, but except the front it has little in it to attract notice; there are a few pictures and some painted windows by an Englishman named White. In proceeding northward to the Boulevards, we will just take a look at the Rue Vendôme, as it is full of hôtels, amongst which are some of the finest in Paris; on reaching the Boulevard du Temple, No. 50 may be remarked, it is always pointed out to strangers as the house from whence Fieschi discharged in 1835 his infernal machine (which is now to be seen at Madame Tussaud's exhibition in Baker Street, London). By the means of that diabolical affair, Marshal Mortier, Colonel Rieussec, and many others, were killed and wounded, but the King, at whom it was aimed, fortunately escaped. We shall now proceed by the Rue du Faubourg du Temple; at No. 68 is a large barrack which has been formed for infantry, but is a few steps out of the way, and hardly worth looking after, in an architectural point of view. I should therefore advise turning to the left, by the northern bank of the Canal St. Martin, and observing the Grand Entrepôt des Sels, from whence annually 9,000,000 lbs. of salt are distributed for the consumption of Paris. Opposite, on the southern bank, is the Entrepôt de la Compagnie des Douanes, which was built in 1834 by a joint stock company, for receiving goods in bond, consisting of a spacious area in which stand two large warehouses 250 feet in length, with a court covered in between for stowage, besides a number of sheds. They are constructed on a most solid plan, being built of stone with brick arches, and the wood-work of oak enclosing pillars of iron. It is altogether on a most extensive and commodious plan, with such regulations as have rendered it highly serviceable to the purposes of commerce. Adjoining are the warehouses of the Custom House, called the Douanes de Paris, the entrance is in the Rue Neuve Sanson, the house of the Director is attached, and particularly neat; the whole of the buildings, although constructed upon a solid principle, are light and handsome. The first turning to the right, brings us to the Rue de l'Hôpital, in which is the hospital of St. Louis, a most noble establishment founded by Henry IV, in 1607. It contains 800 beds, and is justly celebrated for its excellent medicated and mineral baths. There is a chapel attached to it, of which the first stone was laid by Henry IV. It was called after St. Louis, from having been originally devoted to persons infected with the plague, he having died of that disease at Turin in 1270. At present it is appropriated to such as are afflicted with cutaneous complaints. As we cross the canal, we must notice the charcoal market, close to which is the Hospital of Incurables, for men, No. 34, Rue des Récollets, established in 1802 in the ancient convent of the Récollets. The number of men admitted is 400, male children 70. Those boys Who are capable, are encouraged to learn different trades, and at 20 years of age are sent to the Bicêtre. Strangers are admitted every day except Sundays and festivals. The church of St. Laurent is facing, in the Place de la Fidélité and Rue du Faubourg St. Martin; it was first built in 1429, enlarged in 1543, and in part rebuilt in 1595, and the porch and perhaps the lady chapel, added in 1622. A gridiron is the only object which attracts notice on the exterior, and the interior offers little more; the key stones of the vaulting ribs are deep pendent masses of stone, carved into groups of figures, fruit, etc., and in the vaulting there is some bold sculpture displayed in the northern aisle of the choir, which is the most ancient part of the church. The Foire of St. Laurent merits being visited, it is a market which has been built by a company for the supply of this part of the capital. The design is elegant, consisting of a parallelogram of two stories, with covered galleries and a fountain in the middle of the court. The whole is covered in by lateral windows, and a roof of glass. The street St. Laurent conducts immediately to the Maison Royale de Santé, No. 112, Rue Faubourg St. Denis, an institution in which invalids are received; persons who cannot afford the means of sustaining an expensive illness are admitted on paying from 3 to 6 francs a day, advice, medicine, board, and if required, surgical operations included. It contains 175 beds, the utmost attention is paid to the comforts of the patients. Opposite, at No. 117, is St. Lazare, formerly the ancient Convent of the Lazarists, or Priests of the Mission, now a prison for female offenders. It was once a place of much importance, the remains of the kings and queens of France were carried to the convent of St. Lazare, prior to being conveyed to St. Denis, the coffin being placed between the two gates of the building on a tomb of state, with all the prelates of the kingdom surrounding it, chanting the service of the dead, and sprinkling it with holy water. It is now appropriated to the imprisonment of misguided women, and every encouragement is afforded them to amend, for which purpose they are allowed two-thirds of their earnings, and a variety of occupations are constantly going on. Children, under sixteen years of age, are kept by themselves; in all there are mostly from 900 to 1000 persons confined in St. Lazare, but the order, cleanliness and apparent comfort is such as to give an air of happiness to the whole establishment, and for the humane, it is one of the most gratifying sights in Paris. Attached to this institution is the general bakehouse, laundry, and linen dépôt for all the prisons. A chapel is in the midst of the building, and the women attend service every Sunday. We will now return to the Boulevards, and taking the Rue de la Lune, we shall there find the church of Notre Dame de Bonne Nouvelle: the old building was destroyed during the wars of the League, in 1593, but was rebuilt in 1624; of this second construction the tower alone is still standing, the body of the present church having been erected in 1825, it is a plain edifice of the doric order, a fresco by Pujol merits attention, but is the only object throughout the edifice which can excite much interest. We must now retrace a few steps, and by the Rue St. Claude turn into the Rue St. Denis, and proceeding southwards observe the establishment of Les Bains St. Sauveur, at the corner of the street of that name, from which a street communicates with the Rue Thevenot, and about here was the Cour des Miracles, cited by Dulaure, and afterwards by Victor Hugo, as the resort of thieves and beggars, where five hundred families lived huddled together in the greatest state of filth that could be imagined; it was not until the year 1667 that they were partly dispersed. The stranger must not forget the manufactory of mirrors, No. 313, Rue St. Denis, he will there find an immense plate glass warehouse; the concern having been established since 1634; it is carried on to a great degree of perfection. A Frenchman named Thévart first discovered the art of casting glass, that of polishing it was invented by Rivière, and now glasses may be had at this establishment 154 inches by 104. The largest table of iron for polishing glass was made a few months since, weighing twenty-five tons. At No. 121 is the Cour Batave, so called from being erected by a company of Dutch merchants, in 1791; it is disfigured now by shops, but had the original design been carried out, instead of having been disturbed by the Revolution, it would have been one of the handsomest monuments of the capital. A short distance northward, in the same street, is the church of St. Leu and St. Gilles; on the spot a chapel was erected in 1230, and in a small tower to the west a date is inscribed of 1230, but it has been repaired several times since that period, particularly in 1320; the nave, however, is supposed to be of the thirteenth century, and most likely of the date of the foundation, but other parts of the building are evidently of a more recent epoch, possibly of 1320; judging from the style of the architecture. Amongst the pictures is one of St. Margaret, Queen of Scotland, washing the feet of the poor; there are others which are well worthy attention, as also a representation of the Creation, which is a very curious piece of carve-work. As St. Leu had the credit of healing the sick, the kings of France, on their accession to the throne, for nine days successively used to visit this church to implore the saint to grant them health. We must now proceed to the southern extremity of the street, and take the last turning to the left, which is called the Rue St. Jacques de la Boucherie, and in groping about amongst some dirty streets, we shall find the tower of the same name; it is a remarkably curious object, and it is much to be regretted that the church belonging to it no longer stands it was begun in 1508; and finished in 1522, it is 156 feet high, and had formerly a spire thirty feet high; the style of architecture is rich and very singular, the gargouilles, or gutter spouts, are of a tremendous size; as it has been recently purchased by the Municipality of Paris from an individual, there are hopes that this interesting monument will be fully repaired and restored. Around its base a market is established for linen and old clothes. A little filthy street to the south will take us into the Place du Châtelet, where we can breathe a little fresh air; here stood the celebrated Châtelet, at once a court of justice and prison of olden time. In the middle is a fountain, from which rises a column representing a palm-tree, and upon it are inscribed the victories of Napoleon. Amongst other allegorical decorations, the statues of Justice, Strength, Prudence, and Vigilance adorn the pedestal, and joining hands encircle the column, the whole surmounted by a statue of Victory. At No. 1, upon the Place, is the chamber of notaries, where landed property and houses are sold by auction. We must now return to the Rue St. Denis, and follow it until we come to the Rue de la Ferronnerie, which is to the left, into which we must proceed, and shall find that the second turning to the left is the Rue des Déchargeurs, and at No. 11 is an edifice of the seventeenth century, which is now the Dépôt général des Bonneteries (Hosiery) de France. Returning a few steps northward, brings us to the corner of the Rue St. Honoré, and against No. 3 is a bust of Henry IV, and a stone with a latin inscription, indicating that it was exactly opposite that spot that he was stabbed by Ravaillac. The street was very narrow at that period, and at the moment when the deed was perpetrated, the carriage of Henri IV was stopped by a number of carts which choked up the passage. A little street nearly opposite, takes into the Marché des Innocents, which occupies an immense space formerly the cemetry of the Innocents. In the middle of the area is a fountain built by Pierre Lescot, in 1551, and is decidedly a most beautiful object, which is not sufficiently noticed by strangers, as it is surrounded by a crowded market and not at all hours easy of approach; the court-yard of a palace would be a more appropriate situation for this elegant edifice, and I particularly request my readers to pay it a visit. Around this fountain is certainly the largest and most frequented market in Paris, not only each description of vegetables, poultry, and almost all kind of eatables are sold here, but cloth, a large building being purposely constructed for that object 400 feet in length; another division is for every description of herbs, the northern side is devoted to potatoes and onions; a triangular building a little farther, is on purpose for butter, eggs, and cheese, whilst another edifice is for fish. At a short distance, in the Rue Mauconseil is the great hall for the sale of leather, which was formerly the Hôtel de Bourgogne, where the players used to perform scriptural pieces in the 15th century. To the west of the Marché des Innocents is the curious street de la Tonnellerie, an open passage running, through the ground floors of some of the houses, inhabited mostly by dealers in rags, cloth, and old furniture; in this street is the bread market, where it is sold cheaper than at the bakers in Paris. At the south end of the street at No. 3, is the site of the house where Molière was born, which was held by his father who was an upholsterer and valet de chambre to Louis XII; against the house is a bust of the author, with an inscription specifying the event. Following the Rue de la Tonnellerie brings us opposite St. Eustache, which after Notre-Dame is the largest church in Paris, built on the site of a chapel of St. Agnes. The present edifice was begun in 1532, but not supposed to have been finished until 1642. The portico is more recent, being after a design by Mansart de Jouy, and erected in 1754: combining altogether a most incongruous mixture of styles and orders of architecture, originally commenced with the design that it should be a sort of mixed gothic, of which the southern door and front bear evidence, whilst the western portico has doric and ionic columns, and at the northern end are corinthian pillars, notwithstanding it is a bold imposing structure, and the interior has the appearance of a fine abbey, and is a monument which every stranger ought to visit. It is a pity that a number of little square knobs have been suffered to remain sticking out from different parts of the shafts of the columns of this church; it is strange that the French could not be made to understand that the beauty of a pillar in a great degree consists in a bold broad mass, which should never be cut up into littlenesses, by rings or any obtruding projections. In this church lie buried several celebrated persons, amongst the rest the great Colbert, which is indicated by a very handsome sarcophagus, sculptured by Coysevose. The sacred music here is sometimes most exquisitely delightful, the organ being particularly fine. Facing the southern front is the Marché des Prouvaires, a sort of appendage to the Marché des Innocents, and opposite the east side of the church, is the Fontaine de Tantale, at the point formed by the two streets, Montmartre and Montorgueil, which will repay the observer for a few minutes devoted to its examination. The west front of the church faces the Rue Oblin, which we will take, as it leads to the Halle au Blé, a fine extensive circular building, with a noble dome, it is built on the site of the Hôtel de Soissons, erected for Catherine de Médicis, in 1572, which in 1748 was demolished, and the present Halle constructed in 1763; the roof has a round skylight, 31 feet in diameter, and from the system adopted in its formation, it is considered by connaiseurs a _chef d'oeuvre_ in the art of building. It is indeed altogether so curious, and so commodious a building for the purpose for which it is designed, that the visiter must be highly gratified in viewing it: there is besides another attraction, which is on the southern side, one of the immense doric columns which once composed the noble Hôtel de Soissons; it was erected for the purposes of astrology, and contains a winding staircase, and is ornamented with emblematic symbols, of the widowhood of Catherine de Médicis, as broken mirrors, C. and H. interlaced, etc. An ingenious sundial is placed on its shaft, and a fountain in its pedestal. By taking the Rue Sartine we shall arrive at the Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and there find the Hôtel des Postes or General Post Office; it was formerly an Hôtel belonging to the Duke d'Epernon, and was afterwards inhabited by different proprietors, until 1757, when it was purchased by government, for its present purposes. It is an extensive building but badly situated amongst narrow streets, many additions have been made since it has become government property. Taking the Rue Verdelet, the street which runs along the north side of the building, and proceeding westward, we come to the Place des Victoires, which was built in 1685; in the centre is a very fine equestrian statue of Louis XIV, in bronze, which although weighing 16,000 lbs is entirely sustained by the hinder legs and the tail. It is the work of Bosio, and was modelled in 1822. Proceeding to the south-west, by the Rue de la Petite-Vrillière, the Bank of France is before us. It was formerly the Hôtel de Toulouse, erected by Mansard, in 1720; for the Duke de la Vrillière; it is well situated, and adapted to its present use, but it has no striking architectural beauty. The Rue Vide Gousset, to the north-west of the Place des Victoires, leads to the Église des Petits-Pères, or de Notre-Dame des Victoires, erected in 1656. It was called Petits-Pères, or little fathers, on account of Henry IV, on two of the community of small stature having been introduced into his antechamber, asking, "who are those little fathers?" The convent which was attached, is now used as barracks for infantry. The portal of the church was built in 1739, and is composed of columns of the ionic and corinthian orders. The interior has some handsomely decorated chapels and altars; the pictures by Vanloo also are fine. Lulli, the musical composer, lies buried here. In the Rue Notre-Dame des Victoires is the immense establishment of the Messageries Royales, from whence start diligences to all parts of France; we will pass through the yard into the Rue Montmartre, at No. 44, is the Marché St. Joseph, at 166, the Fontaine de la Rue Montmartre, and at No. 176, the Hôtel d'Uzès erected by Le Doux, considered one of the finest hôtels in Paris. We will now enter the Boulevard Poissonnière, by turning to the right, and in passing along to the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle must notice the very handsome Bazaar called the Galeries de Commerce, and the noble building called Maison du Pont de Fer with its curious iron bridge, uniting the back and front premises with the Boulevard. Taking, the Rue de l'Échiquier, to the left, will conduct us to the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière, and opposite, at No. 23, we find the Garde Meuble de la Couronne, containing all the furniture of the crown not in use, the regalia, and other articles of immense value, but to obtain admission is extremely difficult. Annexed to this building is the Conservatoire de Musique and the Salle des Menus Plaisirs. In this street are several handsome mansions particularly at Nos. 26 and 60, the gateway of which, with its fine ionic columns, is one of the most imposing in Paris; there also are large barracks for infantry with military trophies over the entrance. From thence a few steps lead into the Rue Lafayette, and will bring us to a new church which promises to be, when quite finished, one of the most elegant in the capital, it is situated at the summit of the Rue Hauteville. The order is ionic, which is solely and consistently preserved throughout the building, all the ornaments are in good taste, and the paintings promise to be in keeping with the rest, so that it augurs well towards being quite a chef-d'oeuvre of art. It is intended to replace the old church of St. Vincent de Paule, which stands about a furlong from it to the west in the Rue Montholon, to where we will proceed, and look at the altar-piece, being the apotheosis of the philanthropist to whom it is dedicated, and the only object in the church worth attention. Keeping straight on westward, we come to the beautiful church of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, finished in 1837, it is exactly fronting the Rue Lafitte, from which the noble portico of corinthian columns has a most beautiful effect. The interior is splendid, indeed gorgeous, all that painting, sculpture, and gilding can produce, is here combined, and the effect is dazzling, and excites almost universal admiration, and would mine also were it a theatre, but the chaste, still solemnity of a holy sanctuary exists not here, amongst the gay colours and lurid glare which every where meets the eye from the glitter, which blazes around in this too profusely decorated church. Yet one must do justice as one examines it in detail, and admit that in point of execution all its different departments are most exquisitely wrought, and magnificent as a whole, only not consistent with our associations connected with a temple of worship. We will now descend by the Rue Faubourg Montmartre to the Boulevards, and bearing a little westward, shall come to the very handsome Rue Vivienne, through which we will proceed until we are opposite the Bourse (Exchange), and there we pause and contemplate what I consider the _beau idéal_ of fine architecture; its noble range of 66 corinthian columns have no unseemly projections to break the broad mass of light, which sheds its full expanse upon their large rounded shafts, no profusion of frittering ornaments spoil the chaste harmony which pervades the whole character of this building, which to me appears faultless. If there were any improvement possible, I should say that if the bold flight of steps which leads to the front entrance had been carried all round the building the effect would have been still more grand than it now is. The interior is adorned with paintings in imitation of bas relief, which are executed in the most masterly style. The grand Salle de la Bourse in the centre of the building, where the stock-brokers and merchants meet, is 116 feet in length by 76 in breadth, entirely paved with marble. The whole arrangements are such as to render it in every respect the most commodious for all commercial purposes. From hence we proceed by the street opposite to the Rue Richelieu, and turning to the left, we arrive at the Place Richelieu, and must pass a few minutes in admiring the elegant bronze fountain in the centre with its noble basins and four allegorical figures representing the Seine, the Loire, the Saône, and the Garonne, round which the water falls from above, and flows beneath, producing a most beautiful effect. Opposite is the Bibliothéque du Roi, or Royal Library, which certainly is the most extensive and most complete of any in the world, possessing nearly 1,000,000 books and printed pamphlets, 80,000 MSS, 100,000 medals, 1,400,000 engravings, 300,000 maps and plans. This institution may be considered to owe its foundation to St. Louis, who first made the attempt of forming a public library, and arranged some volumes in an apartment attached to the Holy Chapel; under successive reigns the number gradually increased, whilst the locality assigned for them was often changed, and it was not until the reign of Louis XV that they were placed where they now are, in a most extensive building, formerly the residence of Cardinal Mazarin, which, seen from the Rue Richelieu, presents nothing but a great ugly dead wall, with a high roof to it, and here and there a few square holes for windows, but when you enter the court-yard, you find rather a fine building than otherwise, and the interior displays, by the vast size of the apartments, some idea of what its former grandeur must have been; the richness of the ornaments and decorations in most instances are destroyed, and replaced by books, with which the walls are covered. The engravings occupy the ground floor, and amongst them are to be found fifty thousand portraits, including every eminent character which Europe has produced, and presenting all the varieties of costumes existing at the different epochs in which they flourished; in one of the rooms where the prints are kept is an oil portrait, in profile, of the unfortunate King John of France, which is curious as an antiquity, being an original, and executed at a time when the art of portrait painting was very little known, as John died in the year 1364. On ascending the staircase to the right, a piece of framed tapestry must be remarked, as having formed part of the furniture of the chateau of Bayard. Those who are curious in typographical specimens must ask to see the most ancient printed book _with a date_, being 1457, also the Bible, called Mazarin, printed in 1456, with cut metal types. The oldest manuscript is one of Josephus, and others are of the fifth and sixth centuries; the amateurs of autography will be gratified in seeing letters from Henri IV to Gabrielle d'Estrée, and the writing of Francis I, Turenne, Madame de Maintenon, Voltaire, Rousseau, Racine, Corneille; Boileau, Bossuet, etc. Amongst other interesting objects is the chair of Dagobert, which is supposed to be much older even than his time, and of ancient Roman fabric, the vase of the Ptolemies, the famous cameo representing the apotheosis of Augustus, the seal of Michael Angelo, and the armour of Francis I, and the admirers of _vertu_ must be delighted with the collection of exquisitely beautiful intaglios and cameos. Two globes, twelve feet in diameter, being the largest extant, cannot be overlooked. Mount Parnassus in bronze, which the French poets and musicians are ascending with Louis XIV on the summit, is a fine piece of workmanship; there is also a model of the Pyramids of Egypt, with figures and trees to denote their height. There are a few very good paintings, and many objects calculated to excite the highest interest, which it would take years properly to examine and appreciate. The prayer-books of St. Louis and Anne of Brittany, and one which belonged in succession to Charles V Charles IX, and Henri III, bearing their signatures are exceedingly curious. Amongst the books and manuscripts may be found some of every known language which has characters. This noble institution is open daily for students; authors; etc., from ten till three, except Sundays and festivals; and those who merely wish to view the establishment may be admitted from ten till three on Tuesdays and Fridays; except during the vacation, which is from the 1st September to the 15th October. In the same street, a little farther southward, at the corner of the Rue Traversière, the preparations will be observed for a statue to Molière, on the spot where stood the house in which he died, and nearly opposite is a small passage which passes under a house; and takes one opposite another of a similar description, which leads into the Palais Royal: suddenly emerging from the little dark alleys into a beautiful area, has a most extraordinary and pleasing effect; you see before you a parallelogram of 700 feet by 300, completely surrounded by a beautiful building with arcades, and having flower-gardens; statues, and a splendid fountain in the centre. To see this extraordinary scene to the greatest advantage, the first visit should be by night, and the impulsive coup-d'oeil tempts the beholder to imagine that he has around him the realization of some gay dream of a fairy palace, the immense glare of light glittering on the falling waters, the brilliance of the illuminated shops; the magnificence and richness of the articles therein displayed, with reflecting lamps so contrived as to throw a powerful light on their sparkling jewels and glittering ware, the vistas of trees, the borders of flowers, the well dressed company and animated groups, with the gilded coffee-houses beaming all round, form such a picture as it is more easy to imagine than describe. Four galleries with shops encircle the garden of the Palais Royal, three of them are under piazzas opening to the grand area, the fourth, called the Galerie d'Orléans, is enclosed on both sides, and the roof is formed by one immense skylight, whilst the effect of the whole is superb. Over the shops are mostly either coffee-houses or restaurateurs, some of them splendidly decorated and most brilliantly lighted; as may be imagined, this amusing locality forms the lounge of thousands, and no stranger ever comes to Paris without making an early visit to the Palais Royal. It was originally intended by Cardinal Richelieu for his own residence, but the magnificence which he had already developed, with intentions of augmenting his design to so extravagant and luxurious a degree, began to excite the jealousy of Louis XIII, and finally the Cardinal made him a present of it shortly before his death. Since then it has been inhabited by several royal visiters, and such changes have been made that the original plan is scarcely to be traced, it having formerly been so much more extensive as to occupy several of the surrounding streets. So numerous are the shops, and so various are the articles within them, that it has been observed that a person might live in the Palais Royal without ever stirring out of it, finding all within it required to supply the wants of a reasonable being. Although under the comprehensive title of Palais Royal, the whole extent is included, not only garden but all the surrounding shops and the stories above, yet that part which specifically is the Palais Royal, or Royal Palace, is situated at the southern extremity, looking into two court-yards, and where the present King with his family resided until 1831, when he removed to the Tuileries. It is entered by the Rue St. Honoré, and may be considered rather a fine building; the doric, ionic, and corinthian orders are visible in different parts of the edifice, in the interior there are some extremely handsome apartments, beautifully furnished but not very large for a palace; there are many very interesting pictures, particularly those relative to the King's life, from the period, of his teaching geography in a school in Switzerland, to his return to Paris; also the subjects connected with the events of the Palace are well worth attention, and many of them painted by the first rate artists. The apartments may usually be seen on Sundays from 1 till 4, on presentation of the passport. Opposite the Palais-Royal is an open space called the Place du Palais Royal, on the southern side is the Château-d'Eau, a reservoir of water for supplying the neighbouring fountains; it is decorated with statues, and two pavilions. Just near it is the Rue St. Thomas-du-Louvre, where formerly stood the famous Hôtel de Longueville, the residence of the Duke de Longueville, and Elboeuf, where the intrigues of the Fronde were carried on, during the minority of Louis XIV, against Mazarin; it is now in part occupied by the king's stables, containing 160 horses, and may be visited any day by applying at the porter's lodge. We will now retrace a few steps eastward to the Rue St. Honoré, and passing by the large establishment of Laffitte, Caillard, et Compagnie, for diligences to all parts of France, we shall come to the Oratoire, built for the Prêtres de l'Oratoire in 1621, but now devoted to the protestant worship; it is adorned with doric columns, with a range of corinthian pillars above, and in the interior, the roof of which is highly ornamented. Service is performed in French every Sunday at half past 12. Within a hundred yards eastward is the Fontaine de la Croix-du-Tiroir, at the corner of the Rue de l'Arbre-Sec, rebuilt by Soufflot (on the site of one erected under Francis I). Adorned by pilasters and a nymph, which would have been graceful but is spoiled by their painting over it. The first turning in the Rue de l'Arbre-Sec, is the Rue des Fossés St. Germain-l'Auxerrois, and at No. 14 is the house formerly called the Hôtel Ponthieu, in which Admiral Coligni was assassinated on St. Bartholomew's day, in 1572; in the very room where the event took place the witty actress, Sophie Arnould, was born, in 1740, then called the Hôtel Lisieux, and in 1747, it was occupied by Vanloo the celebrated painter. We return to the Rue de l'Arbre-Sec, and a few steps southward bring us in front of the venerable and mouldering church of St. Germain-l'Auxerrois (vide page 61); the oldest part still standing and supposed to be of the 14th century, is the western front; the porch was built by Jean Gausel in 1431, several other parts have been built at later periods; altogether it is a most interesting building and is connected with many sad historical associations, it was the bell of this church that tolled the signal for the massacre of the protestants on the night of St. Bartholomew; in a little street adjoining the south side of the church, is a house with a picturesque turret, supposed to have belonged to some building attached to the church; there is a very remarkable piece of carve-work in wood and some interesting pictures within the church; we will now leave its tranquil vaulted aisles, and quitting by the western porch, the most beautiful façade of the Louvre rises before us, which was erected in the reign of Louis XIV, after a design by Claude Perrault. [Illustration: Champin del. Lith. Rigo Frères Cie St. Germain l'Auxerrois.] The Louvre has been so often described in works of so many different natures, descending the different grades from histories to pamphlets, that I shall not fatigue my readers with a too detailed review of its wonders, but endeavour to give them some impression of its grandeur, with as little prolixity as possible. I have already, in the historical sketch of Paris, touched upon its foundation, and the various epochs at which the different parts of the building were erected, and certainly let any one place himself in the middle of the grand court, and behold the four sides, and see if he can call to mind any thing equal to it, take it, for its all in all; I am well aware that there is rather a redundancy of ornament to satisfy the purest taste, and in that respect there is undoubtedly a deviation from perfection, but the approach is sufficiently near to excite the warmest admiration. Each side is 408 feet, and although there is a degree of uniformity, taken _en masse_, preserved, with two of the façades particularly, yet on examination the ornaments are found to be different, each side requires much close study after a _coup-d'oeil_ has been taken of the whole, and the more it is inspected, the more beautiful will it be found; the statues and different devices are by five different sculptors, the most celebrated of their day, the order of the pillars is generally corinthian, but there are some, which are composite. The external façades are by no means burthened with ornament, the north and western sides being perfectly plain, the south side has a noble effect, and faces the quay, having plenty of room to admit of its being properly viewed and justice rendered to its noble range of forty corinthian pilasters; this is by Perrault, as well as the eastern side, which is certainly one of the finest specimens of modern architecture that can be imagined. A grand colonnade composed of 28 coupled corinthian columns has the most splendid effect, the basement story being perfectly simple, whilst the central mass of the building which forms the gateway is crowned by a pediment of stones, each 52 feet in length and three in thickness; all is vast, all is grand about this noble front, which is justly the admiration of every architectural connoisseur, no matter from what part of the world he may come. Of the interior volumes might be said, I must first, after conducting my reader to the great door on the southern side of the building, direct his attention to the grand staircase, which is of a most splendid character, as to design, and consistently beautiful as to execution. The visiter after passing by a small room filled with very old paintings enters a larger when the grand gallery extends before him, which is unrivalled in the world, being above a quarter of a mile in length, and 42 feet in width, filled with paintings, principally from the old masters, but of them I will treat in a future chapter; it contains 1406 pictures some of them being of immense size. We will now pass on for the moment to the other apartments. The bed-room of Henry IV must arrest our attention, and the eye naturally falls on the alcove where his bed was placed, the oak carving, and gilded mouldings have been preserved exactly in the same state that they were when he died. We next proceed to a suite of rooms containing paintings of the Spanish, French, Flemish, and Italian schools; others devoted to drawings; of the latter there are 1293. Another range of apartments is on the ground floor and called the Museum of Antiquities, containing statues and various specimens of sculpture, in all 1,116 objects. Other suites of rooms are appropriated to Egyptian, Greek, and Roman antiquities, and in some of the apartments are objects of great value; that the amount of real worth of the contents of the Louvre must be incalculable, one casket alone of Mary de Medicis is estimated at several thousand pounds, and there are many articles equally costly. One portion of the building is devoted to every thing that concerns naval architecture and an immense variety of marine objects, with a number of curious models. The Louvre may be entered on presenting the passport, every day, and new wonders and beauties may be discovered at each visit, although they be repeated for months together. We now pass on westward, and enter the Place du Carrousel, so called from Louis XIV having held a grand tournament there in 1662, but it was not then so extensive as at present. The triumphal arch erected by Napoleon in 1806, first strikes the eye a beautiful monument composed of different coloured marbles, of works in bronze with figures, and devices relative to war, and commemorative of the campaigns of the French army in 1805; all the different parts are admirable from the exquisite manner of their execution. On our left is the grand picture-gallery of the Louvre, communicating with the Tuileries, on the right, the same description of building exists in part, but is not yet completed. Before us spreads the extended dimensions of the palace of the Tuileries; with all deficiences it must be admitted that it is a noble pile, and has a grand, though heavy imposing air, the height of the roof is certainly a deformity, but we will enter the grand court-yard, which is separated from the Place du Carrousel by a handsome railing with gilt spear-heads, and then pass under the palace, and view the façade on the garden side, where the sameness of the building is relieved by a handsome colonnade in the centre, adorned with statues, vases, etc.; the wings also have a fine effect, they are more massive than the body of the building, which although not a beauty as respects the edifice in general, yet the execution of all the different parts is admirable in the identical detail; having a fair share of ornament not injudiciously disposed, situated as the Palace is seen, at the end of a splendid garden, it has a most striking and beautiful effect. The interior contains many apartments which are, as might be expected, exceedingly handsome, one termed the Galerie de Diane is 176 feet long by 32 broad, it is of the time of Louis XIII, and rich in gilding and paintings, but generally the furniture is not so magnificent as might be imagined; those occupied by the Duke of Orléans are an exception; being very splendid. Amongst the numerous objects of _vertu_ which here abound is the large solid silver statue of Peace, presented to Napoleon by the city of Paris after the treaty of Amiens. The pictures are generally by the most eminent French artists. The Salle des Maréchaux contains the portraits of the living Marshals of France; Soult, Molitor, and Grouchy are the only remaining, whose names figured in the campaigns of Napoleon; on the whole it may be remarked that the apartments generally in the Tuileries are not equal in point of extent and decoration, to the saloons of many of the nobility of Paris. When the King is absent, the Palace may be viewed by applying to M. le Commandant du Château des Tuileries, and the same is the case with the apartments of the Duke of Orleans. The gardens present a most agreeable aspect, although too stiff and formal to be in good taste, yet the mélange of noble high trees, wide gravel walks, marble basins, beautiful fountains, the most classic statues, beds of flowers, ornamental vases, and the commanding view to the Triumphal Arch, certainly form an _ensemble_ which produces the most delightful sensation; in fact, I never enter them, such is the cheering effect upon me, without having but one unpleasant feeling, and that is, to think that I have not time to go there oftener, and pass hours amongst such charming scenes. To view the number of sweet merry looking children, with their clean and neat _bonnes_ (nursery maids), all playing so happily together, enlivens the heart, then the retired walks between the dense foliage in the heat of summer invites the mind to meditation. The exquisitely beautiful statues are also most interesting objects of study, and I recommend them particularly to the attention of the visiter. On the northern side of the gardens, extends the handsome Rue Rivoli, with its noble colonnade; at No. 48, is the Hôtel des Finances, a spacious building covering a large extent of ground, containing several courts, with offices, and splendid apartments for the Minister. We shall now cross the Rue Rivoli, and take the Rue des Pyramides, also having an arcade all through the Rue St. Honoré, and facing us rises the noble church of St. Roch (vide page 97). The entrance is approached by a flight of steps, which have witnessed some sanguinary scenes, when Napoleon poured forth the iron hail of his artillery upon the opposing force which was there posted; again, in 1830, on the same spot, the people made a firm resistance against the gendarmerie of Charles X. The portal has two ranges of columns of corinthian and doric orders, the interior, although plain, has a fine appearance, heightened by the effect produced by many handsome monuments to illustrious characters who have been buried here, amongst the rest, Corneille; painting as well as sculpture has lent its aid in decorating this church, as it contains some fine pictures. The Royal Family attend here, and the music is very fine, but generally there are such crowds that it is difficult to enter. At No. 13 in the Rue d'Argenteuil, behind St. Roch, in 1684, Corneille died. A black slab in the court-yard bears an inscription and the bust of the poet. Returning to the Rue St. Honoré, we proceed westward, and pass by the Rue Marché St. Honoré on our right, in which is a most commodious market. Pursuing our course we look down the Rue Castiglione, which communicates with the Rue Rivoli, and the Place Vendôme; it is remarkably handsome, and has a fine colonnade, at the corner is a fountain, which is plainer than they usually are, and a little farther to the west, at No. 369, is the Assomption (vide page 96). This church formerly belonged to a convent of nuns, styled Les Dames de l'Assomption, the remains may be perceived in the Rue Neuve du Luxembourg, and are now occupied as barracks. It was completed in 1676. It contains some interesting pictures. A chapel is contiguous, dedicated to St. Hyacinthe, which was erected in 1822. Continuing to follow the Rue St. Honoré, we cross the Rue Royale, displaying the fountains of the Place de la Concorde to our left, and the Madeleine on our right, we enter the Rue Faubourg St. Honoré, in which are many most superb hôtels, amongst the rest, the British Ambassador's, formerly the Hôtel Borghèse, occupied by the Princess Pauline, sister of Bonaparte; the next hôtel is that of the Baroness Pontalba, and is one of the most splendid in Paris, which the visiter must not fail to remark. We next come to the Palais de l'Elysée Bourbon, erected in 1718, and afterwards purchased and occupied by Madame de Pompadour, since when it has had many masters, amongst the rest, Murat, Napoleon, the Emperor of Russia, the Duke of Wellington, and the Duke de Berri, but it now belongs to the crown, and combines an appearance of splendid desolation, with a variety of associations, that cause us to muse on the fall of the great. The library which is over the council chamber was fitted up by Madame Murat, in the most exquisite style, as a surprise for her husband after his return from one of his campaigns; it next became the bed-room of Maria Louisa, and the birthplace of the daughter of the Duke and Duchess de Berri. Here also is shown the bed-room, and bed in which Napoleon last slept in Paris, after the battle of Waterloo. The building itself is handsome, and though not large, has an elegant appearance, some of the apartments are very splendid, but now having a solitary aspect. The garden, which is large, contains some noble trees, and is laid out in the Italian style. To see this Palace, apply for admission to M. l'Intendant de la Liste civile. Facing the Elysée Bourbon, is the Hôtel Beauveau, in the Place Beauveau, occupied by the Neapolitan Ambassador. Still proceeding westward we come to the church St. Philippe du Roule, which was completed in 1784. It has but very little ornament, but is an exceedingly chaste production, the columns of the portico are doric, and those of the interior are ionic. It contains several good pictures. Nearly opposite is a handsome building with tuscan columns, and is used as stables for the King, and also a receptacle for his carriages. A short distance farther on is the Hôpital Beaujon, founded by the banker of that name in 1824, a handsome and well arranged building, having an air of health and cheerfulness; it contains 400 beds, and the situation is particularly salubrious, and so well ordered that the inspection of it will afford much gratification to the visiter. The Chapelle Beaujon, opposite, is by the same founder as the hospital, and may be considered as belonging to it. We must now travel back as far as the British Ambassador's, and facing is the Rue d'Aguesseau, in which is the Episcopal Chapel, entirely appropriated to the English protestant worship, a building well adapted in every respect to the purposes for which it was erected. A few steps farther we turn to the right, which will bring us to the Rue de la Madeleine, in which we shall find the Chapelle Expiatoire, built over the spot where Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were buried, immediately after their execution, and the interior is adorned by their statues; their remains were afterwards removed to St. Denis. This chapel is one of the most elegant and interesting monuments in Paris, it is in the form of a cross, with a dome in the centre. A short distance eastward, is the Collége Royal de Bourbon, No. 5, Rue St. Croix, which was built for a Convent of Capuchins, in 1781. It consists of a doorway in the centre, with columns, and two pavilions at the ends, one of which was the chapel of the convent, but is now the church St. Louis, a plain building of the doric order, but decorated by some fine fresco paintings, and four large pictures of saints, painted in wax. From hence we may take the Rue Joubert, opposite, and proceed until we arrive at the Rue de la Victoire, formerly called the Rue Chantereine, where resided Napoleon after his Italian campaign, and from hence went forth to strike the _coup d'état_ which dissolved the government on the 18th Brumaire. The house was built for the famous dancer Guimard, then passed to Madame Talma, who sold it to madame Beauharnais, afterwards the Empress Joséphine, who added the pavilion at the nearer end. Bertrand inhabited this mansion a short time after his return from St. Helena, at present it is untenanted, and undergoing repair; it belongs to the widow of General Lefebvre Desnouettes. In the garden is a bust of Napoleon, which certainly possesses no great merit. If disposed to extend our walk, we may proceed northward to the Rue de Clichy and there find a prison for debtors, in an airy, healthy situation, which is satisfactory information for some of our prodigal countrymen, too many of whom, I regret to say, have been, and are still, inhabitants of this building, which contains from 150 to 200 persons. In returning we will amuse ourselves in wandering about many of the streets of the Chaussée-d'Antin, both right and left, which have in them some most beautiful houses decorated with statues and the most elaborate carve-work. On returning to the Boulevards by the Madeleine, as we pass along we notice the Hôtel des Affaires Etrangères, or residence of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, corner of the Rue Neuve-des-Capucines, formerly belonging to Marshal Berthier, we then proceed to the eastward, and turn down the Rue Neuve St. Augustin, which will bring us to the point where the streets La Michodière and Port Mahon meet, at the beautiful Fontaine de Louis-le-Grand, with the statue of a Genius striking at a dolphin, with consistent ornaments extremely well executed. CHAPTER VII. A matter of fact chapter, more useful than amusing; advice to Englishmen visiting or sojourning at Paris; several serviceable establishments recommended; hints as to management and economy. Although I have already afforded my readers a transient glance at the Champs-Élysées on entering Paris, yet so charming a spot must not be passed over altogether in so hurried a manner; possessing as it does so many attractions for the happy portion of the Parisians, which do not only consist of its fine vistas of high trees, its broad walks, flowing fountains, etc., but a wide open space is left, where the people recreate themselves with athletic games, whilst in other parts there are swings, merry-go-rounds, shows, music, dancing, and every variety of amusement that can afford pleasure to those who are merrily inclined. Franconi has also a Theatre here for the display of horsemanship during the summer, which is extremely well conducted, and constantly filled. The prices are from 1 to 2 francs. In the south-western portion of the Champs-Élysées, is a quarter called Chaillot, in which is situated, at No. 78 bis, the Chapelle Marboeuf, where protestant service is regularly performed every Sunday. At No. 99 is Sainte Perine, a refuge for persons above 60 with small incomes, who by paying 600 francs a year, are comfortably provided for, or by depositing a certain sum at once, on entering. It was formerly a monastery, and can accommodate 180 men and women. The church of St. Pierre is a little farther on, in which there are a few pictures, and the choir is of the 15th century. There are a great number of very handsome houses about the Champs-Elysées; which is a favourite neighbourhood with the English, and it is an agreeable vicinity, on account of its airy position, its picturesque appearance, and affording pleasure in viewing the numbers who crowd there for the purpose of enjoyment, and with the determination to enjoy. It is also a fashionable resort for pedestrians, equestrians, and carriages, and whilst I am dilating on the attractions of the Champs-Elysées, I must not omit to direct the attention of my readers to the very delightful establishment which Doctor Achille Hoffman has formed in the Avenue Fortuné, which is called the _Villa Beaujon_, uniting within its interior every object desirable for health, comfort, and pleasure. This establishment has been formed by the Doctor on such a system, as to render it in every respect a cheerful and agreeable residence for boarders; hence every rational and intellectual amusement is provided within its walls, a piano, and instruments for forming a quartetto, a billiard room, newspapers, periodical works, baths, etc., alternately present the inmates with a fund of amusement: possessing also the greatest advantage in having Madame Hoffman at the head of the establishment, who from the good society she has been accustomed to frequent, and her mental qualifications, is enabled, by her conversation, ever to cause the hours to pass most pleasantly with the residents of the Villa, to whose comforts, and wants, she pays the most unremitting attention, and unites the advantage of speaking English. Doctor Hoffman is willing to receive any patients except such as may be afflicted with either contagious complaints, or with mental alienation, and to attend them upon the homoepathic principles, in which he has attained considerable celebrity, having for many years practised upon that system with the greatest success. The apartments are fitted up in a style of elegance which at once convinces the spectator of the good taste of the director, and although they are numerous, each has its peculiar attraction, either in the view from the windows, or from the internal arrangement: but the quality which is most recommendable in this establishment, is the peculiar care which has been devoted to every minutia which can in any degree tend to comfort, and particularly for that season when it is most required, having by the means of two immense calorifères, so contrived that the whole house is warmed by a pure air, which is introduced from the garden, and conveyed not only into every apartment, but also to the staircases, corridors, and even into the closets, the degree of heat being regulated exactly to the grade desired; thus a person may pass a whole winter in this little Elysium, without ever feeling any of its baneful effects, which is a great desideratum for persons of delicate health, or having the slightest tendency to consumption, to whom the most powerful enemies are _cold_ and _damp_, two intruders who are never permitted to enter under any pretext the Villa Beaujon. For the pedestrian the greatest treat is afforded, as the neighbourhood consists of a most numerous variety of delightful walks, and for those who desire to enjoy the beauties of nature, without fatigue, the most favourable opportunity is offered, a terrace having been formed at the summit of the premises which commands a panoramic view for fifteen leagues round, comprehending within its circle an immense variety of villages, châteaux, hills, wood, water, and every description of picturesque scenery. There is also a garden prettily arranged, and kept in the nicest order, with kiosques and a _jet d'eau_, in fact there is no attraction omitted which could possibly contribute towards rendering the Villa a most desirable residence for every season; the charge is moderate, and the treatment in every respect the most liberal, the Doctor being in such a position that emolument is not an important object. Amongst other advantages which the establishment possesses, is that of always having one English servant. The situation which has been selected by the Doctor for his residence, is not only the most agreeable but considered decidedly one of the most healthy round Paris, as the few houses which are immediately around it are of the better order and environed by gardens, therefore the purity of the air is untainted by smoke or any effluvia arising from closely inhabited cities; indeed in that instance Paris has a great advantage over London, on account of wood being the principal fuel burnt in the former, and coal in the latter, hence Paris seen from a height, every object is visible from the clearness of the atmosphere, whilst London under the same circumstances is capped by a murky sort of cloud by which the greater part of the city is generally obscured. Although the French capital is above three degrees south of the English, yet the former is colder in the winter, only that it is dryer, consequently more wholesome and the cold weather is of much shorter duration, as the springs are always finer and forwarder than in England, which is proved by the vegetables being much earlier in Paris, peas being sold cheap about the streets on the 20th or 25th of May, and other leguminous crops in proportion. The autumns are often very fine, generally, indeed, I have known the month of November to be quite clear and sunny, but of latter years the summers have been wet. The English in most instances have their health better in France than in England, which is considered to arise from several different causes; the lower and even some of the middle classes in London and other large towns are much addicted to drinking quantities of porter and ale, which are not so accessible in Paris or in any town in France; hence after a time they accustom themselves to the light wines of the country, and with the higher classes of English the case is nearly similar, as they renounce port, sherry, and Madeira, for Burgundy, Bordeaux, etc., and as a draught wine _even_ good _ordinaire_, but a grand point is to obtain it of the best quality, proportioned to the price; perhaps there is not a town in the world where there are so many persons who sell wine as in Paris, but as there is a great deal of quackery and compounding practised, I must caution my countrymen not to purchase at any house to which they are not particularly recommended. I shall therefore advise them to give the preference to the old established house of Meunier, which has existed ever since 1800, now conducted by Messrs. Debonnelle et Guiard; I have myself long dealt there, as also my friends, and have ever found their prices the most reasonable, and the qualities unexceptionable; their tarif comprehends all descriptions of wine, and the charges in proportion, commencing on so moderate a scale that they are attainable to the most modest purse, and as there is no description of known wine which they do not possess, of course some there are at very high prices; the same case may be stated of their liqueurs, of which they have every variety. In this establishment persons may either be accommodated with a single bottle, or may purchase by the pipe, as they carry on an extensive wholesale business; their great warehouses are at Bercy which is the grand dépôt for the wine merchants of Paris. This is one of those houses to which I have before alluded as having, although nearly in the centre of the city, a delightful garden, and in the present instance quite a little aviary of canary and other birds, which is open to the street, situated No. 22, Rue des Saints-Pères, Faubourg St. Germain. The present proprietors were clerks in the house as long back as 1810, and have never since been absent from the business, which has been considerably augmented by their extreme attention and civility to their customers, and the reputation which they have acquired for keeping good articles, and vending them at fair prices. As a great object of my work is to render it as serviceable as possible to my readers, I must not omit some cautionary remarks upon the tradespeople of Paris; an opinion has generally existed of their predisposition to overcharge the English, and in a great many instances it has been the case, when they first came over to France; an idea existed that they were extremely rich, and a bad feeling prevailed of making the wealthy pay: even amongst their own country people, they do the same, it is a common phrase with them, "Il est riche, alors faites-lui payer," "He is rich, so make him pay," and that system of calculating the weight of a person's means and making the charge, accordingly, is still followed in a degree; even the government have in some measure encouraged the practice, no doubt from a good motive, which has prompted them at certain periods to enforce regulations, that some articles should be sold for less to the poor, such as bread, and other necessaries of life. Another circumstance caused the French to continue their impositions upon the English, their having been duped by the latter, and in many instances to a considerable amount, as amongst the crowds who came over, were many persons who were not very scrupulous with respect to paying their debts, to whom the French willingly gave credit, the English name at that period having stood extremely high in the estimation of the French, but having sustained several losses on account of their too great facility in giving credit, they determined to make such of the English as they could attract, pay a portion towards what they had been mulcted by their runaway country-people. The French are not alone in that respect, as some of the fashionable tailors in London charge an immense price for their coats, because they say they only get paid for two out of three, therefore they make those pay dearly for such as do not pay at all. The system now is rather better in Paris, so many shopkeepers having adopted the plan of selling at "Prix fixe" as they call it, which means fixed prices, from which they seldom or ever depart; but then there is a great difference with regard to the value of the articles in which they deal, some shops being infinitely cheaper than others, I therefore have been at considerable pains to discover those who conduct their business in an honourable manner and shall give my readers the benefit of my researches. With respect to provisions there certainly is a difference with regard to the quarters, which are the more or the less fashionable, the former being somewhat dearer than the latter, but there is a proportionate difference with regard to the quality, and therefore in some instances the higher priced articles are the cheapest in the end; for instance, M. Rolland, of No. 363, Rue St. Honoré, sells none but the very best meat; certainly in some of the obscurer parts of the town, and in the markets it is to be had cheaper; but the quality far inferior. I have heard the English complain of the meat not being so good in Paris as it is in London, but if they dealt with M. Rolland they could not in justice make the remark, he is always the possessor of the ox which is exhibited on Shrove Tuesday, and which weighed the last time nearly 4,000lbs; he retains a well executed portrait of it, which he shows to his customers, but he has often beasts approaching that weight, as about a dozen every year are fatted by the Norman graziers for the prize, and he is the principal purchaser; his other meat is proportionately fine, therefore I fancy that a good manager will find that economy is promoted by dealing with M. Holland in preference to any one who may sell at a nominally lower price. Now that economy is on the _tapis_, I must endeavour to enlighten my reader as much on that head as I can, by giving him all the advantage of my own experience in the art, and as I am an old practitioner, I have the vanity to flatter myself that my advice on that score may count for something. On quitting England I advise my readers to disburthen themselves of all their clothes, except such as are absolutely requisite for travelling, and then on arriving at Paris to order those of which they may stand in need; indeed for myself, when I return to England I always provide a good stock of habiliments, convinced that the cloth procured in France is so much more durable than that obtained in England, and the workmen being paid much less, you have a superior article in France for a lower charge. As to the difference of fashion or cut, I leave that to be decided by a committee of dandies of the two countries, and to prevent my readers from getting into bad hands, I recommend them at once to M. Courtois, aux Montagnes Russes, No. 11, Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, facing the Rue Vivienne, there the stranger is sure of being fairly treated with regard to the worth of the commodity, the solidity and neatness of the execution, and punctuality in the fulfillment of his engagements. The difference of prices between a fashionable London and Parisian tailor is immense, the former will make you pay 7_l._ 7_s._ for a coat of the best cloth, whilst M. Courtois only charges 100 francs (4_l._) for the same article, equal in every respect, and furnishes every other description of clothing on equally moderate terms. I shall now bid my reader to doff his hat, and obtain one that will sit so lightly on his brow, that he will scarcely be conscious that his head is covered, of which I had experience under circumstances rather ludicrous than otherwise. I entered a glover's shop with my mind I suppose occupied with divers meditations, and like a true uncourteous Englishman forgot to take off my hat to the Dame de Comptoir, as she is styled, but having obtained what I sought, in the act of departing I took up a hat which was on the counter, not dreaming that I had already one upon my head, but as I was making my obeissance to the mistress of the shop, she observed, very archly, that she should have thought Monsieur might be satisfied with having a hat on his head, without requiring to have one in his hand; surprised at finding myself absolutely committing a robbery, I made the best excuses the subject would admit, and retired after having furnished a subject of amusement for Madame, for Monsieur whose hat I had so illegally appropriated to myself, and to some pretty laughing-looking demoiselles who were ensconced behind a counter. These aerial hats are to be procured of M. Servas, No. 69, Rue Richelieu, who is the inventor, and for which he has received a medal from a scientific society, they are of so light and elastic a nature, that they do not cause the slightest pressure upon the brow, nor leave that unsightly mark upon the forehead, that is often a great annoyance to those gentlemen who object to having a stain upon the _blanche_ purity of that feature, and as those who are tenacious in that respect must naturally be so with regard to the form and the material of which their hat is composed, they may rest assured on that point they will be suited in those of M. Servas, which have long had an acknowledged superiority and celebrity on that account, his establishment having for upwards of 30 years been famed under the firm of Coquel and Quesnoy, which by the ingenuity of his recent invention he has considerably augmented. As I am now on a chapter devoted to usefulness, I must recommend my readers to get well and _comfortably_ shod, particularly if they have any intention of visiting the monuments and antiquities I have described, for which purpose they must procure their shoes in Paris, the leather being prepared in such a manner as to render it infinitely more soft and flexible than it is in England, consequently one can walk twice the distance, without tiring, in French shoes, than one can in English; hence with the former all the tortures of new shoes are never felt, being fully as easy as an old pair of the latter, and for this purpose no one can better supply the article desired, than M. Deschamps, No. 14, Galerie d'Orléans, Palais-Royal, who stands so high in the estimation of my countrymen, that he is obliged to go to London twice a year to supply their demands. An attention to comfort in this respect is to me so essential, that in returning to England I always provide myself with a plentiful stock of boots and shoes, although not to the same degree that one of our celebrated tragedians practised this precaution, having furnished himself with thirty-six pair to the no small amusement of the Dover custom-house officers when they overhauled his luggage. One of the great advantages of the French shoes is that the upper leather never cracks nor bursts, and indeed I have not only found the material better, but also the workmanship. M. Deschamps has acquired much celebrity for the very elegant manner in which his shoes for balls and _soirées_ are executed, after a system of his own, which have now become the fashion in all the saloons in Paris. Perhaps my readers may think I have devoted too much space to this subject, but being a great pedestrian, it is one of peculiar importance, to me (and it is so natural to judge every one by one's self), and in order to see all the interesting little bits of architectural antiquity, which are so numerous in Paris, the visit must be performed on foot, as it is sometimes requisite to go into little courts and alleys where no carriage can possibly enter; besides an antiquarian must peep and grope about in places where a vehicle would only be an incumbrance. Whilst my memory is on, or, as some people would say, whilst my hand is in, I must not forget to recommend the stationer's shop, No. 159, Rue St. Honoré, next door to the Oratoire, as it is presumable that my readers, who intend to sojourn a while at Paris, must want to pay some visits, consequently will need visiting cards, with which they will provide themselves at the above establishment on terms so reasonable as quite to surprise a Londoner; also the visiter must write, and will here find an assortment of sixty different descriptions of English metal pens of Cuthbert's manufacture, and every variety of stationary that can be desired, and the manner in which they get up cards and addresses, with regard to the neatness of the engraving, printing, and quality of the card, is really surprising, for the price; whilst the mistress receives her customers with so much politeness, that having been once, is sure to prove the cause for other visits, when any of the articles in which she deals are required; and punctuality in the execution of the orders received is a quality to be met with in her, and in good truth, I cannot say much for the Parisians in general on that score, and one great cause is that they have too much business, and far more than they can attend to in a proper manner. In the same street, at No. 416, is an establishment of which the English ought to be informed, being that of M. Renault, wherein good cutlery is to be obtained at very moderate prices; there is every variety that can be desired, either for the table or other purposes, all of the finest description; his shop is situated in the quarter most convenient for the English, being that in which they so frequently reside. As health is a desideratum which is requisite for the pursuit of every occupation, and particularly for such as mean to enjoy Paris to its full extent, which will require a considerable degree of exercise, I must recommend the visiter a chymist and druggist on whom he may rely, where he may find the means of re-establishing any relaxation of strength or other malady to which all human nature is ever prone. There are innumerable establishments of this nature in Paris, and especially of those who announce English medicines, but the one which I have understood as possessing such as are truly genuine both in French and English pharmacy, is that of M. Joseau, and as a testimony of confidence in the respectability of his establishment, it has been made the chief depository of a medicine entitled the Copahine Mége, so particularly recommended by the Royal Medicine Academy of France, who have voted their thanks to the author, and granted him a patent for fifteen years, having proved so efficacious where patients have by their excesses deteriorated their health, and in fact, in all cases of blennorrhagies. M. Joseau may be also useful to my countrymen, who are in the habit of riding much on horseback, in providing them with belts of his own invention, which are made of India rubber, and in general use with the French cavalry. The establishment of M. Joseau is situated at No. 161, corner of the Rue Montmartre, and of the Gallery Montmartre, Passage Panorama, where my countrymen will be sure of meeting with the most assiduous attention, both from himself and his assistants, and that whatever they may require in his department will be of the best description, and at the most moderate prices; I know of no business whatever in which there is such an immense difference in the charges both in London and Paris, that it appears to me that chemists and druggists make you pay _ad libitum_, without having any fixed system, therefore I never enter any of their shops without I have had them particularly recommended. Before I quit this chapter of shreds and patches, although of solid utility, a very useful establishment must be introduced to my readers, belonging to Messrs. Danneville, No. 16, Rue d'Aguesseau, Faubourg St. Honoré, facing the Protestant Chapel, consisting of every description of earthenware and crockery, on a very extensive scale, with a very quiet exterior, the premises having more the appearance of warehouses than shops; the assortment is quite of a multitudinous description, including vessels of the cheapest and most useful nature, at the same time containing numbers of superior articles, wherein extreme taste is displayed. The concern has been a long time established, and is quite in the centre of the quarter which such numbers of English choose for their residence; the proprietors are civil, quiet, unassuming people, and their articles exceedingly reasonable. CHAPTER VIII. Novel introductions of different branches of industry.--Recent inventions.--Extensions of commerce in various departments.--Establishments of several new descriptions of business, now flourishing, and formerly unknown. The commerce of Paris has now extended to so vast a scale, that it has become an immense entrepòt for all the productions and manufactures of France; the foreign merchant now feels that in visiting Paris he shall there find the cheapest, the choicest, and the most extensive assortment of all that the nature of the country, aided by art, is able to produce; he is aware that he need not repair to Lyons, to Lille, Rouen, or other manufacturing districts, for their respective articles, for which they are famed, as he knows that in the great emporium of the Continent, all that the ingenuity of man can produce will there be found. Independent of that advantage, there are many branches of industry confined to Paris, first invented within its walls, improved, and wrought to a state of perfection, which is unrivalled in any other capital, and affording employ to an immense number of hands, from the multitude of ramifications into which these branches diverge; so that Paris once principally celebrated as a city of pleasure and gaiety, still retaining that reputation, is now also renowned for its extraordinary manufactures, and the curious and splendid specimens of art and ingenuity emerging from its numerous _ateliers_, and which would require an extent far beyond the limits of this work, to give a just and accurate review of their merits; but some there are which being of a nature totally novel in the annals of commerce, and having merely been introduced within the last few years, we shall devote some space to their description in order to afford our readers an idea of their beauty and utility. Amongst the various articles of the above description, none perhaps occupy a more prominent position for beauty, taste, and ingenuity, than the extraordinary variety displayed in what is termed fancy stationary, the fabrication of which is now extended to such a degree, as to have become an important branch of the commerce of Paris. Its introduction is but of recent date, as in the reign of Charles X all the paper required for notes, letters, dispatches, etc., was procured from England, on account of its extreme superiority over that of France; the Court never using any other, the example was followed not only by the major part of the French nobility, but by all foreigners of distinction who happened to be sojourning at Paris, hence the importation of paper from England was to a considerable amount. But when Louis Philippe came to the throne, he with his usual policy observed, that paper of French manufacture was good enough for his purposes, it was therefore adopted at the Court, and the noblesse and gentry, following in the same line, that encouragement was afforded to their countrymen, that engendered the idea of rendering their own paper so tasteful and elegant that now the affair is quite reversed, and England takes from France an immense quantity of this beautiful manufacture, which employs even artists of talent for designing the elegant and fanciful devices which ornament their envelopes, with their enclosures of various sizes and forms, in which the arts of drawing, painting, gilding, stamping, etc., combine to render them so pretty and so gay, that one feels loath to destroy any of these ornamental epistles, however trifling their import; the subjects of the devices are as various as those which they are intended to illustrate, history, the heathen mythology, religion, friendship, a more tender passion, etc., are all allegorically or emblematically represented, in the fancy stationary, offering the writer the means of choosing a subject consistent with the text of his letter, as an invitation to dinner is designated by paintings of pheasants, game, etc., to a _soirée dansante_, the note is adorned by couples waltzing, etc., to a whist party, the cards and players are introduced, and if to tea, the cups and saucers of gilded and glowing hue, bedeck the gay margin; so that before a word is written in the letter, it foretells its errand. There are very many who have gradually contributed their talents to this branch of industry, but it is M. Marion who may be considered the inventor, he having availed himself with the most effect of their abilities, and concentrated their respective merits, in which he has displayed much perseverance, taste, and judgment, as also in the manner in which he has organised this branch of commerce, and promoted its extension. At his establishment at No. 14, Cité-Bergère, will be found a most extensive assortment of fancy stationary, comprehending every description of variety that the most fertile imagination could depict, the prices of ordinary paper commencing at the very humble price of six sheets for a sou, and according to the degree that it is ornamented, gradually rising to 25 francs a sheet. M. Marion has also an establishment in London, at No. 19, Mortimer Street, Cavendish Square, exactly on a similar plan as that in Paris, containing an equal variety of specimens of this new branch of art. When the visiter has a half hour to spare, he would not find it thrown away in visiting the establishment of Madame Merckel, she having found the means of applying the phosphorus and chemical matches, which she has invented, to such a number of purposes, and of introducing them in so curious and ingenious a manner into divers articles, calculated both for utility and ornament, that her manufactory might be considered quite a little museum; amongst a variety of pretty things, I was first struck with a time-piece which acts as an alarum, and not only answers the purpose of awakening you at any hour which you may desire, but a little figure representing a magician, at the instant strikes a magic mirror, by which means the taper he holds is ignited, and with all possible grace, he presents you with a light just as you open your eyes. A night lamp next attracted me, which represented Mount Vesuvius, and the means by which it is lighted, proceeds from an enormous dragon emitting fire from his throat; this article is equally useful as a paper press. Another night lamp I found particularly elegant, though perfectly simple, consisting merely of a gilded branch, gracefully carved into a sort of festoon, from which was suspended a little lamp of most classic form. The inkstands consist of an indescribable variety, displaying all kinds of contrivances, some so portable as easily to go into the pocket, and containing instantaneous light on touching a spring, with pens, ink, seal and wax. Amongst the endless number of paper presses is one with a blacksmith, who, when light is required, strikes the anvil and fire appears; abundance of cigar stands with matches are arranged after a variety of whimsical methods, some of them very tasteful, and having quite an ornamental effect. Fortunately, Madame Merckel has in a great degree met with the reward her ingenuity merits, receiving the greatest encouragement from the public, and not only having had a patent granted her to protect her inventions, but she has also been presented with medals from three scientific Societies. As her prices are as various as the objects are numerous, every purse may be accommodated, as there are some as low as a sou, whilst there are others which rise as high as twenty pounds, the charge elevating according to the degree of ornament or utility. It appears surprising that a business which was not known until within the last few years should have risen to such importance, as Madame Merckel not only transmits her merchandise to every town in France, but also to the principal cities throughout Europe. The manufactory is No. 24, Rue du Bouloi, in the Cour des Fermes; there is besides a similar establishment in London, at No. 30, Edmund Place, Aldersgate Street, which is entirely furnished by Madame Merckel, possessing the same varied assortment, and undertaking to execute the same extent of supply. How very simple are some descriptions of inventions, and how very simple one is apt to think one's self in not having before thought of that which appears so trifling and easy when once known. So it is with a sort of portable desk, invented by M. Tachet, for which he has procured a patent; it needs no table nor any kind of support, as the student places it under him, and his own weight keeps it perfectly firm and steady; the plane (on which he writes or draws) being attached to the part on which he sits, rises before him, capable of accommodating itself to such elevation as may be desired; its principal utility is for sketching from nature, but as females could not make use of this desk in the same manner as men, M. Tachet has also such as are adapted to their accommodation, the base lying on the lap, and fastened by a band round the waist, which keeps it perfectly firm. M. Tachet has also devoted much time and attention in forming a collection of angular and carved pieces of wood, shaped and finished with extreme neatness, describing almost every form that can well be imagined, and composed of such wood as has been so well seasoned that it can never warp, either ebony, box, pear-tree, or indeed of every different country which produces the hardest woods; they are particularly used by engineers and architects, for drawing plans or elevations of buildings, as every curve or angle of any dimensions which can be required, may be traced by these curved and angular rulers. In French, on account of the form resembling that of a pistol, the curved pieces are called _pistolet_, which comprehends a complete set, and great demands for them come from England. At the establishment of M. Tachet will also be found almost every article that is required by the artist, and it is in fact the only house in Paris where there is any certainty of procuring _real English_ colours, as there are so many counterfeits of them exposed in almost all the colour-shops in Paris, with the names and arms upon them of some of the most eminent English colour manufacturers. But I can assure my countrymen that those they obtain from M. Tachet are genuine, and that they may deal with him in the same confidence as they would with what we call a true Englishman; he has likewise a most complete collection of mathematical instruments; his shop is situated at No. 274, Rue St. Honoré, at the bottom of the court-yard, and although it has not so brilliant an appearance as many establishments of the same nature, it is not the worse for its quiet exterior, but on the contrary, the same articles will be found with him at a more moderate charge than they ever can be procured of his dashing rivals. Another branch of industry which has risen into extreme importance latterly is that of producing such exquisitely beautiful objects in cut glass, for which the establishment of Messrs. Lahoche-Boin and Comp. has for many years been celebrated, and ever conspicuous on account of its glass staircase, but I should be afraid to trust myself with beginning to describe the multitude of tasteful and elegant articles assembled in this exhibition (for it is really much more worthy of being so called than many that bear the name), lest I should be inveigled into too much prolixity. Into many of their richly wrought services of glass, gold is so happily introduced, that the two brilliant substances seem to sparkle in rivalry of each other, and the deeper tone of bronze sometimes lends its aid and heightens the effect of both. Glass is now appropriated to a variety of purposes, formerly never thought of, as balustrades, the handles of locks and plates to doors, instead of brass, and a number of other objects; indeed from this establishment there is always emanating something new, and for the beauty of the works which they displayed at a national exhibition of specimens of art and industry, they were awarded the gold medal. Amongst other articles which attract the attention in their splendid collection, are some of the most magnificent china vases, painted by talented artists in that department, also services of Sèvres porcelain for the table, in the taste of times past; others of glass, gilded and elaborately carved, which style was also much in vogue with our ancestors; some likewise of a more simple description but always possessing a degree of elegance which excites admiration. The proprietors of this concern are merchants of respectability, and besides furnishing the Royal Family of France, and several of the courts of Europe, they have transactions with most parts of the world, charging themselves with the execution of orders for any country, and requiring the remuneration of a very moderate commission. The establishment of Messrs. Lahoche-Boin and Comp. is at Nos. 152, 153, Palais-Royal, and the carriage entrance, No. 19, Rue de Valois. This is one of those houses in Paris (of which doubtless there are many) where the stranger may feel every confidence that he will meet with none but the most honourable treatment. For those of my countrymen who like to proceed to the fountain head, and obtain articles from the manufacturer himself, instead of purchasing them of the shopkeeper who vends them at a higher price, I would recommend a visit to the establishment of M. Vincent, which is in fact like a little town, the number of warehouses, workshops, offices, etc., on the premises, amounting to no less than 84. In this manufactory an endless variety of articles are produced, consisting of every description of knick-knackery, if I may be allowed the term, as snuff-boxes, cigar-cases, memorandum books, souvenirs, bon-bon boxes, tablets, tooth-picks, card and needle-cases, pocket mirrors, housewives, paper presses, port-crayons, rulers, seals, musical snuff-boxes, etc., etc. The above articles being executed in every possible variety that can be imagined, of tortoise-shell, ivory, or mother of pearl, inlaid with gold and silver in the richest and most elaborate manner, miniature frames of every description, composed of fancy woods, with chased circles, metal gilt, stamped tortoise-shell, bronze and of every sort of material adapted for the purpose, albums and pocket-books in great variety, dressing-cases both for ladies and gentlemen, tea caddies, work-boxes, and an infinity of articles too numerous to recapitulate, for some of which patents have been obtained. It is from this establishment that most of the showy shops in Paris, who deal in articles of the same nature, are provided, hence much economy is effected by purchasing of M. Vincent, the profit of the shopkeeper being saved by procuring the object from the manufacturer. Tradesmen who come to Paris from London, would find their interest in applying to this establishment, where they could obtain the goods they require of the descriptions stated, at considerably more advantageous terms than from other quarters. I will cite one article which will prove how very low are the charges compared to what we are accustomed to in London; the musical mechanism of a snuff-box, 10 francs (eight shillings) playing two airs, rising gradually in price to 90 francs, or about 3_l._ 12_s._ playing six tunes, which of course can be afterwards set in any description of box which the purchaser chooses, of gold, silver, or tortoise-shell, as fancy directs. All other articles sold by M. Vincent are equally reasonable. His residence is No. 4, Rue de Beauce, at the corner of the Rue de Bretagne, near the Temple, certainly not in a very desirable neighbourhood, but manufactories are seldom carried on in the most agreeable vicinities. An art which has been recently brought to an astonishing degree of perfection in Paris, is that of dyeing, cleaning, scouring, and restoring almost all descriptions of habiliments; this has been effected by M. Bonneau, but not until he had visited the principal manufacturing towns, and had passed many years in studying the art scientifically, aided by persevering researches into the depths of chymistry, to which he is indebted for being able to perform that which has not until now been accomplished. I have seen instances of a soiled, faded, cashmere shawl, almost considered beyond redemption, committed to his charge, and reappear so resuscitated that the owners could scarcely believe it was the same dingy, deplorable-looking affair they had sent a fortnight before. The same power of restoring is effected upon all descriptions of satin, even that of the purest white, which, although so soiled as to be of a dirty yellow colour, is brought forth perfectly clean and with all its original lustre; with silks, merinos, gros de Naples of the tenderest tints, the process adopted is equally successful; blonde, guipure, and all descriptions of lace, no matter how discoloured, are restored to their original whiteness. With the apparel of men, the same advantages are obtained, silk, cashmere, velvet, and other waistcoats that many would throw aside as totally spoiled, or too shabby to be worn any longer, by being sent to M. Bonneau, are returned, having the appearance of being quite new. His establishment, at No. 17, Rue Lepelletier, just facing the French Opera, is well known to many English families; but having heard so much of the wonders he performed in reviving the lost colours of the elaborate borders of ladies' cashmeres, and rendering them their pristine brilliance, I determined to visit his premises, upon which he carried on his operations, in the Rue de Bondy, No. 40. I there found everything conducted upon a most methodical system of regularity and order, each room was appropriated to its peculiar department, and heated and ventilated by a certain process, and that which does M. Bonneau much honour, is, that all is so arranged, with the utmost consideration for the health of his work-people, by taking care that they shall be kept as dry as possible, and that a proper degree of warmth and air shall be admitted into every chamber. When required, M. Bonneau sends his men to clean furniture at persons' houses, which would be rather incommodious to remove. When any article is sent to him, the bearer is informed what day it will be completed, and is sure not to be deceived, and he has an apartment so arranged for preserving whatever is confided to him, from any injury which might be caused by moths or other insects. Amongst those articles for which France used to depend upon England, but wherein the case is reversed by England taking from France, is that of pencil-cases, in which small pieces of lead are inserted, and emitted or withdrawn at pleasure; numbers of these formerly were sent from London and Birmingham to Paris, but recently M. Riottot has invented and obtained a patent for a pencil-case which has a little elastic tube of tempered steel placed at the end which is used, and into which the lead is inserted, and tightly held within it, so that there is no risk of breaking, either in the act of fixing in the lead, or from its afterwards shaking, the steel tube operating as a spring, retains it so firmly that it remains, even whilst writing with it, perfectly immoveable; these are arranged in gold or silver cases, more or less ornamental as may be required, and are found so infinitely more serviceable than those on the former principle, that as they are becoming more known in England, the demand for them continues to increase. The term by which they are designated, is Porte Crayon à Pince élastique; their advantages are such as tend to economy, as they are neither liable to fall out nor break, besides the convenience of their never moving about whilst one is using them, to which the previous system was constantly liable. M. Riottot has also an assortment of pens and pen-holders, either plated or of silver or gold, richly chased or simple, with a variety of seals and other articles; he likewise retains a stock of lead, properly prepared for inserting into the pencil-cases. His address is at No. 27, Rue Phélippeaux, Passage de la Marmite, Escalier A, completely in the quarter of Paris inhabited by the operatives, surrounded by workshops of different descriptions, not exactly calculated for very delicate ladies. For the benefit of a little purer air, we will quit the working mechanics' rendez-vous, and take a lounge in the Palais-Royal, and as soon as we breathe a little freely, we will examine the engraved seals of M. Leteurtre-Maurisset, No. 33, Galerie d'Orléans, which, from the extreme delicacy of the execution, are objects well worth attention; his talents in this department have obtained him the distinction of being engraver to the Chamber of Deputies and to the royal museums; some of his specimens of armorial bearings, his designs for stamping impressions, in relief and heraldric devices, are extremely clever; he engraves on stones of different descriptions, with equal accuracy and on any kind of metal, as plates for visiting cards, etc., and whatever he undertakes he executes in the most perfect manner, that the nature of the work will admit. As he is attached to his profession, however trifling the order he may receive, he enters into it with the same zest as if it were of the first importance, of course it is engraving subjects for seals in which he finds the most pleasure, as it is in those that he has the greatest scope for the display of his abilities, and seldom fails to excel. Although the progress which France has made in almost every branch of industry is most extraordinary, yet none is so striking as the advance which has been effected in cutlery, as I well remember when I first came to France, it was a common joke amongst the English, when speaking of the rarity of an object, to observe that it was as scarce as a knife in France that would cut, its appearance also was as dull as its edge, soon however their cutlery, with their ideas, began to brighten, and to sharpen; but even as recently as 1830, they were still so outshone by England, that if it was known that you were going from Paris to London, with the intention of returning, every lady asked you to bring her a pair of scissors, every man a pair of razors, and by all medical friends you were assailed to bring them over lancets or other machines for cutting and maiming human flesh; thanks to the genius, talents, and perseverance of M. Charrière, one is no longer troubled with such commissions, he having improved every description of surgical instruments to such a degree of perfection, that now many of our English surgeons provide themselves from his establishment on returning to England; not only has M. Charrière produced every variety of instrument used by our faculty, but he has invented several others, which have merited and obtained the thanks of his country, with letters and medals from several scientific societies. Even foreigners from all parts of Europe, from America, and from the East, are now becoming acquainted with the utility of his inventions, which are already well known in London and Edinburgh, and will soon be as much in demand in England as they are now in France. Some idea may be formed of how far M. Charrière has raised this branch of industry, when it is stated that but a few years since, the whole number of workmen occupied in this department was but 30 and now he alone employs 150! M. Charrière in fact possesses one quality which generally ensures success, a passion for his art; he is not to be regarded simply as a vender of cutlery, but as one possessing a scientific knowledge of his profession, and as a mechanic of considerable talent. To recapitulate all his inventions, with their respective merits, and the approbatory letters that he has received from different academical institutions, would half fill my little volume; suffice it to say that he is the only person in his business, to whom has ever been awarded the gold medal; besides which, the Royal Academy of Sciences have presented him with 1800 francs, for the improvement he has effected in surgical instruments. There is scarcely a disease and certainly not a single operation that can be performed on the human frame, for which M. Charrière has not the requisite materials in the utmost perfection, even for the fabrication of artificial noses; and for one invention he merits the gratitude of all mothers, the _biberon_, a machine for the purpose of supplying an infant with milk, when circumstances prevent the mother from affording that nourishment. This instrument is so contrived that the part which meets the lips is in point of texture exactly the same as that which nature provides, uniting an equal degree of softness and elasticity, that the child takes to the substitute, with the same zest as if it were the reality. I have known instances where the lives of children have been saved by this machine, the parents declaring to me that such was the case, and that they considered that every mother ought to be provided with so useful an instrument. The address of M. Charrière is No. 9, Rue de l'Ecole-de-Médecine. A variety of cutlery is kept of as perfect a description as those articles for which he has attained so high a celebrity. It has generally in modern days been a reproach to France, that she has been rather lax in regard of religious matters; what there may be in the hearts of the inhabitants of that or other countries I shall not presume to give an opinion, but can only say that I find the churches in Paris, both protestant and catholic, always during service time nearly full, and many to overflowing. Not only that, but the French are much attached to holy associations, hence the prints of our Saviour, the Virgin, and the Saints, have a most inexhaustible sale; I need give my readers no greater proof than recommending them to visit the establishment of M. Dopter, No. 21, Rue St. Jacques, they will there find amongst his immense collection of engravings and lithographies, the portrait of every saint that ever was heard of, an innumerable variety of religious subjects for which there is a most extensive and incessant demand. Some of these are stamped and illuminated in a most splendid manner, and I verily believe there is scarcely a subject connected with the christian religion, of which M. Dopter has not a representation; his establishment is therefore known throughout all France, and many parts of Europe, to which he transmits numbers of his publications. He likewise has a most useful assortment of maps and geographical illustrations, with portraits of celebrated characters, particularly those connected with the campaigns and adventures of Napoleon, as also his battles, and remarkable events of his life, as well as a great diversity of historical subjects, landscapes, academical studies, etc., etc.; M. Dopter is also the inventor of the new style of covers for binding, of which the present volume is a specimen, having them of an innumerable variety of patterns, and of every size likely to be demanded. It has often struck me that maps were very incomplete, in consequence of their not being capable of giving the degrees of elevation of hills or mountains except in a very inefficient manner; the same idea, I suppose, actuated M. Bauerkeller, and induced him to invent those maps in relief, which are now becoming so generally demanded, as giving such an accurate illustration of the surface of a country, which is most beautifully exemplified in many of his specimens, but most particularly in that of Switzerland; every object having a degree of elevation proportioned to the reality, and coloured in a great measure similar to the subject intended to be represented, thus the snow-capped mountains of Switzerland have their white summits distinctly expressed, their blue lakes, their green meadows, grey rocks, etc., given with such fidelity, that a person obtains a most perfect notion of regions he may never have an opportunity to visit. This system of forming maps or plans upon embossed paper, is peculiarly applicable to cities, as the public buildings appear to such advantage, and M. Bauerkeller has already executed those of London, Paris, St. Petersburg, Vienna, New York, the city of Mexico, Hamburg, Basle, a Panorama of the Rhine from Coblentz to Mayence, besides several other cities and countries, and there is no doubt that in a short time the whole of Europe and many other distant districts will be illustrated in the same manner, as he is constantly adding to his collection which already excites the highest interest. M. Bauerkeller's plan of executing charts, maps, or views in relief, can be equally produced either upon velvet, silk, or leather, for the illustration of a diversity of subjects which can be applied to an innumerable variety of purposes, as shades for lamps, men's caps, slippers, reticules, stands for decanters, screens, etc., etc.; already he has extended his connexions to such a degree that he receives applications from all parts of Europe and America for different articles in which his invention is introduced. Some of his works which were displayed at the national exhibition excited universal admiration, and obtained him a medal; he has also been granted a patent for fifteen years. This invention is not only valuable in having rendered maps more ornamental, but it assists the study of geography; by the objects being rendered so much more distinct, it increases the interest and consequently makes a deeper impression on the memory; in fact, the numerous advantages to be derived from this system of giving plans in relief may be easily imagined, but are too long to be described. A specimen of the art will be found at the beginning of this work: M. Bauerkeller's address is No. 380, Rue St. Denis, Passage Lemoine. Amongst the number of inventions which are constantly emanating from the brain of man, I know of few which unite more ingenuity, utility, and simplicity than that of M. Martin (gun-maker at No. 36, Rue Phélippeaux), relative to the improvement of every description of gun that is impelled by percussion. According to the system he has introduced, and for which he has obtained a patent, all the inconvenience to which the sportsman is subjected in priming is entirely obviated, as instead of having to place the percussion cap with one's fingers, so disagreeable in very cold weather, it is at once effected by the act of cocking, and the gun may be fired from 80 to 100 times, always as it were priming itself, as the number of percussion caps required are introduced through the butt, and conducted to the point desired. The method of inserting the percussion caps is perfectly easy; pressing a little button or nut at the bottom of the butt causes a plate to open, when two spiral wire-springs must be taken out, as also a moveable tube, from the interior of the gun, and the latter filled with percussion caps, which must be poured into fixed tubes which communicate with the anvil; they may contain from 40 to 50 each; when this number is introduced replace the spiral wire-springs which press the percussion caps exactly, regularly and successively as they are needed to the point desired, then fasten in the springs with the little hook attached for that purpose, lastly replace the moveable tube and shut the plate at the bottom of the butt. This process is executed in a far shorter time than it can be described. The _immense_ advantage of this invention may not appear at the first view; but when it is considered how much more rapid may be the fire of an army in consequence of the time gained, which would be occupied in priming, the power it will give them over an enemy must be evident, and there is no doubt but that in a very short time they will be universally adopted. All such of my countrymen who come to Paris I would recommend to call on M. Martin; he will give them every possible explanation on the subject in the most obliging manner, and also give them practical evidence of the manner in which it operates. However deficient the French were until a very few years since in almost every thing which relates to mechanics, yet in some articles they have now made such rapid strides, that it becomes a question whether they will not surpass us, if we do not exert the same energy in the spirit of improvement with which they have been recently actuated. Formerly the inferiority of French pianos to ours was most evident, and perhaps, generally speaking, I should still say it was the case, but there are a few manufacturers, the tone of whose instruments is superb; of such a description are those of M. Soufleto. It is really surprising how he has been enabled, in a small upright piano, to produce the force and depth of tone which he has found the means of uniting in comparatively so small a volume, the bass having absolutely the power and roundness of an organ; but that part of an instrument which most frequently fails, is that which is composed of the additional keys or the highest notes, which are apt to be thin and wiry, but with Mr. Soufleto's pianos it is not the case, the tone being soft and full, with a proportionate degree of force with the rest of the instrument. His merit has been duly acknowledged, having not only received the King's patent, but having been twice presented with medals, and appointed manufacturer to the Queen. As most English families who come to Paris for the purpose of residing or sojourning for a certain time, are desirous of hiring or purchasing a _good_ piano, I can assure them that such they will find at M. Soufleto's, No. 171, Rue Montmartre, and that his terms are extremely moderate in consideration of the excellence of his instruments. I am sure my readers will approve of my directing their attention to the establishment of M. Richond, styled the Phoenix, No. 17, Boulevard Montmartre, near the Rue Richelieu. They will there find such a splendid assortment of time-pieces, as constitutes a most beautiful sight, equally gratifying to the artist and the amateur, many of the subjects being perfectly classic, and exhibiting the tastes and costumes of different ages; some of these magnificent time-pieces are adorned with figures, either bronze or gilded, representing historical characters, after the designs of the first masters, which are most admirably executed, and indeed there is such a variety of subjects, that one might pass hours in the shop, deriving the greatest pleasure from the examination of so many interesting subjects. It is also a satisfaction to know that the works of M. Richond's time-pieces are equal to their external beauty. In fact it is a house that has been long established and has ever supported a good name, having a considerable connexion, not only throughout France, but in foreign countries, particularly with England, and is by far the most recommendable of any in Paris in that line of business. Every object has the price marked upon it, which is always adhered to, and the charges are as moderate as could possibly be expected from the superiority of the articles over those which are sold in so many other shops in Paris; some time-pieces there are which of course amount to a high price, consistent with their splendour. There is a stamp fixed by government upon the internal works of each time-piece, to prove that it is verified as being of the best quality. M. Richond undertakes, at his own risk, the conveyance of time-pieces to London which have been purchased at his shop, and warrants them against any accident which may happen to the works in travelling, having a correspondent in London who is in the same business, and is commissioned to execute any repairs which may be requisite. Amongst other branches of industry which now have risen into considerable importance, is one which at present constitutes an extensive business of itself, although formerly only considered as a minor department of different concerns; that to which I allude is what the French term _chemisier_, which I can translate no otherwise than shirt-maker. There are now many following this business in Paris, but the largest establishment, and from which many others spring, is that of M. Demarne, No. 39, Rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs, and he has so exerted his ingenuity in this peculiar line that he has obtained a patent for the perfection to which he has elevated it; he has been twice honourably mentioned in the reports published of two national exhibitions in which he had specimens of his works. His fame has already travelled throughout the Continent, and he is patronised by the princes of several courts of Europe, amongst others Prince Ernest of Cobourg, and noticing the names of several of the English nobility, in a list which he showed me to prove the encouragement he received from my _compatriots_, I remarked that of a noble lord of sporting notoriety whose shirts were at the price of _only_ 150 fr. (6_l._) each. However, it must not be supposed that M. Demarne is dearer than other people, the price of all his articles are proportioned to the nature of the materials of which they are composed, and many are at the most moderate charges. At his extensive establishment will also be found an assortment of shirt collars, cravats, braces, silk handkerchiefs, etc., etc., arranged according to the prevailing fashions. One of the most curious, ingenious and incomprehensible inventions of any I have seen is that of M. Paris, coiffeur to the Princes and Princesses, 25, Passage Choiseul, and 22, Rue Dalayrac, near the new Italian Theatre, relating to all descriptions of false hair, which he contrives to arrange in such a manner that the skin of the head is seen through where the hair is parted, and the roots represented as springing from the head in so natural a manner, that the deception cannot be discerned even on the closest inspection; the extreme delicacy of the work in these fronts and toupies is really inimitable, a person may put one on the back of their hand, and the division appears so transparent that the skin is seen under it as clear as if not a single hair crossed it, and yet by some invisible means the parts are held together, which can only be by light transparent hairs which are not discernible to the naked eye. He has obtained a patent for this invention, and although I know my countrywomen have generally very fine heads of hair, yet as from fevers or other causes they are sometimes deprived of it, also that grey hairs will intrude, I cannot too strongly recommend them to patronise the talents of M. Paris, and which under similar circumstances will be found equally serviceable to gentlemen. Whilst dilating upon different inventions which either contribute to comfort or convenience, I must not omit that of M. Cazal, who has obtained two patents, and medals for the umbrellas and parasols he has invented, with which he furnishes the Queen and Princesses, and which are entirely superseding all those of any other construction. In such as M. Cazal has brought into vogue, instead of the catches or springs which retain the umbrella when open or shut, being inserted in the stick, which always contributes towards weakening it, they are attached to the wire frame-work, and by merely touching a little button will slide up or down as required with the greatest facility, without those little annoyances which so frequently happen in the old method, of either pinching one's fingers, or the glove catching in the spring, or the latter breaking or losing its elasticity, etc., etc. The stick by this system, it must also be observed, is stronger, therefore can if desired be thinner, and consequently lighter. Another description, called travelling umbrellas, is also invented by M. Cazal and is particularly convenient, containing a cane inside the stick, by which it may be used as one or as the other, according as the weather or caprice may require; these are extremely desirable for lame persons who require a stick, as the umbrella when closed answers the purpose, and if required to be opened the cane drawing out equally affords support. M. Cazal has an assortment of canes and whips the most varied that can be imagined; it would be difficult to fancy any pattern or form that is not to be found in his numerous collection. His establishment is No. 23, Boulevard Italien, where there is always some one in attendance who speaks English. Whilst so near, I cannot resist mentioning so respectable a tradesman as M. Frogé, tailor, with whom the fashionable Englishmen sojourning at Paris have dealt for above twenty years, and ever found him so honourable in his transactions that they still continue to afford him their patronage; his address is No. 3, Boulevard des Capucines. CHAPTER IX. To the ladies. As I have set out with professing to render my work of as much utility as possible, I am desirous of giving my fair countrywomen the benefit of my own experience in Paris, by indicating to them those establishments wherein they may abstract a portion of the contents of their purse, without having cause to think that it has been recklessly dissipated, as no one more than myself would regret to see their "glittering money fly like chaff before the wind," so am I extremely tenacious that they should only barter it for its full value, and as I know ladies must and will have perfumes, however superfluous in most instances, for it is but adding "sweets to the sweets," I shall conduct them to the emporium of delicious odours, appertaining to M. Blanche, whose dealings I can assure them are as pure as his name; he has besides the merit of being an excellent chymist, and the still greater merit of having devoted his talents to the fair sex, and in that point which they appreciate most highly, the embellishment and preservation of their personal attractions; he has therefore invented a peculiar description of vegetable soap, called _Savon Végétal de Guimauve_, which is so renowned amongst the Paris belles, that I should not be surprised at their forming themselves into a committee, and voting an address of thanks to M. Blanche for the signal services he has rendered to the cause of beauty, as not only are the medicinal powers attributed to this _savon_, of removing any impurities and softening the skin, but also that of giving it a smooth satiny lustre, which may be compared to adding the last _coup de grâce_ to the female charms. In addition to these advantages it possesses that of having the most agreeable scent; its merits have in fact obtained it a patent and it is only sold at the establishment of M. Blanche, No. 48, Passage Choiseul, where also may be procured every description of perfumery and a variety of other articles, all good of their kind, as the proprietor would consider the vending of an inferior quality as a stain upon his character and upon his _fair_ name. Formerly the English ladies were very _sharp_ and _pointed_ in their reflexions upon French needles, much more so indeed than the objects to which their sarcasms were directed, which in fact were but blunt and brittle ware, and the consequence was that they not only tried all their own little arts to smuggle over as many as they could when they came from England, but they exacted the same pecadillo from their unfortunate friends; now of all things I most hate smuggling, principally I admit from the fear of being caught; which I think excessively disagreeable. Judge then how rejoiced I was when informed by some of my fair friends that there were as good needles to be had at the Maison Bierri, à la Ville de Lille, 32, Faubourg St. Honoré, as any that could be procured in London, and one respectable matron insisted that it was a moral duty incumbent upon me to mention an establishment so exceedingly useful to my countrywomen, not only because it contains so many articles which females are constantly requiring, but that every thing they have is of so superior a quality; in fact nothing would satisfy the good lady but my going myself to see how it was crowded with purchasers. I obeyed, and in good truth found the shop quite like a fair, but the most perfect order and arrangement prevailing, the proprietor constantly upon the watch to see that the young people were civil and attentive to the customers, who were purchasing a variety of articles and particularly ribbands; of which there appeared a most brilliant assortment, and I heard it observed that in that department the Maison Bierri had a celebrity _unique_. There were also as great diversity of fringe, net, blonde, muslin, mercery, lace, jaconas, linings, worsteds, all kinds of haberdashery, etc., etc. I also remarked that in every drawer, containing the different articles which were produced, the prices were marked, so that in case of the least demur regarding the charge, a reference to the label decides the affair. By the excellence of his goods, the regular system upon which the business is conducted, and the assiduity of all concerned in the Maison Bierri, he has attracted numbers of the English, and amongst the rest the Ambassadress, and there is always some person attending who speaks their language. In the exterior there is no attempt at display; like many of the most respectable establishments, it depends so entirely on its extensive connexions, as not to need any efforts to promote publicity, and every one residing at Paris must have heard of the reputation of the Maison Bierri; it is particularly convenient for the English, being in the quarter in which they mostly dwell. As there is no department of the toilet by which ladies either so disfigure or embellish themselves, as the hat, bonnet, or cap, I must beseech my fair countrywomen to procure those articles from such persons alone who have as it were obtained a diploma for good taste; as I am most anxious that when Englishwomen are in France, that they should in every respect appear to the best advantage; now as I consider that which adorns the head as having so important a bearing upon the beauty of a female, deep and frequent were my cogitations upon the subject, before I could make up my mind what _modiste_ I should recommend to the patronage of my countrywomen, as I would not have the sin upon my head, for all the mines of Golconda, of having been accessary to an Englishwoman putting on a hat or bonnet that did not become her; therefore, after mature deliberation, I determined to call a council of all my female acquaintances, and beg of them to hold a debate upon this knotty point; the result was most satisfactory, the question being carried without a division, in fact there was not one dissentient voice, the name of Madame de Barenne being pronounced by one and all at the same moment; it being observed that there were several persons who had attained a certain degree of celebrity as _modistes_, but for uniting grace, elegance and simplicity with an artistical _gusto_, there were none in Paris who surpassed Madame de Barenne (14 place Vendôme). I have before alluded to this lady, and certainly have observed that her manners, her apartments, and every thing around her has an air _distingué_, and although I would never have the presumption of giving an opinion upon articles so far above my judgment, yet I can record the opinion of those who are considered true connaisseurs, from whom I learn that at Madame de Barenne's, hats, bonnets, caps, and turbans, of every variety, are arranged with the utmost perfection, the materials being of the most superior description consistent with the season of the year, adorned with marabouts, bird of paradise feathers, aigrettes, flowers from the celebrated Constantin, all selected from those houses which have the most renown for the respective articles in which they deal, but which are introduced with so much taste and judgment, that besides her ingenuity, having obtained a patent, she has been specially appointed modiste to the Queen of Belgium, the Princess Clémentine, and the Duchess de Nemours. Not far from the English Ambassador's, in the centre as it were of what may be termed the English quarter, is an establishment styled _La Tentation_, which from the variety and excellence of its goods operates on the visiter consistently with its title. It is a _Magasin de Nouveautés_, containing almost every article appertaining to the toilet, as linen, drapery, hosiery, fancy goods, etc., and is on that extensive scale, that their assortment possesses every diversity that can be desired, whilst even the most fastidious cannot fail of meeting that which must suit their taste. This establishment is not like many in the same way of business, who spend a little fortune in advertising their goods, incurring tremendous expenses in obtruding themselves and their merchandise before the public, and then making that public pay the outlay they have made upon newspapers, pamphlets, etc., by either charging higher prices, or laying in stock of inferior quality, thereby even at an apparently moderate price they are enabled to obtain higher profits, whilst by continuing their puffing advertisements, they hope constantly to attract a new supply of dupes. _La Tentation_, on the contrary, calculate only upon obtaining and retaining connexion, by keeping none but good articles, and selling them at a small profit; strict attention and civility to their customers, and having a stock ever consistent with the changes of the fashions and seasons, by a constant adherence to these objects a durable success has been effected. The progress of this establishment has been worthy of remark, commencing under a humble roof upon a modest scale, until with the process of time the proprietors were emboldened to enlarge their premises when at length it increased to its present magnitude, occupying a considerable portion of a noble mansion This has been achieved by a judicious selection of stock, with constant perseverance, and conducting their business on honourable principles, it is just such an establishment as is calculated to please the English, where great neatness and cleanliness is observed, and everything conducted in a quiet and unassuming manner. The charges on each article are fixed at a price that will admit of no diminution, and the English have the satisfaction of knowing that they pay no more than the French, which perhaps is not the case in all houses in Paris; persons wishing to view the goods are not pressed to purchase unless they feel disposed to do so, and however trifling may be the amount, they are not tormented, as in too many shops, to buy more than they wish. Whatever articles are selected are sent punctually to the residence of the parties at the time required, and orders, whether personally or by letter, meet with the strictest attention. There is always some person belonging to the establishment who speaks English. La Tentation is situated No. 67, Rue Faubourg St. Honoré, at the corner of the Avenue de Marigny. Perhaps there is no branch of the arts which has been wrought to so high a perfection as that of making artificial flowers, and no place in the world where it is practised to such an extent as Paris, or with so high a degree of talent; but although it has been long and justly celebrated for the exquisite taste developed in forming bouquets, wherein all the varieties of colour are so assembled as to display each other to the best advantage, yet so arranged that a certain harmony should pervade the whole; still M. Constantin has discovered the means of availing himself of the abilities of the Parisians in this department of the art, that he has elevated it to a degree of altitude it had never before attained, and in fact his flowers have become so exclusively the mode, that if a lady wear any whatever, it would be offending her to suppose that they were any other than those of M. Constantin. Indeed, it is impossible to enter his apartments without feeling a thorough conviction of the elegance of his taste, first passing through a long corridor between two rows of real flowers, proving that he fears not the rivality of nature, conscious that his own works unite the same beauties of tints and colours which her highest powers can produce, and one room into which his customers are introduced, unites a degree of taste in the richness and splendour of its ornamental objects, with that proper tone of keeping which is pleasing to the eye; but it is at his little boudoir that the beholder is astonished, such luxuriant magnificence as is therein displayed can only be imagined from a description presented in the Arabian Nights! in fact the Dutch Ambassador was so delighted with the exquisite arrangement of this superb specimen of sumptuous decoration, that he requested permission to bring an artist to take an exact copy of the elegant little chamber and its contents, to form a similar boudoir for the Queen of Holland. As M. Constantin is now arrived at the summit of his profession, he is enabled to command prices commensurate with his talents, and has some bouquets as high as 1000 francs, but there are articles which may be purchased at the moderate charge of 10 francs; his residence is No. 37, Rue Neuve St. Augustin. M. Constantin possesses the recommendation of being extremely particular as to the morality and propriety of conduct with his young persons, and that degree of decorum is constantly preserved, that any ladies visiting his apartments will find the same order and discipline maintained as in the strictest boarding-schools. I know not whether it is the case with all men, but I believe it is, that the first time I see a lady, I naturally look in her face, then my next impulse is to look at her foot; now as I have already done my utmost for my countrywomen for the ornamenting of the former, in recommending them to Madame de Barenne, I must now endeavour to serve them in respect to the latter, reminding them that in Lord Normandy's novel of "Yes and No," he observes, speaking of the feet of Parisian females, "How exquisitely they decorate that part of the person," and as I have already remarked that I do not wish English ladies in any one particular to yield to Parisian or any other ladies, I must request that they will, as soon as possible after they arrive at Paris, apply to M. Hoffman, No. 8, Rue de la Paix, who will fit them in such a light and elegant manner, giving such a "_jolie tournure_" to the foot, that they will scarcely know their own feet again, after having been accustomed to be shod in the English fashion; for although I have a very exalted idea of the transcendant talents of my countrymen, I do not consider that the vein of their abilities at all runs in the shoemaking line. M. Hoffman's residence is at the end of a court-yard, almost as quiet and as retired as if it were in a convent; his articles will be found of the best quality, both he and Madame speak English, and rival each other in attention and civility to their customers; they have an assortment of the different specimens of their work, consisting of every variety which is worn, according with the fashion and season. I believe every lady before she quits England with the intention of visiting Paris, has already made up her mind to make some purchase of lace pretty soon after her arrival; to prevent them therefore from falling into bad hands, I recommend them to go at once to one of the most extensive and respectable establishments in that department of any in Paris, indeed I believe I may truly add the most so. It is one of those large wholesale houses of the French metropolis that transact business with all parts of the world in lace, ribbands, and silks; it is situated at No. 2ter, Rue Choiseul, the firm is Messrs. Bellart, Louys and Delcambre, where every description of blonde and lace, in all its multitudinous variety, from the most simple to the richest, rarest and most costly, will be found, and at extremely reasonable prices, as so many retail dealers furnish themselves from this establishment; besides which, they are themselves manufacturers of black Chantilly lace and white blonde. This concern has the character of being solely wholesale, but they make an exception with regard to lace. Their collection of ribbands is unrivalled both for the beauty and extent. They have also a most valuable assortment of silks, satins, velvets, stuffs, brocade, embroidery of gold and silver, etc., etc., selected with extreme taste and judgment, and indeed Mme de Barenne owes a great portion of her success to having supplied herself from this house with the material which she required, as being of so very superior a quality, it gave great vogue to whatever was produced by her ingenuity, to which certainly her own talents contributed in the taste displayed in the disposition and arrangement of the different articles, independent of their own excellence. Whatever rivalry there may be between different countries, respecting their divers produce and manufactures, with regard to gloves none would have the audacity to cast the gauntlet at France, which has ever held the supremacy over other nations in that department, yet it has recently been elevated a step higher by an invention of M. Mayer, of No. 26, Rue de la Paix, for which he has been granted a king's patent, consisting in what are termed ball gloves, which are so made as to button and lace about half way up the arm, which prevents them from slipping down upon the wrist, they are besides furnished with trimmings also invented by M. Mayer, which may either be of the utmost simplicity, or of the richest description, and may be composed of either satin, velvet, lace, gold, or even pearls and diamonds may be and are frequently introduced; they may be also furnished with tassels which may be formed of materials equally costly, thus the trimmings of these gloves may either be had for four francs or may cost twenty guineas and upwards, according to the desires of the wearers. In fact M. Mayer has introduced a degree of luxury and splendour in the decorations of gloves, which has given them an importance in the toilet which they never before possessed, and have become so much the vogue with ladies of the highest distinction, that they have obtained for M. Mayer the privilege of furnishing the royal family of France, the Empress of Russia, the Queens of Naples, Spain, Belgium, etc. M. Mayer also occupies himself with gentlemen's gloves, and has just invented a peculiar description, without gussets between the fingers, by which means they set closer to the hand, and are not so liable to be come unsewed as by the former method; he has them likewise so arranged as to button at the side instead of the middle, which always left an unsightly aperture. Now I think of it, these last few lines had no business in the ladies' chapter, as they allude to that which are worn solely by gentlemen, but I dare say that my fair readers, if they find M. Mayer's gloves merit my commendations, will be equally anxious that their husbands, brothers, or sons should furnish themselves at the same place and excuse the intrusion. M. Mayer has a private apartment tastefully fitted up, appropriated for the ladies, where they can make their selections as uninterrupted and unobserved as at their own homes. Next door to M. Mayer's, at No. 28, is an establishment which has received very distinguished and extensive patronage, known by the appellation of La Maison Lucy Hocquet, not only for hats, bonnets, capotes and turbans, but also for pelerines, fichus à la paysanne, _canzous_, chemisettes, collars, habit shirts, parures de spectacles, etc.; in these articles they have been so celebrated for the taste and elegance with which they are arranged, that the fame of their talents has attracted around them many of the most influential ladies in Paris, as also several of the most celebrated _artistes_ whose good taste and jugement are proverbial; amongst others may be cited Mlle Rachel. La Maison Lucy Hocquet likewise furnishes several crowned heads, as the Empress of Russia, Queen of Portugal, etc., and amongst the leading personages of Paris, the Princess Demidoff, the Duchesses d'Eckmühl, de Montebello, de Valmy, Marquise d'Osmond, etc. To the above list might be added many names of the English nobility, who still continue to be supplied from this establishment, which independent of the merit which is displayed in the arrangement of every article which it produces, is also highly recommendable on account of the attentive civility which they extend to all who may have occasion to apply to them. CHAPTER X. The present artists in France and their productions, improvements in Paris, fortifications, humanity to animals, education of females, personal appearance of the French, army and navy, scientific Societies, and commercial enterprises. Never perhaps at any period was there so much encouragement given to the arts and sciences in general in France as at the present, nor ever was there a monarch who reigned over the French, who so much endeavoured to promote every object which tended to usefulness, or to the advancement of the fine arts. No country in the world has such advantages as France for nurturing talent, and giving it the opportunity of developing itself, so numerous are the societies and institutions where lectures and instruction are afforded gratuitously, hence the great assistance to young artists; without any expense or trouble, they are admitted into a drawing academy, where they may acquire the fundamental principles of the graphic art; afterwards there are other different establishments which they can enter as their studies progress, and when they attain any degree of proficiency, they have a chance of being sent at the expense of government to Rome, to complete their studies, and if they excel to a moderate degree, are sure to be employed by the King, or some member of the royal family, or by the nation. With all these immense advantages, how much might be expected of the French artists, but the fact does not realise those hopes that might be justly formed from the solid rudimental education which they have the power of receiving. The exhibition this year at the Louvre of the paintings of the living artists was a complete illustration of what I have stated, as every one allows that it was far inferior to that of last year, which was considered much worse than those of former years. At the same time it must be admitted that several of the best artists have not sent any pictures for the last few years, and particularly the present, when amongst the absentees might be cited Ingres, Horace Vernet, Ary Scheffer, Delaroche, etc., who it appears were all employed by the King or government; the consequence was, although there was an immense mass of large historical and scriptural subjects, it was what might have been called a most sorry display. Amongst the number one alone evinced a superiority of talent, and that was the taking of Mazagran by Phillippoteaux, which really had considerable merit, and the artist it appears passed some time in Algiers, and therefore was enabled to give a faithful representation of the inhabitants of the country. Of miscellaneous subjects, or what the French call _tableau de genre_, there were many most exquisite pictures, amongst the rest, the Miller, his Son and his Ass, by H. Bellangé, which was so full of character and expression, that it needed not language to tell the tale; there were also several other pieces by the same artist, possessing equal merit. An Assembly of Protestants surprised by Catholic Troops, by Karl Girardet, was a most superior picture in Wilkie's best style; Reading the Bible, by Edward Girardet, also exceedingly clever; but one of the most delightful pictures in the exhibition was by Gué, of Raymond of Toulouse reconciling himself to the Church; I never yet saw any performance of that artist but evinced some great merit, either the finest imagination, the most beautiful execution, or the utmost truth to nature, according to the subject he undertakes. I should certainly pronounce Gué as one of the best artists who now send their pictures to the Louvre; one he had two years since of the Crucifixion, at the annual Exhibition, which certainly was a most sublime composition, the approach of night, with a slight glare of parting light, was most admirably represented, and gave a sort of wild gloom which so beautifully harmonised with the nature of the subject; he had also introduced the dead rising from their tombs, which contributed to augment the solemn tone which pervaded the whole picture. However lightly or frivolously the mind might be engaged, one glance at this exquisite painting must at once strike awe into the beholder; it was true that there was a great similarity with one on the same subject, in the Louvre, by Karel Dujardin, but not sufficiently so to say it was borrowed, or to detract from its merit. T. Johanot had but one picture this year, which was very clever, as his always are; his subjects are mostly historical, and his illustrations of Walter Scott are universally known and admired. Schopin is another of the French artists whose pictures will always live, his females are so truly graceful, such sweetness of expression in their countenances; this year he did not shine so much as he has before, having but one picture, which was from Ruth and Boaz, and the latter was made to appear too old. A paralyzed old Man on an Ass, which his son was leading, was a true picture of nature, by Leleux; the vigour of the one and the feebleness of the other were admirably contrasted, although rather flat from wanting more shade. Of this description there were far too many pictures possessing merit than I can afford room to cite, but amongst the portraits there were some such wretched daubs, that they would have been a disgrace to any country; in fact this is a branch in which the French are peculiarly deficient, and in which we far surpass them. The portrait painter who has now the greatest vogue is Winterhatter, who certainly has a great degree of merit, but rather sacrifices the face to the drapery; his picture of the Queen was very justly admired in many respects, but the laboured accuracy with which the lace was given, was rendered so conspicuous, that the eye fell upon the costume before it lighted upon the features; this pleases the ladies, I am aware, who like to have an exact map of their blonde and guipure, and it certainly is too much the case that an artist is obliged to be more or less the slave of his sitters and their friends; his miscellaneous pieces, where his pencil roves freely, are all that is delightful. His portrait of the Comte de Paris and the Duchess de Nemours, certainly display considerable talent. Two favourite and fashionable portrait painters are Dubuffe and Court, the works of the former are well known in England, they are exceedingly attractive from their softness and brilliance, but they want the crispness and tone of nature, the drawing also is sometimes defective. These observations equally apply to both these artists. The younger Dubuffe is rising rapidly in the estimation of artists. I have seen some portraits very true to life by Coignet, Roller, Laure, Rouilliard, and Vinchon; one of Sébastiani, by the latter, was quite nature itself. There are several very clever painters of marine subjects, amongst others Gudin and Isabey, and there is not any department which is more encouraged by the King and the government; for the last several years the former has had orders for at least a dozen each year, of naval combats between France and her enemies, but those subjects which he paints from his own spontaneous suggestions, are infinitely superior to such as he executes to order. Fruits and flowers are branches of the art in which the French artists particularly excel, one piece of flowers by Bergon I think was one of the most perfect I have met with. Latterly they have much advanced in their representation of cattle, their sheep and cows are particularly good; some draught horses by Casey were executed with infinite spirit, as also some wild horses by Lepoitevin. Some delightful domestic pieces must excite admiration, of fishermen, their wives and children, by Colin, very much in the style of our own Collins, but not quite so good, as also others by Le Camus Duval. Several interesting subjects attracted much of my attention, by Henry Scheffer, Meissonnier, Bouchot, Dupré, Steuben, Rubio, Signol, Charlet, Storelli, and a few others; in water colours the French are now advancing with rapid strides, this year there were some exquisite specimens in that department of painting, particularly by Heroult: but the style in which the French now are most happy, is in what they call _pastel_, which consists in a great variety of coloured chalks, rather harder than what we understand by crayons; the manner in which they execute portraits about a quarter the size of life, with these materials, is surprising, it infinitely surpasses their oil portrait or their miniatures. There are several foreign artists within the last two years, who have sent their works to the Louvre which must not be passed unnoticed, amongst the rest is a Spanish artist named Villa amil, whose interiors are far above mediocrity, and who has given us some rich specimens of Spanish monuments, which are now admirably illustrated in a periodical lithographic work. Our countrymen, Messrs. Callow and Barker, have also sent several pieces, which do them and their country credit, the former, some beautiful subjects in water colours, and the latter of varied descriptions, in some of which the game has been particularly admired. Miniature painting in France I should decidedly say was much inferior to that of England, they are very fond of thick muddy back-grounds, their colouring partakes of the same dirty hue, there is generally a stiffness in the position, and much high finish without effect; there are certainly some exceptions to this rule, at the head of which is Madame Lezinska de Mirbel, whose miniatures are broad, bold, and natural, but always plainer than the originals; there are a few others who have come forward latterly, whose performances are above mediocrity. There were some landscapes which evinced much talent, both as to composition and execution; the selection of subjects being from some of the wild romantic provinces of France and Switzerland, aided greatly in affording them a certain degree of interest. Taking a comparative view of the artists of England and France, there is no doubt, generally speaking, that the latter are superior in drawing, and the former in colouring; many of the French artists have latterly adopted a leady tone in their flesh tints, which gives their figures a half dead appearance. With whatever faults he may possess, I doubt if there be any other man that can do so much as Horace Vernet; many may be found who may excel him in the separate objects which he must introduce in a general historical subject, as a landscape, an architectural building, a ship, a horse, etc., might be better executed by such artists as have exclusively studied any one of those subjects, but I do not think there is any painter now living who could produce the _ensemble_ so well, and manage to give the effect to the composition in the same masterly style as Horace Vernet. Delaroche also has completed many pictures which with his name will be immortal; the same may be said of Ary Scheffer, whilst Ingres is known and cited all over Europe for the perfection of his drawing, supposed to be the only man who could correctly draw the naked human figure in any position without a model. In portrait and miniature painting, landscapes and water colours, the French are still decidedly inferior to the English artists. With respect to sculpture, it is so far more encouraged in France than in England, that of course the numbers who profess it are far more numerous in the former country, and there is a great deal of talent to be found amongst the present French sculptors, but perhaps not quite of the highest class. I never have seen anything which I considered so beautiful as Bailey's Eve, and I doubt whether there are any of them who could produce a work equal to Gibson, or that could surpass Cockerill in the representation of a horse, still most of their statues which have been executed for the government, are certainly better than many of those which have been placed in different parts of London. There is a great taste for sculptural subjects in general throughout Paris, numbers of houses which have been recently built are adorned with statues, and an immense variety of devices and ornaments of different descriptions, all of which afford employment for the young sculptor; in fact there exists now quite a mania for decoration, and those mansions which still remain of the middle ages present the same predilection for rich carve-work and elaborate ornament which is now revived, and undoubtedly it gives a very picturesque richness to the aspect of a city. As a department of sculpture I certainly must not omit to state to what a high degree the French have wrought the art of casting in bronze, and I am sure I shall be procuring my readers a treat in directing them to the establishment of M. De Braux d'Anglure, No. 8, Rue Castiglione; they will there find an infinite variety of very splendid subjects, some executed with the most exquisite delicacy, others in fine broad masses, as animals the size of life, and some equestrian figures of the middle ages after the first masters displaying the full merit of the original designs. But that which is still more interesting is to visit M. De Braux's foundry, and atelier, No. 15, Rue d'Astorg, where he takes a pleasure in explaining the whole process requisite in casting the different objects, and showing them throughout the various stages through which they pass before they are completed. The French have brought this art to a high perfection, which it appears is facilitated by their having a peculiar sort of sand near Paris (which they cannot find elsewhere), particularly serviceable for the purpose of casting. The orders which come from England for works in bronze is immense; whilst I was at M. de Braux's he was at work upon a bust of the Duke of Wellington, which was part of what was to be a figure the size of life, destined as a national monument (as M. de Braux understood) for some part of London. The great art which he now practises, is that of casting whole masses at once, instead of small bits which were joined together according to the former method. Every amateur of the arts will find the highest gratification in viewing the number of interesting objects which present themselves in various forms at M. de Braux's atelier. The shopkeepers and proprietors of coffee-houses, restaurants, etc., also have afforded much occupation to artists of moderate talent, having reliefs and paintings introduced upon their walls, that are by no means contemptible, and it is quite an amusement, in walking the streets of Paris, to observe to what an extent it is carried; many of the new houses in the most frequented thoroughfares, above the shops, are now so handsome that if they were appropriated for national purposes would be admired as public monuments, some of these may be remarked even in several of the narrow shabby streets, only (as already stated) they are compelled, by the Municipality, to build them a few feet farther back, to give greater width to the street. One of the beauties and attractions of Paris at the present period, is the Passages, in which are to be found some of the most splendid assortments of every article which the most refined luxury can desire; of such a description are the Passages des Panoramas, Saumon, Choiseul, Vero-Dodat, Vivienne, Opera and Colbert; in the latter is a Magasin de Nouveauté, styled the Grand Colbert, which peculiarly merits the attention, both of the amateur and the connaisseurs of such merchandise as will be found there displayed. In Paris there are many establishments of this nature on the most colossal scales, even surpassing in extent the far famed Waterloo House, but in none is the public more honourably served, or treated with a greater degree of courtesy and attention, than at the Grand Colbert; the taste and discernment with which their stock is selected, does the highest credit to the proprietors, and their premises being arranged and decorated so as to resemble a Moresque temple, as the purchasers behold spread around them in gay profusion all the rich and glowing tints which Cashmere can produce, they may almost fancy that they are in some oriental Bazaar, where the costly manufactures of those climes are displayed for the admiring gaze of the delighted spectator. In the choice of silks is developed the beau idéal of all that the genius, art, and industry of Lyons can effect, which has been selected as regards the tints and designs, with an artistical tact. A great advantage of this establishment is that one partner is French, possessing that degree of taste for which his countrymen are so justly celebrated in all that relates to fancy goods, whilst the other partner is English, partaking of that truly national character which pries deeply into the worth and solidity of every article, before it is presented to the public. Thus far I can speak from experience, having for sixteen years been accustomed to purchase every thing I required at the Grand Colbert, either in linen, drapery, mercery, hosiery, lace, millinery, etc. The premises are entered from two different points, the Rue Vivienne, and the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, of which streets it forms the corner. The central position adds another recommendation to the stranger, being close to the Palais Royal, in a street communicating with the Bourse, and the most fashionable part of the Boulevards, but a few minutes' walk from all the principal Theatres, at the back of the Royal Library, and in fact in the midst of the most attractive and frequented parts of Paris. Whilst a long range of immense squares of plate glass not only have an ornamental appearance but have the effect of throwing so powerful a light upon the premises that every possible advantage may be afforded for the examination of the goods. Just near this spot they are about to open a new street, which will be on the spacious and handsome plan of those which have been recently constructed; many others are projected on the same system, and will have a most beneficial effect, in adding to the salubrity of the capital, by clearing away a number of little dirty lanes and alleys, hundreds of which have already been absorbed in the great improvements which have been effected in Paris within my recollection. The extensive projects which are in contemplation for the embellishing of the city, would cost some hundreds of millions of francs to carry into effect, but could have been executed, had not so large a sum been required for the erection of the fortifications, which are proceeding, if not rapidly, at any rate steadily. Concerning their utility or the policy of such a measure, opinion is much divided, but the majority conceive that such circumstances as could render them necessary are never likely to arrive, as they consider that by keeping the frontiers always in the best state of defense, there never could be any fear of an army reaching Paris, as when it occurred under Napoleon, it was after the resources of France had been exhausted by a war of upwards of twenty years, an event that in all probability never could happen again, and that the immense outlay of capital might be applied to purposes so much more calculated to promote the welfare of the country. Others contend that supposing France to be assailed by three armies, and even that she be victorious over two of them, and it be not the case with the third, that force might march on Paris, which might be immediately taken if it were open as at present, whereas if fortified, the resistance it would be enabled to make would give time for either of the victorious armies to come to its relief. Whilst a third party pretend that the fortifications are intended more to operate against Paris than in its defence; that in case of any formidable popular commotion the surrounding cannon can be pointed against the city and inhabitants, and any refractory bands that might be disposed to pour in from the province to join the factious could be effectually prevented entering Paris. Whatever may be the different opinions on the subject, every one must regret such a tremendous expense for almost a visionary object, whilst there is so much capital and labour required for increasing the facilities of communication by means of improved roads, canals, or railways from the opposite points of the kingdom. With respect to the ameliorations which have already been effected in Paris, one may say that wonders have been accomplished, particularly in regard to cleansing and paving the streets, and in all possible cases opening and widening every available spot of ground, whereby a freer air could be admitted. I cannot conceive how people formerly could exist in such dirty holes emitting horrible odours, of which there still remain too many specimens, wherein even the physical appearance of persons one would imagine certainly must be affected, yet I have often remarked in the midst of the narrowest and most unsightly looking streets of Paris, numbers of persons with fresh colours and having a most healthy appearance; it is true that there are now open spaces in all quarters, from which a person cannot live more than about two hundred yards, the Boulevards encircling Paris, and the Seine running through it with its large wide quays, afford a free current of air all through the heart of the city, then there are such a number of spacious markets, of _places_, or, as we call them, squares, and of large gardens, which all afford ample breathing room; whereas in London that is not the case, in many parts, such as the city end of Holborn, Cheapside, Cornhill, Leadenhall street, Whitechapel, etc., where you must go a long way to get any thing like fresh air. That part of Paris termed La Cité, was the worst in that respect, but such numbers of houses have been swept away round Notre-Dame, that they have now formed delightful promenades with trees and gravelled walks. The French are extremely fond of anything in the shape of a garden, and you come upon them sometimes where you would least expect to find them at the backs of houses, in the very narrow nasty little streets to which I have alluded, but if they have no space of ground in which they can raise a bit of something green, they will avail themselves of their balconies, their terraces, their roofs, parapets, and I have often seen a sort of frame-work projecting from their windows, containing flowers and plants. They evince the same partiality for animals, to whom they are extremely kind, and in several parts of Paris there are hospitals for dogs and cats, where they are attended with the utmost care. I was much amused the first time I heard of such an establishment; I went with a lady to pay a visit to a friend, and after the usual enquiries, the question of how is Bijou was added, in a most anxious manner: the answer was given with a sigh. "Oh! my dear, he is at the hospital," and then continued the lady in a somewhat less doleful tone, "but fortunately he is going on very well, and in another week we hope he will be able to come out." I thought all the while that they must be alluding to a servant of the family, who had been sent to the hospital, when the lady I had accompanied exclaimed, "Poor dear little creature." This somewhat puzzled me, and whilst I was pondering on what it could all mean, the other lady observed, "It is such a nice affectionate animal," and at last I found out it was a dog which excited so much sympathy. I have also observed the same kind consideration towards their horses, and remember once seeing the driver of a cabriolet take off his great coat to cover his horse with it, and certainly at present I do not perceive any practical proof of what used to be said of Paris, that it was a "hell for horses, and a heaven for women," and as to the latter case it is very evident that the females work much more than they do in England, particularly amongst the middle-classes; accounts being strictly attended to in the course of their education, enables them to render most important aid in the establishments either of their husbands or brothers, to which they devote themselves with much cheerfulness and assiduity, arising from the manner in which they are brought up. Indeed the general system observed in female boarding-schools in Paris is very commendable, and as there are numbers of the English whose circumstances will not permit of their residing in France, yet are extremely desirous that their children should acquire a perfect knowledge of the French language, I know not any service that I can render such persons more important than that of recommending a seminary, in which I can confidently state that they will not only receive all the advantages of an accomplished education, but also be treated with maternal care; of such a description is the establishment of Madame Loiseau. Having known several young ladies who had been there brought up, and hearing them always express themselves in the most affectionate manner of its mistress, whilst the parents added their encomiums to those of their children, I was tempted to pay Madame Loiseau a visit, that I might be empowered to recommend her establishment, by having the advantage of ocular demonstration added to that of oral testimony. I have known several boarding-schools in my own country, but never any one which was superior in regard to the extreme of neatness and cleanliness, or possessing a more perfect system of regularity, which appears to prevail in that of Madame Loiseau; although mine was rather an early morning call, yet all was in the nicest order. The house, which is in the Rue Neuve de Berri, No. 6, just close to the Champs Elysées, the favourite quarter of the English, is most advantageously situated, facing a park, and at the back is a good sized garden, with shaded walks, well calculated for the recreation of the pupils, and there is besides a spacious gymnasium, where the young ladies can always practise those exercises so much recommended for the promotion of health, when the weather will not permit of taking the air. The premises are so extensive, that different rooms are appropriated for different studies, the one for drawing, another for writing, several for music, etc., etc.; there is a chapel attached to the establishment, which is adapted to those who are of the Catholic persuasion, whilst the English Protestant pupils are sent with a teacher of their own country, either to the Ambassador's or to the Marboeuf English chapel, both of which are near to the residence of Madame Loiseau. The masters for the different accomplishments are judiciously selected, and although much attention is devoted to enriching the minds of the pupils with the beauties of literature, and elegant acquirements, Madame Loiseau takes still more pains in instructing them in every social duty, towards rendering them exemplary, either as daughters, wives, or mothers. In case of any pupils proving unwell, apartments are appropriated to them, separated from the dormitories, where they receive the most assiduous attention; baths are amongst other conveniences contained within the establishment. The table is most liberally supplied, and on those days which are observed as fasts by the catholics, joints are prepared for the protestants, the same as upon other days. The terms are moderate, proportioned to the advantages which are offered. The physical appearance of the French strikes me as having undergone a considerable change; when I was a child, I can remember a host of emigrants who used to live mostly about Somers Town, and impressed me with the idea of their being tall and meagre, exactly as I was accustomed to see them represented in the caricatures; I remember particularly remarking that they had thin visages, hollow cheeks, long noses and chins, that I used to observe they were all features and no face, they had besides a sort of grouty snuffy appearance; of the females I have less recollection, except that I thought they looked rather yellow, and generally took snuff. When I came to France, therefore, I was very much struck with the change, particularly in the young men, whom I found with small features, and generally round faces, of the middle height, and well made, not so dark or so pale as I expected to find them. The same description applies to the females; there is not so much red and white as we are accustomed to see in England, nor the soft blue eye, nor flaxen nor golden hair, nor generally speaking such fine busts, and I know not why, but the French women have almost always shorter necks, but they have mostly very pretty little feet and ankles, and although their features may not be regular or handsome, taken separately, yet the ensemble is generally pleasing; their eyes are fine and expressive, and after all, in my opinion, expression is the soul of beauty. The female peasantry of France take no pains in guarding against the sun and wind, but merely wear caps, consequently get very much tanned, and look old very soon: whereas the Englishwomen preserve their appearance much longer by wearing bonnets, and particularly pokes, which effectually shelter the face. The sun also has more power in most parts of France, and the women work harder than in England, therefore cannot wear so well. Proportioned to the price of provisions, wages are higher in France than in England; you cannot have an able bodied man in Paris, for the lowest description of work, for less than 40 sous a day, those who are now working at the fortifications have 50, that being the minimum, and if a person understand any trade, 3, 4, and 5 francs are the usual prices, and those who are considered clever at their business often get more. But many a young man's advancement in life is impeded by the conscription; it often occurs that an industrious shopman, or artisan, has with economy saved some hundred francs, when he is drawn for the army, and glad to appropriate his little savings towards procuring him some comforts more than the common soldier is allowed; the troops generally are very quiet and orderly behaved, in the different towns where they are quartered, but the infantry have not a very brilliant appearance, having found small men so very active and serviceable in climbing the rocks, enduring fatigue, and braving all kinds of impediments, men two inches shorter than would have before been received, were admitted into the ranks, the consequence is that the regiments of the line now make but a poor display, as regards the height of the men, and indeed in their manner of marching, and carrying their muskets, some nearly upright others more horizontally, they have not a regular orderly appearance, like many of the other troops on the Continent; most of the largest sized men are taken up for the cavalry, and very well looking fellows they many of them are, particularly in the Carabineers, which, in regard to the height of the men, is a remarkably fine regiment, but might be much more so, if the government paid that attention which is devoted by other powers to the selections for their choice regiments; in the Carabineers there are men as much as six feet three, and four, and others as short as five feet ten, whilst in other regiments, such as the Lancers and Dragoons, they have here and there men above six feet, which if placed in the Carabineers, and those who were the shortest in that corps removed into the others, all those regiments would be improved, as being rendered more even, whilst the Carabineers would then be equal in appearance, with regard to the men, to any regiment in the world. With respect to the horses, it would be more difficult to render it as perfect as our Life Guards, and as to their bridles and equipments in general (except their regimentals) there is often an inequality and want of care and attention as to uniformity of appearance, but throughout all the French cavalry, the men have an excellent command over their horses. I have been at many grand reviews both in France and in England, and in the former I never saw a man thrown, whereas in the latter it has frequently occurred, either from the horse falling or other circumstances. With regard to the French army in general, the effect is that of the men having individually a degree of independent appearance, or as if each man acted for himself, instead of being as one solid machine set in motion as it were by a sort of spring, which moving the whole mass, all the parts must operate together. The French infantry, in point of marching, are an exact contrast to the most highly disciplined troops of Russia and Prussia, who pretend to assert that they have regiments who can march with such extreme steadiness and regularity, that every man may have a glass of wine upon his head and not a drop will be spilt; attempt the same thing with a French regiment, and wine and glass would soon be on the ground, and in all their military proceeding there is an apparent slovenliness and irregularity, a want of closeness and compactness in their movements; with regard to outward appearance, the National Guard have the advantage on a field day, as there is a sort of _esprit du corps_ between the legions, which causes them to take great pains with regard to the _tenue_ of their respective battalions; but after all, the great force of the French army is _enthusiasm_, and that would be excited to a much greater degree in a war with England, than with any other power, because they have been so taunted by the English press, with the old absurd doctrine, viz., that one Englishman can beat three Frenchmen, and several papers lately raked up the battles of Cressy, Poitiers, Agincourt, etc., but the reply of the French is indisputable, that those successes were most efficiently revenged, when it is remembered that England was in possession of the whole of the provinces of Guienne, Normandy, great part of Picardy and French Flanders, some portions of which were under England for nearly 500 years, but that we were overcome in such a succession of battles, that ultimately we were beaten out of every acre we had left in France; Calais, which surrendered to the Duke de Guise, in the reign of Mary, being the last place which we retained. These of course, as historical facts, cannot be denied. But I certainly do consider that portion of the English press much to blame, in recurring to events so distant, for the purpose of wounding national feeling; the effect has been to provoke reply on the part of the French press, and in all the virulence of party spirit, in defending their country against the odium cast upon her, they have been led into some of the most illiberal statements which have had a very baneful effect upon many persons, in exciting an extreme irritation against England; but generally speaking, the French people, if left alone, do not desire war with the English; if it were only for the sake of their interests, it is natural for the French to wish for peace with England, as her subjects are amongst the most liberal purchasers of the produce of the soil and manufactures of France. The party the most anxious for war with England, is the navy, and they bitterly feel the sting which goads within them, of their having been so beaten by our fleets, and pant for an opportunity to efface the stain which they certainly do feel now tarnishes the honour of their flag. They consider, also, that the circumstances under which they were opposed to the forces of England, were so disadvantageous, that no other result could have been expected than such as occurred, as when the war broke out in 1793, France had not one experienced admiral in the service; all possessing any practical knowledge of naval affairs, being staunch adherents to the royal cause, had either quitted France, or retired from the navy, de Grasse, d'Éstaing, Entrecasteux, d'Orvilliers, Suffren, Bougainville and several others. The consequence was, that the command of the fleets were given to men who acquitted themselves very ably in the management of a single vessel, but were not at all competent to the office with which the necessity of circumstances invested them, and although there were several encounters between the frigates of the two nations, in which the reputation of both were well sustained, yet of the power of so doing, the French were soon deprived, by Napoleon, who at one period in his ardour for military glory, sacrificed the navy, by taking from it the best gunners in order to supply his artillery; also the choicest and ablest men were selected wherever they could be found, to fill up the ranks of the army, which were being constantly thinned by the universal war which he was always waging with the greater part of Europe. The ships were then manned with whatever refuse could be picked up, and a Lieutenant Diez told me, that the crew of the vessel to which he belonged was such, that they had not above twenty men who could go aloft, and had they met with an English vessel of the same size, they must have been taken without the least difficulty. But the officers in the present French navy know that the case is now very different, for the last twenty years the greatest attention has been devoted to that arm, which is candidly acknowledged on the part of our naval officers, of which I remember an instance at Smyrna, whilst dining at the English consul's with eight or ten of them, being the commanders of the ships which composed the English fleet, then lying at Vourla, when the conversation falling upon the French navy, it was observed that nothing could be more perfect than its state at that period, every man, down to a cabin boy, knowing well his duty, and all the regulations and manoeuvres being carried on with such perfect order and regularity. There are however some advantages which we still maintain, afforded by our foreign commerce being the most extensive, enabling us always to have a greater number of sailors, and generally speaking more experienced seamen, and a French naval captain who has seen a good deal of service, once observed that there was another point in which we had a superiority, and that was with respect to our ship's carpenters, which was particularly illustrated in the combat at Navarin, as the morning after the action the English were far in advance of the French, with regard to the repairs which had been rendered necessary from the damages which had been sustained. The French now have several officers who are experienced practical men, in whom the navy has great confidence, as, Admirals Duperré, Hugon, Rosamel, Lalande, Beaudin, Roussin, Bergeret, Mackau, Casey, etc., all of whose names have been before the public in different affairs in which they have created their present reputation. During the present reign, every means has been adopted to infuse within the minds of the French an interest for naval affairs, hence apartments have been fitted up in the Louvre, as before stated, with models, and representations of all connected with a ship, whilst the best artists have been employed to paint different naval actions, which have reflected honour on the French flag, and really I had no idea that they could have cited so many instances, in regard to encounters with our shipping, but on reference to James's Naval History, they will be found mainly correct, giving some latitude for a little exaggeration in their own favour, a habit to which I believe every nation is more or less prone. The government have certainly succeeded beyond their wishes, in engendering an extreme anxiety in the people with regard to the navy, which has just been elicited, in the singular anomaly of the opposition voting on the motion of M. Lacrosse a greater sum by three millions of francs for the navy than the minister demanded. With an eye also to the marine, Louis-Philippe has made some sacrifices to the promotion and extension of foreign commerce, and not without a considerable degree of success. There is not at present any branch of art, science, or industry, that the French are not making great exertions to encourage, for that object many societies and companies are formed, of which I will state a few of the most important. There are four societies styled Athenæum, the Royal, which is at the Palais-Royal, No. 2, devoted to literature, and three others at the Hôtel de Ville for music, for medicine, and for the arts. The Geographical Society, Rue de l'Université, 23. Royal Antiquarian Society, Rue des Petits-Augustins, No. 16. Asiatic Society, and for elementary Instruction, Agriculture, Moral Christianity, No. 12, Rue Taranne. Society for universal French Statistics, Place Vendôme, 24. The Protestant Bible Society of Paris, Rue Montorgueil. Geological Society, Rue du Vieux-Colombier, No. 26. Philotechnic Society, No. 16, Rue des Petits-Augustins. Philomatic Society, Entomological, and for natural History, No. 6, Rue d'Anjou, Faubourg St. Germain. Society for intellectual Emancipation, No. 11, Rue St. Georges, as also a variety of other medical, surgical, phrenological, etc., etc., a number of schools besides those I have already alluded to, veterinary, for mosaic work, technography, and other purposes. Although I have observed that in great commercial undertakings, the French are very slow and cautious, yet they are progressing visibly; there are now thirty-four coal mines at work in various parts of France, belonging to different public companies more or less flourishing, besides private enterprises, 16 more in agitation where coal has been found, and societies formed but not yet in active operation, and 15 now working in Belgium, of which the sharers are principally French. There are twenty Asphalte and Bitumen companies. Thirty-five Assurance companies, between twenty and thirty railway ditto, about the same number for canals and nearly as many for steam boats, and for bridges projected about 20, for gas, 14, for the bringing into cultivation the marshes and waste lands, 7, for markets, bazaars, and dépôts, 10, and for manufactures of glass, earthenware, soap and a variety of other things, there are about forty more public companies. These are such as now still offer their shares for sale; there are many others which have been for a length of time established, which no longer issue either advertisement or prospectus, but when enterprises of this kind are undertaken in France they generally succeed. CHAPTER XI. The Literature of the time being, principal authors. Music; its ancient date in France, performers, and singers. Of the present state of literature in France, it is not possible to draw a very flattering picture; there is a good deal of moderate talent but certainly none that is transcendental, which remark may be applied to statesmen, orators, authors, artists, etc.; as to poetry there appears at present so little taste for it, and writers seem so thoroughly aware of its being the case, that they have too much good sense to attempt to obtrude it upon the public, and those who had obtained a certain reputation as poets seem to write no more. The works of de Lamartine certainly have many admirers, displaying a pleasing style of versification fraught with beautiful imagery, a happy arrangement of ideas enwreathed within the flowers of language, but little or no originality. As if himself conscious of that circumstance, he brought forth his Chute d'un Ange (the fall of an angel), which caused his own _fall_ at the same time; if his sole desire was to attain originality, he gained his point, but at the price of common sense; the majority of the public appear to have been of this opinion, and M. de Lamartine seems to have passed from poetry to politics, being now one of the best and most conspicuous speakers in the Chamber of Deputies. A certain tone runs through M. de Lamartine's works, that leads one to infer he has deeply read and admired Lord Byron. M. Casimir Delavigne was a great favourite at one period; it might be my want of taste, or a deficiency in the knowledge of the French language sufficient to relish that class of poetry, but certainly I found his works laboured and tedious, and could not in spite of all my efforts derive any pleasure from their perusal. The productions of Béranger are confined within a very small compass, but containing that which causes one to regret that his works are not more voluminous. The true nerve and genius of poetry, continually sparkling throughout his writings, as a patriotic feeling and a generous love of liberty formed the principal points in his character. The efforts to suppress that spirit which was attempted in the reign of Charles X called forth the powers of his muse, but since the accession of the present monarch to the throne, as all has been conducted on a more liberal system, his pen has lain dormant, which has disappointed all who have read and admired those effusions of a free and exalted mind, which he has at present published, and led to the hope that they would be continued. Of Victor Hugo's productions I need say but little, as they are so generally known in England, particularly his Notre-Dame de Paris, which has been dramatised under the title of Quasimodo and acted at Covent Garden, as well as at other theatres, and few I believe there are who have not felt some sympathy for Esmeralda. When Victor Hugo wrote this, the works of Sir Walter Scott I think were bearing upon his mind; his poems and dramatic pieces at one period created much sensation, and undoubtedly possess a certain tone of merit. The Comte Alfred de Vigny is the author of one work which may be considered as a gem amongst the mass of publications which emanate from the French press of that nature; it is entitled, Cinq-Mars, an historical novel, which is decidedly one of the best and most interesting of any that have appeared either in England or in France for several years past; he has also written a tragedy on the subject of the unfortunate Chatterton, which at the time it came out excited a deep interest, but M. de Vigny, like many of the present literary characters in France, appears resting on his oars. Not so with Alexandre Dumas, whose prolific pen appears like himself to be ever active; what with travelling to different countries, then publishing accounts of his wanderings, novels of divers descriptions, detached pieces, and dramatic productions, he must be constantly on the _qui vive_. There are very different opinions respecting his writings, they certainly possess a good deal of spirit, some of them considerable feeling, and are generally amusing. Of novel writers there are many, but unfortunately the bad taste prevails of introducing subjects in them that prevent their being read by females, with a few exceptions; those of Balzac are by no means devoid of merit and are exceedingly entertaining, and some there are which any one may peruse of Eugène Sue, who has lately been knighted by the King of the Netherlands; the same may be said, although of the latter description there exist but few. Those of Paul de Kock are well known in other countries as well as France; they are very clever and exceedingly amusing, but partake of the fault alluded to. As a female writer and translator, Madame Tastu may be cited as having produced works which do credit to her taste and judgment. Madame Emile de Girardin, well known as Delphine Gay, is a talented writer, but would have been more esteemed had she steered clear of political subjects. Monsieur and Madame Ancelot both write tales and dramatic pieces, which are justly admired; but the author to whom the stage is most indebted is Scribe, who perhaps is one of the most multitudinous writers existing; his works completely made and sustained the Theatre du Gymnase, besides greatly contributing to the success of others. In consequence of their having been so much translated, and adapted to the English stage, they are almost as well known in one country as the other. M. Scribe is a man who is highly esteemed on account of his liberality to literary characters, and his extreme generosity to all who are in need of his aid. Of authors on more solid subjects there are not many who now continue to write, several of the most conspicuous having become completely absorbed in politics; of such a description is M. Guizot, whose works are generally known and admired, particularly his Commentaries on the English Revolution; partly a continuation of the same subject, it is stated he has now in preparation, but placed at the helm of the nation, as he now is, his time is too much occupied to be devoted to any other object than affairs of state, and his position is such as requires the exertion of every power of thought and mind to sustain, against its numerous and indefatigable assailants. M. Thiers owes his success in life to his literary productions, and his talents as an author are universally admitted; his History of the French Revolution is as well known in England as in France, and generally allowed to be the best work upon the subject, but he is also so totally engaged in political affairs, that the public cannot derive much advantage from the effusions of his pen, as it is impossible that they can be very voluminous, when his time and abilities are so exclusively appropriated to a still more important object; but it is understood that it is his intention to afford the world the benefit of other works which are now in embryo. The same remarks may in a degree be applied to M. Villemain, who has written upon literature, in which he has displayed considerable ability, but having become an active Minister of Instruction, of his publications there is at present a complete cessation. Nearly a similar instance may be cited in M. Cousin, who has written very ably upon philosophy and metaphysics, but as a peer of France, literature has been forced to succumb to politics, his talents also being directed into the latter channel. Amidst this general languor which seems to have come over France, with regard to the exertions of her most eminent authors, there are a few who occupy themselves with history, which now appears to be the most favourite study with those who devote their minds to reading; the very delightful work on the Norman Conquest, by M. Thierri, I trust is well known to many of my readers, or if not, I wish it may be so, as it cannot do otherwise than give them pleasure; he has written several other things, and amongst the rest Récit des Temps Mérovingiens, which is highly interesting. A work of considerable merit, is l'Histoire des Ducs de Bourgogne, by Monsieur de Barante. M. Capefigue has published many historical productions, and amongst the rest a Life of Napoleon, which is perhaps one of the most impartial extant, and very interesting, as containing a sort of recapitulation of facts, without any endeavour to palliate such of his actions as stern justice must condemn. M. Mignet has also chosen the path of history, and has not followed it unsuccessfully; the foundation of his present prosperity consisting entirely in his writings, there are several other authors of minor note who have adopted the same course, but not any who have created any great sensation, or effected any permanent impression on the public. The only living author whose name is likely to descend to posterity is that of Chateaubriand, who, although he has never been a writer of poetry, may be considered the greatest poet in France, as there is so much of imagination and of soul in his prose, so much of sublimity in his ideas, that the works in verse of his contemporaries appear insipid when compared to the wild flights of genius which ever emerge from his pen, yet when they are closely studied, and deeply sounded for their solid worth, it will be found that they consist merely of beautiful imagery, elegantly turned phrases, a sort of flash of sentiment, which catches the ear, but appeals not to the understanding, a gorgeous superstructure, as it were, without a firm foundation for its basis. As for example, in his preface to Attila, alluding to Napoleon, he observes "Qu'il était envoyé par la Providence, comme une signe de réconciliation quand elle était lasse de punir." Which may be rendered thus: that Napoleon was sent upon earth by Providence as a sign of reconciliation, when she was fatigued with punishing; this is certainly very pretty, but I will appeal to common sense, whether there was aught of fact to support such an assertion? Even those who were the most enthusiastic admirers of the martial genius of Bonaparte, could not participate in the fulsome compliment paid to their hero by M. Chateaubriand; but when strictly scrutinized, all his works will generally be found of the same tissue; yet, as there is so often a wild grandeur in his conceptions and in his mode of expressing them, whilst they are arrayed in all the grace and beauty which language can bestow, his volumes will always find a place in every well-assorted library, when probably those of most of the other French authors of the present period will be consigned to oblivion, excepting such as have written upon history, which will always maintain their ground, as they are in a degree works of reference. There are several very clever men who write for the newspapers, or what may be styled pamphleteers, amongst whom are Jules Janin, and Alphonse Karr; the latter publishes a satirical work called the Guêpe, which possesses the talent of being very severe and stinging wherever it fixes. M. Barthélemy has written some poetry much in the same strain, which is rather pungent, but he latterly appears to have sunk into the same slumber which seems to have enveloped so many of the present literary men of France. M. Deschamps now and then produces some poetic effusions which are pleasing, and prove the author to be possessed of that ability which would induce a wish that his works were less brief and more frequently before the public. But taking all into consideration, this is by no means a literary era in France; the nineteenth century has not yet produced any such names as Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, and many others, who have shed a lustre on the French name; there are no doubt many clever men still living who have written scientific works upon medicine, surgery, natural history, physiology, botany, astronomy, etc., whilst the names of De Jussieu and Arago, as eminent in the latter sciences, are known all over Europe, as well as many others who are celebrated in their different departments. Although the present age is not fecund in the production of French genius as relates to the polite arts, yet there never was a period when there was more anxiety for their promotion, and now all classes read; but the reading of the lower orders consists principally of a political nature; the newspapers now however have what is called a _feuilleton_, which embraces many subjects, and appears to interest all; the criticisms on the theatrical performances are perused with much avidity, an extreme partiality for dramatic representations still forms a considerable portion of the French character, as also a general love of music, without being at all particular as to its quality; no matter how trifling it be, as long as there is any thing of an air distinguishable it will please. There are at present a host of composers in France whose fame will probably be not so long as their lives; Paris is inundated every year with a number of insignificant ballads which just have their day, and if perchance there should be one or more that are really clever amongst the mass of dross which comes forth, after a twelvemonth no one would think of singing it because it has already been pronounced _ancienne_, and it is completely laid aside, and in a few years so totally cast in oblivion, that it cannot even be procured of any of the music-sellers, or anywhere else: this was the case with some delightful airs which appeared about ten years since, and which are now nowhere to be found, although once having excited quite a sensation. The French cannot certainly be considered as a musical nation, yet many of their airs are full of life, and quite exhilarating, whilst others have a degree of pathos which touches the heart; still none of their music has the nerve, the depth, the sterling solidity of the German, nor the elegance nor grace of the Italian. Yet some composers they have whose works will have more than an ephemeral fame, amongst whom may be cited Aubert, whose music is not only admired in France but throughout all Europe; another author of extreme merit is Onslow, whose productions are not so voluminous or so extensively known as those of Aubert, but possessing that intrinsic worth which will increase in estimation as it descends to posterity: the compositions of Halévy and Berlioz have also some degree of merit. But amongst the numerous productions which have emanated from the French composers for the last fifty years, one there is that for soul and grandeur stands unrivalled, and that is the Marseilles Hymn, or March, by Rouget de Lille; perhaps there exists no air so calculated to inspire martial ardour, and there is no doubt but that it had considerable effect upon the enthusiastic republicans in exciting them to rush into what they considered the struggle for liberty and honour; it appears to have been an inspiration which must have suddenly lighted upon the composer, as none of his works either before or since ever created any particular sensation. Although of far distant date, the old air of Henry IV must certainly be placed amongst the gems of French musical composition; there is a peculiar wildness in it, which gives it a tone of romance, and reminds one of very olden time, there is in it an originality, a something unlike anything else; the Breton and Welsh airs alone resemble it in some degree, and in both those countries they pretend that they are of Celtic origin. Music is of very ancient origin in France: in 554 profane singing was forbidden on holy days; in 757, King Pepin received a present of an organ, from Constantin VI; a tremendous quarrel occurred between the Roman and Gallic musicians, in the time of Charlemagne, and two professors are cited, named Benedict and Theodore, who were pupils of St. Gregory; but the most ancient melodies extant, and which are perfectly well authenticated, are the songs of the Troubadours of Provence, who principally flourished from the year 1000 to the year 1300. Saint Louis was a great patron of music, so much so that in 1235 he granted permission to the Paris minstrels, who had formed themselves into a company, to pass free through the barriers of the city, provided they entertained the toll-keepers with a song and made their monkies dance. At that period they had as many as thirty instruments in use; the form of some of them are now totally lost. Rameau is the only French composer whose name and compositions may be said to have had any permanent reputation, which does not now stand particularly high out of his own country; Lulli, Gluck, and Gretry were not born in France, although it was their principal theatre of action. It remains to be proved whether the works of Boïeldieu will stand the test of time, as also of those composers who are still living and are the most esteemed. Much may be said of the French musical performers, who certainly may be considered to excel upon several different instruments, particularly on the harp, which all can testify who have ever heard Liebart. There are also a number of ladies to be met with in private society who play extremely well; the same may be said with regard to the piano-forte, but although there are many professors who astonish by their execution, yet they have not produced any equal to a Liszt or Thalberg; I have even amongst amateurs known some young ladies develop a lightness and rapidity of finger quite surprising, and far surpassing what I have generally met with in England (except with the most accomplished professors), but I do not consider that they play with so much feeling and expression as I have often found even with female performers in my own country, and which affords me a much higher gratification, as fingering is after all but mechanical, which may astonish, but will never enchant. On the violin they have produced some very fine players, as also upon other instruments, and the bands at their operas can hardly be too highly praised. But their music which has afforded me the most delight has been the performances of their first masters on some of their magnificent organs; on those occasions I heard the most exquisite feeling and expression displayed, and have known the most powerful sensations excited; this most superlative enjoyment I have experienced at the churches of Notre-Dame, St. Sulpice, St. Eustache, and St. Roch, but it happens only on particular and rare occasions, and it is difficult to find out when such performances will take place; sometimes it is announced in Galignani's paper but not always, and their sacred music is often most exquisite particularly that which is vocal. In respect to singing, although the Conservatory of Music and the most talented masters give every advantage to the pupil of theory and science, yet they cannot confer a fine quality of voice where it has not been afforded by nature, and that deficiency I find generally existing with the French females; they will often attain an extreme height with apparent facility, and even will manage notes at the same time so low that no fault can be found with the compass of their voices, nor any lack of flexibility; their execution being perfectly clean and correct. I have frequently heard them run the chromatic scale with extreme distinctness and apparent ease, and acquit themselves admirably in the performance of the most intricate and difficult passages, all of which is the result of good teaching and attentive application of the pupil, but sweetness of tone exists not in their voices, which are generally thin and wiry; they want that depth and roundness which gives the swell of softness and beauty to the sound; hence there is generally a want of expression in their singing as well as their playing. Of course there are exceptions, and Madame Dorus-Gras may be cited as such, as well as many others, who have won the admiration of the public. The voices of the men are better, often very powerful, possessing extremely fine bass notes, but many of them have even still a horrid habit of singing their notes through the nose. I don't know whether it is that they regard their nasal promontory in the light of a trumpet, so considering it as a sort of instrumental accompaniment to their vocal performance, but although it is a practice which is wearing off, there is a great deal too much of it left. Nourrit had none of it, his voice was firm and sweet, and few men have I ever heard sing with so much feeling. Duprez is also a singer of no common stamp, and of whom any nation might be proud, and I have often met men in society sing together most delightfully, either duets, trios, or quartettos, and totally devoid of the nasal twang, or, as the reader will observe, delightful it could not be. CHAPTER XII. Instructions for strangers; remarks upon the feelings and behaviour of the lower classes of the Parisians. Political ideas prevailing in Paris. Observations upon the present statesmen. There are certain regulations to be observed at Paris which we are not accustomed to in our own country; on a stranger's arrival he is conducted to an hôtel, either to that to which he is recommended, or he fixes upon one of which he hears the most extravagant praises from persons who attend with cards, and even throw them into the carriage before it stops; on whichever the traveller may make his selection the same plan is to be followed, make your arrangement as to price before you install yourself, either per day, per week, or per month; you may make your agreement to take your meals from the people of the hôtel, or to send for it from a restaurateur, or to go and dine at one, as you may think proper; the latter plan is found the most agreeable for a stranger, as he sees more of the people by so doing, and can try several different restaurants, which he will find very amusing, and some of them, from the beautiful manner of fitting up, are well worth seeing; the prices vary from a franc to six or seven francs, according to their celebrity. Every hôtel has a porter, to whom you must give your key whenever you go out, and then the mistress of the house is answerable for anything which may be missing, but if you leave your key in the door whilst you are absent, you cannot make any claim for whatever may have been lost; at night, on the contrary, after the gates are shut, when you retire to bed, and you let it remain outside, should anything be stolen, the mistress is accountable, as it is supposed that when all is closed in, everything is then under the safeguard of the porter, for whose conduct the mistress is considered liable. According to the style of the hôtel in which you take up your abode, the porter will expect remuneration; at one that is moderate, and not in a first-rate situation, six sous a day is sufficient, but in most hôtels about the fashionable quarters half a franc is the usual sum expected; for this your bed is made, your boots and shoes cleaned, as also your room, and your clothes brushed; they likewise take in messages or letters, and answer all enquiries respecting you, direct the visiters to your apartment, etc., but if you send them out anywhere, no matter how short the distance, they always charge at least ten sous for it; it is one of the dearest things I know in France, that of charging for every little errand or commission. At some of the hôtels there are commissioners who make offers of their services, to conduct strangers to different shops or warehouses, for the purpose of making their purchases, but too much reliance must not be placed on those gentry, as they often exact contributions from the shopkeepers for bringing travellers to their shops, when they naturally must charge so much the more upon the goods in order to pay the commissioner. Tradesmen from London particularly are often misled in that manner, but in proceeding to such establishments as those I have stated, which are respectable wholesale houses, such as Messrs. Bellart, Louis, Delcambre, for lace, ribband, and silk, 2ter Rue Choiseul, etc., they will never be deceived; I will also add another establishment which has existed for many years and always conducted their business on equitable terms, being that of M. Langlais-Quignolot, No. 10, Rue Chapon, where he executes orders for London on a most extensive scale for net gloves, purses and reticules. He lives in the neighbourhood where many of the wholesale houses are situated, and would willingly inform any stranger of the most respectable in the different branches required. The different articles to be seen at M. Langlais' warehouse are got up in a most superior style and at prices so reasonable, that it is quite surprising when compared to the charges made for the same goods in London, where undoubtedly they have duty and carriage to pay. He has lately brought into vogue some most beautiful little purses called Rebecca, being exactly in the form of the pitcher with which she is represented at the well; their appearance is most ornamental, and although very small they distend so as to hold as much as most ladies would like to lose in an evening at cards. M. Langlais has already sent over numbers to London, which must now be making their appearance in Regent Street, but I recommend my countrywomen when at Paris to pay him a visit themselves, as he does not refuse a retail customer although his is a wholesale house; he has a most extensive assortment of all varieties of purses and net gloves and reticules, from which numbers of shops in Paris and London are supplied, and of course being the fountain head the articles may be procured on advantageous terms of M. Langlais. There is one precaution I would recommend all travellers to adopt, and that is always to keep their passports, about them; in case they happen to pass any exhibition or building that is open to a stranger on producing his passport, it is well to be provided with it, or if he should meet with any accident, or that any casuality should occur, it will always be found useful. When you arrive at the port where you disembark in coming from England, your passport is taken from you and sent on to Paris, and what is called a Carte de Sûreté is given you instead, for which you pay 2 francs; this you must give to the mistress of the hôtel where you lodge at Paris, and she will procure your original passport for you from the police, or if you choose you may go for it yourself, and save the charge of the commissioner who would be employed to fetch it. In returning to England, you take it to the English Ambassador's to be signed, and from thence to the police for the same purpose, but only state that you are going to the port from whence you are to embark, as if you say that you are going to England they send you to the Minister of Foreign Affairs for his signature, where there is a charge of ten francs, which there is not the slightest necessity of incurring. I have been very often from Paris to London and never paid by following the plan I have stated, but for a permit to embark there is always 30 sous to pay, at the port on quitting the country. In all the diligences throughout France the places are numbered, and he who comes first has the first choice, in which case most persons choose No. 1, but others who prefer sitting with their backs to the horses select No. 3; this excellent regulation prevents any kind of dispute about seats. If you have much luggage you are required to send it an hour or so before the coach starts, and in travelling by the Malle-Poste (or Mail) if your trunk be very large, and weighty, they will not take it, therefore you must ascertain that point when you take your place; it is always sent by a diligence which follows, but a delay is occasioned which sometimes proves inconvenient. The mails are dearer than the diligence, and some go eleven miles an hour. With regard to posting, the price is 2 francs each horse for a miriametre or six miles and a quarter, and as many horses as there are persons in the carriage must be paid for; 15 sous is what should be given to the postillion, but most people give a franc. The posting is entirely in the hands of government, and where the horses are kept is not always an inn; but wherever it may be, printed regulations are kept to which the traveller may demand a reference, if he imagine its rules are not fulfilled. For 4 francs a book may be purchased which gives a most detailed account of every thing connected with posting; all the charges must be paid in advance. Coaches may be hired in Paris at from 20 to 30 francs a day, with which you may go into the country, but must be back before midnight. An excellent and most useful establishment will be found at No. 49, Rue de Miroménil, Faubourg St. Honoré, called Etablissement d'Amsterdam, where there are above 300 carriages constantly kept, either for hire, for sale, or for exchange; it is also a locality where persons may sell or deposit their carriages for any period of time they think proper, and can likewise have it repaired if required; they will besides find every description of harness and sadlery. Horses also are taken in to keep, or bought or sold. The establishment is most complete in all its appointments, is very extensive and kept in the most perfect state of order. There are some carriages amongst the immense variety that may thoroughly answer the purpose for travelling, which can be procured at extremely low prices, whilst others there are, very handsome and perfectly new, which are of course charged in proportion. The proprietors are extremely civil, and ever ready to show their premises to any visiter who may wish to see them. A fiacre, or hackney coach, is 30 sous each course, for which you may go from barrier to barrier, which might be five miles; but if you only go a few yards the price is the same. If you hire it per hour the first is 45 sous and afterwards 30 sous; after midnight, 2 francs each course and 3 per hour; a few sous are always given to the coachman, which may be varied according to the length of the course. Chariots are 25 sous per course, 35 first hour, afterwards 30. Cabriolets 20 sous the course and first hour 35, afterwards 30; but as all these prices are subject to change with new regulations, it is not worth while to give any farther detail. The General Post-Office is in the Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but there are other places where you may put in your letters for England, although not many if you wish to pay. In the exchange there is a box for receiving letters for all parts; and in the square to the left is an office where you can pay your letter, which is always 40 sous to London if it be not over weight. Whatever you bring over that is liable to pay duty at the custom-house, if you take it back with you on your return to England, on producing the articles and the receipt of what you have paid, you can reclaim whatever you have disbursed; this particularly applies to carriages and to plate, only you must not neglect to demand a receipt at the time you pay, and to take care of it, as I have known many instances of persons losing them, and then their reclamations are useless. I have never found them very severe in the custom-houses in France, but am convinced that the best plan on both sides of the water is to give your keys to the commissioner of the inn where you put up; by displaying no anxiety on the subject, the officers conclude that you have not any thing of importance, and will pass your things over more lightly than if you were present, as when witnesses are by they like to preserve the appearance of doing their duty strictly. I have seen some of the English bluster and go in a passion about having their things tumbled about, as they expressed it, but it only makes matters worse. I have known the searchers in those cases to turn a large chest completely topsy-turvy, so that not a single article has escaped examination, and the whole has had to be re-packed. It is at best an unpleasant tax upon travellers, but it is always better policy to submit to it with a good grace. The passport is a grievance which is much complained of by Englishmen, and certainly it does appear an infraction on liberty, that it should not be possible to go from one part of the country to another, without having to obtain permission; but it has other advantages: a criminal in France can very seldom escape; by the regulations of the police it is almost impossible for them to evade detection, as wherever he sleeps his passport must be produced, and every master or mistress of every description of lodging-house is bound to give an account of whatever stranger sleeps under their roof, to the police, and their officers; or the gendarmes, are authorised to demand the sight of the passport of any person whom they may suspect. In England a passport is not so necessary, because being an island the means of escape are not so easy, as they must either embark at some port or they must hire a boat on their own account, or enter into some proceeding which leads to discovery; and notwithstanding those obstacles to leaving the country, and the extreme vigilance of our police, felons do very often escape, and murders remain undiscovered, as those of Mr. Westwood, Eliza Greenwood, and many others. But those who are invested with authority in France sustain it with a more courteous demeanour than is the case in England, consequently it is less offensive. If your passport be asked for, it is in a polite manner, whereas with the English, give the butcher or the blacksmith the staff of office as constable, and he exercises his brief authority very frequently in a manner which is not the most engaging. Although a _politesse_ and refinement of expression united with a smutted face, tucked-up sleeves, an apron and rough coarse hands, has something in it of the ludicrous, yet it softens the brutality to which uncultivated human nature is ever prone, but instances of such inconsistencies sometimes occur which cannot otherwise than excite a smile; a few days since a working man dropped a knife, a dirty looking boy of about 12 years of age picked it up, and presented it to the owner, with some degree of grace, saying, "Render unto Cæsar that which is Cæsar's." Passing through the Rue des Arcis, which is a mean narrow street, at one of the lowest descriptions of wine-houses where dancing was going forward, perhaps amongst fishwomen and scavengers, I noticed a large lantern hanging out over the door, upon which was inscribed, "Bal séduisant, le Paradis des Dames," which may be translated, "Seductive Ball, the Paradise of Ladies." The traveller may remark on the road from Boulogne to Paris and within a few leagues of the latter, in a small village at a house little better than a hut, where the insignia of a barber is displayed, a board on which is written; "Ici on embellit la nature," or "Here we embellish nature." Even in the lowest classes the French must have a little bit of sentiment, and amongst them marriages occur principally from affection, but almost always with the consent of the parents; it is lamentable to think how many young couples destroy each other because they cannot obtain the sanction of the father or mother to one of the parties, and these mistaken lovers really think it less crime to commit suicide than to marry against the consent of their parents, which they are by law empowered to do, provided that they have three times made what is called _les sommations respectueuses_, that is, having three times respectfully asked their permission, without having obtained which, they cannot marry if not of age under any circumstances; but when no longer minors, and that they have conformed to what the law prescribes, they may be united notwithstanding the opposition of their parents, but it is a case which scarcely ever occurs. There is much more of family attachments and bond of union between relations in France than there is with us, and at marriages, funerals, and baptisms, the most distant cousins are all brought together to be present at the ceremony, which amongst the higher and middle classes has rather a pleasing effect; the bride arrayed in a long white flowing veil decorated with orange flowers has a most interesting appearance. Before being performed at the church, it must be registered at the mayoralty. When any one is deceased, black drapery is hung up outside the house, and the coffin is brought within sight and burning tapers fixed around it, and every one who passes takes off his hat, and if he chooses, sprinkles it with holy water; chaunting over the coffin at the church is sometimes continued for two hours, and the effect is very impressive. Wherever the funeral procession proceeds along the streets every one who meets it takes off his hat; in fact in no country is there more respect paid to the dead. When a child has lost both its parents, it generally happens that some relation will take it, even sometimes a second or third cousin; this will happen often amongst the poorer people, they hold it as a sort of sacred duty for relations to assist each other, a feeling that I could wish to see more general in England, as I have known too many instances where even brothers exhibited instances of affluence and poverty. In my own neighbourhood, there was a case of a Mr. N. living in good style, with livery servants, etc., and his own brother working for him at 1_s._ 8_d._ a day as a common labourer, although his fall in life had been entirely caused by misfortune and not by his prodigality or mismanagement; such a circumstance could not have existed in France; the peasants would have hooted the rich brother every time he showed his face. The French people are too apt to take those affairs in their own hands, and express their indignation in no unmeasured terms. They are very prone to act from the impulse of the moment, and are easily aroused in any cause where they consider injustice has been enacted, and many of the persons concerned in the press are well aware of this, and by most artfully turned arguments they work up their passions either for or against a party, as circumstances may render it fitting for their purpose. But although some of the newspapers have certainly had some fire-brand articles against England, yet it does not appear to me to have had any effect of exciting a hatred against the English. I have never seen in any one instance any manifestation of such a feeling; in fact the French are much in the habit of separating the government from the people, and even the most hostile portion of the press observe that there are amongst the population in England numbers of individuals of the most exalted characters; hence the French do not consider that the people are amenable for the faults of their government, and are inclined to imagine those of every country more or less corrupt. They never had a very exalted opinion of their own; perhaps the most popular ministry they have had for the last thirty years was that of M. Martignac, which Charles X so suddenly dismissed and thereby laid the first foundation for the glorious three days. With the present government I should say that the majority of the people appear disposed to be passively satisfied, not so much from a feeling of approbation of its proceedings, but fearing that were there a change it might be for the worse; with the present they have the assurance of peace, and tranquillity, and all manufacturing and agricultural France know how destructive war would be to their present prosperity; of this none are more sensible than the Parisians, as it is really astonishing what sums of money the English nobility expend even whilst they are residing in England, with the tradesmen in Paris, principally for articles of art and luxury but also for a great portion of that which is useful as well as ornamental; and imagining that many of my readers may have as great an aversion to copying letters as myself and at the same time be aware of the necessity under many circumstances of keeping a duplicate, I must not forget to mention an extremely useful invention which adds another evidence of the prolific ingenuity of France. It consists in a machine for copying letters, registers, deeds, or in fact any description of written document, or stamped, or in relief, by which they can be repeated even a thousand times if required and in a very short space of time; there have been many who have attempted to attain the same object and have had a partial success, but those of M. Poirier, No. 35, Rue du Faubourg St. Martin, appear to unite advantages which none of the preceding ever attained. They are called, Presses Auto-Zinco-Graphiques. For the merit of this invention he has been granted a patent, and awarded a medal by the Central Jury, appointed to examine the specimens of art and ingenuity sent to the National Exhibition established for the purpose of bringing them before the public. For merchants, solicitors, and all persons keeping several clerks such a machine must be a great acquisition, as in addition to the copies being effected more rapidly than would be possible by hand, where there are numbers of letters of which duplicates are requisite, the labour of one clerk at least must be saved. M. Poirier has them executed in so beautiful a manner that they really are quite a handsome piece of furniture, some of which are as high as 350 fr. but the prices gradually descend to even as low as 10 fr. which are so contrived for travelling that they contain pen, ink and paper and only weigh one pound. I here subjoin the opinion of the Central Jury addressed to M. Poirier. "These presses are certainly the best executed of any which have been exhibited. Their merit consisting in superior execution, cannot be too much encouraged, as the happiest ideas often fail in the realisation, therefore that the jury may not be deficient in recompensing M. Poirier they award him the bronze medal." All parties regard M. Guizot (Minister of Foreign Affairs) as a talented man; and one of considerable firmness of character, who unflinchingly maintains his ground whilst a host are baying at him, appearing as unmoved as the rock that is pelted by the storm; he seems never taken by surprise, but is ever ready with such answers and explanations as generally baffle his accusers; still he cannot be called a popular minister, because he is known to possess what is called the Anglo-mania, that is, to have a most decided predilection for everything that is English, and there is no doubt that he wishes to do all in his power to conciliate England, without sacrificing the interests and honour of his country; but in that respect his enemies think that he would not be too delicate, but is determined to have peace with England _à tout prix_ (at any price). M. Guizot is a protestant and was a professor in the University. His immediate opponent, M. Thiers, has risen to eminence entirely by his writings; he came to Paris from Aix in Provence (in 1820), and lived in a room on the fourth floor in the Rue St. Honoré; here he wrote for the newspapers, but being taken by the hand by M. Lafitte he and his works speedily rose into notice; it is possible that he may be as anxious for the welfare of his country as M. Guizot, but would carry things with a higher hand, and although every one is aware of his extraordinary abilities, yet the moderate and thinking part of the community remember how near he was involving France in a war with her most powerful neighbours, and however they smarted for a time under what they conceived an affront offered to their country, yet there are very few now but feel fully sensible of the benefits they derive from the blessing of peace having been preserved. M. Thiers may be cited as one of the most animated and effective speakers of any in the Chambers, and his speeches often display a brilliance, energy, and ardour, which create a forcible impression, but sometimes betray the orator into hasty assertions, of which he may afterwards repent, but feeling too much pride to recant, he prefers standing by the position he had hastily assumed; consequently, he is then compelled to marshal all his powers of argument to sustain that which in his own mind he may feel convinced is erroneous. Yet although many from prudential motives did not approve his policy, which had nearly involved France in hostility with England, they rather admired the spirit and susceptibility which he displayed in resenting the slight with which the French nation had been treated, and looked upon him as a sort of champion of their cause, so that he may be rather designated a popular statesman than otherwise, although he was considered in the wrong on that one point, and the reflexions which he flung upon England would have passed away as unmerited, and soon sunk into oblivion, had not a portion of the English press so indulged in abuse and ridicule of the French at that period, who often remark that they were subdued by the allies combined, but that it is only the _English press_ which is as it were triumphing over and insulting them, by pretending such a superiority in their troops and seamen as to place those of France in a most contemptible light, whilst all the other powers, although equally their conquerors, give them credit for being a brave military nation. I must confess that I have found more liberality in the French with regard to rendering the merit due to the English troops, than in any other country, and I remember a work which came out in Berlin upon military movements, tactics, etc., and in a parenthesis was this sentence, "It is well known that the English, though excellent sailors, are inferior as troops to those of the other European powers." I should have thought that the Prussians who have fought with us would have known better of what metal English soldiers were composed. But to return to M. Thiers; I should still say notwithstanding all that has past, his talents are held in such estimation, that certain changes might occur which would again place him at the helm of the nation. Having given a slight sketch of the two political chiefs who as it were head the most powerful contending parties, I must be still more brief in my notice of the other statesmen whose names, acts and speeches are before the public, amongst the most conspicuous of whom is Odilon Barrot, who is what may be termed decidedly liberal, or in plainer language radical, and has long sustained his cause with talent, energy, and consistence; he speaks well and boldly, and has hitherto acted in that manner which might be expected from the tenor of his speeches; sometimes however persons become calm, what others would call moderate, or a slight tint manifests itself in the colour of their politics, perhaps rendering them more harmonious with the reigning parties, but which accord not with the ideas of the most staunch advocates of a more _ultra_ liberal system; this appears to be somewhat the case with M. Odilon Barrot, whose adherents judge from the support he gave to Thiers, that he is not so warm in the cause as themselves; however he still may be considered the chief of that division of the Chamber which he has always led. M. Mauguin was at one time the most violent of the same party, but during his visit to St. Petersburg he appears to have had such an affectionate hug from the Russian Bear, that he has latterly espoused the cause of Bruin, and would if he could induce France to throw England overboard altogether, and cast herself entirely into the arms of Russia. M. Arago, the celebrated astronomer, has ever proved himself an honest undeviating radical, both in his speeches and his actions. As an orator, many give the palm to M. Berryer, but as his party is not numerous, being carlist, his talents do not receive the general appreciation that they would, had he attached himself to a more popular cause, but he deserves much credit for having faithfully and constantly adhered to his principles. M. Lamartine, the poet, who professes to be independent of any party, is also a very admired speaker, and so was Sébastiani, but now he is passing fast into the vale of years, and has lost that spirit and energy which formerly gave much force to his speeches. M. Molé is another of those statesmen who has filled the most important political stations, but now is getting old and more quiet. As to dilating upon the merits and demerits of those persons who compose the present ministry, it would be but time lost, as they are so often changed in France that their brief authority is often _brief_ indeed, and with the exception of M. Guizot, (who is certainly a host within himself), and Marshal Soult, there is not any character that is particularly prominent, or remarkable for any extraordinary talent. The career of the Marshal is, I presume, well known to most of my readers, and the manner in which he was received in England proves the degree of estimation in which he was there held. He was the son of a notary at St. Amand, where he was born in 1769, being the same year which gave birth to Napoleon, Wellington, and Mehemet Ali. Admiral Duperré, the Minister of Marine, served with great credit to himself throughout the war, and commanded the force which defeated our attempt to take the Isle of France, in 1810, and the naval portion of the expedition employed in the capture of Algiers, was placed under his orders. There are yet a good many men whose names have been long and well known in the political world, who still take a more or less active part in the affairs of the nation, amongst whom may be cited the Baron Pasquier, President of the Chamber of Peers; M. Sauzet, President of the Chamber of Deputies, and the ministers Duchatel for the interior, Cunin Gridaine for commerce, Teste for public works, and Lacave Laplagne for finances; to whom may be added the Duke de Broglie, the Comte Montalivet, Dufaure, Joubert, Salvandy, Delessert, Isambert, Ganneron, etc., also the brothers Dupin, the eldest highly celebrated as an avocat, and the younger (Charles), for his writings upon the naval department, upon statistics in general, and a very clever work upon England. Amongst the extreme radicals, Ledru Rollin may be cited, General Thiard, Marie, a barrister of rising talent, and a young man named Billaud, who is coming forward, and considered to be rather a brilliant speaker. The foregoing names include several men who have had much experience, and possess moderate abilities, merely passable as orators, but having a fair practical knowledge of political business, but not men of exalted genius, or such whose names will be likely to figure in the page of history; perhaps it may be with truth said, that the best statesman France now possesses, or even ever has possessed, is the King, it being very doubtful whether any of his ministers, or indeed any member of either of the chambers, is blest with that deep discernment and profound knowledge of human nature which he has displayed, by the correctness of his calculations upon the pulses of his subjects, under the most trying difficulties, and which have enabled him to weather the storm. CHAPTER XIII. The theatres, present state of the drama, and principal performers. Collections of paintings. It is rather extraordinary that in this age of superlative refinement, the drama should rather be upon the decline than otherwise in regard to the talent of the performers, but it appears to me that such is really the case both in England and France. I can just remember when Mrs. Siddons, John Kemble, Charles Kemble, Young, Mrs. Jordan, Irish Johnson, Munden, Emery, etc. so well sustained the character of the English stage. Alas! shall I ever see the like again? Theatrical representations in France have had a similar decline, although _two_ stars there are who uphold her histrionic fame with superior _éclat_, Mlle. Rachel for tragedy, and Bouffé for comedy; it would be useless for me to attempt any description of the powers of the former, as she is as well known in London as in Paris, but with the latter my readers I believe are only partially acquainted; he has been in London, but I rather think only made but a short stay, certainly a more perfect representation of French nature it would be impossible to imagine; even although he undertake ever so opposite a description of character, the simple truth would be given in them all; he has not recourse to grimace or buffoonery, or any exaggerated action, but seems not to remember he is counterfeiting a part, but appears to make the case his own, and not to have another thought than that which must be supposed to occupy the mind of the individual he is personifying. Pleased with Bouffé to our heart's full content, we look around amongst all the range of actors to find some approach to his inimitable talent, not being so unreasonable as to hope to discover his equal, but our search ends in disappointment, we seek in vain for the representatives of Perlet, Odry, Laporte, and Potier, to whose comic powers we are indebted for many a laughing hour, but they are now replaced, as well as many other of our old acquaintances, by substitutes who are but sorry apologies for those we have lost; however, although the French theatre has certainly retrograded in respect to its dramatics personæ, it has gained surprisingly with regard to scenery, decorations, and costumes, which very considerably enhance the interest of a theatrical performance, particularly when it is historical, and it is a satisfaction to know that no pains are spared to render the drapery as exact as possible to that worn at the period the piece is intended to represent; thus you have the most accurate peep into olden times that can possibly be afforded, and Paris offers such extreme facilities for ascertaining what description of dress was adopted at any particular age, by means of their immense collection of engravings, and written descriptions, contained in their old books, and manuscripts, which are freely produced to any individual on making the proper application. Of these advantages the managers of the theatres avail themselves to the utmost extent, which enables them to be extremely correct, not only with regard to the habiliments, but also the scenery, and all the _accessoires_ are rendered strictly in keeping with the century in which the events recorded have occurred. The Italian Opera in Paris is considered to be managed with great perfection, the company is much the same with regard to the principal singers as our own, consisting of Grisi, Persiani, Albertazzi, Lablache, Tamburini, Rubini, Mario, etc., as they can be obtained, according to their engagements in London or elsewhere, and the operas performed are also similar, therefore any description of either would be superfluous; altogether, the enjoyment afforded is not so great as at our own, as no ballet is given, and the coup-d'oeil is not so splendid as in ours. The Theatre de la Renaissance is devoted to the performance of the Italian Opera, it is situated in the middle of a small square, opposite the Rue Méhul, which turns out of the Rue Neuve des Petits Champs, from which it is seen to the best advantage; the façade has a handsome appearance, with the statues of Apollo and the nine Muses, supported by doric and ionic columns. The prices of the places are from ten francs to two francs, which last is the amphitheatre; the intermediate charges are seven francs ten sous, six francs, five, four and three francs ten sous the pit, and it is capable of containing 2,000 persons. The performance begins at eight. The French Opera, or Académie Royale de Musique, in the Rue Pelletier, near the Boulevard des Italiens, has nothing very striking in its external appearance, but the arrangements and decorations of the interior are certainly extremely handsome, and everything is conducted on a most superior scale; the scenery and costumes are here in perfection, the arrangements and accommodations for seats are excellent. The great strength of the vocal performance consists in Duprez and Madame Dorus Gras, to whom I have before alluded, and whose reputation is too well established to need any comment. They are ably seconded by Levasseur, Madame Stolz who is well known in London, and the fine deep voice of Baroilhet, Boucher, Massol, and Mademoiselle Nau, possess a moderate share of talent, there are also others whose abilities are of minor force but sufficient to support the subordinate _rôles_. The orchestra and chorusses are extremely good and numerously composed, and on the whole it may be considered that they get up an opera in a very superior manner. The ballet at this theatre was formerly the greatest treat that could be imagined, derivable from performances of that nature, but at the present period the strength they possess in that department is by no means efficient. Carlotta Grisi stands alone as having with youth any degree of talent above mediocrity; the same can hardly be said of Mademoiselle Fitzjames, and Madame Dupont; Noblet is past that age which is indispensable in exciting interest as a dancer, notwithstanding she has still considerable ability, and there are not any others who are worth mentioning amongst the females. Of the men, when Petitpa is cited as having a grade more of ability than the rest, nothing more in the shape of praise can be added with respect to their present _corps de ballet_. This theatre is also capable of containing 2,000 persons, and the prices are from 2 francs 10 sous to 9 francs, the pit is 3 francs 12 sous, and there are as many as 20 different parts of the house cited with their respective charges. They sometimes begin at 7, more often 1/2 past, but never later. The Theatre of the Comic Opera is situated in the rue Marivaux, Boulevard des Italiens, and the façade with its noble columns has a very fine effect, which is fully equalled by the decorations of the interior. Chollet, still remains their principal singer; his voice is good, so is his knowledge of music, but he is now no longer young nor ever was handsome, but always a favourite with the public; he is supported by Roger who takes the _rôles_ of young lovers, by Grard who has a fine bass voice, and Mocker with a good tenor; amongst the females is our countrywoman Anna Thillon, who is exceedingly admired, and at present the great attraction, she is pretty, lively, or sentimental, as her part may require, her voice is pleasing and it may be said that she is quite a pet with the Parisians; she is an excellent actress, and appears at home in every part she undertakes. Mademoiselle Prevost has for many years sustained a certain reputation as one of the principal singers at this theatre, for my own part I always thought her rather heavy and a want of feeling and expression both in her acting and singing. Madame Rossi Caccia, although only just returned from Italy, belongs to the company, she has a most admirable voice and is a great acquisition to the theatre, at which, on the whole, the amusements are of the most delightful description. The prices are from 30 sous to 7 francs 10 sous. They begin at 7. The Théâtre-Français in the Rue Richelieu holds the first rank, for the drama, of any theatre in France, where Talma, Duchesnois, Mars and Georges have so often enchanted not only the French public, but persons of all nations who were assembled in Paris, and on these boards Mlle Rachel now displays her magic art; nor are the attractions of Mlle Plessis to be passed over unnoticed, but as she has lately been to London, my country people can form a better judgment of her than from any description I can give. Mlle Anaïs is an actress who has been and is still rather a favourite, although now not young. Mlle Mantes is a fine woman upon a large scale, plays well and has been many years on the stage, but never created any sensation; Mlle Maxime rather stands high in the public estimation; Mlle Noblet and Mme Guyon possess moderate talent acquit themselves well, and are much liked, generally speaking. At present Ligier is considered their best tragedian, but principally owes what fame he has, to their actors in that department being of so mediocre a description, some people prefer Beauvallet but not the majority, their abilities are very nearly of the same stamp. Guyon is a fine young man, and plays the parts of young heroes very fairly. Geffroy is another, possessing sufficient merit to escape condemnation. As comic actors they have Regnier who may be placed upon the moderate list; Samson is certainly much better, and in fact by no means destitute of talent, which may decidedly be also stated of Firmin; Provost is likewise a very passable actor. Comedy is indeed their fort, it is far more pure than ours; I remember making that remark to the celebrated John Kemble at the time he was residing at Toulouse, and adding that I considered our comic actors gave way too much to grimace and buffoonery. Kemble replied, "Don't blame the actors for that, it is owing to the bad taste of the audience, by whom it is always applauded, and a thoroughly chaste performance, without some caricature, would not stand the same chance of success." The prices at the Théâtre Français are from 1 fr. 5 sous varying up to 6 fr. 12 sous, according to that part of the house in which you choose your seat; they begin sometimes 1/4 before 7. The Theatre du Gymnase, on the Boulevart Bonne-Nouvelle, was once one of the most successful of any in Paris, but it does not sustain the high reputation it formerly possessed. Bouffé is now its principal support, and has indeed a most attractive power; there are also other actors of merit, as Klein, Numa, Tisserant, and Volnys, who sustain their respective parts extremely well; but when performing with such a star as Bouffé, their minor talents are eclipsed, and little noticed. Mad. Volnys (formerly Leontine Fay) still retains that high reputation which she has so long and so justly merited, she ever was a most charming and natural actress. Mesdames Julienne, Habeneck and Nathalie are all rather above mediocrity, so that this theatre still affords the dramatic amateur much rational enjoyment. They commence at 6, and the prices range from 1 fr. 5 sous, to 5 fr. The Théâtre des Variétés always has been and is still a great favourite, where they play vaudevilles, a sort of light comedy, which are generally highly amusing; they have always contrived to have actors at this theatre who were sure to draw full houses, and that is the case at present. Lafont is an excellent actor and a very fine looking man, he has performed in London; Lepeintre yields to few men for the very general estimation in which his talents are held; Levassor is a man of very gentlemanly appearance, not at all wanting in assurance, and always at his ease in every _rôle_ he is destined to fill. For females they have Mesdames Flore, Bressant, Boisgontier, Esther and Eugenie Sauvage, the first rather too much inclined to embonpoint, but playing her part none the worse for that, the last an actress of great merit, whilst the others act so well that one would wonder what they wanted with so many; besides which they have several others who are above mediocrity, and a few hours may be passed any evening most agreeably at this theatre. The performances commence at 7, the prices are the same as at the Gymnase with regard to the minimum and maximum, but having altogether nineteen different intermediate specifications. The Theatre du Palais-Royal, forming the corner of the Rues Montpensier and Beaujolais, and having an entrance in the Palais-Royal, is one of the most successful in Paris, and one of the very few which have proved good speculations, and they continue to have such excellent actors as cannot fail to attract. A. Tousez has much ability and is very comic, M. and Mad. Lemesnil, M. and Mad. Ravel are very clever in their respective parts, Sainville is not less so; then amongst their first rate actresses they have Dejazet, who has been highly appreciated in London, Mlle Pernon, young, talented, and pretty, and Mlle Fargueil, handsome, and though youthful, already an excellent actress. The pit is only 1 fr. 5 sous, from which it rises to 5 fr. for the best seats. They begin at half-past six. The Vaudeville Theatre is facing the Exchange in the Place de la Bourse, and retains a very good share of the patronage of the public; their performances are, for the most part, very good, and the pieces which are mostly played, are such as the name of the theatre indicates. Félix and Lepeintre jeune are much liked, Bardou is an excellent actor, Arnal a famous low comedian, M. and Mad. Taigny possessing very fair talent, and are called the pretty couple. Mesdames Doche and Thénard not without merit, and on the whole their corps dramatic is much above mediocrity. Their light, comic, and amusing little pieces are well calculated to chase away a heavy hour. They commence at a quarter past seven, and the prices are much the same as at the Variété. To the Porte St. Martin I have already alluded, situated on the Boulevart of the same name, although they often give very interesting pieces as melodramas, light comedies, etc., and always had some very good actors, yet it has seldom had the success to which the exertions of the proprietors were entitled. After a total failure the theatre has been re-opened, and amongst the actors there are some of known talent; Frederick Lemaitre may be considered their brightest star, once so celebrated in the rôle of Robert Macaire, Clarence, Raucour, Bocage, and Melingue sustain their parts very fairly, and the same may be said of Mesdames Klotz and Fitzjames, who are more than passable actresses. The pieces begin as low as twelve sous, and rise to six francs. The performances commence at seven. The Ambigu Comique is a theatre situated on the Boulevart St. Martin, and also for melodramas and vaudevilles; it has not been much more fortunate than its neighbour the Theatre Porte St. Martin, and the representations are very similar at both. St. Ernest, as an actor, and Madame Boutin, as an actress, appear to be the favourites amongst rather a numerous company, of which some are far from being indifferent performers. The prices are very modest, commencing at only ten sous, and elevating to four francs; it begins at seven. The Gaieté, on the Boulevart du Temple, is another theatre of much the same description; at present, however, the company is considered to be very good: the strength consisting of Neuville, the brothers Francisque and Deshays, and of the females, Madame Gautier, Clarisse, Leontine, Abit, and Melanie are considered the best. Some pieces have come out at this theatre that have had a great run. The prices begin at eight sous and rise to five francs. They also commence at seven. The Theatre des Folies Dramatiques is likewise on the Boulevart du Temple, and varies very slightly from the last, except being one grade inferior, and the prices in proportion, commencing at six sous, and not mounting higher than two francs five sous, and yet the performances are often not by any means contemptible. They begin at half-past six. M. Comte has a theatre in the Passage Choiseul where children perform, which may be considered as a sort of nursery for the theatres in general; but what afford the most amusement are his extraordinary feats of legerdemain, which are certainly wonderfully clever. The prices are from about one franc to five francs. Although I have left it to the last, I must not entirely omit to mention the Odéon theatre, to which I have already adverted; little can be judged from it at present, having only just re-opened. Mlle. George is endeavouring, in the eve of her days, to afford it the support of her now declining powers; she is however ably sustained by Achard. Vernet also is a good actor, and they have others who are by no means deficient. It begins at 7, and the prices are from 1 franc to 5. In addition to those I have already stated, there are about a dozen more theatres, inducting such as are just outside the Barriers, and although theatrical speculations have generally been very unfortunate recently, yet it does not appear to arise so much from the want of audiences, but from paying the great performers too highly, and having too many of all descriptions. There are besides several public concerts, of which the one styled Muzard's, in the Rue Neuve-Vivienne, is the best; the price of entrance to most of them is 1 franc. Several public balls are constantly going forward in gardens during the summer, and in large saloons in the winter; they are mostly attended by the lower order of tradespeople, or by females of indifferent character, except in the Carnival, and then more respectable characters go to the masked balls at the theatres which are the most expensive; the ladies however only as spectators, generally speaking, but their attractions are too irresistible to many, for them to suffer the season to pass over without once joining the gay throng, particularly to some who have a great delight in mystifying a friend or acquaintance, and telling them a few home truths under the protecting shield of a mask, having opportunities of so doing at the public balls without fear of being recognised; whereas concealment at private masquerades can seldom be preserved to the last. It is most usual for ladies who visit the theatres to see the masked balls only to remain in a box with their party, and from thence to view the motley group; there are however some females even of rank who cannot resist the charm of going entirely incognito, to puzzle and perplex different persons whom they know will be there, only confiding to one or two dearest friends their little enterprise, to whom they recount the adventures of the evening. All strangers sojourning at Paris are generally directed to devote their earliest attention to the Gallery of Pictures at the Louvre, and I had intended to have bestowed much space to that object, but I find such excellent works published on that subject at only one or two francs, that I would recommend my readers to furnish themselves with one and take it with them to the Louvre when they go there; they can procure them of M. Amyot, No. 6, Rue de la Paix, where they will also find almost every publication they are likely to require, and will meet with the utmost civility and attention. There are continually changes taking place in the arrangements of the pictures, consequently it would be impossible to give any correct numerical indications. The works of Rubens are particularly numerous, but I should not say they were the _chefs d'oeuvre_ of that great artist, the women are so fat and totally devoid of grace; I have seen several of his pictures in the great Collection at Vienna which I like much better. The Louvre may be also considered rich in the works of Titian, some fine subjects by Guido, Murillo, Correggio, and Paul Veronese, of which the Marriage in Cana is supposed to be the largest detached picture in the world; and many of the figures are portraits, as of Francis I, Mary of England, etc., who were contemporaries with the artist; in fact there are some paintings of almost every celebrated Italian and Spanish master. The Dutch and Flemish school is extremely rich, particularly in Vandycks, but as might be expected specimens of the French school are the most numerous, the principal gems of which are by Claude Lorraine, Poussin, and Le Brun, infinitely superior to the productions of the present day. There are besides many pictures by French artists of the time of David, Gérard, Gros, etc., which I consider generally inferior to some of those of their best painters now living. There are several private collections that are well worth the attention of the visiter; amongst the number is that of Marshal Soult, consisting of some of the most exquisite Murillos, I should decidedly say the happiest efforts of his pencil, but I believe since I saw them he has sold some of the best to an English nobleman. The gallery of M. Aguado (Marquis de Las Marismas), contains undoubtedly some very fine subjects of the Spanish school, and others that have considerable merit, but out of the great number of paintings which are assembled together the portion of copies is by no means small; still there is sufficient of that which is very good to afford great pleasure to the amateur. The residence of the Marquis was in the Rue Grange-Batelière, and it is to be presumed that, notwithstanding his decease, the establishment will be kept up as before. The collection of the Marquis de Pastoret, in the Place de la Concorde, is well worth visiting if you have a good pair of legs and lungs, for I believe you have upwards of a hundred steps and stairs to mount; but an ample reward will be afforded in viewing some very clever small cabinet paintings by celebrated Italian, French and Flemish masters. The Baron d'Espagnac has at his hôtel in the Rue d'Aguesseau a selection of paintings which may be considered one of the most _recherchée_ in Paris; a landscape by Dominichino is quite a gem, and he has scarcely a painting in his numerous collection but must be admired; his copy of the Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci is perhaps the best that has ever been executed, and affords a most exact idea of the original, which is now, alas! nearly if not entirely defaced. To see these, as well as many other very excellent private collections, it is merely necessary to write to the owner and the request is immediately granted. Mr. Rickets, an English gentleman living at No. 9, Rue Royale, has about 400 pictures, amongst which are some of considerable merit and particularly interesting, either for the execution, the subjects, or certain associations connected with them; this selection presents a singular variety of styles, wherein may be recognised all the most celebrated schools; some of the smaller pictures are executed with the most exquisite delicacy and require long examination to form an adequate appreciation of their merit. This collection is only accessible through the medium of an introduction. As many purchasers of pictures often want them cleaned and restored, I would recommend them to a countryman for that purpose, M. Penley, No. 11, Rue Romford, whose efforts I have seen effect a complete resuscitation upon a dingy and almost incomprehensible subject. CHAPTER XIV. The concluding Chapter; application of capital, information for travellers, prices of provisions. One of the first measures to be adopted on arriving in France, is to acquire the knowledge of the value of the coin, which is indeed rather intricate; first a sou, or what we should call a halfpenny, is four liards or five centimes; then there are two sou pieces, which resemble our penny pieces; there is likewise a little dingy looking copper coin, with an N upon one side and 10 centimes on the other, that is also two sous; they once had a little silver wash upon them, but it has now disappeared. Next there is a little piece which looks like a bad farthing, rather whitish from the silver not being quite worn away, which passes for a sou and a half or six liards. We then rise to a quarter franc, or 5 sous, which is a very neat little silver coin; next the half franc, then a fifteen sous piece, which is copper washed over with silver, with a head of Louis on one side and a figure on the other; double the size but exactly similar is the 30 sous piece; the franc is 20 sous, the two francs 40 sous, both of which are neat silver coin, as also the 5 francs piece. The gold circulation consists in ten, twenty, and forty franc pieces. There are no notes in Paris for less than 500 francs, which are of the Bank of France; the visiter on arriving in Paris will require to change his English money, and there are many money changers; I have had transactions with most of them, but have found Madame Emerique, of No. 32, Palais-Royal, Galerie Montpensier, (there is an entrance also Rue Montpensier, No. 22,) the most liberal and just of any, and I am quite certain that any stranger might go there with a total ignorance of the value of the money he presented, and would receive the full amount according to the state of exchange at the time. Much credit is due to Madame Emerique from our country-people with regard to her conduct respecting stolen Bank of England notes; she takes great pains to obtain a list of such as are stolen, that she may not be unconsciously accessary in aiding the success of crime, by giving the value for that which had been obtained by theft, and adopts every means that the presenters should be detained; if all the money changers were as particular in that respect, thieves would derive no benefit in coming over to France with their stolen notes. The office of Madame Emerique has been the longest established of any, and the high respectability of her family and connexions are a certain guarantee for the foreigner against being imposed upon. The number of hôtels in Paris is immense; as I always frequent the same which I have known for nearly 20 years, of course I can recommend it, both as regards the extreme respectability of the persons by whom it is kept and the moderation of the charges; it is situated at No. 71, Rue Richelieu, and is called the Hôtel de Valois, Baths abound in Paris, but the Bains Chinois, Boulevart des Italiens, are of the oldest date, and have been visited by the most illustrious persons. Amongst the rest, the proprietor declares that William the Fourth attended them at the time he was sojourning incognito at Paris. Amongst the numerous list of Bankers, those which are most frequented by the English are Madame Luc Callaghan and Son, No. 40, Rue de la Ferme-des-Mathurins; Monsieur le Baron Rothschild, Rue Laffitte, and Messrs. Laffitte, Blount and Comp., No. 52, Rue Basse-du-Rempart. Amongst the multitude of interesting spots which surround Paris, Versailles is pre-eminent, not only for the grandeur of the palace, the beauty of the gardens, etc., but it has now received so many objects of art, and its collection of pictures is so immense, that it may be considered the Museum of France; but there are so many works written upon it, and its description must be so voluminous to render it any justice, that I must content myself with referring my readers to those publications which have already appeared on the subject. St. Cloud, St. Germains, St. Denis and Fontainebleau are too remarkable to be lightly touched, particularly the two latter, upon which there are publications giving the most ample details of all which they contain that is interesting; those works therefore I must also recommend for the visiter's perusal. Before I bid adieu to my readers, I must not omit to mention an institution formed in Paris, which does honour to the English character; it is entitled the British Charitable Fund, and was founded in 1822, under the patronage of the British Ambassador, and is entirely supported by voluntary contributions, for the purpose of relieving old and distressed British subjects, or of sending them to their native country; suffice it to say, that there have been within the last ten years 11,500 persons relieved, and 2,571 sent to Great Britain. There are quite a host of steam-boat establishments, having their agents and offices in Paris, but that for which the agency has been confided to M. Chauteauneuf, No. 8, Boulevart Montmartre, embraces so wide a field that I consider in recommending my readers to him, I afford them the opportunity of obtaining all the information they can require upon the subject; the Company could not have selected any one more capable of fulfilling the duties of such an office, as besides his extreme civility and attention to all applicants, he speaks many different languages, as French, English, Spanish, Italian, etc. The boats for which he is agent proceed from Dunkirk to St. Petersburg, touching direct at Copenhagen, and privileged by the Emperor of Russia; the passage is effected in 6 or 7 days. Dunkirk to Hamburg in 36 or 40 hours, corresponding with all the steamers on the Baltic and the Elbe. Dunkirk to Rotterdam in 10 or 12 hours, communicating with all the navigation upon the Rhine. Boulogne to London by the Commercial Steam Company. Antwerp to New York, touching at Southampton; Marseilles to Nice, Genoa, Leghorn, Civita Vecchia, Naples, Sicily, Malta and the Levant, by the steamers of the Neapolitan Company. The above vessels are fitted up in the most efficient and solid manner, with English machinery. At Lyons there is a corresponding office for the navigation of the interior, held by Messrs. Jackson, Dufour, and Comp., No. 7, Quai St. Clair. M. Chateauneuf is very obliging in explaining all the details of the different tarifs of the custom duties of the various countries with which the steamers communicate. A very great convenience exists in Paris, which I think much wanted in London, and that is what are termed Cabinets de Lecture, where you may read all the principal papers and periodical pamphlets for the small expense of 3 sous; some are higher, where English newspapers are taken, when the price is five sous; they are mostly circulating libraries at the same time. But those who wish to see all or the greater part of the London and some provincial and foreign papers, will find them at Galignani's, and at an English reading room established in the Rue Neuve St. Augustin, No. 55, near the Rue de la Paix; at both these establishments the admittance is ten sous. The only English newspaper at present published in Paris is by Galignani, which contains extracts judiciously selected from the French and English papers, besides other useful information. The investment of capital in land in France will rarely produce more than 31/2 per cent and very frequently less; in the purchase of houses in Paris 5 or 51/2, sometimes 6, is obtained; in the funds about 41/2. Numbers of persons in France place their money on _hypothèque_, or mortgage, by which they make 5 per cent; the affair is arranged by means of a _notaire_, but often the most lucrative manner of placing money is what is called _en commandite_, that is, they invest a fixed sum in different descriptions of business, from which they receive a certain share, not appearing in the concern otherwise than having deposited a stated amount of money in it, for which alone, in case of bankruptcy, they are liable. A considerable portion of the French lend their money to different tradespeople, getting the best security they can, sometimes merely personal; 6 per cent is the regular interest that is given, and it is a very rare case that the capital is lost, as the lender takes great precautions in ascertaining the exact state of the borrower's affairs. Although rents are so immensely high in the centre of Paris, one house, No. 104, Rue Richelieu, letting for 120,000 francs, (4,800_l._) a year, yet as you diverge in any direction towards the walls of the city a house may be had for much less under the same circumstances than in London, and just outside a substantial dwelling of eight or ten rooms, with an acre of garden beautifully laid out, will only be 40_l._, a year. Some of the villages round Paris are very agreeably situated, but are dreadfully cut up by the fortifications, particularly the favourite spot of the Parisians, the Bois de Boulogne, where many families amongst the tradespeople go and pass their whole Sunday under the trees; and the innumerable rides and walks through the wood, and its very picturesque appearance tempt all ranks at all hours of the day; part of it remains unspoiled by the walls and forts constructing for the defence of Paris, but it was much to be regretted that any portion should have been destroyed for an object, the utility of which still seems an enigma. As prices of provisions are so constantly varying that I determined to leave them entirely to the last, that I might be enabled to give the latest information respecting them; in most instances they are much dearer than they were a few years since, particularly meat, which now may be quoted on an average of 8_d._ a pound, and veal, if the choice parts be selected, 1_d._ or even 2_d._ more at some seasons, but joints where there is much proportion of bone may be had for 7_d._; best wheaten bread is at present 13/4d., a pound; butter, best quality, _s._ 6_d._; cheese 10_d._ Poultry is much higher than formerly; a fine fowl 3_s._ a duck, 2_s._; a goose 4_s._; a turkey 6_s._ and much dearer at some periods of the year; pigeons' eggs 81/2_d._ each; a hare 4_s._; a rabbit 1_s._ 6_d._ Vegetables are generally pretty cheap, potatoes hardly 1/2_d._ a pound, cauliflowers, brocoli, and asparagus at a much less price than in London; the finer sorts of fruits, as peaches, nectarines, apricots, greengages, grapes, etc., are very reasonable, but on the whole Paris is very little cheaper than London; the principal difference is in the wine, which is to be had at all prices from 5_d._ to 5_s._ a bottle, but by arranging with the Maison Meunier, 22, Rue des Saints-Pères, the house I have recommended, by taking a certain quantity, very good Bordeaux may be had, which will only come to about 1_s._ 6_d._ a bottle. Fuel is the dearest article in Paris; coals, of which there is not much consumption, are considerably higher than in London, but yet much cheaper than burning wood. In the best part of Paris a well furnished sitting and bed room is 4_l._ a month; in other parts only half the price. Brandy and liqueurs are much cheaper than in England; beer from 2_d._ to 4_d._ a bottle, but taking a cask it comes cheaper. Best white sugar 10_d._ Tea from 4_s._ upwards, coffee 2_s._ to 3_s._ It must be remembered that the pound weight in France has two ounces more than in England. There is one peculiarity the stranger should remark in Paris which will much assist him in finding a house he may be seeking; the even numbers are always on one side of a street and the odd on the other and in all the streets running south and north the numbers commence from the Seine, so that the farther you get from the river the higher the figure amounts; and, as you proceed from that source the even numbers will be found on the right side and the uneven on the left. Those streets which run east and west commence their numbers from the Hôtel-de-Ville, or Town-Hall, the even numbers also being on the right hand side and uneven on the opposite. * * * * * Aware that my countrymen are ever amateurs of engravings, lithographies, etc., I must repair the omission of having forgotten to mention Mr. Sinnett, the only English publisher of engravings living in Paris, and as he has an enthusiastic passion for the arts, accompanied by the most correct judgment, the selection of his subjects are such as cannot fail to gratify every person of taste; he also acts as an agent both for the Paris and London print-sellers, and by the arrangements into which he has entered, is enabled to furnish individuals with engravings of both countries on the most advantageous terms, foregoing those charges which it is customary to impose under similar circumstances. The English have it, therefore, in their power to procure from Mr. Sinnett any print, whether published in England or France, at a lower price than in any other house in Paris. His address is No. 15, grande rue Verte, faubourg Saint-Honoré. THE END. INDEX. Pages. Abattoir 215 Academic royale 207 Actors et actresses 396 to 404 Agriculture 37 Arago 186, 391 Archives 237 Arches, triumphal 42, 270 Armour 216 Army 353 Arsenal 225 Artificial flowers 326 Artists 334 Athenæum 359 Auber 369 Authors 360 Balls 405 Bank 257 Bankers 411 Barriers 45 Barrot. Odilon 390 Bears 177 Béranger 361 Berryer 391 Bièvre 182 Boarding house 279 Boarding-schools 348 Bonnets 332 Boots 289 Bouffé 107 Boulevart 100 Boulogne 26 Bourse 259 Breakfasts 137 Bronze 341 Cabriolets 379 Café Hardy 405 Calais 24 Canes 319 Caps 332 Carnival 405 Carriages 379 Catacombs 186 Cavalry 352 Cercles 136 Chamber of Deputies 220 Chamber of Peers 201 Champs-Élysées 42, 278 Champ de Mars 216 Chapelle Beaujon 275 -- Episcopal 276 -- Expiatoire 276 -- Marboeuf 278 -- Sainte 171 Chateaubriand 366 China 301 Churches, Abbaye-aux-Bois 214 -- L'Assomption 96, 369 -- La Madeleine 400 -- Notre-Dame 69, 472 -- des Blancs-Manteaux 236 -- des Victoires or des Petits-Pères 257 -- de Loretto 259 -- Saint-Ambroise 232 -- Saint-Denis 235 -- Sainte-Elisabeth 246 -- Saint-Etienne-du Mont 190 -- Saint-Eustache 254 -- Saint-François-d'Assises 237 -- Saint-François-Xavier 217 -- St.-Germ.-l'Auxerrois 61, 237 -- St-Germain-des-Prés 61, 205 -- Saint-Gervais 239 -- St-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas 189 -- Saint-Laurent 248 -- Saint-Leo-et-Saint-Gilles 251 -- Saint-Louis en I'lle 174 -- Ste. Marguerite 228 -- St. Medard 184 -- St. Merry 88, 242 -- St. Nicholas-des-Champs 242 -- St. Nicholas-du-Chardonnet 193 -- St. Paul et St. Louis 238 -- St. Philippe-du-Roule 275 -- St. Pierre-de-Chaillot 279 -- St. Pierre-du-Gros-Caillou 218 -- St. Roch 97, 273 -- St. Severin 195 -- St. Sulpice, 203 -- St. Thomas-d'Aquin, 210 -- St. Vincent-de-Paul, 258 -- Luthérien, 239 -- Oratoire, 266 -- Sorbonne, 196 -- Val-de-Grâce, 184 -- Visitation, 226 Clothes, 287 Coiffeur, 317 Coffee-houses, 137 Collections of pictures, 407 Colleges, Bourbon, 276 -- Charlemagne, 233 -- Henry IV, 191 -- De France, 192 -- Louis-le-Grand, 191 -- St. Louis, 198 -- Irish, 190 -- Scotch, 190 -- Sorbonne, 196 Colours, 300 Columns, 43, 103, 226 Conservatory of Arts et Trades, 243 -- of music, 258 Convents of Benedictines, 245 -- Carmelites, 202 -- English Augustines, 190 -- Dames de St. Thomas, 214 -- Lazarists, 214 -- Noviciat religieuses Hospitalières, 214 -- Sâcré-Coeur, 212 Copying machine, 386 Crockery, 293 Custom-House, 380 Cutlery, 201 Diligences, 378 Dinners, 105 Dress, 123 Dressing-cases, 302 Dyeing et cleansing, 304 Earthen-ware, 293 École militaire, 215 Economy, 286 Education, 124 Elysée-Bourbon, 274 Engravings, 417 Fancy Stationary, 294 Fashions, 324 Fiacres, 379 Flowers, 102 _Principal Fountains._ Fountain, Boulevart-St. Martin, 109 -- des Champs-Elysées, 42, 278 -- du Châtelet, 252 -- Cuvier, 182 -- de Grenelle, 211 -- du marché des Innocents, 253 -- de la place de la Concorde, 43 -- de la Place Richelieu, 260 Funerals, 384 Garde-Meuble, 43, 258 Gardens, des Plantes, 175 -- Luxembourg, 200 -- Tuileries, 272 George-Mademoiselle, 404 Glass, 301 Gloves, 330 Gobelin tapestry, 132 Guizot, 364, 387 Guns, 312 Haberdashery, 322 Hats, 288 Homeopathie, 280 Horsemanship, 138 _Principal Hospitals._ D'Accouchement, 185 Blind, 227 ----- Children, 194 Deaf and Dumb, 188 Hôtel-Dieu, 174 Incurables (men), 248 ---------- (women), 214 Invalids, 216 Orphan, 188 De la Pitié, 181 Salpêtrière, 181 St. Louis, 247 Sick children, 214 Val-de-Grâce, 184 Hôtels de Cluny, 197 -- de Carnavalet, 234 -- des Invalides, 210 -- de la Monnaie, 206 -- de Soubise, 238 -- de Sully, 233 -- de Valois, 411 -- de Ville, 240 Institut, 207 Infantry, 352 Lamartine, 361 Lace, 329 _Principal public Libraries._ Arsenal, 225 Hôtel-de-Ville, 240 Mazarine, 207 Royal, 260 Sainte-Geneviève, 191 Linen drapery, 325 Liqueurs, 283 Literature, 360 Lithographies, 310 Lodgings, 416 Louis-Philippe, 32, 101, 358 Louvre, 89, 267, 406 Luxembourg, 98, 200 Mails, 378 Maps et plans in relief, 311 Marriage, 128, 383 _Principal Markets._ -- Corn, or Halle an Blé, 255 -- Flowers, 171 -- Innocents, 353 -- St. Germain, 204 -- St. Honoré, 273 -- St. Laurent, 248 -- St. Martin, 245 Meat, 286 Medicines, 292 Middle classes, 123, 135 Ministers, 302 Mint, 200 Mirrors (manufacture of), 228 Money-changers, 410 Modes, 324 Mont-de-Piété, 236 Morgue, 172 Music, 368 Musical snuff-boxes, 302 National guards, 354 Navy, 355 Needles, 321 Newspapers, 414 Observatory, 185 Palais-royal, 263 -- de-Justice, 170 -- de la Legion-d'Honneur, 221 -- du Quai d'Orsay, 222 -- des Beaux-Arts, 208 Pantheon, 189 Passports, 381 Pens, 290 Pencil-cases, 305 Père La Chaise, 229 Perfumery, 320 Phosphorus matches et boxes, 297 Piano-fortes, 314 Plate-glass manufacture, 250 Polytechnic, 192 Post-office, 380 Press, English, 354 Press, French, 355, 385 Printing establishment, royal, 237 Prints, 417 _Principal Prisons._ -- Abbaye, 205 -- Conciergerie, 171 -- Debtors, 277 -- La Force, 234 -- Jeunes Détenus, 231 -- De la Roquette, 231 -- Saint-Lazare, 249 -- Sainte-Pélagie, 181 Purses, 376 Rachel, 394 Reading-rooms, 413 Religion, 309 Restaurateurs, 105 Rents, 119 Riding-school, 140 Rouen, 22 Seal engraver, 306 _Principal Seminaries._ -- Foreign Missionaries, 211 -- St. Nicolas Chardonnet, 194 -- St. Sulpice, 204 Shirts, 316 Silk mercery and fancy goods, 343 Sisters of Charity, 188, 243 School of Medicine, 199 -- Drawing, 199 -- Mines, 200 -- Pharmacy, 134 -- Ponts et Chaussées, 212 Shoes, ladies, 328 -- gentlemen, 289 Societies, scientific, 359 Soult, 392 Stays, 157 Steam, boats, 412 Surgical instruments, 307 Tailors, 287, 319 Temple, 245 _Principal Theatres._ -- Italian Opera, 397 -- French Opera 398 -- Comique Opera, 399 -- Theatre Français, 400 -- Gymnase, 401 -- Variétés, 401 -- Vaudeville, 402 -- Palais Royal, 143 -- Porte St. Martin, 405 -- Ambigu Comique, 405 -- La Gaîté, 404 -- Cirque Olympique, 110 -- Fulies Dramatiques, 404 -- Odéon, 404 Thiers, 388 Timepieces, 315 Tuileries, 270 Umbrellas et parasols, 319 Whips, 319 Wine, 283 
18080	----	from page images generously made available by Bibliothèque nationale de France (http://gallica.bnf.fr/) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 18080-h.htm or 18080-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/8/0/8/18080/18080-h/18080-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/8/0/8/18080/18080-h.zip) NORMANDY PICTURESQUE. by HENRY BLACKBURN, Author of 'Travelling in Spain,' 'The Pyrenees,' 'Artists and Arabs,' Etc. Travelling Edition. With Appendix of Routes and List of Watering-Places. [Illustration: JOAN OF ARC'S HOUSE AT ROUEN] [Illustration: Map] London: Sampson Low, Son, & Marston, Crown Buildings, Fleet Street. 1870. London: Printed by William Clowes and Sons, Stamford Street & Charing Cross. PREFACE TO "_TRAVELLING EDITION._" In issuing the Travelling Edition of "Normandy Picturesque," the publishers deem it right to state that the body of the work is identical with the Christmas Edition; but that the APPENDIX contains additional information for the use of travellers, some of which is not to be found in any Guide, or Handbook, to France. The descriptions of places and buildings in Normandy call for little or no alteration in the present edition, excepting in the case of one town, concerning which the Author makes the following note:-- "The traveller who may arrive at Pont Audemer this year, with '_Normandy Picturesque_' in his hand, will find matters strangely altered since these notes were written; he will find that a railway has been driven into the middle of the town, that many old houses have disappeared, that the inhabitants have left off their white caps, and have given up their hearts to modern ways. "Such changes have come rapidly upon Pont Audemer, but we must not, in consequence, alter our description of it; for the old houses and the old customs are dear memories, and the more worth recording because the reality has faded before our eyes." _London, May, 1870._ CONTENTS. PAGE CHAP. I.--ON THE WING 1 " II.--PONT AUDEMER 13 " III.--LISIEUX 35 " IV.--CAEN--DIVES 51 " V.--BAYEUX 83 " VI.--ST. LO--COUTANCES--GRANVILLE 109 " VII.--AVRANCHES--MONT ST. MICHAEL 135 " VIII.--VIRE--MORTAIN--FALAISE 162 " IX.--ROUEN 185 " X.--THE VALLEY OF THE SEINE 217 " XI.--ARCHITECTURE AND COSTUME 243 " XII.--THE WATERING PLACES OF NORMANDY 265 APPENDIX 283 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. JOAN OF ARC'S HOUSE AT ROUEN _By_ S. PROUT. _Frontispiece_. CHAP. PAGE II.--Market-place at Pont Audemer S. P. HALL (_From a sketch by A. E. Browne._) 14 " A Sketch at Pont Audemer M. TIBIALONG 18 " Old Houses at Pont Audemer A. E. BROWNE 29 III.--Wood-carving at Lisieux A. E. BROWNE 40 IV.--Church of St. Pierre, Caen M. CLERGET 54 " A Sketch, at Caen M. TIBIALONG 64 " Old Woman of Caen M. TIRARD 69 V.--Bayeux Cathedral H. BLACKBURN 83 " Corner of House at Bayeux A. E. BROWNE 86 " Ancient Tablet in Cathedral H. BLACKBURN 90 " Facsimile of Bayeux Tapestry A. SEVERN 103 VI.--A Sketch, at Cherbourg M. TIBIALONG 110 " Exterior Pulpit at St. Lo _From a Photograph_ 116 " A 'Toiler of the Sea' S. P. HALL 132 " Mont St. Michael H. BLACKBURN 135 VII.--Church near Avranches H. BLACKBURN 144 " Ancient Cross H. BLACKBURN 147 VIII.--Clock Tower at Vire H. BLACKBURN 171 IX.--Rouen Cathedral M. CLERGET 194 X.--Market-women--Lower Normandy S. P. HALL (_From a sketch by A. E. Browne._) 217 XI.--Modern houses at Houlgate H. BLACKBURN 253 " 'The Wrestlers' GUSTAVE DORÉ 257 NORMANDY PICTURESQUE. CHAPTER I. _ON THE WING._ It is, perhaps, rather a subject for reproach to English people that the swallows and butterflies of our social system are too apt to forsake their native woods and glens in the summer months, and to fly to 'the Continent' for recreation and change of scene; whilst poets tell us, with eloquent truth, that there is a music in the branches of England's trees, and a soft beauty in her landscape more soothing and gracious in their influence than 'aught in the world beside.' Whether it be wise or prudent, or even pleasant, to leave our island in the very height of its season, so to speak--at a time when it is most lovely, when the sweet fresh green of the meadows is changing to bloom of harvest and gold of autumn--for countries the features of which are harder, and the landscape, if bolder, certainly less beautiful, for a climate which, if more sunny, is certainly more bare and burnt up, and for skies which, if more blue, lack much of the poetry of cloud-land--we will not stay to enquire; but admitting the fact that, for various reasons, English people _will_ go abroad in the autumn, and that there is a fashion, we might almost say a passion, for 'flying, flying south,' which seems irresistible--we will endeavour in the following pages to suggest a compromise, in the shape of a tour which shall include the undoubted delight and charm of foreign travel, with scenery more like England than any other in Europe, which shall be within an easy distance from our shores, and within the limits of a short purse; and which should have one special attraction for us, viz., that the country to be seen and the people to be visited bear about them a certain English charm--the men a manliness, and the women a beauty with which we may be proud to claim kindred. We speak of the north-west corner of France, divided from us (and perhaps once not divided) by the British Channel--the district called NORMANDY (_Neustria_), and sometimes, 'nautical France,' which includes the Departments of _Calvados_, _Eure_, _Orne_, and part of _La Manche_. It comprises, as is well known, but a small part of France, and occupies an area of about one hundred and fifty miles by seventy-five, but in this small compass is comprehended so much that is interesting to English people that we shall find quite enough to see and to do within its limits alone. If the reader will turn to the little map on our title-page, he will see at a glance the position of the principal towns in Normandy, which we may take in the following order, making England (or London) our starting point:-- Crossing the Channel from Southampton to Havre by night, or from Newhaven to Dieppe by day, we proceed at once to the town of PONT AUDEMER, situated about six miles from Quillebeuf and eight from Honfleur, both on the left bank of the Seine. From Havre, Pont Audemer may be reached in a few hours, by water, and from Dieppe, Rouen or Paris there is now railway communication. From Pont Audemer we go to LISIEUX (by road or railway), from Lisieux to CAEN, BAYEUX and ST. LO, where the railway ends, and we take the diligence to COUTANCES, GRANVILLE, and AVRANCHES. After a visit to the island of Mont St. Michael, we may return (by diligence) by way of MORTAIN, VIRE, and FALAISE; thence to ROUEN, and by the valley of the Seine, to the sea-coast.[1] The whole journey is a short and inexpensive one, and may occupy a fortnight, a month, or three months (the latter is not too long), and may be made a simple _voyage de plaisir_, or turned to good account for artistic study. But there is one peculiarity about it that should be mentioned at the outset. The route we have indicated, simple as it seems, and most easily to be carried out as it would appear, is really rather difficult of accomplishment, for the one reason that the journey is almost always made on _cross-roads_. The traveller who follows it will continually find himself delayed because he is not going to Paris. 'Paris is France' under the Imperial régime, and at nearly every town or railway station he will be reminded of the fact; and, if he be not careful, will find himself and his baggage whisked off to the capital.[2] If he wishes to see Normandy, and to carry out the idea of a provincial tour in its integrity, he must resist temptation, _have nothing to do with Paris_, and put up with slow trains, creeping diligences, and second-rate inns. The network of roads and railways in France converge as surely to the capital as the threads of a spider's web lead to its centre, and in pursuing his route through the bye-ways of Normandy the traveller will be much in the position of the fly that has stepped upon its meshes--every road and railway leading to the capital where '_M. d'Araignée_' the enticing, the alluring, the fascinating, the most extravagant--is ever waiting for his prey. From the moment he sets foot on the shores of Normandy, Paris will be made ever present to him. Let him go, for example, to the railway station at any port on his arrival in France, and he will find everything--people, goods, and provisions, being hurried off to the capital as if there were no other place to live in, or to provide for. Let him (in pursuit of the journey we have suggested) tread cautiously on the _fil de fer_ at Lisieux, for he will pass over one of the main lines that connect the world of Fashion at Paris with another world of Fashion by the sea.[3] Let him, when at St. Lo, apply for a place in the diligence for Avranches, and he will be told by a polite official that nothing can be done until the mail train arrives from Paris; and let him not be surprised if, on his arrival at Avranches, his name be chronicled in the local papers as the latest arrival from the capital. Let him again, on his homeward journey, try and persuade the people of Mortain and Vire that he does _not_ intend to visit Paris, and he will be able to form some estimate of its importance in the eyes of the French people. We draw attention to this so pointedly at the outset, because it is altogether inconsistent and wide of our purpose in making a quiet, and we may add, economical, visit to Normandy, to do, as is the general custom with travellers--spend half their time and most of their money in Paris. Thus much in outline for the ordinary English traveller on a holiday ramble; but the artist or the architect need not go so far a-field. If we might make a suggestion to him, especially to the architect, we would say, take only the first four towns on our list (continuing the journey to Coutances, or returning by Rouen if there be opportunity), and he will find enough to last him a summer.[4] If he has never set foot in Normandy before we may promise him an æsthetic treat beyond his dreams. He will have his idols both of wood and stone--wood for dwelling, and stone for worship; at PONT AUDEMER, the simple domestic architecture of the middle ages, and at LISIEUX, the more ornate and luxurious; passing on to CAEN, he will have (in ecclesiastical architecture) the memorial churches of William the Conqueror, and, in the neighbouring city of BAYEUX (in one building), examples of the 'early,' as well as the more elaborate, gothic of the middle ages. If the architect, or art student, will but make this little pilgrimage in its integrity, if he will, like Christian, walk in faith--turning neither to the right hand nor to the left, and shunning the broad road which leads to destruction--he will be rewarded. There are two paths for the architect in Normandy, as elsewhere--paths which we may call the 'simple right' and the 'elaborate wrong,' and the right path is sometimes as difficult to follow as the path of virtue. But both artist and amateur will revel alike in the beauty of landscape, in the variety of form and colour of the old buildings, and in the costume of the people; and we cannot imagine a more pleasant and complete change from the heat and pressure of a London season than to drop down (suddenly, as it were, like a bird making a swoop in the air), into the midst of the quiet, primitive population of a town like Pont Audemer, not many miles removed from the English coast, but at least a thousand in the habits and customs of the people. An artist of any sensibility could scarcely do it, the shock would be too great, the delight too much to be borne; but the ordinary reader, who has prepared his mind to some extent by books of travel, or the tourist, who has come out simply for a holiday, may enjoy the change as he never enjoyed anything before. In the following pages we do not profess to describe each place on the route we have suggested, but rather to record a few notes, made at various times during a sojourn in Normandy; notes--not intended to be exhaustive, or even as complete and comprehensive in description, as ordinary books of travel, but which--written in the full enjoyment of summer time in this country, in sketching in the open air, and in the exploration of its mediæval towns--may perchance impart something of the author's enthusiasm to his unknown readers, when scattered upon the winds of a publisher's breeze. [Illustration] CHAPTER II. _PONT AUDEMER._ About one hundred and fifty miles in a direct line from the door of the Society of British Architects in Conduit Street, London (and almost unknown, we venture to say, to the majority of its members), sleeps the little town of PONT AUDEMER, with its quaint old gables, its tottering houses, its Gothic 'bits,' its projecting windows, carved oak galleries, and streets of time-worn buildings--centuries old. Old dwellings, old customs, old caps, old tanneries, set in a landscape of bright green hills.[5] 'Old as the hills,' and almost as unchanged in aspect, are the ways of the people of Pont Audemer, who dress and tan hides, and make merry as their fathers did before them. For several centuries they have devoted themselves to commerce and the arts of peace, and in the enthusiasm of their business have desecrated one or two churches into tanneries. But they are a conservative and primitive people, loving to do as their ancestors did, and to dwell where they dwelt; they build their houses to last for several generations, and take pride and interest in the 'family mansion,' a thing unknown and almost impossible amongst the middle classes of most communities. [Illustration: MARKET PLACE, PONT AUDEMER.] Pont Audemer was once warlike; it had its castle in feudal times (destroyed in the 14th century), and the legend exists that cannon was here first used in warfare. It has its history of wars in the time of the Norman dukes, but its aspect is now quiet and peaceful, and its people appear happy and contented; the little river Rille winds about it, and spreads its streamlets like branches through the streets, and sparkles in the evening light. Like Venice, it has its 'silent highways;' like Venice, also, on a smaller and humbler scale, it has its old façades and lintels drooping to the water's edge; like Venice, too, we must add, that it has its odours here and there--odours not always proceeding from the tanneries. In the chief place of the _arrondissement_, and in a rapidly increasing town, containing about six thousand inhabitants; with a reputation for healthiness and cheapness of living, and with a railway from Paris, we must naturally look for changes and modern ways; but Pont Audemer is still essentially old, and some of its inhabitants wear the caps, as in our illustration, which were sketched only yesterday in the market-place. If we take up our quarters at the old-fashioned inn called the _Pôt d'Étain_, we shall find much to remind us of the 15th century. If we take a walk by the beautiful banks of the Rille on a summer's evening, or in the fields where the peasants are at work, we shall find the aspect curiously English, and in the intonation of the voices the resemblance is sometimes startling; we seem hardly amongst foreigners--both in features and in voice there is a strong family likeness. There is a close tie of blood relationship no doubt, of ancient habits and natural tastes; but, in spite of railways and steamboats, the two peoples know very little of each other. That young girl with the plain white cap fitting close to her hair--who tends the flocks on the hill side, and puts all her power and energy into the little matter of knitting a stocking--is a Norman maiden, a lineal descendant, it may be, of some ancient house, whose arms we may find in our own heraldic albums. She is noble by nature, and has the advantage over her coroneted cousins in being permitted to wear a white cap out of doors, and an easy and simple costume; in the fact of her limbs being braced by a life spent in the open air, and her head not being plagued with the proprieties of May Fair. She is pretty; but what is of more importance she knows how to cook, and she has a little store of money in a bank. She has been taught enough for her station, and has few wishes beyond it; and some day she will marry Jean, and happy will be Jean. That stalwart warrior (whom we see on the next page), sunning himself outside his barrack door, having just clapped his helmet on the head of a little boy in blouse and sabots, is surely a near relation to our guardsman; he is certainly brave, he is full of fun and intelligence, he very seldom takes more wine than is good for him, and a game at dominoes delights his soul. [Illustration] But it is in the market-place of Pont Audemer that we shall obtain the best idea of the place and of the people. On market mornings and on fête days, when the _Place_ is crowded with old and young,--when all the caps (of every variety of shape, from the 'helmet' to the _bonnet-rouge_), and all the old brown coats with short tails--are collected together, we have a picture, the like of which we may have seen in rare paintings, but very seldom realize in life. Of the tumult of voices on these busy mornings, of the harsh discordant sounds that sometimes fill the air, we must not say much, remembering their continual likeness to our own; but viewed, picturesquely, it is a sight not to be forgotten, and one that few English people are aware can be witnessed so near home. Here the artist will find plenty of congenial occupation, and opportunities (so difficult to meet with in these days) of sketching both architecture and people of a picturesque type--groups in the market-place, groups down by the river fishing under the trees, groups at windows of old hostelries, and seated at inn doors; horses in clumsy wooden harness; calves and pigs, goats and sheep; women at fruit stalls, under tents and coloured umbrellas; piles upon piles of baskets, a wealth of green things, and a bright fringe of fruit and flowers, arranged with all the fanciful grace of "_les dames des halles_," in Paris.[6] All this, and much more the artist finds to his hand, and what does the architect discover? First of all, that if he had only come here before he might have saved himself an immensity of thought and trouble, for he would have found such suggestions for ornament in wood carving, for panels, doorways, and the like, of so good a pattern, and so old, that they are new to the world of to-day; he would have found houses built out over the rivers, looking like pieces of old furniture, ranged side by side--rich in colour and wonderfully preserved, with their wooden gables, carved in oak of the fifteenth century, supported by massive timbers, sound and strong, of even older date. He would see many of these houses with windows full of flowers, and creepers twining round the old eaves; and long drying-poles stretched out horizontally, with gay-coloured clothes upon them, flapping in the wind--all contrasting curiously with the dark buildings. But he would also find some houses on the verge of ruin. If he explored far enough in the dark, narrow streets, where the rivers flow under the windows of empty dwellings; he might see them tottering, and threatening downfall upon each other--leaning over and casting shadows, black and mysterious upon the water--no line perpendicular, no line horizontal, the very beau-ideal of picturesque decay--buildings of which Longfellow might have sung as truly as of Nuremberg,-- "Memories haunt thy pointed gables, Like the rooks which round them throng." In short, he would find Pont Audemer, and the neighbouring town of Lisieux, treasure houses of old mysterious 'bits' of colour and form, suggestive of simple domestic usage in one building, and princely grandeur in another--strength and simplicity, grace and beauty of design--all speaking to him of a past age with the eloquence of history. Let us look well at these old buildings, many of them reared and dwelt in by men of humble birth and moderate means--(men who lived happily and died easily without amassing a fortune)--let us, if we can, without too much envy, think for a moment of the circumstances under which these houses were built. To us, to many of us, who pay dearly for the privilege of living between four square walls (so slight and thin sometimes, that our neighbours are separated from us by sight, but scarcely by sound)--walls that we hire for shelter, from necessity, and leave generally without reluctance; that we are prone to cover with paper, in the likeness of oak and marble, to hide their meanness--these curious, odd-shaped interiors, with massive walls, and solid oak timbers, are especially attractive. How few modern rooms, for instance, have such niches in them, such seats in windows and snug corners, that of all things make a house comfortable. Some of these rooms are twenty feet high, and are lighted from windows in surprising places, and of the oddest shapes. What more charming than this variety, to the eye jaded with monotony; what more suggestive, than the apparently accidental application of Gothic architecture to the wants and requirements of the age.[7] We will not venture to say that these old buildings are altogether admirable from an architect's point of view, but to us they are delightful, because they were designed and inhabited by people who had time to be quaint, and could not help being picturesque. And if these old wooden houses seem to us wanting (as many are wanting) in the appliances and fittings which modern habits have rendered necessary, it was assuredly no fault of the 15th-century architect. They display both in design and construction, most conspicuously, the elements of common sense in meeting the requirements of their own day, which is, as has been well remarked, "the one thing wanting to give life to modern architecture;" and they have a character and individuality about them which renders almost every building unique. Like furniture of rare design they bear the direct impress of their maker. They were built in an age of comparative leisure, when men gave their hearts to the meanest, as well as to the mightiest, work of their hands; in an age when love, hope, and a worthy emulation moved them, as it does not seem to move men now; in an age, in short, when an approving notice in the columns of the 'Builder' newspaper, was not a high aspiration. But in nothing is the attraction greater to us, who are accustomed to the monotonous perspective of modern streets, than the irregularity of the _exteriors_, arising from the independent method of construction; for, by varying the height and pattern of each façade, the builders obtained to almost every house what architects term the 'return,' to their cornices and mouldings, i.e., the corner-finish and completeness to the most important projecting lines. And yet these houses are evidently built with relation to each other; they generally harmonize, and set off, and uphold each other, just as forest trees form themselves naturally into groups for support and protection. All this we may see at a distance, looking down the varied perspective of these streets of clustering dwellings; and the closer we examine them, the more we find to interest, if not to admire. If we gain little in architectural knowledge, we at least gain pleasure, we learn _the value of variety in its simplest forms_, and notice how easy it would be to relieve the monotony of our London streets; we learn, too, the artistic value of high-pitched roofs, of contrast in colour (if it be only of dark beams against white plaster) and of _meaning_ in every line of construction. These, and many more such, sheaves we may gather from our Norman harvest, but we must haste and bind them, for the winds of time are scattering fast. Pont Audemer is being modernised, and many an interesting old building is doomed to destruction; whilst cotton-mills and steam-engines, and little white villas amongst the trees, black coats and parisian bonnets, all tend to blot out the memories of mediæval days. Let us make the most of the place whilst there is time--and let us, before we pass on to Lisieux, add one picture of Pont Audemer in the early morning--a picture which every year will seem less real.[8] There are few monuments or churches to examine, and when we have seen the stained-glass windows in the fine old church of St. Ouen, and walked by the banks of the Rille, to the ruins of a castle (of the twelfth century) at Montfort; we shall have seen the chief objects of interest, in what Murray laconically describes as, 'a prettily situated town of 5400 inhabitants, famed for its tanneries.' _Early morning at Pont Audemer._ That there is 'nothing new under the sun,' may perhaps be true of its rising; nevertheless, a new sensation awaits most of us, if we choose to see it under various phases. The early morning at Pont Audemer is the same early morning that breaks upon the unconscious inhabitants of a London street; but the conditions are more delightful and very much more picturesque; and we might be excused for presenting the picture on the simple ground that it treats of certain hours of of the twenty-four, of which most of us know nothing, and in which (such are the exigencies of modern civilization) most of us do nothing. [Illustration: OLD HOUSES, PONT AUDEMER.] A storm passed over the town one night in August, which shook the great rafters of the old houses, and made the timbers strain; the water flowed from them as from the sides of a ship--one minute they were illuminated, the next, they were in blackest gloom. In two or three hours it has all passed away, and as we go out into the silent town, and cross the street where it forms a bridge over the Rille (the spot from which the next sketch was taken), a faint gleam of light appears upon the water, and upon the wet beams of one or two projecting gables. The darkness and the 'dead' silence are soon to be disturbed--one or two birds fly out from the black eaves, a rat crosses the street, some distant chimes come upon the wind, and a faint clatter of sabots on the wet stones; the town clock strikes half-past three, and the watchman puts out his lantern, and goes to sleep. The morning is breaking on Pont Audemer, and it is the time for surprises--for the sudden appearance of a gable-end, which just now was shadow, for the more gradual, but not less curious, formation of a street in what seemed to be space; for the sudden creation of windows in dead walls, for the turning of fantastic shadows into palpable carts, baskets, piles of wood, and the like; and for the discovery of a number of coiled-up dogs (and one or two coiled-up men) who had weathered the night in sheltered places. But the grey light is turning fast to gold, the warmer tints begin to prevail, the streets leading eastward are gleaming, and the hills are glistening in their bright fresh green.[9] The sweet morning air welcomes us as we leave the streets and its five thousand sleepers, and pass over another bridge and out by the banks of the Rille, where the fish are stirring in the swollen stream, and the lilies are dancing on the water. The wind blows freshly through the trees, and scatters the raindrops thickly; the clouds, the last remnant of the night's storm, career through a pale blue space, the birds are everywhere on the wing, cattle make their appearance in the landscape, and peasants are already to be seen on the roads leading to the town. Suddenly--with gleams of gold, and with a rushing chorus of insect life, and a thousand voices in the long grass on the river's bank--the day begins.[10] It is market-morning, and we will go a little way up the hill to watch the arrivals--a hill, from which there is a view over town and valley; the extent and beauty of which it would be difficult to picture to the reader, in words. Listen! for there is already a cavalcade coming down the hill; we can see it at intervals through the trees, and hear men's voices, the laughter of women, the bleating of calves, and the crushing sound of wheels upon the road. It is a peaceful army, though the names of its leaders (if we heard them), might stir up warlike memories--there are Howards and Percys amongst them, but there is no clash of arms; they come of a brave lineage, their ancestors fought well under the walls of Pont Audemer; but they have laid down their arms for centuries--their end is commerce and peace. Let us stand aside under the lime trees, and see them pass. But they are making a halt, their horses go straight to the water-trough, and the whole cavalcade comes to a stand; the old women in the carts (wearing starched caps a foot high) with baskets of eggs, butter, cheeses, and piles of merchandise, sit patiently until the time comes to start again; and the drivers, in blouses and wooden sabots, lounge about and smoke, or sit down to rest. The young girls, who accompany the expedition and who will soon take their places in the market, now set to work systematically to perform their toilettes, commencing by washing their feet in a stream, and putting on the shoes and stockings which they had carried during their wet march; then more ablutions, with much fun, and laughter, and tying up of tresses, and producing from baskets of those wonderful caps which we have sketched so often--_soufflés_ of most fantastic shape and startling dimensions. This was the crowning work, the picture was complete: bright, fresh, morning faces, glowing under white caps; neat grey or blue dresses with white bodices, or coloured handkerchiefs; grey stockings, shoes with buckles, and a silver cross, a rosary, or a flower. We must not quite forget the younger men (with coats, not blouses), who plumed themselves in a rough way, and wore wonderful felt hats; nor, above all, a peep through the trees behind the group, far away down the valley, at the gables and turrets of Pont Audemer, glistening through a cloud of haze. This is all we need describe, a word more would spoil the picture; like one of Edouard Frère's paintings of "Cottage Life in Brittany," the charm and pathos of the scene lie in its simplicity and harmony with Nature. If we choose to stay until the day advances, we may see more market-people come crowding in, and white caps will crop up in the distance through the trees, till the green meadows blossom with them, and sparkle like a lawn of daisies; we may hear the ringing laughter of the girls to whom market day seems an occasion of great rejoicing, and we may be somewhat distracted with the steady droning patois of the old women; but we come to see rather than to hear, and, returning to the town for the last time, we take our station at the corner of the market-place, and make a sketch of a group of Norman maidens who are well worth coming out to see. [Illustration] CHAPTER III. _LISIEUX._ 'Oh! the pleasant days, when men built houses after their own minds, and wrote their own devices on the walls, and none laughed at them; when little wooden knights and saints peeped out from the angles of gable-ended houses, and every street displayed a store of imaginative wealth.'--_La Belle France_. We must now pass on to the neighbouring town of LISIEUX, which will be found even more interesting than Pont Audemer in examples of domestic architecture of the middle ages; resisting with difficulty a passing visit to Pont l'Evêque, another old town a few miles distant. "Who does not know Pont l'Evêque," asks an enthusiastic Frenchman, "that clean little smiling town, seated in the midst of adorable scenery, with its little black, white, rose-colour and blue houses? One sighs and says 'It would be good to live here,' and then one passes on and goes to amuse oneself"--at Trouville-sur-mer! If we approach Lisieux by the road from Pont Audemer (a distance of about twenty-six miles) we shall get a better impression of the town than if riding upon the whirlwind of an express train; and we shall pass through a prettily-wooded country, studded with villas and comfortable-looking houses, surrounded by pleasant fruit and flower gardens--the modern abodes of wealthy manufacturers from the neighbouring towns, and also of a few English families. We ought to come quietly through the suburbs of Lisieux, if only to see how its 13,000 inhabitants are busied in their woollen and cloth factories; how they have turned the old timber-framed houses of feudal times into warehouses; how the banners and signs of chivalry are desecrated into trade-marks, and how its inhabitants are devoting themselves heart and soul to the arts of peace. We should then approach the town by picturesque wooden bridges over the rivers which have brought the town its prosperity, and see some isolated examples of carved woodwork in the suburbs; in houses surrounded by gardens, which we should have missed by any other road.[11] The churches at Lisieux are scarcely as interesting to us as its domestic architecture; but we must not neglect to examine the pointed Gothic of the 13th century in the cathedral of St. Pierre. The door of the south transept, and one of the doors under the western towers (the one on the right hand) is very beautiful, and is quite mauresque in the delicacy of its design. The interior is of fine proportions, but is disfigured with a coat of yellow paint; whilst common wooden seats (of churchwardens' pattern) and wainscotting have been built up against its pillars, the stone work having been cut away to accommodate the painted wood. There are some good memorial windows; one of Henry II. being married to Eleanor (1152); and another of Thomas-à-Becket visiting Lisieux when exiled in 1169. The church of St. Jacques with its fine stained-glass, the interior of which is much plainer than St. Pierre, will not detain us long; it is rather to such streets as the celebrated '_Rue aux Fèvres_' that we are attracted by the decoration of the houses, and their curious construction. There is one house in this street, the entire front of which is covered with grotesquely carved figures, intricate patterns, and graceful pillars. The exterior woodwork is blackened with age, and the whole building threatens to fall upon its present tenant--the keeper of a café. The beams which support the roof inside are also richly decorated. To give the reader any idea of the variety of the wooden houses at Lisieux would require a series of drawings or photographs: we can do little more in these pages than point out these charming corners of the world where something is still left to us of the work of the middle ages. The general character of the houses is better than at Pont Audemer, and the style is altogether more varied. Stone as well as wood is used in their construction, and the rooms are more commodious and more elaborately decorated. But the exterior carving and the curious signs engraved on the time-stained wood, are the most distinctive features, and give the streets their picturesque character. Here we may notice, in odd corners, names and legends carved in wood on the panels, harmonizing curiously with the decoration; just as the names of the owners (in German characters) are carved on Swiss châlets; and the words 'God is great,' and the like, form appropriate ornaments (in Arabic) over the door of a mosque.[12] And upon heraldic shields, on old oak panels, and amidst groups of clustering leaves, we may sometimes trace the names of the founders (often the architects) of the houses in which several generations lived and died. [Illustration] The strange familiarity of some of these crests and devices (lions, tigers, dragons, griffins, and other emblems of ferocity), the English character of many of the names, and the Latin mottos, identical with some in common use in England, may give us a confused and not very dignified idea respecting their almost universal use by the middle classes in England. M. Taine, a well-known french writer, remarks that 'c'est loin du monde que nous pouvons jugez sainement des illusions dont nous environt,' and perhaps it is from Lisieux that we may best see ourselves, wearing 'coats of arms.' It is considered by many an unmeaning and unjust phrase to call the nineteenth century 'an age of shams,' but it seems appropriate enough when we read in newspapers daily, of 'arms found' and 'crests designed;' and when we consider the extent of the practice of assuming them, or rather we should say, of having them 'found,' we cannot feel very proud of the fashion. Without entering into a genealogical discussion, we have plenty of evidence that the Normans held their lands and titles from a very early date, and that after the Conquest their family arms were spread over England; but not in any measure to the extent to which they are used amongst us. In these days nearly every one has a 'crest' or a 'coat of arms.'[13] Do the officials of Heralds' College (we may ask in parenthesis) believe in their craft? and does the tax collector ever receive 13_s_. 4_d_. for imaginary honours? Such things did not, and could not, exist in mediæval times, in the days when every one had his place from the noble to the vassal, when every man's name was known and his title to property, if he had any, clearly defined. A 'title' in those days meant a title to land, and an acceptance of its responsibilities. How many "titled" people in these days possess the one, or accept the other? It would seem reserved for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to create a state of society when the question 'Who is he?' has to be perpetually asked and not always easily answered; in a word, to foster and increase to its present almost overwhelming dimensions a great middle-class of society without a name or a title, or even a home to call its own. It was assuredly a good time when men's lives and actions were handed down, so to speak, from father to son, and the poor man had his '_locum tenens_' as well as the rich; and how he loved his own dwelling, how he decked it with ornament according to his taste or his means, how he watched over it and preserved it from decay; how, in short, his pride was in his own hearth and home--these old buildings tell us. The conservative influence of all this on his character (which, although we are in France, we must call 'home-feeling'), its tendency to contentment and self-respect, are subjects suggestive enough, but on which we must not dwell. It flourished during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and it declined when men commenced crowding into cities, and were no longer 'content to do without what they could not produce.'[14] Let us stay quietly at Lisieux, if we have time, and _see_ the place, for we shall find nothing in all Normandy to exceed it in interest; and the way to see it best, and to remember it, is, undoubtedly, to _sketch_. Let us make out all these curious 'bits,' these signs, and emblems in wood and stone--twigs and moss, and birds with delicate wings, a spray of leaves, the serene head of a Madonna, the rampant heraldic griffin,--let us copy, if we can, their colour and the marks of age. We may sketch them, and we may dwell upon them, here, with the enthusiasm of an artist who returns to his favourite picture again and again; for we have seen the sun scorching these panels and burning upon their gilded shields; and we have seen the snow-flakes fall upon these sculptured eaves, silently, softly, thickly--like the dust upon the bronze figures of Ghiberti's gates at Florence--so thickly fall, so soon disperse, leaving the dark outlines sharp and clear against the sky; the wood almost as unharmed as the bronze. But more interesting, perhaps, to the traveller who sees these things for the first time, more charming than the most exquisite Gothic lines, more fascinating than their quaint aspect, more attractive even than their colour or their age, are the associations connected with them; and the knowledge that they bear upon them the direct impress of the hands that built them centuries ago, and that every house is stamped, as it were, with the hall mark of individuality. The historian is nowhere so eloquent as when he can point to such examples as these. We may learn from them (as we did at Pont Audemer) much of the method of working in the 14th century, and, indeed, of the habits of the people, and the secret of their great success. It is evident enough that in those old times when men were very ignorant, slavish, easily led, impulsive (childlike we might almost call them), everything they undertook like the building of a house, was a serious matter, a labour of love, and the work of many years; to be an architect and a builder was the aspiration of their boyhood, the natural growth of artistic instinct, guided by so much right as they could glean from their elders. With few books or rules, they worked out their designs for themselves, irrespective, it would seem, of time or cost. And why should they consider either the one or the other, when time was of no 'marketable value,' when the buildings were to last for ages; and when there were no such things as estimates in those days? Like the Moors in Spain, they did much as they pleased, and, like them also, they had a great advantage over architects of our own day--they had little to _unlearn_. They knew their materials, and had not to endeavour, after a laborious and expensive education in one school, to modify and alter their method of treatment to meet the exigencies of another. They were not cramped for space, nor for money; they were not 'tied for time;' and they had not to fight against, and make compromises with, the two great enemies of modern architects--Economy and Iron. At Lisieux, as at Pont Audemer, we cannot help being struck with the extreme simplicity of the method of building, and with the _possibilities_ of Gothic for domestic purposes. We see it here, in its pure and natural development, as opposed to the rather unnatural adoption of mediæval art in England, in the latter half of the 19th century. This last is, to quote a well-known writer on art, 'the worship of Gothic-run-mad' in architecture. It instals itself wherever it can, in mediævally-devised houses, fitted up with mediæval chairs and tables, presses and cupboards, wall papers, and window hangings, all 'brand-new, and intensely old;' which feeds its fancy on old pictures and old poetry, its faith on old legend and ceremonial, and would fain dress itself in the garb of the 15th century--the natural reaction in a certain class of minds against the mean and prosaic aspects of contemporary work-a-day life. The quiet contemplation of the old buildings in such towns as Pont Audemer, Lisieux, and Bayeux, must, we should think, convince the most enthusiastic admirers of the archaic school, that the mere isolated reproduction of these houses in the midst of modern streets (such as we are accustomed to in London or Paris) is of little use, and is, in fact, beginning at the wrong end. It might occur to them, when examining the details of these buildings, and picturing to themselves the lives of their inhabitants, in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, that the 'forcing system' is a mistake--that art never flourished as an exotic, and assuredly never will--that before we live again in mediæval houses, and realise the true meaning of what is 'Gothic' and appropriate in architecture, we must begin at the beginning, our lives must be simpler, our costumes more graceful and appropriate, and the education of our children more in harmony with a true feeling for art. In short, we must be more manly, more capable, more self-reliant, and true to each other, and have less in common with the present age of shams. The very essence and life of Gothic art is its realism and truism, and until we carry out its principles in our hearts and lives, it will be little more to us than a toy and a tradition. CHAPTER IV. _CAEN._ 'Large, strong, full of draperies, and all sorts of merchandise; rich citizens, noble dames, damsels, and fine churches.' The ancient city of Caen, which was thus described by Froissart in the middle of the fourteenth century, when the English sacked the town and carried away its riches, might be described in the nineteenth, in almost the same words; when a goodly company of English people have again taken possession of it--for its cheapness. The chief town of the department of Calvados with a population numbering nearly 50,000--the centre of the commerce of lower Normandy, and of the district for the production of black lace--Caen has a busy and thriving aspect; the river Orne, on which it is built, is laden with produce; with corn, wine, oil, and cider; with timber, and with shiploads of the celebrated Caen stone. On every side we see the signs of productiveness and plenty, and consequent cheapness of many of the necessaries of life; Calvados, like the rest of lower Normandy, has earned for itself the name of the 'food-producing land' of France, from whence both London and Paris (and all great centres) are supplied. The variety and cheapness of the goods for sale, manufactured here and in the neighbourhood, testify to the industry and enterprise of the people of Caen; there is probably no city in Normandy where purchases of clothing, hardware, &c., can be more advantageously made. There is commercial activity at Caen and little sympathy with idlers. If we take up a position in the _Place Royale_, adorned with a statue of Louis XIV., or, better, in the _Place St. Pierre_ near the church tower, we shall see a mixed and industrious population; and we shall probably hear several different accents of Norman patois. But we shall see a number of modern-looking shops, and warehouses full of Paris goods, and even find smooth pavement to walk upon. We are treading in the 'footsteps of the Conqueror' at Caen, but its busy inhabitants have little time for historic memories; they will jostle us in the market-place, and in the principal streets they will be seen rushing about as if 'on change,' or hurrying to 'catch the train for Paris,' like the rest of the world. A few only have eyes of love and admiration for the noble spire of the church of St. Pierre, which rises above the old houses and the market-place, with even a grander effect than any that the artist has been able to render in the illustration. 'St. Pierre, St. Pierre,' are the first and last words we heard of Caen; the first time, when--approaching it one summer's morning from Dives, by the banks of the Orne--the driver of our calèche pointed to its summit with the pride of a Savoy peasant, shewing the traveller the highest peak of Monte Rosa; and the last, when Caen was en fête, and all the world flocked to hear a great preacher from Paris, and the best singers in Calvados. Built in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, in the best period of Gothic art in Normandy, its beautiful proportions and grace of line (especially when seen from the north side) have been the admiration of ages of architects and the occasion of many a special pilgrimage in our own day. Pugin has sketched its western façade and its 'lancet windows;' and Prout has given us drawings of the spire, '_percée au jour_'--perforated with such mathematical accuracy that, as we approach the tower, there is always one, or more, opening in view--as one star disappears, another shines out, as in the cathedral at Bourgos in Spain. [Illustration: TOWER OF ST PIERRE. CAEN.] In the interior, the nave is chiefly remarkable for its proportions; but the choir is richly ornamented in the style of the renaissance.[15] It has been restored at different periods, but, as usual in France, the whole interior has been coloured or whitewashed, so that it is difficult to detect the old work from the new. The sculptured pendants and the decorations of the aisles will attract us by their boldness and originality, and the curious legends in stone on the capitals of the pillars, of 'Alexander and his Mistress,' of 'Launcelot crossing the Sea on his Sword,' and of 'St. Paul being lowered in a Basket,' may take our attention a little too much from the carving in the chapels; but when we have examined them all, we shall probably remember St. Pierre best as Prout and Pugin have shewn it to us, and care for it most (as do the inhabitants of Caen) for its beautiful exterior.[16] We should mention a handsome carved oak pulpit in the style of the fifteenth century, which has lately been erected; it is an ornament to the church in spite of its new and temporary appearance--taking away from the cold effect of the interior, and relieving the monotony of its aisles. The people of Caen are indebted to M. V. Hugot, curé of St. Pierre, for this pulpit. 'A mon arrivée dans la paroisse,' he says (in a little pamphlet sold in the church), 'un des premiers objets qui durent appeler mes soins c'était le rétablissement d'une chaire à precher.' The pulpit and staircase are elaborately carved and decorated with statuettes, bas-reliefs, &c., which the pamphlet describes at length, ending with the information that it is not yet paid for. The most interesting and characteristic buildings in Caen, its historical monuments in fact, are the two royal abbeys of William the Conqueror--_St. Étienne_, called the 'Abbaye aux Hommes,' and _la Ste. Trinité_, the 'Abbaye aux Dames'--both founded and built in the eleventh century; the first (containing the tomb of the Conqueror) with two plain, massive towers, with spires; and an interior remarkable for its strength and solidity--'a perfect example of Norman Romanesque;' adorned, it must be added, with twenty-four nineteenth-century chandeliers with glass lustres suspended by cords from the roof; and with gas brackets of a Birmingham pattern. The massive grandeur, and the 'newness,' if we may use the word, of the interior of _St. Étienne_, are its most remarkable features; the plain marble slab in the chancel, marking the spot where William the Conqueror was buried and disinterred (with the three mats placed in front of it for prayer), is shewn with much ceremony by the custodian of the place. The Abbaye aux Dames is built on high ground at the opposite side of the town, and is surrounded by conventual buildings of modern date. It resembles the Abbaye aux Hommes in point of style, but the carving is more elaborate, and the transepts are much grander in design; the beautiful key-pattern borders, and the grotesque carving on the capitals of some of the pillars, strike the eye at once; but what is most remarkable is the extraordinary care with which the building has been restored, and the whole interior so scraped and chiselled afresh that it has the appearance of a building of to-day. The eastern end and the chancel are partitioned off for the use of the nuns attached to the Hôtel Dieu; the sister who conducts us round this part of the building raises a curtain, softly stretched across the chancel-screen, and shews us twenty or thirty of them at prayers. We can see the hospital wards in the cloisters, and, if we desire it, ascend the eastern tower, and obtain a view over a vast extent of country, and of the town of Caen, set in the midst of gardens and green meadows, and the river, with boats and white sails, winding far away to the sea. 'These two royal abbeys,' writes Dawson Turner, 'which have fortunately escaped the storm of the Revolution, are still an ornament to the town, an honour to the sovereign who caused them to be erected, and to the artist who produced them. Both edifices rose at the same time and from the same motive. William the Conqueror, by his union with Matilda, had contracted a marriage proscribed by the decrees of consanguinity. The clergy, and especially the Archbishop of Rouen, inveighed against the union; and the Pope issued an injunction, that the royal pair should erect two monasteries by way of penance, one for monks, the other for nuns; as well as that the Duke should found four hospices, each for 100 poor persons. In obedience to this command, William founded the Church of St. Stephen, and Matilda, the Church of the Holy Trinity. It is usual on this spot to recount the pitiful, but rather apocryphal story of the burial of William the Conqueror, by a 'simple knight;' of its dramatic interruption by one of the bystanders, a 'man of low degree,' who claimed the site of the grave, and was appeased with 60 sous; and of the subsequent disturbance and destruction of his tomb by the Huguenots; but the artistic traveller will be more interested in these buildings as monuments of the architecture of the eleventh century, and to notice the marks of the chisel and the mason's hieroglyphics made in days so long gone by, that history itself becomes indistinct without these landmarks--marks and signs that neither armies of revolutionists nor eight centuries of time have been able to destroy. We speak of 'eight centuries' in two words (the custodian of the place has them glibly on his tongue), but it is difficult to comprehend this space of time; to realise the fact of the great human tide that has ebbed and flowed through these aisles for eleven generations--smoothing the pillars by its constant wave, but leaving no more mark upon them than the sea on the rocks of Calvados. The contemplation of these two monuments may suggest a comparison between two others that are rising up in western London at the present time,--the 'Albert Memorial' and the 'Hall of Science.' They (the old and the new) stand, as it were, at the two extremities of a long line of kings, a line commencing with 'William the Bold,' and ending with 'Albert the Good;' the earlier monuments dedicated to Religion, the latter to Science and Art--the first to commemorate a warrior, the latter a man of peace--the first endurable through many ages, the latter destructible in a few years.[17] The comparison is surely worth making, for is it not curiously typical of the state of monumental art in England in the present day, that we are only doing what our ancestors did better? They erected useful, appropriate, and endurable monuments which are still crowning ornaments to the town of Caen. Are either of our 'memorials' likely to fulfil these conditions? Not to go further into detail, there is no doubt that, elaborate and magnificent as the 'Albert Memorial' may be, it is useless, inappropriate, and out of place in Hyde Park; and that the 'Hall of Science' at South Kensington (whatever its use may be) is not likely to attract foreign nations by the external beauty of its design. At Caen we are in an atmosphere of heroes and kings, we pass from one historical site to another until the mind becomes half confused; we are shown (by the same valet-de-place) the tomb of the Conqueror, and the house where Beau Brummel died. We see the ruins of a castle on the heights where le 'jeune et beau Dunois' performed historical prodigies of valour; and the chapel where he 'allait prier Marie, bénir ses exploits.' But the modern military aspect of things is, we are bound to confess, prosaic to a degree; we find the Dunois of the period occupied in more peaceful pursuits, mending shoes, tending little children, and carrying wood for winter fires. [Illustration] There are many other buildings and churches at Caen which we should examine, especially the exterior carving of '_St. Étienne-le-vieux_;' which is now used as a warehouse. The cathedrals and monuments are generally, as we have said, in wonderful preservation, but they are desecrated without remorse; on every side of them, and, indeed, upon them, are staring advertisements of 'magazines,' dedicated '_au bon diable_,' '_au petit diable_,' or to some other presiding genius; of '_magasins les plus vastes du monde_,' and of '_loteries impériales de France;_' whichever way we turn, we cannot get rid of these staring affiches; even upon the 'footsteps of the Conqueror' the bill-sticker seems master of the situation. We must now speak of Caen as we see it on fête days, but for the information of those who are interested in it as a place of residence, we may allude in passing to the very pleasant English society that has grown up here of late years, to the moderate rents of houses, the good schools and masters to be met with; the comparative cheapness of provisions and of articles of clothing, and to the good accommodation at the principal inns. The situation of Caen, although not perhaps as healthy as Avranches, is much more convenient and accessible from England. _Caen, Sunday, August_, 186-. It is early on Sunday morning, and Caen is _en fête_. We have reason to know it by the clamour of church bells which attends the sun's rising. There is terrible energy, not to say harshness, in thus ushering in the day. On a mountain side, or in some remote village, the distant sound of bells is musical enough, but here it is dinned into our ears to distraction; and there seems no method in the madness of these sturdy Catholics, for they make the tower of St. Pierre vibrate to most uncertain sounds. They ring out all at once with a burst and tumble over one another, hopelessly involved, _en masse;_ a combination terribly dissonant to unaccustomed ears. Then comes the military _réveille_, and the deafening 'rataplan' of regimental drums, and the town is soon alive with people arriving and departing by the early trains; whilst others collect in the market-place in holiday attire with baskets of flowers, and commence the erection of an altar to the Virgin in the middle of the square. Then women bring their children dressed in white, with bouquets of flowers and white favours, and a procession is formed (with a priest at the head) and marshalled through the principal streets and back again to where the altar to 'Our Lady' stands, now decorated with a profusion of flowers and an effigy of the Virgin. All this time the bells are ringing at intervals, and omnibuses loaded with holiday people rattle past with shouting and cracking of whips. The old fashion and the new become mingled and confused, old white caps and Parisian bonnets, old ceremonies and modern ways; the Norman peasant and the English school-girl walk side by side in the crowd, whilst the western door of the Church of St. Pierre, to which they are tending, bears in flaming characters the name of a vendor of '_modes parisiennes_' Men, women, and children, in gay and new attire, fill the streets and quite outnumber those of the peasant class; the black coat and hat predominate on fête days; a play-bill is thrust into our hands announcing the performance of an opera in the evening, and we are requested frequently to partake of coffee, syrop, and bonbons as we make our way through the Rue St. Pierre and across the crowded square. Stay here for a moment and witness a little episode--another accidental collision between the old world and the new. [Illustration] An undergraduate, just arrived from England on the 'grand tour,' gets into a wrangle with an old woman in the market-place; an old woman of nearly eighty years, with a cap as old and ideas as primitive as her dress, but with a sense of humour and natural combativeness that enables her to hold her own in lively sallies and smart repartees against her youthful antagonist.[18] It is a curious contrast, the wrinkled old woman of Caen and the English lad--the one full of the realities and cares of life; born in revolutionary days, and remembering in her childhood Charlotte Corday going down this very street on her terrible mission to Paris; her daughters married, her only son killed in war, her life now (it never was much else) an uneventful round of market days, eating and sleeping, knitting and prayers; the other--young, careless, fresh to the world, his head stored with heathen mythology, the loves of the Gods, and problems of Euclid--taking a light for his pipe from the old woman, and airing his French in a discussion upon a variety of topics, from the price of apples to the cost of a dispensation; the conversation merging finally into a regular religious discussion, in which the disputants were more abroad than ever,--a religion outwardly represented, in the one case by so many chapels, in the other by so many beads. It is a '_fête_' to day (according to a notice pasted upon a stone pillar) '_avec Indulgence plénière_,' GRAND MESSE à 10 a.m., LES VÊPRES à 3 p.m., SALUT ET BENEDICTION DU SACRAMENT, SERMON, &c.' Let us now follow the crowd (up the street we saw in the illustration) into the Church of St. Pierre, which is already overflowing with people coming and going, pushing past each other through the baize door, dropping sous into the '_tronc pour les pauvres_,' and receiving, with bowed head and crossed breast, the holy water, administered with a brush. We pay two sous for a chair and take our places, under a fire of glances from our neighbours, who pray the while, and tell their beads; and we have scarcely time to notice the beautiful proportions of the nave, the carving in the side chapels, or the grotesque figures that we have before alluded to, when the service commences, and we can just discern in the distance the priests at the high altar (looking in their bright stiff robes, and with their backs to the people, like golden beetles under a microscope); we cannot hear distinctly, for the moving of the crowd about us, the creaking of chairs, and the whispering of many voices; but we can see the incense rising, the children in white robes swinging silver chains, and the cocked hat of the tall 'Suisse' moving to and fro. Presently the congregation sits down, the organ peals forth and a choir of sweet voices chaunts the 'Agnus Dei.' Again the congregation kneels to the sound of a silver bell; the smoke of incense curls through the aisles, and the golden beetles move up and down; again there is a scraping of chairs, a shuffling of feet, and a general movement towards the pulpit, the men standing in groups round it with their hats in their hands; then a pause, and for the first time so deep a silence that we can hear the movement of the crowd outside, and the distant rattle of drums. All eyes are now turned to the preacher; a man of about forty, of an austere but ordinary (we might almost say low) type of face, closely shaven, with an ivory crucifix at his side and a small black book in his hand. He makes his way through the crowded aisles, and ascends the new pulpit in the centre of the church, where everyone of the vast congregation can both see and hear him. His voice was powerful (almost too loud sometimes) and most persuasive; he was eloquent and impassioned, but he used little gesture or any artifice to engage attention. He commenced with a rhapsody--startling in the sudden flow of its eloquence, thrilling in its higher tones, tender and compassionate (almost to tears) in its lower passages--a rhapsody to the Virgin-- 'O sweet head of my mother; sacred eyes!' * * * * * and then an appeal--an appeal for us 'true Catholics' to the 'Queen of Heaven, the beautiful, the adorable.' He elevated our hearts with his moving voice, and, by what we might call the electricity of sympathy, almost to a frenzy of adoration; he taught us how the true believer, 'clad in hope,' would one day (if he leaned upon Mary his mother in all the weary stages of the 'Passage of the Cross') be crowned with fruition. He lingered with almost idolatrous emphasis on the charms of Mary, and with his eyes fixed upon her image, his hands outstretched, and a thousand upturned faces listening to his words, the aisles echoed his romantic theme:-- 'With my lips I kneel, and with my heart, I fall about thy feet and worship thee.' A stream of eloquence followed--studied or spontaneous it mattered not--the congregation held their breath and listened to a story for the thousandth time repeated. The preacher paused for a moment, and then with another burst of eloquence, he brought his hearers to the verge of a passion, which was (as it seemed to us) dangerously akin to human love and the worship of material beauty; then he lowered our understandings still more by the enumeration of 'works and miracles,' and ended with words of earnest exhortation, the burden of which might be shortly translated:--'Pray earnestly, and always, to Mary our mother, for all souls in purgatory; confess your sins unto us your high priests; give, give to the Church and to the poor, strive to lead better lives, look forward ever to the end; and bow down, oh! bow down, before the golden images [manufactured for us in the next street] which our Holy Mother the Church has set up.' With a transition almost as startling as the first, the book is closed, the preacher has left the pulpit, the congregation (excepting a few in the side chapels) have dispersed; and Caen keeps holiday after the manner of all good Catholics, putting on its best attire, and disporting itself in somewhat rampant fashion. Everybody visits everybody else to-day, and a fiacre is hardly to be obtained for the afternoon drive in _Les Cours_, the public promenade. We may go to the Jardin des Plantes, which we shall find crowded with country people, examining the beautiful exotic plants (of which there are several thousand); to the public Picture Gallery, established at the beginning of the present century, which contains pictures by Paul Veronese, Perugino, Poussin, and a number of works of the French school; and to the Museum of Antiquities, containing Roman remains, vases, coins, &c., discovered in the neighbourhood of Dives. There are also excursions to Bayeux, Honfleur, and Trouville for the day; and many tempting opportunities of visiting the neighbouring towns. But we may be most amused by mixing with the crowd, or by listening to the performance on the _Place royale_ of a company of foreign musicians--shabby and dingy in aspect, enthusiastic and poor--who had found their way here in time to entertain the trim holiday makers of Caen. They were of that ragged and unkempt order of slovenly brotherhood that the goddess of music claims for her own; let them call themselves 'wandering minstrels,' 'Arabs,' or what not (their collars were limp, and they rejoiced in smoke), they had certainly an ear for harmony, and a 'soul for music;' a talent in most of them, half cultivated and scarcely understood. A woman in a German, or Swiss, costume levied rapid contributions amongst the crowd, which seemed to prefer listening to this performance than to any other 'distraction,' not excepting the modern and exciting performance of velocipede races outside the town. The streets are crowded all day with holiday people, and somewhat obstructed by the fashion of the inhabitants taking their meals in the street. We also, in the evening, dine at an open café (with a marble table and a pebble floor) amidst a clamour and confusion of voices, under the shadow of old eaves--with creepers and flowers twining round nearly every window, where the pigeons lurk and dive at stray morsels. The evening is calm and bright and the sky overhead a deep blue, but we are chattering, laughing, eating, and smoking, clinking glasses and shouting to waiters; we drown even the sound of the church clocks, and if it were not for the little flower girls with their '_deux sous, chaque_' and their winning smiles, and for the children playing on the ground around us, we might soon forget our better natures in the din of this culinary pandemonium. But we are in good company; three tall mugs of cider are on the next table to our own, a dark, stout figure, with shaven crown, is seated with his back to us--it is the preacher of the morning, who with two lay friends for companions, also keeps the feast. _DIVES._ Before leaving the neighbourhood of Caen, the antiquary and historically minded traveller will naturally turn aside and pay a visit to the town of DIVES, about eighteen miles distant, near the sea shore to the north-east, on the right bank of the river Dives. It is interesting to us not only as an ancient Roman town, and as being the place of embarkation of the Conqueror's flotilla, from whence it drifted, with favourable winds, to St. Valery--but because it possesses the remains of one of the finest twelfth-century churches in Normandy. We find hardly any mention of this church in 'Murray,' and it stands almost deserted by the town which once surrounded it, and by the sea, on the shore of which it was originally built. At the present time there are not more than eight or nine hundred inhabitants, but we can judge by the size of the old covered market-place, and the extent of the boundaries of the town, that it must have been a seaport of considerable importance. Dives was once rich, but no longer bears out the meaning of its name; in comparison to the thriving town of Cabourg (which it joins), it is more like Lazarus sitting at the gate. The interior of the church at Dives has been restored, repaired, and whitewashed; but neither time nor whitewash can conceal the lovely proportions of the building; the pillars and aisles, and the carving over the doorways which the twelfth-century mason fashioned so tenderly have little left of his most delicate workmanship; half of the stained glass in the chancel windows has been destroyed, and the pinnacles on the roof have been broken down by rude hands. Nevertheless it is a church worth going far to see; and it will have exceptional interest for those who believe that their ancestors 'came over with the Conqueror,' for on the western wall there is a list of the names of the principal persons who were known to have accompanied him. Some of these names are very familiar to English ears, such as PERCY, TALBOT, VERNON, LOVEL, GIFFARD, BREWER, PIGOT, CARTERET, CRESPEN, &c.; and there are at least a hundred others, all in legible characters, which any visitor may decipher for himself. There is a small grass-grown church-yard surrounded by a low wall, but the tablets are of comparatively modern date. If, before leaving Dives, we take a walk up the hill on the east side of the town, and look down upon the broad valley, with the river Dives winding southwards through a rich pasture land, flanked with thickly wooded hills--and beyond it the river Orne, leading to Caen--we shall see at once what a favourable and convenient spot this must have been for the collecting together of an army of fifty thousand men, for the construction of vessels, and for the embarkation of troops and horses, and the _matériel_ of war; and, if we continue our walk, through one or two cornfields in the direction of Beuzeval, we shall find, on a promontory facing the sea, and overlooking the mouth of the river, a not very ornamental, round stone pillar placed here by the Archæological Society of France in 1861; 'AU SOUVENIR DU PLUS GRAND ÉVÉNEMENT HISTORIQUE DES ANNALES NORMANDES--LE DÉPART DU DUC GUILLAUME LE BÂTARD POUR LA CONQUÊTE DE L'ANGLETERRE EN 1066;' and, if the reader should be as fortunate as we were in 1869, he might find a french gentleman _standing upon the top of this column_, and (forgetting probably that Normandy was not _always_ part of France) blowing a blast of triumph seaward, from a cracked french horn. [Illustration] CHAPTER V. _BAYEUX._ The approach to the town of Bayeux from the west, either by the old road from Caen or by the railway, is always striking. The reader may perchance remember how in old coaching days in England on arriving near some cathedral town, at a certain turn of the road, the first sight of some well-known towers or spires came into view. Thus there are certain spots from which we remember Durham, and from which we have seen Salisbury; and thus, there is a view of all others which we identify with Bayeux. We have chosen to present it to the reader as we first saw it and sketched it (before the completion of the new central semi-grecian cupola); when the graceful proportions of the two western spires were seen to much greater advantage than at present. The cathedral has been drawn and photographed from many points of view; Pugin has given the elevation of the west front, and the town and cathedral together have been made the subject of drawings by several well-known artists; but returning to Bayeux after an absence of many years, and examining it from every side, we find no position from which we can obtain a distant view to such advantage as that near the railway station, which we have shewn in the sketch at the head of this chapter. The repose--the solemnity we might almost call it--that pervades Bayeux even in this busy nineteenth century, is the first thing that strikes a stranger; a repose the more solemn and mysterious when we think of its rude history of wars, of pillage, and massacres, and of its destruction more than once by fire and sword. From the days when the town consisted of a few rude huts (in the time of the Celts), all through the splendours of the time of the Norman dukes, and the more terrible days of the Reformation, it is prominent in history; but Bayeux is now a place of peaceful industry, with about 10,000 inhabitants, 'a quiet, dull, ecclesiastical city,' as the guide books express it; with an aspect almost as undisturbed as a cathedral close. There are a few paved streets with cafés and shops, as usual, but the most industrious inhabitants appear to be the lacemakers--women seated at the doorways of the old houses, wearing the quaint horseshoe comb and white cap with fan-like frill, which are peculiar to Bayeux. [Illustration] Every building of importance has a semi-ecclesiastical character; the feeling seeming to have especially pervaded the designers of the thirteenth-century houses, as we may see from this rough sketch made at a street corner. Many houses have such figures carved in _wood_ upon them, and we may sometimes see a little stone spire on a roof top; the architects appearing to have aimed at expressing in this way their love and admiration for the cathedral, and to have emulated the Gothic character of its decorations; the conventual and neighbouring buildings harmonizing with it in a manner impossible to describe in words. Even the principal inn, called the 'Hôtel du Luxembourg,' partakes of the quiet air of the place; the walls of the _salle à manger_ are covered with pictures of saints and martyrs, and the houses we can see from its windows are built and carved in stone. The chief object of interest is, undoubtedly, the cathedral itself, for although we may find many curious old houses, everything gives way in importance and interest to this one central building. The noble west front, with its pointed Gothic towers and spires, is familiar to us in many an engraving and painting, but what these illustrations do not give us on a small scale is the beauty of the carved doorways, the clustering of the ornaments about them, and the statues of bishops, priests, and kings. Later than the cathedral itself, and 'debased in style' (as our severe architectural friends will tell us), the work on these beautiful porches has exquisite grace; the fourteenth-century sculptor gave free scope to his fancy, his hands have played about the soft white stone till it took forms so delicate and strange, so unsubstantial and yet so permanent, that it is a marvel of the sculptor's skill.[19] The interior is 315 feet long and 81 feet high, open from one end to the other, and forms a very striking and imposing effect. 'The west end,' to quote a few words from the best technical authority, 'consists of florid Norman arches and piers, whose natural heaviness is relieved by the beautifully diapered patterns wrought upon the walls, probably built by Henry I., who destroyed the previously existing church by fire. Above this, runs a blank trefoiled arcade in the place of a triforium, surrounded by a clerestory of early-pointed windows, very lofty and narrow. The arches of the nave, nearest the cross and the choir, ending in a semi-circle, exhibit a more advanced state of the pointed style, and are distinguished by the remarkable elegance of their graceful clustered pillars. The circular ornaments in the spandrils of the arches are very pleasing and of fanciful variety.' We see in the interior of this cathedral a confusion of styles--a conflict of grace and beauty with rude and grotesque work. The delicately-traced patterns carved on the walls, the medallions and pendant ornaments, in stone, of the thirteenth century, are scarcely surpassed at Chartres; side by side with these, there are headless and armless statues of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which have been painted, and tablets (such as we have sketched) to commemorate the ancient founders of the church; and underneath the choir, the crypt of Bishop Odo, the Conqueror's half-brother, with its twelve massive pillars, which formed the foundation of the original church, built in 1077. [Illustration] In the nave we may admire the beautiful radiating chapels, with their curious frescoes (some destroyed by damp and others evidently effaced by rude hands); and we may examine the bronze pulpit, with a figure of the Virgin trampling on the serpent; the dark, carved woodwork in the chancel; the old books with clasps (that Haag, or Werner, would delight in), and two quite modern stone pulpits or lecterns, with vine leaves twining up them in the form of a cross, the carving of which is equal to any of the old work--the rugged vine stem and the soft leaves being wonderfully rendered. The interior is disfigured by some gaudy colouring under the new cupola, and the effect of the west end is, as usual, ruined by the organ loft. There are very fine stained-glass windows, some quite modern, but so good both in colour and design, that we cannot look at them without rebelling in our minds, against the conventionality of much of the modern work in english churches.[20] It seems not unreasonable to look forward to the time when it shall be accounted a sin to present caricatures of scriptural subjects in memorial church-windows. Let us rather have the kaleidescope a thousand times repeated, or the simplest diaper pattern on ground glass, than 'Jonahs' or 'Daniels,' as they are represented in these days; we are tired of the twelve apostles, so smooth and clean, in their robes of red and blue (the particular red and blue that will come best out of the melting-pot), of yellow glories and impossible temples. The long-neglected art of staining glass being once more revived, let us hope that, with it, a taste will grow up for something better than a repetition of the grotesque. But it is the exterior of Bayeux Cathedral that will be remembered best, the beauty and simplicity of its design; its 'sky line,' that we pointed out at a distance, at the beginning of this chapter, which (like the curve of the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, and many an english nineteenth-century church we could name), leaves an impression of beauty on the mind that the more ornate work of the Renaissance fails to give us. It is an illustration in architecture, of what we have ventured to call the 'simple right' and the 'elaborate wrong;' like the composition of Raphael's Holy Family (drawn on the head of a tub), it was _right_, whilst its thousand imitations have been wrong. And if any argument or evidence were wanting, of the beauty and fitness of Gothic architecture as the central feature of interest, and as a connecting link between the artistic taste of a past and present age, we could point to no more striking instance than this cathedral. It has above all things the appearance of a natural and spontaneous growth, harmonizing with the aspect of the place and with the feelings of the people. A silence falls upon the town of Bayeux sometimes, as if the world were deserted by its inhabitants; a silence which we notice, to the same extent, in no other cathedral city. We look round and wonder where all the people are; whether there is really anybody to buy and sell, and carry on business, in the regular worldly way; or whether it is peopled only with strange memories and histories of the past. On every side there are landmarks of cruel wars and the sites of battles--nearly every old house has a legend or a history attached to it; and all about the cathedral precincts, with its old lime trees--in snug, quiet courtyards, under gate-ways, and in stiff, formal gardens behind high walls--we may see where the old bishops and canons of Bayeux lived and died; the house where 'Master Wace' toiled for many unwearied years, and where he had audience with the travelling _raconteurs_ of the time who came to listen to him, and to repeat far and wide the words of the historian.[21] The silence of Bayeux is peopled with so many memories, of wars so terrible, and of legends so wild and weird, that a book might be written about Bayeux and called 'The Past.' We must not trench upon the work of the antiquary, or we might point out where Henry I. of England attacked and destroyed the city, and the exact spot in the market-place where they first lighted the flames of Revolution; but we may dwell for a moment upon one or two curious customs and legends connected with Bayeux. The 'Fête of the three Kings' (a remnant of a custom in the time of the Druids) is still religiously observed by its inhabitants, and incantations and ceremonies are kept up by the country people around Bayeux, especially on the eve of this fête. The time is winter, and around the town of Bayeux (as many visitors may have noticed) a curious fog or mist hangs over the fields and the neighbouring gardens, through which the towers of the cathedral are seen like phantoms; it is then that the peasants light their torches, and both priests and people wander in procession through the fields, singing in a loud, but mournful tone, a strange and quaint ditty. Thus their fields and the crops (which they are about to sow) will be productive, and a good harvest bless the land! We are still in the middle ages at Bayeux, we believe implicitly in witches, in good omens, and in fairy rings; we are told gravely by an old inhabitant that a knight of Argouges, near Bayeux, was protected by a good fairy in his encounter with some great enemy, and we are shewn, in proof of the assertion, the family arms of the house of Argouges, with a female figure in the costume of Lady Godiva of Coventry, and the motto, _à la fée_; and we hear so many other romantic stories of the dark ages, that history at last becomes enveloped in a cloud of haze, like the town of Bayeux itself on a winter's night. We must now pass from the region of romance and fable to its very antipodes in realism; to the examination of a strip of fine linen cloth of the colour of brown holland, which is exhibited in the Public Library at Bayeux. [Illustration] This world-renowned relic of antiquity, which Dibdin half-satirically describes as 'an exceedingly curious document of the conjugal attachment and enthusiastic veneration of Matilda,' is now kept with the greatest care, and is displayed on a stand under a glass case, in its entire length, 227 feet. It is about 20 inches wide, and is divided into 72 compartments. Every line is expressed by coarse stitches of coloured thread or worsted, of which this arrow's head is a facsimile, and the figures are worked in various colours, the groundwork and the flesh tints being generally left white. The extraordinary preservation of the tapestry, when we consider, not only the date of the work, but the vicissitudes to which it has been subjected, is so remarkable, that the spectator is disposed to ask to see the 'original,' feeling sure that this fresh, bright-looking piece of work cannot have lasted thus for eight hundred years. And when we remember that it was carried from town to town by order of Napoleon I., and also exhibited on the stage on certain occasions; that it has survived the Revolution, and that the cathedral, which it was originally intended to adorn, has long been levelled with the ground, we cannot help approaching it with more than ordinary interest; an interest in which the inhabitants, and even the ecclesiastics of Bayeux, scarcely seem to share. It was but a few years ago that the priests of the cathedral, when asked by a traveller to be permitted to see the tapestry, were unable to point it out; they knew that the '_toile St. Jean_,' as it is called, was annually displayed in the Cathedral on St. John's Day, but of its historical and antiquarian interest they seemed to take little heed. The scenes, which (as is well known) represent the principal events in the Norman Conquest, are arranged in fifty-eight groups. The legend of the first runs thus:-- Le roi Edouard ordonne à Harold d'aller apprendre au duc Guillaume qu'il sera un jour roi d'Angleterre, &c. After the interview between the 'sainted' King Edward and Harold, the latter starts on his mission to 'Duke William,' and in the next group we see Harold, '_en marché_,' with a hawk on his wrist--then entering a church (the ancient abbey of Bosham, in Sussex), and the clergy praying for his safety before embarking, and--next, '_en mer_.' We see him captured on landing, by Guy de Ponthieu, and afterwards surrounded by the ambassadors whom William sends for his release; the little figure holding the horses being one Tyrold, a dependant of Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, and the artist (it is generally supposed) who designed the tapestry. Then we see Harold received in state at Rouen by Duke William, and afterwards, their setting out together for Mont St. Michael, and Dinan; and other episodes of the war in Brittany. We next see Harold in England, at the funeral of Edward the Confessor, and have a curious view of Westminster Abbey, in red and green worsted. After the death of King Edward, we have another group, where 'Edouard (in extremis) parle aux hommes de sa cour;' evidently an after-thought, or a mistake in taking up the designs to work in their proper order. Harold is crowned, but with an ill omen (from the Norman point of view), as represented in the tapestry by an evil star--a comet of extravagant size, upon which the people gaze with most comical expressions of wonder and alarm. Harold began his reign well, says an old chronicler, he 'stablysshed good lawes, specyally for the defence of holy churche;' but soon he 'waxed so proud and covetouse,' that he became unpopular with his subjects. Then follows the great historical event, of 'THE INVASION OF ENGLAND BY THE CONQUEROR,' and we have all the details portrayed of the felling of trees, constructing ships, transporting of cavalry, and the like; we see the preparations for the commissariat, and the curious implements of warfare, shewing, amongst other things, the lack of iron in those days; the spades, for use in earthworks and fortifications, being only _tipped_ with iron. The bustle and excitement attendant upon the embarcation are given with wonderful reality; and there is many a quaint and natural touch in the attitudes and expressions of these red and yellow men. The landing in Pevensey bay is next given (the horses being swung out of the ships with cranes and pulleys as in the present day), and soon afterwards, the preparations for a feast; the artist at this point becoming apparently imbued with the true British idea that nothing could be done without a dinner. There must be a grand historical picture of a banquet before the fight, and so, like Oliver Cromwell and Napoleon, William the Conqueror has his 'night before the battle,' and, perhaps, it is the most faithful representation of the three. Of the battle of Hastings itself, of the consternation at one time amongst the troops at the report of William's death, of the charge of cavalry, with William on a tremendous black horse (riding as straight in the saddle as in our own day), of the cutting to pieces of the enemy, of the stripping the wounded on the ground, and of Harold's defeat and death, there are several very spirited representations. For our illustration we have chosen a scene where the battle is at its height, and the melée is given with great vigour. These figures on the tapestry are coloured green and yellow (for there was evidently not much choice of colours), and the chain armour is left white. The woodcut is about a third of the size, and is, as nearly as possible, a _facsimile_ of the original. [Illustration: Facsimile of Bayeux Tapestry.] The last group is thus described in the catalogue:-- 'ET FVGA VETERVNT ANGLI. 'Et les Anglais furent mis en fuite. Des hommes à pied, armés de haches et d'ípíes, combattent contre les cavaliers: mais _la défaite des Anglais est complète_; ils sont poursuivis à toute outrance par les Normands vainqueurs. 'La scéne suivante reprísentent des hérauts d'armes à pied, et des cavaliers galoppant à toute bride pour annoncer probablement le succés du Conquérant; mais l'interruption subite du monument ne permet plus de continuer cette chronique figuríe, qui allait vraisemblablement jusqu'au couronnement de Guillaume. The _design_ of the tapestry is very unequal, some of the latter scenes being weak in comparison, especially that of the _death of Harold_; the eleventh-century artist, perhaps becoming tired of the work, or having, more probably, a presentiment that this scene would be painted and exhibited annually, by English artists, to the end of time. Perhaps the most interesting and important scenes are:--first, when Harold takes the oath of allegiance to William, with his hands leaning on two ark-like shrines, full of the relics plundered from churches; next, the awful catastrophe of the _malfosse_, where men and horses, Norman and Saxon, are seen rolling together in the ditch; and, lastly, the ultra-grotesque tableaux of stripping the wounded after the battle. The borders on the latter part of the tapestry (part of which we have shewn in the illustration) consist of incidents connected with the battle, and add greatly to its interest. Some of the earlier scenes are very amusing, having evidently been suggested by the fables of Æsop and Phædrus; there are griffins, dragons, serpents, dogs, elephants, lions, birds, and monsters that suggest a knowledge of pre-Adamite life (some biting their own tails, or putting their heads into their neighbours' mouths), interspersed with representations of ploughing, and hunting, and of killing birds with a sling and a stone.[22] The most striking thing about the tapestry is the charming freshness and _naïveté_ with which the scenes and characters are depicted. The artist who designed it did not draw figures particularly well, he was ignorant of perspective, and all principles of colouring; but he gave, in his own way, expression to his faces, and attitudes which tell their story even without the help of the latin inscriptions which accompany them. Shade is often represented by colour, and that not always strictly in accordance with nature; thus, a red horse will be represented with one leg worked in blue, and so on; the faces and naked limbs of the warriors being worked in green or yellow, or left white, apparently as was found most convenient by the ladies of the time. Whether Queen Matilda, or the ladies of her court, ever really worked the tapestry (there is good reason to doubt that she designed the borders) is a question of so little importance, that it is wonderful so much discussion has been raised upon it; it is surely enough for us to know that it was worked soon after the Conquest. There is evidence of this, and also that Odo, Bishop of Bayeux (the Conqueror's half-brother), ordered and arranged the work to the exact length of the walls of the church, round which it was intended that it should have been placed. CHAPTER VI. _ST. LO--COUTANCES--GRANVILLE. (CHERBOURG.)_ On our way to ST. LO, COUTANCES, and GRANVILLE on the western coast of Normandy, we may do well--if we are interested in the appliances of modern warfare, and would obtain any idea of the completeness and magnificence of the French Imperial Marine--to see something of CHERBOURG, situated near the bold headland of Cap de la Hague. If we look about us as we approach the town, we shall see that the railway is cut through an extraordinary natural fortification of rocks; and if we ascend the heights of Le Roule, we shall obtain, what a Frenchman calls, a _vue féerique du Cherbourg_. We shall look down upon the magnificent harbour with its breakwater and surrounding forts, and see a fleet of iron-clads at anchor, surrounded by smaller vessels of all nations; gun-boats, turret-ships and every modern invention in the art of maritime war, but scarcely any ships of commerce. The whole energy and interest of a busy population seem concentrated at Cherbourg, either in constructing works of defence or engines of destruction. The rather slovenly-looking orderly that we have sketched--sauntering up and down upon the ramparts, and sniffing the fresh breezes that come to him with a booming sound from the rocks of Querqueville that guard the west side of the bay--is justly proud of the efficiency and completeness which everywhere surround him, and with a twinkle in his eye, asks if 'Monsieur' has visited the arsenals, or has ever seen a naval review at Cherbourg. The pride and boast even of the boys that play upon these heights (boys with '_La Gloire_' upon their hats, and dressed in a naval costume rather different from our notions of sailors), is that 'Cherbourg is impregnable and France invincible,' and, if we stay here long, we shall begin to believe both the one and the other. [Illustration: A SKETCH AT CHERBOURG.] There is a little difficulty, not insurmountable to an Englishman, with the assistance of his consul, in obtaining permission to visit the government works in progress, and now fast approaching completion; for the Government is courteous, if cautious, in this matter. The French people cannot help being polite; there is an English yacht riding in the harbour this morning, and the ladies, who have just come ashore, have every politeness and attention shewn to them; and the little yacht will refit, as so many do here in the summer, and take refuge again and again in this roadstead, with great convenience and many pleasant recollections of their reception. If we had been upon these heights in the summer of 1858, and later in 1865, we might have seen the combined fleets of England and France in the roadstead; and, in the spring of 1865, with a good telescope, we might have witnessed a miniature naval engagement between the famous _Alabama_ and the _Kearsage_, which took place a few miles from the shore. The _Port Militaire_ and the _Arsenal de Marine_ at Cherbourg (which are said to be five times as large as Portsmouth), and its basins, in which a hundred sail of the line can be accommodated at one time, are sights which we scarcely realize in description, but which almost overwhelm us with their magnitude and importance, when seen from this vantage ground. In three hours after leaving Cherbourg we may find ourselves settled in the little old-fashioned inn, called the _Hôtel du Soleil Levant_, at ST. LO, which we shall probably have entirely to ourselves. St. Lo, although the _chef-lieu_ of the department of La Manche, appears to the traveller a quiet, second-rate manufacturing town, well-situated and picturesquely built, but possessing no particular objects of interest excepting the cathedral; although visitors who have spent any time in this neighbourhood find it rich in antiquities, and a good centre from which to visit various places in the environs. In no part of this beautiful province do we see the country to better advantage, and nowhere than in the suburbs of St. Lo, shall we find better examples of buildings of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. But St. Lo is dull, and there is a gloom about it that communicates itself insensibly to the mind; that finds expression in the worship of graven images by little children, and in the burning of innumerable candles in the churches. There is an air of untidiness and neglect about the town that no trim military regulations can alter, and a repose that no amount of chattering of the old women, or even the rattle of regimental drums, seems able to disturb. They do strange things at St. Lo in their quiet, dull way; they paint the names of their streets on the cathedral walls, and they make a post-office of one of its buttresses; they paste the trees all over with advertisements in the principal squares, and erect images of the Virgin on their warehouses. The master at our hotel calls to a neighbour across the street to come and join us at table, and the people at the shops stand outside, listlessly contemplating their own wares. There are at least 10,000 inhabitants, but we see scarcely anyone; a carriage, or a cart, startles us with its unusual sound, and every footstep echoes on the rough pavement. The arrival of the train from Paris; the commercial travellers that it brings, and the red liveries of the government grooms, leading out their horses, impart the only appearance of life to the town. Nowhere in France does the military element seem more out of place, never did 'fine soldiers' seem so much in the way as at St. Lo. There is a parade to-day, there was a parade yesterday, and to-morrow (Sunday) there will be a military mass for a regiment leaving on foreign duty. It is all very right, no doubt, and necessary for the peace of Europe, the 'balance of power,' the consumption of pipe-clay, and the breaking of hearts sometimes; but, in contrast to the natural quiet of this place, the dust and noise are tremendous, and the national air (so gaily played as the troops march through the town) has, as it seems to us, an uncertain tone, and does not catch the sympathy of the bystanders. They stand gazing upon the pageant like the Venetians listening to the Austrian band--they are a peace-loving community at St. Lo. But let us look well at the cathedral, at the grandeur of its spires, at its towers with open galleries, at the rich 'flamboyant' decoration of the doorways; at its monuments, chapels, and stained glass, and above all at the _exterior_ pulpit, abutting on the street at the north-east end, which is one of the few remaining in France. [Illustration: Exterior Pulpit at St Lo.[23]] If we ascend one of the towers, we shall be rewarded with a view over a varied and undulating landscape, stretching far away westward towards the sea, and southward towards Avranches and Vire; whilst here and there we may distinguish, dotted amongst the trees, those curious châteaux of the _ancienne noblesse_, which are disappearing rapidly in other parts of France; and the view of the town and cathedral together, as seen from the opposite hill, with the river winding through the meadows, and the women washing, on their knees on the bank, is also very picturesque. We do not, however, make a long stay at St. Lo, for we are within sixteen miles of the city of COUTANCES, with its narrow and curiously modern-looking streets, its ecclesiastical associations, and its magnificent cathedral. As we approach it, by the road, we see before us a group of noble Gothic spires, and are prepared to meet (as we do in nearly every street) ecclesiastics and priests, and to find the 'Catholic Church' holding its head high in this remote part of France. Everything gives way to the Cathedral in point of interest and importance. It is considered 'one of the most complete and beautiful in France, free from exuberant ornament, and captivating the eye by the elegance of proportion and arrangement. Its plan possesses several peculiar features, comprising a nave with two west towers, side aisles, and chapels, filling up what would in other cathedrals be intervals between buttresses; north and south transepts, with an octagonal tower at their intersection; a choir with a polygonal apse, double aisles, with radiating chapels, and a Lady chapel at the east end. The nave, which is 100 feet high, consists of six bays, with triforium and lofty clerestory. The effect is exceedingly grand, and is enhanced by the lateral chapels seeming to constitute a second aisle all round. The whole of this part of the building is worthy of the closest examination. The interior of the large chapel of the south transept is very curious, circular at both ends. The choir has three bays in its rectangle, and five bays in its apse, the latter being separated by coupled piers outside each other (not touching), of wonderful lightness and beauty. The double aisle of the choir has a central range of single columns running all round it, and the effect of the intersection of so many shafts, columns, and vaultings is perfectly marvellous. There is no triforium in the choir, but only a pierced parapet under the clerestory windows, which are filled with fine early glass. There is much good glass, indeed, throughout the cathedral, and several interesting tombs.' We quote this description in detail because the cathedral at Coutances is a rare gem, and possesses so many points of interest to the architect and antiquary. The history of Coutances is like a history of the Roman Catholic Church, and the relics of bishops and saints meet us at every turn. As early as the third century there are records of its conversion to Christianity; it has passed through every vicissitude of war, pillage, and revolution, until in these latter days it has earned the guide-book appellation of 'a semi-clerical, semi-manufacturing, quiet, clean, agreeable town.' There are about 9000 inhabitants, including a few English families, attracted here by its reputation for salubrity and cheapness of living. The beauty of the situation of Coutances can scarcely be exaggerated; built upon the sides of a lofty hill commanding views over a vast extent of country, it is approached on both sides up steep hills, by broad smooth roads with avenues of trees and surrounding gardens, and is surmounted by its magnificent old cathedral, which is the last important building of the kind, that we shall see, until we reach Rouen; and one the traveller is never likely to forget, especially if he ascend the tower, as we did, one morning whilst service was being performed below.[24] It was our last morning at Coutances, the air was still and clear, and the panorama was superb; on every side of us were beautiful hills, rich with orchards laden with fruit, and fields of corn; and beyond them, far away westward, the sea and coast line, and the channel islands with their dangerous shores. The air was calm, and dreamy, but in the distance we could see white lines of foam--the 'wild horses' of the Atlantic in full career; beneath our feet was the open 'lantern dome,' and the sound of voices came distinctly up the fluted columns; we could hear the great organ under the western towers, the voices of the congregation in the nave, and the chanting of the priests before the altar,-- 'Casting down their golden crowns, beside the glassy sea.' The town of GRANVILLE, built on a rock by the sea, with its dark granite houses, its harbour and fishing-boats, presents a scene of bustle and activity in great contrast to Coutances and St. Lo. There is an upper and lower town--a town on the rocks, with its old church with five gilt statues, built almost out at sea--and another town, on the shore. The streets of the old town are narrow and badly paved; but there is great commercial activity, and a general sign of prosperity amongst its sea-faring population. The approach to the sea (on one side of the promontory, on which the town is built) is very striking; we emerge suddenly through a fissure in the cliffs on to the sea-shore, into the very heart and life of the place--into the midst of a bustling community of fishermen and women. There is fish everywhere, both in the sea and on the land, and the flavour of it is in the air; there are baskets, bales, and nets, and there is, it must be added, a familiar ring of Billingsgate in the loud voices that we hear around us. Granville is the great western sea port of France, from which Paris is constantly supplied; and, in spite of the deficiency of railway communication, it keeps up constant trade with the capital--a trade which is not an unmixed benefit to its inhabitants; for in the '_Messager de Granville_' of August, 1869, we read that:-- 'L'extrême chaleur de la température n'empêche pas nos marchands d'expédier à Paris des quantités considérables de poisson, _au moment même où il est hors de prix sur notre marché_. Nous ne comprenons rien à de semblables spéculations, dont l'un des plus fâcheux résultats est d'ajouter--une _affreuse odeur_ aux désagréments de nos voitures publiques!' All through the fruitful land that we have passed, we cannot help being struck with the evident inadequate means of transport for goods and provisions; at Coutances, for instance, and at Granville (the great centre of the oyster fisheries of the west) they have only just thought about railways, and we may see long lines of carts and waggons, laden with perishable commodities, being carried no faster than in the days of the first Napoleon. But we, who are in search of the picturesque should be the very last to lament the fact, and we may even join in the sentiment of the Maire of Granville, and be 'thankful' that the great highways of France are under the control of a careful Government; and that her valleys are not (as in England) strewn with the wrecks of abandoned railways--ruins which, by some strange fatality, never look picturesque. Granville is a favourite place of residence, and a great resort for bathing in the summer; although the 'Établissement' is second-rate, and the accommodation is not equal to that of many smaller watering-places of France. It is, however, a pleasant and favourable spot in which to study the manners and customs of a sea-faring people: and besides the active human creatures which surround us, we--who settle down for a season, and spend our time on the sands and on the dark rocks which guard this iron-bound coast--soon become conscious of the presence of another vast, active, striving, but more silent community on the sea-shore, digging and delving, sporting and swimming, preying upon themselves and each other, and enjoying intensely the luxury of living. If we, _nous autres_, who dwell upon the land and prey upon each other according to our opportunities, will go down to the shore when the tide is out, and ramble about in the-- 'Rosy gardens revealed by low tides,' we may make acquaintance with a vast Lilliput community; we may learn some surprising lessons in natural history, and read sermons in shells. But, amidst this most interesting and curious congregation of fishes--a concourse of crabs, lobsters, eels in holes, limpets on the rocks, and a hundred other inhabitants of the sea, in every form of activity around us--we must not forget, in our enthusiasm for these things, the treacherous tides on this coast, and the great Atlantic waves, that will suddenly overwhelm the flat shore, and cut off retreat from those who are fishing on the rocks. This happens so often, and is so full of danger to those unacquainted with the coast, that we may do good service by relating again, an adventure which happened to the late Campbell of Islay and a friend, who were nearly drowned near Granville. They had been absorbed in examining the rocks at some distance from the shore, and in collecting the numerous marine plants which abound in their crevices; when suddenly one of the party called out-- 'Mercy on us! I forgot the tide, and here it comes.' Turning towards the sea they saw a stream of water running at a rapid pace across the sands. They quickly began to descend the rocks, but before they could reach the ground 'the sand was in stripes, and the water in sheets.' They then ran for the shore, but before they had proceeded far, they were met by one of the fisher-girls, who had seen their danger from the shore, and hastened to turn them back, calling to them-- 'The wave! the wave! it is coming--turn! turn and run--or we are lost!' They did turn, and saw far out to sea a large wave rolling toward the shore. The girl passed them and led the way; the two friends strained every nerve to keep pace with her, for as they neared the rock, the wave still rolled towards them; the sand became gradually covered, and for the last ten steps they were up to their knees in water--but they were on the rock. 'Quick! quick!' said the girl; '_there_ is the passage to the Cross at the top; but if the second wave comes we shall be too late.' She scrambled on for a hundred yards till she came to a crack in the rock, six or seven feet wide, along which the water was rushing like a mill-sluice. With some difficulty they reached the upper rocks, carrying the fisher-girl in their arms, and wading above their knees in water. Here they rest a moment--when a great wave rolls in, and the water runs along the little platform where they are sitting; they all rise, and mounting the rocky points (which the little Granvillaise assures them are never quite covered with water), cluster together for support. In a few moments the suspense is over, the girl points to the shore, where they can hear the distant sound of a cheer, and see people waving their handkerchiefs. 'They think the tide has turned,' says the girl, 'and they are shouting to cheer us.' She was right, the tide had turned. Another wave came and wetted their feet, but when it had passed the water had fallen, and in five minutes the platform was again dry! The fisherwomen of Granville are famed for their beauty, industry, and courage; we, certainly, have not seen such eyes, excepting at Cadiz, and never have we seen so many active hard-working old women. The women seem to do everything here--the 'boatmen' are women, and the fishermen young girls. We may well admire some of these handsome Granvillaises, living their free life by the sea, earning less in the day, generally, than our Staffordshire pit girls, but living much more enviable lives. Here they are by hundreds, scattered over the beach in the early morning, and afterwards crowding into the market-place; driving hard bargains for the produce of their sea-farms, and--with rather shrill and unpronounceable ejaculations and many most winning smiles--handing over their shining wares. It is all for the Paris market they will tell you, and they may also tell you (if you win their confidence) that they, too, are one day for Paris. Let us leave the old women to do the best bargaining, and picture to the reader a bright figure that we once saw upon this shining shore, a Norman maiden, about eighteen years of age, without shoes or stockings; a picture of health and beauty bronzed by the sun.[25] This young creature who had spent her life by the sea and amongst her own people, was literally overflowing with happiness, she could not contain the half of it, she imparted it to everyone about her (unconsciously, and that was its sweetness); she could not strictly be called handsome, and she might be considered very ignorant; but she bloomed with freshness, she knew neither ill health nor _ennui_, and happiness was a part of her nature. This charming 'aphrodite piscatrix' is stalwart and strong (she can swim a mile with ease), she has carried her basket and nets since sunrise, and now at eight o'clock on this summer's morning sits down on the rocks, makes a quick breakfast of potage, plumes herself a little, and commences knitting. She does not stay long on the beach, but before leaving, makes a slight acquaintance with the strangers, and evinces a curious desire to hear anything they may have to tell her about the great world. It is too bright a picture to last; she too, it would seem, has day-dreams of cities; she would give up her freedom, she would join the crowd and enter the 'great city,' she would have a stall at '_les halles_,' and see the world. Day-dreams, but too often fulfilled--the old story of centralization doing its work; look at the map of Normandy, and see how the 'chemin de fer de l'Ouest' is putting forth its arms, which--like the devil-fish, in Victor Hugo's '_Travailleurs de la Mer'_--will one day draw irresistibly to itself, our fair 'Toiler of the sea.'[26] 'What does Monsieur think?' (for we are favoured with a little confidence from our young friend), and what can we say? Could we draw a tempting picture of life in cities--could we, if we had the heart, draw a favourable contrast between _her_ life, as we see it, and the lives of girls of her own age, who live in towns--who never see the breaking of a spring morning, or know the beauty of a summer's night? Could we picture to her (if we would) the gloom that shrouds the dwellings of many of her northern sisters; and could she but see the veil that hangs over London, in such streets as Harley, or Welbeck Street, on the brightest morning that ever dawned on their sleeping inhabitants, she might well be reconciled to her present life! [Illustration: A TOILER OF THE SEA.] 'Is it nothing,' we are inclined to ask her, 'to feel the first rays of the sun at his rising, to be fanned with fresh breezes, to rejoice in the wind, to brave the storm; to have learned from childhood to welcome as familiar friends, the changes of the elements, and, in short, to have realised, in a natural life the 'mens sana in corpore sano'? Would she be willing to repeat the follies of her ancestors in the days of the _Trianon_ and Louis XIV.? Would she complete the fall which began when knights and nobles turned courtiers--and roués? Let us read history to her and remind her what centralization did for old France; let us whisper to her, whilst there is time, what Paris is like in our own day. Do we exaggerate the evils of over-centralization? We only at present, half know them; but the next generation may discover the full meaning of the word. There is exaggeration, no doubt; some men have lived so long in the country that they speak of towns as a 'seething mass of corruption,' pregnant of evil; and of villages as of an almost divine Arcadia, whence nothing but good can spring; but the evils of centralization can scarcely be overrated in any community. The social system even in France, cannot revolve for ever round one sun. CHAPTER VII. _AVRANCHES--MONT ST. MICHAEL._ There are some places in Europe which English people seem, with one consent, to have made their own; they take possession of them, peacefully enough it is true, but with a determination that the inhabitants find it impossible to resist. Thus it is that Avranches--owing principally, it may be, to its healthiness and cheapness of living, and to the extreme beauty of its situation--has become an English country town, with many of its peculiarities, and a few, it must be added, of its rather unenviable characteristics. The buildings at Avranches are not very remarkable. The cathedral has been destroyed, and the houses are of the familiar French pattern; some charmingly situated in pleasant gardens commanding the view over the bay. The situation seems perfect. Built upon the extreme western promontory of the long line of hills which extend from Domfront and the forest of Audaine, with a view unsurpassed in extent towards the sea, with environs of undulating hills and fruitful landscape; with woods and streams (such as the traveller who has only passed through central France could hardly imagine) we can scarcely picture to ourselves a more favoured spot. No district in Normandy (a resident assures us) affords a more agreeable resting place than the hills of Avranches, excepting, perhaps, the smiling environs of Mortain and Vire. Mortain is within easy distance, as well as Mont St. Michael (which we have sketched from the terrace at Avranches, at the beginning of this chapter), and Granville, also, on the western shore of the Norman archipelago; to the extreme south is seen the Bay of Cancale in Brittany, and the promontory of St. Malo; to the north, the variegated landscape of the Cotentin--hills, valleys, woods, villages, churches, and châteaux smiling in the sunshine,--the air melodious with the song of the lark and innumerable nightingales.' True as is this picture of the natural beauty of the position of Avranches, we will add one or two facts (gathered lately on the spot) which may be useful to intending emigrants from our shores. Within the last few years house rent, though still cheap, has greatly increased; and the prices of provisions, which used to be so abundant from Granville and St. Malo, have risen, as they have, indeed, all over France. The railway from Granville to Paris will only make matters worse, and the resident will soon see the butter, eggs, and fowls, which used to throng the market of Avranches, packed away in baskets for Paris and London. The salmon and trout in the rivers, are already netted and sold by the pound; and the larks sing no longer in the sky. Thus, like Dinan, Tours and Pau, Avranches feels the weight of centralisation and the effects of rapid communication with the capital; and will in a few years be anything but a cheap place of residence. However, from information gathered only yesterday, we learn that 'house rent bears favourable comparison with many English provincial towns; that servants' wages are not high, and that provisions are comparatively cheap;' also that the climate is 'very cold sometimes in winter, but more inclined to be damp; and that there is no good inn.' Again,--'if any quiet family demands fine air, a lovely position, cheap house-rent and servants, easy and cheerful society, regular church services, and, above all, first-class education for boys, and good governesses and masters for girls, it cannot do better than settle down here.' And again (from another point of view) that, 'after a year's residence in Normandy, I can see but little economy in it compared with England, and believe that sensible people would find far greater comfort, and but little more expense, if resident in Wales, Ireland, or some of the distant parts of our own country; if they would but make up their minds to live with as few servants, and to see as little society as is the custom abroad.' These varying opinions are worth having, coming as they do from residents, and giving us the latest information on the subject; but our friend whom we have quoted last seems to put the case most fairly, when he says, in so many words, 'English people had better live in their own country, if they can.' Life at Avranches is a strange contrast to Granville. In a few hours we pass from the contemplation of fishermen's lives to a curious kind of civilization--an exotic plant, which some might think was hardly worth the transplanting. A little colony of English people have taken possession of one of the finest and healthiest spots in Europe, and upon this vantage ground have deposited, or reproduced as in a magic mirror, much of the littleness and pettiness that is peculiar to an English country town: they have brought insular prejudices and peculiarities, and unpacked several of them at Avranches. Do we overdraw the picture? Hear one more resident, who thus tersely, and rather pathetically, puts his grievances to us, _viva voce_:-- 'We quiet English people,' he says, 'generally dine early, because it is considered economical--_which it is not!_ 'We live exclusively and stiffly, because it is considered proper and necessary--_which it is not!_ 'We go to the expense and trouble of bringing out our families, because living is supposed to be cheaper than in England--_which practically it is not!_ 'We believe that our children will be well educated, and pick up French for nothing--_which they do not!_'--&c, &c. An amusing book might be written about English society in French towns; no one indeed knows who has not tried it, with what little society-props such coteries as those at Avranches, Pau, &c., are kept up. It varies, of course, every year, and in each place every year; but when we were last at Avranches, 'society' was the watchword, we might almost say the war cry; and we had to declare our colours as if we lived in the days of the Wars of the Roses. The old inhabitants are, of course, 'rather particular,' and, to tell the truth, are sometimes rather afraid of each other. They are apt to eye with considerable caution any new arrival; the 'new arrival' is disposed to be equally select, and so they live together and apart, after the true English model; and indulging sometimes, it must be added, in considerable speculation about their new neighbours' business. 'Why were they proud--because red-lined accounts Were richer than the songs of Grecian years? Why were they proud--again we ask, aloud, Why in the name of glory were they proud?' And so on; but what we might say of Avranches would apply to nearly every little English colony abroad. There are two sides to the picture, and there is a good, pleasant side to the English society at Avranches; there is also great necessity to be 'particular,' however much we may laugh. English people who come to reside abroad are not, as a rule, very good representatives of their nation; neither they nor their children seem to flourish on a foreign soil, they differ in their character as much as transplanted trees; they have more affinity with the poplars and elms of France than with the sturdy oaks of England.[27] Let us not be thought to disparage Avranches; if it is our lot to live here we may enjoy life well; and if we are not deterred by the dull and 'weedy' aspect of some of the old chateaux, we may also make some pleasant friends amongst the French families in the neighbourhood. In summer time we may almost live out of doors, and ramble about in the fields and sketch, as we should do in England; the air is fresh and bracing, and the sea breeze comes gratefully on the west wind. We may stroll through shady lanes and between hedgerows, and we shall hear the familiar sound of bells, and see through the trees a church tower, such as the following (which is indeed the common type throughout Normandy); but here the similarity to England ceases, for we may enter the building at any hour, and find peasant women at prayers. [Illustration] And we may see sometimes a party of English girls from a French school, with their drawing master; sketching from nature and making minute studies of the brandies of trees. They are seated on a hill-side, and there is a charming pastoral scene before them,--wood and water, pasture-land and cattle grazing,--women with white caps, and little white houses peeping through the trees. But the trees that they are studying are small and characterless compared with our own, they are scattered about the landscape, or set in trim lines along the roads: our fair artists had better be in England for this work. There is none of the mass and grandeur here that we see in our forest trees, none of the suggestive groups with which we are so familiar, even in the parks of London, planted 'by accident' (as we are apt to call it), but standing together with clear purpose of protection and support,--the strong-limbed facing the north and stretching out their protecting arms, the weaker towering above them in the centre of the square; whilst those to the south spread a deep shade almost to the ground. French trees are under an Imperial necessity to form into line; the groves at Fontainbleau are as straight as the Fifth Avenue at New York. There are no studies of trees in all Normandy like the royal oaks of Windsor, there is nothing to compare in grandeur with the stems of the Burnham beeches, set in a carpet of ferns; and nothing equal in effect to the massing of the blue pines--with their bronzed stems against an evening sky--in Woburn Park in Bedfordshire. We may bring some pretty studies from Avranches and from the country round, but we should not come to France to draw trees. But there are studies which we may make near Avranches, and of scenes that we shall not meet with in England. If we descend the hill and walk a few miles in the direction of Granville, we may see by the roadside the remnants of several wayside 'stations' of very early date. Let us sit down by the roadside to sketch one of these (A.D. 1066), and depict for the reader, almost with the accuracy of a photograph, its grotesque proportions. It stands on a bank, in a prominent position, by the roadside; a rude contrast to the surrounding scenery. Presently there comes up an old cantonnier in a blouse and heavy sabots, who has just returned from mending the roads; he takes off his cap, crosses himself devoutly, and kneels down to pray. The sun shines upon the cross and upon the kneeling figure; the soft wind plays about them, the bank is lovely with wild flowers; there are purple hills beyond, and a company of white clouds careering through space. But the old man sees nothing but the cross, he has no eyes for the beauty of landscape, no ear for the music of the birds or the voices of nature; he sees nothing but the image of his Saviour, he kneels as he knelt in childhood before the cross, he clasps his worn hands, and prays, with many repetitions, words which evidently bring comfort to his soul. In a few minutes the old man rises and puts on his cap, with a brass plate on it with the number of his canton, produces a little can of soup and bread and sits down on the bank to breakfast; ending by unrolling a morsel of tobacco from a crumpled paper, putting it into his mouth and going fast asleep. [Illustration] Many more such scenes we could record, but they are more fitted for the pencil than the pen; the artist can easily fill his sketch-book without going far from Avranches. But as autumn advances our thoughts are naturally turned more towards 'le sport;' and if we are fortunate enough to be on visiting terms with the owners of the neighbouring châteaux, we may be present at some interesting scenes that will remind us of pictures in the galleries at Versailles. 'With good books, a good rod, and a double gun, one could never weary of a residence at Avranches,' says an enthusiastic settler who has found out the right corners in the trout-streams, and, possibly, the denizens of the neighbouring woods. The truth, however, is that in spite of the beautifully wooded country round, and the rivers that wind so picturesquely beneath us; in spite of its unexampled situation and its glorious view, Avranches is scarcely the spot for a sportsman to select for a residence. In the season there are numerous sportsmen, both English and French, and occasionally a very fair bag may be made; but game not being preserved systematically, the supply is variable, and accounts of sport naturally differ very widely. We can only say that it is poor work after our English covers, and that we know some residents at Avranches who prefer making excursions into Brittany for a week's shooting. Trout may be caught in tolerable abundance, and salmon of good weight are still to be found in the rivers, but they are diminishing fast, being, as we said, netted at night for the Paris market.[28] It was in the shooting season of the year, when game had been unusually scarce for the sportsman and provokingly plentiful to behold in the market-place at Granville--when the last accounts we had of the success of a party (who had been out for a week) was that they had bagged 'only a few woodcocks, three partridges, and a hare or two'--that the following clever sketch appeared in the newspapers. It was great fun, especially amongst some of our French friends who were very fond of the phrase 'chasse magnifique,' and resented the story as a terrible libel. An enthusiastic French marquis offered one of our countrymen, whom he met in Paris, a few days' shooting, in short, a 'chasse magnifique.' He accepted and went the next day; 'the journey was seven hours by railway, but to the true sportsman this was nothing.' The morning after his arrival he was attended by the marquis's keeper, who, in answer to X.'s enquiries, thus mapped out the day's sport:-- 'Pour commencer, monsieur, nous chasserons dans les vignes de M. le Marquis, où à cette saison nous trouverons certainement des grives (thrushes).' 'Et après?' says X. 'Eh bien! après, nous passerons une petite heure sur la grande plaine, où, sans doute, nous trouverons une masse d'alouettes (larks). En suite je montrerai à monsieur certaines poules d'eau (moorhens) que je connais; fichtre! nous les attraperons. Il y a là-bas aussi, dans le marais, un petit lac où, l'année passée, j'ai vu un canard, mais un canard sauvage! Nous le chercherons; peut-être il y sera.' 'But have you no partridges?' 'Des perdreaux! mais oui! je le crois bien! (il demande si nous avons des perdreaux!) Il y en a, mais ils sont difficiles. Nous en avions _quatre_, mais, le mois passé, M. le Marquis en a tué un et sérieusement blessé un second. La pauvre bête n'est pas encore guérie. Cela ne nous laisse que deux. Nous les chasserons sans doute si monsieur le veut; _mais que feronsnous l'année prochaine_? Si monsieur veut bien achever cette pauvre bête blessée, ça peut s'arranger.' 'Well, but have you no covert shooting--no hares?' 'Les liévres? mais certainement, nous avons des liévres. Nous irons dans la forêt, je prendrai mes chiens, et je vous montrerai de belles lièvres. J'en ai trois--_Josephine, Alphonse_, et le vieux _Adolphe_. Pour le moment Josephine est sacrée--elle est mère. Le petit Alphonse s'est marié avec elle, comme ça il est un peu père de famille; nous l'épargnerons, n'est-ce-pas, monsieur? Mais le vieux Adolphe, nous le tuerons; c'est déjà temps; voilà cinq ans que je le chasse!' _MONT ST. MICHAEL._ From the terrace of the Jardin des Plantes, where we are never tired of the view (although some residents complain that it becomes monotonous, because they are too far from the sea to enjoy its variety), the grey mount of St. Michael is ever before us, gleaming in the sunshine or looming through the storm. In our little sketch we have given as accurately as possible its appearance from Avranches on a summer's day after rain;[29] but it should be seen when a storm passes over it, when the same clouds that we have watched so often on summer nights, casting deep shadows on the intervening plain--some silver-lined that may have expressed hope, some black as midnight that might mean despair--come over to us like messengers from the great rock, and take our little promontory by storm. They come silently one by one, and gather round and fold over us; then suddenly clap their hands and burst with such a deluge of rain that it seems a matter for wonder that any little creeping human things could survive the flood. And it does us good; we are thoroughly drenched, our houses and gardens do not recover their fair presence for weeks; our little prejudices and foibles are well nigh washed out of us, and we are reminded of the dread reality of the lives of our neighbours on the island, who form a much larger colony than ourselves.[30] 'On no account omit a visit to Mont St. Michael,' say the guide-books, and accordingly we charter a carriage on a summer's morning and are driven in a few hours along a bad road, to the edge of the sands about a mile from the mount--the same sands that we saw depicted in the Bayeux tapestry, when William and Harold marched on Dinan. We choose a favourable time of the tide, and approach the gates at the foot of the mount dryshod.[31] For a thousand years pilgrims have crossed these treacherous sands to lay their offerings at the feet of the Archangel Michael; Norman dukes and monks of the middle ages have paid their devotion at his shrine, and troops of pilgrims in all ages, even to this day, when a party of English school-girls come tripping across the bay, provided with a passport and a fee, bent upon having the terrors of the prison-house shewn to them as easily as the 'chamber of horrors' at Madame Tussaud's. Before us, as we walk the last mile, the granite rock gradually becomes a mountain surrounded by a wide plain of sand, covered with clustering houses, towers, turrets, and fortifications, and surmounted by a Gothic church nearly 400 feet above the sea. There is a little town upon the rock, old, tumble-down, irregular, and picturesque, like Bastia in Corsica--constructed by a hardy sea-faring people, who have built their dwellings in the sides of this conical rock, like the sea-birds; and there is a little inn called the _Lion d'or_, with windows built out over the ramparts, from which we can see the shore. On arriving at the island we pass under two ancient towers, and into 'the court of the Lion;' then to a third gate, with its towers and battlements, and frowning portcullis; and we see, as we pass, the lion (the insignia of the knights of Mont St. Michael) carved in stone, and set into the wall. We are received in the ancient guard-room by a 'young brother,' who has (shall it be repeated?) 'turned the guard-room into a cheerful bazaar for the sale of photographs, ivory carvings and the like.' We are on the threshold of the sanctuary, at the end of our pilgrimage; we offer up no prayers, as of old, for safe deliverance from peril, but we set to work at once, and 'invest in a pocketful of little presents, which another brother (on business thoughts intent) packs for us neatly in a pasteboard box.' We are shewn the apartments in the 'Tour des Corbins,' with its grand staircase, called 'l'escalier des exils,' and the crypt one hundred feet long, built by the monks in the eleventh century; we see the great Gothic hall of the Knights of Mont St. Michael, with its carved stone-work and lofty roof, supported by three rows of pillars, beautiful in proportion, and grand in effect, although the Revolution, as usual, has left us little but the bare walls; but, as we look down upon it from a gallery, it is easy to picture the splendour of a banquet of knights in the twelfth century, with the banners and insignia of chivalry ranged upon the walls.[32] But it is now a silent gloomy chamber, and the atmosphere is so close and the moral atmosphere so heavy withal, that we are glad to leave it, and to ascend to another story of this wonderful pile; through the beautiful Gothic cloisters, and out upon the cathedral roof, where we suddenly emerge upon a view more wonderful in its extent and flatness than anything, save that from the cathedral tower of Chartres; before us an horizon of sea, behind us the coast line, and the hills of Avranches; all around, a wide plain of sand, and northward, in the far distance, the low dark lines of the channel islands. That 'Saint Michael's Mount has become a popular lion, and can only be seen under the vexatious companionship of a guide and a party' is true enough; nevertheless, we can stay at the inn on the island, and thus be enabled to examine and make drawings of some of the most beautiful thirteenth-century work in the cloisters that we shall meet with in Normandy. These cloisters and open arcades (supported by upwards of two hundred slender pillars) are carved and decorated with grotesque and delicate ornament, the capitals to the pillars are richly foliated, and the fringe that surrounds them has been well described as a 'wilderness of vines and roses, and dragons, winged and crowned.' Like the churches in Normandy, the architecture of these monastic buildings is in nearly every style, from the simple romanesque of the eleventh century to the rich _flamboyant_ of the fifteenth; and, like many of the churches, its history dates from the time when the Druids took possession of the island to the days when the storm of the Revolution broke upon its shores. The ordinary time for visiting the rock is when the tide is out, but we have not seen Mont St. Michael to advantage until it is completely surrounded by water, as it is during the spring tides; it is then that, approached from the west, we may see it half-obscured by sea-foam, with its turrets shining through the clouds, and the heavy Atlantic waves booming against its foundations. The little fishing population of Mont St. Michael, and the stories they tell of the dangers of the quicksands, will while away the time in the evening and reward us for staying; and we shall see such an exhibition of hopeless _ennui_ on the part of the French officers in garrison as will not soon be forgotten. It would require a separate work to describe in detail all the buildings on the rock;[33] (it takes a day to examine the fortifications and dungeons alone); we have therefore only attempted to give the reader an idea of its general aspect; of what M. Nodier, in his '_Annales Romantiques_,' describes as 'l'effet poétique et religieux de la flèche du Mont St. Michael;' and indeed we have hardly dared to picture to ourselves the complete magnificence of the basilica of the Archangel, as mariners who approached these shores must have seen it three hundred years ago, with its lofty towers of sculptured stone; and the image of its patron saint, turning towards the western sun a fiery cross of gold. CHAPTER VIII. _MORTAIN--VIRE--FALAISE._ We now turn our faces towards the east, and starting again from Avranches on our homeward journey, go very leisurely by diligence, through Mortain and Vire to Falaise. The distance from Avranches to Mortain is not more than twenty miles, and takes nearly five hours; but the country is so beautiful, and the air is so fresh and bracing, that a seat in the banquette of the diligence is one of the most enviable in life. The roof is over-loaded with goods and passengers, which gives a pleasant swaying motion to the vehicle; but the road is so smooth and even that 'nobody cares'--the rocking to and fro is soothing, and sends the driver to sleep, the pieces of string that keep the harness together will hold for another hour or two, and the crazy machine will last our journey at least. We halt continually on the journey--once, for half-an-hour, literally 'under the lindens'--they are not yet in bloom, but they give out a pleasant perfume into the dreamy air; we are again in the open country, in the atmosphere of old historic Normandy, and bound, slowly it is true, for the birthplace of William the Conqueror; and we can read or sleep at pleasure, as our crazy diligence crawls up and creeps down every hill, and stops at every cottage by the way. On this beautiful winding road, which is carried along and between, the ridge of hills on which Avranches stands, and commands views westward over the bay to Mont St. Michael and eastward towards Alençon and the plains of Orne, we only meet one or two solitary pedestrians. We are nearly as much alone as in a Swiss pass; the scenery might be part of the Tête Noire, and the _Hôtel de la Poste_, at Mortain, which is built on the side of a hill over a ravine, and at which our diligence makes a dead stop, might, for many reasons, be a posada on the Italian Alps. If we stroll out at once, before the evening closes, we shall have time to visit the cemetery on the rocks, to see the remains of a castle of the Norman dukes, and above all, the superb panorama from the heights; and we may wander afterwards into the valleys to see the cascades, the ivy-covered rocks, and the masses of ferns; scenes so exquisite and varied that we are lost in wonder that all these things are to be seen in France at small trouble and cost, and that French artists have hardly ever told us of them.[34] That 'the country round Mortain is not known as well as it deserves,' is a remark that cannot be too often repeated; we cannot, indeed, imagine a more delightful district for an English artist in which to spend a summer, and we promise him that he shall find subjects that will look as well on the walls of the Academy as the Welsh hills, or the valleys of Switzerland. We are at a loss to express in words the romantic beauty of the situation of Mortain, where we may pitch our tent, and make studies of rocks, which will tell us more in practice, than written volumes about these wondrous geological formations; and the clusters of ivy in the niches, the moss and lichen, the rich colour of the boulders, the trees in the valleys below us, the clear sky, and the sweet air that comes across the bay, make us linger here for the beauty of the scene alone; regardless almost of the ancient history of Mortain, of the story of its Pagan temples, of its thirteenth-century church, and almost unmindful of the 'Abbaye de Savigny,' eight miles off, a building which is worthy of a special visit. And we come away, perforce, in the evening-time from all this lovely landscape, from the pure air, from the cascades, the rocks, and the ferns, from everything agreeable to the senses, to the most literal, shameful, wallowing in the mire. We have spoken, so far, only of the scene; let add a word in very truth, about 'man and his dwelling-place.' How shall we describe it? We are at the _Hôtel de la Poste_, and we are housed like pigs; we (some of us) eat like them, and live even as the lower animals. We--'_Messieurs et Mesdames_,' lords and ladies of the creation--hide our heads in a kennel; our dirty rooms 'give' on to the odorous court-yard; we turn our backs upon the valley which the building almost overhangs; we can neither breathe pure air nor see the bright landscape. Any details of the domestic arrangements and surroundings of the _Hôtel de la Poste_ at Mortain would be unfit for these pages; suffice it that, we are in one of the second-rate old-fashioned inns of France, the style of which our travelled forefathers may well remember.[35] We have more than once been censured for saying that the French people have little natural love for scenery, and a stilted, not to say morbid, theory of landscape; but whilst we stay in this inn, from which we might have had such splendid views, we become confirmed in the opinion (formed in the Pyrenees), that the French people _do not care_, and that they think nothing of defiling Nature's purest places. At this hotel we are in the position of the prisoners confined aloft in the tower at Florence; the hills and valleys are before and around us, but we are not allowed to see them.[36] On our road to VIRE, twenty-three miles distant, it is tempting to make a digression to the town of Domfront (which the reader will see on the map, a few miles to the south-east); we should do so, to see its picturesque position, with the ancient castle on the heights, and the town, as at Falaise, growing round its feet; also an old church at the foot of the hill, which is considered 'one of the best and purest specimens of Norman work to be found anywhere.' But the route we have chosen for description, now turns northward, passing through a still beautiful land, studded with thatched cottages, and lighted up with the dazzling white helmets of the women who are busy in the fields, and in the farms and homesteads. As we approach the town of Vire, the population has evidently been absorbed into the cloth and paper mills, for, excepting in the morning and the evening, there are very few people abroad; we see scarcely any one, save, at regular intervals on the road, the old cantonniers occupied in their business of making stone-pies,[37] or a village curé at work in his garden; but we notice that the houses are neater and better built than those near Mortain, where grass grows luxuriantly upon them, and the roofs are covered with coloured mosses. The situation of Vire is one of extreme beauty (reminding us again of Switzerland), with hills and valleys richly wooded, the trees being larger than any we have yet seen on our route. If we had approached Vire from the west, by way of Villedieu and St. Sever, we should have had even finer views than by way of Mortain; but Villedieu is at present more deplorable than Mortain in its domestic arrangements, and the inn is to be avoided by all cleanly people; however, with the completion of the railway from Vire to Granville, we are promised much better things. [Illustration: CLOCK TOWER AT VIRE.] The chief architectural object of interest at Vire is the old clock-tower of the thirteenth century, over the Rue de Calvados, with its high gateway, formerly called 'the gate of the Champ de Vire.' Over this gateway (which we cannot see from the position where we have sketched the belfry) there is a statue of the Virgin, with the inscription, '_Marie protége la ville_.' This tower has been altered and repaired at several periods, and, like two others near it, is too much built up against and crowded by, what the French call '_maisons vulgaires_,' to be well seen. We have not spoken of the castle first, because there is little of it left besides the keep; and the part that remains seems no longer old. The bold promontory on which it stood is now neatly kept and 'tidied' with smooth slopes, straight walks, and double rows of trees, pleasant to walk upon, but more suggestive of the Bois de Boulogne than the approach to a ruin. It is from this promontory, or rather from what Murray calls 'this dusty pleasure ground,' that we obtain our best view of the country westward, towards Avranches; and from whence we can see the bold granite formation of the rocks in the neighbourhood. We may see where the manufacturers of cloth and paper have established their mills; and also where, in some cases, they have had to widen out the valleys, and to cut roads through the rocks to their works. All the streams turn waterwheels, and many of the surrounding rocks are disfigured with cloth 'tenters.' There are some curious half-timbered houses at Vire, and some old streets tempting to sketch; including the house of Basselin, the famous originator of 'vaux de Vire'--or, as they are now called, _vaudevilles_. The inhabitants number about 9000, they are for the most part engaged in the manufactories of the place, too busy apparently to modernise either their costume or their dwellings; but the railway is now bringing others to the town who will work these changes for them. Happily for them and for us, the hills are of granite and their sides most precipitous, and the innovators make slow progress in modernisation. At the hotels everyone drinks cider, rather than _vin ordinaire_; and at night we are awoke with the clatter of sabots and the voice of the watchman. The ancient town of FALAISE, to which so many Englishmen make a pilgrimage, as being the reputed birthplace of William the Conqueror, can now be reached, either from Caen, Vire, or Paris, by railway; but we who come from the west, will do well to keep to the old road; and (if we wish to preserve within us any of the associations connected with the place) should not have the sound of '_Falaise_' first rung in our ears by railway porters. Both the town and castle of Falaise are situated on high ground; and the latter, being on the side of a precipitous eminence, may be seen for a long distance before we approach it by the road. At Falaise, as at Lisieux, the traveller who arrives in the town by railway, is generally surprised and disappointed, at first sight, with its modern aspect. 'The castle of Falaise,' says M. Leduc, 'consists of a large square Norman keep of the tenth and eleventh centuries, standing at the steepest and highest part of a rocky eminence, with a lofty and exceedingly fine _circular_ tower, connected with it on the south-west by a passage; and round the whole, a long irregular line of outer wall following the sinuosities of the hill, fortified by circular towers and enclosing various detached buildings used by the garrison. This line of outer wall and the circular tower is of much later date than the keep, and the greater portion of them is not older than the fourteenth or fifteenth century, when the castle had to withstand attacks from the English. In the keep (it is said) William the Conqueror was born, and they pretend to show the remains of the very room where this event took place, as well as the identical window from which his father "Duke Robert the Magnificent," first saw Arlette, the daughter of the Falaise tanner.' Here, under the shadow of 'Talbot's tower,' we might prefer to muse historically, and gather up our memories of facts connected with the place; but we are treading again upon 'the footsteps of the Conqueror,' and must pay for our indiscretion. From the moment we approach the precincts of the castle, we are pounced upon by the inevitable spider (in this instance, in the shape of a very rough and ignorant custodian) who is in hiding to receive his prey. Before we have time for remonstrance, we have paid our money, we have ascended the smooth round tower (one hundred feet high, with walls fifteen feet thick) by a winding staircase, we have been taken out on to the modern zinc-covered roof, and shown the view therefrom; and the spots where the various sieges and battles took place, including the breach made by Henry IV. after seven days' cannonade, a breach that two or three shots from an Armstrong gun would have effected in these days. We are shewn, of course, 'the room where William the Conqueror was born,' and from the windows of the castle keep we have just time to make a sketch of the beautiful Val d'Ante,[38] and of the women, with their curiously-shaped baskets, washing in the stream; and to listen to the thrice-told tale of the tanner's daughter, and to the deeds of valour wrought on these heights--when the performance is declared to be over, and we find ourselves once more on the ramparts outside the castle. We are so full of historical associations at Falaise--every nook and corner of the castle telling of its nine sieges--that we are glad to be able to examine the building thoroughly from without, and to remind ourselves of the method of defensive warfare in the fifteenth century. The whole of the precincts of the castle, the walls, ramparts, and the principal towers, are (at the time we write, August, 1869) strewn with mason's work, as if a new castle of Falaise were being built; everything looks fresh and new, it is only here and there we discover anything old, the remnants of a carved window, and the like. But, as a Frenchman observed to us, if it had not been for all this nineteenth-century work, the present generation would never have seen the castle of Falaise. The work of restoration appears to be carried on in rather a different spirit from the ecclesiastical restorations at Caen and Bayeux; here the prevailing idea seems to be, 'prop up your antique _any how_' (with timber beams, and a zinc roof to Talbot's tower, such as we might put over a cistern), so long as devotees will come and worship, with francs, at the shrine; whilst at Bayeux, as we have seen, the old work is handled with reverence and fear, and the nineteenth-century mason puts out all his power to imitate, if not to excel, the work of the twelfth. The churches at Falaise should not pass unnoticed; but we will not weary the reader with any detailed description. Artists will especially delight in the view of a fourteenth-century church close to the castle, with its chancel with creepers growing over it, and peeping out between the stones; and historians will be interested in the laconic inscription on its walls, 'rebuilt in 1438, a year of war, death, plague, and famine.' If such artists as Brewer, or Burgess, would only come here and give us drawings of these streets (of one especially, taking in the cathedral at the end, with its stone walls built over by shops, as at Pont Audemer), they would be very interesting to Englishmen. Antiquaries will regret to learn that in the year 1869, the west end of a church is obliterated, as in the next illustration; that the shop of one 'M. Guille, peruquier,' reposes against the window, and that two other, quite modern, buildings lean against its walls. An old Norman arch is carved immediately above the window we have sketched, and completes the picture. [Illustration] It is, of course, not very easy to sketch undisturbed in the streets of Falaise; and both in the churches and in the castle the showman is perpetually treading on the traveller's heels. Everywhere we turn, in the neighbourhood of the castle, we are reminded of historic deeds of valour, and of deadly fights in the middle ages; and every day that we remain in the town, we are reminded (by the crowds of farmers, horsedealers, and others, who are busy at the great fair held here twice a year) of our own, by comparison, very trifling business at Falaise. We are making a drawing of the great rocks near the castle, and of the valley below, every step of which is made famous by the memory of the Conqueror; when our studies are disturbed, not by tourists but by natives of the town; once by a farmer to see his good horses, which indeed he had, at the stables at the 'hotel of the beautiful Star,' where there were at least fifty standing for sale; and once, by a small boy, who carries a tray full of little yellow books called '_La Lanterne de Falaise_,' with a picture on the cover of the castle tower, and a huge lantern slung from the battlements! We purchase a copy, to get rid of the last intruder, and find it to be a '_Revue, satirique et humouristique_,' treating of divers matters, including '_faits atroces et chiens perdus_'! Now without being accused of misanthropy, we may remark that there are times and places when an Englishman would rather be 'let alone,' and that the precincts of Falaise are certainly of them. These century-wide contrasts and concussions, jar so terribly sometimes, that we are half-inclined to ask with M. de Tocqueville, whether we do not seem to be on the eve of a new Byzantine era, in which 'little men shall discuss and ape the deeds which great men did in their forefathers' days.'[39] The refrain in this nineteenth century is, 'still the showman, still the spectator,' until we become almost tired of the song. 'Here some noble act was achieved--there some valiant man perished.' Every nook and corner of the place tells the same story; until we are tempted to enquire 'What are _we_ doing (or are fit and capable of doing personally, on an emergency, in the matter of fighting,) to compare with the achievements of these Norman men of all ranks of life?' But not only in Normandy, it is the same wherever we go: as far as our own personal part in heroic actions is concerned, we live in an atmosphere of unreality; we read of great deeds rather than achieve them, we make shows of the works of our ancestors, we take pence (readily) over the graves of our kinsmen, and live, as it seems to us, rather unworthily, in the past. With our nineteenth-century inventions, we could, it is true, mow down these castle heights in half an hour, and we might well be proud of the achievement as a nation; but our warfare is at best but poor mercenary work, the heart of the nation--the life and courage of its people--are not in it.[40] We civilians, are too much protected, and most of us do not know how to fight. Like the Athenians, we are supposed to be cultivating the arts of peace, but, as we endeavoured to show at Caen, if judged by our monuments, we are making no great mark in our generation. Perhaps this is a question rather wide of our subject, but let us at least contend for one thing, viz.:--that if the mission of the present generation is not to wield battle-axes, but rather to fight social battles, say for the amelioration of the unhappy part of the population; and if it is our fortune to be protected the while, by a staff of policemen, and by strong laws against crime--that we should not neglect, at the same time, to cultivate and preserve the personal valour that is in us, by the use of arms. It may be that the day is shortly coming (our engineers predict that we shall soon have hand-to-hand fighting again), when every individual amongst us will have to put his courage to the proof; and if this should ever happen, it will certainly not diminish our interest in the construction and arrangement of these mediæval castles, or in the battles that have been fought beneath their walls. CHAPTER IX. _ROUEN._ At a corner of the market-place at Rouen, there stood, but a few years ago, one of the most picturesque houses in all Normandy, and with a story (if we are to believe the old chroniclers) as pathetic as any in history. It was from a door in this house that, in the year 1431, the unfortunate Joan of Arc was led out to be 'burned as a sorceress' before the people of Rouen. We need not dwell upon the story of the 'fair maid of Orleans,' which every child has by heart, but (mindful of our picturesque mission) we should like to carry the reader in imagination to the same spot just four hundred years later, when an English artist, heedless of the crowd that collects around him, sits down in the street to sketch the lines of the old building, already tottering to ruin. Faithfully and patiently does the artist draw the old gables, the unused doorway, the heavy awnings, the piles of wood, the market-women, and the grey perspective of the side street with its pointed roofs, curious archways and oil lantern swinging from house to house; and as faithfully (even to the mis-spelling of the word 'liquer,' on a board over the doorway) almost indeed, with the touch of the artist's pencil, has the engraver reproduced, by means of photography, the late Samuel Prout's drawing on the frontispiece of this volume.[41] Few artists have succeeded, as Prout succeeded, in giving the character of the old buildings in Normandy, and certainly no other drawings with which we are acquainted, admit of being photographed as his do, without losing effect. It is scarcely too much to say that in this engraving we can distinguish the different washes of colour, the greys and warmer tints, the broad touches of his pencil on the white caps of the women, and the very work of his hand in the bold, decisive shadows. It is pleasant to dwell for a moment on Prout's work, for he has become identified with Normandy through numerous sketches of buildings now pulled down; and they have an antiquarian as well as an artistic interest. They are 'mannered,' as we all know, but they have more _couleur locale_ than any of the drawings of Pugin; and are valued (we speak of money value) at the present time, above the works of most water-colour painters of his time. But we must not dream about old Rouen, we must rather tell the reader what it is like to-day, and how modern and prosaic is its aspect; how we arrive by express train, and are rattled through wide paved streets in an '_omnibus du Chemin de Fer_,' and are set down at a 'grand' hotel, where we find an Englishman seated in the doorway reading 'Bell's Life.' Rouen is busy and thriving, and has a fixed population of not less than 150,000; situated about half-way between Paris and the port of Havre, there is a constant flow of traffic passing and repassing, and its quays are lined with goods for exportation. In front of our window at the Hôtel d'Angleterre, from which we have a view for miles on both sides of the Seine, the noise and bustle are almost as great as at Lyons or Marseilles. The Rouen of to-day is given up to commerce, to the swinging of cranes, and to the screeching of locomotives on the quays; whilst the fine broad streets and lines of newly erected houses, shut out from our view the old city of which we have heard so much, and which many of us have come so far to see. As we approach Rouen by the river, or even by railway, it is true that we see cathedral towers, but they are interspersed with smoking factory chimneys and suspension bridges; and although on our first drive through the town, we pass the magnificent portal of the cathedral and the old clock-tower in the '_rue de la Grosse Horloge_,' we observe that the cathedral has a cast-iron spire, and that the frescoes and carving round the clock-tower are built up against and pasted over with bills of concerts and theatres. The streets are full of busy merchants, trim shopkeepers, and the usual crowd of blouses that we see in every city in France. There are wide boulevards and trees round Rouen; and if we look down upon the city from the heights of Mont St. Catherine (perhaps the best view that we can obtain anywhere) it may remind us, with its broad river laden with ships and its cathedral towers, of the superb view of Lyons that we obtain from the heights near the cemetery: the view so well known to visitors to that city. The people of Rouen who have spread out into the enormous suburb of St. Sever, on the left bank of the Seine,[42] are busy by thousands in the manufactories,--the sound of the loom and the anvil comes up to us even here; and down by the banks of the river, away westward, as far as the eye can see, up spring clean bright houses of the wealthy manufacturers and traders of Rouen,--rich, sleek, and portly gentlemen with the thinnest boots, who never even pass down the old streets if they can help it, but whom we shall find very pleasant and hospitable; and with whom we may sit down at a café under the trees and play at dominoes in the open street, in the middle of the day, without creating a scandal. But if Rouen will not compare with Lyons in size, or commercial importance, it surpasses it in antiquarian interest; and we have chosen our illustrations to depict it rather as it was, than as it is. We give a drawing of Joan of Arc's house rather than of a building in the 'rue Imperiale;' and a view of the old market-place in front of the cathedral rather than of the trim toy-garden at the west end of the church of St. Ouen; and we do this, not only because it is more picturesque, but because the modern aspect of Rouen is familiar to the majority of our readers. But we must examine the old buildings whilst there is time, for (as in other towns of Normandy) the work of demolition grows fast and furious; and the churches, the _Palais de Justice_, the courts of law, and the tower of the _Grosse Horloge_ will soon be all that is left to us. The narrow winding streets of gable-ended houses, with their strange histories, will soon be forgotten by all but the antiquary; for there is a ruthless law that no more half-timbered houses shall be built, and another that everything shall be in line. We are surrounded by old houses, but cannot easily find them, and when discovered they almost crumble at the touch--they fade away as if by magic; and there is a halo of mystery, we might almost say of sanctity, about them which is indescribable; it is as if the blossoms of an early age still clung to the old walls and garlanded with time-wreaths their tottering ruins. Rouen is disappearing like a dissolving view--a few more slides in the magic lantern, a few more windows of plate-glass, a few more '_grandes rues_' and the picture of old Rouen fades away. Let us hasten to the _Place de la Pucelle_, and examine the carving on the houses, and on the _Hôtel Bourgthéroude_, before the great Parisian conjuror waves his wand once more. But, hey presto! down they come, in a street hard by--even whilst we write, a great panel totters to the ground--heraldic shields, with a border of flowers and pomegranates, carved in oak; clusters of grapes and diaper patterns of rich design, emblems of old nobility--all in the dust; a hatchment half defaced, a dragon with the gold still about his collar, a bit of an eagle's wing, a halberd snapped in twain--all piled together in a heap of ruin! A few weeks only, and we pass the place again--all is in order, the 'improvement' has taken place; there is a pleasant wide _pavé_, and a manufactory for '_eau gazeuse_.' The cathedral church of Nôtre Dame (the west front of which we have seen in the illustration), and the church of St. Ouen, the two most magnificent monuments in Rouen, are so familiar to most readers that we can say little that is new respecting them. When we have given a short description, taken from the best authorities on the subject, and have pointed out to artistic readers that this west front with its surrounding houses, and the view of the towers of St. Ouen from the garden, at the _east_ end, are two of the grandest architectural pictures to be found in Normandy, we shall have nearly accomplished our task.[43] [Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF 'NOTRE DAME' AT ROUEN. "Like a piece of rockwork, rough and encrusted with images, and ornamented from top to bottom."] 'The cathedral of Nôtre Dame occupies with its west front one side of a square, formerly a fruit and flower market. The vast proportions of this grand Gothic façade, its elaborate and profuse decorations, and its stone screens of open tracery, impress one at first with wonder and admiration, diminished however but not destroyed, by a closer examination; which shows a confusion of ornament and a certain corruption of taste. 'The projecting central porch, and the whole of the upper part, is of the sixteenth century, the lateral ones being of an earlier period and chaster in style. Above the central door is carved the genealogy of Jesse; over the north-west door is the death of John the Baptist, with the daughter of Herodias dancing before Herod; and above them, figures of Virgin and Saints. 'The north tower, called St. Romain (the one on the left in our illustration), is older in date, part of it being of the twelfth century; the right-hand tower, which is more florid, being of the sixteenth.' The central spire in the background is really of _cast iron_, and stands out, it is fair to say, much more sharply and painfully against the sky, than in our illustration.[44] We must not omit to mention the beautiful north door, called the 'Portail des Libraires,' which in Prout's time was completely blocked up with old houses and wooden erections. 'On entering the doorway of the north porch (says _Cassell_), the visitor will be struck with the size, loftiness, and rich colour of the interior, 435 feet long and 89 feet high. The 'clerestory' of the sixteenth century is full of painted glass. On each side of the nave there is a series of chapels, constructed in the fourteenth century, between the buttresses of the main walls; they are full of very fine stained glass, and contain good pictures and monuments. The transepts are remarkable for their magnificent rose-windows, and in the north transept there is a staircase of open-tracery work of exquisite workmanship. 'The choir, separated from the nave by a modern Grecian screen, was built in the thirteenth century, the carving of the stalls is extremely curious. The elaborately carved screen in front of the sacristy was executed in the latter part of the fifteenth century, and its wrought-iron door must not be passed unnoticed.'[45] The Church of St. Ouen 'surpasses the cathedral in size, purity of style, masterly execution, and splendid, but judicious decoration, and is inferior only in its historic monuments. It is one of the noblest and most perfect Gothic edifices in the world.' Thus it has been described again and again; suffice it for us to mention a few details of its construction. It is said that the abbey of St. Ouen was orginally built in 533, in the reign of Clothaire I., and then dedicated to St. Peter. Through various changes of construction and destruction, it holds a prominent part in the history of the time of the Conqueror and the Dukes of Normandy; and it was not for a thousand years after its foundation that the present building was completed. 'During the troubles of the times of the Huguenots in the sixteenth century, it suffered greatly, especially in 1562, when the fanatics lighted bonfires inside, and burnt the organ, stalls, pulpit, and vestments.' Again at the end of the eighteenth century, 'the building was exposed to the fury of the Revolutionists, when it was used as a manufactory of arms; a forge being erected within it and the painted windows so blackened as to become indecipherable; and later still, 'in the time of Napoleon I., a project was laid before him, by the municipality of Rouen, for destroying the church altogether!' Perhaps there is no monument that we could point to in Europe which has a more eventful history, or which, after a lapse of thirteen hundred years, presents to the spectator, in the year 1869, a grander spectacle. If we walk in the public gardens that surround it, and see its towers, from different points, through the trees, or, better still, ascend one of the towers and look down on its pinnacles, we shall never lose the memory of St. Ouen. The beautiful proportions of its octagon tower, terminating with a crown of _fleurs de lis_, has well been called a 'model of grace and beauty;' whilst its interior, 443 feet long and 83 feet wide, unobstructed from one end to the other, with its light, graceful pillars, and the coloured light shed through the painted windows, have as fine an effect as that of any church in France; not excepting the cathedrals of Amiens and Chartres. We should not omit to mention the beautiful church of St. Maclou at Rouen, and several others that are being preserved and restored with the utmost care. The great delights of this city are its ecclesiastical monuments; for if Rouen has become of late years (as in fact it has) a busy, modern town; if its old houses and streets are being swept away, its churches and monuments remain. And if, as we have said, the inhabitants are prone to imitate many English habits and customs, there is one custom of ours that they do not imitate--they do not 'religiously' close nearly every church in the land for six days out of the seven; their places of worship are not shut up like dungeons, they are open to the breath of life, and partake of the atmosphere of the 'work-a-day' world.[46] In England we dust out our earthy little chapels on Saturdays, and we complete the process with silken trains on Sundays; we worship in an atmosphere more fit for the dead than the living, and in a few hours shut up the buildings again to the spiders and the flies! We have little more to say to the reader about the churches in Normandy, and we should like to leave him best at the south-west corner of the square in front of the Cathedral (close to the spot from which M. Clerget has made his drawing), where he may take away with him an impression of the wealth and grandeur of the architecture of Normandy, pleasant to dwell upon. If we do not examine too closely into 'principles,' or trouble our minds too much with 'styles' of architecture, the effect that we obtain here will be completely and artistically beautiful, and satisfying to the eye. It is not easy to point out any modern building that fulfils these conditions; where, for instance, can we see anything like the work that was bestowed on the lower portion of this façade? We may spend more money and effort, but we do not achieve anything which seems to the spectator more spontaneously beautiful (if we use the word aright); anything displaying more wealth of decoration, combined with grandeur of effect. Severe, we might say austere, critics speak of the 'confusion of ornament,' and tell us that the over-elaboration of carving on the exterior of this cathedral is a sign of decadence, and that the principles on which the architects of Caen and Bayeux worked were more noble and worthy; whilst architects will tell us that Gothic art was generally 'debased' at Rouen,--debased from the time when people gave themselves up to the luxury of the Renaissance, and 'pride took the place of enthusiasm and faith, in art.' We might, indeed, if we chose to make the comparison for a moment between Christian and Mahommedan art, see a higher principle at work in the construction of the mosques and palaces of the Moors, where simplicity, refinement, and truth are noticeable in every line; we might see it in mauresque work, in the absence of grotesque images, or the imitation of living things in ornament; but, above all, in the severe simplicity and grandeur of their _exteriors_, and in the decoration, colour, and gilding of their interior courts alone,--carrying out, in short, the true meaning of the words that, the king's daughter should be--'all glorious within, her clothing of wrought gold.' * * * * * On one Sunday morning at Rouen we go with 'all the world' to be present at a musical mass at the cathedral, and to hear another great preacher from Paris. It was a grander performance than the one we attended at Caen; but the sermon was less eloquent, less refined, and was remarkable in quite a different way. It was a discourse, holding up to his hearers, as far as we could follow the rapid flow of his eloquence, the delight and glory of 'doing battle for Right'--of fighting (to use the common phrase) the 'fight of Faith.' But he was preaching to a congregation of shopkeepers, traders, and artisans, and his appeal to arms seemed to fall flatly on the trading mind; whilst the old incongruity between the building and the dress of the nineteenth century, was as remarkable as it is in Westminster Abbey; and the contrast between the unchivalrous aspect of the speaker, and the tone of his language, was more striking still.[47] What priest or curé, in these days, stands forth in his presence or influence, as the ideal champion of a romantic faith, the ceremonials of which seem more and more alienated from the spirit of the nineteenth century--at least in the north of Europe, where colour, imagination, and passion have less influence? What real sympathy has the kind, fat, fatherly figure before us with soldiers, saints, or martyrs?[48] He preached for nearly an hour, with frequent pauses and strange changes in the inflexion of the voice. We will not attempt a repetition of his arguments, but must record one sentence in an extempore sermon of great versatility and power; a sentence that, if we understood it aright, was singularly liberal and broad in view. Speaking of the rivalry that existed between the different sects of Christians, and making pointed allusion to the colony of protestant Huguenots established at Beuzeval on the sea-shore, he ended with the words, 'Better than all this rivalry and strife (far better than the common result amongst men, indifference) that, like ships becalmed at sea,--when a religious breeze stirs our hearts--we should raise aloft our fair white sails and come sailing into port together, lowering them in the haven of the one true church.' He made a pause several times in his discourse, during which he looked about him, and mopped his head with his handkerchief, and behaved, for the moment, much more as if he were in his dressing-room than in a public pulpit; but he held his audience with magic sway, his influence over the people was wonderful--wonderful to us when we listened to his imagery, and to the means used to stir their hearts.[49] In the picturesque and moving times of the middle ages it must surely have needed less forcing and fewer formulæ to 'lift up the hearts of the people to the Queen of Heaven;' if it were only in the likeness of the black doll, which they worship at Chartres to this day. But until we realise to ourselves more completely the lives of warriors in mediæval days, we shall never understand how chivalry and the worship of beauty entered into their hearts and lives, and was to them the highest and noblest of virtues; nor shall we comprehend their ready acceptance of the adoration of the Virgin as the one true religion. In such a building as the cathedral at Rouen, it is impossible to forget the people who once trod its pavement; memories that not all the modern paraphernalia and glitter can obliterate. If we visit the cathedral after vespers, when the candles in the Lady-chapel look like glowworm-lights through the dark aisles, we are soon carried back in imagination to mediæval days. The floor of the nave is covered with kneeling figures of warriors, each with a red cross on his breast; the pavement resounds to the clash of arms; there is a low chorus of voices in prayer, a sound of stringed instruments, a silence--and then, an army of men rise up and march to war. There is a pause of six hundred years, and another procession passes through these aisles; the pavement resounds to less martial footsteps,--they are not warriors, they are 'Cook's excursionists'! Let us now leave the cathedral, and see something more of the town. It is a fine summer's afternoon, in the middle of the week, the air is soft and quiet; the busy population of Rouen seem, with one consent, to rest from labour, and the Goddess of Leisure tells her beads. One, two (decrepit old men); three, four, five (nurses and children); six, seven, eight (Chasseurs de Vincennes or a 'noble Zouave),' and so on, until the Rosary is complete and there are no more seats.[50] Every day under our windows they come and wedge themselves close together on the long stone seats under the dusty trees, to rest; and thread themselves in rows one by one, as if some unseen hand were telling, with human beads, the mystery of the Rosary. Why do we speak of what is done every day in every city of France? Because it is worth a moment's notice, that in the day-time of busy cities men can, if they choose, find time to rest. There are gardens open, and seats provided in the middle of the cities, so that the poor children need not play on dustheaps and under carriage-wheels. There is a small open square in the heart of Rouen, laid out with rocks and trees, and a waterfall, which we should dearly like to shew to certain 'parish guardians.' The modern business-like aspect of Rouen communicates itself even to religious matters, and before we have been here long, we think nothing of seeing piles of crucifixes, and 'Virgins and children', put out in the street in boxes for sale, at a 'fabrique d'ornaments de l'église.' We, the people of Rouen, do a great business in _chasublerie_, and the like; we drive hard bargains for images of the Saviour in zinc and iron (they are catalogued for us, and placed in rows in the shop windows); we purchase _lachryma Christi_ by the dozen; and, for a few sous, may become possessed of the whole paraphernalia of the Holy Manger. We have been cheated so often at Rouen, that we are inclined to ask the question whether we, English people, really possess a higher working morality than the French. Are we really more straightforward and honourable than they? Are there bounds which they overstep and which we cannot pass? It has been our pride for centuries to be considered more noble and manly than many of our neighbours; is there any reason to fear that our moral influence is on the wane, in these days of universal interchange of thought, free-trade, and rapid intercommunication? In the course of our journey through Normandy, we have not said much about modern paintings, but at Rouen we are reminded that there are many French artists hard at work. The most prominent painters are those of the school of Edouard Frère, who depict scenes of cottage life, with the earnestness, if not always with the elevated sentiment of Mason, Walker, and other, younger, English painters. The works of many of these French artists are familiar to us in England, and we need not allude to them further; but there is an exhibition of water-colour drawings at Rouen, about which we must say a word.[51] These sketches of towns in Normandy, and of pastoral scenes, have a curious family likeness, and a mannerism which the French may call '_chic_,' but which we are inclined to attribute to want of power and patient study. There is an old-fashioned formality in the composition of their landscapes, which does not seem to our eyes to belong to the world of to-day, and a decidedly amateurish treatment which is surprising. They repeat themselves and each other, without end, and evidently are thinking more about _Beranger_ than the places of which he sang; they would seek (as some one expresses it) to 'reconcile literal facts with rapturous harmonies,' in short they attempt too much, and accomplish too little. In form and feature, these pictures remind us (like Rouen itself) of a bygone time, when travelling on the Continent was difficult and expensive, and views of foreign towns were not easy to obtain; when some distinguished amateur (distinguished, perhaps, more for his courage and industry than for his art) visited the Continent at rare intervals, and brought home in triumph a few hazy sketches of a people that we had scarce heard of, and hardly believed in; and had them engraved and multiplied, for the art-loving amongst us, as the best treasures of the time. The modernised aspect of Rouen is one that we (as lookers-on merely) shall never cease to regret, because it is the town of all others which should tell us most of the past; and it is, moreover, the one town in Normandy which most English people find time to see. But if most of its individuality and character have vanished, its sanitary condition and its wealth, have, we must admit, improved greatly under the new regime. 'When I walk through the enormous streets and boulevards of new Paris,' says a well-known writer, 'I feel appalled by the change, but unable to dispute with it mentally, for it bears the imprint of an idea which is becoming dominant over Europe. For the moment the individuality of man as expressed in his dwelling (as in the house in our frontispiece) is gone--suppressed. The human creature no longer builds for himself, decorates for himself; no longer lets loose his fancy, his humour, his notions of the fitting and the comfortable. Science and economy go hand in hand, and lay down his streets and erect his houses.' Thus, although, from an artistic point of view, we shall never be reconciled to the changes that have come over Normandy, we cannot ignore the consequent social advantages. Mr. Ruskin, speaking of the change in Switzerland during his memory of it (thirty-five years) says:--'In that half of the permitted life of man I have seen strange evil brought upon every scene that I best loved, or tried to make beloved by others. The light which once flushed those pale summits with its rose at dawn and purple at sunset, is now umbered and faint; the air which once inlaid the clefts of all their golden crags with azure, is now defiled with languid coils of smoke, belched from worse than volcanic fires; their very glacier waves are ebbing, and their snows fading, as if hell had breathed on them; the waters that once sunk at their feet into crystalline rest, are now dimmed and foul, from deep to deep, and shore to shore.' But the clouds of smoke that defile the land, the shrieking of steam, and the perpetual, terrible grinding of iron against iron (sounds which our little children grow up not to heed) are part of a system which enables Mr. Ruskin, one day to address a crowd in the theatre of the British Institution, and on the next--or the next but one--to utter this lament on the banks of Lake Leman. His remarks, with which so many will sympathise, lose point and consequence from the fact of his own rapid translation from one place to another, and from the advantages _we_ gain by his travelling on the wings of steam. And there is a certain consolation in the knowledge that in the days when the waters of Geneva were of 'purest blue,' the accommodation for travellers at the old hostelries was less favourable to peace of mind. [Illustration] CHAPTER X. _THE VALLEY OF THE SEINE._ In the fruitful hills that border the river Seine, and form part of the great watershed of Lower Normandy, Nature has poured forth her blessings; and her daughters, who are here lightly sketched, dispense her bounties. It is a pleasant thing to pass homeward through this 'food-producing' land--to go leisurely from town to town, and see something more of country life in Normandy--to see the laden orchards, the cattle upon the hills, and the sloping fields of corn. It is yet early in the autumn, but the variety of colour spread over the landscape is delightful to the eye; the rich brown of the buckwheat, the bright yellow mustard; the green pastures by rivers, and the poppies in the golden corn; the fields, divided by high hedges, and interspersed with mellowed trees; the orchards raining fruit that glitters in the sunshine as it falls; the purple heath, the luxuriant ferns. There is '_une recolte magnifique_' this year, and the people have but one thought--'the gathering in;' the country presents to us a picture--not like Watteau's '_fêtes galantes_,' but rather that of an English harvest-home. We are in the midst of the cornfields near Villers-sur-mer, and the hill-side is glorious; it is covered to the very summit with riches--the heavily-laden corn-stems wave their crests against a blue horizon, whilst, in a cleft of the hill, a long line of poppies winds downwards in one scarlet stream. They are set thickly in some places, and form a blaze of colour, inconceivably, painfully brilliant--a concentration of light as utterly beyond our power of imitation by the pencil, as genius is removed from ordinary minds. We could not paint it if we would, but we may see in it an allegory of plenty, and of peace (of that peace which France so urgently desires); we may see her blood-red banner of war laid down to garland the hill-side with its crimson folds, and her children laying their offerings at the feet of Ceres and forgetting Mars altogether. The national anthem becomes no longer a natural refrain--anything would sound more appropriate than 'partant pour la Syrie' (there is no time for _that_ work)--to our little friend in fluttering blouse, who sits in the grass and 'minds' fifty head of cattle by moral force alone; we should rather sing:-- 'Little boy blue, come blow me your horn, The orchards are laden, the cow 's in the corn!' * * * * * We cannot leave this pastoral scene, at least until the evening; when the sun goes down behind the sea--leaving a glow upon the hill-side and upon the crowd of gleaners who have just come up, and casts long shadows across the stubble and on the sheaves of corn; when the harvest moon shines out, and the picture is completed--the corn--sheaves lighted on one side by the western glow, on the other by the moon; like the famous shield over which knights did battle,--one side silver, the other gold. All this time we are within sight, and nearly within sound, of the 'happy hunting grounds' of Trouville and Deauville, but the country people are singularly unaffected by the proximity of those pretty towns, invented by Dumas and peopled by his following.[52] It is true that on the walls of a little village inn, there is something paraded about a 'Trouville Association, Limited,' and a company for 'the passage of the Simplon,' with twenty-franc shares; but these things do not seem to find much favour amongst the thrifty peasantry. They have, in their time, been tempted to unearth their treasures, and to invest in bubble companies like the rest of the world; but there is a reaction here, the Normans evidently thinking, like the old Colonnæ, that a hole in the bottom of the garden is about the safest place after all. And they have, it is true, some other temptations which come to them with a cheap press, such as '_la sureté financière_,' '_le moniteur des tirages financiers_,' '_le petit moniteur financier_,' &c., newspapers whose special business it is, to teach the people how to get rid of their savings, we are speaking, of course, of the comparatively uneducated agricultural population--the farmers, all through the district we have come, especially near Vire and Falaise, being rich _propriétaires_ and investing largely; and there are many other things in these half-penny French newspapers which find their way into these remote corners of France, which must make the curé sometimes regret that he had taught his flock to read. In a little paper which lies before us, the first article is entitled '_Le miroir du diable_;' then follows a long account of a poisoning case in Paris, and some songs from a _café chantant_, interspersed with illustrations of the broadest kind. But let us not be too critical; we have seen many things in France which would startle Englishmen, but nothing, we venture to say, more harmful in its tendency, than the weekly broad-sheet of crime which is spread out over our own land (to the number, the proprietors boast, of at least a hundred thousand[53]), wherein John and Jane, who can only sign their names with a cross, read in hideous cartoons, suggestions of cruelty and crime more revolting than any the schoolmaster could have taught them. In these rich and prosperous provinces, the people (revolutionary and excitable as their ancestors were) certainly appear happy and contented; the most uneducated of them are quick-witted and ready in reply, they are not boorish or sullen, they have more readiness--at least in manner--than the germanic races, and are, as a rule, full of gaiety and humour. These people do not want war, they hate the conscription which takes away the flower of the flock; they regard with anything but pleasure the rather dictatorial '_Moniteur_' that comes to them by post sometimes, whether they ask for it or not, and would much rather be 'let alone.'[54] Such is a picture of Lower Normandy, the land of plenty where we wander with so much pleasure in the summer months, putting up at wayside inns (where the hostess makes her 'note' on a slate and finds it hard work to make the amount come to more than five francs, for the night, for board and lodging for 'monsieur') and at farmhouses sometimes; chatting with the people in their rather troublesome patois, and making excursions with the local antiquary or curé, to some spot celebrated in history. They are pleasant days, when, if we will put up with a few inconveniences, and live principally out of doors, we may see and hear much that a railway traveller misses altogether. We shall not admire the system of farming, as a rule (each farmer holding only a few acres); and we shall find some of the cottages of the labourers very primitive, badly built, and unhealthy, although generally neat; we shall notice that the people are cruel, and careless of the sufferings of animals, and that no farm servant knows how to groom a horse. We shall see them clever in making cider, and prone to drink it; we shall see plenty of fine, strong, rather idle men and women in the fields carrying tremendous burdens, but hardly any children; they are almost as rare in the country as a lady, or a gentleman. Indeed, in all our country wanderings the 'gentry' make little figure, and appear much less frequently on the scene than we are accustomed to in England. There are, of course, _propriétaires_ in this part of Normandy who spend both their time and money in the country, and are spoken of with respect and affection by the people; but they are _raræ aves_, men of mark, like the founder of the protestant colony at Beuzeval on the sea. Nearly every Sunday after harvest-time there will be a village wedding, where we may see the bride and bridegroom coming to take 'the first sacrament;' seated in a prominent place in front of the altar, and receiving the elements before the rest of the congregation, the bride placing a white favour on the basket which contains the consecrated bread, and afterwards coming from the church, the bride with a cap nearly a foot high, the bridegroom wearing a dress coat, with a tremendous bouquet, and a wedding-ring on his fore-finger; and, if we stand near the church porch, we may be deafened with a salute fired by the villagers in honour of the occasion, and overwhelmed by the eloquence of the 'best man,' who takes this opportunity of delivering a speech; and finally, the bells will ring out with such familiar tone that we can hardly realise that we are in France.[55] These people are of the labouring class, but they have some money to 'commence life' with; the poorest girls seldom marry without a portion (indeed, so important is this considered amongst them that there are societies for providing portions for the unendowed), and they are, with few exceptions, provident and happy in married life. They are so in the country at least, in spite of all that has been said and written to the contrary. A lady who has had five-and-twenty years' acquaintance with French society, both in town and country, assures us that 'the stereotyped literary and dramatic view of French married life is wickedly false.' The corruption of morals, she says, which so generally prevails in Paris, and which has been so systematically aggravated by the luxury and extravagance of the second Empire, has emboldened writers to foist these false pictures of married life on the world. But we, as travellers, must not enter deeply into these questions; our business is, as usual, principally with their picturesque aspect. And there is plenty to see; a few miles from us there is the little town of Pont l'Evêque; and of course there is a fête going on. Let us glance at the official programme for the day:-- 'At 10 A.M., agricultural and horticultural meetings. From 11 to 12, musical mass; several pieces to be performed by the band of the 19th Regiment. At 12-1/2, meeting of the Orphéonists and other musical societies. 1 P.M., ordering and march of a procession, and review of Sappers and Miners. 2 P.M., ascension of grotesque balloons. 2-1/2 P.M., race of velocipedes. 3-1/2 P.M., climbing poles and races in sacks. 5 P.M., performance of music in the _Place de l'Eglise_; band of the 19th Regiment. 6 P.M., grand dinner in the College Hall, with toasts, speeches, and concert. 8 P.M., general illumination with Chinese lanterns, &c. 9 P.M., Display of fireworks; procession with torches to the music of the military band.' N.B. Every householder is requested to contribute to the gaiety by illuminating his own house--_By order of the Maire._ How the rather obscure little town of Pont l'Evêque suddenly becomes important,--how it puts on (as only a French town knows how to do) an alluring and coquettish appearance; how the people promenade arm and arm, up the street and down the street, on the dry little _place_, and under the shrivelled-up trees; how they play at cards and dominoes in the middle of the road, and crowd to the canvas booths outside the town--would be a long task to tell. They crowd everywhere--to the menagerie of wild beasts, to see the 'pelican of the wilderness;' to the penny peepshows, where they fire six shots for a sou at a plaster cast of Bismarck; to the lotteries for crockery and bonbons, and to all sorts of exhibitions 'gratis.' Of the quantity of cider and absinthe consumed in one day, the holiday-makers may have rather a confused and careless recollection, as they are jogged home, thirteen deep in a long cart, with a neglected, footsore old horse, weighed down with his clumsy harness and his creaking load, and deafened by the jingling of his rusty bells. But if we happen to be in one of the larger towns during the time of the Imperial fêtes (the 15th of August), or at a seaport on the occasion of the annual procession in honour of the Virgin, we shall see a more striking ceremony still. The processions are very characteristic, with the long lines of fisherwomen in their scarlet and coloured dresses, and handkerchiefs tied round the head; the fishermen, old and weather-beaten, boys in semi-naval costume, neat and trim; and perhaps a hundred little children, dressed in blue and white. A dense mass of people crowding through the hot streets all day, impressive from their numbers, and from the quiet orderly method of their procession, headed and marshalled, of course, by the clergy and manoeuvred to the sound of bells. There is such a perpetual ringing of bells, and the trains run so frequently, that those who are not accustomed to such sights may become confused as to their true meaning. We learn, however, from the _affiches_ that it is all in honour of 'Our Lady of Hope,' that the _externes_ from one school parade the streets to-day, wearing wreaths and carrying banners and crowns of flowers; that others bear aloft the 'cipher of Mary,' the banner of the Immaculate Conception, baskets of roses, oriflammes, &c.; that twenty grown-up men parade the town with the 'banner of the Sacred Heart,' and that a party of young ladies, in white dresses fringed with gold, brave the heat and the dust, and crowd to do honour to the 'Queen of Angels.' A multitude with streamers and banners, a confusion of colour and gilding, passing to and from the churches all day; and at night, fire balloons, _feu d'artifice_, open theatres, and 'general joy.' Of one more ceremony we must speak, differing in character, but equally characteristic and curious. We are in the country again, spending our days in sketching, or wandering amongst the hills; enjoying the 'perfect weather,' as we call it, and a little careless, perhaps, of the fact that the land is parched with thirst, that the springs are dried up, and that the peasants are beginning to despair of rain. We see a little white smoke curling through the branches of the trees, and hear in faint, uncertain cadence, the voices of men and children singing. Presently there comes up the pathway between two lines of poplars, a long procession, headed by a priest, holding high in the air a glittering cross; there are old men with bowed heads, young men erect, with shaven crowns, and boys in scarlet and white robes, carrying silver censers; there is a clanking of silver chains, a tinkling of little bells, and an undertone of oft-repeated prayer. The effect is startling, and brilliant; the sunlight glances upon the white robes of the men, in alternate stripes of soft shadow and dazzling brightness, the wind plays round their feet as they march heavily along, in a whirl of dust which robs the leaves of their morning freshness; whilst the scarlet robes of the children light up the grove as with a furnace, and the rush of voices disturbs the air. On they come through the quiet country fields, hot and dusty with their long march, the foremost priest holding his head high, and doing his routine work manfully--never wearying of repeating the same words, or of opening and shutting the dark-bound volume in his hand; and the children, not yet quite weary of singing, and of swinging incense-burners--keeping close together two and two in line; the people following being less regular, less apparently enthusiastic, but walking close together in a long winding stream up the hill. What does it all mean? Why, that these simple people want rain on the land, and that they have collected from all parts of the country to offer their prayers, and their money, to propitiate the Deity. Could we, but for one moment, as onlookers from some other sphere, see this line of creeping things on their earnest errand, the sight would seem a strange one. Do these atoms on the earth's surface hope to change the order of the elements, to serve their own purposes? If rain were needed, would it not come? But we are in a land where we are taught, not only to pray for our wants, but to pay for their expression; so let us not question the motive of the procession, but follow it again in the evening, into the town, where it becomes lost in the crowded streets--so crowded that we cannot see more than the heads of the people; but the line is marked above them by a stream of sunset, which turns the dust-particles above their heads into a golden fringe. They make a halt in the square and sing the 'Angelus,' and then enter the cathedral, where the priest offers up a prayer--a prayer which we would interpret--not for rain, if drought be best, but rather for help and strength to fight the battle of life in the noblest way. Such scenes may still be witnessed in Normandy (although, of course, becoming less primitive and characteristic every year) by those who are not compelled to hurry through the land. In the country districts the habits of the peasant class are the only ones that a traveller has any opportunity of observing; of the upper classes he will see nothing, and of their domestic life obtain no idea whatever. It is not to be accomplished, _en passant_, in Normandy, any more than in Vienna. In the inns, the company at the public table consists almost invariably of French commercial travellers, and the two English ladies whom we meet with everywhere, travelling together. There is hardly an hotel in Normandy, excepting, of course, at the watering-places (of which we shall speak in the last chapter), that would be considered well appointed, according to modern notions of comfort and convenience. Ladies travelling alone would certainly find themselves better accommodated in Switzerland or in the Pyrenees; excepting in the matter of expense, for Normandy is still one of the cheapest parts of Europe to travel in--the Russians and Americans not having yet come. We meet, as we have said, but few French people above the farming and commercial class; our fellow-travellers being generally 'unprotected' Englishwomen who may be seen in summer-time at the various railway stations--fighting their way to the front in the battle of the '_bagages_,' and speaking French to the officials with a grammatical fervour, and energy, which is wonderful to contemplate[56]--taking their places on the top of a diligence, amongst fowls and cheeses, with the heroic self sacrifice that would be required to mount a barricade; in short, placing themselves continually (and unnecessarily, it must be admitted) in positions inconsistent with English notions of propriety, and exposing themselves, for pleasure's sake, to more roughness and rudeness than is good for their sex. These things arise sometimes from necessity--on which we have not a word to say--but more frequently from a rigid determination to 'economize,' in a way that they would not dream of doing at home. We would certainly suggest that English ladies should not elect to travel by the diligences, and in out-of-the-way places, _unattended_; and that they had better not attempt to 'rough it' in Normandy, if they are able (by staying at home) to avoid the concussion. To most men, this diligence travelling is charming--the seat on the _banquette_ on a fine summer's day is one of the most enjoyable places in life; it is cheap, and certainly not too rapid (five or six miles an hour being the average); and we can sit almost as comfortably in a corner of the banquette as in an easy-chair. In this beautiful country we should always either drive or walk, if we have time; the diligence is the most amusing and sometimes the slowest method of progress. Nobody hurries--although we carry 'the mails' and have a letter-box in the side of the conveyance, where letters are posted as we go along, it is scarcely like travelling--the free and easy way in which people come and go on the journey is more like 'receiving company' than taking up passengers. As we jog along, to the jingling of bells and the creaking of rusty iron, the people that we overtake on the road keep accumulating on our vehicle one by one, as we approach a town, until we become encrusted with human things like a rock covered with limpets. There is no shaking them off, the driver does not care, and they certainly do not all pay. It is a pleasant family affair which we should all be sorry to see disturbed; and the roads are so good and even, that it does not matter much about the load. The neglect and cruelty to the horses, which we are obliged to witness, is certainly one drawback,[57] and the dust and crowding on market days, are not always pleasant; but we can think of no other objections in fine weather, to this quiet method of seeing the country. Much has been said in favour of 'a walking tour in Normandy,' but we venture to question its thorough enjoyment when undertaken for long distances; and it can scarcely be called 'economical to walk,' unless the pedestrian's time is of no value to other people. Let us be practical, and state the cost of travelling over the whole of the ground that we have mapped out. We may assume that the most determined pedestrian will not commence active operations until he reaches Havre, or some other seaport town. From Havre to Pont Audemer by steamboat; thence by road or railway to _all_ the towns on our route (visiting Rouen by the Seine, from Honfleur), and so back to Havre, will cost a 'knapsack-traveller' 46 francs 50 c., if he takes the banquette of the diligence and travels third class, by railway. Thus it is a question of less than two pounds, for those who study economy, whilst at least a month's time is saved by taking the diligence. One argument for walking is, that you may leave the high roads at pleasure, and see more of the country and of the people; but the pedestrian has his day's work before him, and must spend the greater part of an August day on the dusty road, in order to reach his destination. There are districts, such as those round Vire and Mortain, which are exceptionally hilly, where he might walk from town to town; but he will not see the country as well, even there, as from the elevated position of a banquette. The finest parts of Normandy are generally in the neighbourhood of towns which the traveller (who has driven to them) can explore on his arrival, without fatigue; _chacun à son gout_--these smooth, well-levelled roads are admirably adapted for velocipedes--but we confess to preferring the public conveyances, to any other method of travelling in France. Let us conclude our remarks on this subject with an extract from the published diary of a pedestrian, who thus describes his journey from Lisieux to Caen, a distance of about twenty-six miles:-- 'It is nightfall,' he says, 'before I have walked more than half-way to Caen; to the left of the road I see a number of lights indicative of a small town, but I perceive no road in that direction, and so am compelled to trudge on. I was dreadfully fatigued, for I had walked about Lisieux before starting. In the faint light, I thought I saw a dog cross the road just before me, but soon perceived that it must be a spectral one, the result of excessive fatigue. At length I reach a lamp-post, with the light still burning, indicating that I am in the suburbs of Caen. The road proceeds down a steep hill. I don't know how long it would seem to the visitor in the ordinary way, but to myself, prostrated by fatigue, it appeared on this night a long and weary tramp.'--'A Walking Tour in Normandy!' CHAPTER XI. _ARCHITECTURE AND COSTUME._ In the course of our little pilgrimage through Normandy, it may have been thought that we dwelt with too much earnestness and enthusiasm on the architecture of the middle ages, as applicable to buildings in the nineteenth century. Let us repeat our belief, that it is in its _adaptability_ to our wants, both practical and artistic, that its true value consists. Mediæval architects in England are never tired of insisting upon this fact; although hitherto they must confess to a certain amount of failure, because, perhaps, they attempt too much. If one were to judge by what appears to be going on in nearly every town in England at the present time, we should say that there never was a time when architecture was so much considered. 'Every town' (says a late writer, speaking of the extent of this movement), 'that shares the progress and character of the age, has a new town hall, a new exchange, new schools, and every institution for which an honest pretence can be found. A stranger, possessing an interest in the town, and with no claim upon it excepting that it shall please his eye, must be charmed with the profuse display of towers, turrets, pinnacles, and pointed roofs, windows of all sorts, niches, arcades, battlements, bosses, and everything else to be found in an architectural glossary. He may wonder why a lofty tower--sometimes several towers--should be necessary to the trying cases of assault and petty larceny, to the reading of newspapers, to the inspection of samples of wheat, or to the drilling of little boys in declensions and conjugations; but that is not his affair, and he has nothing to do with it, except to be thankful for a good sky-line, and a well-relieved, but yet harmonious, façade.' Nevertheless, we live in certain hope of a more practical application of beauty and simplicity of form, to the wants and requirements of our own day; and we believe that it is possible to have both cheap and useful buildings, graceful in form, and harmonious in colour and design. But notwithstanding our admiration for the buildings of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, we are bound to confess that many of them, both churches and dwellings, fail too often in essentials. Their dwellings are often deficient in light and ventilation, and are built with a lavish expenditure of materials; and their churches sometimes fail in carrying out the very object for which they were constructed, viz., the transmission of sound. Still it is possible--as we have seen at Caen and Bayeux--to have noble, gothic interiors which do not 'drown the voice' of the preacher; and it is also possible--as we have seen in many towns in Normandy--to build ornamental and healthy dwellings at a moderate cost. The extraordinary adaptability of Gothic architecture over all other styles, is a subject on which the general public is very ignorant, and with which it has little sympathy. The mediæval architect is a sad and solitary man (who ever met a cheery one?), because his work is so little understood; yet if he would only meet the enemy of expediency and ugliness half-way, and condescend to teach us how to build not merely _economically_, but well at the same time, he would no longer be 'the waif and stray of an inartistic century.' Shadows rise around us as we write--dim reproachful shadows of an age of unspeakable beauty in constructive art, and of (apparently) unapproachable excellence in design; and the question recurs to us again--Can we ever hope to compete with thirteenth-century buildings whilst we lead nineteenth-century lives? It may not be in our generation, but the time will assuredly come when, as has been well remarked, 'the living vigour of humanity will break through the monotony of modern arrangements and assert itself in new forms--forms which may cause a new generation to feel less regret at being compelled to walk in straight lines.' Here our thoughts, on the great question of architectural beauty and fitness, turn naturally to a New World. If, as we believe, there is a life and energy in the West which must sooner or later make its mark in the world, and perhaps take a lead for a while, amongst the nations, in the practical application of Science and Art; may it not rest with a generation of Americans yet unborn, to create--out of such elements as the fast-fading Gothic of the middle ages--a style of architecture that will equal it in beauty, and yet be more suitable to a modern era; a style that shall spring spontaneously from the wants and requirements of the age--an age that shall prize beauty of form as much as utility of design? Do we dream dreams? Is it quite beyond the limits of possibility that an art, that has been repeating itself for ages in Europe--until the original designs are fading before our eyes, until the moulds have been used so often that they begin to lose their sharpness and significance--may not be succeeded by a new and living development which will be found worthy to take its place side by side with the creations of old classic time? Is the idea altogether Utopian--is there not room in the world for a 'new style' of architecture--shall we be always copying, imitating, restoring--harping for ever on old strings? It may be that we point to the wrong quarter of the globe, and we shall certainly be told that no good thing in art can come from the 'great dollar cities of the West,' from a people without monuments and without a history; but there are signs of intellectual energy, and a process of refinement and cultivation is going on, which it will be well for us of the Old World not to ignore. Their day may be not yet; before such a change can come, the nation must find rest--the pulse of this great, restless, thriving people must beat less quickly, they must know (as the Greeks knew it) the meaning of the word 'repose.' It was a good sign, we thought, when Felix Darley, an American artist on a tour through Europe (a '5000 dollar run' is, we believe, the correct expression), on arriving at Liverpool, was content to go quietly down the Wye, and visit our old abbeys and castles, such as Tintern and Kenilworth, instead of taking the express train for London; and it is to the many signs of culture and taste for art, which we meet with daily, in intercourse with travellers from the western continent, that we look with confidence to a great revolution in taste and manners.[58] To these, then (whom we may be allowed to look upon as pioneers of a new and more artistic civilization), and to our many readers on the other side of the Atlantic, we would draw attention to the towns in Normandy, as worthy of examination, before they pass away from our eyes; towns where 'art is still religion,'--towns that were built before the age of utilitarianism, and when expediency was a thing unknown. To young America we say--'Come and see the buildings of old France; there is nothing like them in the western world, neither the wealth of San Francisco, nor the culture of its younger generation, can, at present, produce anything like them. They are waiting for you in the sunlight of this summer evening; the gables are leaning, the waters are sparkling, the shadows are deepening on the hills, and the colours on the banners that trail in the water, are 'red, white, and blue!' * * * * * A Word or two here may not be out of place, on some of the modern architectural features of Normandy. In some towns that we have passed through it would seem as if the old feeling for form and colour had at last revived, and that (although perhaps in rather a commonplace way) the builders of modern villas and seaside houses were emulating the works of their ancestors. Prom our windows at Houlgate (on the sea-coast, near Trouville) we can see modern, half-timbered houses, set in a garden of shrubs and flowers, with gables prettily 'fringed,' graceful dormer windows, turrets and overhanging eaves; solid oak doors, and windows with carved balconies twined about with creepers, with lawns and shady walks surrounding--as different from the ordinary type of French country-house with its straight avenues and trimly cut trees, as they are remote in design from any ordinary English seaside residence; and (this is our point) they are not only ornamental and pleasing to the eye, but they are durable, dry, and healthy dwellings, and are _not costly to build_. Here are sketches of four common examples of modern work, all of which are within a few yards of our own doors. No. 1 is a good substantial brick-built house, close to the sea-shore, surrounded by shrubs and a small garden. The whole building is of a rich warm brown, set off by the darker tints of the woodwork; relieved by the bright shutters, the interior fittings, the flowers in the windows and the surrounding trees. No. 2 is a common example of square open turret of dark oak, with slated roof; the chimney is of brick and terra-cotta; the frontage of the house is of parti-coloured brickwork with stone facings, &c. [Illustration] No. 3 is a round tower at a street corner (the turret forming a charming boudoir, with extensive view); it is built of red and white brick, the slates on the roof are rounded, and the ornamental woodwork is of dark oak--the lower story of this house is of stone. No. 4, which forms one end of a large house, is ornamented with light-coloured wooden galleries and carving under the eaves, contrasting charmingly with the blue slating of the roofs and the surface tiling of the frontage--smooth tiles are introduced exteriorly in diaper patterns, chiefly of the majolica colours, which the wind and rain keep ever bright and fresh-looking, and which no climate seems to affect. The ornamental woodwork on this house is especially noticeable.[59] There may be nothing architecturally new in these modern 'chateaux' and 'chalets;' but it is as well to see what the French are doing, with a climate, in Normandy, much like our own, and with the same interest as ourselves, in building commodious and durable houses. It is pleasant to see that even French people care no longer to dim their eyesight with bare white walls; that they have had enough of straight lines and shadeless windows; that, in short, they are beginning to appreciate the beauty of thirteenth-century work. [Illustration] We have hitherto spoken principally of the architecture of Normandy, but we might well go further in our study of old ways, and suggest that there were other matters in which we might take a hint from the middle ages. First, with respect to DRESS, let us imagine by way of illustration, that two gentlemen, clad in the easy and picturesque walking costume of the times of the Huguenots 'fall to a wrestling;' they may be in fun or in earnest--it matters not--they simply divest themselves of their swords, and see, as in our illustration, with what perfect ease and liberty of limb they are able to go to work and bring every muscle of the body into play. Next, by way of contrast, let us picture to ourselves what would happen to a man under the same circumstances, in the costume of the present day. If he commenced a wrestling match with no more preparation than above (_i.e._ by laying down his stick, or umbrella), it would befall him first to lose his hat, next to split his coat up the back, and to break his braces; he would lose considerably in power and balance from the restraining and unnatural shape of all his clothes, he would have no firmness of foothold--his toes being useless to him in fashionable boots. Does the comparison seem far-fetched; and is it not well to make the contrast, if it may lead, however slightly, to a consideration of our own deformities? We believe that the time is coming when a great modification in the dress of our younger men will be adopted, if only for health and economy; it will come with the revival, or more general practice, of such games as singlestick, wrestling, and the like, and with an improved system of physical education. It sounds little better than a mockery to speak of deeds of valour and personal prowess, whilst we submit to confine our limbs in garments that cramp the frame and resist every healthy movement of the body. We must not go farther into the question in these pages, but we may ask--were there as many narrow-shouldered, weak-chested, delicate men, in the days when every gentleman knew how to use a sword?[60] The extravagances and vagaries of modern costume (for which we can find no precedent in the comparative ignorance and barbarism of the middle ages) lead to the conviction that there must be a great change, if only as a question of health. Travellers who have been in Spain, notice with surprise that the men are wrapt literally 'up to their eyes,' in their cloaks, whilst the women walk abroad in the bitter wind with only a lace veil over their heads and shoulders; but the disproportionate amount of clothing that modern society compels men and women to wear in the same room seems equally absurd.[61] And yet there must be some extraordinary fascination in the prevailing dress, that induces nearly every European nation to give up its proper costume and to be (as the saying is) 'like other people.' There is an old adage that you cannot touch pitch without being defiled, and with the people of whom we have been speaking, it certainly has its application. What is the Normandy peasant's pride on high days and holidays in the year 1869, but to put on a 'frock coat' and a _chapeau noir;_ to throw away the costume that his fathers wore, to bid farewell to colour, character, and freedom of limb, to don the livery of a high civilization, and to become (to our poor understanding) anything but the 'noblest work of God.' Again, in the little matter of WRITING, may we not learn something by looking back three or four hundred years--were not our ancestors a little more practical than ourselves? Did the monks of the middle ages find it necessary, in order to express a single word on paper or parchment, to make the pen (as we do) travel over a distance of eight or ten inches?[62] Here are two words, [Illustration: excellentis] one written by a lady, educated in the 'pot-hook-and-hanger' school, and another, the autograph of William of Malmesbury, an historian of the twelfth century. Is the modern method of writing much more legible than the old--is it more easily or quickly written; and might not we adopt some method of writing, by which to express our meaning in a letter, at less length than thirty feet? We might add something about our misuse of words (as compared with the habit of 'calling a spade a spade' in the writings of the old chroniclers), about our unnecessary complications, and the number of words required to express an idea in these days; and suggest another curious consideration, as to how such prolixity affects our thoughts and actions.[63] Is it of no moment to be able to express our thoughts quickly and easily? Does it help the Bavarian peasant-boy to comprehend the fact of the sun's rising over his native hills, that ten consonants, in the poetic word morgenlandisch have to travel through his mind? These things may be considered by many of slight importance, and that if they are wrong, they are not very easily remedied; but in architecture and costume we have the remedy in our own hands. Why--it may be asked in conclusion--do we cling to costume, and prize so much the old custom of distinctive dress? Because it bears upon its forehead the mark of truth; because, humble or noble, it is at least, what it appears to be; because it gives a silent but clear assurance (in these days so sadly needed) that a man's position in life is what he makes it appear to be; that, in short, there is nothing behind the scenes, nothing to be discovered or hunted out. It is the relic of a really 'good old time,' when a uniform or a badge of office was a mark of honour, when the _bourgeoisie_ were proud of their simple estate, and domestic service was indeed what its name implies. We cling to costume and regret its disappearance, when (to use a familiar illustration) we compare the French _bonne_ in a white cap, with her English contemporary with a chignon and the airs of 'my lady.' But distinctive costumes, like the old buildings, are disappearing everywhere, and with them even the traditions seem to be dying out. Queen Matilda (we are soon to be told) _never worked the Bayeux Tapestry_, and Joan of Arc _was not burnt at Rouen_! The old world banners are being torn down one by one--facts which were landmarks in history are proved to be fiction by the Master of the Rolls; we close the page almost in despair, and with the words coming to our lips, 'there is _nothing true_ under the sun.' CHAPTER XII. _THE WATERING PLACES OF NORMANDY._ 'Trouville est une double extrait de Paris--la vie est une fête, et le costume une mascarade.'--_Conty._ The watering-places of Normandy are so well known to English people that there is little that is new to be said respecting them; at the same time any description of this country would not be considered complete without some mention of the sea-coast. The principal bathing places on the north coast are the following, commencing from the east:--DIEPPE, FÉCAMP, ÉTRETAT, TROUVILLE and DEAUVILLE, VILLERS-SUR-MER, HOULGATE, CABOURG, and CHERBOURG. We will say a few words about Trouville and Étretat (as representative places) and conclude with some statistics, in an APPENDIX, which may be useful to travellers. Life at Trouville is the gayest of the gay: it is not so much to bathe that we come here, as because on this fine sandy shore near the mouth of the Seine, the world of fashion and delight has made its summer home; because here we can combine the refinements, pleasures, and 'distractions' of Paris with northern breezes, and indulge without restraint in those rampant follies that only a Frenchman, or a Frenchwoman, understands. It is a pretty, graceful, and rational idea, no doubt, to combine the ball room with the sanatorium, and the opera with any amount of ozone; and we may well be thankful to Dumas for inventing a seaside resort at once so pleasant and so gay. Of the daily life at Trouville and Deauville there is literally nothing new to be told; they are the best, the most fashionable, and the most extravagant of French watering-places; and there is the usual round of bathing in the early morning, breakfast at half-past ten, donkey-riding, velocipede racing, and driving in the country until the afternoon, promenade concerts and in-door games at four, dinner at six or seven (table-d'hôte, if you please, where new comers are stared at with that solid, stony stare, of which only the politest nation in the world, is capable)--casino afterwards, with pleasant, mixed society, concert again and '_la danse_.' Of the fashion and extravagance at Trouville a moralist might feel inclined to say much, but we are here for a summer holiday, and we _must_ be gay both in manner and attire. It is our business to be delighted with the varied scene of summer costume, and with all the bizarre combinations of colour that the beautiful Parisians try upon us; but it is impossible altogether to ignore the aspect of anxiety which the majority of people bring with them from Paris. They come 'possessed,' (the demon is in those huge boxes, which have caused the death of so many poor _facteurs_, and which the railway pours out upon us, daily); they bring their burden of extravagance with them, they take it down to the beach, they plunge into the water with it, and come up burdened as before. _Dress_ is the one thing needful at Trouville--in the water, or on the sands. Look at that old French gentleman, with the cross of the Legion of Honour on his breast; he is neat and clean, his dress is, in all respects, perfection; and it is difficult to say whether it is the make of his boots, the fit of his gloves, or his hat, which is most on his mind--they furnish him with food for much thought, and sometimes trouble him not a little. Of the ladies' attire what shall we say? It is all described in the last number of '_Le Follet_,' and we will not attempt to compete with that authority; we will rather quote two lines from the letter of a young English lady, who thus writes home to quiet friends,--'We are all delighted with Trouville; we have to make _five toilettes daily_, the gentlemen are so particular.' Of the bathing at Trouville, a book might be written on the costumes alone--on the suits of motley, the harlequins, the mephistopheles, the spiders, the 'grasshoppers green,' and the other eccentric _costumes de bain_--culminating in a lady's dress trimmed with death's heads, and a gentleman's, of an indescribable colour, after the pattern of a trail of seaweed. Strange, costly creatures--popping in and out of little wooden houses, seated, solitary on artificial rocks, or pacing up and down within the limits prescribed by the keeper of the show--tell us, 'Monsieur l'administrateur,' something about their habits; stick some labels into the sand with their Latin names, tell us how they manage to feather their nests, whether they 'ruminate' over their food--and we shall have added to our store of knowledge at the seaside! It is all admirably managed ('administered' is the word), as everything of the kind is in France. In order to bathe, as the French understand it, you must study costume, and to make a good appearance in the water you must move about with the dexterity and grace required in a ball room; you must remember that you are present at a _bal de mer_, and that you are not in a tub. There are water velocipedes, canoes for ladies, and floats for the unskilful; fresh water for the head before bathing, and tubs of hot water afterwards for the feet, on the sands; an appreciating and admiring audience on the shore; a lounge across the sands and through the 'Établissement,' in costumes more scanty than those of Neapolitan fish girls! Yes, youth and beauty come to Trouville-by-the-sea; French beauty of the dresden china pattern, side by side and hand in hand, with the young English girl of the heavy Clapham type (which elderly Frenchmen adore)--all in the water together, in the prettiest dresses, 'sweetly trimmed' and daintily conceived; all joining hands, men and women having a 'merry go round' in the water--some swimming, some diving, shouting, and disporting themselves, and 'playing fantastic tricks before high heaven,'--to the admiration of a crowded beach. '_Honi soit qui mal y pense_,' when English ladies join the party, and write home that 'it is delightful, that there is a refreshing disregard for what people may think at French watering-places, and a charming absence of self-consciousness that disarms criticism'! What does quiet paterfamilias think about his mermaid daughter, and of that touch about the 'absence of self-consciousness;' and would anything induce _him_ to clothe himself in a light-green skin, to put on a pair of 'human fins,' or to perch himself on the rocks before a crowd of ladies on the beach, within a few yards of him? Yes, it _is_ delightful--the prettiest sight and the brightest life imaginable; but is it quite the thing, we may ask, for English girls to take their tone (ever so little) from the Casino, and from the '_Guides Conty;_' which they do as surely, as the caterpillar takes its colour from the leaf on which it feeds? But the system of bathing in France is so sensible and good compared with our own; the facilities for learning to swim, the accommodation for bathers, and the accessories, are so superior to anything we know of in England, that we hardly like to hint at any drawbacks. We need not all go to Trouville (some of us cannot afford it), but we may live at most of these bathing places at less cost, and with more comfort and amusement than at home. They do manage some things better in France: at the seaside here the men dress in suits of flannel, and wear light canvas shoes habitually; the women swim, and take their children with them into the water,--floating them with gourds, which accustoms them to the water, and to the use of their limbs. At the hotels and restaurants, they provide cheap and appetizing little dinners; there is plenty of ice in hot weather, and cooling drinks are to be had everywhere: in short, in these matters the practical common sense of the French people strikes us anew, every time we set foot on their shores. Why it should be so, we cannot answer; but as long as it is so, our countrymen and countrywomen may well crowd to French watering-places. The situation of Trouville is thus described by Blanchard Jerrold, who knows the district better than most Englishmen:--'Even the shore has been subdued to comfortable human uses; rocks have been picked out of the sand, until a carpet as smooth as Paris asphalte has been obtained for the fastidious feet of noble dames, who are the finishing bits of life and colour in the exquisite scene. Even the ribbed sand is not smooth enough; a boarded way has been fixed from the casino to the mussel banks, whither the dandy resorts to play at mussel gathering, in a nautical dress that costs a sailor's income. The great and rich have planted their Louis XIII. chateaux, their 'maisons mauresques' and 'pavillons à la renaissance,' so closely over the available slopes, round about the immense and gaudily-appointed Casino, and the Hotel of the Black Rocks, that it has been found necessary to protect them with masonry of more than Roman strength. From these works of startling force, and boldness of design, the view is a glorious one indeed. To the right stretches the white line of Havre, pointed with its electric _phare_; to the left, the shore swells and dimples, and the hills, in gentle curves, rise beyond. Deauville is below, and beyond--a flat, formal place of fashion, where ladies exhibit the genius of Worth to one another, and to the astonished fishermen. Imagine a splendid court playing at seaside life; imagine such a place as Watteau would have designed, with inhabitants as elegantly rustic as his, and you imagine a Trouville. It is the village of the millionaire--the stage whereon the duchess plays the hoyden, and the princess seeks the exquisite relief of being natural for an hour or two. No wonder every inch of the rock is disputed; there are so many now in the world who have sipped all the pleasures the city has to give. Masters of the art of entering a drawing-room, the Parisians crowd seaward to get the sure foot of the mussel-gatherer upon the slimy granite of a bluff Norman headland; they bring their taste with them, and they get heartiness in the bracing air. The _salon_ of the casino, at the height of the season, is said to show at once the most animated and diverting assemblage of Somebodies to be seen in the world.' DEAUVILLE, separated only by the river Touques, is a place of greater pretension even than Trouville. It is, however, quite in its infancy; it was planned for a handsome and extensive watering-place, but the death of the Duc de Morny has stopped its growth,--large tracts of land, in what should be the town, still lying waste. It is quiet compared with Trouville, select and 'aristocratic,' and boasts the handsomest casino in France; it is built for the most part upon a sandy plain, but the houses are so tastefully designed, and so much has been made of the site, that (from some points of view) it presents, with its background of hills, a singularly picturesque appearance. No matter how small or uninteresting the locality, if it is to be fashionable, _il n'y aura point de difficulté_. If there are no natural attractions, the ingenious and enterprising speculator will provide them; if there are no trees, he will bring them,--no rocks, he will manufacture them,--no river, he will cut a winding canal,--no town, he will build one,--no casino, he will erect a wooden shed on the sands! But of all the bathing-places on the north coast of Normandy the little fishing-village of ÉTRETAT will commend itself most to English people, for its bold coast and bracing air. Situated about seventeen miles north-east of Havre, shut in on either side by rocks which form a natural arch over the sea, the little bay of Étretat--with its brilliant summer crowd of idlers and its little group of fishermen who stand by it in all weathers--is one of the quaintest of the nooks and corners of France. There is a homelike snugness and retirement about the position of Étretat, and a mystery about the caves and caverns--extending for long distances under its cliffs--which form an attraction that we shall find nowhere else. Since Paris has found it out, and taken it by storm as it were, the little fishermen's village has been turned into a gay _parterre_; its shingly beach lined with chairs _à volonté_, and its shores smoothed and levelled for delicate feet. The _Casino_ and the _Établissement_ are all that can be desired; whilst pretty châlets and villas are scattered upon the hills that surround the town. There is scarcely any 'town' to speak of; a small straggling village, with the remains of a Norman church, once close to the sea (built on the spot where the people once watched the great flotilla of William the Conqueror drift eastward to St. Valery), and on the shore, old worn-out boats, thatched and turned into fishermen's huts and bathing retreats. Étretat has its peculiar customs; the old fisher-women, who assume the more profitable occupation of washerwomen during the summer, go down to the shore as the tide is ebbing, and catch the spring water on its way to the sea; scooping out the stones, and making natural washing-tubs of fresh water close to the sea--a work of ten minutes or so, which is all washed away by the next tide. At Étretat almost everybody swims and wears a costume of blue serge, trimmed with scarlet, or other bright colour; and everybody sits in the afternoon in the gay little bay, purchases shell ornaments and useless souvenirs, sips coffee or ices, and listens to the band. For a very little place, without a railway, and with only two good hotels, Étretat is wonderfully lively and attractive; and the drives in the neighbourhood add to its natural attractions. The show is nearly over for the season, at Étretat, by the time we leave it; the puppets are being packed up for Paris, and even the boxes that contained them will soon be carted away to more sheltered places. It is late in September, and the last few bathers are making the most of their time, and wandering about on the sands in their most brilliant attire; but their time is nearly over, Étretat will soon be given up to the fishermen again--like the bears in the high Pyrenees, that wait at the street corners of the mountain towns, and scramble for the best places after the visitors have left, the natives of Étretat are already preparing to return to their winter quarters. It is the finest weather of the year, and the setting sun is brilliant upon the shore; a fishing-boat glides into the bay, and a little fisher-boy steps out upon the sands. He comes down towards us, facing the western sun, with such a glory of light about his head, such a halo of fresh youth, and health, as we have not seen once this summer, in the 'great world.' His feet are bare, and leave their tiny impress on the sand--a thousand times more expressive than any Parisian boot; his little bronzed hands are crystallized with the salt air; his dark-brown curls are flecked with sea-foam, and flutter in the evening breeze; his face is radiant--a reflection of the sun, a mystery of life and beauty half revealed. After all we have seen and heard around us, it is like turning, with a thankful sense of rest, from the contemplation of some tricky effect of colour, to a painting by Titian or Velasquez; it is, in an artistic sense, transition from darkness to light--from the glare of the lamp to the glory of the true day. APPENDIX TO NORMANDY PICTURESQUE. Sketch of Route, showing the Distances, Fares, &c., to and from the principal Places in Normandy. TRAVELLING EXPENSES over the whole of this Route (including the journey from London to Havre, or Dieppe, and back) do not amount to more than 4l. 4s. first class, and need not exceed 3l. 10s. (see p. 240). HOTEL EXPENSES average about 10s. a day. Thus it is possible to accomplish month's tour for £20, and one of two months for £35. There are _no good hotels_ in Normandy (excepting at the seaside) according to modern ideas of comfort and convenience. CAEN, AVRANCHES, and ROUEN may be mentioned as the best places at which to stay, _en route_. Havre to Pont Audemer.--Steamboat direct.--Fare 2frs. Or viâ Honfleur or Trouville, by boat and diligence. Dieppe to Pont Audemer.--Railway (viâ Rouen and Glosmontfort) 65 miles. Fare, first class, 12frs. 50c. (10s.) PONT AUDEMER (Pop. 6000). Hotels: _Pôt d'Étain_ (old-fashioned in style, but no longer in prices); _Lion d'Or_. Pont Audemer to Lisieux.--Diligence. Distance, 22 miles.--Or by Ry. 43 miles; fare, 8frs. 50c. (7s.) Fare.[64] LISIEUX (Pop. 13,000). Hotels: _de France_, (on a quiet boulevard, with garden); _d'Espagne_, &c. Lisieux to Caen.--Railway, 30 miles. Fare, 5frs. 50c. (4s. 6d.) CAEN (Pop. 44,000). Hotels: _d'Angleterre_, (well-managed, central, and bustling); _d'Espagne_, &c. Caen to Bayeux.--Railway, 19 miles. Fare, 3frs. 40c. (2s. 9d.) BAYEUX (Pop. 9,500). Hotels: _du Luxembourg, Grand Hotel_, &c. Bayeux to St. Lo.--Railway 28 miles. Fare, 5frs. (4s.) [Bayeux to Cherbourg. Rly. 63 miles. Fare, 11frs. 40s. (9s. 6d.)] [For Hotels, &c., see App., p. iv.] ST. LO (Pop. 10,000). Hotel: _du Soleil Levant_ (quiet and commercial.) St. Lo to Coutances.--Diligence, 16 miles. COUTANCES (Pop. 9000). Hotels: _de France, du Dauphin, &c._ (indifferent). Coutances to Granville.--Diligence, 18 miles. GRANVILLE (Pop. 17,000). Hotels: _du Nord_ (large and bustling, crowded with English from the Channel Islands); _Trois Couronnes, &c._ (See p. 123.) Granville to Avranches.--Diligence, 16 miles. AVRANCHES (Pop. 9000). Hotels: _d'Angleterre, de Bretagne, &c._ (accustomed to English people.) [Excursion to Mont St. Michel and back in one day; Carriage, 15frs, (12s. 6d.). Distance, 10 miles; or by Pont Orson (the best route), 13 miles.] Avranches to Vire.--Diligence, 36 miles (viâ Mortain). VIRE (Pop. 8000). Hotel: _du Cheval Blanc_. [Mortain to Domfront. Diligence, 17 miles. (Pop. 3000.) _Hotel de la Poste_.] Vire to Falaise.--Diligence, 34 miles [or by Rly. 65 miles. Fare, 12frs. (9s. 9d.)] FALAISE (Pop. 9000). Hotels: _de Normandie, &c._ (All commercial.) Falaise to Rouen.--Rly. 83 miles (viâ Mezidon and Serquiny). Fare, 15frs. 50c. (12s. 6d.) [At Serquiny turn off to Evreux, 26 miles. Fare from Serquiny, 4frs. 60c. (3s. 9d.) Hotel: _Grand Cerf_.] ROUEN (Pop. 103,000). Hotels: _d'Angleterre, d'Albion, &c._ (none first-rate, generally full of English people.) Rouen to Havre by the Seine; or by Rly. _List of the_ WATERING-PLACES OF NORMANDY, _from east to west, with a few notes for Visitors_. Dieppe (Pop. 20,000).--Busy seaport town--fashionable and expensive during the season--good accommodation facing the sea--pretty rides and drives in the neighbourhood--shingly beach, bracing air. HOTELS: _Royal, des Bains, de Londres, &c. Ry. to Paris._ Fécamp (13,000).--A dull uninteresting town, inns second-rate and dear, in summer--situated on a river, the town reaching for nearly a mile inland. HOTELS: _de la Plage, des Bains, Chariot d'Or. Ry. to Paris._ Étretat (2000).--Romantic situation--bracing air--rocky coast--shingly beach--only two good hotels--a few villas and apartments--no town--very amusing for a time. HOTELS: _Blanquet, Hauville, Dil. to Fécamp, and Havre._ Havre (75,000).--Large and important seaport on the right bank of the Seine--harbour, docks, warehouses, fine modern buildings, streets, and squares--picturesque old houses and fishing-boats on the quay--bathing not equal to Dieppe or Trouville. HOTELS: _de l'Europe, de l'Amirauté, &c., and Frascatî's on the sea-shore. Ry. to Paris; Steamboats to Trouville, &c._ Honfleur (10,000).--Opposite Havre, on the Seine--old and picturesque town--pleasant walks--English society--sea-bathing, "_mais quels bains_," says Conty, "_bains impossible!_" Living is not dear for residents. HOTELS: _du Cheval Blanc, de la Paix, &c. Ry. to Paris_. Trouville (5000 or 6000).--Fashionable and very dear at the best hotels--ample accommodation to suit all purses--good sands--splendid casino--handsome villas, and plenty of apartments. Less bracing than Dieppe or Étretat. HOTELS: _Roches-Noires, Paris, Bras d'Or, &c. Ry. to Paris._ Deauville.--A scattered assemblage of villas and picturesque houses--very exclusive and select, and dull for a stranger--grand casino--quite a modern town--separated from Trouville by the river Touques. HOTELS: _Grand, du Casino, &c. Ry. to Paris._ Villers-sur-mer.--A pretty village, six miles from Trouville--crowded during the season--beautiful neighbourhood--good apartments, but expensive--inns moderate. HOTELS: _du Bras d'Or, Casino, &c. Ry. to Paris._ Houlgate.--One large hotel surrounded by pretty and well-built châlets to be let furnished; also many private villas in gardens--beautiful situation--good sands--small Casino--becoming fashionable and dear--accommodation limited. _Dil. to Trouville, 11 miles_. Beuzeval.--A continuation of Houlgate, westward; lower, near the mouth of the Dives--one second-rate hotel close to the sands--quiet and reasonable--sea recedes half-a-mile (no boating at Houlgate or Beuzeval)--beautiful neighbourhood--a few villas and apartments--no Établissement. _Dil. to Trouville or Caen_. Cabourg.--A small, but increasing, town in a fine open situation on the left bank of the Dives--good accommodation and moderate--not as well known as it deserves to be. HOTELS: _de la Plage, Casino, &c. Dil. do. do_. [Then follow nine or ten minor sea-bathing places, situated north of Caen and Bayeux, in the following order:--Lies, Luc, Lasgrune, St, Aubin, Coutances, Aromanches, Auxelles, Vierville, and Grandcamp; where accommodation is more or less limited, and board and lodging need not cost more than seven or eight francs a-day in the season. They are generally spoken of in French guide-books as, '_bien tristes sans ressources;_' 'fit only for fathers of families'! St. Aubin, about twelve miles from Caen, is one of the best.] Cherbourg (42,000).--Large, fortified town--bold coast--good bathing--splendid views from the heights--wide streets and squares--docks and harbours--hotels--good and dear. HOTELS: _l'Univers, l'Amirauté, &c. Ry. to Paris_. Granville.--See pp. 122 and following; also Appendix, p. ii. * * * * * The average charge at seaside hotels in Normandy, during the season (if taken by the week) is 8 or 9 francs a-day, for sleeping accommodation and the two public meals; nearly everything else being charged for 'extra.' At Trouville, Deauville, and Dieppe, 10 or 12 francs is considered 'moderate.' Furnished houses and apartments can be had nearly everywhere, and at all prices. The sum of 10_l._ or 15_l_. a week is sometimes paid at Trouville, or Deauville, for a furnished house. Conty's guide-book, '_Les Côtes de Normandie_,' should be recommended for its very practical information on these matters, but not for its illustrations. _London, May, 1870._ FOOTNOTES: [1] We have not put CHERBOURG, DOMFRONT, or EVREAUX, as a matter of course, on our list, although they should be included in a tour, especially the two latter towns, for their archæological interest. [2] The same remark applies to Mantes, familiar to us from its historical associations, and by its graceful towers, which so many have seen from the railway in going to Paris. "All the world goes by Mantes, but very few stop there," writes a traveller. "The tourist, on his way to Paris, generally has a ticket which allows him to stop at Rouen but not at Mantes. People very anxious to stop at Mantes, and to muse, so to speak, amongst its embers, have had great searchings of heart how to get there, and have not accomplished their object until after some years of reflection." [3] Trouville and Deauville-sur-mer. [4] The architecture of Rouen, which is better known to our countrymen than that of any other town in Normandy, is later than that of Caen or Bayeux. Notwithstanding the magnificence of its cathedral, we venture to say that there is nothing in all Rouen to compare with the norman romanesque of the latter towns. [5] 'I am not enthusiastic about gutters and gables, and object to a population composed exclusively of old women,' wrote the author of 'Miss Carew;' but she could not have seen Pont Audemer. [6] The brightness and cleanliness of the peasant and market-women, is a pleasant feature to notice in Normandy. [7] It is worthy of note that the very variety and irregularity that attracts us so much in these buildings does not meet with universal approval in the French schools. In the _'Grammaire des Arts du Dessin_,' M. Charles Blanc lays down as an axiom, that "sublimity in architecture belongs to three essential conditions--simplicity of surface, straightness, and continuity of line." Nevertheless we find many modern French houses built in the style of the 13th and 14th century; especially in Lower Normandy. [8] There is a great change in the aspect of Pont Audemer during the last year or two; streets of new houses having sprung up, hiding some of the best old work from view; and one whole street of wooden houses having been lately taken down. [9] There is one peculiarity about the position of Pont Audemer which is charming to an artist; the streets are ended by hills and green slopes, clothed to their summits with trees, which are often in sunshine, whilst the town is in shadow. [10] We, human creatures, little know what high revel is held at four o'clock on a summer's morning, by the birds of the air and the beasts of the field; when their tormentors are asleep. [11] The approach to Lisieux from the railway station is singularly uninteresting; a new town of common red brick houses, of the Coventry or Birmingham pattern, having lately sprung up in this quarter. [12] There is something not inappropriate, in the printed letters in present use in France, to the 'Haussmann' style of street architecture; some inscriptions over warehouses and shops could scarcely indeed be improved. We might point as an illustration of our meaning to the successful introduction of the word NORD, several times repeated, on the façade of the terminus of the Great Northern Railway at Paris. [13] We lately saw an english crest, bearing the motto "Courage without fear;" a piece of tautology, surely of modern manufacturer? [14] The contrast between the present and former states of society might be typified by the general substitution of the screw for the nail in building; both answering the purpose of the modern builder, but the former preferred, because _removable_ at pleasure. It is a restless age, in which advertisements of 'FAMILIES REMOVED' are pasted on the walls of a man's house without appearing to excite his indignation. [15] The 'renaissance' work at the east end of this church is considered by Herr Lübke to be 'the masterpiece of the epoch.' 'It is to be found,' he says, 'at one extremity of a building, the other end of which is occupied by the loveliest steeple and tower in the world.' [16] It is remarkable that with all their care for this building, the authorities should permit apple-stalls and wooden sheds to be built up against the tower. [17] An architect, speaking of the Albert Memorial, now approaching completion, says:--'In ten years the spire and all its elaborate tracery will have become obsolete and effaced for all artistic purposes. The atmosphere of London will have performed its inevitable function. Every 'scroll work' and 'pinnacle' will be a mere clot of soot, and the bronze gilt Virtues will represent nothing but swarthy denizens of the lower regions; the plumage of the angels will be converted into a sort of black-and-white check-work. 'All this fated transformation we see with the mind's eye as plainly as we see with those of the body, the similar change which has been effected in the Gothic tracery of some of our latest churches.' [18] The old woman is well known at Caen, and her encounter with the '_garçon anglais_' it matter of history amongst her friends in the town. [19] It was lately found necessary to repair the south door; but the restoration of the carved work has been effected with the utmost skill and care: indeed we could hardly point to a more successful instance of 'restoring' in France. [20] We might point, as a notable exception, to the memorial window to Brunel, the engineer, in Westminster Abbey; especially for its appropriateness and harmony with the building. [21] The _raconteurs_ of the middle ages used to travel on foot about Europe, reciting, or repeating, the last new work or conversation of celebrated men--a useful and lucrative profession in days before printing was invented. [22] In the British Museum there is a book containing a facsimile of the whole of this tapestry (printed in colours, for the Society of Antiquaries), where the reader may see it almost as well as at Bayeux; just as, at the Crystal Palace, we may examine the modelling of Ghiberti's gates, with greater facility than by standing in the windy streets of Florence. [23] The sketch of the pulpit (made on the spot by the author) is erroneously stated in the List of Illustrations to be from a photograph. [24] At the cathedral at Coutances the service is held under the great tower, and the effect is most melodious from above. [25] In an article in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, on the 'woman of the future,' the writer argues that:--'As beauty is more or less a matter of health, too much can never be said against the abuse of it. Quite naturally the fragile type of beauty has become the standard of the present day, and men admire in real lift the lily-cheeked, small-waisted, diaphanous-looking creatures idealized by living artists. When we become accustomed to a nobler kind of beauty we shall attain to a loftier ideal. Men will seek nobility rather than prettiness, strength rather than weakness, physical perfection rather than physical degeneracy, in the women they select as mothers of their children. Artists will rejoice and sculptors will cease to despair when this happy consummation is reached--let none regard it as chimerical or Utopian.' [26] The railway from Paris to Granville is nearly finished; and another line is in progress to connect Cherbourg, Coutances, Granville, and St. Malo. [27] If this were the place to enlarge upon the general question of bringing children abroad to be educated, we might suggest, at the outset, that there were certain English qualities, such as manliness and self-reliance; and certain English sports, such as cricket, hunting and the like, which have less opportunity of fair development in boys educated abroad. And as to girls--who knows the impression left for life on young hearts, by the dead walls and silent trees of a French _pension_? [28] It is well that sportsmen do not always make a good bag, for another drawback to the pleasures of sport in France is the 'heavy octroi duty which a successful shot has to pay upon every head of game which he takes back to town.' For a pheasant (according to the latest accounts) he has to pay '3f. 50c. to 4f.; for a hare, 1f. 50c. to 2f.; for a rabbit, 75c. to 1f. 25c.; for a partridge, 75c. to 1f. 50c. the pound; and for every other species of feathered game, 18c. the kilogramme.' [29] The island, in this illustration, appears, after engraving, to be about two miles nearer the spectator, and to be less covered with houses, than it really is. [30] During the last few years the prisoners have all been removed from Mont St. Michael. [31] The sands are so shifting and variable, that it is impossible to cross with safety, excepting by well-known routes, and at certain times of the tide; many lives, even of the fishermen and women, have been lost on these sands. [32] It a irresistible, here, not to compare in our minds, with these twelfth-century relics of magnificence and festivity, certain emblazoned 'civic banquets,' and the gay 'halls by the sea,' with which the child (old or young) of the nineteenth century is enraptured--the former being the realities of a chivalrous epoch; the latter, masquerades or money speculations, of a more advanced century. The comparison may be considered unjust, but it is one that suggests itself again and again, as typical of a curiously altered state of society and manners. [33] The latest, and perhaps the most complete, description of Mont St Michael, will be found in the 'People's Magazine' for August, 1869. [34] French artists flock together in the valleys of the Seine and the Somme, like English landscape painters at the junction of the Greta and the Tees--Mortain and Vire not being yet fashionable. It is hard, indeed, to get English artists out of a groove; to those who, like ourselves, have had to examine the pictures at our annual Exhibitions, year by year, somewhat closely, the streams in Wales are as familiar on canvas, as 'Finding the Body of Harold.' [35] We speak of Mortain as we found it a few years ago; its sanitory arrangements have, we understand, been improved, but people are not yet enthusiastic about Mortain as a residence. [36] Notwithstanding this apparent indifference to landscape, we remember finding at a country inn, the walls covered with one of Troyon's pictures (a hundred times repeated in paper-hanging); a pretty pastoral scene which Messrs. Christie would have catalogued as 'a landscape with cattle.' [37] The neatness and precision with which they make their piles of stones at the roadside will be remembered by many a traveller in this part of Normandy. They accomplish it by putting the stones into a shape (as if making a jelly), and removing the boards when full; and, as there are no French boys, the loose pile remains undisturbed for months. [38] Submitting to the exigencies of publishing expediency, we have been unable to have this drawing reproduced on wood; although we were anxious to draw attention to the bold forms of rocks which crown these heights, and to the line old trees which surround the castle. [39] There are' deeds of valour' (according to the _affiches_) to be witnessed in these days at Falaise; we once saw a woman here, in a circus, turning somersaults on horseback before a crowd of spectators. The people of Falaise cannot be accused of being behind the age; one gentleman advertises as his _specialité_,' the cure of injuries caused by velocipedes'! [40] Our peaceful proclivities may be noticed in small things; the fierce and warlike devices, such as an eagle's head, a lion _rampant_, and the like, which were originally designed to stimulate the warrior in battle, now serve to adorn the panel of a carriage, or a sheet of note-paper. [41] It is rather a curious fact that Prout, notwithstanding his love for historic scenes, seems to have had little sympathy with the poor 'Maid of Orleans.' In a letter which accompanied the presentation of this drawing, the following passage occurs:--'I beg your acceptance of what is miserable, though perhaps not uninteresting, as it is part of the house in which Joan of Arc was confined at Rouen, and before which the English, _very wisely_, burnt her for a witch!' Mr. Prout evidently differed in opinion from Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Bauvais, who presided at the tribunal which condemned Joan of Arc to death; for he founded a Lady Chapel at Lisieux, 'in expiation of his false judgment of an innocent woman.' [42] It is curious to note that the wealth of cities nearly always flow westward,--converting, as in London, the market-gardens of the poor into the 'Palace Gardens' of the rich; and, with steady advance, sweeps away our landmarks,--turning the gravel pits of western London into the decorum of a Ladbroke-square. [43] It is no new remark that more than one Englishman of artistic taste has returned to Rouen after visiting the buildings of Paris, having found nothing equal in grandeur to this cathedral, and the church of St. Ouen. [44] The original spire was made of wood, and much more picturesque; our artist evidently could not bring himself to copy with literal truth this disfiguring element to the building. [45] For a detailed description of the monuments in this Cathedral, and of the church of St. Ouen, we cannot do better than refer the reader to the very accurate account in Murray's 'Handbook;' and also to Cassell's 'Normandy,' from which we have made the above extracts. [46] We must record an exception to this rule, in the case of the church at Dives, which a kept closely locked, under the care of an old woman. [47] Just as the words of our Baptismal service, enrolling a young child into the 'church militant,' lose half their effect when addressed to men whose ideas of manliness and fighting fall very short of their true meaning. It has a strange sound (to say the least that could be said) to hear quiet town-bred godfathers promise that they will 'take care' that a child shall 'fight under the banner' of the cross, and 'continue Christ's faithful soldier and servant unto his life's end;' and it is almost as strange to hear the good Bishop Heber's warlike imagery--'His blood-red banner streams afar; who follows in his train?' &c., &c.--in the mouths of little children. [48] The incongruity strikes one more when we see him afterwards in the town, marching along with a flat-footed shambling tread, holding an umbrella in front of him in his clenched fist (as all french priests hold it),--a figure as unromantic-looking as ungraceful. [49] He could not be called naturally gifted, even in the matter of speaking; but he had been well taught from his youth up, both the manner and the method of fixing the attention of his hearers. [50] On the quay at the front of the Hotel d'Angleterre, the public seats under the trees are crowded with people in the afternoon, especially of the poor and working classes. [51] There seem to be few living French artists of genius, who devote themselves to landscape painting; when we have mentioned the names of Troyon, Lambinet, Lamorinière and Auguste Bonheur, we have almost exhausted the list. [52] It is unfortunately different in the case of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood of Fécamp and Étretat, who are certainly not improved, either in manners or morals, by the fashionable invasion of their province. [53] The London 'Illustrated Police News.' [54] The people in this part of Normandy are becoming less political, and more conservative, every day (a conservatism which, in their case, may be taken as a sign of prosperity, and of a certain unwillingness to be disturbed in their business); they are content with a paternal government--at a distance; they wish for peace and order, and have no objection to be taken care of. They are so willing to be led that, as a Frenchman expressed it to us, 'they would almost prefer, if they could, to have an omnipotent Postmaster-General to inspect all letters, and see whether they were creditable to the sender and fitting to be received'! [55] In the matter of bells, the same voices now ring half over Europe--the music is the same at Bruges as at Birmingham; church bells being made wholesale, to the same pattern and in the same mould, another link in the chain of old associations, is broken. [56] We are tempted to remark, in passing, on the curious want of manner in speaking French that we notice amongst English people abroad; arising, probably, from their method of learning it. French people have often expressed to us their astonishment at this defect, amongst so many educated English women; a defect which, according to the same authority, is less prominent amongst travelled Englishmen in the same position in life. We will not venture to give an opinion upon the latter point; but most of us have yet to learn that there are two French languages--one for writing and one for speaking; and that the latter is almost made up of _manner_, and depends upon the modulation of the voice. [57] It is worthy of note that, in a cruel country like France, the 'blinkers' to the horses (which we are doing away with in England) are a most merciful provision against the driver's brutality; and a security to the traveller, against his habitual carelessness. [58] We confess to a lively sympathy with the growth of artistic taste in America; a sympathy not diminished by the knowledge that every English work of credit on these subjects is eagerly bought and read by the people. [59] The carving may be machine-made, and the slate and fringes to the roofs cut by steam; but we must remember that these houses are only 'run up to let,' as it is called, some of them costing not more than 500_l._ or 600l. [60] It is interesting to note how the changes in the modern systems of warfare seem to be tending (both in attack and defence) to a more practical and picturesque state of things. Thus in attack, the top boots and loose costume of the engineers and sappers figure more conspicuously in these days, than the smooth broad-cloth of the troops of the line; and in defence (thanks to Captain Moncreiff's system), we are promised guns that shall be concealed in the long grass of our southern downs, whilst stone and brick fortifications need no longer desolate the heights. [61] In one of the west-end clubs a fresco has lately been exhibited as a suggestion to the members, shewing the easy and graceful costume of the fifteenth century. [62] If the words in an ordinary letter in a lady's handwriting, were measured, it would be found that the point of the pen had passed over a distance of twenty or thirty feet. [63] We are becoming so accustomed to the deliberate misuse of words, that when a person (in London) informs us that he is going 'to dine at the pallis,' we understand him at once to mean that he if going to spend the day at the great glass bazaar at Sydenham. [64] The fares by Diligence are not inserted because they are liable to variation; but the traveller may safely calculate them, at not more than 2d. a mile for the best places, All _railway fares_ stated are _first class_. _Books by the same Author. 'ARTISTS AND ARABS.' 'TRAVELLING IN SPAIN.' 'THE PYRENEES.'_ _Published by Sampson Low and Co., Crown Buildings, Fleet Street, London._ _Crown 8vo._, 10s. 6d. ARTISTS AND ARABS; OR, Sketching in Sunshine. "Let us sit down here quietly for one day and paint a camel's head, not flinching from the work, but mastering the wonderful texture and shagginess of his thick coat or mane, its massive beauty, and its infinite gradations of colour. "Such a sitter no portrait painter ever had in England. Feed him up first, get a boy to keep the flies from him, and he will remain almost immoveable through the day. He will put on a sad expression in the morning which will not change; he will give no trouble whatever, he will but sit still and croak."--Chap. IV., '_Our Models_.' WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS. Opinions of the Press on "Artists and Arabs." _'"Artists and Arabs" is a fanciful name for a clever book, of which the figures are Oriental, and the sceneries Algerian. It is full of air and light, and its style is laden, so to speak, with a sense of unutterable freedom and enjoyment; a book which would remind us, not of the article on Algeria in a gazetteer, but of Turner's picture of a sunrise on the African coast.'_--Athenæum. _'The lesson which Mr. Blackburn sets himself to impress upon his readers, is certainly in accordance with common sense. The first need of the painter is an educated eye, and to obtain this he must consent to undergo systematic training. He is in the position of a man who is learning a language merely from his books, with nothing to recall its accents in the daily life around him. If he will listen to Mr. Blackburn he may get rid of all these uncongenial surroundings.'_--Saturday Review. _'This it a particularly pretty boor, containing many exquisite illustrations and vignettes. Mr. Blackburn's style is occasionally essentially poetical, while his descriptions of mountain and valley, of sea and sky, of sunshine and storm, are vivid and picturesque.'_--Examiner. _'Mr. Blackburn is an artist in words, and can paint a picture in a paragraph. He delights in the beauty of form and colour, in the perfume of flowers, in the freedom of the desert, in the brilliant glow and delicious warmth of a southern atmosphere.'_--Spectator. _'This is a genuine book, full of character and trustworthiness. The woodcuts, with which it is liberally embellished, are excellent, and bear upon them the stamp of truth to the scenes and incidents they are intended to represent. Mr. Blackburn's views of art are singularly unsophisticated and manly.'_--Leader. _'Interesting as are Mr. Blackburn's ascriptions of Algiers, we almost prefer those of the country beyond it. His sketches of the little Arab village, called the Bouzareah, and of the storm that overtook him there, are in the best style of descriptive writing.'_--London Review. _'Mr. Blackburn is an artist and a lover of nature, and he pretends to nothing more in these gay and pleasing pages.'_--Daily News. _'Since the days of Eöthen, we have not met with so lively, racy, gossiping, and intellectual a book as this.'_--News of the World. _'The reader feels, that in perusing the pages of "Artists and Arabs," he has had a glimpse of sunshine more intense than any ever seen in cloudy England.'_--The Queen. _'The narrative is told with a commendable simplicity and absence of self display, or self boasting; and the illustrations are worthy the fame of a reputable British artist.'_--Press. _'The sparkling picturesqueness of the style of this book is combined with sound sense, and strong argument, when the author pleads the claims and the beauties of realism in art; and though addressed to artists, the volume is one of that most attractive which hat been set before the general reader of late.'_--Contemporary Review. _&c. &c. &c._ * * * * * Second Edition, Crown 8vo., Six Shillings. TRAVELLING IN SPAIN In the Present Day. WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATION'S By THE LATE John Phillip, R.A., E. LUNDGREN, WALTER SEVERN, AND THE AUTHOR. ALSO, A NEW MAP OF SPAIN, AND AN APPENDIX OF ROUTES. Opinions of the Press on "Travelling in Spain." _'This pleasant volume, dedicated to the Right Hon. E. Horsman, M.P., by his late private secretary, admirably fulfils its author's design, which was "to record simply and easily, the observations of ordinary English travelers visiting the principal cities of Spain." The travellers whose adventures are here recorded were, however, something more than ordinary observers. Some artists being of the party, have given graceful evidence of their observations in some spiritedly sketches of Spanish scenes and Spanish life. There are no less than nineteen of these illustrations, some by John Phillip, R.A.; and the ornaments at the beginning and close of each chapter are fac-similes of embroideries brought from Granada. The whole volume, in its getting up and appearance, is most attractive; and the descriptions of Spanish men and women are singularly interesting._ _'At the end there is an_ APPENDIX OF ROUTES, &c., _which will be invaluable to all intending travellers in Spain.'_--Sun. _'Mr. Blackburn's charming volume is on a different principle from that of Irving and Cayley. He does not aspire to present Spain as it affected him,--but Spain as it is. His travelling party consisted of two ladies and two gentlemen--an arrangement fatal to romance. To go out on a serenading adventure in wicked Madrid is quite impossible for Mr. Horsman's ex-private secretary, having in charge two English gentlemen. So Mr. Blackburn wisely did not go in for adventures, but preferred to describe in straightforward fashion what he saw, so as to guide others who may feel disposed for Spanish travel--and he describes capitally. He saw a couple of bull-fights, one at Madrid and one at Seville, and brings them before his readers in a very vigorous style. He has admirably succeeded in sketching the special character in each of the cities that he visited. The book is illustrated by several well-known hands.'_--Press. _'A delightful book is Mr. Blackburn's volume upon "Travelling in Spain." Its artistic appearance is a credit to the publishers as well as to the author. The pictures are of the best, and so is the text, which gives a very clear and practical account of Spanish travel, that is unaffectedly lively, and full of shrewd and accurate notes upon Spanish character.'_--Examiner. _'Mr. Blackburn sketches the aspect of the streets with considerable humour, and with a correctness which will be admitted by all who have basked in the sunshine of the Puerta del Sol.'_--Pall Mall Gazette. _'The writer has genuine humour, and a light and graceful style, which carries the reader through the notes with increasing relish.'_--Public Opinion. _'Extremely readable,--a lively picture of Spain as it is.'_--London Review. _'A truthful and pleasant record of the adventures of a party of ladies and gentlemen--an accomplished and artistic little company of friends.'_--Era. _'This unpretending but practical volume is very readable.'_--Standard. _'Not only to be admired, but read.'_--Illustrated London News. _'A lively and interesting sketch of a journey through Spain.'_--Builder. _'Very useful as well as entertaining.'_--Observer. _'A most amusing book, profusely illustrated.'_--John Bull. _'The dullest of books--a thing of shreds and patches.'_--Morning Star. _Royal 8vo._ (_cloth_ 18_s._, _or morocco_ 24_s._) * * * * * THE PYRENEES _With One Hundred Illustrations by_ GUSTAVE DORÉ. Opinions of the Press on "The Pyrenees." _'This handsome volume will confirm the opinion of those who hold that M. Doré's real strength lies in landscape. Mr. Blackburn's share in the work is pleasant and readable, and is really what it pretends to be, a description of summer life at French watering-places. It is a_ bonâ fide _record of his own experiences, told without either that abominable smartness, or that dismal book-making, which are the characteristics of too many illustrated books.'_--Pall Mall Gazette. _'The author of this volume has spared no pains in his endeavour to present a work which shall be worthy of public approbation. He has secured three elements favourable to a large success,--a popular and fascinating subject, exquisite illustrative sketches from an artist of celebrity, and letter-press dictated by an excellent judgment, neither tedious by its prolixity, nor curtailed to the omission of any circumstance worth recording.'_--Press. _'Mr. Blackburn has accomplished his task with the ease and pleasantness to be expected of the author of "Travelling in Spain." He writes graphically, sometimes with humour, always like a gentleman, and without a trace or tinge of false sentiment; in short, this is as acceptable a book as we have seen far many a day.'_--Atheneum. _'A general, but painstaking account, by a cultivated Englishman, of the general impression, step by step, which an ordinary Englishman, travelling for his pleasure, would derive from a visit to the watering-places of the Pyrenees.'_--Spectator. '_Mr. Blackburn has an eye for the beautiful in nature, and a faculty for expressing pleasantly what is worth describing; moreover, his pictures of men and manners are both amusing and life-like.'_--Art Journal. _'Readers of this book will gain therefrom a great deal of information should they feel disposed to make a summer pilgrimage over the romantic ground so well described by the author.'_--Era. _'One of the most exquisite books of the present year is Mr. Henry Blackburn's volume, "The Pyrenees;" it is brightly, amusingly, and intelligently written.'_--Daily News. _'Few persons will be able to turn over the leaves of the pretty book before us, without a longing desire for a nearer acquaintance with the scenes which it depicts.'_--Guardian. _'A pleasant account of travel and summer life in the Pyrenees.'_--Examiner. _'The author has illustrated M. Gustavo Doré's engravings very successfully.'_-The Times. _'This is a noble volume, not unworthy of the stately Pyrenees.'_--Illustrated London News. _'A singularly attractive book, well written, and beautifully illustrated.'_--Contemporary Review. London: Sampson Low, Son, and Marston. 
18327	----	Online Distributed Proofreaders Europe at http://dp.rastko.net [Illustration: MI LORD ANGLAIS AT MABILLE. _He is smiling, he is splendid, he is full of graceful enjoyment; on the table are a few of the beverages he admires; but above all he adores the ease of the French ladies in the dance._] THE COCKAYNES IN PARIS OR "GONE ABROAD." BY BLANCHARD JERROLD. [Illustration] WITH SKETCHES BY GUSTAVE DORÉ, AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE ENGLISH ABROAD FROM A FRENCH POINT OF VIEW. LONDON: JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN, 74 & 75, PICCADILLY. [_All Rights Reserved._] PREFACE. The story of the Cockaynes was written some years ago,--in the days when Paris was at her best and brightest; and the English quarter was crowded; and the Emperor was at St. Cloud; and France appeared destined to become the wealthiest and strongest country in the world. Where the Cockaynes carried their guide-books and opera-glasses, and fell into raptures at every footstep, there are dismal ruins now. The Vendôme Column is a stump, wreathed with a gigantic _immortelle_, and capped with the tri-color. The Hall of the Marshals is a black hole. Those noble rooms in which the first magistrate of the city of Boulevards gave welcome to crowds of English guests, are destroyed. In the name of Liberty some of the most precious art-work of modern days has been fired. The Communists' defiling fingers have passed over the canvas of Ingrès. Auber and Dumas have gone from the scene in the saddest hour of their country's history. The Anglo-French alliance--that surest rock of enduring peace--has been rent asunder, through the timorous hesitation of English ministers, and the hardly disguised Bourbon sympathies of English society. We are not welcome now in Paris, as we were when I followed in the wake of the prying Cockaynes. My old concierge is very cold in his greeting, and carries my valise to my rooms sulkily. Jerome, my particular waiter at the Grand Café, no longer deigns to discuss the news of the day with me. Good Monsieur Giraudet, who could suggest the happiest little _menus_, when I went to his admirable restaurant, and who kept the _Rappel_ for me, now bows silently and sends an underling to see what the Englishman requires. It is a sad, and a woful change; and one of ominous import for our children. Most woful to those of my countrymen who, like the reader's humble servant, have passed a happy half-score of years in the delightful society and the incomparable capital of the French people. BLANCHARD JERROLD. RUE DE ROME, PARIS, _July_, 1871. [Illustration] CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE I. MRS. ROWE'S 13 II. HE'S HERE AGAIN! 30 III. MRS. ROWE'S COMPANY 39 IV. THE COCKAYNES IN PARIS 45 V. THE COCKAYNE FAMILY 62 VI. A "GRANDE OCCASION" 91 VII. OUR FOOLISH COUNTRYWOMEN 104 VIII. "OH, YES!" AND "ALL RIGHT!" 111 IX. MISS CARRIE COCKAYNE TO MISS SHARP 122 X. "THE PEOPLE OF THE HOUSE" 129 XI. MYSTERIOUS TRAVELLERS 140 XII. MRS. DAKER 154 XIII. AT BOULOGNE-SUR-MER 174 XIV. THE CASTAWAY 192 XV. THE FIRST TO BE MARRIED 210 XVI. GATHERING A FEW THREADS 231 [Illustration: MAMMA ANGLAISE. (_A French design._)] ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE MY LORD ANGLAIS AT MABILLE Frontispiece CROSSING THE CHANNEL--A SMOOTH PASSAGE 13 CROSSING THE CHANNEL--RATHER SQUALLY 14 ROBINSON CRUSOE AND FRIDAY 16 PAPA AND THE DEAR BOYS 18 THE DOWAGER AND TALL FOOTMAN 20 ON THE BOULEVARDS 42 A GROUP OF MARBLE "INSULAIRES" 46 BEAUTY AND THE B---- 68 PALAIS DU LOUVRE.--THE ROAD TO THE BOIS 72 MUSEE DU LUXEMBOURG 77 THE INFLEXIBLE "MEESSES ANGLAISES" 105 ENGLISH VISITORS TO THE CLOSERIE DE LILAS--SHOCKING!! 109 SMITH BRINGS HIS ALPENSTOCK 114 JONES ON THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE 118 FRENCH RECOLLECTION OF MEESS TAKING HER BATH 125 THE BRAVE MEESS AMONG THE BILLOWS HOLDING ON BY THE TAIL OF HER NEWFOUNDLAND 125 VARIETIES OF THE ENGLISH STOCK.--COMPATRIOTS MEETING IN THE FRENCH EXHIBITION 126 A PIC-NIC AT ENGHIEN 147 EXCURSIONISTS AND EMIGRANTS 152 BOIS DE BOULOGNE 164 [Illustration: CROSSING THE CHANNEL--A SMOOTH PASSAGE] THE COCKAYNES IN PARIS. CHAPTER I. MRS. ROWE'S. The story I have to tell is disjointed. I throw it out as I picked it up. My duties, the nature of which is neither here nor there, have borne me to various parts of Europe. I am a man, not with an establishment--but with two portmanteaus. I have two hats in Paris and two in London always. I have seen everything in both cities, and like Paris, on the whole, best. There are many reasons, it seems to me, why an Englishman who has the tastes of a duke and the means of a half-pay major, should prefer the banks of the Seine to those of the Thames--even with the new Embankment. Everybody affects a distinct and deep knowledge of Paris in these times; and most people do know how to get the dearest dinner Bignon can supply for their money; and to secure the apartments which are let by the people of the West whom nature has provided with an infinitesimal quantity of conscience. But there are now crowds of English men and women who know their Paris well; men who never dine in the restaurant of the stranger, and women who are equal to a controversy with a French cook. These sons and daughters of Albion who have transplanted themselves to French soil, can show good and true reasons why they prefer the French to the English life. The wearying comparative estimates of household expenses in Westbournia, and household expenses in the Faubourg St. Honoré! One of the disadvantages of living in Paris is the constant contact with the odious atmosphere of comparisons. "Pray, sir--you have been in London lately--what did you pay for veal cutlet?" [Illustration: CROSSING THE CHANNEL--RATHER SQUALLY.] The new arrivals are the keenest torments. "In London, where I have kept house for over twenty years, and have had to endure every conceivable development of servants' extortion, no cook ever demanded a supply of white aprons yet." You explain for the hundredth time that it is the custom in Paris. There are people who believe Kensington is the domestic model of the civilized world, and travel only to prove at every stage how far the rest of the universe is behind that favoured spot. He who desires to see how narrow his countrymen and countrywomen can be abroad, and how completely the mass of British travellers lay themselves open to the charge of insularity, and an overweening estimate of themselves and their native customs, should spend a few weeks in a Paris boarding-house, somewhere in the Faubourg St. Honoré--if he would have the full aroma of British conceit. The most surprising feature of the English quarter of the French capital is the eccentricity of the English visitors, as it strikes their own countrymen. I cannot find it in me to blame Gallican caricaturists. The statuettes which enliven the bronze shops; the gaunt figures which are in the chocolate establishments; the prints in the windows under the Rivoli colonnade; the monsters with fangs, red hair, and Glengarry caps, of Cham, and Doré, and Bertall, and the female sticks with ringlets who pass in the terra-cotta show of the Palais Royal for our countrywomen, have long ago ceased to warm my indignation. All I can say now is, that the artists and modellers have not travelled. They have studied the strange British apparitions which disfigure the Boulevard des Italiens in the autumn, their knowledge of our race is limited to the unfortunate selection of specimens who strut about their streets, and--according to their light--they are not guilty of outrageous exaggeration. I venture to assert that an Englishman will meet more unpleasant samples of his countrymen and countrywomen in an August day's walk in Paris, than he will come across during a month in London. To begin with, we English treat Paris as though it were a back garden, in which a person may lounge in his old clothes, or indulge his fancy for the ugly and slovenly. Why, on broiling days, men and women should sally forth from their hotel with a travelling-bag and an opera-glass slung about their shoulders, passes my comprehension. Conceive the condition of mind of that man who imagines that he is an impressive presence when he is patrolling the Rue de la Paix with an alpenstock in his hand! At home we are a plain, well-dressed, well-behaved people, fully up in Art and Letters--that is, among our educated classes, to any other nation--in most elegant studies before all; but our travellers in France and Switzerland slander us, and the "Paris in 10 hours" system has lowered Frenchmen's estimate of the national character. The Exhibition of 1867, far from promoting the brotherhood of the peoples, and hinting to the soldier that his vocation was coming to an end, spread a dislike of Englishmen through Paris. It attracted rough men from the North, and ill-bred men from the South, whose swagger, and noise, and unceremonious manners in cafés and restaurants chafed the polite Frenchman. They could not bring themselves to salute the _dame de comptoir_, they were loud at the table d'hôte and commanding in their airs to the waiter. In brief, the English mass jarred upon their neighbours; and Frenchmen went the length of saying that the two peoples--like relatives--would remain better friends apart. The disadvantage is, beyond doubt, with us; since the _froissement_ was produced by the British lack of that suavity which the French cultivate--and which may be hollow, but is pleasant, and oils the wheels of life. [Illustration: ROBINSON CRUSOE AND FRIDAY. _From French designs._] Mrs. Rowe's was in the Rue--say the Rue Millevoye, so that we may not interfere with possible vested interests. Was it respectable? Was it genteel? Did good country families frequent it? Were all the comforts of an English home to be had? Had Mrs. Grundy cast an approving eye into every nook and corner? Of course there were Bibles in the bedrooms; and you were not made to pay a franc for every cake of soap. Mrs. Rowe had her tea direct from Twinings'. Twinings' tea she had drunk through her better time, when Rowe had one of the finest houses in all Shepherd's Bush, and come what might, Twinings' tea she would drink while she was permitted to drink tea at all. Brown Windsor--no other soap for Mrs. Rowe, if you please. People who wanted any of the fanciful soaps of Rimmel or Piver must buy them. Brown Windsor was all she kept. Yes, she was obliged to have Gruyère--and people did ask occasionally for Roquefort; but her opinion was that the person who did not prefer a good Cheshire to any other cheese, deserved to go without any. She had been twenty-one years in Paris, and seven times only had she missed morning service on Sundays. Hereupon, a particular history of each occasion, and the superhuman difficulty which had bound Mrs. Rowe hand and foot to the Rue Millevoye from eleven till one. She had a faithful note of a beautiful sermon preached in the year 1850 by the Rev. John Bobbin, in which he compared life to a boarding-house. He was staying with Mrs. Howe at the time. He was an earnest worker in the true way; and she distinctly saw her _salle-à-manger_ in his eye, when he enlarged on the bounteous table spread by Nature, and the little that was needed from man to secure all its blessings. [Illustration: PAPA & THE DEAR BOYS.] Mrs. Rowe took a maternal interest in me. I had made an economical arrangement by which I secured a little room to myself throughout the year, under the slates. I had many friends. I constantly arrived, bringing new lodgers in my wake. For the house was quiet, well-ordered, cheap, and tremendously respectable. I say, Mrs. Rowe took a maternal interest in me--that is, she said so. There were ill-natured people who had another description for her solicitude; but she had brought herself to believe that she had an unselfish regard for your humble servant, and that she was necessary to my comfort in the world, and I was pleased at the innocent humbug. It afforded me excellent creature comforts; and I was indebted to it for a constant welcome when I got to Paris--which is something to the traveller. We cling to an old hotel, after we have found the service bad, the cooking execrable, and the rooms dirty. It is an ancient house, and the people know us, and have a cheery word and a home look. [Illustration: THE DOWAGER AND TALL FOOTMAN.] Many years were passed in the Rue Millevoye by Mrs. Rowe and her niece, without more incident than the packing and unpacking of luggage, and genteel disputes over items in the bills conducted with icy politeness on both sides, and concluded by Mrs. Rowe invariably with the withering observation, that it was the first remark of the kind which had ever been made on one of her little notes. People usually came to a settlement with complimentary expressions of surprise at the extreme--almost reckless--moderation of her charges; and expressed themselves as at a loss to understand how she could make it worth her while to do so very much for so very little. The people who came and went were alike in the mass. The reader is requested to bear in mind that Mrs. Rowe had a connexion of her own. She was seldom angry; but when an advertising agent made his way to her business parlour, and took the liberty of submitting the value of a Western States paper as a medium for making her establishment known, she confessed that the impertinence was too much for her temper. Mrs. Rowe advertise! Mrs. Rowe would just as soon throw herself off the Pont Neuf, or--miss church next Sunday. "They don't come a second time!" Mrs. Rowe would say to me, with a fierce compression of the lip, that might lead a nervous person to imagine she made away with them in the cellars. When Mrs. Rowe took you into her confidence--a slow and tedious admission--she was pleased, usually, to fortify your stock of knowledge with a comprehensive view of her family connexions; intended to set the Whytes of Battersea (from whom she derived, before the vulgar Park was there) upon an eminence of glory, with a circle of cringing and designing Rowes at the base. How she--Whyte on both sides, for her father married his first cousin--ever came to marry Joshua Rowe, was something her mother never understood to her dying day. She was graciously open to consolation in the reflection that nobles and princes had made humble matches before her; and particularly in this, that the Prince Regent married Mrs. Fitzherbert. Lucy Rowe was favoured with these observations, heightened by occasional hits at her own misfortune in that she was a Rowe, and could not boast one thimbleful of Whyte blood in her veins. It was the almost daily care of Mrs. Rowe to impress the people with whom her business brought her in contact, with the gulf that lay between her and her niece; although, through the early and inexplicable condescension of a Miss Harriet Whyte, of Battersea, they bore the same name, Miss Rowe was no blood relation _whatever_. It was surprising to see how Lucy bore up under the misfortune. She was not a Whyte, but she had lived beside one. Youth is so elastic! Lucy, albeit she had the Rowe lip and nose, and, worse than all, the Rowe hair (a warm auburn, which Mrs. Rowe described in one syllable, with a picturesque and popular comparison comprehended in two), was daring enough to meet the daylight, without showing the smallest signs of giving way to melancholy. When new comers, as a common effort of politeness, saw a strong likeness between Mrs. Rowe and her niece, the representative of the Whytes of Battersea drew herself to her full height, which was a trifle above her niece's shoulders, and answered--"Oh dear, no, madam! It would be very strange if there were, as there is not the slightest blood relationship between us." Lucy Rowe was about fifteen when I first saw her. A slender, golden-haired, shy and quiet girl, much in bashful and sensitive demeanour like her romantic namesake of "the untrodden ways." It is quite true that she had no Whyte blood in her veins, and Mrs. Rowe could most conscientiously declare that there was not the least resemblance between them. The Whyte features were of a type which none would envy the possessor, save as the stamp of the illustrious house of Battersea. The House of Savoy is not attractive by reason of its faultless profile; but there are persons of almost matchless grace who would exchange their beauty for its blood. In her very early days, I have no doubt. Lucy Rowe would have given her sweet blue eyes, her pouting lips, and pretty head (just enough to fold lovingly between the palms of a man's hand), for the square jaw and high cheek-bone of the Whytes. She felt very humble when she contemplated the grandeur of her aunt's family, and very grateful to her aunt who had stooped so far as to give her shelter when she was left alone in the world. She kept the accounts, ran errands, looked after the house linen, and made herself agreeable to the boarders' children; but all this was the very least she could do to express her humble thankfulness to the great lady-relative who had befriended her, after having been good enough to commit the sacrifice of marrying her uncle Joshua. Lucy sat many hours alone in the business parlour--an apartment not decorated with the distinct view of imparting cheerfulness to the human temperament. The mantelpiece was covered with files of bills. There were rows of numbered keys against the wall. Mrs. Rowe's old desk--_style Empire_ she said, when any visitor noticed the handsome ruin--stood in a corner by the window, covered with account books, prospectuses and cards of the establishment, and heaps of old newspapers. Another corner showed heaps of folded linen, parcels left for boarders, umbrellas and sticks, which had been forgotten by old customers (Mrs. Rowe called them clients), and aunt's walking-boots. One corner was Lucy's, which she occupied in conjunction with a little table, at which, from seven in the morning until bedtime, she worked with pen or needle (it was provoking she could not learn to ply both at one time), when she was not running about the house, or nursing a boarder's baby. On the rare evenings when her aunt could not find work of any description for her, Lucy was requested to take the Bible from the shelf, and read a chapter aloud. When her aunt went to sleep during the reading Lucy continued steadily, knowing that the scion of the illustrious house of Whyte would wake directly her voice ceased. Occasionally the clergyman would drop in; whereupon Lucy would hear much improving discourse between her aunt and the reverend gentleman. Mrs. Rowe poured all her griefs into the ear of the Reverend Horace Mohun--griefs which she kept from the world. Before Lucy she spoke freely--being accustomed to regard the timid girl as a child still, whose mind could not gather the threads of her narrative. Lucy sate--not listening, but hearing snatches of the mournful circumstances with which Mrs. Rowe troubled Mr. Mohun. The reverend gentleman was a patient and an attentive listener; and drank his tea and ate his toast (it was only at Mrs. Rowe's he said he could ever get a good English round of toast), shaking his head, or offering a consoling "dear, dear me!" as the droning proceeded. Lucy was at work. If Mrs. Rowe caught her pausing she would break her story to say--"If you have finished 42 account, put down two candles to 10, and a foot-bath to 14." And Lucy--who seldom paused because she had finished her task, as her aunt knew well--bent over the table again, and was as content as she was weary. When she went up to her bedroom (which the cook had peremptorily refused to occupy) she prayed for good Aunt Rowe every night of her dull life, before she lay upon her truckle bed to rest for the morrow's cheerful round of hard duties. Was it likely that a child put thus into the harness of life, would pass the talk of her aunt with Mr. Mohun as the idle wind? The mysteries which lay in the talk, and perplexed her, were cleared up in due time. CHAPTER II. HE'S HERE AGAIN! "He has but stumbled in the path Thou hast in weakness trod."--A. A. PROCTER. "He's here again, Mum." He was there at the servant's entrance to the highly respectable boarding-house in the Rue Millevoye. It was five in the morning--a winter's morning. Mrs. Rowe hastened from her room, behind the business parlour, in her dressing-gown, her teeth chattering, and her eyes flashing the fire of hate. The boarders sleeping upstairs would not have known the godly landlady, who glided about the house by day, rubbing her hands and hoping every soul under her roof was comfortable--or would at once complain to her, who lived only to make people comfortable--bills being but mere accidental accessories, fortuitously concurrent with the arrival of a cab and the descent of luggage. "At the back door, mum, with his coat tucked over his ears, and such a cold in his head. Shall I show him in?" "My life is a long misery, Jane," Mrs. Rowe said, under her voice. "La! mum, it's quite safe. I'm sure I shouldn't trouble much about it--'specially in this country, as----" "Silence!" Mrs. Rowe hissed. The thorns in her cross consisted chiefly of Jane's awkward attempts at consolation. "The villain is bent on my ruin. A bad boy he was; a bad man he is. Show him in; and see that François doesn't come here. Get some coffee yourself, Jane, and bring it. Let the brute in." "You're hard upon him, mum, indeed you are. I'm sure he'd be a credit to----" "Go, and hold your tongue. You presume, Jane, on the privileges of an old servant." "Indeed I hope not, mum; but----" "Go!" Jane went to summon the early visitor; and was heard talking amiably to him, as she led him to the bureau. "Now, you must be good, Mr. Charles, to-day, and not stay more than a quarter of an hour. Don't talk loud, like the last time; promise me. Missus means well--you know she does." With an impatient "All right" the stranger pushed into the business parlour, and sharply closed the door. Mrs. Rowe stood, her knuckles firmly planted upon the closed desk, her face rigidly set, to receive her visitor--keeping the table between him and herself. He was advancing to take her hand. "Stand there," she said, with an authority he had not the courage to defy. He stood there--abashed, or hesitating as to the way in which he should enter upon his business. "Well!" Mrs. Rowe said, firmly and impatiently. Mr. Charles, stung by the manner, turned upon his victim. "Well!" he jeered, "yes, and well again, Mrs. Rowe. Is it necessary for me to explain myself? Do you think I have come to see _you_!" "I have no money at present; I wrote you so." "And I didn't believe you, and have come to fetch what you wouldn't send. If you think I'm going into a corner to starve for your personal satisfaction, you are very much mistaken. I'm surprised you don't understand me better by this time." "You were a rascal, Charles, before you left school." "School! Pretty school! D--n it, don't blame me--woman!" Mrs. Rowe was alarmed by the outburst, lest it should wake some of the boarders. "The Dean and his lady are sleeping overhead. If you don't respect me, think----" "I'm not here to respect, or think about anybody. I'm cast alone into the world--tossed into it; left to shift for myself, and to be ashamed of myself; and I want a little help through it, and it's for you to give it me, and give it me YOU SHALL." Mr. Charles held out his left hand, and slapped its open palm vehemently with his right--pantomime to indicate the exact whereabouts he had selected for the reception of Mrs. Rowe's money. "I told you I had no money. You'll drive me from this house by bringing disgrace upon it." "That's very good," Mr. Charles said, with a cruel laugh. "That's a capital joke." Jane entered with coffee. "That's right," she whispered, encouragingly to Mr. Charles; "laugh and be cheerful, Mr. Charles, and make haste with your coffee." The face of Mr. Charles blackened to night. He turned like a tiger upon the servant. "Laugh and be cheerful?" he roared; and then he raised a hoarse mock laugh, that moved Mrs. Rowe, in her agony of fear, to turn the key in the lock of her desk. Shaking her hands wildly in the air, Jane left the room, and shut the door. "You are an arrant coward, Charles," Mrs. Rowe hissed, leaning across the table and shaking her head violently. Mr. Charles imitated her gesture, answering--"I am what heartless people have made me. I have been dragged up under a cloud; made the scape-goat. How often in the course of your hypocritical days have you wished me dead? You hear I've a cough; but I cannot promise you it's a churchyard one. I'm a nuisance; but I suppose I'm not responsible for my existence, Mrs. Rowe. _I_ was not consulted." "Viper!" "And devil too, when needful: remember that." Mr. Charles moved round the table in the direction of the desk. "Stand where you are. I would rather give you the clothes from my back than touch you." Mrs. Rowe, as she stood still turning the lock of the bureau, and keeping her angry eyes fixed upon the man, was the picture of all the hate she expressed. She never took her eyes off him, nor did he quail, while she fumbled in the drawer in which she kept money. The musical rattle of the gold smote upon the ear of Mr. Charles. "Pretty sound," he said, with a smile of hate in his face; "but there is crisp paper sounds sweeter. Mrs. Rowe, I'm not here for a couple of yellow-boys. Do you hear that?" He banged the table, and advanced a step. "You can't bleed a stone, miscreant." "Nay, but you can break it, Mrs. Rowe. I mean business to-day. The rarer I make my visits the better for both of us." "I am quite of that opinion." "Then make it as long as you like; you know how." "Is this ever to end? Have you no shame? Charles, you will end with some tragedy. A man who can play the part you are playing, must be ready for crime!" Mr. Charles shook his head in impatient rage, and made another step towards Mrs. Rowe. "Move nearer, and I wake the house, come what may." Mrs. Rowe's face looked like one cut in grey stone. "What! and wake the Dean and his lady! What! affright the Reverend Horace Mohun who counts Mrs. Rowe among the milk-white sheep of his flock! No; Mrs. Rowe is too prudent a woman--Now." As he ended, she drew forth a roll of notes. He made a clutch at them--and she started back. "Charles, it has come to that! Robber! It will be murder some day." "This day--by----" Mr. Charles looked the man to make his word good. Mrs. Rowe was amazed and terrified by the fiend she had conjured up in the man. He seized the table, and looked a giant in the mighty expression of his iron will. "Lay that roll upon the table--or I'll shiver it into a thousand pieces--and then--and then----Am I to say more?" Mrs. Rowe fell into a chair. Mr. Charles was at her in an instant, and had possession of the notes. The poor woman had swooned. He rang the bell--Jane appeared. "Look after her," said Mr. Charles, his eyes flaming, as they fell on the unconscious figure of Mrs. Rowe. "But let me out, first." "You'll kill me with fright, that you will. What have you done to your own----" "Mind your own business. A smell of salts'll put her right enough." Mr. Charles was gone. "And what a sweet gentleman he can be, when he likes," said Jane. CHAPTER III. MRS. ROWE'S COMPANY. I must be permitted to tell the rambling stories that ran parallel during my experiences of Mrs. Rowe's establishment in my own manner--filling up with what I guessed, all I heard from Lucy, or saw for myself. Mr. Charles was a visitor at intervals who always arrived when the house was quiet; and after whose visits Mrs. Rowe regularly took to her room for the day, leaving the accounts and the keys wholly to Lucy, and the kitchen to Jane--with strict injunctions to look after the Reverend Horace Mohun's tea and his round of toast if he called--and let him see the _Times_ before it went up to the general sitting-room. On these days Lucy looked pale; and Jane called her "poor child" to me, and begged me to say a few words of comfort to her, for she would listen to me. What a fool Jane was! Visitors came and went. The serious, who inspected Paris as Mr. Redgrave inspects a factory, or as the late Mr. Braidwood inspected a fire on the morrow; who did the Louvre and called for bread-and-butter and tea on the Boulevards at five. The new-rich, who would not have breakfasted with the general company to save their vulgar little souls, threw their money to the fleecing shopkeepers (who knew their _monde_), and misbehaved themselves in all the most expensive ways possible. The jolly ignorant, who were loud and unabashed in the sincerity and heartiness of their enjoyment, and had more litres of brandy in their bedrooms than the rest of the house, as Jane had it, "put together." The frugal, who counted the lumps of sugar, found fault with the dinners, lived with the fixed and savage determination to eat well up to the rate at which they were paying for their board, and stole in, in the evening, with their brandy hidden about them. Somehow, although there never was a house in which more differences of opinion were held on nearly every question of human interest, there was a surprising harmony of ideas as to French brandy. A Boulogne excursion boat on its homeward journey hardly contains more uncorked bottles of cognac, than were thrust in all kinds of secret places in the bedrooms under Mrs. Rowe's roof. The hypocrisy and scandal which brandy produced in the general room were occasionally very fierce, especially when whispers had travelled quietly as the flies all over the house that one of the ladies had certainly, on one occasion, revoked at cards--for one reason, and one only. Free speculations would be cheerfully indulged in at other times on the exact quantity the visitor who left yesterday had taken during his stay, and the number of months which the charitable might give him to live. [Illustration: ON THE BOULEVARDS.] After the general brandy, in degree of interest, stood dress. The shopping was prodigious. The carts of the Louvre, the Ville de Paris, the Coin de Rue, and other famous houses of nouveautés were for ever rattling to Mrs. Rowe's door. With a toss of the head a parcel from the _Bon Marché_ was handed to its owner. Mrs. Jones must have come to Paris with just one change--and such a change! Mrs. Tottenham had nothing fit to wear. Mrs. Court must still be wearing out her trousseau--and her youngest was three! Mrs. Rhode had no more taste, my dear, than our cook. The men were not far behind--had looked out for Captain Tottenham in the Army List; went to Galignani's expressly: not in it, by Jove, sir! Court paid four shillings in the pound hardly two years ago, and met him swelling it with his wife (deuced pretty creature!) yesterday at Bignon's. Is quite up to Marennes oysters: wonder where he could have heard of 'em. Rhode is a bore; plenty of money, very good-natured; read a good deal--but can't the fellow come to table in something better than those eternal plaid trousers? Bad enough in Lord Brougham. Eccentricity _with_ the genius, galling enough; but without, not to be borne, sir. Last night Jones was simply drunk, and got a wigging, no doubt, when he found his room. He looks it all. We are an amiable people! Happily, I have forgotten the Joneses and the Tottenhams, and the Courts and the Rhodes! The two "sets" who dwell in my memory--who are, I may say, somewhat linked with my own life, and of whom I have something to tell--were, as a visitor said of the fowls of Boulogne hotels--birds apart. They crossed and re-crossed under Mrs. Rowe's roof until they hooked together; and I was mixed up with them, until a tragedy and a happy event made us part company. Now, so complicated are our treaties--offensive and defensive--that I have to refer to my note-book, where I am likely to meet any one of them, to see whether I am on speaking terms with the coming man or woman as the case may be. I shall first introduce the Cockaynes as holding the greater "lengths" on my stage. CHAPTER IV. THE COCKAYNES IN PARIS. The morning after a bevy of "the blonde daughters of Albion" have arrived in Paris, Pater--over the coffee (why is it impossible to get such coffee in England?), the delicious bread, and the exquisite butter--proceeds to expound his views of the manner in which the time of the party should be spent. So was it with the Cockaynes, an intensely British party. "My dears," said Mr. Cockayne, "we must husband our time. To-day I propose we go, at eleven o'clock, to see the parade of the Guard in the Rue de Rivoli; from there (we shall be close at hand) we can see the Louvre; by two o'clock we will lunch in the Palais Royal. I think it's at five the band plays in the Tuileries gardens; after the band----" "But, dear papa, we want to look at the shops!" interposes the gentle Sophonisba. "The what, my dear? Here you are in the capital of the most polished nation on the face of the earth, surrounded by beautiful monuments that recall--that are, in fact----" "Well!" firmly observes Sophonisba's determined mamma; "you, Mr. Cockayne, go, with your Murray's handbook, see all the antiquities, your Raphaels and Rubens, and amuse yourself among the cobwebs of the Hôtel Cluny; _we_ are not so clever--we poor women; and while you're rubbing your nose against the marbles in the Louvre, we'll go and see the shops." "We don't mind the parade and the band, but we might have a peep at just a few of the shops near the hotel, before eleven," observes Sophonisba. Cockayne throws up his eyes, and laments the frivolity of women. He is left with one daughter (who is a blue) to admire the proportions of the Madeleine, to pass a rapturous hour in the square room of the Louvre, and to examine St. Germain l'Auxerrois, while the frivolous part of his household goes stoutly away, light-hearted and gay as humming-birds, to have their first look at the shops. [Illustration: A GROUP OF MARBLE "INSULAIRES." _So cold and natural they might be mistaken for life_.] I happen to have seen the shops of many cities. I have peered into the quaint, small-windowed shops of Copenhagen; I have passed under the pendant tobacco leaves into the primitive cigar-shops of St. Sebastian; I have hobbled, in furs, into the shops of Stockholm; I have been compelled to take a look at the shops of London, Dublin, Edinburgh, Liverpool, and a host of other places; but perfect shopping is to be enjoyed in Paris only; and in the days gone by, the Palais Royal was the centre of this paradise. Alas! the days of its glory are gone. The lines of splendid boulevards, flanked with gorgeous shops and _cafés_; the long arcades of the Rue de Rivoli; and, in fine, the leaning of all that is fashionable, and lofty, and rich to the west, are the causes which have brought the destruction of the Palais Royal. Time was when that quaint old square--the Place-Royale in the Marais--was mighty fashionable. It now lies in the neglected, industrious, factory-crowded east--a kind of Parisian Bloomsbury Square, only infinitely more picturesque, with its quaint, low colonnades. You see the fine Parisians have travelled steadily westward, sloping slowly, like "the Great Orion." They are making their way along the Champs-Elysées to the Avenue de l'Impératrice; and are constructing white stone aristocratic suburbs. So the foreigners no longer make their way direct to the Palais Royal now, on the morrow of their arrival in Paris. If they be at the Louvre, they bend westward along the Rue de Rivoli, and by the Rue de la Paix, to the brilliant boulevards. If they be in the Grand Hôtel, they issue at once upon these famous boulevards, and the ladies are in a feminine paradise at once. Why, exactly opposite to the Grand Hôtel is Rudolphi's remarkable shop, packed artistically with his works of art--ay, and of the most finished and cunning art--in oxidized silver. His shop is most admirably adapted to the articles the effect of which he desires to heighten. It is painted black and pointed with delicate gold threads. The rich array of jewellery and the rare ecclesiastical ornaments stand brightly out from the sombre case, and light the window. The precious stones, the lapis lazuli, the malachite, obtain a new brilliance from the rich neutral tints and shades of the chased dulled silver in which they are held. Sophonisba, her mamma and sisters, are not at much trouble to decide the period to which the bracelet, or the brooch, or the earring belongs. "_Cinque cento_, my dear! I know nothing about that. I think it would suit my complexion." "I confess to a more modern taste, Sophonisba. That is just the sort of thing your father would like. Now, do look at those--sphinxes, don't you call them--for a brooch. I think they're hideous. Did you ever see such ears? I own, that diamond dew-drop lying in an enamel rose leaf, which I saw, I think, in the Rue de la Paix, is more to my taste." And so the ladies stroll westward to the famous Giroux (where you can buy, an it please you, toys at forty guineas each--babies that cry, and call "mamma," and automata to whom the advancement of science and art has given all the obnoxious faculties of an unruly child), or east to the boulevards, which are known the wide world over, at least by name, the Boulevards de la Madeleine, des Capucines, des Italiens, Montmartre. These make up the heart and soul of Paris. Within the limits of these gorgeous lines of shops and _cafés_ luxury has concentrated all her blandishments and wiles. This is the earthly heaven of the Parisians. Here all the celebrities air themselves. Here are the Opera stars, the lights of literature, the chiefs of art, the dandies of the Jockey Club, the prominent spendthrifts and eccentrics of the day. About four o'clock in the afternoon all the known Paris figures are lounging upon the asphaltum within this charmed space. Within this limit--where the Frenchman deploys all his seductive, and vain, and frivolous airs; where he wears his best clothes and his best manners; where he loves to be seen, and observed, and saluted--the tradesmen of the capital have installed establishments the costliness and elaborateness of which it is hardly possible to exaggerate. The gilding and the mirrors, the marbles and the bronze, the myriad lamps of every fantastic form, the quaint and daring designs for shop fronts, the infinite arts employed to "set off" goods, and the surprising, never-ceasing varieties of art-manufacture--whether in chocolate or the popular Algerian onyx--bewilder strangers. Does successful Mr. Brown, who, having doffed the apron of trade, considers it due to himself to become--so far as money can operate the strange transformation--a _fine fleur_; does he desire also to make of plain, homely Mrs. Brown a leader of fashion and a model of expensive elegance?--here are all the appliances and means in abundance. Within these enchanted lines Madame B. may be made "beautiful for ever!" Every appetite, every variety of whim, the cravings of the gourmet and the dreams of the sybarite, may be gratified to the utmost. A spendthrift might spend a handsome patrimony within these limits, nor, at the end of his time, would he call to mind a taste he had not been able to gratify. Sophonisba enters this charmed region of perfect shopping from the west. Tahan's bronze shop, at the corner of the Rue de la Paix, marks (or did mark) its western boundary. There are costly trifles in that window--as, book cutters worth a library of books, and cigar-stands, ash-trays, pen-trays, toothpick-holders (our neighbours are great in these), and match, and glove, and lace, and jewel-boxes--of wicked price. Ladies are not, however, very fond of bronze, as a rule. The great Maison de Blanc--or White House--opposite, is more attractive, with its gigantic architectural front, and its acres of the most expensive linens, cambrics, &c. Ay, but close by Tahan is Boissier. Not to know Boissier is to argue yourself unknown in Paris. He is the shining light of the confectioner's art. Siraudin, of the Rue de la Paix, has set up a dangerous opposition to him, under the patronage of a great duke, whose duchess was one day treated like an ordinary mortal in Boissier's establishment, but Boissier's clients (nobody has customers in Paris) are, in the main, true to him; and his sweets pass the lips still of nearly all the élégantes of the "centre of civilization." Peep into his shop. Miss Sophonisba is within--_la belle insulaire!_--buying a bag of _marrons glacés_, for which Boissier is renowned throughout civilization. The shop is a miracle of taste. The white and gold are worthy of Marie Antoinette's bedroom at St. Cloud--occupied, by the way, by our English queen, when she was the guest of the French Emperor in 1855. The front of the shop is ornamented with rich and rare caskets. A white kitten lies upon a rosy satin cushion; lift the kitten, and you shall find that her bed is a _bon-bon_ box! "How very absurd!" exclaims Sophonisba's mamma, _bon-bon_ boxes not being the particular direction which the extravagance of English ladies takes. Close by the succulent establishment of M. Boissier, to whom every dentist should lift his hat, is the doorway of Madame Laure. Sophonisba sees a man in livery opening the door of what appears to be the entrance to some quiet learned institution. She touches her mamma upon the arm, and bids her pause. They had reached the threshold of a temple. Madame Laure makes for the Empress. "Ah! to be sure, my child, so she does," Sophonisba's mamma replies. "I remember. Very quiet-looking kind of place, isn't it?" It is impossible to say what description of "loud" place had dwelt in the mind of Sophonisba's mamma as the locale where the Empress Eugénie's milliner "_made_" for her Majesty. Perhaps she hoped to see two _cent gardes_ doing duty at the door of an or-molu paradise. At every step the ladies find new excitement. By the quiet door of Madame Laure is the renowned Neapolitan Ice Establishment, well known to most ladies who have been in Paris. Why should there not be a Neapolitan ice _café_ like this in London? Ices we have, and we have Granger's; but here is ice in every variety, from the solid "bombe"--which we strongly recommend ladies to bear in mind next time--to the appetizing _Ponch à la Romaine_! Again, sitting here on summer evenings, the lounger will perceive dapper _bonnes_, or men-servants, going in and out with little shapely white paper parcels which they hold daintily by the end. Madame has rung for an ice, and this little parcel, which you might blow away, contains it. Now, why should not a lady be able to ring for an ice--and an exquisitely-flavoured Neapolitan ice--on the shores of "perfidious Albion?" "I wish Papa were here," cries Sophonisba; "we should have ices." Sophonisba's mamma merely remarks that they are very unwholesome things. Hard by is Christofle's dazzling window, Christofle being the Elkington of France. "Tut! it quite blinds one!" says the mamma of Sophonisba. Christofle's window is startling. It is heaped to the top with a mound of plated spoons and forks. They glitter in the light so fiercely that the eye cannot bear to rest upon them. Impossible to pass M. Christofle without paying a moment's attention to him. And now we pass the asphaltum of the boulevard of boulevards--that known as "the Italiens." This is the apple of the eye of Paris. "Now, my dears," says Sophonisba's mamma, "now we can really say that we are in Paris." The shops claimed the ladies' attention one by one. They passed with disdain the _cafés_ radiant with mirror and gold, where the selfish men were drinking absinthe and playing at dominoes. It had always been the creed of Sophonisba's mamma that men were selfish creatures, and she had come to Paris only to see that she was right. They passed on to Potel's. Potel's window is a sight that is of Paris Parisian. It is more imposing than that of Chevet in the Palais Royal. In the first place Potel is on "the Italiens." It is a daily store of all the rarest and richest articles of food money can command for the discontented palate of man. The truffled turkeys are the commonest of the articles. Everybody eats truffled turkeys, must be the belief of Potel. If salmon could peer into the future, and if they had any ambition, they would desire, after death, to be artistically arrayed in fennel in the shop-window of Potel. Would not the accommodating bird who builds an edible nest work with redoubled ardour, if he could be assured that his house would be some day removed to the great window on "the Italiens?" Happy the ortolans whom destiny puts into Potel's plate of honour! Most fortunate of geese, whose liver is fattened by a slow fire to figure presently here with the daintiest and noblest of viands! The pig who hunts the truffle would have his reward could he know that presently the fragrant vegetable would give flavour to his trotter! And is it not a good quarter of an hour's amusement every afternoon to watch the gourmets feasting their eyes on the day's fare? And the _gamins_ from the poor quarters stare in also, and wonder what those black lumps are. Opposite Potel's is a shop, the like of which we have not, nor, we verily believe, has any other city. It is the show-store of the far-famed Algerian Onyx Company. The onyx is here in great superb blocks, wedded with bronze of exquisite finish, or serving as background to enamels of the most elaborate design. Within, the shop is crammed with lamps, jardinières, and monumental marbles, all relieved by bronzes, gold, and exotics. The smallest object would frighten a man of moderate means, if he inquired its price. There is a flower shop not far off, but it isn't a shop, it's a bower. It is close by a dram-shop, where the cab-men of the stand opposite refresh the inner man. It represents the British public-house. But what a quiet orderly place it is! The kettle of punch--a silver one--is suspended over the counter. The bottles are trim in rows; there are no vats of liquid; there is no brawling; there are no beggars by the door--no drunkards within. It is so quiet, albeit on the Boulevard, not one in a hundred of the passers-by notice it. The lordly Café du Cardinal opposite is not more orderly. Past chocolate shops, where splendidly-attired ladies preside; wood-carving shops, printsellers, pastrycooks--where the savarins are tricked out, and where _petit fours_ lie in a hundred varieties--music-shops, bazaars, immense booksellers' windows; they who are bent on a look at the shops reach a corner of the Grand Opera Street, where the Emperor's tailor dwells. The attractions here are, as a rule, a few gorgeous official costumes, or the laurel-embellished tail coat of the academician. Still proceeding eastward, the shops are various, and are all remarkable for their decoration and contents. There is a shop where cots and flower-stands are the main articles for sale; but such cots and such flower-stands! The cots are for Princes and the flower-stands for Empresses. I saw the Empress Eugénie quietly issuing from this very shop, one winter afternoon. Sophonisba's mother lingered a long time over the cots, and delighted her mother-eye with the models of babies that were lying in them. One, she remarked, was the very image of young Harry at home. And so on to "Barbédienne's," close by the well-known Vachette. Sophonisba, however, will not wait for our description of the renowned Felix's establishment, where are the lightest hands for pastry, it is said, in all France. When last we caught sight of the young lady, she was _chez_ Felix, demolishing her second _baba!_ May it lie lightly on her--! I humbly beg the pardon of Mademoiselle Sophonisba! CHAPTER V. THE COCKAYNE FAMILY. The Cockaynes deserve a few words of formal introduction to the reader, since he is destined to make their better acquaintance. We have ventured hitherto only to take a few discreet and distant glimpses at them, as we found them loitering about the Boulevards on the morrow of their appearance in Paris. Mr. Cockayne--having been very successful for many years in the soap-boiling business, to the great discomfort and vexation of the noses of his neighbours, and having amassed fortune enough to keep himself and wife and his three blooming daughters among the _crême de la crême_ of Clapham, and in the list of the elect of society, known as carriage-people--he had given up the soap-boiling to his two sons, and had made up his mind to enjoy his money, or rather so much of it as Mrs. Cockayne might not require. It is true that every shilling of the money had been made by Cockayne, that every penny-piece represented a bit of soap which he had manufactured for the better cleansing of his generation. But this highly honourable fact, to the credit of poor Cockayne, albeit it was unpleasant to the nostrils of Mrs. C. when she had skimmed some of the richest of the Clapham _crême_ into her drawing-room, did not abate her resolve to put at least three farthings of the penny into her pocket, for her uses and those of her simple and innocent daughters. Mrs. Cockayne, being an economical woman, spent more money on herself, her house, and her children than any lady within a mile of Cockayne House. It is certain that she was an excellent mother to her three daughters, for she reminded Cockayne every night regularly--as regularly, he said, as he took his socks off--that if it were not for her, she did not know what would become of the children. She was quite sure their father wouldn't trouble his head about them. Perhaps Mrs. Cockayne was right. Cockayne had slaved in business only thirty-five years out of the fifty-two he had passed in this vale of tears, and had only lodged her at last in a brougham and pair. He might have kept in harness another ten years, and set her up in a carriage and four. She was sure he didn't know what to do with himself, now he had retired. He was much better tempered when he went off to business by the nine o'clock omnibus every morning; and before he had given himself such ridiculous airs, and put himself on all kinds of committees he didn't understand anything about, and taken to make himself disagreeable to his neighbours in the vestry-hall, and moving what he called amendments and riders, for the mere pleasure, she verily believed, of opposing somebody, as he did everybody in his own house, and of hearing himself talk. Does the reader perceive by this time the kind of lady Mrs. Cockayne was, and what a comfort she must have been to her husband in the autumn of his life? How he must have listened for what the novelists call "her every footstep," and treasured her every syllable! It was mercifully ordained that Mr. Cockayne should be a good-tempered, non-resisting man. When Mrs. Cockayne was, as her sons pleasantly and respectfully phrased it, "down upon the governor," the good man, like the flowers in the poem, "dipped and rose, and turned to look at her." He sparkled while she stormed. He smiled when the shafts of her sarcasm were thrown point-blank at him. He was good-tempered before the storm began, while it lasted, and when it was over. Mrs. Cockayne had the ingenuity to pretend that Cockayne was the veriest tyrant behind people's backs; he who, as a neighbour of his very expressively put the case, dared not help himself to the fresh butter without having previously asked the permission of his wife. Fate, in order to try the good-nature of Timothy Cockayne to the utmost, had given him two daughters closely resembling, in patient endurance and self-abnegation, their irreproachable mamma. Sophonisba--at whom the reader has already had a glimpse, and whom we last saw demolishing her second _baba_ at Felix's, was the eldest daughter--and the second was Theodosia. There was a third, Carrie; she was the blue, and was gentle and contented with everything, like her father. The reader may now be prepared to learn that it was not Mr. Timothy Cockayne, late of Lambeth, who had planned the family's journey to Paris. Mrs. Cockayne had projected the expedition. Everybody went to Paris now-a-days, and you looked so very stupid if you had to confess in a drawing-room that you had never been. She was sure there was not another family on Clapham Common, of their station, who had not been. Besides, it would exercise the girls' French. If Mr. Cockayne could only consent to tear himself away from board-meetings, and devote a little time to his own flesh and blood. They would go alone, and not trouble him, only what would their neighbours say to see them start off alone, as though they'd nobody in the world to care a fig about them. At any rate, they didn't want people to know they were neglected. Now Mr. Cockayne had never had the most distant idea of leaving the ladies of his family to go alone to Paris. But it pleased his wife to put the case in this pleasant way, and he never interfered with her pleasures. He wanted very much to see Paris again, for he had never been on the banks of the Seine since 1840, when he made a flying visit to examine some new patent soap-boiling apparatus. He was ordered about by both mother and daughters, by boat and railway. He was reproached fifty times for his manners in insisting on going the Dieppe route. He was loaded with parcels and baskets and rugs, and was soundly rated all the way from the railway station to the Grand Hôtel, on the Boulevard des Capucines, for having permitted the Custom House officers to turn over Mrs. Cockayne's boxes, as she said, "in the most impudent manner; but they saw she was without protection." I have always been at a loss to discover why certain classes of English travellers, who make their appearance in Paris during the excursion season, persist in regarding the capital of France, or, as the Parisian has it, "the centre of civilization," as a Margate without the sea. I wonder what was floating in the head of Mr. Cockayne, when he bought a flat cloth grey cap, and ordered a plaid sporting-suit from his tailor's, and in this disguise proceeded to "do" Paris. In London Mr. Cockayne was in the habit of dressing like any other respectable elderly gentleman. He was going to the capital of a great nation, where people's thoughts are not unfrequently given to the cares of the _toilette;_ where, in short, gentlemen are every bit as severe in their dress as they are in Pall Mall, or in a banking-house in Lombard Street. Now Mr. Cockayne would as soon have thought of wearing that plaid shooting-suit and that grey flat cap down Cheapside or Cornhill, as he would have attempted to play at leap-frog in the underwriters' room at Lloyd's. He had a notion, however, that he had done the "correct thing" for foreign parts, and that he had made himself look as much a traveller as Livingstone or Burton. Some strange dreams in the matter of dress had possessed the mind of Mrs. Cockayne, and her daughters also. They were in varieties of drab coloured dresses and cloaks; and the mother and the three daughters, deeming bonnets, we suppose, to be eccentric head-gears in Paris, wore dark brown hats all of one pattern, all ornamented with voluminous blue veils, and all ready to Dantan's hand. The young ladies had, moreover, velvet strings, that hung down from under their hats behind, almost to their heels. It was thus arrayed that the party took up their quarters at the Grand Hôtel, and opened their Continental experiences. I have already accompanied Mrs. Cockayne, Sophonisba, and Theodosia, on their first stroll along the Boulevards, and peeped into a few shops with them. Mr. Cockayne was in the noble courtyard of the Hôtel, waiting to receive them on their return, with Carrie sitting close by him, intently reading a voluminous catalogue of the Louvre, on which, according to Mrs. Cockayne, her liege lord had "wasted five francs." Mr. Cockayne was all smiles. Mrs. Cockayne and her two elder daughters were exhausted, and threw themselves into seats, and vowed that Paris was the most tiring place on the face of the earth. [Illustration: BEAUTY & THE B----. _Normally a severe Excursionist_.] "My dear," said Mr. Cockayne, addressing his wife, "people find Paris fatiguing because they walk about the streets all day, and give themselves no rest. If we did the same thing at Clapham----" "There, that will do, Cockayne," the lady sharply answered. "I'm sure I'm a great deal too tired to hear speeches. Order me some iced water. You talk about French politeness, Cockayne. I think I never saw people stare so much in the whole coarse of my life. And some boys in blue pinafores actually laughed in our very faces. I know what _I_ should have done to them, had _I_ been their mother. What was it they said, Sophy, my dear?" "I didn't quite catch, mamma; these people talk so fast." "They seem to me," Mrs. Cockayne continued, "to jumble all their words one into another." "That is because----" Mr. Cockayne was about to explain. "Now, pray, Mr. Cockayne, do leave your Mutual Improvement Society behind, and give us a little relief while we are away. I say the people jumble one word into another in the most ridiculous manner, and I suppose I have ears, and Sophy has ears, and we are not quite lunatics because we have not been staring our eyes out all the morning at things we don't understand." Here Carrie, lifting her eyes from her book, said to her father-- "Papa dear, you remember that first Sculpture Hall, where the colossal figures were; that was the Salle des Caryatides, and those gigantic figures you admired so much were by Jean Goujon. Just think! It was in this hall that Henry IV. celebrated his wedding with Marguerite de Valois. Yes, and in this very room Molière used to act before the Court." "Yes," Mrs. Cockayne interjected, pointing to Carrie's hands, "and in that very room, I suppose, Miss Caroline Cockayne appeared with her fingers out of her glove." "And where have you been all day, my dear?" Mr. Cockayne said, in his blandest manner, to his wife. "We poor benighted creatures," responded Mrs. Cockayne, "have been--pray don't laugh. Mr. Cockayne--looking at the shops, and very much amused we have been, I can assure you, and we are going to look at them to-morrow, and the day after, and the day after that." "With all my heart, my dear," said Mr. Cockayne, who was determined to remain in the very best of tempers. "I hope you have been amused, that is all." [Illustration: PALAIS DU LOUVRE.] [Illustration: THE ROAD TO THE BOIS] "We have had a delightful day," said Sophonisba. "I am sure we have been into twenty shops," said Theodosia. "And I am sure," Mrs. Cockayne continued, "it is quite refreshing, after the boorish manners of your London shopkeepers, to be waited upon by these polite Frenchmen. They behave like noblemen." "Mamma has had fifty compliments paid to her in the course of the day, I am certain," said Sophonisba. "I am very glad to hear it," said Sophonisba's papa. "Glad to hear it, and surprised also, I suppose, Mr. Cockayne! In London twenty compliments have to last a lady her lifetime." "I don't know how it is," Theodosia observed, "but the tradespeople here have a way of doing things that is enchanting. We went into an imition jeweller's in the Rue Vivienne--and such imitations! I'll defy Mrs. Sandhurst--and you know how ill-natured she is--to tell some earrings and brooches we saw from real gold and jewels. Well, what do you think was the sign of the shop, which was arranged more like a drawing-room than a tradesman's place of business; why, it was called L'Ombre du Vrai (the Shadow of Truth). Isn't it quite poetical?" Mr. Cockayne thought he saw his opportunity for an oratorical flourish. "It has been observed, my dear Theo," said he, dipping the fingers of his right hand into the palm of his left, "by more than one acute observer, that the mind of the race whose country we are now----" Here Mrs. Cockayne rapped sharply the marble table before her with the end of her parasol, and said-- "Mr. Cockayne, have you ordered any dinner for us?" Mr. Cockayne meekly gave it up, and replied that he had secured places for the party at the _table d'hôte_. Satisfied on this score, the matron proceeded to inform that person whom in pleasant irony she called her lord and master, that she had set her heart on a brooch of the loveliest design it had ever been her good fortune to behold. "At the _L'Ombre_--what do you call it, my dear?" said the husband, blandly. Mrs. Cockayne went through that stiffening process which ladies of dignity call drawing themselves up. "You really surprise me, Mr. Cockayne. If you mean it as a joke, I would have you know that people don't joke with their wives; and I should think you ought to know by this time that I am not in the habit of wearing imitation jewellery." "I ought," briefly responded Cockayne; and then he rapidly continued, in order to ward off the fire he knew his smart rejoinder would provoke-- "Tell me where it was, my dear. Suppose we go and look at it together. I saw myself some exquisite Greek compositions in the Rue de la Paix, which both myself and Carrie admired immensely." "Greek fiddlesticks! I want no Greek, nor any other old-fashioned ornaments, Mr. Cockayne. One would think you were married to the oldest female inhabitant, by the way you talk; or that I had stepped out of the Middle Ages; or that I and Sphinx were twins. But you must be so very clever, with your elevation of the working-classes, and those prize Robinson Crusoes you gave to the Ragged-school children--which you know you got trade price." "Well, well," poor Cockayne feebly expostulated, "if it's not far, let us go and see the brooch." "There, mamma!" cried both Sophonisba and Theodosia in one breath. "Mind, the one with the three diamonds." [Illustration: MUSEE DU LUXEMBOURG.] Mrs. Cockayne being of an exceedingly yielding temperament, allowed herself to be mollified, and sailed out of the hotel, with the blue veil hanging from her hat down her back, observing by the way that she should like to box those impudent Frenchmen's ears who were lounging about the doorway, and who, she was sure, were looking at her. Mr. Cockayne was unfortunate enough to opine that his wife was mistaken, and that the Frenchmen in question were not even looking in her direction. "Of course not, Mr. Cockayne," said the lady; "who would look at me, at my time of life?" "Nonsense! I didn't mean that," said Mr. Cockayne, now a little gruffly, for there was a limit even to _his_ patience. "It is difficult to tell what you mean. I don't think you know yourself, half your time." Thus agreeably beguiling the way, the pair walked to the shop in the Rue de la Paix, where the lady had seen a brooch entirely to her mind. It was the large enamel rose-leaf, with three charming dew-drops in the shape of brilliants. "They speak English, I hope," said Mr. Cockayne. "We ought to have brought Sophonisba with us." "Sophonisba! much use _her_ French is in this place. She says their French and the French she learnt at school are two perfectly different things. So you may make up your mind that all those extras for languages you paid for the children were so much money thrown away." "That's a consoling reflection, now the money's gone," quoth Mr. Cockayne. They then entered the shop. A very dignified gentleman, with exquisitely arranged beard and moustache, and dressed unexceptionably, made a diplomatic bow to Mr. Cockayne and his wife. Cockayne, without ceremony, plunged _in medias res_. He wanted to look at the rose-leaf with the diamonds on it. The gentleman in black observed that it became English ladies' complexion "à ravir." It occurred to Mr. Cockayne, as it has occurred to many Englishmen in Paris, that he might make up for his ignorance of French by speaking in a voice of thunder. He seemed to have come to the conclusion that the French were a deaf nation, and that they talked a language which he did not understand in order that he might bear their deafness in mind. For once in her life Mrs. Cockayne held the same opinion as her husband. She accordingly, on her side, made what observations she chose to address to the dignified jeweller in her loudest voice. The jeweller smiled good naturedly, and pattered his broken English in a subdued and deferential tone. As Mr. Cockayne found that he did not get on very well, or make his meaning as clear as crystal by bawling, and as he found that the polite jeweller could jerk out a few broken phrases of English, the bright idea struck him that he, Mr. Cockayne, late of Lambeth, would make his meaning plainer than a pike-staff by speaking broken English also. The jeweller was puzzled, but he was very patient; and as he kept passing one bracelet after another over the arm of Mrs. Cockayne, quite captivated that lady. "He seems to think we're going to buy all the shop," growled Cockayne. "How vulgar you are! Lambeth manners don't do in Paris. Mr. Cockayne." "But they seem to like Lambeth sovereigns, anyhow," was the aggravating rejoinder. "If you're going to talk like that, I'll leave the shop, and not have anything." This was a threat the lady did not carry out. She bore the enamel rose-leaf--the leaf with the three diamonds, as her daughters had affectionately reminded her--off in triumph, having promised that delightful man, the jeweller, to return and have a look at the bracelets another day. She was quite enchanted with the low bow the jeweller gave her as he closed his handsome plate-glass door. He might have been a duke or a prince, she said. "Or a footman," Mr. Cockayne added. "I don't call all that bowing and scraping business." When Mr. and Mrs. Cockayne returned to the Grand Hôtel, they found their daughters Sophonisba and Theodosia in a state of rapture. "Mamma, mamma!" cried Sophonisba, holding up a copy of _La France,_ an evening paper, "you know that splendid shop we passed to-day, under the colonnades by the Louvre Hôtel, where there was that deep blue _moire_ you said you should so much like if you could afford it. Well, look here, there is a '_Grande Occasion_' there!" and the enraptured girl pointed to letters at least two inches high, printed across the sheet of the newspaper. "Look! a 'Grande Occasion!'" "And pray what's that, Sophy?" Mrs. Cockayne asked. "What grand occasion, I should like to know." "Dear me, mamma," Theodosia murmured, "it means an excellent opportunity." "My dear," Mrs. Cockayne retorted severely to her child, "I didn't have the advantage of lessons in French, at I don't know how many guineas a quarter; nor, I believe, did your father; nor did we have occasion to teach ourselves, like Miss Sharp." "Well, look here, mamma," Miss Sophonisba said, her eyes sparkling and her fingers trembling as they ran down line after line of the advertisement that covered the whole back sheet of the newspaper. "You never saw such bargains. The prices are positively ridiculous. There are silks, and laces, and muslins, and grenadines, and alpacas, and shawls, and cloaks, and plain _sultanes_, and I don't know what, all at such absurdly low prices that I think there must be some mistake about it." "Tut," Mr. Cockayne said; "one of those 'awful sacrifices' and bankrupt stock sales, like those we see in London, and the bills of which are thrown into the letter-box day after day." "You are quite mistaken, papa dear, indeed you are," Theodosia said; "we have asked the person in the _Bureau_ down stairs, and she has told us that these '_Grandes Occasions_' take place twice regularly every year, and that people wait for them to make good bargains for their summer things and for their winter things." The lady in the _Bureau_ was right. The prudent housewives of Paris take advantage of these "_Grandes Occasions_" to make their summer and winter purchases for the family. In the spring-time, when the great violet trade of Paris brightens the corners of the streets, immense advertisements appear in all the daily and weekly papers of Paris, headed by gigantic letters that the fleetest runner may read, announcing extraordinary exhibitions, great exhibitions, and unprecedented spring shows. "Poor Jacques" offers 3000 cashmere shawls at twenty-seven francs each, 2000 silk dresses at twenty-nine francs, and 1000 at thirty-nine francs. "Little Saint Thomas," of the Rue du Bac, has 90,000 French linos, 1000 "Jacquettes gentleman," 500 Zouaves, and 1000 dozen cravats--all at extraordinary low prices. Poor Jacques draws public attention to the "incomparable cheapness" of his immense operations: while Little St. Thomas declares that his assortment of goods is of "exceptional importance," and that he is selling his goods at a cheapness _hors ligne_. For a nation that has twitted the English with being a race of shop-keepers, our friends the Parisians who keep shops are not wanting in devotion to their own commercial interests. Indeed, there is a strong commercial sense in thousands of Parisians who have no shutters to take down. Take for instance the poetical M. Alphonse Karr, whose name has passed all over Europe as the charming author of A Journey round my Garden. Nothing can be more engaging than the manner in which M. Karr leads his readers about with him among his flowers and the parasites of his garden. He falls into raptures over the petals of the rose, and his eye brightens tenderly over the June fly. One would think that this garden-traveller was a very ethereal personage, and that milk and honey and a few sweet roots would satisfy his simple wants, and that he had no more idea of trafficking in a market than a hard man of business has in spending hours watching a beetle upon a leaf. But let not the reader continue to labour under this grievous mistake. M. Karr is quite up to the market value of every bud that breaks within the charmed circle of his garden at Nice. He cultivates the poetry for his books, but he does not neglect his ledger. In the spring, when, according to Mr. Tennyson, "a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast," and "young men's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love," M. Alphonse Karr, poet and florist, opens his flower-shop. Carrie had taken up the newspaper which had moved the enthusiasm of her elder sisters. Her eyes fell on the following advertisement:-- "By an arrangement agreed upon, M. ALPHONSE KARR, of Nice, sends direct, gratuitously, and post free, either a box containing Herbes aux Turguoises, or a magnificent bouquet of Parma Violets, to every person who, before the end of March, shall become a subscriber to the monthly review entitled Life in the Country. A specimen number will be sent on receipt of fifteen sous in postage stamps." This is Alphonse Karr's magnificent spring assortment--his Grand Occasion. "So you see, Mr. Cockayne," said his wife, "this Mr. Karr, whose book about the garden--twaddle, _I_ call it--you used to think so very fine and poetic, is just a market-gardener and nothing more. He is positively an advertising tradesman." "Nothing more, mamma, I assure you," said Sophonisba. "I remember at school that one of the French young ladies, Mademoiselle de la Rosière, told me that when her sister was married, the bride and all the bridesmaids had Alphonse Karr's _bouquets_. It seems that the mercenary creature advertises to sell ball or wedding _bouquets_, which he manages to send to Paris quite fresh in little boxes, for a pound apiece." "Do you hear that?" said Mrs. Cockayne, addressing her husband. "This is your pet, sir, who was so fond of his beetles! Why, the man would sell the nightingales out of his trees, if he could catch them, I've no doubt." "The story is a little jarring, I confess," Pater said. "But after all, why shouldn't he sell the flowers also, when he sells the pretty things he writes about them?" "Upon my word, you're wonderful. You try to creep out of everything. But what is that you were reading, my dear Sophonisba, about the _grande occasion_ near the Louvre Hôtel? I dare say it's a great deal more interesting than Mr. Karr and his violets. I haven't patience with your papa's affectation. What was it we saw, my dear, in the Rue Saint Honoré? The 'Butterfly's Chocolate'?" "Yes, mamma," Theodosia answered. "_Chocolat du Papillon_. Yes; and you know, mamma, there was the linen-draper's with the sign _A la Pensée_. I never heard such ridiculous nonsense." "Yes; and there was another, my dear," said Mrs. Cockayne, "'To the fine Englishwoman,' or something of that sort." "Oh, those two or three shops, mamma," said Sophonisba, "dedicated _A la belle Anglaise!_ Just think what people would say, walking along Oxford Street, if they were to see over a hosier's shop, written in big, flaring letters, 'To the beautiful Frenchwoman!" Mr. Cockayne laughed. Mrs. Cockayne saw nothing to laugh at. She maintained that it was a fair way of putting the case. Mr. Cockayne said that he was not laughing at his wife, but at some much more ridiculous signs which had come under his notice. "What do you say," he asked, "to a linen-draper's called the 'Siege of Corinth?' or the 'Great Condé?' or the 'Good Devil'?" "What on earth has La Belle Jardinière got to do with cheap trowsers, Mr. Cockayne?" his wife interrupted. "You forget your daughters are in the room." "Well, my dear, the Moses of Paris call their establishment the Belle Jardinière." "That's not half so absurd, papa dear," Sophonisba observed, "as another cheap tailor's I have seen under the sign of the 'Docks de la Violette.'" "I don't know, my dear; I thought when my friend Rhodes came back from Paris, and told me he had worn a pair of the Belle Jardinières----" "Mr. Cockayne!" screamed his wife. "Well, unmentionables, my dear--I thought I should have died with laughter." "Sophonisba, my dear, tell us what the paper says about that magnificent shop under the Louvre colonnade; your father is forgetting himself." "Dear mamma," said Sophonisba, "it would take me an hour to read all;" but she read the tit-bits. "My dears," said Mrs. Cockayne to her daughters, "it would be positively a sin to miss such an opportunity." Mr. Cockayne took up the paper which Sophonisba had finished reading, and running his eye over it, said, with a wicked curling of his lip-- "My dear Sophy, my dear child, here are a number of things you've not read." Sophonisba tittered, and ejaculated--"Papa dear!" "We have heard quite enough," Mrs. Cockayne said, sternly; "and we'll go to-morrow, directly after breakfast, and spend a nice morning looking over the things." "But there are really two or three items, my dear, Sophy has forgotten. There are a lot of articles with lace and pen work; and think of it, my love, ten thousand ladies' chem----" Mrs. Cockayne started to her feet, and shrieked-- "Girls, leave the room!" "What a pity, my dear," the incorrigible Mr. Cockayne continued, in spite of the unappeasable anger of Mrs. Cockayne--"what a pity the _Magasins de Louvre_ were not established at the time of the celebrated emigration of the ten thousand virgins; you see there would have been just one apiece." CHAPTER VI. A "GRANDE OCCASION." "Well, these Paris tradespeople are the most extraordinary persons in the world," cried Sophonisba's mamma, and the absolute ruler of Mr. Cockayne. "I confess I can't make them out. They beat me. My dear, they are the most independent set I ever came across. They don't seem to care whether you buy or you don't; and they ask double what they intend to take." "What is the matter now, my dear?" Mr. Cockayne ventured, in an unguarded moment, to ask, putting aside for a moment Mr. Bayle St. John's scholarly book on the Louvre. "At any rate, Mr. Cockayne, we do humbly venture to hope that you will be able to spare us an hour this morning to accompany us to the _Magasins du Louvre_. We would not ask you, but we have been told the crowd is so great that ladies alone would be torn to pieces." "I forget how many thousands a day, papa dear," Sophonisba mercifully interposed, "but a good many, visit these wonderful shops. I confess I never saw anything like even the outside of them. The inside must be lovely." "I have no doubt they are, my dear," Mr. Cockayne observed. "They were built about ten years ago. The foundations were----" "There," cried Mrs. Cockayne, rising, "there, your papa is off with his lecture. I shall put on my bonnet." And Mrs. Cockayne swept grandly from the room. Mrs. Cockayne re-entered the room with her bonnet on; determination was painted on the lady's countenance. Cockayne should not escape this time. He should be led off like a lamb to the slaughter. Were not the silks marked at ridiculously low prices? Was not the shawl-room a sight more than equal to anything to be seen in any other part of Paris? Was not the folding department just as much a sight of Paris as that wretched collection of lumber in the Hôtel Cluny? Some wives had only to hint to have; but that was not the case with the hapless Mrs. Cockayne. She was sure nobody could be more economical than she was, both for herself and the children, and that was her reward. She had to undergo the most humiliating process of asking point-blank; even when twenty or thirty thousand pairs of gloves were to be sold at prices that were unheard of! Men were so stupid in their meanness! "Buy the shop," Mr. Cockayne angrily observed. Perhaps Mr. Cockayne would be pleased to inform his lawful wife and the unfortunate children who were subjected by fate to his cruel tyranny--perhaps he would inform them when it would be convenient for him to take them home. His insults were more than his wife could bear. "What's the matter now?" asked the despairing Cockayne, rubbing his hat with his coat-sleeve. "Mamma dear, papa is coming with us," Sophonisba expostulated. "Well, I suppose he is. It has not quite come to that yet, my dear. I am prepared for anything, I believe; but your father will, I trust, not make us the laughing-stock of the hotel." "I am ready," said Cockayne, grimly, between his teeth. "I am obliged, you see, children, to speak," icily responded the lady he had sworn to love and cherish. "Hints are thrown away. I must suffer the indignity for your sakes, of saying to your father, I shall want some money for the purchases your mother wants to make for you. It is not the least use going to this Grande Occasion, or whatever they call it, empty-handed." "Will you allow me time to get change?" And Mr. Cockayne headed the procession through the hotel court-yard to the Boulevards. "Walk with your father," the outraged lady said to Sophonisba. "It's positively disgraceful, straggling out in this way. But I might have known what it was likely to be before I left home." Mr. Cockayne, as was his wont, speedily re-assumed his equanimity, and chatted pleasantly with Sophonisba as they walked along the Rue de la Paix, across the Place Vendôme, into the Rue Castiglione. Mrs. Cockayne followed with Theodosia; Carrie had begged to be left behind, to write a long letter to her intellectual friend, Miss Sharp. Mr. Cockayne stopped before the door of Mr. John Arthur. "What on earth can your father want here?" said Mrs. Cockayne, pausing at the door, while her husband had an interview with Mr. John Arthur within. Theodosia, peering through the window, answered, "He is getting change, mamma dear." "At last!" Mr. Cockayne issued radiant from Mr. John Arthur's establishment. "There," said he to his wife, in his heartiest voice; "there, my dear, buy what you and the girls want." "I will do the best I can with it. Perhaps we can manage our shopping without troubling you." "It's not the least trouble in the world," gaily said Cockayne, putting that bright face of his on matters. "I thought you had some idea of going to the Museum of Artillery this afternoon, to see whether or not you approved of the French guns." Mr. Cockayne laughed at the sarcasm, and again gave Sophonisba his arm, and went under the colonnades of the Rue de Rivoli, wondering, by the way, why people stared at him in his plaid suit, and at his daughter in her brown hat and blue veil. Mrs. Cockayne wondered likewise. The French were the rudest people on the face of the earth, and not the politest, as they had the impudence to assert. When the party reached the colonnades of the Grand Hôtel du Louvre, they found themselves in the midst of a busy scene. The _Magasins du Louvre_ stretch far under the Hôtel, from the Rue de Rivoli to the Rue Saint-Honoré. Year after year has the stretching process continued; but now the great company of linen drapers and hosiers have all the space that can be spared them. The endless lines of customers' carriages in the Rue Saint-Honoré and on the _Place_ opposite Prince Napoleon's palace betoken the marvellous trade going on within. The father of the English family here turned his back upon the great shop, and glancing towards the Louvre and the Church of Saint Germain l'Auxerrois, exclaimed--"Marvellous scene! A sight not to be equalled in the world. Yonder is the old church, the bell of which tolled the----" "You're making a laughing-stock of yourself," Mrs. Cockayne exclaims, taking her husband firmly by the arm. "One would think you were an hotel guide, or a walking handbook, or--or a beadle or showman. What do you want to know about the massacre of St. Bartholomew now? There'll not be a mantle or a pair of gloves left. Come in--do! You can go gesticulating about the streets with Carrie to-morrow, if you choose; but do contrive to behave like an ordinary mortal to-day." Mr. Cockayne resigned himself. He plunged into the magnificent shop. He was dragged into the crowd that was defiling past the fifteen-sous counter, where the goods lay in great tumbled masses on the floor and upon the counter. He was surprised to see the shopmen standing upon the counter, and, with marvellous rapidity, telling off the yards of the cheap fabrics to the ladies and gentlemen who were pressing before them in an unbroken line. Beyond were the packers. Beyond again, was the office where payment was made, each person having a note or ticket, with the article bought, showing the sum due. A grave official marshalled the customer to the pay-place. There was wonderful order in the seeming confusion. The admirable system of the establishment was equal to the emergency. An idea of the continuous flow of the crowd past the silk and mixed fabric counters may be got from the fact that many ladies waited three and four hours for their turn to be served. One Parisian lady told Mrs. Cockayne that, after waiting four hours in the crowd, she had gone home to lunch, and had returned to try her fortune a second time. Poor Cockayne! He was absolutely bewildered. His endeavours to steer the "three daughters of Albion" who were under his charge, in the right direction, were painful to witness. First he threaded corridors, then he was in the carpet gallery, and now he was in the splendid, the palatial shawl-hall, where elegant ladies were trying on shawls of costly fabric, with that grace and quiet for which Parisians are unmatched. "This is superb! Oh, this is very, very fine!" cried the ladies. "How on earth shall we find our way out?" Now they sailed among immensities of silk and satin waves. Now they were encompassed with shawls; and now they were amid colonnades of rolls of carpet. Mrs. Cockayne stayed here and there to make a purchase, by the help of Sophonisba's French, which was a source of considerable embarrassment to the shopmen. They smiled, but were very polite. "This is not a shop, it is a palace dedicated to trade," cried Cockayne. "Stuff and nonsense," was his answer; "take care of the parcels. Yon know better, of course, than the people to whom it belongs." The Cockaynes found themselves borne by the endless stream of customers into a vast and lofty gallery. Pater paused. "This is superb! It would have been impossible to realize----" "Don't be a fool, Cockayne," said his wife; "this is the lace department. We must not go away without buying something." "Let us try," was saucily answered. Mrs. Cockayne immediately settled upon some Chantilly, and made her lord, as she expressed it in her pretty way, "pay for his impudence." The silk gallery was as grand and bewildering as the lace department; and here again were made some extraordinary bargains. Obliging officials directed the party to the first staircase on the right, or to turn to the left, by the furnishing department. They made a mistake, and found themselves in the _salons_ devoted to made linen, where Mrs. Cockayne hoped her husband would not make his daughters blush with what he considered to be (and he was much mistaken) witty observations. He was to be serious and silent amid mountains of feminine under linen. He was to ask no questions. In the Saint Honoré gallery--which is the furnishing department--Mr. Cockayne was permitted to indulge in a few passing expressions of wonder. He was hushed in the splendour of the shawl gallery--where all is solid oak and glass and rich gold, and where the wearied traveller through the exciting scene of a _Grande Occasion_ at the marvellous shops of the Louvre, can get a little rest and quiet. "A wonderful place!" said Pater, as he emerged in the Rue de Rivoli, exhausted. "And much more sensible than the place opposite," his wife replied, pointing to the palace where the art treasures of Imperial France are imperially housed. "_Grande Occasion!_" muttered Mr. Cockayne, when he reached the hotel--"a grand opportunity for emptying one's pocket. The cheapness is positively ruinous. I wonder whether there are any cheap white elephants in Paris?" "White elephants, Cockayne! White fiddlesticks! I do really think, girls, your father is gradually--mind, I say, _gradually--gradually_ taking leave of his senses." "La! mamma," unfortunate Carrie interposed, raising her eyes from a volume on Paris in the Middle Ages--"la! mamma, you know that in India----" "Hold your tongue, Miss--of course I know--and if I didn't, it is not for _you_ to teach me." Mr. Timothy Cockayne heaved a deep sigh and rang for his bill. He was to leave for London on the morrow--and his wife and daughters were to find lodgings. CHAPTER VII. OUR FOOLISH COUNTRYWOMEN. I Introduce at this point--its proper date--Miss Carrie Cockayne's letter to Miss Sharp:-- "Grand Hôtel, Paris. "DEAREST EMMY--They are all out shopping, so here's a long letter. I haven't patience with the men. I am sure we have had enough abuse in our own country, without travelling all the way to Paris for it; and yet the first paper I take up in the reading saloon of the hotel, contains a paragraph headed _Le Beau Sexe en Angleterre_. The paragraph is violent. The writer wants to know what demon possesses the Englishwomen at this moment. I might have been sure it was translated from an English paper. The creature wants to know whether the furies are let loose, and is very clever about Lucretia Borgia, and Mary Manning, and Mary Newell! One would think English mothers were all going to boil their children. This is just what has happened about everything else. In certain English circles slang is talked: therefore women have become coarse and vulgar. The Divorce Court has been a busy one of late; and scandals have been 'going round' as the American ladies in this hotel say; therefore there are to be no more virtuous mothers and sisters presently. Upon my word, the audacity of this makes my blood boil. Here the ladies paint, my dear, one and all. Why, the children in the Tuileries gardens whisk their skirts, and ogle their boy playmates. Vanity Fair at its height is here--I am not going to dispute it. Nor will I say papa is quite in the wrong when he cries shame on some of the costumes one meets on the Boulevards. My dear, short skirts and grey hair do _not_ go well together. I cannot even bear to think of grand-mamma showing her ankles and Hessian boots! But what vexes and enrages me is the injustice of the sudden outcry. Where has the slang come from? Pray who brought it into the drawing-room? How is it that girls delight in stable-talk, and imitate men in their dress and manners? We cannot deny that the domestic virtues have suffered in these fast days, nor that wife and husband go different ways too much: but are we to bear all the blame? Did _we_ build the clubs, I wonder? Did you or I invent racing, and betting, and gambling? Do _you_ like being lonely, as you are, my dear? When women go wrong, who leads the way? The pace is very fast now, and we _do_ give more time to dress, and that sort of thing than our mothers did. I own I'm a heavy hand at pastry, and mamma is a light one. I couldn't tell you how many shirts papa has. I should be puzzled to make my own dresses. I hate needlework. But are we monsters for all this? Papa doesn't grumble _very_ much. He has his pleasures, I'm sure. He dined out four times the week we came away. He was at the Casino in the Rue St. Honoré last night, and came home with such an account of it that I am quite posted up in the manners and costumes of _ces dames_, yes, and the _lower_ class of them. The mean creature who has been writing in the _Saturday Review_ gives us no benefit of clergy. We have driven our brothers out into the night; we have sent our lovers to Newmarket; we have implored our husbands (that is, _we_ who have got husbands,) not to come home to dinner, because we have more agreeable company which we have provided for ourselves. Girls talk slang, I know--perhaps they taught their brothers! I suppose mamma taught papa to describe a woman in the _Bois_ as 'no end of a swell,' and when he is in the least put out to swear at her. [Illustration: THE INFLEXIBLE "MEESSES ANGLAISES." _They are not impressionable, but they will stoop to "field sports."_] "Now, my dear, shall I give you _my_ idea of the mischief? Papa thinks I go about with my eyes shut; that I observe nothing--except the bonnet shops. I say the paint, the chignons, the hoops, and the morals--whatever they may be--start from here. My ears absolutely tingled the first evening I spent here _en soirée_. Lovers! why the married ladies hardly take the trouble to disguise their preferences. "I was at an embassy reception the other night. Papa said it was like a green-room, only not half so amusing. They talked in one corner as openly as you might speak of the Prince Imperial, about Mademoiselle Schneider's child. There were women of the company whose _liaisons_ are as well known as their faces, and yet they were _parfaitement bien reçues_! Theresa is to be heard--or was to be heard till she went out of fashion--in private salons, screaming her vulgar songs among the young ladies. When I turn the corner just outside the hotel, what do I see in one of the most fashionable print-shops? Why, three great Mabille prints of the shockingly indecent description--with ladies and their daughters looking at them. Those disagreeable pictures in the Burlington Arcade are, my dearest Emmy, moral prints when compared with them. We have imported all this. Paris is within ten hours and a half of London, so we get French ways, as papa says, 'hot and hot.'" [Illustration: ENGLISH VISITORS TO THE CLOSERIE DE LILAS.--SHOCKING!] "Who admires domestic women now? Tell an English _crévé_ that Miss Maria is clever at a custard, and he will sneer at her. No. She must be witty, pert; able to give him as good as he sends, as people say. Young Dumas has done a very great deal of this harm; and he has made a fortune by it. He has brought the Casino into the drawing-room, given _ces dames_ a position in society, and made hundreds of young men ruin themselves for the glory of being seen talking to a Cora Pearl. _Now_ what do you think he has done. He has actually brought out a complete edition of his pieces, with a preface, in which, Papa tells me, he plays the moralist. He has unfolded all the vice--crowded the theatres to see a bad woman in a consumption--painted the _demi-monde--with a purpose_! All the world has laboured under the idea that the purpose was piles of gold. But now, the locker being full, and the key turned, and in the young gentleman's pocket, he dares to put himself in the robe of a professor, to say it was not the money he cared about--it was the lesson. He is a reformer--a worshipper of virtue! We shall have the author of _Jack Sheppard_ start as a penologist soon. My dear, the cowardice of men when dealing with poor women is bad enough; but it is not by half so repulsive as their hypocrisy. Ugh! "Any news of the handsome Mr. Daker? It strikes me, dear Emmy, 'Uncle Sharp' didn't send him up from Maidstone with a letter of introduction to his niece for nothing. "Your affectionate friend, "CARRIE C." CHAPTER VIII. "OH, YES!" AND "ALL RIGHT!" Lucy was privileged to read the following:-- _Miss Carrie Cockayne to Miss Emily Sharp._ "Rue Millevoye, Paris. "MY DEAREST EMMY,--I should certainly not venture to offer any remarks on taste to you, my love, under ordinary circumstances. But I am provoked. I have passed a severe round of _soirées_ of every description. Jaded with the fantastic activities of a fancy-dress genteel riot, I have been compelled to respond to the intimation of the Vicomtesse de Bois de Rose, that "_on sautera_". I have jumped with the rest. I have half killed myself with _sirops, petit-fours_, those microscopic caricatures of detestable British preparation--sandwiches (pronounced _sonveetch_), _bouillon_, and chocolate, in the small hours; ices in tropical heats; _foie-gras_ and champagne about two hours after healthy bedtime, and tea like that which provoked old Lady Gargoyle to kick over the tea-table in her boudoir--in her eightieth year, too. The Gargoyles (I shall have much to tell you about them when we meet) were always an energetic race; and I feel the blood tingling in me while my eye wanders over the impertinences of the French chroniqueurs, when they are pleased to be merry at the expense of _la vieille Angleterre_. I hold I am right; am I not?--that when even a chroniqueur--that smallest of literary minnows--undertakes to criticize a foreign nation, at least the equal of his own, he should start with some knowledge of its language, history, manners, and customs. But what do we find? The profoundest ignorance of the rudiments of English. The special correspondent sent to London by the _Figaro_ to be amusing on our darker side, cannot spell the word theatre; but he is trenchant when dealing with what he saw at the Adelphi _Theater_. How completely he must have understood the dialogue, he who describes Webster as a _comique de premier ordre!_ In the same paper the dramatic critic, after explaining that at the rehearsals of _L'Abime_, the actors, who continually are complaining that they are ordered off on the wrong side, are quieted with the information that matters dramatic are managed in this way in bizzare England--prints in a line apart, and by way of most humorous comment, these words, 'English spoken here.' Conceive, my dear, an English humorous writer interlarding his picture of a French incident with the occasional interjection of _Parlez-vous Français?_ Yet the comic writers of Paris imagine that they show wit when they pepper their comments with disjointed, irrelevant, and misspelt ejaculations in our vernacular. We have a friend here (we have made dozens) who has a cat she calls To-be--the godfather being 'To-be or not to be! 'All right' appears daily as a witticism; 'Oh, yes!' serves for the thousandth time as a touch of humour. The reason is obvious. French critics are wholly ignorant of our language. Very few of them have crossed the Channel, even to obtain a Leicester Square idea of our dear England. But they are not diffident on this account. They have never seen samples of the Britisher--except on the Boulevards, or whistling in the cafés--where our countrymen, I beg leave to say, do not shine; and these to them are representations of our English society. Suppose we took our estimate of French manners and culture from the small shopkeepers of the Quartier St. Antoine! My protest is against those who judge us by our vulgar and coarse types. The Manchester bully who lounges into the Café Anglais with his hat on the back of his head; the woman who wears a hat and a long blue veil, and shuffles in in the wake of the _malhonnête_ to whom she is married; again, the boor who can speak only such French as 'moa besoin' and 'j'avais faim,' represent English men and women just as fairly as the rude, hoggish, French egg-and-poultry speculators represent the great seigneurs of France. [Illustration: SMITH BRINGS HIS ALPENSTOCK.] "I say I have, by this time, more than a tolerable experience, not only of French _salons_, but also of those over which foreign residents in Paris preside. I have watched the American successes in Paris of this season, which is now closing its gilded gates, dismissing the slaves of pleasure to the bitter waters of the German springs and gaming-tables. I have seen our people put aside for Madame de Lhuile de Petrole and the great M. Caligula Shoddy. The beauties of the season have been 'calculating' and 'going round' in the best _salons_, and they have themselves given some of the most successful entertainments we have had. Dixie's land has been fairyland. Strange and gorgeous Princesses from the East have entered mighty appearances. One has captivated the Prince, said to be the handsomest man in Paris. Russian and Polish great ladies have done the honours--according to the newspapers--with their 'habitual charm.' The Misses Bickers have had their beauties sung by a chorus of chroniqueurs. Here the shoulders of ladies at a party are as open to criticism as the ankles of a stage dancer. The beauties of our blonde Misses have made whole bundles of goose-quills tremble. Paris society is made up not even chiefly of Parisians; the rich of all nations flock to us, and are content to pay a few hundred pounds per month for a floor of glass and gilding. The Emperor has made a show capital as a speculation. All Europe contributes to the grandeur of the fashionable world of Paris. And suddenly what do we hear? "That we, whose blood is good enough for England; who _can_ speak a few foreign languages in addition to our own; who know our neighbours by having lived among them; who have travelled enough to learn that good breeding is not confined to England or to France, are accused of having destroyed the high tone of the Opera audiences in this city. We are good enough, as to manners, for Her Majesty's Theatre, but not for the Italiens. Tell Mrs. Sandhurst of this: she will be _so_ mad! "A few nights before La Patti left us, to degrade herself by warbling her wood-notes in the ignorant ears of the Opera public whom Mr. Gye is about to assemble, and on whom the leadership of Costa is thrown away, an unfortunate incident happened at the Italiens. Patti had been announced, and Mdlle. Harris appeared instead. Whereupon there was an uproar that could not be stilled. La Patti wept; la Harris wept also. Finally, the spoilt child appeared, like Niobe, all tears. Who created the uproar? The French chroniqueur answers: a cosmopolitan audience--an audience from the Grand Hôtel. He is good enough not to pick us out, but we are included with the rest. The foreign residents have degraded the Opera. The audience which greets Patti is a rabble compared with that which listened to Sontag. 'The exquisite urbanity which is proverbially French,' and which was apparent at the Italiens fifteen or twenty years ago, has disappeared since Paris has become the world's railway terminus. M. Emile Villars, who is so obliging as to make the observation, proceeds to be very clever. Scratch the Russian, and you know what you will find. I answer, a gentleman uninfluenced by a stale proverb; we have a delightful specimen in this very house. M. Villars is great at scratching, since his readers are recommended to grate Peruvians and Javanese. Under the three articles, we are told, lies the one barbarous material! The ladies of these are charming, seductive, irresistible, but they want _ton_, and lack the delicacy of the _monde_. We foreigners are too proud of our beauty and our dollars, have an unquenchable thirst for pleasure, and we are socially daring. M. Villars is funny in the fashion of his class. He says that we English-speaking class of foreigners bear aloft a banner with the strange device 'All right.' M. Villars proceeds to remark, 'We take from foreigners what we should leave to them, their feet upon chairs, and their hats upon their heads, as at the Italiens the other night.' He finds that a cosmopolitan invasion has made French society less delicate, less gallant, less polite. [Illustration: JONES ON THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE.] "We are to blame! Belgravia is not refined enough for the Avenue de l'Impératrice. Clapham, I infer, would not be tolerated at Batignolles. I repeat, I have gone through some arduous times here, in the midst of the foreign invasion of polite society. I have scratched neither Russ, nor German, nor Servian, nor Wallachian. But I must be permitted to observe, that I have found their manners quite equal to any that were native. Shall I go further, Emmy, and speak all my mind? There is a race of the new-rich--of the recently honoured, here, who are French from their shoe-rosettes to their chignons. They come direct from the Bourse, and from the Pereire fortune-manufactory of the Place Vendôme. They bring noise and extravagance, but not manners. I have seen many of my countrymen in Parisian drawing-rooms, in the midst of Frenchmen, Russians, Princes of various lands; and, do you know, I have not seen anything _much_ better in the way of bearing, manners, and mental culture and natural refinement than the English gentleman. I feel quite positive that it is not he who has lowered the manners or morals of Napoleon the Third's subjects. I am bold enough to think that a probationary tour through some of our London drawing-rooms would do good to the saucy young seigneurs I see leaning on the balcony of the Jockey Club when we are driving past. "I will remind M. Villars that his proverb has been parodied, and that it has been said, 'Scratch a Frenchman, and you find a dancing-master.' But I know this proverb to be foolish; and I am candid and liberal enough to say so. "I hope you are not too lonely, and don't keep too much to your room. Now I know by experience what life in a boarding-house means. How must you feel, dearest Emmy, alone! Je t'embrasse. How gets on the German? "We have such a specimen of the gandin here--the Vicomte de Gars. I think John Catt had better make haste over. "Yours affectionately, "CARRIE." CHAPTER IX. _Miss Carrie Cockayne to Miss Sharp._ "Rue Millevoye. "My dearest Emmy,--No answer from you? How unkind! But still I continue to give you my ideas of the moment from this. What do we want? A writer in one of the frivolous sheets which are called newspapers on this side of the Channel, has been giving himself great airs; looking out of his window, with two or three touches of his pen he dismisses the poor women who pass under his balcony, and closes the casement with the conviction that woman's rights and wrongs are put away for another generation. Foolish women! They are plentiful enough, and they muster in fair numbers at the Wauxhall meetings which have been going on here, to the infinite amusement of the superior creatures who drink absinthe, smoke cigars, and gamble, hours after we silly things have gone to bed. I am not writing to deny woman's weakness, nor her vanity, nor the ridiculous exhibition she makes of herself when she takes to "orating"--as the Yankees say--and lecturing, and dressing herself up in her brother's clothes. Do you think, my dear Emmy, there are many women foolish enough to applaud Dr. Mary Walker because she dresses like an overgrown school-girl, and shows her trousers? What is she like in society? Neither man nor woman. But how many have imitated her? How many women in England, France, and America have taken to the platform? One would think that all womankind was in a state of revolution, and about to make a general descent upon the tailors and tobacconists, turning over the lords of the creation to the milliners and the baby-linen warehouses. This is just the way men argue, and push themselves out of a difficulty. This French philosophical pretender, who has been observing us from his window (I can't imagine where he lives), describes one or two social monstrosities--with false complexions, hair, figure,--and morals; brazen in manner, defiant in walk--female intellectual all-in-alls. His model drives, hunts, orates, passes resolutions, dissects--in short does everything except attend to baby. This she leaves to the husband. He takes the pap-bowl, and she shoulders the gun. He looks out the linen while she sharpens her razors. The foolish public laugh all along the boulevards, and say what a charming creature a woman will be when she drives a locomotive, commands a frigate, and storms a citadel! "Every time a meeting is convened at the Wauxhall to consider how the amount of female starvation or misery may be reduced, the philosopher throws his window open again, and grins while he caricatures, or rather distorts and exaggerates to positive untruth. M. Gill gets fresh food. The _chroniqueurs_ invent a series of absurdities, which didn't happen yesterday, as they allege. I am out of patience when I see all this mischievous misrepresentation, because I see that it is doing harm to a very just and proper cause. We are arguing for more work for our poor sisters who have neither father, husband, brother, nor fortune to depend upon; and these French comic scribblers describe us as unsexed brawlers, who want top-boots. I want no manly rights for women. I am content with the old position, that her head should just reach the height of a man's heart; but I do see where she is not well used--where she is left to genteel dependence, and a life in the darkest corner of the drawing-room, upon the chair with the unsafe leg, over the plate that is cracked, in the bedroom where the visitor died of scarlet fever. [Illustration: FRENCH RECOLLECTION OF MEESS TAKING HER BATH. _The faithful Bouledogue gazes with admiration at the performance of his Mistress._] [Illustration: THE BRAVE MEESS AMONG THE BILLOWS HOLDING ON BY THE TAIL OF HER NEWFOUNDLAND.] "She is not unsexed wearing her poor heart out against these bars; but she would be a free, bright, instructed creature, helping her rich sister, or a trusty counsellor when the children are ill. She would be unsexed issuing railway tickets or managing a light business; but she is truly womanly while she is helpless and a burden to others. "Foolish women! Yes, very stupid very often, but hardly in hoping that the defenceless among us may be permitted to become, by fair womanly exertion, independent. I am directed to observe how amusing the _Figaro_ has been recently at our expense, hoping to obtain the suffrages of the really thoughtless of our sex thereby. We are our own worst enemies and well do you men know it. The frivolous are an immense host, and these have reason to laugh at serious women who want to get a little justice and teaching for their dependent sisters--not manly avocations, nor masculine amusements. I go to the Wauxhall, my dear Emmy, not to help my sex to unsex itself, but, I must repeat, to aid my poor sisters who want to work, that, if left without the support of male kindred, they may lead honourable, independent lives; to this end they must have certain rights, and these, and no more, I advocate. [Illustration: VARIETIES OF THE ENGLISH STOCK. _The Parent Flower and two lovely Buds._] [Illustration: COMPATRIOTS MEETING IN THE FRENCH EXHIBITION. _Bar-maids in the English Department recognising a fellow-countryman._] "You see, the old story is told over again. We beg a little independence; and we are answered with ancient jests. You are quite as unjust, and not so amusing or clever in your injustice in England. They have not imitated the medical students in St. James's Hall at this Wauxhall. We have seen no such monstrous spectacle as a host of young men hooting and yelling at one poor, weak, foolish little woman in black pantalettes. Truly, you must be as tired of the comic view of the question as you are ashamed of your medical students. I know what the highly-educated English ladies think on the subject. They detest the orating, blustering, strangely-costumed advocates of woman's rights; but don't fall into the common error of believing that they are not earnest about many of the points we have been discussing here, in the midst of this mocking race. Depend upon it, we are not foolish enough--fond as you men are of crying 'foolish women!'--to unsex ourselves. "The woman who wants to get into Parliament is, to my thinking, a monster; and I would sentence her to stocking-mending for life. The creature who appears before men in black pantalettes, and other imitations of his dress, should be rigorously held clear of decent houses, until she had learned how to dress herself modestly and becomingly. The Missy who talked about eating her way to the bar, I would doom to the perpetual duty of cooking chops for hungry lawyers' clerks. "But you will have had enough of this. "Not a word? and you promised so many. Somebody has whispered a name to me. It is Charles. Is that true? I will never forgive you. "Ever yours, "CARRIE." Emmy never answered, poor girl! CHAPTER X. "THE PEOPLE OF THE HOUSE." Lucy Rowe would have been fast friends with Carrie Cockayne during their stay in her aunt's house, had Mrs. Cockayne, on the one hand, permitted her daughter to become intimate with anything so low as "the people of the house," and had Mrs. Rowe, on the other, suffered her niece to "forget her place." But they did approach each other, by an irresistible affinity, and by the easy companionship of common tastes. While Sophonisba engaged ardently in all the doings of the house, and was a patient retailer of its scandals; and while Mrs. Cockayne was busy with her evening whist, and morning "looks at the shops"--quiet and retiring Theodosia managed to become seriously enamoured of the Vicomte de Gars, who visited Mrs. Rowe's establishment, as the unexceptionable friend of the Reverend Horace Mohun. The young Vicomte was a Protestant; of ancient family and limited means. Where the living scions of the noble stock held their land, and went forth over their acres from under the ancestral portcullis, was more than even Mrs. Rowe had been able, with all her penetrating power in scandal, to ascertain. But the young nobleman was Mr. Mohun's friend--and that was enough. There had been reverses in the family. Losses fall upon the noblest lines; and supposing the Count de Gars in the wine trade--to speak broadly, in the Gironde--this was to his honour. The great man struggling with the storms of fate, is a glad picture always to noble minds. Some day he would issue from his cellars, and don his knightly plume once more, and summon the vulgar intruders to begone from the Château. As for Mrs. Cockayne, to deny that she was highly contented at the family's intimacy with a Viscount, would be to falsify my little fragmentary chain of histories. She wrote to her husband that she met the very best society at Mrs. Rowe's, extolled the elegant manners and enclosed the photograph of the Vicomte de Gars, and said she really began to hope that she had persuaded "his lordship" to pay them a visit in London. "Tell Mrs. Sandhurst, my dear Cockayne, that I am sure she will like the Vicomte de Gars." The Vicomte de Gars was a little man, with long wristbands. Miss Tayleure described him as all eye-glass and shirt-front. Comic artists have often drawn the moon capering on spider-legs; a little filling out would make the Vicomte very like the caricature. He was profound--in his salutations, learned--in lace, witty--thanks to the _Figaro_. His attentions to Miss Theodosia Cockayne, and to Madame her mother, were of the most splendid and elaborate description. He left flowers for the young lady early in the morning. It was very provoking that Theodosia had consented to be betrothed to John Catt of Peckham. "Carrie, my dear," Mrs. Cockayne observed, having called her daughter to her bedroom for a good lecture, "once for all, I WILL NOT have you on such intimate terms with the people of the house. What on earth can you be thinking about? I should have thought you would show more pride. I am quite sure the Vicomte saw you yesterday when you were sitting quite familiarly with Miss Rowe in the bureau. I WILL NOT have it." "Mamma dear, Lucy Rowe is one of the most sensible and, at the same time, best informed girls I ever knew; and her sentiments are everything that could be desired." "I will not be answered, Carrie; mind that. I wonder you haven't more pride. A chit like that, who keeps the hotel books, and gives out the sugar." "Her father was----" "Never mind what her father was. What is she? I wonder you don't propose to ask her home on a visit." "She would not disgrace----" This was too much for Mrs. Cockayne. She stamped her foot, and bore down upon Carrie with a torrent of reasons why Miss Rowe should be held at a distance. "You wouldn't find Theodosia behaving in such a manner. She understands what's becoming. I dare say she's not so clever as you are----" "Dear mamma, this is cruel----" "Don't interrupt me. No, no; I see through most things. This Miss Howe is always reading. I saw her just now with some novel, I've no doubt, which she shouldn't read----" "It was Kingsley's----" "Hold your tongue, child. Yes, reading, and with a pen stuck behind her ear." "She's so very lonely: and Mrs. Howe is so very severe with her." "I have no doubt it's quite necessary; there, go and dress for the table d'hôte, and mind what I say." Poor Lucy wondered what on earth could have happened that Carrie Cockayne avoided her: and what those furtive nods of the head and stolen smiles at her could mean? On the other hand, how had she offended Mrs. Cockayne? Happily, Mrs. Rowe was on Lucy's side; for it had pleased Mrs. Cockayne to show her social superiority by extravagant coldness and formality whenever she had occasion to address "the landlady." One thing Mrs. Cockayne admitted she could NOT understand--viz., Why Jane the servant took so much upon herself with her mistress; and what all the mystery was about a Mr. Charles, who seemed to be a dark shadow, kept somewhere as far as possible in the background of the house. Mrs. Rowe, on her side, was amply revenged for Mrs. Cockayne's airs of superiority, when Mr. Cockayne arrived in the company of Mr. John Catt, the betrothed love of Theodosia. "You must be mad, Mr. Cockayne," was his wife's greeting directly they were alone--"raving mad to bring that vulgar fellow John Catt with you. Didn't you get my letters?" "I did, my dear; and they brought me over, and John Catt with me. I, at least, intend to act an honourable part." "Perhaps you will explain yourself, Mr. Cockayne." "I have travelled from Clapham for that purpose. Who the devil is this Viscount de Gars, to begin with?" Mrs. Cockayne drew herself up to her full height, and looked through her husband--or meant to look through him--but just then he was not to be cowed even by Mrs. Cockayne. With provoking coolness and deliberation over the exact relative quantities, Mr. Cockayne mixed himself a glass of grog from his brandy flask; while he proceeded to inform his wife that Mr. John Catt, who had been engaged, with their full consent, to their daughter, had, at his instigation, travelled to Paris to understand what all this ridiculous twaddle about Viscount de Gars meant. "You will spoil everything," Mrs. Cockayne gasped, "as usual." "I don't know, madam, that I am in the habit of spoiling anything; but be very certain of this, that I shall not stand by and see my daughter make a fool of a young man of undoubted integrity and of excellent prospects, for the sake of one of these foreign adventurers who swarm wherever foolish Englishwomen wake their appearance. I beg you will say nothing, but let me observe for myself, and leave the young people to come to an understanding by themselves." In common with many Englishmen of Timothy Cockayne's and John Catt's class, Theodosia's father at once concluded that the poor polite little Vicomte de Gars was an adventurer, and that his coronet was pasteboard, and his shirt studs stolen. Mr. John Catt distinguished himself on his arrival by loud calls for bottled beer, the wearing of his hat in the sitting-room, and by the tobacco-fumes which he liberally diffused in his wake. When the little Vicomte made his accustomed appearance in the drawing-room, after the table d'hôte, he offered the Cockayne ladies his profoundest bows, and was most reverential in his attitude to Mr. Cockayne, who on his side was red and brusque. As neither Mr. nor Mrs. Cockayne could speak a French word, and Mr. John Catt was not in a position to help them, and was, moreover, inclined to the most unfavourable conclusions on the French nobleman, the presentations were on the English side of the most awkward description. The demoiselles Cockayne "fell a giggling" to cover their confusion; and the party would have made a ridiculous figure before all the boarders, had not the Reverend Horace Mohun covered them with his blandness. Mr. John Catt was not well-mannered, but he was good-hearted and stout-hearted. He was one of those rough young gentlemen who pride themselves upon "having no nonsense about them." He was downright in all things, even in love-making. He took, therefore, a very early opportunity of asking his betrothed "what this all meant about Monsieur de Gars?" and of observing, "She had only to say the word, and he was ready to go." This was very brutal, and it is not in the least to be wondered at that the young lady resented it. I am, as the reader will have perceived, only touching now and then upon the histories of the people who passed through Mrs. Rowe's highly respectable establishment while I was in the habit of putting up there. This John Catt was told he was very cruel, and that he might go; Mrs. Cockayne resolutely refused to give up the delights and advantages of the society of the Vicomte de Gars; the foolish girl was--well, just as foolish as her mamma; and finally, in a storm that shook the boarding-house almost to its respectable foundations, the Cockayne party broke up--not before the Vicomte and Miss Theodosia Cockayne had had an explanation in the conservatory, and Mrs. Cockayne had invited "his lordship" to London. I shall pick up the threads of all this presently. CHAPTER XI. MYSTERIOUS TRAVELLERS. Poor girl! she was timid, frightened. I saw at once that the man with whom she was, and who packed her feet up so carefully in the travelling rug in her state cabin, was not of her class. She could not have been daintier in mien and shape than she appeared. Hands round and white as pearls, feet as pretty as ever stole from a man's hand to the stirrup; a sweet wee face, that had innocence and heart in it. Country bred, I thought: nested in some Kentish village: a childhood amid the hops: familiar with buttermilk and home-baked bread. Who has not been blessed by looking upon such an English face: ruddy on the cheek, and white and pink upon the brow and neck: the head poised upon the shoulders with a wondrous delicacy? Such girls issue from honest Englishmen's homes to gladden honeymoon cottages, and perpetuate that which is virtuous and courageous in our Saxon race. She lay muffled in shawls, pillowed upon a carpet-bag, softened with his fur coat, frightened about the sea, and asking every few minutes whether we were near the port. He fell into conversation with me before we were clear of Folkestone harbour. He was a travelled man, accustomed to do his journeying socially, and not in the surly, self-contained, and selfish manner of our countrymen generally. I confess--and it is a boldness, knowing all I do know now--that I was drawn towards Daker at the outset. He had a winning manner--just that manner which puts you on a friendly footing with a stranger before you have passed an hour in his company. He began, as though it was quite natural that we should become acquainted, in the tone your neighbour at dinner assumes, although you are unacquainted with his name. We were on an exact level: gentlemen, beyond fear or reproach. I repeat emphatically, I liked Daker's manner, for it was easy and polished, and it had--which you don't often get with much polish--warmth. I was attracted by his many attentions to his young wife. Who could be near her, and not feel the chivalry in his soul warm to such a woman? But Daker's attentions were idiosyncrasies. While he was talking to me at the cabin-door, he saw the fur coat slip, and readjusted it. He divined when she wanted to move. He fanned her; and she sought his eyes incessantly with the deep pure blue of hers, and slaked her ever-thirsty love with long, passionate gazing. She took no notice of me: he was all her world. Daker was in an airy humour--a man I thought without guile or care, passing away from England to happy connubial times along the enchanting shores which the Mediterranean bathes. We fell, as fellow-travellers generally do, upon old stories of the ways of the world we had seen. He had taken wider ranges than my duties had ever entailed on me. Autumn was cooling to winter; it was early November when we met. "I have been," he said, "killing time and birds pleasantly enough in Sussex." Mrs. Daker overheard him, and smiled. Then we shifted carelessly, as far as I was concerned, away. He continued-- "And now we're off on the usual tramp. My wife wants a warm winter, and so do I, for the matter of that." "Nice?" I asked. A very decided "no" was the answer. "I shall find some little sleepy Italian country-place, where we shall lay up like dormice, and just give King Frost the go-by for once. Are you bound south?" "Only to Paris--as prosaic a journey as any cotton-spinner could desire." "Always plenty to be done in Paris," Daker said; "at least I have never felt at a loss. But it's a bachelor's paradise." "And a wife's," I interposed. "Not a husband's, you think?" Daker asked, turning the end of his moustache very tight. "I agree with you." "I have no experience; but I have an opinion, which I have been at some pains to gather--French society spoils our simple English women." "Most decidedly," said Daker. "They are too simple and too affectionate for the artificial, diplomatic--shall I say heartless?--society of the salons. Their ears burn at first at the conversation. They are presented to people who would barely be tolerated in the upper circles of South Bank, St. John's Wood." "You are right; I know it well," said Daker, very earnestly, but resuming his normal air of liveliness in an instant. "It's a bad atmosphere, but decidedly amusing. The _esprit_ of a good salon is delicious--nothing short of it. I like to bathe in it: it just suits me, though I can't contribute much to it. We Englishmen are not alert enough in mind to hold our own against our nimble neighbours. We shall never fence, nor dance, nor rally one another as they can. We are men who don't know how to be children. It's a great pity!" "I am not so sure of that," was the opinion I uttered. "We should lose something deeper and better. We don't enjoy life--that is, the art of living--as they do; but we reach deeper joys." Daker smiled, and protested playfully-- "We are running into a subject that would carry us far, if we would let it. I only know I wish I were a Frenchman with all my heart, and I'm not the first Englishman who has said so. Proud of one's country, and all that sort of thing: plucky, strong, master race of the world. I know it. But I have seen bitter life on that side"--pointing to the faint white line of Dover--"and I have enjoyed myself immensely on that"--pointing to the growing height of Cape Grisnez. I thought, as he spoke, that he must be an ungrateful fellow to say one word against the country where he had found the sweet little lady whose head was then pillowed upon his rough coat. I understood him afterwards. He started a fresh conversation, after having made a tender survey of the wraps and conveniences of Mrs. Daker, who followed him with the deep eyes as he returned to my side with his open cigar-case, to offer me a cheroot. "Do you know anything of Amiens?" he said. "Is it a large place--busy, thriving?" I gave him my impression--a ten-year old one. "Not a place a man could lose himself in, evidently," he joked; "and they've been mowed down rather smartly by the cholera since you were there." I could not quite like the tone of this; and yet what tenderness was in the man when he turned to his young wife! "St. Omer, Abbeville, Montreuil, and the rest of the places on the line, are dreary holes, I happen to know. You have been to Chantilly, of course?" [Illustration: A PIC-NIC AT ENGHIEN] I had lost a round sum of money in that delightful place, where our ambassador was wont to refresh himself after his diplomatic labours and ceremonials. "I know the place," Daker went on; "I know Chantilly well. It wakes up a curious dream of the long ago in my mind." "And Enghien?" "_Comme ma poche._" Daker knew his Enghien well--and Enghien was profoundly acquainted with Daker. Daker appeared to be a man not yet over his thirtieth year. He was fair, full-blooded, with a bright grey eye, a lithe shapely build, and distinguished in air and movement withal. There were no marks upon his face; his eyes were frank and direct; his speech was firm and of a cheery ring; and emotions seemed to come and go in him as in an unused nature. Yet his conversation, free as it was, and wholly unembarrassed, cast out frequent hints at a copious history and an eventful one, in which he had acted a part. I concluded he was no common man, and that, until now, the world had not treated him over well; albeit he had just received ample compensation for the past in the girlish wife who had crept to his side, and who, the swiftest runner might have read, loved him with all her soul. We all pride ourselves on our skill in reading the characters of our fellow-creatures. A man will admit any dulness except that which closes the hearts of others to him. I was convinced that I had read the character of Daker before we touched the quay at Boulogne: he was a man of fine and delicate nature, whom the world had hit; who had been cheery under punishment; and who had at length got his rich reward in Mrs. Daker. I repeat this confession, and to my cost; for it is necessary as part explanation of what follows. My conversation with Daker was broken by the call of a sweet voice--"Herbert!" We were crossing the bar at the entrance of Boulogne harbour. The good ship rolled heavily, and Herbert was wanted! When the passengers crowded to the side, pressing and jostling to effect an early landing, and the fishwives were scrambling from the paddles to the deck, I came upon Daker and his wife once more. She glanced shyly and not very good-humouredly at me, and seemed to say, "It was you who diverted the attention of my Herbert from me so long." "Good morning," Daker said, meaning that there was an end of our fortuitous intercourse, and that he should be just as chatty and familiar with any man who might happen to be in the same carriage with him between Boulogne and Paris. I watched him hand his wife into a basket phaeton, smooth her dress, arrange her little parcels, satisfy her as to her dressing-case, and then seat himself triumphantly at her side, and call gaily to the saturnine Boulounais upon the box, "Allez!" I confess that a pang of jealousy shot through me. It has been observed by La Rochefoucauld that it is astonishing how cheerfully we bear the ills of others; he might well have added that, on the other hand, it is remarkable how we fret over the happiness of our neighbours. I envied Daker when I saw him drive away to the station with the gentle girl at his side; I knew that she was nestling against him, and half her illness was only an excuse to get nearer to his heart. Why should I envy him? Could I have seen through his face into his heart at that moment I should have thanked God, who made me of simpler mould--a lonely, but an honourable man. We were on our way to Paris in due time. At Amiens, where we enjoyed the usual twenty minutes' rest, Daker offered me a light. I saw him making his way to the carriage in which his wife sat, with a basket of pears and some _caramels_. The bell rang, and we all hurried to our seats. I remarked that, at the point of starting, there was an unusual stir and noise on the platform. _Messieurs les voyageurs_ were not complete; somebody was missing from one of the carriages. The station-master and the guard kept up a brisk and angry conversation, which ended in an imperious wave of the hand to the engine-driver. The guard and the commissioner (who travels in the interest of the general vagrant public from London to Paris, making himself generally useful by the way) shrugged their shoulders and got to their places, and we went forward to Creil. Here the carriages were all searched carefully. A lady was inquiring for the gentleman. My French companions laughed, and answered in their native light manner; and again we were _en route_ for Paris. Past Chantilly and Enghien and St. Denis we flew, to where the low line of the fortifications warned us to dust ourselves, fold our newspapers, roll up our rugs, and tell one another that which was obvious to all--that we were in the centre of civilization once more. It was dark; and I was hungry, and out of humour, and impatient. I had fallen in with unsympathetic companions. That half-hour in the waiting-room, while the porters are arranging the luggage for examination, is trying to most tempers. I am usually free from it; but on this occasion I had some luggage belonging to a friend to look after. I was waiting sulkily. Presently the guard, the travelling commissioner, and half-a-dozen more in official costume, appeared, surrounding a lady, who was in deep distress. Had I seen a gentleman--fair, &c., &c.? I turned and beheld Mrs. Daker. She darted at me, and I can never forget the look which accompanied the question-- "You were with my husband on the boat. Where is he?" He was not among the passengers who reached Paris. We telegraphed back to Creil, and to Amiens. No English traveller, who had missed his train, made answer. We questioned all the passengers in the waiting-room; one had seen the _blonde_ Englishman buying pears at Amiens; this was all we could hear. I say "we," because Mrs. [Illustration: EXCURSIONISTS & EMIGRANTS. _Sketches in Paris_] Daker at once fastened upon me: she implored my advice; she narrated all that had passed between her husband and herself while the train was waiting at Amiens. He had begged her not to stir--kind fellow that he was--he had insisted upon fetching fruit and sweetmeats for her. I calmed her fears, for they were exaggerated beyond all reason. He would follow in the next train; I knew what Frenchmen were, and they would not remark a single traveller, unless he had some strong peculiarity in his appearance, and her husband had a travelled air which was cosmopolitan. He spoke French like a Frenchman, she told me; and he had proved, on the boat, that he was familiar with its idioms. I begged her to get her luggage, go to her hotel, and leave me to watch and search. What hotel were they to use? She knew nothing about it. Her husband hadn't told her, for she was an utter stranger to Paris. I recommended the Windsor (I thought it prudent not to say Mrs. Rowe's); and she was a child in my hands. She looked even prettier in her distress than when her happy eyes were beaming, as I first caught sight of them, upon Herbert Daker. The tears trickled down her cheek; the little white hands shook like flower bells in the wind. While the luggage was being searched (fortunately she had the ticket in her reticule), I stood by and helped her. "But surely, madam, this is not all!" I remarked, when her two boxes had been lightly searched. She caught my meaning. Where was her husband's portmanteau? "Mr. Baker's portmanteau was left behind at Boulogne--there was some mistake; I don't know what exactly. I----" At this moment she marked an expression of anxiety in my face. She gave a sharp scream, that vibrated through the gloomy hall and startled the bystanders. "Was madame ill? Would she have some _eau sucrée?_" She had fainted! and her head lay upon my arm! Unhappy little head, why stir again? CHAPTER XII. MRS. DAKER. "You must come, my dear fellow. You know, when I promise you a pleasant evening I don't disappoint you. You'll meet everybody. You dine with me. _Sole Joinville_, at Philippe's--best to be had, I think--and a bird. In the cool, the Madrid for our coffee, and so gently back. I'll drop you at your door--leave you for an hour to paint the lily, and then fetch and take you. You shall not say me nay." I protested a little, but I was won. I had a couple of days to spend in Paris, and, like a man on the wing, had no particular engagements. We met, my host and I, at the _Napolitain_. He knew everybody, and was everybody's favourite. Cosmo Bertram, once guardsman, then fashionable saunterer wherever society was gayest, quietly extravagant and sentimentally dissipated, had, after much flitting about the sunny centres of the Continent, settled down to Paris and a happy place in the English society that has agglomerated in the west of Napoleon's capital. Fortunately for his "little peace of mind"--as he described a shrewd, worldly head--he was put down by the dowagers, after some sharp discussions of his antecedents, as "no match." There was the orphan daughter of a Baronet who had some hundred and twenty a year, and tastes which she hoped one day to satisfy by annexing a creature wearing a hat, and a pocket with ten times that sum. She had thought for a moment of Cosmo Bertram when she had enjoyed her first half-hour of his amusing rattle; but she had been quickly undeceived--Bertram could not have added a chicken to her broth, a pair of gloves to her toilette; so she shut up the thing she called a heart, for lack of some fitter name, and cruised again through the ominous gold rings of her glasses round the _salons_, and hoped the growing taste for travel might send her some one for annexation at last. "We're jigging on pretty much as usual," Bertram said at Philippe's. "Plenty of scandal and plenty of reason for it. The demand creates the supply--is that sound political economy?" "I am surprised that political economy, together with an intimate acquaintance with hydrostatics, are not exacted in these mad examination days from a queen's messenger; but I am not bound not to be a fool in political economy, so I elect to be one." "Chablis?" "Ay; and about ice?" "My dear Q. M., when you have had a headache, has it ever fallen to your lot to be in the company of a pretty woman?" "Else had I been one of the most neglected of men." "Well, she has fetched the Eau-de-Cologne, bathed your manly brow, and then blown her balmy breath over your temples. That sweet coolness, my dear fellow, is my idea of the proper temperature for Chablis." "It's a great bit of luck to pounce upon you, Bertram, when a man has only a few hours to spend in Paris, after a year or two's absence. Nearly upon two years have passed since I was here. Yes, November, '62--now August, '64." "In that time, my dear Q. M., reputations have been made and lost by the hundred. I have had a score of eternal friendships. You can run through the matrimonial gauntlet, from courtship to the Divorce Court, in that time. We used to grieve for years: now we weep as we travel; shed tears, as we cast grain, by machinery. Two years! Why, I have passed through half-a-dozen worlds. My bosom friend of '62 wouldn't remember me if I met him to-morrow. I met old Baron Desordres, who has made such a brilliant _fiasco_ for everybody except himself, yesterday; I knew him in '62 with poor little Bartle, who lent him a couple of thousands. Bartle died last month. In '62 Desordres and Bartle were inseparable. I said to the Baron yesterday, 'You know poor little Bartle is dead.' The Baron, picking his teeth, murmured, turning over the leaves of his memory, '_Bartel! Bartel!_ I remember--_un petit gros, vrai?_' and the leaves of the Baron's memory were turned back, and Bartle was as much forgotten in five minutes as the burnt end of a cigarette. I daresay his sisters are gone as governesses for want of the thousands the Baron ate. Two years! Two epochs!" "I suppose so. While the light burns, and the summer is on, the moths come out. Tragedy, comedy, and farce elbow each other through the rooms. I have seen very much myself, for bird of passage. I took part in a strange incident when I passed through last time." "Tell your story, and drink your Roederer, my dear Q. M." "Story! I want to get at the story. I travelled with a man and his wife from Folkestone to Paris. On the boat he was the most attentive of husbands; at the terminus he had disappeared. Poor woman in tears; fell into my arms, sir, by Jove!" "No story!" cried Bertram, winking at the floating air-beads in his glass. "No story! my good, simple Q.M. Egad! what would you have? Pray go on." "Go on! I've finished. I was off in the afternoon by the Marseilles mail. Of course, I did my utmost to find the husband. She went to the Windsor; I thought it would be quiet for her. I went to the police, paid to have inquiries kept up in all the hotels; and lastly, put her in communication with a good business man--Moffum, you know; and left her, a wreck of one of the prettiest creatures I have ever seen." "What kind of fellow was the husband? You got his name, of course?" "Daker--Herbert Daker. Man of good family. A most agreeable, taking, travelled companion; light and bright as----" "The light-hearted Janus of Lamb," Bertram interrupted, his words dancing lightly as the beads in his glass. The association of Daker with Wainwright struck me sharply. For how genial and accomplished a man was the criminal! a stranger conglomeration of graces and sins never dwelt within one human breast. I was started on wild speculations. "I've set you dreaming. You found no clue to a history?" "None. She had been married three months to Daker. She was a poor girl left alone, with a few hundreds, I apprehend. She would not say much. A runaway match, I concluded. Not a word about her family. When I left Paris, after dinner, he had made no sign. She promised to write to me to Constantinople. I gave her my address in town. I told her Arthur's here would reach me. But not a word, my dear boy. That woman had the soul of truth in voice and look, or I never read Eve's face yet." "Ha! ha!" Bertram laughed. "I wish I had not got beyond the risk of being snared by the un-gloving of a hand. You only pass through, I live in Paris." "Paris or London, a heart may be read, if you will only take the trouble. I shall never hear, in all human probability, what has become of Mrs. Daker, or her husband; she may be an intrigante, and he a card-sharper now; all I know, and will swear, is that she loved that man to distraction then, and it was a girl in love." "And he?" Bertram's suspicions seemed to be fixed on Daker, whom he had never seen; although I had described his eminently prepossessing qualities. "I can't understand why you should suspect Daker of villany, as I see you do, Bertram." "I tell you he was a most accomplished, prepossessing villain, my dear Q.M. Your upper class villains are always prepossessing. Manners are as necessary to them as a small hand to a pickpocket." "Sharp, but unfair--only partly true, like all sweeping generalizations. I think, as I hope, that the wife found the husband, and that they are nestling in some Italian retreat." "And never had the grace to write you a word! No, no, you say they had manners. That, at any rate, then, is not the solution of the mystery." Bertram was right here. Then what had become of Mrs. Daker? Daker, if alive, was a scoundrel, and one who had contrived to take care of himself. But that sweet country face! Here was a heart that might break, but would never harden. "Mystery it must and will remain, I suppose." "One of many," was Bertram's gay reply. "How they overload these matches with sulphur!" He was lighting his cigar. His phaeton was at the door. A globule of Chartreuse; a compliment for the _chef_, a bow to the _dame de comptoir_, and we were on our way to the Bois, at a brisk trot, for the great world had cleared off to act tragedy and comedy by the ocean shore, or the invalid's well, or the gambler's green baize. Bertram--one of that great and flourishing class of whom Scandal says "she doesn't know how they do it, or who pays for it"--albeit a bad match, even for Miss Tayleure, was, as I have said, in good English and French society, and drove his phaeton. He was saluted on his way along the Champs Elysées and by the lake, by many, and by some ladies who were still unaccountably lingering in Paris. A superb little Victoria passed. Bertram raised his hat. "An Irish girl," he said, "of superb beauty." At the Madrid we met a few people we knew; and, driving home, Bertram saluted Miss Tayleure, who was crawling round the lake with her twin sister, and was provoked to be recognised by a man of fashion in a hack vehicle in the month of August. [Illustration: BOIS DE BOULOGNE.] "Charming evening they're having," said Bertram: "taking out their watches every two minutes to be quite sure they shall get back within the hour and a half which they have made up their minds to afford. Beastly position!" "What! living for appearances?" "Just so; with women especially. Their dodges are extraordinary. Tayleure would cheapen a penny loaf, and run down the price of a box of lucifer matches. There's a chance for you! She would be an economical wife; but then, my dear fellow, she would spend all the savings on herself. Her virtue is like Gibraltar!" "And would be safe as unintrenched tableland, I should think." "Hang it!" Bertram handsomely interposed, "let us drop poor Tayleure. She believes that her hour of happiness has to be rung in yet; and she is always craning out of the window to catch the first silver echoes of the bells. The old gentlewoman is happy." "Suppose you tell me something about your Irish beauty," I suggested. "Quite a different story, my good Q.M. Wait till I get clear of this clumsy fellow ahead. So, so, gently. Now, Miss Trefoil; the Trefoil is a girl whose success I can understand perfectly. To begin with--the girl is educated. In the second place, she is, beyond all dispute, a beautiful woman. There is not another pair of violet eyes in all Paris--I mean in the season--to be matched with hers. Milk and roses--nothing more--for complexion: and _no_ paint; which makes her light sisters--accomplished professors of the art of _maquillage_--hate her. A foot!" Bertram kissed the tip of his glove, by way of description. "A voice that seems to make the air rich about her." "Gently, Bertram. We must be careful how we approach your queen, I see." "Not a bit of it. I am telling you just what you would hear in any of the clubs. She has a liberal nature, my boy, and loves nobody, that I can find, in particular. What bewitches me in talking to her is a sort of serious background. I hate a woman all surface as I hate a flat house. The Trefoil--queer name, isn't it?--can put a tremor in her voice suddenly. The Trefoil has memories--a fact: something which she doesn't give to the world, generous as she is. It is the shade to her abounding and sparkling passages of light. Only her deep art, I dare say; but devilish pleasant and refreshing when you get tired of laughing--gives a little repose to facial muscles. The Trefoil has decidedly made a sensation. At the races she was as popular as the winner. She must have got home with a chariot full of money. Of course, when she bet, she won--or she didn't pay. A pot of money is to be made on that system: and the women, bless 'em, how kindly they've taken to it!" This kind of improving discourse employed us to my gate. Bertram dropped me to return for "the painted lily" in an hour. I am no squeamish man, or I should have passed a wretched life. The man who is perpetually travelling must bear with him a pliant nature that will adapt itself to any society, to various codes of morals, habits of thought, rules of conduct, and varieties of temperament. I can make myself at home in most places, but least in those regions which the progress of civilization, or the progress of something, has established in every capital of Europe, and to the description of which the younger Dumas has devoted his genius. The atmosphere of the _demi-monde_ never delighted me. I see why it charms; I guess why it has become the potent rival of good society; the reason why men of genius, scholars, statesmen, princes, and all the great of the earth take pleasure in it, is not far to seek; silly women at home are to blame in great part. This new state of the body social is very much to be regretted; but I am not yet of those who think that good, decent society--the converse of honourable men with honourable women--is come or coming to an end. I am of the old-fashioned, who have always been better pleased and more diverted with the society of ladies than with that of the free graces who allow smoke and indulge in it, and who have wit but lack wisdom. I was not in high glee at the prospect of accompanying Cosmo Bertram to his free dancing party. They are all very much alike. The fifteen sous basket, to use Dumas' fine illustration, in Paris, is very like the Vienna, the Berlin, or the London basket. The ladies are beautiful, exquisitely dressed, vivacious, and, early in the evening, well-mannered. At the outset you might think yourself at your embassy; at the close you catch yourself hoping you will get away safely. Shrill voices pipe in corners of the room. "_On sautera!_" People are jumping with a vengeance. The paint is disturbed upon your partner's face. Pretty lips speak ugly words. _Honi soit qui mal y pense;_ but then the gentleman is between two and three wines, and the lady is rallying him because he has sense enough left to be a little modest. A couple sprawl in a waltz. A gentleman roars a toast. The hostess prays for less noise. An altercation breaks out in the antechamber. Two ladies exchange slaps on the face, and you thank madame for a charming evening. The next morning you are besieged, at your club, for news about Aspasia's reception. She did the honours _en souveraine_; but it is really a pity she will not be less attentive to the champagne. Everything would have gone off splendidly if that little _diablesse_ Titi had not revived her feud with Fanchette. You are not surprised to hear that Aspasia's goods were seized this morning. The duke must have had more than enough of it by this time, and has, of course, discovered that he has been the laughing-stock of his friends for a long time past. Over the absinthe tripping commentary Aspasia sinks from the Chasusée d'Antin to the porter's lodge. A little _crévé_ taps his teeth with the end of his cane, blinks his tired, wicked eyes, like a monkey in the sun, through his _pince-nez_, and opines, with a sharp relish, that Aspasia is destined to sweep her five stories--well. Pah! What kind of discourse is all this for born and bred gentlemen to hold in these days, when the portals of noble knowledge lie wide open, and every man may grace his humanity with some special wisdom of his own! Bertram, a ribbon in his buttonhole, and arrayed to justify his fame as one of the best-dressed men in Paris, came in haste for me. "We are late, my dear Q.M. This is not carnival time, remember. We jump early." The rooms were--but I cannot be at the pains of describing them. The reader knows what Sévres and Aubusson, St. Gobain, Barbédienne, Fourdinois, Jeanseline, Tahan, and the rest, can do for a first floor within a stone's throw of the Boulevard des Italiens. The fashion in all its most striking aspects is here. The presents lie thick as autumn leaves. The bonne says you might fill a portmanteau with madame's fans. Bertram is recognised by a dozen ladies at once. The lady of the house receives me with the lowest curtsey. No ambassadress could be more _gracieuse_. The toilettes are amazing. It is early, after all Bertram's impatience. The state is that of a duchesse for the present. Bertram leaves me and is lost in the crowd. The conversation is measured and orderly. The dancing begins, and I figure in the quadrille of honour. I am giving my partner--a dark-eyed, vivacious lady--an ice, when I am tapped upon the shoulder by Cosmo Bertram. Bertram has a lady on his arm. He turns to her, saying-- "Permit me to present my friend to you, Madame Trefoil----" "What! Mrs. Daker!" I cried. Mrs. Daker's still sweet eyes fell upon me; and she shook my hand; and by her commanding calmness smothered my astonishment, so that the bystanders should not see it. Later in the evening she said--passing me in the crowd--"Come and see me." I did not--I could not--next morning, tell Lucy nor Mrs. Rowe. CHAPTER XIII. AT BOULOGNE-SUR-MER. I had an unfortunate friend at Boulogne in the year 1865--then and many years before. He lived on the ramparts in the upper town; had put on that shabby military air, capped with a naval _couvre-chef_ (to use a Paris street word that is expressive, as street words often are), which distinguishes the British inhabitant of Boulogne-sur-mer; and was the companion of a group of majors and skippers, sprinkled with commercial men of erratic book-keeping tendencies. He had lost tone. He took me to his club; nothing more than a taproom, reserved to himself and men with whom he would not have exchanged a cigar light in London. The jokes were bad and flat. A laid-up captain of an old London boat--sad old rascal was he!--led the conversation. Who was drunk last night? How did the Major get the key into the lock? Who paid for Todger's last go? "My word," said I, to my friend, who had liquored himself out of one of the snuggest civil berths I know, "how you can spend your time with those blackguards, surpasses my comprehension." They amused him, he said. He must drink with them, or play whist with another set, whose cards--he emphatically added, giving me to understand much thereby--he did not like. It was only for a short time, and he would be quit of them. This was his day dream. My friend was always on the point of getting rid of Boulogne; everything was just settled; and so, buoyed with a hope that never staled, death caught him one summer's afternoon, in the Rue Siblequin, and it was the bibulous sea captain and the very shady major who shambled after him, when he was borne through those pretty _Petits Arbres_ to the English section of the cemetery. Wrecks of many happy families lie around him in that narrow field of rest; and passing through on my state errands, I have thought once or twice, what sermons indeed are there not in the headstones of Boulogne cemetery. I was with my poor friend in the December of 1865. I was on way home to pass a cheery Christmas with my own people--a luxury which was not often reserved for me--and he had persuaded me to give him a couple of days. It would have been hard to refuse Hanger, who had been gazing across Channel so many weary months, seeing friends off whither he might not follow; and wondering when he should trip down the ladder, and bustle with the steward in the cabin, and ask the sailors whether we shall have a fine passage. To see men and women and children crowding home to their English Christmas from every corner of Europe, and to be left behind to eat plum-pudding in a back parlour of an imitation British tavern, with an obsolete skipper, and a ruined military man, whose family blushed whenever his name was mentioned, was trying. Hanger protested he had no sentiment about Christmas, but he nearly wrung my hand off when he took leave of me. It was while we were sauntering along the port, pushing hard against a blustering northerly wind, and I was trying to get at the truth about Hanger's affairs, advising him at every turn to grasp the bull by the horns, adopt strong measures, look his creditors full in the face--the common counsel people give their friends, but so seldom apply in their own instance--that we were accosted by a man who had just landed from the Folkestone boat. He wanted a place--yes, a cheap place--where they spoke English and gave English fare. Hanger hastened to refer him to his own British tavern, and, turning to me, said, "Must give Cross a good turn--a useful fellow in an emergency." I returned with Hanger to the tavern, much against my will; but he insisted I should not give myself airs, but consent to be his guest to the extent of some bitter ale. Cross's new client was before a joint of cold beef, on the merits of which, combined with pickled onions, pickled by the identical hands of Mrs. Cross, Cross could not be prevailed upon to be quiet. "Not a bad bit of beef," said the stranger, helping himself to a prodigious slice. "Another pint of beer." Cross carried off the tankard, and returned, still muttering--"Not bad beef, I should think not--nor bad ale neither. Had the beef over from the old country." The stranger brought his fist with tremendous force upon the table, and roared--"That's right, landlord; that's it; stick to that." Cross, thus encouraged, would have treated the company to a copious dissertation on the merits of British fare, had not the company chorused him down with--"Now Cross is off! Cross on beef! Cross on beer!" In a furious passion Cross left the room, rowing that he would be even with "the captain" before the day was over. Hanger considered himself bound to ask the stranger whether he was satisfied with his recommendation. "Couldn't be better, thankee," the stranger answered; "but the landlord doesn't seem to know much about the place. New comer, I suppose?" "Was forty years ago," the old captain said, looking round for a laugh; "but he doesn't go out of the street once a month." "I asked him where Marquise was, and be hanged if he could tell me. I want to know particularly." The major glanced at the captain, and the captain at a third companion. Was somebody wanted? Who was hiding at Marquise? "Thought every fool knew that," the captain said, in the belief that he had made a palpable hit. "Every fool who lives in these parts, leastwise," the stranger retorted. "Perhaps you'll direct me?' "Now, look you here, sir," the captain was proceeding, leisurely emphasizing each word with a puff of tobacco smoke. But the stranger would not be patient. He changed his tone, and answered, fiercely-- "I'm in no mind for fun or chaff. I've got d----d serious business on hand; and if you can tell me how to get to Marquise, tell me straight off, and ha' done with it--and I shall be obliged to you." With this he finished his second tankard of ale. Hanger, feeling some responsibility about the man he had introduced, approached him with marked urbanity, and offered his services-- "I know Marquise and Wimille." "Wimille! that's it!" the stranger cried. "Right you are. That's my direction. This is business. Yes, between Marquise and Wimille." "Precisely," Hanger continued, as we proceeded towards the door. I heard the major growl between his teeth in our rear--"Hanger's got him well in tow." I should have been glad to show the man his way, and leave him to follow it; but Hanger, who could not resist an adventure, drew me aside and said--"We may as well drive to Marquise as anywhere else. We shall be back easily for the _table d'hôte_." The expedition was not to my taste; but I yielded. The stranger was glad of our company, for the reason, which he bluntly explained, that we might be of some use to him; for the place was not exactly at Marquise nor at Wimille. We hired a carriage, and were soon clattering along the Calais road, muffled to our noses to face the icy wind. The stranger soon communicated his name, saying, "My name is Reuben Sharp, and I don't care who knows it. Ask who Reuben Sharp is at Maidstone: they'll tell you." Reuben Sharp was a respectable farmer--it was not necessary for him to tell us that. He was a man something over fifty: sharp eyes, round head, ruddy face, short hair flaked with white, which he matted over his forehead at intervals with a flaming bandanna; a voice built to call across a field or two; limbs equal to any country work or sport. In short, an individual as peculiar to England as her chalk cliffs. When he found that we knew something--and more than something--of the hunting-field, and that I knew his country, including Squire Lufton, to say nothing of the Lion at Farningham (one of the sweetest and most charming hostelries in all England), he took me to his heart, and told me his mission and his grief. "I don't know how I shall meet him," Reuben Sharp said; "I'm not quite certain about myself. The man I'm going to see--this Matthew Glendore--has done me and mine a bitter wrong. The villain brought dishonour on my family. I knew he was in difficulties when he came into our parts, and took two rooms in Mother Gaselee's cottage. But he was a gentleman, every inch of it, in appearance. A d--d good shot; rode well; and--you know what fools girls are!" I could only listen: any question might prove a most indiscreet one. Hanger was not quite so sensitive. "Fools!" he cried--"they are answerable for more mischief in the world than all the men and children, and the rest of the animal creation put together." "And yet no man's worth a woman's little finger, if you know what I mean," Reuben Sharp went on, struggling manfully to get clear expression for the tumult of painful feeling that was in him. "They don't know what the world is; you cannot make 'em understand. The best fall into the hands of the worst men. She was the best, and he was the worst: the best, that she was. And I sent him to her, where she was living like an honest woman, and learning to be a lady, in London." "And who is this Matthew Glendore, whom you are going to see?" "The worst of men--the basest; and he's on his death-bed! and I'm to forgive him! I! "Where is she? where is she, Glendore? for I know you through your disguise." We stared at the farmer while he raved, lit his cigar, and then, in the torrent of his passion, let it out again. As we dipped to the hollow in which Wimille lay, passing carts laden with iron ore, Sharp became more excited. "We cannot be far off now. He's lying at one of the iron-masters' houses, half a mile beyond this Wimille. Let's stop: I must have some brandy-and-water." Hanger joyfully fell in with this proposition, vowing that he was frozen, and really could not stand the cold without, unless he had something warm within, any longer. We alighted at the village cabaret, and drew near the sweet-smelling wood fire, from which the buxom landlady drove two old men for our convenience. I protested they should not be disturbed; but they went off shivering, as they begged us to do them the honour of taking up their post in the chimney-corner. We threw our coats off, and the grog was brought. The woman produced a little carafon of brandy. "Tell her to bring the bottle," Sharp shouted, impatiently. "Does she take us to be school girls? Let the water be boiling. Ask her--Does she know anything of this Matthew Glendore?" The farmer mixed himself a stiff glass of brandy-and-water, while he watched Hanger questioning the landlady with many bows and smiles. "Plenty of palavering," Sharp muttered; then shouted--"Does she know the scoundrel?" "One minute, my friend," Hanger mildly observed, meaning to convey to Sharp that he was asking a favour of gentlemen, not roaring his order to slaves. "Permit me to get the good woman's answers. Yes; she knows Monsieur Glendore." "Mounseer Glendore! She knows no good of him." "On the contrary," mildly pursued Hanger, sipping his grog, and nicely balancing it with sugar to his taste--"on the contrary, my good sir, she says he is a brave fellow--what she calls a _brave garçon_." "Doesn't know him then, Mounseer Glendore! I wonder how many disguises he has worn in his life--how many women he has trapped and ruined! Ask her how long he has been here?" The landlady answered--"Two years about the middle of next month." "And he has never left this since?" Sharp went on, mixing himself by this time a second glass of brandy-and-water. The landlady had never been a day without seeing him. He came to play his game of dominoes in the evening frequently. The dominoes exasperated the farmer. He would as soon see a man with crochet needles. "D--n him!" Sharp shouted; "just like him." I now ventured to interfere. Reuben Sharp was becoming violent with passion inflamed by brandy. The landlady was certain poor Monsieur Glendore would never rise from his bed again. I said to Sharp--"Whatever the wrong may be this man has done you, Mr. Sharp, pray remember he is dying. He is passing beyond your judgment." "Is he? Passing from my grip, is he? No--no--Herbert Daker." Sharp had sprung from his chair, and was shaking his fist in the air. "Daker! Herbert Daker!" I seized Reuben Sharp by the shoulder, and shook him violently. "What do you know about Herbert Daker?" Sharp turned upon me a face shattered with rage, and hissed at me. "What do I know about him? What do _you_ about him? Are you his friend?" "I am not: never will, nor can be," was my reply. Sharp wrung my hand till it felt bloodless. "Herbert Daker is Matthew Glendore--Mounseer Glendore. When did you meet him?" "On the Boulogne steamer, about three years ago, when he was crossing with his wife." "Then!" Sharp exclaimed, and again he took a draught of brandy-and-water. At this moment Hanger, who had been talking with the landlady, joined us, and whispered--"Be calm, gentlemen; this is a time for calmness. Glendore is at hand--in a little cottage on Monsieur Guibert's works. Madame says if we wish to see him alive, we had better lose no time. The clergyman from Boulogne arrived about an hour ago, and is with him now. His wife!----" "His wife!" Sharp was now a pitiable spectacle. He finished his glass, and caught Hanger by the collar of his coat--staring into his face to get at all the truth. "Glendore's wife!" Hanger was as cool as man could be. He disengaged himself deliberately from the farmer's grip, put the table between them, and went smoothly on with the further observation he had to make! "I repeat, according to the landlady, whose word we have no reason to doubt, his wife is with him--and his mother!" Sharp struck the table and roared that it was impossible. I stood in hopeless bewilderment. "Would it be decent to intrude at such a moment?" "Decent!" Sharp was frantically endeavouring to button up his coat. "D--n it, decent! Which is the way? My girl--my poor girl!" "Show him," I contrived to say to Hanger, and he took the landlady's directions, while I passed my arm through Reuben Sharp's. We stumbled and blundered along in Hanger's footsteps, round muddy corners, past heaps of yellow ore, Sharp muttering and cursing and gesticulating by the way. We came suddenly to a halt at the little green door of a four-roomed cottage. "Knock! knock!" Sharp shouted, pressing with his whole weight against the door. "Let me see her!--the villain!--Mounseer Glendore!--No, no, Herbert Daker!" The power of observation is at its quickest in moments of intense excitement. I remember looking with the utmost calmness at Sharp's face and figure, as he stood gasping before the door of Herbert Daker's lodging. It was the head of a satyr in anger. "Daker--Herbert Daker!" Sharp cried. The door was suddenly thrown open, and an English clergyman, unruffled and full of dignity, stood in the entrance. Sharp was a bold, untutored man; but he dared not force his way past the priest. "Quiet, gentlemen--be quiet. Step in--but quiet--quiet." We were in the chamber of Matthew Glendore in a moment. A lady rose from the bedside. Humble, and yet stately, a white face with red and swollen eyelids, eyes with command in them. We were uncovered, and in an instant wholly subdued. "My child--my girl!" Reuben Sharp moaned. The clergyman approached him, and laid his hand upon him. "Whom do you want?" "Mrs. Daker--my--" The pale lady, full of grief, advanced a step, and looking full in the face of Reuben Sharp, said, "I, sir, am Mrs. Daker." I had never seen that lady before. "You!" Sharp shouted, shaking with rage. But the minister firmly laid his hand upon him now, saying, "Hush! in the chamber of death! His mother is at his bedside; spare her." At this, a little figure with a ghastly face rose from the farther side of the bed. "Mrs. Rowe!" I cried. She had not the power left to scream; and her head fell heavily upon the pillow of the dying man. "Enough, enough!" the clergyman said with authority--closing the door of the chamber wherein Herbert Daker, the "Mr. Charles" of the Rue Millevoye, lay dead! CHAPTER XIV. THE CASTAWAY. Cosmo Bertram was at a very low ebb. No horse. Had moved off to Batignolles. Had not been asked to the Embassy for a twelvemonth. When he ventured into the Tuileries gardens in the afternoon, it somehow happened that the backs of the ladies' chairs were mostly turned towards him. He was still dapper in appearance; but a close observer could see a difference. Management was perceptible in his dress. He had no watch; but the diamond remained on his finger--for the present; and yet society had nothing seriously compromising to say against him. It was rumoured that he had seen the interior of Clichy twice. So had Sir Ronald, who was now the darling of the Faubourg; but then, note the difference. Sir Ronald had re-issued with plenty of money--or credit, which to society is the same thing; while poor Bertram had stolen down the hill by back streets to Batignolles, where he had found a cheap nest, and whence he trudged to his old haunts with a foolish notion that people would believe his story about a flying visit to England, and accept his translation to Batignolles as a sanitary precaution strongly recommended by his physician. If society be not yet civilized enough to imitate the savages, who kill the old members of the community, it has studied the philosophy of the storks in Jutland, who get rid of their ailing, feeble brother storks, at the fall of the year. Bertram was a bird to be pecked to pieces, and driven away from the prosperous community, being no longer prosperous. First among the sharp peckers was Miss Tayleure, who always had her suspicions of Captain Bertram, although she was too good-natured to say anything. The seasons had circled three or four times since she had had the honour of being introduced to the gentleman, and yet the lady was waiting to see what the improved facilities for travel might bring her in the matrimonial line. She had, her dearest friends said, almost made up her mind to marry into commerce. "Poor Tayleure!" one of the attachés said, at the Café Anglais, over his Marennes oysters, after the opera; "doomed to pig-iron, I'm afraid. Must do it. Can't carry on much longer. Another skein of false hair this season, by Jove." In a society so charmingly constituted, the blows are dealt with an impartial hand; and it is so mercifully arranged, that he who is doubling his fist seldom feels the blow that is falling upon his own back. It was a belief which consoled the poor Baronet's orphan through her dreary time at the boarding-house--that, at least, she was free from damaging comment. Her noble head was many inches out of water; the conviction gave her superb confidence when she had to pass an opinion on her neighbour. Two old friends of Cosmo Bertram are lounging in the garden of the Imperial Club. "Hasn't old Tayleure got her knife into Bertram! Poor dear boy. It's all up with him. Great pity. Was a capital fellow." "Don't you know the secret? The old girl had designs on Bertram when he first turned up; and the Daker affair cast her plot to the winds. Mrs. Daker, you remember, was at old Tayleure's place--Rue d'Angoulême!" "A pretty business that was. But who the deuce was Daker?" "Bad egg." The threads of this story lay in a tangle--in Paris, in Boulogne, and in Kent! I never laboured hard to unravel them; but time took up the work, and I was patient. Also, I was far away from its scenes, and only passed through them at intervals--generally at express speed. It so happened, however, that I was at hand when the crisis and the close came. Mrs. Daker was living in a handsome apartment when I called upon her on the morrow of the ball. She wept passionately when she saw me. She said--"I could have sunk to the earth when I saw you with Bertram--of all men in the world." I could get no answers to my questions save that she had heard no tidings of her husband, and that she had never had the courage to write to her father. Plentiful tears and prayers that I would forget her; and never, under any temptation, let her people, should I come across them, know her assumed name, or her whereabouts. I pressed as far as I could, but she shut her heart upon me, and hurried me away, imploring me never to return, nor to speak about her to Cosmo Bertram. "He will never talk about me," she added, with something like scorn, and something very like disgust. I left Paris an hour or two after this interview; and when I next met Bertram--at Baden, I think, in the following autumn--great as my curiosity was, I respected Mrs. Baker's wish. He never touched upon the subject; and, since I could not speak, and my suspicions affected him in a most painful manner, I did not throw myself in his way, nor give him an opportunity of following me up. Besides, he was in a very noisy, reckless set, and was, I could perceive before I had talked to him ten minutes, on the way to the utter bad. When I remembered our conversation about Daker, his light, airy, unconcerned manner, and the consummate deceit which effectually conveyed to me the idea that he had never heard the name of Daker, I was inclined to turn upon him, and let him know I was not altogether in the dark. Again, at the ball, he had carried off the introduction to Mrs. Trefoil with masterly coolness, making me a second time his dupe. Had we met much we should have quarrelled desperately; for I recollected the innocent English face I had first seen on the Boulogne boat, and the unhappy woman who had implored me not to speak her name to him. The days follow one another and have no resemblance, says the proverb. I passed away from Baden, and Bertram passed out of my mind. I had not seen him again when I spent those eventful few days at Boulogne with Hanger. Another year had gone, and I had often thought over the death scene of Daker, and Sharp's trudges about Paris in search of his niece. I could not help him, for I was homeward bound at the time, and shortly afterwards was despatched to St. Petersburg. But I gave him letters. There was one hope that lingered in the gloom of this miserable story; perhaps Mrs. Daker had won the love of some honest man, and, emancipated by Daker's deceit and death, might yet spend some happy days. And then the figure of Cosmo Bertram would rise before me--and I knew he was not the man to atone a fault or sin by a sacrifice. I was in Paris again at the end of 1866. I heard nothing, save that Sharp had returned home, having tried in vain to find the child to whom he had been a father since the death of his brother. He had identified her as Mrs. Trefoil; he had discovered that shame had come upon her and him; and he had made out the nature of the relations between his niece and Captain Cosmo Bertram. But Captain Bertram was not in Paris; Mrs. Trefoil had disappeared and left no sign. So many exciting stories float about Paris in the course of a season, that such an event as the appearance of a Kentish farmer in search of Mrs. Daker, afterwards Mrs. Trefoil, and the connexion of Captain Bertram with her name, is food for a few days only. This is a very quiet humdrum story, when it is compared with the dramas of society, provincial and Parisian, which the _Gazette des Tribunaux_ is constantly presenting to its readers. When I reached Paris it was forgotten. Miss Tayleure had moved off to Tours--for economy some said; to break new ground, according to others. There had been diplomatic changes. The English society had received many accessions, and suffered many secessions. I went to my old haunts and found new faces. I was met with a burst of passionate tears by Lucy Rowe, end honest Jane, the servant. Mrs. Rowe was lying, with all her secrets and plots, in Père Lachaise--to the grief, among others, of the Reverend Horace Mohun, who would hardly be comforted by Lucy's handsome continuance of the buttered toast and first look at the _Times_. Lucy, bright and good Lucy, had become queen and mistress of the boarding-house--albeit she had not a thimbleful of the blood of the Whytes of Battersea in her veins. But of the Rue Millevoye presently. I came upon Bertram by accident by the Montmartre cemetery, whither I had been with a friend to look at a new-made grave. As I have observed, Bertram had reached a very low ebb. He avoided his old thoroughfares. He had discovered that all the backs of the Tuileries chairs were towards him. Miss Tayleure had had her revenge before she left. He had heard that "the fellows were sorry for him," and that they were not anxious to see him. The very waiters in his café knew that evil had befallen him, and were less respectful than of old. No very damaging tales, as I have said, were told against him; but it was made evident to him that Paris society had had enough of him for the present, and that his comfortable plan would be to move off. Cosmo Bertram had moved off accordingly; and when I met him at Montmartre he had not been heard of for many months. I should have pushed on, but he would not let me. A man in misfortune disarms your resentment. When the friend who has been always bright and manly with you, approaches with a humble manner, and his eyes say to you, while he speaks, "Now is not the time to be hard," you give in. I parted with my fellow-mourner, and joined Bertram, saying coldly--"We have not met, Bertram, for many months--it seems years. What has happened?" The man's manner was completely changed. He talked to me with the cowed manner of a conscious inferior. He was abashed; as changed in voice and expression as in general effect. "Ruin--nothing more," he answered me. "Baden--Homburg, I suppose?" "No; tomfoolery of every kind. I'm quite broken. That friend of yours didn't recognise me, did he?" "Had never seen you before, I'm quite sure." I took him into a quiet café and ordered breakfast. His face and voice recalled to me all the Daker story; and I felt that I was touching another link in it. He avoided my eye. He grasped the bottle greedily, and took a deep draught. The wine warmed him, and loosed "the jesses of his tongue." He had a long tale to tell about himself! He disburdened his breast about Clichy; of all the phases of his decline from the fashionable man in the Bois to the shabby skulker in the _banlieue_, he had something to say. He had been everybody's victim. The world had been against him. Friends had proved themselves ungrateful, and foes had acted meanly. Nobody could imagine half his sufferings. While he dwelt on himself with all the volubility and wearying detail of a wholly selfish man, I was eager to catch the least clue to a history that interested me much more deeply than his; and in which I had good reason to suspect he had not borne an honourable part. The gossips had confirmed the fears which Mrs. Daker had created. I had picked up scraps here and there which I had put together. "I am obliged to keep very dark, my dear Q.M.," Bertram said at last, still dwelling on the inconvenience to himself. "Hardly dare to move out of the quarter. Disgusting bore." "A debt?" I asked. "Worse." "What then, an entanglement; the old story, petticoats?" "Precisely. To-day I ought to be anywhere but here; the old boy is over, or will be, in a few hours." The whole story was breaking upon me; Bertram saw it, and my manner, become icy to him, was closing the sources upon me. I resolved to get the mystery cleared up. I resumed my former manner with him, ordered some Burgundy, and entreated him to proceed. "You remember," he said, "your story about the girl you met travelling with her husband on the Boulogne boat--Mrs. Daker." His voice fell as he pronounced the name. "I deceived you, my dear Q. M., when I affected unconcern and ignorance." "I know it, Bertram," was my answer. "But that is unimportant: go on." "I met Mrs. Daker at her hotel, very soon after she arrived in Paris. She talked about you; and I happened to say that I knew you. We were friends at once." "More than friends." "I see," Bertram continued, much relieved at finding his revelation forestalled in its chief episodes; "I see there is not much to tell you. You are pretty well posted up. I cannot see why you should look so savage; Mrs. Daker is no relation of yours." "No!" I shouted, for I could not hold my passion--"had she been----" "You would have the right to call me to account. As it is," Bertram added, rising, "I decline to tell you more, and I shall wish you good-day." After all Bertram was right; I had no claim to urge, no wrong to redress. Besides, by my hastiness, I was letting the thread slip through my fingers. "Sit down, Bertram; you are the touchiest man alive. It is no concern of mine, but I have seen more than you imagine--I have seen Daker; I have been with Sharp." Bertram grasped my arm. "Tell me all, then; I must know all. You don't know how I have suffered, my dear Q. M. Tell me everything." "First let me ask you, Bertram, have you been an honourable man to Mrs. Daker?" "Explain yourself." "Where is she? Her uncle has broken his heart!" "All I need say is, that she is with me, and that it is I who have sacrificed almost my honour in keeping her with me, after----" I understood the case completely now. "You found the prey at the right moment, Bertram. Poor forsaken woman! You took it; you lost it; it falls into your hands again--broken unto death." "Unto death!" Bertram echoed. I related to him my adventure in Boulogne; and when I came to Baker's end, and his bigamy, Bertram exclaimed-- "The villain! My dear Q. M., I loved--I do love her; she might have been my wife. The villain!" "You say she is with you, Bertram. Where? Can I see her?" "You cannot, she's very ill So ill, I doubt----" "And you are here, Bertram?" "Her uncle--Sharp--is with her by this time. She implored me not to be in the way. There would be a row, you know, and I hate rows." It was Bertram to the last. _He_ hated rows! I suddenly turned upon him with an idea that flashed through my mind. "Bertram, you owe this poor woman some reparation. You love her, you say--or have loved her." "Do love her now." "She is a free woman; indeed, poor soul, she has always been. Marry her--take her away--and get to some quiet place where you will be unknown. You will be happy with her, or I have strangely misread her." "Can't," Bertram dolefully answered. "Not a farthing." "I'll help you." Bertram grasped my hand. His difficulty was removed. I continued rapidly, "Give me your address. I'll see Sharp, and, if they permit me, Mrs. Daker. Let us make an effort to end this miserable business well. You had better remain behind till I have settled with Sharp." Bertram remained inert, without power of thinking or speaking, in his seat. I pushed him, to rouse him. "Bertram, the address--quick." "Too late, my dear Q. M.--much too late. She's dying--I am sure of it." The address was 102 in the next street to that in which we had been breakfasting. I hurried off, tearing myself, at last, by force from Bertram. I ran down the street, round the corner, looking right and left at the numbers as I ran. I was within a few doors of the number when I came with a great shock against a man, who was walking like myself without looking ahead. I growled and was pushing past, when an iron grip fell upon my shoulder. It was Reuben Sharp. He was so altered I had difficulty in recognising him. At that moment he looked a madman; his eyes were wild and savage; his lips were blue; his face was masked by convulsive twitches. "I was running to see you. Come back," I said. "It's no use--no use. They can ill-treat her no more. My darling Emmy! It's all over--all over--and you have been very kind to me." The poor man clapped his heavy hands upon me like the paws of a lion, and wept, as weak women and children weep. Yea, it was all over. It was on New Year's Day, 1867, I supported Reuben Sharp, following a hearse to the cemetery hard by. Lucy Rowe accompanied us--at my urgent request--and her presence served to soften and support old Reuben's honest Kentish heart in his desolate agony. As they lowered the coffin a haggard face stretched over a tomb behind us. Sharp was blinded with tears, and did not see it. CHAPTER XV. THE FIRST TO BE MARRIED. It will happen so--and here is our moral--the bonnets of Sophonisba and Theodosia, bewitching as they were, and archly as these young ladies wore them, paling every toilette of the Common, were not put aside for bridal veils. Carrie, who was content with silver-grey, it was who returned to Paris first, sitting at the side of the writer of the following letters, sent, it is presumed, to his bachelor friend:-- "Paris, 'The Leafy Month of June.' "MY DEAR MAC,--I will be true to my promise. I will give you the best advice my experience may enable me to afford you. Friendship is a sacred thing, and I will write as your friend. Only ten days ago Caroline murmured those delicious sounds at the altar, which announce a heaven upon earth to man. I see you smile, you rogue, as you read this, but I repeat it--that announce a heaven upon earth to man. "Some men take a wife carelessly, as they select a dinner at their club, as though they were catering only to satisfy the whim of the hour. Others adopt all the homely philosophy of Dr. Primrose, and reflect how the wife will wear, and whether she have the qualities that will keep the house in order. Others, again, are lured into matrimony by the tinkling of the pianoforte, or the elaboration of a bunch of flowers upon a Bristol board. Remember Calfsfoot. His wife actually fiddled him into the church. Was there ever an uglier woman? Two of her front teeth were gone, and she was bald. Fortunately for her, Beauty draws us with a single hair, or she had not netted Calfsfoot. Now what a miserable time he has of it. She is a vixen. You know what fiddle-strings are made of; well, I'm told she supplies her own. But why should I dwell on infelicitous unions of this kind? It was obvious to every rational creature from the first--and to him most concerned--that Mrs. Calfsfoot would fiddle poor C. into a lunatic asylum. And if he be not there yet, depend upon it he's on the high road. "Between Mrs. Calfsfoot and my Caroline (you should have seen her hanging upon my shoulder, her auburn ringlets tickling my happy cheek, begging me to call her Carrie!)--between Mrs. Calfsfoot and my Carrie, then, what a contrast! As I sat last evening in one of the shady nooks of the Bois de Boulogne, watching the boats, with their coloured lights, floating about the lake, my Carrie's hand trembling like a caught bird in mine, I thought, can this sweet, amiable, innocent creature have anything in common with that assured, loud-voiced, pretentious Mrs. Calfsfoot. Calfsfoot told me that he was very happy during the honeymoon. But, then, people's notions of happiness vary, and I cannot for the life of me conceive how a man of Calfsfoot's sense--for he has sound common sense on most points--could have looked twice at the creature he took to his bosom. I have heard of people who like to nurse vipers; can friend C. be of this strange band? Now, I am happy--supremely happy, I may say, because I honestly believe my Carrie to be the most adorable creature on the face of God's earth. A man who could not be happy with her would not deserve felicity. You should see her at the breakfast-table, in a snow-white dress, with just a purple band about her dainty waist, handling the cups and saucers! The first time she asked me whether I would take two lumps of sugar (I could have taken both of them from her pretty lips, and I'll not say whether I did or did not), was one of those delicious moments that happen seldom, alas, in the chequered life of man. And then, when she comes tripping into the room after breakfast, in her little round hat, and, putting her hand upon my shoulder, asks me in the most musical of voices whether I have finished with my paper, and am ready for a walk, I feel ashamed that I have allowed myself to distract my attention even for ten minutes from her charming self, to read stupid leading articles and wretched police cases. But men are utterly without sentiment. Reading the _Times_ in the honeymoon! I wonder how the delightful creatures can give us two minutes' thought. Carrie, however, seems to live only for your unworthy humble servant. Shall I ever be worthy of her? Shall I ever be worthy of the glorious sky overhead, or of the flowers at my feet? My dear Mac, I feel the veriest worm as I contemplate this perfect creature, who, with that infinite generosity which belongs to goodness and beauty, has sworn to love, honour, and obey me. That she loves me I know full well; that she obeys my lightest wish, I allow, on my knees. But how shall she honour me? To all this you will answer, puffing your filthy pipe the while, 'Tut! he has been married only ten short days!" "My dear Mac, life is not to be measured by the hour-glass. There are minutes that are hours, there are hours that are years, there are years that are centuries. Again, some men are observant, and some pay no better compliment to the light of day than moles. You did me the honour of saying one evening, when we were having a late cigar at the Trafalgar (we should have been in bed hours before), that you never knew a more quick-sighted man, nor a readier reader of the human heart than the individual who now addresses you. It would ill become me to say that you only did me justice; but permit me to remark, that having closely watched myself and compared myself with others, for years, I have come to the conclusion that I am blessed with a rapid discernment. Before Mrs. Flowerdew (I have written the delightful name on every corner of my blotting-paper) honoured me with her hand, I brought this power to bear on her incessantly. Under all kinds of vexatious circumstances I have been witness of her unassailable good temper. I have seen her wear a new bonnet in a shower of rain. These clumsy hands of mine have spilled lobster-salad upon her dress. That little wretch of a brother of hers has pulled her back hair down. Her sister Sophonisba has abused her. Still has she been mild as the dove! "Then, her common sense is astonishing. She says any woman can manage with three bonnets and half-a-dozen good dresses. I wanted to buy her a bracelet the other day, price ten guineas. 'No,' she answered; 'here is one at only six guineas, quite good enough for me in our station of life;' and the dear creature was content with it. "As for accomplishments, she may vie with any fine lady in the land. Last night she played me a piece from Mendelssohn, and her little hands danced like lightning about the keys. It was rather long, to be sure; but I could not help stealing from behind her and kissing the dear fingers when it was over. "She has written some exquisite verses, much in the style of Byron--a poet not easily imitated, you will remember. She has read every line of Thackeray; and during one of our morning walks, she proved to me, who am not easily moved from my point, that Carlyle has only one idea. Let me recommend you to peruse this writer's 'French Revolution' again, and you will be satisfied that my Carrie is right. "I trouble you, my dear fellow, with all these details, that you may not run away with the notion that Flowerdew is blindly in love. My faculties were never more completely about me than they are at this moment. I am at a loss to imagine why a man should throw his head away when he yields his heart. I can look dispassionately at my wife, and if she had a fault, I am confident that I should be the first to see it. But, _que voulez-vous?_ she has not yet given me the opportunity. "Marriage is a lottery. In a lottery, somebody must draw the prize; if I have drawn it, am I to be ashamed of my luck? No; let me manfully confess my good fortune, and thank my star. "I have snatched the time to write you these hurried lines, while the worshipped subject of them has been trying on some new--but I forgot; I am writing to a bachelor. I have still a few minutes; let me make use of them. "My dear Mac, when I return to foggy London--(I hear you have had terrible weather there)--you will see little or nothing of me. My Carrie allows me to smoke (she permits me everything), but I should be a mean brute if I took advantage of her boundless generosity. I smoke one cigar _per diem_, and no more. And as for wine--the honey of the loved one's lips is the true grape of the honeymoon. I must tell you that Carrie and I have made a solemn compact. Her head was nestled against my waistcoat as we made it. We are not going to live for the world, like foolish people whom we know. For society my little wife needs me; and I, happy man, shall be more than content for ever while the partner of my bosom deigns to solace me with her gentle voice. She has friends without number who will mourn her loss to society. Her dear friends the Barcaroles will be inconsolable; her sister Theodosia will break her heart. Life has its trials, however, which must be bravely borne; and Carrie's friends must be consoled when they learn that she is happy with the man of her choice. In the same way, be comforted, my dear Mac (for I know how warmly you regard me), when I tell you that henceforth we shall meet only at rare intervals. My life is bound up in that of the celestial being who is knitting in the window, not an arm's length from me. "My dear Mac, we have drank our last gin-sling together. Recal me affectionately to the memory of Joe Parkes, and young Square, and all friends of her Majesty's Pugilistic Department; and may they all speedily be as happy as I am. How the wretches will laugh when you tell them that Flowerdew has reformed his ways, and has blackened his last Milo; but I think, my dear fellow, I have convinced you that I write after cool reflection. We have taken a cottage four miles south of my office. A sixpenny omnibus will take me back at four o'clock daily, to my little haven. My Carrie is fond of a garden; and I shall find her, on summer afternoons, waiting at the gate for me, in her garden hat, and leaning upon the smartest little rake in the world. You, and Joe, and the Pugilistic Department fellows may laugh; but this is the happy life I have chalked out for myself. As I have told you, some men marry with their eyes shut; but I live only to congratulate myself on my sagacity. To think that I, of all men, should have won Caroline Cockayne! "We shall remain here for another week, when we go to Fontainebleau, and thence we return to London. I may write to you from our next stage; but if not, expect to hear from me on my return, when, if I can persuade my love to brave the presence of a stranger, for friendship's sake, you shall have a peep at our felicity. "Your old friend, "HAPPY TOM FLOWERDEW." Mr. Mac's observations on the foregoing were, no doubt, to this effect: "He'll come to his senses by-and-by. I shouldn't like to be compelled to buy all the cigars he'll smoke before he turns his toes up." _Flowerdew, from Fontainebleau._ "Fontainebleau, July 1. "MY DEAR MAC,--I am tempted to send you a few lines from this wonderful place. You have heard of Fontainebleau grapes--you have tasted them; but you have not seen Fontainebleau. My dear Mac, when you marry (and, as your friend, I say, lose no time about it)--yes, when you marry, take the _cara sposa_ to Fontainebleau. Let her see the weeping rock, in that wonderful battle between granite and trees, they call the forest. Let her feed the fat carp with _galette_ behind the Palace in the company of those Normandy nurses (brown and flat as Normandy pippins), and their squalling basked-capped charges. Give her some of that delicious iced currant-water, which the dragoons who are quartered here appear to drink with all the relish the children show for it. Never fear that she will look twice at these soldiers, in their sky-blue coats and broad red pantaloons, and their hair cut so close that their eyes must have watered under the operation. Imagine dragoons drinking currant-water; and playing dominoes for shapeless sous, which they rattle incessantly in their preposterous trousers! I am meditating a book on the French army, in which I shall lay great stress on the above, I flatter myself, rather acute bit of observation. Carrie (she grows prettier daily) rather inclines to the idea that the moderation of these French dragoons is in their favour; and this is the first time I have found her judgment at fault. But then it would be unreasonable indeed to hope that on military subjects she could have that clear insight which she displays with such charming grace, whether we are contemplating the Marriage of Cana, in the Louvre, or thinking over the scenes some of those orange-trees in the Tuileries gardens have shed leaves upon. For, let me tell you, my dear Mac, there are trees there, the flowers of which have trembled at the silver laugh of unhappy Antoinette. Sallow Robespierre has rubbed against them. They were in their glory on that July day when the mob of blouses tasted of the cellars of a King. "But you can get in Murray all I can tell you of the wonderful place in which it has been my fortune to find myself with my little wife. When, on the morning after our arrival, I threw my bedroom window open, the air was, I thought, the sweetest that had ever refreshed my nostrils. The scene would have been perfect, had it not been for swarms of wasps that dashed their great bodies, barred, as Carrie said, like grooms' waistcoats (wasn't it clever of her?) into the room. If everything were not flavoured with garlic (peaches included), I should say without hesitation, that our _hôte_ is THE _cordon bleu_ of the country. Omelettes, my dear Mac, as light as syllabub; wild strawberries frosted with the finest white sugar I ever put to my lips; coffee that would make a Turk dance with delight; only, in each and all of these dainties, there is just a pinch of garlic. But love makes light of these little drawbacks. Carrie has made a wry face once or twice, it is true, but only in the best of humours, and when the garlic was very strong indeed. "We had a rainy day yesterday: but we enjoyed it. We sat all the morning at our window, gossiping and flirting, and watching the peasants sauntering home from market, apparently unconscious that they were being drenched. I had bought Carrie a huge sugar stick (_sucre de pomme_, I think they call it), and she looked bewitchingly as she nibbled it, and then coaxingly held it to my lips. You remember my old antipathy to sweets; well, strange to say, I thought I had never tasted anything more delicious than this sugar stick; but remember, it came direct from Carrie's lips. Then we speculated on what our friends were doing at that very moment, peeped into Clapham, and we made bad guesses enough, I have no doubt. It ended by our agreeing that none of you were half so happy as we were. "In the evening the weather cleared a little, and we went out for a stroll. A stroll through the streets of Fontainebleau is not one of the pleasantest exploits in the world. I thought every moment that my wife (delightful word, that thrills me to the finger tips as I write it) would sprain an ankle, for the paving is simply a heap of round stones thrown out of a cart; but she stepped so nimbly and lightly, that no harm came to her. I wish, my dear Mac, you could hear her conversation. From morning till night she prattles away, hopping, skipping, and jumping from one subject to another, and saying something sensible or droll on each. You must know that Carrie has an immense fund of humour. Her imitations of people make me almost die with laughter. You remember Mrs. Calfsfoot's habit of twitching her nose and twirling her thumbs when she is beginning an anecdote about somebody one never saw, and never cared to see. Well, Carrie stopped in the middle of our rambles in the forest, and imitated her squeaky voice and absurd gestures to the life. The anecdote, concocted impromptu, was a wonderfully sustained bit of pure invention. On my honour, when she had finished her little performance, I could not help giving her a kiss for it. "You will smile, my dear Mac, at this: remembering the horror we mutually expressed one night at Ardbye's chambers, of female mimics. But there is a difference, which we do not appear to have recognised on that occasion, between good-natured and ill-natured mimicry. Now nothing can be more harmless fun than my Carrie's imitations. She never has the bad taste to mimic a deformity, or to burlesque a misfortune. She certainly said of Mrs. Blomonge (who is known to be the stoutest person in the parish of St. Bride's) that her head floated on her shoulders like a waterlily on a pond; but then the joke was irresistible, and there was not a touch of malice in the way the thing was said. How much there is in manner! "Carrie is beginning to yearn for the repose of Arcady Cottage. She wants to see herself mistress of a house. She longs to have to order dinner, inspect the dusting of the drawing-room, pour out tea from our own tea-pot, and work antimacassars for our chairs. I can see already that she will make the most perfect little housewife in the world. "There are dolts and dullards who declare that women who are witty and accomplished, generally make bad housewives. They are said to lie on sofas all day through, reading hooks they cannot understand; playing all kinds of tortuous music; and painting moss roses upon velvet. I am not an old married man (twenty days old only), but I am ready to wager, from what I have already seen of my Carrie, that there is not the slightest ground for those charges against clever women; on the contrary, it seems to me that your clever woman will see the duty, as well as the pleasure, of ordering her husband's house in a becoming manner. Why should empty-headed girls, who haven't a word to say for themselves, nor an accomplishment to their back--why should they be the superlative concocters of custards, and menders of shirts and stockings? Do you mean to tell me that a woman must be a fool to have a light hand at pastry? I believe these libels on clever women have been propagated by designing mothers who had stupid daughters on their hands. Whenever you see a heavy-eyed, lumpish girl, who hides herself in corners, and reddens to the very roots of the hair when you say a civil thing to her, you are sure to be told that she is the very best house-keeper in the world, and will make a better wife than her pretty sister. In future I shall treat all such excuses for ugliness and dulness as they deserve. For I say it boldly beforehand, ere Carrie has tried her first undercrust, she will be a pattern housewife--although she reads John Stuart Mill. "'Tom, darling!' sounds from the next room, and the music goes to my soul. Good-bye. The next from Aready Cottage. Thine, "TOM FLOWERDEW. "P.S.--We met yesterday a most charming travelling companion; and although, as I think I hinted in my last, I and Carrie intend to suffice for each other, he had so vast a fund of happy anecdote, we could not find it in our hearts to snub him. Besides, he began by lending me the day's _Galignani_." "That travelling companion," remarked shrewd Mr. Mac, "marks the beginning of the end of the honeymoon. I shall keep him dark when I dine with Papa Cockayne on Sunday." CHAPTER XVI. GATHERING A FEW THREADS. Is there a more melancholy place than the street in which you have lived; than the house, now curtainless and weather-stained, you knew prim, and full of happy human creatures; than the "banquet-hall deserted:" than the empty chair; than the bed where Death found the friend you loved? The Rue Millevoye is all this to me. I avoid it. If any cabman wants to make a short cut that way I stop him. Mrs. Rowe rests at last, in the same churchyard with the Whytes of Battersea: her faults forgiven; that dark story which troubled all her afterlife and made her son the terror of every hour, ended and forgotten. If hers was a sad life, even cheered by the consolations of Mr. Mohun given over refreshing rounds of buttered toast; what was the gloom upon the head of Emily Sharp, whom the child of shame (was it in revenge) brought to shame? I never tread the deck of a Boulogne steamer without thinking of her sweet, loving face; I never wait for my luggage in the chilly morning at the Chemin de Fer du Nord terminus, without seeing her agony as the deserted one. The Cockayne girls are prospering in all the comfort of maternal dignity in the genteel suburbs; and yet were they a patch upon forlorn Emmy Sharp? Miss Sophonisba, with her grand airs, in her critical letters from Paris--what kind of a heart had she? Miss Theodosia was a flirt of the vulgarest type who would have thrown up John Catt as she would throw away a two-button glove for a three-button pair, had not the Vicomte de Gars given her father to understand that he must have a very substantial _dot_ with her. Mademoiselle Cockayne without money was not a thing to be desired, according to "his lordship." John Catt was a rough diamond, as the reader has perceived, given to copious draughts of beer, black pipes, short sticks, prodigious shirt-collars, and music-halls. But he was a brave, honest, chivalrous lad in his coarse way. He loved Miss Theodosia Cockayne, and was seriously stricken when he left Paris, although he had tried to throw off the affair with a careless word or two. He hid his grief behind his bluntness; but she had no tears to hide. It was only when the Vicomte, after a visit to Clapham (paid much against Mr. Cockayne's will) had come to business in the plumpest manner, that the young lady had been brought to her senses by the father's observation that he was not prepared to buy a foreign viscount into the family on his own terms, and that "his lordship" would not take the young lady on her own merits, aroused Miss Theodosia's pride;--and with it the chances of John Catt revived. He took her renewed warmth for repentance after a folly. He said to himself, "She loved me all the time; and even the Vicomte was not, in the long run, proof against her affection for me." Miss Theodosia, having lost the new love, was fortunate enough to get on with the old again, and she is, I hear, reasonably happy--certainly happier than she deserves to be, as Mrs. John Catt. I am told she is very severe upon Emma Sharp, and wonders how her sister Carrie can have the creature's portrait hung up in her morning room. But there are a few things she no longer wonders at. Carrie speaks to Lucy Rowe; kisses Lucy Rowe; puts her arm round Lucy Rowe's neck; and tumbles her baby upon Lucy Rowe's knees; and Mrs. John Catt wonders no longer. Not, I suspect, because she is fonder of Lucy now than she was in the Rue Millevoye, but because--well, _I_ married her, as the reader, who is not a goose, has suspected long ago. And a little Lucy writes for me, in big round hand, her mother guiding the pen-- THE END. LONDON: SAVILL, EDWARDS AND CO., PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET, COVENT GARDEN. 
19882	----	images generously made available by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) (http://gallica.bnf.fr/) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations and maps. See 19882-h.htm or 19882-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/9/8/8/19882/19882-h/19882-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/9/8/8/19882/19882-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through La Bibliothèque nationale de France. See http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k1034792 Transcriber's note: The printed book carried two kinds of headnote: keyword and mileage. "Keyword" headers, noting the places and subjects mentioned on the page, have been placed before the most appropriate paragraph. Each itinerary gives the "miles from" {starting point} and "miles to" {ending point}, with the numbers themselves printed in the left and right corners of each paragraph. For this e-text the numbers are shown in braces before the beginning of each paragraph; the place names are given at the beginning of the itinerary, and repeated as needed. Paragraphs describing side exursions do not have mileage information. Additional transcriber's notes are at the end of the book. CORSICA. [Map: Sketch Map of the Riviera and Corsica] * * * * * New Editions of Guide-Books for France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal and the Channel Islands. Copiously Illustrated with Maps and Plans. NORTH-FRANCE--From the North Sea to the Loire, exclusive of Paris, and from the Bay of Biscay to the Rhine. 19 Maps and 21 Plans 7/6 SOUTH-FRANCE--From the Loire to the Mediterranean, and from the Bay of Biscay to the rivers Arno and Po. The island of Corsica. 40 Maps and 27 Plans 7/6 _Published also in separate Parts._ North-France, WEST-HALF, or NORMANDY, BRITTANY and TOURAINE. 14 Maps and 16 Plans. Eighth Edition 5/ NORMANDY: Its CASTLES and CHURCHES. Second Edition. 5 Maps and 9 Plans 2/6 North-France, EAST-HALF, or PICARDY, CHAMPAGNE, LORRAINE, ALSACE and part of BURGUNDY. 5 Plans and 5 Maps. Third Edition 2/6 South-France, WEST-HALF. The SUMMER RESORTS in the PYRENEES; LUCHON, BIGORRE, BARÈGES, etc.; the WINTER RESORTS of PAU, ARCACHON, BIARRITZ, ST. JEAN-DE-LUZ, VERNET, AMÉLIE-LES-BAINS and MALAGA, and the CLARET-WINE VINEYARDS in MEDOC. 17 Maps and 4 Plans. Fourth Edition 2/6 South-France, EAST-HALF, or the VALLEYS of the WALDENSES, of the RHÔNE, the DURANCE and the UPPER LOIRE; the Baths of VICHY, AIX-LES-BAINS, ROYAT, VALS, MONT-DORE, BOURBOULE, BOURBON-LANCY, ACQUI, LUCCA, VALDIERI, etc.; the VOLCANIC REGION OF ARDÈCHE; the MOUNTAIN-PASSES between FRANCE and ITALY; and the RIVIERA of the MEDITERRANEAN from MARSEILLES to LEGHORN. 20 Plans and 21 Maps. Fourth Edition 5/ THE RIVIERA, or the MEDITERRANEAN from MARSEILLES to LEGHORN, including the inland towns of PISA, LUCCA, CARRARA and FLORENCE, and Excursions into the MARITIME ALPS. Fourth Edition. 10 Plans and 13 Maps 2/6 CORSICA, its Rail, Carriage and Forest Roads, with 6 Maps from the latest authorities. Second Edition 1/ BELGIUM, its CHURCHES, CHIMES and BATTLEFIELDS. 9 Plans and 4 Maps 2/6 NORTH-FRANCE (East-Half) and BELGIUM in One Volume, including a part of HOLLAND. Convenient for those going to Aix-la-Chapelle, Spa, Vittel, Contrexéville, or any of the Bathing Stations on the North Sea 5/ HANDBOOK for the CAR-TOURIST in the pleasant Islands of JERSEY, GUERNSEY and ALDERNEY. Maps and Plans. Second Edition 1/ SPAIN and PORTUGAL. (O'SHEA.) Seventh Edition. Edited by JOHN LOMAS. Crown 8vo. Maps and Plans 15/ From "Scotsman," June 2, 1884. _"C. B. Black's Guide-books have a character of their own; and that character is a good one. Their author has made himself personally acquainted with the localities with which he deals in a manner in which only a man of leisure, a lover of travel, and an intelligent observer of Continental life could afford to do. He does not 'get up' the places as a mere hack guide-book writer is often, by the necessity of the case, compelled to do. Hence he is able to correct common mistakes, and to supply information on minute points of much interest apt to be overlooked by the hurried observer."_ * * * * * ITINERARY THROUGH CORSICA by Its Rail, Carriage & Forest Roads by C. B. BLACK Illustrated by Five Maps and One Plan [Illustration: Moor's Head] Edinburgh Adam and Charles Black 1888 CONTENTS: CORSICA. [Transcriber's Note: The four pages consisting of the Contents and List of Illustrations appeared twice in the original text, first as pgs. v-viii, then as pgs. xv-xviii. (The intervening pages are absent.) The text and layout are identical except that the first group is headed "Contents", the second "Corsica." The repeated text has been omitted here.] Page Corsica. --Position --Extent --Population --Highest Mountains --Forests --Vegetation --Aspect --Climate --Steamboats 1 Ajaccio. --Hotels --Cabs --Napoleon's Birthplace --Memorial Chapel --Chapel of San Antonio --Chapelle Greco --Fontaine du Salario --Family Sepulchral Chapels --Climate --Fair of St. Pancras --Water Carriers --Curiosities 3 Ajaccio to Bastia by Corté. --This road traverses the centre of the island diagonally, exhibits every characteristic of Corsica, crosses the longest rivers, passes through one of the greatest forests and by some of the highest mountains, and connects the three principal towns. Rail between Corté and Bastia 7 From Vivario, p. 8, a road leads to the mineral water establishment of Pietrapola. From Corté, p. 8, the ascent is made of Mt. Rotondo. From the Ponte Francardo, p. 9, the most important of the Forest roads extends S.W. to Porto by Albertacce and Evisa. From Albertacce the ascent is made of Mt. Cinto. The great highway traversing the island from Prunete to Calvi passes through Ponte alla Leccia, p. 9. From Bastia, p. 10, are trains or diligences to every part of the east coast, and steamers to Leghorn, Genoa, Nice and Marseilles. Bastia to Rogliano and Morsaglia, skirting the east coast of the long peninsula called Cap Corse. This road follows more or less the level of the sea till it reaches Macinaggio, whence it ascends to Morsaglia. The highway on the western side of Cap Corse is cut along the flanks of the mountains, generally at a considerable height above the sea 11 Bastia to Calvi by St. Florent and the Ile Rousse 14 Calvi to Ajaccio, by Galeria, Porto and Sagona. From Galeria and Porto great Forest roads penetrate into the interior 16 GALERIA to the FORESTS of FILOSORMA. --Tourists should not explore any of the great Forest roads without being provided with letters to the dwellers in the maisons forestières and in those of the Cantonniers; see p. 41 and map, p. 20 16 PORTO to the PONTE FRANCARDO. --The most important of all the Forest roads. It passes through Evisa and by several good "maisons forestières." From the Col Vergio is seen Mt. Tafanato, with its natural tunnel, and from Albertacce is commenced the ascent of Mt. Cinto. Several mule-paths ramify from this forest road, the most important being to Lake Nino and Corté, and to Asco: whence Mt. Cinto is also ascended. The most famous part of the road itself is the Scala di Santa Regina 18 Calvi to Corté or to BASTIA by PONTE ALLA LECCIA. --This road traverses a most picturesque country, and the region of the finest olive trees in the island 20 BELGODERE to the FOREST of TARTAGINE. --This forest contains few old trees, and is not of easy access 21 Ajaccio to Evisa, VICO and the BATHS of GUAGNO 22 Ajaccio to Sartène, by CAURO, APA, OLMETO and PROPRIANO. See S.W. end of general map 23 CAURO to BASTELICA. --Bastelica is the common name of a group of hamlets, in one of which Sampiero was born. From this the ascent is made of Mt. Renoso 24 AJACCIO and APA to ZICAVO and the BATHS of GUITERA, by Santa-Maria-Siché, Frasseto and Zecavo. S. Maria-Siché is the birthplace of the fair and gentle Vanina. From Zicavo the ascent is made of Mt. Incudine; whence is beheld the finest view in Corsica. See maps on fly-leaf and fronting p. 27 24 PROPRIANO to SOLENZARA, from the S.W. to the S.E. of the island. This Route Forestière is better treated on p. 36, as Solenzara to Sartène 26 Sartène to Corté by Vivario. --This is the great central highway, of which the wildest and most difficult part is given on map, p. 27. It leads to some fine forests, of which the best is the Verde forest. At the most desolate portion are tolerably comfortable maisons forestières. Vehicles should be hired either at Sartène or Vivario, 20 to 25 frs. per day 27 GHISONI to GHISONACCIA, by the route forestière, extending from the central main road to the Ghisonaccia railway station on the east coast. The most dangerous part of the road is the "Passage" Inzecca. See map, p. 27 29 SARTÈNE to BONIFACIO 30 Bonifacio to Bastia by the fertile plains and insalubrious lakes of the east coast 31 Aleria to Corté by a picturesque road following the course of the Tavignano. Coach every other day 33 Prunete to Castagneto or ALESANI, by coach daily. Castagneto is one of the villages in the Castagniccia or Chestnut country. The road ascends all the way. It, as well as most of the roads into the interior, should not be taken till the chestnut trees are in leaf 33 FOLELLI to STAZZONA by coach daily. Stazzona is the village nearest to the Spa of Orezza. The road extends to Ponte alla Leccia 33 VESCOVATO STATION to PORTA, by coach daily, passing Vescovato, Venzolasca and Silvareccio. In summer the coach goes on to Piedicroce 34 PONTE ALLA LECCIA to PIEDICROCE by "Courrier" daily 34 Piedicroce to Prunete-Railway Station, the finest part of the road being between Piedicroce and Castagneto. Coach from Castagneto to Prunete by Cervione. From Castagneto or Alesani to Prunete see Prunete to Alesani, on p. 33 35 SOLENZARA, on the S.E. coast, to SARTÈNE, 46 m. S.W., by a forest road with much fine scenery 36 HISTORY, HABITS, AGRICULTURE and HOUSES OF REFUGE, called "Maison" in the index 37 LIST OF MAPS. Page Sketch Map of the Riviera and Corsica, showing the relative position of their principal towns; as also the ports connected with each other by steamboat _Fly-leaf_ General Map of Corsica 1 Plan of Ajaccio. --The town is built on rising ground 3 Environs of Ajaccio 6 The Western Central Region. --This is the least known and the most difficult portion of the island to traverse. Yet easy and picturesque short excursions may be made from Porto, Evisa and Galeria, into the forests of evergreen oaks, etc 20 Central Corsica, or the most troublesome part of the grand highway, which traverses Corsica from south to north, from Sartène to Ponte alla Leccia, whence it ramifies eastward to Bastia and westward to Calvi and Ile Rousse. It joins the railway and the road between Ajaccio and Corté near Vivario 27 CORSICA Is situated 54 miles W. from Leghorn, 98 m. S. from Genoa, and 106 m. S.E. from Nice. It is 116 m. long, 52 m. broad, and contains an area of 3376 square miles; divided into 5 arrondissements, subdivided into 62 cantons, and these again into 363 communes, with a population of 275,000. The surface, of which little more than a tenth is under cultivation, is composed of lofty and rugged granite mountain chains, diverging in all directions from the culminating peaks of Mounts Cinto, 8892 ft.; Rotondo, 8613 ft.; Pagliorba, 8278 ft.; Padro, 7846 ft.; and Oro, 8829 ft. On the western and southern sides of the island these ranges terminate abruptly on the shore, or run out into the sea; while, on the eastern side, a great undulating plain intervenes between their termination and the coast, in summer troubled with malaria, but in a less degree than formerly. Corsica is the central region of the great plant system of the Mediterranean. Among the many fine forests which cover the mountains, the most important are those of Valdoniello, Filosorma, Vizzavona Verde, Zonza, Bavella, Ometa and Calenzana. They contain noble specimens of pines, oaks, beech, chestnut, walnut and olive trees. The cork oak forms woods, chiefly in the south of the island. The chestnut trees are as large and fruitful as the best on the Apennines, and the nuts form the staple article of food for man and beast during the winter months. Indeed, these glorious chestnut and beech forests, when in full foliage, are the grand features of Corsican scenery, which therefore cannot be seen to advantage till towards the end of May, and if to this we add the splendid bloom of the oleanders, not till July. "I at any rate know of no such combination of sea and mountains, of the sylvan beauty of the north with the rich colours of the south; no region where within so small a space nature takes so many sublime and exquisite aspects as she does in Corsica. Palms, orange groves, olives, vines, maize and chestnuts; the most picturesque beech forests, the noblest pine woods in Europe; granite peaks, snows and frozen lakes--all these are brought into the compass of a day's journey. Everything is as novel to the Alpine climber as if, in place of being on a fragment of the Alps, severed only by 100 miles from their nearest snows, he was in a different continent."--D. W. Freshfield, Alpine Club. [Map: Corsica] [Headnote: VEGETATION.] The prickly pear, the American aloe, the castor-oil plant and the fig-tree, grow wild along the coast; while a little farther upwards, on the slopes and plateaus, the arbutus, cistus, oleander, myrtle and various kinds of heaths, form a dense coppice, called in the island maqui, supplying an excellent covert for various kinds of game and numerous blackbirds. When the arbutus and myrtle berries are ripe the blackbirds are eagerly hunted, as at that time they are plump and make very savoury and delicate eating. There are few cows on the island, the greater part of the milk supply being procured from goats. It is excellent, and has no rank flavour. The only remarkable creature is the mouflon, a species of sheep, resembling that almost extinct animal the bouquetin or ibex of the Alps. It inhabits the highest mountains, and though very wild is easily tamed. The best red wines are grown about Ajaccio, Tallano, Cervione and Sartene, and the best white wines in Sari and in the valleys of Cape Corso. They improve up to twenty years, and even up to fifty. The temperature of the climate of Corsica varies according to the elevation. Along the coast the sun is warm even in January. After January the temperature rises rapidly. The climate of the zone 2000 ft. above the sea is considerably colder and snow generally appears there in December. The olive ripens its fruit up to an elevation of 2000 ft. and the chestnut to 3000, where it gives place to oaks, box trees, junipers, firs and beeches. The greater part of the population inhabits the region of the chestnut trees, in villages scattered over the mountain slopes, valleys and tablelands. [Headnote: STEAMBOATS.] Steamers to Corsica.--For invalids the easiest way is by the large weekly Tunis steamer of the Compagnie Generale Transatlantique, 12 R. de la Republique, which on its way from and to Marseilles, touches at Ajaccio, 211 m. S., in 16 to 19 hrs., fare including meals, 38 frs. The Compagnie Insulaire, 29 R. Cannebière, have boats every week for Ajaccio and Propriano, 38 frs., Calvi and Ile Rousse, 28 frs., Bastia and Leghorn, 32 frs., and Nice, Bastia and Leghorn. Weekly steamers between Genoa, Leghorn and Bastia. The boats of the Compagnie Insulaire being smaller, come within a few yards of the mole. The luggage is landed from the steamers by the company free of expense and is delivered at the custom-house to the proprietor on presentation of the bulletin de baggage. Passengers are taken ashore and to their hotels for 2 frs. each. The Navigazione Generale Italiana, Piazza Marini, Genoa, have a steamer every week for Portotorres, at the north-west extremity of Sicily, calling at Bastia. Also from Leghorn to Bastia. Distance 72 miles, fare 20 frs., time 7 hrs. Small steamer between Ajaccio and Propriano twice weekly. AJACCIO. _Hotels._--On an eminence, in its own grounds, rising gently from the sea, is the *Grand Hotel, with sea and fresh water baths and every convenience; opened at the end of the present year. A skilled English physician on the premises. There are besides three good family hotels, charging from 8 to 12 frs.; in the Course Grandval, the H. Continental, wine 1½ fr., carpeted brick floors, garden; near it, with south exposure and full view of the bay, the *H. Suisse or Schweizerhof, wine 1 fr., smooth wood floors, partially carpeted, garden; at the top of the Course Grandval, the H. Bellevue, wine 1¼ fr., partially carpeted wood floors, garden. These prices include coffee or tea in the morning, meat breakfast and dinner and service, but neither candles nor wine, of which the lowest price per bottle is given above. In the Place Bonaparte is the H. de France, a good French hotel, pension 8 to 12 frs. _Bankers and Money-changers._--The bank Bozzo-Costa and the bank Lanzi, both near each other in the Boulevard Roi Jerome. The office of the Compagnie Transatlantique is in the same Boulevard; the office of the Compagnie Insulaire is in the Place du Marché. _Cabs._--The course 1½ fr., the hour 2 frs., the day 25 frs. Tariff of return drives, with 2 frs. extra for every hour of repose. _West_ from Ajaccio: Scudo, 5 frs.; Vignola 1114 ft., 15 frs.; Vignola village, 10 frs.; Lisa, 15 frs.; Iles Sanguinaires, 10 frs.; St. Antoine, 5 frs.; Salario, 5 frs. _North_ from Ajaccio: Castelluccio, 4 frs.; Mezzavia, 5 frs.; Alata and Col Carbinica, 25 frs.; Afa, 20 frs. _East_ from Ajaccio: the Campo dell' Oro, or the plain at the mouth of the Gravona, 5 frs.; the Baths of Caldaniccia, 5 frs.; Bastelicaccia, 5 frs.; Pisciatella, 6 frs. Three frs. gratuity for a whole day. The horses cover on an average about thirty miles a day. AJACCIO, pop. 19,050, the capital of Corsica, is situated on the extremity of a small gulf 677 miles from Paris and 15 to 20 hours' sail from Marseilles. Founded in 1492 by the Bank of St. George of Genoa, a commercial association similar to the East India Company, it was raised in 1811 through the influence of Madame Letitia and Cardinal Fesch to the dignity of capital of the island, and became accordingly the residence of the Préfet and the seat of the civil and ecclesiastical Courts. Ajaccio has a handsome Episcopal chapel built by Miss Campbell, of Moniack Castle, Scotland, an accomplished lady, the authoress of a work on the island in French and English. In the Cours Napoleon is a small French mission, whose worthy pastor, besides conducting the regular Sunday services, gives two lectures (conferences) every week, which are attended by from 80 to 100 people. The houses in Ajaccio, as well as those throughout the island, are generally built in large square blocks of from 3 to 5 stories, each story forming a separate dwelling. [Map: Ajaccio] [Headnote: NAPOLEON'S BIRTHPLACE.] The mole at which passengers land from the steamers is at the foot of the Place du Marché. In the centre of this "Place" is a fountain ornamented with lions and a white marble statue of Napoleon I. by Laboureur. To the left of the statue is the Hotel de Ville, the markets, and the commencement of the Rue Fesch, in which is the edifice containing the public library, the museum, and the memorial chapel (p. 5); while to the right is the Rue Napoleon, in which the first opening right leads into the Place Letitia. A little beyond this opening is No. 17, the house of the Pozzo di Borgo family, of whom Charles André, 1768-1842, was the great upholder of Paoli and the bitter enemy of Napoleon I. Napoleon's house, though not equal to that of the Borgo family, was one of the best in Ajaccio. It is well built, of three stories of six windows each, and all the rooms have a more or less handsome marble chimney-piece. Over the door is inscribed on white marble "Napoleon est né dans cette maison le XV Aovt MDCCLXIX". A good staircase, bordered by a wrought-iron railing, leads to the top. The rooms shown are on the first floor. The first is the parlour, with a small table, a few chairs, and a piano said to have belonged to Mme. Letitia. Then after having passed through a small chamber we enter the room in which Napoleon was born, into which Madame was brought hurriedly from the church in the sedan chair kept in the end room. Over the chimney-piece are portraits of the father and mother. Then follows the dining-room, and after it the drawing-room, with inlaid wood floor and six windows on both sides. The floors of all the other rooms are of glazed tiles. In the next room is the sedan chair. Fee for party 1 fr. This now silent and empty house was once enlivened and brightened by the fair Letitia and her large family of children, just like other men's children; schoolboys toiling at their Plutarch or Cæsar, and their three young sisters growing up careless and rather wild, like their neighbours' daughters, in the half-barbarous island town. There is Joseph, the eldest, then Napoleon, the second born, then Lucien, Louis, and Jerome; then Caroline, Eliza, and Pauline, the children of a notary of moderate income, who is incessantly and vainly carrying on law-suits with the Jesuits of Ajaccio to gain a contested estate which is necessary to his numerous family. Their future fills him with anxiety; what will they be in the world and how will they secure a comfortable subsistence? And behold! these same children, one after the other, take to themselves the mightiest crowns of the earth--tear them from the heads of the most unapproachable kings of Europe and wear them in the sight of all the world; and they, the sons of an Ajaccio lawyer, cause themselves to be embraced as brothers and brothers-in-law by emperors and kings. Napoleon is European Emperor; Joseph King of Spain; Louis King of Holland; Jerome King of Westphalia; Caroline Queen of Naples and Pauline and Eliza Princesses of Italy. In 1793, after the flight of Madame Letitia and her children to her country residence, the Casone, the house was pillaged by the Corsicans opposed to the French Republic. [Headnote: CATHEDRAL.] Near the Place Letitia is the cathedral built in the 16th century by Pope Gregory. It contains the font at which Napoleon I. was baptized on the 21st July 1771. [Headnote: MEMORIAL CHAPEL.] In the Rue Fesch is the College founded in 1822. In one wing of the edifice is the public library, with 33,000 volumes, founded by Lucien Bonaparte, and the museum and picture gallery, with 900 paintings, mostly copies; and in the other the memorial chapel built by Napoleon III., lined with beautiful marble. In the crypt under the transept, left hand, is the tomb of Marie Letitia Ramolino, died at Rome in 1836; and right hand, that of Napoleon's uncle, Cardinal Fesch, died at Rome in 1839. Both bodies were brought to this, their present resting-place, in 1851. There are, besides, the tombs of Prince Charles and of Zenaida his daughter. Napoleon's father died in 1785 and is buried at Montpellier. Madame was only 35 at his death and had already borne him 13 children, 5 of whom were dead, and Jerome was an infant in the cradle. Parallel with the Rue Fesch is the Cours Napoleon, by which all the diligences enter and leave the town. The continuation round the bay is bordered with plane trees. At the commencement is a bronze statue of "E. C. Abbatucci né à Zicavo le 12 Novembre 1770, mort pour la patrie le 2 Decembre 1796." Near it is the railway station. At the western end of the Cours Napoleon is the Place Bonaparte or Diamant, bordered with trees and ornamented with a complicate bronze monument on a granite pedestal by Violet le Duc, "à la memoire de Napoleon I. et de ses frères Joseph, Lucien, Louis, Jerome." All are life-size statues; Napoleon is on horseback, the others on foot, marching solemnly towards the sea. [Headnote: WALKS.] EXCURSIONS. From the port, 11 m. W., is the chapel S. Antonio, 850 ft. The road passes the penitentiary of S. Antonio, 331 ft. North from it, under the peak of La Barrage, 1476 feet, is the Castelluccio penitentiary. Westward by the Hospice Eugenie and the Batterie de Maestrello, a pleasant road leads along the coast to the orange gardens of Barbicaja, passing by the Chapelle de Greco and the cemetery. About 4 m. farther is the Tête Parata, 199 ft., opposite the Iles Sanguinaires. A beautiful road, the continuation of the Cours Grandval, ascends 2½ m. to the Fontaine du Salario, 760 ft., commanding enchanting views. This road traverses the Place Casone, 144 ft., occupying the site of the Casone, the country house of the Bonapartes, destroyed in 1878. Close by is the "grotte Napoleon," composed of blocks of granite, to which, it is said, the youthful Napoleon used to retire. About 6 m. N. from Ajaccio is the village of Alata, 1312 ft. Within an easy walking distance north from Ajaccio is the pleasant estate of Carrosaccia, on the canal which supplies the town with water from the Gravona. 5½ m. N. from Ajaccio are the sulphurous springs of Caldaniccia. [Headnote: FAMILY TOMBS.] In the neighbourhood of Ajaccio and of the other Corsican towns and villages are numerous family sepulchral chapels enclosed within walls. A more pleasing characteristic feature, probably inherited from the Moors, are the numerous fountains in the villages and by the road side, whence flow streams of cold, sparkling water of exquisite purity. [Headnote: CLIMATE.] _Climate._--For convalescent invalids, Ajaccio forms a delightful change from the Riviera, as it is so rural, and has such pleasant air and good water. The hotels are comfortable and their charges moderate. As, too, the road metal used around Ajaccio is that disintegrating granite which so readily solidifies by the combined action of the rain and traffic, there is very little dust in the neighbourhood (p. 9). The principal winds are the Libeccio or S.W. wind, the Sirocco or S.E. wind, and the Mistral or N.W. wind. On the 12th, 13th and 14th of May the fair of St. Pancras is held, which affords a good opportunity for purchasing Corsican horses. They are from 10 to 14 hands high and of great endurance. It is wonderful to behold the energy these small slim creatures display in dragging heavy lumbering diligences up long, steep, winding roads. But more wonderful still is it to see the peasant women and girls as young as thirteen carrying on their heads up and down the mountain paths big pails, or the more elegant two-handled brass jars of classic form, containing about two gallons of water, without ever stumbling on any of the many stones. The pails are made of copper lined with tin, weighing when full of water from 55 lbs. to 65 lbs. Among the curiosities of Ajaccio are gourds made into bottles, of various shapes and sizes and mounted with silver, and the pretty baskets made of straw by the girls of Alata. [Map: Environs of Ajaccio] Ajaccio to Bastia. Ajaccio to Bocognano by rail, thence by diligence to Corté; Corté to Bastia by rail 47 m., or 44 by road. The road from Ajaccio ascends the valley of the Gravona to its source at the Col Vizzavona. On the N. side of the Col it follows the course of the Vecchio. The most picturesque part of this route is between Vizzavona and Vivario. miles from AJACCIO miles to BASTIA { }{95} AJACCIO. Start from the station in the Cours Napoleon. The road, after traversing the fertile plain of Campo dell Oro, crosses the Col Sudricchio, 804 ft., and then the bridge of Ucciani, 948 ft., built in the reign of Louis XIV., 17½ m. from Ajaccio and 2 m. from the village of Ucciani. Use general map, and map, p. 27. [Headnote: BOCOGNANO.] {25}{70} BOCOGNANO, pop. 2000, and 2120 ft. above the sea. _Inn:_ Univers. Picturesquely situated in a plantation of chestnut trees, surrounded by high mountain peaks. Near Bocognano commences the Vizzavona tunnel, 4375 yards through the mountain. Diligence now to Corté. The road, having crossed the Sellola bridge, 2843 ft., winds its way up by the Col de Pinzalone, 3370 ft., and the Maison and Pont de Lavatoggio 3615 ft. to the top of the ridge. See map, p. 27. [Headnote: VIZZAVONA.] [Headnote: PINES.] {31}{64} LE FORT DE VIZZAVONA, on the summit of the Pass, 3813 ft. above the sea, with the Gendarmerie and a few houses of refuge. A few miles northwards is Monte d'Oro, 7845 ft., and southwards Monte Renoso, 7733 ft. The diligence, in its descent to Vivario, traverses the forest of Vizzavona, consisting mainly of beeches and larches, frequently 150 ft. high. Of this tree there are two varieties, the _Pinus pinaster_ or cluster pine, the _Pin maritime_ of the French, which grows best on deep loose soils and flourishes even on the drifting sands of the sea shore. They supply large quantities of resin. Their wood being soft, coarse and perishable, is usually converted into charcoal and lamp black. The other is the _Pinus laricio_, which thrives on the high lands of Corsica, Spain, south of France, Greece and Cyprus. Their growth is rapid, the trunk straight and from 100 to 150 ft. high, the branches are in regular whorls, forming in large trees a pyramidal head, and the leaves are slender, from 4 to 7 inches long, and of a dark green tint. The timber is good and durable, though less strong than that of the _Pinus silvestris_. Between the 51st and 53d kilomètre stones are passed the "Maison de Refuge d'Alzarella," and the "Maison de refuge Omellina," 2832 ft. After crossing the Col de Campo di Lupo, 2684 ft., 35 m. from Ajaccio, the road descends into the ravine of the Vecchio, above which is [Headnote: VIVARIO.] {38}{57} VIVARIO, pop. 1500, and 2152 ft. _Inn:_ H. Voyageurs a three-storied house. Junction with road to Zicavo, 37 m. S. (pp. 27,29). Although Vivario be a poor village, yet it has a terrace and fountain ornamented with a statue of Diana. The breeding of pigs fed in the adjoining chestnut forest, and the manufacture of hams, sausages and bacon, are the most important industries of the inhabitants. From Vivario a forest road extends 27 m. S.E. to the hamlet of Vadina, by Muracciole 2022 ft., 1½ m., the Col Erbajo 3018 ft., 7 m.; Pietroso 10½ m., Saparelli 12½ m., and Quinzena 18 m. From Vadina a good carriage road leads 6 m. to the Baths of Pietrapola, which are supplied by most copious springs of hot, saline, sulphurous water. The season is from May 1 to June 30; or September 1 to November 30. The situation is beautiful and the bathing-establishment and lodging accommodation comfortable, and much frequented. The road from Vivario to Serraggio passes along the top of the rocky gorge of the foaming Vecchio. The best view of the gorge is from the Pont du Vecchio 40 m. from Ajaccio and 280 ft. above the bed. From Serraggio, 1890 ft., Mt d'Oro is well seen. See map, p. 20. The road now passes Lugo, 1980 ft.; S. Pietro, 2496 ft.; the Col. S. Nicolo, 2473 ft.; and Casanova, 2136 ft., to [Headnote: CORTÉ.] miles from AJACCIO miles to BASTIA {51}{44} CORTÉ, 1329 ft., pop. 5500. _Hotels:_ *Paoli, 8 to 10 frs., Europe. Is situated at the junction of the Tavignano with the Restonico, in the midst of majestic mountains of the most varied form. The citadel or château, built in the early part of the 15th century, stands on precipitous and jagged rocks rising from the Tavignano, commanding from the top a magnificent view of the wild surrounding scenery. In the "Place" is a statue of Paoli, the Corsican patriot, born at Stretta in 1726, and to the right of the statue the post and telegraph office. In the immediate neighbourhood stands a large house, a Franciscan convent, in which the Corsican parliament assembled in Paoli's time. Near Corté, by the left side of the Restonico, is a quarry of marble of a bluish tint with reddish white veins. To take the walk up the gorge of the Restonico, descend by first road left up the main street from the hotels and cross only the Tavignano bridge. The mountain appearing to close the valley is Mte. Rotondo. See map, p. 20. Coach to Aleria, 31 m. S.E. (p. 33), by a beautiful road. Just outside Corté the rail traverses the Torretta tunnel, 1531 yards. [Headnote: MTE. ROTONDO.] From Corté the ascent of Monte Rotondo is most easily effected. It is 8613 feet above the sea-level, or 7284 feet above Corté. Cabins inhabited by the herdsmen are scattered over the declivities of the mountain up to within 3000 feet of the top. Time 2 days. Guide with mule 25 frs. Ascend by the road up the picturesque valley of the Restonico to the Timozzo bridge, 3590 feet, and 2½ hours from Corté. From this the path extends 1½ hour up the wild ravine of the Timozzo to the shepherds' huts; whence the rest must be done on foot. Now the hard work commences. Block lies above block, towering upwards and upwards in such endless masses of monotonous gray that the heart quails with the sight and the foot trembles to go farther. After about 2 hours' scramble over these colossal steps the traveller reaches the fontaine de Triggione, about 2200 feet below the summit and in full view of it, an incomplete circle of steep jagged cliffs. About 330 feet higher is a little dark lake, the Lago di Monte Rotondo, encircled by gentle green slopes, where the night is generally spent. Snow-field extend from the lake to the summit, which, although apparently near, requires 2 full hours' climbing to reach, often on hands and feet, over sharp fragments of rock, or up steep beds of slippery frozen snow. The extreme peak is a rugged obelisk of gray rock ending in a pinnacle. A way leads down by the S. side in 6 hours, to Guagno by lake Bettianella, 3419 ft., then W. by the road over the Col de Manganella, 5874 ft. See map, p. 20. [Headnote: GRANITE.] "The view from Monte Rotondo did not impress me. The central uplands, which form a large portion of it, are bare and arid, while the great ridge of Monte Cinto stretches across the northern horizon like a long screen. Comparatively little of the coast is seen in any direction, but most towards the west. It was curious to notice how completely the tops of the mountains between us and the Cinto ridge were flattened down, while the crest on which we stood was a set of bristling teeth. There are two kinds of granite in Corsica, one friable and unable to resist the action of the air, the other hard and defiant of the elements. Of this latter consist the Cinto range, Monte Rotondo and the rocks in the forest of Bavella."--D. W. Freshfield, Alpine Club. The road now from Corté to Bastia traverses the Quilico Col, 1932 ft., passes Soveria, 1843 ft., and Caporalino, 8 m. from Corté, 36 from Bastia and 1 m. from Omessa. About 1½ m. farther it crosses the Golo by the Francardo bridge, 856 ft., where it meets the great Forest Road from Porto, 50 m. S.W. by Evisa and the Col de Vergio, p. 18, and map, p. 20. [Headnote: PONTE LECCIA.] miles from AJACCIO miles to BASTIA {66}{29} PONTE ALLA LECCIA, 624 ft. Village, and coach and railway station. _Inn:_ Cyrnoz. Diligence to Calvi by the beautiful northern continuation of the road from Prunete by Cervione and Piedicroce, p. 20. "Courrier" daily to Piedicroce, 18 m. S.E. by Morosaglia, see p. 34. During the summer heats Ponte alla Leccia is considered insalubrious. [Headnote: PONTE NOVO.] {71}{24} PONTE NOVO. The site of the disastrous battle fought on the 9th of May 1769, when the Corsicans lost their independence and became subject to France. The two small houses on the right bank, a little farther down the river, were Paoli's headquarters. One month afterwards he, with some other Corsican refugees, sailed from Porto Vecchio in a British vessel for England (p. 39). [Headnote: BORGO.] {85}{10} BORGO, pop. 820. On the Mariana hills, rising from Lake Biguglia, one of the many lagoons on the eastern coast, separated from the sea by narrow sandbanks. Along this coast extend the only large plains in Corsica. Unfortunately, in summer they are subject to malaria, which, however, a judicious system of drainage is gradually abating. They are cultivated by Italian labourers who visit the island periodically. Between Borgo and Bastia is Bevinco, with valuable marble quarries. Southward from Borgo on the coast is Mariana, the site of the colony founded by Marius (p. 34). [Headnote: BASTIA.] {95} BASTIA, pop. 21,000. _Hotels:_ *France; Europe; Lingenieur; Croix de Malte over the post and telegraph office, all in the Boul. du Palais, 8 to 10 frs. Theatre; Public Library with 65,000 volumes. Steamers twice a week to Marseilles, time 18 hours, touching once a week at Nice, 12 hours distant. Fare direct to Marseilles, including food, 28 frs. To Nice, without food, 30 frs. Rubattino's steamers leave three times a week for Leghorn; time 6 hours. These same steamers proceed afterwards to Genoa. Railway to Corté. Rail also to Aleria, whence diligence to Bonifacio, Sartène and Ajaccio. Diligences daily from Bastia to Cap Corse, 7 hours, 6 or 5 frs.; and also to Calvi, 12 hours, 13 or 10 frs. [Headnote: BRANDO.] Carriages to visit the stalactite cave at Brando, 10 frs. Admission 2 frs. each. It is 7 m. from Bastia, above Erbalunga, on the face of a mountain; and was discovered in 1841 by M. Ferdinandi. A steep path leads up to it. Keeper near cave. See p. 12. _Bastia_, the most important city of Corsica, is built on ground rising gently from the sea. Facing the sea and the principal harbour is the Place St. Nicholas, adorned with a marble statue of Napoleon I., by Bartolini, looking towards the island of Elba. In this "Place", the promenade of the town, are the offices of the Messageries Maritimes and of the Compagnie Insulaire. Fraissinet's office is at the old harbour; whence also their steamers sail. From the Place St. Nicholas ascends the principal street, the Boulevard du Palais, to the Palais de Justice. In this Boulevard are the post and telegraph offices (whence most of the diligences start), the hotels, cafés and the best shops, and from it ramify the streets of the town. At the top of the B. du Palais commences, right hand, the Boul. Cardo, one of the best roads to take for views of the town and neighbourhood. A flight of steps leads from the quay up to the cathedral, a handsome building in the Italian style. The markets are held in the "Place" fronting the cathedral. Most of the houses are built in large blocks from 5 to 6 stories high and from 6 to 9 windows broad, each story forming a separate residence. Bastia owes its name to the bastion built here by the Genoese in the 14th century. From the hills behind Bastia the view embraces the islands of Gorgona, Capraja, Elba, and Monte-Christo, seen best from the top of the Serra di Pigno, 3640 feet. Refer to map on fly-leaf. [Headnote: STEAMERS.] The most beautiful part of Corsica, and the most easily visited, is the eastern side, including the Castagniccia or the chestnut country, and the whole region up in the mountains, which border this coast. The wealthiest, most industrious and most enterprising of the people are those who inhabit that long narrow tongue of land called Cap Corse. Although boats are constantly sailing from Marseilles and Leghorn to Bastia, invalids visiting Corsica with the intention of wintering in Ajaccio should, if possible, sail from Marseilles or Nice direct to Ajaccio; but on leaving the island, when winter is over, Bastia is perhaps the best port to sail from, as it affords an excellent opportunity for visiting the most beautiful parts of Corsica and the most important towns in Italy. On arriving at Leghorn (see Black's _South France_) it is best to proceed at once to the railway station, and start for Pisa, only 30 minutes distant. There are numerous trains. At the station and in the kiosques in the "Piazzas" of Leghorn, is sold an excellent little book with all the railway Time-tables, _L'Indicatore Ufficiale_, price 50 c. [Headnote: CAP CORSE.--WINE.] CAP CORSE. Bastia to Rogliano and Morsaglia. See General Map, p. 1. By diligence, fare to Rogliano, 4 frs. and 3 frs., distance 27½ m., 6 hrs. To Morsaglia, 5½ and 4½ frs., distance 37½ m., 8 hrs. By the road skirting the eastern side of the peninsula of Cap Corse, the best cultivated part of the island, and containing the tidiest villages. The best Cap Corse wine, mostly white, is produced around Luri and Rogliano. The quality used as table wine is drunk the first year. It improves till the fifth year, the better qualities till the tenth and twentieth year. Cap Corse is traversed by a rugged mountain range or serra, of which the culminating peaks are Mount Alticcione, 4230 feet; Mount Stello, 4536 feet; and the Serra de Pigno, 3640 feet. From the east side of this rugged serra little fertile valleys extend to the sea. [Headnote: PINO.--LURI.] Mr. Freshfield thus describes the "Cap":--"Down a promontory 8 to 10 m. wide runs a range 3000 to 4000 ft. high, with the crest towards the western coast and the valleys towards the eastern. Hence the western Cornice road is a terrace along an always steep, sometimes sheer, mountain side, while the eastern crosses a succession of low maquis-covered spurs, which beyond Cap Sagro flatten and become monotonous. Pino is one of the most beautiful sites on the western coast. It is also important as the spot where the cross-road through the vale of Luri, under Seneca's tower, falls into the western Cornice. Half-way on this road the village of Luri groups itself in the most picturesque way imaginable on a hill-side broken by a deep ravine. Down on the seashore above the little Marina or port is a large convent; a church occupies a projecting brow 200 ft. above it; higher still, and right and left, every vantage-ground is occupied by groups of well-built villas and sepulchral chapels. The slopes are terraced into orchards of citron, lemon, peach and almond trees, olive groves and vineyards, sheltered from the gales of winter by high palisades." Farther south, 5¼ m., is Nonza, with inn, 479 ft., pop. 550. Coach to St. Florent. This is one of the most curious villages of the island. It stands like an eagle's nest, perched above the sea on a black rock on the mountain side. Its houses, built level with the edge of the cliffs, formed in olden days a sufficient rampart against marauders. The diligence having passed Lavasina 4½ m. from Bastia, Brando 7 m., and Erbalunga 6¼ m., halts at Sisco-port 9¼ m. To visit the cave of Brando take the steep narrow path left, near a mill, just before arriving at Erbalunga. Seats in shady places are placed here and there. The keeper's house is close to the entrance. The diligence then proceeds by Pietracorbara 11½ m., and the Torre all'Osse 13 m.; one of the best remaining specimens of the 85 towers built by the Pisans and Genoese to ward off the attacks of the Saracens. From the Torre the diligence proceeds other 2 m. to Perticciolo, where it halts. [Headnote: SENECA'S TOWER.] Two miles farther is S. Severa, where the horses are changed and the passengers breakfast. From S. Severa, a road ramifies 10 m. W. to Pino on the other side of the peninsula by the valley of the Luri, with vineyards and orange groves, passing the village of Luri 3½ m., with good inn, the Col de S. Lucie 7 m., 1363 ft., and Saronese 9¾ m. From the Santa Severa inn, Seneca's tower is distinctly seen, at the head of the valley, on the summit of a precipitous peak, rising from the S. side of the Col, 1355 ft., from which a steep, stony path leads up to it, by a forsaken Franciscan convent. The view is grand. To this tower, one of the many watch-towers built in the 12th cent., Seneca could never have been sent, but to the Roman colony of Mariana, then used as a place of banishment for political offenders. [Headnote: SENECA.] Lucius Annæus Seneca was born at Cordova in Spain, just before the commencement of the Christian era. His eldest brother was A. Seneca Novatus, which name was altered afterwards to that of his adopted father, Junius Gallio. This brother was the proconsul of Achaia, before whom St. Paul was arraigned (Acts xviii. 12). While Seneca was still a child he was brought by his aunt to Rome, where he had for teachers Sotion, Papirius Fabianus and Attalus the Stoic. Although weak in body he was a most diligent student, which, joined to his powerful memory, enabled him to obtain at an early age important offices. Before his banishment, A.D. 41, he had already served as quæstor. Having irritated Caligula, he would have been put to death, had not one of the mistresses of the emperor assured him that it was not worth while, as Seneca was so consumptive he would soon die a natural death. In the first year of the reign of Claudius, his wife Messalina having become jealous of the influence his niece Julia, daughter of Germanicus, had over Claudius her husband, succeeded in getting rid of her by imputing to her improper intimacy with Seneca, then a married man. For that reason Seneca was banished to Corsica A.D. 41. During his exile he wrote his consolatory letter to his mother Helvia, as well as a panegyric on Messalina and a consolatory letter to Polybius, ostensibly to condole with him on the loss of his brother; but in reality to get that powerful freedman to exert his influence with the emperor, to recall his sentence of exile. This letter is full of fulsome flattery and expressions unworthy of an honest man. After the death of Messalina, Claudius married his niece Agrippina, sister of Julia and mother of Nero by a former husband. Through her influence Seneca was recalled A.D. 49 and appointed a prætor and tutor to Nero, then 11 years old. In A.D. 51 Agrippina poisoned her husband. [Headnote: MACINAGGIO.--ROGLIANO.] From S. Severa, the diligence, resuming its journey, passes Meria 20½ m., and halts again at the port of Macinaggio 2½ m. more. From this commences the steep ascent up to Rogliano 1300 ft., a town built in groups on the side of the mountain, among vineyards and olive and chestnut trees, the inn being in the second highest group, near the post-office. After Rogliano the diligence crosses the Cols S. Anne, Cappiaja and S. Nicholas, and arrives at Botticella 31 m., and then proceeds to Ersa with inn, near the top of the Col de Serra 1182 ft., commanding a good view of Cap Corse. Shortly afterwards the diligence arrives at Morsaglia, called also Pecorile, a village composed of groups of houses like Rogliano on the side of a hill. The conductor of the diligence will show the hotel. Six miles S. from Morsaglia is Pino, see p. 12. [Headnote: BOTTICELLA.] From Botticella a road leads 4½ m. N. to Barcaggio, opposite the island of Giraglia, on which is a first-class lighthouse, 269 feet above the sea, seen within a radius of 14 m. From Morsaglia the road is continued 31 m. farther to the Col S. Bernardino on the Bastia and St. Florent road, passing Pino, 25 m. from the Col S. Bernardino; Minerbio, 21½ m.; Marinca, 16 m.; Nonza, 9 m.; Farinole, 2½ m.; Pont du Patrimonio, 1¼ m.; and joins the Bastia road at the Col S. Bernardino, 11¼ m. W. from Bastia. Bastia to Calvi. 57 miles west; time 12 hours; fare 13 and 10 frs. [Headnote: COL TEGHIME.] miles from BASTIA miles to CALVI { }{57} BASTIA. The road traverses a mountainous country, with scanty vegetation. As far as St. Florent the prevailing rocks are micaceous and beyond granitic. Immediately after leaving Bastia the diligence commences the ascent of the Col de Teghime (1785 feet) in the Serra di Pigno, discovering as it winds its way upwards, an ever-extending panorama over the great eastern plain, including Lake Biguglia, and the Mediterranean with the islands of Elba, Gorgona and Monte Christo. As the road descends towards the western shore, the enchanting panorama of the blue gulf of St. Florent, encircled by low reddish rocks, gradually unfolds itself. It was at this road, made by Count Marboeuf, at which, it is said, King Bernadotte worked among the other labourers. It passes the hamlets of Barbaggio and Patrimonio, the Col St. Bernardino 11¼ m. from Bastia, and the Pont des Strette, and enters the valley of Nebbio, partly watered by the sluggish Aliso, flowing through a marsh crowded with oleanders. [Headnote: ST. FLORENT.] {14¼}{42¾} ST. FLORENT, pop. 760. Hôtel de l'Europe, where a hurried breakfast can be had while the horses are being changed. Close to the village is the site of the ancient town of Nebbio, occupied now by a few poor houses and a small church, now a ruin, built in the 12th century. Napoleon said, "St. Florent has one of the finest situations I have ever seen. It lies most favourably for commerce, its landing places are safe and its roads can accommodate large fleets. I should have built there a large and beautiful city." It was one of the first places to give adherence to the Bank of Genoa. The road now for some distance leaves the shore and ascends a range of barren hills containing slate, limestone and granite. Hardy trees become more abundant than the chestnut, and the mountains higher and more imposing, as we approach the little port of [Headnote: L'ILE ROUSSE.] {42}{15} L'ILE ROUSSE, pop. 1610; Hotel Europe. The diligence stops in the "Place" near the monument to Pascal Paoli, and remains a sufficient time to enable the traveller to cast a glance over the main features of this port, founded by Paoli in 1759. The street beyond the "Place" leads by the market to the harbour and to the long jagged tongue of red sandstone rocks projecting into the sea, bearing on the extreme point a lighthouse of the fourth order. Steamer every alternate week to Marseilles. There is a charming view from the eminence St. Reparata, crowned with a church, now abandoned. Inland from L'Ile Rousse is the fertile valley of Balagna, famous for the size and fertility of its olive trees (p. 20). {47}{10} ALGAJOLA, pop. 200. The block of granite which forms the pedestal of the column in the Place Vendome came from the quarries of this place. Pillars 65 feet long can be procured from this quarry. [Headnote: LUMIO.] {51}{6} LUMIO, pop. 1100, among orange groves and high cactus hedges. From the hills here there is a beautiful view of the valley and gulf of Calvi. Junction here with road to Corté, 55½ miles, south-east, passing through a charming and picturesque country (see p. 20). [Headnote: CALVI.] {57} CALVI, pop. 2200. _Inns:_ H. France, in the high town; *Colombani, in the low town, near the dil. office and the wharf. Steamer for Marseilles every alternate week. This, the nearest port to France, is composed of the Citadel or Haute Ville and the Port or Basse Ville. The former, although the residence of the public functionaries, has a dilapidated and forsaken appearance. A rough road, paved with blocks of granite, leads up to it and to the ramparts, commanding beautiful and extensive views. The houses, shops and streets of the Basse Ville are much better and more cheerful than those in the Citadel. Both are defended by Fort Mozzello, rising behind the harbour. On the Punta-Revellata is a lighthouse of the first order, with a fixed light seen 20 miles off. Eight miles S.E. from Calvi is Calenzana, pop. 2900, with the chapel of S. Restituta, visited by pilgrims. Calvi to Ajaccio. miles from CALVI miles to AJACCIO { }{102} Distance 102 miles S.E. The road skirts the coast the greater part of the way. The first village is Galeria, pop. 500--_Inn:_ Seta, 21 miles S. from Calvi. From Galeria the Route Forestière, No. 8, extends 16 miles eastwards to the Col Capronale, 4495 feet, in the forest of Ometa. Six miles from Galeria is the entrance to the forest of evergreen oaks of Treccio, as well as the commencement of the road, 4½ m. long, to the forest of Perticato by the Col Erbajo, 3½ m., 2090 ft., and the Bocca Melza, 4½ m. 2500 ft. Galeria to the Forests of Filosorma. Grand scenery. Guide necessary. Map, p. 20. This, the forest road No. 8, has two ramifications. The main line follows the course of the Fango the whole way, and only becomes a mule-path when near the Maison de Cantonniers d'Ometa, 14 m. E. 3¾ m. from Galeria a mule-path ramifies from the road to the hamlets of Tuarelli, Prunicciole and Chiorna. 3 m. farther is the ramification, 4½ m. S., through the forest of Perticato by the Col d'Erbajo, 2090 ft., 3½ m. S., and the Bocca Melza, 2500 ft., 4½ m. S. From the Bocca Melza a very bad path leads 2 m. S. to the hamlet of Pinito. At the beginning of the above ramification the main road enters the Ilex forest of Treccio, and leaves it nearly 2 m. afterwards. 8¾ m. from Galeria is a roadside inn, and 3¼ m. farther the entrance into the Ilex forest of Ometa. 11¼ m. from Galeria and about 2 m. from the almost unknown valley of the Lonca, an affluent of the Porto, is the Pont de Lancone, 1083 ft., across the Rocce. From this bridge there is a good view of Mt. Tafonato, 7687 ft., to the N. E., with its singularly perforated peak. 13¼ m. is the Grand Cassis d'Ometa, 1680 ft. A little farther the road becomes a bridle-path, and ascends from 1677 ft. to the Maison de Cantonniers d'Ometa, 2274 ft., and 1 m. farther is the end of the forest of Ometa. 15 m. from Galeria is the Grand Cassis de Giargione, 1163 ft., and about 2 m. farther the summit of Col Capronale, 4495 ft. A little way beyond, at the Capo Guagnerola, is a beautiful semicircle of reddish rocks covered with trees at the base. Farther E. by the Golo this forest road joins the forest road No. 9 to Francardo (p. 18). Having crossed the Col de Castellaccio, 850 feet, and passed through the villages of Partinello and Vitriccia, 20 m. from Galeria, we arrive at miles from CALVI miles to AJACCIO {51}{51} PORTO (_Inn:_ H. Padoram), occupying a pleasant and sheltered situation at the head of a fine gulf, with a climate rivalling that of Ajaccio. Most of the timber from the forests of Valdoniello and Perticato is shipped here. For Porto to Ponte Francardo, see p. 18. The road from Porto to La Piana (map, p. 20) affords a delightful drive, and exhibits good engineering. It is cut for a considerable distance through the rocks and cliffs and tall jagged peaks, like cypresses turned into stone, standing on the edge of this savage coast, parts of which are truly splendid. As the ascent is slowly continued, charming views disclose themselves, and on each side of the road the eye discerns some new beauty to dwell upon. At the Col Geneparo, to the right are the ruins of the castle of the Colonnas di Leca, rising boldly above the sea and surrounded and protected by magnificent natural battlements and pinnacles. Six miles from Porto, after having passed the Cols of Geneparo and Mezzano, both about 1250 feet, the traveller reaches [Headnote: LA PIANA.] miles from CALVI miles to AJACCIO {58}{44} LA PIANA, 1587 feet, pop. 1280. _Inn:_ H. France. Delightfully situated, with a fine sea-view. From the Col San Martino, 1 m. from La Piana and 1630 feet above the sea, the landscape undergoes a rapid change. The magnificent rocks become parched and arid and the grass as yellow as the soil where it tries to grow. [Headnote: CARGÉSÉ.] {70}{32} CARGÉSÉ, pop. 1100. _Inn:_ H. de Voyageurs. A large village at the foot of a hill which slopes down to the sea. It was founded by a colony of 730 Greeks, who, fleeing from the oppression of the Turks, arrived and settled here, by the permission of the Genoese, in March 1676. For having refused to aid Paoli in 1755 against the Genoese their villages were burnt to the ground, and they themselves had to seek refuge in Ajaccio. After the cession of Corsica to the French in 1769 M. de Marboeuf had the village and church of Cargese built for the colonists, when they all returned. Greek is still spoken in the village, and it has a Greek as well as a Romanist priest. [Headnote: SAGONA.] {79}{23} SAGONA, pop. 100. The port of Vico. It contains a few houses, one of which is the inn, where beds, bread, eggs, coffee and wine can be had. On the beach are generally large logs brought down from the forests for shipment. Junction with road to Vico 9¼ miles E. (see p. 23), and also with the road extending 19 miles E. to the forest of Aïtone, passing by the Col Vico, 7½ m., 1607 ft.; Poggio, 12½ m.; the Col Sevi, 3612 ft., 13¼ m.; Cristinacce, 16½ m.; and the Col Lacciola, 3040 ft. in the forest. Five and a half miles from Sagona are the cold sulphurous springs of Caldanella; efficacious as a tonic. {87½}{14½} CALCATOGGIO, pop. 670. A poor village on a hill above the road. From this the diligence shortly after commences the ascent of the Col Sebastien, 1344 feet, 12 miles from Ajaccio. After the Col Sebastien, the road having passed over the Col Staggiola, 930 feet, within a short distance of Appietto, situated on a hill; reaches AJACCIO, 102 miles south-west from Calvi. Porto to the Ponte Francardo. 50 miles north-east. Map, p. 20. This important forest road traverses the region of the highest mountains and of the greatest forests, passes through Albertacce, and by the other villages of the Canton of Calacuccia, and then proceeds to Francardo by the defile of the Golo. Porto to Evisa, 13¾ m., by an excellent carriage road wending through most picturesque mountain scenery. The road, after following the course of the Porto, crosses the stream Onda, ascends the ravine of the Cario, which it crosses 3 m. from Porto under the Capo Polmonaccia, 5627 ft. It now winds its way round little valleys into the narrow gorge of the Porto between dark red cliffs crowned with pinnacles. Nine m. from Porto is the ramification of the mule-path to Chidazzo, and ½ m. farther the ramification to Marignano. The road, after passing the chapelle S. Cyprien, enters Evisa, pop. 1000; _Inn:_ *H. Carrara; 2770 ft., on a high promontory projecting in the centre of a mountain-girt basin from the central range between two deep gulfs hollowed out to a depth of 2000 ft. Behind it rise pine forests to a broad mountain crest, the pass of the Niolo. Evisa is admirably situated for excursions. A difficult winding path leads in 2½ hours down to the great walls of the dark granite ravine called the Spelunca, at the confluence of the Aïtone with the Porto. Rambles and drives into the forest of Aïtone, from which unfortunately the old stately pines have disappeared. Evisa to Albertacce, 18 m. E. The road traverses the forest of Aïtone with its vigorous beeches and young pines (_Pinus laricio_), whose stems are clear of branches from 80 to 100 ft. It is watered by the Porto and numerous brawling streams; which rush down steep ravines covered with moss and ferns. In the forest, 3 m. from Evisa, by this road, is the Maison forestière d'Aïtone, where those provided with introductions, see p. 41, will find pleasant headquarters for grand excursions and fishing and botanical expeditions. 1¼ m. farther is the house of the road menders (Cantonniers) of Tagnone; where lodging can also be had. The road having made several detours to get round the heads of ravines, ascends the Col de Vergio 4803 ft. on the great mountain chain separating the valley of the Golo from the valley of the Porto. About 230 ft. above the Col on the Cricche ridge, a little to the W., is an admirable view of Mt. Tafonato, 7687 ft., almost due N., with a strange natural tunnel through the summit. From Mt. Cuculla, 6733 ft., nearly 1¾ hours W. from the Col is a still better view of Tafonato, and besides a sight of Mt. Cinto, the valley of the Golo and the mountain range of Monte Rotondo. A little beyond the summit of the Col is the Maison de Cantonniers de Castellaccio, whence there is a good view of the forest of Valdoniello, 11,483 acres, containing besides many large pines very fine specimens of beeches, birches and alders. The felling of the trees in this forest commenced in 1863. After arriving at the Maison forestière de Sciattarina 10½ m. from Evisa, the road passes by some of the finest trees, and descends into the valley of the Golo; which has its source in a ravine between Mts. Tafonato and Paglia-Orba. Four and a half miles farther is the Maison forestière de Popaja, 3468 ft., 15 m. from Evisa and 3 m. from Albertacce. Either this house or the former, make good quarters for exploring the forest. Two miles farther is the Ponte Alto, 2740 ft.; where the road crosses the Golo and enters the pastoral country of the Niolo; now called the canton of Calacuccia, comprehending the villages of Albertacce, Calacuccia, Corscia, Lozzi, and Casamaccioli. From near the bridge a mule path of 1¾ m. ascends to Casamaccioli, 2780 ft., pop. 550; whence the continuation leads in 7 hours to Corté by the Bocca la Croce, the Melo forest, and the valley of the Tavignano. [Headnote: ALBERTACCE.--MONTE CINTO.] Albertacce, 18 m. from Evisa, 2845 ft., pop. 1000, a dirty village amidst chestnut and walnut trees; where a good deal of coarse linen and Corsican cloth is woven. It is one of the places whence the ascent is made of Monte Cinto, 8892 ft., in 7 hours, and in about 6 for the descent. The path ascends by Calasima, 3610 ft., to the height of 5251 ft. After this the course extends almost horizontally in a western direction across ridges, ascending by gradations more or less fatiguing. When about 7720 ft., and having climbed nearly 6 hours, a cave is passed where shelter can be had. The remainder of the ascent is comparatively easy. The view is grand, Monte Falo, 8363 ft., being the most prominent object. The ascent cannot be made till the beginning of summer on account of the snow. [Headnote: LAKE NINO.] To Lake Nino, 5598 ft., the source of the Tavignano in 5 hours. From the lake a mule path chiefly by the left bank of the Tavignano, leads in 6½ hours to Corté, through magnificent forests. Around the lake are some shepherds huts; where rest and refreshment can be had, but no further supply of food can be counted on between the lake and Corté. The lake, full of fish, lies in a hollow between high mountains, the highest being Mt. Retto, 6592 at the western end. Albertacce to Ponte Francardo, 18 m. N.E. The road follows the Golo. To the left, a road 1¼ m., leads up to Lozzi, pop. 1050. 2½ m. from Albertacce is Calacuccia, 2779 ft. pop. 860, and 2 m. farther, another byeroad ascends to Corscia, 2913 ft., pop. 1000, about 5 hours walk S. from Asco, whence also Mt. Cinto may be ascended by the valley of the Asco called also Stranciacone. Asco is 5 hours from Olmi Capella by the Stranciacone, its affluent the Tassinella, and the Col de Petrella, 6440 ft., to the S. of Mt. Corona, 7032 ft. Near the chapel of S. Pancrazio, 2786 ft., 4 m. from Albertacce is the commencement of the Scala di Santa Regina, as this part of road is called, cut in the face of perpendicular cliffs rising from the bed of the Golo. About half way are the small chapel and inn of Santa Regina, and the cave which in former times used to be the stronghold of robbers. Thirteen miles from Albertacce is the Pont du Diable, 1083 ft., where four roads meet. The road southwards or to the right leads to Corté, 7 m. S. by Castirla and Soveria, and the Col of Oninanda, 2155 ft., between cliffs rising 1720 ft. above it. [Headnote: ASCO.] The road leading northwards extends to the beautiful highway between Ponte alla Leccia and Calvi; by Castiglione 3¼ m., pop. 550, at the foot of Mt. Traunato, 7186 ft., Popolasca, 7 m., pop. 200, with beautiful red granite pinnacles, and Moltifao 12 m., pop. 1050, with Inn, consisting of a group of villages, clustered on the slopes of the ridge which separate the valley of the Tartagine from the Asco. The byeroad S.W. from Moltifao leads up the highly picturesque valley of the Asco, with magnificent forest trees, to the village of Asco, pop. 950, a group of hamlets seldom visited, although one of the best points from which to make the ascent of Mt. Cinto. [Headnote: PONTE FRANCARDO.] The road leading 5 m. N.E. by the Golo extends to the Ponte Francardo, where the rail may be taken. See p. 9 and General Map. Calvi to Corté or to Bastia. See General Map. By Ponte alla Leccia. The finest part of the road is between Calvi and the Col Colombano. "If I were to permit myself to dwell in detail on the exquisite variety and charm of the drive, especially after quitting the _route forestière_ a little E. of the hamlet of Palasca, I should wander far from the main purpose of this paper. Valery, Gregorovius, Lear and others have done justice to its wonderful beauty, and the last truly remarks that 'those who visit Corsica without going through upper Balagne remain ignorant of one of its finest divisions,' adding, 'no description can exaggerate the beauty of this remarkable tract of mountain background and deep valley, which for richness of foreground, cheerful fertility and elegance of distance may compete with most Italian landscapes.' The district is densely peopled--at least twelve large villages are situated on the road itself between Belgodere and Lumio, a distance of 21 miles--and picturesque hamlets with lofty campanili perch high up on the mountain slopes or crown the summits of the lower hills, whilst everywhere there is the richest culture and most varied produce, and the charm of the picture is completed by continually varying views over 'bowery hollows crowned with summer sea.'"--F. F. Tuckett, Alpine Club. [Headnote: THE OLIVE TREE.] miles from CALVI miles to CORTÉ { }{61} CALVI. The road skirts the coast as far as Lumio, 6 m. from Calvi, whence it commences to ascend gradually by an admirably engineered road round the undulations of olive-clad mountains, disclosing at every turn a different view of the fertile valley of Balagna, extending from the distant mountains to the blue waters of the Mediterranean. It is said that there is no district throughout the whole of Italy where the olive attains such a size as in this valley. Of the tree there are three varieties, the Sabine (_Sabinacci_), the Saracen (_Saraceni_), and the Genoese (_Genovesi_), the most common of all, and is ascribed to the Genoese, who during the government of Agostino Doria compelled the Corsicans to plant olives in great numbers. [Map: Corsica Western Central Region] After passing the picturesquely situated village of Lavatoggio, 9 m.; the Col Cesario, 1200 ft., 10½ m.; the villages of Feliceto, inn, pop. 640, 16¼ m.; Castor, 24 m.; Speloncato; Ville di Paraso, pop. 750; Occhiatana, and many more perched on the surrounding mountain tops, or nestling in nooks among olive and chestnut trees, the diligence arrives at [Headnote: BELGODERE.] {26¾}{34¼} BELGODERE, 1017 feet, pop. 950, commanding the finest view of this beautiful valley, its orchards, fields and mountains undulating towards the blue sea. The diligence just remains long enough to give time to run through the gate and up the narrow dirty street to the top of the rock on which the houses are clustered, and there to take a rapid glance at the lovely scene around and underneath. After the gate, the diligence halts at the post-office, and then moves on a few yards towards the stables, where the horses are changed. FOREST ROAD FROM BELGODERE TO THE FOREST OF TARTAGINE. [Headnote: CAPELLA.--TARTAGINE FOREST.] From Belgodere, Route Forestière, No. 3, leads down to the small port of Losari, 6 miles N. from Belgodere and 4½ E. from the Ile Rousse. A continuation of the same route southward extends to the bridge across the Tartagine, 2355 feet, 25 miles from the Ile Rousse, in the great forest of Tartagine. It passes the Bocca Campana, 2782 feet, 3¼ miles from Belgodere; the Bocca Croce, 3045 feet, the culminating part of the road, 7 miles from Belgodere; and 2½ miles farther, the hamlets of Olmi and Capella, 9 miles from Speloncato; with ever-varying mountain and village scenes among great forests; 20 m. from Belgodere is the Pont Tartagine in the forest of that name. The forest of Tartagine, enclosed within the high crests of the Capo Dente 6667 ft. on the west, and of Mt. Padro on the east, measures 7166 acres, and contains principally the _Pinus laricio_ and the _P. pinaster_, intermingled with ilexes or evergreen oaks (p. 41). "Olmi-Capella 2723 ft. is in an open airy situation, commanding fine views of the mountains to the S. and S.W., and protected to some extent on the N. and N.W. by the ridge which sweeps round to the head of the Tartagine valley. This ridge, though in the neighbourhood of the village only about 1000 ft. above the sloping plateau on which it is built, rises to the W. into the peaks of Monte Tolo 4370 ft., Monte San Parteo 5512 ft., Monte Cineraggia 5286 ft., Monte Grosso 6227 ft., Punta Radiche 6595 ft., Capo al Dente 6667 ft., and Monte Corona 7031 ft. The N. slope of this ridge is very steep, and commands most magnificent views of the Haute Balagne and the sea beyond, whilst it is traversed by numerous passes which afford charming scenery. Besides the _route forestière_, which crosses the Col de Bocca Croce 3048 ft., and by which the timber of the forest of Tartagine is conveyed to Ile Rousse for shipment, several mule-paths connect Olmi Capella much more directly with Ville and Speloncato by the Bocca Battaglia 3550 ft., and Bocca Croce d'Ovo 3629 feet; with Feliceto by the Bocca Pianile 5033 ft.; with Zilia and Calvi by the Bocca di Cineraggia 4698 ft.; with Calenzana by the Bocca Bianca 6155 ft., with Calenzana or the Val Ficarella by the Bocca di Tartagine 6093 ft.; and with the head of the valley of Asco by the Bocca de l'Ondella 6086 ft."--F. F. Tuckett, Alpine Club. [Headnote: PALASCA.] miles from CALVI miles to CORTÉ {28¾}{32¼} PALASCA, pop. 550. Situated lower down than the high road and the last village on this side of the {31½}{29½} COL DE SAN COLOMBANO, 2625 feet above the sea. The view though more vast is less distinct, presenting a succession of mountain-tops, between which are dimly seen valleys with the sea in the distance. The diligence now descends into the narrow, rocky vale of the Navaccia, an affluent of the Tartagine, which enters the Golo a little above the important bridge called the [Headnote: PONTE ALLA LECCIA.] {46¾}{14¼} PONTE ALLA LECCIA. Inn at station. Here take rail for Corté (see p. 8) or for Bastia, 29 miles N.E. (see p. 10). The Ponte Nuovo is distinctly seen from the station. The two small houses near the railway bridge, on the S. side of the Golo, were Paoli's headquarters during the battle (see pp. 9 and 39). {61} CORTÉ, see page 8. Ajaccio to Vico and Evisa. 33 miles north; time 7 to 8 hours; fare 4 frs. miles from AJACCIO miles to VICO { }{33} AJACCIO. At about two miles from the town the diligence commences the ascent of the low Col of Stileto, passing the aqueduct for the Gravona water. On the left hand are the granite quarries whence the large slabs were taken for the monument to Napoleon in the Place d'Armes, as well as the long blocks for the pillars of the Marseilles cathedral. To the right are the village of Appietto, pop. 700, on a hill and the great cliff Monte Gozzi, 656 feet high. {12}{21} Summit of the COL ST. SEBASTIEN, 1344 feet above the sea, commanding a lovely prospect of the Bays of Liscia, Sagona and Cargésé, and of the valley of Cinarca, with its villages and vineyards. At the foot of the Col is a small inn called Le Repos des Voyageurs, where bread and wine and capital sea-urchins can be had. They are eaten raw, and taken out of the shell by cutting it in two horizontally. {23}{10} SAGONA, junction with road to Calvi, 79 miles N. (see p. 17). {31}{2} Summit of the COL ST. ANTOINE, 1488 feet. Near the top, at some distance to the left, is the village of Balogna, pop. 600, while in front is seen the splendid range of the Monte Rotondo, among which the most conspicuous is La Sposata, at the head of wooded valleys. The road to the left or N. leads to Evisa, 18 miles from Vico, pop. 1000, and 2770 feet above the sea. _Hotel:_ Carrara, a comfortable house, where vehicles may be hired. Evisa is charmingly situated on the confines of the forest of Aïtone, containing 3,749 acres. Beyond Aïtone, or 11 miles from Evisa, is the large forest of Valdoniello, 11,483 acres. These forests, instead of extending monotonously on large plains, plunge into deep valleys, or creep up the sides of high mountains. From Evisa descend to Porto (see p. 18). [Headnote: VICO.] miles from AJACCIO miles to VICO {33} VICO, pop. 2020. _Inns:_ France, where the diligence stops; Voyageurs; Univers. Most picturesquely situated in the valley of the Liamone, surrounded by steep mountains covered with apple, peach, chestnut, walnut, olive and oak trees. On the opposite side of the valley is the large whitewashed convent of St. Francis, with terraced garden shaded by tall magnolias, beautifully placed on a thickly-wooded bank, above which is seen the small hamlet of Nessa. It is a favourite summer resort of the _élite_ of Ajaccio, who revel here on carpets of cyclamen, violets, and a profusion of other wild flowers, in the shade of the dense foliage of the chestnut groves around. [Headnote: BATHS OF GUAGNO.] Seven and a half miles from Vico up the wooded vale of the Liamone and by the Bridges of Silvani and Belfiori, the village of Murzo and the Col de Sorro, are the Baths of Guagno, with hot, sulphurous springs, resembling in their properties those of Bareges in the Pyrenees (see Black's _South France_). From May to September they are much frequented, when a coach runs between Vico and Guagno. Time, 2 hours; fare, 3 frs. Coaches can be hired at Vico for Evisa. Charge, 10 frs. Ajaccio to Sartène. 53 m. S. by diligence, over a hilly road; 13 hrs. miles from AJACCIO miles to SARTÈNE { }{53} AJACCIO. The most comfortable way to go to Sartène is to take the steamer to Propriano, only 8 miles N. from Sartène, and there to await the daily coach. The diligence from Ajaccio, after having crossed the rivers Gravona, Prunelli, Agnone, Vergajolo and Margone, and the pass of Campolaccio, 843 feet, arrives at [Headnote: CAURO.] {12½}{40½} CAURO or CAVRO, 1180 ft. _Inn._ Coach to Bastelica. Pop. 700. A straggling mountain village, commanding extensive views. Cauro to Bastelica. 12 m. northwards by "Courrier" by a charming forest road, which after crossing the Else at the Pont Zipitoli, 7 m. from Cauro, enters the defile of the Prunelli at the Col de Menta, about 2 m. from Bastelica. The road from Cauro crosses the Col Torro, 1394 ft., 1½ m. Four miles, the col and bridge S. Alberto, 1710 ft. whence a road ramifies 7½ m. S. to S. Maria-Siché and Grossetto. On the right side of the road a waterfall descends from the crest of the Usciolo. Large oaks and chestnut trees with ilexes and pines are now seen. 7 m. here a short branch road leads to a maison forestière surrounded by large trees, at the foot of Mt. Mantelluccio, 5515 ft. A little farther a road ramifies 4½ m. by the wild and beautiful valley of the Else into the forest of Ponteniello, and where it ends a mule path commences to Frasseto, pop. 750, on the coach road between Ajaccio and the baths of Guitera. 7½ m. the Zipitoli bridge across the Else, a short way above its junction with the Prunelli. On the right side of the river is the Maison de Cantonniers of Zipitoli. 8 m. The Col Crichetto, 2380 ft., and nearly 3 m. farther the Col Menta, 2458 ft., from which the road descends to the Prunelli and continues by its banks to [Headnote: DOMINICACCI.] Bastelica, pop. 4000, inn, 2400 ft., consisting of a group of hamlets, none of which bears the name of Bastelica. Sampiero was born in the one called Dominicacci, between Stazzona and Costa, at the end of the 15th cent., and killed by the Ornanos in the defile of the Prunelli on the 17th January 1567. The house which stands on the site of the one he lived in bears an epitaph to his memory, placed by "William Wyse, Irish Roman Catholic, nephew of Napoleon the Great." [Headnote: MT. RENOSO.] Among the many pleasant excursions is the ascent of Mt. Renoso, 7733 ft., 5½ hrs. N.E. In summer men go up every day with mules for frozen snow. There are lakes on the south and east sides of the mountain, and some fine velvety swards. Map, p. 27. Five miles beyond Cauro, the Sartène road attains the summit of the Col St. Georges, 2500 ft., commanding a fine prospect of the surrounding country, and afterwards descends to the valley of Ornano, the native land of Vanina, traversed by the Taravo. miles from AJACCIO miles to SARTÈNE {20}{33} APA, whence a Route Departamentale extends 18 m. N.E. to the baths of Guitera and Zicavo. Maps, pp. 1 and 27. AJACCIO TO ZICAVO AND THE BATHS OF GUITERA. [Headnote: BATHS OF GUITERA.] 8¼ hrs. by coach and 39 m. from Ajaccio by the Apa mill, 1841 ft., then by the slopes of the Punta del Castello, 2674 ft., through a charming country, to S. Maria-Siché, 2 m. from Apa, inn where coach stops, pop. 800. An old lofty building here of granite, with the remains of towers blackened by age, was the birthplace of the unfortunate Vanina, strangled by Sampiero, p. 39. The ruins of the chateau he built for himself in 1554, after his house had been destroyed, are seen on a hill to the left of the road. Coaches for Ajaccio, Guitera, Zicavo, and Propriano. 4½ m. from Apa at Campo, pop. 390, the road describes a great circuit to get round the head of the defile of the torrent of Frasseto, an affluent of the Taravo. 1¼ m. farther is Frasseto, pop. 740. When about 2770 feet high there is, through an opening, a superb view extending to the sea by the valley of the Frasseto. 8 m. from Apa is the Col de Granace, 2713 ft., with a splendid view. Zecavo, 10 m., 2238 ft., pop. 510, on an affluent of the Taravo. Then rounding the buttresses of the Sposata, 3288 ft., enter the village of Corrano, 12 m., pop. 470, in a lovely situation. 14½ m. from Apa and 34½ from Ajaccio are the hot sulphurous springs of Guitera, with hotel, 1437 ft., on the right bank of the Taravo, an excellent trout stream. Coach to and from Ajaccio during the season, from May to September. Pleasantly situated among cork oaks and banks covered with the Osmunda fern. The road from the Baths of Guitera up to Zicavo, 3½ m., follows for about 1 m. the Taravo till its union with the torrent from Mt. Coscione, whence it climbs up through the gorge to [Headnote: ZICAVO.--MT. INCUDINE.] Zicavo, pop. 1500, hotel, 2385 ft., charmingly situated, overlooking the valley of the Taravo, 38 m. by coach from Ajaccio. From Zicavo the ascent is made of Monte Incudine, 7008 ft., in 6 hrs. Mules can be employed to within ½ hr. of summit. Although not difficult, guide and mule are advisable, if for nothing else than to assist in fording the streams. After having passed the chapel of S. Roch, ascend a steep mule path, right, among the largest and best formed chestnut trees in the island, then rounding Mt. Buchino, 3623 ft., among ilexes, and Mt. Occhiato, 5749 ft., covered with beech trees, ascend southwards by a wooded ravine between great rocks. Between 2 and 3 hrs. the Pastures of the plain of Coscione, with many shepherds' huts, are reached, whence Mt. Incudine is seen. After leaving this the path becomes very bad, over loose stones and across troublesome torrents. These are succeeded by an annoying thick coppice of alders, and then the Col de Cheralba, 6345 ft., is ascended, in about 5½ hrs. from starting. The mules are left here, and the ascent is made by the western flank, taking care to make the guide understand that the highest peak is wanted, and not the Rocher de l'Incudine. "The view is probably the most beautiful in Corsica--a vast panorama full of variety. Steep pine clad hills sink abruptly into the eastern sea; glens open southward on a rich glowing valley; the blue depths of the bays are fringed with an edging of white sand and green water. The great granite aiguilles of the forest of Bavella, a strange array of horns and pinnacles, run across the foreground; to the left the long fiord of Porto Vecchio stretches far into the land; while in the centre of the picture are spread out the broad Straits of Bonifacio, studded with pale isles and islets. On the left is Caprera, the home of the liberator of the Two Sicilies. [Headnote: NELSON.] The one beside it, Maddalena, is linked with even greater memories--Nelson and Napoleon. Under its lee, in a bay which Nelson christened 'Agincourt Sound,' the British fleet lay for months before the battle of the Nile, watching for the French squadron sheltered behind the guns of Toulon. Two silver candlesticks on the altar of the village church record Nelson's gratitude for the friendly services of the inhabitants. It was in attacking this same village that Napoleon, in 1793, first saw fire. For mountain views the Alpine clubman is spoilt, but for sea views, and they are not less beautiful, he must go far, perhaps as far as Greece, to find such another."--D. F. Freshfield, Alpine Club. See map on fly-leaf. miles from AJACCIO miles to SARTÈNE {21}{32} GROSSETO, 1476 feet, pop. 600; 4½ hours by diligence from Ajaccio. A little beyond the inn is the church, sheltered by large ilex trees, which grow to a great height in this neighbourhood. {30}{23} BICCHISANO, 350 feet, pop. 1800, where the passengers dine. The diligence then passes the villages of Petreto and Cassalabriva, pop. 300, and shortly afterwards reaches the summit of the Col Celaccia, 1910 feet, about 2½ m. E. from Sollacaro, pop. 800, where Boswell visited Paoli. Sollacaro is not on the highroad. [Headnote: OLMETO.] {39}{14} OLMETO, pop. 1650, hotel. On a hill, with an extensive view. In the neighbourhood, on Monte Buttareto, are the ruins of the castle of Arrigo della Rocca. No more beautiful sight than that of Olmeto can be pictured. Immediately below the town the ground dips steeply down, covered with corn or turf; or in terraces of vineyard, varied with large groups of fine olive trees stretching down to the shore. Above the village a vast growth of vegetation climbs the heights. Among huge masses of granite are tangles of every shrub the island produces, the wild olive or oleaster being one of the most elegant; while every part of the heights close to the town abounds with little picture subjects, with a clear blue sky for a background. The road now descends to the coast, and after crossing the Baracci, near the hot sulphurous mineral baths of Baracci, arrives at [Headnote: PROPRIANO.] {44½}{8½} PROPRIANO, pop. 1000. H. France. Every Saturday a steamer arrives from Ajaccio, and returns on the Monday morning. Another steamer twice weekly between this and Ajaccio. Near the bridge over the Rizzanèse, are the two Celtic monuments called the Stazione del' Diavolo. PROPRIANO TO SOLENZARA. Two and a half miles beyond the bridge commences the Route Forestière, No. 4, leading to Solenzara, 42½ m. N.E. This road ascends by the Rizzanese to S. Lucia di Tallano, whence eastward to Levie, 1970 ft.; and thence Zonza, 2586 ft. The road afterwards ascends N.E. by a picturesque ravine to the Col Bavella, 3965 ft.; whence after descending to the Maison Cantonniere, 1476 ft., it crosses the Col Larone, 2013; whence it descends by a winding road partly by the banks of the Fiumicello and partly by the R. Solenzara to Solenzara (see p. 36). [Map: Corsica, Central Region] Shortly after crossing the Rizzanese the diligence commences the long ascent to Sartène, disclosing views of the great valley below and of the splendid snowy heights of the long range of mountains opposite, terminating in the lofty regions of the great Monte Incudine, 7008 ft. [Headnote: SARTÈNE.] miles from AJACCIO miles to SARTÈNE {53} SARTÈNE, 1000 feet; pop. 6010; _Inns:_ Commerce: Univers. Coaches daily to and from Ajaccio, Bonifacio and Santa Lucia di Tallano. Old Sartène is a town of narrow streets approached by a fine bridge, whence the whole valley is seen down to the Gulf of Valinco. It still retains some towers and parts of the walls erected in the 16th century. The houses are built of rough, dark gray granite, with steep stone steps leading up to the main entrance, and odd Italian chimneys, some in the shape of pillars with curious capitals, others in the form of towers or obelisks. The houses bordering the Nouvello Traverse and the streets leading into the "Place" form the new town. Sartène to Corté by Vivario, up the centre of the island. Maps, pp. 1 and 27. This grand mountain road, No. 196 bis, extends from Sartène, 73 m. N. to the Ajaccio and Corté road, which it joins at the 60 kilometres-stone, on the Col Serra, ½ mile from Vivario. All the diligences between Ajaccio and Corté halt at the inn of Vivario (p. 8). [Headnote: S. LUCIA DI TALLANO.] After leaving Sartène the road crosses the Fiumicicoli and ascends the valley of the Rizzanese to Loreto, 12 m., and Cargiaca 15 m. N. from Sartène 1302 ft.; grand view. Near Loreto is S. Lucia di Tallano, 1270 ft., with a quarry of a beautiful amphibole, a variety of hornblende. The ground colour is grayish blue sprinkled with white and margined with black spots (see p. 37). [Headnote: ZICAVO.] From Cargiaca the road enters the valley of the Coscione and ascends through the ilex forest of Taca amidst towering mountains and vertical cliffs by the villages of Zerubia and Aullene, 2736 ft., pop. 1100; inn; 21 m. N. from Sartène. It now crosses the Coscione, 3492 ft., then the Col Vaccia, 3898 ft., and descends by the Col d'Alisandri, 3426 ft., to Zicavo, 2445 ft., with an inn, 17 m. from Aullene, 3½ m. E. from the baths of Guitera, 38 m. N. from Sartène and 37 m. S. from Vivario. From the Bocca Tinzole a road ramifies N.W. to Olivese 1460 ft., pop. 700, in the valley of the Taravo, 7 m. from Guitera by a beautiful road. From Zicavo the road crosses the Col San Francesco, 1969 ft., to Cozzano, 40 m., pop. 900, and enters the valley of the Taravo, which it ascends by the east bank between two great mountain chains, the culminating point of the western chain being Mt. Don Giovanni 6405 ft., and that of the eastern Pointe Capella 6706 ft. Three and a quarter miles up the valley from Cozzano a wheel road leads 1½ m. E. to the Maison Forestière of St. Antoine, whence a mule path by the Col de Rapara, 5557 ft., extends to Isolaccio and the hot baths of Pietrapola, p. 8, by a picturesque road through a beautiful part of the forest. Four and a half miles above Cozzano is the Col Scrivano, 2959 ft., whence a mule path leads across the valley to Palneca, pop. 1050, on the wooded slopes of Mt. Pietra Cinta, 4958 ft. A little below the summit of the Col is the Maison de Cantonniers de Scrivano. Nine and a half miles N. from Zicavo is the bridge Argentuccia, fronting a grand semi-circle of mountains covered with noble trees. This is the commencement of the real Verde forest. Eleven and three quarter miles from Zicavo is the Maison de Cantonniers de Ghiraldino, 3936 ft., 49 m. N. from Sartène, 2 m. S. from the Col Verde and 5 m. S. from the House of Refuge of Marmano. A little beyond the house a wheel road, left, descends into one of the finest parts of the Verde forest. [Headnote: COL VERDE.] Thirteen and three quarter miles from Zicavo and 51 m. from Sartène is the Col Verde, 4290 ft., with, nearly a mile distant, the Maison de Cantonniers de Marmano. Below is the forest of Marmano, with its best trees cut down, and in the neighbourhood the sources of the rivers Taravo, 5678 ft., at the Col Tisina, of the Fium Orbo, 3783 ft. under a mountain a little to the N. of the Col Verde, and of the Prunelli, 4790 ft., among a group of high mountains to the W. The Vecchio rises from the springs on Mt. Oro. [Headnote: REFUGE DE MARMANO.] Seventeen miles from Zicavo and 54 m. from Sartène is the Refuge de Marmano, 3182 ft., beautifully situated. Here was formerly the summer station of the Casabianda penitentiary. The escaped criminals committed such outrages that the government at the repeated petitioning of the shepherds were obliged to withdraw it. Finally Casabianda was abandoned also, and the prisoners removed to the neighbourhood of Ajaccio, where they could be well looked after. Food and lodging may be obtained at the Maison Forestière, or 1¼ m. farther at the Maison de Cantonniers de Canareccia, 2760 ft., in the rocky defile of the Fium Orbo. Between this and Ghisoni, 6 m., 3 bridges and 2 low Cols are crossed. At the second bridge, the Pont de Casso, 4½ m. from Ghisoni, are seen the great pinnacles or needles and lofty cliffs of Albuccia Point or Kyrie Eleison, 4935 ft. From the Canaraccia the road winds its way northward along the flanks of mountains sloping down to the Orbo, which it leaves shortly before reaching [Headnote: GHISONI.--COL SORBA.] Ghisoni, pop. 1740, 2160 ft., 62 m. N. from Sartène, 12 m. S. from Vivario, 8 m. N. from the House of Refuge, and 24 m. N. from Zicavo. Four m. N. from Ghisoni the road crosses the Col Scozzolatojo, 3916 ft., and 2 m. farther the Col Sorba, 4310 ft., 6 m. S. from Vivario, see p. 8. The descent from the Col Sorba into Vivario is very striking. It is effected by excessively sharp zigzags through a noble pine forest. Between the branches tower the bold forms of Monte d'Oro, Monte Rotondo, and, in the distance, behind the uplands of Corté, the crags of Monte Traunato. The best resting-places on this road are Zicavo, 39 m. S.E. from Ajaccio, from which it is approached by a diligence; and the pleasant village of Ghisoni, where there is a very fair inn. At Vivario there is the Hotel Voyageurs. Guides and carriages should be hired either at Sartène or Vivario, 20 frs. per day. Ghisoni to Ghisonaccia. 18 m. S.E. Maps, pp. 1 and 27. By the Forest road No. 5, cut for nearly 11 m. in the face of the steep cliffs which enclose the Orbo. As this road in all the dangerous parts is hardly 11 ft. wide, it is necessary to ascertain before starting in a vehicle, the position of the carts conveying the logs, and to arrange accordingly. The road descends from Ghisoni to the Pont de Regolo, 2077 ft., where it crosses the Casapietrone, and then follows the course of the Fium Orbo, crosses the Ruello Bridge 1450 ft., and enters the Salto della Sposata 4½ m. from Ghisoni, where the river flows in a narrow bed between vertical precipices, some more than 1200 ft. high. [Headnote: L'INZECCA.] The road, chiselled out of these cliffs, passes under 3 great portals. From the third is seen, through the great cleft in the rock of Inzecca, the sea at Aleria. After this the defile opens up to close again between serpentine cliffs. It then crosses the 2 Ponts de Parabuja and the viaduct de l'Inzecca, and reaches the entrance to the Passage de l'Inzecca, 7 m. from Ghisoni, 985 ft. above the sea, where the road is cut through great serpentine rocks. This is the most difficult part for the waggons to pass. Map, p. 27. The plain now widens, and 8 m. from Ghisoni a branch road leads to Vezzani. Nine and a quarter miles from Ghisoni is the Col S. Antoine, 355 ft., and 8¾ m. farther is Ghisonaccia, p. 32. Sartène to Bonifacio. 33 miles south-east, by diligence; time, 6 hours. miles from SARTÈNE miles to BONIFACIO { }{33} SARTÈNE. The road winds its way through great blocks of granite scattered on a plain studded with shrubby specimens of the ilex, towards the shore of the Golfo di Roccapina, with a fantastically shaped rock called il Leone Coronato. East from the gulf the road passes the village of Pianottoli, 21 m. from Sartène, almost due south from the singular mountain l'Uomo di Cagna, 3980 ft.; then the bridge across the Figari at the head of the Gulf of Figari, 23 m.; the Col de la Testa or Scopeto, 225 ft., 24 m.; and the bridge across the Ventilegni, 27 m. from Sartène, and 6 from Bonifacio. [Headnote: BONIFACIO.] {33} BONIFACIO, pop. 4000. H. du Nord; France in the high town. Diligences leave daily for Bastia, Sartène, and Ajaccio. A steamer arrives every Saturday from Ajaccio and returns on the Monday. Bonifacio was founded in 833 by the Tuscan marquis whose name it bears, to protect this part of the island against the piratical incursions of the Saracens. The high town is built on the top of a limestone rock rising vertically from the sea. The low town occupies one side of the fine natural dock, hemmed in by perpendicular cliffs with an opening of only 328 yards towards the sea. From the steamboat wharf a broad paved series of steps leads up to the high town, entering it through the Porte Vieille. In the old house fronting this Porte or gateway, Charles V., in 1541, stayed two days and a night on his return from his unsuccessful expedition against Algiers. Overtaken by a storm, he had taken refuge in the Gulf of Santa Manza. The door of the house, decorated with an arabesque on marble, is in the narrow side street. In the Place d'Armes are the church of San Domenico, built by the Templars, characterised by its octagonal tower with an embrasured termination; and the great tower "Torrione," part of the fortifications built by the marquis, and formerly the most important part of the citadel. Near this tower is the flight of steps "Redragon," cut in the rock by the Genoese, which descends by 202 steps to the sea. The small room over the gateway of the citadel, opposite the house of Charles V., was inhabited by Napoleon for nearly eight months. There are grand sea-views from the ramparts. The town consists of tall, dingy houses, and narrow, steep, and in most cases dirty streets. The promenade of Bonifacio is the small covered terrace before the church of Santa Maria. Here also is the public cistern. Of the numerous caves which pierce the base of the rock of Bonifacio, the most remarkable one enters from the sea, 214 feet below the Place d'Armes, and extends to an unknown distance. It contains a freshwater lake, which rises and falls with the tide. A staircase with a vaulted roof and consisting of 337 steps leads down to this lake. The water is brought up to the surface by a force pump, is perfectly transparent, with a slight calcareous taste. In the high town there are 39 private and one public cistern, in which the rain water from the roofs is stored up. The low town has a well supplied from a stream by an aqueduct. The afternoon is the best time to visit the caves. A boat for one or party should not cost more than 5 frs. The finest, the Dragonetta, cannot be visited when the sea is rough. On Monte Pertusato (the south extremity of Corsica), 2 miles S.E. from Bonifacio, is a lighthouse of the first order, 325 feet above the sea. The southern promontory is pierced by a cavern hung with stalactites. Bonifacio to Bastia. 103 miles; diligence to Ghisonaccia, 50 m. N., the rest by rail. miles from BONIFACIO miles to BASTIA { }{103} BONIFACIO. The diligence, after passing the Col Finocchio, 354 feet, 2½ miles N. from Bonifacio, the Maison Francola, 7 miles, the bridge across the Stabiacco, 16 miles, and the Col Mattonara, 17½ miles (whence the Route Forestière, No. 11, ascends 14 miles west into the forest of the Ospedale), arrives in 3 hours at [Headnote: PORTO-VECCHIO.] {27}{76} PORTO-VECCHIO, pop. 2740. Hôtel Amis. Surrounded by its old walls, and at the head of a beautiful gulf. The surrounding country is fertile, but unhealthy during the hot weather, on account of the miasma rising from the morasses and lagoons. To the N. of Porto, the mountains still approach near to the sea; but beyond Solenzara (where the diligence halts) 41½ miles from Bonifacio, they recede and leave free those great undulating plains which characterise the eastern coast of Corsica--plains almost uninhabited and covered with heaths. From the north side of the Travo commences a series of large lakes swarming with fish and a kind of cockle. They are separated from the sea by long narrow sandbanks, like earthen break-waters. The malaria prevails from June to October, but even then only the night should be avoided in travelling along this coast. The road after passing by the hamlet of Favona, 33 m., arrives at [Headnote: SOLENZARA.] {45}{58} SOLENZARA. Whence a wheel road extends westwards into the forest of Bavella by the Col Bavella 18½ m. S.W., and the Col Scalella, 22 m., 2982 ft. to Zonza, 24½ m. from Solenzara; 4 m. farther is the village of S. Gavino di Carbini, 2292 ft., and other 2½ m. the village of Levie; 30 m. S.W. from Solenzara, and 10½ from Propriano is S. Lucia de Tallano, on the highroad to Aullene (see p. 27), and for continuation of this road to Propriano see p. 26. The road to Bastia, after passing the Travo, 44 m., Vicchiseri, 46 m., and Casamozza, 48½ m., arrives at the railway station of [Headnote: GHISONACCIA.] {53}{50} GHISONACCIA, pop. 850. On the Fium Orbo, 36 m. S.E. from Corté. From this a department road of 4½ m. leads to the hot sulphurous baths of Pietrapola, with a large hotel in a healthy situation. From Ghisonaccia a carriage road extends N.W. to the villages of Poggio-di-Nazza, 9½ m., and Lugo-di-Nazza, 11½ m. From Ghisonaccia railway station a forest road extends 18 m. N.W. to Ghisoni, where it joins the high road between Sartène and Vivario (p. 29). The southern prolongation of this road leads to Zicavo, Petreto, Bicchisano, and Portopollo, on the Gulf of Valinco. Forty-six m. from Bastia is Casabianda. H. Perett; a village situated on a well-cultivated estate belonging to the government; formerly used as an agricultural penitentiary for juvenile criminals. In the hot season it is safer to pass the night at Casabianda than at Aleria. [Headnote: ALERIA.] miles from BONIFACIO miles to BASTIA {58¼}{44¾} ALERIA. Inn. The capital of Corsica till the invasion of the Saracens in the 4th cent., now a poor village with an old Genoese fort, situated at the mouth of the Tavignano, 1¼ m. from the Etang de Diane. Ancient Aleria, the colony founded by the dictator Sulla about 82 B.C., occupied both banks of the Tavignano, which waters one of the finest plains in the world, where winter is unknown. The site of the town was well selected. The population was probably 20,000. It was at Aleria that Theodore Neuhoff, a native of Altona, in Germany, landed to have himself proclaimed King of Corsica, March 1736. He died a pauper in London, and was buried in an obscure corner of St. Anne's churchyard, Soho. On a mural tablet against the exterior wall, west end, is the following epitaph written by Horace Walpole:--"Near this place is interred Theodore, King of Corsica, who died in this parish, Dec. 11, 1756, immediately after leaving the King's Bench prison, by the benefit of the Act of Insolvency. In consequence of which, he registered his kingdom of Corsica for the use of his creditors." His capital was Cervione. The lake de Diane is a great sheet of salt water with one narrow opening to the sea. It formed the harbour of Aleria, and was provided with quays, of which a vestige still remains. The lake contains an island 460 yards in circumference, composed of oyster shells covered with luxurious vegetation. Fish, and a cockle a species of Venerupis, inhabit the brackish water of the lake. ALERIA TO CORTÉ. Coach every other day; fare, 5 francs; time, 4 hours. Thirty-one and a half m. N.W., by a picturesque road up the course of the Tavignano, passing Cateraggio, 2 m., Rotani, 5 m., commencement of bridle path leading N. to Tallone, 7½ m., Tox, 9½ m., Campo, 11 m., and Moïta, 12½ m. Seven m. farther up the main road a ramification extends N. to Giuncaggio, 4½ m., and to Pancheraccia, 5½ m. Up the main road, 21½ m. from Aleria, and near the bridge across the Vecchio, a bridle path strikes off S. to Rospigliani, 5 m., and Vezzani, 6½ m. A little higher a ramification extends 5 m. W. to Serraggio (p. 8). The road, after passing several other ramifications with the Corté and Ajaccio road, arrives at Corté, p. 8. Ten m. W. from Aleria are the cold saline sulphurous springs of Puzzichello, 190 ft., considered efficacious in the cure of syphilitic diseases, resembling in this property the water of Aulus in the Pyrenees. See Black's _South France_, West Half (Pyrenees). [Headnote: PRUNETE.--CERVIONE.--ALESANI.] miles from BONIFACIO miles to BASTIA {79}{24} PRUNETE. _Inn:_ Gaetan. Junction with road to Ponte alla Leccia, 44 m. N.W. (p. 9), leading through a region of chestnut trees and past many villages on the mountains, built chiefly on terraces. A coach runs from the station to Alesani called also Castagneto 1938 ft. 14 m. W.; ascending by Muchieto 808 ft. 3¾ m., Cervione 1073 ft. 4½ m., pop. 1000; _Inns:_ France: Voyageurs: an untidy village, once the capital of King Theodore's realm. From Cervione the road describes a long detour to the bridge across the Chebbia, whence it ascends to Cotone 1008 ft 6¼ m., the Col d'Aja 1236 ft., and Ortale 1489 ft., 1¾ m. from Alesani. Good red wine is made in the neighbourhood of Cervione. The dirty little village of Castagneto or Alesani is picturesquely situated on the side of a mountain overlooking a valley covered with chestnut trees. The diligence stops at an inn, where bread, eggs and coffee with goats' milk can be had and a comfortable bed. A char-a-banc from this inn to Piedicroce (Orezza) costs 10 frs., time 2½ hours, 11 miles. For Orezza, see p. 34. Passengers from Prunete to Piedicroce or Stazzona should not stop at Cervione but continue the diligence route to Castagneto, whence start next morning. The drive between Castagneto and Piedicroce, 11 miles, is by far the most beautiful part of the road. The highest part of the Col d'Arcarotta is a narrow ridge between the valleys of Orezza and Ortia, commanding a charming view. See also p. 35. {87¼}{24¾} PADULELLA. Four and a quarter miles west by a good road is San Nicolao, pop. 600. [Headnote: STAZZONA.] {84¼}{18¾} FOLELLI-Orezza station. Junction with road to Piedicroce 14¼ m. S.W.; by the course of the Fium'alto, the Chestnut country, and the village of Stazzona, 13¼ m. from Folelli, ¼ m. from and 355 ft. under Piedicroce, and 1 m. from and 200 ft. above the spring of Orezza. The coach from the station stops at Stazzona, pop. 250. _Hotels_: *Paix, Casino. Very fine oleanders in the gardens. On the opposite side of the valley of the Fium'alto is Granajola, with the establishment Manfredi, 2016 ft. above the sea and 220 feet above the spring. The hotel Manfredi has the most select society, is the largest house, and its road from the spring is the least dusty; but as no public coach goes there it is necessary to hire a private conveyance either at Stazzona or Piedicroce, 3 or 4 miles. The charge in all the hotels is 7 frs. per day, not including coffee or tea in the morning. The hotels of Stazzona and the hotel Manfredi are the most convenient for the Spa drinkers; those of Piedicroce are too distant. [Headnote: OREZZA.] The Orezza spring is in the centre of a small terrace in the narrow valley of the Fium'alto, whose steep banks are covered with chestnut trees, and ascended by dusty winding roads. The water is a bicarbonate chalybeate, with an agreeable amount of free carbonic acid gas. [Headnote: VESCOVATO.] {89}{14} VESCOVATO STATION. Town 1¼ m. W., pop. 1500. *H. de Progreso in the large "Place" where all the coaches stop, near a fountain of pure gushing water, cold even in summer. The rather untidy town of Vescovato is almost hidden in the corner of a valley, 550 ft. above the sea, by woods of vigorous olive and chestnut trees. From it a coach starts daily to Porta, 15 m. W., by a bad, dusty, jolting road, passing through Venzolasca, pop. 1300, on the top of a hill, 732 ft., 1½ m. from Vescovato. Three m. farther a road, left, 1 m., leads to Porri, 1718 ft., pop. 300. 7½ m. from Vescovato is the Col S. Agostino, and then follow, 8 m., Silvareccio, 2198 ft., pop. 550; 8½ m., Piano, 2230 ft., pop. 170; Casabianca, 4 m. farther, 2133 ft.; and then Porta, pop. 630; _Inn:_ H. Franceschi, in the "Place," opposite the church, where the coach stops. In July and August the coach goes on to Piedicroce. {91}{12} PONT DU GOLO. A little more than 3 miles from the bridge, at the mouth of the river, stood the town of Mariana, founded by Marius (B. 155, D. 86 B.C.), where Seneca most probably spent his exile, and of which there remain only a few insignificant fragments on the beach. In the vicinity are the ruins of a chapel, and about a mile farther those of the church, called La Canonica, with 2 aisles and a nave 100 feet long and 40 wide, ornamented with rows of pillars of the Doric order. Both church and chapel are in the Pisan style. At Casamozza Station, 12½ m. S. from Bastia, the Aleria railway joins the one from Corté. {103} BASTIA. See p. 10. Ponte alla Leccia to Piedicroce. Eighteen miles S.E. by "Courrier" daily. Fare 3 frs. Time 5 hours, by a mountain road, making immense circuits round by the heads of ravines among rich pastures and great chestnut and beech trees. Nine miles from the Ponte is Morosaglia, pop. 1060, with an inn, where the coach stops. A conglomeration of hamlets on the slopes of a mountain, one of which, Stretta, was the birthplace of Pascal Paoli. 2 m. farther is the summit of the Col de Prato with an inn, 3215 ft., 2850 ft. below, or 3 hours from the top of San Pietro, commanding a magnificent view of the Castagniccia or the Chestnut country, and the islands of Monte Christo, Pianosa, and Elba, floating in the haze between sky and water. See map on fly-leaf. [Headnote: CASTAGNICCIA.] The Castagniccia may be said to lie between the Golo and the Tavignano, bounded on the W. by the railway. The chestnut trees are not so famous for their size as for the qualify of their fruit. The coach having passed the hamlet of Campana arrives at [Headnote: PIEDICROCE.] Piedicroce, pop. 600, several inns, 2104 ft., 18 m. from Ponte alla Leccia, and 650 ft. above the spring of Orezza by a winding, dusty, bad wheel road, passing Stazzona 1978 ft. above the sea. Although Piedicroce is not a suitable place for those who come to drink the Orezza water, it is an excellent centre for excursions, the favourite one being to the top of Monte S. Pietro 5795 ft. in 3 hours, by the cabins of Tajalto 4600 ft., and a beech forest. Mule to nearly the top. Guide and mule, 5 frs. See also above. Coach in July and August to the Vescovato station by Porta, p. 34. Piedicroce to Prunete Station, 26 m. S.E. The continuation of the road from Ponte alla Leccia. From Piedicroce the road passes by Pied'Orezza, 2106 ft., 1¾ m. from Piedicroce, Piedipartino, 2124 ft., 2 m.; Carcheto, 2172 ft., 3m.; Brustico, 2293 ft. 4 m.; the Col d'Arcarotta, 2698 ft., 5¼ m. from Piedicroce, between the richly wooded valleys of the Fium'alto and the Alesani, and commanding a very fine view of both. From this the road gradually descends to Prunete, the most beautiful part being from this Col to Castagneto called also Alesani, where there is an inn and whence a coach starts daily to Prunete Railway Station. [Headnote: CASTAGNETO.] Seven miles from Piedicroce and 2 from the Col is Ortia, 2638 ft., pop. 400, hidden among chesnut trees; Felce, 2570 ft., 8¾ m., pop. 400; Pied Alesani 11 m.; Querceto, 2041 ft., and Castagneto or Alesani, 1938 ft., 12 m. from Piedicroce and 14 from Prunete Railway Station, the principal village in this valley. A little below Castagneto, at the commencement of this chestnut wooded valley is Ortale, 1489 ft., pop. 280. The coach then having passed Cotone 1008 ft., 19¼ m., pop. 800, and having crossed the little bridge over the stream Chebbia arrives at Cervione, _Inn_, France: 1073 ft., 21¾ m. from Piedicroce, and 4¼ from Prunete. From Cervione another coach descends to Prunete Railway Station by Muchieto 820 ft. Prunete consists of a few houses near the beach, resorted to by bathers in summer, situated on the highway between Bastia and Bonifacio. See also p. 33. Solenzara to Sartène, 46 m. S.W. This forest road, No. 4, ascends the valley of the Solenzara, crosses the great S.E. range at the Col de Bavella, descends into the valley of the Rizzanese, passes through the villages of Zonza, San Gavino, Levie, and Ste. Lucie, and joins the highroad between Ajaccio and Bonifacio at the milestone 76·690 (47¾ m.) from Ajaccio, 3¾ m. from Sartène, and 42 m. from Solenzara. The road, after passing up by the S. side of the river through olive groves and "maquis," arrives at the Col and Maison de Cantonniers de Castelluccio, 210 ft., 4 m. from Solenzara. Two m. farther by the Pont de Ghiadole, the road crosses the Solenzara by the Calzatojo bridge, 6 m. from Solenzara, 340 ft., winds upward by the deep gully of the Fiumicello, which having crossed by the bridge 7¼ m. from Solenzara, ascends a steep winding road bordered with great trees to the Maison de Cantonniers de Rocchio-Pinzuto, 8¾ m., 1060 ft., at the foot of the great cliff of that name. The road still winding upwards passes the immense wall of reddish cliffs called the Rochers de Bavella before arriving at the Col de Larone 10¾ m., 2056 ft. The road, still winding, ascends a huge promontory between the torrents Fiumicello and S. Pietro, separating into two distinct parts the forest of Bavella, and crosses the Pont de Bocintoro, 1510 ft., 12 m. A little farther, in a wild yet beautiful situation, is the Maison de Cantonniers d'Arghiavara. From the Pont 1½ m. is the better house, la maison forestière de l'Alza, commanding superb views, situated among great trees and nursery gardens. The ascent from this is by a steep road, almost impracticable for vehicles, through a forest of the stateliest and oldest pines in Corsica. 18 m. from Solenzara and 28 from Sartène is the Maison de Cantonniers de Bavella, 3885 ft., near the summit of the Col Bavella, 4068 ft. In this house of refuge there is generally comfortable accommodation and a supply of provisions. The surrounding huts are occupied in July and August by people from the plains about Solenzara, who come here to escape the fever-producing malaria. The house commands, even from the windows, grand views. On the other side of the Col, 550 ft. below it and 2¼ m. from it, is the Maison de Cantonniers de Ballatojo, from which the road descends amidst great pines mixed with a few oaks and ilexes, in view of the Asinao forest and of the lofty granite pinnacled precipices, 10 m. long, between Mt. Colva, 4520 ft., and the Point Tintinaja, 6658 ft. Zonza, good inn, pop. 1040, height 2582 ft., 24¼ m. from Solenzara and 21¾ m. from Sartène, hidden among chestnut trees and conveniently situated for visiting the forests of Zonza, Asinao, and Bavella. [Headnote: S. GAVINO.] 3½ m. beyond is San Gavino di Carbini, pop. 770, height 2238 ft., a poor miserable village, where there existed in 1365 a sect of socialists, with whom even the women and children were held in common, and by whom were committed frightful abominations. [Headnote: LEVIE.] 30 m. from Solenzara and 16 m. from Sartène is Levie, consisting of various hamlets. Inn where the coach, running between this and Sartène, stops. Pop, 2040, height 2238 ft This village, easily approached, is situated among mountains abounding with game. It commands superb views, and makes in April a very pleasant residence. In winter it is rather cold. On the road between Levie and Santa Lucia di Tallano, 5 ½ m. from the Col d'Aja Vignarsa, 2408 ft., are seen the valley of the Rizzanese and the Gulfs of Valinco and Ajaccio. On the grassy table lands of the Col d'Aja are many rare flowers, among others a species of red gladiolus. [Headnote: S. LUCIA DI TALLANO.] 5½ m. W. from Levie and 11¼ from Sartène is Santa Lucia di Tallano, pop. 1300, Inn where the Sartène and Levie coach stops. S. Lucia is built in terraces on the hills rising from the Fiumicicoli. Church 14th cent. The wines grown in this neighbourhood command good prices in the Corsican market. Below, on the Fiumicicoli, is a hot sulphurous spring. On the way down to the river by the sides of the Point Campolaccia, near a place called Campolajo, is beautiful hornblende, page 27. From Santa Lucia the road leads southwards by the Rizzanese to Sartène, p. 27. SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF CORSICA. It is not known who the original inhabitants of Corsica were. The Phocæans of Ionia were the first civilised people that established settlements in Corsica. About the year 560 B.C. they landed on the island, and founded at the mouth of the Tavignano the city of Aleria, which after a short occupation they were compelled to abandon. After an interval of a few years they again returned, rebuilt Aleria, which they fortified, and endeavoured to maintain their ground against the natives. After a struggle of some years they were again compelled to leave the island. The next foreign occupants of Corsica were the Tuscans, who founded the city of Nicæa, but they in their turn were compelled to give way before the growing maritime power of the Carthaginians, whose jurisdiction in the island was unquestioned till the beginning of the first Punic War. On that occasion the Romans sent out a fleet, drove the Carthaginians from the island, and exacted at least a nominal homage from the native population. They did not, however, fully establish their power here till about thirty years later, and even then rebellions and revolts were of constant occurrence. [Headnote: ROMAN COLONIES.] The first step made towards the real subjugation of the island was the establishment of the two colonies on its eastern coast-that of Aleria by Sulla and that of Mariana by Marius. In the time of the emperors the island had fallen into disrepute among the Romans, by whom it was used chiefly as a place of banishment for political offenders. One of the most distinguished of these sufferers was the younger Seneca, who spent in this island eight years of banishment ending with 49 A.D. [Headnote: ARMS.] On the downfall of the Roman empire in the West, Corsica passed into the hands of the Vandals. These barbarians were driven out by Belisarius, but after his death, 565 A.D., the resistless hordes of Attila once more gained possession of the island. Since that period it has successively owned the dominion of the Goths, the Saracens, the Pisans and the Genoese. The impress of the last is to be found in the style of the church architecture, while the armorial crest of the island, a Moor's head, with a band across the brow, dates from the expedition of the Saracen king, Sanza Ancisa. The patroness of Corsica, the "Protectrice de la Corse," is Santa Devota; who is also the patron saint of Monaco. The Corsicans often style the Virgin Mary simply La Santa; and in their common exclamation Santa! Maria is understood. [Headnote: SAMPIERO.] Among the most renowned and intrepid patriots in the struggle of the Corsicans to free themselves from the Genoese was Sampiero, born of poor parents towards the end of the 15th cent, in Dominicacci, one of the hamlets which compose Bastelica. His house having been burned down by the Genoese, the inhabitants in the 18th cent. constructed a new one on the same site, on which Mr. Wyse, an Irishman, affixed a tablet with an inscription in 1855, expressing his admiration of the man. After serving with great distinction in the armies of the Italian princes and in those of Francis I., King of France, Sampiero returned to Corsica in 1547 and married the fair Vanina, heiress of Ornano, belonging to one of the oldest families in the island. Shortly after the marriage the Corsicans, led by Sampiero, revolted against the tyranny of the Banking Company of St. George of Genoa, and, assisted by the French, under General Thermes, overthrew them after six years of hard fighting and much bloodshed, in which Sampiero and his peasant army bore by far the greatest share. All, however, they had gained at such immense sacrifice was completely lost to them by the treaty of Chateau Cambresis, 1559, by which France agreed to restore Corsica to Genoa. Sampiero and his family had to leave the island. Such was the virulent and implacable hatred Sampiero bore to the Genoese, that he with his own hand, in cold blood, strangled mercilessly his trembling wife three years after (1562) in Marseilles, for having allowed herself, in his absence, to be persuaded to make an arrangement with the Genoese to save the patrimony of her children. Sampiero escaped with impunity, although he buried his murdered wife publicly, and with pomp, in the church of St. Francis at Marseilles. Antonio Francesco, the younger son, who was, when a mere child, with his mother when she was murdered, was afterwards assassinated at Rome by a Frenchman, whom he had insulted while playing at cards. On the 12th June 1564 Sampiero landed at the Gulf of Valinco with a band of 20 Corsicans and 25 Frenchmen, to make another desperate attempt to free Corsica from the hated yoke. After a five years' life-and-death struggle, fired by a feverish thirst for revenge, the Corsicans had to yield to the might of Genoa, supported by well-drilled Italian, German and Spanish mercenaries, commanded by their greatest generals, Doria, Centurione and Spinola, and aided by a powerful fleet. On the 17th January 1567 Sampiero was slain in an ambuscade laid for him in the defile of Cauro, into which he had been led by forged letters brought him by the monk Ambrosius of Bastelica. His elder son Alfonso d'Ornano continued the struggle after his father's death, till the exhausted state of Corsica compelled him to desist and to accept a general amnesty proclaimed by the Genoese governor George Doria in 1569. Alfonso d'Ornano was afterwards created "Maréchal de France." [Headnote: PASCAL PAOLI.] From 1755 the Corsicans, led by the brave Pascal Paoli, carried on the struggle for their independence against the Genoese, who were occasionally assisted by the French. On the 15th May 1768 the former sold their presumed claims to the island to the French, who ended this war of subjugation by the terrible battle of Ponte Nuovo, 9th May 1769. On the llth of June Paoli left Porto-Vecchio for London; where, at the instance of the Duke of Grafton, then prime minister of England, he received an annual pension of £1200. After Corsica had been made one of the departments of France he was invited in 1790, by the National Assembly, to take the supreme command in the island. On his arrival at Paris (3d April 1790), on his way to Corsica, he was fêted as the Washington of Europe, and Lafayette was constantly by his side; while, on his arrival at Marseilles, he was received by a deputation, among whom was Napoleon. In July 1790 he landed at Macinaggio, on the east side of Cap Corse. The execution of the king and the cruelties and excesses of the Convention having shocked the philanthropic spirit of Paoli and alienated his sympathies, he organised a revolt to separate Corsica from France, and succeeded by the aid of the English fleet, 20th July 1794, when Calvi, the last of the forts, surrendered. On the 10th of June 1794 the Corsicans declared that they would unite their country to Great Britain, but that it was to remain independent, and to be governed by a viceroy according to their own constitution. The English, from ignorance, managed the affairs of the island so badly, that when in 1796 Napoleon sent troops against them, they were joined by the Corsicans, who together forced the English to leave the island. Not only had a certain Gilbert Elliot been named viceroy instead of Paoli, but this same man having written to the Government that it was necessary for the safety of the English to remove Paoli from the island, George III. wrote Paoli a letter inviting him to return to England and to his court. It is suspected that Andrea Pozzo di Borgo, president of the Council of State, under the short viceroyship of Elliot, influenced, for his own ends or from jealousy, the English in Corsica against Paoli. Paoli lived twelve years more in London, died peacefully on 5th February 1807 at the age of 82, was buried in St. Pancras churchyard, and a small monument to his memory was placed in Westminster Abbey. He bequeathed to four professors of the intended Corté University salaries of £50 a year each, but as it was never established the money was given to the Ecole Paoli in Corté, attended by 120 pupils. Since the expulsion of the English, the French have remained in undisturbed possession of Corsica. The English occupation lasted from 1794 to 1796. [Headnote: CHARACTER.] The Corsicans look to the Government for the improvement of their island far more than to their own efforts, for they themselves are neither industrious nor enterprising. The roads, railways, bridges and other public works are constructed chiefly by Italian labourers. The women do the drudgery both in their homes and on the fields, carrying great loads on their heads, as the mules do on their backs; but bestow little labour on the cleanliness of their children and dwellings, and do not make good domestic servants. In many small towns women are the bread bakers and assistant butchers. The villages, excepting in Cape Corse, are untidy. The use of the bath is almost unknown to young and old, rich and poor. [Headnote: VENDETTA.] The tendency to take summary vengeance, called vendetta, still exists in the villages; where the people having no social amusements, nothing to read, nor any other resource than cards during the winter nights, are apt to quarrel over trifles; which, fanned by their local petty jealousies, assisted often by the generous nature of their wine, ripen into deadly feuds. [Headnote: OAKS.] The staple food of the majority of the inhabitants, as well as of the horses and mules, during a great part of the year, is the chestnut. For domestic purposes it is mostly ground, when it costs only about half the price of wheat flour, which is procured chiefly from Marseilles, Corsica itself producing very little. The ease with which the harvest of chestnuts is annually obtained tends to foster indolence and deaden enterprise among the peasantry. The one great danger to which the generous chestnut trees are exposed is a conflagration. Besides olives, pines, beeches and chestnuts, there are also important forests of evergreen oaks, the Quercus Ilex, called also the holm oak. It has abundance of dark-green ovate leaves, mostly prickly at the margin; the acorns are oblong on short stalks; the stem grows to the height of 80 ft.; the wood is dark-brown and hard, weighing 70 lbs. the cubic foot, while the same of the Quercus ruber or British oak weighs only 55 lbs., and the tree attains a vast age. The cork oak, Quercus suber, grows either singly among other trees or in groups, principally in the southern parts of the island. The bark is of little commercial importance. [Headnote: AGRICULTURE.] The inhabitants do not assist nature. Their seed potatoes are of an inferior class, their fruit trees receive little attention, very few of the vineyards are carefully cultivated, and their sheep, goats and pigs are of poor breeds. Of late years many have taken to the growing of lemons and citrons; which in a good year yield a very handsome profit; but the harvest, through untimely frosts, is precarious. The headquarters of this culture is Cape Corse. The olive trees yield a more secure though less remunerative harvest. That terrible scourge the phylloxera has got among the vineyards, where it is committing its usual havoc. The drives and pedestrian excursions about Corsica are superb, especially along the east side and up the centre by Sartène, Zicavo and Ghisoni (p. 27), and the road between Calvi and Ponte alla Leccia (p. 20). There are inns in all the large villages, though the only good and comfortable hotels are in Ajaccio. [Headnote: FORESTHOUSES.] Enterprising tourists wishing to explore the great forests and to scale the mountains should endeavour to procure letters of introduction from the chief forestal authorities at Ajaccio, Corté, Bastia or Calvi to the occupants of the Maisons Forestières in the forests to be visited. Although the gardes forestières are generally hospitable, they are afraid to follow their inclination without orders from their superiors. For each day in these houses 7 to 8 frs. should be given. INDEX. AGRICULTURE 41 Aïtone forest 18, 23 Ajaccio 3 Bankers 3 Cab tariff 3 Cathedral 5 Climate 6 Curiosities 6 Drives 3 Episcopal chapel 3 Excursions 5 Fountains 6 Hotels 3 Library 5 Memorial chapel 5 Mission 3 Napoleon 4 Picture gallery 5 Pozzo di Borgo 4 St. Pancras 6 Sepulchral chapels 6 Steamers 2 Water-carriers 6 Ajaccio to Bastia 7 ---- to Corté 7 ---- to Sartène 23 ---- to Vico and Evisa 22 Albertacce 19 Albuccia point 28 Aleria 32 ---- to Corté 33 ---- to Puzzichello 33 Alesani 33, 35 Algajola 15 Amphibole 27 Apa 24 ---- to Zicavo 24 Appietto 22 Arcarotta col 33, 35 Asco 19, 20 Aullene 27 BALAGNA VALLEY 20 Balogna 23 Baracci baths 26 Barcaggio 14 Bastelica 24 Bastia 10 ---- to Calvi 14 ---- to Cap Corse 11 ---- rail to Aleria 34 Baths of Baracci 26 ---- of Caldaniccia 6 ---- of Guagno 23 ---- of Guitera 25 ---- of Orezza 34 ---- of Pietrapola 28, 32 ---- of Puzzichello 33 Bavella col 26, 31, 36 Belgodere 21 ---- to Olmi-Capella 21 ---- to Tartagine forest 21 Bettianella lake 9 Bevinco 10 Bianca bocca 22 Bicchisano 26 Biguglia lake 10 Bocca Melza 16 Bocognano 7 Bonifacio 30 Caves 31 Charles V. 30 Napoleon 30 Bonifacio to Bastia 31 Borgo 10 Botticella 14 Brando cave 10, 12 Brustico 35 CALACUCCIA 19 Calasima 19 Calcatoggio 17 Caldanella 17 Caldaniccia 6 Calenzana 22 Calenzana 15 Calvi 15 ---- to Ajaccio 16 ---- to Bastia 20 Campo 25 Cap Corse 11 Capella mount 27 Capronale col 16 Cargese 17 Cargiaca 27 Carrosaccia 6 Casabianca 34 Casabianda 32 Casamaccioli 19 Casamozza 34 Cassalabriva 26 Castagneto 33, 35 Castagniccia 35 Castellaccio col 16 Castello punta 24 Castiglione 20 Cauro 23 ---- to Bastelica 24 Celaccia col 26 Cervione 33, 35 Character 40 Chestnut trees 1, 41 Chidazzo 18 Cineraggia mount 21 bocca 22 Cinto mount 1, 19, 20 Climate 2 Coast lakes 10, 31, 32 Corona mount 19, 21 Corsican arms 38 ---- character 40 ---- dimensions 1 ---- patroness 38 Corscia 19 Corté 8 ---- to Aleria 8 ---- to Mt. Rotondo 8 Coscione mount 25 Cotone 33, 35 Cozzano 27 Cristinacce 17 Cuculla mount 18 DENTE CAPO 21 Diana lake 32 Dominicacci 24 Don Giovanni mount 27 ELSE VALLEY 24 Erbajo col 8, 16 Erbalunga 12 Ersa 14 Escutcheon 38 Evergreen oaks 41 Evisa 18, 23 ---- to Albertacce 18 FELCE 35 Feliceto 21, 22 Fium Orbo source 28 Folelli 33 ---- to Piedicroce 33 Francardo bridge 9, 20 Frasseto 24, 25 GALERIA 16 ---- to forests of Filosorma 16 Ghisonaccia 32 ---- to Ghisoni 29 Ghisoni 29 ---- to Ghisonaccia 29 Giraglia island 14 Golo source 19 Gozzi mount 22 Granace col 25 Grosso mount 21 Guagno baths 23 Guitera baths 25 HISTORY 37 Houses of shelter 41. See also under "Maison." ILE ROUSSE 15 Incudine mount 25 Inzecca 29 Isolaccio 28 KYRIE ELEISON 28 LACCIOLA COL 17 La Piana 17 Larone col 26, 36 Lavatoggio 21 Leone coronato 30 Levie 26, 32, 37 Lonca valley 16 Lozzi 19 Lugo 8 Lugo di Nazza 32 Lumio 15 Luri 12 MACINAGGIO 13, 39 Maddalena isle 25 Maison Aïtone 18 ---- Alza 36 ---- Arghiavara 36 ---- Ballatojo 36 ---- Bavella 36 ---- Canareccia 28 ---- Castellaccio 18 ---- Castelluccio 36 ---- Ghiraldino 28 ---- Marmano 28 ---- Ometa 16 ---- Popaja 19 ---- Rocchio-Pinzuto 36 ---- S. Antoine 28 ---- Sciattarina 18 ---- Scrivano 28 ---- Tagnone 18 ---- Zipitoli 24 Manganella col 9 Mariana 34 Marmano forest 28 Menta col 24 Moltifao 20 Moor's head 38 Morosaglia 35 Morsaglia 14 Mouflon 2 Muchieto 33, 35 NAPOLEON 4, 26, 30 Nelson 26 Nino lake 19 Niolo 19 Nonza 12, 14 OLIVESE 27 Olive trees 20 Olmeto 26 Olmi-Capella 21 Ometa ilex forest 16 Oninanda col 20 Orezza spa 34 Oro mount 1 Ortale 33, 35 PADRO MOUNT 1, 21 Padulella 33 Pagliorba mount 1 Palasca 22 Palneca 28 Pancheraccia 33 Paoli 39 Patron Saint 38 Pecorile 14 Perticato forest 16 Pertusato mount 31 Petrella col 19 Piano 34 Piedicroce 34, 9, 35 ---- to Prunete 35 Pietrapola baths 28, 32 Pines 7 Pino 12, 14 Pinus Laricio 7 Pinus Pinaster 7 Poggio di Nazza 32 Pont Diable 20 Pont du Golo 34 Ponte alla Leccia 9, 22 ---- to Calvi 20 ---- to Piedicroce 34 Ponteniello forest 24 Ponte Novo 9, 22 Popolasca 20 Porri 34 Porta 34 Porto 16 ---- to Evisa 18 ---- to Ponte Francardo 18 Portopollo 32 Porto-Vecchio 31 Prato col 35 Propriano 26 ---- to Solenzara 26 Prunelli source 28 Prunete 33, 35 ---- to Alesani 33 QUERCUS ILEX 41 RAPARA COL 28 Renoso mount 7, 24 Retto mount 19 Rogliano 13 Rotondo mount 1, 8 SAGONA 17, 23 ---- to Aitone forest 17 ---- to Vico 23 St. Antoine col 23 ---- Bernardino col 14 ---- Colombano col 22 ---- Devota 38 ---- Florent 14 ---- Georges col 24 ---- Gavino di Carbini 37 ---- Lucia di Tallano 26, 27, 32, 37 ---- Lucie col 12 ---- Maria Siché 24 ---- Nicolao 33 ---- Pietro mount 35 ---- Sebastien col 22 ---- Severa 12 Salario fountain 6 Sampiero 24, 38 Sartène 27 ---- to Bonifacio 30 ---- to Vivario 27 Scala di Santa Regina 10 Scozzolatojo col 29 Scrivano col 28 Sea-urchins 22 Sebastien col 17 Seneca's tower 12 Serra col 14 Serraggio 8, 33 Sevi col 17 Silvareccio 34 Solenzara 31 ---- to Sartène 36 ---- to Zonza 31 Sollacaro 26 Sorba col 29 Speloncato 21 Spelunca 18 Sposata 25 Stazzona 34 Steamers 2, 10, 11 Stretta 35 TACA FOREST 27 Tafonato mount 16, 18 Taravo source 28 Tartagine forest 21 Teghime col 14 Theodore Neuhoff 32 Torre all'Osse 12 Traunato mount 20 Treccio ilex forest 16 UCCIANI BRIDGE 7 Uomo di Cagna 30 VADINA 8 Valdoniello forest 18, 23 Vanina 25, 38 Vecchio source 28 Vendetta 40 Venzolasca 34 Verde col 28 Verde forest 28 Vergio col 18 Vescovato 34 ---- to Porta 34 Vico 23 Ville 21 Vivario 8, 29 ---- to Pietrapola 8 ---- to Sartène 27 Vizzavona 7 WINES 2, 11 Wyse, W., 24 ZECAVO 25 Zicavo 25, 27, 28 Zonza 26, 31, 36 THE END. Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh * * * * * Errors and Uncertainties noted by Transcriber When the Index and body text disagreed on spelling, the form shown in the General Map was used. The abbreviation "ft" has been regularized to "ft." where full stop was missing or invisible. _Inconsistencies (as alphabetized in Index, where applicable)_ Between the 51st and 53d kilomètre stones 60 kilometres-stone, _inconsistency in original_ Calenzana (pg 15) _Index entry reads "Calenzani", but body text has "Calenzana"; it appears to refer to the same place as the earlier Index entry "Calenzana"_ Granace (col) _body text "Garanace", Index "Garance", Map "Granace". The Map's spelling was used because it can be found in modern sources._ PONTE NOVO. The site of the disastrous battle ... The Ponte Nuovo is distinctly ... ... the terrible battle of Ponte Nuovo ... [Index] Ponte Novo 9, 22 _the General Map and the town description (p. 9) use the "Novo" spelling; other references (p. 22, 39) use "Nuovo". The Index as printed had parallel entries for each spelling, omitting p. 39_ Col St. Sebastien [text and Index] Col Sebastien [text and Index] _variant forms of same name_ Zicavo ... 2385 ft. Zicavo, 2445 ft. _same place: map has 2345 ft._ _Errors_ [Contents] Ajaccio to Sartène _text reads "Sarténe"_ Portotorres, at the north-west extremity of Sicily _error for Sardinia_ and other 2½ m. the village of Levie _error for "and another"?_ S. Lucia de Tallano, on the highroad to Aullene _text reads "Lucie"_ Ortia, 2638 ft., pop. 400, hidden among chestnut trees _text reads "chesnut trees"_ From 1755 the Corsicans, led by the brave Pascal Paoli _text reads "Corscians"_ Quercus Ilex _text and Index: should be "Quercus ilex"_ [Index] (Ajaccio) to Corté _page reference missing from text_ _may be intentional: Corté is on Ajaccio-Bastia itinerary_ Corscia _not an error here: "Corscia" is the name of a village_ Levie _text has "Levie 37, 32" only_ 
19983	----	Online Distributed Proofreaders Europe at http://dp.rastko.net. This file was produced from images generously made available by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) COLLECTION OF ANCIENT AND MODERN BRITISH AUTHORS. VOL. CLXXII. RECOLLECTIONS OF EUROPE. PRINTED BY J. SMITH, 16, RUE MONTMORENCY. RECOLLECTIONS OF EUROPE. BY J. FENIMORE COOPER, ESQ. AUTHOR OF "THE PILOT," "THE SPY", etc. PARIS, BAUDRY'S EUROPEAN LIBRARY, RUE DU COQ, NEAR THE LOUVRE. 1837. CONTENTS. LETTER I. Our Embarkation.--Leave-taking.--Our Abigail.--Bay of New York.--The Hudson.--Ominous Prediction.--The Prophet falsified.--Enter the Atlantic.--"Land-birds."--Our Master.--Officers of Packet-ships.--Loss of "The Crisis."--The "Three Chimneys."--Calamities at Sea. --Sailing-match.--View of the Eddystone.--The Don Quixote.--Comparative Sailing.--Pilot-boats.--Coast of Dorsetshire.--The Needles. --Lymington.--Southampton Water.--The Custom-house. LETTER II. Controversy at Cowes.--Custom-house Civility.--English Costume.--Fashion in America.--Quadrilles in New York.--Cowes.--Nautical Gallantry. English Beauty.--Isle of Wight Butter.--English Scenery.--M'Adamized Roads.--Old Village Church.--Rural Interment.--Pauper's Grave.--Carisbrooke Cattle.--Southampton.--Waiter at the Vine.--English Costume.--Affinity with England.--Netley Abbey.--Southampton Cockneys. LETTER III. Road to London.--Royal Pastime.--Cockney Coachman.--Winchester Assizes. --Approach to London.--The Parks.--Piccadilly.--Street Excursion. --Strangers in London.--Americans in England.--Westminster Abbey. --Gothic Decorations.--Westminster Hall.--Inquisitive Barber.--Pasta and Malibran.--Drury-lane Theatre.--A Pickpocket.--A Fellow-traveller. --English Gentlemen.--A Radical.--Encampment of Gipsies.--National Distinctions.--Antiquities.--National Peculiarities. LETTER IV. Quit England.--Approach to France.--Havre.--Our Reception there.--Female Commissionnaire.--Clamour of Drums.--Port of Havre.--Projected Enterprize.--American Enterprize.--Steam-boat Excursion.--Honfleur.--Rouen.--French Exaction.--American Porters.--Rouen Cathedral.--Our Cicerone.--A Diligence.--Picturesque Road.--European Peasantry.--Aspect of the Country.--Church at Louviers.--Village near Vernon.--Rosny.--Mantes.--Bourbon Magnificence. --Approach to Paris--Enter Paris. LETTER V. Paris in August 1826.--Montmartre.--The Octroi.--View of Paris. --Montmorency.--Royal Residences.--Duke of Bordeaux.--Horse-racing. --The Dauphine.--Popular feeling in Paris.--Royal Equipage.--Gardes du Corps.--Policy of Napoleon.--Centralization. LETTER VI. Letters of Introduction.--European Etiquette.--Diplomatic Entertainments.--Ladies in Coffee-houses.--French Hospitality.--Mr. Canning at Paris.--Parisian Hotels.--French Lady at Washington.--Receptions in Paris and in New York.--Mode of Announcement.--Republican Affectation.--Hotel Monaco.--Dinner given to Mr. Canning.--Diplomatic Etiquette.--European Ambassadors.--Prime Minister of France.--Mr. Canning.--Count Pozzo di Borgo.--Precedency at Dinner.--American Etiquette.--A French Dinner.--Servants.--Catholic Fasting.--Conversation with Canning.--English Prejudice against Americans. LETTER VII. English Jurisprudence.--English Justice.--Justice in France.--Continental Jurisprudence.--Juries.--Legal Injustice.--The Bar in France.--Precedence of the Law. LETTER VIII. Army of France.--Military Display.--Fête of the Trocadero.--Royal Review.--Royal Ordinance.--Dissatisfaction.--Hostile Demonstration.--Dispersion of Rioters.--French Cavalry.--Learned Coachman.--Use of Cavalry.--Cavalry Operations.--The Conscription.--National Defence.--Napoleon's Marshals.--Marshal Soult--Disaffection of the Army. LETTER IX Royal Dinner.--Magnificence and Comfort.--Salle de Diane.--Prince de Condé.--Duke of Orleans.--The Dinner-table.--The Dauphin.--Sires de Coucy.--The Dauphine.--Ancient Usages--M. de Talleyrand.--Charles X. --Panoramic Procession.--Droll Effect.--The Dinner.--M. de Talleyrand's Office.--The Duchesse de Berri.--The Catastrophe.--An Aristocratic Quarrel. LETTER X. Road to Versailles.--Origin of Versailles.--The present Chateau.--The two Trianons.--La Petite Suisse.--Royal Pastime.--Gardens of Versailles. --The State Apartments.--Marie Antoinette's Chamber.--Death of Louis XV. --Oeil de Boeuf.--The Theatre and Chapel.--A Quarry.--Caverns.--Compiègne.--Chateau de Pierre-font.--Influence of Monarchy.--Orangery at Versailles. LETTER XI. Laws of Intercourse.--Americans in Europe.--Americans and English. --Visiting in America.--Etiquette of Visits.--Presentations at Foreign Courts.--Royal Receptions.--American Pride.--Pay of the President. --American Diplomatist. LETTER XII. Sir Walter Scott in Paris.--Conversation with him.--Copyright in America.--Miss Scott.--French Compliments.--Sir Walter Scott's Person and Manners.--Ignorance as to America.--French Commerce.--French Translations.--American Luxury. LETTER XIII. French Manufactures.--Sèvres China.--Tapestry of the Gobelins.--Paper for Hangings.--The Savonnerie.--French Carpets.--American Carpets. --Transfer of old Pictures from Wood to Canvass.--Coronation Coach. --The Arts in France--in America.--American Prejudice. LETTER XIV. False Notions.--Continental Manners.--People of Paris.--Parisian Women. --French Beauty.--Men of France.--French Soldiers. LETTER XV. Perversion of Institutions.--The French Academy.--Laplace.--Astronomy. --Theatres of Paris.--Immoral Plot.--Artificial Feelings.--French Tragedy.--Literary Mania.--The American Press.--American Newspapers.--French Journals--Publishing Manoeuvres.--Madame Malibran. LETTER XVI. Environs of Paris.--Village of St. Ouen.--Our House there.--Life on the River.--Parisian Cockneys.--A pretty Grisette.--Voyage across the Seine.--A rash Adventurer.--Village Fête.--Montmorency.--View near Paris. LETTER XVII. Rural Drives.--French Peasantry.--View of Montmartre.--The Boulevards. --The Abattoirs.--Search for Lodgings.--A queer Breakfast.--Royal Progresses and Magnificence.--French Carriages and Horses.--Modes of Conveyance.--Drunkenness.--French Criminal Justice.--Marvellous Stories of the Police. LETTER XVIII. Personal Intercourse.--Parisian Society and Hospitality.--Influence of Money.--Fiacres.--M. de Lameth.--Strife of Courtesy.--Standard of Delicacy.--French Dinners.--Mode of Visiting.--The Chancellor of France. --The Marquis de Marbois.--Political Côteries.--Paris Lodgings.--A French Party.--An English Party.--A splendid Ball.--Effects of good Breeding.--Characteristic Traits.--Influence of a Court. LETTER XIX. Garden of the Tuileries.--The French Parliament.--Parliamentary Speakers.--The Tribune.--Royal Initiative.--The Charter.--Mongrel Government.--Ministerial Responsibility.--Elections in France.--Doctrinaires.--Differences of Opinion.--Controversy. LETTER XX. Excursion with Lafayette.--Vincennes.--The Donjon.--Lagrange.--The Towers.--Interior of the House--the General's Apartments.--the Cabinet. --Lafayette's Title.--Church of the Chateau.--Ruins of Vivier.--Roman Remains.--American Curiosity.--The Table at Lagrange.--Swindling. LETTER XXI. Insecurity of the Bourbons.--Distrust of Americans.--Literary Visitor. --The Templars.--Presents and Invitations.--A Spy.--American Virtue. --Inconsistency.--Social Freedom in America.--French Mannerists. --National Distinctions.--A lively Reaction. LETTER XXII. Animal Magnetism.--Somnambules.--Magnetised Patients.--My own Examination.--A Prediction.--Ventriloquism.--Force of the Imagination. LETTER XXIII. Preparations for Departure.--My Consulate.--Leave Paris.--Picardy.--Cressy.--Montreuil.--Gate of Calais.--Port of Calais.--Magical Words. PREFACE. It may seem to be late in the day to give an account of the more ordinary characteristics of Europe. But the mass of all nations can form their opinions of others through the medium of testimony only; and as no two travellers see precisely the same things, or, when seen, view them with precisely the same eyes, this is a species of writing, after all, that is not likely to pall, or cease to be useful. The changes that are constantly going on everywhere, call for as constant repetitions of the descriptions; and although the pictures may not always be drawn and coloured equally well, so long as they are taken in good faith, they will not be without their value. It is not a very difficult task to make what is commonly called an amusing book of travels. Any one who will tell, with a reasonable degree of graphic effect, what he has seen, will not fail to carry the reader with him; for the interest we all feel in personal adventure is, of itself, success. But it is much more difficult to give an honest and a discriminating summary of what one has seen. The mind so naturally turns to exceptions, that an observer has great need of self-distrust, of the powers of analysis, and, most of all, of a knowledge of the world, to be what the lawyers call a safe witness. I have no excuse of haste, or of a want of time, to offer for the defect of these volumes. All I ask is, that they may be viewed as no more than they profess to be. They are the _gleanings of a harvest already gathered_, thrown together in a desultory manner, and without the slightest, or, at least, very small pretensions, to any of those arithmetical and statistical accounts that properly belong to works of a graver character. They contain the passing remarks of one who has certainly seen something of the world, whether it has been to his advantage or not, who had reasonably good opportunities to examine what he saw, and who is not conscious of being, in the slightest degree, influenced "by fear, favour, or the hope of reward." His _compte rendu_ must pass for what it is worth. FRANCE. LETTER I. Our Embarkation.--Leave-taking.--Our Abigail.--Bay of New York. --The Hudson.--Ominous Prediction.--The Prophet falsified.--Enter the Atlantic.--"Land-birds."--Our Master.--Officers of Packet-ships. --Loss of "The Crisis."--The "Three Chimneys."--Calamities at Sea. --Sailing-match.--View of the Eddystone.--The Don Quixote. --Comparative Sailing.--Pilot-boats.--Coast of Dorsetshire.--The Needles. --Lymington.--Southampton Water.--The Custom-house. TO CAPTAIN SHUBRICK, U.S.N. MY DEAR SHUBRICK, "Passengers by the Liverpool, London and Havre packets are informed that a steam-boat will leave the White Hall Wharf precisely at eleven, A.M. to-morrow, June 1st." If to this notice be added the year 1826, you have the very hour and place of our embarkation. We were nominally of the London party, it being our intention, however, to land at Cowes, from which place we proposed crossing the Channel to Havre. The reason for making this variation from the direct route, was the superior comfort of the London ship; that of the French line for the 1st June, though a good vessel and well commanded, being actually the least commodious packet that plied between the two hemispheres. We were punctual to the hour, and found one of the smaller steamers crowded with those who, like ourselves, were bound to the "old world," and the friends who had come to take the last look at them. We had our leave-takings, too, which are sufficiently painful when it is known that years must intervene before there is another meeting. As is always done by good Manhattanese, the town house had been given up on the 1st of May, since which time we had resided at an hotel. The furniture had been principally sold at auction, and the entire month had passed in what I believed to be very ample preparations. It may be questioned if there is any such thing as being completely prepared for so material a change; at all events, we found a dozen essentials neglected at the last moment, and as many oversights to be repaired in the same instant. On quitting the hotel, some fifty or a hundred volumes and pamphlets lay on the floor of my bed-room. Luckily, you were to sail on a cruise in a day or two, and as you promised not only to give them a berth, but to read them one and all, they were transferred forthwith to the Lexington. They were a dear gift, if you kept your word! John was sent with a note, with orders to be at the wharf in half an hour. I have not seen him since. Then Abigail was to be discharged. We had long debated whether this excellent woman should, or should not, be taken. She was an American, and like most of her countrywomen who will consent to serve in a household, a most valuable domestic. She wished much to go, but, on the other side, was the conviction, that a woman who had never been at sea would be useless during the passage; and then we were told so many fine things of the European servants, that the odds were unfortunately against her. The principal objection, however, was her forms of speech. Foreign servants would of themselves be a great aid in acquiring the different languages; and poor Abigail, at the best, spoke that least desirable of all corruptions of the English tongue, the country dialect of New England. Her New England morals and New England sense; in this instance, were put in the balance against her "bens," "_an_-gels," "doozes," "nawthings," "noans," and even her "virtooes," (in a family of children, no immaterial considerations,) and the latter prevailed. We had occasion to regret this decision. A few years later I met in Florence an Italian family of high rank, which had brought with them from Philadelphia two female domestics, whom they prized above all the other servants of a large establishment. Italy was not good enough for them, however; and, after resisting a great deal of persuasion, they were sent back. What was Florence or Rome to Philadelphia! But then these people spoke good English--better, perhaps, than common English nursery-maids, the greatest of their abuses in orthoepy being merely to teach a child to call its mother a "mare." It was a flat calm, and the packets were all dropping down the bay with the ebb. The day was lovely, and the view of the harbour, which _has_ so many, while it _wants_ so many, of the elements of first-rate scenery, was rarely finer. All estuaries are most beautiful viewed in the calm; but this is peculiarly true of the Bay of New York--neither the colour of the water, nor its depth, nor the height of the surrounding land, being favourable to the grander efforts of Nature. There is little that is sublime in either the Hudson, or its mouth; but there is the very extreme of landscape beauty. Experience will teach every one, that without returning to scenes that have made early impressions, after long absences, and many occasions to examine similar objects elsewhere, our means of comparison are of no great value. My acquaintance with the Hudson has been long and very intimate; for to say that I have gone up and down its waters a hundred times, would be literally much within the truth. During that journey whose observations and events are about to fill these volumes, I retained a lively impression of its scenery, and, on returning to the country, its current was ascended with a little apprehension that an eye which had got to be practised in the lights and shades of the Alps and Appenines might prove too fastidious for our own river. What is usually termed the grandeur of the highlands was certainly much impaired; but other parts of the scenery gained in proportion; and, on the whole, I found the passage between New York and Albany to be even finer than it had been painted by memory. I should think there can be little doubt that, if not positively the most beautiful river, the Hudson possesses some of the most beautiful river-scenery, of the known world. Our ship was named after this noble stream. We got on board of her off Bedlow's, and dropped quietly down as far as the quarantine ground before we were met by the flood. Here we came to, to wait for a wind, more passengers, and that important personage, whom man-of-war's men term the master, and landsmen the captain. In the course of the afternoon we had all assembled, and began to reconnoitre each other, and to attend to our comforts. To get accustomed to the smell of the ship, with its confined air, and especially to get all their little comforts about them in smooth water, is a good beginning for your novices. If to this be added moderation in food, and especially in drink; as much exercise as one can obtain; refraining from reading and writing until accustomed to one's situation, and paying great attention to the use of aperients; I believe all is said that an old traveller, and an old sailor too, can communicate on a subject so important to those who are unaccustomed to the sea. Can your experience suggest anything more? We lay that night at the quarantine ground; but early on the morning of the 2nd, all hands were called to heave-up. The wind came in puffs over the heights of Staten, and there was every prospect of our being able to get to sea in two or three hours. We hove short, and sheeted home, and hoisted the three topsails; but the anchor hung, and the people were ordered to get their breakfasts, leaving the ship to tug at her ground-tackle with a view to loosen her hold of the bottom. Everything was now in motion. The little Don Quixote, the Havre ship just mentioned, was laying through the narrows, with a fresh breeze from the south-west. The Liverpool ship was out of sight, and six or seven sails were turning down with the ebb, under every stitch of canvass that would draw. One fine vessel tacked directly on our quarter. As she passed quite near our stern, some one cried from her deck:--"A good run to you, Mr. ----." After thanking this well-wisher, I inquired his name. He gave me that of an Englishman, who resided in Cuba, whither he was bound. "How long do you mean to be absent?" "Five years." "You will never come back." With this raven-like prediction we parted; the wind sweeping his vessel beyond the reach of the voice. These words, "You will never come back!" were literally the last that I heard on quitting my country. They were uttered in a prophetic tone, and under circumstances that were of a nature to produce an impression. I thought of them often, when standing on the western verge of Europe, and following the course of the sun toward the land in which I was born; I remembered them from the peaks of the Alps, when the subtle mind, outstripping the senses, would make its mysterious flight westward across seas and oceans, to recur to the past, and to conjecture the future; and when the allotted five years were up, and found us still wanderers, I really began to think, what probably every man thinks, in some moment of weakness, that this call from the passing ship was meant to prepare me for the future. The result proved in my case, however, as it has probably proved in those of most men, that Providence did not consider me of sufficient importance to give me audible information of what was about to happen. So strong was this impression to the last, notwithstanding, that on our return, when the vessel passed the spot where the evil-omened prediction was uttered, I caught myself muttering involuntarily, "---- is a false prophet; I _have_ come back!" We got our anchor as soon as the people were ready, and, the wind drawing fresh through the narrows, were not long turning into lower bay. The ship was deep, and had not a sufficient spread of canvass for a summer passage, but she was well commanded, and exceedingly comfortable. The wind became light in the lower bay. The Liverpool ship had got to sea the evening before, and the Don Quixote was passing the Hook, just as we opened the mouth of the Raritan. A light English bark was making a fair wind of it, by laying out across the swash; and it now became questionable whether the ebb would last long enough to sweep us round the south-west spit, a _détour_ that our heavier draught rendered necessary. By paying great attention to the ship, however, the pilot, who was of the dilatory school, succeeded about 3 P.M. in getting us round that awkward but very necessary buoy, which makes so many foul winds of fair ones, when the ship's bead was laid to the eastward, with square yards. In half an hour the vessel had "slapped" past the low sandy spit of land that you have so often regarded with philosophical eyes, and we fairly entered the Atlantic, at a point where nothing but water lay between us and the Rock of Lisbon. We discharged the pilot on the bar. By this time the wind had entirely left us, the flood was making strong, and there was a prospect of our being compelled to anchor. The bark was nearly hull-down in the offing, and the top-gallant-sails of the Don Quixote were just settling into the water. All this was very provoking, for there might be a good breeze to seaward, while we had it calm inshore. The suspense was short, for a fresh-looking line along the sea to the southward gave notice of the approach of wind; the yards were braced forward, and in half an hour we were standing east southerly, with strong headway. About sunset we passed the light vessel which then lay moored several leagues from land, in the open ocean,--an experiment that has since failed. The highlands of Navesink disappeared with the day. The other passengers were driven below before evening. The first mate, a straight-forward Kennebunk man, gave me a wink, (he had detected my sea-education by a single expression, that of "send it an end," while mounting the side of the ship,) and said, "A clear quarter-deck! a good time to take a walk, sir." I had it all to myself, sure enough, for the first two or three days, after which our land-birds came crawling up, one by one; but long before the end of the passage nothing short of a double-reefed-topsail breeze could send the greater part of them below. There was one man, however, who, the mate affirmed wore the heel of a spare topmast smooth, by seating himself on it, as the precise spot where the motion of the ship excited the least nausea. I got into my berth at nine; but hearing a movement overhead about midnight, I turned out again, with a sense of uneasiness I had rarely before experienced at sea. The responsibility of a large family acted, in some measure, like the responsibility of command. The captain was at his post, shortening sail, for it blew fresher: there was some rain; and thunder and lightning were at work in the heavens in the direction of the adjacent continent: the air was full of wild, unnatural lucidity, as if the frequent flashes left a sort of twilight behind them; and objects were discernible at a distance of two or three leagues. We had been busy in the first watch, as the omens denoted easterly weather; the English bark was struggling along the troubled waters, already quite a league on our lee quarter. I remained on deck half an hour, watching the movements of the master. He was a mild, reasoning Connecticut man, whose manner of ministering to the wants of the female passengers had given me already a good opinion of his kindness and forethought, while it left some doubts of his ability to manage the rude elements of drunkenness and insubordination which existed among the crew, quite one half of whom were Europeans. He was now on deck in a southwester,[1] giving his orders in a way effectually to shake all that was left of the "horrors" out of the ship's company. I went below, satisfied that we were in good hands; and before the end of the passage, I was at a loss to say whether Nature had most fitted this truly worthy man to be a ship-master or a child's nurse, for he really appeared to me to be equally skilful in both capacities. [Footnote 1: Doric--_south_-wester.] Such a temperament is admirably suited to the command of a packet--a station in which so many different dispositions, habits and prejudices are to be soothed, at the same time that a proper regard is to be had to the safety of their persons. If any proof is wanting that the characters of seamen in general have been formed under adverse circumstances, and without sufficient attention, or, indeed, any attention to their real interests, it is afforded in the fact, that the officers of the packet-ships, men usually trained like other mariners, so easily adapt their habits to their new situation, and become more mild, reflecting and humane. It is very rare to hear a complaint against an officer of one of these vessels; yet it is not easy to appreciate the embarrassments they have frequently to encounter from whimsical, irritable, ignorant, and exacting passengers. As a rule, the eastern men of this country make the best packet-officers. They are less accustomed to sail with foreigners than those who have been trained in the other ports, but acquire habits of thought and justice by commanding their countrymen; for, of all the seamen of the known world, I take it the most subordinate, the least troublesome, and the easiest to govern, so long as he is not oppressed is the native American. This, indeed, is true, both ashore and afloat, for very obvious reasons: they who are accustomed to reason themselves, being the most likely to submit to reasonable regulations; and they who are habituated to plenty, are the least likely to be injured by prosperity, which causes quite as much trouble in this world as adversity. It is this prosperity, too suddenly acquired, which spoils most of the labouring Europeans who emigrate; while they seldom acquire the real, frank independence of feeling which characterizes the natives. They adopt an insolent and rude manner as its substitute, mistaking the shadow for the substance. This opinion of the American seamen is precisely the converse of what is generally believed in Europe, however, and more particularly in England; for, following out the one-sided political theories in which they have been nurtured, disorganization, in the minds of the inhabitants of the old world, is inseparable from popular institutions. The early part of the season of 1826 was remarkable for the quantities of ice that had drifted from the north into the track of European and American ships. The Crisis, a London packet, had been missing nearly three months when we sailed. She was known to have been full of passengers, and the worst fears were felt for her safety; ten years have since elapsed, and no vestige of this unhappy ship has ever been found! Our master prudently decided that safety was of much more importance than speed, and he kept the Hudson well to the southward. Instead of crossing the banks, we were as low as 40°, when in their meridian; and although we had some of the usual signs, in distant piles of fog, and exceedingly chilly and disagreeable weather, for a day or two, we saw no ice. About the 15th, the wind got round to the southward and eastward, and we began to fall off, more than we wished even, to the northward. All the charts for the last fifty years have three rocks laid down to the westward of Ireland, which are known as the "Three Chimneys." Most American mariners have little faith in their existence, and yet, I fancy, no seaman draws near the spot where they are said to be, without keeping a good look-out for the danger. The master of the Hudson once carried a lieutenant of the English navy, as a passenger, who assured him that he had actually seen these "Three Chimneys." He may have been mistaken, and he may not. Our course lay far to the southward of them; but the wind gradually hauled ahead, in such a way as to bring us as near as might be to the very spot where they ought to appear, if properly laid down. The look-outs of a merchant-ship are of no great value, except in serious cases, and I passed nearly a whole night on deck, quite as much incited by my precious charge, as by curiosity, in order to ascertain all that eyes could ascertain under the circumstances. No signs of these rocks, however, were seen from the Hudson. It is surprising in the present state of commerce, and with the vast interests which are at stake, that any facts affecting the ordinary navigation between the two hemispheres should be left in doubt. There is a shoal, and I believe a reef, laid down near the tail of the great bank, whose existence is still uncertain. Seamen respect this danger more than that of the "Three Chimneys," for it lies very much in the track of ships between Liverpool and New York; still, while tacking, or giving it a berth, they do not know whether they are not losing a wind for a groundless apprehension! Our own government would do well to employ a light cruiser, or two, in ascertaining just these facts (many more might he added to the list), during the summer months. Our own brief naval history is pregnant with instances of the calamities that befall ships. No man can say when, or how, the Insurgente, the Pickering, the Wasp, the Epervier, the Lynx, and the Hornet disappeared. We know that they are gone; and of all the brave spirits they held, not one has been left to relate the histories of the different disasters. We have some plausible conjectures concerning the manner in which the two latter were wrecked; but an impenetrable mystery conceals the fate of the four others. They may have run on unknown reefs. These reefs may be constantly heaving up from the depths of the ocean, by subterranean efforts; for a marine rock is merely the summit of a submarine mountain.[2] [Footnote 2: There is a touching incident connected with the fortunes of two young officers of the navy, that is not generally known. When the Essex frigate was captured in the Pacific, by the Phoebe and Cherub, two of the officers of the former were left in the ship, in order to make certain affidavits that were necessary to the condemnation. The remainder were paroled and returned to America. After a considerable interval, some uneasiness was felt at the protracted absence of those who had been left in the Essex. On inquiry it was found, that, after accompanying the ship to Rio Janeiro, they had been exchanged, according to agreement, and suffered to go where they pleased. After some delay, they took passage in a Swedish brig bound to Norway, as the only means which offered to get to Europe, whence they intended to return home. About this time great interest was also felt for the sloop Wasp. She had sailed for the mouth of the British Channel, where she fell in with and took the Reindeer, carrying her prisoners into France. Shortly after she had an action with and took the Avon, but was compelled to abandon her prize by others of the enemy's cruisers, one of which (the Castilian) actually came up with her and gave her a broad-side. About twenty days after the latter action she took a merchant-brig, near the Western Islands, and sent her into Philadelphia. This was the last that had been heard of her. Months and even years went by, and no farther intelligence was obtained. All this time, too, the gentlemen of the Essex were missing. Government ordered inquiries to be made in Sweden for the master of the brig in which they had embarked; he was absent on a long voyage, and a weary period elapsed before he could be found. When this did happen, he was required to give an account of his passengers. By producing his logbook and proper receipts, he proved that he had fallen in with the Wasp, near the line, about a fortnight after she had taken the merchant-brig named, when the young officers in question availed themselves of the occasion to return to their flag. Since that time, a period of twenty-one years, the Wasp has not been heard of.] We were eighteen days out, when, early one morning, we made an American ship, on our weather quarter. Both vessels had everything set that would draw, and were going about five knots, close on the wind. The stranger made a signal to speak us, and, on the Hudson's main-topsail being laid to the mast, he came down under our stern, and ranged up alongside to leeward. He proved to be a ship called the "London Packet," from Charlestown, bound to Havre, and his chronometer having stopped, he wanted to get the longitude. When we had given him our meridian, a trial of sailing commenced, which continued without intermission for three entire days. During this time, we had the wind from all quarters, and of every degree of force, from the lightest air to a double-reefed-topsail breeze. We were never a mile separated, and frequently we were for hours within a cable's length of each other. One night the two ships nearly got foul, in a very light air. The result showed, that they sailed as nearly alike, one being deep and the other light, as might well happen to two vessels. On the third day, both ships being under reefed topsails, with the wind at east, and in thick weather, after holding her own with us for two watches, the London Packet edged a little off the wind, while the Hudson still hugged it, and we soon lost sight of our consort in the mist. We were ten days longer struggling with adverse winds. During this time the ship made all possible traverses, our vigilant master resorting to every expedient of an experienced seaman to get to the eastward. We were driven up as high as fifty-four, where we fell into the track of the St. Lawrence traders. The sea seemed covered with them, and I believe we made more than a hundred, most of which were brigs. All these we passed without difficulty. At length a stiff breeze came from the south-west, and we laid our course for the mouth of the British Channel under studding-sails. On the 28th we got bottom in about sixty fathoms water. The 29th was thick weather, with a very light, but a fair wind; we were now quite sensibly within the influence of the tides. Towards evening the horizon brightened a little, and we made the Bill of Portland, resembling a faint bluish cloud. It was soon obscured, and most of the landsmen were incredulous about its having been seen at all. In the course of the night, however, we got a good view of the Eddystone. Going on deck early on the morning of the 30th, a glorious view presented itself. The day was fine, clear, and exhilarating, and the wind was blowing fresh from the westward. Ninety-seven sail, which had come into the Channel, like ourselves, during the thick weather, were in plain sight. The majority were English, but we recognized the build of half the maritime nations of Christendom in the brilliant fleet. Everybody was busy, and the blue waters were glittering with canvass. A frigate was in the midst of us, walking through the crowd like a giant stepping among pigmies. Our own good vessel left everything behind her also, with the exception of two or three other bright-sided ships, which happened to be as fast as herself. I found the master busy with the glass; and, as soon as he caught my eye, he made a sign for me to come forward. "Look at that ship directly ahead of us!" The vessel alluded to led the fleet, being nearly hull-down to the eastward. It was the Don Quixote, which had left the port of New York one month before, about the same distance in our advance. "Now look here, inshore of us," added the master: "it is an American; but I cannot make her out." "Look again: she has a new cloth in her main-top-gallant sail." This was true enough, and by that sign, the vessel was our late competitor, the London Packet! As respects the Don Quixote, we had made a journey of some five thousand miles, and not varied our distance, on arriving, a league. There was probably some accident in this; for the Don Quixote had the reputation of a fast ship, while the Hudson was merely a pretty fair sailer. We had probably got the best of the winds. But a hard and close trial of three days had shown that neither the Hudson nor the London Packet, in their present trims, could go ahead of the other in any wind. And yet here, after a separation of ten days, during which time our ship had tacked and wore fifty times, had calms, foul winds and fair, and had run fully a thousand miles, there was not a league's difference between the two vessels! I have related these circumstances, because I think they are connected with causes that have a great influence on the success of American navigation. On passing several of the British ships to-day, I observed that their officers were below, or at least out of sight; and in one instance, a vessel of a very fair mould, and with every appearance of a good sailer, actually lay with some of her light sails aback, long enough to permit us to come up with and pass her. The Hudson probably went with this wind some fifteen or twenty miles farther than this loiterer; while I much question if she could have gone as far, had the latter been well attended to. The secret is to be found in the fact, that so large a portion of American ship-masters are also ship-owners, as to have erected a standard of activity and vigilance, below which few are permitted to fall. These men work for themselves, and, like all their countrymen, are looking out for something more than a mere support. About noon we got a Cowes pilot. He brought no news, but told us the English vessel I have just named was sixty days from Leghorn, and that she had been once a privateer. We were just thirty from New York. We had distant glimpses of the land all day, and several of the passengers determined to make their way to the shore in the pilot-boat. These Channel craft are sloops of about thirty or forty tons, and are rather picturesque and pretty boats, more especially when under low sail. They are usually fitted to take passengers, frequently earning more in this way than by their pilotage. They have the long sliding bowsprit, a short lower mast, very long cross-trees, with a taunt topmast, and, though not so "wicked" to the eye, I think them prettier objects at sea than our own schooners. The party from the Hudson had scarcely got on board their new vessel when it fell calm, and the master and myself paid them a visit. They looked like a set of smugglers waiting for the darkness to run in. On our return we rowed round the ship. One cannot approach a vessel at sea, in this manner, without being struck with the boldness of the experiment which launched such massive and complicated fabrics on the ocean. The pure water is a medium almost as transparent as the atmosphere, and the very keel is seen, usually so near the surface, in consequence of refraction, as to give us but a very indifferent opinion of the security of the whole machine. I do not remember ever looking at my own vessel, when at sea, from a boat, without wondering at my own folly in seeking such a home. In the afternoon the breeze sprang up again, and we soon lost sight of our friends, who were hauling in for the still distant land. All that afternoon and night we had a fresh and a favourable wind. The next day I went on deck, while the people were washing the ship. It was Sunday, and there was a flat calm. The entire scene admirably suited a day of rest. The Channel was like a mirror, unruffled by a breath of air, and some twenty or thirty vessels lay scattered about the view, with their sails festooned and drooping, thrown into as many picturesque positions by the eddying waters. Our own ship had got close in with the land; so near, indeed, as to render a horse or a man on the shore distinctly visible. We were on the coast of Dorsetshire. A range of low cliffs lay directly abeam of us, and, as the land rose to a ridge behind them, we had a distinct view of a fair expanse of nearly houseless fields. We had left America verdant and smiling, but we found England brown and parched, there having been a long continuance of dry easterly winds. The cliffs terminated suddenly, a little way ahead of the ship, and the land retired inward, with a wide sweep, forming a large, though not a very deep bay, that was bounded by rather low shores. It was under these very cliffs, on which we were looking with so much pleasure and security, and at so short a distance, that the well-known and terrible wreck of an Indiaman occurred, when the master, with his two daughters, and hundreds of other lives, were lost. The pilot pointed out the precise spot where that ill-fated vessel went to pieces. But the sea in its anger, and the sea at rest, are very different powers. The place had no terrors for us. Ahead of us, near twenty miles distant, lay a high hazy bluff, that was just visible. This was the western extremity of the Isle of Wight, and the end of our passage in the Hudson. A sloop of war was pointing her head in towards this bluff, and all the vessels in sight now began to take new forms, varying and increasing the picturesque character of the view. We soon got a light air ourselves, and succeeded in laying the ship's head off shore, towards which we had been gradually drifting nearer than was desirable. The wind came fresh and fair about ten, when we directed our course towards the distant bluff. Everything was again in motion. The cliffs behind us gradually sunk, as those before us rose, and lost their indistinctness; the blue of the latter soon became grey, and, ere long, white as chalk, this being the material of which they are, in truth, composed. We saw a small whale (it might have been a large grampus) floundering ahead of us, and acting as an extra pilot, for he appeared to be steering, like ourselves, for the Needles. These Needles are fragments of the chalk cliffs, that have been pointed and rendered picturesque by the action of the weather, and our course lay directly past them. They form a line from the extremity of the Isle of Wight, and are awkwardly placed for vessels that come this way in thick weather, or in the dark. The sloop of war got round them first, and we were not far behind her. When fairly within the Needles the ship was embayed, our course now lying between Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, through a channel of no great width. The country was not particularly beautiful, and still looked parched; though we got a distant view of one pretty town, Lymington, in Hampshire. This place, in the distance, appeared not unlike a large New England village, though there was less glare to the houses. The cliffs, however, were very fine, without being of any extraordinary elevation. Though much inferior to the shores of the Mediterranean, they as much surpass anything I remember to have seen on our own coast, between Cape Anne and Cape Florida; which, for its extent, a part of India, perhaps, excepted, is, I take it, just the flattest, and tamest, and least interesting coast in the entire world. The master pointed out a mass of dark herbage on a distant height, which resembled a copse of wood that had been studiously clipped into square forms at its different angles. It was visible only for a few moments, through a vista in the hills. This was Carisbrooke Castle, buried in ivy. There was another little castle, on a low point of land, which was erected by Henry VIII. as a part of a system of marine defence. It would scarcely serve to scale the guns of a modern twenty-four-pounder frigate, judging of its means of resistance and annoyance by the eye. These things are by-gones for England, a country that has little need of marine batteries. About three, we reached a broad basin, the land retiring on each side of us. The estuary to the northward is called Southampton Water, the town of that name being seated on its margin. The opening in the Isle of Wight is little more than a very wide mouth to a very diminutive river or creek, and Cowes, divided into East and West, lines its shores. The anchorage in the arm of the sea off this little haven was well filled with vessels, chiefly the yachts of amateur seamen, and the port itself contained little more than pilot-boats and crafts of a smaller size. The Hudson brought up among the former. Hauling up the forecourse of a merchant-ship is like lifting the curtain again on the drama of the land. These vessels rarely furl this sail; and they who have not experienced it, cannot imagine what a change it produces on those who have lived a month or six weeks beneath its shadow. The sound of the chain running out was very grateful, and I believe, though well satisfied with the ship as such, that everybody was glad to get a nearer view of our great mother earth. It was Sunday, but we were soon visited by boats from the town. Some came to carry us ashore, others to see that we carried nothing off with us. At first, the officer of the customs manifested a desire to make us all go without the smallest article of dress, or anything belonging to our most ordinary comforts; but he listened to remonstrances, and we were eventually allowed to depart with our night-bags. As the Hudson was to sail immediately for London, all our effects were sent within the hour to the custom-house. At 3 P.M. July 2nd, 1826, we put foot in Europe, after a passage of thirty-one days from the quarantine ground. LETTER II. Controversy at Cowes.--Custom-house Civility.--English Costume.--Fashion in America.--Quadrilles in New York.--Cowes.--Nautical Gallantry. English Beauty.--Isle of Wight Butter.--English Scenery.--M'Adamized Roads.--Old Village Church.--Rural Interment.--Pauper's Grave.--Carisbrooke Cattle.--Southampton.--Waiter at the Vine.--English Costume.--Affinity with England.--Netley Abbey.--Southampton Cockneys. TO MRS. POMEROY, COOPERSTOWN, NEW YORK. We were no sooner on English ground, than we hurried to one of the two or three small inns of West Cowes, or the principal quarter of the place, and got rooms at the Fountain. Mr. and Mrs. ---- had preceded us, and were already in possession of a parlour adjoining our own. On casting an eye out at the street, I found them, one at each window of their own room, already engaged in a lively discussion of the comparative merits of Cowes and Philadelphia! This propensity to exaggerate the value of whatever is our own, and to depreciate that which is our neighbour's, a principle that is connected with the very ground-work of poor human nature, forms a material portion of travelling equipage of nearly every one who quits the scenes of his own youth, to visit those of other people. A comparison between Cowes and Philadelphia is even more absurd than a comparison between New York and London, and yet, in this instance, it answered the purpose of raising a lively controversy between an American wife and a European husband. The consul at Cowes had been an old acquaintance at school some five-and-twenty years before, and an inquiry was set on foot for his residence. He was absent in France, but his deputy soon presented himself with an offer of services. We wished for our trunks, and it was soon arranged that there should be an immediate examination. Within an hour we were summoned to the store-house, where an officer attended on behalf of the customs. Everything was done in a very expeditious and civil manner, not only for us, but for a few steerage passengers, and this, too, without the least necessity for a _douceur_, the usual _passe-partout_ of England. America sends no manufactures to Europe; and, a little smuggling in tobacco excepted, there is probably less of the contraband in our commercial connexion with England, than ever before occurred between two nations that have so large a trade. This, however, is only in reference to what goes eastward, for immense amounts of the smaller manufactured articles of all Europe find their way, duty free, into the United States. There is also a regular system of smuggling through the Canadas, I have been told. While the ladies were enjoying the negative luxury of being liberated from a ship, at the Fountain Inn, I strolled about the place. You know that I had twice visited England professionally before I was eighteen; and, on one occasion, the ship I was in anchored off this very island, though not at this precise spot. I now thought the people altered. There had certainly been so many important changes in myself during the same period, that it becomes me to speak with hesitation on this point: but even the common class seemed less peculiar, less English, _less provincial_, if one might use such an expression, as applied to so great a nation; in short, more like the rest of the world than formerly. Twenty years before, England was engaged in a war, by which she was, in a degree, isolated from most of Christendom. This insulated condition, sustained by a consciousness of wealth, knowledge, and power, had served to produce a decided peculiarity of manners, and even of appearance. In the article of dress I could not be mistaken. In 1806 I had seen all the lower classes of the English clad in something like _costumes_. The Channel waterman wore the short dowlas petticoat; the Thames waterman, a jacket and breeches of velveteen, and a badge; the gentleman and gentlewoman, attire such as was certainly to be seen in no other part of the Christian world, the English colonies excepted. Something of this still remained, but it existed rather as the exception than as the rule. I then felt, at every turn, that I was in a foreign country; whereas, now, the idea did not obtrude itself, unless I was brought in immediate contact with the people. America, in my time, at least, has always had an active and swift communication with the rest of the world. As a people, we are, beyond a question, decidedly provincial; but our provincialism is not exactly one of external appearance. The men are negligent of dress, for they are much occupied, have few servants, and clothes are expensive; but the women dress remarkably near the Parisian _modes_. We have not sufficient confidence in ourselves to set fashions. All our departures from the usages of the rest of mankind are results of circumstances, and not of calculation,--unless, indeed, it be one that is pecuniary. Those whose interest it is to produce changes cause fashions to travel fast, and there is not so much difficulty, or more cost, in transporting anything from Havre to New York, than there is in transporting the same thing from Calais to London; and far less difficulty in causing a new _mode_ to be introduced, since, as a young people, we are essentially imitative. An example or two will better illustrate what I mean. When I visited London, with a part of my family, in 1823, after passing near two years on the continent of Europe, Mrs. ---- was compelled to change her dress--at all times simple, but then, as a matter of course, Parisian--in order not to be the subject of unpleasant observation. She might have gone in a carriage attired as a Frenchwoman, for they who ride in England are not much like those who walk; but to walk in the streets, and look at objects, it was far pleasanter to seem English than to seem French. Five years later, we took London on our way to America, and even then something of the same necessity was felt. On reaching home, with dresses fresh from Paris, the same party was only in the _mode_; with _toilettes_ a little, and but very little, better arranged, it is true, but in surprising conformity with those of all around them. On visiting our own little retired mountain village, these Parisian-made dresses were scarcely the subject of remark to any but to your _connoisseurs_. My family struck me as being much less peculiar in the streets of C---- than they had been, a few months before, in the streets of London. All this must be explained by the activity of the intercourse between France and America, and by the greater facility of the Americans in submitting to the despotism of foreign fashions. Another fact will show you another side of the subject. While at Paris, a book of travels in America, written by an Englishman (Mr. Vigne), fell into my hands. The writer, apparently a well-disposed and sensible man, states that he was dancing _dos-à-dos_ in a _quadrille_, at New York, when he found, by the embarrassment of the rest of the set, he had done something wrong. Some one kindly told him that they no longer danced _dos-à-dos_. In commenting on this trifling circumstance, the writer ascribes the whole affair to the false delicacy of our women! Unable to see the connexion between the cause and the effect, I pointed out the paragraph to one of my family, who was then in the daily practice of dancing, and that too in Paris itself, the very court of Terpsichore. She laughed, and told me that the practice of dancing _dos-à-dos had gone out at Paris a year or two before_, and that doubtless the newer _mode_ had reached New York before it reached Mr. Vigne! These are trifles, but they are the trifles that make up the sum of national peculiarities, ignorance of which leads us into a thousand fruitless and absurd conjectures. In this little anecdote we learn the great rapidity with which new fashions penetrate American usages, and the greater ductility of American society in visible and tangible things, at least; and the heedless manner with which even those who write in a good spirit of America, jump to their conclusions. Had Captain Hall, or Mrs. Trollope, encountered this unlucky _quadrille_, they would probably have found some clever means of imputing the _nez-à-nez_ tendencies of our dances to the spirit of democracy! The latter, for instance, is greatly outraged by the practice of wearing hats in Congress, and of placing the legs on tables; and, yet, both have been practised in Parliament from time immemorial! She had never seen her own Legislature, and having a set of theories cut and dried for Congress, everything that struck her as novel was referred to one of her preconceived notions. In this manner are books manufactured, and by such means are nations made acquainted with each other! Cowes resembles a toy-town. The houses are tiny; the streets, in the main, are narrow, and not particularly straight, while everything is neat as wax. Some new avenues, however, are well planned, and, long ere this, are probably occupied; and there were several small marine villas in or near the place. One was shown me that belonged to the Duke of Norfolk. It had the outward appearance of a medium-sized American country-house. The bluff King Hal caused another castle to be built here also, which, I understood, was inhabited at the time by the family of the Marquis of Anglesey, who was said to be its governor. A part of the system of the English government patronage is connected with these useless castles and nominally fortified places. Salaries are attached to the governments, and the situations are usually bestowed on military men. This is a good or a bad regulation, as the patronage is used. In a nation of extensive military operations it might prove a commendable and a delicate way of rewarding services; but, as the tendency of mankind is to defer to intrigue, and to augment power rather than to reward merit, the probability is, that these places are rarely bestowed, except in the way of political _quids pro quos_. I was, with one striking exception, greatly disappointed in the general appearance of the females that I met in the streets. While strolling in the skirts of the town, I came across a group of girls and boys, in which a laughable scene of nautical gallantry was going on. The boys, lads of fourteen or fifteen, were young sailors, and among the girls, who were of the same age and class, was one of bewitching beauty. There had been some very palpable passages of coquetry between the two parties, when one of the young sailors, a tight lad of thirteen or fourteen, rushed into the bevy of petticoats, and, borne away by an ecstasy of admiration, but certainly guided by an excellent taste, he seized the young Venus round the neck, and dealt out some as hearty smacks as I remember to have heard. The working of emotion in the face of the girl was a perfect study. Confusion and shame came first; indignation followed; and, darting out from among her companions, she dealt her robust young admirer such a slap in the face, that it sounded like the report of a pocket-pistol. The blow was well meant, and admirably administered. It left the mark of every finger on the cheek of the sturdy little fellow. The lad clenched his fist, seemed much disposed to retort in kind, and ended by telling his beautiful antagonist that it was very fortunate for her she was not a boy. But it was the face of the girl herself that drew my attention. It was like a mirror which reflected every passing thought. When she gave the blow, it was red with indignation. This feeling instantly gave way to a kinder sentiment, and her colour softened to a flush of surprise at the boldness of her own act. Then came a laugh, and a look about her, as if to inquire if she had been very wrong; the whole terminating in an expression of regret in the prettiest blue eyes in the world, which might have satisfied any one that an offence occasioned by her own sweet face was not unpardonable. The sweetness, the ingenuousness, the spirit mingled with softness, exhibited in the countenance of this girl, are, I think, all characteristic of the English female countenance, when it has not been marble-ized by the over-wrought polish of high breeding. Similar countenances occur in America, though, I think, less frequently than here; and I believe them to be quite peculiar to the Anglo-Saxon race. The workings of such a countenance are like the play of lights and shades in a southern sky. From the windows of the inn we had a very good view of a small castellated dwelling that one of the King's architects had caused to be erected for himself. The effect of gray towers seen over the tree-tops, with glimpses of the lawn, visible through vistas in the copses, was exceedingly pretty; though the indescribable influence of association prevented us from paying that homage to turrets and walls of the nineteenth, that we were ready so devotedly to pay to anything of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. We broke bread, for the first time in Europe, that evening, having made an early and a hurried dinner on board the ship. The Isle of Wight is celebrated for its butter, and yet we found it difficult to eat it! The English, and many other European nations, put no salt in their table butter; and we, who had been accustomed to the American usage, exclaimed with one voice against its insipidity. A near relation of A----'s who once served in the British army, used to relate an anecdote on the subject of tastes, that is quite in point. A brother officer, who had gone safely through the celebrated siege of Gibraltar, landed at Portsmouth, on his return home. Among the other privations of his recent service, he had been compelled to eat butter whose fragrance scented the whole Rock. Before retiring for the night, he gave particular orders to have hot rolls and Isle of Wight butter served for breakfast. The first mouthful disappointed him, and of course the unlucky waiter suffered. The latter protested that he had executed the order to the letter. "Then take away your Isle of Wight butter," growled the officer, "and bring me some that _has a taste_." Like him of Gibraltar, we were ready to exclaim, "Take away your Isle of Wight butter, and bring us some from the good ship Hudson," which, though not quite as fragrant as that which had obtained its odour in a siege, was not entirely without a taste. This little event, homely as it may appear, is connected with the principle that influences the decisions of more than half of those who visit foreign nations. Usages are condemned because they are not our own; practices are denounced if their connexion with fitness is not self-apparent to our inexperience; and men and things are judged by rules that are of local origin and local application. The moral will be complete when I add, that we, who were so fastidious about the butter at Cowes, after an absence of nearly eight years from America, had the salt regularly worked out of all we ate, for months after our return home, protesting there was no such thing as good butter in America. Had Mrs. ---- introduced the Philadelphia butter, however, I think her husband must have succumbed, for I believe it to be the best in the world, not even excepting that of Leyden. Towards evening, the Hudson having landed all her passengers, and the most of those who were in the steerage, went round the eastern point of the little port, on her way to London. After taking an early breakfast, we all got into a carriage called a sociable, which is very like a larger sort of American coaches and went to Newport, the principal town in the island. The road ran between hedges, and the scenery was strictly English. Small enclosures, copses, a sward clipped close as velvet, and trees (of no great size or beauty, however,) scattered in the fields, with an effect nearly equal to landscape gardening, were the predominant features. The drought had less influence on the verdure here than in Dorsetshire. The road was narrow and winding, the very _beau idéal_ of a highway; for, in this particular, the general rule obtains that what is agreeable is the least useful. Thanks to the practical good sense and perseverance of Mr. McAdam, not only the road in question, but nearly all the roads of Great Britain have been made, within the last five-and-twenty years, to resemble in appearance, but really to exceed in solidity and strength, the roads one formerly saw in the grounds of private gentlemen. These roads are almost flat, and when they have been properly constructed, the wheel rolls over them as if passing along a bed of iron. Apart from the levels, which, of course, are not so rigidly observed, there is not, any very sensible difference between the draught on a really good McAdamized road and on a railroad. We have a few roads in America that are nearly as good as most one meets with, but we have nothing that deserves to be termed a real imitation of the system of Mr. McAdam. The distance to Newport was only four or five miles. The town itself, a borough, but otherwise of little note, lies in a very sweet vale, and is neat but plain, resembling, in all but its greater appearance of antiquity and the greater size of its churches, one of our own provincial towns of the same size. A---- and myself took a fly, and went, by a very rural road, to Carisbrooke, a distance of about a mile, in quest of lodgings. Carisbrooke is a mere village, but the whole valley in this part of the island is so highly cultivated, and so many pretty cottages meet the eye--not cottages of the poor, but cottages of the rich--that it has an air of finish and high cultivation that we are accustomed to see only in the immediate vicinity of large towns, and not always even there. On reaching the hamlet of Carisbrooke we found ourselves immediately beneath the castle. There was a fine old village church, one of those picturesque rustic edifices which abound in England, a building that time had warped and twisted in such a way as to leave few parallel lines, or straight edges, or even regular angles, in any part of it. They told us, also, that the remains of a ruined priory were at hand. We had often laughed since at the eagerness and delight with which we hurried off to look at these venerable objects. It was soon decided, however, that it was a pleasure too exquisite to be niggardly enjoyed alone, and the carriage was sent back with orders to bring up the whole party. While the fly--a Liliputian coach drawn by a single horse, a sort of diminutive buggy--was absent, we went in quest of the priory. The people were very civil, and quite readily pointed out the way. We found the ruin in a farmyard. There was literally nothing but a very small fragment of a blind wall, but with these materials we went to work with the imagination, and soon completed the whole edifice. We might even have peopled it, had not Carisbrooke, with its keep, its gateway, and its ivy-clad ramparts, lain in full view, inviting us to something less ideal. The church, too--the rude, old, hump-backed church was already opened, waiting to be inspected. The interior of this building was as ancient, in appearance, at least, and quite as little in harmony with right lines and regular angles, as its exterior. All the wood-work was of unpainted oak, a colour, however, that was scarcely dark enough to be rich; a circumstance which, to American eyes, at least--eyes on whose lenses paint is ever present--gave it an unfinished look. Had we seen this old building five years later, we might have thought differently. As for the English oak, of which one has heard so much, it is no great matter: our own common oaks are much prettier, and, did we understand their beauty, there would not be a village church in America that, in this particular, would not excel the finest English cathedral. I saw nothing in all Europe, of this nature, that equalled the common oaken doors of the hall at C----, which you know so well. A movement in the church-yard called us out, and we became pained witnesses of the interment of two of the "unhonoured dead." The air, manner and conduct of these funerals made a deep impression on us both. The dead were a woman and a child, but of different families. There were three or four mourners belonging to each party. Both the bodies were brought in the same horse-cart, and they were buried by the same service. The coffins were of coarse wood, stained with black, in a way to betray poverty. It was literally _le convoi du pauvre_. Deference to their superiors, and the struggle to maintain appearances--for there was a semblance of the pomp of woe, even in these extraordinary groups, of which all were in deep mourning--contrasted strangely with the extreme poverty of the parties, the niggardly administration of the sacred offices, and the business-like manner of the whole _transaction_. The mourners evidently struggled between natural grief and the bewilderment of their situation. The clergyman was a good-looking young man, in a dirty surplice. Most probably he was a curate. He read the service in a strong voice, but without reverence, and as if he were doing it by the job. In every way short measure was dealt out to the poor mourners. When the solemn words of "dust to dust, ashes to ashes," were uttered, he bowed hastily towards each grave--he stood between them--and the assistants met his wholesale administration of the rites with a wholesale sympathy. The ceremony was no sooner over, than the clergyman and his clerk retired into the church. One or two of the men cast wistful eyes towards the graves, neither of which was half filled, and reluctantly followed. I could scarcely believe my senses, and ventured to approach the door. Here I met such a view as I had never before seen, and hope never to witness again. On one side of me two men were filling the graves; on the opposite, two others were actually paying the funeral fees. In one ear was the hollow sound of the clod on the coffin; in the other the chinking of silver on the altar! Yea, literally on the altar! We are certainly far behind this great people in many essential particulars; our manners are less formed; our civilization is less perfect; but, thanks to the spirit which led our ancestors into the wilderness! such mockery of the Almighty and his worship, such a mingling of God and Mammon, never yet disgraced the temple within the wide reach of the American borders. We were joined by the whole party before the sods were laid on the graves of the poor; but some time after the silver had been given for the consolations of religion. With melancholy reflections we mounted to the castle. A---- had been educated in opinions peculiarly favourable to England; but I saw, as we walked mournfully away from the spot, that one fact like this did more to remove the film from her eyes, than volumes of reading. Carisbrooke has been too often described to need many words. Externally, it is a pile of high battlemented wall, completely buried in ivy, forming within a large area, that was once subdivided into courts, of which however, there are, at present, scarcely any remains. We found an old woman as warder, who occupied a room or two in a sort of cottage that had been made out of the ruins. The part of the edifice which had been the prison of Charles I. was a total ruin, resembling any ordinary house, without roof, floors, or chimneys. The aperture of the window through which he attempted to escape is still visible. It is in the outer wall, against which the principal apartments had been erected. The whole work stands on a high irregular ridge of a rocky hill, the keep being much the most elevated. We ascended to the sort of bastion which its summit forms, whence the view was charming. The whole vale, which contains Carisbrooke and Newport, with a multitude of cottages, villas, farm-houses and orchards, with meads, lawns and shrubberies, lay in full view, and we had distant glimpses of the water. The setting of this sweet picture, or the adjacent hills, was as naked and brown as the vale itself was crowded with objects and verdant. The Isle of Wight, as a whole, did not strike me as being either particularly fertile or particularly beautiful, while it contains certain spots that are eminently both. I have sailed entirely round it more than once, and, judging from the appearance of its coasts, and from what was visible in this little excursion, I should think that it had more than a usual amount of waste treeless land. The sea-views are fine, as a matter of course, and the air is pure and bracing. It is consequently much frequented in summer. It were better to call it the "watering-place," than to call it the "garden" of England. We had come in quest of a house where the family might be left, for a few days, while I went up to London. But the whole party was anxious to put their feet in _bona fide_ old England before they crossed the Channel, and the plan was changed to meet their wishes. We slept that night at Newport, therefore, and returned in the morning to Cowes, early enough to get on board a steam-boat for Southampton. This town lies several miles up an estuary that receives one or two small streams. There are a few dwellings on the banks of the latter, that are about the size and of the appearance of the better sort of country-houses on the Hudson, although more attention appears to have been generally paid to the grounds. There were two more of Henry the Eighth's forts; and we caught a glimpse of a fine ruined Gothic window in passing Netley Abbey. We landed on the pier at Southampton about one, and found ourselves truly in England. "Boat, sir, boat?" "Coach, sir, coach?" "London, sir, London?"--"No; we have need of neither!"--"Thank'ee, sir--thank'ee, sir." These few words, in one sense, are an epitome of England. They rang in our ears for the first five minutes after landing. Pressing forward for a livelihood, a multitude of conveniences, a choice of amusements, and a trained, but a heartless and unmeaning civility. "No; I do not want a boat." "Thank'ee, sir." You are just as much "thank'ee" if you do not employ the man as if you did. You are thanked for condescending to give an order, for declining, for listening. It is plain to see that such thanks dwell only on the lips. And yet we so easily get to be sophisticated; words can be so readily made to supplant things; deference, however unmeaning, is usually so grateful, that one soon becomes accustomed to all this, and even begins to complain that he is not imposed on. We turned into the first clean-looking inn that offered. It was called the Vine, and though a second-rate house, for Southampton even, we were sufficiently well served. Everything was neat, and the waiter, an old man with a powdered bead, was as methodical as a clock, and a most busy servitor to human wants. He told me he had been twenty-eight years doing exactly the same things daily, and in precisely the same place. Think of a man crying "Coming, sir," and setting table, for a whole life, within an area of forty feet square! Truly, this was not America. The principal street in Southampton, though making a sweep, is a broad, clean avenue, that is lined with houses having, with very few exceptions, bow-windows, as far as an ancient gate, a part of the old defences of the town. Here the High-street is divided into "Above-bar" and "Below-bar". The former is much the most modern, and promises to be an exceedingly pretty place when a little more advanced. "Below-bar" is neat and agreeable too. The people appeared singularly well dressed, after New York. The women, though less fashionably attired than our own, taking the Paris modes for the criterion, were in beautiful English chintzes, spotlessly neat, and the men all looked as if they had been born with hat-brushes and clothes-brushes in their hands, and yet every one was in a sort of seashore _costume_. I saw many men whom my nautical instinct detected at once to be naval officers,--some of whom must have been captains,--in round-abouts; but it was quite impossible to criticise toilettes that were so faultlessly neat, and so perfectly well arranged. We ordered dinner, and sallied forth in quest of lodgings. Southampton is said to be peculiar for "long passages, bow-windows, and old maids." I can vouch that it merits the two first distinctions. The season had scarcely commenced, and we had little difficulty in obtaining rooms, the bow-window and long passage included. These lodgings comprise one or more drawing-rooms, the requisite number of bed-rooms, and the use of the kitchen. The people of the house, ordinarily tradespeople, do the cooking and furnish the necessary attendance. We engaged an extra servant, and prepared to take possession that evening. When we returned to the Vine, we found a visitor in this land of strangers. Mrs. R----, of New York, a relative and an old friend, had heard that Americans of our name were there, and she came doubting and hoping to the Vine. We found that the windows of our own drawing-room looked directly into those of hers. A few doors below us dwelt Mrs. L----, a still nearer relative; and a few days later, we had _vis-à-vis_, Mrs. M'A----, a sister of A----'s, on whom we all laid eyes for the first time in our lives! Such little incidents recall to mind the close consanguinity of the two nations; although for myself, I have always felt as a stranger in England. This has not been so much from the want of kindness and a community of opinion many subjects, as from a consciousness, that in the whole of that great nation, there is not a single individual with whom I could claim affinity. And yet, with a slight exception, we are purely of English extraction. Our father was the great-great-grandson of an Englishman. I once met with a man, (an Englishman,) who bore so strong a resemblance to him, in stature, form, walk, features and expression, that I actually took the trouble to ascertain his name. He even had our own. I had no means of tracing the matter any farther; but here was physical evidence to show the affinity between the two people. On the other hand, A---- comes of the Huguenots. She is purely American by every intermarriage, from the time of Louis the Fourteenth down, and yet she found cousins in England at every turn, and even a child of the same parents, who was as much of an Englishwoman as she herself was an American. We drank to the happiness of America, at dinner. That day, fifty years, she declared herself a nation; that very day, and nearly at that hour, two of the co-labourers in the great work we celebrated, departed in company for the world of spirits! A day or two was necessary to become familiarized to the novel objects around us, and my departure for London was postponed. We profited by the delay, to visit Netley Abbey, a ruin of some note, at no great distance from Southampton. The road was circuitous, and we passed several pretty country-houses, few of which exceeded in size or embellishments, shrubbery excepted, similar dwellings at home. There was one, however, of an architecture much more ancient than we had been accustomed to see, it being, by all appearance, of the time of Elizabeth or James. It had turrets and battlements, but was otherwise plain. The abbey was a fine, without being a very imposing, ruin, standing in the midst of a field of English neatness, prettily relieved by woods. The window already mentioned formed the finest part. The effect of these ruins on us proved the wonderful power of association. The greater force of the past than of the future on the mind, can only be the result of questionable causes. Our real concern with the future is incalculably the greatest, and yet we are dreaming over our own graves, on the events and scenes which throw a charm around the graves of those who have gone before us! Had we seen Netley Abbey, just as far advanced towards completion, as it was, in fact, advanced towards decay, our speculations would have been limited by a few conjectures on its probable appearance; but gazing at it as we did, we peopled its passages, imagined Benedictines stalking along its galleries, and fancied that we heard the voices of the choir, pealing among its arches. Our fresh American feelings were strangely interrupted by the sounds of junketing. A party of Southampton cockneys, (there are cockneys even in New York,) having established themselves on the grass, in one of the courts, were lighting a fire, and were deliberately proceeding to make tea! "To tea, and ruins," the invitations most probably run. We retreated into a little battery of the bluff King Hal, that was near by, a work that sufficiently proved the state of nautical warfare in the sixteenth century. LETTER III. Road to London.--Royal Pastime.--Cockney Coachman.--Winchester Assizes. --Approach to London.--The Parks.--Piccadilly.--Street Excursion. --Strangers in London.--Americans in England.--Westminster Abbey. --Gothic Decorations.--Westminster Hall.--Inquisitive Barber.--Pasta and Malibran.--Drury-lane Theatre.--A Pickpocket.--A Fellow-traveller. --English Gentlemen.--A Radical.--Encampment of Gipsies.--National Distinctions.--Antiquities.--National Peculiarities. To R. COOPER, ESQ. COOPERSTOWN. At a very early hour one of the London coaches stopped at the door. I had secured a seat by the side of the coachman, and we went through the "bar" at a round trot. The distance was about sixty miles, and I had paid a guinea for my place. There were four or five other passengers, all on the outside. The road between Southampton and London is one of little interest; even the highway itself is not as good as usual, for the first twenty or thirty miles, being made chiefly of gravel, instead of broken stones. The soil for a long distance was thirsty, and the verdure was nearly gone. England feels a drought sooner than most countries, probably from the circumstances of its vegetation being so little accustomed to the absence of moisture, and to the comparative lightness of the dews. The winds, until just before the arrival of the Hudson, had been blowing from the eastward for several weeks, and in England this is usually a dry wind. The roads were dusty, the hedges were brown, and the fields had nothing to boast of over our own verdure. Indeed, it is unusual to see the grasses of New York so much discoloured, so early in the season. I soon established amicable relations with my companion on the box. He had been ordered at the Vine to stop for an American, and he soon began to converse about the new world. "Is America anywhere near Van Diemen's Land?" was one of his first questions. I satisfied him on this head, and he apologised for the mistake, by explaining that he had a sister settled in Van Diemen's Land, and he had a natural desire to know something about her welfare! We passed a house which had more the air of a considerable place than any I had yet seen, though of far less architectural pretensions than the miniature castle near Cowes. This, my companion informed me, had once been occupied by George IV. when Prince of Wales. "Here his Royal Highness enjoyed what I call the perfection of life, sir; women, wine, and fox-hunting!" added the professor of the whip, with the leer of a true amateur. These coachmen are a class by themselves. They have no concern with grooming the horses, and keep the reins for a certain number of relays. They dress in a particular way, without being at all in livery or uniform, like the continental postilions, talk in a particular way, and act in a particular way. We changed this personage for another, about half the distance between Southampton and London. His successor proved to be even a still better specimen of his class. He was a thorough cockney, and altogether the superior of his country colleague, he was clearly the oracle of the boys, delivering his sentiments in the manner of one accustomed to dictate to all in and about the stables. In addition to this, there was an indescribable, but ludicrous salvo to his dignity, in the way of surliness. Some one had engaged him to carry a blackbird to town, and caused him to wait. On this subject he sang a Jeremiad in the true cockney key. "He didn't want to _take_ the _bla-a-a-ck-bud_; but if the man wanted to _send_ the _bla-a-a-ck-bud_, why didn't he _bring_ the _bla-a-a-ck-bud_?" This is one of the hundred dialects of the lower classes of the English. One of the horses of the last team was restiff, and it became necessary to restrain him by an additional curb before we ventured into the streets of London. I intimated that I had known such horses completely subdued in America by filling their ears with cotton. This suggestion evidently gave offence, and he took occasion soon after to show it. He wrung the nose of the horse with a cord, attaching its end below, in the manner of a severe martingale. While going through this harsh process, which, by the way, effectually subdued the animal, he had leisure to tell him that "he was an _English_ horse, and not an _out-landish_ horse, and _he_ knew best what was good for him," with a great deal more similar sound nationality. Winchester was the only town of any importance on the road. It is pleasantly seated in a valley, is of no great size, is but meanly built, though extremely neat, has a cathedral and a bishop, and is the shire-town of Hampshire. The assizes were sitting, and Southampton was full of troops that had been sent from Winchester, in order to comply with a custom which forbids the military to remain near the courts of justice. England is full of these political mystifications, and it is one of the reasons that she is so much in arrears in many of the great essentials. In carrying out the practice in this identical case, a serious private wrong was inflicted, in order that, in form, an abstract and perfectly useless principle might be maintained. The inns at Southampton were filled with troops, who were billeted on the publicans, will ye, nill ye; and not only the masters of the different houses, but travellers were subjected to a great inconvenience, in order that this abstraction might not be violated. There may be some small remuneration, but no one can suppose for a moment, that the keeper of a genteel establishment of this nature wishes to see his carriage-houses, gateways, and halls thronged with soldiers. Society oppresses him to maintain appearances! At the present day the presence of soldiers might be the means of sustaining justice, while there is not the smallest probability that they would be used for contrary purposes, except in cases in which this usage or law--for I believe there is a statue for it--would not be in the least respected. This is not an age, nor is England the country, in which a judge is to be overawed by the roll of a drum. All sacrifices of common sense, and all recourse to plausible political combinations, whether of individuals or of men, are uniformly made at the expense of the majority. The day is certainly arrived when absurdities like these should be done away with. The weather was oppressively hot, nor do I remember to have suffered more from the sun than during this little journey. Were I to indulge in the traveller's propensity to refer everything to his own state of feeling, you might be told what a sultry place England is in July. But I was too old a sailor not to understand the cause. The sea is always more temperate than the land, being cooler in summer and warmer in winter. After being thirty days at sea, we all feel this truth, either in one way or the other. I was quitting the coast, too, which is uniformly cooler than the interior. When some twelve or thirteen miles from town, the coachman pointed to a wood enclosed by a wall, on our left. A rill trickled from the thicket, and ran beneath the road. I was told that Virginia Water lay there, and that the evening before a single footpad had robbed a coach in that precise spot, or within a few hundred yards of the very place where the King of England at the moment was amusing himself with the fishing-rod. Highway robberies, however are now of exceedingly rare occurrence, that in question being spoken of as the only one within the knowledge of my informant for many years. Our rate of travelling was much the same as that of one of our own better sort of stages. The distance was not materially less than that between Albany and C----n; the roads were not so hilly, and much better than our own road; and yet, at the same season, we usually perform it in about the same time that we went the distance between Southampton and London. The scenery was tame, nor, with the exception of Winchester, was there a single object of any interest visible until we got near London. We crossed the Thames, a stream of trifling expanse, and at Kew we had a glimpse of an old German-looking edifice in yellow bricks, with towers, turrets, and battlements. This was one of the royal palaces. It stood on the opposite side of the river, in the midst of tolerably extensive grounds. Here a nearly incessant stream of vehicles commenced. I attempted to count the stage-coaches, and got as high as thirty-three, when we met a line of mail-coaches, that caused me to stop in despair. I think we met not less than fifty within the last hour of our journey. There were seven belonging to the mail in one group. They all leave London at the same hour, for different parts of the kingdom. At Hyde Park Corner I began to recall objects known in my early visits to London. Apsley House had changed owners, and had become the property of one whose great name was still in the germ, when I had last seen his present dwelling. The Parks, a gateway or two excepted, were unchanged. In the row of noble houses that line Piccadilly--in that hospital-looking edifice, Devonshire House--in the dingy, mean, irregular, and yet interesting front of St. James's--in Brookes's, White's, the Thatched House, and various other historical _monuments_, I saw no change. Buckingham House had disappeared, and an unintelligible pile was rising on its ruins. A noble "_palazzo-non-finito_" stood at the angle between the Green and St. James's Parks, and here and there I discovered houses of better architecture than London was wont of old to boast. One of the very best of these, I was told, was raised in honour of Mercury, and probably out of his legitimate profits. It is called Crockford's. Our "_bla-a-a-ck-bud_" pulled up in the Strand, at the head of Adam-street, Adelphi, and I descended from my seat at his side. An extra shilling brought the glimmering of a surly smile athwart his blubber-cheeks, and we parted in good-humour. My fellow-travellers were all men of no very high class, but they had been civil, and were sufficiently attentive to my wants, when they found I was a stranger, by pointing out objects on the road, and explaining the usages of the inns. One of them had been in America, and he boasted a little of his intimacy with General This and Commodore That. At one time, too, he appeared somewhat disposed to institute comparisons between the two countries, a good deal at our expense, as you may suppose; but as I made no answers, I soon heard him settling it with his companions, that, after all, it was quite natural a man should not like to hear his own country abused; and so he gave the matter up. With this exception, I had no cause of complaint, but, on the contrary, good reason to be pleased. I was set down at the Adam-street Hotel, a house much frequented by Americans. The respectable woman who has so long kept it received me with quiet civility, saw that I had a room, and promised me a dinner in a few minutes. While the latter was preparing, having got rid of the dust, I went out into the streets. The lamps were just lighted, and I went swiftly along the Strand, recalling objects at every step. In this manner I passed, at a rapid pace, Somerset House, St. Clement's-le-Dane, St. Mary-le-Strand, Temple-bar, Bridge-street, Ludgate-hill, pausing only before St. Paul's. Along the whole of this line I saw but little change. A grand bridge, Waterloo, with a noble approach to it, had been thrown across the river just above Somerset House, but nearly everything else remained unaltered. I believe my manner, and the eagerness with which I gazed at long-remembered objects, attracted attention; for I soon observed I was dogged around the church by a suspicious-looking fellow. He either suspected me of evil, or, attracted by my want of a London air, he meditated evil himself. Knowing my own innocence, I determined to bring the matter to an issue. We were alone, in a retired part of the place, and, first making sure that my watch, wallet, and handkerchief had not already disappeared, I walked directly up to him, and looked him intently in the face, as if to recognize his features. He took the hint, and, turning on his heels, moved nimbly of. It is surprising how soon an accustomed eye will distinguish a stranger in the streets of a large town. On mentioning this circumstance next day to ----, he said that the Londoners pretend to recognize a rustic air in a countess, if she has been six months from town. Rusticity in such cases, however, must merely mean a little behind the fashions. I had suffered curiosity to draw me two miles from my dinner, and was as glad to get back as just before I had been to run away from it. Still the past, with the recollections which crowded on the mind, bringing with them a flood of all sorts of associations, prevented me from getting into a coach, which would, in a measure, have excluded objects from my sight. I went to bed that night with the strange sensation of being again in London, after an interval of twenty years. The next day I set about the business which had brought me to the English capital. Most of our passengers were in town, and we met, as a matter of course. I had calls from three or four Americans established here, some in one capacity, and some in others; for our country has long been giving back its increase to England, in the shape of admirals, generals, judges, artists, writers and _notion-mongers_. But what is all this compared to the constant accessions of Europeans among ourselves? Eight years later, on returning home, I found New York, in feeling, opinions, desires, (apart from profit,) and I might almost say, in population, a foreign rather than American town. I had passed months in London when a boy, and yet had no knowledge of Westminster Abbey! I cannot account for this oversight, for I was a great devotee of Gothic architecture, of which, by the way, I knew nothing, except through the prints; and I could not reproach myself with a want of proper curiosity on such subjects, for I had devoted as much time to their examination as my duty to the ship would at all allow. Still, all I could recall of the abbey was an indistinct image of two towers, with a glimpse in at a great door. Now that I was master of my own movements, one of my first acts was to hurry to the venerable church. Westminster Abbey is built in the form of a cross, as is, I believe, invariably the case with every Catholic church of any pretension. At its northern end are two towers, and at its southern is the celebrated chapel of Henry VII. This chapel is an addition, which, allowing for a vast difference in the scale, resembles, in its general appearance, a school, or vestry-room, attached to the end of one of our own churches. A Gothic church is, indeed, seldom complete without such a chapel. It is not an easy matter to impress an American with a proper idea of European architecture. Even while the edifice is before his eyes, he is very apt to form an erroneous opinion of its comparative magnitude. The proportions aid deception in the first place, and absence uniformly exaggerates the beauty and extent of familiar objects. None but those who have disciplined the eye, and who have accustomed themselves to measure proportions by rules more definite than those of the fancy, should trust to their judgments in descriptions of this sort. Westminster itself is not large, however, in comparison with St. Paul's, and an ordinary parish church, called St. Margaret's, which must be, I think, quite as large as Trinity, New York, and stands within a hundred yards of the abbey, is but a pigmy compared with Westminster. I took a position in St. Margaret's church-yard, at a point where the whole of the eastern side of the edifice might be seen, and for the first time in my life gazed upon a truly Gothic structure of any magnitude. It was near sunset, and the light was peculiarly suited to the sombre architecture. The material was a grey stone, that time had rendered dull, and which had broad shades of black about its angles and faces. That of the chapel was fresher, and of a warmer tint; a change well suited to the greater delicacy of the ornaments. The principal building is in the severer style of the Gothic, without, however, being one of its best specimens. It is comparatively plain, nor are the proportions faultless. The towers are twins, are far from being high, and to me they have since seemed to have a crowded appearance, or to be too near each other; a defect that sensibly lessens the grandeur of the north front. A few feet, more or less, in such a case, may carry the architect too much without, or too much within, the just proportions. I lay claim to very little science on the subject, but I have frequently observed since, that, to my own eye, (and the uninitiated can have no other criterion,) these towers, as seen from the parks, above the tops of the trees, have a contracted and pinched air. But while the abbey church itself is as plain as almost any similar edifice I remember, its great extent, and the noble windows and doors, rendered it to me deeply impressive. On the other hand, the chapel is an exquisite specimen of the most elaborated ornaments of the style. All sorts of monstrosities have, at one period or another, been pressed into the service of the Gothic, such as lizards, toads, frogs, serpents, dragons, spitfires, and salamanders. There is, I believe, some typical connexion between these offensive objects and the different sins. When well carved, properly placed, and not viewed too near, their effect is far from bad. They help to give the edifice its fretted appearance, or a look resembling that of lace. Various other features, which have been taken from familiar objects, such as parts of castellated buildings, portcullises, and armorial bearings, help to make up the sum of the detail. On Henry the Seventh's chapel, toads, lizards, and the whole group of metaphorical sins are sufficiently numerous, without being offensively apparent; while miniature portcullises, escutcheons, and other ornaments, give the whole the rich and imaginative--almost fairy-like aspect,--which forms the distinctive feature of the most ornamented portions of the order. You have seen ivory work-boxes from the East, that were cut and carved in a way to render them so very complicated, delicate, and beautiful, that they please us without conveying any fixed forms to the mind. It would be no great departure from literal truth, were I to bid you fancy one of these boxes swelled to the dimensions of a church, the material changed to stone, and, after a due allowance for a difference in form, for the painted windows, and for the emblems, were I to add, that such a box would probably give you the best idea of a highly-wrought Gothic edifice, that any comparison of the sort can furnish. I stood gazing at the pile, until I felt the sensation we term "a creeping of the blood." I know that Westminster, though remarkable for its chapel, was, by no means, a first-rate specimen of its own style of architecture; and, at that moment, a journey through Europe promised to be a gradation of enjoyments, each more exquisite than the other. All the architecture of America united, would not assemble a tithe of the grandeur, the fanciful, or of the beautiful, (a few imitations of Grecian temples excepted,) that were to be seen in this single edifice. If I were to enumerate the strong and excited feelings which are awakened by viewing novel objects, I should place this short visit to the abbey as giving birth in me to sensation No. 1. The emotion of a first landing in Europe had long passed; our recent "land-fall" had been like any other "land-fall," merely pleasant; and I even looked upon St. Paul's as an old and a rather familiar friend. This was absolutely my introduction to the Gothic, and it has proved to be an acquaintance pregnant of more satisfaction than any other it has been my good fortune to make since youth. It was too late to enter the church, and I turned away towards the adjoining public buildings. The English kings had a palace at Westminster, in the times of the Plantagenets. It was the ancient usage to assemble the parliament, which was little more than a _lit de justice_ previously to the struggle which terminated in the commonwealth, in the royal residence, and, in this manner, Westminster Palace became, permanently, the place for holding the meetings of these bodies. The buildings, ancient and modern, form a cluster on the banks of the river, and are separated from the abbey by a street. I believe their site was once an island. Westminster Hall was built as the banqueting room of the palace. There is no uniformity in the architecture of the pile, which is exceedingly complicated and confused. My examination, at this time, was too hurried for details; and I shall refer you to a later visit to England for a description. A vacant space at the abbey end of the palace is called Old Palace-yard, which sufficiently indicates the locality of the ancient royal residence; and a similar, but larger space or square, at the entrance to the hall, is known as New Palace-yard. Two sides of the latter are filled with the buildings of the pile; namely, the courts of law, the principal part of the hall, and certain houses that are occupied by some of the minor functionaries of the establishment, with buildings to contain records, etc. The latter are mean, and altogether unworthy of the neighbourhood. They were plastered on the exterior, and observing a hole in the mortar, I approached and found to my surprise, that here, in the heart of the English capital, as a part of the legislative and judicial structures, in plain view, and on the most frequented square of the vicinity, were houses actually built of wood, and covered with lath and mortar! The next morning I sent for a hair-dresser. As he entered the room I made him a sign, without speaking, to cut my hair. I was reading the morning paper, and my operator had got half through with his job, without a syllable being exchanged between us, when the man of the comb suddenly demanded, "What is the reason, sir, that the Americans think everything in their own country so much better than it is everywhere else?" You will suppose that the _brusquerie_, as well as the purport of this interrogatory, occasioned some surprise. How he knew I was an American at all I am unable to say, but the fellow had been fidgeting the whole time to break out upon me with this question. I mention the anecdote, in order to show you how lively and general the feeling of jealousy has got to be among our transatlantic kinsmen. There will be a better occasion to speak of this hereafter. London was empty. The fashionable streets were actually without a soul, for minutes at a time; and, without seeing it, I could not have believed that a town which, at certain times, is so crowded as actually to render crossing its streets hazardous, was ever so like a mere wilderness of houses. During these recesses in dissipation and fashion, I believe that the meanest residents disappear for a few months. Our fellow-traveller, Mr. L----, however, was in London, and we passed a day or two in company. As he is a votary of music, he took me to hear Madame Pasta. I was nearly as much struck with the extent and magnificence of the Opera-house, as I had been with the architecture of the Abbey. The brilliant manner in which it was lighted, in particular, excited my admiration, for want of light is a decided and a prominent fault of all scenic exhibitions at home, whether they are made in public or in private. Madame Pasta played _Semiramide_ "How do you like her?" demanded L----, at the close of the first act. "Extremely; I scarce know which to praise the most, the command and the range of her voice, or her powers as a mere actress. But, don't you think her exceedingly like the _Signorina?_" The present Madame Malibran was then singing in New York, under the name of Signorina Garcia. L---- laughed, and told me the remark was well enough, but I had not put the question in exactly the proper form. "Do you not think the Signorina exceedingly like Madame Pasta?" would have been better. I had got the matter wrong end foremost. L---- reminded me of our having amused ourselves on the passage with the nasal tones of the chorus at New York. He now directed my attention to the same peculiarity here. In this particular I saw no difference; nor should there be any, for I believe nearly all who are on the American stage, in any character, are foreigners, and chiefly English. The next day we went to old Drury, where we found a countryman, and townsman, Mr. Stephen Price, in the chair of Sheridan. The season was over, but we were shown the whole of the interior. It is also a magnificent structure in extent and internal embellishment, though a very plain brick pile externally. It must have eight or ten times the cubic contents of the largest American theatre. The rival building, Covent Garden, is within a few hundred feet of it, and has much more of architectural pretension, though neither can lay claim to much. The taste of the latter is very well, but it is built of that penny-saving material, stuccoed bricks. We dined with Mr. Price, and on the table was some of our own justly-celebrated Madeira. L----, who is an oracle on these subjects, pronounced it injured. He was told it was so lately arrived from New York, that there had not been time to affect it. This fact, coupled with others that have since come to my knowledge, induce me to believe that the change of tastes, which is so often remarked in liquors, fruits, and other eatables, is as much wrought on ourselves, as in the much-abused viands. Those delicate organs which are necessary to this particular sense may readily undergo modifications by the varieties of temperature. We know that taste and its sister sense, smelling, are both temporarily destroyed by colds. The voice is signally affected by temperature. In cold climates it is clear and soft; in warm, harsh and deep. All these facts would serve to sustain the probability of the theory that a large portion of the strictures that are lavished on the products of different countries, should be lavished on our own capricious organs. _Au reste_, the consequence is much the same, let the cause be what it will. Mr. M----, an Englishman, who has many business concerns with America, came in while we were still at table, and I quitted the house in his company. It was still broad daylight. As we were walking together, arm and arm, my companion suddenly placed a hand behind him, and said, "My fine fellow, you are there, are you?" A lad of about seventeen had a hand in one of his pockets, feeling for his handkerchief. The case was perfectly clear, for Mr. M---- had him still in his gripe when I saw them. Instead of showing apprehension or shame, the fellow began to bluster and threaten. My companion, after a word or two of advice, hurried me from the spot. On expressing the surprise I felt at his permitting such a hardened rogue to go at large, he said that our wisest course was to get away. The lad was evidently supported by a gang, and we might be beaten as well as robbed, for our pains. Besides, the handkerchief was not actually taken, attendance in the courts was both expensive and vexatious, and he would be bound over to prosecute. In England, the complainant is compelled to prosecute, which is, in effect, a premium on crime! We retain many of the absurdities of the common law, and, among others, some which depend on a distinction between the intention and the commission of the act; but I do not know that any of our States are so unjust as to punish a citizen, in this way, because he has already been the victim of a rogue. After all, I am not so certain our law is much better; but I believe more of the _onus_ of obtaining justice falls on the injured party here than it does with us: still we are both too much under the dominion of the common law. The next day I was looking at a bronze statue of Achilles, at Hyde Park Corner, which had been erected in honour of the Duke of Wellington. The place, like every other fashionable haunt at that season, was comparatively deserted. Still, there might have been fifty persons in sight. "Stop him! stop him!" cried a man, who was chasing another directly towards me. The chase, to use nautical terms, began to lighten ship by throwing overboard first one article and then another. As these objects were cast in different directions, he probably hoped that his pursuer, like Atalantis, might stop to pick them up. The last that appeared in the air was a hat, when, finding himself hemmed in between three of us, the thief suffered himself to be taken. A young man had been sleeping on the grass, and this land-pirate had absolutely succeeded in getting his shoes, his handkerchief, and his hat; but an attempt to _take off his cravat_ had awoke the sleeper. In this case, the prisoner was marched off under sundry severe threats of vengeance; for the _robbee_ was heated with the run, and really looked so ridiculous that his anger was quite natural. My business was now done, and I left London in a night-coach for Southampton. The place of rendezvous was the White Horse Cellar, in Piccadilly--a spot almost as celebrated for those who are _in transitu_, as was the Isthmus of Suez of old. I took an inside seat this time, for the convenience of a nap. At first, I had but a single fellow-traveller. Venturing to ask him the names of one or two objects that we passed, and fearing he might think my curiosity impertinent, I apologized for it, by mentioning that I was a foreigner. "A foreigner!" he exclaimed; "why, you speak English as well as I do myself!" I confess I had thought, until that moment, that the advantage, in this particular, was altogether on my side; but it seems I was mistaken. By way of relieving his mind, however, I told him I was an American. "An American!" and he seemed more puzzled than ever. After a few minutes of meditation on what he had just heard, he civilly pointed to a bit of meadow through which the Thames meanders, and good-naturedly told me it was Runnymeade. I presume my manner denoted a proper interest, for he now took up the subject of the English Barons, and entered into a long account of their modern magnificence and wealth. This is a topic that a large class in England, who only know their aristocracy by report, usually discuss with great unction. They appear to have the same pride in the superiority of their great families, that the American slave is known to feel in the importance of his master. I say this seriously, and not with a view to sneer, but to point out to you a state of feeling that, at first, struck me as very extraordinary. I suppose that the feelings of both castes depend on a very natural principle. The Englishman, however, as he is better educated, has one respectable feature in his deference. He exults with reason in the superiority of his betters over the betters of most other people: in this particular he is fully borne out by the fact. Subsequent observation has given me occasion to observe, that the English gentleman, in appearance, attainments, manliness, and perhaps I might add, principles, although this and deportment are points on which I should speak with less confidence, stands at the head of his class in Christendom. This should not be, nor would it be, were the gentlemen of America equal to their fortunes, which, unhappily, they are not. Facts have so far preceded opinions at home, as to leave but few minds capable of keeping in their company. But this is a subject to which we may also have occasion to return. The coach stopped, and we took up a third inside. This man proved to be a radical. He soon began to make side-hits at the "nobility and gentry," and, mingled with some biting truths, he uttered a vast deal of nonsense. While he was in the midst of his denunciations, the coach again stopped, and one of the outsides was driven into it by the night air. He was evidently a gentleman, and the guard afterwards told me he was a Captain Somebody, and a nephew of a Lord Something, to whose country place he was going. The appearance of the captain checked the radical for a little while; but, finding that the other was quiet, he soon returned to the attack. The aristocrat was silent, and the admirer of aristocracy evidently thought himself too good to enter into a dispute with one of the mere people; for _to admire_ aristocracy was, in his eyes, something like an _illustration_; but wincing under one of the other's home-pushes, he said, "These opinions may do very well for this gentleman," meaning me, who as yet had not uttered a syllable--"who is an American; but I must say, I think them out of place in the mouth of an Englishman." The radical regarded me a moment, and inquired if what the other had just said was true. I answered that it was. He then began an eulogium on America; which, like his Jeremiad on England, had a good many truths blended with a great deal of nonsense. At length, he unfortunately referred to me, to corroborate one of his most capital errors. As this could not be done conscientiously, for his theory depended on the material misconstruction of giving the whole legislative power to Congress, I was obliged to explain the mistake into which he had fallen. The captain and the _toady_ were both evidently pleased; nor can I say, I was sorry the appeal had been made, for it had the effect of silencing a commentator, who knew very little of his subject. The captain manifested his satisfaction, by commencing a conversation, which lasted until we all went to sleep. Both the captain and the radical quitted us in the night. Men like the one just described do the truth a great deal of harm. Their knowledge does not extend to first principles, and they are always for maintaining their positions by a citation of facts. One half of the latter are imagined; and even that which is true is so enveloped with collateral absurdities, that when pushed, they are invariably exposed. These are the travellers who come among us Liberals, and go back Tories. Finding that things fall short of the political Elysiums of their imaginations, they fly into the opposite extreme, as a sort of _amende honorable_ to their own folly and ignorance. At the distance of a few miles from Winchester, we passed an encampment of gipsies, by the way-side. They were better-looking than I had expected to see them, though their faces were hardly perceptible in the grey of the morning. They appeared well fed and very comfortably bivouacked. Why do not these people appear in America? or, do they come, and get absorbed, like all the rest, by the humane and popular tendencies of the country? What a homage will it be to the institutions, if it be found that even a gipsy cease to be a gipsy in such a country! Just as the sun rose, I got out to our lodgings and went to bed. After a sound sleep of two or three hours, I rose and went to the drawing-room. A lady was in it, seated in a way to allow me to see no more than a small part of her side-face. In that little, I saw the countenance of your aunt's family. It was the sister whom we had never seen, and who had hastened out of Hertfordshire to meet us. There are obvious reasons why such a subject cannot be treated in this letter, but the study of two sisters who had been educated, the one in England and the other in America, who possessed so much in common, and yet, who were separated by so much that was not in common, was to me a matter of singular interest. It showed me, at a glance, the manner in which the distinctive moral and physical features of nations are formed; the points of resemblance being just sufficient to render the points of difference more obvious. A new and nearer route to Netley had been discovered during my absence, and our unpractised Americans had done little else than admire ruins for the past week. The European who comes to America plunges into the virgin forest with wonder and delight; while the American who goes to Europe finds his greatest pleasure, at first, in hunting up the memorials of the past. Each is in quest of novelty, and is burning with the desire to gaze at objects of which he has often read. The steam-boat made but one or two voyages a week between Southampton and Havre, and we were obliged to wait a day or two for the next trip. The intervening time was passed in the manner just named. Every place of any importance in England has some work or other written on the subject of its history, its beauties, and its monuments. It is lucky to escape a folio. Our works on Southampton, (which are of moderate dimensions, however,) spoke of some Roman remains in the neighbourhood. The spot was found, and, although the imagination was of greater use than common in following the author's description, we stood on the spot with a species of antiquarian awe. Southampton had formerly been a port of some importance. Many of the expeditions sent against France embarked here, and the town had once been well fortified, for the warfare of the period. A good deal of the old wall remains. All of this was industriously traced out; while the bow-windows, long passages, and old maids, found no favour in our eyes. One simple and touching memorial I well remember. There is a ferry between the town and the grounds near Netley Abbey. A lady had caught a cold, which terminated in death, in consequence of waiting on the shore, during a storm, for the arrival of a boat. To protect others from a similar calamity, she had ordered a very suitable defence against the weather to be built on the fatal spot, and to be kept in repair for ever. The structure is entirely of stone, small and exceedingly simple and ingenious. The ground plan is that of a Greek cross. On this foundation are reared four walls, which, of course, cross each other in the centre at right angles. A little above the height of a man, the whole is amply roofed. Let the wind blow which way it will, you perceive there is always shelter. There is no external wall, and the diameter of the whole does not exceed ten feet, if it be as much. This little work is exceedingly English, and it is just as unlike anything American as possible. It has its origin in benevolence, is original in the idea, and it is picturesque. We might accomplish the benevolence, but it would be of a more public character: the picturesque is a thing of which we hardly know the meaning; and as for the originality, the dread of doing anything different from his neighbour would effectually prevent an American from erecting such a shelter; even charity with us being subject to the control of the general voice. On the other hand, what a clever expedient would have been devised, in the first instance, in America, to get across the ferry without taking cold! All these little peculiarities have an intimate connexion with national character and national habits. The desire to be independent and original causes a multitude of silly things to be invented here, while the apprehension of doing anything different from those around them causes a multitude of silly things to be _perpetuated_ in America; and yet we are children of the same parents! When profit is in view, we have but one soul and that is certainly inventive enough; but when money has been made, and is to be spent, we really do not seem to know how to set about it, except by routine. LETTER IV. Quit England.--Approach to France.--Havre.--Our Reception there.--Female Commissionnaire.--Clamour of Drums.--Port of Havre.--Projected Enterprize.--American Enterprize.--Steam-boat Excursion.--Honfleur.--Rouen.--French Exaction.--American Porters.--Rouen Cathedral.--Our Cicerone.--A Diligence.--Picturesque Road.--European Peasantry.--Aspect of the Country.--Church at Louviers.--Village near Vernon.--Rosny.--Mantes.--Bourbon Magnificence. --Approach to Paris--Enter Paris. To R. COOPER, ESQ., COOPERSTOWN. On quitting England, we embarked from the very strand where Henry V. embarked for the fruitless field of Agincourt. A fearful rumour had gone abroad that the Camilla (the steam-boat) had been shorn of a wing, and there were many rueful faces in the boat that took us off to the vessel. In plainer speech, one of the boilers was out of order, and the passage was to be made with just half the usual propelling power. At that season, or indeed at any season, the only probable consequence was loss of time. With a strong head-wind, it is true, the Camilla might have been compelled to return; but this might also have happened with the use of both the boilers. Our adventurers did not see things in this light. The division of employments, which produces prices so cheap and good, makes bad travellers. Our boat's cargo embarked with fear and trembling, and "She has but one boiler!" passed from mouth to mouth amid ominous faces. A bachelor-looking personage, of about fifty, with his person well swaddled in July, declared in a loud voice, that we were "all going on board to be drowned." This startled A----, who, having full faith in my nautical experience, asked what we were to think of it? It was a mere question between ten hours and fifteen, and so I told her. The females, who had just before been trembling with alarm, brightened at this, and two or three of them civilly thanked me for the information they had thus obtained incidentally!--"Boat, sir! boat!" "Thank 'ee, sir; thank 'ee, sir." We found two or three parties on board of a higher condition than common. Apprehension cast a shade over the cold marble-like polish of even the English aristocrat; for if, as Mrs. Opie has well observed, there is nothing "so like a lord in a passion as a commoner in a passion," "your fear" is also a sad leveller. The boat was soon under way, and gradually our cargo of mental apprehensions settled into the usual dolorous physical suffering of landsmen in rough water. So much for excessive civilization. The want of a boiler under similar circumstances, would have excited no feeling whatever among a similar number of Americans, nineteen in twenty of whom, thanks to their rough-and-tumble habits, would know exactly what to think of it. I was seated, during a part of the day, near a group of young men, who were conversing with a lady of some three or four and twenty. They expressed their surprise at meeting her on board. She told them it was a sudden whim; that no one knew of her movements; she meant only to be gone a fortnight, to take a run into Normandy. In the course of the conversation I learned that she was single, and had a maid and a footman with her. In this guise she might go where she pleased; whereas, had she taken "an escort" in the American fashion, her character would have suffered. This usage, however, is English rather than European. Single women on the Continent, except in extraordinary cases, are obliged to maintain far greater reserve even than with us; and there, single or married, they cannot travel under the protection of any man who is not very nearly connected with them, domestics and dependants excepted. The debates about proceeding at all had detained us so long, and the "one boiler" proved to be so powerless, that night set in, and we had not yet made the coast of France. The breeze had been fresh, but it lulled towards sunset, though not before we began to feel the influence of the tides. About midnight, however, I heard some one exclaim, "Land!" and we all hastened on deck, to take a first look at France. The boat was running along beneath some cliffs. The moon was shining bright, and her rays lighted up the chalky sides of the high coast, giving them a ghostly hue. The towers of two lighthouses also glittered on a headland near by. Presently a long sea-wall became visible, and, rounding its end, we shot into smooth water. We entered the little port of Havre between artificial works, on one of which stands a low, massive, circular tower, that tradition attributes to no less a personage than Julius Caesar. What a change in so short a time! On the other side of the Channel, beyond the usual demands for employment, which were made in a modest way, and the eternal "Thank'ee, sir," there was a quiet in the people that was not entirely free from a suspicion of surliness. Here every man seemed to have two voices, both of which he used as if with no other desire than to hear himself speak. Notwithstanding the hour, which was past midnight, the quay was well lined, and a dozen officials poured on board the boat to prevent our landing. Custom-house officers, gendarmes, with enormous hats, and female commissionaires, were counteracting each other at every turn. At length we were permitted to land, being ordered up to a building near by. Here the females were taken into a separate room, where their persons were examined by functionaries of their own sex for contraband goods! This process has been described to me as being to the last degree offensive and humiliating. My own person was respected, I know not, why, for we were herded like sheep. As we were without spot, at least so far as smuggling was concerned, we were soon liberated. All our effects were left in the office, and we were turned into the streets without even a rag but what we had on. This was an inauspicious commencement for a country so polished; and yet, when one comes to look at the causes, it is not easy to point out an alternative. It was our own fault that we came so late. The streets were empty, and the tall grey houses, narrow avenues, and the unaccustomed objects, presented a strange spectacle by the placid light of the moon. It appeared as if we had alighted in a different planet. Though fatigued and sleepy, the whole party would involuntarily stop to admire some novelty, and our march was straggling and irregular. One house refused us after another, and it soon became seriously a question whether the night was not to be passed in the open air. P---- was less than three years old, and as we had a regular gradation from that age upward, our _début_ in France promised to be anything but agreeable. The guide said his resources were exhausted, and hinted at the impossibility of getting in. Nothing but the inns was open, and at all these we were refused. At length I remembered that, in poring over an English guide-book, purchased in New York, a certain Hôtel d'Angleterre had been recommended as the best house in Havre. "Savez-vous, mon ami, où est l'Hôtel d'Angleterre?"--"Ma fois, oui; c'est tout près." This "ma fois, oui," was ominous, and the "c'est tout, près," was more so still. Thither we went, however, and we were received. Then commenced the process of climbing. We ascended several stories, by a narrow crooked staircase, and were shown into rooms on the fifth floor. The floors were of waxed tiles, without carpets or mats, and the furniture was tawdry. We got into our beds, which fatigue could scarcely render it possible to endure, on account of the bugs. A more infernal night I never passed, and I have often thought since, how hazardous it is to trust to first impressions. This night, and one or two more passed at Havre, and one other passed between Rouen and Paris, were among the most uncomfortable I can remember; and yet if I were to name a country in which one would be the most certain to get a good and a clean bed, I think I should name France! The next morning I arose and went down the ladder, for it was little better, to the lower world. The servant wished to know if we intended to use the _table d'hôte_, which he pronounced excellent. Curiosity induced me to look at the appliances. It was a dark, dirty and crowded room, and yet not without certain savoury smells. French cookery can even get the better of French dirt. It was the only place about the house, the kitchen excepted, where a tolerable smell was to be found, and I mounted to the upper regions in self-defence. An hour or two afterwards, the consul did me the favour to call. I apologized for the necessity of causing him to clamber up so high. "It is not a misfortune here," was the answer, "for the higher one is, the purer is the atmosphere;" and he was right enough. It was not necessary to explain that we were in an inferior house, and certainly everything was extremely novel. At breakfast, however, there was a sensible improvement. The linen was white as snow; we were served with silver forks--it was a breakfast _à la fourchette_--spotlessly clean napkins, excellent rolls, and delicious butter, to say nothing of _côtelettes_ that appeared to have been cooked by magic. Your aunt and myself looked at each other with ludicrous satisfaction when we came to taste coffee, which happened to be precisely at the same instant. It was the first time either of us had ever tasted French coffee--it would scarcely be exaggeration to say, that either of us had ever tasted coffee at all. I have had many French cooks since; have lived years in the capital of France itself, but I could never yet obtain a servant who understood the secret of making _café au lait_, as it is made in most of the inns and _cafés_ of that country. The discrepancy between the excellence of the table and the abominations of the place struck them all, so forcibly, that the rest of the party did little else but talk about it. As for myself, I wished to do nothing but eat. I had now another specimen of national manners. It was necessary to get our luggage through the custom-house. The consul recommended a _commissionnaire_ to help me. "You are not to be surprised," he said, laughing, as he went away, "if I send you one in petticoats." In a few minutes, sure enough, one of the _beau sexe_ presented herself. Her name was Désirée, and an abler negotiator was never employed. She scolded, coaxed, advised, wrangled, and uniformly triumphed. The officers were more civil, by daylight, than we had found them under the influence of the moon, and our business was soon effected. W---- had brought with him a spy-glass. It was old and of little value, but it was an heir-loom of the family. It came from the Hall at C----n, and had become historical for its service in detecting deer, in the lake, during the early years of the settlement. This glass had disappeared. No inquiry could recover it. "Send for Désirée," said the consul. Désirée came, received her orders, and in half an hour the glass was restored. There was an oversight in not getting a passport, when we were about to quit Havre. The office hours were over, and the steam-boat could not wait. "Were is Désirée?" Désirée was made acquainted with the difficulty, and the passport was obtained. "Désirée, où est Désirée?" cried some one in the crowd, that had assembled to see the Camilla start for England, the day after our arrival. "Here is an Englishman who is too late to get his passport _viséd_," said this person to Désirée, so near me that I heard it all; "the boat goes in ten minutes--what is to be done?"--"_Ma foi_--it is too late!" "Try, _ma bonne_--it's a pity he should lose his passage--_voici_." The Englishman gave his fee. Désirée looked about her, and then taking the idler by the arm, she hurried him through the crowd, this way and that way, ending by putting him aboard without any passport at all. "It is too late to get one," she said; "and they can but send you back." He passed undetected. France has a plenty of these managing females, though Désirée is one of the cleverest of them all. I understood this woman had passed a year or two in England, expressly to fit herself for her present occupation, by learning the language. While engaged in taking our passages on board the steam-boat for Rouen, some one called me by name, in English. The sound of the most familiar words, in one's own language, soon get to be startling in a foreign country. I remember, on returning to England, after an absence of five years, that it was more than a week before I could persuade myself I was not addressed whenever a passer-by spoke suddenly. On the present occasion, I was called to by an old schoolboy acquaintance, Mr. H----r, who was a consul in England, but who had taken a house on what is called the _Côte_, a hill-side, just above Ingouville, a village at no great distance from the town. We went out to his pretty little cottage, which enjoyed a charming view. Indeed I should particularize this spot as the one which gave me the first idea of one species of distinctive European scenery. The houses cling to the declivity, rising above each other in a way that might literally enable one to toss a stone into his neighbour's chimney-top. They are of stone, but being whitewashed, and very numerous, they give the whole mountain-side the appearance of a pretty hamlet, scattered without order in the midst of gardens. Italy abounds with such little scenes; nor are they unfrequent in France, especially in the vicinity of towns; though whitened edifices are far from being the prevailing taste of that country. That evening we had an infernal clamour of drums in the principal street, which happened to be our own. There might have been fifty, unaccompanied by any wind instrument. The French do not use the fife, and when one is treated to the drum, it is generally in large potions, and nothing but drum. This is a relic of barbarism, and is quite unworthy of a musical age. There is more or less of it in all the garrisoned towns of Europe. You may imagine the satisfaction with which one listens to a hundred or two of these plaintive instruments, beat between houses six or eight stories high, in a narrow street, and with desperate perseverance! The object is to recall the troops to their quarters. Havre is a tide-harbour. In America, where there is, on an average, not more than five feet of rise and fall to the water of the sea, such a haven would, of course, be impracticable for large vessels. But the majority of the ports on the British Channel are of this character, and indeed a large portion of the harbours of Great Britain. Calais, Boulogne, Havre, and Dieppe, are all inaccessible at low water. The cliffs are broken by a large ravine, a creek makes up the gorge, or a small stream flows outward into the sea, a basin is excavated, the entrance is rendered safe by moles which project into deep water, and the town is crowded around this semi-artificial port as well as circumstances will allow. Such is, more or less, the history of them all. Havre, however, is in some measure an exception. It stands on a plain, that I should think had once been a marsh. The cliffs are near it, seaward, and towards the interior there are fine receding hills, leaving a sufficient site, notwithstanding, for a town of large dimensions. The port of Havre has been much improved of late years. Large basins have been excavated, and formed into regular wet docks. They are nearly in the centre of the town. The mole stretches out several hundred yards on that side of the entrance of the port which is next the sea. Here signals are regularly made to acquaint vessels in the offing with the precise number of feet that can be brought into the port. These signals are changed at the rise or fall of every foot, according to a graduated scale which is near the signal pole. At dead low water the entrance to the harbour, and the outer harbour itself, are merely beds of soft mud. Machines are kept constantly at work to deepen them. The ship from sea makes the lights, and judges of the state of the tide by the signals. She rounds the Mole-Head at the distance of fifty or sixty yards, and sails along a passage too narrow to admit another vessel, at the same moment, into the harbour. Here she finds from eighteen to twenty, or even twenty-four feet of water, according to circumstances. She is hauled up to the gates of a dock, which are opened at high water only. As the water falls, one gate is shut, and the entrance to the dock becomes a lock: vessels can enter, therefore, as long as there remains sufficient water in the outer harbour for a ship to float. If caught outside, however, she must lie in the mud until the ensuing tide. Havre is the sea-port of Paris, and is rapidly increasing in importance. There is a project for connecting the latter with the sea by a ship channel. Such a project is hardly suited to the French impulses, which imagine a thousand grand projects, but hardly ever convert any of them to much practical good. The opinions of the people are formed on habits of great saving, and it requires older calculations, greater familiarity with risks, and more liberal notions of industry, and, possibly, more capital than is commonly found in their enterprises, to induce the people to encounter the extra charges of these improvements, when they can have recourse to what, in their eyes, are simpler and safer means of making money. The government employs men of science, who conceive well; but their conceptions are but indifferently sustained by the average practical intellect of the country. In this particular France is the very converse of America. The project of making a sea-port of Paris, is founded on a principle that is radically wrong. It is easier to build a house on the sea-side, than to carry the sea into the interior. But the political economy of France, like that of nearly all the continental nations, is based on a false principle, that of forcing improvements. The intellects of the mass should first be acted on, and when the public mind is sufficiently improved to benefit by innovations, the public sentiment might be trusted to decide the questions of locality and usefulness. The French system looks to a concentration of everything in Paris. The political organization of the country favours such a scheme, and in a project of this sort, the interests of all the northern and western departments would be sacrificed to the interests of Paris. As for the departments east and south of Paris, they would in no degree be benefited by making a port of Paris, as goods would still have to be transshipped to reach them. A system of canals and railroads is much wanted in France, and most of all, a system of general instruction, to prepare the minds of the operatives to profit by such advantages. When I say that we are behind our facts in America, I do not mean in a physical, but in a moral sense. All that is visible and tangible is led by opinion; in all that is purely moral, the facts precede the notions of the people. I found, at a later day, many droll theories broached in France, more especially in the Chamber of Deputies, on the subject of our own great success in the useful enterprises. As is usual, in such cases, any reason but the true one was given. At the period of our arrival in Europe, the plan of connecting the great lakes with the Atlantic had just been completed, and the vast results were beginning to attract attention in Europe. At first, it was thought, as a matter of course, that engineers from the old world had been employed. This was disproved, and it was shown that they who laid out the work, however skilful they may have since become by practice, were at first little more than common American surveyors. Then the trifling cost was a stumbling-block, for labour was known to be far better paid in America than in Europe; and lastly, the results created astonishment. Several deputies affirmed that the cause of the great success was owing to the fact, that in America we trusted such things to private competition, whereas, in France, the government meddled with everything. But it was the state governments, (which indeed alone possess the necessary means and authority,) that had caused most of the American canals to be constructed. These political economists knew too little of other systems to apply a clever saying of their own--_Il y a de la Rochefoucald, et de la Rouchefoucald_. All governments do not wither what they touch. Some Americans have introduced steam-boats on the rivers of France, and on the lakes of Switzerland and Italy. We embarked in one, after passing two delectable nights at the Hôtel d'Angleterre. The boat was a frail-looking thing, and so loaded with passengers, that it appeared actually to stagger under its freight. The Seine has a wide mouth, and a long ground-swell was setting in from the Channel. Our Parisian cockneys, of whom there were several on board, stood aghast. "Nous voici en pleine mer!" one muttered to the other, and the annals of that eventful voyage are still related, I make no question, to admiring auditors in the interior of France. The French make excellent seamen when properly trained; but I think, on the whole, they are more thoroughly landsmen than any people of my acquaintance, who possess a coast. There has been too much sympathy with the army to permit the mariners to receive a proper share of the public favour. The boat shaped her course diagonally across the broad current, directly for Honfleur. Here we first began to get an idea of the true points of difference between our own scenery and that of the continent of Europe, and chiefly of that of France. The general characteristics of England are not essentially different from those of America, after allowing for a much higher finish in the former, substituting hedges for fences, and stripping the earth of its forests. These, you may think, are, in themselves, grand points of difference, but they fall far short of those which render the continent of Europe altogether of a different nature. Of forest, there is vastly more in France than in England. But, with few exceptions, the fields are not separated by enclosures. The houses are of stone, or of wood, rough-cast. Honfleur, as we approached, had a grey distinctness that is difficult to describe. The atmosphere seemed visible, around the angles of the buildings, as in certain Flemish pictures, bringing out the fine old sombre piles from the depth of the view, in a way to leave little concealed, while nothing was meretricious or gaudy. At first, though we found these hues imposing, and even beautiful, we thought the view would have been gayer and more agreeable, had the tints been livelier; but a little use taught us that our tastes had been corrupted. On our return home every structure appeared flaring and tawdry. Even those of stone had a recent and mushroom air, besides being in colours equally ill suited to architecture or a landscape. The only thing of the sort in America which appeared venerable and of a suitable hue, after an absence of eight years, was our own family abode, and this, the despoiler, paint, had not defiled for near forty years. We discharged part of our cargo at Honfleur, but the boat was still greatly crowded. Fatigue and ill health rendered standing painful to A----, and all the benches were crowded. She approached a young girl of about eighteen, who occupied _three chairs_. On one she was seated; on another she had her feet; and the third held her _reticule_. Apologizing for the liberty, A---- asked leave to put the _reticule_ on the second chair, and to take the third for her own use. This request was refused! The selfishness created by sophistication and a factitious state of things renders such acts quite frequent, for it is more my wish to offer you distinctive traits of character than exceptions. This case of selfishness might have been a little stronger than usual, it is true, but similar acts are of daily occurrence, _out of society_, in France. _In society_, the utmost respect to the wants and feelings of others is paid, vastly more than with us; while, with us, it is scarcely too strong to say that such an instance of unfeeling selfishness could scarcely have occurred at all. We may have occasion to inquire into the causes of this difference in national manners hereafter. The Seine narrows at Quilleboeuf, about thirty miles from Havre, to the width of an ordinary European tide river. On a high bluff we passed a ruin, called _Tancarville_, which was formerly a castle of the De Montmorencies. This place was the cradle of one of William's barons; and an English descendant, I believe, has been ennobled by the title of Earl of Tankerville. Above Quilleboeuf the river becomes exceedingly pretty. It is crooked, a charm in itself, has many willowy islands, and here and there a grey venerable town is seated in the opening of the high hills which contract the view, with crumbling towers, and walls that did good service in the times of the old English and French wars. There were fewer seats than might have been expected, though we passed three or four. One near the waterside, of some size, was in the ancient French style, with avenues cut in formal lines, mutilated statues, precise and treeless terraces, and other elaborated monstrosities. These places are not entirely without a pretension to magnificence; but, considered in reference to what is desirable in landscape gardening, they are the very _laid idéal_ of deformity. After winding our way for eight or ten hours amid such scenes, the towers of Rouen came in view. They had a dark ebony-coloured look, which did great violence to our Manhattanese notions, but which harmonized gloriously with a bluish sky, the grey walls beneath, and a background of hanging fields. Rouen is a sea-port; vessels of two hundred, or two hundred and fifty tons burden, lying at its quays. Here is also a custom-house, and our baggage was again opened for examination. This was done amid a great deal of noise and confusion, and yet so cursorily as to be of no real service. At Havre, landing as we did in the night, and committing all to Désirée the next day, I escaped collision with subordinates. But, not having a servant, I was now compelled to look after our effects in person. W---- protested that we had fallen among barbarians; what between brawls, contests for the trunks, cries, oaths, and snatching, the scene was equally provoking and comic. Without schooling, without training of any sort, little checked by morals, pressed upon by society, with nearly every necessary of life highly taxed, and yet entirely loosened from the deference of feudal manners, the Frenchmen of this class have, in general, become what they who wish to ride upon their fellow mortals love to represent them as being, truculent, violent, greedy of gain, and but too much disposed to exaction. There is great _bonhomie_ and many touches of chivalry in the national character; but it is asking too much to suppose that men who are placed in the situation I have named, should not exhibit some of the most unpleasant traits of human infirmity. Our trunks were put into a handbarrow, and wheeled by two men a few hundred yards, the whole occupying half an hour of time. For this service ten francs were demanded. I offered five, or double what would have been required by a drayman in New York, a place where labour is proverbially dear. This was disdainfully refused, and I was threatened with the law. Of the latter I knew nothing; but, determined not to be bullied into what I felt persuaded was an imposition, I threw down the five francs and walked away. These fellows kept prowling about the hotel the whole day, alternately wheedling and menacing, without success. Towards night one of them appeared, and returned the five francs, saying, that he gave me his services for nothing. I thanked him, and put the money in my pocket. This fit of dignity lasted about five minutes, when, as _finale_, I received a proposal to pay the money again, and bring the matter to a close, which was done accordingly. An Englishman of the same class would have done his work in silence, with a respect approaching to servility, and with a system that any little _contretems_ would derange. He would ask enough, take his money with a "thank 'ee, sir," and go off looking as surly as if he were dissatisfied. An American would do his work silently, but independently as to manner--but a fact will best illustrate the conduct of the American. The day after we landed at New-York, I returned to the ship for the light articles. They made a troublesome load, and filled a horse-cart. "What do you think I _ought_ to get for carrying this load, 'sqire?" asked the cartman, as he looked at the baskets, umbrellas, band-boxes, valises, secretaries, trunks, etc. etc.; "it is quite two miles to Carroll Place." "It is, indeed; what is your fare?" "Only thirty-seven and a half cents;" (about two francs;) "and it is justly worth seventy-five, there is so much trumpery." "I will give you a dollar." "No more need be said, sir; you shall have everything safe." I was so much struck with this straight-forward manner of proceeding, after all I had undergone in Europe, that I made a note of it the same day. The Hôtel de l'Europe, at Rouen, was not a first-rate inn, for France, but it effectually removed the disagreeable impression left by the Hôtel d'Angleterre, at Havre. We were well lodged, well fed, and otherwise well treated. After ordering dinner, all of a suitable age hurried off to the cathedral. Rouen is an old, and by no means a well-built town. Some improvements along the river are on a large scale, and promise well; but the heart of the city is composed principally of houses of wooden frames, with the interstices filled in with cement. Work of this kind is very common in all the northern provincial towns of France. It gives a place a singular, and not altogether an unpicturesque air; the short dark studs that time has imbrowned, forming a sort of visible ribs to the houses. When we reached the little square in front of the cathedral, verily Henry the Seventh's chapel sunk into insignificance. I can only compare the effect of the chiselling on the quaint Gothic of this edifice, to that of an enormous skreen of dark lace, thrown into the form of a church. This was the first building of the kind that my companions had ever seen; and they had, insomuch, the advantage over me, as I had, in a degree, taken off the edge of wonder by the visit already mentioned to Westminster. The first look at this pile was one of inextricable details. It was not difficult to distinguish the vast and magnificent doors, and the beautiful oriel windows, buried as they were in ornament; but an examination was absolutely necessary to trace the little towers, pinnacles, and the crowds of pointed arches, amid such a scene of architectural confusion. "It is worth crossing the Atlantic, were it only to see this!" was the common feeling among us. It was some time before we discovered that divers dwellings had actually been built between the buttresses of the church, for their comparative diminutiveness, quaint style, and close incorporation with the pile, caused us to think them, at first, a part of the edifice itself. This desecration of the Gothic is of very frequent occurrence on the continent of Europe, taking its rise in the straitened limits of fortified towns, the cupidity of churchmen, and the general indifference to knowledge, and, consequently, to taste, which depressed the ages that immediately followed the construction of most of these cathedrals. We were less struck by the interior, than by the exterior of this building. It is vast, has some fine windows, and is purely Gothic; but after the richness of the external details, the aisles and the choir appeared rather plain. It possessed, however, in some of its monuments, subjects of great interest to those who had never stood over a grave of more than two centuries, and rarely even over one of half that age. Among other objects of this nature, is the heart of Coeur de Lion, for the church was commenced in the reign of one of his predecessors; Normandy at that time belonging to the English kings, and claiming to be the depository of the "lion heart." Rouen has many more memorials of the past. We visited the square in which Joan of Arc was burned; a small irregular area in front of her prison; the prison itself, and the hall in which she had been condemned. All these edifices are Gothic, quaint, and some of them sufficiently dilapidated. I had forgotten to relate, in its place, a fact, as an offset to the truculent garrulity of the porters. We were shown round the cathedral by a respectable-looking old man in a red scarf, a cocked hat, and a livery, one of the officers of the place. He was respectful, modest, and well instructed in his tale. The tone of this good old cicerone was so much superior to anything I had seen in England--in America such a functionary is nearly unknown--that, under the influence of our national manners, I had awkward doubts as to the propriety of offering him money. At length the five francs rescued from the cupidity of the half-civilized peasants of _la basse Normandie_ were put into his hand. A look of indecision caused me to repent the indiscretion. I thought his feelings had been wounded. "Est-ce que monsieur compte me présenter tout ceci?" I told him I hoped he would do me the favour to accept it. I had only given _more_ than was usual, and the honesty of the worthy cicerone hesitated about taking it. To know when to pay, and what to pay, is a useful attainment of the experienced traveller. Paris lay before us, and, although Rouen is a venerable and historical town, we were impatient to reach the French capital. A carriage was procured, and, on the afternoon of the second day, we proceeded. After quitting Rouen the road runs, for several miles, at the foot of high hills, and immediately on the banks of the Seine. At length we were compelled to climb the mountain which terminates near the city, and offers one of the noblest views in France, from a point called St. Catherine's Hill. We did not obtain so fine a prospect from the road, but the view far surpassed anything we had yet seen in Europe. Putting my head out of the window, when about half way up the ascent, I saw an object booming down upon us, at the rate of six or eight miles the hour, that resembled in magnitude at least a moving house. It was a diligence, and being the first we had met, it caused a general sensation in our party. Our heads were in each other's way, and finding it impossible to get a good view in any other manner, we fairly alighted in the highway, old and young, to look at the monster unincumbered. Our admiration and eagerness caused as much amusement to the travellers it held, as their extraordinary equipage gave rise to among us; and two merrier parties did not encounter each other on the public road that day. A proper diligence is formed of a chariot-body, and two coach-bodies placed one before the other, the first in front. These are all on a large scale, and the wheels and train are in proportion. On the roof (the three bodies are closely united) is a cabriolet, or covered seat, and baggage is frequently piled there, many feet in height. A large leathern apron covers the latter. An ordinary load of hay, though wider, is scarcely of more bulk than one of these vehicles, which sometimes carries twenty-five or thirty passengers, and two or three tons of luggage. The usual team is composed of five horses, two of which go on the pole, and three on the lead, the latter turning their heads outwards, as W---- remarked, so as to resemble a spread eagle. Notwithstanding the weight, these carriages usually go down a hill faster than when travelling on the plain. A bar of wood is brought, by means of a winch that is controlled by a person called the _conducteur_, one who has charge of both ship and cargo, to bear on the hind wheels, with a greater or less force, according to circumstances, so that all the pressure is taken off the wheel horses. A similar invention has latterly been applied to railroad cars. I have since gone over this very road with ten horses, two on the wheel, and eight in two lines on the lead. On that occasion, we came down this very hill, at the rate of nine miles the hour. After amusing ourselves with the spectacle of the diligence, we found the scenery too beautiful to re-enter the carriage immediately, and we walked to the top of the mountain. The view from the summit was truly admirable. The Seine comes winding its way through a broad rich valley, from the southward, having just before run east, and, a league or two beyond due west, our own Susquehanna being less crooked. The stream was not broad, but its numerous isles, willowy banks, and verdant meadows, formed a line for the eye to follow. Rouen in the distance, with its ebony towers, fantastic roofs, and straggling suburbs, lines its shores, at a curvature where the stream swept away west again, bearing craft of the sea on its bosom. These dark old towers have a sombre, mysterious air, which harmonizes admirably with the recollections that crowd the mind at such a moment! Scarce an isolated dwelling was to be seen, but the dense population is compressed into villages and _bourgs_, that dot the view, looking brown and teeming, like the nests of wasps. Some of these places have still remains of walls, and most of them are so compact and well defined that they appear more like vast castles than like the villages of England or America. All are grey, sombre, and without glare, rising from the background of pale verdure, so many appropriate _bas reliefs_. The road was strewed with peasants of both sexes, wending their way homeward, from the market of Rouen. One, a tawny woman, with no other protection for her head than a high but perfectly clean cap, was going past us, driving an ass, with the panniers loaded with manure. We were about six miles from the town, and the poor beast, after staggering some eight or ten miles to the market in the morning, was staggering back with this heavy freight, at even. I asked the woman, who, under the circumstances, could not be a resident of one of the neighbouring villages, the name of a considerable _bourg_ that lay about a gun-shot distant, in plain view, on the other side of the river. "Monsieur, je ne saurais pas vous dire, parce que, voyez-vous, je ne suis pas de ce pays-là," was the answer! Knowledge is the parent of knowledge. He who possesses most of the information of his age will not quietly submit to neglect its current acquisitions, but will go on improving as long as means and opportunities offer; while he who finds himself ignorant of most things, is only too apt to shrink from a labour which becomes Herculean. In this manner ambition is stifled, the mind gets to be inactive, and finally sinks into unresisting apathy. Such is the case with a large portion of the European peasantry. The multitude of objects that surround them becomes a reason of indifference; and they pass, from day to day, for a whole life, in full view of a town, without sufficient curiosity in its history to inquire its name, or, if told by accident, sufficient interest to remember it. We see this principle exemplified daily in cities. One seldom thinks of asking the name of a passer-by, though he may be seen constantly; whereas, in the country, such objects being comparatively rare, the stranger is not often permitted to appear without some question touching his character.[3] [Footnote 3: When in London, two years later, I saw a gentleman of rather striking appearance pass my door for two months, five or six times of a morning. Remembering the apathy of the Norman peasant, I at length asked who it was--"Sir Francis Burdett," was the answer.] I once inquired of a servant girl, at a French inn, who might be the owner of a chateau near by, the gate of which was within a hundred feet of the house we were in. She was unable to say, urging, as an apology, that she had only been six weeks in her present place! This, too, was in a small country hamlet. I think every one must have remarked, _coeteris paribus_, how much more activity and curiosity of mind is displayed by a countryman who first visits a town, than by the dweller in a city who first visits the country. The first wishes to learn everything, since be has been accustomed to understand everything he has hitherto seen; while the last, accustomed to a crowd of objects, usually regards most of the novel things he now sees for the first time with indifference. The road, for the rest of the afternoon, led us over hills and plains, from one reach of the river to another, for we crossed the latter repeatedly before reaching Paris. The appearance of the country was extraordinary in our eyes. Isolated houses were rare, but villages dotted the whole expanse. No obtrusive colours; but the eye had frequently to search against the hill-side, or in the valley, and, first detecting a mass, it gradually took in the picturesque angles, roofs, towers, and walls of the little _bourg_. Not a fence, or visible boundary of any sort, to mark the limits of possessions. Not a hoof in the fields grazing, and occasionally, a sweep of mountain-land resembled a pattern-card, with its stripes of green and yellow, and other hues, the narrow fields of the small proprietors. The play of light and shade on these gay upland patches though not strictly in conformity with the laws of taste, certainly was attractive. When they fell entirely into shadow, the harvest being over, and their gaudy colours lessened, they resembled the melancholy and wasted vestiges of a festival. At Louviers we dined, and there we found a new object of wonder in the church. It was of the Gothic of the _bourgs_, less elaborated and more rudely wrought than that of the larger towns, but quaint, and, the population considered, vast. Ugly dragons thrust out their grinning heads at us from the buttresses. The most agreeable monstrosities imaginable were crawling along the grey old stones. After passing this place, the scenery lost a good deal of the pastoral appearance which renders Normandy rather remarkable in France, and took still more of the starched pattern-card look, just mentioned. Still it was sombre, the villages were to be extracted by the eye from their setting of fields, and here and there one of those "silent fingers pointing to the skies" raised itself into the air, like a needle, to prick the consciences of the thoughtless. The dusky hues of all the villages contrasted oddly, and not unpleasantly, with the carnival colours of the grains. We slept at Vernon, and, before retiring for the night, passed half an hour in a fruitless attempt to carry by storm a large old circular tower, that is imputed to the inexhaustible industry of Caesar. This was the third of his reputed works that we had seen since landing in France. In this part of Europe, Caesar has the credit of everything for which no one else is willing to apply, as is the case with Virgil at Naples. It was a sensation to rise in the morning with the rational prospect of seeing Paris, for the first time in one's life, before night. In my catalogue it stands numbered as sensation the 5th; Westminster, the night arrival in France, and the Cathedral of Rouen, giving birth to numbers 1, 2, and 4. Though accustomed to the tattoo, and the evening bugle of a man-of-war, the drums of Havre had the honour of number 3. Alas! how soon we cease to feel those agreeable excitements at all, even a drum coming in time to pall on the ear! Near Vernon we passed a village, which gave us the first idea of one feature in the old _régime_. The place was grey, sombre, and picturesque, as usual, in the distance; but crowded, dirty, inconvenient, and mean, when the eye got too near. Just without the limits of its nuisances stood the chateau, a regular pile of hewn stone, with formal _allées_, abundance of windows, extensive stables, and broken vases. The ancient _seigneur_ probably retained no more of this ancient possession than its name, while some Monsieur Le Blanc, or Monsieur Le Noir, filled his place in the house, and "personne dans la seigneurie." A few leagues farther brought us to an eminence, whence we got a beautiful glimpse of the sweeping river, and of a wide expanse of fertile country less formally striped and more picturesque than the preceding. Another grey castellated town lay on the verge of the river, with towers that seemed even darker than ever. How different was all this from the glare of our own objects! As we wound round the brow of the height, extensive park-grounds, a village more modern, less picturesque, and less dirty than common, with a large chateau in red bricks, was brought in sight, in the valley. This was Rosny, the place that gave his hereditary title to the celebrated Sully, as Baron and Marquis de Rosny; Sully, a man, who, like Bacon, almost deserves the character so justly given of the latter by Pope, that of "The wisest, greatest, _meanest_, of mankind." The house and grounds were now the property of Madame, as it is the etiquette to term the Duchesse de Berri. The town in the distance, with the dark towers, was Mantes, a place well known in the history of Normandy. We breakfasted at Le Cheval Blanc. The church drew us all out, but it was less monstrous than that of Louviers, and, as a cathedral, unworthy to be named with those of the larger places. The next stage brought us to St. Germain-en-Laye, or to the verge of the circle of low mountains that surround the plains of Paris. Here we got within the influence of royal magnificence and the capital. The Bourbons, down to the period of the revolution, were indeed kings, and they have left physical and moral impressions of their dynasty of seven hundred years, that will require as long a period to eradicate. Nearly every foot of the entire semi-circle of hills to the west of Paris is historical, and garnished by palaces, pavilions, forests, parks, aqueducts, gardens, or chases. A carriage terrace, of a mile in length, and on a most magnificent scale in other respects, overlooks the river, at an elevation of several hundred feet above its bed. The palace itself, a quaint old edifice of the time of Francis I, who seems to have had an architecture not unlike that of Elizabeth of England, has long been abandoned as a royal abode. I believe its last royal occupant was the dethroned James II. It is said to have been deserted by its owners, because it commands a distant view of that silent monitor, the sombre beautiful spire of St. Denis, whose walls shadow the vaults of the Bourbons; they who sat on a throne not choosing to be thus constantly reminded of the time when they must descend to the common fate and crumbling equality of the grave. An aqueduct, worthy of the Romans, gave an imposing idea of the scale on which these royal works were conducted. It appeared, at the distance of a league or two, a vast succession of arches, displaying a broader range of masonry than I had ever before seen. So many years had passed since I was last in Europe, that I gazed in wonder at its vastness. From St. Germain we plunged into the valley, and took our way towards Paris, by a broad paved avenue, that was bordered with trees. The road now began to show an approach to a capital, being crowded with all sorts of uncouth-looking vehicles, used as public conveyances. Still it was on a Lilliputian scale as compared to London, and semi-barbarous even as compared to one of our towns. Marly-la-Machine was passed; an hydraulic invention to force water up the mountains to supply the different princely dwellings of the neighbourhood. Then came a house of no great pretension, buried in trees, at the foot of the bill. This was the celebrated consular abode, Malmaison. After this we mounted to a hamlet, and the road stretched away before us, with the river between, to the unfinished Arc de l'Étoile, or the barrier of the capital. The evening was soft, and there had been a passing shower. As the mist drove away, a mass rose like a glittering beacon, beyond the nearest hill, proclaiming Paris. It was the dome of the Hotel of the Invalids! Though Paris possesses better points of view from its immediate vicinity than most capitals, it is little seen from any of its ordinary approaches until fairly entered. We descended to the river by a gentle declivity. The chateau and grounds of Neuilly, a private possession of the Duke of Orleans, lay on our left; the Bois de Boulogne, the carriage promenade of the capital, on our right. We passed one of those abortions, a _magnificent_ village, (Neuilly,) and ascended gently towards the unfinished Arch of the Star. Bending around this imposing memorial of--Heaven knows what! for it has had as many destinations as France has had governors--we entered the iron gate of the barrier, and found ourselves within the walls of Paris. We were in the Avenue de Neuilly. The Champs Elysées, without verdure, a grove divided by the broad approach, and moderately peopled by a well-dressed crowd, lay on each side. In front, at the distance of a mile, was a mass of foliage that looked more like a rich copse in park than an embellishment of a town garden; and above this, again, peered the pointed roofs of two or three large and high members of some vast structure, sombre in colour and quaint in form. They were the pavilions of the Tuileries.[4] A line of hotels became visible through trees and shrubbery on the left, and on the right we soon got evidence that we were again near the river. We had just left it behind us, and after a _détour_ of several leagues, here it was again flowing in our front, cutting in twain the capital. [Footnote 4: Tuileries is derived from _Tuile_, or tile; the site of the present gardens having been a tile-yard.] Objects now grew confused, for they came fast. We entered and crossed a paved area, that lay between the Seine, the Champs Elysées, the garden of the Tuileries, and two little palaces of extraordinary beauty of architecture. This was the place where Louis XVI. and his unfortunate wife were beheaded. Passing between the two edifices last named, we came upon the Boulevards, and plunged at once into the street-gaiety and movement of this remarkable town. LETTER V. Paris in August 1826.--Montmartre.--The Octroi.--View of Paris. --Montmorency.--Royal Residences.--Duke of Bordeaux.--Horse-racing. --The Dauphine.--Popular feeling in Paris.--Royal Equipage.--Gardes du Corps.--Policy of Napoleon.--Centralization. To R COOPER, ESQ., COOPERSTOWN. We were not a fortnight in Paris before we were quietly established, _en bourgeois_, in the Faubourg St. Germain. Then followed the long and wearying toil of sight-seeing. Happily, our time was not limited, and we took months for that which is usually performed in a few days. This labour is connected with objects that description has already rendered familiar, and I shall say nothing of them, except as they may incidentally belong to such parts of my subject as I believe worthy to be noticed. Paris was empty in the month of August 1826. The court was at St. Cloud; the Duchesse de Berri at her favourite Dieppe; and the fashionable world was scattered abroad over the face of Europe. Our own minister was at the baths of Aix, in Savoy. One of the first things was to obtain precise and accurate ideas of the position and _entourage_ of the place. In addition to those enjoyed from its towers, there are noble views of Paris from Montmartre and Père Lachaise. The former has the best look-out, and thither we proceeded. This little mountain is entirely isolated, forming no part of the exterior circle of heights which environ the town. It lies north of the walls, which cross its base. The ascent is so steep as to require a winding road, and the summit, a table of a hundred acres, is crowned by a crowded village, a church, and divers windmills. There was formerly a convent or two, and small country-houses still cling to its sides, buried in the shrubbery that clothe their terraces. We were fortunate in our sky, which was well veiled in clouds, and occasionally darkened by mists. A bright sun may suit particular scenes, and peculiar moods of the mind, but every connoisseur in the beauties of nature will allow that, as a rule, clouds, and very frequently a partial obscurity, greatly aid a landscape. This is yet more true of a bird's-eye view of a grey old mass of walls, which give up their confused and dusky objects all the better for the absence of glare. I love to study a place teeming with historical recollections, under this light; leaving the sites of memorable scenes to issue, one by one, out of the grey mass of gloom, as time gives up its facts from the obscurity of ages. Unlike English and American towns, Paris has scarcely any suburbs. Those parts which are called its Faubourgs are, in truth, integral parts of the city; and, with the exception of a few clusters of winehouses and _guinguettes_, which have collected near its gates to escape the city duties, the continuity of houses ceases suddenly with the _barrières_, and, at the distance of half a mile from the latter, one is as effectually in the country, so far as the eye is concerned, as if a hundred leagues in the provinces. The unfenced meadows, vineyards, lucerne, oats, wheat, and vegetables, in many places, literally reach the walls. These walls are not intended for defence, but are merely a financial _enceinte_, created for offensive operations against the pockets of the inhabitants. Every town in France that has two thousand inhabitants is entitled to set up an _octroi_ on its articles of consumption, and something like four millions of dollars are taken annually at the gates of Paris, in duties on this internal trade. It is merely the old expedient to tax the poor, by laying impositions on food and necessaries. From the windmills of Montmartre, the day we ascended, the eye took in the whole vast capital at a glance. The domes sprung up through the mist, like starling balloons; and here and there the meandering stream threw back a gleam of silvery light. Enormous roofs denoted the sites of the palaces, churches, or theatres. The summits of columns, the crosses of the minor churches, and the pyramids of pavilion tops, seemed struggling to rear their heads from out the plain of edifices. A better idea of the vastness of the principal structures was obtained here in one hour, than could be got from the streets in a twelvemonth. Taking the roofs of the palace, for instance, the eye followed its field of slate and lead through a parallelogram for quite a mile. The sheet of the French opera resembled a blue pond, and the aisles of Notre Dame and St. Eustache, with their slender ribs and massive buttresses, towered so much above the lofty houses around them, as to seem to stand on their ridges. The church of St. Geneviève, the Pantheon of the revolution, faced us on the swelling land of the opposite side of the town, but surrounded still with crowded lines of dwellings; the Observatory limiting equally the view, and the vast field of houses in that direction. Owing to the state of the atmosphere, and the varying light, the picture before us was not that simply of a town, but, from the multiplicity and variety of its objects, it was a vast and magnificent view. I have frequently looked at Paris since from the same spot, or from its church towers, when the strong sunlight reduced it to the appearance of confused glittering piles, on which the eye almost refused to dwell; but, in a clouded day, all the peculiarities stand out sombre and distinct, resembling the grey accessories of the ordinary French landscape. From the town we turned to the heights which surround it. East and south-east, after crossing the Seine, the country lay in the waste-like unfenced fields which characterize the scenery of this part of Europe. Roads stretched away in the direction of Orleans, marked by the usual lines of clipped and branchless trees. More to the west commence the abrupt heights, which, washed by the river, enclose nearly half the wide plain, like an amphitheatre. This has been the favourite region of the kings of France, from the time of Louis XIII. down to the present day. The palaces of Versailles, St. Germain, St. Cloud, and Meudon, all lie in this direction, within short distances of the capital; and the royal forests, avenues, and chases intersect it in every direction, as mentioned before. Farther north, the hills rise to be low mountains, though a wide and perfectly level plain spreads itself between the town and their bases, varying in breadth from two to four leagues. On the whole of this expanse of cultivated fields, there was hardly such a thing as an isolated house. Though not literally true, this fact was so nearly so as to render the effect oddly peculiar, when one stood on the eastern extremity of Montmartre, where, by turning southward, he looked down upon the affluence and heard the din of a vast capital, and by turning northward, he beheld a country with all the appliances of rural life, and dotted by grey villages. Two places, however, were in sight, in this direction, that might aspire to be termed towns. One was St. Denis, from time immemorial the burying-place of the French kings; and the other was Montmorency, the _bourg_ which gives its name to, or receives it from, the illustrious family that is so styled; for I am unable to say which is the fact. The church spire of the former is one of the most beautiful objects in view from Montmartre, the church itself, which was desecrated in the revolution, having been restored by Napoleon. St. Denis is celebrated, in the Catholic annals, by the fact of the martyr, from whom the name is derived, having walked after decapitation, with his head under his arm, all the way from Paris to this very spot. Montmorency is a town of no great size or importance, but lying on the side of a respectable mountain, in a way to give the spectator more than a profile, it appears to be larger than it actually is. This place is scarcely distinguishable from Paris, under the ordinary light; but on a day like that which we had chosen, it stood out in fine relief from the surrounding fields, even the grey mass of its church being plainly visible. If Paris is so beautiful and striking when seen from the surrounding heights, there are many singularly fine pictures in the bosom of the place itself. We rarely crossed the Pont Royal, during the first month or two of our residence, without stopping the carriage to gaze at the two remarkable views it offers. One is up the reach of the Seine which stretches through the heart of the town, separated by the island; and the other, in an opposite direction, looks down the reach by which the stream flows into the meadows, on its way to the sea. The first is a look into the avenues of a large town, the eye resting on the quaint outlines and endless mazes of walls, towers, and roofs; while the last is a prospect, in which the front of the picture is a collection of some of the finest objects of a high state of civilization, and the background a beautiful termination of wooded and decorated heights. At first, one who is accustomed to the forms and movements of a sea-port feels a little disappointment at seeing a river that bears nothing but dingy barges loaded with charcoal and wine-casks. The magnificence of the quays seems disproportioned to the trifling character of the commerce they are destined to receive. But familiarity with the town soon changes all these notions, and while we admit that Paris is altogether secondary, so far as trade is concerned, we come to feel the magnificence of her public works, and to find something that is pleasing and picturesque, even in her huge and unwieldy wood and coal barges. Trade is a good thing in its way, but its agents rarely contribute to the taste, learning, manners, or morals of a nation. The sight of the different interesting objects that encircle Paris stimulated our curiosity to nearer views, and we proceeded immediately to visit the environs. These little excursions occupied more than a month, and they not only made us familiar with the adjacent country, but, by compelling us to pass out at nearly every one of the twenty or thirty different gates or barriers, as they are called, with a large portion of the town also. This capital has been too often described to render any further account of the principal objects necessary, and in speaking of it, I shall endeavour to confine my remarks to things that I think may still interest you by their novelty. The royal residences in Paris at this time are, strictly speaking, but two,--the Tuileries and the Palais Royal. The Louvre is connected with the first, and it has no finished apartments that are occupied by any of princely rank, most of its better rooms being unfinished, and are occupied as cabinets or museums. A small palace, called the Elysée Bourbon, is fitted up as a residence for the heir presumptive, the Duc de Bordeaux; but, though it contains his princely toys, such as miniature batteries of artillery, etc., he is much too young to maintain a separate establishment. This little scion of royalty only completed his seventh year not long after our arrival in France; on which occasion one of those silly ceremonies, which some of the present age appear to think inseparable from sound principles, was observed. The child was solemnly and formally transferred from the care of the women to that of the men. Up to this period, Madame la Vicomtesse de Gontaut-Biron had been his governess, and she now resigned her charge into the hands of the Baron de Damas, who had lately been Minister of Foreign Affairs. Madame de Gontaut was raised to the rank of Duchess on the occasion. The boy himself is said to have passed from the hands of the one party to those of the other, in presence of the whole court, _absolutely naked_. Some such absurdity was observed at the reception of Marie Antoinette, it being a part of regal etiquette that a royal bride, on entering France, should leave her old wardrobe, even to the last garment, behind her. You will be amused to hear that there are people in Europe who still attach great importance to a rigid adherence to all the old etiquette at similar ceremonies. These are the men who believe it to be essential that judges and advocates should wear wigs, in an age when, their use being rejected by the rest of the world, their presence cannot fail, if it excite any feeling, to excite that of inconvenience and absurdity. There is such a thing as leaving society too naked, I admit; but a _chemise_, at least, could not have injured the little Duke of Bordeaux at this ceremony. Whenever a usage that is poetical in itself, and which awakens a sentiment without doing violence to decency, or comfort, or common sense, can be preserved, I would rigidly adhere to it, if it were only for antiquity's sake; but, surely, it would be far more rational for judges to wear false beards, because formerly Bacon and Coke did not shave their chins, than it is for a magistrate to appear on the bench with a cumbrous, hot, and inconvenient cloud of powdered flax, or whatever may be the material on his poll, because our ancestors, a century or two since, were so silly as to violate nature in the same extraordinary manner. Speaking of the Duke of Bordeaux, reminds me of an odd, and, indeed, in some degree a painful scene, of which I was accidentally a witness, a short time before the ceremony just mentioned. The _émigrés_ have brought back with them into France a taste for horse-racing, and, supported by a few of the English who are here, there are regular races, spring and autumn, in the Champs de Mars. The course is one of the finest imaginable, being more than a mile in circumference, and surrounded by mounds of earth, raised expressly with that object, which permit the spectators to overlook the entire field. The result is a species of amphitheatric arena, in which any of the dramatic exhibitions, that are so pleasing to this spectacle-loving nation, may be enacted. Pavilions are permanently erected at the starting-post, and one or two of these are usually fitted up for the use of the court, whenever it is the pleasure of the royal family to attend, as was the case at the time the little occurrence I am about to relate took place. On this occasion Charles X. came in royal state, from St. Cloud, accompanied by detachments of his guards, many carriages, several of which were drawn by eight horses, and a cloud of mounted footmen. Most of the dignitaries of the kingdom were present, in the different pavilions, or stands, and nearly or quite all the ministers, together with the whole diplomatic corps. There could not have been less than a hundred thousand spectators on the mounds. The racing itself was no great matter, being neither within time nor well contested. The horses were all French, the trial being intended for the encouragement of the French breeders, and the sports were yet too recent to have produced much influence on the stock of the country. During the heats, accompanied by a young American friend, I had strolled among the royal equipages, in order to examine their magnificence, and returning towards the course, we came out unexpectedly at a little open space, immediately at one end of the pavilion in which the royal family was seated. There were not a dozen people near us, and one of these was a sturdy Englishman, evidently a tradesman, who betrayed a keen and a truly national desire to get a look at the king. The head of a little girl was just visible above the side of the pavilion, and my companion, who, by a singular accident, not long before, had been thrown into company with _les enfans de France_, as the royal children are called, informed me that it was Mademoiselle d'Artois, the sister of the heir presumptive. He had given me a favourable account of the children, whom he represented as both lively and intelligent, and I changed my position a little, to get a better look of the face of this little personage, who was not twenty feet from the spot where we stood. My movement attracted her attention; and, after looking down a moment into the small area in which we were enclosed, she disappeared. Presently a lady looked over the balustrade, and our Englishman seemed to be on tenter-hooks. Some thirty or forty French gathered round us immediately, and I presume it was thought none but loyal subjects could manifest so much desire to gaze at the family, especially as one or two of the French clapped the little princess, whose head now appeared and disappeared again, as if she were earnestly pressing something on the attention of those within the pavilion. In a moment the form of a pale and sickly-looking boy was seen, the little girl, who was a year or two older, keeping her place at his side. The boy was raised on the knee of a melancholy-looking and rather hard-featured female of fifty, who removed his straw hat in order to salute us. "These are the Dauphine and the Duc de Bordeaux," whispered my companion, who knew the person of the former by sight. The Dauphine looked anxiously, and I thought mournfully, at the little cluster we formed directly before her, as if waiting to observe in what manner her nephew would be received. Of course my friend and myself, who were in the foreground, stood uncovered; as gentlemen we could not do less, nor as _foreign_ gentlemen could we very well do more. Not a Frenchman, however, even touched his hat! On the other hand, the Englishman straddled his legs, gave a wide sweep with his beaver, and uttered as hearty a hurrah as if he had been cheering a member of parliament who gave gin in his beer. The effect of this single, unaccompanied, unanswered cheer, was both ludicrous and painful. The poor fellow himself seemed startled at hearing his own voice amid so profound a stillness, and checking his zeal as unexpectedly as he had commenced its exhibition, he looked furiously around him and walked surlily away. The Dauphine followed him with her eyes. There was no mistaking his gaitered limbs, dogged mien, and florid countenance; be clearly was not French, and those that were, as clearly turned his enthusiasm into ridicule. I felt sorry for her, as, with a saddened face, she set down the boy, and withdrew her own head within the covering of the pavilion. The little Mademoiselle d'Artois kept her bright looks, in a sort of wonder, on us, until the circumspection of those around her, gave her a hint to disappear. This was the first direct and near view I got of the true state of popular feeling in Paris towards the reigning family. According to the journals in the interest of the court, enthusiasm was invariably exhibited whenever any of their princes appeared in public; but the journals in every country, our own dear and shrewd republic not excepted, are very unsafe guides for those who desire truth. I am told that the style of this court has been materially altered, and perhaps improved, by the impetuous character of Napoleon. The king rarely appears in public with less than eight horses, which are usually in a foam. His liveries are not showy, neither are the carriages as neat and elegant as one would expect. The former are blue and white, with a few slight ornaments of white and red lace, and the vehicles are showy, large and even magnificent, but, I think, without good taste. You will be surprised to hear that he drives with what in America we call "Dutch collars." Six of the horses are held in hand, and the leaders are managed by a postilion. There is always one or more empty carriages, according to the number of the royal personages present, equipped in every respect like those which are filled, and which are held in reserve against accidents; a provision, by the way, that is not at all unreasonable in those who scamper over the broken pavements, in and about Paris, as fast as leg can be put to the ground. Notwithstanding the present magnificence of the court, royalty is shorn of much of its splendour in France, since the days of Louis XVI. Then a city of a hundred thousand souls (Versailles) was a mere dependant of the crown; lodgings for many hundred _abbés_, it is said, were provided in the palace alone, and a simple representation at the palace opera cost a fortune. It is not an easy matter to come at the real cost of the kingly office in this country, all the expenditures of the European governments being mystified in such a way, as to require a very intimate knowledge of the details to give a perfectly clear account of them. But, so far as I have been able to ascertain, the charges that arise from this feature of the system do not fall much short, if indeed they do any, of eight millions of dollars annually. Out of this sum, however, the king pays the extra allowances of his guards, the war office taking the same view of all classes of soldiers, after distinguishing between foot and cavalry. You will get an idea of the luxury of royalty by a short account of the _gardes du corps_. These troops are all officers, the privates having the rank and receiving the pay of lieutenants. Their duty, as the name implies, is to have the royal person in their especial care, and there is always a guard of them in an ante-chamber of the royal apartments. They are heavy cavalry, and when they mount guard in the palaces, their arm is a carabine. A party of them always appear near the carriage of the king, or indeed near that of any of the reigning branch of the family. There are said to be four regiments or companies of them, of four hundred men each; but it strikes me the number must be exaggerated. I should think, however, that there are fully a thousand of them. In addition to these selected troops, there are three hundred Swiss, of the Swiss and royal guards; of the latter, including all arms, there must be many thousands. These are the troops that usually mount guard in and about all the palaces. The annual budget of France appears in the estimates at about a _milliard_, or a thousand millions of francs; but the usual mystifications are resorted to, and the truth will give the annual central expenses of the country at not less, I think, than two hundred millions of dollars. This sum, however, covers many items of expenditure, that we are accustomed to consider purely local. The clergy, for instance, are paid out of it, as is a portion of the cost of maintaining the roads. On the other hand, much money is collected, as a general regulation, that does not appear in the budget. Few or no churches are built, and there are charges for masses, interments, christenings, and fees for a hundred things, of which no account is taken in making out the sum total of the cost of government. It was the policy of Napoleon to create a system of centralization, that should cause everything to emanate from himself. The whole organization of government had this end in view, and all the details of the departments have been framed expressly to further this object. The prefects are no more than so many political _aides_, whose duty it is to carry into effect the orders that emanate from the great head, and lines of telegraphs are established all over France, in such a way that a communication may be sent from the Tuileries, to the remotest corner of the kingdom, in the course of a few hours. It has been said that one of the first steps towards effecting a revolution, ought to be to seize the telegraphs at Paris, by means of which such information and orders could be sent into the provinces, as the emergency might seem to require. This system of centralization has almost neutralized the advancement of the nation, in a knowledge of the usages and objects of the political liberty that the French have obtained, by bitter experience, from other sources. It is the constant aim of that portion of the community which understands the action of free institutions, to increase the powers of the municipalities, and to lessen the functions of the central government; but their efforts are resisted with a jealous distrust of everything like popular dictation. Their municipal privileges are, rightly enough, thought to be the entering wedges of real liberty. The people ought to manage their own affairs, just as far as they can do so without sacrificing their interests for want of a proper care, and here is the starting point of representation. So far from France enjoying such a system, however, half the time a bell cannot be hung in a parish church, or a bridge repaired, without communications with and orders from Paris. LETTER VI. Letters of Introduction.--European Etiquette.--Diplomatic Entertainments. --Ladies in Coffee-houses.--French Hospitality.--Mr. Canning at Paris. --Parisian Hotels.--French Lady at Washington.--Receptions in Paris and in New York.--Mode of Announcement.--Republican Affectation. --Hotel Monaco.--Dinner given to Mr. Canning.--Diplomatic Etiquette. --European Ambassadors.--Prime Minister of France.--Mr. Canning. --Count Pozzo di Borgo.--Precedency at Dinner.--American Etiquette. --A French Dinner.--Servants.--Catholic Fasting.--Conversation with Canning.--English Prejudice against Americans. To MRS. POMEROY, COOPERSTOWN, NEW YORK. I quitted America with some twenty letters of introduction, that had been pressed upon me by different friends, but which were carefully locked up in a secretary, where they still remain, and are likely to remain for ever, or until they are destroyed. As this may appear a singular resolution for one who left his own country to be absent for years, I shall endeavour to explain it. In the first place, I have a strong repugnance to pushing myself on the acquaintance of any man: this feeling may, in fact, proceed from pride, but I have a disposition to believe that it proceeds, in part, also from a better motive. These letters of introduction, like verbal introductions, are so much abused in America, that the latter feeling, perhaps I might say both feelings, are increased by the fact. Of all the people in the world we are the most prodigal of these favours, when self-respect and propriety would teach us we ought to be among the most reserved, simply because the character of the nation is so low, that the European, more than half the time, fancies he is condescending when he bestows attentions on our people at all. Other travellers may give you a different account of the matter, but let every one be responsible for his own opinions and facts. Then a friend who, just as we left home, returned from Europe after an absence of five years, assured me that he found his letters of but little use; that nearly every agreeable acquaintance he made was the result of accident, and that the Europeans in general were much more cautious in giving and receiving letters of this nature than ourselves. The usages of all Europe, those of the English excepted, differ from our own on the subject of visits. There the stranger, or the latest arrival, is expected to make the first visit, and an inquiry for your address is always taken for an intimation that your acquaintance would be acceptable. Many, perhaps most Americans, lose a great deal through their provincial breeding, in this respect, in waiting for attentions that it is their duty to invite, by putting themselves in the way of receiving them. The European usage is not only the most rational, but it is the most delicate. It is the most rational, as there is a manifest absurdity in supposing, for instance, that the inhabitant of a town is to know whenever a visitor from the country arrives; and it is the most delicate, as it leaves the newcomer, who is supposed to know his own wishes best, to decide for himself whether he wishes to make acquaintances or not. In short, our own practices are provincial and rustic, and cannot exist when the society of the country shall have taken the usual phases of an advanced civilization. Even in England, in the higher classes, the cases of distinguished men excepted, it is usual for the stranger to seek the introduction. Under such circumstances, coupled with the utter insignificance of an ordinary individual in a town like Paris, you will easily understand that we had the first months of our residence entirely to ourselves. As a matter of course, we called on our own minister and his wife; and, as a matter of course, we have been included in the dinners and parties that they are accustomed to give at this season of the year. This, however, has merely brought us in contact with a chance-medley of our own countrymen, these diplomatic entertainments being quite obviously a matter of accident, so far as the set is concerned. The dinners of your banker, however, are still worse, since with them the visiting-list is usually a mere extract from the ledger. Our privacy has not been without its advantages. It has enabled us to visit all the visible objects without the incumbrance of engagements, and given me leisure to note and to comment on things that might otherwise have been overlooked. For several months we have had nothing to do but to see sights, get familiarized with a situation that, at first, we found singularly novel, and to brush up our French. I never had sufficient faith in the popular accounts of the usages of other countries, to believe one-half of what I have heard. I distrusted from the first the fact of ladies--I mean real, _bona fide_ ladies, women of sentiment, delicacy, taste, and condition--frequenting public eating-houses, and habitually living, without the retirement and reserve that is so necessary to all _women_, not to say _men_, of the _caste_. I found it difficult, therefore, to imagine I should meet with many females of condition in _restaurans_ and _cafés_. Such a thing might happen on an emergency, but it was assailing too much all those feelings and tastes which become inherent in refinement, to suppose that the tables of even the best house of the sort in Paris could be honoured by the presence of such persons, except under particular circumstances. My own observation corroborated this opinion, and, in order to make sure of the fact, I have put the question to nearly every Frenchwoman of rank it has since been my good fortune to become sufficiently acquainted with to take the liberty. The answer has been uniform. Such things are sometimes done, but rarely; and even then it is usual to have the service in a private room. One old lady, a woman perfectly competent to decide on such a point, told me frankly:--"We never do it, except by way of a frolic, or when in a humour which induces people to do many other silly and unbecoming things. Why should we go to the _restaurateurs_ to eat? We have our own houses and servants as well as the English, or even you Americans"--it may be supposed I laughed--"and certainly the French are not so devoid of good taste as not to understand that the mixed society of a public-house is not the best possible company for a woman." It is, moreover, a great mistake to imagine that the French are not hospitable, and that they do not entertain as freely, and as often, as any other people. The only difference between them and the English, in this respect, or between them and ourselves, is in the better taste and ease which regulate their intercourse of this nature. While there is a great deal of true elegance, there is no fuss, at a French entertainment; and all that you have heard of the superiority of the kitchen in this country, is certainly true. Society is divided into _castes_ in Paris, as it is everywhere else; and the degrees of elegance and refinement increase as one ascends as a matter of course; but there is less of effort, in every class, than is usual with us. One of the best-bred Englishmen of my acquaintance, and one, too, who had long been in the world, has frankly admitted to me, that the highest tone of English society is merely an imitation of that which existed in Paris previously to the revolution, and of which, though modified as to usages and forms, a good deal still remains. By the highest tone, however, you are not to suppose I mean that laboured, frigid, heartless manner that so many, in England especially, mistake for high breeding, merely because they do not know how to unite with the finish which constant intercourse with the world creates, the graceful semblance of living less for one's self than for others, and to express, as it were, their feelings and wishes, rather than to permit one's own to escape him--a habit that, like the reflection of a mirror, produces the truest and most pleasing images, when thrown back from surfaces the most highly polished. But I am anticipating rather than giving you a history of what I have seen. In consequence of our not having brought any letters, as has just been mentioned, and of not having sought society, no one gave themselves any trouble on our account for the first three or four months of our residence in Paris. At the end of that period, however, I made my _début_ at, probably, as brilliant an entertainment as one usually sees here in the course of a whole winter. Mr. Canning, then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, came to Paris on a visit, and, as is usual on such occasions, diplomacy was a good deal mixed up with eating and drinking. Report says, that the etiquette of the court was a good deal deranged by this visit, the Bourbons not having adopted the hale-fellow hospitality of the English kings. M. de Villèle or M. de Damas would be invited to dine at Windsor almost as a matter of course; but the descendant of Hugh Capet hesitated about breaking bread with an English commoner. The matter is understood to have been gotten over, by giving the entertainment at St. Cloud, where, it would seem, the royal person has fewer immunities than at the Tuileries. But, among other attentions that were bestowed on the English statesman, Mr. Brown determined to give him a great diplomatic dinner; and our own legations having a great poverty of subordinates, except in the way of travelling _attachés_, I was invited to occupy one end of the table, while the regular secretary took his seat at the other. Before I attempt a short description of this entertainment, it may help to enliven the solitude of your mountain residence, and serve to give you more distinct ideas of the matter than can be obtained from novels, if I commence with a summary of the appliances and modes of polite intercourse in this part of the world, as they are to be distinguished from our own. In the first place, you are to discard from your mind all images of two rooms and folding-doors, with a passage six feet wide, a narrow carpeted flight of steps, and a bed-room prepared for the ladies to uncloak in, and another in which the men can brush their hair and hide their hats. Some such snuggeries very possibly exist in England, among the middling classes; but I believe all over the continent of Europe style is never attempted without more suitable means to carry out the intention. In Paris, every one who mingles with the world lives in an hotel, or a house that has a court and an outer gate. Usually the building surrounds three sides of this court, and sometimes the whole four; though small hotels are to be found, in which the court is encircled on two, or even on three of its sides, merely by high walls. The gate is always in the keeping of a regular porter, who is an important personage about the establishment, taking in letters, tickets, etc., ejecting blackguards and all other suspicious persons, carrying messages, besides levying contributions on all the inmates of the house, in the way of wood and coal. In short, he is in some measure, held to be responsible for the exits and entrances, being a sort of domestic gendarme. In the larger hotels there are two courts, the great and _la basse cour_, the latter being connected with the offices and stables. Of course, these hotels vary in size and magnificence. Some are not larger than our own largest town dwellings, while others, again, are palaces. As these buildings were originally constructed to lodge a single establishment, they have their principal and their inferior apartments; some have their summer and their winter apartments. As is, and always must be the case, where everything like state and magnificence are affected, the reception-rooms are en suite; the mode of building which prevails in America, being derived from the secondary class of English houses. It is true, that in London, many men of rank, perhaps of the nobility, do not live in houses any larger, or much better, than the best of our own; though I think, that one oftener sees rooms of a good size and proper elevation, even in these dwellings, than it is usual to see in America. But the great houses of London, such as Burlington-house, Northumberland-house, Devonshire-house, Lansdown-house, Sutherland-house (the most magnificent of all) etc. are, more or less, on the continental plan, though not generally built around courts. This plan eschews passages of all descriptions, except among the private parts of the dwelling. In this respect, an American house is the very opposite of a European house. We are nothing without passages, it being indispensable that every room should open on one; whereas, here the great point is to have as little to do with them as possible. Thus you quit the great staircase by a principal door, and find yourself in an ante-chamber; this communicates with one or two more rooms of the same character, gradually improving in ornaments and fixtures, until you enter a _salon_. Then comes a succession of apartments, of greater or less magnificence, according to circumstances until you are led entirely round the edifice, quitting it by a door on the great staircase again, opposite to the one by which you entered. In those cases in which there are courts, the principal rooms are ranged in this manner, _en suite_, on the exterior range, usually looking out on the gardens, while those within them, which look into the court, contain the bed-rooms, boudoir, eating-rooms, and perhaps the library. So tenacious are those, who lay any claim to gentility here, of the use of the ante-chambers, that I scarcely recollect a lodging of any sort, beyond the solitary chamber of some student, without, at least, one. They seem indispensable, and I think rightly, to all ideas of style, or even of comfort. I remember to have seen an amusing instance of the strength of this feeling in the case of the wife of a former French minister, at Washington. The building she inhabited was one of the ordinary American double houses, as they are called, with a passage through the centre, the stairs in the passage, and a short corridor, to communicate with the bed-rooms above. Off the end of this upper corridor, if, indeed, so short a transverse passage deserves the name, was partitioned a room of some eight feet by ten, as a bed-room. A room adjoining this, was converted into a boudoir and bed-room, for Madame de ----, by means of a silk screen. The usual door of the latter opened, of course, on the passage. In a morning call one day, I was received in the boudoir. Surprised to be carried up stairs on such an occasion, I was still more so to find myself taken through a small room, before I was admitted to the larger. The amount of it all was; that Madame de ----, accustomed to have many rooms, and to think it vulgar to receive in her great drawing-room of a morning, believing _au premier_, or up one pair of stairs, more genteel than the _rez de chaussée_, or the ground floor, and feeling the necessity of an ante-chamber as there was an abruptness in being at once admitted into the presence of a lady from a staircase, a sort of local _brusquerie_, that would suit her cook better than the wife of an envoy extraordinary, had contrived to introduce her guests through the little bed-room, at the end of the upstairs entry! From all this you will be prepared to understand some of the essential differences between a reception in Paris and one at New York, or even at Washington. The footman, or footmen, if there are two, ascend to the inner ante-chamber, with their masters and mistresses, where they receive the cloaks, shawls, over-coats, or whatever else has been used for the sake of mere warmth, and withdraw. If they are sent home, as is usually the case at dinners and evening parties, they return with the things at the hour ordered; but if the call be merely a passing one, or the guest means to go early to some other house, they either wait in the ante-chamber, or in a room provided for that purpose. The French are kind to their servants; much kinder than either the English, or their humble imitators, ourselves; and it is quite common to see, not only a good warm room, but refreshments, provided for the servants at a French party. In England, they either crowd the narrow passages and the door-way, or throng the street, as with us. In both countries, the poor coachmen sit for hours on their carriage-boxes, like so many ducks, in the drizzle and rain. The footman gives the names of his party to the _maître d'hôtel_, or the groom of the chambers, who, as he throws open the door of the first drawing-room, announces them in a loud voice. Announcing by means of a line of servants, is rarely, if ever, practised in France, though it is still done in England, at large parties, and in the great houses. Every one has heard the story of the attempt at Philadelphia, some forty years ago, to introduce the latter custom, when, by the awkwardness of a servant, a party was announced as "Master and Mistress, and the young ladies;" but you will smile when I tell you that the latter part of this style is precisely that which is most in vogue at Paris. A young lady here may be admired, she may be danced with, and she may even look and be looked at; but in society she talks little, is never loud or _belleish_, is always neat and simple in her attire, using very little jewelry, and has scarcely any other name than Mademoiselle. The usual mode of announcing is, "Monsieur le Comte et Madame la Comtesse d'une telle, avec leurs demoiselles;" or, in plain English, "The Count and Countess Such-a-one, with their daughters" This you will perceive is not so far, after all, from "Master and Mistress, and the young ladies." The English, more simple in some respects, and less so in others, usually give every name, though, in the use of titles, the utmost good taste is observed. Thus every nobleman below a duke is almost uniformly addressed and styled Lord A----, Lord B----, etc. and their wives, Ladies A----, and B----. Thus the Marquess of Lansdowne would, I think, always be addressed and spoken of, and even announced, merely as Lord Lansdowne. This, you will observe, is using the simplest possible style, and it appears to me that there is rather an affectation of simplicity in their ordinary intercourse, the term "My Lord" being hardly ever used, except by the tradesmen and domestics. The safest rule for an American, and certainly the one that good taste would dictate, is to be very sparing in his use of everything of this sort, since he cannot be always certain of the proper usages of the different countries he visits, and, so long as he avoids unnecessary affectations of republicanisms, and, if a gentleman, this he will do without any effort, simplicity is his cue. When I say _avoids the affectations of republicanisms_, I do not mean the points connected with principles, but those vulgar and underbred pretensions of ultra equality and liberalism, which, while they mark neither manliness nor a real appreciation of equal rights almost uniformly betray a want of proper training and great ignorance of the world. Whenever, however, any attempt is made to identify equality of rights and democratical institutions with vulgarity and truculency, as is sometimes attempted here, in the presence of Americans, and even in good company, it is the part of every gentleman of our country to improve the opportunity that is thus afforded him, to show it is a source of pride with him to belong to a nation in which a hundred men are not depressed politically, in order that one may be great; and also to show how much advantage, after all, he who is right in substance has over him who is substantially wrong, even in the forms of society, and in that true politeness which depends on natural justice. Such a principle, acted on systematically would soon place the gentlemen of America where they ought to be, and the gentlemen of other countries where, sooner or later, they must be content to descend, or to change their systems. That these things are not so, must be ascribed to our provincial habits, our remote situation, comparative insignificance, and chiefly to the circumstance that men's minds, trained under a different state of things, cannot keep even pace with the wonderful progress of the facts of the country. But all this time I have only got you into the outer _salon_ of a French hotel. In order that we may proceed more regularly, we will return to the dinner given by our minister to Mr. Canning. Mr. Brown has an apartment in the Hotel Monaco, one of the best houses in Paris. The Prince of Monaco is the sovereign of a little territory of the same name, on the Gulf of Nice, at the foot of the maritime Alps. His states may be some six or eight miles square, and the population some six or eight thousand. The ancient name of the family is Grimaldi; but by some intermarriage or other, the Duke of Valentinois, a Frenchman, has become the prince. This little state is still independent, though under the especial protection of the King of Sardinia, and without foreign relations. It was formerly a common thing for the petty princes of Europe to own hotels at Paris. Thus the present Hotel of the Legion of Honour was built by a Prince of Salms; and the Princes of Monaco had two, one of which is occupied by the Austrian ambassador, and, in the other, our own minister, just at this moment, has an apartment. As I had been pressed especially to be early, I went a little before six, and finding no one in the drawing-room, I strolled into the bureau, where I found Mr. Shelden, the secretary of legation, who lived in the family, dressed for dinner. We chatted a little, and, on my admiring the magnificence of the rooms, he gave me the history of the hotel, as you have just heard it, with an additional anecdote, that may be worth relating. "This hotel," said the secretary, "was once owned by M. de Talleyrand, and this bureau was probably the receptacle of state secrets of far greater importance than any that are connected with our own simple and unsupported claims for justice." He then went on to say, that the citizens of Hamburg, understanding it was the intention of Napoleon to incorporate their town with the empire, had recourse to a _...ceur_,[5] in order to prevent an act that, by destroying their neutrality, would annihilate their commerce. Four millions of francs were administered on this occasion, and of these, a large proportion, it is said, went to pay for the Hotel Monaco, which was a recent purchase of M. de Talleyrand. To the horror of the Hambourgeois, the money was scarcely paid, when the deprecated decree appeared, and every man of them was converted into a Frenchman by the stroke of a pen. The worthy burghers were accustomed to receive a _quid pro quo_ for every florin they bestowed, failing of which, on the present occasion, they sent a deputation forthwith, to Napoleon, to reveal the facts, and to make their complaints. That great man little liked that any one but himself should peculate in his dominions, and, in the end, M. de Talleyrand was obliged to quit the Hotel Monaco. By some means with which I am unacquainted, most probably by purchase, however, the house is now the property of Madame Adelaide of Orleans. [Footnote 5: the first three letters of the word cannot be correctly read on the original book] The rolling of a coach into the court was a signal for us to be at our posts, and we abandoned the bureau so lately occupied by the great father of diplomacy, for the drawing-room. I have already told you that this dinner was in honour of Mr. Canning, and, although diplomatic in one sense, it was not so strictly confined to the corps as to prevent a selection. This selection, in honour of the principal guest, had been made from the representatives of the great powers, Spain being the least important nation represented on the occasion, the republic of Switzerland excepted. I do not know whether the presence of the Swiss chargé-d'affaires was so intended or not, but it struck me as pointed and in good taste, for all the other foreign agents were ambassadors, with the exception of the Prussian, who was an Envoy Extraordinary. Diplomacy has its honorary gradations as well as a military corps; and, as you can know but little of such matters, I will explain them _en passant_. First in rank comes the Ambassador. This functionary is supposed to represent the personal dignity of the state that sends him. If a king, there is a room in his house that has a throne, and it is usual to see the chair reversed, in respect for its sanctity; and it appears to be etiquette to suspend the portrait of the sovereign beneath the canopy. The Envoy Extraordinary comes next, and then the Minister Plenipotentiary. Ordinarily, these two functions are united in the same individual. Such is the rank of Mr. Brown. The Minister Resident is a lower grade, and the Chargé-d'affaires the lowest of all. _Inter se_, these personages take rank according to this scale. Previously to the peace of 1814, the representative of one monarch laid claim to precede the representative of another, always admitting, however, of the validity of the foregoing rule. This pretension gave rise to a good deal of heartburning and contention. Nothing can, in itself, be of greater indifference whether A. or B. walk into the reception-room or to the dinner-table first; but when the idea of general superiority is associated with the act, the aspect of the thing is entirely changed. Under the old system, the ambassador of the Emperor, claimed precedence over all other ambassadors, and, I believe, the representatives of the kings of France had high pretensions also. Now there are great mutations in states. Spain, once the most important kingdom of Europe, has much less influence to-day than Prussia, a power of yesterday. Then the minister of the most insignificant prince claimed precedency over the representative of the most potent republic. This might have passed while republics were insignificant and dependent; but no one can believe that a minister of America, for instance, representing a state of fifty millions, as will be the case before long, would submit to such an extravagant pretension on the part of a minister of Wurtemburg, or Sardinia, or Portugal. He would not submit to such a pretension on the part of the minister of any power on earth. I do not believe that the Congress of Vienna had sufficient foresight, or sufficient knowledge of the actual condition of the United States, to foresee this difficulty; but there were embarrassing points to be settled among the European states themselves, and the whole affair was disposed of on a very discreet and equitable principle. It was decided that priority of standing at a particular court should regulate the rank between the different classes of agents at that particular court. Thus the ambassador longest at Paris precedes all the other ambassadors at Paris; and the same rule prevails with the ministers and chargés, according to their respective gradations of rank. A provision, however, was made in favour of the representative of the Pope, who, if of the rank of a nuncio, precedes all ambassadors. The concession has been made in honour of the church, which, as you must know, or ought to be told, is an interest much protected in all monarchies, statesmen being notoriously of tender consciences. The constant habit of meeting drills the diplomatic corps so well, that they go through the evolutions of etiquette as dexterously as a corps of regular troops perform their wheelings and countermarches. The first great point with them is punctuality; for, to people who sacrifice so much of it to forms, time gets to be precious. The roll of wheels was incessant in the court of the Hotel Monaco, from the time the first carriage entered until the last had set down its company. I know, as every man who reflects must know, that it is inherently ill-bred to be late anywhere; but I never before felt how completely it was high breeding to be as punctual as possible. The _maître d'hôtel_ had as much as he could do to announce the company, who entered as closely after each other as decorum and dignity would permit. I presume one party waited a little for the others in the outer drawing-room, the reception being altogether in the inner room. The Americans very properly came first. We were Mr. Gallatin, who was absent from London on leave, his wife and daughter, and a clergyman and his wife, and myself; Mrs. ---- having declined the invitation on account of ill health. The announcing and the entrance of most of the company, especially as everybody was in high dinner-dress, the women in jewels and the men wearing all their orders, had something of the air of a scenic display. The effect was heightened by the magnificence of the hotel, the drawing-room in which we were collected being almost regal. The first person who appeared was a handsome, compact, well-built, gentleman-like little man, who was announced as the Duke of Villa Hermosa, the Spanish ambassador. He was dressed with great simplicity and beauty, having, however, the breast of his coat covered with stars, among which I recognized, with historical reverence, that of the Golden Fleece. He came alone, his wife pleading indisposition for her absence. The Prussian minister and his wife came next. Then followed Lord and Lady Granville, the representatives of England. He was a large, well-looking man, but wanted the perfect command of movement and manner that so much distinguish his brethren in diplomacy: as for mere physical stuff, he and our own minister, who stands six feet four in his stockings, would make material enough for all the rest of the corps. He wore the star of the Bath. The Austrian ambassador and ambassadress followed, a couple of singularly high air, and a good tone of manner. He is a Hungarian, and very handsome; she a Veronese, I believe, and certainly a woman admirably adapted for her station. They had hardly made their salutations before M. le Comte et Mad. la Comtesse de Villèle were announced. Here, then, we had the French prime minister. As the women precede the men into a drawing-room here, knowing how to walk and to curtsey alone, I did not, at first, perceive the great man, who followed so close to his wife's skirts as to be nearly hid. But he was soon flying about the room at large, and betrayed himself immediately to be a fidget. Instead of remaining stationary, or nearly so as became his high quality, he took the initiative in compliments, and had nearly every diplomatic man walking apart in the adjoining room, in a political aside, in less than twenty minutes. He had a countenance of shrewdness, and I make little doubt is a better man in a bureau than in a drawing-room. His colleague, the foreign minister, M. de Damas, and his wife, came next. He was a large, heavy-looking personage, that I suspect throws no small part of the diplomacy on the shoulders of the premier; though he had more the manner of good society than his colleague. He has already exchanged his office for that of governor of the heir presumptive, as I have already stated. There was a pause, when a quiet, even-paced, classical-looking man, in the attire of an ecclesiastic, appeared in the door, and was announced as "My Lord the Nuncio." He was then an archbishop, and wore the usual dress of his rank; but I have since met him at an evening party with a red hat; under his arm, the Pope having recalled him, and raised him to that dignity. He is now Cardinal Macchi. He was a priestly and an intellectual-looking personage, and, externals considered, well suited to his station. He wore a decoration or two, as well as most of the others. "My Lord Clanricarde and Mr. Canning" came next, and the great man, followed by his son-in-law, made his appearance. He walked into the room with the quiet _aplomb_ of a man accustomed to being _lionised_; and certainly, without being of striking, he was of very pleasing appearance. His size was ordinary, but his frame was compact and well built, neither too heavy nor too light for his years, but of just the proportions to give one the idea of a perfect management of the machine. His face was agreeable, and his eye steady and searching. He and M. de Villèle were the very opposites in demeanour, though, after all, it was easy to see that the Englishman had the most latent force about him. One was fidgety, and the other humorous; for, with all his command of limb and gesture, nothing could be more natural than the expression of Mr. Canning, I may have imagined that I detected some of his wit, from a knowledge of the character of his mind. He left the impression, however, of a man whose natural powers were checked by a trained and factitious deference to the rank of those with whom he associated. Lord Granville, I thought, treated him with a sort of affectionate deference; and, right or wrong, I jumped to the conclusion, that the English ambassador was a straight-forward, good fellow at the bottom, and one very likely to badger the fidgetty premier, by his steady determination to do what was right. I thought M. de Damas, too, looked like an honest man. God forgive me, if I do injustice to any of these gentlemen! All this time, I have forgotten Count Pozzo di Borgo, the Russian ambassador. Being a bachelor, he came alone. It might have been fancy, but I thought he appeared more at his ease under the American roof than any of his colleagues. The perfect good understanding between our own government and that of Russia extends to their representatives, and, policy or not, we are better treated by them than by any other foreign ministers. This fact should be known and appreciated, for as one citizen of the republic, however insignificant, I have no notion of being blackguarded and vituperated half a century, and then cajoled into forgetfulness, at the suggestions of fear and expediency, as circumstances render our good-will of importance. Let us at least show that we are not mannikins to be pulled about for the convenience and humours of others, but that we know what honest words are, understand the difference between civility and abuse, and have pride enough to resent contumely, when, at least, we feel it to be unmerited. M. Pozzo is a handsome man, of good size and a fine dark eye, and has a greater reputation for talents than any other member of the diplomatic corps now at Paris. He is by birth a Corsican, and, I have heard it said, distantly related to Bonaparte. This may be true, Corsica being so small a country; just as some of us are related to everybody in West Jersey. Our party now consisted of the prime minister, the secretary of foreign affairs, the Austrian and English ambassadors, and the Prussian minister, with their wives,--the Nuncio, the Russian and Spanish ambassadors, the Swiss chargé-d'affaires, Mr. Canning, Lord Clanricarde, --Mr. Mrs. and Miss Gallatin, and the other Americans already mentioned, or twenty-five in all. If I had been struck with the rapid and business-like manner in which the company entered, I was amused with the readiness with which they paired off when dinner was announced. It was like a _coup de théâtre_, every man and woman knowing his or her exact rank and precedency, and the time when to move. This business of getting out of a drawing-room to a dinner-table is often one of difficulty, though less frequently in France than in most other European countries, on account of the admirable tact of the women, who seldom suffer a knotty point to get the ascendancy, but, by choosing the gentlemen for themselves, settle the affair off hand. From their decision, of course, there is no appeal. In order that in your simplicity you may not mistake the importance of this moment, I will relate an anecdote of what lately occurred at a dinner given by an English functionary in Holland. When William invaded England, in 1688, he took with him many Dutch nobles, some of whom remained, and became English peers. Among others, he created one of his followers an Irish earl; but choosing to return to Holland, this person was afterwards known as the Count de ----, although his Irish rank was always acknowledged. It happened that the wife of the descendant of this person was present at the entertainment in question. When dinner was announced, the company remarked that the master of the house was in a dilemma. There was much consultation, and a delay of near half an hour before the matter was decided. The debated point was, whether Madame de ---- was to be considered as a Dutch or an Irish countess. If the latter, there were English ladies present who were entitled to precede her; if the former, as a stranger, she might get that advantage herself. Luckily for the rights of hospitality, the Dutch lady got the best of it. These things sound absurd, and sometimes they are so; but this social drilling, unless carried to extremes, is not without its use. In America, I have always understood that, on such occasions, silent laws of etiquette exist in all good company, which are founded on propriety and tact. The young give way to the old, the undistinguished to the distinguished, and he who is at home to the stranger. These rules are certainly the most rational, and in the best taste, when they can be observed, and, on the whole, they lead perhaps to the fewest embarrassments; always so, if there happen to be none but the well-bred present, since seats become of little consideration where no importance is attached to them. I confess to some manoeuvring in my time, to get near, or away from a fire, out of a draught, or next some agreeable woman; but the idea whether I was at the head or the foot of the table never crossed my mind: and yet here, where they do mean the salt to come into the account, I begin to take care that they do not "bite their thumbs" at me. Two or three little things have occurred in my presence, which show that all our people do not even understand the ways of their own good society. A very young man lately, under the impression that gallantry required it, led one of the most distinguished women in the room to the table, merely because he happened to be next her, at the moment dinner was announced. This was certainly a failure even in American etiquette, every woman being more disposed to appreciate the delicacy and respect which should have induced such a person to give place to one of higher claims, than to prize the head-over-heels assiduity that caused the boy to forget himself. Sentiment should be the guide on such occasions, and no man is a gentleman until his habits are brought completely in subjection to its dictates, in all matters of this sort. There was very little sentiment, however, in marshalling the company at the dinner given to Mr. Canning. I will not undertake to say that all the guests were invited to meet this gentleman, and that he had been asked to name a day, as is usual when it is intended to pay an especial compliment; but I was asked to meet him, and I understood that the dinner was in his honour. Diplomatic etiquette made short work of the matter, notwithstanding, for the doors were hardly thrown open, before all the privileged vanished, with a quickness that was surprising. The minister took Madame de Villèle; M. de Villèle, Mrs. Brown; M. de Damas, the wife of the oldest ambassador; and the Nuncio, Madame de Damas: after which, the ambassadors and ministers took each other's wives in due order, and with a promptitude that denoted great practice. Even the charge disappeared, leaving the rest of us to settle matters among ourselves as well as we could. Mr. Canning, Mr. Gallatin, Lord Clanricarde, the divine, the secretary, and myself, were left with only the wife of the clergyman and Miss Gallatin. As a matter of course, the Americans, feeling themselves at home, made signs for the two Englishmen to precede them, and Mr. Canning offered his arm to Mrs. ----, and Lord Clanricarde, his to Miss Gallatin. Here occurred a touch of character that is worthy to be mentioned, as showing of how very little account an American, male or female, is in the estimation of a European, and how very arbitrary are the laws of etiquette among our English cousins. Mr. Canning actually gave way to his son-in-law, leaving the oldest of the two ladies to come after the youngest, because, as a marquis, his son-in-law took precedence of a commoner! This was out of place in America, at least, where the parties were, by a fiction in law, if not in politeness, and it greatly scandalized all our Yankee notions of propriety. Mrs. ---- afterwards told me that he apologized for the circumstance, giving Lord Clanricarde's rank as the reason. "_Sempereadem_," or "worse and worse," as my old friend O----n used to translate it. What became of the precedency of the married lady all this time? you will be ready to ask. Alas! she was an American, and had no precedency. The twelve millions may not settle this matter as it should be; but, take my word for it, the "fifty millions" will. Insignificant as all this is, or rather ought to be, your grandchildren and mine will live to see the mistake rectified. How much better would it be for those who cannot stop the progress of events, by vain wishes and idle regrets, to concede the point gracefully, and on just principles, than to have their cherished prejudices broken down by dint of sheer numbers and power! The dinner itself was, like every dinner that is given at Paris, beautiful in decoration, admirable in its order, and excellent in viands, or rather, in its dishes; for it is the cookery and not the staple articles that form the boast of the French kitchen. As you are notable in your own region for understanding these matters, I must say a word touching the gastric science as it is understood here. A general error exists in America on the subject of French cookery, which is not highly seasoned, but whose merit consists in blending flavours and in arranging compounds, in such a manner as to produce, at the same time, the lightest and most agreeable food. A lady who, from her public situation, receives once a week, for the entire year, and whose table has a reputation, assured me lately, that all the spices consumed annually in her kitchen did not cost her a franc. The _effect_ of a French dinner is its principal charm. One of reasonably moderate habits, rises from the table with a sense of enjoyment, that, to a stranger, at least, is sometimes startling. I have, on several occasions, been afraid I was relaxing into the vices of a _gourmet_, if, indeed, vices they can be called. The _gourmand_ is a beast, and there is nothing to be said in his favour; but, after all, I incline to the opinion that no one is the worse for a knowledge of what is agreeable to the palate. Perhaps no one of either sex is thoroughly trained, or properly bred, without being _tant soit peu de gourmet_. The difference between sheer eating, and eating with tact and intelligence, is so apparent as to need no explanation. A dinner here does not oppress one. The wine neither intoxicates nor heats, and the frame of mind and body in which one is left, is precisely that best suited to intellectual and social pleasures. I make no doubt, that one of the chief causes of the French being so agreeable as companions, is, in a considerable degree, owing to the admirable qualities of their table. A national character may emanate from a kitchen. Roast beef, bacon, pudding, and beer, and port, will make a different man, in time, from Chateau Margau, _côtelettes_, _consommés_, and _soufflés_. The very name of _vol au vent_ is enough to make one walk on air! Seriously, these things have more influence than may be, at a glance, imagined. The first great change I could wish to make in America, would be to see a juster appreciation of the substance, and less importance attached to outward forms, in moral things. The second would be, to create a standard of greatness and distinction that should be independent, or nearly independent, of money. The next, a more reasoning and original tone of thought as respects our own distinctive principles and _distinctive situation_, with a total indifference to the theories that have been broached to sustain an alien and an antagonist system, in England; and the last (the climax), a total reform in the kitchen! If I were to reverse the order of these improvements, I am not certain the three last might not follow as a consequence of the first. After our people have been taught to cook a dinner, they ought also to be taught how to eat it. Our entertainment lasted the usual hour and a half; and, as one is all this time eating, and there are limits to the capacity of a stomach, a part of the lightness and gaiety with which one rises from a French dinner ought to be attributed to the time that is consumed at the table. The different ingredients have opportunity to dispose of themselves in their new abode, and are not crowded together pell-mell, or like papers and books in ---- library, as I think they must be after a transatlantic meal. As for the point of a mere consumption of food, I take it the palm must be given to your Frenchman. I had some amusement to-day in watching the different countries. The Americans were nearly all through their dinner by the time the first course was removed. All that was eaten afterwards was literally, with them, pure makeweight, though they kept a hungry look to the last. The English seemed fed even before the dinner was begun; and, although the continental powers in general had the art of picking till they got to the finger-bowls, none really kept up the ball but the Frenchmen. It happened to be Friday, and I was a little curious to discover whether the Nuncio came to these places with a dispensation in his pocket. He sat next to Madame de Damas, as good a Catholic as himself, and I observed them helping themselves to several suspicious-looking dishes during the first course. I ought to have told you before, that one rarely, almost never, helps his neighbour, at a French entertainment. The dishes are usually put on the table, removed by the servants to be carved in succession, and handed to the guests to help themselves. When the service is perfect, every dish is handed to each guest. In the great houses, servants out of livery help to the different _plats_, servants in livery holding the dishes, sauces, etc., and changing the plates. I believe it is strictly _haut ton_ for the servants in livery to do nothing but assist those out of livery. In America it is thought stylish to give liveries; in Europe those who keep most servants out of livery are in the highest mode, since these are always a superior class of menials. The habits of this quarter of the world give servants a very different estimation from that which they hold with us. Nobles of high rank are employed about the persons of princes; and, although, in this age, they perform no strictly menial offices, or only on great occasions, they are, in theory, the servitors of the body. Nobles have been even employed by nobles; and it is still considered an honour for the child of a physician, or a clergyman, or a shopkeeper, in some parts of Europe, to fill a high place in the household of a great noble. The body servant, or the _gentleman_, as he is sometimes called even in England, of a man of rank, looks down upon a mechanic as his inferior. Contrary to all our notions as all this is, it is strictly reasonable, when the relative conditions, information, habits, and characters of the people are considered. But servants here are divided into many classes; for some are scullions, and some are entrusted with the keys. It follows that those who maintain most of the higher class, who are never in livery, maintain the highest style. To say, he keeps a servant out of livery, means, that he keeps a better sort of domestic. Mere footmen always wear it; the _maître d'hôtel_, or groom of the chambers, and the valet, never. But to return to the dispensation, I made it a point to taste every dish that had been partaken of by the Nuncio and his neighbour; and I found that they were all fish; but fish so treated, that they could hardly know what to think of themselves. You may remember, however, that an Archbishop of Paris was sufficiently complaisant to declare a particular duck, of which one of Louis the Sixteenth's aunts was fond, to be fish, and, of course, fit to be eaten on fast-days. The fasting of these people would strike you as singular; for I verily believe they eat more of a fast-day than on any other. We engaged a governess for the girls not long after our arrival, and she proved to be a bigoted Catholic, a furious royalist, and as ignorant as a calf. She had been but a few weeks in the house, when I detected her teaching her _élèves_ to think Washington an unpardonable rebel, La Fayette a monster, Louis XVI. a martyr, and all heretics in the high road to damnation. There remained no alternative but to give her a quarter's salary, and to get rid of her. By the way, this woman was of a noble family, and as such received a small pension from the court. But I kept her fully a month longer than I think I otherwise should, to see her eat on fast-days. Your aunt had the consideration invariably to order fish for her, and she made as much havoc among them as a pike. She always commenced the Friday with an extra allowance of fruit, which she was eating all the morning; and at dinner she contrived to eat half the vegetables and all the fish. One day, by mistake, the soup happened to be _gras_ instead of _maigre_, and, after she had swallowed a large plateful, I was malicious enough to express my regrets at the mistake. I really thought the poor woman was about to disgorge on the spot; but by dint of consolation she managed to spare us this scene. So good an occasion offering, I ventured to ask her why she fasted at all, as I did not see it made any great difference in the sum total of her bodily nutriment. She assured me that I did not understand the matter. The fruit was merely a "_rafraîchissant_" and so counted for nothing; and as for the fish and vegetables, I might possibly think them very good eating, and, for that matter, so did she, on Thursdays and Saturdays; but no sooner did Friday come than she longed for meat. The merit of the thing consisted, therefore, more in denying her appetite than in going without food. I tried hard to persuade her to take a _côtelette_ with me; but the proposition made her shudder, though she admitted that she envied me every mouthful I swallowed. The knowledge of this craving did not take away my appetite. Lest you should suppose that I am indulging in the vulgar English slang against French governesses, I will add, that our own was the very worst, in every respect, I ever saw, in or out of France; and that I have met with ladies in this situation every way qualified, by principles, attainments, manners, and antecedents, to be received with pleasure in the best company of Europe. Our _connives_ in the Hotel Monaco soon disappeared after the _chasse-café_, leaving none but the Americans behind them. Men and women retired as they came; the latter, however, taking leave, as is always required by the punctilios of your sex, except at very large and crowded parties, and even then properly; and the former, if alone, getting away as quietly as possible. The whole affair was over before nine o'clock, at which hour the diplomatic corps was scattered all through Paris. Previously to this dispersion, however, Mr. Gallatin did me the favour to present me to Mr. Canning. The conversation was short, and was chiefly on America. There was a sore part in his feelings in consequence of a recent negotiation, and he betrayed it. He clearly does not love us; but what Englishman does? You will be amused to hear that, unimportant in other respects as this little conversation was, it has been the means of affecting the happiness of two individuals of high station in Great Britain. It would be improper for me to say more; but of the fact I can entertain no manner of doubt, and I mention it here merely as a curious instance of the manner in which "tall oaks from little acorns grow." I ought to have said that two, instead of one event, followed this dinner. The second was our own introduction into European society. The how and wherefore it is unnecessary to explain, but some of the cleverest and best-bred people of this well-bred and clever capital took us by the hand, all "unlettered" as we were, and from that moment, taking into consideration our tastes and my health, the question has been, not how to get into, but how to keep out of, the great world. You know enough of these matters, to understand that, the ice once broken, any one can float in the current of society. This little footing has not been obtained without some _contretems_, and I have learned early to understand that wherever there is an Englishman in the question, it behoves an American to be reserved, punctilious, and sometimes stubborn. There is a strange mixture of kind feeling, prejudice, and ill-nature, as respects us, wrought into the national character of that people, that will not admit of much mystification. That they should not like us, may be natural enough; but if they seek the intercourse, they ought, on all occasions, to be made to conduct it equally, without annoyance and condescension and on terms of perfect equality; conditions, by the way, that are scarcely agreeable to their present notions of superiority.[6] [Footnote 6: The change in this respect during the last ten years is _patent_. No European nation has, probably, just at this moment as much real respect for America as the English, though it is still mixed with great ignorance, and a very sincere dislike. Still, the enterprise, activity, and growing power of the country are forcing themselves on the attention of our kinsmen; and if the government understood its foreign relations as well as it does its domestic, and made a proper exhibition of maritime preparation and of maritime force, this people would hold the balance in many of the grave questions that are now only in abeyance in European politics. Hitherto we have been influenced by every vacillation in English interests, and it is quite time to think of turning the tables, and of placing, as far as practicable, American interests above the vicissitudes of those of other people. The thing is more easily done than is commonly imagined, but a party politician is rarely a statesman, the subordinate management necessary to the one being death to the comprehensive views that belong to the other. The peculiar nature of the American institutions, and the peculiar geographical situation of the country, moreover, render higher qualities necessary, perhaps, to make a statesman here than elsewhere.] In order to understand why I mention any other than the French, in the capital of France, you will remember that there are many thousands of foreigners established here, for longer or shorter periods, who, by means of their money (a necessary that, relatively, is less abundant with the French), materially affect society, contriving to penetrate it in all directions, in some way or other. LETTER VII. English Jurisprudence.--English Justice.--Justice in France.--Continental Jurisprudence.--Juries.--Legal Injustice.--The Bar in France.--Precedence of the Law. To JACOB SUTHERLAND, ESQ. NEW YORK. Your legal pursuits will naturally give you an interest in the subject of the state of justice in this part of the world. A correspondence like mine would not admit of any very profound analysis of the subject, did I possess the necessary learning, which I do not, but I may present a few general facts and notions, that will give you some idea of the state of this important feature of society. The forms and modes of English jurisprudence are so much like our own, as to create the impression that the administration of justice is equally free from venality and favour. As a whole and when the points at issue reach the higher functionaries of the law, I should think this opinion true; but, taking those facts that appear in the daily prints, through the police reports and in the form of personal narratives, as guides, I should think that there is much more oppression, many more abuses, and far more outrages on the intention of the law, in the purlieus of the courts in England, through the agency of subordinates, than with us. The delays and charges of a suit in chancery almost amount to a denial of justice. Quite lately, I saw a statement, which went to show that a legacy to a charity of about 1000_l_., with the interest of some fourteen years, had been consumed in this court, with the exception of rather more than 100_l_. This is an intolerable state of things, and goes to prove, I think, that, in some of its features at least, English jurisprudence is behind that of every other free country. But I have been much impressed lately, by a case that would be likely to escape the attention of more regular commentators. A peer of the realm having struck a constable on a race-course, is proceeded against, in the civil action. The jury found for the plaintiff, damages fifty pounds. In summing up, the judge reasoned exactly contrary to what I am inclined to think would have been the case had the matter been tried before you. He gave it as his opinion that the action was frivolous, and ought never to have been brought; that the affair should have been settled out of court; and, in short, left the impression that it was not, as such, so great a hardship for a constable to be struck by a peer, that his honour might not be satisfied with the offering of a guinea or two. The jury thought differently; from which I infer that the facts did not sustain the judge in his notions. Now, the reasoning at home would, I think, have been just the other way. The English judge said, in substance, a man of Lord ----'s dignity ought not to have been exposed to this action; you would have said, a senator is a law-maker, and owes even a higher example of order than common to the community; _he_ insinuated that a small reparation ought to suffice, while _you_ would have made some strong hints at smart-money. I mention this case, for I think it rather illustrative of English justice. Indeed, it is not easy to see how it well can be otherwise: when society is divided into castes, the weak must go to the wall. I know that the theory here is quite different, and that one of the boasts of England is the equality of its justice; but I am dealing in _facts_, and not in theories. In America it is thought, and with proper limitations I dare say justly, that the bias of juries, in the very lowest courts, is in favour of the poor against the rich; but the right of appeal restores the balance, and, in a great degree, secures justice. In each case it is the controlling power that does the wrong; in England the few, in America the many. In France, as you probably know, juries are confined to criminal cases. The consequence is, a continuance of the old practice of soliciting justice. The judge virtually decides in chambers, and he hears the parties in chambers, or, in other words, wherever he may choose to receive them. The client depends as much on external influence and his own solicitations, as on the law and the justice of his case. He visits the judge officially, and works upon his mind by all the means in his power. You and I have been acquainted intimately from boyhood, and it has been my bad luck to have had more to do with the courts than I could wish; and yet, in all the freedom of an otherwise unfettered intercourse, I have never dared to introduce the subject of any suit in which I have been a party. I have been afraid of wounding your sense of right, to say nothing of my own, and of forfeiting your esteem, or at least, of losing your society. Now had we been Frenchmen, you would have expected me to _solicit_ you; you would probably have heard me with the bias of an old friend; and my adversary must have been a singularly lucky fellow, or you a very honest one, if he did not get the worst of it, supposing the case to admit of doubt. Formerly, it was known that influence prevailed; bribes were offered and received, and a suit was a contest of money and favouritism rather than one of facts and principles. I asked General La Fayette not long since, what he thought of the actual condition of France as respects the administration of justice. In most political cases he accused the government of the grossest injustice, illegality, and oppression. In the ordinary criminal cases he believed the intentions of the courts and juries perfectly fair, as, indeed, it is difficult to believe they should not be. In the civil suits he thought a great improvement had taken place; nor did he believe that there now exists much of the ancient corruption. The civil code of Napoleon had worked well, and all he complained of was a want of fitness between the subordinate provisions of a system invented by a military despot for his own support, and the system of _quasi_ liberty that had been adopted at the restoration; for the Bourbons had gladly availed themselves of all the machinery of power that Napoleon bequeathed to France. A gentleman who heard the conversation afterwards told me the following anecdote. A friend of his had long been an unsuccessful suitor in one of the higher courts of the kingdom. They met one day in the street, when the other told him that an unsealed letter, which he held in his hand, contained an offer of a pair of carriage-horses to the wife of the judge who had the control of his affair. On being told he dare not take so strong a step, M. de ----, my informant, was requested to read the letter, to seal it and to put it in the _boîte aux lettres_ with his own hands, in order to satisfy himself of the actual state of justice in France. All this was done, and "I can only add," continued M. de ----, "that I afterwards saw the horses in the carriage of Madame ----, and that my friend gained his cause." To this anecdote I can only say, I tell it exactly as I heard it, and that M. de ---- is a deputy, and one of the honestest and simplest-minded men of my acquaintance. It is but proper to add, that the judge in question has a bad name, and is little esteemed by the bar; but the above-mentioned fact would go to show that too much of the old system remains. In Germany justice bears a better name, though the absence of juries generally must subject the suitor to the assaults of personal influence. Farther south, report speaks still less favourably of the manner in which the laws are interpreted; and, indeed, it would seem to be an inevitable consequence of despotism that justice should be abused. One hears occasionally of some signal act of moderation and equity on the part of monarchies, but the merits of systems are to be proved, not by these brilliant _coups de justice_, but by the steady, quiet and regular working of the machine, on which men know how to calculate, in which they have faith, and which as seldom deceives them as comports with human fallibility, rather than by _scenes_ in which the blind goddess is made to play a part in a _melodrama_. On the whole, it is fair to presume that, while public opinion, and that intelligence which acts virtually as a bill of rights, even in the most despotic governments of Europe, not even excepting Turkey, perhaps, have produced a beneficial influence on the courts, the secrecy of their proceedings, the irresponsible nature of their trusts (responsible to power, and irresponsible to the nation), and the absence of publicity, produce precisely the effects that a common-sense view of the facts would lead one who understands human nature to expect. I am no great admirer of the compromising verdicts of juries, in civil suits that admit of a question as to amounts. They are an admirable invention to settle questions of guilty or not guilty, but an enlightened court would, nine times in ten, do more justice in the cases just named. Would it not be an improvement to alter the present powers of juries, by letting them simply find for or against the suitor, leaving the damages to be assessed by regular officers, that might resemble masters in chancery? At all events, juries, or some active substitute, cannot be safely dispensed with until a people have made great progress in the science of publicity, and in a knowledge of the general principles connected with jurisprudence. This latter feature is quite peculiar to America. Nothing has struck me more in Europe than the ignorance which everywhere exists on such subjects, even among educated people. No one appears to have any distinct notions of legal principles, or even of general law, beyond a few prominent facts, but the professional men. Chance threw me, not long since into the company of three or four exceedingly clever young Englishmen. They were all elder sons, and two were the heirs of peers.[7] Something was said on the subject of a claim of a gentleman with whom I am connected to a large Irish estate. The grandfather of this gentleman was the next brother to the incumbent, who died intestate. The grandson, however, was defeated in his claim, in consequence of its being proved, that the ancestor through whom he derived his claim was of the half-blood. My English companions did not understand the principle, and when, I explained by adding, that the grandfather of the claimant was born of a different mother from the last holder in fee, and that he could never inherit at law (unless by devise), the estate going to a hundredth cousin of the whole blood in preference, or even escheating to the king, they one and all protested England had no such law! They were evidently struck with the injustice of transferring property that had been acquired by the common ancestor of two brothers to a remote cousin, merely because the affinity between the sons was only on the father's side although that very father may have accumulated the estate; and they could not believe that what struck them as so grievous a wrong, could be the law of descents under which they lived. Luckily for me, one learned in the profession happened to be present, and corroborated the fact. Now all these gentlemen were members of parliament; but they were accustomed to leave legal questions of this nature to the management of professional men. [Footnote 7: This absurd and unaccountable provision of the common law has since been superseded by a statute regulating descents on a more intelligible and just provision. England has made greater advances in common sense and in the right, in all such matters, within the last five years, than during the previous hundred.] I mentioned this conversation to another Englishman, who thought the difficulty well disposed of by saying, that if property ever escheated in this manner, I ought to remember, that the crown invariably bestowed it on the natural heir. This struck me as singular reasoning to be used by a people who profess to cherish liberty, inasmuch as, to a certain degree, it places all the land in the kingdom at the mercy of the sovereign. I need not tell you, moreover, that this answer was insufficient, as it did not meet the contingency of a remote cousin's inheriting to the prejudice of the children of him who earned the estate. But habit is all in all with the English in such matters; and that which they are accustomed to see and hear, they are accustomed to think right. The bar is rising greatly in public consideration in France. Before the revolution there were certain legal families of great distinction; but these could scarcely be considered as forming a portion of the regular practitioners. Now, many of the most distinguished statesmen, peers, and politicians of France, commenced their careers as advocates. The practice of public speaking gives them an immense advantage in the chambers, and fully half of the most popular debaters are members who belong to the profession. New candidates for public favour appear every day, and the time is at hand when the fortunes of France, so lately controlled by soldiers, will be more influenced by men of this profession than by those of all the others. This is a great step in moral civilization; for the country that most feels the ascendancy of the law, and that least feels that of arms, is nearest to the summit of human perfection. When asked which profession takes rank in America, I tell them the law in influence, and the church in deference. Some of my moustachoed auditors stare at this reply; for here the sword has precedence of all others, and the law, with few exceptions, is deemed a calling for none but those who are in the secondary ranks of society. But, as I have told you, opinion is undergoing a great change in this particular. I believe that every efficient man in the present ministry is, or has been, a lawyer. LETTER VIII. Army of France.--Military Display.--Fête of the Trocadero.--Royal Review. --Royal Ordinance.--Dissatisfaction.--Hostile Demonstration.--Dispersion of Rioters.--French Cavalry.--Learned Coachman.--Use of Cavalry.--Cavalry Operations.--The Conscription.--National Defence.--Napoleon's Marshals. --Marshal Soult--Disaffection of the Army. To COL. BANKHEAD, U.S. ARTILLERY. The army of France obtained so high a reputation, during the wars of the revolution and the empire, that you may feel some curiosity to know its actual condition. As the Bourbons understand that they have been restored to the throne, by the great powers of Europe, if not in opposition to the wishes of a majority of Frenchmen, certainly in opposition to the wishes of the active portion of the population, and consequently to that part of the nation which would be most likely to oppose their interests, they have been accused of endeavouring to keep the establishments of France so low as to put her at the mercy of any new combination of the allies. I should think this accusation, in a great degree, certainly unmerited; for France, at this moment, has a large and, so far as I can judge, a well-appointed army, and one that is charged by the liberal party with being a heavy expense to the nation, and that, too, chiefly with the intention of keeping the people in subjection to tyranny. But these contradictions are common in party politics. It is not easy here to get at statistical facts accurately, especially those which are connected with expenditure. Nominally, the army is about 200,000 men, but it is whispered that numerous _congés_ are given, in order to divert the funds that are thus saved to other objects. Admitting all this to be true, and it probably is so in part, I should think France must have fully 150,000 men embodied, without including the National Guards. Paris is pretty well garrisoned, and the _casernes_ in the vicinity of the capital are always occupied. It appears to me there cannot be less than 20,000 men within a day's march of the Tuileries, and there may be half as many more.[8] [Footnote 8: The sudden disbandment of the guards and other troops in 1830 greatly diminished the actual force of the country.] Since our arrival there have been several great military displays, and I have made it a point to be present at them all. The first was a _petite guerre_,[9] on the plains of Issy, or within a mile of the walls of the town. There may have been 15,000 men assembled for the occasion, including troops of all arms. [Footnote 9: Sham-fight.] One of the first things that struck me at Paris was the careless militia-like manner in which the French troops marched about the streets. The disorder, irregularity, careless and indifferent style of moving, were all exactly such as I have heard laughed at a thousand times in our own great body of national defenders. But this is only one of many similar instances, in which I have discovered that what has been deemed a peculiarity in ourselves, arising from the institutions perhaps, is a very general quality belonging rather to man than to any particular set of men. Our notions, you will excuse the freedom of the remark, are apt to be a little provincial, and every one knows that fashion, opinions and tastes only become the more exaggerated the farther we remove from the centre of light. In this way, we come to think of things in an exaggerated sense, until, like the boy who is disappointed at finding a king a man, we form notions of life that are anything but natural and true. I was still so new to all this, however, that I confess I went to the plain of Issy expecting to see a new style of manoeuvring, or, at least, one very different from that which I had so often witnessed at home, nor can I say that in this instance there was so much disappointment. The plan of the day did not embrace two parties, but was merely an attack on an imaginary position, against which the assailants were regularly and scientifically brought up, the victory being a matter of convention. The movements were very beautiful, and were made with astonishing spirit and accuracy. All idea of disorder or the want of regularity was lost here, for entire battalions advanced to the charges without the slightest apparent deviation from perfectly mathematical lines. When we reached the acclivity that overlooked the field, a new line was forming directly beneath us, it being supposed that the advance of the enemy had already been driven in upon his main body, and the great attack was just on the point of commencing. A long line of infantry of the French guards formed the centre of the assailants. Several batteries of artillery were at hand, and divers strong columns of horse and foot were held in reserve. A regiment of lancers was on the nearest flank, and another of cuirassiers was stationed at the opposite. All the men of the royal family were in the field, surrounded by a brilliant staff. A gun was fired near them, by way of signal, I suppose, when two brigades of artillery galloped through the intervals of the line, unlimbered, and went to work as if they were in downright earnest. The cannonade continued a short time, when the infantry advanced in line, and delivered its fire by companies, or battalions, I could not discern which, in the smoke. This lasted some ten minutes, when I observed a strong column of troops, dressed in scarlet, moving up with great steadiness and regularity from the rear. These were the Swiss Guards, and there might have been fifteen hundred or two thousand of them. The column divided into two, as it approached the rear of the line, which broke into column in turn, and for a minute there was a confused crowd of red and blue coats, in the smoke, that quite set my nautical instinct at defiance. The cuirassiers chose this moment to make a rapid and menacing movement in advance, but without opening their column, and some of the artillery reappeared and commenced firing at the unoccupied intervals. This lasted a very little while for the Swiss deployed into line like clock-work, and then made a quick charge, with beautiful precision. Halting, they threw in a heavy fire, by battalions; the French guard rallied and formed upon their flanks; the whole reserve came up; the cuirassiers and lancers charged, by turning the position assailed, and for ten or fifteen minutes there was a succession of quick evolutions, which like the _finale_ of a grand piece of music, appeared confused even while it was the most scientific, and then there was a sudden pause. The position, whose centre was a copse, had been carried, and we soon saw the guards formed on the ground that was supposed to have been held by the enemy. The artillery still fired occasionally, as on a retreating foe, and the lancers and cuirassiers were charging and manoeuvring, half a mile farther in advance, as if following up their advantage. Altogether, this was much the prettiest field exercise I ever witnessed. There was a unity of plan, a perfection of evolution, and a division of _matériel_ about it, that rendered it to my eyes as nearly perfect as might be. The troops were the best of France, and the management of the whole had been confided to some one accustomed to the field. It contained all the poetry, without any of the horrors of a battle. It could not possess the heart-stirring interest of a real conflict, and yet it was not without great excitement. Some time after the _petite guerre_ of Issy, the capital celebrated the fête of the Trocadero. The Trocadero, you may remember, was the fortress of Cadix, carried by assault, under the order of the Dauphin, in the war of the late Spanish revolution. This government, which has destroyed all the statues of the Emperor, proscribed his family, and obliterated every visible mark of his reign in their power, has had the unaccountable folly of endeavouring to supplant the military glory acquired under Napoleon by that of Louis Antoine, Dauphin of France! A necessary consequence of the attempt, is a concentration of all the military souvenirs of the day in this affair of the Trocadero. Bold as all this will appear to one who has not the advantage of taking a near view of what is going on here, it has even been exceeded, through the abject spirit of subserviency in those who have the care of public instruction, by an attempt to exclude even the name of the Bonaparte from French history. My girls have shown me an abridgment of the history of France, that has been officially prepared for the ordinary schools, in which there is no sort of allusion to him. The wags here say, that a work has been especially prepared for the heir presumptive, however, in which the Emperor is a little better treated; being spoken of as "a certain Marquis de Bonaparte, who commanded the armies of the king." The mimic attack on the Trocadero, like its great original, was at night. The troops assembled in the Champs de Mars, and the assault was made, across the beautiful bridge of Jena, on a sharp acclivity near Passy, which was the imaginary fortress. The result was a pretty good effect of night-firing, some smoke, not a little noise, with a very pretty movement of masses. I could make nothing of it, of much interest, for the obscurity prevented the eyes from helping the imagination. Not long since, the king held a great review of regular troops, and of the entire body of the National Guards of Paris and its environs. This review also took place in the Champs de Mars, and it was said that nearly a hundred thousand men were under arms for the occasion. I think there might have been quite seventy thousand. These mere reviews have little interest, the evolutions being limited to marching by regiments on and off the ground. In doing the latter, the troops defile before the king. Previously to this, the royal cortege passed along the several lines, receiving the usual honours. On this occasion the Dauphine and the Duchesse de Berri followed the king in open carriages, accompanied by the little Duc de Bordeaux and his sister. I happened to be at an angle of the field as the royal party, surrounded by a showy group of marshals and generals, passed, and when there seemed to be a little confusion. As a matter of course, the cry of "Vive le roi!" had passed along with the procession; for, popular or not, it is always easy for a sovereign to procure this sign of affection, or for others to procure it for him. You will readily understand that _employés_ of the government are especially directed to betray the proper enthusiasm on such occasions. There was however, a cry at this corner of the area that did not seem so unequivocally loyal, and, on inquiry, I was told that some of the National Guards had cried "A bas les ministres!" The affair passed off without much notice, however; and I believe it was generally forgotten by the population within an hour. The desire to get rid of M. de Villèle and his set was so general in Paris, that most people considered the interruption quite as a matter of course. The next day the capital was electrified by a royal ordinance, disbanding all the National Guards of Paris! A more infatuated, or, if it were intended to punish the disaffected, a more unjust decree, could not easily have been issued. It was telling the great majority of the very class which forms the true force of every government that their rulers could not confide in them. As confidence, by awakening pride, begets a spirit in favour of those who depend on it, so does obvious distrust engender disaffection. But the certainty that Louis XVI. lost his throne and his life for the want of decision, has created one of those sweeping opinions here of the virtue of energy, that constantly leads the rulers into false measures. An act that might have restrained the France of 1792, would be certain to throw the France of 1827 into open revolt. The present generation of Frenchmen, in a political sense, have little in common with even the French of 1814, and measures must be suited to the times in which we live. As well might one think of using the birch on the man, that had been found profitable with the boy, as to suppose these people can be treated like their ancestors. As might have been expected, a deep, and what is likely to prove a lasting discontent, has been the consequence of the blunder. It is pretended that the shopkeepers of Paris are glad to be rid of the trouble of occasionally mounting guard, and that the affair will be forgotten in a short time. All this may be true enough, in part, and it would also be true in the whole, were there not a press to keep disaffection alive, and to inflame the feelings of those who have been treated so cavalierly; for he knows little of human nature who does not understand that, while bodies of men commit flagrant wrongs without the responsibility being kept in view by their individual members, an affront to the whole is pretty certain to be received as an affront to each of those who make an integral part. The immediate demonstrations of dissatisfaction have not amounted to much, though the law and medical students paraded the streets, and shouted beneath the windows of the ministers the very cry that gave rise to the disbandment of the guards. But, if no other consequence has followed this exercise of arbitrary power, I, at least, have learned how to disperse a crowd. As you may have occasion some days, in your military capacity, to perform this unpleasant duty, it may be worth while to give you a hint concerning the _modus operandi_. Happening to pass through the Place Vendôme, I found the foot of the celebrated column which stands directly in the centre of the square surrounded by several hundred students. They were clustered together like bees, close to the iron railing which encloses the base of the pillar, or around an area of some fifty or sixty feet square. From time to time they raised a shout, evidently directed against the ministers, of whom one resided at no great distance from the column. As the hotel of the État-Major of Paris is in this square, and there is always a post at it, it soon became apparent there was no intention quietly to submit to this insult. I was attracted by a demonstration on the part of the _corps de garde_, and, taking a station at no greet distance from the students, I awaited the issue. The guard, some thirty foot soldiers, came swiftly out of the court of the hotel, and drew up in a line before its gate. This happened as I reached their own side of the square, which I had just crossed. Presently, a party of fifteen or twenty _gendarmes à cheval_ came up, and wheeled into line. The students raised another shout, as it might be, in defiance. The infantry shouldered arms, and, filing off singly, headed by an officer, they marched in what we call Indian file, towards the crowd. All this was done in the most quiet manner possible, but promptly, and with an air of great decision and determination. On reaching the crowd, they penetrated it, in the same order, quite up to the railing. Nothing was said, nor was anything done; for it would have been going farther than the students were prepared to proceed, had they attempted to seize and disarm the soldiers. This appeared to be understood, and, instead of wasting the moments and exasperating his enemies by a parley, the officer, as has just been said, went directly through them until he reached the railing. Once there, he began to encircle it, followed in the same order by his men. The first turn loosened the crowd, necessarily, and then I observed that the muskets, which hitherto had been kept at a "carry," were inclined a little outwards. Two turns enabled the men to throw their pieces to a charge, and, by this time, they had opened their order so far as to occupy the four sides of the area. Facing outwards, they advanced very slowly, but giving time for the crowd to recede. This manoeuvre rendered the throng less and less dense, when, watching their time, the mounted gendarmes rode into it in a body, and, making a circuit, on a trot, without the line of infantry, they got the mass so loosened and scattered, that, unarmed as the students were, had they been disposed to resist, they would now have been completely at the mercy of the troops. Every step that was gained of course weakened the crowd, and, in ten minutes, the square was empty; some being driven out of it in one direction, and some in another, without a blow being struck, or even an angry word used. The force of the old saying, "that the king's name is a tower of strength," or, the law being on the side of the troops, probably was of some avail; but a mob of fiery young Frenchmen is not too apt to look at the law with reverence. I stood near the hotels, but still in the square, when a gendarme, sweeping his sabre as one would use a stick in driving sheep, came near me. He told me to go away. I smiled, and said I was a stranger, who was looking at the scene purely from curiosity. "I see you are, sir," he answered, "but you had better fall back into the Rue de la Paix." We exchanged friendly nods, and I did as he told me, without further hesitation. In truth, there remained no more to be seen. Certainly, nothing could have been done in better temper, more effectually, nor more steadily, than this dispersion of the students. There is no want of spirit in these young men, you must know, but the reverse is rather the case. The troops were under fifty in number, and the mob was between six hundred and a thousand, resolute, active, sturdy young fellows, who had plenty of fight in them, but who wanted the unity of purpose that a single leader can give to soldiers. I thought this little campaign of the column of the Place Vendôme quite as good, in its way, as the _petite guerre_ of the plains of Issy. I do not know whether you have fallen into the same error as myself in relation to the comparative merits of the cavalry of this part of the world, though I think it is one common to most Americans. From the excellence of their horses, as well as from that general deference for the character and prowess of the nation which exists at home, I had been led to believe that the superior qualities of the British cavalry were admitted in Europe. This is anything but true; military men, so far as I can learn, giving the palm to the Austrian artillery, the British infantry, and the French cavalry. The Russians are said to be generally good for the purposes of defence, and in the same degree deficient for those of attack. Some shrewd observers, however, think the Prussian army, once more, the best in Europe. The French cavalry is usually mounted on small, clumsy, but sturdy beasts, that do not show a particle of blood. Their movement is awkward, and their powers, for a short effort, certainly are very much inferior to those of either England or America. Their superiority must consist in their powers of endurance; for the blooded animal soon falls off, on scanty fare and bad grooming. I have heard the moral qualities of the men given as a reason why the French cavalry should be superior to that of England. The system of conscription secures to an army the best materials, while that of enlistment necessarily includes the worst. In this fact is to be found the real moral superiority of the French and Prussian armies. Here, service, even in the ranks, is deemed honourable; whereas with us, or in England, it would be certain degradation to a man of the smallest pretension to enlist as a soldier, except in moments that made stronger appeals than usual to patriotism. In short, it is _primâ facie_ evidence of a degraded condition for a man to carry a musket in a regular battalion. Not so here. I have frequently seen common soldiers copying in the gallery of the Louvre, or otherwise engaged in examining works of science or of taste; not ignorantly, and with vulgar wonder, but like men who had been regularly instructed. I have been told that a work on artillery practice lately appeared in France, which excited so much surprise by its cleverness, that an inquiry was set on foot for its author. He was found seated in a cabriolet in the streets, his vocation being that of a driver. What renders his knowledge more surprising is the fact, that the man was never a soldier at all; but, having a great deal of leisure, while waiting for his fares, he had turned his attention to this subject, and had obtained all he knew by means of books. Nothing is more common than to see the drivers of cabriolets and fiacres reading in their seats; and I have even seen market-women, under their umbrellas, _à la Robinson_, with books in their hands. You are not, however, to be misled by these facts, which merely show the influence of the peculiar literature of the country, so attractive and amusing; for a very great majority of the French can neither read nor write. It is only in the north that such things are seen at all, except among the soldiers, and a large proportion of even the French army are entirely without schooling. To return to the cavalry, I have heard the superiority of the French ascribed also to their dexterity in the use of the sabre, or, as it is termed here, _l'arme blanche_. After all, this is rather a poetical conclusion; for charges of cavalry rarely result in regular hand-to-hand conflicts. Like the bayonet, the sabre is seldom used except on an unresisting enemy. Still, the consciousness of such a manual superiority might induce a squadron less expert to wheel away, or to break, without waiting for orders. I have made the acquaintance, here, of an old English general, who has passed all his life in the dragoons, and who commanded brigades of cavalry in Spain and at Waterloo. As he is a sensible old man, of great frankness and simplicity of character, perfect good breeding and good nature, and moreover, so far as I can discover, absolutely without prejudice against America, he has quite won my heart, and I have availed myself of his kindness to see a good deal of him. We walk together frequently, and chat of all things in heaven and earth, just as they come uppermost. The other day I asked him to explain the details of a charge of his own particular arm to me, of which I confessed a proper ignorance. "This is soon done," said the old gentleman, taking my arm with a sort of sly humour, as if he were about to relate something facetious: "against foot, a charge is a menace; if they break, we profit by it; if they stand, we get out of the scrape as well as we can. When foot are in disorder, cavalry does the most, and it is always active in securing a victory, usually taking most of the prisoners. But as against cavalry, there is much misconception. When two regiments assault each other, it is in compact line--" "How," I interrupted him, "do not you open, so as to leave room to swing a sabre?" "Not at all. The theory is knee to knee; but this is easier said than done, in actual service. I will suppose an unsuccessful charge. We start, knee to knee, on a trot. This loosens the ranks, and, as we increase the speed, they become still looser. We are under the fire of artillery, or, perhaps, of infantry, all the time, and the enemy won't run. At this moment, a clever officer will command a retreat to be sounded. If he should not, some officer is opportunely killed, or some leading man loses command of his horse, which is wounded and wheels, the squadron follows, and we get away as well as we can. The enemy follows, and if he catches us, we are cut up. Other charges do occur; but this is the common history of cavalry against cavalry, and, in unsuccessful attacks of cavalry, against infantry too. A knowledge of the use of the sword is necessary; for did your enemy believe you ignorant of it, he would not fly; but the weapon itself is rarely used on such occasions. Very few men are slain in their ranks by the bayonet or the sabre." I was once told, though not directly by an officer, that the English dragoon neglected his horse in the field, selling the provender for liquor, and that, as a consequence, the corps became inefficient; whereas the French dragoon, being usually a sober man, was less exposed to this temptation. This may, or may not, be true; but drunkenness is now quite common in the French army, though I think much less so in the cavalry than in the foot. The former are generally selected with some care, and the common regiments of the line, as a matter of course, receive the refuse of the conscription. This conscription is after all, extremely oppressive and unjust, though it has the appearance of an equal tax. Napoleon had made it so unpopular, by the inordinate nature of his demands for men, that Louis XVIII. caused an article to be inserted in the charter, by which it was to be altogether abolished. But a law being necessary to carry out this constitutional provision, the clause remains a perfect dead letter, it being no uncommon thing for the law to be stronger than the constitution even in America, and quite a common thing here. I will give you an instance of the injustice of the system. An old servant of mine has been drafted for the cavalry. I paid this man seven hundred francs a year, gave him coffee, butter, and wine, with his food, and he fell heir to a good portion of my old clothes. The other day he came to see me, and I inquired into his present situation. His arms and clothes were found him. He got neither coffee, wine, nor butter; and his other food, as a matter of course, was much inferior to that he had been accustomed to receive with me. His pay, after deducting the necessary demands on it in the shape of regular contributions, amounts to about two sous a day, instead of the two francs he got in my service. Now, necessity, in such matters, is clearly the primary law. If a country cannot exist without a large standing army, and the men are not to be had by voluntary enlistments, a draft is probably the wisest and best regulation for its security. But, taking this principle as the basis of the national defence, a just and a paternal government would occupy itself in equalizing the effects of the burden, as far as circumstances would in any manner admit. The most obvious and efficient means would be by raising the rate of pay to the level, at least, of a scale that should admit of substitutes being obtained at reasonable rates. This is done with us, where a soldier receives a full ration, all his clothes, and sixty dollars a year.[10] It is true, that this would make an army very costly, and, to bear the charge, it might be necessary to curtail some of the useless magnificence and prodigality of the other branches of the government; and herein is just the point of difference between the expenditures of America and those of France. It must be remembered, too, that a really free government, by enlisting the popular feeling in its behalf through its justice, escapes all the charges that are incident to the necessity of maintaining power by force, wanting soldiers for its enemies without, and not for its enemies within. We have no need of a large standing army, on account of our geographical position, it is true; but had we the government of France, we should not find that our geographical position exempted us from the charge. [Footnote 10: He now receives seventy-two.] You have heard a great deal of the celebrated soldiers who surrounded Napoleon, and whose names have become almost as familiar to us as his own. I do not find that the French consider the marshals men of singular talents. Most of them reached their high stations on account of their cleverness in some particular branch of their duties, and by their strong devotion, in the earlier parts of their career, to their master. Maréchal Soult has a reputation for skill in managing the civil detail of service. As a soldier, he is also distinguished for manoeuvring in the face of his enemy, and under fire. Some such excitement appears necessary to arouse his dormant talents. Suchet is said to have had capacity; but, I think, to Massena, and to the present King of Sweden, the French usually yield the palm in this respect. Davoust was a man of terrible military energy, and suited to certain circumstances, but scarcely a man of talents. It was to him Napoleon said, "remember, you have but a single friend in France--myself; take care you do not lose him." Lannes seems to have stood better than most of them as a soldier, and Macdonald as a man. But, on the whole, I think it quite apparent there was scarcely one among them all calculated to have carried out a very high fortune for himself, without the aid of the directing genius of his master. Many of them had ambition enough for anything; but it was an ambition stimulated by example, rather than by a consciousness of superiority. In nothing have I been more disappointed than in the appearance of these men. There is more or less of character about the exterior and physiognomy of them all, it is true; but scarcely one has what we are accustomed to think the carriage of a soldier. It may be known to you that Moreau had very little of this, and really one is apt to fancy he can see the civic origin in nearly all of them. While the common French soldiers have a good deal of military coquetry, the higher officers appear to be nearly destitute of it. Maréchal Molitor is a fine man; Maréchal Marmont, neat, compact, and soldierly-looking; Maréchal Mortier, a grenadier without grace; Maréchal Oudinot, much the same; and so on to the end of the chapter. Lamarque is a little swarthy man, with good features and a keen eye; but he is military in neither carriage nor mien. Crossing the Pont Royal, shortly after my arrival, in company with a friend, the latter pointed out to me a stranger, on the opposite side-walk, and desired me to guess who and what he might be. The subject of my examination was a compact, solidly-built man, with a plodding rustic air, and who walked a little lame. After looking at him a minute, I guessed he was some substantial grazier, who had come to Paris on business connected with the supplies of the town. My friend laughed, and told me it was Marshal Soult. To my inexperienced eye, he had not a bit of the exterior of a soldier, and was as unlike the engravings we see of the French heroes as possible. But here, art is art; and like the man who was accused of betraying another into a profitless speculation by drawing streams on his map, when the land was without any, and who defended himself by declaring no one ever saw a _map_ without streams, the French artists appear to think every one should be represented in his ideal character, let him be as _bourgeois_ as he may in truth. I have seen Marshal Soult in company, and his face has much character. The head is good, and the eye searching, the whole physiognomy possessing those latent fires that one would be apt to think would require the noise and excitement of a battle to awaken. La Fayette looks more like an old soldier than any of them. Gérard, however, is both a handsome man and of a military mien. Now and then we see a _vieux moustache_ in the guards; but, on the whole, I have been much surprised at finding how completely the army of this country is composed of young soldiers. The campaigns of Russia, of 1813, 1814, and of 1815, left few besides conscripts beneath the eagles of Napoleon. My old servant Charles tells me that the guardhouse is obliged to listen to tales of the campaign of Spain, and of the Trocadero! The army of France is understood to be very generally disaffected. The restoration has introduced into it, in the capacity of general officers, many who followed the fortunes of the Bourbons into exile, and some, I believe, who actually fought against this country in the ranks of her enemies. This may be, in some measure, necessary, but it is singularly unfortunate. I have been told, on good authority, that, since the restoration of 1815, several occasions have occurred, when the court thought itself menaced with a revolution. On all these occasions the army, as a matter of course, has been looked to with hope or with distrust. Investigation is said to have always discovered so bad a spirit, that little reliance is placed on its support. The traditions of the service are all against the Bourbons. It is true, that very few of the men who fought at Marengo and Austerlitz still remain; but then the recollection of their deeds forms the great delight of most Frenchmen. There is but one power that can counteract this feeling, and it is the power of money. By throwing itself into the arms of the industrious classes, the court might possibly obtain an ally, sufficiently strong to quell the martial spirit of the nation; but, so far from pursuing such a policy, it has all the commercial and manufacturing interests marshalled against it, because it wishes to return to the _bon vieux tems_ of the old system. After all, I much question if any government in France will have the army cordially with it, that does not find it better employment than mock-fights on the plain of Issy, and night attacks on the mimic Trocadero. LETTER IX. Royal Dinner.--Magnificence and Comfort.--Salle de Diane.--Prince de Condé.--Duke of Orleans.--The Dinner-table.--The Dauphin.--Sires de Coucy.--The Dauphine.--Ancient Usages--M. de Talleyrand.--Charles X. --Panoramic Procession.--Droll Effect.--The Dinner.--M. de Talleyrand's Office.--The Duchesse de Berri.--The Catastrophe.--An Aristocratic Quarrel. To MRS. SINGLETON W. BEALL, GREEN BAY. We have lately witnessed a ceremony that may have some interest for one who, like yourself, dwells in the retirement of a remote frontier post. It is etiquette for the kings of France to dine in public twice in the year, viz. the 1st of January, and the day that is set apart for the fête of the king. Having some idle curiosity to be present on one of these occasions, I wrote the usual note to the lord in, waiting, or, as he is called here, "le premier gentilhomme de la chambre du roi, de service," and we got the customary answer, enclosing us tickets of admission. There are two sorts of permissions granted on these occasions: by one you are allowed to remain in the room during the dinner; and by the other, you are obliged to walk slowly through the salle, in at one side and out at the other, without, however, being suffered to pause even for a moment. Ours were of the former description. The King of France having the laudable custom of being punctual, and as every one dines in Paris at six, that best of all hours for a town life, we were obliged to order our own dinner an hour earlier than common, for looking at others eating on an empty stomach is, of all amusements, the least satisfactory. Having taken this wise precaution, we drove to the chateau at half after five, it not being seemly to enter the room after the king, and, as we discovered, for females impossible. Magnificence and comfort seldom have much in common. We were struck with this truth on entering the palace of the king of France. The room into which we were first admitted was filled with tall, lounging foot soldiers, richly attired, but who lolled about the place with their caps on, and with a barrack-like air that seemed to us singularly in contrast with the prompt and respectful civility with which one is received in the ante-chamber of a private hotel. It is true that we had nothing to do with the soldiers and lackeys who thronged the place; but if their presence was intended to impress visitors with the importance of their master, I think a more private entrance would have been most likely to produce that effect; for I confess, that it appeared to me has a mark of poverty, that troops being necessary to the state and security of the monarch, he was obliged to keep them in the vestibule by which his guests entered. But this is royal state. Formerly, the executioner was present; and in the semi-barbarous courts of the East, such is the fact even now. The soldiers were a party of the Hundred Swiss; men chosen for their great stature, and remarkable for the perfection of their musket. Two of them were posted as sentinels at the foot of the great staircase by which we ascended, and we passed several more on the landings. We were soon in the Salle des Gardes, or the room which the _gardes du corps_ on service occupied. Two of these _quasi_ soldiers were also acting as sentinels here, while others lounged about the room. Their apartment communicated with the Salle de Diane, the hall or gallery prepared for the entertainment. I had no other means but the eye of judging of the dimensions of this room; but its length considerably exceeds a hundred feet, and its breadth is probably forty, or more. It is of the proper height, and the ceiling is painted in imitation of those of the celebrated Farnese Palace at Rome. We found this noble room divided, by a low railing, into three compartments. The centre, an area of some thirty feet by forty, contained the table, and was otherwise prepared for the reception of the court. On one side of it were raised benches for the ladies, who were allowed to be seated; and, on the other, a vacant space for the gentlemen, who stood. All these, you will understand, were considered merely as spectators, not being supposed to be in the presence of the king. The mere spectators were dressed as usual, or in common evening dress, and not all the women even in that; while those within the railings, being deemed to be in the royal presence, were in high court dresses. Thus I stood for an hour within five-and-twenty feet of the king, and part of the time much nearer, while, by a fiction of etiquette, I was not understood to be there at all. I was a good while within ten feet of the Duchesse de Berri, while, by convention, I was nowhere. There was abundance of room in our area, and every facility of moving about, many coming and going, as they saw fit. Behind us, but at a little distance, were other rows of raised seats, filled with the best instrumental musicians of Paris. Along the wall, facing the table, was a narrow raised platform, wide enough to allow of two or three to walk abreast, separated from the rest of the room by a railing, and extending from a door at one end of the gallery, to a door at the other. This was the place designed for the passage of the public during the dinner; no one, however, being admitted, even here, without a ticket. A gentleman of the court led your aunt to the seats reserved for the female spectators, which were also without the railing, and I took my post among the men. Although the court of the Tuileries was, when we entered the palace, filled with a throng of those who were waiting to pass through the Gallery of Diana, to my surprise, the number of persons who were to remain in the room was very small. I account for the circumstance, by supposing, that it is not etiquette for any who have been presented to attend, unless they are among the court; and, as some reserve was necessary in issuing these tickets, the number was necessarily limited. I do not think there were fifty men on our side, which might have held several hundred; and the seats of the ladies were not half filled. Boxes were fitted up in the enormous windows, which closed and curtained, a family of fine children occupying that nearest to me. Some one said they were the princes of the house of Orleans; for none of the members of the royal family have seats at the _grands couverts_, as these dinners are called, unless they belong to the reigning branch. There is but one Bourbon prince more remote from the crown[11] than the Duc d'Orléans, and this is the Prince de Condé, or, as he is more familiarly termed here, the Duc de Bourbon, the father of the unfortunate Duc d'Enghien. So broad are the distinctions made between the sovereign and the other members of his family in these governments, that it was the duty of the Prince de Condé to appear to-day behind the king's chair, as the highest dignitary of his household; though it was understood that he was excused, on account of his age and infirmities. These broad distinctions, you will readily imagine, however, are only maintained on solemn and great state occasions; for, in their ordinary intercourse, kings nowadays dispense with most of the ancient formalities of their rank. It would have been curious, however, to see one descendant of St. Louis standing behind the chair of another, as a servitor; and more especially, to see the Prince de Condé standing behind the chair of Charles X.; for, when Comte d'Artois and Duc de Bourbon, some fifty years since, they actually fought a duel on account of some slight neglect of the wife of the latter by the former. [Footnote 11: 1827] The crown of France, as you know, passes only in the male line. The Duke of Orleans is descended from Louis XIII., and the Prince de Condé from Louis IX. In the male line, the Duke of Orleans is only the fourth cousin, once removed, of the king, and the Prince de Condé the eighth or ninth. The latter would be even much more remotely related to the crown, but for the accession of his own branch of the family in the person of Henry IV. who was a near cousin of his ancestor. Thus you perceive, while royalty is always held in reverence--for any member of the family may possibly become the king--still there are broad distinctions made between the near and the more distant branches of the line. The Duke of Orleans fills that equivocal position in the family, which is rather common in the history of this species of government. He is a liberal, and is regarded with distrust by the reigning branch, and with hope by that portion of the people who think seriously of the actual state of the country. A saying of M. de Talleyrand, however, is circulated at his expense, which, if true, would go to show that this wary prince is not disposed to risk his immense fortune in a crusade for liberty. "Ce n'est pas assez d'être quelqu'un--il faut être quelque chose," are the words attributed to the witty and wily politician; but, usually, men have neither half the wit nor half the cunning that popular accounts ascribe to them, when it becomes the fashion to record their acts and sayings. I believe the Duke of Orleans holds no situation about the court, although the king has given him the title of _Royal_ Highness, his birth entitling him to be styled no more than _Serene_ Highness. This act of grace is much spoken of by the Bourbonists, who consider it a favour that for ever secures the loyalty and gratitude of the Duke. The Duchess, being the daughter of a king, had this rank from her birth. The orchestra was playing when we entered the Gallery of Diana, and throughout the whole evening it gave us, from time to time, such music as can only be found in a few of the great capitals of Europe. The covers were laid, and every preparation was made within the railing for the reception of the _convives_. The table was in the shape of a young moon, with the horns towards the spectators, or from the wall. It was of some length, and as there were but four covers, the guests were obliged to be seated several feet from each other. In the centre was an armchair, covered with crimson velvet, and ornamented with a crown; this was for the king. A chair without arms, on his right, was intended for the Dauphin; another on his left, for the Dauphine; and the fourth, which was still further on the right of the Dauphin, was intended for Madame, as she is called, or the Duchess of Berri. These are the old and favourite appellations of the monarchy, and, absurd as some of them are, they excite reverence and respect from their antiquity. Your Wolverines, and Suckers, and Buckeyes, and Hooziers would look amazed to hear an executive styled the White Fish of Michigan, or the Sturgeon of Wisconsin; and yet there is nothing more absurd in it, in the abstract, than the titles that were formerly given in Europe, some of which have descended to our times. The name of the country, as well as the title of the sovereign, in the case of Dauphiné, was derived from the same source. Thus, in homely English, the Dolphin of Dolphinstown, renders "le Dauphin de Dauphiné" perfectly well. The last independent Dauphin, in bequeathing his states to the King of France of the day, (the unfortunate John, the prisoner of the Black Prince,) made a condition that the heir apparent of the kingdom should always be known by his own title, and consequently, ever since, the appellation has been continued. You will understand, that none but an _heir-apparent_ is called the Dauphin, and not an _heir-presumptive_. Thus, should the present Dauphin and the Duc de Bordeaux die, the Duke of Orleans, according to a treaty of the time of Louis XIV., though not according to the ancient laws of the monarchy, would become _heir-presumptive_; but he could never be the Dauphin, since, should the king marry again, and have another son, his rights would be superseded. None but the _heir-apparent_, or the _inevitable_ heir, bears this title. There were formerly _Bears_ in Belgium, who were of the rank of Counts. These appellations were derived from the arms, the Dauphin now bearing dolphins with the lilies of France. The Boar of Ardennes got his _sobriquet_ from bearing the head of a wild boar in his arms. There were formerly many titles in France that are now extinct, such as Captal, Vidame, and Castellan, all of which were general, I believe, and referred to official duties. There was, however, formerly, a singular proof of how even simplicity can exalt a man, when the fashion runs into the opposite extremes. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, there existed in France powerful noblemen, the owners and lords of the castle and lands of Coucy or Couci, who were content to bear the appellation of Sire, a word from which our own "Sir" is derived, and which means, like Sir, the simplest term of courtesy that could be used. These Sires de Coucy were so powerful as to make royal alliances; they waged war with their sovereign, and maintained a state nearly royal. Their pride lay in their antiquity, independence, and power; and they showed their contempt for titles by their device, which is said to have been derived from the answer of one of the family to the sovereign, who, struck with the splendour of his appearance and the number of his attendants, had demanded, "What king has come to my court?" This motto, which is still to be seen on the ancient monuments of the family, reads:-- "Je ne suis roi, ne prince, ne duc, ne comte aussi; Je suis le Sire de Coucy."[12] [Footnote 12: "I am neither king, nor prince, nor duke, nor even a count; I am M. de Coucy."] This greatly beats Coke of Holkham, of whom it is said that George IV., who had been a liberal in his youth, and the friend of the great Norfolk commoner, vexed by his bringing up so many liberal addresses, threatened--"If Coke comes to me with any more of his Whig petitions, _I'll Knight him_." I have often thought that this simplicity of the Sires de Coucy furnishes an excellent example for our own ministers and citizens when abroad. Instead of attempting to imitate the gorgeous attire of their colleagues, whose magnificence, for the want of stars and similar conventional decorations, they can never equal, they should go to court as they go to the President's House, in the simple attire of American gentlemen. If any prince should inquire,--"Who is this that approaches me, clad so simply that I may mistake him for a butler, or a groom of the chambers?" let him answer, "Je ne suis roi, ne prince, ne duc, ne comte aussi--I am the minister of the United States of Ameri_key_," and leave the rest to the millions at home. My life for it, the question would not be asked twice. Indeed, no man who is truly fit to represent the republic would ever have any concern about the matter. But all this time the dinner of the King of France is getting cold. We might have been in the gallery fifteen minutes, when there was a stir at a door on the side where the females were seated, and a _huissier_ cried out--"Madame la Dauphine!" and, sure enough, the Dauphine appeared, followed by two _dames d'honneur_. She walked quite through the gallery, across the area reserved for the court, and passed out at the little gate in the railing which communicated with our side of the room, leaving the place by the same door at which we had entered. She was in high court dress, with diamonds and lappets, and was proceeding from her own apartments, in the other wing of the palace, to those of the king. As she went within six feet of me, I observed her hard and yet saddened countenance with interest; for she has the reputation of dwelling on her early fortunes, and of constantly anticipating evil. Of course she was saluted by all in passing, but she hardly raised her eyes from the floor; though, favoured by my position, I got a slight, melancholy smile, in return for my own bow. The Dauphine had scarcely disappeared, when her Royal Highness, Madame, was announced, and the Duchess of Berri went through in a similar manner. Her air was altogether less constrained, and she had smiles and inclinations for all she passed. She is a slight, delicate, little woman, with large blue eyes, a fair complexion, and light hair. She struck me as being less a Bourbon than an Austrian, and, though wanting in _embonpoint_, she would be quite pretty but for a cast in one of her eyes. A minute or two later, we had Monseigneur le Dauphin, who passed through the gallery in the same manner as his wife and sister-in-law. He had been reviewing some troops, and was in the uniform of a colonel of the guards; booted to the knees, and carrying a military hat in his hand. He is not of commanding presence, though I think he has the countenance of an amiable man, and his face is decidedly Bourbon. We were indebted to the same lantern like construction of the palace, for this preliminary glimpse at so many of the actors in the coming scene. After the passage of the Dauphin, a few courtiers and superior officers of the household began to appear within the railed space. Among them were five or six duchesses. Women of this rank have the privilege of being seated in the presence of the king on state occasions, and _tabourets_ were provided for them accordingly. A _tabouret_ is a stuffed stool, nearly of the form of the ancient cerulean chair, without its back, for a back would make it a chair at once, and, by the etiquette of courts, these are reserved for the blood-royal, ambassadors, etc. As none but duchesses could be seated at the _grand couvert_, you may be certain none below that rank appeared. There might have been a dozen present. They were all in high court dresses. One, of great personal charms and quite young, was seated near me, and my neighbour, an old _abbé_, carried away by enthusiasm, suddenly exclaimed to me--"Quelle belle fortune, monsieur, d'être jeune, jolie, et duchesse!" I dare say the lady had the same opinion of the matter. Baron Louis, not the financier, but the king's physician, arrived. It was his duty to stand behind the king's chair, like Sancho's tormentor, and see that he did not over-eat himself. The ancient usages were very tender of the royal person. If he travelled, he had a spare litter, or a spare coach, to receive him, in the event of accident,--a practice that is continued to this day; if he ate, there was one to taste his food, lest he might be poisoned; and when he lay down to sleep, armed sentinels watched at the door of his chamber. Most of these usages are still continued, in some form or other, and the ceremonies which are observed at these public dinners are mere memorials of the olden time. I was told the following anecdote by Mad. de ----, who was intimate with Louis XVIII. One day, in taking an airing, the king was thirsty, and sent a footman to a cottage for water. The peasants appeared with some grapes, which they offered, as the homage of their condition. The king took them and ate them, notwithstanding the remonstrances of his attendants. This little incident was spoken of at court, where all the monarch does and says becomes matter of interest, and the next time Mad. de ---- was admitted, she joined her remonstrances to those of the other courtiers. "We no longer live in an age when kings need dread assassins," said Louis, smiling. A month passed, and Mad. de ---- was again admitted. She was received with a melancholy shake of the head, and with tears. The Duc de Berri had been killed in the interval! A few gentlemen, who did not strictly belong to the court, appeared among the duchesses, but, at the most, there were but six or eight. One of them, however, was the gayest looking personage I ever saw in the station of a gentleman, being nothing but lace and embroidery, even to the seams of his coat; a sort of genteel harlequin. The _abbé_, who seemed to understand himself, said he was a Spanish grandee. I was near the little gate, when an old man, in a strictly court dress, but plain and matter-of-fact in air, made an application for admittance. In giving way for him to pass, my attention was drawn to his appearance. The long white hair that hung down his face, the _cordon bleu_, the lame foot, the imperturbable countenance, and the _unearthly aspect_, made me suspect the truth. On inquiring, I was right. It was M. de Talleyrand! He came as grand chamberlain, to officiate at the dinner of his master. Everything, in a court, goes by clock-work. Your little great may be out of time, and affect a want of punctuality, but a rigid attention to appointments is indispensable to those who are really in high situations. A failure in this respect would produce the same impression on the affairs of men, that a delay in the rising of the sun would produce on the day. The appearance of the different personages named, all so near each other, was the certain sign that one greater than all could not be far behind. They were the dawn of the royal presence. Accordingly, the door which communicated with the apartments of the king, and the only one within the railed space, opened with the announcement of "Le service du Roi," when a procession of footmen of the palace appeared, bearing the dishes of the first course. All the vessels, whether already on the table, or those in their hands, were of gold, richly wrought, or, at least, silver gilt, I had no means of knowing which; most probably they were of the former metal. The dishes were taken from the footmen by pages, of honour in scarlet dresses, and by them placed in order on the table. The first course was no sooner ready, than we heard the welcome announcement of "Le Roi." The family immediately made their appearance, at the same door by which the service had entered. They were followed by a proper number of lords and ladies in waiting. Every one arose, as a matter of course, even to the "jeunes, jolies, et duchesses;" and the music, as became it, gave us a royal crash. The huissier, in announcing the king, spoke in a modest voice, and less loud, I observed, than in announcing the Dauphin and the ladies. It was, however, a different person; and it is probable one was a common huissier, and the other a gentleman acting in that character. Charles X. is tall, without being of a too heavy frame, flexible of movement, and decidedly graceful. By remembering that he is king, and the lineal chief of the ancient and powerful family of the Bourbons, by deferring properly to history and the illusions of the past, and by feeling _tant soit peu_ more respect for those of the present day than is strictly philosophical, or perhaps wise, it is certainly possible to fancy that he has a good deal of that peculiar port and majesty that the poetry of feeling is so apt to impute to sovereigns. I know not whether it is the fault of a cynical temperament, or of republican prejudices, but I can see no more, about him than the easy grace of an old gentleman, accustomed all his life to be a principal personage among the principal personages of the earth. This you may think was quite sufficient,--but it aid not altogether satisfy the _exigence_ of my unpoetical ideas. His countenance betrayed, a species of vacant _bonhommie_, rather than of thought or dignity of mind; and while he possessed, in a singular degree, the mere physical machinery of his rank, he was wanting in the majesty of character and expression, without which no man can act well the representation of royalty. Even a little more severity of aspect would have better suited the part, and rendered _le grand couvert encore plus grand_. The king seated himself, after receiving the salutations of the courtiers within the railing, taking no notice however, of those who, by a fiction of etiquette, were not supposed to be in his presence. The rest of the family occupied their respective places in the order I have named, and the eating and drinking began, from the score. The different courses were taken off and served by footmen and pages in the manner already described, which, after all, by substituting servants out of livery for pages, is very much the way great dinners are served, in great houses, all over Europe. As soon as the king was seated, the north door of the gallery, or that on the side opposite to the place where I had taken post, was opened, and the public was admitted, passing slowly through the room without stopping. A droller _mélange_ could not be imagined than presented itself in the panoramic procession; and long before the _grand couvert_ was over, I thought it much the most amusing part of the scene. Very respectable persons, gentlemen certainly, and I believe in a few instances ladies, came in this way, to catch a glimpse of the spectacle. I saw several men that I knew, and the women with them could have been no other than their friends. To these must be added, _cochers de fiacres_ in their glazed hats, _bonnes_ in their high Norman caps, peasants, soldiers in their shakos, _épiciers_ and _garçons_ without number. The constant passage, for it lasted without intermission for an hour and a half, of so many queer faces, reminded me strongly of one of those mechanical panoramas, that bring towns, streets, and armies, before the spectator. One of the droll effects of this scene was produced by the faces, all of which turned, like sunflowers, towards the light of royalty, as the bodies moved steadily on. Thus, on entering, the eyes were a little inclined to the right; as they got nearer to the meridian, they became gradually bent more aside; when opposite the table, every face, was _full_; and, in retiring, all were bent backwards over their owners' shoulders, constantly offering a dense crowd of faces, looking towards a common centre, while the bodies were coming on, or moving slowly off the stage. This, you will see, resembled in some measure the revolutions of the moon around our orb, matter and a king possessing the same beneficent attraction. I make no doubt, these good people thought we presented a curious spectacle; but I am persuaded they presented one that was infinitely more so. I had seen in America, in divers places, an Englishman, a colonel in the army. We had never been introduced, but had sat opposite to each other at _tables d'hôtes_, jostled each other in the President's House, met in steam-boats, in the streets, and in many other places, until it was evident our faces were perfectly familiar to both parties; and yet we never nodded, spoke, or gave any other sign of recognition, than by certain knowing expressions of the eyes. In Europe, the colonel reappeared. We met in London, in Paris, in the public walks, in the sight-seeing places of resort, until we evidently began to think ourselves a couple of Monsieur Tonsons. To-night, as I was standing near the public platform, whose face should appear in the halo of countenances but that of my colonel! The poor fellow had a wooden leg, and he was obliged to stump on in his orbit as well as he could, while I kept my eye on him, determined to catch a look of recognition if possible. When he got so far forward as to bring me in his line of sight, our eyes met, and he smiled involuntarily. Then he took a deliberate survey of my comfortable position, and he disappeared in the horizon, with some such expression on his features as must have belonged to Commodore Trunnion, when he called out to Hatchway, while the hunter was leaping over the lieutenant, "Oh! d--n you; you are well anchored!" I do not think the dinner, in a culinary point of view, was anything extraordinary. The king ate and drank but little, for, unlike his two brothers and predecessors, he is said to be abstemious. The Daupin played a better knife and fork; but on the whole, the execution was by no means great for Frenchmen. The guests sat so far apart, and the music made so much noise, that conversation was nearly out of the question; though the King and the Dauphin exchanged a few words in the course of the evening. Each of the gentlemen, also, spoke once or twice to his female neighbour, and that was pretty much the amount of the discourse. The whole party appeared greatly relieved by having something to do during the desert, in admiring the service, which was of the beautiful Sèvres china. They all took up the plates, and examined them attentively; and really I was glad they had so rational an amusement to relieve their _ennui_. Once, early in the entertainment, M. de Talleyrand approached the king, and showed him the bill of fare! It was an odd spectacle to see this old _diplomate_ descending to the pantomime of royalty, and acting the part of a _maître d'hôtel_. Had the duty fallen on Cambacères, one would understand it, and fancy that it might be well done. The king smiled on him graciously, and, I presume, gave him leave to retire; for soon after this act of loyal servitude, the prince disappeared. As for M. Louis, he treated Charles better than his brother treated Sancho; for I did not observe the slightest interference, on his part, during the whole entertainment; though one of those near me said he had tasted a dish or two by way of ceremony,--an act of precaution that I did not myself observe. I asked my neighbour, the _abbé_, what he thought of M. de Talleyrand. After looking up in my face distrustfully, he whispered:--"Mais, monsieur, c'est un chat qui tombe toujours sur ses pieds;" a remark that was literally true tonight, for, the old man was kept on his feet longer than could have been agreeable to the owner of two such gouty legs. The Duchesse de Berri, who sat quite near the place where I stood, was busy a good deal of the time _à lorgner_ the public through her eye-glass. This she did with very little diffidence of manner, and quite as coolly as an English duchess would have stared at a late intimate whom she was disposed to cut. It certainly was neither a graceful, nor a feminine, nor a princely occupation. The Dauphine played the Bourbon better; though, when she turned her saddened, not to say _cruel_ eyes, on the public, it was with an expression that almost amounted to reproach. I did not see her smile once during the whole time she was at table; and yet _I_ thought there were many things to smile at. At length the finger-bowls appeared, and I was not sorry to see them. Contrary to what is commonly practised in very great houses, the pages placed them on the table, just as Henri puts them before us democrats every day. I ought to have said, that the service was made altogether in front, or at the unoccupied side of the table, nothing but the bill of fare, in the hands of M. de Talleyrand, appearing in the rear. As soon as this part of the dinner was over, the king arose, and the whole party withdrew by the door on the further side of the galery. In passing the _gradins_ of the ladies, he stopped to says a few kind words to an old woman who was seated there, muffled in a cloak, and the light of royalty vanished. The catastrophe is to come. The instant the king's back was turned, the gallery became a scene of confusion. The musicians ceased playing, and began to chatter; the pages dashed about to remove the service, and everybody was in motion. Observing that your ---- was standing undecided what to do, I walked into the railed area, brushed past the gorgeous state table, and gave her my arm. She laughed, and said it had all been very magnificent and amusing, but that some one had stolen her shawl! A few years before, I had purchased for her a merino shawl, of singular fineness, simplicity, and beauty. It was now old, and she had worn it on this occasion, because she distrusted the dirt of a palace; and laying it carelessly by her side, in the course of the evening she had found in its place a very common thing of the same colour. The thief was deceived by its appearance your ---- being dressed for an evening party, and had probably mistaken it for a cashmere. So much for the company one meets at court! Too much importance, however, must not be attached to this little _contretems_, as people of condition are apt to procure tickets for such places, and to give them to their _femmes de chambre_. Probably, half the women present, the "jeunes et jolies" excepted, were of this class. But mentioning this affair to the old Princesse de ----, she edified me by an account of the manner in which Madame la Comtesse de ---- had actually appropriated to the service of her own pretty person the _cachemire_ of Madame la Baronne de ----, in the royal presence; and how there was a famous quarrel, _à l'outrance_, about it; so I suspend my opinions as to the quality of the thief. LETTER X. Road to Versailles.--Origin of Versailles.--The present Chateau.--The two Trianons.--La Petite Suisse.--Royal Pastime.--Gardens of Versailles. --The State Apartments.--Marie Antoinette's Chamber.--Death of Louis XV. --Oeil de Boeuf.--The Theatre and Chapel.--A Quarry.--Caverns.--Compiègne.--Chateau de Pierre-font.--Influence of Monarchy.--Orangery at Versailles. To R. COOPER, ESQ., COOPERSTOWN, NEW YORK. We have been to Versailles, and although I have no intention to give a laboured description of a place about which men have written and talked these two centuries, it is impossible to pass over a spot of so much celebrity in total silence. The road to Versailles lies between the park of St. Cloud and the village and manufactories of Sèvres. A little above the latter is a small palace, called Meudon, which, from its great elevation, commands a fine view of Paris. The palace of St. Cloud, of course, stands in the park; Versailles lies six or eight miles farther west; Compiègne is about fifty miles from Paris in one direction; Fontainebleau some thirty in another, and Rambouillet rather more remotely, in a third. All these palaces, except Versailles, are kept up, and from time to time are visited by the court. Versailles was stripped of its furniture in the revolution; and even Napoleon, at a time when the French empire extended from Hamburgh to Rome, shrunk from the enormous charge of putting it in a habitable state. It is computed that the establishment at Versailles, first and last, in matters of construction merely, cost the French monarchy two hundred millions of dollars! This is almost an incredible sum, when we remember the low price of wages in France; but, on the other hand, when we consider the vastness of the place, how many natural difficulties were overcome, and the multitude of works from the hands of artists of the first order it contained, it scarcely seems sufficient. Versailles originated as a hunting-seat, in the time of Louis XIII. In that age, most of the upland near Paris, in this direction, lay in forest, royal chases; and, as hunting was truly a princely sport, numberless temporary residences of this nature existed in the neighbourhood of the capital. There are still many remains of this barbarous magnificence, as in the wood of Vincennes, the forest of St. Germain, Compiègne, Fontainebleau, and divers others; but great inroads have been made in their limits by the progress of civilization and the wants of society. So lately as the reign of Louis XV. they hunted quite near the town; and we are actually, at this moment, dwelling in a country house, at St. Ouen, in which, tradition hatch it, he was wont to take his refreshments. The original building at Versailles was a small chateau, of a very ugly formation, and it was built of bricks. I believe it was enlarged, but not entirely constructed, by Louis XIII. A portion of this building is still visible, having been embraced in the subsequent structures; and, judging from its architecture, I should think it must be nearly as ancient as the time of Francis I. Around this modest nucleus was constructed, by a succession of monarchs, but chiefly by Louis XIV. the most regal residence of Europe, in magnificence and extent, if not in taste. The present chateau, besides containing numberless wings and courts, has vast _casernes_ for the quarters of the household troops, stables for many hundred horses, and is surrounded by a great many separate hotels, for the accommodation of the courtiers. It offers a front on the garden, in a single continuous line, that is broken only by a projection in the centre of more than a third of a mile in length. This is the only complete part of the edifice that possesses uniformity; the rest of it being huge piles grouped around irregular courts, or thrown forward in wings, that correspond to the huge body like those of the ostrich. There is on the front next the town, however, some attempt at simplicity and intelligibility of plan; for there is a vast open court lined by buildings, which have been commenced in the Grecian style. Napoleon, I believe, did something here, from which there is reason to suppose that he sometimes thought of inhabiting the palace. Indeed, so long as France has a king, it is impossible that such a truly royal abode can ever be wholly deserted. At present, it is the fashion to grant lodgings in it to dependants and favourites. Nothing that I have seen gives me so just and so imposing an idea of the old French monarchy as a visit to Versailles. Apart from the vastness and splendour of the palace, here is a town that actually contained, in former times, a hundred thousand souls, that entirely owed its existence to the presence of the court. Other monarchs lived in large towns; but here was a monarch whose presence created one. Figure to yourself the style of the prince, when a place more populous than Baltimore, and infinitely richer in externals, existed merely as an appendage to his abode! The celebrated garden contains two or three hundred acres of land, besides the ground that is included in the gardens of the two Trianons. These Trianons are small palaces erected in the gardens, as if the occupants of the chateau, having reached the acmé of magnificence and splendour in the principal residence, were seeking refuge against the effect of satiety in these humbler abodes. They appear small and insignificant after the palace; but the Great Trianon is a considerable house, and contains a fine suite of apartments, among which are some very good rooms. There are few English abodes of royalty that equal even this of Le Grand Trianon. The Petit Trianon was the residence of Madame de Maintenon; it afterwards was presented to the unfortunate Marie Antoinette, who, in part converted its grounds into an English garden, in addition to setting aside a portion into what is called La Petite Suisse. We went through this exceedingly pretty house and its gardens with melancholy interest. The first is merely a pavilion in the Italian taste, though it is about half as large as the President's House, at Washington. I should think the Great Trianon has quite twice the room of our own Executive residence; and, as you can well imagine, from what has already been said, the Capitol itself would be but a speck among the endless edifices of the chateau. The projection in the centre of the latter is considerably larger than the capitol, and it materially exceeds that building in cubic contents. Now this projection is but a small part indeed of the long line of façade, it actually appearing too short for the ranges of wings. Marie Antoinette was much censured for the amusements in which she indulged in the grounds of the Little Trianon, and vulgar rumour exaggerating their nature, no small portion of her personal unpopularity is attributable to this cause. The family of Louis XVI. appears to have suffered for the misdeeds of its predecessors, for it not being very easy to fancy anything much worse than the immoralities of Louis XV. the public were greatly disposed "to visit the sins of the fathers on the children." La Petite Suisse is merely a romantic portion of the garden, in which has been built what is called the Swiss Hamlet It contains the miniature abodes of the Curé, the Farmer, the Dairywoman, the Garde-de-Chasse, and the Seigneur, besides the mill. There is not much that is Swiss, however, about the place, with the exception of some resemblance in the exterior of the buildings. Here, it is said, the royal family used occasionally to meet, and pass an afternoon in a silly representation of rural life, that must have proved to be a prodigious caricature. The King (at least, so the guide affirmed), performed the part of the Seigneur, and occupied the proper abode; the Queen was the Dairy woman, and we were shown the marble tables that held her porcelain milk-pans; the present King, as became his notorious propensity to field-sports, was the Garde-de-Chasse, the late King was the Miller, and, _mirabile dictu_, the Archbishop of Paris did not disdain to play the part of the Curé. There was, probably, a good deal of poetry in this account; though it is pretty certain that the Queen did indulge in some of these phantasies. There happened to be with me, the day I visited this spot, an American from our own mountains, who had come fresh from home, with all his provincial opinions and habits strong about him. As the guide explained these matters, I translated them literally into English for the benefit of my companion, adding, that the fact rendered the Queen extremely unpopular with her subjects. "Unpopular!" exclaimed my country neighbour; "why so, sir?" "I cannot say; perhaps they thought it was not a fit amusement for a queen." My mountaineer stood a minute cogitating the affair in his American mind; and then nodding his head, he said:--"I understand it now. The people thought that a king and queen, coming from yonder palace to amuse themselves in this toy hamlet, in the characters of poor people, _were making game of them_!" I do not know whether this inference will amuse you as much as it did me at the time. Of the gardens and the _jets d'eau_, so renowned, I shall say little. The former are in the old French style, formal and stiff, with long straight _allées_, but magnificent by their proportions and ornaments. The statuary and vases that are exposed to the open air, in this garden, must have cost an enormous sum. They are chiefly copies from the _antique_. As you stand on the great terrace, before the centre of the palace, the view is down the principal avenue, which terminates at the distance of two or three miles with a low naked hill, beyond which appears the void of the firmament. This conceit singularly helps the idea of vastness, though in effect it is certainly inferior to the pastoral prettiness and rural thoughts of modern landscape gardening. Probably too much is attempted here; for if the mind cannot conceive of illimitable space, still less can it be represented by means of material substances. We examined the interior of the palace with melancholy pleasure. The vast and gorgeous apartments were entirely without furniture, though many of the pictures still remain. The painted ceilings, and the gildings too, contribute to render the rooms less desolate than they would otherwise have been. I shall not stop to describe the saloons of Peace and War, and all the other celebrated apartments, that are so named from the subjects of their paintings, but merely add that the state apartments lie _en suite_, in the main body of the building, and that the principal room, or the great gallery, as it is termed, is in the centre, with the windows looking up the main avenue of the garden. This gallery greatly surpasses in richness and size any other room, intended for the ordinary purposes of a palace, that I have ever seen. Its length exceeds two hundred and thirty feet, its width is about thirty-five, and its height is rather more than forty. The walls are a complete succession of marbles, mirrors, and gildings. I believe, the windows and doors excepted, that literally no part of the sides or ends of this room show any other material. Even some of the doors are loaded with these decorations. The ceiling is vaulted, and gorgeous with allegories and gildings; they are painted by the best artists of France. Here Louis XIV. moved among his courtiers, more like a god than a man, and here was exhibited that mixture of grace and moral fraud, of elegance and meanness, of hope and disappointment, of pleasure and mortification, that form the characters and compose the existence of courtiers. I do not know the precise number of magnificent ante-chambers and saloons through which we passed to reach this gallery, but there could not have been less than eight; one of which, as a specimen of the scale on which the palace is built, is near eighty feet long, and sixty wide. Continuing our course along the suite, we passed, among others, a council-room that looked more like state than business, and then came to the apartments of the Queen. There were several drawing-rooms, and ball-rooms, and card-rooms, and ante-rooms, and the change from the gorgeousness of the state apartments, to the neat, tasteful, chaste, feminine, white and gold of this part of the palace was agreeable, for I had got to be tired of splendour, and was beginning to feel a disposition to "make game of the people," by descending to rusticity. The bed-room of Marie Antoinette is in the suite. It is a large chamber, in the same style of ornament as the rest of her rooms, and the dressing-rooms, bath, and other similar conveniences, were in that exquisite French taste, which can only be equalled by imitation. The chamber of the King looked upon the court, and was connected with that of the Queen, by a winding and intricate communication of some length. The door that entered the apartments of the latter opened into a dressing-room, and both this door and that which communicated with the bed-room form a part of the regular wall, being tapestried as such, so as not to be immediately seen,--a style of finish that is quite usual in French houses. It was owing to this circumstance that Marie Antoinette made her escape, undetected, to the King's chamber, the night the palace was entered by the fish-women. We saw the rooms in which Louis XIV. and Louis XV. died. The latter, you may remember, fell a victim to the small-pox, and the disgusting body, that had so lately been almost worshipped, was deserted, the moment he was dead. It was left for hours, without even the usual decent observances. It was on the same occasion, we have been told, that his grandchildren, including the heir, were assembled in a private drawing-room, waiting the result, when they were startled by a hurried trampling of feet. It was the courtiers, rushing in a crowd, to pay their homage to the new monarch! All these things forced themselves painfully on our minds, as we walked through the state rooms. Indeed there are few things that can be more usefully studied, or which awaken a greater source of profitable recollections, than a palace that has been occupied by a great and historical court. Still they are not poetical. The balcony, in which La Fayette appeared with the Queen and her children, opens from one of these rooms. It overlooks the inner court; or that in which the carriages of none but the privileged entered, for all these things were regulated by arbitrary rules. No one, for instance, was permitted to ride in the King's coach, unless his nobility dated from a certain century (the fourteenth, I believe), and these were your _gentilshommes_; for the word implies more than a noble, meaning an ancient nobleman. The writing cabinet, private dining-room, council-room in ordinary, library, etc. of the King, came next; the circuit ending in the Salles des Gardes, and the apartments usually occupied by the officers and troops on service. There was one room we got into, I scarce know how. It was a long, high gallery, plainly finished for a palace, and it seemed to be lighted from an interior court, or well; for one was completely caged when in it. This was the celebrated Bull's Eye (_oeil de boeuf_), where the courtiers danced attendance before they were received. It got its name from an oval window over the principal door. We looked at no more than the state apartments, and those of the King and Queen, and yet we must have gone through some thirty or forty rooms, of which, the baths and dressing-room of the Queen excepted, the very smallest would be deemed a very large room in America. Perhaps no private house contains any as large as the smallest of these rooms, with the exception of here and there a hall in a country house; and, no room at all, with ceilings nearly as high, and as noble, to say nothing of the permanent decorations, of which we have no knowledge whatever, if we omit the window-glass, and the mantels, in both of which, size apart, we often beat even the French palaces. We next proceeded to the Salle de Spectacle, which is a huge theatre. It may not be as large as the French Opera-house at Paris, but its dimensions did not appear to me to be much less. It is true, the stage was open, and came into the view; but it is a very large house for dramatic representations. Now, neither this building nor the chapel, seen on the exterior of the palace, though additions that project from the regular line of wall, obtrudes itself on the eye, more than a verandah attached to a window, on one of our largest houses! In this place the celebrated dinner was given to the officers of the guards. The chapel is rich and beautiful. No catholic church has pews, or, at all events they are very unusual, though the municipalities do sometimes occupy them in France, and, of course, the area was vacant. We were most struck with the paintings on the ceiling, in which the face of Louis XIV. was strangely and mystically blended with that of God the Father! Pictorial and carved representations of the Saviour and of the Virgin abound in all catholic countries; nor do they much offend, unless when the crucifixion is represented with bleeding wounds; for, as both are known to have appeared in the human form, the mind is not shocked at seeing them in the semblance of humanity. But this was the first attempt to delineate the Deity we had yet seen; and it caused us all to shudder. He is represented in the person of an old man looking from the clouds, in the centre of the ceiling, and the King appears among the angels that surround him. Flattery could not go much farther, without encroaching on omnipotence itself. In returning from Versailles, to a tithe of the magnificence of which I have not alluded, I observed carts coming out of the side of a hill, loaded with the whitish stone that composes the building material of Paris. We stopped the carriage, and went into the passage, where we found extensive excavations. A lane of fifteen or twenty feet was cut through the stone, and the material was carted away in heavy square blocks. Piers were left, at short intervals, to sustain the superincumbent earth; and, in the end, the place gets to be a succession of intricate passages, separated by these piers, which resemble so many small masses of houses among the streets of a town. The entire region around Paris lies on a substratum of this stone, which indurates by exposure to the air, and the whole secret of the celebrated catacombs of Paris is just the same as that of this quarry, with the difference that this opens on a level with the upper world, lying in a hill, while one is compelled to descend to get to the level of the others. But enormous wheels, scattered about the fields in the vicinity of the town, show where shafts descend to new quarries on the plains, which are precisely the same as those under Paris. The history of these subterranean passages is very simple. The stone beneath has been transferred to the surface, as a building material; and the graves of the town, after centuries, were emptied into the vaults below. Any apprehensions of the caverns falling in, on a great scale, are absurd, as the constant recurrence of the piers, which are the living rock, must prevent such a calamity; though it is within the limits of possibility that a house or two might disappear. Quite lately, it is said, a tree in the garden of the Luxembourg fell through, owing to the water working a passage down into the quarries, by following its roots. The top of the tree remained above ground some distance; and to prevent unnecessary panic, the police immediately caused the place to be concealed by a high and close board fence. The tree was cut away in the night, the hole was filled up, and few knew anything about it. But it is scarcely possible that any serious accident should occur, even to a single house, without a previous and gradual sinking of its walls giving notice of the event. The palace of the Luxembourg, one of the largest and finest edifices of Paris, stands quite near the spot where the tree fell through, and yet there is not the smallest danger of the structure's disappearing some dark night, the piers below always affording sufficient support. _Au reste_, the catacombs lie under no other part of Paris than the Quartier St. Jacques, not crossing the river, nor reaching even the Faubourg St. Germain. I have taken you so unceremoniously out of the chateau of Versailles to put you into the catacombs, that some of the royal residences have not received the attention I intended. We have visited Compiègne this summer, including it in a little excursion of about a hundred miles, that we made in the vicinity of the capital, though it scarcely offered sufficient matter of interest to be the subject of an especial letter. We found the forest deserving of its name, and some parts of it almost as fine as an old American wood of the second class. We rode through it five or six miles to see a celebrated ruin, called Pierre-fond, which was one of those baronial holds, out of which noble robbers used to issue, to plunder on the highway, and commit all sorts of acts of genteel violence. The castle and the adjacent territory formed one of the most ancient seigneuries of France. The place was often besieged and taken. In the time of Henry IV. that monarch, finding the castle had fallen into the hands of a set of desperadoes, who were ranked with the Leaguers, sent the Duc d'Epernon against the place; but he was wounded, and obliged to raise the siege. Marshal Biron was next despatched, with all the heavy artillery that could be spared; but he met with little better success. This roused Henry, who finally succeeded in getting possession of the place. In the reign of his son, Louis XIII, the robberies and excesses of those who occupied the castle became so intolerable, that the government seized it again, and ordered it to be destroyed. Now you will remember that this castle stood in the very heart of France, within fifty miles of the capital, and but two leagues from a royal residence, and all so lately as the year 1617; and that it was found necessary to destroy it, on account of the irregularities of its owners. What an opinion one is driven to form of the moral civilization of Europe from a fact like this! Feudal grandeur loses greatly in a comparison with modern law, and more humble honesty. It was easier, however, to order the Chateau de Pierre-fond to be destroyed, than to effect that desirable object. Little more was achieved than to make cuts into the external parts of the towers and walls, and to unroof the different buildings; and, although this was done two hundred years since, time has made little impression on the ruins. We were shown a place where there had been an attempt to break into the walls for stones, but which had been abandoned, because it was found easier to quarry them from the living rock. The principal towers were more than a hundred feet high, and their angles and ornaments seemed to be as sharp and solid as ever. This was much the noblest French ruin we had seen, and it may be questioned if there are many finer, out of Italy, in Europe. The palace of Compiègne, after that of Versailles, hardly rewarded us for the trouble of examining it. Still it is large and in perfect repair: but the apartments are common-place, though there are a few that are good. A prince, however, is as well lodged, even here, as is usual in the north of Europe. The present king is fond of resorting to this house, on account of the game of the neighbouring forest. We saw several roebucks bounding among the trees, in our drive to Pierre-fond.[13] [Footnote 13: Pierre-fond, or Pierre-font] I have dwelt on the palaces and the court so much, because one cannot get a correct idea of what France was, and perhaps I ought to say, of what France, through the reaction, _will_ be, if this point were overlooked. The monarch was all in all in the nation--the centre of light, wealth, and honour; letters, the arts, and the sciences revolved around him, as the planets revolve around the sun; and if there ever was a civilized people whose example it would be fair to quote for or against the effects of monarchy, I think it would be the people of France. I was surprised at my own ignorance on the subject of the magnificence of these kings, of which, indeed, it is not easy for an untravelled American to form any just notion; and it has struck me you might be glad to hear a little on these points. After all I have said, I find I have entirely omitted the Orangery at Versailles. But then I have said little or nothing of the canals, the _jets d'eau_, of the great and little parks, which, united, are fifty miles in circumference, and of a hundred other things. Still, as this orangery is on a truly royal scale, it deserves a word of notice before I close my letter. The trees are housed in winter in long vaulted galleries, beneath the great terrace; and there is a sort of sub-court in front of them, where they are put into the sun during the pleasant season. This place is really an orange grove; and, although every tree is in a box, and is nursed like a child, many of them are as large as it is usual to find in the orange groves of low latitudes. Several are very old, two or three dating from the fifteenth century, and one from the early part of it. What notions do you get of the magnificence of the place, when you are told, that a palace, subterraneous, it is true, is devoted to this single luxury, and that acres are covered with trees in boxes? LETTER XI. Laws of Intercourse.--Americans in Europe.--Americans and English. --Visiting in America.--Etiquette of Visits.--Presentations at Foreign Courts.--Royal Receptions.--American Pride.--Pay of the President. --American Diplomatist. To JAMES STEVENSON, ESQUIRE, ALBANY. I intend this letter to be useful rather than entertaining. Living, as we Americans do, remote from the rest of the world, and possessing so many practices peculiar to ourselves, at the same time that we are altogether wanting in usages that are familiar to most other nations, it should not be matter of surprise that we commit some mistakes on this side of the water, in matters of taste and etiquette. A few words simply expressed, and a few explanations plainly made, may serve to remove some errors, and perhaps render your own contemplated visit to this part of the world more agreeable. There is no essential difference in the leading rules of ordinary intercourse among the polished of all Christian nations. Though some of these rules may appear arbitrary, it will be found, on examination, that they are usually derived from very rational and sufficient motives. They may vary, in immaterial points, but even these variations arise from some valid circumstance. The American towns are growing so rapidly, that they are getting to have the population of capitals without enjoying their commonest facilities. The exaggerated tone of our largest towns, for instance, forbids the exchange of visits by means of servants. It may suit the habits of provincial life to laugh at this as an absurdity, but it may be taken pretty safely as a rule, that men and women of as much common sense as the rest of their fellow-creatures, with the best opportunities of cultivating all those tastes that are dependant on society, and with no other possible motive than convenience, would not resort to such a practice without a suitable inducement. No one who has not lived in a large town that _does_ possess these facilities, can justly appreciate their great advantages, or properly understand how much a place like New York, with its three hundred thousand inhabitants, loses by not adopting them. We have conventions for all sorts of things in America, some of which do good and others harm, but I cannot imagine anything that would contribute more to the comfort of society, than one which should settle the laws of intercourse on principles better suited to the real condition of the country than those which now exist. It is not unusual to read descriptions deriding the forms of Europe, written by travelling Americans; but I must think they have been the productions of very young travellers, or, at least, of such as have not had the proper means of appreciating the usages they ridicule Taking my own experience as a guide, I have no hesitation in saying, that I know no people among whom the ordinary social intercourse is as uncomfortable, and as little likely to stand the test of a rational examination, as our own. The first rule, all-important for an American to know, is, that the latest arrival makes the first visit. England is, in some respects, an exception to this practice, but I believe it prevails in all the rest of Europe. I do not mean to say that departures are not made from this law, in particular instances; but they should always be taken as exceptions, and as pointed compliments. This rule has many conveniences, and I think it also shows a more delicate attention to sentiment and feeling. While the points of intrusion and of disagreeable acquaintances are left just where they would be under our own rule, the stranger is made the judge of his own wishes. It is, moreover, impossible, in a large town, to know of every arrival. Many Americans, who come to Europe with every claim to attention, pass through it nearly unnoticed, from a hesitation about obtruding themselves on others, under the influence of the opinions in which they have been educated. This for a long time was my own case, and it was only when a more familiar acquaintance with the practices of this part of the world made me acquainted with their advantages that I could consent freely to put myself forward. You are not to understand that any stranger arriving in a place like Paris, or London, has a right to leave cards for whom he pleases. It is not the custom, except for those who, by birth, or official station, or a high reputation, may fairly deem themselves privileged, to assume this liberty, and even then, it is always better to take some preliminary step to assure one's self that the visit will be acceptable. The law of salutes is very much the law of visits, in this part of the world. The ship arriving sends an officer to know if his salute will be returned gun for gun, and the whole affair, it is true, is conducted in rather a categorical manner, but the governing principles are the same in both cases, though more management may be required between two gentlemen than between two men-of-war. The Americans in Europe, on account of the country's having abjured all the old feudal distinctions that still so generally prevail here, labour under certain disadvantages, that require, on the one hand, much tact and discretion to overcome, and, on the other, occasionally much firmness and decision. The rule I have adopted in my own case, is to defer to every usage, in matters of etiquette, so far as I have understood them, that belongs to the country in which I may happen to be. If, as has sometimes happened (but not in a solitary instance in France), the claims of a stranger have been overlooked, I have satisfied myself by remembering, that, in this respect at least, the Americans are the superiors, for that is a point in which we seldom fail; and if they are remembered, to accept of just as much attention as shall be offered. In cases, in which those arbitrary distinctions are set up, that, by the nature of our institutions cannot, either in similar or in any parallel cases, exist in America, and the party making the pretension is on neutral ground, _if the claim be in any manner pressed_, I would say that it became an American to resist it promptly; neither to go out of his way to meet it, nor to defer to it when it crosses his path. In really good society awkward cases of this nature are not very likely to occur; they are, however, more likely to occur as between our own people and the English, than between those of any other nation; for the latter, in mixed general associations, have scarcely yet learned to look upon and treat us as the possessors of an independent country. It requires perfect self-possession, great tact, and some nerve, for an American, who is brought much in contact with the English on the continent of Europe, to avoid a querulous and ungentlemanlike disposition to raise objections on these points, and at the same time to maintain the position, and command the respect, with which he should never consent to dispense. From my own little experience, I should say we are better treated, and have less to overlook, in our intercourse with the higher than with the intermediate classes of the English. You will have very different accounts of these points, from some of our travellers. I only give you the results of my own observation, under the necessary limitations of my own opportunities. Still I must be permitted to say that too many of our people, in their habitual deference to England, mistake offensive condescension for civility. Of the two, I will confess I would rather encounter direct arrogance, than the assumption of a right to be affable. The first may at least be resisted. Of all sorts of superiority, that of a condescending quality is the least palatable. I believe Washington is the only place in America where it is permitted to send cards. In every other town, unless accompanied by an invitation, and even then the card is supposed to be left, it would be viewed as airs. It is even equivocal to leave a card in person, unless denied. Nothing can be worse adapted to the wants of American society than this rigid conformity to facts. Without porters; with dwellings in which the kitchens and servants' halls are placed just as far from the street-doors as dimensions of the houses will allow; with large straggling towns that cover as much ground as the more populous capitals of Europe, and these towns not properly divided into quarters; with a society as ambitious of effect, in its way, as any I know; and with people more than usually occupied with business and the family cares,--one is expected to comply rigidly with the most formal rules of village propriety. It is easy to trace these usages to their source, provincial habits and rustic manners; but towns with three hundred thousand inhabitants ought to be free from both. Such rigid conditions cannot well be observed, and a consequence already to be traced is, that those forms of society which tend to refine it, and to render it more human and graceful, are neglected from sheer necessity. Carelessness in the points of association connected with sentiment (and all personal civilities and attention have this root) grows upon one like carelessness in dress, until an entire community may get to be as ungracious in deportment, as it is unattractive in attire. The etiquette of visits, here, is reduced to a sort of science. A card is sent by a servant, and returned by a servant. It is polite to return it, next day, though three, I believe, is the lawful limits, and it is politer still to return it the day it is received. There is no affectation about sending the card, as it is not at all unusual to put E.P. _(en personne)_ on it, by way of expressing a greater degree of attention, even when the card is sent. When the call is really made in person, though the visitor does not ask to be admitted, it is also common to request the porter to say that the party was at the gate. All these niceties may seem absurd and supererogatory, but depend on it they have a direct and powerful agency in refining and polishing intercourse, just as begging a man's pardon, when you tread on his toe, has an effect to humanize, though the parties know no offence was intended. Circumstances once rendered it proper that I should leave a card for a Russian _diplomate_, an act that I took care he should know, indirectly, I went out of my way to do, as an acknowledgment for the civilities his countrymen showed to us Americans. My name was left at the gate of his hotel (it was not in Paris), as I was taking a morning ride. On returning home, after an absence of an hour, I found his card lying on my table. Instead, however, of its containing the usual official titles, it was simply Prince --. I was profoundly emerged in the study of this new feature in the forms of etiquette, when the friend, who had prepared the way for the visit, entered. I asked an explanation, and he told me that I had received a higher compliment than could be conveyed by a merely official card, this being a proffer of _personal_ attention. "You will get an invitation to dinner soon;" and, sure enough, one came before he had quitted the house. Now, here was a delicate and flattering attention paid, and one that I felt, without trouble to either party; one that the occupations of the _diplomate_ would scarcely permit him to pay, except in extraordinary cases, under rules more rigid. There is no obligation on a stranger to make the first visit, certainly; but if he do not, he is not to be surprised if no one notices him. It is a matter of delicacy to obtrude on the privacy of such a person, it being presumed that he wishes to be retired. We have passed some time in a village near Paris, which contains six or eight visitable families. With one of these I had some acquaintance, and we exchanged civilities; but wishing to be undisturbed, I extended my visit no farther, and I never saw anything of the rest of my neighbours. They waited for me to make the advances. A person in society, here, who is desirous of relieving himself, for a time, from the labour and care of maintaining the necessary intercourse, can easily do it, by leaving cards of P.P.O. It might be awkward to remain long in a place very publicly after such a step, but I ventured on it once, to extricate myself from engagements that interfered with more important pursuits, with entire success. I met several acquaintances in the street, after the cards were sent, and we even talked together, but I got no more visits or invitations. When ready _to return to town_, all I had to do was to leave cards again, and things went on as if nothing had happened. I parried one or two allusions to my absence, and had no further difficulty. The only awkward part of it was, that I accepted an invitation to dine _en famille_ with a literary friend, and one of the guests, of whom there were but three, happened to be a person whose invitation to dinner I had declined on account of quitting town! As he was a sensible man, I told him the simple fact, and we laughed at the _contretems_, and drank oar wine in peace. The Americans who come abroad frequently complain of a want of hospitality in the public agents. There is a strong disposition in every man under institutions like our own, to mistake himself for a part of the government, in matters with which he has no proper connexion, while too many totally overlook those interests which it is their duty to watch. In the first place, the people of the United Slates do not give salaries to their ministers of sufficient amount to authorize them to expect that any part of the money should be returned in the way of personal civilities. Fifty thousand francs a year is the usual sum named by the French, as the money necessary to maintain a genteel town establishment, with moderate evening entertainments, and an occasional dinner. This is three thousand francs more than the salary of the minister, out of which he is moreover expected to maintain his regular diplomatic intercourse. It is impossible for any one to do much in the way of personal civilities, on such an allowance. There is, moreover, on the part of too many of our people, an aptitude to betray a jealous sensitiveness on the subject of being presented at foreign courts. I have known some claim it _as a right_ when it is yielded to the minister himself as an act of grace. The receptions of a sovereign are merely his particular mode of receiving visits. No one will pretend that the President of the United States is obliged to give levees and dinners, nor is a king any more compelled to receive strangers, or even his own subjects, unless it suit his policy and his taste. His palace is his house, and he is the master of it, the same as any other man is master of his own abode. It is true, the public expects something of him, and his allowance is probably regulated by this expectation, but the interference does not go so far as to point out his company. Some kings pass years without holding a court at all; others receive every week. The public obligation to open his door, is no more than an obligation of expediency, of which he, and he only, can be the judge. This being the rule, not only propriety, but fair dealing requires that all who frequent a court should comply with the conditions that are understood to be implied in the permission. While there exists an exaggerated opinion, on the part of some of our people, on the subject of the fastidiousness of princes, as respects their associates, there exists among others very confused notions on the other side of the question. A monarch usually cares very little about the quarterings and the nobility of the person he receives, but he always wishes his court to be frequented by people of education, accomplishments, and breeding. In Europe these qualities are confined to _castes_, and, beyond a question, as a general practice, every king would not only prefer, but, were there a necessity for it, he would command that his doors should be closed against all others, unless they came in a character different from that of courtiers. This object has, in effect, been obtained, by establishing a rule, that no one who has not been presented at his own court can claim to be presented at any foreign European court; thus leaving each sovereign to see that no one of his own subjects shall travel with this privilege who would be likely to prove an unpleasant guest to any other prince. But we have neither any prince nor any court, and the minister is left to decide for himself who is, and who is not, proper to be presented. Let us suppose a case. A master and his servant make a simultaneous request to be presented to the King of France. Both are American citizens, and if _either_ has any political claim, beyond mere courtesy, to have his request attended to, _both_ have. The minister is left to decide for himself. He cannot so far abuse the courtesy that permits him to present his countrymen at all, as to present the domestic, and of course he declines doing it. In this case, perhaps, public opinion would sustain him, as, unluckily, the party of the domestics is small in America, the duties usually falling to the share of foreigners and blacks. But the principle may be carried upwards, until a point is attained where a minister might find it difficult to decide between that which his own sense of propriety should dictate, and that which others might be disposed to claim. All other ministers get rid of their responsibility by the acts of their own courts; but the minister of the republic is left exposed to the calumny, abuse, and misrepresentation of any disappointed individual, should he determine to do what is strictly right. Under these circumstances, it appears to me that there are but two courses left for any agent of our government to pursue: either to take _official_ rank as his only guide, or to decline presenting any one. It is not his duty to act as a master of ceremonies; every court has a regular officer for this purpose, and any one who has been presented himself, is permitted on proper representations to present others. The trifling disadvantage will be amply compensated for, by the great and peculiar benefits that arise from our peculiar form of government. These things will quite likely strike you as of little moment. They are, however, of more concern than one living in the simple society of America may at first suppose. The etiquette of visiting has of course an influence on the entire associations of a traveller, and may not be overlooked, while the single fact that one people were practically excluded from the European courts, would have the same effect on their other enjoyments here, that it has to exclude an individual from the most select circles of any particular town. Ordinary life is altogether coloured by things that, in themselves, may appear trifling, but which can no more be neglected with impunity, than one can neglect the varying fashions in dress. The Americans are not a shoving people, like their cousins the English. Their fault in this particular lies in a morbid pride, with a stubbornness that is the result of a limited experience, and which is too apt to induce them to set up their own provincial notions, as the standard, and to throw them backward into the intrenchments, of self-esteem. This feeling is peculiarly fostered by the institutions. It is easy to err in this manner; and it is precisely the failing of the countryman, everywhere, when he first visits town. It is, in fact, the fault of ignorance of the world. By referring to what I have just told you, it will be seen that these are the very propensities which will be the most likely to make one uncomfortable in Europe, where so much of the initiative of intercourse is thrown upon the shoulders of the stranger. I cannot conclude this letter without touching on another point, that suggests itself at the moment. It is the fashion to decry the niggardliness of the American government on the subject of money, as compared with those of this hemisphere. Nothing can be more unjust. Our working men are paid better than even those of England, with the exception of a few who have high dignities to support. I do not see the least necessity for giving the President a dollar more than he gets to-day, since all he wants is enough to entertain handsomely, and to shield him from loss. Under our system, we never can have an _exclusive_ court, nor is it desirable, for in this age a court is neither a school of manners, nor a school of anything else that is estimable. These facts are sufficiently proved by England, a country whose mental cultivation and manners never stood as high as they do to-day, and yet it has virtually been without a court for an entire generation. A court may certainly foster taste and elegance; but they may be quite as well fostered by other, and less exclusive, means. But while the President may receive enough, the heads of departments, at home, and the foreign ministers of the country, are not more than half paid, _particularly the latter_. The present minister is childless, his establishment and his manner of living are both handsome, but not a bit more so than those of a thousand others who inhabit this vast capital, and his intercourse with his colleagues is not greater than is necessary to the interests of his country. Now, I know from his own statement, that his expenses, without a family, exceed by one hundred per cent, his salary. With a personal income of eighty to a hundred thousand francs a years, he can bear this drain on his private fortune, but he is almost the only minister we ever had here who could. The actual position of our diplomatic agents in Europe is little understood at home. There are but two or three modes of maintaining the rights of a nation, to say nothing of procuring those concessions from others which enter into the commercial relations of states, and in some degree affect their interests. The best method, certainly, as respects the two first, is to manifest a determination to defend them by an appeal to force; but so many conflicting interests stand in the way of such a policy, that it is exceedingly difficult, wisest and safest in the end though it be, to carry it out properly. At any rate, such a course has never yet been in the power of the American government, whatever it may be able to do hereafter, with its increasing numbers and growing wealth. But even strength is not always sufficient to obtain voluntary and friendly concessions, for principle must, in some degree, be respected by the most potent people, or they will be put to the ban of the world. Long diplomatic letters, although they may answer the purposes of ministerial _exposés_, and read well enough in the columns of a journal, do very little, in fact, as make-weights in negotiations. I have been told here, _sub rosâ_, and I believe it that some of our laboured efforts, in this way to obtain redress in the protracted negotiation for indemnity, have actually lain months in the _bureaux_, unread by those who alone have power to settle the question. Some _commis_ perhaps may have cursorily related their contents to his superior, but the superior himself is usually too much occupied in procuring and maintaining ministerial majorities, or in looking after the monopolizing concerns of European politics, to wade through folios of elaborate argument in manuscript. The public ought to understand, that the point presents itself to him in the security of his master's capital, and with little or no apprehension of its coming to an appeal to arms, very differently from what it occasionally presents itself in the pages of a President's message, or in a debate in Congress. He has so many demands on his time, that it is even difficult to have a working interview with him at all; and when one is obtained, it is not usual to do more than to go over the preliminaries. The details are necessarily referred to subordinates. Now, in such a state of things, any one accustomed to the world, can readily understand how much may be effected by the kind feelings that are engendered by daily, social intercourse. A few words can be whispered in the ears of a minister, in the corner of a drawing-room, that would never reach him in his bureau. Then _all_ the ministers are met in society, while the _diplomate_, properly speaking, can claim officially to see but _one_. In short, in saving, out of an overflowing treasury, a few thousand dollars a year, we trifle with our own interests, frequently embarrass our agents, and in some degree discredit the country. I am not one of your _sensitives_ on the subject of parade and appearance, nor a member of the embroidery school; still I would substitute for the irrational frippery of the European customs, a liberal hospitality, and a real elegance, that should speak well for the hearts and tastes of the nation. The salary of the minister at Paris, I know it, by the experience of a housekeeper, ought to be increased by at least one half, and it would tell better for the interests of the country were it doubled. Even in this case, however, I do not conceive that an American would be justified in mistaking the house of an envoy for a national inn; but that the proper light to view his allowances would be to consider them as made, first, as an act of justice to the functionary himself; next, as a measure of expediency, as connected with the important interests of the country. As it is, I am certain that no one but a man of fortune can accept a foreign appointment, without committing injustice to his heirs; and I believe few do accept them without sincerely regretting the step, in after years. LETTER XII. Sir Walter Scott in Paris.--Conversation with him.--Copyright in America.--Miss Scott.--French Compliments.--Sir Walter Scott's Person and Manners.--Ignorance as to America.--French Commerce.--French Translations.--American Luxury. To JAMES E. DE KAY, ESQUIRE. We have not only had Mr. Canning in Paris, but Sir Walter Scott has suddenly appeared among us. The arrival of the Great Unknown, or, indeed, of any little Unknown from England, would be an event to throw all the reading clubs at home into a state of high moral and poetical excitement. We are true village _lionizers_. As the professors of the Catholic religion are notoriously more addicted to yielding faith to miraculous interventions, in the remoter dioceses, than in Rome itself; as loyalty is always more zealous in a colony than in a court; as fashions are more exaggerated in a province than in a capital, and men are more prodigious to every one else than their own valets,--so do we throw the haloes of a vast ocean around the honoured heads of the celebrated men of this eastern hemisphere. This, perhaps, is the natural course of things, and is as unavoidable as that the sun shall hold the earth within the influence of its attraction, until matters shall be reversed by the earth's becoming the larger and more glorious orb of the two. Not so in Paris. Here men of every gradation of celebrity, from Napoleon down to the Psalmanazar of the day, are so very common, that one scarcely turns round in the streets to look at them. Delicate and polite attentions, however, fall as much to the share of reputation here as in any other country, and perhaps more so as respects literary men, though there is so little _wonder-mongering_. It would be quite impossible that the presence of Sir Walter Scott should not excite a sensation. He was frequently named in the journals, received a good deal of private and some public notice, but, on the whole, much less of both, I think, than one would have a right to expect for him, in a place like Paris. I account for the fact, by the French distrusting the forthcoming work on Napoleon, and by a little dissatisfaction which prevails on the subject of the tone of "Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk." This feeling may surprise you, as coming from a nation as old and as great as France; but, alas! we are all human. The King spoke to him, in going to his chapel, Sir Walter being in waiting for that purpose; but, beyond this, I believe he met with no civilities from the court. As for myself, circumstances that it is needless to recount had brought me, to a slight degree, within the notice of Sir Walter Scott, though we had never met, nor had I ever seen him, even in public, so as to know his person. Still I was not without hopes of being more fortunate now, while I felt a delicacy about obtruding myself any further on his time and attention. Several days after his arrival went by, however, without my good luck bringing me in his way, and I began to give the matter up, though the Princesse ---- with whom I had the advantage of being on friendly terms, flattered me with an opportunity of seeing the great writer at her house, for she had a fixed resolution of making his acquaintance before he left Paris, _coûte que coûte_. It might have been ten days after the arrival of Sir Walter Scott, that I had ordered a carriage, one morning, with an intention of driving over to the other side of the river, and had got as far as the lower flight of steps, on my way to enter it, when, by the tramping of horses in the court, I found that another coach was driving in. It was raining, and, as my own carriage drove from the door to make way for the newcomer, I stopped where I was, until it could return. The carriage-steps rattled, and presently a large, heavy-moulded man appeared in the door of the hotel. He was grey, and limped a little, walking with a cane. His carriage immediately drove round, and was succeeded by mine, again; so I descended. We passed each other on the stairs, bowing as a matter of course. I had got to the door, and was about to enter the carriage, when it flashed on my mind that the visit might be to myself. The two lower floors of the hotel were occupied as a girl's boarding-school; the reason of our dwelling in it, for our own daughters were in the establishment; _au second_, there was nothing but our own _appartement_, and above us, again, dwelt a family whose visitors never came in carriages. The door of the boarding-school was below, and men seldom came to it, at all. Strangers, moreover, sometimes did honour me with calls. Under these impressions I paused, to see if the visitor went as far as our flight of steps. All this time, I had not the slightest suspicion of who he was, though I fancied both the face and form were known to me. The stranger got up the large stone steps slowly, leaning, with one hand, on the iron railing, and with the other, on his cane. He was on the first landing, as I stopped, and, turning towards the next flight, our eyes met. The idea that I might be the person he wanted, seemed then to strike him for the first time. "Est-ce Mons. ---- que j'ai l'honneur de voir?" he asked, in French, and with but an indifferent accent. "Monsieur, je m'appelle ----. Eh bien, donc--je suis Walter Scott." I ran up to the landing, shook him by the hand, which he stood holding out to me cordially, and expressed my sense of the honour he was conferring. He told me, in substance, that the Princesse ---- had been as good as her word, and having succeeded herself in getting hold of him, she had good-naturedly given him my address. By way of cutting short all ceremony, he had driven from his hotel to my lodgings. All this time he was speaking French, while my answers and remarks were in English. Suddenly recollecting himself, he said--"Well, here have I been _parlez-vousing_ to you, in a way to surprise you, no doubt; but these Frenchmen have got my tongue so set to their lingo, that I have half forgotten my own language." As we proceeded up the next flight of steps, he accepted my arm, and continued the conversation in English, walking with more difficulty than I had expected to see. You will excuse the vanity of my repeating the next observation he made, which I do in the hope that some of our own exquisites in literature may learn in what manner a man of true sentiment and sound feeling regards a trait that they have seen fit to stigmatize unbecoming, "I'll tell you what I most like," he added, abruptly; "and it is the manner in which you maintain the ascendency of your own country on all proper occasions, without descending to vulgar abuse of ours. You are obliged to bring the two nations in collision, and I respect your liberal hostility." This will probably be esteemed treason in our own self-constituted mentors of the press, one of whom, I observe, has quite lately had to apologize to his readers for exposing some of the sins of the English writers in reference to ourselves! But these people are not worth our attention, for they have neither the independence which belongs to masculine reason, nor manhood even to prize the quality in others. "I am afraid the mother has not always treated the daughter well," he continued, "feeling a little jealous of her growth, perhaps; for, though we hope England has not yet begun to descend on the evil side, we have a presentiment that she has got to the top of the ladder." There were two entrances to our apartments; one, the principal, leading by an ante-chamber and _salle à manger_ into the _salon_, and thence through other rooms to a terrace; and the other, by a private corridor, to the same spot. The door of my cabinet opened on this corridor, and though it was dark, crooked, and anything but savoury, as it led by the kitchen, I conducted Sir Walter through it, under an impression that he walked with pain; an idea of which I could not divest myself, in the hurry of the moment. But for this awkwardness on my part, I believe I should have been the witness of a singular interview. General Lafayette had been with me a few minutes before, and he had gone away by the _salon_, in order to speak to Mrs. ----. Having a note to write, I had left him there, and I think his carriage could not have quitted the court when that of Sir Walter Scott entered. If so, the General must have passed out by the ante-chamber about the time we came through the corridor. There would be an impropriety in my relating all that passed in this interview; but we talked over a matter of business, and then the conversation was more general. You will remember that Sir Walter was still the _Unknown_[14] and that he was believed to be in Paris in search of facts for the Life of Napoleon. Notwithstanding the former circumstance, he spoke of his works with great frankness and simplicity, and without the parade of asking any promises of secrecy. In short, as he commenced in this style, his authorship was alluded to by us both just as if it had never been called in question. He asked me if I had a copy of the ---- by me, and on my confessing I did not own a single volume of anything I had written, he laughed, and said he believed that most authors had the same feeling on the subject: as for himself, he cared not if he never saw a Waverley novel again, as long as he lived. Curious to know whether a writer as great and as practised as he felt the occasional despondency which invariably attends all my own little efforts of this nature, I remarked that I found the mere composition of a tale a source of pleasure, so much so, that I always invented twice as much as was committed to paper in my walks, or in bed, and in my own judgment much the best parts of the composition never saw the light; for what was written was usually written at set hours, and was a good deal a matter of chance, and that going over and over the same subject in proofs disgusted me so thoroughly with the book, that I supposed every one else would be disposed to view it with the same eyes. To this he answered that he was spared much of the labour of proofreading, Scotland, he presumed, being better off than America in this respect; but still be said he "would as soon see his dinner again after a hearty meal as to read one of his own tales when he was fairly rid of it." [Footnote 14: He did not avow himself for several months afterwards.] He sat with me nearly an hour, and he manifested, during the time the conversation was not tied down to business, a strong propensity to humour. Having occasion to mention our common publisher in Paris, he quaintly termed him, with a sort of malicious fun, "our Gosling;"[15] adding, that he hoped he, at least, "laid golden eggs." [Footnote 15: His name was Gosselin.] I hoped that he had found the facilities he desired, in obtaining facts for the forthcoming history. He rather hesitated about admitting this. "One can hear as much as he pleases, as a gentleman, he is not always sure how much of it he can, with propriety, relate in a book; besides"--throwing all his latent humour into the expression of his small grey eyes--"one may even doubt how much of what he hears is fit for history on another account." He paused, and his face assumed an exquisite air of confiding simplicity, as he continued, with perfect _bonne foi_ and strong Scottish feeling, "I have been to see _my countryman_ M'Donald, and I rather think that will be about as much as I can do here, now." This was uttered with so much _naïveté_ that I could hardly believe it was the same man who, a moment before, had shown so much shrewd distrust of oral relations of facts. I inquired when we might expect the work "Some time in the course of the winter," he replied, "though it is likely to prove larger than I at first intended. We have got several volumes printed, but I find I must add to the matter considerably, in order to dispose of the subject. I thought I should get rid of it in seven volumes, which are already written, but it will reach, I think, to nine." "If you have two still to write, I shall not expect to see the book before spring." "You may: let me once get back to Abbotsford, and I'll soon knock off those two fellows." To this I had nothing to say, although I thought such a _tour de force_ in writing might better suit invention than history. When he rose to go, I begged him to step into the _salon_, that I might have the gratification of introducing my wife to him. To this he very good-naturedly assented, and entering the room, after presenting Mrs. ---- and my nephew W----. he took a seat. He sat some little time, and his fit of pleasantry returned, for he illustrated his discourse by one or two apt anecdotes, related with a slightly Scottish accent, that he seemed to drop and assume at will. Mrs. ---- observed to him that the _bergère_ in which he was seated had been twice honoured that morning, for General Lafayette had not left it more than half an hour. Sir Walter Scott looked surprised at this, and said inquiringly, "I thought he had gone to America, to pass the rest of his days." On my explaining the true state of the case, he merely observed, "He is a great man;" and yet I thought the remark was made coldly, or in complaisance to us. When Sir Walter left us, it was settled that I was to breakfast with him the following day but one. I was punctual, of course, and found him in a new silk _douillette_ that he had just purchased, trying "as hard as he could," as he pleasantly observed, to make a Frenchman of himself--an undertaking as little likely to be successful, I should think, in the case of his Scottish exterior, and Scottish interior too, as any experiment well could be. There were two or three visitors, besides Miss Ann Scott, his daughter, who was his companion in the journey. He was just answering an invitation from the Princesse ----, to an evening party, as I entered. "Here," said he, "you are a friend of the lady, and _parlez-vous_ so much better than I; can you tell me whether this is for _Jeudi_, or _Lundi_, or _Mardi_, or whether it means no day at all?" I told him the day of the week intended. "You get notes occasionally from the lady, or you could not read her scrawl so readily?" "She is very kind to us, and we often have occasion to read her writing." "Well, it is worth a very good dinner to get through a page of it." "I take my revenge in kind, and I fancy she has the worst of it." "I don't know, after all that she will get much the better of me with this _plume d'auberge._" He was quite right, for, although Sir Walter writes a smooth even hand, and one that appears rather well than otherwise on a page, it is one of the most difficult to decipher I have ever met with; the i's, u's, m's, n's, a's, e's, t's, etc., etc., for want of dots, crossings, and being fully rounded, looking all alike, and rendering the reading slow and difficult, without great familiarity with his mode of handling the pen: at least, I have found it so. He had sealed the note, and was about writing the direction, when he seemed at a loss. "How do you address this lady--as Her Highness?" I was much surprised at this question from him, for it denoted a want of familiarity with the world, that one would not have expected in a man who had been so very much and so long courted by the great. But, after all, his life has been provincial, though, as his daughter remarked in the course of the morning, they had no occasion to quit Scotland to see the world, all the world coming to see Scotland. The next morning he was with me again, for near an hour and we completed our little affair. After this we had a conversation on the law of copyrights in the two countries, which as we possess a common language, is a subject of great national interest. I understood him to say that he had a double right in England to his works; one under a statute, and the other growing out of common law. Any one publishing a book, let it be written by whom it might, in England, duly complying with the law, can secure the right, whereas none but a _citizen_ can do the same in America. I regret to say that I misled him on the subject of our copyright law, which, after all, is not so much more illiberal than that of England as I had thought it. I told Sir Walter Scott, that, in order to secure a copyright in America, it was necessary the book should never have been published _anywhere else_. This was said under the popular notion of the matter; or that which is entertained among the booksellers. Reflection and examination have since convinced me of my error: the publication alluded to in the law can only mean publication in America; for, as the object of doing certain acts previously to publication is merely to forewarn the _American_ public that the right is reserved, there can be no motive for having reference to any other publication. It is, moreover, in conformity with the spirit of all laws to limit the meaning of their phrases by their proper jurisdiction. Let us suppose a case. An American writes a book, he sends a copy to England, where it is published in March complying with the terms of our own copyright law, as to the entries and notices, the same work is published here in April. Now will it be pretended that his right is lost, always providing that his own is the first _American_ publication? I do not see how it can be so by either the letter or the spirit of the law. The intention is to encourage the citizen to write, and to give him a just property in the fruits of his labour; and the precautionary provisions of the law are merely to prevent others from being injured for want of proper information. It is of no moment to either of these objects that the author of a work has already reaped emolument in a foreign country: the principle is to encourage literature by giving it all the advantages it can obtain. If these views are correct, why may not an English writer secure a right in this country, by selling it in season, to a citizen here? An equitable trust might not, probably would not be sufficient; but a _bona fide_ transfer for a valuable consideration, I begin to think, would. It seems to me that all the misconception which has existed on this point has arisen from supposing that the term _publication_ refers to other than a publication in the country. But, when one remembers how rare it is to get lawyers to agree on a question like this, it becomes a layman to advance his opinion with great humility. I suppose, after all a good way of getting an accurate notion of the meaning of the law, would be to toss a dollar into the air, and cry "heads," or "tails." Sir Walter Scott seemed fully aware of the great circulation of his books in America, as well as how much he lost by not being able to secure a copyright. Still he admitted they produced him something. Our conversation on this subject terminated by a frank offer, on his part, of aiding me with the publishers of his own country;[16] but, although grateful for the kindness, I was not so circumstanced as to be able to profit by it. [Footnote 16: An offer that was twice renewed, after intervals of several years.] He did not appear to me to be pleased with Paris. His notions of the French were pretty accurate, though clearly not free from the old fashioned prejudices. "After all," he remarked, "I am a true Scot, never, except on this occasion, and the short visit I made to Paris in 1815, having been out of my own country, unless to visit England, and I have even done very little of the latter." I understood him to say he had never been in Ireland, at all. I met him once more, in the evening, at the hotel of the Princesse ----. The party had been got together in a hurry, and was not large. Our hostess contrived to assemble some exceedingly clever people, however, among whom were one or two women, who are already historical, and whom I had fancied long since dead. All the female part of the company, with the silent delicacy that the French so well understand, appeared with ribbons, hats, or ornaments of some sort or other, of a Scottish stamp. Indeed, almost the only woman in the room, that did not appear to be a Caledonian was Miss Scott. She was in half-mourning, and, with her black eyes and jet-black hair, might very well have passed for a French woman, but for a slight peculiarity about the cheek-bones. She looked exceedingly well, and was much admired. Having two or three more places to go to, they stayed but an hour. As a matter of course, all the French women were exceedingly _empressées_ in their manner towards the Great Unknown; and as there were three or four that were very exaggerated on the score of romance, he was quite lucky if he escaped some absurdities. Nothing could be more patient than his manner, under it all; but as soon as he very well could, he got into a corner, where I went to speak to him. He said, laughingly, that he spoke French with so much difficulty, he was embarrassed to answer the compliments. "I am as good a lion as needs be, allowing my mane to be stroked as familiarly as they please, but I can't growl for them, in French. How is it with you?" Disclaiming the necessity of being either a good or a bad lion, being very little troubled in that way, for his amusement I related to him an anecdote. Pointing out to him a Comtesse de ----, who was present, I told him, I had met this lady once a week for several months, and at every _soirée_ she invariably sailed up to me to say--"Oh, Monsieur ----, quelles livres!--vos charmans livres--que vos livres sont charmans!" and I had just made up my mind that she was, at least, a woman of taste, when she approached me with the utmost _sang-froid_, and cried-- "Bon soir, Monsieur ----; je viens d'acheter tous vos livres, et je compte profiter de la première occasion pour les lire!" I took leave of him in the ante-chamber, as he went away, for he was to quit Paris the following evening. Sir Walter Scott's person and manner have been so often described, that you will not ask much of me in this way, especially as I saw so little of him. His frame is large and muscular, his walk difficult, in appearance, though be boasted himself a vigorous mountaineer, and his action, in general, measured and heavy. His features and countenance were very Scottish, with the short thick nose, heavy lips, and massive cheeks. The superior or intellectual part of his head was neither deep nor broad, but perhaps the reverse, though singularly high. Indeed, it is quite uncommon to see a scull so round and tower-like in the formation, though I have met with them in individuals not at all distinguished for talents. I do not think a casual observer would find anything unusual in the exterior of Sir Walter Scott, beyond his physical force, which is great, without being at all extraordinary. His eye, however, is certainly remarkable. Grey, small, and without lustre, in his graver moments it appears to look inward, instead of regarding external objects, in a way, though the expression, more or less, belongs to abstraction, that I have never seen equalled. His smile is good-natured and social; and when he is in the mood, as happened to be the fact so often in our brief intercourse as to lead me to think it characteristic of the man, his eye would lighten with a great deal of latent fun. He spoke more freely of his private affairs than I had reason to expect, though our business introduced the subject naturally; and, at such times, I thought the expression changed to a sort of melancholy resolution, that was not wanting in sublimity. The manner of Sir Walter Scott is that of a man accustomed to see much of the world without being exactly a man of the world himself. He has evidently great social tact, perfect self-possession, is quiet, and absolutely without pretension, and has much dignity; and yet it struck me that he wanted the ease and _aplomb_ of one accustomed to live with his equals. The fact of his being a lion may produce some such effect; but I am mistaken if it be not more the influence of early habits and opinions than of anything else. Scott has been so much the mark of society, that it has evidently changed his natural manner, which is far less restrained than it is his habit to be in the world. I do not mean by this, the mere restraint of decorum, but a drilled simplicity or demureness, like that of girls who are curbed in their tendency to fun and light-heartedness, by the dread of observation. I have seldom known a man of his years, whose manner was so different in a _tête-à-tête_, and in the presence of a third person. In Edinburgh the circle must be small, and he probably knows every one. If strangers do go there, they do not go all at once, and of course the old faces form the great majority; so that he finds himself always on familiar ground. I can readily imagine that in Auld Reekie, and among the proper set, warmed perhaps by a glass of mountain-dew, Sir Walter Scott, in his peculiar way, is one of the pleasantest companions the world holds. There was a certain M. de ---- at the _soirée_ of the Princesse ----, who has obtained some notoriety as the writer of novels. I had, the honour of being introduced to this person, and was much amused with one of his questions. You are to understand that the vaguest possible notions exist in France on the subject of the United States. Empires, states, continents, and islands are blended in inextricable confusion, in the minds of a large majority of even the intelligent classes, and we sometimes hear the oddest ideas imaginable. This ignorance, quite pardonable in part, is not confined to France by any means, but exists even in England, a country that ought to know us better. It would seem that M. de ----, either because I was a shade or two whiter than himself, or because he did not conceive it possible that an American could write a book (for in this quarter of the world there is a strong tendency to believe that every man whose name crosses the ocean from America is merely some European who has gone there), or from some cause that to me is inexplicable, took it into his head that I was an Englishman who had amused a leisure year or two in the Western Hemisphere. After asking me a few questions concerning the country, he very coolly continued--"Et combien de temps avez-vous passé en Amérique, monsieur?" Comprehending his mistake, for a little practice here makes one quick in such matters, I answered, "Monsieur, nous y sommes depuis deux siècles." I question if M. de ---- has yet recovered from his surprise! The French, when their general cleverness is considered, are singularly ignorant of the habits, institutions, and civilization of other countries. This is in part owing to their being little addicted to travelling. Their commercial enterprise is not great; for though we occasionally see a Frenchman carrying with him into pursuits of this nature the comprehensive views, and one might almost say, the philosophy, that distinguish the real intelligence of the country, such instances are rare, the prevailing character of their commerce being caution and close dealing. Like the people of all great nations, their attention is drawn more to themselves than to others; and then the want of a knowledge of foreign languages has greatly contributed to their ignorance. This want of knowledge of foreign languages, in a nation that has traversed Europe as conquerors, is owing to the fact that they have either carried their own language with them, or met it everywhere. It is a want, moreover, that belongs rather to the last generation than to the present; the returned emigrants having brought back with them a taste for English, German, Italian, and Spanish, which has communicated itself to all, or nearly all, the educated people of the country. English, in particular, is now very generally studied; and perhaps, relatively, more French, under thirty years of age, are to be found in Paris who speak English, than Americans, of the same age, are to be found in New York who speak French. I think the limited powers of the language, and the rigid laws to which it has been subjected, contribute to render the French less acquainted with foreign nations than they would otherwise be. In all their translations there is an effort to render the word, however peculiar may be its meaning, into the French tongue. Thus, "township" and "city," met with in an American book, would probably be rendered by "_canton_" or "_commune_" or "_ville_;" neither of which conveys an accurate idea of the thing intended. In an English or American book we should introduce the French word at once, which would induce the reader to inquire into the differences that exist between the minor territorial divisions, of his own country, and those of the country of which he is reading. In this manner is the door open for further information, until both writers and readers come to find it easier and more agreeable to borrow words from others, than to curtail their ideas by their national vocabularies. The French, however, are beginning to feel their poverty in this respect, and some are already bold enough to resort to the natural cure. The habit of thinking of other nations through their own customs, betrays the people of this country into many ridiculous mistakes. One hears here the queerest questions imaginable every day; all of which, veiled by the good breeding and delicacy that characterize the nation, betray an innocent sense of superiority that may be smiled at, and which creates no feeling of resentment. A _savant_ lately named to me the coasting tonnage of France, evidently with the expectation of exciting my admiration; and on my receiving the information coolly, he inquired, with a little sarcasm of manner--"Without doubt, you have some coasting tonnage also in America?" "The coasting tonnage of the United Slates, Monsieur, is greater than the entire tonnage of France." The man looked astonished, and I was covered with questions as to the nature of the trade that required so much shipping among a population numerically so small. It could not possibly be the consumption of a country--he did not say it, but he evidently thought it--so insignificant and poor? I told him, that bread, wine, and every other article of the first necessity excepted, the other consumption of America, especially in luxuries, did not fall so much short of that of France as he imagined, owing to the great abundance in which the middling and lower classes lived. Unlike Europe, articles that were imported were mere necessaries of life, in America, such as tea, coffee, sugar, etc. etc., the lowest labourer usually indulging in them. He left me evidently impressed with new notions, for there is a desire to learn mingled with all their vanity. But I will relate a laughable blunder of a translator, by way of giving you a familiar example of the manner in which the French fall into error concerning the condition of other nations, and to illustrate my meaning. In one of the recent American novels that have been circulated here, a character is made to betray confusion, by tracing lines on the table, after dinner, with some wine that had been spilt; a sort of idle occupation sufficiently common to allow the allusion to be understood by every American. The sentence was faithfully rendered; but, not satisfied with giving his original, the translator annexes a note, in which he says, "One sees by this little trait, that the use of table-cloths, at the time of the American Revolution, was unknown in America!" You will understand the train of reasoning that led him to this conclusion. In France the cover is laid, perhaps, on a coarse table of oak, or even of pine, and the cloth is never drawn; the men leaving the table with the women. In America, the table is of highly polished mahogany, the cloth is removed, and the men sit, as in England. Now the French custom was supposed to be the custom of mankind, and wine could not be traced on the wood had there been a cloth; America was a young and semi-civilized nation, and, _ergo_, in 1779, there could have been no table-cloths known in America!--When men even visit a people of whom they have been accustomed to think in this way, they use their eyes through the medium of the imagination. I lately met a French traveller who affirmed that the use of carpets was hardly known among us. LETTER XIII. French Manufactures.--Sèvres China.--Tapestry of the Gobelins.--Paper for Hangings.--The Savonnerie.--French Carpets.--American Carpets. --Transfer of old Pictures from Wood to Canvass.--Coronation Coach. --The Arts in France--in America.--American Prejudice. To JAMES E. DE KAY, ESQUIRE. In my last, I gave you a few examples of the instances in which the French have mistaken the relative civilization of their country and America, and I shall now give you some in which we have fallen into the same error, or the other side of the question. There has lately been an exhibition of articles of French manufacture, at Paris; one of, I believe, the triennial collections of this character, that have been established here. The court of the Louvre was filled with temporary booths for the occasion, and vast ranges of the unfinished apartments in that magnificent palace have been thrown open for the same purpose. The court of the Louvre, of itself, is an area rather more than four hundred feet square, and I should think fully a quarter of a mile of rooms in the building itself are to be added to the space occupied for this purpose. The first idea, with which I was impressed, on walking through the booths and galleries, on this occasion, was the great disproportion between the objects purely of taste and luxury, and the objects of use. The former abounded, were very generally elegant and well-imagined, while the latter betrayed the condition of a nation whose civilization has commenced with the summit, instead of the base of society. In France, nearly every improvement in machinery is the result of scientific research; is unobjectionable in principles, profound in the adaptation of its parts to the end, and commonly beautiful in form. But it ends here, rarely penetrating the mass, and producing positive results. The Conservatoire des Arts, for instance, is full of beautiful and ingenious ploughs; while France is tilled with heavy, costly, and cumbrous implements of this nature. One sees light mould turning up, here, under a sort of agricultural _diligences_, drawn by four, and even six heavy horses, which in America would be done quite as well, and much sooner, by two. You know I am farmer enough to understand what I say, on a point like this. In France, the cutlery, ironware, glass, door-fastenings, hinges, locks, fire-irons, axes, hatchets, carpenter's tools, and, in short, almost everything that is connected with homely industry and homely comfort, is inferior to the same thing in America. It is true, many of our articles are imported, but this produces no change in the habits of the respective people; our manufactories are merely in Birmingham, instead of being in Philadelphia. I have now been long enough in France to understand that seeing an article in an exhibition like the one I am describing, is no proof that it enters at all into the comforts and civilization of the nation, although it may be an object as homely as a harrow or a spade. The scientific part of the country has little influence, in this way, on the operative. The chasm between knowledge and ignorance is so vast in France, that it requires a long time for the simplest idea to find its way across it. Exhibitions are everywhere bad guides to the average civilization of a country, as it is usual to expose only the objects that have been wrought with the greatest care. In a popular sense, they are proofs of what can be done, rather than of what _is_ done. The cloths that I saw in the booths, for instance, are not to be met with in the shops; the specimens of fire-arms, glass, cutlery, etc., etc., too, are all much superior to anything one finds on sale. But this is the case everywhere, from the boarding-school to the military parade, men invariably putting the best foot foremost when they are to be especially inspected. This is not the difference I mean. Familiar as every American, at all accustomed to the usages of genteel life in his own country, must be with the better manufactures of Great Britain, I think he would be struck by the inferiority of even the best specimens of the commoner articles that were here laid before the public. But when it came to the articles of elegance and luxury, as connected with forms, taste, and execution, though not always in ingenuity and extent of comfort, I should think that no Englishman, let his rank in life be what it would, could pass through this wilderness of elegancies without wonder. Even the manufactures in which we, or rather the English (for I now refer more to use than to production), ordinarily excel, such as carpets, rugs, porcelain, plate, and all the higher articles of personal comfort, _as exceptions_, surpass those of which we have any notion. I say, _as exceptions_, not in the sense by which we distinguish the extraordinary efforts of the ordinary manufacturer, in order to make a figure at an exhibition, but certain objects produced in certain exclusive establishments that are chiefly the property of the crown, as they have been the offspring of regal taste and magnificence. Of this latter character is the Sèvres china. There are manufactures of this name of a quality that brings them within the reach of moderate fortunes, it is true; but one obtains no idea of the length to which luxury and taste have been pushed in this branch of art without examining the objects made especially for the king, who is in the habit of distributing them as presents among the crowned heads and his personal favourites. After the ware has been made with the greatest care and of the best materials, artists of celebrity are employed to paint it. You can easily imagine the value of these articles, when you remember that each plate has a design of its own, beautifully executed in colours, and presenting a landscape or an historical subject that is fit to be framed and suspended in a gallery. One or two of the artists employed in this manner have great reputations, and it is no uncommon thing to see miniatures in gilded frames which, on examination, prove to be on porcelain. Of course the painting has been subject to the action of heat in the baking. As respects the miniatures, there is not much to be said in their favour. They are well drawn and well enough coloured; but the process and the material give them a glossy, unnatural appearance, which must prevent them from ever being considered as more than so many _tours de force_ in the arts. But on vases, dinner-sets, and all ornamental furniture of this nature, in which we look for the peculiarities of the material, they produce a magnificence of effect that I cannot describe. Vases of the value of ten or fifteen thousand francs, or even of more money, are not uncommon; and at the exhibition there was a little table, the price of which I believe was two thousand dollars, that was a perfect treasure in its way. Busts, and even statues, I believe, have been attempted in this branch of art. This of course is enlisting the statuary as well as the painter in its service. I remember to have seen, when at Sèvres, many busts of the late Duc de Berri in the process of drying, previously to being put into the oven. Our cicerone on that occasion made us laugh by the routine with which he went through his catalogue of wonders. He had pointed out to us the unbaked busts in a particular room, and on entering another apartment, where the baked busts were standing, he exclaimed--"Ah! voilà son Altesse Royale toute cuite." This is just the amount of the criticism I should hazard on this branch of the Sèvres art, or on that which exceeds its legitimate limits--"Behold his Royal Highness, ready cooked." The value of some of the single plates must be very considerable, and the king frequently, in presenting a solitary vase, or ornament of the Sèvres porcelain, presents thousands. The tapestry is another of the costly works that it has suited the policy of France to keep up, while her ploughs, and axes, and carts, and other ordinary implements, are still so primitive and awkward. The exhibition contained many specimens from the Gobelins that greatly surpassed my expectations. They were chiefly historical subjects, with the figures larger than life, and might very well have passed with a novice, at a little distance, for oil-paintings. The dimensions of the apartment are taken, and the subject is designed, of course, on a scale suited to the room. The effect of this species of ornament is very noble and imposing, and the tapestries have the additional merit of warmth and comfort. Hangings in cloth are very common in Paris, but the tapestry of the Gobelins is chiefly confined to the royal palaces. Our neighbour the Duc de ---- has some of it, however, in his hotel, a present from the king; but the colours are much faded, and the work is otherwise the worse for time. I have heard him say that one piece he has, even in its dilapidated state, is valued at seven thousand francs. Occasionally a little of this tapestry is found in this manner in the great hotels; but, as a rule, its use is strictly royal. The paper for hangings is another article in which the French excel. We get very pretty specimens of their skill in this manufacture in America, but, with occasional exceptions, nothing that is strictly magnificent finds its way into our markets. I was much struck with some of these hangings that were made to imitate velvet. The cloth appeared to be actually incorporated with the paper, and by no ingenuity of which I was master could I detect the means. The style of paper is common enough everywhere, but this exhibition had qualities far surpassing anything of the sort I had ever before seen. Curiosity has since led me to the paper-maker, in order to penetrate the secrets of his art; and there, like the affair of Columbus and the egg, I found the whole thing as simple as heart could wish. You will probably smile when you learn the process by which paper is converted into velvet, which is briefly this:-- Wooden moulds are used to stamp the designs, each colour being put on, by laying a separate mould on its proper place, one mould being used after another, though only one is used on any particular occasion. Thus, all the black is put on now, the green to-morrow, and the yellow next day. As to the velvets, they are produced as follows:--Wool is chopped fine, and dyed the desired hue. I am not certain that cotton, or even other materials, may not be used. This chopped and coloured wool is thrown into a tub; the mould is covered with some glutinous substance, and, when applied, it leaves on the paper the adhesive property, as types leave the ink. The paper passes immediately over the tub, and a boy throws on the wool. A light blow or two, of a rattan, tosses it about, and finally throws all back again into the tub that has not touched the glue. The _printed_ part, of course, is covered with blue, or purple, or scarlet wood, and is converted, by a touch of the wand, into velvet! The process of covering a yard lasts about ten seconds, and I should think considerably more than a hundred yards of paper could be velvetized in an hour. We laughed at the discovery, and came away satisfied that Solomon could have known nothing about manufacturing paper-hangings, or he would not have said there was nothing "new under the sun." But the manufacture of France that struck me as being strictly in the best taste, in which perfection and magnificence are attained without recourse to conceits, or doing violence to any of the proprieties, are the products of the Savonnerie, and the exquisitely designed and executed works of Beauvais. These include chair bottoms and backs, hangings for rooms, and, I believe, carpets. At all events, if the carpets do not come from these places, they are quite worthy to have that extraction. Flowers, arabesques, and other similar designs, exquisitely coloured and drawn, chiefly limit the efforts of the former; and the carpets were in single pieces, and made to fit the room. Nothing that you have ever seen, or probably have imagined, at all equals the magnificence of some of these princely carpets. Indeed, I know nothing that runs a closer parallel to the general civilization between France and England, and I might almost add of America, than the history of their respective carpets. In France, a vast majority of the people hardly know what a carpet is. They use mud floors, or, rising a little above the very lowest classes, coarse stone and rude tiles are substituted. The middling classes, out of the large towns, have little else besides painted tiles. The wooden _parquet_ is met with, in all the better houses, and is well made and well kept. There is a finish and beauty about them, that is not misplaced even in a palace. Among all these classes, until quite lately, carpets were unknown, or at least they were confined to the very highest class of society. The great influx of English has introduced them into the public hotels and common lodging-houses; but I have visited among many French of rank and fortune, in the dead of winter, and found no carpets. A few of a very coarse quality, made of rags, adroitly tortured into laboured designs, are seen, it is true, even in indifferent houses; but the rule is as I have told you. In short, carpets, in this country, until quite lately, have been deemed articles of high luxury; and, like nearly everything else that is magnificent and luxurious, at the point where they have been taken up, they infinitely exceed anything of the sort in England. The classical designs, perfect drawings, and brilliant colours, defeat every effort to surpass them,--I had almost said, all competition. In all America, except in the new regions, with here and there a dwelling on the frontier, there is scarcely a house to be found without carpets, the owners of which are at all above the labouring classes. Even in many of the latter they are to be found. We are carpeted, frequently, from the kitchen to the garret; the richness and rarity of the manufacture increasing as we ascend in the scale of wealth and fashion, until we reach the uttermost limits of our habits--a point where beauty and neatness verge upon elegance and magnificence. At this point, however, we stop, and the turn of the French commences. Now this is the history of the comparative civilization of the two countries, in a multitude of other matters; perhaps, it would be better to say, it is the general comparative history of the two countries. The English differ from us, only, in carrying their scale both higher and lower than ourselves; in being sometimes magnificent, and sometimes impoverished; but, rarely, indeed, do they equal the French in the light, classical, and elegant taste that so eminently distinguishes these people. There is something ponderous and purse-proud about the magnificence of England, that is scarcely ever visible here; though taste is evidently and rapidly on the increase in England on the one hand, as comfort is here on the other. The French have even partially adopted the two words "fashionable" and "comfortable." One of the most curious things connected with the arts in France, is that of transferring old pictures from wood to canvass. A large proportion of the paintings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were done on wood or copper, and many of the former are, or have been, in danger of being lost, from decay. In order to meet the evil, a process has been invented by which the painting is transferred to canvass, where it remains, to all appearance, as good as ever. I have taken some pains to ascertain in what manner this nice operation is performed. I have seen pictures in various stages of the process, though I have never watched any one through it all; and, in one instance, I saw a small Wouvermans stripped to the shirt, if it may be so expressed, or, in other words, _when it was nothing but paint_. From what I have seen and been told, I understand the mode of effecting this delicate and almost incredible operation to be as follows:-- A glue is rubbed over the face of the picture, which is then laid on a piece of canvass that is properly stretched and secured, to receive it. Weights are now laid on the back of the picture, and it is left for a day or two, in order that the glue may harden. The weights are then removed, and the operator commences removing the wood, first with a plane, and, when he approaches the paint, with sharp delicate chisels. The paint is kept in its place by the canvass to which it is glued, and which is itself secured to the table; and although the entire body of the colours, hardened as it is by time, is usually not thicker than a thin wafer, the wood is commonly taken entirely from it. Should a thin fragment be left, however, or a crack made in the paint, it is considered of no great moment. The Wouvermans alluded to, was pure paint, however, and I was shown the pieces of wood, much worm-eaten, that had been removed. When the wood is away, glue is applied to the _back of the paint_, and to the canvass on which it is intended the picture shall remain. The latter is then laid on the paint; new weights are placed above it, and they are left two or three days longer, for this new glue to harden. When it is thought the adhesion between the second canvass and the paint is sufficient, the weights are removed, the picture is turned, and warm water is used in loosening the first canvass from the face of the picture, until it can be stripped off. More or less of the varnish of the picture usually comes off with the glue, rendering the separation easier. The painting is then cleaned, retouched, and, should it be necessary, varnished and framed; after which it commonly looks as well, and is really as sound and as good as ever, so far, at least, as the consistency is concerned. Among other wonders in the exhibition, was the coronation coach of Charles X. This carriage is truly magnificent. It is quite large, as indeed are all the royal carriages, perhaps as large as an American stage-coach; the glass, pure and spotless as air, goes all round the upper compartments, so as to admit of a view of the whole interior; the panels are beautifully painted in design; the top has gilded and well-formed angels blowing trumpets, and the crown of France surmounts the centre. The wheels, and train, and pole, are red, striped with gold. All the leather is red morocco, gilt, as is the harness. Plumes of ostrich feathers ornament the angles, and, altogether, it is a most glittering and gorgeous vehicle. The paintings, the gildings, and all the details are well executed, except the running gear, which struck me as clumsy and imperfect. The cost is said to have been about sixty thousand dollars. Many new rooms in the Louvre were thrown open on this occasion, in order that the paintings on their ceilings might be viewed; and as I walked through this gorgeous magnificence, I felt how small were our highest pretensions to anything like elegance or splendour. The very extreme of art, of this nature, may, of itself, be of no great direct benefit, it is true; but is should be remembered, that the skill which produces these extraordinary fruits, in its road to the higher points of magnificence, produces all that embellishes life in the intermediate gradations. In America, in the eagerness of gain, and with the contracted habits that a love of gain engenders, which by their own avidity, as is usual with the grosser passions, too often defeat their own ends, we overlook the vast importance of cultivating the fine arts, even in a pecuniary sense, to say nothing of the increased means of enjoying the very money that is so blindly pursued, which their possession entails. France is at this moment laying all Christendom under contribution, simply by means of her taste. Italy, where the arts have flourished still longer, and where they have still more effectually penetrated society, would drive the English and French out of every market on earth, were the national energy at all equal to the national tastes. These things do not as exclusively belong to extreme luxury as they may at first seem. Science, skill of the nicest investigation, and great research, are all enlisted in their behalf; and, in time, implements of the most homely uses derive perfection, as by-plays, from the investigations consequent on the production of luxuries. It is true, that, by blending a certain amount of information with practice, as in the case of the American labourer, our wants find the means of furnishing their own supplies; but, apart from the fact that the man who makes a chair is not obliged to sit in it, and is therefore content to consult his profits merely, the impulses of practice are much aided by the accumulated knowledge of study. The influence that the arts of design have had on the French manufactures is incalculable. They have brought in the aid of chemistry, and mathematics, and a knowledge of antiquity; and we can trace the effects in the bronzes, the porcelain, the hangings, the chintzes, the silks, down to the very ribands of the country. We shall in vain endeavour to compete with the great European nations, unless we make stronger efforts to cultivate the fine arts. Of what avails our beautiful glass, unless we know how to cut it? or of what great advantage, in the strife of industry, will be even the _skilful_ glass-cutter, should he not also be the _tasteful_ glass-cutter? It is true that classical forms and proportions are, as yet, of no great account among us; and the great mass of the American people still cling to their own uninstructed fancies, in preference to the outlines and proportions of the more approved models, and to those hues which art has demonstrated to be harmonious. This is the history of every society in its progress to perfection; and, cut off as we are from the rest of the civilized world, it is not to be expected that we are to make an extraordinary exception. But, while we may be satisfied with our own skill and taste, the happy lot of all ignorance, our customers will not have the same self-complacency, to induce them to become purchasers. We find this truth already. We beat all nations in the fabrication of common unstamped cottons. Were trade as free as some political economists pretend, we should drive all our competitors out of every market, as respects this one article. But the moment we attempt to print, or to meddle with that part of the business which requires taste, we find ourselves inferior to the Europeans, whose forms we are compelled to imitate, and of course to receive when no longer novel, and whose hues defy our art. The wisest thing the United States could do, would be to appropriate thirty or forty millions to the formation of a marine, not to secure the coast, as our hen-roost statesmen are always preaching, but to keep in our own hands the control of our own fortunes, by rendering our enmity or friendship of so much account to Europe that no power shall ever again dare trespass on our national rights:--and one of the next wisest measures, I honestly believe, would be to appropriate at once a million to the formation of a National Gallery, in which copies of the antique, antiques themselves, pictures, bronzes, arabesques, and other models of true taste, might be collected, before which the young aspirants for fame might study, and with which become imbued, as the preliminary step to an infusion of their merits into society. Without including the vast influence of such a cultivation on the manners, associations, intellects, and habits of the people--an influence that can scarcely be appreciated too highly--fifty years would see the first cost returned fifty-fold in the shape of the much-beloved dollars. Will this happen? Not till men of enlightened minds--_statesmen_, instead of _political partizans_--are sent to Washington. It is the misfortune of America to lie so remote from the rest of the civilized world, as to feel little of the impulses of a noble competition, our rivalry commonly limiting itself to the vulgar exhibitions of individual vanity; and this the more to our disadvantage, as, denied access to the best models for even this humble species of contention with the antagonists we are compelled to choose, victory is as bad as defeat. One of the great impediments to a high class of improvement in America, is the disposition to resent every intimation that we can be any better than we are at present. Few, perhaps no country, has ever enduced so much evil-disposed and unmerited abuse as our own. It is not difficult to trace the reasons, and every American should meet it with a just and manly indignation. But, being deemed a nation of rogues, barbarous, and manifesting the vices of an ancestry of convicts, is a very different thing from standing at the head of civilization. This tendency to repel every suggestion of inferiority is one of the surest signs of provincial habits; it is exactly the feeling with which the resident of the village resents what he calls the airs of the town, and that which the inland trader brings with him among those whom he terms the "dandies" of the sea-board. In short, it is the jealousy of inferiority on the exciting points; whatever may be the merits of its subject in other matters, and furnishes of itself the best possible proof that there is room for amendment. The French have a clever and pithy saying, that of--"On peut tout dire à un grand peuple." "One may tell all to a great nation."[17] [Footnote 17:--Every one was telling me that I should find the country so altered after an absence of eight years, that I should not know it. Altered, indeed, I found it, but not quite so evidently improved. It struck me that there was a vast expansion of mediocrity that was well enough in itself, but which was so overwhelming as nearly to overshadow everything that once stood prominent as more excellent. This was perhaps no more than a natural consequence of the elasticity and growth of a young, vigorous community, which, in its agregate character, as in that of its individuals, must pass through youth to arrive at manhood. Still it was painful and doubly so to one coming from Europe. I saw the towns increased, more tawdry than ever, but absolutely with less real taste than they had in my youth. The art of painting alone appeared to me to have made any material advances in the right direction, if one excepts increase in wealth, and in the facilities to create wealth. The steam-boats were the only objects that approached magnificence; but while they had increased in show, they had less comfort and respectability. The taverns, as a whole, had deteriorated; though the three first I happened to enter might well compete with a very high class of European inns, viz. Head's, Barnum's, and Gadsby's.] LETTER XIV. False Notions.--Continental Manners.--People of Paris.--Parisian Women. --French Beauty.--Men of France.--French Soldiers. To JAMES STEVENSON, ESQUIRE, ALBANY. I cannot tell you whence the vulgar notions that we entertain of the French, which, with many other pernicious prejudices, have made a part of our great inheritance from England, have been originally obtained. Certainly I have seen no thing, nor any person, after a long residence in the country, to serve as models to the flippant _marquis_, the overdressed courtiers, or the _petites maîtresses_ of the English dramatists. Even a French _perruquier_ is quite as homely and plain a personage as an English or an American barber. But these Athenians grossly caricature themselves as well as their neighbours. Although Paris is pretty well garnished with English of all degrees, from the Duke down, it has never yet been my luck to encounter an English dandy. Now and then one meets with a "_dresser_," a man who thinks more of his appearance than becomes his manhood, or than comports with good breeding; and occasionally a woman is seen who is a mere appendage to her attire; but I am persuaded, that, as a rule, neither of these vulgar classes exists among people of any condition, in either country. It is impossible for me to say what changes the revolution, and the wars and the new notions, may have produced in France, but there is no sufficient reason for believing that the present cropped and fringeless, bewhiskered, and _laceless_ generation of France, differs more from their bewigged, belaced, and powdered predecessors, than the men and women of any other country differ from their particular ancestors. Boys wore cocked hats, and breaches, and swords, in America, previously to the revolution; and our immediate fathers flourished in scarlet coats, powder, ruffled fingers, and embroidered waistcoats. The manners of the continent of Europe are more finished than those of England, and while quiet and simplicity are the governing rules of good breeding everywhere, even in unsophisticated America, this quiet and simplicity is more gracious and more graceful in France than in the neighbouring island. As yet, I see no other difference in mere deportment, though there is abundance when one goes into the examination of character. I have met with a good many people of the old court at Paris, and though now and then there is a certain _roué_ atmosphere about them, both men and women, as if too much time had been passed at Coblentz, they have generally, in other respects, been models of elegant demeanour. Usually they are simple, dignified, and yet extremely gracious--gracious without the appearance of affability, a quality that is almost always indicative of a consciousness of superiority. The predominant fault of manner here is too strong a hand in applying flattery; but this is as much the fault of the head as of breeding. The French are fond of hearing pleasant things. They say themselves that "a Frenchman goes into society to make himself agreeable, and an Englishman to make himself disagreeable;" and the _dire_ is not altogether without foundation in truth. I never met a Frenchman in society here, who appeared to wish to enhance his importance by what are called "airs," though a coxcomb in feeling is an animal not altogether unknown to the natural history of Paris, nor is the zoological science of M. Cuvier indispensable to his discovery. I shall probably surprise you with one of my opinions. I think the population of Paris, physically speaking, finer than that of London. Fine men and fine women are, by no means, as frequent, after allowing for the difference in whole numbers, in the French, as in the English capital; but neither are there as many miserable, pallid, and squalid objects. The French are a smaller race than the English, much smaller than the race of English gentlemen, so many of whom congregate at London; but the population of Paris has a sturdy, healthful look, that I do not think is by any means as general in London. In making this comparison, allowance must be made for the better dress of the English, and for their fogs, whose effect is to bleach the skin and to give a colour that has no necessary connexion with the springs of life, although the female portion of the population of Paris has probably as much colour as that of London. It might possibly be safer to say that the female population of Paris is finer than that of London, though I think on the whole the males may be included also. I do not mean by this, that there is relatively as much female beauty in Paris as in London, for in this respect the latter has immeasurably the advantage; but, looks apart, that the _physique_ of the French of Paris is superior to that of the English of London. The population of Paris is a favourable specimen of that of the kingdom; while that of London, Westminster excepted, is not at all above the level of the entire country, if indeed it be as good.[18] [Footnote 18: This opinion remains the same in the writer, who between the years 1806 and 1833 has been six times in London, and between the years 1826 and 1833, five times in Paris. In 1833 he left Paris for London, sailing for home from the latter place. A few days after his arrival he went to Washington, where _during the session of Congress_, dress and air not considered, he thought he had never met so large a proportion of fine men in any part of the world. He was particularly struck with their size, as was an American friend who was with him, and who had also passed many years abroad, having left Liverpool the same day the writer sailed from Portsmouth.] The very general notion which exists in America, that the French are a slightly-built, airy people, and that their women in particular are thin and without _embonpoint_, is a most extraordinary one, for there is not a particle of foundation for it. The women of Paris are about as tall as the women of America, and, could a fair sample of the two nations be placed in the scales, I have no doubt it would be found that the French women would outweigh the Americans in the proportion of six to five. Instead of being meagre, they are compactly built, with good busts, inclining to be full, and well-limbed, as any one may see who will take the trouble to walk the streets after a hard shower; for, as Falstaff told Prince Henry, "You are straight enough in the shoulders; you care not who sees your back." Indeed, I know no females to whom the opinion which we entertain of the French women may better apply than to our own, and yet I know none who are so generally well-looking. The French are not a handsome nation. Personal beauty in either sex is rare: there is a want of simplicity, of repose, of dignity, and even of harmonious expression, what they themselves call _finesse_, in their countenances, and yet the liveliness of the eyes and the joyous character of their looks render them agreeable. You are not to understand from this that great personal beauty does not exist in France, however, for there are so many exceptions to the rule, that they have occasionally made me hesitate about believing it a rule at all. The French often possess a feature in great perfection that is very rare in England, where personal beauty is so common in both sexes. It is in the mouth, and particularly in the smile. Want of _finesse_ about the mouth is a general European deficiency (the Italians have more of it than any other people I know), and it is as prevalent an advantage in America. But the races of Saxon root fail in the chin, which wants nobleness and volume. Here it is quite common to see profiles that would seem in their proper places on a Roman coin. Although female beauty is not common in France, when it is found, it is usually of a very high order. The sweet, cherub-like, guileless expression that belongs to the English female face, and through it to the American, is hardly ever, perhaps never, met with here. The French countenance seldom conveys the idea of extreme infantile innocence. Even in the children there is a _manner_ which, while it does not absolutely convey an impression of an absence of the virtues, I think leaves less conviction of its belonging to the soul of the being, than the peculiar look I mean. One always sees _woman_--modest, amiable, _spirituelle_, feminine and attractive, if you will, in a French girl; while one sometimes sees an _angel_ in a young English or American face. I have no allusion now to religious education, or to religious feelings, which are quite as general in the sex, particularly the young of good families, under their characteristic distinctions, here as anywhere else. In this particular the great difference is, that in America it is religion, and in France it is infidelity, that is metaphysical. There is a coquettish prettiness that is quite common in France, in which air and manner are mingled with a certain sauciness of expression that is not easily described, but which, while it blends well enough with the style of the face, is rather pleasing than captivating. It marks the peculiar beauty of the _grisette_, who, with her little cap, hands stuck in the pockets of her apron, mincing walk, coquettish eye, and well-balanced head, is a creature perfectly _sui generis_. Such a girl is more like an actress imitating the character, than one is apt to imagine the character itself. I have met with imitators of these roguish beauties in a higher station, such as the wives and daughters of the industrious classes, as it is the fashion to call them here, and even among the banking community, but never among women of condition, whose deportment in France, whatever may be their morals, is usually marked by gentility of air, and a perfectly good tone of manner, always excepting that small taint of _rouéism_ to which I have already alluded, and which certainly must have come from the camp and emigration. The highest style of the French beauty is the classical. I cannot recall a more lovely picture, a finer union of the grand and the feminine, than the Duchesse de ----, in full dress, at a carnival ball, where she shone peerless among hundreds of the _élite_ of Europe. I see her now, with her small, well-seated head; her large, dark, brilliant eye, rivetted on the mazes of a _Polonaise_, danced in character; her hair, black as the raven's wing, clustering over a brow of ivory; her graceful form slightly inclining forward in delighted and graceful attention; her features just Grecian enough to be a model of delicate beauty, just Roman enough to be noble; her colour heightened to that of youth by the heat of the room, and her costume, in which all the art of Paris was blended with a critical knowledge of the just and the becoming. And yet this woman was a grandmother! The men of France have the same physical and the same conventional peculiarities as the women. They are short, but sturdy. Including all France, for there is a material difference in this respect between the north and the south, I should think the average stature of the French men (not women) to be quite an inch and a half below the average stature of America, and possibly two inches. At home, I did not find myself greatly above the medium height, and in a crowd I was always compelled to stand on tiptoe to look over the heads of those around me; whereas, here, I am evidently _un grand_, and can see across the Champs Elysées without any difficulty. You may remember that I stand as near as may be to five feet ten; it follows that five feet ten is rather a tall man in France. You are not to suppose, however, that there are not occasionally men of great stature in this country. One of the largest men I have ever seen appears daily in the garden of the Tuileries, and I am told he is a Frenchman of one of the north-eastern provinces. That part of the kingdom is German rather than French, however, and the population still retain most of the peculiarities of their origin. The army has a look of service and activity rather than of force. I should think it more formidable by its manoeuvres than its charges. Indeed, the tactics of Napoleon, who used the legs of his troops more than their muskets, aiming at concentrating masses on important points, goes to show that he depended on alertness instead of _bottom_. This is just the quality that would be most likely to prevail against your methodical, slow-thinking, and slow-moving German; and I make no question the short, sturdy, nimble legs of the little warriors of this country have gained many a field. A general officer, himself a six-footer, told me, lately, that they had found the tall men of very little use in the field, from their inability to endure the fatigues of a campaign. When armies shall march on railroads, and manoeuvre by steam, the grenadiers will come in play again; but as it is, the French are admirably adapted by their _physique_ to return the career that history has given them. The Romans resembled them in this respect, Cicero admitting that many people excelled them in size, strength, beauty, and even learning, though he claimed a superiority for his countrymen, on the score of love of country and reverence for the gods. The French are certainly patriotic enough, though their reverence for the gods may possibly be questioned. The regiments of the guards, the heavy cavalry, and the artillery are all filled with men chosen with some care. These troops would, I think, form about an average American army, on the score of size. The battalions of the line receive the rest. As much attention is bestowed in adapting the duty to the _physique_, and entire corps are composed of men of as nearly as possible the same physical force, some of the regiments certainly make but an indifferent figure, as to dimensions, while others appear particularly well. Still, if not overworked, I should think these short men would do good service. I think I have seen one or two regiments, in which the average height has not exceeded five feet three inches. The chances of not being hit in such a corps are worth something, for the proportion, compared to the chances in a corps of six-footers, is as sixty-three to seventy-two, or is one-eighth in favour of the Lilliputians. I believe the rule for retreating is when one-third of the men are _hors de combat_. Now, supposing a regiment of three thousand grenadiers were obliged to retire with a loss of one thousand men, the little fellows, under the same fire, should have, at the same time, two thousand one hundred and thirty-seven sound men left, and of course, unless bullied out of it, they ought to gain the day. LETTER XV. Perversion of Institutions.--The French Academy.--Laplace.--Astronomy. --Theatres of Paris.--Immoral Plot.--Artificial Feelings.--French Tragedy.--Literary Mania.--The American Press.--American Newspapers.--French Journals--Publishing Manoeuvres.--Madame Malibran. To JAMES E. DE KAY, ESQUIRE. It appears to be the melancholy lot of humanity, that every institution which ingenuity can devise shall be perverted to an end different from the legitimate. If we plan a democracy, the craven wretch who, in a despotism, would be the parasite of a monarch, heads us off, and gets the best of it under the pretence of extreme love for the people; if we flatter ourselves that by throwing power into the hands of the rich and noble, it is put beyond the temptation to abuse it, we soon discover that rich is a term of convention, no one thinking he has enough until he has all, and that nobility of station has no absolute connexion with nobleness of spirit or of conduct; if we confide all to one, indolence, favouritism, and indeed the impossibility of supervision, throws us again into the hands of the demagogue, in his new, or rather true character of a courtier. So it is with life; in politics, religion, arms, arts and letters, yea, even the republic of letters, as it is called, is the prey of schemes and parasites, and things _in fact_, are very different from things _as they seem to be_. "In the seventeen years that I have been a married man," said Captain ---- of the British navy, "I have passed but seventeen months with my wife and family," "But, now there is peace, you will pass a few years quietly in America, to look after your affairs," said I, by way of awkward condolence. "No, indeed; I shall return to England as soon as possible, to make up for lost time. I have been kept so much at sea, that they have forgotten me at home, and duty to my children requires that I should be on the spot." In the simplicity of my heart, I thought this strange, and yet nothing could be more true. Captain ---- was a scion of the English aristocracy, and looked to his sword for his fortune. Storms, fagging, cruising, all were of small avail compared to interest at the Admiralty, and so it is with all things else, whether in Europe or America. The man who really gains the victory, is lucky, indeed, if he obtain the meed of his skill and valour. You may be curious to know of what all this is _à propos?_ To be frank with, you, I have visited the French Academy--"ces quarante qui ont l'esprit comme quatre," and have come away fully impressed with the vanity of human things! The occasion was the reception of two or three new members, when, according to a settled usage, the successful candidates pronounced eulogies on their predecessors. You may be curious to know what impression the assembled genius of France produced on a stranger from the western world. I can only answer, none. The Academy of the Sciences can scarcely ever be less than distinguished in such a nation; but when I came to look about me, and to inquire after the purely literary men, I was forcibly struck with the feebleness of the catalogue of names. Not one in five was at all known to me, and very few, even of those who were, could properly be classed among the celebrated writers of the day. As France has many very clever men who were not on the list, I was desirous of knowing the reason, and then learned that intrigue, court-favour, and "_log-rolling_" to use a quaint American term, made members of the academy as well as members of the cabinet. A moment's reflection might have told me it could not well be otherwise. It would be so in America, if we were burthened with an academy; it is so as respects collegiate honours; and what reason is there for supposing it should not be so in a country so notoriously addicted to intrigue as France? One ought not to be the dupe of these things. There are a few great names, distinguished by common consent, whose claims it is necessary to respect. These men form the front of every honorary institution; if there are to be knights and nobles, and academicians, they must be of the number; not that such distinctions are necessary to them, but that they are necessary to the distinctions; after which the _oi polloi_ are enrolled as they can find interest. Something very like an admission of this is contained in an inscription on the statue of Molière, which stands in the vestibule of the hall of the Academy, which frankly says, "Though we are not necessary to your glory, you are necessary to ours." He was excluded from the forty, by intrigue, on account of his profession being that of a player. Shakspeare, himself, would have fared no better. Now, fancy a country in which there was a club of select authors, that should refuse to enrol the name of William Shakspeare on their list! The sitting was well attended, and I dare say the addresses were not amiss; though there is something exceedingly tiresome in one of these eulogies, that is perpetrated by malice prepense. The audience applauded very much, after the fashion of those impromptus which are made _à loisir_, and I could not but fancy that a good portion of the assembly began to think the Academy was what the cockneys call a _rum_ place, before they heard the last of it. We had a poem by Comte Daru, to which I confess I did not listen, notwithstanding my personal respect for the distinguished writer, simply because I was most heartily wearied before he began, and because I can never make anything of French poetry, in the Academy or out of it. It would be unjust to speak lightly of any part of the French Academy, without a passing remark in honour of those sections of it to which honour is due. In these sections may be included, I think, that of the arts, as well as that of the sciences. The number of respectable artists that exist in this country is perfectly astonishing. The connoisseurs, I believe, dispute the merits of the school, and ignorant as I am, in such matters, I can myself see that there is a prevalent disposition, both in statuary and painting, to sacrifice simplicity to details, and that the theatrical is sometimes mistaken for the grand; but, after admitting both these faults, and some defects in colouring, there still remains a sufficient accumulation of merit, to create wonder in one, like myself, who has not had previous opportunities of ascertaining the affluence of a great nation in this respect. As regards the scientific attainments of the French, it is unnecessary to say anything; though I believe you will admit that they ought at least to have the effect of counteracting some of the prejudices about dancing-masters, _petits maîtres_, and _perruquiers_, that have descended to us, through English novels and plays. Such a man as Laplace, alone, is sufficient to redeem an entire people from these imputations. The very sight of one of his demonstrations will give common men, like ourselves, headaches, and you will remember that having successfully got through one of the toughest of them, he felicitated himself that there was but one other man living who could comprehend it, now it was made. What a noble gift would it have been to his fellow-creatures, had some competent follower of Laplace bestowed on them a comprehensive but popular compend of the leading astronomical facts, to be used as one of the most ordinary school-books! Apart from the general usefulness of this peculiar species of knowledge, and the chances that, by thus popularizing the study, sparks might be struck from the spirit of some dormant Newton, I know no inquiry that has so strong a tendency to raise the mind from the gross and vulgar pursuits of the world, to a contemplation of the power and designs of God. It has often happened to me, when, filled with wonder and respect for the daring and art of man, I have been wandering through the gorgeous halls of some palace, or other public edifice, that an orrery or a diagram of the planetary system has met my eye, and recalled me, in a moment, from the consideration of art, and its intrinsic feebleness, to that of the sublimity of nature. At such times, this globe has appeared so insignificant, in comparison with the mighty system of which it forms so secondary a part, that I felt a truly philosophical indifference, not to give it a better term, for all it contained. Admiration of human powers, as connected with the objects around me, has been lost in admiration of the mysterious spirit which could penetrate the remote and sublime secrets of the science; and on no other occasions have I felt so profound a conviction of my own isolated insignificance, or so lively a perception of the stupendous majesty of the Deity. Passing by the common and conceded facts of the dimensions of the planets, and the extent of their orbits, what thoughts are awakened by the suggestion that the fixed stars are the centres of other solar systems, and the eccentric comets are links to connect them all in one great and harmonious design! The astronomers tell us that some of these comets have no visible nucleuses--that the fixed stars are seen through their apparent densest parts, and that they can be nothing but luminous gases; while, on the other hand, others do betray dark compact bodies of more solid matter. Fixed stars unaccountably disappear, as if suddenly struck out of their places. Now, we know that aerolites are formed in the atmosphere by a natural process, and descend in masses of pure iron. Why may not the matter of one globe, dispersed into its elements by the fusion of its consummation, reassemble in the shape of comets, gaseous at first, and slowly increasing and condensing in the form of solid matter, varying in their course as they acquire the property of attraction, until they finally settle into new and regular planetary orbits by the power of their own masses, thus establishing a regular reproduction of worlds to meet the waste of eternity? Were the earth dissolved into gases by fusion, what would become of its satellite the moon? Might not the principles of our planet, thus volatilized, yield to its nearer attraction, assemble around that orb, which, losing its governing influence, should be left to wander in infinite space, subject to a new but eccentric law of gravity, until finally reduced again within the limits of some new system? How know we that such is not the origin of comets? Many astronomers have believed that the solar system, in company with thousands of other systems, revolves around a common centre, in orbits so vast as to defy computation, and a religious sentiment might well suggest that this centre of the universe is the throne of the Most High. Here we may fancy the Deity seated in power, and controlling, by his will, the movements of worlds, directing each to the completion of his own mysterious and benevolent designs. It certainly might be dangerous to push our speculations too far, but there can be no risk in familiarizing men to consider the omnipotence of God, and to feel their own comparative insignificance. What ideas of vastness are obtained by a knowledge of the fact that there exist stars in the firmament which ordinary telescopes show us only as single bodies, but which, on examination, by using reflectors of a higher power, are found to be clusters of orbs--clusters of worlds--or clusters of suns! These, again, are found to be _binary_ stars, or two stars revolving round each other, while they are thought, at the same time, to revolve around their central sun, and accompanied by this again, probably, to revolve round the great common centre of all! But, in the words of the quaint old song, I must cry "Holla! my fancy, whither dost thou go?" Before taking leave of the stars altogether, however, I will add that the French, and I believe all Europe, with the exception of England, follow the natural order of time, in counting the seasons. Thus the spring commences with the vernal equinox, and the autumn with the autumnal. This division of the year leaves nearly the whole of March as a winter month, June as a spring month, and September as belonging to the summer. No general division of the seasons can suit all latitudes; but the equinoxes certainly suggest the only two great events of the year, that equally affect the entire sphere. Had the old method of computing time continued, the seasons would gradually have made the circle of the months, until their order was reversed as they are now known to be in the northern and southern hemispheres. Quitting the Academy, which, with its schools of the classical and the romantic, has tempted me to a higher flight than I could have believed possible, let us descend to the theatres of Paris. Talma was still playing last year, when we arrived, and as in the case of repentance, I put off a visit to the Théâtre Français, with a full determination to go, because it might be made at any time. In the meanwhile, he fell ill and died, and it never was my good fortune to see that great actor. Mademoiselle Mars I have seen, and, certainly, in her line of characters, I have never beheld her equal. Indeed, it is scarcely possible to conceive of a purer, more severe, more faultless, and yet more poetical representation of common nature, than that which characterizes her art. Her acting has all the finish of high breeding, with just as much feeling as is necessary to keep alive the illusion. As for rant, there is not as much about her whole system, as would serve a common English, or American actress, for a single "length." To be frank with you, so great is the superiority of the French actors, in _vaudevilles_, the light opera, and genteel comedy, that I fear I have lost my taste for the English stage. Of tragedy I say nothing, for I cannot enter into the poetry of the country at all, but, in all below it, these people, to my taste, are immeasurably our superiors; and by _ours_, you know I include the English stage. The different lines here, are divided among the different theatres; so that if you wish to laugh, you can go to the Variétés; to weep, to the Théâtre Français; or, to gape, to the Odéon. At the Porte St. Martin, one finds vigorous touches of national character, and at the Gymnase, the fashionable place of resort, just at this moment, national traits polished by convention. Besides these, there are many other theatres, not one of which, in its way, can be called less than tolerable. One can say but little in favour of the morals of too many of the pieces represented here. In this particular there is a strange obliquity of reason, arising out of habitual exaggeration of feeling, that really seems to disqualify most of the women, even from perceiving what is monstrous, provided it be sentimental and touching. I was particularly advised to go to the Théâtre Madame to see a certain piece by a _côterie_ of very amiable women, whom I met the following night at a house where we all regularly resorted, once a week. On entering, they eagerly inquired if "I had not been charmed, fascinated; if any thing could be better played, or more touching?" Better played it could not easily be, but I had been so shocked with the moral of the piece, that I could scarcely admire the acting. "The moral! This was the first time they had heard it questioned." I was obliged to explain. A certain person had been left the protector of a friend's daughter, then an infant. He had the child educated as his sister, and she grew to be a woman, ignorant of her real origin. In the meantime, she has offers of marriage, all of which she unaccountably refuses. In fine, she was secretly cherishing a passion for her guardian _and supposed brother_; an explanation is had, they marry, and the piece closes. I objected to the probability of a well-educated young woman's falling in love with a man old enough to be selected as her guardian, when she was an infant, and against whom there existed the trifling objection of his being her own brother. "But he was _not_ her brother--not even a relative." "True; but she _believed_ him to be her brother." "And nature--do you count nature as nothing?--a _secret sentiment_ told her he was not her brother." "And use, and education, and an _open sentiment_, and all the world told her he was. Such a woman was guilty of a revolting indelicacy and a heinous crime, and no exaggerated representation of love, a passion of great purity in itself, can ever do away with the shocking realities of such a case." I found no one to agree with me. He was _not_ her brother, and though his tongue and all around her told her he was, her heart, that infallible guide, told her the truth. What more could any reasonable man ask? It was _à propos_ of this play, and of my objection to this particular feature of it, that an exceedingly clever French woman laughingly told me she understood there was no such thing as love in America. That a people of manners as artificial as the French, should suppose that others, under the influence of the cold, formal exterior which the puritans have entailed on so large a portion of the public, were without strong feeling, is not altogether as irrational as may at first appear. Art, in ordinary deportment, is both cause and effect. That which we habitually affect to be, gets in the end to be so incorporated with our natural propensities as to form a part of the real man. We all know that by discipline we can get the mastery of our strongest passions, and, on the other hand, by yielding to them and encouraging them, that they soon get the mastery over us. Thus do a highly artificial people, fond of, and always seeking high excitement, come, in time, to feel it artificially, as it were, by natural impulses. I have mentioned the anecdote of the play, because I think it characteristic of a tone of feeling that is quite prevalent among a large class of the French, though I am far from saying there is not a class who would, at once, see the grave sacrifice of principle that is involved, in building up the sentiments of a fiction on such a foundation of animal instinct. I find, on recollection, however, that Miss Lee, in one of her Canterbury Tales, has made the love of her plot hinge on a very similar incident. Surely she must have been under the influence of some of the German monstrosities that were so much in vogue, about the time she wrote, for even Juvenal would scarcely have imagined anything worse, as the subject of his satire. You will get a better idea of the sentimentalism that more or less influences the tables of this country, however, if I tell you that the ladies of the _côterie_, in which the remarks on the amorous sister were made, once gravely discussed in my presence the question whether Madame de Staël was right or wrong, in causing Corinne to go through certain sentimental _experiences_, as our canters call it at home, on a clouded day, instead of choosing one on which the sun was bright: or, _vice versa_; for I really forget whether it was on the "windy side" of sensibility or not, that the daughter of Necker was supposed to have erred. The first feeling is that of surprise at finding a people so artificial in their ordinary deportment, so chaste and free from exaggeration in their scenic representations of life. But reflection will show us that all finish has the effect of bringing us within the compass of severe laws, and that the high taste which results from cultivation repudiates all excess of mere manner. The simple fact is, that an educated Frenchman is a great actor all the while, and that when he goes on the stage, he has much less to do to be perfect, than an Englishman who has drilled himself into coldness, or an American who looks upon strong expressions of feeling as affectation. When the two latter commence the business of playing assumed parts, they consider it as a new occupation, and go at it so much in earnest, that everybody sees they are acting.[19] [Footnote 19: Mr. Mathews and Mr. Power were the nearest to the neat acting of France of any male English performers the writer ever saw. The first sometimes permitted himself to be led astray, by the caricatures he was required to represent, and by the tastes of his audience; but the latter, so far as the writer has seen him, appears determined to be chaste, come what, come will.] You will remember, I say nothing in favour of the French tragic representations. When a great and an intellectual nation, like France, unites to applaud images and sentiments that are communicated through their own peculiar forms of speech, it becomes a stranger to distrust his own knowledge, rather than their taste. I dare say that were I more accustomed to the language, I might enjoy Corneille and Racine, and even Voltaire, for I can now greatly enjoy Molière; but, to be honest in the matter, all reciters of heroic French poetry appear to me to depend on a pompous declamation, to compensate for the poverty of the idioms, and the want of nobleness in the expressions. I never heard any one, poet or actor, he who read his own verses, or he who repeated those of others, who did not appear to mouth, and all their tragic playing has had the air of being on stilts. Napoleon has said, from the sublime to the ridiculous it is but a step. This is much truer in France than in most other countries, for the sublime is commonly so sublimated, that it will admit of no great increase. Racine, in a most touching scene, makes one of his heroic characters offer to wipe off the tears of a heroine lest they should discolour her _rouge_! I had a classmate at college, who was so very ultra courtly in his language, that he never forgot to say, Mr. Julius Caesar, and Mr. Homer. There exists a perfect mania for letters throughout Europe, in this "piping time of peace." Statesmen, soldiers, peers, princes, and kings, hardly think themselves _illustrated_, until each has produced his book. The world never before saw a tithe of the names of people of condition, figuring in the catalogues of its writers. "Some thinks he writes Cinna--he owns to Panurge," applies to half the people one meets in society. I was at a dinner lately, given by the Marquis de ----, when the table was filled with peers, generals, ex-ministers, ex-ambassadors, naturalists, philosophers, and statesmen of all degrees. Casting my eyes round the circle, I was struck with the singular prevalence of the _cacoethes scribendi_, among so many men of different educations, antecedents, and pursuits. There was a soldier present who had written on taste, a politician on the art of war, a _diplomate_ who had dabbled in poetry, and a jurist who pretended to enlighten the world in ethics, it was the drollest assemblage in the world, and suggested many queer associations, for, I believe, the only man at table, who had not dealt in ink, was an old Lieutenant-General, who sat by me, and who, when I alluded to the circumstance, strongly felicitated himself that he had escaped the mania of the age, as it was an _illustration_ of itself. Among the _convives_ were Cuvier, Villemain, Daru, and several others who are almost as well known to science and letters. Half the voluntary visits I receive are preceded by a volume of some sort or other, as a token of my new acquaintance being a regularly initiated member of the fraternity of the quill. In two or three instances, I have been surprised at subsequently discovering that the regular profession of the writer is arms, or some other pursuit, in which one would scarcely anticipate so strong a devotion to letters. In short, such is the actual state of opinion in Europe, that one is hardly satisfied with any amount, or any quality of glory, until it is consummated by that of having written a book. Napoleon closed his career with the quill, and his successor was hardly on his throne, before he began to publish. The principal officers of the Empire, and _émigrés_ without number, have fairly set to work as so many disinterested historians, and even a lady, who, by way of abbreviation, is called "The Widow of the Grand Army," is giving us regularly volumes, whose eccentricities and periodicity, as the astronomers say, can be reduced to known laws, by the use of figures. In the middle ages golden spurs were the object of every man's ambition. Without them, neither wealth, nor birth, nor power was properly esteemed; and, at the present time, passing from the lance to the pen, from the casque and shield to the ink-pot and fool's cap, we all seek a passport from the order of Letters. Does this augur good or evil, for the world? The public press of France is conducted with great spirit and talents, on all sides. It has few points in common with our own, beyond the mere fact of its general character. In America, a single literary man, putting the best face on it, enters into a compact with some person of practical knowledge, a printer perhaps, and together they establish a newspaper, the mechanical part of which is confided to the care of the latter partner, and the intellectual to the former. In the country, half the time, the editor is no other than the printer himself, the division of labour not having yet reached even this important branch of industry. But looking to the papers that are published in the towns, one man of letters is a luxury about an American print. There are a few instances in which there are two, or three; but, generally, the subordinates are little more than scissors-men. Now, it must be apparent, at a glance, that no one individual can keep up the character of a daily print, of any magnitude; the drain on his knowledge and other resources being too great. This, I take it, is the simple reason why the press of America ranks no higher than it does. The business is too much divided; too much is required, and this, too, in a country where matters of grave import are of rare occurrence, and in which the chief interests are centred in the vulgar concerns of mere party politics, with little or no connexion with great measures, or great principles. You have only to fancy the superior importance that attaches to the views of powerful monarchs, the secret intrigues of courts, on whose results, perhaps, depend the fortunes of Christendom, and the serious and radical principles that are dependent on the great changes of systems that are silently working their way, in this part of the world, and which involve material alterations in the very structure of society, to get an idea of how much more interest a European journal, _ceteris paribus_, must be, compared to an American journal, by the nature of its facts alone. It is true that we get a portion of these facts, as light finally arrives from the remoter stars, but mutilated, and necessarily shorn of much of their interest, by their want of importance to our own country. I had been in Europe some time, before I could fully comprehend the reason why I was ignorant of so many minor points of its political history, for, from boyhood up, I had been an attentive reader of all that touched this part of the world, as it appeared in our prints. By dint of inquiry, however, I believe I have come at the fact. The winds are by no means as regular as the daily prints; and it frequently happens, especially in the winter and spring months, that five or six packets arrive nearly together, bringing with them the condensed intelligence of as many weeks. Now, newspaper finders notoriously seek the latest news, and in the hurry and confusion of reading and selecting, and bringing out, to meet the wants of the day, many of the connecting links are lost, readers get imperfect notions of men and things, and, from a want of a complete understanding of the matter, the mind gives up, without regret, the little and unsatisfactory knowledge it had so casually obtained. I take it, this is a principal cause of the many false notions that exist among us, on the subject of Europe and its events. In France, a paper is established by a regular subscription of capital; a principal editor is selected, and he is commonly supported, in the case of a leading journal, by four or five paid assistants. In addition to this formidable corps, many of the most distinguished men of France are known to contribute freely to the columns of the prints in the interest of their cause. The laws of France compel a journal that has admitted any statement involving facts concerning an individual, to publish his reply, that the antidote may meet the poison. This is a regulation that we might adopt with great advantage to truth and the character of the country. There is not at this moment, within my knowledge, a single critical literary journal of received authority in all France. This is a species of literature to which the French pay but little attention just now, although many of the leading daily prints contain articles on the principal works as they appear. By the little that has come under my observation, I should say the fraudulent and disgusting system of puffing and of abusing, as interest or pique dictates, is even carried to a greater length in France than it is in either England or America. The following anecdote, which relates to myself, may give you some notion of the _modus operandi_. All the works I had written previously to coming to Europe had been taken from the English editions and translated, appearing simultaneously with their originals. Having an intention to cause a new book to be printed in English in Paris, for the sake of reading the proofs, the necessity was felt of getting some control over the translation, lest, profiting by the interval necessary to send the sheets home to be reprinted, it might appear as the original book. I knew that the sheets of previous books had been purchased in England, and I accordingly sent a proposition to the publishers that the next bargain should be made with me. Under the impression that an author's price would be asked, they took the alarm, and made difficulties. Finding me firm, and indisposed to yield to some threats of doing as they pleased, the matter was suspended for a few days. Just at this moment, I received through the post a single number of an obscure newspaper, whose existence, until then, was quite unknown to me. Surprised at such an attention, I was curious to know the contents. The journal contained an article on my merits and demerits as a writer, the latter being treated with a good deal of freedom. When one gets a paper in this manner, containing abuse of himself, he is pretty safe in believing its opinions dishonest. But I had even better evidence than common in this particular case, for I happened to be extolled for the manner in which I had treated the character of Franklin, a personage whose name even had never appeared in anything I had written. This, of course, settled the character of the critique, and the next time I saw the individual who had acted as agent in the negociation just mentioned, I gave him the paper, and told him I was half disposed to raise my price on account of the pitiful manoeuvre it contained. We had already come to terms, the publishers finding that the price was little more than nominal, and the answer was a virtual conclusion that the article was intended to affect my estimate of the value of the intended work in France, and to bring me under subjection to the critics.[20] [Footnote 20: The writer suffers this anecdote to stand as it was written nine years since; but since his return home, he has discovered that we are in no degree behind the French in the corruption and frauds that render the pursuits of a writer one of the most humiliating and revolting in which a man of any pride of character can engage, unless he resolutely maintains his independence, a temerity that is certain to be resented by all those who, unequal to going alone in the paths of literature, seek their ends by clinging to those who can, either as pirates or robbers.] I apprehend that few books are brought before the public in France, dependent only on their intrinsic merits; and the system of intrigue, which predominates in everything, is as active in this as in other interests. In France, a book that penetrates to the provinces may be said to be popular; and as for a book coming _from_ the provinces, it is almost unheard of. The despotism of the trade on this point is unyielding. Paris appears to deem itself the arbiter in all matters of taste and literature, and it is almost as unlikely that a new fashion should come from Lyon, or Bordeaux, or Marseilles, as that a new work should be received with favour that was published in either of those towns. The approbation of Paris is indispensable, and the publishers of the capital, assisted by their paid corps of puffers and detractors, are sufficiently powerful to prevent that potent public, to whom all affect to defer, from judging for itself. We have lately had a proof here of the unwillingness of the Parisians to permit others to decide for them, in anything relating to taste, in a case that refers to us Americans. Madame Malibran arrived from America a few months since. In Europe she was unknown, but the great name of her father stood in her stead. Unluckily it was whispered that she had met with great success in America. America! and this, too, in conjunction with music and the opera! The poor woman was compelled to appear under the disadvantage of having brought an American reputation with her, and seriously this single fact went nigh to destroy her fortunes. Those wretches who, as Coleridge expresses it, are "animalculae, who live by feeding on the body of genius," affected to be displeased, and the public hesitated, at their suggestions, about accepting an artist from the "colonies," as they still have the audacity to call the great Republic. I have no means of knowing what sacrifices were made to the petty tyrants of the press before this woman, who has the talents necessary to raise her to the summit of her profession, was enabled to gain the favour of a "_generous and discerning public!_" LETTER XVI. Environs of Paris.--Village of St. Ouen.--Our House there.--Life on the River.--Parisian Cockneys.--A pretty Grisette.--Voyage across the Seine. --A rash Adventurer.--Village Fête.--Montmorency.--View near Paris. TO JAMES STEVENSON, ESQUIRE, ALBANY. We have been the residents of a French village ever since the 1st of June, and it is now drawing to the close of October. We had already passed the greater part of a summer, and entire autumn, winter and spring, within the walls of Paris, and then we thought we might indulge our tastes a little, by retreating to the fields, to catch a glimpse of country life. You will smile when I add that we are only a league from the Barrière de Clichy. This is the reason I have not before spoken of the removal, for we are in town three or four times every week, and never miss an occasion, when there is anything to be seen. I shall now proceed, however, to let you into the secret of our actual situation. I passed the month of May examining the environs of the capital in quest of an house. As this was an agreeable occupation, we were in no hurry; but having set up my cabriolet, we killed two birds with one stone, by making ourselves familiarly acquainted with nearly every village or hamlet within three leagues of Paris, a distance beyond which I did not wish to go. On the side of St. Cloud, which embraces Passy, Auteuil, and all the places that encircle the Bois de Boulogne, the Hyde Park of Paris, there are very many pleasant residences, but from one cause or another, no one suited us exactly, and we finally took a house in the village of St. Ouen, the Runnymeade of France. When Louis XVIII. came, in 1814, to his capital, in the rear of the allies, he stopped for a few days at St. Ouen, a league from the barriers, where there was a small chateau that was the property of the crown. Here he was met by M. de Talleyrand and others, and hence he issued the celebrated charter, that is to render France for evermore a constitutional country. The chateau has since been razed, and a pavilion erected in its place, which has been presented to the Comtesse de ----, a lady who, reversing the ordinary lot of courtiers, is said to cause majesty to live in the sunshine of _her_ smiles. What an appropriate and encouraging monument to rear on the birth-place of French liberty! At the opposite extremity of the village is another considerable house, that was once the dwelling of M. Necker, and is now the property and country residence of M. Ternaux, or the _Baron_ Ternaux, if it were polite to style him thus, the most celebrated manufacturer of France. I say polite, for the mere _fanfaronnade_ of nobility is little in vogue here. The wags tell a story of some one, who was formally announced as "Monsieur le Marquis d'un tel," turning short round on the servant, and exclaiming with indignation, "Marquis toi-même!" But this story savours of the Bonapartists; for as the Emperor created neither _marquis_ nor _vicomtes_, there was a sort of affectation of assuming these titles at the restoration as proofs of belonging to the old _régime_. St. Ouen is a cluster of small, mean, stone houses, stretched along the right bank of the Seine, which, after making a circuit of near twenty miles, winds round so close to the town again, that they are actually constructing a basin, near the village, for the use of the capital; it being easier to wheel articles from this point to Paris, than to contend with the current and to tread its shoals. In addition to the two houses named, however, it has six or eight respectable abodes between the street and the river, one of which is our own. This place became a princely residence about the year 1800, since which time it has been more or less frequented as such down to the 4th June, 1814, the date of the memorable charter.[21] Madame de Pompadour possessed the chateau in 1745, so you see it has been "dust to dust" with this place, as with all that is frail. [Footnote 21: The chateau of St. Ouen, rather less than two centuries since, passed into the possession of the Duc de Gesvre. Dulaure gives the following,--a part of a letter from this nobleman,--as a specimen of the education of a _duc_ in the seventeenth century:--"Monsieur, me trouvant obligé de randre une bonne party de largan que mais enfant ont pris de peuis qu'il sont au campane, monsieur, cela moblige a vous suplier tres humblemant monsieur de me faire la grasse de commander monsieur quant il vous plera que lon me pay la capitenery de Monsaux monsieur vous asseurant que vous mobligeres fort sansiblement monsieur comme ausy de me croire avec toute sorte de respec, etc." This beats Jack Cade out and out. The great connétable Anne de Montmorency could not write his name, and as his signature became necessary, his secretary stood over his shoulder to tell him when he had made enough _piès de mouche_ to answer the purpose.] The village of St. Ouen, small, dirty, crowded and unsavoury as it is, has a _place_, like every other French village. When we drove into it, to look at the house, I confess to having laughed outright, at the idea of inhabiting such a hole. Two large _portes-cochères_, however, opened from the square, and we were admitted, through the best-looking of the two, into a spacious and an extremely neat court. On one side of the gate was a lodge for a porter, and on the other, a building to contain gardeners' tools, plants, etc. The walls that separate it from the square and the adjoining gardens are twelve or fourteen feet high, and once within them, the world is completely excluded. The width of the grounds does not exceed a hundred and fifty feet; the length, the form being that of a parallelogram, may be three hundred, or a little more; and yet in these narrow limits, which are planted _à l'Anglaise_, so well is everything contrived, that we appear to have abundance of room. The garden terminates in a terrace that overhangs the river, and, from this point, the eye ranges over a wide extent of beautiful plain, that is bounded by fine bold hills which are teeming with gray villages and _bourgs_. The house is of stone, and not without elegance. It may be ninety feet in length, by some forty in width. The entrance is into a vestibule, which has the offices on the right, and the great staircase on the left. The principal _salon_ is in front. This is a good room, near thirty feet long, fifteen or sixteen high, and has three good windows, that open on the garden. The billiard-room communicates on one side, and the _salle à manger_ on the other; next the latter come the offices again, and next the billiard-room is a very pretty little boudoir. Up stairs, are suites of bed-rooms and dressing-rooms; every thing is neat, and the house is in excellent order, and well furnished for a country residence. Now, all this I get at a hundred dollars a month, for the five summer months. There are also a carriage-house, and stabling for three horses. The gardener and porter are paid by the proprietor. The village, however, is not in much request, and the rent is thought to be low. Among the great advantages enjoyed by a residence in Europe, are the facilities of this nature. Furnished apartments, or furnished houses, can be had in almost every town of any size; and, owning your own linen and plate, nearly every other necessary is found you. It is true, that one sometimes misses comforts to which he has been accustomed in his own house; but, in France, many little things are found, it is not usual to meet with elsewhere. Thus, no principal bedroom is considered properly furnished in a good house, without a handsome secretary, and a bureau. These two articles are as much matters of course, as are the eternal two rooms and folding doors, in New York. This, then, has been our Tusculum since June. M. Ternaux enlivens the scene, occasionally, by a dinner; and he has politely granted us permission to walk in his grounds, which are extensive and well laid out, for the old French style. We have a neighbour on our left, name unknown, who gives suppers in his garden, and concerts that really are worthy of the grand opera. Occasionally, we get a song, in a female voice, that rivals the best of Madame Malibran's. On our right lives a staid widow, whose establishment is as tranquil as our own. One of our great amusements is to watch the _living_ life on the river, --there is no _still_ life in France. All the washerwomen of the village assemble, three days in the week, beneath our terrace, and a merrier set of _grisettes_ is not to be found in the neighbourhood of Paris. They chat, and joke, and splash, and scream from morning to night, lightening the toil by never-ceasing good humour. Occasionally an enormous scow-like barge is hauled up against the current, by stout horses, loaded to the water's edge, or one, without freight, comes dropping down the stream, nearly filling the whole river as it floats broad-side to. There are three or four islands opposite, and, now and then, a small boat is seen paddling among them. We have even tried _punting_ ourselves, but the amusement was soon exhausted. Sunday is a great day with us, for then the shore is lined with Parisians, as thoroughly cockney as if Bow-bells could be heard in the Quartier Montmartre! These good people visit us, in all sorts of ways; some on donkeys, some in cabriolets, some in fiacres, and by far the larger portion on foot. They are perfectly inoffensive and unobtrusive, being, in this respect, just as unlike an American inroad from a town as can well be. These crowds pass vineyards on their way to us, unprotected by any fences. This point in the French character, however, about which so much has been said to our disadvantage, as well as to that of the English, is subject to some explanation. The statues, promenades, gardens, etc. etc. are, almost without exception, guarded by sentinels; and then there are agents of the police, in common clothes, scattered through the towns, in such numbers as to make depredations hazardous. In the country each _commune_ has one, or more, _gardes champêtres_, whose sole business it is to detect and arrest trespassers. When to these are added the _gendarmes à pied_ and _à cheval_, who are constantly in motion, one sees that the risk of breaking the laws is attended with more hazard here than with us. There is no doubt, on the other hand, that the training and habits, produced by such a system of watchfulness, enter so far into the character of the people, that they cease to think of doing that which is so strenuously denied them. Some of our visitors make their appearance in a very quaint style. I met a party the other day, among whom the following family arrangement had obtained:--The man was mounted on a donkey, with his feet just clear of the ground. The wife, a buxom brunette, was trudging afoot in the rear, accompanied by the two younger children, a boy and girl, between twelve and fourteen, led by a small dog, fastened to a string like the guide of a blind mendicant; while the eldest daughter was mounted on the crupper, maintaining her equilibrium by a masculine disposition of her lower limbs. She was a fine, rosy-cheeked _grisette_, of about seventeen; and, as they ambled along, just fast enough to keep the cur on a slow trot, her cap flared in the wind, her black eyes flashed with pleasure, and her dark ringlets streamed behind her, like so many silken pennants. She had a ready laugh for every one she met, and a sort of malicious pleasure in asking, by her countenance, if they did not wish they too had a donkey? As the seat was none of the most commodious, she had contrived to make a pair of stirrups of her petticoats. The gown was pinned up about her waist, leaving her knees, instead of her feet, as the _points d'appui_. The well-turned legs, and the ankles, with such a _chaussure_ as at once marks a Parisienne, were exposed to the admiration of a _parterre_ of some hundreds of idle wayfarers. Truly, it is no wonder that sculptors abound in this country, for capital models are to be found, even in the highways. The donkey was the only one who appeared displeased with this _monture_, and he only manifested dissatisfaction by lifting his hinder extremities a little, as the man occasionally touched his flanks with a nettle, that the ass would much rather have been eating. Not long since I passed half an hour on the terrace, an amused witness of the perils of a voyage across the Seine in a punt. The adventurers were a _bourgeois_, his wife, sister, and child. Honest Pierre, the waterman, had conditioned to take the whole party to the island opposite and to return them safe to the main for the modicum of five sous. The old fox invariably charged me a franc for the same service. There was much demurring, and many doubts about encountering the risk; and more than once the women would have receded, had not the man treated the matter as a trifle. He affirmed _parole d'honneur_ that his father had crossed the Maine a dozen times, and no harm had come of it! This encouraged them, and, with many pretty screams, _mes fois_, and _oh, Dieu_, they finally embarked. The punt was a narrow scow that a ton weight would not have disturbed, the river was so low and sluggish that it might have been forded two-thirds of the distance, and the width was not three hundred feet. Pierre protested that the danger was certainly not worth mentioning, and away he went, as philosophical in appearance as his punt. The voyage was made in safety, and the bows of the boat had actually touched the shore on its return, before any of the passengers ventured to smile. The excursion, like most travelling, was likely to be most productive of happiness by the recollections. But the women were no sooner landed, than that rash adventurer, the husband, brother, and father, seized an oar, and began to ply it with all his force. He merely wished to tell his _confrères_ of the Rue Montmartre how a punt might be rowed. Pierre had gallantly landed to assist the ladies, and the boat, relieved of its weight, slowly yielded to the impulse of the oar, and inclined its bows from the land. "Oh! Edouard! mon mari! mon frère!--que fais-tu?" exclaimed the ladies. "Ce n'est rien," returned the man, puffing, and giving another lusty sweep, by which he succeeded in forcing the punt fully twenty feet from the shore. "Edouard! cher Edouard!" "Laisse-moi m'amuser,--je m'amuse, je m'amuse," cried the husband in a tone of indignant remonstrance. But Edouard, a tight, sleek little _épicier_, of about five-and-thirty, had never heard that an oar on each side was necessary in a boat, and the harder he pulled the less likely was he to regain the shore. Of this he began to be convinced, as he whirled more into the centre of the current; and his efforts now really became frantic, for his imagination probably painted the horrors of a distant voyage in an unknown bark to an unknown land, and all without food or compass. The women screamed, and the louder they cried, the more strenuously he persevered in saying, "Laisse-moi m'amuser--je m'amuse, je m'amuse." By this time the perspiration poured from the face of Edouard, and I called to the imperturbable Pierre, who stood in silent admiration of his punt while playing such antics, and desired him to tell the man to put his oar on the bottom, and to push the boat ashore. "Oui, Monsieur," said the rogue, with a leer, for he remembered the francs, and we soon had our adventurer safe on _terra firma_ again. Then began the tender expostulations, the affectionate reproaches, and the kind injunctions for the truant to remember that he was a husband and a father. Edouard, secretly cursing the punt and all rivers in his heart, made light of the matter, however, protesting to the last that he had only been enjoying himself. We have had a fête too; for every village in the vicinity of Paris has its fête. The square was filled with whirligigs and flying-horses, and all the ingenious contrivances of the French to make and to spend a sou pleasantly. There was service in the parish church, at which our neighbours sang in a style fit for St. Peter's, and the villagers danced quadrilles on the green with an air that would be thought fine in many a country drawing-room. I enjoy all this greatly; for, to own the truth, the crowds and mannered sameness of Paris began to weary me. Our friends occasionally come from town to see us, and we make good use of the cabriolet. As we are near neighbours to St. Denis, we have paid several visits to the tombs of the French kings, and returned each time less pleased with most of the unmeaning obsequies that are observed in their vaults. There was a ceremony, not long since, at which the royal family and many of the great officers of the court assisted, and among others M. de Talleyrand. The latter was in the body of the church, when a man rushed upon him and actually struck him, or shoved him to the earth, using at the same time language that left no doubt of the nature of the assault. There are strange rumours connected with the affair. The assailant was a Marquis de ----, and it is reported that his wrongs, real or imaginary, are connected with a plot to rob one of the dethroned family of her jewels, or of some crown jewels, I cannot say which, at the epoch of the restoration. The journals said a good deal about it at the time, but events occur so fast here that a quarrel of this sort produces little sensation. I pretend to no knowledge of the merits of this affair, and only give a general outline of what was current in the public prints at the time. We have also visited Enghien, and Montmorency. The latter, as you know already, stands on the side of a low mountain, in plain view of Paris. It is a town of some size, with very uneven streets, some of them being actually sharp acclivities, and a Gothic church that is seen from afar and that is well worth viewing near by. These quaint edifices afford us deep delight, by their antiquity, architecture, size, and pious histories. What matters it to us how much or how little superstition may blend with the rites, when we know and feel that we are standing in a nave that has echoed with orisons to God, for a thousand years! This of Montmorency is not quite so old, however, having been rebuilt only three centuries since. Dulaure, a severe judge of aristocracy, denounces the pretension of the Montmorencies to be the _Premiers Barons Chrétiens_, affirming that they were neither the first barons, nor the first Christians, by a great many. He says, that the extravagant title has most probably been a war-cry, in the time of the crusaders. According to his account of the family it originated, about the year 1008, in a certain Borchard, who, proving a bad neighbour to the Abbey of St. Denis, the vassals of which he was in the habit of robbing, besides, now and then, despoiling a monk, the king caused his fortress in the Isle St. Denis to be razed; after which, by a treaty, he was put in possession of the mountain hard by, with permission to erect another hold near a fountain, at a place called in the charters, Montmorenciacum. Hence the name, and the family. This writer thinks that the first castle must have been built of wood! We took a road that led us up to a bluff on the mountain, behind the town, where we obtained a new and very peculiar view of Paris and its environs. I have said that the French towns have no straggling suburbs. A few winehouses (to save the _octroi_) are built near the gates, compactly, as in the town itself, and there the buildings cease as suddenly as if pared down by a knife. The fields touch the walls, in many places, and between St. Ouen and the guinguettes and winehouses, at the Barrière de Clichy, a distance of two miles, there is but a solitary building. A wide plain separates Paris, on this side, from the mountains, and of course our view extended across it. The number of villages was absolutely astounding. Although I did not attempt counting them, I should think not fewer than a hundred were in sight, all grey, picturesque, and clustering round the high nave and church tower, like chickens gathering beneath the wing. The day was clouded, and the hamlets rose from their beds of verdure, sombre but distinct, with their faces of wall, now in subdued light, and now quite shaded, resembling the glorious _darks_ of Rembrandt's pictures. LETTER XVII. Rural Drives.--French Peasantry.--View of Montmartre.--The Boulevards. --The Abattoirs.--Search for Lodgings.--A queer Breakfast.--Royal Progresses and Magnificence.--French Carriages and Horses.--Modes of Conveyance.--Drunkenness.--French Criminal Justice.--Marvellous Stories of the Police. To CAPT. M. PERRY, U.S.N. I am often in the saddle since our removal to St. Ouen. I first commenced the business of exploring in the cabriolet, with my wife for a companion, during which time, several very pretty drives, of whose existence one journeying along the great roads would form no idea, were discovered. At last, as these became exhausted, I mounted, and pricked into the fields. The result has been a better knowledge of the details of ordinary rural life, in this country, than a stranger would get by a residence, after the ordinary fashion, of years. I found the vast plain intersected by roads as intricate as the veins of the human body. The comparison is not unapt, by the way, and may be even carried out much further; for the _grandes routes_ can be compared to the arteries, the _chemins vicinaux_, or cross-roads, to the veins, and the innumerable paths that intersect the fields, in all directions, to the more minute blood-vessels, circulation being the object common to all. I mount my horse and gallop into the fields at random, merely taking care not to quit the paths. By the latter, one can go in almost any direction; and as they are very winding there is a certain pleasure in following their sinuosities, doubtful whither they tend. Much of the plain is in vegetables, for the use of Paris; though there is occasionally a vineyard, or a field of grain. The weather has become settled and autumnal, and is equally without the chilling moisture of the winter, or the fickleness of the spring. The kind-hearted peasants see me pass among them without distrust, and my salutations are answered with cheerfulness and civility. Even at this trifling distance from the capital, I miss the brusque ferocity that is so apt to characterise the deportment of its lower classes, who are truly the people that Voltaire has described as "ou singes, ou tigres." Nothing, I think, strikes an American more than the marked difference between the town and country of France. With us, the towns are less town-like, and the country less country-like, than is usually the case. Our towns are provincial from the want of tone that can only be acquired by time, while it is a fault with our country to wish to imitate the towns. I now allude to habits only, for nature at home, owing to the great abundance of wood, is more strikingly rural than in any other country I know. The inhabitant of Paris can quit his own door in the centre of the place, and after walking an hour he finds himself truly in the country, both as to the air of external objects, and as to the manners of the people. The influence of the capital doubtless has some little effect on the latter, but not enough to raise them above the ordinary rusticity, for the French peasants are as rustic in their appearance and habits as the upper classes are refined. One of my rides is through the plain that lies between St. Ouen and Montmartre, ascending the latter by its rear to the windmills that, night and day, are whirling their ragged arms over the capital of France. Thence I descend into the town by the carriage road. A view from this height is like a glimpse into the pages of history; for every foot of land that it commands, and more than half the artificial accessories, are pregnant of the past. Looking down into the fissures between the houses, men appear the mites they are; and one gets to have a philosophical indifference to human vanities by obtaining these bird's-eye views of them in the mass. It was a happy thought that first suggested the summits of mountains for religious contemplation; nor do I think the father of evil discovered his usual sagacity when he resorted to such a place for the purposes of selfish temptation: perhaps, however, it would be better to say, he betrayed the grovelling propensities of his own nature. The cathedral of Notre Dame should have been reared on this noble and isolated height, that the airs of heaven might whisper through its fane, breathing the chaunts in honour of God. Dismounting manfully, I have lately undertaken a far more serious enterprise--that of making the entire circuit of Paris on foot. My companion was our old friend Captain ----. We met by appointment at eleven o'clock, just without the Barrière de Clichy, and ordering the carriage to come for us at five, off we started, taking the direction of the eastern side of the town. You probably know that what are commonly called the _boulevards_ of Paris, are no more than a circular line of wide streets through the very heart of the place, which obtain their common appellation from the fact that they occupy the sites of the ancient walls. Thus the street within this circuit is called by its name, whatever it may happen to be, and if continued without the circuit, the term of _faubourg_ or suburb is added; as in the case of the Rue St. Honoré and the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré, the latter being strictly a continuation of the former, but lying without the site of the ancient walls. As the town has increased, it has been found necessary to enlarge its _enceinte_, and the walls are now encircled with wide avenues that are called the outer _boulevards_. There are avenues within and without the walls, and immediately beneath them; and in many places both are planted. Our route was on the exterior. We began the march in good spirits, and by twelve we had handsomely done our four miles and a half. Of course we passed the different _barrières_, and the gate of Père Lachaise. The captain commenced with great vigour, and for near two hours, as he expressed himself, he had me a little on his lee quarter; not more, however, he thought, than was due to his superior rank, for he had once been my senior as a midshipman. At the Barrière du Trône we were compelled to diverge a little from the wall, in order to get across the river by the Pont d'Austerlitz. By this time I had ranged up abeam of the commodore, and I proposed that we should follow the river up as far as the wall again, in order to do our work honestly; but to this he objected that he had no wish to puzzle himself with spherical trigonometry; that plane sailing was his humour at the moment; and that he had, moreover, just discovered that one of his boots pinched his foot. Accordingly we proceeded straight from the bridge, not meeting the wall again until we were beyond the _abattoir_. These _abattoirs_ are slaughter-houses, that Napoleon caused to be built near the walls, in some places within, and in others without them, according to the different localities. There are five or six of them, that of Montmartre being the most considerable. They are kept in excellent order, and the regulations respecting them appear to be generally good. The butchers sell their meats, in shops, all over the town, a general custom in Europe, and one that has more advantages than disadvantages, as it enables the inhabitant to order a meal at any moment. This independence in the mode of living distinguishes all the large towns of this part of the world from our own; for I greatly question if there be any civilized people among whom the individual is as much obliged to consult the habits and tastes of _all_, in gratifying his own, as in free and independent America. A part of this uncomfortable feature in our domestic economy is no doubt the result of circumstances unavoidably connected with the condition of a young country; but a great deal is to be ascribed to the practice of referring everything to the public, and not a little to those religious sects who extended their supervision to all the affairs of life, that had a chief concern in settling the country, and who have entailed so much that is inconvenient and ungraceful (I might almost say, in some instances, _disgraceful_) on the nation, blended with so much that forms its purest sources of pride. Men are always an inconsistent medley of good and bad. The captain and myself had visited the _abattoir_ of Montmartre only a few days previously to this excursion, and we had both been much gratified with its order and neatness. But an unfortunate pile of hocks, hoofs, tallow, and nameless fragments of carcasses, had caught my companion's eye. I found him musing over this _omnium gatherum_, which he protested was worse than a bread-pudding at Saratoga. By some process of reasoning that was rather material than philosophical, he came to the conclusion that the substratum of all the extraordinary compounds he had met with at the _restaurans_ was derived from this pile, and he swore as terribly as any of "our army in Flanders," that not another mouthful would he touch, while he remained in Paris, if the dish put his knowledge of natural history at fault. He had all along suspected he had been eating cats and vermin, but his imagination had never pictured to him such a store of abominations for the _casserole_ as were to be seen in this pile. In vain I asked him if he did not find the dishes good. Cats might be good for anything he knew, but he was too old to change his habits. On the present occasion, he made the situation of the Abattoir d'Ivry an excuse for not turning up the river by the wall. I do not think, however, we gained anything in the distance, the _détour_ to cross the bridge more than equalling the ground we missed. We came under the wall again at the Barrière de Ville Juif, and followed it, keeping on the side next the town until we fairly reached the river once more, beyond Vaugirard. Here we were compelled to walk some distance to cross the Pont de Jena, and again to make a considerable circuit through Passy, on account of the gardens, in order to do justice to our task. About this time the commodore fairly fell astern; and he discovered that the other boot was too large. I kept talking to him over my shoulder, and cheering him on, and he felicitated me on frogs agreeing so well with my constitution. At length we came in at the Barrière de Clichy, just as the clocks struck three, or in four hours, to a minute, from the time we had left the same spot. We had neither stopped, eaten, nor drunk a mouthful. The distance is supposed to be about eighteen miles, but I can hardly think it is so much, for we went rather further than if we had closely followed the wall. Our agility having greatly exceeded my calculations, we were obliged to walk two miles further, in order to find the carriage. The time expended in going this distance included, we were just four hours and a half on our feet. The captain protested that his boots had disgraced him, and forthwith commanded another pair; a subterfuge that did him no good. One anecdote connected with the sojourn of this eccentric, but really excellent-hearted and intelligent man,[22] at Paris is too good not to be told. He cannot speak a word of pure French; and of all Anglicizing of the language I have ever heard, his attempts at it are the most droll. He calls the Tuileries, Tully_rees_; the Jardin des Plantes, the _Garden dis Plants_; the guillotine, gully_teen_; and the _garçons_ of the _cafés_, _gassons_. Choleric, with whiskers like a bear, and a voice of thunder, if anything goes wrong, he swears away, starboard and larboard, in French and English, in delightful discord. [Footnote 22: He is since dead.] He sought me out soon after his arrival, and carried me with him, as an interpreter, in quest of lodgings. We found a very snug little apartment of four rooms, that he took. The last occupant was a lady, who, in letting the rooms, conditioned that Marie, her servant, must be hired with them, to look after the furniture, and to be in readiness to receive her at her return from the provinces. A few days after this arrangement I called, and was surprised, on ringing the bell, to hear the cry of an infant. After a moment's delay the door was cautiously opened, and the captain, in his gruffest tone, demanded, "Cur vully voo?" An exclamation of surprise at seeing me followed; but instead of opening the door for my admission, he held it for a moment, as if undecided whether to be "at home" or not. At this critical instant an infant cried again, and the thing became too ridiculous for further gravity. We both laughed outright. I entered, and found the captain with a child three days old tucked under his right arm, or that which had been concealed by the door. The explanation was very simple, and infinitely to his credit. Marie, the _locum tenens_ of the lady who had let the apartment, and the wife of a coachman who was in the country, was the mother of the infant. After its birth she presented herself to her new master; told her story; adding, by means of an interpreter, that if he turned her away, she had no place in which to lay her head. The kind-hearted fellow made out to live abroad as well as he could for a day or two--an easy thing enough in Paris, by the way,--and when I so unexpectedly entered, Marie was actually cooking the captain's breakfast in the kitchen while he was nursing the child in the _salon!_ The dialogues between the captain and Marie were to the last degree amusing. He was quite unconscious of the odd sounds he uttered in speaking French, but thought he was getting on very well, being rather minute and particular in his orders; and she felt his kindness to herself and child so sensibly, that she always fancied she understood his wishes. I was frequently compelled to interpret between them; first asking him to explain himself in English, for I could make but little of his French myself. On one occasion he invited me to breakfast, as we were to pass the day exploring in company. By way of inducement, he told me that he had accidentally found some cocoa in the shell, and that he had been teaching Marie how to cook it "ship-fashion." I would not promise, as his hour was rather early, and the distance between us so great; but before eleven I would certainly be with him. I breakfasted at home therefore, but was punctual to the latter engagement. "I hope you have breakfasted?" cried the captain, rather fiercely, as I entered. I satisfied him on this point; and then, after a minute of demure reflection, he resumed, "You are lucky; for Marie boiled the cocoa, and, after throwing away the liquor, she buttered and peppered the shells, and served them for me to eat! I don't see how she made such a mistake, for I was very particular in my directions, and be d----d to her! I don't care so much about my own breakfast neither, for that can be had at the next _café_; but the poor creature has lost hers, which I told her to cook out of the rest of the cocoa." I had the curiosity to inquire how he had made out to tell Marie to do all this. "Why, I showed her the cocoa, to be sure, and then told her to _boily vous-même_." There was no laughing at this, and so I went with the captain to a _café_; after which we proceeded in quest of the _gullyteen_, which he was particularly anxious to see. My rides often extend to the heights behind Malmaison and St. Cloud, where there is a fine country, and where some of the best views in the vicinity of Paris are to be obtained. As the court is at St. Cloud, I often meet different members of the royal family dashing to or from town, or perhaps passing from one of their abodes to another. The style is pretty uniform, for I do not remember to have ever met the king but once with less than eight horses. The exception was quite early one morning, when he was going into the country with very little _éclat_, accompanied by the Dauphine. Even on this occasion he was in a carriage and six, followed by another with four, and attended by a dozen mounted men. These royal progresses are truly magnificent; and they serve greatly to enliven the road, as we live so near the country palace. The king has been quite lately to a camp formed at St. Omer, and I happened to meet a portion of his equipages on their return. The carriages I saw were very neatly built post-chaises, well leathered, and contained what are here called the "officers of the mouth," alias "cooks and purveyors." They were all drawn by four horses. This was a great occasion--furniture being actually sent from the palace of Compiègne for the king's lodgings, and the court is said to have employed seventy different vehicles to transport it. I saw about a dozen. Returning the other night from a dinner-party, given on the banks of the Seine, a few miles above us, I saw flaring lights gleaming along the highway, which, at first, caused nearly as much conjecture as some of the adventures of Don Quixotte. My horse proving a little restive, I pulled up, placing the cabriolet on one side of the road, for the first impression was that the cattle employed at some funeral procession had taken flight and were running away. It proved to be the Dauphine dashing towards St. Cloud. This was the first time I had ever met any of the royal equipages at night, and the passage was much the most picturesque of any I had hitherto seen. Footmen, holding flaming flambeaux, rode in pairs in front, by the side of the carriage, and in its rear; the _piqueur_ scouring along the road in advance, like a rocket. By the way, a lady of the court told me lately that Louis XVIII. had lost some of his French by the emigration, for he did not know how to pronounce this word _piqueur_. On witnessing all this magnificence, the mind is carried back a few generations, in the inquiry after the progress of luxury, and the usages of our fathers. Coaches were first used in England in the reign of Elizabeth. It is clear enough, by the pictures in the Louvre, that in the time of Louis XIV. the royal carriages were huge, clumsy vehicles, with at least three seats. Mademoiselle de Montpensier, in her Memoirs, tells us how often she took her place at the window, in order to admire the graceful attitudes of M. de Lauzun, who rode near it. There is still in existence, in the Bibliothèque du Roi, a letter of Henry IV. to Sully, in which the king explains to the grand master the reason why he could not come to the arsenal that day; the excuse being that the queen _was using the carriage!_ To-day his descendant seldom moves at a pace slower than ten miles the hour, is drawn by eight horses, and is usually accompanied by one or more empty vehicles of equal magnificence to receive him, in the event of an accident. Notwithstanding all this regal splendour, the turn-outs of Paris, as a whole, are by no means remarkable. The genteelest and the fashionable carriage is the chariot. I like the proportions of the French carriages better than those of the English or our own, the first being too heavy, and the last too light. The French vehicles appear to me to be in this respect a happy medium. But the finish is by no means equal to that of the English carriages, nor at all better than that of ours. There are relatively a large proportion of shabby-genteel equipages at Paris. Even the vehicles that are seen standing in the court of the Tuileries on a reception day are not at all superior to the better sort of American carriages, though the liveries are much more showy. Few people here own the carriages and horses they use. Even the strangers, who are obliged to have travelling vehicles rarely use them in town, the road and the streets requiring very different sorts of equipages. There are certain job-dealers who furnish all that is required for a stipulated sum. You select the carriage and horses on trial and contract at so much a month, or at so much a year. The coachman usually comes with the equipage, as does the footman sometimes, though both are paid by the person taking the coach. They will wear your livery, if you choose, and you can have your arms put on the carriage if desirable. I pay five hundred francs a month for a carriage and horses, and forty francs for a coachman. I believe this is the usual price. I have a right to have a pair of horses always at my command, finding nothing but the stable, and even this would be unnecessary in Paris. If we go away from our own stable, I pay five francs a day extra. There is a very great convenience to strangers, in particular, in this system, for one can set up and lay down a carriage, without unnecessary trouble or expense, as it may be wanted. In everything of this nature, we have no town that has the least character, or the conveniences, of a capital. The French have little to boast of in the way of horseflesh. Most of the fine coach and cabriolet cattle of Paris come from Mecklenburgh, though some are imported from England. It is not common to meet with a very fine animal of the native breed. In America, land is so plenty and so cheap, that we keep a much larger proportion of brute force than is kept here. It is not uncommon with us to meet with those who live by day's work, using either oxen or horses. The consequence is that many beasts are raised with little care, and with scarcely any attention to the breeds. We find many good ones. In spite of bad grooming, little training, and hard work, I greatly question if even England possesses a larger proportion of good horses, comparing the population of the two countries, than America. Our animals are quicker footed, and at trotting, I suspect, we could beat the world; Christendom, certainly. The great avenue between the garden of the Tuileries and the Bois de Boulogne, with the _allées_ of the latter, are the places to meet the fast-goers of the French capital, and I am strongly of opinion that there is no such exhibition of speed, in either, as one meets on the Third Avenue of New York. As for the Avenue de Neuilly, our sulky riders would vanish like the wind from anything I have seen on it; although one meets there, occasionally, fine animals from all parts of Europe. The cattle of the _diligences_, of the post-houses, and even of the cavalry of France, are solid, hardy and good feeders, but they are almost entirely without speed or action. The two former are very much the same, and it is a hard matter to get more than eight miles out of them without breaking into a gallop, or more than ten, if put under the whip. Now, a short time previously to leaving home, I went eleven measured miles, in a public coach, in two minutes less than an hour, the whip untouched. I sat on the box, by the side of the driver, and know that this was done under a pull that actually disabled one of his arms, and that neither of the four animals broke its trot. It is not often our roads will admit of this, but, had we the roads of England, I make little doubt we should altogether outdo her in speed. As for the horses used here in the public conveyances, and for the post routes, they are commonly compact, clumsy beasts, with less force than their shape would give reason to suppose. Their manes are long and shaggy, the fetlocks are rarely trimmed, the shoes are seldom corked, and, when there is a little coquetry, the tail is braided. In this trim, with a coarse harness, that is hardly ever cleaned, traces of common rope, and half the time no blinkers or reins, away they scamper, with their heads in all directions, like the classical representation of a team in an ancient car, through thick and thin, working with all their might to do two posts within an hour, one being the legal measure. These animals appear to possess a strange _bonhomie_, being obedient, willing and tractable, although, in the way of harness and reins, they are pretty much their own masters. My excursions in the environs have made me acquainted with a great variety of modes of communication between the capital and its adjacent, villages. Although Paris is pared down so accurately, and is almost without suburbs, the population, within a circuit of ten miles in each direction, is almost equal to that of Paris itself. St. Denis has several thousands, St. Germain the same, and Versailles is still a town of considerable importance. All these places, with villages out of number, keep up daily intercourse with the city, and in addition to the hundreds of vegetable carts that constantly pass to and fro, there are many conveyances that are exclusively devoted to passengers. The cheapest and lowest is called a _coucou_ for no reason that I can see, unless it be that a man looks very like a fool to have a seat in one of them. They are large cabriolets, with two and even three seats. The wheels are enormous, and there is commonly a small horse harnessed by the side of a larger, in the hills, to drag perhaps eight or nine people. One is amazed to see the living carrion that is driven about a place like Paris, in these uncouth vehicles. The river is so exceedingly crooked, that it is little used by travellers above Rouen. The internal transportation of France, where the lines of the rivers are not followed, is carried on, almost exclusively, in enormous carts, drawn by six and even eight heavy horses, harnessed in a line. The burthen is often as large as a load of hay, not quite so high, perhaps, but generally longer, care being had to preserve the balance in such a manner as to leave no great weight on the shaft horse. These teams are managed with great dexterity, and I have often stopped and witnessed, with admiration, the entrance of one of them into a yard, as it passed from a crowded street probably not more than thirty feet wide. But the evolutions of the _diligence_, guided as it chiefly is by the whip, and moving on a trot, are really nice affairs. I came from La Grange, some time since, in one, and I thought that we should dash everything to pieces in the streets, and yet nothing was injured. At the close of the journey, our team of five horses, two on the pole and three on the lead, wheeled, without breaking its trot, into a street that was barely wide enough to receive the huge vehicle, and this too without human direction, the driver being much too drunk to be of any service. These _diligences_ are uncouth objects to the eye; but, for the inside passengers, they are much more comfortable, so far as my experience extends than either the American stage or the English coach. The necessity of passing the _barrière_ two or three times a day, has also made me acquainted with the great amount of drunkenness that prevails in Paris. Wine can be had outside of the walls, for about half the price which is paid for it within the town, as it escapes the _octroi_, or city duty. The people resort to these places for indulgence, and there is quite as much low blackguardism and guzzling here, as is to be met with in any sea-port I know. Provisions of all sorts, too, are cheaper without the gates, for the same reason; and the lower classes resort to them to celebrate their weddings, and on other eating and drinking occasions. "Ici on fait festins et noces,"[23] is a common sign, no barrier being without more or less of these houses. The _guinguettes_ are low gardens, answering to the English tea-gardens of the humblest class, with a difference in the drinkables and other fare. The base of Montmartre is crowded with them. [Footnote 23: Weddings and merry-makings are kept here.] One sometimes meets with an unpleasant adventure among these exhilarated gentry; for, though I think a low Frenchman is usually better natured when a little _grisé_ than when perfectly sober, this is not always the case. Quite lately I had an affair that might have terminated seriously, but for our good luck. It is usual to have two sets of reins to the cabriolets, the horses being very spirited, and the danger from accidents in streets so narrow and crowded being great. I had dined in town, and was coming out about nine o'clock. The horse was walking up the ascent to the Barrière de Clichy, when I observed, by the shadow cast from a bright moon, that there was a man seated on the cabriolet, behind. Charles was driving, and I ordered him to tell the man to get off. Finding words of no effect, Charles gave him a slight tap with his whip. The fellow instantly sprang forward, seized the horse by the reins, and attempted to drag him to one side of the road. Failing in this, he fled up the street. Charles now called out that he had cut the reins. I seized the other pair and brought the horse up, and, as soon as he was under command, we pursued our assailant at a gallop. He was soon out of breath, and we captured him. As I felt very indignant at the supposed outrage, which might have cost, not us only, but others, their lives, I gave him in charge to two gendarmes at the gate, with my address, promising to call at the police office in the morning. Accordingly, next day I presented myself, and was surprised to find that the man had been liberated. I had discovered, in the interval, that the leather had broken, and had not been cut, which materially altered the _animus_ of the offence, and I had come with an intention to ask for the release of the culprit, believing it merely a sally of temper, which a night's imprisonment sufficiently punished; but the man being _charged_ with cutting the rein, I thought the magistrate had greatly forgotten himself in discharging him before I appeared. Indeed I made no scruple in telling him so. We had some warm words, and parted. I make no doubt I was mistaken for an Englishman, and that the old national antipathy was at work against me. I was a good deal surprised at the termination of this, my first essay in French criminal justice. So many eulogiums have been passed on the police, that I was not prepared to find this indifference to an offence like that of wantonly cutting the reins of a spirited cabriolet horse, in the streets of Paris; for such was the charge on which the man stood committed. I mentioned the affair to a friend, and he said that the police was good only for political offences, and that the government rather leaned to the side of the rabble, in order to find support with them, in the event of any serious movement. This, you will remember, was the opinion of a Frenchman, and not mine; for I only relate the facts (one conjecture excepted), and to do justice to all parties, it is proper to add that my friend is warmly opposed to the present _régime_. I have uniformly found the gendarmes civil, and even obliging; and I have seen them show great forbearance on various occasions. As to the marvellous stories we have heard of the police of Paris, I suspect they have been gotten up for effect, such things being constantly practised here. One needs be behind the curtain, in a great many things, to get a just idea of the true state of the world. A laughable instance has just occurred, within my knowledge, of a story that has been got up for effect. The town was quite horrified lately, with an account, in the journals, of a careless nurse permitting a child to fall into the _fossé_ of the great bears, in the Jardin des Plantes, and of the bears eating up the dear little thing, to the smallest fragment, before succour could be obtained. Happening to be at the garden soon after, in the company of one connected with the establishment, I inquired into the circumstances, and was told that the nurses were very careless with the children, and that the story was published in order that the bears should not eat up any child hereafter, rather than because they had eaten up a child heretofore! LETTER XVIII. Personal Intercourse.--Parisian Society and Hospitality.--Influence of Money.--Fiacres.--M. de Lameth.--Strife of Courtesy.--Standard of Delicacy.--French Dinners.--Mode of Visiting.--The Chancellor of France.--The Marquis de Marbois.--Political Côteries.--Paris Lodgings. --A French Party.--An English Party.--A splendid Ball.--Effects of good Breeding.--Characteristic Traits.--Influence of a Court. To MRS. POMEROY, COOPERSTOWN. I have said very little, in my previous letters, on the subject of our personal intercourse with the society of Paris. It is not always easy for one to be particular in these matters, and maintain the reserve that is due to others. Violating the confidence he may have received through his hospitality, is but an indifferent return from the guest to the host. Still there are men, if I may so express it, so public in their very essence, certainly in their lives, that propriety is less concerned with a repetition of their sentiments, and with delineations of their characters, than in ordinary cases; for the practice of the world has put them so much on their guard against the representations of travellers, that there is more danger of rendering a false account, by becoming their dupes, than of betraying them in their unguarded moments. I have scarcely ever been admitted to the presence of a real notoriety, that I did not find the man, or woman--sex making little difference--an actor; and this, too, much beyond the everyday and perhaps justifiable little practices of conventional life. Inherent simplicity of character is one of the rarest, as, tempered by the tone imparted by refinement, it is the loveliest of all our traits, though it is quite common to meet with those who affect it, with an address that is very apt to deceive the ordinary, and most especially the flattered, observer. Opportunity, rather than talents, is the great requisite for circulating gossip; a very moderate degree of ability sufficing for the observation which shall render private anecdotes, more especially when they relate to persons of celebrity, of interest to the general reader. But there is another objection to being merely the medium of information of this low quality, that I should think would have great influence with every one who has the common self-respect of a gentleman. _There is a tacit admission of inferiority_ in the occupation, that ought to prove too humiliating to a man accustomed to those associations, which imply equality. It is permitted to touch upon the habits and appearance of a truly great man; but to dwell upon the peculiarities of a duke, merely because he is a duke, is as much as to say he is your superior; a concession, I do not feel disposed to make in favour of any _mere duke_ in Christendom. I shall not, however, be wholly silent on the general impressions left by the little I have seen of the society of Paris; and, occasionally, when it is characteristic, an anecdote may be introduced, for such things sometimes give distinctness, as well as piquancy, to a description. During our first winter in Paris, our circle, never very large, was principally confined to foreign families intermingled with a few French; but since our return to town, from St. Ouen, we have seen more of the people of the country. I should greatly mislead you, however, were I to leave the impression that our currency in the French capital has been at all general, for it certainly has not. Neither my health, leisure, fortune, nor opportunities, have permitted this. I believe few, perhaps no Americans, have very general access to the best society of any large European town; at all events, I have met with no one who I have had any reason to think was much better off than myself in this respect; and, I repeat, my own familiarity with the circles of the capital is nothing to boast of. It is in Paris, as it is everywhere else, as respects those who are easy of access. In all large towns there is to be found a troublesome and pushing set, who, requiring notoriety, obtrude themselves on strangers, sometimes with sounding names, and always with offensive pretensions of some sort or other; but the truly respectable and estimable class, in every country, except in cases that cannot properly be included in the rule, are to be sought. Now, one must feel that he has peculiar claims, or be better furnished with letters than happened to be my case, to get a ready admission into this set, or, having obtained it, to feel that his position enabled him to maintain the intercourse, with the ease and freedom that could alone render it agreeable. To be shown about as a lion, when circumstances offer the means; to be stuck up at a dinner-table, as a piece of luxury, like strawberries in February, or peaches in April,--can hardly be called association: the terms being much on a par with that which forms the _liaisons_, between him who gives the entertainment, and the hired plate with which his table is garnished. With this explanation, then, you are welcome to an outline of the little I know on the subject. One of the errors respecting the French, which has been imported into America, through England, is the impression that they are not hospitable. Since my residence here, I have often been at a loss to imagine how such a notion could have arisen, for I am acquainted with no town, in which it has struck me there is more true hospitality than in Paris. Not only are dinners, balls, and all the minor entertainments frequent, but there is scarcely a man, or a woman, of any note in society, who does not cause his or her doors to be opened, once a fortnight at least, and, in half the cases, once a week. At these _soirées_ invitations are sometimes given, it is true, but then they are general, and for the whole season; and it is not unusual, even, to consider them free to all who are on visiting terms with the family. The utmost simplicity and good taste prevail at these places, the refreshments being light and appropriate, and the forms exacting no more than what belongs to good breeding. You will, at once, conceive the great advantages that a stranger possesses in having access to such social resources. One, with a tolerable visiting list, may choose his circle for any particular evening, and if, by chance, the company should not happen to be to his mind, he has still before him the alternative of several other houses, which are certain to be open. It is not easy to say what can be more truly hospitable than this. The _petits soupers_, once so celebrated, are entirely superseded by the new distribution of time, which is probably the most rational that can be devised for a town life. The dinner is at six, an hour that is too early to interfere with the engagements of the evening, it being usually over at eight, and too late to render food again necessary that night; an arrangement that greatly facilitates the evening intercourse, releasing it at once from all trouble and parade. It has often been said in favour of French society, that once within the doors of a _salon_, all are equal. This is not literally so, it being impossible that such a state of things can exist; nor is it desirable that it should, since it is confounding all sentiment and feeling, overlooking the claims of age, services, merit of every sort, and setting at nought the whole construction of society. It is not absolutely true that even rank is entirely forgotten in French society, though I think it sufficiently so to prevent any deference to it from being offensive. The social pretensions of a French peer are exceedingly well regulated, nor do I remember to have seen an instance in which a very young man has been particularly noticed on account of his having claims of this sort. Distinguished men are so very numerous in Paris, that they excite no great feeling, and the even course of society is little disturbed on their account. Although all within the doors of a French _salon_ are not perfectly equal, none are made unpleasantly to feel the indifference. I dare say there are circles in Paris, in which the mere possession of money may be a source of evident distinction, but it must be in a very inferior set. The French, while they are singularly alive to the advantages of money, and extremely liable to yield to its influence in all important matters, rarely permit any manifestations of its power to escape them in their ordinary intercourse. As a people, they appear to me to be ready to yield everything to money but its external homage. On these points they are the very converse of the Americans, who are hard to be bought, while they consider money the very base of all distinction. The origin of these peculiarities may be found in the respective conditions of the two countries. In America, fortunes are easily and rapidly acquired; pressure reduces few to want; he who serves is, if anything, more in demand than he who is to be served; and the want of temptation produces exemption from the liability to corruption. Men will, and do, daily _corrupt themselves_ in the rapacious pursuit of gain, but comparatively few are in the market to be bought and sold by others. Notwithstanding this, money being every man's goal, there is a secret, profound, and general deference for it, while money will do less than in almost any other country in Christendom. Here, few young men look forward to gaining distinction by making money; they search for it as a means, whereas with us it is the end. We have little need of arms in America, and the profession is in less request than that of law or merchandize. Of the arts and letters the country possesses none, or next to none; and there is no true sympathy with either. The only career that is felt as likely to lead, and which can lead, to distinction independently of money, is that of politics, and, as a whole, this is so much occupied by sheer adventurers, with little or no pretentions to the name of statesmen, that it is scarcely reputable to belong to it. Although money has no influence in politics, or as little as well may be, even the successful politician is but a secondary man in ordinary society in comparison with the _millionnaire_. Now all this is very much reversed in Paris: money does much, while it seems to do but little. The writer of a successful comedy would be a much more important personage in the _côteries_ of Paris than M. Rothschild; and the inventor of a new bonnet would enjoy much more _éclat_ than the inventor of a clever speculation. I question if there be a community on earth in which gambling risks in the funds, for instance, are more general than in this, and yet the subject appears to be entirely lost sight of out of the Bourse. The little social notoriety that is attached to military distinction here has greatly surprised me. It really seems as if France has had so much military renown as to be satiated with it. One is elbowed constantly by generals, who have gained this or that victory, and yet no one seems to care anything about them. I do not mean that the nation is indifferent to military glory, but society appears to care little or nothing about it. I have seen a good deal of fuss made with the writer of a few clever verses, but I have never seen any made with a hero. Perhaps it was because the verses were new, and the victories old. The perfect good taste and indifference which the French manifest concerning the private affairs, and concerning the mode of living, of one who is admitted to the _salons_, has justly extorted admiration, even from the English, the people of all others who most submit to a contrary feeling. A hackney-coach is not always admitted into a court-yard, but both men and women make their visits in them, without any apparent hesitation. No one seems ashamed of confessing poverty. I do not say that women of quality often use _fiacres_ to make their visits, but men do, and I have seen women in them openly whom I have met in some of the best houses in Paris. It is better to go in a private carriage, or in a _remise_, if one can, but few hesitate, when their means are limited, about using the former. In order to appreciate this self-denial, or simplicity, or good sense, it is necessary to remember that a Paris _fiacre_ is not to be confounded with any other vehicle on earth. I witnessed, a short time since, a ludicrous instance of the different degrees of feeling that exist on this point among different people. A---- and myself went to the house of an English woman our acquaintance who is not very choice in her French. A Mrs. ----, the wife of a colonel in the English army, sat next A----, as a French lady begged that her carriage might be ordered. Our hostess told her servant to order the _fiacre_ of Madame ----. Now Madame ---- kept her chariot, to my certain knowledge, but she disregarded the mistake. A---- soon after desired that our carriage might come next. The good woman of the house, who loved to be busy, again called for the _fiacre_ of Madame ----. I saw the foot of A---- in motion, but catching my eye, she smiled, and the thing passed off. The "voiture de Madame ----," or our own carriage, was announced just as Mrs. ---- was trying to make a servant understand she wished for hers. "Le fiacre de Madame ----," again put in the bustling hostess. This was too much for a colonel's lady, and, with a very pretty air of distress, she took care to explain, in a way that all might hear her, that it was a _remise_. I dare say, vulgar prejudices influence vulgar minds, here, as elsewhere, and yet I must say, that I never knew any one hesitate about giving an address on account of the humility of the lodgings. It is to be presumed that the manner in which families that are historical, and of long-established rank, were broken down by the revolution, has had an influence in effecting this healthful state of feeling. The great tact and careful training of the women, serve to add very much to the grace of French society. They effectually prevent all embarrassments from the question of precedency, by their own decisions. Indeed, it appears to be admitted, that when there is any doubt on these points, the mistress of the house shall settle it in her own way. I found myself lately, at a small dinner, the only stranger, and the especially invited guest, standing near Madame la Marquise at the moment the service was announced. A bishop made one of the trio. I could not precede a man of his years and profession, and he was too polite to precede a stranger. It was a nice point. Had it been a question between a duke and myself, as a stranger, and under the circumstances of the invitation, I should have had the _pas_, but even the lady hesitated about discrediting a father of the church. She delayed but an instant, and, smiling, she begged us to follow her to the table, avoiding the decision altogether. In America such a thing could not have happened, for no woman, by a fiction of society, is supposed to know how to walk in company without support; but, here, a woman will not spoil her curtsey, on entering a room, by leaning on an arm, if she can well help it. The practice of tucking up a brace of females (liver and gizzard, as the English coarsely, but not inaptly, term it), under one's arms, in order to enter a small room that is crowded in a way to render the movements of even one person difficult, does not prevail here, it being rightly judged that a proper _tenue_, a good walk, and a graceful movement, are all impaired by it. This habit also singularly contributes to the comfort of your sex, by rendering them more independent of ours. No one thinks, except in very particular cases, of going to the door to see a lady into her carriage, a custom too provincial to prevail in a capital, anywhere. Still, there is an amusing assiduity among the men, on certain points of etiquette, that has sometimes made me laugh; though, in truth, every concession to politeness being a tribute to benevolence, is respectable, unless spoiled in the manner. As we are gossiping about trifles, I will mention a usage or two, that to you will at least be novel. I was honoured with a letter from le Chevalier Alexandre de Lameth,[24] accompanied by an offering of a book, and I took an early opportunity to pay my respects to him. I found this gentleman, who once played so conspicuous a part in the politics of France, and who is now a liberal deputy, at breakfast, in a small cabinet, at the end of a suite of four rooms. He received me politely, conversed a good deal of America, in which country he had served as a colonel, under Rochambeau, and I took my leave. That M. de Lameth should rise, and even see me into the next room, was what every one would expect, and there I again took my leave of him. But he followed me to each door, in succession, and when, with a little gentle violence, I succeeded in shutting him in the ante-chamber, he seemed to yield to my entreaties not to give himself any further trouble. I was on the landing, on my way down, when, hearing the door of M. de Lameth's apartment open, I turned and saw its master standing before it, to give and receive the last bow. Although this extreme attention to the feelings of others, and delicacy of demeanour, rather marks the Frenchman of the old school, perhaps, it is by no means uncommon here. General Lafayette, while he permits me to see him with very little ceremony, scarcely ever suffers me to leave him without going with me as far as two or three doors. This, in my case, he does more from habit than anything else, for he frequently does not even rise when I enter; and, sometimes, when I laughingly venture to say so much ceremony is scarcely necessary between us, he will take me at my word, and go back to his writing, with perfect simplicity. [Footnote 24: Since dead.] The reception between the women, I see plainly, is graduated with an unpretending but nice regard to their respective claims. They rise, even to men, a much more becoming and graceful habit than that of America, except in evening circles, or in receiving intimates. I never saw a French woman offer her hand to a male visitor, unless a relative, though it is quite common for females to kiss each other, when the _réunion_ is not an affair of ceremony. The practice of kissing among men still exists, though it is not very common at Paris. It appears, to be gradually going out with the earrings. I have never had an offer from a Frenchman, of my own age, to kiss me, but it has frequently occurred with my seniors. General Lafayette practises it still, with all his intimates. I was seated, the other evening, in quiet conversation, with Madame la Princesse de ----. Several people had come and gone in the course of an hour, and all had been received in the usual manner. At length the _huissier_, walking fast through the ante-chamber, announced the wife of an ambassador. The Princesse, at the moment, was seated on a divan, with her feet raised so as not to touch the floor. I was startled with the suddenness and vehemence of her movements. She sprang to her feet, and rather ran than walked across the vast _salon_ to the door, where she was met by her visitor, who, observing the _empressement_ of her hostess, through the vista of rooms, had rushed forward as fast as decorum would at all allow, in order to anticipate her at the door. It was my impression, at first, that they were bosom friends, about to be restored to each other, after a long absence, and that the impetuosity of their feelings had gotten the better of their ordinary self-command. No such thing; it was merely a strife of courtesy, for the meeting was followed by an extreme attention to all the forms of society, profound curtsies, and the elaborated demeanour which marks ceremony rather than friendship. Much has been said about the latitude of speech among the women of France, and comparisons have been made between them and our own females, to the disadvantage of the former. If the American usages are to be taken as the standard of delicacy in such matters, I know of no other people who come up to it. As to our mere feelings, habit can render anything proper, or anything improper, and it is not an easy matter to say where the line, in conformity with good sense and good taste, should be actually drawn. I confess a leaning to the American school, but how far I am influenced by education it would not be easy for me to say myself. Foreigners affirm that we are squeamish, and that we wound delicacy oftener by the awkward attempts to protect it, than if we had more simplicity. There may be some truth in this, for though cherishing the notions of my youth, I never belonged to the ultra school at home, which, I believe you will agree with me, rather proves low breeding than good breeding. One sees instances of this truth, not only every day, but every hour of the day. Yesterday, in crossing the Tuileries, I was witness of a ludicrous scene that sufficiently illustrates what I mean. The statues of the garden have little or no drapery. A countryman, and two women of the same class, in passing one, were struck with this circumstance, and their bursts of laughter, running and hiding their faces, and loud giggling, left no one in ignorance of the cause of their extreme bashfulness. Thousands of both sexes pass daily beneath the same statue, without a thought of its nudity, and it is looked upon as a noble piece of sculpture. In dismissing this subject, which is every way delicate, I shall merely say that usage tolerates a license of speech, of which you probably have no idea, but that I think one hears very rarely from a French woman of condition little that would not be uttered by an American female under similar circumstances. So far as my experience goes, there is a marked difference in this particular between the women of a middle station and those of a higher rank; by rank, however, I mean hereditary rank, for The revolution has made a _pêle mêle_ in the _salons_ of Paris. Although the _petits soupers_ have disappeared, the dinners are very sufficient substitutes: they are given at a better hour; and the service of a French entertainment, so quiet, so entirely free from effort, or chatter about food, is admirably adapted to rendering them agreeable. I am clearly of opinion that no one ought to give any entertainment that has not the means of making it pass off as a matter-of-course thing, and without effort. I have certainly seen a few fussy dinners here, but they are surprisingly rare. At home, we have plenty of people who know that a party that has a laboured air is inherently vulgar, but how few are there that know how to treat a brilliant entertainment as a mere matter of course! Paris is full of those desirable houses in which the thing is understood. The forms of the table vary a little, according to the set one is in. In truly French houses, until quite lately, I believe, it was not the custom to change the knife,--the duty of which, by the way, is not great, the cookery requiring little more than the fork. In families that mingle more with strangers, both are changed, as with us. A great dinner is served very much as at home, so far as the mere courses are concerned, though I have seen the melons follow the soup. This I believe to be in good taste, though it is not common; and it struck me at first as being as much out of season as the old New England custom of eating the pudding before the meat. But the French give small dinners (small in name, though certainly very great in execution), in which the dishes are served singly or nearly so, the entertainment resembling those given by the Turks, and being liable to the same objection; for when there is but a single dish before one, and it is not known whether there is to be any more, it is an awkward thing to decline eating. Such dinners are generally of the best quality, but I think they should never be given, except where there is sufficient intimacy to embolden the guest to say _jam satis_. The old devotion to the sex is not so exclusively the occupation of a French _salon_ as it was probably half a century since. I have been in several, where the men were grouped in a corner talking politics, while the women amused each other as best they could, in cold, formal lines, looking like so many figures placed there to show off the latest modes of the toilette. I do not say this is absolutely common, but it is less rare than you might be apt to suppose. I can tell you little of the habit of reading manuscripts in society. Such things are certainly done, for I have been invited to be present on one or two occasions; but having a horror of such exhibitions, I make it a point to be indisposed, the choice lying between the megrims before or after them. Once, and once only, I have heard a poet recite his verses in a well-filled drawing-room; and though I have every reason to think him clever, my ear was so little accustomed to the language, that, in the mouthing of French recitation, I lost nearly all of it. I have had an odd pleasure in driving from one house to another, on particular evenings, in order to produce as strong contrasts as my limited visiting-list will procure. Having a fair opportunity a few nights since, in consequence of two or three invitations coming in for the evening on which several houses where I occasionally called were opened, I determined to make a night of it, in order to note the effect. As A---- did not know several of the people, I went alone, and you may possibly be amused with an account of my adventures: they shall be told. In the first place, I had to dress, in order to go to dinner at a house that I had never entered, and with a family of which I had never seen a soul. These are incidents which frequently come over a stranger, and at first were not a little awkward; but use hardens us to much greater misfortunes. At six, then, I stepped punctually into my _coupé_, and gave Charles the necessary number and street. I ought to tell you that the invitation had come a few days before, and in a fit of curiosity I had accepted it, and sent a card, without having the least idea who my host and hostess were, beyond their names. There was something _piquant_ in this ignorance, and I had almost made up my mind to go in the same mysterious manner, leaving all to events, when happening, in an idle moment, to ask a lady of my acquaintance, and for whom I have a great respect, if she knew a Madame de ----, to my surprise, her answer was, "Most certainly; she is my cousin, and you are to dine there to-morrow." I said no more, though this satisfied me that my hosts were people of some standing. While driving to their hotel, it struck me, under all the circumstances, it might be well to know more of them, and I stopped at the gate of a female friend, who knows everybody, and who, I was certain, would receive me even at that unseasonable hour. I was admitted, explained my errand, and inquired if she knew a M. de ----. "Quelle question!" she exclaimed--"M. de ---- est Chancelier de France!" Absurd and even awkward as it might have proved, but for this lucky thought, I should have dined with the French Lord High Chancellor, without having the smallest suspicion of who he was! The hotel was a fine one, though the apartment was merely good, and the reception, service, and general style of the house were so simple that neither would have awakened the least suspicion of the importance of my hosts. The party was small and the dinner modest. I found the _chancelier_ a grave dignified man, a little curious on the subject of America, and his wife apparently a woman of great good sense, and I should think, of a good deal of attainment. Everything went off in the quietest manner possible, and I was sorry when it was time to go. From this dinner, I drove to the hotel of the Marquis de Marbois, to pay a visit of digestion. M. de Marbois retires so early, on account of his great age, that one is obliged to be punctual, or he will find the gate locked at nine. The company had got back into the drawing-room, and as the last week's guests were mostly there, as well as those who had just left the table, there might have been thirty people present, all of whom were men but two. One of the ladies was Madame de Souza, known in French literature as the writer of several clever novels of society. In the drawing-room were grouped, in clusters, the Grand Referendary, M. Cuvier, M. Daru, M. Villemain, M. de Plaisance, Mr. Brown, and many others of note. There seemed to be something in the wind, as the conversation was in low confidential whispers, attended by divers ominous shrugs. This could only be politics, and watching an opportunity, I questioned an acquaintance. The fact was really so. The appointed hour had come and the ministry of M. de Villèle was in the agony. The elections had not been favourable, and it was expedient to make an attempt to reach the old end, by what is called a new combination. It is necessary to understand the general influence of political intrigues on certain _côteries_ of Paris, to appreciate the effect of this intelligence, on a drawing-room filled, like this, with men who had been actors in the principal events of France for forty years. The name of M. Cuvier was even mentioned as one of the new ministers. Comte Roy was also named as likely to be the new premier. I was told that this gentleman was one of the greatest landed proprietors of France, his estates being valued at four millions of dollars. The fact is curious, as showing, not on vulgar rumour, but from a respectable source, what is deemed a first-rate landed property in this country. It is certainly no merit, nor do I believe it is any very great advantage; but I think we might materially beat this, even in America. The company soon separated, and I retired. From the Place de la Madeleine, I drove to a house near the Carrousel, where I had been invited to step in, in the course of the evening. All the buildings that remain within the intended parallelogram, which will some day make this spot one of the finest squares in the world, have been bought by the government, or nearly so, with the intent to have them pulled down, at a proper time; and the court bestows lodgings, _ad interim_, among them, on its favourites. Madame de ---- was one of these favoured persons, and she occupies a small apartment in the third story of one of these houses. The rooms were neat and well-arranged, but small. Probably the largest does not exceed fifteen feet square. The approach to a Paris lodging is usually either very good, or very bad. In the new buildings may be found some of the mediocrity of the new order of things; but in all those which were erected previously to the revolution, there is nothing but extremes in this, as in most other things: great luxury and elegance, or great meanness and discomfort. The house of Madame de ---- happens to be of the latter class, and although all the disagreeables have disappeared from her own rooms, one is compelled to climb up to them, through a dark well of a staircase, by flights of steps not much better than those we use in our stables. You have no notion of such staircases as those I had just descended in the hotels of the _chancelier_ and the _président premier_;[25] nor have we any just idea, as connected with respectable dwellings, of these I had now to clamber up. M. de ---- is a man of talents and great respectability, and his wife is exceedingly clever, but they are not rich. He is a professor, and she is an artist. After having passed so much of my youth on top-gallant yards, and in becketting royals, you are not to suppose, however, I had any great difficulty in getting up these stairs, narrow, steep, and winding as they were. [Footnote 25: M. de Marbois was the first president of the Court of Accounts.] We are now at the door, and I have rung. On whom do you imagine the curtain will rise? On a _réunion_ of philosophers come to discuss questions in botany, with M. de ----, or on artists, assembled to talk over the troubles of their profession, with his wife? The door opens, and I enter. The little drawing-room is crowded; chiefly with men. Two card-tables are set, and at one I recognize a party, in which are three dukes of the _vieille cour_, with M. de Duras at their head! The rest of the company was a little more mixed, but, on the whole, it savoured strongly of Coblentz and the _émigration_. This was more truly French than anything I had yet stumbled on. One or two of the grandees looked at me as if, better informed than Scott, they knew that General Lafayette had not gone to America to live. Some of these gentlemen certainly do not love us; but I had cut out too much work for the night to stay and return the big looks of even dukes, and, watching an opportunity, when the eyes of Madame de ---- were another way, I stole out of the room. Charles now took his orders, and we drove down into the heart of the town somewhere near the general post-office, or into those mazes of streets that near two years of practice have not yet taught me to thread. We entered the court of a large hotel, that was brilliantly lighted, and I ascended, by a noble flight of steps, to the first floor. Ante-chambers communicated with a magnificent saloon, which appeared to be near forty feet square. The ceilings were lofty, and the walls were ornamented with military trophies, beautifully designed, and which had the air of being embossed and gilded. I had got into the hotel of one of Napoleon's marshals, you will say, or at least into one of a marshal of the old _régime_. The latter conjecture may be true, but the house is now inhabited by a great woollen manufacturer, whom the events of the day has thrown into the presence of all these military emblems. I found the worthy _industriel_ surrounded by a group, composed of men of his own stamp, eagerly discussing the recent changes in the government. The women, of whom there might have been a dozen, were ranged, like a neglected parterre, along the opposite side of the room. I paid my compliments, staid a few minutes, and stole away to the next engagement. We had now to go to a little retired house on the Champs Elysées. There were only three or four carriages before the door, and on ascending to a small but very near apartment, I found some twenty people collected. The mistress of the house was an English lady, single, of a certain age, and a daughter of the Earl of ----, who was once governor of New York. Here was a very different set. One or two ladies of the old court, women of elegant manners, and seemingly of good information,--several English women, pretty, quiet, and clever, besides a dozen men of different nations. This was one of those little _réunions_ that are so common in Paris, among the foreigners, in which a small infusion of French serves to leaven a considerable batch of human beings from other parts of the world. As it is always a relief to me to speak my own language, after being a good while among foreigners, I staid an hour at this house. In the course of the evening an Irishman of great wit and of exquisite humour, one of the paragons of the age in his way, came in. In the course of conversation, this gentleman, who is the proprietor of an Irish estate, and a Catholic, told me of an atrocity in the laws of his country, of which until then I was ignorant. It seems that any younger brother, next heir, might claim the estate by turning Protestant, or drive the incumbent to the same act. I was rejoiced to hear that there was hardly an instance of such profligacy known.[26] To what baseness will not the struggle for political ascendency urge us! [Footnote 26: I believe this infamous law, however, has been repealed.] In the course of the evening, Mr. ----, the Irish gentleman, gravely introduced me to a Sir James ----, adding, with perfect gravity, "a gentleman whose father humbugged the Pope--humbugged infallibility." One could not but be amused with such an introduction, urged in a way so infinitely droll, and I ventured, at a proper moment, to ask an explanation, which, unless I was also humbugged, was as follows:-- Among the _détenus_ in 1804, was Sir William ----, the father of Sir James ----, the person in question. Taking advantage of the presence of the Pope at Paris, he is said to have called on the good-hearted Pius, with great concern of manner, to state his case. He had left his sons in England, and through his absence they had fallen under the care of two Presbyterian aunts; as a father he was naturally anxious to rescue them from this perilous situation. "Now Pius," continued my merry informant, "quite naturally supposed that all this solicitude was in behalf of two orthodox Catholic souls, and he got permission from Napoleon for the return of so good a father to his own country, never dreaming that the conversion of the boys, if it ever took place, would only be from the Protestant Episcopal Church of England, to that of Calvin; or a rescue from one of the devil's furnaces, to pop them into another." I laughed at this story, I suppose with a little incredulity, but my Irish friend insisted on its truth, ending the conversation with a significant nod, Catholic as he was, and saying--"humbugged infallibility!" By this time it was eleven o'clock, and as I am obliged to keep reasonable hours, it was time to go to _the_ party of the evening. Count ----, of the ---- Legation, gave a great ball. My carriage entered the line at the distance of near a quarter of a mile from the hotel; gendarmes being actively employed in keeping us all in our places. It was half an hour before I was set down, and the quadrilles were in full motion when I entered. It was a brilliant affair, much the most so I have ever yet witnessed in a private house. Some said there were fifteen hundred people present. The number seems incredible, and yet, when one comes to calculate, it may be so. As I got into my carriage to go away, Charles informed me that the people at the gates affirmed that more than six hundred carriages had entered the court that evening. By allowing an average of little more than two to each vehicle, we get the number mentioned. I do not know exactly how many rooms were opened on this occasion, but I should think there were fully a dozen. Two or three were very large salons, and the one in the centre, which was almost at fever-heat, had crimson hangings, by way of cooling one. I have never witnessed dancing at all comparable to that of the quadrilles of this evening. Usually there is either too much or too little of the dancing-master, but on this occasion every one seemed inspired with a love of the art. It was a beautiful sight to see a hundred charming young women, of the first families of Europe, for they were there of all nations, dressed with the simple elegance that is so becoming to the young of the sex, and which is never departed from here until after marriage, moving in perfect time to delightful music, as if animated by a common soul. The men, too, did better than usual, being less lugubrious and mournful than our sex is apt to be in dancing. I do not know how it is in private, but in the world, at Paris, every young woman seems to have a good mother; or, at least, one capable of giving her both a good tone and good taste. At this party I met the ----, an intimate friend of the ambassador, and one who also honours me with a portion of her friendship. In talking over the appearance of things, she told me that some hundreds of _applications for invitations_ to this ball had been made. "Applications! I cannot conceive of such meanness. In what manner?" "Directly; by note, by personal intercession--almost by tears. Be certain of it, many hundreds have been refused." In America we hear of refusals to go to balls, but we have not yet reached the pass of sending refusals to invite! "Do you see Mademoiselle ----, dancing in the set before you?" She pointed to a beautiful French girl, whom I had often seen at her house, but whose family was in a much lower station in society than herself, "Certainly--pray how came she here?" "I brought her. Her mother was dying to come, too, and she begged me to get an invitation for her and her daughter; but it would not do to bring the mother to such a place, and I was obliged to say no more tickets could be issued. I wished, however, to bring the daughter, she is so pretty, and we compromised the affair in that way." "And to this the mother assented!" "Assented! How can you doubt it--what funny American notions you have brought with you to France!" I got some droll anecdotes from my companion, concerning the ingredients of the company on this occasion, for she could be as sarcastic as she was elegant. A young woman near us attracted attention by a loud and vulgar manner of laughing. "Do you know that lady?" demanded my neighbour. "I have seen her before, but scarcely know her name." "She is the daughter of your acquaintance, the Marquise de ----." "Then she is, or was, a Mademoiselle de ----." "She is not, nor properly ever was, a Mademoiselle de ----. In the revolution the Marquis was imprisoned by you wicked republicans, and the Marquise fled to England, whence she returned, after an absence of three years, bringing with her this young lady, then an infant a few months old." "And Monsieur le Marquis?" "He never saw his daughter, having been beheaded in Paris, about a year before her birth." "_Quelle contretems_!" "_N'est-ce pas_?" It is a melancholy admission, but it is no less true, that good breeding is sometimes quite as active a virtue as good principles. How many more of the company present were born about a year after their fathers were beheaded, I have no means of knowing; but had it been the case with all of them, the company would have been of as elegant demeanour, and of much more _retenue_ of deportment, than we are accustomed to see, I will not say in _good_, but certainly in _general_ society at home. One of the consequences of good breeding is also a disinclination, positively a distaste, to pry into the private affairs of others. The little specimen to the contrary just named was rather an exception, owing to the character of the individual, and to the indiscretion of the young lady in laughing too loud, and then the affair of a birth so _very_ posthumous was rather too _patent_ to escape all criticism. My friend was in a gossiping mood this evening, and as she was well turned of fifty, I ventured to continue the conversation. As some of the _liaisons_ which exist here must be novel to you, I shall mention one or two more. A Madame de J---- passed us, leaning on the arm of M. de C----. I knew the former, who was a widow; had frequently visited her, and had been surprised at the intimacy which existed between her and M. de C----, who always appeared quite at home in her house. I ventured to ask my neighbour if the gentleman were the brother of the lady. "Her brother! It is to be hoped not, as he is her husband." "Why does she not bear his name, if that be the case?" "Because her first husband is of a more illustrious family than her second; and then there are some difficulties on the score of fortune. No, no. These people are _bona fide_ married. _Tenez_--do you see that gentleman who is standing so assiduously near the chair of Madame de S----? He who is all attention and smiles to the lady?" "Certainly--his politeness is even affectionate." "Well it ought to be, for it is M. de S----_, her husband." "They are a happy couple, then." "_Hors de doute--he meets her at _soirées_ and balls; is the pink of politeness; puts on her shawl; sees her safe into her carriage, and--" "Then they drive home together, as loving as Darby and Joan." "And then he jumps into his cabriolet, and drives to the lodgings of ----. _Bon soir_, Monsieur;--you are making me fall into the vulgar crime of scandal." Now, as much as all this may sound like invention, it is quite true, that I repeat no more to you than was said to me, and no more than what I believe to be exact. As respects the latter couple, I have been elsewhere told that they literally never see each other, except in public, where they constantly meet, as the best friends in the world. I was lately in some English society, when Lady G---- bet a pair of gloves with Lord R---- that he had not seen Lady R---- in a fortnight. The bet was won by the gentleman, who proved satisfactorily that he had met his wife at a dinner-party, only ten days before. After all I have told you, and all that you may have heard from others, I am nevertheless inclined to believe, that the high society of Paris is quite as exemplary as that of any other large European town. If we are any better ourselves, is it not more owing to the absence of temptation, than to any other cause? Put large garrisons into our towns, fill the streets with idlers, who have nothing to do but to render themselves agreeable, and with women with whom dress and pleasure are the principal occupations, and then let us see what protestantism and liberty will avail us, in this particular. The intelligent French say that their society is improving in morals. I can believe this, of which I think there is sufficient proof by comparing the present with the past, as the latter has been described to us. By the past, I do not mean the period of the revolution, when vulgarity assisted to render vice still more odious--a happy union, perhaps, for those who were to follow--but the days of the old _régime_. Chance has thrown me in the way of three or four old dowagers of that period, women of high rank, and still in the first circles, who, amid all their _finesse_ of breeding, and ease of manner, have had a most desperate _roué_ air about them. Their very laugh, at times, has seemed replete with a bold levity, that was as disgusting as it was unfeminine. I have never, in any other part of the world, seen loose sentiments _affichés_ with more effrontery. These women are the complete antipodes of the quiet, elegant Princesse de ----, who was at Lady ---- ----'s, this evening; though some of them write _Princesses_ on their cards, too. The influence of a court must be great on the morals of those who live in its purlieus. Conversing with the Duc de ----, a man who has had general currency in the best society of Europe, on this subject, he said, --"England has long decried our manners. Previously to the revolution, I admit they were bad; perhaps worst than her own; but I know nothing in our history as bad as what I lately witnessed in England. You know I was there quite recently. The king invited me to dine at Windsor. I found every one in the drawing-room, but His Majesty and Lady ----. She entered but a minute before him, like a queen. Her reception was that of a queen; young, unmarried females kissed her hand. Now, all this might happen in France, even now: but Louis XV. the most dissolute of our monarchs, went no farther. At Windsor, I saw the husband, sons, and daughters of the favourite, in the circle! _Le parc des Cerfs_ was not as bad as this." "And yet, M. de ----, since we are conversing frankly, listen to what I witnessed, but the other day, in France. You know the situation of things at St. Ouen, and the rumours that are so rife. We had the _Fête Dieu_, during my residence there. You, who are a Catholic, need not be told that your sect believe in the doctrine of the 'real presence.' There was a _reposoir_ erected in the garden of the chateau, and God, in person, was carried, with religious pomp, to rest in the bowers of the ex-favourite. It is true, the husband was not present: he was only in the provinces!" "The influence of a throne makes sad parasites and hypocrites," said M. de ----, shrugging his shoulders. "And the influence of the people, too, though in a different way. A courtier is merely a well-dressed demagogue." "It follows, then, that man is just a poor devil." But I am gossiping away with you, when my Asmodean career is ended, and it is time I went to bed. Good night! LETTER XIX. Garden of the Tuileries.--The French Parliament.--Parliamentary Speakers.--The Tribune.--Royal Initiative.--The Charter.--Mongrel Government.--Ministerial Responsibility.--Elections in France.--Doctrinaires.--Differences of Opinion.--Controversy. TO JACOB SUTHERLAND, ESQ. NEW YORK. The Chambers have been opened with the customary ceremonies and parade. It is usual for the king, attended by a brilliant _cortège_, to go, on these occasions, from the Tuileries to the Palais Bourbon, through lines of troops, under a salute of guns. The French love _spectacles_, and their monarch, if he would be popular, is compelled to make himself one, at every plausible opportunity. The garden of the Tuileries is a parallelogram, of, I should think, fifty acres, of which one end is bounded by the palace. It has a high vaulted terrace on the side next the river, as well as at the opposite end, and one a little lower, next the Rue de Rivoli. There is also a very low broad terrace, immediately beneath the windows of the palace, which separates the buildings from the parterres. You will understand that the effect of this arrangement is to shut out the world from the persons in the garden, by means of the terraces, and, indeed, to enable them, by taking refuge in the woods that fill quite half the area, to bury themselves almost in a forest. The public has free access to this place, from an early hour in the morning to eight or nine at night, according to the season. When it is required to clear them, a party of troops marches, by beat of drum, from the chateau, through the great _allée_, to the lower end of the garden. This is always taken as the signal to disperse, and the world begins to go out, at the different gates. It is understood that the place is frequently used as a promenade, by the royal family, after this hour, especially in the fine season; but, as it would be quite easy for any one, evilly disposed, to conceal himself among the trees, statues, and shrubs, the troops are extended in very open order, and march slowly back to the palace, of course driving every one before them. Each gate is locked, as the line passes it. The only parts of the garden, which appear, on the exterior, to be on a level with the street, though such is actually the fact with the whole of the interior, are the great gate opposite the palace, and a side gate near its southern end; the latter being the way by which one passes out, to cross the Pont Royal. In attempting to pass in at this gate the other morning, for the first time, at that hour, I found it closed. A party of ladies and gentlemen were walking on the low terrace, beneath the palace windows, and a hundred people might have been looking at them from without. A second glance showed me, that among some children, were the heir presumptive, and his sister Mademoiselle d'Artois. The exhibition could merely be an attempt to feel the public pulse, for the country-house of La Bagatelle, to which the children go two or three times a week, is much better suited to taking the air. I could not believe in the indifference that was manifested, had I not seen it. The children are both engaging, particularly the daughter, and yet these innocent and perfectly inoffensive beings were evidently regarded more with aversion than with affection. The display of the opening of the session produced no more effect on the public mind, than the appearance on the terrace of _les Enfans de France_. The Parisians are the least loyal of Charles's subjects, and though the troops, and a portion of the crowd, cried "Vive le Roi!" it was easy to see that the disaffected were more numerous than the well-affected. I have attended some of the sittings since the opening, and shall now say a word on the subject of the French Parliamentary proceedings. The hall is an amphitheatre, like our own; the disposition of the seats and speaker's chair being much the same as at Washington. The members sit on benches, however, that rise one behind the other, and through which they ascend and descend, by aisles. These aisles separate the different shades of opinion, for those who think alike sit together. Thus the _gauche_ or left is occupied by the extreme liberals; the _centre gauche_, by those who are a shade nearer the Bourbons. The _centre droit_, or right centre, by the true Bourbonists, and so on, to the farthest point of the semi-circle. Some of the members affect even to manifest the minuter shades of their opinions by their relative positions in their own sections, and I believe it is usual for each one to occupy his proper place. You probably know that the French members speak from a stand immediately beneath the chair of the president, called a tribune. Absurd as this may seem, I believe it to be a very useful regulation, the vivacity of the national character rendering some such check on loquacity quite necessary. Without it, a dozen would often be on their feet at once; as it is, even, this sometimes happens. No disorder that ever occurs in our legislative bodies, will give you any just notion of that which frequently occurs here. The president rings a bell as a summons to keep order, and as a last resource he puts on his hat, a signal that the sitting is suspended. The speaking of both chambers is generally bad. Two-thirds of the members read their speeches, which gives the sitting a dull, monotonous character, and, as you may suppose, the greater part of their lectures are very little attended to. The most parliamentary speaker is M. Royer Collard, who is, just now, so popular that he has been returned for seven different places at the recent election. M. Constant is an exceedingly animated speaker, resembling in this particular Mr. M'Duffie. M. Constant, however, has a different motion from the last gentleman, his movement being a constant oscillation over the edge of the tribune, about as fast, and almost as regular, as that of the pendulum of a large clock. It resembles that of a sawyer in the Mississippi. General Lafayette speaks with the steadiness and calm that you would expect from his character, and is always listened to with respect. Many professional men speak well, and exercise considerable influence in the house; for here, as elsewhere, the habit of public and extemporaneous speaking gives an immediate ascendency in deliberative bodies. Some of the scenes one witnesses in the Chamber of Deputies are amusing by their exceeding vivacity. The habit of crying "Écoutez!" prevails, as in the English parliament, though the different intonations of that cry are not well understood. I have seen members run at the tribune, like children playing puss in a corner; and, on one occasion, I saw five different persons on its steps, in waiting for the descent of the member in possession. When a great question is to be solemnly argued, the members inscribe their names for the discussion, and are called on to speak in the order in which they stand on the list. The French never sit in committee of the whole, but they have adopted in its place an expedient, that gives power more control over the proceedings of the two houses. At the commencement of the session, the members draw for their numbers in the _bureaux_, as they are called. Of these _bureaux_, there are ten or twelve, and, as a matter of course, they include all the members. As soon as the numbers are drawn, the members assemble in their respective rooms, and choose their officers; a president and secretary. These elections are always supposed to be indicative of the political tendency of each _bureau_; those which have a majority of liberals, choosing officers of their own opinions, and _vice versa_. These _bureaux_ are remodelled, periodically, by drawing anew; the term of duration being a month or six weeks. I believe the chamber retains the power to refer questions, or not, to these _bureaux_; their institution being no more than a matter of internal regulation, and not of constitutional law. It is, however, usual to send all important laws to them, where they are discussed and voted on; the approbation of a majority of the _bureaux_ being, in such cases, necessary for their reception in the chambers. The great evil of the present system is the initiative of the king. By this reservation in the charter, the crown possesses more than a veto, all laws actually emanating from the sovereign. The tendency of such a regulation is either to convert the chambers into the old _lits de justice_, or to overthrow the throne, an event which will certainly accompany any serious change here. As might have been, as _would_ have been anticipated, by any one familiar with the action of legislative bodies, in our time, this right is already so vigorously assailed, as to give rise to constant contentions between the great powers of the state. All parties are agreed that no law can be presented, that does not come originally from the throne; but the liberals are for putting so wide a construction on the right to amend, as already to threaten to pervert the regulation. This has driven some of the Bourbonists to maintain that the chambers have no right, at all, to amend a royal proposition. Any one may foresee, that this is a state of things which cannot peaceably endure for any great length of time. The ministry are compelled to pack the chambers, and in order to effect their objects, they resort to all the expedients of power that offer. As those who drew up the charter had neither the forethought, nor the experience, to anticipate all the embarrassments of a parliamentary government, they unwittingly committed themselves, and illegal acts are constantly resorted to, in order that the system may be upheld. The charter was bestowed _ad captandum_, and is a contradictory _mélange_ of inexpedient concessions and wily reservations. The conscription undermined the popularity of Napoleon, and Louis XVIII. in his charter says, "The conscription is abolished; the _recruiting_ for the army and navy shall be settled by a law." Now the conscription _is not_ abolished; but, if pushed on this point, a French jurist would perhaps tell you it is _now_ established by law. The feudal exclusiveness, on the subject of taxation, is done away with, all men being equally liable to taxation. The nett pay of the army is about two sous a day; _this_ is settled by law, passed by the representatives of those who pay two hundred francs a year, in direct taxation. The conscription, in appearance, is general and fair enough; but he who has money can always hire a substitute, at a price quite within his power. It is only the poor man, who is never in possession of one or two thousand francs, that is obliged to serve seven years at two sous a day, nett. France has gained, beyond estimate, by the changes from the old to the present system, but it is in a manner to render further violent changes necessary. I say _violent_, for political changes are everywhere unavoidable, since questions of polity are, after all, no other than questions of facts, and these are interests that will regulate themselves, directly or indirectly. The great desideratum of a government, after settling its principles in conformity with controlling facts, is to secure to itself the means of progressive change, without the apprehension of convulsion. Such is not the case with France, and further revolutions are inevitable. The mongrel government which exists, neither can stand, nor does it deserve to stand. It contains the seeds of its own destruction. Here, you will be told, that the King is a Jesuit, that he desires to return to the ancient regime, and that the opposition wishes merely to keep him within the limits of the charter. My own observations lead to a very different conclusion. The difficulty is in the charter itself, which leaves the government neither free nor despotic; in short, without any distinctive character. This defect is so much felt, that, in carrying out the details of the system, much that properly belongs to it has been studiously omitted. The king can do no wrong, here, as in England, but the ministers are responsible. By way of making a parade of this responsibility, every official act of the king is countersigned by the minister of the proper department, and, by the theory of the government, that particular minister is responsible for that particular act. Now, by the charter, the peers are the judges of political crimes. By the charter, also, it is stipulated that no one can be proceeded against except in cases expressly provided for by law and in the _forms_ prescribed by the law. You will remember that, all the previous constitutions being declared illegal, Louis XVIII. dates his reign from the supposed death of Louis XVII. and that there are no fundamental precedents that may be drawn in to aid the constructions, but that the charter must be interpreted by its own provisions. It follows, then, as a consequence, that no minister can be legally punished until a law is enacted to dictate the punishment, explain the offences, and point out the forms of procedure. Now, no such law has ever been proposed, and although the chambers may _recommend_ laws to the king, they must await his pleasure in order even to discuss them openly, and enlist the public feeling in their behalf. The responsibility of the ministers was proposed _ad captandum_, like the abolition of the conscription, but neither has been found convenient in practice.[27] [Footnote 27: When the ministers of Charles X. were tried, it was without law, and they would probably have escaped punishment altogether, on this plea, had not the condition of the public mind required a concession.] The electors of France are said to be between eighty and one hundred thousand. The qualifications of a deputy being much higher than those of an elector, it is computed that the four hundred and fifty members must be elected from among some four or five thousand available candidates. It is not pretended that France does not contain more than this number of individuals who pay a thousand francs a year in direct taxes, for taxation is so great that this sum is soon made up; but a deputy must be forty years old, a regulation which at once excludes fully one half the men, of itself; and then it will be recollected that many are superannuated, several hundreds are peers, others cannot quit their employments, etc. etc. I have seen the number of available candidates estimated as low, even, as three thousand. The elections in France are conducted in a mode peculiar to the nation. The electors of the highest class have two votes, or for representatives of two descriptions. This plan was an after-thought of the king, for the original charter contains no such regulation, but the munificent father of the national liberties saw fit, subsequently, to qualify his gift. Had Louis XVIII. lived a little longer, he would most probably have been dethroned before this; the hopes and expectations which usually accompany a new reign having, most probably, deferred the crisis for a few years. The electors form themselves into colleges, into which no one who is not privileged to vote is admitted. This is a good regulation, and might be copied to advantage at home. A law prescribing certain limits around each poll, and rendering it penal for any but those authorized to vote at that particular poll, to cross it, would greatly purify our elections. The government, here, appoints the presiding officer of each electoral college, and the selection is always carefully made of one in the interests of the ministry; though in what manner such a functionary can influence the result, is more than I can tell you. It is, however, thought to be favourable to an individual's own election to get this nomination. The vote is by ballot, though the charter secures no such privilege. Indeed that instrument is little more than a declaration of rights, fortified by a few general constituent laws. The same latitude exists here, in the constructions of the charter, as exists at home, in the constructions of the constitution. The French have, however, one great advantage over us, in daring to think for themselves; for, though there is a party of _doctrinaires_, who wish to imitate England, too, it is neither a numerous nor a strong party. These _doctrinaires_, as the name implies, are men who wish to defer to theories, rather than facts; a class that is to be found all over the world. For obvious reasons, the English system has admirers throughout Europe, as well as in America, since nothing can be more agreeable, for those who are in a situation to look forward to such an advantage, than to see themselves elevated into, as Lafayette expresses, so many "little legitimacies." The peerage, with its exclusive and hereditary benefits, is the aim of all the nobility of Europe, and wishes of this sort make easy converts to any philosophy that may favour the desire. One meets, here, with droll evidences of the truth of what I have just told you. I have made the acquaintance of a Russian of very illustrious family, and he has always been loud and constant in his eulogiums of America and her liberty. Alluding to the subject, the other day, he amused me by _naïvely_ observing, "Ah, you are a happy people--you are _free_--and so are the _English_. Now, in Russia, all rank depends on the commission one bears in the army, or on the will of the Emperor. I am a Prince; my father was a Prince; my grandfather, too; but it is of no avail. I get no privileges by my birth; whereas, in England, where I have been, it is so different--And I dare say it is different in America, too?" I told him it was, indeed, "very different in America." He sighed, and seemed to envy me. The party of the _doctrinaires_ is the one that menaces the most serious evil to France. It is inherently the party of aristocracy; and, in a country as far advanced as France, it is the combinations of the few, that, after all, are most to be apprehended. The worst of it is, that, in countries where abuses have so long existed, the people get to be so disqualified for entertaining free institutions, that even the disinterested and well-meaning are often induced to side with the rapacious and selfish, to prevent the evils of reaction. In a country so much inclined to speculate, to philosophize, and to reason on everything, it is not surprising that a fundamental law, as vaguely expressed as the charter, should leave ample room for discussion. We find that our own long experience in these written instruments does not protect us from violent differences of opinion, some of which are quite as extravagant as any that exist here, though possibly less apt to lead to as grave consequences.[28] [Footnote 28: The discussion which grew out of the law to protect American industry, affords a singular instance of the manner in which clever men can persuade themselves and others into any notion, however extravagant. The uncouth doctrine of nullification turned on the construction that might be put on the intimacy of the relations created by the Union, and on the nature of the sovereignties of the states. Because the constitution commences with a declaration, that it is formed and adopted by "we the people of the United States," overlooking, not only all the facts of the case, but misconceiving the very meaning of the words they quote, one party virtually contended, that the instrument was formed by a consolidated nation. On this point their argument, certainly sustained in part by unanswerable truth, mainly depends. The word "people" has notoriously several significations. It means a "population;" it means the "vulgar;" it means any particular portion of a population, as, "rich people," "poor people," "mercantile people," etc. etc. In a political sense, it has always been understood to mean that portion of the population of a country, which is possessed of _political rights_. On this sense, then, it means a _constituency_ in a representative government, and so it has always been understood in England, and is understood to-day in France. When a question is referred to the "people" at an election in England, it is not referred to a tithe of the population, but to a particular portion of it. In South Carolina and Louisiana, in the popular sense of Mr. Webster, there is no "people" to refer to, a majority of the men of both states possessing no civil rights, and scarcely having civil existence. Besides, "people," in its broad signification, includes men, women, and children, and no one will contend, that the two latter had anything to do with the formation of our constitution. It follows, then, that the term has been used in a limited sense, and we must look to incidental facts to discover its meaning. The convention was chosen, not by any common constituency, but by the constituencies of the several states, which, at that time, embraced every gradation between a democratical and an aristocratically polity. Thirteen states existed in 1787, and yet the constitution was to go into effect when it was adopted by any nine of them. It will not be pretended that this decision would be binding on the other four, and yet it is possible that these four dissenting states should contain more than half of all the population of the confederation. It would be very easy to put a proposition, in which it might be demonstrated arithmetically, that the constitution could have been adopted against a considerable majority of whole numbers. In the face of such a fact, it is folly to suppose the term "people" is used in any other than a conventional sense. It is well known, in addition to the mode of its adoption, that every provision of the constitution can be altered, with a single exception, by three-fourths of the states. Perhaps more than half of the entire population (excluding the Territories and the District), is in six of the largest states, at this moment. But whether this be so or not, such a combination could easily he made, as would demonstrate that less than a third of the population of the country can at any time alter the constitution. It is probable that the term "we the people," was used in a sort of contradistinction to the old implied right of the sovereignty of the king, just as we idly substituted the words "God save the people" at the end of a proclamation, for "God save the king." It was a form. But, if it is desirable to affix to them any more precise signification, it will not do to generalize according to the argument of one party; but we are to take the words, in their limited and appropriate meaning and with their accompanying facts. They can only allude to the constituencies, and these constituencies existed only _through_ the states, and were as varied as their several systems. If the meaning of the term "we the people" was misconceived, it follows that the argument which was drawn from the error was worthless. The constitution of the United States was not formed by the _people_ of the United States, but by such a portion of them as it suited the several states to invest with political powers, and under such combinations as gave the decision to anything but a majority of the nation. In other words, the constitution was certainly formed by the _states_ as _political bodies_, and without any necessary connexion with any general or uniform system of polity. Any theory based on the separate sovereignties of the states, has, on the other hand, a frail support. The question was not _who_ formed the constitution, but _what_ was formed. All the great powers of sovereignty, such as foreign relations, the right to treat, make war and peace, to control commerce, to coin money, etc. etc. are expressly ceded. But these are not, after all, the greatest blows that are given to the doctrine of reserved sovereignty. A power to _alter_ the constitution, as has just been remarked, has been granted, by which even the _dissenting states_ have become bound. The only right reserved, is that of the equal representation in the senate, and it would follow, perhaps, as a legitimate consequence, the preservation of the confederated polity; but South Carolina could, under the theory of the constitution, be stripped of her right to control nearly every social interest; every man, woman and child in the state dissenting. It is scarcely worth while to construct a sublimated theory, on the sovereignty of a community so situated by the legitimate theory of the government under which it actually exists! No means can be devised, that will always protect the weak from the aggressions of the strong, under the forms of law; and nature has pointed out the remedy, when the preponderance of good is against submission; but one cannot suppress his expression of astonishment, at finding any respectable portion of a reasoning community, losing sight of this simple and self-evident truth, to uphold a doctrine as weak as that of nullification, viewed as a legal remedy. If the American statesmen (_quasi_ and real) would imitate the good curate and the bachelor of Don Quixote, by burning all the political heresies, with which their libraries, not to say their brains, are now crammed, and set seriously about studying the terms and the nature of the national compact, without reference to the notions of men who had no connexion with the country, the public would be the gainers, and occasionally one of them might stand a chance of descending to posterity in some other light than that of the mere leader of a faction.] LETTER XX. Excursion with Lafayette.--Vincennes.--The Donjon.--Lagrange.--The Towers.--Interior of the House--the General's Apartments.--the Cabinet. --Lafayette's Title.--Church of the Chateau.--Ruins of Vivier.--Roman Remains.--American Curiosity.--The Table at Lagrange.--Swindling. To R. COOPER, ESQ. COOPERSTOWN. I have said nothing to you of Lagrange, though I have now been there no less than three times. Shortly after our arrival in Paris, General Lafayette had the kindness to send us an invitation; but we were deterred from going for sometime, by the indisposition of one of the family. In the autumn of 1826, I went, however, alone; in the spring I went again, carrying Mrs. ---- with me; and I have now just returned from a third visit, in which I went with my wife, accompanied by one or two more of the family. It is about twenty-seven miles from Paris to Rosay, a small town that is a league from the castle. This is not a post-route, the great road ending at Rosay, and we were obliged to go the whole distance with the same horses. Paris is left by the Boulevard de la Bastille, the Barrière du Trône, and the chateau and woods of Vincennes. The second time I went into Brie, it was with the General himself, and in his own carriage. He showed me a small pavilion that is still standing in a garden near the old site of the Bastille, and which he told me, once belonged to the hotel that Beaumarchais inhabited, when in his glory, and in which pavilion this witty writer was accustomed to work. The roof was topped by a vane to show which way the wind blew; and, in pure _fanfaronnade_, or to manifest his contempt for principles, the author of "Figaro" had caused a large copper pen to do the duty of a weathercock; and there it stands to this day, a curious memorial equally of his wit and of his audacity. At the Barrière du Trône the General pointed out to me the spot where two of his female connexions suffered under the guillotine during the Reign of Terror. On one occasion, in passing, we entered the Castle of Vincennes, which is a sort of citadel for Paris, and which has served for a state prison since the destruction of the Bastille. Almost all of these strong old places were formerly the residences of the kings, or of great nobles, the times requiring that they should live constantly protected by ditches and walls. Vincennes, like the Tower of London, is a collection of old buildings, enclosed within a wall, and surrounded by a ditch. The latter, however, is dry. The most curious of the structures, and the one which gives the place its picturesque appearance, in the distance, is a cluster of exceedingly slender, tall, round towers, in which the prisoners are usually confined, and which is the _donjon_ of the hold. This building, which contains many vaulted rooms piled on each other, was formerly the royal abode; and it has, even now, a ditch of its own, though it stands within the outer walls of the place. There are many other high towers on the walls; and, until the reign of Napoleon, there were still more; but he caused them to be razed to the level of the walls, which of themselves are sufficiently high. The chapel is a fine building, being Gothic. It was constructed in the time of Charles V. There are also two or three vast _corps de bâtimens_, which are almost palaces in extent and design, though they are now used only as quarters for officers, etc. etc. The _donjon_ dates from the same reign. The first room in this building is called the "salle de la question," a name which sufficiently denotes its infernal use. That of the upper story is the room in which the kings of France formerly held their councils. The walls are sixteen feet thick, and the rooms are thirty feet high. As there are five stories, this _donjon_ cannot be less than a hundred and forty or fifty feet in elevation. The view from the summit is very extensive; though it is said that, in the time of Napoleon, a screen was built around the battlement, to prevent the prisoners, when they took the air, from enjoying it. As this conqueror was cruel from policy alone, it is probable this was merely a precaution against signals; for it is quite apparent, if he desired, to torment his captives, France has places better adapted to the object than even the _donjon_ of Vincennes. I am not his apologist, however; for, while I shall not go quite as far as the Englishman who maintained, in a laboured treatise, that Napoleon was the beast of the Revelations, I believe he was anything but a god. Vincennes was a favourite residence of St. Louis, and there is a tradition that he used to take his seat under a particular oak, in the adjoining forest, where, all who pleased were permitted to come before him, and receive justice from himself. Henry V. of England, died in the _donjon_ of Vincennes; and I believe his successor, Henry VI. was born in the same building. One gets a better notion of the state of things in the ages of feudality, by passing an hour in examining such a hold, than in a week's reading. After going through this habitation, and studying its barbarous magnificence, I feel much more disposed to believe that Shakspeare has not outraged probability in his dialogue between Henry and Catharine, than if I had never seen it, bad as that celebrated love-scene is. Shortly after quitting Vincennes the road crosses the Marne, and stretches away across a broad bottom. There is little of interest between Paris and Rosay. The principal house is that of Grosbois, which once belonged to Moreau, I believe, but is now the property of the Prince de Wagram, the young son of Berthier. The grounds are extensive, and the house is large, though I think neither in very good taste, at least, so far as one could judge in passing. There are two or three ruins on this road of some historical interest, but not of much beauty. There is usually a nakedness, unrelieved by trees or other picturesque accessories, about the French ruins, which robs them of half their beauty, and dirty, squalid hamlets and villages half the time come in to render the picture still less interesting. At Rosay another route is taken, and Lagrange is approached by the rear, after turning a small bit of wood. It is possible to see the tops of the towers for an instant, on the great road, before reaching the town. It is not certainly known in what age the chateau was built; but, from its form, and a few facts connected with its origin, whose dates are ascertained, it is thought to be about five hundred years old. It never was more than a second-rate building of its class, though it was clearly intended for a baronial hold. Originally, the name was Lagrange en Brie; but by passing into a new family, it got the appellation of Lagrange Bléneau, by which it is known at present. You are sufficiently familiar with French to understand that _grange_ means barn or granary, and that a liberal translation would make it Bléneau Farm. In 1399 a marriage took place between the son of the lord of Lagrange en Brie with a daughter of a branch of the very ancient and great family of Courtenay, which had extensive possessions, at that time, in Brie. It was this marriage which gave the new name to the castle, the estate in consequence passing into the line of Courtenay-Bléneau. In 1595, the property, by another marriage with an heiress, passed into the well-known family D'Aubussons, Comtes de la Feuillade. The first proprietor of this name was the grandfather of the Mareschal de la Feuillade, the courtier who caused the Place des Victoires to be constructed at Paris; and he appropriated the revenues of the estate, which, in 1686, were valued at nine thousand francs, to the support and completion of his work of flattery. The property at that time was, however, much more extensive than it is at present. The son of this courtier dying without issue, in 1726, the estate was purchased by M. Dupré, one of the judges of France. With this magistrate commences, I believe, the connexion of the ancestors of the Lafayettes with the property. The only daughter married M. d'Aguesseau; and her daughter, again, married the Duc de Noailles-d'Ayen, [29] carrying with her, as a marriage portion, the lands of Fontenay, Lagrange, etc. etc., or, in other words, the ancient possessions of M. de Lafeuillade. The Marquis de Lafayette married one of the Mesdemoiselles de Noailles, while he was still a youth, and when the estate, after a short sequestration, was restored to the family, General Lafayette received the chateau of Lagrange, with some six or eight hundred acres of land around it, as his wife's portion. [Footnote 29: Mr. Adams, in his Eulogy on Lafayette, has called the Duc de Noailles, the first peer of France. The fact is of no great moment, but accuracy is always better than error. I believe the Duc de Noailles was the youngest of the old _ducs et pairs_ of France. The Duc d'Uzès, I have always understood, was the oldest.] Although the house is not very spacious for a chateau of the region in which it stands, it is a considerable edifice, and one of the most picturesque I have seen in this country. The buildings stand on three sides of an irregular square. The fourth side must have been either a high wall or a range of low offices formerly, to complete the court and the defences, but every vestige of them has long since been removed. The ditch, too, which originally encircled the whole castle, has been filled in, on two sides, though still remaining on the two others, and greatly contributing to the beauty of the place, as the water is living, and is made to serve the purposes of a fishpond. We had carp from it, for breakfast, the day after our arrival. Lagrange is constructed of hewn stone, of a good greyish colour, and in parts of it there are some respectable pretensions to architecture. I think it probable that one of its fronts has been rebuilt, the style being so much better than the rest of the structure. There are five towers, all of which are round, and have the plain, high, pyramidal roof, so common in France. They are without cornices, battlements of any sort, or, indeed, any relief to the circular masonry. One, however, has a roof of a square form, though the exterior of the lower itself is, at least in part, round. All the roofs are of slate. The approach to the castle is circuitous, until quite near it, when the road enters a little thicket of evergreens, crosses a bridge, and passes beneath an arch to the court, which is paved. The bridge is now permanent, though there was once a draw, and the grooves of a portcullis are still visible beneath the arch. The shortest side of the square is next the bridge, the building offering here but little more than the two towers, and the room above the gateway. One of these towers forms the end of this front of the castle, and the other is, of course, at an angle. On the exterior, they are both buried in ivy, as well as the building which connects them. This ivy was planted by Charles Fox, who, in company with General Fitzpatrick, visited Lagrange, after the peace of Amiens. The windows, which are small and irregular on this side, open beautifully through the thick foliage, and as this is the part of the structure that is occupied by the children of the family, their blooming faces thrust through the leafy apertures have a singularly pleasing effect. The other three towers stand, one near the centre of the principal _corps de bâtiment_, one at the other angle, and the third at the end of the wing opposite that of the gate. The towers vary in size, and are all more or less buried in the walls, though still so distinct as greatly to relieve the latter, and everywhere to rise above them. On the open side of the court there is no ditch, but the ground, which is altogether park-like, and beautifully arranged, falls away, dotted with trees and copses, towards a distant thicket. Besides the _rez-de-chaussée_, which is but little above the ground, there are two good stories all round the building, and even more in the towers. The dining-room and offices are below, and there is also a small oratory, or chapel, though I believe none of the family live there. The entrance to the principal apartments is opposite the gate, and there is also here an exterior door which communicates directly with the lawn, the ditch running behind the other wing, and in front of the gate only. The great staircase is quite good, being spacious, easy of ascent, and of marble, with a handsome iron railing. It was put there by the mother of Madame Lafayette, I believe, and the General told me, it was nearly the only thing of value that he found among the fixtures, on taking possession. It had escaped injury. I should think the length of the house on the side of the square which contains the staircase might be ninety feet, including the tower at the end, and the tower at the angle; and perhaps the side which contains the offices may be even a little longer; though this will also include the same tower in the same angle, as well as the one at the opposite corner; while the side in which is the gateway can scarcely exceed sixty feet. If my estimates, which are merely made by the eye, are correct, including the towers, this would give an outside wall of two hundred and fifty feet, in circuit. Like most French buildings, the depth is comparatively much less. I question if the outer drawing-room is more than eighteen feet wide, though it is near thirty long. This room has windows on the court and on the lawn, and is the first apartment one enters after ascending the stairs. It communicates with the inner drawing-room, which is in the end tower of this side of the chateau, is quite round, of course, and may be twenty feet in diameter. The General's apartments are on the second floor. They consist of his bed-room, a large cabinet, and the library. The latter is in the tower at the angle, on the side of the staircase. It is circular, and from its windows overlooks the moat, which is beautifully shaded by willows and other trees. It contains a respectable collection of books, besides divers curiosities. The only bed-rooms I have occupied are, one in the tower, immediately beneath the library, and the other in the side tower, or the only one which does not stand at an angle, or at an end of the building. I believe, however, that the entire edifice, with the exception of the oratory, the offices, the dining-room, which is a large apartment on the _rez-de-chaussée_, the two drawing-rooms, two or three cabinets, and the library, and perhaps a family-room or two, such as a school-room, painting-room, etc., is subdivided into sleeping apartments, with the necessary cabinets and dressing-rooms. Including the family, I have known thirty people to be lodged in the house, besides servants, and I should think it might even lodge more. Indeed its hospitality seems to know no limits, for every newcomer appears to be just as welcome as all the others. The cabinet of Lafayette communicates with the library, and I passed much of the time during our visit, alone with him, in these two rooms. I may say that this was the commencement of a confidence with which he has since continued to treat me, and of a more intimate knowledge of the amiable features and simple integrity of his character, that has greatly added to my respect. No one can be pleasanter in private, and he is full of historical anecdotes, that he tells with great simplicity, and frequently with great humour. The cabinet contains many portraits, and, among others, one of Madame de Staël, and one of his own father. The former I am assured is exceedingly like; it is not the resemblance of a very fascinating woman. In the latter I find more resemblance to some of the grandchildren than to the son, although there is something about the shape of the head that is not unlike that of Lafayette's. General Lafayette never knew his father, who was killed, when he was quite an infant, at the battle of Minden. I believe the general was an only child, for I have never heard him speak of any brother or sister, nor indeed of any relative at all, as I can remember, on his own side, though he often alludes to the connexions he made by his marriage. I asked him how his father happened to be styled the _Comte_ de Lafayette, and he to be called the _Marquis_. He could not tell me: his grandfather was the _Marquis_ de Lafayette, his father the _Comte_, and he again was termed the _Marquis_. "I know very little about it," said be, "beyond this: I found myself a little _Marquis_, as I grew to know anything, and boys trouble themselves very little about such matters; and then I soon got tired of the name after I went to America. I cannot explain all the foolish distinctions of the feudal times, but I very well remember that when I was quite a boy, I had the honour to go through the ceremony of appointing the _curé_ of a very considerable town in Auvergne, of which I was the Seigneur. My conscience has been quite easy about the nomination, however, as my guardians must answer for the sin, if there be any." I was at a small dinner given by the Comte de Ségur, just before we went to Lagrange, and at which General Lafayette and M. Alexander de Lameth were also guests. The three had served in America, all of them having been colonels while little more than boys. In the course of the conversation, M. de Lameth jokingly observed that the Americans paid the greater deference to General Lafayette because he was a _Marquis_. For a long time there had been but one Marquis in England (Lord Rockingham), and the colonist appreciating all other Marquises by this standard, had at once thought they would do no less than make the Marquis de Lafayette a general. "As for myself, though I was the senior colonel, and (as I understood him to say) his superior in personal rank, I passed for nobody, because I was only a _chevalier._" This sally was laughed at, at the time, though there is something very unsettled in the use of those arbitrary personal distinctions on which the French formerly laid so much stress. I shall not attempt to explain them. I contented myself by whispering to M. de Lameth, that we certainly knew very little of such matters in America, but I questioned if we were ever so ignorant as to suppose there was only one _Marquis_ in France. On the contrary, we are little too apt to fancy every Frenchman a _Marquis_. There was formerly a regular parish church attached to the chateau, which is still standing. It is very small, and is within a short distance of the gateway. The congregation was composed solely of the inhabitants of the chateau, and the people of the farm. The church contains epitaphs and inscriptions in memory of three of the D'Aubussons whose hearts were buried here, viz. Leon, Comte de Lafeuillade, a lieutenant-general; Gabriel, Marquis de Montargis; and Paul D'Aubussons, a Knight of Malta; all of whom were killed young, in battle. The General has about three hundred and fifty acres in cultivation, and more than two in wood, pasture, and meadow. The place is in very excellent condition, and seems to be well attended to. I have galloped all over it, on a little filly belonging to one of the young gentlemen, and have found beauty and utility as nicely blended, as is often to be met with, even in England, the true country of _fermes ornées_, though the name is imported. The third day of our visit, we all drove three or four leagues across the country, to see an old ruin of a royal castle called Vivier. This name implies a pond, and sure enough we found the remains of the buildings in the midst of two or three pools of water. This has been a considerable house, the ruins being still quite extensive and rather pretty. It was originally the property of a great noble, but the kings of France were in possession of it, as early as the year 1300. Charles V. had a great affection for Vivier, and very materially increased its establishment. His son, Charles VI. who was at times deranged, was often confined here, and it was after his reign, and by means of the long wars that ravaged France, that the place came to be finally abandoned as a royal abode. Indeed, it is not easy to see why a king should ever have chosen this spot at all for his residence, unless it might be for the purpose of hunting, for even now it is in a retired, tame, and far from pleasant part of the country. There are the ruins of a fine chapel and of two towers of considerable interest, beside extensive fragments of more vulgar buildings. One of these towers, being very high and very slender, is a striking object; but, from its form and position, it was one of those narrow wells that were attached to larger towers, and which contained nothing but the stairs. They are commonly to be seen in the ruins of edifices built in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, in France; and what is worthy of remark, in several instances, notwithstanding their slender forms, I have met with them standing, although their principals have nearly disappeared. I can only account for it, by supposing that their use and delicacy of form have required more than ordinary care in the construction. The ruins of Vivier belong to M. Parquin, a distinguished lawyer of Paris. This gentleman has a small country-house near by, and General Lafayette took us all to see him. We found him at home, and met, quite as a matter of course, with a polite reception. M. Parquin gave us much curious information about the ruin, and took us to see some of the subterraneous passages that he has caused to be opened. It is thought that some of these artificial caverns were prisons, and that others were intended merely as places for depositing stores. The one we entered was of beautiful masonry, vaulted with the nicest art, and seemed to communicate with the ruins although the outlet was in the open field, and some distance from the walls. It might have been intended for the double purpose of a store-house and an outlet; for it is rare to meet with a palace, or a castle, that has out, more or less, of these private means of entrance and retreat. The Tuileries is said to abound with them, and I have been shown the line of an under-ground passage, between that palace and one of the public hotels, which must be fully a quarter of a mile in length. Dulaure gives an extract from a report of the state of the Chateau of Vivier, made about the year 1700, with a view to know whether its conditions were such as to entitle the place to preserve certain of its privileges. In this document, the castle is described as standing in the centre of a marsh, surrounded by forest, and as so remote from all civilization, as to be nearly forgotten. This, it will be remembered, is the account of a royal abode, that stands within thirty miles of Paris. In the very heart of the French capital, are the remains of an extensive palace of one of the Roman Emperors, and yet it may be questioned if one in a thousand, of those who live within a mile of the spot, have the least idea of the origin of the buildings. I have inquired about it, in its immediate neighbourhood, and it was with considerable difficulty I could discover any one who even knew that there was such a ruin at all, in the street. The great number of similar objects, and the habit of seeing them daily, has some such effect on one, as the movement of a crowd in a public thoroughfare, where images pass so incessantly before the eye, as to leave no impression of their peculiarities. Were a solitary bison to scamper through the Rue St. Honoré, the worthy Parisians would transmit an account of his exploits to their children's children, while the wayfarer on the prairies takes little heed of the flight of a herd. As we went to Lagrange, we stopped at a tavern, opposite to which was the iron gate of a small chateau. I asked the girl who was preparing our _goûter_, to whom the house belonged. "I am sorry I cannot tell you, sir," she answered; and then seeing suspicion in my face, she promptly added--"for, do you see, sir, I have only been here _six weeks_." Figure to yourself an American girl, set down opposite an iron gate, in the country, and how long do you imagine she would be ignorant of the owner's name? If the blood of those pious inquisitors, the puritans, were in her veins, she would know more, not only of the gate, but of its owner, his wife, his children, his means, his hopes, wishes, intentions and thoughts, than he ever knew himself, or would be likely to know. But if this prominent love of meddling must of necessity in its very nature lead to what is worse than contented ignorance, gossiping error, and a wrong estimate of our fellow-creatures, it has, at least, the advantage of keeping a people from falling asleep over their everyday facts. There is no question that the vulgar and low-bred propensity of conjecturing, meddling, combining, with their unavoidable companion, _inventing_, exist to a vice, among a portion of our people; but, on the other hand, it is extremely inconvenient when one is travelling, and wishes to know the points of the compass, as has happened to myself, if he should ask a full-grown woman whereabouts the sun rises in that neighbourhood, he is repulsed with the answer, that--"Monsieur ought to know that better than a poor garden-woman like me!" We returned to Paris, after a pleasant visit of three days at Lagrange, during which we had delightful weather, and altogether a most agreeable time. The habits of the family are very regular and simple, but the intercourse has the freedom and independence of a country-house. We were all in the circular drawing-room a little before ten, breakfast being served between ten and eleven. The table was French, the morning repast consisting of light dishes of meat, _compotes_, fruits, and sometimes _soupe au lait_, one of the simplest and best things for such a meal than can be imagined. As a compliment to us Americans, we had fish fried and broiled, but I rather think this was an innovation. Wine, to drink with water, as a matter of course, was on the table. The whole ended with a cup of _café au lait_. The morning then passed as each one saw fit. The young men went shooting, the ladies drove out, or read, or had a little music, while the general and myself were either walking about the farm, or were conversing in the library. We dined at six, as at Paris, and tea was made in the drawing-room about nine. I was glad to hear from General Lafayette, that the reports of Americans making demands on his purse, like so many other silly rumours that are circulated, merely because some one has fancied such a thing might be so, are untrue. On the contrary, he assures me that applications of this nature are very seldom made, and most of those that have been made have proved to come from Englishmen, who have thought they might swindle him in this form. I have had at least a dozen such applications myself, but I take it nothing is easier, in general, than to distinguish between an American and a native of Great Britain. It was agreed between us, that in future all applications of this nature should be sent to me for investigation.[30] [Footnote 30: Under this arrangement, two or three years later, an applicant was sent for examination, under very peculiar circumstances. The man represented himself to be a shopkeeper of Baltimore, who had come to England with his wife and child, to purchase goods. He had been robbed of all he had, according to his account of the matter, about a thousand pounds in sovereigns, and was reduced to want, in a strange country. After trying all other means in vain, he bethought him of coming to Paris, to apply to General Lafayette for succour. He had just money enough to do this, having left his wife in Liverpool. He appeared with an English passport, looked like an Englishman, and had even caught some of the low English idioms, such as, "I am agreeable," for "It is agreeable to me," or, "I agree to do so," etc. etc. The writer was exceedingly puzzled to decide as to this man's nationality. At length, in describing his journey to Paris, he said, "they took my passport from me, when we got _to the lines_." This settled the matter, as no one but an American would call a _frontier_ the _lines_. He proved, in the end, to be an American, and a great rogue.] LETTER XXI. Insecurity of the Bourbons.--Distrust of Americans.--Literary Visitor. --The Templars.--Presents and Invitations.--A Spy--American Virtue. --Inconsistency.--Social Freedom in America,--French Mannerists --National Distinctions.--A lively Reaction. To R. COOPER, ESQ. COOPERSTOWN. We all went to bed, a night or two since, as usual, and awoke to learn that there had been a fight in the capital. One of the countless underplots had got so near the surface, that it threw up smoke. It is said, that about fifty were killed and wounded, chiefly on the part of the populace. The insecurity of the Bourbons is little understood in America. It is little understood even by those Americans who pass a few months in the country, and in virtue of frequenting the _cafés_, and visiting the theatres, fancy they know the people. Louis XVIII. was more than once on the point of flying, again, between the year 1815 and his death; for since the removal of the allied troops, there is really no force for a monarch to depend on, more especially in and around the capital, the army being quite as likely to take sides against them as for them. The government has determined on exhibiting vigour, and there was a great show of troops the night succeeding the combat. Curious to see the effect of all this, two or three of us got into a carriage and drove through the streets, about nine o'clock. We found some two or three thousand men on the Boulevards, and the Rue St. Denis, in particular, which had been the scene of the late disorder, was watched with jealous caution. In all, there might have been four or five thousand men under arms. They were merely in readiness, leaving a free passage for carriages, though in some of the narrow streets we found the bayonets pretty near our faces. An American being supposed _ex officio_, as it were, to be a well-wisher to the popular cause, there is, perhaps, a slight disposition to look at us with distrust. The opinion of our _travellers'_ generally favouring liberty is, in my judgment, singularly erroneous, the feelings of a majority being, on the whole, just the other way, for, at least, the first year or two of their European experience; though, I think, it is to be noticed, by the end of that time, that they begin to lose sight of the personal interests which, at home, have made them anything but philosophers on such subjects, and to see and appreciate the immense advantages of freedom over exclusion, although the predominance of the former may not always favour their own particular views. Such, at least, has been the result of my own observations, and so far from considering a fresh arrival from home, as being likely to be an accession to our little circle of liberal principles, I have generally deemed all such individuals as being more likely to join the side of the aristocrats or the exclusionists in politics. This is not the moment to enter into an examination of the causes that have led to so singular a contradiction between opinions and facts, though I think the circumstance is not to be denied, for it is now my intention to give you an account of the manner in which matters are managed here, rather than enter into long investigations of the state of society at home. Not long after my arrival in France, a visit was announced, from a person who was entirely unknown to me, but who called himself a _littérateur_. The first interview passed off as such interviews usually do, and circumstances not requiring any return on my part, it was soon forgotten. Within a fortnight, however, I received visit the second, when the conversation took a political turn, my guest freely abusing the Bourbons, the aristocrats, and the present state of things in France. I did little more than listen. When the way was thus opened, I was asked if I admired Sir Walter Scott, and particularly what I thought of Ivanhoe, or, rather, if I did not think it an indifferent book. A little surprised at such a question, I told my _littérateur_, that Ivanhoe appeared to me to be very unequal, the first half being incomparably the best, but that, as a whole, I thought it stood quite at the head of the particular sort of romances to which it belonged. The Antiquary, and Guy Mannering, for instance, were both much nearer perfection, and, on the whole, I thought both better books; but Ivanhoe, especially its commencement, was a noble poem. But did I not condemn the want of historical truth in its pictures? I did not consider Ivanhoe as intended to be history; it was a work of the imagination, in which all the fidelity that was requisite, was enough to be probable and natural, and that requisite I thought it possessed in an eminent degree. It is true, antiquarians accused the author of having committed some anachronisms, by confounding the usages of different centuries, which was perhaps a greater fault, in such a work, than to confound mere individual characters; but of this I did not pretend to judge, not being the least of an antiquary myself. Did I not think he had done gross injustice to the noble and useful order of the Templars? On this point I could say no more than on the preceding, having but a very superficial knowledge of the Templars, though I thought the probabilities seemed to be perfectly well respected. Nothing could _seem_ to be more true, than Scott's pictures. My guest then went into a long vindication of the Templars, stating Scott had done them gross injustice, and concluding with an exaggerated compliment, in which it was attempted to persuade me that I was the man to vindicate the truth, and to do justice to at subject that was so peculiarly connected with liberal principles. I disclaimed the ability to undertake such a task, at all; confessed that I did not wish to disturb the images which Sir Walter Scott had left, had I the ability; and declared I did not see the connexion between his accusation, admitting it to be true, and liberal principles. My visitor soon after went away, and I saw no more of him for a week, when he came again. On this occasion, he commenced by relating several _piquant_ anecdotes of the Bourbons and their friends, gradually and ingeniously leading the conversation, again, round to his favourite Templars. After pushing me, for half an hour, on this point, always insisting on my being the man to vindicate the order, and harping on its connexion with liberty, he took advantage of one of my often-repeated protestations of ignorance of the whole matter, suddenly to say, "Well, then, Monsieur, go and see for yourself, and you will soon be satisfied that my account of the order is true." "Go and see what?" "The Templars." "There are no longer any." "They exist still." "Where?" "Here, in Paris." "This is new to me: I do not understand it." "The Templars exist; they possess documents to prove how much Scott has misrepresented them, and--but, you will remember that the actual government has so much jealousy of everything it does not control, that secrecy is necessary--and, to be frank with you, M. ----, I am commissioned by the Grand Master, to invite you to be present at a secret meeting, this very week." Of course, I immediately conjectured that some of the political agitators of the day had assumed this taking guise, in order to combine their means, and carry out their plans.[31] The proposition was gotten rid of, by my stating, in terms that could not be misunderstood, that I was a traveller, and did not wish to meddle with anything that required secrecy, in a foreign government; that I certainly had my own political notions, and if pushed, should not hesitate to avow them anywhere; that the proper place for a writer to declare his sentiments, was in his books, unless under circumstances which authorized him to act; that I did not conceive foreigners were justifiable in going beyond this; that I never had meddled with the affairs of foreign countries, and that I never would; and that the fact of this society's being secret, was sufficient to deter me from visiting it. With this answer, my guest departed, and he never came again. [Footnote 31: Since the revolution of 1830, these Templars have made public, but abortive efforts, to bring themselves into notice, by instituting some ceremonies, in which they appeared openly in their robes.] Now, the first impression was, as I have told you, and I supposed my visitor, although a man of fifty, was one of those who innocently lent himself to these silly exaggerations; either as a dupe, or to dupe others. I saw reason, however, to change this opinion. At the time these visits occurred, I scarcely knew any one in Paris, and was living in absolute retirement--being, as you know already, quite without letters. About ten days after I saw the last of my _littérateur_, I got a letter from a high functionary of the government, sending me a set of valuable medals. The following day these were succeeded by his card, and an invitation to dinner. Soon after, another person, notoriously connected with court intrigues, sought me out, and overwhelmed me with civilities. In a conversation that shortly after occurred between us, this person gave a pretty direct intimation, that by pushing a little, a certain decoration that is usually conferred on literary men was to be had, if it were desired. I got rid of all these things, in the straight-forward manner, that is the best for upsetting intrigues; and having really nothing to conceal, I was shortly permitted to take my own course. I have now little doubt that the _littérateur_ was a _spy_, sent either to sound me on some points connected with Lafayette and the republicans, or possibly to lead me into some difficulty, though I admit that this is no more than conjecture. I give you the facts, which, at the time, struck me as, at least, odd, and you may draw your own conclusions. This, however, is but one of a dozen adventures, more or less similar, that have occurred, and I think it well to mention it, by way of giving you an insight into what sometimes happens here.[32] [Footnote 32: A conversation, which took place after the revolution of 1830, with one of the parties named, leaves little doubt as to the truth of the original conjecture.] My rule has been, whenever I am pushed on the subject of politics, to deal honestly and sincerely with all with whom I am brought in contact, and in no manner to leave the impression, that I think the popular form of government an unavoidable evil, to which America is obliged to submit. I do not shut my eyes to the defects of our own system, or to the bad consequences that flow from it, and from it alone; but, the more I see of other countries, the more I am persuaded, that, under circumstances which admit but of a choice of evils, we are greatly the gainers by having adopted it. Although I do not believe every other nation is precisely fitted to imitate us, I think it is their misfortune they are not so. If the inhabitants of other countries do not like to hear such opinions, they should avoid the subject with Americans. It is very much the custom here, whenever the example of America is quoted in favour of the practicability of republican institutions, to attribute our success to the fact of society's being so simple, and the people so virtuous. I presume I speak within bounds, when I say that I have heard the latter argument urged a hundred times, during the last eighteen months. One lady, in particular, who is exceedingly clever, but who has a dread of all republics, on account of having lost a near friend during the reign of terror, was especially in the practice of resorting to this argument, whenever, in our frequent playful discussions of the subject, I have succeeded in disturbing her inferences, by citing American facts. "Mais, Monsieur, l'Amérique est si jeune, et vous avez les vertus que nous manquons," etc. etc. has always been thought a sufficient answer. Now I happen to be one of those who do not entertain such extravagant notions of the exclusive and peculiar virtues of our own country. Nor have I been so much struck with the profound respect of the Europeans, in general, for those very qualities that, nevertheless, are always quoted as the reason of the success of what is called the "American experiment." Quite the contrary: I have found myself called on, more than once, to repel accusations against our morality of a very serious nature; accusations that we do not deserve; and my impression certainly is, that the American people, so far as they are at all the subjects of observation, enjoy anything but a good name, in Europe. Struck by this flagrant contradiction, I determined to practise on my female friend, a little; a plan that was successfully carried out, as follows. Avoiding all allusion to politics, so as to throw her completely off her guard, I took care to introduce such subjects as should provoke comparisons on other points, between France and America; or rather, between the latter and Europe generally. As our discussions had a tinge of philosophy, neither being very bigoted, and both preserving perfect good humour, the plot succeeded admirably. After a little time, I took occasion to fortify one of my arguments by a slight allusion to the peculiar virtues of the American people. She was too well-bred to controvert this sort of reasoning at first, until, pushing the point, little by little, she was so far provoked as to exclaim, "You lay great stress on the exclusive virtues of your countrymen, Monsieur, but I have yet to learn that they are so much better than the rest of the world!" "I beg a thousand pardons, Madame, if I have been led into an indiscretion on this delicate subject; but you must ascribe my error to your own eloquence, which, contrary to my previous convictions, had persuaded me into the belief that we have some peculiar unction of this nature, that is unknown in Europe. I now begin to see the mistake, and to understand "que nous autres Américains" are to be considered _virtuous_ only where there is question of the practicability of maintaining republican form of government, and as great rogues on all other occasions." Madame de ---- was wise enough, and good-tempered enough, to laugh at the artifice, and the allusion to "nous autres vertueux" has got to be a _mot d'ordre_ with us. The truth is, that the question of politics is exclusively one of personal advantages, with a vast majority of the people of Europe; one set selfishly struggling to maintain their present superiority, while the other is as selfishly, and in some respects as blindly, striving to overturn all that is established, in order to be benefited by the scramble that will follow; and religion, justice, philosophy, and practical good are almost equally remote from the motives of both parties. From reflecting on such subjects, I have been led into a consideration of the influence of political institutions on the more ordinary relations of society. If the conclusions are generally in favour of popular rights, and what is called freedom, there can be little question that there are one or two weak spots, on our side of the question, that it were better did they not exist. Let us, for the humour of the thing, look a little into these points. It is a common remark of all foreigners, that there is less social freedom in America than in most other countries of Christendom. By social freedom, I do not mean as relates to the mere forms of society, for in these we are loose rather than rigid; but that one is less a master of his own acts, his own mode of living, his own time, being more rigidly amenable to public opinion, on all these points, than elsewhere. The fact, I believe, out of all question, is true; at least it appears to be true, so far as my knowledge of our own and of other countries extends. Admitting then the fact to be so, it is worth while to throw away a moment in inquiring into the consequent good and evil of such a state of things, as well as in looking for the causes. It is always a great assistant in our study of others, to have some tolerable notions of ourselves. The control of public opinion has, beyond question, a salutary influence on the moral _exterior_ of a country. The great indifference which the French, and indeed the higher classes of most European countries, manifest to the manner of living of the members of their different circles, so long as certain appearances are respected, may do no affirmative good to society, though at the same time it does less positive harm than you may be disposed to imagine. But this is not the point to which I now allude. Europeans maintain that, in things _innocent in themselves_, but which are closely connected with the independence of action and tastes of men, the American is less his own master than the inhabitant of this part of the world; and this is the fact I, for one, feel it necessary to concede to them. There can be no doubt that society meddles much more with the private affairs of individuals, and affairs, too, over which it properly has no control, in America than in Europe. I will illustrate what I mean, by an example. About twenty years since there lived in one of our shiretowns a family, which, in its different branches, had numerous female descendants, then all children. A member of this family, one day, went to a respectable clergyman, his friend, and told him that he and his connexions had so many female children, whom it was time to think of educating, that they had hit upon the plan of engaging some suitable instructress, with the intention of educating their girls all together, both for economy's sake and for convenience, as well as that such near connexions might be brought up in a way to strengthen the family tie. The clergyman warmly remonstrated against the scheme, assuring his friend, _that the community would not bear it, and that it would infallibly make enemies!_ This was the feeling of a very sensible man, and of an experienced divine, and I was myself the person making the application. This is religiously true, and I have often thought of the circumstance since, equally with astonishment and horror. There are doubtless many parts of America, even, where such an interference with the private arrangement of a family would not be dreamt of; but there is a large portion of the country in which the feeling described by my clerical friend does prevail. Most observers would refer all this to democracy, but I do not. The interference would not proceed from the humblest classes of society at all, but from those nearer one's own level. It would proceed from a determination to bring all within the jurisdiction of a common opinion, or to be revenged on delinquents, by envy, hatred, and all uncharitableness. There is no disposition in America, to let one live as he or she may happen to please to live; the public choosing, though always in its proper circle, to interfere and say _how_ you must live. It is folly to call this by terms as sounding as republicanism or democracy, which inculcate the doctrine of as much personal freedom as at all comports with the public good. He is, indeed, a most sneaking democrat, who finds it necessary to consult a neighbourhood before he can indulge his innocent habits and tastes. It is sheer _meddling_, and no casuistry can fitly give it any other name. A portion of this troublesome quality is owing, beyond question, to our provincial habits, which are always the most exacting; but I think a large portion, perhaps I ought to say the largest, is inherited from those pious but exaggerated religionists who first peopled the country. These sectaries extended the discipline of the church to all the concerns of life. Nothing was too minute to escape their cognizance, and a parish sat in judgment on the affairs of all who belonged to it. One may easily live so long in the condition of society that such an origin has entailed on us, as to be quite unconscious of its peculiarities, but I think they can hardly escape one who has lived much beyond its influence. Here, perhaps, the fault is to be found in the opposite extreme; though there are so many virtues consequent on independence of thought and independence of habits, that I am not sure the good does not equal the evil. There is no canting, and very little hypocrisy, in mere matters of habits, in France; and this, at once, is abridging two of our own most besetting vices. Still the French can hardly be called a very original people. Convention ties them down mercilessly in a great many things. They are less under the influence of mere fashion, in their intercourse, it is true, than some of their neighbours, reason and taste exercising more influence over such matters, in France, than almost anywhere else; but they are mannerists in the fine arts, in their literature, and in all their _feelings_, if one can use such an expression. The gross exaggerations of the romantic school that is, just now, attracting so much attention, are merely an effort to liberate themselves. But, after allowing for the extreme ignorance of the substratum of society, which, in France, although it forms so large a portion of the whole, should no more be taken into the account in speaking of the national qualities, than the slaves of Carolina should be included in an estimate of the character of the Carolinians, there is, notwithstanding this mannerism, a personal independence here, that certainly does not exist with us. The American goes and comes when he pleases, and no one asks for a passport; he has his political rights, talks of his liberty, swaggers of his advantages, and yet does less as he pleases, even in innocent things, than the Frenchman. His neighbours form a police, and a most troublesome and impertinent one it sometimes proves to be. It is also unjust, for having no legal means of arriving at facts, it half the time condemns on conjecture. The truth is, our institutions are the result of facts and accidents, and, being necessarily an imitative people, there are often gross inconsistencies between our professions and our practice; whereas the French have had to struggle through their apprenticeship in political rights, by the force of discussions and appeals to reason, and theory is still too important to be entirely overlooked. Perhaps no people understand the _true_ private characters of their public men so little as the Americans, or any people so well as the French. I have never known a distinguished American, in whom it did not appear to me that his popular character was a false one; or a distinguished Frenchman, whom the public did not appear to estimate very nearly as he deserved to be. Even Napoleon, necessary as he is to the national pride, and dazzling as is all military renown, seems to me to be much more justly appreciated at Paris than anywhere else. The practice of meddling can lead to no other result. They who wish to stand particularly fair before the public, resort to deception, and I have heard a man of considerable notoriety in America confess, that he was so much afraid of popular comments, that he always acted as if an enemy were looking over his shoulder. With us, no one scruples to believe that he knows all about a public man, even to the nicest traits of his character; all talk of him, as none should talk but those who are in his intimacy, and, what between hypocrisy on his part--an hypocrisy to which he is in some measure driven by the officious interference with his most private interests--and exaggerations and inventions, that ingenious tyrant, public opinion, comes as near the truth as a fortune-teller who is venturing his prediction in behalf of a stranger.[33] [Footnote 33: I can give no better illustration of the state of dependence to which men are reduced in America, by this spirit of meddling, than by the following anecdote: A friend was about to build a new town-house, and letting me know the situation, he asked my advice as to the mode of construction. The inconveniences of an ordinary American town-house were pointed out to him,--its unfitness for the general state of society, the climate, the other domestic arrangements, and its ugliness. All were admitted, and the plan proposed in place of the old style of building was liked, but still my friend hesitated about adopting it. "It will be a genteeler and a better-looking house than the other." "Agreed." "It will be really more convenient." "I think so, too." "It will be cheaper." "Of that there is no question." "Then why not adopt it?" "To own the truth, I _dare not build differently from my neighbour!_"] In France the right of the citizen to discuss all public matters is not only allowed, but _felt_. In America it is not _felt_, though it is allowed. A homage must be paid to the public, by assuming the disguise of acting as a public agent, in America; whereas, in France, individuals address their countrymen, daily, under their own signatures. The impersonality of _we_, and the character of public journalists, is almost indispensable, with us, to impunity, although the mask can deceive no one, the journalists notoriously making their prints subservient to their private passions and private interests, and being _impersonal_ only in the use of the imperial pronoun. The _representative_, too, in America, is privileged to teach, in virtue of his collective character, by the very men who hold the extreme and untenable doctrine of instruction! It is the fashion to say in America, _that the people will rule!_ it would be nearer the truth, however, to say, _the people will seem to rule_. I think that these distinctions are facts, and they certainly lead to odd reflections. We are so peculiarly situated as a nation, that one is not to venture on conclusions too hastily. A great deal is to be imputed to our provincial habits; much to the circumstance of the disproportion between surface and population, which, by scattering the well-bred and intelligent, a class at all times relatively small, serves greatly to lessen their influence in imparting tone to society; something to the inquisitorial habits of our pious forefathers, who appear to have thought that the charities were nought, and, in the very teeth of revelation, that Heaven was to be stormed by impertinences; while a good deal is to be conceded to the nature of a popular government whose essential spirit is to create a predominant opinion, before which, right or wrong, all must bow until its cycle shall be completed. Thus it is, that we are always, more or less, under one of two false influences, the blow or its rebound; action that is seldom quite right, or reaction that is always wrong; sinning heedlessly, or repeating to fanaticism. The surest process in the world, of "riding on to fortune" in America, is to get seated astride a lively "reaction," which is rather more likely to carry with it a unanimous sentiment, than even the error to which it owes its birth. As much of this weakness as is inseparable from humanity exists here, but it exists under so many modifying circumstances, as, in this particular, to render France as unlike America as well may be. Liberty is not always pure philosophy nor strict justice, and yet, as a whole, it is favourable to both. These are the spots on the political sun. To the eye which seeks only the radiance and warmth of the orb, they are lost; but he who studies it, with calmness and impartiality, sees them too plainly to be in any doubt of their existence. LETTER XXII. Animal Magnetism.--Somnambules.--Magnetised Patients.--My own Examination.--A Prediction.--Ventriloquism.--Force of the Imagination. To JAMES E. DE KAY, M.D. Although we have not been without our metaphysical hallucinations in America, I do not remember to have heard that "animal magnetism" was ever in vogue among us. A people who are not very quick to feel the poetry of sentiment, may well be supposed exempt from the delusions of a doctrine which comprehends the very poetry of physics. Still, as the subject is not without interest, and as chance has put me in the way of personally inquiring into this fanciful system, I intend, in this letter, to give you an account of what I have both heard and seen. I shall premise by saying that I rank "animal magnetism" among the "arts" rather than among the "sciences." Of its theory I have no very clear notion, nor do I believe that I am at all peculiar in my ignorance; but until we can say what is that other "magnetism" to which the world is indisputably so much indebted for its knowledge and comforts, I do not know that we are to repudiate this, merely because we do not understand it. Magnetism is an unseen and inexplicable influence, and that is "metallic," while this is "animal;" _voilà tout_. On the whole, it may be fairly mooted which most controls the world, the animal or the metallic influence. To deal gravely with a subject that, at least, baffles our comprehension, there are certainly very extraordinary things related of animal magnetism, and apparently on pretty good testimony. Take, for instance, a single fact. M. Jules Cloquet is one of the cleverest practitioners of Paris, and is in extensive business. This gentleman publicly makes the following statement. I write it from memory, but have heard it and read it so often, that I do not think my account will contain any essential error. A woman, who was subject to the magnetic influence, or who was what is commonly called a _somnambule_, had a cancer in the breast. M. ----, one of the principal magnetisers of Paris, and from whom, among others, I have had an account of the whole affair, was engaged to magnetise this woman, while M. Cloquet operated on the diseased part. The patient was put asleep, or rather into the magnetic trance, for it can scarcely be called sleep, and the cancer was extracted, without the woman's _manifesting the least terror, or the slightest sense of pain!_ To the truth of the substance of this account, M. Cloquet, who does not pretend to explain the reason, nor profess to belong, in any way, to the school, simply testifies. He says that he had such a patient, and that she was operated on, virtually, as I have told you. Such a statement, coming from so high a source, induced the Academy, which is certainly not altogether composed of magnetisers, but many of whose members are quite animal enough to comprehend the matter, to refer the subject to a special committee, which committee, I believe, was comprised of very clever men. The substance of their report was pretty much what might have been anticipated. They said that the subject was inexplicable, and that "animal magnetism" could not be brought within the limits of any known laws of nature. They might have said the same thing of the comets! In both cases we have facts, with a few established consequences, but are totally without elementary causes. Animal magnetism is clearly one of three things: it is what it pretends to be, an unexplained and as yet incomprehensible physical influence; it is delusion, or it is absolute fraud. A young countryman of ours, having made the acquaintance of M. C----, professionally, and being full of the subject, I have so far listened to his entreaties as to inquire personally into the facts, a step I might not have otherwise been induced to take. I shall now proceed to the history of my own experience in this inexplicable mystery. We found M. C---- buried in the heart of Paris, in one of those vast old hotels, which give to this town the air of generations of houses, commencing with the quaint and noble of the sixteenth century, and ending with the more fashionable pavilion of our own times. His cabinet looked upon a small garden, a pleasant transition from the animal within to the vegetable without. But one meets with gardens, with their verdure and shrubbery and trees, in the most unexpected manner, in this crowded town. M. C---- received us politely, and we found with him one of his _somnambules_; but as she had just come out of a trance, we were told she could not be put asleep again that morning. Our first visit, therefore, went no farther than some discourse on the subject of "animal magnetism," and a little practical by-play, that shall be related in its place. M. C---- did not attempt ascending to first principles, in his explanations. Animal magnetism was animal magnetism--it was a fact, and not a theory. Its effects were not to be doubted; they depended on testimony of sufficient validity to dispose of any mere question of authenticity. All that he attempted was hypothesis, which he invited us to controvert. He might as well have desired me to demonstrate that the sun is not a carbuncle. On the _modus operandi_, and the powers of his art, the doctor was more explicit. There were a great many gradations in quality in his _somnambules_, some being better and some worse; and there was also a good deal of difference in the _intensity_ of the _magnetiser's_. It appears to be settled that the best _somnambules_ are females, and the best _magnetisers_ males, though the law is not absolute. I was flattered with being, by nature, a first-rate magnetiser, and the doctor had not the smallest doubt of his ability to put me to sleep; and ability, so far as his theory went, I thought it was likely enough he might possess, though I greatly questioned his physical means. I suppose it is _primâ facie_ evidence of credulity, to take the trouble to inquire into the subject at all; at any rate it was quite evident I was set down as a good subject, from the moment of my appearance. Even the _somnambule_ testified to this, though she would not then consent to be put into a trance in order to give her opinion its mystical sanction. The powers of a really good _somnambule_ are certainly of a very respectable class. If a lock of hair be cut from the head of an invalid, and sent a hundred leagues from the provinces, such a _somnambule_, properly magnetised, becomes gifted with the faculty to discover the seat of the disease, however latent; and, by practice, she may even prescribe the remedy, though this is usually done by a physician, like M. C----, who is regularly graduated. The _somnambule_ is, properly, only versed in pathology, any other skill she may discover being either a consequence of this knowledge, or the effects of observation and experience. The powers of a _somnambule_ extend equally to the _morale_ as well as to the _physique_. In this respect a phrenologist is a pure quack in comparison with a lady in a trance. The latter has no dependence on bumps and organs, but she looks right through you, at a glance, and pronounces _ex cathedrâ_, whether you are a rogue, or an honest man; a well-disposed, or an evil-disposed child of Adam. In this particular, it is an invaluable science, and it is a thousand pities all young women were not magnetised before they pronounce the fatal vows, as not a few of them would probably wake up, and cheat the parson of his fee. Our sex is difficult to be put asleep, and are so obstinate, that I doubt if they would be satisfied with a shadowy glimpse of the temper and dispositions of their mistresses. You may possibly think I am trifling with you, and that I invent as I write. On the contrary, I have not related one half of the miraculous powers which being magnetised imparts to the thoroughly good _somnambule_, as they were related to me by M. C----, and vouched for by four or five of his patients who were present, as well as by my own companion, a firm believer in the doctrine. M. C---- added that _somnambules_ improve by practice, as well as _magnetisers_, and that he has such command over one of his _somnambules_ that he can put her to sleep, by a simple effort of the will, although she may be in her own apartment, in an adjoining street. He related the story of M. Cloquet and the cancer, with great unction, and asked me what I thought of that? Upon my word, I did not very well know what I did think of it, unless it was to think it very queer. It appeared to me to be altogether extraordinary, especially as I knew M. Cloquet to be a man of talents, and believe him to be honest. By this time I was nearly magnetised with second-hand facts; and I became a little urgent for one or two that were visible to my own sense. I was promised more testimony, and a sight of the process of magnetising some water that a patient was to drink. This patient was present; the very type of credulity. He listened to everything that fell from M. C---- with a _gusto_ and a faith that might have worked miracles truly, had it been of the right sort, now and then turning his good-humoured marvel-eating eyes on me, as much as to say, "What do you think of that, now?" My companion told me, in English, he was a man of good estate, and of proved philanthropy, who had no more doubt of the efficacy of animal magnetism than I had of my being in the room. He had brought with him two bottles of water, and these M. C---- _magnetised_, by pointing his fingers at their orifices, rubbing their sides, and ringing his hands about them as if washing them, in order to disengage the subtle fluid that was to impart to them their healing properties, for the patient drank no other water. Presently a young man came in, of a good countenance and certainly of a very respectable exterior. As the _somnambule_ had left us, and this person could not consult her, which was his avowed intention in coming, M. C---- proposed to let me see his own power as a magnetiser, in an experiment on this patient. The young man consenting, the parties were soon prepared. M. C---- began by telling me, that he would, by _a transfusion of his will_, into the body of the patient, compel him to sit still, although his own desire should be to rise. In order to achieve this, he placed himself before the young man and threw off the fluid from his fingers' ends, which he kept in a cluster, by constant forward gestures of the arms. Sometimes he held the fingers pointed at some particular part of the body, the heart in preference, though the brain would have been more poetical. The young man certainly did not rise; neither did I, nor any one else in the room. As this experiment appeared so satisfactory to everybody else, I was almost ashamed to distrust it, easy as it really seemed to sit still, with a man flourishing his fingers before one's eyes. I proposed that the doctor should see if he could pin me down, in this invisible fashion, but this he frankly admitted he did not think he could do _so soon_, though he foresaw I would become a firm believer in the existence of animal magnetism, ere long, and a public supporter of its wonders. In time, he did not doubt his power to work the same miracle on me. He then varied the experiment, by making the young man raise his arm _contrary_ to his wishes. The same process was repealed, all the fluid being directed at the arm, which, after a severe trial, was slowly raised, until it pointed forward like a finger-board. After this he was made to stand up, in spite of himself. This was the hardest affair of all, the doctor throwing off the fluid in handfuls; the magnetised refusing for some time to budge an inch. At length he suddenly stood up, and seemed to draw his breath like one who finally yields after a strong trial of his physical force. Nothing, certainly, is easier than for a young man to sit still and to stand up, pretending that he strives internally to resist the desire to do either. Still, if you ask me, if I think this was simple collusion, I hardly know what to answer. It is the easiest solution, and yet it did not strike me as being the true one. I never saw less of the appearance of deception than in the air of this young man; his face, deportment, and acts being those of a person in sober earnest. He made no professions, was extremely modest, and really seemed anxious not to have the experiments tried. To my question, if he resisted the will of M. C----, he answered, as much as he could, and said, that when he rose, he did it because he could not help himself. I confess myself disposed to believe in his sincerity and good faith. I had somewhat of a reputation, when a boy, of effecting my objects by pure dint of teasing. Many is the shilling I have abstracted, in this way, from my mother's purse, who, constantly affirmed that it was sore against her will. Now, it seems to me, that M. C---- may, very easily, have acquired so much command over a credulous youth, as to cause him to do things of this nature, as he may fancy, against his own will. Signs are the substitutes of words, which of themselves are purely conventional, and, in his case, the flourishing of the fingers are merely so many continued solicitations to get up. When the confirmation of a theory that is already received, and which is doubly attractive by its mysticisms, depends, in some measure, on the result, the experiment becomes still less likely to fail. It is stripping one of all pretensions to be a physiognomist, to believe that this young man was not honest; and I prefer getting over the difficulty in this way. As to the operator himself, he might, or might not, be the dupe of his own powers. If the former, I think it would, on the whole, render him the more likely to succeed with his subject. After a visit or two, I was considered sufficiently advanced to be scientifically examined. One of the very best of the _somnambules_ was employed on the occasion, and everything being in readiness, she was put to sleep. There was a faith-shaking brevity in this process, which, to say the least, if not fraudulent, was ill-judged. The doctor merely pointed his fingers at her once or twice, looking her intently in the eye, and the woman gaped; this success was followed up by a flourish or two of the hand, and the woman slept, or was magnetised. Now this was hardly sufficient even for my theory of the influence of the imagination. One could have wished the _somnambule_ had not been so drowsy. But there she was, with her eyes shut, giving an occasional hearty gape, and the doctor declared her perfectly lit for service. She retained her seat, however, moved her body, laughed, talked, and, in all other respects, seemed to be precisely the woman she was before he pointed his fingers at her. At first, I felt a disposition to manifest that more parade was indispensable to humbugging me (who am not the Pope, you will remember), but reflection said, the wisest way was to affect a little faith, as the surest means of securing more experiments. Moreover, I am not certain, on the whole, that the simplicity of the operation is not in favour of the sincerity of the parties; for, were deception deliberately planned, it would be apt to call in the aid of more mummery, and this, particularly, in a case in which there was probably a stronger desire than usual to make a convert. I gave the _somnambule_ my hand, and the examination was commenced, forthwith. I was first physically inspected, and the report was highly favourable to the condition of the animal. I had the satisfaction of hearing from this high authority, that the whole machinery of the mere material man was in perfect order, everything working well and in its proper place. This was a little contrary to my own experience, it is true, but as I had no means of seeing the interior clock-work of my own frame, like the _somnambule_, had I ventured to raise a doubt, it would have been overturned by the evidence of one who had ocular proofs of what she said, and should, beyond question, have incurred the ridicule of being accounted a _malade imaginaire_. Modesty must prevent my recording all that this obliging _somnambule_ testified to, on the subject of my _morale_. Her account of the matter was highly satisfactory, and I must have been made of stone, not to credit her and her mysticisms. M. C---- looked at me again and again, with an air of triumph, as much as to say, "What do you think of all that now?--are you not _really_ the noble, honest, virtuous, disinterested, brave creature, she has described you to be?" I can assure you, it required no little self-denial to abstain from becoming a convert to the whole system. As it is very unusual to find a man with a good head, who has not a secret inclination to believe in phrenology, so does he, who is thus purified by the scrutiny of animal magnetism, feel disposed to credit its mysterious influence. Certainly, I might have gaped, in my turn, and commenced the moral and physical dissection of the _somnambule_, whose hand I held, and no one could have given me the lie, for nothing is easier than to speak _ex cathedrâ_, when one has a monopoly of knowledge. Encouraged by this flattering account of my own condition, I begged hard for some more indisputable evidence of the truth of the theory. I carried a stop-watch, and as I had taken an opportunity to push the stop on entering the room, I was particularly desirous that the _somnambule_ should tell me the time indicated by its hands, a common test of their powers, I had been told; but to this M. C---- objected, referring everything of this tangible nature to future occasions. In fine, I could get nothing during three or four visits, but pretty positive assertions, expressions of wonder that I should affect to doubt what had been so often and so triumphantly proved to others, accounts physical and moral, like the one of which I had been the subject myself, and which did not admit of either confirmation or refutation, and often-repeated declarations, that the time was not distant when, in my own unworthy person, I was to become one of the most powerful magnetisers of the age. All this did very well to amuse, but very little towards convincing; and I was finally promised, that at my next visit, the _somnambule_ would be prepared to show her powers, in a way that would not admit of cavil. I went to the appointed meeting with a good deal of curiosity to learn the issue, and a resolution not to be easily duped. When I presented myself (I believe it was the fourth visit), M. C---- gave me a sealed paper, that was not to be opened for several weeks, and which, he said, contained the prediction of an event that was to occur to myself, between the present time and the day set for the opening of the letter, and which the _somnambule_ had been enabled to foresee, in consequence of the interest she took in me and mine. With this sealed revelation, then, I was obliged to depart, to await the allotted hour. M. C---- had promised to be present at the opening of the seal, but he did not appear. I dealt fairly by him, and the cover was first formally removed, on the evening of the day endorsed on its back, as the one when it would be permitted. The _somnambule_ had foretold that, in the intervening time, one of my children would be seriously ill, that I should magnetise it, and the child would recover. Nothing of the sort had occurred. No one of the family had been ill, I had not attempted to magnetise any one, or even dreamed of it, and, of course, the whole prediction was a complete failure. To do M. C---- justice, when he heard the result, he manifested surprise rather than any less confident feeling. I was closely questioned, first, as to whether either of the family had not been ill, and secondly, whether I had not felt a secret desire to magnetise any one of them. To all these interrogatories, truth compelled me to give unqualified negatives. I had hardly thought of the subject during the whole time. As this interview took place at my own house, politeness compelled me to pass the matter off as lightly as possible. There happened to be several ladies present, however, the evening M. C---- called, and, thinking the occasion a good one for him to try his powers on some one besides his regular _somnambules_, I invited him to magnetise any one of the party who might be disposed to submit to the process. To this he made no difficulty, choosing an English female friend as the subject of the experiment. The lady in question raised no objection, and the doctor commenced with great zeal, and with every appearance of faith in his own powers. No effect, however, was produced on this lady, or on one or two more of the party, all of whom obstinately refused even to gape. M. C---- gave the matter up, and soon after took his leave, and thus closed my personal connexion with animal magnetism. If you ask me for the conclusions I have drawn from these facts, I shall be obliged to tell you, that I am in doubt how far the parties concerned deceived others, and how far they deceived themselves. It is difficult to discredit entirely all the testimony that has been adduced in behalf of this power; and one is consequently obliged to refer all the established facts to the influence of the imagination. Then testimony itself is but a precarious thing, different eyes seeing the same objects in different lights. Let us take ventriloquism as a parallel case to that of animal magnetism. Ventriloquism is neither more nor less than imitation; and yet, aided by the imagination, perhaps a majority of those who know anything about it, are inclined to believe there is really such a faculty as that which is vulgarly attributed to ventriloquism. The whole art of the ventriloquist consists in making such sounds as would be produced by a person, or thing, that should be actually in the circumstances that he wishes to represent. Let there be, for instance, five or six sitting around a table, in a room with a single door; a ventriloquist among them wishes to mislead his companions, by making them believe that another is applying for admission. All he has to do, is to make a sound similar to that which a person on the outside would make, in applying for admission. "Open the door, and let me in," uttered in such a manner, would deceive any one who was not prepared for the experiment, simply because men do not ordinarily make such sounds when sitting near each other, because the words themselves would draw the attention to the door, and because the sounds would be suited to the fictitious application. If there were _two_ doors, the person first moving his head towards one of them, would probably give a direction to the imaginations of all the others; unless, indeed, the ventriloquist himself, by his words, or his own movements, as is usually the case, should assume the initiative. Every ventriloquist takes especial care to _direct_ the imagination of his listener to the desired point, either by what he says, by some gesture, or by some movement. Such, undeniably, is the fact in regard to ventriloquism; for we know enough of the philosophy of sound, to be certain it can he nothing else. One of the best ventriloquists of this age, after affecting to resist this explanation of his mystery, candidly admitted to me, on finding that I stuck to the principles of reason, that all his art consisted of no more than a power to control the imagination by imitation supported occasionally by acting. And yet I once saw this man literally turn a whole family out of doors, in a storm, by an exercise of his art. On that occasion, so complete was the delusion, that the good people of the house actually fancied sounds which came from the ventriloquist, came from a point considerably beyond the place where they stood, and on the side _opposite_ to that occupied by the speaker, although they stood at the top of a flight of steps, and he stood at the bottom. All this time, the sounds appeared to me to come from the place whence, by the laws of sound, except in cases of reverberation, and of the influence of the imagination, they only could appear to come; or, in other words, from the mouth of the ventriloquist himself. Now, if the imagination can effect so much, even in crowded assemblies, composed of people of all degrees of credulity, intelligence, and strength of mind, and when all are prepared, in part at least, for the delusion, what may it not be expected to produce on minds peculiarly suited to yield to its influence, and this, too, when the prodigy takes the captivating form of mysticism and miracles! In the case of the patient of M. Cloquet, we are reduced to the alternatives of denying the testimony, of believing that recourse was had to drugs, of referring all to the force of the imagination, or of admitting the truth of the doctrine of animal magnetism. The character of M. Cloquet, and the motiveless folly of such a course, compel us to reject the first; the second can hardly be believed, as the patient had not the appearance of being drugged, and the possession of such a secret would be almost as valuable as the art in question itself. The doctrine of animal magnetism we cannot receive, on account of the want of uniformity and exactitude in the experiments; and I think, we are fairly driven to take refuge in the force of the imagination. Before doing this, however, we ought to make considerable allowances for exaggerations, colouring, and the different manner in which men are apt to regard the same thing. My young American friend, who _did_ believe in animal magnetism, viewed several of the facts I have related with eyes more favourable than mine, although even he was compelled to allow that M. C---- had much greater success with himself, than with your humble servant. LETTER XXIII. Preparations for Departure.--My Consulate.--Leave Paris.--Picardy.--Cressy.--Montreuil.--Gate of Calais.--Port of Calais.--Magical Words. To R. COOPER, ESQ., COOPERSTOWN. We entered France in July, 1826, and having remained in and about the French capital until February, 1828, we thought it time to change the scene. Paris is effectually the centre of Europe, and a residence in it is the best training an American can have, previously to visiting the other parts of that quarter of the world. Its civilisation, usages, and facilities take the edge off our provincial admiration, remove prejudices, and prepare the mind to receive new impressions, with more discrimination and tact. I would advise all our travellers to make this their first stage, and then to visit the North of Europe, before crossing the Alps or the Pyrenees. Most people, however, hurry into the South, with a view to obtain the best as soon as possible; but it is with this, as in most of our enjoyments, a too eager indulgence defeats its own aim. We had decided to visit London, where the season, _or winter_, would soon commence. The necessary arrangements were made, and we sent round our cards of p.p.c. and obtained passports. On the very day we were to quit Paris, an American friend wrote me a note to say that a young connexion of his was desirous of going to London, and begged a place for her in my carriage. It is, I believe, a peculiar and a respectable trait in the national character, that we so seldom hesitate about asking, or acceding to, favours of this sort. Whenever woman is concerned, our own sex yield, and usually without murmuring. At all events, it was so with W----, who cheerfully gave up his seat in the carriage to Miss ----, in order to take one in the _coupé_ of the diligence. The notice was so short, and the hour so late, that there was no time to get a passport for him, and, as he was included in mine, I was compelled to run the risk of sending him to the frontiers without one. I was a consul at the time,--a titular one as to duties, but in reality as much of a consul as if I had ever visited my consulate.[34] The only official paper I possessed, in connexion with the office, the commission and _exequatur_ excepted, was a letter from the Préfet of the Rhône, acknowledging the receipt of the latter. As this was strictly a French document, I gave it to W---- as proof of my identity, accompanied by a brief statement of the reasons why he was without a passport, begging the authorities at Need to let him pass as far as the frontier, where I should be in season to prove his character. This statement I signed as consul, instructing W---- to show it, if applied to for a passport; and if the gendarmes disavowed me, to show the letter, by way of proving who I was. The expedient was clumsy enough, but it was the best that offered. [Footnote 34: There being so strong a propensity to cavil at American facts, lest this book might fall into European hands, it may be well to explain a little. The consulate of the writer was given to him solely to avoid the appearance of going over to the enemy, during his residence abroad. The situation conferred neither honour nor profit, there being no salary, and, in his case, not fees enough to meet the expense of the office opened by a deputy. The writer suspects he was much too true to the character and principles of his native country, to be voluntarily selected by its Government as the object of its honours or rewards, and it is certain he never solicited either. There are favours, it would seem, that are reserved, in America, for those who most serve the interests of her enemies! A day of retribution will come.] This arrangement settled, we got into the carriage, and took our leave of Paris. Before quitting the town, however, I drove round to the Rue d'Anjou, to take my leave of General Lafayette. This illustrious man had been seriously ill for some weeks, and I had many doubts of my ever seeing him again. He did not conceive himself to be in any danger, however; but spoke of his speedy recovery as a matter of course, and made an engagement with me for the ensuing summer. I bade him adieu, with a melancholy apprehension that I should never see him again. We drove through the gates of Paris, amid the dreariness of a winter's evening. You are to understand that everybody quits London and Paris just as night sets in. I cannot tell you whether this is caprice, or whether it is a usage that has arisen from a wish to have the day in town, and a desire to relieve the monotony of roads so often travelled, by sleep; but so it is. We did not fall into the fashion simply because it is a fashion, but the days are so short in February in these high latitudes, that we could not make our preparations earlier. I have little agreeable to say concerning the first forty miles of the journey. It rained; and the roads were, as usual, slippery with mud, and full of holes. The old _pavés_ are beginning to give way, however, and we actually got a bit of _terre_ within six posts of Paris. This may be considered a triumph of modern civilisation; for, whatever may be said and sung in favour of Appian ways and Roman magnificence, a more cruel invention for travellers and carriage-wheels, than these _pavés_, was never invented. A real Paris winter's day is the most uncomfortable of all weather. If you walk, no device of leather will prevent the moisture from penetrating to your heart; if you ride, it is but an affair of mud and _gras de Paris_. We enjoyed all this until nine at night, by which time we had got enough of it; and in Beauvais, instead of giving the order _à la poste_, the postilion was told to go to an inn. A warm supper and good beds put us all in good-humour again. In putting into the mouth of Falstaff the words, "Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?" Shakspeare may have meant no more than the drowsy indolence of a glutton; but they recur to me with peculiar satisfaction whenever I get unbooted, and with a full stomach before the warm fire of an hotel, after a fatiguing and chilling day's work. If any man doubt whether Providence has not dealt justly by all of us in rendering our enjoyments dependent on comparative rather than on positive benefits, let him travel through a dreary day, and take his comfort at night in a house where everything is far below his usual habits, and learn to appreciate the truth. The sweetest sleep I have ever had has been caught on deck, in the middle watch, under a wet pee-jacket, and with a coil of rope for a pillow. Our next day's work carried us as far as Abbeville, in Picardy. Here we had a capital supper of game, in a room that set us all shivering with good honest cold. The beds, as usual, were excellent. The country throughout all this part of France, is tame and monotonous, with wide reaches of grain-lands that are now brown and dreary, here and there a wood, and the usual villages of dirty stonehouses. We passed a few hamlets, however, that were more than commonly rustic and picturesque, and in which the dwellings seemed to be of mud, and were thatched. As they were mostly very irregular in form, the street winding through them quite prettily, they would have been good in their way, had there been any of the simple expedients of taste to relieve their poverty. But the French peasants of this province appear to think of little else but their wants. There was occasionally a venerable and generous old vine clinging about the door, however, to raise some faint impressions of happiness. We passed through, or near, the field of Cressy. By the aid of the books, we fancied we could trace the positions of the two armies; but it was little more than very vague conjecture. There was a mead, a breadth of field well adapted to cavalry, and a wood. The river is a mere brook, and could have offered but little protection, or resistance, to the passage of any species of troops. I saw no village, and we may not have been within a mile of the real field, after all. Quite likely; no one knows where it is. It is very natural that the precise sites of great events should be lost, though our own history is so fresh and full, that to us it is apt to appear extraordinary. In a conversation with a gentleman of the Stanley family, lately, I asked him if Latham-House, so celebrated for its siege in the civil wars, was still in the possession of its ancient proprietors. I was told it no longer existed, and that, until quite recently, its positive site was a disputed point, and one which had only been settled by the discovery of a hole in a rock, in which shot had been cast during the siege, and which hole was known to have formerly been in a court. It is no wonder that doubts exist as to the identity of Homer, or the position of Troy. We have anglicised the word Cressy, which the French term Crécy, or, to give it a true Picard orthography, Créci. Most of the names that have this termination are said to be derived from this province. Many of them have become English, and have undergone several changes in the spelling. Tracy, or Tracey; de Courcy, or de Courcey; Montmorency; and Lacy, or Lacey, were once "Traci," "Courci," "Montmorenci," and "Laci." [35] The French get over the disgrace of their ancient defeats very ingeniously, by asserting that the English armies of old were principally composed of Norman soldiers, and that the chivalrous nobility which performed such wonders were of purely Norman blood. The latter was probably more true than the former. [Footnote 35: The celebrated Sir William Draper was once present when the subject turned on the descent of families, and the changes that names underwent. "Now my own is a proof of what I say," he continued, with the intention to put an end to a discourse that was getting to savour of family pride; "my family being directly derived from King Pepin." "How do you make that out, Sir William?" "By self-evident orthographical testimony, as you may see,--Pepin, Pipkin, Napkin, Diaper, Draper."] As we drew nearer to the coast, the country became more varied. Montreuil and Samer are both fortified; and one of these places, standing on an abrupt, rocky eminence, is quite picturesque and quaint. But we did not stop to look at anything very minutely, pushing forward, as fast as three horses could draw us, for the end of our journey. A league or two from Boulogne we were met by a half-dozen mounted runners from the different inns, each inviting us to give our custom to his particular employer. These fellows reminded me of the wheat-runners on the hill at Albany; though they were as much more clamorous and earnest, as a noisy protestation-making Frenchman is more obtrusive, than a shrewd, quiet, calculating Yankee. We did not stop in Boulogne to try how true were the voluble representations of these gentry, but, changing horses at the post, went our way. The town seemed full of English; and we gazed about us, with some curiosity, at a place that has become so celebrated by the great demonstration of Napoleon. There is a high monument standing at no great distance from the town, to commemorate one of his military parades. The port is small and crowded, like most of the harbours on both sides of the Channel. We had rain, and chills, and darkness, for the three or four posts that succeeded. The country grew more and more tame, until, after crossing an extensive plain of moist meadow-land, we passed through the gate of Calais. I know no place that will give you a more accurate notion of this celebrated port than Powles Hook. It is, however, necessary to enlarge the scale greatly, for Calais is a town of some size, and the hommock on which it stands, and the low land by which it is environed, are much more considerable in extent than the spot just named. We drove to the inn that Sterne has immortalised, or one at least that bears the same name, and found English comfort united with French cookery and French taste. After all, I do not know why I may not say French comforts too; for in many respects they surpass their island neighbours even in this feature of domestic comfort. It is a comfort to have a napkin even when eating a muffin; to see one's self entire in a mirror, instead of _edging_ the form into it, or out of it, sideways; to drink good coffee; to eat good _côtelettes;_ and to be able to wear the same linen for a day, without having it soiled. The Bible says, "Comfort me with flagons, or apples," I really forget which,--and if either of these is to be taken as authority, a _côtelette_ may surely be admitted into the _carte de conforts_. We found Calais a clear town, and pressing a certain medium aspect, that was as much English as French. The position is strong, though I was not much struck with the strength of the works. England has no motive to wish to possess it, now that conquest on the Continent is neither expedient nor possible. The port is good for nothing, in a warlike sense, except to protect a privateer or two; though the use of steam will probably make it of more importance in any future war, than it has been for the last two centuries. We found W---- safely arrived. At one of the frontier towns he had been asked for his passport, and in his fright he gave the letter of the Préfet of the Rhône, instead of the explanation I had so cleverly devised. This letter commenced with the words "Monsieur le Consul" in large letters, and occupying, according to French etiquette, nearly half of the first page. The gendarme, a _vieux moustache_, held his lantern up to read it, and seeing this ominous title, it would seem that Napoleon, and Marengo, and all the glories of the Consulate, arose in his imagination. He got no further than those three words, which he pronounced aloud; and then folding the letter, he returned it with a profound bow, asking no further questions. As the diligence drove on, W---- heard him say, "Apparemment vous avez un homme très-considérable là-dedans, Monsieur le Conducteur." So much for our fears, for passports, and for gendarmes! We went to bed, with the intention of embarking for England in the morning. THE END 
11996	----	A RESIDENCE IN FRANCE, DURING THE YEARS 1792, 1793, 1794, AND 1795; DESCRIBED IN A SERIES OF LETTERS FROM AN ENGLISH LADY; With General And Incidental Remarks On The French Character And Manners. Prepared for the Press By John Gifford, Esq. Author of the History of France, Letter to Lord Lauderdale, Letter to the Hon. T. Erskine, &c. Second Edition. _Plus je vis l'Etranger plus j'aimai ma Patrie._ --Du Belloy. London: Printed for T. N. Longman, Paternoster Row. 1797. PRELIMINARY REMARKS BY THE EDITOR. The following Letters were submitted to my inspection and judgement by the Author, of whose principles and abilities I had reason to entertain a very high opinion. How far my judgement has been exercised to advantage in enforcing the propriety of introducing them to the public, that public must decide. To me, I confess, it appeared, that a series of important facts, tending to throw a strong light on the internal state of France, during the most important period of the Revolution, could neither prove uninteresting to the general reader, nor indifferent to the future historian of that momentous epoch; and I conceived, that the opposite and judicious reflections of a well-formed and well-cultivated mind, naturally arising out of events within the immediate scope of its own observation, could not in the smallest degree diminish the interest which, in my apprehension, they are calculated to excite. My advice upon this occasion was farther influenced by another consideration. Having traced, with minute attention, the progress of the revolution, and the conduct of its advocates, I had remarked the extreme affiduity employed (as well by translations of the most violent productions of the Gallic press, as by original compositions,) to introduce and propagate, in foreign countries, those pernicious principles which have already sapped the foundation of social order, destroyed the happiness of millions, and spread desolation and ruin over the finest country in Europe. I had particularly observed the incredible efforts exerted in England, and, I am sorry to say, with too much success, for the base purpose of giving a false colour to every action of the persons exercising the powers of government in France; and I had marked, with indignation, the atrocious attempt to strip vice of its deformity, to dress crime in the garb of virtue, to decorate slavery with the symbols of freedom, and give to folly the attributes of wisdom. I had seen, with extreme concern, men, whom the lenity, mistaken lenity, I must call it, of our government had rescued from punishment, if not from ruin, busily engaged in this scandalous traffic, and, availing themselves of their extensive connections to diffuse, by an infinite variety of channels, the poison of democracy over their native land. In short, I had seen the British press, the grand palladium of British liberty, devoted to the cause of Gallic licentiousness, that mortal enemy of all freedom, and even the pure stream of British criticism diverted from its natural course, and polluted by the pestilential vapours of Gallic republicanism. I therefore deemed it essential, by an exhibition of well-authenticated facts, to correct, as far as might be, the evil effects of misrepresentation and error, and to defend the empire of truth, which had been assailed by a host of foes. My opinion of the principles on which the present system of government in France was founded, and the war to which those principles gave rise, have been long since submitted to the public. Subsequent events, far from invalidating, have strongly confirmed it. In all the public declarations of the Directory, in their domestic polity, in their conduct to foreign powers, I plainly trace the prevalence of the same principles, the same contempt for the rights and happiness of the people, the same spirit of aggression and aggrandizement, the same eagerness to overturn the existing institutions of neighbouring states, and the same desire to promote "the universal revolution of Europe," which marked the conduct of BRISSOT, LE BRUN, DESMOULINS, ROBESPIERRE, and their disciples. Indeed, what stronger instance need be adduced of the continued prevalence of these principles, than the promotion to the supreme rank in the state, of two men who took an active part in the most atrocious proceedings of the Convention at the close of 1792, and at the commencement of the following year? In all the various constitutions which have been successively adopted in that devoted country, the welfare of the people has been wholly disregarded, and while they have been amused with the shadow of liberty, they have been cruelly despoiled of the substance. Even on the establishment of the present constitution, the one which bore the nearest resemblance to a rational system, the freedom of election, which had been frequently proclaimed as the very corner-stone of liberty, was shamefully violated by the legislative body, who, in their eagerness to perpetuate their own power, did not scruple to destroy the principle on which it was founded. Nor is this the only violation of their own principles. A French writer has aptly observed, that "En revolution comme en morale, ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute:" thus the executive, in imitation of the legislative body, seem disposed to render their power perpetual. For though it be expressly declared by the 137th article of the 6th title of their present constitutional code, that the "Directory shall be partially renewed by the election of a new member every year," no step towards such election has been taken, although the time prescribed by the law is elapsed.--In a private letter from Paris now before me, written within these few days, is the following observation on this very circumstance: "The constitution has received another blow. The month of Vendemiaire is past, and our Directors still remain the same. Hence we begin to drop the appalation of Directory, and substitute that of the Cinqvir, who are more to be dreaded for their power, and more to be detested for their crimes, than the Decemvir of ancient Rome." The same letter also contains a brief abstract of the state of the metropolis of the French republic, which is wonderfully characteristic of the attention of the government to the welfare and happiness of its inhabitants! "The reign of misery and of crime seems to be perpetuated in this distracted capital: suicides, pillage, and assassinations, are daily committed, and are still suffered to pass unnoticed. But what renders our situation still more deplorable, is the existence of an innumerable band of spies, who infest all public places, and all private societies. More than a hundred thousand of these men are registered on the books of the modern SARTINE; and as the population of Paris, at most, does not exceed six hundred thousand souls, we are sure to find in six individuals one spy. This consideration makes me shudder, and, accordingly, all confidence, and all the sweets of social intercourse, are banished from among us. People salute each other, look at each other, betray mutual suspicions, observe a profound silence, and part. This, in few words, is an exact description of our modern republican parties. It is said, that poverty has compelled many respectable persons, and even state-creditors, to enlist under the standard of COCHON, (the Police Minister,) because such is the honourable conduct of our sovereigns, that they pay their spies in specie--and their soldiers, and the creditors of the state, in paper.--Such is the morality, such the justice, such are the republican virtues, so loudly vaunted by our good and dearest friends, our pensioners--the Gazetteers of England and Germany!" There is not a single abuse, which the modern reformers reprobated so loudly under the ancient system, that is not magnified, in an infinite degree, under the present establishment. For one Lettre de Cachet issued during the mild reign of LOUIS the Sixteenth, a thousand Mandats d'Arret have been granted by the tyrannical demagogues of the revolution; for one Bastile which existed under the Monarchy, a thousand Maisons de Detention have been established by the Republic. In short, crimes of every denomination, and acts of tyranny and injustice, of every kind, have multiplied, since the abolition of royalty, in a proportion which sets all the powers of calculation at defiance. It is scarcely possible to notice the present situation of France, without adverting to the circumstances of the WAR, and to the attempt now making, through the medium of negotiation, to bring it to a speedy conclusion. Since the publication of my Letter to a Noble Earl, now destined to chew the cud of disappointment in the vale of obscurity, I have been astonished to hear the same assertions advance, by the members and advocates of that party whose merit is said to consist in the violence of their opposition to the measures of government, on the origin of the war, which had experienced the most ample confutation, without the assistance of any additional reason, and without the smallest attempt to expose the invalidity of those proofs which, in my conception, amounted nearly to mathematical demonstration, and which I had dared them, in terms the most pointed, to invalidate. The question of aggression before stood on such high ground, that I had not the presumption to suppose it could derive an accession of strength from any arguments which I could supply; but I was confident, that the authentic documents which I offered to the public would remove every intervening object that tended to obstruct the fight of inattentive observers, and reflect on it such an additional light as would flash instant conviction on the minds of all. It seems, I have been deceived; but I must be permitted to suggest, that men who persist in the renewal of assertions, without a single effort to controvert the proofs which have been adduced to demonstrate their fallacy, cannot have for their object the establishment of truth--which ought, exclusively, to influence the conduct of public characters, whether writers or orators. With regard to the negotiation, I can derive not the smallest hopes of success from a contemplation of the past conduct, or of the present principles, of the government of France. When I compare the projects of aggrandizement openly avowed by the French rulers, previous to the declaration of war against this country, with the exorbitant pretensions advanced in the arrogant reply of the Executive Directory to the note presented by the British Envoy at Basil in the month of February, 1796, and with the more recent observations contained in their official note of the 19th of September last, I cannot think it probable that they will accede to any terms of peace that are compatible with the interest and safety of the Allies. Their object is not so much the establishment as the extension of their republic. As to the danger to be incurred by a treaty of peace with the republic of France, though it has been considerably diminished by the events of the war, it is still unquestionably great. This danger principally arises from a pertinacious adherence, on the part of the Directory, to those very principles which were adopted by the original promoters of the abolition of Monarchy in France. No greater proof of such adherence need be required than their refusal to repeal those obnoxious decrees (passed in the months of November and December, 1792,) which created so general and so just an alarm throughout Europe, and which excited the reprobation even of that party in England, which was willing to admit the equivocal interpretation given to them by the Executive Council of the day. I proved, in the Letter to a Noble Earl before alluded to, from the very testimony of the members of that Council themselves, as exhibited in their official instructions to one of their confidential agents, that the interpretation which they had assigned to those decrees, in their communications with the British Ministry, was a base interpretation, and that they really intended to enforce the decrees, to the utmost extent of their possible operation, and, by a literal construction thereof, to encourage rebellion in every state, within the reach of their arms or their principles. Nor have the present government merely forborne to repeal those destructive laws--they have imitated the conduct of their predecessors, have actually put them in execution wherever they had the ability to do so, and have, in all respects, as far as related to those decrees, adopted the precise spirit and principles of the faction which declared war against England. Let any man read the instructions of the Executive Council to PUBLICOLA CHAUSSARD, their Commissary in the Netherlands, in 1792 and 1793, and an account of the proceedings in the Low Countries consequent thereon, and then examine the conduct of the republican General, BOUNAPARTE, in Italy--who must necessarily act from the instructions of the Executive Directory----and he will be compelled to acknowledge the justice of my remark, and to admit that the latter actuated by the same pernicious desire to overturn the settled order of society, which invariably marked the conduct of the former. "It is an acknowledged fact, that every revolution requires a provisional power to regulate its disorganizing movements, and to direct the methodical demolition of every part of the ancient social constitution.-- Such ought to be the revolutionary power. "To whom can such power belong, but to the French, in those countries into which they may carry their arms? Can they with safety suffer it to be exercised by any other persons? It becomes the French republic, then, to assume this kind of guardianship over the people whom she awakens to Liberty!*" * _Considerations Generales fur l'Esprit et les Principes du Decret du 15 Decembre_. Such were the Lacedaemonian principles avowed by the French government in 1792, and such is the Lacedaimonian policy* pursued by the French government in 1796! It cannot then, I conceive, be contended, that a treaty with a government still professing principles which have been repeatedly proved to be subversive of all social order, which have been acknowledged by their parents to have for their object the methodical demolition of existing constitutions, can be concluded without danger or risk. That danger, I admit, is greatly diminished, because the power which was destined to carry into execution those gigantic projects which constituted its object, has, by the operations of the war, been considerably curtailed. They well may exist in equal force, but the ability is no longer the same. MACHIAVEL justly observes, that it was the narrow policy of the Lacedaemonians always to destroy the ancient constitution, and establish their own form of government, in the counties and cities which they subdued. But though I maintain the existence of danger in a Treaty with the Republic of France, unless she previously repeal the decrees to which I have adverted, and abrogate the acts to which they have given birth, I by no means contend that it exists in such a degree as to justify a determination, on the part of the British government, to make its removal the sine qua non of negotiation, or peace. Greatly as I admire the brilliant endowments of Mr. BURKE, and highly as I respect and esteem him for the manly and decisive part which he has taken, in opposition to the destructive anarchy of republican France, and in defence of the constitutional freedom of Britain; I cannot either agree with him on this point, or concur with him in the idea that the restoration of the Monarchy of France was ever the object of the war. That the British Ministers ardently desired that event, and were earnest in their endeavours to promote it, is certain; not because it was the object of the war, but because they considered it as the best means of promoting the object of the war, which was, and is, the establishment of the safety and tranquillity of Europe, on a solid and permanent basis. If that object can be attained, and the republic exist, there is nothing in the past conduct and professions of the British Ministers, that can interpose an obstacle to the conclusion of peace. Indeed, in my apprehension, it would be highly impolitic in any Minister, at the commencement of a war, to advance any specific object, that attainment of which should be declared to be the sine qua non of peace. If mortals could arrogate to themselves the attributes of the Deity, if they could direct the course of events, and controul the chances of war, such conduct would be justifiable; but on no other principle, I think, can its defence be undertaken. It is, I grant, much to be lamented, that the protection offered to the friends of monarchy in France, by the declaration of the 29th of October, 1793, could not be rendered effectual: as far as the offer went it was certainly obligatory on the party who made it; but it was merely conditional--restricted, as all similar offers necessarily must be, by the ability to fulfil the obligation incurred. In paying this tribute to truth, it is not my intention to retract, in the smallest degree, the opinion I have ever professed, that the restoration of the ancient monarchy of France would be the best possible means not only of securing the different states of Europe from the dangers of republican anarchy, but of promoting the real interests, welfare, and happiness of the French people themselves. The reasons on which this opinion is founded I have long since explained; and the intelligence which I have since received from France, at different times, has convinced me that a very great proportion of her inhabitants concur in the sentiment. The miseries resulting from the establishment of a republican system of government have been severely felt, and deeply deplored; and I am fully persuaded, that the subjects and tributaries of France will cordially subscribe to the following observation on republican freedom, advanced by a writer who had deeply studied the genius of republics: _"Di tutte le fervitu dure, quella e durissima, che ti sottomette ad una republica; l'una, perche e la piu durabile, e manco si puo sperarne d'ufare: L'altra perche il fine della republica e enervare ed indebolire, debolire, per accrescere il corpo suo, tutti gli altri corpi._*" JOHN GIFFORD. London, Nov. 12, 1796. * _Discorsi di Nicoli Machiavelli,_ Lib. ii. p. 88. P.S. Since I wrote the preceding remarks, I have been given to understand, that by a decree, subsequent to the completion of the constitutional code, the first partial renewal of the Executive Directory was deferred till the month of March, 1979; and that, therefore, in this instance, the present Directory cannot be accused of having violated the constitution. But the guilt is only to be transferred from the Directory to the Convention, who passed that decree, as well as some others, in contradiction to a positive constitutional law.-----Indeed, the Directory themselves betrayed no greater delicacy with regard to the observance of the constitution, or M. BARRAS would never have taken his seat among them; for the constitution expressly says, (and this positive provision was not even modified by any subsequent mandate of the Convention,) that no man shall be elected a member of the Directory who has not completed his fortieth year--whereas it is notorious that Barras had not this requisite qualification, having been born in the year 1758! - - - - - - - - - - - - I avail myself of the opportunity afforded me by the publication of a Second Edition to notice some insinuations which have been thrown out, tending to question the authenticity of the work. The motives which have induced the author to withhold from these Letters the sanction of her name, relate not to herself, but to some friends still remaining in France, whose safety she justly conceives might be affected by the disclosure. Acceding to the force and propriety of these motives, yet aware of the suspicions to which a recital of important facts, by an anonymous writer, would naturally be exposed, and sensible, also, that a certain description of critics would gladly avail themselves of any opportunity for discouraging the circulation of a work which contained principles hostile to their own; I determined to prefix my name to the publication. By so doing, I conceived that I stood pledged for its authenticity; and the matter has certainly been put in a proper light by an able and respectable critic, who has observed that "Mr. GIFFORD stands between the writer and the public," and that "his name and character are the guarantees for the authenticity of the Letters." This is precisely the situation in which I meant to place myself-- precisely the pledge which I meant to give. The Letters are exactly what they profess to be; the production of a Lady's pen, and written in the very situations which they describe.--The public can have no grounds for suspecting my veracity on a point in which I can have no possible interest in deceiving them; and those who know me will do me the justice to acknowledge, that I have a mind superior to the arts of deception, and that I am incapable of sanctioning an imposition, for any purpose, or from any motives whatever. Thus much I deemed it necessary to say, as well from a regard for my own character, and from a due attention to the public, as from a wish to prevent the circulation of the work from being subjected to the impediments arising from the prevalence of a groundless suspicion. I naturally expected, that some of the preceding remarks would excite the resentment and draw down the vengeance of those persons to whom they evidently applied. The contents of every publication are certainly a fair subject for criticism; and to the fair comments of real critics, however repugnant to the sentiments I entertain, or the doctrine I seek to inculcate, I shall ever submit without murmur or reproach. But, when men, assuming that respectable office, openly violate all the duties attached to it, and, sinking the critic in the partizan, make a wanton attack on my veracity, it becomes proper to repel the injurious imputation; and the same spirit which dictates submission to the candid award of an impartial judge, prescribes indignation and scorn at the cowardly attacks of a secret assassin. April 14, 1797. RESIDENCE IN FRANCE DEDICATION To The RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE. SIR, It is with extreme diffidence that I offer the following pages to Your notice; yet as they describe circumstances which more than justify Your own prophetic reflections, and are submitted to the public eye from no other motive than a love of truth and my country, I may, perhaps, be excused for presuming them to be not altogether unworthy of such a distinction. While Your puny opponents, if opponents they may be called, are either sunk into oblivion, or remembered only as associated with the degrading cause they attempted to support, every true friend of mankind, anticipating the judgement of posterity, views with esteem and veneration the unvarying Moralist, the profound Politician, the indefatigable Servant of the Public, and the warm Promoter of his country's happiness. To this universal testimony of the great and good, permit me, Sir, to join my humble tribute; being, with the utmost respect, SIR, Your obedient Servant, THE AUTHOR. Sept. 12, 1796. PREFACE After having, more than once, in the following Letters, expressed opinions decidedly unfavourable to female authorship, when not justified by superior talents, I may, by now producing them to the public, subject myself to the imputation either of vanity or inconsistency; and I acknowledge that a great share of candour and indulgence must be possessed by readers who attend to the apologies usually made on such occasions: yet I may with the strictest truth alledge, that I should never have ventured to offer any production of mine to the world, had I not conceived it possible that information and reflections collected and made on the spot, during a period when France exhibited a state, of which there is no example in the annals of mankind, might gratify curiosity without the aid of literary embellishment; and an adherence to truth, I flattered myself, might, on a subject of this nature, be more acceptable than brilliancy of thought, or elegance of language. The eruption of a volcano may be more scientifically described and accounted for by the philosopher; but the relation of the illiterate peasant who beheld it, and suffered from its effects, may not be less interesting to the common hearer. Above all, I was actuated by the desire of conveying to my countrymen a just idea of that revolution which they have been incited to imitate, and of that government by which it has been proposed to model our own. Since these pages were written, the Convention has nominally been dissolved, and a new constitution and government have succeeded, but no real change of principle or actors has taken place; and the system, of which I have endeavoured to trace the progress, must still be considered as existing, with no other variations than such as have been necessarily produced by the difference of time and circumstances. The people grew tired of massacres en masse, and executions en detail: even the national fickleness operated in favour of humanity; and it was also discovered, that however a spirit of royalism might be subdued to temporary inaction, it was not to be eradicated, and that the sufferings of its martyrs only tended to propagate and confirm it. Hence the scaffolds flow less frequently with blood, and the barbarous prudence of CAMILLE DESMOULINS' guillotine economique has been adopted. But exaction and oppression are still practised in every shape, and justice is not less violated, nor is property more secure, than when the former was administered by revolutionary tribunals, and the latter was at the disposition of revolutionary armies. The error of supposing that the various parties which have usurped the government of France have differed essentially from each other is pretty general; and it is common enough to hear the revolutionary tyranny exclusively associated with the person of ROBESPIERRE, and the thirty-first of May, 1793, considered as the epoch of its introduction. Yet whoever examines attentively the situation and politics of France, from the subversion of the Monarchy, will be convinced that all the principles of this monstrous government were established during the administration of the Brissotins, and that the factions which succeeded, from Danton and Robespierre to Sieyes and Barras, have only developed them, and reduced them to practice. The revolution of the thirty-first of May, 1793, was not a contest for system but for power--that of July the twenty-eighth, 1794, (9th Thermidor,) was merely a struggle which of two parties should sacrifice the other--that of October the fifth, 1795, (13th Vendemiaire,) a war of the government against the people. But in all these convulsions, the primitive doctrines of tyranny and injustice were watched like the sacred fire, and have never for a moment been suffered to languish. It may appear incredible to those who have not personally witnessed this phoenomenon, that a government detested and despised by an immense majority of the nation, should have been able not only to resist the efforts of so many powers combined against it, but even to proceed from defence to conquest, and to mingle surprize and terror with those sentiments of contempt and abhorrence which it originally excited. That wisdom or talents are not the sources of this success, may be deduced from the situation of France itself. The armies of the republic have, indeed, invaded the territories of its enemies, but the desolation of their own country seems to increase with every triumph--the genius of the French government appears powerful only in destruction, and inventive only in oppression--and, while it is endowed with the faculty of spreading universal ruin, it is incapable of promoting the happiness of the smallest district under its protection. The unrestrained pillage of the conquered countries has not saved France from multiplied bankruptcies, nor her state-creditors from dying through want; and the French, in the midst of their external prosperity, are often distinguished from the people whom their armies have been subjugated, only by a superior degree of wretchedness, and a more irregular despotism. With a power excessive and unlimited, and surpassing what has hitherto been possessed by any Sovereign, it would be difficult to prove that these democratic despots have effected any thing either useful or beneficent. Whatever has the appearance of being so will be found, on examination, to have for its object some purpose of individual interest or personal vanity. They manage the armies, they embellish Paris, they purchase the friendship of some states and the neutrality of others; but if there be any real patriots in France, how little do they appreciate these useless triumphs, these pilfered museums, and these fallacious negotiations, when they behold the population of their country diminished, its commerce annihilated, its wealth dissipated, its morals corrupted, and its liberty destroyed-- "Thus, on deceitful Aetna's Flow'ry side Unfading verdure glads the roving eye, While secret flames with unextinguish'd rage Insatiate on her wafted entrails prey, And melt her treach'rous beauties into ruin." Those efforts which the partizans of republicanism admire, and which even well-disposed persons regard as prodigies, are the simple and natural result of an unprincipled despotism, acting upon, and disposing of, all the resources of a rich, populous, and enslaved nation. _"Il devient aise d'etre habile lorsqu'on s'est delivre des scrupules et des loix, de tout honneur et de toute justice, des droits de ses semblables, et des devoirs de l'autorite--a ce degre d'independence la plupart des obstacles qui modifient l'activite humaine disparaissent; l'on parait avoir du talent lorsqu'on n'a que de l'impudence, et l'abus de la force passe pour energie._*" * "Exertions of ability become easy, when men have released themselves from the scruples of conscience, the restraints of law, the ties of honour, the bonds of justice, the claims of their fellow creatures, and obedience to their superiors:--at this point of independence, most of the obstacles which modify human activity disappear; impudence is mistaken for talents; and the abuse of power passes for energy." The operations of all other governments must, in a great measure, be restrained by the will of the people, and by established laws; with them, physical and political force are necessarily separate considerations: they have not only to calculate what can be borne, but what will be submitted to; and perhaps France is the first country that has been compelled to an exertion of its whole strength, without regard to any obstacle, natural, moral, or divine. It is for want of sufficiently investigating and allowing for this moral and political latitudinarianism of our enemies, that we are apt to be too precipitate in censuring the conduct of the war; and, in our estimation of what has been done, we pay too little regard to the principles by which we have been directed. An honest man could scarcely imagine the means we have had to oppose, and an Englishman still less conceive that they would have been submitted to: for the same reason that the Romans had no law against parricide, till experience had evinced the possibility of the crime. In a war like the present, advantage is not altogether to be appreciated by military superiority. If, as there is just ground for believing, our external hostilities have averted an internal revolution, what we have escaped is of infinitely more importance to us than what we could acquire. Commerce and conquest, compared to this, are secondary objects; and the preservation of our liberties and our constitution is a more solid blessing than the commerce of both the Indies, or the conquest of nations. Should the following pages contribute to impress this salutary truth on my countrymen, my utmost ambition will be gratified; persuaded, that a sense of the miseries they have avoided, and of the happiness they enjoy, will be their best incentive, whether they may have to oppose the arms of the enemy in a continuance of the war, or their more dangerous machinations on the restoration of peace. I cannot conclude without noticing my obligations to the Gentleman whose name is prefixed to these volumes; and I think it at the same time incumbent on me to avow, that, in having assisted the author, he must not be considered as sanctioning the literary imperfections of the work. When the subject was first mentioned to him, he did me the justice of supposing, that I was not likely to have written any thing, the general tendency of which he might disapprove; and when, on perusing the manuscript, he found it contain sentiments dissimilar to his own, he was too liberal to require a sacrifice of them as the condition of his services.--I confess that previous to my arrival in France in 1792, I entertained opinions somewhat more favourable to the principle of the revolution than those which I was led to adopt at a subsequent period. Accustomed to regard with great justice the British constitution as the standard of known political excellence, I hardly conceived it possible that freedom or happiness could exist under any other: and I am not singular in having suffered this prepossession to invalidate even the evidence of my senses. I was, therefore, naturally partial to whatever professed to approach the object of my veneration. I forgot that governments are not to be founded on imitations or theories, and that they are perfect only as adapted to the genius, manners, and disposition of the people who are subject to them. Experience and maturer judgement have corrected my error, and I am perfectly convinced, that the old monarchical constitution of France, with very slight meliorations, was every way better calculated for the national character than a more popular form of government. A critic, though not very severe, will discover many faults of style, even where the matter may not be exceptionable. Besides my other deficiencies, the habit of writing is not easily supplied, and, as I despaired of attaining excellence, and was not solicitous about degrees of mediocrity, I determined on conveying to the public such information as I was possessed of, without alteration or ornament. Most of these Letters were written exactly in the situation they describe, and remain in their original state; the rest were arranged according as opportunities were favourable, from notes and diaries kept when "the times were hot and feverish," and when it would have been dangerous to attempt more method. I forbear to describe how they were concealed either in France or at my departure, because I might give rise to the persecution and oppression of others. But, that I may not attribute to myself courage which I do not possess, nor create doubts of my veracity, I must observe, that I seldom ventured to write till I was assured of some certain means of conveying my papers to a person who could safely dispose of them. As a considerable period has elapsed since my return, it may not be improper to add, that I took some steps for the publication of these Letters so early as July, 1795. Certain difficulties, however, arising, of which I was not aware, I relinquished my design, and should not have been tempted to resume it, but for the kindness of the Gentleman whose name appears as the Editor. Sept. 12, 1796. A RESIDENCE IN FRANCE. May 10, 1792. I am every day more confirmed in the opinion I communicated to you on my arrival, that the first ardour of the revolution is abated.--The bridal days are indeed past, and I think I perceive something like indifference approaching. Perhaps the French themselves are not sensible of this change; but I who have been absent two years, and have made as it were a sudden transition from enthusiasm to coldness, without passing through the intermediate gradations, am forcibly struck with it. When I was here in 1790, parties could be scarcely said to exist--the popular triumph was too complete and too recent for intolerance and persecution, and the Noblesse and Clergy either submitted in silence, or appeared to rejoice in their own defeat. In fact, it was the confusion of a decisive conquest--the victors and the vanquished were mingled together; and the one had not leisure to exercise cruelty, nor the other to meditate revenge. Politics had not yet divided society; nor the weakness and pride of the great, with the malice and insolence of the little, thinned the public places. The politics of the women went no farther than a few couplets in praise of liberty, and the patriotism of the men was confined to an habit de garde nationale, the device of a button, or a nocturnal revel, which they called mounting guard.--Money was yet plenty, at least silver, (for the gold had already begun to disappear,) commerce in its usual train, and, in short, to one who observes no deeper than myself, every thing seemed gay and flourishing--the people were persuaded they were happier; and, amidst such an appearance of content, one must have been a cold politician to have examined too strictly into the future. But all this, my good brother, is in a great measure subsided; and the disparity is so evident, that I almost imagine myself one of the seven sleepers--and, like them too, the coin I offer is become rare, and regarded more as medals than money. The playful distinctions of Aristocrate and Democrate are degenerated into the opprobium and bitterness of Party--political dissensions pervade and chill the common intercourse of life--the people are become gross and arbitrary, and the higher classes (from a pride which those who consider the frailty of human nature will allow for) desert the public amusements, where they cannot appear but at the risk of being the marked objects of insult.--The politics of the women are no longer innoxious--their political principles form the leading trait of their characters; and as you know we are often apt to supply by zeal what we want in power, the ladies are far from being the most tolerant partizans on either side.--The national uniform, which contributed so much to the success of the revolution, and stimulated the patriotism of the young men, is become general; and the task of mounting guard, to which it subjects the wearer, is now a serious and troublesome duty.--To finish my observations, and my contrast, no Specie whatever is to be seen; and the people, if they still idolize their new form of government, do it at present with great sobriety--the Vive la nation! seems now rather the effect of habit than of feeling; and one seldom hears any thing like the spontaneous and enthusiastic sounds I formerly remarked. I have not yet been here long enough to discover the causes of this change; perhaps they may lie too deep for such an observer as myself: but if (as the causes of important effects sometimes do) they lie on the surface, they will be less liable to escape me, than an observer of more pretentions. Whatever my remarks are, I will not fail to communicate them--the employment will at least be agreeable to me, though the result should not be satisfactory to you; and as I shall never venture on any reflection, without relating the occurrence that gave rise to it, your own judgement will enable you to correct the errors of mine. I was present yesterday at a funeral service, performed in honour of General Dillon. This kind of service is common in Catholic countries, and consists in erecting a cenotaph, ornamented with numerous lights, flowers, crosses, &c. The church is hung with black, and the mass is performed the same as if the body were present. On account of General Dillon's profession, the mass yesterday was a military one. It must always, I imagine, sound strange to the ears of a Protestant, to hear nothing but theatrical music on these occasions, and indeed I could never reconcile myself to it; for if we allow any effect to music at all, the train of thought which should inspire us with respect for the dead, and reflections on mortality, is not likely to be produced by the strains in which Dido bewails Eneas, or in which Armida assails the virtue of Rinaldo.--I fear, that in general the air of an opera reminds the belle of the Theatre where she heard it--and, by a natural transition, of the beau who attended her, and the dress of herself and her neighbours. I confess, this was nearly my own case yesterday, on hearing an air from "Sargines;" and had not the funeral oration reminded me, I should have forgotten the unfortunate event we were celebrating, and which, for some days before, when undistracted by this pious ceremony, I had dwelt on with pity and horror.*-- * At the first skirmish between the French and Austrians near Lisle, a general panic seized the former, and they retreated in disorder to Lisle, crying _"Sauve qui peut, & nous fomnes (sic) trahis."_--"Let every one shift for himself--we are betrayed." The General, after in vain endeavouring to rally them, was massacred at his return on the great square.--My pen faulters, and refuses to describe the barbarities committed on the lifeless hero. Let it suffice, perhaps more than suffice, to say, that his mutilated remains were thrown on a fire, which these savages danced round, with yells expressive of their execrable festivity. A young Englishman, who was so unfortunate as to be near the spot, was compelled to join in this outrage to humanity.--The same day a gentleman, the intimate friend of our acquaintance, Mad. _____, was walking (unconscious what had happened) without the gate which leads to Douay, and was met by the flying ruffians on their return; immediately on seeing him they shouted, _"Voila encore un Aristocrate!"_ and massacred him on the spot. --Independent of any regret for the fate of Dillon, who is said to have been a brave and good officer, I am sorry that the first event of this war should be marked by cruelty and licentiousness.--Military discipline has been much relaxed since the revolution, and from the length of time since the French have been engaged in a land war, many of the troops must be without that kind of courage which is the effect of habit. The danger, therefore, of suffering them to alledge that they are betrayed, whenever they do not choose to fight, and to excuse their own cowardice by ascribing treachery to their leaders, is incalculable.--Above all, every infraction of the laws in a country just supposing itself become free, cannot be too severely repressed. The National Assembly have done all that humanity could suggest--they have ordered the punishment of the assassins, and have pensioned and adopted the General's children. The orator expatiated both on the horror of the act and its consequences, as I should have thought, with some ingenuity, had I not been assured by a brother orator that the whole was "execrable." But I frequently remark, that though a Frenchman may suppose the merit of his countrymen to be collectively superior to that of the whole world, he seldom allows any individual of them to have so large a portion as himself.--Adieu: I have already written enough to convince you I have neither acquired the Gallomania, nor forgotten my friends in England; and I conclude with a wish _a propos_ to my subject--that they may long enjoy the rational liberty they possess and so well deserve.--Yours. May, 1792. You, my dear _____, who live in a land of pounds, shillings, and pence, can scarcely form an idea of our embarrassments through the want of them. 'Tis true, these are petty evils; but when you consider that they happen every day, and every hour, and that, if they are not very serious, they are very frequent, you will rejoice in the splendour of your national credit, which procures you all the accommodation of paper currency, without diminishing the circulation of specie. Our only currency here consists of assignats of 5 livres, 50, 100, 200, and upwards: therefore in making purchases, you must accommodate your wants to the value of your assignat, or you must owe the shopkeeper, or the shopkeeper must owe you; and, in short, as an old woman assured me to-day, "C'est de quoi faire perdre la tete," and, if it lasted long, it would be the death of her. Within these few days, however, the municipalities have attempted to remedy the inconvenience, by creating small paper of five, ten, fifteen, and twenty sols, which they give in exchange for assignats of five livres; but the number they are allowed to issue is limited, and the demand for them so great, that the accommodation is inadequate to the difficulty of procuring it. On the days on which this paper (which is called billets de confiance) is issued, the Hotel de Ville is besieged by a host of women collected from all parts of the district--Peasants, small shopkeepers, fervant maids, and though last, not least formidable-- fishwomen. They usually take their stand two or three hours before the time of delivery, and the interval is employed in discussing the news, and execrating paper money. But when once the door is opened, a scene takes place which bids defiance to language, and calls for the pencil of a Hogarth. Babel was, I dare say, comparatively to this, a place of retreat and silence. Clamours, revilings, contentions, tearing of hair, and breaking of heads, generally conclude the business; and, after the loss of half a day's time, some part of their clothes, and the expence of a few bruises, the combatants retire with small bills to the value of five, or perhaps ten livres, as the whole resource to carry on their little commerce for the ensuing week. I doubt not but the paper may have had some share in alienating the minds of the people from the revolution. Whenever I want to purchase any thing, the vender usually answers my question by another, and with a rueful kind of tone inquires, "En papier, madame?"--and the bargain concludes with a melancholy reflection on the hardness of the times. The decrees relative to the priests have likewise occasioned much dissension; and it seems to me impolitic thus to have made religion the standard of party. The high mass, which is celebrated by a priest who has taken the oaths, is frequented by a numerous, but, it must be confessed, an ill-drest and ill-scented congregation; while the low mass, which is later, and which is allowed the nonjuring clergy, has a gayer audience, but is much less crouded.--By the way, I believe many who formerly did not much disturb themselves about religious tenets, have become rigid Papists since an adherence to the holy see has become a criterion of political opinion. But if these separatists are bigoted and obstinate, the conventionalists on their side are ignorant and intolerant. I enquired my way to-day to the Rue de l'Hopital. The woman I spoke to asked me, in a menacing tone, what I wanted there. I replied, which was true, that I merely wanted to pass through the street as my nearest way home; upon which she lowered her voice, and conducted me very civilly.--I mentioned the circumstance on my return, and found that the nuns of the hospital had their mass performed by a priest who had not taken the oaths, and that those who were suspected of going to attend it were insulted, and sometimes ill treated. A poor woman, some little time ago, who conceived perhaps that her salvation might depend on exercising her religion in the way she had been accustomed to, persisted in going, and was used by the populace with such a mixture of barbarity and indecency, that her life was despaired of. Yet this is the age and the country of Philosophers.--Perhaps you will begin to think Swift's sages, who only amused themselves with endeavouring to propagate sheep without wool, not so contemptible. I am almost convinced myself, that when a man once piques himself on being a philosopher, if he does no mischief you ought to be satisfied with him. We passed last Sunday with Mr. de ____'s tenants in the country. Nothing can equal the avidity of these people for news. We sat down after dinner under some trees in the village, and Mr. de _____ began reading the Gazette to the farmers who were about us. In a few minutes every thing that could hear (for I leave understanding the pedantry of a French newspaper out of the question) were his auditors. A party at quoits in one field, and a dancing party in another, quitted their amusements, and listened with undivided attention. I believe in general the farmers are the people most contented with the revolution, and indeed they have reason to be so; for at present they refuse to sell their corn unless for money, while they pay their rent in assignats; and farms being for the most part on leases, the objections of the landlord to this kind of payment are of no avail. Great encouragement is likewise held out to them to purchase national property, which I am informed they do to an extent that may for some time be injurious to agriculture; for in their eagerness to acquire land, the deprive themselves of cultivating it. They do not, like our crusading ancestors, "sell the pasture to buy the horse," but the horse to buy the pasture; so that we may expect to see in many places large farms in the hands of those who are obliged to neglect them. A great change has happened within the last year, with regard to landed property--so much has been sold, that many farmers have had the opportunity of becoming proprietors. The rage of emigration, which the approach of war, pride, timidity, and vanity are daily increasing, has occasioned many of the Noblesse to sell their estates, which, with those of the Crown and the Clergy, form a large mass of property, thrown as it were into general circulation. This may in future be beneficial to the country, but the present generation will perhaps have to purchase (and not cheaply) advantages they cannot enjoy. A philanthropist may not think of this with regret; and yet I know not why one race is preferable to another, or why an evil should be endured by those who exist now, in order that those who succeed may be free from it.--I would willingly plant a million of acorns, that another age might be supplied with oaks; but I confess, I do not think it quite so pleasant for us to want bread, in order that our descendants may have a superfluity. I am half ashamed of these selfish arguments; but really I have been led to them through mere apprehension of what I fear the people may have yet to endure, in consequence of the revolution. I have frequently observed how little taste the French have for the country, and I believe all my companions, except Mr. de _____, who took (as one always does) an interest in surveying his property, were heartily ennuyes with our little excursion.--Mad. De _____, on her arrival, took her post by the farmer's fire-side, and was out of humour the whole day, inasmuch as our fare was homely, and there was nothing but rustics to see or be seen by. That a plain dinner should be a serious affair, you may not wonder; but the last cause of distress, perhaps you will not conclude quite so natural at her years. All that can be said about it is, that she is a French woman, who rouges, and wears lilac ribbons, at seventy-four. I hope, in my zeal to obey you, my reflections will not be too voluminous.--For the present I will be warned by my conscience, and add only, that I am, Yours. June 10, 1792. You observe, with some surprize, that I make no mention of the Jacobins-- the fact is, that until now I have heard very little about them. Your English partizans of the revolution have, by publishing their correspondence with these societies, attributed a consequence to them infinitely beyond what they have had pretensions to:--a prophet, it is said, is not honoured in his own country--I am sure a Jacobin is not. In provincial towns these clubs are generally composed of a few of the lowest tradesmen, who have so disinterested a patriotism, as to bestow more attention on the state than on their own shops; and as a man may be an excellent patriot without the aristocratic talents of reading and writing, they usually provide a secretary or president, who can supply these deficiencies--a country attorney, a _Pere de l'oratoire,_ or a disbanded capuchin, is in most places the candidate for this office. The clubs often assemble only to read the newspapers; but where they are sufficiently in force, they make motions for "fetes," censure the municipalities, and endeavour to influence the elections of the members who compose them.--That of Paris is supposed to consist of about six thousand members; but I am told their number and influence are daily increasing, and that the National Assembly is more subservient to them than it is willing to acknowledge--yet, I believe, the people at large are equally adverse to the Jacobins, who are said to entertain the chimerical project of forming a republic, and to the Aristocrates, who wish to restore the ancient government. The party in opposition to both these, who are called the Feuillans,* have the real voice of the people with them, and knowing this, they employ less art than their opponents, have no point of union, and perhaps may finally be undermined by intrigue, or even subdued by violence. *They derive this appellation, as the Jacobins do theirs, from the convent at which they hold their meetings. You seem not to comprehend why I include vanity among the causes of emigration, and yet I assure you it has had no small share in many of them. The gentry of the provinces, by thus imitating the higher noblesse, imagine they have formed a kind of a common cause, which may hereafter tend to equalize the difference of ranks, and associate them with those they have been accustomed to look up to as their superiors. It is a kind of ton among the women, particularly to talk of their emigrated relations, with an accent more expressive of pride than regret, and which seems to lay claim to distinction rather than pity. I must now leave you to contemplate the boasted misfortunes of these belles, that I may join the card party which forms their alleviation.-- Adieu. June 24, 1792. You have doubtless learned from the public papers the late outrage of the Jacobins, in order to force the King to consent to the formation of an army at Paris, and to sign the decree for banishing the nonjuring Clergy. The newspapers will describe to you the procession of the Sans-Culottes, the indecency of their banners, and the disorders which were the result-- but it is impossible for either them or me to convey an idea of the general indignation excited by these atrocities. Every well-meaning person is grieved for the present, and apprehensive for the future: and I am not without hope, that this open avowal of the designs of the Jacobins, will unite the Constitutionalists and Aristocrates, and that they will join their efforts in defence of the Crown, as the only means of saving both from being overwhelmed by a faction, who are now become too daring to be despised. Many of the municipalities and departments are preparing to address they King, on the fortitude he displayed in this hour of insult and peril.--I know not why, but the people have been taught to entertain a mean opinion of his personal courage; and the late violence will at least have the good effect of undeceiving them. It is certain, that he behaved on this occasion with the utmost coolness; and the Garde Nationale, whose hand he placed on his heart, attested that it had no unusual palpitation. That the King should be unwilling to sanction the raising an army under the immediate auspice of the avowed enemies of himself, and of the constitution he has sworn to protect, cannot be much wondered at; and those who know the Catholic religion, and consider that this Prince is devout, and that he has reason to suspect the fidelity of all who approach him, will wonder still less that he refuses to banish a class of men, whose influence is extensive, and whose interest it is to preserve their attachment to him. These events have thrown a gloom over private societies; and public amusements, as I observed in a former letter, are little frequented; so that, on the whole, time passes heavily with a people who, generally speaking, have few resources in themselves. Before the revolution, France was at this season a scene of much gaiety. Every village had alternately a sort of Fete, which nearly answers to our Wake--but with this difference, that it was numerously attended by all ranks, and the amusement was dancing, instead of wrestling and drinking. Several small fields, or different parts of a large one, were provided with music, distinguished by flags, and appropriated to the several classes of dancers--one for the peasants, another for the bourgeois, and a third for the higher orders. The young people danced beneath the ardour of a July sun, while the old looked on and regaled themselves with beer, cyder, and gingerbread. I was always much pleased with this village festivity: it gratified my mind more than select and expensive amusements, because it was general, and within the power of all who chose to partake of it; and the little distinction of rank which was preserved, far from diminishing the pleasure of any, added, I am certain, to the freedom of all. By mixing with those only of her own class, the Paysanne* was spared the temptation of envying the pink ribbons of the Bourgeoise, who in her turn was not disturbed by an immediate rivalship with the sash and plumes of the provincial belle. But this custom is now much on the decline. The young women avoid occasions where an inebriated soldier may offer himself as her partner in the dance, and her refusal be attended with insult to herself, and danger to those who protect her; and as this licence is nearly as offensive to the decent Bourgeoise as to the female of higher condition, this sort of fete will most probably be entirely abandoned. *The head-dress of the French _Paysanne_ is uniformly a small cap, without ribbon or ornament of any kind, except in that part of Normandy which is called the _Pays de Caux,_ where the Paysannes wear a particular kind of head dress, ornamented with silver. The people here all dance much better than those of the same rank in England; but this national accomplishment is not instinctive: for though few of the laborious class have been taught to read, there are scarcely any so poor as not to bestow three livres for a quarter's instruction from a dancing master; and with this three months' noviciate they become qualified to dance through the rest of their lives. The rage for emigration, and the approach of the Austrians, have occasioned many restrictions on travelling, especially near the seacoast of frontiers. No person can pass through a town without a passport from the municipality he resides in, specifying his age, the place of his birth, his destination, the height of his person, and the features of his face. The Marquis de C____ entered the town yesterday, and at the gate presented his passport as usual; the guard looked at the passport, and in a high tone demanded his name, whence he came, and where he was going. M. de C____ referred him to the passport, and suspecting the man could not read, persisted in refusing to give a verbal account of himself, but with much civility pressed the perusal of the passport; adding, that if it was informal, Monsieur might write to the municipality that granted it. The man, however, did not approve of the jest, and took the Marquis before the municipality, who sentenced him to a month's imprisonment for his pleasantry. The French are becoming very grave, and a bon-mot will not now, as formerly, save a man's life.--I do not remember to have seen in any English print an anecdote on this subject, which at once marks the levity of the Parisians, and the wit and presence of mind of the Abbe Maury.--At the beginning of the revolution, when the people were very much incensed against the Abbe, he was one day, on quitting the Assembly, surrounded by an enraged mob, who seized on him, and were hurrying him away to execution, amidst the universal cry of _a la lanterne! a la lanterne!_ The Abbe, with much coolness and good humour, turned to those nearest him, _"Eh bien mes amis et quand je serois a la lanterne, en verriez vous plus clair?"_ Those who held him were disarmed, the bon-mot flew through the croud, and the Abbe escaped while they were applauding it.--I have nothing to offer after this trait which is worthy of succeeding it, but will add that I am always Yours. July 24, 1792. Our revolution aera has passed tranquilly in the provinces, and with less turbulence at Paris than was expected. I consign to the Gazette-writers those long descriptions that describe nothing, and leave the mind as unsatisfied as the eye. I content myself with observing only, that the ceremony here was gay, impressive, and animating. I indeed have often remarked, that the works of nature are better described than those of art. The scenes of nature, though varied, are uniform; while the productions of art are subject to the caprices of whim, and the vicissitudes of taste. A rock, a wood, or a valley, however the scenery may be diversified, always conveys a perfect and distinct image to the mind; but a temple, an altar, a palace, or a pavilion, requires a detail, minute even to tediousness, and which, after all, gives but an imperfect notion of the object. I have as often read descriptions of the Vatican, as of the Bay of Naples; yet I recollect little of the former, while the latter seems almost familiar to me.--Many are strongly impressed with the scenery of Milton's Paradise, who have but confused ideas of the splendour of Pandemonium. The descriptions, however, are equally minute, and the poetry of both is beautiful. But to return to this country, which is not absolutely a Paradise, and I hope will not become a Pandemonium--the ceremony I have been alluding to, though really interesting, is by no means to be considered as a proof that the ardour for liberty increases: on the contrary, in proportion as these fetes become more frequent, the enthusiasm which they excite seems to diminish. "For ever mark, Lucilius, when Love begins to sicken and decline, it useth an enforced ceremony." When there were no foederations, the people were more united. The planting trees of liberty seems to have damped the spirit of freedom; and since there has been a decree for wearing the national colours, they are more the marks of obedience than proofs of affection.--I cannot pretend to decide whether the leaders of the people find their followers less warm than they were, and think it necessary to stimulate them by these shows, or whether the shows themselves, by too frequent repetition, have rendered the people indifferent about the objects of them.--Perhaps both these suppositions are true. The French are volatile and material; they are not very capable of attachment to principles. External objects are requisite for them, even in a slight degree; and the momentary enthusiasm that is obtained by affecting their senses subsides with the conclusion of a favourite air, or the end of a gaudy procession. The Jacobin party are daily gaining ground; and since they have forced a ministry of their own on the King, their triumph has become still more insolent and decisive.--A storm is said to be hovering over us, which I think of with dread, and cannot communicate with safety--"Heaven square the trial of those who are implicated, to their proportioned strength!"-- Adieu. August 4, 1792. I must repeat to you, that I have no talent for description; and, having seldom been able to profit by the descriptions of others, I am modest enough not willingly to attempt one myself. But, as you observe, the ceremony of a foederation, though familiar to me, is not so to my English friends; I therefore obey your commands, though certain of not succeeding so as to gratify your curiosity in the manner you too partially expect. The temple where the ceremony was performed, was erected in an open space, well chosen both for convenience and effect. In a large circle on this spot, twelve posts, between fifty and sixty feet high, were placed at equal distances, except one larger, opening in front by way of entrance. On each alternate post were fastened ivy, laurel, &c. so as to form a thick body which entirely hid the support. These greens were then shorn (in the manner you see in old fashioned gardens) into the form of Doric columns, of dimensions proportioned to their height. The intervening posts were covered with white cloth, which was so artificially folded, as exactly to resemble fluted pillars--from the bases of which ascended spiral wreaths of flowers. The whole was connected at top by a bold festoon of foliage, and the capital of each column was surmounted by a vase of white lilies. In the middle of this temple was placed an altar, hung round with lilies, and on it was deposed the book of the constitution. The approach to the altar was by a large flight of steps, covered with beautiful tapestry. All this having been arranged and decorated, (a work of several days,) the important aera was ushered in by the firing of cannon, ringing of bells, and an appearance of bustle and hilarity not to be seen on any other occasion. About ten, the members of the district, the municipality, and the judges in their habits of ceremony, met at the great church, and from thence proceeded to the altar of liberty. The troops of the line, the Garde Nationale of the town, and of all the surrounding communes, then arrived, with each their respective music and colours, which (reserving one only of the latter to distinguish them in the ranks) they planted round the altar. This done, they retired, and forming a circle round the temple, left a large intermediate space free. A mass was then celebrated with the most perfect order and decency, and at the conclusion were read the rights of man and the constitution. The troops, Garde Nationale, &c. were then addressed by their respective officers, the oath to be faithful to the nation, the law, and the King, was administered: every sword was drawn, and every hat waved in the air; while all the bands of music joined in the favorite strain of ca ira.-- This was followed by crowning, with the civic wreaths hung round the altar, a number of people, who during the year had been instrumental in saving the lives of their fellow-citizens that had been endangered by drowning or other accidents. This honorary reward was accompanied by a pecuniary one, and a fraternal embrace from all the constituted bodies. But this was not the gravest part of the ceremony. The magistrates, however upright, were not all graceful, and the people, though they understood the value of the money, did not that of the civic wreaths, or the embraces; they therefore looked vacant enough during this part of the business, and grinned most facetiously when they began to examine the appearance of each other in their oaken crowns, and, I dare say, thought the whole comical enough.--This is one trait of national pedantry. Because the Romans awarded a civic wreath for an act of humanity, the French have adopted the custom; and decorate thus a soldier or a sailor, who never heard of the Romans in his life, except in extracts from the New Testament at mass. But to return to our fete, of which I have only to add, that the magistrates departed in the order they observed in coming, and the troops and Garde Nationale filed off with their hats in the air, and with universal acclamations, to the sound of ca ira.--Things of this kind are not susceptible of description. The detail may be uninteresting, while the general effect may have been impressive. The spirit of the scene I have been endeavouring to recall seems to have evaporated under my pen; yet to the spectator it was gay, elegant, and imposing. The day was fine, a brilliant sun glittered on the banners, and a gentle breeze gave them motion; while the satisfied countenances of the people added spirit and animation to the whole. I must remark to you, that devots, and determined aristocrates, ever attend on these occasions. The piety of the one is shocked at a mass by a priest who has taken the oaths, and the pride of the other is not yet reconciled to confusion of ranks and popular festivities. I asked a woman who brings us fruit every day, why she had not come on the fourteenth as usual. She told me she did not come to the town, _"a cause de la foederation"--"Vous etes aristocrate donc?"--"Ah, mon Dieu non--ce n'est pas que je suis aristocrate, ou democrate, mais que je suis Chretienne._*" *"On account of the foederation."--"You are an aristocrate then, I suppose?"--"Lord, no! It is not because I am an aristocrate, or a democrate, but because I am a Christian." This is an instance, among many others I could produce, that our legislators have been wrong, in connecting any change of the national religion with the revolution. I am every day convinced, that this and the assignats are the great causes of the alienation visible in many who were once the warmest patriots.--Adieu: do not envy us our fetes and ceremonies, while you enjoy a constitution which requires no oath to make you cherish it: and a national liberty, which is felt and valued without the aid of extrinsic decoration.--Yours. August 15. The consternation and horror of which I have been partaker, will more than apologize for my silence. It is impossible for any one, however unconnected with the country, not to feel an interest in its present calamities, and to regret them. I have little courage to write even now, and you must pardon me if my letter should bear marks of the general depression. All but the faction are grieved and indignant at the King's deposition; but this grief is without energy, and this indignation silent. The partizans of the old government, and the friends of the new, are equally enraged; but they have no union, are suspicious of each other, and are sinking under the stupor of despair, when they should be preparing for revenge.--It would not be easy to describe our situation during the last week. The ineffectual efforts of La Fayette, and the violences occasioned by them, had prepared us for something still more serious. On the ninth, we had a letter from one of the representatives for this department, strongly expressive of his apprehensions for the morrow, but promising to write if he survived it. The day, on which we expected news, came, but no post, no papers, no diligence, nor any means of information. The succeeding night we sat up, expecting letters by the post: still, however, none arrived; and the courier only passed hastily through, giving no detail, but that Paris was _a feu et a sang_.* * All fire and slaughter. At length, after passing two days and nights in this dreadful suspence, we received certain intelligence which even exceeded our fears.--It is needless to repeat the horrors that have been perpetrated. The accounts must, ere now, have reached you. Our representative, as he seemed to expect, was so ill treated as to be unable to write: he was one of those who had voted the approval of La Fayette's conduct--all of whom were either massacred, wounded, or intimidated; and, by this means, a majority was procured to vote the deposition of the King. The party allow, by their own accounts, eight thousand persons to have perished on this occasion; but the number is supposed to be much more considerable. No papers are published at present except those whose editors, being members of the Assembly, and either agents or instigators of the massacres, are, of course, interested in concealing or palliating them.---Mr. De _____ has just now taken up one of these atrocious journals, and exclaims, with tears starting from his eyes, _"On a abattu la statue d'Henri quatre!*"_ *"They have destroyed the statue of Henry the Fourth." The sacking of Rome by the Goths offers no picture equal to the licentiousness and barbarity committed in a country which calls itself the most enlightened in Europe.--But, instead of recording these horrors, I will fill up my paper with the Choeur Bearnais. _Choeur Bearnais. "Un troubadour Bearnais, "Le yeux inoudes de larmes, "A ses montagnards "Chantoit ce refrein source d'alarmes-- "Louis le fils d'Henri "Est prisonnier dans Paris! "Il a tremble pour les jours "De sa compagne cherie "Qui n'a troube de secours "Que dans sa propre energie; "Elle suit le fils d'Henri "Dans les prisons de Paris. "Quel crime ont ils donc commis "Pour etre enchaines de meme? "Du peuple ils sont les amis, "Le peuple veut il qu'on l'aime, "Quand il met le fils d'Henri "Dans les prisons de Paris? "Le Dauphin, ce fils cheri, "Qui seul fait notre esperance, "De pleurs sera donc nourri; "Les Berceaux qu'on donne en France "Aux enfans de notre Henri "Sont les prisons de Paris. "Il a vu couler le sang "De ce garde fidele, "Qui vient d'offrir en mourant "Aux Francais un beau modele; Mais Louis le fils d'Henri "Est prisonnier dans Paris. "Il n'est si triste appareil "Qui du respect nous degage, "Les feux ardens du Soleil "Savent percer le nuage: "Le prisonnier de Paris "Est toujours le fils d'Henri. "Francais, trop ingrats Francais "Rendez le Roi a sa compagne; "C'est le bien du Bearnais, "C'est l'enfant de la Montagne: "Le bonheur qu' avoit Henri "Nous l'affarons a Louis. "Chez vouz l'homme a de ses droits "Recouvre le noble usage, "Et vous opprimez vos rois, "Ah! quel injuste partage! "Le peuple est libre, et Louis "Est prisonnier dans Paris. "Au pied de ce monument "Ou le bon Henri respire "Pourquoi l'airain foudroyant? "Ah l'on veut qu' Henri conspire "Lui meme contre son fils "Dans les prisons de Paris."_ It was published some time ago in a periodical work, (written with great spirit and talents,) called "The Acts of the Apostles," and, I believe, has not yet appeared in England. The situation of the King gives a peculiar interest to these stanzas, which, merely as a poetical composition, are very beautiful. I have often attempted to translate them, but have always found it impossible to preserve the effect and simplicity of the original. They are set to a little plaintive air, very happily characteristic of the words. Perhaps I shall not write to you again from hence, as we depart for A_____ on Tuesday next. A change of scene will dissipate a little the seriousness we have contracted during the late events. If I were determined to indulge grief or melancholy, I would never remove from the spot where I had formed the resolution. Man is a proud animal even when oppressed by misfortune. He seeks for his tranquility in reason and reflection; whereas, a post-chaise and four, or even a hard-trotting horse, is worth all the philosophy in the world.--But, if, as I observed before, a man be determined to resist consolation, he cannot do better than stay at home, and reason and phosophize. Adieu:--the situation of my friends in this country makes me think of England with pleasure and respect; and I shall conclude with a very homely couplet, which, after all the fashionable liberality of modern travellers, contains a great deal of truth: "Amongst mankind "We ne'er shall find "The worth we left at home." Yours, &c. August 22, 1792. The hour is past, in which, if the King's friends had exerted themselves, they might have procured a movement in his favour. The people were at first amazed, then grieved; but the national philosophy already begins to operate, and they will sink into indifference, till again awakened by some new calamity. The leaders of the faction do not, however, entirely depend either on the supineness of their adversaries, or the submission of the people. Money is distributed amongst the idle and indigent, and agents are nightly employed in the public houses to comment on newspapers, written for the purpose to blacken the King and exalt the patriotism of the party who have dethroned him. Much use has likewise been made of the advances of the Prussians towards Champagne, and the usual mummery of ceremony has not been wanting. Robespierre, in a burst of extemporary energy, previously studied, has declared the country in danger. The declaration has been echoed by all the departments, and proclaimed to the people with much solemnity. We were not behind hand in the ceremonial of the business, though, somehow, the effect was not so serious and imposing as one could have wished on such an occasion. A smart flag, with the words "Citizens, the country is in danger," was prepared; the judges and the municipality were in their costume, the troops and Garde Nationale under arms, and an orator, surrounded by his cortege, harangued in the principal parts of the town on the text of the banner which waved before him. All this was very well; but, unfortunately, in order to distinguish the orator amidst the croud, it was determined he should harangue on horseback. Now here arose a difficulty which all the ardour of patriotism was not able to surmount. The French are in general but indifferent equestrians; and it so happened that, in our municipality, those who could speak could not ride, and those who could ride could not speak. At length, however, after much debating, it was determined that arms should yield to the gown, or rather, the horse to the orator--with this precaution, that the monture should be properly secured, by an attendant to hold the bridle. Under this safeguard, the rhetorician issued forth, and the first part of the speech was performed without accident; but when, by way of relieving the declaimer, the whole military band began to flourish ca ira, the horse, even more patriotic than his rider, curvetted and twisted with so much animation, that however the spectators might be delighted, the orator was far from participating in their satisfaction. After all this, the speech was to be finished, and the silence of the music did not immediately tranquillize the animal. The orator's eye wandered from the paper that contained his speech, with wistful glances toward the mane; the fervor of his indignation against the Austrians was frequently calmed by the involuntary strikings he was obliged to submit to; and at the very crisis of the emphatic declaration, he seemed much less occupied by his country's danger than his own. The people, who were highly amused, I dare say, conceived the whole ceremony to be a rejoicing, and at every repetition that the country was in danger, joined with great glee in the chorus of _ca ira_.* *The oration consisted of several parts, each ending with a kind of burden of _"Citoyens, la patri est en danger;"_ and the arrangers of the ceremony had not selected appropriate music: so that the band, who had been accustomed to play nothing else on public occasions, struck up _ca ira_ at every declaration that the country was in danger! Many of the spectators, I believe, had for some time been convinced of the danger that threatened the country, and did not suppose it much increased by the events of the war; others were pleased with a show, without troubling themselves about the occasion of it; and the mass, except when rouzed to attention by their favourite air, or the exhibitions of the equestrian orator, looked on with vacant stupidity. --This tremendous flag is now suspended from a window of the Hotel de Ville, where it is to remain until the inscription it wears shall no longer be true; and I heartily wish, the distresses of the country may not be more durable than the texture on which they are proclaimed. Our journey is fixed for to-morrow, and all the morning has been passed in attendance for our passports.--This affair is not so quickly dispatched as you may imagine. The French are, indeed, said to be a very lively people, but we mistake their volubility for vivacity; for in their public offices, their shops, and in any transaction of business, no people on earth can be more tedious--they are slow, irregular, and loquacious; and a retail English Quaker, with all his formalities, would dispose of half his stock in less time than you can purchase a three sols stamp from a brisk French Commis. You may therefore conceive, that this official portraiture of so many females was a work of time, and not very pleasant to the originals. The delicacy of an Englishman may be shocked at the idea of examining and registering a lady's features one after another, like the articles of a bill of lading; but the cold and systematic gallantry of a Frenchman is not so scrupulous.--The officer, however, who is employed for this purpose here, is civil, and I suspected the infinity of my nose, and the acuteness of Mad. de ____'s chin, might have disconcerted him; but he extricated himself very decently. My nose is enrolled in the order of aquilines, and the old lady's chin pared off to a _"menton un peu pointu."_--[A longish chin.] The carriages are ordered for seven to-morrow. Recollect, that seven females, with all their appointments, are to occupy them, and then calculate the hour I shall begin increasing my distance from England and my friends. I shall not do it without regret; yet perhaps you will be less inclined to pity me than the unfortunate wights who are to escort us. A journey of an hundred miles, with French horses, French carriages, French harness, and such an unreasonable female charge, is, I confess, in great humility, not to be ventured on without a most determined patience.--I shall write to you on our arrival at Arras; and am, till then, at all times, and in all places, Yours. Hesdin. We arrived here last night, notwithstanding the difficulties of our first setting out, in tolerable time; but I have gained so little in point of repose, that I might as well have continued my journey. We are lodged at an inn which, though large and the best in the town, is so disgustingly filthy, that I could not determine to undress myself, and am now up and scribbling, till my companions shall be ready. Our embarkation will, I foresee, be a work of time and labour; for my friend, Mad. de ____, besides the usual attendants on a French woman, a femme de chambre and a lap-dog, travels with several cages of canary-birds, some pots of curious exotics, and a favourite cat; all of which must be disposed of so as to produce no interstine commotions during the journey. Now if you consider the nature of these fellow-travellers, you will allow it not so easy a matter as may at first be supposed, especially as their fair mistress will not allow any of them to be placed in any other carriage than her own.--A fray happened yesterday between the cat and the dog, during which the birds were overset, and the plants broken. Poor M. de ____, with a sort of rueful good nature, separated the combatants, restored order, and was obliged to purchase peace by charging himself with the care of the aggressor. I should not have dwelt so long on these trifling occurrences, but that they are characteristic. In England, this passion for animals is chiefly confined to old maids, but here it is general. Almost every woman, however numerous her family, has a nursery of birds, an angola, and two or three lap-dogs, who share her cares with her husband and children. The dogs have all romantic names, and are enquired after with so much solicitude when they do not make one in a visit, that it was some time before I discovered that Nina and Rosine were not the young ladies of the family. I do not remember to have seen any husband, however master of his house in other respects, daring enough to displace a favourite animal, even though it occupied the only vacant fauteuil. The entrance into Artois from Picardy, though confounded by the new division, is sufficiently marked by a higher cultivation, and a more fertile soil. The whole country we have passed is agreeable, but uniform; the roads are good, and planted on each side with trees, mostly elms, except here and there some rows of poplar or apple. The land is all open, and sown in divisions of corn, carrots, potatoes, tobacco, and poppies of which last they make a coarse kind of oil for the use of painters. The country is entirely flat, and the view every where bounded by woods interspersed with villages, whose little spires peeping through the trees have a very pleasing effect. The people of Artois are said to be highly superstitious, and we have already passed a number of small chapels and crosses, erected by the road side, and surrounded by tufts of trees. These are the inventions of a mistaken piety; yet they are not entirely without their use, and I cannot help regarding them with more complacence than a rigid Protestant might think allowable. The weary traveller here finds shelter from a mid-day sun, and solaces his mind while he reposes his body. The glittering equipage rolls by--he recalls the painful steps he has past, anticipates those which yet remain, and perhaps is tempted to repine; but when he turns his eye on the cross of Him who has promised a recompence to the sufferers of this world, he checks the sigh of envy, forgets the luxury which excited it, and pursues his way with resignation. The Protestant religion proscribes, and the character of the English renders unnecessary, these sensible objects of devotion; but I have always been of opinion, that the levity of the French in general would make them incapable of persevering in a form of worship equally abstracted and rational. The Spaniards, and even the Italians, might abolish their crosses and images, and yet preserve their Christianity; but if the French ceased to be bigots, they would become atheists. This is a small fortified town, though not of strength to offer any resistance to artillery. Its proximity to the frontier, and the dread of the Austrians, make the inhabitants very patriotic. We were surrounded by a great croud of people on our arrival, who had some suspicion that we were emigrating; however, as soon as our passports were examined and declared legal, they retired very peaceably. The approach of the enemy keeps up the spirit of the people, and, notwithstanding their dissatisfaction at the late events, they have not yet felt the change of their government sufficiently to desire the invasion of an Austrian army.--Every village, every cottage, hailed us with the cry of Vive la nation! The cabaret invites you to drink beer a la nation, and offers you lodging a la nation--the chandler's shop sells you snuff and hair powder a la nation--and there are even patriotic barbers whose signs inform you, that you may be shaved and have your teeth drawn a la nation! These are acts of patriotism one cannot reasonably object to; but the frequent and tedious examination of one's passports by people who can't read, is not quite so inoffensive, and I sometimes lose my patience. A very vigilant _Garde Nationale_ yesterday, after spelling my passport over for ten minutes, objected that it was not a good one. I maintained that it was; and feeling a momentary importance at the recollection of my country, added, in an assuring tone, _"Et d'ailleurs je suis Anglaise et par consequent libre d'aller ou bon me semble._*" The man stared, but admitted my argument, and we passed on. *"Besides, I am a native of England, and, consequently, have a right to go where I please." My room door is half open, and gives me a prospect into that of Mad. de L____, which is on the opposite side of the passage. She has not yet put on her cap, but her grey hair is profusely powdered; and, with no other garments than a short under petticoat and a corset, she stands for the edification of all who pass, putting on her rouge with a stick and a bundle of cotton tied to the end of it.--All travellers agree in describing great indelicacy to the French women; yet I have seen no accounts which exaggerate it, and scarce any that have not been more favourable than a strict adherence to truth might justify. This inattractive part of the female national character is not confined to the lower or middling classes of life; and an English woman is as likely to be put to the blush in the boudoir of a Marquise, as in the shop of the Grisette, which serves also for her dressing-room. If I am not too idle, or too much amused, you will soon be informed of my arrival at Arras; but though I should neglect to write, be persuaded I shall never cease to be, with affection and esteem, Yours, &c. Arras, August, 1792. The appearance of Arras is not busy in proportion to its population, because its population is not equal to its extent; and as it is a large, without being a commercial, town, it rather offers a view of the tranquil enjoyment of wealth, than of the bustle and activity by which it is procured. The streets are mostly narrow and ill paved, and the shops look heavy and mean; but the hotels, which chiefly occupy the low town, are large and numerous. What is called la Petite Place, is really very large, and small only in comparison with the great one, which, I believe, is the largest in France. It is, indeed, an immense quadrangle--the houses are in the Spanish form, and it has an arcade all round it. The Spaniards, by whom it was built, forgot, probably, that this kind of shelter would not be so desirable here as in their own climate. The manufacture of tapestry, which a single line of Shakespeare has immortalized, and associated with the mirthful image of his fat Knight, has fallen into decay. The manufacturers of linen and woollen are but inconsiderable; and one, which existed till lately, of a very durable porcelain, is totally neglected. The principal article of commerce is lace, which is made here in great quantities. The people of all ages, from five years old to seventy, are employed in this delicate fabrick. In fine weather you will see whole streets lined with females, each with her cushion on her lap. The people of Arras are uncommonly dirty, and the lacemakers do not in this matter differ from their fellow-citizens; yet at the door of a house, which, but for the surrounding ones, you would suppose the common receptacle of all the filth in the vicinage, is often seated a female artizan, whose fingers are forming a point of unblemished whiteness. It is inconceivable how fast the bobbins move under their hands; and they seem to bestow so little attention on their work, that it looks more like the amusement of idleness than an effort of industry. I am no judge of the arguments of philosophers and politicians for and against the use of luxury in a state; but if it be allowable at all, much may be said in favour of this pleasing article of it. Children may be taught to make it at a very early age, and they can work at home under the inspection of their parents, which is certainly preferable to crouding them together in manufactories, where their health is injured, and their morals are corrupted. By requiring no more implements than about five shillings will purchase, a lacemaker is not dependent on the shopkeeper, nor the head of a manufactory. All who choose to work have it in their own power, and can dispose of the produce of their labour, without being at the mercy of an avaricious employer; for though a tolerable good workwoman can gain a decent livelihood by selling to the shops, yet the profit of the retailer is so great, that if he rejected a piece of lace, or refused to give a reasonable price for it, a certain sale would be found with the individual consumer: and it is a proof of the independence of this employ, that no one will at present dispose of their work for paper, and it still continues to be paid for in money. Another argument in favour of encouraging lace-making is, that it cannot be usurped by men: you may have men-milliners, men-mantuamakers, and even ladies' valets, but you cannot well fashion the clumsy and inflexible fingers of man to lace-making. We import great quantities of lace from this country, yet I imagine we might, by attention, be enabled to supply other countries, instead of purchasing abroad ourselves. The art of spinning is daily improving in England; and if thread sufficiently fine can be manufactured, there is no reason why we should not equal our neighbours in the beauty of this article. The hands of English women are more delicate than those of the French; and our climate is much the same as that of Brussels, Arras, Lisle, &c. where the finest lace is made. The population of Arras is estimated at about twenty-five thousand souls, though many people tell me it is greater. It has, however, been lately much thinned by emigration, suppression of convents, and the decline of trade, occasioned by the absence of so many rich inhabitants.--The Jacobins are here become very formidable: they have taken possession of a church for their meetings, and, from being the ridicule, are become the terror of all moderate people. Yesterday was appointed for taking the new oath of liberty and equality. I did not see the ceremony, as the town was in much confusion, and it was deemed unsafe to be from home. I understand it was attended only by the very refuse of the people, and that, as a gallanterie analogue, the President of the department gave his arm to Madame Duchene, who sells apples in a cellar, and is Presidente of the Jacobin club. It is, however, reported to-day, that she is in disgrace with the society for her condescension; and her parading the town with a man of forty thousand livres a year is thought to be too great a compliment to the aristocracy of riches; so that Mons. Le President's political gallantry has availed him nothing. He has debased and made himself the ridicule of the Aristocrates and Constitutionalists, without paying his court, as he intended, to the popular faction. I would always wish it to happen so to those who offer up incense to the mob. As human beings, as one's fellow creatures, the poor and uninformed have a claim to our affection and benevolence, but when they become legislators, they are absurd and contemptible tyrants.--_A propos_--we were obliged to acknowledge this new sovereignty by illuminating the house on the occasion; and this was not ordered by nocturnal vociferation as in England, but by a regular command from an officer deputed for that purpose. I am concerned to see the people accustomed to take a number of incompatible oaths with indifference: it neither will nor can come to any good; and I am ready to exclaim with Juliet--"Swear not at all." Or, if ye must swear, quarrel not with the Pope, that your consciences may at least be relieved by dispensations and indulgences. To-morrow we go to Lisle, notwithstanding the report that it has already been summoned to surrender. You will scarcely suppose it possible, yet we find it difficult to learn the certainty of this, at the distance of only thirty miles: but communication is much less frequent and easy here than in England. I am not one of those "unfortunate women who delight in war;" and, perhaps, the sight of this place, so famous for its fortifications, will not be very amusing to me, nor furnish much matter of communication for my friends; but I shall write, if it be only to assure you that I am not made prize of by the Austrians. Yours, &c. Lisle, August, 1792. You restless islanders, who are continually racking imagination to perfect the art of moving from one place to another, and who can drop asleep in a carriage and wake at an hundred mile distance, have no notion of all the difficulties of a day's journey here. In the first place, all the horses of private persons have been taken for the use of the army, and those for hire are constantly employed in going to the camp--hence, there is a difficulty in procuring horses. Then a French carriage is never in order, and in France a job is not to be done just when you want it--so that there is often a difficulty in finding vehicles. Then there is the difficulty of passports, and the difficulty of gates, if you want to depart early. Then the difficulties of patching harness on the road, and, above all, the inflexible _sang froid_ of drivers. All these things considered, you will not wonder that we came here a day after we intended, and arrived at night, when we ought to have arrived at noon. --The carriage wanted a trifling repair, and we could get neither passports nor horses. The horses were gone to the army--the municipality to the club--and the blacksmith was employed at the barracks in making a patriotic harangue to the soldiers.--But we at length surmounted all these obstacles, and reached this place last night. The road between Arras and Lisle is equally rich with that we before passed, but is much more diversified. The plain of Lens is not such a scene of fertility, that one forgets it has once been that of war and carnage. We endeavoured to learn in the town whereabouts the column was erected that commemmorates that famous battle, [1648.] but no one seemed to know any thing of the matter. One who, we flattered ourselves, looked more intelligent than the rest, and whom we supposed might be an attorney, upon being asked for this spot,--(where, added Mr. de ____, by way of assisting his memory, _"le Prince de Conde s'est battu si bien,"_) --replied, _"Pour la bataille je n'en sais rien, mais pour le Prince de Conde il y a deja quelque tems qu'il est emigre--on le dit a Coblentz."_* After this we thought it in vain to make any farther enquiry, and continued our walk about the town. *"Where the Prince of Conde fought so gallantly."--"As to the battle I know nothing about the matter; but for the Prince of Conde he emigrated some time since--they say he is at Coblentz." Mr. P____, who, according to French custom, had not breakfasted, took a fancy to stop at a baker's shop and buy a roll. The man bestowed so much more civility on us than our two sols were worth, that I observed, on quitting the shop, I was sure he must be an Aristocrate. Mr. P____, who is a warm Constitutionalist, disputed the justice of my inference, and we agreed to return, and learn the baker's political principles. After asking for more rolls, we accosted him with the usual phrase, "Et vous, Monsieur, vous etes bon patriote?"--_"Ah, mon Dieu, oui,_ (replied he,) _il faut bien l'etre a present."_* *"And you, Sir, are without doubt, a good patriot?"--"Oh Lord, Sir, yes; one's obliged to be so, now-a-days." Mr. P____ admitted the man's tone of voice and countenance as good evidence, and acknowledged I was right.--It is certain that the French have taken it into their heads, that coarseness of manners is a necessary consequence of liberty, and that there is a kind of leze nation in being too civil; so that, in general, I think I can discover the principles of shopkeepers, even without the indications of a melancholy mien at the assignats, or lamentations on the times. The new doctrine of primeval equality has already made some progress. At a small inn at Carvin, where, upon the assurance that they had every thing in the world, we stopped to dine, on my observing they had laid more covers than were necessary, the woman answered, "Et les domestiques, ne dinent ils pas?"--"And, pray, are the servants to have no dinner?" We told her not with us, and the plates were taken away; but we heard her muttering in the kitchen, that she believed we were aristocrates going to emigrate. She might imagine also that we were difficult to satisfy, for we found it impossible to dine, and left the house hungry, notwithstanding there was "every thing in the world" in it. On the road between Carvin and Lisle we saw Dumouriez, who is going to take the command of the army, and has now been visiting the camp of Maulde. He appears to be under the middle size, about fifty years of age, with a brown complexion, dark eyes, and an animated countenance. He was not originally distinguished either by birth or fortune, and has arrived at his present situation by a concurrence of fortuitous circumstances, by great and various talents, much address, and a spirit of intrigue. He is now supported by the prevailing party; and, I confess, I could not regard with much complacence a man, whom the machinations of the Jacobins had forced into the ministry, and whose hypocritical and affected resignation has contributed to deceive the people, and ruin the King. Lisle has all the air of a great town, and the mixture of commercial industry and military occupation gives it a very gay and populous appearance. The Lillois are highly patriotic, highly incensed against the Austrians, and regard the approaching siege with more contempt than apprehension. I asked the servant who was making my bed this morning, how far the enemy was off. _"Une lieue et demie, ou deux lieues, a moins qu'ils ne soient plus avances depuis hier,"_* repled she, with the utmost indifference.--I own, I did not much approve of such a vicinage, and a view of the fortifications (which did not make the less impression, because I did not understand them,) was absolutely necessary to raise my drooping courage. *"A league and a half, or two leagues; unless, indeed, they have advanced since yesterday." This morning was dedicated to visiting the churches, citadel, and Collisee (a place of amusement in the manner of our Vauxhall); but all these things have been so often described by much abler pens, that I cannot modestly pretend to add any thing on the subject. In the evening we were at the theatre, which is large and handsome; and the constant residence of a numerous garrison enables it to entertain a very good set of performers:--their operas in particular are extremely well got up. I saw Zemire et Azor given better than at Drury Lane.--In the farce, which was called Le Francois a Londres, was introduced a character they called that of an Englishman, (Jack Roastbeef,) who pays his addresses to a nobleman's daughter, in a box coate, a large hat slouched over his eyes, and an oaken trowel in his hand--in short, the whole figure exactly resembling that of a watchman. His conversation is gross and sarcastic, interlarded with oaths, or relieved by fits of sullen taciturnity--such a lover as one may suppose, though rich, and the choice of the lady's father, makes no impression; and the author has flattered the national vanity by making the heroine give the preference to a French marquis. Now there is no doubt but nine-tenths of the audience thought this a good portraiture of the English character, and enjoyed it with all the satisfaction of conscious superiority.--The ignorance that prevails with regard to our manners and customs, among a people so near us, is surprizing. It is true, that the noblesse who have visited England with proper recommendations, and have been introduced to the best society, do us justice: the men of letters also, who, from party motives, extol every thing English, have done us perhaps more than justice. But I speak of the French in general; not the lower classes only, but the gentry of the provinces, and even those who in other respects have pretensions to information. The fact is, living in England is expensive: a Frenchman, whose income here supports him as a gentleman, goes over and finds all his habits of oeconomy insufficient to keep him from exceeding the limits he had prescribed to himself. His decent lodging alone costs him a great part of his revenue, and obliges him to be strictly parsimonious of the rest. This drives him to associate chiefly with his own countrymen, to dine at obscure coffee-houses, and pay his court to opera-dancers. He sees, indeed, our theatres, our public walks, the outside of our palaces, and the inside of churches: but this gives him no idea of the manners of the people in superior life, or even of easy fortune. Thus he goes home, and asserts to his untravelled countrymen, that our King and nobility are ill lodged, our churches mean, and that the English are barbarians, who dine without soup, use no napkin, and eat with their knives.--I have heard a gentleman of some respectability here observe, that our usual dinner was an immense joint of meat half drest, and a dish of vegetables scarcely drest at all.--Upon questioning him, I discovered he had lodged in St. Martin's Lane, had likewise boarded at a country attorney's of the lowest class, and dined at an ordinary at Margate. Some few weeks ago the Marquis de P____ set out from Paris in the diligence, and accompanied by his servant, with a design of emigrating. Their only fellow-traveller was an Englishman, whom they frequently addressed, and endeavoured to enter into conversation with; but he either remained silent, or gave them to understand he was entirely ignorant of the language. Under this persuasion the Marquis and his valet freely discussed their affairs, arranged their plan of emigration, and expressed, with little ceremony, their political opinions.--At the end of their journey they were denounced by their companion, and conducted to prison. The magistrate who took the information mentioned the circumstance when I happened to be present. Indignant at such an act in an Englishman, I enquired his name. You will judge of my surprize, when he assured me it was the English Ambassador. I observed to him, that it was not common for our Ambassadors to travel in stage-coaches: this, he said, he knew; but that having reason to suspect the Marquis, Monsieur l'Ambassadeur had had the goodness to have him watched, and had taken this journey on purpose to detect him. It was not without much reasoning, and the evidence of a lady who had been in England long enough to know the impossibility of such a thing, that I would justify Lord G____ from this piece of complaisance to the Jacobins, and convince the worthy magistrate he had been imposed upon: yet this man is the Professor of Eloquence at a college, is the oracle of the Jacobin society; and may perhaps become a member of the Convention. This seems so almost incredibly absurd, that I should fear to repeat it, were it not known to many besides myself; but I think I may venture to pronounce, from my own observation, and that of others, whose judgement, and occasions of exercising it, give weight to their opinions, that the generality of the French who have read a little are mere pedants, nearly unacquainted with modern nations, their commercial and political relation, their internal laws, characters, or manners. Their studies are chiefly confined to Rollin and Plutarch, the deistical works of Voltaire, and the visionary politics of Jean Jaques. Hence they amuse their hearers with allusions to Caesar and Lycurgus, the Rubicon, and Thermopylae. Hence they pretend to be too enlightened for belief, and despise all governments not founded on the Contrat Social, or the Profession de Foi.--They are an age removed from the useful literature and general information of the middle classes in their own country--they talk familiarly of Sparta and Lacedemon, and have about the same idea of Russia as they have of Caffraria. Yours. Lisle. "Married to another, and that before those shoes were old with which she followed my poor father to the grave."--There is scarcely any circumstance, or situation, in which, if one's memory were good, one should not be mentally quoting Shakespeare. I have just now been whispering the above, as I passed the altar of liberty, which still remains on the Grande Place. But "a month, a little month," ago, on this altar the French swore to maintain the constitution, and to be faithful to the law and the King; yet this constitution is no more, the laws are violated, the King is dethroned, and the altar is now only a monument of levity and perjury, which they have not feeling enough to remove. The Austrians are daily expected to besiege this place, and they may destroy, but they will not take it. I do not, as you may suppose, venture to speak so decisively in a military point of view--I know as little as possible of the excellencies of Vauban, or the adequacy of the garrison; but I draw my inference from the spirit of enthusiasm which prevails among the inhabitants of every class--every individual seems to partake of it: the streets resound with patriotic acclamations, patriotic songs, war, and defiance.--Nothing can be more animating than the theatre. Every allusion to the Austrians, every song or sentence, expressive of determined resistance, is followed by bursts of assent, easily distinguishable not to be the effort of party, but the sentiment of the people in general. There are, doubtless, here, as in all other places, party dissensions; but the threatened siege seems at least to have united all for their common defence: they know that a bomb makes no distinction between Feuillans, Jacobins, or Aristocrates, and neither are so anxious to destroy the other, when it is only to be done at such a risk to themselves. I am even willing to hope that something better than mere selfishness has a share in their uniting to preserve one of the finest, and, in every sense, one of the most interesting, towns in France. Lisle, Saturday. We are just on our departure for Arras, where, I fear, we shall scarcely arrive before the gates are shut. We have been detained here much beyond our time, by a circumstance infinitely shocking, though, in fact, not properly a subject of regret. One of the assassins of General Dillon was this morning guillotined before the hotel where we are lodged.--I did not, as you will conclude, see the operation; but the mere circumstance of knowing the moment it was performed, and being so near it, has much unhinged me. The man, however, deserved his fate, and such an example was particularly necessary at this time, when we are without a government, and the laws are relaxed. The mere privation of life is, perhaps, more quickly effected by this instrument than by any other means; but when we recollect that the preparation for, and apprehension of, death, constitute its greatest terrors; that a human hand must give motion to the Guillotine as well as to the axe; and that either accustoms a people, already sanguinary, to the sight of blood, I think little is gained by the invention. It was imagined by a Mons. Guillotin, a physician of Paris, and member of the Constituent Assembly. The original design seems not so much to spare pain to the criminal, as obloquy to the executioner. I, however, perceive little difference between a man's directing a Guillotine, or tying a rope; and I believe the people are of the same opinion. They will never see any thing but a _bourreau_ [executioner] in the man whose province it is to execute the sentence of the laws, whatever name he may be called by, or whatever instrument he may make use of.--I have concluded this letter with a very unpleasant subject, but my pen is guided by circumstances, and I do not invent, but communicate.--Adieu. Yours, &c. Arras, September 1, 1792. Had I been accompanied by an antiquary this morning, his sensibility would have been severely exercised; for even I, whose respect for antiquity is not scientific, could not help lamenting the modern rage for devastation which has seized the French. They are removing all "the time-honoured figures" of the cathedral, and painting its massive supporters in the style of a ball-room. The elaborate uncouthness of ancient sculpture is not, indeed, very beautiful; yet I have often fancied there was something more simply pathetic in the aukward effigy of an hero kneeling amidst his trophies, or a regal pair with their supplicating hands and surrounding offspring, than in the graceful figures and poetic allegories of the modern artist. The humble intreaty to the reader to "praye for the soule of the departed," is not very elegant--yet it is better calculated to recall the wanderings of morality, than the flattering epitaph, a Fame hovering in the air, or the suspended wreath of the remunerating angel.--But I moralize in vain--the rage of these new Goths is inexorable: they seem solicitous to destroy every vestige of civilization, lest the people should remember they have not always been barbarians. After obtaining an order from the municipality, we went to see the gardens and palace of the Bishop, who has emigrated. The garden has nothing very remarkable, but is large and well laid out, according to the old style. It forms a very agreeable walk, and, when the Bishop possest it, was open for the enjoyment of the inhabitants, but it is now shut up and in disorder. The house is plain, and substantially furnished, and exhibits no appearance of unbecoming luxury. The whole is now the property of the nation, and will soon be disposed of.--I could not help feeling a sensation of melancholy as we walked over the apartments. Every thing is marked in an inventory, just as left; and an air of arrangement and residence leads one to reflect, that the owner did not imagine at his departure he was quitting it perhaps for ever. I am not partial to the original emigrants, yet much may be said for the Bishop of Arras. He was pursued by ingratitude, and marked for persecution. The Robespierres were young men whom he had taken from a mean state, had educated, and patronized. The revolution gave them an opportunity of displaying their talents, and their talents procured them popularity. They became enemies to the clergy, because their patron was a Bishop; and endeavoured to render their benefactor odious, because the world could not forget, nor they forgive, how much they were indebted to him.--Vice is not often passive; nor is there often a medium between gratitude for benefits, and hatred to the author of them. A little mind is hurt by the remembrance of obligation--begins by forgetting, and, not uncommonly, ends by persecuting. We dined and passed the afternoon from home to-day. After dinner our hostess, as usual, proposed cards; and, as usual in French societies, every one assented: we waited, however, some time, and no cards came-- till, at length, conversation-parties were formed, and they were no longer thought of. I have since learned, from one of the young women of the house, that the butler and two footmen had all betaken themselves to clubs and Guinguettes,* and the cards, counters, &c. could not be obtained. * Small public houses in the vicinity of large towns, where the common people go on Sundays and festivals to dance and make merry. This is another evil arising from the circumstances of the times. All people of property have begun to bury their money and plate, and as the servants are often unavoidably privy to it, they are become idle and impertinent--they make a kind of commutation of diligence for fidelity, and imagine that the observance of the one exempts them from the necessity of the other. The clubs are a constant receptacle for idleness; and servants who think proper to frequent them do it with very little ceremony, knowing that few whom they serve would be imprudent enough to discharge them for their patriotism in attending a Jacobin society. Even servants who are not converts to the new principle cannot resist the temptation of abusing a little the power which they acquire from a knowledge of family affairs. Perhaps the effect of the revolution has not, on the whole, been favourable to the morals of the lower class of people; but this shall be the subject of discussion at some future period, when I shall have had farther opportunities of judging. We yesterday visited the Oratoire, a seminary for education, which is now suppressed. The building is immense, and admirably calculated for the purpose, but is already in a state of dilapidation; so that, I fear, by the time the legislature has determined what system of instruction shall be substituted for that which has been abolished, the children (as the French are fond of examples from the ancients) will take their lessons, like the Greeks, in the open air; and, in the mean while, become expert in lying and thieving, like the Spartans. The Superior of the house is an immoderate revolutionist, speaks English very well, and is a great admirer of our party writers. In his room I observed a vast quantity of English books, and on his chimney stood what he called a patriotic clock, the dial of which was placed between two pyramids, on which were inscribed the names of republican authors, and on the top of one was that of our countryman, Mr. Thomas Paine--whom, by the way, I understand you intended to exhibit in a much more conspicuous and less tranquil situation. I assure you, though you are ungrateful on your side of the water, he is in high repute here--his works are translated-- all the Jacobins who can read quote, and all who can't, admire him; and possibly, at the very moment you are sentencing him to an installment in the pillory, we may be awarding him a triumph.--Perhaps we are both right. He deserves the pillory, from you for having endeavoured to destroy a good constitution--and the French may with equal reason grant him a triumph, as their constitution is likely to be so bad, that even Mr. Thomas Paine's writings may make it better! Our house is situated within view of a very pleasant public walk, where I am daily amused with a sight of the recruits at their exercise. This is not quite so regular a business as the drill in the Park. The exercise is often interrupted by disputes between the officer and his eleves--some are for turning to the right, others to the left, and the matter is not unfrequently adjusted by each going the way that seemeth best unto himself. The author of the _"Actes des Apotres"_ [The Acts of the Apostles] cites a Colonel who reprimanded one of his corps for walking ill--_"Eh Dicentre,_ (replied the man,) _comment veux tu que je marche bien quand tu as fait mes souliers trop etroits."_* but this is no longer a pleasantry--such circumstances are very common. A Colonel may often be tailor to his own regiment, and a Captain operated on the heads of his whole company, in his civil capacity, before he commands them in his military one. *"And how the deuce can you expect me to march well, when you have made my shoes too tight?" The walks I have just mentioned have been extremely beautiful, but a great part of the trees have been cut down, and the ornamental parts destroyed, since the revolution--I know not why, as they were open to the poor as well as the rich, and were a great embellishment to the low town. You may think it strange that I should be continually dating some destruction from the aera of the revolution--that I speak of every thing demolished, and of nothing replaced. But it is not my fault--"If freedom grows destructive, I must paint it:" though I should tell you, that in many streets where convents have been sold, houses are building with the materials on the same site.--This is, however, not a work of the nation, but of individuals, who have made their purchases cheap, and are hastening to change the form of their property, lest some new revolution should deprive them of it.--Yours, &c. Arras, September. Nothing more powerfully excites the attention of a stranger on his first arrival, than the number and wretchedness of the poor at Arras. In all places poverty claims compulsion, but here compassion is accompanied by horror--one dares not contemplate the object one commiserates, and charity relieves with an averted eye. Perhaps with Him, who regards equally the forlorn beggar stretched on the threshold, consumed by filth and disease, and the blooming beauty who avoids while she succours him, the offering of humanity scarcely expiates the involuntary disgust; yet such is the weakness of our nature, that there exists a degree of misery against which one's senses are not proof, and benevolence itself revolts at the appearance of the poor of Arras.--These are not the cold and fastidious reflections of an unfeeling mind--they are not made without pain: nor have I often felt the want of riches and consequence so much as in my incapacity to promote some means of permanent and substantial remedy for the evils I have been describing. I have frequently enquired the cause of this singular misery, but can only learn that it always has been so. I fear it is, that the poor are without energy, and the rich without generosity. The decay of manufactures since the last century must have reduced many families to indigence. These have been able to subsist on the refuse of luxury, but, too supine for exertion, they have sought for nothing more; while the great, discharging their consciences with the superfluity of what administered to their pride, fostered the evil, instead of endeavouring to remedy it. But the benevolence of the French is not often active, nor extensive; it is more frequently a religious duty than a sentiment. They content themselves with affording a mere existence to wretchedness; and are almost strangers to those enlightened and generous efforts which act beyond the moment, and seek not only to relieve poverty, but to banish it. Thus, through the frigid and indolent charity of the rich, the misery which was at first accidental is perpetuated, beggary and idleness become habitual, and are transmitted, like more fortunate inheritances, from one generation to another.--This is not a mere conjecture--I have listened to the histories of many of these unhappy outcasts, who were more than thirty years old, and they have all told me, they were born in the state in which I beheld them, and that they did not remember to have heard that their parents were in any other. The National Assembly profess to effectuate an entire regeneration of the country, and to eradicate all evils, moral, physical, and political. I heartily wish the numerous and miserable poor, with which Arras abounds, may become one of the first objects of reform; and that a nation which boasts itself the most polished, the most powerful, and the most philosophic in the world, may not offer to the view so many objects shocking to humanity. The citadel of Arras is very strong, and, as I am told, the chef d'oeuvre of Vauban; but placed with so little judgement, that the military call it _la belle inutile_ [the useless beauty]. It is now uninhabited, and wears an appearance of desolation--the commandant and all the officers of the ancient government having been forced to abandon it; their houses also are much damaged, and the gardens entirely destroyed.--I never heard that this popular commotion had any other motive than the general war of the new doctrines on the old. I am sorry to see that most of the volunteers who go to join the army are either old men or boys, tempted by extraordinary pay and scarcity of employ. A cobler who has been used to rear canary-birds for Mad. de ____, brought us this morning all the birds he was possessed of, and told us he was going to-morrow to the frontiers. We asked him why, at his age, he should think of joining the army. He said, he had already served, and that there were a few months unexpired of the time that would entitle him to his pension.--"Yes; but in the mean while you may get killed; and then of what service will your claim to a pension be?"-- _"N'ayez pas peur, Madame--Je me menagerai bien--on ne se bat pas pour ces gueux la comme pour son Roi."_* * "No fear of that, Madam--I'll take good care of myself: a man does not fight for such beggarly rascals as these as he would for his King." M. de ____ is just returned from the camp of Maulde, where he has been to see his son. He says, there is great disorder and want of discipline, and that by some means or other the common soldiers abound more in money, and game higher, than their officers. There are two young women, inhabitants of the town of St. Amand, who go constantly out on all skirmishing parties, exercise daily with the men, and have killed several of the enemy. They are both pretty--one only sixteen, the other a year or two older. Mr. de ____ saw them as they were just returning from a reconnoitring party. Perhaps I ought to have been ashamed after this recital to decline an invitation from Mr. de R___'s son to dine with him at the camp; but I cannot but feel that I am an extreme coward, and that I should eat with no appetite in sight of an Austrian army. The very idea of these modern Camillas terrifies me--their creation seems an error of nature.* * Their name was Fernig; they were natives of St. Amand, and of no remarkable origin. They followed Dumouriez into Flanders, where they signalized themselves greatly, and became Aides-de-Camp to that General. At the time of his defection, one of them was shot by a soldier, whose regiment she was endeavouring to gain over. Their house having been razed by the Austrians at the beginning of the war, was rebuilt at the expence of the nation; but, upon their participation in Dumouriez' treachery, a second decree of the Assembly again levelled it with the ground. Our host, whose politeness is indefatigable, accompanied us a few days ago to St. Eloy, a large and magnificent abbey, about six miles from Arras. It is built on a terrace, which commands the surrounding country as far as Douay; and I think I counted an hundred and fifty steps from the house to the bottom of the garden, which is on a level with the road. The cloisters are paved with marble, and the church neat and beautiful beyond description. The iron work of the choir imitates flowers and foliage with so much taste and delicacy, that (but for the colour) one would rather suppose it to be soil, than any durable material.--The monks still remain, and although the decree has passed for their suppression, they cannot suppose it will take place. They are mostly old men, and, though I am no friend to these institutions, they were so polite and hospitable that I could not help wishing they were permitted, according to the design of the first Assembly, to die in their habitations-- especially as the situation of St. Eloy renders the building useless for any other purpose.--A friend of Mr. de ____ has a charming country-house near the abbey, which he has been obliged to deny himself the enjoyment of, during the greatest part of the summer; for whenever the family return to Arras, their persons and their carriage are searched at the gate, as strictly as though they were smugglers just arrived from the coast, under the pretence that they may assist the religious of St. Eloy in securing some of their property, previous to the final seizure. I observe, in walking the streets here, that the common people still retain much of the Spanish cast of features: the women are remarkably plain, and appear still more so by wearing faals. The faal is about two ells of black silk or stuff, which is hung, without taste or form, on the head, and is extremely unbecoming: but it is worn only by the lower class, or by the aged and devotees. I am a very voluminous correspondent, but if I tire you, it is a proper punishment for your insincerity in desiring me to continue so. I have heard of a governor of one of our West India islands who was universally detested by its inhabitants, but who, on going to England, found no difficulty in procuring addresses expressive of approbation and esteem. The consequence was, he came back and continued governor for life.--Do you make the application of my anecdote, and I shall persevere in scribbling.--Every Yours. Arras. It is not fashionable at present to frequent any public place; but as we are strangers, and of no party, we often pass our evenings at the theatre. I am fond of it--not so much on account of the representation, as of the opportunity which it affords for observing the dispositions of the people, and the bias intended to be given them. The stage is now become a kind of political school, where the people are taught hatred to Kings, Nobility, and Clergy, according as the persecution of the moment requires; and, I think, one may often judge from new pieces the meditated sacrifice. A year ago, all the sad catalogue of human errors were personified in Counts and Marquisses; they were not represented as individuals whom wealth and power had made something too proud, and much too luxurious, but as an order of monsters, whose existence, independently of their characters, was a crime, and whose hereditary possessions alone implied a guilt, not to be expiated but by the forfeiture of them. This, you will say, was not very judicious; and that by establishing a sort of incompatibility of virtue with titular distinctions, the odium was transferred from the living to the dead--from those who possessed these distinctions to those who instituted them. But, unfortunately, the French were disposed to find their noblesse culpable, and to reject every thing which tended to excuse or favour them. The hauteur of the noblesse acted as a fatal equivalent to every other crime; and many, who did not credit other imputations, rejoiced in the humiliation of their pride. The people, the rich merchants, and even the lesser gentry, all eagerly concurred in the destruction of an order that had disdained or excluded them; and, perhaps, of all the innovations which have taken place, the abolition of rank has excited the least interest. It is now less necessary to blacken the noblesse, and the compositions of the day are directed against the Throne, the Clergy, and Monastic Orders. All the tyrants of past ages are brought from the shelves of faction and pedantry, and assimilated to the mild and circumscribed monarchs of modern Europe. The doctrine of popular sovereignty is artfully instilled, and the people are stimulated to exert a power which they must implicitly delegate to those who have duped and misled them. The frenzy of a mob is represented as the sublimest effort of patriotism; and ambition and revenge, usurping the title of national justice, immolate their victims with applause. The tendency of such pieces is too obvious; and they may, perhaps, succeed in familiarizing the minds of the people to events which, a few months ago, would have filled them with horror. There are also numerous theatrical exhibitions, preparatory to the removal of the nuns from their convents, and to the banishment of the priests. Ancient prejudices are not yet obliterated, and I believe some pains have been taken to justify these persecutions by calumny. The history of our dissolution of the monasteries has been ransacked for scandal, and the bigotry and biases of all countries are reduced into abstracts, and exposed on the stage. The most implacable revenge, the most refined malice, the extremes of avarice and cruelty, are wrought into tragedies, and displayed as acting under the mask of religion and the impunity of a cloister; while operas and farces, with ridicule still more successful, exhibit convents as the abode of licentiousness, intrigue, and superstition. These efforts have been sufficiently successful--not from the merit of the pieces, but from the novelty of the subject. The people in general were strangers to the interior of convents: they beheld them with that kind of respect which is usually produced in uninformed minds by mystery and prohibition. Even the monastic habit was sacred from dramatic uses; so that a representation of cloisters, monks, and nuns, their costumes and manners, never fails to attract the multitude.--But the same cause which renders them curious, makes them credulous. Those who have seen no farther than the Grille, and those who have been educated in convents, are equally unqualified to judge of the lives of the religious; and their minds, having no internal conviction or knowledge of the truth, easily become the converts of slander and falsehood. I cannot help thinking, that there is something mean and cruel in this procedure. If policy demand the sacrifice, it does not require that the victims should be rendered odious; and if it be necessary to dispossess them of their habitations, they ought not, at the moment they are thrown upon the world, to be painted as monsters unworthy of its pity or protection. It is the cowardice of the assassin, who murders before he dares to rob. This custom of making public amusements subservient to party, has, I doubt not, much contributed to the destruction of all against whom it has been employed; and theatrical calumny seems to be always the harbinger of approaching ruin to its object; yet this is not the greatest evil which may arise from these insidious politics--they are equally unfavourable both to the morals and taste of the people; the first are injured beyond calculation, and the latter corrupted beyond amendment. The orders of society, which formerly inspired respect or veneration, are now debased and exploded; and mankind, once taught to see nothing but vice and hypocrisy in those whom they had been accustomed to regard as models of virtue, are easily led to doubt the very existence of virtue itself: they know not where to turn for either instruction or example; no prospect is offered to them but the dreary and uncomfortable view of general depravity; and the individual is no longer encouraged to struggle with vicious propensities, when he concludes them irresistibly inherent in his nature. Perhaps it was not possible to imagine principles at once so seductive and ruinous as those now disseminated. How are the morals of the people to resist a doctrine which teaches them that the rich only can be criminal, and that poverty is a substitute for virtue--that wealth is holden by the sufferance of those who do not possess it--and that he who is the frequenter of a club, or the applauder of a party, is exempt from the duties of his station, and has a right to insult and oppress his fellow citizens? All the weaknesses of humanity are flattered and called to the aid of this pernicious system of revolutionary ethics; and if France yet continue in a state of civilization, it is because Providence has not yet abandoned her to the influence of such a system. Taste is, I repeat it, as little a gainer by the revolution as morals. The pieces which were best calculated to form and refine the minds of the people, all abound with maxims of loyalty, with respect for religion, and the subordinations of civil society. These are all prohibited; and are replaced by fustian declamations, tending to promote anarchy and discord --by vulgar and immoral farces, and insidious and flattering panegyrics on the vices of low life. No drama can succeed that is not supported by the faction; and this support is to be procured only by vilifying the Throne, the Clergy, and Noblesse. This is a succedaneum for literary merit, and those who disapprove are menaced into silence; while the multitude, who do not judge but imitate, applaud with their leaders--and thus all their ideas become vitiated, and imbibe the corruption of their favourite amusement. I have dwelt on this subject longer than I intended; but as I would not be supposed prejudiced nor precipitate in my assertions, I will, by the first occasion, send you some of the most popular farces and tragedies: you may then decide yourself upon the tendency; and, by comparing the dispositions of the French before, and within, the last two years, you may also determine whether or not my conclusions are warranted by fact. Adieu.--Yours. Arras. Our countrymen who visit France for the first time--their imaginations filled with the epithets which the vanity of one nation has appropriated, and the indulgence of the other sanctioned--are astonished to find this "land of elegance," this refined people, extremely inferior to the English in all the arts that minister to the comfort and accommodation of life. They are surprized to feel themselves starved by the intrusion of all the winds of heaven, or smothered by volumes of smoke--that no lock will either open or shut--that the drawers are all immoveable--and that neither chairs nor tables can be preserved in equilibrium. In vain do they inquire for a thousand conveniences which to them seem indispensible; they are not to be procured, or even their use is unknown: till at length, after a residence in a score of houses, in all of which they observe the same deficiencies, they begin to grow sceptical, to doubt the pretended superiority of France, and, perhaps for the first time, do justice to their own unassuming country. It must however, be confessed, that if the chimnies smoke, they are usually surrounded by marble--that the unstable chair is often covered with silk--and that if a room be cold, it is plentifully decked with gilding, pictures, and glasses.--In short, a French house is generally more showy than convenient, and seldom conveys that idea of domestic comfort which constitutes the luxury of an Englishman. I observe, that the most prevailing ornaments here are family portraits: almost every dwelling, even among the lower kind of tradesmen, is peopled with these ensigns of vanity; and the painters employed on these occasions, however deficient in other requisites of their art, seem to have an unfortunate knack at preserving likenesses. Heads powdered even whiter than the originals, laced waistcoats, enormous lappets, and countenances all ingeniously disposed so as to smile at each other, encumber the wainscot, and distress the unlucky visitor, who is obliged to bear testimony to the resemblance. When one sees whole rooms filled with these figures, one cannot help reflecting on the goodness of Providence, which thus distributes self-love, in proportion as it denies those gifts that excite the admiration of others. You must not understand what I have said on the furniture of French houses as applying to those of the nobility or people of extraordinary fortunes, because they are enabled to add the conveniences of other countries to the luxuries of their own. Yet even these, in my opinion, have not the uniform elegance of an English habitation: there is always some disparity between the workmanship and the materials--some mixture of splendour and clumsiness, and a want of what the painters call keeping; but the houses of the gentry, the lesser noblesse, and merchants, are, for the most part, as I have described---abounding in silk, marble, glasses, and pictures; but ill finished, dirty, and deficient in articles of real use.--I should, however, notice, that genteel people are cleaner here than in the interior parts of the kingdom. The floors are in general of oak, or sometimes of brick; but they are always rubbed bright, and have not that filthy appearance which so often disgusts one in French houses. The heads of the lower classes of people are much disturbed by these new principles of universal equality. We enquired of a man we saw near a coach this morning if it was hired. "Monsieur--(quoth he--then checking himself suddenly,)--no, I forgot, I ought not to say Monsieur, for they tell me I am equal to any body in the world: yet, after all, I know not well if this may be true; and as I have drunk out all I am worth, I believe I had better go home and begin work again to-morrow." This new disciple of equality had, indeed, all the appearance of having sacrificed to the success of the cause, and was then recovering from a dream of greatness which he told us had lasted two days. Since the day of taking the new oath we have met many equally elevated, though less civil. Some are undoubtedly paid, but others will distress their families for weeks by this celebration of their new discoveries, and must, after all, like our intoxicated philosopher, be obliged to return "to work again to-morrow." I must now bid you adieu--and, in doing so, naturally turn my thoughts to that country where the rights of the people consist not of sterile and metaphysic declarations, but of real defence and protection. May they for ever remain uninterrupted by the devastating chimeras of their neighbours; and if they seek reform, may it be moderate and permanent, acceded to reason, and not extorted by violence!--Yours, &c. September 2, 1792. We were so much alarmed at the theatre on Thursday, that I believe we shall not venture again to amuse ourselves at the risk of a similar occurrence. About the middle of the piece, a violent outcry began from all parts of the house, and seemed to be directed against our box; and I perceived Madame Duchene, the Presidente of the Jacobins, heading the legions of Paradise with peculiar animation. You may imagine we were not a little terrified. I anxiously examined the dress of myself and my companions, and observing nothing that could offend the affected simplicity of the times, prepared to quit the house. A friendly voice, however, exerting itself above the clamour, informed us that the offensive objects were a cloak and a shawl which hung over the front of the box.--You will scarcely suppose such grossness possible among a civilized people; but the fact is, our friends are of the proscribed class, and we were insulted because in their society.--I have before noticed, that the guards which were stationed in the theatre before the revolution are now removed, and a municipal officer, made conspicuous by his scarf, is placed in the middle front box, and, in case of any tumult, is empowered to call in the military to his assistance. We have this morning been visiting two objects, which exhibit this country in very different points of view--as the seat of wealth, and the abode of poverty. The first is the abbey of St. Vaast, a most superb pile, now inhabited by monks of various orders, but who are preparing to quit it, in obedience to the late decrees. Nothing impresses one with a stronger idea of the influence of the Clergy, than these splendid edifices. We see them reared amidst the solitude of deserts, and in the gaiety and misery of cities; and while they cheer the one and embellish the other, they exhibit, in both, monuments of indefatigable labour and immense wealth.--The facade of St. Vaast is simple and striking, and the cloisters and every other part of the building are extremely handsome. The library is supposed to be the finest in France, except the King's, but is now under the seal of the nation. A young monk, who was our Cicerone, told us he was sorry it was not in his power to show it. _"Et nous, Monsieur, nous sommes faches aussi."_--["And we are not less sorry than yourself, Sir."] Thus, with the aid of significant looks, and gestures of disapprobation, an exchange of sentiments took place, without a single expression of treasonable import: both parties understood perfectly well, that in regretting that the library was inaccessible, each included all the circumstances which attended it.--A new church was building in a style worthy of the convent--I think, near four hundred feet long; but it was discontinued at the suppression of the religious orders, and will now, of course, never be finished. From this abode of learned case and pious indolence Mr. de ____ conducted us to the Mont de Piete, a national institution for lending money to the poor on pledges, (at a moderate interest,) which, if not redeemed within a year, are sold by auction, and the overplus, if there remain any, after deducting the interest, is given to the owner of the pledge. Thousands of small packets are deposited here, which, to the eye of affluence, might seem the very refuse of beggary itself.--I could not reflect without an heart-ache, on the distress of the individual, thus driven to relinquish his last covering, braving cold to satisfy hunger, and accumulating wretchedness by momentary relief. I saw, in a lower room, groupes of unfortunate beings, depriving themselves of different parts of their apparel, and watching with solicitude the arbitrary valuations; others exchanging some article of necessity for one of a still greater-- some in a state of intoxication, uttering execrations of despair; and all exhibiting a picture of human nature depraved and miserable.--While I was viewing this scene, I recalled the magnificent building we had just left, and my first emotions were those of regret and censure. When we only feel, and have not leisure to reflect, we are indignant that vast sums should be expended on sumptuous edifices, and that the poor should live in vice and want; yet the erection of St. Vaast must have maintained great numbers of industrious hands; and perhaps the revenues of the abbey may not, under its new possessors, be so well employed. When the offerings and the tributes to religion are the support of the industrious poor, it is their best appropriation; and he who gives labour for a day, is a more useful benefactor than he who maintains in idleness for two. --I could not help wishing that the poor might no longer be tempted by the facility of a resource, which perhaps, in most instances, only increases their distress.--It is an injudicious expedient to palliate an evil, which great national works, and the encouragement of industry and manufactures, might eradicate.* * In times of public commotion people frequently send their valuable effects to the Mont de Piete, not only as being secure by its strength, but as it is respected by the people, who are interested in its preservation. --With these reflections I concluded mental peace with the monks of St. Vaast, and would, had it depended upon me, have readily comprized the finishing their great church in the treaty. The Primary Assemblies have already taken place in this department. We happened to enter a church while the young Robespierre was haranguing to an audience, very little respectable either in numbers or appearance. They were, however, sufficiently unanimous, and made up in noisy applause what they wanted in other respects. If the electors and elected of other departments be of the same complexion with those of Arras, the new Assembly will not, in any respect, be preferable to the old one. I have reproached many of the people of this place, who, from their education and property, have a right to take an interest in the public affairs, with thus suffering themselves to be represented by the most desperate and worthless individuals of the town. Their defence is, that they are insulted and overpowered if they attend the popular meetings, and by electing _"les gueux et les scelerats pour deputes,"_* they send them to Paris, and secure their own local tranquillity. * The scrubs and scoundrels for deputies. --The first of these assertions is but too true, yet I cannot but think the second a very dangerous experiment. They remove these turbulent and needy adventurers from the direction of a club to that of government, and procure a partial relief by contributing to the general ruin. Paris is said to be in extreme fermentation, and we are in some anxiety for our friend M. P____, who was to go there from Montmorency last week. I shall not close my letter till I have heard from him. September 4. I resume my pen after a sleepless night, and with an oppression of mind not to be described. Paris is the scene of proscription and massacres. The prisoners, the clergy, the noblesse, all that are supposed inimical to public faction, or the objects of private revenge, are sacrificed without mercy. We are here in the utmost terror and consternation--we know not the end nor the extent of these horrors, and every one is anxious for himself or his friends. Our society consists mostly of females, and we do not venture out, but hover together like the fowls of heaven, when warned by a vague yet instinctive dread of the approaching storm. We tremble at the sound of voices in the street, and cry, with the agitation of Macbeth, "there's knocking at the gate." I do not indeed envy, but I most sincerely regret, the peace and safety of England.--I have no courage to add more, but will enclose a hasty translation of the letter we received from M. P____, by last night's post. Humanity cannot comment upon it without shuddering.--Ever Yours, &c. "Rue St. Honore, Sept. 2, 1792. "In a moment like this, I should be easily excused a breach of promise in not writing; yet when I recollect the apprehension which the kindness of my amiable friends will feel on my account, I determine, even amidst the danger and desolation that surround me, to relieve them.--Would to Heaven I had nothing more alarming to communicate than my own situation! I may indeed suffer by accident; but thousands of wretched victims are at this moment marked for sacrifice, and are massacred with an execrable imitation of rule and order: a ferocious and cruel multitude, headed by chosen assassins, are attacking the prisons, forcing the houses of the noblesse and priests, and, after a horrid mockery of judicial condemnation, execute them on the spot. The tocsin is rung, alarm guns are fired, the streets resound with fearful shrieks, and an undefinable sensation of terror seizes on one's heart. I feel that I have committed an imprudence in venturing to Paris; but the barriers are now shut, and I must abide the event. I know not to what these proscriptions tend, or if all who are not their advocates are to be their victims; but an ungovernable rage animates the people: many of them have papers in their hands that seem to direct them to their objects, to whom they hurry in crouds with an eager and savage fury.--I have just been obliged to quit my pen. A cart had stopped near my lodgings, and my ears were assailed by the groans of anguish, and the shouts of frantic exultation. Uncertain whether to descend or remain, I, after a moment's deliberation, concluded it would be better to have shown myself than to have appeared to avoid it, in case the people should enter the house, and therefore went down with the best show of courage I could assume.--I will draw a veil over the scene that presented itself--nature revolts, and my fair friends would shudder at the detail. Suffice it to say, that I saw cars, loaded with the dead and dying, and driven by their yet ensanguined murderers; one of whom, in a tone of exultation, cried, 'Here is a glorious day for France!' I endeavoured to assent, though with a faultering voice, and, as soon as they were passed escaped to my room. You may imagine I shall not easily recover the shock I received.--At this moment they say, the enemy are retreating from Verdun. At any other time this would have been desirable, but at present one knows not what to wish for. Most probably, the report is only spread with the humane hope of appeasing the mob. They have already twice attacked the Temple; and I tremble lest this asylum of fallen majesty should ere morning, be violated. "Adieu--I know not if the courier will be permitted to depart; but, as I believe the streets are not more unsafe than the houses, I shall make an attempt to send this. I will write again in a few days. If to-morrow should prove calm, I shall be engaged in enquiring after the fate of my friends.--I beg my respects to Mons. And Mad. de ____; and entreat you all to be as tranquil as such circumstances will permit.--You may be certain of hearing any news that can give you pleasure immediately. I have the honour to be," &c. &c. Arras, September, 1792. You will in future, I believe, find me but a dull correspondent. The natural timidity of my disposition, added to the dread which a native of England has of any violation of domestic security, renders me unfit for the scenes I am engaged in. I am become stupid and melancholy, and my letters will partake of the oppression of my mind. At Paris, the massacres at the prisons are now over, but those in the streets and in private houses still continue. Scarcely a post arrives that does not inform M. de ____ of some friend or acquaintance being sacrificed. Heaven knows where this is to end! We had, for two days, notice that, pursuant to a decree of the Assembly, commissioners were expected here at night, and that the tocsin would be rung for every body to deliver up their arms. We did not dare go to bed on either of these nights, but merely lay down in our robes de chambre, without attempting to sleep. This dreaded business is, however, past. Parties of the Jacobins paraded the streets yesterday morning, and disarmed all they thought proper. I observed they had lists in their hands, and only went to such houses as have an external appearance of property. Mr. de ____, who has been in the service thirty years, delivered his arms to a boy, who behaved to him with the utmost insolence, whilst we sat trembling and almost senseless with fear the whole time they remained in the house; and could I give you an idea of their appearance, you would think my terror very justifiable. It is, indeed, strange and alarming, that all who have property should be deprived of the means of defending either that or their lives, at a moment when Paris is giving an example of tumult and assassination to every other part of the kingdom. Knowing no good reason for such procedure, it is very natural to suspect a bad one.--I think, on many accounts, we are more exposed here than at ____, and as soon as we can procure horses we shall depart.--The following is the translation of our last letter from Mr. P____. "I promised my kind friends to write as soon as I should have any thing satisfactory to communicate: but, alas! I have no hope of being the harbinger of any thing but circumstances of a very different tendency. I can only give you details of the horrors I have already generally described. Carnage has not yet ceased; and is only become more cool and more discriminating. All the mild characteristics annihilated; and a frantic cruelty, which is dignified with the name of patriotism, has usurped ever faculty, and banished both reason and mercy. "Mons. ____, whom I have hitherto known by reputation, as an upright, and even humane man, had a brother shut up, with a number of other priests, at the Carmes; and, by his situation and connections, he has such influence as might, if exerted, have preserved the latter. The unfortunate brother knowing this, found means, while hourly expecting his fate, to convey a note to Mr. ____, begging he would immediately release, and procure him an asylum. The messenger returned with an answer, that Mons. ____ had no relations in the enemies of his country! "A few hours after, the massacres at the Carmes took place.--One Panis,* who is in the Comite de Surveillance, had, a few days previous to these dreadful events, become, I know not on what occasion, the depositary of a large sum of money belonging to a gentleman of his section. * Panis has since figured on various occasions. He is a member of the Convention, and was openly accused of having been an accomplice in the robbery of the Garde Meuble. "A secret and frivolous denunciation was made the pretext for throwing the owner of the money into prison, where he remained till September, when his friends, recollecting his danger, flew to the Committee and applied for his discharge. Unfortunately, the only member of the Committee present was Panis. He promised to take measures for an immediate release.--Perhaps he kept his word, but the release was cruel and final--the prison was attacked, and the victim heard of no more.--You will not be surprized at such occurrences when I tell you that G____,* whom you must remember to have heard of as a Jacobin at ____, is President of the Committee above mentioned--yes, an assassin is now the protector of the public safety, and the commune of Paris the patron of a criminal who has merited the gibbet. * G____ was afterwards elected (doubtless by a recommendation of the Jacobins) Deputy for the department of Finisterre, to which he was sent Commissioner by the Convention. On account of some unwarrantable proceedings, and of some words that escaped him, which gave rise to a suspicion that he was privy to the robbery of the Garde Meuble, he was arrested by the municipality of Quimper Corentin, of which place he is a native. The Jacobins applied for his discharge, and for the punishment of the municipality; but the Convention, who at that time rarely took any decisive measures, ordered G____ to be liberated, but evaded the other part of the petition which tended to revenge him. The affair of the Garde Meuble, was, however, again brought forward; but, most probably, many of the members had reasons for not discussing too nearly the accusation against G____; and those who were not interested in suppressing it, were too weak or too timid to pursue it farther. "--I know not if we are yet arrived at the climax of woe and iniquity, but Brissot, Condorcet, Rolland, &c. and all those whose principles you have reprobated as violent and dangerous, will now form the moderate side of the Assembly. Perhaps even those who are now the party most dreaded, may one day give place to yet more desperate leaders, and become in their turn our best alternative. What will then be the situation of France? Who can reflect without trembling at the prospect?--It is not yet safe to walk the streets decently dressed; and I have been obliged to supply myself with trowsers, a jacket, coloured neckcloths, and coarse linen, which I take care to soil before I venture out. "The Agrarian law is now the moral of Paris, and I had nearly lost my life yesterday by tearing a placard written in support of it. I did it imprudently, not supposing I was observed; and had not some people, known as Jacobins, come up and interfered in my behalf, the consequence might have been fatal.--It would be difficult, and even impossible, to attempt a description of the manners of the people of Paris at this moment: the licentiousness common to great cities is decency compared with what prevails in this; it has features of a peculiar and striking description, and the general expression is that of a monstrous union of opposite vices. Alternately dissolute and cruel, gay and vindictive, the Parisian vaunts amidst debauchery the triumph of assassination, and enlivens his midnight orgies by recounting the sufferings of the massacred aristocrates: women, whose profession it is to please, assume the _bonnet rouge_ [red cap], and affect, as a means of seduction, an intrepid and ferocious courage.--I cannot yet learn if Mons. S____'s sister be alive; her situation about the Queen makes it too doubtful; but endeavour to give him hope--many may have escaped whose fears still detain them in concealment. People of the first rank now inhabit garrets and cellars, and those who appear are disguised beyond recollection; so that I do not despair of the safety of some, who are now thought to have perished.-- I am, as you may suppose, in haste to leave this place, and I hope to return to Montmorency tomorrow; but every body is soliciting passports. The Hotel de Ville is besieged, and I have already attended two days without success.--I beg my respectful homage to Monsieur and Madame de ____; and I have the honour to be, with esteem, the affectionate servant of my friends in general. "L____." You will read M. L____'s letter with all the grief and indignation we have already felt, and I will make no comment on it, but to give you a slight sketch of the history of Guermeur, whom he mentions as being President of the Committee of Surveillance.--In the absence of a man, whom he called his friend, he seduced his wife, and eloped with her: the husband overtook them, and fell in the dispute which insued; when Guermeur, to avoid being taken by the officers of justice, abandoned his companion to her fate, and escaped alone. After a variety of adventures, he at length enlisted himself as a grenadier in the regiment of Dillon. With much assurance, and talents cultivated above the situation in which he appeared, he became popular amongst his fellow-soldiers, and the military impunity, which is one effect of the revolution, cast a veil over his former guilt, or rather indeed enabled him to defy the punishment annexed to it. When the regiment was quartered at ____, he frequented and harangued at the Jacobin club, perverted the minds of the soldiers by seditious addresses, till at length he was deemed qualified to quit the character of a subordinate incendiary, and figure amongst the assassins at Paris. He had hitherto, I believe, acted without pay, for he was deeply in debt, and without money or clothes; but a few days previous to the tenth of August, a leader of the Jacobins supplied him with both, paid his debts, procured his discharge, and sent him to Paris. What intermediate gradations he may have passed through, I know not; but it is not difficult to imagine the services that have advanced him to his present situation.--It would be unsafe to risk this letter by the post, and I close it hastily to avail myself of a present conveyance.--I remain, Yours, &c. Arras, September 14, 1792. The camp of Maulde is broken up, and we deferred our journey, that we might pass a day at Douay with M. de ____'s son. The road within some miles of that place is covered with corn and forage, the immediate environs are begun to be inundated, and every thing wears the appearance of impending hostility. The town is so full of troops, that without the interest of our military friends we should scarcely have procured a lodging. All was bustle and confusion, the enemy are very near, and the French are preparing to form a camp under the walls. Amidst all this, we found it difficult to satisfy our curiosity in viewing the churches and pictures: some of the former are shut, and the latter concealed; we therefore contented ourselves with seeing the principal ones. The town-house is a very handsome building, where the Parliament was holden previous to the revolution, and where all the business of the department of the North is now transacted.--In the council-chamber, which is very elegantly carved, was also a picture of the present King. They were, at the very moment of our entrance, in the act of displacing it. We asked the reason, and were told it was to be cut in pieces, and portions sent to the different popular societies.--I know not if our features betrayed the indignation we feared to express, but the man who seemed to have directed this disposal of the portrait, told us we were not English if we saw it with regret. I was not much delighted with such a compliment to our country, and was glad to escape without farther comment. The manners of the people seem every where much changed, and are becoming gross and inhuman. While we were walking on the ramparts, I happened to have occasion to take down an address, and with the paper and pencil in my hand turned out of the direct path to observe a chapel on one side of it. In a moment I was alarmed by the cries of my companions, and beheld the musquet of the centinel pointed at me, and M. de ____ expostulating with him. I am not certain if he supposed I was taking a plan of the fortifications, and meant really more than a threat; but I was sufficiently frightened, and shall not again approach a town wall with pencils and paper. M. de ____ is one of the only six officers of his regiment who have not emigrated. With an indignation heated by the works of modern philosophers into an enthusiastic love of republican governments, and irritated by the contempt and opposition he has met with from those of this own class who entertain different principles, he is now become almost a fanatic. What at first was only a political opinion is now a religious tenet; and the moderate sectary has acquired the obstinacy of a martyr, and, perhaps, the spirit of persecution. At the beginning of the revolution, the necessity of deciding, a youthful ardour for liberty, and the desire of preserving his fortune, probably determined him to become a patriot; and pride and resentment have given stability to notions which might otherwise have fluctuated with circumstances, or yielded to time. This is but too general the case: the friends of rational reform, and the supporters of the ancient monarchy, have too deeply offended each other for pardon or confidence; and the country perhaps will be sacrificed by the mutual desertions of those most concerned in its preservation. Actuated only by selfishness and revenge, each party willingly consents to the ruin of its opponents. The Clergy, already divided among themselves, are abandoned by the Noblesse--the Noblesse are persecuted by the commercial interest--and, in short, the only union is amongst the Jacobins; that is, amongst a few weak persons who are deceived, and a banditti who betray and profit by their "patriotism." I was led to these reflections by my conversation with Mr. de L____ and his companions. I believe they do not approve of the present extremes, yet they expressed themselves with the utmost virulence against the aristocrates, and would hear neither of reconcilement nor palliation. On the other hand, these dispositions were not altogether unprovoked--the young men had been persecuted by their relations, and banished the society of their acquaintance; and their political opinions had acted as an universal proscription. There were even some against whom the doors of the parental habitation were shut.--These party violences are terrible; and I was happy to perceive that the reciprocal claims of duty and affection were not diminished by them, either in M. de ____, or his son. He, however, at first refused to come to A____, because he suspected the patriotism of our society. I pleaded, as an inducement, the beauty of Mad. G____, but he told me she was an aristocrate. It was at length, however, determined, that he should dine with us last Sunday, and that all visitors should be excluded. He was prevented coming by being ordered out with a party the day we left him; and he has written to us in high spirits, to say, that, besides fulfilling his object, he had returned with fifty prisoners. We had a very narrow escape in coming home--the Hulans were at the village of ____, an hour after we passed through it, and treated the poor inhabitants, as they usually do, with great inhumanity.--Nothing has alienated the minds of the people so much as the cruelties of these troops--they plunder and ill treat all they encounter; and their avarice is even less insatiable than their barbarity. How hard is it, that the ambition of the Chiefs, and the wickedness of faction, should thus fall upon the innocent cottager, who perhaps is equally a stranger to the names of the one, and the principles of the other! The public papers will now inform you, that the French are at liberty to obtain a divorce on almost any pretext, or even on no pretext at all, except what many may think a very good one--mutual agreement. A lady of our acquaintance here is become a republican in consequence of the decree, and probably will very soon avail herself of it; but this conduct, I conceive, will not be very general. Much has been said of the gallantry of the French ladies, and not entirely without reason; yet, though sometimes inconstant wives, they are, for the most part, faithful friends--they sacrifice the husband without forsaking him, and their common interest is always promoted with as much zeal as the most inviolable attachment could inspire. Mad. de C____, whom we often meet in company, is the wife of an emigrant, and is said not to be absolutely disconsolate at his absence; yet she is indefatigable in her efforts to supply him with money: she even risks her safety by her solicitude, and has just now prevailed on her favourite admirer to hasten his departure for the frontiers, in order to convey a sum she has with much difficulty been raising. Such instances are, I believe, not very rare; and as a Frenchman usually prefers his interest to every thing else, and is not quite so unaccommodating as an Englishman, an amicable arrangement takes place, and one seldom hears of a separation. The inhabitants of Arras, with all their patriotism, are extremely averse from the assignats; and it is with great reluctance that they consent to receive them at two-thirds of their nominal value. This discredit of the paper money has been now two months at a stand, and its rise or fall will be determined by the success of the campaign.--I bid you adieu for the last time from hence. We have already exceeded the proposed length of our visit, and shall set out for St. Omer to-morrow.--Yours. St. Omer, September, 1792. I am confined to my room by a slight indisposition, and, instead of accompanying my friends, have taken up my pen to inform you that we are thus far safe on our journey.--Do not, because you are surrounded by a protecting element, smile at the idea of travelling forty or fifty miles in safety. The light troops of the Austrian army penetrate so far, that none of the roads on the frontier are entirely free from danger. My female companions were alarmed the whole day--the young for their baggage, and the old for themselves. The country between this and Arras has the appearance of a garden cultivated for the common use of its inhabitants, and has all the fertility and beauty of which a flat surface is susceptible. Bethune and Aire I should suppose strongly fortified. I did not fail, in passing through the former, to recollect with veneration the faithful minister of Henry the Fourth. The misfortunes of the descendant of Henry, whom Sully* loved, and the state of the kingdom he so much cherished, made a stronger impression on me than usual, and I mingled with the tribute of respect a sentiment of indignation. * Maximilien de Bethune, Duc de Sully. What perverse and malignant influence can have excited the people either to incur or to suffer their present situation? Were we not well acquainted with the arts of factions, the activity of bad men, and the effect of their union, I should be almost tempted to believe this change in the French supernatural. Less than three years ago, the name of Henri Quatre was not uttered without enthusiasm. The piece that transmitted the slightest anecdotes of his life was certain of success--the air that celebrated him was listened to with delight--and the decorations of beauty, when associated with the idea of this gallant Monarch, became more irresistible.* * At this time it was the prevailing fashion to call any new inventions of female dress after his name, and to decorate the ornamental parts of furniture with his resemblance. Yet Henry the Fourth is now a tyrant--his pictures and statues are destroyed, and his memory is execrated!--Those who have reduced the French to this are, doubtless, base and designing intriguers; yet I cannot acquit the people, who are thus wrought on, of unfeelingness and levity.--England has had its revolutions; but the names of Henry the Fifth and Elizabeth were still revered: and the regal monuments, which still exist, after all the vicissitudes of our political principles, attest the mildness of the English republicans. The last days of our stay at Arras were embittered by the distress of our neighbour and acquaintance, Madame de B____. She has lost two sons under circumstances so affecting, that I think you will be interested in the relation.--The two young men were in the army, and quartered at Perpignan, at a time when some effort of counter-revolution was said to be intended. One of them was arrested as being concerned, and the other surrendered himself prisoner to accompany his brother.--When the High Court at Orleans was instituted for trying state-prisoners, those of Perpignan were ordered to be conducted there, and the two B____'s, chained together, were taken with the rest. On their arrival at Orleans, their gaoler had mislaid the key that unlocked their fetters, and, not finding it immediately, the young men produced one, which answered the purpose, and released themselves. The gaoler looked at them with surprize, and asked why, with such a means in their power, they had not escaped in the night, or on the road. They replied, because they were not culpable, and had no reason for avoiding a trial that would manifest their innocence. Their heroism was fatal. They were brought, by a decree of the Convention, from Orleans to Versailles, (on their way to Paris,) where they were met by the mob, and massacred. Their unfortunate mother is yet ignorant of their fate; but we left her in a state little preferable to that which will be the effect of certainty. She saw the decree for transporting the prisoners from Orleans, and all accounts of the result have been carefully concealed from her; yet her anxious and enquiring looks at all who approach her, indicate but too well her suspicion of the truth.--Mons. de ____'s situation is indescribable. Informed of the death of his sons, he is yet obliged to conceal his sufferings, and wear an appearance of tranquillity in the presence of his wife. Sometimes he escapes, when unable to contain his emotions any longer, and remains at M. de ____'s till he recovers himself. He takes no notice of the subject of his grief, and we respect it too much to attempt to console him. The last time I asked him after Madame de ____, he told me her spirits were something better, and, added he, in a voice almost suffocated, "She is amusing herself with working neckcloths for her sons!"--When you reflect that the massacres at Paris took place on the second and third of September, and that the decree was passed to bring the prisoners from Orleans (where they were in safety) on the tenth, I can say nothing that will add to the horror of this transaction, or to your detestation of its cause. Sixty-two, mostly people of high rank, fell victims to this barbarous policy: they were brought in a fort of covered waggons, and were murdered in heaps without being taken out.* * Perhaps the reader will be pleased at a discovery, which it would have been unsafe to mention when made, or in the course of this correspondence. The two young men here alluded to arrived at Versailles, chained together, with their fellow-prisoners. Surprize, perhaps admiration, had diverted the gaoler's attention from demanding the key that opened their padlock, and it was still in their possession. On entering Versailles, and observing the crowd preparing to attack them, they divested themselves of their fetters, and of every other incumbrance. In a few moments their carriages were surrounded, their companions at one end were already murdered, and themselves slightly wounded; but the confusion increasing, they darted amidst the croud, and were in a moment undistinguishable. They were afterwards taken under the protection of an humane magistrate, who concealed them for some time, and they are now in perfect security. They were the only two of the whole number that escaped. September, 1792. We passed a country so barren and uninteresting yesterday, that even a professional traveller could not have made a single page of it. It was, in every thing, a perfect contrast to the rich plains of Artois-- unfertile, neglected vallies and hills, miserable farms, still more miserable cottages, and scarcely any appearance of population. The only place where we could refresh the horses was a small house, over the door of which was the pompous designation of Hotel d'Angleterre. I know not if this be intended as a ridicule on our country, or as an attraction to our countrymen, but I, however, found something besides the appellation which reminded me of England, and which one does not often find in houses of a better outside; for though the rooms were small, and only two in number, they were very clean, and the hostess was neat and civil. The Hotel d'Angleterre, indeed, was not luxuriously supplied, and the whole of our repast was eggs and tea, which we had brought with us.--In the next room to that we occupied were two prisoners chained, whom the officers were conveying to Arras, for the purpose of better security. The secret history of this business is worth relating, as it marks the character of the moment, and the ascendancy which the Jacobins are daily acquiring. These men were apprehended as smugglers, under circumstances of peculiar atrocity, and committed to the gaol at ____. A few days after, a young girl, of bad character, who has much influence at the club, made a motion, that the people, in a body, should demand the release of the prisoners. The motion was carried, and the Hotel de Ville assailed by a formidable troop of sailors, fish-women, &c.--The municipality refused to comply, the Garde Nationale was called out, and, on the mob persisting, fired over their heads, wounded a few, and the rest dispersed of themselves.--Now you must understand, the latent motive of all this was two thousand livres promised to one of the Jacobin leaders, if he succeeded in procuring the men their liberty.--I do not advance this merely on conjecture. The fact is well known to the municipality; and the decent part of it would willingly have expelled this man, who is one of their members, but that they found themselves too weak to engage in a serious quarrel with the Jacobins.--One cannot reflect, without apprehension, that any society should exist which can oppose the execution of the laws with impunity, or that a people, who are little sensible of realities, should be thus abused by names. They suffer, with unfeeling patience, a thousand enormities--yet blindly risk their liberties and lives to promote the designs of an adventurer, because he harangues at a club, and calls himself a patriot.--I have just received advice that my friends have left Lausanne, and are on their way to Paris. Our first plan of passing the winter there will be imprudent, if not impracticable, and we have concluded to take a house for the winter six months at Amiens, Chantilly, or some place which has the reputation of being quiet. I have already ordered enquiries to be made, and shall set out with Mrs. ____ in a day or two for Amiens. I may, perhaps, not write till our return; but shall not cease to be, with great truth.--Yours, &c. Amiens, 1792. The departement de la Somme has the reputation of being a little aristocratic. I know not how far this be merited, but the people are certainly not enthusiasts. The villages we passed on our road hither were very different from those on the frontiers--we were hailed by no popular sounds, no cries of Vive la nation! except from here and there some ragged boy in a red cap, who, from habit, associated this salutation with the appearance of a carriage. In every place where there are half a dozen houses is planted an unthriving tree of liberty, which seems to wither under the baneful influence of the _bonnet rouge_. [The red cap.] This Jacobin attribute is made of materials to resist the weather, and may last some time; but the trees of liberty, being planted unseasonably, are already dead. I hope this will not prove emblematic, and that the power of the Jacobins may not outlive the freedom of the people. The Convention begin their labours under disagreeable auspices. A general terror seems to have seized on the Parisians, the roads are covered with carriages, and the inns filled with travellers. A new regulation has just taken place, apparently intended to check this restless spirit. At Abbeville, though we arrived late and were fatigued, we were taken to the municipality, our passports collated with our persons, and at the inn we were obliged to insert in a book our names, the place of our birth, from whence we came, and where we were going. This, you will say, has more the features of a mature Inquisition, than a new-born Republic; but the French have different notions of liberty from yours, and take these things very quietly.--At Flixecourt we eat out of pewter spoons, and the people told us, with much inquietude, that they had sold their plate, in expectation of a decree of the Convention to take it from them. This decree, however, has not passed, but the alarm is universal, and does not imply any great confidence in the new government. I have had much difficulty in executing my commission, and have at last fixed upon a house, of which I fear my friends will not approve; but the panic which depopulates Paris, the bombardment of Lisle, and the tranquillity which has hitherto prevailed here, has filled the town, and rendered every kind of habitation scarce, and extravagantly dear: for you must remark, that though the Amienois are all aristocrates, yet when an intimidated sufferer of the same party flies from Paris, and seeks an asylum amongst them, they calculate with much exactitude what they suppose necessity may compel him to give, and will not take a livre less.--The rent of houses and lodgings, like the national funds, rises and falls with the public distresses, and, like them, is an object of speculation: several persons to whom we were addressed were extremely indifferent about letting their houses, alledging as a reason, that if the disorders of Paris should increase, they had no doubt of letting them to much greater advantage. We were at the theatre last night--it was opened for the first time since France has been declared a republic, and the Jacobins vociferated loudly to have the fleur de lys, ad other regal emblems, effaced. Obedience was no sooner promised to this command, than it was succeeded by another not quite so easily complied with--they insisted on having the Marsellois Hymn sung. In vain did the manager, with a ludicrous sort of terror, declare, that there were none of his company who had any voice, or who knew either the words of the music of the hymn in question. _"C'est egal, il faut chanter,"_ ["No matter for that, they must sing."] resounded from all the patriots in the house. At last, finding the thing impossible, they agreed to a compromise; and one of the actors promised to sing it on the morrow, as well as the trifling impediment of having no voice would permit him.--You think your galleries despotic when they call for an epilogue that is forgotten, and the actress who should speak it is undrest; or when they insist upon enlivening the last acts of Jane Shore with Roast Beef! What would you think if they would not dispense with a hornpipe on the tight-rope by Mrs. Webb? Yet, bating the danger, I assure you, the audience of Amiens was equally unreasonable. But liberty at present seems to be in an undefined state; and until our rulers shall have determined what it is, the matter will continue to be settled as it is now--by each man usurping as large a portion of tyranny as his situation will admit of. He who submits without repining to his district, to his municipality, or even to the club, domineers at the theatre, or exercises in the street a manual censure on aristocratic apparel.* *It was common at this time to insult women in the streets if dressed too well, or in colours the people chose to call aristocratic. I was myself nearly thrown down for having on a straw bonnet with green ribbons. Our embarrassment for small change is renewed: many of the communes who had issued bills of five, ten, and fifteen sols, repayable in assignats, are become bankrupts, which circumstance has thrown such a discredit on all this kind of nominal money, that the bills of one town will not pass at another. The original creation of these bills was so limited, that no town had half the number requisite for the circulation of its neighbourhood; and this decrease, with the distrust that arises from the occasion of it, greatly adds to the general inconvenience. The retreat of the Prussian army excites more surprize than interest, and the people talk of it with as much indifference as they would of an event that had happened beyond the Ganges. The siege of Lisle takes off all attention from the relief of Thionville--not on account of its importance, but on account of its novelty.--I remain, Yours, &c. Abbeville, September, 1792. We left Amiens early yesterday morning, but were so much delayed by the number of volunteers on the road, that it was late before we reached Abbeville. I was at first somewhat alarmed at finding ourselves surrounded by so formidable a cortege; they however only exacted a declaration of our political principles, and we purchased our safety by a few smiles, and exclamations of vive la nation! There were some hundreds of these recruits much under twenty; but the poor fellows, exhilarated by their new uniform and large pay, were going gaily to decide their fate by that hazard which puts youth and age on a level, and scatters with indiscriminating hand the cypress and the laurel. At Abbeville all the former precautions were renewed--we underwent another solemn identification of our persons at the Hotel de Ville, and an abstract of our history was again enregistered at the inn. One would really suppose that the town was under apprehensions of a siege, or, at least, of the plague. My "paper face" was examined as suspiciously as though I had had the appearance of a travestied Achilles; and M____'s, which has as little expression as a Chinese painting, was elaborately scrutinized by a Dogberry in spectacles, who, perhaps, fancied she had the features of a female Machiavel. All this was done with an air of importance sufficiently ludicrous, when contrasted with the object; but we met with no incivility, and had nothing to complain of but a little additional fatigue, and the delay of our dinner. We stopped to change horses at Bernay, and I soon perceived our landlady was a very ardent patriot. In a room, to which we waded at great risk of our clothes, was a representation of the siege of the Bastille, and prints of half a dozen American Generals, headed by Mr. Thomas Paine. On descending, we found out hostess exhibiting a still more forcible picture of curiosity than Shakspeare's blacksmith. The half-demolished repast was cooling on the table, whilst our postilion retailed the Gazette, and the pigs and ducks were amicably grazing together on whatever the kitchen produced. The affairs of the Prussians and Austrians were discussed with entire unanimity, but when these politicians, as is often the case, came to adjust their own particular account, the conference was much less harmonious. The postilion offered a ten sols billet, which the landlady refused: one persisted in its validity, the other in rejecting it--till, at last, the patriotism of neither could endure this proof, and peace was concluded by a joint execration of those who invented this fichu papier-- "Sorry paper." At ____ we met our friend, Mad. de ____, with part of her family and an immense quantity of baggage. I was both surprized and alarmed at such an apparition, and found, on enquiry, that they thought themselves unsafe at Arras, and were going to reside near M. de ____'s estate, where they were better known. I really began to doubt the prudence of our establishing ourselves here for the winter. Every one who has it in his power endeavours to emigrate, even those who till now have been zealous supporters of the revolution.--Distrust and apprehension seem to have taken possession of every mind. Those who are in towns fly to the country, while the inhabitant of the isolated chateau takes refuge in the neighbouring town. Flocks of both aristocrates and patriots are trembling and fluttering at the foreboding storm, yet prefer to abide its fury, rather than seek shelter and defence together. I, however, flatter myself, that the new government will not justify this fear; and as I am certain my friends will not return to England at this season, I shall not endeavour to intimidate or discourage them from their present arrangement. We shall, at least, be enabled to form some idea of a republican constitution, and I do not, on reflection, conceive that any possible harm can happen to us. October, 1792. I shall not date from this place again, intending to quit it as soon as possible. It is disturbed by the crouds from the camps, which are broken up, and the soldiers are extremely brutal and insolent. So much are the people already familiarized with the unnatural depravity of manners that begins to prevail, that the wife of the Colonel of a battalion now here walks the streets in a red cap, with pistols at her girdle, boasting of the numbers she has destroyed at the massacres in August and September. The Convention talk of the King's trial as a decided measure; yet no one seems to admit even the possibility that such an act can be ever intended. A few believe him culpable, many think him misled, and many acquit him totally: but all agree, that any violation of his person would be an atrocity disgraceful to the nation at large.--The fate of Princes is often disastrous in proportion to their virtues. The vanity, selfishness, and bigotry of Louis the Fourteenth were flattered while he lived, and procured him the appellation of Great after his death. The greatest military talents that France has given birth to seemed created to earn laurels, not for themselves, but for the brow of that vain-glorious Monarch. Industry and Science toiled but for his gratification, and Genius, forgetting its dignity, willingly received from his award the same it has since bestowed. Louis the Fifteenth, who corrupted the people by his example, and ruined them by his expence, knew no diminution of the loyalty, whatever he might of the affection, of his people, and ended his days in the practice of the same vices, and surrounded by the same luxury, in which he had passed them. Louis the Sixteenth, to whom scarcely his enemies ascribe any vices, for its outrages against whom faction finds no excuse but in the facility of his nature--whose devotion is at once exemplary and tolerant--who, in an age of licentiousness, is remarkable for the simplicity of his manners-- whose amusements were liberal or inoffensive--and whose concessions to his people form a striking contrast with the exactions of his predecessors.--Yes, the Monarch I have been describing, and, I think, not partially, has been overwhelmed with sorrow and indignities--his person has been degraded, that he might be despoiled of his crown, and perhaps the sacrifice of his crown may be followed by that of his life. When we thus see the punishment of guilt accumulated on the head of him who has not participated in it, and vice triumph in the security that should seem the lot of innocence, we can only adduce new motives to fortify ourselves in this great truth of our religion--that the chastisement of the one, and reward of the other, must be looked for beyond the inflictions or enjoyments of our present existence. I do not often moralize on paper, but there are moments when one derives one's best consolation from so moralizing; and this easy and simple justification of Providence, which refers all that appears inconsistent here to the retribution of a future state, is pointed out less as the duty than the happiness of mankind. This single argument of religion solves every difficulty, and leaves the mind in fortitude and peace; whilst the pride of sceptical philosophy traces whole volumes, only to establish the doubts, and nourish the despair, of its disciples. Adieu. I cannot conclude better than with these reflections, at a time when disbelief is something too fashionable even amongst our countrymen.--Yours, &c. Amiens, October, 1792. I arrived here the day on which a ball was given to celebrate the return of the volunteers who had gone to the assistance of Lisle.* *The bombardment of Lisle commenced on the twenty-ninth of September, at three o'clock in the afternoon, and continued, almost without interruption, until the sixth of October. Many of the public buildings, and whole quarters of the town, were so much damaged or destroyed, that the situation of the streets were scarcely distinguishable. The houses which the fire obliged their inhabitants to abandon, were pillaged by barbarians, more merciless than the Austrians themselves. Yet, amidst these accumulated horrors, the Lillois not only preserved their courage, but their presence of mind: the rich incited and encouraged the poor; those who were unable to assist with their labour, rewarded with their wealth: the men were employed in endeavouring to extinguish the fire of the buildings, or in preserving their effects; while women and children snatched the opportunity of extinguishing the fuzes of the bombs as soon as they fell, at which they became very daring and dexterous. During the whole of this dreadful period, not one murmur, not one proposition to surrender, was heard from any party. --The Convention decreed, amidst the wildest enthusiasm of applause, that Lisle had deserved well of the country. --Forty-two thousand five hundred balls were fired, and the damages were estimated at forty millions of livres. The French, indeed, never refuse to rejoice when they are ordered; but as these festivities are not spontaneous effusions, but official ordinances, and regulated with the same method as a tax or recruitment, they are of course languid and uninteresting. The whole of their hilarity seems to consist in the movement of the dance, in which they are by not means animated; and I have seen, even among the common people, a cotillion performed as gravely and as mechanically as the ceremonies of a Chinese court.--I have always thought, with Sterne, that we were mistaken in supposing the French a gay nation. It is true, they laugh much, have great gesticulation, and are extravagantly fond of dancing: but the laugh is the effect of habit, and not of a risible sensation; the gesture is not the agitation of the mind operating upon the body, but constitutional volatility; and their love of dancing is merely the effect of a happy climate, (which, though mild, does not enervate,) and that love of action which usually accompanies mental vacancy, when it is not counteracted by heat, or other physical causes. I know such an opinion, if publicly avowed, would be combated as false and singular; yet I appeal to those who have at all studied the French character, not as travellers, but by a residence amongst them, for the support of my opinion. Every one who understands the language, and has mixed much in society, must have made the same observations.--See two Frenchmen at a distance, and the vehemence of their action, and the expression of their features, shall make you conclude they are discussing some subject, which not only interests, but delights them. Enquire, and you will find they were talking of the weather, or the price of a waistcoat!--In England you would be tempted to call in a peace-officer at the loud tone and menacing attitudes with which two people here very amicably adjust a bargain for five livres.--In short, we mistake that for a mental quality which, in fact, is but a corporeal one; and, though the French may have many good and agreeable points of character, I do not include gaiety among the number. I doubt very much of my friends will approve of their habitation. I confess I am by no means satisfied with it myself; and, with regard to pecuniary consideration, my engagement is not an advantageous one. --Madame Dorval, of whom I have taken the house, is a character very common in France, and over which I was little calculated to have the ascendant. Officiously polite in her manners, and inflexibly attentive to her interest, she seemingly acquiesces in every thing you propose. You would even fancy she was solicitous to serve you; yet, after a thousand gracious sentiments, and as many implied eulogiums on her liberality and generosity, you find her return, with unrelenting perseverance, to some paltry proposition, by which she is to gain a few livres; and all this so civilly, so sentimentally, and so determinedly, that you find yourself obliged to yield, and are duped without being deceived. The lower class have here, as well as on your side of the water, the custom of attributing to Ministers and Governments some connection with, or controul over, the operations of nature. I remarked to a woman who brings me fruit, that the grapes were bad and dear this year--_"Ah! mon Dieu, oui, ils ne murrissent pas. Il me semble que tout va mal depuis qu'on a invente la nation."_ ["Ah! Lord, they don't ripen now.--For my part, I think nothing has gone well since the nation was first invented."] I cannot, like the imitators of Sterne, translate a chapter of sentiment from every incident that occurs, or from every physiognomy I encounter; yet, in circumstances like the present, the mind, not usually observing, is tempted to comment.--I was in a milliner's shop to-day, and took notice on my entering, that its mistress was, whilst at her work, learning the _Marseillois_ Hymn. [A patriotic air, at this time highly popular.] Before I had concluded my purchase, an officer came in to prepare her for the reception of four volunteers, whom she was to lodge the two ensuing nights. She assented, indeed, very graciously, (for a French woman never loses the command of her features,) but a moment after, the Marseillois, which lay on the counter, was thrown aside in a pet, and I dare say she will not resume her patriotic taste, nor be reconciled to the revolution, until some days after the volunteers shall have changed their quarters. This quartering of troops in private houses appears to me the most grievous and impolitic of all taxes; it adds embarrassment to expence, invades domestic comfort, and conveys such an idea of military subjection, that I wonder any people ever submits to it, or any government ever ventures to impose it. I know not if the English are conscious of their own importance at this moment, but it is certain they are the centre of the hopes and fears of all parties, I might say of all Europe. The aristocrates wait with anxiety and solicitude a declaration of war, whilst their opponents regard such an event as pregnant with distress, and even as the signal of their ruin. The body of the people of both parties are averse from increasing the number of their enemies; but as the Convention may be directed by other motives than the public wish, it is impossible to form any conclusion on the subject. I am, of course, desirous of peace, and should be so from selfishness, if I were not from philanthropy, as a cessation of it at this time would disconcert all our plans, and oblige us to seek refuge at ____, which has just all that is necessary for our happiness, except what is most desirable--a mild and dry atmosphere.-- Yours, &c. Amiens, November, 1792. The arrival of my friends has occasioned a short suspension of my correspondence: but though I have been negligent, I assure you, my dear brother, I have not been forgetful; and this temporary preference of the ties of friendship to those of nature, will be excused, when you consider our long separation. My intimacy with Mrs. D____ began when I first came to this country, and at every subsequent visit to the continent it has been renewed and increased into that rational kind of attachment, which your sex seldom allow in ours, though you yourselves do not abound in examples of it. Mrs. D____ is one of those characters which are oftener loved than admired--more agreeable than handsome--good-natured, humane, and unassuming--and with no mental pretensions beyond common sense tolerably well cultivated. The shades of this portraiture are an extreme of delicacy, bordering on fastidiousness--a trifle of hauteur, not in manners, but disposition--and, perhaps, a tincture of affectation. These foibles are, however, in a great degree, constitutional: she is more an invalid than myself; and ill health naturally increases irritability, and renders the mind less disposed to bear with inconveniencies; we avoid company at first, through a sense of our infirmities, till this timidity becomes habitual, and settles almost into aversion.--The valetudinarian, who is obliged to fly the world, in time fancies herself above it, and ends by supposing there is some superiority in differing from other people. Mr. D____ is one of the best men existing--well bred and well informed; yet, without its appearing to the common observer, he is of a very singular and original turn of mind. He is most exceedingly nervous, and this effect of his physical construction has rendered him so susceptible, that he is continually agitated and hurt by circumstances which others pass by unnoticed. In other respects he is a great lover of exercise, fond of domestic life, reads much, and has an aversion from bustle of all kind. The banishment of the Priests, which in many instances was attended with circumstances of peculiar atrocity, has not yet produced those effects which were expected from it, and which the promoters of the measure employed as a pretext for its adoption. There are indeed now no masses said but by the Constitutional Clergy; but as the people are usually as ingenious in evading laws as legislators are in forming them, many persons, instead of attending the churches, which they think profaned by priests who have taken the oaths, flock to church-yards, chapels, or other places, once appropriated to religious worship, but in disuse since the revolution, and of course not violated by constitutional masses. The cemetery of St. Denis, at Amiens, though large, is on Sundays and holidays so crouded, that it is almost difficult to enter it. Here the devotees flock in all weathers, say their mass, and return with the double satisfaction of having preserved their allegiance to the Pope, and risked persecution in a cause they deem meritorious. To say truth, it is not very surprizing that numbers should be prejudiced against the constitutional clergy. Many of them are, I doubt not, liberal and well-meaning men, who have preferred peace and submission to theological warfare, and who might not think themselves justified in opposing their opinion to a national decision: yet are there also many of profligate lives, who were never educated for the profession, and whom the circumstances of the times have tempted to embrace it as a trade, which offered subsistence without labour, and influence without wealth, and which at once supplied a veil for licentiousness, and the means of practising it. Such pastors, it must be confessed, have little claim to the confidence or respect of the people; and that there are such, I do not assert, but on the most credible information. I will only cite two instances out of many within my own knowledge. P____n, bishop of St. Omer, was originally a priest of Arras, of vicious character, and many of his ordinations have been such as might be expected from such a patron.--A man of Arras, who was only known for his vicious pursuits, and who had the reputation of having accelerated the death of his wife by ill treatment, applied to P____n to marry him a second time. The good Bishop, preferring the interest of his friend to the salvation of his flock, advised him to relinquish the project of taking a wife, and offered to give him a cure. The proposal was accepted on the spot, and this pious associate of the Reverend P____n was immediately invested with the direction of the consciences, and the care of the morals, of an extensive parish. Acts of this nature, it is to be imagined, were pursued by censure and ridicule; but the latter was not often more successful than on the following occasion:--Two young men, whose persons were unknown to the bishop, one day procured an audience, and requested he would recommend them to some employment that would procure them the means of subsistence. This was just a time when the numerous vacancies that had taken place were not yet supplied, and many livings were unfilled for want of candidates. The Bishop, who was unwilling that the nonjuring priests should have the triumph of seeing their benefices remain vacant, fell into the snare, and proposed their taking orders. The young men expressed their joy at the offer; but, after looking confusedly on each other, with some difficulty and diffidence, confessed their lives had been such as to preclude them from the profession, which, but for this impediment, would have satisfied them beyond their hopes. The Bishop very complaisantly endeavoured to obviate thesse objections, while they continued to accuse themselves of all the sins in the decalogue; but the Prelate at length observing he had ordained many worse, the young men smiled contemptuously, and, turning on their heels, replied, that if priests were made of worse men than they had described themselves to be, they begged to be excused from associating with such company. Dumouriez, Custine, Biron, Dillon, &c. are doing wonders, in spite of the season; but the laurel is an ever-green, and these heroes gather it equally among the snows of the Alps, and the fogs of Belgium. If we may credit the French papers too, what they call the cause of liberty is not less successfully propagated by the pen than the sword. England is said to be on the eve of a revolution, and all its inhabitants, except the King and Mr. Pitt, become Jacobins. If I did not believe "the wish was father to the thought," I should read these assertions with much inquietude, as I have not yet discovered the excellencies of a republican form of government sufficiently to make me wish it substituted for our own.--It should seem that the Temple of Liberty, as well as the Temple of Virtue, is placed on an ascent, and that as many inflexions and retrogradations occur in endeavouring to attain it. In the ardour of reaching these difficult acclivities, a fall sometimes leaves us lower than the situation we first set out from; or, to speak without a figure, so much power is exercised by our leaders, and so much submission exacted from the people, that the French are in danger of becoming habituated to a despotism which almost sanctifies the errors of their ancient monarchy, while they suppose themselves in the pursuit of a degree of freedom more sublime and more absolute than has been enjoyed by any other nation.-- Attempts at political as well as moral perfection, when carried beyond the limits compatible with a social state, or the weakness of our natures, are likely to end in a depravity which moderate governments and rational ethics would have prevented. The debates of the Convention are violent and acrimonious. Robespierre has been accused of aspiring to the Dictatorship, and his defence was by no means calculated to exonerate him from the charge. All the chiefs reproach each other with being the authors of the late massacres, and each succeeds better in fixing the imputation on his neighbour, than in removing it from himself. General reprobation, personal invectives, and long speeches, are not wanting; but every thing which tends to examination and enquiry is treated with much more delicacy and composure: so that I fear these first legislators of the republic must, for the present, be content with the reputation they have assigned each other, and rank amongst those who have all the guilt, but want the courage, of assassins. I subjoin an extract from a newspaper, which has lately appeared.* *Extract from _The Courier de l'Egalite,_ November, 1792: "There are discontented people who still venture to obtrude their sentiments on the public. One of them, in a public print, thus expresses himself-- 'I assert, that the newspapers are sold and devoted to falsehood. At this price they purchase the liberty of appearing; and the exclusive privilege they enjoy, as well as the contradictory and lying assertions they all contain, prove the truth of what I advance. They are all preachers of liberty, yet never was liberty so shamefully outraged--of respect for property, and property was at no time so little held sacred--of personal security, yet when were there committed so many massacres? and, at the very moment I am writing, new ones are premeditated. They call vehemently for submission, and obedience to the laws, but the laws had never less influence; and while our compliance with such as we are even ignorant of is exacted, it is accounted a crime to execute those in force. Every municipality has its own arbitrary code--every battalion, every private soldier, exercises a sovereignty, a most absolute despotism; and yet the Gazettes do not cease to boast the excellence of such a government. They have, one and all, attributed the massacres of the tenth of August and the second of September, and the days following each, to a popular fermentation. The monsters! they have been careful not to tell us, that each of these horrid scenes (at the prisons, at La Force, at the Abbaye, &c. &c.) was presided by municipal officers in their scarfs, who pointed out the victims, and gave the signal for the assassination. It was (continue the Journals) the error of an irritated people--and yet their magistrates were at the head of it: it was a momentary error; yet this error of a moment continued during six whole days of the coolest reflection--it was only at the close of the seventh that Petion made his appearance, and affected to persuade the people to desist. The assassins left off only from fatigue, and at this moment they are preparing to begin again. The Journals do not tell us that the chief of these _Scelerats_ [We have no term in the English language that conveys an adequate meaning for this word--it seems to express the extreme of human wickedness and atrocity.] employed subordinate assassins, whom they caused to be clandestinely murdered in their turn, as though they hoped to destroy the proof of their crime, and escape the vengeance that awaits them. But the people themselves were accomplices in the deed, for the Garde Nationale gave their assistance,'" &c. &c. In spite of the murder of so many journalists, and the destruction of the printing-offices, it treats the September business so freely, that the editor will doubtless soon be silenced. Admitting these accusations to be unfounded, what ideas must the people have of their magistrates, when they are credited? It is the prepossession of the hearer that gives authenticity to fiction; and such atrocities would neither be imputed to, nor believed of, men not already bad.--Yours, &c. December, 1792. Dear Brother, All the public prints still continue strongly to insinuate, that England is prepared for an insurrection, and Scotland already in actual rebellion: but I know the character of our countrymen too well to be persuaded that they have adopted new principles as easily as they would adopt a new mode, or that the visionary anarchists of the French government can have made many proselytes among an humane and rational people. For many years we were content to let France remain the arbitress of the lighter departments of taste: lately she has ceded this province to us, and England has dictated with uncontested superiority. This I cannot think very strange; for the eye in time becomes fatigued by elaborate finery, and requires only the introduction of simple elegance to be attracted by it. But if, while we export fashions to this country, we should receive in exchange her republican systems, it would be a strange revolution indeed; and I think, in such a commerce, we should be far from finding the balance in our favour. I have, in fact, little solicitude about these diurnal falsehoods, though I am not altogether free from alarm as to their tendency. I cannot help suspecting it is to influence the people to a belief that such dispositions exist in England as preclude the danger of a war, in case it should be thought necessary to sacrifice the King. I am more confirmed in this opinion, from the recent discovery, with the circumstances attending it, of a secret iron chest at the Tuilleries. The man who had been employed to construct this recess, informs the minister, Rolland; who, instead of communicating the matter to the Convention, as it was very natural he should do on an occasion of so much importance, and requiring it to be opened in the presence of proper witnesses, goes privately himself, takes the papers found into his own possession, and then makes an application for a committee to examine them. Under these suspicious and mysterious appearances, we are told that many letters, &c. are found, which inculpate the King; and perhaps the fate of this unfortunate Monarch is to be decided by evidence not admissible with justice in the case of the obscurest malefactor. Yet Rolland is the hero of a party who call him, par excellence, the virtuous Rolland! Perhaps you will think, with me, that this epithet is misapplied to a man who has risen, from an obscure situation to that of first Minister, without being possessed of talents of that brilliant or prominent class which sometimes force themselves into notice, without the aid of wealth or the support of patronage. Rolland was inspector of manufactories in this place, and afterwards at Lyons; and I do not go too far in advancing, that a man of very rigid virtue could not, from such a station, have attained so suddenly the one he now possesses. Virtue is of an unvarying and inflexible nature: it disdains as much to be the flatterer of mobs, as the adulator of Princes: yet how often must he, who rises so far above his equals, have stooped below them? How often must he have sacrificed both his reason and his principles? How often have yielded to the little, and opposed the great, not from conviction, but interest? For in this the meanest of mankind resemble the most exalted; he bestows not his confidence on him who resists his will, nor subscribes to the advancement of one whom he does not hope to influence.--I may almost venture to add, that more dissimulation, meaner concessions, and more tortuous policy, are requisite to become the idol of the people, than are practised to acquire and preserve the favour of the most potent Monarch in Europe. The French, however, do not argue in this manner, and Rolland is at present very popular, and his popularity is said to be greatly supported by the literary talents of his wife. I know not if you rightly understand these party distinctions among a set of men whom you must regard as united in the common cause of establishing a republic in France, but you have sometimes had occasion to remark in England, that many may amicably concur in the accomplishment of a work, who differ extremely about the participation of its advantages; and this is already the case with the Convention. Those who at present possess all the power, and are infinitely the strongest, are wits, moralists, and philosophers by profession, having Brissot, Rolland, Petion, Concorcet, &c. at their head; their opponents are adventurers of a more desperate cast, who make up by violence what they want in numbers, and are led by Robespierre, Danton, Chabot, &c. &c. The only distinction of these parties is, I believe, that the first are vain and systematical hypocrites, who have originally corrupted the minds of the people by visionary and insidious doctrines, and now maintain their superiority by artifice and intrigue: their opponents, equally wicked, and more daring, justify that turpitude which the others seek to disguise, and appear almost as bad as they are. The credulous people are duped by both; while the cunning of the one, and the vehemence of the other, alternately prevail.--But something too much of politics, as my design is in general rather to mark their effect on the people, than to enter on more immediate discussions. Having been at the Criminal Tribunal to-day, I now recollect that I have never yet described to you the costume of the French Judges.--Perhaps when I have before had occasion to speak of it, your imagination may have glided to Westminster Hall, and depicted to you the scarlet robes and voluminous wigs of its respectable magistrates: but if you would form an idea of a magistrate here, you must bring your mind to the abstraction of Crambo, and figure to yourself a Judge without either gown, wig, or any of those venerable appendages. Nothing indeed can be more becoming or gallant, than this judicial accoutrement--it is black, with a silk cloak of the same colour, in the Spanish form, and a round hat, turned up before, with a large plume of black feathers. This, when the magistrate happens to be young, has a very theatrical and romantic appearance; but when it is worn by a figure a little Esopian, or with a large bushy perriwig, as I have sometimes seen it, the effect is still less awful; and a stranger, on seeing such an apparition in the street, is tempted to suppose it a period of jubilee, and that the inhabitants are in masquerade. It is now the custom for all people to address each other by the appellation of Citizen; and whether you are a citizen or not--whether you inhabit Paris, or are a native of Peru--still it is an indication of aristocracy, either to exact, or to use, any other title. This is all congruous with the system of the day: the abuses are real, the reform is imaginary. The people are flattered with sounds, while they are losing in essentials. And the permission to apply the appellation of Citizen to its members, is but a poor compensation for the despotism of a department or a municipality. In vain are the people flattered with a chimerical equality--it cannot exist in a civilized state, and if it could exist any where, it would not be in France. The French are habituated to subordination--they naturally look up to something superior--and when one class is degraded, it is only to give place to another. --The pride of the noblesse is succeeded by the pride of the merchant-- the influence of wealth is again realized by cheap purchases of the national domains--the abandoned abbey becomes the delight of the opulent trader, and replaces the demolished chateau of the feudal institution. Full of the importance which the commercial interest is to acquire under a republic, the wealthy man of business is easily reconciled to the oppression of the superior classes, and enjoys, with great dignity, his new elevation. The counting-house of a manufacturer of woollen cloth is as inaccessible as the boudoir of a Marquis; while the flowered brocade gown and well-powdered curls of the former offer a much more imposing exterior than the chintz robe de chambre and dishevelled locks of the more affable man of fashion. I have read, in some French author, a maxim to this effect:--"Act with your friends as though they should one day be your enemies;" and the existing government seems amply to have profited by the admonition of their country-man: for notwithstanding they affirm, that all France supports, and all England admires them, this does not prevent their exercising a most vigilant inquisition over the inhabitants of both countries.--It is already sagaciously hinted, that Mr. Thomas Paine may be a spy, and every householder who receives a lodger or visitor, and every proprietor who lets a house, is obliged to register the names of those he entertains, or who are his tenants, and to become responsible for their conduct. This is done at the municipality, and all who thus venture to change their residence, of whatever age, sex, or condition, must present themselves, and submit to an examination. The power of the municipalities is indeed very great; and as they are chiefly selected from the lower class of shop-keepers, you may conclude that their authority is not exercised with much politeness or moderation. The timid or indolent inhabitant of London, whose head has been filled with the Bastilles and police of the ancient government, and who would as soon have ventured to Constantinople as to Paris, reads, in the debates of the Convention, that France is now the freeest country in the world, and that strangers from all corners of it flock to offer their adorations in this new Temple of Liberty. Allured by these descriptions, he resolves on the journey, willing, for once in his life, to enjoy a taste of the blessing in sublimate, which he now learns has hitherto been allowed him only in the gross element.--He experiences a thousand impositions on landing with his baggage at Calais, but he submits to them without murmuring, because his countrymen at Dover had, on his embarkation, already kindly initiated him into this science of taxing the inquisitive spirit of travellers. After inscribing his name, and rewarding the custom-house officers for rummaging his portmanteau, he determines to amuse himself with a walk about the town. The first centinel he encounters stops him, because he has no cockade: he purchases one at the next shop, (paying according to the exigency of the case,) and is suffered to pass on. When he has settled his bill at the Auberge "a l'Angloise," and emagines he has nothing to do but to pursue his journey, he finds he has yet to procure himself a passport. He waits an hour and an half for an officer, who at length appears, and with a rule in one hand, and a pen in the other, begins to measure the height, and take an inventory of the features of the astonished stranger. By the time this ceremony is finished, the gates are shut, and he can proceed no farther, till the morrow. He departs early, and is awakened twice on the road to Boulogne to produce his passport: still, however, he keeps his temper, concluding, that the new light has not yet made its way to the frontiers, and that these troublesome precautions may be necessary near a port. He continues his route, and, by degrees, becomes habituated to this regimen of liberty; till, perhaps, on the second day, the validity of his passport is disputed, the municipality who granted it have the reputation of aristocracy, or the whole is informal, and he must be content to wait while a messenger is dispatched to have it rectified, and the officers establish the severity of their patriotism at the expence of the stranger. Our traveller, at length, permitted to depart, feels his patience wonderfully diminished, execrates the regulations of the coast, and the ignorance of small towns, and determines to stop a few days and observe the progress of freedom at Ameins. Being a large commercial place, he here expects to behold all the happy effects of the new constitution; he congratulates himself on travelling at a period when he can procure information, and discuss his political opinions, unannoyed by fears of state prisons, and spies of the police. His landlord, however, acquaints him, that his appearance at the Town House cannot be dispensed with--he attends three or four different hours of appointment, and is each time sent away, (after waiting half an hour with the valets de ville in the antichamber,) and told that the municipal officers are engaged. As an Englishman, he has little relish for these subordinate sovereigns, and difficult audiences--he hints at the next coffee-house that he had imagined a stranger might have rested two days in a free country, without being measured, and questioned, and without detailing his history, as though he were suspected of desertion; and ventures on some implied comparison between the ancient "Monsieur le Commandant," and the modern "Citoyen Maire."--To his utter astonishment he finds, that though there are no longer emissaries of the police, there are Jacobin informers; his discourse is reported to the municipality, his business in the town becomes the subject of conjecture, he is concluded to be _"un homme sans aveu,"_ [One that can't give a good account of himself.] and arrested as "suspect;" and it is not without the interference of the people to whom he may have been recommended at Paris, that he is released, and enabled to continue his journey. At Paris he lives in perpetual alarm. One night he is disturbed by a visite domiciliaire, another by a riot--one day the people are in insurrection for bread, and the next murdering each other at a public festival; and our country-man, even after making every allowance for the confusion of a recent change, thinks himself very fortunate if he reaches England in safety, and will, for the rest of his life, be satisfied with such a degree of liberty as is secured to him by the constitution of his own country. You see I have no design of tempting you to pay us a visit; and, to speak the truth, I think those who are in England will show their wisdom by remaining there. Nothing but the state of Mrs. D____'s health, and her dread of the sea at this time of the year, detains us; for every day subtracts from my courage, and adds to my apprehensions. --Yours, &c. 1793 Amiens, January, 1793. Vanity, I believe, my dear brother, is not so innoxious a quality as we are desirous of supposing. As it is the most general of all human failings, so is it regarded with the most indulgence: a latent consciousness averts the censure of the weak; and the wise, who flatter themselves with being exempt from it, plead in its favour, by ranking it as a foible too light for serious condemnation, or too inoffensive for punishment. Yet, if vanity be not an actual vice, it is certainly a potential one--it often leads us to seek reputation rather than virtue, to substitute appearances for realities, and to prefer the eulogiums of the world to the approbation of our own minds. When it takes possession of an uninformed or an ill-constituted mind, it becomes the source of a thousand errors, and a thousand absurdities. Hence, youth seeks a preeminence in vice, and age in folly; hence, many boast of errors they would not commit, or claim distinction by investing themselves with an imputation of excess in some popular absurdity--duels are courted by the daring, and vaunted by the coward--he who trembles at the idea of death and a future state when alone, proclaims himself an atheist or a free-thinker in public--the water-drinker, who suffers the penitence of a week for a supernumerary glass, recounts the wonders of his intemperance--and he who does not mount the gentlest animal without trepidation, plumes himself on breaking down horses, and his perils in the chace. In short, whatever order of mankind we contemplate, we shall perceive that the portion of vanity allotted us by nature, when it is not corrected by a sound judgement, and rendered subservient to useful purposes, is sure either to degrade or mislead us. I was led into this train of reflection by the conduct of our Anglo-Gallican legislator, Mr. Thomas Paine. He has lately composed a speech, which was translated and read in his presence, (doubtless to his great satisfaction,) in which he insists with much vehemence on the necessity of trying the King; and he even, with little credit to his humanity, gives intimations of presumed guilt. Yet I do not suspect Mr. Paine to be of a cruel or unmerciful nature; and, most probably, vanity alone has instigated him to a proceeding which, one would wish to believe, his heart disapproves. Tired of the part he was playing, and which, it must be confessed, was not calculated to flatter the censurer of Kings and the reformer of constitutions, he determined to sit no longer for whole hours in colloquy with his interpreter, or in mute contemplation, like the Chancellor in the Critic; and the speech to which I have alluded was composed. Knowing that lenient opinions would meet no applause from the tribunes, he inlists himself on the side of severity, accuses all the Princes in the world as the accomplices of Louis the Sixteenth, expresses his desire for an universal revolution, and, after previously assuring the Convention the King is guilty, recommends that they may instantly proceed to his trial. But, after all this tremendous eloquence, perhaps Mr. Paine had no malice in his heart: he may only be solicitous to preserve his reputation from decay, and to indulge his self-importance by assisting at the trial of a Monarch whom he may not wish to suffer.--I think, therefore, I am not wrong in asserting, that Vanity is a very mischievous counsellor. The little distresses I formerly complained of, as arising from the paper currency, are nearly removed by a plentiful emission of small assignats, and we have now pompous assignments on the national domains for ten sols: we have, likewise, pieces coined from the church bells in circulation, but most of these disappear as soon as issued. You would scarcely imagine that this copper is deemed worthy to be hoarded; yet such is the people's aversion from the paper, and such their mistrust of the government, that not an housewife will part with one of these pieces while she has an assignat in her possession; and those who are rich enough to keep a few livres by them, amass and bury this copper treasure with the utmost solicitude and secresy. A tolerably accurate scale of the national confidence might be made, by marking the progress of these suspicious interments. Under the first Assembly, people began to hide their gold; during the reign of the second they took the same affectionate care of their silver; and, since the meeting of the Convention, they seem equally anxious to hide any metal they can get. If one were to describe the present age, one might, as far as regards France, call it, both literally and metaphorically, the Iron Age; for it is certain, the character of the times would justify the metaphoric application, and the disappearance of every other metal the literal one. As the French are fond of classic examples, I shall not be surprized to see an iron coinage, in imitation of Sparta, though they seem in the way of having one reason less for such a measure than the Spartans had, for they are already in a state to defy corruption; and if they were not, I think a war with England would secure the purity of their morals from being endangered by too much commercial intercourse. I cannot be displeased with the civil things you say of my letters, nor at your valuing them so much as to preserve them; though, I assure you, this fraternal gallantry is not necessary, on the account you intimate, nor will our countrymen suffer, in my opinion, by any comparisons I can make here. Your ideas of French gallantry are, indeed, very erroneous-- it may differ in the manner from that practised in England, but is far from having any claim to superiority. Perhaps I cannot define the pretensions of the two nations in this respect better than by saying, that the gallantry of an Englishman is a sentiment--that of a Frenchman a system. The first, if a lady happen to be old or plain, or indifferent to him, is apt to limit his attentions to respect, or utility--now the latter never troubles himself with these distinctions: he is repulsed by no extremity of years, nor deformity of feature; he adores, with equal ardour, both young and old, nor is either often shocked by his visible preference of the other. I have seen a youthful beau kiss, with perfect devotion, a ball of cotton dropped from the hand of a lady who was knitting stockings for her grand-children. Another pays his court to a belle in her climacteric, by bringing _gimblettes_ [A sort of gingerbread.] to the favourite lap-dog, or attending, with great assiduity, the egresses and regresses of her angola, who paces slowly out of the room ten times in an hour, while the door is held open by the complaisant Frenchman with a most respectful gravity. Thus, you see, France is to the old what a masquerade is to the ugly --the one confounds the disparity of age as the other does that of person; but indiscriminate adoration is no compliment to youth, nor is a mask any privilege to beauty. We may therefore conclude, that though France may be the Elysium of old women, England is that of the young. When I first came into this country, it reminded me of an island I had read of in the Arabian Tales, where the ladies were not deemed in their bloom till they verged towards seventy; and I conceived the project of inviting all the belles, who had been half a century out of fashion in England, to cross the Channel, and begin a new career of admiration!-- Yours, &c. Amiens, 1793. Dear Brother, I have thought it hitherto a self evident proposition--that of all the principles which can be inculcated in the human mind, that of liberty is least susceptible of propagation by force. Yet a Council of Philosophers (disciples of Rousseau and Voltaire) have sent forth Dumouriez, at the head of an hundred thousand men, to instruct the people of Flanders in the doctrine of freedom. Such a missionary is indeed invincible, and the defenceless towns of the Low Countries have been converted and pillaged [By the civil agents of the executive power.] by a benevolent crusade of the philanthropic assertors of the rights of man. These warlike Propagandistes, however, do not always convince without experiencing resistance, and ignorance sometimes opposes, with great obstinacy, the progress of truth. The logic of Dumouriez did not enforce conviction at Gemappe, but at the expence of fifteen thousand of his own army, and, doubtless, a proportionate number of the unconverted. Here let me forbear every expression tending to levity: the heart recoils at such a slaughter of human victims; and, if a momentary smile be excited by these Quixotisms, it is checked by horror at their consequences!--Humanity will lament such destruction; but it will likewise be indignant to learn, that, in the official account of this battle, the killed were estimated at three hundred, and the wounded at six!--But, if the people be sacrificed, they are not deceived. The disabled sufferers, who are returning to their homes in different parts of the republic, betray the turpitude of the government, and expose the fallacy of these bloodless victories of the gazettes. The pedants of the Convention are not unlearned in the history of the Praetorian Bands and the omnipotence of armies; and an offensive war is undertaken to give occupation to the soldiers, whose inactivity might produce reflection, or whose discontent might prove fatal to the new order of things.--Attempts are made to divert the public mind from the real misery experienced at home, by relations of useless conquests abroad; the substantial losses, which are the price of these imaginary benefits, are palliated or concealed; and the circumstances of an engagement is known but by individual communication, and when subsequent events have nearly effaced the remembrance of it.--By these artifices, and from motives at least not better, and, perhaps, worse than those I have mentioned, will population be diminished, and agriculture impeded: France will be involved in present distress, and consigned to future want; and the deluded people be punished in the miseries of their own country, because their unprincipled rulers have judged it expedient to carry war and devastation into another. One of the distinguishing features in the French character is _sang froid_ --scarcely a day passes that it does not force itself on one's observation. It is not confined to the thinking part of the people, who know that passion and irritability avail nothing; nor to those who, not thinking at all, are, of course, not moved by any thing: but is equally possessed by every rank and condition, whether you class them by their mental endowments, or their temporal possessions. They not only (as, it must be confessed, is too commonly the case in all countries,) bear the calamities of their friends with great philosophy, but are nearly as reasonable under the pressure of their own. The grief of a Frenchman, at least, partakes of his imputed national complaisance, and, far from intruding itself on society, is always ready to accept of consolation, and join in amusement. If you say your wife or relations are dead, they replay coldly, _"Il faut se consoler:"_ or if they visit you in an illness, _"Il faut prendre patience."_ Or tell them you are ruined, and their features then become something more attenuated, the shoulders something more elevated, and a more commiserating tone confesses, _"C'est bien mal beureux--Mai enfin que voulez vous?"_ ["It's unlucky, but what can be said in such cases?"] and in the same instant they ill recount some good fortune at a card party, or expatiate on the excellence of a ragout.--Yet, to do them justice, they only offer for your comfort the same arguments they would have found efficacious in promoting their own. This disposition, which preserves the tranquillity of the rich, indurates the sense of wretchedness in the poor; it supplies the place of fortitude in the one, and that of patience in the other; and, while it enables both to endure their own particular distresses, it makes them submit quietly to a weight and excess of public evils, which any nation but their own would sink under, or resist. Amongst shopkeepers, servants, &c. without incurring personal odium, it has the effect of what would be deemed in England impenetrable assurance. It forces pertinaceously an article not wanted, and preserves the inflexibility of the features at a detected imposition: it inspires servants with arguments in defence of every misdemeanour in the whole domestic catalogue; it renders them insensible either of their negligences or the consequences of them; and endows them with a happy facility of contradicting with the most obsequious politeness. A gentleman of our acquaintances dined at a table d'Hote, where the company were annoyed by a very uncommon and offensive smell. On cutting up a fowl, they discovered the smell to have been occasioned by its being dressed with out any other preparation than that of depluming. They immediately sent for the host, and told him, that the fowl had been dressed without having been drawn: but, far from appearing disconcerted, as one might expect, he only replied, _"Cela se pourroit bien, Monsieur."_ ["'Tis very possible, Sir."] Now an English Boniface, even though he had already made his fortune, would have been mortified at such an incident, and all his eloquence would scarcely have produced an unfaultering apology. Whether this national indifference originate in a physical or a moral cause, from an obtuseness in their corporeal formation or a perfection in their intellectual one, I do not pretend to decide; but whatever be the cause, the effect is enjoyed with great modesty. So little do the French pique themselves on this valuable stoicism, that they acknowledge being more subject to that human weakness called feeling, than any other people in the world. All their writers abound in pathetic exclamations, sentimental phrases, and allusions to "la sensibilite Francaise," as though they imagined it proverbial. You can scarcely hold a conversation with a Frenchman without hearing him detail, with an expression of feature not always analogous, many very affecting sentences. He is _desole, desespere, or afflige_--he has _le coeur trop sensible, le coeur serre, or le coeur navre;_ [Afflicted--in despair--too feeling a heart-- his heart is wrung or wounded.] and the well-placing of these dolorous assertions depends rather upon the judgement and eloquence of the speaker, than the seriousness of the case which gives rise to them. For instance, the despair and desolation of him who has lost his money, and of him whose head is ill drest, are of different degrees, but the expressions are usually the same. The debates of the Convention, the debates of the Jacobins, and all the public prints, are fraught with proofs of this appropriated susceptibility, and it is often attributed to persons and occasions where we should not much expect to find it. A quarrel between the legislators as to who was most concerned in promoting the massacres of September, is reconciled with a "sweet and enthusiastic excess of fraternal tenderness." When the clubs dispute on the expediency of an insurrection, or the necessity of a more frequent employment of the guillotine, the debate terminates by overflowing of sensibility from all the members who have engaged in it! At the assassinations in one of the prisons, when all the other miserable victims had perished, the mob discovered one Jonneau, a member of the Assembly, who had been confined for kicking another member named Grangeneuve.* As the massacrers probably had no orders on the subject, he was brought forth, from amidst heaps of murdered companions, and a messenger dispatched to the Assembly, (which during these scenes met as usual,) to enquire if they acknowledged Jonneau as a member. A decree was passed in the affirmative, and Jonneau brought by the assassins, with the decree fastened on his breast, in triumph to his colleagues, who, we are told, at this instance of respect for themselves, shed tears of tenderness and admiration at the conduct of monsters, the sight of whom should seem revolting to human nature. * When the massacres began, the wife and friends of Jonneau petitioned Grangeneuve on their knees to consent to his enlargement; but Grangeneuve was implacable, and Jonneau continued in prison till released by the means above mentioned. It is observable, that at this dreadful moment the utmost strictness was observed, and every form literally enforced in granting the discharge of a prisoner. A suspension of all laws, human and divine, was allowed to the assassins, while those only that secured them their victims were rigidly adhered to. Perhaps the real sang froid I have before noticed, and these pretensions to sensibility, are a natural consequence one or the other. It is the history of the beast's confession--we have only to be particularly deficient in any quality, to make us solicitous for the reputation of it; and after a long habit of deceiving others we finish by deceiving ourselves. He who feels no compassion for the distresses of his neighbour, knows that such indifference is not very estimable; he therefore studies to disguise the coldness of his heart by the exaggeration of his language, and supplies, by an affected excess of sentiment, the total absence of it.--The gods have not (as you know) made me poetical, nor do I often tax your patience with a simile, but I think this French sensibility is to genuine feeling, what their paste is to the diamond--it gratifies the vanity of the wearer, and deceives the eye of the superficial observer, but is of little use or value, and when tried by the fire of adversity quickly disappears. You are not much obliged to me for this long letter, as I own I have scribbled rather for my own amusement than with a view to yours.-- Contrary to our expectation, the trial of the King has begun; and, though I cannot properly be said to have any real interest in the affairs of this country, I take a very sincere one in the fate of its unfortunate Monarch--indeed our whole house has worn an appearance of dejection since the commencement of the business. Most people seem to expect it will terminate favourably, and, I believe, there are few who do not wish it. Even the Convention seem at present disposed to be merciful; and as they judge now, so may they be judged hereafter! --Yours. Amiens, January 1793. I do all possible justice to the liberality of my countrymen, who are become such passionate admirers of the French; and I cannot but lament their having been so unfortunate in the choice of the aera from whence they date this new friendship. It is, however, a proof, that their regards are not much the effect of that kind of vanity which esteems objects in proportion as they are esteemed by the rest of the world; and the sincerity of an attachment cannot be better evinced than by its surviving irretrievable disgrace and universal abhorrence. Many will swell the triumph of a hero, or add a trophy to his tomb; but he who exhibits himself with a culprit at the gallows, or decorates the gibbet with a wreath, is a friend indeed. If ever the character of a people were repugnant to amity, or inimical to connection, it is that of the French for the last three years.--* * The editor of the _Courier de l'Egalite,_ a most decided patriot, thus expresses himself on the injuries and insults received by the King from the Parisians, and their municipality, previous to his trial: "I know that Louis is guilty--but are we to double his punishment before it is pronounced by the law? Indeed one is tempted to say that, instead of being guided by the humanity and philosophy which dictated the revolution, we have taken lessons of barbarity from the most ferocious savages! Let us be virtuous if we would be republicans; if we go on as we do, we never shall, and must have recourse to a despot: for of two evils it is better to choose the least." The editor, whose opinion of the present politics is thus expressed, is so truly a revolutionist, and so confidential a patriot, that, in August last, when almost all the journalists were murdered, his paper was the only one that, for some time, was allowed to reach the departments. In this short space they have formed a compendium of all the vices which have marked as many preceding ages:--the cruelty and treachery of the league--the sedition, levity, and intrigue of the _Fronde_ [A name given to the party in opposition to the court during Cardinal Mazarin's ministry.--See the origin of it in the Memoirs of that period.] with the licentiousness and political corruption of more modern epochs. Whether you examine the conduct of the nation at large, or that of its chiefs and leaders, your feelings revolt at the one, and your integrity despises the other. You see the idols erected by Folly, degraded by Caprice;--the authority obtained by Intrigue, bartered by Profligacy;--and the perfidy and corruption of one side so balanced by the barbarity and levity of the other, that the mind, unable to decide on the preference of contending vices, is obliged to find repose, though with regret and disgust, in acknowledging the general depravity. La Fayette, without very extraordinary pretensions, became the hero of the revolution. He dictated laws in the Assembly, and prescribed oaths to the Garde Nationale--and, more than once, insulted, by the triumph of ostentatious popularity, the humiliation and distress of a persecuted Sovereign. Yet when La Fayette made an effort to maintain the constitution to which he owed his fame and influence, he was abandoned with the same levity with which he had been adopted, and sunk, in an instant, from a dictator to a fugitive! Neckar was an idol of another description. He had already departed for his own country, when he was hurried back precipitately, amidst universal acclamations. All were full of projects either of honour or recompence-- one was for decreeing him a statue, another proposed him a pension, and a third hailed him the father of the country. But Mr. Neckar knew the French character, and very wisely declined these pompous offers; for before he could have received the first quarter of his pension, or the statue could have been modelled, he was glad to escape, probably not without some apprehensions for his head! The reign of Mirabeau was something longer. He lived with popularity, was fortunate enough to die before his reputation was exhausted, was deposited in the Pantheon, apotheosised in form, and his bust placed as a companion to that of Brutus, the tutelary genius of the Assembly.--Here, one might have expected, he would have been quit for this world at least; but the fame of a patriot is not secured by his death, nor can the gods of the French be called immortal: the deification of Mirabeau is suspended, his memory put in sequestration, and a committee appointed to enquire, whether a profligate, expensive, and necessitous character was likely to be corruptible. The Convention, too, seem highly indignant that a man, remarkable only for vice and atrocity, should make no conscience of betraying those who were as bad as himself; and that, after having prostituted his talents from the moment he was conscious of them, he should not, when associated with such immaculate colleagues, become pure and disinterested. It is very probable that Mirabeau, whose only aim was power, might rather be willing to share it with the King, as Minister, than with so many competitors, and only as Prime Speechmaker to the Assembly: and as he had no reason for suspecting the patriotism of others to be more inflexible than his own, he might think it not impolitic to anticipate a little the common course of things, and betray his companions, before they had time to stipulate for felling him. He might, too, think himself more justified in disposing of them in the gross, because he did not thereby deprive them of their right of bargaining for themselves, and for each other in detail.--* * La Porte, Steward of the Household, in a letter to Duquesnoy, [Not the brutal Dusquenoy hereafter mentioned.] dated February, 1791, informs him that Barrere, Chairman of the Committee of Domains, is in the best disposition possible.--A letter of Talon, (then minister,) with remarks in the margin by the King, says, that "Sixteen of the most violent members on the patriotic side may be brought over to the court, and that the expence will not exceed two millions of livres: that fifteen thousand will be sufficient for the first payment; and only a Yes or No from his Majesty will fix these members in his interest, and direct their future conduct."--It likewise observes, that these two millions will cost the King nothing, as the affair is already arranged with the Liquidator-General. Extract of a letter from Chambonas to the King, dated June 18, 1792: "Sire, "I inform your Majesty, that my agents are now in motion. I have just been converting an evil spirit. I cannot hope that I have made him good, but I believe I have neutralized him.--To-night we shall make a strong effort to gain Santerre, (Commandant of the Garde Nationale,) and I have ordered myself to be awakened to hear the result. I shall take care to humour the different interests as well as I can.--The Secretary of the Cordeliers club is now secured.--All these people are to be bought, but not one of them can be hired.--I have had with me one Mollet a physician. Perhaps your Majesty may have heard of him. He is an outrageous Jacobin, and very difficult, for he will receive nothing. He insists, previous to coming to any definitive treaty, on being named Physician to the Army. I have promised him, on condition that Paris is kept quiet for fifteen days. He is now gone to exert himself in our favour. He has great credit at the Caffe de Procope, where all the journalists and 'enragis' of the Fauxbourg St. Germain assemble. I hope he will keep his word.--The orator of the people, the noted Le Maire, a clerk at the Post-office, has promised tranquility for a week, and he is to be rewarded. "A new Gladiator has appeared lately on the scene, one Ronedie Breton, arrived from England. He has already been exciting the whole quarter of the Poisonnerie in favour of the Jacobins, but I shall have him laid siege to.--Petion is to come to-morrow for fifteen thousand livres, [This sum was probably only to propitiate the Mayor; and if Chambonas, as he proposed, refused farther payment, we may account for Petion's subsequent conduct.] on account of thirty thousand per month which he received under the administration of Dumouriez, for the secret service of the police.-- I know not in virtue of what law this was done, and it will be the last he shall receive from me. Your Majesty will, I doubt not, understand me, and approve of what I suggest. (Signed) "Chambonas." Extract from the Papers found at the Thuilleries. It is impossible to warrant the authenticity of these Papers; on their credibility, however, rests the whole proof of the most weighty charges brought against the King. So that it must be admitted, that either all the first patriots of the revolution, and many of those still in repute, are corrupt, or that the King was condemned on forged evidence. The King might also be solicitous to purchase safety and peace at any rate; and it is unfortunate for himself and the country that he had not recourse to the only effectual means till it was too late. But all this rests on no better evidence than the papers found at the Thuilleries; and as something of this kind was necessary to nourish the exhausted fury of the populace, I can easily conceive that it was thought more prudent to sacrifice the dead, than the living; and the fame of Mirabeau being less valuable than the safety of those who survived him, there would be no great harm in attributing to him what he was very likely to have done.-- The corruption of a notorious courtier would have made no impression: the King had already been overwhelmed with such accusations, and they had lost their effect: but to have seduced the virtuous Mirabeau, the very Confucius of the revolution, was a kind of profanation of the holy fire, well calculated to revive the languid rage, and extinguish the small remains of humanity yet left among the people. It is sufficiently remarkable, that notwithstanding the court must have seen the necessity of gaining over the party now in power, no vestige of any attempt of this kind has been discovered; and every criminating negotiation is ascribed to the dead, the absent, or the insignificant. I do not, however, presume to decide in a case so very delicate; their panegyrists in England may adjust the claims of Mirabeau's integrity, and that of his accusers, at their leisure. Another patriot of "distinguished note," and more peculiarly interesting to our countrymen, because he has laboured much for their conversion, is Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun.--He was in England some time as Plenipotentiary from the Jacobins, charged with establishing treaties between the clubs, publishing seditious manifestoes, contracting friendly alliances with discontented scribblers, and gaining over neutral or hostile newspapers.--But, besides his political and ecclesiastical occupations, and that of writing letters to the Constitutional Society, it seems this industrious Prelate had likewise a correspondence with the Agents of the Court, which, though he was too modest to surcharge his fame by publishing it, was, nevertheless, very profitable. I am sorry his friends in England are mostly averse from episcopacy, otherwise they might have provided for him, as I imagine he will have no objection to relinquish his claims on the see of Autun. He is not under accusation, and, were he to return, he would not find the laws quite so ceremonious here as in England. After labouring with impunity for months together to promote an insurrection with you, a small private barter of his talents would here cost him his head; and I appeal to the Bishop's friends in England, whether there can be a proper degree of freedom in a country where a man is refused the privilege of disposing of himself to the best advantage. To the eternal obloquy of France, I must conclude, in the list of those once popular, the ci-devant Duke of Orleans. But it was an unnatural popularity, unaided by a single talent, or a single virtue, supported only by the venal efforts of those who were almost his equals in vice, though not in wealth, and who found a grateful exercise for their abilities in at once profiting by the weak ambition of a bad man, and corrupting the public morals in his favour. The unrighteous compact is now dissolved; those whom he ruined himself to bribe have already forsaken him, and perhaps may endeavour to palliate the disgrace of having been called his friends, by becoming his persecutors.--Thus, many of the primitive patriots are dead, or fugitives, or abandoned, or treacherous; and I am not without fear lest the new race should prove as evanescent as the old. The virtuous Rolland,* whose first resignation was so instrumental in dethroning the King, has now been obliged to resign a second time, charged with want of capacity, and suspected of malversation; and this virtue, which was so irreproachable, which it would have been so dangerous to dispute while it served the purposes of party, is become hypocrisy, and Rolland will be fortunate if he return to obscurity with only the loss of his gains and his reputation. * In the beginning of December, the Council-General of the municipality of Paris opened a register, and appointed a Committee to receive all accusations and complaints whatever against Rolland, who, in return, summoned them to deliver in their accounts to him as Minister of the interior, and accused them, at the same time, of the most scandalous peculations. The credit of Brissot and the Philosophers is declining fast--the clubs are unpropitious, and no party long survives this formidable omen; so that, like Macbeth, they will have waded from one crime to another, only to obtain a short-lived dominion, at the expence of eternal infamy, and an unlamented fall. Dumouriez is still a successful General, but he is denounced by one faction, insulted by another, insidiously praised by a third, and, if he should persevere in serving them, he has more disinterested rectitude than I suspect him of, or than they merit. This is another of that Jacobin ministry which proved so fatal to the King; and it is evident that, had he been permitted to entertain the same opinion of all these people as they now profess to have of each other, he would have been still living, and secure on his throne. After so many mutual infidelities, it might be expected that one party would grow indifferent, and the other suspicious; but the French never despair: new hordes of patriots prepare to possess themselves of the places they are forcing the old ones to abandon, and the people, eager for change, are ready to receive them with the momentary and fallacious enthusiasm which ever precedes disgrace; while those who are thus intriguing for power and influence, are, perhaps, secretly devising how it may be made most subservient to their personal advantage. Yet, perhaps, these amiable levities may not be displeasing to the Constitutional Society and the revolutionists of England; and, as the very faults of our friends are often endearing to us, they may extend their indulgence to the "humane" and "liberal" precepts of the Jacobins, and the massacres of September.--To confess the truth, I am not a little ashamed for my country when I see addresses from England to a Convention, the members of which have just been accusing each other of assassination and robbery, or, in the ardour of a debate, threatening, cuffing, and knocking each other down. Exclusive of their moral character, considered only as it appears from their reciprocal criminations, they have so little pretension to dignity, or even decency, that it seems a mockery to address them as the political representatives of a powerful nation deliberating upon important affairs. If a bearer of one of these congratulatory compliments were not apprized of the forms of the House, he would be rather astonished, at his introduction, to see one member in a menacing attitude, and another denying his veracity in terms perfectly explicit, though not very civil. Perhaps, in two minutes, the partizans of each opponent all rise and clamour, as if preparing for a combat--the President puts on his hat as the signal of a storm--the subordinate disputants are appeased--and the revilings of the principal ones renewed; till, after torrents of indecent language, the quarrel is terminated by a fraternal embrace.*--I think, after such a scene, an addresser must feel a little humiliated, and would return without finding his pride greatly increased by his mission. * I do not make any assertions of this nature from conjecture or partial evidence. The journals of the time attest that the scenes I describe occur almost in every debate.--As a proof, I subjoin some extracts taken nearly at hazard: "January 7th, Convention Nationale, Presidence de Treilhard.--The debate was opened by an address from the department of Finisterre, expressing their wishes, and adding, that these were likewise the wishes of the nation at large--that Marat, Robespierre, Bazire, Chabot, Merlin, Danton, and their accomplices, might be expelled the Convention as caballers and intriguers paid by the tyrants at war with France." The account of this debate is thus continued--"The almost daily troubles which arise in the Convention were on the point of being renewed, when a member, a friend to order, spoke as follows, and, it is remarked, was quietly listened to: "'Citizens, "'If three months of uninterrupted silence has given me any claim to your attention, I now ask it in the name of our afflicted country. Were I to continue silent any longer, I should render myself as culpable as those who never hold their tongues. I see we are all sensible of the painfulness of our situation. Every day dissatisfied with ourselves, we come to the debate with the intention of doing something, and every day we return without having done any thing. The people expect from us wise laws, and not storms and tumults. How are we to make these wise laws, and keep twenty-five millions of people quiet, when we, who are only seven hundred and fifty individuals, give an example of perpetual riot and disorder? What signifies our preaching the unity and indivisibility of the republic, when we cannot maintain peace and union amongst ourselves? What good can we expect to do amidst such scandalous disturbances, and while we spend our time in attending to informations, accusations, and inculpations, for the most part utterly unfounded? For my part, I see but one means of attaining any thing like dignity and tranquillity, and that is, by submitting ourselves to coercive regulations.'" Here follow some proposals, tending to establish a little decency in their proceedings for the future; but the account from whence this extract is taken proceeds to remark, that this invitation to peace was no sooner finished, than a new scene of disturbance took place, to the great loss of their time, and the scandal of all good citizens. One should imagine, that if ever the Convention could think it necessary to assume an appearance of dignity, or at least of seriousness and order, it would be in giving their judgement relative to the King. Yet, in determining how a series of questions should be discussed, on the arrangement of which his fate seems much to have depended, the solemnity of the occasion appears to have had no weight. It was proposed to begin by that of the appeal to the people. This was so violently combated, that the Convention would hear neither party, and were a long time without debating at all. Petion mounted the tribune, and attempted to restore order; but the noise was too great for him to be heard. He at length, however, obtained silence enough to make a motion. Again the murmurs recommenced. Rabaud de St. Etienne made another attempt, but was equally unsuccessful. Those that were of an opposite opinion refused to hear him, and both parties rose up and rushed together to the middle of the Hall. The most dreadful tumult took place, and the President, with great difficulty, procured a calm. Again the storm began, and a member told them, that if they voted in the affirmative, those on the left side (Robespierre, &c.) would not wait the result, but have the King assassinated. "Yes! Yes! (resounded from all parts) the Scelerats of Paris will murder him!" --Another violent disorder ensuing, it was thought no decree could be passed, and, at length, amidst this scene of riot and confusion, the order of questions was arranged, and in such a manner as to decide the fate of the King.--It was determined, that the question of his guilt should precede that of the appeal to the people. Had the order of the questions been changed, the King might have been saved, for many would have voted for the appeal in the first instance who did not dare do it when they found the majority resolved to pronounce him guilty. It is very remarkable, that, on the same day on which the friends of liberty and equality of Manchester signalized themselves by a most patriotic compliment to the Convention, beginning with _"Francais, vous etes libres,"_ ["Frenchmen, you are free."] they were, at that very moment, employed in discussing a petition from numbers of Parisians who had been thrown into prison without knowing either their crime or their accusers, and were still detained under the same arbitrary circumstances.--The law of the constitution is, that every person arrested shall be interrogated within twenty-four hours; but as these imprisonments were the work of the republican Ministers, the Convention seemed to think it indelicate to interpose, and these citizens of a country whose freedom is so much envied by the Manchester Society, will most likely remain in durance as long as their confinement shall be convenient to those who have placed them there.--A short time after, Villette, who is a news-writer and deputy, was cited to appear before the municipality of Paris, under the charge of having inserted in his paper "equivocal phrases and anti-civic expressions, tending to diminish the confidence due to the municipality."--Villette, as being a member of the Convention, obtained redress; but had he been only a journalist, the liberty of the press would not have rescued him.--On the same day, complaint was made in the Assembly, that one man had been arrested instead of another, and confined for some weeks, and it was agreed unanimously, (a thing that does not often occur,) that the powers exercised by the Committee of Inspection [Surveillance.--See Debates, December.] were incompatible with liberty. The patriots of Belfast were not more fortunate in the adaption of their civilities--they addressed the Convention, in a strain of great piety, to congratulate them on the success of their arms in the "cause of civil and religious liberty."* * At this time the municipalities were empowered to search all houses by night or day; but their visites domiciliaires, as they are called, being made chiefly in the night, a decree has since ordained that they shall take place only during the day. Perhaps an Englishman may think the latter quite sufficient, considering that France is the freeest country in the world, and, above all, a republic. The harangue was interrupted by the _mal-a-propos_ entrance of two deputies, who complained of having been beaten, almost hanged, and half drowned, by the people of Chartres, for belonging, as they were told, to an assembly of atheistical persecutors of religion; and this Convention, whom the Society of Belfast admire for propagating "religious liberty" in other countries, were in a few days humbly petitioned, from various departments, not to destroy it in their own. I cannot, indeed, suppose they have really such a design; but the contempt with which they treat religion has occasioned an alarm, and given the French an idea of their piety very different from that so kindly conceived by the patriots of Belfast. I entrust this to our friend Mrs. ____, who is leaving France in a few days; and as we are now on the eve of a war, it will be the last letter you will receive, except a few lines occasionally on our private affairs, or to inform you of my health. As we cannot, in the state Mrs. D____ is in, think of returning to England at present, we must trust ourselves to the hospitality of the French for at least a few weeks, and I certainly will not abuse it, by sending any remarks on their political affairs out of the country. But as I know you interest yourself much in the subject, and read with partiality my attempts to amuse you, I will continue to throw my observations on paper as regularly as I have been accustomed to do, and I hope, ere long, to be the bearer of the packets myself. I here also renew my injunction, that no part of my correspondence that relates to French politics be communicated to any one, not even my mother. What I have written has been merely to gratify your own curiosity, and I should be extremely mortified if my opinions were repeated even in the little circle of our private acquaintance. I deem myself perfectly justifiable in imparting my reflections to you, but I have a sort of delicacy that revolts at the thought of being, in the remotest degree, accessary to conveying intelligence from a country in which I reside, and which is so peculiarly situated as France is at this moment. My feelings, my humanity, are averse from those who govern, but I should regret to be the means of injuring them. You cannot mistake my intentions, and I conclude by seriously reminding you of the promise I exacted previous to any political discussion.--Adieu. Amiens, February 15, 1793. I did not, as I promised, write immediately on my return from Chantilly; the person by whom I intended to send my letter having already set out for England, and the rule I have observed for the last three months of entrusting nothing to the post but what relates to our family affairs, is now more than ever necessary. I have before requested, and I must now insist, that you make no allusion to any political matter whatever, nor even mention the name of any political person. Do not imagine that you are qualified to judge of what is prudent, or what may be written with safety--I repeat, no one in England can form an idea of the suspicion that pervades every part of the French government. I cannot venture to answer decisively your question respecting the King-- indeed the subject is so painful to me, that I have hitherto avoided reverting to it. There certainly was, as you observe, some sudden alteration in the dispositions of the Assembly between the end of the trial and the final judgement. The causes were most probably various, and must be sought for in the worst vices of our nature--cruelty, avarice, and cowardice. Many, I doubt not, were guided only by the natural malignity of their hearts; many acted from fear, and expected to purchase impunity for former compliances with the court by this popular expiation; a large number are also supposed to have been paid by the Duke of Orleans--whether for the gratification of malice or ambition, time must develope.--But, whatever were the motives, the result was an iniquitous combination of the worst of a set of men, before selected from all that was bad in the nation, to profane the name of justice--to sacrifice an unfortunate, but not a guilty Prince--and to fix an indelible stain on the country. Among those who gave their opinion at large, you will observe Paine: and, as I intimated in a former letter, it seems he was at that time rather allured by the vanity of making a speech that should be applauded, than by any real desire of injuring the King. Such vanity, however, is not pardonable: a man has a right to ruin himself, or to make himself ridiculous; but when his vanity becomes baneful to others, as it has all the effect, so does it merit the punishment, of vice. Of all the rest, Condorcet has most powerfully disgusted me. The avowed wickedness of Thuriot or Marat inspires one with horror; but this cold philosophic hypocrite excites contempt as well as detestation. He seems to have wavered between a desire to preserve the reputation of humanity, which he has affected, and that of gratifying the real depravity of his mind. Would one have expected, that a speech full of benevolent systems, mild sentiments, and aversion from the effusion of human blood, was to end in a vote for, and recommendation of, the immediate execution of his sovereign?--But such a conduct is worthy of him, who has repaid the benefits of his patron and friend [The Duke de la Rochefaucault.] by a persecution which ended in his murder. You will have seen, that the King made some trifling requests to be granted after his decease, and that the Convention ordered him to be told, that the nation, "always great, always just," accorded them in part. Yet this just and magnanimous people refused him a preparation of only three days, and allowed him but a few hours--suffered his remains to be treated with the most scandalous indecency--and debated seriously, whether or no the Queen should receive some little tokens of affection he had left for her. The King's enemies had so far succeeded in depreciating his personal courage, that even his friends were apprehensive he might not sustain his last moments with dignity. The event proves how much injustice has been done him in this respect, as well as in many others. His behaviour was that of a man who derived his fortitude from religion--it was that of pious resignation, not ostentatious courage; it was marked by none of those instances of levity and indifference which, at such a time, are rather symptoms of distraction than resolution; he exhibited the composure of an innocent mind, and the seriousness that became the occasion; he seemed to be occupied in preparing for death, but not to fear it.--I doubt not but the time will come, when those who have sacrificed him may envy the last moments of Louis the Sixteenth! That the King was not guilty of the principal charges brought against him, has been proved indubitably--not altogether by the assertions of those who favour him, but by the confession of his enemies. He was, for example, accused of planning the insurrection of the tenth of August; yet not a day passes that both parties in the Convention are not disputing the priority of their efforts to dethrone him, and to erect a republic; and they date their machinations long before the period on which they attribute the first aggression to the King.--Mr. Sourdat, and several other writers, have very ably demonstrated the falsehood of these charges; but the circulation of such pamphlets was dangerous--of course, secret and limited; while those which tended to deceive and prejudice the people were dispersed with profusion, at the expence of the government.* * Postscript of the Courier de l'Egalite, Sept. 29: "The present minister (Rolland) takes every possible means in his power to enlighten and inform the people in whatever concerns their real interests. For this purpose he has caused to be printed and distributed, in abundance, the accounts and papers relative to the events of the tenth of August. We have yet at our office a small number of these publications, which we have distributed to our subscribers, and we still give them to any of our fellow-citizens who have opportunities of circulating them." I have seen one of these written in coarse language, and replete with vulgar abuse, purposely calculated for the lower classes in the country, who are more open to gross impositions than those of the same rank in towns; yet I have no doubt, in my own mind, that all these artifices would have proved unavailing, had the decision been left to the nation at large: but they were intimidated, if not convinced; and the mandate of the Convention, which forbids this sovereign people to exercise their judgement, was obeyed with as much submission, and perhaps more reluctance, than an edict of Louis the fourteenth.* * The King appealed, by his counsel, to the People; but the convention, by a decree, declared his appeal of no validity, and forbade all persons to pay attention to it, under the severest penalties. The French seem to have no energy but to destroy, and to resist nothing but gentleness or infancy. They bend under a firm or oppressive administration, but become restless and turbulent under a mild Prince or a minority. The fate of this unfortunate Monarch has made me reflect, with great seriousness, on the conduct of our opposition-writers in England. The literary banditti who now govern France began their operations by ridiculing the King's private character--from ridicule they proceeded to calumny, and from calumny to treason; and perhaps the first libel that degraded him in the eyes of his subjects opened the path from the palace to the scaffold.--I do not mean to attribute the same pernicious intentions to the authors on your side the Channel, as I believe them, for the most part, to be only mercenary, and that they would write panegyrics as soon as satires, were they equally profitable. I know too, that there is no danger of their producing revolutions in England--we do not suffer our principles to be corrupted by a man because he has the art of rhyming nothings into consequence, nor suffer another to overturn the government because he is an orator. Yet, though these men may not be very mischievous, they are very reprehensible; and, in a moment like the present, contempt and neglect should supply the place of that punishment against which our liberty of the press secures them. It is not for a person no better informed than myself to pronounce on systems of government--still less do I affect to have more enlarged notions than the generality of mankind; but I may, without risking those imputations, venture to say, I have no childish or irrational deference for the persons of Kings. I know they are not, by nature, better than other men, and a neglected or vicious education may often render them worse. This does not, however, make me less respect the office. I respect it as the means chosen by the people to preserve internal peace and order--to banish corruption and petty tyrants ["And fly from petty tyrants to the throne."--Goldsmith]--and give vigour to the execution of the laws. Regarded in this point of view, I cannot but lament the mode which has lately prevailed of endeavouring to alienate the consideration due to our King's public character, by personal ridicule. If an individual were attacked in this manner, his house beset with spies, his conversation with his family listened to, and the most trifling actions of his life recorded, it would be deemed unfair and illiberal, and he who should practice such meanness would be thought worthy of no punishment more respectful than what might be inflicted by an oaken censor, or an admonitory heel.--But it will be said, a King is not an individual, and that such a habit, or such an amusement, is beneath the dignity of his character. Yet would it be but consistent in those who labour to prove, by the public acts of Kings, that they are less than men, not to exact, that, in their private lives, they should be more.--The great prototype of modern satyrists, Junius, does not allow that any credit should be given a Monarch for his domestic virtues; is he then to be reduced to an individual, only to scrutinize his foibles, and is his station to serve only as the medium of their publicity? Are these literary miners to penetrate the recesses of private life, only to bring to light the dross? Do they analyse only to discover poisons? Such employments may be congenial to their natures, but have little claim to public remuneration. The merit of a detractor is not much superior to that of a flatterer; nor is a Prince more likely to be amended by imputed follies, than by undeserved panegyrics. If any man wished to represent his King advantageously, it could not be done better than by remarking, that, after all the watchings of assiduous necessity, and the laborious researches of interested curiosity, it appears, that his private life affords no other subjects of ridicule than, that he is temperate, domestic, and oeconomical, and, as is natural to an active mind, wishes to be informed of whatever happens not to be familiar to him. It were to be desired that some of these accusations were applicable to those who are so much scandalized at them: but they are not littlenesses--the littleness is in him who condescends to report them; and I have often wondered that men of genius should make a traffic of gleaning from the refuse of anti-chambers, and retailing the anecdotes of pages and footmen! You will perceive the kind of publications I allude to; and I hope the situation of France, and the fate of its Monarch, may suggest to the authors a more worthy employ of their talents, than that of degrading the executive power in the eyes of the people. Amiens, Feb. 25, 1793. I told you, I believe, in a former letter, that the people of Amiens were all aristocrates: they have, nevertheless, two extremely popular qualifications--I mean filth and incivility. I am, however, far from imputing either of them to the revolution. This grossness of behavior has long existed under the palliating description of _"la franchise Picarde,"_ ["Picardy frankness."] and the floors and stairs of many houses will attest their preeminence in filth to be of a date much anterior to the revolution.--If you purchase to the amount of an hundred livres, there are many shopkeepers who will not send your purchases home; and if the articles they show you do not answer your purpose, they are mostly sullen, and often rude. No appearance of fatigue or infirmity suggests to them the idea of offering you a seat; they contradict you with impertinence, address you with freedom, and conclude with cheating you if they can. It was certainly on this account that Sterne would not agree to die at the inn at Amiens. He might, with equal justice, have objected to any other house; and I am sure if he thought them an unpleasant people to die amongst, he would have found them still worse to live with.--My observation as to the civility of aristocrates does not hold good here--indeed I only meant that those who ever had any, and were aristocrates, still preserved it. Amiens has always been a commercial town, inhabited by very few of the higher noblesse; and the mere gentry of a French province are not very much calculated to give a tone of softness and respect to those who imitate them. You may, perhaps, be surprized that I should express myself with little consideration for a class which, in England, is so highly respectable: there gentlemen of merely independent circumstances are not often distinguishable in their manners from those of superior fortune or rank. But, in France, it is different: the inferior noblesse are stiff, ceremonious, and ostentatious; while the higher ranks were always polite to strangers, and affable to their dependents. When you visit some of the former, you go through as many ceremonies as though you were to be invested with an order, and rise up and sit down so many times, that you return more fatigued than you would from a cricket match; while with the latter you are just as much at your ease as is consistent with good breeding and propriety, and a whole circle is never put in commotion at the entrance and exit of every individual who makes part of it. Any one not prepared for these formalities, and who, for the first time, saw an assembly of twenty people all rising from their seats at the entrance of a single beau, would suppose they were preparing for a dance, and that the new comer was a musician. For my part I always find it an oeconomy of strength (when the locality makes it practicable) to take possession of a window, and continue standing in readiness until the hour of visiting is over, and calm is established by the arrangement of the card tables.--The revolution has not annihilated the difference of rank; though it has effected the abolition of titles; and I counsel all who have remains of the gout or inflexible joints, not to frequent the houses of ladies whose husbands have been ennobled only by their offices, of those whose genealogies are modern, or of the collaterals of ancient families, whose claims are so far removed as to be doubtful. The society of all these is very exigent, and to be avoided by the infirm or indolent. I send you with this a little collection of airs which I think you will find very agreeable. The French music has not, perhaps, all the reputation it is entitled to. Rousseau has declared it to be nothing but doleful psalmodies; Gray calls a French concert "Une tintamarre de diable:" and the prejudices inspired by these great names are not easily obliterated. We submit our judgement to theirs, even when our taste is refractory.--The French composers seem to excel in marches, in lively airs that abound in striking passages calculated for the popular taste, and yet more particularly in those simple melodies they call romances: they are often in a very charming and singular style, without being either so delicate or affecting as the Italian. They have an expression of plaintive tenderness, which makes one tranquil rather than melancholy; and which, though it be more soothing than interesting, is very delightful.--Yours, &c. Amiens, 1793. I have been to-day to take a last view of the convents: they are now advertised for sale, and will probably soon be demolished. You know my opinion is not, on the whole, favourable to these institutions, and that I thought the decree which extinguishes them, but which secured to the religious already profest the undisturbed possession of their habitations during life, was both politic and humane. Yet I could not see the present state of these buildings without pain--they are now inhabited by volunteers, who are passing a novitiate of intemperance and idleness, previous to their reception in the army; and those who recollect the peace and order that once reigned within the walls of a monastery, cannot but be stricken with the contrast. I felt both for the expelled and present possessors, and, perhaps, gave a mental preference to the superstition which founded such establishments, over the persecution that destroys them. The resigned and pious votaries, who once supposed themselves secure from all the vicissitudes of fortune, and whose union seemed dissoluble only by the common lot of mortality, are now many of them dispersed, wandering, friendless, and miserable. The religion which they cherished as a comfort, and practised as a duty, is now pursued as a crime; and it is not yet certain that they will not have to choose between an abjuration of their principles, and the relinquishment of the means of existence.--The military occupiers offered nothing very alleviating to such unpleasant reflections; and I beheld with as much regret the collection of these scattered individuals, as the separation of those whose habitations they fill. They are most of them extremely young, taken from villages and the service of agriculture, and are going to risk their lives in a cause detested perhaps by more than three parts of the nation, and only to secure impunity to its oppressors. It has usually been a maxim in all civilized states, that when the general welfare necessitates some act of partial injustice, it shall be done with the utmost consideration for the sufferer, and that the required sacrifice of moral to political expediency shall be palliated, as much as the circumstances will admit, by the manner of carrying it into execution. But the French legislators, in this respect, as in most others, truly original, disdain all imitation, and are rarely guided by such confined motives. With them, private rights are frequently violated, only to facilitate the means of public oppressions--and cruel and iniquitous decrees are rendered still more so by the mode of enforcing them. I have met with no person who could conceive the necessity of expelling the female religious from their convents. It was, however, done, and that with a mixture of meanness and barbarity which at once excites contempt and detestation. The ostensible, reasons were, that these communities afforded an asylum to the superstitious, and that by their entire suppression, a sale of the houses would enable the nation to afford the religious a more liberal support than had been assigned them by the Constituent Assembly. But they are shallow politicians who expect to destroy superstition by persecuting those who practise it: and so far from adding, as the decree insinuates, to the pensions of the nuns, they have now subjected them to an oath which, to those at least whose consciences are timid, will act as a prohibition to their receiving what they were before entitled to. The real intention of the legislature in thus entirely dispersing the female religious, besides the general hatred of every thing connected with religion, is, to possess itself of an additional resource in the buildings and effects, and, as is imagined by some, to procure numerous and convenient state prisons. But, I believe, the latter is only an aristocratic apprehension, suggested by the appropriation of the convents to this use in a few places, where the ancient prisons are full.-- Whatever purpose it is intended to answer, it has been effected in a way disgraceful to any national body, except such a body as the Convention; and, though it be easy to perceive the cruelty of such a measure, yet as, perhaps, its injustice may not strike you so forcibly as if you had had the same opportunities of investigating it as I have, I will endeavour to explain, as well as I can, the circumstances that render it so peculiarly aggravated. I need not remind you, that no order is of very modern foundation, nor that the present century has, in a great degree, exploded the fashion of compounding for sins by endowing religious institutions. Thus, necessarily, by the great change which has taken place in the expence of living, many establishments that were poorly endowed must have become unable to support themselves, but for the efforts of those who were attached to them. It is true, that the rent of land has increased as its produce became more valuable; but every one knows that the lands dependent on religious houses have always been let on such moderate terms, as by no means to bear a proportion to the necessities they were intended to supply; and as the monastic vows have long ceased to be the frequent choice of the rich, little increase has been made to the original stock by the accession of new votaries:--yet, under all these disadvantages, many societies have been able to rebuild their houses, embellish their churches, purchase plate, &c. &c. The love of their order, that spirit of oeconomy for which they are remarkable, and a persevering industry, had their usual effects, and not only banished poverty, but became a source of wealth. An indefatigable labour at such works as could be profitably disposed of, the education of children, and the admission of boarders, were the means of enriching a number of convents, whose proper revenues would not have afforded them even a subsistence. But the fruits of active toil or voluntary privation, have been confounded with those of expiatory bequest and mistaken devotion, and have alike become the prey of a rapacious and unfeeling government. Many communities are driven from habitations built absolutely with the produce of their own labour. In some places they were refused even their beds and linen; and the stock of wood, corn, &c. provided out of the savings of their pensions, (understood to be at their own disposal,) have been seized, and sold, without making them the smallest compensation. Thus deprived of every thing, they are sent into the world with a prohibition either to live several of them together, wear their habits,* or practise their religion; yet their pensions** are too small for them to live upon, except in society, or to pay the usual expence of boarding: many of them have no other means of procuring secular dresses, and still more will imagine themselves criminal in abstaining from the mode of worship they have been taught to think salutary. * Two religious, who boarded with a lady I had occasion to see sometimes, told me, that they had been strictly enjoined not to dress like each other in any way. ** The pensions are from about seventeen to twenty-five pounds sterling per annum.--At the time I am writing, the necessaries of life are increased in price nearly two-fifths of what they bore formerly, and are daily becoming dearer. The Convention are not always insensible to this--the pay of the foot soldier is more than doubled. It is also to be remembered, that women of small fortune in France often embraced the monastic life as a frugal retirement, and, by sinking the whole they were possessed of in this way, they expected to secure a certain provision, and to place themselves beyond the reach of future vicissitudes: yet, though the sums paid on these occasions can be easily ascertained, no indemnity has been made; and many will be obliged to violate their principles, in order to receive a trifling pension, perhaps much less than the interest of their money would have produced without loss of the principal. But the views of these legislating philosophers are too sublimely extensive to take in the wrongs or sufferings of contemporary individuals; and not being able to disguise, even to themselves, that they create much misery at present, they promise incalculable advantages to those who shall happen to be alive some centuries hence! Most of these poor nuns are, however, of an age to preclude them from the hope of enjoying this Millennium; and they would have been content en attendant these glorious times, not to be deprived of the necessaries of life, or marked out as objects of persecution. The private distresses occasioned by the dissolution of the convents are not the only consequences to be regretted--for a time, at least, the loss must certainly be a public one. There will now be no means of instruction for females, nor any refuge for those who are without friends or relations: thousands of orphans must be thrown unprotected on the world, and guardians, or single men, left with the care of children, have no way to dispose of them properly. I do not contend that the education of a convent is the best possible: yet are there many advantages attending it; and I believe it will readily be granted, that an education not quite perfect is better than no education at all. It would not be very difficult to prove, that the systems of education, both in England and France, are extremely defective; and if the characters of women are generally better formed in one than the other, it is not owing to the superiority of boarding-schools over convents, but to the difference of our national manners, which tend to produce qualities not necessary, or not valued, in France. The most distinguished female excellencies in England are an attachment to domestic life, an attention to its oeconomies, and a cultivated understanding. Here, any thing like house-wifery is not expected but from the lower classes, and reading or information is confined chiefly to professed wits. Yet the qualities so much esteemed in England are not the effect of education: few domestic accomplishments, and little useful knowledge, are acquired at a boarding-school; but finally the national character asserts its empire, and the female who has gone through a course of frivolities from six to sixteen, who has been taught that the first "human principle" should be to give an elegant tournure to her person, after a few years' dissipation, becomes a good wife and mother, and a rational companion. In France, young women are kept in great seclusion: religion and oeconomy form a principal part of conventual acquirements, and the natural vanity of the sex is left to develope itself without the aid of authority, or instillation by precept--yet, when released from this sober tuition, manners take the ascendant here as in England, and a woman commences at her marriage the aera of coquetry, idleness, freedom, and rouge.--We may therefore, I think, venture to conclude, that the education of a boarding-school is better calculated for the rich, that of a convent for the middle classes and the poor; and, consequently, that the suppression of this last in France will principally affect those to whom it was most beneficial, and to whom the want of it will be most dangerous. A committee of wise men are now forming a plan of public instruction, which is to excel every thing ever adopted in any age or country; and we may therefore hope that the defects which have hitherto prevailed, both in theirs and our own, will be remedied. All we have to apprehend is, that, amidst so many wise heads, more than one wise plan may be produced, and a difficulty of choice keep the rising generation in a sort of abeyance, so that they must remain sterile, or may become vitiated, while it is determining in what manner they shall be cultivated. It is almost a phrase to say, the resources of France are wonderful, and this is no less true than generally admitted. Whatever be the want or loss, it is no sooner known than supplied, and the imagination of the legislature seems to become fertile in proportion to the exigence of the moment.--I was in some pain at the disgrace of Mirabeau, lest this new kind of retrospective judgement should depopulate the Pantheon of the few divinities that remained; more especially when I considered that Voltaire, notwithstanding his merits as an enemy to revelation, had been already accused of aristocracy, and even Rousseau himself might not be found impeccable. His Contrat Social might not, perhaps, in the eyes of a committee of philosophical Rhadmanthus's, atone for his occasional admiration of christianity: and thus some crime, either of church or state, disfranchise the whole race of immortals, and their fame scarcely outlast the dispute about their earthly remains.* * Alluding to the disputes between the Convention and the person who claimed the exclusive right to the remains of Rousseau. My concern, on this account, was the more justifiable, because the great fallibility which prevailed among the patriots, and the very delicate state of the reputation of those who retained their political existence, afforded no hope that they could ever fill the vacancies in the Pantheon.--But my fears were very superfluous--France will never want subjects for an apotheosis, and if one divinity be dethroned, "another and another still succeeds," all equally worthy as long as they continue in fashion.--The phrenzy of despair has supplied a successor to Mirabeau, in Le Pelletier. [De St. Fargeau.] The latter had hitherto been little heard of, but his death offered an occasion for exciting the people too favourable to be neglected: his patriotism and his virtues immediately increased in a ratio to the use which might be made of them;* a dying speech proper for the purpose was composed, and it was decreed unanimously, that he should be installed in all the rights, privileges, and immortalities of the degraded Riquetti.-- * At the first intelligence of his death, a member of the Convention, who was with him, and had not yet had time to study a speech, confessed his last words to have been, "Jai froid."--"I am cold." This, however, would nave made no figure on the banners of a funeral procession; and Le Pelletier was made to die, like the hero of a tragedy, uttering blank verse. The funeral that preceded these divine awards was a farce, which tended more to provoke a massacre of the living, than to honour the dead; and the Convention, who vowed to sacrifice their animosities on his tomb, do so little credit to the conciliating influence of St. Fargeau's virtues, that they now dispute with more acrimony than ever. The departments, who begin to be extremely submissive to Paris, thought it incumbent on them to imitate this ceremony; but as it was rather an act of fear than of patriotism, it was performed here with so much oeconomy, and so little inclination, that the whole was cold and paltry. --An altar was erected on the great market-place, and so little were the people affected by the catastrophe of a patriot whom they were informed had sacrificed* his life in their cause, that the only part of the business which seemed to interest them was the extravagant gestures of a woman in a dirty white dress, hired to act the part of a "pleureuse," or mourner, and whose sorrow appeared to divert them infinitely.-- * There is every reason to believe that Le Pelletier was not singled out for his patriotism.--It is said, and with much appearance of probability, that he had promised PARIS, with whom he had been intimate, not to vote for the death of the King; and, on his breaking his word, PARIS, who seems to have not been perfectly in his senses, assassinated him.--PARIS had been in the Garde du Corps, and, like most of his brethren, was strongly attached to the King's person. Rage and despair prompted him to the commission of an act, which can never be excused, however the perpetrator may imagine himself the mere instrument of Divine vengeance.--Notwithstanding the most vigilant research, he escaped for some time, and wandered as far as Forges d'Eaux, a little town in Normandy. At the inn where he lodged, the extravagance of his manner giving suspicions that he was insane, the municipality were applied to, to secure him. An officer entered his room while he was in bed, and intimated the purpose he was come for. PARIS affected to comply, and, turning, drew a pistol from under the clothes, and shot himself.--Among the papers found upon him were some affecting lines, expressive of his contempt for life, and adding, that the influence of his example was not to be dreaded, since he left none behind him that deserved the name of Frenchmen!--_"Qu'on n'inquiete personne! personne n'a ete mon complice dans la mort heureuse de Scelerat St. Fargeau. Si Je ne l'eusse pas rencontre sous ma main, Je purgeois la France du regicide, du parricide, du patricide D'Orleans. Qu'on n'inquiete personne. Tous les Francois sont des laches auxquelles Je dis-- "Peuple, dont les forfaits jettent partout l'effroi, "Avec calme et plaisir J'abandonne la vie "Ce n'est que par la mort qu'on peut fuir l'infamie, "Qu'imprime sur nos fronts le sang de notre Roi."_ "Let no man be molested on my account: I had no accomplice in the fortunate death of the miscreant St. Fargeau. If he had not fallen in my way, I should have purged France of the regicide, parricide, patricide D'Orleans. Let no man be molested. All the French are cowards, to whom I say--'People, whose crimes inspire universal horror, I quit life with tranquility and pleasure. By death alone can we fly from that infamy which the blood of our King has marked upon our foreheads!'"--This paper was entitled "My Brevet of Honour." It will ever be so where the people are not left to consult their own feelings. The mandate that orders them to assemble may be obeyed, but "that which passeth show" is not to be enforced. It is a limit prescribed by Nature herself to authority, and such is the aversion of the human mind from dictature and restraint, that here an official rejoicing is often more serious than these political exactions of regret levied in favour of the dead.--Yours, &c. &c. March 23, 1793. The partizans of the French in England alledge, that the revolution, by giving them a government founded on principles of moderation and rectitude, will be advantageous to all Europe, and more especially to Great Britain, which has so often suffered by wars, the fruit of their intrigues.--This reasoning would be unanswerable could the character of the people be changed with the form of their government: but, I believe, whoever examines its administration, whether as it relates to foreign powers or internal policy, will find that the same spirit of intrigue, fraud, deception, and want of faith, which dictated in the cabinet of Mazarine or Louvois, has been transfused, with the addition of meanness and ignorance,* into a Constitutional Ministry, or the Republican Executive Council. * The Executive Council is composed of men who, if ever they were well-intentioned, must be totally unfit for the government of an extensive republic. Monge, the Minister of the Marine, is a professor of geometry; Garat, Minister of Justice, a gazette writer; Le Brun, Minister of Foreign Affairs, ditto; and Pache, Minister of the Interior, a private tutor.--Whoever reads the debates of the Convention will find few indications of real talents, and much pedantry and ignorance. For example, Anacharsis Cloots, who is a member of the Committee of Public Instruction, and who one should, of course, expect not to be more ignorant than his colleagues, has lately advised them to distress the enemy by invading Scotland, which he calls the granary of England. France had not yet determined on the articles of her future political creed, when agents were dispatched to make proselytes in England, and, in proportion as she assumed a more popular form of government, all the qualities which have ever marked her as the disturber of mankind seem to have acquired new force. Every where the ambassadors of the republic are accused of attempts to excite revolt and discontent, and England* is now forced into a war because she could not be persuaded to an insurrection. * For some time previous to the war, all the French prints and even members of the Convention, in their debates, announced England to be on the point of an insurrection. The intrigues of Chauvelin, their ambassador, to verify this prediction, are well known. Brissot, Le Brun, &c. who have since been executed, were particularly charged by the adverse party with provoking the war with England. Robespierre, and those who succeeded, were not so desirous of involving us in a foreign war, and their humane efforts were directed merely to excite a civil one.--The third article of accusation against Rolland is, having sent twelve millions of livres to England, to assist in procuring a declaration of war. Perhaps it may be said, that the French have taken this part only for their own security, and to procure adherents to the common cause; but this is all I contend for--that the politics of the old government actuate the new, and that they have not, in abolishing courts and royalty, abolished the perfidious system of endeavouring to benefit themselves, by creating distress and dissention among their neighbours.-- Louvois supplied the Protestants in the Low Countries with money, while he persecuted them in France. The agents of the republic, more oeconomical, yet directed by the same motives, eke out corruption by precepts of sedition, and arm the leaders of revolt with the rights of man; but, forgetting the maxim that charity should begin at home, in their zeal for the freedom of other countries, they leave no portion of it for their own! Louis the Fourteenth over-ran Holland and the Palatinate to plant the white flag, and lay the inhabitants under contribution--the republic send an army to plant the tree of liberty, levy a _don patriotique,_ [Patriotic gift.] and place garrisons in the towns, in order to preserve their freedom.--Kings have violated treaties from the desire of conquest --these virtuous republicans do it from the desire of plunder; and, previous to opening the Scheldt, the invasion of Holland, was proposed as a means of paying the expences of the war. I have never heard that even the most ambitious Potentates ever pretended to extend their subjugation beyond the persons and property of the conquered; but these militant dogmatists claim an empire even over opinions, and insist that no people can be free or happy unless they regulate their ideas of freedom and happiness by the variable standard of the Jacobin club. Far from being of Hudibras's philosophy,* they seem to think the mind as tangible as the body, and that, with the assistance of an army, they may as soon lay one "by the heels" as the other. * "Quoth he, one half of man, his mind, "Is, sui juris, unconfin'd, "And ne'er can be laid by the heels, "Whate'er the other moiety feels." Hudibras. Now this I conceive to be the worst of all tyrannies, nor have I seen it exceeded on the French theatre, though, within the last year, the imagination of their poets has been peculiarly ingenious and inventive on this subject.--It is absurd to suppose this vain and overbearing disposition will cease when the French government is settled. The intrigues of the popular party began in England the very moment they attained power, and long before there was any reason to suspect that the English would deviate from their plan of neutrality. If, then, the French cannot restrain this mischievous spirit while their own affairs are sufficient to occupy their utmost attention, it is natural to conclude, that, should they once become established, leisure and peace will make them dangerous to the tranquillity of all Europe. Other governments may be improved by time, but republics always degenerate; and if that which is in its original state of perfection exhibit already the maturity of vice, one cannot, without being more credulous than reasonable, hope any thing better for the future than what we have experienced from the past.--It is, indeed, unnecessary to detain you longer on this subject. You must, ere now, be perfectly convinced how far the revolutionary systems of France are favourable to the peace and happiness of other countries. I will only add a few details which may assist you in judging of what advantage they have been to the French themselves, and whether, in changing the form of their government, they have amended its principles; or if, in "conquering liberty," (as they express it,) they have really become free. The situation of France has altered much within the last two months: the seat of power is less fluctuating and the exercise of it more absolute-- arbitrary measures are no longer incidental, but systematic--and a regular connection of dependent tyranny is established, beginning with the Jacobin clubs, and ending with the committees of the sections. A simple decree for instance, has put all the men in the republic, (unmarried and without children,) from eighteen to forty-five at the requisition of the Minister of War. A levy of three hundred thousand is to take place immediately: each department is responsible for the whole of a certain number to the Convention, the districts are answerable for their quota to the departments, the municipalities to the district, and the diligence of the whole is animated by itinerant members of the legislature, entrusted with the disposal of an armed force. The latter circumstance may seem to you incredible; yet is it nevertheless true, that most of the departments are under the jurisdiction of these sovereigns, whose authority is nearly unlimited. We have, at this moment, two Deputies in the town, who arrest and imprison at their pleasure. One-and-twenty inhabitants of Amiens were seized a few nights ago, without any specific charge having been exhibited against them, and are still in confinement. The gates of the town are shut, and no one is permitted to pass or repass without an order from the municipality; and the observance of this is exacted even of those who reside in the suburbs. Farmers and country people, who are on horseback, are obliged to have the features and complexion of their horses minuted on the passport with their own. Every person whom it is found convenient to call suspicious, is deprived of his arms; and private houses are disturbed during the night, (in opposition to a positive law,) under pretext of searching for refractory priests.--These regulations are not peculiar to this department, and you must understand them as conveying a general idea of what passes in every part of France.--I have yet to add, that letters are opened with impunity--that immense sums of assignats are created at the will of the Convention--that no one is excused mounting guard in person--and that all housekeepers, and even lodgers, are burthened with the quartering of troops, sometimes as many as eight or ten, for weeks together. You may now, I think, form a tolerable idea of the liberty that has accrued to the French from the revolution, the dethronement of the King, and the establishment of a republic. But, though the French suffer this despotism without daring to murmur openly, many a significant shrug and doleful whisper pass in secret, and this political discontent has even its appropriate language, which, though not very explicit, is perfectly understood.--Thus when you hear one man say to another, _"Ah, mon Dieu, on est bien malheureux dans ce moment ici;"_ or, _"Nous sommes dans une position tres critique--Je voudrois bien voir la fin de tout cela;"_ ["God knows, we are very miserable at present--we are in a very critical situation--I should like to see an end of all this."] you may be sure he languishes for the restoration of the monarchy, and hopes with equal fervor, that he may live to see the Convention hanged. In these sort of conferences, however, evaporates all their courage. They own their country is undone, that they are governed by a set of brigands, go home and hide any set of valuables they have not already secreted, and receive with obsequious complaisance the next visite domiciliaire. The mass of the people, with as little energy, have more obstinacy, and are, of course, not quite so tractable. But, though they grumble and procrastinate, they do not resist; and their delays and demurs usually terminate in implicit submission. The Deputy-commissioners, whom I have mentioned above, have been at Amiens some time, in order to promote the levying of recruits. On Sundays and holidays they summoned the inhabitants to attend at the cathedral, where they harangued them on the subject, called for vengeance on the coalesced despots, expatiated on the love of glory, and insisted on the pleasure of dying for one's country: while the people listened with vacant attention, amused themselves with the paintings, or adjourned in small committees to discuss the hardship of being obliged to fight without inclination.--Thus time elapsed, the military orations produced no effect, and no troops were raised: no one would enlist voluntarily, and all refused to settle it by lot, because, as they wisely observed, the lot must fall on somebody. Yet, notwithstanding the objection, the matter was at length decided by this last method. The decision had no sooner taken place, than another difficulty ensued--those who escaped acknowledged it was the best way that could be devised; but those who were destined to the frontiers refused to go. Various altercations, and excuses, and references, were the consequence; yet, after all this murmuring and evasion, the presence of the Commissioners and a few dragoons have arranged the business very pacifically; many are already gone, and the rest will (if the dragoons continue here) soon follow. This, I assure you, is a just statement of the account between the Convention and the People: every thing is effected by fear--nothing by attachment; and the one is obeyed only because the other want courage to resist.--Yours, &c. Rouen, March 31, 1793. Rouen, like most of the great towns in France, is what is called decidedly aristocratic; that is, the rich are discontented because they are without security, and the poor because they want bread. But these complaints are not peculiar to large places; the causes of them equally exist in the smallest village, and the only difference which fixes the imputation of aristocracy on one more than the other, is, daring to murmur, or submitting in silence. I must here remark to you, that the term aristocrate has much varied from its former signification. A year ago, aristocrate implied one who was an advocate for the privileges of the nobility, and a partizan of the ancient government--at present a man is an aristocrate for entertaining exactly the same principles which at that time constituted a patriot; and, I believe, the computation is moderate, when I say, that more than three parts of the nation are aristocrates. The rich, who apprehend a violation of their property, are aristocrates--the merchants, who regret the stagnation of commerce, and distrust the credit of the assignats, are aristocrates--the small retailers, who are pillaged for not selling cheaper than they buy, and who find these outrages rather encouraged than repressed, are aristocrates--and even the poor, who murmur at the price of bread, and the numerous levies for the army, are, occasionally, aristocrates. Besides all these, there are likewise various classes of moral aristocrates--such as the humane, who are averse from massacres and oppression--those who regret the loss of civil liberty--the devout, who tremble at the contempt for religion--the vain, who are mortified at the national degradation--and authors, who sigh for the freedom of the press.--When you consider this multiplicity of symptomatic indications, you will not be surprized that such numbers are pronounced in a state of disease; but our republican physicians will soon generalize these various species of aristocracy under the single description of all who have any thing to lose, and every one will be deemed plethoric who is not in a consumption. The people themselves who observe, though they do not reason, begin to have an idea that property exposes the safety of the owner and that the legislature is less inexorable when guilt is unproductive, than when the conviction of a criminal comprehends the forfeiture of an estate.--A poor tradesman was lamenting to me yesterday, that he had neglected an offer of going to live in England; and when I told him I thought he was very fortunate in having done so, as he would have been declared an emigrant, he replied, laughing, _"Moi emigre qui n'ai pas un sol:"_ ["I am emigrant, who am not worth a halfpenny!"]--No, no; they don't make emigrants of those who are worth nothing. And this was not said with any intended irreverence to the Convention, but with the simplicity which really conceived the wealth of the emigrants to be the cause of the severity exercised against them. The commercial and political evils attending a vast circulation of assignats have been often discussed, but I have never yet known the matter considered in what is, perhaps, its most serious point of view--I mean its influence on the habits and morals of the people. Wherever I go, especially in large towns like this, the mischief is evident, and, I fear, irremediable. That oeconomy, which was one of the most valuable characteristics of the French, is now comparatively disregarded. The people who receive what they earn in a currency they hold in contempt, are more anxious to spend than to save; and those who formerly hoarded six liards or twelve sols pieces with great care, would think it folly to hoard an assignat, whatever its nominal value. Hence the lower class of females dissipate their wages on useless finery; men frequent public-houses, and game for larger sums than before; little shopkeepers, instead of amassing their profits, become more luxurious in their table: public places are always full; and those who used, in a dress becoming their station, to occupy the "parquet" or "parterre," now, decorated with paste, pins, gauze, and galloon, fill the boxes:--and all this destructive prodigality is excused to others and themselves _"par ce que ce n'est que du papier."_ [Because it is only paper.]--It is vain to persuade them to oeconomize what they think a few weeks may render valueless; and such is the evil of a circulation so totally discredited, that profusion assumes the merit of precaution, extravagance the plea of necessity, and those who were not lavish by habit become so through their eagerness to part with their paper. The buried gold and silver will again be brought forth, and the merchant and the politician forget the mischief of the assignats. But what can compensate for the injury done to the people? What is to restore their ancient frugality, or banish their acquired wants? It is not to be expected that the return of specie will diminish the inclination for luxury, or that the human mind can be regulated by the national finance; on the contrary, it is rather to be feared, that habits of expence which owe their introduction to the paper will remain when the paper is annihilated; that, though money may become more scarce, the propensities of which it supplies the indulgence will not be less forcible, and that those who have no other resources for their accustomed gratifications will but too often find one in the sacrifice of their integrity.--Thus, the corruption of manners will be succeeded by the corruption of morals, and the dishonesty of one sex, with the licentiousness of the other, produce consequences much worse than any imagined by the abstracted calculations of the politician, or the selfish ones of the merchant. Age will be often without solace, sickness without alleviation, and infancy without support; because some would not amass for themselves, nor others for their children, the profits of their labour in a representative sign of uncertain value. I do not pretend to assert that these are the natural effects of a paper circulation--doubtless, when supported by high credit, and an extensive commerce, it must have many advantages; but this was not the case in France--the measure was adopted in a moment of revolution, and when the credit of the country, never very considerable, was precarious and degraded--It did not flow from the exuberance of commerce, but the artifices of party--it never presumed, for a moment, on the confidence of the people--its reception was forced, and its emission too profuse not to be alarming.--I know it may be answered, that the assignats do not depend upon an imaginary appreciation, but really represent a large mass of national wealth, particularly in the domains of the clergy: yet, perhaps, it is this very circumstance which has tended most to discredit them. Had their credit rested only on the solvency of the nation, though they had not been greatly coveted, still they would have been less distributed; people would not have apprehended their abolition on a change of government, nor that the systems adopted by one party might be reversed by another. Indeed we may add, that an experiment of this kind does not begin auspiciously when grounded on confiscation and seizures, which it is probable more than half the French considered as sacrilege and robbery; nor could they be very anxious to possess a species of wealth which they made it a motive of conscience to hope would never be of any value.--But if the original creation of assignats were objectionable, the subsequent creations cannot but augment the evil. I have already described to you the effects visible at present, and those to be apprehended in future--others may result from the new inundation, [1200 millions--50 millions sterling.] which it is not possible to conjecture; but if the mischiefs should be real, in proportion as a part of the wealth which this paper is said to represent is imaginary, their extent cannot easily be exaggerated. Perhaps you will be of this opinion, when you recollect that one of the funds which form the security of this vast sum is the gratitude of the Flemings for their liberty; and if this reimbursement be to be made according to the specimen the French army have experienced in their retreat, I doubt much of the convention will be disposed to advance any farther claims on it; for, it seems, the inhabitants of the Low Countries have been so little sensible of the benefits bestowed on them, that even the peasants seize on any weapons nearest hand, and drub and pursue the retrograding armies as they would wild beasts; and though, as Dumouriez observes in one of his dispatches, our revolution is intended to favour the country people, _"c'est cependant les gens de campagne qui s'arment contre nous, et le tocsin sonne de toutes parts;"_ ["It is, however, the country people who take up arms against us, and the alarm is sounded from all quarters."] so that the French will, in fact, have created a public debt of so singular a nature, that every one will avoid as much as possible making any demand of the capital. I have already been more diffuse than I intended on the subject of finance; but I beg you to observe, that I do not affect to calculate, or speculate, and that I reason only from facts which are daily within my notice, and which, as tending to operate on the morals of the people, are naturally included in the plan I proposed to myself. I have been here but a few days, and intend returning to-morrow. I left Mrs. D____ very little better, and the disaffection of Dumouriez, which I just now learn, may oblige us to remove to some place not on the route to Paris.--Every one looks alert and important, and a physiognomist may perceive that regret is not the prevailing sentiment-- "We now begin to speak in tropes, "And, by our fears, express our hopes." The Jacobins are said to be apprehensive, which augurs well; for, certainly, next to the happiness of good people, one desires the punishment of the bad. Amiens, April 7, 1793. If the sentiments of the people towards their present government had been problematical before, the visible effect of Dumouriez' conduct would afford an ample solution of the problem. That indifference about public affairs which the prospect of an established despotism had begun to create has vanished--all is hope and expectation--the doors of those who retail the newspapers are assailed by people too impatient to read them-- each with his gazette in his hand listens eagerly to the verbal circulation, and then holds a secret conference with his neighbour, and calculates how long it may be before Dumouriez can reach Paris. A fortnight ago the name of Dumouriez was not uttered but in a tone of harshness and contempt, and, if ever it excited any thing like complacency, it was when he announced defeats and losses. Now he is spoken of with a significant modulation of voice, it is discovered that he has great talents, and his popularity with the army is descanted upon with a mysterious air of suppressed satisfaction.--Those who were extremely apprehensive lest part of the General's troops should be driven this way by the successes of the enemy, seem to talk with perfect composure of their taking the same route to attack the capital; while others, who would have been unwilling to receive either Dumouriez or his army as peaceful fugitives, will be "nothing loath" to admit them as conquerors. From all I can learn, these dispositions are very general, and, indeed, the actual tyranny is so great, and the perspective so alarming, that any means of deliverance must be acceptable. But whatever may be the event, though I cannot be personally interested, if I thought Dumouriez really proposed to establish a good government, humanity would render one anxious for his success; for it is not to be disguised, that France is at this moment (as the General himself expressed it) under the joint dominion of _"imbecilles"_ and _"brigands."_ [Ideots and robbers.] It is possible, that at this moment the whole army is disaffected, and that the fortified towns are prepared to surrender. It is also certain, that Brittany is in revolt, and that many other departments are little short of it; yet you will not very easily conceive what may have occupied the Convention during part of this important crisis--nothing less than inventing a dress for their Commissioners! But, as Sterne says, "it is the spirit of the nation;" and I recollect no circumstance during the whole progress of the revolution (however serious) that has not been mixed with frivolities of this kind. I know not what effect this new costume may produce on the rebels or the enemy, but I confess it appears to me more ludicrous than formidable, especially when a representative happens to be of the shape and features of the one we have here. Saladin, Deputy for this department, and an advocate of the town of Amiens, has already invested himself with this armour of inviolability; "strange figure in such strange habiliments," that one is tempted to forget that Baratraria and the government of Sancho are the creation of fancy. Imagine to yourself a short fat man, of sallow complexion and small eyes, with a sash of white, red, and blue round his waist, a black belt with a sword suspended across his shoulders, and a round hat turned up before, with three feathers of the national colours: "even such a man" is our representative, and exercises a more despotic authority than most Princes in Europe.--He is accompanied by another Deputy, who was what is called Pere de la Oratoire before the revolution--that is, in a station nearly approaching to that of an under-master at our public schools; only that the seminaries to which these were attached being very numerous, those employed in them were little considered. They wore the habit, and were subject to the same restrictions, as the Clergy, but were at liberty to quit the profession and marry, if they chose.--I have been more particular in describing this class of men, because they have every where taken an active and successful part in perverting and misleading the people: they are in the clubs, or the municipalities, in the Convention, and in all elective administrations, and have been in most places remarkable for their sedition and violence. Several reasons may be assigned for the influence and conduct of men whose situation and habits, on a first view, seem to oppose both. In the first ardour of reform it was determined, that all the ancient modes of education should be abolished; small temporary pensions were allotted to the Professors of Colleges, and their admission to the exercise of similar functions in the intended new system was left to future decision. From this time the disbanded oratorians, who knew it would be vain to resist popular authority, endeavoured to share in it; or, at least, by becoming zealous partizans of the revolution, to establish their claims to any offices or emoluments which might be substituted for those they had been deprived of. They enrolled themselves with the Jacobins, courted the populace, and, by the talent of pronouncing Roman names with emphasis, and the study of rhetorical attitudes, they became important to associates who were ignorant, or necessary to those who were designing. The little information generally possessed by the middle classes of life in France, is also another cause of the comparative importance of those whose professions had, in this respect, raised them something above the common level. People of condition, liberally educated, have unfortunately abandoned public affairs for some time; so that the incapacity of some, and the pride or despondency of others, have, in a manner, left the nation to the guidance of pedants, incendiaries, and adventurers. Perhaps also the animosity with which the description of men I allude to pursued every thing attached to the ancient government, may, in some degree, have proceeded from a desire of revenge and retaliation. They were not, it must be confessed, treated formerly with the regard due to persons whose profession was in itself useful and respectable; and the wounds of vanity are not easily cured, nor the vindictiveness of little minds easily satisfied. From the conduct and popular influence of these Peres de l'Oratoire, some truths may be deduced not altogether useless even to a country not liable to such violent reforms. It affords an example of the danger arising from those sudden and arbitrary innovations, which, by depriving any part of the community of their usual means of living, and substituting no other, tempt them to indemnify themselves by preying, in different ways, on their fellow-citizens.--The daring and ignorant often become depredators of private property; while those who have more talents, and less courage, endeavour to succeed by the artifices which conciliate public favour. I am not certain whether the latter are not to be most dreaded of the two, for those who make a trade of the confidence of the people seldom fail to corrupt them--they find it more profitable to flatter their passions than to enlighten their understandings; and a demagogue of this kind, who obtains an office by exciting one popular insurrection, will make no scruple of maintaining himself in it by another. An inferrence may likewise be drawn of the great necessity of cultivating such a degree of useful knowledge in the middle order of society, as may not only prevent their being deceived by interested adventurers themselves, but enable them to instruct the people in their true interests, and rescue them from becoming the instruments, and finally the victims, of fraud and imposture.--The insult and oppression which the nobility frequently experience from those who have been promoted by the revolution, will, I trust, be a useful lesson in future to the great, who may be inclined to arrogate too much from adventitious distinctions, to forget that the earth we tread upon may one day overwhelm us, and that the meanest of mankind may do us an injury which it is not in the power even of the most exalted to shield us from. The inquisition begins to grow so strict, that I have thought it necessary to-day to bury a translation of Burke.--In times of ignorance and barbarity, it was criminal to read the bible, and our English author is prohibited for a similar reason--that is, to conceal from the people the errors of those who direct them: and, indeed, Mr. Burke has written some truths, which it is of much more importance for the Convention to conceal, than it could be to the Catholic priests to monopolize the divine writings.--As far as it was possible, Mr. Burke has shown himself a prophet: if he has not been completely so, it was because he had a benevolent heart, and is the native of a free country. By the one, he was prevented from imagining the cruelties which the French have committed; by the other, the extreme despotism which they endure. April 20, 1793. Before these halcyon days of freedom, the supremacy of Paris was little felt in the provinces, except in dictating a new fashion in dress, an improvement in the art of cookery, or the invention of a minuet. At present our imitations of the capital are something more serious; and if our obedience be not quite so voluntary, it is much more implicit. Instead of receiving fashions from the Court, we take them now from the _dames des balles,_ [Market-women.] and the municipality; and it must be allowed, that the imaginations of our new sovereigns much exceed those of the old in force and originality. The mode of pillaging the shops, for instance, was first devised by the Parisian ladies, and has lately been adopted with great success in the departments; the visite domiciliaire, also, which I look upon as a most ingenious effort of fancy, is an emanation from the commune of Paris, and has had an universal run.--But it would be vain to attempt enumerating all the obligations of this kind which we owe to the indulgence of that virtuous city: our last importation, however, is of so singular a nature, that, were we not daily assured all the liberty in the world centers in Paris, I should be doubtful as to its tendency. It has lately been decreed, that every house in the republic shall have fixed on the outside of the door, in legible characters, the name, age, birth-place, and profession of its inhabitants. Not the poorest cottager, nor those who are too old or too young for action, nor even unmarried ladies, are exempt from thus proclaiming the abstract of their history to passers-by. --The reigning party judge very wisely, that all those who are not already their enemies may become so, and that those who are unable to take a part themselves may excite others: but, whatever may be the intention of this measure, it is impossible to conceive any thing which could better serve the purposes of an arbitrary government; it places every individual in the republic within the immediate reach of informers and spies--it points out those who are of an age to serve in the army-- those who have sought refuge in one department from the persecutions of another--and, in short, whether a victim is pursued by the denunciation of private malice, or political suspicion, it renders escape almost impracticable. We have had two domiciliary visits within the last fortnight--one to search for arms, the other under pretext of ascertaining the number of troops each house is capable of lodging. But this was only the pretext, because the municipalities always quarter troops as they think proper, without considering whether you have room or not; and the real object of this inquisition was to observe if the inhabitants answered to the lists placed on the doors.--Mrs. D____ was ill in bed, but you must not imagine such a circumstance deterred these gallant republicans from entering her room with an armed force, to calculate how many soldiers might be lodged in the bedchamber of a sick female! The French, indeed, had never, in my remembrance, any pretensions to delicacy, or even decency, and they are certainly not improved in these respects by the revolution. It is curious in walking the streets, to observe the devices of the several classes of aristocracy; for it is not to be disguised, that since the hope from Dumouriez has vanished, though the disgust of the people may be increased, their terror is also greater than ever, and the departments near Paris have no resource but silent submission. Every one, therefore, obeys the letter of the decrees with the diligence of fear, while they elude the spirit of them with all the ingenuity of hatred. The rich, for example, who cannot entirely divest themselves of their remaining hauteur, exhibit a sullen compliance on a small piece of paper, written in a small hand, and placed at the very extreme of the height allowed by the law. Some fix their bills so as to be half covered by a shutter; others fasten them only with wafers, so that the wind detaching one or two corners, makes it impossible to read the rest.* * This contrivance became so common, that an article was obliged to be added to the decree, importing, that whenever the papers were damaged or effaced by the weather, or deranged by the wind, the inhabitants should replace them, under a penalty. Many who have courts or passages to their houses, put their names on the half of a gate which they leave open, so that the writing is not perceptible but to those who enter. But those who are most afraid, or most decidedly aristocrates, subjoin to their registers, "All good republicans:" or, _"Vive la republique, une et indivisible."_ ["The republic, one and indivisible for ever!"] Some likewise, who are in public offices, or shopkeepers who are very timid, and afraid of pillage, or are ripe for a counter-revolution, have a sheet half the size of the door, decorated with red caps, tri-coloured ribbons, and flaming sentences ending in "Death or Liberty!" If, however, the French government confined itself to these petty acts of despotism, I would endeavour to be reconciled to it; but I really begin to have serious apprehensions, not so much for our safety as our tranquillity, and if I considered only myself, I should not hesitate to return to England. Mrs. D____ is too ill to travel far at present, and her dread of crossing the sea makes her less disposed to think our situation here hazardous or ineligible. Mr. D____, too, who, without being a republican or a partizan of the present system, has always been a friend to the first revolution, is unwilling to believe the Convention so bad as there is every reason to suppose it. I therefore let my judgement yield to my friendship, and, as I cannot prevail on them to depart, the danger which may attend our remaining is an additional reason for my not quitting them. The national perfidy which has always distinguished France among the other countries of Europe, seems now not to be more a diplomatic principle, than a rule of domestic government. It is so extended and generalized, that an individual is as much liable to be deceived and betrayed by confiding in a decree, as a foreign power would be by relying on the faith of a treaty.--An hundred and twenty priests, above sixty years of age, who had not taken the oaths, but who were allowed to remain by the same law that banished those who were younger, have been lately arrested, and are confined together in a house which was once a college. The people did not behold this act of cruelty with indifference, but, awed by an armed force, and the presence of the Commissioners of the Convention, they could only follow the priests to their prison with silent regret and internal horror. They, however, venture even now to mark their attachment, by taking all opportunities of seeing them, and supplying them with necessaries, which it is not very difficult to do, as they are guarded by the Bourgeois, who are generally inclined to favour them. I asked a woman to-day if she still contrived to have access to the priests, and she replied, _"Ah, oui, il y a encore de la facilite, par ce que l'on ne trouve pas des gardes ici qui ne sont pas pour eux."_* * "Yes, yes, we still contive it, because there are no guards to be found here who don't befriend them." Thus, even the most minute and best organized tyranny may be eluded; and, indeed, if all the agents of this government acted in the spirit of its decrees, it would be insupportable even to a native of Turkey or Japan. But if some have still a remnant of humanity left, there are a sufficient number who execute the laws as unfeelingly as they are conceived. When these poor priests were to be removed from their several houses, it was found necessary to dislodge the Bishop of Amiens, who had for some time occupied the place fixed on for their reception. The Bishop had notice given him at twelve o'clock in the day to relinquish his lodging before evening; yet the Bishop of Amiens is a constitutional Prelate, and had, before the revolution, the cure of a large parish at Paris; nor was it without much persuasion that he accepted the see of Amiens. In the severe winter of 1789 he disposed of his plate and library, (the latter of which was said to be one of the best private collections in Paris,) to purchase bread for the poor. "But Time hath a wallet on his back, wherein he puts alms for oblivion;" and the charities of the Bishop could not shield him from the contempt and insult which pursue his profession. I have been much distressed within the last few days on account of my friend Madame de B____. I subjoining a translation of a letter I have just received from her, as it will convey to you hereafter a tolerable specimen of French liberty. "Maison de Arret, at ____. "I did not write to you, my dear friend, at the time I promised, and you will perceive, by the date of this, that I have had too good an excuse for my negligence. I have been here almost a week, and my spirits are still so much disordered, that I can with difficulty recollect myself enough to relate the circumstances of our unfortunate situation; but as it is possible you might become acquainted with them by some other means, I rather determined to send you a few lines, than suffer you to be alarmed by false or exaggerated reports. "About two o'clock on Monday morning last our servants were called up, and, on their opening the door, the house was immediately filled with armed men, some of whom began searching the rooms, while others came to our bedchamber, and informed us we were arrested by order of the department, and that we must rise and accompany them to prison. It is not easy to describe the effect of such a mandate on people who, having nothing to reproach themselves with, could not be prepared for it.--As soon as we were a little recovered from our first terrors, we endeavoured to obey, and begged they would indulge us by retiring a few moments till I had put my clothes on; but neither my embarrassment, nor the screams of the child--neither decency nor humanity, could prevail. They would not even permit my maid to enter the room; and, amidst this scene of disorder, I was obliged to dress myself and the terrified infant. When this unpleasant task was finished, a general examination of our house and papers took place, and lasted until six in the evening: nothing, however, tending in the remotest degree to criminate us was found, but we were nevertheless conducted to prison, and God knows how long we are likely to remain here. The denunciation against us being secret, and not being able to learn either our crime or our accusers, it is difficult for us to take any measures for our enlargement. We cannot defend ourselves against a charge of which we are ignorant, nor combat the validity of a witness, who is not only allowed to remain secret, but is paid perhaps for his information.* * At this time informers were paid from fifty to an hundred livres for each accusation. "We most probably owe our misfortune to some discarded servant or personal enemy, for I believe you are convinced we have not merited it either by our discourse or our actions: if we had, the charge would have been specific; but we have reason to imagine it is nothing more than the indeterminate and general charge of being aristocrates. I did not see my mother or sister all the day we were arrested, nor till the evening of the next: the one was engaged perhaps with "Rosine and the Angola", who were indisposed, and the other would not forego her usual card-party. Many of our friends likewise have forborne to approach us, lest their apparent interest in our fate should involve themselves; and really the alarm is so general, that I can, without much effort, forgive them. "You will be pleased to learn, that the greatest civilities I have received in this unpleasant situation, have been from some of your countrymen, who are our fellow-prisoners: they are only poor sailors, but they are truly kind and attentive, and do us various little services that render us more comfortable than we otherwise should be; for we have no servants here, having deemed it prudent to leave them to take care of our property. The second night we were here, these good creatures, who lodge in the next room, were rather merry, and awoke the child; but as they found, by its cries, that their gaiety had occasioned me some trouble, I have observed ever since that they walk softly, and avoid making the least noise, after the little prisoner is gone to rest. I believe they are pleased with me because I speak their language, and they are still more delighted with your young favourite, who is so well amused, that he begins to forget the gloom of the place, which at first terrified him extremely. "One of our companions is a nonjuring priest, who has been imprisoned under circumstances which make me almost ashamed of my country.--After having escaped from a neighbouring department, he procured himself a lodging in this town, and for some time lived very peaceably, till a woman, who suspected his profession, became extremely importunate with him to confess her. The poor man, for several days, refused, telling her, that he did not consider himself as a priest, nor wished to be known as such, nor to infringe the law which excluded him. The woman, however, still continued to persecute him, alledging, that her conscience was distressed, and that her peace depended on her being able to confess "in the right way." At length he suffered himself to be prevailed upon--the woman received an hundred livres for informing against him, and, perhaps, the priest will be condemned to the Guillotine.* * He was executed some time after. "I will make no reflection on this act, nor on the system of paying informers--your heart will already have anticipated all I could say. I will only add, that if you determine to remain in France, you must observe a degree of circumspection which you may not hitherto have thought necessary. Do not depend on your innocence, nor even trust to common precautions--every day furnishes examples that both are unavailing.--Adieu.--My husband offers you his respects, and your little friend embraces you sincerely. As soon as any change in our favour takes place, I will communicate it to you; but you had better not venture to write--I entrust this to Louison's mother, who is going through Amiens, as it would be unsafe to send it by the post. --Again adieu.--Yours, "Adelaide de ____." Amiens, 1793. It is observable, that we examine less scrupulously the pretensions of a nation to any particular excellence, than we do those of an individual. The reason of this is, probably, that our self-love is as much gratified by admitting the one, as in rejecting the other. When we allow the claims of a whole people, we are flattered with the idea of being above narrow prejudices, and of possessing an enlarged and liberal mind; but if a single individual arrogate to himself any exclusive superiority, our own pride immediately becomes opposed to his, and we seem but to vindicate our judgement in degrading such presumption. I can conceive no other causes for our having so long acquiesced in the claims of the French to pre-eminent good breeding, in an age when, I believe, no person acquainted with both nations can discover any thing to justify them. If indeed politeness consisted in the repetition of a certain routine of phrases, unconnected with the mind or action, I might be obliged to decide against our country; but while decency makes a part of good manners, or feeling is preferable to a mechanical jargon, I am inclined to think the English have a merit more than they have hitherto ascribed to themselves. Do not suppose, however, that I am going to descant on the old imputations of "French flattery," and "French insincerity;" for I am far from concluding that civil behaviour gives one a right to expect kind offices, or that a man is false because he pays a compliment, and refuses a service: I only wish to infer, that an impertinence is not less an impertinence because it is accompanied by a certain set of words, and that a people, who are indelicate to excess, cannot properly be denominated "a polite people." A French man or woman, with no other apology than _"permettez moi,"_ ["Give me leave."] will take a book out of your hand, look over any thing you are reading, and ask you a thousand questions relative to your most private concerns--they will enter your room, even your bedchamber, without knocking, place themselves between you and the fire, or take hold of your clothes to guess what they cost; and they deem these acts of rudeness sufficiently qualified by _"Je demande bien de pardons."_ ["I ask you a thousand pardons."]--They are fully convinced that the English all eat with their knives, and I have often heard this discussed with much self-complacence by those who usually shared the labours of the repast between a fork and their fingers. Our custom also of using water-glasses after dinner is an object of particular censure; yet whoever dines at a French table must frequently observe, that many of the guests might benefit by such ablutions, and their napkins always testify that some previous application would be by no means superfluous. Nothing is more common than to hear physical derangements, disorders, and their remedies, expatiated upon by the parties concerned amidst a room full of people, and that with so much minuteness of description, that a foreigner, without being very fastidious, is on some occasions apt to feel very unpleasant sympathies. There are scarcely any of the ceremonies of a lady's toilette more a mystery to one sex than the other, and men and their wives, who scarcely eat at the same table, are in this respect grossly familiar. The conversation in most societies partakes of this indecency, and the manners of an English female are in danger of becoming contaminated, while she is only endeavouring to suffer without pain the customs of those she has been taught to consider as models of politeness. Whether you examine the French in their houses or in public, you are every where stricken with the same want of delicacy, propriety, and cleanliness. The streets are mostly so filthy, that it is perilous to approach the walls. The insides of the churches are often disgusting, in spite of the advertisements that are placed in them to request the forbearance of phthifical persons: the service does not prevent those who attend from going to and fro with the same irreverence as if the church were empty; and, in the most solemn part of the mass, a woman is suffered to importune you for a liard, as the price of the chair you sit on. At the theatres an actor or actress frequently coughs and expectorates on the stage, in a manner one should think highly unpardonable before one's most intimate friends in England, though this habit is very common to all the French. The inns abound with filth of every kind, and though the owners of them are generally civil enough, their notions of what is decent are so very different from ours, that an English traveller is not soon reconciled to them. In short, it would be impossible to enumerate all that in my opinion excludes the French from the character of a well-bred people.--Swift, who seems to have been gratified by the contemplation of physical impurity, might have done the subject justice; but I confess I am not displeased to feel that, after my long and frequent residences in France, I am still unqualified. So little are these people susceptible of delicacy, propriety, and decency, that they do not even use the words in the sense we do, nor have they any others expressive of the same meaning. But if they be deficient in the external forms of politeness, they are infinitely more so in that politeness which may be called mental. The simple and unerring rule of never preferring one's self, is to them more difficult of comprehension than the most difficult problem in Euclid: in small things as well as great, their own interest, their own gratification, is their leading principle; and the cold flexibility which enables them to clothe this selfish system in "fair forms," is what they call politeness. My ideas on this subject are not recent, but they occurred to me with additional force on the perusal of Mad. de B____'s letter. The behaviour of some of the poorest and least informed class of our countrymen forms a striking contrast with that of the people who arrested her, and even her own friends: the unaffected attention of the one, and the brutality and neglect of the other, are, perhaps, more just examples of English and French manners than you may have hitherto imagined. I do not, however, pretend to say that the latter are all gross and brutal, but I am myself convinced that, generally speaking, they are an unfeeling people. I beg you to remember, that when I speak of the dispositions and character of the French, my opinions are the result of general observation, and are applicable to all ranks; but when my remarks are on habits and manners, they describe only those classes which are properly called the nation. The higher noblesse, and those attached to courts, so nearly resemble each other in all countries, that they are necessarily excepted in these delineations, which are intended to mark the distinguishing features of a people at large: for, assuredly, when the French assert, and their neighbours repeat, that they are a polite nation, it is not meant that those who have important offices or dignified appellations are polite: they found their claims on their superiority as a people, and it is in this light I consider them. My examples are chiefly drawn, not from the very inferior, nor from the most eminent ranks; neither from the retailer of a shop, nor the claimant of a _tabouret,_* or _les grandes ou petites entrees;_ but from the gentry, those of easy fortunes, merchants, &c.--in fact, from people of that degree which it would be fair to cite as what may be called genteel society in England. * The tabouret was a stool allowed to the Ladies of the Court particularly distinguished by rank or favour, when in presence of the Royal Family.--"Les entrees" gave a familiar access to the King and Queen. This cessation of intercourse with our country dispirits me, and, as it will probably continue some time, I shall amuse myself by noting more particularly the little occurrences which may not reach your public prints, but which tend more than great events to mark both the spirit of the government and that of the people.--Perhaps you may be ignorant that the prohibition of the English mails was not the consequence of a decree of the Convention, but a simple order of its commissioners; and I have some reason to think that even they acted at the instigation of an individual who harbours a mean and pitiful dislike to England and its inhabitants.--Yours, &c. May 18, 1793. Near six weeks ago a decree was passed by the Convention, obliging all strangers, who had not purchased national property, or who did not exercise some profession, to give security to the amount of half their supposed fortune, and under these conditions they were to receive a certificate, allowing them to reside, and were promised the protection of the laws. The administrators of the departments, who perceive that they become odious by executing the decrees of the Convention, begin to relax much of their diligence, and it is not till long after a law is promulgated, and their personal fear operates as a stimulant, that they seriously enforce obedience to these mandates. This morning, however, we were summoned by the Committee of our section (or ward) in order to comply with the terms of the decree, and had I been directed only by my own judgement, I should have given the preference to an immediate return to England; but Mrs. D____ is yet ill, and Mr. D____ is disposed to continue. In vain have I quoted "how fickle France was branded 'midst the nations of the earth for perfidy and breach of public faith;" in vain have I reasoned upon the injustice of a government that first allured strangers to remain by insidious offers of protection, and now subjects them to conditions which many may find it difficult to subscribe to: Mr. D____ wishes to see our situation in the most favourable point of view: he argues upon the moral impossibility of our being liable to any inconvenience, and persists in believing that one government may act with treachery towards another, yet, distinguishing between falsehood and meanness, maintain its faith with individuals--in short, we have concluded a sort of treaty, by which we are bound, under the forfeiture of a large sum, to behave peaceably and submit to the laws. The government, in return, empowers us to reside, and promises protection and hospitality. It is to be observed, that the spirit of this regulation depends upon those it affects producing six witnesses of their _"civisme;"_* yet so little interest do the people take on these occasions, that our witnesses were neighbours we had scarcely ever seen, and even one was a man who happened to be casually passing by. * Though the meaning of this word is obvious, we have no one that is exactly synonymous to it. The Convention intend by it an attachment to their government: but the people do not trouble themselves about the meaning of words--they measure their unwilling obedience by the letter. These Committees, which form the last link of a chain of despotism, are composed of low tradesmen and day-labourers, with an attorney, or some person that can read and write, at their head, as President. Priests and nobles, with all that are related, or anywise attached, to them, are excluded by the law; and it is understood that true sans-culottes only should be admitted. With all these precautions, the indifference and hatred of the people to their government are so general, that, perhaps, there are few places where this regulation is executed so as to answer the purposes of the jealous tyranny that conceived it. The members of these Committees seem to exact no farther compliances than such as are absolutely necessary to the mere form of the proceeding, and to secure themselves from the imputation of disobedience; and are very little concerned whether the real design of the legislature be accomplished or not. This negligence, or ill-will, which prevails in various instances, tempers, in some degree, the effect of that restless suspicion which is the usual concomitant of an uncertain, but arbitrary, power. The affections or prejudices that surround a throne, by ensuring the safety of the Monarch, engage him to clemency, and the laws of a mild government are, for the most part, enforced with exactness; but a new and precarious authority, which neither imposes on the understanding nor interests the heart, which is supported only by a palpable and unadorned tyranny, is in its nature severe, and it becomes the common cause of the people to counteract the measures of a despotism which they are unable to resist.--This (as I have before had occasion to observe) renders the condition of the French less insupportable, but it is by no means sufficient to banish the fears of a stranger who has been accustomed to look for security, not from a relaxation or disregard of the laws, but from their efficacy; not from the characters of those who execute them, but from the rectitude with which they are formed.--What would you think in England, if you were obliged to contemplate with dread the three branches of your legislature, and depend for the protection of your person and property on soldiers and constables? Yet such is nearly the state we are in; and indeed a system of injustice and barbarism gains ground so fast, that almost any apprehension is justified.--The Tribunal Revolutionnaire has already condemned a servant maid for her political opinions; and one of the Judges of this tribunal lately introduced a man to the Jacobins, with high panegyrics, because, as he alledged, he had greatly contributed to the condemnation of a criminal. The same Judge likewise apologized for having as yet sent but a small number to the Guillotine, and promises, that, on the first appearance of a "Brissotin" before him, he will show him no mercy. When the minister of public justice thus avows himself the agent of a party, a government, however recent its formation, must be far advanced in depravity; and the corruption of those who are the interpreters of the law has usually been the last effort of expiring power. My friends, Mons. And Mad. de B____, are released from their confinement; not as you might expect, by proving their innocence, but by the efforts of an individual, who had more weight than their accuser: and, far from obtaining satisfaction for the injury they have received, they are obliged to accept as a favour the liberty they were deprived of by malice and injustice. They will, most probably, never be acquainted with the nature of the charges brought against them; and their accuser will escape with impunity, and, perhaps, meet with reward. All the French papers are filled with descriptions of the enthusiasm with which the young men "start to arms" [_Offian._] at the voice of their country; yet it is very certain, that this enthusiasm is of so subtle and aerial a form as to be perceivable only to those who are interested in discovering it. In some places these enthusiastic warriors continue to hide themselves--from others they are escorted to the place of their destination by nearly an equal number of dragoons; and no one, I believe, who can procure money to pay a substitute, is disposed to go himself. This is sufficiently proved by the sums demanded by those who engage as substitutes: last year from three to five hundred livres was given; at present no one will take less than eight hundred or a thousand, besides being furnished with clothes, &c. The only real volunteers are the sons of aristocrates, and the relations of emigrants, who, sacrificing their principles to their fears, hope, by enlisting in the army, to protect their estates and families: those likewise who have lucrative employments, and are afraid of losing them, affect great zeal, and expect to purchase impunity for civil peculation at home, by the military services of their children abroad. This, I assure you, is the real state of that enthusiasm which occasions such an expence of eloquence to our gazette-writers; but these fallacious accounts are not like the ephemeral deceits of your party prints in England, the effect of which is destroyed in a few hours by an opposite assertion. None here are bold enough to contradict what their sovereigns would have believed; and a town or district, driven almost to revolt by the present system of recruiting, consents very willingly to be described as marching to the frontiers with martial ardour, and burning to combat les esclaves des tyrans! By these artifices, one department is misled with regard to the dispositions of another, and if they do not excite to emulation, they, at least, repress by fear; and, probably, many are reduced to submission, who would resist, were they not doubtful of the support and union of their neighbours. Every possible precaution is taken to prevent any connections between the different departments-- people who are not known cannot obtain passports without the recommendation of two housekeepers--you must give an account of the business you go upon, of the carriage you mean to travel in, whether it has two wheels or four: all of which must be specified in your passport: and you cannot send your baggage from one town to another without the risk of having it searched. All these things are so disgusting and troublesome, that I begin to be quite of a different opinion from Brutus, and should certainly prefer being a slave among a free people, than thus be tormented with the recollection that I am a native of England in a land of slavery. Whatever liberty the French might have acquired by their first revolution, it is now much like Sir John Cutler's worsted stockings, so torn, and worn, and disguised by patchings and mendings, that the original texture is not discoverable.--Yours, &c. June 3, 1793. We have been three days without receiving newspapers; but we learn from the reports of the courier, that the Brissotins are overthrown, that many of them have been arrested, and several escaped to raise adherents in the departments. I, however, doubt much if their success will be very general: the people have little preference between Brissot and Marat, Condorcet and Robespierre, and are not greatly solicitous about the names or even principles of those who govern them--they are not yet accustomed to take that lively interest in public events which is the effect of a popular constitution. In England every thing is a subject of debate and contest, but here they wait in silence the result of any political measure or party dispute; and, without entering into the merits of the cause, adopt whatever is successful. While the King was yet alive, the news of Paris was eagerly sought after, and every disorder of the metropolis created much alarm: but one would almost suppose that even curiosity had ceased at his death, for I have observed no subsequent event (except the defection of Dumouriez) make any very serious impression. We hear, therefore, with great composure, the present triumph of the more violent republicans, and suffer without impatience this interregnum of news, which is to continue until the Convention shall have determined in what manner the intelligence of their proceedings shall be related to the departments. The great solicitude of the people is now rather about their physical existence than their political one--provisions are become enormously dear, and bread very scarce: our servants often wait two hours at the baker's, and then return without bread for breakfast. I hope, however, the scarcity is rather artificial than real. It is generally supposed to be occasioned by the unwillingness of the farmers to sell their corn for paper. Some measures have been adopted with an intention of remedying this evil, though the origin of it is beyond the reach of decree. It originates in that distrust of government which reconciles one part of the community to starving the other, under the idea of self-preservation. While every individual persists in establishing it as a maxim, that any thing is better than assignats, we must expect that all things will be difficult to procure, and will, of course, bear a high price. I fear, all the empyricism of the legislature cannot produce a nostrum for this want of faith. Dragoons and penal laws only "linger, and linger it out;" the disease is incurable. My friends, Mons. and Mad. de B____, by way of consolation for their imprisonment, now find themselves on the list of emigrants, though they have never been a single day absent from their own province, or from places of residence where they are well known. But that they may not murmur at this injustice, the municipality have accompanied their names with those of others who have not even been absent from the town, and of one gentleman in particular, who I believe may have been seen on the ramparts every day for these seven years.--This may appear to you only very absurd, and you may imagine the consequences easily obviated; yet these mistakes are the effect of private malice, and subject the persons affected by them to an infinity of expence and trouble. They are obliged, in order to avert the confiscation of their property, to appear, in every part of the republic where they have possessions, with attestations of their constant residence in France, and perhaps suffer a thousand mortifications from the official ignorance and brutality of the persons to whom they apply. No remedy lies against the authors of these vexations, and the sufferer who is prudent fears even to complain. I have, in a former letter, noticed the great number of beggars that swarm at Arras: they are not less numerous at Amiens, though of a different description--they are neither so disgusting, nor so wretched, but are much more importunate and insolent--they plead neither sickness nor infirmity, and are, for the most part, able and healthy. How so many people should beg by profession in a large manufacturing town, it is difficult to conceive; but, whatever may be the cause, I am tempted to believe the effect has some influence on the manners of the inhabitants of Amiens. I have seen no town in France so remarkable for a rude and unfeeling behaviour, and it is not fanciful to conjecture that the multitude of poor may tend in part to occasion it. The constant view of a sort of misery that excites little compassion, of an intrusive necessity which one is more desirous to repulse than to relieve, cannot but render the heart callous, and the manners harsh. The avarice of commerce, which is here unaccompanied by its liberality, is glad to confound real distress with voluntary and idle indigence, till, in time, an absence of feeling becomes part of the character; and the constant habit of petulant refusals, or of acceding more from fatigue than benevolence, has perhaps a similar effect on the voice, gesture, and external. This place has been so often visited by those who describe better than myself, that I have thought it unnecessary to mention public buildings, or any thing equally obvious to the traveller or the resident. The beauty and elegance of the cathedral have been celebrated for ages, and I only remind you of it to indulge my national vanity in the reflection that one of the most splendid monuments of Gothic architecture in France is the work of our English ancestors. The edifice is in perfect preservation, and the hand of power has not yet ventured to appropriate the plate or ornaments; but this forbearance will most probably give way to temptation and impunity. The Convention will respect ancient prejudices no longer than they suppose the people have courage to defend them, and the latter seem so entirely subdued, that, however they may murmur, I do not think any serious resistance is to be expected from them, even in behalf of the relics of St. Firmin. [St. Firmin, the patron of Amiens, where he is, in many of the streets, represented with his head in his hand.]--The bust of Henry the Fourth, which was a present from the Monarch himself, is banished the town-house, where it was formerly placed, though, I hope, some royalist has taken possession of it, and deposited it in safety till better times. This once popular Prince is now associated with Nero and Caligula, and it is "leze nation" to speak of him to a thorough republican.--I know not if the French had before the revolution reached the acme of perfection, but they have certainly been retrograding very fast since. Every thing that used to create fondness and veneration is despised, and things are esteemed only in proportion as they are worthless. Perhaps the bust of Robespierre may one day replace that of Henry the Fourth, and, to speak in the style of an eastern epistle, "what can I say more?" Should you ever travel this way with Gray in your hand, you will look for the Ursuline convent, and regret the paintings he mentions: but you may recollect, for your consolation, that they are merely pretty, and remarkable only for being the work of one of the nuns.--Gray, who seems to have had that enthusiastic respect for religious orders common to young minds, admired them on this account; and numbers of English travellers have, I dare say, prepossessed by such an authority, experienced the same disappointment I myself felt on visiting the Ursuline church. Many of the chapels belonging to these communities were very showy and much decorated with gilding and sculpture: some of them are sold for a mere trifle, but the greatest part are filled with corn and forage, and on the door is inscribed "Magazin des armees." The change is almost incredible to those who remember, that less than four years ago the Catholic religion was strictly practised, and the violation of these sanctuaries deemed sacrilegious. Our great historian [Gibbon] might well say "the influence of superstition is fluctuating and precarious;" though, in the present instance, it has rather been restrained than subdued; and the people, who have not been convinced, but intimidated, secretly lament these innovations, and perhaps reproach themselves conscientiously with their submission.--Yours. June 20, 1793. Mercier, in his Tableau de Paris, notices, on several occasions, the little public spirit existing among his countrymen--it is also observable, that many of the laws and customs presume on this deficiency, and the name of republicans has by no means altered that cautious disposition which makes the French consider either misfortunes or benefits only as their personal interest is affected by them.--I am just returned from a visit to Abbeville, where we were much alarmed on Sunday by a fire at the Paraclete convent. The tocsin rang great part of the day, and the principal street of the town was in danger of being destroyed. In such circumstances, you will suppose, that people of all ranks eagerly crouded to offer their service, and endeavour to stop the progress of so terrible a calamity. By no means--the gates of the town were shut to prevent its entire evacuation, many hid themselves in garrets and cellars, and dragoons patrolled the streets, and even entered the houses, to force the inhabitants to assist in procuring water; while the consternation, usually the effect of such accidents, was only owing to the fear of being obliged to aid the sufferers.--This employment of military coercion for what humanity alone should dictate, is not ascribeable to the principles of the present government--it was the same before the revolution, (except that the agents of the ancient system were not so brutal and despotic as the soldiers of the republic,) and compulsion was always deemed necessary where there was no stimulant but the general interest. In England, at any alarm of the fort, all distinction of ranks is forgotten, and every one is solicitous to contribute as much as he is able to the safety of his fellow-citizens; and, so far from an armed force being requisite to procure assistance, the greatest difficulty is to repress the too-officious zeal of the croud.--I do not pretend to account for this national disparity, but I fear what a French gentleman once said to me of the Parisians is applicable to the general character, _"Ils sont tous egoistes,"_ ["They are all selfish!"] and they would not do a benevolent action at the risk of soiling a coat or tearing a ruffle. Distrust of the assignats, and scarcity of bread, have occasioned a law to oblige the farmers, in every part of the republic, to sell their corn at a certain price, infinitely lower than what they have exacted for some months past. The consequence of this was, that, on the succeeding market days, no corn came to market, and detachments of dragoons are obliged to scour the country to preserve us from a famine. If it did not convey an idea both of the despotism and want with which the nation is afflicted, one should be amused by the ludicrous figures of the farmers, who enter the town preceded by soldiers, and reposing with doleful visages on their sacks of wheat. Sometimes you see a couple of dragoons leading in triumph an old woman and an ass, who follow with lingering steps their military conductors; and the very ass seems to sympathize with his mistress on the disaster of selling her corn at a reduced price, and for paper, when she had hoped to hoard it till a counter-revolution should bring back gold and silver. The farmers are now, perhaps, the greatest aristocrates in the country; but as both their patriotism and their aristocracy have been a mere calculation of interest, the severity exercised on their avarice is not much to be regretted. The original fault is, however, in an usurped government, which inspires no confidence, and which, to supply an administration lavish beyond all example, has been obliged to issue such an immense quantity of paper as nearly destroys its credit. In political, as in moral, vices, the first always necessitates a second, and these must still be sustained by others; until, at length, the very sense of right and wrong becomes impaired, and the latter is not only preferred from habit, but from choice. Thus the arbitrary emission of paper has been necessarily followed by still more arbitrary decrees to support it. For instance--the people have been obliged to sell their corn at a stated price, which has again been the source of various and general vexations. The farmers, irritated by this measure, concealed their grain, or sold it privately, rather than bring it to market.--Hence, some were supplied with bread, and others absolutely in want of it. This was remedied by the interference of the military, and a general search for corn has taken place in all houses without exception, in order to discover if any was secreted; even our bedchambers were examined on this occasion: but we begin to be so accustomed to the visite domiciliaire, that we find ourselves suddenly surrounded by the Garde Nationale, without being greatly alarmed.--I know not how your English patriots, who are so enamoured of French liberty, yet thunder with the whole force of their eloquence against the ingress of an exciseman to a tobacco warehouse, would reconcile this domestic inquisition; for the municipalities here violate your tranquillity in this manner under any pretext they choose, and that too with an armed cortege sufficient to undertake the siege of your house in form. About fifteen departments are in insurrection, ostensibly in behalf of the expelled Deputies; but I believe I am authorized in saying, it is by no means the desire of the people at large to interfere. All who are capable of reflection consider the dispute merely as a family quarrel, and are not partial enough to either party to adopt its cause. The tropps they have already raised have been collected by the personal interest of the members who contrived to escape, or by an attempt of a few of the royalists to make one half of the faction subservient to the destruction of the other. If you judge of the principles of the nation by the success of the Foederalists,* and the superiority of the Convention, you will be extremely deceived; for it is demonstrable, that neither the most zealous partizans of the ancient system, nor those of the abolished constitution, have taken any share in the dispute; and the departments most notoriously aristocratic have all signified their adherence to the proceedings of the Assembly. * On the 31st of May and 2d of June, the Convention, who had been for some months struggling with the Jacobins and the municipality of Paris, was surrounded by an armed force: the most moderate of the Deputies (those distinguished by the name of Brissotins,) were either menaced into a compliance with the measures of the opposite faction, or arrested; others took flight, and, by representing the violence and slavery in which the majority of the Convention was holden, excited some of the departments to take arms in their favour.--This contest, during its short existence, was called the war of the Foederalists.--The result is well known. Those who would gladly take an active part in endeavouring to establish a good government, are averse from risking their lives and properties in the cause of Brissot or Condorcet.--At Amiens, where almost every individual is an aristocrate, the fugitive Deputies could not procure the least encouragement, but the town would have received Dumouriez, and proclaimed the King without opposition. But this schism in the legislature is considered as a mere contest of banditti, about the division of spoil, not calculated to excite an interest in those they have plundered and oppressed. The royalists who have been so mistaken as to make any effort on this occasion, will, I fear, fall a sacrifice, having acted for the most part without union or concert; and their junction with the Deputies renders them suspicious, if not odious, to their own party. The extreme difficulty, likewise, of communication between the departments, and the strict watch observed over all travellers, form another obstacle to the success of any attempt at present; and, on the whole, the only hope of deliverance for the French seems to rest upon the allied armies and the insurgents of La Vendee. When I say this, I do not assert from prejudices, which often deceive, nor from conjecture, that is always fallible; but from unexceptionable information--from an intercourse with various ranks of people, and a minute observance of all. I have scarcely met with a single person who does not relate the progress of the insurgents in La Vendee with an air of satisfaction, or who does not appear to expect with impatience the surrender of Conde: and even their language, perhaps unconsciously, betrays their sentiments, for I remark, they do not, when they speak of any victory gained by the arms of the republic, say, Nous, or Notre armee, but, Les Francais, and, Les troupes de la republique;--and that always in a tone as though they were speaking of an enemy.--Adieu. June 30, 1793. Our modern travellers are mostly either sentimental or philosophical, or courtly or political; and I do not remember to have read any who describe the manner of living among the gentry and middle ranks of life in France. I will, therefore, relieve your attention for a moment from our actual distresses, and give you the picture of a day as usually passed by those who have easy fortunes and no particular employment.--The social assemblage of a whole family in the morning, as in England, is not very common, for the French do not generally breakfast: when they do, it is without form, and on fruit, bread, wine, and water, or sometimes coffee; but tea is scarcely ever used, except by the sick. The morning is therefore passed with little intercourse, and in extreme dishabille. The men loiter, fiddle, work tapestry, and sometimes read, in a robe de chambre, or a jacket and _"pantalons;"_ [Trowsers.] while the ladies, equipped only in a short manteau and petticoat, visit their birds, knit, or, more frequently, idle away the forenoon without doing any thing. It is not customary to walk or make visits before dinner, and if by chance any one calls, he is received in the bedchamber. At half past one or two they dine, but without altering the negligence of their apparel, and the business of the toilette does not begin till immediately after the repast. About four, visits of ceremony begin, and may be made till six or seven according to the season; but those who intend passing an evening at any particular house, go before six, and the card parties generally finish between eight and nine. People then adjourn to their supper engagements, which are more common than those for dinner, and are, for the most part, in different places, and considered as a separate thing from the earlier amusements of the evening. They keep better hours than the English, most families being in bed by half past ten. The theatres are also regulated by these sober habits, and the dramatic representations are usually over by nine. A day passed in this manner is, as you may imagine, susceptible of much ennui, and the French are accordingly more subject to it than to any other complaint, and hold it in greatest dread than either sickness or misfortune. They have no conception how one can remain two hours alone without being ennuye a la mort; and but few, comparatively speaking, read for amusement: you may enter ten houses without seeing a book; and it is not to be wondered at that people, who make a point of staying at home all the morning, yet do not read, are embarrassed with the disposition of so much time.--It is this that occasions such a general fondness for domestic animals, and so many barbarous musicians, and male-workers of tapestry and tambour. I cannot but attribute this littleness and dislike of morning exercise to the quantity of animal food the French eat at night, and to going to rest immediately after it, in consequence of which their activity is checked by indigestions, and they feel heavy and uncomfortable for half the succeeding day.--The French pique themselves on being a gayer nation than the English; but they certainly must exclude their mornings from the account, for the forlorn and neglected figure of a Frenchman till dinner is a very antidote to chearfulness, especially if contrasted with the animation of our countrymen, whose forenoon is passed in riding or walking, and who make themselves at least decent before they appear even in their own families. The great difficulty the French have in finding amusement makes them averse from long residences in the country, and it is very uncommon for those who can afford only one house not to prefer a town; but those whose fortune will admit of it, live about three months of the year in the country, and the rest in the neighbouring town. This, indeed, as they manage it, is no very considerable expence, for the same furniture often serves for both habitations, and the one they quit being left empty, requires no person to take charge of it, especially as house-breaking is very uncommon in France; at least it was so before the revolution, when the police was more strict, and the laws against robbers were more severe. You will say, I often describe the habits and manners of a nation so frequently visited, as though I were writing from Kamschatka or Japan; yet it is certain, as I have remarked above, that those who are merely itinerant have not opportunities of observing the modes of familiar life so well as one who is stationary, and travellers are in general too much occupied by more important observations to enter into the minute and trifling details which are the subject of my communications to you. But if your attention be sometimes fatigued by occurrences or relations too well known, or of too little consequence to be interesting, I claim some merit in never having once described the proportions of a building, nor given you the history of a town; and I might have contrived as well to tax your patience by an erudite description, as a superficial reflection, or a female remark. The truth is, my pen is generally guided by circumstances as they rise, and my ideas have seldom any deeper origin than the scene before me. I have no books here, and I am apt to think if professed travellers were deprived of this resource, many learned etymologies and much profound compilation would be lost to the modern reader. The insurgents of La Vendee continue to have frequent and decided successes, but the insurrections in the other departments languish. The avowed object of liberating the Convention is not calculated to draw adherents, and if any better purpose be intended, while a faction are the promoters of it, it will be regarded with too much suspicion to procure any effectual movement. Yet, however partial and unconnected this revolt may be, it is an object of great jealousy and inquietude: all the addresses or petitions brought in favour of it are received with disapprobation, and suppressed in the official bulletin of the legislature; but those which express contrary sentiments are ordered to be inserted with the usual terms of "applaudi, adopte, et mention honorable."--In this manner the army and the people, who derive their intelligence from these accounts (which are pasted up in the streets,) are kept in ignorance of the real state of distant provinces, and, what is still more important for the Convention, the communication of examples, which they know so many are disposed to imitate, is retarded. The people here are nearly in the same state they have been in for some time--murmuring in secret, and submitting in public; expecting every thing from that energy in others which they have not themselves, and accumulating the discontents they are obliged to suppress. The Convention call them the brave republicans of Amiens; but if their bravery were as unequivocal as their aristocracy, they would soon be at the gates of Paris. Even the first levies are not all departed for the frontiers, and some who were prevailed on to go are already returned.-- All the necessaries of life are augmenting in price--the people complain, pillage the shops and the markets one day, and want the next. Many of the departments have opposed the recruiting much more decidedly than they have ventured to do here; and it was not without inspiring terror by numerous arrests, that the levies which were immediately necessary were procured.--France offers no prospect but that of scarcity, disorder, and oppression; and my friends begin to perceive that we have committed an imprudence in remaining so long. No passports can now be obtained, and we must, as well as several very respectable families still here, abide the event of the war. Some weeks have elapsed since I had letters from England, and those we receive from the interior come open, or sealed with the seal of the district. This is not peculiar to our letters, as being foreigners, but the same unceremonious inspection is practised with the correspondence of the French themselves. Thus, in this land of liberty, all epistolary intercourse has ceased, except for mere matters of business; and though in the declaration of the rights of man it be asserted, that every one is entitled to write or print his thoughts, yet it is certain no person can entrust a letter to the post, but at the risk of having it opened; nor could Mr. Thomas Paine himself venture to express the slightest disapprobation of the measures of government, without hazarding his freedom, and, in the end, perhaps, his life. Even these papers, which I reserve only for your amusement, which contain only the opinions of an individual, and which never have been communicated, I am obliged to conceal with the utmost circumspection; for should they happen to fall into the hands of our domiciliary inquisitors, I should not, like your English liberties, escape with the gentle correction of imprisonment, or the pillory.--A man, who had murdered his wife, was lately condemned to twenty years imprisonment only; but people are guillotined every day for a simple discourse, or an inadvertent expression.--Yours. Amiens, July 5, 1793. It will be some consolation to the French, if, from the wreck of their civil liberty, they be able to preserve the mode of administering justice as established by the constitution of 1789. Were I not warranted by the best information, I should not venture an opinion on the subject without much diffidence, but chance has afforded me opportunities that do not often occur to a stranger, and the new code appears to me, in many parts, singularly excellent, both as to principle and practice.--Justice is here gratuitous--those who administer it are elected by the people--they depend only on their salaries, and have no fees whatever. Reasonable allowances are made to witnesses both for time and expences at the public charge--a loss is not doubled by the costs of a prosecution to recover it. In cases of robbery, where property found is detained for the sake of proof, it does not become the prey of official rapacity, but an absolute restitution takes place.--The legislature has, in many respects, copied the laws of England, but it has simplified the forms, and rectified those abuses which make our proceedings in some cases almost as formidable to the prosecutor as to the culprit. Having to compose an entire new system, and being unshackled by professional reverence for precedents, they were at liberty to benefit by example, to reject those errors which have been long sanctioned by their antiquity, and are still permitted to exist, through our dread of innovation. The French, however, made an attempt to improve on the trial by jury, which I think only evinces that the institution as adopted in England is not to be excelled. The decision is here given by ballot--unanimity is not required--and three white balls are sufficient to acquit the prisoner. This deviation from our mode seems to give the rich an advantage over the poor. I fear, that, in the number of twelve men taken from any country, it may sometimes happen that three may be found corruptible: now the wealthy delinquent can avail himself of this human failing; but, "through tatter'd robes small vices do appear," and the indigent sinner has less chance of escaping than another. It is to be supposed, that, at this time, the vigour of the criminal laws is much relaxed, and their execution difficult. The army offers refuge and impunity to guilt of all kinds, and the magistrates themselves would be apprehensive of pursuing an offender who was protected by the mob, or, which is the same thing, by the Jacobins. The groundwork of much of the French civil jurisprudence is arbitration, particularly in those trifling processes which originate in a spirit of litigation; and it is not easy for a man here, however well disposed, to spend twenty pounds in a contest about as many pence, or to ruin himself in order to secure the possession of half an acre of land. In general, redress is easily obtained without unnecessary procrastination, and with little or no cost. Perhaps most legal codes may be simple and efficacious at their first institution, and the circumstance of their being encumbered with forms which render them complex and expensive, may be the natural consequence of length of time and change of manners. Littleton might require no commentary in the reign of Henry II. and the mysterious fictions that constitute the science of modern judicature were perhaps familiar, and even necessary, to our ancestors. It is to be regretted that we cannot adapt our laws to the age in which we live, and assimilate them to our customs; but the tendency of our nature to extremes perpetuates evils, and makes both the wise and the timid enemies to reform. We fear, like John Calvin, to tear the habit while we are stripping off the superfluous decoration; and the example of this country will probably long act as a discouragement to all change, either judicial or political. The very name of France will repress the desire of innovation--we shall cling to abuses as though they were our support, and every attempt to remedy them will become an objection of suspicion and terror.--Such are the advantages which mankind will derive from the French revolution. The Jacobin constitution is now finished, and, as far as I am able to judge, it is what might be expected from such an origin: calculated to flatter the people with an imaginary sovereignty--to place the whole power of election in the class most easily misled--to exclude from the representation those who have a natural interest in the welfare of the country, and to establish the reign of anarchy and intrigue.--Yet, however averse the greater number of the French may be from such a constitution, no town or district has dared to reject it; and I remark, that amongst those who have been foremost in offering their acceptation, are many of the places most notoriously aristocratic. I have enquired of some of the inhabitants of these very zealous towns on what principle they acted so much in opposition to their known sentiments: the reply is always, that they fear the vengeance of the Jacobins, and that they are awed by military force. This reasoning is, of course, unanswerable; and we learn, from the debates of the Convention, that the people have received the new constitution _"avec la plus vive reconnoissance,"_ ["With the most lively gratitude."] and that they have all sworn to die in its defence.--Yours, &c. July 14, 1793. The return of this day cannot but suggest very melancholy reflections to all who are witnesses of the changes which a single year has produced. In twelve months only the government of France has been overturned, her commerce destroyed, the country depopulated to raise armies, and the people deprived of bread to support them. A despotism more absolute than that of Turkey is established, the manners of the nation are corrupted, and its moral character is disgraced in the eyes of all Europe. A barbarous rage has laid waste the fairest monuments of art--whatever could embellish society, or contribute to soften existence, has disappeared under the reign of these modern Goths--even the necessaries of life are becoming rare and inadequate to the consumption--the rich are plundered and persecuted, yet the poor are in want--the national credit is in the last stage of debasement, yet an immense debt is created, and daily accumulating; and apprehension, distrust, and misery, are almost universal.--All this is the work of a set of adventurers who are now divided among themselves--who are accusing each other of those crimes which the world imputes to them all--and who, conscious they can no longer deceive the nation, now govern with the fear and suspicion of tyrants. Every thing is sacrificed to the army and Paris, and the people are robbed of their subsistence to supply an iniquitous metropolis, and a military force that awes and oppresses them. The new constitution has been received here officially, but no one seems to take the least interest in it: it is regarded in just the same light as a new tax, or any other ministerial mandate, not sent to be discussed but obeyed. The mode of proclaiming it conveyed a very just idea of its origin and tendency. It was placed on a cushion, supported by Jacobins in their red caps, and surrounded by dragoons. It seemed the image of Anarchy, guarded by Despotism.--In this manner they paraded the town, and the "sacred volume" was then deposed on an altar erected on the Grande Place.--The Garde Nationale, who were ordered to be under arms, attended, and the constitution was read. A few of the soldiers cried "Vive la republique!" and every one returned home with countenances in which delight was by no means the prevailing expression. A trifling incident which I noticed on this occasion, will serve, among others of the same kind that I could enumerate, to prove that even the very lower class of the people begin to ridicule and despise their legislators. While a municipal officer was very gravely reading the constitution, an ass forced his way across the square, and placed himself near the spot where the ceremony was performing: a boy, who was under our window, on observing it, cried out, "Why don't they give him the _accolade fraternelle!"_* * Fraternal embrace.--This is the reception given by the President to any one whom the Convention wish particularly to distinguish. On an occasion of the sort, the fraternal embrace was given to an old Negress.--The honours of the fitting are also daily accorded to deputations of fish-women, chimney-sweepers, children, and all whose missions are flattering. There is no homage so mean as not to gratify the pride of those to whom dominion is new; and these expressions are so often and so strangely applied, that it is not surprizing they are become the cant phrases of the mob. --"Yes, (rejoined another,) and admit him _aux honneurs de la feance."_ [To the honours of the fitting.] This disposition to jest with their misfortunes is, however, not so common as it was formerly. A bon mot may alleviate the loss of a battle, and a lampoon on the court solace under the burthen of a new impost; but the most thoughtless or improvident can find nothing very facetious in the prospect of absolute want--and those who have been used to laugh under a circumscription of their political liberty, feel very seriously the evil of a government which endows its members with unlimited power, and enables a Deputy, often the meanest and most profligate character of his department, to imprison all who, from caprice, interest, or vengeance, may have become the objects of his persecution. I know this will appear so monstrous to an Englishman, that, had I an opportunity of communicating such a circumstance before it were publicly authenticated, you would suppose it impossible, and imagine I had been mistaken, or had written only from report; it is nevertheless true, that every part of France is infested by these Commissioners, who dispose, without appeal, of the freedom and property of the whole department to which they are sent. It frequently happens, that men are delegated to places where they have resided, and thus have an opportunity of gratifying their personal malice on all who are so unfortunate as to be obnoxious to them. Imagine, for a moment, a village-attorney acting with uncontrouled authority over the country where he formerly exercised his profession, and you will have some idea of what passes here, except that I hope no class of men in England are so bad as those which compose the major part of the National Convention.--Yours, &c. July 23, 1793. The events of Paris which are any way remarkable are so generally circulated, that I do not often mention them, unless to mark their effect on the provinces; but you will be so much misled by the public papers with regard to the death of Marat, that I think it necessary to notice the subject while it is yet recent in my memory. Were the clubs, the Convention, or the sections of Paris to be regarded as expressing the sense of the people, the assassination of this turbulent journalist must be considered being the case, that the departments are for the most part, if not rejoiced, indifferent--and many of those who impute to him the honour of martyrdom, or assist at his apotheosis, are much better satisfied both with his christian and heathen glories, than they were while he was living to propagate anarchy and pillage. The reverence of the Convention itself is a mere political pantomime. Within the last twelve months nearly all the individuals who compose it have treated Marat with contempt; and I perfectly remember even Danton, one of the members of the Committee of Salut Publique, accusing him of being a contre revolutionnaire. But the people, to use a popular expression here, require to be electrified.--St. Fargeau is almost forgotten, and Marat is to serve the same purposes when dead, to which he contributed while living.--An extreme grossness and want of feeling form the characteristic feature of the Parisians; they are ignorant, credulous, and material, and the Convention do not fail on all occasions to avail themselves of these qualities. The corpse of Marat decently enclosed in a coffin would have made little impression, and it was not pity, but revenge, which was to be excited. The disgusting object of a dead leper was therefore exposed to the eyes of a metropolis calling itself the most refined and enlightened of all Europe-- "And what t'oblivion better were consign'd, Is hung on high to poison half mankind." I know not whether these lines are most applicable to the display of Marat's body, or the consecration of his fame, but both will be a lasting stigma on the manners and morals of Paris. If the departments, however, take no interest in the loss of Marat, the young woman who assassinated him has created a very lively one. The slightest anecdotes concerning her are collected with avidity, and repeated with admiration; and this is a still farther proof of what you have heard me advance, that neither patriotism nor humanity has an abundant growth in this country. The French applaud an act in itself horrid and unjustifiable, while they have scarcely any conception of the motive, and such a sacrifice seems to them something supernatural.--The Jacobins assert, that Charlotte Corday was an emissary of the allied powers, or, rather, of Mr. Pitt; and the Parisians have the complaisance to believe, that a young woman could devote herself to certain destruction at the instigation of another, as though the same principles which would lead a person to undertake a diplomatic commission, would induce her to meet death. I wrote some days ago to a lady of my acquaintance at Caen, to beg she would procure me some information relative to this extraordinary female, and I subjoin an extract of her answer, which I have just received: "Miss Corday was a native of this department, and had, from her earliest years, been very carefully educated by an aunt who lives at Caen. Before she was twenty she had decided on taking the veil, and her noviciate was just expired when the Constituent Assembly interdicted all religious vows for the future: she then left the convent, and resided entirely with her aunt. The beauty of her person, and particularly her mental acquisitions, which were superior to that of French women in general, rendered an object of much admiration. She spoke uncommonly well, and her discourse often turned on the ancients, and on such subjects as indicated that masculine turn of mind which has since proved so fatal to her. Perhaps her conversation was a little tinctured with that pedantry not unjustly attributed to our sex when they have a little more knowledge than usual, but, at the same time, not in such a degree as to render it unpleasant. She seldom gave any opinion on the revolution, but frequently attended the municipalities to solicit the pensions of the expelled religious, or on any other occasion where she could be useful to her friends. On the arrival of Petion, Barbaroux, and others of the Brissotin faction, she began to frequent the clubs, and to take a more lively interest in political affairs. Petion, and Barbaroux especially, seemed to be much respected by her. It was even said, she had a tender partiality for the latter; but this I believe is untrue.--I dined with her at her aunt's on the Sunday previous to her departure for Paris. Nothing very remarkable appeared in her behaviour, except that she was much affected by a muster of the recruits who were to march against Paris, and seemed to think many lives might be lost on the occasion, without obtaining any relief for the country.--On the Tuesday following she left Caen, under pretext of visiting her father, who lives at Sens. Her aunt accompanied her to the gate of the town, and the separation was extremely sorrowful on both sides. The subsequent events are too well known to need recital." On her trial, and at her execution, Miss Corday was firm and modest; and I have been told, that in her last moments her whole figure was interesting beyond description. She was tall, well formed, and beautiful--her eyes, especially, were fine and expressive--even her dress was not neglected, and a simple white dishabille added to the charms of this self-devoted victim. On the whole, it is not possible to ascertain precisely the motives which determined her to assassinate Marat. Her letter to Barbaroux expresses nothing but republican sentiments; yet it is difficult to conceive that a young woman, who had voluntarily embraced the life of a cloister, could be really of this way of thinking.--I cannot but suppose her connection with the Deputies arose merely from an idea that they might be the instruments of restoring the abolished government, and her profession of republican principles after she was arrested might probably be with a view of saving Duperret, and others of the party, who were still in the power of the Convention.--Her selection of Marat still remains to be accounted for. He was, indeed, the most violent of the Jacobins, but not the most dangerous, and the death of several others might have been more serviceable to the cause. Marat was, however, the avowed persecutor of priests and religion, and if we attribute any influence to Miss Corday's former habits, we may suppose them to have had some share in the choice of her victim. Her refusal of the ministry of a constitutional priest at the scaffold strengthens this opinion. We pay a kind of involuntary tribute of admiration to such firmness of mind in a young and beautiful woman; and I do not recollect that history has transmitted any thing parallel to the heroism of Charlotte Corday. Love, revenge, and ambition, have often sacrificed their victims, and sustained the courage of their voluntaries under punishment; but a female, animated by no personal motives, sensible only to the misfortunes of her country, patriotic both from feeling and reflection, and sacrificing herself from principle, is singular in the annals of human nature.--Yet, after doing justice to such an instance of fortitude and philanthropic devotion, I cannot but sincerely lament the act to which it has given rise. At a time when so many spirits are irritated by despair and oppression, the example may be highly pernicious, and a cause, however good, must always be injured by the use of such means in its support.--Nothing can sanctify an assassination; and were not the French more vindictive than humane, the crimes of the republican party would find a momentary refuge in this injudicious effort to punish them. My friend La Marquise de ____ has left Paris, and is now at Peronne, where she has engaged me to pass a few weeks with her; so that my next will most probably be dated from thence.--Mr. D____ is endeavouring to get a passport for England. He begins to regret having remained here. His temper, naturally impatient of restraint, accords but ill with the portion of liberty enjoyed by our republicans. Corporal privations and mental interdictions multiply so fast, that irritable people like himself, and valetudinarians like Mrs. C____ and me, could not choose a worse residence; and, as we are now unanimous on the subject, I hope soon to leave the country.--There is, as you observe in your last, something of indolence as well as friendship in my having so long remained here; but if actions were always analyzed so strictly, and we were not allowed to derive a little credit from our weaknesses, how many great characters would be reduced to the common level. Voltaire introduced a sort of rage for anecdotes, and for tracing all events to trifling causes, which has done much more towards exploding the old-fashioned system or the dignity of human nature than the dry maxims of Rochefaucault, the sophisms of Mandeville, or even the malicious wit of Swift. This is also another effect of the progress of philosophy; and this sort of moral Quixotism, continually in search of evil, and more gratified in discovering it than pained by its existence, may be very philosophical; but it is at least gloomy and discouraging; and we may be permitted to doubt whether mankind become wiser or better by learning, that those who have been most remarkable either for wisdom or virtue were occasionally under the influence of the same follies and passions as other people.--Your uncharitable discernment, you see, has led me into a digression, and I have, without intending it, connected the motives of my stay with reflections on Voltaire's General History, Barillon's Letters, and all the secret biography of our modern libraries. This, you will say, is only a chapter of a "man's importance to himself;" but public affairs are now so confused and disgusting, that we are glad to encourage any train of ideas not associated with them. The Commissioners I gave you some account of in a former letter are departed, and we have lately had Chabot, an Ex-capuchin, and a patriot of special note in the Convention, and one Dumont, an attorney of a neighbouring village. They are, like all the rest of these missionaries, entrusted with unlimited powers, and inspire apprehension and dismay wherever they approach. The Garde Nationale of Amiens are not yet entirely subdued to the times, and Chabot gave some hints of a project to disarm them, and actually attempted to arrest some of their officers; but, apprized of his design, they remained two nights under arms, and the Capuchin, who is not martially inclined, was so alarmed at this indication of resistance, that he has left the town with more haste than ceremony.--He had, in an harangue at the cathedral, inculcated some very edifying doctrines on the division of property and the right of pillage; and it is not improbable, had he not withdrawn, but the Amienois would have ventured, on this pretext, to arrest him. Some of them contrived, in spite of the centinel placed at the lodging of these great men, to paste up on the door two figures, with the names of Chabot and Dumont; in the "fatal position of the unfortunate brave;" and though certain events in the lives of these Deputies may have rendered this perspective of their last moments not absolutely a novelty, yet I do not recollect that Akenside, or any other author, has enumerated a gibbet amongst the objects, which, though not agreeable in themselves, may be reconciled to the mind by familiarity. I wish, therefore, our representatives may not, in return for this admonitory portrait of their latter end, draw down some vengeance on the town, not easily to be appeased. I am no astrologer, but in our sublunary world the conjunction of an attorney and a renegade monk cannot present a fortunate aspect; and I am truly anxious to find myself once again under the more benign influence of your English hemisphere.--Yours. Peronne, July 29, 1793. Every attempt to obtain passports has been fruitless, and, with that sort of discontented resignation which is the effect of necessity, I now look upon myself as fixed here till the peace. I left Mr. and Mrs. D____ yesterday morning, the disappointment operating upon them in full force. The former takes longer walks than usual, breaks out in philippics against tyrannies of all kinds, and swears ten times a day that the French are the most noisy people upon earth--the latter is vexed, and, for that reason, fancies she is ill, and calculates, with great ingenuity, all the hazard and inconvenience we may be liable to by remaining here. I hope, on my return, to find them more reconciled. At Villars de Bretonne, on my road hither, some people told me, with great gaiety, that the English had made a descent on the coast of Picardy. Such a report (for I did not suppose it possible) during the last war would have made me tremble, but I heard this without alarm, having, in no instance, seen the people take that kind of interest in public events which formerly made a residence in France unpleasant to an individual of an hostile nation. It is not that they are become more liberal, or better informed--no change of this kind has been discovered even by the warmest advocates of the revolution; but they are more indifferent, and those who are not decidedly the enemies of the present government, for the most part concern themselves as little about the events of the war, as though it were carried on in the South Sea. I fear I should risk an imputation on my veracity, were I to describe the extreme ignorance and inattention of the French with respect to public men and measures. They draw no conclusions from the past, form no conjectures for the future, and, after exclaiming "Il ne peut pas durer comme cela," they, with a resignation which is certainly neither pious nor philosophic, leave the rest to the agency of Providence.--Even those who are more informed so bewilder themselves in the politics of Greece and Rome, that they do not perceive how little these are applicable to their own country. Indeed, it should seem that no modern age or people is worthy the knowledge of a Frenchman.--I have often remarked, in the course of our correspondence, how little they are acquainted with what regards England or the English; and scarcely a day passes that I have not occasion to make the same observation. My conductor hither, who is a friend of Mad. de T____, and esteemed "bien instruit," was much surprized when I told him that the population and size of London exceeded that of Paris--that we had good fruit, and better vegetables than were to be found in many parts of France. I saw that he suspected my veracity, and there is always on these occasions such a decided and impenetrable incredulity in a Frenchman as precludes all hopes of convincing him. He listens with a sort of self-sufficient complacence which tells you he does not consider your assertions as any thing more than the exaggerations of national vanity, but that his politeness does not allow him to contradict you. I know nothing more disgustingly impertinent than his ignorance, which intrenches itself behind the forms of civility, and, affecting to decline controversy, assumes the merit of forbearance and moderation: yet this must have been often observed by every one who has lived much in French society: for the first emotion of a Frenchman, on hearing any thing which tends to place another country on an equality with France, is doubt--this doubt is instantly reinforced by vanity--and, in a few seconds, he is perfectly satisfied that the thing is impossible. One must be captious indeed to object to this, did it arise from that patriotic feeling so common in the English; but here it is all vanity, downright vanity: a Frenchman must have his country and his mistress admired, though he does not often care much for either one or the other. I have been in various parts of France in the most critical periods of the revolution--I have conversed with people of all parties and of all ranks--and I assert, that I have never yet met but with one man who had a grain of real patriotism. If the Athenian law were adopted which doomed all to death who should be indifferent to the public welfare in a time of danger, I fear there would be a woeful depopulation here, even among the loudest champions of democracy. It is not thirty miles from Amiens to Peronne, yet a journey of thirty miles is not now to be undertaken inconsiderately; the horses are so much worked, and so ill fed, that few perform such a distance without rest and management. If you wish to take others, and continue your route, you cannot, or if you wait while your own horses are refreshed, as a reward for your humanity you get starved yourself. Bread being very scarce, no family can get more than sufficient for its own consumption, and those who travel without first supplying themselves, do it at the risk of finding none on the road. Peronne is chiefly remarkable in history for never having been taken, and for a tower where Louis XI. was confined for a short time, after being outwitted in a manner somewhat surprizing for a Monarch who piqued himself on his talents for intrigue, by Charles le Temeraire, Duke of Burgundy. It modern reputation, arises from its election of the Abbe Maury for its representative, and for entertaining political principles every way analogous to such a choice. I found the Marquise much altered in her person, and her health much impaired, by the frequent alarms and continual apprehensions she had been subject to at Paris. Fortunately she has no imputation against her but her rank and fortune, for she is utterly guiltless of all political opinions; so that I hope she will be suffered to knit stockings, tend her birds and dogs, and read romances in peace.--Yours, &c. &c. August 1, 1793. When the creation of assignats was first proposed, much ingenuity was employed in conjecturing, and much eloquence displayed in expatiating upon, the various evils that might result from them; yet the genius of party, however usually successful in gloomy perspective, did not at that time imagine half the inconvenience this measure was fraught with. It was easy, indeed, to foresee, that an immense circulation of paper, like any other currency, must augment the price of every thing; but the excessive discredit of the assignats, operating accessarily to their quantity, has produced a train of collateral effects of greater magnitude than even those that were originally apprehended. Within the last twelve months the whole country are become monopolizers--the desire of realizing has so possessed all degrees of people, that there is scarcely an article of consumption which is not bought up and secreted. One would really suppose that nothing was perishable but the national credit--the nobleman, the merchant, the shopkeeper, all who have assignats, engage in these speculations, and the necessities of our dissipated heirs do not drive them to resources for obtaining money more whimsical than the commerce now practised here to get rid of it. I know a beau who has converted his _hypotheque_ [Mortgage.] on the national domains into train oil, and a General who has given these "airy nothings" the substance and form of hemp and leather!* * In the late rage for monopolies in France, a person who had observed the vast daily consumption of onions, garlic, and eschalots, conceived the project of making the whole district of Amiens tributary for this indispensible article. In consequence, he attended several market-days, and purchased all that came in his way. The country people finding a ready sale for their onions, poured in from all quarters, and our projector found that, in proportion as he bought, the market became more profusely supplied, and that the commodity he had hoped to monopolize was inexhaustible. Goods purchased from such motives are not as you may conceive sold till the temptation of an exorbitant profit seduces the proprietor to risk a momentary possession of assignats, which are again disposed of in a similar way. Thus many necessaries of life are withdrawn from circulation, and when a real scarcity ensues, they are produced to the people, charged with all the accumulated gains of these intermediate barters. This illiberal and pernicious commerce, which avarice and fear have for some time kept in great activity, has at length attracted the notice of the Convention, and very severe laws are now enacted against monopolies of all kinds. The holder of any quantity of merchandize beyond what he may be supposed to consume is obliged to declare it to his municipality, and to expose the articles he deals in in writing over his door. These clauses, as well as every other part of the decree, seem very wise and equitable; but I doubt if the severity of the punishment annexed to any transgression of it will not operate so as to defeat the purposes intended to be produced. A false declaration is punishable by six years imprisonment, and an absolute non-compliance with death.--Blackstone remarks, that it is the certainty, not the severity, of punishment, which makes laws efficacious; and this must ever be the case amongst an humane people.--An inordinate desire of gain is not often considered by mankind as very criminal, and those who would willingly subject it to its adequate punishment of fine and confiscation, will hesitate to become the means of inflicting death on the offender, or of depriving him of his liberty. The Poets have, from time immemorial, claimed a kind of exclusive jurisdiction over the sin of avarice: but, unfortunately, minds once steeled by this vice are not often sensible to the attacks of ridicule; and I have never heard that any poet, from Plautus to Moliere, has reformed a single miser. I am not, therefore, sorry that our legislature has encroached on this branch of the poetical prerogative, and only wish that the mild regimen of the Muses had been succeeded by something less rigid than the prison or the guillotine. It is true, that, in the present instance, it is not the ordinary and habitual practice of avarice that has called forth the severity of the laws, but a species so destructive and extensive in its consequences, that much may be said in defence of any penalty short of death; and such is the general distrust of the paper-money, that I really believe, had not some measure of the kind been adopted, no article susceptible of monopoly would have been left for consumption. There are, however, those who retort on the government, and assert, that the origin of the evil is in the waste and peculation of its agents, which also make the immense emission of paper more necessary; and they are right in the fact, though not in their deduction, for as the evil does exist whatever may be the cause, it is certainly wise to endeavour to remedy it. The position of Valenciennes, which is supposed to be on the eve of a surrender--the progress of the insurgents in La Vendee--the discontents in the South--and the charge of treachery against so many of the Generals, and particularly Custine--all together seem to have agitated the public extremely: yet it is rather the agitation of uncertainty than that occasioned by any deep impression of hope or fear. The people wish to be relieved from their present situation, yet are without any determinate views for the future; and, indeed, in this part of the country, where they have neither leaders nor union, it would be very difficult for them to take a more active part. The party of the foederalists languish, merely because it is nothing more than a party, and a party of which the heads excite neither interest nor esteem. I conclude you learn from the papers all the more important events, and I confine myself, as usual, to such details as I think less likely to reach you. The humanity of the English must often banish their political animosities when they read what passes here; and thousands of my countrymen must at this moment lament with me the situation to which France is reduced by projects in which common sense can distinguish no medium between wickedness and folly. All apparent attachment to royalism is now cautiously avoided, but the royalists do not diminish by persecution, and the industry with which they propagate their opinions is nearly a match for all the force armee of the republicans.--It is not easy to print pamphlets or newspapers, but there are certain shops which one would think were discovered by instinct, where are sold a variety of mysterious emblems of royalty, such as fans that have no visible ornaments except landscapes, &c. but when opened by the initiated, present tolerable likenesses of the Royal Family; snuff-boxes with secret lids, containing miniature busts of the late King; and music so ingeniously printed, that what to the common eye offers only some popular air, when folded so as to join the heads and tails of the notes together, forms sentences of very treasonable import, and by no means flattering to the existing government--I have known these interdicted trifles purchased at extravagant prices by the best-reputed patriots, and by officers who in public breathe nothing but unconquerable democracy, and detestation of Kings. Yet, though these things are circulated with extreme caution, every body has something of the sort, and, as Charles Surface says, "for my part, I don't see who is out of the secret." The belief in religious miracles is exploded, and it is only in political ones that the faith of the people is allowed to exercise itself.--We have lately seen exhibited at the fairs and markets a calf, produced into the world with the tri-coloured cockade on its head; and on the painted cloth that announces the phoenomenon is the portrait of this natural revolutionist, with a mayor and municipality in their official scarfs, addressing the four-footed patriot with great ceremony. We set out early to-morrow-morning for Soissons, which is about twenty leagues from hence. Travelling is not very desirable in the present circumstances, but Mad. de F____ has some affairs to settle there which cannot well be entrusted to a third person. The times, however, have a very hostile appearance, and we intend, if possible, to be absent but three days.--Yours. Soissons, August 4, 1793. "And you may go by Beauvais if you will, for which reason many go by Beauvais;" and the stranger who turns out of his road to go by Soissons, must use the same reasoning, for the consciousness of having exercised his free agency will be all his reward for visiting Soissons. This, by the way; for my journey hither not being one of curiosity, I have no right to complain; yet somehow or other, by associating the idea of the famous Vase, the ancient residence of the first French Kings, and other circumstances as little connected as these I suppose with modern history, I had ranked Soissons in my imagination as one of the places I should see with interest. I find it, however, only a dull, decent-looking town, tolerably large, but not very populous. In the new division of France it is the capital of the department De l'Aisne, and is of course the seat of the administration. We left Peronne early, and, being so fortunate as to encounter no accidental delays, we arrived within a league of Soissons early in the afternoon. Mad. de F____, recollecting an acquaintance who has a chateau not far out of our road, determined to stop an hour or two; for, as she said, her friend was so "fond of the country," she should be sure to find him there. We did, indeed, find this Monsieur, who is so "fond of the country," at home, extremely well powdered, dressed in a striped silk coat, and engaged with a card party, on a warm afternoon on the third of August.--The chateau was situated as a French chateau usually is, so as to be benefited by all the noises and odours of the village--built with a large single front, and a number of windows so judiciously placed, that it must be impossible either to be cool in summer or warm in winter. We walked out after taking some coffee, and I learned that this lover of the country did not keep a single acre of land in his own hands, but that the part immediately contiguous to the house was cultivated for a certain share of the profit by a farmer who lives in a miserable looking place adjoining, and where I saw the operations of the dairy-maid carried on amidst pigs, ducks, and turkeys, who seemed to have established a very familiar access. Previous to our arrival at Soissons, the Marquise (who, though she does not consider me as an aristocrate, knows I am by no means a republican,) begged me to be cautious in expressing my sentiments, as the Comte de ____, where we were going, had embraced the principles of the revolution very warmly, and had been much blamed by his family on this account. Mad. de F____ added, that she had not seen him for above a year, but that she believed him still to be "extremement patriote." We reached Mons. de ____'s just as the family were set down to a very moderate supper, and I observed that their plate had been replaced by pewter. After the first salutations were over, it was soon visible that the political notions of the count were much changed. He is a sensible reflecting man, and seems really to wish the good of his country. He thinks, with many others, that all the good effects which might have been obtained by the revolution will be lost through the contempt and hatred which the republican government has drawn upon it. Mons. de ____ has two sons who have distinguished themselves very honourably in the army, and he has himself made great pecuniary sacrifices; but this has not secured him from numerous domiciliary visits and vexations of all kinds. The whole family are at intervals a little pensive, and Mons. de ____ told us, at a moment when the ladies were absent, that the taking of Valenciennes had occasioned a violent fermentation at Paris, and that he had serious apprehensions for those who have the misfortune to be distinguished by their rank, or obnoxious from their supposed principles--that he himself, and all who were presumed to have an attachment to the constitution of eighty-nine, were much more feared, and of course more suspected, than the original aristocrates--and "enfin" that he had made up his mind a la Francaise to the worst that could happen. I have just run over the papers of the day, and I perceive that the debates of the Convention are filled with invectives against the English. A letter has been very opportunely found on the ramparts of Lisle, which is intended to persuade the people that the British government has distributed money and phosphoric matches in every town in France--the one to provoke insurrection, the other to set fire to the corn.* You will conclude this letter to be a fabrication, and it is imagined and executed with so little ingenuity, that I doubt whether it will impose on the most ignorant of the people for a moment. * "The National Convention, in the name of violated humanity, denounces to all the world, and to the people of England in particular, the base, perfidious, and wicked conduct of the British government, which does not hesitate to employ fire, poison, assassination, and every other crime, to procure the triumph of tyranny, and the destruction of the rights of man." (Decree, 1st August, 1793.) The Queen has been transferred to the Conciergerie, or common prison, and a decree is passed for trying her; but perhaps at this moment (whatever may be the result hereafter) they only hope her situation may operate as a check upon the enemy; at least I have heard it doubted by many whether they intend to proceed seriously on this trial so long threatened.-- Perhaps I may have before noticed to you that the convention never seemed capable of any thing great or uniform, and that all their proceedings took a tinge from that frivolity and meanness which I am almost tempted to believe inherent in the French character. They have just now, amidst a long string of decrees, the objects of which are of the first consequence, inserted one for the destruction of all the royal tombs before the tenth of August, and another for reducing the expences of the King's children, particularly their food, to bare necessaries. Had our English revolutionists thus employed themselves, they might have expelled the sculptured Monarchs from the Abbey, and waged a very successful war on the admirers of Gothic antiquity; but neither the Stuarts, nor the Catholic religion, would have had much to fear from them. We have been wandering about the town all day, and I have not remarked that the successes of the enemy have occasioned any regret. When I was in France three years ago, you may recollect that my letters usually contained some relation of our embarrassment and delays, owing to the fear and ignorance of the people. At one place they apprehended the introduction of foreign troops--at another, that the Comte d'Artois was to burn all the corn. In short, the whole country teemed with plots and counterplots, every one of which was more absurd and inexplicable than those of Oates, with his whole tribe of Jesuits. At present, when a powerful army is invading the frontiers, and people have not in many places bread to eat, they seem to be very little solicitous about the former, and as little disposed to blame the aristocrates for the latter. It is really extraordinary, after all the pains that have been taken to excite hatred and resentment against the English, that I have not heard of a single instance of their having been insulted or molested. Whatever inconveniencies they may have been subjected to, were acts of the government, not of the people; and perhaps this is the first war between the two nations in which the reverse has not been the case. I accompanied Mad. de ____ this afternoon to the house of a rich merchant, where she had business, and who, she told me, had been a furious patriot, but his ardour is now considerably abated. He had just returned from the department, [Here used for the place where the public business is transacted.] where his affairs had led him; and he assures us, that in general the agents of the republic were more inaccessible, more insolent, corrupt, and ignorant, than any employed under the old government. He demurred to paying Mad. de ____ a sum of money all in _assignats a face;_* and this famous patriot would readily have given me an hundred livres for a pound sterling. * _Assignats a face_--that is, with the King's effigy; at this time greatly preferred to those issued after his death. We shall return to Peronne to-morrow, and I have availed myself of the hour between cards and supper, which is usually employed by the French in undressing, to scribble my remarks. In some families, I suppose, supping in dishabille is an arrangement of oeconomy, in others of ease; but I always think it has the air of preparation for a very solid meal; and, in effect, supping is not a mere ceremony with either sex in this country. I learnt in conversation with M. de ____, whose sons were at Famars when the camp was forced, that the carnage was terrible, and that the loss of the French on this occasion amounted to several thousands. You will be informed of this much more accurately in England, but you will scarcely imagine that no official account was ever published here, and that in general the people are ignorant of the circumstance, and all the disasters attending it. In England, you have opposition papers that amply supply the omissions of the ministerial gazettes, and often dwell with much complacence on the losses and defeats of their country; here none will venture to publish the least event which they suppose the government wish to keep concealed. I am told, a leading feature of republican governments is to be extremely jealous of the liberty of the press, and that of France is, in this respect, truly republican.--Adieu. Peronne, August, 1793. I have often regretted, my dear brother, that my letters have for some time been rather intended to satisfy your curiosity than your affection. At this moment I feel differently, and I rejoice that the inquietude and danger of my situation will, probably, not come to your knowledge till I shall be no longer subject to them. I have been for several days unwell, and yet my body, valetudinarian as I am at best, is now the better part of me; for my mind has been so deranged by suspense and terror, that I expect to recover my health long before I shall be able to tranquillize my spirits. On our return from Soissons I found, by the public prints, that a decree had passed for arresting all natives of the countries with which France is at war, and who had not constantly resided there since 1789.--This intelligence, as you will conceive, sufficiently alarmed me, and I lost no time in consulting Mad. de ____'s friends on the subject, who were generally of opinion that the decree was merely a menace, and that it was too unjust to be put in execution. As some days elapsed and no steps were taken in consequence, I began to think they were right, and my spirits were somewhat revived; when one evening, as I was preparing to go to bed, my maid suddenly entered the room, and, before she could give me any previous explanation, the apartment was filled with armed men. As soon as I was collected enough to enquire the object of this unseasonable visit, I learned that all this military apparel was to put the seals on my papers, and convey my person to the Hotel de Ville!--I knew it would be vain to remonstrated, and therefore made an effort to recover my spirits and submit. The business, however, was not yet terminated, my papers were to be sealed--and though they were not very voluminous, the process was more difficult than you would imagine, none of the company having been employed on affairs of the kind before. A debate ensued on the manner in which it should be done, and, after a very tumultuous discussion, it was sagaciously concluded to seal up the doors and windows of all the apartments appropriated to my use. They then discovered that they had no seal fit for the purpose, and a new consultation was holden on the propriety of affixing a cypher which was offered them by one of the Garde Nationale. This weighty matter being at length decided, the doors of my bedchamber, dressing-room, and of the apartments with which they communicated, were carefully fastened up, though not without an observation on my part that I was only a guest at Mad. de ____'s, and that an order to seize my papers or person was not a mandate for rendering a part of her home useless. But there was no reasoning with ignorance and a score of bayonets, nor could I obtain permission even to take some linen out of my drawers. On going down stairs, I found the court and avenues to the garden amply guarded, and with this numerous escort, and accompanied by Mad. de ____, I was conducted to the Hotel de Ville. I know not what resistance they might expect from a single female, but, to judge by their precautions, they must have deemed the adventure a very perilous one. When we arrived at the Hotel de Ville, it was near eleven o'clock: the hall was crouded, and a young man, in a dirty linen jacket and trowsers and dirty linen, with the air of a Polisson and the countenance of an assassin, was haranguing with great vehemence against the English, who, he asserted, were all agents of Pitt, (especially the women,) and were to set fire to the corn, and corrupt the garrisons of the fortified towns.-- The people listened to these terrible projects with a stupid sort of surprize, and, for the most part, seemed either very careless or very incredulous. As soon as this inflammatory piece of eloquence was finished, I was presented to the ill-looking orator, who, I learned, was a representant du peuple. It was very easy to perceive that my spirits were quite overpowered, and that I could with difficulty support myself; but this did not prevent the representant du peuple from treating me with that inconsiderable brutality which is commonly the effect of a sudden accession of power on narrow and vulgar minds. After a variety of impertinent questions, menaces of a prison for myself, and exclamations of hatred and vengeance against my country, on producing some friends of Mad. de ____, who were to be answerable for me, I was released, and returned home more dead than alive. You must not infer, from what I have related, that I was particularly distinguished on this occasion, for though I have no acquaintance with the English here, I understand they had all been treated much in the same manner.--As soon as the representant had left the town, by dint of solicitation we prevailed on the municipality to take the seal off the rooms, and content themselves with selecting and securing my papers, which was done yesterday by a commission, formally appointed for the purpose. I know not the quality of the good citizens to whom this important charge was entrusted, but I concluded from their costume that they had been more usefully employed the preceding part of the day at the anvil and last. It is certain, however, they had undertaken a business greatly beyond their powers. They indeed turned over all my trunks and drawers, and dived to the bottom of water-jugs and flower-jars with great zeal, but neglected to search a large portfolio that lay on the table, probably from not knowing the use of it; and my servant conveyed away some letters, while I amused them with the sight of a blue-bottle fly through a microscope. They were at first much puzzled to know whether books and music were included under the article of papers, and were very desirous of burning a history of France, because they discovered, by the title-plate, that it was "about Kings;" but the most difficult part of this momentous transaction was taking an account of it in writing. However, as only one of the company could write, there was no disputing as to the scribe, though there was much about the manner of execution. I did not see the composition, but I could hear that it stated "comme quoi," they had found the seals unbroken, "comme quoi," they had taken them off, and divers "as hows" of the same kind. The whole being concluded, and my papers deposited in a box, I was at length freed from my guests, and left in possession of my apartments. It is impossible to account for this treatment of the English by any mode of reasoning that does not exclude both justice and policy; and viewing it only as a symptom of that desperate wickedness which commits evil, not as a means, but an end, I am extremely alarmed for our situation. At this moment the whole of French politics seems to center in an endeavour to render the English odious both as a nation and as individuals. The Convention, the clubs, and the streets of Paris, resound with low abuse of this tendency; and a motion was made in the former, by one Garnier, to procure the assassination of Mr. Pitt. Couthon, a member of the Comite de Salut Publique, has proposed and carried a decree to declare him the enemy of mankind; and the citizens of Paris are stunned by the hawkers of Mr. Pitt's plots with the Queen to "starve all France," and "massacre all the patriots."--Amidst so many efforts* to provoke the destruction of the English, it is wonderful, when we consider the sanguinary character which the French people have lately evinced, that we are yet safe, and it is in effect only to be accounted for by their disinclination to take any part in the animosities of their government. * When our representative appeared at Abbeville with an intention of arresting the English and other foreigners, the people, to whom these missionaries with unlimited powers were yet new, took the alarm, and became very apprehensive that he was come likewise to disarm their Garde Nationale. The streets were crouded, the town house was beset, and Citizen Dumout found it necessary to quiet the town's people by the following proclamation. One part of his purpose, that of insuring his personal safety, was answered by it; but that of exciting the people against the English, failed-- insomuch, that I was told even the lowest classes, so far from giving credit to the malignant calumnies propagated against the English, openly regretted their arrestation. "Citizens, "On my arrival amongst you, I little thought that malevolence would be so far successful as to alarm you on the motives of my visit. Could the aristocrates, then, flatter themselves with the hope of making you believe I had the intention of disarming you? Be deaf, I beseech you, to so absurd a calumny, and seize on those who propagate it. I came here to fraternize with you, and to assist you in getting rid of those malcontents and foreigners, who are striving to destroy the republic by the most infernal manoeuvres.--An horrible plot has been conceived. Our harvests are to be fired by means of phosphoric matches, and all the patriots assassinated. Women, priests, and foreigners, are the instruments employed by the coalesced despots, and by England above all, to accomplish these criminal designs.--A law of the first of this month orders the arrest of all foreigners born in the countries with which the republic is at war, and not settled in France before the month of July, 1789. In execution of this law I have required domiciliary visits to be made. I have urged the preservation of the public tranquillity. I have therefore done my duty, and only what all good citizens must approve." I have just received a few lines from Mrs. D____, written in French, and put in the post without sealing. I perceive, by the contents, though she enters into no details, that circumstances similar to those I have described have likewise taken place at Amiens. In addition to my other anxieties, I have the prospect of a long separation from my friends; for though I am not in confinement, I cannot, while the decree which arrested me remains in force, quit the town of Peronne. I have not often looked forward with so little hope, or so little certainty, and though a first-rate philosopher might make up his mind to a particular event, yet to be prepared for any thing, and all things, is a more difficult matter. The histories of Greece and Rome have long constituted the grand resources of French eloquence, and it is not till within a few days that an orator has discovered all this good learning to be of no use--not, as you might imagine, because the moral character and political situation of the French differ from those of the Greeks and Romans, but because they are superior to all the people who ever existed, and ought to be cited as models, instead of descending to become copyists. "Therefore, continues this Jacobin sage, (whose name is Henriot, and who is highly popular,) let us burn all the libraries and all the antiquities, and have no guide but ourselves--let us cut off the heads of all the Deputies who have not voted according to our principles, banish or imprison all the gentry and the clergy, and guillotine the Queen and General Custine!" These are the usual subjects of discussion at the clubs, and the Convention itself is not much more decent. I tremble when I recollect that I am in a country where a member of the legislature proposes rewards for assassination, and the leader of a society, that pretends to inform and instruct the people, argues in favour of burning all the books. The French are on the eve of exhibiting the singular spectacle of a nation enlightened by science, accustomed to the benefit of laws and the enjoyment of arts, suddenly becoming barbarous by system, and sinking into ignorance from choice.--When the Goths shared the most curious antiques by weight, were they not more civilized than the Parisian of 1793, who disturbs the ashes of Henry the Fourth, or destroys the monument of Turenne, by a decree?--I have myself been forced to an act very much in the spirit of the times, but I could not, without risking my own safety, do otherwise; and I sat up late last night for the purpose of burning Burke, which I had brought with me, but had fortunately so well concealed, that it escaped the late inquisition. I indeed made this sacrifice to prudence with great unwillingness--every day, by confirming Mr. Burke's assertions, or fulfilling his predictions, had so increased my reverence for the work, that I regarded it as a kind of political oracle. I did not, however, destroy it without an apologetic apostrophe to the author's benevolence, which I am sure would suffer, were he to be the occasion, though involuntarily, of conducting a female to a prison or the Guillotine. "How chances mock, and changes fill the cup of alteration up with divers liquors."--On the same hearth, and in a mingled flame, was consumed the very constitution of 1789, on which Mr. Burke's book was a censure, and which would now expose me to equal danger were it to be found in my possession. In collecting the ashes of these two compositions, the tendency of which is so different, (for such is the complexion of the moment, that I would not have even the servant suspect I had been burning a quantity of papers,) I could not but moralize on the mutability of popular opinion. Mr. Burke's Gallic adversaries are now most of them proscribed and anathematized more than himself. Perhaps another year may see his bust erected on the piedestal which now supports that of Brutus or Le Pelletier. The letters I have written to you since the communication was interrupted, with some other papers that I am solicitous to preserve, I have hitherto always carried about me, and I know not if any danger, merely probable, will induce me to part with them. You will not, I think, suspect me of attaching any consequence to my scribblings from vanity; and if I run some personal risk in keeping them, it is because the situation of this country is so singular, and the events which occur almost daily so important, that the remarks of any one who is unlucky enough to be a spectator, may interest, without the advantage of literary talents.--Yours. Peronne, August 24, 1793. I have been out to-day for the first time since the arrest of the English, and, though I have few acquaintances here, my adventure at the Hotel de Ville has gained me a sort of popularity. I was saluted by many people I did not know, and overwhelmed with expressions of regret for what had happened, or congratulations on my having escaped so well. The French are not commonly very much alive to the sufferings of others, and it is some mortification to my vanity that I cannot, but at the expence of a reproaching conscience, ascribe the civilities I have experienced on this occasion to my personal merit. It would doubtless have been highly flattering to me to relate the tender and general interest I had excited even among this cold-hearted people, who scarcely feel for themselves: but the truth is, they are disposed to take the part of any one whom they think persecuted by their government; and their representative, Dumont, is so much despised in his private character, and detested in his public one, that it suffices to have been ill treated by him, to ensure one a considerable portion of the public good will. This disposition is not a little consolatory, at a time when the whole rage of an oligarchical tyranny, though impotent against the English as a nation, meanly exhausts itself on the few helpless individuals within its power. Embarrassments accumulate and if Mr. Pitt's agents did not most obligingly write letters, and these letters happen to be intercepted just when they are most necessary, the Comite de Salut Publique would be at a loss how to account for them. Assignats have fallen into a discredit beyond example, an hundred and thirty livres having been given for one Louis-d'or; and, as if this were not the natural result of circumstances like the present, a correspondence between two Englishmen informs us, that it is the work of Mr. Pitt, who, with an unparalleled ingenuity, has contrived to send couriers to every town in France, to concert measures with the bankers for this purpose. But if we may believe Barrere, one of the members of the Committee, this atrocious policy of Mr. Pitt will not be unrevenged, for another intercepted letter contains assurances that an hundred thousand men have taken up arms in England, and are preparing to march against the iniquitous metropolis that gives this obnoxious Minister shelter. My situation is still the same--I have no hope of returning to Amiens, and have just reason to be apprehensive for my tranquillity here. I had a long conversation this morning with two people whom Dumont has left here to keep the town in order during his absence. The subject was to prevail on them to give me a permission to leave Peronne, but I could not succeed. They were not, I believe, indisposed to gratify me, but were afraid of involving themselves. One of them expressed much partiality for the English, but was very vehement in his disapprobation of their form of government, which he said was "detestable." My cowardice did not permit me to argue much in its behalf, (for I look upon these people as more dangerous than the spies of the old police,) and I only ventured to observe, with great diffidence, that though the English government was monarchical, yet the power of the Crown was very much limited; and that as the chief subjects of our complaints at present were not our institutions, but certain practical errors, they might be remedied without any violent or radical changes; and that our nobility were neither numerous nor privileged, and by no means obnoxious to the majority of the people.--_"Ah, vous avez donc de la noblesse blesse en Angleterre, ce sont peut-etre les milords,"_ ["What, you have nobility in England then? The milords, I suppose."] exclaimed our republican, and it operated on my whole system of defence like my uncle Toby's smoke-jack, for there was certainly no discussing the English constitution with a political critic, who I found was ignorant even of the existence of a third branch of it; yet this reformer of governments and abhorrer of Kings has power delegated to him more extensive than those of an English Sovereign, though I doubt if he can write his own language; and his moral reputation is still less in his favour than his ignorance--for, previous to the revolution, he was known only as a kind of swindler, and has more than once been nearly convicted of forgery.--This is, however, the description of people now chiefly employed, for no honest man would accept of such commissions, nor perform the services annexed to them. Bread continues very scarce, and the populace of Paris are, as usual, very turbulent; so that the neighbouring departments are deprived of their subsistence to satisfy the wants of a metropolis that has no claim to an exemption from the general distress, but that which arises from the fears of the Convention. As far as I have opportunity of learning or observing, this part of France is in that state of tranquillity which is not the effect of content but supineness; the people do not love their government, but they submit to it, and their utmost exertions amount only to a little occasional obstinacy, which a few dragoons always reduce to compliance. We are sometimes alarmed by reports that parties of the enemy are approaching the town, when the gates are shut, and the great bell is toll'd; but I do not perceive that the people are violently apprehensive about the matter. Their fears are, I believe, for the most part, rather personal than political--they do not dread submission to the Austrians, but military licentiousness. I have been reading this afternoon Lord Orrery's definition of the male Cecisbeo, and it reminds me that I have not yet noticed to you a very important class of females in France, who may not improperly be denominated female Cecisbeos. Under the old system, when the rank of a woman of fashion had enabled her to preserve a degree of reputation and influence, in spite of the gallantries of her youth and the decline of her charms, she adopted the equivocal character I here allude to, and, relinquishing the adorations claimed by beauty, and the respect due to age, charitably devoted herself to the instruction and advancement of some young man of personal qualifications and uncertain fortune. She presented him to the world, panegyrized him into fashion, and insured his consequence with one set of females, by hinting his successes with another. By her exertions he was promoted in the army or distinguished at the levee, and a career begun under such auspices often terminated in a brilliant establishment.--In the less elevated circle, a female Cecisbeo is usually of a certain age, of an active disposition, and great volubility, and her functions are more numerous and less dignified. Here the grand objects are not to besiege Ministers, nor give a "ton" to the protege at a fashionable ruelle, but to obtain for him the solid advantages of what she calls _"un bon parti."_ [A good match.] To this end she frequents the houses of widows and heiresses, vaunts the docility of his temper, and the greatness of his expectations, enlarges on the solitude of widowhood, or the dependence and insignificance of a spinster; and these prefatory encomiums usually end in the concerted introduction of the Platonic "ami." But besides these principal and important cares, a female Cecisbeo of the middle rank has various subordinate ones--such as buying linen, choosing the colour of a coat, or the pattern of a waistcoat, with all the minutiae of the favourite's dress, in which she is always consulted at least, if she has not the whole direction. It is not only in the first or intermediate classes that these useful females abound, they are equally common in more humble situations, and only differ in their employments, not in their principles. A woman in France, whatever be her condition, cannot be persuaded to resign her influence with her youth; and the bourgeoise who has no pretensions to court favour or the disposal of wealthy heiresses, attaches her eleve by knitting him stockings, forcing him with bons morceaux till he has an indigestion, and frequent regales of coffee and liqueur. You must not conclude from all this that there is any gallantry implied, or any scandal excited--the return for all these services is only a little flattery, a philosophic endurance of the card-table, and some skill in the disorders of lap-dogs. I know there are in England, as well as in France, many notable females of a certain age, who delight in what they call managing, and who are zealous in promoting, matches among the young people of their acquaintance; but for one that you meet with in England there are fifty here. I doubt much if, upon the whole, the morals of the English women are not superior to those of the French; but however the question may be decided as to morals, I believe their superiority in decency of manners is indisputable--and this superiority is, perhaps, more conspicuous in women of a certain age, than in the younger part of the sex. We have a sort of national regard for propriety, which deters a female from lingering on the confines of gallantry, when age has warned her to withdraw; and an old woman that should take a passionate and exclusive interest about a young man not related to her, would become at least an object of ridicule, if not of censure:--yet in France nothing is more common; every old woman appropriates some youthful dangler, and, what is extraordinary, his attentions are not distinguishable from those he would pay to a younger object.--I should remark, however, as some apology for these juvenile gallants, that there are very few of what we call Tabbies in France; that is, females of severe principles and contracted features, in whose apparel every pin has its destination with mathematical exactness, who are the very watch-towers of a neighbourhood, and who give the alarm on the first appearance of incipient frailty. Here, antique dowagers and faded spinsters are all gay, laughing, rouged, and indulgent--so that 'bating the subtraction of teeth and addition of wrinkles, the disparity between one score and four is not so great: "Gay rainbow silks their mellow charms enfold, Nought of these beauties but themselves is old." I know if I venture to add a word in defence of Tabbyhood, I shall be engaged in a war with yourself and all our young acquaintance; yet in this age, which so liberally "softens, and blends, and weakens, and dilutes" away all distinctions, I own I am not without some partiality for strong lines of demarcation; and, perhaps, when fifty retrogrades into fifteen, it makes a worse confusion in society than the toe of the peasant treading on the heel of the courtier.--But, adieu: I am not gay, though I trifle. I have learnt something by my residence in France, and can be, as you see, frivolous under circumstances that ought to make me grave.--Yours. Peronne, August 29, 1793. The political horizon of France threatens nothing but tempests. If we are still tranquil here, it is only because the storm is retarded, and, far from deeming ourselves secure from its violence, we suffer in apprehension almost as much as at other places is suffered in reality. An hundred and fifty people have been arrested at Amiens in one night, and numbers of the gentry in the neighbouring towns have shared the same fate. This measure, which I understand is general throughout the republic, has occasioned great alarms, and is beheld by the mass of the people themselves with regret. In some towns, the Bourgeois have petitions to the Representatives on mission in behalf of their gentry thus imprisoned: but, far from succeeding, all who have signed such petitions are menaced and intimidated, and the terror is so much increased, that I doubt if even this slight effort will be repeated any where. The levee en masse, or rising in a body, which has been for some time decreed, has not yet taken place. There are very few, I believe, that comprehend it, and fewer who are disposed to comply. Many consultations have been holden, many plans proposed; but as the result of all these consultations and plans is to send a certain number to the frontiers, the suffrages have never been unanimous except in giving their negative.-- Like Falstaff's troops, every one has some good cause of exemption; and if you were to attend a meeting where this affair is discussed, you would conclude the French to be more physically miserable than any people on the glove. Youths, in apparent good health, have internal disorders, or concealed infirmities--some are near-sighted--others epileptic--one is nervous, and cannot present a musquet--another is rheumatic, and cannot carry it. In short, according to their account, they are a collection of the lame, the halt, and the blind, and fitter to send to the hospital, than to take the field. But, in spite of all these disorders and incapacities, a considerable levy must be made, and the dragoons will, I dare say, operate very wonderful cures. The surrender of Dunkirk to the English is regarded as inevitable. I am not politician enough to foresee the consequences of such an event, but the hopes and anxieties of all parties seem directed thither, as if the fate of the war depended on it. As for my own wishes on the subject, they are not national, and if I secretly invoke the God of Armies for the success of my countrymen, it is because I think all that tends to destroy the present French government may be beneficial to mankind. Indeed, the successes of war can at no time gratify a thinking mind farther than as they tend to the establishment of peace. After several days of a mockery which was called a trial, though the witnesses were afraid to appear, or the Counsel to plead in his favour, Custine has suffered at the Guillotine. I can be no judge of his military conduct, and Heaven alone can judge of his intentions. None of the charges were, however, substantiated, and many of them were absurd or frivolous. Most likely, he has been sacrificed to a cabal, and his destruction makes a part of that system of policy, which, by agitating the minds of the people with suspicions of universal treason and unfathomable plots, leaves them no resource but implicit submission to their popular leaders. The death of Custine seems rather to have stimulated than appeased the barbarity of the Parisian mob. At every defeat of their armies they call for executions, and several of those on whom the lot has fallen to march against the enemy have stipulated, at the tribune of the Jacobins, for the heads they exact as a condition of their departure,* or as the reward for their labours. The laurel has no attraction for heroes like these, who invest themselves with the baneful yew and inauspicious cypress, and go to the field of honour with the dagger of the assassin yet ensanguined. * Many insisted they would not depart until after the death of the Queen--some claimed the death of one General, some that of another, and all, the lives or banishment of the gentry and clergy. "Fair steeds, gay shields, bright arms," [Spencer.] the fancy-created deity, the wreath of fame, and all that poets have imagined to decorate the horrors of war, are not necessary to tempt the gross barbarity of the Parisian: he seeks not glory, but carnage--his incentive is the groans of defenceless victims--he inlists under the standard of the Guillotine, and acknowledges the executioner for his tutelary Mars. In remarking the difficulties that have occurred in carrying into execution the levee en masse, I neglected to inform you that the prime mover of all these machinations is your omnipotent Mr. Pitt--it is he who has fomented the perverseness of the towns, and alarmed the timidity of the villages--he has persuaded some that it is not pleasant to leave their shops and families, and insinuated into the minds of others that death or wounds are not very desirable--he has, in fine, so effectually achieved his purpose, that the Convention issues decree after decree, the members harangue to little purpose, and the few recruits already levied, like those raised in the spring, go from many places strongly escorted to the army.--I wish I had more peaceful and more agreeable subjects for your amusement, but they do not present themselves, and "you must blame the times, not me." I would wish to tell you that the legislature is honest, that the Jacobins are humane, and the people patriots; but you know I have no talent for fiction, and if I had, my situation is not favourable to any effort of fancy.--Yours. Peronne, Sept. 7, 1793. The successes of the enemy on all sides, the rebellion at Lyons and Marseilles, with the increasing force of the insurgents in La Vendee, have revived our eagerness for news, and if the indifference of the French character exempt them from more patriotic sensations, it does not banish curiosity; yet an eventful crisis, which in England would draw people together, here keeps them apart. When an important piece of intelligence arrives, our provincial politicians shut themselves up with their gazettes, shun society, and endeavour to avoid giving an opinion until they are certain of the strength of a party, or the success of an attempt. In the present state of public affairs, you may therefore conceive we have very little communication--we express our sentiments more by looks and gestures than words, and Lavater (admitting his system) would be of more use to a stranger than Boyer or Chambaud. If the English take Dunkirk, perhaps we may be a little more social and more decided. Mad. de ____ has a most extensive acquaintance, and, as we are situated on one of the roads from Paris to the northern army, notwithstanding the cautious policy of the moment, we are tolerably well informed of what passes in most parts of France; and I cannot but be astonished, when I combine all I hear, that the government is able to sustain itself. Want, discord, and rebellion, assail it within--defeats and losses from without. Perhaps the solution of this political problem can only be found in the selfishness of the French character, and the want of connection between the different departments. Thus one part of the country is subdued by means of another: the inhabitants of the South take up arms in defence of their freedom and their commerce, while those of the North refuse to countenance or assist them, and wait in selfish tranquillity till the same oppression is extended to themselves. The majority of the people have no point of union nor mode of communication, while the Jacobins, whose numbers are comparatively insignificant, are strong, by means of their general correspondence, their common center at Paris, and the exclusive direction of all the public prints. But, whatever are the causes, it is certain that the government is at once powerful and detested--almost without apparent support, yet difficult to overthrow; and the submission of Rome to a dotard and a boy can no longer excite the wonder of any one who reflects on what passes in France. After various decrees to effect the levee en masse, the Convention have discovered that this sublime and undefined project was not calculated for the present exhausted state of martial ardour. They therefore no longer presume on any movement of enthusiasm, but have made a positive and specific requisition of all the male inhabitants of France between eighteen and twenty-five years of age. This, as might be expected, has been more effectual, because it interests those that are exempt to force the compliance of those who are not. Our young men here were like children with a medicine--they proposed first one form of taking this military potion, then another, and finding them all equally unpalatable, would not, but for a little salutary force, have decided at all. A new law has been passed for arresting all the English who cannot produce two witnesses of their civisme, and those whose conduct is thus guaranteed are to receive tickets of hospitality, which they are to wear as a protection. This decree has not yet been carried into effect at Peronne, nor am I much disturbed about it. Few of our countrymen will find the matter very difficult to arrange, and I believe they have all a better protection in the disposition of the people towards them, than any that can be assured them by decrees of the Convention. Sept. 11. The news of Lord Hood's taking possession of Toulon, which the government affected to discredit for some days, is now ascertained; and the Convention, in a paroxism of rage, at once cowardly and unprincipled, has decreed that all the English not resident in France before 1789, shall be imprisoned as hostages, and be answerable with their lives for the conduct of their countrymen and of the Toulonese towards Bayle and Beauvais, two Deputies, said to be detained in the town at the time of its surrender. My first emotions of terror and indignation have subsided, and I have, by packing up my clothes, disposing of my papers, and providing myself with money, prepared for the worst. My friends, indeed, persuade me, (as on a former occasion,) that the decree is too atrocious to be put in execution; but my apprehensions are founded on a principle not likely to deceive me--namely, that those who have possessed themselves of the French government are capable of any thing. I live in constant fear, watching all day and listening all night, and never go to bed but with the expectation of being awakened, nor rise without a presentiment of misfortune.--I have not spirits nor composure to write, and shall discontinue my letters until I am relieved from suspense, if nor from uneasiness. I risk much by preserving these papers, and, perhaps, may never be able to add to them; but whatever I may be reserved for, while I have a hope they may reach you they shall not be destroyed. --I bid you adieu in a state of mind which the circumstances I am under will describe better than words.--Yours. Maison d'Arret, Arras, Oct. 15, 1793. Dear Brother, The fears of a timid mind usually magnify expected evil, and anticipated suffering often diminishes the effect of an apprehended blow; yet my imagination had suggested less than I have experienced, nor do I find that a preparatory state of anxiety has rendered affliction more supportable. The last month of my life has been a compendium of misery; and my recollection, which on every other subject seems to fail me, is, on this, but too faithful, and will enable me to relate events which will interest you not only as they personally concern me, but as they present a picture of the barbarity and despotism to which this whole country is subject, and to which many thousands besides myself were at the same instant victims. A few evenings after I concluded my last, the firing of cannon and ringing the great bell announced the arrival of Dumont (still Representative en mission in our department). The town was immediately in alarm, all the gates were shut, and the avenues leading to the ramparts guarded by dragoons. Our house being in a distant and unfrequented street, before we could learn the cause of all this confusion, a party of the national guard, with a municipal officer at their head, arrived, to escort Mad. de ___ and myself to a church, where the Representant was then examining the prisoners brought before him. Almost as much astonished as terrified, we endeavoured to procure some information of our conductors, as to what was to be the result of this measure; but they knew nothing, and it was easy to perceive they thought the office they were executing an unpleasant one. The streets we passed were crouded with people, whose silent consternation and dismayed countenances increased our forebodings, and depressed the little courage we had yet preserved. The church at our arrival was nearly empty, and Dumont preparing to depart, when the municipal officer introduced us to him. As soon as he learned that Mad. de ____ was the sister of an emigrant, and myself a native of England, he told us we were to pass the night in a church appointed for the purpose, and that on the morrow we should be conveyed to Arras. For a moment all my faculties became suspended, and it was only by an effort almost convulsive that I was able to ask how long it was probable we should be deprived of our liberty. He said he did not know--"but that the raising of the siege of Dunkirk, and the loss of six thousand troops which the French had taken prisoners, would doubtless produce an insurrection in England, par consequent a peace, and our release from captivity!" You may be assured I felt no desire of freedom on such terms, and should have heard this ignorant and malicious suggestion only with contempt, had not the implication it conveyed that our detention would not terminate but with the war overwhelmed every other idea. Mad. de ____ then petitioned that we might, on account of our health, (for we were both really unwell,) be permitted to go home for the night, accompanied by guards if it were thought necessary. But the Representant was inexorable, and in a brutal and despotic tone ordered us away.--When we reached the church, which was to be our prison till morning, we found about an hundred and fifty people, chiefly old men, women, and children, dispersed in melancholy groupes, lamenting their situation, and imparting their fears to each other. The gloom of the building was increased by the darkness of the night; and the noise of the guard, may of whom were intoxicated, the odour of tobacco, and the heat of the place, rendered our situation almost insupportable. We soon discovered several of our acquaintance, but this association in distress was far from consolatory, and we passed the time in wandering about together, and consulting upon what would be of most use to us in our confinement. We had, indeed, little to hope for from the morrow, yet the hours dragged on heavily, and I know not if ever I beheld the return of light with more pleasure. I was not without apprehension for our personal safety. I recollected the massacres in churches at Paris, and the frequent propositions that had been made to exterminate the gentry and clergy. Mad. de ____ has since confessed, that she had the same ideas. Morning at length came, and our servants were permitted to enter with breakfast. They appeared sorrowful and terror-stricken, but offered with great willingness to accompany us whithersoever we should be sent. After a melancholy sort of discussion, it was decided that we should take our femmes de chambres, and that the others should remain for the safety of the house, and to send us what we might have occasion for. This settled, they returned with such directions as we were able to give them, (God knows, not very coherent ones,) to prepare for our journey: and as our orders, however confused, were not very voluminous, they were soon executed, and before noon every thing was in readiness for our departure. The people employed by our companions were equally diligent, and we might very well have set out by one o'clock, had our case been at all considered; but, I know not why, instead of so providing that we might reach our destination in the course of the day, it seemed to have been purposely contrived that we should be all night on the road, though we had already passed one night without rest, and were exhausted by watching and fatigue. In this uncertain and unpleasant state we waited till near six o'clock; a number of small covered waggons were then brought, accompanied by a detachment of dragoons, who were to be our escort. Some time elapsed, as you may suppose, before we could be all settled in the carriages and such a cavalcade put in motion; but the concourse of people that filled the streets, the appearance of the troops, and the tumult occasioned by so many horses and carriages, overpowered my spirits, and I remember little of what passed till I found we were on the road to Arras. Mad. de ____'s maid now informed us, that Dumont had arrived the evening before in extreme ill humour, summoned the municipality in haste, enquired how many people they had arrested, and what denunciations they had yet to make. The whole body corporate trembled, they had arrested no one, and, still worse, they had no one to accuse; and could only alledge in their behalf, that the town was in the utmost tranquillity, and the people were so well disposed, that all violence was unnecessary. The Representant became furious, vociferated _tout grossierement a la Francaise,_ [In the vulgar French manner.] that he knew there were five thousand aristocrates in Peronne, and that if he had not at least five hundred brought him before morning, he would declare the town in a state of rebellion. Alarmed by this menace, they began to arrest with all possible speed, and were more solicitous to procure their number than to make discriminations. Their diligence, however, was inadequate to appease the choleric legislator, and the Mayor, municipal officers, and all the administrators of the district, were in the morning sent to the Castle, whence they are to be conveyed, with some of their own prisoners, to Amiens. Besides this intelligence, we learned that before our servants had finished packing up our trunks, some Commissioners of the section arrived to put the seals on every thing belonging to us, and it was not without much altercation that they consented to our being furnished with necessaries--that they had not only sealed up all the house, but had placed guards there, each of whom Mad. de ____ is to pay, at the rate of two shillings a day. We were too large a body to travel fast, and by the time we reached Bapaume (though only fifteen miles) it was after twelve; it rained dreadfully, the night was extremely dark, the roads were bad, and the horses tired; so that the officer who conducted us thought it would be difficult to proceed before morning. We were therefore once more crouded into a church, in our wet clothes, (for the covering of the waggon was not thick enough to exclude the rain,) a few bundles of damp straw were distributed, and we were then shut up to repose as well as we could. All my melancholy apprehensions of the preceding night returned with accumulated force, especially as we were now in a place where we were unknown, and were guarded by some of the newly-raised dragoons, of whom we all entertained very unfavourable suspicions. We did not, as you may well imagine, attempt to sleep--a bed of wet straw laid on the pavement of a church, filthy, as most French churches are, and the fear of being assassinated, resisted every effort of nature herself, and we were very glad when at the break of day we were summoned to continue our journey. About eleven we entered Arras: the streets were filled by idle people, apprized of our arrival; but no one offered us any insult, except some soldiers, (I believe, by their uniform, refugees from the Netherlands,) who cried, "a la Guillotine!--a la Guillotine!" The place to which we were ordered had been the house of an emigrant, now converted into an house of detention, and which, though large, was excessively full. The keeper, on our being delivered to him, declared he had no room for us, and we remained with our baggage in the court-yard some hours before he had, by dislodging and compressing the other inhabitants, contrived to place us. At last, when we were half dead with cold and fatigue, we were shown to our quarters. Those allotted for my friend, myself, and our servants, was the corner of a garret without a cieling, cold enough in itself, but rendered much warmer than was desirable by the effluvia of a score of living bodies, who did not seem to think the unpleasantness of their situation at all increased by dirt and offensive smells. Weary as we were, it was impossible to attempt reposing until a purification had been effected: we therefore set ourselves to sprinkling vinegar and burning perfumes; and it was curious to observe that the people, (_all gens comme il faut_ [People of fashion.]) whom we found inhaling the atmosphere of a Caffrarian hut, declared their nerves were incommoded by the essence of roses and vinaigre des quatre voleurs. As a part of the room was occupied by men, our next business was to separate our corner by a curtain, which we had fortunately brought with our bedding; and this done, we spread our mattresses and lay down, while the servants were employed in getting us tea. As soon as we were a little refreshed, and the room was quiet for the night, we made up our beds as well as we could, and endeavoured to sleep. Mad. de ____ and the two maids soon forgot their cares; but, though worn out by fatigue, the agitation of my mind conquered the disposition of my body. I seemed to have lost the very faculty of sleeping, and passed this night with almost as little repose as the two preceding ones. Before morning I discovered that remaining so long in damp clothes, and the other circumstances of our journey, had given me cold, and that I had all the symptoms of a violent fever. I leave you to conjecture, for it would be impossible to detail, all the misery of illness in such a situation; and I will only add, that by the care of Mad. de ____, whose health was happily less affected, and the attention of my maid, I was able to leave the room in about three weeks. --I must now secrete this for some days, but will hereafter resume my little narrative, and explain how I have ventured to write so much even in the very neighbourhood of the Guillotine.--Adieu. Maison d'Arret, Arras, Oct. 17, 1793. On the night I concluded my last, a report that Commissioners were to visit the house on the morrow obliged me to dispose of my papers beyond the possibility of their being found. The alarm is now over, and I proceed.--After something more than three weeks indisposition, I began to walk in the yard, and make acquaintance with our fellow-prisoners. Mad. de ____ had already discovered several that were known to her, and I now found, with much regret, that many of my Arras friends were here also. Having been arrested some days before us, they were rather more conveniently lodged, and taking the wretchedness of our garret into consideration, it was agreed that Mad. de ____ should move to a room less crouded than our own, and a dark closet that would just contain my mattresses was resigned to me. It is indeed a very sorry apartment, but as it promises me a refuge where I may sometimes read or write in peace, I have taken possession of it very thankfully. A lock on the door is not the least of its recommendations, and by way of securing myself against all surprize, I have contrived an additional fastening by means of a large nail and the chain of a portmanteau--I have likewise, under pretext of keeping out the wind, papered over the cracks of the door, and provided myself with a sand-bag, so that no one can perceive when I have a light later than usual.--With these precautions, I can amuse myself by putting on paper any little occurrences that I think worth preserving, without much danger, and perhaps the details of a situation so new and so strange may not be uninteresting to you. We are now about three hundred in number of both sexes, and of all ages and conditions--ci-devant noblesse, parents, wives, sisters, and other relations of emigrants--priests who have not taken the oaths, merchants and shopkeepers accused of monopoly, nuns, farmers that are said to have concealed their corn, miserable women, with scarcely clothes to cover them, for not going to the constitutional mass, and many only because they happened to be at an inn, or on a visit from their own town, when a general arrest took place of all who are what is called etrangers, that is to say, not foreigners only, but not inhabitants of the town where they are found.--There are, besides, various descriptions of people sent here on secret informations, and who do not themselves know the precise reason of their confinement. I imagine we are subject to nearly the same rules as the common prisons: no one is permitted to enter or speak to a "detenu" but at the gate, and in presence of the guard; and all letters, parcels, baskets, &c. are examined previous to their being either conveyed from hence or received. This, however, depends much on the political principles of those who happen to be on guard: an aristocrate or a constitutionalist will read a letter with his eyes half shut, and inspect bedding and trunks in a very summary way; while a thorough-paced republican spells every syllable of the longest epistle, and opens all the roasted pigs or duck-pies before he allows their ingress.--None of the servants are suffered to go out, so that those who have not friends in the town to procure them necessaries are obliged to depend entirely on the keeper, and, of course, pay extravagantly dear for every thing; but we are so much in the power of these people, that it is prudent to submit to such impositions without murmuring. I did not, during my illness, read the papers, and have to-day been amusing myself with a large packet. General Houchard, I find, is arrested, for not having, as they say he might have done, driven all the English army into the sea, after raising the siege of Dunkirk; yet a few weeks ago their utmost hopes scarcely amounted to the relief of the town: but their fears having subsided, they have now leisure to be jealous; and I know no situation so little to be envied under the present government as that of a successful General.--Among all their important avocations, the Convention have found time to pass a decree for obliging women to wear the national cockade, under pain of imprisonment; and the municipality of the superb Paris have ordered that the King's family shall, in future, use pewter spoons and eat brown bread! Oct. 18. I begin to be very uneasy about Mr. and Mrs. D____. I have written several times, and still receive no answer. I fear they are in a confinement more severe than my own, or that our letters miscarry. A servant of Mad. de ____'s was here this morning, and no letters had come to Peronne, unless, as my friend endeavours to persuade me, the man would not venture to give them in presence of the guard, who par excellence happened to be a furious Jacobin.--We had the mortification of hearing that a very elegant carriage of Mad. de ____'s has been put in requisition, and taken to convey a tinman and two farriers who were going to Paris on a mission--that two of her farmer's best horses had been killed by hard work in taking provisions to the army, and that they are now cutting down the young wood on her estate to make pikes.--The seals are still on our effects, and the guard remains in possession, which has put us to the expence of buying a variety of articles we could not well dispense with: for, on examining the baggage after our arrival, we found it very much diminshed; and this has happened to almost all the people who have been arrested. Our suspicions naturally fall on the dragoons, and it is not very surprizing that they should attempt to steal from those whom they are certain would not dare to make any complaint. Many of our fellow-prisoners are embarrassed by their servants having quitted them.--One Collot d'Herbois, a member of the Commite de Salut Public, has proposed to the Convention to collect all the gentry, priests, and suspected people, into different buildings, which should be previously mined for the purpose, and, on the least appearance of insurrection, to blow them up all together.--You may perhaps conclude, that such a project was received with horror, and the adviser of it treated as a monster. Our humane legislature, however, very coolly sent it to the committee to be discussed, without any regard to the terror and apprehension which the bare idea of a similar proposal must inspire in those who are the destined victims. I cannot myself believe that this abominable scheme is intended for execution, but it has nevertheless created much alarm in timid minds, and has occasioned in part the defection of the servants I have just mentioned. Those who were sufficiently attached to their masters and mistresses to endure the confinement and privations of a Maison d'Arret, tremble at the thoughts of being involved in the common ruin of a gunpowder explosion; and the men seem to have less courage than the women, at least more of the latter have consented to remain here.--It was atrocious to publish such a conception, though nothing perhaps was intended by it, as it may deprive many people of faithful attendants at a time when they are most necessary. We have a tribunal revolutionnaire here, with its usual attendant the Guillotine, and executions are now become very frequent. I know not who are the sufferers, and avoid enquiring through fear of hearing the name of some acquaintance. As far as I can learn, the trials are but too summary, and little other evidence is required than the fortune, rank, and connections of the accused. The Deputy who is Commissioner for this department is one Le Bon, formerly a priest--and, I understand, of an immoral and sanguinary character, and that it is he who chiefly directs the verdicts of the juries according to his personal hatred or his personal interest.--We have lately had a very melancholy instance of the terror created by this tribunal, as well as of the notions that prevail of its justice. A gentleman of Calais, who had an employ under the government, was accused of some irregularity in his accounts, and, in consequence, put under arrest. The affair became serious, and he was ordered to prison, as a preliminary to his trial. When the officers entered his apartment to take him, regarding the judicial procedure as a mere form, and concluding it was determined to sacrifice him, he in a frenzy of despair seized the dogs in the chimney, threw them at the people, and, while they escaped to call for assistance, destroyed himself by cutting his arteries.--It has appeared, since the death of this unfortunate man, that the charge against him was groundless, and that he only wanted time to arrange his papers, in order to exonerate himself entirely. Oct. 19. We are disturbed almost nightly by the arrival of fresh prisoners, and my first question of a morning is always _"N'est il pas du monde entre la nuit?"_--Angelique's usual reply is a groan, and _"Ah, mon Dieu, oui;" "Une dixaine de pretres;"_ or, _"Une trentaine de nobles:"_ ["Did not some people arrive in the night?"]--"Yes, God help us--half a score priests, or twenty or thirty gentry." And I observe the depth of the groan is nearly in proportion to the quality of the person she commiserates. Thus, a groan for a Comte, a Marquise, or a Priest, is much more audible than one for a simple gentlewoman or a merchant; and the arrival of a Bishop (especially if not one of the constitutional clergy) is announced in a more sorrowful key than either. While I was walking in the yard this morning, I was accosted by a female whom I immediately recollected to be Victoire, a very pretty _couturiere,_ [Sempstress.] who used to work for me when I was at Panthemont, and who made your last holland shirts. I was not a little surprized to see her in such a situation, and took her aside to enquire her history. I found that her mother was dead, and that her brother having set up a little shop at St. Omer, had engaged her to go and live with him. Being under five-and-twenty, the last requisition obliged him to depart for the army, and leave her to carry on the business alone. Three weeks after, she was arrested at midnight, put into a cart, and brought hither. She had no time to take any precautions, and their little commerce, which was in haberdashery, as well as some work she had in hand, is abandoned to the mercy of the people that arrested her. She has reason to suppose that her crime consists in not having frequented the constitutional mass; and that her accuser is a member of one of the town committees, who, since her brother's absence, has persecuted her with dishonourable proposals, and, having been repulsed, has taken this method of revenging himself. Her conjecture is most probably right, as, since her imprisonment, this man has been endeavouring to make a sort of barter with her for her release. I am really concerned for this poor creature, who is at present a very good girl, but if she remain here she will not only be deprived of her means of living, but perhaps her morals may be irremediably corrupted. She is now lodged in a room with ten or dozen men, and the house is so crouded that I doubt whether I have interest enough to procure her a more decent apartment. What can this strange policy tend to, that thus exposes to ruin and want a girl of one-and-twenty--not for any open violation of the law, but merely for her religious opinions; and this, too, in a country which professes toleration as the basis of its government? My friend, Mad. de ____ s'ennui terribly; she is not incapable of amusing herself, but is here deprived of the means. We have no corner we can call our own to sit in, and no retreat when we wish to be out of a croud except my closet, where we can only see by candle-light. Besides, she regrets her employments, and projects for the winter. She had begun painting a St. Theresa, and translating an Italian romance, and had nearly completed the education of a dozen canary birds, who would in a month's time have accompanied the harp so delightfully, as to overpower the sound of the instrument. I believe if we had a few more square inches of room, she would be tempted, if not to bring the whole chorus, at least to console herself with two particular favourites, distinguished by curious topknots, and rings about their necks. With all these feminine propensities, she is very amiable, and her case is indeed singularly cruel and unjust.--Left, at an early age, under the care of her brother, she was placed by him at Panthemont (where I first became acquainted with her) with an intention of having her persuaded to take the veil; but finding her averse from a cloister, she remained as a pensioner only, till a very advantageous marriage with the Marquis de ____, who was old enough to be her father, procured her release. About two years ago he died, and left her a very considerable fortune, which the revolution has reduced to nearly one-third of its former value. The Comte de ____, her brother, was one of the original patriots, and embraced with great warmth the cause of the people; but having very narrowly escaped the massacres of September, 1792, he immediately after emigrated. Thus, my poor friend, immured by her brother till the age of twenty-two in a convent, then sacrificed three years to a husband of a disagreeable temper and unsuitable age, is now deprived of the first liberty she ever enjoyed, and is made answerable for the conduct of a man over whom she has no sort of influence. It is not, therefore, extraordinary that she cannot reconcile herself to her present situation, and I am really often more concerned on her account than my own. Cut off from her usual resources, she has no amusement but wandering about the house; and if her other causes of uneasiness be not augmented, they are at least rendered more intolerable by her inability to fill up her time.--This does not arise from a deficiency of understanding, but from never having been accustomed to think. Her mind resembles a body that is weak, not by nature, but from want of exercise; and the number of years she has passed in a convent has given her that mixture of childishness and romance, which, my making frivolities necessary, renders the mind incapable of exertion or self-support. Oct. 20. The unfortunate Queen, after a trial of some days, during which she seems to have behaved with great dignity and fortitude, is no longer sensible of the regrets of her friends or the malice of her enemies. It is singular, that I have not yet heard her death mentioned in the prison --every one looks grave and affects silence. I believe her death has not occasioned an effect so universal as that of the King, and whatever people's opinions may be, they are afraid of expressing them: for it is said, though I know not with what truth, that we are surrounded by spies, and several who have the appearance of being prisoners like ourselves have been pointed out to me as the objects of this suspicion. I do not pretend to undertake the defence of the Queen's imputed faults-- yet I think there are some at least which one may be very fairly permitted to doubt. Compassion should not make me an advocate for guilt --but I may, without sacrificing morals to pity, venture to observe, that the many scandalous histories circulated to her prejudice took their rise at the birth of the Dauphin,* which formed so insurmountable a bar to the views of the Duke of Orleans.-- * Nearly at the same time, and on the same occasion, there were literary partizans of the Duke of Orleans, who endeavoured to persuade the people that the man with the iron mask, who had so long excited curiosity and eluded conjecture, was the real son of Louis XIII.--and Louis XIV. in consequence, supposititious, and only the illegitimate offspring of Cardinal Mazarin and Anne of Austria--that the spirit of ambition and intrigue which characterized this Minister had suggested this substitution to the lawful heir, and that the fears of the Queen and confusion of the times had obliged her to acquiesce: "Cette opinion ridicule, et dont les dates connues de l'histoire demontrent l'absurdite, avoit eu des partisans en France--elle tendoit a avilir la maison regnante, et a persuader au peuple que le trone n'appartient pas aux descendans de Louis XIV. prince furtivement sutstitue, mais a la posterite du second fils de Louis XIII. qui est la tige de la branche d'Orleans, et qui est reconnue comme descendant legitimement, et sans objection, du Roi Louis XIII." --Nouvelles Considerations sur la Masque de Fer, Memoirs de Richelieu. "This ridiculous opinion, the absurdity of which is demonstrated by historical dates, had not been without its partizans in France.--It tended to degrade the reigning family, and to make the people believe that the throne did not of right belong to the descendants of Louis XIV. (a prince surreptitiously intruded) but to the posterity of the second son of Louis XIII. from whom is derived the branch of Orleans, and who was, without dispute, the legitimate and unobjectionable offspring of Louis XIII." --New Considerations on the Iron Mask.--Memoirs of the Duc de Richelieu. The author of the above Memoirs adds, that after the taking of the Bastille, new attempts were made to propagate this opinion, and that he himself had refuted it to many people, by producing original letters and papers, sufficiently demonstrative of its absurdity. --He might hope, by popularity, to supersede the children of the Count d'Artois, who was hated; but an immediate heir to the Crown could be removed only by throwing suspicions on his legitimacy. These pretensions, it is true, were so absurd, and even incredible, that had they been urged at the time, no inference in the Queen's favour would have been admitted from them; but as the existence of such projects, however absurd and iniquitous, has since been demonstrated, one may now, with great appearance of reason, allow them some weight in her justification. The affair of the necklace was of infinite disservice to the Queen's reputation; yet it is remarkable, that the most furious of the Jacobins are silent on this head as far as it regarded her, and always mention the Cardinal de Rohan in terms that suppose him to be the culpable party: but, "whatever her faults, her woes deserve compassion;" and perhaps the moralist, who is not too severe, may find some excuse for a Princess, who, at the age of sixteen, possibly without one real friend or disinterested adviser, became the unrestrained idol of the most licentious Court in Europe. Even her enemies do not pretend that her fate was so much a merited punishment as a political measure: they alledge, that while her life was yet spared, the valour of their troops was checked by the possibility of negotiation; and that being no more, neither the people nor armies expecting any thing but execration or revenge, they will be more ready to proceed to the most desperate extremities.--This you will think a barbarous sort of policy, and considering it as national, it appears no less absurd than barbarous; but for the Convention, whose views perhaps extend little farther than to saving their heads, peculating, and receiving their eighteen livres a day, such measures, and such a principle of action, are neither unwise nor unaccountable: "for the wisdom of civilized nations is not their wisdom, nor the ways of civilized people their ways."*-- * I have been informed, by a gentleman who saw the Queen pass in her way to execution, that the short white bed gown and the cap which she wore were discoloured by smoke, and that her whole appearance seemed to have been intended, if possible, to degrade her in the eyes of the multitude. The benevolent mind will recollect with pleasure, that even the Queen's enemies allow her a fortitude and energy of character which must have counteracted this paltry malice, and rendered it incapable of producing any emotion but contempt. On her first being removed to the Conciergerie, she applied for some necessaries; but the humane municipality of Paris refused them, under pretext that the demand was contrary to the system of _la sainte elagite_--"holy equality." --It was reported that the Queen was offered her life, and the liberty to retire to St. Cloud, her favourite residence, if she would engage the enemy to raise the siege of Maubeuge and withdraw; but that she refused to interfere. Arras, 1793. For some days previous to the battle by which Maubeuge was relieved, we had very gloomy apprehensions, and had the French army been unsuccessful and forced to fall back, it is not improbable but the lives of those detained in the _Maison d'Arret_ [House of detention.] might have been sacrificed under pretext of appeasing the people, and to give some credit to the suspicions so industriously inculcated that all their defeats are occasioned by internal enemies. My first care, as soon as I was able to go down stairs, was to examine if the house offered any means of escape in case of danger, and I believe, if we could preserve our recollection, it might be practicable; but I can so little depend on my strength and spirits, should such a necessity occur, that perhaps the consolation of knowing I have a resource is the only benefit I should ever derive from it. Oct. 21. I have this day made a discovery of a very unpleasant nature, which Mad. de ____ had hitherto cautiously concealed from me. All the English, and other foreigners placed under similar circumstances, are now, without exception, arrested, and the confiscation of their property is decreed. It is uncertain if the law is to extend to wearing apparel, but I find that on this ground the Committee of Peronne persist in refusing to take the seals off my effects, or to permit my being supplied with any necessaries whatsoever. In other places they have put two, four, and, I am told, even to the number of six guards, in houses belonging to the English; and these guards, exclusive of being paid each two shillings per day, burn the wood, regale on the wine, and pillage in detail all they can find, while the unfortunate owner is starving in a Maison d'Arret, and cannot obtain permission to withdraw a single article for his own use.--The plea for this paltry measure is, that, according to the report of a deserter escaped from Toulon, Lord Hood has hanged one Beauvais, a member of the Convention. I have no doubt but the report is false, and, most likely, fabricated by the Comite de Salut Public, in order to palliate an act of injustice previously meditated. It is needless to expatiate on the atrocity of making individuals, living here under the faith of the nation, responsible for the events of the war, and it is whispered that even the people are a little ashamed of it; yet the government are not satisfied with making us accountable for what really does happen, but they attribute acts of cruelty to our countrymen, in order to excuse those they commit themselves, and retaliate imagined injuries by substantial vengeance.--Legendre, a member of the Convention, has proposed, with a most benevolent ingenuity, that the manes of the aforesaid Beauvais should be appeased by exhibiting Mr. Luttrell in an iron cage for a convenient time, and then hanging him. A gentleman from Amiens, lately arrested while happening to be here on business, informs me, that Mr. Luttrell is now in the common gaol of that place, lodged with three other persons in a miserable apartment, so small, that there is not room to pass between their beds. I understand he was advised to petition Dumont for his removal to a Maison d'Arret, where he would have more external convenience; but he rejected this counsel, no doubt from a disdain which did him honour, and preferred to suffer all that the mean malice of these wretches would inflict, rather than ask any accommodation as a favour.--The distinguishing Mr. Luttrell from any other English gentleman is as much a proof of ignorance as of baseness; but in this, as in every thing else, the present French government is still more wicked than absurd, and our ridicule is suppressed by our detestation. Oct. 22. Mad. de ____'s _homme d'affaires_ [Agent] has been here to-day, but no news from Amiens. I know not what to conjecture. My patience is almost exhausted, and my spirits are fatigued. Were I not just now relieved by a distant prospect of some change for the better, my situation would be insupportable.--"Oh world! oh world! but that thy strange mutations make us wait thee, life would not yield to age." We should die before our time, even of moral diseases, unaided by physical ones; but the uncertainty of human events, which is the "worm i'the bud" of happiness, is to the miserable a cheering and consolatory reflection. Thus have I dragged on for some weeks, postponing, as it were, my existence, without any resource, save the homely philosophy of _"nous verrons demain."_ ["We shall see to-morrow."] At length our hopes and expectations are become less general, and if we do not obtain our liberty, we may be able at least to procure a more eligible prison. I confess, the source of our hopes, and the protector we have found, are not of a dignity to be ushered to your notice by citations of blank verse, or scraps of sentiment; for though the top of the ladder is not quite so high, the first rounds are as low as that of Ben Bowling's. Mad. de ____'s confidential servant, who came here to-day, has learned, by accident, that a man, who formerly worked with the Marquis's tailor, having (in consequence, I suppose of a political vocation,) quitted the selling of old clothes, in which he had acquired some eminence, has become a leading patriot, and is one of Le Bon's, the Representative's, privy counsellors. Fleury has renewed his acquaintance with this man, has consulted him upon our situation, and obtained a promise that he will use his interest with Le Bon in our behalf. Under this splendid patronage, it is not unlikely but we may get an order to be transferred to Amiens, or, perhaps, procure our entire liberation. We have already written to Le Bon on the subject, and Fleury is to have a conference with our friend the tailor in a few days to learn the success of his mediation; so that, I trust, the business will not be long in suspense. We have had a most indulgent guard to-day, who, by suffering the servant to enter a few paces within the gate, afforded us an opportunity of hearing this agreeable intelligence; as also, by way of episode, that boots being wanted for the cavalry, all the boots in the town were last night put in requisition, and as Fleury was unluckily gone to bed before the search was made at his inn, he found himself this morning very unceremoniously left bootless. He was once a famous patriot, and the oracle of Mad. de ____'s household; but our confinement had already shaken his principles, and this seizure of his "superb English boots" has, I believe, completed his defection. Oct. 25. I have discontinued my journal for three days to attend my friend, Mad. de ____, who has been ill. Uneasiness, and want of air and exercise, had brought on a little fever, which, by the usual mode of treatment in this country, has been considerably increased. Her disorder did not indeed much alarm me, but I cannot say as much of her medical assistants, and it seems to me to be almost supernatural that she has escaped the jeopardy of their prescriptions. In my own illness I had trusted to nature, and my recollection of what had been ordered me on similar occasions; but for Mad. de ____ I was less confident, and desirous of having better advice, begged a physician might be immediately sent for. Had her disorder been an apoplexy, she must infallibly have died, for as no person, not even the faculty, can enter, without an order from the municipal Divan, half a day elapsed before this order could be procured. At length the physician and surgeon arrived, and I know not why the learned professions should impose on us more by one exterior than another; but I own, when I saw the physician appear in a white camblet coat, lined with rose colour, and the surgeon with dirty linen, and a gold button and loop to his hat, I began to tremble for my friend. My feminine prejudices did not, however, in this instance, deceive me. After the usual questions, the patient was declared in a fever, and condemned to cathartics, bleeding, and "bon bouillons;" that is to say, greasy beef soup, in which there is never an oeconomy of onions.--When they were departed, I could not help expressing my surprize that people's lives should be entrusted to such hands, observing, at the same time, to the Baron de L____, (who is lodged in the same apartment with Mad. de ____,) that the French must never expect men, whose education fitted them for the profession, would become physicians, while they continued to be paid at the rate of twenty-pence per visit.-- Yet, replied the Baron, if they make twenty visits a day, they gain forty livres--_"et c'est de quoi vivre."_ [It is a living.] It is undeniably _de quoi vivre,_ but as long as a mere subsistence is the only prospect of a physician, the French must be content to have their fevers cured by "drastics, phlebotomy, and beef soup." They tell me we have now more than five hundred detenus in this single house. How so many have been wedged in I can scarcely conceive, but it seems our keeper has the art of calculating with great nicety the space requisite for a given number of bodies, and their being able to respire freely is not his affair. Those who can afford it have their dinners, with all the appurtenances, brought from the inns or traiteurs; and the poor cook, sleep, and eat, by scores, in the same room. I have persuaded my friend to sup as I do, upon tea; but our associates, for the most part, finding it inconvenient to have suppers brought at night, and being unwilling to submit to the same privations, regale themselves with the remains of their dinner, re-cooked in their apartments, and thus go to sleep, amidst the fumes of _perdrix a l'onion, oeufs a la tripe,_ [Partridge a l'onion--eggs a la tripe.] and all the produce of a French kitchen. It is not, as you may imagine, the Bourgeois, and less distinguished prisoners only, who indulge in these highly-seasoned repasts, at the expence of inhaling the savoury atmosphere they leave behind them: the beaux and petites mistresses, among the ci-devant, have not less exigent appetites, nor more delicate nerves; and the ragout is produced at night, in spite of the odours and disorder that remain till the morrow. I conclude, notwithstanding your English prejudices, that there is nothing unwholesome in filth, for if it were otherwise, I cannot account for our being alive. Five hundred bodies, in a state of coacervation, without even a preference for cleanliness, "think of that Master Brook." All the forenoon the court is a receptacle for cabbage leaves, fish scales, leeks, &c. &c.--and as a French chambermaid usually prefers the direct road to circumambulation, the refuse of the kitchen is then washed away by plentiful inundations from the dressing-room--the passages are blockaded by foul plates, fragments, and bones; to which if you add the smell exhaling from hoarded apples and gruyere cheese, you may form some notion of the sufferings of those whose olfactory nerves are not robust. Yet this is not all--nearly every female in the house, except myself, is accompanied even here by her lap-dog, who sleeps in her room, and, not unfrequently, on her bed; and these Lesbias and Lindamiras increase the insalubrity of the air, and colonize one's stockings by sending forth daily emigrations of fleas. For my own part, a few close November days will make me as captious and splenetic as Matthew Bramble himself. Nothing keeps me in tolerable good humour at present, but a clear frosty morning, or a high wind. Oct. 27. I thought, when I wrote the above, that the house was really so full as to be incapable of containing more; but I did not do justice to the talents of our keeper. The last two nights have brought us an addition of several waggon loads of nuns, farmers, shopkeepers, &c. from the neighbouring towns, which he has still contrived to lodge, though much in the way that he would pack goods in bales. Should another convoy arrive, it is certain that we must sleep perpendicularly, for even now, when the beds are all arranged and occupied for the night, no one can make a diagonal movement without disturbing his neighbour.--This very sociable manner of sleeping is very far, I assure you, from promoting the harmony of the day; and I am frequently witness to the reproaches and recriminations occasioned by nocturnal misdemeanours. Sometimes the lap-dog of one dowager is accused of hostilities against that of another, and thereby producing a general chorus of the rest--then a four-footed favourite strays from the bed of his mistress, and takes possession of a General's uniform--and there are female somnambules, who alarm the modesty of a pair of Bishops, and suspended officers, that, like Richard, warring in their dreams, cry "to arms," to the great annoyance of those who are more inclined to sleep in peace. But, I understand, the great disturbers of the room where Mad. de ____ sleeps are two chanoines, whose noses are so sonorous and so untuneable as to produce a sort of duet absolutely incompatible with sleep; and one of the company is often deputed to interrupt the serenade by manual application _mais tout en badinant et avec politesse_ [But all in pleasantry, and with politeness.] to the offending parties. All this, my dear brother, is only ludicrous in the relation; yet for so many people to be thus huddled together without distinction of age, sex, or condition, is truly miserable.--Mad. De ____ is still indisposed, and while she is thus suffocated by bad air, and distracted by the various noises of the house, I see no prospect of her recovery. Arras is the common prison of the department, and, besides, there are a number of other houses and convents in the town appropriated to the same use, and all equally full. God knows when these iniquities are to terminate! So far from having any hopes at present, the rage for arresting seems, I think, rather to increase than subside. It is supposed there are now more than three hundred thousand people in France confined under the simple imputation of being what is called "gens suspect:" but as this generic term is new to you, I will, by way of explanation, particularize the several species as classed by the Convention, and then described by Chaumette, solicitor for the City of Paris;*-- * Decree concerning suspected people: "Art. I. Immediately after the promulgation of the present decree, all suspected persons that are found on the territory of the republic, and who are still at large, shall be put under arrest. "II. Those are deemed suspicious, who by their connections, their conversation, or their writings, declare themselves partizans of tyranny or foederation, and enemies to liberty--Those who have not demonstrated their means of living or the performance of their civic duties, in the manner prescribed by the law of March last--Those who, having been suspended from public employments by the Convention or its Commissioners, are not reinstated therein--Those of the ci-devant noblesse, who have not invariably manifested their attachment to the revolution, and, in general, all the fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, and agents of emigrants--All who have emigrated between the 1st of July, 1789, and 8th of April, 1792. "III. The execution of the decree is confided to the Committee of Inspection. The individuals arrested shall be taken to the houses of confinement appointed for their reception. They are allowed to take with them such only of their effects as are strictly necessary, the guards set upon them shall be paid at their expence, and they shall be kept in confinement until the peace.--The Committees of Inspection shall, without delay, transmit to the Committee of General Safety an account of the persons arrested, with the motives of their arrest. [If this were observed (which I doubt much) it was but a mockery, few persons ever knew the precise reason of their confinement.]--The civil and criminal tribunals are empowered, when they deem it necessary, to detain and imprison, as suspected persons, those who being accused of crimes have nevertheless had no bill found against them, (lieu a accusation,) or who have even been tried and acquitted." Indications that may serve to distinguish suspicious persons, and those to whom it will be proper to refuse certificates of civism: "I. Those who in popular assemblies check the ardour of the people by artful speeches, by violent exclamations or threats. "II. Those who with more caution speak in a mysterious way of the public misfortunes, who appear to pity the lot of the people, and are ever ready to spread bad news with an affectation of concern. "III. Those who adapt their conduct and language to the circumstances of the moment--who, in order to be taken for republicans, put on a studied austerity of manners, and exclaim with vehemence against the most trifling error in a patriot, but mollify when the crimes of an Aristocrate or a Moderee are the subject of complaint. [These trifling events were, being concerned in the massacres of September, 1792--public peculations--occasional, and even habitual robbery, forgeries, &c. &c. &c.--The second, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh classes, were particularly numerous, insomuch that I doubt whether they would not have included nineteen-twentieths of all the people in France who were honest or at all capable of reflection.] "IV. Those who pity avaricious farmers and shopkeepers, against whom the laws have been necessarily directed. "V. Those who with the words liberty, country, republic, &c. constantly in their mouths, hold intercourse with ci-devant Nobles, Contre-revolutionnaires, Priests, Aristocrates, Feuillans, &c. and take an interest in their concerns. "VI. Those who not having borne an active part in the revolution, endeavour to excuse themselves by urging the regular payment of their taxes, their patriotic gifts, and their service in the Garde National by substitute or otherwise. "VII. Those who received the republican constitution with coolness, or who intimated their pretended apprehensions for its establishment and duration. "VIII. Those who, having done nothing against liberty, have done as little for it. "IX. Those who do not frequent the assembly of their section, and offer, for excuse, that they are no orators, or have no time to spare from their own business. "X. Those who speak with contempt of the constituted authorities, of the rigour of the laws, of the popular societies, and the defenders of liberty. "XI. Those who have signed anti-revolutionary petitions, or any time frequented unpatriotic clubs, or were known as partizans of La Fayette, and accomplices in the affair of the Champ de Mars." --and it must be allowed by all who reside in France at this moment, and are capable of observing the various forms under which hatred for the government shelters itself, that the latter is a chef d'oeuvre in its kind. Now, exclusive of the above legal and moral indications of people to be suspected, there are also outward and visible signs which we are told from the tribune of the Convention, and the Jacobins, are not much less infallible--such as _Gens a bas de soie rayes mouchetes--a chapeau rond-- habit carre--culotte pincee etroite--a bottes cirees--les muscadins-- Freloquets--Robinets, &c._ [People that wear spotted or striped silk stockings--round hats--small coats--tight breeches--blacked boots-- perfumes--coxcombs--sprigs of the law, &c.] The consequence of making the cut of a man's coat, or the shape of his hat, a test of his political opinions, has been the transformation of the whole country into republicans, at least as far as depends on the costume; and where, as is natural, there exists a consciousness of inveterate aristocracy, the external is more elaborately "a la Jacobin." The equipment, indeed, of a French patriot of the latest date is as singular as his manners, and in both he is highly distinguishable from the inhabitants of any other country: from those of civilized nations, because he is gross and ferocious--from those of barbarous ones, because his grossness is often affected, and his ferocity a matter of principle and preference. A man who would not be reckoned suspect now arrays himself in a jacket and trowsers (a Carmagnole) of striped cotton or coarse cloth, a neckcloth of gaudy cotton, wadded like a horse-collar, and projecting considerably beyond his chin, a cap of red and blue cloth, embroidered in front and made much in the form of that worn by the Pierrot of a pantomime, with one, or sometimes a pair, of ear-rings, about the size of a large curtain-ring! Finally, he crops his hair, and carefully encourages the growth of an enormous pair of whiskers, which he does not fail to perfume with volumes of tobacco smoke. He, however, who is ambitious of still greater eminence, disdains these fopperies, and affects an appearance of filth and rags, which he dignifies with the appellation of stern republicanism and virtuous poverty; and thus, by means of a thread-bare coat out at elbows, wooden shoes, and a red woollen cap, the rich hope to secure their wealth, and the covetous and intriguing to acquire lucrative employment.--Rolland, I think, was the founder of these modern Franciscans, and with this miserable affectation he machinated the death of the King, and, during some months, procured for himself the exclusive direction of the government. All these patriots by prescription and system have likewise a peculiar and appropriated dialect--they address every one by the title of Citizen, thee and thou indistinctly, and talk of nothing but the agents of Pitt and Cobourg, the coalesced tyrants, royal ogres, satellites of the despots, automaton slaves, and anthropophagi; and if they revert to their own prosperous state, and this very happy country, it is, _un peuple libre, en peuple heureux, and par excellence la terre de la liberte._ ["A free people--a happy people--and, above all others, the land of liberty."]--It is to be observed, that those with whom these pompous expressions are most familiar, are officers employed in the war-like service of mutilating the wooden saints in churches, and arresting old women whom they encounter without national cockades; or members of the municipalities, now reduced to execute the offices of constables, and whose chief functions are to hunt out suspected people, or make domiciliary visits in quest of concealed eggs and butter. But, above all, this democratic oratory is used by tailors, shoemakers, &c.* of the Committees of Inspection, to whom the Representatives on mission have delegated their unlimited powers, who arrest much on the principle of Jack Cade, and with whom it is a crime to read and write, or to appear decently dressed. * For some months the departments were infested by people of this description--corrupt, ignorant, and insolent. Their motives of arrest were usually the hope of plunder, or the desire of distressing those whom they had been used to look upon as their superiors.--At Arras it sufficed even to have disobliged the wives of these miscreants to become the object of persecution. In some places they arrested with the most barbarous caprice, even without the shadow of a reason. At Hesden, a small town in Artois, Dumont left the Mayor carte blanche, and in one night two hundred people were thrown into prison. Every where these low and obscure dominators reigned without controul, and so much were the people intimidated, that instead of daring to complain, they treated their new tyrants with the most servile adulation.--I have seen a ci-devant Comtesse coquetting with all her might a Jacobin tailor, and the richest merchants of a town soliciting very humbly the good offices of a dealer in old clothes. These ridiculous accoutrements, and this magnificent phraseology, are in themselves very harmless; but the ascendancy which such a class of people are taking has become a subject of just alarm.--The whole administration of the country is now in the hands of uninformed and necessitous profligates, swindlers, men already condemned by the laws, and who, if the revolution had not given them "place and office," would have been at the galleys, or in prison.* * One of the administrators of the department de la Somme (which, however, was more decently composed than many others,) was, before the revolution, convicted of house-breaking, and another of forgery; and it has since been proved on various occasions, particularly on the trial of the ninety-four Nantais, that the revolutionary Committees were, for the most part, composed of the very refuse of society--adventurers, thieves, and even assassins; and it would be difficult to imagine a crime that did not there find reward and protection.--In vain were the privileges of the nobility abolished, and religion proscribed. A new privileged order arose in the Jacobins, and guilt of every kind, without the semblance of penitence, found an asylum in these Committees, and an inviolability more sacred than that afforded by the demolished altars. To these may be added a few men of weak character, and unsteady principles, who remain in office because they fear to resign; with a few, and but very few, ignorant fanatics, who really imagine they are free because they can molest and destroy with impunity all they have hitherto been taught to respect, and drink treble the quantity they did formerly. Oct. 30. For some days the guards have been so untractable, and the croud at the door has been so great, that Fleury was obliged to make various efforts before he could communicate the result of his negotiation. He has at length found means to inform us, that his friend the tailor had exerted all his interest in our favour, but that Dumont and Le Bon (as often happens between neighbouring potentates) are at war, and their enmity being in some degree subject to their mutual fears, neither will venture to liberate any prisoner arrested by the other, lest such a disposition to clemency should be seized on by his rival as a ground of accusation.* * But if they did not free the enemies of each other, they revenged themselves by throwing into prison all their mutual friends--for the temper of the times was such, that, though these Representatives were expressly invested with unlimited powers, they did not venture to set any one at liberty without a multitude of forms and a long attendance: on the contrary, they arrested without any form at all, and allowed their myrmidons to harrass and confine the persons and sequester the property of all whom they judged proper.--It seemed to have been an elementary principle with those employed by the government at this time, that they risked nothing in doing all the mischief they could, and that they erred only in not doing enough. --All, therefore, that can be obtained is, a promise to have us removed to Amiens in a short time; and I understand the detenus are there treated with consideration, and that no tribunal revolutionnaire has yet been established. My mind will be considerably more at ease if this removal can be effected. Perhaps we may not be in more real danger here than at any other place, but it is not realities that constitute the misery of life; and situated as we are, that imagination must be phlegmatic indeed, which does not create and exaggerate enough to prevent the possibility of ease.--We are, as I before observed, placed as it were within the jurisdiction of the guillotine; and I have learned "a secret of our prison-house" to-day which Mad. de ____ had hitherto concealed from me, and which has rendered me still more anxious to quit it. Several of our fellow prisoners, whom I supposed only transferred to other houses, have been taken away to undergo the ceremony of a trial, and from thence to the scaffold. These judicial massacres are now become common, and the repetition of them has destroyed at once the feeling of humanity and the sense of justice. Familiarized to executions, the thoughtless and sanguinary people behold with equal indifference the guilty or innocent victim; and the Guillotine has not only ceased to be an object of horror, but is become almost a source of amusement. * At Arras this horrid instrument of death was what they called en permanence, (stationary,) and so little regard was paid to the morals of the people, (I say the morals, because every thing which tends to destroy their humanity renders them vicious,) that it was often left from one execution to another with the ensanguined traces of the last victim but too evident.--Children were taught to amuse themselves by making models of the Guillotine, with which they destroyed flies, and even animals. On the Pontneuf, at Paris, a sort of puppet-show was exhibited daily, whose boast it was to give a very exact imitation of a guillotinage; and the burthen of a popular song current for some months was _"Dansons la Guillotine."_ --On the 21st of January, 1794, the anniversary of the King's death, the Convention were invited to celebrate it on the "Place de la Revolution," where, during the ceremony, and in presence of the whole legislative body, several people were executed. It is true, Bourdon, one of the Deputies, complained of this indecency; but not so much on account of the circumstance itself, as because it gave some of the people an opportunity of telling him, in a sort of way he might probably deem prophetic, that one of the victims was a Representative of the People. The Convention pretended to order that some enquiry should be made why at such a moment such a place was chosen; but the enquiry came to nothing, and I have no doubt but the executions were purposely intended as analogous to the ceremony.--It was proved that Le Bon, on an occasion when he chose to be a spectator of some executions he had been the cause of, suspended the operation while he read the newspaper aloud, in order, as he said, that the aristocrates might go out of the world with the additional mortification of learning the success of the republican arms in their last moments. The People of Brest were suffered to behold, I had almost said to be amused with (for if those who order such spectacles are detestable, the people that permit them are not free from blame,) the sight of twenty-five heads ranged in a line, and still convulsed with the agonies of death.--The cant word for the Guillotine was "our holy mother;" and verdicts of condemnation were called prizes in the Sainte Lotterie--"holy lottery." The dark and ferocious character of Le Bon developes itself hourly: the whole department trembles before him; and those who have least merited persecution are, with reason, the most apprehensive. The most cautious prudence of conduct, the most undeviating rectitude in those who are by their fortune or rank obnoxious to the tyrant, far from contributing to their security, only mark them out for a more early sacrifice. What is still worse, these horrors are not likely to terminate, because he is allowed to pay out of the treasury of the department the mob that are employed to popularize and applaud them.--I hope, in a few days, we shall receive our permission to depart. My impatience is a malady, and, for nearly the first time in my life, I am sensible of ennui; not the ennui occasioned by want of amusement, but that which is the effect of unquiet expectation, and which makes both the mind and body restless and incapable of attending to any thing. I am incessantly haunted by the idea that the companion of to-day may to-morrow expire under the Guillotine, that the common acts of social intercourse may be explained into intimacy, intimacy into the participation of imputed treasons, and the fate of those with whom we are associated become our own. It appears both useless and cruel to have brought us here, nor do I yet know any reason why we were not all removed to Amiens, except it was to avoid exposing to the eyes of the people in the places through which we must pass too large a number of victims at once.--The cause of our being removed from Peronne is indeed avowed, as it is at present a rule not to confine people at the place of their residence, lest they should have too much facility or communication with, or assistance from, their friends.* * In some departments the nobles and priests arrested were removed from ten to twenty leagues distant from their homes; and if they happened to have relations living at the places where they were confined, these last were forbidden to reside there, or even to travel that way. We should doubtless have remained at Arras until some change in public affairs had procured our release, but for the fortunate discovery of the man I have mentioned; and the trifling favour of removal from one prison to another has been obtained only by certain arrangements which Fleury has made with this subordinate agent of tyranny, and in which justice or consideration for us had no share. Alas! are we not miserable? is not the country miserable, when our only resource is in the vices of those who govern?--It is uncertain when we shall be ordered from hence--it may happen when we least expect it, even in the night, so that I shall not attempt to write again till we have changed our situation. The risk is at present too serious, and you must allow my desire of amusing you to give way to my solicitude for my own preservation. Bicetre at Amiens, Nov. 18, 1793. _Nous voila donc encore, logees a la nation;_ that is to say, the common prison of the department, amidst the thieves, vagabonds, maniacs, &c. confined by the old police, and the gens suspects recently arrested by the new.--I write from the end of a sort of elevated barn, sixty or seventy feet long, where the interstices of the tiles admit the wind from all quarters, and scarcely exclude the rain, and where an old screen and some curtains only separate Mad. de ____, myself, and our servants, from sixty priests, most of them old, sick, and as wretched as men can be, who are pious and resigned. Yet even here I feel comparatively at ease, and an escape from the jurisdiction of Le Bon and his merciless tribunal seems cheaply purchased by the sacrifice of our personal convenience. I do not pretend to philosophize or stoicize, or to any thing else which implies a contempt of life--I have, on the contrary, a most unheroic solicitude about my existence, and consider my removal to a place where I think we are safe, as a very fortunate aera of our captivity. After many delays and disappointments, Fleury at length procured an order, signed by the Representative, for our being transferred to Amiens, under the care of two _Gardes Nationalaux,_ and, of course, at our expence.--Every thing in this country wears the aspect of despotism. At twelve o'clock at night we were awakened by the officer on guard, and informed we were to depart on the morrow; and, notwithstanding the difficulty of procuring horses and carriages, it was specified, that if we did not go on the day appointed, we were not to go at all. It was, or course, late before we could surmount the various obstacles to our journey, and procure two crazy cabriolets, and a cart for the guards, ourselves, and baggage. The days being short, we were obliged to sleep at Dourlens; and, on our arrival at the castle, which is now, as it always has been, a state-prison, we were told it was so full, that it was absolutely impossible to lodge us, and that we had better apply to the Governor, for permission to sleep at an inn. We then drove to the Governor's* house, who received us very civilly, and with very little persuasion agreed to our request. At the best of the miserable inns in the town we were informed they had no room, and that they could not accommodate us in any way whatever, except a sick officer then in the house would permit us to occupy one of two beds in his apartment. * The Commandant had been originally a private soldier in the regiment of Dillon.--I know not how he had obtained his advancement, but, however obtained, it proved fatal to him: he was, a very short time after I saw him, guillotined at Arras, for having borrowed money of a prisoner. His real crime was, probably, treating the prisoners in general with too much consideration and indulgence; and at this period every suspicion of the kind was fatal. In England it would not be very decent to make such a request, or to accept such an accommodation. In France, neither the one nor the other is unusual, and we had suffered lately so many embarrassments of the kind, that we were, if not reconciled, at least inured to them. Before, however, we could determine, the gentleman had been informed of our situation, and came to offer his services. You may judge of our surprize when we found in the stranger, who had his head bound up and his arm in a sling, General ____, a relation of Mad. de ____. We had now, therefore, less scruple in sharing his room, though we agreed, notwithstanding, only to repose a few hours in our clothes. After taking some tea, the remainder of the evening was dedicated to reciprocal conversation of all kinds; and our guards having acquaintance in the town, and knowing it was impossible for us to escape, even were we so inclined, very civilly left us to ourselves. We found the General had been wounded at Maubeuge, and was now absent on conge for the recovery of his health. He talked of the present state of public affairs like a military man who is attached to his profession, and who thinks it his duty to fight at all events, whatever the rights or merits of those that employ him. He confessed, indeed, that they were repulsing their external enemies, only to confirm the power of those who were infinitely more to be dreaded at home, and that the condition of a General was more to be commiserated at this time than any other: if he miscarry, disgrace and the Guillotine await him--if he be successful, he gains little honour, becomes an object of jealousy, and assists in rivetting the chains of his country. He said, the armies were for the most part licentious and insubordinate, but that the political discipline was terrible--the soldiers are allowed to drink, pillage, and insult their officers with impunity, but all combinations are rigorously suppressed, the slightest murmur against the Representative on mission is treason, and to disapprove of a decree of the convention, death--that every man of any note in the army is beset with spies, and if they leave the camp on any occasion, it is more necessary to be on their guard against these wretches than against an ambuscade of the enemy; and he related a circumstance which happened to himself, as an example of what he mentioned, and which will give you a tolerable idea of the present system of government.--After the relief of Dunkirk, being quartered in the neighbourhood of St. Omer, he occasionally went to the town on his private concerns. One day, while he was waiting at the inn where he intended to dine, two young men accosted him, and after engaging him in a general conversation for some time, began to talk with great freedom, though with an affected caution of public men and measures, of the banditti who governed, the tyranny that was exercised, and the supineness of the people: in short, of all those too poignant truths which constitute the leze nation of the day. Mons. de ____ was not at first very attentive, but finding their discourse become still more liberal, it excited his suspicions, and casting his eyes on a glass opposite to where they were conversing, he perceived a sort of intelligence between them, which immediately suggested to him the profession of his companions; and calling to a couple of dragoons who had attended him, ordered them to arrest the two gentlemen as artistocrates, and convey them without ceremony to prison. They submitted, seemingly more surprized than alarmed, and in two hours the General received a note from a higher power, desiring him to set them at liberty, as they were agents of the republic. Duquesnoy, one of the Representatives now with the Northern army, is ignorant and brutal in the extreme. He has made his brother (who, as well as himself, used to retail hops in the streets of St. Pol,) a General; and in order to deliver him from rivals and critics, he breaks, suspends, arrests, and sends to the Guillotine every officer of any merit that comes in his way. After the battle of Maubeuge, he arrested a General Bardell, [The Generals Bardell and D'Avesnes, and several others, were afterwards guillotined at Paris.] for accommodating a wounded prisoner of distinction (I think a relation of the Prince of Cobourg) with a bed, and tore with his own hands the epaulette from the shoulders of those Generals whose divisions had not sustained the combat so well as the others. His temper, naturally savage and choleric, is irritated to fury by the habit of drinking large quantities of strong liquors; and Mad. de ___'s relation assured us, that he had himself seen him take the Mayor of Avesnes (a venerable old man, who was presenting some petition to him that regarded the town,) by the hair and throw him on the ground, with the gestures of an enraged cannibal. He also confined one of his own fellow deputies in the tower of Guise, upon a very frivolous pretext, and merely on his own authority. In fact, I scarcely remember half the horrors told us of this man; and I shall only remind you, that he has an unlimited controul over the civil constitution of the Northern army, and over the whole department of the North. You, I suppose, will be better informed of military events than we are, and I mention our friend's conjecture, that (besides an enormous number of killed) the wounded at Maubeuge amounted to twelve or fourteen thousand, only to remark the deception which is still practised on the people; for no published account ever allowed the number to be more than a few hundreds.--Besides these professional details, the General gave us some very unpleasant family ones. On returning to his father's chateau, where he hoped to be taken care of while his wounds were curing, he found every room in it under seals, three guards in possession, his two sisters arrested at St. Omer, where they happened to be on a visit, and his father and mother confined in separate houses of detention at Arras. After visiting them, and making some ineffectual applications for their relief, he came to the neighbourhood of Dourlens, expecting to find an asylum with an uncle, who had hitherto escaped the general persecution of the gentry. Here again his disappointment and chagrin were renewed: his uncle had been carried off to Amiens the morning of his arrival, and the house rendered inaccessible, by the usual affixture of seals, and an attendant pair of myrmidons to guard them from infraction. Thus excluded from all his family habitations, he had taken up his residence for a day or two at the inn where we met him, his intention being to return to Arras. In the morning we made our adieus and pursued our journey; but, tenacious of this comparative liberty and the enjoyment of pure air, we prevailed on our conductors to let us dine on the road, so that we lingered with the unwillingness of truant children, and did not reach Amiens until dark. When we arrived at the Hotel de Ville, one of the guards enquired how we were to be disposed of. Unfortunately for us, Dumont happened to be there himself, and on hearing we were sent from Arras by order of Le Bon, declared most furiously (for our Representative is subject to choler since his accession to greatness) that he would have no prisoners received from Arras, and that we should sleep at the Conciergerie, and be conveyed back again on the morrow. Terrified at this menace, we persuaded the guard to represent to Dumont that we had been sent to Amiens at our own instance, and that we had been originally arrested by himself, and were therefore desirous of returning to the department where he was on mission, and where we had more reason to expect justice than at Arras. Mollified, perhaps, by this implied preference of his authority, he consented that we should remain for the present at Amiens, and ordered us to be taken to the Bicetre. Whoever has been used to connect with the word Bicetre the idea of the prison so named at Paris, must recoil with horror upon hearing they are destined to such a abode. Mad. de ___, yet weak from the remains of her illness, laid hold of me in a transport of grief; but, far from being able to calm or console her, my thoughts were so bewildered that I did not, till we alighted at the gate, begin to be really sensible of our situation. The night was dark and dreary, and our first entrance was into a kitchen, such as my imagination had pictured the subterraneous one of the robbers in Gil Blas. Here we underwent the ceremony of having our pocket-books searched for papers and letters, and our trunks rummaged for knives and fire-arms. This done, we were shown to the lodging I have described, and the poor priests, already insufferably crouded, were obliged almost to join their beds in order to make room for us.--I will not pain you by a recital of all the embarrassments and distresses we had to surmount before we could even rest ourselves. We were in want of every thing, and the rules of the prison such, that it was nearly impossible, for some time, to procure any thing: but the human mind is more flexible than we are often disposed to imagine it; and in two days we were able to see our situation in this best point of view, (that is, as an escape from Arras,) and the affair of submitting our bodies to our minds must be atchieved by time.--We have now been here a week. We have sounded the very depth of humiliation, taken our daily allowance of bread with the rest of the prisoners, and contracted a most friendly intimacy with the gaoler. I have discovered since our arrival, that the order for transferring us hither described me as a native of the Low Countries. I know not how this happened, but my friend has insisted on my not rectifying the mistake, for as the French talk continually of re-conquering Brabant, she persuades herself such an event would procure me my liberty. I neither desire the one nor expect the other; but, to indulge her, I speak no English, and avoid two or three of my countrymen who I am told are here. There have been also some English families who were lately removed, but the French pronounce our names so strangely, that I have not been able to learn who they were. November 19, 1793. The English in general, especially of late years, have been taught to entertain very formidable notions of the Bastille and other state prisons of the ancient government, and they were, no doubt, horrid enough; yet I have not hitherto been able to discover that those of the new republic are any way preferable. The only difference is, that the great number of prisoners which, for want of room, are obliged to be heaped together, makes it impossible to exclude them as formerly from communication, and, instead of being maintained at the public expence, they now, with great difficulty, are able to procure wherewithal to eat at their own. Our present habitation is an immense building, about a quarter of a mile from the town, intended originally for the common gaol of the province. The situation is damp and unwholesome, and the water so bad, that I should suppose a long continuance here of such a number of prisoners must be productive of endemical disorders. Every avenue to the house is guarded, and no one is permitted to stop and look up at the windows, under pain of becoming a resident. We are strictly prohibited from all external intercourse, except by writing; and every scrap of paper, though but an order for a dinner, passes the inquisition of three different people before it reaches its destination, and, of course, many letters and notes are mislaid, and never sent at all.--There is no court or garden in which the prisoners are allowed to walk, and the only exercise they can take is in damp passages, or a small yard, (perhaps thirty feet square,) which often smells so detestably, that the atmosphere of the house itself is less mephitic. Our fellow-captives are a motley collection of the victims of nature, of justice, and of tyranny--of lunatics who are insensible of their situation, of thieves who deserve it, and of political criminals whose guilt is the accident of birth, the imputation of wealth, or the profession of a clergyman. Among the latter is the Bishop of Amiens, whom I recollect to have mentioned in a former letter. You will wonder why a constitutional Bishop, once popular with the democratic party, should be thus treated. The real motive was, probably, to degrade in his person a minister of religion--the ostensible one, a dispute with Dumont at the Jacobin club. As the times grew alarming, the Bishop, perhaps, thought it politic to appear at the club, and the Representative meeting him there one evening, began to interrogate him very rudely with regard to his opinion of the marriage of priests. M. Dubois replied, that when it was officially incumbent on him to explain himself, he would do so, but that he did not think the club a place for such discussions, or something to this purpose. _"Tu prevariques donc!--Je t'arrete sur le champ:"_ ["What, you prevaricate!--I arrest you instantly."] the Bishop was accordingly arrested at the instant, and conducted to the Bicetre, without even being suffered to go home and furnish himself with necessaries; and the seals being immediately put on his effects, he has never been able to obtain a change of linen and clothes, or any thing else--this too at a time when the pensions of the clergy are ill paid, and every article of clothing so dear as to be almost unpurchaseable by moderate fortunes, and when those who might otherwise be disposed to aid or accommodate their friends, abandon them through fear of being implicated in their misfortunes. But the Bishop, yet in the vigour of life, is better capable of enduring these hardships than most of the poor priests with whom he is associated: the greater number of them are very old men, with venerable grey locks-- and their tattered clerical habits, scanty meals, and wretched beds, give me many an heart-ache. God send the constant sight of so much misery may not render me callous!--It is certain, there are people here, who, whatever their feelings might have been on this occasion at first, seem now little affected by it. Those who are too much familiarized with scenes of wretchedness, as well as those to whom they are unknown, are not often very susceptible; and I am sometimes disposed to cavil with our natures, that the sufferings which ought to excite our benevolence, and the prosperity that enables us to relieve them, should ever have a contrary effect. Yet this is so true, that I have scarcely ever observed even the poor considerate towards each other--and the rich, if they are frequently charitable, are not always compassionate.* * Our situation at the Bicetre, though terrible for people unused to hardships or confinement, and in fact, wretched as personal inconvenience could make it, was yet Elysium, compared to the prisons of other departments. At St. Omer, the prisoners were frequently disturbed at midnight by the entrance of men into their apartments, who, with the detestable ensign of their order, (red caps,) and pipes in their mouths, came by way of frolic to search their pockets, trunks, &c.--At Montreuil, the Maisons d'Arret were under the direction of a Commissary, whose behaviour to the female prisoners was too atrocious for recital--two young women, in particular, who refused to purchase milder treatment, were locked up in a room for seventeen days.--Soon after I left Arras, every prison became a den of horror. The miserable inhabitants were subject to the agents of Le Bon, whose avarice, cruelty, and licentiousness, were beyond any thing a humane mind can imagine. Sometimes the houses were suddenly surrounded by an armed force, the prisoners turned out in the depth of winter for several hours into an open court, during the operation of robbing them of their pocket-books, buckles, ear-rings, or whatever article of value they had about them. At other times they were visited by the same military array, and deprived of their linen and clothes. Their wine and provisions were likewise taken from them in the same manner--wives were separated from their husbands, parents from their children, old men treated with the most savage barbarity, and young women with an indecency still more abominable. All communication, either by writing or otherwise, was often prohibited for many days together, and an order was once given to prevent even the entry of provisions, which was not revoked till the prisoners became absolutely distressed. At the Hotel Dieu they were forbidden to draw more than a single jug of water in twenty-four hours. At the Providence, the well was left three days without a cord, and when the unfortunate females confined there procured people to beg water of the neighbours, they were refused, "because it was for prisoners, and if Le Bon heard of it he might be displeased!" Windows were blocked up, not to prevent escape, but to exclude air; and when the general scarcity rendered it impossible for the prisoners to procure sufficient food for their support, their small portions were diminished at the gate, under pretext of searching for letters, &c. --People, respectable both for their rank and character, were employed to clean the prisons and privies, while their low and insolent tyrants looked on and insulted them. On an occasion when one of the Maisons d'Arrets was on fire, guards were planted round, with orders to fire upon those that should attempt to escape.--My memory has but too faithfully recorded these and still greater horrors; but curiosity would be gratified but too dearly by the relation. I added the above note some months after writing the letter to which it is annexed. Nov. 20. Besides the gentry and clergy of this department, we have likewise for companions a number of inhabitants of Lisle, arrested under circumstances singularly atrocious, even where atrocity is the characteristic of almost every proceeding.--In the month of August a decree was passed to oblige all the nobility, clergy, and their servants, as well as all those persons who had been in the service of emigrants, to depart from Lisle in eight-and-forty hours, and prohibiting their residence within twenty leagues from the frontiers. Thus banished from their own habitations, they took refuge in different towns, at the prescribed distance; but, almost as soon as they were arrived, and had been at the expence of settling themselves, they were arrested as strangers,* and conducted to prison. * I have before, I believe, noticed that the term estranger at this time did not exclusively apply to foreigners, but to such as had come from one town to another, who were at inns or on a visit to their friends. It will not be improper to notice here the conduct of the government towards the towns that have been besieged. Thionville,* to whose gallant defence in 1792 France owed the retreat of the Prussians and the safety of Paris, was afterwards continually reproached with aristocracy; and when the inhabitants sent a deputation to solicit an indemnity for the damage the town had sustained during the bombardment a member of the Convention threatened them from the tribune with "indemnities a coup de baton!" that is, in our vernacular tongue, with a good thrashing. * Wimpsen, who commanded there, and whose conduct at the time was enthusiastically admired, was driven, most probably by the ingratitude and ill treatment of the Convention, to head a party of the Foederalists.--These legislators perpetually boast of imitating and surpassing the Romans, and it is certain, that their ingratitude has made more than one Coriolanus. The difference is, that they are not jealous for the liberty of the country, but for their own personal safety. The inhabitants of Lisle, who had been equally serviceable in stopping the progress of the Austrians, for a long time petitioned without effect to obtain the sums already voted for their relief. The noblesse, and others from thence who have been arrested, as soon as it was known that they were Lillois, were treated with peculiar rigour;* and an _armee revolutionnaire,_** with the Guillotine for a standard, has lately harrassed the town and environs of Lisle, as though it were a conquered country. * The Commandant of Lisle, on his arrival at the Bicetre, was stripped of a considerable sum of money, and a quantity of plate he had unluckily brought with him by way of security. Out of this he is to be supplied with fifty livres at a time in paper, which, according to the exchange and the price of every thing, is, I suppose, about half a guinea. ** The armee revolutionnaire was first raised by order of the Jacobins, for the purpose of searching the countries for provisions, and conducting them to Paris. Under this pretext, a levy was made of all the most desperate ruffians that could be collected together. They were divided into companies, each with its attendant Guillotine, and then distributed in the different departments: they had extraordinary pay, and seem to have been subject to no discipline. Many of them were distinguished by the representation of a Guillotine in miniature, and a head just severed, on their cartouch-boxes. It would be impossible to describe half the enormities committed by these banditti: wherever they went they were regarded as a scourge, and every heart shrunk at their approach. Lecointre, of Versailles, a member of the Convention, complained that a band of these wretches entered the house of a farmer, one of his tenants, by night, and, after binding the family hand and foot, and helping themselves to whatever they could find, they placed the farmer with his bare feet on the chaffing-dish of hot ashes, by way of forcing him to discover where he had secreted his plate and money, which having secured, they set all the vessels of liquor running, and then retired. You are not to suppose this a robbery, and the actors common thieves; all was in the usual form--"au nom de la loi," and for the service of the republic; and I do not mention this instance as remarkable, otherwise than as having been noticed in the Convention. A thousand events of this kind, even still more atrocious, have happened; but the sufferers who had not the means of defence as well as of complaint, were obliged, through policy, to be silent. --The garrison and national guard, indignant at the horrors they committed, obliged them to decamp. Even the people of Dunkirk, whose resistance to the English, while the French army was collecting together for their relief, was perhaps of more consequence than ten victories, have been since intimidated with Commissioners, and Tribunals, and Guillotines, as much as if they had been convicted of selling the town. In short, under this philanthropic republic, persecution seems to be very exactly proportioned to the services rendered. A jealous and suspicious government does not forget, that the same energy of character which has enabled a people to defend themselves against an external enemy, may also make them less submissive to domestic oppression; and, far from repaying them with the gratitude to which they have a claim, it treats them, on all occasions, as opponents, whom it both fears and hates. Nov. 22. We have been walking in the yard to-day with General Laveneur, who, for an act which in any other country would have gained him credit, is in this suspended from his command.--When Custine, a few weeks before his death, left the army to visit some of the neighbouring towns, the command devolved on Laveneur, who received, along with other official papers, a list of countersigns, which, having probably been made some time, and not altered conformably to the changes of the day, contained, among others, the words Condorcet--Constitution; and these were in their turn given out. On Custine's trial, this was made a part of his accusation. Laveneur, recollecting that the circumstance had happened in the absence of Custine, thought it incumbent on him to take the blame, if there were any, on himself, and wrote to Paris to explain the matter as it really stood; but his candour, without availing Custine, drew persecution on himself, and the only notice taken of his letter was an order to arrest him. After being dragged from one town to another, like a criminal, and often lodged in dungeons and common prisons, he was at length deposited here. I know not if the General's principles are republican, but he has a very democratic pair of whiskers, which he occasionally strokes, and seems to cherish with much affection. He is, however, a gentleman-like man, and expresses such anxiety for the fate of his wife and children, who are now at Paris, that one cannot but be interested in his favour.--As the agents of the republic never err on the side of omission, they arrested Mons. Laveneur's aid-de-camp with him; and another officer of his acquaintance, who was suspended, and living at Amiens, has shared the same fate, only for endeavouring to procure him a trifling accommodation. This gentleman called on Dumont, to beg that General Laveneur's servant might be permitted to go in and out of the prison on his master's errands. After breakfasting together, and conversing on very civil terms, Dumont told him, that as he concerned himself so much in behalf of his friend, he would send him to keep the latter company, and at the conclusion of his visit he was sent prisoner to the Bicetre. Perhaps the greater part of between three and four hundred thousand people, now imprisoned on suspicion, have been arrested for reasons as little substantial. --I begin to fear my health will not resist the hardship of a long continuance here. We have no fire-place, and are sometimes starved with partial winds from the doors and roof; at others faint and heartsick with the unhealthy air produced by so many living bodies. The water we drink is not preferable to the air we breathe; the bread (which is now every where scarce and bad) contains such a mixture of barley, rye, damaged wheat, and trash of all kinds, that, far from being nourished by it, I lose both my strength and appetite daily.--Yet these are not the worst of our sufferings. Shut out from all society, victims of a despotic and unprincipled government capable of every thing, and ignorant of the fate which may await us, we are occasionally oppressed by a thousand melancholy apprehensions. I might, indeed, have boasted of my fortitude, and have made myself an heroine on paper at as small an expence of words as it has cost me to record my cowardice: but I am of an unlucky conformation, and think either too much or too little (I know not which) for a female philosopher; besides, philosophy is getting into such ill repute, that not possessing the reality, the name of it is not worth assuming. A poor old priest told me just now, (while Angelique was mending his black coat with white thread,) that they had left at the place where they were last confined a large quantity of linen, and other necessaries; but, by the express orders of Dumont, they were not allowed to bring a single article away with them. The keeper, too, it seems, was threatened with dismission, for supplying one of them with a shirt.--In England, where, I believe, you ally political expediency as much as you can with justice and humanity, these cruelties, at once little and refined, will appear incredible; and the French themselves, who are at least ashamed of, if they are not pained by, them, are obliged to seek refuge in the fancied palliative of a "state of revolution."--Yet, admitting the necessity of confining the persons of these old men, there can be none for heaping them together in filth and misery, and adding to the sufferings of years and infirmity by those of cold and want. If, indeed, a state of revolution require such deeds, and imply an apology for them, I cannot but wish the French had remained as they were, for I know of no political changes that can compensate for turning a civilized nation into a people of savages. It is not surely the eating acorns or ragouts, a well-powdered head, or one decorated with red feathers, that constitutes the difference between barbarism and civilization; and, I fear, if the French proceed as they have begun, the advantage of morals will be considerably on the side of the unrefined savages. The conversation of the prison has been much engaged by the fate of an English gentleman, who lately destroyed himself in a Maison d'Arret at Amiens. His confinement had at first deeply affected his spirits, and his melancholy increasing at the prospect of a long detention, terminated in deranging his mind, and occasioned this last act of despair.--I never hear of suicide without a compassion mingled with terror, for, perhaps, simple pity is too light an emotion to be excited by an event which reminds us, that we are susceptible of a degree of misery too great to be borne--too strong for the efforts of instinct, reflection, and religion. --I could moralize on the necessity of habitual patience, and the benefit of preparing the mind for great evils by a philosophic endurance of little ones; but I am at the Bicetre--the winds whistle round me--I am beset by petty distresses, and we do not expatiate to advantage on endurance while we have any thing to endure.--Seneca's contempt for the things of this world was doubtless suggested in the palace of Nero. He would not have treated the subject so well in disgrace and poverty. Do not suppose I am affecting to be pleasant, for I write in the sober sadness of conviction, that human fortitude is often no better than a pompous theory, founded on self-love and self-deception. I was surprized at meeting among our fellow-prisoners a number of Dutch officers. I find they had been some time in the town on their parole, and were sent here by Dumont, for refusing to permit their men to work on the fortifications.--The French government and its agents despise the laws of war hitherto observed; they consider them as a sort of aristocratie militaire, and they pretend, on the same principle, to be enfranchised from the law of nations.--An orator of the convention lately boasted, that he felt himself infinitely superior to the prejudices of Grotius, Puffendorff, and Vatel, which he calls "l'aristocratie diplomatique."--Such sublime spirits think, because they differ from the rest of mankind, that they surpass them. Like Icarus, they attempt to fly, and are perpetually struggling in the mire.--Plain common sense has long pointed out a rule of action, from which all deviation is fatal, both to nations and individuals. England, as well as France, has furnished its examples; and the annals of genius in all countries are replete with the miseries of eccentricity.--Whoever has followed the course of the French revolution, will, I believe, be convinced, that the greatest evils attending on it have been occasioned by an affected contempt for received maxims. A common banditti, acting only from the desire of plunder, or men, erring only through ignorance, could not have subjugated an whole people, had they not been assisted by narrow-minded philosophers, who were eager to sacrifice their country to the vanity of making experiments, and were little solicitous whether their systems were good or bad, provided they were celebrated as the authors of them. Yet, where are they now? Wandering, proscribed, and trembling at the fate of their followers and accomplices.--The Brissotins, sacrificed by a party even worse than themselves, have died without exciting either pity or admiration. Their fall was considered as the natural consequence of their exaltation, and the courage with which they met death obtained no tribute but a cold and simple comment, undistinguished from the news of the day, and ending with it. December. Last night, after we had been asleep about an hour, (for habit, that "lulls the wet sea-boy on the high and giddy mast," has reconciled us to sleep even here,) we were alarmed by the trampling of feet, and sudden unlocking of our door. Our apprehensions gave us no time for conjecture --in a moment an ill-looking fellow entered the room with a lantern, two soldiers holding drawn swords, and a large dog! The whole company walked as it were processionally to the end of the apartment, and, after observing in silence the beds on each side, left us. It would not be easy to describe what we suffered at this moment: for my own part, I thought only of the massacres of September, and the frequent proposals at the Jacobins and the Convention for dispatching the _"gens suspect,"_ and really concluded I was going to terminate my existence _"revolutionnairement."_ I do not now know the purport of these visits, but I find they are not unusual, and most probably intended to alarm the prisoners. After many enquiries and messages, I have had the mortification of hearing that Mr. and Mrs. D____ were taken to Arras, and were there even before I left it. The letters sent to and from the different prisons are read by so many people, and pass through so many hands, that it is not surprizing we have not heard from each other. As far as I can learn, they had obtained leave, after their first arrest, to remove to a house in the vicinity of Dourlens for a few days, on account of Mrs. D____'s health, which had suffered by passing the summer in the town, and that at the taking of Toulon they were again arrested while on a visit, and conveyed to a _Maison d'Arret_ at Arras. I am the more anxious for them, as it seems they were unprepared for such an event; and as the seals were put upon their effects, I fear they must be in want of every thing. I might, perhaps, have succeeded in getting them removed here, but Fleury's Arras friend, it seems, did not think, when the Convention had abolished every other part of Christianity, that they intended still to exact a partial observance of the eighth article of the decalogue; and having, in the sense of Antient Pistol, "conveyed" a little too notoriously, Le Bon has, by way of securing him from notice or pursuit, sent him to the frontiers in the capacity of Commissary. The prison, considering how many French inhabitants it contains, is tolerably quiet--to say the truth, we are not very sociable, and still less gay. Common interest establishes a sort of intimacy between those of the same apartment; but the rest of the house pass each other, without farther intercourse than silent though significant civility. Sometimes you see a pair of unfortunate aristocrates talking politics at the end of a passage, or on a landing-place; and here and there a bevy of females, en deshabille, recounting altogether the subject of their arrest. One's ear occasionally catches a few half-suppressed notes of a proscribed aire, but the unhallowed sounds of the Carmagnole and Marseillois are never heard, and would be thought more dissonant here than the war-whoop. In fact, the only appearance of gaiety is among the ideots and lunatics. --_"Je m'ennuye furieusement,"_ is the general exclamation.--An Englishman confined at the Bicetre would express himself more forcibly, but, it is certain, the want of knowing how to employ themselves does not form a small part of the distresses of our fellow-prisoners; and when they tell us they are _"ennuyes,"_ they say, perhaps, nearly as much as they feel-- for, as far as I can observe, the loss of liberty has not the same effect on a Frenchman as an Englishman. Whether this arises from political causes, or the natural indifference of the French character, I am not qualified to determine; probably from both: yet when I observe this facility of mind general, and by no means peculiar to the higher classes, I cannot myself but be of opinion, that it is more an effect of their original disposition than of their form of government; for though in England we were accustomed from our childhood to consider every man in France as liable to wake and find himself in the Bastille, or at Mont St. Michel, this formidable despotism existed more in theory than in practice; and if courtiers and men of letters were intimidated by it, the mass of the people troubled themselves very little about Lettres de Cachet. The revenge or suspicion of Ministers might sometimes pursue those who aimed at their power, or assailed their reputation; but the lesser gentry, the merchants, or the shopkeepers, were very seldom victims of arbitrary imprisonment--and I believe, amongst the evils which it was the object of the revolution to redress, this (except on the principle) was far from being of the first magnitude. I am not likely, under my present circumstances, to be an advocate for the despotism of any form of government; and I only give it as a matter of opinion, that the civil liberty of the French was not so often and generally violated,* as to influence their character in such a degree as to render them insensible of its loss. At any rate, we must rank it among the _bizarreries_ [Unaccountable whimsical events.] of this world, that the French should have been prepared, by the theory of oppression under their old system, for enduring the practice of it under the new one; and that what during the monarchy was only possible to a few, is, under the republic, almost certain to all. * I remember in 1789, after the destruction of the Bastille, our compassionate countrymen were taught to believe that this tremendous prison was peopled with victims, and that even the dungeons were inhabited; yet the truth is, though it would not have told so pathetically, or have produced so much theatrical effect, there were only seven persons confined in the whole building, and certainly not one in the dungeons. Amiens, Providence, Dec. 10, 1793. We have again, as you will perceive, changed our abode, and that too without expecting, and almost without desiring it. In my moments of sullenness and despondency, I was not very solicitous about the modifications of our confinement, and little disposed to be better satisfied with one prison than another: but, heroics apart, external comforts are of some importance, and we have, in many respects, gained by our removal. Our present habitation is a spacious building, lately a convent, and though now crouded with more prisoners by two or three hundred than it will hold conveniently, yet we are better lodged than at the Bicetre, and we have also a large garden, good water, and, what above all is desirable, the liberty of delivering our letters or messages ourselves (in presence of the guard) to any one who will venture to approach us. Mad. de ____ and myself have a small cell, where we have just room to place our beds, but we have no fire-place, and the maids are obliged to sleep in an adjoining passage. A few evenings ago, while we were at the Bicetre, we were suddenly informed by the keeper that Dumont had sent some soldiers with an order to convey us that night to the Providence. We were at first rather surprized than pleased, and reluctantly gathered our baggage together with as much expedition as we could, while the men who were to escort us were exclaiming "a la Francaise" at the trifling delay this occasioned. When we had passed the gate, we found Fleury, with some porters, ready to receive our beds, and overjoyed at having procured us a more decent prison, for, it seems, he could by no means reconcile himself to the name of Bicetre. We had about half a mile to walk, and on the road he contrived to acquaint us with the means by which he had solicited this favour of Dumont. After advising with all Mad. de ____'s friends who were yet at liberty, and finding no one willing to make an effort in her behalf, for fear of involving themselves, he discovered an old acquaintance in the "femme de chambre" of one of Fleury's mistresses.-- This, for one of Fleury's sagacity, was a spring to have set the whole Convention in a ferment; and in a few days he profited so well by this female patronage, as to obtain an order for transferring us hither. On our arrival, we were informed, as usual, that the house was already full, and that there was no possibility of admitting us. We however, set up all night in the keeper's room with some other people newly arrived like ourselves, and in the morning, after a little disputing and a pretty general derangement of the more ancient inhabitants, we were "nichees," as I have described to you. We have not yet quitted our room much, but I observe that every one appears more chearful, and more studied in their toilette, than at the Bicetre, and I am willing to infer from thence that confinement here is less insupportable.--I have been employed two days in enlarging the notes I had made in our last prison, and in making them more legible, for I ventured no farther than just to scribble with a pencil in a kind of short-hand of my own invention, and not even that without a variety of precautions. I shall be here less liable either to surprize or observation, and as soon as I have secured what I have already noted, (which I intend to do to-night,) I shall continue my remarks in the usual form. You will find even more than my customary incorrectness and want of method since we left Peronne; but I shall not allow your competency as a critic, until you have been a prisoner in the hands of French republicans. It will not be improper to notice to you a very ingenious decree of Gaston, (a member of the Convention,) who lately proposed to embark all the English now in France at Brest, and then to sink the ships.--Perhaps the Committee of Public Welfare are now in a sort of benevolent indecision, whether this, or Collot d'Herbois' gunpowder scheme, shall have the preference. Legendre's iron cage and simple hanging will, doubtless, be rejected, as too slow and formal. The mode of the day is "les grandes mesures." If I be not seriously alarmed at these propositions, it is not that life is indifferent to me, or that I think the government too humane to adopt them. My tranquillity arises from reflecting that such measures would be of no political use, and that we shall most likely be soon forgotten in the multitude of more important concerns. Those, however, whom I endeavour to console by this reasoning, tell me it is nothing less than infallible, that the inutility of a crime is here no security against its perpetration, and that any project which tends to evil will sooner be remembered than one of humanity or justice. [End of Vol. I. The Printed Books] [Beginning of Volume II. Of The Printed Books] Providence, Dec. 20, 1793. "All places that are visited by the eye of Heaven, are to the wise man happy havens." If Shakspeare's philosophy be orthodox, the French have, it must be confessed, many claims to the reputation of a wise people; and though you know I always disputed their pretensions to general gaiety, yet I acknowledge that misfortune does not deprive them of the share they possess, and, if one may judge by appearances, they have at least the habit, more than any other nation, of finding content under situations with which it should seem incompatible. We are here between six and seven hundred, of all ages and of all ranks, taken from our homes, and from all that usually makes the comfort of life, and crowded together under many of the inflictions that constitute its misery; yet, in the midst of all this, we fiddle, dress, rhyme, and visit as ceremoniously as though we had nothing to disturb us. Our beaux, after being correctly frizz'd and powdered behind some door, compliment the belle just escaped from a toilet, performed amidst the apparatus of the kitchen; three or four beds are piled one upon another to make room for as many card-tables; and the wits of the prison, who are all the morning employed in writing doleful placets to obtain their liberty, in the evening celebrate the loss of it in bout-rimees and acrostics. I saw an ass at the _Corps de Garde_ this morning laden with violins and music, and a female prisoner seldom arrives without her complement of bandboxes.--Embarrassed, stifled as we are by our numbers, it does not prevent a daily importation of lap-dogs, who form as consequential a part of the community in a prison, as in the most superb hotel. The faithful valet, who has followed the fortunes of his master, does not so much share his distresses as contribute to his pleasure by adorning his person, or, rather, his head, for, excepting the article of hair-dressing, the beaux here are not elaborate. In short, there is an indifference, a frivolity, in the French character, which, in circumstances like the present, appears unaccountable. But man is not always consistent with himself, and there are occasions in which the French are nothing less than philosophers. Under all these externals of levity, they are a very prudent people, and though they seem to bear with infinite fortitude many of the evils of life, there are some in which their sensibility is not to be questioned. At the death of a relation, or the loss of liberty, I have observed that a few hours suffice, _pour prendre son parti;_ [To make up his mind.] but on any occasion where his fortune has suffered, the liveliest Frenchman is _au desespoir_ for whole days. Whenever any thing is to be lost or gained, all his characteristic indifference vanishes, and his attention becomes mentally concentrated, without dissipating the habitual smile of his countenance. He may sometimes be deceived through deficiency of judgment, but I believe not often by unguardedness; and, in a matter of interest, a _petit maitre_ of five-and-twenty might _tout en badinage_ [All in the way of pleasantry.] maintain his ground against a whole synagogue.--This disposition is not remarkable only in affairs that may be supposed to require it, but extends to the minutest objects; and the same oeconomy which watches over the mass of a Frenchman's estate, guards with equal solicitude the menu property of a log of wood, or a hen's nest. There is at this moment a general scarcity of provisions, and we who are confined are, of course, particularly inconvenienced by it; we do not even get bread that is eatable, and it is curious to observe with what circumspection every one talks of his resources. The possessor of a few eggs takes care not to expose them to the eye of his neighbour; and a slice of white bread is a donation of so much consequence, that those who procure any for themselves do not often put their friends to the pain either of accepting or refusing it. Mad. de ____ has been unwell for some days, and I could not help giving a hint to a relation of her's whom we found here, and who has frequent supplies of bread from the country, that the bread we eat was peculiarly inimical to her; but I gained only a look of repulsive apprehension, and a cold remark that it was very difficult to get good bread--_"et que c'etoit bien malheureux."_ [And that it certainly was very unfortunate.] I own this kind of selfishness is increased by a situation where our wants are numerous, and our enjoyments few; and the great distinctions of meum and tuum, which at all times have occasioned so much bad fellowship in the world, are here perhaps more rigidly observed than any where else; yet, in my opinion, a close-hearted consideration has always formed an essential and a predominant quality in the French character. People here do not ruin themselves, as with us, by hospitality; and examples of that thoughtless profusion which we censure and regret, without being able entirely to condemn, are very rare indeed. In France it is not uncommon to see a man apparently dissipated in his conduct, and licentious in his morals, yet regular, even to parsimony, in his pecuniary concerns.--He oeconomizes with his vices, and indulges in all the excesses of fashionable life, with the same system of order that accumulates the fortune of a Dutch miser. Lord Chesterfield was doubtless satisfied, that while his son remained in France, his precepts would have all the benefit of living illustration; yet it is not certain that this cautious and reflecting licentiousness has any merit over the more imprudent irregularity of an English spendthrift: the one is, however, likely to be more durable than the other; and, in fact, the character of an old libertine is more frequent in France than in England. If oeconomy preside even over the vices of the rich and fashionable, you may conclude that the habits of the middling ranks of people of small fortunes are still more scrupulously subjected to its influence. A French _menage_ [Household.] is a practical treatise on the art of saving--a spirit of oeconomy pervades and directs every part of it, and that so uniformly, so generally, and so consistently, as not to make the same impression on a stranger as would a single instance where the whole was not conducted on the same principle. A traveller is not so forcibly stricken by this part of the French character, because it is more real than apparent, and does not seem the effect of reasoning or effort, which is never consequential, but rather that of inclination and the natural course of things. A degree of parsimony, which an Englishman, who does not affect the reputation of a Codrus, could not acquire without many self-combats, appears in a Frenchman a matter of preference and convenience, and till one has lived long and familiarly in the country, one is apt to mistake principles for customs, and character for manners, and to attribute many things to local which have their real source in moral causes.--The traveller who sees nothing but gay furniture, and gay clothes, and partakes on invitation of splendid repasts, returns to England the enamoured panegyrist of French hospitality.--On a longer residence and more domestic intercourse, all this is discoverable to be merely the sacrifice of parsimony to vanity--the solid comforts of life are unknown, and hospitality seldom extends beyond an occasional and ostentatious reception. The gilding, painting, glasses, and silk hangings of a French apartment, are only a gay disguise; and a house, which to the eye may be attractive even to splendour, often has not one room that an Englishman would find tolerably convenient. Every thing intended for use rather than shew is scanty and sordid--all is _beau, magnifique, gentil,_ or _superb,_ [Fine magnificent, genteel, or superb.] and nothing comfortable. The French have not the word, or its synonime, in their language. In France, clothes are almost as durable as furniture, and the gaiety which twenty or thirty years ago we were complaisant enough to admire is far from being expensive. People are not more than five or six hours a day in their gala habits, and the whole of this period is judiciously chosen between the hours of repast, so that no risk in incurred by accidents at table. Then the caprices of fashion, which in England are so various and despotic, have here a more limited influence: the form of a dress changes as long as the material is convertible, and when it has outlasted the possibility of adaptation to a reigning mode, it is not on that account rejected, but is generally worn in some way or other till banished by the more rational motive of its decay. All the expences of tea-visits, breakfast-loungings, and chance-dinners, are avoided--an evening visit is passed entirely at cards, a breakfast in form even for the family is unusual, and there are very few houses where you could dine without being previously engaged. I am, indeed, certain, that (unless in large establishments) the calculation for diurnal supply is so exact, that the intrusion of a stranger would be felt by the whole family. I must, however, do them the justice to say, that on such occasions, and where they find the thing to be inevitable, they put the best face possible on it, and the guest is entertained, if not plentifully, and with a very sincere welcome, at least with smiles and compliments. The French, indeed, allow, that they live less hospitably than the English: but then they say they are not so rich; and it is true, property is not so general, nor so much diffused, as with us. This is, however, only relative, and you will not suspect me of being so uncandid as to make comparisons without allowing for every difference which is the effect of necessity. All my remarks of this kind are made after an unprejudiced comparison of the people of the same rank or fortune in the two countries;--yet even the most liberal examination must end by concluding, that the oeconomy of the French too nearly approaches to meanness, and that their civility is ostentatious, perhaps often either interested, or even verbal. You already exclaim, why, in the year 1793, you are characterizing a nation in the style of Salmon! and implying a panegyric on the moral of the School for Scandal! I plead to the first part of the charge, and shall hereafter defend my opinion against the more polished writers who have succeeded Salmon. For the moral of the School for Scandal, I have always considered it as the seal of humanity on a comedy which would otherwise be perfection. It is not the oeconomy of the French that I am censuring, but their vanity, which, engrossing all their means of expence, prefers show to accommodation, and the parade of a sumptuous repast three or four times a year to a plainer but more frequent hospitality.--I am far from being the advocate of extravagance, or the enemy of domestic order; and the liberality which is circumscribed only by prudence shall not find in me a censurer. My ideas on the French character and manner of living may not be unuseful to such of my countrymen as come to France with the project of retrieving their affairs; for it is very necessary they should be informed, that it is not so much the difference in the price of things, which makes a residence here oeconomical, as a conformity to the habits of the country; and if they were not deterred by a false shame from a temporary adoption of the same system in England, their object might often be obtained without leaving it. For this reason it may be remarked, that the English who bring English servants, and persist in their English mode of living, do not often derive very solid advantages from their exile, and their abode in France is rather a retreat from their creditors than the means of paying their debts. Adieu.--You will not be sorry that I have been able for a moment to forget our personal sufferings, and the miserable politics of the country. The details of the former are not pleasant, and the latter grow every day more inexplicable. 1794 A RESIDENCE IN FRANCE January 6, 1794. If I had undertaken to follow the French revolution through all its absurdities and iniquities, my indolence would long since have taken the alarm, and I should have relinquished a task become too difficult and too laborious. Events are now too numerous and too complicated to be described by occasional remarks; and a narrator of no more pretensions than myself may be allowed to shrink from an abundance of matter which will hereafter perplex the choice and excite the wonder of the historian.--Removed from the great scene of intrigues, we are little acquainted with them--we begin to suffer almost before we begin to conjecture, and our solicitude to examine causes is lost in the rapidity with which we feel their effects. Amidst the more mischievous changes of a philosophic revolution, you will have learned from the newspapers, that the French have adopted a new aera and a new calendar, the one dating from the foundation of their republic, and other descriptive of the climate of Paris, and the productions of the French territory. I doubt, however, if these new almanack-makers will create so much confusion as might be supposed, or as they may desire, for I do not find as yet that their system has made its way beyond the public offices, and the country people are particularly refractory, for they persist in holding their fairs, markets, &c. as usual, without any regard to the hallowed decade of their legislators. As it is to be presumed that the French do not wish to relinquish all commercial intercourse with other nations, they mean possibly to tack the republican calendar to the rights of man, and send their armies to propagate them together; otherwise the correspondence of a Frenchman will be as difficult to interpret with mercantile exactness as the characters of the Chinese. The vanity of these philosophers would, doubtless, be gratified by forcing the rest of Europe and the civilized world to adopt their useless and chimerical innovations, and they might think it a triumph to see the inhabitant of the Hebrides date _"Vendemiaire,"_ [Alluding to the vintage.] or the parched West-Indian _"Nivose;"_ but vanity is not on this, as it is on many other occasions, the leading principle.--It was hoped that a new arrangement of the year, and a different nomenclature of the months, so as to banish all the commemorations of Christianity, might prepare the way for abolishing religion itself, and, if it were possible to impose the use of the new calendar so far as to exclude the old one, this might certainly assist their more serious atheistical operations; but as the success of such an introduction might depend on the will of the people, and is not within the competence of the bayonet, the old year will maintain its ground, and these pedantic triflers find that they have laboured to no more extensive a purpose, than to furnish a date to the newspapers, or to their own decrees, which no one will take the pains to understand. Mankind are in general more attached to customs than principles. The useful despotism of Peter, which subdued so many of the prejudices of his countrymen, could not achieve the curtailment of their beards; and you must not imagine that, with all the endurance of the French, these continual attempts at innovation pass without murmurs: partial revolts happen very frequently; but, as they are the spontaneous effect of personal suffering, not of political manoeuvre, they are without concert or union, of course easily quelled, and only serve to strengthen the government.--The people of Amiens have lately, in one of these sudden effusions of discontent, burnt the tree of liberty, and even the representative, Dumont, has been menaced; but these are only the blows of a coward who is alarmed at his own temerity, and dreads the chastisement of it.* * The whole town of Bedouin, in the south of France, was burnt pursuant to a decree of the convention, to expiate the imprudence of some of its inhabitants in having cut down a dead tree of liberty. Above sixty people were guillotined as accomplices, and their bodies thrown into pits, dug by order of the representative, Magnet, (then on mission,) before their death. These executions were succeeded by a conflagration of all the houses, and the imprisonment or dispersion of their possessors. It is likewise worthy of remark, that many of these last were obliged, by express order of Maignet, to be spectators of the murder of their friends and relations. This crime in the revolutionary code is of a very serious nature; and however trifling it may appear to you, it depends only on the will of Dumont to sacrifice many lives on the occasion. But Dumont, though erected by circumstances into a tyrant, is not sanguinary--he is by nature and education passionate and gross, and in other times might only have been a good natured Polisson. Hitherto he has contented himself with alarming, and making people tired of their lives, but I do not believe he has been the direct or intentional cause of anyone's death. He has so often been the hero of my adventures, that I mention him familiarly to you, without reflecting, that though the delegate of more than monarchical power here, he is too insignificant of himself to be known in England. But the history of Dumont is that of two-thirds of the Convention. He was originally clerk to an attorney at Abbeville, and afterwards set up for himself in a neighbouring village. His youth having been marked by some digressions from the "'haviour of reputation," his profession was far from affording him a subsistence; and the revolution, which seems to have called forth all that was turbulent, unprincipled, or necessitous in the country, naturally found a partizan in an attorney without practice.--At the election of 1792, when the King's fall and the domination of the Jacobins had spread so general a terror that no man of character could be prevailed upon to be a candidate for a public situation, Dumont availed himself of this timidity and supineness in those who ought to have become the representatives of the people; and, by a talent for intrigue, and a coarse facility of phrase-making, (for he has no pretensions to eloquence,) prevailed on the mob to elect him. His local knowledge, active disposition, and subservient industry, render him an useful kind of drudge to any prevailing party, and, since the overthrow of the Brissotines, he has been entrusted with the government of this and some of the neighbouring departments. He professes himself a zealous republican, and an apostle of the doctrine of universal equality, yet unites in his person all the attributes of despotism, and lives with more luxury and expence than most of the _ci-devant_ gentry. His former habitation at Oisemont is not much better than a good barn; but patriotism is more profitable here than in England, and he has lately purchased a large mansion belonging to an emigrant. * "Britain no longer pays her patriots with her spoils:" and perhaps it is matter of congratulation to a country, when the profession of patriotism is not lucrative. Many agreeable inferences may be made from it--the sentiment may have become too general for reward, Ministers too virtuous to fear, or even the people too enlightened to be deceived. --His mode of travelling, which used at best to be in the _coche d'eau_ [Passage-boat.] or the diligence, is now in a coach and four, very frequently accompanied by a led horse, and a party of dragoons. I fear some of your patriots behold this with envy, and it is not to be wondered at that they should wish to see a similar revolution in England. What a seducing prospect for the assertors of liberty, to have the power of imprisoning and guillotining all their countrymen! What halcyon days, when the aristocratic palaces* shall be purified by solacing the fatigues of republican virtue, and the levellers of all distinction travel with four horses and a military escort!--But, as Robespierre observes, you are two centuries behind the French in patriotism and information; and I doubt if English republicanism will ever go beyond a dinner, and toasting the manes of Hampden and Sydney. I would, therefore, seriously advise any of my compatriots who may be enamoured of a government founded on the rights of man, to quit an ungrateful country which seems so little disposed to reward their labours, and enjoy the supreme delight of men a systeme, that of seeing their theories in action. * Many of the emigrants' houses were bought by members of the Convention, or people in office. At Paris, crouds of inferior clerks, who could not purchase, found means to get lodged in the most superb national edifices: Monceaux was the villa of Robespierre--St. Just occasionally amused himself at Raincy--Couthon succeed the Comte d'Artois at Bagatelle-and Vliatte, a juryman of the Revolutionary Tribunal, was lodged at the pavillion of Flora, in the Tuilleries, which he seems to have occupied as a sort of Maitre d'Hotel to the Comite de Salut Public. _A propos_--a decree of the Convention has lately passed to secure the person of Mr. Thomas Paine, and place seals on his papers. I hope, however, as he has been installed in all the rights of a French citizen, in addition to his representative inviolability, that nothing more than a temporary retreat is intended for him. Perhaps even his personal sufferings may prove a benefit to mankind. He may, like Raleigh, "in his prison hours enrich the world," and add new proselytes to the cause of freedom. Besides, human evils are often only blessings in a questionable form--Mr. Paine's persecutions in England made him a legislator in France. Who knows but his persecutions in France may lead to some new advancement, or at least add another line to the already crouded title-pages that announce his literary and political distinctions! --Yours. January, 1794. The total suppression of all religious worship in this country is an event of too singular and important a nature not to have been commented upon largely by the English papers; but, though I have little new to add on the subject, my own reflections have been too much occupied in consequence for me to pass it over in silence. I am yet in the first emotions of wonder: the vast edifice which had been raised by the blended efforts of religion and superstition, which had been consecrated by time, endeared by national taste, and become necessary by habit, has now disappeared, and scarcely left a vestige of its ruins. To those who revert only to the genius of the Catholic religion, and to former periods of the history of France, this event must seem incredible; and nothing but constant opportunities of marking its gradual approach can reconcile it to probability. The pious christian and the insidious philosopher have equally contributed to the general effect, though with very different intentions: the one, consulting only his reason, wished to establish a pure and simple mode of worship, which, divested of the allurements of splendid processions and imposing ceremonies, should teach the people their duty, without captivating their senses; the other, better acquainted with French character, knew how little these views were compatible with it, and hoped, under the specious pretext of banishing the too numerous ornaments of the Catholic practice, to shake the foundations of Christianity itself. Thus united in their efforts, though dissimilar in their motives, all parties were eager at the beginning of the revolution for a reform in the Church: the wealth of the Clergy, the monastic establishments, the supernumerary saints, were devoted and attacked without pity, and without regret; and, in the zeal and hurry of innovation, the decisive measure, which reduced ecclesiastics to small pensions dependent on the state, was carried, before those who really meant well were aware of its consequences. The next step was, to make the receiving these pensions subject to an oath, which the selfish philosopher, who can coldly calculate on, and triumph in, the weakness of human nature, foresaw would be a brand of discord, certain to destroy the sole force which the Clergy yet possessed--their union, and the public opinion. Unfortunately, these views were not disappointed: conviction, interest, or fear, prevailed on many to take the oath; while doubt, worldly improvidence, or a scrupulous piety, deterred others. A schism took place between the jurors and nonjurors--the people became equally divided, and adhered either to the one or the other, as their habits or prepossessions directed them. Neither party, as it may be imagined, could see themselves deprived of any portion of the public esteem, without concern, perhaps without rancour; and their mutual animosity, far from gaining proselytes to either, contributed only to the immediate degradation and future ruin of both. Those, however, who had not taken the prescribed oath, were in general more popular than what were called the constitutionalists, and the influence they were supposed to exert in alienating the minds of their followers from the new form of government, supplied the republican party with a pretext for proposing their banishment.* *The King's exertion of the power vested in him by the constitution, by putting a temporary negative on this decree, it is well known, was one of the pretexts for dethroning him. At the King's deposition this decree took place, and such of the nonjuring priests as were not massacred in the prisons, or escaped the search, were to be embarked for Guiana. The wiser and better part of those whose compliances entitled them to remain, were, I believe, far from considering this persecution of their opponents as a triumph--to those who did, it was of short duration. The Convention, which had hitherto attempted to disguise its hatred of the profession by censure and abuse of a part of its members, began now to ridicule the profession itself: some represented it as useless--others as pernicious and irreconcileable with political freedom; and a discourse* was printed, under the sanction of the Assembly, to prove, that the only feasible republic must be supported by pure atheism. * Extracts from the Report of Anacharsis Cloots, member of the Committee of Public Instruction, printed by order of the National Convention: "Our _Sans-culottes_ want no other sermon but the rights of man, no other doctrine but the constitutional precepts and practice, nor any other church than where the section or the club hold their meetings, &c. "The propagation of the rights of man ought to be presented to the astonished world pure and without stain. It is not by offering strange gods to our neighbours that we shall operate their conversion. We can never raise them from their abject state by erecting one altar in opposition to another. A trifling heresy is infinitely more revolting than having no religion at all. Nature, like the sun, diffuses her light without the assistance of priests and vestals. While we were constitutional heretics, we maintained an army of an hundred thousand priests, who waged war equally with the Pope and the disciples of Calvin. We crushed the old priesthood by means of the new, and while we compelled every sect to contribute to the payment of a pretended national religion, we became at once the abhorrence of all the Catholics and Protestants in Europe. The repulsion of our religious belief counteracted the attraction of our political principles.--But truth is at length triumphant, and all the ill-intentioned shall no more be able to detach our neighbours from the dominion of the rights of man, under pretext of a religious dominion which no longer exists.--The purpose of religion is no how so well answered as by presenting carte blanche to the abused world. Every one will then be at liberty to form his spiritual regimen to his own taste, till in the end the invincible ascendant of reason shall teach him that the Supreme Being, the Eternal Being, is no other than Nature uncreated and uncreatable; and that the only Providence is the association of mankind in freedom and equality!-- This sovereign providence affords comfort to the afflicted, rewards the good, and punishes the wicked. It exercises no unjust partialities, like the providence of knaves and fools. Man, when free, wants no other divinity than himself. This god will not cost us a single farthing, not a single tear, nor a drop of blood. From the summit of our mountain he hath promulgated his laws, traced in evident characters on the tables of nature. From the East to the West they will be understood without the aid of interpreters, comments, or miracles. Every other ritual will be torn in pieces at the appearance of that of reason. Reason dethrones both the Kings of the earth, and the Kings of heaven.--No monarch above, if we wish to preserve our republic below. "Volumes have been written to determine whether or no a republic of Atheists could exist. I maintain that every other republic is a chimera. If you once admit the existence of a heavenly Sovereign, you introduce the wooden horse within your walls!--What you adore by day will be your destruction at night. "A people of theists necessarily become revelationists, that is to say, slaves of priests, who are but religious go-betweens, and physicians of damned souls. "If I were a scoundrel, I should make a point of exclaiming against atheism, for a religious mask is very convenient to a traitor. "The intolerance of truth will one day proscribe the very name of temple 'fanum,' the etymology of fanaticism. "We shall instantly see the monarchy of heaven condemned in its turn by the revolutionary tribunal of victorious Reason; for Truth, exalted on the throne of Nature, is sovereignly intolerant. "The republic of the rights of man is, properly speaking, neither theistical nor atheistical--it is nihilistical." Many of the most eminent conforming Prelates and Clergy were arrested, and even individuals, who had the reputation of being particularly devout, were marked as objects of persecution. A new calendar was devised, which excluded the ancient festivals, and limited public worship to the decade, or tenth day, and all observance of the Sabbath was interdicted. The prisons were crouded with sufferers in the cause of religion, and all who had not the zeal or the courage of martyrs, abstained from manifesting any attachment to the Christian faith. While this consternation was yet recent, the Deputies on mission in the departments shut up the churches entirely: the refuse of low clubs were paid and encouraged to break the windows and destroy the monuments; and these outrages, which, it was previously concerted, should at first assume the appearance of popular tumult, were soon regulated and directed by the mandates of the Convention themselves. The churches were again opened, an atheistic ritual, and licentious homilies,* were substituted for the proscribed service--and an absurd and ludicrous imitation of the Greek mythology was exhibited, under the title of the Religion of Reason.-- * I have read a discourse pronounced in a church at Paris, on the decade, so indecent and profane, that the most humble audience of a country-puppet show in England would not have tolerated it. On the principal church of every town was inscribed, "The Temple of Reason;" and a tutelary goddess was installed with a ceremony equally pedantic, ridiculous, and profane.* * At Havre, the goddess of Reason was drawn on a car by four cart-horses, and as it was judged necessary, to prevent accidents, that the horses should be conducted by those they were accustomed to, the carters were likewise put in requisition and furnished with cuirasses a l'antique from the theatre. The men, it seems, being neither martial nor learned, were not au fait at this equipment, and concluding it was only a waistcoat of ceremony, invested themselves with the front behind, and the back part laced before, to the great amusement of the few who were sensible of the mistake. Yet the philosophers did not on this occasion disdain those adventitious aids, the use of which they had so much declaimed against while they were the auxiliaries of Christianity.* * Mr. Gibbon reproaches the Christians with their adoption of the allurements of the Greek mythology.--The Catholics have been more hostilely despoiled by their modern persecutors, and may retort that the religion of reason is a more gross appeal to the senses than the darkest ages of superstition would have ventured on. Music, processions, and decorations, which had been banished from the ancient worship, were introduced in the new one, and the philosophical reformer, even in the very attempt to establish a religion purely metaphysical, found himself obliged to inculcate it by a gross and material idolatry.*-- * The French do not yet annex any other idea to the religion of reason than that of the female who performs the part of the goddess. Thus, by submitting his abstractions to the genius of the people, and the imperfections of our nature, perhaps the best apology was offered for the errors of that worship which had been proscribed, persecuted, and ridiculed. Previous to the tenth day, on which a celebration of this kind was to take place, a Deputy arrived, accompanied by the female goddess:* that is, (if the town itself did not produce one for the purpose,) a Roman dress of white satin was hired from the theatre, with which she was invested--her head covered with a red cap, ornamented with oak leaves-- one arm was reclined on a plough, the other grasped a spear--and her feet were supported by a globe, and environed by mutilated emblems of seodality. [It is not possible to explain this costume as appropriate.] * The females who personated the new divinity were usually selected from amongst those who "might make sectaries of whom they bid but follow," but who were more conspicuous for beauty than any other celestial attribute.--The itinerant goddess of the principal towns in the department de la Somme was the mistress of one Taillefer, a republican General, brother to the Deputy of the same name.--I know not, in this military government, whether the General's services on the occasion were included in his other appointments. At Amiens, he not only provided the deity, but commanded the detachment that secured her a submissive adoration. Thus equipped, the divinity and her appendages were borne on the shoulders of Jacobins "en bonnet rouge," and escorted by the National Guard, Mayor, Judges, and all the constituted authorities, who, whether diverted or indignant, were obliged to preserve a respectful gravity of exterior. When the whole cavalcade arrived at the place appointed, the goddess was placed on an altar erected for the occasion, from whence she harangued the people, who, in return, proffered their adoration, and sung the Carmagnole, and other republican hymns of the same kind. They then proceeded in the same order to the principal church, in the choir of which the same ceremonies were renewed: a priest was procured to abjure his faith and avow the whole of Christianity an imposture;* and the festival concluded with the burning of prayer-books, saints, confessionals, and every thing appropriated to the use of public worship.**-- *It must be observed, in justice to the French Clergy, that it was seldom possible to procure any who would consent to this infamy. In such cases, the part was exhibited by a man hired and dressed for the purpose.--The end of degrading the profession in the eyes of the people was equally answered. ** In many places, valuable paintings and statues were burnt or disfigured. The communion cups, and other church plate, were, after being exorcised in Jacobin revels, sent to the Convention, and the gold and silver, (as the author of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire invidiously expresses himself,) the pearls and jewels, were wickedly converted to the service of mankind; as if any thing whose value is merely fictitious, could render more service to mankind than when dedicated to an use which is equally the solace of the rich and the poor--which gratifies the eye without exciting cupidity, soothes the bed of sickness, and heals the wounds of conscience. Yet I am no advocate for the profuse decorations of Catholic churches; and if I seem to plead in their behalf, it is that I recollect no instance where the depredators of them have appropriated the spoil to more laudable purposes. The greater part of the attendants looked on in silent terror and astonishment; whilst others, intoxicated, or probably paid to act this scandalous farce, danced round the flames with an appearance of frantic and savage mirth.--It is not to be forgotten, that representatives of the people often presided as the high priests of these rites; and their official dispatches to the convention, in which these ceremonies were minutely described, were always heard with bursts of applause, and sanctioned by decrees of insertion in the bulletin.* * A kind of official newspaper distributed periodically at the expence of Government in large towns, and pasted up in public places--it contained such news as the convention chose to impart, which was given with the exact measure of truth or falsehood that suited the purpose of the day. I have now conducted you to the period in which I am contemplating France in possession of all the advantages which a total dereliction of religious establishments can bestow--at that consummation to which the labours of modern philosophers have so long tended. Ye Shaftesburys, Bolingbrokes, Voltaires, and must I add the name of Gibbon,* behold yourselves inscribed on the registers of fame with a Laplanche, a Chenier, an Andre Dumont, or a Fouche!**-- * The elegant satirist of Christianity will smile at the presumption of so humble a censurer.--It is certain, the misapplication only of such splendid talents could embolden me to mention the name of the possessor with diminished respect. ** These are names too contemptible for notice, but for the mischief to which they were instrumental--they were among the first and most remarkable persecutors of religion. Do not blush at the association; your views have been the same; and the subtle underminer of man's best comfort in the principles of his religion, is even more criminal than him who prohibits the external exercise of it. Ridicule of the sacred writings is more dangerous than burning them, and a sneer at the miracles of the gospel more mischievous than disfiguring the statues of the evangelists; and it must be confessed that these Anti-christian Iconoclasts themselves might probably have been content to "believe and say their prayers," had not the intolerance of philosophy made them atheists and persecutors.--The coarse legend of "death is the sleep of eternity,"* is only a compendium of the fine-drawn theories of the more elaborate materialist, and the depositaries of the dead will not corrupt more by the exhibition of this desolating standard, than the libraries of the living by the volumes which hold out the same oblivion to vice, and discouragement to virtue.-- * Posts, bearing the inscription "la mort est un sommeil eternel," were erected in many public burying-grounds.--No other ceremony is observed with the dead than enclosing the body in some rough boards, and sending it off by a couple of porters, (in their usual garb,) attended by a municipal officer. The latter inscribes on a register the name of the deceased, who is thrown into a grave generally prepared for half a score, and the whole business is finished. The great experiment of governing a civilized people without religion will now be made; and should the morals, the manners, or happiness of the French, be improved by it, the sectaries of modern philosophy may triumph. Should it happen otherwise, the Christian will have an additional motive for cherishing his faith: but even the afflictions of humanity will not, I fear, produce either regret or conviction in his adversary; for the prejudices of philosophers and systemists are incorrigible.* * _"Ce ne sont point les philosophes qui connoissent le mieux les hommes. Ils ne les voient qu'a travers les prejuges, et je ne fache aucun etat ou l'on en ait tant."_--J. J. Rousseau. ["It is not among philosophers that we are to look for the most perfect knowledge of human nature.--They view it only through the prejudices of philosophy, and I know of no profession where prejudices are more abundant."] Providence, Jan. 29. We are now quite domesticated here, though in a very miserable way, without fire, and with our mattresses, on the boards; but we nevertheless adopt the spirit of the country, and a total absence of comfort does not prevent us from amusing ourselves. My friend knits, and draws landscapes on the backs of cards; and I have established a correspondence with an old bookseller, who sends me treatises of chemistry and fortifications, instead of poetry and memoirs. I endeavoured at first to borrow books of our companions, but this resource was soon exhausted, and the whole prison supplied little more than a novel of Florian's, _Le Voyage du jeune Anarcharsis,_ and some of the philosophical romances of Voltaire.--They say it ennuyes them to read; and I observe, that those who read at all, take their books into the garden, and prefer the most crowded walks. These studious persons, who seem to surpass Crambe himself in the faculty of abstraction, smile and bow at every comma, without any appearance of derangement from such frequent interruptions. Time passes sorrowly, rather than slowly; and my thoughts, without being amused, are employed. The novelty of our situation, the past, the future, all offer so many subjects of reflection, that my mind has more occasion for repose than amusement. My only external resource is conversing with our fellow-prisoners, and learning the causes of their detention. These relations furnish me with a sort of "abstract of the times," and mark the character of the government better than circumstances of more apparent consequence; for what are battles, sieges, and political machinations, but as they ultimately affect the happiness of society? And when I learn that the lives, the liberty, and property of no class are secure from violation, it is not necessary one should be at Paris to form an opinion of this period of the revolution, and of those who conduct it. The persecution which has hitherto been chiefly directed against the Noblesse, has now a little subsided, and seems turned against religion and commerce. People are daily arrested for assisting at private masses, concealing images, or even for being possessors of religious books. Merchants are sent here as monopolizers, and retailers, under various pretexts, in order to give the committees an opportunity of pillaging their shops. It is not uncommon to see people of the town who are our guards one day, become our fellow-prisoners the next; and a few weeks since, the son of an old gentleman who has been some time here, after being on guard the whole day, instead of being relieved at the usual hour, was joined by his wife and children, under the escort of a couple of dragoons, who delivered the whole family into the custody of our keeper; and this appears to have happened without any other motive than his having presented a petition to Dumont in behalf of his father. An old man was lately taken from his house in the night, and brought here, because he was said to have worn the cross of St. Louis.--The fact is, however, that he never did wear this obnoxious distinction; and though his daughter has proved this incontrovertibly to Dumont, she cannot obtain his liberty: and the poor young woman, after making two or three fruitless journeys to Paris, is obliged to content herself with seeing her father occasionally at the gate. The refectory of the convent is inhabited by hospital nuns. Many of the hospitals in France had a sort of religious order annexed to them, whose business it was to attend the sick; and habit, perhaps too the association of the offices of humanity with the duties of religion, had made them so useful in their profession, that they were suffered to remain, even after the abolition of the regular monasteries. But the devastating torrent of the revolution at length reached them: they were accused of bestowing a more tender solicitude on their aristocratic patients than on the wounded volunteers and republicans; and, upon these curious charges, they have been heaped into carts, without a single necessary, almost without covering, sent from one department to another, and distributed in different prisons, where they are perishing with cold, sickness, and want! Some people are here only because they happened to be accidentally at a house when the owner was arrested;* and we have one family who were taken at dinner, with their guests, and the plate they were using! * It was not uncommon for a mandate of arrest to direct the taking "Citizen Such-a-one, and all persons found in his house." A grand-daughter of the celebrated De Witt, who resided thirty leagues from hence, was arrested in the night, put in an open cart, without any regard to her age, her sex, or her infirmities, though the rain fell in torrents; and, after sleeping on straw in different prisons on the road, was deposited here. As a Fleming, the law places her in the same predicament with a very pretty young woman who has lived some months at Amiens; but Dumont, who is at once the maker, the interpreter, and executor of the laws, has exempted the latter from the general proscription, and appears daily with her in public; whereas poor Madame De Witt is excluded from such indulgence, being above seventy years old-- and is accused, moreover, of having been most exemplarily charitable, and, what is still worse, very religious.--I have given these instances not as any way remarkable, and only that you may form some idea of the pretexts which have served to cover France with prisons, and to conduct so many of its inhabitants to the scaffold. It is impossible to reflect on a country in such a situation, without abhorring the authors of it, and dreading the propagation of their doctrines. I hope they neither have imitators nor admirers in England; yet the convention in their debates, the Jacobins, and all the French newspapers, seem so sanguine in their expectation, and so positive in their assertions of an English revolution, that I occasionally, and in spite of myself, feel a vague but serious solicitude, which I should not have supposed the apprehension of any political evil could inspre. I know the good sense and information of my countrymen offer a powerful resource against the love of change and metaphysical subtilties; but, it is certain, the French government have much depended on the spirit of party, and the zeal of their propagandistes. They talk of a British convention, of a conventional army, and, in short, all France seem prepared to see their neighbours involved in the same disastrous system with themselves. The people are not a little supported in this error by the extracts that are given them from your orators in the House of Commons, which teem with nothing but complaints against the oppression of their own country, and enthusiastic admiration of French liberty. We read and wonder--collate the Bill of Rights with the Code Revolutionnaire, and again fear what we cannot give credit to. Since the reports I allude to have gained ground, I have been forcibly stricken by a difference in the character of the two nations. At the prospect of a revolution, all the French who could conveniently leave the country, fled; and those that remained (except adventurers and the banditti that were their accomplices) studiously avoided taking any part. But so little are our countrymen affected with this selfish apathy, that I am told there is scarcely one here who, amidst all his present sufferings, does not seem to regret his absence from England, more on account of not being able to oppose this threatened attack on our constitution, than for any personal motive.--The example before them must, doubtless, tend to increase this sentiment of genuine patriotism; for whoever came to France with but a single grain of it in his composition, must return with more than enough to constitute an hundred patriots, whose hatred of despotism is only a principle, and who have never felt its effects.--Adieu. February 2, 1794. The factions which have chosen to give France the appellation of a republic, seem to have judged, and with some reason, that though it might answer their purpose to amuse the people with specious theories of freedom, their habits and ideas were far from requiring that these fine schemes should be carried into practice. I know of no example equal to the submission of the French at this moment; and if "departed spirits were permitted to review the world," the shades of Richelieu or Louvois might hover with envy round the Committee of Public Welfare, and regret the undaring moderation of their own politics. How shall I explain to an Englishman the doctrine of universal requisition? I rejoice that you can imagine nothing like it.--After establishing, as a general principle, that the whole country is at the disposal of government, succeeding decrees have made specific claims on almost every body, and every thing. The tailors, shoemakers,* bakers, smiths, sadlers, and many other trades, are all in requisition--carts, horses, and carriages of every kind, are in requisition--the stables and cellars are put in requisition for the extraction of saltpetre, and the houses to lodge soldiers, or to be converted into prisons. * In order to prevent frauds, the shoemakers were obliged to make only square-toed shoes, and every person not in the army was forbidden to wear them of this form. Indeed, people of any pretentions to patriotism (that is to say, who were much afraid) did not venture to wear any thing but wooden shoes; as it had been declared anti-civique, if not suspicious, to walk in leather. --Sometimes shopkeepers are forbidden to sell their cloth, nails, wine, bread, meat, &c. There are instances where whole towns have been kept without the necessaries of life for several days together, in consequence of these interdictions; and I have known it proclaimed by beat of drum, that whoever possessed two uniforms, two hats, or two pair of shoes, should relinquish one for the use of the army! Yet with all these efforts of despotism, the republican troops are in many respects ill supplied, the produce being too often converted to the use of the agents of government, who are all Jacobins, and whose peculations are suffered with impunity, because they are too necessary, or perhaps too formidable for punishment. These proceedings, which are not the less mischievous for being absurd, must end in a total destruction of commerce: the merchant will not import what he may be obliged to sell exclusively to government at an arbitrary and inadequate valuation.--Those who are not imprisoned, and have it in their power, are for the most part retired from business, or at least avoid all foreign speculations; so that France may in a few months depend only on her internal resources. The same measures which ruin one class, serve as a pretext to oppress and levy contributions on the rest.--In order to make this right of seizure still more productive, almost every village has its spies, and the domiciliary visits are become so frequent, that a man is less secure in his own house, than in a desert amidst Arabs. On these occasions, a band of Jacobins, with a municipal officer at their head, enter sans ceremonie, over-run your apartments, and if they find a few pounds of sugar, soap, or any other article which they choose to judge more than sufficient for immediate consumption, they take possession of the whole as a monopoly, which they claim for the use of the republic, and the terrified owner, far from expostulating, thinks himself happy if he escapes so well.--But this is mere vulgar tyranny: a less powerful despotism might invade the security of social life, and banish its comforts. We are prone to suffer, and it requires often little more than the will to do evil to give us a command over the happiness of others. The Convention are more original, and, not satisfied with having reduced the people to the most abject slavery, they exact a semblance of content, and dictate at stated periods the chastisement which awaits those who refuse to smile. The splendid ceremonies at Paris, which pass for popular rejoicings, merit that appellation less than an auto de fe. Every movement is previously regulated by a Commissioner appointed for the purpose, (to whom en passant these fetes are very lucrative jobs,) a plan of the whole is distributed, in which is prescribed with great exactness, that at such and such parts the people are to "melt into tears," at others they are to be seized with a holy enthusiasm, and at the conclusion of the whole they are to rend the air with the cry of "Vive la Convention!" --These celebrations are always attended by a military force, sufficient to ensure their observance, besides a plentiful mixture of spies to notice refractory countenances or faint acclamations. The departments which cannot imitate the magnificence of Paris, are obliged, nevertheless, to manifest their satisfaction. At every occasion on which a rejoicing is ordered, the same kind of discipline is preserved; and the aristocrats, whose fears in general overcome their principles, are often not the least zealous attendants. At the retaking of Toulon, when abandoned by our countrymen, the National Guards were every where assembled to participate in the festivity, under a menace of three days imprisonment. Those persons who did not illuminate their houses were to be considered as suspicious, and treated as such: yet, even with all these precautions, I am informed the business was universally cold, and the balls thinly attended, except by aristocrats and relations of emigrants, who, in some places, with a baseness not excused even by their terrors, exhibited themselves as a public spectacle, and sang the defeats of that country which was armed in their defence. I must here remark to you a circumstance which does still less honour to the French character; and which you will be unwilling to believe. In several towns the officers and others, under whose care the English were placed during their confinement, were desirous sometimes on account of the peculiar hardship of their situation as foreigners, to grant them little indulgences, and even more liberty than to the French prisoners; and in this they were justified on several considerations, as well as that of humanity.--They knew an Englishman could not escape, whatever facility might be given him, without being immediately retaken; and that if his imprisonment were made severe, he had fewer external resources and alleviations than the natives of the country: but these favourable dispositions were of no avail--for whenever any of our countrymen obtained an accommodation, the jealousy of the French took umbrage, and they were obliged to relinquish it, or hazard the drawing embarrassment on the individual who had served them. You are to notice, that the people in general, far from being averse to seeing the English treated with a comparative indulgence, were even pleased at it; and the invidious comparisons and complaints which prevented it, proceeded from the gentry, from the families of those who had found refuge in England, and who were involved in the common persecution.--I have, more than once, been reproached by a female aristocrat with the ill success of the English army; and many, with whom I formerly lived on terms of intimacy, would refuse me now the most trifling service.--I have heard of a lady, whose husband and brother are both in London, who amuses herself in teaching a bird to repeat abuse of the English. It has been said, that the day a man becomes a slave, he loses half his virtue; and if this be true as to personal slavery, judging from the examples before me, I conclude it equally so of political bondage.--The extreme despotism of the government seems to have confounded every principle of right and wrong, every distinction of honour and dishonour and the individual, of whatever class, alive only to the sense of personal danger, embraces without reluctance meanness or disgrace, if it insure his safety.--A tailor or shoemaker, whose reputation perhaps is too bad to gain him a livelihood by any trade but that of a patriot, shall be besieged by the flatteries of people of rank, and have levees as numerous as Choiseul or Calonne in their meridian of power. When a Deputy of the Convention is sent to a town on mission, sadness takes possession of every heart, and gaiety of every countenance. He is beset with adulatory petitions, and propitiating gifts; the Noblesse who have escaped confinement form a sort of court about his person; and thrice happy is the owner of that habitation at which he condescends to reside.--* * When a Deputy arrives, the gentry of the town contend with jealous rivalship for the honour of lodging him; and the most eloquent eulogist of republican simplicity in the Convention does not fail to prefer a large house and a good table, even though the unhallowed property of an aristocrat.--It is to be observed, that these Missionaries travel in a very patriarchal style, accompanied by their wives, children, and a numerous train of followers, who are not delicate in availing themselves of this hospitality, and are sometimes accused of carrying off the linen, or any thing else portable--even the most decent behave on these occasions as though they were at an inn. --A Representative of gallantry has no reason to envy either the authority of the Grand Signor, or the licence of his seraglio--he is arbiter of the fate of every woman that pleases him; and, it is supposed, that many a fair captive has owed her liberty to her charms, and that the philosophy of a French husband has sometimes opened the doors of his prison. Dumont, who is married, and has besides the countenance of a white Negro, never visits us without occasioning a general commotion amongst all the females, especially those who are young and pretty. As soon as it is known that he is expected, the toilettes are all in activity, a renovation of rouge and an adjustment of curls take place, and, though performed with more haste, not with less solicitude, than the preparatory splendour of a first introduction.--When the great man arrives, he finds the court by which he enters crowded by these formidable prisoners, and each with a petition in her hand endeavours, with the insidious coquetry of plaintive smiles and judicious tears, that brighten the eye without deranging the features, to attract his notice and conciliate his favour. Happy those who obtain a promise, a look of complacence, or even of curiosity!--But the attention of this apostle of republicanism is not often bestowed, except on high rank, or beauty; and a woman who is old, or ill dressed, that ventures to approach him, is usually repulsed with vulgar brutality--while the very sight of a male suppliant renders him furious. The first half hour he walks about, surrounded by his fair cortege, and is tolerably civil; but at length, fatigued, I suppose by continual importunity, he loses his temper, departs, and throws all the petitions he has received unopened into the fire. Adieu--the subject is too humiliating to dwell on. I feel for myself, I feel for human nature, when I see the fastidiousness of wealth, the more liberal pride of birth, and the yet more allowable pretensions of beauty, degraded into the most abject submission to such a being as Dumont. Are our principles every where the mere children of circumstance, or is it in this country only that nothing is stable? For my own part I love inflexibility of character; and pride, even when ill founded, seems more respectable while it sustains itself, than concessions which, refused to the suggestions of reason, are yielded to the dictates of fear.--Yours. February 12, 1794. I was too much occupied by my personal distresses to make any remarks on the revolutionary government at the time of its adoption. The text of this political phoenomenon must be well known in England--I shall, therefore, confine myself to giving you a general idea of its spirit and tendency,--It is, compared to regular government, what force is to mechanism, or the usual and peaceful operations of nature to the ravages of a storm--it substitutes violence for conciliation, and sweeps with precipitate fury all that opposes its devastating progress. It refers every thing to a single principle, which is in itself not susceptible of definition, and, like all undefined power, is continually vibrating between despotism and anarchy. It is the execrable shape of Milton's Death, "which shape hath none," and which can be described only by its effects.--For instance, the revolutionary tribunal condemns without evidence, the revolutionary committees imprison without a charge, and whatever assumes the title of revolutionary is exonerated from all subjection to humanity, decency, reason, or justice.--Drowning the insurgents, their wives and children, by boatloads, is called, in the dispatch to the Convention, a revolutionary measure--* * The detail of the horrors committed in La Vendee and at Nantes were not at this time fully known. Carrier had, however, acknowledged, in a report read to the Convention, that a boat-load of refractory priests had been drowned, and children of twelve years old condemned by a military commission! One Fabre Marat, a republican General, wrote, about the same period, I think from Angers, that the Guillotine was too slow, and powder scarce, so that it was concluded more expedient to drown the rebels, which he calls a patriotic baptism!--The following is a copy of a letter addressed to the Mayor of Paris by a Commissary of the Government: "You will give us pleasure by transmitting the details of your fete at Paris last decade, with the hymns that were sung. Here we all cried _"Vive la Republique!"_ as we ever do, when our holy mother Guillotine is at work. Within these three days she has shaved eleven priests, one _ci-devant_ noble, a nun, a general, and a superb Englishman, six feet high, and as he was too tall by a head, we have put that into the sack! At the same time eight hundred rebels were shot at the Pont du Ce, and their carcases thrown into the Loire!--I understand the army is on the track of the runaways. All we overtake we shoot on the spot, and in such numbers that the ways are heaped with them!" --At Lyons, it is revolutionary to chain three hundred victims together before the mouths of loaded cannon, and massacre those who escape the discharge with clubs and bayonets;* and at Paris, revolutionary juries guillotine all who come before them.--** * The Convention formally voted their approbation of this measure, and Collot d'Herbois, in a report on the subject, makes a kind of apostrophical panegyric on the humanity of his colleagues. "Which of you, Citizens, (says he,) would not have fired the cannon? Which of you would not joyfully have destroyed all these traitors at a blow?" ** About this time a woman who sold newspapers, and the printer of them, were guillotined for paragraphs deemed incivique. --Yet this government is not more terrible than it is minutely vexations. One's property is as little secure as one's existence. Revolutionary committees every where sequestrate in the gross, in order to plunder in detail.* * The revolutionary committees, when they arrested any one, pretended to affix seals in form. The seal was often, however, no other than the private one of some individual employed--sometimes only a button or a halfpenny, which was broken as often as the Committee wanted access to the wine or other effects. Camille Desmoulins, in an address to Freron, his fellow-deputy, describes with some humour the mode of proceeding of these revolutionary pilferers: _"Avant hier, deux Commissaires de la section de Mutius Scaevola, montent chez lui--ils trouvent dans la bibliotheque des livres de droit; et non-obstant le decret qui porte qu'on ne touchera point Domat ni a Charles Dumoulin, bien qu'ils traitent de matieres feodales, ils sont main basse sur la moitie de la bibliotheque, et chargent deux Chrocheteurs des livres paternels. Ils trouvent une pendule, don't la pointe de Paiguille etoit, comme la plupart des pointes d'aiguilles, terminee en trefle: il leur semble que cette pointe a quelque chose d'approchant d'une fleur de lys; et non-obstant le decret qui ordonne de respecter les monumens des arts, il confisquent la pendule.--Notez bien qu'il y avoit a cote une malle sur laquelle etoit l'adresse fleurdelisee du marchand.--Ici il n'y avoit pas moyen de aier que ce fut une belle et bonne fleur de lys; mais comme la malle ne valoit pas un corset, les Commissaires se contentent de rayer les lys, au lieu que la malheureuse pendule, qui vaut bien 1200 livres, est, malgre son trefle, emportee par eux-memes, qui ne se fioient pas aux Chrocheteurs d'un poid si precieux--et ce, en vertu du droit que Barrere a appelle si heureusement le droit de prehension, quoique le decret s'opposat, dans l'espece, a l'application de ce droit.--Enfin, notre decemvirat sectionnaire, qui se mettoit ainsi au-dessus des decrets, trouve le brevet de pension de mon beau-pere, qui, comme tous les brevets de pension, n'etant pas de nature a etre porte sur le grand livre de la republique, etoit demeure dans le porte-feuille, et qui, comme tous les brevets de pension possibles, commencoit par ce protocole; Louis, &c. Ciel! s'ecrient les Commissaires, le nom du tyran!--Et apres avoir retrouve leur haleine, suffoquee d'abord par l'indignation, ils mettent en poche le brevet de pension, c'est a dire 1000 livres de rente, et emportent la marmite. Autre crime, le Citoyen Duplessis, qui etoit premier commis des finances, sous Clugny, avoit conserve, comme c'etoit l'usage, la cachet du controle general d'alors--un vieux porte-feuille de commis, qui etoit au rebut, ouble au dessus d'une armoire, dans un tas de poussiere, et auquel il n'avoit pas touche ne meme pense depuis dix ans peutetre, et sur le quel on parvint a decouvrir l'empreinte de quelques fleurs de lys, sous deux doigts de crasse, acheva de completer la preuve que le Citoyen Duplessis etoit suspect--et la voila, lui, enferme jusqu'a la paix, et le scelle mis sur toutes les portes de cette campagne, ou, tu te souviens, mon cher Freroa--que, decretes tous deux de prise de corps, apres le massacre du Champ de Mars, nous trouvions un asyle que le tyran n'osoit violer."_ "The day before yesterday, two Commissaries belonging to the section of Mutius Scaevola, entered my father-in-law's apartments; they found some law-books in the library, and, notwithstanding the decree which exempts from seizure the works of Domat and Charles Dumouin, (although they treat of feudal matters,) they proceeded to lay violent hands on one half of the collection, and loaded two porters with paternal spoils. The next object that attracted their attention was a clock, the hand of which, like the hands of most other clocks, terminated in a point, in the form of a trefoil, which seemed to them to bear some resemblance to a fleur de lys; and, notwithstanding the decree which ordains that the monuments of the arts shall be respected, they immediately passed sentence of confiscation on the clock. I should observe to you, that hard by lay a portmanteau, having on it the maker's address, encircled with lilies.-- Here there was no disputing the fact, but as the trunk was not worth five livres, the Commissaries contented themselves with erasing the lilies; but the unfortunate clock, being worth twelve hundred, was, notwithstanding its trefoil, carried off by themselves, for they would not trust the porters with so precious a load.--And all this was done in virtue of the law, which Barrere aptly denominated the law of prehension, and which, according to the terms of the decree itself, was not applicable to the case in question. "At length our sectionary decemvirs, who thus placed themselves above the law, discovered the grant of my father-in-law's pension, which, like all similar grants, being excluded from the privilege of inscription on the great register of public debts, had been left in his port-folio; and which began, as all such grants necessarily must, with the words, Louis, &c. "Heaven!" exclaimed the Commissaries, "here is the very name of the tyrant!" And, as soon as they recovered their breaths, which had been nearly stopped by the violence of the indignation, they coolly pocketed the grant, that is to say, an annuity of one thousand livres, and sent off the porridge-pot. Nor did these constitute all the crimes of Citizen Duplessis, who, having served as first clerk of the revenue board under Clugny, had, as was usual, kept the official seal of that day. An old port-folio, which had been thrown aside, and long forgotten, under a wardrobe, where it was buried in dust, and had, in all probability, not been touched for ten years, but, which with much difficulty, was discovered to bear the impression of a fleur de lys, completed the proof that Citizen Duplessis was a suspicious character. And now behold him shut up in a prison until peace shall be concluded, and the seals put upon all the doors of that country seat, where, you may remember, my dear Freron, that at the time when warrants were issued for apprehending us both, after the massacre in the Champ de Mars, we found an asylum which the tyrant did not dare to violate." --In a word, you must generally understand, that the revolutionary system supersedes law, religion, and morality; and that it invests the Committees of Public Welfare and General Safety, their agents, the Jacobin clubs, and subsidiary banditti, with the disposal of the whole country and its inhabitants. This gloomy aera of the revolution has its frivolities as well as the less disastrous periods, and the barbarism of the moment is rendered additionally disgusting by a mixture of levity and pedantry.--It is a fashion for people at present to abandon their baptismal and family names, and to assume that of some Greek or Roman, which the debates of the Convention have made familiar.--France swarms with Gracchus's and Publicolas, who by imaginary assimilations of acts, which a change of manners has rendered different, fancy themselves more than equal to their prototypes.* * The vicissitudes of the revolution, and the vengeance of party, have brought half the sages of Greece, and patriots of Rome, to the Guillotine or the pillory. The Newgate Calendar of Paris contains as many illustrious names as the index to Plutarch's Lives; and I believe there are now many Brutus's and Gracchus's in durance vile, besides a Mutius Scaevola condemned to twenty years imprisonment for an unskilful theft.--A man of Amiens, whose name is Le Roy, signified to the public, through the channel of a newspaper, that he had adopted that of Republic. --A man who solicits to be the executioner of his own brother ycleps himself Brutus, and a zealous preacher of the right of universal pillage cites the Agrarian law, and signs himself Lycurgus. Some of the Deputies have discovered, that the French mode of dressing is not characteristic of republicanism, and a project is now in agitation to drill the whole country into the use of a Roman costume.--You may perhaps suspect, that the Romans had at least more bodily sedateness than their imitators, and that the shrugs, jerks, and carracoles of a French petit maitre, however republicanized, will not assort with the grave drapery of the toga. But on your side of the water you have a habit of reasoning and deliberating --here they have that of talking and obeying. Our whole community are in despair to-day. Dumont has been here, and those who accosted him, as well as those who only ventured to interpret his looks, all agree in their reports that he is in a "bad humour."--The brightest eyes in France have supplicated in vain--not one grace of any sort has been accorded--and we begin to cherish even our present situation, in the apprehension that it may become worse.--Alas! you know not of what evil portent is the "bad humour" of a Representant. We are half of us now, like the Persian Lord, feeling if our heads are still on our shoulders.--I could add much to the conclusion of one of my last letters. Surely this incessant solicitude for mere existence debilitates the mind, and impairs even its passive faculty of suffering. We intrigue for the favour of the keeper, smile complacently at the gross pleasantries of a Jacobin, and tremble at the frown of a Dumont.--I am ashamed to be the chronicler of such humiliation: but, "tush, Hal; men, mortal men!" I can add no better apology, and quit you to moralize on it.--Yours. [No date given.] Were I a mere spectator, without fear for myself or compassion for others, the situation of this country would be sufficiently amusing. The effects produced (many perhaps unavoidably) by a state of revolution--the strange remedies devised to obviate them--the alternate neglect and severity with which the laws are executed--the mixture of want and profusion that distinguish the lower classes of people--and the distress and humiliation of the higher; all offer scenes so new and unaccountable, as not to be imagined by a person who has lived only under a regular government, where the limits of authority are defined, the necessaries of life plentiful, and the people rational and subordinate. The consequences of a general spirit of monopoly, which I formerly described, have lately been so oppressive, that the Convention thought it necessary to interfere, and in so extraordinary a way, that I doubt if (as usual) "the distemper of their remedies" will not make us regret the original disease. Almost every article, by having passed through a variety of hands, had become enormously dear; which, operating with a real scarcity of many things, occasioned by the war, had excited universal murmurings and inquietude. The Convention, who know the real source of the evil (the discredit of assignats) to be unattainable, and who are more solicitous to divert the clamours of the people, than to supply their wants, have adopted a measure which, according to the present appearances, will ruin one half of the nation, and starve the other. A maximum, or highest price, beyond which nothing is to be sold, is now promulgated under very severe penalties for all who shall infringe it. Such a regulation as this, must, in its nature, be highly complex, and, by way of simplifying it, the price of every kind of merchandise is fixed at a third above what it bore in 1791: but as no distinction is made between the produce of the country, and articles imported--between the small retailer, who has purchased perhaps at double the rate he is allowed to sell at, and the wholesale speculator, this very simplification renders the whole absurd and inexecutable.--The result was such as might have been expected; previous to the day on which the decree was to take place, shopkeepers secreted as many of their goods as they could; and, when the day arrived, the people laid siege to them in crowds, some buying at the maximum, others less ceremonious, and in a few hours little remained in the shop beyond the fixtures. The farmers have since brought neither butter nor eggs to market, the butchers refuse to kill as usual, and, in short, nothing is to be purchased openly. The country people, instead of selling provisions publicly, take them to private houses; and, in addition to the former exorbitant prices, we are taxed for the risk that is incurred by evading the law. A dozen of eggs, or a leg of mutton, are now conveyed from house to house with as much mystery, as a case of fire-arms, or a treasonable correspondence; the whole republic is in a sort of training like the Spartan youth; and we are obliged to have recourse to dexterity and intrigue to procure us a dinner. Our legislators, aware of what they term the "aristocratie marchande,"-- that is to say, that tradesmen would naturally shut up their shops when nothing was to be gained--provided, by a clause in the above law, that no one should do this in less time than a year; but as the injunction only obliged them to keep the shops open, and not to have goods to sell, every demand is at first always answered in the negative, till a sort of intelligence becomes established betwixt the buyer and seller, when the former, if he may be trusted, is informed in a low key, that certain articles may be had, but not au maximum.--Thus even the rich cannot obtain the necessaries of life without difficulty and submitting to imposition--and the decent poor, who will not pillage nor intimidate the tradesmen, are more embarrassed than ever. The above species of contraband commerce is carried on, indeed, with great circumspection, and no avowed hostilities are attempted in the towns. The great war of the maximum was waged with the farmers and higlers, as soon as it was discovered that they took their commodities privily to such people as they knew would buy at any price, rather than not be supplied. In consequence, the guards were ordered to stop all refractory butter-women at the gates, and conduct them to the town-house, where their merchandize was distributed, without pity or appeal, au maximum, to those of the populace who could clamour loudest. These proceedings alarmed the peasants, and our markets became deserted. New stratagems, on one side, new attacks on the other. The servants were forced to supply themselves at private rendezvous in the night, until some were fined, and others arrested; and the searching all comers from the country became more intolerable than the vexations of the ancient Gabelle.--Detachments of dragoons are sent to scour the farm-yards, arrest the farmers, and bring off in triumph whatever the restive housewives have amassed, to be more profitably disposed of. In this situation we remain, and I suppose shall remain, while the law of the maximum continues in force. The principle of it was certainly good, but it is found impossible to reduce it to practice so equitably as to affect all alike: and as laws which are not executed are for the most part rather pernicious than nugatory, informations, arrests, imposition, and scarcity are the only ends which this measure seems to have answered. The houses of detention, before insupportable, are now yet more crouded with farmers and shopkeepers suspected of opposing the law.--Many of the former are so ignorant, as not to conceive that any circumstances ought to deprive them of the right to sell the produce of their farms at the highest price they can get, and regard the maximum much in the same light as they would a law to authorize robbing or housebreaking: as for the latter, they are chiefly small dealers, who bought dearer than they have sold, and are now imprisoned for not selling articles which they have not got. An informer by trade, or a personal enemy, lodges an accusation against a particular tradesman for concealing goods, or not selling au maximum; and whether the accusation be true or false, if the accused is not in office, or a Jacobin, he has very little chance of escaping imprisonment.--It is certain, that if the persecution of these classes of people continue, and commerce (already nearly annihilated by the war) be thus shackled, an absolute want of various articles of primary consumption must ensue; but if Paris and the armies can be supplied, the starving the departments will be a mere pleasurable experiment to their humane representatives! March 1, 1794. The freedom of the press is so perfectly well regulated, that it is not surprizing we are indulged with the permission of seeing the public papers: yet this indulgence is often, I assure you, a source of much perplexity to me--our more intimate associates know that I am a native of England, and as often as any debates of our House of Commons are published, they apply to me for explanations which it is not always in my power to give them. I have in vain endeavoured to make them comprehend the nature of an opposition from system, so that when they see any thing advanced by a member exactly the reverse of truth, they are wondering how he can be so ill informed, and never suspect him of saying what he does not believe himself. It must be confessed, however, that our extracts from the English papers often form so complete a contrast with facts, that a foreigner unacquainted with the tactics of professional patriotism, may very naturally read them with some surprize. A noble Peer, for example, (whose wisdom is not to be disputed, since the Abbe Mably calls him the English Socrates,*) asserts that the French troops are the best clothed in Europe; yet letters, of nearly the same date with the Earl's speech, from two Generals and a Deputy at the head of different armies intreat a supply of covering for their denudated legions, and add, that they are obliged to march in wooden shoes!** * It is surely a reflection on the English discernment not to have adopted this happy appellation, in which, however, as well as in many other parts of "the rights of Man and the Citizen," the Abbe seems to have consulted his own zeal, rather than the noble Peer's modesty. ** If the French troops are now better clothed, it is the effect of requisitions and pre-emptions, which have ruined the manufacturers. --Patriots of the North, would you wish to see our soldiers clothed by the same means? --On another occasion, your British Sage describes, with great eloquence, the enthusiasm with which the youth of France "start to arms at the call of the Convention;" while the peaceful citizen anticipates, with equal eagerness, the less glorious injunction to extract saltpetre.--The revolts, and the coercion, necessary to enforce the departure of the first levies (however fear, shame, and discipline, may have since made them soldiers, though not republicans) might have corrected the ardour of the orator's inventive talents; and the zeal of the French in manufacturing salpetre, has been of so slow a growth, that any reference to it is peculiarly unlucky. For several months the Convention has recommended, invited, intreated, and ordered the whole country to occupy themselves in the process necessary for obtaining nitre; but the republican enthusiasm was so tardy, that scarcely an ounce appeared, till a long list of sound penal laws, with fines and imprisonments in every line, roused the public spirit more effectually.* * Two years imprisonment was the punishment assigned to a Citizen who should be found to obstruct in any way the fabricating saltpetre. If you had a house that was adjudged to contain the materials required, and expostulated against pulling it down, the penalty was incurred.--I believe something of this kind existed under the old government, the abuses of which are the only parts the republic seems to have preserved. --Another cause also has much favoured the extension of this manufacture: the necessity of procuring gunpowder at any rate has secured an exemption from serving in the army to those who shall be employed in making it.--* * Many, under this pretext, even procured their discharge from the army; and it was eventually found requisite to stop this commutation of service by a decree. --On this account vast numbers of young men, whose martial propensities are not too vehement for calculation, considering the extraction of saltpetre as more safe than the use of it, have seriously devoted themselves to the business. Thus, between fear of the Convention and of the enemy, has been produced that enthusiasm which seems so grateful to Lord S____. Yet, if the French are struck by the dissimilitude of facts with the language of your English patriots, there are other circumstances which appear still more unaccountable to them. I acknowledge the word patriotism is not perfectly understood any where in France, nor do my prison-associates abound in it; but still they find it difficult to reconcile the love of their country, so exclusively boasted by certain senators, with their eulogiums on a government, and on men who avow an implacable hatred to it, and are the professed agents of its future destruction. The Houses of Lords and Commons resound with panegyrics on France; the Convention with _"delenda est Carthate"--"ces vils Insulaires"--"de peuple marchand, boutiquier"--"ces laches Anglois"--_ &c. &c. ("Carthage must be destroyed"--"those vile Islanders"--"that nation of shopkeepers"--"those cowardly Englishmen"--&c.) The efforts of the English patriots overtly tend to the consolidation of the French republic, while the demagogues of France are yet more strenuous for the abolition of monarchy in England. The virtues of certain people called Muir and Palmer,* are at once the theme of Mr. Fox and Robespierre,** of Mr. Grey and Barrere,***, of Collot d'Herbois**** and Mr. Sheridan; and their fate is lamented as much at the Jacobins as at St. Stephen's.***** * If I have not mentioned these gentlemen with the respect due to their celebrity, their friends must pardon me. To say truth, I did not at this time think of them with much complacence, as I had heard of them only from the Jacobins, by whom they were represented as the leaders of a Convention, which was to arm ninety thousand men, for the establishment of a system similar to that existing in France. **The French were so much misled by the eloquence of these gentlemen in their favour, that they were all exhibited on the stage in red caps and cropped heads, welcoming the arrival of their Gallic friends in England, and triumphing in the overthrow of the British constitution, and the dethronement of the King. *** If we may credit the assertions of Barrere, the friendship of the Committee of Public Welfare was not merely verbal. He says, the secret register of the Committee furnishes proofs of their having sent three frigates to intercept these distinguished victims, whom their ungrateful country had so ignominiously banished. **** This humane and ingenious gentleman, by profession a player, is known likewise as the author of several farces and vaudevilles, and of the executions at Lyons.--It is asserted, that many of the inhabitants of this unfortunate city expiated under the Guillotine the crime of having formerly hissed Collot's successful attempts on the stage. ***** The printing of a particular speech was interdicted on account of its containing allusions to certain circumstances, the knowledge of which might be of disservice to their unfortunate friends during their trial. --The conduct of Mr. Pitt is not more acrimoniously discussed at the Palais National than by a part of his colleagues; and the censure of the British government, which is now the order of the day at the Jacobins, is nearly the echo of your parliamentary debates.* * Allowing for the difference of education in the orators, a journeyman shoemaker was, I think, as eloquent, and not more abusive, than the facetious _ci-devant_ protege of Lord T____d. --All this, however, does not appear to me out of the natural order of things; it is the sorry history of opposition for a century and an half, and our political rectitude, I fear, is not increasing: but the French, who are in their way the most corrupt people in Europe, have not hitherto, from the nature of their government, been familiar with this particular mode of provoking corruption, nor are they at present likely to become so. Indeed, I must here observe, that your English Jacobins, if they are wise, should not attempt to introduce the revolutionary system; for though the total possession of such a government is very alluring, yet the prudence, which looks to futurity, and the incertitude of sublunary events, must acknowledge it is "Caesar or nothing;" and that it offers no resource in case of those segregations, which the jealousy of power, or the appropriation of spoil, may occasion, even amongst the most virtuous associates.--The eloquence of a discontented orator is here silenced, not by a pension, but by a mandat d'arret; and the obstinate patriotism, which with you could not be softened with less than a participation of authority, is more cheaply secured by the Guillotine. A menace is more efficacious than a bribe, and in this respect I agree with Mr. Thomas Paine,* that a republic is undoubtedly more oeconomical than a monarchy; besides, that being conducted on such principles, it has the advantage of simplifying the science of government, as it consults neither the interests nor weaknesses of mankind; and, disdaining to administer either to avarice or vanity, subdues its enemies by the sole influence of terror.--* * This gentleman's fate is truly to be pitied. After rejecting, as his friends assert, two hundred a year from the English Ministry, he is obliged now to be silent gratis, with the additional desagrement of occupying a corner in the Luxembourg. --Adieu!--Heaven knows how often I may have to repeat the word thus unmeaningly. I sit here, like Pope's bard "lulled by soft zephyrs through the broken pane," and scribbling high-sounding phrases of monarchy, patriotism, and republics, while I forget the humbler subject of our wants and embarrassments. We can scarcely procure either bread, meat, or any thing else: the house is crouded by an importation of prisoners from Abbeville, and we are more strictly guarded than ever. My friend ennuyes as usual, and I grow impatient, not having sang froid enough for a true French ennuie in a situation that would tempt one to hang one's self. March, 1794. The aspect of the times promises no change in our favour; on the contrary, every day seems to bring its attendant evil. The gentry who had escaped the comprehensive decree against suspected people, are now swept away in this and the three neighbouring departments by a private order of the representatives, St. Just, Lebas, and Dumont.* * The order was to arrest, without exception, all the ci-devant Noblessse, men, women, and children, in the departments of the Somme, North, and Pas de Calais, and to exclude them rigourously from all external communication--(mettre au secret). --A severer regimen is to be adopted in the prisons, and husbands are already separated from their wives, and fathers from their daughters, for the purpose, as it is alledged, of preserving good morals. Both this place and the Bicetre being too full to admit of more inhabitants, two large buildings in the town are now appropriated to the male prisoners.-- My friends continue at Arras, and, I fear, in extreme distress. I understand they have been plundered of what things they had with them, and the little supply I was able to send them was intercepted by some of the harpies of the prisons. Mrs. D____'s health has not been able to sustain these accumulated misfortunes, and she is at present at the hospital. All this is far from enlivening, even had I a larger share of the national philosophy; and did I not oftener make what I observe, than what I suffer, the subject of my letters, I should tax your patience as much by repetition, as I may by dullness. When I enumerated in my last letters a few of the obligations the French have to their friends in England, I ought also to have observed, with how little gratitude they behave to those who are here. Without mentioning Mr. Thomas Paine, whose persecution will doubtless be recorded by abler pens, nothing, I assure you, can be more unpleasant than the situation of one of these Anglo-Gallican patriots. The republicans, supposing that an Englishman who affects a partiality for them can be only a spy, execute all the laws, which concern foreigners, upon him with additional rigour;* and when an English Jacobin arrives in prison, far from meeting with consolation or sympathy, his distresses are beheld with triumph, and his person avoided with abhorrence. They talk much here of a gentleman, of very democratic principles, who left the prison before I came. It seems, that, notwithstanding Dumont condescended to visit at his house, and was on terms of intimacy with him, he was arrested, and not distinguished from the rest of his countrymen, except by being more harshly treated. The case of this unfortunate gentleman was rendered peculiarly amusing to his companions, and mortifying to himself, by his having a very pretty mistress, who had sufficient influence over Dumont to obtain any thing but the liberation of her protector. The Deputy was on this head inflexible; doubtless, as a proof of his impartial observance of the laws, and to show that, like the just man in Horace, he despised the clamour of the vulgar, who did not scruple to hint, that the crime of our countryman was rather of a moral than a political nature--that he was unaccommodating, and recalcitrant--addicted to suspicions and jealousies, which it was thought charitable to cure him of, by a little wholesome seclusion. In fact, the summary of this gentleman's history is not calculated to tempt his fellow societists on your side of the water to imitate his example.--After taking refuge in France from the tyranny and disappointments he experienced in England, and purchasing a large national property to secure himself the rights of a citizen, he is awakened from his dream of freedom, to find himself lodged in a prison, his estate under sequestration, and his mistress in requisition.--Let us leave this Coriolanus among the Volscians--it is a persecution to make converts, rather than martyrs, and _"Quand le malheur ne seroit bon, "Qu'a mettre un sot a la raison, "Toujours seroit-ce a juste cause "Qu'on le dit bon a quelque chose."_* * If calamity were only good to restore a fool to his senses, still we might justly say, "that it was good for some thing." Yours, &c. March 5, 1794. Of what strange influence is this word revolution, that it should thus, like a talisman of romance, keep inchained, as it were, the reasoning faculties of twenty millions of people! France is at this moment looking for the decision of its fate in the quarrels of two miserable clubs, composed of individuals who are either despised or detested. The municipality of Paris favours the Cordeliers, the Convention the Jacobins; and it is easy to perceive, that in this cafe the auxiliaries are principals, and must shortly come to such an open rupture, as will end in the destruction of either one or the other. The world would be uninhabitable, could the combinations of the wicked be permanent; and it is fortunate for the tranquil and upright part of mankind, that the attainment of the purposes for which such combinations are formed, is usually the signal of their dissolution. The municipality of Paris had been the iniquitous drudges of the Jacobin party in the legislative assembly--they were made the instruments of massacring the prisoners,* of dethroning and executing the king,** and successively of destroying the Brissotine faction,*** filling the prisons with all who were obnoxious to the republicans,**** and of involving a repentant nation in the irremidiable guilt of the Queen's death.--***** * It is well known that the assassins were hired and paid by the municipality, and that some of the members presided at these horrors in their scarfs of office. ** The whole of what is called the revolution of the 10th of August may very justly be ascribed to the municipality of Paris--I mean the active part of it. The planning and political part has been so often disputed by different members of the Convention, that it is not easy to decide on any thing, except that the very terms of these disputes fully evince, that the people at large, and more particularly the departments, were both innocent, and, until it took place, ignorant of an event which has plunged the country into so many crimes and calamities. *** A former imprisonment of Hebert formed a principal charge against the Brissotines, and, indeed, the one that was most insisted on at their trial, if we except that of having precipitated France into a war with England.--It must be difficult for the English Jacobins to decide on this occasion between the virtues of their dead friends and those of their living ones. **** The famous definition of suspected persons originated with the municipality of Paris. ***** It is certain that those who, deceived by the calumnies of faction, permitted, if not assented to, the King's death, at this time regretted it; and I believe I have before observed, that one of the reasons urged in support of the expediency of putting the Queen to death, was, that it would make the army and people decisive, by banishing all hope of peace or accommodation. See the _Moniteur_ of that time, which, as I have elsewhere observed, may be always considered as official. --These services being too great for adequate reward, were not rewarded at all; and the municipality, tired of the odium of crime, without the participation of power, has seized on its portion of tyranny; while the convention, at once jealous and timid, exasperated and doubtful, yet menaces with the trepidation of a rival, rather than with the security of a conqueror. Hebert, the Deputy-solicitor for the commune of Paris, appears on this occasion as the opponent of the whole legislature; and all the temporizing eloquence of Barrere, and the mysterious phraseology of Robespierre, are employed to decry his morals, and to reproach the ministers with the sums which have been the price of his labours.--* * Five thousand pounds, two thousand pounds, and other considerable sums, were paid to Hebert for supplying the army with his paper, called "La Pere Duchene." Let whoever has read one of them, conceive the nature of a government to which such support was necessary, which supposed its interests promoted by a total extinction of morals, decency, and religion. I could almost wish, for the sake of exhibiting vice under its most odious colours, that my sex and my country permitted me to quote one. --Virtuous republicans! the morals of Hebert were pure when he outraged humanity in his accusations of the Queen--they were pure when he prostrated the stupid multitude at the feet of a Goddess of Reason;* they were pure while his execrable paper served to corrupt the army, and to eradicate every principle which yet distinguished the French as a civilized people. * Madame Momoro, the unfortunate woman who exposed herself in this pageant, was guillotined as an accomplice of Hebert, together with the wives of Hebert and Camille Desmoulins. --Yet, atrocious as his crimes are, they form half the Magna Charta of the republic,* and the authority of the Convention is still supported by them. * What are the death of the King, and the murders of August and September, 1792, but the Magna Charta of the republicans? --It is his person, not his guilt, that is proscribed; and if the one be threatened with the scaffold, the fruits of the other are held sacred. He will fall a sacrifice--not to offended religion or morality, but to the fears and resentment of his accomplices! Amidst the dissentions of two parties, between which neither reason nor humanity can discover a preference, a third seems to have formed itself, equally inimical to, and hated by both. At the head of it are Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Philipeaux, &c.--I own I have no better opinion of the integrity of these, than of the rest; but they profess themselves the advocates of a system of mildness and moderation, and, situated as this country is at present, even the affectation of virtue is captivating.-- As far as they dare, the people are partial to them: bending beneath the weight of a sanguinary and turbulent despotism, if they sigh not for freedom, they do for repose; and the harassed mind, bereft of its own energy, looks up with indolent hope for relief from a change of factions. They forget that Danton is actuated by ambitious jealousy, that Camille Desmoulins is hacknied in the atrocities of the revolution, and that their partizans are adventurers, with neither honour nor morals. Yet, after all, if they will destroy a few of the guillotines, open our bastilles, and give us at least the security of servitude, we shall be content to leave these retrospections to posterity, and be thankful that in this our day the wicked sometimes perceive it their interest to do good. In this state of seclusion, when I remark to you the temper of the public at any important crisis, you are, perhaps, curious to know my sources of intelligence; but such details are unnecessary. I might, indeed, write you a manuel des prisons, and, like Trenck or Latude, by a vain display of ingenuity, deprive some future victim of a resource. It is enough, that Providence itself seems to aid our invention, when its object is to elude tyranny; besides that a constant accession of prisoners from all parts, who are too numerous to be kept separate, necessarily circulates among us whatever passes in the world. The Convention has lately made a sort of _pas retrogade_ [Retrogade movement.] in the doctrine of holy equality, by decreeing, that every officer who has a command shall be able to read and write, though it cannot be denied that their reasons for this lese democratie are of some weight. All gentlemen, or, as it is expressed here, noblesse, have been recalled from the army, and replaced by officers chosen by the soldiers themselves, [Under the rank of field-officers.] whose affections are often conciliated by qualities not essentially military, though sometimes professional. A buffoon, or a pot-companion, is, of course, often more popular than a disciplinarian; and the brightest talents lose their influence when put in competition with a head that can bear a greater number of bottles.* * Hence it happened, that a post was sometimes confided to one who could not read the parole and countersign; expeditions failed, because commanding officers mistook on the map a river for a road, or woods for mountains; and the most secret orders were betrayed through the inability of those to whom they were entrusted to read them. --Yet this reading and writing are a sort of aristocratic distinctions, and not among the primeval rights of man; so that it is possible your English patriots will not approve of any regulations founded on them. But this is not the only point on which there is an apparent discordance between them and their friends here--the severity of Messrs. Muir and Palmer's sentence is pathetically lamented in the House of Commons, while the Tribunal Revolutionnaire (in obedience to private orders) is petitioning, that any disrespect towards the convention shall be punished with death. In England, it is asserted, that the people have a right to decide on the continuation of the war--here it is proposed to declare suspicious, and treat accordingly, all who shall dare talk of peace.--Mr. Fox and Robespierre must settle these trifling variations at the general congress of republicans, when the latter shall (as they profess) have dethroned all the potentates in Europe! Do you not read of cart-loads of patriotic gifts,* bales of lint and bandages, and stockings, knit by the hands of fair citizens, for the use of the soldiers? * A sum of money was at this time publicly offered to the Convention for defraying the expences and repairs of the guillotine.--I know not if it were intended patriotically or correctionally; but the legislative delicacy was hurt, and the bearer of the gift ordered for examination to the Committee of General Safety, who most probably sent him to expiate either his patriotism or his pleasantry in a prison. --Do you not read, and call me calumniator, and ask if these are proofs that there is no public spirit in France? Yes, the public spirit of an eastern tributary, who offers, with apprehensive devotion, a part of the wealth which he fears the hand of despotism may ravish entirely.--The wives and daughters of husbands and fathers, who are pining in arbitrary confinement, are employed in these feeble efforts, to deprecate the malice of their persecutors; and these voluntary tributes are but too often proportioned, not to the abilities, but the miseries of the donor.* * A lady, confined in one of the state prisons, made an offering, through the hands of a Deputy, of ten thousand livres; but the Convention observed, that this could not properly be deemed a gift-- for, as she was doubtless a suspicious person, all she had belonged of right to the republic: _"Elle doit etre a moi, dit il, et la raison, "C'est que je m'appelle Lion "A cela l'on n'a rien a dire."_ -- La Fontaine. Sometimes these _dons patriotiques_ were collected by a band of Jacobins, at others regularly assessed by a Representative on mission; but on all occasions the aristocrats were most assiduous and most liberal: "Urg'd by th' imperious soldier's fierce command, "The groaning Greeks break up their golden caverns, "The accumulated wealth of toiling ages; . . . . . . . . "That wealth, too sacred for their country's use; "That wealth, too pleasing to be lost for freedom, "That wealth, which, granted to their weeping Prince, "Had rang'd embattled nations at their gates." -- Johnson. Or, what is still better, have relieved the exigencies of the state, without offering a pretext for the horrors of a revolution.--O selfish luxury, impolitic avarice, how are ye punished? robbed of your enjoyments and your wealth--glad even to commute both for a painful existence! --The most splendid sacrifices that fill the bulletin of the Convention, and claim an honourable mention in their registers, are made by the enemies of the republican government--by those who have already been the objects of persecution, or are fearful of becoming such.--Ah, your prison and guillotine are able financiers: they raise, feed, and clothe an army, in less time than you can procure a tardy vote from the most complaisant House of Commons!--Your, &c. March 17, 1794. After some days of agitation and suspense, we learn that the popularity of Robespierre is victorious, and that Hebert and his partizans are arrested. Were the intrinsic claims of either party considered, without regard to the circumstances of the moment, it might seem strange I should express myself as though the result of a contest between such men could excite a general interest: yet a people sadly skilled in the gradations of evil, and inured to a choice only of what is bad, learn to prefer comparatively, with no other view than that of adopting what may be least injurious to themselves; and the merit of the object is out of the question. Hence it is, that the public wish was in favour of Robespierre; for, besides that his cautious character has given him an advantage over the undisguised profligacy of Hebert, it is conjectured by many, that the more merciful politics professed by Camille Desmoulins, are secretly suggested, or, at least assented to, by the former.* * This was the opinion of many.--The Convention and the Jacobins had taken alarm at a paper called "The Old Cordelier," written by Camille Desmoulins, apparently with a view to introduce a milder system of government. The author had been censured at the one, expelled the other, and defended by Robespierre, who seems not to have abandoned him until he found the Convention resolved to persist in the sanguinary plan they had adopted. Robespierre afterwards sacrificed his friends to retrieve his influence; but could his views have been answered by humane measures, as certainly as by cruel ones, I think he would have preferred the first; for I repeat, that the Convention at large were averse from any thing like reason or justice, and Robespierre more than once risked his popularity by professions of moderation.--The most eloquent speech I have seen of his was previous to the death of Danton, and it seems evidently intended to sound the principles of his colleagues as to a change of system.--Camille Desmoulins has excited some interest, and has been deemed a kind of martyr to humanity. Perhaps nothing marks the horrors of the time more than such a partiality.--Camille Desmoulins, under an appearance of simplicity, was an adventurer, whose pen had been employed to mislead the people from the beginning of the revolution. He had been very active on the 10th of August; and even in the papers which have given him a comparative reputation, he is the panegyrist of Marat, and recommends "une Guillotine economique;" that is, a discrimination in favour of himself and his party, who now began to fear they might themselves be sacrificed by the Convention and deserted by Robespierre--after being the accomplices and tools of both. The vicissitudes of the revolution have hitherto offered nothing but a change of vices and of parties; nor can I regard this defeat of the municipality of Paris as any thing more: the event is, however, important, and will probably have great influence on the future. After having so long authorized, and profited by, the crimes of those they have now sacrificed, the Convention are willing to have it supposed they were themselves held in subjection by Hebert and the other representatives of the Parisian mob.--Admitting this to be true, having regained their independence, we ought naturally to expect a more rational and humane system will take place; but this is a mere hope, and the present occurrences are far from justifying it. We hear much of the guilt of the fallen party, and little of remedying its effects--much of punishment, and little of reform; and the people are excited to vengeance, without being permitted to claim redress. In the meanwhile, fearful of trusting to the cold preference which they owe to a superior abhorrence of their adversaries, the Convention have ordered their colleagues on mission to glean the few arms still remaining in the hands of the National Guard, and to arrest all who may be suspected of connection with the adverse party.--Dumont has performed this service here very diligently; and, by way of supererogation, has sent the Commandant of Amiens to the Bicetre, his wife, who was ill, to the hospital, and two young children to this place. As usual, these proceedings excite secret murmurs, but are nevertheless yielded to with perfect submission. One can never, on these occasions, cease admiring the endurance of the French character. In other countries, at every change of party, the people are flattered with the prospect of advantage, or conciliated by indulgences; but here they gain nothing by change, except an accumulation of oppression--and the success of a new party is always the harbinger of some new tyranny. While the fall of Hebert is proclaimed as the triumph of freedom, all the citizens are disarmed by way of collateral security; and at the instant he is accused by the Convention of atheism and immorality,* a militant police is sent forth to devastate the churches, and punish those who are detected in observing the Sabbath--_"mais plutot souffrir que mourir, c'est la devise des Francois."_ ["To suffer rather than die is the motto of Frenchmen."] * It is remarkable, that the persecution of religion was never more violent than at the time when the Convention were anathematizing Hebert and his party for athiesm. --Brissot and his companions died singing a paraphrase of my quotation: _"Plutot la mort que l'esclavage, "C'est la devise des Francois."_ ["Death before slavery, is the Frenchman's motto."] --Let those who reflect on what France has submitted to under them and their successors decide, whether the original be not more apposite. I hope the act of accusation against Chabot has been published in England, for the benefit of your English patriots: I do not mean by way of warning, but example. It appears, that the said Chabot, and four or five of his colleagues in the Convention, had been bribed to serve a stock-jobbing business at a stipulated sum,* and that the money was to be divided amongst them. * Chabot, Fabre d'Eglantine, (author of "l'Intrigue Epistolaire," and several other admired dramatic pieces,) Delaunay d'Angers, Julien de Toulouse, and Bazire, were bribed to procure the passing certain decrees, tending to enrich particular people, by defrauding the East India Company.--Delaunay and Julien (both re-elected into the present Assembly) escaped by flight, the rest were guillotined. --It is probable, that these little peculations might have passed unnoticed in patriots of such note, but that the intrigues and popular character of Chabot made it necessary to dispose of him, and his accomplices suffered to give a countenance to the measure. --Chabot, with great reason, insisted on his claim to an extra share, on account, as he expressed it, of having the reputation of one of the first patriots in Europe. Now this I look upon to be a very useful hint, as it tends to establish a tariff of reputations, rather than of talents. In England, you distinguish too much in favour of the latter; and, in a question of purchase, a Minister often prefers a "commodity" of rhetoricians, to one of "good names."--I confess, I am of Chabot's opinion; and think a vote from a member who has some reputation for honesty, ought to be better paid for than the eloquence which, weakened by the vices of the orator, ceases to persuade. How it is that the patriotic harangues at St. Stephen's serve only to amuse the auditors, who identify the sentiments they express as little with the speaker, as they would those of Cato's soliloquy with the actor who personates the character for the night? I fear the people reason like Chabot, and are "fools to fame." Perhaps it is fortunate for England, that those whose talents and principles would make them most dangerous, are become least so, because both are counteracted by the public contempt. Ought it not to humble the pride, and correct the errors, which too often accompany great genius, that the meanest capacity can distinguish between talents and virtue; and that even in the moment our wonder is excited by the one, a sort of intrinsic preference is given to the other?--Yours, &c. Providence, April 15, 1794. "The friendship of bad men turns to fear:" and in this single phrase of our popular bard is comprized the history of all the parties who have succeeded each other during the revolution.--Danton has been sacrificed to Robespierre's jealousy,* and Camille Desmoulins to support his popularity;** and both, after sharing in the crimes, and contributing to the punishment, of Hebert and his associates, have followed them to the same scaffold. * The ferocious courage of Danton had, on the 10th of August, the 2d of September, the 31st of May, and other occasions, been the ductile instrument of Robespierre; but, in the course of their iniquitous connection, it should seem, they had committed themselves too much to each other. Danton had betrayed a desire of more exclusively profiting by his crimes; and Robespierre's views been equally ambitious, though less daring, their mutual jealousies had risen to a height which rendered the sacrifice of one party necessary--and Robespierre had the address to secure himself, by striking the first blow. They had supped in the country, and returned together to Paris, on the night Danton was arrested; and, it may be supposed, that in this interview, which was intended to produce a reconciliation, they had been convinced that neither was to be trusted by the other. ** There can be no doubt but Robespierre had encouraged Camille Desmoulins to publish his paper, intitled "The Old Cordelier," in which some translations from Tacitus, descriptive of every kind of tyranny, were applied to the times, and a change of system indirectly proposed. The publication became highly popular, except with the Convention and the Jacobins; these, however, it was requisite for Robespierre to conciliate; and Camille Desmoulins was sacrificed, to prove that he did not favour the obnoxious moderation of his friend. I know not if one's heart gain any thing by this habitual contemplation of successive victims, who ought not to inspire pity, and whom justice and humanity forbid one to regret.--How many parties have fallen, who seem to have laboured only to transmit a dear-bought tyranny, which they had not time to enjoy themselves, to their successors: The French revolutionists may, indeed, adopt the motto of Virgil's Bees, "Not for ourselves, but for you." The monstrous powers claimed for the Convention by the Brissotines,* with the hope of exclusively exercising them, were fatal to themselves--the party that overthrew the Brissotines in its turn became insignificant--and a small number of them only, under the description of Committees of Public Welfare and General Safety, gradually usurped the whole authority. * The victorious Brissotines, after the 10th of August, availing themselves of the stupor of one part of the people, and the fanaticism of the other, required that the new Convention might be entrusted with unlimited powers. Not a thousandth portion of those who elected the members, perhaps, comprehended the dreadful extent of such a demand, as absurd as it has proved fatal.--_"Tout pouvoir sans bornes ne fauroit etre legitime, parce qu'il n'a jamais pu avoir d'origine legitime, car nous ne pouvons pas donner a un autre plus de pouvoir sur nous que nous n'en avons nous-memes"_ [Montesquieu.]:--that is, the power which we accord to others, or which we have over ourselves, cannot exceed the bounds prescribed by the immutable laws of truth and justice. The united voice of the whole French nation could not bestow on their representatives a right to murder or oppress one innocent man. --Even of these, several have already perished; and in the hands of Robespierre, and half a dozen others of equal talents and equal atrocity, but less cunning, center at present all the fruits of so many miseries, and so many crimes. In all these conflicts of party, the victory seems hitherto to have remained with the most artful, rather than the most able; and it is under the former title that Robespierre, and his colleagues in the Committee of Public Welfare, are now left inheritors of a power more despotic than that exercised in Japan.--Robespierre is certainly not deficient in abilities, but they are not great in proportion to the influence they have acquired him. They may, perhaps, be more properly called singular than great, and consist in the art of appropriating to his own advantage both the events of chance and the labours of others, and of captivating the people by an exterior of severe virtue, which a cold heart enables him to assume, and which a profligacy, not the effect of strong passions, but of system, is easily subjected to. He is not eloquent, nor are his speeches, as compositions,* equal to those of Collot d'Herbais, Barrere, or Billaud Varennes; but, by contriving to reserve himself for extraordinary occasions, such as announcing plots, victories, and systems of government, he is heard with an interest which finally becomes transferred from his subject to himself.** * The most celebrated members of the Convention are only readers of speeches, composed with great labour, either by themselves or others; and I think it is distinguishable, that many are manufactured by the same hand. The style and spirit of Lindet, Barrere, and Carnot, seem to be in common. ** The following passages, from a speech of Dubois Crance, who may be supposed a competent judge, at once furnish an idea of Robespierre's oratory, exhibit a leading feature in his character, and expose some of the arts by which the revolutionary despotism was maintained: _"Rapportant tout a lui seul, jusqu'a la patrie, il n'en parla jamais que pour s'en designer comme l'unique defenseur: otez de ses longs discours tout ce qui n'a rapport qu'a son personnel, vous n'y trouverez plus que de seches applications de prinipes connus, et surtout de phrases preparees pour amener encore son eloge. Vous l'avez juge timide, parce que son imagination, que l'on croyait ardente, qui n'etait que feroce, parassait exagerer souvent les maux de son pays. C'etait une jonglerie: il ne croyait ni aux conspirations don't il faisait tant d'etalage, ni aux poignards aux-quels il feignoit de sse devouer; mais il vouloit que les citoyens fusssent constamment en defiance l'un de l'autre," &c._ "Affecting to consider all things, even the fate of the country, as depending on himself alone, he never spoke of it but with a view to point himself out its principal defender.--If you take away from his long harangues all that regards him personally, you will find only dry applications of familiar principles, and, above all, those studied turns, which were artfully prepared to introduce his own eternal panegyric.--You supposed him timid because his imagination (which was not merely ardent, as was supposed, but ferocious) seemed often to exaggerate the misfortunes of his country.--This was a mere trick: he believed neither in the conspiracies he made so great a parade of, nor in the poignards to which he pretended to devote himself as a victim.--His real design was to infuse into the minds of all men an unceasing diffidence of each other." One cannot study the characters of these men, and the revolution, without wonder; and, after an hour of such scribbling, I wake to the scene around me, and my wonder is not a little increased, at the idea that the fate of such an individual as myself should be at all dependent on either.--My friend Mad. de ____ is ill,* and taken to the hospital, so that having no longer the care of dissipating her ennui, I am at full liberty to indulge my own. * I have generally made use of the titles and distinctions by which the people I mention were known before the revolution; for, besides that I found it difficult to habituate my pen to the republican system of levelling, the person to whom these letters were addressed would not have known who was meant by the new appellations. It is, however, to be observed, that, except in private aristocratic intercourse, the word Citizen was in general use; and that those who had titles relinquished them and assumed their family names. --Yet I know not how it is, but, as I have before observed to you, I do not ennuye--my mind is constantly occupied, though my heart is vacant-- curiosity serves instead of interest, and I really find it sufficiently amusing to conjecture how long my head may remain on my shoulders.--You will, I dare say, agree with me that any doubts on such a subject are very well calculated to remove the tranquil sort of indifference which produces ennui; though, to judge by the greater part of my fellow-prisoners, one would not think so.--There is something surely in the character of the French, which makes them differ both in prosperity and adversity from other people. Here are many amongst us who see little more in the loss of their liberty than a privation of their usual amusements; and I have known some who had the good fortune to obtain their release at noon, exhibit themselves at the theatre at night.--God knows how such minds are constituted: for my part, when some consolatory illusion restores me to freedom, I associate with it no idea of positive pleasure, but long for a sort of intermediate state, which may repose my harassed faculties, and in which mere comfort and security are portrayed as luxuries. After being so long deprived of the decent accommodations of life, secluded from the intercourse which constitutes its best enjoyments, trembling for my own fate, and hourly lamenting that of my friends, the very thoughts of tumult or gaiety seem oppressive, and the desire of peace, for the moment, banishes every other. One must have no heart, after so many sufferings, not to prefer the castle of Indolence to the palace of Armida. The coarse organs of an Argus at the door, who is all day employed in calling to my high-born companions by the republican appellations of _"Citoyen,"_ and _"Citoyenne,"_ has just interrupted me by a summons to receive a letter from my unfortunate friends at Arras.--It was given me open;* of course they say nothing of their situation, though I have reason to believe it is dreadful. * The opening of letters was now so generally avowed, that people who corresponded on business, and were desirous their letters should be delivered, put them in the post without sealing; otherwise they were often torn in opening, thrown aside, or detained, to save the trouble of perusing. --They have now written to me for assistance, which I have not the means of affording them. Every thing I have is under sequestration; and the difficulty which attends the negociating any drafts drawn upon England, has made it nearly impossible to procure money in the usual way, even if I were not confined. The friendship of Mad. de ____ will be little available to me. Her extensive fortune, before frittered to mere competency by the extortions of the revolution, now scarcely supplies her own wants; and her tenants humanely take the opportunity of her present distress to avoid paying their rent.* * In some instances servants or tenants have been known to seize on portions of land for their own use--in others the country municipalities exacted as the price of a certificate of civism, (without which no release from prison could be obtained,) such leases, lands, or privileges, as they thought the embarrassments of their landlords would induce them to grant. Almost every where the houses of persons arrested were pilfered either by their own servants or the agents of the republic. I have known an elegant house put in requisition to erect blacksmiths' forges in for the use of the army, and another filled with tailors employed in making soldiers' clothes.--Houses were likewise not unfrequently abandoned by the servants through fear of sharing the fate of their masters, and sometimes exposed equally by the arrest of those who had been left in charge, in order to extort discoveries of plate, money, &c. the concealment of which they might be supposed privy to. --So that I have no resource, either for myself or Mrs. D____, but the sale of a few trinkets, which I had fortunately secreted on my first arrest. How are we to exist, and what an existence to be solicitous about! In gayer moments, and, perhaps, a little tinctured by romantic refinement, I have thought Dr. Johnson made poverty too exclusively the subject of compassion: indeed I believe he used to say, it was the only evil he really felt for. This, to one who has known only mental suffering, appears the notion of a coarse mind; but I doubt whether, the first time we are alarmed by the fear of want, the dread of dependence does not render us in part his converts. The opinion of our English sage is more natural than we may at first imagine; or why is it that we are affected by the simple distresses of Jane Shore, beyond those of any other heroine?--Yours. April 22, 1794. Our abode becomes daily more crouded; and I observe, that the greater part of those now arrested are farmers. This appears strange enough, when we consider how much the revolutionary persecution has hitherto spared this class of people; and you will naturally enquire why it has at length reached them. It has been often observed, that the two extremes of society are nearly the same in all countries; the great resemble each other from education, the little from nature. Comparisons, therefore, of morals and manners should be drawn from the intervening classes; yet from this comparison also I believe we must exclude farmers, who are every where the same, and who seem always more marked by professional similitude than national distinction. The French farmer exhibits the same acuteness in all that regards his own interest, and the same stupidity on most other occasions, as the mere English one; and the same objects which enlarge the understanding and dilate the heart of other people, seem to have a contrary effect on both. They contemplate the objects of nature as the stock-jobber does the vicissitudes of the public funds: "the dews of heaven," and the enlivening orb by which they are dispelled, are to the farmer only objects of avaricious speculation; and the scarcity, which is partially profitable, is but too often more welcome than a general abundance.--They consider nothing beyond the limits of their own farms, except for the purpose of making envious comparisons with those of their neighbours; and being fed and clothed almost without intermediate commerce, they have little necessity for communication, and are nearly as isolated a part of society as sailors themselves. The French revolutionists have not been unobserving of these circumstances, nor scrupulous of profiting by them: they knew they might have discussed for ever their metaphysical definitions of the rights of man, without reaching the comprehension, or exciting the interest, of the country people; but that if they would not understand the propagation of the rights of man, they would very easily comprehend an abolition of the rights of their landlords. Accordingly, the first principle of liberty they were taught from the new code was, that they had a right to assemble in arms, to force the surrender of title-deeds; and their first revolutionary notions of equality and property seem to have been manifested by the burning of chateaux, and refusing to pay their rents. They were permitted to intimidate their landlords, in order to force them to emigration, and either to sell their estates at a low price, or leave them to the mercy of the tenants. At a time when the necessities of the state had been great enough to be made the pretext of a dreadful revolution, they were not only almost exempt from contributing to its relief, but were enriched by the common distress; and while the rest of their countrymen beheld with unavailing regret their property gradually replaced by scraps of paper, the peasants became insolent and daring by impunity, refused to sell but for specie, and were daily amassing wealth. It is not therefore to be wondered at, that they were partial to the new order of things. The prisons might have overflowed or been thinned by the miseries of those with whom they had been crowded--the Revolutionary Tribunal might have sacrificed half France, and these selfish citizens, I fear, would have beheld it tranquilly, had not the requisition forced their labourers to the army, and the "maximum" lowered the price of their corn. The exigency of the war, and an internal scarcity, having rendered these measures necessary, and it being found impossible to persuade the farmers into a peaceful compliance with them, the government has had recourse to its usual summary mode of expostulation--a prison or the Guillotine.* * The avarice of the farmers was doubtless to be condemned, but the cruel despotism of the government almost weakened our sense of rectitude; for by confounding error with guilt, and guilt with innocence, they habituated us to indiscriminate pity, and obliged us to transfer our hatred of a crime to those who in punishing it, observed neither mercy nor justice. A farmer was guillotined, because some blades of corn appeared growing in one of his ponds; from which circumstance it was inferred, he had thrown in a large quantity, in order to promote a scarcity--though it was substantially proved on his trial, that at the preceding harvest the grain of an adjoining field had been got in during a high wind, and that in all probability some scattered ears which reached the water had produced what was deemed sufficient testimony to convict him.-- Another underwent the same punishment for pursuing his usual course of tillage, and sowing part of his ground with lucerne, instead of employing the whole for wheat; and every where these people became the objects of persecution, both in their persons and property. "Almost all our considerable farmers have been thrown into prison; the consequence is, that their capital is eat up, their stock gone to ruin, and our lands have lost the almost incalculable effect of their industry. In La Vendee six million acres of land lie uncultivated, and five hundred thousand oxen have been turned astray, without shelter and without an owner." Speech of Dubois Crance, Sept. 22, 1794. --Amazed to find themselves the objects of a tyranny they had hitherto contributed to support, and sharing the misfortune of their Lords and Clergy, these ignorant and mistaken people wander up and down with a vacant sort of ruefulness, which seems to bespeak that they are far from comprehending or being satisfied with this new specimen of republicanism.--It has been a fatality attending the French through the whole revolution, that the different classes have too readily facilitated the sacrifice of each other; and the Nobility, the Clergy, the Merchant, and the Farmer, have the mortification of experiencing, that their selfish and illiberal policy has answered no purpose but to involve all in one common ruin. Angelique has contrived to-day to negotiate the sale of some bracelets, which a lady, with whom I was acquainted previous to our detention, has very obligingly given almost half their value for, though not without many injunctions to secresy, and as many implied panegyrics on her benevolence, in risking the odium of affording assistance to a foreigner. We are, I assure you, under the necessity of being oeconomists, where the most abundant wealth could not render us externally comfortable: and the little we procure, by a clandestine disposal of my unnecessary trinkets, is considerably diminished,* by arbitrary impositions of the guard and the poor,** and a voluntary tax from the misery that surrounds us. * I am aware of Mr. Burke's pleasantry on the expression of very little, being greatly diminished; but my exchequer at this time was as well calculated to prove the infinite divisibility of matter, as that of the Welch principality. ** The guards of the republican Bastilles were paid by the prisoners they contained; and, in many places, the tax for this purpose was levied with indecent rigour. It might indeed be supposed, that people already in prison could have little to apprehend from an inability or unwillingness to submit to such an imposition; yet those who refused were menaced with a dungeon; and I was informed, from undoubted authority, of two instances of the sort among the English--the one a young woman, the other a person with a large family of children, who were on the point of suffering this treatment, but that the humanity of some of their companions interfered and paid the sum exacted of them. The tax for supporting the imprisoned poor was more willingly complied with, though not less iniquitous in its principle; numbers of inoffensive and industrious people were taken from their homes on account of their religion, or other frivolous pretexts, and not having the wherewithal to maintain themselves in confinement, instead of being kept by the republic, were supported by their fellow-prisoners, in consequence of a decree to that purpose. Families who inherited nothing from their noble ancestors but their names, were dragged from obscurity only to become objects of persecution; and one in particular, consisting of nine persons, who lived in extreme indigence, but were notwithstanding of the proscribed class; the sons were brought wounded from the army and lodged with the father, mother, and five younger children in a prison, where they had scarcely food to support, or clothing to cover them. I take this opportunity of doing justice to the Comte d'Artois, whose youthful errors did not extinguish his benevolence--the unfortunate people in question having enjoyed a pension from him until the revolution deprived them of it. Our male companions are for the most part transferred to other prisons, and among the number are two young Englishmen, with whom I used sometimes to converse in French, without acknowledging our compatriotism. They have told me, that when the decree for arresting the English was received at Amiens, they happened to be on a visit, a few miles from the town; and having notice that a party of horse were on the road to take them, willing to gain time at least, they escaped by another route, and got home. The republican constables, for I can call the military employed in the interior by no better appellation, finding their prey had taken flight, adopted the impartial justice of the men of Charles Town,* and carried off the old couple (both above seventy) at whose house they had been. * "But they maturely having weigh'd "They had no more but him o'th'trade, "Resolved to spare him, yet to do "The Indian Hoghan-Moghan too "Impartial justice--in his stead did "Hang an old weaver that was bed-rid." The good man, who was probably not versed in the etiquette of the revolution, conceived nothing of the matter, and when at the end of their journey they were deposited at the Bicetre, his head was so totally deranged, that he imagined himself still in his own house, and continued for some days addressing all the prisoners as though they were his guests--at one moment congratulating them on their arrival, the next apologizing for want of room and accommodation.--The evasion of the young men, as you will conclude, availed them nothing, except a delay of their captivity for a few hours. A report has circulated amongst us to-day, that all who are not detained on specific charges are soon to be liberated. This is eagerly believed by the new-comers, and those who are not the "pale converts of experience." I am myself so far from crediting it, that I dread lest it should be the harbinger of some new evil, for I know not whether it be from the effect of chance, or a refinement in atrocity, but I have generally found every measure which tended to make our situation more miserable preceded by these flattering rumours. You would smile to see with what anxious credulity intelligence of this sort is propagated: we stop each other on the stairs and listen while our palled dinner, just arrived from the traiteur, is cooling; and the bucket of the draw-well hangs suspended while a history is finished, of which the relator knows as little as the hearer, and which, after all, proves to have originated in some ambiguous phrase of our keeper, uttered in a good-humoured paroxysm while receiving a douceur. We occasionally lose some of our associates, who, having obtained their discharge, _depart a la Francaise,_ forget their suffering, and praise the clemency of Dumont, and the virtue of the Convention; while those who remain still unconverted amuse themselves in conjecturing the channel through which such favours were solicited, and alleging reasons why such preferences were partial and unjust. Dumont visits us, as usual, receives an hundred or two of petitions, which he does not deign to read, and reserves his indulgence for those who have the means of assailing him through the smiles of a favourite mistress, or propitiating him by more substantial advantages.--Many of the emigrants' wives have procured their liberty by being divorced, and in this there is nothing blameable, for I imagine the greater number consider it only as a temporary expedient, indifferent in itself, and which they are justified in having recourse to for the protection of their persons and property. But these domestic alienations are not confined to those who once moved in the higher orders of society--the monthly registers announce almost as many divorces as marriages, and the facility of separation has rendered the one little more than a licentious compact, which the other is considered as a means of dissolving. The effect of the revolution has in this, as in many other cases, been to make the little emulate the vices of the great, and to introduce a more gross and destructive policy among the people at large, than existed in the narrow circle of courtiers, imitators of the Regent, or Louis the fifteenth. Immorality, now consecrated as a principle, is far more pernicious than when, though practised, it was condemned, and, though suffered, not sanctioned. You must forgive me if I ennuye you a little sententiously--I was more partial to the lower ranks of life in France, than to those who were deemed their superiors; and I cannot help beholding with indignant regret the last asylums of national morals thus invaded by the general corruption.--I believe no one will dispute that the revolution has rendered the people more vicious; and, without considering the matter either in a moral or religious point of view, it is impossible to assert that they are not less happy. How many times, when I was at liberty, have I heard the old wish for an accession of years, or envy those yet too young to be sensible of "the miseries of a revolution!"--Were the vanity of the self-sufficient philosopher susceptible of remorse, would he not, when he beholds this country, lament his presumption, in supposing he had a right to cancel the wisdom of past ages; or that the happiness of mankind might be promoted by the destruction of their morals, and the depravation of their social affections?--Yours, &c. April 30, 1794. For some years previous to the revolution, there were several points in which the French ascribed to themselves a superiority not very distant from perfection. Amongst these were philosophy, politeness, the refinements of society, and, above all, the art of living.--I have sometimes, as you know, been inclined to dispute these claims; yet, if it be true that in our sublunary career perfection is not stationary, and that, having reached the apex of the pyramid on one side, we must necessarily descend on the other, I might, on this ground, allow such pretensions to be more reasonable than I then thought them. Whatever progress might have been attained in these respects, or however near our neighbours might have approached to one extreme, it is but too certain they are now rapidly declining to the other. This boasted philosophy is become a horrid compound of all that is offensive to Heaven, and disgraceful to man--this politeness, a ferocious incivility--and this social elegance and exclusive science in the enjoyment of life, are now reduced to suspicious intercourse, and the want of common necessaries. If the national vanity only were wounded, perhaps I might smile, though I hope I should not triumph; but when I see so much misery accompany so profound a degradation, my heart does not accord with my language, if I seem to do either one or the other. I should ineffectually attempt to describe the circumstances and situation which have given rise to these reflections. Imagine to yourself whatever tyranny can inflict, or human nature submit to-- whatever can be the result of unrestrained wickedness and unresisting despair--all that can scourge or disgrace a people--and you may form some idea of the actual state of this country: but do not search your books for comparisons, or expect to find in the proscriptions and extravagancies of former periods any examples by which to judge the present.--Tiberius and Nero are on the road to oblivion, and the subjects of the Lama may boast comparative pretensions to rank as a free and enlightened nation. The frantic ebullitions of the revolutionary government are now as it were subsided, and instead of appearing the temporary resources of "despotism in distress," [Burke.] have assumed the form of a permanent and regular system. The agitation occasioned by so many unexampled scenes is succeeded by an habitual terror, and this depressing sentiment has so pervaded all ranks, that it would be difficult to find an individual, however obscure or inoffensive, who deems his property, or even his existence, secure only for a moment. The sound of a bell or a knocker at the close of the evening is the signal of dismay. The inhabitants of the house regard each other with looks of fearful interrogation--all the precautions hitherto taken appear insufficient-- every one recollects something yet to be secreted--a prayer-book, an unburied silver spoon, or a few assignats "a face royale," are hastily scrambled together, and if the visit prove nothing more than an amicable domiciliary one, in search of arms and corn, it forms matter of congratulation for a week after. Yet such is the submission of the people to a government they abhor, that it is scarcely thought requisite now to arrest any person formally: those whom it is intended to secure often receive nothing more than a written mandate* to betake themselves to a certain prison, and such unpleasant rendezvous are attended with more punctuality than the most ceremonious visit, or the most gallant assignation. * These rescripts were usually couched in the following terms:-- "Citizen, you are desired to betake yourself immediately to ------, (naming the prison,) under pain of being conveyed there by an armed force in case of delay." --A few necessaries are hastily packed together, the adieus are made, and, after a walk to their prison, they lay their beds down in the corner allotted, just as if it were a thing of course. It was a general observation with travellers, that the roads in France were solitary, and had rather the deserted appearance of the route of a caravan, than of the communications between different parts of a rich and populous kingdom. This, however, is no longer true, and, as far as I can learn, they are now sufficiently crowded--not, indeed, by curious itinerants, parties of pleasure, or commercial industry, but by Deputies of the Convention,* agents of subsistence,** committee men, Jacobin missionaries,*** troops posting from places where insurrection is just quelled to where it has just begun, besides the great and never-failing source of activity, that of conveying suspected people from their homes to prison, and from one prison to another.-- * Every department was infested by one, two, or more of these strolling Deputies; and, it must be confessed, the constant tendency of the people to revolt in many places afforded them sufficient employment. Sometimes they acted as legislators, making laws on the spot--sometimes, both as judges and constables--or, if occasion required, they amused themselves in assisting the executioner.--The migrations of obscure men, armed with unlimited powers, and whose persons were unknown, was a strong temptation to imposture, and in several places adventurers were detected assuming the character of Deputies, for various purposes of fraud and depredation.--The following instance may appear ludicrous, but I shall be excused mentioning it, as it is a fact on record, and conveys an idea of what the people supposed a Deputy might do, consistent with the "dignity" of his executive functions. An itinerant of this sort, whose object seems to have been no more than to procure a daily maintenance, arriving hungry in a village, entered the first farm-house that presented itself, and immediately put a pig in requisition, ordered it to be killed, and some sausages to be made, with all speed. In the meanwhile our mock-legislator, who seems to have acted his part perfectly well, talked of liberty, l'amour de la Patrie, of Pitt and the coalesced tyrants, of arresting suspicious people and rewarding patriots; so that the whole village thought themselves highly fortunate in the presence of a Deputy who did no worse than harangue and put their pork in requisiton.--Unfortunately, however, before the repast of sausages could be prepared, a hue and cry reached the place, that this gracious Representant was an impostor! He was bereft of his dignities, conveyed to prison, and afterwards tried by the Tribunal Revolutionnaire at Paris; but his Counsel, by insisting on the mildness with which he had "borne his faculties," contrived to get his punishment mitigated to a short imprisonment.--Another suffered death on a somewhat similar account; or, as the sentence expressed it, for degrading the character of a National Representative.--Just Heaven! for degrading the character of a National Representative!!! --and this too after the return of Carrier from Nantes, and the publication of Collot d'Herbois' massacres at Lyons! **The agents employed by government in the purchase of subsistence amounted, by official confession, to ten thousand. In all parts they were to be seen, rivalling each other, and creating scarcity and famine, by requisitions and exactions, which they did not convert to the profit of the republic, but to their own.--These privileged locusts, besides what they seized upon, occasioned a total stagnation of commerce, by laying embargoes on what they did not want; so that it frequently occurred that an unfortunate tradesman might have half the articles in his shop under requisition for a month together, and sometimes under different requisitions from deputies, commissaries of war, and agents of subsistence, all at once; nor could any thing be disposed of till such claims were satisfied or relinquished. *** Jacobin missionaries were sent from Paris, and other great towns, to keep up the spirits of the people, to explain the benefits of the revolution, (which, indeed, were not very apparent,) and to maintain the connection between the provincial and metropolitan societies.--I remember the Deputies on mission at Perpignan writing to the Club at Paris for a reinforcement of civic apostles, _"pour evangeliser les habitans et les mettre dans la voie de salut"_--("to convert the inhabitants, and put them in the road to salvation"). --These movements are almost entirely confined to the official travellers of the republic; for, besides the scarcity of horses, the increase of expence, and the diminution of means, few people are willing to incur the suspicion or hazard* attendant on quitting their homes, and every possible obstacle is thrown in the way of a too general intercourse between the inhabitants of large towns. * There were moments when an application for a passport was certain of being followed by a mandat d'arret--(a writ of arrest). The applicant was examined minutely as to the business he was going upon, the persons he was to transact it with, and whether the journey was to be performed on horseback or in a carriage, and any signs of impatience or distaste at those democratic ceremonies were sufficient to constitute _"un homme suspect"_--("a suspicious person"), or at least one _"soupconne d'etre suspect,"_ that is, a man suspected of being suspicious. In either case it was usually deemed expedient to prevent the dissemination of his supposed principles, by laying an embargo on his person.--I knew a man under persecution six months together, for having gone from one department to another to see his family. The committee of Public Welfare is making rapid advances to an absolute concentration of the supreme power, and the convention, while they are the instruments of oppressing the whole country, are themselves become insignificant, and, perhaps, less secure than those over whom they tyrannize. They cease to debate, or even to speak; but if a member of the Committee ascends the tribune, they overwhelm him with applauses before they know what he has to say, and then pass all the decrees presented to them more implicitly than the most obsequious Parliament ever enregistered an arrete of the Court; happy if, by way of compensation, they attract a smile from Barrere, or escape the ominous glances of Robespierre.* * When a member of the committee looked inauspiciously at a subordinate accomplice, the latter scarce ventured to approach his home for some time.--Legendre, who has since boasted so continually about his courage, is said to have kept his bed, and Bourdon de l'Oise, to have lost his senses for a considerable time, from frights, the consequence of such menaces. Having so far described the situation of public affairs, I proceed as usual, and for which I have the example of Pope, who never quits a subject without introducing himself, to some notice of my own. It is not only bad in itself, but worse in perspective than ever: yet I learn not to murmur, and derive patience from the certainty, that almost every part of France is more oppressed and wretched than we are.--Yours, etc. June 3, 1794. The individual sufferings of the French may perhaps yet admit of increase; but their humiliation as a people can go no farther; and if it were not certain that the acts of the government are congenial to its principles, one might suppose this tyranny rather a moral experiment on the extent of human endurance, than a political system. Either the vanity or cowardice of Robespierre is continually suggesting to him plots for his assassination; and on pretexts, at once absurd and atrocious, a whole family, with near seventy other innocent people as accomplices, have been sentenced to death by a formal decree of the convention. One might be inclined to pity a people obliged to suppress their indignation on such an event, but the mind revolts when addresses are presented from all quarters to congratulate this monster's pretended escape, and to solicit a farther sacrifice of victims to his revenge.-- The assassins of Henry the Fourth had all the benefit of the laws, and suffered only after a legal condemnation; yet the unfortunate Cecilia Renaud, though evidently in a state of mental derangement, was hurried to the scaffold without a hearing, for the vague utterance of a truth, to which every heart in France, not lost to humanity, must assent. Brooding over the miseries of her country, till her imagination became heated and disordered, this young woman seems to have conceived some hopeless plan of redress from expostulation with Robespierre, whom she regarded as a principal in all the evils she deplored. The difficulty of obtaining an audience of him irritated her to make some comparison between an hereditary sovereign and a republican despot; and she avowed, that, in desiring to see Robespierre, she was actuated only by a curiosity to "contemplate the features of a tyrant."--On being examined by the Committee, she still persisted that her design was "seulement pour voir comment etoit fait un tyrant;" and no instrument nor possible means of destruction was found upon her to justify a charge of any thing more than the wild and enthusiastic attachment to royalism, which she did not attempt to disguise. The influence of a feminine propensity, which often survives even the wreck of reason and beauty, had induced her to dress with peculiar neatness, when she went in search of Robespierre; and, from the complexion of the times, supposing it very probable a visit of this nature might end in imprisonment and death, she had also provided herself with a change of clothes to wear in her last moments. Such an attention in a beautiful girl of eighteen was not very unnatural; yet the mean and cruel wretches who were her judges, had the littleness to endeavour at mortifying, by divesting her of her ornaments, and covering her with the most loathsome rags. But a mind tortured to madness by the sufferings of her country, was not likely to be shaken by such puerile malice; and, when interrogated under this disguise, she still preserved the same firmness, mingled with contempt, which she had displayed when first apprehended. No accusation, nor even implication, of any person could be drawn from her, and her only confession was that of a passionate loyalty: yet an universal conspiracy was nevertheless decreed by the Convention to exist, and Miss Renaud, with sixty-nine others,* were sentenced to the guillotine, without farther trial than merely calling over their names. * It is worthy of remark, that the sixty-nine people executed as accomplices of Miss Renaud, except her father, mother, and aunt, were totally unconnected with her, or with each other, and had been collected from different prisons, between which no communication could have subsisted. --They were conducted to the scaffold in a sort of red frocks, intended, as was alleged, to mark them as assassins--but, in reality, to prevent the crowd from distinguishing or receiving any impression from the number of young and interesting females who were comprised in this dreadful slaughter.--They met death with a courage which seemed almost to disappoint the malice of their tyrants, who, in an original excess of barbarity, are said to have lamented that their power of inflicting could not reach those mental faculties which enabled their victims to suffer with fortitude.* * Fouquier Tinville, public accuser of the Revolutionary Tribunal, enraged at the courage with which his victims submitted to their fate, had formed the design of having them bled previous to their execution; hoping by this means to weaken their spirits, and that they might, by a pusillanimous behaviour in their last moments, appear less interesting to the people. Such are the horrors now common to almost every part of France: the prisons are daily thinned by the ravages of the executioner, and again repeopled by inhabitants destined to the fate of their predecessors. A gloomy reserve, and a sort of uncertain foreboding, have taken possession of every body--no one ventures to communicate his thoughts, even to his nearest friend--relations avoid each other--and the whole social system seems on the point of being dissolved. Those who have yet preserved their freedom take the longest circuit, rather than pass a republican Bastille; or, if obliged by necessity to approach one, it is with downcast or averted looks, which bespeak their dread of incurring the suspicion of humanity. I say little of my own feelings; they are not of a nature to be relieved by pathetic expressions: "I am e'en sick at heart." For some time I have struggled both against my own evils, and the share I take in the general calamity, but my mortal part gives way, and I can no longer resist the despondency which at times depresses me, and which indeed, more than the danger attending it, has occasioned my abandoning my pen for the last month.--Several circumstances have occurred within these few days, to add to the uneasiness of our situation, and my own apprehensions. Le Bon,* whose cruelties at Arras seem to have endeared him to his colleagues in the Convention, has had his powers extended to this department, and Andre Dumont is recalled; so that we are hourly menaced with the presence of a monster, compared to whom our own representative is amiable.-- * I have already noticed the cruel and ferocious temper of Le Bon, and the massacres of his tribunals are already well known. I will only add some circumstances which not only may be considered as characteristic of this tyrant, but of the times--and I fear I may add of the people, who suffered and even applauded them. They are selected from many others not susceptible of being described in language fit for an English reader. As he was one day enjoying his customary amusement of superintending an execution, where several had already suffered, one of the victims having, from a very natural emotion, averted his eyes while he placed his body in the posture required, the executioner perceived it, and going to the sack which contained the heads of those just sacrificed, took one out, and with the most horrible imprecations obliged the unhappy wretch to kiss it: yet Le Bon not only permitted, but sanctioned this, by dining daily with the hangman. He was afterwards reproached with this familiarity in the Convention, but defended himself by saying, "A similar act of Lequinio's was inserted by your orders in the bulletin with 'honourable mention;' and your decrees have invariably consecrated the principles on which I acted." They all felt for a moment the dominion of conscience, and were silent.--On another occasion he suspended an execution, while the savages he kept in pay threw dirt on the prisoners, and even got on the scaffold and insulted them previous to their suffering. When any of his colleagues passed through Arras, he always proposed their joining with him in a _"partie de Guillotine,"_ and the executions were perpetrated on a small square at Arras, rather than the great one, that he, his wife, and relations might more commodiously enjoy the spectacle from the balcony of the theatre, where they took their coffee, attended by a band of music, which played while this human butchery lasted. The following circumstance, though something less horrid, yet sufficiently so to excite the indignation of feeling people, happened to some friends of my own.--They had been brought with many others from a distant town in open carts to Arras, and, worn out with fatigue, were going to be deposited in the prison to which they were destined. At the moment of their arrival several persons were on the point of being executed. Le Bon, presiding as usual at the spectacle, observed the cavalcade passing, and ordered it to stop, that the prisoners might likewise be witnesses. He was, of course, obeyed; and my terrified friends and their companions were obliged not only to appear attentive to the scene before them, but to join in the cry of _"Vive la Republique!"_ at the severing of each head.-- One of them, a young lady, did not recover the shock she received for months. The Convention, the Committees, all France, were well acquainted with the conduct of Le Bon. He himself began to fear he might have exceeded the limits of his commission; and, upon communicating some scruples of this kind to his employers, received the following letters, which, though they do not exculpate him, certainly render the Committee of Public Welfare more criminal than himself. "Citizen, "The Committee of Public Welfare approve the measures you have adopted, at the same time that they judge the warrant you solicit unnecessary--such measures being not only allowable, but enjoined by the very nature of your mission. No consideration ought to stand in the way of your revolutionary progress--give free scope therefore to your energy; the powers you are invested with are unlimited, and whatever you may deem conducive to the public good, you are free, you are even called upon by duty, to carry into execution without delay.--We here transmit you an order of the Committee, by which your powers are extended to the neighbouring departments. Armed with such means, and with your energy, you will go on to confound the enemies of the republic, with the very schemes they have projected for its destruction. "Carnot. "Barrere. "R. Lindet." Extract from another letter, signed Billaud Varenne, Carnot, Barrere. "There is no commutation for offences against a republic. Death alone can expiate them!--Pursue the traitors with fire and sword, and continue to march with courage in the revolutionary track you have described." --Merciful Heaven! are there yet positive distinctions betwixt bad and worse that we thus regret a Dumont, and deem ourselves fortunate in being at the mercy of a tyrant who is only brutal and profligate? But so it is; and Dumont himself, fearful that he has not exercised his mission with sufficient severity, has ordered every kind of indulgence to cease, the prisons to be more strictly guarded, and, if possible, more crowded; and he is now gone to Paris, trembling lest he should be accused of justice or moderation! The pretended plots for assassinating Robespierre are, as usual, attributed to Mr. Pitt; and a decree has just passed, that no quarter shall be given to English prisoners. I know not what such inhuman politics tend to, but my contempt, and the conscious pride of national superiority; certain, that when Providence sees fit to vindicate itself, by bestowing victory on our countrymen, the most welcome "Laurels that adorn their brows "Will be from living, not dead boughs." The recollection of England, and its generous inhabitants, has animated me with pleasure; yet I must for the present quit this agreeable contemplation, to take precautions which remind me that I am separated from both, and in a land of despotism and misery! --Yours affectionately. June 11, 1794. The immorality of Hebert, and the base compliances of the Convention, for some months turned the churches into "temples of reason."--The ambition, perhaps the vanity, of Robespierre, has now permitted them to be dedicated to the "Supreme Being," and the people, under such auspices, are to be conducted from atheism to deism. Desirous of distinguishing his presidency, and of exhibiting himself in a conspicuous and interesting light, Robespierre, on the last decade, appeared as the hero of a ceremony which we are told is to restore morals, destroy all the mischiefs introduced by the abolition of religion, and finally to defeat the machinations of Mr. Pitt. A gay and splendid festival has been exhibited at Paris, and imitated in the provinces: flags of the republican colours, branches of trees, and wreaths of flowers, were ordered to be suspended from the houses--every countenance was to wear the prescribed smile, and the whole country, forgetting the pressure of sorrow and famine, was to rejoice. A sort of monster was prepared, which, by some unaccountable ingenuity, at once represented Atheism and the English, Cobourg and the Austrians--in short, all the enemies of the Convention.--This external phantom, being burned with proper form, discovered a statue, which was understood to be that of Liberty, and the inauguration of this divinity, with placing the busts of Chalier* and Marat in the temple of the Supreme Being, by way of attendant saints, concluded the ceremony.-- * Chalier had been sent from the municipality of Paris after the dethronement of the King, to revolutionize the people of Lyons, and to excite a massacre. In consequence, the first days of September presented the same scenes at Lyons as were presented in the capital. For near a year he continued to scourge this unfortunate city, by urging the lower classes of people to murder and pillage; till, at the insurrection which took place in the spring of 1793, he was arrested by the insurgents, tried, and sentenced to the guillotine. --The Convention, however, whose calendar of saints is as extraordinary as their criminal code, chose to beatify Chalier, while they executed Malesherbes; and, accordingly, decreed him a lodging in the Pantheon, pensioning his mistress, and set up his bust in their own Hall as an associate for Brutus, whom, by the way, one should not have expected to find in such company. The good citizens of the republic, not to be behind hand with their representatives, placed Chalier in the cathedrals, in their public-houses, on fans and snuff-boxes--in short, wherever they thought his appearance would proclaim their patriotism.--I can only exclaim as Poultier, a deputy, did, on a similar occasion--"Francais, Francais, serez vous toujours Francais?"--(Frenchmen, Frenchmen, will you never cease to be Frenchmen?) --But the mandates for such celebrations reach not the heart: flowers were gathered, and flags planted, with the scrupulous exactitude of fear;* yet all was cold and heavy, and a discerning government must have read in this anxious and literal obedience the indication of terror and hatred. * I have more than once had occasion to remark the singularity of popular festivities solemnized on the part of the people with no other intention but that of exact obedience to the edicts of government. This is so generally understood, that Richard, a deputy on mission at Lyons, writes to the Convention, as a circumstance extraordinary, and worthy of remark, that, at the repeal of a decree which was to have razed their city to the ground, a rejoicing took place, _"dirigee et executee par le peuple, les autorites constitutees n'ayant fait en quelque sorte qu'y assister,"_-- (directed and executed by the people, the constituted authorities having merely assisted at the ceremony). --Even the prisons were insultingly decorated with the mockery of colours, which, we are told, are the emblems of freedom; and those whose relations have expired on the scaffold, or who are pining in dungeons for having heard a mass, were obliged to listen with apparent admiration to a discourse on the charms of religious liberty.--The people, who, for the most part, took little interest in the rest of this pantomime, and insensible of the national disgrace it implied, beheld with stupid satisfaction* the inscription on the temple of reason replaced by a legend, signifying that, in this age of science and information, the French find it necessary to declare their acknowledgment of a God, and their belief in the immortality of the soul. * Much has been said of the partial ignorance of the unfortunate inhabitants of La Vendee, and divers republican scribblers attribute their attachment to religion and monarchy to that cause: yet at Havre, a sea-port, where, from commercial communication, I should suppose the people as informed and civilized as in any other part of France, the ears of piety and decency were assailed, during the celebration above-mentioned, by the acclamations of, _"Vive le Pere Eternel!"--"Vive l'etre Supreme!"_--(I entreat that I may not be suspected of levity when I translate this; in English it would be "God Almighty for ever! The Supreme Being for ever!") --At Avignon the public understanding seems to have been equally enlightened, if we may judge from the report of a Paris missionary, who writes in these terms:--"The celebration in honour of the Supreme Being was performed here yesterday with all possible pomp: all our country-folks were present, and unspeakably content that there was still a God--What a fine decree (cried they all) is this!" My last letter was a record of the most odious barbarities--to-day I am describing a festival. At one period I have to remark the destruction of the saints--at another the adoration of Marat. One half of the newspaper is filled with a list of names of the guillotined, and the other with that of places of amusement; and every thing now more than ever marks that detestable association of cruelty and levity, of impiety and absurdity, which has uniformly characterized the French revolution. It is become a crime to feel, and a mode to affect a brutality incapable of feeling--the persecution of Christianity has made atheism a boast, and the danger of respecting traditional virtues has hurried the weak and timid into the apotheosis of the most abominable vices. Conscious that they are no longer animated by enthusiasm,* the Parisians hope to imitate it by savage fury or ferocious mirth--their patriotism is signalized only by their zeal to destroy, and their attachment to their government only by applauding its cruelties.--If Robespierre, St. Just, Collot d'Herbois, and the Convention as their instruments, desolate and massacre half France, we may lament, but we can scarcely wonder at it. How should a set of base and needy adventurers refrain from an abuse of power more unlimited than that of the most despotic monarch; or how distinguish the general abhorrence, amid addresses of adulation, which Louis the Fourteenth would have blushed to appropriate?* * Louis the Fourteenth, aguerri (steeled) as he was by sixty years of adulation and prosperity, had yet modesty sufficient to reject a "dose of incense which he thought too strong." (See D'Alembert's Apology for Clermont Tonnerre.) Republicanism, it should seem, has not diminished the national compliasance for men in power, thought it has lessened the modesty of those who exercise it.--If Louis the Fourteenth repressed the zeal of the academicians, the Convention publish, without scruple, addresses more hyperbolical than the praises that monarch refused.--Letters are addressed to Robespierre under the appellation of the Messiah, sent by the almighty for the reform of all things! He is the apostle of one, and the tutelar deity of another. He is by turns the representative of the virtues individually, and a compendium of them altogether: and this monster, whose features are the counterpart of his soul, find republican parasites who congratulate themselves on resembling him. The bulletins of the Convention announce, that the whole republic is in a sort of revolutionary transport at the escape of Robespierre and his colleague, Collot d'Herbois, from assassination; and that we may not suppose the legislators at large deficient in sensibility, we learn also that they not only shed their grateful tears on this affecting occasion, but have settled a pension on the man who was instrumental in rescuing the benign Collot. The members of the Committee are not, however, the exclusive objects of public adoration--the whole Convention are at times incensed in a style truly oriental; and if this be sometimes done with more zeal than judgment, it does not appear to be less acceptable on that account. A petition from an incarcerated poet assimilates the mountain of the Jacobins to that of Parnassus--a state-creditor importunes for a small payment from the Gods of Olympus--and congratulations on the abolition of Christianity are offered to the legislators of Mount Sinai! Every instance of baseness calls forth an eulogium on their magnanimity. A score of orators harangue them daily on their courage, while they are over-awed by despots as mean as themselves and whom they continue to reinstal at the stated period with clamorous approbation. They proscribe, devastate, burn, and massacre--and permit themselves to be addressed by the title of "Fathers of their Country!" All this would be inexplicable, if we did not contemplate in the French a nation where every faculty is absorbed by a terror which involves a thousand contradictions. The rich now seek protection by becoming members of clubs,* and are happy if, after various mortifications, they are finally admitted by the mob who compose them; while families, that heretofore piqued themselves on a voluminous and illustrious genealogy,** eagerly endeavour to prove they have no claim to either. * _Le diplome de Jacobin etait une espece d'amulette, dont les inities etaient jaloux, et qui frappoit de prestiges ceux qui ne l'etaient pas_--"The Jacobin diploma was a kind of amulet, which the initiated were jealous of preserving, and which struck as it were with witchcraft, those who were not of the number." Rapport de Courtois sur les Papiers de Robespierre. ** Besides those who, being really noble, were anxious to procure certificates of sans-cullotism, many who had assumed such honours without pretensions now relinquished them, except indeed some few, whose vanity even surmounted their fears. But an express law included all these seceders in the general proscription; alledging, with a candour not usual, that those who assumed rank were, in fact, more criminal than such as were guilty of being born to it. --Places and employments, which are in most countries the objects of intrigue and ambition, are here refused or relinquished with such perfect sincerity, that a decree became requisite to oblige every one, under pain of durance, to preserve the station to which his ill stars, mistaken politics, or affectation of patriotism, had called him. Were it not for this law, such is the dreadful responsibility and danger attending offices under the government, that even low and ignorant people, who have got possession of them merely for support, would prefer their original poverty to emoluments which are perpetually liable to the commutation of the guillotine.--Some members of a neighbouring district told me to-day, when I asked them if they came to release any of our fellow-prisoners, that so far from it, they had not only brought more, but were not certain twelve hours together of not being brought themselves. The visionary equality of metaphysical impostors is become a substantial one--not constituted by abundance and freedom, but by want and oppression. The disparities of nature are not repaired, but its whole surface is levelled by a storm. The rich are become poor, but the poor still remain so; and both are conducted indiscriminately to the scaffold. The prisons of the former government were "petty to the ends" of this. Convents, colleges, palaces, and every building which could any how be adapted to such a purpose, have been filled with people deemed suspicious;* and a plan of destruction seems resolved on, more certain and more execrable than even the general massacre of September 1792. * Now multiplied to more than four hundred thousand!--The prisons of Paris and the environs were supposed to contain twenty-seven thousand. The public papers stated but about seven thousand, because they included the official returns of Paris only. --Agents of the police are, under some pretended accusation, sent to the different prisons; and, from lists previously furnished them, make daily information of plots and conspiracies, which they alledge to be carrying on by the persons confined. This charge and this evidence suffice: the prisoners are sent to the tribunal, their names read over, and they are conveyed by cart's-full to the republican butchery. Many whom I have known, and been in habits of intimacy with, have perished in this manner; and the expectation of Le Bon,* with our numbers which make us of too much consequence to be forgotten, all contribute to depress and alarm me. * Le Bon had at this period sent for lists of the prisoners in the department of the Somme--which lists are said to have been since found, and many of the names in them marked for destruction. --Even the levity of the French character yields to this terrible despotism, and nothing is observed but weariness, silence, and sorrow:-- _"O triste loisir, poids affreux du tems."_ [St. Lambert.] The season returns with the year, but not to us--the sun shines, but to add to our miseries that of insupportable heat--and the vicissitudes of nature only awaken our regret that we cannot enjoy them-- "Now gentle gales o'er all the vallies play, "Breathe on each flow'r, and bear their sweets away." [Collins.] Yet what are fresh air and green fields to us, who are immured amidst a thousand ill scents, and have no prospect but filth and stone walls? It is difficult to describe how much the mind is depressed by this state of passive suffering. In common evils, the necessity of action half relieves them, as a vessel may reach her port by the agitation of a storm; but this stagnant listless existence is terrible. Those most to be envied here are the victims of their religious opinions. The nuns, who are more distressed than any of us,* employ themselves patiently, and seem to look beyond this world; whilst the once gay deist wanders about with a volume of philosophy in his hand, unable to endure the present, and dreading still more the future. * These poor women, deprived of the little which the rapacity of the Convention had left them, by it subordinate agents, were in want of every thing; and though in most prisons they were employed for the republican armies, they could scarcely procure more than bread and water. Yet this was not all: they were objects of the meanest and most cruel persecution.--I knew one who was put in a dungeon, up to her waist in putrid water, for twelve hours altogether, without losing her resolution or serenity. I have already written you a long letter, and bid you adieu with the reluctance which precedes an uncertain separation. Uneasiness, ill health, and confinement, besides the danger I am exposed to, render my life at present more precarious than "the ordinary of nature's tenures." --God knows when I may address you again!--My friend Mad. de ____ is returned from the hospital, and I yield to her fears by ceasing to write, though I am nevertheless determined not to part with what I have hitherto preserved; being convinced, that if evil be intended us, it will be as soon without a pretext as with one.--Adieu. Providence, Aug. 11, 1794. I have for some days contemplated the fall of Robespierre and his adherents, only as one of those dispensations of Providence, which were gradually to pursue all who had engaged in the French revolution. The late change of parties has, however, taken a turn I did not expect; and, contrary to what has hitherto occurred, there is a manifest disposition in the people to avail themselves of the weakness which is necessarily occasioned by the contentions of their governors. When the news of this extraordinary event first became public, it was ever where received with great gravity--I might say, coldness.--Not a comment was uttered, nor a glance of approbation seen. Things might be yet in equilibrium, and popular commotions are always uncertain. Prudence was, therefore, deemed, indispensable; and, until the contest was finally decided, no one ventured to give an opinion; and many, to be certain of guarding against verbal indiscretion, abstained from all intercourse whatever. By degrees, the execution of Robespierre and above an hundred of his partizans, convinced even the most timid; the murmurs of suppressed discontent began to be heard; and all thought they might now with safety relieve their fears and their sufferings, by execrating the memory of the departed tyrants. The prisons, which had hitherto been avoided as endangering all who approached them, were soon visited with less apprehension; and friendship or affection, no longer exanimate by terror, solicited, though still with trepidation, the release of those for whom they were interested. Some of our associates have already left us in consequence of such intercessions, and we all hope that the tide of opinion, now avowedly inimical to the detestable system to which we are victims, will enforce a general liberation.--We are guarded but slightly; and I think I perceive in the behaviour of the Jacobin Commissaries something of civility and respect not usual. Thus an event, which I beheld merely as the justice which one set of banditti were made the instruments of exercising upon another, may finally tend to introduce a more humane system of government; or, at least, suspend proscription and massacre, and give this harassed country a little repose. I am in arrears with my epistolary chronicle, and the hope of so desirable a change will now give me courage to resume it from the conclusion of my last. To-morrow shall be dedicated to this purpose.-- Yours. August 12. My letters, previous to the time when I judged it necessary to desist from writing, will have given you some faint sketch of the situation of the country, and the sufferings of its inhabitants--I say a faint sketch, because a thousand horrors and iniquities, which are now daily disclosing, were then confined to the scenes where they were perpetrated; and we knew little more of them than what we collected from the reports of the Convention, where they excited a laugh as pleasantries, or applause as acts of patriotism. France had become one vast prison, executions were daily multiplied, and a minute and comprehensive oppression seemed to have placed the lives, liberty, and fortune of all within the grasp of the single Committee. Despair itself was subdued, and the people were gradually sinking into a gloomy and stupid obedience. * The words despotism and tyranny are sufficiently expressive of the nature of the government to which they are applied; yet still they are words rendered familiar to us only by history, and convey no precise idea, except that of a bad political system. The condition of the French at this time, besides its wretchedness, had something so strange, so original in it, that even those who beheld it with attention must be content to wonder, without pretending to offer any description as adequate. --The following extract from a speech of Bailleul, a member of the Convention, exhibits a picture nearer the original than I have yet seen-- _"La terreur dominait tous les esprits, comprimait tous les couers-- elle etait la force du gouvernement, et ce gouvernement etait tel, que les nombreux habitans d'un vaste territoire semblaient avoir perdu les qualites qui distinguent l'homme de l'animal domestique: ils semblaient meme n'avoir de vie que ce que le gouvernement voulait bien leur en accorder.--Le moi humain n'existoit plus; chaque individu n'etait qu'une machine, allant, venant, pensant ou ne pensant pas, felon que la tyrannie le pressait ou l'animait."_ Discours de Bailleul, 19 March 1795. "The minds of all were subdued by terror, and every heart was compressed beneath its influence.--In this consisted the strength of the government; and that government was such, that the immense population of a vast territory, seemed to have lost all the qualities which distinguish man from the animals attached to him.-- They appeared to exhibit no signs of life but such as their rulers condescended to permit--the very sense of existence seemed doubtful or extinct, and each individual was reduced to a mere machine, going or coming, thinking or not thinking, according as the impulse of tyranny gave him force or animation." Speech of Bailleul, 19 March 1795. On the twenty-second of Prairial, (June 10,) a law, consisting of a variety of articles for the regulation of the Revolutionary Tribunal, was introduced to the convention by Couthon, a member of the government; and, as usual adopted with very little previous discussion.--Though there was no clause of this act but ought to have given the alarm to humanity, "knocked at the heart, and bid it not be quiet;" yet the whole appeared perfectly unexceptionable to the Assembly in general: till, on farther examination, they found it contained an implied repeal of the law hitherto observed, according to which, no representative could be arrested without a preliminary decree for that purpose.--This discovery awakened their suspicions, and the next day Bourdon de l'Oise, a man of unsteady principles, (even as a revolutionist,) was spirited up to demand an explicit renunciation of any power in the Committee to attack the legislative inviolability except in the accustomed forms.--The clauses which elected a jury of murderers, that bereft all but guilt of hope, and offered no prospect to innocence but death, were passed with no other comment than the usual one of applause.*-- * The baseness, cruelty, and cowardice of the Convention are neither to be denied, nor palliated. For several months they not only passed decrees of proscription and murder which might reach every individual in France except themselves, but they even sacrificed numbers of their own body; and if, instead of proposing an article affecting the whole Convention, the Committee had demanded the heads of as many Deputies as they had occasion for by name, I am persuaded they would have met no resistance.--This single example of opposition only renders the convention still more an object of abhorrence, because it marks that they could subdue their pusillanimity when their own safety was menaced, and that their previous acquiescence was voluntary. --This, and this only, by involving their personal safety, excited their courage through their fears.--Merlin de Douay, originally a worthless character, and become yet more so by way of obviating the imputation of bribery from the court, seconded Bourdon's motion, and the obnoxious article was repealed instantaneously. This first and only instance of opposition was highly displeasing to the Committee, and, on the twenty-fourth, Robespierre, Barrere, Couthon, and Billaud, animadverted with such severity on the promoters of it, that the terrified Bourdon* declared, the repeal he had solicited was unnecessary, and that he believed the Committee were destined to be the saviours of the country; while Merlin de Douay disclaimed all share in the business-- and, in fine, it was determined, that the law of the twenty-second of Prairial should remain as first presented to the Convention, and that the qualification of the succeeding day was void. * It was on this occasion that the "intrepid" Bourdon kept his bed a whole month with fear. So dangerous an infringement on the privileges of the representative body, dwelt on minds insensible to every other consideration; the principal members caballed secretly on the perils by which they were surrounded; and the sullen concord which now marked their deliberations, was beheld by the Committee rather as the prelude to revolt, than the indication of continued obedience. In the mean while it was openly proposed to concentrate still more the functions of government. The circulation of newspapers was insinuated to be useless; and Robespierre gave some hints of suppressing all but one, which should be under particular and official controul.* * This intended restriction was unnecessary; for the newspapers were all, not indeed paid by government, but so much subject to the censure of the guillotine, that they had become, under an "unlimited freedom of the press," more cautious and insipid than the gazettes of the proscribed court. Poor Duplain, editor of the "Petit Courier," and subsequently of the "Echo," whom I remember one of the first partizans of the revolution, narrowly escaped the massacre of August 1792, and was afterwards guillotined for publishing the surrender of Landrecy three days before it was announced officially. A rumour prevailed, that the refractory members who had excited the late rebellion were to be sacrificed, a general purification of the Assembly to take place, and that the committee and a few select adherents were to be invested with the whole national authority. Lists of proscription were said to be made; and one of them was secretly communicated as having been found among the papers of a juryman of the Revolutionary Tribunal lately arrested.--These apprehensions left the members implicated no alternative but to anticipate hostilities, or fall a sacrifice; for they knew the instant of attack would be that of destruction, and that the people were too indifferent to take any part in the contest. Things were in this state, when two circumstances of a very different nature assisted in promoting the final explosion, which so much astonished, not only the rest of Europe, but France itself. It is rare that a number of men, however well meaning, perfectly agree in the exercise of power; and the combinations of the selfish and wicked must be peculiarly subject to discord and dissolution. The Committee of Public Welfare, while it enslaved the convention and the people, was torn by feuds, and undermined by the jealousies of its members. Robespierre, Couthon, and St. Just, were opposed by Collot and Billaud Varennes; while Barrere endeavoured to deceive both parties; and Carnot, Lindet, the two Prieurs, and St. Andre, laboured in the cause of the common tyranny, in the hope of still dividing it with the conquerors. For some months this enmity was restrained, by the necessity of preserving appearances, and conciliated, by a general agreement in the principles of administration, till Robespierre, relying on his superior popularity, began to take an ascendant, which alarmed such of his colleagues as were not his partisans, both for their power and their safety. Animosities daily increased, and their debates at length became so violent and noisy, that it was found necessary to remove the business of the Committee to an upper room, lest people passing under the windows should overhear these scandalous scenes. Every means were taken to keep these disputes a profound secret--the revilings which accompanied their private conferences were turned into smooth panegyrics of each other when they ascended the tribune, and their unanimity was a favourite theme in all their reports to the Convention.* * So late as on the seventh of Thermidor, (25th July,) Barrere made a pompous eulogium on the virtues of Robespierre; and, in a long account of the state of the country, he acknowledges "some little clouds hang over the political horizon, but they will soon be dispersed, by the union which subsists in the Committees;--above all, by a more speedy trial and execution of revolutionary criminals." It is difficult to imagine what new means of dispatch this airy barbarian had contrived, for in the six weeks preceding this harangue, twelve hundred and fifty had been guillotined in Paris only. The impatience of Robespierre to be released from associates whose views too much resembled his own to leave him an undivided authority, at length overcame his prudence; and, after absenting himself for six weeks from the Committee, on the 8th of Thermidor, (26th July,) he threw off the mask, and in a speech full of mystery and implications, but containing no direct charges, proclaimed the divisions which existed in the government.--On the same evening he repeated this harangue at the Jacobins, while St. Just, by his orders, menaced the obnoxious part of the Committee with a formal denunciation to the Convention.--From this moment Billaud Varennes and Collot d'Herbois concluded their destruction to be certain. In vain they soothed, expostulated with, and endeavoured to mollify St. Just, so as to avert an open rupture. The latter, who probably knew it was not Robespierre's intention to accede to any arrangement, left them to make his report. On the morning of the ninth the Convention met, and with internal dread and affected composure proceeded to their ordinary business.--St. Just then ascended the tribune, and the curiosity or indecision of the greater number permitted him to expatiate at large on the intrigues and guilt of every kind which he imputed to a "part" of the Committee.--At the conclusion of this speech, Tallien, one of the devoted members, and Billaud Varennes, the leader of the rival party, opened the trenches, by some severe remarks on the oration of St. Just, and the conduct of those with whom he was leagued. This attack encouraged others: the whole Convention joined in accusing Robespierre of tyranny; and Barrere, who perceived the business now deciding, ranged himself on the side of the strongest, though the remaining members of the Committee still appeared to preserve their neutrality. Robespierre was, for the first time, refused a hearing, yet, the influence he so lately possessed still seemed to protect him. The Assembly launched decrees against various of his subordinate agents, without daring to proceed against himself; and had not the indignant fury with which he was seized, at the desertion of those by whom he had been most flattered, urged him to call for arrest and death, it is probable the whole would have ended in the punishment of his enemies, and a greater accession of power to himself. But at this crisis all Robespierre's circumspection abandoned him. Having provoked the decree for arresting his person, instead of submitting to it until his party should be able to rally, he resisted; and by so doing gave the Convention a pretext for putting him out of the law; or, in other words, to destroy him, without the delay or hazard of a previous trial. Having been rescued from the Gens d'Armes, and taken in triumph to the municipality, the news spread, the Jacobins assembled, and Henriot, the commander of the National Guard, (who had likewise been arrested, and again set at liberty by force,) all prepared to act in his defence. But while they should have secured the Convention, they employed themselves at the Hotel de Ville in passing frivolous resolutions; and Henriot, with all the cannoneers decidedly in his favour, exhibited an useless defiance, by stalking before the windows of the Committee of General Safety, when he should have been engaged in arresting its members. All these imprudences gave the Convention time to proclaim that Robespierre, the municipality, and their adherents, were decreed out of the protection of the laws, and in circumstances of this nature such a step has usually been decisive--for however odious a government, if it does but seem to act on a presumption of its own strength, it has always an advantage over its enemies; and the timid, the doubtful, or indifferent, for the most part, determine in favour of whatever wears the appearance of established authority. The people, indeed, remained perfectly neuter; but the Jacobins, the Committees of the Sections, and their dependents, might have composed a force more than sufficient to oppose the few guards which surrounded the National Palace, had not the publication of this summary outlawry at once paralyzed all their hopes and efforts.--They had seen multitudes hurried to the Guillotine, because they were "hors de la loi;" and this impression now operated so forcibly, that the cannoneers, the national guard, and those who before were most devoted to the cause, laid down their arms, and precipitately abandoned their chiefs to the fate which awaited them. Robespierre was taken at the Hotel de Ville, after being severely wounded in the face; his brother broke his thigh, in attempting to escape from a window; Henriot was dragged from concealment, deprived of an eye; and Couthon, whom nature had before rendered a cripple, now exhibited a most hideous spectacle, from an ineffectual effort to shoot himself.--Their wounds were dressed to prolong their suffering, and their sentence being contained in the decree that outlawed them, their persons were identified by the same tribunal which had been the instrument of their crimes. --On the night of the tenth they were conveyed to the scaffold, amidst the insults and execrations of a mob, which a few hours before beheld them with trembling and adoration.--Lebas, also a member of the convention, and a principal agent of Robespierre, fell by his own hand; and Couthon, St. Just, and seventeen others, suffered with the two Robespierres.--The municipality of Paris, &c. to the number of seventy-two, were guillotined the succeeding day, and about twelve more the day after. The fate of these men may be ranked as one of the most dreadful of those examples which history vainly transmits to discourage the pursuits of ambition. The tyrant who perishes amidst the imposing fallaciousness of military glory, mingles admiration with abhorrence, and rescues his memory from contempt, if not from hatred. Even he who expiates his crimes on the scaffold, if he die with fortitude, becomes the object of involuntary compassion, and the award of justice is not often rendered more terrible by popular outrage. But the fall of Robespierre and his accomplices was accompanied by every circumstance that could add poignancy to suffering, or dread to death. The ambitious spirit which had impelled them to tyrannize over a submissive and defenceless people, abandoned them in their last moments. Depressed by anguish, exhausted by fatigue, and without courage, religion, or virtue, to support them, they were dragged through the savage multitude, wounded and helpless, to receive that stroke, from which even the pious and the brave sometimes shrink with dismay. Robespierre possessed neither the talents nor merits of Nicolas Riezi; but they are both conspicuous instances of the mutability of popular support, and there is a striking similitude in the last events of their history. They both degraded their ambition by cowardice--they were both deserted by the populace, whom they began by flattering, and ended by oppressing; and the death of both was painful and ignominious--borne without dignity, and embittered by reproach and insult.* * Robespierre lay for some hours in one of the committee-rooms, writhing with the pain of his wound, and abandoned to despair; while many of his colleagues, perhaps those who had been the particular agents and applauders of his crimes, passed and repassed him, glorying and jesting at his sufferings. The reader may compare the death of Robespierre with that of Rienzi; but if the people of Rome revenged the tyranny of the Tribune, they were neither so mean nor so ferocious as the Parisians. You will perceive by this summary that the overthrow of Robespierre was chiefly occasioned by the rivalship of his colleagues in the Committee, assisted by the fears of the Convention at large for themselves.--Another circumstance, at which I have already hinted, as having some share in this event, shall be the subject of my next letter. Providence, Aug. 13, 1794. _Amour, tu perdis Troye_ [Love! thou occasionedst the destruction of Troy.]:--yet, among the various mischiefs ascribed to the influence of this capricious Sovereign, amidst the wrecks of sieges, and the slaughter of battles, perhaps we may not unjustly record in his praise, that he was instrumental to the solace of humanity, by contributing to the overthrow of Robespierre. It is at least pleasing to turn from the general horrors of the revolution, and suppose, for a moment, that the social affections were not yet entirely banished, and that gallantry still retained some empire, when every other vestige of civilization was almost annihilated. After such an exordium, I feel a little ashamed of my hero, and could wish, for the credit of my tale, it were not more necessary to invoke the historic muse of Fielding, than that of Homer or Tasso; but imperious Truth obliges me to confess, that Tallien, who is to be the subject of this letter, was first introduced to celebrity by circumstances not favourable for the comment of my poetical text. At the beginning of the revolution he was known only as an eminent orator en plain vent; that is, as a preacher of sedition to the mob, whom he used to harangue with great applause at the Palais Royal. Having no profession or means of subsistence, he, as Dr. Johnson observes of one of our poets, necessarily became an author. He was, however, no farther entitled to this appellation, than as a periodical scribbler in the cause of insurrection; but in this he was so successful, that it recommended him to the care of Petion and the municipality, to whom his talents and principles were so acceptable, that they made him Secretary to the Committee. On the second and third of September 1792, he superintended the massacre of the prisons, and is alledged to have paid the assassins according to the number of victims they dispatched with great regularity; and he himself seems to have little to say in his defence, except that he acted officially. Yet even the imputation of such a claim could not be overlooked by the citizens of Paris; and at the election of the Convention he was distinguished by being chosen one of their representatives. It is needless to describe his political career in the Assembly otherwise than by adding, that when the revolutionary furor was at its acme, he was deemed by the Committee of Public Welfare worthy of an important mission in the South. The people of Bourdeaux were, accordingly, for some time harassed by the usual effects of these visitations--imprisonments and the Guillotine; and Tallien, though eclipsed by Maignet and Carrier, was by no means deficient in the patriotic energies of the day. I think I must before have mentioned to you a Madame de Fontenay, the wife of an emigrant, whom I occasionally saw at Mad. de C____'s. I then remarked her for the uncommon attraction of her features, and the elegance of her person; but was so much disgusted at a tendency to republicanism I observed in her, and which, in a young woman, I thought unbecoming, that I did not promote the acquaintance, and our different pursuits soon separated us entirely. Since this period I have learned, that her conduct became exceedingly imprudent, or at least suspicious, and that at the general persecution, finding her republicanism would not protect her, she fled to Bourdeaux, with the hope of being able to proceed to Spain. Here, however, being a Spaniard by birth, and the wife of an emigrant, she was arrested and thrown into prison, where she remained till the arrival of Tallien on his mission. The miscellaneous occupations of a deputy-errant, naturally include an introduction to the female prisoners; and Tallien's presence afforded Mad. de Fontenay an occasion of pleading her cause with all the success which such a pleader might, in other times, be supposed to obtain from a judge of Tallien's age. The effect of the scenes Tallien had been an actor in, was counteracted by youth, and his heart was not yet indifferent to the charms of beauty--Mad. de Fontenay was released by the captivation of her liberator, and a reciprocal attachment ensued. We must not, however, conclude, all this merely a business of romance. Mad. de Fontenay was rich, and had connexions in Spain, which might hereafter procure an asylum, when a regicide may with difficulty find one: and on the part of the lady, though Tallien's person is agreeable, a desire of protecting herself and her fortune might be allowed to have some influence. From this time the revolutionist is said to have given way: Bourdeaux became the Capua of Tallien; and its inhabitants were, perhaps, indebted for a more moderate exercise of his power, to the smiles of Mad. de Fontenay.--From hanging loose on society, he had now the prospect of marrying a wife with a large fortune; and Tallien very wisely considered, that having something at stake, a sort of comparative reputation among the higher class of people at Bourdeaux, might be of more importance to him in future, than all the applause the Convention could bestow on a liberal use of the Guillotine.--The relaxed system which was the consequence of such policy, soon reached the Committee of Public Welfare, to whom it was highly displeasing, and Tallien was recalled. A youth of the name of Julien, particularly in the confidence of Robespierre, was then sent to Bourdeaux, not officially as his successor, but as a spy, to collect information concerning him, as well as to watch the operations of other missionaries, and prevent their imitating Tallien's schemes of personal advantage, at the expence of scandalizing the republic by an appearance of lenity.--The disastrous state of Lyons, the persecutions of Carrier, the conflagrations of Maignet, and the crimes of various other Deputies, had obliterated the minor revolutionisms of Tallien:* The citizens of Bourdeaux spoke of him without horror, which in these times was equal to eulogium; and Julien transmitted such accounts of his conduct to Robespierre,** as were equally alarming to the jealousy of his spirit, and repugnant to the cruelty of his principles. * It was Tallien's boast to have guillotined only aristocrats, and of this part of his merit I am willing to leave him in possession. At Toulon he was charged with the punishment of those who had given up the town to the English; but finding, as he alledged, nearly all the inhabitants involved, he selected about two hundred of the richest, and that the horrid business might wear an appearance of regularity, the patriots, that is, the most notorious Jacobins, were ordered to give their opinion on the guilt of these victims, who were brought out into an open field for that purpose. With such judges the sentence was soon passed, and a fusillade took place on the spot.--It was on this occasion that Tallien made particular boast of his humanity; and in the same publication where he relates the circumstance, he exposes the "atrocious conduct" of the English at the surrender of Toulon. The cruelty of these barbarians not being sufficiently gratified by dispatching the patriots the shortest way, they hung up many of them by their chins on hooks at the shambles, and left them to die at their leisure.--See "Mitraillades, Fusillades," a recriminating pamphlet, addressed by Tallien to Collot d'Herbois.--The title alludes to Collot's exploits at Lyons. ** It is not out of the usual course of things that Tallien's moderation at Bourdeaux might have been profitable; and the wife or mistress of a Deputy was, on such occasions, a useful medium, through which the grateful offerings of a rich and favoured aristocrat might be conveyed, without committing the legislative reputation.--The following passage from Julien's correspondence with Robespierre seems to allude to some little arrangements of this nature: "I think it my duty to transmit you an extract from a letter of Tallien's, [Which had been intercepted.] to the National Club.--It coincides with the departure of La Fontenay, whom the Committee of General Safety have doubtless had arrested. I find some very curious political details regarding her; and Bourdeaux seems to have been, until this moment, a labyrinth of intrigue and peculation." It appears from Robespierre's papers, that not only Tallien, but Legendre, Bourdon de l'Oise, Thuriot, and others, were incessantly watched by the spies of the Committee. The profession must have improved wonderfully under the auspices of the republic, for I doubt if _Mons. le Noir's Mouchards_ [The spies of the old police, so called in derision.-- Brissot, in this act of accusation, is described as having been an agent of the Police under the monarchy.--I cannot decide on the certainty of this, or whether his occupation was immediately that of a spy, but I have respectable authority for saying, that antecedent to the revolution, his character was very slightly estimated, and himself considered as "hanging loose on society."] were as able as Robespierre's.--The reader may judge from the following specimens: "The 6th instant, the deputy Thuriot, on quitting the Convention, went to No. 35, Rue Jaques, section of the Pantheon, to the house of a pocket-book maker, where he staid talking with a female about ten minutes. He then went to No. 1220, Rue Fosse St. Bernard, section of the Sans-Culottes, and dined there at a quarter past two. At a quarter past seven he left the last place, and meeting a citizen on the Quay de l'Ecole, section of the Museum, near le Cafe Manoury, they went in there together, and drank a bottle of beer. From thence he proceeded to la Maison Memblee de la Providence, No. 16, Rue d'Orleans Honore, section de la Halle au Bled, whence, after staying about five-and-twenty minutes, he came out with a citoyenne, who had on a puce Levite, a great bordered shawl of Japan cotton, and on her head a white handkerchief, made to look like a cap. They went together to No. 163, Place Egalite, where after stopping an instant, they took a turn in the galleries, and then returned to sup.--They went in at half past nine, and were still there at eleven o'clock, when we came away, not being certain if they would come out again. "Bourdon de l'Oise, on entering the Assembly, shook hands with four or five Deputies. He was observed to gape while good news was announcing." Tallien was already popular among the Jacobins of Paris; and his connexion with a beautiful woman, who might enable him to keep a domestic establishment, and to display any wealth he had acquired, without endangering his reputation, was a circumstance not to be overlooked; for Robespierre well knew the efficacy of female intrigue, and dinners,* in gaining partizans among the subordinate members of the Convention. * Whoever reads attentively, and in detail, the debates of the Convention, will observe the influence and envy created by a superior style of living in any particular member. His dress, his lodging, or dinners, are a perpetual subject of malignant reproach. --This is not to be wondered at, when we consider the description of men the Convention is composed of;--men who, never having been accustomed to the elegancies of life, behold with a grudging eye the gay apparel or luxurious table of a colleague, who arrived at Paris with no other treasure but his patriotism, and has no ostensible means beyond his eighteen livres a day, now increased to thirty-six. Mad. de Fontenay, was, therefore, on her arrival at Paris, whither she had followed Tallien, (probably in order to procure a divorce and marry him,) arrested, and conveyed to prison. An injury of this kind was not to be forgiven; and Robespierre seems to have acted on the presumption that it could not. He beset Tallien with spies, menaced him in the Convention, and made Mad. de Fontenay an offer of liberty, if she would produce a substantial charge against him, which he imagined her knowledge of his conduct at Bourdeaux might furnish her grounds for doing. A refusal must doubtless have irritated the tyrant; and Tallien had every reason to fear she would soon be included in one of the lists of victims who were daily sacrificed as conspirators in the prisons. He was himself in continual expectation of being arrested; and it was generally believed Robespierre would soon openly accuse him.--Thus situated, he eagerly embraced the opportunity which the schism in the Committee presented of attacking his adversary, and we certainly must allow him the merit of being the first who dared to move for the arrest of Robespierre.--I need not add, that la belle was one of the first whose prison doors were opened; and I understand that, being divorced from Mons. de Fontenay, she is either married, or on the point of being so, to Tallien. This conclusion spoils my story as a moral one; and had I been the disposer of events, the Septembriser, the regicide, and the cold assassin of the Toulonais, should have found other rewards than affluence, and a wife who might represent one of Mahomet's Houris. Yet, surely, "the time will come, though it come ne'er so slowly," when Heaven shall separate guilt from prosperity, and when Tallien and his accomplices shall be remembered only as monuments of eternal justice. For the lady, her faults are amply punished in the disgrace of such an alliance-- "A cut-purse of the empire and the rule; "____ a King of shreds and patches." Providence, Aug. 14, 1794. The thirty members whom Robespierre intended to sacrifice, might perhaps have formed some design of resisting, but it appears evident that the Convention in general acted without plan, union, or confidence.*-- * The base and selfish timidity of the Convention is strongly evinced by their suffering fifty innocent people to be guillotined on the very ninth of Thermidor, for a pretended conspiracy in the prison of St. Lazare.--A single word from any member might at this crisis have suspended the execution of the sentence, but that word no one had the courage or the humanity to utter. --Tallien and Billaud were rendered desperate by their situation, and it is likely that, when they ventured to attack Robespierre, they did not themselves expect to be successful--it was the consternation of the latter which encouraged them to persist, and the Assembly to support them: "There is a tide in the affairs of men, "Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune." And to have been lucky enough to seize on this crisis, is, doubtless, the whole merit of the convention. There has, it is true, been many allusions to the dagger of Brutus, and several Deputies are said to have conceived very heroic projects for the destruction of the tyrant; but as he was dead before these projects were brought to light, we cannot justly ascribe any effect to them. The remains of the Brissotin faction, still at liberty, from whom some exertions might have been expected, were cautiously inactive; and those who had been most in the habit of appreciating themselves for their valour, were now conspicuous only for that discretion which Falstaff calls the better part of it.--Dubois Crance, who had been at the expence of buying a Spanish poniard at St. Malo, for the purpose of assassinating Robespierre, seems to have been calmed by the journey, and to have finally recovered his temper, before he reached the Convention.--Merlin de Thionville, Merlin de Douay, and others of equal note, were among the "passive valiant;" and Bourdon de l'Oise had already experienced such disastrous effects from inconsiderate exhibitions of courage, that he now restrained his ardour till the victory should be determined. Even Legendre, who is occasionally the Brutus, the Curtius, and all the patriots whose names he has been able to learn, confined his prowess to an assault on the club-room of the Jacobins, when it was empty, and carrying off the key, which no one disputed with him, so that he can at most claim an ovation. It is, in short, remarkable, that all the members who at present affect to be most vehement against Robespierre's principles, [And where was the all-politic Sieyes?--At home, writing his own eulogium.] were the least active in attacking his person; and it is indisputable, that to Tallien, Billaud, Louchet, Elie Lacoste, Collot d'Herbois, and a few of the more violent Jacobins, were due those first efforts which determined his fall.--Had Robespierre, instead of a querelous harangue, addressed the convention in his usual tone of authority, and ended by moving for a decree against a few only of those obnoxious to him, the rest might have been glad to compound for their own safety, by abandoning a cause no longer personal: but his impolicy, not his wickedness, hastened his fate; and it is so far fortunate for France, that it has at least suspended the system of government which is ascribed to him. The first days of victory were passed in receiving congratulations, and taking precautions; and though men do not often adapt their claims to their merits, yet the members of the Convention seemed in general to be conscious that none amongst them had very decided pretensions to the spoils of the vanquished.--Of twelve, which originally composed the Committee of Public Welfare, seven only remained; yet no one ventured to suggest a completion of the number, till Barrere, after previously insinuating how adequate he and his colleagues were to the task of "saving the country," proposed, in his flippant way, and merely as a matter of form, that certain persons whom he recommended, should fill up the vacancies in the government. This modest Carmagnole* was received with great coolness; the late implicit acquiescence was changed to demur, and an adjournment unanimously called for. * A ludicrous appellation, which Barrere used to give to his reports in the presence of those who were in the secret of his Charlatanry. The air of "La Carmagnole" was originally composed when the town of that name was taken by Prince Eugene, and was adapted to the indecent words now sung by the French after the 10th of August 1792. --Such unusual temerity susprised and alarmed the remains of the Committee, and Billaud Varennes sternly reminded the Convention of the abject state they were so lately released from. This produced retort and replication, and the partners of Robespierre's enormities, who had hoped to be the tranquil inheritors of his power, found, that in destroying a rival, they had raised themselves masters. The Assembly persisted in not adopting the members offered to be imposed upon them; but, as it was easier to reject than to choose, the Committee were ordered to present a new plan for this part of the executive branch, and the election of those to be entrusted with it was postponed for farther consideration. Having now felt their strength, they next proceeded to renew a part of the committee of General Safety, several of its members being inculpated as partizans of Robespierre, and though this Committee had become entirely subordinate to that of Public Welfare, yet its functions were too important for it to be neglected, more especially as they comprised a very favourite branch of the republican government, that of issuing writs of arrest at pleasure.--The law of the twenty-second of Prairial is also repealed, but the Revolutionary Tribunal is preserved, and the necessity of suspending the old jury, as being the creatures of Robespierre, has not prevented the tender solicitude of the Convention for a renovated activity in the establishment itself. This assumption of power has become every day more confirmed, and the addresses which are received by the Assembly, though yet in a strain of gross adulation,* express such an abhorrence of the late system, as must suffice to convince them the people are not disposed to see such a system continued. * A collection of addresses, presented to the Convention at various periods, might form a curious history of the progress of despotism. These effusions of zeal were not, however, all in the "sublime" style: the legislative dignity sometimes condescended to unbend itself, and listen to metrical compositions, enlivened by the accompaniment of fiddles; but the manly and ferocious Danton, to whom such sprightly interruptions were not congenial, proposed a decree, that the citizens should, in future, express their adorations in plain prose, and without any musical accessories. Billaud Varennes, Collot, and other members of the old Committee, view these innovations with sullen acquiescence; but Barrere, whose frivolous and facile spirit is incapable of consistency, even in wickedness, perseveres and flourishes at the tribune as gaily as ever.--Unabashed by detection, insensible to contempt, he details his epigrams and antitheses against Catilines and Cromwells with as much self-sufficiency as when, in the same tinsel eloquence, he promulgated the murderous edicts of Robespierre. Many of the prisoners at Paris continue daily to obtain their release, and, by the exertions of his personal enemies, particularly of our quondam sovereign, Andre Dumont, (now a member of the Committee of General Safety,) an examination into the atrocities committed by Le Bon is decreed.--But, amidst these appearances of justice, a versatility of principle, or rather an evident tendency to the decried system, is perceptible. Upon the slightest allusion to the revolutionary government, the whole Convention rise in a mass to vociferate their adherence to it:* the tribunal, which was its offspring and support, is anxiously reinstalled; and the low insolence with which Barrere announces their victories in the Netherlands, is, as usual, loudly applauded. * The most moderate, as well as the most violent, were always united on the subject of this irrational tyranny.--_"Toujours en menageant, comme la prunelle de ses yeux, le gouvernement revolutionnaire."_-- "Careful always of the revolutionary government, as of the apple of their eye." _Fragment pour servir a l'Hist. de la Convention, par J. J. Dussault_. The brothers of Cecile Renaud, who were sent for by Robespierre from the army to Paris, in order to follow her to the scaffold, did not arrive until their persecutor was no more, and a change of government was avowed. They have presented themselves at the bar of the Convention, to entreat a revisal of their father's sentence, and some compensation for his property, so unjustly confiscated.--You will, perhaps, imagine, that, at the name of these unfortunate young men, every heart anticipated a consent to their claims, even before the mind could examine the justice of them, and that one of those bursts of sensibility for which this legislature is so remarkable instantaneously accorded the petition. Alas! this was not an occasion to excite the enthusiasm of the Convention: Coupilleau de Fontenay, one of the "mild and moderate party", repulsed the petitioners with harshness, and their claim was silenced by a call for the order of the day. The poor Renauds were afterwards coldly referred to the Committee of Relief, for a pittance, by way of charity, instead of the property they have a right to, and which they have been deprived of, by the base compliance of the Convention with the caprice of a monster. Such relapses and aberrations are not consolatory, but the times and circumstances seem to oppose them--the whole fabric of despotism is shaken, and we have reason to hope the efforts of tyranny will be counteracted by its weakness. We do not yet derive any advantage from the early maturity of the harvest, and it is still with difficulty we obtain a limited portion of bad bread. Severe decrees are enacted to defeat the avarice of the farmers, and prevent monopolies of the new corn; but these people are invulnerable: they have already been at issue with the system of terror-- and it was found necessary, even before the death of Robespierre, to release them from prison, or risk the destruction of the harvest for want of hands to get it in. It is now discovered, that natural causes, and the selfishness of individuals, are adequate to the creation of a temporary scarcity; yet when this happened under the King, it was always ascribed to the machinations of government.--How have the people been deceived, irritated, and driven to rebellion, by a degree of want, less, much less, insupportable than that they are obliged to suffer at present, without daring even to complain! I have now been in confinement almost twelve months, and my health is considerably impaired. The weather is oppressively warm, and we have no shade in the garden but under a mulberry-tree, which is so surrounded by filth, that it is not approachable. I am, however, told, that in a few days, on account of my indisposition, I shall be permitted to go home, though with a proviso of being guarded at my own expence.--My friends are still at Arras; and if this indulgence be extended to Mad. de la F____, she will accompany me. Personal accommodation, and an opportunity of restoring my health, render this desirable; but I associate no idea of freedom with my residence in this country. The boundary may be extended, but it is still a prison.--Yours. Providence, Aug. 15, 1794. To-morrow I expect to quit this place, and have been wandering over it for the last time. You will imagine I can have no attachment to it: yet a retrospect of my sensations when I first arrived, of all I have experienced, and still more of what I have apprehended since that period, makes me look forward to my departure with a satisfaction that I might almost call melancholy. This cell, where I have shivered through the winter--the long passages, which I have so often traversed in bitter rumination--the garden, where I have painfully breathed a purer air, at the risk of sinking beneath the fervid rays of an unmitigated sun, are not scenes to excite regret; but when I think that I am still subject to the tyranny which has so long condemned me to them, this reflection, with a sentiment perhaps of national pride, which is wounded by accepting as a favour what I have been unjustly deprived of, renders me composed, if not indifferent, at the prospect of my release. This dreary epoch of my life has not been without its alleviations. I have found a chearful companion in Mad. de M____, who, at sixty, was brought here, because she happened to be the daughter of Count L____, who has been dead these thirty years!--The graces and silver accents of Madame de B____, might have assisted in beguiling severer captivity; and the Countess de C____, and her charming daughters (the eldest of whom is not to be described in the common place of panegyric), who, though they have borne their own afflictions with dignity, have been sensible to the misfortunes of others, and whom I must, in justice, except from all the imputations of meanness or levity, which I have sometimes had occasion to notice in those who, like themselves, were objects of republican persecution, have essentially contributed to diminish the horrors of confinement.--I reckon it likewise among my satisfactions, that, with the exception of the Marechalle de Biron,* and General O'Moran, none of our fellow-prisoners have suffered on the scaffold.-- * The Marechalle de Biron, a very old and infirm woman, was taken from hence to the Luxembourg at Paris, where her daughter-in-law, the Duchess, was also confined. A cart arriving at that prison to convey a number of victims to the tribunal, the list, in the coarse dialect of republicanism, contained the name of la femme Biron. "But there are two of them," said the keeper. "Then bring them both."-- The aged Marechalle, who was at supper, finished her meal while the rest were preparing, then took up her book of devotion, and departed chearfully.--The next day both mother and daughter were guillotined. --Dumont has, indeed, virtually occasioned the death of several; in particular the Duc du Chatelet, the Comte de Bethune, Mons. de Mancheville, &c.--and it is no merit in him that Mr. Luttrell, with a poor nun of the name of Pitt,* whom he took from hence to Paris, as a capture which might give him importance, were not massacred either by the mob or the tribunal. * This poor woman, whose intellects, as I am informed, appeared in a state of derangement, was taken from a convent at Abbeville, and brought to the Providence, as a relation of Mr. Pitt, though I believe she has no pretensions to that honour. But the name of Pitt gave her importance; she was sent to Paris under a military escort, and Dumont announced the arrival of this miserable victim with all the airs of a conqueror. I have been since told, she was lodged at St. Pelagie, where she suffered innumerable hardships, and did not recover her liberty for many months after the fall of Robespierre. --If the persecution of this department has not been sanguinary,* it should be remembered, that it has been covered with prisons; and that the extreme submission of its inhabitants would scarcely have furnished the most merciless tyrant with a pretext for a severer regimen.-- * There were some priests guillotined at Amiens, but the circumstance was concealed from me for some months after it happened. --Dumont, I know, expects to establish a reputation by not having guillotined as an amusement, and hopes that he may here find a retreat when his revolutionary labours shall be finished. The Convention have not yet chosen the members who are to form the new Committee. They were yesterday solemnly employed in receiving the American Ambassador; likewise a brass medal of the tyrant Louis the Fourteenth, and some marvellous information about the unfortunate Princess' having dressed herself in mourning at the death of Robespierre. These legislators remind me of one of Swift's female attendants, who, in spite of the literary taste he endeavoured to inspire her with, never could be divested of her original housewifely propensities, but would quit the most curious anecdote, as he expresses it, "to go seek an old rag in a closet." Their projects for the revival of their navy seldom go farther than a transposal in the stripes of the flag, and their vengeance against regal anthropophagi, and proud islanders, is infallibly diverted by a denunciation of an aristocratic quartrain, or some new mode, whose general adoption renders it suspected as the badge of a party.--If, according to Cardinal de Retz' opinion, elaborate attention to trifles denote a little mind, these are true Lilliputian sages.--Yours, &c. August, 1794. I did not leave the Providence until some days after the date of my last: there were so many precautions to be taken, and so many formalities to be observed--such references from the municipality to the district, and from the district to the Revolutionary Committee, that it is evident Robespierre's death has not banished the usual apprehension of danger from the minds of those who became responsible for acts of justice or humanity. At length, after procuring a house-keeper to answer with his life and property for our re-appearance, and for our attempting nothing against the "unity and indivisibility" of the republic, we bade (I hope) a long adieu to our prison. Madame de ____ is to remain with me till her house can be repaired; for it has been in requisition so often, that there is now, we are told, scarcely a bed left, or a room habitable. We have an old man placed with us by way of a guard, but he is civil, and is not intended to be a restraint upon us. In fact, he has a son, a member of the Jacobin club, and this opportunity is taken to compliment him, by taxing us with the maintenance of his father. It does not prevent us from seeing our acquaintance, and we might, I suppose, go out, though we have not yet ventured. The politics of the Convention are fluctuating and versatile, as will ever be the case where men are impelled by necessity to act in opposition to their principles. In their eagerness to attribute all the past excesses to Robespierre, they have, unawares, involved themselves in the obligation of not continuing the same system. They doubtless expected, by the fall of the tyrant, to become his successors; but the people, weary of being dupes, and of hearing that tyrants were fallen, without feeling any diminution of tyranny, have every where manifested a temper, which the Convention, in the present relaxed state of its power, is fearful of making experiments upon. Hence, great numbers of prisoners are liberated, those that remain are treated more indulgently, and the fury of revolutionary despotism is in general abated. The Deputies who most readily assent to these changes have assumed the appellation of Moderates; (Heaven knows how much they are indebted to comparison;) and the popularity they have acquired has both offended and alarmed the more inflexible Jacobins. A motion has just been made by one Louchet, that a list of all persons lately enlarged should be printed, with the names of those Deputies who solicited in their favour, annexed; and that such aristocrats as were thus discovered to have regained their liberty, should be re-imprisoned.--The decree passed, but was so ill received by the people, that it was judged prudent to repeal it the next day. This circumstance seems to be the signal of dissention between the Assembly and the Club: the former, apprehensive of revolting the public opinion on the one hand, and desirous of conciliating the Jacobins on the other, waver between indulgence and severity; but it is easy to discover, that their variance with the Jacobins is more a matter of expediency than principle, and that, were it not for other considerations, they would not suffer the imprisonment of a few thousand harmless people to interrupt the amity which has so long subsisted between themselves and their ancient allies.--It is written, "from their works you shall know them;" and reasoning from this tenet, which is our best authority, (for who can boast a science in the human heart?) I am justified in my opinion, and I know it to be that of many persons more competent to decide than myself. If I could have had doubts on the subject, the occurrences of the last few days would have amply satisfied them. However rejoiced the nation at large might be at the overthrow of Robespierre, no one was deceived as to the motives which actuated his colleagues in the Committee. Every day produced new indications not only of their general concurrence in the enormities of the government, but of their own personal guilt. The Convention, though it could not be insensible of this, was willing, with a complaisant prudence, to avoid the scandal of a public discussion, which must irritate the Jacobins, and expose its own weakness by a retrospect of the crimes it had applauded and supported. Laurent Lecointre,* alone, and apparently unconnected with party, has had the courage to exhibit an accusation against Billaud, Collot, Barrere, and those of Robespierre's accomplices who were members of the Committee of General Safety. He gave notice of his design on the eleventh of Fructidor (28th of August). * Lecointre is a linen-draper at Versailles, an original revolutionist, and I believe of more decent character than most included in that description. If we could be persuaded that there were any real fanatics in the Convention, I should give Lecointre the credit of being among the number. He seems, at least, to have some material circumstances in his favour--such as possessing the means of living; of not having, in appearance, enriched himself by the revolution; and, of being the only member who, after a score of decrees to that purpose, has ventured to produce an account of his fortune to the public. --It was received everywhere but in the Convention with applause; and the public was flattered with the hope that justice would attain another faction of its oppressors. On the succeeding day, Lecointre appeared at the tribune to read his charges. They conveyed, even to the most prejudiced mind, an entire conviction, that the members he accused were sole authors of a part, and accomplices in all the crimes which had desolated their country. Each charge was supported by material proof, which he deposited for the information of his colleagues. But this was unnecessary--his colleagues had no desire to be convinced; and, after overpowering him with ridicule and insult, they declared, without entering into any discussion, that they rejected the charges with indignation, and that the members implicated had uniformly acted according to their [own] wishes, and those of the nation. As soon as this result was known in Paris, the people became enraged and disgusted, the public walks resounded with murmurs, the fermentation grew general, and some menaces were uttered of forcing the Convention to give Lecointre a more respectful hearing.--Intimidated by such unequivocal proofs of disapprobation, when the Assembly met on the thirteenth, it was decreed, after much opposition from Tallien, that Lecointre should be allowed to reproduce his charges, and that they should be solemnly examined. After all this, Lecointre, whose figure is almost ludicrous, and who is no orator, was to repeat a voluminous denunciation, amidst the clamour, abuse, chicane, and derision of the whole Convention. But there are occasions when the keenest ridicule is pointless; when the mind, armed by truth and elevated by humanity, rejects its insidious efforts--and, absorbed by more laudable feelings, despises even the smile of contempt. The justice of Lecointre's cause supplied his want of external advantages: and his arguments were so clear and so unanswerable, that the plain diction in which they were conveyed was more impressive than the most finished eloquence; and neither the malice nor sarcasms of his enemies had any effect but on those who were interested in silencing or confounding him. Yet, in proportion as the force of Lecointre's denunciation became evident, the Assembly appeared anxious to suppress it; and, after some hours' scandalous debate, during which it was frequently asserted that these charges could not be encouraged without criminating the entire legislative body, they decreed the whole to be false and defamatory. The accused members defended themselves with the assurance of delinquents tried by their avowed accomplices, and who are previously certain of favour and acquittal; while Lecointre's conduct in the business seems to have been that of a man determined to persevere in an act of duty, which he has little reason to hope will be successful.* * It is said, that, at the conclusion of this disgraceful business, the members of the convention crouded about the delinquents with their habitual servility, and appeared gratified that their services on the occasion had given them a claim to notice and familiarity. Though the galleries of the Convention were more than usually furnished on the day with applauders, yet this decision has been universally ill received. The time is passed when the voice of reason could be silenced by decrees. The stupendous tyranny of the government, though not meliorated in principle, is relaxed in practice; and this vote, far from operating in favour of the culprits, has only served to excite the public indignation, and to render them more odious. Those who cannot judge of the logical precision of Lecointre's arguments, or the justness of his inferences, can feel that his charges are merited. Every heart, every tongue, acknowledges the guilt of those he has attacked. They are certain France has been the prey of numberless atrocities--they are certain, that these were perpetrated by order of the committee; that eleven members composed it; and that Robespierre and his associates being but three, did not constitute a majority. These facts are now commented on with as much freedom as can be expected among a people whose imaginations are yet haunted by revolutionary tribunals and Bastilles, and the conclusions are not favourable to the Convention. The national discontent is, however, suspended by the hostilities between the legislature and the Jacobin club: the latter still persists in demanding the revolutionary system in its primitive severity, while the former are restrained from compliance, not only by the odium it must draw on them, but from a certainty that it cannot be supported but through the agency of the popular societies, who would thus again become their dictators. I believe it is not unlikely that the people and the Convention are both endeavouring to make instruments of each other to destroy the common enemy; for the little popularity the Convention enjoy is doubtless owing to a superior hatred of the Jacobins: and the moderation which the former affect towards the people, is equally influenced by a view of forming a powerful balance against these obnoxious societies.--While a sort of necessity for this temporizing continues, we shall go on very tranquilly, and it is become a mode to say the Convention is "adorable." Tallien, who has been wrestling with his ill fame for a transient popularity, has thought it advisable to revive the public attention by the farce of Pisistratus--at least, an attempt to assassinate him, in which there seems to have been more eclat than danger, has given rise to such an opinion. Bulletins of his health are delivered every day in form to the Convention, and some of the provincial clubs have sent congratulations on his escape. But the sneers of the incredulous, and perhaps an internal admonition of the ridicule and disgrace attendant on the worship of an idol whose reputation is so unpropitious, have much repressed the customary ardour, and will, I think, prevent these "hair-breadth 'scapes" from continuing fashionable.--Yours, &c. [No Date Given] When I describe the French as a people bending meekly beneath the most absurd and cruel oppression, transmitted from one set of tyrants to another, without personal security, without commerce--menaced by famine, and desolated by a government whose ordinary resources are pillage and murder; you may perhaps read with some surprize the progress and successes of their armies. But, divest yourself of the notions you may have imbibed from interested misrepresentations--forget the revolutionary common-place of "enthusiams", "soldiers of freedom," and "defenders of their country"--examine the French armies as acting under the motives which usually influence such bodies, and I am inclined to believe you will see nothing very wonderful or supernatural in their victories. The greater part of the French troops are now composed of young men taken indiscriminately from all classes, and forced into the service by the first requisition. They arrive at the army ill-disposed, or at best indifferent, for it must not be forgotten, that all who could be prevailed on to go voluntarily had departed before recourse was had to the measure of a general levy. They are then distributed into different corps, so that no local connections remain: the natives of the North are mingled with those of the South, and all provincial combinations are interdicted. It is well known that the military branch of espionage is as extended as the civil, and the certainty of this destroys confidence, and leaves even the unwilling soldier no resource but to go through his professional duty with as much zeal as though it were his choice. On the one hand, the discipline is severe--on the other, licentiousness is permitted beyond all example; and, half-terrified, half-seduced, principles the most inimical, and morals the least corrupt, become habituated to fear nothing but the government, and to relish a life of military indulgence.--The armies were some time since ill clothed, and often ill fed; but the requisitions, which are the scourge of the country, supply them, for the moment, with profusion: the manufacturers, the shops, and the private individual, are robbed to keep them in good humour--the best wines, the best clothes, the prime of every thing, is destined to their use; and men, who before laboured hard to procure a scanty subsistence, now revel in luxury and comparative idleness. The rapid promotion acquired in the French army is likewise another cause of its adherence to the government. Every one is eager to be advanced; for, by means of requisitions, pillage and perquisites, the most trifling command is very lucrative.--Vast sums of money are expended in supplying the camps with newspapers written nearly for that purpose, and no others are permitted to be publicly circulated.--When troops are quartered in a town, instead of that cold reception which it is usual to accord such inmates, the system of terror acts as an excellent Marechal de Logis, and procures them, if not a cordial, at least a substantial one; and it is indubitable, that they are no where so well entertained as at the houses of professed aristocrats. The officers and men live in a familiarity highly gratifying to the latter; and, indeed, neither are distinguishable by their language, manners, or appearance. There is, properly speaking, no subordination except in the field, and a soldier has only to avoid politics, and cry "Vive la Convention!" to secure plenary indulgence on all other occasions.--Many who entered the army with regret, continue there willingly for the sake of a maintenance; besides that a decree exists, which subjects the parents of those who return, to heavy punishments. In a word, whatever can operate on the fears, or interests, or passions, is employed to preserve the allegiance of the armies to the government, and attach them to their profession. I am far from intending to detract from the national bravery--the annals of the French Monarchy abound with the most splendid instances of it--I only wish you to understand, what I am fully convinced of myself, that liberty and republicanism have no share in the present successes. The battle of Gemappe was gained when the Brissotin faction had enthroned itself on the ruins of a constitution, which the armies were said to adore with enthusiasm: by what sudden inspiration were their affections transferred to another form of government? or will any one pretend that they really understood the democratic Machiavelism which they were to propagate in Brabant? At the battle of Maubeuge, France was in the first paroxysm of revolutionary terror--at that of Fleurus, she had become a scene of carnage and proscription, at once the most wretched and the most detestable of nations, the sport and the prey of despots so contemptible, that neither the excess of their crimes, nor the sufferings they inflicted, could efface the ridicule which was incurred by a submission to them. Were the French then fighting for liberty, or did they only move on professionally, with the enemy in front, the Guillotine in the rear, and the intermediate space filled up with the licentiousness of a camp?--If the name alone of liberty suffices to animate the French troops to conquest, and they could imagine it was enjoyed under Brissot or Robespierre, this is at least a proof that they are rather amateurs than connoisseurs; and I see no reason why the same impulse might not be given to an army of Janizaries, or the the legions of Tippoo Saib. After all, it may be permitted to doubt, whether the sort of enthusiasm so liberally ascribed to the French, would really contribute more to their successes, than the thoughtless courage I am willing to allow them.--It is, I believe, the opinion of military men, that the best soldiers are those who are most disposed to act mechanically; and we are certain that the most brilliant victories have been obtained where this ardour, said to be produced by the new doctrines, could have had no influence.--The heroes of Pavia, of Narva, or those who administered to the vain-glory of Louis the Fourteenth, by ravaging the Palatinate, we may suppose little acquainted with it. The fate of battles frequently depends on causes which the General, the Statesman, or the Philosopher, are equally unable to decide upon; and the laurel, "meed of mighty conquerors," seems oftener to fall at the caprice of the wind, than to be gathered. It is sometimes the lot of the ablest tactician, at others of the most voluminous muster-roll; but, I believe, there are few examples where these political elevations have had an effect, when unaccompanied by advantages of situation, superior skill, or superior numbers.--_"La plupart des gens de guerre_ (says Fontenelle) _sont leur metier avec beaucoup de courage. Il en est peu qui y pensent; leurs bras agissent aussi vigoureusement que l'on veut, leurs tetes se reposent, et ne prennent presque part a rieu"_*-- * "Military men in general do their duty with much courage, but few make it a subject of reflection. With all the bodily activity that can be expected of them, their minds remain at rest, and partake but little of the business they are engaged in." --If this can be applied with truth to any armies, it must be to those of France. We have seen them successively and implicitly adopting all the new constitutions and strange gods which faction and extravagance could devise--we have seen them alternately the dupes and slaves of all parties: at one period abandoning their King and their religion: at another adulating Robespierre, and deifying Marat.--These, I confess are dispositions to make good soldiers, but convey to me no idea of enthusiasts or republicans. The bulletin of the Convention is periodically furnished with splendid feats of heroism performed by individuals of their armies, and I have no doubt but some of them are true. There are, however, many which have been very peaceably culled from old memoirs, and that so unskilfully, that the hero of the present year loses a leg or an arm in the same exploit, and uttering the self-same sentences, as one who lived two centuries ago. There is likewise a sort of jobbing in the edifying scenes which occasionally occur in the Convention--if a soldier happen to be wounded who has relationship, acquaintance, or connexion, with a Deputy, a tale of extraordinary valour and extraordinary devotion to the cause is invented or adopted; the invalid is presented in form at the bar of the Assembly, receives the fraternal embrace and the promise of a pension, and the feats of the hero, along with the munificence of the Convention, are ordered to circulate in the next bulletin. Yet many of the deeds recorded very deservedly in these annals of glory, have been performed by men who abhor republican principles, and lament the disasters their partizans have occasioned. I have known even notorious aristocrats introduced to the Convention as martyrs to liberty, and who have, in fact, behaved as gallantly as though they had been so.--These are paradoxes which a military man may easily reconcile. Independently of the various secondary causes that contribute to the success of the French armies, there is one which those persons who wish to exalt every thing they denominate republican seem to exclude--I mean, the immense advantage they possess in point of numbers. There has scarcely been an engagement of importance, in which the French have not profited by this in a very extraordinary degree.* * This has been confessed to me by many republicans themselves; and a disproportion of two or three to one must add considerably to republican enthusiasm. --Whenever a point is to be gained, the sacrifice of men is not a matter of hesitation. One body is dispatched after another; and fresh troops thus succeeding to oppose those of the enemy already harassed, we must not wonder that the event has so often proved favourable to them. A republican, who passes for highly informed, once defended this mode of warfare by observing, that in the course of several campaigns more troops perished by sickness than the sword. If then an object could be attained by such means, so much time was saved, and the loss eventually the same: but the Generals of other countries dare not risk such philosophical calculations, and would be accountable to the laws of humanity for their destructive conquests. When you estimate the numbers that compose the French armies, you are not to consider them as an undisciplined multitude, whose sole force is in their numbers. From the beginning of the revolution, many of them have been exercised in the National Guard; and though they might not make a figure on the parade at Potsdam, their inferiority is not so great as to render the German exactitude a counterbalance for the substantial inequality of numbers. Yet, powerfully as these considerations favour the military triumphs of France, there is a period when we may expect both cause and effect will terminate. That period may still be far removed, but whenever the assignats* become totally discredited, and it shall be found requisite to economize in the war department, adieu la gloire, a bas les armes, and perhaps bon soir la republique; for I do not reckon it possible, that armies so constituted can ever be persuaded to subject themselves to the restraints and privations which must be indispensible, as soon as the government ceases to have the disposal of an unlimited fund. * The mandats were, in fact, but a continuation of the assignats, under another name. The last decree for the emission of assignats, limited the quantity circulated to forty milliards, which taken at par, is only about sixteen hundred millions of pounds sterling! What I have hitherto written you will understand as applicable only to the troops employed on the frontiers. There are some of another description, more cherished and not less serviceable, who act as a sort of police militant and errant, and defend the republic against her internal enemies--the republicans. Almost every town of importance is occasionally infested by these servile instruments of despotism, who are maintained in insolent profusion, to overawe those whom misery and famine might tempt to revolt. When a government, after imprisoning some hundred thousands of the most distinguished in every class of life, and disarming all the rest, is yet obliged to employ such a force for its protection, we may justifiably conclude, it does not presume on the attachment of the people. It is not impossible that the agents of different descriptions, destined to the service of conciliating the interior to republicanism, might alone form an army equal to that of the Allies; but this is a task, where the numbers employed only serve to render it more difficult. They, however, procure submission, if they do not create affection; and the Convention is not delicate. Amiens, Sept. 30, 1794. The domestic politics of France are replete with novelties: the Convention is at war with the Jacobins--and the people, even to the most decided aristocrats, have become partizans of the Convention.--My last letters have explained the origin of these phaenomena, and I will now add a few words on their progress. You have seen that, at the fall of Robespierre, the revolutionary government had reached the very summit of despotism, and that the Convention found themselves under the necessity of appearing to be directed by a new impulse, or of acknowledging their participation in the crimes they affected to deplore.--In consequence, almost without the direct repeal of any law, (except some which affected their own security,) a more moderate system has been gradually adopted, or, to speak more correctly, the revolutionary one is suffered to relax. The Jacobins behold these popular measures with extreme jealousy, as a means which may in time render the legislature independent of them; and it is certainly not the least of their discontents, that, after all their labours in the common cause, they find themselves excluded both from power and emoluments. Accustomed to carry every thing by violence, and more ferocious than politic, they have, by insisting on the reincarceration of suspected people, attached a numerous party to the Convention, which is thus warned that its own safety depends on repressing the influence of clubs, which not only loudly demand that the prisons may be again filled, but frequently debate on the project of transporting all the "enemies of the republic" together. The liberty of the press, also, is a theme of discord not less important than the emancipation of aristocrats. The Jacobins are decidedly adverse to it; and it is a sort of revolutionary solecism, that those who boast of having been the original destroyers of despotism, are now the advocates of arbitrary imprisonment, and restraints on the freedom of the press. The Convention itself is divided on the latter subject; and, after a revolution of five years, founded on the doctrine of the rights of man, it has become matter of dispute--whether so principal an article of them ought really to exist or not. They seem, indeed, willing to allow it, provided restrictions can be devised which may prevent calumny from reaching their own persons; but as that cannot easily be atchieved, they not only contend against the liberty of the press in practice, but have hitherto refused to sanction it by decree, even as a principle. It is perhaps reluctantly that the Convention opposes these powerful and extended combinations which have so long been its support, and it may dread the consequences of being left without the means of overawing or influencing the people; but the example of the Brissotins, who, by attempting to profit by the services of the Jacobins, without submitting to their domination, fell a sacrifice, has warned their survivors of the danger of employing such instruments. It is evident that the clubs will not act subordinately, and that they must either be subdued to insignificance, or regain their authority entirely; and as neither the people nor Convention are disposed to acquiesce in the latter, they are politicly joining their efforts to accelerate the former. Yet, notwithstanding these reciprocal cajoleries, the return of justice is slow and mutable; an instinctive or habitual preference of evil appears at times to direct the Convention, even in opposition to their own interests. They have as yet done little towards repairing the calamities of which they are the authors; and we welcome the little they have done, not for its intrinsic value, but as we do the first spring flowers--which, though of no great sweetness or beauty, we consider as pledges that the storms of winter are over, and that a milder season is approaching.--It is true, the revolutionary Committees are diminished in number, the prisons are disencumbered, and a man is not liable to be arrested because a Jacobin suspects his features: yet there is a wide difference between such toleration and freedom and security; and it is a circumstance not favourable to those who look beyond the moment, that the tyrannical laws which authorized all the late enormities are still unrepealed. The Revolutionary Tribunal continues to sentence people to death, on pretexts as frivolous as those which were employed in the time of Robespierre; they have only the advantage of being tried more formally, and of forfeiting their lives upon proof, instead of without it, for actions that a strictly administered justice would not punish by a month's imprisonment.* * For instance, a young monk, for writing fanatic letters, and signing resolutions in favour of foederalism--a hosier, for facilitating the return of an emigrant--a man of ninety, for speaking against the revolution, and discrediting the assignats--a contractor, for embezzling forage--people of various descriptions, for obstructing the recruitment, or insulting the tree of liberty. These, and many similar condemnations, will be found in the proceedings of the Revolutionary Tribunal, long after the death of Robespierre, and when justice and humanity were said to be restored. A ceremony has lately taken place, the object of which was to deposit the ashes of Marat in the Pantheon, and to dislodge the bust of Mirabeau-- who, notwithstanding two years notice to quit this mansion of immortality, still remained there. The ashes of Marat being escorted to the Convention by a detachment of Jacobins, and the President having properly descanted on the virtues which once animated the said ashes, they were conveyed to the place destined for their reception; and the excommunicated Mirabeau being delivered over to the secular arm of a beadle, these remains of the divine Marat were placed among the rest of the republican deities. To have obliged the Convention in a body to attend and consecrate the crimes of this monster, though it could not degrade them, was a momentary triumph for the Jacobins, nor could the royalists behold without satisfaction the same men deploring the death of Marat, who, a month before, had celebrated the fall of Louis the Sixteenth! To have been so deplored, and so celebrated, are, methinks, the very extremes of infamy and glory. I must explain to you, that the Jacobins have lately been composed of two parties--the avowed adherents of Collot, Billaud, &c. and the concealed remains of those attached to Robespierre; but party has now given way to principle, a circumstance not usual; and the whole club of Paris, with several of the affiliated ones, join in censuring the innovating tendencies of the Convention.--It is curious to read the debates of the parent society, which pass in afflicting details of the persecutions experienced by the patriots on the parts of the moderates and aristocrats, who, they assert, are become so daring as even to call in question the purity of the immortal Marat. You will suppose, of course, that this cruel persecution is nothing more than an interdiction to persecute others; and their notions of patriotism and moderation may be conceived by their having just expelled Tallien and Freron as moderates.* * Freron endeavoured, on this occasion, to disculpate himself from the charge of "moderantisme," by alledging he had opposed Lecointre's denunciation of Barrere, &c.--and certainly one who piques himself on being the pupil of the divine Marat, was worthy of remaining in the fraternity from which he was now expelled.--Freron is a veteran journalist of the revolution, of better talents, though not of better fame, than the generality of his contemporaries: or, rather, his early efforts in exciting the people to rebellion entitle him to a preeminence of infamy. Amiens, October 4, 1794. We have had our guard withdrawn for some days; and I am just now returned from Peronne, where we had been in order to see the seals taken off the papers, &c. which I left there last year. I am much struck with the alteration observable in people's countenances. Every person I meet seems to have contracted a sort of revolutionary aspect: many walk with their heads down, and with half-shut eyes measure the whole length of a street, as though they were still intent on avoiding greetings from the suspicious; some look grave and sorrow-worn; some apprehensive, as if in hourly expectation of a _mandat d'arret;_ and others absolutely ferocious, from a habit of affecting the barbarity of the times. Their language is nearly as much changed as their appearance--the revolutionary jargon is universal, and the most distinguished aristocrats converse in the style of Barrere's reports. The common people are not less proficients in this fashionable dialect, than their superiors; and, as far as I can judge, are become so from similar motives. While I was waiting this morning at a shop-door, I listened to a beggar who was cheapening a slice of pumpkin, and on some disagreement about the price, the beggar told the old _revendeuse_ [Market-woman.] that she was _"gangrenee d'aristocratie."_ ["Eat up with aristocracy."] _"Je vous en defie,"_ ["I defy you."] retorted the pumpkin-merchant; but turning pale as she spoke, _"Mon civisme est a toute epreuve, mais prenez donc ta citrouille,"_ ["My civism is unquestionable; but here take your pumpkin."] take it then." _"Ah, te voila bonne republicaine,_ ["Ah! Now I see you are a good republican."] says the beggar, carrying off her bargain; while the old woman muttered, _"Oui, oui, l'on a beau etre republicaine tandis qu'on n'a pas de pain a manger."_ ["Yes, in troth, it's a fine thing to be a republican, and have no bread to eat."] I hear little of the positive merits of the convention, but the hope is general that they will soon suppress the Jacobin clubs; yet their attacks continue so cold and cautious, that their intentions are at least doubtful: they know the voice of the nation at large would be in favour of such a measure, and they might, if sincere, act more decisively, without risk to themselves.--The truth is, they would willingly proscribe the persons of the Jacobins, while they cling to their principles, and still hesitate whether they shall confide in a people whose resentment they have so much deserved, and have so much reason to dread. Conscious guilt appears to shackle all their proceedings, and though the punishment of some subordinate agents cannot, in the present state of things, be dispensed with, yet the Assembly unveil the register of their crimes very reluctantly, as if each member expected to see his own name inscribed on it. Thus, even delinquents, who would otherwise be sacrificed voluntarily to public justice, are in a manner protected by delays and chicane, because an investigation might implicate the Convention as the example and authoriser of their enormities.--Fouquier Tinville devoted a thousand innocent people to death in less time than it has already taken to bring him to a trial, where he will benefit by all those judicial forms which he has so often refused to others. This man, who is much the subject of conversation at present, was Public Accuser to the Revolutionary Tribunal--an office which, at best, in this instance, only served to give an air of regularity to assassination: but, by a sort of genius in turpitude, he contrived to render it odious beyond its original perversion, in giving to the most elaborate and revolting cruelties a turn of spontaneous pleasantry, or legal procedure.--The prisoners were insulted with sarcasms, intimidated by threats, and still oftener silenced by arbitrary declarations, that they were not entitled to speak; and those who were taken to the scaffold, after no other ceremony than calling over their names, had less reason to complain, than if they had previously been exposed to the barbarities of such trials.--Yet this wretch might, for a time at least, have escaped punishment, had he not, in defending himself, criminated the remains of the Committee, whom it was intended to screen. When he appeared at the bar of the Convention, every word he uttered seemed to fill its members with alarm, and he was ordered away before he could finish his declaration. It must be acknowledged, that, however he may be condemned by justice and humanity, nothing could legally attach to him: he was only the agent of the Convention, and the utmost horrors of the Tribunal were not merely sanctioned, but enjoined by specific decrees. I have been told by a gentleman who was at school with Fouquier, and has had frequent occasions of observing him at different periods since, that he always appeared to him to be a man of mild manners, and by no means likely to become the instrument of these atrocities; but a strong addiction to gaming having involved him in embarrassments, he was induced to accept the office of Public Accuser to the Tribunal, and was progressively led on from administering to the iniquity of his employers, to find a gratification in it himself. I have often thought, that the habit of watching with selfish avidity for those turns of fortune which enrich one individual by the misery of another, must imperceptibly tend to harden the heart. How can the gamester, accustomed both to suffer and inflict ruin with indifference, preserve that benevolent frame of mind, which, in the ordinary and less censurable pursuits of common life, is but too prone to become impaired, and to leave humanity more a duty than a feeling? The conduct of Fouquier Tinville has led me to some reflections on a subject which I know the French consider as matter of triumph, and as a peculiar advantage which their national character enjoys over the English--I mean that smoothness of manner and guardedness of expression which they call "aimable," and which they have the faculty of attaining and preserving distinctly from a correspondent temper of the mind. It accompanies them through the most irritating vicissitudes, and enables them to deceive, even without deceit: for though this suavity is habitual, of course frequently undesigning, the stranger is nevertheless thrown off his guard by it, and tempted to place confidence, or expect services, which a less conciliating deportment would not have been suggested. A Frenchman may be an unkind husband, a severe parent, or an arrogant master, yet never contract his features, or asperate his voice, and for this reason is, in the national sense, "un homme bien doux." His heart may become corrupt, his principles immoral, and his disposition ferocious--yet he shall still retain his equability of tone and complacent phraseology, and be "un homme bien aimable." The revolution has tended much to develope this peculiarity of the French character, and has, by various examples in public life, confirmed the opinions I had formed from previous observation. Fouquier Tinville, as I have already noticed, was a man of gentle exterior.--Couthon, the execrable associate of Robespierre, was mildness itself--Robespierre's harangues are in a style of distinguished sensibility--and even Carrier, the destroyer of thirty thousand Nantais, is attested by his fellow-students to have been of an amiable disposition. I know a man of most insinuating address, who has been the means of conducting his own brother to the Guillotine; and another nearly as prepossessing, who, without losing his courteous demeanor, was, during the late revolutionary excesses, the intimate of an executioner. *It would be too voluminous to enumerate all the contrasts of manners and character exhibited during the French revolution--The philosophic Condorcet, pursuing with malignancy his patron, the Duc de la Rochefoucault, and hesitating with atrocious mildness on the sentence of the King--The massacres of the prisons connived at by the gentle Petion--Collot d'Herbois dispatching, by one discharge of cannon, three hundred people together, "to spare his sensibility" the talk of executions in detail--And St. Just, the deviser of a thousand enormities, when he left the Committee, after his last interview, with the project of sending them all to the Guillotine, telling them, in a tone of tender reproach, like a lover of romance, "Vous avez fletri mon coeur, je vais l'ouvrir a la Convention."-- Madame Roland, in spite of the tenderness of her sex, could coldly reason on the expediency of a civil war, which she acknowledged might become necessary to establish the republic. Let those who disapprove this censure of a female, whom it is a sort of mode to lament, recollect that Madame Roland was the victim of a celebrity she had acquired in assisting the efforts of faction to dethrone the King--that her literary bureau was dedicated to the purpose of exasperating the people against him--and that she was considerably instrumental to the events which occasioned his death. If her talents and accomplishments make her an object of regret, it was to the unnatural misapplication of those talents and accomplishments in the service of party, that she owed her fate. Her own opinion was, that thousands might justifiably be devoted to the establishment of a favourite system; or, to speak truly, to the aggrandisement of those who were its partizans. The same selfish principle actuated an opposite faction, and she became the sacrifice.--"Oh even-handed justice!" I do not pretend to decide whether the English are virtually more gentle in their nature than the French; but I am persuaded this douceur, on which the latter pride themselves, affords no proof of the contrary. An Englishman is seldom out of humour, without proclaiming it to all the world; and the most forcible motives of interest, or expediency, cannot always prevail on him to assume a more engaging external than that which delineates his feelings. If he has a matter to refuse, he usually begins by fortifying himself with a little ruggedness of manner, by way of prefacing a denial he might otherwise not have resolution to persevere in. "The hows and whens of life" corrugate his features, and disharmonize his periods; contradiction sours, and passion ruffles him--and, in short, an Englishman displeased, from whatever cause, is neither "un homme bien doux," nor "un homme bien aimable;" but such as nature has made him, subject to infirmities and sorrows, and unable to disguise the one, or appear indifferent to the other. Our country, like every other, has doubtless produced too many examples of human depravity; but I scarcely recollect any, where a ferocious disposition was not accompanied by corresponding manners--or where men, who would plunder or massacre, affected to retain at the same time habits of softness, and a conciliating physiognomy. We are, I think, on the whole, authorized to conclude, that, in determining the claims to national superiority, the boasted and unvarying controul which the French exercise over their features and accents, is not a merit; nor those indications of what passes within, to which the English are subject, an imperfection. If the French sometimes supply their want of kindness, or render disappointment less acute at the moment, by a sterile complacency, the English harshness is often only the alloy to an efficient benevolence, and a sympathizing mind. In France they have no humourists who seem impelled by their nature to do good, in spite of their temperament--nor have we in England many people who are cold and unfeeling, yet systematically aimable: but I must still persist in not thinking it a defect that we are too impetuous, or perhaps too ingenuous, to unite contradictions. There is a cause, that doubtless has its effects in representing the English disadvantageously, and which I have never heard properly allowed for. The liberty of the press, and the great interest taken by all ranks of people in public affairs, have occasioned a more numerous circulation of periodical prints of every kind in England, than in any other country in Europe. Now, as it is impossible to fill them constantly with politics, and as the taste of different readers must be consulted, every barbarous adventure, suicide, murder, robbery, domestic fracas, assaults, and batteries of the lower orders, with the duels and divorces of the higher, are all chronicled in various publications, disseminated over Europe, and convey an idea that we are a very miserable, ferocious, and dissolute nation. The foreign gazettes being chiefly appropriated to public affairs, seldom record either the vices, the crimes, or misfortunes of individuals; so that they are thereby at least prevented from fixing an unfavourable judgement on the national character. Mercier observes, that the number of suicides committed in Paris was supposed to exceed greatly that of similar disasters in London; and that murders in France were always accompanied by circumstances of peculiar horror, though policy and custom had rendered the publication of such events less general than with us.--Our divorces, at which the Gallic purity of manners used to be so much scandalized, are, no doubt, to be regretted; but that such separations were not then allowed, or desired in France, may perhaps be attributed, at least as justly, to the complaisance of husbands, as to the discretion of wives, or the national morality.* * At present, in the monthly statement, the number of divorces in France, is often nearly equal to that of the marriages. I should reproach myself if I could feel impartial when I contemplate the English character; yet I certainly endeavour to write as though I were so. If I have erred, it has been rather in allowing too much to received opinions on the subject of this country, than in suffering my affections to make me unjust; for though I am far from affecting the fashion of the day, which censures all prejudices as illiberal, except those in disfavour of our own country, yet I am warranted, I hope, in saying, that however partial I may appear to England, I have not been so at the expence of truth.--Yours, &c. October 6, 1794. The sufferings of individuals have often been the means of destroying or reforming the most powerful tyrannies; reason has been convinced by argument, and passion appealed to by declamation in vain--when some unvarnished tale, or simple exposure of facts, has at once rouzed the feelings, and conquered the supineness of an oppressed people. The revolutionary government, in spite of the clamorous and weekly swearings of the Convention to perpetuate it, has received a check from an event of this nature, which I trust it will never recover.--By an order of the Revolutionary Committee of Nantes, in November 1793, all prisoners accused of political crimes were to be transferred to Paris, where the tribunal being more immediately under the direction of government, there would be no chance of their acquittal. In consequence of this order, an hundred and thirty-two inhabitants of Nantes, arrested on the usual pretexts of foederalism, or as suspected, or being Muscadins, were, some months after, conducted to Paris. Forty of the number died through the hardships and ill treatment they encountered on the way, the rest remained in prison until after the death of Robespierre. The evidence produced on their trial, which lately took place, has revealed but too circumstantially all the horrors of the revolutionary system. Destruction in every form, most shocking to morals or humanity, has depopulated the countries of the Loire; and republican Pizarro's and Almagro's seem to have rivalled each other in the invention and perpetration of crimes. When the prisons of Nantes overflowed, many hundreds of their miserable inhabitants had been conducted by night, and chained together, to the river side; where, being first stripped of their clothes, they were crouded into vessels with false bottoms, constructed for the purpose, and sunk.*-- * Though the horror excited by such atrocious details must be serviceable to humanity, I am constrained by decency to spare the reader a part of them. Let the imagination, however repugnant, pause for a moment over these scenes--Five, eight hundred people of different sexes, ages, and conditions, are taken from their prisons, in the dreary months of December and January, and conducted, during the silence of the night, to the banks of the Loire. The agents of the Republic there despoil them of their clothes, and force them, shivering and defenceless, to enter the machines prepared for their destruction--they are chained down, to prevent their escape by swimming, and then the bottom is detached for the upper part, and sunk.--On some occasions the miserable victims contrived to loose themselves, and clinging to the boards near them, shrieked in the agonies of despair and death, "O save us! it is not even now too late: in mercy save us!" But they appealed to wretches to whom mercy was a stranger; and, being cut away from their hold by strokes of the sabre, perished with their companions. That nothing might be wanting to these outrages against nature, they were escribed as jests, and called "Noyades, water parties," and "civic baptisms"! Carrier, a Deputy of the Convention, used to dine and make parties of pleasure, accompanied by music and every species of gross luxury, on board the barges appropriated to these execrable purposes. --At one time, six hundred children appear to have been destroyed in this manner;--young people of different sexes were tied in pairs and thrown into the river;--thousands were shot in the high roads and in the fields; and vast numbers were guillotined, without a trial!* * Six young women, (the _Mesdemoiselles la Meterie,_) in particular, sisters, and all under four-and-twenty, were ordered to the Guillotine together: the youngest died instantly of fear, the rest were executed successively.--A child eleven years old, who had previously told the executioner, with affecting simplicity, that he hoped he would not hurt him much, received three strokes of the Guillotine before his head was severed from his body. --Two thousand died, in less than two months, of a pestilence, occasioned by this carnage: the air became infected, and the waters of the Loire empoisoned, by dead bodies; and those whom tyranny yet spared, perished by the elements which nature intended for their support.* * Vast sums were exacted from the Nantais for purifying the air, and taking precautions against epidemical disorders. But I will not dwell on horrors, which, if not already known to all Europe, I should be unequal to describe: suffice it to say, that whatever could disgrace or afflict mankind, whatever could add disgust to detestation, and render cruelty, if possible, less odious than the circumstances by which it was accompanied, has been exhibited in this unfortunate city.--Both the accused and their witnesses were at first timid through apprehension, but by degrees the monstrous mysteries of the government were laid open, and it appeared, beyond denial or palliation, that these enormities were either devised, assisted, or connived at, by Deputies of the Convention, celebrated for their ardent republicanism and revolutionary zeal.--The danger of confiding unlimited power to such men as composed the majority of the Assembly, was now displayed in a manner that penetrated the dullest imagination, and the coldest heart; and it was found, that, armed with decrees, aided by revolutionary committees, revolutionary troops, and revolutionary vehicles of destruction,* missionaries selected by choice from the whole representation, had, in the city of Nantes alone, and under the mask of enthusiastic patriotism, sacrificed thirty thousand people! * A company was formed of all the ruffians that could be collected together. They were styled the Company of Marat, and were specially empowered to arrest whomsoever they chose, and to enter houses by night or day--in fine, to proscribe and pillage at their pleasure. Facts like these require no comment. The nation may be intimidated, and habits of obedience, or despair of redress, prolong its submission; but it can no longer be deceived: and patriotism, revolutionary liberty, and philosophy, are for ever associated with the drowning machines of Carrier, and the precepts and calculations of a Herault de Sechelles,* or a Lequinio.**-- * Herault de Sechelles was distinguished by birth, talents, and fortune, above most of his colleagues in the Convention; yet we find him in correspondence with Carrier, applauding his enormities, and advising him how to continue them with effect.--Herault was of a noble family, and had been a president in the Parliament of Paris. He was one of Robespierre's Committee of Public Welfare, and being in some way implicated in a charge of treachery brought against Simon, another Deputy, was guillotined at the same time with Danton. ** Lequinio is a philosopher by profession, who has endeavoured to enlighten his countrymen by a publication entitled "_Les Prejuges Detruits,_" and since by proving it advantageous to make no prisoners of war. --The ninety Nantais, against whom there existed no serious charge, and who had already suffered more than death, were acquitted. Yet, though the people were gratified by this verdict, and the general indignation appeased by an immediate arrest of those who had been most notoriously active in these dreadful operations, a deep and salutary impression remains, and we may hope it will be found impracticable either to renew the same scenes, or for the Convention to shelter (as they seemed disposed to do) the principal criminals, who are members of their own body. Yet, how are these delinquents to be brought to condemnation? They all acted under competent authority, and their dispatches to the Convention, which sufficiently indicated their proceedings, were always sanctioned by circulation, and applauded, according to the excess of their flagitiousness. It is worthy of remark, that Nantes, the principal theatre of these persecutions and murders, had been early distinguished by the attachment of its inhabitants to the revolution; insomuch, that, at the memorable epoch when the short-sighted policy of the Court excluded the Constituent Assembly from their Hall at Versailles, and they took refuge in the Jeu de Paume, with a resolution fatal to their country, never to separate until they had obtained their purposes, an express was sent to Nantes, as the place they should make choice of, if any violence obliged them to quit the neighbourhood of Paris. But it was not only by its principles that Nantes had signalized itself; at every period of the war, it had contributed largely both in men and money, and its riches and commerce still rendered it one of the most important towns of the republic.--What has been its reward?--Barbarous envoys from the Convention, sent expressly to level the aristocracy of wealth, to crush its mercantile spirit, and decimate its inhabitants.*-- * When Nantes was reduced almost to a state of famine by the destruction of commerce, and the supplies drawn for the maintenance of the armies, Commissioners were sent to Paris, to solicit a supply of provisions. They applied to Carrier, as being best acquainted with their distress, and were answered in this language:--_"Demandez, pour Nantes! je solliciterai qu'on porte le fer et la flamme dans cette abominable ville. Vous etes tous des coquins, des contre- revolutionnaires, des brigands, des scelerats, je ferai nommer une commission par la Convention Nationale.--J'irai moi meme a la tete de cette commission.--Scelerats, je serai rouler les tetes dans Nantes--je regenererai Nantes."_--"Is it for Nantes that you petition? I'll exert my influence to have fire and sword carried into that abominable city. You are all scoundrels, counter- revolutionists, thieves, miscreants.--I'll have a commission appointed by the Convention, and go myself at the head of it.-- Villains, I'll set your heads a rolling about Nantes--I'll regenerate Nantes." Report of the Commission of Twenty-one, on the conduct of Carrier. --Terrible lesson for those discontented and mistaken people, who, enriched by commerce, are not content with freedom and independence, but seek for visionary benefits, by becoming the partizans of innovation, or the tools of faction!* * The disasters of Nantes ought not to be lost to the republicans of Birmingham, Manchester, and other great commercial towns, where "men fall out they know not why;" and where their increasing wealth and prosperity are the best eulogiums on the constitution they attempt to undermine. I have hitherto said little of La Vendee; but the fate of Nantes is so nearly connected with it, that I shall make it the subject of my next letter. [No Date or Place Given.] It appears, that the greater part of the inhabitants of Poitou, Anjou, and the Southern divisions of Brittany, now distinguished by the general appellation of the people of La Vendee, (though they include those of several other departments,) never either comprehended or adopted the principles of the French revolution. Many different causes contributed to increase their original aversion from the new system, and to give their resistance that consistency, which has since become so formidable. A partiality for their ancient customs, an attachment to their Noblesse, and a deference for their Priests, are said to characterize the brave and simple natives of La Vendee. Hence republican writers, with self-complacent decision, always treat this war as the effect of ignorance, slavery, and superstition. The modern reformist, who calls the labourer from the plough, and the artizan from the loom, to make them statesmen or philosophers, and who has invaded the abodes of contented industry with the rights of man, that our fields may be cultivated, and our garments wove, by metaphysicians, will readily assent to this opinion.--Yet a more enlightened and liberal philosophy may be tempted to examine how far the Vendeans have really merited the contempt and persecution of which they have been the objects. By the confession of the republicans themselves, they are religious, hospitable, and frugal, humane and merciful towards their enemies, and easily persuaded to whatever is just and reasonable. I do not pretend to combat the narrow prejudices of those who suppose the worth or happiness of mankind compatible but with one set of opinions; and who, confounding the adventitious with the essential, appreciate only book learning: but surely, qualities which imply a knowledge of what is due both to God and man, and information sufficient to yield to what is right or rational, are not descriptive of barbarians; or at least, we may say with Phyrrhus, "there is nothing barbarous in their discipline."* *"The husbandmen of this country are in general men of simple manners, naturally well inclined, or at least not addicted to serious vices." Lequinio, Guerre de La Vendee. Dubois de Crance, speaking of the inhabitants of La Vendee, says, "They are the most hospitable people I ever saw, and always disposed to listen to what is just and reasonable, if proffered with mildness and humanity." "This unpolished people, whom, however, it is much less difficult to persuade than to fight." Lequinio, G. de La V. "They affected towards our prisoners a deceitful humanity, neglecting no means to draw them over to their own party, and often sending them back to us with only a simple prohibition to bear arms against the King or religion." Report of Richard and Choudieu. The ignorant Vendeans then could give lessons of policy and humanity, which the "enlightened" republicans were not capable of profiting by. --Their adherence to their ancient institutions, and attachment to their Gentry and Clergy, when the former were abolished and the latter proscribed, might warrant a presumption that they were happy under the one, and kindly treated by the other: for though individuals may sometimes persevere in affections or habits from which they derive neither felicity nor advantage, whole bodies of men can scarcely be supposed eager to risk their lives in defence of privileges that have oppressed them, or of a religion from which they draw no consolation. But whatever the cause, the new doctrines, both civil and religious, were received in La Vendee with a disgust, which was not only expressed by murmurs, but occasionally by little revolts, by disobedience to the constitutional authorities, and a rejection of the constitutional clergy. Some time previous to the deposition of the King, Commissioners were sent to suppress these disorders; and though I doubt not but all possible means were taken to conciliate, I can easily believe, that neither the King nor his Ministers might be desirous of subduing by force a people who erred only from piety or loyalty. What effect this system of indulgence might have produced cannot now be decided; because the subsequent overthrow of the monarchy, and the massacre or banishment of the priests, must have totally alienated their minds, and precluded all hope of reconcilement.--Disaffection, therefore, continued to increase, and the Brissotines are suspected of having rather fostered than repressed these intestine commotions,* for the same purpose which induced them to provoke the war with England, and to extend that of the Continent. * Le Brun, one of the Brissotin Ministers, concealed the progress of this war for six months before he thought fit to report it to the Convention. --It is impossible to assign a good motive to any act of this literary intriguer. --Perhaps, while they determined to establish their faction by "braving all Europe," they might think it equally politic to perplex and overawe Paris by a near and dangerous enemy, which would render their continuance in power necessary, or whom they might join, if expelled from it.* * This last reason might afterwards have given way to their apprehensions, and the Brissotins have preferred the creation of new civil wars, to a confidence in the royalists. These men, who condemned the King for a supposed intention of defending an authority transmitted to him through whole ages, and recently sanctioned by the voice of the people, did not scruple to excite a civil war in defence of their six months' sovereignty over a republic, proclaimed by a ferocious comedian, and certainly without the assent of the nation. Had the ill-fated Monarch dared thus to trifle with the lives of his subjects, he might have saved France and himself from ruin. When men gratify their ambition by means so sanguinary and atrocious as those resorted to by the Brissotines, we are authorized in concluding they will not be more scrupulous in the use or preservation of power, than they were in attaining it; and we can have no doubt but that the fomenting or suppressing the progress of civil discord, was, with them, a mere question of expediency. The decree which took place in March, 1793, for raising three hundred thousand men in the departments, changed the partial insurrections of La Vendee to an open and connected rebellion; and every where the young people refused going, and joined in preference the standard of revolt. In the beginning of the summer, the brigands* (as they were called) grew so numerous, that the government, now in the hands of Robespierre and his party, began to take serious measures to combat them. * Robbers--_banditti_--The name was first given, probably, to the insurgents of La Vendee, in order to insinuate a belief that the disorders were but of a slight and predatory nature. --One body of troops were dispatched after another, who were all successively defeated, and every where fled before the royalists. It is not unusual in political concerns to attribute to deep-laid plans and abstruse combinations, effects which are the natural result of private passions and isolated interests. Robespierre is said to have promoted both the destruction of the republican armies and those of La Vendee, in order to reduce the national population. That he was capable of imagining such a project is probable--yet we need not, in tracing the conduct of the war, look farther than to the character of the agents who were, almost necessarily, employed in it. Nearly every officer qualified for the command of an army, had either emigrated, or was on service at the frontiers; and the task of reducing by violence a people who resisted only because they deemed themselves injured, and who, even in the estimation of the republicans, could only be mistaken, was naturally avoided by all men who were not mere adventurers. It might likewise be the policy of the government to prefer the services of those, who, having neither reputation nor property, would be more dependent, and whom, whether they became dangerous by their successes or defeats, it would be easy to sacrifice. Either, then, from necessity or choice, the republican armies in La Vendee were conducted by dissolute and rapacious wretches, at all times more eager to pillage than fight, and who were engaged in securing their plunder, when they should have been in pursuit of the enemy. On every occasion they seemed to retreat, that their ill success might afford them a pretext for declaring that the next town or village was confederated with the insurgents, and for delivering it up, in consequence, to murder and rapine. Such of the soldiers as could fill their pocket-books with assignats, left their less successful companions, and retired as invalids to the hospitals: the battalions of Paris (and particularly "the conquerors of the Bastille") had such ardour for pillage, that every person possessed of property was, in their sense, an aristocrat, whom it was lawful to despoil.* * _"Le pillage a ete porte a son comble--les militaires au lieu de songer a ce qu'ils avoient a faire, n'ont pense qu'a remplir leurs sacs, et a voir se perpetuer une guerre aussi avantageuse a leur interet--beaucoup de simples soldats ont acquis cinquante mille francs et plus; on en a vu couverts de bijoux, et faisant dans tous les genres des depenses d'une produgaloite, monstreuse." Lequinio, Guerre de la Vendee._ "The most unbridled pillage prevailed--officers, instead of attending to their duty, thought only of filling their portmanteaus, and of the means to perpetuate a war they found so profitable.--Many private soldiers made fifty thousand livres, and they have been seen loaded with trinkets, and exercising the most abominable prodigalities of every kind." Lequinio, War of La Vendee. "The conquerors of the Bastille had unluckily a most unbridled ardour for pillage--one would have supposed they had come for the express purpose of plunder, rather than fighting. The stage coaches for Paris were entirely loaded with their booty." Report of Benaben, Commissioner of the Department of Maine and Loire. --The carriages of the army were entirely appropriated to the conveyance of their booty; till, at last, the administrators of some departments were under the necessity of forbidding such incumbrances: but the officers, with whom restrictions of this sort were unavailing, put all the horses and waggons of the country in requisition for similar purposes, while they relaxed themselves from the serious business of the war, (which indeed was nearly confined to burning, plundering, and massacring the defenceless inhabitants,) by a numerous retinue of mistresses and musicians. It is not surprizing that generals and troops of this description were constantly defeated; and their reiterated disasters might probably have first suggested the idea of totally exterminating a people it was found so difficult to subdue, and so impracticable to conciliate.--On the first of October 1793, Barrere, after inveighing against the excessive population of La Vendee, which he termed "frightful," proposed to the Convention to proclaim by a decree, that the war of La Vendee "should be terminated" by the twentieth of the same month. The Convention, with barbarous folly, obeyed; and the enlightened Parisians, accustomed to think with contempt on the ignorance of the Vendeans, believed that a war, which had baffled the efforts of government for so many months, was to end on a precise day--which Barrere had fixed with as much assurance as though he had only been ordering a fete. But the Convention and the government understood this decree in a very different sense from the good people of Paris. The war was, indeed, to be ended; not by the usual mode of combating armies, but by a total extinction of all the inhabitants of the country, both innocent and guilty--and Merlin de Thionville, with other members, so perfectly comprehended this detestable project, that they already began to devise schemes for repeopling La Vendee, when its miserable natives should be destroyed.* * It is for the credit of humanity to believe, that the decree was not understood according to its real intention; but the nation has to choose between the imputation of cruelty, stupidity, or slavery-- for they either approved the sense of the decree, believed what was not possible, or were obliged to put on an appearance of both, in spite of their senses and their feelings. A proclamation, in consequence, to the army, is more explicit--"All the brigands of La Vendee must be exterminated before the end of October." From this time, the representatives on mission, commissaries of war, officers, soldiers, and agents of every kind, vied with each other in the most abominable outrages. Carrier superintended the fusillades and noyades at Nantes, while Lequinio dispatched with his own hands a part of the prisoners taken at La Fontenay, and projected the destruction of the rest.--After the evacuation of Mans by the insurgents, women were brought by twenties and thirties, and shot before the house where the deputies Tureau and Bourbotte had taken up their residence; and it appears to have been considered as a compliment to these republican Molochs, to surround their habitation with mountains of the dead. A compliment of the like nature was paid to the representative Prieur de la Marne,* by a volunteer, who having learned that his own brother was taken amongst the enemy, requested, by way of recommending himself to notice, a formal permission to be his executioner.--The Roman stoicism of Prieur accepted the implied homage, and granted the request!! * This representative, who was also a member of the Committee of Public Welfare, was not only the Brutus, but the Antony of La Vendee; for we learn from the report of Benaben, that his stern virtues were accompanied, through the whole of his mission in this afflicted country, by a cortege of thirty strolling fiddlers! Fourteen hundred prisoners, who had surrendered at Savenay, among whom were many women and children, were shot, by order of the deputy Francastel, who, together with Hentz, Richard, Choudieu, Carpentier, and others of their colleagues, set an example of rapine and cruelty, but too zealously imitated by their subordinate agents. In some places, the inhabitants, without distinction of age or sex, were put indiscriminately to the sword; in others, they were forced to carry the pillage collected from their own dwellings, which, after being thus stripped, were consigned to the flames.* * "This conflagration accomplished, they had no sooner arrived in the midst of our army, than the volunteers, in imitation of their commanders, seized what little they had preserved, and massacred them.--But this is not all: a whole municipality, in their scarfs of office, were sacrificed; and at a little village, inhabited by about fifty good patriots, who had been uniform in their resistance of the insurgents, news is brought that their brother soldiers are coming to assist them, and to revenge the wrongs they have suffered. A friendly repast is provided, the military arrive, embrace their ill-fated hosts, and devour what they have provided; which is no sooner done, than they drive all these poor people into the churchyard, and stab them one after another." Report of Faure, Vice-President of a Military Commission at Fontenay. --The heads of the prisoners served occasionally as marks for the officers to shoot at for trifling wagers, and the soldiers, who imitated these heinous examples, used to conduct whole hundreds to the place of execution, singing _"allons enfans de la patrie."_* * Woe to those who were unable to walk, for, under pretext that carriages could not be found to convey them, they were shot without hesitation!--Benaben. The insurgents had lost Cholet, Chatillon, Mortagne, &c. Yet, far from being vanquished by the day appointed, they had crossed the Loire in great force, and, having traversed Brittany, were preparing to make an attack on Granville. But this did not prevent Barrere from announcing to the convention, that La Vendee was no more, and the galleries echoed with applauses, when they were told that the highways were impassable, from the numbers of the dead, and that a considerable part of France was one vast cemetery. This intelligence also tranquillized the paternal solicitude of the legislature, and, for many months, while the system of depopulation was pursued with the most barbarous fury, it was not permissible even to suspect that the war was yet unextinguished. It is only since the trial of the Nantais, that the state of La Vendee has again become a subject of discussion: truth has now forced its way, and we learn, that, whatever may be the strength of these unhappy people, their minds, embittered by suffering, and animated by revenge, are still less than ever disposed to submit to the republican government. The design of total extirpation, once so much insisted on, is at present said to be relinquished, and a plan of instruction and conversion is to be substituted for bayonets and conflagrations. The revolted countries are to be enlightened by the doctrines of liberty, fanaticism is to be exposed, and a love of the republic to succeed the prejudices in favour of Kings and Nobles.--To promote these objects, is, undoubtedly, the real interest of the Convention; but a moralist, who observes through another medium, may compare with regret and indignation the instructors with the people they are to illumine, and the advantages of philosophy over ignorance. Lequinio, one of the most determined reformers of the barbarism of La Vendee, proposes two methods: the first is, a general massacre of all the natives--and the only objection it seems susceptible of in his opinion is, their numbers; but as he thinks on this account it may be attended with difficulty, he is for establishing a sort of perpetual mission of Representatives, who, by the influence of good living and a company of fiddlers and singers, are to restore the whole country to peace.*-- *"The only difficulty that presents itself is, to determine whether recourse shall be had to the alternative of indulgence, or if it will not be more advantageous to persist in the plan of total destruction. "If the people that still remain were not more than thirty or forty thousand, the shortest way would doubtless be, to cut all their throats (egorger), agreeably to my first opinion; but the population is immense, amounting still to four hundred thousand souls.--If there were no hope of succeeding by any other methods, certainly it were better to kill all (egorger), even were there five hundred thousand. "But what are we to understand by measures of rigour? Is there no distinction to be made between rigorous and barbarous measures? The utmost severity is justified on the plea of the general good, but nothing can justify barbarity. If the welfare of France necessitated the sacrifice of the four hundred thousand inhabitants of La Vendee, and the countries in rebellion adjoining, they ought to be sacrificed: but, even in this case, there would be no excuse for those atrocities which revolt nature, which are an outrage to social order, and repugnant equally to feeling (sentiment) and reason; and in cutting off so many entire generations for the good of the country, we ought not to suffer the use of barbarous means in a single instance. "Now the most effectual way to arrive at this end (converting the people), would be by joyous and fraternal missions, frank and familiar harangues, civic repasts, and, above all, dancing. "I could wish, too, that during their circuits in these countries, the Representatives were always attended by musicians. The expence would be trifling, compared with the good effect; if, as I am strongly persuaded, we could thus succeed in giving a turn to the public mind, and close the bleeding arteries of these fertile and unhappy provinces." Lequinio, Guerre de La Vendee. And this people, who were either to have their throats cut, or be republicanized by means of singing, dancing, and revolutionary Pans and Silenus's, already beheld their property devastated by pillage or conflagration, and were in danger of a pestilence from the unburied bodies of their families.--Let the reader, who has seen Lequinio's pamphlet, compare his account of the sufferings of the Vendeans, and his project for conciliating them. They convey a strong idea of the levity of the national character; but, in this instance, I must suppose, that nature would be superior to local influence; and I doubt if Lequinio's jocund philosophy will ever succeed in attaching the Vendeans to the republic. --Camille Desmouins, a republican reformer, nearly as sanguinary, though not more liberal, thought the guillotine disgraced by such ignorant prey, and that it were better to hunt them down like wild beasts; or, if made prisoners, to exchange them against the cattle of their country!--The eminently informed Herault de Sechelles was the patron and confidant of the exterminating reforms of Carrier; and Carnot, when the mode of reforming by noyades and fusillades was debated at the Committee, pleaded the cause of Carrier, whom he describes as a good, nay, an excellent patriot.--Merlin de Thionville, whose philosophy is of a more martial cast, was desirous that the natives of La Vendee should be completely annihilated, in order to furnish in their territory and habitations a recompence for the armies.--Almost every member of the Convention has individually avowed principles, or committed acts, from which common turpitude would recoil, and, as a legislative body, their whole code has been one unvarying subversion of morals and humanity. Such are the men who value themselves on possessing all the advantages the Vendeans are pretended to be in want of.--We will now examine what disciples they have produced, and the benefits which have been derived from their instructions. Every part of France remarkable for an early proselytism to the revolutionary doctrines has been the theatre of crimes unparalleled in the annals of human nature. Those who have most boasted their contempt for religious superstition have been degraded by an idolatry as gross as any ever practiced on the Nile; and the most enthusiastic republicans have, without daring to murmur, submitted for two years successively to a horde of cruel and immoral tyrants.--A pretended enfranchisement from political and ecclesiastical slavery has been the signal of the lowest debasement, and the most cruel profligacy: the very Catechumens of freedom and philosophy have, while yet in their first rudiments, distinguished themselves as proficients in the arts of oppression and servility, of intolerance and licentiousness.--Paris, the rendezvous of all the persecuted patriots and philosophers in Europe, the centre of the revolutionary system, whose inhabitants were illumined by the first rays of modern republicanism, and who claim a sort of property in the rights of man, as being the original inventors, may fairly be quoted as an example of the benefits that would accrue from a farther dissemination of the new tenets. Without reverting to the events of August and September, 1792, presided by the founders of liberty, and executed by their too apt sectaries, it is notorious that the legions of Paris, sent to chastise the unenlightened Vendeans, were the most cruel and rapacious banditti that ever were let loose to afflict the world. Yet, while they exercised this savage oppression in the countries near the Loire, their fellow-citizens on the banks of the Seine crouched at the frown of paltry tyrants, and were unresistingly dragged to dungeons, or butchered by hundreds on the scaffold.--At Marseilles, Lyons, Bourdeaux, Arras, wherever these baleful principles have made converts, they have made criminals and victims; and those who have been most eager in imbibing or propagating them have, by a natural and just retribution, been the first sacrificed. The new discoveries in politics have produced some in ethics not less novel, and until the adoption of revolutionary doctrines, the extent of human submission or human depravity was fortunately unknown. In this source of guilt and misery the people of La Vendee are now to be instructed--that people, who are acknowledged to be hospitable, humane, and laborious, and whose ideas of freedom may be better estimated by their resistance to a despotism which the rest of France has sunk under, than by the jargon of pretended reformers.--I could wish, that not only the peasants of La Vendee, but those of all other countries, might for ever remain strangers to such pernicious knowledge. It is sufficient for this useful class of men to be taught the simple precepts of religion and morality, and those who would teach them more, are not their benefactors. Our age is, indeed, a literary age, and such pursuits are both liberal and laudable in the rich and idle; but why should volumes of politics or philosophy be mutilated and frittered into pamphlets, to inspire a disgust for labour, and a taste for study or pleasure, in those to whom such disgusts or inclinations are fatal. The spirit of one author is extracted, and the beauties of another are selected, only to bewilder the understanding, and engross the time, of those who might be more profitably employed. I know I may be censured as illiberal; but I have, during my abode in this country, sufficiently witnessed the disastrous effects of corrupting a people through their amusements or curiosity, and of making men neglect their useful callings to become patriots and philosophers.*-- *This right of directing public affairs, and neglecting their own, we may suppose essential to republicans of the lower orders, since we find the following sentence of transportation in the registers of a popular commission: "Bergeron, a dealer in skins--suspected--having done nothing in favour of the revolution--extremely selfish (egoiste,) and blaming the Sans-Culottes for neglecting their callings, that they may attend only to public concerns."--Signed by the members of the Commission and the two Committees. --_"Il est dangereux d'apprendre au peuple a raisonner: il ne faut pas l'eclairer trop, parce qu'il n'est pas possible de l'eclairer assez."_ ["It is dangerous to teach the people to reason--they should not be too much enlightened, because it is not possible to enlighten them sufficiently."]--When the enthusiasm of Rousseau's genius was thus usefully submitted to his good sense and knowledge of mankind, he little expected every hamlet in France would be inundated with scraps of the contrat social, and thousands of inoffensive peasants massacred for not understanding the Profession de Foi. The arguments of mistaken philanthropists or designing politicians may divert the order of things, but they cannot change our nature--they may create an universal taste for literature, but they will never unite it with habits of industry; and until they prove how men are to live without labour, they have no right to banish the chearful vacuity which usually accompanies it, by substituting reflections to make it irksome, and propensities with which it is incompatible. The situation of France has amply demonstrated the folly of attempting to make a whole people reasoners and politicians--there seems to be no medium; and as it is impossible to make a nation of sages, you let loose a horde of savages: for the philosophy which teaches a contempt for accustomed restraints, is not difficult to propagate; but that superior kind, which enables men to supply them, by subduing the passions that render restraints necessary, is of slow progress, and never can be general. I have made the war of La Vendee more a subject of reflection than narrative, and have purposely avoided military details, which would be not only uninteresting, but disgusting. You would learn no more from these desultory hostilities, than that the defeats of the republican armies were, if possible, more sanguinary than their victories; that the royalists, who began the war with humanity, were at length irritated to reprisals; and that more than two hundred thousand lives have already been sacrificed in the contest, yet undecided. Amiens, Oct. 24, 1794. Revolutions, like every thing else in France, are a mode, and the Convention already commemorate four since 1789: that of July 1789, which rendered the monarchical power nugatory; that of August the 10th, 1792, which subverted it; the expulsion of the Brissotins, in May 1793; and the death of Robespierre, in July 1794. The people, accustomed, from their earliest knowledge, to respect the person and authority of the King, felt that the events of the two first epochs, which disgraced the one and annihilated the other, were violent and important revolutions; and, as language which expresses the public sentiment is readily adopted, it soon became usual to speak of these events as the revolutions of July and August. The thirty-first of May has always been viewed in a very different light, for it was not easy to make the people at large comprehend how the succession of Robespierre and Danton to Brissot and Roland could be considered as a revolution, more especially as it appeared evident that the principles of one party actuated the government of the other. Every town had its many-headed monster to represent the defeat of the Foederalists, and its mountain to proclaim the triumph of their enemies the Mountaineers; but these political hieroglyphics were little understood, and the merits of the factions they alluded to little distinguished--so that the revolution of the thirty-first of May was rather a party aera, than a popular one. The fall of Robespierre would have made as little impression as that of the Girondists, if some melioration of the revolutionary system had not succeeded it; and it is in fact only since the public voice, and the interest of the Convention, have occasioned a change approaching to reform, that the death of Robespierre is really considered as a benefit. But what was in itself no more than a warfare of factions, may now, if estimated by its consequences, be pronounced a revolution of infinite importance. The Jacobins, whom their declining power only rendered more insolent and daring, have at length obliged the Convention to take decided measures against them, and they are now subject to such regulations as must effectually diminish their influence, and, in the end, dissolve their whole combination. They can no longer correspond as societies, and the mischievous union which constituted their chief force, can scarcely be supported for any time under the present restrictions.* * "All affiliations, aggregations, and foederations, as well as correspondences carried on collectively between societies, under whatever denomination they may exist, are henceforth prohibited, as being subversive of government, and contrary to the unity of the republic. "Those persons who sign as presidents or secretaries, petitions or addresses in a collective form, shall be arrested and confined as suspicious, &c. &c.--Whoever offends in any shape against the present law, will incur the same penalty." The whole of the decree is in the same spirit. The immediate and avowed pretext for this measure was, that the popular societies, who have of late only sent petitions disagreeable to the Convention, did not express the sense of the people. Yet the deposition of the King, and the establishment of the republic, had no other sanction than the adherence of these clubs, who are now allowed not to be the nation, and whose very existence as then constituted is declared to be subversive of government. It is not improbable, that the Convention, by suffering the clubs still to exist, after reducing them to nullity, may hope to preserve the institution as a future resource against the people, while it represses their immediate efforts against itself. The Brissotins would have attempted a similar policy, but they had nothing to oppose to the Jacobins, except their personal influence. Brissot and Roland took part with the clubs, as they approved the massacres of August and September, just as far as it answered their purpose; and when they were abandoned by the one, and the other were found to incur an unprofitable odium, they acted the part which Tallien and Freron act now under the same circumstances, and would willingly have promoted the destruction of a power which had become inimical to them.*-- * Brissot and Roland were more pernicious as Jacobins than the most furious of their successors. If they did not in person excite the people to the commission of crimes, they corrupted them, and made them fit instruments for the crimes of others. Brissot might affect to condemn the massacres of September in the gross, but he is known to have enquired with eager impatience, and in a tone which implied he had reasons for expecting it, whether De Morande, an enemy he wished to be released from, was among the murdered. --Their imitators, without possessing more honesty, either political or moral, are more fortunate; and not only Tallien and Freron, who since their expulsion from the Jacobins have become their most active enemies, are now in a manner popular, but even the whole Convention is much less detested than it was before. It is the singular felicity of the Assembly to derive a sort of popularity from the very excesses it has occasioned or sanctioned, and which, it was natural to suppose, would have consigned it for ever to vengeance or obloquy; but the past sufferings of the people have taught them to be moderate in their expectations; and the name of their representation has been so connected with tyranny of every sort, that it appears an extraordinary forbearance when the usual operations of guillotines and mandates of arrest are suspended. Thus, though the Convention have not in effect repaired a thousandth part of their own acts of injustice, or done any good except from necessity, they are overwhelmed with applauding addresses, and affectionate injunctions not to quit their post. What is still more wonderful, many of these are sincere; and Tallien, Freron, Legendre, &c. with all their revolutionary enormities on their heads, are now the heroes of the reviving aristocrats. Situated as things are at present, there is much sound policy in flattering the Convention into a proper use of their power, rather than making a convulsive effort to deprive them of it. The Jacobins would doubtless avail themselves of such a movement; and this is so much apprehended, that it has given rise to a general though tacit agreement to foment the divisions between the Legislature and the Clubs, and to support the first, at least until it shall have destroyed the latter. The late decrees, which obstruct the intercourse and affiliation of popular societies, may be regarded as an event not only beneficial to this country, but to the world in general; because it is confessed, that these combinations, by means of which the French monarchy was subverted, and the King brought to the scaffold, are only reconcileable with a barbarous and anarchical government. The Convention are now much occupied on two affairs, which call forth all their "natural propensities," and afford a farther confirmation of this fact--that their feelings and principles are always instinctively at war with justice, however they may find it expedient to affect a regard for it--_C'est la chatte metamorphosee en femme_ [The cat turned into a woman.]-- _"En vain de son train ordinaire" "On la veut desaccoutumer, "Quelque chose qu'on puisse faire "On ne fauroit la reformer."_ La Fontaine. The Deputies who were imprisoned as accomplices of the Girondists, and on other different pretexts, have petitioned either to be brought to trial or released; and the abominable conduct of Carrier at Nantes is so fully substantiated, that the whole country is impatient to have some steps taken towards bringing him to punishment: yet the Convention are averse from both these measures--they procrastinate and elude the demand of their seventy-two colleagues, who were arrested without a specific charge; while they almost protect Carrier, and declare, that in cases which tend to deprive a Representative of his liberty, it is better to reflect thirty times than once. This is curious doctrine with men who have sent so many people arbitrarily to the scaffold, and who now detain seventy-two Deputies in confinement, they know not why. The ashes of Rousseau have recently been deposited with the same ceremonies, and in the same place, as those of Marat. We should feel for such a degradation of genius, had not the talents of Rousseau been frequently misapplied; and it is their misapplication which has levelled him to an association with Marat. Rousseau might be really a fanatic, and, though eccentric, honest; yet his power of adorning impracticable systems, it must be acknowledged, has been more mischievous to society than a thousand such gross impostors as Marat. I have learned since my return from the Providence, the death of Madame Elizabeth. I was ill when it happened, and my friends took some pains to conceal an event which they knew would affect me. In tracing the motives of the government for this horrid action, it may perhaps be sufficiently accounted for in the known piety and virtues of this Princess; but reasons of another kind have been suggested to me, and which, in all likelihood, contributed to hasten it. She was the only person of the royal family of an age competent for political transactions who had not emigrated, and her character extorted respect even from her enemies. [The Prince of Conti was too insignificant to be an object of jealousy in this way.] She must therefore, of course, since the death of the Queen, have been an object of jealousy to all parties. Robespierre might fear that she would be led to consent to some arrangement with a rival faction for placing the King on the throne--the Convention were under similar apprehensions with regard to him; so that the fate of this illustrious sufferer was probably gratifying to every part of the republicans. I find, on reading her trial, (if so it may be called,) a repetition of one of the principal charges against the Queen--that of trampling on the national colours at Versailles, during an entertainment given to some newly-arrived troops. Yet I have been assured by two gentlemen, perfectly informed on the subject, and who were totally unacquainted with each other, that this circumstance, which has been so usefully enlarged upon, is false,* and that the whole calumny originated in the jealousy of a part of the national guard who had not been invited. * This infamous calumny (originally fabricated by Lecointre the linen draper, then an officer of the National Guard, now a member of the council of 500) was amply confuted by M. Mounier, who was President of the States-General at the time, in a publication intitled "_Expose de ma Conduite,_" which appeared soon after the event--in the autumn of 1789.--Editor. But this, as well as the taking of the Bastille, and other revolutionary falsehoods, will, I trust, be elucidated. The people are now undeceived only by their calamities--the time may come, when it will be safe to produce their conviction by truth. Heroes of the fourteenth of July, and patriots of the tenth of August, how will ye shrink from it!--Yours, &c. Amiens, Nov. 2, 1794. Every post now brings me letters from England; but I perceive, by the suppressed congratulations of my friends, that, though they rejoice to find I am still alive, they are far from thinking me in a state of security. You, my dear Brother, must more particularly have lamented the tedious confinement I have endured, and the inconveniencies to which I have been subjected; I am, however, persuaded that you would not wish me to have been exempt from a persecution in which all the natives of England, who are not a disgrace to their country, as well as some that are so, have shared. Such an exemption would now be deemed a reproach; for, though it must be confessed that few of us have been voluntary sufferers, we still claim the honour of martyrdom, and are not very tolerant towards those who, exposed by their situation, may be supposed to have owed their protection to their principles. There are, indeed, many known revolutionists and republicans, who, from party disputes, personal jealousies, or from being comprised in some general measure, have undergone a short imprisonment; and these men now wish to be confounded with their companions who are of a different description. But such persons are carefully distinguished;* and the aristocrats have, in their turn, a catalogue of suspicious people--that is, of people suspected of not having been suspicious. * Mr. Thomas Paine, for instance, notwithstanding his sufferings, is still thought more worthy of a seat in the Convention or the Jacobins, than of an apartment in the Luxembourg.--Indeed I have generally remarked, that the French of all parties hold an English republican in peculiar abhorrence. It is now the fashion to talk of a sojourn in a maison d'arret with triumph; and the more decent people, who from prudence or fear had been forced to seek refuge in the Jacobin clubs, are now solicitous to proclaim their real motives. The red cap no longer "rears its hideous front" by day, but is modestly converted into a night-cap; and the bearer of a diplome de Jacobin, instead of swinging along, to the annoyance of all the passengers he meets, paces soberly with a diminished height, and an air not unlike what in England we call sneaking. The bonnet rouge begins likewise to be effaced from flags at the doors; and, as though this emblem of liberty were a very bad neighbour to property, its relegation seems to encourage the re-appearance of silver forks and spoons, which are gradually drawn forth from their hiding-places, and resume their stations at table. The Jacobins represent themselves as being under the most cruel oppression, declare that the members of the Convention are aristocrats and royalists, and lament bitterly, that, instead of fish-women, or female patriots of republican external, the galleries are filled with auditors in flounces and anti-civic top-knots, femmes a fontanges. These imputations and grievances of the Jacobins are not altogether without foundation. People in general are strongly impressed with an idea that the Assembly are veering towards royalism; and it is equally true, that the speeches of Tallien and Freron are occasionally heard and applauded by fair elegantes, who, two years ago, would have recoiled at the name of either. It is not that their former deeds are forgotten, but the French are grown wise by suffering; and it is politic, when bad men act well, whatever the motive, to give them credit for it, as nothing is so likely to make them persevere, as the hope that their reputation is yet retrievable. On this principle the aristocrats are the eulogists of Tallien, while the Jacobins remind him hourly of the massacres of the priests, and his official conduct as Secretary to the municipality or Paris.* * Tallien was Seecretary to the Commune of Paris in 1792, and on the thirty-first of August he appeared at the bar of the Legislative Assembly with an address, in which he told them "he had caused the refractory priests to be arrested and confined, and that in a few days the Land of Liberty should be freed of them."--The massacres of the prisons began two days after! As soon as a Representative is convicted of harbouring an opinion unfavourable to pillage or murder, he is immediately declared an aristocrat; or, if the Convention happen for a moment to be influenced by reason or justice, the hopes and fears of both parties are awakened by suspicions that the members are converts to royalism.--For my own part, I believe they are and will be just what their personal security and personal interest may suggest, though it is but a sorry sort of panegyric on republican ethics to conclude, that every one who manifests the least symptom of probity or decency, must of course be a royalist or an aristocrat. Notwithstanding the harmony which appears to subsist between the Convention and the people, the former is much less popular in detail than in the gross. Almost every member who has been on mission, is accused of dilapidations and cruelties so heinous, that, if they had not been committed by Representans du Peuple, the criminal courts would find no difficulty in deciding upon them.--But as theft or murder does not deprive a member of his privileges, complaints of this nature are only cognizable by the Assembly, which, being yet in its first days of regeneration, is rather scrupulous of defending such amusements overtly. Alarmed, however, at the number, and averse from the precedent of these denunciations, it has now passed a variety of decrees, which are termed a guarantee of the national representation, and which in fact guarantee it so effectually, that a Deputy may do any thing in future with impunity, provided it does not affect his colleagues. There are now so many forms, reports, and examinations, that several months may be employed before the person of a delinquent, however notorious his guilt, can be secured. The existence of a fellow-creature should, doubtless, be attacked with caution; for, though he may have forfeited his claims on our esteem, and even our pity, religion has preserved him others, of which he should not be deprived.--But when we recollect that all these merciful ceremonies are in favour of a Carrier or a Le Bon, and that the King, Madame Elizabeth, and thousands of innocent people, were hurried to execution, without being allowed the consolations of piety or affection, which only a mockery of justice might have afforded them; when, even now, priests are guillotined for celebrating masses in private, and thoughtless people for speaking disrespectfully of the Convention--the heart is at variance with religion and principle, and we regret that mercy is to be the exclusive portion of those who were never accessible to its dictates.* * The denunciation being first presented to the Assembly, they are to decide whether it shall be received. If they determine in the affirmative, it is sent to the three Committees of Legislation, Public Welfare, and General Safety, to report whether there may be room for farther examination. In that case, a commission of twenty-one members is appointed to receive the proofs of the accuser, and the defence of the accused. These Commissioners, after as long a delay as they may think fit to interpose, make known their opinion; and if it be against the accused, the Convention proceed to determine finally whether the matter shall be referred to the ordinary tribunal. All this time the culprit is at large, or, at worst, and merely for the form, carelessly guarded at his own dwelling. I would not "pick bad from bad," but it irks one's spirit to see these miscreants making "assurance doubly sure," and providing for their own safety with such solicitude, after sacrificing, without remorse, whatever was most interesting or respectable in the country.--Yours, &c. Basse-ville, Arras, Nov. 6, 1794. Since my own liberation, I have been incessantly employed in endeavouring to procure the return of my friends to Amiens; who, though released from prison some time, could not obtain passports to quit Arras. After numerous difficulties and vexations, we have at length succeeded, and I am now here to accompany them home. I found Mr. and Mrs. D____ much altered by the hardships they have undergone: Mrs. D____, in particular, has been confined some months in a noisome prison called the Providence, originally intended as a house of correction, and in which, though built to contain an hundred and fifty persons, were crouded near five hundred females, chiefly ladies of Arras and the environs.--The superintendance of this miserable place was entrusted to a couple of vulgar and vicious women, who, having distinguished themselves as patriots from the beginning of the revolution, were now rewarded by Le Bon with an office as profitable as it was congenial to their natures. I know not whether it is to be imputed to the national character, or to that of the French republicans only, but the cruelties which have been committed are usually so mixed with licentiousness, as to preclude description. I have already noticed the conduct of Le Bon, and it must suffice to say, his agents were worthy of him, and that the female prisoners suffered every thing which brutality, rapaciousness, and indecency, could inflict. Mr. D____ was, in the mean time, transferred from prison to prison--the distress of separation was augmented by their mutual apprehensions and pecuniary embarrassments--and I much fear, the health and spirits of both are irretrievably injured. I regret my impatience in coming here, rather than waiting the arrival of my friends at home; for the changes I observe, and the recollections they give birth to, oppress my heart, and render the place hateful to me.--All the families I knew are diminished by executions, and their property is confiscated--those whom I left in elegant hotels are now in obscure lodgings, subsisting upon the superfluities of better days--and the sorrows of the widows and orphans are increased by penury; while the Convention, which affects to condemn the crimes of Le Bon, is profiting by the spoils of his victims. I am the more deeply impressed by these circumstances, because, when I was here in 1792, several who have thus fallen, though they had nothing to reproach themselves with, were yet so much intimidated as to propose emigrating; and I then was of opinion, that such a step would be impolitic and unnecessary. I hope and believe this opinion did not influence them, but I lament having given it, for the event has proved that a great part of the emigrants are justifiable. It always appeared to me so serious and great an evil to abandon one's country, that when I have seen it done with indifference or levity, I may perhaps have sometimes transferred to the measure itself a sentiment of disapprobation, excited originally by the manner of its adoption. When I saw people expatiate with calmness, and heard them speak of it as a means of distinguishing themselves, I did not sufficiently allow for the tendency of the French to make the best of every thing, or the influence of vanity on men who allow it to make part of the national characteristic: and surely, if ever vanity were laudable, that of marking a detestation for revolutionary principles, and an attachment to loyalty and religion, may justly be considered so. Many whom I then accused of being too lightly affected by the prospect of exile, might be animated by the hope of personally contributing to the establishment of peace and order, and rescuing their country from the banditti who were oppressing it; and it is not surprising that such objects should dazzle the imagination and deceive the judgment in the choice of measures by which they were to be obtained. The number of emigrants from fashion or caprice is probably not great; and whom shall we now dare to include under this description, when the humble artizan, the laborious peasant, and the village priest, have ensanguined the scaffold destined for the prince or the prelate?--But if the emigrants be justifiable, the refugees are yet more so. By Emigrants, I mean all who, without being immediately in danger, left their country through apprehension of the future--from attachment to the persons of the Princes, or to join companions in the army whom they might deem it a disgrace to abandon.--Those whom I think may with truth be styled Refugees, are the Nobility and Priests who fled when the people, irritated by the literary terrorists of the day, the Brissots, Rolands, Camille Desmoulins, &c. were burning their chateaux and proscribing their persons, and in whom expatriation cannot properly be deemed the effect of choice. These, wherever they have sought an asylum, are entitled to our respect and sympathy. Yet, I repeat, we are not authorized to discriminate. There is no reasoning coldly on the subject. The most cautious prudence, the most liberal sacrifices, and the meanest condescensions, have not insured the lives and fortunes of those who ventured to remain; and I know not that the absent require any other apology than the desolation of the country they have quitted. Had my friends who have been slaughtered by Le Bon's tribunal persisted in endeavouring to escape, they might have lived, and their families, though despoiled by the rapacity of the government, have been comparatively happy.* * The first horrors of the revolution are well known, and I have seen no accounts which exaggerate them. The niece of a lady of my acquaintance, a young woman only seventeen, escaped from her country-house (whilst already in flames) with her infant at her breast, and literally without clothes to cover her. In this state she wandered a whole night, and when she at length reached a place where she procured assistance, was so exhausted that her life was in danger.--Another lady, whom I knew, was wounded in the arm by some peasants assembled to force from her the writings of her husband's estates. Even after this they still remained in France, submitted with cheerfulness to all the demands of patriotic gifts, forced loans, requisitions and impositions of every kind; yet her husband was nevertheless guillotined, and the whole of their immense property confiscated. Retrospections, like these, obliterate many of my former notions on the subject of the Emigrants; and if I yet condemn emigration, it is only as a general measure, impolitic, and inadequate to the purposes for which it was undertaken. But errors of judgment, in circumstances so unprecedented, cannot be censured consistently with candour, through we may venture to mark them as a discouragement to imitation; for if any nation should yet be menaced by the revolutionary scourge, let it beware of seeking external redress by a temporary abandonment of its interests to the madness of systemists, or the rapine of needy adventurers. We must, we ought to, lament the fate of the many gallant men who have fallen, and the calamities of those who survive; but what in them has been a mistaken policy, will become guilt in those who, on a similar occasion, shall not be warned by their example. I am concerned when I hear these unhappy fugitives are any where objects of suspicion or persecution, as it is not likely that those who really emigrated from principle can merit such treatment: and I doubt not, that most of the instances of treachery or misconduct ascribed to the Emigrants originated in republican emissaries, who have assumed that character for the double purpose of discrediting it, and of exercising their trade as spies. The common people here, who were retained by Le Bon for several months to attend and applaud his executions, are still dissolute and ferocious, and openly regret the loss of their pay, and the disuse of the guillotine. --I came to Arras in mourning, which I have worn since the receipt of your first letter, but was informed by the lady with whom my friends lodge, that I must not attempt to walk the streets in black, for that it was customary to insult those who did so, on a supposition that they were related to some persons who had been executed; I therefore borrowed a white undress, and stole out by night to visit my unfortunate acquaintance, as I found it was also dangerous to be seen entering houses known to contain the remains of those families which had been dismembered by Le Bon's cruelties. We return to Amiens to-morrow, though you must not imagine so formidable a person as myself is permitted to wander about the republic without due precaution; and I had much difficulty in being allowed to come, even attended by a guard, who has put me to a considerable expence; but the man is civil, and as he has business of his own to transact in the town, he is no embarrassment to me. Amiens, Nov. 26, 1794. The Constituent Assembly, the Legislative Assembly, and the National Convention, all seem to have acted from a persuasion, that their sole duty as revolutionists was comprised in the destruction of whatever existed under the monarchy. If an institution were discovered to have the slightest defect in principle, or to have degenerated a little in practice, their first step was to abolish it entirely, and leave the replacing it for the present to chance, and for the future to their successors. In return for the many new words which they have introduced into the French language, they have expunged that of reform; and the havock and devastation, which a Mahometan conqueror might have performed as successfully, are as yet the only effects of philosophy and republicanism. This system of ignorance and violence seems to have persecuted with peculiar hostility all the ancient establishments for education; and the same plan of suppressing daily what they have neither leisure nor abilities to supply, which I remarked to you two years ago, has directed the Convention ever since. It is true, the interval has produced much dissertation, and engendered many projects; but those who were so unanimous in rejecting, were extremely discordant in adopting, and their own disputes and indecision might have convinced them of their presumption in condemning what they now found it so difficult to excel. Some decided in favour of public schools, after the example of Sparta-- this was objected to by others, because, said they, if you have public schools you must have edifices, and governors, and professors, who will, to a certainty, be aristocrats, or become so; and, in short, this will only be a revival of the colleges of the old government--A third party proposed private seminaries, or that people might be at liberty to educate their children in the way they thought best; but this, it was declared, would have a still greater tendency to aristocracy; for the rich, being better able to pay than the poor, would engross all the learning to themselves. The Jacobins were of opinion, that there should be no schools, either public or private, but that the children should merely be taken to hear the debates of the Clubs, where they would acquire all the knowledge necessary for republicans; and a few spirits of a yet sublimer cast were adverse both to schools or clubs, and recommended, that the rising generation should "study the great book of Nature alone." It is, however, at length concluded, that there shall be a certain number of public establishments, and that people shall even be allowed to have their children instructed at home, under the inspection of the constituted authorities, who are to prevent the instillation of aristocratic principles.* * We may judge of the competency of many of these people to be official censors of education by the following specimens from a report of Gregoire's. Since the rage for destruction has a little subsided, circular letters have been sent to the administrators of the departments, districts, &c. enquiring what antiquities, or other objects of curiosity, remain in their neighbourhood.--"From one, (says Gregoire,) we are informed, that they are possessed of nothing in this way except four vases, which, as they have been told, are of porphyry. From a second we learn, that, not having either forge or manufactory in the neighbourhood, no monument of the arts is to be found there: and a third announces, that the completion of its library cataloges has been retarded, because the person employed at them ne fait pas la diplomatique!"--("does not understand the science of diplomacy.") The difficulty as to the mode in which children were to be taught being got over, another remained, not less liable to dispute--which was, the choice of what they were to learn. Almost every member had a favourite article---music, physic, prophylactics, geography, geometry, astronomy, arithmetic, natural history, and botany, were all pronounced to be requisites in an eleemosynary system of education, specified to be chiefly intended for the country people; but as this debate regarded only the primary schools for children in their earliest years, and as one man for a stipend of twelve hundred livres a year, was to do it all, a compromise became necessary, and it has been agreed for the present, that infants of six years shall be taught only reading, writing, gymnastics, geometry, geography, natural philosophy, and history of all free nations, and that of all the tyrants, the rights of man, and the patriotic songs. --Yet, after these years of consideration, and days of debate, the Assembly has done no more than a parish-clerk, or an old woman with a primer, and "a twig whilom of small regard to see," would do better without its interference. The students of a more advanced age are still to be disposed of, and the task of devising an institution will not be easy; because, perhaps a Collot d'Herbois or a Duhem is not satisfied with the system which perfectioned the genius of Montesquieu or Descartes. Change, not improvement, is the object--whatever bears a resemblance to the past must be proscribed; and while other people study to simplify modes of instruction, the French legislature is intent on rendering them as difficult and complex as possible; and at the moment they decree that the whole country shall become learned, they make it an unfathomable science to teach urchins of half a dozen years old their letters. Foreigners, indeed, who judge only from the public prints, may suppose the French far advanced towards becoming the most erudite nation in Europe: unfortunately, all these schools, primary, and secondary, and centrical, and divergent, and normal,* exist as yet but in the repertories of the Convention, and perhaps may not add "a local habitation" to their names, till the present race** shall be unfit to reap the benefit of them. * _Les Ecoles Normales_ were schools where masters were to be instructed in the art of teaching. Certain deputies objected to them, as being of feudal institution, supposing that Normale had some reference to Normandy. ** This was a mistake, for the French seem to have adopted the maxim, "that man is never too old to learn;" and, accordingly, at the opening of the Normal schools, the celebrated Bougainville, now eighty years of age, became a pupil. This Normal project was, however, soon relinquished--for by that fatality which has hitherto attended all the republican institutions, it was found to have become a mere nursery for aristocrats. But this revolutionary barbarism, not content with stopping the progress of the rising generation, has ravaged without mercy the monuments of departed genius, and persecuted with senseless despotism those who were capable of replacing them. Pictures have been defaced, statues mutilated, and libraries burnt, because they reminded the people of their Kings or their religion; while artists, and men of science or literature, were wasting their valuable hours in prison, or expiring on the scaffold.--The moral and gentle Florian died of vexation. A life of abstraction and utility could not save the celebrated chymist, Lavoisier, from the Guillotine. La Harpe languished in confinement, probably, that he might not eclipse Chenier, who writes tragedies himself; and every author that refused to degrade his talents by the adulation of tyranny has been proscribed and persecuted. Palissot,* at sixty years old, was destined to expiate in a prison a satire upon Rousseau, written when he was only twenty, and escaped, not by the interposition of justice, but by the efficacity of a bon mot. * Palissot was author of "The Philosophers," a comedy, written thirty years ago, to ridicule Rousseau. He wrote to the municipality, acknowledged his own error, and the merits of Rousseau; yet, says he, if Rousseau were a god, you ought not to sacrifice human victims to him.--The expression, which in French is well tuned, pleased the municipality, and Palissot, I believe, was not afterwards molested. --A similar fate would have been awarded Dorat, [Author of "Les Malheurs de l'Inconstance," and other novels.] for styling himself Chevalier in the title-pages of his novels, had he not commuted his punishment for base eulogiums on the Convention, and with the same pen, which has been the delight of the French boudoir, celebrated Carrier's murders on the Loire under the appellation of "baptemes civiques." Every province in France, we are informed by the eloquent pedantry of Gregoire, exhibits traces of these modern Huns, which, though now exclusively attributed to the agents of Robespierre and Mr. Pitt,* it is very certain were authorized by the decrees of the Convention, and executed under the sanction of Deputies on mission, or their subordinates. * _"Soyez sur que ces destructions se sont pour la plupart a l'instigation de nos ennemis--quel triomphe pour l'Anglais si il eul pu ecraser notre commerce par l'aneantissement des arts dont la culture enrichit le sien."_--"Rest assured that these demolitions were, for the most part, effected at the instigation of our enemies --what a triumph would it have been for the English, if they had succeeded in crushing our commerce by the annihilation of the arts, the culture of which enriched their own." --If the principal monuments of art be yet preserved to gratify the national taste or vanity, it is owing to the courage and devotion of individuals, who obeyed with a protecting dilatoriness the destructive mandates of government. At some places, orangeries were sold by the foot for fire-wood, because, as it was alledged, that republicans had more occasion for apples and potatoes than oranges.--At Mousseaux, the seals were put on the hot-houses, and all the plants nearly destroyed. Valuable remains of sculpture were condemned for a crest, a fleur de lys, or a coronet attached to them; and the deities of the Heathen mythology were made war upon by the ignorance of the republican executioners, who could not distinguish them from emblems of feodality.* * At Anet, a bronze stag, placed as a fountain in a large piece of water, was on the point of being demolished, because stags are beasts of chace, and hunting is a feodal privilege, and stags of course emblems of feodality.--It was with some difficulty preserved by an amateur, who insisted, that stags of bronze were not included in the decree.--By a decree of the Convention, which I have formerly mentioned, all emblems of royalty or feodality were to be demolished by a particular day; and as the law made no distinction, it could not be expected that municipalities, &c. often ignorant or timid, should either venture or desire to spare what in the eyes of the connoisseur might be precious. "At St. Dennis, (says the virtuoso Gregoire,) where the National Club justly struck at the tyrants even in their tombs, that of Turenne ought to have been spared; yet strokes of the sword are still visible on it."--He likewise complains, that at the Botanic Garden the bust of Linnaeus had been destroyed, on a presumption of its being that of Charles the Ninth; and if it had been that of Charles the Ninth, it is not easy to discern how the cause of liberty was served by its mutilation.--The artist or moralist contemplates with equal profit or curiosity the features of Pliny or Commodus; and History and Science will appreciate Linnaeus and Charles the Ninth, without regarding whether their resemblances occupy a palace, or are scattered in fragments by republican ignorance.--Long after the death of Robespierre, the people of Amiens humbly petitioned the Convention, that their cathedral, perhaps the most beautiful Gothic edifice in Europe, might be preserved; and to avoid giving offence by the mention of churches or cathedrals, they called it a Basilique.--But it is unnecessary to adduce any farther proof, that the spirit of what is now called Vandalism originated in the Convention. Every one in France must recollect, that, when dispatches from all corners announced these ravages, they were heard with as much applause, as though they had related so many victories gained over the enemy. --Quantities of curious medals have been melted down for the trifling value of the metal; and at Abbeville, a silver St. George, of uncommon workmanship, and which Mr. Garrick is said to have desired to purchase at a very high price, was condemned to the crucible-- _"----Sur tant de tresors "Antiques monumens respectes jusqu'alors, "Par la destruction signalant leur puissance, "Las barbares etendirent leur stupide vengeance." "La Religion,"_ Racine. Yet the people in office who operated these mischiefs were all appointed by the delegates of the Assembly; for the first towns of the republic were not trusted even with the choice of a constable. Instead, therefore, of feeling either surprise or regret at this devastation, we ought rather to rejoice that it has extended no farther; for such agents, armed with such decrees, might have reduced France to the primitive state of ancient Gaul. Several valuable paintings are said to have been conveyed to England, and it will be curious if the barbarism of France in the eighteenth century should restore to us what we, with a fanaticism and ignorance at least more prudent than theirs, sold them in the seventeenth. The zealots of the Barebones' Parliament are, however, more respectable than the atheistical Vandals of the Convention; and, besides the benefit of our example, the interval of a century and an half, with the boast of a philosophy and a degree of illumination exceeding that of any other people, have rendered the errors of the French at once more unpardonable and more ridiculous; for, in assimilating their past presentations to their present conduct and situation, we do not always find it possible to regret without a mixture of contempt. Amiens, Nov. 29, 1794. The selfish policy of the Convention in affecting to respect and preserve the Jacobin societies, while it deprived them of all power, and help up the individuals who composed them to abhorrence, could neither satisfy nor deceive men versed in revolutionary expedients, and more accustomed to dictate laws than to submit to them.* * The Jacobins were at this time headed by Billaud Varenne, Collot, Thuriot, &c.--veterans, who were not likely to be deceived by temporizing. Supported by all the force of government, and intrinsically formidable by their union, the Clubs had long existed in defiance of public reprobation, and for some time they had braved not only the people, but the government itself. The instant they were disabled from corresponding and communicating in that privileged sort of way which rendered them so conspicuous, they felt their weakness; and their desultory and unconnected efforts to regain their influence only served to complete its annihilation. While they pretended obedience to the regulations to which the Convention had subjected them, they intrigued to promote a revolt, and were strenuously exerting themselves to gain partizans among the idle and dissolute, who, having subsisted for months as members of revolutionary committees, and in other revolutionary offices, were naturally averse from a more moderate government. The numbers of these were far from inconsiderable: and, when it is recollected that this description of people only had been allowed to retain their arms, while all who had any thing to defend were deprived of them, we cannot wonder if the Jacobins entertained hopes of success. The Convention, aware of these attempts, now employed against its ancient accomplices the same arts that had proved so fatal to all those whom it had considered as its enemies. A correspondence was "opportunely" intercepted between the Jacobins and the Emigrants in Switzerland, while emissaries insinuated themselves into the Clubs, for the purpose of exciting desperate motions; or, dispersed in public places, contrived, by assuming the Jacobin costume, to throw on the faction the odium of those seditious exclamations which they were employed to vociferate. There is little doubt that the designs of the Jacobins were nearly such as have been imputed to them. They had, however, become more politic than to act thus openly, without being prepared to repel their enemies, or to support their friends; and there is every appearance that the Swiss plots, and the insurrections of the _Palais Egalite,_ were the devices of the government, to give a pretext for shutting up the Club altogether, and to avert the real dangers with which it was menaced, by spreading an alarm of fictitious ones. A few idle people assembled (probably on purpose) about the _Palais Egalite,_ and the place where the Jacobins held their meetings, and the exclamation of "Down with the Convention!" served as the signal for hostilities. The aristocrats joined the partizans of the Convention, the Jacobins were attacked in their hall, and an affray ensued, in which several persons on each side were wounded. Both parties accused each other of being the aggressor, and a report of the business was made to the Assembly; but the Assembly had already decided--and, on the ninth of November, while the Jacobins were endeavouring to raise the storm by a recapitulation of the rights of man, a decree was passed, prohibiting their debates, and ordering the national seal to be put on their doors and papers. The society were not in force to make resistance, and the decree was carried into execution as quietly as though it had been levelled against the hotel of some devoted aristocrat. When the news of this event reached the departments, it occasioned an universal rejoicing--not such a rejoicing as is ordered for the successes of the French arms, (which always seems to be a matter of great indifference,) but a chearfulness of heart and of countenance; and many persons whom I do not remember to have ever seen in the least degree moved by political events, appeared sincerely delighted at this-- "And those smile now, who never smil'd before, "And those who always smil'd, now smile the more." Parnell's Claudian. The armies might proceed to Vienna, pillage the Escurial, or subjugate all Europe, and I am convinced no emotion of pleasure would be excited equal to that manifested at the downfall of the Jacobins of Paris. Since this disgrace of the parent society, the Clubs in the departments have, for the most part, dissolved themselves, or dwindled into peaceable assemblies to hear the news read, and applaud the convention.--The few Jacobin emblems which were yet remaining have totally disappeared, and no vestige of Jacobinism is left, but the graves of its victims, and the desolation of the country. The profligate, the turbulent, the idle, and needy, of various countries in Europe, have been tempted by the successes of the French Jacobins to endeavour to establish similar institutions; but the same successes have operated as a warning to people of a different description, and the fall of these societies has drawn two confessions from their original partizans, which ought never to be forgotten--namely, that they were formed for the purpose of subverting the monarchy, and that their existence is incompatible with regular government of any kind.--"While the monarchy still existed, (says the most philosophic Lequinio, with whose scheme of reforming La Vendee you are already acquainted,) it was politic and necessary to encourage popular societies, as the most efficacious means of operating its destruction; but now we have effected a revolution, and have only to consolidate it by mild and philosophic laws, these societies are dangerous, because they can produce only confusion and disorder."--This is also the language of Brissot, who admires the Jacobins from their origin till the end of 1792, but after that period he admits they were only the instruments of faction, and destructive of all property and order.* * The period of the Jacobin annals so much admired by Brissot, comprises the dethronement of the King, the massacres of the prisons, the banishment of the priests, &c. That which he reprobates begins precisely at the period when the Jacobins disputed the claims of himself and his party to the exclusive direction of the government.--See Brissot's Address to his Constituents. --We learn therefore, not from the abuses alone, but from the praises bestowed on the Jacobins, how much such combinations are to be dreaded. Their merit, it appears, consisted in the subversion of the monarchical government, and their crime in ceasing to be useful as agents of tyranny, the moment they ceased to be principals. I am still sceptical as to the conversion of the Assembly, and little disposed to expect good from it; yet whatever it may attempt in future, or however its real principles may take an ascendant, this fortunate concurrence of personal interests, coalition of aristocrats and democrats, and political rivalry, have likewise secured France from a return of that excess of despotism which could have been exercised only by such means. It is true, the spirit of the nation is so much depressed, that an effort to revive these Clubs might meet no resistance; but the ridicule and opprobrium to which they have latterly been subject, and finally the manner of their being sacrificed by that very Convention, of which they were the sole creators and support, will, I think, cool the zeal, and diminish the numbers of their partizans too much for them ever again to become formidable. The conduct of Carrier has been examined according to the new forms, and he is now on his trial--though not till the delays of the Convention had given rise to a general suspicion that they intended either to exonerate or afford him an opportunity of escaping; and the people were at last so highly exasperated, that six thousand troops were added to the military force of Paris, and an insurrection was seriously apprehended. This stimulated the diligence, or relaxed the indulgence, of the commission appointed to make the report on Carrier's conduct; and it being decided that there was room for accusation, the Assembly confirmed the decision, and he was ordered into custody, to be tried along with the Revolutionary Committee of Nantes which had been the instrument of his crimes. It is a circumstance worth noting, that most of the Deputies who explained the motives on which they thought Carrier guilty, were silent on the subject of his drowning, shooting, and guillotining so many thousands of innocent people, and only declared him guilty, as having been wanting in respect towards Trehouard, one of his colleagues, and of injuring the republican cause by his atrocities. The fate of this monster exhibits a practical exposition of the enormous absurdity of such a government. He is himself tried for the exercise of a power declared to be unbounded when entrusted to him. The men tried with him as his accomplices were obliged by the laws to obey him; and the acts of which they are all accused were known, applauded, and held out for imitation, by the Convention, who now declare those very acts to be criminal!--There is certainly no way of reconciling justice but by punishing both chiefs and subordinates, and the hour for this will yet come.--Adieu. Amiens. [No date given.] I do not yet venture to correspond with my Paris friends by the post, but whenever the opportunity of private conveyance occurs, I receive long and circumstantial letters, as well as packets, of all the publications most read, and the theatrical pieces most applauded. I have lately drudged through great numbers of these last, and bestowed on them an attention they did not in themselves deserve, because I considered it as one means of judging both of the spirit of the government and the morals of the people. The dramas produced at the beginning of the revolution were in general calculated to corrupt the national taste and morals, and many of them were written with skill enough to answer the purpose for which they were intended; but those that have appeared during the last two years, are so stupid and so depraved, that the circumstance of their being tolerated even for a moment implies an extinction both of taste and of morals.* * _"Dans l'espace d'un an ils ont failli detruire le produit de plusieurs siecles de civilization."_--("In the space of a year they nearly destroyed the fruits of several ages of civilization.") The principal cause of this is the despotism of the government in making the stage a mere political engine, and suffering the performance of such pieces only as a man of honesty or genius would not submit to write.* * The tragedy of Brutus was interdicted on account of these two lines: _"Arreter un romain sur de simple soupcons, "C'est agir en tyrans, nous qui les punissons."_ That of Mahomet for the following: _"Exterminez, grands dieux, de la terre ou nous sommes "Quiconque avec plaisir repand le sang des hommes."_ It is to be remarked, that the last lines are only a simple axiom of humanity, and could not have been considered as implying a censure on any government except that of the French republic. --Hence a croud of scribblers, without shame or talents, have become the exclusive directors of public amusements, and, as far as the noise of a theatre constitutes success, are perhaps more successful than ever was Racine or Moliere. Immorality and dulness have an infallible resource against public disapprobation in the abuse of monarchy and religion, or a niche for Mr. Pitt; and an indignant or impatient audience, losing their other feelings in their fears, are glad to purchase the reputation of patriotism by applauding trash they find it difficult to endure. The theatres swarm with spies, and to censure a revolutionary piece, however detestable even as a composition, is dangerous, and few have courage to be the critics of an author who is patronized by the superintendants of the guillotine, or who may retaliate a comment on his poetry by the significant prose of a mandat d'arret. Men of literature, therefore, have wisely preferred the conservation of their freedom to the vindication of their taste, and have deemed it better to applaud at the Theatre de la Republique, than lodge at St. Lazare or Duplessis.--Thus political slavery has assisted moral depravation: the writer who is the advocate of despotism, may be dull and licentious by privilege, and is alone exempt from the laws of Parnassus and of decency.--One Sylvan Marechal, author of a work he calls philosophie, has written a sort of farce, which has been performed very generally, where all the Kings in Europe are brought together as so many monsters; and when the King of France is enquired after as not being among them, a Frenchman answers,--"Oh, he is not here--we have guillotined him--we have cut off his head according to law."--In one piece, the hero is a felon escaped from the galleys, and is represented as a patriot of the most sublime principles; in another, he is the virtuous conductor of a gang of banditti; and the principal character in a third, is a ploughman turned deist and politician. Yet, while these malevolent and mercenary scribblers are ransacking past ages for the crimes of Kings or the abuses of religion, and imputing to both many that never existed, they forget that neither their books nor their imagination are able to furnish scenes of guilt and misery equal to those which have been presented daily by republicans and philosophers. What horror can their mock-tragedies excite in those who have contemplated the Place de la Revolution? or who can smile at a farce in ridicule of monarchy, that beholds the Convention, and knows the characters of the men who compose it?--But in most of these wretched productions the absurdity is luckily not less conspicuous than the immoral intention: their Princes, their Priests, their Nobles, are all tyrannical, vicious, and miserable; yet the common people, living under these same vicious tyrants, are described as models of virtue, hospitality, and happiness. If, then, the auditors of such edifying dramas were in the habit of reasoning, they might very justly conclude, that the ignorance which republicanism is to banish is desirable, and that the diffusion of riches with which they have been flattered, will only increase their vices, and subtract from their felicity. There are, however, some patriotic spirits, who, not insensible to this degeneracy of the French theatre, and lamenting the evil, have lately exercised much ingenuity in developing the cause. They have at length discovered, that all the republican tragedies, flat farces, and heavy comedies, are attributable to Mr. Pitt, who has thought proper to corrupt the authors, with a view to deprave the public taste. There is, certainly, no combating this charge; for as, according to the assertions of the Convention, Mr. Pitt has succeeded in bribing nearly every other description of men in the republic, we may suppose the consciences of such scribblers not less flexible. Mr. Pitt, indeed, stands accused, sometimes in conjunction with the Prince of Cobourg, and sometimes on his own account, of successively corrupting the officers of the fleet and army, all the bankers and all the farmers, the priests who say masses, and the people who attend them, the chiefs of the aristocrats, and the leaders of the Jacobins. The bakers who refuse to bake when they have no flour, and the populace who murmur when they have no bread, besides the merchants and shopkeepers who prefer coin to assignats, are notoriously pensioned by him: and even a part of the Representatives, and all the frail beauties, are said to be enlisted in his service.--These multifarious charges will be found on the journals of the Assembly, and we must of course infer, that Mr. Pitt is the ablest statesman, or the French the most corrupt nation, existing. But it is not only Barrere and his colleagues who suppose the whole country bribeable--the notion is common to the French in general; and vanity adding to the omnipotence of gold, whenever they speak of a battle lost, or a town taken, they conclude it impossible to have occurred but through the venal treachery of their officers.--The English, I have observed, always judge differently, and would not think the national honour sustained by a supposition that their commanders were vulnerable only in the hand. If a general or an admiral happen to be unfortunate, it would be with the utmost reluctance that we should think of attributing his mischance to a cause so degrading; yet whoever has been used to French society will acknowledge, that the first suggestion on such events is _"nos officiers ont ete gagnes,"_ [Our officers were bought.] or _"sans la trahison ce ne seroit pas arrive."_ [This could not have happened without treachery.]--Pope's hyperbole of "Just half the land would buy, and half be sold," is more than applicable here; for if we may credit the French themselves, the buyers are by no means so well proportioned to the sellers. As I have no new political intelligence to comment upon, I shall finish my letter with a domestic adventure of the morning.--Our house was yesterday assigned as the quarters of some officers, who, with part of a regiment, were passing this way to join the Northern army. As they spent the evening out, we saw nothing of them, but finding one was a Colonel, and the other a Captain, though we knew what republican colonels and captains might be, we thought it civil, or rather necessary, to send them an invitation to breakfast. We therefore ordered some milk coffee early, (for Frenchmen seldom take tea,) and were all assembled before the usual time to receive our military guests. As they did not, however, appear, we were ringing to enquire for them, when Mr. D____ entered from his morning walk, and desired us to be at ease on their account, for that in passing the kitchen, he had perceived the Captain fraternizing over some onions, bread, and beer, with our man; while the Colonel was in close conference with the cook, and watching a pan of soup, which was warming for his breakfast. We have learned since, that these heroes were very willing to accept of any thing the servants offered them, but could not be prevailed upon to approach us; though, you are to understand, this was not occasioned either by timidity or incivility, but by mere ignorance. --Mr. D____ says, the Marquise and I have not divested ourselves of aristocratic associations with our ideas of the military, and that our deshabilles this morning were unusually coquetish. Our projects of conquest were, however, all frustrated by the unlucky intervention of Bernardine's _soupe aux choux,_ [Cabbage-soup.] and Eustace's regale of cheese and onions. "And with such beaux 'tis vain to be a belle." Yours, &c. Amiens, Dec. 10, 1794. Your American friend passed through here yesterday, and delivered me the two parcels. As marks of your attention, they were very acceptable; but on any other account, I assure you, I should have preferred a present of a few pecks of wheat to all your fineries. I have been used to conclude, when I saw such strange and unaccountable absurdities given in the French papers as extracts from the debates in either of your Houses of Parliament, that they were probably fabricated here to serve the designs of the reigning factions: yet I perceive, by some old papers which came with the muslins, that there are really members so ill-informed or so unprincipled, as to use the language attributed to them, and who assert that the French are attached to their government, and call France "a land of republicans." When it is said that a people are republicans, we must suppose they are either partial to republicanism as a system, or that they prefer it in practice. A little retrospection, perhaps, will determine both these points better than the eloquence of your orators. A few men, of philosophic or restless minds, have, in various ages and countries, endeavoured to enlighten or disturb the world by examinations and disputes on forms of government; yet the best heads and the best hearts have remained divided on the subject, and I never heard that any writer was able to produce more than a partial conviction, even in the most limited circle. Whence, then, did it happen in France, where information was avowedly confined, and where such discussions could not have been general, that the people became suddenly inspired with this political sagacity, which made them in one day the judges and converts of a system they could scarcely have known before, even by name?--At the deposition of the King, the French, (speaking at large,) had as perspicuous a notion of republics, as they may be supposed to have of mathematics, and would have understood Euclid's Elements as well as the Social Contract. Yet an assemblage of the worst and most daring men from every faction, elected amidst massacres and proscription, the moment they are collected together, declare, on the proposal of Collot d'Herbois, a profligate strolling player, that France shall be a republic.--Admitting that the French were desirous of altering their form of government, I believe no one will venture to say such an inclination was ever manifested, or that the Convention were elected in a manner to render them competent to such a decision. They were not the choice of the people, but chiefly emissaries imposed on the departments by the Jacobins and the municipality of Paris; and let those who are not acquainted with the means by which the elections were obtained, examine the composition of the Assembly itself, and then decide whether any people being free could have selected such men as Petion, Tallien, Robespierre, Brissot, Carrier, Taillefer, &c. &c. from the whole nation to be their Representatives.--There must, in all large associations, be a mixture of good and bad; but when it is incontrovertible that the principal members of the Convention are monsters, who, we hope, are not to be paralleled-- that the rest are inferior rather in talents than wickedness, or cowards and ideots, who have supported and applauded crimes they only wanted opportunity to commit--it is not possible to conceive, that any people in the world could make a similar choice. Yet if the French were absolutely unbiassed, and of their own free will made this collection, who would, after such an example, be the advocates of general suffrage and popular representation?--But, I repeat, the people were not free. They were not, indeed, influenced by bribes--they were intimidated by the horrors of the moment; and along with the regulations for the new elections, were every where circulated details of the assassinations of August and September.* * The influence of the municipality of Paris on the new elections is well known. The following letter will show what instruments were employed, and the description of Representatives likely to be chosen under such auspices. "Circular letter, written by the Committee of Inspection of the municipality of Paris to all the departments of the republic, dated the third of September, the second day of the massacres: "The municipality of Paris is impatient to inform their brethren of the departments, that a part of the ferocious conspirators detained in the prisons have been put to death by the people: an act of justice which appeared to them indispensable, to restrain by terror those legions of traitors whom they must have left behind when they departed for the army. There is no doubt but the whole nation, after such multiplied treasons, will hasten to adopt the same salutary measure!"--Signed by the Commune of Paris and the Minister of Justice. Who, after this mandate, would venture to oppose a member recommended by the Commune of Paris? --The French, then, neither chose the republican form of government, nor the men who adopted it; and are, therefore, not republicans on principle.--Let us now consider whether, not being republicans on principle, experience may have rendered them such. The first effects of the new system were an universal consternation, the disappearance of all the specie, an extravagant rise in the price of provisions, and many indications of scarcity. The scandalous quarrels of the legislature shocked the national vanity, by making France the ridicule of all Europe, until ridicule was suppressed by detestation at the subsequent murder of the King. This was followed by the efforts of one faction to strengthen itself against another, by means of a general war--the leaders of the former presuming, that they alone were capable of conducting it. To the miseries of war were added revolutionary tribunals, revolutionary armies and committees, forced loans, requisitions, maximums, and every species of tyranny and iniquity man could devise or suffer; or, to use the expression of Rewbell, [One of the Directory in 1796.] "France was in mourning and desolation; all her families plunged in despair; her whole surface covered with Bastilles, and the republican government become so odious, that the most wretched slave, bending beneath the weight of his chains, would have refused to live under it!" Such were the means by which France was converted into a land of republicans, and such the government to which your patriots assert the French people were attached: yet so little was this attachment appreciated here, that the mere institutions for watching and suppressing disaffection amount, by the confession of Cambon, the financier, to twenty-four millions six hundred and thirty-one thousand pounds sterling a year! To suppose, then, that the French are devoted to a system which has served as a pretext for so many crimes, and has been the cause of so many calamities, is to conclude them a nation of philosophers, who are able to endure, yet incapable of reasoning; and who suffer evils of every kind in defence of a principle with which they can be little acquainted, and which, in practice, they have known only by the destruction it has occasioned. You may, perhaps, have been persuaded, that the people submit patiently now, for the sake of an advantage in perspective; but it is not in the disposition of unenlightened men (and the mass of a people must necessarily be so) to give up the present for the future. The individual may sometimes atchieve this painful conquest over himself, and submit to evil, on a calculation of future retribution, but the multitude will ever prefer the good most immediately attainable, if not under the influence of that terror which supersedes every other consideration. Recollect, then, the counsel of the first historian of our age, and "suspend your belief of whatever deviates from the laws of nature and the character of man;" and when you are told the French are attached to a government which oppresses them, or to principles of which they are ignorant, suppose their adoption of the one, and their submission to the other, are the result of fear, and that those who make these assertions to the contrary, are either interested or misinformed. Excuse me if I have devoted a few pages to a subject which with you is obsolete. I am indignant at the perusal of such falsehoods; and though I feel for the humiliation of great talents, I feel still more for the disgrace such an abuse of them brings on our country. It is not inapposite to mention a circumstance which happened to a friend of Mr. D____'s, some little time since, at Paris. He was passing through France, in his way from Italy, at the time of the general arrest, and was detained there till the other day. As soon as he was released from prison, he applied in person to a member of the Convention, to learn when he might hope to return to England. The Deputy replied, _"Ma soi je n'en sais rien_ [Faith I can't tell you.]--If your Messieurs (naming some members in the opposition) had succeeded in promoting a revolution, you would not have been in your cage so long--_mais pour le coup il faut attendre."_ [But now you must have patience.] It is not probable the members he named could have such designs, but Dumont once held the same language to me; and it is mortifying to hear these miscreants suppose, that factious or ambitious men, because they chance to possess talents, can make revolutions in England as they have done in France. In the papers which gave rise to these reflections, I observe that some of your manufacturing towns are discontented, and attribute the stagnation of their commerce to the war; but it is not unlikely, that the stagnation and failures complained of might have taken place, though the war had not happened.--When I came here in 1792, every shop and warehouse were over-stocked with English goods. I could purchase any article of our manufacture at nearly the retail price of London; and some I sent for from Paris, in the beginning of 1793, notwithstanding the reports of war, were very little advanced. Soon after the conclusion of the commercial treaty, every thing English became fashionable; and so many people had speculated in consequence, that similar speculations took place in England. But France was glutted before the war; and all speculations entered into on a presumption of a demand equal to that of the first years of the treaty, must have failed in a certain degree, though the two countries had remained at peace.--Even after a two years cessation of direct intercourse, British manufactures are every where to be procured, which is a sufficient proof that either the country was previously over supplied, or that they are still imported through neutral or indirect channels. Both these suppositions preclude the likelihood that the war has so great a share in relaxing the activity of your commerce, as is pretended. But whatever may be the effect of the war, there is no prospect of peace, until the efforts of England, or the total ruin of the French finances,* shall open the way for it. * By a report of Cambon's at this time, it appears the expences of France in 1792 were eighteen millions sterling--in 1793, near ninety millions--and, in the spring of 1794, twelve and a half millions per month!--The church bells, we learn from the same authority, cost in coinage, and the purchase of copper to mix with the metal, five or six millions of livres more than they produced as money. The church plate, which was brought to the bar of the Convention with such eclat, and represented as an inexhaustible resource, amounted to scarcely a million sterling: for as the offering was every where involuntary, and promoted by its agents for the purposes of pillage, part was secreted, a still greater part stolen, and, as the conveyance to Paris was a sort of job, the expences often exceeded the worth--a patine, a censor, and a small chalice, were sent to the Convention, perhaps an hundred leagues, by a couple of Jacobin Commissioners in a coach and four, with a military escort. Thus, the prejudices of the people were outraged, and their property wasted, without any benefit, even to those who suggested the measure. --The Convention, indeed, have partly relinquished their project of destroying all the Kings of the earth, and forcing all the people to be free. But, though their schemes of reformation have failed, they still adhere to those of extirpation; and the most moderate members talk occasionally of "vile islanders," and "sailing up the Thames."*-- * The Jacobins and the Moderates, who could agree in nothing else, were here perfectly in unison; so that on the same day we see the usual invectives of Barrere succeeded by menaces equally ridiculous from Pelet and Tallien-- _"La seule chose dont nous devons nous occuper est d'ecraser ce gouvernement infame."_ Discours de Pelet, 14 Nov. "The destruction of that infamous government is the only thing that ought to engage our attention." Pelet's Speech, 14 Nov. 1794. _"Aujourdhui que la France peut en se debarrassant d'une partie de ses ennemis reporter la gloire de ses armes sur les bordes de la Tamise, et ecraser le gouvernement Anglais." Discours de Tallien._ "France, having now the opportunity of lessening the number of her enemies, may carry the glory of her arms to the banks of the Thames, and crush the English government." Tallien's Speech. _"Que le gouvernement prenne des mesures sages pour faire une paix honorable avec quelques uns de nos ennemis, et a l'aide des vaisseaux Hollandais et Espagnols, portons nous ensuite avec vigueur sur les bordes de la Tamise, et detruisons la nouvelle Carthage." Discours de Tallien, 14 Nov._ "Let the government but adopt wise measures for making an honorable peace with a part of our enemies, and with the aid of the Dutch and Spanish navies, let us repair to the banks of the Thames, and destroy the modern Carthage." Tallien's Speech, 14 Nov. 1794. No one is here ignorant of the source of Tallien's predilection for Spain, and we may suppose the intrigue at this time far advanced. Probably the charms of his wife (the daughter of Mons. Cabarrus, a French speculator, formerly much encouraged by the Spanish government, afterwards disgraced and imprisoned, but now liberated) might not be the only means employed to procure his conversion. --Tallien, Clauzel, and those who have newly assumed the character of rational and decent people, still use the low and atrocious language of Brissot, on the day he made his declaration of war; and perhaps hope, by exciting a national spirit of vengeance against Great Britain, to secure their lives and their pay, when they shall have been forced to make peace on the Continent: for, be certain, the motives of these men are never to be sought for in any great political object, but merely in expedients to preserve their persons and their plunder. Those who judge of the Convention by their daily harangues, and the justice, virtue, or talents which they ascribe to themselves, must believe them to be greatly regenerated: yet such is the dearth both of abilities and of worth of any kind, that Andre Dumont has been successively President of the Assembly, Member of the Committee of General Safety, and is now in that of Public Welfare.--Adieu. Amiens, Dec. 16, 1794. The seventy-three Deputies who have been so long confined are now liberated, and have resumed their seats. Jealousy and fear for some time rendered the Convention averse from the adoption of this measure; but the public opinion was so determined in favour of it, that farther resistance might not have been prudent. The satisfaction created by this event is general, though the same sentiment is the result of various conclusions, which, however, all tend to one object--the re-establishment of monarchy. The idea most prevalent is, that these deputies, when arrested, were royalists.* * This opinion prevailed in many places where the proscribed deputies took refuge. "The Normans (says Louvet) deceived by the imputations in the newspapers, assisted us, under the idea that we were royalists: but abandoned us when they found themselves mistaken." In the same manner, on the appearance of these Deputies in other departments, armies were collecting very fast, but dispersed when they perceived these men were actuated only by personal fear or personal ambition, and that no one talked of restoring the monarchy. --By some it is thought, persecution may have converted them; but the reflecting part of the nation look on the greater number as adherents of the Girondists, whom the fortunate violence of Robespierre excluded from participating in many of the past crimes of their colleagues, and who have, in that alone, a reason for not becoming accomplices in those which may be attempted in future. It is astonishing to see with what facility people daily take on trust things which they have it in their power to ascertain. The seventy-three owe a great part of the interest they have excited to a persuasion of their having voted either for a mild sentence on the King, or an appeal to the nation: yet this is so far from being true, that many of them were unfavourable to him on every question. But supposing it to have been otherwise, their merit is in reality little enhanced: they all voted him guilty, without examining whether he was so or not; and in affecting mercy while they refused justice, they only aimed at conciliating their present views with their future safety. The whole claim of this party, who are now the Moderates of the Convention, is reducible to their having opposed the commission of crimes which were intended to serve their adversaries, rather than themselves. To effect the dethronement of the King, and the destruction of those obnoxious to them, they approved of popular insurrections; but expected that the people whom they had rendered proficients in cruelty, should become gentle and obedient when urged to resist their own authority; yet they now come forth as victims of their patriotism, and call the heads of the faction who are fallen--martyrs to liberty! But if they are victims, it is to their folly or wickedness in becoming members of such an assembly; and if their chiefs were martyrs, it was to the principles they inculcated. The trial of the Brissotins was justice, compared with that of the King. If the former were condemned without proof, their partizans should remember, that the revolutionary jury pretended to be influenced by the same moral evidence they had themselves urged as the ground on which they condemned the King; and if the people beheld with applause or indifference the execution of their once-popular idols, they only put in practice the barbarous lessons which those idols had taught them;--they were forbidden to lament the fate of their Sovereign, and they rejoiced in that of Brissot and his confederates.--These men, then, only found the just retribution of their own guilt; and though it may be politic to forget that their survivors were also their accomplices, they are not objects of esteem--and the contemporary popularity, which a long seclusion has obtained for them, will vanish, if their future conduct should be directed by their original principles.* * Louvet's pamphlet had not at this time appeared, and the subsequent events proved, that the interest taken in these Deputies was founded on a supposition they had changed their principles; for before the close of the Convention they were as much objects of hatred and contempt as their colleagues. Some of these Deputies were the hirelings of the Duke of Orleans, and most of them are individuals of no better reputation than the rest of the Assembly. Lanjuinais has the merit of having acted with great courage in defence of himself and his party on the thirty-first of May 1792; but the following anecdote, recited by Gregoire* in the Convention a few days ago will sufficiently explain both his character and Gregoire's, who are now, however, looked up to as royalists, and as men comparatively honest. * Gregoire is one of the constitutional Clergy, and, from the habit of comparing bad with worse, is more esteemed than many of his colleagues; yet, in his report on the progress of Vandalism, he expresses himself with sanguinary indecency--"They have torn (says he) the prints which represented the execution of Charles the first, because there were coats of arms on them. Ah, would to god we could behold, engraved in the same manner, the heads of all Kings, done from nature! We might then reconcile ourselves to seeing a ridiculous embellishment of heraldry accompany them." --"When I first arrived at Versailles, (says Gregoire,) as member of the Constituent Assembly, (in 1789,) I met with Lanjuinais, and we took an oath in concert to dethrone the King and abolish Nobility." Now, this was before the alledged provocations of the King and Nobility--before the constitution was framed--before the flight of the royal family to Varennes--and before the war. But almost daily confessions of this sort escape, which at once justify the King, and establish the infamy of the revolutionists. These are circumstances not to be forgotten, did not the sad science of discriminating the shades of wickedness, in which (as I have before noticed) the French have been rendered such adepts, oblige them at present to fix their hopes--not according to the degree of merit, but by that of guilt. They are reduced to distinguish between those who sanction murders, and those who perpetrated them--between the sacrificer of one thousand victims, and that of ten--between those who assassinate, and those who only reward the assassin.* * Tallien is supposed, as agent of the municipality of paris, to have paid a million and a half of livres to the Septembrisers or assassins of the prisons! I know not whether the sum was in assignats or specie.--If in the former, it was, according to the exchange then, about two and thirty thousand pounds sterling: but if estimated in proportion to what might be purchased with it, near fifty thousand. Tallien has never denied the payment of the money-- we may, therefore, conclude the charge to be true. --Before the revolution, they would not have known how to select, where all were objects of abhorrence; but now the most ignorant are casuists in the gradations of turpitude, and prefer Tallien to Le Bon, and the Abbe Sieyes to Barrere. The crimes of Carrier have been terminated, not punished, by death. He met his fate with a courage which, when the effect of innocence, is glorious to the sufferer, and consoling to humanity; but a career like his, so ended, was only the confirmation of a brutal and ferocious mind.* * When Carrier was arrested, he attempted to shoot himself, and, on being prevented by the Gens-d'armes, he told them there were members of the Convention who would not forgive their having prevented his purpose--implying, that they apprehended the discoveries he might make on his trial. While he was dressing himself, (for they took him in bed,) he added, "_Les Scelerats!_ (Meaning his more particular accomplices, who, he was told, had voted against him,) they deserved that I should be as dastardly as themselves." He rested his defence entirely on the decrees of the Convention. --Of thirty who were tried with him as his agents, and convicted of assisting at the drownings, shootings, &c. two only were executed, the rest were acquitted; because, though the facts were proved, the moral latitude of the Revolutionary Jury* did not find the guilt of the intention--that is, the culprits were indisputably the murderers of several thousand people, but, according to the words of the verdict, they did not act with a counter-revolutionary intention. * An English reader may be deceived by the name of Jury. The Revolutionary Jury was not only instituted, but even appointed by the Convention.--The following is a literal translation of some of the verdicts given on this occasion: "That O'Sulivan is author and accomplice of several noyades (drownings) and unheard-of cruelties towards the victims delivered to the waves. "That Lefevre is proved to have ordered and caused to be executed a noyade of men, women, and children, and to have committed various arbitrary acts. "That General Heron is proved to have assassinated children, and worn publicly in his hat the ear of a man he had murdered. That he also killed two children who were peaceably watching sheep. "That Bachelier is author and accomplice of the operations at Nantes, in signing arbitrary mandates of arrest, imposing vexatious taxes, and taking for himself plate, &c. found at the houses of citizens arrested on suspicion. "That Joly is guilty, &c. in executing the arbitrary orders of the Revolutionary Committee, of tying together the victims destined to be drowned or shot." There are thirty-one articles conceived nearly in the same terms, and which conclude thus--"All convicted as above, but not having acted with criminal or counter-revolutionary intentions, the Tribunal acquits and sets them at liberty." All France was indignant at those verdicts, and the people of Paris were so enraged, that the Convention ordered the acquitted culprits to be arrested again, perhaps rather for protection than punishment. They were sent from Paris, and I never heard the result; but I have seen the name of General Heron as being at large. The Convention were certainly desirous that the atrocities of these men (all zealous republicans) should be forgotten; for, independently of the disgrace which their trial has brought on the cause, the sacrifice of such agents might create a dangerous timidity in future, and deprive the government of valuable partizans, who would fear to be the instruments of crimes for which, after such a precedent, they might become responsible. But the evil, which was unavoidable, has been palliated by the tenderness or gratitude of a jury chosen by the Convention, who, by sacrificing two only of this mass of monsters, and protecting the rest, hope to consecrate the useful principle of indulgence for every act, whatever its enormity, which has been the consequence of zeal or obedience to the government. It is among the dreadful singularities of the revolution, that the greatest crimes which have been committed were all in strict observance of the laws. Hence the Convention are perpetually embarrassed by interest or shame, when it becomes necessary to punish them. We have only to compare the conduct of Carrier, le Bon, Maignet, &c. with the decrees under which they acted, to be convinced that their chief guilt lies in having been capable of obeying: and the convention, coldly issuing forth their rescripts of extermination and conflagration, will not, in the opinion of the moralist, be favorably distinguished from those who carried these mandates into execution. December 24, 1794. I am now at a village a few miles from Amiens, where, upon giving security in the usual form, we have been permitted to come for a few days on a visit to some relations of my friend Mad. de ____. On our arrival, we found the lady of the house in a nankeen pierrot, knitting grey thread stockings for herself, and the gentleman in a thick woollen jacket and pantaloons, at work in the fields, and really labouring as hard as his men.--They hope, by thus taking up the occupation and assuming the appearance of farmers, to escape farther persecution; and this policy may be available to those who have little to lose: but property is now a more dangerous distinction than birth, and whoever possesses it, will always be considered as the enemies of the republic, and treated accordingly. We have been so much confined the last twelve months, that we were glad to ride yesterday in spite of the cold; and our hosts having procured asses for the females of the party, accompanied us themselves on foot.-- During our ramble, we entered into conversation with two old men and a boy, who were at work in an open field near the road. They told us, they had not strength to labour, because they had not their usual quantity of bread--that their good lady, whose chateau we saw at a distance, had been guillotined, or else they should have wanted for nothing--_"Et ste pauvre Javotte la n'auroit pas travaille quant elle est qualsiment prete a mourir."_ ["And our poor Javotte there would not have had to work when she is almost in her grave."]--_"Mon dieu,"_ (says one of the old men, who had not yet spoke,) _"Je donnerais bien ma portion de sa terre pour la ravoir notre bonne dame."_ ["God knows, I would willingly give up my share of her estate to have our good lady amongst us again."]--_"Ah pour ca oui,"_ (returned the other,) _"mais j'crois que nous n'aurons ni l'une l'autre, voila ste maudite nation qui s'empare de tout."_ ["Ah truly, but I fancy we shall have neither one nor the other, for this cursed nation gets hold of every thing."] While they were going on in this style, a berline and four cabriolets, with three-coloured flags at the windows, and a whole troop of national guard, passed along the road. _"Vive la Republique!"_--"Vive la Nation!" cried our peasants, in an instant; and as soon as the cavalcade was out of sight, _"Voyez ste gueusaille la, quel train, c'est vraiment quelque depute de la Convention--ces brigands la, ils ne manquent de rien, ils vivent comme des rois, et nous autres nous sommes cent sois plus miserables que jamais."_ ["See there what a figure they make, those beggarly fellows--it's some deputy of the convention I take it. The thieves want for nothing, they live like so many kings, and we are all a hundred times worse off than ever."]--_"Tais toi, tais tois,"_ ["Be quiet, I tell you."] (says the old man, who seemed the least garrulous of the two.)--_"Ne crains rien,_ ["Never fear."] (replied the first,) _c'est de braves gens;_ these ladies and gentlemen I'm sure are good people; they have not the look of patriots."--And with this compliment to ourselves, and the externals of patriotism, we took our leave of them. I found, however, by this little conversation, that some of the peasants still believe they are to have the lands of the gentry divided amongst them, according to a decree for that purpose. The lady, whom they lamented, and whose estate they expected to share, was the Marquise de B____, who had really left the country before the revolution, and had gone to drink some of the German mineral waters, but not returning within the time afterwards prescribed, was declared an emigrant. By means of a friend, she got an application made to Chabot, (then in high popularity,) who for an hundred thousand livres procured a passport from the Executive Council to enter France. Upon the faith of this she ventured to return, and was in consequence, notwithstanding her passport, executed as an emigrant. Mrs. D____, who is not yet well enough for such an expedition, and is, besides, unaccustomed to our montures, remained at home. We found she had been much alarmed during our absence, every house in the village having been searched, by order of the district, for corn, and two of the horses taken to the next post to convey the retinue of the Deputy we had seen in the morning. Every thing, however, was tranquil on our arrival, and rejoicing it was no worse, though Mons. ____ seemed to be under great apprehension for his horses, we sat down to what in France is called a late dinner. Our host's brother, who left the army at the general exclusion of the Noblesse, and was in confinement at the Luxembourg until after the death of Robespierre, is a professed wit, writes couplets to popular airs, and has dramatized one of Plutarch's Lives. While we were at the desert, he amused us with some of his compositions in prison, such as an epigram on the Guillotine, half a dozen calembours on the bad fare at the _Gamelle,_ [Mess.] and an ode on the republican victory at Fleurus--the last written under the hourly expectation of being sent off with the next _fournee_ (batch) of pretended conspirators, yet breathing the most ardent attachment to the convention, and terminated by a full sounding line about tyrants and liberty.--This may appear strange, but the Poets were, for the most part, in durance, and the Muses must sing, though in a cage: hope and fear too both inspire prescriptively, and freedom might be obtained or death averted by these effusions of a devotion so profound as not to be alienated by the sufferings of imprisonment, or the menace of destruction. Whole volumes of little jeux d'esprit, written under these circumstances, might be collected from the different prisons; and, I believe, it is only in France that such a collection could have been furnished.* * Many of these poetical trifles have been published--some written even the night before their authors were executed. There are several of great poetical merit, and, when considered relatively, are wonderful.--Among the various poets imprisoned, was one we should scarcely have expected--Rouget Delille, author of the Marseillois Hymn, who, while his muse was rouzing the citizens from one end of the republic to the other to arm against tyrants, was himself languishing obscurely a victim to the worst of all tyrannies. Mr. D____, though he writes and speaks French admirably, does not love French verses; and I found he could not depend on the government of his features, while a French poet was reciting his own, but kept his eyes fixed on a dried apple, which he pared very curiously, and when that was atchieved, betook himself to breaking pralines, and extracting the almonds with equal application. We, however, complimented Monsieur's poetry; and when we had taken our coffee, and the servants were entirely withdrawn, he read us some trifles more agreeable to our principles, if not to our taste, and in which the Convention was treated with more sincerity than complaisance. It seems the poet's zeal for the republic had vanished at his departure from the Luxembourg, and that his wrath against coalesced despots, and his passion for liberty, had entirely evaporated. In the evening we played a party of reversi with republican cards,* and heard the children sing "Mourrons pour la Patrie." * The four Kings are replaced by four Genii, the Queens by four sorts of liberty, and the Knaves by four descriptions of equality. --After these civic amusements, we closed our chairs round the fire, conjecturing how long the republic might last, or whether we should all pass another twelve months in prison, and, agreeing that both our fate and that of the republic were very precarious, adjourned to rest. While I was undressing, I observed Angelique looked extremely discontented, and on my enquiring what was the matter, she answered, _"C'est que je m'ennuie beaucoup ici,"_ ["I am quite tired of this place."] "Mademoiselle," (for no state or calling is here exempt from this polite sensation.) "And why, pray?"--_"Ah quelle triste societe, tout le monde est d'un patriotisme insoutenable, la maison est remplie d'images republicaines, des Marat, des Voltaire, des Pelletier, que sais-moi? et voila jusqu'au garcon de l'ecurie qui me traite de citoyenne."_ ["Oh, they are a sad set--every body is so insufferably patriotic. The house is full from top to bottom of republican images, Marats, and Voltaires, and Pelletiers, and I don't know who--and I am called Citizen even by the stable boy."] I did not think it right to satisfy her as to the real principles of our friends, and went to bed ruminating on the improvements which the revolution must have occasioned in the art of dissimulation. Terror has drilled people of the most opposite sentiments into such an uniformity of manner and expression, that an aristocrat who is ruined and persecuted by the government is not distinguishable from the Jacobin who has made his fortune under it. In the morning Angelique's countenance was brightened, and I found she had slept in the same room with Madame's _femme de chambre,_ when an explanation of their political creeds had taken place, so that she now assured me Mad. Augustine was _"fort honnete dans le fond,"_ [A very good girl at heart.] though she was obliged to affect republicanism.--"All the world's a stage," says our great dramatic moralist. France is certainly so at present, and we are not only necessitated to act a part, but a sorry one too; for we have no choice but to exhibit in farce, or suffer in tragedy.--Yours, &c. December 27, 1794. I took the opportunity of my being here to go about four leagues farther to see an old convent acquaintance lately come to this part of the country, and whom I have not met since I was at Orleans in 1789. The time has been when I should have thought such a history as this lady's a romance, but tales of woe are now become familiar to us, and, if they create sympathy, they no longer excite surprize, and we hear of them as the natural effects of the revolution. Madame de St. E__m__d is the daughter of a gentleman whose fortune was inadequate both to his rank and manner of living, and he gladly embraced the offer of Monsieur de St. E__m__d to marry her at sixteen, and to relinquish the fortune allotted her to her two younger sisters. Monsieur de St. E__m__d, being a dissipated man, soon grew weary of any sort of domestic life, and placing his wife with her father, in less than a year after their marriage departed for Italy.--Madame de St. E__m__d, thus left in a situation both delicate and dangerous for a young and pretty woman, became unfortunately attached to a gentleman who was her distant relation: yet, far from adopting the immoral principles not unjustly ascribed to your country, she conducted herself with a prudence and reserve, which even in France made her an object of general respect. About three years after her husband's departure the revolution took place, and not returning, he was of course put on the list of emigrants. In 1792, when the law passed which sanctioned and facilitated divorces, her friends all earnestly persuaded her to avail herself of it, but she could not be prevailed upon to consider the step as justifiable; for though Monsieur de St. E__m__d neglected her, he had, in other respects, treated her with generosity and kindness. She, therefore, persisted in her refusal, and her lover, in despair, joined the republican army. At the general arrest of the Noblesse, Madame de St. E__m__d and her sisters were confined in the town where they resided, but their father was sent to Paris; and a letter from one of his female relations, who had emigrated, being found among his papers, he was executed without being able to see or write to his children. Madame de St. E__m__d's husband had returned about the same time to France, in the disguise of a post-boy, was discovered, and shared the same fate. These events reached her love, still at the army, but it was impossible for him to quit his post, and in a few days after, being mortally wounded, he died,* recommending Eugenie de St. E__m__d to the protection of his father.-- * This young man, who died gallantly fighting in the cause of the republic, was no republican: but this does not render the murder of his father, a deaf [There were people both deaf and dumb in the prisons as conspirators.] and inoffensive man, less abominable.--The case of General Moreau's father, though somewhat similar, is yet more characteristic of the revolution. Mons. Moreau was persuaded, by a man who had some interest in the business, to pay a debt which he owed an emigrant, to an individual, instead of paying it, as the law directed, to the use of the republic. The same man afterwards denounced him, and he was thrown into prison. At nine o'clock on the night preceding his trial, his act of accusation was brought him, and before he had time to sketch out a few lines for his defence, the light by which he wrote was taken away. In the morning he was tried, the man who had informed against him sitting as one of his judges, and he was condemned and executed the very day on which his son took the Fort de l'Ecluse!--Mons. Moreau had four sons, besides the General in the army, and two daughters, all left destitute by the confiscation of his property. --A brother officer, who engaged to execute this commission, wrote immediately to the old man, to inform him of his loss, and of his son's last request. It was too late, the father having been arrested on suspicion, and afterwards guillotined, with many other persons, for a pretended conspiracy in prison, the very day on which his son had fallen in the performance of an act of uncommon bravery. Were I writing from imagination, I should add, that Madame de St. E__m__d had been unable to sustain the shock of these repeated calamities, and that her life or understanding had been the sacrifice. It were, indeed, happy for the sufferer, if our days were always terminated when they became embittered, or that we lost the sense of sorrow by its excess: but it is not so--we continue to exist when we have lost the desire of existence, and to reason when feeling and reason constitute our torments. Madame de St. E__m__d then lives, but lives in affliction; and having collected the wreck of her personal property, which some friends had concealed, she left the part of France she formerly inhabited, and is now with an aunt in this neighbourhood, watching the decay of her eldest sister, and educating the youngest. Clementine was consumptive when they were first arrested, and vexation, with ill-treatment in the prison, have so established her disorder, that she is now past relief. She is yet scarcely eighteen, and one of the most lovely young women I ever saw. Grief and sickness have ravaged her features; but they are still so perfect, that fancy, associating their past bloom with their present languor, supplies perhaps as much to the mind as is lost by the eye. She suffers without complaining, and mourns without ostentation; and hears her father spoken of with such solemn silent floods of tears, that she looks like the original of Dryden's beautiful portrait of the weeping Sigismunda. The letter which condemned the father of these ladies, was not, it seems, written to himself, but to a brother, lately dead, whose executor he was, and of whose papers he thus became possessed. On this ground their friends engaged them to petition the Assembly for a revision of the sentence, and the restoration of their property, which was in consequence forfeited. The daily professions of the Convention, in favour of justice and humanity, and the return of the seventy-three imprisoned Deputies, had soothed these poor young women with the hopes of regaining their paternal inheritance, so iniquitously confiscated. A petition was, therefore, forwarded to Paris about a fortnight ago; and the day before, the following decree was issued, which has silenced their claims for ever: "La Convention Nationale declare qu'elle n'admettra aucune demande en revision des jugemens criminels portant confiscation de biens rendus et executes pendant la revolution."* * "The National Convention hereby declares that it will admit no petitions for the revisal of such criminal sentences, attended with confiscation of property, as have been passed and executed since the revolution." Yet these revolutionists, who would hear nothing of repairing their own injustice, had occasionally been annulling sentences past half a century ago, and the more recent one of the Chevalier La Barre. But their own executions and confiscations for an adherence to religion were to be held sacred.--I shall be excused for introducing here a few words respecting the affair of La Barre, which has been a favourite topic with popular writers of a certain description. The severity of the punishment must, doubtless, be considered as disgraceful to those who advised as well as to those who sanctioned it: but we must not infer from hence that he merited no punishment at all; and perhaps degradation, some scandalous and public correction, with a few years solitary confinement, might have answered every purpose intended. La Barre was a young etourdi, under twenty, but of lively talents, which, unfortunately for him, had taken a very perverse turn. The misdemeanour commonly imputed to him and his associates was, that they had mutilated a Christ which stood on the Pont-neuf at Abbeville: but La Barre had accustomed himself to take all opportunities of insulting, with the most wanton malignity, these pious representations, and especially in the presence of people, with whom his particular connections led him to associate, and whose profession could not allow them entirely to overlook such affronts on what was deemed an appendage to the established religion of the country. The people of Abbeville manifested their sense of the business when d'Etalonde, La Barre's intimate friend, who had saved himself by flight, returned, after a long exile, under favour of the revolution. He was received in the neighbourhood with the most mortifying indifference. The decree of the Convention too, by which the memory of this imprudent young man was re-established, when promulgated, created about as much interest as any other law which did not immediately affect the property or awaken the apprehensions of the hearers. Madame de St. E__m__d told me her whole fortune was now reduced to a few Louis, and about six or seven thousand livres in diamonds; that she was unwilling to burden her aunt, who was not rich, and intended to make some advantage of her musical talents, which are indeed considerable. But I could not, without anguish, hear an elegant young woman, with a heart half broken, propose to get her living by teaching music.--I know not that I ever passed a more melancholy day. In the afternoon we walked up and down the path of the village church-yard. The church was shut up, the roof in part untiled, the windows were broken, and the wooden crosses that religion or tenderness had erected to commemorate the dead, broken and scattered about. Two labourers, and a black-smith in his working garb, came while we were there, and threw a sort of uncouth wooden coffin hastily into a hole dug for the purpose, which they then covered and left without farther ceremony. Yet this was the body of a lady regretted by a large family, who were thus obliged to conquer both their affection and their prejudices, and inter her according to the republican mode.* * The relations or friends of the dead were prohibited, under severe penalties, from following their remains to the grave. I thought, while we traversed the walk, and beheld this scene, that every thing about me bore the marks of the revolution. The melancholy objects I held on my arm, and the feeble steps of Clementine, whom we could scarcely support, aided the impression; and I fear that, for the moment, I questioned the justice of Heaven, in permitting such a scourge to be let loose upon its works. I quitted Madame de St. E__m__d this morning with reluctance, for we shall not meet again till I am entirely at liberty. The village municipality where she now resides, are quiet and civil, and her misfortunes make her fearful of attracting the notice of the people in authority of a large place, so that she cannot venture to Amiens.--You must observe, that any person who has suffered is an object of particular suspicion, and that to have had a father or a husband executed, and to be reduced to beggary, are titles to farther persecution.--The politics of the day are, it is true, something less ferocious than they were: but confidence is not to be restored by an essay in the Orateur du Peuple,* or an equivocal harangue from the tribune; and I perceive every where, that those who have been most injured, are most timid. * _"L'Orateur du Peuple,"_ was a periodical paper published by Freron, many numbers of which were written with great spirit.-- Freron was at this time supposed to have become a royalist, and his paper, which was comparatively favourable to the aristocrats, was read with great eagerness. The following extract from the registers of one of the popular commissions will prove, that the fears of those who had already suffered by the revolution were well founded: "A. Sourdeville, and A. N. E. Sourdeville, sisters of an emigrant Noble, daughters of a Count, aristocrats, and having had their father and brother guillotined. "M. J. Sourdeville, mother of an emigrant, an aristocrat, and her husband and son having been guillotined. "Jean Marie Defille--very suspicious--a partizan of the Abbe Arnoud and La Fayette, has had a brother guillotined, and always shewn himself indifferent about the public welfare." The commissions declare that the above are condemned to banishment. I did not reach this place till after the family had dined, and taking my soup and a dish of coffee, have escaped, under pretext of the headache, to my own room. I left our poet far gone in a classical description of a sort of Roman dresses, the drawings of which he had seen exhibited at the Lyceum, as models of an intended national equipment for the French citizens of both sexes; and my visit to Madame de St. E__m__d had incapacitated me for discussing revolutionary draperies. In England, this is the season of festivity to the little, and beneficence in the great; but here, the sterile genius of atheism has suppressed the sounds of mirth, and closed the hands of charity--no season is consecrated either to the one or the other; and the once-varied year is but an uniform round of gloom and selfishness. The philosopher may treat with contempt the notion of periodical benevolence, and assert that we should not wait to be reminded by religion or the calendar, in order to contribute to the relief of our fellow creatures: yet there are people who are influenced by custom and duty, that are not always awake to compassion; and indolence or avarice may yield a too ready obedience to prohibitions which favour both. The poor are certainly no gainers by the substitution of philosophy for religion; and many of those who are forbidden to celebrate Christmas or Easter by a mass, will forget to do it by a donation. For my own part, I think it an advantage that any period of the year is more particularly signalized by charity; and I rejoice when I hear of the annual gifts of meat or firing of such, or such a great personage--and I never enquire whether they might still continue their munificence if Christianity were abolished.--Adieu. 1795 Amiens, Jan. 23, 1795. Nothing proves more that the French republican government was originally founded on principles of despotism and injustice, than the weakness and anarchy which seem to accompany every deviation from these principles. It is strong to destroy and weak to protect: because, deriving its support from the power of the bad and the submission of the timid, it is deserted or opposed by the former when it ceases to plunder or oppress-- while the fears and habits of the latter still prevail, and render them as unwilling to defend a better system as they have been to resist the worst possible. The reforms that have taken place since the death of Robespierre, though not sufficient for the demands of justice, are yet enough to relax the strength of the government; and the Jacobins, though excluded from authority, yet influence by the turbulence of their chiefs in the Convention, and the recollection of their past tyranny--against the return of which the fluctuating politics of the Assembly offer no security. The Committees of Public Welfare and General Safety (whose members were intended, according to the original institution, to be removed monthly) were, under Robespierre, perpetual; and the union they preserved in certain points, however unfavourable to liberty, gave a vigour to the government, of which from its conformation it should appear to have been incapable. It is now discovered, that an undefined power, not subject to the restriction of fixed laws, cannot remain long in the same hands without producing tyranny. A fourth part of the Members of these Committees are, therefore, now changed every month; but this regulation, more advantageous to the Convention than the people, keeps alive animosities, stimulates ambition, and retains the country in anxiety and suspense; for no one can guess this month what system may be adopted the next--and the admission of two or three new Jacobin members would be sufficient to excite an universal alarm. We watch these renewals with a solicitude inconceivable to those who study politics as they do a new opera, and have nothing to apprehend from the personal characters of Ministers; and our hopes and fears vary according as the members elected are Moderates, Doubtfuls, or decided Mountaineers.* * For instance, Carnot, whose talents in the military department obliged the Convention (even if they had not been so disposed) to forget his compliances with Robespierre, his friendship for Barrere and Collot, and his eulogiums on Carrier. --This mixture of principles, which intrigue, intimidation, or expediency, occasions in the Committees, is felt daily; and if the languor and versatility of the government be not more apparent, it is that habits of submission still continue, and that the force of terror operates in the branches, though the main spring be relaxed. Were armies to be raised, or means devised to pay them now, it could not be done; though, being once put in motion, they continue to act, and the requisitions still in a certain degree supply them. The Convention, while they have lost much of their real power, have also become more externally contemptible than ever. When they were overawed by the imposing tone of their Committees, they were tolerably decent; but as this restraint has worn off, the scandalous tumult of their debates increases, and they exhibit whatever you can imagine of an assemblage of men, most of whom are probably unacquainted with those salutary forms which correct the passions, and soften the intercourse of polished society. They question each other's veracity with a frankness truly democratic, and come fraternally to "Touchstone's seventh remove" at once, without passing any of the intermediate progressions. It was but lately that one Gaston advanced with a stick in full assembly to thresh Legendre; and Cambon and Duhem are sometimes obliged to be holden by the arms and legs, to prevent their falling on Tallien and Freron. I described scenes of this nature to you at the opening of the Convention; but I assure you, the silent meditations of the members under Robespierre have extremely improved them in that species of eloquence, which is not susceptible of translation or transcription. We may conclude, that these licences are inherent to a perfect democracy; for the greater the number of representatives, and the nearer they approach to the mass of the people, the less they will be influenced by aristocratic ceremonials. We have, however, no interest in disputing the right of the Convention to use violence and lavish abuse amongst themselves; for, perhaps, these scenes form the only part of their journals which does not record or applaud some real mischief. The French, who are obliged to celebrate so many aeras of revolution, who have demolished Bastilles and destroyed tyrants, seem at this moment to be in a political infancy, struggling against despotism, and emerging from ignorance and barbarity. A person unacquainted with the promoters and objects of the revolution, might be apt to enquire for what it had been undertaken, or what had been gained by it, when all the manufactured eloquence of Tallien is vainly exerted to obtain some limitation of arbitrary imprisonment--when Freron harangues with equal labour and as little success in behalf of the liberty of the press; while Gregoire pleads for freedom of worship, Echasseriaux for that of commerce, and all the sections of Paris for that of election.* * It is to be observed, that in these orations all the decrees passed by the Convention for the destruction of commerce and religion, are ascribed to the influence of Mr. Pitt.--"La libertedes cultes existe en Turquie, elle n'existe point en France. Le peuple y est prive d'un droit donc on jouit dans les etats despotiques memes, sous les regences de Maroc et d'Algers. Si cet etat de choses doit perseverer, ne parlons plus de l'inquisition, nous en avons perdu le droit, car la liberte des cultes n'est que dans les decrets, et la persecution tiraille toute la France. "Cette impression intolerante aurait elle ete (suggeree) par le cabinet de St. James?" "In Turkey the liberty of worship is admitted, though it does not exist in France. Here the people are deprived of a right common to the most despotic governments, not even excepting those of Algiers and Morocco.--If things are to continue in this state, let us say no more about the Inquisition, we have no right, for religious liberty is to be found only in our decrees, while, in truth, the whole country is exposed to persecution. "May not these intolerant notions have been suggested by the Cabinet of St. James?" Gregoire's Report on the Liberty of Worship. --Thus, after so many years of suffering, and such a waste of whatever is most valuable, the civil, religious, and political privileges of this country depend on a vote of the Convention. The speech of Gregoire, which tended to restore the Catholic worship, was very ill received by his colleagues, but every where else it is read with avidity and applause; for, exclusive of its merit as a composition, the subject is of general interest, and there are few who do not wish to have the present puerile imitations of Paganism replaced by Christianity. The Assembly listened to this tolerating oration with impatience, passed to the order of the day, and called loudly for Decades, with celebrations in honour of "the liberty of the world, posterity, stoicism, the republic, and the hatred of tyrants!" But the people, who understand nothing of this new worship, languish after the saints of their ancestors, and think St. Francois d'Assise, or St. Francois de Sales, at least as likely to afford them spiritual consolation, as Carmagnoles, political homilies, or pasteboard goddesses of liberty. The failure of Gregoire is far from operating as a discouragement to this mode of thinking; for such has been the intolerance of the last year, that his having even ventured to suggest a declaration in favour of free worship, is deemed a sort of triumph to the pious which has revived their hopes. Nothing is talked of but the restoration of churches, and reinstalment of priests--the shops are already open on the Decade, and the decrees of the Convention, which make a principal part of the republican service, are now read only to a few idle children or bare walls. [When the bell toll'd on the Decade, the people used to say it was for La messe du Diable--The Devil's mass.]--My maid told me this morning, as a secret of too much importance for her to retain, that she had the promise of being introduced to a good priest, (un bon pretre, for so the people entitle those who have never conformed,) to receive her confession at Easter; and the fetes of the new calendar are now jested on publicly with very little reverence. The Convention have very lately decreed themselves an increase of pay, from eighteen to thirty-six livres. This, according to the comparative value of assignats, is very trifling: but the people, who have so long been flattered with the ideas of partition and equality, and are now starving, consider it as a great deal, and much discontent is excited, which however evaporates, as usual, in the national talent for bon mots. The augmentation, though an object of popular jealousy, is most likely valued by the leading members only as it procures them an ostensible means of living; for all who have been on missions, or had any share in the government, have, like Falstaff, "hid their honour in their necessities," and have now resources they desire to profit by, but cannot decently avow. The Jacobin party have in general opposed this additional eighteen livres, with the hope of casting an odium on their adversaries; but the people, though they murmur, still prefer the Moderates, even at the expence of paying the difference. The policy of some Deputies who have acquired too much, or the malice of others who have acquired nothing, has frequently proposed, that every member of the Convention should publish an account of his fortune before and since the revolution. An enthusiastic and acclamatory decree of assent has always insued; but somehow prudence has hitherto cooled this warmth before the subsequent debate, and the resolution has never yet been carried into effect. The crimes of Maignet, though they appear to occasion but little regret in his colleagues, have been the source of considerable embarrassment to them. When he was on mission in the department of Vaucluse, besides numberless other enormities, he caused the whole town of Bedouin to be burnt, a part of its inhabitants to be guillotined, and the rest dispersed, because the tree of liberty was cut down one dark night, while they were asleep.* * Maignet's order for the burning of Bedouin begins thus: "Liberte, egalite, au nom du peuple Francais!" He then states the offence of the inhabitants in suffering the tree of liberty to be cut down, institutes a commission for trying them, and proceeds--"It is hereby ordered, that as soon as the principal criminals are executed, the national agent shall notify to the remaining inhabitants not confined, that they are enjoined to evacuate their dwellings, and take out their effects in twenty-four hours; at the expiration of which he is to commit the town to the flames, and leave no vestige of a building standing. Farther, it is forbidden to erect any building on the spot in future, or to cultivate the soil." "Done at Avignon, the 17th Floreal." The decree of the Convention to the same effect passed about the 1st of Floreal. Merlin de Douai, (Minister of Justice in 1796,) Legendre, and Bourdon de l'Oise, were the zealous defenders of Maignet on this occasion. --Since the Assembly have thought it expedient to disavow these revolutionary measures, the conduct of Maignet has been denounced, and the accusations against him sent to a commission to be examined. For a long time no report was made, till the impatience of Rovere, who is Maignet's personal enemy, rendered a publication of the result dispensable. They declared they found no room for censure or farther proceedings. This decision was at first strongly reprobated by the Moderates; but as it was proved, in the course of the debate, that Maignet was authorized, by an express decree of the Convention, to burn Bedouin, and guillotine its inhabitants, all parties soon agreed to consign the whole to oblivion. Our clothes, &c. are at length entirely released from sequestration, and the seals taken off. We are indebted for this act of justice to the intrigues of Tallien, whose belle Espagnole is considerably interested. Tallien's good fortune is so much envied, that some of the members were little enough to move, that the property of the Spanish Bank of St. Charles (in which Madame T----'s is included) should be excepted from the decree in favour of foreigners. The Convention were weak enough to accede; but the exception will, doubtless, be over-ruled. The weather is severe beyond what it has been in my remembrance. The thermometer was this morning at fourteen and a half. It is, besides, potentially cold, and every particle of air is like a dart.--I suppose you contrive to keep yourselves warm in England, though it is not possible to do so here. The houses are neither furnished nor put together for the climate, and we are fanned by these congealing winds, as though the apertures which admit them were designed to alleviate the ardours of an Italian sun. The satin hangings of my room, framed on canvas, wave with the gales lodged behind them every second. A pair of "silver cupids, nicely poised on their brands," support a wood fire, which it is an occupation to keep from extinguishing; and all the illusion of a gay orange-grove pourtrayed on the tapestry at my feet, is dissipated by a villainous chasm of about half an inch between the floor and the skirting-boards. Then we have so many corresponding windows, supernumerary doors, "and passages that lead to nothing," that all our English ingenuity in comfortable arrangement is baffled.--When the cold first became so insupportable, we attempted to live entirely in the eating-room, which is warmed by a poele, or German stove, but the kind of heat it emits is so depressive and relaxing to those who are not inured to it, that we are again returned to our large chimney and wood-fire.--The French depend more on the warmth of their clothing, than the comfort of their houses. They are all wadded and furred as though they were going on a sledge party, and the men, in this respect, are more delicate than the ladies: but whether it be the consequence of these precautions, or from any other cause, I observe they are, in general, without excepting even the natives of the Southern provinces, less sensible of cold than the English. Amiens, Jan. 30, 1795. Delacroix, author of _"Les Constitutions Politiques de l'Europe,"_ [The Political Constitutions of Europe.] has lately published a work much read, and which has excited the displeasure of the Assembly so highly, that the writer, by way of preliminary criticism, has been arrested. The book is intitled _"Le Spectateur Francais pendant la Revolution."_ [The French Spectator during the Revolution.] It contains many truths, and some speculations very unfavourable both to republicanism and its founders. It ventures to doubt the free acceptance of the democratic constitution, proposes indirectly the restoration of the monarchy, and dilates with great composure on a plan for transporting to America all the Deputies who voted for the King's death. The popularity of the work, still more than its principles, has contributed to exasperate the Assembly; and serious apprehensions are entertained for the fate of Delacroix, who is ordered for trial to the Revolutionary Tribunal. It would astonish a superficial observer to see with what avidity all forbidden doctrines are read. Under the Church and Monarchy, a deistical or republican author might sometimes acquire proselytes, or become the favourite amusement of fashionable or literary people; but the circulation of such works could be only partial, and amongst a particular class of readers: whereas the treason of the day, which comprises whatever favours Kings or religion, is understood by the meanest individual, and the temptation to these prohibited enjoyments is assisted both by affection and prejudice.--An almanack, with a pleasantry on the Convention, or a couplet in behalf of royalism, is handed mysteriously through half a town, and a _brochure_ [A pamphlet.] of higher pretensions, though on the same principles, is the very bonne bouche of our political _gourmands_. [Gluttons.] There is, in fact, no liberty of the press. It is permitted to write against Barrere or the Jacobins, because they are no longer in power; but a single word of disrespect towards the Convention is more certain of being followed by a Lettre de Cachet, than a volume of satire on any of Louis the Fourteenth's ministers would have been formerly. The only period in which a real freedom of the press has existed in France were those years of the late King's reign immediately preceding the revolution; and either through the contempt, supineness, or worse motives, of those who should have checked it, it existed in too great a degree: so that deists and republicans were permitted to corrupt the people, and undermine the government without restraint.* * It is well known that Calonne encouraged libels on the Queen, to obtain credit for his zeal in suppressing them; and the culpable vanity of Necker made made him but too willing to raise his own reputation on the wreck of that of an unsuspecting and unfortunate Monarch. After the fourteenth of July 1789, political literature became more subject to mobs and the lanterne, than ever it had been to Ministers and Bastilles; and at the tenth of August 1792, every vestige of the liberty of the press disappeared.*-- * "What impartial man among us must not be forced to acknowledge, that since the revolution it has become dangerous for any one, I will not say to attack the government, but to emit opinions contrary to those which the government has adopted." Discours de Jean Bon St. Andre sur la Liberte de la Presse, 30th April, 1795. A law was passed on the first of May, 1795, a short time after this letter was written, making it transportation to vilify the National Representation, either by words or writing; and if the offence were committed publicly, or among a certain number of people, it became capital. --Under the Brissotins it was fatal to write, and hazardous to read, any work which tended to exculpate the King, or to censure his despotism, and the massacres that accompanied and followed it.*-- * I appeal for the confirmation of this to every person who resided in France at that period. --During the time of Robespierre the same system was only transmitted to other hands, and would still prevail under the Moderates, if their tyranny were not circumscribed by their weakness. It was some time before I ventured to receive Freron's Orateur du Peuple by the post. Even pamphlets written with the greatest caution are not to be procured without difficulty in the country; and this is not to be wondered at when we recollect how many people have lost their lives through a subscription to a newspaper, or the possession of some work, which, when they purchased it, was not interdicted. As the government has lately assumed a more civilized cast, it was expected that the anniversary of the King's death would not have been celebrated. The Convention, however, determined otherwise; and their musical band was ordered to attend as usual on occasions of festivity. The leader of the band had perhaps sense and decency enough to suppose, that if such an event could possibly be justified, it never could be a subject of rejoicing, and therefore made choice of melodies rather tender than gay. But this Lydian mood, far from having the mollifying effect attributed to it by Scriblerus, threw several Deputies into a rage; and the conductor was reprimanded for daring to insult the ears of the legislature with strains which seemed to lament the tyrant. The affrighted musician begged to be heard in his defence; and declaring he only meant, by the adoption of these gentle airs, to express the tranquillity and happiness enjoyed under the republican constitution, struck off Ca Ira. When the ceremony was over, one Brival proposed, that the young King should be put to death; observing that instead of the many useless crimes which had been committed, this ought to have had the preference. The motion was not seconded; but the Convention, in order to defeat the purposes of the royalists, who, they say, increase in number, have ordered the Committees to consider of some way of sending this poor child out of the country. When I reflect on the event which these men have so indecently commemorated, and the horrors which succeeded it, I feel something more than a detestation for republicanism. The undefined notions of liberty imbibed from poets and historians, fade away--my reverence for names long consecrated in our annals abates--and the sole object of my political attachment is the English constitution, as tried by time and undeformed by the experiments of visionaries and impostors. I begin to doubt either the sense or honesty of most of those men who are celebrated as the promoters of changes of government which have chiefly been adopted rather with a view to indulge a favourite theory, than to relieve a people from any acknowledged oppression. A wise or good man would distrust his judgment on a subject so momentous, and perhaps the best of such reformers were but enthusiasts. Shaftesbury calls enthusiasm an honest passion; yet we have seen it is a very dangerous one: and we may perhaps learn, from the example of France, not to venerate principles which we do not admire in practice.* * I do not imply that the French Revolution was the work of enthusiasts, but that the enthusiasm of Rousseau produced a horde of Brissots, Marats, Robespierres, &c. who speculated on the affectation of it. The Abbe Sieyes, whose views were directed to a change of Monarchs, not a dissolution of the monarchy, and who in promoting a revolution did not mean to found a republic, has ventured to doubt both the political genius of Rousseau, and the honesty of his sectaries. These truths from the Abbe are not the less so for our knowing they would not be avowed if it answered his purpose to conceal them.--_"Helas! un ecrivain justement celebre qui seroit mort de douleur s'il avoit connu ses disciples; un philosophe aussi parfait de sentiment que foible de vues, n'a-t-il pas dans ses pages eloquentes, riches en detail, pauvre au fond, confondu lui-meme les principes de l'art social avec les commencemens de la societe humaine? Que dire si l'on voyait dans un autre genre de mechaniques, entreprendre le radoub ou la construction d'un vaisseau de ligne avec la seule theorie, avec les seules resources des Sauvages dans la construction de leurs Pirogues!"_--"Alas! has not a justly-celebrated writer, who would have died with grief, could he have known what disciples he was destined to have;--a philosopher as perfect in sentiment as feeble in his views,--confounded, in his eloquent pages--pages which are as rich in matter as poor in substance--the principles of the social system with the commencement of human society? What should we say to a mechanic of a different description, who should undertake the repair or construction of a ship of the line, without any practical knowledge of the art, on mere theory, and with no other resources than those which the savage employs in the construction of his canoe?" Notices sur la Vie de Sieyes. What had France, already possessed of a constitution capable of rendering her prosperous and happy, to do with the adoration of Rousseau's speculative systems? Or why are the English encouraged in a traditional respect for the manes of republicans, whom, if living, we might not improbably consider as factious and turbulent fanatics?* * The prejudices of my countrymen on this subject are respectable, and I know I shall be deemed guilty of a species of political sacrilege. I attack not the tombs of the dead, but the want of consideration for the living; and let not those who admire republican principles in their closets, think themselves competent to censure the opinions of one who has been watching their effects amidst the disasters of a revolution. Our slumbers have for some time been patriotically disturbed by the danger of Holland; and the taking of the Maestricht nearly caused me a jaundice: but the French have taught us philosophy--and their conquests appear to afford them so little pleasure, that we ourselves hear of them with less pain. The Convention were indeed, at first, greatly elated by the dispatches from Amsterdam, and imagined they were on the eve of dictating to all Europe: the churches were ordered to toll their only bell, and the gasconades of the bulletin were uncommonly pompous--but the novelty of the event has now subsided, and the conquest of Holland excites less interest than the thaw. Public spirit is absorbed by private necessities or afflictions; people who cannot procure bread or firing, even though they have money to purchase it, are little gratified by reading that a pair of their Deputies lodged in the Stadtholder's palace; and the triumphs of the republic offer no consolation to the families which it has pillaged or dismembered. The mind, narrowed and occupied by the little cares of hunting out the necessaries of life, and evading the restraints of a jealous government, is not susceptible of that lively concern in distant and general events which is the effect of ease and security; and all the recent victories have not been able to sooth the discontents of the Parisians, who are obliged to shiver whole hours at the door of a baker, to buy, at an extravagant price, a trifling portion of bread. * "Chacun se concentre aujourdhui dans sa famille et calcule ses resources."--"The attention of every one now is confined to his family, and to the calculation of his resources." Discours de Lindet. "Accable du soin d'etre, et du travail de vivre."--"Overwhelmed with the care of existence, and the labour of living." St. Lambert --The impression of these successes is, I am persuaded, also diminished by considerations to which the philosopher of the day would allow no influence; yet by their assimilation with the Deputies and Generals whose names are so obscure as to escape the memory, they cease to inspire that mixed sentiment which is the result of national pride and personal affection. The name of a General or an Admiral serves as the epitome of an historical relation, and suffices to recall all his glories, and all his services; but this sort of enthusiasm is entirely repelled by an account that the citizens Gillet and Jourbert, two representatives heard of almost for the first time, have taken possession of Amsterdam. I enquired of a man who was sawing wood for us this morning, what the bells clattered for last night. _"L'on m'a dit_ (answered he) _que c'est pour quelque ville que quelque general de la republique a prise. Ah! ca nous avancera beaucoup; la paix et du pain, je crois, sera mieux notre affaire que toutes ces conquetes."_ ["They say its for some town or other, that some general or other has taken.--Ah! we shall get a vast deal by that--a peace and bread, I think, would answer our purpose better than all these victories."] I told him he ought to speak with more caution. _"Mourir pour mourir,_ [One death's as good as another.] (says he, half gaily,) one may as well die by the Guillotine as be starved. My family have had no bread these two days, and because I went to a neighbouring village to buy a little corn, the peasants, who are jealous that the town's people already get too much of the farmers, beat me so that I am scarce able to work."*-- * _"L'interet et la criminelle avarice ont fomente et entretenu des germes de division entre les citoyens des villes et ceux des campagnes, entre les cultivateurs, les artisans et les commercans, entre les citoyens des departements et districts, et meme des communes voisines. On a voulu s'isoler de toutes parts." Discours de Lindet._ "Self-interest and a criminal avarice have fomented and kept alive the seeds of division between the inhabitants of the towns and those of the country, between the farmer, the mechanic, and the trader-- the like has happened between adjoining towns and districts--an universal selfishness, in short, has prevailed." Lindet's Speech. This picture, drawn by a Jacobin Deputy, is not flattering to republican fraternization. --It is true, the wants of the lower classes are afflicting. The whole town has, for some weeks, been reduced to a nominal half pound of bread a day for each person--I say nominal, for it has repeatedly happened, that none has been distributed for three days together, and the quantity diminished to four ounces; whereas the poor, who are used to eat little else, consume each, in ordinary times, two pounds daily, on the lowest calculation. We have had here a brutal vulgar-looking Deputy, one Florent-Guyot, who has harangued upon the virtues of patience, and the magnanimity of suffering hunger for the good of the republic. This doctrine has, however, made few converts; though we learn, from a letter of Florent-Guyot's to the Assembly, that the Amienois are excellent patriots, and that they starve with the best grace possible. You are to understand, that the Representatives on mission, who describe the inhabitants of all the towns they visit as glowing with republicanism, have, besides the service of the common cause, views of their own, and are often enabled by these fictions to administer both to their interest and their vanity. They ingratiate themselves with the aristocrats, who are pleased at the imputation of principles which may secure them from persecution--they see their names recorded on the journals; and, finally, by ascribing these civic dispositions to the power of their own eloquence, they obtain the renewal of an itinerant delegation--which, it may be presumed, is very profitable. Beauvais, March 13, 1795. I have often, in the course of these letters, experienced how difficult it is to describe the political situation of a country governed by no fixed principles, and subject to all the fluctuations which are produced by the interests and passions of individuals and of parties. In such a state conclusions are necessarily drawn from daily events, minute facts, and an attentive observation of the opinions and dispositions of the people, which, though they leave a perfect impression on the mind of the writer, are not easily conveyed to that of the reader. They are like colours, the various shades of which, though discriminated by the eye, cannot be described but in general terms. Since I last wrote, the government has considerably improved in decency and moderation; and though the French enjoy as little freedom as their almost sole Allies, the Algerines, yet their terror begins to wear off-- and, temporizing with a despotism they want energy to destroy, they rejoice in the suspension of oppressions which a day or an hour may renew. No one pretends to have any faith in the Convention; but we are tranquil, if not secure--and, though subject to a thousand arbitrary details, incompatible with a good government, the political system is doubtless meliorated. Justice and the voice of the people have been attended to in the arrest of Collot, Barrere, and Billaud, though many are of opinion that their punishment will extend no farther; for a trial, particularly that of Barrere, who is in the secret of all factions, would expose so many revolutionary mysteries and patriotic reputations, that there are few members of the Convention who will not wish it evaded; they probably expect, that the seclusion, for some months, of the persons of the delinquents will appease the public vengeance, and that this affair may be forgotten in the bustle of more recent events.--If there had been any doubt of the crimes of these men, the publication of Robespierre's papers would have removed them; and, exclusive of their value when considered as a history of the times, these papers form one of the most curious and humiliating monuments of human debasement, and human depravity, extant.* * The Report of Courtois on Robespierre's papers, though very able, is an instance of the pedantry I have often remarked as so peculiar to the French, even when they are not deficient in talents. It seems to be an abstract of all the learning, ancient and modern, that Courtois was possessed of. I have the book before me, and have selected the following list of persons and allusions; many of which are indeed of so little use or ornament to their stations in this speech, that one would have thought even a republican requisition could not have brought them there: "Sampson, Dalila, Philip, Athens, Sylla, the Greeks and Romans, Brutus, Lycurgus, Persepolis, Sparta, Pulcheria, Cataline, Dagon, Anicius, Nero, Babel, Tiberius, Caligula, Augustus, Antony, Lepidus, the Manicheans, Bayle and Galileo, Anitus, Socrates, Demosthenes, Eschinus, Marius, Busiris, Diogenes, Caesar, Cromwell, Constantine, the Labarum, Domitius, Machiavel, Thraseas, Cicero, Cato, Aristophanes, Riscius, Sophocles, Euripides, Tacitus, Sydney, Wisnou, Possidonius, Julian, Argus, Pompey, the Teutates, Gainas, Areadius, Sinon, Asmodeus, Salamanders, Anicetus, Atreus, Thyestus, Cesonius, Barca and Oreb, Omar and the Koran, Ptolomy Philadelphus, Arimanes, Gengis, Themuginus, Tigellinus, Adrean, Cacus, the Fates, Minos and Rhadamanthus," &c. &c. Rapport de Courtois su les Papiers de Robespierre. After several skirmishes between the Jacobins and Muscadins, the bust of Marat has been expelled from the theatres and public places of Paris, and the Convention have ratified this popular judgment, by removing him also from their Hall and the Pantheon. But reflecting on the frailty of our nature, and the levity of their countrymen, in order to obviate the disorders these premature beatifications give rise to, they have decreed that no patriot shall in future by Pantheonized until ten years after his death. This is no long period; yet revolutionary reputations have hitherto scarcely survived as many months, and the puerile enthusiasm which is adopted, not felt, has been usually succeeded by a violence and revenge equally irrational. It has lately been discovered that Condorcet is dead, and that he perished in a manner singularly awful. Travelling under a mean appearance, he stopped at a public house to refresh himself, and was arrested in consequence of having no passport. He told the people who examined him he was a servant, but a Horace, which they found about him, leading to a suspicion that he was of a superior rank, they determined to take him to the next town. Though already exhausted, he was obliged to walk some miles farther, and, on his arrival, he was deposited in a prison, where he was forgotten, and starved to death. Thus, perhaps at the moment the French were apotheosing an obscure demagogue, the celebrated Condorcet expired, through the neglect of a gaoler; and now, the coarse and ferocious Marat, and the more refined, yet more pernicious, philosopher, are both involved in one common obloquy. What a theme for the moralist!--Perhaps the gaoler, whose brutal carelessness terminated the days of Condorcet, extinguished his own humanity in the torrent of that revolution of which Condorcet himself was one of the authors; and perhaps the death of a sovereign, whom Condorcet assisted in bringing to the scaffold, might have been this man's first lesson in cruelty, and have taught him to set little value on the lives of the rest of mankind.--The French, though they do not analyse seriously, speak of this event as a just retribution, which will be followed by others of a similar nature. _"Quelle mort,"_ ["What an end."] says one--_"Elle est affreuse,_ (says another,) _mais il etoit cause que bien d'autres ont peri aussi."_--_"Ils periront tous, et tant mieux,"_ ["'Twas dreadful--but how many people have perished by his means."-- "They'll all share the same fate, and so much the better."] reply twenty voices; and this is the only epitaph on Condorcet. The pretended revolution of the thirty-first of May, 1792, which has occasioned so much bloodshed, and which I remember it dangerous not to hallow, though you did not understand why, is now formally erased from among the festivals of the republic; but this is only the triumph of party, and a signal that the remains of the Brissotines are gaining ground. A more conspicuous and a more popular victory has been obtained by the royalists, in the trial and acquittal of Delacroix. The jury had been changed after the affair of Carrier, and were now better composed; though the escape of Delacroix is more properly to be attributed to the intimidating favour of the people. The verdict was received with shouts of applause, repeated with transport, and Delacroix, who had so patriotically projected to purify the Convention, by sending more than half its members to America, was borne home on the shoulders of an exulting populace. Again the extinction of the war in La Vendee is officially announced; and it is certain that the chiefs are now in treaty with government. Such a peace only implies, that the country is exhausted, for it suffices to have read the treatment of these unhappy people to know that a reconciliation can neither be sincere nor permanent. But whatever may be the eventual effect of this negotiation, it has been, for the present, the means of wresting some unwilling concessions from the Assembly in favour of a free exercise of religion. No arrangement could ever be proposed to the Vendeans, which did not include a toleration of Christianity; and to refuse that to patriots and republicans, which was granted to rebels and royalists, was deemed at this time neither reasonable nor politic. A decree is therefore passed, authorizing people, if they can overcome all the annexed obstacles, to worship God in they way they have been accustomed to. The public hitherto, far from being assured or encouraged by this decree, appear to have become more timid and suspicious; for it is conceived in so narrow and paltry a spirit, and expressed in such malignant and illusive terms, that it can hardly be said to intend an indulgence. Of twelve articles of an act said to be concessive, eight are prohibitory and restrictive; and a municipal officer, or any other person "in place or office," may controul at his pleasure all religious celebrations. The cathedrals and parish churches yet standing were seized on by the government at the introduction of the Goddesses of Reason, and the decree expressly declares that they shall not be restored or appropriated to their original uses. Individuals, who have purchased chapels or churches, hesitate to sell or let them, lest they should, on a change of politics, be persecuted as the abettors of fanaticism; so that the long-desired restoration of the Catholic worship makes but very slow progress.*-- * This decree prohibits any parish, community, or body of people collectively, from hiring or purchasing a church, or maintaining a clergyman: it also forbids ringing a bell, or giving any other public notice of Divine Service, or even distinguishing any building by external signs of its being dedicated to religion. --A few people, whose zeal overpowers their discretion, have ventured to have masses at their own houses, but they are thinly attended; and on asking any one if they have yet been to this sort of conventicle, the reply is, _"On new sait pas trop ce que le decret veut dire; il faut voir comment cela tournera."_ ["One cannot rightly comprehend the decree--it will be best to wait and see how things go."] Such a distrust is indeed very natural; for there are two subjects on which an inveterate hatred is apparent, and which are equally obnoxious to all systems and all parties in the Assembly--I mean Christianity and Great Britain. Every day produces harangues against the latter; and Boissy d'Anglas has solemnly proclaimed, as the directing principle of the government, that the only negociation for peace shall be a new boundary described by the Northern conquests of the republic; and this modest diplomatic is supported by arguments to prove, that the commerce of England cannot be ruined on any other terms.* * "How (exclaims the sagacious Bourdon de l'Oise) can you hope to ruin England, if you do not keep possession of the three great rivers." (The Rhine, the Meuse, and the Scheldt.) The debates of the Convention increase in variety and amusement. Besides the manual exercises of the members, the accusations and retorts of unguarded choler, disclose to us many curious truths which a politic unanimity might conceal. Saladin, who was a stipendiary of the Duke of Orleans, and whose reputation would not grace any other assembly, is transformed into a Moderate, and talks of virtue and crime; while Andre Dumont, to the great admiration of his private biographists, has been signing a peace with the Duke of Tuscany.--Our republican statesmen require to be viewed in perspective: they appear to no advantage in the foreground. Dumont would have made "a good pantler, he would have chipp'd bread well;" or, like Scrub, he might have "drawn warrants, or drawn beer,"--but I should doubt if, in a transaction of this nature, the Dukedom of Tuscany was ever before so assorted; and if the Duke were obliged to make this peace, he may well say, "necessity doth make us herd with strange companions." Notwithstanding the Convention still detests Christianity, utters anathemas against England, and exhibits daily scenes of indecent discussion and reviling, it is doubtless become more moderate on the whole; and though this moderation be not equal to the people's wishes, it is more than sufficient to exasperate the Jacobins, who call the Convention the Senate of Coblentz, and are perpetually endeavouring to excite commotions. The belief is, indeed, general, that the Assembly contains a strong party of royalists; yet, though this may be true in a degree, I fear the impulse which has been given by the public opinion, is mistaken for a tendency in the Convention itself. But however, this may be, neither the imputations of the Jacobins, nor the hopes of the people, have been able to oppose the progress of a sentiment which, operating on a character like that of the French, is more fatal to a popular body than even hatred or contempt. The long duration of this disastrous legislature has excited an universal weariness; the guilt of particular members is now less discussed than the insignificance of the whole assemblage; and the epithets corrupt, worn out, hackneyed, and everlasting, [Tare, use, banal, and eternel.] have almost superseded those of rogues and villains. The law of the maximum has been repealed some time, and we now procure necessaries with much greater facility; but the assignats, no longer supported by violence, are rapidly diminishing in credit--so that every thing is dear in proportion. We, who are more than indemnified by the rise of exchange in our favour, are not affected by these progressive augmentations in the price of provisions. It would, however, be erroneous and unfeeling to judge of the situation of the French themselves from such a calculation. People who have let their estates on leases, or have annuities on the Hotel de Ville, &c. receive assignats at par, and the wages of the labouring poor are still comparatively low. What was five years ago a handsome fortune, now barely supplies a decent maintenance; and smaller incomes, which were competencies at that period, are now almost insufficient for existence. A workman, who formerly earned twenty-five sols a day, has at present three livres; and you give a sempstress thirty sols, instead of ten: yet meat, which was only five or six sols when wages was twenty-five, is now from fifty sols to three livres the pound, and every other article in the same or a higher proportion. Thus, a man's daily wages, instead of purchasing four or five pounds of meat, as they would have done before the revolution, now only purchase one. It grieves me to see people whom I have known at their ease, obliged to relinquish, in the decline of life, comforts to which they were accustomed at a time when youth rendered indulgence less necessary; yet every day points to the necessity of additional oeconomy, and some little convenience or enjoyment is retrenched--and to those who are not above acknowledging how much we are the creatures of habit, a dish of coffee, or a glass of liqueur, &c. will not seem such trifling privations. It is true, these are, strictly speaking, luxuries; so too are most things by comparison-- "O reason not the need: our basest beggars "Are in the poorest thing superfluous: "Allow not nature more than nature needs, "Man's life is cheap as beast's." If the wants of one class were relieved by these deductions from the enjoyments of another, it might form a sufficient consolation; but the same causes which have banished the splendor of wealth and the comforts of mediocrity, deprive the poor of bread and raiment, and enforced parsimony is not more generally conspicuous than wretchedness. The frugal tables of those who were once rich, have been accompanied by relative and similar changes among the lower classes; and the suppression of gilt equipages is so far from diminishing the number of wooden shoes, that for one pair of sabots which were seen formerly, there are now ten. The only Lucullus's of the day are a swarm of adventurers who have escaped from prisons, or abandoned gaming-houses, to raise fortunes by speculating in the various modes of acquiring wealth which the revolution has engendered.--These, together with the numberless agents of government enriched by more direct pillage, live in coarse luxury, and dissipate with careless profusion those riches which their original situations and habits have disqualified them from converting to a better use. Although the circumstances of the times have necessitated a good deal of domestic oeconomy among people who live on their fortunes, they have lately assumed a gayer style of dress, and are less averse from frequenting public amusements. For three years past, (and very naturally,) the gentry have openly murmured at the revolution; and they now, either convinced of the impolicy of such conduct, terrified by their past sufferings, or, above all, desirous of proclaiming their triumph over the Jacobins, are every where reviving the national taste for modes and finery. The attempt to reconcile these gaieties with prudence, has introduced some contrasts in apparel whimsical enough, though our French belles adopt them with much gravity. In consequence of the disorders in the South of France, and the interruption of commerce by sea, soap is not only dear, but sometimes difficult to purchase at any rate. We have ourselves paid equal to five livres a pound in money. Hence we have white wigs* and grey stockings, medallions and gold chains with coloured handkerchiefs and discoloured tuckers, and chemises de Sappho, which are often worn till they rather remind one of the pious Queen Isabel, than the Greek poetess. * Vilate, in his pamphlet on the secret causes of the revolution of the ninth Thermidor, relates the following anecdote of the origin of the peruques blondes. "The caprice of a revolutionary female who, on the fete in celebration of the Supreme Being, covered her own dark hair with a tete of a lighter colour, having excited the jealousy of La Demahe, one of Barrere's mistresses, she took occasion to complain to him of this coquettry, by which she thought her own charms eclipsed. Barrere instantly sent for Payen, the national agent, and informed him that a new counter-revolutionary sect had started up, and that its partizans distinguished themselves by wearing wigs made of light hair cut from the heads of the guillotined aristocrats. He therefore enjoined Payen to make a speech at the municipality, and to thunder against this new mode. The mandate was, of course, obeyed; and the women of rank, who had never before heard of these wigs, were both surprized and alarmed at an imputation so dangerous. Barrere is said to have been highly amused at having thus solemnly stopped the progress of a fashion, only becuase it displeased one of his female favourites.--I perfectly remember Payen's oration against this coeffure, and every woman in Paris who had light hair, was, I doubt not, intimidated." This pleasantry of Barrere's proves with what inhuman levity the government sported with the feelings of the people. At the fall of Robespierre, the peruque blonde, no longer subject to the empire of Barrere's favourites, became a reigning mode. --Madame Tallien, who is supposed occasionally to dictate decrees to the Convention, presides with a more avowed and certain sway over the realms of fashion; and the Turkish draperies that may float very gracefully on a form like hers, are imitated by rotund sesquipedal Fatimas, who make one regret even the tight lacings and unnatural diminishings of our grandmothers. I came to Beauvais a fortnight ago with the Marquise. Her long confinement has totally ruined her health, and I much fear she will not recover. She has an aunt lives here, and we flattered ourselves she might benefit by change of air--but, on the contrary, she seems worse, and we propose to return in the course of a week to Amiens. I had a good deal of altercation with the municipality about obtaining a passport; and when they at last consented, they gave me to understand I was still a prisoner in the eye of the law, and that I was indebted to them for all the freedom I enjoyed. This is but too true; for the decree constituting the English hostages for the Deputies at Toulon has never been repealed-- "Ah, what avails it that from slavery far, "I drew the breath of life in English air?" Johnson. Yet is it a consolation, that the title by which I was made an object of mean vengeance is the one I most value.* * An English gentleman, who was asked by a republican Commissary, employed in examining the prisons, why he was there, replied, "Because I have not the misfortune to be a Frenchman!" This is a large manufacturing town, and the capital of the department of l'Oise. Its manufactories now owe their chief activity to the requisitions for supplying cloth to the armies. Such commerce is by no means courted; and if people were permitted, as they are in most countries, to trade or let it alone, it would soon decline.--The choir of the cathedral is extremely beautiful, and has luckily escaped republican devastation, though there seems to exist no hope that it will be again restored to the use of public worship. Your books will inform you, that Beauvais was besieged in 1472 by the Duke of Burgundy, with eighty thousand men, and that he failed in the attempt. Its modern history is not so fortunate. It was for some time harassed by a revolutionary army, whose exactions and disorders being opposed by the inhabitants, a decree of the Convention declared the town in a state of rebellion; and this ban, which operates like the Papal excommunications three centuries ago, and authorizes tyranny of all kinds, was not removed until long after the death of Robespierre.--Such a specimen of republican government has made the people cautious, and abundant in the exteriors of patriotism. Where they are sure of their company, they express themselves without reserve, both on the subject of their legislators and the miseries of the country; but intercourse is considerably more timid here than at Amiens. Two gentlemen dined with us yesterday, whom I know to be zealous royalists, and, as they are acquainted, I made no scruple of producing an engraving which commemorates mysteriously the death of the King, and which I had just received from Paris by a private conveyance. They looked alarmed, and affected not to understand it; and, perceiving I had done wrong, I replaced the print without farther explanation: but they both called this evening, and reproached me separately for thus exposing their sentiments to each other.--This is a trifling incident, yet perhaps it may partly explain the great aenigma why no effectual resistance is made to a government which is secretly detested. It has been the policy of all the revolutionists, from the Lameths and La Fayette down to Brissot and Robespierre, to destroy the confidence of society; and the calamities of last year, now aiding the system of spies and informers, occasion an apprehension and distrust which impede union, and check every enterprize that might tend to restore the freedom of the country.--Yours, &c. Amiens, April 12, 1795. Instead of commenting on the late disorders at Paris, I subjoin the translation of a letter just received by Mrs. D-------- from a friend, whose information, we have reason to believe, is as exact as can possibly be obtained in the chaos of little intrigues which now comprise the whole science of French politics. "Paris, April 9. "Though I know, my good friend, you are sufficiently versed in the technicals of our revolution not to form an opinion of occurrences from the language in which they are officially described, yet I cannot resist the favourable opportunity of Mad. --------'s return, to communicate such explanations of the late events as their very ambiguous appearance may render necessary even to you. "I must begin by informing you, that the proposed decree of the Convention to dissolve themselves and call a new Assembly, was a mere coquettry. Harassed by the struggles of the Jacobins, and alarmed at the symptoms of public weariness and disgust, which became every day more visible, they hoped this feint might operate on the fears of the people of Paris, and animate them to a more decided support against the efforts of the common enemy, as well as tend to reconcile them to a farther endurance of a representation from which they did not disguise their wishes to be released. An opportunity was therefore seized on, or created, when our allowance of bread had become unusually short, and the Jacobins unusually turbulent, to bring forward this project of renovating the legislature. But in politics, as well as love, such experiments are dangerous. Far from being received with regret, the proposition excited universal transport; and it required all the diligence of the agents of government to insinuate effectually, that if Paris were abandoned by the Convention at this juncture, it would not only become a prey to famine, but the Jacobins would avail themselves of the momentary disorder to regain their power, and renew their past atrocities. "A conviction that we in reality derive our scanty supplies from exertions which would not be made, were they not necessary to restrain the popular ill humour, added to an habitual apprehension of the Clubs,* assisted this manoeuvre; and a few of the sections were, in consequence, prevailed on to address our Representatives, and to request they would remain at their post.-- * Paris had been long almost entirely dependent on the government for subsistence, so that an insurrection could always be procured by withholding the usual supply. The departments were pillaged by requisitions, and enormous sums sent to the neutral countries to purchase provisions, that the capital might be maintained in dependence and good humour. The provisions obtained by these means were distributed to the shopkeepers, who had instructions to retail them to the idle and disorderly, at about a twentieth part of the original cost, and no one could profit by this regulation, without first receiving a ticket from the Committee of his section. It was lately asserted in the Convention, and not disavowed, that if the government persisted in this sort of traffic, the annual loss attending the article of corn alone would amount to fifty millions sterling. The reduction of the sum in question into English money is made on a presumption that the French government did not mean (were it to be avoided) to commit an act of bankruptcy, and redeem their paper at less than par. Reckoning, however, at the real value of assignats when the calculation was made, and they were then worth perhaps a fifth of their nominal value, the government was actually at the expence of ten millions sterling a year, for supplying Paris with a very scanty portion of bread! The sum must appear enormous, but the peculation under such a government must be incalculable; and when it is recollected that all neutral ships bringing cargoes for the republic must have been insured at an immense premium, or perhaps eventually purchased by the French, and that very few could reach their destination, we may conclude that such as did arrive cost an immoderate sum. --"The insurrection that immediately succeeded was at first the effect of a similar scheme, and it ended in a party contention, in which the people, as usual, were neuter. "The examination into the conduct of Barrere, Collot, &c. had been delayed until it seemed rather a measure destined to protect than to bring them to punishment; and the impatience which was every where expressed on the subject, sufficiently indicated the necessity, or at least the prudence, of hastening their trial. Such a process could not be ventured on but at the risk of involving the whole Convention in a labyrinth of crimes, inconsistencies, and ridicule, and the delinquents already began to exonerate themselves by appealing to the vote of solemn approbation passed in their favour three months after the death of Robespierre had restored the Assembly to entire freedom. "The only means of extrication from this dilemma, appeared to be that of finding some pretext to satisfy the public vengeance, without hazarding the scandal of a judicial exposure. Such a pretext it was not difficult to give rise to: a diminished portion of bread never fails to produce tumultuous assemblages, that are easily directed, though not easily suppressed; and crouds of this description, agitated by real misery, were excited (as we have every reason to suppose) by hired emissaries to assail the Convention with disorderly clamours for bread. This being attributed to the friends of the culprits, decrees were opportunely introduced and passed for transporting them untried out of the republic, and for arresting most of the principal Jacobin members as their partizans. "The subsequent disturbances were less artificial; for the Jacobins, thus rendered desperate, attempted resistance; but, as they were unsuccessful, their efforts only served their adversaries as an excuse for arresting several of the party who had escaped the former decrees. "Nothing, I assure you, can with less truth be denominated popular movements, than many of these scenes, which have, notwithstanding, powerfully influenced the fate of our country. A revolt, or insurrection, is often only an affair of intrigue and arrangement; and the desultory violences of the suburbs of St. Antoine, or of the market women, are regulated by the same Committee and cabals that direct our campaigns and treaties. The common distresses of the people are continually drawing them together; and, when thus collected, their credulity renders them the ready instruments of any prevailing faction. "Our recent disorders afforded a striking proof of this. I was myself the Cicerone of a country friend on the day the Convention was first assailed. The numbers who crouded into the hall were at first considerable, yet they exhibited no signs of hostility, and it was evident they were brought there for some purpose of which they were themselves ignorant. When asked their intentions, they vociferated 'Du pain! Du pain!'--Bread, Bread; and, after occupying the seats of the Deputies for a short time, quietly withdrew. "That this insurrection was originally factitious, and devised for the purpose I have mentioned, is farther corroborated by the sudden appearance of Pichegru and other officers, who seemed brought expressly to protect the departure of the obnoxious trio, in case it should be opposed either by their friends or enemies. It is likewise to be remarked, that Barrere and the rest were stopped at the gates of Paris by the same mob who were alledged to have risen in their favour, and who, instead of endeavouring to rescue them, brought them back to the Committee of General Safety, on a supposition that they had escaped from prison.--The members of the moderate party, who were detained in some of the sections, sustained no ill treatment whatever, and were released on being claimed by their colleagues, which could scarcely have happened, had the mob been under the direction of the Jacobins, or excited by them.--In short, the whole business proved that the populace were mere agents, guided by no impulse of their own, except hunger, and who, when left to themselves, rather impeded than promoted the designs of both factions. "You must have been surprized to see among the list of members arrested, the name of Laurent Lecointre; but he could never be pardoned for having reduced the Convention to the embarrassing necessity of prosecuting Robespierre's associates, and he is now secured, lest his restless Quixotism should remind the public, that the pretended punishment of these criminals is in fact only a scandalous impunity. "We are at present calm, but our distress for bread is intolerable, and the people occasionally assail the pastry-cooks' shops; which act of hostility is called, with more pleasantry than truth or feeling, _'La guerre du pain bis contre la brioche.'_ [The war of brown bread against cakes.]--God knows, it is not the quality of bread, but the scarcity of it which excites these discontents. "The new arithmetic* is more followed, and more interesting, than ever, though our hopes are all vague, and we neither guess how or by whom they are to be fulfilled. * This was a mysterious way of expressing that the royalists were still gaining ground. It alluded to a custom which then prevailed, of people asking each other in the street, and sometimes even assailing the Deputies, with the question of "How much is eight and a half and eight and a half?"--By which was understood Louis the Seventeenth. "I have done every thing that depends on me to obtain your passports without success, and I still advise you to come to Paris and solicit them in person. Your departure, in happier times, would be a subject of regret, at present I shall both envy and congratulate you when you are enabled to quit a country which promises so little security or satisfaction. "We receive, at this moment, the two loaves. My sister joins me in acknowledgments, and expresses her fears that you must suffer by your kindness, though it is truly acceptable--for I have been several days under arms, and have had no time to make my usual excursions in search of bread. "Yours, &c." The proposed dissolution of the Assembly alluded to in the beginning of Mons. --------'s letter, occasioned here a more general rejoicing than even the fall of the Jacobin club, and, not being influenced by the motives suggested to the Parisians, we were sincerely disappointed when we found the measure postponed. The morning this news arrived, we walked about the town till dinner, and in every street people were collected in groupes, and engaged in eager discussion. An acquaintance whom we happened to meet, instead of the usual salutations, exclaimed "_Nous viola quittes, ils s'en vont les brigands_" ["At length we are quit of them--the rogues are going about their business."]; and I observed several recontres of this sort, where people skipped and caracoled, as though unable to contain their satisfaction. Nothing was talked of but _Le Petit_ [An endearing appellation given to the young King by those who would not venture to mention his name.], and the new elections; and I remarked with pleasure, that every one agreed in the total exclusion of all the present Deputies. Two mornings after we had been indulging in these agreeable visions, we learned that the Convention, purely from a patriotic desire of serving their country, had determined not to quit their post. We were at this time in extreme want of bread, the distribution not exceeding a quarter of a pound per day; and numbers who are at their ease in other respects, could not obtain any. This, operating perhaps with the latent ill humour occasioned by so unwelcome a declaration of perseverance on the part of their Representatives, occasioned a violent ferment among the people, and on the second of this month they were in open revolt; the magazine of corn for the use of the army was besieged, the national colours were insulted, and Blaux, a Deputy who is here on mission, was dragged from the Hotel de Ville, and obliged by the enraged populace to cry "Vive le Roi!" These disorders continued till the next day, but were at length appeased by a small distribution of flour from the magazine. In the debates of the Convention the whole is ascribed to the Jacobins, though it is well known they have no influence here; and I wish you to attend to this circumstance more particularly, as it proves what artifices are used to conceal the real sentiments of the people. I, and every inhabitant of Amiens, can attest that this revolt, which was declared in the Assembly to have been instigated by the partizans of the Jacobins, was, as far as it had any decided political character, an effervescence of royalism. At Rouen, Abbeville, and other places, the trees of liberty, (or, rather, the trees of the republic,) have been cut down, the tri-coloured flag torn, and the cry of "Vive le Roi!" was for some time predominant; yet the same misrepresentation was had recourse to, and all these places were asserted to have espoused the cause of that party to which they are most repugnant. I acknowledge that the chief source of these useless excesses is famine, and that it is for the most part the lower classes only who promote them; but the same cause and the same description of people were made the instruments for bringing about the revolution, and the poor seek now, as they did in 1789, a remedy for their accumulated sufferings in a change of government. The mass of mankind are ever more readily deluded by hope than benefited by experience; and the French, being taught by the revolutionists to look for that relief from changes of government which such changes cannot afford, now expect that the restoration of the monarchy will produce plenty, as they were before persuaded that the first efforts to subvert it would banish want. We are now tolerably quiet, and should seriously think of going to Paris, were we not apprehensive that some attempt from the Jacobins to rescue their chiefs, may create new disturbances. The late affair appears to have been only a retaliation of the thirty-first of May, 1792; and the remains of the Girondists have now proscribed the leaders of the Mountaineers, much in the same way as they were then proscribed themselves.--Yours. Amiens, May 9, 1795. Whilst all Europe is probably watching with solicitude the progress of the French arms, and the variations of their government, the French themselves, almost indifferent to war and politics, think only of averting the horrors of famine. The important news of the day is the portion of bread which is to be distributed; and the siege of Mentz, or the treaty with the King of Prussia, are almost forgotten, amidst enquiries about the arrival of corn, and anxiety for the approach of harvest. The same paper that announces the surrender of towns, and the success of battles, tells us that the poor die in the streets of Paris, or are driven to commit suicide, through want. We have no longer to contend with avaricious speculations, but a real scarcity; and detachments of the National Guard, reinforced by cannon, often search the adjacent villages several days successively without finding a single septier of corn. The farmers who have yet been able to conceal any, refuse to dispose of it for assignats; and the poor, who have neither plate nor money, exchange their best clothes or linen for a loaf, or a small quantity of flour. Our gates are sometimes assailed by twenty or thirty people, not to beg money, but bread; and I am frequently accosted in the street by women of decent appearance, who, when I offer them assignats, refuse them, saying, "We have enough of this sorry paper--it is bread we want."--If you are asked to dine, you take your bread with you; and you travel as though you were going a voyage--for there are not many inns on the road where you can expect to find bread, or indeed provisions of any kind. Having procured a few six-livre pieces, we were enabled to purchase a small supply of corn, though by no means enough for our consumption, so that we are obliged to oeconomise very rigidly. Mr. D-------- and the servants eat bread made with three-parts bran to one of flour. The little provision we possess is, however, a great embarrassment to us, for we are not only subject to domiciliary visits, but continually liable to be pillaged by the starving poor around us; and we are often under the necessity of passing several meals without bread, because we dare not send the wheat to be ground, nor bake except at night. While the last operation is performing, the doors are carefully shut, the bell rings in vain, and no guest is admitted till every vestige of it is removed.--All the breweries have seals put upon the doors, and severe penal laws are issued against converting barley to any other purpose than the making of bread. If what is allowed us were composed only of barley, or any other wholesome grain, we should not repine; but the distribution at present is a mixture of grown wheat, peas, rye, &c. which has scarcely the resemblance of bread. I was asked to-day, by some women who had just received their portion, and in an accent of rage and despair that alarmed me, whether I thought such food fit for a human creature.--We cannot alleviate this misery, and are impatient to escape from the sight of it. If we can obtain passports to go from hence to Paris, we hope there to get a final release, and a permission to return to England. My friend Madame de la F-------- has left us, and I fear is only gone home to die. Her health was perfectly good when we were first arrested, though vexation, more than confinement, has contributed to undermine it. The revolution had, in various ways, diminished her property; but this she would have endured with patience, had not the law of successions involved her in difficulties which appeared every day more interminable, and perplexed her mind by the prospect of a life of litigation and uncertainty. By this law, all inheritances, donations, or bequests, since the fourteenth of July 1789, are annulled and subjected to a general partition among the nearest relatives. In consequence, a large estate of the Marquise's, as well as another already sold, are to be accounted for, and divided between a variety of claimants. Two of the number being emigrants, the republic is also to share; and as the live stock, furniture, farming utensils, and arrears, are included in this absurd and iniquitous regulation, the confusion and embarrassment which it has occasioned are indescribable. Though an unlucky combination of circumstances has rendered such a law particularly oppressive to Madame de la F--------, she is only one of an infinite number who are affected by it, and many of whom may perhaps be still greater sufferers than herself. The Constituent Assembly had attempted to form a code that might counteract the spirit of legal disputation, for which the French are so remarkable; but this single decree will give birth to more processes than all the _pandects, canons,_ and _droits feodaux,_ accumulated since the days of Charlemagne; and I doubt, though one half the nation were lawyers, whether they might not find sufficient employment in demalgamating the property of the other half. This mode of partition, in itself ill calculated for a rich and commercial people, and better adapted to the republic of St. Marino than to that of France, was introduced under pretext of favouring the system of equality; and its transition from absurdity to injustice, by giving it a retroactive effect, was promoted to accommodate the "virtuous" Herault de Sechelles, who acquired a considerable addition of fortune by it. The Convention are daily beset with petitions from all parts on this subject; but their followers and themselves being somewhat in the style of Falstaff's regiment--"younger sons of younger brothers," they seem determined, as they usually are, to square their notions of justice by what is most conducive to their own interest. An apprehension of some attempt from the Jacobins, and the discontents which the scarcity of bread give rise to among the people, have produced a private order from the Committees of government for arming and re-organizing the National Guard.* * Though I have often had occasion to use the term National Guard, it is to be understood only as citizens armed for some temporary purpose, whose arms were taken from them as soon as that service was performed. The _Garde Nationale,_ as a regular institution, had been in a great measure suppressed since the summer of 1793, and those who composed it gradually disarmed. The usual service of mounting guard was still continued, but the citizens, with very few exceptions, were armed only with pikes, and even those were not entrusted to their own care, each delivering up his arms when he retired more exactly than if it were an article of capitulation with a successful enemy. --I remember, in 1789 and 1790, when this popular militia was first instituted, every one, either from policy or inclination, appeared eager to promote it; and nothing was discussed but military fetes, balls, exercise, and uniforms. These patriotic levities have now entirely vanished, and the business proceeds with languor and difficulty. One dreads the present expence, another future persecution, and all are solicitous to find cause for exemption. This reluctance, though perhaps to be regretted, is in a great measure justifiable. Where the lives and fortunes of a whole nation are dependent on the changes of party, obscurity becomes the surest protection, and those who are zealous now, may be the first sacrifices hereafter. Nor is it encouraging to arm for the defence of the Convention, which is despised, or to oppose the violence of a populace, who, however misguided, are more objects of compassion than of punishment. Fouquier Tinville, with sixteen revolutionary Judges and Jurymen, have been tried and executed, at the moment when the instigators of their crimes, Billaud-Varennes, Collot, &c. were sentenced by the Convention to a banishment, which is probably the object of their wishes. This Tinville and his accomplices, who condemned thousands with such ferocious gaiety, beheld the approach of death themselves with a mixture of rage and terror, that even cowardice and guilt do not always exhibit. It seems an awful dispensation of Providence, that they who were inhuman enough to wish to deprive their victims of the courage which enabled them to submit to their fate with resignation, should in their last moments want that courage, and die despairing, furious, and uttering imprecations, which were returned by the enraged multitude.* --Yours, &c. * Some of the Jurymen were in the habit of taking caricatures of the prisoners while they condemned them. Among the papers of the Revolutionary Tribunal were found blank sentences, which were occasionally sent to the Committee of Public Safety, to be filled up with the names of those intended to be sacrificed.--The name of one of the Jurymen executed on this occasion was Leroi, but being a very ardent republican, he had changed it for that of Citizen Tenth of August. Amiens, May 26, 1795. Our journey to Paris has been postponed by the insurrection which occurred on the first and second of Prairial, (20th and 21st of May,) and which was not like that of Germinal, fabricated--but a real and violent attempt of the Jacobins to regain their power. Of this event it is to be remarked, that the people of Paris were at first merely spectators, and that the Convention were at length defended by the very classes which they have so long oppressed under the denomination of aristocrats. For several hours the Assembly was surrounded, and in the power of its enemies; the head of Ferraud, a deputy, was borne in triumph to the hall;* and but for the impolitic precipitation of the Jacobins, the present government might have been destroyed. * The head of Ferraud was placed on a pole, and, after being paraded about the Hall, stationed opposite the President. It is impossible to execrate sufficiently this savage triumph; but similar scenes had been applauded on the fourteenth of July and the fifth and sixth of October 1789; and the Parisians had learned, from the example of the Convention themselves, that to rejoice in the daily sacrifice of fifty or sixty people, was an act of patriotism. As to the epithets of Coquin, Scelerats, Voleurs, &c. which were now bestowed on the Assembly, they were only what the members were in the constant habit of applying to each other. The assassin of Ferraud being afterwards taken and sentenced to the Guillotine, was rescued by the mob at the place of execution, and the inhabitants of the Fauxbourg St. Antoine were in revolt for two days on this occasion, nor would they give him up until abandoned by the cannoneers of their party.--It is singular, and does no honour to the revolutionary school, or the people of Paris, that Madame Elizabeth, Malsherbes, Cecile Renaud, and thousands of others, should perish innocently, and that the only effort of this kind should be exerted in favour of a murderer who deserved even a worse death. The contest began, as usual, by an assemblage of females, who forced themselves into the national palace, and loudly clamoured for immediate supplies of bread. They then proceeded to reproach the Convention with having robbed them of their liberty, plundered the public treasure, and finally reduced the country to a state of famine.* * People.--_"Nous vous demandons ce que vous avez fait de nos tresors et de notre liberte?"_--"We want to know what you have done with our treasure and our liberty?" President.--_"Citoyens, vous etes dans le sein de la Convention Nationale."_--"Citizens, I must remind you that you are in the presence of the National Convention." People.--_"Du pain, du pain, Coquin--Qu'as tu fait de notre argent? Pas tant de belles phrases, mais du pain, du pain, il n'y a point ici de conspirateurs--nous demandons du pain parceque nous avons saim."_--"Bread, bread, rogue!--what have you done with our money?-- Fine speeches won't do--'tis bread we want.--There are no conspirators among us--we only ask for bread, because we are hungry." See Debates of the Convention. --It was not easy either to produce bread, or refute these charges, and the Deputies of the moderate party remained silent and overpowered, while the Jacobins encouraged the mob, and began to head them openly. The Parisians, however interested in the result of this struggle, appeared to behold it with indifference, or at least with inactivity. Ferraud had already been massacred in endeavouring to repel the croud, and the Convention was abandoned to outrage and insult; yet no effectual attempt had been made in their defence, until the Deputies of the Mountain prematurely avowed their designs, and moved for a repeal of all the doctrines since the death of Robespierre--for the reincarceration of suspected persons--and, in fine, for an absolute revival of the whole revolutionary system. The avowal of these projects created an immediate alarm among those on whom the massacre of Ferraud, and the dangers to which the Assembly was exposed, had made no impression. The dismay became general; and in a few hours the aristocrats themselves collected together a force sufficient to liberate the Assembly,* and wrest the government from the hands of the Jacobins.-- * This is stated as a ground of reproach by the Jacobins, and is admitted by the Convention. Andre Dumont, who had taken so active a part in supporting Robespierre's government, was yet on this occasion defended and protected the whole day by a young man whose father had been guillotined. --This defeat ended in the arrest of all who had taken a part against the now triumphant majority; and there are, I believe, near fifty of them in custody, besides numbers who contrived to escape.* * Among those implicated in this attempt to revive the revolutionary government was Carnot, and the decree of arrest would have been carried against him, had it not been suggested that his talents were necessary in the military department. All that remained of Robespierre's Committees, Jean Bon St. Andre, Robert Lindet, and Prieur, were arrested. Carnot alone was excepted; and it was not disguised that his utility, more than any supposed integrity, procured him the exemption. That the efforts of this more sanguinary faction have been checked, is doubtless a temporary advantage; yet those who calculate beyond the moment see only the perpetuation of anarchy, in a habit of expelling one part of the legislature to secure the government of the other; nor can it be denied, that the freedom of the representative body has been as much violated by the Moderates in the recent transactions, as by the Jacobins on the thirty-first of May 1793. The Deputies of the Mountain have been proscribed and imprisoned, rather as partizans than criminals; and it is the opinion of many, that these measures, which deprive the Convention of such a portion of its members, attach as much illegality to the proceedings of the rest, as the former violences of Robespierre and his faction.* * The decrees passed by the Jacobin members during their few hours triumph cannot be defended; but the whole Convention had long acquiesced in them, and the precise time when they were to cease was certainly a matter of opinion. The greater part of these members were accused of no active violence, nor could they have been arrested on any principles but that of being rivals to a faction stronger than themselves. --It is true, the reigning party may plead in their justification that they only inflict what they would themselves have suffered, had the Jacobins prevailed; and this is an additional proof of the weakness and instability of a form of government which is incapable of resisting opposition, and which knows no medium between yielding to its adversaries, and destroying them. In a well organized constitution, it is supposed that a liberal spirit of party is salutary. Here they dispute the alternatives of power and emolument, or prisons and guillotines; and the sole result to the people is the certainty of being sacrificed to the fears, and plundered by the rapacity of either faction which may chance to acquire the superiority.-- Had the government any permanent or inherent strength, a party watching its errors, and eager to attack them, might, in time, by these perpetual collisions, give birth to some principles of liberty and order. But, as I have often had occasion to notice, this species of republicanism is in itself so weak, that it cannot exist except by a constant recurrence to the very despotism it professes to exclude. Hence it is jealous and suspicious, and all opposition to it is fatal; so that, to use an argument somewhat similar to Hume's on the liberty of the press in republics, the French possess a sort of freedom which does not admit of enjoyment; and, in order to boast that they have a popular constitution, are obliged to support every kind of tyranny.* * Hume observes, that absolute monarchies and republics nearly approach; for the excess of liberty in the latter renders such restraints necessary as to make them in practice resemble the former. The provinces take much less interest in this event, than in one of a more general and personal effect, though not apparently of equal importance. A very few weeks ago, the Convention asseverated, in the usual acclamatory style, that they would never even listen to a proposal for diminishing the value, or stopping the currency, of any description of assignats. Their oaths are not, indeed, in great repute, yet many people were so far deceived, as to imagine that at least the credit of the paper would not be formally destroyed by those who had forced its circulation. All of a sudden, and without any previous notice, a decree was issued to suppress the corsets, (or assignats of five livres,) bearing the King's image;* and as these were very numerous, and chiefly in the hands of the lower order of people, the consternation produced by this measure was serious and unusual.-- * The opinion that prevailed at this time that a restoration of the monarchy was intended by the Convention, had rendered every one solicitous to amass assignats issued during the late King's reign. Royal assignats of five livres were exchanged for six, seven, and eight livres of the republican paper. --There cannot be a stronger proof of the tyranny of the government, or of the national propensity to submission, than the circumstance of making it penal to refuse one day, what, by the same authority, is rendered valueless the next--and that notwithstanding this, the remaining assignats are still received under all the probability of their experiencing a similar fate. Paris now offers an interval of tranquillity which we mean to avail ourselves of, and shall, in a day or two, leave this place with the hope of procuring passports for England. The Convention affect great moderation and gratitude for their late rescue; and the people, persuaded in general that the victorious party are royalists, wait with impatience some important change, and expect, if not an immediate restoration of the monarchy, at least a free election of new Representatives, which must infallibly lead to it. With this hope, which is the first that has long presented itself to this harassed country, I shall probably bid it adieu; but a visit to the metropolis will be too interesting for me to conclude these papers, without giving you the result of my observations. --Yours. &c. Paris, June 3, 1795. We arrived here early on Saturday, and as no stranger coming to Paris, whether a native of France, or a foreigner, is suffered to remain longer than three days without a particular permission, our first care was to present ourselves to the Committee of the section where we lodge, and, on giving proper security for our good conduct, we have had this permission extended to a Decade. I approached Paris with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension, as though I expected the scenes which had passed in it, and the moral changes it had undergone, would be every where visible; but the gloomy ideas produced by a visit to this metropolis, are rather the effect of mental association than external objects. Palaces and public buildings still remain; but we recollect that they are become the prisons of misfortune, or the rewards of baseness. We see the same hotels, but their owners are wandering over the world, or have expired on the scaffold. Public places are not less numerous, nor less frequented; but, far from inspiring gaiety, we behold them with regret and disgust, as proofs of the national levity and want of feeling. I could almost wish, for the credit of the French character, to have found some indications that the past was not so soon consigned to oblivion. It is true, the reign of Robespierre and his sanguinary tribunal are execrated in studied phrases; yet is it enough to adopt humanity as a mode, to sing the _Revel du Peuple_ in preference to the _Marseillois,_ or to go to a theatre with a well-powdered head, instead of cropped locks a la Jacobin? But the people forget, that while they permitted, and even applauded, the past horrors, they were also accessary to them, and if they rejoice at their termination, their sensibility does not extend to compunction; they cast their sorrows away, and think it sufficient to exhibit their reformation in dressing and dancing-- "Yet hearts refin'd their sadden'd tint retain, "The sigh is pleasure, and the jest is pain." Sheridan. French refinements are not, however, of this poetical kind.* * This too great facility of the Parisians has been commented upon by an anonymous writer in the following terms: "At Paris, where more than fifty victims were dragged daily to the scaffold, the theatres never failed to overflow, and that on the Place de la Revolution was not the least frequented. The public, in their way every evening to the Champs Ellisees, continued uninterruptedly to cross the stream of blood that deluged this fatal spot with the most dreadful indifference; and now, though these days of horror are scarcely passed over our heads, one would suppose them ages removed--so little are we sensible that we are dancing, as it were, on a platform of dead bodies. Well may we say, respecting those events which have not reached ourselves-- _'Le malheur Qui n'est plus, n'a jamais existe.'_ But if we desire earnestly that the same misfortunes should not return, we must keep them always present in our recollection." The practice of the government appears to depart every day more widely from its professions; and the moderate harangues of the tribune are often succeeded by measures as arbitrary as those which are said to be exploded.--Perhaps the Convention begin to perceive their mistake in supposing that they can maintain a government against the inclination of the people, without the aid of tyranny. They expected at the same time that they decried Robespierre, to retain all the power he possessed. Hence, their assumed principles and their conduct are generally at variance; and, divided between despotism and weakness, they arrest the printers of pamphlets and newspapers one day, and are obliged to liberate them the next.--They exclaim publicly against the system of terror, yet secretly court the assistance of its agents.--They affect to respect the liberty of the press, yet every new publication has to defend itself against the whole force of the government, if it happen to censure a single member of the reigning party.--Thus, the _Memoirs of Dumouriez_ had circulated nearly through all Europe, yet it was not without much risk, and after a long warfare, that they were printed in France.* *On this subject the government appears sometimes to have adopted the maxim--that prevention is better than punishment; for, in several instances, they seized on manuscripts, and laid embargoes on the printers' presses, where they only suspected that a work which they might disapprove was intended to be published. I know not if it be attributable to these political inconsistencies that the calm which has succeeded the late disorders is little more than external. The minds of the people are uncommonly agitated, and every one expresses either hope or apprehension of some impending event. The royalists, amidst their ostensible persecutions, are particularly elated; and I have been told, that many conspicuous revolutionists already talk of emigration. I am just returned from a day's ramble, during which I have met with various subjects of unpleasant meditation. About dinner-time I called on an old Chevalier de St. Louis and his lady, who live in the Fauxbourg St. Germain. When I knew them formerly, they had a handsome annuity on the Hotel de Ville, and were in possession of all the comforts necessary to their declining years. To-day the door was opened by a girl of dirty appearance, the house looked miserable, the furniture worn, and I found the old couple over a slender meal of soup maigre and eggs, without wine or bread. Our revolutionary adventures, as is usual on all meetings of this kind, were soon communicated; and I learned, that almost before they knew what was passing around them, Monsieur du G--------'s forty years' service, and his croix, had rendered him suspected, and that he and his wife were taken from their beds at midnight and carried to prison. Here they consumed their stock of ready money, while a guard, placed in their house, pillaged what was moveable, and spoiled what could not be pillaged. Soon after the ninth of Thermidor they were released, but they returned to bare walls, and their annuity, being paid in assignats, now scarcely affords them a subsistence.--Monsieur du G-------- is near seventy, and Madame is become helpless from a nervous complaint, the effect of fear and confinement; and if this depreciation of the paper should continue, these poor people may probably die of absolute want. I dined with a relation of the Marquise's, and in the afternoon we called by appointment on a person who is employed by the Committee of National Domains, and who has long promised my friend to facilitate the adjustment of some of the various claims which the government has on her property. This man was originally a valet to the brother of the Marquise: at the revolution he set up a shop, became a bankrupt, and a furious Jacobin, and, in the end, a member of a Revolutionary Committee. In the last capacity he found means to enrich himself, and intimidate his creditors so as to obtain a discharge of his debts, without the trouble of paying them.* * "It was common for men in debt to procure themselves to be made members of a revolutionary committee, and then force their creditors to give them a receipt in full, under the fear of being imprisoned." Clauzel's Report, Oct. 13, 1794. I am myself acquainted with an old lady, who was confined four months, for having asked one of these patriots for three hundred livres which he owed her. --Since the dissolution of the Committees, he has contrived to obtain the situation I have mentioned, and now occupies superb apartments in an hotel, amply furnished with the proofs of his official dexterity, and the perquisites of patriotism. The humiliating vicissitudes occasioned by the revolution induced Madame de la F-------- to apply to this democratic _parvenu,_ [Upstart.] whose office at present gives him the power, and whose former obligations to her family (by whom he was brought up) she hoped would add the disposition, to serve her.--The gratitude she expected has, however, ended only in delays and disappointments, and the sole object of my commission was to get some papers which she had entrusted to him out of his possession. When we enquired if the Citizen was at home, a servant, not in livery, informed us Monsieur was dressing, but that if we would walk in, he would let Monsieur know we were there. We passed through a dining parlour, where we saw the remains of a dessert, coffee, &c. and were assailed by the odours of a plentiful repast. As we entered the saloon, we heard the servant call at the door of an adjoining parlour, _"Monsieur, voici deux Citoyennes et un Citoyen qui vous demandent."_ ["Sir, here are two female citizens and one male citizen enquiring for you."] When Monsieur appeared, he apologized with an air of graciousness for the impossibility he had been under of getting my friend's affairs arranged--protested he was _accable_ [Oppressed..]--that he had scarcely an instant at his own disposal--that _enfin_ the responsibility of people in office was so terrible, and the fatigue so _assommante,_ [Overpowering.] that nothing but the purest _civism,_ and a heart _penetre de l'amour de la patrie,_ [Penetrated with the love of his country.] could enable him to persevere in the task imposed on him. As for the papers we required, he would endeavour to find them, though his cabinet was really so filled with petitions and certificates of all sorts, _que des malheureux lui avoient addresses,_ [Addressed to him by unfortunate people.] that it would not be very easy to find them at present; and, with this answer, which we should have smiled at from M. de Choiseul or Sartine, we were obliged to be satisfied. We then talked of the news of the day, and he lamented that the aristocrats were still restless and increasing in number, and that notwithstanding the efforts of the Convention to diffuse a spirit of philosophy, it was too evident there was yet much fanaticism among the people. As we rose to depart, Madame entered, dressed for visiting, and decorated with bracelets on her wrists and above her elbows, medallions on her waists and neck, and, indeed, finery wherever it could possibly be bestowed. We observed her primitive condition of a waiting-woman still operated, and that far from affecting the language of her husband, she retained a great deference for rank, and was solicitous to insinuate that she was secretly of a superior way of thinking. As we left the room together, she made advances to an acquaintance with my companions (who were people of condition); and having occasion to speak to a person at the door, as she uttered the word _Citoyen_ she looked at us with an expression which she intended should imply the contempt and reluctance with which she made use of it. I have in general remarked, that the republicans are either of the species I have just been describing, waiters, jockies, gamblers, bankrupts, and low scribblers, living in great splendour, or men taken from laborious professions, more sincere in their principles, more ignorant and brutal--and who dissipate what they have gained in gross luxury, because they have been told that elegance and delicacy are worthy only of Sybarites, and that the Greeks and Romans despised both. These patriots are not, however, so uninformed, nor so disinterested, as to suppose they are to serve their country without serving themselves; and they perfectly understand, that the rich are their legal patrimony, and that it is enjoined them by their mission to pillage royalists and aristocrats.* --Yours. * Garat observes, it was a maxim of Danton, _"Que ceux qui fesaient les affaires de la republique devaient aussi faireles leurs,"_ that who undertook the care of the republic should also take care of themselves. This tenet, however, seems common to the friends of both. Paris, June 6, 1795. I had scarcely concluded my last, when I received advice of the death of Madame de la F--------; and though I have, almost from the time we quitted the Providence, thought she was declining, and that such an event was probable, it has, nevertheless, both shocked and grieved me. Exclusively of her many good and engaging qualities, which were reasonable objects of attachment, Madame de la F-------- was endeared to me by those habits of intimacy that often supply the want of merit, and make us adhere to our early friendships, even when not sanctioned by our maturer judgment. Madame de la F-------- never became entirely divested of the effects of a convent education; but if she retained a love of trifling amusements, and a sort of infantine gaiety, she likewise continued pious, charitable, and strictly attentive not only to the duties, but to the decorum, essential in the female character and merits of this sort are, I believe, now more rare than those in which she might be deemed deficient. I was speaking of her this morning to a lady of our acquaintance, who acquiesced in my friendly eulogiums, but added, in a tone of superiority, _"C'etoit pourtant une petite femme bien minutieuse_--she always put me out of patience with her birds and her flowers, her levees of poor people, and her persevering industry in frivolous projects." My friend was, indeed, the most feminine creature in the world, and this is a flippant literary lady, who talks in raptures of the Greeks and Romans, calls Rousseau familiarly Jean Jaques, frisks through the whole circle of science at the Lyceum, and has an utter contempt both for personal neatness and domestic oeconomy. How would Madame de Sevigne wonder, could she behold one of these modern belles esprits, with which her country, as well as England, abounds? In our zeal for reforming the irregular orthography and housewifely penmanship of the last century, we are all become readers, and authors, and critics. I do not assert, that the female mind is too much cultivated, but that it is too generally so; and that we encourage a taste for attainments not always compatible with the duties and occupations of domestic life. No age has, I believe, produced so many literary ladies as the present;* yet I cannot learn that we are at all improved in morals, or that domestic happiness is more universal than when, instead of writing sonnets to dew-drops or daisies,** we copied prayers and recipes, in spelling similar to that of Stowe or Hollingshed. * Let me not be supposed to undervalue the female authors of the present day. There are some who, uniting great talents with personal worth, are justly entitled to our respect and admiration. The authoress of "Cecilia," or the Miss Lees, cannot be confounded with the proprietors of all the Castles, Forests, Groves, Woods, Cottages, and Caverns, which are so alluring in the catalogue of a circulating library. ** Mrs. Smith's beautiful Sonnets have produced sonnetteers for every object in nature, visible or invisible; and her elegant translations of Petrarch have procured the Italian bard many an English dress that he would have been ashamed to appear in. --We seem industrious to make every branch of education a vehicle for inspiring a premature taste for literary amusements; and our old fashioned moral adages in writing-books are replaced by scraps from "Elegant Extracts," while print-work and embroidery represent scenes from poems or novels. I allow, that the subjects formerly pourtrayed by the needle were not pictoresque, yet, the tendency considered, young ladies might as well employ their silk or pencils in exhibiting Daniel in the lions' den, or Joseph and his brethren, as Sterne's Maria, or Charlotte and Werter. You will forgive this digression, which I have been led into on hearing the character of Madame de la F-------- depreciated, because she was only gentle and amiable, and did not read Plutarch, nor hold literary assemblies. It is, in truth, a little amende I owe her memory, for I may myself have sometimes estimated her too lightly, and concluded my own pursuits more rational than hers, when possibly they were only different. Her death has left an impression on my mind, which the turbulence of Paris is not calculated to soothe; but the short time we have to stay, and the number of people I must see, oblige me to conquer both my regret and my indolence, and to pass a great part of the day in running from place to place. I have been employed all this morning in executing some female commissions, which, of course, led me to milliners, mantua-makers, &c. These people now recommend fashions by saying one thing is invented by Tallien's wife, and another by Merlin de Thionville, or some other Deputy's mistress; and the genius of these elegantes has contrived, by a mode of dressing the hair which lengthens the neck, and by robes with an inch of waist, to give their countrywomen an appearance not much unlike that of a Bar Gander. I saw yesterday a relation of Madame de la F--------, who is in the army, and whom I formerly mentioned as having met when we passed through Dourlens. He was for some months suspended, and in confinement, but is now restored to his rank, and ordered on service. He asked me if I ever intended to visit France again. I told him I had so little reason to be satisfied with my treatment, that I did not imagine I should.--"Yes, (returned he,) but if the republic should conquer Italy, and bring all its treasures to Paris, as has lately been suggested in the Convention, we shall tempt you to return, in spite of yourself."* *The project of pillaging Italy of its most valuable works of art was suggested by the philosophic Abbe Gregoire, a constitutional Bishop, as early as September 1794, because, as he alledged, the chefs d'ouvres of the Greek republic ought not to embellish a country of slaves. --I told him, I neither doubted their intending such a scheme, nor the possibility of its success, though it was not altogether worthy of philosophers and republicans to wage war for Venus's and Appollos, and to sacrifice the lives of one part of their fellow-citizens, that the rest might be amused with pictures and statues.--"That's not our affair (says Monsieur de --------). Soldiers do not reason. And if the Convention should have a fancy to pillage the Emperor of China's palace, I see no remedy but to set sail with the first fair wind,"--"I wish, (said his sister, who was the only person present,) instead of being under such orders, you had escaped from the service." "Yes, (returned the General quickly,) and wander about Europe like Dumouriez, suspected and despised by all parties." I observed, Dumouriez was an adventurer, and that on many accounts it was necessary to guard against him. He said, he did not dispute the necessity or even the justice of the conduct observed towards him, but that nevertheless I might be assured it had operated as an effectual check to those who might, otherwise, have been tempted to follow Dumouriez's example; "And we have now (added he, in a tone between gaiety and despair,) no alternative but obedience or the guillotine."--I have transcribed the substance of this conversation, as it confirms what I have frequently been told, that the fate of Dumouriez, however merited, is one great cause why no desertion of importance has since taken place. I was just now interrupted by a noise and shouting near my window, and could plainly distinguish the words Scipio and Solon uttered in a tone of taunt and reproach. Not immediately comprehending how Solon or Scipio could be introduced in a fray at Paris, I dispatched Angelique to make enquiry; and at her return I learned that a croud of boys were following a shoemaker of the neighbourhood, who, while he was member of a revolutionary Committee, had chosen to unite in his person the glories of both Rome and Greece, of the sword and gown, and had taken unto himself the name of Scipio Solon. A decree of the Convention some weeks since enjoined all such heroes and sages to resume their original appellations, and forbade any person, however ardent his patriotism, to distinguish himself by the name of Brutus, Timoleon, or any other but that which he derived from his Christian parents. The people, it seems, are not so obedient to the decree as those whom it more immediately concerns; and as the above-mentioned Scipio Solon had been detected in various larcenies, he is not allowed to quit his shop without being reproached with his thefts, and his Greek and Roman appellations. --I am, &c. Paris, June 8, 1795. Yesterday being Sunday, and to-day the Decade, we have had two holidays successively, though, since the people have been more at liberty to manifest their opinions, they give a decided preference to the Christian festival over that of the republic.* * This was only at Paris, where the people, from their number, are less manageable, and of course more courageous. In the departments, the same cautious timidity prevailed, and appeared likely to continue. --They observe the former from inclination, and the latter from necessity; so that between the performance of their religious duties, and the sacrifice to their political fears, a larger portion of time will be deducted from industry than was gained by the suppression of the Saints' days. The Parisians, however, seem to acquiesce very readily in this compromise, and the philosophers of the Convention, who have so often declaimed against the idleness occasioned by the numerous fetes of the old calendar, obstinately persist in the adoption of a new one, which increases the evil they pretend to remedy. If the people are to be taken from their labour for such a number of days, it might as well be in the name of St. Genevieve or St. Denis, as of the Decade, and the Saints'-days have at least this advantage, that the forenoons are passed in churches; whereas the republican festivals, dedicated one to love, another to stoicism, and so forth, not conveying any very determinate idea, are interpreted to mean only an obligation to do nothing, or to pass some supernumerary hours at the cabaret. [Alehouse.] I noticed with extreme pleasure yesterday, that as many of the places of public worship as are permitted to be open were much crouded, and that religion appears to have survived the loss of those exterior allurements which might be supposed to have rendered it peculiarly attractive to the Parisians. The churches at present, far from being splendid, are not even decent, the walls and windows still bear traces of the Goths (or, if you will, the philosophers,) and in some places service is celebrated amidst piles of farage, sacks, casks, or lumber appertaining to the government--who, though they have by their own confession the disposal of half the metropolis, choose the churches in preference for such purposes.* * It has frequently been asserted in the Convention, that by emigrations, banishments, and executions, half Paris had become the property of the public. --Yet these unseemly and desolate appearances do not prevent the attendance of congregations more numerous, and, I think, more fervent, than were usual when the altars shone with the offerings of wealth, and the walls were covered with the more interesting decorations of pictures and tapestry. This it is not difficult to account for. Many who used to perform these religious duties with negligence, or indifference, are now become pious, and even enthusiastic--and this not from hypocrisy or political contradiction, but from a real sense of the evils of irreligion, produced by the examples and conduct of those in whom such a tendency has been most remarkable.--It must, indeed, be acknowledged, that did Christianity require an advocate, a more powerful one need not be found, than in a retrospect of the crimes and sufferings of the French since its abolition. Those who have made fortunes by the revolution (for very few have been able to preserve them) now begin to exhibit equipages; and they hope to render the people blind to this departure from their visionary systems of equality, by foregoing the use of arms and liveries--as if the real difference between the rich and the poor was not constituted rather by essential accommodation, than extrinsic embellishments, which perhaps do not gratify the eyes of the possessor a second time, and are, probably of all branches of luxury, the most useful. The livery of servants can be of very little importance, whether morally or politically considered--it is the act of maintaining men in idleness, who might be more profitably employed, that makes the keeping a great number exceptionable; nor is a man more degraded by going behind a carriage with a hat and feather, than with a bonnet de police, or a plain beaver; but he eats just as much, and earns just as little, equipped as a Carmagnole, as though glittering in the most superb gala suit.* * In their zeal to imitate the Roman republicans, the French seem to forget that a political consideration very different from the love of simplicity, or an idea of the dignity of man, made the Romans averse from distinguishing their slaves by any external indication. They were so numerous that it was thought impolitic to furnish them with such means of knowing their own strength in case of a revolt. The marks of service cannot be more degrading than service itself; and it is the mere chicane of philosophy to extend reform only to cuffs and collars, while we do not dispense with the services annexed to them. A valet who walks the street in his powdering jacket, disdains a livery as much as the fiercest republican, and with as much reason--for there is no more difference between domestic occupation performed in one coat or another, than there is between the party-coloured habit and the jacket. If the luxury of carriages be an evil, it must be because the horses employed in them consume the produce of land which might be more beneficially cultivated: but the gilding, fringe, salamanders, and lions, in all their heraldic positions, afford an easy livelihood to manufacturers and artisans, who might not be capable of more laborious occupations. I believe it will generally be found, that most of the republican reforms are of this description--calculated only to impose on the people, and disguising, by frivolous prohibitions, their real inutility. The affectation of simplicity in a nation already familiarized with luxury, only tends to divert the wealth of the rich to purposes which render it more destructive. Vanity and ostentation, when they are excluded from one means of gratification, will always seek another; and those who, having the means, cannot distinguish themselves by ostensible splendour, will often do so by domestic profusion.* * "Sectaries (says Walpole in his Anecdotes of Painting, speaking of the republicans under Cromwell) have no ostensible enjoyments; their pleasures are private, comfortable and gross. The arts of civilized society are not calculated for men who mean to rise on the ruins of established order." Judging by comparison, I am persuaded these observations are yet more applicable to the political, than the religious opinions of the English republicans of that period; for, in these respects, there is no difference between them and the French of the present day, though there is a wide one between an Anabaptist and the disciples of Boulanger and Voltaire. --Nor can it well be disputed, that a gross luxury is more pernicious than an elegant one; for the former consumes the necessaries of life wantonly, while the latter maintains numerous hands in rendering things valuable by the workmanship which are little so in themselves. Every one who has been a reflecting spectator of the revolution will acknowledge the justice of these observations. The agents and retainers of government are the general monopolizers of the markets, and these men, who are enriched by peculation, and are on all occasions retailing the cant phrases of the Convention, on the _purete des moeurs republicains, et la luxe de la ci-devant Noblesse,_ [The purity of republican manners, and the luxury of the ci-devant Noblesse.] exhibit scandalous exceptions to the national habits of oeconomy, at a time too when others more deserving are often compelled to sacrifice even their essential accommodations to a more rigid compliance with them.* * Lindet, in a report on the situation of the republic, declares, that since the revolution the consumption of wines and every article of luxury has been such, that very little has been left for exportation. I have selected the following specimens of republican manners, from many others equally authentic, as they may be of some utility to those who would wish to estimate what the French have gained in this respect by a change of government. "In the name of the French people the Representatives sent to Commune Affranchie (Lyons) to promote the felicity of its inhabitants, order the Committee of Sequestration to send them immediately two hundred bottles of the best wine that can be procured, also five hundred bottles of claret, of prime quality, for their own table. For this purpose the commission are authorized to take of the sequestration, wherever the above wine can be found. Done at Commune Affranchie, thirteenth Nivose, second year. (Signed) "Albitte, "Fouche, "Deputies of the National Convention." Extract of a denunciation of Citizen Boismartin against Citizen Laplanche, member of the National Convention: "The twenty-fourth of Brumaire, in the second year of the republic, the Administrators of the district of St. Lo gave orders to the municipality over which I at that time presided, to lodge the Representative of the people, Laplanche, and General Siphert, in the house of Citizen Lemonnier, who was then under arrest at Thorigni. In introducing one of the founders of the republic, and a French General, into this hospitable mansion, we thought to put the property of our fellow-citizen under the safeguard of all the virtues; but, alas, how were we mistaken! They had no sooner entered the house, than the provisions of every sort, the linen, clothes, furniture, trinkets, books, plate, carriages, and even title-deeds, all disappeared; and, as if they purposely insulted our wretchedness, while we were reduced to the sad necessity of distributing with a parsimonious hand a few ounces of black bread to our fellow-citizens, the best bread, pillaged from Citizen Lemonnier, was lavished by buckets full to the horses of General Siphert, and the Representative Laplanche.--The Citizen Lemonnier, who is seventy years of age, having now recovered his liberty, which he never deserved to lose, finds himself so entirely despoiled, that he is at present obliged to live at an inn; and, of property to the amount of sixty thousand livres, he has nothing left but a single spoon, which he took with him when carried to one of the Bastilles in the department de la Manche." The chief defence of Laplanche consisted in allegations that the said Citizen Lemonnier was rich, and a royalist, and that he had found emblems of royalism and fanaticism about the house. At the house of one of our common friends, I met --------, and so little did I imagine that he had escaped all the revolutionary perils to which he had been exposed, that I could almost have supposed myself in the regions of the dead, or that he had been permitted to quit them, for his being alive scarcely seemed less miraculous or incredible. As I had not seen him since 1792, he gave me a very interesting detail of his adventures, and his testimony corroborates the opinion generally entertained by those who knew the late King, that he had much personal courage, and that he lost his crown and his life by political indecision, and an humane, but ill-judged, unwillingness to reduce his enemies by force. He assured me, the Queen might have been conveyed out of France previous to the tenth of August, if she would have agreed to leave the King and her children behind; that she had twice consulted him on the subject; but, persisting in her resolution not to depart unaccompanied by her family, nothing practicable could be devised, and she determined to share their fate.* * The gentleman here alluded to has great talents, and is particularly well acquainted with some of the most obscure and disastrous periods of the French revolution. I have reason to believe, whenever it is consistent with his own safety, he will, by a genuine relation, expose many of the popular falsehoods by which the public have been misled. This, as well as many other instances of tenderness and heroism, which distinguished the Queen under her misfortunes, accord but ill with the vices imputed to her; and were not such imputations encouraged to serve the cause of faction, rather than that of morality, these inconsistencies would have been interpreted in her favour, and candour have palliated or forgotten the levities of her youth, and remembered only the sorrows and the virtues by which they were succeeded. I had, in compliance with your request on my first arrival in France, made a collection of prints of all the most conspicuous actors in the revolution; but as they could not be secreted so easily as other papers, my fears overcame my desire of obliging you, and I destroyed them successively, as the originals became proscribed or were sacrificed. Desirous of repairing my loss, I persuaded some friends to accompany me to a shop, kept by a man of whom they frequently purchased, and whom, as his principles were known to them, I might safely ask for the articles I wanted. He shook his head, while he ran over my list, and then told me, that having preferred his safety to his property, he had disposed of his prints in the same way I had disposed of mine. "At the accession of a new party, (continued he,) I always prepare for a domiciliary visit, clear my windows and shelves of the exploded heads, and replace them by those of their rivals. Nay, I assure you, since the revolution, our trade is become as precarious as that of a gamester. The Constitutionalists, indeed, held out pretty well, but then I was half ruined by the fall of the Brissotins; and, before I could retrieve a little by the Hebertists and Dantonists, the too were out of fashion."-- "Well, but the Robespierrians--you must have gained by them?"--"Why, true; Robespierre and Marat, and Chalier, answered well enough, because the royalists generally placed them in their houses to give themselves an air of patriotism, yet they are gone after the rest.--Here, however, (says he, taking down an engraving of the Abbe Sieyes,) is a piece of merchandize that I have kept through all parties, religions, and constitutions--_et le voila encore a la mode,_ ["And now you see him in fashion again."] mounted on the wrecks, and supported by the remnants of both his friends and enemies. _Ah! c'est un fin matois."_ ["Ah! He's a knowing one."] This conversation passed in a gay tone, though the man added, very seriously, that the instability of popular factions, and their intolerance towards each other, had obliged him to destroy to the amount of some thousand livres, and that he intended, if affairs did not change, to quit business. Of all the prints I enquired for, I only got Barrere, Sieyes, and a few others of less note. Your last commissions I have executed more successfully, for though the necessaries of life are almost unpurchaseable, articles of taste, books, perfumery, &c. are cheaper than ever. This is unfortunately the reverse of what ought to be the case, but the augmentation in the price of provisions is to be accounted for in various ways, and that things of the description I allude to do not bear a price in proportion is doubtless to be attributed to the present poverty of those who used to be the purchasers of them; while the people who are become rich under the new government are of a description to seek for more substantial luxuries than books and essences.--I should however observe, that the venders of any thing not perishable, and who are not forced to sell for their daily subsistence, are solicitous to evade every demand for any article which is to be paid for in assignats. I was looking at some trinkets in a shop at the Palais Royal, and on my asking the mistress of it if the ornaments were silver, she smiled significantly, and replied, she had nothing silver nor gold in the shop, but if I chose to purchase _en espece,_ she would show me whatever I desired: _"Mais pour le papier nous n'en avons que trop."_ ["In coin, but for paper we have already too much of it."] Many of the old shops are nearly empty, and the little trade which yet exists is carried on by a sort of adventurers who, without being bred to any one trade, set up half a dozen, and perhaps disappear three months afterwards. They are, I believe, chiefly men who have speculated on the assignats, and as soon as they have turned their capital in a mercantile way a short time, become apprehensive of the paper, realize it, and retire; or, becoming bankrupts by some unlucky monopoly, begin a new career of patriotism. There is, properly speaking, no money in circulation, yet a vast quantity is bought and sold. Annuitants, possessors of moderate landed property, &c., finding it impossible to subsist on their incomes, are forced to have recourse to the little specie they have reserved, and exchange it for paper. Immense sums in coin are purchased by the government, to make good the balance of their trade with the neutral countries for provisions, so that I should suppose, if this continue a few months, very little will be left in the country. One might be tempted to fancy there is something in the atmosphere of Paris which adapts the minds of its inhabitants to their political situation. They talk of the day appointed for a revolt a fortnight before, as though it were a fete, and the most timid begin to be inured to a state of agitation and apprehension, and to consider it as a natural vicissitude that their lives should be endangered periodically. A commission has been employed for some time in devising another new constitution, which is to be proposed to the Assembly on the thirteenth of this month; and on that day, it is said, an effort is to be made by the royalists. They are certainly very numerous, and the interest taken in the young King is universal. In vain have the journalists been forbidden to cherish these sentiments, by publishing details concerning him: whatever escapes the walls of his prison is circulated in impatient whispers, and requires neither printing nor gazettes a la main to give it publicity.* * Under the monarchy people disseminated anecdotes or intelligence which they did not think it safe to print, by means of these written gazettes.--I doubt if any one would venture to have recourse to them at present. --The child is reported to be ill, and in a kind of stupefaction, so as to sit whole days without speaking or moving: this is not natural at his age, and must be the consequence of neglect, or barbarous treatment. The Committees of Government, and indeed most of the Convention who have occasionally appeared to give tacit indications of favouring the royalists, in order to secure their support against the Jacobins, having now crushed the latter, begin to be seriously alarmed at the projects of the former.--Sevestre, in the name of the Committee of Public Safety, has announced that a formidable insurrection may be expected on the twenty-fifth of Prairial, (thirteenth June,) the Deputies on mission are ordered to return, and the Assembly propose to die under the ruins of the republic. They have, notwithstanding, judged it expedient to fortify these heroic dispositions by the aid of a military force, and a large number of regular troops are in Paris and the environs. We shall certainly depart before this menacing epoch: the application for our passports was made on our first arrival, and Citizen Liebault, Principal of the Office for Foreign Affairs, who is really very civil, has promised them in a day or two. Our journey here was, in fact, unnecessary; but we have few republican acquaintance, and those who are called aristocrats do not execute commission of this kind zealously, nor without some apprehensions of committing themselves.--You will wonder that I find time to write to you, nor do I pretend to assume much merit from it. We have not often courage to frequent public places in the evening, and, when we do, I continually dread some unlucky accident: either a riot between the Terrorists and Muscadins, within, or a military investment without. The last time we were at the theatre, a French gentleman, who was our escort, entered into a trifling altercation with a rude vulgar-looking man, in the box, who seemed to speak in a very authoritative tone, and I know not how the matter might have ended, had not a friend in the next box silenced our companion, by conveying a penciled card, which informed him the person he was disputing with was a Deputy of the Convention. We took an early opportunity of retreating, not perfectly at ease about the consequences which might ensue from Mr. -------- having ventured to differ in opinion from a Member of the Republican Legislature. Since that time we have passed our evenings in private societies, or at home; and while Mr. D-------- devours new pamphlets, and Mrs. D-------- and the lady we lodge with recount their mutual sufferings at Arras and St. Pelagie, I take the opportunity of writing. --Adieu. Paris, June 12, 1795. The hopes and fears, plots and counterplots, of both royalists and republicans, are now suspended by the death of the young King. This event was announced on Tuesday last, and since that time the minds and conversation of the public have been entirely occupied by it. Latent suspicion, and regret unwillingly suppressed, are every where visible; and, in the fond interest taken in this child's life, it seems to be forgotten that it is the lot of man "to pass through nature to eternity," and that it was possible for him to die without being sacrificed by human malice. All that has been said and written on original equality has not yet persuaded the people that the fate of Kings is regulated only by the ordinary dispensations of Providence; and they seem to persist in believing, that royalty, if it has not a more fortunate pre-eminence, is at least distinguished by an unusual portion of calamities. When we recollect the various and absurd stories which have been propagated and believed at the death of Monarchs or their offspring, without even a single ground either political or physical to justify them, we cannot now wonder, when so many circumstances of every kind tend to excite suspicion, that the public opinion should be influenced, and attribute the death of the King to poison. The child is allowed to have been of a lively disposition, and, even long after his seclusion from his family, to have frequently amused himself by singing at the window of his prison, until the interest he was observed to create in those who listened under it, occasioned an order to prevent him. It is therefore extraordinary, that he should lately have appeared in a state of stupefaction, which is by no means a symptom of the disorder he is alledged to have died of, but a very common one of opiates improperly administered.* * In order to account in some way for the state in which the young King had lately appeared, it was reported that he had been in the habit of drinking strong liquors to excess. Admitting this to be true, they must have been furnished for him, for he could have no means of procuring them.--It is not inapposite to record, that on a petition being formerly presented to the legislature from the Jacobin societies, praying that the "son of the tyrant" might be put to death, an honourable mention in the national bulletin was unanimously decreed!!! Though this presumption, if supported by the evidence of external appearances, may seem but of little weight; when combined with others, of a moral and political nature, it becomes of considerable importance. The people, long amused by a supposed design of the Convention to place the Dauphin on the throne, were now become impatient to see their wishes realized; or, they hoped that a renewal of the representative body, which, if conducted with freedom, must infallibly lead to the accomplishment of this object, would at least deliver them from an Assembly which they considered as exhausted in talents and degraded in reputation.--These dispositions were not attempted to be concealed; they were manifested on all occasions: and a general and successful effort in favour of the Royal Prisoner was expected to take place on the thirteenth.* * That there were such designs, and such expectations on the part of the people, is indubitable. The following extract, written and signed by one of the editors of the _Moniteur,_ is sufficiently expressive of the temper of the public at this period; and I must observe here, that the _Moniteur_ is to be considered as nearly equivalent to an official paper, and is always supposed to express the sense of government, by whom it is supported and paid, whatever party or system may happen to prevail: _"Les esperances les plus folles se manifestent de toutes parts.-- C'est a qui jettera plus promptement le masque--on dirait, a lire les ecrits qui paraissent, a entendre les conversations des gens qui se croient dans les confidences, que c'en est fait de la republique: la Convention, secondee, poussee meme par le zele et l'energie des bons citoyens a remporte une grande victoire sur les Terroristes, sur les successeurs de Robespierre, il semble qu'elle n'ait plus qu'a proclamer la royaute. Ce qui donne lieu a toutes les conjectures plus ou moins absurdes aux quelles chacun se livre, c'est l'approche du 25 Prairial."_ (13th June, the day on which the new constitution was to be presented). "The most extravagant hopes, and a general impatience to throw off the mask are manifested on all sides.--To witness the publications that appear, and to hear what is said by those who believe themselves in the secret, one would suppose that it was all over with the republic.--The Convention seconded, impelled even, by the good citizens, has gained a victory over the Terrorists and the successors of Robespierre, and now it should seem that nothing remained to be done by to proclaim royalty--what particularly gives rise to these absurdities, which exist more or less in the minds of all, is the approach of the 25th Prairial." _Moniteur,_ June 6, 1795. Perhaps the majority of the Convention, under the hope of securing impunity for their past crimes, might have yielded to the popular impulse; but the government is no longer in the hands of those men who, having shared the power of Robespierre before they succeeded him, might, as Rabaut St. Etienne expressed himself, "be wearied of their portion of tyranny."* * -"Je suis las de la portion de tyrannie que j'exerce."---"I am weary of the portion of tyranny which I exercise." Rabaut de St. Etienne --The remains of the Brissotins, with their newly-acquired authority, have vanity, interest, and revenge, to satiate; and there is no reason to suppose that a crime, which should favour these views, would, in their estimation, be considered otherwise than venial. To these are added Sieyes, Louvet, &c. men not only eager to retain their power, but known to have been of the Orleans faction, and who, if they are royalists, are not loyalists, and the last persons to whose care a son of Louis the Sixteenth ought to have been intrusted. At this crisis, then, when the Convention could no longer temporize with the expectations it raised--when the government was divided between one party who had deposed the King to gratify their own ambition, and another who had lent their assistance in order to facilitate the pretensions of an usurper--and when the hopes of the country were anxiously fixed on him, died Louis the Seventeenth. At an age which, in common life, is perhaps the only portion of our existence unalloyed by misery, this innocent child had suffered more than is often the lot of extended years and mature guilt. He lived to see his father sent to the scaffold--to be torn from his mother and family--to drudge in the service of brutality and insolence--and to want those cares and necessaries which are not refused even to the infant mendicant, whose wretchedness contributes to the support of his parents.* * It is unnecessary to remind the reader, that the Dauphin had been under the care of one Simon, a shoemaker, who employed him to clean his (Simon's) shoes, and in any other drudgery of which his close confinement admitted. --When his death was announced to the Convention, Sevestre, the reporter, acknowledged that Dessault, the surgeon, had some time since declared the case to be dangerous; yet, notwithstanding policy as well as humanity required that every appearance of mystery and harshness should, on such an occasion, be avoided, the poor child continued to be secluded with the same barbarous jealousy--nor was the Princess, his sister, whose evidence on the subject would have been so conclusive, ever suffered to approach him. No report of Dessault's opinion had till now been made public; and Dessault himself, who was an honest man, died of an inflammatory disorder four days before the Dauphin.--It is possible, he might have expressed himself too freely, respecting his patient, to those who employed him-- his future discretion might be doubted--or, perhaps, he was only called in at first, that his character might give a sanction to the future operations of those who were more confided in. But whether this event is to be ascribed to natural causes, or to that of opiates, the times and circumstances render it peculiarly liable to suspicions, and the reputation of those who are involved, is not calculated to repel them. Indeed, so conscious are the advocates of government, that the imputation cannot be obviated by pleading the integrity of the parties, that they seem to rest their sole defence on the inutility of a murder, which only transfers whatever rights the House of Bourbon may be supposed to possess, from one branch of it to another. Yet those who make use of this argument are well aware of its fallaciousness: the shades of political opinion in France are extremely diversified, and a considerable part of the Royalists are also Constitutionalists, whom it will require time and necessity to reconcile to the emigrant Princes. But the young King had neither enemies nor errors--and his claims would have united the efforts and affections of all parties, from the friends of the monarchy, as it existed under Louis the Fourteenth, down to the converted Republican, who compromises with his principles, and stipulates for the title of Perpetual President. That the removal of this child has been fortunate for those who govern, is proved by the effect: insurrections are no longer talked of, the royalists are confounded, the point of interest is no more, and a sort of despondency and confusion prevails, which is highly favourable to a continuance of the present system.--There is no doubt, but that when men's minds become more settled, the advantage of having a Prince who is capable of acting, and whose success will not be accompanied by a long minority, will conciliate all the reflecting part of the constitutional royalists, in spite of their political objections. But the people who are more under the influence of their feelings, and yield less to expediency, may not, till urged by distress and anarchy, be brought to take the same interest in the absent claimant of the throne, that they did in their infant Prince. It is to be regretted, that an habitual and unconquerable deference for the law which excludes females from the Crown of France, should have survived monarchy itself; otherwise the tender compassion excited by the youth, beauty and sufferings of the Princess, might yet have been the means of procuring peace to this distracted country. But the French admire, lament, and leave her to her fate-- "O, shame of Gallia, in one sullen tower "She wets with royal tears her daily cell; "She finds keen anguish every rose devour, "They spring, they bloom, then bid the world farewell. "Illustrious mourner! will no gallant mind "The cause of love, the cause of justice own? "Such claims! such charms! And is no life resign'd "To see them sparkle from their parent throne?" How inconsistent do we often become through prejudices! The French are at this moment governed by adventurers and courtezans--by whatever is base, degraded, or mean, in both sexes; yet, perhaps, would they blush to see enrolled among their Sovereigns an innocent and beautiful Princess, the descendant of Henry the Fourth. Nothing since our arrival at Paris has seemed more strange than the eagerness with which every one recounts some atrocity, either committed or suffered by his fellow-citizens; and all seem to conclude, that the guilt or shame of these scenes is so divided by being general, that no share of either attaches to any individual. They are never tired of the details of popular or judicial massacres; and so zealous are they to do the honours of the place, that I might, but for disinclination on my part, pass half my time in visiting the spots where they were perpetrated. It was but to-day I was requested to go and examine a kind of sewer, lately described by Louvet, in the Convention, where the blood of those who suffered at the Guillotine was daily carried in buckets, by men employed for the purpose.* * "At the gate of St. Antoine an immense aqueduct had been constructed for the purpose of carrying off the blood that was shed at the executions, and every day four men were employed in taking it up in buckets, and conveying it to this horrid reservoir of butchery." Louvet's Report, 2d May. --These barbarous propensities have long been the theme of French satyrists; and though I do not pretend to infer that they are national, yet certainly the revolution has produced instances of ferocity not to be paralleled in any country that ever had been civilized, and still less in one that had not.* * It would be too shocking, both to decency and humanity, to recite the more serious enormities alluded to; and I only add, to those I have formerly mentioned, a few examples which particularly describe the manners of the revolution.-- At Metz, the heads of the guillotined were placed on the tops of their own houses. The Guillotine was stationary, fronting the Town-house, for months; and whoever was observed to pass it with looks of disapprobation, was marked as an object of suspicion. A popular Commission, instituted for receiving the revolutionary tax at this place, held their meetings in a room hung with stripes of red and black, lighted only with sepulchral lamps; and on the desk was placed a small Guillotine, surrounded by daggers and swords. In this vault, and amidst this gloomy apparatus, the inhabitants of Metz brought their patriotic gifts, (that is, the arbitrary and exorbitant contributions to which they were condemned,) and laid them on the altar of the Guillotine, like the sacrifice of fear to the infernal deities; and, that the keeping of the whole business might be preserved, the receipts were signed with red ink, avowedly intended as expressive of the reigning system. At Cahors, the deputy, Taillefer, after making a triumphal entry with several waggons full of people whom he had arrested, ordered a Guillotine to be erected in the square, and some of the prisoners to be brought forth and decorated in a mock costume representing Kings, Queens, and Nobility. He then obliged them successively to pay homage to the Guillotine, as though it had been a throne, the executioner manoeuvring the instrument all the while, and exciting the people to call for the heads of those who were forced to act in this horrid farce. The attempt, however, did not succeed, and the spectators retired in silent indignation. At Laval, the head of Laroche, a deputy of the Constituent Assembly, was exhibited (by order of Lavallee, a deputy there on mission) on the house inhabited by his wife.--At Auch, in the department of Gers, d'Artigoyte, another deputy, obliged some of the people under arrest to eat out of a manger.--Borie used to amuse himself, and the inhabitants of Nismes, by dancing what he called a farandole round the Guillotine in his legislative costume.--The representative Lejeune solaced his leisure hours in beheading animals with a miniature Guillotine, the expence of which he had placed to the account of the nation; and so much was he delighted with it, that the poultry served at his table were submitted to its operation, as well as the fruits at his dessert! (Debates, June 1.) But it would be tedious and disgusting to describe all the _menus plaisirs_ of these founders of the French republic. Let it suffice to say, that they comprised whatever is ludicrous, sanguinary, and licentious, and that such examples were but too successful in procuring imitators. At Tours, even the women wore Guillotines in their ears, and it was not unusual for people to seal their letters with a similar representation! We have been once at the theatre since the King's death, and the stanza of the _Reveil du Peuple,_ [The rousing of the people.] which contains a compliment to the Convention, was hissed pretty generally, while those expressing an abhorrence of Jacobinism were sung with enthusiasm. But the sincerity of these musical politics is not always to be relied on: a popular air is caught and echoed with avidity; and whether the words be _"Peuple Francais, peuple de Freres,"_ ["Brethren."]--or _"Dansons la Guillotine,"_ the expression with which it is sung is not very different. How often have the theatres resounded with _"Dieu de clemence et de justice."_ ["God of mercy and justice."] and _"Liberte, Liberte, cherie!"_ ["Liberty, beloved Liberty!"] while the instrument of death was in a state of unceasing activity--and when the auditors, who joined in these invocations to Liberty, returned to their homes trembling, lest they should be arrested in the street, or find a mandate or guard at their own houses.* * An acquaintance of mine told me, that he was one evening in company at Dijon, where, after singing hymns to liberty in the most energetic style, all the party were arrested, and betook themselves as tranquilly to prison, as though the name of liberty had been unknown to them. The municipality of Dijon commonly issued their writs of arrest in this form--"Such and such a person shall be arrested, and his wife, if he has one!" --At present, however, the Parisians really sing the _Reveil_ from principle, and I doubt if even a new and more agreeable air in the Jacobin interest would be able to supplant it. We have had our permission to remain here extended to another Decade; but Mr. D------, who declares, ten times in an hour, that the French are the strangest people on earth, besides being the most barbarous and the most frivolous, is impatient to be gone; and as we now have our passports, I believe we shall depart the middle of next week. --Yours. Paris, June 15, 1795. I am now, after a residence of more than three years, amidst the chaos of a revolution, on the eve of my departure from France. Yet, while I joyfully prepare to revisit my own country, my mind involuntarily traces the rapid succession of calamities which have filled this period, and dwells with painful contemplation on those changes in the morals and condition of the French people that seem hitherto to be the only fruits which they have produced. In this recurrence to the past, and estimation of the present, however we may regret the persecution of wealth, the destruction of commerce, and the general oppression, the most important and irretrievable mischief of the revolution is, doubtless, the corruption of manners introduced among the middle and lower classes of the people. The labouring poor of France have often been described as frugal, thoughtless, and happy, earning, indeed, but little, yet spending still less, and in general able to procure such a subsistence as their habits and climate rendered agreeable and sufficient.* * Mr. Young seems to have been persuaded, that the common people of France worked harder, and were worse fed, than those of the same description in England. Yet, as far as I have had opportunity of observing, and from the information I have been able to procure, I cannot help supposing that this gentleman has drawn his inference partially, and that he has often compared some particular case of distress, with the general situation of the peasantry in the rich counties, which are the scene of his experiments. The peasantry of many distant parts of England fare as coarsely, and labour harder, than was common in France; and taking their habits of frugality, their disposition to be satisfied, and their climate into the account, the situation of the French perhaps was preferable. Mr. Young's Tour has been quoted very triumphantly by a Noble Lord, particularly a passage which laments and ascribes to political causes the appearance of premature old age, observable in French women of the lower classes. Yet, for the satisfaction of his Lordship's benevolence and gallantry, I can assure him, that the female peasants in France have not more laborious occupations than those of England, but they wear no stays, and expose themselves to all weathers without hats; in consequence, lose their shape, tan their complexions, and harden their features so as to look much older than they really are.--Mr. Young's book is translated into French, and I have too high an opinion both of his principles and his talents to doubt that he must regret the ill effects it may have had in France, and the use that has been made of it in England. --They are now become idle, profuse, and gloomy; their poverty is embittered by fanciful claims to riches and a taste for expence. They work with despair and unwillingness, because they can no longer live by their labour; and, alternately the victims of intemperance or want, they are often to be found in a state of intoxication, when they have not been able to satisfy their hunger--for, as bread cannot always be purchased with paper, they procure a temporary support, at the expence of their health and morals, in the destructive substitute of strong liquors. Those of the next class, such as working tradesmen, artizans, and domestic servants, though less wretched, are far more dissolute; and it is not uncommon in great towns to see men of this description unite the ferociousness of savages with all the vices of systematic profligacy. The original principles of the revolution, of themselves, naturally tended to produce such a depravation; but the suspension of religious worship, the conduct of the Deputies on mission, and the universal immorality of the existing government, must have considerably hastened it. When the people were forbidden the exercise of their religion, though they did not cease to be attached to it, yet they lost the good effects which even external forms alone are calculated to produce; and while deism and atheism failed in perverting their faith, they were but too successful in corrupting their morals. As in all countries the restraints which religion imposes are more readily submitted to by the inferior ranks of life, it is these which must be most affected by its abolition; and we cannot wonder, that when men have been once accustomed to neglect the duty they consider as most essential, they should in time become capable of violating every other: for, however it may be among the learned, _qui s'aveuglent a force de lumiere,_ [Who blind themselves by excess of light. Destouchet.] with the ignorant the transition from religious indifference to actual vice is rapid and certain. The Missionaries of the Convention, who for two years extended their destructive depredations over the departments, were every where guilty of the most odious excesses, and those least culpable offered examples of licentiousness and intemperance with which, till then, the people had never been familiar.* * "When the Convention was elected, (says Durand Maillane, see Report of the Committee of Legislation, 13th Prairial, 1st June,) the choice fell upon men who abused the name of patriot, and adopted it as a cloak for their vices.--Vainly do we inculcate justice, and expect the Tribunals will bring thieves and assassins to punishment, if we do not punish those amongst ourselves.--Vainly shall we talk of republican manners and democratic government, while our representatives carry into the departments examples of despotism and corruption." The conduct of these civilized banditti has been sufficiently described. Allard, Lacoste, Mallarme, Milhaud, Laplanche, Monestier, Guyardin, Sergent, and many others, were not only ferocious and extravagant, but known to have been guilty of the meanest thefts. Javoques is alledged to have sacrificed two hundred people of Montibrison, and to have stolen a vast quantity of their effects. It was common for him to say, that he acknowledged as true patriots those only who, like himself, _"etaient capables de boire une verre de sang,"_--("were capable of drinking a glass of blood.") D'Artigoyte distinguished himself by such scandalous violations of morals and decency, that they are not fit to be recited. He often obliged married women, by menaces, to bring their daughters to the Jacobin clubs, for the purpose of insulting them with the grossest obscenities.--Having a project of getting up a play for his amusement, he caused it to be declared, that those who had any talents for acting, and did not present themselves, should be imprisoned as suspects. And it is notorious, that this same Deputy once insulted all the women present at the theatre, and, after using the most obscene language for some time, concluded by stripping himself entirely in presence of the spectators. Report of the Committee of Legislation, 13th Prairial (1st of June). Lacoste and Baudet, when they were on mission at Strasburgh, lived in daily riot and intoxication with the members of the Revolutionary Tribunal, who, after qualifying themselves in these orgies, proceeded to condemn all the prisoners brought before them.--During the debate following the above quoted report, Dentzel accused Lacoste, among other larcenies, of having purloined some shirts belonging to himself; and addressing Lacoste, who was present in the Assembly, with true democratic frankness, adds, _"Je suis sur qu'il en a une sur le corps."_--("I am certain he has one of them on at this moment.") Debate, 1st of June. The following is a translation of a letter from Piorry, Representative of the People, to the popular society of Poitiers:-- "My honest and determined _Sans Culottes,_ as you seemed to desire a Deputy amongst you who has never deviated from the right principles, that is to say, a true Mountaineeer, I fulfil your wishes in sending you the Citizen Ingrand.--Remember, honest and determined _Sans Culottes,_ that with the sanction of the patriot Ingrand, you may do every thing, obtain every thing, destroy every thing--imprison all, try all, transport all, or guillotine all. Don't spare him a moment; and thus, through his means, all may tremble, every thing be swept away, and, finally, be re-established in lasting order. (Signed) "Piorry." The gentleman who translated the above for me, subjoined, that he had omitted various oaths too bad for translation.--This Piorry always attended the executions, and as fast as a head fell, used to wave his hat in the air, and cry, _"Vive la Republique!"_ Such are the founders of the French Republic, and such the means by which it has been supported! --It may be admitted, that the lives of the higher Noblesse were not always edifying; but if their dissipation was public, their vices were less so, and the scenes of both were for the most part confined to Paris. What they did not practise themselves, they at least did not discourage in others; and though they might be too indolent to endeavour at preserving the morals of their dependents, they knew their own interest too well to assist in depraving them. But the Representatives, and their agents, are not to be considered merely as individuals who have corrupted only by example;--they were armed with unlimited authority, and made proselytes through fear, where they failed to produce them from inclination. A contempt for religion or decency has been considered as the test of an attachment to the government; and a gross infraction of any moral or social duty as a proof of civism, and a victory over prejudice. Whoever dreaded an arrest, or courted an office, affected profaneness and profligacy--and, doubtless, many who at first assumed an appearance of vice from timidity, in the end contracted a preference for it. I myself know instances of several who began by deploring that they were no longer able to practise the duties of their religion, and ended by ridiculing or fearing them. Industrious mechanics, who used to go regularly to mass, and bestow their weekly _liard_ on the poor, after a month's revolutionising, in the suite of a Deputy, have danced round the flames which consumed the sacred writings, and become as licentious and dishonest as their leader. The general principles of the Convention have been adapted to sanction and accelerate the labours of their itinerant colleagues. The sentences of felons were often reversed, in consideration of their "patriotism"-- women of scandalous lives have been pensioned, and complimented publicly --and various decrees passed, all tending to promote a national dissoluteness of manners.* * Among others, a decree which gave all illegitimate children a claim to an equal participation in the property of the father to whom they should (at the discretion of the mother) be attributed. --The evil propensities of our nature, which penal laws and moralists vainly contend against, were fostered by praise, and stimulated by reward--all the established distinctions of right and wrong confounded-- and a system of revolutionary ethics adopted, not less incompatible with the happiness of mankind than revolutionary politics. Thus, all the purposes for which this general demoralization was promoted, being at length attained, those who were rich having been pillaged, those who were feared massacred, and a croud of needy and desperate adventurers attached to the fate of the revolution, the expediency of a reform has lately been suggested. But the mischief is already irreparable. Whatever was good in the national character is vitiated; and I do not scruple to assert, that the revolution has both destroyed the morals of the people, and rendered their condition less happy*--that they are not only removed to a greater distance from the possession of rational liberty, but are become more unfit for it than ever. * It has been asserted, with a view to serve the purposes of party, that the condition of the lower classes in France was mended by the revolution. If those who advance this were not either partial or ill-informed, they would observe that the largesses of the Convention are always intended to palliate some misery, the consequence of the revolution, and not to banish what is said to have existed before. For the most part, these philanthropic projects are never carried into effect, and when they are, it is to answer political purposes.--For instance, many idle people are kept in pay to applaud at the debates and executions, and assignats are distributed to those who have sons serving in the army. The tendency of both these donations needs no comment. The last, which is the most specious, only affords a means of temporary profusion to people whose children are no incumbrance to them, while such as have numerous and helpless families, are left without assistance. Even the poorest people now regard the national paper with contempt; and, persuaded it must soon be of no value, they eagerly squander whatever they receive, without care for the future. As I have frequently, in the course of these letters, had occasion to quote from the debates of the Convention, and other recent publications, I ought to observe that the French language, like every thing else in the country, has been a subject of innovation--new words have been invented, the meaning of old ones has been changed, and a sort of jargon, compounded of the appropriate terms of various arts and sciences, introduced, which habit alone can render intelligible. There is scarcely a report read in the Convention that does not exhibit every possible example of the Bathos, together with more conceits than are to be found in a writer of the sixteenth century; and I doubt whether any of their projects of legislation or finance would be understood by Montesquieu or Colbert. But the style most difficult to be comprehended by foreigners, is that of the newspapers; for the dread of offending government so entirely possesses the imagination of those who compose such publications, that it is not often easy to distinguish a victory from a defeat, by the language in which it is conveyed. The common news of the day is worded as cautiously as though it were to be the subject of judicial disquisition; and the real tendency of an article is sometimes so much at variance with its comment, that the whole, to a cursory peruser, may seem destitute of any meaning at all. Time, however, has produced a sort of intelligence between news-writers and their readers--and rejoicings, lamentations, praise, or censure, are, on particular occasions, understood to convey the reverse of what they express. The affected moderation of the government, and the ascendency which some of the Brissotin party are beginning to take in it, seem to flatter the public with the hope of peace. They forget that these men were the authors of the war, and that a few months imprisonment has neither expiated their crimes, nor subdued their ambition. It is the great advantage of the Brissotins, that the revolutionary tyranny which they had contributed to establish, was wrested from them before it had taken its full effect; but those who appreciate their original claims, without regard to their sufferings under the persecution of a party, are disposed to expect they will not be less tenacious of power, nor less arbitrary in the exercise of it than any of the intervening factions. The present government is composed of such discordant elements, that their very union betrays that they are in fact actuated by no principle, except the general one of retaining their authority. Lanjuinais, Louvet, Saladin, Danou, &c. are now leagued with Tallien, Freron, Dubois de Crance, and even Carnot. At the head of this motley assemblage of Brissotins, Orleanists, and Robespierrians, is Sieyes--who, with perhaps less honesty, though more cunning, than either, despises and dupes them all. At a moment when the Convention had fallen into increased contempt, and when the public affairs could no longer be conducted by fabricators of reports and framers of decrees, the talents of this sinister politician became necessary; yet he enjoys neither the confidence of his colleagues nor that of the people--the vanity and duplicity of his conduct disgust and alarm the first, while his reputation of partizan of the Duke of Orleans is a reason for suspicion in the latter. But if Sieyes has never been able to conciliate esteem, nor attain popularity, he has at length possessed himself of power, and will not easily be induced to relinquish it.--Many are of opinion, that he is secretly machinating for the son of his former patron; but whether he means to govern in the name of the Duke of Orleans, or in that of the republic, it is certain, had the French any liberty to lose, it never could have found a more subtle and dangerous enemy.* * The Abbe, in his _"notices sur la Vie de Sieyes,"_ declares that his contempt and detestation of the colleagues "with whom his unfortunate stars had connected him," were so great, that he determined, from his first arrival at the Convention, to take no part in public affairs. As these were his original sentiments of the Assembly, perhaps he may hereafter explain by which of their operations his esteem was so much reconciled, that he has condescended to become their leader. Paris may, without exaggeration, be described as in a state of famine. The markets are scantily supplied, and bread, except the little distributed by order of the government, not to be obtained: yet the inhabitants, for the most part, are not turbulent--they have learned too late, that revolutions are not the source of plenty, and, though they murmur and execrate their rulers, they abstain from violence, and seem rather inclined to yield to despair, than to seek revenge. This is one proof, among a variety of others, that the despotism under which the French have groaned for the last three years, has much subdued the vivacity and impatience of the national character; for I know of no period in their history, when such a combination of personal suffering and political discontent, as exists at present, would not have produced some serious convulsion. Amiens, June 18, 1795. We returned hither yesterday, and on Friday we are to proceed to Havre, accompanied by an order from the Committee of Public Welfare, stating that several English families, and ourselves among the number, have been for some time a burthen on the generosity of the republic, and that for this reason we are permitted to embark as soon as we can find the means. This is neither true, nor very gallant; but we are too happy in quitting the republic, to cavil about terms, and would not exchange our pauper-like passports for a consignment of all the national domains. I have been busy to-day in collecting and disposing of my papers, and though I have taken infinite pains to conceal them, their bulk is so considerable, that the conveyance must be attended with risk. While I was thus employed, the casual perusal of some passages in my letters and notes has led me to consider how much my ideas of the French character and manners differ from those to be found in the generality of modern travels. My opinions are not of importance enough to require a defence; and a consciousness of not having deviated from truth makes me still more averse from an apology. Yet as I have in several instances varied from authorities highly respectable, it may not be improper to endeavour to account for what has almost the appearance of presumption. If you examine most of the publications describing foreign countries, you will find them generally written by authors travelling either with the eclat of birth and riches, or, professionally, as men of science or letters. They scarcely remain in any place longer than suffices to view the churches, and to deliver their letters of recommendation; or, if their stay be protracted at some capital town, it is only to be feted from one house to another, among that class of people who are every where alike. As soon as they appear in society, their reputation as authors sets all the national and personal vanity in it afloat. One is polite, for the honour of his country--another is brilliant, to recommend himself; and the traveller cannot ask a question, the answer to which is not intended for an honourable insertion in his repertory of future fame. In this manner an author is passed from the literati and fashionable people of one metropolis to those of the next. He goes post through small towns and villages, seldom mixes with every-day life, and must in a great degree depend for information on partial enquiries. He sees, as it were, only the two extremes of human condition--the splendour of the rich, and the misery of the poor; but the manners of the intermediate classes, which are less obtrusive, are not within the notice of a temporary resident. It is not therefore extraordinary, that I, who have been domesticated some years in France, who have lived among its inhabitants without pretensions, and seen them without disguise, should not think them quite so polite, elegant, gay, or susceptible, as they endeavour to appear to the visitant of the day. Where objects of curiosity only are to be described, I know that a vast number may be viewed in a very rapid progress; yet national character, I repeat, cannot be properly estimated but by means of long and familiar intercourse. A person who is every where a stranger, must see things in their best dress; being the object of attention, he is naturally disposed to be pleased, and many circumstances both physical and moral are passed over as novelties in this transient communication, which might, on repetition, be found inconvenient or disgusting. When we are stationary, and surrounded by our connections, we are apt to be difficult and splenetic; but a literary traveller never thinks of inconvenience, and still less of being out of humour--curiosity reconciles him to the one, and his fame so smooths all his intercourse, that he has no plea for the other. It is probably for these reasons that we have so many panegyrists of our Gallic neighbours, and there is withal a certain fashion of liberality that has lately prevailed, by which we think ourselves bound to do them more than justice, because they [are] our political enemies. For my own part, I confess I have merely endeavoured to be impartial, and have not scrupled to give a preference to my own country where I believed it was due. I make no pretensions to that sort of cosmopolitanism which is without partialities, and affects to consider the Chicktaw or the Tartars of Thibet, with the same regard as a fellow-countryman. Such universal philanthropists, I have often suspected, are people of very cold hearts, who fancy they love the whole world, because they are incapable of loving any thing in it, and live in a state of "moral vagabondage," (as it is happily termed by Gregoire,) in order to be exempted from the ties of a settled residence. _"Le cosmopolytisme de systeme et de fait n'est qu'un vagabondage physique ou moral: nous devons un amour de preference a la societe politique dont nous sommes membres."_ ["Cosmopolytism, either in theory or in practice, is no better than a moral or physical vagrancy: the political society of which we are members, is entitled to a preference in our affections."] Let it not be imagined, that, in drawing comparisons between France and England, I have been influenced by personal suffering or personal resentment. My opinions on the French characters and manners were formed before the revolution, when, though my judgment might be deficient, my heart was warm, and my mind unprejudiced; yet whatever credit may be allowed to my general opinions, those which particularly apply to the present situation and temper of the French will probably be disputed. When I describe the immense majority of the nation as royalists, hating their government, and at once indignant and submissive, those who have not studied the French character, and the progress of the revolution, may suspect my veracity. I can only appeal to facts. It is not a new event in history for the many to be subdued by the few, and this seems to be the only instance in which such a possibility has been doubted.* * It is admitted by Brissot, who is in this case competent authority, that about twenty factious adventurers had oppressed the Convention and the whole country. A more impartial calculator would have been less moderate in the number, but the fact is the same; and it would be difficult to fix the period when this oppression ceased. --The well-meaning of all classes in France are weak, because they are divided; while the small, but desperate factions that oppress them, are strong in their union, and in the possession of all the resources of the country. Under these circumstances, no successful effort can be made; and I have collected from various sources, that the general idea of the French at present is, to wait till the new constitution appears, and to accept it, though it should be even more anarchical and tyrannic than the last. They then hope that the Convention will resign their power without violence, that a new election of representatives will take place, and that those representatives, who they intend shall be men of honesty and property, will restore them to the blessings of a moderate and permanent government. --Yours. Havre, June 22, 1795. We are now in hourly expectation of sailing for England: we have agreed with the Captain of a neutral vessel, and are only waiting for a propitious wind. This good ally of the French seems to be perfectly sensible of the value of a conveyance out of the republic, and accordingly we are to pay him about ten times more for our passage than he would have asked formerly. We chose this port in preference to Calais or Boulogne, because I wished to see my friend Madame de ------ at Rouen, and leave Angelique with her relations, who live there. I walked this morning to the harbour, and seeing some flat-bottomed boats constructing, asked a French gentleman who accompanied me, perhaps a little triumphantly, if they were intended for a descent on the English coast. He replied, with great composure, that government might deem it expedient (though without any views of succeeding) to sacrifice ten or twenty thousand men in the attempt.--It is no wonder that governments, accountable for the lives and treasure they risk, are scarcely equal to a conflict sustained by such power, and conducted on such principles.--But I am wearied and disgusted with the contemplation of this despotism, and I return to my country deeply and gratefully impressed with a sense of the blessings we enjoy in a free and happy constitution. --I am, &c. FINIS. 
17624	----	A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL Antiquarian AND PICTURESQUE TOUR. PRINTED BY WILLIAM NICOL, AT THE Shakspeare Press [Illustration: FILLE DE CHAMBRE, NUREMBERG] A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL, Antiquarian AND PICTURESQUE TOUR IN FRANCE AND GERMANY. BY THE REVEREND THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN, D.D. MEMBER OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY AT ROUEN, AND OF THE ACADEMY OF UTRECHT. SECOND EDITION. VOLUME III. [Illustration: Logo] DEI OMNIA PLENA. LONDON: PUBLISHED BY ROBERT JENNINGS, AND JOHN MAJOR. 1829. CONTENTS OF VOLUME III. CONTENTS VOLUME III. LETTER I. Strasbourg to Stuttgart. Baden. The Elder Schweighæuser. STUTTGART. The Public Library. The Royal Library, 1 LETTER II. The Royal Palace. A Bibliographical Negotiation. Dannecker the Sculptor. Environs of Stuttgart, 43 LETTER III. Departure from Stuttgart. ULM. AUGSBOURG. The Picture Gallery at Augsbourg, 55 LETTER IV. AUGSBOURG. Civil and Ecclesiastical Architecture. Population. Trade. The Public Library, 91 LETTER V. MUNICH. Churches. Royal Palace. Picture Gallery. The Public Library, 105 LETTER VI. Further Book-Acquisitions. Society. The Arts, 149 LETTER VII. Freysing. Landshut. Altöting. Salzburg. The Monastery of St. Peter, 169 LETTER VIII. Salzburg to Chremsminster. The Lake Gmunden. The Monastery of Chremsminster. Lintz, 206 LETTER IX. The Monasteries of St. Florian, Mölk, and Göttwic, 232 LETTER X. VIENNA. Imperial Library. Illuminated MSS. and early printed Books, 279 LETTER XI. Population. Streets and Fountains. Churches. Convents. Palaces. Theatres. The Prater. The Emperor's Private Library. Collection of Duke Albert. Suburbs. Monastery of Closterneuburg. Departure from Vienna, 335 SUPPLEMENT. Ratisbon, Nuremberg, Manheim, 407 LETTER I. STRASBOURG TO STUTTGART. BADEN. THE ELDER SCHWEIGHÆUSER. STUTTGART. THE PUBLIC LIBRARY. THE ROYAL LIBRARY. _Stuttgart, Poste Royale, August 4, 1818._ Within forty-eight hours of the conclusion of my last, I had passed the broad and rapidly-flowing Rhine. Having taken leave of all my hospitable acquaintances at Strasbourg, I left the _Hôtel de l'Esprit_ between five and six in the afternoon--when the heat of the day had a little subsided--with a pair of large, sleek, post horses; one of which was bestrode by the postilion, in the red and yellow livery of the duchy of Baden. Our first halting place, to change horses, was _Kehl_; but we had not travelled a league on this side of the Rhine, ere we discovered a palpable difference in the general appearance of the country. There was more pasture-land. The houses were differently constructed, and were more generally surrounded by tall trees. Our horses carried us somewhat fleetly along a good, broad, and well-conditioned road. Nothing particularly arrested our attention till we reached _Bischoffsheim, à la haute monté_; where the general use of the German language soon taught us the value of our laquais; who, from henceforth, will be often called by his baptismal name of Charles. At Bischoffsheim, while fresh horses were being put to, I went to look at the church; an humble edifice--but rather picturesquely situated. In my way thither I passed, with surprise, a great number of _Jews_ of both sexes; loitering in all directions. I learnt that this place was the prescribed _limits_ of their peregrinations; and that they were not suffered, by law, to travel beyond it: but whether this law restricted them from entering Suabia, or Bavaria, I could not learn. I approached the church, and with the aid of a good-natured verger, who happened luckily to speak French, I was conducted all over the interior--which was sufficiently neat. But the object of my peculiar astonishment was, that Jews, Protestants, and Catholics, all flocked alike, and frequently, at the SAME TIME, to exercise their particular forms of worship within this church!--a circumstance, almost partaking of the felicity of an Utopian commonwealth. I observed, indeed, a small crucifix upon the altar, which confirmed me in the belief that the Lutheran worship, according to the form of the Augsbourg confession, was practised here; and the verger told me there was no other place of worship in the village. His information might be deceitful or erroneous; but it is to the honour of his character that I add, that, on offering him a half florin for his trouble in shewing me the church, he seemed to think it a point of conscience _not_ to receive it. His refusal was mild but firm--and he concluded by saying, gently repelling the hand which held the money, "jamais, jamais!" Is it thus, thought I to myself, that "they order things in" Germany? The sun had set, and the night was coming on apace, after we left _Bischoffsheim_, and turned from the high road on the left, leading to Rastadt to take the right, for _Baden_. For the advantage of a nearer cut, we again turned to the right--and passed through a forest of about a league in length. It was now quite dark and late: and if robbers were abroad, this surely was the hour and the place for a successful attack upon defenceless travellers. The postboy struck a light, to enjoy the comfort of his pipe, which he quickly put to his mouth, and of which the light and scent were equally cheering and pleasant. We were so completely hemmed in by trees, that their branches brushed strongly in our faces, as we rolled swiftly along. Every thing was enveloped in silence and darkness: but the age of banditti, as well as of chivalry--at least in Germany--appears to be "gone." We sallied forth from the wood unmolested; gained again the high road; and after discerning some lights at a distance, which our valet told us (to our great joy) were the lights of BADEN, we ascended and descended--till, at midnight, we entered the town. On passing a bridge, upon which I discerned a whole-length statue of _St. Francis_, (with the infant Christ in his arms) we stopped, to the right, at the principal hotel, of which I have forgotten the name; but of which, one Monsieur or Le Baron Cotta, a bookseller of this town, is said to be the proprietor. The servants were yet stirring: but the hotel was so crowded that it was impossible to receive us. We pushed on quickly to another, of which I have also forgotten the name--and found the principal street almost entirely filled by the carriages of visitors. Here again we were told there was no room for us. Had it not been for our valet, we must have slept in the open street; but he recollected a third inn, whither we went immediately, and to our joy found just accommodation sufficient. We saw the carriage safely put into the remise, and retired to rest. The next morning, upon looking out of window, every thing seemed to be faëry land. I had scarcely ever before viewed so beautiful a spot. I found the town of Baden perfectly surrounded by six or seven lofty, fir-clad hills, of tapering forms, and of luxuriant verdure. Thus, although compared with such an encircling belt of hills, Baden may be said to lie in a hollow--it is nevertheless, of itself, upon elevated ground; commanding views of lawns, intersected by gravel walks; of temples, rustic benches, and detached buildings of a variety of description. Every thing, in short, bespeaks nature improved by art; and every thing announced that I was in a place frequented by the rich, the fashionable, and the gay. I was not long in finding out the learned and venerable SCHWEIGHÆUSER, who had retired here, for a few weeks, for the benefit of the waters--which flow from _hot_ springs, and which are said to perform wonders. Rheumatism, debility, ague, and I know not what disorders, receive their respective and certain cures from bathing in these tepid waters. I found the Professor in a lodging house, attached to the second hotel which we had visited on our arrival. I sent up my name, with a letter of introduction which I had received from his Son. I was made most welcome. In this celebrated Greek scholar, and editor of some of the most difficult ancient Greek authors, I beheld a figure advanced in years--somewhere about seventy-five--tall, slim, but upright, and firm upon his legs: with a thin, and at first view, severe countenance--but, when animated by conversation, and accompanied by a clear and melodious voice, agreeable, and inviting to discourse. The Professor was accompanied by one of his daughters; strongly resembling her brother, who had shewn me so much kindness at Strasbourg. She told me her father was fast recovering strength; and the old gentleman, as well as his daughter, strongly invited us to dinner; an invitation which we were compelled to decline. On leaving, I walked nearly all over the town, and its immediate environs: but my first object was the CHURCH, upon the top of the hill; from which the earliest (_Protestant_) congregation were about to depart--not before I arrived in time to hear some excellently good vocal and instrumental music, from the front seat of a transverse gallery. There was much in this church which had an English air about it: but my attention was chiefly directed to some bronze monuments towards the eastern extremity, near the altar; and fenced off, if I remember rightly, by some rails from the nave and side aisles. Of these monuments, the earliest is that of _Frederick, Bishop of Treves_. He died in 1517, in his 59th year. The figure of him is recumbent: with a mitre on his head, and a quilted mail for his apron. The body is also protected, in parts, with plate armour. He wears a ring upon each of the first three fingers of his right hand. It is an admirable piece of workmanship: bold, sharp, correct, and striking in all its parts. Near this episcopal monument is another, also of bronze, of a more imposing character; namely, of _Leopold William Margrave or Duke of Baden_, who died in 1671, and of the _Duchess_, his wife. The figure of Leopold, evidently a striking portrait, is large, heavy, and ungracious; but that of his wife makes ample amends--for a more beautifully expressive and interesting bronze figure, has surely never been reared upon a monumental pedestal. She is kneeling, and her hands are closed--in the act of prayer. The head is gently turned aside, as well as inclined: the mouth is very beautiful, and has an uncommon sweetness of expression: the hair, behind, is singular but not inelegant. The following is a part of the inscription: "_Vivit post funera virtus. Numinis hinc pietas conjugis inde trahit_." I would give half a dozen ducats out of the supplemental supply of Madame Francs to have a fine and faithful copy of this very graceful and interesting monumental figure. As I left the church, the second (_Catholic_) congregation was entering for divine worship. Meanwhile the heavens were "black with clouds;" the morning till eleven o'clock, having been insufferably hot and a tremendous thunder storm--which threatened to deluge the whole place with rain--moved, in slow and sullen majesty, quite round and round the town, without producing any other effect than that of a few sharp flashes, and growling peals, at a distance. But the darkened and flitting shadows upon the fir trees, on the hills, during the slow wheeling of the threatening storm, had a magnificently picturesque appearance. The walks, lawns, and rustic benches about Baden, are singularly pretty and convenient. Here was a play-house; there, a temple; yonder, a tavern, whither the _Badenois_ resorted to enjoy their Sunday dinner. One of these taverns was unusually large and convenient. I entered, as a stranger, to look around me: and was instantly struck by the notes of the deepest-toned bass voice I had ever heard--accompanied by some rapidly executed passages upon the harp. These ceased--and the softer strains of a young female voice succeeded. Yonder was a _master singer_[1]--as I deemed him--somewhat stooping from age; with white hairs, but with a countenance strongly characteristic of intellectual energy of _some_ kind. He was sitting in a chair. By the side of him stood the young female, about fourteen, from whose voice the strains, just heard, had proceeded. They sang alternately, and afterwards together: the man holding down his head as he struck the chords of his harp with a bold and vigorous hand. I learnt that they were uncle and niece. I shall not readily forget the effect of these figures, or of the songs which they sang; especially the sonorous notes of the mastersinger, or minstrel. He had a voice of most extraordinary compass. I quickly perceived that I was now in the land of music; but the guests seemed to be better pleased with their food than with the songs of this old bard, for he had scarcely received a half florin since I noticed him. Professor Schweighæuser came to visit me at the appointed hour of six, in order to have an evening stroll together to a convent, about two miles off, which is considered to be the fashionable evening walk and ride of the place. I shall long have reason to remember this walk; as well from the instructive discourse of my venerable and deeply learned guide, as from the beauty of the scenery and variety of the company. As the heat of the day subsided, the company quitted their tables in great crowds. The mall was full. Here was Eugene Beauharnois, drawn in a carriage by four black steeds, with traces of an unusual length between the leaders and wheel horses. A grand Duke was parading to the right: to the left, a Marchioness was laughing _à pleine gorge_. Here walked a Count, and there rode a General. Bavarians, Austrians, French, and English--intermixed with the tradesmen of Baden, and the rustics of the adjacent country--all, glittering in their gayest sabbath-attires, mingled in the throng, and appeared to vie with each other in gaiety and loudness of talk. We gained a more private walk, within a long avenue of trees; where a small fountain, playing in the midst of a grove of elm and beech, attracted the attention both of the Professor and ourselves. "It is here," observed the former--"where I love to come and read your favourite Thomson." He then mentioned Pope, and quoted some verses from the opening of his Essay on Man--and also declared his particular attachment to Young and Akenside. "But our Shakspeare and Milton, Sir--what think you of these?" "They are doubtless very great and superior to either: but if I were to say that I understood them as well, I should say what would be an untruth: and nothing is more disgusting than an affectation of knowing what you have, comparatively, very little knowledge of." We continued our route towards the convent, at a pretty brisk pace; with great surprise, on my part, at the firm and rapid movements of the Professor. Having reached the convent, we entered, and were admitted within the chapel. The nuns had just retired; but we were shewn the partition of wood which screens them most effectually from the inquisitive eyes of the rest of the congregation. We crossed a shallow, but rapidly running brook, over which was only one plank, of the ordinary width, to supply the place of a bridge. The venerable Professor led the way--tripping along so lightly, and yet so surely, as to excite our wonder. We then mounted the hill on the opposite side of the convent; where there are spiral, and neatly trimmed, gravel walks, which afford the means of an easy and pleasant ascent--but not altogether free from a few sharp and steep turnings. From the summit of this hill, the Professor bade me look around, and view a valley which was the pride of the neighbourhood, and which was considered to have no superior in Suabia. It was certainly very beautiful--luxuriant in pasture and woodland scenery, and surrounded by hills crowned with interminable firs. As we descended, the clock of the convent struck eight, which was succeeded by the tolling of the convent bell. After a day of oppressive heat, with a lowering atmosphere threatening instant tempest, it was equally, grateful and refreshing to witness a calm blue sky, chequered by light fleecy clouds, which, as they seemed to be scarcely impelled along by the evening breeze, were fringed in succession by the hues of a golden sun-set. The darkening shadows of the trees added to the generally striking effect of the scene. As we neared the town, I perceived several of the common people, apparently female rustics, walking in couples, or in threes, with their arms round each others necks, joining in some of the popular airs of their country. The off-hand and dextrous manner in which they managed the _second parts_, surprised and delighted me exceedingly. I expressed my gratification to Mr. Schweighæuser, who only smiled at my wondering simplicity. "If _these_ delight you so much, what would you say to our _professors_?"--observed he. "Possibly, I might not like them quite so well," replied I. The professor pardoned such apparent heresy; and we continued to approach the town. We were thirsty from our walk, and wished to enter the tea gardens to partake of refreshment. Our guide became here both our interpreter and best friend; for he insisted upon treating us. We retired into a bocage, and partook of one of the most delicious bottles of white wine which I ever remember to have tasted. He was urgent for a second bottle; but I told him we were very sober Englishmen. In our way home, the discourse fell upon literature, and I was anxious to obtain from our venerable companion an account of his early studies, and partialities for the texts of such Greek authors as he had edited. He told me that he was first put upon collations of Greek MSS. by our _Dr. Musgrave_, for his edition of _Euripides_; and that he dated, from that circumstance, his first and early love of classical research. This attachment had increased upon him as he became older--had "grown with his growth, and strengthened with his strength"--and had induced him to grapple with the unsettled, and in parts difficult, texts of _Appian_, _Epictetus_, and _Athenæus_. He spoke with a modest confidence of his _Herodotus_--just published: said that he was even then meditating a _second_ Latin version of it: and observed that, for the more perfect execution of the one now before the public, he had prepared himself by a diligent perusal of the texts of the purer Latin historians. We had now entered the town, and it was with regret that I was compelled to break off such interesting conversation. In spite of the lateness of the hour (ten o'clock) and the darkness of the evening, the worthy old Grecian would not suffer me to accompany him home--although the route to his house was devious, and in part precipitously steep, and the Professor's sight was not remarkably good. When we parted, it was agreed that I should breakfast with him on the morrow, at eight o'clock, as we intended to quit Baden at nine. The next morning, I was true to the hour. The Professor's coffee, bread, butter, and eggs were excellent. Having requested our valet to settle every thing at the inn, and bring the carriage and horses to the door of M. Schweighæuser by nine o'clock, I took a hearty leave of our amiable and venerable host, accompanied with mutual regrets at the shortness of the visit--and with a resolution to cultivate an acquaintance so heartily began. As we got into the carriage, I held up his portrait which Mr. Lewis had taken,[2] and told him "he would be neither out of _sight_ nor out of _mind_" He smiled graciously--waved his right hand from the balcony upon which he stood--and by half-past nine we found the town of Baden in our rear. I must say that I never left a place, which had so many attractions, with keener regret, and a more fixed determination to revisit it. That "revisit" may possibly never arise; but I recommend all English travellers to spend a week, at the least, at Baden--called emphatically, _Baden-Baden_. The young may be gratified by the endless amusements of society, in many of its most polished forms. The old may be delighted by the contemplation of nature in one of her most picturesque aspects, as well as invigorated by the waters which gush in boiling streams from her rocky soil. I shall not detain you a minute upon the road from Baden to this place; although we were nearly twenty-four hours so detained. _Rastadt_ and _Karlsruhe_ are the only towns worth mentioning in the route. The former is chiefly distinguished for its huge and tasteless castle or palace--a sort of Versailles in miniature; and the latter is singularly pleasing to an Englishman's eye, from the trim and neat appearance of the houses, walks, and streets; which latter have the footpaths almost approaching to our pavement. You enter and quit the town through an avenue of lofty and large stemmed poplars, at least a mile long. The effect, although formal, is pleasing. They were the loftiest poplars which I had ever beheld. The churches, public buildings, gardens, and streets (of which _latter_ the principal is a mile long) have all an air of tidiness and comfort; although the very sight of them is sufficient to freeze the blood of an antiquary. There is nothing, apparently, more than ninety-nine years old! We dined at Karlsruhe, and slept at _Schweiberdingen_, one stage on this side of Stuttgart: but for two or three stages preceding Stuttgart, we were absolutely astonished at the multitude of apple-trees, laden, even to the breaking down of the branches, with goodly fruit, just beginning to ripen: and therefore glittering in alternate hues of red and yellow--all along the road-side as well as in private gardens. The vine too was equally fruitful, and equally promising of an abundant harvest. There was a drizzling rain when we entered THIS TOWN. We passed the long range of royal stables to the right, and the royal palace to the left; the latter, with the exception of a preposterously large gilt crown placed upon the central part of a gilt cushion, in every respect worthy of a royal residence. On, driving to the hotel of the _Roi d'Angleterre_, we found every room and every bed occupied; and were advised to go to the place from whence I now address you. But the _Roman Emperor_ is considered to be more fashionable: that is to say, the charges are more extravagant. Another time, however, I will visit neither the one nor the other; but take up my quarters at the _King of Wirtemberg_--the neatest, cleanliest, and most comfortable hotel in Stuttgart. In _this_ house there is too much noise and bustle for a traveller whose nerves are liable to be affected. As a whole, Stuttgart is a thoroughly dull place. Its immediate environs are composed of vine-covered hills, which, at this season of the year, have an extremely picturesque appearance; but, in winter, when nothing but a fallow-like looking earth is visible, the effect must be very dreary. This town is large, and the streets--especially the _Könings-strasse,_ or King-Street,--are broad and generally well paved. The population may be about twenty-two thousand. He who looks for antiquities, will be cruelly disappointed; with the exception of the _Hôtel de Ville_, which is placed near a church, and more particularly of a _Crucifix_--there is little or nothing to satisfy the hungry cravings of a thorough-bred English Antiquary. The latter is of stone, of a rough grain, and sombre tint: and the figures are of the size of life. They are partly mutilated; especially the right leg of our Saviour, and the nose of St. John. Yet you will not fail to distinguish, particularly from the folds of the drapery, that precise character of art which marked the productions both of the chisel and of the pencil in the first half of the sixteenth century. The Christ is, throughout, even including the drapery, finely marked; and the attitude of the Virgin, in looking up, has great expression. She embraces intensely the foot of the cross; while her eyes and very soul seem to be as intensely rivetted to her suffering and expiring Son. I was not long in introducing myself to M. LE BRET, the head Librarian; for the purpose of gaining admission to the PUBLIC LIBRARY. That gentleman and myself have not only met, but met frequently and cordially. Each interview only increased the desire for a repetition of it: and the worthy and well-informed Head Librarian has partaken of a trout and veal dinner with me, and shared in one bottle of _Fremder Wein_, and in another of _Ordinärer Wein_.[3] We have, in short, become quite sociable; and I will begin by affirming, that, a more thoroughly competent, active, and honourable officer, for the situation which he occupies, his Majesty the King of Würtemberg does not possess in any nook, corner, or portion of his Suabian dominions. I will prove what I say at the point of--my pen. Yet more extraordinary intelligence. A "deed of note" has been performed; and to make the mystery more mysterious, you are to know that I have paid my respects to the King, at his late levee; the first which has taken place since the accouchement of the Queen.[4] And what should be the _object_ of this courtly visit? Truly, nothing more or less than to agitate a question respecting the possession of _two old editions of Virgil_, printed in the year 1471. But let me be methodical. When I parted from Lord Spencer on this "Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour," I was reminded by his Lordship of the second edition of the _Virgil_ printed at Rome by _Sweynheym_ and _Pannartz_, and of another edition, _printed by Adam_, in 1471, both being in the public library of this place:--but, rather with a desire, than any seriously-grounded hope, on his part of possessing them. Now, when we were running down upon _Nancy_--as described in a recent despatch,[5] I said to Mr. Lewis, on obtaining a view of what I supposed might be the Vosges, that, "behind the Vosges was the _Rhine_, and on the other side of the Rhine was _Stuttgart!_ and it was at Stuttgart that I should play my first trump-card in the bibliographical pack which I carried about me." But all this seemed mystery, or methodised madness, to my companion. However, I always bore his Lordship's words in mind--and something as constantly told me that I should gain possession of these long sought after treasures: but in fair and honourable combat: such as beseemeth a true bibliographical Knight. Having proposed to visit the public library on the morrow--and to renew the visit as often and as long as I pleased--I found, on my arrival, the worthy Head Librarian, seriously occupied in a careful estimate of the value of the Virgils in question--and holding up _Brunet's Manuel du Libraire_ in his right hand--"Tenez, mon ami," exclaimed he, "vous voyez que la seconde édition de Virgile, imprimée par vos amis Sweynheym et Pannartz, est encore plus rare que la premiére." I replied that "c'étoit la fantasie seule de l'auteur." However, he expressed himself ready to receive preliminaries, which would be submitted to the Minister of the Interior, and by him--to the King; for that the library was the exclusive property of his Majesty. It was agreed, in the first instance, that the amount of the pecuniary value of the two books should be given in modern books of our own country; and I must do M. Le Bret the justice to say, that, having agreed upon the probable pecuniary worth, he submitted a list of books, to be received in exchange, which did equal honour to his liberality and judgment. I have said something about the _local_ of this Public Library, and of its being situated in the market-place.[6] This market-place, or square, is in the centre of the town; and it is the only part, in the immediate vicinity of which the antiquarian's eye is cheered by a sight of the architecture of the sixteenth century. It is in this immediate vicinity, that the _Hôtel de Ville_ is situated; a building, full of curious and interesting relics of sculpture in wood and stone. Just before it, is a fountain of black marble, where the women come to fetch water, and the cattle to drink. Walking in a straight line with the front of the public library (which is at right angles with the Hôtel de Ville) you gain the best view of this Hotel, in conjunction with the open space, or market place, and of the churches in the distance. About this spot, Mr. Lewis fixed himself, with his pencil and paper in hand, and produced a drawing from which I select the following felicitous portion. [Illustration: Drawing] But to return to the Public Library. You are to know therefore, that The Public Library of Stuttgart contains, in the whole, about 130,000 volumes. Of these, there are not fewer than 8200 volumes relating to the _Sacred Text_: exclusively of duplicates. This library has been indeed long celebrated for its immense collection of _Bibles_. The late King of Würtemberg, but more particularly his father, was chiefly instrumental to this extraordinary collection:--and yet, of the very earlier Latin impressions, they want the _Mazarine_, or the _Editio Princeps_; and the third volume of _Pfister's_ edition. Indeed the first volume of their copy of the latter wants a leaf or two of prefatory matter. They have two copies of the first _German Bible_, by _Mentelin_[7]--of which _one_ should be disposed of, for the sake of contributing to the purchase of the earliest edition of the Latin series. Each copy is in the original binding; but they boast of having a _complete series of German Bibles_ before the time of Luther; and of Luther's earliest impression of 1524, printed by Peypus, they have a fine copy UPON VELLUM, like that in the Althorp Library; but I think taller. Of Fust's Bible of 1462, there is but an indifferent and cropt copy, upon paper; but of the _Polish Bible_ of 1563, there is a very fine one, in the first oaken binding. Of _English Bibles_, there is no edition before that of 1541, of which the copy happens to be imperfect. They have a good large copy, in the original binding, of the _Sclavonian Bible_ of 1581. Yet let me not dismiss this series of earlier Bibles, printed in different languages, without noticing the copies of _Italian versions_ of August and October 1471. Of the August impression, there is unluckily only the second volume; but such _another_ second volume will not probably be found in any public or private library in Europe. It is just as if it had come fresh from the press of _Vindelin de Spira_, its printer. Some of the capital letters are illuminated in the sweetest manner possible. The leaves are white, unstained, and crackling; and the binding is of wood. Of the _October_ impression, the copy is unequal: that is to say, the first volume is cruelly cut, but the second is fine and tall. It is in blue morocco binding. I must however add, in this biblical department, that they possess a copy of our _Walton's Polyglott_ with the _original dedication_ to King Charles II.; of the extreme rarity of which M. Le Bret was ignorant.[8] I now come to the CLASSICS. Of course the _two Virgils_ of 1471 were the first objects of my examination. The _Roman_ edition was badly bound in red morocco; that of _Adam_ was in its original binding of wood. When I opened the _latter_, it was impossible to conceal my gratification. I turned to M. Le Bret, and then to the book--and to the Head Librarian, and to the book--again and again! "How now, Mons. Le Bibliographe?" (exclaimed the professor--for M. Le Bret is a Professor of belles-lettres), "I observe that you are perfectly enchanted with what is before you?" There was no denying the truth of the remark--and I could plainly discern that the worthy Head Librarian was secretly enjoying the attestations of my transport. "The more I look at these two volumes (replied I, very leisurely and gravely,) the more I am persuaded that they will become the property of Earl Spencer." M. Le Bret laughed aloud at the strangeness of this reply. I proceeded to take a particular account of them.[9] Here is an imperfect copy of an edition of _Terence_, by _Reisinger_, in folio; having only 130 leaves, and twenty-two lines in a full page.[10] It is the first copy of this edition which I ever saw; and I am much deceived if it be exceeded by any edition of the same author in rarity: and when I say this, I am not unmindful of the Editio Princeps of it by _Mentelin_--which happens _not_ to be here. There is, however, a beautifully white copy of this latter printer's Editio Princeps of _Valerius Maximus_; but not so tall as the largest of the two copies of this same edition which I saw at Strasbourg. Of the _Offices of Cicero_, of 1466, there is rather a fine tall copy (within a quarter of an inch of ten inches high) UPON VELLUM; in the original wooden binding. The first two or three leaves have undergone a little martyrdom, by being scribbled upon. Of J. de Spira's edition of the _Epistles of Cicero_, of 1469--having the colophon on the recto of the last leaf--here is a fine, broad-margined copy, which however ought to be cleansed from the stains which disfigure it. I was grieved to see so indifferent a copy of the Edit. Prin. of _Tacitus_: but rejoiced at beholding so large and beautiful a one (in its original wooden binding) of the _Lucan_ of 1475, with the Commentary of Omnibonus; printed as I conceive, by _I. de Colonia and M. de Gherretzem_.[11] But I had nearly forgotten to acquaint you with a remarkably fine, thick-leaved, crackling copy--yet perhaps somewhat cropt--of Cardinal _Bessarion's Epistles_, printed by Sweynheym and Pannartz at Rome in 1469. It is in old gilt edges, in a sort of binding of wood. I now come to the notice of a few choice and rare _Italian books_: and first, for _Dante_. Here is probably the rarest of all the earlier editions of this poet: that is to say, the edition printed at Naples by Tuppo, in two columns, having forty-two lines in a full column. At the end of the _Inferno_, we read "Gloria in excelsis Deo," in the gothic letter; the text being uniformly roman. At the end of the _Purgatorio_: SOLI DEO GLORIA. Erubescat Judeus Infelir. At the end of the _Paradiso_: DEO GRATIAS--followed by Tuppo's address to Honofrius Carazolus of Naples. A register is on the recto of the following and last leaf. This copy is large, but in a dreadfully loose, shattered, and dingy state--in the original wooden binding. So precious an edition should be instantly rebound. Here is the Dante of 1478, with the _Commentary of Guido Terzago, printed at Milan in_ 1478, folio. The text of the poet is in a fine, round, and legible roman type--that of the commentator, in a small and disagreeable gothic character. _Petrarch_ shall follow. The rarest edition of him, which I have been able to put my hand upon, is that printed at Bologna in 1476 with the commentary of Franciscus Philelphus. Each sonnet is followed by its particular comment. The type is a small roman, not very unlike the smallest of Ulric Han, or Reisinger's usual type, and a full page-contains forty-one lines. Of _Boccaccio_, here is nothing which I could observe particularly worthy of description, save the very rare edition of the _Nimphale_ of 1477, printed by _Bruno Valla of Piedmont_, and _Thomaso of Alexandria._ A full page has thirty-two lines. I shall conclude the account of the rarer books, which it was my chance to examine in the Public Library of Stuttgart, with what ought perhaps, more correctly, to have formed the earliest articles in this partial catalogue:--I mean, the _Block Books_. Here is a remarkably beautiful, and uncoloured copy of the first Latin edition of the _Speculum Humanæ Salvationis_. It _has_ been bound--although it be now unbound, and has been unmercifully cut. As far as I can trust to my memory, the impressions of the cuts in this copy are sharper and clearer than any which I have seen. Of the _Apocalypse_, there is a copy of the second edition, wanting a leaf. It is sound and clean, but coloured and cut. Unbound, but formerly bound. Here is a late German edition of the _Ars Moriendi_, having thirty-four lines on the first page. Of the _Historia Beatæ Virginis_, here is a copy of what I should consider to be the second Latin edition; precisely like a German edition of the _Biblia Pauperum_, with the express date of 1470,--which is also here. The similarity is in the style of art and character of the type, which latter has much of a _Bamberg_ cast about it. But of the _Latin Biblia Pauperum_ here is a copy of the first edition, very imperfect, and in wretched condition. And thus much, or rather thus little, for _Block Books._ A word or two now for the MANUSCRIPTS--which, indeed, according to the order usually observed in these Letters, should have preceded the description of the printed books. I will begin with a _Psalter,_ in small folio, which I should have almost the hardihood to pronounce of the _tenth_--but certainly of the early part of the _eleventh_--century. The text is executed in lower-case roman letters, large and round. It abounds with illuminations, of about two inches in height, and six in length--running horizontally, and embedded as it were in the text. The figures are, therefore, necessarily small. Most of these illuminations, have a greenish back-ground. The armour is generally in the Roman fashion: the helmets being of a low conical form, and the shields having a large knob in the centre. Next comes an _Evangelistarium_ "seculo undecimo aut circà annum 1100:--pertinuit ad Monasterium Gengensbachense in Germania, ut legitur in margine primi folii." The preceding memorandum is written at the beginning of the volume, but the inscription to which it alludes has been partly destroyed--owing to the tools of a modern book-binder. The scription of this old MS. is in a thick, lower case, roman letter. The illuminations are interesting: especially that of the Scribe, at the beginning, who is represented in a white and delicately ornamented gown, or roquelaure, with gold, red, and blue borders, and a broad black border at bottom. The robe should seem to be a monastic garment: but the figure is probably that of St. Jerom. It is standing before an opened book. The head is shaved at top; an azure glory is round the head. The back-ground of the whole is gold, with an arabesque border. I wish I could have spared time to make a facsimile of it. There are also figures of the four Evangelists, in the usual style of art of this period; the whole in fine preservation. The capital initials are capricious, but tasteful. We observe birds, beasts, dragons, &c. coiled up in a variety of whimsical forms. The L. at the beginning of the "Liber Generationis," is, as usual in highly executed works of art of this period, peculiarly elaborate and striking. A _Psalter_, of probably a century later, next claims our attention. It is a small folio, executed in a large, bold, gothic character. The illuminations are entirely confined to the capital initials, which represent some very grotesque, and yet picturesque grouping of animals and human figures--all in a state of perfect preservation. The gold back-grounds are not much raised, but of a beautiful lustre. It is apparently imperfect at the end. The _binding_ merits distinct notice. In the centre of one of the outside covers, is a figure of the Almighty, sitting; in that of the other, are the Virgin and Infant Christ, also sitting. Each subject is an illumination of the time of those in the volume itself; and each is surrounded by pencil-coloured ornaments, divided into squares, by pieces of tin, or lead soldered. A sheet of _horn_ is placed over the whole of the exterior cover, to protect it from injury. This binding is uncommon, but I should apprehend it to be not earlier than the very commencement of the xvth century. I have not yet travelled out of the twelfth century; and mean to give you some account of rather a splendid and precious MS. entitled _Vitæ Sanctorum_--supposed to be of the same period. It is said to have been executed under the auspices of the _Emperor Conrad,_ who was chosen in 1169 and died in 1193. It is an elegant folio volume. The illuminations are in outline; in red, brown, or blue--firmly and truly touched, with very fanciful inventions in the forms of the capital letters. The initial letter prefixed to the account of the _Assumption of the Virgin_, is abundantly clever and whimsical; while that prefixed to the Life of _St. Aurelius_ has even an imposing air of magnificence, and is the most important in the volume. Here is a curious _History of the Bible, in German verse_, as I learn, by Rudolph, Count of Hohen Embs. Whether "curious" or not, I cannot tell; but I can affirm that, since opening the famous MS. of the Roman d'Alexandre,[12] at Oxford, I have not met with a finer, or more genuine MS. than the present. It is a noble folio volume; highly, although in many places coarsely, adorned. The text is executed in a square, stiff, German letter, in double columns; and the work was written (as M. Le Bret informed me, and as warranted by the contents) "in obedience to the orders of the Emperor Conrad, son of the Emperor Frederick II: the greater part of it being composed after the chronicle of Geoffrey de Viterbe." To specify the illuminations would be an endless task. At the end of the MS. are the following colophonic verses: _Uf den fridag was sts Brictius Do nam diz buch ende alsus Nach godis geburten dusint jar Dar su ccc dni vnx achtzig als eyn har_. the "_ccc_" are interlined, in red ink: but the whole inscription implies that the book was finished in 1381, on Friday, the day of St. Brictius. It follows therefore that it could not have been written during the life-time of Conrad IV. who was elected Emperor in 1250. This interesting MS. is in a most desirable condition. There are two or three _Missals_ deserving only of brief notice. One, of the XIVth century, is executed in large gothic letter; having an exceedingly vivid and fresh illumination of a crucifixion, but in bad taste, opposite the well-known passage of "Te igitur clementissime," &c. It is bound in red satin. Two missals of the xvth century--of which one presents only a few interesting prints connected with art. It is ornamented in a sort of bistre outline, preparatory to colouring--of which numerous examples may be seen in the Breviary of the Duke of Bedford in the Royal Library at Paris.[13] I examined half a dozen more Missals, which the kind activity of M. Le Bret had placed before me, and among them found nothing deserving of particular observation,--except a thick, short, octavo volume, in the German language, with characteristic and rather clever embellishments; especially in the borders. There is a folio volume entitled "_La Vie, Mort, et Miracles de St. Jerome_." The first large illumination, which is prettily composed, is unluckily much injured in some parts. It represents the author kneeling, with his cap in his right hand, and a book bound in black, with gold clasps and knobs, in the other. A lady appears to receive this presentation-volume very graciously; but unfortunately her countenance is obliterated. Two female attendants are behind her: the whole, gracefully composed. I take this MS. to be of the end of the xvth. century. There is a most desirable MS. of the _Roman de la Rose_--of the end of the xivth century; in double columns; with some of the illuminations, about two inches square, very sweet and interesting. That, on the recto of folio xiiij, is quite charming. The "testament" of the author, J. de Meun, follows; quietly decorated, within flowered borders. The last illumination but one, of our Saviour, sitting upon a rainbow is very singular. This MS. is in its old binding of wood. A few _miscellaneous articles_ may be here briefly noticed. First: a German metrical version of the Game of Chess, moralized, called _Der Schachzabel._ This is an extraordinary, and highly illuminated MS. upon paper; written in a sort of secretary gothic hand, in short rhyming verse, as I conceive about the year 1400, or 1450. The embellishments are large and droll, and in several of them we distinguish that thick, and shining, but cracked coat of paint which is upon the old print of St. Bridget, in Lord Spencer's collection.[14] Among the more striking illuminations is the _Knight_ on horseback, in silver armour, about nine inches high--a fine showy fellow! His horse has silver plates over his head. Many of the pieces in the game are represented in a highly interesting manner, and the whole is invaluable to the antiquary. This MS. is in boards. Second: a German version of _Maundeville_, of the date of 1471, with curious, large, and grotesque illuminations, of the coarsest execution. It is written in double columns, in a secretary gothic hand, upon paper. The heads of the Polypheme tribe are ludicrously horrible. Third:--_Herren Duke of Brunswick_, or the _Chevalier au Lion_,--a MS. relating to this hero, of the date of 1470. A lion accompanies him every where. Among the embellishments, there is a good one of this animal leaping upon a tomb and licking it--as containing the mortal remains of his master. Fourth: a series of German stanzas, sung by birds, each bird being represented, in outline, before the stanza appropriated to it. In the whole, only three leaves. The "last and not least" of the MSS. which I deem it worthy to mention, is an highly illuminated one of _St. Austin upon the Psalms_. This was the _first_ book which I remembered to have seen, upon the continent, from the library of the famous _Corvinus King of Hungary,_ about which certain pages have discoursed largely. It was also an absolutely beautiful book: exhibiting one of the finest specimens of art of the latter end of the XVth century. The commentary of the Saint begins on the recto of the second leaf, within such a rich, lovely, and exquisitely executed border--as almost made me forget the embellishments in the _Sforziada_ in the Royal Library of France.[15] The border in question is a union of pearls and arabesque ornaments quite standing out of the background ... which latter has the effect of velvet. The arms, below, are within a double border of pearls, each pair of pearls being within a gold circle upon an ultramarine ground. The heads and figures have not escaped injury, but other portions of this magical illumination have been rubbed or partly obliterated. A ms. note, prefixed by M. Le Bret, informs us, in the opinion of its writer, that this illumination was the work of one "_Actavantes de Actavantibus of Florence_,--who lived towards the end of the XVth century," and who really seems to have done a great deal for Corvinus. The initial letters, throughout this volume, delicately cross-barred in gold, with little flowers and arabesques, &c. precisely resemble those in the MS. of Mr. Hibbert.[16] Such a white, snowy page, as the one just in part described, can scarcely be imagined by the uninitiated in ancient illuminated MSS. The binding, in boards covered with leather, has the original ornaments, of the time of Corvinus, which are now much faded. The fore-edges of the leaves preserve their former gilt-stamped ornaments. Upon the whole--an ALMOST MATCHLESS book! Such, my good friend, are the treasures, both in MS. and in print, which a couple of morning's application, in the Public Library of Stuttgart, have enabled me to bring forward for your notice. A word or two, now, for the treasures of the ROYAL LIBRARY, and then for a little respite. The Library of his Majesty is in one of the side wings, or rather appurtenances, of the Palace: to the right, on looking at the front. It is on the first floor--where _all_ libraries should be placed--and consists of a circular and a parallelogram-shaped room: divided by a screen of Ionic pillars. A similar screen is also at the further end of the latter room. The circular apartment has a very elegant appearance, and contains some beautiful books chiefly of modern art. A round table is in the centre, covered with fine cloth, and the sides and pillars of the screen are painted wholly in white--as well as the room connected with it. A gallery goes along the latter, or parallelogram-shaped apartment; and there are, in the centre, two rows of book-cases, very tall, and completely filled with books. These, as well as the book-cases along the sides, are painted white. An elaborately painted ceiling, chiefly composed of human figures, forms the graphic ornament of the long library; but, unluckily, the central book-cases are so high as to cover a great portion of the painting--viewed almost in any direction. At the further end of the long library, facing the circular extremity, is a bust of the late King of Würtemberg, by Dannecker. It bears so strong a resemblance to that of our own venerable monarch, that I had considered it to be a representation of him--out of compliment to the Dowager Queen of Würtemberg, his daughter. The ceiling of this Library is undoubtedly too low for its length. But the circular extremity has something in it exceedingly attractive, and inviting to study. In noticing some of the contents of this Library, I shall correct the error committed in the account of the Public Library, by commencing here with the MANUSCRIPTS in preference to the Printed Books. The MSS. are by no means numerous, and are perhaps rather curious than intrinsically valuable. I shall begin with an account of a _Prayer-Book, or Psalter,_ in a quarto form, undoubtedly of the latter end of the XIIth century. Its state of preservation, both for illumination and scription, is quite exquisite. It appears to have been expressly executed for Herman, and Sophia his wife, King and Queen of Hungary and Bohemia--who lived at the latter end of the twelfth century. The names of these royal patrons and owners of, the volume are introduced at the end of the volume, in a sort of litany: accompanied with embellishments of the Mother of Christ, Saints and Martyrs, &c.: as thus: "_Sophia Regina Vngariæ, Regina Bohemiæ_"--"_Herman Lantgrauius Turingie, Rex Vngariæ, Rex Bohemiæ_." In the Litany, we read (of the _latter_) in the address to the Deity, "_Vt famulu tuu_ HERMANNV _in tua misericordia confidente, confortare et regere dignter:_" so that there is no doubt about the age of the MS. In the representations of the episcopal dresses, the tops of the mitres are depressed--another confirmation of the date of the book. The initial letters, and especially the B before the Psalms, are at once elegant and elaborate. Among the subjects described, the _Descent into Hell_, or rather the Place of Torment, is singularly striking and extraordinary. The text of the MS. is written in a large bold gothic letter. This volume has been recently bound in red morocco, and cruelly cut in the binding. Of course, here are some specimens of illuminated _Hours_, both in manuscript and print. In the former, I must make you acquainted with a truly beautiful volume; upon the fly leaf of which we read as follows: "I 3 F, RT, lo _Fortitudo Eius Rhodum tenuit Amadeus Graff^{9} Sauoia_." Below, "_Biblioth: Sem: Mergenth_:" then, a long German note, of which I understood not one word, and as M. Le Bret was not near me, I could not obtain the solution of it. But although I do not understand one word of this note, I do understand that this is one of the very prettiest, and most singularly illuminated Missals, which any library can possess: broad margins: vellum, white as snow in colour, and soft as that of Venice in touch! The text is written in a tall, close, gothic character--between, as I should conceive, the years 1460 and 1480. The _drolleries_ are delightfully introduced and executed. The initial letters are large and singular; the subject being executed within compartments of gothic architecture. The figures, of which these subjects are composed, are very small; generally darkly shaded, and highly relieved. They are numerous. Of these initial letters, the fifth to the ninth, inclusively, are striking: the sixth being the most curious, and the ninth the most elaborate. The binding of this volume seems to be of the sixteenth century. This is as it should be. But, more precious than either, or than both, or than three times as many of the preceding illuminated volumes--in the estimation of our friend * * * would be a MS. of which the title runs thus: "_Libri Duo de Vita_ S. WILLIBROORDI _Archiepiscopi autore humili de vita_ ALCUINI _cum prefat. ad Beonradum Archiepiscopum. Liber secundus metrice scriptus est_."[17] Then an old inscription, thus: "_Althwinus de vita Willibrordi Epi_." There can be no doubt of this MS. being at least as old as the eleventh century. The PRINTED BOOKS--at least the account of such as seemed to demand a more particular examination, will not occupy a very great share of your attention. I will begin with a pretty little VELLUM COPY of the well-known _Hortulus Animæ_, of the date of 1498, in 12mo., printed by _Wilhelmus Schaffener de Ropperswiler,_ at _Strasbourg_. The vellum is excellent; and the wood cuts, rather plentifully sprinkled through the volume, happen fortunately to be well-coloured. This copy appears to have come from the "_Weingarth Monastery"_, with the date of 1617 upon it--as that of its having been then purchased for the monastery. It is in its original wooden binding: wanting repair. Here are a few _Roman Classics_, which are more choice than those in the Public Library: as _Reisinger's Suetonius_, in 4to. but cropt, and half bound in red morocco, with yellow sprinkled edges to the leaves--a woful specimen of the general style of binding in this library. _Lucretius_, 1486: _Manilius_, 1474: both in one volume, bound in wood--and sound and desirable copies. _Eutropius_, 1471; by Laver; a sound, desirable copy, in genuine condition. Of _Bibles_, here is the Greek Aldine folio of 1518, in frightful half binding, cropt to the quick: also an Hungarian impression of the two Books of Samuel and of Kings, of 1565, in folio--beginning: AZ KET SAMVEL: colophon: _Debreczenbe_, &c. MDLXV: in wretched half binding. The small paper of the _Latin Bibles_ of 1592, 1603. And of _Greek Testaments_ here are the first, second, fourth and fifth editions of Erasmus; the first, containing both parts, is in one volume, in original boards, or binding; a sound and clean copy: written upon, but not in a _very_ unpicturesque manner. The second edition is but an indifferent copy. The following may be considered _Miscellaneous Articles._ I will begin with the earliest. _St. Austin de Singularitate Clericorum_, printed in a small quarto volume by _Ulric Zel_, in 1467: a good, sound, but cropt copy, along with some opuscula of _Gerson_ and _Chrysostom_, also printed by Zel: these, from the Schönthal monastery. At the end of this dull collection of old theology, are a few ms. opuscula, and among them one of the _Gesta Romanorum:_ I should think of the fourteenth century. The _Wurtzburg Synod_, supposed to be printed by Reyser, towards the end of the fifteenth century; and of which there is a copy in the Public Library, as well as another in that of Strasbourg. To the antiquary, this may be a curious book. I mention it again,[18] in order to notice the name and seal of "Iohannes Fabri,--clericus Maguntin diocesz publicus imperiali auctoritate notarius, &c. Scriba iuratus"--which occur at about one fourth part of the work: as I am desirous of knowing whether this man be the same, or related to the, printer so called, who published the _Ethics of Cato_ in 1477?--of which book I omitted to mention a copy in the Public Library here.[19] Bound up with this volume is Fyner's edition of _P. Niger contra perfidos Iudæos_, 1475, folio. Fyner lived at Eislingen, in the neighbourhood of this place, and it is natural to find specimens of his press here. The _Stella Meschiah_ of 1477, is here cruelly cropt, and bound in the usually barbarous manner, with a mustard-coloured sprinkling upon the edges of the leaves. _Historie von der Melusina:_ a singular volume, in the German language, printed without date, in a thin folio. It is a book perfectly _à la_ Douce; full of whimsical and interesting wood cuts, which I do not remember to have seen in any other ancient volume. From the conclusion of the text, it appears to have been composed or finished in 1446, but I suspect the date of its typographical execution to be that of 1480 at the earliest. I looked about sharply for fine, old, mellow-tinted _Alduses:_--but to no purpose. Yet I must notice a pretty little Aldine _Petrarch_ of 1521, 12mo. bound with _Sannazarius de partu Virginis_, by the same printer, in 1527, 12mo.: in old stamped binding--but somewhat cropt. The leaves of both copies crackle lustily on turning them over. These, also, from the Weingarth monastery. I noticed a beautiful little Petrarch of 1546, 8vo. with the commentary of Velutellus; having a striking device of Neptune in the frontispiece: but no _membranaceous_ articles, of this character and period, came across my survey. I cannot, however, take leave of the Royal Library (a collection which I should think must contain 15,000 volumes) without expressing my obligations for the unrestricted privilege of examination afforded me by those who had the superintendance of it. But I begin to be wearied, and it is growing late. The account of the "court-levee," and the winding up of other Stuttgart matters, must be reserved for to-morrow. The watchman has just commenced his rounds, by announcing, as usual, the hour of _ten_--which announce is succeeded by a long (and as I learn _metrical_) exhortation--for the good folks of Stuttgart to take care of their fires and candles. I obey his injunctions; and say good night. [1] See vol. ii. p. 421. [2] [Of this PORTRAIT, which may be truly said to enrich the pages of the previous edition of the Tour, a more _liberal_ use has been made than I was prepared to grant. My worthy friends, Messrs. Treuttel, Würtz, and Richter were welcome to its republication; but a _third edition_ of it, by another hand, ought not to have been published without permission. The ORIGINAL of this Portrait has ceased to exist. After a laborious life of fourscore years, the learned Schweighæuser has departed--in the fullest maturity of reputation arising from classical attainments; to which must be added, all the excellences of a mild, affable, christian-like disposition. As a husband, a father, and a friend, none went before him: no one displayed these domestic virtues in a more perfect and more pleasing form. As a Greek Scholar and Commentator, he may be said to rank with Hemsterhusius, Wyttenbach, and Heyne. He was equally the boast of Strasbourg and the glory of his age. Never was profound learning more successfully united with "singleness of heart," and general simplicity of character. He ought to have a splendid monument (if he have it not already?) among his Fellow Worthies in the church of St. Thomas at Strasbourg. PEACE TO HIS ASHES!] [3] For the first time, my bill (which I invariably called for, and settled, every day) was presented to me in a printed form, in the _black letter_, within an ornamented border. It was entitled Rechnung von Gottlob Ernst Teichmann, zum Waldhorn in Stuttgart. The printed articles, against which blanks are left, to be filled up according to the quantity and quality of the fare, were these: Fruhstuck, Mittag-Essen, Nacht Essen, Fremder Wein, Ordinarier Wein, Verschiedenes, Logis, Feuerung, Bediente. I must be allowed to add, that the head waiter of the Waldhorn, or _Hunting Horn_, was one of the most respectably looking, and well-mannered, of his species. He spoke French fluently, but with the usual German accent. The master of the inn was coarse and bluff, but bustling and civil. He frequently devoted one of the best rooms in his house to large, roaring, singing, parties--in which he took a decided lead, and kept it up till past midnight. [4] [The late Duchess of OLDENBURG.] [5] See vol. ii. p. 356. [6] [This Public Library is now pulled down, and another erected on the site of it.] [7] In one of these copies is an undoubtedly coeval memorandum in red ink, thus: "_Explicit liber iste Anno domini Millesio quadringentissimo sexagesimosexto_ (1466) _format^{9} arte impssoria p venerabilem viru Johane mentell in argentina_," &c. I should add, that, previously to the words "_sexagesimosexto_" were those of "_quiquagesimosexto_"--which have been erased by the pen of the Scribe; but not so entirely as to be illegible. I am indebted to M. Le Bret for the information that this Bible by Mentelin is more ancient than the one, without date or place, &c. (see _Bibl. Spencer_, vol. i. p. 42, &c.) which has been usually considered to be anterior to it. M. Le Bret draws this conclusion from the comparative antiquity of the language of Mentelin's edition. [8] This was the _second_ copy, with the same original piece, which I had seen abroad; that in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris being the first. I have omitted to notice this, in my account of that Library, vol. ii. p. 156-7, &c. [9] [Both volumes will be found particularly described in the _Ædes Althorpianæ_, vol. ii. p. 285-290.] [10] Lord Spencer has recently obtained a PERFECT COPY of this most rare edition--by the purchase of the library of the Duke di Cassano, at Naples. See the _Cassano Catalogue_, p. 116. [11] A very particular description of this rare edition will be found in the _Bibl. Spencer_, vol. ii. p. 141. [12] See the _Bibliographical Decameron_, vol. i. p. cxcviii. [13] See vol. ii. p. 73. [14] See _Ottley's History of Engraving_, vol. i. p. 86; where a fac-simile of this cut is given--which, in the large paper copies, is coloured. [15] See vol. ii. p. 134-5. [16] The SFORZIADA: See the Catalogue of his Library, no. 7559. [17] The prologue of this metrical life begins thus: _Ecce tuis parui uotis uenerande sacerdos Cor quia de vro feruet amore mihi Pontificis magna wilbroodi et psulis almus Recurrens titulis inclyta gesta tuis Sit lux inferior strepitant cum murmure rauco illius egregi^{9} sermo meus meritis_ This life consists of only 11 leaves, having 23 verses in a full page. It is printed in the _Lect. Antiq. of Canisius_, vol. ii. p. 463; and the prose life is printed by _Surius_ and by _Mabillon_. [18] Before described in the _Bibl. Spenceriana_; vol. IV. p. 508. [19] The book in question has the following colophon: _Hoc opus exiguum perfecit rite iohannes Fabri: cui seruat lingonis alta lares. Ac uoluit formis ipsum fecisse casellis. M.cccc.lxxcii de mense maii_. The _s_ is very singular, being smaller than the other letters, and having a broken effect. This copy, in the Public Library at Stuttgart, is not bound, but in excellent condition. LETTER II. THE ROYAL PALACE. A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NEGOTIATION. DANNECKER THE SCULPTOR. ENVIRONS OF STUTTGART. The morrow is come; and as the morning is too rainy to stir abroad, I sit down to fulfil the promise of last night. This will be done with the greater cheerfulness and alacrity, as the evenings have been comparatively cooler, and my slumbers, in consequence, more sound and refreshing. M. LE BRET--must be the first name mentioned upon this occasion. In other words, the negotiation about the _two Virgils_, through the zeal and good management of that active Head-Librarian, began quickly to assume a most decided form; and I received an intimation from Mr. Hamilton, our Chargé d'Affaires, that the King expected to see me upon the subject at the "circle"--last Sunday evening. But before you go with me to court, I must make you acquainted with the place in which the Court is held: in other words, with the ROYAL PALACE of STUTTGART. Take away the gilt cushion and crown at the top of it, and the front façade has really the air of a royal residence. It is built of stone: massive and unpretending in its external decorations, and has two wings running at right angles with the principal front elevation. To my eye, it had, at first view, and still continues to have, more of a Palace-like look than the long but slender structure of the Tuilleries. To the left, on looking at it--or rather behind the left wing is a large, well-trimmed flower-garden, terminating in walks, and a carriage way. Just in front of this garden, before a large bason of water, and fixed upon a sort of parapet wall--is a very pleasing, colossal group of two female statues--_Pomona_ and _Flora_, as I conceive--sculptured by Dannecker. Their forms are made to intertwine very gracefully; and they are cut in a coarse, but hard and pleasingly-tinted, stone. For out-of-door figures, they are much superior to the generality of unmeaning allegorical marble statues in the gardens of the Thuilleries. The interior of the palace has portions, which may be said to verify what we have read, in boyish days, of the wonder-working powers of the lamp of Aladdin. Here are porphyry and granite, and rosewood, and satin-wood, porcelaine, and or-molu ornaments, in all their varieties of unsullied splendor. A magnificent vestibule, and marble staircase; a concert room; an assembly-room; and chamber of audience: each particularly brilliant and appropriate; while, in the latter, you observe a throne, or chair of state, of antique form, but entirely covered with curious gilt carvings--rich, without being gaudy--and striking without being misplaced. You pass on--room after room--from the ceilings of which, lustres of increasing brilliance depend; but are not disposed to make any halt till you enter a small apartment with a cupola roof--within a niche of which stands the small statue of _Cupid_; with his head inclined, and one hand raised to feel the supposed-blunted point of a dart which he holds in the other. This is called the Cupid-Room, out of compliment to DANNECKER the sculptor of the figure, who is much patronised by the Queen. A statue or two by Canova, with a tolerable portion of Gobeleine tapestry, form the principal remaining moveable pieces of furniture. A minuter description may not be necessary: the interiors of all palaces being pretty much alike--if we put pictures and statues out of the question. From the Palace, I must now conduct you to the "circle" or Drawing Room--which I attended. Mr. Hamilton was so obliging as to convey me thither. The King paid his respects personally to each lady, and was followed by the Queen. The same order was observed with the circle of gentlemen. His Majesty was dressed in what seemed to be an English uniform, and wore the star of the Order of the Bath. His figure is perhaps under the middle size, but compact, well formed, and having a gentlemanly deportment. The Queen was, questionless, the most interesting female in the circle. To an Englishman, her long and popular residence in England, rendered her doubly an object of attraction. She was superbly dressed, and yet the whole had a simple, lady-like, appearance. She wore a magnificent tiara of diamonds, and large circular diamond ear rings: but it was her _necklace_, composed of the largest and choicest of the same kind of precious stones, which flashed a radiance on the eyes of the beholder, that could scarcely be exceeded even in the court-circles of St. Petersburg. Her hair was quietly and most becomingly dressed; and with a small white fan in her hand, which she occasionally opened and shut, she saluted, and discoursed with, each visitor, as gracefully and as naturally as if she had been accustomed to the ceremony from her earliest youth. Her dark eyes surveyed each figure, quickly, from head to foot--while ... "_Favours_ to none, to all she _smiles_ extends." Among the gentlemen, I observed a young man of a very prepossessing form and manners--having seven orders, or marks of distinction hanging from his button-holes. Every body seemed anxious to exchange a word with him; and he might be at farthest in his thirtieth year. I could not learn his name, but I learnt that his _character_ was quite in harmony with his _person_: that he was gay, brave, courteous and polite: that his courage knew no bounds: that he would storm a citadel, traverse a morass, or lead on to a charge, with equal coolness, courage, and intrepidity: that repose and inaction were painful to him--but that humanity to the unfortunate, and the most inflexible attachment to relations and friends, formed, equally, distinctive marks of his character. This intelligence quite won my heart in favour of the stranger, then standing and smiling immediately before me; and I rejoiced that the chivalrous race of the _Peterboroughs_ was not yet extinct, but had taken root, and "borne branch and flower," in the soil of Suabia. When it came to my turn to be addressed, the king at once asked--"if I had not been much gratified with the books in the Public Library, and particularly with two _ancient editions_ of Virgil?" I merely indicated an assent to the truth of this remark, waiting for the conclusion to be drawn from the premises. "There has been some mention made to me (resumed his Majesty) about a proposed exchange on the part of Lord Spencer, for these two ancient editions, which appear to be wanting in his Lordship's magnificent collection. For my part, I see no objection to the final arrangement of this business--if it can be settled upon terms satisfactory to all parties." This was the very point to which I was so anxious to bring the conference. I replied, coolly and unhesitatingly, "that it was precisely as his Majesty had observed; that his own Collection was strong in _Bibles_, but comparatively weak in Ancient _Classics_: and that a diminution of the _latter_ would not be of material consequence, if, in lieu of it, there could be an increase of the _former_--so as to carry it well nigh towards perfection; that, in whatever way this exchange was effected, whether by money, or by books, in the first instance, it would doubtless be his Majesty's desire to direct the application of the one or the other to the completion of his _Theological Collection_." The King replied "he saw no objection whatever to the proposed exchange--and left the forms of carrying it into execution with his head librarian M. Le Bret." Having gained my point, it only remained to make my bow. The King then passed on to the remainder of the circle, and was quickly followed by the Queen. I heard her Majesty distinctly tell General Allan,[20] in the English language, that "she could never forget her reception in England; that the days spent there were among the happiest of her life, and that she hoped, before she died, again to visit our country." She even expressed "gratitude for the cordial manner in which she had been received, and, entertained in it."[21] The heat had now become almost insupportable; as, for the reason before assigned, every window and door was shut. However, this inconvenience, if it was severe, was luckily of short duration. A little after nine, their Majesties retired towards the door by which they had entered: and which, as it was reopened, presented, in the background, the attendants waiting to receive them. The King and Queen then saluted the circle, and retired. In ten minutes we had all retreated, and were breathing the pure air of heaven. I preferred walking home, and called upon M. Le Bret in my way. It was about half past nine only, but that philosophical bibliographer was about retiring to rest. He received me, however, with a joyous welcome: re-trimmed his lamp; complimented me upon the success of the negotiation, and told me that I might now depart in peace from Stuttgart--for that "the affair might be considered as settled."[22] I have mentioned to you, more than once, the name of DANNECKER the sculptor. It has been my good fortune to visit him, and to converse with him much at large, several times. He is one of the most unaffected of the living Phidias-tribe; resembling much, both in figure and conversation, and more especially in a pleasing simplicity of manners, our celebrated _Chantry_. Indeed I should call Dannecker, on the score of art as well as of person, rather the Chantry than the _Flaxman_ or _Canova_ of Suabia. He shewed me every part of his study; and every cast of such originals as he had executed, or which he had it in contemplation to execute. Of those that had left him, I was compelled to be satisfied with the plaster of his famous ARIADNE, reclining upon the back of a passant leopard, each of the size of life. The original belongs to a banker at Frankfort, for whom it was executed for the sum of about one thousand pounds sterling. It must be an exquisite production; for if the _plaster_ be thus interesting what must be the effect of the _marble_? Dannecker told me that the most difficult parts of the group, as to detail, were the interior of the leopard's feet, and the foot and retired drapery of the female figure--which has one leg tucked under the other. The whole composition has an harmonious, joyous effect; while health, animation, and beauty breathe in every limb and lineament of Ariadne. But it was my good fortune to witness _one_ original of Dannecker's chisel--of transcendent merit. I mean, the colossal head of SCHILLER; who was the intimate friend, and a townsman of this able sculptor. I never stood before so expressive a modern countenance. The forehead is high and wide, and the projections, over the eye-brows, are boldly, but finely and gradually, marked. The eye is rather full, but retired. The cheeks are considerably shrunk. The mouth is full of expression, and the chin somewhat elongated. The hair flows behind in a broad mass, and ends in a wavy curl upon the shoulders: not very unlike the professional wigs of the French barristers which I had seen at Paris. Upon the whole, I prefer this latter--for breadth and harmony--to the eternal conceit of the wig à la grecque. "It was so (said Dannecker) that Schiller wore his hair; and it was precisely with this physiognomical expression that he came out to me, dressed en roquelaure, from his inner apartment, when I saw him for the last time. I thought to myself--on so seeing him--(added the sculptor) that it is thus that I will chisel your bust in marble." Dannecker then requested me to draw my hand gently over the forehead--and to observe by what careful, and almost imperceptible gradations, this boldness of front had been accomplished; I listened to every word that he said about the extraordinary character then, as it were, before me, with an earnestness and pleasure which I can hardly describe; and walked round and round the bust with a gratification approaching to ecstacy. They may say what they please--at Rome or at London--but a _finer_ specimen of art, in its very highest department, and of its particular kind, the chisel of _no living_ Sculptor hath achieved. As a bust, it is perfect. It is the MAN; with all his MIND in his countenance; without the introduction of any sickly airs and graces, which are frequently the result of a predetermination to treat it--as _Phidias_ or _Praxiteles_ would have treated it! It is worth a host of such figures as that of Marshal Saxe at Strasbourg. "Would any sum induce you to part with it?"--said I, in an under tone, to the unsuspecting artist ... bethinking me, at the same time, of offering somewhere about 250 louis d'or--"None:" replied Dannecker. "I loved the original too dearly to part with this copy of his countenance, in which I have done my utmost to render it worthy of my incomparable friend." I think the artist said that the Queen had expressed a wish to possess it; but he was compelled to adhere religiously to his determination of keeping it for himself. Dannecker shewed me a plaster cast of his intended figure of CHRIST. It struck me as being of great simplicity of breadth, and majesty of expression; but perhaps the form wanted fulness--and the drapery might be a little too sparing. I then saw several other busts, and subjects, which have already escaped my recollection; but I could not but be struck with the quiet and unaffected manner in which this meritorious artist mentioned the approbation bestowed by CANOVA upon several of his performances. He is very much superior indeed to Ohmacht; but comparisons have long been considered as uncourteous and invidious--and so I will only add, that, if ever Dannecker visits England--which he half threatens to do--he shall be fêted by a Commoner, and patronised by a Duke. Meanwhile, you have here his Autograph for contemplation. [Illustration: Autograph of Dannecker] [20] Afterwards Sir Alexander Allan, Bart. I met him and Captain C * * *, of the Royal Navy, in their way to Inspruck. But Sir Alexander (than whom, I believe a worthier or a braver man never entered the profession of which he was so distinguished an ornament) scarcely survived the excursion two years. [21] The Queen of Würtemberg survived the levee, above described, only a few months. Her DEATH was in consequence of over-maternal anxiety about her children, who were ill with the measles. The queen was suddenly called from her bed on a cold night in the month of January to the chamber where her children were seriously indisposed. Forgetful of herself, of the hour, and of the season, she caught a severe cold: a violent erysipelatous affection, terminating in apoplexy, was the fatal result--and SHE, who, but a few short-lived months before, had shone as the brightest star in the hemisphere of her own court;--who was the patroness of art;--and of two or three national schools, building, when I was at Stuttgart, at her own expense--was doomed to become the subject of general lamentation and woe. She was admired, respected, and beloved. It was pleasing, as it was quite natural, to see her (as I had often done) and the King, riding out in the same carriage, or phaeton, without any royal guard; and all ranks of people heartily disposed to pay them the homage of their respect. In a letter from M. Le Bret, of the 8th of June 1819, I learnt that a magnificent chapel, built after the Grecian model, was to contain the monument to be erected to her memory. Her funeral was attended by six hundred students from Tubingen, by torch light. [22] For the sake of juxta-position, I will here mention the SEQUEL, as briefly as may be. The "affair" was far from being at that time "settled." But, on reaching Manheim, about to recross the Rhine, on my return to Paris--I found a long and circumstantial letter from my bibliographical correspondent at Stuttgart, which seemed to bring the matter to a final and desirable issue. "So many thousand francs had been agreed upon--there only wanted a well bound copy of the _Bibliographical Decameron_ to boot:--and the Virgils were to be considered as his Lordship's property." Mr. Hamilton, our Chargé d'Affaires, had authority to pay the money--and I ... walked instantly to _Artaria's_--purchased a copy of the work in question, (which happened to be there, in blue morocco binding,) and desired my valet to get ready to start the next morning, by three or four o'clock, to travel post to Stuttgart: from whence he was not to return _without_ bringing the VIRGILS, in the same carriage which would convey him and the Decameronic volumes. Charles Rohfritsch immediately prepared to set out on his journey. He left Manheim at three in the morning; travelled without intermission to Stuttgart,--perhaps fourscore or ninety miles from Manheim--put up at his old quarters _zum Waldhorn_ (see p. 17, ante.) waited upon M. Le Bret with a letter, and the morocco tomes--RECEIVED THE VIRGILS--and prepared for his return to Manheim--which place he reached by two on the following morning. I had told him that, at whatever hour he arrived, he was to make his way to my chamber. He did as he was desired. "LES VOILA!"--exclaimed he, on placing the two volumes hastily upon the table.--"Ma foi, Monsieur, c'est ceci une drôle d'affaire; il y a je ne sçai pas combien de lieues que j'ai traversé pour deux anciens livres qui ne valent pas à mes yeux le tiers d'un Napoleon!" I readily forgave him all this saucy heresy--and almost hugged the volumes ... on finding them upon my table. They were my constant travelling companions through France to Calais; and when I shewed the _Adam Virgil_ to M. Van Praet, at Paris--"Enfin (remarked he, as he turned over the broad-margined and loud-crackling leaves) voilà un livre dont j'ai beaucoup entendu parler, mais que je n'ai jamais vu!" These words sounded as sweet melody to mine ears. But I will unfeignedly declare, that the joy which crowned the whole, was, when I delivered _both_ the books ... into the hands of their present NOBLE OWNER: with whom they will doubtless find their FINAL RESTING PLACE. [Such was my bibliographical history--eleven years ago. Since that period NO copy of EITHER edition has found its way into England. "Terque quaterque beatus!"] LETTER III. DEPARTURE FROM STUTTGART. ULM. AUGSBOURG. THE PICTURE GALLERY AT AUGSBOURG. _Augsbourg, Hôtel des Trois Nègres, Aug. 9, 1818._ MY DEAR FRIEND; I have indeed been an active, as well as fortunate traveller, since I last addressed you; and I sit down to compose rather a long despatch, which, upon the whole, will be probably interesting; and which, moreover, is penned in one of the noblest hotels in Europe. The more I see of Germany, the more I like it. Behold me, then in _Bavaria_; within one of its most beautiful cities, and looking, from my window, upon a street called _Maximilian Street_--which, for picturesque beauty, is exceeded only by the High-street at Oxford. A noble fountain of bronze figures in the centre of it, is sending forth its clear and agitated waters into the air--only to fall, in pellucid drops, into a basin of capacious dimensions: again to be carried upwards, and again to descend. 'Tis a magnificent fountain; and I wish such an one were in the centre of the street above mentioned, or in that of Waterloo Place. But to proceed with my Journal from Stuttgart. I left that capital of the kingdom of Würtemberg about five in the afternoon, accompanied by my excellent friend M. Le Bret, who took a seat in the carriage as far as the boundaries of the city.[23] His dry drollery, and frankness of communication, made me regret that he could not accompany us--at least as far as the first stage _Plochingen_;--especially as the weather was beautiful, and the road excellent. However, the novelty of each surrounding object--(but shall ... I whisper a secret in your ear?--the probably successful result of the negotiation about the two ancient editions of Virgil--yet more than each surrounding object) put me in perfect good humour, as we continued to roll pleasantly on towards our resting-place for the night--either _Göppingen_, or _Geislingen_,--as time and inclination might serve. The sky was in a fine crimson glow with the approaching sun-set, which was reflected by a river of clear water, skirted in parts by poplar and birch, as we changed horses at _Plochingen_. It was, I think, _that_ town, rather than Göppingen, (the next stage) which struck us, en passant, to be singularly curious and picturesque on the score of antiquity and street scenery. It was with reluctance that I passed through it in so rapid a manner: but necessity alone was the excuse. We slept, and slept comfortably, at _Göppingen_. From thence to _Geislingen_ are sweet views: in part luxuriant and cultivated, and in part bold and romantic. Here, were the humble and neatly-trimmed huts of cottagers; there, the lofty and castle-crowned domains of the Baron. It was all pleasing and heart-cheering; while the sky continued in one soft and silvery tint from the unusual transparency of the day. On entering _Geislingen_, our attention was quickly directed to other, and somewhat extraordinary, objects. In this town, there is a great manufactory of articles in _ivory_; and we had hardly stopped to change horses--in other words, the postilion had not yet dismounted--ere we were assailed by some half dozen ill-clad females, who crawled up the carriage, in all directions, with baskets of ivory toys in their hands, saluting us with loud screams and tones--which, of course, we understood to mean that their baskets might be lightened of their contents. Our valet here became the principal medium of explanation. Charles Rohfritsch raised himself up from his seat; extended, his hands, elevated his voice, stamped, seized upon one, and caught hold of another, assailant at the same time--threatening them with the vengeance of the police if they did not instantly desist from their rude assaults. It was indeed high time to be absolute; for Mr. Lewis was surrounded by two, and I was myself honoured by a visit of three, of this gipsy tribe of ivory-venders: who had crawled over the dicky, and up the hinder wheels, into the body of the carriage. There seemed to be no alternative but to purchase _something_. We took two or three boxes, containing crucifixes, toothpicks, and apple-scoops; and set the best face we could upon this strange adventure. Meanwhile, fresh horses were put to; and the valet joked with the ivory venders--having desired the postilion, (as he afterwards informed me) as soon as he was mounted, to make some bold flourishes with his whip, to stick his spurs into the sides of his horses, and disentangle himself from the surrounding female throng as speedily as he could. The postilion did as he was commanded: and we darted off at almost a full gallop. A steep hill was before us, but the horses continued to keep their first pace, till a touch of humanity made our charioteer relax from his efforts. We had now left the town of Geislingen behind us, but yet saw the ivory venders pointing towards the route we had taken. "This has been a strange piece of business indeed, Sir," (observed the valet). "These women are a set of mad-caps; but they are nevertheless women of character. They always act thus: especially when they see that the visitors are English--for they are vastly fond of your countrymen!" We were now within about twenty English miles of ULM. Nothing particular occurred, either by way of anecdote or of scenery, till within almost the immediate approach, or descent to that city--the last in the Suabian territories, and which is separated from Bavaria by the river Danube. I caught the first glance of that celebrated river (here of comparatively trifling width) with no ordinary emotions of delight. It recalled to my memory the battle of _Blenheim_, or of _Hochstedt_; for you know that it was across this very river, and scarcely a score of miles from Ulm, that the victorious MARLBOROUGH chased the flying French and Bavarians--at the battle just mentioned. At the same moment, almost, I could not fail to contrast this glorious issue with the miserable surrender of the town before me--then filled by a large and well-disciplined army, and commanded by that non-pareil of generals, J.G. MACK!--into the power of Bonaparte... almost without pulling a trigger on either side--the place itself being considered, at the time, one of the strongest towns in Europe. These things, I say, rushed upon my memory, when, on the immediate descent into Ulm, I caught the first view of the tower of the MINSTER ... which quickly put Marlborough, and Mack, and Bonaparte out of my recollection. I had never, since quitting the beach at Brighton, beheld such an _English-like_ looking cathedral--as a whole; and particularly the tower. It is broad, bold, and lofty; but, like all edifices, seen from a neighbouring and perhaps loftier height, it loses, at first view, very much of the loftiness of its character. However, I looked with admiration, and longed to approach it. This object was accomplished in twenty minutes. We entered Ulm about two o'clock: drove to an excellent inn (the _White Stag_--which I strongly recommend to all fellow-travellers) and ordered our dinner to be got ready by five; which, as the house was within a stone's cast of the cathedral, gave us every opportunity of visiting it before hand. The day continued most beautiful: and we sallied forth in high spirits, to gaze at and to admire every object of antiquity which should present itself. You may remember my mentioning, towards the close of my last despatch, that a letter was lying upon the table, directed to one of the Professors of the University, or _gymnase_, of this place. The name of that Professor was VEESENMEYER; a very respectable, learned, and kind-hearted gentleman. I sought his house (close to the cathedral) the very first thing on quitting the hotel. The Professor was at home. On receiving my letter, by the hands of a pretty little girl, one of his daughters, M. Veesenmeyer made his appearance at the top of a short stair case, arrayed in a sort of woollen, quilted jacket, with a green cloth cap on, and a pipe in his mouth--which latter seemed to be full as tall as himself. I should think that the Professor could not be taller than his pipe, which might be somewhere about five feet in length. His figure had an exceedingly droll appearance. His mode of pronouncing French was somewhat germanized; but I strained every nerve to understand him, as my valet was not with me, and as there would have been no alternative but to have talked Latin. I was desirous of seeing the library, attached to the cathedral. "Could the Professor facilitate that object?" "Most willingly--" was his reply--"I will write a note to * * the librarian: carry it to him, and he will shew you the library directly, if he be at home." I did as he desired me; but found the number of the house very difficult to discover--as the houses are numbered, consecutively, throughout the town--down one street and up another: so that, without knowing the order of the _streets_ through which the numbers run, it is hardly possible for a stranger to proceed. Having sauntered round and round, and returned almost to the very spot whence I had set out, I at last found the residence of the librarian.--On being admitted, I was introduced to a tall, sharp-visaged, and melancholy-complexioned gentleman, who seemed to rise six feet from the ground on receiving me. He read the Professor's note: but alas! could not speak one word of French. "Placetne tibi, Domine, sermone latino uti?" I answered in the affirmative; but confessed that I was totally out of the habit of speaking it in England: and besides, that our _mode of pronunciation_ was very different from that of other countries. The man of dark vestments and sombre countenance relaxed into a gentle smile, as I added the latter part of this remark: and I accompanied him quickly, but silently, to the library in question. Its situation is surely among the most whimsical in existence. It is placed up one pair of stairs, to the left of the choir; and you ascend up to it through a gloomy and narrow stone staircase. If I remember rightly, the outward door, connecting with the stairs, is in the cathedral yard. The library itself is very small; and a print, being a portrait of its Donor, hangs up against the shelves--facing as you enter. I had never seen this print before. It was an interesting portrait; and had, I think, a date of somewhere about 1584. The collection was chiefly theological; yet there were a few old classics, but of very secondary value. The only book that I absolutely coveted, was a folio, somewhat charged with writing in the margins, of which the title and colophon are as follow:--for I obtained permission to make a memorandum of them. "Gutheri Ligurini Poetæ clarissimi diui Frid. pri Dece libri foeliciter editi: _impssi per industriu & ingeniosu Magistru Erhardu Oeglin ciuem augustesem Ano Sesquimillesimo & septimo mese Apprilio_" This edition contains M vj, in sixes. The preceding article is followed by six leaves, containing supplemental matter. I asked my sable attendant, if this book could be parted with--either for money, or in exchange for other books? he replied, "that that point must be submitted to the consideration of a chapter: that the library was rarely or never visited; but that he considered it would not be proper to disturb its order, or to destroy its identity, since it was a _sacred legacy_." I told him that he reasoned well; but that, should the chapter change such a resolution, my address would be found at Vienna, poste restante, till the 20th of the following month. We parted in terms of formal politeness; being now and then a little checked in my discourse, by the reply, on his part, of "Non prorsus intelligo." I am glad, however, to have seen this secluded cabinet of books; which would have been the very place for the study of Anthony Wood or Thomas Hearne. It had quite an air of monastic seclusion, and it seemed as if scarcely six persons had trod the floor, or six volumes had been taken down from the shelves, since the day when the key was first turned upon the door which encloses the collection. After a few "_salves_," and one "_vale_," I returned to the White Stag. The CATHEDRAL of ULM is doubtless among the most respectable of those upon the continent. It is large and wide, and of a massive and imposing style of architecture. The buttresses are bold, and very much after the English fashion. The tower is the chief exterior beauty. Before we mounted it, we begged the guide, who attended us, to conduct us all over the interior. This interior is very noble: and even superior, as a piece of architecture, to that of Strasbourg. I should think it even longer and wider--for the truth is, that the tower of _Strasbourg_ Cathedral is as much too _tall_, as that of _Ulm_ cathedral is too _short_, for its nave and choir. Not very long ago, they had covered the interior by a white wash; and thus the mellow tint of probably about five centuries--in a spot where there are few immediately surrounding houses--and in a town of which the manufactories and population are comparatively small--the _latter_ about 14,000--thus, I say, the mellow tint of these five centuries (for I suppose the cathedral to have been finished about the year 1320) has been cruelly changed for the staring and chilling effects of whiting. The choir is interesting in a high degree. At the extremity of it, is an altar--indicative of the Lutheran form of worship[24] being carried on within the church--upon which are oil paintings upon wood, emblazoned with gilt backgrounds--of the time of _Hans Burgmair_, and of others at the revival of the art of painting in Germany. These pictures turn upon hinges, so as to shut up, or be thrown open; and are in the highest state of preservation. Their subjects are entirely scriptural; and perhaps old _John Holbein_, the father of the famous Hans Holbein, might have had a share in some of them. Perhaps they may come down to the time of _Lucas Cranach_. Whenever, or by whomsoever executed, this series of paintings, upon the high altar of the cathedral of Ulm, cannot be viewed without considerable satisfaction. They were the first choice specimens of early art which I had seen on this side of the Rhine; and I of course contemplated them with the hungry eye of an antiquary. After a careful survey of the interior, the whole of which had quite the air of English cleanliness and order, we prepared to mount the famous tower. Our valet, Rohfritsch, led the way; counting the steps as he mounted, and finding them to be about three hundred and seventy-eight in number. He was succeeded by the guide. Mr. Lewis and myself followed in a more leisurely manner; peeping through the interstices which presented themselves in the open fretwork of the ornaments, and finding, as we continued to ascend, that the inhabitants and dwelling houses of Ulm diminished gradually in size. At length we gained the summit, which is surrounded by a parapet wall of some three or four feet in height. We paused a minute, to recover our breath, and to look at the prospect which surrounded us. The town, at our feet, looked like the metropolis of Laputa. Yet the high ground, by which we had descended into the town--and upon which Bonaparte's army was formerly encamped--seemed to be more lofty than the spot whereon we stood. On the opposite side flowed the _Danube_: not broad, nor, as I learnt very deep; but rapid, and in a serpentine direction. The river here begins to be navigable for larger boats; but there is little appearance of bustle or business upon the quays. Few or no white sails, floating down the stream, catch the morning or the evening sun-beam: no grove of masts: no shouts of mariners: no commercial rivalry. But what then? Close to the very spot where we stood, our attention was directed to a circumstance infinitely more interesting, to the whimsical fancy of an Antiquary, than a whole forest of masts. What might this be? Listen. "Do you observe, here, gentlemen?" said the guide--pointing to the coping of the parapet wall, where the stone is a little rubbed, "I do"--(replied I) "What may this mean?" "Look below, Sir, (resumed he) how fearfully deep it is. You would not like to tumble down from hence?" This remark could admit but of one answer--in the _negative_; yet the man seemed to be preparing himself to announce some marvellous fact, and I continued mute. "Mark well, gentlemen; (continued he) it was here, on this identical spot, that our famous EMPEROR MAXIMILIAN stood upon one leg, and turned himself quite round, to the astonishment and trepidation of his attendants! He was a man of great bravery, and this was one of his pranks to shew his courage. This story, gentlemen, has descended to us for three centuries; and not long ago the example of the Emperor was attempted to be imitated by two officers,--one of whom failed, and the other succeeded. The first lost his balance, and was precipitated to the earth--dying the very instant he touched the ground; the second succeeded, and declared himself, in consequence, MAXIMILIAN the SECOND!" I should tell you, however, that these attempts were not made on the same day. The officers were Austrian. The room in the middle of the platform, and surmounted by a small spire does not appear to be used for any particular purpose. Having satisfied our curiosity, and in particular stretched our eyes "as far (to borrow Caxton's language) as we well might"--in the direction of _Hochstedt_--we descended, extremely gratified; and sought the hotel and our dinner. Upon the whole, the cathedral of Ulm is a noble ecclesiastical edifice: uniting simplicity and purity with massiveness of composition. Few cathedrals are more uniform in the style of their architecture. It seems to be, to borrow technical language, all of a piece. Near it, forming the foreground of the Munich print, are a chapel and a house surrounded by trees. The chapel is very small, and, as I learnt, not used for religious purposes. The house (so Professor Veesenmeyer informed me) is supposed to have been the residence and offices of business of JOHN ZEINER, the well known _printer_, who commenced his typographical labours about the year 1470,[25] and who uniformly printed at Ulm; while his brother GUNTHER as uniformly exercised his art in the city whence I am now addressing you. They were both natives of _Reutlingen_; a town of some note between Tubingen and Ulm. Let no man, from henceforth, assert that all culinary refinement ceases when you cross the Rhine; at least, let him not do so till he has tasted the raspberry-flavoured soufflet of the _White Stag of Ulm_. It came on the table like unto a mountain of cream and eggs, spreading its extremities to the very confines of the dish; but, when touched by the magic-working spoon, it collapsed, and concentrated into a dish of moderate and seemly dimensions. In other words, this very soufflet--considered by some as the _crux_ of refined cookery--was an exemplification of all the essential requisites of the culinary art: but without the _cotelette_, it would not have satisfied appetites which had been sharpened by the air of the summit of the tower of the cathedral. The inn itself is both comfortable and spacious. We dined at one corner of a ball-room, upon the first floor, looking upon a very pleasant garden. After dinner, I hastened to pay my respects to Professor Veesenmeyer, according to appointment. I found him, where all Professors rejoice to be found, in the centre of his library. He had doffed the first dress in which I had seen him; and the long pipe was reposing horizontally upon a table covered with green baize. We began a bibliographical conversation immediately; and he shewed me, with the exultation of a man who is conscious of possessing treasures for which few, comparatively, have any relish--his _early printed_ volumes, upon the lower shelf of his collection. Evening was coming on, and the daylight began to be treacherous for a critical examination into the condition of old volumes. The Professor told me he would send me a note, the next morning, of what further he possessed in the department of early printing,[26] and begged, in the mean time, that he might take a walk with me in the town. I accepted his friendly offer willingly, and we strolled about together. There is nothing very interesting, on the score of antiquities, except it be the _Rath Haus_, or Town Hall; of which the greater part may be, within a century, as old as the Cathedral.[27] On the following morning I left Ulm, well pleased to have visited the city; and, had the time allowed, much disposed to spend another twenty-four hours within its walls. But I had not quitted my bed (and it was between six and seven o'clock in the morning) before my good friend the Professor was announced: and in half a second was standing at the foot of it. He pulled off his green cloth cap, in which I had first seen him--and I pulled off my night cap, to return his salutation--raising myself in bed. He apologised for such an early intrusion, but said "the duties of his situation led him to be an early riser; and that, at seven, his business of instructing youth was to begin." I thanked him heartily for his polite attentions--little expecting the honour of so early a visit. He then assumed a graver expression of countenance, and a deeper tone of voice; and added, in the Latin language--"May it please Providence, worthy Sir, to restore you safely, (after you shall have examined the treasures in the imperial library of Vienna) to your wife and family. It will always gratify me to hear of your welfare." The Professor then bowed: shut the door quickly, and I saw him no more. I mention this little anecdote, merely to give you an idea of the extreme simplicity, and friendliness of disposition, (which I have already observed in more than this one instance) of the German character. The day of my departure was market-day at Ulm. Having ordered the horses at ten o'clock, I took a stroll in the market-place, and saw the several sights which are exhibited on such occasions. Poultry, meat, vegetables, butter, eggs, and--about three stalls of modern books. These books were, necessarily, almost wholly, published in the German language; but as I am fond of reading the popular manuals of instruction of every country--whether these instructions be moral, historical, or facetious--I purchased a couple of copies of the _Almanac Historique nommé Le_ _Messager Boiteux_, &c: a quarto publication, printed in the sorriest chap-book manner, at Colmar, and of which the fictitious name of _Antoine Souci, Astronome et Hist._ stands in the title-page as the author. A wood-cut of an old fellow with a wooden leg, and a letter in his right hand, is intended to grace this title-page. "Do you believe (said I to the young woman, who sold me the book, and who could luckily stammer forth a few words of French) what the author of this work says?" "Yes, Sir, I believe even _more_ than what he says--" was the instant reply of the credulous vender of the tome. Every body around seemed to be in good health and good spirits; and a more cheerful opening of a market-day could not have been witnessed. Perhaps, to a stranger, there is no sight which makes him more solicitous to become acquainted with new faces, in a new country, than such a scene as this. All was hilarity and good humour: while, above, was a sky as bright and blue as ever was introduced into an illuminated copy of the devotional volumes printed by the father of the ULM PRESS; to wit, _John Zeiner of Reutlingen_. We crossed the Danube a little after ten o'clock, and entered the territories of the King of BAVARIA. Fresh liveries to the postilion--light blue, with white facings--a horn slung across the shoulders, to which the postilion applied his lips to blow a merry blast[28]all animated us: as, upon paying the tax at the barriers, we sprung forward at a sharp trot towards _Augsbourg_. The morning continued fine, but the country was rather flat; which enabled us, however, as we turned a frequent look behind, to keep the tower of the cathedral of Ulm in view even for some half dozen miles. The distance before us now became a little more hilly: and we began to have the first glimpse of those _forests of firs_ which abound throughout Bavaria. They seem at times interminable. Meanwhile, the churches, thinly scattered here and there; had a sort of mosque or globular shaped summit, crowned by a short and slender spire; while the villages appeared very humble, but with few or no beggars assailing you upon changing horses. We had scarcely reached _Günzbourg_, the first stage, and about fourteen miles from Ulm, when we obtained a glimpse of what appeared to be some lofty mountains at the distance of forty or fifty miles. Upon enquiry, I found that they were a part of a chain of mountains connected with those in the Tyrol. It was about five o'clock when we reached AUGSBOURG; and, on entering it, we could not but be struck with the _painted exteriors_, and elaborate style of architecture, of the houses. We noticed, with surprise not wholly divested of admiration, shepherds and shepherdesses, heroes and heroines, piazzas, palaces, cascades, and fountains--in colours rather gay than appropriate--depicted upon the exterior walls:--and it seemed as if the accidents of weather and of time had rarely visited these decorations. All was fresh, and gay, and imposing. But a word about our Inn, (_The Three Moors_) before I take you out of doors. It is very large; and, what is better, the owner of it is very civil. Your carriage drives into a covered gate way or vestibule, from whence the different stair-cases, or principal doors, lead to the several divisions of the house. The front of the house is rich and elegant. On admiring it, the waiter observed--"Yes, Sir, this front is worthy of the reputation which the _Hôtel of the Three Moors_ possesses throughout Europe." I admitted it was most respectable. Our bed rooms are superb--though, by preference, I always chose the upper suit of apartments. The _caffé_ for dining, below, is large and commodious; and I had hardly bespoke my first dinner, when the head-waiter put the _travelling book_ into my hands: that is, a book, or _album_, in which the names and qualities of all the guests at that inn, from all parts of Europe, are duly registered. I saw the names of several of my countrymen whom I well knew; and inscribed my own name, and that of my companion, with the simplest adjuncts that could be devised. In doing so, I acted only according to precedent. But the boast and glory of this Inn is its GALLERY OF PICTURES: for sale. The great ball-room, together with sundry corridores and cabinets adjoining, are full of these pictures; and, what renders the view of them more delectable, is, the _Catalogue_:--printed in the _English language_, and of which a German is the reputed author. My attention, upon first running over these pictures was, unluckily, much divided between them and the vehicle of their description. If I turned to the number, and to the description in the printed catalogue, the language of the latter was frequently so whimsical that I could not refrain from downright laughter.[29] However, the substance must not be neglected for the shadow; and it is right that you should know, in case you put your travelling scheme of visiting this country, next year, into execution, that the following observations may not be wholly without their use in directing your choice--as well as attention--should you be disposed to purchase. Here is _said_ to be a portrait of _Arcolano Armafrodita_, a famous physician at Rome in the XVth century, by _Leonardo da Vinci_. Believe neither the one nor the other. There are some _Albert Durers_; one of the _Trinity,_ of the date of 1523, and another of the _Doctors of the Church_ dated 1494: the latter good, and a choice picture of the early time of the master. A portrait of an old man, kit-cat, _supposed_ by _Murillo_. Two ancient pictures by _Holbein_ (that is, the _Father_ of Hans Holbein) of the _Fugger family_--containing nine figures, portraits, of the size of life: dated 1517 and deserving of notice. An old woman veiled, half-length, by _J. Levens_: very good. Here are two _Lucas Cranachs_, which I should like to purchase; but am fearful of dipping too deeply into Madame Francs's supplemental supply. One is a supposed portrait (it is a mere supposition) of _Erasmus_ and his mistress; the other is an old man conversing with a girl. As specimens of colouring, they are fine--for the master; but I suspect they have had a few retouches. Here is what the catalogue calls "A _fuddling-bout. beautyful small piece, by Rembrand_:" nº. 188: but it is any thing but a beautiful piece, and any thing but a Rembrandt. There is a small picture, said to be by _Marchessini_, of "Christ dragged to the place of execution." It is full of spirit, and I think quite original. At first I mistook it for a _Rubens_; and if Marchessini, and not Otho Venius, had been his master, this mistake would have been natural. I think I could cull a nosegay of a few vivid and fragrant flowers, from this graphic garden of plants of all colours and qualities. But I shrewdly suspect that they are in general the off-scourings of public or private collections; and that a thick coat of varnish and a broad gilt frame will often lead the unwary astray. While I am upon the subject of _paintings_, I must take you with me to the TOWN HALL ... a noble structure; of which the audience room, up one pair of stairs--and in which Charles V. received the deputies respecting the famous _Augsbourg Confession of Faith_, in 1530,--is, to my taste, the most perfectly handsome room which I have ever seen. The wainscot or sides are walnut and chestnut wood, relieved by beautiful gilt ornaments. The ceiling is also of the same materials; but marked and diversified by divisions of square, or parallelogram, or oval, or circular, forms. This ceiling is very lofty, for the size of the room: but it is a fault (if it be one) on the right side. I should say, that this were a chamber worthy of the cause--and of the actors--in the scene alluded to. It is thoroughly imperial: grave, grand, and yet not preposterously gorgeous. Above this magnificent room is the PICTURE GALLERY. It is said to receive the overflowings of the gallery of Munich--which, in turn, has been indebted to the well known gallery of Dusseldorf for its principal treasures. However, as a receiver of cast-off apparel, this collection must be necessarily inferior to the parent wardrobe, yet I would strongly recommend every English Antiquary--at all desirous of increasing his knowledge, and improving his taste, in early German art--to pay due attention to this singular collection of pictures at Augsbourg. He will see here, for the first time in Bavaria--in his route from the capital of France--productions, quite new in character, and not less striking from boldness of conception and vigor of execution. Augsbourg may now be considered the soil of the _Elder Holbein_, _Hans Burgmair_, _Amberger_, and _Lucas Cranach_. Here are things, of which Richardson never dreamt, and which Walpole would have parted with three fourths of his graphic embellishments at Strawberry Hill to have possessed. Here are also portraits of some of the early Reformers, of which an excellent Divine (in the vicinity of Hackney church) would leap with transport to possess copies, wherewith to adorn his admirable collection of English ecclesiastical history. Here, too, are capricious drolleries, full of character and singularity--throwing light upon past manners and customs--which the excellent PROSPERO would view with ... an almost coveting eye! But to be more particular; and to begin with the notice of a curious performance of John, or the ELDER HOLBEIN. It is divided, like many of the pictures of the old German masters, into three compartments. The _Nativity_ occupies one; the _Assumption_ another: and the decapitation of _St. Dorothy_ the third. In the Assumption, the Trinity, composed of three male figures, is introduced as sanctifying the Virgin--who is in front. Below this group is the church of "_Maria Maior_," having two bells in the steeple; upon one of which, in the act of being tolled, is the date of 1499: upon the other, in a quiescent state, are the words HANS HOLBEIN: with the initial L.B. to the right. To the left, at bottom, is the inscription HIE LITBE GRA; to the right, below, on a piece of stone, the initial H. The third piece in this composition, the death of St. Dorothy, exhibits a sweetly-drawn and sweetly coloured countenance in that of the devoted Saint. She is kneeling, about to receive the uplifted sword of the executioner; evincing a firmness, yet meekness of resignation, not unworthy the virgin martyrs of the pencils of Raphael and Guido. Her hair is long, and flows gracefully behind. A little boy, habited in a whimsical jacket, offers her a vase filled with flowers. The whole picture is rich and mellow in its colouring, and in a fine state of preservation. Another piece, by the same uncommon artist, may be also worth particular notice. It is a miscellaneous performance, divided into three compartments; having, in the upper part of the first, a representation of the Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. Our Saviour is placed in a very singular situation, within a rock. The comforting angel appears just above him. Below is the Pope, in full costume, in the character of St. Peter, with a key in his left hand, and in his right a scroll; upon the latter of which is this inscription: "_Auctoritate aplica dimitto vob omia pcta_"[30] The date of 1501 is below. This picture, which is exceedingly gorgeous, is in the purest state of preservation. Another compartment represents our Saviour and the Virgin surrounded by male and female martyrs. One man, with his arms over his head, and a nail driven through them into his skull, is very striking: the head being well drawn and coloured. To the left, are the Pope, Bishops, and a Cardinal between St. Christopher and a man in armour. One Bishop (_St. Erasmus_) carries a spit in his left hand, designating the instrument whereby he suffered death. This large picture is also in a very fine state of preservation. A third display of the graphic talents of the Elder Holbein (as I should conceive, rather than of the son, when young--as is generally believed) claims especial notice. This picture is a representation of the leading events in the _Life of St. Paul_; having, like most other performances of this period, many episodes or digressions. It is also divided into three compartments; of which the central one, as usual, is the most elevated. The first compartment, to the left, represents the conversion of St. Paul above, with his baptism by Ananias below. In this baptism is represented a glory round the head of St. Paul--such as we see round that of Christ. Before them stands a boy, with a lighted torch and a box: an old man is to the left, and another, with two children, to the right. This second old man's head is rather fine. To the left of the baptism, a little above, is St. Paul in prison, giving a letter to a messenger. The whole piece is, throughout, richly and warmly coloured, and in a fine state of preservation. The central piece has, above, ["_Basilica Sancti Pauli_."] Christ crowned with thorns. The man, putting a sceptre in his hand, is most singularly and not inelegantly clothed; but one or two of the figures of the men behind, occupied in platting the crown of thorns, have a most extraordinary and original cast of countenance and of head-dress. They appear ferocious, but almost ludicrous, from bordering upon caricature; while the leaves; and bullrush-like ornaments of their head-dress, render them very singularly striking personages. To the right, Joseph of Arimathea is bargaining for the body of Jesus; the finger of one hand placed against the thumb of the other telling the nature of the action admirably. Below this subject, in the centre, is St. Paul preaching at Athens. One of the figures, listening to the orator with folded arms, might have given the hint to Raphael for one of _his_ figures, in a similar attitude, introduced into the famous cartoon of the same subject. Before St. Paul, below, a woman is sitting--looking at him, and having her back turned to the spectator. The head-dress of this figure, which is white, is not ungraceful. I made a rude copy of it; but if I had even coloured like * * * I could not have done justice to the neck and back; which exhibited a tone of colour that seemed to unite all the warmth of Titian with all the freshness of Rubens. In the foreground of this picture, to the right, St. Peter and St. Paul are being led to execution. There is great vigour of conception and of touch (perhaps bordering somewhat upon caricature) in the countenances of the soldiers. One of them is shewing his teeth, with a savage grin, whilst he is goading on the Apostles to execution. The headless trunk of St. Paul, with blood spouting from it, lies to the left; the executioner, having performed his office, is deliberately sheathing his sword. The colouring throughout may be considered perfect. We now come to the remaining, or third compartment. This exhibits the interment of St. Paul. There is a procession from a church, led on by the Pope, who carries the head of the Apostle upon a napkin. The same head is also represented as placed between the feet of the corpse, in the foreground. There is a clever figure, in profile, of a man kneeling in front: the colouring of the robe of a Bishop, also kneeling, is rich and harmonious. A man, with a glory round his head, is let down in a basket, as from prison, to witness the funeral. But let me not forget to notice the head of an old man, in the procession, (coming out of the church-door) and turning towards the left:--it is admirably well touched. I shall now give you a notion of the talents of HANS BURGMAIR--a painter, as well as engraver, of first-rate abilities. I will begin with what I consider to be the most elaborate specimen of his pencil in this most curious gallery of pictures. The subject is serious, but miscellaneous: and of the date of 1501. It consists of Patriarchs, Evangelists, Martyrs, male and female, and Popes, &c. The Virgin and Christ are sitting, at top, in distinguished majesty. The countenances of the whole group are full of nature and expression: that of the Virgin is doubtless painted after a living subject. It exhibits the prevailing or favourite _mouth_ of the artist; which happens however to be generally somewhat awry. The cherub, holding up a white crown, and thrusting his arm as it were towards the spot where it is to be fixed, is prettily conceived. Upon the whole, this picture contains some very fine heads. Another picture of Hans Burgmair, worth especial attention, is dated 1504. It is, as usual, divided, into three compartments; and the subject is that of _St. Ursula and her Virgins_. Although of less solid merit than the preceding, it is infinitely more striking; being most singularly conceived and executed. The gold ornaments, and gold grounds, are throughout managed with a freedom and minuteness of touch which distinguish many of the most beautiful early missals. In the first compartment, or division, are a group of women round "_Sibila Ancyra Phrygiæ_." The dresses of these women, especially about the breast, are very curious. Some of their head dresses are not less striking, but more simple; having what may be called a cushion of gold at the back of them. In the second compartment is the _Crucifixion_--in the warmest and richest (says my memorandum, taken on the very spot) glow of colour. Beneath, there is a singular composition. Before a church, is a group of pilgrims with staves and hats on; a man, not in the attire of a pilgrim, heads them; he is habited in green, and points backwards towards a woman, who is retreating; a book is in his left hand. The attitudes of both are very natural. Further to the right, a man is retreating--going through an archway--with a badge (a pair of cross keys) upon his shoulder. The retreating woman has also the same badge. To the left, another pilgrim is sitting, apparently to watch; further up, is a house, towards which all the pilgrims seem to be directing their steps to enter. A man and woman come out of this house to receive them with open arms. The third division continues the History of St. Ursula. Her attire, sitting in a vessel by the side of her husband Gutherus, is sumptuous in the extreme. I would have given four ducats for a copy of it, but Mr. Lewis was otherwise engaged. A Pope and Cardinal are to the right of St. Ursula: the whole being in a perfect blaze of splendour. Below, they are dragging the female Saint and her virgin companions on shore, for the purpose of decapitation. An attitude of horror, in one of the virgins, is very striking. There is a small picture by Burgmair of the _Virgin and Christ_, in the manner of the Italian masters, which is a palpable failure. The infant is wretchedly drawn, although, in other respects, prettily and tenderly coloured. Burgmair was out of his element in subjects of dignity, or rather of _repose_. Where the workings of the mind were not to be depicted by strong demarcations of countenance, he was generally unsuccessful. Hence it is, that in a subject of the greatest repose, but at the same time intensity of feeling--the _Crucifixion_--this master, in a picture here, of the date of 1519, has really outdone himself: and perhaps is not to be excelled by _any_ artist of the same period. I could not take my eyes from this picture--of which the figures are about half the size of life. It is thus treated. Our Saviour has just breathed his dying exclamation--"it is finished." His head hangs down--cold, pale death being imprinted upon every feature of the face. It is perhaps a painfully-deadly countenance: copied, I make no doubt, from nature. St. Anne, Mary, and St. John, are the only attendants. The former is quite absorbed in agony--her head is lowly inclined, and her arms are above it. (The pattern of the drapery is rather singular). Mary exhibits a more quiet expression: her resignation is calm and fixed, while her heart seems to be broken. But it is in the figure and countenance of _St. John_, that the artist has reached all that an artist _could_ reach in a delineation of the same subject. The beloved disciple simply looks upwards--upon the breathless corpse of his crucified master. In that look, the world appears to be for ever forgotten. His arms and hands are locked together, in the agony of his soul. There is the sublimest abstraction from every artificial and frivolous accompaniment--in the treatment of this subject--which you can possibly conceive. The background of the picture is worthy of its nobler parts. There is a sobriety of colouring about it which Annibal Caracci would not have disdained to own. I should add, that there is a folding compartment on each side of the principal subject, which, moving upon hinges, may be turned inwards, and shut the whole from view. Each of these compartments contains one of the two thieves who were crucified with Our Saviour. There is a figure of S. Lazarus below one of them, which is very fine for colour and drawing. The last, in the series of old pictures by German masters, which I have time to notice, is an exceedingly curious and valuable one by CHRISTOPHER AMBERGER. It represents _the Adoration of the Magi_. There are throughout very successful attempts at reflected light; but what should set this picture above all price, in my humble estimation, is a portrait--and the finest which I remember to have seen--of MELANCTHON:--executed when he was in the vigour of life, and in the full possession of physiognomical expression. He is introduced in the stable just over those near the Virgin, who are coming to pay their homage to the infant Christ: and is habited in black, with a black cap on. Mr. Lewis made the following rough copy of the head in pencil. To the best of my recollection, there is _no engraving_ of it--so that you will preserve the enclosed for me, for the purpose of having it executed upon copper, when I reach England. It is a countenance full of intellectual expression. [Illustration] Of the supposed _Titians_, _Caraccis_, _Guidos_, _Cignanis_, and _Paolo Veroneses_, I will not presume to say one word; because I have great doubts about their genuineness, or, at any rate, integrity of condition. I looked about for _Albert Durer_, and _Lucas Cranach_, and saw with pleasure the portraits of my old friends _Maximilian I._ and _Charles V._ by the former--and a _Samson and Dalila_ by the latter: but neither, I think, in the very first rate style of the artist. There was a frightful, but expressive and well coloured, head of a Dwarf, or Fool, of which Mr. Lewis took a pencil-copy; but it is not of sufficient importance to enclose in this despatch. It is the EARLY GERMAN SCHOOL of Art which is here the grand and almost exclusive feature of attraction--speaking in an antiquarian point of view. ReÏchard estimates the number of these pictures at _twelve hundred_, but I should rather say _seven hundred_. I find, however, that it will be impossible to compress all my _Augsbourg_ intelligence in one epistle; and so I reserve the remainder for another opportunity. [23] [Several years have elapsed since I have received a letter from Mons. Le Bret. Is he alive? If he be living, let him be assured of my unalterable and respectful attachment: and that I have unfeigned pleasure in annexing a fac-simile of his AUTOGRAPH--from a letter to me of the date of June 8th 1819: a letter, which I received on the 17th of the same month following--the very day of our _Roxburghe Anniversary Dinner_. Singularly enough, this letter begins in the following strain of bibliographical jocoseness: "_Monsieur, et très reverend Frère de Boocace l'Immortel!_"] [Illustration: Signature--f.c. Lebret] [24] The predominant religion is the Protestant. Indeed I may say that the number of Catholics is exceedingly limited: perhaps, not an eighth part of the population of the town. [25] I presume this to be the earliest date which any of his books exhibit. His brother GUNTHER, or GINTHER (for the name is spelt both ways in his colophons) began to print in 1468. Lord Spencer possesses a beautiful copy (which I obtained from the library of St. Peter's Monastery, at Salzbourg) of _Bonaventure's Meditations upon the Life of Christ_, of the date of 1468, printed by G. Zainer, or (Zeiner) at Augsbourg; and considered to be the first effort of his press. [26] The note, above mentioned, was written in Latin: the Professor telling me that he preferred that language to the French, as he thought he could write it more grammatically. A _Latin note_ must be rather a curiosity to my readers: which, as it is purely bibliographical, and in other respects highly characteristic of the _bon-hommie_ of the writer, shall receive a place here. After mentioning the books above specified, the Professor goes on thus: "Haec paucula e pluribus notare libuit, quæ reliqua temporis angustia ostendere non permisit. Habeo enim alias, quas vocant, editiones principes, e.g. Diogenis Laertii, Bas. 1533-4. Josephi, Bas. 1544. fol. Jo. Chrysostomi [Greek: _peri pronoias_] 1526-8. Ej. [Greek: peri hierôsunês], ib 1525-8. Aliorum Græcorum et Patrum. Calpurnii et Nemesiani Eclogarum editionem, ab. do. Alex. Brassicano curatam editionem ad MS. antiquum factam et Argent. 1519-4. impressam. Præterea aliquot Aldinas et Juntinas editiones, aliquot a Mich. Vascosano, Paris. factas, in quibus Thucydidis Libri III. priores, Paris. 1548. 4. cujus margini Lectt. Varr. e MSto adscriptæ sunt, non memoratæ in editione Bipontina. Æschylus, ex edit. Franc. Robortelli, Venet. 1552. 8. Idem ex ed. Henr. Stephani, ex offic. Henr. Stephani, 1557. 4. Dionysii Halic. Opera Rhet. ex. ed. Rob. Stephani, Par. 1547. Fol. Diodor. Sicul. ex edit. Henr. Stephani, 1559. Fol. "Pauculos Codd. MSS. e. gr. Ciceronis de Officiis, Aratoris in Acta App. Fragmenta Liuii et Terentii ostendere tempus non concessit: præter eos habeo aliquot Ciceronis Orationes, Excerpta ex Liuio, duos Historiæ Griseldis, et alios minoris pretii. "Maximam collectionis, Bibliothecam appellare non fas est, meæ partem efficit magnus librorum et libellorum numerus ab Ao. 1500. usque ad 1550. editorum a Reformatoribus eorumque aduersariis, qui numerum sex millium superant, in quibus adsunt Serueti de Trinitatis erroribus, eiusdemque Dialogi, Tomi Pasquillorum, Henr. Corn. Agrippæ aliquot opera, Lemnii Epigrammata, aliquot libelli, Lutheri et Melancthonis manu ornati; præterea alia Collectio Documentorum, quorum antiquissimum est ab. A. 1181 et Epistolarum [Greek: _autographôn_], a viris doctis Sæculorum XV. XVI. XVII. XVIII. conscriptarum, in quibus Henr. Steinhoevvelii, Raym. Peraudi, Lutheri, Melancthonis, Zwinglii, Gruteri, Casauboni, Ludolfi, Camerarii, Patris, Rittershusiorum, Piccarti, aliorumque. "Sed nolo longiore enarratione molestus esse, ne vanus esse uidear, a quo vitio nemo me alienior est. Vt divina providentia iter prosperum esse iubeat, est, quod ex animo TIBI, VIR--precatur Vlmæ, Aug. MDCCCXVIII. [Illustration: Signature] P.S. Et TIBI præsenti, et superiora heri nocte et somno ingruente scribens referre omiseram, esse mihi ex XXII. libris _ab Academia Veneta, della Fama dicta_, editis XV. Omnes adeo sunt rari, ut vel instructissimæ bibliothecae vix aliquot eorum habeant. Addo _germanicam Sixti Papæ Bullæ datæ 1474 versionem,_ sine dubio Vlmæ eodem anno impressam, et quinque foliis constantem; quam apud me vidisti." The Professor, with the above note, was also so obliging as to present me with a copy of his "_Specimen Historico-Litterarium de Academia Veneta_. Qua Scholarchæ et Vniversum Gymnasii quod Ulmæ floret Consilium Mæcenates Patronos Fautores ejusdem Gymnasii ad Orationem aditialem A.D. XXIV. Febr. A. 1794, habendam officiose atque decenter invitant."--A Latin brochure of twelve pages: "_Ulmæ ex Officina Wagneri, Patris_." [27] [There is an excellent lithographic print of this Rath Haus, which I possess.] [28] The postboys in the Duchy of Baden, and in the territories of Würtemberg, have also horns; but I never could get any thing, in the character of a tune, performed by either of them. The moment you enter BAVARIA, you observe a greater elasticity of character. [The ARMS of Bavaria head the first page of this third volume of my Tour.] [29] The reader may try the effect of perusing the following articles (taken from this printed catalogue) upon his own muscles. The performance, as I suspect, is by a native of Augsbourg. 75. _Portrait of Justus Lipsius by Rembrand_. This head of a singulary verity shews of draughts of a man of science: the treatement of Clothing is most perfectful, the respiring of life, the hands all wunder-worthy to be admired. 208. _A hunting-piece_ of great beauty by Schneyders, the dogs seem to be alife, the wild-fowls, a hare, toils, just as in nature. 341. _Queen Marie Christine of Sweden_ represented in a very noble situation of body and tranquility of mind, of a fine verity and a high effect of clair-obscure. By Rembrand. 376. _Cromwell Olivier_, kit-cat the size of life, a Portrait of the finest carnation, who shews of a perfect likeness and verity, school of Vandyk, perhaps by himself. 398. Portrait of _Charles the first king of England_ (so many Portraits of famous persons by Classick painters will very seldom be found into a privat collection) good picture by Janson van Miereveld. 399. A large and precious battle piece representing a scene of the famous _victory by Blindheim wonen by Marleborough_ over the frensh 1704. We see here the portrait of this hero very resembling, he in a graceful attitude on horsebak, is just to order a movement: a many generals and attendance are arround him. The leaguer, the landscape, the groups, the fighting all with the greatest thruth, there is nothing that does not contribute to embellish this very remarcable picture, painted by a contemporary of the evenement and famous artist in battle pieces, George Philipp Rugendas. [30] This was no uncommon representation in the early period of art. "In the church of St. Peter the Younger, at Strasbourg, about the year 1515, there was a kind of large printed placard, with figures on each side of it, suspended near a confessional. On one side, was a naked Christ, removing the fire of purgatory with his cross, and sending all those, who came out of the fire, to the Pope--who was seated in his pontifical robes, having letters of indulgence before him. Before him, also, knelt emperors, kings, cardinals, bishops and others: behind him was a sack of silver, with many captives delivered from Mahometan slavery--thanking the supreme Pontiff, and followed by clergymen paying the ransom money to the Turks. There might also be seen captives, at the bottom of a deep well, shut down by bars of iron; and men, women, and children, making all manner of horrible contortions. "Those, says the chronicler Wencker, "who saw such a piteous sight, wept, and gave money liberally--for the possession of indulgences;--of which the money, raised by the sale, was supposed to be applied towards the ransom of Christian captives." HERMANN; _Notices Historiques, &c. de Strasbourg_: vol. ii. p. 434. LETTER IV. AUGSBOURG. CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE. POPULATION. TRADE. THE PUBLIC LIBRARY. In ancient times--that is to say, upwards of three centuries ago--the CITY OF AUGSBOURG was probably the most populous and consequential in the kingdom of Bavaria. It was the principal residence of the noblesse, and the great mart of commerce. Dukes, barons, nobles of every rank and degree, became domiciled here. A thousand blue and white flags streamed from the tops of castellated mansions, and fluttered along the then almost impregnable ramparts. It was also not less remarkable for the number and splendour of its religious establishments. Here was a cathedral, containing twenty-four chapels; and an abbey or monastery (of _Saints Vlric and Afra_) which had no rival in Bavaria for the size of its structure and the wealth of its possessions. This latter contained a LIBRARY, both of MSS. and printed books, of which the recent work of Braun has luckily preserved a record;[31] and which, but for such record, would have been unknown to after ages. The treasures of this Library are now entirely dispersed; and Munich, the capital of Bavaria, is the grand repository of them. Augsbourg, in the first instance, was enriched by the dilapidations of numerous monasteries; especially upon the suppression of the order of the Jesuits. The paintings, books, and relics, of every description, of such monasteries as were in the immediate vicinity of this city, were taken away to adorn the town hall, churches, capitals and libraries. Of this collection, (of which no inconsiderable portion, both for number and intrinsic value, came from the neighbouring monastery of Eichstadt,[32]) there has of course been a pruning; and many flowers have been transplanted to Munich. Yet there are _graphic_ treasures in Augsbourg well deserving the diligent search and critical examination of the English Antiquary. The church of the _Recollets_ has an organ which is considered among the noblest in Europe: nor must I forget to notice the pulpit, by Eichlen, and some old pictures in the church of St. Anne. [Illustration: MONASTERY OF SAINTS ULRIC & AFRA, AUGSBURG.] The TOWN HALL in this city, which I mentioned in my last letter, is thought to be the finest in Germany. It was yet exceeded, as I learn, by the old EPISCOPAL PALACE, now dismembered of its ancient dimensions, and divided into public offices of government. The principal church, at the end of the _Maximilian Street_, is that which once formed the chief ornament of the famous Abbey of Sts. Ulric and Afra.[33] I should think that there is no portion of the present building older than the fourteenth century; while it is evident that the upper part of the tower is of the middle of the sixteenth. It has a nearly globular or mosque-shaped termination--so common in the greater number of the Bavarian churches. It is frequented by congregations both of the Catholic and Protestant persuasion; and it was highly gratifying to see, as I saw, human beings assembled under the same roof, equally occupied in their different forms of adoration, in doing homage to their common Creator. It was also pleasing, the other day, to witness, upon some high religious festival, the crowds of respectable and well-dressed people (chiefly females) who were issuing from the Church just above mentioned. It had quite an English Sunday appearance. I have said that these females were "well dressed"--I should, rather have said superbly dressed: for their head-ornaments--consisting of a cap, depressed at top, but terminating behind in a broad bow--are usually silk, of different colours, entirely covered with gold or silver gauze, and spangles. The hair appeared to be carefully combed and plaited, either turned up in a broad mass behind, or terminating in ringlets. I asked the price of one of the simplest of these caps--worn by the common order of servants--and found it to be little less than a guinea. But they last long, and the owners attach some importance to them. Augsbourg was once distinguished for great learning and piety, as well as for political consequence; and she boasts of a very splendid _martyrological roll_.[34] At the present day, all is comparatively dull and quiet; but you cannot fail to be struck with the magnificence of many of the houses, and the air of importance hence given to the streets; while the paintings upon the outer walls add much to the splendid effect of the whole. The population of Augsbourg is supposed to amount to about thirty thousand. In the time of Maximilian, and Charles V. it was, I make no doubt, twice as numerous. Of the TRADE of Augsbourg, I am not enabled to transmit any very flattering details. Silks, stuffs, dimity, (made here for the first time) and jewellery, are the chief commodities; but for the _latter_, connected with articles of dress, there is rather a brisk demand. The reputation of the manufactory of _Seethaler_, is deserving of mention. In the repository of this respectable tradesman you will find varieties of every description: rings, buckles, clasps, bracelets, and images of Saints, of peculiar and interesting forms. Yet they complain here of stagnation of commerce in almost every one of its branches: although they admit that the continuance of peace will bring things comfortably round again. The late war exhausted both the population and the treasury of Bavaria. They do a good stroke of business in the concerns of the bank: and this is considered rather a famous place for the management of letters and bills of exchange. With respect to the _latter_, some singular customs and privileges are, I understand, observed here: among others, if a bill become due on a _Wednesday_, eight days of grace are invariably allowed. It was the thoughts of the PUBLIC LIBRARY alone that afforded the chief comfort to the depressed state of my spirits, from the excessive heat of the day. What I might _do_, and at last, what I had _done_, within the precincts of that same library, was sure to be my greatest solace during the evening rambles near the ramparts. The good fortune which attended me at Stuttgart, has followed to this place. Within two yards' length of me repose, at this present instant, the first _Horace_, and the finest copy imaginable of the _Polish Protestant Bible_ of Prince Radzivil--together with a _Latin Bible_ of 1475, by _Frisner and Sensenschmidt_, in two enormous folio volumes, of an execution of almost unparalleled magnificence. These are no common stimulants to provoke appetite. It remains to see whether the banquet itself be composed of proportionably palatable ingredients. On leaving Stuttgart, M. Le Bret told me that Messrs. BEYSCHLAG and MAY were the principal librarians or curators of the Public Library of this place; and that I should find them intelligent and pleasant gentlemen. Professor Veesenmeyer at Ulm confirmed this statement. I had a letter from the latter, to the Rector Beyschlag, which procured me an immediate entrance into the library. The Rector's coadjutor, Professor May, was also most prompt to shew me every rarity. In the countenance of the _latter_, I saw, what you could not fail to call that of a handsome-looking English gentleman. I had never before so vehemently desired to speak the German language, or for my new acquaintance to speak my own. However, the French tongue was the happy medium of imparting my ideas and propositions to both the gentlemen in question; and we had hardly exchanged half a dozen sentences, when I opened what I considered (and what eventually turned out to be) a well directed fire upon the ancient volumes by which I was at the time surrounded. The exterior of this library has a monastic form. The building is low and unpretending, having an octangular tower, up the staircase of which you mount to the library. It is situated within a stone's throw of the High Street. The interior of the library is not less unpretending than its exterior: but in a closet, at the hither end, (to the left on entering) are preserved the more ancient, choice, and curious volumes. In one compartment of this cabinet-like retreat are contained the _books printed at Augsbourg_ in the infancy of the press of this town:[35] a collection, extremely creditable in itself and in its object; and from which, no consideration, whether of money, or of exchange for other books, would induce the curators to withdraw a volume. Of course I speak not of _duplicates_ of the early Augsbourg press. Two comparatively long rooms, running in parallel lines, contain the greater part of the volumes of the public library; and amongst them I witnessed so many genuine, fair, and original conditioned copies of literary works, of the early period of the Reformation, that I almost sighed to possess them--except that I knew they could not possibly pay the expenses of conveyance. But for the "well directed fire" above alluded to. It produced a _capitulation_ respecting the following articles--which were selected by myself from the boudoir just mentioned, and about which neither mystery was observed nor secrecy enjoined. In fact, the contract, of the venders was to be submitted to, and sanctioned by, the supreme magistracy of the place. The Rector Beyschlag hath much of merriment and of wit in his composition. "Now, Sir,"--observed he--"bring those treasures forward which we can spare, and let us afterwards settle about their value: ourselves affixing a price." I desired nothing better. In consequence forth came the _first_ (quarto) _Horace_, without date or place, fair, sound, and perfect: the _Familiar Epistles of Cicero_ of the date of 1469, by S. and Pannartz, in a condition perfectly unparalleled in every respect; the _Latin Bible_ of _Frisner and Sensenschmidt_ of 1475, in an equally desirable and pristine condition;[36] the _Polish Protestant Bible_ of 1563, with its first rough-edged margins and in wooden binding; _St. Jerom's Epistles_, printed _at Parma_, by _A. de Portilia_--most captivating to the eye; with a curious black-letter broadside, in Latin sapphics, pasted in the interior of the cover; the _History of Bohemia, by Pope Pius II_, of 1475, as fresh and crackling as if it had just come from the printer: _Schuzler's edition of the Hexameron of Ambrosius_, 1472: the _Hungarian Chronicle_ of 1485.... "Ohe jam satis est...." for one bargain, at least,--methinks I hear you remark. It may be so; but the measure must be fuller. Accordingly, after having shot off my great guns, I brought my howitzers into play. Then commenced a pleasant and not unprofitable parley respecting little grammatical tracts, devotional manuals, travels, philology, &c. When lo!--up sprung a delightful crop of _Lilies_, _Donatuses_, _Mandevilles_, _Turrecrematas_, _Brandts_, _Matthews of Cracow_--in vellum surcoats, white in colour, firm in substance, and most talkative in turning over their leaves! These were mere _florin_ acquisitions: the preceding were paid for in heavy metal of a _golden_ hue. It is not fair to betray all that took place upon this Cockerian transaction; but there may be no harm in mentioning that my purse was lightened by upwards of 100 louis d'or. My spirits were lightened in the same proportion. Neither venders nor vendee grieved at the result. Professor May was most joyous; and although the Rector Beyschlag was sonorous in voice, restless in action, and determined in manner--about fixing an alarmingly high price upon the _first Horace_--yet, by degrees, he subsided into a softer note, and into a calmer action--and the Horace became _mine_ by a sort of contre-projet proposition. Nothing would please Professor May but that I must go home with him, and try my luck in purchasing a few similar rarities out of his _own_ collection. I did so. Madame Francs' supplemental supply became gradually diminished, and I began to think that if I went on in this manner I should not only never reach _Vienna_, but not even _Munich_. This doubt was frankly stated to my book-guardians; and my _ducats_ were immediately commuted into _paper_. The result will doubtless prove the honour of the purchaser; for I have drawn upon a quarter which I had exclusively in view when I made the bargain, and which was never known to fail me. "Surely," thought I to myself as I returned to my hotel, "Messrs. Beyschlag and May are among the most obliging and the most enlightened of their fraternity." I returned to the Public Library the next morning, as well to conclude a bargain for an exchange of books for certain recent bibliographical publications, as to take a list of a few of the more rare, fine, and curious volumes, in their own collection, which were destined _always_ to retain their situations. They have, very properly, the FIRST BOOK PRINTED AT AUGSBOURG: namely, _Aurbach's Meditations upon the Life of Christ_, of the date of 1468, printed by _Gunther Zainer_. But one of the most uncommon books examined by me was "_Augustinus Ypponensis Episcopus De Consensu Evangelistarum: In ciuitate Langingen. Impressus. anno a partu virginis salutifero. Millesimoquadringentesimoseptuagesimotercio. Pridie Idus. Aprilis_." The type is very singular; half gothic and half roman. Of the printer and place I know nothing; except that I learnt from the librarians that "_Langingen_" is situated about ten leagues from Augsbourg, upon the Danube. I made every effort--as well by the _ducat_ as by the _exchange_ method--to prevail upon them to part with this book; but to no purpose. The blood-freezing reply of Professor Veesenmeyer was here repeated--"ça reste, à ... Augsbourg." This book is unbound. Another volume, of the same equivocal but tempting description, was called "_Alcuinus de Trinitate_:--IMPRESSUM IN UTTIPURRHA _Monasterio Sacto^{4} marty^{4}, Alexadri et Theodri. Ordiis Scti Bndicti. Anno Sesquimillesimo KL. septembris_ [Hebrew]." It is printed in a rude gothic letter; and a kind of fly leaf contains a wood-cut portrait of Alcuin. The monastery, where this volume was printed, is now suppressed. A pretty little volume--"as fresh as a daisy" (so says my ms. note taken upon the spot) of the "_Hortulus Rosarium de valle lachrymarum_" (to which a Latin ode by S. Brandt is prefixed), printed by I. de Olpe, in 1499, in the original wooden binding--closed my researches among the volumes executed in the fifteenth century. As I descended into the sixteenth century, the choice was less, although the variety was doubtless greater. A fine genuine copy of _Geyler's Navicula Fatuorum_, 1511, 4to. in its original binding, was quickly noted down, and as quickly _secured_. It was a duplicate, and a ducat made it my own. It is one of the commonest books upon the continent--although there _was_ a time when certain bibliomaniacal madcaps, with us, pushed the bidding for this volume up to the monstrously insane sum of £42:[37]--and all, because it was coated in a Grolier binding! Among the theological books, of especial curiosity, my guides directed my attention to the following: "_Altera hæc pars Testam^ti. veteris emendata est iuxta censuras Inquisitionis Hispanicæ an^o 79_. Nouu testam. recusandu omnino est; rejicienduq. propter plurimos errores qui illius scholiis sunt inserti." This was nothing else than the younger R. Stephen's edition of the vulgate Bible of 1556, folio, of which the _New Testament_ was absolutely SEALED UP. It had belonged to the library of the Jesuits. There was a copy of Erasmus, "_Expurgatus iuxta censuram Academiæ Louaniæ an^o 79_." The name of the printer--which in the preceding Bible had been tried to be _cancelled_--was here uniformly _erased_: but it was doubtless the Basil edition of Erasmus by good old honest Froben and his sons-in-law.[38] What think you of undoubted proofs of STEREOTYPE PRINTING in the middle of the sixteenth century? It is even so. What adds to the whimsical puzzle is, that these pieces of metal, of which the surface is composed of types, fixed and immoveable, are sometimes inserted in wooden blocks, and introduced as titles, mottoes, or descriptions of the subjects cut upon the blocks. Professor May begged my acceptance of a specimen or two of the types, thus fixed upon plates of the same metal. They rarely exceeded the height of four or five lines of text, by about four or five inches in length. I carried away, with his permission, two proofs (not long ago pulled) of the same block containing this intermixture of stereotype and block-wood printing. I believe I have now told you all that appears worthy of being told, (as far as my own opportunities of observation have led me) of the CITY OF AUGSBOURG. I shall leave it (to-morrow) with regret; since a longer residence would, I am persuaded, have introduced me to very pleasant society, and made me acquainted with antiquities, of all kinds, well deserving of _some_ record, however trivial. As it is, I must be content with what the shortness of my time, and the more immediately pressing nature of my pursuits, have brought me in contact. A sight of the _Crucifixion by Hans Burgmair_, and the possession of the most genuine copy of the _editio princeps of Horace_, have richly repaid all the toil and expense of the journey from Stuttgart. The Horace, and the Protestant Polish Bible of 1563, will be my travelling companions--at least as far as _Munich_--from whence my next despatch will be dated.[39] I hope, indeed, to dine at that renowned city ere "the set of to-morrow's sun." In the mean while, adieu. [31] His account of the PRINTED BOOKS in the XVth century, in the monastery above mentioned, was published in 1786, in 2 vols. 4to. That of the MANUSCRIPTS, in the same monastic library, was published in 1791, in 2 vols. or rather perhaps, six parts, 4to. [32] Among the books in this monastery was an uncut copy of the famous edition of the _Meditationes J. de Turrecremata_, of the date of 1467, which is now in the Library of Earl Spencer. In Hartmann Schedel's _Chronicon Norimbergense_, 1493, fol. CLXII, are portraits of the Founders of the Town and Monastery of Eichstadt, or EISTETT; together with a large wood-cut view of the town. This monastery appears to have been situated on a commanding eminence. [33] [This Abbey was questionless one of the most celebrated and wealthy in Europe. The antiquarian reader will be pleased with the OPPOSITE PLATE--presenting a bird's eye view of it, in the year 1619--(when it stood in its pristine splendour) from the _Monasteriologia_, attached to the _Imagines Sanctorum_.] [34] In the BAVARIA SANCTA of RADERUS, 1615-27, 3 vols. folio, will be found a succession of martyrological details--adorned by a series of beautiful engravings by _Ralph Sadeler_. The text is in Latin, and the author has apparently availed himself of all the accessible authorities, in manuscript and print, which were likely to give interest and weight to his narrative. But it seems to have been composed rather for the sake of the ENGRAVINGS--which are generally most admirably executed. Great delicacy and truth of drawing, as well as elegance of grouping, are frequently discernible in them; and throughout the whole of the compositions there is much of the air of _Parmegiano's_ pencil; especially in the females. Sadeler makes his monks and abbots quite _gentlemen_ in their figures and deportment; and some of his miracles are described with great singularity and force of effect. [35] Such is ZAPF'S work, entitled _Annales Typographiæ Augustanæ_, 1778; 4to. republished with copious additions in 1786, two volumes, 4to. The text of the latter is (unfortunately, for the unlearned) printed in the German language. [36] [This Latin Bible came from the Eichstadt Monastery.] [37] _Bibliographical Decameron_, vol. iii. p. 115. [38] See the _Bibliographical Decameron_, vol. ii. p. 170. &c. [39] [The first Horace, the Cicero Epist. ad Familiares, 1469, the Latin Bible by Frisner and Sensenschmidt, 1475 and the Polish Bible of 1563, (all so warmly and so justly eulogised in the above pages) have been reposing these last ten years in the library of Earl Spencer: and magnificent and matchless as is that library, it contains no FINER volumes than the four preceding. I conclude this detail by subjoining the Autographs of the two BIBLIOGRAPHICAL WORTHIES who have cut such a conspicuous figure in the scene above described. The latter is now NO MORE.] [Autographs] LETTER V. MUNICH. CHURCHES. ROYAL PALACE. PICTURE GALLERY. PUBLIC LIBRARY. _Munich; Hôtel of the Black Eagle; Aug. 16, 1818._ MY DEAR FRIEND; Behold me, now, in the capital of Bavaria: in a city remarkable for its bustle, compared with the other German cities which I have visited, and distinguished rather for the general creditable appearance of the houses and public buildings, than for any peculiar and commanding remains of antiquity. But ere I speak of the city, let me detain you for a few seconds only with an account of my journey thither; and of some few particulars which preceded my departure from Augsbourg. It turned out as I predicted. "Ere the set of sun," ensuing my last despatch, I drove to the principal front of this large, comfortless, and dirty inn; and partook of a dinner, in the caffé, interrupted by the incessant vociferations of merchants and traders who had attended the market (it being market day when I arrived), and annoyed beyond measure by the countless swarms of flies, which chose to share my cutlet with me. On taking a farewell look of Augsbourg, my eyes seemed to leave unwillingly those objects upon which I gazed. The Paintings, the Town Hall, the old monastery of Saints Ulric and Afra, all--as I turned round to catch a parting glance--seemed to have stronger claims than ever upon my attention, and to reproach me for the shortness of my visit. However, my fate was fixed--and I now only looked steadily forward to Munich; my imagination being warmed (you will say "inflamed") with the thoughts of the countless folios, in manuscript and in print--including _block-books_, unheard and undreamt of--which had been described to me as reposing upon the shelves of the Royal or PUBLIC LIBRARY. In consequence, Hans Burgmair, Albert Durer, and the Elder Holbein were perfectly forgotten--after we had reached the first stage, and changed horses at _Merching_. From Augsbourg to Munich is but a pleasant and easy drive of about forty-five English miles. The last stage, from _Fürstenfelbruck_ to this place, is chiefly interesting; while the two tall brick towers of the cathedral church of Nôtre Dame keep constantly in view for the last seven or eight miles. A chaussée, bordered on each side by willows, poplars, and limes, brings you--in a tediously straight line of four or five miles--up to the very gates of MUNICH. At first view, Munich looks like a modern city. The streets are tolerably spacious, the houses are architectural, and the different little squares, _or places_, are pleasant and commodious. It is a city of business and bustle. Externally, there is not much grandeur of appearance, even in the palaces or public buildings, but the interiors of many of these edifices are rich in the productions of ancient art;--whether of sculpture, of painting, of sainted relics, or of mechanical wonders. Every body just now is from home; and I learn that the bronzes of the Prince Royal--which are considered to be the finest in Europe--are both out of order and out of view. This gallant Prince loves also pictures and books: and, of the latter, those more especially which were printed by the _Family of Aldus_. Upon the whole, there is something very anglicised in the appearance both of this city and of its inhabitants. Of the latter, I have reason to speak in a manner the most favourable:--as you shall hear by and by. But let me now discourse (which I must do very briefly) of inanimate objects--or works of art--before I come to touch upon human beings ... here in constant motion: and, as it should seem--alternately animated by hope and influenced by curiosity. The population of Munich is estimated at about 50,000. Of course, as before, I paid my first visit to the CATHEDRAL, or mother church of NÔTRE DAME, upon the towers of which I had fixed my eyes for a whole hour on the approach to the city. Both the nave and towers, which are of red brick, are frightful in the extreme; without ornament: without general design: without either meaning or expression of any kind. The towers cannot be less than 350 feet in height: but the tops are mere pepper-boxes. No part of this church, or cathedral, either within or without, can be older than the middle of the fifteenth century.[40] The interior has really nothing deserving of particular description. But I check myself in an instant: It _has_ something--eminently worthy of distinct notice and the most unqualified praise. It has a monument of the EMPEROR Louis IV. which was erected by his great-grandson Maximilian I. Duke of Bavaria, in 1603-12. The designer of this superb mausoleum was _Candit_: the figures are in black marble, the ornaments are in bronze; the latter executed by the famous _Krummper_, of Weilheim. I am ignorant of the name of the sculptor. This monument stands in the centre of the choir, of which it occupies a great portion. It is of a square form, having, at each corner, a soldier, of the size of life, bending on one knee and weeping: supporting, at the same time, a small flag between his body and arm. These soldiers are supposed to guard the ashes of the dead. Between them are three figures, of which two stand back to back. Between these two, somewhat more elevated, is raised the figure of the Emperor Louis IV.--dressed in his full imperial costume. But the two figures, just mentioned, are absolutely incomparable. One of them is _Albert V._ in armour, in his ducal attire:[41] the other is _William V._ habited in the order of the golden fleece. This habit consists of a simple broad heavy garment, up to the neck. The wearer holds a drawn sword in his right hand, which is turned a little to the right. This figure may be full six feet and a half high. The head is uncovered; and the breadth of the drapery, together with the erect position of the figure, and the extension of the sword, gives it one of the most commanding, and even appalling, airs imaginable. I stood before it, till I almost felt inclined to kneel and make obeisance. The entire monument is a noble and consummate specimen of art: and can hardly have any superior, of its kind, throughout Europe. Perhaps I should add that the interior of this Church contains twenty-four large octagonal pillars, dividing the nave from the side aisles: and that around these latter and the choir, there are not fewer than twenty-four chapels, ornamented with the tombs of ancient families of distinction. This interior is about 350 English feet in length, by about 145 in width. Of the other Churches, that of St. MICHAEL, attached to the _late College of the Jesuits_,--now forming the Public Academy or University, and containing the Public Library--is probably the most beautiful for its simplicity of ornament and breadth of parts. Indeed at this moment I can recollect nothing to be put in competition with it, as a comparatively modern edifice. This interior is, as to _Roman_ architecture, what that of St. Ouen is as to _Gothic_: although the latter be of considerably greater extent. It is indeed the very charm of interior architecture: where all the parts, rendered visible by an equal distribution of light, meet the eye at the same time, and tell their own tale. The vaulted roof, full 300 English feet in length, has not a single column to support it. Pilasters of the Corinthian order run along each side of the interior, beneath slightly projecting galleries; which latter are again surmounted by rows of pilasters of the Doric order, terminating beneath the spring of the arched roof. The windows are below the galleries. Statues of prophets, apostles, and evangelists, grace the upper part of the choir--executed from the characteristic designs of Candit. The pulpit and the seats are beautifully carved. Opposite the former, are oratories sustained by columns of red marble; and the approach to the royal oratory is rendered more impressive by a flight of ten marble steps. The founder of this church was William V., who lies buried in a square vault below: near which is an altar, where they shew, on All Saints Day, the brass coffins containing the ashes of the Princes of Bavaria. The period of the completion of this church is quite at the end of the sixteenth century.[42] But ere I quit it, I must not fail to direct your attention to a bronze crucifix in the interior--which is in truth a masterpiece of art. My eye ran over the whole of this interior with increased delight at every survey; and while the ceremony of high mass was performing--and the censers emitted their clouds of frankincense--and the vocal and instrumental sounds of a large congregation pervaded every portion of the edifice--it was with reluctance (but from necessity) that I sought the outward door, to close it upon such a combination of attractions! Of the nine or ten remaining churches, it will not be necessary to notice any other than that of St. CAETAN, built by the Electress Adelaide, and finished about the year 1670. It was built in the accomplishment of a vow. The pious and liberal Adelaide endowed it with all the relics of art, and all the treasures of wealth which she could accumulate. It is doubtless one of the most beautiful churches in Bavaria:--quite of the Italian school of art, and seems to be a St. Peter's at Rome in miniature. The architect was Agostino Barella, of Bologna. This church is in the form of a cross. In the centre is a cupola, sustained by pillars of the Corinthian order. The light comes down from the windows of this cupola in a very mellow manner; but there was, when I saw it, rather a want of light. The nave is vaulted: and the principal altar is beneath the dome, separating the nave from the choir. The façade, or west front, is a building of yesterday, as it were: namely, of 1767; but it is beautiful and striking. This church is considered to be the richest in Munich for its collection of pictures; but nothing that I saw there made me forget, for one moment, the Crucifixion by Hans Burgmair.[43] I should say that the interior of this church is equally distinguished for the justness of its proportions, the propriety of its ornaments, and the neatness of its condition. It is an honour to the city of Munich. There were, some half century ago, about a dozen more churches;--but they have been since either destroyed or _desecrated_. From the Churches, I must conduct you, but in a very rapid manner, to some of the public buildings; reserving, as usual, my last and more leisurely description for the PUBLIC LIBRARY. Of these buildings, the _Hôtel de Ville_, _Theatres_, and _Royal Residence_, are necessarily the most imposing in size, and most attractive from their objects of public utility or amusement. The Royal Palace was built by Maximilian I.--a name as great in the annals of Bavaria, as the same name was in those of Austria about a century before. This palace is of about two centuries standing: and its eastern façade measures 550 English feet in length. It abounds, within and without, with specimens of bronze ornaments: and two bronze lions (the work of Krummper, after the designs of Candit) which support the shields of the Electoral houses of Bavaria and Lorraine, have been considered superior to the Lion in the Place of. St. Mark at Venice. This immense pile of building contains three courts. In that of "the Fountain," to the left, under an arch, is a huge black pebble stone, weighing nearly 400 Bavarian pounds. An old German inscription, of the date of 1489, tells you that a certain Bavarian Duke, called _Christopher the Leaper_, threw this same pebble stone to a considerable distance. Near it, you observe three large nails driven into the wall. The highest of them may be about twelve feet from the ground:--the mark which Christopher the Leaper reached in one of his frolicksome jumps. I find they are lovers of marvellous attainments, in Bavaria:--witness, the supposed feat of the great Emperor Maximilian upon the parapet wall at the top of the cathedral of Ulm.[44] To describe the fountains and bronze figures, in these three courts, would be endless; but they strike you with a powerful degree of admiration--and a survey of every thing about you, is a convincing proof that you have entered a country where they shrink not from solidity and vastness in their architectural achievements: while the lighter, or ornamental parts, are not less distinguished by the grace of their design and the vigour of their execution. Will you believe it--I have not visited, nor shall I have an opportunity of visiting, the _Interior_? An interior, in which I am told that there are such gems, jewels, and varieties--such miracles of nature and of art, as equally baffle description and set competition at defiance. As thus:--a chapel, of which the pavement is mosaic work, composed of amethysts, jaspers, and lapis lazuli: of which the interior of its cupola is composed of lapis lazuli, adorned with gilt bronze: wherein is to be seen a statue of the Virgin, in a drapery of solid gold, with a crown upon her head, composed of diamonds:--a massive golden crucifix, adorned with precious stones--and upon which there is an inscription cut upon an emerald an inch square: again, small altars, supported by columns of transparent amethyst, &c. I will say nothing of two little caskets, studded with cameos and turquoises, in this chapel of fairy land--(built by Maximilian I.) of which one contains two precious pictures by Jean d'Aix la Chapelle--and the other (of massive gold, weighing twenty-four pounds) a painting of the resurrection and of paradise, in enamel. Even the very organ is constructed of gold, silver, ebony, turquois and lapis lazuli ornaments; of pearls and of coral. As to the huge altar of massive silver--adorned with cariatides, candelabra, statues, vases, and bouquets of the same metal--and especially the _pix_, lined with diamonds, rubies, and pearls--what shall I say of these--ALL the fruit of the munificent spirit of MAXIMILIAN? Truly, I would pass over the whole with an indifferent eye, to gaze upon a simple altar of pure gold--the sole ornament of the prison of the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots; which Pope Leo XI. gave to William V. Elector of Bavaria--and which bears the following inscription: EXILII COMES ET CARCERIS IMAGO HAEC MARIAE STUARDAE, SCOT. REG. FUIT, FUISSET ET CAEDIS, SI VIXISSET. Not less marvellous things are told of the _Jewellery_ in this palace of wonders:--among which the BLUE DIAMOND ... attached to the order of the Golden Fleece--which is set open, and which, opposed to the sun, emits rays of the most dazzling lustre,--is said to be the nonpareil of coloured precious stones. It weighs 36 carats and 144 grains. Of the _Pearls_, that called the PALATINAT, half white and half black, is considered the greatest curiosity; but in a cabinet is preserved the choicest of all choice specimens of precious art and precious metals. It is a statue of _St. George and the Dragon_, of the height of about a foot and a half, in pure and solid gold: the horse is agate: the shield is of enamelled gold: the dragon is jasper: the whole being thickly studded with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and pearls--to the number of at least two thousand! Another cabinet contains the crowns of emperors, dukes and.... But you are already dazzled and bewildered; and I must break off the description of this ENCHANTED PALACE. What is of easy access is rarely visited. I asked several of my acquaintance here, whether this spectacle were worth seeing?--and they as frequently replied in the negative as in the affirmative. But the PICTURE GALLERY I _have_ seen, and seen with attention;--although I am not likely to pay it a second visit. I noted down what I saw: and paid particular attention to the progress of art in the early German school of painting. I knew that this collection had long enjoyed a great celebrity: that it had been the unceasing object of several of the old Dukes of Bavaria to enrich it; and that the famous Theodore, equally the admirer of books and of pictures, had united to it the gallery of paintings collected by him at Manheim. It moreover contained the united collections of Deux-Ponts and Dusseldorf. This magnificent collection is arranged in seven large rooms on the same floor. Every facility of access is afforded; and you observe, although not so frequently as at Paris, artists at work in copying the treasures before them. In the entrance-hall, where there is a good collection of books upon the fine arts, are specimens by _Masaccio_, _Garofalo_, _Ghirlandaio_, _Perugino_, _Lucas de Leyden_, _Amberger_, _Wohlgemuth_, _Baldonetti, Aldegrave_, _Quinten Matsys_--with several others, by masters of the same period, clearly denoting the order of time in which they are supposed to have been executed. I was well pleased, in this division of the old school, to recognise specimens of my old friends Hans Burgmair and the Elder Holbein; and wished for no individual at my elbow so much as our excellent friend W.Y. Ottley:--a profound critic in works of ancient art, but more particularly in the early Italian and German Schools. To conduct you through all these apartments, or seven rooms, with the methodical precision of an experienced guide, is equally beyond my inclination and ability. Much as I may admire one or two _Titians_, one or two of the _Caracci_ school, the same number of _Veroneses_ and _Schidones_, and a partial sprinkling of indifferent _Raffaelles_, I should say that the boast of this collection are the pictures by _Rubens and Vandyke_. Of the former there are some excellent portraits; but his two easel pictures--the one, the _Fall of the Damned_, and the other the _Beatitude of the Good_--are marvellous specimens of art. The figures, extending from heaven to earth, in either picture, are linked, or grouped together, in that peculiarly bold and characteristic manner which distinguishes the pencil of the master.[45] The colouring throughout is fresh, but mellow and harmonious. Among the larger pictures by this renowned artist, are _Susanna and the Elders_, and _the Death of Seneca_; the latter considered as a distinguished production. But some of the whole length portraits, by the same hand, pleased me better. The pictures of Rubens occupy more particularly the fourth room. Vandyke shines in the second, sixth, and seventh rooms: in which are some charming whole length portraits--combining, almost, the dignity of Titian with the colouring of Rembrandt:--and yet, more natural in expression, more elegant in attitude, and more beautiful in drawing, than you will find in the productions of either of these latter artists. If the art, whether of sculpture or of painting, take not deep root, and send forth lusty branches laden with goodly fruit, at Munich--the fault can never be in the _soil_, but in the waywardness of the _plant_. There is encouragement from every quarter; as far as the contemplation of art, in all its varieties, and all its magnificence, can be said to be a stimulus to exertion. When the re-action of a few dozen years of peace shall have nearly obliterated the ravages and the remembrance of war--when commerce and civil competition shall have entirely succeeded to exaction and tyranny from a foreign force--(which it now holds forth so auspicious a promise of accomplishing)--and when literature shall revert within its former fruitful channels of enlightening the ignorant, gratifying the learned, and illustrating what is obscure among the treasures of former times--then I think Munich will be a proud and a flourishing city indeed.[46] But more of this subject on a future occasion. Let us take a walk abroad--in the fields, or in the immediate vicinity of the town--for methinks we have both had sufficient in-door occupation of late. One of the principal places of resort, in the immediate vicinity of Munich, is a garden--laid out after the English fashion--and of which the late Count Rumford had the principal direction. It is really a very pleasing, and to my taste, successful effort of art--or rather adaptation of nature. A rapid river, or rivulet (a branch of the _Iser_) of which the colour is a hazy or misty blue, very peculiar--runs under a small bridge which you pass. The bed of the river has a considerable descent, and the water runs so rapidly, as to give you the idea that it would empty itself in a few hours. Yet--"Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis ævum." I strolled frequently in the shady walks, and across the verdant lawns, of this pleasant garden; wherein are also arbour-covered benches, and embowered retreats--haunts of meditation--where ... voices, through the void deep sounding, seize Th'enthusiastic ear! But SKELL must not be deprived of his share of praise in the construction of this interesting pleasure ground. He was the principal active superintendant; and is considered to have had a thorough knowledge of _optical effect_ in the construction of his vistas and lawns. A Chinese pagoda, a temple to Apollo--and a monument to Gessner, the pastoral poet--the two latter embosomed in a wood--are the chief objects of attraction on the score of art. But the whole is very beautiful, and much superior to any thing of the kind which I have seen since leaving England. I told you, at the beginning of this letter, that it was market-day when we arrived here. Mr. Lewis, who loses no opportunity of adding to the stores of his sketch book, soon transferred a group of MARKET PEOPLE to his paper, of which you are here favoured with a highly finished copy. The countenances, as well as the dresses, are strongly indicative of the general character of the German women. [Illustration] I was surprised to be told, the other day, that the city of Munich, although lying upon a flat, apparently of several miles in circumference, is nevertheless situated upon very lofty ground:--full twelve or thirteen hundred feet above the level of the sea--and that the snow-charged blasts, from the Tyrolese mountains, towards the end of autumn, render it at times exceedingly cold and trying to the constitution. But I must now revert to the city, and proceed at once to an account of the most interesting of ALL the public edifices at Munich--in my very humble, and perhaps capricious, estimation. Of course you will instantly catch at what I mean. "What, BUT the edifice which contains THE PUBLIC LIBRARY?" 'Tis wisely conjectured; and to this boundless region of books, of almost every age and description, let us instantly resort: first paying our respects to the Directors and Librarians of the establishment. Of the former, the BARON VON MOLL, and MR. FREDERIC SCHLICHTEGROLL are among the principal: of the latter, Messrs. SCHERER and BERNHARD have the chief superintendence: of all these gentlemen, more in my next.[47] At present, suffice it to say, that I was constantly and kindly attended during my researches by M. Bernhard--who proved himself in the frequent discussions, and sometimes little controversies, which we had together, to be one of the very best bibliographers I had met upon the continent. In the bibliographical lore of the fifteenth century, he has scarcely a superior: and I only regretted my utter ignorance of the German language, which prevented my making myself acquainted with his treatises, upon certain early Latin and German Bibles, written in that tongue. But it was his kindness--his diffidence--his affability, and unremitting attention--which called upon me for every demonstration of a sense of the obligations I was under. It will not be easy for me to forget, either the kind-hearted attentions or the bibliographical erudition of M. Bernhard ... "Quæ me cunque vocant terræ." Be it known to you therefore, my good friend, that the PUBLIC LIBRARY at MUNICH is attached to what was once the _College of Jesuits_; and to which the beautiful church, described in a few preceding pages, belonged. On the suppression of the order of Jesuits, the present building was devoted to it by Charles Theodore in 1784: a man, who, in more than this one sense, has deserved well of his country. Would you believe it? They tell me that there are at least _half a hundred_ rooms filled by books and MSS. of one kind or other--including duplicates--and that they suppose the library contains nearer _four_, than _three hundred thousand volumes_! I scarcely know how to credit this; although I can never forget the apparently interminable succession of apartments--in straight lines, and in rectangular lines: floor upon floor: even to the very summit of the building, beneath the slanting roofs--such as I had seen at Stuttgart. But _here_ it should seem as if every monastery throughout Bavaria had emptied itself of its book-treasures ... to be poured into this enormous reservoir. But I will now begin my labours in good earnest. An oblong, narrow, boudoir-sort of apartment, contains the more precious MSS., the block books, and works printed upon vellum. This room is connected with another, at right angles, (if I remember well) which receives the more valuable works of the fifteenth century--the number of which latter, alone, are said to amount to nearly _twenty thousand_. In such a farrago, there must necessarily be an abundance of trash. These, however, are how under a strict assortment, or classification; and I think that I saw not fewer than half a dozen assistants, under the direction of M. Bernhard, hard at work in the execution of this desirable task. LATIN MS. OF THE GOSPELS; _in small folio_. I have no hesitation in ascribing this MS. to the ninth century. It is replete with evidences of this, or even of an earlier, period. It is executed in capital letters of silver and gold, about a quarter of an inch in height, upon a purple ground. Of course the MS. is upon vellum. The beginning of the text is entirely obliterated; but on the recto of the XVth leaf we read "_Explt Breuiarium_." LATIN MS. of the GOSPELS; in _large folio_. This is a more superb, but more recent, MS. than the preceding. Yet I suspect it to be not much later than the very early part of the eleventh century. It is executed in a large, lower-case, roman letter: somewhat bordering upon the Gothic. But the binding, at the very outset, is too singular and too resplendent to be overlooked. The first side of it has the crucifixion, in a sort of parallelogram frame work--in the centre: surrounded by a double arabesque, or Greek border, of a most beautiful form. The whole is in ivory, of a minute and surprisingly curious workmanship. The draperies partake of the character of late Roman art. Round this central ivory piece of carving, is a square, brass border, with the following inscription; which, from the character of the capital letters, (for it is wholly composed of such) is comparatively quite modern: GRAMMATA QVI QVERIT COGNOSCERE VERE HOC MATHESIS PLENE QVADRATVM PLAVDAT HABERE EN QUI VERACES SOPHIE FULSERE SEQUACES ORNAT PERFECTAM REX HEINRICH STEMMATE SECTAM. In the outer border are precious stones, and portraits, with inscriptions in Greek capital letters. These portraits and inscriptions seem to me to be perfect, but barbarous, specimens of Byzantine art. Around the whole are the titles of the Four Gospels in coeval capital letters. The general effect of this first side of the book-cover, or binding, is perfect--for antiquarian genuineness and costliness. The other side of the binding contains representations of the cardinal virtues, in brass, with the lamb in the centre: but they are comparatively modern. The interior of this book does not quite accord with its exterior. It is in pure condition, in every respect; but the art is rather feeble and barbarous. The titles to the Gospels are executed upon a purple ground. The larger subjects, throughout the illuminations, are executed with freedom, but the touch is heavy and the effect weak. The gold back grounds are rather sound than resplendent. Yet is this MS., upon the whole, a most costly and precious volume. LATIN PSALTER. Probably of the latter part of the twelfth century. The text is executed in a lower-case gothic. In the Calendar of Saints are found the names of Edward the Martyr, Cuthbert, Guthlac, Etheldrith, and Thomas à Becket. I think I am fully justified in calling this one of the richest, freshest, and most highly ornamented PSALTERS in existence. The illuminations are endless, and seem to comprise the whole history of the Bible. In the representations of armour, we observe the semicircular and slightly depressed helmet, and no nasels. I must now lay before you a MS. of a very different description--called The ROMANCE OF SIR TRISTRANT;[48] in verse. This ms. is wholly in the German language; written in the XIIIth century, and containing fifteen illuminations. M. Schérer, the Head Librarian, was so obliging as to furnish me with an account of it; having himself translated, as literally as possible, the original text into our own language. I shall now put together a few miscellaneous notices, taken, like all the preceding, from the articles themselves--and which you will find to relate chiefly to books of Missals and Offices, &c. I shall begin, however, with a highly illuminated MS. called The TWELVE SIBYLS. This beautiful book is doubtless of the XVth century. It begins with a representation of the "_Sibila Persica_." The principal merit of these illuminations may, by some, be thought to consist in their _freshness_; but others will not fail to remark, that the accompaniments of these figures, such as the chairs on which they sit, and the pillars which form the frame work of the pieces, are designed and executed in a style of art worthy of the Florentine School of this period. Every Sibyl is succeeded by a scriptural subject. If the faces of these figures were a little more animated and intelligent, this book would be a charming specimen of art of the XVth century. The _Erythræan Sibyl_ holds a white rose very prettily in her left hand. The _Agrippinian Sibyl_ holds a whip in her left hand, and is said "to have prophesied XXX years concerning the flagellation of Christ." This volume is a thin quarto, in delightful condition; bound in yellow morocco, but a _sufferer_ by the binding. A CALENDAR. This is a pretty little duodecimo volume, containing also short prayers to Christ; and embellished by a representation of the several months in the calendar. Each illumination has a border, and its apposite characteristic subject attached to the month. Among the latter, those of October and November are vigorously touched and warmly finished. A picture of the Deluge follows December. The scription is in a neat roman character. This book is bound in lilac velvet, with silver clasps, and preserved in a yellow morocco case. OFFICE OF THE VIRGIN. An exquisite little octavo or rather duodecimo; bound in silver, with coloured ornaments inlaid. The writing, in small roman, shews an Italian calligraphist. The vellum is white, and of the most beautiful quality. The text is surrounded by flowers, fruits, insects, animals, &c. The initial letters are sparkling, and ornamented in the arabesque manner. But the compositions, or scriptural subjects, are the most striking. Among the more beautiful specimens of high finishing, is the figure of Joseph--with the Virgin and Child--after the subject of the Circumcision. Upon the whole, the colours are probably too vivid. The subjects seem to be copies of larger paintings; and there is a good deal of French feeling and French taste in their composition. The rogue of a binder has shewn his love of cropping in this exquisite little volume. The date of 1574 is upon the binding. MISSAL: beginning with the _Oratio devota ad faciem dni nostri ihu xpi_--A most exquisite volume in 8vo.: bound in black fish skin, with silver clasps of an exceedingly graceful form, washed with gold, and studded with rubies, emeralds, and other coloured stones. The head of Christ, with a globe in his hand, faces the beginning of the text. This figure has a short chin, like many similar heads which I have seen: but the colours are radiant, and the border, in which our Saviour is bearing his cross, below, is admirably executed. The beginning of St. John's Gospel follows. The principal subjects have borders, upon a gray or gold ground, on which flowers are most beautifully painted: and some of the subjects themselves, although evidently of Flemish composition, are most brilliantly executed. There is great nature, and vigour of touch, in the priests chanting, while others are performing the offices of religion. The _Annunciation_ is full of tenderness and richness; and, in the _Christ in the manger_--from whose countenance, while lying upon the straw, the light emanates and shines with such beauty upon the face of the Virgin--we see the origin perhaps of that effect which has conferred such celebrity upon the NOTTE of CORREGIO. What gives such a thorough charm to this book, is, the grace, airiness, and truth of the flowers--scattered, as it were, upon the margins by the hand of a faëry. They have perhaps suffered somewhat by time: but they are truth and tenderness itself. The writing is a large handsome square gothic. OFFICE OF THE VIRGIN: bound in massive silver--highly ornamented, in the arabesque manner, and washed with gold. The back is most ingeniously contrived. But if the exterior be so attractive, the interior is not less so--for such a sweetly, and minutely ornamented, book, is hardly to be seen. The margins are very large and the text is very small: only about fifteen lines, by about one inch and three quarters wide. Upon seeing the margins, M. Schérer, the head-librarian, exclaimed, "I hope that satisfies you!" But they are by no means disproportionate--and the extraordinary colour and quality of the vellum render them enchanting. We come now to the ornaments. These are clusters of small flowers, strung in a pearl-like manner, and formed or grouped into the most pleasing and tasteful shapes. The figures are small, with a well indicated outline. How pretty are the little subjects at the foot of each month of the Calendar! And how totally different from the common-place stiffness, and notorious dullness, of the generality of Flemish pieces of this character! This book has no superior of its kind in Europe; and is worthy, on a small scale, of what we see in the superb folios of Matthias Corvinus.[49] A BOOK OF PRAYERS--almost entirely spoilt by damp and rottenness within. I should think, from the writing and illuminations, it was executed between the years 1450 and 1480. The outside is here the principal attraction. It is a very ancient massive binding, in silver. On each side is a sacred subject; but on that, where the Crucifixion is represented, the figure to the right has considerable expression. At the bottom of each compartment are the arms of Bavaria and of the Dukes of Milan. This is a precious treasure in its way. The present is probably the proper place to notice the _principal gem_--in the department of illuminated books of devotion--preserved in the Royal Library at Munich:--I mean, what is called, ALBERT DURER'S PRAYER BOOK. This consists merely of a set of marginal embellishments in a small folio volume, of which the text, written in a very large lower-case gothic letter, forms the central part. These embellishments are said to be by the hand of ALBERT DURER: although, if I mistake not, there is a similar production, or continuation, by LUCAS CRANACH. They are executed in colours of bistre, green, purple, or pink; with a very small portion of shadow--and apparently with a reed pen. Nothing can exceed the spirit of their conception, the vigour of their touch, and the truth both of their drawing and execution. They consist chiefly of _capriccios_, accompanied by the figure or figures of four Saints, &c. They afford one addition to the very many proofs, which I have already seen, of the surprising talents of Albert Durer: and, if I remember rightly; this very volume has been lithographised at Munich, and published in our own country.[50] Descending lower in the chronological order of my researches, I now come to the notice of four very splendid and remarkable folio volumes, comprising only the text of the SEVEN PENITENTIAL PSALMS: and which exhibit extraordinary proofs of the united skill of the _Scribe_, the _Musician_, the _Painter_, and the _Book Binder_--all engaged in the execution of these volumes. Of each of these artists, there is a PORTRAIT; but among them, none please my fancy so much as that of GASPAR RITTER, the book-binder. All these portraits are executed in body colour, in a slight but bold manner, and appear to me to be much inferior to the general style of art in the smaller and historical compositions, illustrative of the text of the book. But Gaspar Ritter well merits a distinct notice; for these volumes display the most perfect style of binding, which I have yet seen, of the sixteenth century. They are in red morocco, variegated with colours, and secured by clasps. Every thing about them is firm, square, knowing and complete. The artist, or painter, to whom these volumes are indebted for their chief attraction, was John MIELICH; a name, of which I suspect very little is known in England. His portrait bears the date of 1570. Looking fairly through these volumes--not for the sake of finding fault, or of detecting little lapses from accuracy of drawing, or harmony of composition--I do not hesitate one moment to pronounce the series of embellishments, which they contain, perfectly unrivalled--as the production of the same pencil. Their great merit consists in a prodigious freedom of touch and boldness of composition. The colouring seems to be purposely made subordinate. Figures the most minute, and actions the most difficult to express, are executed in a ready, off-hand manner, strongly indicative, of the masterly powers of the artist. The subjects are almost interminable in number, and endless in variety. I shall now proceed at once to an account of the xylographical productions, or of BLOCK BOOKS in the public library of this place; and shall begin with a work, of which (according to my present recollection) no writer hath yet taken notice. It is a _Life of Christ_, in small quarto, measuring scarcely five inches by four. The character of the type is between that of Pfister and the Mazarine Bible, although rather more resembling the latter. Each side of the leaf has text, or wood cut embellishments. The first eight pages contain fifteen lines in a page: the succeeding two pages only thirteen lines; but the greater number of the pages have fourteen lines. It is precisely the dotted ground, in the draperies, that impresses me with a notion of the antiquity of these cuts. Such a style of art is seen in all the earlier efforts of wood engraving, such as the _St. Bernardinus_ belonging to M. Van-Praet, and the prints pasted within the covers of Mr. George Nicol's matchless copy of the Mazarine Bible, upon vellum, in its original binding.[51] M. Bernhard also shewed me, from his extraordinary collection of early prints, taken from the old MS. volumes in this library, several of this precise character; and to which we may, perhaps with safety, assign the date of 1460 at the latest. I have been particular in the account of this curious little volume, not so much because it is kept in a case, and considered to be _unique_, as because, to the best of my recollection, no account of it is to be found in any bibliographical publication. EXHORTATION AGAINST THE TURKS, &c.: of the supposed date of 1455. This is the singular tract, of which Baron Aretin (the late head librarian of this establishment) published an entire fac-simile; and which, from the date of M.cccc.lv appearing at the bottom line of the first page, was conceived to be of that period. M. Bernhard, however,--in an anonymous pamphlet--proved, from some local and political circumstances introduced, or referred to, in the month of _December_--in the Calendar attached to this exhortation--that the _genuine_ date should rather be 1472. This brochure is also considered to be unique. It is a small quarto, of six leaves only, of which the first leaf is blank. The type is completely in the form of that of Pfister, and the paper is unusually thick. At the bottom of the first leaf it is observed, in ms. "_Liber eximiæ raritatis et inter cimelia bibliothecæ asservandus. F. Er_." ARS MEMORANDI, &c. Here are not fewer than _five copies_ of this well known--and perhaps first--effort of block-book printing. These are of the earliest dates, yet with trifling variations. The wood cuts in all the copies are coloured; some more heavily than others; and in one of them you observe, in the figure of St. Matthew, that red or crimson glossy wash, or colour, so common in the earliest prints--and which is here carried over the whole figure. One of these five copies is unbound. ARS MORIENDI. Here are two editions, of which one copy is indisputably the most ancient--like that in Lord Spencer's library,[52]--but of a considerably larger size, in quarto. There can be no doubt of the whole of this production being xylographical. Unluckily this fine copy has the first and last pages of text in ms. The other pages, with blank-reverses, are faintly impressed in brown ink: especially the first, which seems to be injured. A double-line border is round each page. This copy, which is bound in blue morocco, has also received injury from a stain. I consider the second copy, which is bound in red morocco, to be printed with moveable _metal_ types. The ink is however of a palish brown. I never saw another copy of this latter impression. BIBLIA PAUPERUM. _In Latin_. I doubt whether this be the first edition; but at any rate it is imperfect. _In German_: with the date of 1470. Here are two copies; of which I was anxious to obtain the duplicate (the largest and uncoloured,) for the library in St. James's Place; but the value fixed upon it was too high; indeed a little extravagant. The APOSTLES CREED. _In German_. Only seven leaves, but pasted together--so that, the work is an opistographised production. This is a very rare, and indeed unique volume; and utterly unknown to bibliographers. Each cut is about the same size, and there are twelve in the whole. There is no other text but the barbarous letters introduced at the bottom of the cut. MIRABILIA URBIS ROMÆ. Another generally unknown xylographic performance; printed in the German language: being a small quarto. I have secured a duplicate of this singular volume for Lord Spencer's library, intending to describe it in the _Ædes Althorpianæ_.[53] The LIFE OF ST. MEINRAT; _in German_, in a series of wood-cut representations. This Saint was murdered by two men, whose Christian names were Peter and Richard, and who were always afterwards haunted by a couple of crows. There is a German introduction of two pages, preceding the cuts. These cuts are forty-eight in number. At the thirtieth cut, the Saint is murdered; the earlier series representing the leading events of his life. The thirty-first cut represents the murderers running away; an angel being above them; In the thirty-second cut, they continue to be pursued. The thirty-third cut thus describes them; the German and the version being as follow; "_Hie furt man die mord vo danne un wil schleisse vn redern die rappen volget alle zit hin nach vn stechet sy_." "Here they bring the murderers, in order to drag them upon the hurdle to execution, and to break them upon the wheel. The crows follow and peck them." In the thirty-fourth cut Peter and Richard are tied and dragged at the heels, of a horse. In the thirty-fifth they are broken upon the wheel. The _Calendar of Regiomontanus_--A decidedly xylographical production; the first date is 1475, the last 1525. A fine sound copy, but cropt. In a duplicate copy the name of the mathematician is given at the end. CANTICA CANTICORUM. First edition. A beautiful copy; cropt, but clean. Sixteen cuts, uncoloured. The leaves have been evidently pasted together. Another copy, coloured; but of a later date. In fine preservation. A third copy; apparently the first edition; washed all over with a slight brown tint, and again coarsely coloured in parts: This copy singularly enough, is intermixed with portions of the first edition (as I take it) of the _Apocalypse_: very clumsily coloured. A fourth copy, also, as I conceive, of the first edition; rather heavily coloured. The back grounds are uncoloured. This is larger than the other copies. DEFENSIO IMMACULATÆ CONCEPTIONIS B.M.V. _Without place; of the date of 1470_. This is a Latin treatise; having four cuts in each page, with the exception of the first two pages, which exhibit only Saints Ambrose, Austin, Jerom and Gregory. At the bottom of the figure of St. Austin, second column, first page, it is thus written; "_f.w. 1470_." In the whole sixteen pages. The style of art is similar to that used in the Antichrist.[54] Of this tract, evidently xylographical, I never saw or heard of another copy. The foregoing list may be said to comprise the _chief rarities_ among the BLOCK BOOKS in the Public Library at Munich; and if I am not mistaken, they will afford no very unserviceable supplement to the celebrated work of Heineken upon the same subject. From this department in the art of printing, we descend naturally to that which is connected with metal types; and accordingly I proceed to lay before you another list of _Book-Rarities_--taken from the earlier _printed volumes_ in this most extraordinary Library. We will begin with the best and most ancient of all Books:--the BIBLE. They have a very singular copy of what is called the _Mazarine edition_: or rather the parent impression of the sacred text:--inasmuch as it contains (what, I believe, no other copy in Europe contains, and therefore M. Bernhard properly considers it as unique) _four printed leaves of a table_, as directions to the Rubricator. At the end of the Psalter is a ms. note thus: "_Explicit Psalterium, 61_." This copy is in other respects far from being desirable, for it is cropt, and in very ordinary calf binding. _Mentelin's German Bible_. Here are two copies of this first impression of the Bible in the German language: both of which have distinct claims to render them very desirable. In the one is an inscription, in the German language, of which M. Bernhard supplied me with the following literal version: "_Hector Mulich and Otilia his wife; who bought this Bible in the year of Our Lord, 1466, on the twenty-seventh day of June, for twelve florins_." Their arms are below. The whole is decidedly a coeval inscription. Here, therefore, is another testimony[55] of the printing of this Bible at least as early as the year 1466. At the end of the book of Jeremiah, in the same copy, is a ms. entry of 1467; "_sub Papa Paulo Secundo et sub Imperatore Frederico tertio_." The second copy of this edition, preserved in the same library, has a German ms. memorandum, executed in red ink, stating that this edition is "_well translated, without the addition of a single word, faithful to the Latin: printed at Strasbourg with great care_." This memorandum is doubtless of the time of the publication of the edition; and the Curators of the library very judiciously keep both copies. A third, or triplicate copy, of Mentelin's edition--much finer than either of the preceding--and indeed abounding with rough edges--was purchased by me for the library in St. James's place; but it was not obtained for a sum beneath its full value.[56] Here is a copy of _Eggesteyn's Latin Bible_, containing forty-five lines in a full page, with the important date of "_24th May, 1466_"--in a coeval ms. memorandum. Thus, you see, here is a date two years earlier[57] than that in a copy of the same Bible in the Public Library at Strasbourg; and I think, from hence, we are well warranted in supposing that both Mentelin and Eggesteyn had their presses in full play at Strasbourg in 1466--if not earlier. This copy of Eggesteyn's first Bible, which is in its original binding of wood, is as fine and large as it is precious. I shall continue, miscellaneously, with the earlier printed books. _T. Aquinas de Virtutibus et Vitiis_; printed by _Mentelin_ in his smallest character. At the end, there is the following inscription, in faded green ink; _Johannes Bamler de Augusta hui^9 libri Illuiator Anno 1468_. Thus Bamler should seem to be an illuminator as well as printer,[58] and Panzer is wrong in supposing that Bamler _printed_ this book. Of course Panzer formed his judgment from a copy which wanted such accidental attestation. _Ptolemy_, 1462: with all the maps, coloured. _Livy_ (1469): very fine--in its original binding--full sixteen inches high. _Cæsar_, 1469: very fine, in the original binding. _Lucan_, 1469: equally fine, and coated in the same manner. _Apuleius_, 1469: imperfect and dirty. The foregoing, you know, are all EDITIONES PRINCIPES. But judge of my surprise on finding neither the first edition of _Terence_, nor of _Valerius Maximus_, nor of _Virgil_[59]--all by Mentelin. I enquired for the first _Roman_ or _Bologna Ovid_: but in vain. It seemed that I was enquiring for "blue diamonds;"[60]--so precious and rare are these two latter works. Here are very fine copies of the _Philosophical works of Cicero, printed by Ulric Han_--with the exception of the Tusculan Questions and the treatise upon Oratory, of the dates of 1468, 1469--which are unluckily wanting. M. Bernhard preserves _four_ copies of the _Euclid_ of 1482, because they have printed variations in the margins. One of these copies has the prefix, or preface of one page, printed in letters of gold. I saw another such a copy at Paris. Here is the _Milan Horace of 1474_--the text only. The _Catholicon by Gutenberg, of 1460_: UPON VELLUM: quite perfect as to the text, but much cropt, and many pieces sliced out of the margins--for purposes, which it were now idle to enquire after; although I have heard of a Durandus of 1459 in our own country, which, in ancient times, had been so served for the purpose of writing directions on parcels of game, &c. _Catholicon of 1469 by G. Zeiner_; also UPON VELLUM, and equally cropt--but otherwise sound and clean. This copy contains an ancient manuscript note which must be erroneous; as it professes the first owner to have got possession of the book before it was _printed_: in other words, an _unit_ was omitted in the date, and we should read 1469 for 1468.[61] Among the more precious ITALIAN BOOKS, is a remarkably fine copy of the old edition of the _Decameron of Boccaccio_, called the _Deo Gracias_--which Lord Spencer purchased at the sale of the Borromeo library in London, last year. It is quite perfect, and in a fine, large condition. It was taken to Paris on a certain memorable occasion, and returned hither on an occasion equally memorable. It contains 253 leaves of text and two of table; and has red ms. prefixes. It came originally from the library of Petrus Victorius, from which indeed there are many books in this collection, and was bought by the King of Bavaria at Rome. What was curious, M. Bernhard shewed me a minute valuation of this very rare volume, which he had estimated at 1100 florins--somewhere about £20. below the price given by Lord Spencer for his copy, of which four leaves are supplied by ms. Here is a magnificent copy of the _Dante of 1481_, with XX CUTS; the twentieth being precisely similar to that of which a fac-simile appears in the B.S. This copy was _demanded_ by the library at Paris, and xix. cuts only were specified in the demand; the twentieth cut was therefore secreted, from another copy--which other copy has a duplicate of the first cut, pasted at the end of the preface. The impressions of the cuts, in the copy under description, are worthy of the condition of the text and of the amplitude of the margins. It is a noble book, in every point of view. I was shewn a great curiosity by this able bibliographer; nothing less than a sheet, or _broadside_, containing _specimens of types from Ratdolf's press_. This sheet is in beautiful preservation, and is executed in double columns. The first ten specimens are in the _gothic_ letter, with a gradually diminishing type. The last is thus: _Hunc adeas mira quicunq: volumina queris Arte uel ex animo pressa fuisse tuo Seruiet iste tibi: nobis (sic) iure sorores Incolumem seruet vsq: rogare licet._ This is succeeded by three gradually diminishing specimens of the printer's _roman_ letter. Then, four lines of Greek, in the Jensonian or Venetian character: next, in large black letter, as below.[62] But a still greater curiosity, in my estimation, was a small leaf; by way of _advertisement_, containing a list of publications issuing from the press of a printer whose name has not yet been discovered, and attached apparently to a copy of the _Fortalitium Fidei_; in which it was found. Luckily there was a duplicate of this little broadside--or advertisement--and I prevailed upon the curators, or rather upon M. Bernhard (whose exclusive property it was) to part with this Sibylline leaf, containing only nineteen lines, for a copy of the _Ædes Althorpianæ-- _as soon as that work should be published.[63] Of course, this is secured for the library in St. James's Place. I am now hastening to the close of this catalogue of the Munich book-treasures. You remember my having mentioned a sort of oblong cabinet, where they keep the books PRINTED UPON VELLUM--together with block books, and a few of the more ancient and highly illuminated MSS. I visited this cabinet the first thing on entering--and the last thing on leaving--the Public Library. "Where are your _Vellum Alduses_, good Mr. Bernhard?" said I to my willing and instructive guide. "You shall see only _two_ of them"--(rejoined he) but from these you must not judge of the remainder. So saying, he put into my hands the _first editions of Horace and Virgil_, each of 1501, and bound in one volume, in old red morocco. They were gems--almost of the very first order, and--almost of their original magnitude: measuring six inches and three eighths, by three inches and seven eighths. They are likewise sound and clean: but the Virgil is not equal to Lord Spencer's similar copy, in whiteness of colour, or beauty of illumination. Indeed the illuminations in the Munich copy are left in an unfinished state. In the ardour of the moment I talked of these two precious volumes being worth "120 louis d'or." M.B. smiled gently, as he heard me, and deliberately returned the volumes to their stations--intimating, by his manner, that not thrice that sum should dispossess the library of such treasures. I have lost my memoranda as to the number of these vellum Alduses; but the impression upon my mind is, that they have not more than _six_. Of course, I asked for a VELLUM _Tewrdanckhs_ of 1517, and my guide forthwith placed _two_ MEMBRANACEOUS copies of this impression before me:--adding, that almost every copy contained variations, more or less, in the text. Indeed I found M.B. "doctissimus" upon this work; and I think he said that he had published upon it as well as Camus.[64] This is about the ninety-ninth time that I have most sensibly regretted my utter ignorance, of the language (German) in which it pleaseth M. Bernhard to put forth his instructive bibliographical lucubrations. Of these two copies, one has the cuts coloured, and is very little cropt: the other has the cuts uncoloured, and is decidedly cropt. With the Tewrdanckhs, I take my leave both of the public library of Munich and (for the present) of its obliging and well-informed Second Librarian. But I must not leave this WORLD OF BOOKS without imparting to you the satisfaction which I felt on witnessing half a dozen grave-looking scribes employed, chiefly under the direction of M. Bernhard, in making out a classed catalogue of _Fifteeners_--preparatory to the sale of their Duplicates. This catalogue will be important in many respects; and I hope to see it in my own country within two years from the date of the present epistle.[65] And now methinks it is high time to put the concluding paragraph to this said epistle--so charged with bibliographical intelligence respecting the capital of Bavaria. You must give it more than _one_ perusal if you wish to digest it thoroughly. My next, within forty-eight hours hereof, will leave me on the eve of departure from hence. In the meanwhile, prepare for some pleasant BOOK TIDINGS in my ensuing despatch. [40] Both the nave and towers appear in Hartmann Schedel's view of Munich, in the _Nuremberg Chronicle_ of 1493: see fol. ccxxvi. The "pepper-box" terminations are, I conceive, of a later date. [41] I take this to be the famous Albert who died in 1500; and who, in Schedel's time, kept lions for his disport--at Munich: "qui sua magnificentia plures nutrit leones" _Chron. Norimb._ 1493. _Ibid._ [42] The steeple fell down in the year 1599, and has never been rebuilt. [43] See p. 87 ante. [44] See p. 66 ante. [45] [Sir J. Reynolds criticised these pictures when they were in the _Dusseldorf Gallery_: but I cannot just now lay my hand upon his remarks.] [46] [It has made, and is yet making, great strides towards the accomplishment of the above-mentioned objects--since the above passage was written.] [47] [With the exception of the first, (although I do not make this exception with _confidence_) all the above-named gentlemen have CEASED TO EXIST. Mr. Bernhard I believe died before the publication of the preceding edition of this work: and I add, with perfect sincerity, that _his_ decease, and that of _M. Adam Bartsch_ (vide post) were, to me, among the bitterest regrets which I ever experienced in my intercourse with foreign literati. [48] The able editor of the Romance of Sir TRISTREAM, ascribed to Thomas of Ercildoune, appears to have been entirely ignorant of the existence of this highly curious and coeval German version. I regret that I am unable to give the reader a complete analysis of the whole. From this account, I select the following very small portion--of fidelity of version--with a fac-simile of one of the Embellishments. So all his thoughts were wavering: _Wilen abe vn wilent an_-- One while above, and one while down, _Er tet wol an im selben schin_ He truly on himself made shew, _Daz der minnende mot_ That an amorous mind behaves _Reht als der vrie fogel tot_ Even as the bird in the open air, _Der durch die friheit dier hat_ Who, by the liberty he enjoys, _Vf daz gelimde twi gestat_ Slightly sits on the lime-twig down; _Als er des limes danne entsebet_ As soon as he the lime descrys, _Vnd er sieh vf ze fluhte hebet_ And rises up to fly in haste, _So chlebet er mit den fossen an_. His feet are clinging to the twig. This simile of the bird seems expressed in the illumination, of which the outline has been faithfully copied by Mr. Lewis: [Illustration] [49] See page 33 ante. [50] It appeared in the year 1808, and was sold for 2l. 12s. 6d. But a blank space was left in the middle--which, in the original, is occupied by a heavy gothic text. The publication of the continuation by Lucas Cranach appeared in 1818. [51] Now in the Collection of Henry Perkins, Esq. [52] See _Bibl. Spenceriana_, vol. i. p. xv-xxiii. where fac-similes of some of the cuts will be found. [53] Where it is fully described, in vol. ii. p. 188, &c. with fac-similes of the type and ornaments. An entire page of it is given at p. 189. [54] See _Bibl. Spenceriana_, vol. i. p. xxxi. [55] A copy in the public library at Stuttgart has a ms. memorandum in which the same dominical date is entered. See note, at page 21 ante. [56] It must be mentioned, however, that a fine copy of the _German edition of Breydenbach's Travels, of 1486_, was given into the bargain. [57] In the _Bibl. Spencer_, vol. i. p. 38-9--where a fac-simile of the type of this edition is given--the impression is supposed to have been executed in "the year 1468 at latest." The inscription of 1468 in the Strasbourg copy (see vol. ii. p. 404.) should seem at least to justify the caution of this conclusion. But, from the above, we are as justified in assigning to it a date of at least two years earlier. [58] Lord Spencer possesses a copy of _St. Austin de Civitate Dei_, with the Commentary of Trivetus, printed by Mentelin, which was also illuminated by Bamler in the same year as above--1468. The memorandum to this effect, by Bamler, is given in the _Ædes Althorpianæ_; vol. ii. p. 20. [59] I will not say _positively_ that the VIRGIL is _not_ there; but I am pretty sure of the absence of the two preceding works. My authority was, of course, the obliging and well informed M. Bernhard. [60] See page 115 ante. [61] The inscription is this: "_Anno dni Millesimo cccc^o lxviij^o. Conparatus est iste Katholicon tpe Iohis Hachinger h^{9} ccclie p tunc imeriti pptti. p. xlviij Aureis R flor^{9} taxatus p. H xxi faciunt in moneta Vsuali xlvj t d_." So that it seems a copy of this work, upon vellum, was worth at the time of its publication, _forty-six golden florins_. [62] _Indicis characterum diversarum manerieru impressioni parataru: Finis. Erhardi Ratdolt Augustensis viri solertissimi: preclaro ingenio & mirifica arte: qua olim Venetijs excelluit celebratissimus. In imperiali nunc vrbe Auguste vindelicorum laudatissime impressioni dedit. Annoq; salutis_ M.CCCC.LXXXXVI. _Cale Aprilis Sidere felici compleuit_. [63] An admirably executed fac-simile of the above curious document appears in the work here referred to: vol. ii. p. 131--where the subject of its probable printer is gone into at considerable length. [64] The reader, if he have leisure and inclination, may consult a long note in the _Bibliographical Decameron_, vol. i. p. 201, respecting the best authorities to be consulted upon the above very splendid and distinguished performance. Camus is included in the list of authorities referred to. [65] Seven years have elapsed since the above was written, but no CLASSED CATALOGUE of any portion of the Public Library of Munich has appeared in this country. Speaking of _duplicates_, not printed in the fifteenth century, it may be worth observing that they have at Munich not fewer than six copies (double the number of those at Strasbourg;) of the ACTA SANCTORUM; good handsome copies in vellum binding. [Since the first edition of this Tour was published, several copies of this stupendous, but unfortunately imperfect work, have been imported into England: among which, however, none, to my recollection, have found their way from MUNICH. Indeed, the heavy expense of carriage is almost an interdiction: unless the copies were obtained at very moderate prices.] LETTER VI. FURTHER BOOK-ACQUISITIONS. SOCIETY. THE ARTS. The bright bibliographical star, which shone upon me at Stuttgart, has continued to shine with the same benign lustre at this place. "[Greek: _Heurêka Heurêka_]"!--the scarcest and brightest of all the ALDINE GEMS has been found and secured by me: that gem, for which M. Renouard still continues to sigh and to rave, alternately, in despair of a _perfect_ copy; and which has, only very recently, been placed among the most brilliant ornaments of the Royal Library at Paris.[66] What may these strange exclamations and inuendos imply?--methinks I hear you say. You shall know in a trice--which just brings me to the very point with which my previous epistle concluded. Those "pleasant book-tidings," referred to in my last, and postponed for the present opportunity, are "as hereafter followeth." In my frequent conversations with the Guardians of the Public Library, I learnt that one STOEGER, a bookseller chiefly devoted to the purchase and sale of _Aldine_ volumes, resided in this metropolis; that his abode was rather private than public; and that his "magasin" was lodged on the second or third floor, in a row of goodly houses, to the right, on entering the city. M. Bernhard added, that Mr. Stoeger had even a copy of the first Aldine edition of the _Greek hours_ (printed in 1497)--which is the very gem above alluded to; "but (observed my intelligent informant, as he accompanied me to the door of the bookseller in question) "he will not part with it: for both the Prince Royal and our Public Library have been incessant in their importunities to possess it. He sets an extravagant price upon it." Having been instructed from early youth, "never to take that for _granted_ which remained to be _proved_," I thanked the worthy M. Bernhard for his intelligence; and, wishing him a good morning, entered the chamber of Mr. Stoeger. I had previously heard (and think that I have before made mention) of the eagerness with which the Prince Royal of Bavaria purchases _Alduses_; and own, that, had I chosen to reflect one little minute, I might have been sufficiently disheartened at any reasonable prospect of success, against two such formidable opponents as the Prince and the Public Library. However, in cases of emergency, 'tis better to think courageously and to act decisively. I entered therefore the chamber of this Aldine bookseller, resolved upon bearing away the prize--"coute qu'il coute"--provided that prize were not absolutely destined for another. M. Stoeger saluted me formally but graciously. He is a short, spare man, with a sharp pair of dark eyes, and speaks French with tolerable fluency. We immediately commenced a warm bibliographical discussion; when Mr. Stoeger, all of a sudden, seemed to raise himself to the height of six feet--gave three strides across the room--and exclaimed, "Well, Sir; the cabinet of my Lord Spencer wants something which I possess in yonder drawer." I told him that I knew what it was he alluded to; and, with the same decision with which I seemed to bespeak the two Virgils at Stuttgart, I observed, that "_that_ want would soon cease; for that ere I quitted the room, the book in question would doubtless become the property of the nobleman whom he had just mentioned." Mr. Stoeger, for three seconds, was lost in astonishment: but instinctively, as it were; he approached the drawer: opened it: and shewed me an unbound, sombre-looking, but sound and perfect copy of the _first edition_ of the GREEK HOURS, _printed by Aldus_. As I had among my papers a collation of the perfect copy at Paris, I soon discovered that Mr. Stoeger's copy was also complete; and ... in less than fifteen minutes I gained a _complete victory_ over the Prince Royal of Bavaria and the corps bibliographique of Messrs. Von Moll, Schlichtegroll, Schérer, Bernhard, &c.--the directors and guardians of the Public Library at Munich. In other words, this tiny book, measuring not quite four inches, by not quite three, was _secured_--for the cabinet in question--at the price of * * florins!! The vender, as I shrewdly suspect, had bought it of a brother bookseller at Augsbourg,[67]of the name of KRANSFELDER (a worthy man; whom I visited--but with whom I found nothing but untransportable Latin and German folios) for ... peradventure only the _hundredth part_ of the sum which he was now to receive. What shall we say? The vender is designated by Mr. Schlichtegroll, in the preface of the last sale catalogue of the duplicates of the Public Library (1815, 8vo.) as "bibliopola honestissimus"--and let us hope that he merits the epithet. Besides, books of this excessive rarity are objects of mere caprice and fancy. To return to this "bibliopola honestissimus," I looked out a few more tempting articles, of the Aldine character,[68] and receiving one or two as a douceur; in the shape a present, settled my account with Mr. Stoeger ... and returned to my lodging more and more confirmed in the truth of the position of "not taking _that_ for granted which remained to be _proved_." The whole of this transaction was, if I may so speak, in the naughty vanity of my heart, a sort of _octodecimo_ illustration of the "VENI, VIDI, VICI" of a certain illustrious character of antiquity. Of a very different character from this _Aldine bibliopolist_ is a bookseller of the name of VON FISCHHEIM: the simplest, the merriest, the most artless of his fraternity. It was my good friend Mr. Hess (of whom I shall presently speak somewhat more at large) who gave me information of his residence. "You will find there (added he) all sorts of old books, old drawings, pictures, and curiosities." What a provocative for an immediate and incessant attack! I took my valet with me--for I was told that Mr. Von Fischheim could not speak a word of French--and within twenty minutes of receiving the information, found myself in the dark and dreary premises of this same bibliopolist. He lives on the first floor; but the way thither is almost perilous. Mr. Fischheim's cabinet of curiosities was crammed even to suffocation; and it seemed as if a century had elapsed since a vent-hole had been opened for the circulation of fresh air. I requested the favour of a pinch of snuff from Mr. Fischheim's box, to counteract all unpleasant sensations arising from effluvia of a variety of description--but I recommend English visitors in general to _smoke a segar_ while they rummage among the curiosities of Mr. Fischheim's cabinet! Old Tom Hearne might here, in a few minutes, have fancied himself ... any thing he pleased! The owner of these miscellaneous treasures wore one unvarying smile upon his countenance during the whole time of my remaining with him. He saw me reject this, and select that; cry "pish" upon one article, and "bravo" upon another--with the same settled complacency of countenance. His responses were short and pithy, and I must add, pleasant: for, having entirely given up all hopes of securing any thing in the shape of a good picture, a good bust, or a genuine illumination from a rich old MS., I confined myself strictly to printed books--and obtained some very rare, precious, and beautifully-conditioned volumes upon most reasonable and acceptable terms.[69] Having completed my purchase, the books were sent to the hotel by a shopman, in the sorriest possible garb, but who wore, nevertheless, a mark of military distinction in his button-hole. From henceforth I can neither think, nor speak, but with kindness of Paul Ludwig Von Fischheim, the simplest, the merriest, and most artless of his fraternity. The day following this adventure, I received a note informing me that a person, practising physic, but also a collector and seller of old books, would be glad to see me in an adjoining street. He had, in particular, some "RARE OLD BIBLES." Another equally stimulant provocative! I went, saw, and... returned--with scarcely a single trophy. Old Bibles there were--but all of too recent a date: and all in the _Latin_ language. Yet I know not how it was, but I suffered myself to be prevailed upon to give some twenty florins for a doubtfully-printed _Avicenna_, and a _Biblia Historica Moralisata_. Had I yielded to further importunities, or listened to further information, I might have filled the large room in which I am now sitting--and which is by much the handsomest in the hotel[70]--with oak-bound folios, vellum-clad quartos, and innumerable broadsides. But I resisted every entreaty: I had done sufficient--at least for the first visit to the capital of Bavaria. And doubtless I have good reason to be satisfied with these Bavarian book-treasures. There they all lie; within as many strides of me as Mr. Stoeger took across the room; while, more immediately within reach, and eyed with a more frequent and anxious look, repose the _Greek Hours_, the _first Horace_, the _Mentelin German Bible_, and the _Polish Protestant Bible_; all--ALL destined for the cabinet of which Mr. Stoeger made such enthusiastic mention. A truce now to books, and a word or two about society. I arrived here at a season when Munich is considered to be perfectly empty. None of the noblesse; no public gaieties; no Chargé d'Affaires--all were flown, upon the wings of curiosity or of pleasure towards the confines of Italy. But as my business was rather with Books and bookmen, I sought chiefly the society of the latter, nor was I disappointed. I shall introduce them one by one. First therefore for the BARON VON MOLL; one of the most vivacious and colloquial of gentlemen; and who perhaps has had more to do with books than any one of his degree in Bavaria. I know not even if he have not had two or more monastic libraries to dispose of--which descended to him as ancestral property. I am sure he talked to me of more than one chateau, or country villa, completely filled with books; of which he meditated the disposal by public or private sale. And this, too--after he had treated with the British Museum through the negotiation of our friend the Rev. Mr. Baber, for two or three thousand pounds worth of books, comprehending, chiefly, a very valuable theological collection. The Baron talked of twenty thousand volumes being here and there, with as much sang-froid and certainty as Bonaparte used to talk of disposing of the same number of soldiers in certain directions. The other Sunday afternoon I accompanied him to one of his villas, in the direct road from Munich--near which indeed I had passed in my route hither. Or, rather, speaking more correctly the Baron accompanied me:--as he bargained for my putting a pair of post-horses to my carriage. He wished me to see his books, and his rural domain. The carriage and burden were equally light, and the road was level and hard. We therefore reached the place of our destination in a short hour. It was a very pleasant mansion, with a good garden, and several fertile fields of pasture and arable land. The Baron made it his summer residence. His books filled the largest room in the house. He invited me to look around, to select any volumes that I might fancy, provided they were not grammatical or lexicographical--for, in that department, he never wished his strength to be diminished, or his numbers to be lessened. I did as he desired me: culled a pretty book-posey;--not quite so blooming as that selected at Lincoln,[71] some dozen years ago,--and, as the sun was setting, voted the remainder of the evening, till supper-time, to a walk with the Baron upon the neighbouring heights. The evening was fair and mild, and the Baron was communicative and instructive. His utterance is rapid and vehement; but with a tone of voice and mode of action by no means uninteresting. We talked about the possession of Munich by the French forces, under the command of Moreau, and he narrated some particulars equally new and striking. Of Moreau, he spoke very handsomely; declaring him to have been a modest, grave, and sensible man--putting his great military talents entirely out of the question. The Baron himself, like every respectable inhabitant of Munich, was put under military surveillance. Two grenadiers and a petty officer were quartered upon him. He told me a curious anecdote about Bonaparte and Marshal Lasnes--if I remember rightly, upon the authority of Moreau. It was during the crisis of some great battle in Austria, when the fate of the day was very doubtful, that Bonaparte ordered Lasnes to make a decisive movement with his cavalry; Lasnes seemed to hesitate. Bonaparte reiterated the order, and Lasnes appeared to hesitate again--as if doubting the propriety of the movement. Bonaparte eyed him with a look of ineffable contempt; and added--almost fixing his teeth together, in a hissing but biting tone of sarcasm--"_Est-ce que je t'ai fait trop riche?_" Lasnes dashed his spurs into the sides of his charger, turned away, and prepared to put the command of his master into execution. So much for the Baron Von Moll. The name of SCHLICHTEGROLL was frequently mentioned in my last letter. It is fitting, therefore, that you should know something of the gentleman to whom this name appertains. Mr. F. Schlichtegroll is the Director in Chief of the Public Library at Munich. I was introduced to him in a room contiguous to that where they keep their models of public buildings--such as bridges, barriers, fortifications, &c. which are extremely beautiful and interesting. The director received me in the heartiest manner imaginable; and within five minutes of our first salutation, I found his arm within my own, as we walked up and down the room--discoursing about first editions, block-books, and works printed upon vellum. He was delighted to hear of my intention to make a vigorous attack, with pen, ink, and paper, upon the oblong cabinet of _Fifteeners_ and precious MSS. of which my last letter made especial mention; and promised to afford me every facility which his official situation might command. Unluckily for a more frequent intercourse between us, which was equally wished by both parties, the worthy Director was taken ill towards the latter part of my stay;[72]--not however before I had visited him twice, and been his guest attended by a numerous party. Mr. SCHERER is the third figure upon this bibliographical piece of canvass, of which I deem it essential to give you a particular description. He is very hearty, very alert in the execution of his office, and is "all over English" in his general appearance and manner of conduct. He is learned in oriental literature; is a great reader of English Reviews; and writes our language with fluency and tolerable correctness. He readily volunteered his kind offices in translating the German ms. of _Sir Tristrem_, of which my last letter made mention--and I have been indebted to him upon every occasion, wherein I have solicited his aid, for much friendly and much effectual attention. He has, luckily for his own character, vouchsafed to _dine_ with me; although it was with difficulty I could prevail upon him so to do, and for him to allow me to dine at the protracted hour of _four_. After dinner, it was with pleasure,--when surrounded by all the book-treasures, specified in the early part of this letter, and which were then lying in detached piles upon the floor[73]--I heard Mr. Schérer expatiate upon the delight he felt in taking a trip, every summer or autumn, among the snow-capt mountains of the Tyrol; or of burying his cares, as well as changing his studies and residence, by an excursion along the lakes and mountains of Switzerland. "When that season arrives (added he--stretching forth both arms in a correspondently ardent manner) I fly away to these grand scenes of silence and solitude, and forget the works of man in the contemplation of those of nature!" As he spake thus, my heart went a good way with him: and I could not but express my regret that London was not situated like the capital of Bavaria. Of Mr. BERNHARD, the sub-librarian, I have already spoken frequently; and in a manner, I trust, to shew that I can never be insensible either of his acquirements or his kindness. He has one of the meekest spirits--accompanied by the firmest decision--which ever marked the human character; and his unconsciousness both of the one and of the other renders his society the more delightful. A temporary farewell to Bibliography, and to Bibliographers. You may remember that I introduced the name of Hess, in a former part of this letter; with an intention of bringing the character, to whom it belonged, at a future period before your notice. You will be gratified by the mention of some particulars connected with him. Mr. Hess has passed his grand climacteric; and is a Professor of Design, but more especially a very distinguished Engraver. His figure, his manner of conversation, his connections, and his character, are all such--as to render it pleasing to find them combined with a man of real talent and worth. I had brought with me, from England, a drawing or copy of one of the original portraits at Althorp--supposed to be painted by Anthony More--with a view of getting it engraved abroad. It is very small, scarcely four inches square. I had shewn it at Paris to Lignon, who _modestly_ said he would execute it in his very best manner, for 3000 francs! M. Hess saw it--and was in extacies. "Would I allow him to engrave it?" "Name your price." "I should think about thirty-five guineas." "I should think (replied I) that that sum would entitle me to your best efforts." "Certainly; and you shall have them"--rejoined he. I then told him of the extravagance of Lignon. He felt indignant at it. "Not (added he) that I shall execute it in _his_ highly finished manner." I immediately consigned the precious portrait into his hands--with a written agreement to receive the engraving of it next year, at the stipulated sum.[74] Thus you see I have set Mr. Hess to work in my absence--when I quit Munich--which will be to-morrow, or the following day at farthest. This worthy artist won upon me at every interview. His dress and address were truly gentlemanly; and as he spoke the English language as well as he did the French, we were of course glad to renew our visits pretty frequently. His anxiety to promote my views, and to afford my companion every assistance in his power, connected with the Fine Arts, will be long and gratefully remembered by us.[75] But Mr. NOCKHER shall not be passed over "sub silentio." He is a banker; and I found another FRANCS in the promptitude and liberality of his offers of pecuniary supply. He, together with Mr. Hess, has tasted the best red wine, at my humble table, that the _Schwartzen Adler_ can afford; and I have quaffed his souchong, in society in which I should like to have mingled again and again. The subjects of pictures and prints occupied every moment of our time, and almost every word of our discussion; and Mr. Nockher shewed me his fine impression of the _Dresden Raphael_, in a manner that proved how perfectly well he was qualified to appreciate the merits of the graphic art. That print, you know, is considered to be the masterpiece of modern art; and it is also said that the engraver--having entirely finished every portion of it--did NOT LIVE TO SEE A FINISHED PROOF. Mr. Nockher bought it for some three or four napoleons, and has refused twenty for it. I own that, to my eye, this print has more power, expression, and I may say colouring, than almost any which I remember to have seen. The original is in the second, or darker style of colouring, of the master; and this engraving of it is as perfect a copy of the manner of the original, as that by Raphael Morghen of the last Supper of Leonardo da Vinci--so celebrated all over Europe. Mr. Nockher is both a good-natured man, and a man of business; and the facility and general correctness of his mode of speaking the English language, renders a communication with him very agreeable. He has undertaken to forward all my book-purchases to England--with the exception of a certain _little Greek duodecimo_, which has taken a marvellous fancy to be the travelling companion of its present master. Mr. Nockher also promises to forward all future book-purchases which I may make--and which may be directed for him at Munich--on to England. Thus, therefore--when I quit this place--I may indulge a pleasing anticipation of the future, without any anxieties respecting the past.[76] And now fare you well. Within twenty-four hours I start from hence, upon rather a _digressive_ excursion; and into which the Baron Von Moll and M. Schlichtegroll have rather coaxed, than reasoned, me. I am to go from hence to _Freysing_ and _Landshut_--and then diverge down, to the right, upon _Salzburg_--situated 'midst snow-clad mountains, and containing a LIBRARY within the oldest monastery in Austria. I am to be prepared to be equally struck with astonishment at the crypt of Freysing, and at the tower of Landshut--and after having "revelled and rioted" in the gloomy cloisters and sombre apartments of St. Peter's monastery, at Salzburg, I am instructed to take the _Lake of Gmunden_ in my way to the _Monastery of Chremsminster_--in the direct route to Lintz and Vienna. A world of variety and of wonder seems therefore to be before me; and as my health has been recently improved, from the comparatively cool state of the weather, I feel neither daunted nor depressed at the thought of any difficulties, should there be any, which may await me in the accomplishment of this journey. My next, God willing, will assuredly be from Salzburg--when I shall have rested awhile after a whirl of some two hundred miles. [66] [See vol. ii. p. 147. Renouard, _L'Imprim. des Alde_, vol. i. 36-7. There are however, NOW, I believe, in this country, FIVE copies of this very rare book; of which four are perfect.] [67] The copy in question had, in 1595, been the property of F. Gregorius, prior of the monastery of Sts. Ulric and Afra at Augsbourg: as that possessor's autograph denotes. [68] The principal of these "tempting articles" were a fine first _Statius_ of 1502, _Asconius Pedianus_, 1522. _Cicero de Officiis_, 1517, and _Leonicerus de Morbo Gallico_--with the leaf of errata: wanting in the copy in St. James's Place. But perhaps rarer than either, the _Laurentius Maoli_ and _Averrois_, each of 1497--intended for _presents_. But Mr. Stoeger had forgotten these intended presents--and _charged_ them at a good round sum. I considered his word as his bond--and told him that honest Englishmen were always in the habit of so considering the words of honest Germans. I threatened him with the return of the whole cargo, including even the beloved _Greek Hours_. Mr. Stoeger seemed amazed: hesitated: relented: and adhered to his original position. Had he done otherwise, I should doubtless have erased the epithet "honestissimus," in all the copies of the sale catalogue above alluded to, which might come within my notice, and placed a marginal emendation of "avidissimus." [69] It may be a novel, and perhaps gratifying, sight to the reader to throw his eye over a list (of a few out of the fifty articles) like the following: _Flor. Kreutz. Liber Moralizat. Biblic. Ulm_. 1474. Folio. Fine copy 11 _Biblia Vulg. Hist. Ital. Venet._ Giunta 1492. Fol. 8 _Horatius. Venet._ 1494. 4to. Fig. lig. incis. 11 _Cronica del rey don Iuan_. _Sevilla_. 1563. 4to. 11 _Breviarium. Teutonicè_. 4to. In MEMBRANIS. A most beautiful and spotless book. It contains only the Pars Hyemalis of the cathedral service. 11 _Dictionarium Pauperum_. _Colon_. 1504. 8vo. 1 _Pars quart. Ind. Orient. Francof_. 1601. 5 30 _Fabulæ Æsopicæ_. _Cura Brandt_. 1501. Folio. Perhaps a matchless copy; in original binding of wood. Full of cuts 55 Thirteen different opuscula, at one florin each; many very curious and uncommon 13 The Lord's Prayer and Creed--in the German language--printed by "_Fricz Crewsner_," in 1472: folio: _broadside_. Perhaps UNIQUE 22 The florin, at the time of my residence at Munich, was about 1s. 9d. [70] [However severely I may have expressed myself in a preceding page (105) of the general condition of this huge Inn, yet I cannot but gaze upon the subjoined view of it with no ordinary sensation of delight when I remember that the three-windowed room, on the first floor, to the right--close to the corner--was the room destined to be graced by the BOOK TREASURES above mentioned. This view may also serve as a general specimen of the frontage of the larger Inns in Bavaria.] [Illustration] [71] [All the _book-world_ has heard mention of THE LINCOLNE NOSEGAY, --a small handful of flowers, of choice hues, and vigorous stems, culled within the precincts of one of the noblest cathedrals in Europe. Neither Covent Garden at home, nor the Marché aux Fleurs at Paris, could boast of such a posey. I learn, however, with something approaching to horror, that the Nosegay in question has been counterfeited. A _spurious_ edition (got up by some unprincipled speculator, and, I must add, bungling hand--for the typographical discrepancy is obvious) is abroad. Roxburghers, look well to your book-armouries! The foe may have crept into them, and exchanged your steel for painted wood.] [72] There is something so hearty and characteristic in the Director's last letter to me, that I hope to be pardoned if I here subjoin a brief extract from it. "M. Schérer vient me quitter, et m'annoncer que votre départ est fixé pour demain. Jamais maladie--auxquelles, heureusement, je suis très rarement exposé--m'est survenu aussi mal-à-propos qu'à cette fois-ci. J'avois compté de jouir encore au moins quelques jours, après mon rétablissement, de votre entretien, et jetter les fondemens d'une amitié collegiale pour la future. La nouvelle, que M. Schérer m'apporte, me désole. J'avois formé le plan de vous accompagner pour voir quelqu'uns de nos Institutions rémarquables, principalement _La Lithographie_, "Vana Somnia!" Votre résolution de quitter Munich plutôt que je n'avois pensé, détruit mes esperances. N'est-ce-pas possible que vous passiez par Munich à votre retour de Vienne? Utinam! Combien de choses restent, sur lesquelles j'esperais de causer et de traiter avec vous! "I bono alite: pede fausto." [Autograph] [The author of this Letter is NO MORE!] [73] See the note, p. 157 ante. [74] This Engraving appears in the _Ædes Althorpianæ_, vol. i. p. 246. On my return to England, it was necessary to keep up a correspondence with the amiable and intelligent character in question. I make no apology, either to the reader, or to the author of the Epistle, for subjoining a copy of one of these letters--premising, that it relates to fac-similes of several old copper cuts in the Public Library at Munich, as well as to his own engraving of the above-mentioned portrait. There is something throughout the whole of this letter so hearty, and so thoroughly original, that I am persuaded it will be perused with extreme gratification: _Munich, 17 May, 1819._ Dear and Reverend Sir; I am a good old fellow, and a passable engraver; but a very bad Correspondent. You are a ... and minister of a religion which forgive all faults of mankind; and so I hope that you will still pardon me the retardation of mine answer. I am now 65 years old, and have never had any sickness in mine life, but I have such an averseness against writing, that only the _sight_ of an ink-horn, pen and paper, make me feeling all sort of fevers of the whole medicinal faculty;--and so I pray that you would forgive me the brevity of mine letters. Following your order, I send you jointly the first proof prints of those plates still (already) finished. The plate of that beautiful head of an English artist, is not yet so far advanced; but in about six weeks you will have it--and during this time, I expect your answer and direction to whom I shall deliver the whole. I wish and hope heartily that the fac-similes and portraits would be correspondent with your expectation. I hold it for necessary and interesting, to give you a true copy of that old print--"_Christ in the lap of God the Father_." You'll see that this print is cutten round, and carefully pasted upon another paper on a wooden band of a book: which proves not only a high respect for a precious antiquity, but likewise that this print is much older than the date of 1462--which is written in red ink, over the cutten outlines, of that antique print. You may be entirely assured of the fidelity of both fac-similes. Now I pray you heartily to remember my name to our dear Mr. Lewis, with my friendliest compliments, and told him that the work on _Lithography_ is now finished, and that he shall have it by the first occasion. In expectation of your honorable answer, I assure you of the highest consideration and respect of Your most obedient humble Servant, [Autograph] [75] [This GRAPHIC WORTHY now _ceases to exist_. He died in his seventy-first year--leaving behind, the remembrance of virtues to be reverenced and of talents to be imitated.] [76] [Another OBITUARY presses closely upon the preceding--but an Obituary which rends one's heart to dwell upon:--for a kinder, a more diligent, and more faithful Correspondent than was Mr. Nockher, it has never been my good fortune to be engaged with. Almost while writing the _above_ passage, this unfortunate gentleman ... DESTROYED himself:--from embarrassment of circumstances!] LETTER VII. FREYSING. LANDSHUT. ALTÖTING. SALZBURG. THE MONASTERY OF ST. PETER. _Salzburg; Golden Ship, Aug. 23, 1818._ MY DEAR FRIEND; If ever I wished for those who are dear to me in England, to be my companions during any part of this "_antiquarian_ and _picturesque_ tour," (for there are comparatively few, I fear, who would like to have been sharers of the "_bibliographical_" department of it) it has been on the route from Munich to this place: first, darting up to the north; and secondly, descending gradually to the south; and feasting my eyes, during the descent, upon mountains of all forms and heights, winding through a country at once cultivated and fertile, and varied and picturesque. Yes, my friend, I have had a glimpse, and even more than a glimpse, of what may be called ALPINE SCENERY: and have really forgotten Fust, Schoeffher, and Mentelin, while contemplating the snow-capt heights of the _Gredig_, _Walseberg_, and _Untersberg_:--to say nothing of the _Gross Klokner_, which raises its huge head and shoulders to the enormous height of 12,000 feet above the level of the sea. These be glorious objects!--but I have only gazed; and, gazed at a distance of some twenty or thirty miles. Surrounded as I am, at this moment,--in one of the most marvellous and romantic spots in Europe--in the vicinity of lakes, mountain-torrents, trout-streams, and salt-mines,--how can you expect to hear any thing about MSS. and PRINTED BOOKS? They shall not, however, be _wholly_ forgotten; for as I always endeavour to make my narrative methodical, I must of necessity make mention of the celebrated library of INGOLDSTADT, (of which Seemiller has discoursed so learnedly in a goodly quarto volume,) now, with the University of the same place, transferred to LANDSHUT--where I slept on the first night of my departure from Munich. A secret, but strong magnetic power, is pulling me yet more southerly, towards _Inspruck_ and _Italy_. No saint in the golden legend was ever more tortured by temptation, than I have been for the last twenty-four hours ... with the desire of visiting those celebrated places. Thrice has some invisible being--some silver-tongued sylph--not mentioned, I apprehend, in the nomenclature of the Rosicrusian philosophy, whispered the word ... "ROME ..." in mine ear--and thrice have I replied in the response... "VIENNA!" I am therefore firmly fixed: immoveably resolved ... and every southerly attraction shall be deserted for the capital of Austria: having determined to mingle among the Benedictin and Augustin monks of _Chremsminster_, _St. Florian_, and _Mölk_--and, in the bookish treasures of their magnificent establishments, to seek and obtain something which may repay the toil and expense of my journey. But why do I talk of monastic delights only in _contemplation_? I have _realized_ them. I have paced the cloisters of St. Peter's, the mother-convent of Austria: have read inscriptions, and examined ornaments, upon tombstones, of which the pavement of these cloisters is chiefly composed: have talked bad Latin with the principal, and indifferently good French with the librarian--have been left alone in the library--made memoranda, or rather selected books for which a _valuable consideration_ has been proposed--and, in short, fancied myself to be thoroughly initiated in the varieties of the Bavarian and Austrian characters. Indeed, I have almost the conceit to affirm that this letter will be worth both postage and preservation. Let me "begin at the beginning." On leaving Munich, I had resolved upon dining at Freysingen, or _Freysing_; as well to explore the books of Mr. Mozler, living there--and one of the most "prying" of the bibliopolistic fraternity throughout Germany--as to examine, with all imaginable attention, the celebrated Church to which a monastery had been formerly attached--and its yet more celebrated _Crypt_. All my Munich friends exhorted me to descend into this crypt; and my curiosity had been not a little sharpened by the lithographic views of it (somewhat indifferently executed) which I had seen and purchased at Munich. Some of my Munich friends considered the crypt of Freysing to be coeval with Charlemagne. This was, at least, a very romantic conjecture. The morning was gray and chill, when we left the _Schwartzen Adler_; but as we approached Garching, the first stage, the clouds broke, the sun shone forth, and we saw Freysing, (the second stage) situated upon a commanding eminence, at a considerable distance. In our way to Garching, the river Iser and the plains of Hohenlinden lay to the right; upon each of which, as I gazed, I could not but think alternately of MOREAU and CAMPBELL. You will readily guess wherefore. The former won the memorable battle of Hohenlinden--fought in the depth of winter--by which the Austrians were completely defeated, and which led to the treaty of Luneville: and the latter (that is, our Thomas Campbell) celebrated that battle in an _Ode_--of which I never know how to speak in sufficient terms of admiration: an ode, which seems to unite all the fire of Pindar with all the elegance of Horace; of which, parts equal Gray in sublimity, and Collins in pathos. We drove to the best, if not the only, Inn at Freysing; and, ordering a late dinner, immediately visited the cathedral;--not however without taking the shop of Mozler, the bookseller, in our way, and finding--to my misfortune--that the owner was absent on a journey; and his sister, the resident, perfectly ignorant of French. We then ascended towards the cathedral, which is a comparatively modern building; at least every thing _above_ ground is of that description. The CRYPT, however, more than answered my expectations. I should have no hesitation in calling it perfectly unique; as I have neither seen, nor heard, nor read of any thing the least resembling it. The pillars, which support the roof, have monsters crawling up their shafts--devouring one another, as one sees them in the margins of the earlier illuminated MSS. The altar beneath Our Lady's chapel was a confused mass of lumber and rubbish; but, if I were to select--from all the strange and gloomy receptacles, attached to places of religious worship, which I have seen since quitting the shores of my own country--any ONE SPOT, in preference to another, for the celebration of mysterious rites--it should be the CRYPT of the CATHEDRAL of FREYSING. And perhaps I should say that portions of it might be as old as the latter end of the eleventh century. From the foundation, we ascended to the very summit of the building; and from the top of the tower, had a most extensive and complete view of the plains of _Hohenlinden_, the rapid _Iser_, and the gray mist of Munich in the distance. I was much struck with a large bell, cast about fourscore years ago; the exterior of which was adorned by several inscriptions, and rather whimsical ornaments. Having gratified a curiosity of this kind, my companion and valet left me, for a stroll about the town; when I requested the guide (who could luckily talk a little bad French) to shew me the LIBRARY belonging to the monastery formerly attached to the cathedral. He told me that it was the mere relics of a library:--the very shadow of a shade. Indeed it was quickly obvious that there were certain _hiatuses_ upon the shelves--which told their own tale pretty readily. The books, once occupying them, had been taken to Munich. The room is light, cheerful, and even yet well garnished with books: most of them being in white forel or vellum binding. There were Bibles, out of number, about the beginning of the sixteenth century; and an abundant sprinkling of glosses, decretals, canon law, and old fashioned scholastic lore of the same period. Nevertheless, I was glad to have examined it; and do not know that I have visited many more desirable book-apartments since I left England. In my way to the inn, I took a more leisurely survey of the collection of Mr. Mozler: but his sister had not returned from vespers, and I was left absolutely alone--with the exception of a female servant; who, pointing to the book-room above stairs, as the supposed fittest place for my visit, betook herself to her culinary occupations. Since the sight of the premises of the younger Manoury at Caen,[77] I had never witnessed such a scene of darkness, lumber, and confusion:--yet I must do Mr. Mozler the justice to say, that there was much which might have repaid the toil of a minute examination. But I was pressed for time: and the appetites of my travelling companions might be sharpened so as to stand in need of an immediate attack upon the cotelette and wine. We dined as expeditiously as ever the Trojans or Grecians did, on expecting a sally from the foe. The red wine was, I think, the most delicious I had then drank in Germany. A little before six, we left Freysing for _Moosburg_: a ten mile stage; but we had not got a quarter of a league upon our journey, when we discovered, to the right, somewhat in our rear, a more complete view of the Tyrolese mountains than we had yet seen. They appeared to be as huge monsters, with overtopping heads, disporting themselves in an element of their own--many thousand feet in the air! It was dusk when we changed horses at _Moosburg_: and the moon, then pretty far advanced towards the full, began to supply the light of which we stood so much in need. _Landshut_ was our next and final stage; but it was unlucky for the first view of a church, of which the tower is considered to be the highest in Bavaria, that we were to see it at such a moment. The air of the evening was mild, and the sky was almost entirely covered by thin flaky clouds, as we pushed on for Landshut. On our immediate approach to it, the valet told us that he well remembered the entrance of the French into Landshut, on Bonaparte's advance to Munich and Vienna. He was himself in the rear of the assault--attending upon his master, one of the French generals. He said, that the French entered the further end of the town from that where we should make our entrance; and that, having gained a considerable eminence, by a circuitous route, above the river, unobserved, they rushed forward--bursting open the barriers--and charging the Austrians at the point of the bayonet. The contest was neither long nor sanguinary. A prudent surrender saved the town from pillage, and the inhabitants from slaughter. On entering Landshut, without having caught any thing like a determined view of the principal church, we found the centre of the principal street entirely occupied by booths and stalls, for an approaching fair--to take place within a few following days. The line of wooden buildings could scarcely extend less than half a mile. We drove to the principal inn, which was spacious and _tolerably_ clean; bespoke good beds, and found every appearance of comfort. I was resolved to devote the next day entirely to the PUBLIC LIBRARY--attached to the University, brought hither from Ingoldstadt. Of course I had been long acquainted with the general character of the early-printed books, from the valuable work of Seemiller;[78] and was resolved to make especial enquiry, in the first place, for the Aldine duodecimo of the _Greek Hours_, of which you have already heard so much. I carried with me a letter to Professor SIEBENKEES, the Head Librarian. In short, I anticipated a day of bibliographical "joyaunce." I was not disappointed in my expectations. The day was as beautiful without, as I found it profitable within doors. The Professor was all kindness, and was pleased to claim a long and intimate acquaintance with me, through certain works which need not be here mentioned: but it would be the height of affectation _not_ to avow the satisfaction I felt in witnessing a thoroughly cut-open, and tolerably well-thumbed copy, of the _Bibl. Spenceriana_ lying upon his table. I instantly commenced the examination of the library, while the Professor as readily offered his services of assistance. "Where are your _Aldine Greek Hours_ of 1497?" observed I. "Alas, Sir, that book exists no longer here!"--replied the Professor, in a melancholy tone of voice, and with an expression of countenance which indicated more than was meant by his _words_. "Nevertheless, (rejoined I) Seemiller describes it as having been at Ingoldstadt." "He does so--but in the conveyance of the books from thence hither, it has _somehow_ disappeared."[79] Again the Professor _looked_ more significantly than he _spake_. "What is invisible cannot be seen"--observed I--"and therefore allow me to take notes of what is before my eyes." "Most willingly and cheerfully. Here is every thing you wish. The more you write, the greater will be my satisfaction; although, after Paris and Munich, there is scarcely any thing worthy of particular description. But ere you begin your labours, allow me to introduce you to the several rooms in which the books are contained." I expressed great pleasure in complying with the Professor's request, and followed him into every apartment. This library, my dear friend, is placed in one of the prettiest situations imaginable. Some meandering branches of the Iser intersect and fertilize considerable tracts of meadow land; equally rich in colour and (as I learnt) in produce: and terminated by some gently swelling hills, quite in the vicinity of the town. The whole had a perfectly English aspect. The rooms were numerous, and commanded a variety of views. They were well lighted by side windows, and the shelves and wainscots were coloured chiefly in white. One small hexagonal closet, or cabinet, on the first floor--(as is indeed the whole suite of apartments) caught my fancy exceedingly, and won my very heart. The view before it, or rather from three of its six sides, was exhilirating in the extreme. "Here Mr. Professor, quoth I, (gently laying hold of his left arm) here will I come, and, if in any spot, put together my materials for a _third_ edition of the BIBLIOMANIA." The worthy Professor, for a little moment, thought me serious--and quickly replied "By all means do so: and you shall be accommodated with every thing necessary for carrying so laudable a design into execution." It was a mere bibliomaniacal vision:[80] dissipated the very moment I had quitted the apartment for another. I shall now give you the result of my examination of a few of the rarer and early-printed books in the PUBLIC LIBRARY of Landshut. And first of MANUSCRIPTS. An _Evangelistarium_, probably of the tenth century, is worth particular notice; if it be only on the score of its scription--which is perfectly beautiful: the most so of any, of such a remote period, which I have ever seen. It is a folio volume, bound in wood, with a stamped parchment cover of about the end of the fifteenth century. They possess a copy of the _oldest written Laws of Bavaria_; possibly of the twelfth--but certainly of the thirteenth century. It is a duodecimo MS. inlaid in a quarto form. No other MS. particularly struck my fancy, in the absence of all that was Greek or Roman: but a very splendid _Polish Missal_, in 8vo. which belonged to Sigismund, King of Poland, in the sixteenth century, seemed worthy of especial notice. The letters are graceful and elegant; but the style of art is heavy, although not devoid of effect. The binding is crimson velvet, with brass knobs, and a central metallic ornament--apparently more ancient than the book itself. This latter may have been possibly taken from another volume. Of the _Printed Books_--after the treasures of this kind seen (as the Professor intimated) at Paris and Munich--there was comparatively very little which claimed attention. They have a cropt and stained copy of Mentelin's _German Bible_, but quite perfect: two copies of the _supposed_ first _German Bible_, for one of which I proposed an exchange in a copy of the B.S. and of the _Ædes Althorpianæ_ as soon as this latter work should be published. The proposition was acceded to on the part of the Head Librarian, and it will be forwarded to the honest and respectable firm of John and Arthur Arch, booksellers; who, previously to my leaving England, had requested me to make something like a similar purchase for them--should a fine copy of this German Bible present itself for sale.[81] Here I saw Mentelin's edition of the _De Civitate Dei_ of _St. Austin_: and a good sound copy of the very rare edition of _Mammotrectus_, printed by _Helias de Helie_, in 1470: a beautiful copy of _Martin Brand's Psalter_ of 1486, printed at Leipsic, in 4to. in a large square gothic type; and a duplicate copy of the Leipsic Psalter of the preceding year, printed by _Conrad Kachelovez_, in 4to. which latter I obtained for the library in St. James's Place. There were at least ten copies of the early Block Books; of which the _Ars Memorandi_ and the _Anti-Christ_ (with extracts inserted in the latter from the B.S.) appeared to be the more ancient and interesting. But I must not forget to mention a very indifferent and imperfect copy of the _Latin Bible of Fust_, of 1462, UPON VELLUM. A few leaves in each volume are wanting. Here too I saw the _Pfarzival_ of 1477 (as at Strasbourg) printed in a metrical form. As I got among the books of the _sixteenth_ century, I was much more gratified with the result of my researches. I will begin with a very choice article: which is nothing less than a copy of the _Complutensian Polyglott_, purchased by Eckius, in 1521, of the celebrated Demetrius Chalcondylas--as the following coeval ms. memorandum attests: "Rome empta biblia ista P Eckium P xiiij ducatis largis a Demetrio Calcondyla anno 1521; mortuo iam Leone Papa in Decembri." The death of Leo is here particularly mentioned, because, during his life, it is said that that Pontiff prohibited the sale of the work in question. The copy is fair and sound; but both this, and a duplicate copy, wants the sixth volume, being the Dictionary or Vocabulary. The mention of Eckius leads me to notice a little anecdote connected with him. He was, as you may have read, one of the most learned, most eloquent, and most successful of Luther's antagonists. He was also the principal theological Professor in the University of Ingoldstadt. They preserve at Landshut, brought from the former place, the chair and the doctor's cap of their famous Anti-Lutheran champion. You see both of these in one of the principal apartments of the Public Library. I was requested to sit in the chair of the renowned Eckius, and to put his doctorial bonnet upon my head. I did both:--but, if I had sat for a century to come, I should never have fancied myself Eckius ... for more reasons than _one_. The Sub Librarian, who is a Catholic, (Professor Siebenkees being a Protestant) has shewn great good sense in preserving all the tracts, which have fallen in his way, both _for_ and _against_ the Lutheran controversy. You go between two small book-cases, or sets of shelves, and find _Luther_ in front, and _Eckius_ and his followers in the rear of you; or vice versa. A considerable number of rare and curious little pieces of _Erasmus_ and _Melancthon_, are mixed in this collection, which is far from being small either in number or value. In this interesting collection, I saw a good copy of Ross's work against Luther, of the date of 1523, which appeared to me to be printed by Pynson.[82] It had the autograph of Sir Thomas More--("_Thom^{9} mor^{9}"--_) who indeed is said to have been the author of the work. This very copy belonged to Eckius, and was given to him by the author, when Eckius came over to England in 1525: the fact being thus attested in the hand-writing of the latter: "_Codex iste dono datus est mihi Johanni Eckio ab illius autore in Anglia, dum visendi cupidus in Insulam traiecissem, 1525, Augusto x_." The worthy Professor next put into my hands what he considered to be an _absolutely unique_ copy of _Der Veis Ritter_, in 1514, folio: adding, that no other copy of the adventures of the _White Knight_, of the _same_ date, was known to bibliographers. I assented to the observation--equally from courtesy and sheer ignorance. But surely this is somewhat difficult to believe. There was nothing further that demanded a distinct registry; and so, making my bow, and shaking hands with the worthy Librarian very heartily, I quitted this congenial spot;--not however before I had been introduced to a Professor of botany (whose name has now escaped me) who was busily engaged in making extracts in the reading room, with a short pipe by the side of him, and a small red tasselled cap upon his head. He had an expressive countenance; understood our language so as to read Shakespeare with facility, and even with rapture: and to a question of mine, whether he was not much gratified with Schlegel's critical remarks upon that dramatist, he replied, that "he did not admire them so much, as, from the Edinburgh Review, the English appeared to do." To another question--"which of Shakspeare's plays pleased him most?" he replied, unhesitatingly, "_Romeo and Juliet_." I own, I should have thought that the mystical, or philosophy-loving, brain of a German would have preferred _Hamlet_. On leaving the library, I surveyed the town with tolerably minute attention. After Munich, it appeared sufficiently small. Its population indeed scarcely exceeds 8000. The day turned out very beautiful, and my first and principal attention was directed to _St. Martin's Church_; of which the tower (as I think I before told you) is considered to be full 420 feet in height, and the loftiest in Bavaria. But its height is its principal boast. Both in detail, and as a whole, the architecture is miserably capricious and tasteless. It is built of red brick. Many of the monuments in the church-yard, but more particularly some mural ones, struck me as highly characteristic of the country. Among these rude specimens of sculpture, the representation of _Our Saviour's Agony in the Garden_--the favourite subject in Bavaria--was singularly curious to a fresh eye. It may be between two and three hundred years old; but has suffered no injury. They have, in the principal street, covered walks, for foot-passengers, in a piazza-fashion, a little resembling those at Chester: but neither so old nor so picturesque. The intermixture of rural objects, such as trees and grass plats--in the high street of Landshut--renders a stroll in the town exceedingly agreeable to the lover of picturesque scenery. The booths and stalls were all getting ready for the fair--which I learnt was to last nearly a fortnight: and which I was too thankful to have escaped. We left Landshut on a fine sun-shining afternoon, purposing to sleep at the second stage--_Neümarkt_--(Angl. "Newmarket") in the route to Salzburg. _Neümarkt_ is little better than a small village, but we fared well in every respect at the principal, if not the only, inn in the place. Our beds were even luxurious. Neümarkt will be quickly forgotten: but the following stage--or _Altöting_--will not be so easily banished from our recollection. We reached it to a late breakfast--after passing through the most fertile and beautifully varied country which I had yet seen--and keeping almost constantly in view the magnificent chain of the Tyrolese mountains, into the very heart of which we seemed to be directing our course. ALTÖTING is situated upon an eminence. We drove into the Place, or Square, and alighted at what seemed to be a large and respectable inn. Two ladies and two gentlemen had just arrived before us, from Munich, by a different route: and while I was surveying them, almost mistaking them for English, and had just exchanged salutations, my valet came and whispered in my ear that "these good folks were come on a pilgrimage to the shrine of the _Black Virgin_." While I was wondering at this intelligence, the valet continued: "you see that small church in the centre of the square--it is _there_ where the richest shrine in Bavaria is deposited; and to-day is a 'high day' with the devotees who come to worship." On receiving this information, we all three prepared to visit this mean-looking little church. I can hardly describe to you with sufficient accuracy, the very singular, and to me altogether new, scene which presented itself on reaching the church. There is a small covered way--in imitation of cloisters--which goes entirely round it. The whole of the interior of these cloisters is covered with little pictures, images, supposed relics--and, in short votive offerings of every description, to the Holy Virgin, to whom the church is dedicated. The worshippers believe that the mother of Christ was an _African_ by birth, and therefore you see little black images of the virgin stuck up in every direction. At first, I mistook the whole for a parcel of pawnbrokers shops near each other: and eyed the several articles with a disposition, more or less, to become a purchaser of a few. But the sound of the chant, and the smell of the frankincense, broke in upon my speculations, and called my attention to the interior. I entered with a sort of rush of the congregation. This interior struck me as being scarcely thirty feet by twenty; but the eye is a deceitful rule in these cases. However, I continued to advance towards the altar; the heat, at the same time, being almost suffocating. An iron grating separated the little chapel and shrine of our _Black Lady_ from the other portion of the building; and so numerous, so constant, and apparently so close, had been the pressure and friction of each succeeding congregation, for probably more than two centuries, that some of these rails, or bars, originally at least one inch square, had been worn to _half_ the size of their pristine dimensions. It was with difficulty, on passing them, that I could obtain a peep at the altar; which, however, I saw sufficiently distinctly to perceive that it was entirely covered with silver vases, cups, dishes, and other _solid_ proofs of devotional ardour--which in short seemed to reach to the very roof. Having thus far gratified my curiosity, I retreated as quickly as possible; for not a window was open, and the little light which these windows emitted, together with the heat of the place, produced so disagreeable an effect as to make me apprehensive of sudden illness. On reaching the outward door, and enjoying the freedom of respiration, I made a sort of secret, but natural vow, that I would never again visit the shrine of _Our Black Lady_ on a festival day. An excellent breakfast--together with the neatness and civility of the female attendants--soon counter-acted the bad effects of the hydrogen contained within the walls of the place of worship we had just quitted. Every thing around us wore a cheerful and pleasing aspect; inasmuch as every thing reminded us of our own country. The servants were numerous, and all females; with their hair braided in a style of elegance which would not have disgraced the first drawing-room in London. We quaffed coffee out of cups which were perfectly of the Brobdignagian calibre; and the bread had the lightness and sweetness of cake. Between eleven and twelve, Charles Rohfritsch (alias our valet) announced that the carriage and horses were at the door; and on springing into it, we bade adieu to the worthy landlady and her surrounding attendants, in a manner quite natural to travellers who have seen something very unusual and interesting, and who have in other respects been well satisfied with good fare, and civil treatment. Not one of the circle could speak a word of French; so I told Charles to announce to them that we would not fail to spread the fame of their coffee, eggs, and bread, all over England! They laughed heartily--and then gave us a farewell salutation ... by dropping very-formal curtesies--their countenances instantly relapsing into a corresponding gravity of expression. In three minutes the inn, the square, and the church of the _Black Virgin_, were out of sight. The postilion put his bugle to his mouth, and played a lively air--in which the valet immediately joined. The musical infatuation, for an instant, extended to ourselves; for it was a tune which we had often heard in England, and which reminded me, in particular, of days of past happiness--never to return! But the sky was bright, the breeze soft, the road excellent, and the view perfectly magnificent. It was evident that we were now nearing the Tyrolese mountains. "At the foot of yonder second, sharp-pointed hill, lies SALZBURG"--said the valet: on receiving his intelligence from the post-boy. We seemed to be yet some twenty miles distant. To the right of the hill pointed out, the mountains rose with a loftier swell, and, covered by snow, the edges or terminations of their summits seemed to melt into the sky. Our road now became more hilly, and the time flew away quickly, without our making an apparently proportionate progress towards Salzburg. At length we reached _Burckhausen_; which is flanked by the river _Salz_ on one side, and defended by a lofty citadel on the other. It struck us, upon the whole, as rather a romantic spot: but the road, on entering the town, is in some places fearfully precipitous. The stratum was little better than rock. We were not long in changing horses, and made off instantly for _Tittmaning_; the last stage but one on that side of Salzburg. The country wore a more pleasing aspect. Stately trees spread their dark foliage on each side of the road; between the stems, and through the branches of which, we caught many a "spirit-stirring" view of the mountains in the neighbourhood of Salzburg--which, on our nearer approach, seemed to have attained double their first grandeur. After having changed horses at _Tittmaning_, and enjoyed a delightfully picturesque ride from Burckhausen thither, we dined at the following stage, _Lauffen_; a poor, yet picturesque and wildly-situated, large village. While the dinner was preparing, I walked to the extremity of the street where the inn is situated, and examined a small church, built there upon high ground. The cloisters were very striking; narrow and low, but filled with mural monuments, of a singular variety of character. It was quite evident, from numberless exhibitions of art--connected with religious worship--along the road-side, or attached to churches--that we had now entered a territory quite different from that of Baden, Wirtemberg, and even the northern part of Bavaria. Small crucifixes, and a representation of the _Agony in the Garden_, &c, presented themselves frequently to our view; and it seemed as if Austria were a land of even greater superstition than Bavaria. On concluding our dinner, and quitting Lauffen, it grew dusk, and the rain began to fall in a continued drizzling shower. "It always rains at Salzburg, sir," said the valet--repeating the information of the post boy. This news made us less cheerful on leaving Lauffen than we were on quitting _Altöting_: but "hope travelled through"--even till we reached the banks of the river Salz, within a mile or two of Salzburg--where the Austrian dominions begin, and those of Bavaria terminate. Our carriage was here stopped, and the trunks were examined, very slightly, on each side of the river. The long, wooden, black and yellow-striped bar of Austria--reaching quite across the road--forbade further progress, till such examination, and a payment of four or five florins, as the barrier-tax,--had been complied with. I had imagined that, if our trunks had been examined on _one_ side of the water, there needed no examination of them on the _other_; unless we had had intercourse with some water fiend in the interval. It seemed, however, that I reasoned illogically. We were detained full twenty minutes, by a great deal of pompous palaver--signifying nothing--on the part of the Austrian commissioner; so that it was quite dark when we entered the barriers of the town of Salzburg:--mountains, trees, meadows, and rivulets having been long previously obliterated from our view. The abrupt ascents and descents of the streets--and the quivering reflection of the lights from the houses, upon the surface of the river _Salz_--soon convinced us that we were entering a very extraordinary town. But all was silent: neither the rattling of carriages, nor the tread of foot-passengers, nor the voice of the labourer, saluted our ear on entering Salzburg--when we drove briskly to the _Gölden-Schiff_, in the _Place de la Cathedrale_, whence I am now addressing you. This inn is justly considered to be the best in the town; but what a melancholy reception--on our arrival! No rush of feet, no display of candles, nor elevation of voices, nor ringing of the bell--- as at the inns on our great roads in England--but ... every body and every, thing was invisible. Darkness and dulness seemed equally to prevail. One feeble candle at length glimmered at the extremity of a long covered arch-way, while afterwards, to the right, came forward two men--with what seemed to be a farthing candle between them, and desired to know the object of our halting? "Beds, and a two-day's residence in your best suite of apartments," replied I quickly--for they both spoke the French language. We were made welcome by one of them, who proved to be the master, and who helped us to alight. A long, and latterly a wet journey, had completely fatigued us--and after mounting up one high stair-case, and rambling along several loosely-floored corridors--we reached our apartments, which contained each a very excellent bed. Wax candles were placed upon the tables: a fire was lighted: coffee brought up; and a talkative, and civil landlord soon convinced us that we had no reason to grumble at our quarters.[83] On rising the next morning, we gazed upon almost every building with surprise and delight; and on catching a view of the CITADEL--in the back ground, above the Place de la Cathedrale--it seemed as if it were situated upon an eminence as lofty as Quito. I quickly sought the _Monastery of St. Peter_;--the oldest in the Austrian dominions. I had heard, and even read about its library; and imagined that I was about to view books, of which no bibliographer had ever yet--even in a vision--received intelligence. But you must wait a little ere I take you with me to that monastic library. There is a pleasing chime of bells, which are placed outside of a small cupola in the _Place_, in which stands the cathedral. I had heard this chime during the night--when I would rather have heard ... any thing else. What struck me the first thing, on looking out of window, was, the quantity of grass--such as Ossian describes within the walls of _Belcluthah_--growing between the pavement in the square. "Wherefore was this?" "Sir, (replied the master of the Gölden Schiff) this town is undergoing a gradual and melancholy depopulation. Before the late war, there were 27,000 inhabitants in Salzburg: at present, there are scarcely 15,000. This _Place_ was the constant resort of foreigners as well as townsmen. They filled every portion of it. Now, you observe there is only a narrow, worn walk, which gives indication of the route of a few straggling pedestrians. Even the very chimes of yonder bells (which must have _delighted_ you so much at every third hour of the night!) have lost their pleasing tone;--and sound as if they foreboded still further desolation to Salzburg." The man seemed to feel as he spoke; and I own that I was touched by so animated and unexpected a reply. I examined two or three old churches, of the Gothic order, of which I have already forgotten the names--unless they be those of _Ste. Trinité_ and _St. Sebastien_. In one of them--it being a festival--there was a very crowded congregation; while the priest was addressing his flock from the steps of the altar, in a strain of easy and impassioned eloquence. Wherever I went--and upon almost whatever object I gazed--there appeared to be traces of curious, if not of remote, antiquity. Indeed the whole town abounds with such--among which are some Roman relics, which have been recently (1816) described by Goldenstein, in a quarto volume published here, and written in the German language.[84] But you are impatient for the MONASTERY OF ST. PETER.[85] Your curiosity shall be no longer thwarted; and herewith I proceed to give you an account of my visit to that venerable and secluded spot--the abode of silence and of sanctity. It was my first appearance in a fraternity of MONKS; and those of the order of ST. BENEDICT. I had no letter of recommendation; but, taking my valet with me, I knocked at the outer gate--and received immediate admission within some ancient and low cloisters: of which the pavement consisted entirely of monumental slabs. The valet sought the librarian, to make known my wishes of examining the library; and I was left alone to contemplate the novel and strange scene which presented itself on all sides. There were two quadrangles, each of sufficiently limited dimensions. In the first, there were several young Monks playing at skittles in the centre of the lawn. Both the bowl and pins were of unusually large dimensions, and the direction of the former was confined within boards, fixed in the earth. These athletic young Benedictins (they might be between twenty and thirty years of age) took little or no notice of me; and while my eye was caught by a monumental tablet, which presented precisely the same coat-armour as the device used by Fust and Schoeffher,--and which belonged to a family that had been buried about two hundred and fifty years--the valet returned, and announced that the Principal of the College desired to see me immediately. I obeyed the summons in an instant, and followed Rohfritsch up stairs. There, on the first floor, a middle-aged monk received me, and accompanied me to the chamber of the President. On rapping at the door with his knuckles, a hollow but deep-toned voice commanded the visitor to enter. I was introduced with some little ceremony, but was compelled, most reluctantly, to have recourse to Latin, in conversing with the Principal. He rose to receive me very graciously; and I think I never before witnessed a countenance which seemed to _tell_ of so much hard fagging and meditation. He must have read every _Father_, in the _editio princeps_ of his works. His figure and physiognomical expression bespoke a rapid approach to the grand climacteric of human life. The deeply-sunk, but large and black, beaming eye--the wan and shrivelled cheek--the nose, somewhat aquiline, with nostrils having all the severity of sculpture--sharp, thin lips--an indented chin--and a highly raised forehead, surmounted by a little black silk cap--(which was taken off on the first salutation) all, added to the gloom of the place, and the novelty of the costume, impressed me in a manner not easily to be forgotten. My visit was very short, as I wished it to be; and it was concluded with an assurance, on the part of the Principal, that the librarian would be at home on the following day, and ready to attend me to the library:--but, added the Principal, on parting, "we have nothing worthy of the inspection of a traveller who has visited the libraries of Paris and Munich. At Mölk, you will see fine books, and a fine apartment for their reception." For the sake of _keeping_, in the order of my narrative, I proceed to give you an account of the visit to the library, which took place on the morrow, immediately after breakfast. It had rained the whole of the preceding night, and every hill and mountain about Salzburg was obscured by a continuation of the rain on the following day. I began to think the postilion spoke but too true, when he said "it always rains at Salzburg." Yet the air was oppressive; and huge volumes of steam, as from a cauldron, rose up from the earth, and mingled with the descending rain. In five minutes, I was within the cloisters of the monastery, and recognised some of the _skittling_ young monks--whom I had seen the day before. One of them addressed me very civilly, in the French language, and on telling him the object of my visit, he said he would instantly conduct me to Mr. GAERTNER, the librarian. On reaching the landing place, I observed a long corridore--where a somewhat venerable Benedictin was walking, apparently to and fro, with a bunch of keys in one hand, and a thick embossed-quarto under his other arm. The very sight of him reminded me of good _Michael Neander_, the abbot of the monastery of St. Ildefonso--the friend of Budæus[86]--of whom (as you may remember) there is a print in the _Rerum Germanicarum Scriptores_, published in 1707, folio. "That, Sir, is the librarian:"--observed my guide: "he waits to receive you." I walked quickly forward and made obeisance. Anon, one of the larger keys in this said bunch was applied to a huge lock, and the folding and iron-cramped doors of the library were thrown open. I descended by a few steps into the ante-room, and from thence had a completely fore-shortened view of the library. It is small, but well filled, and undoubtedly contains some ancient and curious volumes: but several _hiatuses_ gave indication that there had been a few transportations to Vienna or Munich. The small gothic windows were open, and the rain now absolutely descended in torrents. Nevertheless, I went quickly and earnestly to work. A few slight ladders were placed against the shelves, in several parts of the library, by means of which I left no division unexplored. The librarian, after exchanging a few words very pleasantly, in the French language, left me alone, unreservedly to prosecute my researches. I endeavoured to benefit amply by this privilege; but do not know, when, in the course of three or four hours, I have turned over the leaves of so many volumes ... some of which seemed to have been hardly opened since they were first deposited there ... to such little purpose. However, he is a bad sportsman who does not hit _something_ in a well-stocked cover; and on the return of the librarian, he found me busily engaged in laying aside certain volumes--with a written list annexed--"which might _possibly_, be disposed of ... for a valuable consideration?" "Your proposal shall be attended to, but this cannot be done immediately. You must leave the _consideration_ to the Principal and the elder brethren of the monastery." I was quite charmed by this response; gave my address, and taking a copy of the list, withdrew. I enclose you the list or catalogue in question.[87] Certainly I augur well of the result: but no early _Virgil_, nor _Horace_, nor _Ovid_, nor _Lucretius_, nor even an early _Greek Bible_ or _Testament_! What struck me, on the score of rarity, as most deserving of being secured, were some little scarce grammatical and philological pieces, by the French scholars of the early part of the sixteenth century; and some controversial tracts about Erasmus, Luther, and Eckius. So much for the monastic visit to St. Peter's at Salzburg; and yet you are not to quit it, without learning from me that this town was once famous for other similar establishments[88]--which were said anciently to vie with the greater part of those in Austria, for respectability of character, and amplitude of possessions. At present, things of this sort seem to be hastening towards a close, and I doubt whether the present principal will have half a dozen successors. It remains only to offer a brief sketch of some few other little matters which took place at Salzburg; and then to wish you good bye--as our departure is fixed for this very afternoon. We are to travel from hence through a country of mountains and lakes, to the _Monastery of Chremsminster_, in the route to Lintz--on the high road to Vienna. I have obtained a letter to the Vice-President of _Mölk monastery_, from a gentleman here, who has a son under his care; so that, ere I reach the capital of Austria, I shall have seen a pretty good sprinkling of _Benedictins_--as each of these monasteries is of the order of St. Benedict. The evening of the second day of our visit here, enabled me to ascertain something of the general character of the scenery contiguous to the town. This scenery is indeed grand and interesting. The summit of the lowest hill in the neighbourhood is said to be 4000 feet above the level of the sea. I own I have strong doubts about this. It is with the heights of mountains, as with the numbers of books in a great library,--we are apt to over-rate each. However, those mountains, which seem to be covered with perennial snow, must be doubtless 8000 feet above the same level.[89] To obtain a complete view of them, you must ascend some of the nether hills. This we intended to do--but the rain of yesterday has disappointed all our hopes. The river _Salz_ rolls rapidly along; being fed by mountain torrents. There are some pretty little villas in the neighbourhood, which are frequently tenanted by the English; and one of them, recently inhabited by Lord Stanhope, (as the owner informed me,) has a delightful view of the citadel, and the chain of snow-capt mountains to the left. The numerous rapid rivulets, flowing into the Salz, afford excellent trout-fishing; and I understood that Sir Humphry Davy, either this summer, or the last, exercised his well-known skill in this diversion here. The hills abound with divers sorts of four-footed and winged game; and, in short, (provided I could be furnished with a key of free admission into the library of St. Peter's Monastery) I hardly know where I could pass the summer and autumn months more completely to my satisfaction than at SALZBURG. What might not the pencils of Turner and Calcott here accomplish, during the mellow lights and golden tints of autumn? Of course, in a town so full of curiosities of every description, I am not able, during so short a stay in it, to transmit you any intelligence about those sights which are vulgarly called the _Lions_. But I must not close this rambling, desultory letter, without apprising you that I have walked from one end of the _Mönschberg_ to the other. This is an excavation through a hard and high rocky hill, forming the new gate, or entrance into the town. The success of this bold undertaking was as complete, as its utility is generally acknowledged: nor shall it tarnish the lustre of the _mitre_ to say, that it was a BISHOP of Salzburg who conceived, and superintended the execution of, the plan. A very emphatic inscription eternises his memory: "TE SAXA LOQUUNTUR." The view, from the further end of it, is considered to be one of the finest in Europe: but, when I attempted to enjoy it, every feature of the landscape was obscured by drizzling rain. "It always rains at Salzburg!"--said, as you may remember, the postilion from Lauffen. It may do so: but a gleam of _sunshine_ always enlivens that moment, when I subscribe myself, as I do now, your affectionate and faithful friend. [77] See vol. i. p. 199. [78] It is thus entitled: _Bibliothecæ Ingolstadiensis Incunabula Typographica_, 1787, 4to.: containing four parts. A carefully executed, and indispensably necessary, volume in every bibliographical collection. [79] [I rejoice to add, in this edition of my Tour, that the LOST SHEEP has been FOUND. It had not straggled from the fold when I was at Landshut; but had got _penned_ so snugly in some unfrequented corner, as not to be perceived.] [80] [A vision, however, which AGAIN haunts me!] [81] This copy has since reached England, and has been arrayed in a goodly coat of blue morocco binding. Whether it remain in Cornhill at this precise moment, I cannot take upon me to state; but I can confidently state that there is _not a finer copy_ of the edition in question in his Britannic Majesty's united dominions. [This copy now--1829--ceases to exist... in Cornhill.] [82] On consulting the _Typog. Antiquities_, vol. ii. p. 510, I found my conjectures confirmed. The reader will there see the full title of the work--beginning thus: "_Eruditissimi Viri Guilelmi Rossei opus elegans, doctum, festiuum, pium, quo pulcherrime retegit, ac refellit, insanas Lutheri calumnias," &c._ It is a volume of considerable rarity. [83] The charges were moderate. A bottle of the best red ordinary wine (usually--the best in every respect) was somewhere about 1s. 6d. Our lodgings, two good rooms, including the charge of three wax candles, were about four shillings per day. The bread was excellent, and the _cuisine_ far from despicable. [84] We learn from Pez (_Austriacar. Rer._ vol. ii. col. 185, taken from the Chronicle of the famous _Admont Monastery_,) that, in the year 1128, the cathedral and the whole city of Salzburg were destroyed by fire. So, that the antiquity of this, and of other relics, must not be pushed to too remote a period. [85] Before the reader commences the above account of a visit to this monastery, he may as well be informed that the SUBJOINED bird's-eye view of it, together with an abridged history (compiled from Trithemius, and previous chroniclers) appears in the _Monasteriologia of Stengelius_, published in 1619, folio. [Illustration] The monastery is there described as--"et vetustate et dignitate nulli è Germaniæ monasteriis secundum." Rudbertus is supposed to have been its founder:--"repertis edificiis basilicam in honore SANCTI PETRI construxit:" _Chronicon Norimberg._ fol. cliii.; edit. 1493. But this took place towards the end of the sixth century. From Godfred's _Chronicon Gotvvicense_, 1732, folio, pt. i. pp. 37, 39, 52--the library of this Monastery, there called "antiquissima," seems to have had some very ancient and valuable MSS. In Stengelius's time, (1620) the monastery appears to have been in a very flourishing condition. [86] As it is just possible the reader may not have a very distinct recollection of this worthy old gentleman, and ambulatory abbot--it may be acceptable to him to know, that, in the _Thanatologia of Budæus_ (incorporated in the _Tres Selecti Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum_, 1707, folio, p. 27, &c.) the said Neander is described as a native of Sorau, in Bohemia, and as dying in his 70th year, A.D. 1595, having been forty-five years Principal of the monastery of St. Ildefonso. A list of his works, and a laudatory Greek epigram, by Budæus, "UPON HIS EFFIGY," follow. [87] For the sake of juxta-position I here lay before the reader a short history of the issue, or progress of the books in question to their present receptacle, in St. James's Place. A few days after reaching _Vienna_, I received the following "pithy and pleasant" epistle from the worthy librarian, "Mon très-revérend Pasteur. En esperant que vous êtes arrivé à Vienne, à bon port, j'ai l'honneur de declarer à vous, que le prix fixé des livres, que vous avez choisi, et dont la table est ajoutée, est 40 louis d'or, ou 440 florins. Agréez l'assurance, &c." [Autographs] I wrote to my worthy friend Mr. Nockher at Munich to settle this subject immediately; who informed me, in reply, that the good monks would not part with a single volume till they had received "the money upon the nail,"--"l'argent comptant." That dexterous negotiator quickly supplied them with the same; received the case of books; and sent them down the Rhine to Holland, from thence to England: where they arrived in safe and perfect condition. They are all described in the second volume of the _Ædes Athorpianæ_; together with a beautiful fac-simile of an illuminated head, or portrait, of _Gaietanus de Tienis_, who published a most elegantly printed work upon Aristotle's four books of Meteors, _printed by Maufer_, in 1476, folio; and of which the copy in the Salzburg library was adorned by the head (just mentioned) of the Editor. _Æd. Althorp._ vol. ii. p. 134. Among the books purchased, were two exquisite copies, filled with wood cuts, relating to the Æsopian Fables: a copy of one of which, entitled _Æsopus Moralisatus_, was, I think, sold at the sale of the Duke of Marlborough's books, in 1819, for somewhere about 13l. [88] In Hartmann Schedel's time, Salzburg--which was then considered as the CAPITAL OF BAVARIA--"was surrounded by great walls, and was adorned by many beautiful buildings of temples and monasteries." A view of Salzburg, which was formerly called JUVAVIA, is subjoined in the _Nuremberg Chronicle_, fol. CLIII. _edit._ 1493. Consult also the _Chronicon Gotvvicense_, 1732, folio, pt. ii. p. 760--for some particulars respecting the town taking its name from the river _Juvavia_ or _Igonta_. Salzburg was an Archbishopric founded by Charlemagne: see the _Script. Rer. German._ edited by _Nidanus et Struvius_, 1726 folio, vol. i. p. 525. [89] On the morning following my arrival at Salzburg, I purchased a card, and small chart of the adjacent country and mountains. Of the latter, the _Gross Klokner_, _Klein Klokner_, are each about 12000 feet above the level of the sea; The _Weisbachhorn_ is about 11000 feet of similar altitude; _Der Hohe Narr_ about the same height; and the _Hohe Warte_ about 10,000; while the _Ankogl_ and _Herzog Ernst_, are 9000 each. The lowest is the _Gaisberg_ of 4000 feet; but there is a regular gradation in height, from the latter, to the Gross Klokner, including about 25 mountains. [Illustration] LETTER VIII. SALZBURG. TO CHREMSMINSTER. THE LAKE GMUNDEN. THE MONASTERY OF CHREMSMINSTER. LINTZ. _Lintz; on the road to Vienna, Aug. 26, 1818._ In order that I may not be too much in arrear in my correspondence, I snatch an hour or two at this place, to tell you what have been my sights and occupations since I quitted the extraordinary spot whence I last addressed you. Learn therefore, at the outset, that I have been, if possible, more gratified than heretofore. I have shaped my course along devious roads, by the side of huge impending mountains; have skirted more than one lake of wide extent and enchanting transparency; have navigated the celebrated _Lake of Gmunden_ from one end to the other--the greater part of which is surrounded by rocky yet fertilized mountains of a prodigious height;--have entered one of the noblest and richest monasteries of Austria--and darted afterwards through a country, on every side pleasing by nature, and interesting from history. My only regret is, that all this has been accomplished with too much precipitancy; and that I have been compelled to make sketches in my mind, as it were, when the beauty of the objects demanded a finished picture. I left Salzburg on the afternoon after writing my last epistle; and left it with regret at not having been able to pay a visit to the salt mines of _Berchtesgaden_ and _Hallein_: but "non omnia possumus omnes." The first stage, to _Koppf_, was absolutely up hill, the whole way, a short German league and a half: probably about seven English miles. We were compelled to put a leader to our two horses, and even then we did little more than creep. But the views of the country we had left behind us, as we continued ascending, were glorious in the extreme. Each snow-capt mountain appeared to rise in altitude--as we continued to mount. Our views however were mere snatches. The sun was about to set in a bed of rain. Large black clouds arose; which, although they added to the grandeur of picturesque composition, prevented us from distinctly surveying the adjacent country. Masses of deep purple floated along the fir-clad hills: now partially illumined by the sun's expiring rays, and now left in deep shadow--to be succeeded by the darkness of night. The sun was quite set as we stopped to change horses at _Koppf_: and a sort of premature darkness came on:--which, however, was relieved for a short time by a sky of partial but unusual clearness of tint. The whole had a strange and magical effect. As the horses were being put to, I stepped across the road to examine the interior of a small church--where I observed, in the side aisle, a group of figures of the size of life--which, at that sombre hour, had a very extraordinary effect. I approached nearer, and quickly perceived that this group was intended to represent the _Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane_. Our Saviour, at a little distance, was upon his knees, praying; and the piety of some _religieuse_ (as I afterwards learnt) had caused a white handkerchief to be fixed between his hands. The disciples were represented asleep, upon the ground. On coming close to the figures (which were raised upon a platform, of half the height of a man) and removing the moss upon which they were recumbent, I found that they were mere _trunks_, without legs or feet: the moss having been artfully placed, so as to conceal these defects when the objects were seen at a distance. Of course it was impossible to refrain from a smile, on witnessing such a sight. The horses were harnessed in ten minutes; and, having no longer any occasion for a leader, we pursued our route with the usual number of two. The evening was really enchanting; and upon the summit of one of the loftiest of the hills--which rose perpendicularly as a bare sharp piece of rock--we discerned a pole, which we conjectured was fixed there for some particular purpose. The postilion told us that it was the stem of the largest fir-tree in the country, and that there were annual games celebrated around it--in the month of May, when its summit was crowned with a chaplet. Our route was now skirted on each side, alternately, by water and by mountain. The _Mande See_, _Aber See_, and _Aller See_, (three beautiful lakes) lay to the left; of which we caught, occasionally, from several commanding heights, most magnificent views--as the last light of day seemed to linger upon their surfaces. They are embosomed in scenery of the most beautiful description. When we reached _St. Gilgen_, or _Gilling_, we resolved upon passing the night there. It was quite dark, and rather late, when we entered this miserable village; but within half a league of it, we ran a very narrow chance of being overturned, and precipitated into a roaring, rapid stream, just below the road--along the banks of which we had been sometime directing our course. A fir-pole lay across the road, which was undiscernible from the darkness of the night; and the carriage, receiving a violent concussion, and losing its balance for a moment--leaning over the river--it was doubtful what would be the issue. Upon entering the archway of the inn, or rather public house--from the scarcity of candles, and the ignorance of rustic ostlers, the door of the carriage (it being accidentally open) was completely wrenched from the body. Never, since our night's lodging at _Saudrupt_,[90] had we taken up our quarters at so miserable an auberge. The old woman, our landlady, seemed almost to cast a suspicious eye upon us; but the valet in a moment disarmed her suspicions. It was raw, cold, and late; but the kitchen fire was yet in full force, and a few earthen-ware utensils seemed to contain something in the shape of eatables. You should know, that the kitchen fire-places, in Germany, are singularly situated; at least all those at the public inns where we have stopped. A platform, made of brick, of the height of about three feet, is raised in the centre of the floor. The fire is in the centre of the platform. You look up, and see directly the open sky through the chimney, which is of a yawning breadth below, but which narrows gradually towards the top. It was so cold, that I requested a chair to be placed upon the platform, and I sat upon it--close to the kitchen fire--receiving very essential benefit from the position. All the kitchen establishment was quickly put in requisition: and, surrounded by cook and scullion--pots, pans, and culinary vessels of every description--I sat like a monarch upon his throne: while Mr. Lewis was so amused at the novelty of the scene, that he transferred it to his sketch-book. It was midnight when we attacked our _potage_--in the only visitor's bed-room in the house. Two beds, close to each other, each on a sloping angle of nearly forty-five degrees, were to receive our wearied bodies. The _matériel_ of the beds was _straw_; but the sheets were white and well aired, and edged (I think) with a narrow lace; while an eider down quilt--like a super-incumbent bed--was placed upon the first quilt. It was scarcely day-light, when Mr. Lewis found himself upon the floor, awoke from sleep, having gradually slid down. By five o'clock, the smith's hammer was heard at work below--upon the door of the dismembered carriage--and by the time we had risen at eight o'clock, the valet reported to us that the job was just _then_ ... in the very state in which it was at its _commencement_! So much for the reputation of the company of white-smiths at _St. Gilgen_. We were glad to be off by times; but I must not quit this obscure and humble residence without doing the landlady the justice to say, that her larder and kitchen enabled us to make a very hearty breakfast. This, for the benefit of future travellers--benighted like ourselves. The morning lowered, and some soft rain fell as we started: but, by degrees, the clouds broke away, and we obtained a complete view of the enchanting country through which we passed--as we drove along by the banks of the _Aber_ lake, to _Ischel_. One tall, sharp, and spirally-terminating rock, in particular, kept constantly in view before us, on the right; of which the base and centre were wholly feathered with fir. It rose with an extraordinary degree of abruptness, and seemed to be twice as high as the spire of Strasbourg cathedral. To the left, ran sparkling rivulets, as branches of the three lakes just mentioned. An endless variety of picturesque beauty--of trees, rocks, greenswards, wooded heights, and glen-like passes--canopied by a sky of the deepest and most brilliant blue--were the objects upon which we feasted till we reached _Ischel_: where we changed horses. Here we observed several boats, of a peculiarly long and narrow form, laden with salt, making their way for the _Steyer_ and _Ens_ rivers, and from thence to the Danube. To describe what we saw, all the way till we reached the _Traun See_, or the LAKE OF GMUNDEN, would be only a repetition of the previous description. At _Inderlambach_, close to the lake in question, we stopped to dine. This is a considerable village, or even country town. On the heights are well-trimmed gravel walks, from which you catch a commanding view of the hither end of the lake; and of which the sight cheered us amazingly. We longed to be afloat. There is a great manufactory of salt carried on upon these heights--at the foot of which was said to be the best inn in the town. Thither we drove: and if high charges form the test of the excellence of an inn, there is good reason to designate this, at _Inderlambach_, as such. We snatched a hasty meal, (for which we had nearly fifteen florins to pay) being anxious to get the carriage and luggage aboard one of the larger boats, used in transporting travellers, before the sun was getting too low ... that we might see the wonders of the scenery of which we had heard so much. It was a bright, lovely afternoon; and about half-past six we were all, with bag and baggage, on board. Six men, with oars resembling spades in shape, were to row us; and a seventh took the helm. The water was as smooth as glass, and of a sea-green tint, which might have been occasioned by the reflection of the dark and lofty wood and mountainous scenery, by which the lake is surrounded. The rowers used their oars so gently, as hardly to make us sensible of their sounds. The boat glided softly along; and it was evident, from the varying forms of the scenery, that we were making considerable way. We had a voyage of at least nine English miles to accomplish, ere we reached the opposite extremity--called _Gmunden_; and where we were told that the inn would afford us every accommodation which we might wish. On reaching the first winding or turning of the lake, to the left, a most magnificent and even sublime object--like a mountain of rock--presented itself to the right. It rose perpendicularly--vast, craggy, and of a height, I should suppose, little short of 2000 feet. Its gray and battered sides--now lighted up by the varied tints of a setting sun--seemed to have been ploughed by many a rushing torrent, and covered by many a winter's snow. Meanwhile the lake was receiving, in the part nearest to us, a breadth of deep green shadow, as the sun became lower and lower. The last faint scream of the wild fowl gave indication that night was coming on; and the few small fishermen's huts, with which the banks were slightly studded, began to fade from the view. Yet the summit of the mountain of rock, which I have just mentioned, was glowing with an almost golden hue. I cannot attempt a more minute description of this enchanting scene. One thing struck me very forcibly. This enormous rocky elevation seemed to baffle all our attempts to _near_ it--and yet it appeared as if we were scarcely a quarter of a mile from it. This will give you some notion of its size and height. At length, the scenery of the lake began to change--into a more quiet and sober character.... We had now passed the rocky mountain, and on looking upon its summit, we observed that the golden glow of sunshine had subsided into a colour of pale pink, terminating in alternate tints of purple and slate. Almost the whole landscape had faded from the eye, when we reached the end of our voyage; having been more than two hours upon the lake. On disembarking, we made directly for the inn--where we found every thing even exceeding what we had been led to expect--and affording a very striking and comfortable contrast to the quarters of the preceding evening at St. Gilgen. Sofas, carpets, lustres, and two good bed-rooms--a set of china which might have pleased a German baron--all glittered before our eyes, and shewed us that, if we were not well satisfied, the fault would be our own. The front windows of the hotel commanded a direct and nearly uninterrupted length-view of the lake; and if the full moon had risen ... but one cannot have every thing one wants--even at the hotel of Gmunden. We ordered a good fire, and wax candles to be lighted; a chafing dish, filled with live charcoal caused a little cloud of steam to be emitted from a copper kettle--of which the exterior might have been _cleaned_ ... during the _last_ century. But we travelled with our own tea; and enjoyed a succession of cups which seemed to make us "young and lusty as eagles:" and which verified all the pleasing things said in behalf of this philosophical beverage by the incomparable Cowper. Mr. Lewis spent two hours in _penning in_ his drawings; and I brushed up my journal---opened my map--and catechised the landlord about the MONASTERY of CHREMSMINSTER, which it was resolved to visit on the following (Sunday) morning. Excellent beds (not "sloping in an angle of 45 degrees"--) procured us a comfortable night's rest. In the morning, we surveyed the lake, the village, and its immediate vicinity. We inspected two churches, and saw a group of women devoutly occupied in prayer by the side of a large tombstone--in a cemetery at a distance from any church. The tombstones in Germany are whimsical enough. Some look like iron cross-bows, others like crosses; some nearly resemble a gibbet; and others a star. They are usually very slender in their structure, and of a height scarcely exceeding four or five feet. By eleven in the morning, the postboy's bugle sounded for our departure. The carriage and horses were at the door: the postboy, arrayed in an entirely new scarlet jacket, with a black velvet collar edged with silver lace, the livery of Austria, was mounted upon a strong and lofty steed; and the travellers being comfortably seated, the whip sounded, and off we went, up hill, at a good round cantering pace. A large congregation, which was quitting a church in the vicinity of the inn, gazed at us, as we passed, with looks and gestures as if they had never seen two English travellers before. The stage from Gmunden to Chremsminster is very long and tedious; but by no means devoid of interest. We halted an hour to rest the horses, about half-way on the route; which I should think was full eight English miles from the place of starting. On leaving Gmunden, and gaining the height of the neighbouring hills, we looked behind, or rather to the right, upon the _back_ part of that chain of hills and rocks which encircle the lake over which we had passed the preceding evening. The sky was charged with large and heavy clouds; and a broad, deep, and as it were stormy, tint of dark purple ... mantled every mountain which we saw--with the exception of our old gigantic friend, of which the summit was buried in the clouds. At a given distance, you form a tolerably good notion of the altitude of mountains; and from this latter view of those in question, I should think that the highest may be about 3000 feet above the level of the lake. It was somewhere upon two o'clock when we caught the first glimpse of the spire and lofty walls of the MONASTERY OF CHREMSMINSTER. This monastery is hid by high ground,--till you get within a mile of the town of _Chrems_; so called, from a river, of the same name, which washes almost the walls of the monastery. I cannot dissemble the joy I felt on the first view of this striking and venerable edifice. It is situated on a considerable eminence--and seems to be built upon a foundation of rock. Its mosque-fashioned towers, the long range of its windows, and height of its walls, cannot fail to arrest the attention very forcibly. Just on the spot where we caught the first view of it, the road was not only very precipitous, but was under repair; which made it absolutely perilous. The skill of our postilion, however extricated us from all danger; and on making the descent, I opened my portmanteau in front of me--which was strapped to the back-seat of the carriage--pulled out the green silk purse which I had purchased at Dieppe, within a few hours of my landing in France--and introducing my hand into it, took from thence some dozen or twenty napoleons--observing at the same time, to Mr. Lewis, and pointing to the monastery--that "these pieces would probably be devoted to the purchasing of a few book-treasures from the library of the edifice in view." In five minutes we drove up to the principal, or rather only inn, which the town seemed to afford. The first thing I did, was, to bespeak an immediate dinner, and to send a messenger, with a note (written in Latin) to the Vice Principal or Librarian of the monastery--"requesting permission to inspect the library, being English travellers bound for Vienna." No answer was returned ... even on the conclusion of our dinner; when,--on calling a council, it was resolved that we should take the valet and a guide with us, and immediately assail the gates of the Monastery. I marched up the steep path which leads to these gates, with the most perfect confidence in the success of my visit. Vespers were just concluded; and three or four hundred at least of the population of Chrems were pouring forth from the church doors, down the path towards the town. On entering the quadrangle in which the church is situated, we were surprised at its extent, and the respectability of its architecture. We then made for the church--along the cloisters--and found it nearly deserted. A few straggling supplicants were however left behind--ardent in prayer, upon their knees: but the florid style of the architecture of the interior of this church immediately caught my attention and admiration. The sides are covered with large oil paintings, which look like copies of better performances; while, at each lower corner of these pictures, stands a large figure of a saint, boldly sculptured, as if to support the painting. Throwing your eye along this series of paintings and sculpture, on each side of the church, the whole has a grand and imposing effect--while the _subjects_ of some of the paintings, describing the tortures of the damned, or the occupations of the good, cannot fail, in the mind of an enthusiastic devotee, to produce a very powerful sensation. The altars here, as usual in Germany, and even at Lauffen and Koppf--are profusely ornamented. We had hardly retreated from the church--lost in the variety of reflections excited by the novelty of every surrounding object--when I perceived a Benedictin, with his black cap upon his head, walking with a hurried step towards us ... along the cloisters. As he approached, he pulled off his cap, and saluted us very graciously: pouring forth a number of sentences, in the Latin language, (for he could not speak a word of French) with a fluency and rapidity of utterance, of which, I could have no conception; and of which, necessarily, I could not comprehend one half. Assuming a more leisurely method of address, he asked me, what kind of books I was more particularly anxious to see: and on replying "those more especially which were printed in the fifteenth century--the "_Incunabula_"--he answered, "come with me; and, although the librarian be absent, I will do my utmost to assist you." So saying, we followed him into his cell, a mere cabin of a room: where I observed some respectably-looking vellum-clad folios, and where his bed occupied the farther part. He then retired for the key: returned in five seconds, and requested that we would follow him up stairs. We mounted two flights of a noble staircase; the landing-place of the _first_ of which communicated with a lofty and magnificent, arched corridor:--running along the whole side of the quadrangle. The library is situated at the very top of the building, and occupies (as I should apprehend) one half of the side of the quadrangle. It is a remarkably handsome and cheerful room, divided into three slightly indicated compartments; and the colour, both of the wainscot and of the backs of the books, is chiefly white. The first thing that struck me was, the almost unbounded and diversified view from thence. I ran to the windows--but the afternoon had become black and dismal, and the rain was descending fast on all sides; yet, in the haze of distance, I thought I could discern the chain of huge mountains near the lake of Gmunden. Their purple sides and craggy summits yet seemed to rise above the clouds, which were resting upon the intermediate country, and deluging it with rain. The Benedictin confirmed my suspicions as to the identity of the country before us, and then bade me follow, him quickly. I followed M. HARTENSCHNEIDER (for so the worthy Benedictin wrote his name) to the further division, or compartment of the library; and turning to the left, began an attack upon the _Fifteeners_--which were placed there, on the two lowest shelves. My guide would not allow of my taking down the books ... from sheer politeness. "They might prove burdensome"--as if _any thing_, in the shape of a book, could be considered a BURDEN! The first volume I opened, was one of the most beautiful copies imaginable--utterly beyond all competition, for purity and primitiveness of condition--of Schoiffher's edition of _St. Austin de Civitate Dei_, with the Commentary of Trivetus, of the date of 1473. That work is everywhere--in all forms, types, and conditions--upon the continent. The worthy M. Hartenschneider seemed to be marvellously pleased with the delight I expressed on the view of this magnificent volume. He then placed before me the _Catholicon_ of 1469, by G. Zainer: a cropt, but clean and desirable copy. Upon my telling him that I had not long ago seen a copy of it UPON VELLUM, in the Public Library at Munich, he seemed to be mute and pensive... and to sigh somewhat inwardly. Pausing awhile, he resumed, by telling me that the ONLY treasure they had possessed, in the shape of a VELLUM BOOK, was a copy of the same work of St. Austin, printed chiefly by _John de Spira_ (but finished by his brother _Vindelin_) of the date of 1470; but with which, and many other book-curiosities, the French general _Lecourbe_ chose to march away; in the year 1800. That cruel act of spoliation was commemorated, or revenged, by an angry Latin distich. I was also much gratified by a beautifully clean copy of the _Durandi Rationale_ by I. Zeiner, of the date of 1474: as well as with the same printer's _Aurea Biblia_, of the same date, which is indeed almost every where upon the Continent. But nothing came perfectly up to the copy of Schoiffher's edition of the _De Civ. Dei._ M. Hartenschneider added, that the Imperial Library at Vienna had possessed itself of their chief rarities in early typography: but he seemed to exult exceedingly on mentioning the beautiful and perfect state of their DELPHIN CLASSICS. "Do you by chance possess the _Statius_?--" observed I. "Come and see--" replied my guide: and forthwith he took me into a recess, or closet, where my eye was greeted with one of the most goodly book-sights imaginable. There they all stood--those Delphin Classics--in fair array and comeliest condition. I took down the Statius, and on returning it, exclaimed "Exemplar pulcherrimum et optime conservatum." "Pretiosissimumque," rejoined my cicerone. "And the _Prudentius_--good M. Hartenschneider--do you possess it?" "Etiam"--replied he. "And the _Catullus_, _Tibullus_, and _Propertius_?" They were there also: but one of the volumes, containing the Tibullus, was with a brother monk. That monk (thought I to myself) must have something of a tender heart. "But tell me, worthy and learned Sir, (continued I) why so particular about the _Statius_? Here are twenty golden pieces:" (they were the napoleons, taken from the forementioned silken purse[91])--"will these procure the copy in question?" "It is in vain you offer any thing: (replied M. Hartenschneider) we have refused this very copy even to Princes and Dukes." "Listen then to me:" resumed I: "It seems you want that great work, such an ornament to our own country, and so useful to every other--the _Monasticon Anglicanum of Sir William Dugdale_. Will you allow me to propose a fair good copy of that admirable performance, in exchange for your Statius?" "I can promise nothing--replied M. Hartenschneider--as that matter rests entirely with the superiors of the monastery; but what you say appears to be very reasonable; and, for myself, I should not hesitate one moment, in agreeing to the proposed exchange." My guide then gave me to understand that he was _Professor of History_; and that there were not fewer than one hundred monks upon the establishment. I was next intreated, together with my travelling friend and our valet, to stop and pass the night there. We were told that it was getting late and dark; and that there was only a cross road between Chrems and _Ens_, in the route to _Lintz_--to which latter place we were going. "You cannot reach Lintz (said our hospitable attendant) before midnight; but rain and darkness are not for men with nice sensibilities to encounter. You and your friend, and eke your servant, shall not lack a hospitable entertainment. Command therefore your travelling equipage to be brought hither. You see (added he smiling) we have room enough for all your train. I beseech you to tarry with us." This is almost a literal version of what M. Hartenschneider said--and he said it fluently, and even in an impassioned manner. I thanked him again and again; but declared it to be impossible to comply with his kind wishes. "The hospitality of your order (observed I to the Professor) is equal to its learning." M. Hartenschneider bowed: and then taking me by the arm, exclaimed, "well, since you cannot be prevailed upon to stay, you must make the most of your time. Come and see one or two of our more ancient MSS." He then placed before me an _Evangelistarium_ of the eighth century, which he said had belonged to Charlemagne, the founder of the monastery.[92] It was one of the most perfect pieces of calligraphy which I had ever seen; perhaps superior to that in the Public Library at Landshut. But this MS. is yet more precious, as containing, what is considered to be, a compact between Charlemagne and the first Abbot of the Monastery, executed by both parties. I looked at it with a curious and sceptical eye, and had scarcely the courage to _doubt_ its authenticity. The art which it exhibits, in the illuminations of the figures of the Evangelists, is sufficiently wretched--compared with the specimens of the same period in the celebrated MS. (also once belonging to Charlemagne) in the private library of the King at Paris.[93] I next saw a MS. of the _Sonnets of Petrarch_, in a small folio, or super royal octavo size, supposed to have been executed in the fifteenth century, about seventy years after the death of the poet. It is beautifully written in a neat roman letter, and evidently the performance of an Italian scribe; but it may as likely be a copy, made in the early part of the fifteenth century, of a MS. of the previous century. However, it is doubtless a precious MS. The ornaments are sparingly introduced, and feebly executed. On quitting these highly interesting treasures, M. H. and myself walked up and down the library for a few minutes, (the rain descending in torrents the whole time) and discoursed upon the great men of my own country. He mentioned his acquaintance with the works of Bacon, Locke, Swift, and Newton--and pronounced the name of the last ... with an effervescence of feeling and solemnity of utterance amounting to a sort of adoration. "Next to Newton," said he, "is your Bacon: nor is the interval between them _very_ great: but, in my estimation, Newton is more an angel than a mortal. He seemed to have been always communing with the Deity." "All this is excellent, Sir,--replied I: but you say not one word about our divine _Shakspeare_." "Follow me--rejoined he--and you shall see that I am not ignorant of that wonderful genius--and that I do not talk without book." Whereupon M.H. walked, or rather ran, rapidly to the other end of the library, and put into my hands _Baskerville's Edition_ of that poet,[94] of the date of 1768--which I frankly told him I had never before seen. This amused him a good deal; but he added, that the greater part of Shakspeare was incomprehensible to him, although he thoroughly understood _Swift_, and read him frequently. It was now high time to break off the conversation, interesting as it might be, and to think of our departure: for the afternoon was fast wearing away, and a starless, if not a tempestuous, night threatened to succeed. Charles Rohfritsch was despatched to the inn below--to order the horses, settle the reckoning, and to bring the carriage as near to the monastery as possible. Meanwhile Mr. L. and myself descended with M. Hartenschneider to his own room--where I saw, for the first time, the long-sought after work of the _Annales Hirsaugienses_ of _Trithemius_, _printed in the Monastery of St. Gall_ in 1690, 2 vols., folio, lying upon the Professor's table. M.H. told me that the copy belonged to the library we had just quitted. I had indeed written to Kransfelder, a bookseller at Augsbourg, just before leaving Munich, for _two_ copies of that rare and estimable work--which were inserted in his sale catalogue; and I hope to be lucky enough to secure both--for scarcely ten shillings of our money.[95] It now only remained to bid farewell to the most kind, active, and well-informed M. Hartenschneider--and to quit (probably for ever) the MONASTERY OF CHREMSMINSTER. Like the worthy Professor Veesenmeyer at Ulm, he "committed me to God's especial good providence--" and insisted upon accompanying me, uncovered, to the very outer gates of the monastery: promising, all the way, that, on receiving my proposals in writing, respecting the Statius, he would promote that object with all the influence he might possess.[96] Just as he had reached the further limits of the quadrangle, he met the librarian himself--and introduced me to him: but there was now only time to say "Vale!" We shook hands--for the first ... and in all probability ... the last time. Every thing was in readiness--on reaching the bottom of the hill. A pair of small, and apparently young and mettlesome horses, were put to the carriage: the postilion was mounted; and nothing remained but to take our seats, and bid adieu to _Chrems_ and its Monastery. The horses evinced the fleetness of rein deer at starting; and on enquiring about their age and habits, I learnt that they were scarcely _three_ years old--had been just taken from the field--and had been but _once_ before in harness. This intelligence rather alarmed us. However, we continued to push vigorously forward, along a very hilly road, in which no difference whatever was made between ascents and descents. It was a good long sixteen mile stage; and darkness and a drizzling rain overtook us ere we had got over half of it. There were no lights to the carriage, and the road was the most devious I had ever travelled. The horses continued to fly like the wind, and the charioteer began to express his fatigue in holding them in. At length we saw the light of _Ens_, to the right--the first post town on the high road from Lintz to Vienna. This led us to expect to reach the main road quickly. We passed over a long wooden bridge--under which the river Ens, here broad and rapid, runs to empty itself into the Danube: and... nearer the hour of eleven than ten, we drove to the principal inn in the Place. It was fair time: and the town of LINTZ was glittering with lights, and animated by an unusual stir of population. The centre of the _Place_ or Square, where the inn is situated, was entirely filled by booths; and it was with difficulty we could gain admission within the inn, or secure rooms when admitted. However, we had no reason to complain, for the chambermaid (an exceedingly mirthful and active old woman) assured us that Lord and Lady Castlereagh on their route to Vienna in 1815, had occupied the very beds which she had destined for us. These beds were upon the second floor, in a good large room, warmed by a central stove of earthenware tiles--the usual fireplace in Germany. The first floor of the inn was wholly occupied by travellers, merchants, dealers, and adventurers of every description--the noise of whose vociferations, and the tramp of whose movements, were audible even till long after midnight. I am tarrying in a very large, very populous, and excellently well built town. LINTZ, or LINZ, has a population of at least 20,000 souls: and boasts, with justice, not only of its beautiful public buildings, but of its manufactories of stuffs, silks, and printed calicoes. The _Place_, before this inn, affords evidence of the splendour of these wares; and the interiors of several booths are in a perfect blaze--from the highly ornamented gold gauze caps worn by the upper classes of the middling people, even more brilliant than what was observed at Augsbourg. I was asked equal to four guineas of our money for one of these caps, in my reconnoissance before breakfast this morning--nor, as I afterwards learnt, was the demand exorbitant. I must bid you farewell in haste. I start for Vienna within twenty minutes from this time, and it is now nearly-mid-day. But ere I reach the capital of Austria, I hope to pay a string of MONASTIC VISITS:--beginning with that of _St. Florian_, about a dozen miles from this place, just before you reach Ens, the next post town; so that, ere I again address you (which cannot be until I reach Vienna,) I shall have made rather a rambling and romantic tour. "Omne ignotum pro magnifico"--yet, if I mistake not; (from all that I can collect here) _experience_ will confirm what hope and ignorance suggest. [90] Vol. ii. p. 352-3. [91] See p. 217 ante. [92] It should seem, from the pages of PEZ and NIDANUS, that Charlemagne was either the founder, or the patron, or endower, of almost every monastery in Germany. Stengelius, however, gives a a very romantic origin to the foundation of Chremsminster. "The eldest son of Tassilo, a Duke or Elector of Bavaria, went out a hunting in the winter; when, having been separated from his companions, in a large wood, he met a wild boar of an enormous size, near a fountain and pool of water. Notwithstanding the fearful odds between them, Tassilo gallantly received the animal upon the point of his hunting spear, and dispatched him with a tremendous wound: not however without a fatal result to himself. Rage, agony, and over exertion... proved fatal to the conqueror: and when, excited by the barking of the dogs, his father and the troop of huntsmen came up to see what it might be, they witnessed the spectacle of the boar and the young Tassilo lying DEAD by the side of each other. The father built the MONASTERY of CHREMSMINSTER upon the fatal spot--to the memory of his beloved but unfortunate son. He endowed it with large possessions, and his endowments were confirmed by Pope Adrian and the Emperor Charlemagne--in the year 777. The history of the monastery is lost in darkness, till the year 1046, when Engelbert, Bishop of Passau, consecrated it anew; and in 1165, Diepold, another Bishop of Passau, added greatly to its possessions; but he was, in other respects, as well as Manegold in 1206, a very violent and mischievous character. Bishop Ulric, in 1216, was a great benefactor to it; but I do not perceive when the present building was erected: although it is possible there may be portions of it as old as the thirteenth century. See _Pez: Script. Rer. Austriac._, vol. i. col. 1305, &c.: _vol. ii._ col. 67, &c. At the time of publishing the _Monasteriologia of Stengelius_, 1638, (where there is a bird's-eye view of the monastery, as it now generally appears) Wolffradt (or Wolfardt) was the Abbot--who, in the author's opinion, "had no superior among his predecessors." I go a great way in thinking with Stengelius; for this worthy Abbot built the Monks a "good supper-room, two dormitories, a sort of hospital for the sick, and a LIBRARY, with an abundant stock of new books. Also a sacristy, furnished with most costly robes, &c. _Monasteriologia_; sign. A. It was doubtless the BIBLIOTHECA WOLFRADTIANA in which I tarried--as above described--with equal pleasure and profit. [93] See vol. ii. p. 199. [94] This I presume to be the "spurious" Birmingham edition, which is noticed by Steevens in the _Edit. Shakspeare_, 1813. 8vo. vol. ii. p. 151. [95] They were both secured. One copy is now in the ALTHORP LIBRARY, and the other in that of Mr. Heber. [96] On the very night of my arrival at Lintz, late as it was, I wrote a letter to the Abbot, or head of the monastery, addressed thus--as the Professor had written it down: "_Ad Reverendissimum Dominum Anselmum Mayerhoffer inclyti Monasterii Cremifanensis Abbatem vigilantissimum Cremifanum_." This was enclosed in a letter to the Professor himself with the following direction: "_Ad Rev. Dm. Udalricum Hartenschneider Professum Monasterij Cremifanensis et Historiæ ibidem Professorem publicum. Cremifanum_:" the Professor having put into my hands the following written memorandum: "Pro commutandis--quos designasti in Bibliotheca nostra, libris--primo Abbatem adire, aut litteris saltem interrogare necesse est: quas, si tibi placuerit, ad me dirigere poteris." [Autograph] This he wrote with extreme rapidity. In my letter, I repeated the offer about the Monasticon; with the addition of about a dozen napoleons for the early printed books above mentioned; requesting to have an answer, poste restante, at Vienna. No answer has since reached me. The Abbot should seem to have preferred Statius to Dugdale. [But his Statius NOW has declined wofully in pecuniary worth: while the Dugdale, in its newly edited form, has risen threefold.] LETTER IX. THE MONASTERIES OF ST. FLORIAN, MÖLK, AND GÖTTWIC. _Vienna; Hotel of the Emperor of Hungary, Aug. 31, 1818._ MY DEAR FRIEND; Give me your heartiest congratulations; for I have reached, and am well lodged at, the extreme limit of my "BIBLIOGRAPHICAL, ANTIQUARIAN, AND PICTURESQUE TOUR." Behold me, therefore, at VIENNA, the capital of Austria: once the abode of mighty monarchs and renowned chieftains: and the scene probably of more political vicissitudes than any other capital in Europe. The ferocious Turk, the subtle Italian, and the impetuous Frenchman, have each claimed Vienna as their place of residence by right of conquest; and its ramparts have been probably battered by more bullets and balls than were ever discharged at any other fortified metropolis. At present, however, my theme must be entirely monastic. Prepare, therefore, to receive an account of some MONASTIC VISITS, which have perfectly won my heart over to the Institutions of ST. BENEDICT and ST. AUGUSTIN. Indeed I seem to have been mingling with a new set of human beings, and a new order of things; though there was much that put me in mind of the general character of my ever-cherished University of Oxford. Not that there is _any one_ college, whether at Oxford or at Cambridge, which in point of architectural magnificence, can vie with some of those which I am about to describe. My last letter, as you may remember, left us upon the point of starting from Lintz, for the monastery of ST. FLORIAN. That monastery is situated within about three miles of _Ens_, the next post town from Lintz. The road thither was lined, on each side, with the plum and the pear tree--in their alternate tints of saffron and purple--but far from being ripe. The sight, altogether, was as pleasing as it was novel: and especially were my spirits gladdened, on thinking of the fortunate escape from the perils that had seemed to have awaited us in our route from Chremsminster the preceding evening. On turning out of the main road, about a dozen miles from Lintz, we began to be sensible of a gentle ascent,--along a pleasant, undulating road, skirted by meadows, copses, and corn-fields. In ten minutes, the valet shouted out--"_Voilà le Monastère de St. Florian!_" It was situated upon an eminence, of scarcely half the height of Chremsminster; but, from the abruptness of the ascent, as you enter the village, and make towards the monastery, it appears, on an immediate approach, to be of a very considerable elevation. It looked nobly, as we neared it. The walls were massive, and seemed to be embedded in a foundation of granite. Some pleasing little cultivated spots, like private gardens, were between the outer walls and the main body of the building. It rained heavily as we rolled under the archway; when an old man and an old woman demanded, rather with astonishment than severity, what was the object of our visit? Having received a satisfactory answer, the gates were opened, and we stopped between two magnificent flights of steps, leading on each side to the cloisters. Several young monks, excited by the noise of the carriage, came trooping towards the top of the stairs, looking down upon us, and retreating, with the nimbleness and apparent timidity of deer. Their white streamers, or long lappets, suspended from the back of the black gown, (the designation of the _Augustine_ order) had a very singular appearance. Having received a letter of recommendation to the librarian, M. KLEIN, I delivered it to the porter--and in a few seconds observed two short monks uncovered, advancing towards me. M. Klein spoke French--after a certain fashion--which however made us understand one another well enough; and on walking along the cloisters, he took me by the arm to conduct me to the Abbot. "But you have doubtless _dined_?" observed he,--turning sharply upon me. It was only between one and two o'clock; and therefore I thought I might be pardoned, even by the severest of their own order, for answering in the _negative_. My guide then whispered to his attendant (who quickly disappeared) and carried me directly to the Abbot. Such a visit was worth paying. I entered with great solemnity; squeezing my travelling cap into a variety of forms, as I made obeisance,--on observing a venerable man, nearer fourscore than seventy, sitting, with a black cap quite at the back part of his head, and surrounded by half a dozen young monks, who were standing and waiting upon him with coffee (after dinner) which was placed upon the table before him. He was the Principal. The old gentleman's countenance was wan, and rather severely indented, but lighted up by a dark and intelligent pair of eyes. His shoulders were shrouded in a large gray fur tippet; and, on receiving me, he demonstrated every mark of attention--by giving his unfinished cup of coffee to one of his attendants, and, pulling off his cap, endeavouring to rise. I advanced and begged there might be no further movement. As he spoke French, we quickly understood each other. He bade me see every thing that was worth seeing; and, on his renewing the _dinner_ question, and receiving an answer in the negative, he commanded that a meal of some sort should be forthwith got ready. In this, however, he had been anticipated by the librarian. I made my retreating bow, and followed my guide who, by this time, had assumed quite a pleasant air of familiarity with me. I accompanied him to the Library. It is divided into three rooms; of which the largest, at the further end, is the most characteristic. The central room is small, and devoted to MSS. none as I learnt, either very old, very curious, or very valuable. The view from this suite of apartments must, on a fine day, be lovely. Bad as was the weather, when I looked from the windows, I observed, to the left, some gently sloping and sweetly wooded pleasure grounds, with the town of _Ens_, in the centre, at the distance of about three miles. To the right, were more undulating hills, with rich meadows in the foreground; while, immediately below, was the ornamented garden of the monastery. The prospect _within_ doors was not quite of so gratifying a description. It seemed to be the mere shadow of a library. Of old books, indeed, I saw nothing worth noticing--except a white and crackling, but cropt, copy of _Ratdolt's Appian_ of 1478, (always a beautiful book) and a _Latin Version of Josephus_, printed at Venice in 1480 by _Maufer_, a citizen of Rouen. This latter was really a very fine book. There was also _Ratdolt's Euclid_ of 1485--which indeed is every where abroad--but which generally has variations in the marginal diagrams. Of _Bibles_, either Latin or German, I saw nothing more ancient than the edition by Sorg, in the _German_ language of the date of 1477. I paused an instant over the _Tyturell_ of 1477, (the only really scarce book in the collection) and threw a gilded bait before the librarian, respecting the acquisition of it;--but M. Klein quite _screamed_ aloud at the proposition--protesting that "not a single leaf from a single book should be parted with!" "You are quite right," added I. "My guide eyed me as if he could have said, "How much at variance are your thoughts and words!" And yet I spake very sincerely. Mr. Klein then placed a clean, but cropt, copy of the _first Aldine Pindar_ before me; adding, that he understood it to be rare. "It is most rare," rejoined I:--but it is yet "rarer than most rare" when found UPON VELLUM!--as it is to be seen in Lord Spencer's library." He seemed absolutely astonished at this piece of intelligence--and talked about its pecuniary value. "No money can purchase it. It is beyond all price"--rejoined I. Whereupon my guide was struck with still deeper astonishment. There were all the _Polyglott Bibles_, with the exception of the _Complutensian_; which appears to be uncommon in the principal libraries upon the continent. _Walton's Polyglott_ was the Royal copy; which led to a slight discussion respecting the Royal and Republican copies. M. Klein received most implicitly all my bibliographical doctrine upon the subject, and expressed a great desire to read Dr. Adam Clarke's Essay upon the same. When I spoke of the small number of copies upon LARGE PAPER, he appeared to marvel more than ever--and declared "how happy the sight of such a copy would make him, from his great respect for the Editor!" There was a poor sprinkle of _English books_; among which however, I noticed Shakspeare, Milton, Swift, and Thomson; I had declared myself sufficiently satisfied with the inspection of the library, when dinner was announced; but could not reconcile it to myself to depart, without asking "whether they had the _Tewrdanckh_?" "Yes, and UPON VELLUM, too!" was the Librarian's reply. It was a good sound copy. The dinner was simple and nourishing. The wine was what they call the white wine of Austria: rather thin and acid. It still continued to rain. Our friends told us that, from the windows of the room in which we were eating, they could, in fair weather; discern the snow-capt mountains of the Tyrol:--that, from one side of their monastery they could look upon green fields, pleasure gardens, and hanging woods, and from the other, upon magnificent ranges of hills terminated by mountains covered with snow. They seemed to be proud of their situation, as they had good reason to be. I found them exceedingly chatty, pleasant, and even facetious. I broached the subject of politics--but in a very guarded and general manner. The lively Librarian, however, thought proper to observe--"that the English were doing in _India_ what Bonaparte had been doing in _Europe_." I told him that such a doctrine was a more frightful heresy than any which had ever crept into his own church: at which he laughed heartily, and begged we would not spare either the _bouillé_ or the wine. We were scarcely twenty minutes at our meal, being desirous of seeing the CHURCH, the PICTURE GALLERY, and the SALOON--belonging to the monastery. It was not much after three o'clock, and yet it was unusually dark for the hour of the day. However, we followed our guides along a magnificent corridor--desirous of seeing the pictures first. If the number of paintings, and of apartments alone, constitute a good collection of pictures, this of Saint Florian is doubtless a very fair specimen of a picture gallery. There are three rooms and a corridor (or entrance passage) filled with paintings, of which three fourths at least are palpable copies. The _subjects_ of some of the paintings were not exactly accordant with monastic gravity; among these I regret that I am compelled to include a copy of a Magdalen from Rubens--and a Satyr and Sleeping Nymph, apparently by Lucas Giordano. Nevertheless the collection is worth a second and a third examination; which, if time and circumstances had allowed, we should in all probability have given it. A series of subjects, fifteen in number, illustrative of the LIFE OF ST. FLORIAN,[97] (the great fire-extinguishing Saint,--to whom the Monastery is dedicated, and who was born at _Ens_, in the neighbourhood) cuts a most distinguished figure in this collection. There is a good, and I think genuine, head of an old woman by Rubens, which I seemed to stumble upon as if by accident, and which was viewed by my guides with a sort of apathy. Mr. Lewis was half lost in extacies before a pretty little sketch by Paolo Veronese; when, on my observing to him that the time was running away fast, M. Klein spoke aloud in the English language--"_Mister Louise_, (repeating my words) _teime fleis_." He laughed heartily upon uttering it, and seemed to enjoy the joke full as much as my companion, to whom the words were addressed. There were several specimens of the old German masters, but I suspect most of them were copies. The day seemed to be growing darker and darker, although it was only somewhere between three and four o'clock. We descended quickly to see the church, where I found Charles (the valet) and several other spectators. We passed through a small sacristy or vestry, in the way to it. This room was fitted up with several small confessionals, of the prettiest forms and workmanship imaginable: having, in front, two twisted and slender columns, of an ebony tint: the whole--exceedingly inviting to confession. Here the Dean met us; a grave, sober, sensible man, with whom I conversed in Latin. We entered the church, on the tip-toe of expectation: nor were we disappointed. It is at once spacious and magnificent; but a little too profuse in architectural ornament. It consists of a nave and transepts, surmounted by a dome, with a choir of very limited dimensions. The choir is adorned, on each side, just above the several stalls, by an exceedingly rich architrave, running the whole length, in a mixed roman and gothic style. The altar, as usual, is a falling off. The transepts are too short, and the dome is too small. The nave is a sort of elongated parallelogram. It is adorned on each side by pillars of the Corinthian order, and terminated by an _Organ_ ... of the most gorgeous and imposing appearance. The pipes have completely the appearance of polished silver, and the wood work is painted white, richly relieved by gold. For size and splendor united, I had never seen any thing like it. The whole was perfectly magical. On entering, the Dean, M. Klein, and three or four more Benedictins, made slight prostrations on one knee, before the altar; and, just as they rose, to our astonishment and admiration, the organ burst forth with a power of intonation (every stop being opened) such as I had never heard exceeded. As there were only a few present, the sounds were necessarily increased, by being reverberated from every part of the building: and for a moment it seemed as if the very dome would have been unroofed, and the sides burst asunder. We looked up; then at each other: lost in surprise, delight, and admiration. We could not hear a word that was spoken; when, in some few succeeding seconds, the diapason stop only was opened ... and how sweet and touching was the melody which it imparted! "Oh Dieu! (exclaimed our valet) que cela est ravissant, et même pénétrant." This was true enough. A solemn stave or two of a hymn (during which a few other pipes were opened) was then performed by the organist ... and the effect was, as if these notes had been chanted by an invisible choir of angels. The darkness of the heavens added much to the solemnity of the whole. Silence ensuing, we were asked how we liked the church, the organ, and the organist? Of course there could be but one answer to make. The pulpit--situated at an angle where the choir and transept meet, and opposite to the place where we entered--was constructed of the black marble of Austria, ornamented with gold: the whole in sober good taste, and admirably appropriate. We left this beautiful interior, to snatch a hasty view of the dormitories and saloon, and to pay our farewell respects to the Principal. The architect of this church was a Florentine, and it was built something more than a century ago. It is doubtless in too florid a style. Instead of calling the bed-chambers by the homely name of "dormitories," they should be designated (some at least), as state bed rooms. At each corner of several of the beds was a carved figure, in gilt--serving as a leg. The beds are generally capacious, without canopies; but their covertures--in crimson, blue, or yellow silk--interspersed with spots of gold or silver--gave indication, in their faded state, of their original costliness and splendor. The rooms are generally large: but I hurried through them, as every thing--from the gloomy state of the afternoon, and more especially from the absence of almost every piece of furniture--had a sombre and melancholy air. Nothing is more impressive than the traces of departed grandeur. They had once (as I learnt) carousals and rejoicings in this monastery;--and the banquet below made sweet and sound the slumbers above. But matters have recently taken a different and less auspicious turn. The building stands, and will long stand--unless assailed by the musquet and cannon--a proud monument of wealth and of art: while the revenues for its support ... are wasting every year! But I hope my intelligence is incorrect. The highest gratification was yet in store for me: in respect to an architectural treat. In our way to the Saloon, I noticed, over the door of a passage, a small whole length of a man, in a formal peruke and dress, walking with a cane in his hand. A noble building or two appeared in the background. "Who might this be?" "That, Sir, (replied the Dean) is the portrait of the architect of THIS MONASTERY and of MÖLK. He was born, and lived, in an obscure village in the neighbourhood; and rose to unrivalled eminence from the pure strength of native genius and prudent conduct." I looked at the portrait with increased admiration. "Might I have a copy of it--for the purpose of getting it engraved?" "There can surely be no objection,"--replied the Dean. But alas, my friend, I fear it will never be my lot to possess this portrait--in _any_ form or condition. If my admiration of this architect increased as I continued to gaze upon his portrait, to what a pitch was it raised on entering the _Saloon_! I believe that I may safely say I never before witnessed such a banquetting room. It could not be less than sixty feet long, by forty feet wide and forty high;--and almost entirely composed of Salzburg marble,[98] which is of a deep red tint, but mellow and beautiful. The columns, in exceedingly bold alto-relievo, spring from a dado about the height of a man's chest, and which is surmounted by a bold and beautiful architrave. These columns, of the Ionic and Corinthian orders, judiciously intermixed, rise to a fine bold height: the whole being terminated by a vaulted ceiling of a beautiful and light construction, and elaborately and richly ornamented. I never witnessed a finer proportioned or a more appropriately ornamented room. It is, of its kind, as perfect as the Town Hall at Augsbourg;[99] and suitable for an imperial coronation. To a question respecting the antiquity of the monastery,[100] J M. Klein replied, that their _crypt_ was considered to be of the eleventh century. I had not a moment's leisure to examine it, but have some doubts of the accuracy of such a date. The Dean, M. Klein, and several monks followed us down stairs, where the carriage was drawn up to receive us--and helping us into it, they wished us a hearty farewell. Assuredly I am not likely to forget THE MONASTERY OF ST. FLORIAN. We were not long in reaching _Ens_, the first post town on the high road from Lintz to Vienna. On approaching it, our valet bade us notice the various signs of _reparation_ of which the outer walls and the fronts of many houses gave evidence. Nearly half of the town, in short, (as he informed us) had been destroyed by fire in Bonaparte's advance upon Vienna. The cannon balls had done much, but the flames had done more. We slept at the next post town, _Strengberg_, but could not help continuing to express our surprise and admiration of the fruit trees (the pear and plum) which lined each side of the road. We had determined upon dining at Mölk the next day. The early morning was somewhat inauspicious; but as the day advanced, it grew bright and cheerful. Some delightful glimpses of the Danube, to the left, from the more elevated parts of the road, accompanied us the whole way; till we caught the first view, beneath a bright blue sky, of the towering church and MONASTERY OF MÖLK.[101] Conceive what you please, and yet you shall not conceive the situation of this monastery. Less elevated above the road than Chremsminster, but of a more commanding style of architecture, and of considerably greater extent, it strikes you--as the Danube winds round and washes its rocky base--as one of the noblest edifices in the world. The wooded heights of the opposite side of the Danube crown the view of this magnificent edifice, in a manner hardly to be surpassed. There is also a beautiful play of architectural lines and ornament in the front of the building, indicative of a pure Italian taste, and giving to the edifice, if not the air of towering grandeur, at least of dignified splendour. I send you a small bird's-eye view of it--necessarily furnishing a very inadequate representation--for which I am indebted to Professor Pallas, the Sub-Principal. [Illustration] As usual, I ordered a late dinner, intending to pay my respects to the Principal, and obtain permission to inspect the library. My late monastic visits had inspired me with confidence; and I marched up the steep sides of the hill, upon which the monastery is built, quite assured of the success of the visit I was about to pay. You must now accompany the bibliographer to the monastery. In five minutes from entering the outer gate of the first quadrangle--looking towards Vienna, and which is the more ancient part of the building--I was in conversation with the Vice Principal and Librarian, each of us speaking Latin. I delivered the letter which I had received at Salzburg, and proceeded to the library. In proceeding with the Librarian along the first corridor, I passed a portly figure, with an expressive countenance, dressed precisely like the Duke of Norfolk,[102] in black waistcoat, breeches, and stockings, with a gray coat. He might seem to be a sort of small paper copy of that well-known personage, for he resembled him in countenance as well as in dress. On meeting, he saluted me graciously: and he had no sooner passed, than my guide whispered in my ear, "THAT is the famous bibliographer, the ABBÉ STRATTMAN, late principal librarian to the Emperor." I was struck at this intelligence; and wished to run back after the Abbé,--but, in a minute, found myself within the library. I first went into a long, narrow, room--devoted, the greater part, to MSS.:--and at the hither end of which (that is, the end where I entered) were two figures--as large as, and painted after, the life. They were cut out in wood, or thick pasteboard; and were stuck in the centre of the space between the walls. One was an old gentleman, with a pair of bands, and a lady, his wife, opposite to him. Each was sitting upon a chair. A dog (if I remember rightly) was between them. The effect was at first rather _startling_; for these good folks, although they had been sitting for the best part of a century, looked like life, and as if they were going to rise up, and interrogate you for impertinently intruding upon their privacy. On nearing them, I found that the old gentleman had been a great pedagogue, and a great benefactor to the library: in short, the very MSS. by which we were surrounded were _solid_ proofs of his liberality. I was urgent and particular about the _contents_ of these MSS.; but my guide (otherwise a communicative and well-informed man) answered my questions in a manner so general, as to lead me to conclude that they had never been sufficiently examined. There might be at least four thousand volumes in this long and narrow room. From thence we proceeded, across a passage, to a small room--filled with common useful books, for the young men of which the monastic society is now composed; and who I learnt were about one hundred and twenty in number. There were, however, at one end of this room, some coins and medals. I was curious about ascertaining whether they had any _Greek gold coins_, but was answered that they had none. This room is divided into two, by a partition something like the modern fashion of dividing our drawing rooms. The whole is profusely ornamented with paintings executed upon the walls; rather elegantly than otherwise. The view from this library is really enchanting--and put every thing seen, from a similar situation at Landshut, and almost even at Chremsminster, out of my recollection. You look down upon the Danube, catching a fine sweep of the river, as it widens in its course towards Vienna. A man might sit, read, and gaze--in such a situation--till he fancied he had scarcely one earthly want! I now descended a small stair-case, which brought me directly into the large library--forming the right wing of the building, looking up the Danube towards Lintz. I had scarcely uttered three notes of admiration, when the ABBÉ STRATTMAN entered; and to my surprise and satisfaction, addressed me by name. We immediately commenced an ardent unintermitting conversation in the French language, which the Abbé speaks fluently and correctly. We darted at once into the lore of bibliography of the fifteenth century; when the Abbé descanted largely upon the wonders I should see at Vienna:--especially the Sweynheyms and Pannartz' UPON VELLUM! "Here (continued he) there is absolutely nothing worthy of your inspection. We have here no edit. prin. of _Horace_, or _Virgil_, or _Terence_, or _Lucretius_: a copy of the _Decretals of Pope Boniface_, of the date of 1465, is our earliest and only VELLUM treasure of the XVth century. But you will doubtless take the _Monastery of Göttwic_ in your way?" I replied that I was wholly ignorant of the existence of such a monastery. "Then see it--(said, he) and see it carefully; for the library contains _Incunabula_ of the most curious and scarce kind. Besides, its situation is the noblest in Austria." You will give me credit for not waiting for a _second_ importunity to see such a place, before I answered--"I will most assuredly visit the monastery of Göttwic." I now took a leisurely survey of the library; which is, beyond all doubt, the finest room of its kind which I have seen upon the Continent:--not for its size, but for its style of architecture, and the materials of which it is composed. I was told that it was "the Imperial Library in miniature:"--but with this difference, let me here add, in favour of Mölk--that it looks over a magnificently-wooded country, with the Danube rolling its rapid course at its base. The wainscot and shelves are walnut tree, of different shades, inlaid, or dovetailed, surmounted by gilt ornaments. The pilasters have Corinthian capitals of gilt; and the bolder or projecting parts of a gallery, which surrounds the room, are covered with the same metal. Every thing is in harmony. This library may be about a hundred feet in length, by forty in width. It is sufficiently well furnished with books, of the ordinary useful class, and was once, I suspect, much richer in the bibliographical lore of the fifteenth century. The Abbé Strattman bade me examine a _MS. of Horace_, of the twelfth century, which he said had been inspected by Mitscherlich.[103] It seemed to be of the period adjudged to it. The Vice-Principal, M. PALLAS, now made his appearance. He talked French readily, and we all four commenced a very interesting conversation, "Did any books ever travel out of this library?"--said I. "Surely there must be many which are rather objects of curiosity than of utility: rarely consulted, no doubt; but which, by being exchanged for others of a more modern and useful description, would contribute more effectually to the purposes of public education, in an establishment of such magnitude?" These questions I submitted with great deference, and without the least hesitation, to the Vice Principal; who replied in such a manner as to induce me immediately to ascend the staircase, and commence a reconnaissance among the books placed above the gallery. The result of twenty minutes examination was, if not absolutely of the _most_ gratifying kind, at least sufficient to induce me to offer _twenty louis d'or_ for some thirty volumes, chiefly thin quartos, containing many Greek grammatical and philosophical tracts, of which I had never before seen copies. Some scarce and curious theological Latin tracts were also in this number. I turned the books upon their fore-edges, leaving their ends outwards, in order to indicate those which had been selected. M. Pallas told me that he could say nothing definitive in reply,[104] for that the matter must be submitted to the Prelate, or head of the monastery, who, at that time, was at Vienna, perhaps at the point of death. From the library we went to the church. This latter is situated between the two wings: the wings themselves forming the Saloon and the library. As we were about to leave the library, the Abbé observed--"Here, we have food for the _mind_: in the opposite quarter we dine--which is food for the _body_:[105] between both, is the church, which contains food for the _soul_." On entering the corridor, I looked up and saw the following inscription (from 1 _Mac._ c. xii. v. 9.) over the library door: "_Habentes solatio sanctos libros qui sunt in manibus nostris_." My next gratification was, a view of the portrait of BERTHOLDUS DIETMAYR--the founder, or rather the restorer, both of the library and of the monastery--possessing a countenance full of intelligence and expression. Beneath the portrait, which is scarcely half the size of life, is the following distich: _Bertholdi Dietmayr Quidquid Mortale, Tabella, Ingentemque animum_ BIBLIOTHECA, _refert._ "There," exclaimed the Abbé Strattman--"there you have the portrait of a _truly_ great man: one of the three select and privy counsellors of the Emperor Charles VI. Dietmayr was a man of a truly lofty soul, of a refined taste, and of unbounded wealth and liberality of spirit. Even longer than this edifice shall last, will the celebrity of its founder endure." My heart overflowed with admiration as I heard the words of the Abbé, gazing, at the same time, intently upon the portrait of the Prelate Dietmayr. Such men keep the balance of this world even. On reaching the last descending step, just before entering the church, the Vice Principal bade me look upwards and view the cork-screw stair-case. I did so: and to view and admire was one and the same operation of the mind. It was the most perfect and extraordinary thing of the kind which I had ever seen--the consummation (as I was told) of that particular species of art. The church is the very perfection of ecclesiastical Roman architecture: that of Chremsminster, although fine, being much inferior to it in loftiness and richness of decoration. The windows are fixed so as to throw their concentrated light beneath a dome, of no ordinary height, and of no ordinary elegance of decoration; but this dome is suffering from damp, and the paintings upon the ceiling will, unless repaired, be effaced in the course of a few years. The church is in the shape of a cross; and at the end of each of the transepts, is a rich altar, with statuary, in the style of art usual about a century ago. The pews--made of dark mahogany or walnut tree, much after the English fashion, but lower and more tasteful--are placed on each side of the nave, on entering; with ample space between them. They are exclusively appropriated to the tenants of the monastery. At the end of the nave, you look to the left, opposite,--and observe, placed in a recess--a PULPIT ... which, from top to bottom, is completely covered with gold. And yet, there is nothing gaudy, or tasteless, or glaringly obtrusive, in this extraordinary clerical rostrum. The whole is in the most perfect taste; and perhaps more judgment was required to manage such an ornament, or appendage,--consistently with the splendid style of decoration exacted by the founder--(for it was expressly the Prelate Dietmayr's wish that it _should_ be so adorned) than may, on first consideration, be supposed. In fact, the whole church is in a blaze of gold; and I was told that the gilding alone cost upwards of ninety thousand florins. Upon the whole, I understood that the church of this monastery was considered as the most beautiful in Austria; and I can easily believe it to be so. The time flew away so quickly that there was no opportunity of seeing the Saloon. Indeed, I was informed that it was occupied by the students--an additional reason why I _ought_ to have seen it. "But have you no old paintings, Mr. Vice Principal--no Burgmairs, Cranachs, or Albert Durers?" said I to M. Pallas. "Ha! (observed he in reply,) you like old pictures, then, as well as old books. Come with me, and you shall be satisfied." So saying, the Abbé Strattman[106] left us, and I followed the Vice Principal--into a small, wainscoted room, of which he touched the springs of some of the compartments, and anon there was exhibited to my view a series of sacred subjects, relating to the Life of Christ, executed by the first and last named masters: exceedingly fresh, vigorously painted, and one or two of them very impressive, but bordering upon the grotesque. I am not sure that I saw any thing more striking of the kind even in the extraordinary collection at Augsbourg. From this room I was conducted into the Prelate's apartment, where I observed a bed--in an arched recess--which might be called a bed of state. "Our Prelate has left his apartment for the last time; he will never sleep in this bed again"--observed M. Pallas, fixing himself at the foot of it, and directing his eyes towards the pillow. I saw what it was to be beloved and respected; for the Vice Principal took the end of his gown to wipe away a little _dust_ (as he was pleased to call it--but I suspect it was a starting tear) which had fallen into his eye. I was then shewn a set of china, manufactured at Vienna--upon some of the pieces of which were painted views of the monastery. This had been presented to the Prelate; and I was then, as a final exhortation, requested to view the country around me. Need I again remark, that this country was enchantingly fine? On returning to the inn, and dining, we lingered longer than we were wont to do over our dessert and white wine, when the valet came to announce to us that from thence to _St. Pölten_ was a long stage; and that if we wished to reach the latter before dark, we had not ten minutes to spare. This hint was sufficient: and the ten minutes had scarcely elapsed when we were on the high road to St. Pölten. It was indeed almost with the last glimmer of daylight that we entered this town, yet I could observe, on descending the hill by which we entered it, a stone crucifix, with the usual accompanying group. I resolved to give it a careful examination on the morrow. The inn at St. Pölten (I think it was the Dolphin) surprised us by its cheerfulness and neatness. The rooms were papered so as to represent gothic interiors, or ornamented gardens, or shady bowers. Every thing was--almost--as an Englishman could wish it to be. Having learnt that the MONASTERY OF GÖTTWIC was a digression of only some twelve or fourteen miles, I resolved to set off to visit it immediately after an early breakfast. We had scarcely left the town, when we observed a group of rustics, with a crucifix carried in front--indicating that they were about to visit some consecrated spot, for the purpose of fulfilling a vow or performing an annual pilgrimage. I stopped the carriage, to take a survey of so novel a scene; but I confess that there was nothing in it which induced me to wish to be one of the party. If I mistake not, this was the first pilgrimage or procession, of the kind, which I had seen in Austria, or even in Bavaria. It was a sorry cavalcade. Some of the men, and even women, were without shoes and stockings; and they were scattered about the road in a very loose, straggling manner. Many of the women wore a piece of linen, or muslin, half way up their faces, over the mouth; and although the road was not very smooth, both men and women appeared to be in excellent spirits, and to move briskly along--occasionally singing, and looking up to the crucifix--which a stout young man carried at the head of them. They were moving in the direction of the Monastery of Göttwic. It was cold and cloudy at starting; but on leaving the main road, and turning to the left, the horizon cleared up--and it was evident that a fine day was in store for us. Our expectations were raised in proportion to the increasing beauty of the day. The road, though a cross one, was good; winding through a pleasant country, and affording an early glimpse of the monastery in question--at the distance of at least ten miles--and situated upon a lofty eminence. The first view of it was grand and imposing, and stimulated us to urge our horses to a speedier course. The country continued to improve. Some vineyards were beginning to shew the early blush of harvest; and woods of fir, and little meandring streams running between picturesque inequalities of ground, gave an additional interest to every additional mile of the route. At length we caught a glimpse of a crowd of people, halting, in all directions. Some appeared to be sitting, others standing, more lying; and a good number were engaged in devotion before a statue. As we approached them, we observed the statue to be that of St. Francis; around which this numerous group of pilgrims appeared to have marshalled themselves--making a HALT in their pilgrimage (as we afterwards learnt) to the monastery of Göttwic. The day continued to become more and more brilliant, and the scenery to keep pace with the weather. It was evident that we were nearing the monastery very rapidly. On catching the first distinct view of it, my companion could not restrain his admiration. At this moment, from the steepness of the ascent, I thought it prudent to descend, and to walk to the monastery. The view from thence was at once commanding and enchanting. The Danube was the grand feature in the landscape; while, near its very borders, at the distance perhaps of three English miles, stood the post town of _Chrems_. The opposite heights of the Danube were well covered with wood. The sun now shone in his meridian splendour, and every feature of the country seemed to be in a glow with his beams. I next turned my thoughts to gain entrance within the monastery, and by the aid of my valet it was not long before that wished for object was accomplished. The interior is large and handsome, but of less architectural splendor than Mölk or even St. Florian. The librarian, Odilo Klama, was from home. Not a creature was to be found; and I was pacing the cloisters with a dejected air, when my servant announced to me that the Vice Principal would receive me, and conduct me to the Head or President. This was comforting intelligence. I revived in an instant; and following, along one corridor, and up divers stair-cases, I seemed to be gaining the summit of the building, when a yet more spacious corridor brought me to the door of the President's apartments: catching views, on my way thither, of increasing extent and magnificence. But all consideration of exterior objects was quickly lost on my reception at head quarters. The Principal, whose name is ALTMANN, was attired in a sort of half-dignity dress; a gold chain and cross hung upon his breast, and a black silk cap covered his head. A gown, and what seemed to be a cassock, covered his body. He had the complete air of a gentleman, and might have turned his fiftieth year. His countenance bespoke equal intelligence and benevolence:--but alas! not a word of French could he speak--and Latin was therefore necessarily resorted to by both parties. I entreated him to forgive all defects of composition and of pronunciation; at which he smiled graciously. The Vice Principal then bowed to the Abbot and retreated; but not before I had observed them to whisper apart--and to make gesticulations which I augured to portend something in the shape of providing refreshment, if not dinner. My suspicion was quickly confirmed; for, on the Vice Principal quitting the apartment, the Abbot observed to me--"you will necessarily partake of our dinner--which is usually at _one_ o'clock; but which I have postponed till _three_, in order that I may conduct you over the monastery, and shew you what is worthy of observation. You have made a long journey hither, and must not be disappointed." The manner in which this was spoken was as courteous as the purport of the speech was hospitable. "Be pleased to be covered (continued the Abbot) and I will conduct you forthwith to the Library: although I regret to add that our Librarian Odilo is just now from home--having gone, for the day, upon a botanical excursion towards Chrems--as it is now holiday time." In our way to the library, I asked the Principal respecting the revenues of the establishment and its present condition--whether it were flourishing or otherwise--adding, that Chremsminster appeared to me to be in a very flourishing state." "They are much wealthier (observed the Principal) at Chremsminster than we are here. Establishments like this, situated near a metropolis, are generally more _severely_ visited than are those in a retired and remote part of the kingdom. Our very situation is inviting to a foe, from its commanding the adjacent country. Look at the prospect around you. It is unbounded. On yon opposite wooded heights, (on the other side of the Danube) we all saw, from these very windows, the fire and smoke of the advanced guard of the French army, in contest with the Austrians, upon Bonaparte's first advance towards Vienna. The French Emperor himself took possession of this monastery. He slept here, and we entertained him the next day with the best _dejeuné à la fourchette_ which we could afford. He seemed well satisfied with his reception; but I own that I was glad when he left us. Strangers to arms in this tranquil retreat, and visited only, as you may now visit us, for the purpose of peaceful hospitality, it agitated us extremely to come in contact with warriors and chieftains. The preceding was not delivered in one uninterrupted flow of language; but I only string it together as answers to various questions put by myself. "Observe yonder"--continued the Abbot--"do you notice an old castle in the distance, to the left, situated almost upon the very banks of the Danube?" "I observe it well," replied I. "That castle, (answered he) so tradition reports, once held your Richard the First, when he was detained a prisoner by Leopold Marquis of Austria, on his return from the Holy-Land." The more the Abbot spoke, and the more I continued to gaze around, the more I fancied myself treading upon faëry ground, and that the scene in which I was engaged partook of the illusion of romance. "Our funds (continued my intelligent guide, as he placed his hand upon my arm, and arrested our progress towards the library) need be much more abundant than they really are. We have great burdens to discharge. All our food is brought from a considerable distance, and we are absolutely dependant upon our neighbours for water, as there are neither wells nor springs in the soil." "I wonder (replied I) why such a spot was chosen--except for its insulated and commanding situation--as water is the first requisite in every monastic establishment?" "Do you then overlook the _Danube_?"--resumed he--"We get our fish from thence; and, upon the whole, feel our wants less than it might be supposed." In our way to the Library, I observed a series of oil paintings along the corridor--which represented the history of the founder, and of the foundation, of the monastery.[107] The artist's name was, if I remember rightly, Helgendoeffer--or something like it. Many of the subjects were curious, and none of them absolutely ill executed. I observed the devil, or some imp, introduced in more than one picture; and remarked upon it to my guide. He said--"where will you find truth unmixed with fiction?" My observation was adroitly parried; and we now found ourselves close to the library door; where three or four Benedictins, (for I should have told you that this famous monastery is of the order of _St. Benedict_) professors on the establishment, were apparently waiting to receive us. They first saluted the Abbot very respectfully, and then myself--with a degree of cheerfulness amounting almost to familiarity. In a remote and strange place, of such a character, nothing is more encouraging than such a reception. Two of our newly joined associates could luckily speak the French language, which rendered my intercourse with the Principal yet more pleasing and satisfactory to myself. The library door was now opened, and I found myself within a long and spacious room--of which the book-shelves were composed of walnut tree--but of which the architectural ornaments were scarcely to be endured, after having so recently seen those in the library of Mölk. However, it may be fairly said that the Library was worthy of the Monastery: well stored with books and MSS., and probably the richest in bibliographical lore in Austria, after that at Vienna. We now entered the saloon, for dinner. It was a larger light, and lofty room. The ceiling was covered with paintings of allegorical subjects, in fresco, descriptive of the advantages of piety and learning. Among the various groups, I thought I could discern--as I could only take a hasty survey during my meal--the apotheosis of the founder of the monastery. Perhaps I rather wished to see it there, than that it was absolutely depicted. However, we sat down, at the high table--precisely as you may remember it in the halls at Oxford--to a plentiful and elegant repast. The Principal did me the honour of placing me at his right hand. Grace was no sooner said, than Mr. Lewis made his appearance, and seemed to view the scene before him with mingled delight and astonishment. He had, in fact, just completed his sketch of the monastery, and was well satisfied at seeing me in such quarters, and so occupied. The brethren were also well pleased to receive him, but first begged to have a glance at the drawing--with which they were highly gratified. My companion having joined the festive board, the conversation, and the cups of Rhenish wine, seemed equally to circulate without restraint. We were cheerful, even to loud mirth; and the smallness of the party, compared with the size of the hall, caused the sounds of our voices to be reverberated from every quarter. Meantime, the sun threw his radiant beams through a window of noble dimensions, quite across the saloon--so as to keep us in shadow, and illuminate the other parts of the room. Thus we were cool, but the day without had begun to be sultry. Behind me, or rather between the Abbot and myself, stood a grave, sedate, and inflexible-looking attendant--of large, square dimensions--habited in a black gown, which scarcely reached the skirts of his coat. He spake not; he moved not; save when he saw my glass emptied, which without any previous notice or permission, he made a scrupulous point of filling ... even to the very brim!... with the most highly flavoured Rhenish wine which I had yet tasted in Germany. Our glasses being of the most capacious dimensions, it behoved me to cast an attentive eye upon this replenishing process; and I told the worthy master of the table that we should be quickly revelling in our cups. He assured me that the wine, although good, was weak; but begged that I would consider myself at liberty to act as I pleased. In due time, the cloth was cleared; and a dessert, consisting chiefly of delicious peaches, succeeded. A new order of bottles was introduced; tall, square, and capacious; which were said to contain wine of the same quality, but of a more delicate flavour. It proved indeed to be most exquisite. The past labours of the day, together with the growing heat, had given a relish to every thing which I tasted; and, in the full flow of my spirits, I proposed--a sentiment, which I trusted would be considered as perfectly orthodox--"Long life, and happy times to the present members, and increasing prosperity to, the monastery of Göttwic." It was received and drank with enthusiasm. The Abbot then proceeded to give me an account of a visit paid him by Lord Minto, some years ago, when the latter was ambassador at Vienna; and he spoke of that nobleman's intelligent conversation, and amiable manners, in a way which did him great credit. "Come, Sir;" said he: "you shall not find me ungrateful. I propose drinking prosperity and long life to every representative of the British nation who is resident at Vienna. May the union between your country and ours become indissoluble." I then requested that we might withdraw; as the hours were flying away, and as we purposed sleeping within one stage of Vienna on that same evening. "Your wishes shall be mine," answered the Abbot. Whereupon he rose--with all the company--and stepping some few paces backwards, placed his hands across his breast upon the gold cross; half closed his eyes; and said grace--briefly and softly; in a manner the most impressive which I had ever witnessed. We then quickly left the noble room in which we had been banquetting, and prepared to visit the church and what might be called the state apartments, which we had not before seen. After the rooms at St. Florian, there was not much particularly to admire in those of Göttwic: except that they appeared to be better lighted, and most of them commanded truly enchanting views of the Danube and of the surrounding country. In one room, of smaller dimensions, ornamented chiefly in white and gold (if I remember rightly) a _Collection of Prints_ was kept; but those which I saw were not very remarkable for their antiquity, or for their beauty of subject or of impression. The sun was now getting low, and we had a stage of at least fourteen miles to accomplish ere we could think of retiring to rest. "Show us now, worthy Sir, your crypt and church; and then, with pain be it pronounced, we must bid you farewell. Within little more than two hours, darkness will have covered the earth." Such was my remark to the Abbot; who replied: "Say not so: we cannot part with you yet. At any rate you must not go without a testimony of the respect we entertain for the object of your visit. Those who love books, will not object to increase their own stock by a copy of our CHRONICON GOTWICENSE--commenced by one of my learned predecessors, but alas! never completed. Come with me to my room, before we descend to the church, and receive the work in question." Upon which, the amiable Head of the monastery set off, at rather a hurried pace, with myself by the side of him, along several corridors--towards his own apartment, to present me with this Chronicle. I received it with every demonstration of respect--and entreated the Abbot to inscribe a "_dono dedit_" in the fly leaf, which would render it yet more valuable in my estimation.[108] He cheerfully complied with this request. The courtesy, the frankness, the downright heartiness of feeling with which all this was done--together with the value of the present--rendered it one of the most delightful moments of my existence. I instinctively caught the Abbot's arm, pressed his hand with a cordial warmth between both of mine--and pausing one little moment, exclaimed "_Dies hic omninò commemoratione dignus!_" A sort of sympathetic shouting succeeded; for, by this time, the whole of our party had reached the Abbot's rooms. I now requested, to be immediately taken to the church; and within five minutes we were in the crypt. It scarcely merits one word of description on the score of antiquity; and may be, at the farthest, somewhere about three centuries old. The church is small and quite unpretending, as a piece of architecture. On quitting the church, and passing through the last court, or smaller quadrangle, we came to the outer walls: and leaving them, we discerned--below--the horses, carriage, and valet ... waiting to receive us. Our amiable Host and his Benedictin brethren determined to walk a little way down the hill, to see us fairly seated and ready to start. I entreated and remonstrated that this might not be; but in vain. On reaching the carriage, we all shook hands very cordially together, but certainly I pressed those of the Abbot more earnestly than the rest. We then saluted by uncovering; and, stepping into the carriage, I held aloft the first volume of the GÖTTWIC CHRONICLE--exclaiming ... "_Valete, Domini eruditissimi: dies hic commemoratione dignus_:" to which the Abbot replied, with peculiarly emphatic sonorousness of voice, "_Vale: Deus te, omnesque tibi charissimos, conservet_." They then stopped for a moment ... as the horses began to be put in motion ... and retracing their steps up the hill, towards the outer gate of the monastery, disappeared. I thought--but it might not be so--that I discerned the Abbot, at the distance of some two hundred yards, yet lingering alone--with his right arm raised, and shaking it as the last and most affectionate token of farewell. The evening was serene and mild; and the road, although a cross way, was perfectly sound--winding through a country of fertility and picturesque beauty. We saw few vineyards: but those which met our eyes showed the grape to be in its full purple tint, if not beginning to ripen. I had resolved upon stopping to sleep at _Sirghartskirchen_ within two stages of Vienna--thus avoiding the post town of _Perschling_, which is situated in the direct road to Vienna from _St. Pölten_--which latter place, as you may remember, we had left in the morning. Before the darker shades of evening began to prevail, we turned round to catch a farewell glance of the hospitable monastery which we had left behind--and were lucky in viewing it, (scarcely less than seven or eight miles in our rear) just as the outline of its pinnacles could be discerned against a clear, and yet almost brilliant, sky. It was quite dark, and nearer upon eleven than ten o'clock, when we entered the insignificant post town of _Sirghartskirchen_--where we stretched our limbs rather than reposed; and after a hasty, but not very ill provided breakfast, the next morning, we pushed on for _Burkersdorf_, the last post town on that side of Vienna. It may be about nine English miles from Burkersdorf to the capital; of which the greater part is rather agreeable than otherwise. It was here, as in approaching Strasbourg, that I turned my eyes in all directions to catch an early glimpse of the tower of St. Stephen's Cathedral, but in vain. At length, to the right, we saw the magnificent chateau of _Schönbrunn_. The road now became flat and sandy, and the plains in the vicinity of the capital destitute of trees. "Voilà la Cathedrale!" shouted the valet. It was to the left, or rather a little in front: of a tapering, spire-like form: but, seeing only a small portion of it--the lower part being concealed by the intervening rising ground--I could form no judgment of its height. We now neared the suburbs, which are very extensive, and swarming with population. I learnt that they entirely surrounded the capital, in an equal state of populousness. The barriers were now approached: and all the fears, which my accidental travelling acquaintance at Augsbourg had put into my head, began to revive and to take possession of me. But what has an honest man to fear? "Search closely (observed I to the principal examining officer) for I suspect that there is something contraband at the bottom of the trunk. Do you forbid the importation of an old Greek manual of devotion?"--said I, as I saw him about to lay his hand upon the precious Aldine volume, of which such frequent mention has been already made. The officer did not vouchsafe even to open the leaves--treating it, questionless, with a most sovereign contempt; but crying, "bah!--vous pouvez bien passer," he replaced the things which he had very slightly discomposed, and added that he wished all contraband articles to consist of similar materials. We parted with mutual smiles; but I thought there lingered something like a feeling of reproach, in the last quiver or turn of his lip, at my not having slipt two or three florins into his hand--which was broad and brawny enough to have grasped threescore or a hundred. "I will remember you on my return,"--exclaimed I, as the carriage drove off. He gave me a most sceptical shake of the head, as he retreated into his little tenement, like a mastiff into his kennel. The whole of VIENNA, as it now seemed--with its cathedral, churches, palaces, and ramparts--was before us. As we approached the chief entrance, or gateway, I recognised the _Imperial Library_; although it was only a back view of it. In truth, it appeared to be just as I remembered it in the vignette-frontispiece of Denis's folio catalogue of the Latin Theological MSS. contained in the same library. My memory proved to be faithful; for we were assured that the building in view _was_ the library in question. It was our intention to take up our quarters at the principal inn, called the _Empress of Austria_; and, with this view, we drove up to the door of that hotel: but a tall, full-dressed man, with a broad sash across his body, and a silver-tipped staff in his right hand, marched pompously up to the door of the carriage, took off his hat, and informed us with great solemnity that "the hotel was entirely filled, and that his master could not have the honour of entertaining us." On receiving this intelligence, we were comforted by the assurance, on the part of the post-boy and valet, that the second hotel, called the _Crown of Hungary_,--and situated in the _Himelfort Gasse_, or _Heaven-gate Street_--was in every respect as desirable as that which we were compelled to quit. Accordingly we alighted at the door of the _Hungarische Krone_--equally marvelling, all the way thither, at the enormous size of the houses, and at the narrowness of the streets. But it is time to terminate this epistle. Yet I must not fail informing you, that every thing strikes me as approximating very much to my own native country. The countenances, the dresses, the manners of the inhabitants, are very nearly English. My apartments are gay as well as comfortable. A green-morocco sofa, beneath a large and curiously cut looking-glass--with chairs having velvet seats, and wainscot and ceiling very elegantly painted and papered--all remind me that I am in a respectable hotel. A strange sight occupied my attention the very first morning after my arrival. As the day broke fully into my room--it might be between five and six o'clock--I heard a great buzzing of voices in the street. I rose, and looking out of window, saw, from one end of the street to the other, a countless multitude of women--sitting, in measured ranks, with pots of cream and butter before them. It was in fact the chief market day for fruit, cream, and butter; and the _Himelfort Gasse_ is the principal mart for the sale of these articles. The weather has recently become milder, and I feel therefore in better trim for the attack upon the IMPERIAL LIBRARY, where I deliver my credentials, or introductory letters, to-morrow. God bless you. [97] St. FLORIAN was a soldier and sufferer in the time of the Emperors Diocletian and Maximinian. He perished in the tenth and last persecution of the Christian Church by the Romans. The judge, who condemned him to death, was Aquilinus. After being importuned to renounce the Christian religion, and to embrace the Pagan creed, as the only condition of his being rescued from an immediate and cruel death, St. Florian firmly resisted all entreaties; and shewed a calmness, and even joyfulness of spirits, in proportion to the stripes inflicted upon him previous to execution. He was condemned to be thrown into the river, from a bridge, with a stone fastened round his neck. The soldiers at first hesitated about carrying the judgment of Aquilinus into execution. A pause of an hour ensued: which was employed by St. Florian in prayer and ejaculation! A furious young man then rushed forward, and precipitated the martyr into the river: "Fluvius autem suscipiens martyrem Christi, expavit, et elevatis undis suis, in quodam eminentiori loco in saxo corpus ejus deposuit. Tunc annuente favore divino, adveniens aquila, expansis alis suis in modum crucis, eum protegebat." _Acta Sanctorum; Mens. Maii_, vol. i. p. 463. St. Florian is a popular saint both in Bavaria and Austria. He is usually represented in armour, pouring water from a bucket to extinguish a house, or a city, in flames, which is represented below. Raderus, in his _Bavaria Sacra_, vol. i. p. 8, is very particular about this monastery, and gives a list of the pictures above noticed, on the authority of Sebastianus ab Adelzhausen, the head of the monastery at that time; namely in 1615. He also adorns his pages with a copper cut of the martyr about to be precipitated into the river, from the bank--with his hands tied behind him, without any stone about his neck. But the painting, as well as the text of the Acta Sanctorum, describes the precipitation as from a bridge. The form of the Invocation to the Saint is, "O MARTYR and SAINT, FLORIAN, keep us, we beseech thee, by night and by day, from all harm by FIRE, or from other casualties of this life." [98] "Nostris vero temporibus Reverendissimi Præpositi studio augustum sanc templum raro marmore affatim emicans, paucisque inuidens assurexit." This is the language of the _Germania Austriaca, seu Topographia Omnium Germaniæ Provinciarum_, 1701, folio, p. 16: when speaking of THE MONASTERY of ST. FLORIAN. [99] See p. 78, ante. [100] It may be only sufficient to carry it as far back as the twelfth century. What precedes that period is, as usual, obscure and unsatisfactory. The monastery was originally of the _Benedictin_ order; but it was changed to the _Augustine_ order by Engelbert. After this latter, Altman reformed and put it upon a most respectable footing--in 1080. He was, however, a severe disciplinarian. Perhaps the crypt mentioned by M. Klein might be of the latter end of the XIIth century; but no visible portion of the superincumbent building can be older than the XVIth century. [101] The history of this monastery is sufficiently fertile in marvellous events; but my business is to be equally brief and sober in the account of it. In the _Scriptores Rerum Austriacarum_ of _Pez_, vol. i. col. 162-309, there is a chronicle of the monastery, from the year of its foundation to 1564, begun to be written by an anonymous author in 1132, and continued to the latter period by other coeval writers--all monks of the monastery. It is printed by Pez for the first time--and he calls it "an ancient and genuine chronicle." The word Mölk, or Mölck,--or, as it appears in the first map in the _Germania Austriaca, seu Topographia Omnium Germaniæ Provinciarum_, 1701, fol. Melck--was formerly written "Medilicense, Medlicense, Medlicum, Medlich, and Medelick, or Mellicense." This anonymous chronicle, which concludes at col. 290, is followed by "a short chtonicle of Conrad de Wizenberg," and "an anonymous history of the Foundation of the Monastery," compared with six other MSS. of the same kind in the library at Mölk. The whole is concluded by "an ancient Necrology of the Monastery," commenced in the XIIth century, from a vellum MS. of the same date. In the _Monasteriologia of Stengelius_, we have a list of the Heads or Primates of Mölk, beginning with Sigiboldus, in 1089, (who was the first that succeeded Leopold, the founder) down to Valentinus, in 1638; who was living when the author published his work. There is also a copper-plate print of a bird's eye view of the monastery, in its ancient state, previously to the restoration of it, in its present form, by DIETMAYR. [102] [The late Duke.] [103] I do not however find it in the Notitia Literaria prefixed to the edition of Horace, published by Mitscherlich in 1800: see vol. i. p. xxvi. where he notices the MSS. of the poet which are deposited in the libraries of Germany. [104] It was not till my arrival at Manheim, on my return to Paris, that I received the "definitive reply" of the worthy Sub-Principal--which was after the following manner. "Monsieur--La lettre du 21 Septembre, que vous m'avez faite l'honneur de m'écrire, je ne l'ai reçue que depuis peu, c'est-à-dire, depuis le retour de mon voyage. Les scrupules que vous faites touchant l'échange des livres, ont été levés par vous-même dans l'instant que vous en avez faites la proposition. Mais, malheureusement, la lettre qui devait apporter la confirmation du Prélat, n'a apportée que la triste nouvelle de sa mort. Vous sentez bien, que dès ce moment il ne sauroit plus être question de rien. Je ne doute pas, que quoique aucun livre ancien ne soit jusqu'à ce moment sorti de la Bibliothèque du Couvent, le Prélat n'eut fait une exception honorable en égard a l'illustre personnage auquel ces livres ont été destines et à la collection unique d'un art, a fait naitre toutes les bibliothèques, &c. J'ai l'honneur, &c. votre trés humble et très obeisant serviteur," [Autograph] [105] In an octavo volume published by a Dr. Cadet, who was a surgeon in Bonaparte's army in the campaign in Austria, in 1809, and who entitles his work--_Voyage en Autriche, en Moravie, et en Bavière_--published at Paris in 1818--we are favoured with a slight but spirited account of the monastery of Mölk--of the magnificence of its structure, and of the views seen from thence: but, above all, of the PRODUCE OF ITS CELLARS. The French Generals were lodged there, in their route to Vienna; and the Doctor, after telling us of the extent of the vaults, and that a carriage might be turned with ease in some of them, adds, "in order to have an idea of the abundance which reigns there, it may be sufficient only to observe, that, for four successive days, during the march of our troops through Mölk, towards Vienna, there were delivered to them not less than from 50 to 60,000 pints of wine per day--and yet scarcely one half of the stock was exhausted! The monastery, however, only contains twelve Réligieux. The interior of the church is covered with such a profusion of gilt and rich ornaments, that when the sun shines full upon it, it is difficult to view it without being dazzled." Page 79. The old monastery of Mölk successfully stood a siege of three months, against the Hungarians, in the year 1619. See _Germ. Austriaca_, &c. p. 18. [106] [The Abbé Strattman SURVIVED the above interview only about _five years_. I hope and trust that the worthy Vice Principal is as well NOW, as he was about three years ago, when my excellent friend Mr. Lodge, the Librarian of the University of Cambridge, read to him an off-hand German version of the whole of this account of my visit to his Monastery.] [107] This history has come down to us from well authenticated materials; however, in the course of its transmission, it may have been partially coloured with fables and absurdities. The Founder of the Monastery was ALTMANN, Bishop of Passau; who died in the year 1091, about twenty years after the foundation of the building. The two ancient biographies of the Founder, each by a Monk or Principal of the monastery, are introduced into the collection of Austrian historians by _Pez_; vol. i. col. 112-162. Stengelius has a bird's eye view of the monastery as it appeared in 1638, and before the principal suite of apartments was built. But it is yet in an unfinished state; as the view of it from the copper-plate engraving, at page 248 ante, represents it with the _intended_ additions and improvements. These latter, in all probability, will never be carried into effect. This monastery enjoyed, of old, great privileges and revenues. It had twenty-two parish churches--four towns--several villages, &c. subject to its ecclesiastical jurisdiction; and these parishes, together with the monastery itself, were not under the visitation of the Diocesan (of Passau) but of the Pope himself. Stengelius (_Monasteriologia_, sign. C) speaks of the magnificent views seen from the summit of the monastery, on a clear day; observing, however, (even in his time) that it was without springs or wells, and that it received the rain water in leaden cisterns. "Cæterùm (adds he) am[oen]issimum et plané aspectu jucundissimum habet situm." Towards the middle of the seventeenth century, this monastery appears to have taken the noble form under which it is at present beheld. It has not however escaped from more than _one_ severe visitation by the Turks. [108] On my arrival in England, I was of course equally anxious and happy to place the CHRONICON GÖTWICENSE in the library at Althorp. But I have not, in the text above, done full justice to the liberality of the present Abbot of the monastery. He gave me, in addition, a copy--of perhaps a still scarcer work--entitled "_Notitia Austriæ Antiquæ et Mediæ seu tam Norici Veteris quam Pagi et Marchæ_, &c." by MAGNUS KLEIN, Abbot of the monastery, and of which the first volume only was published "typis Monasterii Tegernseensis," in 1781, 4to. This appears to be a very learned and curious work. And here ... let me be allowed for the sake of all lovers of autographs of good and great men--to close this note with a fac-simile of the hand writing (in the "dono dedit"--as above mentioned) of the amiable and erudite donor of these acceptable volumes. It is faithfully thus:--the _original_ scription will only, I trust, perish with the book: [Autograph] LETTER X. IMPERIAL LIBRARY. ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPTS AND EARLY PRINTED BOOKS. VIENNA; _Hotel of the Crown of Hungary, Sept. 9, 1818_. It gave me the sincerest pleasure, my dear friend, to receive your letter... only a very few hours after the transmission of my last. At such a distance from those we love and esteem, you can readily imagine the sort of _comfort_ which such communications impart. I was indeed rejoiced to hear of the health and welfare of your family, and of that of our friend * *, who is indeed not only a thorough-bred _Rorburgher_, but a truly excellent and amiable man. The account of the last anniversary-meeting of the Club has, however, been a little painful to me; inasmuch as it proves that a sort of _heresy_ has crept into the Society--which your Vice-President, on his return, will labour as effectually as he can to eradicate.[109] I had anticipated your wishes. You tell me, "send all you can collect about the IMPERIAL LIBRARY of Vienna; its MSS. and printed books: its treasures in the shape of _Fifteeners_ and _Sixteeners_: in short, be copious (say you) in your description." The present letter will at least convince you that I have not been sparing in the account solicited; and, in truth, I am well pleased to postpone a description of the buildings, and usual sights and diversions of this metropolis, until I shall have passed a few more days here, and had fuller opportunities of making myself acquainted with details. Compared with every other architectural interior which I have yet seen, this LIBRARY is beyond doubt the most magnificent in its structure. But if my admiration be thus great of the building, and of the _books_, it is at least equally so of _those_ who have the _management_ of them. You must know that I arrived here at a very unfortunate moment for bibliographical research. The holidays of the librarians commence at the latter end of August, and continue 'till the end of September. I had no sooner delivered my letter of introduction to the well known Mons. ADAM DE BARTSCH--an Aulic Counsellor, and chief Director of the Library--than he stepped backward with a thoughtful and even anxious brow. "What is the matter, Sir, am I likely to be intrusive?" "My good friend"--replied he--taking my arm with as pleasant an air of familiarity as if I had been an old acquaintance--"you have visited us at a most unlucky moment: but let me turn the matter over in my mind, and you shall have my determination on the morrow." That "determination" was as agreeable as it was unexpected; and really on my part--without the least affectation--unmerited. "I have been talking the matter over with my brethren and coadjutors in the library-department, (said M. Bartsch) and we have agreed--considering the great distance and expense of your journey--to give you an extra week's research among our books. We will postpone our regular trip to _Baden_,--whither the court, the noblesse, and our principal citizens at present resort--in order that you may have an opportunity of perfecting your enquiries. You will of course make the most of your time." I thanked M. Bartsch heartily and unfeignedly for his extreme civility and kindness, and told him that he should not find me either slothful or ungrateful. In person M. Bartsch is shorter than myself; but very much stouter. He is known in the graphic world chiefly by his _Le Peintre Graveur_; a very skilful, and indeed an invaluable production, in sixteen or eighteen octavo volumes--illustrated with some curious fac-similes. He is himself an artist of no ordinary ability; and his engravings, especially after some of Rubens's pictures, are quite admirable. Few men have done so much at his time of life, and borne the effect of so much strenuous toil, so well as himself. He is yet gay in spirit, vigorous in intellect, and sound in judgment; and the simplicity of his character and manners (for in truth we are become quite intimate) is most winning.[110] Messrs. PAYNE and KOPITAR are the Librarians who more immediately attend to the examination of the books. The former is an Abbé--somewhat stricken in years, and of the most pleasing and simple manners. I saw little of him, as he was anxious for the breezes of Baden; but I saw enough to regret that he would not meet his brother librarians at the hotel of the _Crown of Hungary_, where I had prepared the best fare in my power to entertain them.[111] M. Kopitar is an invaluable labourer in this bibliographical vineyard. I had formerly seen him while he was in England; when he came with Mr. Henry Foss to St. James's Place, to examine the _Aldine volumes_, and especially those printed upon vellum. He himself reminded me of the chary manner in which I seemed to allow him to handle those precious tomes. "You would scarcely permit me (said he smilingly) to hold them half a minute in my hands: but I will not treat you after the same fashion. You shall handle _our_ vellum books, whether in ms. or in print, as long and as attentively as you please." I felt the rebuke as it became a _preu_ chevalier in bibliography to feel it. "I am indebted to you, M. Kopitar, (said I, in reply) in more senses than _one_--- on this my visit to your Imperial Library." "But (observed he quickly) you only did what you _ought_ to have done." All power of rejoinder was here taken away. M. Kopitar is a thoroughly good scholar, and is conversant in the Polish, German, Hungarian, and Italian languages. He is now expressly employed upon the _Manuscripts_; but he told me (almost with a sigh!) that he had become so fond of the _Fifteeners_, that he reluctantly complied with the commands of his superiors in entering on the ms. department. Before I lay my _Catalogue Raisonné_ of such books as I have examined, before you, it is right and fitting that I make some mention of the REPOSITORY in which these books are placed. In regard to the dimensions of the library, and the general leading facts connected with the erection of the building, as well as the number of the books, my authority is perhaps the best that can be adduced: namely, that of Mons. de Bartsch himself. Know then, my good friend, that the Imperial Library of Vienna is built over a succession of arched vaults, which are made to contain the carriages of the Emperor. You ascend a broad staircase, to the left, which is lined with fragments of Greek and Roman antiquities. Almost the first room which you enter, is the Reading Room. This may hold about thirty students comfortably, but I think I saw more than forty on my first entrance: of whom several, with the invincible phlegm of their country, were content to stand--leaning against the wall, with their books in their hands. This room is questionless too small for the object to which it is applied; and as it is the fashion, in this part of the world, seldom or never to open the windows, the effect of such an atmosphere of hydrogen is most revolting to sensitive nerves. When the door was opened ... which at once gave me the complete length view of the GRAND LIBRARY ... I was struck with astonishment! Such another sight is surely no where to be seen.[112] The airiness, the height, the splendour, the decorative minutiæ of the whole--to say nothing of the interminable rows of volumes of all sizes, and in all colours of morocco binding--put every thing else out of my recollection. The floor is of red and white marble, diamond-wise. I walked along it, with M. Bartsch on my right hand and M. Kopitar on my left, as if fearful to scratch its polished surface:--first gazing upon the paintings of the vaulted roof, and then upon the statues and globes, alternately, below--while it seemed as if the power of expressing the extent of my admiration, had been taken from me. At length I reached the central compartment of this wonderful room, which is crowned with a sort of oval and very lofty cupola, covered with a profusion of fresco paintings. In the centre, below, stands a whole-length statue, in white marble, of CHARLES VI., under whose truly imperial patronage this library was built. Around him are sixteen whole length statues of certain Austrian Marshals, also in white marble; while the books, or rather folios, (almost wholly bound in red morocco) which line the sides of the whole of this transept division of the room, were pointed out to me as having belonged to the celebrated hero, PRINCE EUGENE. Illustrious man!--thought I to myself--it is a taste like THIS which will perpetuate thy name, and extol thy virtues, even when the memory of thy prowess in arms shall have faded away! "See yonder"--observed M. Bartsch--"there are, I know not how many, atlas folios of that Prince's collection of PRINTS. It is thought to be unrivalled." "But where (replied I) is the _statue_ of this heroic collector, to whom your library is probably indebted for its choicest treasures? Tell me, who are these marshals that seem to have no business in such a sanctuary of the Muses--while I look in vain for the illustrious Eugene?" There was more force in this remark than I could have possibly imagined--for my guide was silent as to the names of these Austrian marshals, and seemed to admit, that PRINCE EUGENE... _ought_ to have been there. "But is it _too late_ to erect his statue? Cannot he displace one of these nameless marshals, who are in attitude as if practising the third step of the _Minuet de la Cour_?" "Doucement, doucement, mon ami ... (replied M.B.) il faut considérer un peu...." "Well, well--be it so: let me now continue my general observation of the locale of this magical collection." M.B. readily allowed me; and seemed silently to enjoy the gratification which I felt and expressed. I then walked leisurely to the very extremity of the room; continuing to throw a rapid, but not uninterested glance upon all the accessories of gilding, carved work, paintings, and statuary, with which the whole seemed to be in a perfect blaze. I paced the library in various directions; and found, at every turn or fresh point of view, a new subject of surprise and admiration. There is a noble gallery, made of walnut tree, ornamented with gilding and constructed in a manner at once light and substantial, which runs from one extremity of the interior to the other. It is a master-piece of art in its way. Upon the whole, there is no furnishing you with any very correct notion of this really matchless public library. At the further end of the room, to the left, is a small door; which, upon opening, brings you into the interior of a moderately sized, plain room, where the _Fifteeners_ are lodged. The very first view of these ancient tomes caused a certain palpitation of the heart. But neither this sort of book-jewel room, nor the large library just described--leading to it--are visited without the special license of the Curators: a plan, which as it respects the latter room, is, I submit, exceedingly absurd; for, what makes a noble book-room look more characteristic and inviting, than its being _well filled with students_? Besides, on the score of health and comfort--at least in the summer months--such a plan is almost absolutely requisite. The MANUSCRIPTS are contained in a room, to the right, as you enter: connected with the small room where M. Bartsch, as commander-in-chief, regularly takes his station--from thence issuing such orders to his officers as best contribute to the well-being of the establishment. The MS. room is sufficiently large and commodious, but without any architectural pretensions. It may be about forty feet long. Here I was first shewn, among the principal curiosities, a _Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus coercendis_: a sort of police ordonnance, on a metal plate--supposed to have been hung up in some of the public offices at Rome nearly 200 years before the birth of Christ. It is doubtless a great curiosity, and invaluable as an historical document--as far as it goes. Here is a _map_, upon vellum, of the _Itinerary_ of _Theodosius the Great_, of the fourth century; very curious, as exhibiting a representation of the then known world, in which the most extraordinary ignorance of the relative position of countries prevails. I understood that both _Pompeii_ and _Herculaneum_ were marked on this map. One of the most singular curiosities, of the antiquarian kind, is a long leather roll of _Mexican hieroglyphics_, which was presented to the Emperor Charles V., by Ferdinand Cortez. There are copies of these hieroglyphics, taken from a copper plate; but the solution of them, like most of those from Egypt, will always be perhaps a point of dispute with the learned. But the objects more particularly congenial with _my_ pursuits, were, as you will naturally guess, connected rather with _vellum MSS._ of the _Scriptures_ and _Classics_: and especially did I make an instant and earnest enquiry about the famous fragment of the BOOK OF GENESIS, of the fourth century, of which I had before read so much in Lambecius, and concerning which my imagination was, strangely enough, wrought up to a most extraordinary pitch. "Place before me that fragment, good M. Kopitar," said I eagerly--"and you shall for ever have my best thanks." "_That_, and every thing else (replied he) is much at your service: fix only your hours of attendance, and our treasures are ready for your free examination." This was as it should be. I enter therefore at once, my good friend, upon the task of giving you a Catalogue Raisonné of those MSS. which it was my good fortune to examine in the nine or ten days conceded to me for that purpose; and during which I seemed to receive more than ordinary attention and kindness from the principal librarians. FRAGMENT OF THE BOOK OF GENESIS--undoubtedly of the end of the fourth century, at earliest. This fragment is a collection of twenty-four leaves, in a folio form, measuring twelve inches by ten, of a small portion of the Book of Genesis, written in large Greek capital letters of gold and silver, now much faded, upon a purple ground. Every page of these twenty-four leaves is embellished with a painting, or illumination, coloured after nature, purposely executed _below_ the text, so that it is a running _graphic_ illustration--as we should say--of the subject above. There is too small a portion of the TEXT to be of much critical importance, but I believe this Greek text to be the _oldest extant_ of sacred writ: and therefore I rejoiced on viewing this venerable and precious relic of scriptural antiquity. Lambecius and Mabillon have given fac-similes of it; and I think Montfaucon also--in his _Palæographia Græca_. At the end of this fragment, are four pages of the _Gospel of St. Luke_--or, rather, figures of the four Evangelists; which are also engraved by Lambecius, and, from him, by Nesselius and Kollarius.[113] SACRAMENTARIUM, SEU MISSA PAPÆ GREGORII, an oblong large octavo, or small folio form. I own I have doubts about calling this volume a contemporaneous production; that is to say, of the latter end of the sixth century. The exterior, which, on the score of art, is more precious than the interior, is doubtless however of a very early period. It consists of an ivory figure of St. Jerome, guarded by a brass frame. The character of the interior, as to its scription, does not appear to be older than the tenth century. GERMAN BIBLE of the EMPEROR WENCESLAUS, in six folio volumes. This too was another of the particularly curious MSS. which, since the account of it in my Decameron, I had much desired to see. It is, upon the whole, an imperial production: but as extraordinary, and even whimsical, as it is magnificent. Of these six volumes, only three are illuminated; and of the third, only two third parts are finished. The text is a large lower-case gothic letter, very nearly a quarter of an inch in height. The ornamental or border illuminations have more grace and beauty than the subjects represented; although, to the eye of an antiquarian virtuoso, the representations of the unfortunate monarch will be the most interesting. I should notice by the way, on the competent authority of M. Kopitar, that this German version of the Bible is one of the most ancient extant. These books have suffered, in the binding, from the trenchant tools of the artist. The gold in the illuminations is rather bright than refulgent. I now proceed with an account of some other MSS. appertaining to Scripture; and hasten to introduce to your notice a magnificent folio volume, entitled EVANGELISTARIUM, with a lion's head in the centre of the exterior binding, surrounded by golden rays, and having a lion's head in each corner of the square. The whole is within an arabesque border. There can be no doubt of the binding being of the time of Frederick III. of the middle of the fourteenth century; and it is at once splendid and tasteful. The book measures nearly fifteen inches by ten. The inside almost surpasses any thing of the kind I have seen. The vellum is smooth, thin, and white--and the colours are managed so as to have almost a faëry like effect. Each page is surrounded with a light blue frame, having twisted flowers for corner ornaments: the whole of a quiet, soft tint, not unlike what appears in the Bible of Wenceslaus. Every line is written in a tall, broad gothic letter--and every letter is _gold_. But the illuminations merit every commendation. They are of various kinds. Some are divided into twelve compartments: but the initial L, to the first page, _L_[_iber Generationis_] is the most tasteful, as well as elaborate thing I ever saw.[114] The figures of angels, on the side, and at bottom, have even the merit of Greek art. A large illumination of our Saviour, with the Virgin and Joseph below, closes the volume: which really can hardly be sufficiently admired. The date of the text is 1368. I shall now give you an account of a few MISSALS of a higher order on the score of art. And first, let me begin with a beautiful FLEMISH MISSAL, in 8vo.: in the most perfect state of preservation--and with the costliest embellishments--as well as with a good number of drollerries _dotted_ about the margins. The frame work, to the larger subjects, is composed of gothic architecture. I am not sure that I have seen any thing which equals the _drolleries_--for their variety, finish, and exquisite condition. The vellum is not to be surpassed. What gives this book an additional value is, that it was once the property of Charles V.: for, on the reverse of fol. 157, at bottom, is the following memorandum in his hand writing: _Afin que Ie Ioye de vous recommandé accepté bonne Dame cest mis sÿ en escript vostre vraÿ bon mestre._ CHARLES. A lovely bird, in the margin, is the last illumination. In the whole, there are 179 leaves. The next article is a LARGE MISSAL, in letters of gold and silver, upon black paper: a very extraordinary book--and, to me, unique. The first illumination shews the arms of Milan and Austria, quarterly, surrounded by an elaborate gold border. The text is in letters of silver--tall stout gothic letters--with the initial letters of gold. Some of the subjects are surrounded by gold borders, delightfully and gracefully disposed in circles and flowers. At the bottom of the page, which faces the descent of the Holy Ghost, is a fool upon horseback--very singular--and very spiritedly touched. The binding is of red velvet, with a representation of the cloven tongues at the day of Pentecost in silver-gilt. A third MISSAL, of the same beautiful character, is of an octavo form. The two first illuminations are not to be exceeded, of their kind. The borders, throughout, are arabesque, relieved by _cameo gris_,--with heads, historical subjects, and every thing to enchant the eye and warm the heart of a tasteful antiquary. The writing is a black, large, gothic letter, not unlike the larger gothic font used by Ratdolt. The vellum is beautiful. The binding is in the Grolier style. The last and not the least, in the estimation of a competent judge of MSS.,--is, a German version of the HORTULUS ANIMÆ of S. Brant. The volume in question is undoubtedly among the loveliest books in the Imperial Library. The character, or style of art, is not uncommon; but such a series of sweetly drawn, and highly finished subjects, is hardly any where to be seen--and certainly no where to be eclipsed. I should say the art was rather Parisian than Flemish. The first in the series, is the following; executed for me by M. Fendi. It occurs where the illuminations usually commence, at the foot of the first page of the first Psalm. Observe, I beseech you, how tranquilly the boat glides along, and how comfortable the party appears. It is a hot day, and they have cut down some branches from the trees to fasten in the sides of the boat--in order to screen them from the heat of the sun. The flagon of wine is half merged in the cooling stream--so that, when they drink, their thirst will be more effectually quenched. There are viands, in the basket, beside the rower; and the mingled sounds of the flageolets and guitar seem to steal upon your ear as you gaze at the happy party--and, perhaps, long to be one of them! [Illustration] A hundred similar sweet things catch the eye as one turns over the spotless leaves of this snow-white book. But the very impressive scene of Christ asleep, watched by angels--(with certain musical instruments in their hands, of which M. Kopitar could not tell me the names,) together with another illumination of Mary, and Joseph in the distance, can hardly be described with justice. The Apostles and Saints are large half lengths. St. Anthony, with the devil in the shape of a black pig beneath his garment, is cleverly managed; but the head is too large. Among the female figures, what think you of MARY MAGDALENE--as here represented? And where will you find female penance put to a severer trial? I apprehend the box, in front of her, to be a _pix_, containing the consecrated elements. [Illustration] I now proceed to give you some account of MSS. of a different character: _classical_, _historical_, and appertaining to _Romance_--which seemed to me to have more particular claims upon the attention of the curious. The famous Greek DIOSCORIDES shall lead the way. This celebrated MS. is a large, thick, imperial quarto; measuring nearly fifteen inches by twelve. The vellum is thin, and of a silky and beautiful texture. The colours in the earlier illuminations are thickly coated and glazed, but very much rubbed; and the faces are sometimes hardly distinguishable. The supposed portrait of Dioscorides (engraved--as well as a dozen other of these illuminations--in Lambecius, &c.) is the most perfect. The plants are on one side of the leaf, the text is on the other. The former are, upon the whole, delicately and naturally coloured. At the end, there is an ornithological treatise, which is very curious for the colouring of the birds. This latter treatise is written in a smaller Greek capital letter than the first; but M. Kopitar supposes it to be as ancient. We know from an indisputably coeval date, that this precious MS. was executed by order of the Empress Juliana Anicia in the year of Christ 505. There is a smaller MS. of Dioscorides, of a more recent date, in which the plants are coloured, and executed--one, two, or three, in number--upon the rectos of the leaves, with the text below, in two columns. Both the illuminations and the text are of inferior execution to those of the preceding MS. Montfaucon, who never saw the larger, makes much of the smaller MS.; which scarcely deserves comparison with it. PHILOSTRATUS; Lat. This is the MS. which belonged to Matthias Corvinus--and of which the illuminations are so beautiful, that Nesselius has thought it worth while to give a fac-simile of the first--from whence I gave a portion to the public in the Bibliog. Decameron.[115] I think that I may safely affirm, that the two illuminations, which face each other at the beginning, are the finest, in every respect, which I have seen of that period; but they have been sadly damaged. The two or three other illuminations, by different hands, are much inferior. The vellum and writing are equally charming. VALERIUS MAXIMUS. This copy has the name of _Sambucus_ at the bottom of the first illumination, and was doubtless formerly in the collection of Matthias Corvinus--the principal remains of whose magnificent library (although fewer than I had anticipated) are preserved in this collection. The illumination in the MS. just mentioned, is very elegant and pleasing; but the colours are rather too dark and heavy. The intended portrait of the Roman historian, with the arms and supporters below, are in excellent good taste. The initial letters and the vellum are quite delightful. The scription is very good. LIVIUS: in six folio volumes. We have here a beautiful and magnificent MS. in a fine state of preservation. There is only one illumination in each volume; but that "one" is perhaps the most perfect specimen which can be seen of that open, undulating, arabesque kind of border, which is rather common in print as well as in MS., towards the end of the fifteenth century. These six illuminations, for invention, delicacy, and brilliancy of finish, are infinitely beyond any thing of the kind which I have seen. The vellum is perfectly beautiful. To state which of these illuminations is the most attractive, would be a difficult task; but if you were at my elbow, I should direct your particular attention to that at the beginning of the IXth book of the IVth Decad--especially to the opposite ornament; where two green fishes unite round a circle of gold, with the title, in golden capitals, in the centre. O Matthias Corvinus, thou wert surely the EMPEROR of Book Collectors! BOOK OF BLAZONRY, or of ARMS. This is an enormous folio MS. full of heraldic embellishments relating to the HOUSE of Austria. Among these embellishments, the author of the text--who lived in the XVIth century, and who was a very careful compiler--has preserved a genuine, original portrait of LEOPOLD de SEMPACH, of the date of 1386. It is very rarely that you observe portraits of this character, or form, introduced into MSS. of so early a period. A nobler heraldic volume probably does not exist. It is bound in wood, covered with red velvet; and the edges are gilt, over coloured armorial ornaments. From _such_ a volume, the step is both natural and easy to ROMANCES. Sir TRISTAN shall lead the way. Here are _three_ MSS. of the feats of that Knight of the Round Table. The first is of the XIIIth century; written in three columns, on a small thick gothic letter. It has some small, and perfect illuminations. This MS. became the property of Prince Eugene. It was taken to Paris, but restored: and has yet the French imperial eagle stamped in red ink. It is indeed a "gloriously ponderous folio." A second MS. of the SAME ROMANCE is written in two columns, in a full short gothic letter. It is very large, and the vellum is very perfect. The illuminations, which are larger than those in the preceding MS. are evidently of the early part of the xvth century. This book also belonged to Prince Eugene. It is doubtless a precious volume. A third MS. executed in pale ink, in a kind of secretary gothic letter, is probably of the latter end of the XIVth century. The illuminations are only slightly tinted. BRUT D'ANGLETTERRE. I should apprehend this MS. to be of the early part of the XIVth century. It is executed in a secretary gothic letter, in double columns, and the ink is much faded in colour. It has but one illumination, which is at the beginning, and much faded. This was also Prince Eugene's copy; and was taken to Paris, but restored. The last, but perhaps the most valuable in general estimation, of the MSS. examined by me, was the AUTOGRAPH of the GERUSALEMME LIBERATA, or, as formerly called, CONQUISTATA,[116] of Tasso: upon which no accomplished Italian can look but with feelings almost approaching to rapture. The MS. is imperfect; beginning with the xxxth canto of the second book, and ending with the LXth canto of the twenty-third book. The preceding will probably give you some little satisfaction respecting the MSS. in this very precious collection. I proceed therefore immediately to an account of the PRINTED BOOKS; premising that, after the accounts of nearly similar volumes, described as being in the libraries previously visited, you must not expect me to expatiate quite so copiously as upon former occasions. I have divided the whole into four classes; namely, 1. THEOLOGY; 2. CLASSICS; 3. MISCELLANEOUS, LATIN; (including Lexicography) 4. ITALIAN; and 5. FRENCH and GERMAN, exclusively of Theology. I have also taken the pains of arranging each class in alphabetical order; so that you will consider what follows to be a very sober, and a sort of bibliopolistic, catalogue. THEOLOGY. AUGUSTINUS (Sts.) DE CIV. DEI. _Printed in the Soubiaco Monastery, 1467_. Folio. A fine large copy; but not equal to that in the Royal Library at Paris or in Lord Spencer's collection. I should think, however, that this may rank as the third copy for size and condition. ---- _Printed by Jenson._ 1475. Folio. A very beautiful book, printed upon white and delicate VELLUM. Many of the leaves have, however, a bad colour. I suspect this copy has been a good deal cropt in the binding. AUGUSTINI S. EPISTOLÆ. LIBRI XIII. CONFESSIONUM. 1475. Quarto. This volume is printed in long lines, in a very slender roman type, which I do not just now happen to remember to have seen before; and which _almost_ resembles the delicacy of the types of the first _Horace_, and the _Florus_ and _Lucan_--so often noticed: except that the letters are a little too round in form. The present is a clean, sound copy; unbound. BIBLIA LATINA. This is the _Mazarine_ Edition; supposed to be the first Bible ever printed. The present is far from being a fine copy; but valuable, from possessing the four leaves of a Rubric which I was taught to believe were peculiar to the copy at Munich.[117] BIBLIA LATINA; _Printed by Pfister_, folio, 3 volumes. I was told that the copy here was upon vellum; but inaccurately. The present was supplied by the late Mr. Edwards; but is not free from stain and writing. Yet, although nothing comparable with the copy in the Royal Library at Paris, or with that in St. James's Place, it is nevertheless a very desirable acquisition--and is quite perfect. ---- _Printed by Fust and Schoeffher._ 1462. Folio. 2 vols. UPON VELLUM. This was Colbert's copy, and is large, sound, and desirable. ---- _Printed by Mentelin._ Without Date. Perhaps the rarest of all Latin Bibles; of which, however, there is a copy in the royal library at Paris, and in the public libraries of Strasbourg and Munich. I should conjecture its date to be somewhere about 1466.[118] The present is a clean and sound, but much cropt copy. ---- _Printed by Sweynhyem and Pannartz._ Folio. 1471-2, 2 vols. A remarkably fine large copy, almost uncut: in modern russia binding. This must form a portion of the impression by the same printers, with the Commentary of De Lyra, in five folio volumes. BIBLIA LATINA; _Printed by Hailbrun_. 1476. Folio. Here are _two_ copies; of which one is UPON VELLUM, and the other upon paper: both beautiful--but the vellum copy is, I think, in every respect, as lovely a book as Lord Spencer's similar copy. It measures eleven inches one sixteenth by seven one eighth. It has, however, been bound in wretched taste, some fifty years ago, and is a good deal cropt in the binding. The paper copy, in 2 vols. is considerably larger. BIBLIA LATINA. _Printed by Jenson_. 1479. Folio. Here, again, are two copies; one upon paper, the other UPON VELLUM. Of these, the vellum copy is much damaged in the principal illumination, and is also cropt in the binding. The paper copy can hardly be surpassed, if equalled. BIBLIA ITALICA. MALHERBI. _Printed in the month of October,_ 1471. Folio. 2 vols. Perhaps one of the finest and largest copies in existence; measuring, sixteen inches five eighths by eleven. It is bound (if I remember rightly) in blue morocco. BIBLIA HEBRAICA. _Printed at Soncino_. 1488. Folio. FIRST EDITION OF THE HEBREW BIBLE. Of all earliest impressions of the sacred text, this is doubtless the MOST RARE. I am not sure that there are _two_ copies of it in England or in France. In our own country, the Bodleian library alone possesses it. This is a beautiful, clean copy, but cropt a little too much in the binding. It has had a journey to _Paris_, and gained a coat of blue morocco by the trip. The binder was Bozerain. This was the first time that I had seen a copy of the FIRST HEBREW BIBLE. There was only one _other_ feeling to be gratified:--that _such_ a copy were safely lodged in St. James's Place. BIBLIA POLONICA. 1563. Folio. The Abbé Strattman, at Mölk, had apprised me of the beauty and value of this copy--of one of the scarcest impressions of the sacred text. This copy was, in fact, a PRESENTATION COPY to the Emperor Maximilian II., from Prince Radzivil the Editor and Patron of the work. It is rather beautifully white, for the book--which is usually of a very sombre complexion. The leaves are rather tender. It is bound in red velvet; but it is a pity they do not keep it in a case--as the back is wearing away fast. Notwithstanding the Abbé Strattman concluded his account of this book with the exclamation of--"Il n'y en a pas comme celui-là," I must be allowed to say, that Lord Spencer may yet indulge in a strain of triumph... on the possession of the copy, of this same work, which I secured for him at Augsbourg;[119] and which is, to the full, as large, as sound, and in every respect as genuine a book. JERONIMI STI. EPISTOLÆ. _Printed by Sweynheym and Pannartz._ 1468. Folio. 2 vols. A magnificent and unique copy, UPON VELLUM. "There are ONLY SIX VELLUM Sweynheyms and Pannartz in the world,"--said the Abbé Strattman to me, in the library of the Monastery of Mölk. "Which be they?" replied I. "They are these"--answered he ... "the _Cæsar_, _Aulus Gellius_, and _Apuleius_--ach the edit. prin.--of the date of 1469: and the _Epistles of St Jerom_, of 1468--all which four books you will see at Vienna:--the _Livy_, which Mr. Edwards bought; and the _Pliny_ of 1470, which is in the library of Lord Spencer. These are the only known vellum Sweynheyms and Pannartz." I looked at the volumes under consideration, therefore, with the greater attention. They are doubtless noble productions; and this copy is, upon the whole, fine and genuine. It is not, however, so richly ornamented, nor is the vellum quite so white, as Lord Spencer's Pliny above mentioned. Yet it is bound in quiet old brown calf, having formerly belonged to Cardinal Bessarion, whose hand writing is on the fly leaf. It measures fifteen inches three eighths, by eleven one sixteenth. LACTANTII OPERA. _Printed in the Soubiaco Monastery._ 1465. Folio. Here are two copies of this earliest production of the Italian press. That which is in blue morocco binding, is infinitely the worse of the two. The other, in the original binding of wood, is, with the exception of Mr. Grenville's copy, the finest which I have ever seen. This however is slightly stained, by water, at top. ---- _Printed at Rostock._ 1476. Folio. A copy UPON VELLUM--which I had never seen before. The vellum is thin and beautiful, but this is not a _comfortable_ book in respect to binding. A few leaves at the beginning are stained. Upon the whole, however, it is a singularly rare and most desirable volume.[120] MISSALE MOZARABICUM. 1500. Folio. First Edition. A book of exceedingly great scarcity, and of which I have before endeavoured to give a pretty full and correct history.[121] The present is a beautiful clean copy, bound in blue morocco, apparently by De Seuil--from the red morocco lining within: but this copy is not so large as the one in St. James's Place. The MOZARABIC BREVIARY, its companion, which is bound in red morocco, has been cruelly cropt. MISSALE HERBIPOLENSE. Folio: with the date of 1479 in the prefatory admonition. This precious book is UPON VELLUM; and a more beautiful and desirable volume can hardly be found. There is a copper-plate of coat-armour, in outline, beneath the prefatory admonition; and M. Bartsch, who was by the side of me when I was examining the book, referred me to his _Peintre Graveur_, vol. x. p. 57. where this early copper-plate is noticed. PSALTERIUM. Latinè. _Printed by Fust and Schoeffher._ 1457. Folio. EDITIO PRINCEPS. If there be ONE book, more than another, which should induce an ardent bibliographer to make a pilgrimage to Vienna, THIS is assuredly the volume in question! And yet, although I could not refrain from doing, what a score of admiring votaries had probably done before me--namely, bestowing a sort of _oscular_ benediction upon the first leaf of the text--yet, I say, it may be questionable whether this copy be as large and fair as that in our Royal Collection!? Doubtless, however, this is a very fine and almost invaluable copy of the FIRST BOOK printed with metal types, with a date subjoined. You will give me credit for having asked for a sight of it, the _very first thing_ on my entrance into the room where it is kept. It is, however, preserved in rather a loose and shabby binding, and should certainly be protected by every effort of the bibliopegistic art. The truth is, as M. Kopitar told me, that every body--old and young, ignorant and learned--asks for a sight of this marvellous volume; and it is, in consequence, rarely kept in a state of quiescence one week throughout the year: excepting during the holidays. PSALTERIUM. Latinè. _Without Printer's name or Date._ _Folio._ This is doubtless a magnificent book, printed in the gothic letter, in red and black, with musical lines not filled up by notes. The text has services for certain Saints days. What rendered this volume particularly interesting to my eyes, was, that on the reverse of the first leaf, beneath two lines of printed text, (in the smaller of two sizes of gothic letter) and two lines of scored music in red, I observed an impression of the very same copper-plate of coat-armour, which I had noticed in the Wurtzburg Missal of 1482, at Oxford, described in the _Bibliographical Decameron_, vol. i. p. 30. Although M. Bartsch had noticed this copper-plate, in its outline character, in the above previously described Wurtzburg Missal, he seemed to be ignorant of its existence in this Psalter. The whole of this book is as fresh as if it had just come from the press. TESTAMENTUM NOV. Bohemicè. _Without Date._ Folio. This is probably one of the very rarest impressions of the sacred text, in the XVth century, which is known to exist. It is printed in the gothic type, in double columns, and a full page contains thirty-six lines. There are running titles. The text, at first glance, has much of the appearance of Bämler's printing at Augsbourg; but it is smaller, and more angular. Why should not the book have been printed in Bohemia? This is a very clean, desirable copy, in red morocco binding. TURRECREMATA I. DE. In LIBRUM PSALMORUM. _Printed at Crause in Suabia._ Folio. This, and the copy described as being in the Public Library at Munich, are supposed to be the only known copies of this impression. Below the colophon, in pencil, there is a date of 1475: but quære upon what authority? This copy is in most miserable condition; especially at the end. ANCIENT CLASSICAL AUTHORS. ÆSOPUS. Gr. Quarto. EDITIO PRINCEPS. A sound and perfect copy: ruled. ---- _Ital._ 1491. Quarto. In Italian poetry, by Manfred de Monteferrato. ---- 1492. Quarto. In Italian prose, by the same. Of these two versions, the Italian appears to be the same as that of the Verona impression of 1479: the cuts are precisely similar. The present is a very sound copy, but evidently cropt. APULEIUS. 1469. _Printed by Sweynheym and Pannartz._ Folio. Editio Princeps. This copy is UPON VELLUM. It is tall and large, but not so fine as is the following article: ---- _Printed by Jenson._ 1472. Folio. A fine sound copy; in red morocco binding. Formerly belonging to Prince Eugene. AULUS GELLIUS. 1469. Folio. Edit. Prin. This is without doubt one of the very finest VELLUM copies of an old and valuable Classic in existence. There are sometimes (as is always the case in the books from the earlier Roman press) brown and yellow pages; but, upon the whole, this is a wonderful and inestimable book. It is certainly unique, as being printed upon vellum. Note well: the _Jerom, Apuleius_, and _Aulus Gellius_--with one or two others, presently to be described--were Cardinal Bessarion's OWN COPIES; and were taken from the library of St. Mark at Venice, by the Austrians, in their memorable campaign in Italy. I own that there are hardly any volumes in the Imperial Library at Vienna which interested me so much as these VELLUM SWEYNHEYMS and PANNARTZ! AUSONIUS. 1472. Folio. Editio Princeps. The extreme rarity of this book is well known. The present copy is severely cropt at top and bottom, but has a good side marginal breadth. It has also been washed; but you are only conscious of it by the scent of soap. CÆSAR. 1469. _Printed by S. and Pannartz._ Folio. Edit. Princeps. A beautiful and unique copy--UPON VELLUM. This was formerly Prince Eugene's copy; and I suspect it to be the same which is described in the _Bibl. Hulziana_, vol. i. no. 3072--as it should seem to be quite settled that the printers, Sweynheym and Pannartz, printed only _one_ copy of their respective first editions upon vellum. It is however but too manifest that this precious volume has been cropt in binding--which is in red morocco. ---- 1472. _Printed by the same._ Folio. This also was Prince Eugene's copy; and is much larger and finer than the preceding--on the score of condition. CICERO DE OFFICIIS. 1465, Quarto. Here are _two_ copies: each UPON VELLUM. One, in blue morocco, is short and small; but in very pretty condition. The other is stained and written upon. It should be cast out. ---- 1466. Quarto. UPON VELLUM. A beautiful copy, which measures very nearly ten inches in height.[122] In all these copies, the title of the "Paradoxes" is printed. CICERONIS. EPIST. FAM. 1467. Folio. Editio Princeps. Cardinal Bessarion's own copy, and unquestionably THE FINEST THAT EXISTS. The leaves are white and thick, and crackle aloud as you turn them over. It is upon paper, which makes me think that there never was a copy upon vellum; for the Cardinal, who was a great patron of Sweynheym and Pannartz, the printers, would doubtless have possessed it in that condition. At the beginning, however, it is slightly stained, and at the end slightly wormed. Yet is this copy, in its primitive binding, finer than any which can well be imagined. The curious are aware that this is supposed to have been the _first book printed at Rome_; and that the blanks, left for the introduction of Greek characters, prove that the printers were not in possession of the latter when this book was published. The Cardinal has written two lines, partly in Greek and partly in Latin, on the fly leaf. This copy measures eleven inches three eighths by seven inches seven eighths. CICERO. RHETORICA VETUS. Printed by Jenson. When I had anticipated the beauty of a VELLUM COPY of this book (in the _Bibl. Spencer._ vol. i. p. 349--here close at hand) I had not of course formed the idea of seeing such a one HERE. This vellum copy is doubtless a lovely book; but the vellum is discoloured in many places, and I suspect the copy has been cut down a little. ---- ORATIONES. _Printed by S. and Pannartz._ 1471. Folio. A beautifully white and genuine copy; but the first few leaves are rather soiled, and it is slightly wormed towards the end. A _fairer_ Sweynheym and Pannartz is rarely seen. ---- OPERA OMNIA. 1498. Folio. 4 vols. A truly beautiful copy, bound in red morocco; but it is not free from occasional ms. annotations, in red ink, in the margins. It measures sixteen inches and three quarters in height, by ten inches and three quarters in width. A fine and perfect copy of this _First Edition of the Entire Works_ of Cicero, is obtained with great difficulty. A nobler monument of typographical splendour the early annals of the press cannot boast of. HOMERI OPERA OMNIA. Gr. 1488. Folio. Editio Princeps. A sound, clean copy, formerly Prince Eugene's; but not comparable with many copies which I have seen. BATRACHOMYOMACHIA. Gr. Without date or place. Quarto. Edit. Prin: executed in red and black lines, alternately. This is a sound, clean, and beautiful copy; perhaps a little cropt. In modern russia binding. JUVENALIS. Folio. _Printed by Ulric Han_, in his larger type. A cruelly cropt copy, with a suspiciously ornamented title page. This once belonged to Count Delci. JUVENALIS. _Printed by I. de Fivizano _. _Without date_. Folio. This is a very rare edition, and has been but recently acquired. It contains twenty-seven lines in a full page. There are neither numerals, signatures, nor catchwords. On the sixty-ninth and last leaf, is the colophon. A sound and desirable copy; though not free from soil. LUCIANI OPUSCULA QUÆDAM. Lat. _Printed by S. Bevilaquensis._ 1494. Quarto. This is really one of the most covetable little volumes in the world. It is a copy printed UPON VELLUM; with most beautiful illuminations, in the purest Italian taste. Look--if ever you visit the Imperial Library--at the last illumination, at the bottom of _o v_, recto. It is indescribably elegant. But the binder should have been hung in chains. He has cut the book to the very quick--so as almost to have entirely sliced away several of the border decorations. OVIDII FASTI. _Printed by Azoguidi._ 1471. Folio. This is the whole of what they possess of this wonderfully rare EDIT. PRIN. of Ovid, printed at Bologna by the above printer:--and of this small portion the first leaf is wanting. ----, OPERA OMNIA, _Printed by Sweynheym and Pannartz_. 1471. Folio. 2 vols. This is a clean, large copy; supplied from two old libraries. The volumes are equally large, but the first is in the finer condition. ----, EPISTOLÆ et FASTI. I know nothing of the printer of this edition, nor can I safely guess where it was printed. The Epistles begin on the recto of _aa ii_ to _gg v_; the Fasti on A i to VV ix, including some few other opuscula; of which my memorandum is misplaced. At the end, we read the word FINIS. PLINIUS SENIOR. _Printed by I. de Spira_. 1469. Folio. Editio Princeps. We have here the identical copy--printed UPON VELLUM--of which I remember to have heard it said, that the Abbé Strattman, when he was at the head of this library, declared, that whenever the French should approach Vienna, he would march off with _this_ book under _one_ arm, and with the FIRST Psalter under the other! This was heroically said; but whether such declaration was ever _acted_ upon, is a point upon which the bibliographical annals of that period are profoundly silent. To revert to this membranaceous treasure. It is in one volume, beautifully white and clean; but ("horresco referens;") it has been cruelly deprived of its legitimate dimensions. In other words, it is a palpably cropt copy. The very first glance of the illumination at the first page confirms this. In other respects, also, it can bear no comparison with the VELLUM copy in the Royal Library at Paris.[123] Yet is it a book ... for which I know more than _one_ Roxburgher who would promptly put pen to paper and draw a check for 300 guineas--to become its possessor. PLINIUS SENIOR. _Printed by Jenson._ 1472. Folio. Another early Pliny--UPON VELLUM: very fine, undoubtedly; but somewhat cropt, as the encroachment upon the arms, at the bottom of the first illuminated page, evidently proves. The initial letters are coloured in that sober style of decoration, which we frequently observe in the illuminated volumes of Sweynheym and Pannartz; but they generally appear to have received some injury. Upon the whole, I doubt if this copy be so fine as the similar copies, upon vellum, in the libraries of the Duke of Devonshire and the late Sir M. M. Sykes. This book is bound in the highly ornamented style of French binding of the XVIIth century; and it measures almost sixteen inches one eighth, by ten inches five eighths. PLINIUS. Italicè. _Printed by Jenson._ 1476. Folio. A fine, large, pure, crackling copy; in yellow morocco binding. It was Prince Eugene's copy; but is yet inferior, in magnitude, to the copy at Paris.[124] SILIUS ITALICUS. _Printed by Laver._ 1471. Folio. The largest, soundest, and cleanest copy of this very rare impression, which I remember to have seen:--with the exception, perhaps, of that in the Bodleian Library. SUETONIUS. _Printed by S. and Pannartz._ 1470. Folio. Second Edition. A fine, sound copy, yet somewhat cropt. The first page of the text has the usual border printed ornament of the time of printing the book. This was Prince Eugene's copy. SUIDAS, Gr. 1499. Folio. 2 vols. This editio princeps of Suidas is always, when in tolerable condition, a wonderfully striking book: a masterpiece of solid, laborious, and beautiful Greek printing. But the copy under consideration--which is in its pristine boards, covered with black leather--was LAMBECIUS'S OWN COPY, and has his autograph. It is, moreover, one of the largest, fairest, and most genuine copies ever opened. TACITUS. _Printed by I. de Spira._ Folio. Edit. Prin. This is the whitest and soundest copy, of this not very uncommon book, which I have seen. It has however lost something of its proper dimensions by the cropping of the binder. TERENTIUS. _Printed by Mentelin, without date._ Folio. Editio Princeps. Of exceedingly great rarity. The present copy, which is in boards--but which richly deserves a russia or morocco binding--is a very good, sound, and desirable copy. VALERIUS MAXIMUS. _Printed by Schoeffher._ 1472. Fol. UPON VELLUM; a charming, sound copy. This book is not very uncommon upon vellum. VIRGILIUS. _Printed by Mentelin._ _Without date._ Folio. Perhaps the rarest of all the early Mentelin classics; and probably the second edition of the author. The present is a beautiful, white, sound copy, and yet probably somewhat cropt. It is in red morocco binding. Next to the very extraordinary copy of this edition, in the possession of Mr. George Hibbert, I should say that _this_ was the finest I had ever seen. ---- _Printed by V. de Spira._ 1470. Folio. It is difficult to find a thoroughly beautiful copy of this very rare book. The present is tolerably fair and rather large, but I suspect washed. The beginning is brown, and the end very brown. ---- _Printed by the Same._ 1471. Folio. This copy is perhaps the most beautiful in the world of the edition in question. It has the old ms. signatures in the corner, which proves how important the preservation of these _witnesses_ is to the confirmation of the size and genuineness of a copy of an old book. No wonder the French got possession of this matchless volume on their memorable visit to Vienna in 1805 or 1809. It was bound in France, in red morocco, and is honestly bound. This is, in short, a perfect book. ---- _Printed by Jenson._ 1475. Folio. A very fine, crackling copy, in the old wooden binding; but the beginning and end are somewhat stained. MISCELLANEOUS LATIN.[125] ÆNEAS SYLVIUS DE DUOBUS AMANTIBUS. Without date. Quarto. This is the only copy which I have seen, of probably what may be considered the FIRST EDITION of this interesting work. It has twenty-three lines in a full page, and is printed in the large and early roman type of _Gering_, _Crantz_, and _Friburger_. Cæsar and Stoll doubtless reprinted this edition. In the whole, there are forty-four leaves. The present is a fair sound copy. ALEXANDER GALLUS: vulgò DE VILLA DEI: DOCTRINALE. _Without date._ Folio. There are few books which I had so much wished to see as the present. The bibliographers of the old school had a great notion of the typographical antiquity of this _work_ if not of _this edition_ of it: but I have very little hesitation, in the first place, of attributing it to the press of _Vindelin de Spira_--and, in the second place, of assigning no higher antiquity to it than that of the year 1471. It is however a book of some intrinsic curiosity, and of unquestionably great rarity. I saw it here for the first time. The present copy is a decidedly much-cropt folio; but in most excellent condition. AQUINAS THOMAS. SECUNDA SECONDÆ. _Printed by Schoeffher._ 1467. Folio. A fine, large copy, printed UPON VELLUM: the vellum is rather too yellow; but this is a magnificent book, and exceedingly rare in such a state. It is bound in red morocco. ---- OPUS QUARTISCRIPTUM. _Printed by Schoeffher._ 1469. Folio. We have here another magnificent specimen of the early Mentz press, struck off UPON VELLUM, and executed in the smallest gothic type of the printer. This is a gloriously genuine copy; having the old pieces of vellum pasted to the edges of the leaves, by way of facilitating the references to the body of the text. There is a duplicate copy of this edition, upon paper, wanting some of the earlier leaves, and which had formerly belonged to Prince Eugene. It is, in other respects, fair and desirable. ---- IN EVANG. MATTH. ET MARC. _Printed by Sweynheym and Pannartz._ 1470. Folio. A fine, large, white, and crackling copy; but somewhat cut; and not quite free from the usual foxy tint of the books executed by these earliest Roman printers. BARTHOLUS. LECTURA. _Printed by V. de Spira._.1471, Folio. One of the finest specimens imaginable of the press of V. de Spira. It is a thick folio, executed in double columns. The first page of this copy is elegantly illuminated with portraits, &c.; but the arms at bottom prove that some portion of the margin has been cut away--even of this magnificent copy. At the end--just before the date, and the four colophonic verses of the printer--we read: "_Finis primi ptis lecture dni Bartoli super ffto nouo_." BELLOVACENSIS (P.) SPECULUM HISTORIALE, Folio. The four volumes in ONE!--of eight inches in thickness, including the binding. The present copy of this extraordinary performance of Peter de Beauvais is as pure and white as possible. The type is a doubtful gothic letter: doubtful, as to the assigning to it its proper printer. CATHOLICON. 1460. Folio. 2 vols. A tolerably fair good copy; in red morocco binding. ---- 1469. _Printed by Gunther Zeiner._ 2 vols. Folio. This copy is UPON VELLUM, of a fair and sound quality. I suspect that it has been somewhat diminished in size, and may not be larger than the similar copy at Göttwic Monastery. In calf binding. DURANDUS. RAT. DIV. OFFIC. _Printed by Fust and Schoeffher._ 1459. Folio. This book, which is always UPON VELLUM, was the Duke de La Valliere's copy. It is the thinnest I ever saw, but it is quite perfect. The condition is throughout sound, and the margins appear to retain all their pristine amplitude. It is bound in morocco. FICHETI RHETORICA. _Printed by Gering_, &c. Quarto. This copy is UPON VELLUM, not indifferently illuminated: but it has been cruelly cropt. LUDOLPHUS. DE TERRA SANCTA and ITINERE IHEROSO-LOMITANO. _Without date or place._ Folio. I never saw this book, nor this work, before. The text describes a journey to Jerusalem, undertaken by Ludolphus, between the years 1336 and 1350. This preface is very interesting; but I have neither time nor space for extracts. At the end: "_Finit feliciter libellus de itinere ad terram sanctam, &_." This impression is printed in long lines, and contains thirty-six leaves.[126] MAMMOTRECTUS. _Printed by Schoeffher._ 1470. Folio. Here are two copies; of which one is UPON VELLUM--but the paper copy is not only a larger, but in every respect a fairer and more desirable, book. The vellum copy has quite a foggy aspect. NONIUS MARCELLUS. _Without name of printer or place._ 1471. Folio. This is the first edition of the work with a date, but the printer is unknown. It is executed in a superior style of typographical elegance; and the present is as fine and white a copy of it as can possibly be possessed. I think it even larger than the Göttwic copy. PETRARCHA. HISTORIA GRISELDIS. _Printed by G. Zeiner._ 1473. Folio. Whether _this_ edition of the HISTORY OF PATIENT GRISEL, or that printed by Zel, without date, be the earliest, I cannot pretend to say. This edition is printed in the roman type, and perhaps is among the very earliest specimens of the printer so executed. It is however a thin, round, and scraggy type. The book is doubtless of extreme rarity. This copy was formerly Prince Eugene's, and is bound in red morocco. PHALARIDIS EPISTOLÆ. Lat. 1471. Quarto. This is the first time (if I remember rightly) that the present edition has come under my notice. It is doubtless of excessive rarity. The type is a remarkably delicate, round, widely spread and roman letter. At the end is the colophon, in capital letters. PHALARIDIS EPISTOLÆ. _Printed by Ulric Han._ _Without date._ Folio. This is among the rarest editions of the Latin version of the Epistles of Phalaris. It is executed in the second, or ordinary roman type of Ulric Han. In the whole there are thirty leaves; and I know not why this impression may not be considered as the first, or at least the second, of the version in question. POGGII FACETIÆ. _Without name of Printer, Place, or Date._ Folio. It is for the first time that I examine the present edition, which I should not hesitate to pronounce the FIRST of the work in question. The types are those which were used in the _Eusebian Monastery_ at Rome. A full page has twenty-three lines. This is a sound, clean copy; in calf binding. PRISCIANUS. _Printed by V. de Spira._ 1470. Folio. Editio princeps. A beautiful, large, white, and crackling copy, in the original wooden binding. Is one word further necessary to say that a finer copy, upon paper, cannot exist? PRISCIANUS. _Printed by Ulric Han._ Folio. With the metrical version of _Dionysius de Situ Orbis_ at the end. This is a very rare book. The fount of Greek letters clearly denotes it to come from a press at Rome, and that press was assuredly Ulric Han's. This appears to have been Gaignat's copy, and is sound and desirable, but not so fine as the copy of this edition in the library of Göttwic Monastery. PTOLEMÆUS. Lat. _Printed at Bologna._ 1462. Folio. There can be no doubt of this date being falsely put for 1472 or even 1482. But this is a rare book to possess, with all the copper plates, which this copy has--and it is moreover a fine copy. PTOLEMÆUS. _Printed by Buckinck._ 1478. Folio. Another fine and perfect copy of a volume of considerable rarity, and interest to the curious in the history of early engraving. TURRECREMATA I. de. MEDITATIONES. _Printed by Ulric Han._ 1467. Folio. This wonderfully rare volume is justly shewn among the "great guns" of the Imperial Library. It was deposited here by the late Mr. Edwards; and is considered by some to be the _first book printed at Rome_, and is filled with strange wood-cuts.[127] The text is uniformly in the large gothic character of Ulric Han. The French were too sensible of the rarity and value of this precious book, to suffer it to remain upon the shelves of the Imperial library after their first triumphant visit to Vienna; and accordingly it was carried off, among other book trophies, to Paris--from whence it seems, naturally as it were, to have taken up its present position. This is a very fine copy; bound in blue morocco, with the cuts uncoloured. It measures thirteen inches and a quarter, by very nearly nine and a quarter: being, what may be fairly called, almost its pristine dimensions. Whenever you visit this library, ask to see, among the very first books deserving of minute inspection, this copy of the Meditations of John de Turrecremata: but, remember--_a yet finer_ copy is within three stones-throw of Buckingham Palace! VALTURIUS DE RE MILITARI. 1472. Folio. Edit. Prin. A fine, clean copy; in red morocco binding. Formerly, in the collection of Prince Eugene. Such a hero, however, should have possessed it UPON VELLUM!--although, of the two copies of this kind which I have seen, neither gave me the notion of a very fine book. BOOKS IN THE ITALIAN LANGUAGE. _Bella (La) Mono._ _Without name of Printer._ 1474. Quarto. This is the first time of my inspecting the present volume; of which the printer is not known--but, in all probability, the book was printed _at Venice_. It is executed in a round, tall, roman letter. This is a cropt and soiled, but upon the whole, a desirable copy: it is bound in red morocco, and was formerly Prince Eugene's. _Berlinghieri._ _Geografia._ _Without Place or Date._ Folio. Prima Edizione. It does the heart good to gaze upon such a copy of so estimable and magnificent a production as the present. This book belonged to Prince Eugene, and is bound in red morocco. It is quite perfect--with all the copper-plate maps. _Boccaccio._ _Il Decamerone._ _Printed by Zarotus._ 1476. Folio. This is an exceedingly rare edition of the Decameron. It is executed in the small and elegantly formed gothic type of the printer, with which the Latin Æsop, of the same date, in 4to, was printed. Notwithstanding this copy is of a very brown hue, and most cruelly cut down--as the illuminated first page but too decisively proves--it is yet a sound and desirable book. This is the only early edition, as far as I had an opportutunity of ascertaining, which they appear to possess of the Decameron of Boccaccio. Of the _Philocolo_, there is a folio edition of 1488; and of the _Nimphale_ there is a sound and clean copy of a dateless edition, in 4to., without name of place or printer, which ends thus--and which possibly may be among the very earliest impressions of that work: Finito il nimphale di fiesole che tracto damore. _Caterina da Bologna._ _Without Date or name of Printer._ Quarto. This is a very small quarto volume of great rarity; concluding with some poetry, and some particulars of the Life of the female Saint and author. It appears to have wholly escaped Brunet. Incomezao alcune cose d'la uita d'la sopra nominata beata Caterina. There are neither manuals, signatures, nor catchwords. This volume looks like a production of the _Bologna_ or _Mantua_ press. I never saw another copy of this curious little work. _Caterina da Siena Legendi di._ _Printed in the Monastery of St. James, at Florence._ 1477. Quarto. This is the edition which Brunet very properly pronounces to be "excessively rare." It is printed in double columns, in a small, close, and scratchy gothic type. On the 158th and last leaf, is the colophon. _Dante._ _Printed by Neumister._ 1472. Folio. PRIMA EDIZIONE. This copy is ruled, but short, and in a somewhat tender condition. Although not a first rate copy, it is nevertheless desirable; yet is this book but a secondary typographical performance. The paper is always coarse in texture, and sombre in tint. _Dante_. 1481. Folio. With the commentary of Landino. This is doubtless a precious copy, inasmuch as it contains TWENTY COPPER-PLATE IMPRESSIONS, and is withal in fair and sound condition. The fore-edge margin has been however somewhat deprived of its original dimensions. _Decor Puellarum. Printed by Jenson_. Quarto. With the false date of 1461 for 1471. This volume, which once gave rise to such elaborate bibliographical disquisition, now ceases to have any extraordinary claims upon the attention of the collector. It is nevertheless a _sine qua non_ in a library with any pretension to early typographical curiosities. The present copy is clean and tolerably large: bound by De Rome. _Fazio. Dita Mundi. Printed by L. Basiliensis_. 1474. Folio. Prima Edizione. Of unquestionably great rarity; and unknown to the earlier bibliographers. It is printed in double columns, with signatures, to _o_ in eighths: _o_ has only four leaves. This copy has the signatures considerably below the text, and they seem to have been a clumsy and _posterior_ piece of workmanship. It has been recently bound in russia. _Frezzi. Il Quadriregio_. 1481. Folio. Prima Edizione. I have before sufficiently expatiated upon the rarity of this impression. The present is a large copy, but too much beaten in the binding. The first leaf is much stained. A few of the others are also not free from the same defect. _Fulgosii Bapt. Anteros.: sive de Amore. Printed by L. Pachel. Milan_. 1496. On the reverse of the title, is a very singular wood-cut--where Death is sitting upon a coffin, and a blinded Cupid stands leaning against a tree before him: with a variety of other allegorical figures. The present is a beautiful copy, in red morocco binding. _Gloria Mulierum. Printed by Jenson_. Quarto. This is another of the early Jenson pieces which are coveted by the curious and of which a sufficiently particular account has been already given to the public[128] This copy is taller than that of the _Decor Puellarum_ (before described) but it is in too tender a condition. _Legende Di Sancti per Nicolao di Manerbi, Printed by Jenson. Without date_. Folio. It is just possible that you may not have forgotten a brief mention of a copy of this very rare book in the Mazarine Library at Paris,[129] That copy, although beautiful, was upon paper: the present is UPON VELLUM--illuminated, very delicately in the margins, with figures of divers Saints. I take the work to be an Italian version of the well known LEGENDA SANCTORUM. The book is doubtless among the most beautiful from the press of JENSON, who is noticed in the prefatory advertisement of Manerbi. _Luctus Christianorum. Printed by Jenson_. Quarto. Another of the early pieces of Jenson's press; and probably of the date of 1471. The present is a fair, nice copy; but has something of a foggy and suspicious aspect about it. I suspect it to have been washed. _Monte Sancto di Dio_. 1477. Folio. The chief value of this book consists in its having good impressions of the THREE COPPER PLATES. Of these, only _one_ is in the present copy, which represents the Devil eating his victims in the lake of Avernus, as given in the La Valliere copy. Yet the absence of the two remaining plates, as it happens, constitutes the chief attraction of this copy; for they are here supplied by two FAC-SIMILES, presented to the Library by Leopold Duke of Tuscany, of the most wonderfully perfect execution I ever saw. _Petrarcha. Sonetti e Trionfi. Printed by V. de Spira._ 1470. Folio. Prima Edizione. The last leaf of the table is unluckily manuscript; and the last leaf but one of the text is smaller than the rest--which appear to have been obtained, from another copy. In other respects, this is a large, sound, and desirable copy. It belonged to Prince Eugene. _Petrarcha. Sonetti e Trionfi. Printed by Zarotus._ 1473. Folio. This edition (if the present copy of it be perfect) has no prefix of table or biographical memorandum of Petrarch. A full page contains forty, and sometimes forty-two lines. On the recto of the last leaf is the colophon. This is a sound and clean, but apparently cropt copy; in old blue morocco binding. _Petrarcha Sonetti e Trionfi. Printed by Jenson._ 1473. Folio. A sound and desirable copy, in red morocco binding; formerly belonging to Prince Eugene. ----. _Comment. Borstii in Trionfi. Printed at Bologna._ 1475. Folio. Here are two copies of this beautifully printed, and by no means common, book. One of them belonged to Prince Eugene; and a glance upon the top corner ms. pagination evidently proves it to have been cropt. It is in red morocco binding. The other copy, bound in blue morocco, has the table inlaid; and is desirable--although inferior to the preceding. _Poggio. Historia Fiorentina. Printed by I. de Rossi._ (Jacobus Rubeus) 1476. Folio. First edition of the Italian version. This copy is really a great curiosity., The first seven books are printed _upon paper_ of a fine tone and texture, and the leaves are absolutely _uncut_: a few leaves at the beginning are soiled--especially the first; but the remainder are in delightful preservation, and shew what an old book _ought_ to be. The eighth book is entirely printed UPON VELLUM; and some of these vellum leaves are perfectly enchanting. They are of the same size with the paper, and _also uncut._ This volume has never been bound. I entreated M. Bartsch to have it handsomely bound, but not to touch the fore edges. He consented readily. _Regula Confitendi Peccata Sua._ 1473. Quarto. Of this book I never saw another copy. The author is PICENUS, and the work is written throughout in the Italian language. There are but seven leaves--executed in a letter which resembles the typographical productions of Bologna and Mantua. * * * * * GERMAN, FRENCH, AND SPANISH BOOKS. _Bone Vie (Livre De);_ qui est appelee Madenie. _Printed by A. Neyret at Chambery._ 1485. Folio. As far as signature 1 vj, the subject is prose: afterwards commences the poetry--"appelle la somme de la vision Iehan du pin." The colophon is on the reverse of the last leaf but one. A wood-cut is on the last leaf. This small folio volume is printed in a tall, close, and inelegant gothic type; reminding me much of the LIVRE DE CHASSE printed at the same place, in 1486, and now in Lord Spencer's library.[130] _Chevalier (Le) Delibre._ 1488. Quarto. This book is filled with some very neat wood cuts, and is printed in the gothic letter. The subject matter is poetical. No name appears, but I suspect this edition to have been, printed in the office of Verard. _Cité des Dames (Le Tresor de la)_--"sclon dame christine." Without Date. Folio. A fine, tall, clean copy; UPON VELLUM. The printer seems in all probability to have been _Verard_. In red morocco binding. _Coronica del Cid ruy Diaz._ _Printed at Seville._ _Without Date._ Quarto. The preceding title is beneath a neat wood-cut of a man on horseback, brandishing his sword; an old man, coming out of a gate, is beside him. The signatures from _a_ to _i vj_, are in eights. On _f ij_ is a singular wood-cut of a lion entering a room, where a man is apparently sleeping over a chess-board, while two men are rising from the table: this cut is rudely executed. On _i v_ is the colophon. This edition is executed in that peculiarly rich and handsome style of printing, in a bold gothic letter, which distinguishes the early annals of the Spanish press. The present beautifully clean copy belonged to PRINCE EUGENE; but it has been severely cropt. _Ein nuizlich büchlin_ das man nennet den Pilgrim das hat der würdig doctor keyserperg zü Augspurg geprediget. Such is the title of this singular tract, printed by _Lucas Zeisenmair_ at Augsbourg in 1498. Small 4to. It has many clever and curious wood-cuts; and I do not remember, in any part of Germany where I have travelled, to have seen another copy of it. _Fierbras._ _Printed by G. Le Roy._ 1486. Folio. This is a small folio, and the third edition of the work. This copy is quite perfect; containing the last leaf, on which is a large wood-cut. All the cuts here are coloured after the fashion of the old times. This sound and desirable copy, in red morocco binding, once graced the library of PRINCE EUGENE. _Iosephe._ _Printed by Verard._ 1492. Folio. "_Cy finist l'hystoire de Josephus de la bataille Judaique, &c_." This is a noble folio volume; printed in the large handsome type of Verard, abounding with wood cuts. It is in red morocco binding. _Jouvencel (Le)._ _Printed by Verard_, 1497. Folio. This is a fine copy, with coloured cuts, printed UPON VELLUM. It is badly bound. _Lancelot du Lac._ _Printed by Verard._ 1488. Folio. 2 vols. First Edition. A fine clean copy, but somewhat cropt. It once belonged to PRINCE EUGENE, and is bound in red morocco. ---- _Printed by the Same._ 1496. Folio. 3 vols. UPON VELLUM. In fine old red morocco binding, beautifully tooled. This copy measures fifteen inches six-eighths in height, by ten inches five-eighths in width. _Les Deux Amans._ _Printed by Verard._ 1493. Quarto. The title is beneath the large L, of which a fac-simile appears in the first vol. of my edition of our _Typographical Antiquities_. The work is old French poetry. Verard's device is on the last leaf. A copy of this book is, in all probability, in a certain black-letter French-metrical cabinet in Portland Place. _Maguelone (La Belle)._ _Printed by Trepperel._ 1492. Quarto. The preceding title is over Trepperel's device. The wood cuts in this edition have rather unusual merit; especially that on the reverse of Ciiii. A very desirable copy. _Marco Polo. Von Venedig des Grost Landtfarer. Germanicè._ _Printed by Creusner._ 1477. Folio. This is the FIRST EDITION of the Travels of MARCO POLO; and I am not sure whether the present copy be not considered unique.[131] A complete paginary and even lineal transcript of it was obtained for Mr. Marsden's forth-coming translation of the work, into our own language--under the superintendence of M. Kopitar. Its value, therefore, may be appreciated accordingly. _Regnars (Les)_ "trauersant les perilleuses voyes des folles frances du möde." _Printed by Verard._ _No Date._ 4to. This is a French metrical version from the German of Sebastian Brandt. The present edition is printed in the black letter, double columns, with wood cuts. This is a fair good copy, bound in red morocco, and formerly belonging to Prince Eugene. _Tewrdannckh._ 1517. Folio. The Emperor Maximilian's OWN COPY!--of course UPON VELLUM. The cuts are coloured. The Abbé Strattman had told me that I should necessarily find this to be the largest and completest copy in existence. It is very white and tall, measuring fifteen inches, by nine and three quarters; and perhaps the largest known. Yet I suspect, from the smooth glossy surface of the fore edge--in its recent and very common-place binding, in russia--that the side margin was once broader.[132] The cuts should not have been coloured, and the binding should haye been less vulgar: Here is ANOTHER COPY, not quite so large, with the cuts uncoloured.[133] _Tristran: chlr de la table ronde "nouellement Imprime a Paris_." Folio. _Printed by Verard._ Without Date. This is a fine sound copy, in old handsome calf binding. _Thucydide (L'hystoire de)._ _Printed by G. Gourmont._ Without Date. Folio. The translator was Claude de Seyssel, when Bishop of Marseilles, and the edition was printed at the command of Francis the First. It is executed in the small, neat, secretary gothic type of Gourmont; whose name is at the bottom of the title-page. This is a beautiful copy, struck off UPON VELLUM; but it is much cut in the fore edge, and much choked in the back of the binding, which is in red morocco. It belonged to PRINCE EUGENE. * * * * * Comparatively copious as may be the preceding list, I fear it will not satisfy you unless I make some mention of _Block Books_, and inform you whether, as you have long and justly supposed, there be not also a few _Cartons_ in the Imperial Library. These two points will occupy very little more of my time and attention. First then of _xylographical_ productions--or of books supposed to have been printed by means of wooden blocks. I shall begin with an unique article of this description. It is called _Liber Regum, seu Vita Davidis_: a folio, of twenty leaves: printed on one side only, but the leaves are here pasted together. Two leaves go to a signature, and the signatures run from A to K. Each page has two wood cuts, about twice as long as the text; or, rather, about one inch and three quarters of the text doubled. The text is evidently xylographic. The ink is of the usual pale, brown colour. This copy is coloured, of the time of the publication of the book. It is in every respect in a fine and perfect state of preservation. Here is the second, if not third edition, of the _Biblia Pauperum_; the second edition of the _Apocalypse_; the same of the _History of the Virgin_; and a coloured and cropt copy of _Hartlib's Book upon Chiromancy_: so much is it cropt, that the name of _Schopff_, the supposed printer, is half cut away. The preceding books are all clumsily bound in modern russia binding. As some compensation, however, there is a fine bound copy, in red morocco binding, of the Latin edition of the _Speculum Humanæ Salvationis_; and a very fine large copy, in blue morocco binding, of the first edition of the _Ars Memorandi per Figuras_; which latter had belonged to Prince Eugene. Of the CAXTONS, the list is more creditable; and indeed very much to be commended: for, out of our own country, I question whether the united strength of all the continental libraries could furnish a more copious supply of the productions of our venerable first printer. I send you the following account--just as the several articles happened to be taken down for my inspection. _Chaucer's Book of Fame_: a neat, clean, perfect copy: in modern russia binding. The _Mayster of Sentence_, &c. This is only a portion of a work, although it is perfect of itself, as to signatures and imprint. This copy, in modern russia binding, is much washed, and in a very tender state. _Game of Chess_; second edition. In very tender condition: bound in blue morocco, with pink lining. An exceedingly _doctored_ copy. _Iason_: a cropt, and rather dirty copy: which formerly belonged to Gulstone. It appears to be perfect; for Gulstone has observed in ms. "_This book has 148 leaves, as I told them carefully. 'Tis very scarce and valuable, and deserves an extraordinary good binding_." Below, is a note, in French; apparently by Count Reviczky. _Godfrey of Boulogne_: a perfect, large copy, in old red morocco (apparently Harleian) binding. On the fly leaf, Count Reviczky has written a notice of the date and name of the printer of the book. Opposite the autograph of _Ames_ (to whom this copy once belonged) the old price of 16_l._ 16_s._ is inserted. On the first page of the text, is the ancient autograph of _Henry Norreys_. This is doubtless the most desirable Caxtonian volume in the collection. This department of bibliography may be concluded by the mention of a sound and desirable copy of the first edition of _Littleton's Tenures_ by _Lettou_ and _Machlinia_, which had formerly belonged to Bayntun of Gray's Inn. This, and most of the preceding articles, from the early English press, were supplied to the Imperial library by the late Mr. Edwards. And now, my good friend, I hope to have fulfilled even your wishes respecting the earlier and more curious book-treasures in the Imperial Library. But I must candidly affirm, that, although _you_ may be satisfied, it is not so with myself. More frequent visits, and less intrusion upon the avocations of Messrs. BARTSCH and KOPITAR--who ought, during the whole time, to have been inhaling the breezes of Baden,--would doubtless have enabled me to render the preceding catalogue more copious and satisfactory; but, whatever be its defects, either on the score of omission or commission, it will at least have the merit of being the first, if not the only, communication of its kind, which has been transmitted for British perusal. To speak fairly, there is a prodigious quantity of lumber--in the shape of books printed in the fifteenth century--in this Imperial Library, which might be well disposed of for more precious literary productions. The MSS. are doubtless, generally speaking, of great value; yet very far indeed from being equal, either in number or in intrinsic worth, to those in the Royal Library at Paris. It is also to be deeply regretted, that, both of these MSS. and printed books--with the exception of the ponderous and digressive work of Lambecius upon the former,--there should be NO printed _catalogue raisonné_. But I will hope that the "Saturnia regna" are about to return; and that the love of bibliographical research, which now seems generally, to pervade, the principal librarians of the public collections upon the continent, will lead to the appearance of some solid and satisfactory performance upon the subjects of which this letter has treated. Fare you well. The post will depart in a few minutes, and I am peremptorily summoned to the operatical ballet of _Der Berggeist_. [109] [All this is profound matter, or secret history--(such as my friend Mr. D'Israeli dearly loves) for future writers to comment upon.] [110] [Mons. Bartsch did NOT LIVE to peruse this humble record of his worth. More of him in a subsequent note.] [111] [M. Payne now CEASES TO EXIST.] [112] My excellent friend M.A. DE BARTSCH has favoured me with the following particulars relating to the Imperial Library. The building was begun in 1723, and finished in 1735, by Joseph Emanuel, Baron de Fischer, Architect of the Court: the same who built the beautiful church of St. Charles Borromeo, in the suburbs. The Library is 246 German feet in length, by 62 in width: the oval dome, running at right angles, and forming something like transepts, is 93 feet long, and 93 feet high, by 57 wide. The fresco-paintings, with which the ceiling of the dome in particular is profusely covered, were executed by Daniel Gran. The number of the books is supposed to amount to 300,000 volumes: of which 8000 were printed in the XVth. century, and 750 are atlas folios filled with engravings. These 750 volumes contain about 180,000 prints; of which the pecuniary value, according to the computation of the day, cannot be less than 3,300,000 "florins argent de convention"--according to a valuation (says M. Bartsch) which I made last year. This may amount to £300,000. of our money. I apprehend there is nothing in Europe to be put in competition with such a collection. [113] The reader may not be displeased to consult, for one moment, the _Bibliog. Decameron_; vol. i. pp. xliii. iv. [114] [A sad tale is connected with the procuring of a copy, or fac-simile, of the initial letter in question. I was most anxious to possess a _coloured_ fac-simile of it; and had authorised M. Bartsch to obtain it at _almost_ any price. He stipulated (I think with M. Fendi) to obtain it for £10. sterling; and the fac-simile was executed in all respects worthy of the reputation of the artist, and to afford M. Bartsch the most unqualified satisfaction. It was dispatched to me by permission of the Ambassador, in the Messenger's bag of dispatches:--but it NEVER reached me. Meanwhile my worthy friend M. Bartsch became impatient and almost angry at the delay; and the artist naturally wondered at the tardiness of payment. Something like _suspicion_ had began to take possession of my friend's mind--when the fact was disclosed to him ... and his sorrow and vexation were unbounded. The money was duly remitted and received; but "the valuable consideration" was never enjoyed by the too enthusiastic traveller. This beautiful copy has doubtless perished from accident.] [115] Vol. ii. p. 458. [116] Tasso, in fact, retouched and almost remodelled his poem, under the title of _Jerusalem Conquered_, and published it under that of Jerusalem Delivered. See upon these alterations and corrections, Brunet, _Manuel du Libraire_, vol. iii. p. 298. edit. 1814; _Haym Bibl._ Ital. vol. ii. p. 28. edit. 1808; and particularly Ginguené _Hist. Lit. d'Italie,_ vol. v. p. 504. [117] See p. 139, ante. [118] Lord Spencer has now obtained a copy of it--as may be seen in _Ædes Althorpianæ_, vol. ii. pp. 39-40, where a facsimile of the type is given. [119] See pages 98, 103, 228, 239, ante. His Lordship's first copy of the POLISH PROTESTANT BIBLE had been obtained from three imperfect copies at VIENNA; for which I have understood that nearly a hundred guineas were paid. The Augsbourg copy now supplies the place of the previous one; which latter, I learn, is in the Bodleian library, at Oxford. [120] A particular account of this edition will be found in the _Bibl. Spencer._ vol. iv. page 522. [121] See the _Bibl. Spencer._; vol. i. page 135-144. [122] It is singular enough that the Curators of this Library, some twenty years ago, threw out PRINCE EUGENE'S copy of the above edition, as a duplicate--which happened to be somewhat larger and finer. This latter copy, bound in red morocco, with the arms of the Prince on the sides, now graces the shelves of Lord Spencer's Library. See _Bibl. Spenceriana_, vol. i. p. 305, 7. [123] See vol. ii. p. 120. [124] See vol. ii. p: 120. [125] Including LEXICOGRAPHY. [126] A copy of this edition (printed in all probability by Fyner of Eislingen) was sold at the sale of Mr. Hibbert's library for £8. 12s. [127] [Of which, specimens appear in the _Ædes Althorpianæ_, vol. ii. p. 273, &c. from the copy in Lord Spencer's collection--a copy, which may be pronounced to be the FINEST KNOWN copy in the world!] [128] _Bibl. Spenceriana_; vol. iv. p. 121. [129] Vol. ii. p. 191. [130] This book is fully described, with numerous fac-similes of the wood-cuts, in the Ædes' Althorpianæ, vol. ii. p. 204-213. [131] Since the above was written, Lord Spencer has obtained a very fine and perfect copy of it, through Messrs. Payne and Foss: which copy will be found fully described, with a fac-simile of a supposed whole-length portrait of MARCO POLO, in the _Ædes Althorpianæ_, vol. ii. p. 176. [132] I think I remember to have seen, at Messrs. Payne and Foss's, the finest copy of this book in England. It was upon vellum, in the original binding, and measured fourteen inches three quarters by nine and a half. Unluckily, it wanted the whole of the table at the end. See the _Bibliog. Decameron_, vol. i. p. 202. [Recently, my neighbour and especial good friend Sir F. Freeling, Bart. has fortunately come into the possession of a most beautifully fair and perfect copy of this resplendent volume.] [133] While upon the subject of this book, it may not be immaterial to add, that I saw the ORIGINAL PAINTINGS from which the large wood blocks were taken for the well known work entitled "the _Triumphs of the Emperor Maximilian_" in large folio. These paintings are in water colours, upon rolls of vellum, very fresh--and rather gaudily executed. They do not convey any high notion of art, and I own that I greatly prefer the blocks (of which I saw several) to the original paintings. These were the blocks which our friend Mr. Douce entreated Mr. Edwards to examine when he came to Vienna, and with these he printed the well-known edition of the Triumphs, of the date of 1794. LETTER XI. POPULATION. STREETS AND FOUNTAINS. CHURCHES. CONVENTS. PALACES. THEATRES. THE PRATER. THE EMPEROR'S PRIVATE LIBRARY. COLLECTION OF DUKE ALBERT. SUBURBS. MONASTERY OF CLOSTERNEUBURG. DEPARTURE FROM VIENNA. _Vienna, September_ 18, 1818. My dear friend; "Extremum hunc--mihi concede laborem." In other words, I shall trouble you for the last time with an epistle from the Austrian territories: at any rate, with the last communication from the capital of the empire. Since my preceding letter, I have stirred a good deal abroad: even from breakfast until a late dinner hour. By the aid of a bright sky, and a brighter moon, I have also visited public places of entertainment; for, having completed my researches at the library, I was resolved to devote the mornings to society and sights out of doors. I have also made a pleasant day's trip to the MONASTERY of CLOSTERNEUBURG--about nine English miles from hence; and have been led into temptation by the sight of some half dozen folios of a yet more exquisite condition than almost any thing previously beheld. I have even bought sundry tomes, of monks with long bushy beards, in a monastery in the suburbs, called the ROSSAU; and might, if I had pleased, have purchased their whole library--covered with the dust and cobwebs of at least a couple of centuries. As, in all previous letters, when arrived at a new capital, I must begin the present by giving you some account of the population, buildings, public sights, and national character of the place in which I have now tarried for the last three weeks; and which--as I think I observed at the conclusion of my _first_ letter from hence--was more characteristic of English fashions and appearances than any thing before witnessed by me ... even since my landing at Dieppe. The CITY of VIENNA may contain a population of 60,000 souls; but its SUBURBS, which are _thirty-three_ in number, and I believe the largest in Europe, contain full _three times_ that number of inhabitants.[134] This estimate has been furnished me by M. Bartsch, according to the census taken in 1815. Vienna itself contains 7150 houses; 123 palaces; and 29 Catholic parishes; 17 convents, of which three are filled by _Religieuses_; one Protestant church; one of the reformed persuasion; two churches of the united Greek faith, and one of the Greek, not united.[135] Of synagogues, I should think there must be a great number; for even _Judaism_ seems, in this city, to be a thriving and wealthy profession. Hebrew bibles and Hebrew almanacks are sufficiently common. I bought a recent impression of the former, in five crown octavo volumes, neatly bound in sheep skin, for about seven shillings of our money; and an atlas folio sheet of the latter for a penny. You meet with Jews every where: itinerant and stationary. The former, who seem to be half Jew and half Turk, are great frequenters of hotels, with boxes full of trinkets and caskets. One of this class has regularly paid me a visit every morning, pretending to have the genuine attar of roses and rich rubies to dispose of. But these were not to my taste. I learnt, however, that this man had recently married his daughter,--and boasted of having been able to give her a dowry equal to 10,000l. of our money. He is short of stature, with a strongly-expressive countenance, and a well-arranged turban--and laughs unceasingly at whatever he says himself, or is said of him. As Vienna may be called the key of Italy, on the land side--or, speaking less figuratively, the concentrating point where Greeks, Turks, Jews, and Italians meet for the arrangement of their mercantile affairs throughout the continent of Europe--it will necessarily follow that you see a great number of individuals belonging to the respective countries from whence they migrate. Accordingly, you are constantly struck with the number and variety of characters, of this class, which you meet from about the hour of three till five. Short clokes, edged with sable or ermine, and delicately trimmed mustachios, with the throat exposed, mark the courteous Greek and Albanian. Long robes, trimmed with tarnished silver or gold, with thickly folded girdles and turbans, and beards of unrestrained growth, point out the majestic Turk. The olive-tinted visage, with a full, keen, black eye, and a costume half Greek and half Turkish, distinguish the citizen of Venice or Verona. Most of these carry pipes, of a varying length, from which volumes of fragrant smoke occasionally issue; but the exercise of smoking is generally made subservient to that of talking: while the loud laugh, or reirated reply, or, emphatic asseveration, of certain individuals in the passing throng, adds much to the general interest of the scene. Smoking, however, is a most decidedly general characteristic of the place. Two shops out of six in some streets are filled with pipes, of which the _bowls_ exhibit specimens of the most curious and costly workmanship. The handles are generally short. A good Austrian thinks he can never pay too much for a good pipe; and the upper classes of society sometimes expend great sums in the acquisition of these objects of comfort or fashion. It was only the other evening, when, in company with my friends Messrs. G. and S., and Madame la Comtesse de------a gentleman drew forth from his pocket a short pipe, which screwed together in three divisions, and of which the upper part of the bowl--(made in the fashion of a black-a-moor's head) near the aperture--was composed of diamonds of great lustre and value. Upon enquiry, I found that this pipe was worth about 1000l. of our money!--and what surprised me yet more, was, the cool and unconcerned manner in which the owner pulled it out of a loose great-coat pocket--as if it had been a tobacco box not worth half a dozen kreutzers! Such is their love of smoking here, that, in one of their most frequented coffee-houses--where I went after dinner for a cup of coffee--the centre of the room was occupied by two billiard tables, which were surrounded by lookers on:--from the mouths of every one of whom, including even the players themselves, issued constant and pungent puffs of smoke, so as to fill the whole room with a dense cloud, which caused me instantly to retreat... as if grazed by a musket ball. Of female society I can absolutely say little or nothing. The upper circles of society are all broken up for the gaieties of Baden. Yet, at the opera, at the Prater, and in the streets, I should say that the general appearance and manners of the females are very interesting; strongly resembling, in the former respect, those of our own country. In the streets, and in the shops, the women wear their own hair, which is generally of a light brown colour, apparently well brushed and combed, platted and twisted into graceful forms. In complexion, they are generally fair, with blue eyes; and in stature they are usually short and stout. The men are, I think, every where good-natured, obliging, and extremely anxious to pay you every attention of which you stand in need. If I could but speak the language fluently, I should quickly fancy myself in England. The French language here is less useful than the Italian, in making yourself understood. So much for the living, or active life. Let me now direct your attention to inanimate objects; and these will readily strike you as relating to _Buildings_--in their varied characters of houses, churches and palaces. First, of the STREETS. I told you, a little before, that there are upwards of one hundred and twenty palaces, so called, in Vienna; but the truth is, almost every street may be said to be filled with palaces: so large and lofty are the houses of which they are usually composed. Sometimes a street, of a tolerable length, will contain only a dozen houses--as, for instance, that of the _Wallnerstrasse:_ at the further end of which, to the right, lives Mr.------ the second banker (Count Fries being the first) in Vienna. Some of the banking-houses have quite the air of noblemen's chateaux. It is true, that these houses, like our Inns of Court, are inhabited by different families; yet the external appearance, being uniform, and frequently highly decorated, have an exceedingly picturesque appearance. The architectural ornaments, over the doors and windows--so miserably wanting in our principal streets and squares, and of which the absence gives to Portland Place the look, at a distance, of a range of barracks--are here, yet more than at Augsbourg or Munich, boldly and sometimes beautifully managed. The _Palace of Prince Eugene_[136] in the street in which I reside, and which no Englishman ought to gaze at without emotions of pleasure--is highly illustrative of the justice of the foregoing remark. This palace is now converted into the _Mint_. The door-ways and window-frames are, generally, throughout the streets of Vienna, of a bold and pleasing architectural character. From one till three, the usual hour of dining, the streets of Vienna are stripped of their full complement of population; but from three till six; at the latter of which hours the plays and opera begin, there is a numerous and animated population. Notwithstanding the season of the year, the days have been sometimes even sultry; while over head has constantly appeared one of the bluest and brightest skies ever viewed by human eyes. Among the most pleasing accompaniments or characteristics of street scenery, at Vienna, are the FOUNTAINS. They are very different from those at Paris; exhibiting more representations of the human figure, and less water. In the _Place_, before mentioned, is probably the most lofty and elaborate of these sculptured accompaniments of a fountain: but, in a sort of square called the _New Market_, and through which I regularly passed in my way to the Imperial Library--there is a fountain of a particularly pleasing, and, to my eye, tasteful cast of character; executed, I think, by DONNER. A large circular cistern receives the water, which is constantly flowing into it, from some one or the other of the surrounding male and female figures, of the size of life. One of these male figures, naked, is leaning over the side of the cistern, about to strike a fish, or some aquatic monster, with a harpoon or dart--while one of his legs (I think it is the right) is thrown back with a strong muscular expression, resting upon the earth--as if to balance the figure, thus leaning forward--thereby giving it an exceedingly natural and characteristic air. Upon the whole, although I am not sure that any _one_ fountain, of the character just mentioned, may equal that in the High Street at Augsbourg, yet, taken collectively, I should say that Vienna has reason to claim its equality with any other city in Europe, on the score of this most picturesque, and frequently salutary, accompaniment of street scenery. In our own country, which has the amplest means of any other in the world, of carrying these objects of public taste into execution, there seems to be an infatuation--amounting to hopeless stupidity--respecting the uniform exclusion of them. While I am on these desultory topics, let me say a word or two respecting the _quoi vivre_ in this metropolis. There are few or no _restaurateurs_: at least, at this moment, only two of especial note.[137] I have dined at each--and very much prefer the vin du Pays, of the better sort [138]--which is red, and called _vin d'Offner_ (or some such name) to that at Paris. But the _meats_, are less choice and less curiously cooked; and I must say that the sense of smelling is not very acute with the Germans. The mutton can only be attacked by teeth of the firmest setting. The beef is always preferable in a stewed or boiled state; although at our Ambassador's table, the other day, I saw and partook of a roasted sirloin which would have done honour to either tavern in Bishopsgate-street. The veal is the _safest_ article to attack. The pastry is upon the whole relishing and good. The bread is in every respect the most nutritive and digestive which I have ever partaken of. The _fruit_, at this moment, is perfectly delicious, especially, the pears. Peaches and grapes are abundant in the streets, and exceedingly reasonable in price. Last Sunday, we dined at the palace of _Schönbrunn;_ or rather, in the suite of apartments, which were formerly servant's offices,--but which are now fitted up in a very tasteful and gay manner, for the reception of Sunday visitors: it being one of the principal fashionable places of resort on the Sabbath. We had a half boiled and half stewed fowl, beefsteak, and fritters, for dinner. The, beef was perfectly uneatable, as being entirely _gone_--but the other dishes were good and well served. The dessert made amends for all previous grievances. It consisted of peaches and grapes--just gathered from the imperial garden: the Emperor allowing his old servants (who are the owners of the taverns, and who gain a livelihood from Sunday visitors) to partake of this privilege. The choicest table at Paris or at London could not boast of finer specimens of the fruit in question. I may here add, that the _slaughter-houses_ are all in the suburbs--or, at any rate, without the ramparts. This is a good regulation; but it is horribly disgusting, at times, to observe carts going along, with the dead bodies of animals, hanging down the sides, with their heads cut off. Of all cities in Europe, Vienna is probably the most distinguished for the excellence of its CARRIAGES of every description--and especially for its _Hackney Coaches._ I grant you, that there is nothing here comparable with our London carriages, made on the nicest principles of art: whether for springs, shape, interior accommodations, or luxury; but I am certain that, for almost every species of carriage to be obtained at London, you may purchase them _here_ at half the price. Satin linings of yellow, pink, and blue, are very prevalent ... even in their hackney coaches. These latter, are, in truth, most admirable, and of all shapes: landau, barouche, phaeton, chariot, or roomy family coach. Glass of every description, at Vienna--from the lustre that illuminates the Imperial Palace to that which is used in the theatre--is excellent; so that you are sure to have plate glass in your fiacre. The coachmen drive swiftly, and delight in rectangular turns. They often come thundering down upon you unawares, and as the streets are generally very narrow, it is difficult to secure a retreat in good time. At the corners of the streets are large stone posts, to protect the houses from the otherwise constant attrition from the wheels. The streets are paved with large stones, and the noise of the wheels, arising from the rapidity of their motion,--re-echoed by the height of the houses, is no trifling trial to nervous strangers. Of the chief objects of architecture which decorate street scenery, there are none, to my old-fashioned eyes, more attractive and more thoroughly beautiful and interesting--from a thousand associations of ideas--than PLACES OF WORSHIP--and of course, among these, none stands so eminently conspicuous as the Mother-Church, or the CATHEDRAL, which, in this place, is dedicated to _St. Stephen_. The spire has been long distinguished for its elegance and height. Probably these are the most appropriate, if not the only, epithets of commendation which can be applied to it. After Strasbourg and Ulm, it appears a second-rate edifice. Not but what the spire may even vie with that of the former, and the nave may be yet larger than that of the latter: but, as a _whole_, it is much inferior to either--even allowing for the palpable falling off in the nave of Strasbourg cathedral. The spire, or tower--for it partakes of both characters--is indeed worthy of general admiration. It is oddly situated, being almost detached--and on the _south_ side of the building. Indeed the whole structure has a very strange, and I may add capricious, if not repulsive, appearance, as to its exterior. The western and eastern ends have nothing deserving of distinct notice or commendation. The former has a porch, which is called "_the Giant's porch_:" it should rather be designated as that of the _Dwarf_. It has no pretensions to size or striking character of any description. Some of the oldest parts of the cathedral appear to belong to the porch of the eastern end. As you walk round the church, you cannot fail to be struck with the great variety of ancient, and to an Englishman, whimsical looking mural monuments, in basso and alto relievos. Some of these are doubtless both interesting and curious. But the spire[140] is indeed an object deserving of particular admiration. It is next to that of Strasbourg in height; being 432 feet of Vienna measurement. It may be said to begin to taper from the first stage or floor; and is distinguished for its open and sometimes intricate fretwork. About two-thirds of its height, just above the clock, and where the more slender part of the spire commences, there is a gallery or platform, to which the French quickly ascended, on their possession of Vienna, to reconnoitre the surrounding country. The very summit of the spire is bent, or inclined to the north; so much so, as to give the notion that the cap or crown will fall in a short time. As to the period of the erection of this spire, it is supposed to have been about the middle, or latter end, of the fifteenth century. It has certainly much in common with the highly ornamental gothic style of building in our own country, about the reign of Henry the VIth. The coloured glazed tiles of the roof of the church are very disagreeable and _unharmonising_. These colours are chiefly green, red, and blue. Indeed the whole roof is exceedingly heavy and tasteless. I will now conduct you to the interior. On entering, from the south-east door, you observe, to the left, a small piece of white marble--which every one touches, with the finger or thumb charged with holy water, on entering or leaving the cathedral. Such have been the countless thousands of times that this piece of marble has been so touched, that, purely, from such friction, it has been worn nearly _half an inch_ below the general surrounding surface. I have great doubts, however, if this mysterious piece of masonry be as old as the walls of the church, (which may be of the fourteenth century) which they pretend to say it is. The first view of the interior of this cathedral, seen even at the most favourable moment--which is from about three till five o'clock--is far from prepossing. Indeed, after what I had seen at Rouen, Paris, Strasboug, Ulm, and Munich, it was a palpable disappointment. In the first place, there seems to be no grand leading feature of simplicity: add to which, darkness reigns every where. You look up, and discern no roof--not so much from its extreme height, as from the absolute want of windows. Every thing not only looks dreary, but is dingy and black--from the mere dirt and dust which seem to have covered the great pillars of the nave--and especially the figures and ornament upon it--for the last four centuries. This is the more to be regretted, as the larger pillars are highly ornamented; having human figures, of the size of life, beneath sharply pointed canopies, running up the shafts. The extreme length of the cathedral is 342 feet of Vienna measurement. The extreme width, between the tower and its opposite extremity--or the transepts--is _222_ feet. There are comparatively few chapels; only four--but many _Bethstücke_ or _Prie-Dieus_. Of the former, the chapels of _Savoy_ and _St. Eloy_ are the chief: but the large sacristy is more extensive than either. On my first entrance, whilst attentively examining the choir, I noticed--what was really a very provoking, but probably not a very uncommon sight,--a maid servant deliberately using a long broom in sweeping the pavement of the high altar, at the moment when several very respectable people, of both sexes, were kneeling upon the steps, occupied in prayer. But the devotion of the people is incessant--all the day long,--and in all parts of the cathedral. The little altars, or _Prie-Dieus,_ seem to be innumerable. Yonder kneels an emaciated figure, before a yet more emaciated crucifix. It is a female--bending down, as it were, to the very grave. She has hardly strength to hold together her clasped hands, or to raise her downcast eye. Yet she prays--earnestly, loudly, and from the heart. Near her, kneels a group of her own sex: young, active, and ardent--as she _once_ was; and even comely and beautiful ... as she _might_ have been. They evidently belong to the more respectable classes of society--and are kneeling before a framed and glazed picture of the Virgin and Child, of which the lower part is absolutely smothered with flowers. There is a natural, and as it were well-regulated, expression of piety among them, which bespeaks a genuineness of feeling and of devotion. Meanwhile, service is going on in all parts of the cathedral. They are singing here: they are praying there: and they are preaching in a third place. But during the whole time, I never heard one single note of the organ. I remember only the other Sunday morning--walking out beneath one of the brightest blue skies that ever shone upon man--and entering the cathedral about nine o'clock. A preacher was in the principal pulpit; while a tolerably numerous congregation was gathered around him. He preached, of course, in the German language, and used much action. As he became more and more animated, he necessarily became warmer, and pulled off a black cap--which, till then, he had kept upon his head: the zeal and piety of the congregation at the same time seeming to increase with the accelerated motions of the preacher. In other more retired parts, solitary devotees were seen--silent, and absorbed in prayer. Among these, I shall not easily forget the head and the physiognomical expression of one old man--who, having been supported by crutches, which lay by the side of him--appeared to have come for the last time to offer his orisons to heaven. The light shone full upon his bald head and elevated countenance; which latter indicated a genuineness of piety, and benevolence, of disposition, not to be soured... even by the most-bitter of worldly disappointments! It seemed as if the old man were taking leave of this life, in full confidence of the rewards which await the righteous beyond the grave. Not a creature was near him but myself;--when, on the completion of his devotions, finding that those who had attended him thither were not at hand to lead him away--he seemed to cast an asking eye of assistance upon me: nor did he look twice before that assistance was granted. I helped to raise him up; but, ere he could bring my hand in contact with his lips, to express his thankfulness--his friends ... apparently his daughter, and two grandchildren ... arrived--and receiving his benediction, quietly, steadily, and securely, led him forth from the cathedral. No pencil ... no pen ... can do justice to the entire effect of this touching picture. So much for the living. A word or two now for the dead. Of course this latter alludes to the MONUMENTS of the more distinguished characters once resident in and near the metropolis. Among these, doubtless the most elaborate is that of the _Emperor Frederick III_.--in the florid gothic style, surmounted by a tablet, filled with coat-armour, or heraldic shields. Some of the mural monuments are very curious, and among them are several of the early part of the sixteenth century--which represent the chins and even mouths of females, entirely covered by drapery: such as is even now to be seen ...and such as we saw on descending from the Vosges; But among these monuments--both for absolute and relative antiquity--none will appear to the curious eye of an antiquary so precious as that of the head of the ARCHITECT of THE CATHEDRAL, whose name was _Pilgram._ This head is twice seen--first, on the wall of the south side aisle, a good deal above the spectator's eye, and therefore in a foreshortened manner--as the following representation of it testifies;[141] [Illustration: S. Fresman.] The second representation of it is in one of the heads in the hexagonal pulpit--in the nave, and in which the preacher was holding forth as before mentioned. Some say that these heads represent one and the same person; but I was told that they were designated for those of the _master_ and _apprentice:_ the former being the apprentice, and the latter the master. The preceding may suffice for a description of this cathedral; in which, as I before observed, there is a palpable want of simplicity and of breadth of construction. The eye wanders over a large mass of building, without being able to rest upon any thing either striking from its magnificence, or delighting by its beauty and elaborate detail. The pillars which divide the nave from the side aisles, are however excluded from this censure. There is one thing--and a most lamentable instance of depraved taste it undoubtedly is--which I must not omit mentioning. It relates to the representation of our Saviour. Whether as a painting, or as a piece of sculpture, this sacred figure is generally made most repulsive--even, in the cathedral. It is meagre in form, wretched in physiognomical expression, and marked by disgusting appearances of blood about the forehead and throat. In the church of _St. Mary_, supposed to be the oldest in Vienna, as you enter the south door, to the left, there is a whole length standing figure of Christ--placed in an obscure niche--of which the part, immediately under the chin, is covered with red paint, in disgusting imitation of blood: as if the throat had been recently cut,--and patches of paint, to represent drops of blood, are also seen upon the feet! In regard to other churches, that of _St. Mary_, supposed to be, in part, as old as the XIIIth century, has one very great curiosity, decidedly worthy of notice. It is a group on the outside, as you enter a door in a passage or court--through which the whole population of Vienna should seem to pass in the course of the day. This group, or subject, represents our _Saviour's Agony in the garden of Gethsemane_: the favourite subject of representation throughout Austria. In the foreground, the figure of Christ, kneeling, is sufficiently conspicuous. Sometimes a handkerchief is placed between the hands, and sometimes not. His disciples are asleep by the side of him. In the middle ground, the soldiers, headed by Judas Iscariot, are leaping over the fence, and entering the garden to seize him: in the back ground, they are leading him away to Caiphas, and buffeting him in the route. These latter groups are necessarily diminutive. The whole is cut in stone--I should think about three centuries ago--and painted after the life. As the people are constantly passing along, you observe, every now and then, some devout citizen dropping upon his knee, and repeating a hurried prayer before the figure of Christ. The _Church of the Augustins_ is near at hand; and the contents of _that_ church are, to my taste and feelings, more precious than any of which Vienna may boast. I allude to the famous monument erected to the memory of the wife of the present venerable DUKE ALBERT OF SAXE TESCHEN. It is considered to be the chef d'oeuvre of CANOVA; and with justice. The church of the Augustins laying directly in my way to the Imperial Library, I think I may safely say that I used, two mornings out of three, to enter it--on purpose to renew my acquaintance with the monument in question. My admiration increased upon every such renewal. Take it, all in all, I can conceive nothing in art to go beyond it. It is alone worth a pilgrimage to Vienna: nor will I from henceforth pine about what has perished from the hand of Phidias or Praxiteles--it is sufficient that this monument remains... from the chisel of CANOVA. I will describe it briefly, and criticise it with the same freedom which I used towards the _Madonna_ of the same sculptor, in the collection of the Marquis de Sommariva at Paris.[142] At the time of my viewing it, a little after ten o'clock, the organ was generally playing--and a very fine chant was usually being performed: rather soft, tender, and impressive--than loud and overwhelming. I own that, by a thousand associations of ideas, (which it were difficult to describe) this coincidence helped to give a more solemn effect to the object before me. You enter a door, immediately opposite to it--and no man of taste can view it, unexpectedly, for the first time, without standing still ... the very moment it meets his eyes! This monument, which is raised about four feet above the pavement, and is encircled by small iron palisades--at a distance just sufficient to afford every opportunity of looking correctly at each part of it--consists of several figures, in procession, which are about to enter an opened door, at the base of a pyramid of gray marble. Over the door is a medallion, in profile, of the deceased... supported by an angel. To the right of the door is a huge lion couchant, asleep. You look into the entrance ... and see nothing ... but darkness: neither boundary nor termination being visible. To the right, a young man--resting his arm upon the lion's mane, is looking upwards, with an intensity of sorrowful expression. This figure is naked; and represents the protecting genius of the afflicted husband. To the left of the door, is the moving procession. One tall majestic female figure, with dishevelled hair, and a fillet of gold round her brow, is walking with a slow, measured step, embracing the urn which contains the ashes of the deceased. Her head is bending down, as if her tears were mingling with the contents of the urn. The drapery of this figure is most elaborate and profuse, and decorated with wreaths of flowers. Two children--symbolical, I suppose, of innocence and purity--walk by her side ... looking upwards, and scattering flowers. In the rear, appear three figures, which are intended to represent the charitable character of the deceased. Of these, two are eminently conspicuous ... namely, an old man leaning upon the arm of a young woman ... illustrative of the bounty and benevolence of the Duchess:--and intended to represent her liberality and kind-heartedness, equally in the protection of the old and feeble, as in that of the orphan and helpless young. The figures are united, as it were, by a youthful female, with a wreath of flowers; with which, indeed the ground is somewhat profusely strewn: so as, to an eye uninitiated in ancient costume, to give the subject rather a festive character. The whole is of the size of life.[143] Such is the mere dry descriptive detail of this master-piece of the art of CANOVA. I now come to a more close and critical survey of it; and will first observe upon what appear to me to be the (perhaps venial) defects of this magnificent monument. In the first place, I could have wished the medallion of the duchess and the supporting angel--_elsewhere_. It is a common-place, and indeed, here, an irrelevant ornament. The deceased has passed into eternity. The apparently interminable excavation into which the figures are about to move, helps to impress your mind with this idea. The duchess is to be thought of ... or seen, in the mind's eye... as an inhabitant of _another world_ ... and therefore not to be brought to your recollection by a common-place representation of her countenance in profile--as an inhabitant of _earth._ Besides, the chief female figure or mourner, about to enter the vault, is carrying her ashes in an urn: and I own it appears to me to be a little incongruous--or, at least, a little defective in that pure classical taste which the sculptor unquestionably possesses,--to put, what may be considered visible and invisible--or tangible and intangible--representations of the _same_ person before you at the _same_ time. If a representation of the figure of the duchess be necessary, it should not be in the form of a medallion. The pyramidal back-ground would doubtless have had a grander effect without it. The lion is also, to me, an objectionable subject. If allegory be necessary, it should be pure, and not mixed. If a _human figure_, at one end of the group, be considered a fit representation of benevolence ... the notion or idea meant to be conveyed by a _lion_, at the other end, should not be conveyed by the introduction of an animal. Nor is it at all obvious--supposing an animal to be necessary--to understand why a lion, who may be considered as placed there to guard the entrance of the pyramid, should be represented _asleep?_ If he be sympathising with the general sorrow, he should not be sleeping; for acute affliction rarely allows of slumber. If his mere object be to guard the entrance, by sleeping he shews himself to be unworthy of trust. In a word, allegory, always bad in itself, should not be _mixed_; and we naturally ask what business lions and human beings have together? Or, we suppose that the females in view have well strung nerves to walk thus leisurely with a huge lion--even sleeping--in front of them! The human figures are indeed delightful to contemplate. Perfect in form, in attitude, and expression, they proclaim the powers of a consummate master. A fastidious observer might indeed object to the bold, muscular strength of the old man--as exhibited in his legs and arms--and as indicative of the maturity, rather than of the approaching extinction, of life ... but what sculptor, in the representation of such subjects, can resist the temptation of displaying the biceps and gastrocnemian muscles? The countenances are all exquisite: all full of nature and taste... with as little introduction, as may be, of Grecian art. To my feelings, the figure of the young man--to the right of the lion--is the most exquisitely perfect. His countenance is indeed heavenly; and there is a play and harmony in the position and demarcation of his limbs, infinitely beyond any thing which I can presume to put in competition with it. In every point of view, in which I regarded this figure, it gained upon my admiration; and on leaving the church, for the last time, I said within myself--"if I have not seen the _Belvedere Apollo_, I have again and again viewed the monument to the memory of the _Duchess Albert of Saxe-Teschen_, by CANOVA... and I am satisfied to return to England in consequence." From churches we will walk together to CONVENTS. Here are only two about which I deem it necessary to give you any description; and these are, the _Convent of the Capuchins_, near the new Market Place, and that of the _Franciscans_, near the street in which I lodge. The former is tenanted by long-bearded monks. On knocking at the outer gate, the door was opened by an apparently middle-aged man, upon whose long silvery, and broad-spreading beard, the light seemed to dart down with a surprisingly, picturesque effect. Behind him was a dark cloister; or at least, a cloister very partially illumined--along which two younger monks were pacing in full costume. The person who opened the outward door proved to be the _porter_. He might, from personal respectability, and amplitude of beard, have been the _President_. On my servant's telling him our object was to view the IMPERIAL TOMBS, which are placed in a vault in this monastery, he disappeared; and we were addressed by a younger person, with a beard upon a comparatively diminutive scale, and with the top of his hair very curiously cut in a circular form. He professed his readiness to accompany us immediately into the receptacle of departed imperial grandeur. He spoke Latin with myself, and his vernacular tongue with the valet. I was soon satisfied with the sepulchral spectacle. As a whole, it has a poor and even disagreeable effect: if you except one or two tombs, such as those of _Francis I_. Emperor of the Romans, and _Maria Theresa_--which latter is the most elaborately ornamented of the whole: but it wants both space and light to be seen effectually, and is moreover I submit, in too florid a style of decoration. Like the generality of them, it is composed of bronze. The tombs of the earlier Emperors of Germany lie in a long and gloomy narrow recess--where little light penetrates, and where there is little space for an accurate examination. I should call them rather _coffin-shells_ than monuments. When I noticed the tomb of the Emperor Joseph II. to my guide, he seemed hardly to vouchsafe a glance at it ... adding, "yes, he is well known every where!" They rather consider him (from the wholesale manner in which the monasteries and convents were converted by him to civil purposes) as a sort of _softened-down Henry VIII_. Upon the whole, the living interested me more than the dead ... in this gloomy retirement ... notwithstanding these vaults are said to contain very little short of fourscore tombs of departed Emperors and Monarchs. The MONASTERY OF THE FRANCISCANS is really an object worth visiting ... if it be only to convince you of the comfort and happiness of ... _not_ being a _Franciscan monk._ I went thither several times, and sauntered in the cloisters of the quadrangle. An intelligent middle-aged woman--a sort of housekeeper of the establishment--who conversed with me pretty fluently in the French language, afforded me all the information which I was desirous of possessing. She said she had nothing to do with the kitchen, or dormitories of the monks. They cooked their own meat, and made their own beds. You see these monks constantly walking about the streets, and even entering the hotels. They live chiefly upon alms. They are usually bare-headed, and bare-footed--with the exception of sandals. Their dress is a thick brown cloak, with a cowl hanging behind in a peaked point: the whole made of the coarsest materials. They have no beards--and yet, altogether, they have a very squalid and dirty appearance. It was towards eight o'clock, when I walked for the first time, in the cloisters; and there viewed, amongst other mural decorations, an oil painting--in which several of their order are represented as undergoing martyrdom--by hanging, and severing their limbs. It was a horrid sight ... and yet the _living_ was not very attractive. Although placed in the very heart of the metropolis of their country, this Franciscan fraternity appears to be insensible of every comfort of society. To their palate, nothing seems to be so sweet as the tainted morsel upon the trencher--and to their ear, no sound more grateful than the melancholy echo, from the tread of their own cloister. Every thing, which so much pleased and gratified me in the great Austrian monasteries of CHREMSMINSTER, ST. FLORIAN, MÕLK, and GÕTTWIC, would, in such an atmosphere, and in such a tenement as the Franciscan monastery here, have been chilled, decomposed, and converted into the very reverse of all former and cheerful impressions. No walnut-tree shelved libraries: no tier upon tier of clasp and knob-bound folios: no saloon, where the sides are emblazoned by Salzburg marble; and no festive board, where the watchful seneschal never allows the elongated glass to remain five minutes unreplenished by Rhenish wine of the most exquisite flavour! None of these, nor of any thing even remotely approximating to them, were to be witnessed, or partaken of, in the dreary abode of monachism which I have just described. You will be glad to quit such a comfortless residence; and I am equally impatient with yourself to view more agreeable sights. Having visited the tombs of departed royalty, let us now enter the abodes--or rather PALACES--of _living_ imperial grandeur. I have already told you that Vienna, on the first glance of the houses, looks like a city of palaces; those buildings, which are professedly _palatial_, being indeed of a glorious extent and magnificence. And yet--it seems strange to make the remark ... will you believe me when I say, that, of the various palaces, or large mansions visited by me, that of the EMPEROR is the least imposing--as a whole? The front is very long and lofty; but it has a sort of architectural tameness about it, which gives it rather the air of the residence of the Lord Chamberlains than of their regal master. Yet the _Saloon_, in this palace, must not be passed over in silence. It merits indeed warm commendation. The roof, which is of an unusual height, is supported by pillars in imitation of polished marble ... but why are they not marble _itself_? The prevailing colour is white--perhaps to excess; but the number and quality of the looking glasses, lustres, and chandeliers, strike you as the most prominent features of this interior. I own that, for pure, solid taste, I greatly preferred the never-to-be-forgotten saloon in the monastery of St. Florian.[144] The rooms throughout the palaces are rather comfortable than gorgeous--if we except the music and ball rooms. Some scarlet velvet, of scarce and precious manufacture, struck me as exceedingly beautiful in one of the principal drawing rooms. I saw here a celebrated statue of a draped female, sitting, the workmanship of Canova. It is worthy of the chisel of the master. As to paintings, there are none worth description on the score of the old masters. Every thing of this kind seems to be concentrated in the palace of the Belvedere. To the BELVEDERE PALACE, therefore, let us go. I visited it with Mr. Lewis--taking our valet with us, immediately after breakfast--on one of the finest and clearest-skied September mornings that ever shone above the head of man. We had resolved to take the _Ambras_, or the LITTLE BELVEDERE, in our way; and to have a good, long, and uninterrupted view of the wonders of art--in a variety of departments. Both the little Belvedere and the large Belvedere rise gradually above the suburbs; and the latter may be about a mile and a half from the ramparts of the city. The _Ambras_ contains a quantity of ancient horse and foot armour; brought thither from a chateau of that name, near Inspruck, and built by the Emperor Charles V. Such a collection of old armour--which had once equally graced and protected the bodies of their wearers, among whom, the noblest names of which Germany can boast may be enrolled--was infinitely gratifying to me. The sides of the first room were quite embossed with suspended shields, cuirasses, and breast-plates. The floor was almost filled by champions on horseback--yet poising the spear, or holding it in the rest--yet _almost_ shaking their angry plumes, and pricking the fiery sides of their coursers. Here rode Maximilian--and there halted Charles his Son. Different suits of armour, belonging to the same character, are studiously shewn you by the guide: some of these are the foot, and some the horse, armour: some were worn in fight--yet giving evidence of the mark of the bullet and battle axe: others were the holiday suits of armour ... with which the knights marched in procession, or tilted at the tournament. The workmanship of the full-dress suits, in which a great deal of highly wrought gold ornament appears, is sometimes really exquisite. The second, or long room, is more particularly appropriated to the foot or infantry armour. In this studied display of much that is interesting from antiquity, and splendid from absolute beauty and costliness, I was particularly gratified by the sight of the armour which the Emperor Maximilian wore as a foot-captain. The lower part, to defend the thighs, consists of a puckered or plated steel-petticoat, sticking out at the bottom of the folds, considerably beyond the upper part. It is very simple, and of polished steel. A fine suit of armour--of black and gold--worn by an Archbishop of Salzburg in the middle of the fifteenth century, had particular claims upon my admiration. It was at once chaste and effective. The mace was by the side of it. This room is also ornamented by trophies taken from the Turks; such as bows, spears, battle-axes, and scymitars. In short, the whole is full of interest and splendor. I ought to have seen the ARSENAL--which I learn is of uncommon magnificence; and, although not so curious on the score of antiquity, is yet not destitute of relics of the old warriors of Germany. Among these, those which belonged to my old bibliomaniacal friend Corvinus, King of Hungary, cut a conspicuous and very respectable figure. I fear it will be now impracticable to see the Arsenal as it ought to be seen. It is now approaching mid-day, and we are walking towards the terrace in front of the GREAT BELVEDERE PALACE: built by the immortal EUGENE in the year 1724, as a summer residence. Probably no spot could have been selected with better judgment for the residence of a Prince--who wished to enjoy, almost at the same moment, the charms of the country with the magnificence of a city view... unclouded by the dense fumes which for ever envelope our metropolis. It is in truth a glorious situation. Walking along its wide and well cultivated terraces, you obtain the finest view imaginable of the city of Vienna. Indeed it may be called a picturesque view. The spire of the cathedral darts directly upwards, as it were, to the very heavens. The ground before you, and in the distance, is gently undulating; and the intermediate portion of the suburbs does not present any very offensive protrusions. More in the distance, the windings of the Danube are seen; with its various little islands, studded with hamlets and fishing huts, lighted up by a sun of unusual radiance. Indeed the sky, above the whole of this rich and civilized scene, was, at the time of our viewing it, almost of a dazzling hue: so deep and vivid a tint we had never before beheld. Behind the palace, in the distance, you observe a chain of mountains which extends into Hungary. As to the building itself, I must say that it is perfectly _palatial_; in its size, form, ornaments, and general effect. He must be fastidious indeed, who could desire a nobler residence for the most illustrious character in the kingdom! Among the treasures, which it contains, it is now high time to enter and to look about us. Yet what am I attempting?--to be your _cicerone_ ... in every apartment, covered with canvas or pannel, upon which colours of all hues, are seen from the bottom to the top of the palace!? It cannot be. My account, therefore, is necessarily a mere sketch. RUBENS, if any artist, seems here to "rule and reign without control!" Two large rooms are filled with his productions; besides several other pictures, by the same hand, which are placed in different apartments. Here it is that you see verified the truth of Sir Joshua's remark upon that wonderful artist: namely, that his genius seems to expand with the size of his canvas. His pencil absolutely riots here--in the most luxuriant manner--whether in the majesty of an altarpiece, in the gaiety of a festive scene [145], or in the sobriety of portrait-painting. His _Ignatius Loyola_ and _St. Francis Xavier_--of the former class--each seventeen feet high, by nearly thirteen wide--are stupendous productions ... in more senses than one. The latter is, indeed, in my humble judgment, the most marvellous specimen of the powers of the painter which I have ever seen... and you must remember that both England and France are not without some of his most celebrated productions--which I have frequently examined. In the _old German School_, the series is almost countless: and of the greatest possible degree of interest and curiosity. Here are to be seen _Wohlgemuths, Albert Durers,_ both the _Holbeins, Lucas Cranachs, Ambergaus,_ and _Burgmairs_ of all sizes and degrees of merit. Among these ancient specimens--which are placed in curious order, in the very upper suite of apartments, and of which the back-grounds of several, in one solid coat of gilt, lighten up the room like a golden sunset--you must not fail to pay particular attention to a singularly curious old subject--representing the _Life, Miracles, and Passion of our Saviour_, in a series of one hundred and fifty-eight pictures--of which the largest is nearly three feet square, and every other about fifteen inches by ten. These subjects are painted upon eighty-six small pieces of wood; of which seventy-two are contained in six folding cabinets, each cabinet holding twelve subjects. In regard to _Teniers, Gerard Dow, Mieris, Wouvermann,_ and _Cuyp_ ... you must look _at home_ for more exquisite specimens. This collection contains, in the whole, not fewer than FIFTEEN HUNDRED PAINTINGS: of which the greater portion consists of pictures of very large dimensions. I could have lived here for a month; but could only move along with the hurried step, and yet more hurrying eye, of an ordinary visitor[146]. About three English miles from the Great Belvedere--or rather about the same number of miles from Vienna, to the right, as you approach the Capital--is the famous palace of SCHÖNBRUNN. This is a sort of summer-residence of the Emperor; and it is here that his daughter, the ex-Empress of France, and the young Bonaparte usually reside. The latter never goes into Italy, when his mother, as Duchess of Parma, pays her annual visit to her principality. At this moment her Son is at Baden, with the court. It was in the Schönbrunn palace that his father, on the conquest of Vienna, used to take up his abode; rarely, venturing into the city. He was surely safe enough here; as every chamber and every court yard was filled by the élite of his guard--whether as officers or soldiers. It is a most magnificent pile of building: a truly imperial residence--but neither the furniture nor the objects of art, whether connected with sculpture or painting, are deserving of any thing in the shape of a _catalogue raisonné_. I saw the chamber where young Bonaparte frequently passes the day; and brandished his flag staff, and beat upon his drum. He is a soldier (as they tell me) every inch of him; and rides out, through the streets of Vienna, in a carriage of state drawn by four or six horses, receiving the _homages_ of the passing multitude. To return to the SCHÖNBRUNN PALACE. I have already told you that it is vast, and capable of accommodating the largest retinue of courtiers. It is of the _Gardens_ belonging to them, that I would now only wish to say a word. These gardens are really worthy of the residence to which they are attached. For what is called ornamental, formal, gardening--enriched by shrubs of rarity, and trees of magnificence--enlivened by fountains--adorned by sculpture--and diversified by vistos, lawns, and walks--interspersed with grottos and artificial ruins--you can conceive nothing upon a grander scale than these: while a menagerie in one place (where I saw a large but miserably wasted elephant)--a flower garden in another--a labyrinth in a third, and a solitude in a fourth place--each, in its turn; equally beguiles the hour and the walk. They are the most spacious gardens I ever witnessed. The preceding is all I can tell you, from actual observation, about the PALACES at Vienna. Those of the Noblesse, with the exception of that of Duke Albert, I have not visited; as I learn that the families are from home--and that the furniture is not arranged in the order in which one could wish it to be for the purpose of inspection or admiration. But I must not omit saying a word or two about the TREASURY--where the Court Jewels and Regalia are kept and where curious clocks and watches, of early Nuremburg manufacture, will not fail to strike and astonish the antiquary. But there are other objects, of a yet more powerful attraction: particularly a series of _crowns_ studded with gems and precious stones, from the time of Maximilian downwards. If I remember rightly, they shewed me here the crown which that famous Emperor himself wore. It is, comparatively, plain, ponderous, and massive. Among the more modern regal ornaments, I was shewn a precious diamond which fastened the cloak of the Emperor or Empress (I really forget which) on the day of coronation. It is large, oval-shaped, and, in particular points of view, seemed to flash a dazzling radiance throughout the room. It was therefore with a _refreshing_ sort of delight that I turned from "the wealth of either Ind" to feast upon a set of old china, upon which the drawings are said to have been furnished by the pencil of Raffaelle. I admit that this is a sort of _suspicious_ object of art: in other words, that, if all the old china, _said_ to be ornamented by the pencil of Raffaelle, were really the production of that great man, he could have done nothing else but paint upon baked earth from his cradle to his grave--and all the _oil paintings_ by him _must_ be spurious. The present, however, having been presented by the Pope, may be safely allowed to be genuine. In this suite of apartments--filled, from one extremity to the other, with all that is gay, and gorgeous, and precious, appertaining to royalty--I was particularly struck with the insignia of regality belonging to Bonaparte as King of Rome. It was a crown, sceptre, and robe--of which the two former were composed of metal, like brass--but of a form particularly chaste and elegant. There is great facility of access afforded for a sight of these valuable treasures, and I was surprised to find myself in a crowd of visitors at the outer door, who, upon gaining entrance, rushed forward in a sort of scrambling manner, and spread themselves in various directions about the apartment. Upon seeing one of the guides, I took him aside, and asked him in a quiet manner "what was done with all these treasures when the French visited their capital?" He replied quickly, and emphatically, "they were taken away, and safely lodged in the Emperor's Hungarian dominions." You may remember that the conclusion of my last letter left me just about to start to witness an entertainment called _Der Berggeist_, or the _Genius of the Mountain;_ and that, in the opening of this letter, I almost made boast of the gaiety of my evening amusements. In short, for a man fond of music--and in the country of GLUCK, MOZART and HAYDN--_not_ to visit the theatres, where a gratification of this sort, in all the perfection and variety of its powers, is held forth, might be considered a sort of heresy hardly to be pardoned. Accordingly, I have seen _Die Zauberflöte, Die Hochzeit des Figaro_, and _Don Giovanni:_ the two former quite enchantingly performed--but the latter greatly inferior to the representation of it at our own Opera House. The band, although less numerous than ours, seems to be perfect in every movement of the piece. You hear, throughout, a precision, clearness, and brilliancy of touch--together with a facility of execution, and fulness of instrumental tone--which almost impresses you with the conviction that the performers were _born_ musicians. The principal opera house, or rather that in which the principal singers are engaged, is near the palace, and is called _Im Theater nächst dem Kärnthnerthoc_. Here I saw the _Marriage of Figaro_ performed with great spirit and éclat. A young lady, a new performer of the name, of _Wranizth_, played Susannah in a style exquisitely naïve and effective. She was one of the most natural performers I ever saw; and her voice seemed to possess equal sweetness and compass. She is a rising favourite, and full of promise. Madame _Hönig_ played Mazelline rather heavily, and sung elaborately, but scientifically. The Germans are good natured creatures, and always prefer commendation to censure. Hence the plaudits with which these two rival syrens were received. The other, opera house, which is in the suburbs, and called _Schauspielhause_, is by much the larger and more commodious place of entertainment. I seized with avidity the first opportunity of seeing the _Zauberflöte_ here, and here also I saw Don Giovanni: the former as perfectly, in every respect, as the latter was inefficiently, performed. But here I saw the marvellous ballet, or afterpiece, called _Die Berggeist_; and I will tell you why I think it marvellous. It is entirely performed by children of all ages--from three to sixteen--with the exception of the venerable-bearded old gentleman, who is called the _Genius of the Mountain_. The author of the piece or ballet "von herrn Ballet-meister"--is _Friedrich Horschelt:_ who, if in such a department or vocation in society a man may be said (and why should he not?) to "deserve well of his country," is, I think, eminently entitled to that distinction. The truth is, that, all the little rogues (I do not speak literally) whom we saw before us upon the stage--and who amount to nearly one hundred and twenty in number--were absolutely beggar-children, and the offspring of beggars, or of the lowest possible classes in society. They earned a livelihood by the craft of asking alms. Mr. Horschelt conceived the plan of converting these hapless little vagabonds into members of some honest and useful calling. He saw an active little match girl trip across the street, and solicit alms in a very winning and even graceful manner--"that shall be my _columbine_," said he:--and she was so. A young lad of a sturdy form, and sluggish movement, is converted into a _clown_: a slim youth is made to personate _harlequin_--and thus he forms and puts into action the different characters of his entertainment... absolutely and exclusively out of the very lowest orders of society. To witness what these metamorphosed little creatures perform, is really to witness a miracle. Every thing they do is in consonance with a well-devised and well-executed plot. The whole is in harmony. They perform characters of different classes; sometimes allegorical, as præternatural beings--sometimes real, as rustics at one moment, and courtiers at another--but whether as fairies, or attendants upon goddesses--and whether the dance be formal or frolicksome--whether in groups of many, or in a pas de deux, or pas seul--they perform with surprising accuracy and effect. The principal performer, who had really been the little match girl above described, and who might have just turned her sixteenth year--would not have disgraced the boards of the Paris opera--at a moment, even, when Albert and Bigotini were engaged upon them. I never witnessed any thing more brilliant and more perfect than she was in all her evolutions and pirouettes. Nor are the lads behind hand in mettle and vigorous movement. One boy, about fourteen, almost divided the plaudits of the house with the fair nymph just mentioned--who, during the evening, had equally shone as a goddess, a queen, a fairy, and a columbine. The emperor of Austria, who is an excellent good man--and has really the moral welfare of his people at heart--was at first a little fearful about the _effect_ of this early metamorphosis of his subjects into actors and actresses; but he learnt, upon careful enquiry, that these children, when placed out in the world--as they generally are before seventeen, unless they absolutely prefer the profession in which they have been engaged--generally turn out to be worthy and good members of society. Their salaries are fixed and moderate, and thus superfluous wealth does not lead them into temptation. On the conclusion of the preceding piece, the stage was entirely filled by the whole juvenile _Corps Dramatique_--perhaps amounting to about one hundred and twenty in number. They were divided into classes, according to size, dress, and talent. After a succession of rapid evolutions, the whole group moved gently to the sound of soft music, while masses of purple tinted clouds descended, and alighted about them. Some were received into the clouds--which were then lifted up--and displayed groups of the smallest children upon their very summits, united by wreaths of roses; while the larger children remained below. The entire front of the stage, up to the very top, was occupied by the most extraordinary and most imposing sight I ever beheld--and as the clouds carried the whole of the children upwards, the curtain fell, and the piece concluded. On its conclusion, the audience were in a perfect frenzy of applause, and demanded the author to come forward and receive the meed of their admiration. He quickly obeyed their summons--and I was surprised, when I saw him, at the youthfulness of his appearance, the homeliness of his dress, and the simplicity of his manners. He thrice bowed to the audience, laying his hand the same number of times upon his heart. I am quite sure that, if he were to come to London, and institute the same kind of exhibition, he would entirely fill Drury Lane or Covent Garden--as I saw the _Schauspielhause_ filled--with parents and children from top to bottom. But a truce to _in-door_ recreations. You are longing, no doubt, to scent the evening breeze along the banks of the PRATER, or among the towering elms of the AUGARTEN--both public places of amusement within about a league of the ramparts of the city. It was the other Sunday evening when I visited the Prater, and when--as the weather happened to be very fine--it was considered to be full: but the absence of the court, and of the noblesse, necessarily gave a less joyous and splendid aspect to the carriages and their attendant liveries. In your way to this famous place of sabbath evening promenade, you pass a celebrated coffee house, in the suburbs, called the _Leopoldstadt_, which goes by the name of the _Greek coffee-house_--on account of its being almost entirely frequented by Greeks--so numerous at Vienna. Do not pass it, if you should ever come hither, without entering it--at least _once_. You would fancy yourself to be in Greece: so thoroughly characteristic are the countenances, dresses, and language of every one within. [Illustration: THE PRATER, VIENNA.] But yonder commences the procession ... of horse and foot: of cabriolets, family coaches, german waggons, cars, phaetons, and landaulets ... all moving in a measured manner, within their prescribed ranks, towards the PRATER. We must accompany them without loss of time. You now reach the Prater. It is an extensive flat, surrounded by branches of the Danube, and planted on each side with double rows of horse chesnut trees. The drive, in one straight line, is probably a league in length. It is divided by two roads, in one of which the company move _onward_, and in the other they _return_. Consequently, if you happen to find a hillock only a few feet high, you may, from thence, obtain a pretty good view of the interminable procession of the carriages before mentioned: one current of them, as it were, moving forward, and another rolling backward. But, hark!--the notes of a harp are heard to the left ... in a meadow, where the foot passengers often digress from the more formal tree-lined promenade. A press of ladies and gentlemen is quickly seen. You mingle involuntarily with them: and, looking forward, you observe a small stage erected, upon which a harper sits and two singers stand. The company now lie down upon the grass, or break into standing groups, or sit upon chairs hired for the occasion--to listen to the notes so boldly and so feelingly executed.[147] The clapping of hands, and exclamations of bravo! succeed: and the sounds of applause, however warmly bestowed, quickly die away in the open air. The performers bow: receive a few kreutschers ... retire; and are well satisfied. The sound of the trumpet is now heard behind you. Tilting feats are about to be performed: the coursers snort and are put in motion: their hides are bathed in sweat beneath their ponderous housings; and the blood, which flows freely from the pricks of their riders' spurs, shews you with what earnestness the whole affair is conducted. There, the ring is thrice carried off at the point of the lance. Feats of horsemanship follow in a covered building, to the right; and the juggler, conjurer, or magician, displays his dexterous feats, or exercises his potent spells ... in a little amphitheatre of trees, at a distance beyond. Here and there rise more stately edifices, as theatres ... from the doors of which a throng of heated spectators is pouring out, after having indulged their grief or joy at the Mary Stuart of Schiller, or the----of----.. In other directions, booths, stalls, and tables are fixed; where the hungry eat, the thirsty drink, and the merry-hearted indulge in potent libations. The waiters are in a constant state of locomotion. Rhenish wine sparkles here; confectionary glitters there; and fruit looks bright and tempting in a third place. No guest turns round to eye the company; because he is intent upon the luxuries which invite his immediate attention--or he is in close conversation with an intimate friend, or a beloved female. They talk and laugh,--and the present seems to be the happiest moment of their lives. All is gaiety and good humour. You return again to the foot-promenade, and look sharply about you, as you move onward, to catch the spark of beauty, or admire the costume of taste, or confess the power of expression. It is an Albanian female who walks yonder ... wondering, and asking questions, at every thing she sees. The proud Jewess, supported by her husband and father, moves in another direction. She is covered with brocade and flaunting ribbands; but she is abstracted from every thing around her ... because her eyes are cast downwards upon her stomacher, or sideways to obtain a glimse of what may be called her spangled epaulettes. Her eye is large and dark: her nose is aquiline: her complexion is of an olive brown: her stature is majestic, her dress is gorgeous, her gait is measured--and her demeanour is grave and composed. "She _must_ be very rich," you say--as she passes on. "She is _prodigiously_ rich," replies the friend, to whom you put the question:--for seven virgins, with nosegays of choicest flowers, held up her bridal train; and the like number of youths, with silver-hilted swords, and robes of ermine and satin, graced the same bridal ceremony. Her father thinks he can never do enough for her; and her husband, that he can never love her sufficiently. Whether she be happy or not, in consequence, we have no time to stop to enquire ... for, see yonder! three "turbaned Turks" make their advances. How gaily, how magnificently they are attired! What finely proportioned limbs--what beautifully formed features! They have been carousing, peradventure, with some young Greeks--who have just saluted them, en passant--at the famous coffee-house before-mentioned. Every thing around you is novel and striking; while the verdure of the trees and lawns is yet fresh, and the sun does not seem yet disposed to sink below the horizon. The carriages still move on, and return, in measured procession. Those who are within, look earnestly from the windows--to catch a glance of their passing friends. The fair hand is waved here; the curiously-painted fan is shaken there; and the repeated nod is seen in almost every other passing landaulet. Not a heart seems sad; not a brow appears to be clouded with care. Such--or something like the foregoing--is the scene which usually passes on a Sunday evening--perhaps six months out of the twelve--upon the famous PRATER at Vienna; while the tolling bell of St. Stephen's tower, about nine o'clock--and the groups of visitors hurrying back, to get home before the gates of the city are shut against them--usually conclude the scene just described. And now, my good friend, methinks I have given you a pretty fair account of the more prominent features of this city--in regard to its public sights; whether as connected with still or active life: as churches, palaces, or theatres. It remains, therefore, to return again, briefly, but yet willingly, to the subject of BOOKS; or rather, to the notice of two _Private Collections,_ especially deserving of description--and of which, the first is that of the EMPEROR HIMSELF. His Majesty's collection of Books and Prints is kept upon the second and third floors of a portion of the building connected with the great Imperial library. Mr. T. YOUNG is the librarian; and he also holds the honourable office of being Secretary of his Majesty's privy council. He is well deserving of both situations, for he fills them with ability and success. He has the perfect appearance of an Englishman, both in figure and face. As he speaks French readily and perfectly well, our interviews have been frequent, and our conversations such as have led me to think that we shall not easily forget each other. But for the library, of which he is the guardian. It is contained in three or four rooms of moderate dimensions, and has very much the appearance of an English Country Gentleman's collection of about 10,000 volumes. The bindings are generally in good taste: in full-gilt light and gray calf--with occasional folios and quartos resplendent in morocco and gold. I hardly know when I have seen a more cheerful and comfortable looking library; and was equally gratified to find such a copious sprinkling of publications from Old England. But my immediate, and indeed principal object, was, a list of a few of the _Rarities_ of the Emperor's private collection, as well in ms. as in print. Mr. Young placed before me much that was exquisite and interesting in the former, and splendid and creditable in the latter, department. He begged of me to judge with my own eyes, and determine for myself; and he would then supply me with a list of what he considered to be most valuable and splendid in the collection. Accordingly, what here ensues, must be considered as the united descriptions of my guide and myself:--Mr. Young having composed his memoranda in the Latin language. First, of the MANUSCRIPTS. The _Gospels;_ a vellum folio:--with illuminated capitals, and thirteen larger paintings, supposed to be of the thirteenth--but I suspect rather of the fourteenth--century. A _Breviary ... "for the use of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy_" This vellum MS. is of the fifteenth century, and was executed for the distinguished character to whom it is expressly dedicated. This is really an elegant volume: written in the gothic character of the period, and sprinkled with marginal and capital initial decorations. Here are--as usual in works of this kind, executed for princes and great men--divers illuminations of figures of saints, of which there are three of larger size than the rest: and, of these three, one is eminently interesting, as exhibiting a small portrait of DUKE CHARLES himself, kneeling before his tutelary saint. Here is an exceedingly pretty octavo volume of _Hours,_ of the fifteenth century, fresh and sparkling in its illuminations, with marginal decorations of flowers, monsters, and capriccios. It is in the binding of the time--the wood, covered with gilt ornaments. _Office of the Virgin:_ a neat vellum MS. of the fourteenth century--with ornamented capital initials and margins, and about two dozen of larger illuminations. But the chief attraction of this MS. arises from the text having been written by four of the most celebrated Princesses of the House of Austria, whose names are inscribed in the first fly leaf. Here is a "_Boccace des Cas des Nobles_" by Laurent Premier Fait--which is indeed every where. Nor must a sprinkle of _Roman Classics_ be omitted to be noticed, however briefly. A _Celsus, Portions of Livy,_ the _Metamorphosis of Ovid_, _Seneca's Tragedies_, the _Æneid of Virgil_, and _Juvenal_: none, I think, of a later period than the beginning or middle of the fifteenth century--just before the invention of printing. Among the MSS. of a miscellaneous class, are two which I was well pleased to examine: namely, the _Funerailles des Reines de France_, in folio--adorned with eleven large illuminations of royal funerals--and a work entitled _Mayni Jasonis Juris consulti Eq. Rom. Cæs., &c, Epitalamion, in_ 4to. The latter MS. is, in short, an epithalamium upon the marriage of Maximilian the Great and Blanche Maria, composed by M. Jaso, who was a ducal senator, and attached to the embassy which returned with the destined bride for Maximilian. What is its _chief_ ornament, in my estimation, are two sweetly executed small portraits of the royal husband and his consort. I was earnest to have fac-similes of them; and Mr. Young gave me the strongest assurances that my wishes should be attended to.[148] Thus much; or perhaps thus little, for the MSS. Still more brief must be my account of the PRINTED BOOKS: and first for a fifteener or two. It is an edition of _Dio Chrysostom de Regno_, without date, or name of printer, in 4to.; but most decidedly executed (as I told Mr. Young) by _Valdarfer_. What renders this copy exceedingly precious is, that it is printed UPON VELLUM; and is, I think, the only known copy so executed. It is in beautiful condition. Here is a pretty volume of _Hours_, in Latin, with a French metrical version, printed in the fifteenth century, without date, and struck off UPON VELLUM. It has wood-cuts, which are coloured of the time. From a copy of ms. verses, at the beginning of the volume, we learn that "the author of this metrical version was _Peter Gringore,_ commonly called _Vaudemont_, herald at arms to the Duke of Lorraine; who dedicated and brought this very copy to _Renatus of Bourbon_." I was much struck with a magnificent folio _Missal_, printed at Venice by that skilful typographical artist _I.H. de Landoia,_ in 1488--UPON VELLUM: with the cuts coloured.[149] A few small vellum _Hours_ by _Vostre_ and Vivian are sufficiently pretty. In the class of books printed upon vellum, and continuing with the sixteenth century, I must not fail to commence with the notice of two copies of the _Tewrdannckh_, each of the date of 1517, and each UPON VELLUM. One is coloured, and the other not coloured. Mr. Young describes the former in the following animated language: "Exemplar omnibus numeris absolutum, optimeque servatum. Præstantissimum, rarissimumque tum typographicæ, tum xylographicæ artis, monumentum." _Lucani Pharsalia,_ 1811. Folio. Printed by Degen. A beautiful copy, of a magnificent book, UPON VELLUM; illustrated by ten copper plates. _M.C. Frontonis Opera: edidit Maius Mediol_. 1815. 4to. An unique copy; upon vellum. _Flore Medicale decrite par Chaumeton & peinte par Mme. E. Panckoucke & I.F. Turpin. Paris,_ 1814. Supposed to be unique, as a vellum copy; with the original drawings, and the cuts printed in bistre. Here is also a magnificent work, called "_Omaggio delle Provincie Venetæ_" upon the nuptials of the present Emperor and Empress of Austria. It consists of seventeen copper-plates, printed upon vellum, and preserved in two cases, covered with beautiful ornaments and figures, in worked gold and silver, &c. Of this magnificent production of art, there were two copies only printed upon vellum, and this is one of them. Up stairs, on the third floor, is kept his Majesty's COLLECTION of ENGRAVED PORTRAITS--which amount, as Mr. Young informed me, to not fewer than 120,000 in number. They commence with the earliest series, from the old German and Italian masters, and descend regularly to our own times. Of course such a collection contains very much that is exquisite and rare in the series of _British Portraits_. Mr. Young is an Italian by birth; but has been nurtured, from earliest youth, in the Austrian dominions. He is a man of strong cultivated parts, and so fond of the literature of the "_Zodiacus Vitæ_" of _Marcellus Palingenius_--translated by our _Barnabe Googe_: of the editions of which translation he was very desirous that I should procure him a copious and correct list. But it is the gentle and obliging manners--the frank and open-hearted conversation--and, above all, the high-minded devotedness to his Royal master and to his interests, that attach, and ever will attach, Mr. Young to me--by ties of no easily dissoluble nature. We have parted ... perhaps never to meet again; but he may rest assured that the recollection of his kindnesses ("Semper honos nomenque," &c.) will never be obliterated from my memory.[150] Scarcely a stone's throw from the Imperial Library, is the noble mansion of the venerable DUKE ALBERT of _Saxe-Teschen:_ the husband of the lady to whose memory Canova has erected the proudest trophy of his art. This amiable and accomplished nobleman has turned his eightieth year; and is most liberal and kind in the display of all the treasures which belong to him.[151] These "treasures" are of a first-rate character; both as to _Drawings_ and _Prints_. He has no rival in the _former_ department, and even surpasses the Emperor in the latter. I visited and examined his collection (necessarily in a superficial manner) twice; paying only particular attention to the drawings of the Italian school--including those of Claude Lorraine. I do not know what is in our _own_ royal collection, but I may safely say that our friend Mr. Ottley has some finer _Michel Angelos and Raffaelles_--and the Duke of Devonshire towers, beyond all competition, in the possession of _Claude Lorraines_. Yet you are to know that the drawings of Duke Albert amount to nearly 12,000 in number. They are admirably well arranged--in a large, light room--overlooking the ramparts. Having so recently examined the productions of the earlier masters in the German school, at Munich--but more particularly in Prince Eugene's collection of prints, in the Imperial Library here--I did not care to look after those specimens of the same masters which were in the port folios of the Duke Albert. The _Albert Durer_ drawings, however, excited my attention, and extorted the warmest commendation. It is quite delightful to learn (for so M. Bartsch told me--the Duke himself being just now at Baden) that this dignified and truly respectable old man, yet takes delight in the treasures of his own incomparable collection. "Whenever I visit him (said my "fidus Achates" M.B.) he begs me to take a chair and sit beside him; and is anxious to obtain intelligence of any thing curious, or rare, or beautiful, which may add to the worth of his collection." It is now high time, methinks, to take leave not only of public and private collections of books, but of almost every thing else in Vienna. Yet I must add a word connected with literature and the fine arts. As to the former, it seems to sleep soundly. Few or no literary societies are encouraged, few public discussions are tolerated, and the capital of the empire is without either _reviews_ or _institutions_--which can bear the least comparison with our own. The library of the University is said, however, to hold fourscore thousand volumes. Few critical works are published there; and for _one_ Greek or Roman classic put forth at Vienna, they have _half_ a _score_ at Leipsic, Franckfort, Leyden, and Strasbourg. But in Oriental literature, M. Hammer is a tower of strength, and justly considered to be the pride of his country. The Academy of Painting is here a mere shadow of a shade. In the fine arts, Munich is as six to one beyond Vienna. A torpidity, amounting to infatuation, seems to possess those public men who have influence both on the councils and prosperity of their country. When the impulse for talent, furnished by the antique gems belonging to the Imperial collection,[152] is considered, it is surprising how little has been accomplished at Vienna for the last century. M. Bartsch is, however, a proud exception to any reproach arising from the want of indigenous talent. His name and performances alone are a host against such captious imputations.[153] There wants only a few wiser heads, and more active spirits, in some of the upper circles of society, and Vienna might produce graphic works as splendid as they would be permanent. We will now leave the city for the country, or rather for the immediate neighbourhood of Vienna; and then, having, I think, sent you a good long Vienna despatch, must hasten to take leave--not only of yourself, but of this metropolis. Whether I shall again write to you before I cross the Rhine on my return home--is quite uncertain. Let me therefore make the most of the present: which indeed is of a most unconscionable length. Turn, for one moment, to the opening of it--and note, there, some mention made of certain monasteries--one of which is situated at CLOSTERNEUBURG, the other in the suburbs. I will first take you to the former--a pleasant drive of about nine miles from hence. Mr. Lewis, myself, and our attendant Rohfritsch, hired a pair of horses for the day; and an hour and a half brought us to a good inn, or Restaurateur's immediately opposite the monastery in question. In our route thither, the Danube continued in sight all the way--which rendered the drive very pleasant. The river may be the best part of a mile broad, near the monastery. The sight of the building in question was not very imposing, after those which I had seen in my route to Vienna. The monastery is, in fact, an incomplete edifice; but the foundations of the building are of an ancient date.[154] Having postponed our dinner to a comparatively late hour, I entered, as usual, upon the business of the monastic visit. The court-yard, or quadrangle, had a mean appearance; but I saw enough of architectural splendour to convince me that, if this monastery had been completed according to the original design, it would have ranked among the noblest in Austria. On obtaining admission, I enquired for the librarian, but was told that he had not yet (two o'clock) risen from dinner. I apologised for the intrusion, and begged respectfully to be allowed to wait till he should be disposed to leave the dining-room. The attendant, however, would admit of no such arrangement; for he instantly disappeared, and returned with a monk, habited in the _Augustine_ garb, with a grave aspect and measured step. He might be somewhere about forty years of age. As he did not understand a word of French, it became necessary again to brush up my Latin. He begged I would follow him up stairs, and in the way to the library, would not allow me to utter one word further in apology for my supposed rudeness in bringing him thus abruptly from his "symposium." A more good natured man seemingly never opened his lips. Having reached the library, the first thing he placed before me--as the boast and triumph of their establishment--was, a large paper copy (in quarto) of an edition of the _Hebrew Bible_, edited by I. Hahn, one of their fraternity, and published in 1806, 4 vols.[155] This was accomplished under the patronage of the Head of the Monastery, _Gaudentius Dunkler_: who was at the sole expense of the paper and of procuring new Hebrew types. I threw my eye over the dedication to the President, by Hahn, and saw the former with pleasure recognised as the MODERN XIMENES. Having thanked the librarian for a sight of these volumes--of which there is an impression in an octavo and cheap form, "for the use of youth"--I begged that I might have a sight of the _Incunabula Typographica_ of which I had heard a high character. He smiled, and said that a few minutes would suffice to undeceive me in this particular. Whereupon he placed before me ... such a set of genuine, unsoiled, uncropt, _undoctored_, ponderous folio tomes ... as verily caused my eyes to sparkle, and my heart to leap! They were, upon the whole---and for their number--_such_ copies as I had never before seen. You have here a very accurate account of them--taken, with the said copies "oculis subjectis." _St. Austin de Civitate Dei_, 1467. _Folio_. A very large and sound copy, in the original binding of wood; but not free from a good deal of ms. annotation. _Mentelin's German Bible_; somewhat cropt, and in its second binding, but sound and perfect. _Supposed first German Bible_: a large and fine copy, in its first binding of wood. _Apuleius_, 1469. Folio. The largest and finest copy which, I think, I ever beheld--with the exception of some slight worm holes at the end. _Livius_, 1470. Folio. 2 vols. _Printed by V. de Spira._ In the original binding. When I say that this copy appears to be full as fine as that in the collection of Mr. Grenville, I bestow upon it the highest possible commendation. _Plutarchi Vit. Parall._ 2 vol. Folio. In the well known peculiarly shaped letter R. This copy, in one magnificent folio volume, is the largest and finest I ever saw: but--eheu! a few leaves are wanting at the end. _Polybius. Lat._ 1473. Folio. The printers are Sweynheym and Pannartz. A large, fine copy; in the original binding of wood: but four leaves at the end, with a strong foxy tint at top, are worm-eaten in the middle. Let me pursue this _amusing_ strain; for I have rarely, within so small a space--in any monastic library I have hitherto visited--found such a sprinkling of classical volumes. _Plinius Senior_, 1472. Folio. Printed by Jenson. A prodigiously fine, large copy. A ms. note, prefixed, says: "_hunc librum comparuit Jacobus Pemperl pro viij t d. an [14]88," &c. Xenophontis Cyropædia_. Lat. _Curante Philelpho_. With the date of the translation, 1467. A very fine copy of a well printed book. _Mammotrectus_, 1470. Folio. Printed by Schoeffher. A fine, white, tall copy; in its original wooden binding. _Sti. Jeronimi Epistolæ_. 1470. Folio. Printed by Sweynheym and Pannartz. In one volume: for size and condition probably unrivalled. In its first binding of wood. _Gratiani Decretales_. 1472. Folio. Printed by Schoeffher. UPON VELLUM: in one enormous folio volume, and in an unrivalled state of perfection. Perhaps, upon the whole, the finest vellum Schoeffher in existence. It is in its original binding, but some of the leaves are loose. _Opus Consiliorum I. de Calderi_. 1472. Idem Opus: _Anthonii de Burtrio_. 1472. Folio. Each work printed by _Adam Rot, Metensis_: a rare printer, but of whose performances I have now seen a good number of specimens. These works are in one volume, and the present is a fine sound copy. _Petri Lombardi Quat. Lib. Sentent_. Folio. This book is without name of printer or date; but I should conjecture it to be executed in Eggesteyn's largest gothic character, and, from a ms. memorandum at the end, we are quite sure that the book was printed in 1471 at latest. The memorandum is as follows: "_Iste liber est magistri Leonardi Fruman de Hyersaw_, 1471." Such appeared to me to be the choicer, and more to be desiderated, volumes in the monastic library of Closterneuberg--which a visit of about a couple of hours only enabled me to examine. I say "_desiderated_"--my good friend--because, on returning home, I revolved within myself what might be done with propriety towards the _possession_ of them.[156] Having thanked the worthy librarian, and expressed the very great satisfaction afforded me by a sight of the books in question--which had fully answered the high character given of them--I returned to the auberge--dined with an increased appetite in consequence of such a sight--and, picking up a "white stone," as a lucky omen, being at the very extent of my _Bibliographical_, _Antiquarian_, and _Picturesque Tour_--returned to Vienna, to a late cup of tea; well satisfied, in every respect, with this most agreeable excursion. There now remains but one more subject to be noticed--and, then, farewell to this city--and hie for Manheim, Paris, and Old England! That one subject is again connected with old books and an old Monastery ... which indeed the opening of this letter leads you to anticipate. In that part of the vast suburbs of Vienna which faces the north, and which is called the ROSSAU--there stands a church and a _Capuchin convent_, of some two centuries antiquity: the latter, now far gone to decay both in the building and revenues. The outer gate of the convent was opened--as at the Capuchin convent which contains the imperial sepulchres--by a man with a long, bushy, and wiry beard ... who could not speak one word of French. I was alone, and a hackney coach had conveyed me thither. What was to be done. "_Bibliothecam hujusce Monasterii valdè videre cupio--licetne Domine?"_ The monk answered my interrogatory with a sonorous "_imo_:" and the gates closing upon us, I found myself in the cloisters--where my attendant left me, to seek the Principal and librarian. In two minutes, I observed a couple of portly Capuchins, pacing the pavement of the cloister, and approaching me with rather a hurried step. On meeting, they saluted me formally--and assuming a cheerful air, begged to conduct me to the library. We were quickly within a room, of very moderate dimensions, divided into two compartments, of which the shelves were literally thronged and crammed with books, lying in all directions, and completely covered with dust. It was impossible to make a selection from such an indigested farrago: but the backs happening to be lettered, this afforded me considerable facility. I was told that the "WHOLE LIBRARY WAS AT MY DISPOSAL!"--which intelligence surprised and somewhat staggered me. The monks seemed to enjoy my expression of astonishment. I went to work quickly; and after upwards of an hour's severe rummaging, among uninteresting folios and quartos of medicine, canon-law, scholastic metaphysics, and dry comments upon the decretals of Popes Boniface and Gratian--it was rather from courtesy, than complete satisfaction, that I pitched upon a few ... of a miscellaneous description--begging to have the account, for which the money should be immediately forthcoming. They replied that my wishes should be instantly attended to--but that it would be necessary to consult together to reconsider the prices--and that a porter should be at the hotel of the _Crown of Hungary_, with the volumes selected--to await my final decision. As a _book-bill_ sent from a monastery, and written in the Latin language, may be considered _unique_ in our country--and a curiosity among the _Roxburghers _--I venture to send you a transcript of it: premising, that I retained the books, and paid down the money: somewhere about _6l. 16s. 6d_. You will necessarily smile at the epithets bestowed upon your friend. Plurimum Reverende, ac Venerande Domine! Mitto cum hisce, quos tibi seligere placuit, libros, eosdemque hic breviter describo, addito pretio, quo nobis conventum est; et quidem ex catalogo desumptos: Florins. Missale Rom. pro Pataviensis Ecclæ ritu. 1494 5 Missa defunctorum. 1499 3 Val. Martialis Epigrammatum opus. 1475 25 Xenophontis Apologia Socratis 3 Epulario &c. 1 De Conceptu et triplici Mariæ V. Candore 1 ac demum Trithemii Annales Hirsaug. et Aristotelis opera Edit. Sylburgii 35 ----- 73 Quæ cuncta Tibi optime convenire, Teque valere perpetim precor et opto. P. JOAN. SARCANDER MRA. _Ord. Serv. B.M.V._ This is the last _bibliomaniacal_ transaction in which I am likely to be engaged at Vienna; for, within thirty-six hours from hence, the post horses will be in the archway of this hotel, with their heads turned towards Old England. In that direction my face will be also turned ... for the next month or five weeks to come; being resolved upon spending the best part of a fortnight of those five weeks, at _Ratisbon_, _Nuremberg_, and _Manheim_. You may therefore expect to hear from me again--certainly for the _last_ time--at Manheim, just before crossing the Rhine for Chalons sur Marne, Metz, and Paris. I shall necessarily have but little leisure on the road--for a journey of full 500 miles is to be encountered before I reach the hither bank of the Rhine at Manheim. Farewell then to VIENNA:--a long, and perhaps final farewell! If I have arrived at a moment when this capital is comparatively thinned of its population, and bereft of its courtly splendors--and if this city may be said to be _now_ dull, compared with what its _winter_ gaieties will render it--I shall nevertheless not have visited it IN VAIN. Books, whether as MSS. or printed volumes, have been inspected by me with an earnestness and profitable result--not exceeded by any previous similar application: while the company of men of worth, of talents, and of kindred tastes, has rendered my social happiness complete. The best of hearts, and the friendliest of dispositions, are surely to be found in the capital of Austria. Farewell. It is almost the hour of midnight--and not a single note of the harp or violin is to be heard in the streets. The moon shines softly and sweetly. God bless you. [134] In Hartman Schedel's time, these suburbs seem to have been equally distinguished. "Habet (says he, speaking of Vienna) SUBURBIA MAXIMA et AMBICIOSA." _Chron. Norimb._ 1493. fol. xcviii. rev. [135] Schedel's general description of the city of Vienna, which is equally brief and spirited, may deserve to be quoted. "VIENNA autem urbs magnifica ambitu murorum cingitur duorum millium passuum: habet fossa et vallo cincta: urbs autem fossatum magnum habet: undique aggerem prealtum: menia deinde spissa et sublimia frequentesque turres; et propugnacula ad bellum prompta. Ædes civium amplae et ornatae: structura solida et firma, altæ domorum facies magnificaeque visuntur. Unum id dedecori est, quod tecta plerumque ligna contegunt pauca lateres. Cetera edificia muro lapideo consistunt. Pictæ domus, et interius et exterius splendent. Ingressus cuiusque domum in ædes te principis venisse putabis." _Ibid._ This is not an exaggerated description. A little below, Schedel says "there is a monastery, called St. Jerome, (much after the fashion of our _Magdalen_) in which reformed Prostitutes are kept; and where, day and night, they sing hymns in the Teutonic dialect. If any of them are found relapsing into their former sinful ways, they are thrown headlong into the Danube." "But (adds he) they lead, on the contrary, a chaste and holy life." [136] I suspect that the houses opposite the Palace are of comparatively recent construction. In _Pfeffel's Viva et Accurata Delineatio_ of the palaces and public buildings of Vienna, 1725 (oblong folio,) the palace faces a wide place or square. Eighteen sculptured human figures, apparently of the size of life, there grace the topmost ballustrade in the copper-plate view of this truly magnificent residence. [137] [Recently however the number of _Restaurateurs_ has become considerable.] [138] In Hartmann Schedel's time, there appears to have been a very considerable traffic in wine at Vienna: "It is incredible (says he) what a brisk trade is stirring in the article of wine,[139] in this city. Twelve hundred horses are daily employed for the purposes of draught--either for the wine drank at Vienna, or sent up the Danube--against the stream--with amazing labour and difficulty. It is said that the wine cellars are frequently as deep _below_ the earth, as the houses are _above_ it." Schedel goes on to describe the general appearance of the streets, and the neatness of the interiors, of the houses: adding, "that the windows are generally filled with stained glass, having iron-gratings without, where numerous birds sing in cages. The winter (remarks he) sets in here very severely." _Chron. Norimb_. 1493, fol. xcix. [139] The vintage about Vienna should seem to have been equally abundant a century after the above was written. In the year 1590, when a severe shock of earthquake threatened destruction to the tower of the Cathedral--and it was absolutely necessary to set about immediate repairs--the _liquid_ which was applied to make the most astringent _mortar_, was WINE: "l'on se servit de _vin,_ qui fut alors en abondance, pour faire le _plâtre_ de cette batise." _Denkmahle der Baukunst und Bildneren des Mittelalters in dem Oesterreichischen Kaiserthume_. Germ. Fr. Part iii. p. 36. 1817-20. [140] There is a good sized (folded) view of the church, or rather chiefly of the south front of the spire, in the "_Vera et Accurata Delineatio Omnium Templorum et Cænobiorum_" of Vienna, published by Pfeffel in the year 1724, oblong folio. [141] This head has been published as the first plate in the third livraison of the ECCLESIASTICAL ANTIQUITIES of Vienna--accompanied by French and German letter-press. I have no hesitation in saying that, without the least national bias or individual partiality, the performance of Mr. Lewis--although much smaller, is by far the most _faithful_; nor is the engraving less superior, than the drawing, to the production of the Vienna artist. This latter is indeed faithless in design and coarse in execution. Beneath the head, in the original sculpture, and in the latter plate, we read the inscription M.A.P. 1313. It is no doubt an interesting specimen of sculpture of the period. [142] Vol. ii. p. 312-313. [143] There is a large print of it (which I saw at Vienna) in the line manner, but very indifferently executed. But of the last, detached group, above described, there is a very fine print in the line manner. [144] See p. 245 ante. [145] As in that of the _Feast of Venus in the island of Cythera_: about eleven feet by seven. There is also another, of himself, in the Garden of Love--with his two wives--in the peculiarly powerful and voluptuous style of his pencil. The picture is about four feet long. His portrait of one of his wives, of the size of life, habited only in an ermine cloak at the back (of which the print is well known) is an extraordinary production ... as to colour and effect. [146] I am not sure whether any publication, connected with this extraordinary collection, has appeared since _Chrétien de Mechel's Catalogue des Tableaux de la Galerie Impériale et Royale de Vienne_; 1784, 8vo.: which contains, at the end, four folded copper-plates of the front elevations and ground plans of the Great and Little Belvederes. He divides his work into the _Venetian, Roman, Florentine, Bolognese_, and _Ancient and Modern Flemish Schools_: according to the different chambers or apartments. This catalogue is a mere straight-forward performance; presenting a formal description of the pictures, as to size and subject, but rarely indulging in warmth of commendation, and never in curious and learned research. The preface, from which I have gleaned the particulars of the History of the Collection, is sufficiently interesting. My friend M. Bartsch, if leisure and encouragement were afforded him, might produce a magnificent and instructive work--devoted to this very extraordinary collection. (Upon whom, NOW, shall this task devolve?!) [147] See the OPPOSITE PLATE. [148] The truth is, not only fac-similes of these illuminations, but of the initial L, so warmly mentioned at page 292, were executed by M. Fendi, under the direction of my friend M. Bartsch, and dispatched to me from Vienna in the month of June 1820--but were lost on the road. [149] Lord Spencer has recently obtained a copy of this exquisitely printed book from the M'Carthy collection. See the _Ædes Althorpianæ;_ vol. ii. p. 192. [150] [I annex, with no common gratification, a fac-simile of the Autograph of this most worthy man, [Illustration]] [151] He has (_now_) been _dead_ several years. [152] ECKHEL'S work upon these gems, in 1788, folio, is well known. The apotheosis of Augustus, in this collection, is considered as an unrivalled specimen of art, upon sardonyx. I regretted much not to have seen these gems, but the floor of the room in which they are preserved was taken up, and the keeper from home. [153] It will be only necessary to mention--for the establishment of this fact--the ENGRAVED WORKS alone of M. Bartsch, from masters of every period, and of every school, amounting to 505 in number: an almost incredible effort, when we consider that their author has scarcely yet passed his grand climacteric. His _Peintre Graveur_ is a literary performance, in the graphic department, of really solid merit and utility. The record of the achievements of M. Bartsch has been perfected by the most affectionate and grateful of all hands--those of his son, _Frederic de Bartsch_--in an octavo volume, which bears the following title, and which has the portrait (but not a striking resemblance) of the father prefixed:--"_Catalogue des Estampes de_ J. ADAM de BARTSCH, _Chevalier de l'Ordre de Léopold, Conseiller aulique et Premier Garde de la Bibl. Imp. et Roy. de la Cour, Membre de l'Academie des Beaux Arts de Vienne_." 1818. 8vo. pp. 165. There is a modest and sensible preface by the son--in which we are informed that the catalogue was not originally compiled for the purpose of making it public. The following is a fac-simile of the Autograph of this celebrated graphical Critic and Artist. [Illustration] [154] The MONASTERY of CLOSTERNEUBURG, or Nevenburg, or Nuenburg, or Newburg, or Neunburg--is supposed to have been built by Leopold the Pious in the year 1114. It was of the order of St. Augustin. They possess (at the monastery, it should seem) a very valuable chronicle, of the XIIth century, upon vellum--devoted to the history of the establishment; but unluckily defective at the beginning and end. It is supposed to have been written by the head of the monastery, for the time being. It is continued by a contemporaneous hand, down to the middle of the fourteenth century. They preserve also, at Closterneuburg, a Necrology--of five hundred years--down to the year 1721. "Inter cæteros præstantes veteres codices manuscriptos, quos INSIGNIS BIBLIOTHECA CLAUSTRO-NEOBURGENSIS servat, est pervetus inclytæ ejusdem canoniæ Necrologium, ante annos quingentos in membranis elegantissimè manu exaratum, et a posteriorum temporum auctoribus continuatum." _Script. Rer. Austriacar. Cura Pez._ 1721. vol. 1. col. 435, 494. [155] The librarian, MAXIMILIAN FISCHER, informed me the quarto copies were rare, for that only 400 were printed. The octavo copies are not so, but they do not contain all the marginal references which are in the quarto impressions. [156] In fact, I wrote a letter to the librarian, the day after my visit, proposing to give 2000 florins in specie for the volumes above described. My request was answered by the following polite, and certainly most discreet and commendable reply: "D....Domine! Litteris a Te 15. Sept. scriptis et 16 Sept. a me receptis, de Tuo desiderio nonnullos bibliothecæ nostræ libros pro pecunia acquirendi, me certiorem reddidisti; ast mihi respondendum venit, quod tuis votis obtemperare non possim. Copia horum librorum ad cimelium bibliothecæ Claustroneoburgensis merito refertur, et maxima sunt in æstimatione apud omnes confratres meos; porro, lege civili cautum est, ne libri et res rariores Abbatiarum divenderentur. Si unum aliumve horum, ceu duplicatum, invenissem, pro æquissimo pretio in signum venerationis transmisissem. "Ad alia, si præstare possem, officia, me paratissimum invenies, simulque Te obsecro, me æstimatorem tui sincerrimum reputes, hinc me in ulteriorem recordationem commendo, ac dignum me æstimes quod nominare me possem, ... dominationis Tuæ _E Canonia Claustroneoburgensi_, addictissimum 17 _Septbr_ 1818. MAXIMILIANUM FISCHER. Can. reg. Bibliothec. et Archivar." _Supplement_. RATISBON, NUREMBERG, MANHEIM. _Supplement_. Having found it impracticable to write to my friend--on the route from Vienna to Paris, and from thence to London--the reader is here presented with a few SUPPLEMENTAL PARTICULARS with which that route furnished me; and which, I presume to think, will not be considered either misplaced or uninteresting. They are arranged quite in the manner of MEMORANDA, or heads: not unaccompanied with a regret that the limits of this work forbid a more extended detail. I shall immediately, therefore, conduct the reader from Vienna to RATISBON. I left VIENNA, with my travelling companion, within two days after writing the last letter, dated from that place--upon a beautiful September morning. But ere we had reached _St. Pölten_, the face of the heavens was changed, and heavy rain accompanied us till we got to Mölk, where we slept: not however before I had written a note to the worthy _Benedictine Fraternity_ at the monastery--professing my intention of breakfasting with them the next morning. This self-invitation was joyfully accepted, and the valet, who returned with the written answer, told me that it was a high day of feasting and merry-making at the monastery--and that he had left the worthy Monks in the plenitude of their social banquet. We were much gratified the next morning, not only by the choice and excellence of the breakfast, but by the friendliness of our reception. So simple are manners here, that, in going up the hill, towards the monastery, we met the worthy Vice Principal, Pallas, habited in his black gown--returning from a baker's shop, where he had been to bespeak the best bread. I was glad to renew my acquaintance with the Abbé Strattman, and again solicited permission for Mr. Lewis to take the portrait of so eminent a bibliographer. But in vain: the Abbé answering, with rather a melancholy and mysterious air, that "the world was lost to him, and himself to the world." We parted--with pain on both sides; and on the same evening slept, where we had stopt in our route to Vienna, at _Lintz_. The next morning (Sunday) we started betimes to breakfast at _Efferding_. Our route lay chiefly along the banks of the Danube ... under hanging woods on one side, with villages and villas on the other. The fog hung heavily about us; and we could catch but partial and unsatisfactory glimpses of that scenery, which, when lightened by a warm sunshine, must be perfectly romantic. At Efferding our carriage and luggage were examined, while we breakfasted. The day now brightened up, and nothing but sunshine and "the song of earliest birds" accompanied us to _Sigharding_,--the next post town. Hence to _Scharding_, where we dined, and to _Fürsternell_, where we supped and slept. The inn was crowded by country people below, but we got excellent quarters in the attics; and were regaled with peaches, after supper, which might have vied with those out of the Imperial garden at Vienna. We arose betimes, and breakfasted at _Vilshofen_--and having lost sight of the Danube, since we left Efferding, we were here glad to come again in view of it: and especially to find it accompany us a good hundred miles of our route, till we reached _Ratisbon_. _Straubing_, where we dined--and which is within two posts of Ratisbon--is a very considerable town. The Danube washes parts of its suburbs. As the day was uncommonly serene and mild, even to occasional sultriness, and as we were in excellent time for reaching Ratisbon that evening, we devoted an hour or two to rambling in this town. Mr. Lewis made sketches, and I strolled into churches, and made enquiries after booksellers shops, and possessors of old books: but with very little success. A fine hard road, as level as a bowling green, carries you within an hour to _Pfätter_--the post town between Straubing and Ratisbon--and almost twice that distance brings you to the latter place. It was dark when we entered Ratisbon, and having been recommended to the hotel of the _Agneau Blanc_ we drove thither, and alighted ... close to the very banks of the Danube--and heard the roar of its rapid stream, turning several mills, close as it were to our very ears. The master of the hotel, whose name is _Cramer_, and who talked French very readily, received us with peculiar courtesy; and, on demanding the best situated room in the house, we were conducted on the second floor, to the chamber which had been occupied, only two or three days before, by the Emperor of Austria himself, on his way to _Aix-la-Chapelle_. The next morning was a morning of wonder to us. Our sitting-room, which was a very lantern, from the number of windows, gave us a view of the rushing stream of the Danube, of a portion of the bridge over it, of some beautifully undulating and vine-covered hills, in the distance, on the opposite side--and, lower down the stream, of the town-walls and water-mills, of which latter we had heard the stunning sounds on our arrival.[157] The whole had a singularly novel and pleasing appearance. But if the sitting room was thus productive of gratification, the very first walk I took in the streets was productive of still greater. On leaving the inn, and turning to the left, up a narrow street, I came in view of a house ... upon the walls of which were painted, full three hundred years ago, the figures of _Goliath and David_. The former could be scarcely less than twenty feet high: the latter, who was probably about one-third of that height, was represented as if about to cast the stone from the sling. The costume of Goliath marked the period when he was thus represented;[158] and I must say, considering the time that has elapsed since that representation, that he is yet a fine, vigorous, and fresh-looking fellow. I continued onwards, now to the right, and afterwards to the left, without knowing a single step of the route. An old, but short square gothic tower--upon one of the four sides of which was a curious old clock, supported by human figures--immediately caught my attention. The _Town Hall_ was large and imposing; but the _Cathedral_, surrounded by booths--it being fair-time--was, of course, the great object of my attention. In short, I saw enough within an hour to convince me, that I was visiting a large, curious, and well-peopled town; replete with antiquities, and including several of the time of the Romans, to whom it was necessarily a very important station. Ratisbon is said to contain a population of about 20,000 souls. The Cathedral can boast of little antiquity. It is almost a building of yesterday; yet it is large, richly ornamented on the outside, especially on the west, between the towers--and is considered one of the noblest structures of the kind in Bavaria.[159] The interior wants that decisive effect which simplicity produces. It is too much broken into parts, and covered with monuments of a very heterogeneous description. Near it I traced the cloisters of an old convent or monastery of some kind, now demolished, which could not be less than five hundred years old. The streets of Ratisbon are generally picturesque, as well from their undulating forms, as from the antiquity of a great number of the houses. The modern parts of the town are handsome, and there is a pleasant inter-mixture of trees and grass plats in some of these more recent portions. There are some pleasing public walks, after the English fashion; and a public garden, where a colossal sphinx, erected by the late philosopher _Gleichen_, has a very imposing appearance. Here is also an obelisk erected to the memory of Gleichen himself, the founder of these gardens; and a monument to the memory of Keplar, the astronomer; which latter was luckily spared in the assault of this town by the French in 1809. But these are, comparatively, every day objects. A much more interesting source of observation, to my mind, were the very few existing relics of the once celebrated monastery of ST. EMMERAM--and a great portion of the remains of another old monastery, called ST. JAMES--which latter may indeed be designated the _College of the Jacobites_; as the few members who inhabit it were the followers of the house and fortunes of the Pretender, James Stuart. The monastery, or _Abbey of St. Emmeram_ was one of the most celebrated throughout Europe; and I suspect that its library, both of MSS. and printed books, was among the principal causes of its celebrity.[160] The intelligent and truly obliging Mr. A. Kraemer, librarian to the Prince of Tour and Taxis, accompanied me in my visit to the very few existing remains of St. Emmeram--which indeed are incorporated, as it were, with the church close to the palace or residence of the Prince. As I walked along the corridors of this latter building, after having examined the Prince's library, and taken notes of a few of the rarer or more beautiful books, I could look through the windows into the body of the church itself. It is difficult to describe this religious edifice, and still more so to know what portions belonged to the old monastery. I saw a stone chair--rude, massive, and almost shapeless--in which _Adam_ might have sat ... if dates are to be judged of by the barbarism of form. Something like a crypt, of which the further part was uncovered--reminded me of portions of the crypt at _Freysing_; and among the old monuments belonging to the abbey, was one of _Queen Hemma_, wife of Ludovic, King of Bavaria: a great benefactress, who was buried there in 876. The figure, which was whole-length, and of the size of life, was painted; and might be of the fourteenth century. There is another monument, of _Warmundus, Count of Wasserburg_, who was buried in 1001. These monuments have been lithographised, from the drawings of Quaglio, in the "_Denkmahle der Baukunst des Mittelalters im Koenigreiche Baiern_," 1816. Folio. Of all interesting objects of architectural antiquity in Ratisbon, none struck me so forcibly--and indeed none is in itself so curious and singular--as the MONASTERY OF ST. JAMES, before slightly alluded to. The front of that portion of it, connected with the church, should seem to be of an extremely remote antiquity. It is the ornaments, or style of architecture, which give it this character of antiquity. The ornaments, which are on each side of the door way, or porch, are quite extraordinary, and appear as if the building had been erected by Mexicans or Hindoos. Quaglio has made a drawing, and published a lithographic print of the whole of this entrance. I had conjectured the building to be of the twelfth century, and was pleased to have my conjecture confirmed by the assurance of one of the members of the college (either Mr. Richardson or Mr. Sharp) that the foundations of the building were laid in the middle of the XIIth century; and that, about twenty miles off, down the Danube, there was another monastery, now in ruins, called _Mosburg_, if I mistake not--which was built about the same period, and which exhibited precisely the same style of architecture. But if the entire college, with the church, cloisters, sitting rooms, and dormitories, was productive of so much gratification, the _contents_ of these rooms, including the _members_ themselves, were productive of yet greater. To begin with the Head, or President, DR. C. ARBUTHNOT: one of the finest and healthiest looking old gentlemen I ever beheld--in his eighty-second year. I should however premise, that the members of this college--only six or eight in number, and attached to the interests of the Stuarts--have been settled here almost from their infancy: some having arrived at seven, and others at twelve, years of age. Their method of speaking their _own_ language is very singular; and rather difficult of comprehension. Nor is the _French_, spoken by them, of much better pronunciation. Of manners the most simple, and apparently of principles the most pure, they seem to be strangers to those wants and wishes which frequently agitate a more numerous and polished establishment; and to move, as it were, from the cradle to the grave ... "The world forgetting, by the world forgot." As soon as the present Head ceases to exist,[161] the society is to be dissolved--and the building to be demolished.[162] I own that this intelligence, furnished me by one of the members, gave a melancholy and yet more interesting air to every object which I saw, and to every Member with whom I conversed. The society is of the Benedictine order, and there is a large whole length portrait, in the upper cloisters, or rather corridor, of ST. BENEDICT--with the emphatic inscription of "PATER MONACHORUM." The _library_ was carefully visited by me, and a great number of volumes inspected. The local is small and unpretending: a mere corridor, communicating with a tolerably good sized room, in the middle, at right angles. I saw a few _hiatuses_, which had been caused by disposing of the volumes, that had _filled_ them, to the cabinet in St. James's Place. In fact, Mr. Horn--so distinguished for his bibliographical _trouvailles_--had been either himself a _member_ of this College, or had had a _brother_, so circumstanced, who foraged for him. What remained was, comparatively, mere chaff: and yet I contrived to find a pretty ample sprinkling of Greek and Latin Philosophy, printed and published at Paris by _Gourmont_, _Colinæus_, and the _Stephens_, in the first half of the sixteenth century. There were also some most beautifully-conditioned Hebrew books, printed by the _Stephen family_;--and having turned the bottoms of those books outwards, which I thought it might be possible to purchase, I requested the librarian to consider of the matter; who, himself apparently consenting, informed me, on the following morning, that, on a consultation held with the other members, it was deemed advisable not to part with any more of their books. I do not suppose that the whole would bring 250l. beneath a well known hammer in Pall-Mall. The PUBLIC LIBRARY was also carefully visited. It is a strange, rambling, but not wholly uninteresting place--although the collection is rather barbarously miscellaneous. I saw more remains of Roman antiquities of the usual character of rings, spear-heads, lachrymatories, &c.--than of rare and curious old books: but, among the latter, I duly noticed _Mentelin's edition of the first German Bible_. No funds are applied to the increase of this collection; and the books, in an upper and lower room, seem to lie desolate and forlorn, as if rarely visited--and yet more rarely opened. Compared with the celebrated public libraries in France, Bavaria, and Austria, this of RATISBON is ... almost a reproach to the municipal authorities of the place. I cannot however take leave of the book-theme, or of Ratisbon--without mentioning, in terms of unfeigned sincerity, the obligations I was under to M. AUGUSTUS KRAEMER, the librarian of the Prince of Tour and Taxis; who not only satisfied, but even anticipated, my wishes, in every thing connected with antiquities. There is a friendliness of disposition, a mildness of manner, and pleasantness both of mien and of conversation, about this gentleman, which render his society extremely engaging. Upon the whole, although I absolutely gained nothing in the way of book-acquisitions, during my residence at Ratisbon, I have not passed three pleasanter days in any town in Bavaria than those which were spent here. It is a place richly deserving of the minute attention of the antiquary; and the country, on the opposite side of the Danube, presents some genuine features of picturesque beauty. Nor were the civility, good fare, and reasonable charges of the _Agneau Blanc_, among the most insignificant comforts attending our residence at Ratisbon. We left that town a little after mid-day, intending to sleep the same evening at NEUMARKT, within two stages of Nuremberg. About an English mile from Ratisbon, the road rises to a considerable elevation, whence you obtain a fine and interesting view of that city--with the Danube encircling its base like a belt. From this eminence I looked, for the last time, upon that magnificent river--which, with very few exceptions, had kept in view the whole way from Vienna: a distance of about two hundred and sixty English miles. I learnt that an aquatic excursion, from Ulm to Ratisbon, was one of the pleasantest schemes or parties of pleasure, imaginable--and that the English were extremely partial to it. Our faces were now resolutely turned towards Nuremberg; while a fine day, and a tolerably good road, made us insensible of any inconvenience which might otherwise have resulted from a journey of nine German miles. We reached _Neumarkt_ about night-fall, and got into very excellent quarters. The rooms of the inn which we occupied had been filled by the Duke of Wellington and Lord and Lady Castlereagh on their journey to Congress in the winter of 1814. The master of the inn related to us a singular anecdote respecting the Duke. On hearing of his arrival, the inhabitants of the place flocked round the inn, and the next morning the Duke found the _tops of his boots half cut away_--from the desire which the people expressed of having "some memorial of the great captain of the age."[163] No other, or more feasible plan presented itself, than that of making interest with his Grace's groom--when the boots were taken down to be cleaned on the morning following his arrival. Perhaps the Duke's _coat_, had it been seen, might have shared the same fate. The morning gave me an opportunity of examining the town of _Neumarkt_, which is surrounded by a wall, in the _inner_ side of which is a sort of covered corridor (now in a state of great decay) running entirely round the town. At different stations there are wooden steps for the purpose of ascent and descent. In a churchyard, I was startled by the representation of the _Agony in the Garden_ (so often mentioned in this Tour) which was executed in stone, and coloured after the life, and which had every appearance of _reality_. I stumbled upon it, unawares: and confess that I had never before witnessed so startling a representation of the subject. Having quitted Neumarkt, after breakfast, it remained only to change horses at _Feucht_, and afterwards to dine at Nuremberg. Of all cities which I had wished to see, before and since quitting England, NUREMBERG was that upon which my heart seemed to be the most fixed.[164] It had been the nursery of the Fine Arts in Bavaria; one of the favourite residences of Maximilian the Great; the seat of learning and the abode equally of commerce and of wealth during the sixteenth century. It was here too, that ALBERT DURER--perhaps the most extraordinary genius of his age--lived and died: and here I learnt that his tombstone, and the house in which he resided, were still to be seen. The first view of the spires and turretted walls of Nuremberg[165] filled me with a sensation which it is difficult to describe. Within about five English miles of it, just as we were about to run down the last descent, from the bottom of which it is perfectly level to the very gates of the city--we discovered a group of peasants, chiefly female, busied in carrying barrows, apparently of fire wood, towards the town. On passing them, the attention of Mr. Lewis was caught by one female countenance in particular--so distinguished by a sweetness and benevolence of expression--that we requested the postilion to stop, that we might learn some particulars respecting this young woman, and the mode of life which she followed. She was without stockings; of a strong muscular form, and her face was half buried beneath a large flapping straw hat. We learnt that her parents were engaged in making black lead pencils (a flourishing branch of commerce, at this moment, at Nuremberg) for the wholesale dealers; and they were so poor, that she was glad to get a _florin_ by conveying wood (as we then saw her) four miles to Nuremberg. It was market-day when we entered Nuremberg, about four o'clock. The inn to which we had been recommended, proved an excellent one: civility, cleanliness, good fare, and reasonable charges--these form the tests of the excellence of the _Cheval Rouge_ at Nuremberg. In our route thither, we passed the two churches of St. _Lawrence_ and St. _Sebald_, of which the former is the largest--and indeed principal place of worship in the town. We also passed through the market-place, wherein are several gothic buildings--more elaborate in ornament than graceful in form or curious from antiquity. The whole square, however, was extremely interesting, and full of population and bustle. The town indeed is computed to contain 30,000 inhabitants. We noticed, on the outsides of the houses, large paintings, as at Ratisbon, of gigantic figures: and every street seemed to promise fresh gratification, as we descended one and ascended another. My first object, on settling at the hotel, was to seek out the PUBLIC LIBRARY, and to obtain an inspection of some of those volumes which had exercised the pen of DE MURR, in his Latin _Memoirs of the Public Library of Nuremberg_. I was now also in the birthplace of PANZER--another, and infinitely more distinguished bibliographer,--whose _Typographical Annals of Europe_ will for ever render his memory as dear to other towns as to Nuremberg. In short, when I viewed the _Citadel_ of this place--and witnessed, in my perambulations about the town, so many curious specimens of gothic architecture, I could only express my surprise and regret that more substantial justice had not been rendered to so interesting a spot. I purchased every thing I could lay my hand upon, connected with the _published antiquities_ of the town; but that "every thing" was sufficiently scanty and unsatisfactory. Before, however, I make mention of the Public Library, it may be as well briefly to notice the two churches--- _St. Sebald_ and _St. Lawrence_. The former was within a stone's throw of our inn. Above the door of the western front, is a remarkably fine crucifix of wood--placed, however, in too deep a recess--said to be by _Veit Stoss_. The head is of a very fine form, and the countenance has an expression of the most acute and intense feeling. A crown of thorns is twisted round the brow. But this figure, as well as the whole of the outside and inside of the church, stands in great need of being repaired. The towers are low, with insignificant turrets: the latter evidently a later erection--probably at the commencement of the sixteenth century. The eastern extremity, as well indeed as the aisles, is surrounded by buttresses; and the sharp-pointed, or lancet windows, seem to bespeak the fourteenth, if not the thirteenth century. The great "wonder" of the interior, is the _Shrine of the Saint_,[166] (to whom the church is dedicated,) of which the greater part is silver. At the time of my viewing it, it was in a disjointed state--parts of it having been taken to pieces, for repair: but from Geisler's exquisite little engraving, I should pronounce it to be second to few specimens of similar art in Europe. The figures do not exceed two feet in height, and the extreme elevation of the shrine may be about eight feet. Nor has Geisler's almost equally exquisite little engraving of the richly carved gothic _font_ in this church, less claim upon the admiration of the connoisseur. The mother church, or Cathedral of _St. Lawrence_, is much larger, and portions of it may be of the latter end of the thirteenth century. The principal entrance presents us with an elaborate door-way--perhaps of the fourteenth century--with the sculpture divided into several compartments, as at Rouen, Strasbourg, and other earlier edifices. There is a poverty in the two towers, both from their size, and the meagerness of the windows; but the slim spires at the summit, are, doubtless, nearly of a coeval date with that which supports them. The bottom of the large circular, or marygold window, is injured in its effect by a gothic balustrade of a later period. The interior of this church has certainly nothing very commanding or striking, on the score of architectural grandeur or beauty; but there are some painted glass-windows--especially by _Volkmar_---which are deserving of particular attention. Nuremberg has one advantage over many populous towns; its public buildings are not choked up by narrow streets: and I hardly know an edifice of distinction, round which the spectator may not walk with perfect ease, and obtain a view of every portion which he is desirous of examining. _The Fraüenkerche_, or the _church of St. Mary_, in the market-place, has a very singular construction in its western front. A double arched door-way, terminated by an arch at the top, and surmounted by a curious triangular projection from the main building, has rather an odd, than a beautiful effect. Above, terminating in an apex--surmounted by a small turret, are five rows of gothic niches, of which the extremities, at each end, narrow--in the fashion of steps, gradually--from the topmost of which range or rows of niches, the turret rises perpendicularly. It is a small edifice, and has been recently doomed to make a very distinguished figure in the imposing lithographic print of Quaglio.[167] The interior of this church is not less singular, as may be seen in the print published about sixty years ago, and yet faithful to its present appearance. I know not how it was, but I omitted to notice the ci-devant church of _Ste. Claire_, where there is said to be the most ancient stained glass window which exists--that is, of the middle of the thirteenth century; nor did I obtain a sight of the seven pillars of _Adam Kraft_, designating the seven points or stations of the Passion of our Saviour. But in the _Rath-hauz Platz_, in the way to the public library, I used to look with delight--almost every morning of the four days which I spent at Nuremberg--at the fragments of gothic architecture, to the right and left, that presented themselves; and among these, none caught my eye and pleased my taste, so fully, as the little hexagonal gothic window, which has sculptured subjects beneath the mullions, and which was attached to the _Pfarrhof_, or clergyman's residence, of St. Sebald. If ever Mr. Blore's pencil should be exercised in this magical city for gothic art, I am quite persuaded that _this window_ will be one of the subjects upon which its powers will be most successfully employed. A little beyond, in a very handsome square, called St. Giles's Place, lived the famous ANTHONY KOBERGER; the first who introduced the art of printing into Nuremberg--and from whose press, more Bibles, Councils, Decretals, Chronicles, and scholastic works, have proceeded than probably from any other press in Europe. Koberger was a magnificent printer, using always a bold, rich, gothic letter--and his first book, _Comestorium Vitiorum_, bears the date of 1470.[168] They shew the house, in this square, which he is said to have occupied; but which I rather suspect was built by his nephew JOHN KOBERGER, who was the son of Sebaldus Koberger, and who carried on a yet more successful business than his uncle. Not fewer than seventeen presses were kept in constant employ by him, and he is said to have been engaged in a correspondence with almost every printer and bookseller in Europe. It was my good fortune to purchase an original bronze head of him, of _Messrs. Frauenholz_ and _Co_., one of the most respectable and substantial houses, in the print trade, upon the Continent. This head is struck upon a circular bronze of about seven inches in diameter, bearing the following incription: JOANNES KOBERGER ... SEIN. ALTR. xxxx: that is, John Koberger, in the fortieth year of his age. The head, singularly enough, is _laureated;_ and in the upper part of it are two capital letters, of which the top parts resemble a B or D--and F or E. It is a fine solid piece of workmanship, and is full of individuality of character. From an old ms. inscription at the back, the original should appear to have died in 1522. I was of course too much interested in the history of the Kobergers, not to ask permission, to examine the premises from which so much learning and piety had once issued to the public; and I could not help being struck with at least the _space_ which these premises occupied. At the end of a yard, was a small chapel, which formerly was, doubtless, the printing office or drying room of the Kobergers. The interior of the house was now so completely devoted to other uses, that one could identify nothing. The church of St. Giles, in this place, is scarcely little more than a century old; as a print of it, of the date of 1689, represents the building to be not yet complete. I shall now conduct the reader at once to the PUBLIC LIBRARY; premising, that it occupies the very situation which it has held since the first book was deposited in it. This is very rarely the case abroad. It is, in fact, a small gothic quadrangle, with the windows modernised; and was formerly a convent of _Dominicans_. M. RANNER, the public librarian, (with whom--as he was unable to speak French, and myself equally unable to speak his own language--I conversed in the Latin tongue) assured me that there was anciently a printing press here--conducted by the Dominicans--who were resolved to print no book but what was the production of one of their own order. I have great doubts about this fact, and expressed the same to M. Ranner; adding, that I had never seen a book so printed; The librarian, however, reiterated his assertion, and said that the monastery was built in the eleventh century. There is certainly no visible portion of it older than the beginning of the fifteenth century. The library itself is on the first floor, and fills two rooms, running parallel with each other; both of them sufficiently dismal and uninviting. It is said to contain 45,000 volumes; but I much question whether there be half that number. There are some precious MSS. of which M. Ranner has published a catalogue in two octavo volumes, in the Latin language, in a manner extremely creditable to himself, and such as to render De Murr's labour upon the same subjects almost useless. Among these MSS. I was shewn one in the Hebrew language--of the eleventh or twelfth century--with very singular marginal illuminations, as grotesques or capriccios; in which the figures, whether human beings, monsters, or animals, were made out by _lines composed of Hebrew characters_, considered to be a gloss upon the text. As to the _printed books_ of an early date, they are few and unimportant--if the _subject_ of them be exclusively considered. There is a woeful want of _classics_, and even of useful literary performances. Here, however, I saw the far-famed _I. de Turrecremata Meditationes_ of 1467, briefly described by De Murr; of which, I believe, only two other copies are known to exist--namely, one in the Imperial library at Vienna,[169] and the other in the collection of Earl Spencer. It is an exceedingly precious book to the typographical antiquary, inasmuch as it is supposed to be the first production of the press of _Ulric Han_. The copy in question has the plates coloured; and, singularly enough, is bound up in a wooden cover with _Honorius de Imagine Mundi_, printed by Koberger, and the _Hexameron_ of _Ambrosius_, printed by Schuzler in 1472. It is, however, a clean, sound copy; but cut down to the size of the volumes with which it is bound. Here is the _Boniface_ of 1465, by Fust, UPON VELLUM: with a large space on the rectos of the second and third leaves, purposely left for the insertion of ms. or some subsequent correction. The _Durandus of_ 1459 has the first capital letter stamped with red and blue, like the smaller capital initials in the Psalter of 1457. In this first capital initial, the blue is the outer portion of the letter. The _German Bible by Mentelin_ is perfect; but wretchedly cropt, and dirty even to dinginess. Here is a very fine large genuine copy of _Jenson's Quintilian_ of 1471. Of the _Epistles of St. Jerom_, here are the early editions by _Mentelin_ and _Sweynheym_ and _Pannartz_; the latter, of the date of 1470: a fine, large copy--but not free from ms. annotations. More precious, however, in the estimation of the critical bibliographer--than either, or the whole, of the preceding volumes--is the very rare edition of the _Decameron of Boccaccio_, of the date of 1472, printed at _Mantua, by A. de Michaelibus_.[170] Such a copy as that in the public library at Nuremberg, is in all probability unparalleled: it being, in every respect, what a perfect copy should be--white, large, and in its pristine binding. A singular coincidence took place, while I was examining this extraordinarily rare book. M. Lechner, the bookseller, of whom I shall have occasion to speak again, brought me a letter, directed to his own house, from Earl Spencer. In that letter, his lordship requested me to make a particular collation of the edition of Boccaccio--with which I was occupied at the _very moment of receiving it_. Of course, upon every account, that collation was made. Upon its completion, and asking M. Ranner whether any consideration would induce the curators of the library to part with this volume, the worthy librarian shouted aloud!... adding, that, "not many weeks before, an English gentleman had offered the sum of sixty louis d'or for it,--but not _twice_ that sum could be taken!... and in fact the book must never leave its present quarters--no ... not even for the noble collection in behalf of which I pleaded so earnestly." M. Ranner's manner was so positive, and his voice so sonorous,--that I dreaded the submission of any contre-projet ... and accordingly left him in the full and unmolested enjoyment of his beloved Decameron printed by _Adam de Michaelibus_. M. Ranner shewed me a sound, fair copy of the _first Florentine Homer_ of 1488; but cropt, with red edges to the leaves. But I was most pleased with a sort of cupboard, or closet-fashioned recess, filled with the first and subsequent editions of all the pieces written by _Melancthon_, I was told that there were more than eight hundred of such pieces. These, and a similar collection from the pens of _Luther_ and _Eckuis_ at Landshut,[171] would, as I conceive, be invaluable repertories for the _History of the Reformation upon the Continent_. Although I examined many shelves of books, for two successive days, in the Public Library of Nuremberg, I am not conscious of having found any thing more deserving of detail than what has been already submitted to the reader. Of all edifices, more especially deserving of being visited at Nuremberg, the CITADEL is doubtless the most curious and ancient, as well as the most remarkable. It rises to a considerable height, close upon the outer walls of the town, within about a stone's throw of the end of _Albrecht Durer Strasse_--or the street where ALBERT DURER lived--and whose house is not only yet in existence, but still the object of attraction and veneration with every visitor of taste, from whatever part of the world he may chance to come. The street running down, is the street called (as before observed) after Albert Durer's own name; and the _well_, seen about the middle of it, is a specimen of those wells--built of stone--which are very common in the streets of Nuremberg. The house of Albert Durer is now in a very wretched, and even unsafe condition. The upper part is supposed to have been his study. The interior is so altered from its original disposition, as to present little or nothing satisfactory to the antiquary. It would be difficult to say how many coats of whitewash have been bestowed upon the rooms, since the time when they were tenanted by the great character in question. Passing through this street, therefore, you turn to the right, and continue onwards, up a pretty smart ascent; when the entrance to the citadel, by the side of a low wall--in front of an old tower--presents itself to your attention. It was before breakfast that my companion and self visited this interesting interior, over every part of which we were conducted by a most loquacious _cicerone_, who spoke the French language very fluently, and who was pleased to express his extreme gratification upon finding that his visitors were _Englishmen_. The tower, of the exterior of which there is a very indifferent engraving in the _Singularia Norimbergensia_, and the adjoining chapel, may be each of the thirteenth century; but the tombstone of the founder of the monastery, upon the site of which the present Citadel was built, bears the date of 1296. This tombstone is very perfect; lying in a loose, unconnected manner, as you enter the chapel:--the chapel itself having a crypt-like appearance. This latter is very small. From the suite of apartments in the older parts of the Citadel, there is a most extensive and uninterrupted view of the surrounding country, which is rather flat. At the distance of about nine miles, the town of _Furth_ (Furta) looks as if it were within an hour's walk; and I should think that the height of the chambers, (from which we enjoyed this view,) to the level ground of the adjacent meadows, could be scarcely less than three hundred feet. In these chambers, there is a little world of curiosity for the antiquary: and yet it was but too palpable that very many of its more precious treasures had been transported to Munich. In the time of Maximilian II., when Nuremberg may be supposed to have been in the very height of its glory, this Citadel must have been worth a pilgrimage of many score miles to have visited. The ornaments which remain are chiefly pictures; of which several are exceedingly precious. Our guide hastened to show us the celebrated two Venuses of _Lucas Cranach_, which are most carefully preserved within folding doors. They are both whole lengths, of the size of life. One of them, which is evidently the inferior picture, is attended by a Cupid; the other is alone, having on a broad red velvet hat--but, in other respects, undraped. For this latter picture, we were told that two hundred louis d'or had been offered and refused--which they well might have been; for I consider it to be, not the only chef-d'oeuvre of L. Cranach, but in truth a very extraordinary performance. There is doubtless something of a poverty of drawing about it; but the colouring glows with a natural warmth which has been rarely surpassed even by Titian. It is one of the most elaborated pictures--yet producing a certain breadth of effect--which can be seen. The other Venus is perhaps more carefully painted--but the effect is cold and poor. Here is also, by the same artist, a masterly little head of _St. Hubert_; and, near it, a charming portrait of _Luther's wife_, by Hans Holbein; but the back-ground of the latter being red and comparatively recent, is certainly not by the same hand. The countenance is full of a sweet, natural expression; and if this portrait be a faithful one of the wife of Luther, we must give that great reformer credit for having had a good taste in the choice of a wife--as far as _beauty_ is concerned. Here are supposed portraits of _Charlemagne and Sigismund II.,_ by Albert Durer--which exhibit great freedom of handling, and may be considered magnificent specimens of that master's better manner of portrait painting. The heads are rather of colossal size. The draperies are most elaborately executed. I observed here, with singular satisfaction, _two_ of the well-known series of the TWELVE APOSTLES, supposed to be both painted and engraved by Albert Durer. They were _St. John_ and _St. Paul_; the drapery, especially of the latter, has very considerable merit. But probably the most interesting picture to the generality of visitors--and indeed it is one entitled to particular commendation by the most curious and critical--is, a large painting, by _Sandrart_, representing a fête given by the Austrian Ambassador, at Nuremberg, upon the conclusion of the treaty of peace at Westphalia, in 1649, after the well known thirty year's war. This picture is about fourteen feet long, by ten wide. The table, at which the guests are banquetting, is filled by all the great characters who were then assembled upon the occasion. An English knight of the garter is sufficiently conspicuous; his countenance in three quarters, being turned somewhat over his left shoulder. The great fault of this picture is, making the guests to partake of a banquet, and yet to turn all their faces _from it_--in order that the spectator may recognise their countenances. Those who sit at table, are about half the size of life. To the right of them, is a group as large as life, in which Sandrart has introduced himself, as if painting the picture. His countenance is charmingly coloured; but it is a pity that all propriety of perspective is so completely lost, by placing two such differently sized groups in the same chamber. This picture stands wofully in need of being repaired. It is considered--and apparently with justice--to be the CHEF D'OEUVRE of the master. I have hardly ever seen a picture, of its kind, more thoroughly interesting--both on the score of subject and execution; but it is surely due to the memory of an artist, like Sandrart,--who spent the greater part of a long life at Nuremberg, and established an academy of painting there--that this picture ... be at least _preserved_ ... if there be no means of engraving it. In these curious old chambers, it was to be expected that I should see some _Wohlegemuths_--as usual, with backgrounds in a blaze of gold, and figures with tortuous limbs, pinched-in waists, and caricatured countenances. In a room, pretty plentifully encumbered with rubbish, I saw a charming _Snyders;_ being a dead stag, suspended from a pole. There is here a portrait of _Albert Durer_, by himself; but said to be a copy. If so, it is a very fine copy. The original is supposed to be at Munich. There was nothing else that my visit enabled me to see, particularly deserving of being recorded; but, when I was told that it was in THIS CITADEL that the ancient Emperors of Germany used oftentimes to reside, and make carousal, and when I saw, _now_, scarcely any thing but dark passages, unfurnished galleries, naked halls, and untenanted chambers--I own that I could hardly refrain from uttering a sigh over the mutability of earthly fashions, and the transitoriness of worldly grandeur. With a rock for its base, and walls almost of adamant for its support--situated also upon an eminence which may be said to look frowningly down over a vast sweep of country--THE CITADEL OF NUREMBERG should seem to have bid defiance, in former times, to every assault of the most desperate and enterprising foe. It is now visited only by the casual traveller ... who is frequently startled at the echo of his own footsteps. While I am on the subject of ancient art--of which so many curious specimens are to be seen in this Citadel--it may not be irrelevant to conduct the reader at once to what is called the _Town Hall_--a very large structure--of which portions are devoted to the exhibition of old pictures. Many of these paintings are in a very suspicious state, from the operations of time and accident; but the great boast of the collection are the Triumphs of Maximilian I, executed by _Albert Durer_--which, however, have by no means escaped injury. I was accompanied in my visit to this interesting collection by Mr. Boerner, a partner in the house of Frauenholz and Co.--and had particular reason to be pleased by the friendliness of his attentions, and by the intelligence of his observations. A great number of these pictures (as I understood) belonged to Messrs. Frauenholz and Co.; and among them, a portrait by _Pens_, struck me as being singularly admirable and exquisite. The countenance, the dress, the attitude, the drawing and colouring, were as perfect as they well might be. But this collection has also suffered from the transportation of many of its treasures to Munich. The rooms, halls, and corridors of this Hôtel de Ville give you a good notion of municipal grandeur. Nuremberg was once the life and soul of _art_ as well as of _commerce_. The numismatic, or perhaps medallic, productions of her artists, in the XVIth century, might, many of them, vie with the choicest efforts of Greece. I purchased two silver medals, of the period just mentioned, which are absolutely perfect of their kind: one has, on the obverse, the profile of an old man with a flowing beard and short bonnet, with the circumscription of _Ætatis Suæ LXVI._; and, on the reverse, the words _De Coelo Victoria. Anno M.D. XLVI._ surrounding the arms of Bavaria. I presume the head to be a portrait of some ancient Bavarian General; and the inscription, on the reverse, to relate to some great victory, in honour of which the medal was struck. The piece is silver-gilt. The boldness of its relief can hardly be exceeded. The other medal represents the portrait of _Joh. Petreius Typographus, Anno Ætat. Suæ._ IIL. (48), _Anno_ 1545--executed with surprising delicacy, expression, and force. But evidences of the perfect state of art in ancient times, at Nuremberg, may be gathered from almost every street in which the curious visitor walks. On the first afternoon of my arrival here, I was driven, by a shower of rain, into a small shop--upon a board, on the exterior of which were placed culinary dishes. The mistress of the house had been cleaning them for the purpose of shewing them off to advantage on the Sunday. One of these dishes--which was brass, with ornaments in high relief--happened to be rather deep, but circular, and of small diameter. I observed a subject in relief, at the bottom, which looked very like art as old as the end of the fifteenth century--although a good deal worn away, from the regularity pf periodical rubbing. The subject represented the eating of the forbidden fruit. Adam, Eve, the Serpent, the trees, and the fruit--with labels, on which the old gothic German letter was sufficiently obvious--all told a tale which was irresistible to antiquarian feelings. Accordingly I proposed terms of purchase (one ducat) to the good owner of the dish:--who was at first exceedingly surprised at the offer ... wondering what could be seen so particularly desirable in such a homely piece of kitchen furniture ... but, in the end, she consented to the proposal with extraordinary cheerfulness. In another shop, on a succeeding day, I purchased two large brass dishes, of beautiful circular forms, with ornaments in bold relief--and brought the whole culinary cargo home with me. While upon the subject of _old art_--of which there are scarcely a hundred yards in the city of Nuremberg that do not display some memorial, however perishing--I must be allowed to make especial mention of the treasures of BARON DERSCHAU--a respectable old Prussian nobleman, who has recently removed into a capacious residence, of which the chambers in front contain divers old pictures; and one chamber in particular, backward, is filled with curiosities of a singular variety of description.[172] I had indeed heard frequent mention of this gentleman, both in Austria and Bavaria. His reception of me was most courteous, and his conversation communicative and instructive. He _did_, and did _not_, dispose of things. He _was_, and was _not_, a sort of gentleman-merchant. One drawer was filled with ivory handled dirks, hunting knives, and pipe-bowls; upon which the carver had exercised all his cunning skill. Another drawer contained implements of destruction in the shape of daggers, swords, pistols, and cutlasses: all curiously wrought. A set of _Missals_ occupied a third drawer: portfolios of drawings and _prints_, a fourth; and sundry _volumes_, of various and not uninteresting character, filled the shelves of a small, contiguous book-case. Every thing around me bore the aspect of _temptation_; when, calling upon my tutelary genius to defend me in such a crisis, I accepted the Baron's offer, and sat down by the side of him upon a sofa--which, from the singularity of its form and _matériel_, might formerly possibly have supported the limbs of Albert Durer himself. The Baron commenced the work of _incantation_ by informing me that he was once in possession of the _journal_, or day-book, of Albert Durer:--written in the German language--and replete with the most curious information respecting the manner of his own operations, and of those of his workmen. From this journal, it appeared that Albert Durer was in the habit of _drawing upon the blocks_, and that his men performed the remaining operation of _cutting away the wood_. I frankly confessed that I had long suspected this: and still suspect the same process to have been used in regard to the wood cuts supposed to have been executed by _Hans Holbein_. On my eagerly enquiring what had become of this precious journal, the Baron replied with a sigh--which seemed to come from the very bottom of his heart--that "it had perished in the flames of a house, in the neighbourhood of one of the battles fought between Bonaparte and the Prussians!!" The Baron is both a man of veracity and virtù. In confirmation of the latter, he gave all his very extraordinary collection of original blocks of wood, containing specimens of art of the most remote period of wood engraving, to the Royal University at Berlin--from which collection has been regularly published, those livraisons, of an atlas form, which contain impressions of the old blocks in question.[173] It is hardly possible for a graphic antiquary to possess a more completely characteristic and _beguiling_ publication than this. On expressing a desire to purchase any little curiosity or antiquity, in the shape of _book_ or _print_, for which the Baron had no immediate use, I was shewn several rarities of this kind; which I did not scruple to request might be laid aside for me--for the purpose of purchasing. Of these, in the book way, the principal were a _Compendium Morale_: a Latin folio, PRINTED UPON VELLUM, without date or name of printer--and so completely unknown to bibliographers, that Panzer, who had frequently had this very volume in his hands, was meditating the writing of a little treatise on it; and was interrupted only by death from carrying his design into execution. It is in the most perfect state of preservation. A volume of _Hours_, and a _Breviary of Cracow_, for the winter part, PRINTED UPON VELLUM--in the German language, exceedingly fair and beautiful. A TERENCE of 1496 (for 9 florins), and the first edition of _Erasmus's Greek Testament_, 1516, for 18 florins. The "_Compendium"_ was charged by the Baron at about 5_l_. sterling. These, with the Austrian historians, Pez, Schard, and Nidanus, formed a tolerably fair acquisition.[174] In the _print_ way, I was fortunate in purchasing a singularly ancient wood-cut of _St. Catherine_, in the peculiarly dotted manner of the fifteenth century. This wood-cut was said to be UNIQUE. At any rate it is very curious and rare; and on my return to England, M. Du Chesne, who is the active director in the department of the prints at Paris, prevailed upon me to part with my St. Catherine--at a price, which sufficiently shewed that he considered it to be no very indifferent object to the royal collection of France. This however was a perfectly secondary consideration. The print was left behind at Paris, as adding something to a collection of unrivalled value and extent, and where there were previously deposited two or three similar specimens of art. But the Baron laid the greatest stress upon a copper plate impression of a crucifixion, of the date of 1430: which undoubtedly had a very staggering aspect.[175] It is described in the subjoined note; and for reasons, therein detailed, I consider it to be much less valuable than the _St. Catherine_.[176] I also purchased of the Baron a few _Martin Schoens, Albert Durers_, and _Israel Van Mechlins_; and what I preferred to either, is a beautiful little illumination, cut out of an old choral book, or psalter, said, by the vendor, to be the production of _Weimplan_, an artist, at Ulm, of the latter end of the fifteenth century. On my return to England, I felt great pleasure in depositing this choice morceau of ancient art in the very extraordinary collection of my friend Mr. Ottley--at the same price for which I had obtained it--about five and twenty shillings. Upon the whole, I was well satisfied with the result of the "temptation" practised upon me at Baron Derschau's, and left the mansion with my purse lightened of about 340 florins. The Baron was anxious to press a choice _Aldus_ or two upon me; but the word "choice" is somewhat ambiguous: and what was considered to be so at _Nuremberg_, might receive a different construction in _London_. I was, however, anxious to achieve a much nobler feat than that of running away with undescribed printed volumes, or rare old prints--whether from copper or wood. It was at Nuremberg that the EBNER FAMILY had long resided: and where the _Codex Ebnerianus_--a Greek MS. of the New Testament, of the XIIth. century--had been so much celebrated by the elaborate disquisition of De Murr--which is accompanied by several copper plate fac-simile engravings of the style of art in the illuminations of the MS. in question. I had heard that the ancient splendors of the Ebner family had been long impaired; that their library had been partly dispersed; and that THIS VERY MS. was yet to be purchased. I resolved, therefore, to lose no opportunity of becoming possessed of it ... preparing myself to offer a very considerable sum, and trusting that the spirit of some private collector, or public body, in my own country, would not long allow it to be a burden on my hands. Accordingly, by the interposition and kind offices of M. Lechner, the bookseller, I learnt, not only in what quarter the MS. was yet preserved, but that its owners were willing to dispose of it for a valuable consideration. A day and hour were quickly appointed. The gentleman, entrusted with the MS.--M. Lechner as interpreter, my own valet, as interpreter between myself and M. Lechner, who could not speak French very fluently--all assembled at the _Cheval Rouge_: with the CODEX EBNERIANUS, bound in massive silver, lying upon the table between us. It is a small, thick quarto volume; written in the cursive Greek character, upon soft and fair coloured vellum, and adorned with numerous illuminations in a fine state of preservation. Its antiquity cannot surely be carried beyond the XIIth century. On the outside of one of the covers, is a silver crucifix. Upon the whole, this precious book, both from its interior and exterior attractions, operated upon me infinitely more powerfully than the ivory-handled knives, gilt-studded daggers, gorgeous scraps of painting, or antique-looking prints ... of the Baron Derschau. We soon commenced an earnest conversation; all four of us frequently being upon our legs, and speaking, at the same time. The price was quickly fixed by the owner of the MS.; but not so readily consented to by the proposed purchaser. It was 120 louis d'or. I adhered to the offer of 100: and we were each inflexible in our terms. I believe indeed, that if my 100 louis d'or could have been poured from a bag upon the table, as "argent-comptant," the owner of the MS. _could_ not have resisted the offer: but he seemed to think that, if paper currency, in the shape of a bill, were resorted to, it would not be prudent to adopt that plan unless the sum of 120l. were written upon the instrument. The conference ended by the MS. being carried back to be again deposited in the family where it had so long taken up its abode. It is, however, most gratifying for me to add, that its return to its ancient quarters was only temporary; and that it was destined to be taken from them, for ever, by British spirit and British liberality. When Mr. John Payne visited Germany, in the following year, I was anxious to give him some particulars about this MS. and was sanguine enough to think that a second attempt to carry it off could not fail to be successful. The house of Messrs. Payne and Foss, so long and justly respected throughout Europe, invested their young representative with ample powers for negotiation--and the _Codex Ebnerianus_, after having been purchased by the representative in question, for the sum first insisted upon by the owner--now reposes upon the richly furnished shelves of the BODLEIAN LIBRARY--where it is not likely to repose _in vain_; and from whence no efforts, by the most eminently successful bibliographical diplomatist in Europe, can dislodge it. I must now say a few words respecting the present state of the FINE ARTS at Nuremberg, and make mention of a few things connected with the vicinity of the town, ere I conduct the reader to Manheim: regretting, however, that I am necessitated to make that account so summary. I consider M. KLEIN to be among the very brightest ornaments of this place, as an artist. I had seen enough of his productions at Vienna, to convince me that his pencil possessed no ordinary powers. He is yet a young man; somewhere between thirty and forty, and leads occasionally a very romantic life--but admirably subservient to the purposes of his art. He puts a knapsack upon his back, filled with merely necessary articles of linen and materials for work--and then stops, draws, eats, drinks, and sleeps where it pleases him: wherever his eye is gratified by strong characteristics of nature--whether on cattle, peasants, soldiers, or Cossacks. Klein appears to have obtained his exquisite knowledge of animal painting from having been a pupil of GABLER--a professed studier of natural history, and painter of animals. The pupil was unluckily absent from Nuremberg, when I was there; but from many enquiries of his ultimate friends, I learnt that he was of a cheerful, social disposition--fond of good company, and was in particular a very active and efficient member of a _Society of Artists_, which has been recently established at Nuremberg. Klein himself, however, resides chiefly at Vienna--there not being sufficient patronage for him in his native city. His water-coloured drawings, in particular, are considered admirable; but he has lately commenced painting in oil--with considerable success. His _etchings_, of which he has published about one hundred, are in general masterly; but perhaps they are a little too metallic and severe. His observation of nature is at once acute and correct. In the neighbourhood of Nuremberg--that is to say, scarcely more than an English mile from thence--are the grave and tomb-stone of ALBERT DURER. Dr. Bright having printed that artist's epitaph at length[177]--and it being found in most biographical details relating to him--it need not be here repeated. The monument is simple and striking. In the churchyard, there is a representation of the Crucifixion, cut in stone. It was on a fine, calm evening, just after sunset, that I first visited the tombstone of Albert Durer; and shall always remember the sensations, with which that visit was attended, as among the most pleasing and impressive of my life. The silence of the spot,--its retirement from the city--the falling shadows of night, and the increasing solemnity of every monument of the dead--- together with the mysterious, and even awful effect, produced by the colossal crucifix... but yet perhaps, more than either, the recollection of the extraordinary talents of the artist, so quietly sleeping beneath my feet ... all conspired to produce a train of reflections which may be readily conceived, but not so readily described. If ever a man deserved to be considered as the glory of his age and nation, ALBERT DURER was surely that man. He was, in truth, the Shakspeare of his art--for the _period_. Notwithstanding I had made every enquiry among the principal booksellers, of _Antiquars_, [178] for rare and curious old volumes, I literally found nothing worth purchasing. The Baron Derschau was doubtless my best friend on this score. Yet I was told that, if I would put a pair of horses to my carriage, and drive, to _Furth_--a short two German mile stage from Nuremberg, and which indeed I had distinctly seen from the windows of the citadel--I should find there, at a certain Antiquar's, called HEERDEGEN, an endless, variety of what was precious and curious in the department of which I was in search. Accordingly, I put the wheels of my carriage in motion, within twenty-four hours of receiving the intelligence. The road to Furth is raised from the level of the surrounding country, and well paved in the centre. It is also lined by poplar trees, a great part of the way. I have reason to remember this visit for many a long day. Having drove to M. Heerdegen's door, I was received with sufficient courtesy; and was told to mount to the top of the house, where the more ancient books were kept, while he, M. Heerdegen, settled a little business below. That business consisted in selling so many old folios, by the pound weight, in great wooden scales;--the vendor, all the time, keeping up a cheerful and incessant conversation. The very _sight_ of this transaction was sufficient to produce an hysterical affection--and, instead of mounting upwards, I stood--stock still--wondering at such an act of barbarity! Having requested permission to open the volumes in question, and finding them to contain decretals, and glosses upon councils, I recovered myself by degrees ... and leisurely walked to the very topmost floor of the house. M. Heerdegen was not long after me. He is a most naïf character; and when he is pleased with a customer, he presents him with an india ink drawing of his own portrait. On receiving this testimony of his approbation, I did not fail to make my proper acknowledgements: but, with respect to the books with which I was to load my carriage, there was scarcely a shadow of hope, of even securing a dozen volumes worth transporting to the banks of the Rhine. However, after three hours pretty severe labour--having opened and rejected I know not how many books of Medicine, Civil and Canon Law, Scholastic Divinity, Commentaries upon Aristotle, and disputations connected with Duns Scotus, together with a great number of later impressions of the Latin Bible in the XVth century--I contrived to get a good _Latin Plutarch_, some pretty Aldine octavos, a few _Lochers_ and _Brandts_, a rare little German poetical tract, of four leaves, called the _Wittemberg Nightingale_, and an _Italian Bible_ printed by the _Giuntæ_, which had belonged to _Melancthon_, and contained his autograph:--all which, with some pieces by _Eckius_, _Schottus_, and _Erasmus_, to the amount of 4_l._ 4_s._ of English money, were conveyed with great pomp and ceremony below. However, I had not been long with M. Heerdegen, before a clergyman, of small stature and spare countenance, made his appearance and saluted me. He had seen the carriage pass, and learnt, on enquiry, that the traveller within it had come expressly to see M. Heerdegen. He introduced himself as the curate of the neighbouring church, of which M. Fronmüller was the rector or pastor: adding, that _his own_ church was the only place of Christian worship in the village. This intelligence surprised me; but the curate, whose name was _Link_, continued thus: "This town, Sir, consists of a population of ten thousand souls, of which four-fifths are _Jews;_ who are strictly forbidden to sleep within the walls of Nuremberg. It is only even by a sort of courtesy, or sufferance, that they are allowed to transact business there during the day time." M. Link then begged I would accompany him to his own church, and to the rector's house--taking his own house in the way. There was nothing particularly deserving of notice in the church, which has little claim to antiquity. It had, however, a good organ. The rector was old and infirm. I did not see him, but was well pleased with his library, which is at once scholar-like and professional. The library of the curate was also excellent of its kind, though limited, from the confined means of its owner. It is surprising upon what small stipends the Protestant clergy live abroad; and if I were to mention that of M. Link, I should only excite the scepticism of my readers. I was then conducted through the village--which abounded with dirty figures and dirty faces. The women and female children were particularly disgusting, from the little attention paid to cleanliness. The men and boys were employed in work, which accounted for their rough appearance. The place seems to swarm with population--and if a plague, or other epidemic disorder should prevail, I can hardly conceive a scene in which it is likely to make more dreadful havoc than at _Furth_. Although I had not obtained any thing _very special_ at this place, in the book way, I was yet glad to have visited it--were it only for the sake of adding one more original character to the _bibliopolistic fraternity_ upon the Continent. In spite of the very extraordinary _line_ of business which M. Heerdegen chooses to follow, I have reason to think that he "turns a good penny" in the course of the year; but own that it was with surprise I learnt that Mr. Bohn, the bookseller of Frith Street,[179] had preceded me in my visit--and found some historical folios which he thought well worth the expense of conveyance to England. It remains only to return for a few hours to Nuremberg, and then to conduct the reader to Manheim. One of the four days, during which I remained at Nuremberg, happened to be _Sunday_; and of all places upon the Continent, Sunday is, at Nuremberg, among the gayest and most attractive. The weather was fine, and the whole population was alternately within and without the city walls. Some Bavarian troops of cavalry were exercising near the public walks, and of course a great multitude was collected to witness their manoeuvres. On casting my eye over this concourse of people, attired in their best clothes, I was particularly struck with the head dresses of the women: composed chiefly of broad-stiffened riband, of different colours, which is made to stick out behind in a flat manner--not to be described except by the pencil of my graphic companion. The figure, seen in the frontispiece of the third volume of this work, is that of the _Fille de chambre_ at our hotel, who was habited in her Sunday attire; and it displays in particular the riband head-dress--which was of black water-tabby sarsenet. But as these ribands are of different colours, and many of them gay and gorgeous, their appearance, in the open air--and where a great number of people is collected, and in constant motion--is that, as it were, of so many moving suns. In general, the _Nurembergeoises_ have little pretensions to beauty: they are; however, active, civil, and intelligent. It is rarely one takes leave of an hotel with regret when every days journey brings us sensibly nearer home. But it is due to the kind treatment and comfortable lodgings, of which I partook at Nuremberg; to say, that no traveller can leave the _Cheval Rouge_ without at least wishing that all future inns which he visits may resemble it. We left Nuremberg after dinner, resolving to sleep at _Ansbach_; of which place the Margrave and Margravine were sufficiently distinguished in our own country. I had received a letter of introduction to Monsieur Le Comte de Drechsel, President de la Regence--and President of the corporation of Nuremberg--respecting the negotiation for the Boccaccio of 1472; from which, however, I augured no very favourable result. The first stage from Nuremberg is _Kloster Heilbronn_: where, on changing horses, the master of the inn pressed me hard to go and visit the old church, which gives the name to the village, and which was said to contain some curious old paintings by Albert Durer: but there was literally no time--and I began to be tired ... almost of Albert Durers! At Ansbach we drove to the _Crown_, a large and excellent inn. It was nightfall when we entered the town, but not so dark as to render the size and extent of the Margrave's palace invisible, nor so late as to render a visit to two booksellers, after a late cup of tea, impracticable. At one place, I found something in the shape of old books, but purchased nothing--except an edition of Boccaccio's Tales, in French, with the well known plates of Roman Le Hooge, 1701. 8vo. It was loosely bound in sorry calf, but a florin could not be considered too much for it, even in its sombre state. The other bookseller supplied, by the tender of his friendly offices, the deficiencies of his collection--which, in fact, consisted of nothing but a stock of modern publications. The next morning I visited the Comte Drechsel--having first written him a note, and gently touched upon the point at issue. He received me with courtesy; and I found him particularly intelligent--but guarded in every expression connected with any thing like the indulgence, even of a hope, of obtaining the precious volume in question. He would submit my proposition to the municipality. He understood English perfectly well, and spoke French fluently. I had received intimation of a collection of rare and curious old books, belonging to a Mr...., in the environs of Ansbach; who, having recently experienced some misfortunes, had meditated the sale of his library. The owner had a pretty country house, scarcely a stone's throw from the outskirts of the town, and I saw his wife and children--but no books. I learnt that these latter were conveyed to the town for the purpose of sale; and having seen a few of them, I left a commission for a copy of _Fust and Schoeffher's_ edition of Pope Boniface's Councils of 1465, UPON VELLUM. I have never heard of the result of the sale. From Ansbach to _Heilbronn_, which can be scarcely less than sixty English miles, few things struck me on the road more forcibly than the remains of a small old church and cloisters at _Feuchtwang_--where we stopped to change horses, the first stage after Ansbach. It rained heavily, and we had only time to run hastily through these very curious old relics, which, if appearances formed the test of truth, might, from the colour of the stone and the peculiarity of the structure, have been old enough to designate the first christian place of worship established in Germany. The whole, however, was upon a singularly small scale. I earnestly recommend every English antiquary to stop longer than we did at Feuchtwang. From thence to _Heilbronn_, we passed many a castle-crowned summit, of which the base and adjacent country were covered by apparently impenetrable forests of fir and elm; but regretted exceedingly that it was quite nightfall when we made the very steep and _nervous_ entrance into _Hall_--down a mountainous descent, which seemed to put the carriage on an inclined plane of forty-five degrees. We were compelled to have four horses, on making the opposite ascent; and were even preceded by boys, with links and torches, over a small bridge, under which runs a precipitous and roaring stream. Hall is a large, lively, and much frequented town. _Heilbronn_, or _Hailbrunn_, is a large consequential town; and parts of it are spacious, as well as curious from appearances of antiquity. The large square, where we changed horses, was sufficiently striking; and the Hotel de ville in particular was worthy of being copied by the pencil of my companion. But we were only passing travellers, anxious to reach Manheim and to cross the Rhine. The country about Heilbronn is picturesque and fertile, and I saw enough to convince me that two days residence there would not be considered as time thrown away. It is one of the principal towns in the kingdom of Wirtemberg, and situated not many leagues from the Black Forest, or _Schwartz Wald_, where wild boars and other wild animals abound, and where St. Hubert (for aught I know to the contrary) keeps his nocturnal revels in some hitherto unfrequented glen ... beneath the radiance of an unclouded moon. But if _Heilbronn_ be attractive, from the imposing appearance of the houses, _Heidelberg_ is infinitely more so; containing a population of nine thousand inhabitants. We reached this latter place at dinner time, on Sunday--but as it rained heavily for the last hour previous to our entrance, we could not take that survey of the adjacent country which we so much desired to do. Yet we saw sufficient to delight us infinitely: having travelled along the banks of the river _Neckhar_ for the last three or four miles, observing the beautifully wood-crowned hills on the opposite side. But it is the CASTLE, or OLD PALACE of HEIDELBERG--where the Grand Dukes of Baden, or old Electors Palatine, used to reside--and where the celebrated TUN, replenished with many a score hogshead of choice Rhenish wine--form the grand objects of attraction to the curious traveller. The palace is a striking edifice more extensive than any thing I had previously seen; but in the general form of its structure, so like _Holland House_ at Kensington, that I hesitated not one moment to assign the commencement of the sixteenth century, as the period of the building in question. The date of 1607,[180] cut in stone, over one of the principal doors, confirmed my conjecture. I now looked eagerly on all sides--observing what portions were more or less dilapidated, and wondering at the extent and magnificence of the building. Room after room, corridor succeeding corridor--saloons, galleries, banquetting apartments, each and all denuded of its once princely furniture--did not fail to strike my imagination most forcibly. Here was the _Hall of Chivalry_, which had been rent asunder by lightning: yonder, a range of statues of the old _Electors Counts Palatine_:--a tier of granite columns stood in another direction, which had equally defied the assaults of the foe and the ravages of time. In one part, looking down, I observed an old square tower, which had been precipitated in consequence (as I learnt) of an explosion of gunpowder. It was doubtless about a century older than the building from which I observed it. On an eminence, almost smothered with larch and lime, and nearly as much above ourselves as we were from the town, stand the ruins of another old castle ... the residence of the older Counts Palatine. The whole scene was full of enchantment to an antiquarian traveller; and I scarcely knew how to quit one portion of it for another. The terrace, at the back of the castle, forms a noble and commanding walk. Here, in former days, the counts and dukes of the empire, with all their trains of duchesses and damoiselles, used to parade in full pomp and magnificence, receiving the homage of their dependants, and the applause of the townsmen. From hence, indeed, they might have looked down, in the proud spirit of disdain, upon their vassal subjects:--or, in case of rebellion, have planted their cannon and pulverised their habitations in a little hour. It is hardly possible to conceive a more magnificent situation ... but now, all is silence and solitude. The wild boar intrudes with impunity into the gardens--and the fowls of heaven roost within those spacious chambers, which were once hung with rich arras, or covered with gorgeous tapestry. Scarcely three human beings ... who seem to sleep out their existence ... are now the tenants of THAT MANSION, where once scarcely fewer than one hundred noblemen with their attendants, found comfortable accommodations. A powerful, and yet not unpleasing melancholy, touches the heart ... as one moves leisurely along these speaking proofs of the mutability of earthly grandeur. No man visits this proud palace without visiting also the equally celebrated TUN--of which _Merian_, in his well known views, has supplied us with a print or two. It is placed in the lower regions of the palace, in a room by itself--except that, by the side of it, there stands a small cask which may hold a hogshead, and which is considered to be the _ne plus ultra_ of the art of cooperage. It is made in the neatest and closest- fitting manner imaginable, without either a nail, or piece of iron, or encircling hoop; and I believe it to be nearly as old as the _great Tun_. This latter monstrous animal, of his species, is supported by ribs--of rather a picturesque appearance--which run across the belly of the cask, at right angles with the staves. As a WINE CASK, it has long maintained its proud distinction of being the _largest in the world_. A stair-case is to the right of it, leading to a little square platform at the top; upon which frolicksome lads and lasses used, in former days, to dance, when the tub had been just filled with the produce of the passing year's vintage. The guide told us that one Elector or Grand Duke, I think it was CHARLES THEODORE, had immortalised himself, by having, during his regency, caused the great tun of Heidelberg to be fairly _twice emptied_;--"those (added he) were golden days, never to return. At present, and for a long time past, the cask is filled almost to the very top with _mere lees_." In an adjoining cellar, I was shewn a set of casks, standing perpendicularly, called the _Twelve Apostles_. The whole of this subterraneous abode had, I must confess, a great air of hospitality about it; but when I mentioned to the guide the enormous size of those casks used by our principal London brewers--compared with which, even the "GREAT TUN" was a mere TEA-CUP--he held up his hands, shook his head, and exclaimed with great self- satisfaction... "cela ne se peut pas être!" After I had dined, I called upon M. Schlosser, one of the professors of the University--for which this town is rather celebrated.[181] Attached to this University, is a famous _Library of MSS. and printed books_--but more especially of the former. It has been long known under the name of the _Palatine Library;_ and having been seized and transported to the Vatican, at the conclusion of the thirty years war, and from thence carried to Paris, was, in the year 1815, at the urgent intercession of the King of Prussia, restored to its ancient-resting-place. What "a day of joyance" was that when this restoration took place! M. Schlosser adverted to it with a satisfaction amounting... almost to rapture. That gentleman made me a present of the first part of his _Universal Biography_, published at _Franckfort on the Main_, the preceding year, in 8vo.--in the German language--with copious and erudite notes. He shewed me the earlier printed volumes of the Public Library; of which, having unluckily lost the few memoranda I had taken--but which I believe only included the notice of a _first Caesar_, _first Suetonius_, and _first Tacitus_--I am not able to give any particular details. M. Schlosser conversed a good deal, and very earnestly, about Lord Spencer's library--and its probable ultimate destination; seeming to dread its "_dispersion_" as a national calamity. It was late in the afternoon, when darkness was rather prematurely coming on--and the rain descending almost in torrents--that I left Heidelberg for MANHEIM--the _ultima Thule_ of my peregrinations on the German side of the Rhine. The road is nearly straight, in good order, and lined with poplar trees. People of all descriptions--on foot, in gigs, carriages, and upon horseback--were hastening home--as upon a Sunday evening with _us_:--anxious to escape the effects of a soaking rain. Unfavourable as the weather was, I could not help looking behind, occasionally, to catch glimpses of the magnificent palace of Heidelberg; which seemed to encrease, in size and elevation as we continued to leave it in the rear. The country, also, on the other side of the _Neckhar_, was mountainous, wooded, and picturesque: the commencement of that chain of hills, which, extending towards _Mayence_ and _Cologne_, form the favourite and well known scenery which Englishmen delight to visit. As my eye ran along this magnificent range, I could not but feel something approaching to deep regret ... that _other_ causes, besides those of the lateness of the season, operated in preventing me from pursuing my course in that direction. It was impossible ... however I might have wished to visit the cities where _Fust_ and _Schoeffher_ and _Ulric Zel_ are supposed to lie entombed, and where the FIRST PRODUCTIONS OF THE PRESS were made public--it was impossible for me to do otherwise than to make Manheim the _colophon_ of my bibliographical excursion. The glass had been _turned_ for some time past, and the sand was fast running out. It was rather late when we drove to the _Golden Fleece_ at Manheim, the best inn in the town--and situated in a square, which, when we visited it, was filled by booths: it being fair time. With difficulty we got comfortable lodgings, so extremely crowded was the inn. The court-yard was half choked up with huge casks of Rhenish wine, of different qualities; most of them destined for England--and all seemed to be agitation and bustle. The first night of my arrival was a night of mixed pleasure and pain, by the receipt of nearly a dozen letters from Vienna, Munich, Stuttgart, and London, collectively: the whole of which had been purposely directed to this place. The contents of the Stuttgart letter have been already detailed to the reader.[182] The first object of my visitation at Manheim, on the morrow, was the house of DOM. ARTARIA--known, throughout the whole of Germany, as the principal mercantile house for books, prints, and pictures.[183] With these objects of commerce, was united that of _banking_: forming altogether an establishment of equal prosperity and respectability. The house is situated in the principal square, at the corner of one of the streets running into it. It has a stone front, and the exterior is equally as attractive in appearance, as the interior is from substantial hospitality. The civility, the frankness, the open-heartedness of my reception here was, if possible, more warm and encouraging than in any previous place in Germany; and what rendered the whole perfectly delightful, was, the thorough English-like appearance of every thing about me. Books, prints, pictures--and household furniture of every description--bespoke the judicious and liberal taste of the owner of the mansion; while the large and regular supplies of letters and despatches, every morning, gave indication of a brisk and opulent commerce. It so happened that, the very first morning of my visit to M. Artaria, there arrived trucks, filled with boxes and bales of goods purchased at the Frankfort fair--which had not been long over. In some of these ponderous cases, were pictures of the old masters; in others, _prints_.. chiefly from Paris and London,[184] and principally from the house of Messrs. Longman and Co. in Paternoster row. Among these latter, was a fine set of the _Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica,_ in ten volumes, 4to. bound in russia--which had been bespoke of M. Artaria by some Bavarian Count: and which must have cost that Count very little short of 120 guineas. The shelves of the front repository were almost wholly filled with English books, in the choicest bindings; and dressed out to catch and captivate the susceptible _bibliomaniac_, in a manner the most adroit imaginable. To the left, on entrance, were two rooms filled with choice paintings; many of them just purchased at the Frankfort fair. Some delicious Flemish pictures, among which I particularly noticed a little _Paul Potter_--valued at five hundred guineas--and some equally attractive Italian performances, containing, among the rest, a most desirable and genuine portrait of _Giovanni Bellini_--valued at one hundred and fifty guineas--were some of the principal objects of my admiration. But, more interesting than either, in my humble judgment, and yet not divested of a certain vexatious feeling, arising from an ignorance of the original--was a portrait, painted in oil, of the size of life, quite in the manner of _Hans Holbein_ ... yet with infinitely more warmth and power of carnation-tint. It was alive--and looked you through, as you entered the room. Few galleries, of portraits contain a more perfect specimen of the painting of the times. For the original, I believe, M. Artaria asked three hundred guineas.[185] The purse and table of M. Artaria were as open and as richly furnished as were his repositories of books and pictures; and I was scolded because I had not made _his house_ my head quarters during my residence at Manheim. I dined with him, however, twice out of the four days of my stay; and was indifferent to plays and public places of resort, in the conversation and company which I found at his house. Yet it was during the circulation of his double-quart bottles of old Rhenish wine--distributed with a liberality not to be exceeded by the Benedictines at the monastery at Göttwic, and yet more exquisite and choice in its flavour--that the gallant host poured forth the liberal sentiments which animated a bosom... grateful to providence for the success that had crowned his steadily and well directed labours! I never saw a man upon whom good fortune sat more comfortably, or one whom it was so little likely to spoil. Half of my time was spent in the house of M. Artaria, because there I found the kind of society which I preferred--and which contained a mixture of the antiquary and collector, with the merchant and man of the world. After this, who shall say that a fac-simile of his Autograph (now that he is NO MORE!) can be unacceptable even to the most fastidious. [Illustration] Among the antiquaries, were Messrs. TRAITEUR and KOCH. The former had been public librarian at Munich; and related to me the singular anecdote of having picked up the _first Mentz Bible_, called the _Mazarine_, for a few francs at Nancy. M. Traiteur is yet enthusiastic in his love of books, and shewed me the relics of what might have been a curious library. He has a strange hypothesis, that the art of printing was invented at _Spire;_ on account of a medal having been struck there in 1471, commemorative of that event; which medal was found during the capture of that place about two centuries ago. He fixed a very high price--somewhere about forty pounds--upon the medal; which, however, I never saw. He hoped (and I hope so too, for his own sake) that the Prince Royal of Bavaria would offer him that sum for it, to enrich his collection at Munich. M. Traiteur talked largely of a German book in his possession, with the express date of 1460; but though I was constantly urging him to shew it to me, he was not able to put his hand upon it. I bought of him, however, about ten pounds worth of books, among which was the _Life of St. Goar _, printed by _Schoeffher_ in 1481, quarto--the date of which had been artfully altered to 1470--by scratching out the final xi. This was not the knavery of the vender. M. Traiteur _offered_ me the _Tewrdanckhs_ of 1517, upon paper, for ten pounds: a sum, much beyond what I considered to be its real worth--from the copy having been half bound, and a good deal cropt. He was incessant in his polite attentions to me. M. Koch had been, if he be not yet, a grocer; but was so fond of rare old books, that he scarcely ever visited his canisters and sugar-loaves. I bought some very curious little pieces of him, to the amount of ten or twelve guineas: among which, was the strange and excessively rare tract, in Latin and German, entitled _De Fide Concubinarum in Sacerdotes_, of which a very particular account appears in the _Bibliographical Decameron_, vol. i. p. 229, 235. His simplicity of manners and friendliness of disposition were equally attractive; and I believe if he had possessed the most precious Aldine Classics, upon vellum, I could have succeeded in tempting him to part with them. The town of Manheim is large, neat, and populous; containing 20,000 souls. The streets run generally at right angles, and are sufficiently airy and wide. But, compared with the domestic architecture of Augsburg, Munich, and Vienna, the houses are low, small, and unornamented. The whole place has much the appearance of a handsome provincial town in England. There are gardens and public walks; but the chief of these is connected with the old red-stone palace of the former Elector Palatine. The Rhine terminates these walks on one side; and when I visited them, which was twice during my stay, that river was running with a rapid and discoloured current. The Rhine is broad here; but its banks are tame. A mound is raised against it, in some parts, to prevent partial overflows, and a fine terrace crowns its summits. A bridge of boats, over which you pass into France, is immediately in view. Upon the whole, these gardens, which seem to be laid out in the English fashion, and which are occasionally varied by some pleasing serpentine walks, are left in a sad state of neglect. The breeze from the river plays freely along the osiers and willows, with which its banks are plentifully planted; and I generally felt refreshed by half an hour's walk upon the broad, dry, gravel terrace, which comes close up to the very windows of the palace. The palace itself is of an enormous size--but is now bereft of every insignia of royalty. It is chiefly (as I understood) a depôt for arms. I ought to mention, among the social gratifications, of which I partook at Manheim, that arising from the kind attentions of M. ACKERMANN; a gentleman, retired from business, and residing in the place or square:--devoting the evening of a bachelor's life to the amusement resulting from a small but well chosen collection of coins and medals. He shewed me several of surprising delicacy and finish ... more especially of the sixteenth century, executed at Nuremberg--and tempted me to become a purchaser of the _Gold Royal_ of our _Edward IV._, for which I offered him five louis. As he thought himself handsomely paid, he presented me, in addition, with a beautiful silver medal of the sixteenth century--struck at Nuremberg--of which particular mention has been made in a preceding, page.[186] One of my visits to M. Ackermann was diversified by the sight of a profusion of fine grapes, of both colours, which had been just gathered from his garden--within the suburbs of the town:--where, indeed, a number of finely trimmed gardens, belonging to the citizens of Manheim, are kept in the highest state of cultivation. The vintage had now set through-out Germany and France; and more delicious grapes than those presented to me by M.A., could seldom be partaken of. Yet I know not if they were quite equal to those of Ratisbon and Heilbrunn. Passing along a very extensive vineyard, we stopped--requesting the valet to alight, and try to procure us some of the tempting fruit in view ... in order to slake our thirst during a hot journey. In a second he disappeared, and in a minute reappeared--with a bunch of black grapes--so large, full, and weighty ... that I question if Van Huysum or De Heem ever sat down to such a model for the exercise of their unrivalled pencils. The juice of this bunch was as copious and delicious as the exterior was downy and inviting. We learnt, however, that these little acts of depredation were not always to be committed with impunity; for that, in the middle of extensive fields, when the grape was ripe enough to be gathered, watch-boxes were placed--and keepers within these boxes were armed with carbines, loaded with something more weighty than _powder_! It only remains to mention, that, having left particular directions with the house of M. Artaria, to forward all _the_ cases which had been consigned to me, at their own house, from Vienna and Nuremberg, to that of Messrs. Arch and Co., booksellers, Cornhill, I had nothing to do but renew my letter of credit, and pass over the Rhine into France. I started immediately after dinner, from M. Artaria's house; horses having been brought to the door. MANHEIM TO PARIS. About four o'clock we passed over the bridge of boats, across the Rhine, and changed horses at _Ogersheim_ and _Spire_, sleeping at _Germezsheim_. The Rhine flows along the meadows which skirt the town of Spire; and while the horses were changing, we took a stroll about the cathedral. It is large, but of a motley style of architecture--and, in part, of a Moorish cast of character. Nothing but desolation appears about its exterior. The roof is sunk, and threatens to fall in every moment. No service (I understood) was performed within--but in a contiguous garden were the remains of a much older edifice, of an ecclesiastical character. Around, however, were the traces of devastation and havoc--the greater part arising from the bullets and cannon balls of the recent campaigns. It was impossible, however, for a _typographical antiquary_ to pass through this town, without feeling some sensations approaching to a sort of pleasing melancholy: for HERE were born the TWO SPIRAS--or _John and Vindelin de Spira_--who introduced the art of printing into Venice. I do not suppose that there exists any relic of domestic architecture here old enough to have been contemporaneous with the period of their births. The journey to Paris, through the route we took, was such--till we reached _St. Avold_, about two hundred and fifty English miles from the capital--as is never likely to induce me to repeat the attempt. The continuation of the chain of mountains called the _Vosges_, running northerly from Strasbourg downwards--renders the road wearisome, and in parts scarcely passable--as the government has recently paid no attention to its reparation. _Landau_, _Weissenbourg_, and _Bitche_ are the principal fortified towns; the latter, indeed, boasts of a commanding fort--upon a very elevated piece of ground, ranked among the more successful efforts of Vauban. The German language continued chiefly to be spoken among the postilions and lower orders, till we left _Forbach_ for _St. Avold_. At _Landau_, about three hundred and sixty miles from Paris, I parted with my valet--- for Strasbourg; under the impression that he would be glad to resume his acquaintance with me, on any future occasion: at the same time he seemed to long to be taken with us to _London_--a city, of all others, he said, he was desirous of seeing. He had also half imbibed the notion that its streets were paved with gold. _Metz_ is a noble city: finely situated, strongly fortified, and thickly inhabited. The _Moselle_ encircles a portion of it in a very picturesque manner. The inn, called the _Cheval Blanc_, should rather be that of _Cheval Noir_--if it take its epithet from the colour of the interior--for a dirtier hotel can scarcely exist. It was a fine moonlight night when we left Metz, on a Sunday, resolving to sleep two stages on the road. The next day we dined at _Dombasle_, a stage beyond _Verdun_; and were within about seventy miles of _Chalons sur Marne_. The vintage and the fruits of Autumn were now rich and abundant on all sides. The fields were all purple, and the orchards all red and gold. Wine casks, stained with the gushing juice, met us between every stage; while on the right hand and left, we saw the women walking beneath their perpendicular baskets, laden with the most bountiful produce of the vineyard. Such a year of plenty had hardly been remembered within the oldest memory. Mean time, the song and the roundelay were heard from all quarters; and between _Dombasle_ and _Clermont_, as we ascended a wooded height, with the sun setting in a flame of gold, in front--we witnessed a rural sight, connected with the vintage, which was sufficient to realise all the beautiful paintings ever executed by _Watteau_ and _Angelis_. It was late when we reached _Chalons_. The next day, we started for _Rheims_, and stopped at _Sillery_ in our way--the last stage on that side of it. The day was really oppressive--although we were in the middle of October. At Sillery we drank some Champagne--for which it is famous--the produce of the same year's vintage. It had not been made a fortnight--and tasted rather sharp and strong. This, we were triumphantly told, was the sure test of its turning out excellent. We were infinitely delighted with Rheims, more especially with THE CATHEDRAL. The western porches--and particularly that on the north side--are not less beautifully, than they are elaborately, sculptured. The interior, immediately within the western porches--or rather on the reverse sides of them--presents sculpture of admirable workmanship:--of the fourteenth century. But the porches appeared much lower than I had imagined. In the nave is an isolated roman sculpture,[187] of the lower age, cut in a block of marble--and unconnectedly placed there. This has been engraved in the _Antiquité Expliquée_ of _Montfaucon_. At the further end of the choir, is an elaborately sculptured modern monument--containing many beautiful figures in white marble:--upon the whole, one of the most interesting which I had seen upon the Continent. The upper part of the exterior of the cathedral, on the south side, is very elegantly carved; but the towers are short, and under repair. The lower part of the south exterior of the cathedral is entirely marred, as to picturesque effect, by the recent buildings attached to it. Upon the whole, however, the Cathedral at Rheims is a very pure and interesting specimen of Gothic architecture. Nor must I omit an anecdote connected with its present state of preservation. That it escaped the ravages of the revolution, was owing, as I learnt, to the respect which was paid to the Curé of some neighbouring parish. He came down to the armed multitude, when they were ripe for every species of destruction. He told them--they might take his LIFE ... but entreated them to spare the MOTHER CHURCH. They spared both: but many marks of their devastation are yet seen; and pieces of old sculpture, dragged from their original places of destination, are stuck about in different parts, over shopkeepers' doors. I could have filled a caravan with several curious specimens of this kind:--which would have been joyfully viewed by many a Member of the Society of Antiquaries. The population of Rheims is estimated at about thirty thousand. It appears to be situated in a fertile and picturesque country. As the weather continued not only serene, but almost sultry--and as we began to be weary of packing and unpacking, and sleeping at so many different inns in the route--I resolved upon travelling all night, and pushing on at once for Paris: where our fatigue would have a temporary cessation. I left, therefore, this venerable city about six o'clock in the evening--intending to travel without intermission till I reached my old quarters at the _Hôtel des Colonies_, in the _Rue de Richelieu_. The road is paved in the middle, the whole way to Paris; but we were careful to avoid the centre. In other respects, this road is broad, and has a noble appearance. As we quitted Rheims, and were gaining the height of the first hill, on the Paris side, we turned round to take a farewell view of the venerable cathedral. It will be long ere I forget that view. The moon, now at full, was rising--in unclouded majesty--just above the summit of the old towers of the cathedral. Her orb was clear, pale, and soft; and yet completely irradiated. The towers and western front were in a cold, gray tint: the houses, of inferior dimensions, were shrunk to insignificancy. There was, therefore, nothing but a cloudless sky, a full moon, and the cathedral of Rheims:--objects, upon which the eye rests, and the imagination riots... as ours did ... till a turning of the road shut out the scenery from our view. It was considerably past midnight when I reached _Soissons_--the principal town between Rheims and Paris. I breakfasted at _Dammartin_. About mid-day I entered Paris, and found the hostess of the _Hôtel des Colonies_, (who had been apprised by letter of our intention of returning thither) perfectly disposed to give me a cordial reception, after an absence of about three months. Having settled my affairs, and enjoyed a short repose at Paris of a fortnight, I returned with my companion, by the diligence, to Calais; and landed at Dover within about six months, and a half of my departure from Brighton to Dieppe. Although my tour was carried on in the most favourable of seasons--and with every sort of comfort, and attention arising from letters of recommendation, and hospitable receptions in consequence--yet I had undergone, from a constant state of excitement and occupation, a great deal of bodily and mental fatigue; and I question if poor Park, ... had it pleased Providence to have allowed him to re-visit his native shore... would have retouched BRITISH EARTH with greater joy than I experienced, when, leaping from the plank, put out from the boat, I planted my foot upon the shingles at DOVER ... ... _reddens landes Domino_.[188] [157] The Emperor of Austria having stopped at this hotel, the landlord asked his permission to call it from henceforth by his _Majesty's name_; which was readily granted. There is an _Album_ here, in which travellers are requested to inscribe their names, and in which I saw the _imperial autograph_. [158] Especially in the striped broad shoes; which strongly resemble those in the series of wood-cuts descriptive of the triumphs of the Emperor Maximilian. [159] There is a lithographic print of it recently published, from the drawing of Quaglio--of the same folio size with the similar prints of Ulm and Nuremburg. The date of the _towers_ of the Cathedral of Ratisbon may be ascertained with the greatest satisfaction. From the _Nuremberg Chronicle_ of 1493 folio xcviii, recto, it appears that when the author (Hartmann Schedel) wrote the text of that book, "the edifice was yet incomplete." This incomplete state, alludes, as I suspect, to the towers; for in the wood-cut, attached to the description, there is a crane fixed upon the top of _one_ of the towers, and a stone being drawn up by it--this tower being one story shorter than the other. Schedel is warm in commendation of the numerous religious establishments, which, in his time, distinguished the city of Ratisbon. Of that of St. Emmeran, the following note supplies some account. [160] Lord Spencer possesses some few early Classics from this monastic library, which was broken up about twenty years ago. His Lordship's copy of the _Pliny of_ 1469, folio, from the same library, is, in all probability, the finest which exists. The MONASTERY OF ST. EMMERAM was doubtless among the "most celebrated throughout Europe." In Hartmann Schedel's time, it was "an ample monastery of the order of St. Benedict." In the _Acta Sanctorum, mense Septembris, vol. vi. Sep_. 22, p. 469, the writer of the life of St. Emmeram supposes the monastery to have been built towards the end of the VIIth century. It was at first situated _without_ the walls,--but was afterwards (A.D. 920) included within the walls. Hansizius, a Jesuit, wrote a work in 1755, concerning the origin and constitution of the monastery--in which he says it was founded by Theodo in 688. The body of St. Emmeram was interred in the church of St. George, by Gaubaldus, in the VIIIth century, which church was reduced to ashes in 1642; but three years afterwards, they found the body of St. Emmeram, preserved in a double chest, or coffin, and afterwards exposed it, on Whitsunday, 1659, in a case of silver--to all the people. [161] He died in April, 1820. [162] [NOT so--as I understand. It is re-established in its previous form.] [163] So I heard him called everywhere--in Austria and Bavaria--by men of every degree and rank in society; and by _professional_ men as frequently as by others. I recollect when at Landshut, standing at the door of the hotel, and conversing with two gallant-looking Bavarian officers, who had spent half their lives in the service: one of them declaring that "he should like to have been _opposed_ to WELLINGTON--to have _died_ even in such opposition, if he could not have vanquished him." I asked him, why? "Because (said he) there is glory in such a contest--for he is, doubtless, the FIRST CAPTAIN OF THE AGE." [164] Dr. Bright, in _Travels in Lower Hungary_, p. 90-3, has an animated passage connected with this once flourishing, but now comparatively drooping, city. In the _Bibl. Spenceriana_, vol. iii. p. 261-3, will be found an extract or two, from Schedel's _Nuremberg Chronicle_, fol. c., &c. edit. 1493, which may serve to give a notion of the celebrity of Nuremberg about three centuries and a half ago. [165] Or rather, walls which have certain round towers, with a projecting top, at given intervals. These towers have a very strong and picturesque appearance; and are doubtless of the middle part of the fifteenth century. In Hartman Schedel's time, there were as many of them as there were days in the year. [166] [A large and most beautiful print of this interesting Shrine has been published since the above was written. It merits every commendation.] [167] This is a striking and interesting print--and published in England for 1_l._ 1_s._ The numerous figures introduced in it are habited in the costume of the seventeenth century. [168] The author of this work was _Franciscus de Retz_. As a first essay of printing, it is a noble performance. The reader may see the book pretty fully described in the _Bibl. Spenceriana_, vol. iii. p. 489. [169] See p. 320 ante. [170] See a copy of it described at Paris; vol. ii. p. 126. [171] See p. 182 ante. [172] [He is since DEAD.] [173] Only three livraisons of this work have, I believe, been yet published:--under the title of "_Gravures en Bois des anciens maîtres allemands tirées des Planches originales recueillies par_ IULIAN ALBERT DERSCHAU. _Publiées par Rodolphe Zecharie Becker_." The last, however, is of the date of 1816--and as the publisher has now come down to wood-blocks of the date of 1556, it may be submitted whether the work might not advantageously cease? Some of the blocks in this third part seem to be a yard square. [174] They are now in the library of Earl Spencer. [175] I will describe this singular specimen of old art as briefly and perspicuously as I am able. It consists of an impression, in pale black ink--resembling very much that of aquatint, of a subject cut upon copper, or brass, which is about seventeen inches in height (the top being a little cut away) and about ten inches six-eighths in width. The upper part of the impression is in the shape of an obtusely pointed, or perhaps rather semicircular, gothic window--and is filled by involutions of forms or patterns, with great freedom of play and grace of composition: resembling the stained glass in the upper parts of the more elaborated gothic windows of the beginning of the fifteenth century. Round the outer border of the subject, there are seven white circular holes, as if the metal from which the impression was taken, had been _nailed up_ against a wall--and these blank spots were the result of the aperture caused by the space formerly occupied by the nails. Below, is the subject of the crucifixion. The cross is ten inches high: the figure of Christ, without the glory, six inches: St. John is to the left, and the mother of Christ to the right of the cross; and each of these figures is about four inches high. The drawing and execution of these three figures, are barbarously puerile. To the left of St. John is a singular appearance of the _upper_ part of _another_ plate, running at right angles with the principal, and composed also in the form of the upper portion of a gothic window. To the right of the virgin, and of the plate, is the "staggering" date abovementioned. It is thus: M.cccc.xxx. This date is fixed upon the stem of a tree, of which both the stem and the branches above appear to have been _scraped_, in the copper, almost _white_--for the sake of introducing the inscription, or _date_. The date, moreover, has a very suspicious look, in regard to the execution of the letters of which it is composed. As to the _paper_, upon which the impression is taken, it has, doubtless, much of the look of old paper; but not of that particular kind, either in regard to _tone_ or _quality_, which we see in the prints of Mechlin, Schoen, or Albert Durer. But what gives a more "staggering aspect" to the whole affair is, that the worthy Derschau had _another_ copy of this _same_ impression, which he sold to Mr. John Payne, and which is now in the highly curious collection of Mr. Douce. This was fortunate, to say the least. The copy purchased by myself, is now in the collection of Earl Spencer. [176] I should add, that the _dotted_ manner of executing this old print, may be partly seen in that at page 280 of vol. iii. of the second edition of this work; but still more decidedly in the old prints pasted within the covers of the extraordinary copy of the _Mazarine Bible_, UPON VELLUM, once in the possession of Messrs. Nicol, booksellers to his late Majesty, and now in that of Henry Perkins, Esq. [177] _Travels in Lower Hungary_, 1818, 4to. p.93. [178] _Buchhandler_ is bookseller: and _Antiquar_ a dealer in old books. In Nuremberg, families exist for centuries in the same spot. I.A. ENDTER, one of the principal booksellers, resides in a house which his family have occupied since the year 1590. My intercourse was almost entirely with M. Lechner--one of the most obliging and respectable of his fraternity at Nuremberg. [179] [Now of Henrietta Street Covent Garden. As is a sturdy oak, of three centuries growth, compared with a sapling of the last season's transplanting, so is the business of Mr. Bohn, NOW, compared with what it was when the _above_ notice was written.] [180] It is either 1607, or 1609. [181] The reputation of the University of Heidelberg, which may contain 500 students, greatly depends upon that of the professors. The students are generally under twenty years of age. Their dress and general appearance is very picturesque. The shirt collar is open, the hair flowing, and a black velvet hat or cap, of small and square dimensions, placed on one side, gives them a very knowing air. One young man in particular, scarcely nineteen from his appearance, displayed the most beautiful countenance and figure which I had ever beheld. He seemed to be _Raphael_ or _Vandyke_ revived. [182] See note at page 49-51. [183] Since March 1819, called the firm of ARTARIA and FONTAINE. [184] Among the prints recently imported from the _latter_ place, was the whole length of the DUKE OF WELLINGTON, engraved by Bromley, from the painting of Sir Thomas Lawrence. I was surprised when M. Artaria told me that he had sold _fifty copies_ of this print--to his Bavarian and Austrian customers. In a large line engraving, of the Meeting of the Sovereigns and Prince Schwartzenberg, after the battle of Leipsic--from the painting of P. Krafft--and published by Artaria and Fontaine in January 1820--it is gratifying to read the name of our SCOTT--as that of the engraver of the piece--although it had been _previously_ placed in other hands. [185] [It was brought to England about three years ago, and is YET, I believe, a purchasable article in some Repository. It should at least be _seen_ by the whole tribe of COGNOSCENTI in Pall Mall.] [186] See page 439. [187] The town is said to abound with Roman antiquities; among which is a triumphal arch of the time of Augustus, and an arcade called the _Romulus_. It was at Rheims where the holy _ampoule_, or oil for consecrating the Kings of France was kept--who were usually crowned here. A Jacobin ruffian, of the name of _Ruht_, destroyed this ampoule during the revolution. This act was succeeded by his own self-destruction. [188] CHRISTMAS CAROL: printed by Wynkyn De Worde, 1521, 4to. see _Typog. Antiquities_, vol. ii. p. 251. THE END. PRINTED BY WILLIAM NICOL, AT THE Shakspeare Press, Cleveland Row, St. James's. 
20263	----	Transcriber's note: Inconsistencies and idiosyncrasies of spelling, punctuation, hyphenation, capitalization, and use of diacriticals are preserved as they appear in the original text. BOSWELL'S CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE HONOURABLE ANDREW ERSKINE AND HIS JOURNAL OF A TOUR TO CORSICA (Reprinted from the Original Editions) Edited With a Preface, Introduction, and Notes by GEORGE BIRKBECK HILL, D.C.L. Author of "Dr. Johnson: His Friends and His Critics." London: Thos. De La Rue & Co. 1879 Printed by Thomas De La Rue and Co., Bunhill Row, London. CONTENTS. PREFACE i LETTERS BETWEEN THE HONOURABLE ANDREW ERSKINE AND JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. 3 INTRODUCTION TO THE JOURNAL OF A TOUR TO CORSICA 101 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 125 PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION 135 THE JOURNAL OF A TOUR TO CORSICA 137 APPENDIX 239 BOSWELL AND ERSKINE'S LETTERS. PREFACE. Boswell did not bring out his "Life of Johnson" till he was past his fiftieth year. His "Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides" had appeared more than five years earlier. While it is on these two books that his fame rests, yet to the men of his generation he was chiefly known for his work on Corsica and for his friendship with Paoli. His admiration for Johnson he had certainly proclaimed far and wide. He had long been off, in the words of his father, "wi' the land-louping scoundrel of a Corsican, and had pinned himself to a dominie--an auld dominie who keeped a schule and cau'd it an acaadamy." Nevertheless it was to Corsica and its heroic chief that he owed the position that he undoubtedly held among men of letters. He was Corsica Boswell and Paoli Boswell long before he became famous as Johnson Boswell. It has been shown elsewhere[1] what a spirited thing it was in this young Scotchman to make his way into an island, the interior of which no traveller from this country had ever before visited. The Mediterranean still swarmed with Turkish corsairs, while Corsica itself was in a very unsettled condition. It had been computed that, till Paoli took the rule and held it with a firm hand, the state had lost no less than 800 subjects every year by assassination. Boswell, as he tells us in his Journal, had been warned by an officer of rank in the British Navy, who had visited several of the ports, of the risk he ran to his life in going among these "barbarians." Moreover a state of hostility existed between the Corsicans and the Republic of Genoa--which, the year before Boswell's visit, had obtained the assistance of France. The interior of the island was still held by Paoli, but many of the seaport towns were garrisoned by the French and the Genoese. At the time of Boswell's visit war was not being actively carried on, for the French commander had been instructed merely to secure these points, and not to undertake offensive operations against the natives. From the Journal that Boswell gives, we see that when once he had landed he ran no risks; but it is not every young man who, when out on his travels, leaves the safe and beaten round to go into a country that is almost unknown, and to prove to others that there also safety is to be found. With good reason did Johnson write to him--"Come home and expect such welcome as is due to him whom a wise and noble curiosity has led where perhaps no native of this country ever was before." With scarcely less reason did Paoli say, "A man come from Corsica will be like a man come from the Antipodes." [Footnote 1: "Dr. Johnson: His Friends and His Critics." By George Birkbeck Hill, D.C.L. Smith, Elder & Co.] How strongly his journey and his narrative touched the hearts of people at home may still be read in Mrs. Barbauld's fine lines on Corsica:-- "Such were the working thoughts which swelled the breast Of generous Boswell; when with nobler aim And views beyond the narrow beaten track By trivial fancy trod, he turned his course From polished Gallia's soft delicious vales, From the grey reliques of imperial Rome, From her long galleries of laureled stone, Her chiseled heroes and her marble gods, Whose dumb majestic pomp yet awes the world, To animated forms of patriot zeal; Warm in the living majesty of virtue; Elate with fearless spirit; firm; resolved; By fortune nor subdued; nor awed by power."[2] [Footnote 2: "Mrs. Barbauld's Poems," vol. i., p. 2. It is certainly strange that Boswell, so far as I know, nowhere quotes these lines. He was not wont to let the world remain in ignorance of any compliment that had been paid him. I fear that he was rather ashamed at finding himself praised by a writer who was not only a woman, but also was the wife of "a little presbyterian parson who kept an infant boarding school."] Gray was moved greatly by the account given of Paoli. "He is a man," he wrote, "born two thousand years after his time." Horace Walpole had written to beg him to read the book. "What relates to Paoli," he said, "will amuse you much." What merely amused Walpole "moved" Gray "strangely." It moved others besides him. Subscriptions were raised for the Corsicans, and money and arms were sent to them from this country. Boswell writes to tell his friend Temple--"I have hopes that our Government will interfere. In the meantime, by a private subscription in Scotland, I am sending this week £700 worth of ordnance." Other subscriptions were forwarded which Paoli, as is told in a letter from him published in the "Gentleman's Magazine,"[3] "applied to the support of the families of those patriots who, abhorring a foreign yoke, have abandoned their houses and estates in that part of the country held by the enemy, and have retired to join our army." [Footnote 3: "Gentleman's Magazine," vol. xxxix., p. 214.] Boswell's work met with a rapid sale. The copyright he sold to Dilly for one hundred guineas. The publisher must have made no small gain by the bargain, for a third edition was called for within a year. "My book," writes Boswell, "has amazing celebrity: Lord Lyttelton, Mr. Walpole, Mrs. Macaulay, Mr. Garrick have all written me noble letters about it." With his Lordship's letter he was so much delighted that in the third edition he obtained leave to use it to "enrich" his book. Johnson pronounced his Journal in a very high degree curious and delightful. It is surprising that a work which thus delighted Johnson, moved Gray strangely, and amused Horace Walpole, can now be met with only in old libraries and on the shelves of a dealer in second-hand books. I doubt whether a new edition has been published in the last hundred years. It is still more surprising when we remember that it is the work of an author who has written a book "that is likely to be read as long as the English exists, either as a living or as a dead language." The explanation of this, I take it, is to be found in the distinction that Johnson draws between Boswell's Account of Corsica, which forms more than two-thirds of the whole book, and the Journal of his Tour. His history, he said, was like other histories. It was copied from books. His Journal rose out of his own experience and observation. His history was read, and perhaps read with eagerness, because at the time when it appeared there was a strong interest felt in the Corsicans. In despair of maintaining their independence, they had been willing to place themselves and their island entirely under the protection of Great Britain. The offer had been refused, but they still hoped for our assistance. Not a few Englishmen felt with Lord Lyttelton when he wrote--"I wish with you that our Government had shown more respect for Corsican liberty, and I think it disgraces our nation that we do not live in good friendship with a brave people engaged in the noblest of all contests, a contest against tyranny." But in such a contest as this Corsica was before long to play a different part. Scarcely four years after Boswell from some distant hill "had a fine view of Ajaccio and its environs," that town was rendered famous by the birth of Napoleon Buonaparte. With whatever skill Boswell's history had been compiled it could not have lived. There were not, indeed, the materials out of which a history that should last could have been formed. The whole island boasted of but one printing press and one bookseller's shop. The feuds and wars of the wild islanders might have lived in the songs of the poet, but were little fit for the purposes of the historian. He who attempts to write the history of such a people is almost forced to accept tradition for fact, and to believe in their Arthurs and their Tells. The Corsicans are, indeed, from time to time found in one or other of the great tracks of European history. As Boswell says, their island had belonged to the Phoenicians, the Etruscans, the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Goths, and the Saracens. It had been conquered by France, and had been made a gift from that kingdom to the Pope. It had been given by the Pope to the Pisans, and from them had passed to the Republic of Genoa. It had undergone strange and rapid revolutions, but they were those common revolutions that befall a wild race that lives in the midst of powerful neighbours. Boswell, unsurpassed though he is as a biographer, admirable as he is as a writer of a Journal, yet had little of the stuff out of which an historian is made. His compilation is a creditable performance for a young man who had but lately returned home from his travels. It certainly adds nothing to the reputation of the author of the "Life of Johnson." But while it lies overwhelmed with deserved neglect, it ought not to drag down with it the Journal of his Tour. That portion of the work is lively, is interesting, and is brief. It can be read with pleasure now, as it was read with pleasure when it first appeared. But, besides this, it is interesting to us as the early work of a writer whose mind has been a puzzle to men of letters. Even should we accept Macaulay's judgment on Boswell, and despise him as he despises him, yet it must surely be worth while to examine closely the early writings of an author, who has, "in an important department of literature, immeasurably surpassed such writers as Tacitus, Clarendon, Alfieri, and his own idol Johnson."[4] This Journal is like the youthful sketch of some great artist. It exhibits the merits which, later on, distinguished, in so high a degree the mature writer. [Footnote 4: "Macaulay's Essays," vol. i., p. 377.] Together with the "Journal of a Tour to Corsica," I am reprinting a volume of letters that passed between Boswell and his friend The Honourable Andrew Erskine. Lively and amusing though they often are, yet I should not have proposed to republish them did not they throw almost as much light on Boswell's character as the Journal throws light on his powers as a writer. In his account of Corsica, there is a passage in which, while describing the historian Petrus Cyrnaeus, he at the same time describes himself. "The fourth book of Petrus Cyrnaeus," he says, "is entirely taken up with an account of his own wretched vagabond life, full of strange, whimsical anecdotes. He begins it very gravely: 'Quoniam ad hunc locum perventum est, non alienum videtur de Petri qui haec scripsit vita et moribus proponere.' 'Since we are come thus far it will not be amiss to say something of the life and manners of Petrus, who writeth this history.' He gives a very excellent character of himself, and, I dare say, a very faithful one. But so minute is his narration, that he takes care to inform posterity that he was very irregular in his method of walking, and that he preferred sweet wine to hard. In short, he was a man of considerable parts, with a great simplicity and oddity of character." To the simplicity and oddity of character that Boswell shared with this learned historian, there was certainly added not a little impudence. It was an impudence that was lively and amusing; but none the less was it downright impudence. We are amazed at the audacity with which two young men ventured to publish to the world the correspondence which had passed between them when they were scarcely of age. In fact, the earlier letters were written when Boswell was but twenty. Their justification only increases their offence. "Curiosity," they say, "is the most prevalent of all our passions; and the curiosity for reading letters, is the most prevalent of all kinds of curiosity. Had any man in the three kingdoms found the following letters, directed, sealed, and adorned with postmarks,--provided he could have done it honestly--he would have read every one of them." There is this, however, that makes us always look with a certain indulgence on Boswell. He never plays the hypocrite. He likes praise, he likes to be talked about, he likes to know great people, and he no more cares to conceal his likings than Sancho Panza cared to conceal his appetite. Three pullets and a couple of geese were but so much scum, which Don Quixote's squire whipped off to stay his stomach till dinner-time. By the time Boswell was six-and-twenty he could boast that he had made the acquaintance of Adam Smith, Robertson, Hume, Johnson, Goldsmith, Wilkes, Garrick, Horace Walpole, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Paoli. He had twice at least received a letter from the Earl of Chatham. But his appetite for knowing great men could never be satisfied. These might stay his stomach for a while, but more would be presently wanted. At the time when he published this volume of Letters he seems to have had some foresight into his future life. "I am thinking," he says, "of the intimacies which I shall form with the learned and ingenious in every science, and of the many amusing literary anecdotes which I shall pick up." When fame did come upon him by his book on Corsica, no one could have relished it more. "I am really the _great man_ now," he writes to his friend Temple. "I have had David Hume in the forenoon, and Mr. Johnson in the afternoon of the same day visiting me. Sir John Pringle, Dr. Franklin, and some more company dined with me to-day; and Mr. Johnson and General Oglethorpe one day, Mr. Garrick alone another, and David Hume and some more _literati_ another, dine with me next week. I give admirable dinners and good claret; and the moment I go abroad again, which will be in a day or two, I set up my chariot. This is enjoying the fruit of my labours, and appearing like the friend of Paoli.... David Hume came on purpose the other day to tell me that the Duke of Bedford was very fond of my book, and had recommended it to the Duchess." In the preface to the third edition, he says,--"When I first ventured to send my book into the world, I fairly owned an ardent desire for literary fame. I have obtained my desire: and whatever clouds may overcast my days, I can now walk here among the rocks and woods of my ancestors, with an agreeable consciousness that I have done something worthy." It was about this time that, writing to the great Earl of Chatham, he said--"I can labour hard; I feel myself coming forward, and I hope to be useful to my country. Could your Lordship find time to honour me now and then with a letter? I have been told how favourably your Lordship has spoken of me. To correspond with a Paoli and a Chatham, is enough to keep a young man ever ardent in the pursuit of virtuous fame."[5] [Footnote 5: "Chatham Correspondence," vol. iii., p. 246.] A few months before his account of Corsica was published, he had fixed upon the date of its publication as the period when he should steadily begin that pursuit of virtuous fame, which now was to be secured by correspondence with a Paoli and a Chatham. "I am always for fixing some period," he wrote, "for my perfection, as far as possible. Let it be when my account of Corsica is published; I shall then have a character which I must support." Unhappily the time for his perfection was again and again put off. Johnson, in speaking of Derrick, said--"Derrick may do very well, as long as he can outrun his character; but the moment his character gets up with him, it is all over." With Boswell, just the opposite was the case. He soon acquired a character--a character which he was bound to support. But he could never get up with it. The friend of Paoli, the friend of Johnson, was, unhappily, given to drink. The gay spirits and lively health of youth supported him for a while; but, even in these early days, he was too often troubled with that depression of spirit which follows on a debauch. But, as time passed on, and the habit grew stronger upon him, his health began to give way, and his cheerfulness of mind to desert him. He lived but four years after the publication of his great work. In the preface to the second edition of the "Life of Johnson" he shows his delight in his fame. "There are some men, I believe, who have, or think they have, a very small share of vanity. Such may speak of their literary fame in a decorous state of diffidence. But I confess that I am so formed by nature and by habit, that to restrain the effusion of delight on having obtained such fame, to me would be truly painful. Why, then, should I suppress it? Why, 'out of the abundance of the heart,' should I not speak?" This preface bears the date of July 1, 1793. Only ten days earlier he had written to tell Temple how he had been drinking, and had been robbed. "The robbery is only of a few shillings; but the cut on my head and bruises on my arms were sad things, and confined me to bed in pain, and fever, and helplessness, as a child, many days.... This shall be a crisis in my life: I trust I shall henceforth be a sober, regular man. Indeed, my indulgence in wine has, of late years especially, been excessive.... Your suggestion as to my being carried off in a state of intoxication, is awful. I thank you for it, my dear friend. It impressed me much, I assure you." It was too late in life to form resolutions. A year later he was again "resolved anew to be upon his guard." In the May of 1795, he died, after an illness of great suffering. To him might be applied some of the lines which the great poet who lived so near him wrote as his own epitaph:-- "He keenly felt the friendly glow, And softer flame; But thoughtless follies laid him low, And stain'd his name." Boswell had, indeed, but little of that "prudent, cautious, self-control," which, as Burns tells us, "is wisdom's root." It is a sad thought that at the very same time the two most famous writers that Ayrshire can boast, men whose homes were but a few miles apart, were at the same time drinking themselves to death. Burns outlived Boswell little more than a year. Boswell was fifty-four years old when he died. Greatly as he relished wine, he relished fame still more. He had worked hard for fame, and he had fairly earned it; but in its full flush his intemperance swept him away. There can be little question that his first triumph in the field of letters, his book on Corsica brought him far greater pleasure than his "Life of Johnson," by which his name will live. Perhaps the happiest day in his life was when, at the Shakespeare Jubilee, he entered the amphitheatre in the dress of a Corsican chief. "On the front of his cap was embroidered, in gold letters, "_Viva la Libertà_," and on the side of it was a handsome blue feather and cockade, so that it had an elegant as well as a warlike appearance." "So soon as he came into the room," says the account in the "London Magazine," written, no doubt, by himself, "he drew universal attention." The applause that his "Life of Johnson" brought him was, no doubt, far greater, but then, as I have said, his health was breaking, and his fine spirits were impaired. He who would know Boswell at his happiest--when he was, as Hume described him, very good humoured, very agreeable, and very mad, must read his volume of Letters, and the Journals of his Tours to Corsica and the Hebrides. LETTERS BETWEEN THE HONOURABLE ANDREW ERSKINE, AND JAMES BOSWELL, Esq; LONDON: Printed by SAMUEL CHANDLER; For W. FLEXNEY, near Gray's-Inn-Gate, Holborn. MDCCLXIII. ADVERTISEMENT. Curiosity is the most prevalent of all our passions; and the curiosity for reading letters, is the most prevalent of all kinds of curiosity. Had any man in the three Kingdoms found the following letters, directed, sealed, and adorned with postmarks,--provided he could have done it honestly--he would have read every one of them; or, had they been ushered into the world, from Mr. Flexney's shop, in that manner, they would have been bought up with the greatest avidity. As they really once had all the advantages of concealment, we hope their present more conspicuous form will not tend to diminish their merit. They have made ourselves laugh; we hope they will have the same effect upon other people. LETTERS. [In a Memoir of James Boswell,[6] by the Rev. Charles Rogers, a short account is given of the Hon. Andrew Erskine, Boswell's correspondent. He was the youngest son of Alexander, fifth Earl of Kellie. He served in the army for some years. After his retirement he settled at Edinburgh. "His habits were regular, but he indulged occasionally at cards, and was partial to the game of whist. Having sustained a serious loss at his favourite pastime, he became frantic, and threw himself into the Forth and perished." Burns, writing to his friend Thomson, October, 1793, says--"Your last letter, my dear Thomson, was indeed laden with heavy news. Alas, poor Erskine! The recollection that he was a coadjutor in your publication has, till now, scared me from writing to you, or turning my thoughts on composing for you." "He was," adds Dr. Rogers, "of a tall, portly form, and to the last wore gaiters and a flapped vest." By this last description Dr. Rogers's readers may be pleasantly reminded of an anecdote that is given for the first time, I believe, in his book. "Dr. Johnson used to laugh at a passage in Carte's 'Life of the Duke of Ormond,' where he gravely observed that 'he was always in full dress when he went to Court; too many being in the practice of going thither with double lapells.'" As poor Erskine "wore to the last his gaiters and a flapped vest," no doubt he had them on when he drowned himself.--ED.] [Footnote 6: "Boswelliana: The Commonplace Book of James Boswell." With a Memoir and Annotations, by the Rev. Charles Rogers, LL.D. London: Printed for the Grampian Club, 1874.] * * * * * LETTER I. Auchinleck, Aug. 25, 1761. Dear ERSKINE,--No ceremony, I beseech you. Give me your hand. How is my honest Captain Andrew? How goes it with the elegant gentle Lady A----? the lovely sighing Lady J----? and how, O how does that glorious luminary Lady B---- do? You see I retain my usual volatility. The Boswells, you know, came over from Normandy, with William the Conqueror, and some of us possess the spirit of our ancestors the French. I do for one. A pleasant spirit it is. _Vive la Bagatelle_, is the maxim. A light heart may bid defiance to fortune. And yet, Erskine, I must tell you, that I have been a little pensive of late, amorously pensive, and disposed to read Shenstone's Pastoral on Absence, the tenderness and simplicity of which I greatly admire. A man who is in love is like a man who has got the tooth-ache, he feels most acute pain while nobody pities him. In that situation am I at present: but well do I know that I will not be long so. So much for inconstancy. As this is my first epistle to you, it cannot in decency be a long one. Pray write to me soon. Your letters, I prophecy, will entertain me not a little; and will besides be extremely serviceable in many important respects. They will supply me with oil to my lamps, grease to my wheels, and blacking to my shoes. They will furnish me with strings to my fiddle, lashes to my whip, lining to my breeches, and buttons to my coat. They will make charming spurs, excellent knee buckles, and inimitable watch-keys. In short, while they last I shall neither want breakfast, dinner, nor supper. I shall keep a couple of horses, and I shall sleep upon a bed of down. I shall be in France this year, and in Spain the next; with many other particulars too tedious to mention. You may take me in a metaphorical sense; but I would rather choose to be understood literally. I am Your most affectionate friend, JAMES BOSWELL. * * * * * LETTER II. Kelly, Sept. 11, 1761. HAIL! mighty Boswell! at thy awful name The fainting muse relumes her sinking flame. Behold how high the tow'ring blaze aspires, While fancy's waving pinions fan my fires! Swells the full song? it swells alone from thee; Some spark of thy bright genius kindles me! "But softly, Sir," I hear you cry, "This wild bombast is rather dry: I hate your d----n'd insipid song, That sullen stalks in lines so long; Come, give us short ones like to Butler, Or, like our friend Auchinleck[7] the cutler." A Poet, Sir, whose fame is to support, Must ne'er write verses tripping pert and short: Who ever saw a judge himself disgrace, By trotting to the bench with hasty pace? I swear, dear Sir, you're really in the wrong; To make a line that's good, I say, James, make it long. [Footnote 7: Pronounced "Affleck."--ED.] You see, Sir, I have quite the best of the argument; and indeed I was determined not to give it up, till you acknowledged yourself vanquished; so to verse I go again, tooth and nail. How well you talk of glory and the guards, Of fighting heroes, and their great rewards! Our eyes behold you glow with martial flame, Our ears attend the never-ceasing theme. Fast from your tongue the rousing accents flow, And horror darkens on your sable brow! We hear the thunder of the rolling war, And see red vict'ry shouting from her car! You kindly took me up, an awkward cub, And introduced me to the Soaping-Club;[8] Where ev'ry Tuesday eve our ears are blest With genuine humour, and with genuine jest: The voice of mirth ascends the list'ning sky, While, "soap his own beard, every man," you cry. Say, who could e'er indulge a yawn or nap, When Barclay roars forth snip, and Bainbridge snap?[9] Tell me how I your favours may return; With thankfulness and gratitude I burn. I've one advice, oh! take it I implore! Search out America's untrodden shore; There seek some vast Savannah rude and wild, Where Europe's sons of slaughter never smil'd, With fiend-like arts, insidious to betray The sooty natives as a lawful prey. At you th' astonish'd savages shall stare, And hail you as a God, and call you fair: Your blooming beauty shall unrivall'd shine, And Captain Andrew's whiteness yield to thine.[10] [Footnote 8: The Soaping-Club--a Club in Edinburgh, the motto of which was, "Every Man soap his own Beard;" or, "Every Man indulge his own Humour." Their game was that facetious one, Snip, Snap, Snorum.] [Footnote 9: Barclay and Bainbridge, two members of this Club.] [Footnote 10: "And Captain Andrew's whiteness, &c." The writers of these Letters, instead of being rivals in wit, were rivals in complexion.] In reality, I'm under vast obligations to you. It was you who first made me thoroughly sensible (indeed I very readily believed it) of the excellencies of my own Poetry; and about that time, I made two wonderful discoveries, to wit, that you was a sensible man, and that I was a good poet; discoveries which I dare say are yet doubted by some incredulous people. Boswell, I shall not praise your letter, because I know you have an aversion at being thought a genius, or a wit. The reluctance with which you always repeat your Cub,[11] and the gravity of countenance which you always assume upon that occasion, are convincing proofs of this assertion. You hate flattery, too, but in spite of your teeth I must tell you, that you are the best Poet, and the most humorous letter-writer I know; and that you have a finer complexion, and dance better than any man of my acquaintance. For my part, I actually think you would make an excellent champion at the approaching coronation.[12] What though malevolent critics may say you are too little, yet you are a Briareus in comparison of Tydeus the hero of Statius's Thebais; and if he was not a warrior, then am I, Andrew Erskine, Lieutenant in the 71st regiment, blind of one eye, hump-backed, and lame in both legs. We all tired so much of the Highlands, that we had not been there three weeks before we all came away again. Lady B---- is gone a-visiting, and the rest of us are come to Kelly. It was most unaccountable in me to leave New-Tarbat; for nowhere will you meet with such fine ingredients for poetical description. However, we are all going back again when Mr. M---- comes from London; so some time in October you may expect a most cordial invitation. This is all at present (according to the simple but eloquent expression of the vulgar) from your sincere friend, ANDREW ERSKINE. [Footnote 11: In March, 1762, Boswell published "The Cub at Newmarket: a Tale." (Dodsley).--ED.] [Footnote 12: George III. was crowned on September 22nd, of this year.--ED.] * * * * * LETTER III. Auchinleck, Sept. 14, 1761. Dear Captain Andrew! Poet of renown! Whether the chairmen of Edina's town You curious draw, and make 'em justly speak, To use a vulgar phrase, _as clean's a leek_; Or smart Epistles, Fables, Songs you write, All put together handsome trim and tight; Or when your sweetly plaintive muse does sigh, And elegiac strains you happy try; Or when in ode sublime your genius soars, Which guineas brings to Donaldson by scores; Accept the thanks of ME, as quick as sage, Accept sincerest thanks for ev'ry page, For ev'ry page?--for ev'ry single line Of your rich letter aided by the Nine.[13] [Footnote 13: The rest of Boswell's verses--more than a hundred in number--the reader will thank me for omitting.--ED.] * * * * * You are now so heartily tired, that it would be absolutely barbarous to stun your ears any longer; only give me leave to tell you in one good round sentence, that your prose is admirable, and that I am just now (at three o'clock in the morning) sitting over the poor pale remnant of a once glorious blazing fire, and feasting upon it, till I am all in a _Lather_. I cannot stop yet. Allow me a few more words. I live here in a remote corner of an old ruinous house, where my ancestors have been very jovial. What a solemn idea rushes on my mind! They are all gone; I must follow. Well, and what then? Let me shift about to another subject. The best I can think of is a sound sleep. So good night, and believe me, Yours, JAMES BOSWELL. * * * * * LETTER IV. Auchinleck, Oct. 10, 1761. Dear ERSKINE,--Had Philip of Macedon been saddle-sick with riding up and down the country after his unruly son Alexander, and been waiting in extreme pain, till the surgeon of the next village brought him emollient relief, he could not have been more impatient than I am for a return to my last letter. I thought, indeed, that my firing so great a gun, would have produced a speedy and a suitable echo, and I had no doubt of at least being paid the interest of a sum so very large. I now give you fair warning, that if something is not speedily done in this affair, I shall be obliged to take very disagreeable methods. From this way of talking, I begin to fancy myself a Schoolmaster; a character next to that of a giant, most terrible to tender minds. Don't think to escape the rod. Don't think your dignity as a poet will save you from it. I make no question, but what that acrimonious pedagogue George Buchanan has often applied it to his pupil, and he you know was a poet and a king into the bargain. I have been reading the Rosciad. You see my very studies have tended towards flagellation. Upon my word Churchill[14] does scourge with a vengeance; I should not like to come under his discipline. He is certainly a very able writer. He has great power of numbers. [Footnote 14: Churchill's "Rosciad" had been published in March of this year.--ED.] "In manly tides of verse he rolls along."[15] [Footnote 15: "In manly tides of sense they roll'd along." --"The Rosciad."--ED.] I desire, Erskine, once again, that you may write without delay, otherwise, I shall no longer be Your affectionate friend, JAMES BOSWELL. * * * * * LETTER V. Kelly, Nov. 1, 1761. Dear BOSWELL,--If you could conceive the many twitches of conscience I have felt upon your account, the agitations, the compunctions, the remorses, you would certainly forgive me. However, I was beginning to turn callous against all suggestions of writing to you, when your last letter arrived, which like the day of judgment, made my transgressions stare me full in the face. Indolence and unwearied stupidity have been my constant companions this many a day; and that amiable couple, above all things in the world detest letter-writing. Besides, I heard you was just going to be married, and as a poet, I durst not approach you without an Epithalamium, and an Epithalamium was a thing, which at that time I could not compass. It was all in vain, that Cupid and Hymen, Juno and Luna, offered their assistance; I had no sort of employment for them. When you and I walked twice round the meadow upon the subject of matrimony, I little thought that my difference in opinion from you, would have brought on your marriage so soon; for I can attribute it to no other cause: From this I learn that contradiction is of use in society; and I shall take care to encourage that humour, or rather spirit, in myself. As this is the first marriage I ever made, I expect great congratulations, especially from you. I have been busy furbishing up some old pieces for Donaldson's[16] second volume: I exceed in quantity, twenty Eustace Budgels, according to your epistle. Pray what is become of the Cub? Is Dodsley to sell you for a shilling, or not? I have written one or two new things, an Ode to Pity, and an Epistle to the great Donaldson, which is to be printed: The subject was promising, but I made nothing of it. I must give over poetry, and copy epistles out of that elegant treatise the Complete Letter-Writer. D---- is gone to London, his parting advice to his sister was, to keep the key of the coals herself; so I suppose he intends to keep up his fire, this winter, in parliament, and not to go over the coals with the ministry. [Footnote 16: Donaldson, an Edinburgh bookseller, was bringing out a collection of Original Poems, by the Rev. Mr. Blacklock, and other Scotch gentlemen. Erskine was the editor.--ED.] Lady A---- and I set out for New-Tarbat to-morrow. Could you come? Let nothing but wedlock detain you. Oh, Boswell! the soporific effluvia of a hearty dinner cloud all my faculties. I'm as dull as the tolling in of the eighth-hour bell, or a neighbour in the country, that pays you an annual visit. At this present moment, I'm astonished how anybody can be clever; and your letter in heroic verse seems more amazing to me than if the King of Britain was to send an express for me, to dance a hornpipe before him, or the King of Prussia was to declare in a manifesto, that I was the occasion of the present war. I detest the invention of writing; and nothing could reconcile me to it, but that I can assure you at this distance, that I am yours sincerely, ANDREW ERSKINE. There's a genteel conclusion for you. When you come to Edinburgh, I'll settle an unintermitting correspondence with you. * * * * * LETTER VI. Edinburgh, Nov. 17, 1761. Dear ERSKINE,--Much much concern does it give me, to find that you have been in such bad spirits as your last most grievously indicates. I believe we great geniuses are all a little subject to the sorcery of that whimsical demon the spleen, which indeed we cannot complain of, considering what power of enchantment we ourselves possess, by the sweet magic of our flowing numbers. I would recommend to you to read Mr. Green's[17] excellent poem upon that subject. He will dispel the clouds and enliven you immediately. Or if that should not do, you may have recourse to Xenophon's method, which was boiling potatoes, and pelting the cats with them, an infallible receipt to promote risibility. [Footnote 17: Matthew Green (1696-1737). Author of "The Spleen."--ED.] So you too have listened to the report of my marriage, and must forsooth display a pretty vein of jocularity upon the mournful occasion. Did you really believe it? If you did, you will never be able to astonish me with any thing else that is wonderful in your creed, for I shall reckon your judgment at least three stanzas worse than formerly. In the name of every thing that is upside down, what could the people mean by marrying me? If they had boiled me into portable soup, or hammered me into horse-shoes, I should not have been greatly surprised. A man who has so deeply pondered on the wonders daily presented to our view, and who has experienced so many vicissitudes of fortune, as I have done, can easily make allowance for stranger things than these. But I own their matrimonial system exceeds my comprehension. Happy is it for the world that this affair did not take place. An event so prodigious must have been attended with very alarming consequences. For my own part, I tremble when I think of it. Damocles, Nero, and Richard the Third, would have appeared amiable princes in comparison of me. Wherever I went I should have carried horror and devastation, sparing neither sex nor age. All, all should have been sacrificed to my relentless cruelty. Donaldson is busy printing his second volume. I have mustered up a few verses for him, some old, some new. I will not boast of _them_. But I'll tell you one thing; the volume will be pretty free from typographical errors: I have the honour to correct the proof-sheets. My Cub is now with Dodsley. I fancy he will soon make his appearance in public. I long to see him in his Pall-Mall[18] habit: Though I'm afraid he will look a little awkward. Write to me often. You shall have the best answers I can give you. I remain, yours, JAMES BOSWELL. [Footnote 18: Dodsley's shop was in Pall Mall.--ED.] * * * * * LETTER VII. New-Tarbat, Nov. 23, 1761. Dear BOSWELL,--As we never hear that Demosthenes could broil beef-steaks, or Cicero poach eggs, we may safely conclude, that these gentlemen understood nothing of cookery. In like manner it may be concluded, that you, James Boswell, and I Andrew Erskine, cannot write serious epistles. This, as Mr. Tristram[19] says, I deny; for this letter of mine shall contain the quintessence of solidity; it shall be a piece of boiled beef and cabbage, a roasted goose, and a boiled leg of pork and greens: in one word, it shall contain advice; sage and mature advice. Oh! James Boswell! take care and don't break your neck; pray don't fracture your skull, and be very cautious in your manner of tumbling down precipices: beware of falling into coal-pits, and don't drown yourself in every pool you meet with. Having thus warned you of the most material dangers which your youth and inexperience will be ready to lead you into, I now proceed to others less momentary indeed, but very necessary to be strictly observed. Go not near the Soaping-Club, never mention Drury-lane Playhouse; be attentive to those Pinchbeck buckles which fortune has so graciously given you, of which I am afraid you're hardly fond enough; never wash your face, but above all forswear Poetry: from experience I can assure you, and this letter may serve as a proof, that a man may be as dull in prose as in verse; and as dullness is what we aim at, prose is the easiest of the two. Oh! my friend! profit by these my instructions; think that you see me studying for your advantage, my reverend locks over-shadowing my paper, my hands trembling, and my tongue hanging out, a figure of esteem, affection and veneration. By Heavens! Boswell! I love you more--But this, I think, may be more conveniently expressed in rhyme More than a herd of swine a kennel muddy, More than a brilliant belle polemic study, More than fat Falstaff lov'd a cup of sack, More than a guilty criminal the rack, More than attorneys love by cheats to thrive, And more than witches to be burnt alive. [Footnote 19: The first two volumes of Tristram Shandy were published towards the end of 1759.--ED.] I begin to be afraid that we shall not see you here this winter; which will be a great loss to you. If ever you travel into foreign parts, as Machiavel used to say, everybody abroad will require a description of New-Tarbat[20] from you. That you may not appear totally ridiculous and absurd, I shall send you some little account of it. Imagine then to yourself what Thomson would call an interminable plain,[21] interspersed in a lovely manner with beautiful green hills. The Seasons here are only shifted by Summer and Spring. Winter with his fur cap and his cat-skin gloves, was never seen in this charming retreat. The Castle is of Gothic structure, awful and lofty: there are fifty bed-chambers in it, with halls, saloons, and galleries without number. Mr. M----'s father, who was a man of infinite humour, caused a magnificent lake to be made, just before the entry of the house. His diversion was to peep out of his window, and see the people who came to visit him, skipping through it;--for there was no other passage--then he used to put on such huge fires to dry their clothes, that there was no bearing them. He used to declare, that he never thought a man good company till he was half drown'd and half burnt; but if in any part of his life he had narrowly escaped hanging (a thing not uncommon in the Highlands) he would perfectly doat upon him, and whenever the story was told him, he was ready to choke himself. But to return. Everything here is in the grand and sublime style. But, alas! some envious magician, with his d----d enchantments, has destroyed all these beauties. By his potent art, the house with so many bed-chambers in it, cannot conveniently lodge above a dozen people. The room which I am writing in, just now, is in reality a handsome parlour of twenty feet by sixteen; though in my eyes, and to all outward appearance, it seems a garret of six feet by four. The magnificent lake is a dirty puddle; the lovely plain, a rude wild country cover'd with the most astonishing high black mountains: the inhabitants, the most amiable race under the sun, appear now to be the ugliest, and look as if they were over-run with the itch. Their delicate limbs, adorned with the finest silk stockings, are now bare, and very dirty; but to describe all the transformations would take up more paper than Lady B---- from whom I had this, would choose to give me. My own metamorphosis is indeed so extraordinary, that I must make you acquainted with it. You know I am really very thick and short, prodigiously talkative and wonderfully impudent. Now I am thin and tall, strangely silent, and very bashful. If these things continue, who is safe? Even you, Boswell, may feel a change. Your fair and transparent complexion may turn black and oily; your person little and squat; and who knows but you may eternally rave about the King of Great Britain's guards;[22] a species of madness, from which good Lord deliver us! [Footnote 20: New-Tarbat, a wild seat in the western Highlands of Scotland, surrounded with mountains.] [Footnote 21: "Far smoking o'er the interminable plain." --Thomson's "Seasons."--Spring.--ED.] [Footnote 22: Boswell in a letter to his friend Temple, dated May 1st 1761, had thus described himself. "A young fellow whose happiness was always centred in London, ... who had got his mind filled with the most gay ideas--getting into the Guards, being about Court, enjoying the happiness of the _beau monde_, and the company of men of genius, &c."--ED.] I have often wondered, Boswell, that a man of your taste in music, cannot play upon the Jew's harp; there are some of us here that touch it very melodiously, I can tell you. Corelli's solo of _Maggie Lauder_, and Pergolesi's sonata of _The Carle he came o'er the Craft_, are excellently adapted to that instrument; let me advise you to learn it. The first cost is but three halfpence, and they last a long time. I have composed the following ode upon it, which exceeds Pindar as much as the Jew's harp does the organ. ODE UPON A JEW'S HARP. I. SWEET instrument! which fix'd in yellow teeth, So clear so sprightly and so gay is found, Whether you breathe along the shore of Leith, Or Lowmond's lofty cliffs thy strains resound; Struck by a taper finger's gentle tip, Ah softly in our ears thy pleasing murmurs slip! II. Where'er thy lively music's found, All are jumping, dancing round: Ev'n trusty William lifts a leg, And capers like sixteen with Peg; Both old and young confess thy pow'rful sway, They skip like madmen and they frisk away. III. Rous'd by the magic of the charming air, The yawning dogs forego their heavy slumbers; The ladies listen on the narrow stair, And Captain Andrew straight forgets his numbers. Cats and mice give o'er their battling, Pewter plates on shelves are rattling; But falling down the noise my lady hears, Whose scolding drowns the trump more tuneful than the spheres! Having thus, Boswell, written you a most entertaining letter, with which you are highly pleased; to your great grief I give over in these or the like words, your affectionate friend, ANDREW ERSKINE. * * * * * LETTER VIII. Edinburgh, Dec. 2, 1761. Dear ERSKINE,--Notwithstanding of your affecting elegy on the death of two pigs, I am just now returned from eating a most excellent one with the most magnificent Donaldson. I wish you would explain to me the reason of my being so very hard-hearted as to discover no manner of reluctance at that innocent animal's being brought to table well roasted. I will confess to you, my friend, that I fed upon it with no small alacrity--neither do I feel any pangs of remorse for having so done. The reason perhaps lies so deep as to elude our keenest penetration;--at the same time give me leave to offer my conjecture, which you may have by a little transmutation of a vulgar adage, in such manner as to obtain at one and the same time (so to speak) not only a strong reason for my alleged inhumanity, but also an apparent pun, and a seeming paradox; all which you have for the small and easy charge of saying, The belly has no bowels. I do assure you the imperial sovereign of Pope's head, Caledonian Dodsley, Scottish Baskerville, and captain general of collective bards, entertained us most sumptuously; I question much if captain Erskine himself ever fared better; although I was the only author in the company, which I own surprised me not a little. Donaldson is undoubtedly a gentleman perfectly skilled in the art of insinuation. His dinners are the most eloquent addresses imaginable. For my own part, I am never a sharer in one of his copious repasts, but I feel my heart warm to the landlord, and spontaneously conceive this expressive soliloquy,--Upon my word I must give him another hundred lines. Now, my dear Captain, tell me how is it with you, after reading this? With what feeling are you most strongly possessed? But as this depends a good deal upon the time of the day at which you receive my epistle, I shall make no farther inquiry. Thus, Sir, have I unbosomed the big exultation which possessed me upon occasion of what some of the fathers would call _splendidum prandium_; Englished thus, a splendid dinner. Are not you all this time very much astonished, nay, somewhat piqued, that I have as yet made no mention of your last, notwithstanding of the wonderful enchantments which you relate, the sagacious advices which you give, and the ode to a Jew's harp, which you add. Forgive me, good Captain. Blame Donaldson. Write to me whenever you have any thing that you wish to say, and believe me, Yours, JAMES BOSWELL. P.S. Are not you very proud of your Ode to Midnight? Lord K---- calls it the best Poem in the English language. But it will not be long so. For in imitation of it I have written an Ode to Gluttony, of which take two stanzas. I. HAIL Gluttony! O let me eat Immensely at thy awful board, On which to serve the stomach meet, What art and nature can afford. I'll furious cram, devoid of fear, Let but the roast and boil'd appear; Let me but see a smoking dish, I care not whether fowl or fish; Then rush ye floods of ale adown my throat, And in my belly make the victuals float! II. And yet why trust a greasy cook? Or give to meat the time of play? While ev'ry trout gulps down a hook, And poor dumb beasts harsh butchers slay? Why seek the dull, sauce-smelling gloom, Of the beef-haunted dining room; Where D----r gives to every guest With lib'ral hand whate'er is best; While you in vain th' insurance must invoke To give security you shall not choke? * * * * * LETTER IX. New-Tarbat, Dec. 3, 1761. Dear BOSWELL, EV'N now intent upon thy Ode, I plunge my knife into the beef, Which, when a cow--as is the mode-- Was _lifted_ by a Highland thief. Ah! spare him, spare him, circuit Lords! Ah hang him not in hempen cords; Ah save him in his morn of youth From the damp-breathing, dark[23] tolbooth, Lest when condemn'd and hung in clanking chains, His body moulder down white-bleached with winter rains! [Footnote 23: Tolbooth Prison.] But let not me intermeddle with your province; to parody the ode to midnight, could only be thought of and executed by the mirth-moving, humour-hunting, raillery-raising James Boswell. You must send me the rest of your Gluttony by the return of the post, even though it should prove the night of the Beard-soaping Club. Did you ever suspect me of believing your marriage? No, I always said from the beginning, there was nothing in it; I can bring twenty witnesses to prove it, who shall be nameless; indeed if you had been married, I don't know but the same gentlemen might have been prevailed upon to vouch for me that I frequently declared my firm persuasion of it; these kind of witnesses have multiplied greatly of late years, to the eternal credit of many a person's surprising sagacity; but if you want to see this subject pursued and treated with accuracy, peruse Doctor Woodward's Treatise of Fossils, particularly his remarks upon the touchstone. I am glad to hear you are returned to town, and once more near that seat of learning and genius Mr. Alexander Donaldson's shop. You tell me you are promoted to be his corrector of the press; I wish you also had the office of correcting his children, which they very much want; the eldest son, when I was there, never failed to play at taw all the time, and my queue used frequently to be pulled about; you know, upon account of its length it is very liable to these sort of attacks; I am thinking to cut it off, for I never yet met with a child that could keep his hands from it: and here I can't forbear telling you, that if ever you marry and have children, our acquaintance ceases from that moment, unless you breed them up after the manner of the great Scriblerus, and unless they be suckled with soft verse, and weaned with criticism. Write me when the volume will be published, and what sort of figure you think it will make, particularly how James Boswell and Andrew Erskine will appear; I know you will mix your opinion with a good deal of partial praise, as you are one of those extraordinary authors that have a love for their own works, and also one of those still more extraordinary ones that can flatter another. I find fault with one or two things in your letters; I could wish you wrote in a smaller hand, and that when you end a sentence in the beginning of a line, you would begin the next sentence in the same line. Dear Boswell, go to Donaldson and tell him he is a most inhuman miscreant, and deserves, as he is a Printer, to be pressed to death; then thunder in his ear that he has not sent Captain Erskine his Critical Review. Lady B---- entreats that you would come here and spend the Christmas holidays; she has sent for two Highland bards to entertain you, and I have a wash-ball and a stick of pomatum much at your service: we are all, thank God, in general pretty clear of the Itch just now, and most of us not near so lousy as we used to be, so I think you may venture. I received your letter ten days after the date, though it only came from Edinburgh; I had wrote you one some little time before, directed to the Parliament-Close, have you got it? That you may never want Odes of mine to parody, I enclose you one to Fear,[24] nothing like it you will observe since the time of Pindar. [Footnote 24: This Ode is not worth reprinting.--ED.] And now, my dear dear Boswell, I conclude, having, as I hope for mercy, not one word more to say, which I believe is often the case of many an enormous genius. Farewell. Yours, &c., ANDREW ERSKINE. * * * * * LETTER X. Edinburgh, Dec. 8, 1761. Dear ERSKINE,--It is a very strange thing, that I James Boswell, Esq., "who am happily possessed of a facility of manners,"--(to use the very words of Mr. Professor Smith,[25] which upon honour were addressed to me. I can produce the Letter in which they are to be found) I say it is a very strange thing that I should ever be at a loss how to express myself; and yet at this moment of my existence, that is really the case. May Lady B---- say unto me, "Boswell, I detest thee," if I am not in downright earnest. [Footnote 25: Adam Smith. Boswell had attended his classes on Moral Philosophy, when a student in the University of Glasgow.--ED.] Mankind are such a perverse race of beings, that they never fail to lay hold of every circumstance tending to their own praise, while they let slip every circumstance tending to their censure. To illustrate this by a recent example, you see I accurately remember Mr. Smith's beautiful, I shall even grant you just compliment, but have quite forgot his severe criticism on a sentence so clumsily formed, as to require an _I say_ to keep it together; which I myself candidly think much resembles a pair of ill-mended breeches. Having a mind, Erskine, to open a sluice of happiness upon you, I must inform you that I have lately got you an immensity of applause from men of the greatest taste. You know I read rather better than any man in Britain; so that your works had a very uncommon advantage. I was pleased at the praise which you received. I was vain of having such a correspondent. I thought I did not envy you a bit, and yet, I don't know, I felt somehow, as if I could like to thresh you pretty heartily: however, I have one comfort, in thinking that all this praise would not have availed you a single curl of Sir Cloudesley Shovel's periwig,[26] had not I generously reported it to you: so that in reality you are obliged to me for it. [Footnote 26: "Sir Cloudesley Shovel's monument has very often given me great offence: instead of the brave, rough English Admiral, which was the distinguishing character of that plain, gallant man, he is represented on his tomb by the figure of a beau, dressed in a long periwig, and reposing himself upon velvet cushions under a canopy of state."--The "Spectator," No. 26.--ED.] The second volume of the Poems will not be published till January. Captain Erskine will make a very good figure. Boswell a decent one. Lady B---- intreats me to come and pass the Christmas holidays with her: guess, O guess! what transport I felt at reading that. I did not know how to contain my elevation of spirits. I thought myself one of the greatest geniuses in Europe. I thought I could write all sorts of books, and work at all handicraft trades. I imagined that I had fourscore millions of money out at interest, and that I should actually be chosen Pope at the next election. I obtest you, my friend, in the warmest spirit of love to return to her Ladyship my most sincere thanks, and tell her that when the planets permit us to meet, she herself shall judge how richly I can express my gratitude. Although I am a good deal of a Don Quixote, yet I feel myself averse to so long a journey. Believe me, I am as sweetly indolent as any genius in all his Majesty's dominions, so that for my own incitement I must propose the following scheme. You Captain Andrew shall, upon Monday the 28th day of this present month, set out from New-Tarbat in Mr. M----'s chaise, and meet me at Glasgow, that evening. Next day shall we both in friendly guise get into the said chaise, and drive with velocity to your present habitation, where I shall remain till the Monday sennight; on which day I shall be in like manner accompanied back to Glasgow, from thence to make my way as well as I can, to the Scottish metropolis. I have told the story of my scheme rather awkwardly; but it will have its advantages; I shall have a couple of days more of your classical company, and somewhat less to pay, which to a Poet is no slender consideration. I shall chaise it the whole way. Thanks to the man who first invented that comfortable method of journeying. Had it not been for that, I dare say both you and I would have circumscribed our travels within a very few miles. For my own part, I think to dress myself in a great-coat and boots, and get astride a horse's back, and be jolted through the mire, perhaps in wind and rain, is a punishment too severe for all the offences which I can charge myself with. Indeed I have a mortal antipathy at riding, and that was the true reason for my refusing a regiment of dragoons which the King of Prussia offered me at the beginning of this war. I know indeed the Marischal Duke de Belleisle in his Political Testament,[27] has endeavoured to persuade the world that it was owing to my having a private amour with a Lady of distinction in the Austrian court, but that minister was too deeply immersed in state-intrigues, to know much about those of a more tender nature. The tumultuous hurry of business and ambition, left no room in his mind for the delicious delicacy of sentiment and passion, so very essential to a man of gallantry. [Footnote 27: "Avez-vous lu le _Testament politique du Maréchal de Belle-Isle_? C'est un ex-capucin de Rouen, nommé jadis Maubert, fripon, espion, escroc, menteur et ivrogne, ayant tous les talens de moinerie, qui a composé cet impertinent ouvrage."--Voltaire, Nov. 27, 1761.--ED.] I think, Erskine, in this scheme of mine, I am playing a very sure game, for you must either indulge me in every article which I have mentioned, or entertain me with a plentiful dish of well drest apologies. I beg it of you, however, don't put yourself to any inconvenience; indeed I might have saved myself the trouble of making this request, for you are that kind of man that I believe you would not put yourself to an inconvenience to be made a Lieutenant-General. Pray shall we not see you here this winter at all? You ought to come and eat the fruit of your labours. I remain your most affectionate friend, JAMES BOSWELL. I shall rouse Donaldson as you desire. I shall rouse him like a peal of thunder. I wonder what you will all think of this proposal of mine for delivering myself in Folio. Ten days make a period, as I use to say. They bear some proportion to the whole of life. Write instantly. * * * * * LETTER XI.[28] [Footnote 28: This Letter was occasioned by seeing an Ode to Tragedy, written by a Gentleman of Scotland, and dedicated to James Boswell, Esq., advertised in the Edinburgh Newspapers. It afterwards appeared that the Ode was written by Mr. Boswell himself.] New-Tarbat, Dec. 13, 1761. Dear BOSWELL,--An Ode to Tragedy by a gentleman of Scotland, and dedicated to you! had there been only one spark of curiosity in my whole composition, this would have raised it to a flame equal to the general conflagration. May G----d d----n me, as Lord Peter says,[29] if the edge of my appetite to know what it can be about, is not as keen as the best razor ever used by a member of the Soaping-Club. Go to Donaldson, demand from him two of my franks, and send it me even before the first post: write me, O write me! what sort of man this author is, where he was born, how he was brought up, and with what sort of diet he has been principally fed; tell me his genealogy, like Mr. M----; how many miles he has travelled in post-chaises, like Colonel R----; tell me what he eats, like a cook; what he drinks, like a wine-merchant; what shoes he wears, like a shoe-maker; in what manner his mother was delivered of him, like a man-midwife; and how his room is furnished, like an upholsterer; but if you happen to find it difficult to utter all this in terms befitting Mr. M----, Colonel R----, a cook, a wine-merchant, a shoemaker, a man-midwife, and an upholsterer, Oh! tell it me all in your own manner, and in your own incomparable style. [Footnote 29: In the "Tale of a Tub."--ED.] Your scheme, Boswell, has met with--but the thoughts of this Ode-writing gentleman of Scotland again come across me,--I must now ask, like the Spectator,[30] is he fat or lean, tall or short, does he use spectacles? what is the length of his walking-stick? has he a landed estate? has he a good coal-work?--Lord! Lord! what a melancholy thing it is to live twenty miles from a post-town! why am I not in Edinburgh? why am I not chained to Donaldson's shop? [Footnote 30: "I have observed that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure, till he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor, with other particulars of the like nature that conduce very much to the right understanding of an author."--"The Spectator," No. 1.--ED.] I received both your letters yesterday, for we send to the Post-house but once a week: I need not tell you how I liked them; were I to acquaint you with that, you would consecrate the pen with which they were written, and deify the inkhorn: I think the outside of one of them was adorned with the greatest quantity of good sealing-wax I ever saw, and my brother A---- and Lady A----, both of whom have a notable comprehension of these sort of things, agree with me in this my opinion. Your Ode to Gluttony[31] is altogether excellent; the descriptions are so lively, that mistaking the paper on which they were written, for a piece of bread and butter spread with marmalade, I fairly swallowed the whole composition, and I find my stomach increased three-fold since that time; I declare it to be the most admirable whet in the world, superior to a solan goose, or white wine and bitters; it ought to be hung up in every cook's shop in the three kingdoms, engraved on pillars in all market places, and pasted in all rooms in all taverns. [Footnote 31: He refers to the continuation of this Ode, which I have omitted in the present Edition.--ED.] You seem to doubt in your first letter, if ever Captain Erskine was better entertained by the great Donaldson, than you was lately; banish that opinion, tell it not in Gath; nor publish it in Askalon; repeat it not in John's Coffee-house, neither whisper it in the Abbey of Holyrood-House; no, I shall never forget the fowls and oyster sauce which bedecked the board: fat were the fowls, and the oysters of the true pandour or croat kind; then the apple pie with raisins, and the mutton with cauliflower, can never be erased from my remembrance; I may forget my native country, my dear brothers and sisters, my poetry, my art of making love, and even you, O Boswell! but these things I can never forget; the impression is too deep, too well imprinted ever to be effaced; I may turn Turk or Hottentot, I may be hanged for stealing a bag to adorn my hair, I may ravish all sorts of virgins, young and old, I may court the fattest Wapping landlady, but these things I can never forget; I may be sick and in prison, I may be deaf, dumb, and may lose my memory, but these things I can never forget. And now, Boswell, I am to acquaint you, that your proposal is received with the utmost joy and festivity, and the scheme, if I live till to-morrow fortnight, will be put in execution. The New-Tarbat chaise will arrive at Glasgow on Monday evening the 28th of December, drove by William. Captain Andrew's slim personage will slip out, he will enquire for James Boswell, Esq.; he will be shewn into the room where he is sitting before a large fire, the evening being cold, raptures and poetry will ensue, and every man will soap his own beard; every other article of the proposals will be executed as faithfully as this; but to speak very seriously, you must be true to your appointment, and come with the utmost regularity upon the Monday; think of my emotions at Græme's, if you should not come; view my melancholy posture; hark! I rave like Lady Wishfort,[32] no Boswell yet, Boswell's a lost thing. I must receive a letter from you before I set out, telling me whether you keep true to your resolution, and pray send me the Ode to Tragedy: I beg you'll bring me out in your pocket my Critical Review, which you may desire Donaldson to give you; but above all, employ Donaldson to get me a copy of Fingal,[33] which tell him I'll pay him for; I long to see it. [Footnote 32: In "The Way of the World," by Congreve.--ED.] [Footnote 33: The first volume of Macpherson's "Fingal" was published this winter.--ED.] There are some things lately published in London, which I would be glad to have, particularly a Spousal Hymn on the marriage of the King and Queen, and an Elegy on viewing a ruined Pile of Buildings; see what you can do for me; I know you will not take it ill to be busied a little for that greatest of all Poets Captain Andrew. The sluice of happiness you have let in upon me, has quite overflowed the shallows of my understanding; at this moment I am determined to write more and print more than any man in the kingdom, except the great Dr. Hill, who writes a Folio every month, a Quarto every fortnight, an Octavo every week, and a Duodecimo every day.[34] Hogarth has humourously represented a brawny porter almost sinking to the ground under a huge load of his works. I am too lazy just now to copy out an Ode to Indolence, which I have lately written; besides, it's fitting I reserve something for you to peruse when we meet, for upon these occasions an exchange of Poems ought to be as regular as an exchange of prisoners between two nations at war. Believe me, dear Boswell, to be yours sincerely, ANDREW ERSKINE. [Footnote 34: "Would you believe, what I know is fact, that Dr. Hill earned fifteen guineas a week by working for wholesale dealers? He was at once employed on six voluminous works of Botany, Husbandry, &c., published weekly."--Horace Walpole, date of Jan. 3, 1761.--ED.] P.S.--Pray write me before I set out for Glasgow.--The Ode to Tragedy, by a gentleman of Scotland, good now! wonderful! * * * * * LETTER XII. Edinburgh, Saturday, Dec. 14, 1761. Dear ERSKINE,--If my scheme takes, you must alter it. Thursday the 24th must be the day of our meeting, as I am obliged to return hither on Saturday the 2nd of January. This is really a curious way of employing you; however, you will gain something by it; you will acquire a particular exactness in knowing the days of the month, a science too much neglected in these degenerate days, but a science which was cultivated with a glorious ardour in Greece and Rome, and was no doubt the cause of their flourishing so much in every respect. I am yours sincerely, JAMES BOSWELL. * * * * * LETTER XIII. Edinburgh, Dec. 17, 1761. Dear ERSKINE,--Had you but hinted a method of conveyance sooner than by the first post, sooner should the Ode to Tragedy have saluted your longing eyes. At length it comes! it comes! Hark! with what lofty music do the spheres proclaim its triumphal entry into the majestic edifice at Tarbat! Behold the family gathered around it in a sort of quadrangular figure! Heavens! what a picture of curiosity! what a group of eager expectants! They show their teeth, they rub their hands, they kick the floor! But who is this the fire of whose look flames infinitely beyond the rest? It is Captain Andrew! It is! it is! ye Gods! he seizes! he opens! he reads! Let us leave him. I can no more. It would stretch the strings too far to proceed. You must know I purposely neglected to send the Ode myself, and likewise prevented Donaldson from sending it immediately when it was published, in order to give full play to your impatience. I considered what amazing effects it must produce upon Captain Erskine, to find in one advertisement, An Ode to Tragedy--A Gentleman of Scotland--Alexander Donaldson--and James Boswell, Esq. How far my conjecture was just, your last letter does most amply testify. The author of the Ode to Tragedy, is a most excellent man: he is of an ancient family in the west of Scotland, upon which he values himself not a little. At his nativity there appeared omens of his future greatness. His parts are bright, and his education has been good. He has travelled in post-chaises, miles without number. He is fond of seeing much of the world. He eats of every good dish, especially apple-pie. He drinks old hock. He has a very fine temper. He is somewhat of an humorist, and a little tinctured with pride. He has a good manly countenance, and he owns himself to be amorous. He has infinite vivacity, yet is observed at times to have a melancholy cast. He is rather fat than lean, rather short than tall, rather young than old. His shoes are neatly made, and he never wears spectacles. The length of his walking-stick is not as yet ascertained; but we hope soon to favour the republic of letters with a solution of this difficulty, as several able mathematicians are employed in its investigation, and for that purpose have posted themselves at different given points in the Cannongate, so that when the gentleman saunters down to the Abbey of Holyrood-house, in order to think on ancient days, on King James the Fifth, and on Queen Mary, they may compute its altitude above the street, according to the rules of geometry. I hope you have received a line from me fixing Thursday the 24th, as the day of our meeting. I exult in the prospect of felicity that is before us. Fingal and your Critical Review shall accompany me. I will not anticipate your pleasure in reading the Highland bard; only take my word for it, he will make you feel that you have a soul. I shall remember your other commissions. Continue to trust me till you find me negligent. I beg it of you, for once, be a Frenchman, and in the character of Boswell, kneel, supplicate, worship Lady B----. I remain, your affectionate Friend, JAMES BOSWELL. * * * * * LETTER XIV. New-Tarbat, Dec. 16, 1761. Dear BOSWELL,--Swift as pen can scratch, or ink can flow, as floods can rush, or winds can blow, which you'll observe is a very pretty rhyme, I sit down on a chair which has really a very bad bottom, being made of wood, and answer your epistle which I received this moment; it is dated on Saturday the 14th, which was really the 12th, according to the computation of the best chronologists: this is a blunder which Sir Isaac Newton would never have excused; but I a man no less great, forgive it from my soul; and I here declare, that I will never upbraid you with it in any company or conversation, even though that conversation should turn upon the quickest and most pleasant method of swallowing oysters, when you know I might very naturally introduce it. I confess it is singularly silly in me to turn the page in this manner, and that I should have followed your example, or rather ensample, as some great judges of style usually write it. I see by the newspapers, that Fingal is to be published at Edinburgh in a few days, pray bring it with you. I will undoubtedly meet you at Glasgow on the 24th day of the month, being exactly that day which precedes Christmas, as was ingeniously observed by Mr. Sheridan in his fourth Lecture;[35] and I hear he is going to publish a whole volume of discoveries all as notable as this, which I imagine will exceed his lectures greatly. [Footnote 35: "Course of Lectures on Elocution," by Thomas Sheridan, M.A. London, 1762.--ED.] Pray now be faithful to this appointment, and so I commit this letter to the guidance of Providence, hoping that it will not miscarry, or fail of being duly delivered. Believe me yours sincerely, ANDREW ERSKINE. * * * * * LETTER XV. New-Tarbat, Jan. 10, 1762. Dear BOSWELL,--The storms of night descended, the winds rolled along the clouds with all their ghosts, around the rock the dark waves burst, and shewed their flaming bosoms, loud rushed the blast through the leafless oaks, and the voice of the spirit of the mountains was heard in our halls; it was Saturday, when lo! at once the postman came, mighty was his striding in the kitchen, and strong was his voice for ale. In short, I have as yet received no letter from you, and great is my wonder and astonishment, even Donaldson has not sent me my Critical Review; would to God he had one rap from Fingal's sword of Luno. I feel myself at this present moment capable of writing a letter which would delight you, but I am determined not to do it, and this is the severe punishment of your neglect, I withhold the treasures of my wit and humour from you, a perfect Golconda mine of Diamonds. I have been enjoying since you left me, the most exquisite entertainment, in the perusal of the noble works of Ossian, the greatest poet, in my opinion, that ever composed, and who exceeds Homer, Virgil, and Milton. He transports us by the grandeur of his sublime, or by some sudden start of tenderness he melts us into distress: Who can read, without the warmest emotions, the pathetic complaints of the venerable old bard, when he laments his blindness, and the death of his friends? But how are we animated when the memory of former years comes rushing on his mind, and the light of the song rises in his soul. It is quite impossible to express my admiration of his Poems; at particular passages I felt my whole frame trembling with ecstasy; but if I was to describe all my thoughts, you would think me absolutely mad. The beautiful wildness of his fancy is inexpressibly agreeable to the imagination; for instance, the mournful sound from the untouched harp when a hero is going to fall, or the awful appearances of his ghosts and spirits. Notwithstanding all these beauties, we shall still continue pedants, and Homer and Virgil will be read and quoted, when Ossian shall be totally forgot; this, without the gift of prophecy, I can foresee; much could I enlarge upon this subject, but this must not be a long letter. Believe me Yours sincerely, ANDREW ERSKINE. * * * * * LETTER XVI. Edinburgh, Jan. 11, 1762. Dear ERSKINE,--Instead of endeavouring to excuse myself for neglecting so long to write, I shall present you with some original conjectures of my own, upon the way and manner in which you have been affected upon this present occasion. And here I must premise, that in so doing I shall not follow the formal and orderly method of Bishop Latimer, in his sermons before King Edward the Sixth; but, on the contrary, shall adopt the easy, desultory style of one whom at present I shall not venture to name, but leave that to some future ingenious commentator on the epistolary correspondence of the Hon. Andrew Erskine and James Boswell, Esq. Either you have been sunk into a frigid state of listless indifference, and gone whistling up and down the room upon a fife, and murmuring at intervals, while you took breath; let him do as he likes, let him please himself; yes, yes, let him soap his own beard. Or you have felt the most delicate pangs of afflicted sensibility, and uttered tender tales of woe in softly plaintive numbers. The savage bard returns no humorous line, No Tragic Ode now sooths my soul to rest; In vain I fly to Lady B----'s wine, Nor can a hearty supper make me blest. Or you have burned, raged, and fried like the thrice-amorous swain in the renowned English translation of Voi Amante, and perhaps thundered forth all the Anathemas which Tristram Shandy has borrowed from the church of Rome, and transferred to poor Obadiah. By this time, the storm is blown over. This merry letter has made you grin, and show every expression of laughter. You are now in very good humour, and are in all human probability saying to yourself, My good friend Boswell, is a most excellent correspondent. It is true he is indolent, and _dissipated_, as the celebrated Parson Brown,[36] of Carlisle says, and he frequently is a little negligent: but when he does write, ye Gods! how he does write! in short, to sing him his own inimitable song, "There is no better fellow alive." I remain Yours sincerely, JAMES BOSWELL. [Footnote 36: Dr. John Brown, the author of "An Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times."--ED.] * * * * * LETTER XVII. New-Tarbat, Jan. 20, 1762. Dear BOSWELL,--It is a kind of maxim, or rule in life, never to begin a thing without having an eye towards the conclusion; certainly this rule was never better observed than in your last letter, in which indeed I am apt to think you kept the conclusion rather too much in view, or perhaps you forgot the beginning altogether, which is not unfrequently the case with you; but you do these things with so little compunction, that I shall very soon cease to forgive you, and answer you in the same manner. It is to be feared, that the dissolution of our correspondence will immediately follow, or dwindle into half a page of your text hand, which I always looked upon as a detestable invention: if all this that I dread happens, we shall then cease to be reckoned men of LETTERS. I find it recorded in the history of the eastern Roman Empire, that it was the custom whenever the inhabitants of Constantinople mutinied for want of bread, to whip all the bakers through the city, which always appeased the populace; in like manner, Boswell, I having dreamt a few nights ago, that I had whipt you severely, find my wrath and resentment very much mollified; not so much indeed I confess, as if I had really had the pleasure of actually correcting you, but however I am pretty well satisfied. You was quite mistaken as to the manner I bore your silence; I only thought it was a little droll. Donaldson tells me, that he wants thirty or forty pages to complete his volume; pray don't let him insert any nonsense to fill it up, but try John Home[37] and John R----, who I hear is a very good poet; you may also hint the thing to Mr. N----, and to my brother, Lord K----, who has some excellent poems by him. [Footnote 37: The author of "Douglas."--ED.] Since I saw you, I received a letter from Mr. D----; it is filled with encomiums upon you: he says there is a great deal of humility in your vanity, a great deal of tallness in your shortness, and a great deal of whiteness in your black complexion. He says there is a great deal of poetry in your prose, and a great deal of prose in your poetry. He says, that as to your late publication, there is a great deal of Ode in your dedication, and a great deal of dedication in your Ode; it would amaze you to see how D---- keeps up this see-saw, which you'll remark has prodigious wit in it. He says there is a great deal of coat in your waistcoat, and a great deal of waistcoat in your coat; that there is a great deal of liveliness in your stupidity, and a great deal of stupidity in your liveliness; but to write you all he says, would require rather more fire in my grate, than there is at present; and my fingers would undoubtedly be numbed, for there is a great deal of snow in this frost, and a great deal of frost in this snow: in short, upon this occasion he writes like a Christian and a Poet, and a Physician and an Orator, and a Jew. Pray, Boswell, tell me particularly in your first letter, how Fingal has been received; that book will serve me as a criterion, to discover the taste of the present age. Boswell, imitate me in your writing; observe how closely the lines are joined, how near the words are written to one another, and how small the letters are formed; I am praiseworthy in this particular. Adieu. Yours sincerely, ANDREW ERSKINE. * * * * * LETTER XVIII. Edinburgh, Jan. 22, 1762. Dear ERSKINE,--I would not for all the books in Donaldson's shop that our correspondence should cease. Rather, much rather would I trot a horse in the hottest day in summer, between Fort George and Aberdeen; rather, much rather would I hold the office of him who every returning noon plays upon the music-bells of the good town of Edinburgh;[38] and rather, much rather would I be condemned to pass the next seven years of my life, as a spiritless student at the college of Glasgow. [Footnote 38: "All the people of business at Edinburgh, and even the genteel company may be seen standing in crowds every day, from one to two in the afternoon, in the open street.... The company are entertained with a variety of tunes, played upon a set of bells, fixed in a steeple hard by. As these bells are well toned, and the musician, who has a salary from the city for playing upon them with keys, is no bad performer, the entertainment is really agreeable, and very striking to the ears of a stranger."--"Humphry Clinker," vol. ii., p. 223.--ED.] Let our wit, my friend, continue to shine in a succession of brilliant sparkles. Let there be no more distance between each flash of vivacity, but what is necessary for giving time to observe its splendid radiance. I hope I shall never again approach so near the clod of clay. I hope the fire of my genius shall never again be so long in kindling, or so much covered up with the dross of stupidity. I have desired Donaldson to cause his correspondent at London, to send a copy of the first volume of his collection to each of the Reviews, that is to say, to Hamilton[39] and Griffiths, with whose names the slate-blue covers of these awful oracles of criticism are inscribed. [Footnote 39: Hamilton was the proprietor of "The Critical Review." Its first editor was Smollett. Griffiths was the proprietor of "The Monthly Review." Goldsmith worked for him for some time. Griffiths was fool enough to venture, with the aid of his wife, to correct Goldsmith's compositions.--See Forster's "Life of Goldsmith."--ED.] Donaldson has yet about thirty-six pages of the second Volume to print. I have given him two hundred lines more. He is a loadstone of prodigious power, and attracts all my poetic needles. The Volume will be out next week; the different pieces of which it is composed are, to be sure, not all of equal merit. But is not that the case in every miscellaneous collection, even in that excellent one published by Mr. Dodsley? The truth is, that a volume printed in a small type exhausts an infinite quantity of _copy_ (to talk technically) so that we must not be over-nice in our choice, nor think every man in our ranks below size, who does not come up to the elevated standard of Captain Andrew. D----'s encomiums have rendered my humility still prouder; they are indeed superb, and worthy of an opposer of the German war. I suppose they have not lost a bit of beef by their long journey, and I should imagine that the Highland air has agreed well with them, and that they have agreed well with the Highland air. They occasioned much laughter in my heart, and much heart in my laughter. They have at last given over marrying me; so that I am going about like a horse wanting a halter, ready to be bridled and saddled by the first person who is so very fortunate as to lay hold of me. A simile not to be found in any author ancient or modern. We had a splendid ball at the Abbey of Holyrood-house, on the Queen's birthday, given by Colonel Graeme. I exhibited my existence in a minuet, and as I was dressed in a full chocolate suit, and wore my most solemn countenance, I looked as you used to tell me, like the fifth act of a deep Tragedy. Lord K---- danced with Miss C----, by the fire of whose eyes, his melodious lordship's heart is at present in a state of combustion. Such is the declaration which he makes in loud whispers many a time and oft. Our friend H---- S---- is in town this winter. He is a most surprising old fellow. I am told he is some years past sixty; and yet he has all the vivacity and frolic, and whim of the sprightliest youth. He continues to rank all mankind under the general denomination of Gilbert. He patrols the streets at midnight as much as ever, and beats with as much vigour the town-guard drum; nor is his affection for the company of blind fiddlers, in the least abated. Fingal has been very warmly received at London. A second edition of it is just now come out. The public taste you will allow is good at present: long may it last. Long may the voice of the venerable bard be heard with unaffected pleasure. I see your regiment is ordered for England. I hope you will be allowed to recruit, or have leave of absence, as it would be very severe upon you to be moved from your present situation. If you will number the lines in our pages, you will find I have twenty-three, whereas you have only eighteen. I enclose you the sorrowful lamentation of a stabler called Hutchison, who, on Wednesday last was whipt through this town, for forcing away a young man as a recruit, and beating him unmercifully. The said lamentation you will find is in verse; and although sold for a single penny, is a work of remarkable merit. The exordium is a passionate address to Captains all; amongst whom, who can more properly be reckoned than Captain Andrew? I remain your sincere friend, JAMES BOSWELL. * * * * * LETTER XIX. Morpeth, Feb. 7th, 1762. Dear BOSWELL,--And lo I am at Morpeth, after meeting with every accident that could possibly happen to a man in a post-chaise, overturns, breaking of springs, dropping of wheels, and sticking in roads, though with four horses. We imagine we are to remain in this town some time. Upon looking over my poems, in the second volume, I find several errors; I'm afraid you have not corrected the press so violently as you boasted. Perhaps, Boswell, this will be the worst and the shortest letter I ever wrote to you; I'm writing in an inn, and half-a-dozen people in the room; but when I'm settled in lodgings of my own, expect epistles in the usual style. I think you two or three times have treated me as I treat you now, so I remain your most humble servant, And affectionate friend, ANDREW ERSKINE. P.S.--Never was there such a tame subjected performance as this. * * * * * LETTER XX. Morpeth, Feb. 8, 1762. Dear BOSWELL,--I beg you will get a copy of the second volume of the Poems, and send me it by the man who brings you this; let it be a neat one, well-bound: pray tell me what people say of the book. Your currant-jelly is good, has a delicious flavour, and tastes much of the fruit, as my aunts say. I did not make out all the names in your Race-Ballad cleverly. I am still in the way I was, when I wrote you last, in a public-house, and pestered with noise: I have not above six ideas at present, and none of them fit for a letter. Dear Boswell, farewell! pray for my recovery from this lethargy of spirits and sense which has seized me. Yours, &c. ANDREW ERSKINE. * * * * * LETTER XXI. Edinburgh, Feb. 16, 1762. Dear ERSKINE,--To see your brother ---- at Morpeth, will, I dare say, surprise you as much as it did me, to find him here. In short, nothing will serve him but a sight of the British capital, although he is already much better acquainted with it than either you or I. What has at present instigated him I own I am puzzled to discover: but I solemnly and merrily declare, that I never yet saw anybody so excessively enamoured of London. The effects of this violent passion are deeply impressed upon every feature in his countenance, his nose not excepted, which is absolutely most surprising. His body is tossed and shaken like one afflicted with the hot fit of an ague, or the severest paroxysms of convulsion. Then as to his mind, it is altogether distempered. He is perpetually declaiming on the magnificence, the liberty, and the pleasure, which reigns in the imperial British metropolis. He swears, that in that glorious place alone we can enjoy life. He says, there is no breathing beyond St. James's; and he affirms, that the air of that delicious spot is celestial. He says, there is no wit except at the Bedford; no military genius but at George's; no wine but at the Star and Garter; no turbot except at the Tilt-Yard. He asserts, that there are no clothes made beyond the liberties of Westminster; and he firmly holds Cheapside to be the sole mart of stockings. It would fill up two-thirds of a quarto volume to enumerate the various extravagant exclamations into which he breaks out. He declares that for his own part, he will never go to church except to St. Paul's, nor to a lady's private lodgings, except in the neighbourhood of Soho-square. I beg it of you, my friend, be very attentive to him; observe his appearance and behaviour with the greatest accuracy, so that between us we may be able to have a pretty just notion of this wonderful affair, and may faithfully draw up his case to be read before the Royal Society, and transmitted to posterity in these curious annals the Philosophical Transactions. I have sent you the second volume, which Donaldson begs leave to present you with, in consideration of your being one of those who bear the brunt of the day. He has also done me the same honour. No plain shop copy; no, no, elegantly bound and gilt. Adieu, yours sincerely, JAMES BOSWELL. * * * * * LETTER XXII. Morpeth, March 2, 1762. Oh, BOSWELL! if you found yourself in the middle of the Firth of Forth, and the sea fast up-springing through every leak, after the skipper had remonstrated, in the most warm manner, against proceeding to cross the water; or if, like me, you found yourself in the midst of a sentence, without knowing how to end it, you could not feel more pain than I do at this instant: in short, I have had a very excellent letter of yours in my left waistcoat-pocket this fortnight; is that letter answered? you say: Oh! let the reply to this question be buried in the bottom of the Red Sea, where I hope no future army will ever disturb it; or let it be inserted in the third volume of Donaldson's Collection, where it will never be found, as the book will never be opened. What would I not do to gain your pardon? I would even swear that black was white; that's to say, I would praise the fairness of your complexion. By that smile which irradiates your countenance, like a gleam of the moon through the black clouds of the south; by the melting of that pomatum which gives your hair a gloss, like the first beaming of a new suit of regimentals on an assembly night, when twenty fiddlers sweat; by the grandeur of your pinchbeck buckles; by the solemnity of your small nose; by the blue expended in washing your shirts; by the rotundity of your Bath great-coat; by the well-polished key of your portmanteau; by the tag of your shoe; by the tongue of your buckle; by your tailor's bill; by the last kiss of Miss C----; by the first guinea you ever had in your possession; and chiefly by all the nonsense you have just read, let the kneeling Captain find favour in your eyes, and then, my Ode to Goodnature shall be inscribed to you, while your Ode to Ingratitude (which, I suppose, is finished) shall be burnt. I was, as you imagine, very much surprised to see A---- here; I noted him, according to your direction, with a critical eye; like a gentleman in a line which you may remember I made on the Castle-hill, he seemed to have taken the Tower of London for his bride; every feature and every limb was changed wonderfully; his nose resembled Westminster-Bridge; his cheeks were like Bloomsbury-Square; his high forehead like Constitution-Hill; his chin like China-Row; his tongue and his teeth looked like Almack's in Pall-Mall; his lips like the Shakespeare's Head; his fists like Hockley-in-the-Hole; his ears like the Opera-House; his eyes like a harlequin entertainment; his stomach was like Craven-Street; his chest like the trunk-maker's in the corner of St. Paul's-Church-yard; the calf of his leg like Leadenhall-market; his pulse like the Green-market in Covent-Garden; his neck like Tyburn; and his gait like Newgate; his navel like Fleet-street; and his lungs and his bladder were like Blowbladder-street: everything about him seemed metamorphosed; he had moulded his hat into the form of the Mansion-House; some guineas which he had, looked like the 'Change; but it would be tedious to relate every particular; however, I must not let his conversation be forgot, though it was much of a piece with that you so humorously relate: he swore to me he never saw a rag fit for a gentleman to wear, but in Rag-fair; he said there was no scolding but at Billingsgate; and he avowed there were no bad poets but in Grub-street; I could not stand that, I bid him call to remembrance an acquaintance of his who lived in the Parliament-Close, and also a relation of his who formerly resided in Campbell's Land; he smiled, and confessed these were really very bad poets, but that he was not convinced for all that; upon this, to put the matter out of all dispute, I offered to lend him the first and second volumes of Donaldson's Collection. At that very moment the hostler informed him the chaise was ready, and he still remains ignorant where the worst poets in the world are. Tell me how our second volume is received; I was much pleased with N----'s lines; how did he get them inserted? I intend writing a criticism upon the volume, and upon your writings in particular, so tremble. Dear Boswell, farewell, Yours most affectionately, ANDREW ERSKINE. P.S.--I hope you'll write to me soon. * * * * * LETTER XXIII. Edinburgh, March 9, 1762. Dear ERSKINE,--Can a man walk up the Cowgate after a heavy rain without dirtying his shoes? I might have said the soles of his shoes:--and, indeed, to put the matter beyond dispute, I would yet have you to understand me so; for although nothing is so common as to use a part for the whole; yet if you should be out of humour with a bad dinner, a bad lodging, an ill-dressed shirt, or an ill-printed book, you might be disposed to cavil, and object, that in critical precision of language, (supposing a man to walk slow) he could not be said to have dirtied his shoes, no more than a boarding-school girl, who has cut her finger in paring an apple, could be said to have mangled her carcase. But to proceed; can a man make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land from the Island of Great Britain, without the aid of navigation? Can a man walk in the Mall at noon, carrying his breeches upon an enormous long pole, without being laughed at? Can a man of acknowledged ignorance and stupidity, write a tragedy superior to Hamlet? or a genteel comedy superior to the Careless Husband?[40] I need not wait for an answer. No word but no, will do: it is self-evident. No more, my friend, can he who is lost in dissipation, write a letter. I am at present so circumstanced; accept this short line in answer to your last, and write very soon to Your affectionate Friend, JAMES BOSWELL. [Footnote 40: By Colley Cibber. "Who upon earth has written such perfect comedies (as Molière)? for the 'Careless Husband' is but one."--Horace Walpole, Aug. 29, 1785.--ED.] * * * * * LETTER XXIV. New-Tarbat, April 15, 1762. Dear BOSWELL,--The sun which rose on Wednesday last, with his first beams beheld you set out for Auchinleck, but he did not see me arrive in Edinburgh; however, he was good-natured enough to lend a little light to the moon, by the help of which, about twelve at night I landed at Peter Ramsay's: the thoughts of seeing you next day kept up my spirits, during a stage of seventeen miles. William he snored; I called upon you, after being refreshed with soft slumbers, in which my guardian genius did not inform me of your absence: but oh! when the maid told me you was gone, what were my emotions! she beholding me affected in a most supreme degree, tried to administer comfort to me, and plainly told me, that you would be very sorry you had missed me, this delivered in an elegant manner, soothed me prodigiously. I began writing this at Graham's in Glasgow, but was interrupted by a jowl of Salmon; every thing there reminded me of you. I was in the same room you and I were in, you seemed placed before me, your face beamed a black ray upon me. I am now at New-Tarbat, once more returned to the scenes of calm retirement, and placid meditation, as Mr. Samuel Johnson says in the Idler.[41] We all wish to have you here, and we all agree in thinking that there is nothing to hinder you to come. [Footnote 41: "I am now, as I could wish every man of wisdom and virtue to be, in the regions of calm content and placid meditation."--"The Idler," No. 71.--ED.] I must beg your pardon seriously for not writing to you, but I was really in such bad spirits, and such ill temper, at that cursed place Morpeth, that it was impossible; but I assure you I will make up terribly. I am recruiting again; I believe our regiment won't go abroad this summer. I was glad to see by the London newspapers, that Mr. Robert Dodsley had at last published your Cub: Mr. H---- showed me a very severe Epigram that somebody in London had written upon it. You know it is natural to take a lick at a Cub. Pray come to us. I cannot all at once come into the way of letter-writing again, so I must conclude, Dear Boswell, Your affectionate friend, ANDREW ERSKINE. * * * * * LETTER XXV. Auchinleck, April 22, 1762. Dear ERSKINE,--This is a strange world that we live in. Things turn out in a very odd manner. Every day produces something more wonderful than another. Earthquakes, murders, conflagrations, inundations, jubilees, operas, marriages, and pestilence, unite to make mortal men gape and stare. But your last letter and mine being wrote on the same day, astonishes me still more than all these things put together. This is the most unaccountable rhodomontade that I ever uttered. I am really dull at present, and my affectation to be clever, is exceedingly awkward. My manner resembles that of a footman who has got an ensign's commission, or a kept mistress who is made a wife. I have not at any time been more insipid, more muddy, and more standing-water like than I am just now. The country is my aversion. It renders me quite torpid. Were you here just now, you would behold your vivacious friend a most stupid exhibition. It is very surprising that the country should affect me so; whether it be that the scenes to be met with there, fall infinitely short of my ideas of pastoral simplicity; or that I have acquired so strong a relish for the variety and hurry of a town life, as to languish in the stillness of retirement; or that the atmosphere is too moist and heavy, I shall not determine. I have now pretty good hopes of getting soon into the guards, that gay scene of life of which I have been so long and so violently enamoured. Surely this will cause you to rejoice. I have lately had the pleasure and the pride of receiving a most brilliant epistle from Lady B----. It excels Captain Andrew's letters by many degrees. I have picked as many diamonds out of it, as to make me a complete set of buckles; I have turned so much of it into brocade waistcoats, and so much into a very rich suit of embroidered horse-furniture. I know how unequal I am to the task of answering it; nevertheless present her Ladyship with the inclosed. It may amuse her a little. It is better to have two shillings in the pound, than nothing at all. I was really shocked at the lethargy of our correspondence. Let it now be renovated with increase of spirit, so that I may not only subscribe myself your sincere friend, but your witty companion, JAMES BOSWELL. * * * * * LETTER XXVI. New-Tarbat, May 1, 1762. Well then, my friend, you leave the bar, Resolv'd on drums, on dress, and war, While fancy paints in liveliest hues, Swords, sashes, shoulder-knots, reviews, You quit the study of the laws, And show a blade in Britain's cause, Of length to throw into a trance, The frighten'd kings of Spain and France! A hat of fiercest cock is sought, And your cockade's already bought, While on your coat there beams a lace, That might a captain-general grace! For me, who never show admir'd, Or very long ago was tir'd, I can with face unmov'd behold, A scarlet suit with glittering gold; And tho' a son of war and strife, Detest the listless languid life; Then coolly, Sir, I say repent, And in derision hold a tent; Leave not the sweet poetic band, To scold recruits, and pore on Bland,[42] Our military books won't charm ye, Not even th' enchanting list o' th' army. Trust me, 'twill be a foolish sight, To see you facing to the right; And then, of all your sense bereft, Returning back unto the left; Alas! what transport can you feel, In turning round on either heel? Much sooner would I choose indeed, To see you standing on your head; Or with your breeches off to rub Foul clothes, and dance within a tub. [Footnote 42: Humphrey Bland, author of "Military Discipline," (1727). He served under the Duke of Marlborough. Was present also at the battles of Dettingen and Fontenoy. Became colonel of the Second Dragoon Guards.--ED.] Besides, my dear Boswell, we find in all history ancient and modern, lawyers are very apt to run away. Demosthenes the Greek, writer to the signet, who managed the great suit against Philip of Macedon, fairly scoured off, I think, at the battle of Cheronea; and Cicero, the Roman advocate is universally accused of cowardice. I am not indeed ignorant that some of your ancestors behaved well at Flodden;[43] but as they lost the day, I think the omen but bad, and as they were killed, I think that makes the omen still worse; however, perhaps you don't think so, and I allow that argument to be very convincing, and rather more conclusive, than if you had said, "I don't know that." [Footnote 43: "Thomas Boswell obtained from James IV., as a signal mark of royal favour, the estate of Auchinleck. He was slain at Flodden."--"Memoir of James Boswell," by Rev. C. Rogers, p. 3.--ED.] You complain much of the country, and you assign various reasons for disliking it; among others, you imagine the atmosphere too moist and heavy; I agree with you in that opinion, all the black clouds in the sky are continually pressing upon you, for as the proverb says, Like draws to like. Believe me, I have sometimes taken you at a distance, for the pillar of smoke which used to accompany the Israelites out of Egypt; it would be impossible to tell how many things I have taken you for at different times; sometimes I have taken you for the witches' cauldron in Macbeth; this resemblance was in some degree warranted by your figure and shape; sometimes for an enormous ink-bottle; sometimes for a funeral procession; now and then for a chimney sweeper, and not unfrequently for a black-pudding. For my part, Boswell, I must confess I am fond of the country to a degree; things there are not so artificially disguised as in towns, real sentiments are discovered, and the passions play naturally and without restraint. As for example, it was only in the country I could have found out Lady J----'s particular attachment to the tune of _Appie Mac-Nab_; in the town, no doubt, she would have pretended a great liking for Voi Amante; in the town, I never would have seen Lady B---- go out armed for fear of the Turkey-cock, which is her daily practice here, and leaves room for numberless reflections: she cannot eat Turkeys when roasted or boiled; and she dreads them when alive so much, that she displays every forenoon a cudgel to them, fitted by its size to strike terror into a bull, or a butting cow. What can her keeping of Turkeys be owing to? Assuredly to vanity, which is of such an insinuating nature, that we are apt very often to meet it where we least expect it; I have seen it in an old shoe, in a dirty shirt, in a long nose, a crooked leg, and a red face. So much it seemed good for me to say upon the subject of vanity, supporting by the most irrefragable arguments, the doctrine of Solomon. We had a visit from Mr. C---- of S---- here this morning; he came in a chaise drawn by four bay horses; I am certain of the number, you may draw what inference you please from this intelligence, I give you only a simple narration of the fact. I am surprised you say nothing of my proposal of your coming here, and still more that you say nothing of your Cub. Why don't you send me a copy? We were all so much entertained with your letter to Lady B----, that I was really seized with a qualm of envy; we regard it as one of those efforts of genius, which are only produced by a fine flow of spirits, a beautiful day, and a good pen. I pray you, Boswell, note well this sheet of paper, its size is magnificent: If Lady B---- was possessed of such an extent of plain ground, she would undoubtedly throw it into a lawn, and plant it with clumps of trees, she would vary it with fish-ponds, and render it rural with flocks; here, where I am writing, might a cow feed; here might be an arbour; here, perhaps, might you recline at full length; by the edge of this stream might the Captain walk, and in this corner, might Lady B---- give orders to her shepherds. I am drawn in the most irresistible manner to conclude, by the external impulse of the cloth's being laid, and by the internal impulse of being hungry. Believe me, Boswell, to be in the most unconscionable manner, your affectionate friend, ANDREW ERSKINE. P.S.--I send you franks, which return filled with the utmost wit and humour. * * * * * LETTER XXVII. Auchinleck, May 4, 1762. For military operation[44] I have a wondrous inclination; Ev'n when a boy, with cheerful glee, The red-coats march I used to see; With joy beheld the corporals drill, The men upon the Castle-hill; And at the sound of drum and fife, Felt an unusual flow of life. Besides, my honest friend, you know I am a little of a beau. I'm sure, my friend need not be told, That Boswell's hat was edg'd with gold; And that a shining bit of lace, My brownish-colour'd suit did grace; And that mankind my hair might see, Powder'd at least two days in three. My pinchbeck buckles are admir'd By all who are with taste inspir'd. Trophies of Gallic pride appear, The crown to every Frenchman dear, And the enchanting fleur de lis, The flower of flowers you must agree; While for variety's sweet sake, And witty Charles's tale to wake, The curious artist interweaves A twisted bunch of oaken leaves. Tell me, dear Erskine, should not I My favourite path of fortune try? Our life, my friend, is very short, A little while is all we've for't; And he is blest who can beguile, With what he likes, that little while. [Footnote 44: I have omitted the first eighty lines of this poem.--ED.] My fondness for the guards must appear very strange to you, who have a rooted antipathy at the glare of scarlet. But I must inform you, that there is a city called London, for which I have as violent an affection as the most romantic lover ever had for his mistress. There a man may indeed soap his own beard, and enjoy whatever is to be had in this transitory state of things. Every agreeable whim may be freely indulged without censure. I hope, however, you will not impute my living in England, to the same cause for which Hamlet was advised to go there; because the people were all as mad as himself. I long much for another of our long conversations on a fine forenoon, after breakfast, while the sun sheds light and gladness around us. Believe me, Yours sincerely, JAMES BOSWELL. * * * * * LETTER XXVIII. Auchinleck, May 8, 1762. Dear ERSKINE,--I should have wondered very much, had I been told of Lady J----'s particular attachment to the tune of _Appie Mac-nab_, two months ago: but I must inform you, that a few days before I left Edinburgh, having occasion to look into the advocates' library, I there chanced to turn up an old Roman song-book, and, to my great surprise, met with the individual air of _Appie Mac-nab_, which I discovered to be part of an original Patrician cantata on the daughter of the famous Appius, set for the _Tibiæ sinistræ_. In a manuscript marginal note, it is said to have been composed by Tigellius the famous musician, whose death and character Horace takes occasion to entertain and instruct us with, in the second satire of his first Book. You see, therefore, that Lady J----'s taste for Italian music, cannot be called in question; and indeed, I think her liking _Appie Mac-nab_, is a very strong proof of it, as she certainly could not know its original. The Roman song-book, a very great curiosity, was brought from Rome some hundred years ago, by father Macdonald, an old popish priest, who left it as a legacy to the Duke of Gordon. It is probable, that some musician in the North of Scotland, has transcribed the Appian cantata from it, and giving its principal air a Scottish turn, and adapting proper words to it, has produced the vulgar ballad of _Appie Mac-nab_. Lady B----'s terror for the Turkey-cock, diverts me extremely. Did they but come to an engagement, how noble must it be! The idea makes a strong impression on my fancy. I shall certainly write something astonishing upon it. This charming weather has reconciled me to the country. It enlivens me exceedingly. I am cheerful and happy. I have been wandering by myself, all this forenoon, through the sweetest place in the world. The sunshine is mild, the breeze is gentle, my mind is peaceful. I am indulging the most agreeable reveries imaginable. I am thinking of the brilliant scenes of happiness, which I shall enjoy as an officer of the guards. How I shall be acquainted with all the grandeur of a court, and all the elegance of dress and diversions; become a favourite of ministers of state, and the adoration of ladies of quality, beauty, and fortune! How many parties of pleasure shall I have in town! How many fine jaunts to the noble seats of dukes, lords, and members of parliament in the country! I am thinking of the perfect knowledge which I shall acquire of men and manners, of the intimacies which I shall have the honour to form with the learned and ingenious in every science, and of the many amusing literary anecdotes which I shall pick up. I am thinking of making the tour of Europe, and feasting on the delicious prospects of Italy and France; of feeling all the transports of a bard at Rome, and writing noble poems on the banks of the Tiber. I am thinking of the distinguished honours which I shall receive at every foreign court, and of what infinite service I shall be to all my countrymen upon their travels. I am thinking of returning to England, of getting into the house of commons, of speaking still better than Mr. Pitt, and of being made principal secretary of state. I am thinking of having a regiment of guards, and of making a glorious stand against an invasion by the Spaniards. I am thinking how I shall marry a lady of the highest distinction, with a fortune of a hundred thousand pounds. I am thinking of my flourishing family of children; how my sons shall be men of sense and spirit, and my daughters women of beauty, and every amiable perfection. I am thinking of the prodigious respect which I shall receive, of the splendid books which will be dedicated to me, and the statues which will be erected to my immortal honour. I am thinking that my mind is too delicate, and my feelings too fine for the rough bustle of life; I am therefore thinking that I shall steal silently and unperceived through the world; that I shall pass the winter in London, much in the same way that the Spectator describes himself to have done; and in summer, shall live sometimes here at home; sometimes in such a pleasing retirement as Mrs. Row beautifully paints in her letters moral and entertaining.[45] I like that book much. I read it when I was very young, and I am persuaded, that it contributed to improve my tender imagination. I am thinking that I shall feel my frame too delicate for the British Climate. I am thinking that I shall go and live in one of the most pleasant provincial towns in the South of France, where I shall be blest with constant felicity. This is a scheme to which I could give vast praise, were I near the beginning of my letter; but as that is very far from being the case, I must reserve it for a future epistle. [Footnote 45: "Letters, Moral and Entertaining, in Prose and Verse," by Elizabeth Rowe.--ED.] I am glad to find you are so anxious to hear about the Cub at Newmarket, Love me, love my Cub. However, I can tell you nothing about him. Dodsley has not yet sent me a copy. Derrick,[46] a London author, whom you have heard me mention, has sent me his versifications of the battle of Lora, and some of the Erse fragments. If you want to see them, let me have some franks. [Footnote 46: "Pray, Sir," said Mr. Morgann to Johnson, "whether do you reckon Derrick or Smart the best poet?" Johnson at once felt himself roused; and answered, "Sir, there is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea." Boswell's "Life of Johnson." Date of March 30th, 1783.--ED.] I shall be at Dumfries soon, where I hope to see my friend Johnston. We will talk much of old Scotch history, and the memory of former years will warm our hearts. We will also talk of Captain Andrew, with whom we have passed many a pleasant hour. Johnston is a very worthy fellow: I may safely say so; for I have lived in intimacy with him more years than the Egyptian famine lasted. And now, O most renowned of Captains! having fairly written myself out of pen, ink, and paper, I conclude with my usual epithet, of Your affectionate friend, JAMES BOSWELL. * * * * * LETTER XXIX. New-Tarbat, May 13, 1762. Dear BOSWELL,--Your first epistle being of a length which modern letters seldom attain to, surprised me very much; but at the sight of your second, consisting of such an exuberant number of sheets, I was no less amazed than if I had wakened at three o'clock in the morning, and found myself fast clasped in the arms of the empress Queen; or if I had found myself at the mouth of the river Nile, half-eaten by a crocodile; or if I had found myself ascending the fatal ladder in the Grass-market at Edinburgh, and Mr. Alexander Donaldson the hangman. To confess a truth, I imagine your funds for letter-writing are quite inexhaustible; and that the fire of your fancy, like the coal at Newcastle, will never be burnt out; indeed, I look upon you in the light of an old stocking, in which we have no sooner mended one hole, than out starts another; or I think you are like a fertile woman, who is hardly delivered of one child, before slap she is five months gone with a second. I need not tell you your letters are entertaining; I might as well acquaint King George the Third, that he is sovereign of Great Britain, or gravely disclose to my servant, that his name is William. It is superfluous to inform people of what it is impossible they should not know. You think you have a knack of story-telling, but there you must yield to me, if you hearken attentively to what I am about to disclose, you will be convinced; it is a tale, my dear Boswell, which whether we consider the turnings and windings of fortune, or the sadness of the catastrophe, is delightful and improving.--You demand of me, Sir, a faithful recital of the events which have distinguished my life. Though the remembrance of every misfortune which can depress human nature, must be painful; yet the commands of such a revered friend as James Boswell must be obeyed; and Oh, Sir! if you find any of my actions blamable, impute them to destiny, and if you find any of them commendable, impute them to my good sense. I am about fifty years of age, grief makes me look as if I was fourscore; thirty years ago I was a great deal younger; and about twenty years before that, I was just born; as I find nothing remarkable in my life, before that event, I shall date my history from that period; some omens happened at my birth: Mr. Oman at Leith was married at that time; this was thought very portentous; the very day my mother was brought to bed of me, the cat was delivered of three kittens; but the world was soon bereaved of them by death, and I had not the pleasure of passing my infancy with such amiable companions; this was my first misfortune, and no subsequent one ever touched me more nearly; delightful innocents! methinks, I still see them playing with their tails, and galloping after corks; with what a becoming gravity did they wash their faces! how melodious was their purring! From them I derived any little taste I have for music; I composed an Ode upon their death; as it was my first attempt in poetry, I write it for your perusal; you will perceive the marks of genius in the first production of MY TENDER IMAGINATION; and you will shed a tear of applause and sorrow, on the remains of those animals, so dear to the premature years of your mourning and lamenting friend. ODE ON THE DEATH OF THREE KITTENS. STROPHE. Attend, ye watchful cats, Attend the ever lamentable strain; For cruel death, most kind to rats, Has kill'd the sweetest of the kitten-train. ANTISTROPHE. How pleas'd did I survey, Your beauteous whiskers as they daily grew, I mark'd your eyes that beam'd so grey, But little thought that nine lives were too few. EPODE. It was delight to see My lovely kittens three, When after corks through all the room they flew, When oft in gamesome guise they did their tails pursue. When thro' the house, You hardly, hardly, heard a mouse; And every rat lay snug and still, And quiet as a thief in mill; But cursed death has with a blow, Laid all my hopes low, low, low, low: Had that foul fiend the least compassion known; I should not now lament my beauteous kittens gone. You have often wondered what made me such a miserable spectacle; grief for the death of my kittens, has wrought the most wonderful effects upon me; grief has drawn my teeth, pulled out my hair, hollowed my eyes, bent my back, crooked my legs, and marked my face with the small-pox; but I give over this subject, seeing it will have too great a hold of your tender imagination: I find myself too much agitated with melancholy to proceed any longer in my life to-day; the weather also is extremely bad, and a thousand mournful ideas rush into my mind; I am totally overpowered with them; I will now disburden myself to you, and set down each sad thought as it occurs. I am thinking how I will never get a clean shirt to my back; how my coat will always be out at the elbows; and how I never will get my breeches to stay up. I am thinking how I will be married to a shrew of a wife, who will beat me every evening and morning, and sometimes in the middle of the day. I am thinking what a d----d w---- she will be, and how my children will be most of them hanged, and whipped through towns, and burnt in the hand. I am thinking of what execrable poems I will write; and how I will be thrown into prison for debt; and how I will never get out again; and how nobody will pity me. I am thinking how hungry I will be; and how little I will get to eat; and how I'll long for a piece of roast-beef; and how they'll bring me a rotten turnip. And I am thinking how I will take a consumption, and waste away inch by inch; and how I'll grow very fat and unwieldy, and won't be able to stir out of my chair. And I am thinking how I'll be roasted by the Portuguese inquisition; and how I'll be impaled by the Turks; and how I'll be eaten by Cannibals; and how I'll be drowned on a voyage to the East Indies; and how I'll be robbed and murdered by a highwayman; and how I'll lose my senses; and how very mad I'll be; and how my body will be thrown out to dogs to devour; and how I'll be hanged, drawn, and quartered; and how my friend Boswell will neglect me; and how I'll be despised by the whole world; and how I will meet with ten thousand misfortunes worse than the loss of my kittens. Thus have I, in a brief manner, related a few of the calamities which, in the present disposition of my mind, appear so dreadful; I could have enlarged the catalogue, but your heart is too susceptible of pity, and I will not shock you altogether. You will doubtless remark the great inequality of our fortunes. In your last letter, you was the happiest man I was ever acquainted with; I wish it may last, and that your children may have as much merit as you imagine; I only hope you won't plan a marriage with any of mine, their dispositions will be so unlike, that it must prove unhappy. Pray send me Derrick's versifications, which though they are undoubtedly very bad, I shall be glad to see, as sometimes people take a pleasure in beholding a man hanged. And now, Boswell, I am going to end my letter, which being very short, I know will please you, as you will think you have gained a complete victory over the captain, seeing that you are several sheets a-head of me; but times may alter, and when I resume my adventures, you will find yourself sorely defeated; believe me, Yours sincerely, ANDREW ERSKINE. * * * * * LETTER XXX. New-Tarbat, May 25, 1762. Dear BOSWELL,--It has been said, that few people succeed both in poetry and prose. Homer's prose essay on the gun-powder-plot, is reckoned by all critics inferior to the Iliad; and Warburton's rhyming satire on the methodists is allowed by all to be superior to his prosaical notes on Pope's works. Let it be mine to unite the excellencies both of prose and verse in my inimitable epistles. From this day, my prose shall have a smack of verse, and my verse have a smack of prose. I'll give you a specimen of both--My servant addresses me in these words, very often-- The roll is butter'd, and the kettle boil'd, Your honour's newest coat with grease is soil'd; In your best breeches glares a mighty hole, Your wash-ball and pomatum, Sir, are stole. Your tailor, Sir, must payment have, that's plain, He call'd to-day, and said he'd call again. There's prosaic poetry; now for poetic prose--Universal genius is a wide and diffused stream that waters the country and makes it agreeable; 'tis true, it cannot receive ships of any burden, therefore it is of no solid advantage, yet is it very amusing. Gondolas and painted barges float upon its surface, the country gentleman forms it into ponds, and it is spouted out of the mouths of various statues; it strays through the finest fields, and its banks nourish the most blooming flowers. Let me sport with this stream of science, wind along the vale, and glide through the trees, foam down the mountain, and sparkle in the sunny ray; but let me avoid the deep, nor lose myself in the vast profound, and grant that I may never be pent in the bottom of a dreary cave, or be so unfortunate as to stagnate in some unwholesome marsh. Limited genius is a pump-well, very useful in all the common occurrences of life, the water drawn from it is of service to the maids in washing their aprons; it boils beef, and it scours the stairs; it is poured into the tea-kettles of the ladies, and into the punch-bowls of the gentlemen. Having thus given you, in the most clear and distinct manner, my sentiments of genius, I proceed to give you my opinion of the ancient and modern writers; a subject, you must confess, very aptly and naturally introduced. I am going to be very serious, you will trace a resemblance between me and Sir William Temple,[47] or perhaps David Hume, Esq. [Footnote 47: Temple wrote "An Essay upon Ancient and Modern Learning."--ED.] A modern writer must content himself with gleaning a few thoughts here and there, and binding them together without order or regularity, that the variety may please; the ancients have reaped the full of the harvest, and killed the noblest of the game: in vain do we beat about the once plenteous fields, the dews are exhaled, no scent remains. How glorious was the fate of the early writers![48] born in the infancy of letters; their task was to reject thoughts more than to seek after them, and to select out of a number, the most shining, the most striking, and the most susceptible of ornament. The poet saw in his walks every pleasing object of nature undescribed; his heart danced with the gale, and his spirits shone with the invigorating sun, his works breathed nothing but rapture and enthusiasm. Love then spoke with its genuine voice, the breast was melted down with woe, the whole soul was dissolved into pity with its tender complaints; free from the conceits and quibbles which, since that time, have rendered the very name of it ridiculous; real passion heaved the sigh; real passion uttered the most prevailing language. Music too reigned in its full force; that soft deluding art, whose pathetic strains so gently steal into our very souls, and involve us in the sweetest confusion; or whose animating strains fire us even to madness: how has the shore of Greece echoed with the wildest sounds; the delicious warblings of the Lyre charmed and astonished every ear. The blaze of rhetoric then burst forth; the ancients sought not by false thoughts, and glittering diction, to captivate the ear, but by manly and energetic modes of expression, to rule the heart and sway the passions. [Footnote 48: "The most ancient poets are considered as the best ... whether the first writers took possession of the most striking objects for description, and the most probable occurrences for fiction, and left nothing to those that followed them but transcription of the same events, and new combinations of the same images."--"Rasselas," chapter x.--ED.] There, Boswell, there are periods for you. Did you not imagine that you was reading "The Rambler" of Mr. Samuel Johnson; or that Mr. Thomas Sheridan[49] himself was resounding the praises of the ancients, and his own art? I shall now finish this letter without the least blaze of rhetoric, and with no very manly or energetic mode of expression, assure you, that I am, Yours sincerely, ANDREW ERSKINE. [Footnote 49: Thomas Sheridan, the father of R.B. Sheridan, was about this time lecturing on Oratory. "He knows that I laugh at his oratory," Johnson once said to Boswell.--ED.] * * * * * LETTER XXXI. Auchinleck, June 1, 1762. At length, O Erskine! Lady B---- and the Turkey-cock are sung in strains sublime. I have finished an ode. Receive it with reverence.[50] It is one of the greatest productions of the human mind. Just that sort of composition which we form an awful and ravishing conception of, in those divine moments, when the soul (to use a bold metaphor) is in full blow, and soaring fancy reaches its utmost heights. Could it but be really personified--it would be like Saul of old, taller than any of the people, and were it to be guilty of a capital crime, it could not enjoy one of the greatest privileges of a British subject, to be tried by its Peers. [Footnote 50: The Ode is not worth reprinting.--ED.] I am sure that my ode is great. Mr. James Bruce the gardener, my faithful counsellor and very excellent companion, declares it is quite to his mind. He stood by me while I took my portrait of the cock, from a large one which struts upon the green. I shall be in Edinburgh in a few days; for which reason, I remain your affectionate friend, JAMES BOSWELL. * * * * * LETTER XXXII. New-Tarbat, June 5, 1762. Dear BOSWELL,--The first idea of our correspondence was not yours; for, many months before you addressed me, I wrote you the following letter at Fort George, where you may remember our acquaintance commenced. You'll observe that some of the stanzas[51] are parodies on Gray's Elegy in a Church-yard, I use the liberty to mark them. I stood too much in awe of you, to send it when it was written, and I am too much at my ease now, to be withheld any longer from presenting you with it. I am, Sir, With the greatest respect and esteem, Your most obedient, And most humble servant, ANDREW ERSKINE. [Footnote 51: These stanzas are nearly as bad as Boswell's Ode, and, like it, are not worth reprinting.--ED.] * * * * * LETTER XXXIII. Auchinleck, June 9, 1762. Dear ERSKINE,--At this delightful season of the year, when everything is cheerful and gay, when the groves are all rich with leaves, the gardens with flowers, and the orchards with blossoms, one would think it almost impossible to be unhappy; yet such is my hard fate at present, that instead of relishing the beautiful appearance of nature, instead of participating the universal joy, I rather look upon it with aversion, as it exhibits a strong contrast to the cloudy darkness of my mind, and so gives me a more dismal view of my own situation. Fancy, capricious fancy will allow me to see nothing but shade. How strange is it to think, that I who lately abounded in bliss, should now be the slave of black melancholy! How unaccountable does it appear to the reasoning mind that this change should be produced without any visible cause. However, since I have been seized with _the pale cast of thought_, I know not how, I comfort myself, that I shall get free of it as whimsically. You must excuse this piece of serious sententiousness; for it has relieved me; and you may look upon it as much the same with coughing before one begins to sing, or deliver anything in public, in order that the voice may be as clear as possible. The death of your kittens, my dear Erskine! affected me very much. I could wish that you would form it into a tragedy, as the story is extremely pathetic, and could not fail greatly to interest the tender passions. If you have any doubts as to the propriety of their being three in number, I beg it of you to reflect that the immortal Shakespeare has introduced three daughters into his tragedy of King Lear, which has often drawn tears from the eyes of multitudes. The same author has likewise begun his tragedy of Macbeth with three witches; and Mr. Alexander Donaldson has resolved, that his collection of original poems by Scotch gentlemen, shall consist of three volumes, and no more. I don't know, indeed, but your affecting tale might better suit the intention of an opera, especially when we consider the musical genius of the feline race: were a sufficient number of these animals put under the tuition of proper masters, nobody can tell what an astonishing chorus might be produced. If this proposal shall be embraced, I make no doubt of its being the wonder of all Europe, and I remain, Yours, as usual, JAMES BOSWELL. * * * * * LETTER XXXIV. New-Tarbat, June 14, 1762. AND are YOU gloomy! oh James Boswell! has your flow of spirits evaporated, and left nothing but the black dregs of melancholy behind? has the smile of cheerfulness left your countenance? and is the laugh of gaiety no more? oh woeful condition! oh wretched friend! but in this situation you are dear to me; for lately my disposition was exactly similar to yours. No conversation pleased me; no books could fix my attention; I could write no letters, and I despised my own poems. Tell me how you was affected; could you speak any? could you fix your thoughts upon anything but the dreary way you was in? and would not the sight of me have made you very miserable? I have lately had the epidemical distemper; I don't mean poverty, but that cold which they call the influenza, and which made its first appearance in London;[52] whether it came to Scotland in the wagon, or travelled with a companion in a post-chaise, is quite uncertain. [Footnote 52: "The time is wonderfully sickly; nothing but sore-throats, colds, and fevers." Horace Walpole, in a letter to George Montagu, April 29, 1762.--ED.] Derrick's versifications are infamously bad; what think you of the Reviewers commending such an execrable performance? I have a fancy to write an ironical criticism upon it, and praise all the worst lines, which you shall send to Derrick, as the real sentiments of a gentleman of your acquaintance on reading his work. For want of something else to entertain you, I begin my criticism immediately.--To versify poetical prose has been found a very difficult task. Dr. Young and Mr. Langhorne, in their paraphrases upon the Bible (which Lord Bolingbroke tells us, is an excellent book) have succeeded but indifferently: I therefore took up Mr. Samuel Derrick's versifications from Fingal, with little expectation of being entertained; but let no man judge of a book till at least he reads the title page; for lo! Mr. Samuel Derrick has adorned his with a very apt and uncommon quotation, from a good old poet called Virgil. I am much pleased with the candour so conspicuous in the short advertisement to the public, in which Mr. Derrick seems very willing to run snacks in reputation with Mr. MacPherson, which will greatly rejoice that gentleman, who cannot justly boast of so extensive a fame as Mr. Samuel Derrick. The dedication is very elegant, though, I am apt to think, the author has neither praised Lord Pomfret nor himself enough; two worthy people, who, in my opinion, deserve it. But at last, we come to the poems themselves: and here I might indulge myself in warm and indiscriminate applause; but let it be my ambition to trace Mr. Derrick step by step through his wonderful work; let me pry both into the kitchen and dining-room of his genius, to use the comparison of the great Mr. Boyle. The first lines, or the exordium of the battle of Lora, are calmly sublime, and refined with simplicity. In the eighth line, our author gives the epithet of posting to the wind, which is very beautiful: however, to make it natural, it ought to be applied, in poetical justice, to that wind which wafts a packet-boat. I had almost forgot, the sixth line says, "the voice of songs, a tuneful voice I hear." Now, I should be glad to know, whether these same songs be a man or a woman. Lines 23 and 24. "In secret round they glanc'd their kindled eyes, Their indignation spoke in bursting sighs." It seems to me improbable, that a pair of kindled eyes could glance in secret; and I cannot think that sighs are the language of indignation. Lines 57, 58, 59. "So on the settled sea blue mists arise, In vapory volumes darkening to the skies, They glitter in the sun." These mists that glitter and are dark at the same time, are very extraordinary, and the contrast is lovely and new. Line 67th begins--"His post is terror."--This is a post, that, I believe, none of our members of Parliament would accept. Lines 175, 176, "An hundred steeds he gives that own the rein, Never a swifter race devour'd the plain." Devoured the plain! if this is not sublime, then am I no critic; however, its lucky for the landed interest, that the breed of those horses is lost; they might do very well, I confess, in the Highlands of Scotland; but a dozen of them turned loose near Salisbury would be inconceivably hurtful. I'm tired of this stuff; if you think it worth the while you may end it and send it to Derrick; but let your part be better than mine, or it won't do. "Grief for thy loss drank all my vitals dry"--I laughed heartily at that line. In this letter I have bestowed my dulness[53] freely upon you; you have had my wit, and you must take my stupidity into the bargain; as when we go to the market, we purchase bones as well as beef; and when we marry an heiress, we are obliged to take the woman as well as the money; and when we buy Donaldson's collection, we pay as dear for the poems of Mr. Lauchlan MacPherson, as we do for those written by the incomparable Captain Andrew. [Footnote 53: "If I were as tedious as a king, I could find it in my heart to bestow it all of your worship."--"Much Ado about Nothing." Act iii., scene 5.--ED.] You are in Edinburgh, I imagine, by this time, if the information of Mr. Alexander Donaldson may be depended upon. I shall be in town one night soon on my way to Kelly, for the H----s of D---- threaten an invasion upon this peaceful abode. Farewell. Yours sincerely, ANDREW ERSKINE. * * * * * LETTER XXXV. Edinburgh, June 19, 1762. Dear ERSKINE,--You have upon many occasions made rather too free with my person, upon which I have often told you that I principally value myself. I feel a strong inclination to retaliate. I have great opportunity, and I will not resist it. Your figure, Erskine, is amazingly uncouth. The length of your body bears no manner of proportion to its breadth, and far less does its breadth bear to its length. If we consider you one way, you are the tallest, and if we consider you another way, you are the thickest man alive. The crookedness of your back is terrible; but it is nothing in comparison of the frightful distortions of your countenance. What monsters have you been the cause of bringing into the world! not only the wives of sergeants and corporals of the 71st regiment, but the unhappy women in every town where you was quartered, by looking at you have conceived in horror. Natural defects should be spared; but I must not omit the large holes in your ears, and the deep marks of the iron on your hands. I hope you will allow these to be artificial. Nature nails no man's ears to the pillory. Nature burns no man in the hand. As I have a very sincere friendship for you, I cannot help giving you my best advice with regard to your future schemes of life. I would beseech you to lay aside all your chimerical projects, which have made you so absurd. You know very well, when you went upon the stage at Kingston in Jamaica, how shamefully you exposed yourself, and what disgrace and vexation you brought upon all your friends. You must remember what sort of treatment you met with, when you went and offered yourself to be one of the fathers of the inquisition at Macerata, in the room of Mr. Archibald Bower;[54] a project which could enter into the head of no man who was not utterly destitute of common sense. [Footnote 54: The author of the "History of the Popes." He had been a professor in the University of Macerata, and a Counsellor of the Inquisition. He became a Protestant, and died in England.--ED.] You tell me, that your intention at present is, to take orders in the Church of England; and you hope I will approve of your plan: but I must tell you honestly, that this is a most ridiculous hair-brained conceit. Before you can be qualified for the smallest living, you must study nine years at Oxford; you must eat at a moderate computation, threescore of fat beeves, and upwards of two hundred sheep; you must consume a thousand stone of bread, and swallow ninety hogsheads of porter. You flatter yourself with being highly promoted, because you are an Earl's brother, and a man of genius. But, my dear friend, I beg it of you to consider, how little these advantages have already availed you. The army was as good a scene for you to rise in as the church can be; and yet you are only a lieutenant in a very young regiment. I seriously think, that your most rational scheme should be, to turn inn-keeper upon some of the great roads: you might have an elegant sign painted of Apollo and the Muses, and entertainment for men and horses, by THE HONOURABLE ANDREW ERSKINE, would be something very unusual, and could not fail to bring numbers of people to your house. You would by this means have a life of most pleasing indolence, and would never want a variety of company, as you would constantly dine and sup with your guests. Men of fashion would be glad to receive you as their equal; and men of no fashion would be proud to sit at table with one who had any pretension to nobility. I hope the honest concern which I shew for your real welfare, will convince you how much I am, My dear Sir, Your most affectionate friend, JAMES BOSWELL. * * * * * LETTER XXXVI. Kelly, July 5, 1762. Dear BOSWELL,--Vanity has, in all former ages, been reckoned the characteristic of poets; in our time, I think they are more particularly distinguished by modesty; I have carefully perused their works, and I have never once found them throwing out either thought, sentiment, or reflection of their own; convincing proof of their humility; they seem all to allow that the ancients, and some few of the earlier moderns, were much better writers than themselves; therefore they beg, borrow, and steal from them, without the smallest mercy or hesitation. In some things, however, they are quite original; their margins and prices are larger than any ever known before; and they advertise their pieces much oftener in the newspapers than any of their predecessors. You compliment me highly on my elegies, and tell me that I have even dared to be original now and then; and you ask me very seriously, how I come to be so well acquainted with the tender passion of love.--Ah, Sir, how deceitful are appearances! under a forbidding aspect and uncouth form, I conceal the soul of an Oroondates, a soul that thrills with the most sensible emotions at the sight of beauty. Love easily finds access where the mind is naturally inclined to melancholy; we foster the pleasing delusion, it grows up with our frame, and becomes a part of our being; long have I laboured under the influence of that passion; long vented my grief in unavailing sighs. Besides, your thin meagre man is always the most violent lover; a thousand delusions enter his paper-skull, which the man of guts never dreams of. In vain does Cupid shoot his arrows at the plump existence, who is entrenched in a solid wall of fat: they are buried like shrimps in melted butter; as eggs are preserved by mutton-tallow, from rottenness and putrefaction, so he, by his grease, is preserved from love. Pleased with his pipe, he sits and smokes in his elbow-chair; totally unknown to him is the ardent passion that actuates the sentimental soul: alas! unhappy man! he never indulged in the pleasing reverie which inspires the spindle-shanked lover, as he strays through nodding forest by gliding stream; if he marries, he chooses a companion fat as himself; they lie together, and most musical is their snore, they melt like two pounds of butter in one plate in a sunshiny-day. Pray, Boswell, remember me kindly to honest Johnston. Let me know if his trees are growing well, at his paternal estate of Grange; if he is as fond of Melvil's Memoirs[55] as he used to be; and if he continues to stretch himself in the sun upon the mountains near Edinburgh. I ever am, Yours most affectionately, ANDREW ERSKINE. [Footnote 55: Sir James Melville. Born 1535, died 1607. His "Memoirs" were published in 1683.--ED.] * * * * * LETTER XXXVII. Kelly, July 6, 1762. Dear BOSWELL,--Nothing happened during my journey; I arrived in Aberdeen on Thursday last; the town is really neater, cleaner, and better than you would imagine; but the country around is dismal; long gloomy moors, and the extended ocean, are the only prospects that present themselves; the whole region seems as if made in direct opposition to descriptive poetry. You meet here with none of the lengthened meads, sunny vales and dashing streams, that brighten in the raptured poet's eye; however, as I believe you have been here, I shall trouble you with no farther descriptions. Never was parting more tender than that of mine with George Robertson the postilion, and the Kelly chaise at Dundee water-side; we formed as dolorous a trio as then existed upon the face of this valley of tears. Oh George! Oh! Erskine! were the cries that echoed across the waves, and along the mountains. Tears trickled down the rugged boatman's face, An unpaid freight he thought no harder case; The seals no longer sported in the sea, While ev'ry bell rung mournful in Dundee, Huge ploughmen wept, and stranger still, 'tis said, So strong is sympathy, that asses bray'd. Farewell, lovely George, I roared out, and oh! if you should happen to be dry, for such is the nature of sorrow, take this shilling, and spend it in the sugared ale, or the wind-expelling dram: with sweet reluctance he put forth his milk-white hand, cold with clammy sweat, and with a faltering voice, feebly thanked me. Oh! I shall never forget my emotions when he drove from me, and the chaise lessened in my view; now it whirled sublime along the mountain's edge; now, I scarcely saw the head of George nodding in the vale. Thus, on the summit of a craggy cliff, which high overlooks the resounding waves, Jean, Susan, or Nell, sees in a boat her lovely sailor, who has been torn from her arms by a cruel press-gang; now it climbs the highest seas; now it is buried between two billows, and vanishes from her sight. Weep not, sweet maid, he shall return loaded with honours; a gold watch shall grace each fob, a pair of silver buckles shall shine resplendent upon his shoes, and a silk handkerchief shall be tied around his neck, which soon shall cover thy snowy bosom. When the chaise was totally lost, and my breast was distracted with a thousand different passions; all of a sudden I broke out into the following soliloquy.--Surely, surely mortal man is a chaise: now trailing through the heavy sand of indolence, anon jolted to death upon the rough road of discontent; and shortly after sunk in the deep rut of low spirits; now galloping on the post-road of expectation, and immediately after, trotting on the stony one of disappointment; but the days of our driving soon cease, our shafts break, our leather rots, and we tumble into a hole. Adieu, yours, ANDREW ERSKINE. * * * * * LETTER XXXVIII. Kelly, July 7, 1762. Dear BOSWELL,--I imagined, that by ceasing to write to you for some time, I should be able to lay up a stock of materials, enough to astonish you, and that, like a river damm'd up, when let loose, I should flow on with unusual rapidity; or like a man, who has not beat his wife for a fortnight, I should cudgel you with my wit for hours together; but I find the contrary of all this is the case; I resemble a person long absent from his native country, of which he has formed a thousand endearing ideas, and to which he at last returns; but alas! he beholds with sorrowful eyes, everything changed for the worse; the town where he was born, which used to have two snows[56] and three sloops trading to all parts of the known world, is not now master of two fishing-boats; the steeple of the church, where he used to sleep in his youth, is rent with lightning; and the girl on whom he had placed his early affections, has had three bastard children, and is just going to be delivered of a fourth; or I resemble a man who has had a fine waistcoat lying long in the very bottom of a chest, which he is determined shall be put on at the hunter's ball; but woe's me, the lace is tarnished, and the moths have devoured it in a melancholy manner; these few similies may serve to shew, that this letter has little chance of being a good one; yet they don't make the affair certain. Prince Ferdinand beat the French at Minden; Sheridan, in his lectures, sometimes spoke sense; and John Home wrote one good play.[57] I have read Lord Kames's Elements,[58] and agree very heartily with the opinion of the Critical Reviewers; however, I could often have wished, that his Lordship had been less obscure, or that I had had more penetration; he praises the Mourning Bride excessively, which, nevertheless, I can not help thinking a very indifferent play; the plot wild and improbable, and the language infinitely too high and swelling.[59] It is curious to see the opinions of the Reviewers concerning you and me; they take you for a poor distressed gentleman, writing for bread, and me for a very impudent Irishman; whereas you are heir to a thousand a year, and I am one of the most bashful Scotchmen that ever appeared! I confess, indeed, my bashfulness does not appear in my works, for them I print in the most impudent manner; being exceeded in that respect by nobody but James Boswell, Esq. Yours, &c., ANDREW ERSKINE. [Footnote 56: A snow (Low-German, snau; High-German, schnau) is a small vessel with beaked or snout-like bows, according to Wedgewood. But more probably it takes its name from the triangular shape of its sails.--Schnauzegel, a trysail.--ED.] [Footnote 57: "As we sat over our tea, Mr. Home's tragedy of Douglas was mentioned. I put Dr. Johnson in mind that once, in a coffee-house at Oxford, he called to old Mr. Sheridan, 'how came you, Sir, to give Home a gold medal for writing that foolish play?'" Boswell's "Tour to the Hebrides." Date of October 26, 1773.--ED.] [Footnote 58: "The Elements of Criticism," by Henry Home, Lord Kames. "Sir," said Johnson, "this book is a pretty essay and deserves to be held in some estimation though much of it is chimerical!" Boswell's "Life of Johnson." Date of May 16, 1763.--ED.] [Footnote 59: "In this play there is more bustle than sentiment; the plot is busy and intricate, and the events take hold on the attention; but, except a very few passages, we are rather amused with noise, and perplexed with stratagem, than entertained with any true delineation of natural characters."--Johnson's "Lives of the Poets."--ED.] * * * * * LETTER XXXIX. Kames, October 19, 1762. Dear ERSKINE,--In my own name, and in the name of Lord Kames, I desire to see you here immediately. I have been reading the "Elements of Criticism." You and the Reviewers have pronounced enough of serious panegyric on that book. In my opinion, it has the good properties of all the four elements. It has the solidity of earth, the pureness of air, the glow of fire, and the clearness of water. The language is excellent, and sometimes rises to so noble a pitch, that I exclaim, in imitation of Zanga in the Revenge,[60] "I like this roaring of the Elements." [Footnote 60: "The Revenge," a tragedy, by Edward Young, author of "Night Thoughts."--ED.] If this does not bring you, nothing will; and so, Sir, I continue, Yours as usual, JAMES BOSWELL. * * * * * LETTER XL. Kelly, October 28, 1762. Dear BOSWELL,--How shall I begin? what species of apology shall I make? the truth is, I really could not write, my spirits have been depressed so unaccountably. I have had whole mountains of lead pressing me down: you would have thought that five Dutchmen had been riding on my back, ever since I saw you; or that I had been covered with ten thousand folios of controversial divinity; you would have imagined that I was crammed in the most dense part of a plumb-pudding, or steeped in a hogshead of thick English Port. Heavens! is it possible, that a man of some fame for joking, possessed of no unlaughable talent in punning, and endued with no contemptible degree of liveliness in letter-writing, should all of a sudden have become more impenetrably stupid than a Hottentot legislator, or a moderator of the general assembly of the Kirk of Scotland. By that smile which enlivens your black countenance, like a farthing candle in a dark cellar, I perceive I am pardoned; indeed I expected no less; for, I believe, if a sword was to run you through the body, or a rope was to hang you, you would forget and forgive: you are at Kames just now, very happy, I suppose; your letter seems to come from a man in excellent spirits; I am very unequal at present to the task of writing an answer to it, but I was resolved to delay no longer, lest you should think I neglected you wilfully; a thought, I'm sure, you never shall have occasion to entertain of me, though the mist of dulness should for ever obscure and envelope my fancy and imagination. I cannot think of coming to Kames, yet I am sufficiently thankful for the invitation; my lowness would have a very bad effect in a cheerful society; it would be like a dead march in the midst of a hornpipe, or a mournful elegy in a collection of epigrams. Farewell. Yours, &c., ANDREW ERSKINE. * * * * * LETTER XLI. Parliament-Close, Nov. 10, 1762. Dear ERSKINE,--All I have now to say, is to inform you, that I shall set out for London on Monday next, and to beg that you may not leave Edinburgh before that time. My letters have often been carried to you over rising mountains and rolling seas. This pursues a simpler track, and under the tuition of a cadie,[61] is transmitted from the Parliament-Close to the Canongate. Thus it is with human affairs; all is fluctuating, all is changing. Believe me, Yours, &c. JAMES BOSWELL. [Footnote 61: "There is at Edinburgh a society or corporation of errand-boys, called 'cawdies,' who ply in the streets at night with paper lanthorns, and are very serviceable in carrying messages."--"Humphry Clinker," vol. ii., p. 240.--ED.] * * * * * LETTER XLII. London, Nov. 20, 1762. Dear ERSKINE,--What sort of a letter shall I now write to you? Shall I cram it from top to bottom with tables of compound interest? with anecdotes of Queen Anne's wars? with excerpts from Robertson's history? or with long stories translated from Olaus Wormius?[62] [Footnote 62: A distinguished Danish historian and antiquary, "Known in the history of anatomy by the bones of the skull named after him _ossa Wormiana_."--ED.] To pass four-and-twenty hours agreeably was still my favourite plan. I think at present that the mere contemplation of this amazing bustle of existence, is enough to make my four-and-twenty go merrily round. I went last night to Covent-Garden; and saw Woodward play Captain Bobadil;[63] he is a very lively performer; but a little extravagant: I was too late for getting into Drury-Lane, where Garrick played King Lear. That inimitable actor is in as full glory as ever; like genuine wine, he improves by age, and possesses the steady and continued admiration even of the inconstant English.[64] [Footnote 63: In Ben Jonson's "Every Man in his Humour." This was thought to be Woodward's masterpiece.--ED.] [Footnote 64: This is scarcely correct. Garrick's popularity was, at this time, falling off, and his theatre did not fill. "The profits of the following season," says Davies, "fell very short to those of the preceding years." At the close of the season he went abroad, and was away for nearly two years. In Rogers's "Table Talk," it is recorded--"Before his going abroad, Garrick's attraction had much decreased; Sir W.W. Pepys said that the pit was often almost empty. But, on his return to England, people were mad about seeing him." His popularity did not wane a second time.--ED.] I don't know what to say to you about myself: if I can get into the Guards, it will please me much; if not, I can't help it. Perhaps you may hear of my turning Templar, and perhaps ranger of some of his Majesty's parks. It is not impossible but I may catch a little true poetic inspiration, and have my works splendidly printed at Strawberry-hill, under the benign influence of the Honourable Horace Walpole.[65] You and I, Erskine, are, to be sure, somewhat vain. We have some reason too. The Reviewers gave great applause to your Odes to Indolence and Impudence; and they called my poems "agreeable light pieces," which was the very character I wished for. Had they said less, I should not have been satisfied; and had they said more, I should have thought it a burlesque. [Footnote 65: Walpole always expressed the greatest contempt for Boswell. In one of his letters he says that "he is the ape of most of Johnson's faults, without a grain of his sense." In another letter he writes about "a jackanapes who has lately made a noise here, one Boswell, by anecdotes of Dr. Johnson." Improbable though it was that Boswell should catch a little true poetic inspiration, it was still more improbable that he should ever have a single one of his works printed at The Strawberry Press.--ED.] What a fine animated prospect of life now spreads before me! Be assured, that my genius will be highly improved, and please yourself with the hopes of receiving letters still more entertaining. I ever am, Your affectionate friend, JAMES BOSWELL. THE JOURNAL OF A TOUR TO CORSICA. INTRODUCTION. The following sketch of the Corsican War of Independence may, perhaps, enable the reader better to follow Boswell in his narrative, and in his description of Paoli's character. I have founded it chiefly on Boswell's own account, though I have, at the same time consulted other authorities. As an historical writer, in theory at least, he would scarcely satisfy the exact school of historians that has sprung up since his day. "I confess I am not," he says in his second chapter, "for humouring an inordinate avidity for positive evidence." He is speaking, however, about the origin of nations, and not about the wars of Corsica, which he describes at some length. From about the beginning of the fourteenth century Corsica had belonged to the Republic of Genoa. The islanders had proved restive under the yoke of their hard masters, and more than once had risen in revolt. The Government of the Republic was, indeed, the worst of despotisms. A succession of infamous Governors--men who came to Corsica poor, and, after their two years of office, returned to Genoa rich--had cruelly oppressed the people. By their ill-gotten wealth, and by their interest in the Senate, they were able on their return to secure themselves against any inquiry into their conduct. The foreign trade of the islanders was almost ruined by a law which appointed Genoa as the sole port to which their products could be exported. The Corsicans, like many other mountaineers, had always been too much given up to private feuds. But it was charged against their Genoese masters, that, in their dread of union among their subjects, they themselves fomented dissentions. It was asserted in a petition presented to the King of France in 1738, that, under the last sixteen Governors, no less than 26,000 Corsicans had died by the hands of the assassin. In the legal proceedings that followed on these deeds of bloodshed, the Genoese judges found their profit. Condemnation was often followed by confiscation of the criminal's estates; acquittal had often been preceded by a heavy bribe to the judge. Multitudes were condemned to the galleys on frivolous charges in the hope that they would purchase their freedom at a high price. The law was even worse than the judges. A man could be condemned to the galleys or to death on secret information, without being once confronted with his accusers, without undergoing any examination, without the observance of any formality of any kind in the sentence that was passed on him. The judge could either acquit the greatest criminal, or condemn a man of stainless character "_ex informata conscientia_, on the information of his own conscience, of which he was not obliged to give any account." He could at any time stop the course of justice, "by saying '_Non procedatur_, let there be no process;' which could easily be cloaked under the pretence of some defect in point of form." When this atrocious law was at last abolished, Montesquieu wrote, "On a vu souvent des peuples demander des priviléges; ici le souverain accorde le droit de toutes les nations." No wonder that Horace Walpole exclaimed more than twenty years before Boswell's book was published, "I hate the Genoese; they make a commonwealth the most devilish of all tyrannies!" In 1729 the people rose once more against their rulers. It was the case of Wat Tyler over again. A tax-gatherer demanded a small sum--it was but about fivepence--of a poor old woman. Small as it was, she had not wherewithal to pay. He abused her, and seized some of her furniture. She raised an outcry. Her neighbours came flocking in and took her part. The tax-gatherer used threats, and was answered with a volley of stones. Troops were sent to support him in the execution of his office, and the people, in their turn, flew to their weapons. The revolt spread, and soon the whole island was in arms. The Genoese, as vassals of the Empire, sought the aid of their sovereign lord, the Emperor Charles the Sixth, who sent a strong body of troops to the island. The Corsicans were unable to resist, and "laid down their arms, upon condition that a treaty should be made between them and the Genoese, having for guarantee the Emperor." Hostages were sent by the islanders, to whom the Republic was inclined to show but scant respect. In fact, the Emperor's consent to their execution had been almost obtained, when the Prince of Wirtemberg, the commander of the imperial forces in Corsica, sent an express to Vienna, "with a very strong letter, representing how much the honour of Cæsar would suffer, should he consent to the death of those who had surrendered themselves upon the faith of his sacred protection." The great Prince Eugene also spoke out, and for this time, Cæsar's honour--at all events, all that was left of it--was saved. The suspension of hostilities was but short; for neither was the cruelty of the Genoese, nor the hatred of the Corsicans easily confined within the limits of a treaty. "There is not," writes Boswell, "a Corsican child who can procure a little gun-powder, but he immediately sets fire to it, huzzas at the explosion, and, as if he had blown up the enemy, calls out, 'Ecco i Genovesi; there go the Genoese!'" In 1734, the whole island once more was in the flames of an insurrection. Giafferi and Giacinto Paoli, the father of the famous Pascal Paoli, were chosen as leaders. The Genoese hired Swiss mercenaries. They thought that against soldiers, brought up amidst the Alps, as these had been, the mountains of Corsica would provide no shelter for freedom. But the Swiss "soon saw that they had made a bad bargain, and that they gave the Genoese too much blood for their money." When at Lucerne we gaze at the noble monument set up by Switzerland in memory of her sons who were massacred in Paris, it is well at times to remember how the Swiss lion was at the hire of the very jackals of the world. Genoa next published an indemnity to all her assassins and outlaws, on condition that they should fight for the Republic, in Corsica. "The robbers and assassins of Genoa," writes Boswell, "are no inconsiderable proportion of her people. These wretches flocked together from all quarters, and were formed into twelve companies." The Corsican chiefs called a general assembly, in which "On donna la Corse à la Vierge Marie, qui ne parut pas accepter cette couronne."[66] They were not, however, to be left long without a king, for the following year one of the strangest adventurers whom the world has ever seen made a bid for the crown. He promised the islanders the support of the great powers, and, with their aid, he undertook, if he were made king, to clear Corsica of her enemies. Men whose fortunes are well-nigh desperate, are of easy faith, and the conditions of this poor German Baron were accepted. [Footnote 66: Voltaire, "Précis du Siècle de Louis XV.," chapter xl.] His name was Theodore. He was Baron Neuhof, in the county of La Marc, in Westphalia. Horace Walpole, who had seen him, describes him as "a comely, middle-sized man, very reserved, and affecting much dignity." Boswell says that "he was a man of abilities and address." He had served in the French army, and, later on, had travelled through Spain, Italy, England, and Holland, ever in search of some new adventure. He had passed over to Tunis, and, under pretence of conquering Corsica for that power, had obtained a supply of money and arms. In a ship of ten guns furnished by the Bey, but carrying the English flag, which Theodore had the impudence to raise, he sailed to Leghorn. There he sold the ship, and despatched his offers to the Corsican leaders. He quickly passed over to the island. This was in the spring of 1736. "He was a man of a very stately appearance, and the Turkish dress which he wore, added to the dignity of his mien.... He had his guards, and his officers of state. He conferred titles of honour, and he struck money, both of silver and copper. There was such a curiosity over all Europe to have King Theodore's coins, that his silver coins were sold at four zechins each; and when the genuine ones were exhausted, imitations of them were made at Naples, and, like the imitations of antiques, were bought up at a high price, and carefully preserved in the cabinets of the virtuosi." He boasted of the immense treasures he had brought with him, and, as a proof, he scattered among the people fifty sequins in small coins of a debased or worn out currency. "Il donna des souliers de bon cuir, magnificence ignorée en Corse." He blockaded the seaport towns that were in the occupation of the Genoese. "He used to be sometimes at one siege, sometimes at another, standing with a telescope in his hand, as if he spied the assistance which he said he expected" from his allies, the other monarchs of Europe. Couriers, who had been despatched by himself, were constantly arriving from Leghorn, bringing him despatches, as he pretended, from the great powers. The Genoese set a price on his head. He replied in a manifesto, with all the calmness and dignity of an injured monarch. At the end of eight months, he "perceived that the people began to cool in their affections towards him, and he therefore wisely determined to leave them for a little, and try his fortune again upon the continent." He went to Amsterdam, where he was thrown into prison for debt. But even in prison he made fresh dupes. He induced some merchants, particularly Jews, to pay his debts, and to furnish him with a ship, arms, and provisions. He undertook in return, that they, and they alone, should carry on the whole foreign trade of Corsica. When he reached the island he did not venture to land; but contented himself with disembarking his stores, and with putting to death the supercargo, "that he might not have any trouble from demands being made upon him." In the end he retired to London. "I believe I told you that King Theodore is here," wrote Horace Walpole in 1749, to Sir Horace Mann, our Envoy at Florence. "I am to drink coffee with him to-morrow at Lady Schaub's." The rest of the story of this adventurer is so strange that, though it scarcely bears on Corsica, I shall venture to continue it. In the summer of the next year Walpole writes to his friend, "I believe I told you that one of your sovereigns, and an intimate friend of yours, King Theodore, is in the King's Bench prison." The unfortunate monarch languished there for some years. Walpole, with a kindliness which was natural to him, raised a subscription for his majesty. He advocated his cause in a paper in "The World," with the motto _Date obolum Belisario_. But he wrote to his former correspondent, "His majesty's character is so bad, that it only raised fifty pounds; and though that was so much above his desert, it was so much below his expectation, that he sent a solicitor to threaten the printer with a prosecution for having taken so much liberty with his name--take notice, too, that he had accepted the money! Dodsley, you may believe, laughed at the lawyer; but that does not lessen the dirty knavery.... I have done with countenancing kings." After he had remained in prison more than six years, "he took the benefit of the Act of Insolvency, and went to the Old Bailey for that purpose: in order to it, the person applying gives up all his effects to his creditors: his Majesty was asked what effects he had? He replied 'Nothing but the kingdom of Corsica;' and it was actually registered for the benefit of his creditors. As soon as Theodore was at liberty, he took a chair and went to the Portuguese Minister, but did not find him at home; not having sixpence to pay, he prevailed on the chairmen to carry him to a tailor he knew in Soho, whom he prevailed upon to harbour him; but he fell sick the next day, and died in three more." Walpole set up a stone in St. Ann's Churchyard, Soho, in memory of his majesty, with the following inscription:-- Near this place is interred Theodore, King of Corsica; Who died in this parish, Dec. 11, 1756, Immediately after leaving the King's Bench Prison, By the benefit of the Act of Insolvency: In consequence of which, he registered His Kingdom of Corsica For the use of his Creditors. The Grave, great teacher, to a level brings, Heroes and beggars, galley-slaves and kings. But Theodore this moral learn'd, ere dead; Fate pour'd its lessons on his living head, Bestow'd a kingdom and denied him bread. Disappointed though they were in their king, the Corsicans nevertheless carried on the war with spirit. They would, no doubt, have soon freed the whole island, had not the French come to the help of their oppressors. It was in vain that the islanders sent a memorial to the King of France. "If," said their spokesman to Louis XV., "your sovereign commands force us to yield to Genoa, well then, let us drink this bitter cup to the health of the most Christian king, and die." The king and the emperor acting together drew up articles of peace which seemed fair enough; but, as a preliminary, the Corsicans were to be disarmed. To this they refused to yield. Their leaders "published a spirited manifesto to their countrymen, concluding it with the noble sentiment of Judas Maccabeus: 'Melius est mori in bello quam videre mala gentis nostrae. It is better for us to die in battle than to behold the calamities of our people.'" The French dispatched an expedition to the assistance of the Genoese which utterly failed. The following year (1739) a more formidable expedition was sent under an able commander, the Marquis de Maillebois. He divided his forces into two bodies. Marching through the heart of the country each army carried devastation in its path. "He cut down the standing corn," writes Boswell, "the vines, the olives, set fire to the villages, and spread terror and desolation in every quarter. He hanged numbers of monks and others who were keenest in the revolt, and at the same time published, wherever he went, his terms of capitulation." In a few weeks, all but the wildest parts of the island were reduced. By the end of the next year there was not a single patriot left in arms. In 1741 broke out the war of the Austrian Succession, and the French troops, which were needed elsewhere, were recalled. Once more the island rose; even young boys took the field. The Genoese were driven into the fortified towns. The Corsican leader Gaffori was besieging the Castle of Corte, when the defenders, making a sudden sally, seized his infant son, whom his nurse had thoughtlessly carried too near the walls. "The General," says Boswell, in language which strikes us as most odd, though, to the men of his time, it sounded perhaps natural enough, "showed a decent concern at this unhappy accident, which struck a damp into the whole army. The Genoese," he goes on to say, "thought they could have Gaffori upon their own terms, since they were possessed of so dear a pledge. When he advanced to make some cannon play, they held up his son, directly over that part of the wall against which his artillery was levelled. The Corsicans stopped, and began to draw back; but Gaffori, with the resolution of a Roman, stood at their head, and ordered them to continue the fire." The child escaped and lived to tell Boswell this curious story. In 1745, England "not, as if from herself, but as complying with the request of her ally, the king of Sardinia," sent a squadron of ships to the assistance of the Corsicans. They came before Bastia on November 18th--three days, as it is worth while noticing, after the town of Carlisle had surrendered to the forces of the Young Pretender. "There was but little wind blowing, and the men of war had to be towed up by the long boats. The fortress of Bastia let fly first, and made a terrible fire, particularly against the commodore's ship, whose flag was beat down three times, and her main and mizen masts broke. The Commodore being exasperated immediately ordered the Castle to be cannonaded and bombarded, which was continued near two hours with extraordinary fury, when part of the wall was seen to tumble down."[67] The place surrendered in a few days to the Corsicans. In the following year the patriots sent envoys to the English ambassador at Turin with proposals that Corsica should put herself entirely under the protection of Great Britain. No definite answer was given. In 1748 some English troops were landed in the island, but on the conclusion of the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle they were withdrawn, and the Corsicans and Genoese were again left to fight out their own battles. [Footnote 67: "The Gentleman's Magazine," vol. xv., p. 628.] Five years later (1753) Gaffori, who had long held the office of sole general of the island, was carried off by assassination. "The murderers," says Boswell, "were set on by the Republic. At least, it is a fact that some of these wretches have still a miserable pension to support them, in the territory of Genoa." His place was filled by Pascal Paoli, the son of the old Corsican leader, who ever since the French invasion had lived with his boy in retirement at Naples. When the young man was sent for by his countrymen, his old father, "hoary and gray with years, fell on his neck and kissed him, gave him his blessing, and with a broken feeble voice, encouraged him in the undertaking on which he was entering: 'My son,' said he, 'I may, possibly, never see you more; but in my mind I shall ever be present with you. Your design is a great and a noble one; and I doubt not, but God will bless you in it.'" Paoli's task was full of difficulties. In "the affairs of Corsica, he found the utmost disorder and confusion. There was no subordination, no discipline, no money, hardly any arms and ammunition; and, what was worse than all, little union among the people. He immediately began to remedy these defects. His persuasion and example had wonderful force. In a short time he drove the Genoese to the remotest corners of the island.... He, in a manner, new-modelled the government upon the soundest principles of democratical rule, which was always his favourite idea." He carried a law by which assassination was made capital on whatever pretence it had been committed. He set about establishing schools in every village, and he founded a University at Corte. Boswell writing to Temple in 1767 says, "I have received an elegant letter from the University of Corte, and also an extract of an oration pronounced this year at the opening of the University, in which oration I am celebrated in a manner which does me the greatest honour." But the jealousy of France was again excited, and again she sent troops to the island. This was in 1764, nine years after Paoli had received the supreme command. Rousseau, full of indignation at this monstrous proceeding, thus expressed himself in a letter to a friend, "Il faut avouer que vos François, sont un peuple bien servile, bien vendu à la tyrannie, bien cruel, et bien acharné sur les malheureux. S'ils savoient un homme libre à l'autre bout du monde, je crois qu'ils iroient pour le seul plaisir de l'exterminer. It must be owned that your countrymen, the French, are a very servile nation, wholly sold to tyranny, exceedingly cruel and relentless in persecuting the unhappy. If they knew of a free man at the other end of the world I believe they would go thither for the mere pleasure of extirpating him." The French did not act on the offensive. They merely garrisoned certain towns, and professed to limit their occupation to the space of four years. It was in the second year of their occupation (1765) that Boswell visited the island. At the end of the four years the Republic of Genoa ceded Corsica to the crown of France. In the cession there was a pretence of a reservation with which it is needless to trouble the reader. "Genoa," writes Voltaire, "made a good bargain, and France made a better." "Il restait à savoir," he added, "si les hommes ont le droit de vendre d'autres hommes, mais c'est une question qu'on n'examina jamais dans aucun traité." Negociations were opened with Paoli, but there was no common ground between the free chief of a free people and the despot who wished to enslave them. Paoli might have looked for high honours and rewards had he consented to enter the French service. He had the far greater and purer glory of resisting a King of France for nearly a whole year. No foreign power came to his aid. "A few Englishmen alone," wrote Voltaire, "full of love for that liberty which he upheld, sent him some money and arms." His troops were badly armed. Their muskets were not even furnished with bayonets. Their courage went some way to make up for their want of proper weapons. In one battle they piled up in front of them a rampart of their dead, and behind this bloody pile they loaded their pieces before they began their retreat. But against the disciplined forces that France could bring, all resistance was in vain. "Poor brave Paoli!" wrote Horace Walpole, "but he is not disgraced. We, that have sat still and seen him overwhelmed, must answer it to history. Nay, the Mediterranean will taunt us in the very next war." Walpole wrote this letter but two months before the birth of Buonaparte. Had England, who has joined in many a worthless quarrel, struck in for the Corsicans, what a change might have been made in the history of the world! If Buonaparte had never been a citizen of France the name of Napoleon might be unknown. Paoli escaped in an English ship, and settled in England. Walpole met him one day at Court. "I could not believe it," he wrote, "when I was told who he was.... Nobody sure ever had an air so little foreign!... The simplicity of his whole appearance had not given me the slightest suspicion of anything remarkable in him." Paoli remained in England, an honoured guest, for thirty years. In 1789 Mirabeau moved, in the National Assembly, the recall of all the Corsican patriots. Paoli went to Paris, where "he was received with enthusiastic veneration. The Assembly and the Royal Family contended which should show him most distinction." The king made him lieutenant-general and military commandant in Corsica. "He used the powers entrusted to him with great wisdom and moderation." The rapid changes that swept over France did not leave him untouched. He was denounced in the Convention and "was summoned to attend for the purpose of standing on his defence. He declined the journey on account of his age." A large part of his countrymen stood by him, and in an assembly appointed him general-in-chief, and president of the council of government. The Convention sent an expedition to arrest him. Buonaparte happened at the time to be in Corsica, on leave of absence from his regiment. He and Paoli had been on friendly terms, indeed they were distantly related, but Buonaparte did not hesitate for a moment which side to take. He commanded the French troops in an attack on his native town. Paoli's party proved the stronger, and Napoleon Buonaparte and his brother Lucien were banished. The Corsicans sought the aid of the English who, in the year 1794, landed, five regiments strong, in the island. A deputation went to London to offer the Crown of Corsica to the King of Great Britain. The offer was accepted, but contrary to the hopes and the expectations of the islanders, not Paoli, but Sir Gilbert Eliot was made Viceroy. The great patriot then found that he could best serve his country by leaving it. For about two years Corsica remained part of the British Empire; but in 1796 the English were forced to abandon it. Paoli returned to England, where he passed the rest of his years. He died in 1807 at the age of eighty-two. His monument is in Westminster Abbey. AN ACCOUNT OF CORSICA, THE JOURNAL OF A TOUR TO THAT ISLAND; AND MEMOIRS OF PASCAL PAOLI. BY JAMES BOSWELL, Esq; ILLUSTRATED with a New and Accurate MAP OF CORSICA. Non enim propter gloriam, divitias aut honores pugnamus, sed propter libertatem solummodo, quam nemo bonus nisi simul cum vita amittit. Lit. Comit. et Baron. Scotiae ad Pap. A.D. 1320. GLASGOW, PRINTED BY ROBERT AND ANDREW FOULIS FOR EDWARD AND CHARLES DILLY IN THE POULTRY, LONDON; MDCCLXVIII. DEDICATION TO PASCAL PAOLI, GENERAL OF THE CORSICANS. SIR,--Dedications are for most part the offerings of interested servility, or the effusions of partial zeal; enumerating the virtues of men in whom no virtues can be found, or predicting greatness to those who afterwards pass their days in unambitious indolence, and die leaving no memorial of their existence, but a dedication, in which all their merit is confessedly future, and which time has turned into a silent reproach. He who has any experience of mankind, will be cautious to whom he dedicates. Publickly to bestow praise on merit of which the publick is not sensible, or to raise flattering expectations which are never fulfilled, must sink the character of an authour, and make him appear a cringing parasite, or a fond enthusiast. I am under no apprehensions of that nature, when I inscribe this book to Pascal Paoli. Your virtues, Sir, are universally acknowledged; they dignify the pages which I venture to present to you; and it is my singular felicity that my book is the voucher of its dedication. In thus addressing you, my intention is not to attempt your panegyrick. That may in some measure be collected from my imperfect labours. But I wish to express to the world, the admiration and gratitude with which you have inspired me. This, Sir, is all the return that I can make for the many favours which you have deigned to confer upon me. I intreat you to receive it as a testimony of my disposition. I regret that I have neither power nor interest to enable me to render any essential service to you and to the brave Corsicans. I can only assure you of the most fervent wishes of a private gentleman. I have the honour to be, with all respect and affection, Sir, Your ever devoted obliged humble servant JAMES BOSWELL. Auchinleck, Ayrshire, 29 October,[68] 1767. [Footnote 68: Boswell's birthday. The preface to the third edition also bears the date of his birthday.--ED.] PREFACE. No apology shall be made for presenting the world with An Account of Corsica. It has been for some time expected from me; and I own that the ardour of publick curiosity has both encouraged and intimidated me. On my return from visiting Corsica, I found people wherever I went, desirous to hear what I could tell them concerning that island and its inhabitants. Unwilling to repeat my tale to every company, I thought it best to promise a book which should speak for me. But I would not take upon me to do this till I consulted with the General of the nation. I therefore informed him of my design. His answer is perhaps too flattering for me to publish: but I must beg leave to give it as the licence and sanction of this work. Paoli was pleased to write to me thus; "Nothing can be more generous than your design to publish the observations which you have made upon Corsica. You have seen its natural situation, you have been able to study the manners of its inhabitants, and to see intimately the maxims of their government, of which you know the constitution. This people with an enthusiasm of gratitude, will unite their applause with that of undeceived Europe." * * * * * It is amazing that an island so considerable, and in which such noble things have been doing, should be so imperfectly known. Even the succession of chiefs has been unperceived; and because we have read of Paoli being at the head of the Corsicans many years back, and Paoli still appears at their head, the command has been supposed all this time in the person of the same man. Hence all our newspapers have confounded the gallant Pascal Paoli in the vigour of manhood, with the venerable chief his deceased father, Giacinto Paoli. Nay the same errour has found its way into the page of the historian; for Dr. Smollet when mentioning Paoli at the siege of Furiani a few years ago, says he was then past fourscore. I would in the first place return my most humble thanks to Pascal Paoli, for the various communications with which he has been pleased to favour me; and as I have related his remarkable sayings, I declare upon honour, that I have neither added nor diminished; nay so scrupulous have I been, that I would not make the smallest variation even when my friends thought it would be an improvement. I know with how much pleasure we read what is perfectly authentick. Count Rivarola[69] was so good as to return me full and distinct answers to a variety of queries which I sent him with regard to many particulars concerning Corsica. I am much indebted to him for this, and particularly so, from the obliging manner in which he did it. [Footnote 69: The Sardinian Consul in Corsica. See page 142.--ED.] The reverend Mr. Burnaby, chaplain to the British factory at Leghorn, made a tour to Corsica in 1766, at the same time with the honourable and reverend Mr. Hervey, now bishop of Cloyne.[70] Mr. Burnaby was absent from Leghorn when I was there, so I had not the pleasure of being personally known to him. But he with great politeness of his own accord, sent me a copy of the Journal which he made of what he observed in Corsica. I had the satisfaction to find that we agreed in every thing which both of us had considered. But I found in his Journal, observations on several things which I had omitted; and several things which I had remarked, I found set in a clearer light. As Mr. Burnaby was so obliging as to allow me to make what use I pleased of his Journal, I have freely interwoven it into my work. [Footnote 70: The son of Pope's Lord Hervey. He succeeded in 1779 to the Earldom of Bristol.--ED.] I acknowledge my obligations to my esteemed friend John Dick Esquire, his Britannick Majesty's Consul at Leghorn, to Signor Gian Quilico Casa Bianca, to the learned Greek physician Signor Stefanopoli, to Colonel Buttafoco,[71] and to the Abbé Rostini. These gentlemen have all contributed their aid in erecting my little monument to liberty. [Footnote 71: Colonel Buttafoco was one of Rousseau's correspondents. At the time of the French Revolution he was elected Deputy from Corsica to the National Assembly. He was most violently attacked by Napoleon Buonaparte in a letter dated "From my closet at Milleli, 23rd January, Year 2." The letter thus begins:--"From Bonifacio to Cape Corso, from Ajaccio to Bastia, there is one chorus of imprecations against you." The writer goes on to say, "Your countrymen, to whom you are an object of horror, will enlighten France as to your character. The wealth, the pensions, the fruits of your treasons, will be taken from you.... O Lameth! O Robespierre! O Petion! O Volney! O Mirabeau! O Barnave! O Bailly! O La Fayette! this is the man who dares to seat himself by your side!"--Scott's "Life of Napoleon Buonaparte," vol. ix., Appendix I.--ED.] I am also to thank an ingenious gentleman who has favoured me with the translations of Seneca's Epigrams. I made application for this favour, in the "London Chronicle;" and to the honour of literature, I found her votaries very liberal. Several translations were sent, of which I took the liberty to prefer those which had the signature of Patricius, and which were improved by another ingenious correspondent under the signature of Plebeius. By a subsequent application I begged that Patricius would let me know to whom I was obliged for what I considered as a great ornament to my book. He has complied with my request; and I beg leave in this publick manner, to acknowledge that I am indebted for those translations to Thomas Day Esquire,[72] of Berkshire, a gentleman whose situation in life is genteel, and his fortune affluent. I must add that although his verses have not only the fire of youth, but the maturity and correctness of age, Mr. Day is no more than nineteen. [Footnote 72: This is, I believe the author of "Sandford and Merton," who was born in 1748, and was nineteen years old at the date of the dedication of Boswell's work. His father had died when Day was a year old, and had left him a fortune of £1,200 a year.--ED.] Nor can I omit to express my sense of the candour and politeness with which Sir James Steuart received the remark which I have ventured to make in opposition to a passage concerning the Corsicans, in his "Inquiry into the principles of Political Oeconomy." I have submitted my book to the revisal of several gentlemen who honour me with their regard, and I am sensible how much it is improved by their corrections. It is therefore my duty to return thanks to the reverend Mr. Wyvill rectour of Black Notely in Essex, and to my old and most intimate friend the reverend Mr. Temple[73] rectour of Mamhead in Devonshire. I am also obliged to My Lord Monboddo for many judicious remarks, which his thorough acquaintance with ancient learning enabled him to make. But I am principally indebted to the indulgence and friendly attention of My Lord Hailes, who under the name of Sir David Dalrymple,[74] has been long known to the world as an able Antiquarian, and an elegant and humourous Essayist; to whom the world has no fault but that he does not give them more of his own writings, when they value them so highly.[75] [Footnote 73: See "Letters of James Boswell addressed to the Rev. W.J. Temple."--Bentley, London, 1857.--ED.] [Footnote 74: It is the custom in Scotland to give the Judges of the Court of Session the title of Lords by the names of their estates. Thus Mr. Burnett is Lord Monboddo, and Sir David Dalrymple is Lord Hailes.] [Footnote 75: "Johnson this evening drank a bumper to Sir David Dalrymple, 'as a man of worth, a scholar, and a wit. I have,' said he, 'never heard of him, except from you; but let him know my opinion of him: for as he does not show himself much in the world, he should have the praise of the few who hear of him.'"--Boswell's "Johnson." Date of July 20, 1763.--ED.] I would however have it understood, that although I received the corrections of my friends with deference, I have not always agreed with them. An authour should be glad to hear every candid remark. But I look upon a man as unworthy to write, who has not force of mind to determine for himself. I mention this, that the judgement of the friends I have named may not be considered as connected with every passage in this book. Writing a book I have found to be like building a house. A man forms a plan and collects materials. He thinks he has enough to raise a large and stately edifice; but after he has arranged, compacted and polished, his work turns out to be a very small performance. The authour, however, like the builder, knows how much labour his work has cost him; and therefore estimates it at a much higher rate than other people think it deserves. I have endeavoured to avoid an ostentatious display of learning. By the idle and the frivolous indeed, any appearance of learning is called pedantry. But as I do not write for such readers, I pay no regard to their censures. Those by whom I wish to be judged, will I hope, approve of my adding dignity to Corsica, by shewing its consideration among the ancients, and will not be displeased to find my page sometimes embellished with a seasonable quotation from the Classicks. The translations are ascribed to their proper authours. What are not so ascribed are my own. It may be necessary to say something in defence of my orthography. Of late it has become the fashion to render our language more neat and trim by leaving out k after c, and u in the last syllable of words which used to end in our. The illustrious Mr. Samuel Johnson, who has alone[76] executed in England what was the task of whole academies in other countries, has been careful in his Dictionary to preserve the k as a mark of Saxon original. He has for most part, too, been careful to preserve the u, but he has also omitted it in several words. I have retained the k, and have taken upon me to follow a general rule with regard to words ending in our. Wherever a word originally Latin has been transmitted to us through the medium of the French, I have written it with the characteristical u. An attention to this may appear trivial. But I own I am one of those who are curious in the formation of language in its various modes; and therefore wish that the affinity of English with other tongues may not be forgotten. If this work should at any future period be reprinted, I hope that care will be taken of my orthography.[77] [Footnote 76: "ADAMS.--But, Sir, how can you do this in three years? JOHNSON.--Sir, I have no doubt that I can do it in three years. ADAMS.--But the French Academy, which consists of forty members, took forty years to compile their Dictionary. JOHNSON.--Sir, thus it is. This is the proportion. Let me see; forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three to sixteen hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman."--Boswell's "Johnson." Date of 1748.--ED.] [Footnote 77: I have not dared to disregard Boswell's request. His orthography is retained.--ED.] He who publishes a book, affecting not to be an authour, and professing an indifference for literary fame, may possibly impose upon many people such an idea of his consequence as he wishes may be received. For my part, I should be proud to be known as an authour; and I have an ardent ambition for literary fame; for of all possessions I should imagine literary fame to be the most valuable. A man who has been able to furnish a book which has been approved by the world, has established himself as a respectable character in distant society, without any danger of having that character lessened by the observation of his weaknesses. To preserve an uniform dignity among those who see us every day, is hardly possible; and to aim at it must put us under the fetters of a perpetual restraint. The authour of an approved book may allow his natural disposition an easy play, and yet indulge the pride of superiour genius when he considers that by those who know him only as an authour, he never ceases to be respected. Such an authour when in his hours of gloom and discontent, may have the consolation to think that his writings are at that very time giving pleasure to numbers; and such an authour may cherish the hope of being remembered after death, which has been a great object to the noblest minds in all ages.[78] [Footnote 78: "The rational pride of an author may be offended, rather than flattered, by vague, indiscriminate praise; but he cannot, he should not, be indifferent to the fair testimonies of private and public esteem. Even his moral sympathy may be gratified by the idea, that now, in the present hour, he is imparting some degree of amusement or knowledge to his friends in a distant land; that one day his mind will be familiar to the grand-children of those who are yet unborn."--"Memoirs of my Life and Writings," by Edward Gibbon, vol. i., p. 273. "Do thou teach me not only to foresee but to enjoy, nay even to feed on future praise. Comfort me by the solemn assurance, that when the little parlour in which I sit at this moment shall be reduced to a worse-furnished box, I shall be read with honour by those who never knew nor saw me, and whom I shall neither know nor see."--"Tom Jones," book xiii., chap. I. Quoted by Gibbon, or his Editor.--ED.] Whether I may merit any portion of literary fame, the publick will judge. Whatever my ambition may be, I trust that my confidence is not too great, nor my hopes too sanguine. PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. I now beg leave to present the world with a more correct edition of my Account of Corsica. I return my sincere thanks to those who have taken the trouble to point out several faults, with a spirit of candid criticism. I hope they will not be offended that in one or two places I have preserved my own reading, contrary to their opinion; as I never would own that I am wrong, till I am convinced that it is so. My orthography I have sufficiently explained; and although some pleasantry has been shewn, I have not met with one argument against it. * * * * * While I have a proper sense of my obligations to those who have treated me with candour, I do not forget that there have been others who have chosen to treat me in an illiberal manner. The resentment of some has evidently arisen from the grateful admiration which I have expressed of Mr. Samuel Johnson. Over such, it is a triumph to me to assure them, that I never cease to think of Mr. Johnson with the same warmth of affection, and the same dignity of veneration. The resentment of others it is more difficult to explain. For what should make men attack one who never offended them, who has done his best to entertain them, and who is engaged in the most generous cause? But I am told by those who have gone before me in literature, that the attacks of such should rather flatter me, than give me displeasure. To those who have imagined themselves very witty in sneering at me for being a Christian, I would recommend the serious study of Theology, and I hope they will attain to the same comfort that I have, in the belief of a Revelation by which a SAVIOUR is proclamed to the world, and "life and immortality are clearly brought to light." I am now to return thanks to My Lord Lyttelton, for being so good as to allow me to enrich my book with one of his Lordship's letters to me.[79] I was indeed most anxious that it should be published; as it contains an eulogium on Pascal Paoli, equal to anything that I have found in the writings of antiquity. Nor can I deny that I was very desirous to shew the world that this worthy and respectable Nobleman, to whom genius, learning and virtue owe so much, can amidst all his literary honours be pleased with what I have been able to write. [Footnote 79: I have not thought it needful to reprint this letter.--ED.] May I be permitted to say that the success of this book has exceeded my warmest hopes. When I first ventured to send it into the world, I fairly owned an ardent desire for literary fame. I have obtained my desire: and whatever clouds may overcast my days, I can now walk here among the rocks and woods of my ancestors, with an agreeable consciousness that I have done something worthy. AUCHINLECK, AYRSHIRE, 29 October, 1768. THE JOURNAL OF A TOUR TO CORSICA; AND MEMOIRS OF PASCAL PAOLI. Olim meminisse juvabit. VIRG. THE JOURNAL OF A TOUR TO CORSICA. Having resolved to pass some years[80] abroad, for my instruction and entertainment, I conceived a design of visiting the island of Corsica. I wished for something more than just the common course of what is called the tour of Europe; and Corsica occurred to me as a place which no body else had seen, and where I should find what was to be seen no where else, a people actually fighting for liberty, and forming themselves from a poor inconsiderable oppressed nation, into a flourishing and independent state. [Footnote 80: Boswell had left England, on August 6th, 1763, for the University of Utrecht, whither his father had sent him to study civil law. On his return to Scotland, he was to put on the gown as a member of the Faculty of Advocates. "Honest man!" he writes of his father to his friend Temple, "he is now very happy; it is amazing to think how much he has had at heart my pursuing the road of civil life." Boswell had once hoped to enter the Guards. A few days later on he wrote: "My father has allowed me £60 a quarter; that is not a great allowance, but with economy I may live very well upon it, for Holland is a cheap country. However I am determined not to be straightened, nor to encourage the least narrowness of disposition as to saving money, but will draw upon my father for any sums I find necessary." He did not give many months to his legal studies at Utrecht. In the following year he set out on his travels. He went through Germany and Switzerland to Italy. It was in the autumn of 1765 that he visited Corsica. He returned to England through France, and arrived in London in February, 1766.] When I got into Switzerland, I went to see M. Rousseau. He was then living in romantick retirement, from whence, perhaps, it had been better for him never to have descended. While he was at a distance, his singular eloquence filled our minds with high ideas of the wild philosopher. When he came into the walks of men, we know alas! how much these ideas suffered.[81] [Footnote 81: Rousseau came to England in January, 1766. He had not been here long before he quarrelled with Hume, who had been to him so true a friend.--ED.] He entertained me very courteously; for I was recommended to him by my honoured friend the Earl Marischal,[82] with whom I had the happiness of travelling through a part of Germany. I had heard that M. Rousseau had some correspondence with the Corsicans, and had been desired to assist them in forming their laws.[83] I told him my scheme of going to visit them, after I had compleated my tour of Italy; and I insisted that he should give me a letter of introduction. He immediately agreed to do so, whenever I should acquaint him of my time of going thither; for he saw that my enthusiasm for the brave islanders was as warm as his own. [Footnote 82: George, tenth Earl Marischal. He had taken part in the Jacobite rising of 1715. Later on he held high office in the Prussian service. In 1759 his attainder was reversed, but he continued to live abroad. In one of his letters to Madame de Boufflers he says, in speaking of Rousseau, "Je lui avais fait un projet; mais en le disant un château en Espagne, d'aller habiter une maison toute meublée que j'ai en Ecosse; d'engager le bon David Hume de vivre avec nous."--"Hume's Private Correspondence," page 43.--ED.] [Footnote 83: See page 222.] I accordingly wrote to him from Rome, in April 1765, that I had fixed the month of September for my Corsican expedition, and therefore begged of him to send me the letter of introduction, which if he refused, I should certainly go without it, and probably be hanged as a spy. So let him answer for the consequences. The wild philosopher was a man of his word; and on my arrival at Florence in August I received the following letter. "A MONSIEUR, MONSIEUR BOSWELL, &c. "A MOTIERS le 30 May, 1765. "La crise orageuse ou je me trouve, Monsieur, depuis votre depart d'ici, m'a oté le tems de repondre à votre premiére lettre, et me laisse à peine celui de repondre en peu de mots à la seconde. Pour m'en tenir à ce qui presse pour le moment, savoir la recommendation que vous desirez en Corse; puisque vous avez le desir de visiter ces braves insulaires, vous pourrez vous informer à Bastia, de M. Buttafoco capitaine au Regiment Royal Italien; il a sa maison à Vescovado, ou il se tient assez souvent. C'est un très galant homme, qui a des connoissances et de l'esprit; il suffira de lui montrer cette lettre, et je suis sur qu'il vous recevra bien, et contribuera à vous faire voir l'isle et ses habitans avec satisfaction. Si vous ne trouvez pas M. Buttafoco, et que vous vouliez aller tout droit à M. Pascal de Paoli general de la nation, vous pouvez egalement lui montrer cette lettre, et je suis sur, connoissant la noblesse de son caractére, que vous serez très-content de son accueil: vous pourrez lui dire même que vous étes aimé de Mylord Mareschal d'Ecosse, et que Mylord Mareschal est un des plus zelés partizans de la nation Corse. Au reste vouz n'avez besoin d'autre recommendation près de ces Messieurs que votre propre mérite, la nation Corse etant naturellement si accueillante et si hospitaliére, que tous les etrangers y sont bien venus et caressés. * * * * * "Bons et heureux voyages, santé, gaieté et promt retour. Je vous embrasse, Monsieur, de tout mon coeur." "J.J. ROUSSEAU." "TO MR. BOSWELL, &c. "MOTIERS, the 30 May 1765. "The stormy crisis in which I have found myself since your departure from this, has not allowed me any leisure to answer your first letter, and hardly allows me leisure to reply in a few words to your second. To confine myself to what is immediately pressing, the recommendation which you ask for Corsica; since you have a desire to visit those brave islanders, you may enquire at Bastia for M. Buttafoco, captain of the Royal Italian Regiment; his house is at Vescovado, where he resides pretty often. He is a very worthy man, and has both knowledge and genius; it will be sufficient to shew him this letter, and I am sure he will receive you well, and will contribute to let you see the island and its inhabitants with satisfaction. If you do not find M. Buttafoco, and will go directly to M. Pascal Paoli General of the nation, you may in the same manner shew him this letter, and as I know the nobleness of his character, I am sure you will be very well pleased at your reception. You may even tell him that you are liked by My Lord Marischal of Scotland, and that My Lord Marischal is one of the most zealous partisans of the Corsican nation. You need no other recommendation to these gentlemen but your own merit, the Corsicans being naturally so courteous and hospitable, that all strangers who come among them, are made welcome and caressed. * * * * * "I wish you agreeable and fortunate travels, health, gaiety, and a speedy return. I embrace you Sir with all my heart "JOHN JAMES ROUSSEAU." Furnished with these credentials, I was impatient to be with the illustrious Chief. The charms of sweet Siena detained me longer than they should have done. I required the hardy air of Corsica to brace me, after the delights of Tuscany. I recollect with astonishment how little the real state of Corsica was known, even by those who had good access to know it. An officer of rank in the British navy, who had been in several ports of the island, told me that I run the risque of my life in going among these barbarians; for, that his surgeon's mate went ashore to take the diversion of shooting, and every moment was alarmed by some of the natives, who started from the bushes with loaded guns, and if he had not been protected by Corsican guides, would have certainly blown out his brains. Nay at Leghorn, which is within a day's sailing of Corsica, and has a constant intercourse with it, I found people who dissuaded me from going thither, because it might be dangerous. I was however under no apprehension in going to Corsica. Count Rivarola the Sardinian consul, who is himself a Corsican, assuring me that the island was then in a very civilized state; and besides, that in the rudest times no Corsican would ever attack a stranger. The Count was so good as to give me most obliging letters to many people in the island. I had now been in several foreign countries. I had found that I was able to accommodate myself to my fellow-creatures of different languages and sentiments. I did not fear that it would be a difficult task for me to make myself easy with the plain and generous Corsicans. The only danger I saw was, that I might be taken by some of the Barbary Corsairs, and have a tryal of slavery among the Turks at Algiers.[84] I spoke of it to Commodore Harrison, who commanded the British squadron in the Mediterranean, and was then lying with his ship the Centurion in the bay of Leghorn. He assured me, that if the Turks did take me, they should not keep me long; but in order to prevent it, he was so good as to grant me a very ample and particular passport; and as it could be of no use if I did not meet the Corsairs, he said very pleasantly when he gave it me, "I hope, Sir, it shall be of no use to you." [Footnote 84: In the "Gentleman's Magazine" for 1750 (vol. xx., p. 42), we read, "The Phoenix, Captain Carberry, of Bristol, was taken on Christmas eve by an Algerine corsair off the rock of Lisbon, on pretence that his pass was not good, and ordered for Algiers with an officer and six other Turks; but in the passage Captain Carberry with three English sailors and a boy recovered the vessel, after flinging the Turkish officer and two other Turks overboard, and brought it with the Turkish sailors prisoners to Bristol." In the same year the English consul at Algiers wrote to say that some Algerine Corsairs had taken five English vessels because their passes were not good. The consul had complained to the Dey, "who said that he would give such orders that nothing of this sort should happen again, and then swore by his prophet that if any one controverted those orders he would take his head." The Dey had also seized a packet-boat of the British Crown. Commodore Keppel was sent to demand restitution. The Dey replied, "We are disposed to give full satisfaction to the King and the British nation for anything that may happen amiss hereafter; but as to what is past, if they have had any cause to complain, they must think no more of it, and bury it in oblivion." The packet-boat, he maintained, had not a proper Algerine pass, and therefore had been lawfully seized. By a treaty made with the Dey in the following year, the Commodore "settled all differences by waiving the restitution of the money and effects taken from on board the packet-boat on condition that his Majesty's packet-boats shall never be obliged to carry Algerine passports," &c. Whatever protection the English vessels may have had the Turkish corsairs continued to plunder the ships of most other nations. In the "Gentleman's Magazine" for 1785, (vol. lv., p. 830) we read, "The Algerines still continue their piracies in the Mediterranean. They even extend their captures to the Atlantic Ocean, and have struck the American traders with terror."--ED.] Before I left Leghorn, I could observe, that my tour was looked upon by the Italian politicians in a very serious light, as if truly I had a commission from my Court, to negociate a treaty with the Corsicans. The more I disclaimed any such thing, the more they persevered in affirming it; and I was considered as a very close young man. I therefore just allowed them to make a minister of me, till time should undeceive them.[85] [Footnote 85: Compare Scribe's Comedy of "_Le Diplomate_."--ED.] I sailed from Leghorn in a Tuscan vessel, which was going over to Capo Corso for wine. I preferred this to a vessel going to Bastia, because, as I did not know how the French general was affected towards the Corsicans, I was afraid that he might not permit me to go forward to Paoli. I therefore resolved to land on the territories of the nation, and after I had been with the illustrious Chief, to pay my respects to the French if I should find it safe. Though from Leghorn to Corsica is usually but one day's sailing, there was so dead a calm that it took us two days. The first day was the most tedious. However there were two or three Corsicans aboard, and one of them played on the Citra, which amused me a good deal. At sun-set all the people in the ship sung the Ave Maria, with great devotion and some melody. It was pleasing to enter into the spirit of their religion, and hear them offering up their evening orisons. The second day we became better acquainted, and more lively and chearful. The worthy Corsicans thought it was proper to give a moral lesson to a young traveller just come from Italy. They told me that in their country I should be treated with the greatest hospitality; but if I attempted to debauch any of their women, I might lay my account with instant death. I employed myself several hours in rowing, which gave me great spirits. I relished fully my approach to the island, which had acquired an unusual grandeur in my imagination. As long as I can remember any thing, I have heard of "The malecontents of Corsica, with Paoli at their head." It was a curious thought that I was just going to see them. About seven o'clock at night, we landed safely in the harbour of Centuri. I learnt that Signor Giaccomini of this place, to whom I was recommended by Count Rivarola, was just dead. He had made a handsome fortune in the East Indies; and having had a remarkable warmth in the cause of liberty during his whole life, he shewed it in the strongest manner in his last will. He bequeathed a considerable sum of money, and some pieces of ordinance, to the nation. He also left it in charge to his heir, to live in Corsica, and be firm in the patriotick interest; and if ever the island should again be reduced under the power of the Genoese, he ordered him to retire with all his effects to Leghorn. Upon these conditions only could his heir enjoy his estate. I was directed to the house of Signor Giaccomini's cousin, Signor Antonio Antonetti at Morsiglia, about a mile up the country. The prospect of the mountains covered with vines and olives, was extremely agreeable; and the odour of the myrtle and other aromatick shrubs and flowers that grew all around me, was very refreshing. As I walked along, I often saw Corsican peasants come suddenly out from the covert; and as they were all armed, I saw how the frightened imagination of the surgeon's mate had raised up so many assassins. Even the man who carried my baggage was armed, and had I been timorous might have alarmed me. But he and I were very good company to each other. As it grew dusky, I repeated to myself these lines from a fine passage in Ariosto. "E pur per selve oscure e calli obliqui Insieme van senza, sospetto aversi." ARIOST. Canto I. "Together through dark woods and winding ways They walk, nor on their hearts suspicion preys." I delivered Signor Antonetti the letter for his deceased cousin. He read it, and received me with unaffected cordiality, making an apology for my frugal entertainment, but assuring me of a hearty welcome. His true kindly hospitality was also shewn in taking care of my servant, an honest Swiss, who loved to eat and drink well.[86] [Footnote 86: Like master, like man.--ED.] I had formed a strange notion that I should see every thing in Corsica totally different from what I had seen in any other country.[87] I was therefore much surprised to find Signor Antonetti's house quite an Italian one, with very good furniture, prints, and copies of some of the famous pictures. In particular, I was struck to find here a small copy from Raphael, of St. Michael and the Dragon. There was no necessity for its being well done. To see the thing at all was what surprised me. [Footnote 87: See Appendix B for a curious custom described by Boswell.--ED.] Signor Antonetti gave me an excellent light repast, and a very good bed. He spoke with great strength of the patriotick cause, and with great veneration of the General. I was quite easy, and liked much the opening of my Corsican tour. The next day, being Sunday, it rained very hard; and I must observe that the Corsicans with all their resolution, are afraid of bad weather, to a degree of effeminacy. I got indeed a drole but a just enough account of this, from one of them. "Sir," said he, "if you were as poor as a Corsican, and had but one coat, so as that after being wet, you could not put on dry cloaths, you would be afraid too."[88] Signor Antonetti would not allow me to set out while it rained, for, said he, "Quando si trova fuori, patienza; ma di andare fuori è cattivo. If a man finds himself abroad, there is no help for it. But to go deliberately out, is too much." [Footnote 88: A friend of mine, driving last September from Tunis to Utica, was overtaken by a storm of rain. The driver at once got down from the box and seated himself on the ground under the carriage. By way of excuse he said that he had but one coat.--ED.] When the day grew a little better, I accompanied Signor Antonetti and his family, to hear mass in the parish church, a very pretty little building, about half a quarter of a mile off. Signor Antonetti's parish priest was to preach to us, at which I was much pleased, being very curious to hear a Corsican sermon. Our priest did very well. His text was in the Psalms. "Descendunt ad infernum viventes. They go down alive into the pit." After endeavouring to move our passions with a description of the horrours of hell, he told us "Saint Catherine of Siena wished to be laid on the mouth of this dreadful pit, that she might stop it up, so as no more unhappy souls should fall into it. I confess, my brethren, I have not the zeal of holy Saint Catherine. But I do what I can; I warn you how to avoid it." He then gave us some good practical advices and concluded. The weather being now cleared up, I took leave of the worthy gentleman to whom I had been a guest. He gave me a letter to Signor Damiano Tomasi Padre del Commune at Pino, the next village. I got a man with an ass to carry my baggage. But such a road I never saw. It was absolutely scrambling along the face of a rock overhanging the sea, upon a path sometimes not above a foot broad. I thought the ass rather retarded me; so I prevailed with the man to take my portmanteau and other things on his back. Had I formed my opinion of Corsica from what I saw this morning, I might have been in as bad humour with it, as Seneca was, whose reflections in prose are not inferiour to his epigrams. "Quid tam nudum inveniri potest, quid tam abruptum undique quam hoc saxum? quid ad copias respicienti jejunius? quid ad homines immansuetius? quid ad ipsum loci situm horridius? Plures tamen hîc peregrini quam cives consistunt? usque eò ergo commutatio ipsa locorum gravis non est, ut hic quoque locus a patria quosdam abduxerit.[89] What can be found so bare, what so rugged all around as this rock? what more barren of provisions? what more rude as to its inhabitants? what in the very situation of the place more horrible? what in climate more intemperate? yet there are more foreigners than natives here. So far then is a change of place from being disagreeable, that even this place hath brought some people away from their country." [Footnote 89: Seneca de Consolatione.] At Pino I was surprised to find myself met by some brisk young fellows drest like English sailors, and speaking English tolerably well. They had been often with cargoes of wine at Leghorn, where they had picked up what they knew of our language, and taken clothes in part of payment for some of their merchandise. I was cordially entertained at Signor Tomasi's. Throughout all Corsica, except in garrison towns, there is hardly an inn. I met with a single one, about eight miles from Corte. Before I was accustomed to the Corsican hospitality, I sometimes forgot myself, and imagining I was in a publick house, called for what I wanted, with the tone which one uses in calling to the waiters at a tavern. I did so at Pino, asking for a variety of things at once; when Signora Tomasi, perceiving my mistake, looked in my face and smiled, saying with much calmness and good-nature, "Una cosa dopo un altra, Signore. One thing after another, Sir." In writing this Journal, I shall not tire my readers with relating the occurrences of each particular day. It will be much more agreeable to them, to have a free and continued account of what I saw or heard, most worthy of observation. For some time, I had very curious travelling, mostly on foot, and attended by a couple of stout women, who carried my baggage upon their heads. Every time that I prepared to set out from a village, I could not help laughing, to see the good people eager to have my equipage in order, and roaring out, "Le Donne, Le Donne. The Women, The Women." I had full leisure and the best opportunities to observe every thing, in my progress through the island. I was lodged sometimes in private houses, sometimes in convents, being always well recommended from place to place. The first convent in which I lay, was at Canari. It appeared a little odd at first. But I soon learnt to repair to my dormitory as naturally as if I had been a friar for seven years. The convents were small decent buildings, suited to the sober ideas of their pious inhabitants. The religious who devoutly endeavour to "walk with GOD," are often treated with raillery by those whom pleasure or business prevents from thinking of future and more exalted objects. A little experience of the serenity and peace of mind to be found in convents, would be of use to temper the fire of men of the world. At Patrimonio I found the seat of a provincial magistracy. The chief judge was there, and entertained me very well. Upon my arrival, the captain of the guard came out, and demanded who I was? I replied "Inglese English." He looked at me seriously, and then said in a tone between regret and upbraiding, "Inglese, c'erano i nostri amici; ma non le sono più. The English. They were once our friends; but they are so no more." I felt for my country, and was abashed before this honest soldier. At Oletta I visited Count Nicholas Rivarola, brother to my friend at Leghorn. He received me with great kindness, and did every thing in his power to make me easy. I found here a Corsican who thought better of the British than the captain of the guard at Patrimonio. He talked of our bombarding San Fiorenzo,[90] in favour of the patriots, and willingly gave me his horse for the afternoon, which he said he would not have done to a man of any other nation. [Footnote 90: In 1745. See Introduction. Page 110.--ED.] When I came to Morato, I had the pleasure of being made acquainted with Signor Barbaggi, who is married to the niece of Paoli. I found him to be a sensible, intelligent, well-bred man. The mint of Corsica was in his house. I got specimens of their different kinds of money in silver and copper, and was told that they hoped in a year or two, to strike some gold coins. Signor Barbaggi's house was repairing, so I was lodged in the convent. But in the morning returned to breakfast, and had chocolate; and at dinner we had no less than twelve well-drest dishes, served on Dresden china, with a desert, different sorts of wine and a liqueur, all the produce of Corsica. Signor Barbaggi was frequently repeating to me, that the Corsicans inhabited a rude uncultivated country, and that they lived like Spartans. I begged leave to ask him in what country he could show me greater luxury than I had seen in his house; and I said I should certainly tell wherever I went, what tables the Corsicans kept, notwithstanding their pretensions to poverty and temperance. A good deal of pleasantry passed upon this. His lady was a genteel woman, and appeared to be agreeable, though very reserved. From Morato to Corte, I travelled through a wild mountainous rocky country, diversified with some large valleys. I got little beasts for me and my servant, sometimes horses, but oftener mules or asses. We had no bridles, but cords fixed round their necks, with which we managed them as well as we could. At Corte I waited upon the supreme council, to one of whom, Signor Boccociampe, I had a letter from Signor Barbaggi. I was very politely received, and was conducted to the Franciscan convent, where I got the apartment of Paoli, who was then some days' journey beyond the mountains, holding a court of syndicato[91] at a village called Sollacarò. [Footnote 91: "The Syndicatori make a tour through the different provinces, as our judges in Britain go the circuits. They hear complaints against the different magistrates."--Boswell's "Account of Corsica," p. 153.--ED.] As the General resided for some time in this convent, the fathers made a better appearance than any I saw in the island. I was principally attended by the Priour, a resolute divine, who had formerly been in the army, and by Padre Giulio, a man of much address, who still favours me with his correspondence. These fathers have a good vineyard and an excellent garden. They have between 30 and 40 bee-hives in long wooden cases or trunks of trees, with a covering of the bark of the cork tree. When they want honey, they burn a little juniper wood, the smoak of which makes the bees retire. They then take an iron instrument with a sharp-edged crook at one end of it, and bring out the greatest part of the honey-comb, leaving only a little for the bees, who work the case full again. By taking the honey in this way, they never kill a bee. They seemed much at their ease, living in peace and plenty. I often joked them with the text which is applied to their order, "Nihil habentes et omnia possidentes. Having nothing, and yet possessing all things." I went to the choir with them. The service was conducted with propriety, and Padre Giulio played on the organ. On the great altar of their church is a tabernacle carved in wood by a Religious. It is a piece of exquisite workmanship. A Genoese gentleman offered to give them one in silver for it; but they would not make the exchange. These fathers have no library worth mentioning; but their convent is large and well built. I looked about with great attention, to see if I could find any inscriptions; but the only one I found was upon a certain useful edifice. "Sine necessitate huc non intrate, Quia necessaria sumus." A studied, rhiming, Latin conceit marked upon such a place was truly ludicrous. I chose to stop a while at Corte, to repose myself after my fatigues, and to see every thing about the capital of Corsica. The morning after my arrival here, three French deserters desired to speak with me. The foolish fellows had taken it into their heads, that I was come to raise recruits for Scotland, and so they begged to have the honour of going along with me; I suppose with intention to have the honour of running off from me, as they had done from their own regiments. I received many civilities at Corte from Signor Boccociampe, and from Signor Massesi the Great Chancellor, whose son Signor Luigi a young gentleman of much vivacity, and natural politeness, was so good as to attend me constantly as my conductour. I used to call him my governour. I liked him much, for as he had never been out of the island, his ideas were entirely Corsican. Such of the members of the supreme council as were in residence during my stay at Corte, I found to be solid and sagacious, men of penetration and ability, well calculated to assist the General in forming his political plans, and in turning to the best advantage, the violence and enterprise of the people. The university was not then sitting, so I could only see the rooms, which were shewn me by the Abbé Valentini, procuratour of the university. The professours were all absent except one Capuchin father whom I visited at his convent. It is a tolerable building, with a pretty large collection of books. There is in the church here a tabernacle carved in wood, in the manner of that at the Franciscans', but much inferiour to it. I went up to the castle of Corte. The commandant very civilly shewed me every part of it. As I wished to see all things in Corsica, I desired to see even the unhappy criminals.[92] There were then three in the castle, a man for the murder of his wife, a married lady who had hired one of her servants to strangle a woman of whom she was jealous, and the servant who had actually perpetrated this barbarous action. They were brought out from their cells, that I might talk with them. The murderer of his wife had a stupid hardened appearance, and told me he did it at the instigation of the devil. The servant was a poor despicable wretch. He had at first accused his mistress, but was afterwards prevailed with to deny his accusation, upon which he was put to the torture,[93] by having lighted matches held between his fingers. This made him return to what he had formerly said, so as to be a strong evidence against his mistress. His hands were so miserably scorched, that he was a piteous object. I asked him why he had committed such a crime, he said, "Perche era senza spirito. Because I was without understanding." The lady seemed of a bold and resolute spirit. She spoke to me with great firmness, and denied her guilt, saying with a contemptuous smile, as she pointed to her servant, "They can force that creature to say what they please." [Footnote 92: Boswell was too fond of seeing criminals and hangmen. He was frequently present at executions. In his "Life of Johnson" he records, under date of June 23rd, 1784, "I visited Johnson in the morning, after having been present at the shocking sight of fifteen men executed before Newgate." He once persuaded Sir Joshua Reynolds to accompany him, and they recognised among the sufferers a former servant of Mrs. Thrale's. He describes Mr. Akerman, the Keeper of Newgate, as his esteemed friend. According to Mr. Croker, he defended his taste in a paper he wrote for the "London Magazine," "as a natural and irresistible impulse."--ED.] [Footnote 93: So far as I have been able to ascertain, this passage, this great blot on Paoli and the Corsican patriots, excited no attention in England. But the Inquisition was still at its hateful work in many countries, and men's minds were used to cruelties. Torture was still employed in capital cases to force confession even in Holland and France.--ED.] The hangman of Corsica was a great curiosity. Being held in the utmost detestation, he durst not live like another inhabitant of the island. He was obliged to take refuge in the castle, and there he was kept in a little corner turret, where he had just room for a miserable bed, and a little bit of fire to dress such victuals for himself as were sufficient to keep him alive, for nobody would have any intercourse with him, but all turned their backs upon him. I went up and looked at him. And a more dirty rueful spectacle I never beheld. He seemed sensible of his situation, and held down his head like an abhorred outcast. It was a long time before they could get a hangman in Corsica, so that the punishment of the gallows was hardly known, all their criminals being shot.[94] At last this creature whom I saw, who is a Sicilian, came with a message to Paoli. The General who has a wonderful talent for physiognomy, on seeing the man, said immediately to some of the people about him, "Ecco il boia. Behold our hangman." He gave orders to ask the man if he would accept of the office, and his answer was, "My grandfather was a hangman, my father was a hangman. I have been a hangman myself, and am willing to continue so." He was therefore immediately put into office, and the ignominious death dispensed by his hands, had more effect than twenty executions by fire arms. [Footnote 94: "Their dignities, and a' that," are, it seems, to be found even among executioners. The man who shoots scorns the man who hangs. It would be an interesting inquiry how the headsman ranks.--ED.] It is remarkable that no Corsican would upon any account consent to be hangman. Not the greatest criminals, who might have had their lives upon that condition. Even the wretch, who for a paultry hire, had strangled a woman, would rather submit to death, than do the same action, as the executioner of the law.[95] [Footnote 95: See, however, page 201.--ED.] When I had seen every thing about Corte, I prepared for my journey over the mountains, that I might be with Paoli. The night before I set out, I recollected that I had forgotten to get a passport, which, in the present situation of Corsica, is still a necessary precaution. After supper therefore the Priour walked with me to Corte, to the house of the Great Chancellor, who ordered the passport to be made out immediately, and while his secretary was writing it, entertained me by reading to me some of the minutes of the general consulta. When the passport was finished, and ready to have the seal put to it, I was much pleased with a beautiful, simple incident. The Chancellor desired a little boy who was playing in the room by us, to run to his mother, and bring the great seal of the kingdom. I thought myself sitting in the house of a Cincinnatus. Next morning I set out in very good order, having excellent mules, and active clever Corsican guides. The worthy fathers of the convent who treated me in the kindest manner while I was their guest, would also give me some provisions for my journey; so they put up a gourd of their best wine, and some delicious pomegranates. My Corsican guides appeared so hearty, that I often got down and walked along with them, doing just what I saw them do. When we grew hungry, we threw stones among the thick branches of the chestnut trees which over-shadowed us, and in that manner we brought down a shower of chestnuts with which we filled our pockets, and went on eating them with great relish; and when this made us thirsty, we lay down by the side of the first brook, put our mouths to the stream, and drank sufficiently. It was just being for a little while, one of the "prisca gens mortalium, the primitive race of men," who ran about in the woods eating acorns and drinking water. While I stopped to refresh my mules at a little village, the inhabitants came crouding about me as an ambassadour going to their General. When they were informed of my country, a strong black fellow among them said, "Inglese! sono barbari; non credono in Dio grande. English! they are barbarians; they don't believe in the great GOD." I told him, "Excuse me Sir. We do believe in GOD, and in Jesus Christ too." "Um," said he, "e nel Papa? and in the Pope?" "No." "E perche? And why?" This was a puzzling question in these circumstances; for there was a great audience to the controversy. I thought I would try a method of my own, and very gravely replied, "Perche siamo troppo lontani. Because we are too far off."[96] A very new argument against the universal infallibility of the Pope. It took however; for my opponent mused a while, and then said, "Troppo lontano! La Sicilia è tanto lontana che l'Inghilterra; e in Sicilia si credono nel Papa. Too far off! Why Sicily is as far off as England. Yet in Sicily they believe in the Pope." "O," said I "noi siamo dieci volte più lontani che la Sicilia! We are ten times farther off than Sicily." "Aha!" said he; and seemed quite satisfied. In this manner I got off very well. I question much whether any of the learned reasonings of our protestant divines would have had so good an effect. [Footnote 96: According to Macaulay ("Essays," vol. i., p. 378), "wit was utterly wanting to Boswell."--ED.] My journey over the mountains was very entertaining. I past some immense ridges and vast woods. I was in great health and spirits, and fully able to enter into the ideas of the brave rude men whom I found in all quarters. At Bastelica where there is a stately spirited race of people, I had a large company to attend me in the convent. I liked to see their natural frankness and ease;[97] for why should men be afraid of their own species? They just came in making an easy bow, placed themselves round the room where I was sitting, rested themselves on their muskets, and immediately entered into conversation with me. They talked very feelingly of the miseries that their country had endured, and complained that they were still but in a state of poverty. I happened at that time to have an unusual flow of spirits; and as one who finds himself amongst utter strangers in a distant country has no timidity, I harangued the men of Bastelica with great fluency. I expatiated on the bravery of the Corsicans, by which they had purchased liberty, the most valuable of all possessions, and rendered themselves glorious over all Europe. Their poverty, I told them, might be remedied by a proper cultivation of their island, and by engaging a little in commerce. But I bid them remember, that they were much happier in their present state than in a state of refinement and vice, and that therefore they should beware of luxury.[98] [Footnote 97: "For my part I like very well to hear honest Goldsmith talk away carelessly." Boswell, as reported by himself. "Life of Johnson." Date of April 11, 1772.--ED.] [Footnote 98: "I give admirable dinners, and good claret; and the moment I go abroad again, I set up my chariot."--Boswell, in a letter to Temple, May 14, 1768.--ED.] What I said had the good fortune to touch them, and several of them repeated the same sentiments much better than I could do. They all expressed their strong attachment to Paoli, and called out in one voice that they were all at his command. I could with pleasure have passed a long time here. At Ornano I saw the ruins of the seat where the great Sampiero[99] had his residence. They were a droll enough society of monks in the convent at Ornano. When I told them that I was an Englishman, "Aye, aye," said one of them, "as was well observed by a reverend bishop, when talking of your pretended reformation, 'Angli olim angeli nunc diaboli. The English, formerly angels now devils.'" I looked upon this as an honest effusion of spiritual zeal. The Fathers took good care of me in temporals. [Footnote 99: Sampiero had been the leader of a revolt which broke out in 1564. He was assassinated three years later.--ED.] When I at last came within sight of Sollacarò, where Paoli was, I could not help being under considerable anxiety. My ideas of him had been greatly heightened by the conversations I had held with all sorts of people in the island, they having represented him to me as something above humanity. I had the strongest desire to see so exalted a character; but I feared that I should be unable to give a proper account why I had presumed to trouble him with a visit, and that I should sink to nothing before him. I almost wished yet to go back without seeing him.[100] These workings of sensibility employed my mind till I rode through the village and came up to the house where he was lodged. [Footnote 100: Compare Boswell's introduction to Johnson.--ED.] Leaving my servant with my guides, I past through the guards, and was met by some of the General's people, who conducted me into an antichamber, where were several gentlemen in waiting. Signor Boccociampe had notified my arrival, and I was shewn into Paoli's room. I found him alone, and was struck with his appearance. He is tall, strong, and well made; of a fair complexion, a sensible, free, and open countenance, and a manly and noble carriage. He was then in his fortieth year. He was drest in green and gold. He used to wear the common Corsican habit, but on the arrival of the French he thought a little external elegance might be of use to make the government appear in a more respectable light. He asked me what were my commands for him. I presented him a letter from Count Rivarola, and when he had read it, I shewed him my letter from Rousseau. He was polite, but very reserved. I had stood in the presence of many a prince, but I never had such a trial as in the presence of Paoli. I have already said that he is a great physiognomist. In consequence of his being in continual danger from treachery and assassination, he has formed a habit of studiously observing every new face. For ten minutes we walked backwards and forwards through the room, hardly saying a word, while he looked at me, with a steadfast, keen and penetrating eye, as if he searched my very soul. This interview was for a while very severe upon me. I was much relieved when his reserve wore off, and he began to speak more. I then ventured to address him with this compliment to the Corsicans. "Sir, I am upon my travels, and have lately visited Rome. I am come from seeing the ruins of one brave and free people; I now see the rise of another." He received my compliment very graciously; but observed that the Corsicans had no chance of being like the Romans, a great conquering nation, who should extend its empire over half the globe. Their situation, and the modern political systems, rendered this impossible. "But," said he, "Corsica may be a very happy country." He expressed a high admiration of M. Rousseau, whom Signor Buttafoco had invited to Corsica, to aid the nation in forming its laws. It seems M. de Voltaire had reported, in his rallying manner, that the invitation was merely a trick which he had put upon Rousseau. Paoli told me that when he understood this, he himself wrote to Rousseau, enforcing the invitation. Of this affair I shall give a full account in an after part of my Journal.[101] [Footnote 101: See page 222.--ED.] Some of the nobles who attended him came into the room, and in a little we were told that dinner was served up. The General did me the honour to place me next him. He had a table of fifteen or sixteen covers, having always a good many of the principal men of the island with him. He had an Italian cook who had been long in France; but he chose to have a few plain substantial dishes, avoiding every kind of luxury, and drinking no foreign wine. I felt myself under some constraint in such a circle of heroes. The General talked a great deal on history and on literature. I soon perceived that he was a fine classical scholar, that his mind was enriched with a variety of knowledge, and that his conversation at meals was instructive and entertaining. Before dinner he had spoken French. He now spoke Italian, in which he is very eloquent. We retired to another room to drink coffee. My timidity wore off. I no longer anxiously thought of myself; my whole attention was employed in listening to the illustrious commander of a nation. He recommended me to the care of the Abbé Rostini, who had lived many years in France. Signor Colonna, the lord of the manor here being from home, his house was assigned for me to live in. I was left by myself till near supper time, when I returned to the General, whose conversation improved upon me, as did the society of those about him, with whom I gradually formed an acquaintance. Every day I felt myself happier. Particular marks of attention were shewn me as a subject of Great Britain, the report of which went over to Italy, and confirmed the conjectures that I was really an envoy. In the morning I had my chocolate served up upon a silver salver adorned with the arms of Corsica. I dined and supped constantly with the General. I was visited by all the nobility, and whenever I chose to make a little tour, I was attended by a party of guards. I begged of the General not to treat me with so much ceremony; but he insisted upon it. One day when I rode out I was mounted on Paoli's own horse, with rich furniture of crimson velvet, with broad gold lace, and had my guards marching along with me.[102] I allowed myself to indulge a momentary pride in this parade, as I was curious to experience what could really be the pleasure of state and distinction with which mankind are so strangely intoxicated. [Footnote 102: "Then took Haman the apparel and the horse, and arrayed Mordecai, and brought him on horseback through the street of the city, and proclaimed before him, 'Thus shall it be done unto the man whom the king delighteth to honour.'"--Book of Esther, c. vi., v. 11.--ED.] When I returned to the continent after all this greatness, I used to joke with my acquaintance, and tell them that I could not bear to live with them, for they did not treat me with a proper respect. My time passed here in the most agreeable manner. I enjoyed a sort of luxury of noble sentiment. Paoli became more affable with me. I made myself known to him.[103] I forgot the great distance between us, and had every day some hours of private conversation with him. [Footnote 103: "Finding him (Johnson) in a placid humour, and wishing to avail myself of the opportunity which I fortunately had of consulting a sage, to hear whose wisdom, I conceived, in the ardour of youthful imagination, that men filled with a noble enthusiasm for intellectual improvement would gladly have resorted from distant lands, I opened my mind to him ingenuously, and gave him a little sketch of my life, to which he was pleased to listen with great attention."--Boswell's "Johnson." Date of June 13, 1763.--ED.] From my first setting out on this tour, I wrote down every night what I had observed during the day, throwing together a great deal, that I might afterwards make a selection at leisure. Of these particulars, the most valuable to my readers, as well as to myself, must surely be the memoirs and remarkable sayings of Paoli, which I am proud to record. Talking of the Corsican war, "Sir," said he, "if the event prove happy, we shall be called great defenders of liberty. If the event shall prove unhappy, we shall be called unfortunate rebels." The French objected to him that the Corsican nation had no regular troops. "We would not have them," said Paoli. "We should then have the bravery of this and the other regiment. At present every single man is as a regiment himself. Should the Corsicans be formed into regular troops, we should lose that personal bravery which has produced such actions among us, as in another country would have rendered famous even a Marischal."[104] [Footnote 104: See page 140.--ED.] I asked him how he could possibly have a soul so superiour to interest. "It is not superiour," said he; "my interest is to gain a name. I know well that he who does good to his country will gain that: and I expect it. Yet could I render this people happy, I would be content to be forgotten. I have an unspeakable pride. 'Una superbia indicibile.' The approbation of my own heart is enough." He said he would have great pleasure in seeing the world, and enjoying the society of the learned, and the accomplished in every country. I asked him how with these dispositions he could bear to be confined to an island yet in a rude uncivilised state; and instead of participating Attick evenings, "noctes coenaeque Deûm," be in a continual course of care and of danger. He replied in one line of Virgil, "Vincet amor patriae laudumque immensa cupido." This uttered with the fine open Italian pronunciation, and the graceful dignity of his manner, was very noble. I wished to have a statue of him taken at that moment. I asked him if he understood English. He immediately began and spoke it, which he did tolerably well. When at Naples he had known several Irish gentlemen who were officers in that service. Having a great facility in acquiring languages, he learnt English from them. But as he had been now ten years without ever speaking it, he spoke very slow. One could see that he was possessed of the words, but for want of what I may call mechanical practice, he had a difficulty in expressing himself. I was diverted with his English library. It consisted of-- Some broken volumes of the "Spectatour" and "Tatler." Pope's "Essay on Man." "Gulliver's Travels." A "History of France," in old English. And "Barclay's Apology for the Quakers." I promised to send him some English books.[105] [Footnote 105: I have sent him the works of Harrington, of Sidney, of Addison, of Trenchard, of Gordon, and of other writers in favour of liberty. I have also sent him some of our best books of morality and entertainment, in particular the works of Mr. Samuel Johnson, with a compleat set of the "Spectatour," "Tatler," and "Guardian;" and to the University of Corte, I have sent a few of the Greek and Roman Classicks, of the beautiful editions of the Messieurs Foulis at Glasgow.[A]] [Footnote A: The fate of one of these books was curious. Dr. Moore (the author of "Edward," and the father of Sir John Moore) visited Berne somewhere about the year 1772 (he gives no dates). He went to examine the public library of that town. "I happened," he says, "to open the Glasgow edition of Homer, which I saw here; on a blank page of which was an address in Latin to the Corsican General, Paoli, signed James Boswell. This very elegant book had been sent, I suppose, as a present from Mr. Boswell to his friend, the General; and, when that unfortunate chief was obliged to abandon his country, fell, with other of his effects, into the hands of the Swiss officer in the French service, who made a present of the Homer to this library."--"A View of Society and Manners in France," &c., by John Moore, M.D., vol. i., p. 307.--ED.] He convinced me how well he understood our language; for I took the liberty to shew him a Memorial which I had drawn up on the advantages to Great Britain from an alliance with Corsica, and he translated this memorial into Italian with the greatest facility. He has since given me more proofs of his knowledge of our tongue by his answers to the letters which I have had the honour to write to him in English, and in particular by a very judicious and ingenious criticism on some of Swift's works. He was well acquainted with the history of Britain. He had read many of the parliamentary debates, and had even seen a number of the "North Briton."[106] He shewed a considerable knowledge of this country, and often introduced anecdotes and drew comparisons and allusions from Britain. [Footnote 106: John Wilkes began the publication of the "North Briton" in June, 1762.--ED.] He said his great object was to form the Corsicans in such a manner that they might have a firm constitution, and might be able to subsist without him. "Our state," said he, "is young, and still requires the leading strings. I am desirous that the Corsicans should be taught to walk of themselves. Therefore when they come to me to ask whom they should chuse for their Padre del Commune, or other Magistrate, I tell them, 'You know better than I do the able and honest men among your neighbours. Consider the consequence of your choice, not only to yourselves in particular, but to the island in general.' In this manner I accustom them to feel their own importance as members of the state." After representing the severe and melancholy state of oppression under which Corsica had so long groaned, he said, "We are now to our country like the prophet Elishah stretched over the dead child of the Shunamite, eye to eye, nose to nose, mouth to mouth. It begins to recover warmth, and to revive. I hope it shall yet regain full health and vigour." I said that things would make a rapid progress, and that we should soon see all the arts and sciences flourish in Corsica. "Patience, Sir," said he. "If you saw a man who had fought a hard battle, who was much wounded, who was beaten to the ground, and who with difficulty could lift himself up, it would not be reasonable to ask him to get his hair well drest, and to put on embroidered clothes. Corsica has fought a hard battle, has been much wounded, has been beaten to the ground, and with difficulty can lift herself up. The arts and sciences are like dress and ornament. You cannot expect them from us for some time. But come back twenty or thirty years hence, and we'll shew you arts and sciences, and concerts and assemblies, and fine ladies, and we'll make you fall in love among us, Sir." He smiled a good deal, when I told him that I was much surprised to find him so amiable, accomplished, and polite; for although I knew I was to see a great man, I expected to find a rude character, an Attila king of the Goths, or a Luitprand[107], king of the Lombards. [Footnote 107: Liutprand. See Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," chap. xlix.--ED.] I observed that although he had often a placid smile upon his countenance, he hardly ever laughed. Whether loud laughter in general society be a sign of weakness or rusticity, I cannot say; but I have remarked that real great men, and men of finished behaviour, seldom fall into it. The variety, and I may say versatility, of the mind of this great man is amazing. One day when I came in to pay my respects to him before dinner, I found him in much agitation, with a circle of his nobles around him, and a Corsican standing before him like a criminal before his judge. Paoli immediately turned to me, "I am glad you are come, Sir. You protestants talk much against our doctrine of transubstantiation. Behold here the miracle of transubstantiation, a Corsican transubstantiated into a Genoese. That unworthy man who now stands before me is a Corsican, who has been long a lieutenant under the Genoese, in Capo Corso. Andrew Doria and all their greatest heroes could not be more violent for the republick than he has been, and all against his country." Then turning to the man, "Sir," said he, "Corsica makes it a rule to pardon the most unworthy of her children, when they surrender themselves, even when they are forced to do so, as is your case. You have now escaped. But take care. I shall have a strict eye upon you; and if ever you make the least attempt to return to your traiterous practices, you know I can be avenged of you." He spoke this with the fierceness of a lion, and from the awful darkness of his brow, one could see that his thoughts of vengeance were terrible. Yet when it was over, he all at once resumed his usual appearance, called out "andiamo, come along;" went to dinner, and was as chearful and gay as if nothing had happened. His notions of morality are high and refined, such as become the Father of a nation. Were he a libertine, his influence would soon vanish; for men will never trust the important concerns of society to one they know will do what is hurtful to society for his own pleasures. He told me that his father had brought him up with great strictness, and that he had very seldom deviated from the paths of virtue. That this was not from a defect of feeling and passion, but that his mind being filled with important objects, his passions were employed in more noble pursuits than those of licentious pleasure. I saw from Paoli's example the great art of preserving young men of spirit from the contagion of vice, in which there is often a species of sentiment, ingenuity and enterprise nearly allied to virtuous qualities. Shew a young man that there is more real spirit in virtue than in vice, and you have a surer hold of him, during his years of impetuosity and passion, than by convincing his judgement of all the rectitude of ethicks. One day at dinner, he gave us the principal arguments for the being and attributes of GOD. To hear these arguments repeated with graceful energy by the illustrious Paoli in the midst of his heroick nobles, was admirable. I never felt my mind more elevated. I took occasion to mention the king of Prussia's infidel writings, and in particular his epistle to Marischal Keith.[108] Paoli, who often talks with admiration of the greatness of that monarch, instead of uttering any direct censure of what he saw to be wrong in so distinguished a hero, paused a little, and then said with a grave and most expressive look, "C'est une belle consolation pour un vieux general mourant, 'En peu de tems vous ne serez plus.' It is fine consolation for an old general when dying, 'In a little while you shall be no more.'" [Footnote 108: The younger brother of the Earl Marischal (see p. 140). He took part in the rebellion of 1715, although he was but seventeen years old. He next served for ten years in the Irish Brigade in the Spanish army. He then entered the Russian service, and fought against the Turks. He was sent to England as Russian ambassador. When he came to Court he was required to speak by an interpreter when he had an audience of the king, and to appear in Russian dress. He next entered the Prussian service as Field-Marshal. He was killed in the battle of Hochkirchen, in 1758.--ED.] He observed that the Epicurean philosophy had produced but one exalted character, whereas Stoicism had been the seminary of great men. What he now said put me in mind of these noble lines of Lucan. Hi mores, haec duri immota Catonis Secta fuit, servare modum finemque tenere, Naturamque sequi, patriaeque impendere vitam, Nec sibi sed toti genitum se credere mundo. LUCAN. Pharsal. lib. ii. l. 380. These were the stricter manners of the man, And this the stubborn course in which they ran; The golden mean unchanging to pursue, Constant to keep the purpos'd end in view; Religiously to follow nature's laws, And die with pleasure in his country's cause. To think he was not for himself design'd, But born to be of use to all mankind. --ROWE. When he was asked if he would quit the island of which he had undertaken the protection, supposing a foreign power should create him a Marischal, and make him governour of a province; he replied, "I hope they will believe I am more honest, or more ambitious; for," said he, "to accept of the highest offices under a foreign power would be to serve." "To have been a colonel, a general or a marischal," said he, "would have been sufficient for my table, for my taste in dress, for the beauty whom my rank would have entitled me to attend. But it would not have been sufficient for this spirit, for this imagination." Putting his hand upon his bosom. He reasoned one day in the midst of his nobles whether the commander of a nation should be married or not. "If he is married," said he, "there is a risk that he may be distracted by private affairs, and swayed too much by a concern for his family. If he is unmarried, there is a risk that not having the tender attachments of a wife and children, he may sacrifice all to his own ambition." When I said he ought to marry and have a son to succeed him, "Sir," said he, "what security can I have that my son will think and act as I do? What sort of a son had Cicero, and what had Marcus Aurelius?" He said to me one day when we were alone, "I never will marry. I have not the conjugal virtues. Nothing would tempt me to marry, but a woman who should bring me an immense dowry, with which I might assist my country." But he spoke much in praise of marriage, as an institution which the experience of ages had found to be the best calculated for the happiness of individuals, and for the good of society. Had he been a private gentleman, he probably would have married, and I am sure would have made as good a husband and father as he does a supreme magistrate and a general. But his arduous and critical situation would not allow him to enjoy domestick felicity. He is wedded to his country, and the Corsicans are his children. He often talked to me of marriage, told me licentious pleasures were delusive and transient, that I should never be truly happy till I was married, and that he hoped to have a letter from me soon after my return home, acquainting him that I had followed his advice, and was convinced from experience that he was in the right. With such an engaging condescension did this great man behave to me. If I could but paint his manner, all my readers would be charmed with him. He has a mind fitted for philosophical speculations as well as for affairs of state. One evening at supper, he entertained us for some time with some curious reveries and conjectures as to the nature of the intelligence of beasts, with regard to which, he observed human knowledge was as yet very imperfect. He in particular seemed fond of inquiring into the language of the brute creation. He observed that beasts fully communicate their ideas to each other, and that some of them, such as dogs, can form several articulate sounds. In different ages there have been people who pretended to understand the language of birds and beasts. Perhaps, said Paoli, in a thousand years we may know this as well as we know things which appeared much more difficult to be known. I have often since this conversation indulged myself in such reveries. If it were not liable to ridicule, I would say that an acquaintance with the language of beasts would be a most agreeable acquisition to man, as it would enlarge the circle of his social intercourse. On my return to Britain I was disappointed to find nothing upon this subject in Doctour Gregory's[109] Comparative View of the State and Faculties of Man with those of the Animal World, which was then just published. My disappointment however was in a good measure made up by a picture of society, drawn by that ingenious and worthy authour, which may be well applied to the Corsicans. "There is a certain period in the progress of society in which mankind appear to the greatest advantage. In this period, they have the bodily powers, and all the animal functions remaining in full vigour. They are bold, active, steady, ardent in the love of liberty and their native country. Their manners are simple, their social affections warm, and though they are greatly influenced by the ties of blood, yet they are generous and hospitable to strangers. Religion is universally regarded among them, though disguised by a variety of superstitions."[110] [Footnote 109: John Gregory, M.D., born 1724, Professor of the Practice of Physic in Edinburgh. "It is stated that no less than sixteen members of this family have held British Professorships, chiefly in the Scotch Universities."--Chalmers' "Biog. Dict.," p. 289.--ED.] [Footnote 110: Preface to "Comparative View," p. 8.] Paoli was very desirous that I should study the character of the Corsicans. "Go among them," said he, "the more you talk with them, you will do me the greater pleasure. Forget the meanness of their apparel. Hear their sentiments. You will find honour, and sense, and abilities among these poor men." His heart grew big when he spoke of his countrymen. His own great qualities appeared to unusual advantage, while he described the virtues of those for whose happiness his whole life was employed. "If," said he, "I should lead into the field an army of Corsicans against an army double their number, let me speak a few words to the Corsicans, to remind them of the honour of their country and of their brave forefathers, I do not say that they would conquer, but I am sure that not a man of them would give way. The Corsicans," said he, "have a steady resolution that would amaze you. I wish you could see one of them die. It is a proverb among the Genoese, 'I Corsi meritano la furca e la sanno soffrire. The Corsicans deserve the gallows, and they fear not to meet it.' There is a real compliment to us in this saying." He told me, that in Corsica, "criminals are put to death four and twenty hours after sentence is pronounced against them. This," said he, "may not be over catholick, but it is humane." He went on, and gave me several instances of the Corsican spirit. "A sergeant," said he, "who fell in one of our desperate actions, when just a dying, wrote to me thus. 'I salute you. Take care of my aged father. In two hours I shall be with the rest who have bravely died for their country.'" A Corsican gentleman who had been taken prisoner by the Genoese, was thrown into a dark dungeon, where he was chained to the ground. While he was in this dismal situation, the Genoese sent a message to him, that if he would accept of a commission in their service, he might have it. "No," said he. "Were I to accept of your offer, it would be with a determined purpose to take the first opportunity of returning to the service of my country. But I will not accept of it. For I would not have my countrymen even suspect that I could be one moment unfaithful." And he remained in his dungeon. Paoli went on: "I defy Rome, Sparta or Thebes to shew me thirty years of such patriotism as Corsica can boast. Though the affection between relations is exceedingly strong in the Corsicans, they will give up their nearest relations for the good of their country, and sacrifice such as have deserted to the Genoese." He gave me a noble instance of a Corsican's feeling and greatness of mind. "A criminal," said he, "was condemned to die. His nephew came to me with a lady of distinction, that she might solicit his pardon. The nephew's anxiety made him think that the lady did not speak with sufficient force and earnestness. He therefore advanced, and addressed himself to me, 'Sir, is it proper for me to speak?' as if he felt that it was unlawful to make such an application. I bid him go on. 'Sir,' said he, with the deepest concern, 'may I beg the life of my uncle? If it is granted, his relations will make a gift to the state of a thousand zechins. We will furnish fifty soldiers in pay during the siege of Furiani. We will agree that my uncle shall be banished, and will engage that he shall never return to the island.' I knew the nephew to be a man of worth, and I answered him: 'You are acquainted with the circumstances of this case. Such is my confidence in you, that if you will say that giving your uncle a pardon would be just, useful or honourable for Corsica, I promise you it shall be granted.' He turned about, burst into tears, and left me, saying, 'Non vorrei vendere l'onore della patria per mille zechini. I would not have the honour of our country sold for a thousand zechins.' And his uncle suffered." Although the General was one of the constituent members of the court of syndicato,[111] he seldom took his chair. He remained in his own apartment; and if any of those whose suits were determined by the syndicato were not pleased with the sentence, they had an audience of Paoli, who never failed to convince them that justice had been done them. This appeared to me a necessary indulgence in the infancy of government. The Corsicans having been so long in a state of anarchy, could not all at once submit their minds to the regular authority of justice. They would submit implicitly to Paoli, because they love and venerate him. But such a submission is in reality being governed by their passions. They submit to one for whom they have a personal regard. They cannot be said to be perfectly civilized till they submit to the determinations of their magistrates as officers of the state, entrusted with the administration of justice. By convincing them that the magistrates judge with abilities and uprightness, Paoli accustoms the Corsicans to have that salutary confidence in their rulers, which is necessary for securing respect and stability to the government. [Footnote 111: See page 154.--ED.] After having said much in praise of the Corsicans, "Come," said he, "you shall have a proof of what I tell you. There is a crowd in the next room, waiting for admittance to me. I will call in the first I see, and you shall hear him." He who chanced to present himself, was a venerable old man. The General shook him by the hand, and bid him good day, with an easy kindness that gave the aged peasant full encouragement to talk to his Excellency with freedom. Paoli bid him not mind me, but say on. The old man then told him that there had been an unlucky tumult in the village where he lived, and that two of his sons were killed. That looking upon this as a heavy misfortune, but without malice on the part of those who deprived him of his sons, he was willing to have allowed it to pass without enquiry. But his wife anxious for revenge, had made an application to have them apprehended and punished. That he gave his Excellency this trouble to intreat that the greatest care might be taken, lest in the heat of enmity among his neighbours, any body should be punished as guilty of the blood of his sons, who was really innocent of it. There was something so generous in this sentiment, while at the same time the old man seemed full of grief for the loss of his children, that it touched my heart in the most sensible manner. Paoli looked at me with complacency and a kind of amiable triumph on the behaviour of the old man, who had a flow of words and a vivacity of gesture which fully justified what Petrus Cyrnaeus[112] hath said of the Corsican eloquence; "Diceres omnes esse bonos causidicos. You would say they are all good pleaders." [Footnote 112: See Preface, page viii.--ED.] I found Paoli had reason to wish that I should talk much with his countrymen, as it gave me a higher opinion both of him and of them. Thuanus[113] has justly said, "Sunt mobilia Corsorum ingenia. The dispositions of the Corsicans are changeable." Yet after ten years, their attachment to Paoli is as strong as at the first. Nay, they have an enthusiastick admiration of him. "Questo grand' uomo mandato per Dio a liberare la patria. This great man whom God hath sent to free our country," was the manner in which they expressed themselves to me concerning him. [Footnote 113: Jacques-Auguste de Thou (or, as he called himself in Latin, Jacobus Augustus Thuanus), born in Paris 1553. Author of "Historia sui Temporis," in 138 books.--ED.] Those who attended on Paoli were all men of sense and abilities in their different departments. Some of them had been in foreign service. One of them, Signor Suzzoni, had been long in Germany. He spoke German to me, and recalled to my mind, the happy days which I have past among that plain, honest, brave people, who of all nations in the world, receive strangers with the greatest cordiality.[114] Signor Gian Quilico Casa Bianca, of the most ancient Corsican nobility, was much my friend. He instructed me fully with regard to the Corsican government. He had even the patience to sit by me while I wrote down an account of it, which from conversations with Paoli, I afterwards enlarged and improved. I received many civilities from the Abbé Rostini, a man of literature, and distinguished no less for the excellency of his heart. His saying of Paoli deserves to be remembered. "Nous ne craignons pas que notre General nous trompe ni qu'il se laisse tromper. We are not afraid that our General will deceive us, nor that he will let himself be deceived." [Footnote 114: They must have wonderfully improved since the days of Erasmus. "Advenientem nemo salutat, ne videantur ambire hospitem.... Ubi diu inclamaveris, tandem aliquis per fenestellam æstuarii (nam in his degunt fere usque ad solstitium æstivum) profert caput, non aliter quam e testa prospicit testudo. Is rogandus est an liceat illic diversari. Si non renuit, intelligis dari locum," &c.--"Erasmi Colloquia. Diversoria."--ED.] I also received civilities from Father Guelfucci of the order of Servites,[115] a man whose talents and virtues, united with a singular decency and sweetness of manners, have raised him to the honourable station of secretary to the General. Indeed all the gentlemen here behaved to me in the most obliging manner. We walked, rode, and went a-shooting together. [Footnote 115: Servites, or Servants of the Blessed Virgin, a religious order, first instituted in Tuscany in 1233.--ED.] The peasants and soldiers were all frank, open, lively and bold, with a certain roughness of manner which agrees well with their character, and is far from being displeasing. The General gave me an admirable instance of their plain and natural solid good sense. A young French Marquis, very rich and very vain, came over to Corsica. He had a sovereign contempt for the barbarous inhabitants, and strutted[116] about (andava a passo misurato) with prodigious airs of consequence. The Corsicans beheld him with a smile of ridicule, and said, "Let him alone, he is young." [Footnote 116: "You see yon birkie, ca'd a lord, Wha struts, and stares, and a' that." --Burns.--ED.] The Corsican peasants and soldiers are very fond of baiting cattle with the large mountain dogs. This keeps up a ferocity among them which totally extinguishes fear. I have seen a Corsican in the very heat of a baiting, run in, drive off the dogs, seize the half-frantick animal by the horns, and lead it away. The common people did not seem much given to diversions. I observed some of them in the great hall of the house of Colonna where I was lodged, amusing themselves with playing at a sort of draughts in a very curious manner. They drew upon the floor with chalk, a sufficient number of squares, chalking one all over, and leaving one open, alternately; and instead of black men and white, they had bits of stone and bits of wood. It was an admirable burlesque on gaming. The chief satisfaction of these islanders when not engaged in war or in hunting, seemed to be that of lying at their ease in the open air, recounting tales of the bravery of their countrymen, and singing songs in honour of the Corsicans, and against the Genoese. Even in the night they will continue this pastime in the open air, unless rain forces them to retire into their houses. The ambasciadore Inglese, The English ambassadour, as the good peasants and soldiers used to call me, became a great favourite among them. I got a Corsican dress made, in which I walked about with an air of true satisfaction. The General did me the honour to present me with his own pistols, made in the island, all of Corsican wood and iron, and of excellent workmanship. I had every other accoutrement. I even got one of the shells which had often sounded the alarm to liberty. I preserve them all with great care. The Corsican peasants and soldiers were quite free and easy with me. Numbers of them used to come and see me of a morning, and just go out and in as they pleased.[117] I did every thing in my power to make them fond of the British, and bid them hope for an alliance with us. They asked me a thousand questions about my country, all which I chearfully answered as well as I could. [Footnote 117: One is reminded of Gulliver in Lilliput. "I took all possible methods to cultivate this favourable disposition. The natives came, by degrees, to be less apprehensive of any danger from me. I would sometimes lie down, and let five or six of them dance on my hand."--ED.] One day they would needs hear me play upon my German flute. To have told my honest natural visitants, Really gentlemen I play very ill, and put on such airs as we do in our genteel companies, would have been highly ridiculous. I therefore immediately complied with their request. I gave them one or two Italian airs, and then some of our beautiful old Scots tunes, Gilderoy, the Lass of Patie's Mill, Corn riggs are Bonny. The pathetick simplicity and pastoral gaiety of the Scots musick, will always please those who have the genuine feelings of nature. The Corsicans were charmed with the specimens I gave them, though I may now say that they were very indifferently performed. My good friends insisted also to have an English song from me. I endeavoured to please them in this too, and was very lucky in that which occurred to me. I sung them "Hearts of oak are our ships, Hearts of oak are our men."[118] I translated it into Italian for them, and never did I see men so delighted with a song as the Corsicans were with Hearts of oak. "Cuore di querco," cried they, "bravo Inglese." It was quite a joyous riot. I fancied myself to be a recruiting sea-officer. I fancied all my chorus of Corsicans aboard the British fleet. [Footnote 118: A song written by Garrick.--ED.] Paoli talked very highly on preserving the independency of Corsica. "We may," said he, "have foreign powers for our friends; but they must be 'Amici fuori di casa. Friends at arm's length.' We may make an alliance, but we will not submit ourselves to the dominion of the greatest nation in Europe. This people who have done so much for liberty, would be hewn in pieces man by man, rather than allow Corsica to be sunk into the territories of another country. Some years ago, when a false rumour was spread that I had a design to yield up Corsica to the Emperour, a Corsican came to me, and addressed me in great agitation. 'What! shall the blood of so many heroes, who have sacrificed their lives for the freedom of Corsica, serve only to tinge the purple of a foreign prince!'" I mentioned to him the scheme of an alliance between Great Britain and Corsica. Paoli with politeness and dignity waved the subject, by saying, "The less assistance we have from allies, the greater our glory." He seemed hurt by our treatment of his country. He mentioned the severe proclamation at the last peace, in which the brave islanders were called the Rebels of Corsica. He said with a conscious pride and proper feeling, "Rebels! I did not expect that from Great Britain." He however showed his great respect for the British nation, and I could see he wished much to be in friendship with us. When I asked him what I could possibly do in return for all his goodness to me. He replied, "Solamente disingannate il suo corte. Only undeceive your court. Tell them what you have seen here. They will be curious to ask you. A man come from Corsica will be like a man come from the Antipodes." I expressed such hopes as a man of sensibility would in my situation naturally form. He saw at least one Briton devoted to his cause. I threw out many flattering ideas of future political events, imaged the British and the Corsicans strictly united both in commerce and in war, and described the blunt kindness and admiration with which the hearty, generous common people of England would treat the brave Corsicans. I insensibly got the better of his reserve upon this head. My flow of gay ideas relaxed his severity, and brightened up his humour. "Do you remember," said he, "the little people in Asia who were in danger of being oppressed by the great king of Assyria,[119] till they addressed themselves to the Romans. And the Romans, with the noble spirit of a great and free nation, stood forth, and would not suffer the great king to destroy the little people, but made an alliance with them?" [Footnote 119: When Paoli makes the Romans have dealings with the great king of Assyria, we may well say, as Mrs. Shandy said of Socrates, "He had been dead a hundred years ago."--ED.] He made no observations upon this beautiful piece of history. It was easy to see his allusion to his own nation and ours. When the General related this piece of history to me, I was negligent enough not to ask him what little people he meant. As the story made a strong impression upon me, upon my return to Britain I searched a variety of books to try if I could find it, but in vain. I therefore took the liberty in one of my letters to Paoli, to beg he would let me know it. He told me the little people was the Jews, that the story was related by several ancient authours, but that I would find it told with most precision and energy in the eighth chapter of the first book of the Maccabees. The first book of the Maccabees, though not received into the Protestant canon, is allowed by all the learned to be an authentick history. I have read Paoli's favourite story with much satisfaction, and, as in several circumstances, it very well applies to Great Britain and Corsica, is told with great eloquence, and furnishes a fine model for an alliance, I shall make no apology for transcribing the most interesting verses. "Now Judas had heard of the fame of the Romans, that they were mighty and valiant men, and such as would lovingly accept all that joined themselves unto them, and make a league of amity with all that came unto them. "And that they were men of great valour. It was told him also of their wars and noble acts which they had done amongst the Galatians, and how they had conquered them, and brought them under tribute. "And what they had done in the country of Spain, for the winning of the mines of the silver and gold which are there. "And that by their policy and patience they had conquered all the place, though it were very far from them. "It was told him besides, how they destroyed and brought under their dominion, all other kingdoms and isles that at any time resisted them. "But with their friends, and such as relied upon them, they kept amity: and that they had conquered kingdoms both far and near, insomuch as all that heard of their name were afraid of them: "Also, that whom they would help to a kingdom, those reign; and whom again they would, they displace: finally, that they were greatly exalted: "Moreover, how they had made for themselves a senate-house, wherein three hundred and twenty men sat in council dayly, consulting alway for the people, to the end that they might be well ordered. "In consideration of these things Judas chose Eupolemus the son of John the son of Accos, and Jason the son of Eleazar, and sent them to Rome, to make a league of amity and confederacy with them, "And to entreat them that they would take the yoke from them, for they saw that the kingdom of the Grecians did oppress Israel with servitude. "They went therefore to Rome, which was a very great journey, and came into the senate, where they spake, and said, "Judas Maccabeus, with his brethren, and the people of the Jews, have sent us unto you, to make a confederacy and peace with you, and that we might be registered your confederates and friends. "So that matter pleased the Romans well. "And this is the copy of the epistle which the senate wrote back again, in tables of brass, and sent to Jerusalem, that there they might have by them a memorial of peace and confederacy. "Good success be to the Romans, and to the people of the Jews, by sea and by land for ever. The sword also, and enemy be far from them. "If there come first any war upon the Romans, or any of their confederates, throughout all their dominions. "The people of the Jews shall help them, as the time shall be appointed, with all their heart. "Neither shall they give any thing unto them that make war upon them, or aid them with victuals, weapons, money or ships, as it hath seemed good unto the Romans, but they shall keep their covenant, without taking anything therefore. "In the same manner also, if war come first upon the nation of the Jews, the Romans shall help them with all their heart, according as the time shall be appointed them. "Neither shall victuals be given to them that take part against them, or weapons, or money, or ships, as it hath seemed good to the Romans; but they shall keep their covenants, and that without deceit. "According to these articles did the Romans make a covenant with the people of the Jews. "Howbeit, if hereafter the one party or the other, shall think meet to add or diminish any thing they may do it at their pleasures, and whatsoever they shall add or take away, shall be ratified. "And, as touching the evils that Demetrius doth to the Jews, we have written unto him, saying, Wherefore hast thou made thy yoke heavy upon our friends and confederates the Jews? "If therefore they complain any more against thee, we will do them justice, and fight with thee by sea and by land." I will venture to ask whether the Romans appear, in any one instance of their history, more truly great than they do here. Paoli said, "If a man would preserve the generous glow of patriotism, he must not reason too much. Mareschal Saxe reasoned; and carried the arms of France into the heart of Germany, his own country.[120] I act from sentiment, not from reasonings." [Footnote 120: "Ce fier Saxon, qu'on croit né parmi nous." --Voltaire, "Poëme de Fontenoi."--ED.] "Virtuous sentiments and habits," said he, "are beyond philosophical reasonings, which are not so strong, and are continually varying. If all the professours in Europe were formed into one society, it would no doubt be a society very respectable, and we should there be entertained with the best moral lessons. Yet I believe I should find more real virtue in a society of good peasants in some little village in the heart of your island. It might be said of these two societies, as was said of Demosthenes and Themistocles, 'Illius dicta, hujus facta magis valebant. The one was powerful in words, but the other in deeds.'" This kind of conversation led me to tell him how much I had suffered from anxious speculations. With a mind naturally inclined to melancholy, and a keen desire of inquiry, I had intensely applied myself to metaphysical researches, and reasoned beyond my depth, on such subjects as it is not given to man to know. I told him I had rendered my mind a camera obscura, that in the very heat of youth I felt the "non est tanti," the "omnia vanitas" of one who has exhausted all the sweets of his being, and is weary with dull repetition. I told him that I had almost become for ever incapable of taking a part in active life. "All this," said Paoli, "is melancholy. I have also studied metaphysicks. I know the arguments for fate and free-will, for the materiality and immateriality of the soul, and even the subtile arguments for and against the existence of matter. 'Ma lasciamo queste dispute ai oziosi. But let us leave these disputes to the idle. Io tengo sempre fermo un gran pensiero. I hold always firm one great object. I never feel a moment of despondency.'"[121] [Footnote 121: "Do not hope wholly to reason away your troubles; do not feed them with attention, and they will die imperceptibly away. Fix your thoughts upon your business, fill your intervals with company, and sunshine will again break in upon your mind."--Johnson to Boswell, March 5, 1776.--ED.] The contemplation of such a character really existing, was of more service to me than all I had been able to draw from books, from conversation, or from the exertions of my own mind. I had often enough formed the idea of a man continually such as I could conceive in my best moments. But this idea appeared like the ideas we are taught in the schools to form of things which may exist, but do not; of seas of milk, and ships of amber. But I saw my highest idea realised in Paoli. It was impossible for me, speculate as I pleased, to have a little opinion of human nature in him. One morning I remember, I came in upon him without ceremony, while he was dressing. I was glad to have an opportunity of seeing him in those teasing moments, when according to the Duke de Rochefoucault, no man is a hero to his valet de chambre. The lively nobleman who has a malicious pleasure in endeavouring to divest human nature of its dignity, by exhibiting partial views, and exaggerating faults, would have owned that Paoli was every moment of his life a hero. Paoli told me that from his earliest years, he had in view the important station which he now holds; so that his sentiments must ever have been great. I asked him how one of such elevated thoughts could submit with any degree of patience, to the unmeaning ceremonies and poor discourse of genteel society, which he certainly was obliged to do while an officer at Naples. "O," said he, "I managed it very easily. Ero connosciuto per una testa singolare, I was known to be a singular man. I talked and joked, and was merry; but I never sat down to play; I went and came as I pleased. The mirth I like is what is easy and unaffected. Je ne puis souffrir long temps les diseurs de bons mots. I cannot endure long the sayers of good things." How much superiour is this great man's idea of agreeable conversation to that of professed wits, who are continually straining for smart remarks, and lively repartees. They put themselves to much pain in order to please, and yet please less than if they would just appear as they naturally feel themselves. A company of professed wits has always appeared to me, like a company of artificers employed in some very nice and difficult work, which they are under a necessity of performing. Though calm and fully master of himself, Paoli is animated with an extraordinary degree of vivacity. Except when indisposed or greatly fatigued, he never sits down but at meals. He is perpetually in motion, walking briskly backwards and forwards. Mr. Samuel Johnson, whose comprehensive and vigorous understanding, has by long observation, attained to a perfect knowledge of human nature, when treating of biography has this reflection. "There are many invisible circumstances which, whether we read as enquiries after natural or moral knowledge; whether we intend to enlarge our science, or increase our virtue, are more important than publick occurrences. Thus Sallust the great master of nature, has not forgotten in his account of Catiline, to remark, that 'his walk was now quick, and again slow,' as an indication of a mind revolving something with violent commotion."[122] Ever mindful of the wisdom of the "Rambler," I have accustomed myself to mark the small peculiarities of character. Paoli's being perpetually in motion, nay his being so agitated that, as the same Sallust also says of Catiline, "Neque vigiliis, neque quietibus sedari poterat. He could not be quieted either by watching or by repose," are indications of his being as active and indefatigable as Catiline, but from a very different cause. The conspiratour from schemes of ruin and destruction to Rome; the patriot from schemes of liberty and felicity to Corsica. [Footnote 122: "Rambler," number 60.] Paoli told me that the vivacity of his mind was such, that he could not study above ten minutes at a time. "La testa mi rompa. My head is like to break," said he. "I can never write my lively ideas with my own hand. In writing, they escape from my mind. I call the Abbé Guelfucci, Allons presto, pigliate li pensieri. Come quickly, take my thoughts; and he writes them." Paoli has a memory like that of Themistocles; for I was assured that he knows the names of almost all the people in the island, their characters, and their connections. His memory as a man of learning, is no less uncommon. He has the best part of the classicks by heart, and he has a happy talent in applying them with propriety, which is rarely to be found. This talent is not always to be reckoned pedantry. The instances in which Paoli is shewn to display it, are a proof to the contrary. I have heard Paoli recount the revolutions of one of the ancient states, with an energy and a rapidity which shewed him to be master of the subject, to be perfectly acquainted with every spring and movement of the various events. I have heard him give what the French call, "Une catalogue raisonnée" of the most distinguished men in antiquity. His characters of them were concise, nervous and just. I regret that the fire with which he spoke upon such occasions, so dazzled me that I could not recollect his sayings so as to write them down when I retired from his presence.[123] [Footnote 123: "I recollect with admiration an animating blaze of eloquence, which roused every intellectual power in me to the highest pitch, but must have dazzled me so much, that my memory could not preserve the substance of his discourse."--Boswell's "Johnson." Date of July 30, 1763.--ED.] He just lives in the times of antiquity. He said to me, "A young man who would form his mind to glory, must not read modern memoirs; mà Plutarcho, mà Tito Livio; but Plutarch and Titus Livius." I have seen him fall into a sort of reverie, and break out into sallies of the grandest and noblest enthusiasm. I recollect two instances of this. "What a thought? that thousands owe their happiness to you!" And throwing himself into an attitude, as if he saw the lofty mountain of fame before him. "THERE is my object (pointing to the summit); if I fall, I fall at least THERE (pointing a good way up) magnis tamen excidit ausis." I ventured to reason like a libertine, that I might be confirmed in virtuous principles by so illustrious a preceptour.[124] I made light of moral feelings. I argued that conscience was vague and uncertain; that there was hardly any vice but what men might be found who have been guilty of it without remorse. "But," said he, "there is no man who has not a horrour at some vice. Different vices and different virtues have the strongest impression on different men! Mà il virtù in astratto è il nutrimento dei nostri cuori. But virtue in the abstract, is the food of our hearts." [Footnote 124: Compare Boswell's discussion with Johnson on May 7th, 1773.--ED.] Talking of Providence, he said to me with that earnestness with which a man speaks who is anxious to be believed: "I tell you on the word of an honest man, it is impossible for me not to be persuaded that GOD interposes to give freedom to Corsica. A people oppressed like the Corsicans, are certainly worthy of divine assistance. When we were in the most desperate circumstances, I never lost courage, trusting as I did in Providence." I ventured to object: "But why has not Providence interposed sooner?" He replied with a noble, serious and devout air, "Because his ways are unsearchable. I adore him for what he hath done. I revere him in what he hath not done." I gave Paoli the character of my revered friend Mr. Samuel Johnson. I have often regreted that illustrious men such as humanity produces a few times in the revolution of many ages, should not see each other; and when such arise in the same age, though at the distance of half the globe, I have been astonished how they could forbear to meet. "As steel sharpneth steel, so doth a man the countenance of his friend," says the wise monarch. What an idea may we not form of an interview between such a scholar and philosopher as Mr. Johnson, and such a legislatour and general as Paoli![125] [Footnote 125: "On the evening of October 10, 1769, I presented Dr. Johnson to General Paoli. I had greatly wished that two men, for whom I had the highest esteem, should meet. They met with a manly ease, mutually conscious of their own abilities, and of the abilities of each other."--Boswell's "Johnson."--ED.] I repeated to Paoli several of Mr. Johnson's sayings, so remarkable for strong sense and original humour. I now recollect these two. When I told Mr. Johnson that a certain authour affected in conversation to maintain, that there was no distinction between virtue and vice, he said, "Why Sir, if the fellow does not think as he speaks, he is lying; and I see not what honour he can propose to himself from having the character of a lyar. But if he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why Sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons."[126] [Footnote 126: See Boswell's "Johnson." Date of July 14th, 1763.--ED.] Of modern infidels and innovatours, he said, "Sir, these are all vain men, and will gratify themselves at any expence. Truth will not afford sufficient food to their vanity; so they have betaken themselves to errour. Truth Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull."[127] [Footnote 127: See Boswell's "Johnson." Date of July 20th, 1763.--ED.] I felt an elation of mind to see Paoli delighted with the sayings of Mr. Johnson, and to hear him translate them with Italian energy to the Corsican heroes. I repeated Mr. Johnson's sayings as nearly as I could, in his own peculiar forcible language,[128] for which, prejudiced or little criticks have taken upon them to find fault with him. He is above making any answer to them, but I have found a sufficient answer in a general remark in one of his excellent papers. "Difference of thoughts will produce difference of language. He that thinks with more extent than another, will want words of larger meaning."[129] [Footnote 128: "Lord Pembroke said once to me at Wilton, with a happy pleasantry and some truth, that Dr. Johnson's sayings would not appear so extraordinary were it not for his _bow-wow-way_."--Boswell's "Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides," page 7.--ED.] [Footnote 129: "Idler," number 70.] I hope to be pardoned for this digression, wherein I pay a just tribute of veneration and gratitude to one from whose writings and conversation I have received instructions of which I experience the value in every scene of my life. During Paoli's administration there have been few laws made in Corsica. He mentioned one which he has found very efficacious in curbing that vindictive spirit of the Corsicans, of which I have said a good deal in a former part of this work. There was among the Corsicans a most dreadful species of revenge, called "Vendetta trasversa, Collateral revenge," which Petrus Cyrnaeus candidly acknowledges. It was this. If a man had received an injury, and could not find a proper opportunity to be revenged on his enemy personally, he revenged himself on one of his enemy's relations. So barbarous a practice, was the source of innumerable assassinations. Paoli knowing that the point of honour was every thing to the Corsicans, opposed it to the progress of the blackest of crimes, fortified by long habits. He made a law, by which it was provided, that this collateral revenge should not only be punished with death, as ordinary murther, but the memory of the offender should be disgraced for ever by a pillar of infamy. He also had it enacted that the same statute should extend to the violatours of an oath of reconciliation, once made. By thus combating a vice so destructive, he has, by a kind of shock of opposite passions, reduced the fiery Corsicans to a state of mildness, and he assured me that they were now all fully sensible of the equity of that law. While I was at Sollacarò information was received that the poor wretch who strangled the woman at the instigation of his mistress had consented to accept of his life, upon condition of becoming hangman. This made a great noise among the Corsicans, who were enraged at the creature, and said their nation was now disgraced. Paoli did not think so. He said to me, "I am glad of this. It will be of service. It will contribute to form us to a just subordination.[130] We have as yet too great an equality among us. As we must have Corsican taylours and Corsican shoemakers, we must also have a Corsican hangman." [Footnote 130: "'Sir,' said Johnson, 'I am a friend to subordination, as most conducive to the happiness of society.'"--Boswell's "Johnson." Date of June 13, 1763.--ED.] I could not help being of a different opinion. The occupations of a taylour and a shoemaker, though mean, are not odious. When I afterwards met M. Rousseau in England, and made him a report of my Corsican expedition, he agreed with me in thinking that it would be something noble for the brave islanders to be able to say that there was not a Corsican but who would rather suffer death than become a hangman; and he also agreed with me, that it might have a good effect to have always a Genoese for the hangman of Corsica. I must, however, do the Genoese the justice to observe that Paoli told me, that even one of them had suffered death in Corsica, rather than consent to become hangman. When I, with a keenness natural enough in a Briton born with an abhorrence at tyranny, talked with violence against the Genoese, Paoli said with a moderation and candour which ought to do him honour even with the republick, "It is true the Genoese are our enemies; but let us not forget that they are the descendants of those worthies who carried their arms beyond the Hellespont." There is one circumstance in Paoli's character which I present to my readers with caution, knowing how much it may be ridiculed in an age when mankind are so fond of incredulity, that they seem to pique themselves in contracting their circle of belief as much as possible. But I consider this infidel rage as but a temporary mode of the human understanding, and am well persuaded that e'er long we shall return to a more calm philosophy. I own I cannot help thinking that though we may boast some improvements in science, and in short, superior degrees of knowledge in things where our faculties can fully reach, yet we should not assume to ourselves sounder judgements than those of our fathers; I will therefore venture to relate that Paoli has at times extraordinary impressions of distant and future events. The way in which I discovered it was this: Being very desirous of studying so exalted a character, I so far presumed upon his goodness to me, as to take the liberty of asking him a thousand questions with regard to the most minute and private circumstances of his life. Having asked him one day when some of his nobles were present, whether a mind so active as his was employed even in sleep, and if he used to dream much, Signor Casa Bianca said, with an air and tone which implied something of importance, "Sì, si sogna. Yes, he dreams." And upon my asking him to explain his meaning, he told me that the General had often seen in his dreams, what afterwards came to pass. Paoli confirmed this by several instances. Said he, "I can give you no clear explanation of it. I only tell you facts. Sometimes I have been mistaken, but in general these visions have proved true. I cannot say what may be the agency of invisible spirits. They certainly must know more than we do; and there is nothing absurd in supposing that GOD should permit them to communicate their knowledge to us." He went into a most curious and pleasing disquisition on a subject, which the late ingenious Mr. Baxter has treated in a very philosophical manner, in his "Inquiry into the Nature of the Human Soul;"[131] a book which may be read with as much delight, and surely with more advantage than the works of those who endeavour to destroy our belief. Belief is favourable to the human mind, were it for nothing else but to furnish it entertainment. An infidel I should think must frequently suffer from ennui. [Footnote 131: Published in October, 1733. "The author is said to be one Baxter."--"Gentleman's Magazine" for 1750, vol. xx.--ED.] It was perhaps affectation in Socrates to say, that all he had learned to know was that he knew nothing. But surely it is a mark of wisdom, to be sensible of the limited extent of human knowledge, to examine with reverence the ways of GOD, nor presumptuously reject any opinion which has been held by the judicious and the learned, because it has been made a cloak for artifice, or had a variety of fictions raised upon it by credulity. Old Feltham says, "Every dream is not to be counted of; nor yet are all to be cast away with contempt. I would neither be a Stoick, superstitious in all; nor yet an Epicure, considerate of none."[132] And after observing how much the ancients attended to the interpretation of dreams, he adds, "Were it not for the power of the gospel in crying down the vains[133] of men, it would appear a wonder how a science so pleasing to humanity, should fall so quite to ruin."[134] [Footnote 132: "Feltham's Resolves," Cent. I., Resol. 52.] [Footnote 133: He means vanity.] [Footnote 134: "Feltham's Resolves," Cent. I., Resol. 52.] The mysterious circumstance in Paoli's character which I have ventured to relate, is universally believed in Corsica. The inhabitants of that island, like the Italians, express themselves much by signs. When I asked one of them if there had been many instances of the General's foreseeing future events, he grasped a large bunch of his hair, and replied, "Tante, Signore, So many, Sir." It may be said that the General has industriously propagated this opinion, in order that he might have more authority in civilizing a rude and ferocious people, as Lycurgus pretended to have the sanction of the oracle at Delphos, as Numa gave it out that he had frequent interviews with the nymph Egeria, or as Marius persuaded the Romans that he received divine communications from a hind. But I cannot allow myself to suppose that Paoli ever required the aid of pious frauds. Paoli, though never familiar, has the most perfect ease of behaviour. This is a mark of a real great character. The distance and reserve which some of our modern nobility affect is, because nobility is now little else than a name in comparison of what it was in ancient times. In ancient times, noblemen lived at their country seats, like princes, in hospitable grandeur. They were men of power, and every one of them could bring hundreds of followers into the field. They were then open and affable. Some of our modern nobility are so anxious to preserve an appearance of dignity which they are sensible cannot bear an examination, that they are afraid to let you come near them. Paoli is not so. Those about him come into his apartment at all hours, wake him, help him on with his clothes, are perfectly free from restraint; yet they know their distance, and, awed by his real greatness, never lose their respect for him. Though thus easy of access, particular care is taken against such attempts upon the life of the illustrious Chief, as he has good reason to apprehend from the Genoese, who have so often employed assassination merely in a political view, and who would gain so much by assassinating Paoli. A certain number of soldiers are continually on guard upon him; and as still closer guards, he has some faithful Corsican dogs. Of these five or six sleep, some in his chamber, and some at the outside of the chamber-door. He treats them with great kindness, and they are strongly attached to him. They are extremely sagacious, and know all his friends and attendants. Were any person to approach the General during the darkness of the night, they would instantly tear him in pieces. Having dogs for his attendants, is another circumstance about Paoli similar to the heroes of antiquity. Homer represents Telemachus so attended. [Greek: duô kunes argoi heponto], --HOMER, "Odyss.," lib. ii., l. 11. "Two dogs a faithful guard attend behind." --POPE. But the description given of the family of Patroclus applies better to Paoli. [Greek: Ennea tô ge anakti trapezêes kunes êsan], --HOMER, "Iliad," lib. xxiii., l. 73. "Nine large dogs domestick at his board." --POPE. Mr. Pope, in his notes on the second book of the "Odyssey," is much pleased with dogs being introduced, as it furnishes an agreeable instance of ancient simplicity. He observes that Virgil thought this circumstance worthy of his imitation, in describing old Evander.[135] So we read of Syphax, general of the Numidians, "Syphax inter duos canes stans, Scipionem appellavit.[136] Syphax standing between two dogs called to Scipio." [Footnote 135: "Æneid," lib. viii., l. 461.] [Footnote 136: I mention this on the authority of an excellent scholar, and one of our best writers, Mr. Joseph Warton, in his notes on the Aeneid; for I have not been able to find the passage in Livy which he quotes.] Talking of courage, he made a very just distinction between constitutional courage and courage from reflection. "Sir Thomas More," said he, "would not probably have mounted a breach so well as a sergeant who had never thought of death. But a sergeant would not on a scaffold have shewn the calm resolution of Sir Thomas More." On this subject he told me a very remarkable anecdote, which happened during the last war in Italy. At the siege of Tortona, the commander of the army which lay before the town, ordered Carew an Irish officer in the service of Naples, to advance with a detachment to a particular post. Having given his orders, he whispered to Carew, "Sir, I know you to be a gallant man. I have therefore put you upon this duty. I tell you in confidence, it is certain death for you all. I place you there to make the enemy spring a mine below you." Carew made a bow to the general, and led on his men in silence to the dreadful post. He there stood with an undaunted countenance, and having called to one of the soldiers for a draught of wine, "Here," said he, "I drink to all those who bravely fall in battle." Fortunately at that instant Tortona capitulated, and Carew escaped. But he had thus a full opportunity of displaying a rare instance of determined intrepidity. It is with pleasure that I record an anecdote so much to the honour of a gentleman of that nation, on which illiberal reflections are too often thrown, by those of whom it little deserves them. Whatever may be the rough jokes of wealthy insolence, or the envious sarcasms of needy jealousy, the Irish have ever been, and will continue to be, highly regarded upon the continent. Paoli's personal authority among the Corsicans struck me much. I have seen a crowd of them, with eagerness and impetuosity, endeavouring to approach him, as if they would have burst into his apartment by force. In vain did the guards attempt to restrain them; but when he called to them in a tone of firmness, "Non c'è ora ricorso, No audience now," they were hushed at once. He one afternoon gave us an entertaining dissertation on the ancient art of war. He observed that the ancients allowed of little baggage, which they very properly called "impedimenta;" whereas the moderns burthen themselves with it to such a degree, that 50,000 of our present soldiers are allowed as much baggage as was formerly thought sufficient for all the armies of the Roman empire. He said it was good for soldiers to be heavy armed, as it renders them proportionably robust; and he remarked that when the Romans lightened their arms the troops became enfeebled.[137] He made a very curious observation with regard to the towers full of armed men, which we are told were borne on the backs of their elephants. He said it must be a mistake; for if the towers were broad, there would not be room for them on the backs of elephants; for he and a friend who was an able calculatour, had measured a very large elephant at Naples, and made a computation of the space necessary to hold the number of men said to be contained in those towers, and they found that the back of the broadest elephant would not be sufficient, after making the fullest allowance for what might be hung by ballance on either side of the animal. If again the towers were high, they would fall; for he did not think it at all probable that the Romans had the art of tying on such monstrous machines at a time when they had not learnt the use even of girths to their saddles. He said he did not give too much credit to the figures on Trajan's pillar, many of which were undoubtedly false. He said it was his opinion, that those towers were only drawn by the elephants; an opinion founded in probability, and free from the difficulties of that which has been commonly received. [Footnote 137: "The enervated soldiers abandoned their own, and the public defence; and their pusillanimous indolence may be considered as the immediate cause of the downfall of the empire." Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," chapter 27.--ED.] Talking of various schemes of life, fit for a man of spirit and education; I mentioned to him that of being a foreign minister. He said he thought it a very agreeable employment for a man of parts and address, during some years of his life. "In that situation," said he, "a man will insensibly attain to a greater knowledge of men and manners, and a more perfect acquaintance with the politicks of Europe. He will be promoted according to the returns which he makes to his court. They must be accurate, distinct, without fire or ornament. He may subjoin his own opinion, but he must do it with great modesty. The ministry at home are proud." He said the greatest happiness was not in glory, but in goodness; and that Penn in his American colony, where he had established a people in quiet and contentment, was happier than Alexander the Great after destroying multitudes at the conquest of Thebes. He observed that the history of Alexander is obscure and dubious; for his captains who divided his kingdom, were too busy to record his life and actions, and would at any rate wish to render him odious to posterity. Never was I so thoroughly sensible of my own defects as while I was in Corsica. I felt how small were my abilities, and how little I knew. Ambitious to be the companion of Paoli, and to understand a country and a people which roused me so much, I wished to be a Sir James MacDonald.[138] [Footnote 138: Sir James MacDonald, baronet of the Isle of Sky, who at the age of one and twenty, had the learning and abilities of a Professour and a statesman, with the accomplishments of a man of the world. Eton and Oxford will ever remember him as one of their greatest ornaments.[B] He was well known to the most distinguished in Europe, but was carried off from all their expectations. He died at Frescati, near Rome, in 1765. Had he lived a little longer, I believe I should have prevailed with him to visit Corsica.] [Footnote B: Horace Walpole thus describes him in a letter dated September 30th, 1765:--"He is a very extraordinary young man for variety of learning. He is rather too wise for his age, and too fond of showing it; but when he has seen more of the world, he will choose to know less." See also Boswell's "Johnson." Date of July 20th, 1763.--ED.] The last day which I spent with Paoli appeared of inestimable value. I thought him more than usually great and amiable, when I was upon the eve of parting from him. The night before my departure, a little incident happened which shewed him in a most agreeable light. When the servants were bringing in the desert after supper, one of them chanced to let fall a plate of walnuts. Instead of flying into a passion at what the man could not help, Paoli said with a smile, "No matter;" and turning to me, "It is a good sign for you, Sir, Tempus est spargere nuces, It is time to scatter walnuts. It is a matrimonial omen: You must go home to your own country, and marry some fine woman whom you really like. I shall rejoice to hear of it." This was a pretty allusion to the Roman ceremony at weddings, of scattering walnuts. So Virgil's "Damon" says-- "Mopse novas incide faces: tibi ducitur uxor. Sparge marite nuces: tibi deserit Hesperus Oetam." --VIRG. "Eclog." viii, l. 30. "Thy bride comes forth! begin the festal rites! The walnuts strew! prepare the nuptial lights! O envied husband, now thy bliss is nigh! Behold for thee bright Hesper mounts the sky!" --WARTON. When I again asked Paoli if it was possible for me in any way to shew him my great respect and attachment, he replied, "Ricordatevi che Io vi sia amico, e scrivetemi. Remember that I am your friend, and write to me." I said I hoped that when he honoured me with a letter, he would write not only as a commander, but as a philosopher and a man of letters. He took me by the hand, and said, "As a friend." I dare not transcribe from my private notes the feelings which I had at this interview. I should perhaps appear too enthusiastick. I took leave of Paoli with regret and agitation, not without some hopes of seeing him again. From having known intimately so exalted a character, my sentiments of human nature were raised, while, by a sort of contagion, I felt an honest ardour to distinguish myself, and be useful, as far as my situation and abilities would allow; and I was, for the rest of my life, set free from a slavish timidity in the presence of great men, for where shall I find a man greater than Paoli? When I set out from Sollacarò I felt myself a good deal indisposed. The old house of Colonna, like the family of its master, was much decayed; so that both wind and rain found their way into my bed-chamber. From this I contracted a severe cold, which ended in a tertian ague. There was no help for it. I might well submit to some inconveniences, where I had enjoyed so much happiness. I was accompanied a part of the road by a great swarthy priest, who had never been out of Corsica. He was a very Hercules for strength and resolution. He and two other Corsicans took a castle, garrisoned by no less than fifteen Genoese. Indeed the Corsicans have such a contempt for their enemies, that I have heard them say, "Basterebbero le donne contra i Genovesi, Our women would be enough against the Genoese." This priest was a bluff, hearty, roaring fellow, troubled neither with knowledge nor care. He was ever and anon shewing me how stoutly his nag could caper. He always rode some paces before me, and sat in an attitude half turned round, with his hand clapped upon the crupper. Then he would burst out with comical songs about the devil and the Genoese,[139] and I don't know what all. In short, notwithstanding my feverishness, he kept me laughing whether I would or no. [Footnote 139: "When he came to the part-- 'We'll still make 'em run, and we'll still make 'em sweat, In spite of the devil and Brussels Gazette!' his eyes would sparkle as with the freshness of an impending event."--Letter of Charles Lambe to H.C. Robinson, January 20th, 1826.--ED.] I was returning to Corte, but I varied my road a little from the way I had come, going more upon the low country, and nearer the western shore. At Cauro I had a fine view of Ajaccio and its environs. My ague was sometime of forming, so I had frequent intervals of ease, which I employed in observing whatever occurred. I was lodged at Cauro in the house of Signor Peraldi of Ajaccio, who received me with great politeness. I found here another provincial magistracy. Before supper, Signor Peraldi and a young Abbé of Ajaccio entertained me with some airs on a violin. After they had shewn me their taste in fine improved musick, they gave me some original Corsican airs, and at my desire, they brought up four of the guards of the magistracy, and made them shew me a Corsican dance. It was truly savage. They thumped with their heels, sprung upon their toes, brandished their arms, wheeled and leaped with the most violent gesticulations. It gave me the idea of an admirable war dance. During this journey I had very bad weather. I cannot forget the worthy rectour of Cuttoli, whose house afforded me a hospitable retreat, when wet to the skin, and quite overcome by the severity of the storm, which my sickness made me little able to resist. He was directly such a venerable hermit as we read of in the old romances. His figure and manner interested me at first sight. I found he was a man well respected in the island, and that the General did him the honour to correspond with him. He gave me a simple collation of eggs, chestnuts and wine, and was very liberal of his ham and other more substantial victuals to my servant. The honest Swiss was by this time very well pleased to have his face turned towards the continent. He was heartily tired of seeing foreign parts, and meeting with scanty meals and hard beds, in an island which he could not comprehend the pleasure of visiting. He said to me, "Si J' etois encore une fois retourné à mon pais parmi ces montagnes de Suisse dont monsieur fait tant des plaisanteries, Je verrai qui m'engagera à les quitter. If I were once more at home in my own country, among those mountains of Switzerland, on which you have had so many jokes, I will see who shall prevail with me to quit them." The General, out of his great politeness, would not allow me to travel without a couple of chosen guards to attend me in case of any accidents. I made them my companions, to relieve the tediousness of my journey. One of them called Ambrosio, was a strange iron-coloured fearless creature. He had been much in war; careless of wounds, he was cooly intent on destroying the enemy. He told me, as a good anecdote, that having been so lucky as to get a view of two Genoese exactly in a line, he took his aim, and shot them both through the head at once. He talked of this just as one would talk of shooting a couple of crows. I was sure I needed be under no apprehension; but I don't know how, I desired Ambrosio to march before me that I might see him. I was upon my guard how I treated him. But as sickness frets one's temper, I sometimes forgot myself, and called him "bestia, blockhead;" and once when he was at a loss which way to go, at a wild woody part of the country, I fell into a passion, and called to him "Mi maraviglio che un uomo si bravo può esser si stupido. I am amazed that so brave a man can be so stupid." However by afterwards calling him friend, and speaking softly to him, I soon made him forget my ill humour, and we proceeded as before. Paoli had also been so good as to make me a present of one of his dogs, a strong and fierce animal. But he was too old to take an attachment to me, and I lost him between Lyons and Paris. The General has promised me a young one, to be a guard at Auchinleck. At Bogognano I came upon the same road I had formerly travelled from Corte, where I arrived safe after all my fatigues. My good fathers of the Franciscan convent, received me like an old acquaintance, and shewed a kind concern at my illness. I sent my respects to the Great Chancellor, who returned me a note, of which I insert a translation as a specimen of the hearty civility to be found among the highest in Corsica. "Many congratulations to Mr. Boswell on his return from beyond the mountains, from his servant Massesi, who is at the same time very sorry for his indisposition, which he is persuaded has been occasioned by his severe journey. He however flatters himself, that when Mr. Boswell has reposed himself a little, he will recover his usual health. In the mean time he has taken the liberty to send him a couple of fowls, which he hopes, he will honour with his acceptance, as he will need some refreshment this evening. He wishes him a good night, as does his little servant Luiggi, who will attend him to-morrow, to discharge his duty." My ague distressed me so much, that I was confined to the convent for several days: I did not however weary. I was visited by the Great Chancellor, and several others of the civil magistrates, and by Padre Mariani rectour of the university, a man of learning and abilities, as a proof of which he had been three years at Madrid in the character of secretary to the General of the Franciscans. I remember a very eloquent expression of his on the state of his country. "Corsica," said he, "has for many years past, been bleeding at all her veins. They are now closed. But after being so severely exhausted, it will take some time before she can recover perfect strength." I was also visited by Padre Leonardo, of whose animating discourse I have made mention in a former part of this book. Indeed I should not have been at a loss though my very reverend fathers had been all my society. I was not in the least looked upon as a heretick. Difference of faith was forgotten in hospitality. I went about the convent as if I had been in my own house; and the fathers without any impropriety of mirth, were yet as chearful as I could desire. I had two surgeons to attend me at Corte, a Corsican and a Piedmontese; and I got a little Jesuit's bark from the spiceria, or apothecary's shop, of the Capuchin convent. I did not however expect to be effectually cured till I should get to Bastia. I found it was perfectly safe for me to go thither. There was a kind of truce between the Corsicans and the French. Paoli had held two different amicable conferences with M. de Marboeuf their commander in chief, and was so well with him, that he gave me a letter of recommendation to him. On one of the days that my ague disturbed me least, I walked from the convent to Corte, purposely to write a letter to Mr. Samuel Johnson. I told my revered friend, that from a kind of superstition agreeable in a certain degree to him, as well as to myself, I had during my travels, written to him from Loca Solennia, places in some measure sacred. That as I had written to him from the Tomb of Melancthon, sacred to learning and piety, I now wrote to him from the palace of Pascal Paoli, sacred to wisdom and liberty; knowing that however his political principles may have been represented, he had always a generous zeal for the common rights of humanity. I gave him a sketch of the great things I had seen in Corsica, and promised him a more ample relation.[140] [Footnote 140: "He kept the greater part of my letters very carefully; and a short time before his death was attentive enough to seal them up in bundles, and ordered them to be delivered to me, which was accordingly done. Amongst them I found one, of which I had not made a copy, and which I own I read with pleasure at the distance of almost twenty years. It is dated November, 1765, at the palace of Pascal Paoli, in Corte, and is full of generous enthusiasm. After giving a sketch of what I had seen and heard in that island, it proceeded thus:--'I dare to call this a spirited tour. I dare to challenge your approbation.'"--Boswell's "Johnson." Date of 1765.] Mr. Johnson was pleased with what I wrote here; for I received at Paris an answer from him which I keep as a valuable charter. "When you return, you will return to an unaltered, and I hope, unalterable friend. All that you have to fear from me, is the vexation of disappointing me. No man loves to frustrate expectations which have been formed in his favour, and the pleasure which I promise myself from your journals and remarks, is so great, that perhaps no degree of attention or discernment will be sufficient to afford it. Come home however and take your chance. I long to see you, and to hear you; and hope that we shall not be so long separated again. Come home, and expect such a welcome as is due to him whom a wise and noble curiosity has led where perhaps, no native of this country ever was before."[141] [Footnote 141: "Having had no letter from him, ... and having been told by somebody that he was offended at my having put into my book an extract of his letter to me at Paris, I was impatient to be with him.... I found that Dr. Johnson had sent a letter to me to Scotland, and that I had nothing to complain of but his being more indifferent to my anxiety than I wished him to be." In the letter, which is dated March 23, 1768, Johnson had said, "I have omitted a long time to write to you, without knowing very well why. I could now tell why I should not write; for who would write to men who publish the letters of their friends without their leave? Yet I write to you, in spite of my caution, to tell you that I shall be glad to see you, and that I wish you would empty your head of Corsica, which I think has filled it rather too long."--ED.] I at length set out for Bastia. I went the first night to Rostino, hoping to have found there Signor Clemente de' Paoli. But unluckily he had gone upon a visit to his daughter; so that I had not an opportunity of seeing this extraordinary personage, of whom I have given so full an account,[142] for a great part of which I am indebted to Mr. Burnaby. [Footnote 142: See Appendix C.--ED.] Next day I reached Vescovato, where I was received by Signor Buttafoco, who proved superiour to the character I had conceived of him from the letter of M. Rousseau.[143] I found in him the incorrupted virtues of the brave islander, with the improvements of the continent. I found him, in short, to be a man of principle, abilities and knowledge; and at the same time a man of the world. He is now deservedly raised to the rank of colonel of the Royal Corsicans, in the service of France. [Footnote 143: In this letter a high character is given of Buttafoco. See page 141.--ED.] I past some days with Signor Buttafoco, from whose conversation I received so much pleasure, that I in a great measure forgot my ague. As various discourses have been held in Europe, concerning an invitation given to M. Rousseau to come to Corsica; and as that affair was conducted by Signor Buttafoco, who shewed me the whole correspondence between him and M. Rousseau, I am enabled to give a distinct account of it. M. Rousseau in his Political Treatise, entitled "Du Contract Social," has the following observation: "Il est encore en Europe un pays capable de législation; c'est l'isle de Corse. La valeur et la constance avec laquelle ce brave peuple a su recouvrer et défendre sa liberté mériteroit bien que quelque homme sage lui apprit à la conserver. J'ai quelque pressentiment qu'un jour cette petite isle étonnera l'Europe.[144] There is yet one country in Europe, capable of legislation; and that is the island of Corsica. The valour and the constancy with which that brave people have recovered and defended its liberty, would well deserve that some wise man should teach them how to preserve it. I have some presentiment that one day that little island will astonish Europe." [Footnote 144: "Du Contract Social," liv. ii., chap. 10.] Signor Buttafoco, upon this, wrote to M. Rousseau, returning him thanks for the honour he had done to the Corsican nation, and strongly inviting him to come over, and be that wise man who should illuminate their minds. I was allowed to take a copy of the wild philosopher's answer to this invitation; it is written with his usual eloquence. "Il est superflu, Monsieur, de chercher à exciter mon zele pour l'entreprise que vous me proposez. Sa[145] seule idée m'éleve l'ame et me transporte. Je croirois la[146] reste de mes jours bien noblement, bien vertueusement et bien heureusement employés.[147] Je croirois meme avoir bien racheté l'inutilité des autres, si je pouvois rendre ce triste reste bon en quelque chose à vos braves compatriotes; si je pouvois concourir par quelque conseil utile aux vues de votre[148] digne Chef et aux vôtres; de ce côté-là donc soyez sur de moi. Ma vie et mon coeur sont à vous." [Footnote 145: La.--ED.] [Footnote 146: Le.--ED.] [Footnote 147: Employé.--ED.] [Footnote 148: Leur. I have made the corrections by the copy given in "Rousseau's Collected Works."--ED.] "It is superfluous, Sir, to endeavour to excite my zeal for the undertaking which you propose to me. The very idea of it elevates my soul and transports me. I should esteem the rest of my days very nobly, very virtuously, and very happily employed. I should even think that I well redeemed the inutility of many of my days that are past, if I could render these sad remains of any advantage to your brave countrymen. If by any useful advice, I could concur in the views of your worthy Chief, and in yours. So far then you may be sure of me. My life and my heart are devoted to you." Such were the first effusions of Rousseau. Yet before he concluded even this first letter, he made a great many complaints of his adversities and persecutions, and started a variety of difficulties as to the proposed enterprise. The correspondence was kept up for some time, but the enthusiasm of the paradoxical philosopher gradually subsiding, the scheme came to nothing.[149] [Footnote 149: In one of his letters, dated March 24, 1765, Rousseau said:--"Sur le peu que j'ai parcouru de vos mémoires, je vois que mes idées different prodigieusement de celles de votre nation. Il ne serait pas possible que le plan que je proposerais ne fît beaucoup de mécontents, et peut-être vous-même tout le premier. Or, Monsieur, je suis rassasié de disputes et de querelles."--ED.] As I have formerly observed, M. de Voltaire thought proper to exercise his pleasantry upon occasion of this proposal,[150] in order to vex the grave Rousseau, whom he never could bear. I remember he used to talk of him with a satyrical smile, and call him, "Ce Garçon, That Lad;" I find this among my notes of M. de Voltaire's conversations, when I was with him at his Chateau de Ferney, where he entertains with the elegance rather of a real prince than of a poetical one. [Footnote 150: "Je reçus bien ... la lettre de M. Paoli; mais ... il faut vous dire, Monsieur, que le bruit de la proposition que vous m'aviez faite s'étant répandu sans que je sache comment, M. de Voltaire fit entendre à tout le monde que cette proposition était une invention de sa façon; il prétendait m'avoir écrit au nom des Corses une lettre contrefaite dont j'avais été la dupe."--Rousseau to Butta-Foco, May 26, 1765.--ED.] To have Voltaire's assertion contradicted by a letter under Paoli's own hand, was no doubt a sufficient satisfaction to Rousseau. From the account which I have attempted to give of the present constitution of Corsica, and of its illustrious Legislatour and General, it may well be conceived that the scheme of bringing M. Rousseau into that island, was magnified to an extravagant degree by the reports of the continent. It was said, that Rousseau was to be made no less than a Solon by the Corsicans, who were implicitely to receive from him a code of laws. This was by no means the scheme. Paoli was too able a man to submit the legislation of his country to one who was an entire stranger to the people, the manners, and in short to every thing in the island. Nay, I know well that Paoli pays more regard to what has been tried by the experience of ages than to the most beautiful ideal systems. Besides, the Corsicans were not all at once to be moulded at will. They were to be gradually prepared, and by one law laying the foundation for another, a compleat fabrick of jurisprudence was to be formed. Paoli's intention was to grant a generous asylum to Rousseau, to avail himself of the shining talents which appeared in his writings, by consulting with him, and catching the lights of his rich imagination, from many of which he might derive improvements to those plans which his own wisdom had laid down. But what he had principally in view, was to employ the pen of Rousseau in recording the heroick actions of the brave islanders. It is to be regretted that this project did not take place. The father of the present colonel Buttafoco made large collections for many years back. These are carefully preserved, and when joined to those made by the Abbé Rostini, would furnish ample materials for a History of Corsica. This, adorned with the genius of Rousseau, would have been one of the noblest monuments of modern times. Signor Buttafoco accompanied me to Bastia. It was comfortable to enter a good warm town after my fatigues. We went to the house of Signor Morelli, a counsellor at law here, with whom we supped. I was lodged for that night by a friend of Signor Buttafoco, in another part of the town. Next morning I waited on M. de Marboeuf. Signor Buttafoco introduced me to him, and I presented him the letter of recommendation from Paoli. He gave me a most polite reception. The brilliancy of his levee pleased me; it was a scene so different from those which I had been for some time accustomed to see. It was like passing at once from a rude and early age to a polished modern age; from the mountains of Corsica to the banks of the Seine. My ague was now become so violent that it got the better of me altogether. I was obliged to ask the French general's permission to have a chair set for me in the circle. When M. de Marboeuf was informed of my being ill, he had the goodness to ask me to stay in his house till I should recover; "I insist upon it," said he, "I have a warm room for you. My servants will get you bouillons, and every thing proper for a sick man; and we have an excellent physician." I mention all these circumstances to shew the goodness of M. de Marboeuf, to whom I shall ever consider myself as under great obligations, His invitation was given in so kind and cordial a manner, that I willingly accepted of it. I found M. de Marboeuf a worthy open-hearted Frenchman. It is a common and a very just remark, that one of the most agreeable characters in the world is a Frenchman who has served long in the army, and has arrived at that age when the fire of youth is properly tempered. Such a character is gay without levity, and judicious without severity. Such a character was the Count de Marboeuf, of an ancient family in Britanny, where there is more plainness of character than among the other French. He had been Gentilhomme de la Chambre to the worthy King Stanislaus. He took a charge of me as if he had been my near relation. He furnished me with books and every thing he could think of to amuse me. While the physician ordered me to be kept very quiet, M. de Marboeuf would allow nobody to go near me, but payed me a friendly visit alone. As I grew better he gradually encreased my society, bringing with him more and more of his officers; so that I had at last the honour of very large companies in my apartment. The officers were polite agreeable men: some of them had been prisoners in England, during the last war. One of them was a Chevalier de St. Louis, of the name of Douglas, a descendant of the illustrious house of Douglas in Scotland, by a branch settled near to Lyons. This gentleman often came and sat with me. The idea of our being in some sort countrymen, was pleasing to us both. I found here an English woman of Penrith in Cumberland. When the Highlanders marched through that country in the year 1745, she had married a soldier of the French picquets in the very midst of all the confusion and danger, and when she could hardly understand one word he said. Such freaks will love sometimes take. "Sic visum Veneri; cui placet impares Formas atque animos sub juga ahenea Saevo mittere cum joco." --HORAT. lib. i., Od. 33. "So Venus wills, whose power controuls The fond affections of our souls; With sportive cruelty she binds Unequal forms, unequal minds." --FRANCIS. M. de la Chapelle was the physician who attended me. He had been several years physician to the army at Minorca, and had now the same office in Corsica. I called him the physician of the isles. He was indeed an excellent one. That gayeté de coeur which the French enjoy, runs through all their professions. I remember the phrase of an English common soldier who told me, "that at the battle of Fontenoy, his captain received a shot in the breast, and fell," said the soldier, "with his spontoon in his hand, as prettily killed as ever I see'd a gentleman." The soldier's phrase might be used in talking of almost every thing which the French do. I may say I was prettily cured by M. de la Chapelle. But I think myself bound to relate a circumstance which shews him and his nation in the genteelest light. Though he attended me with the greatest assiduity, yet, when I was going away, he would not accept of a single Louis d'or. "No Sir," said he, "I am nobly paid by my king. I am physician to his army here. If I can at the same time, be of service to the people of the country, or to any gentleman who may come among us, I am happy. But I must be excused from taking money." M. Brion the surgeon major behaved in the same manner. As soon as I had gathered a little strength, I walked about as well as I could; and saw what was to be seen at Bastia. Signor Morelli was remarkably obliging. He made me presents of books and antiques, and of every other curiosity relating to Corsica. I never saw a more generous man. Signor Carassa, a Corsican officer in the service of France, with the order of St. Louis, was also very obliging. Having made a longer stay in Corsica than I intended, my finances were exhausted, and he let me have as much money as I pleased. M. Barlé, secretary to M. de Marboeuf, was also very obliging. In short, I know not how to express my thankfulness to all the good people whom I saw at Bastia. The French seemed to agree very well with the Corsicans. Of old, those islanders were much indebted to the interposition of France in their favour. But since the days of Sampiero, there have been many variances between them. A singular one happened in the reign of Lewis XIV. The Pope's Corsican guards in some fit of passion insulted the French ambassadour at Rome.[151] The superb monarch resolved to revenge this outrage. But Pope Alexander VII. foreseeing the consequences, agreed to the conditions required by France; which were, that the Corsican guards should be obliged to depart the ecclesiastical state, that the nation should be declared incapable ever to serve the holy see, and, that opposite to their ancient guard-house, should be erected a pyramid inscribed with their disgrace.[152] [Footnote 151: According to Voltaire it was the French who were the most to blame. Their ambassador had disgusted the Romans by his arrogance. His servants exaggerated their master's faults, and imitated "la jeunesse indisciplinable de Paris, qui se fesait alors un honneur d'attaquer toutes les nuits le guet qui vieille à la garde de la ville!" Some of them ventured one day to fall sword in hand on the Corsican guards. The Corsicans in their turn besieged the ambassador's house. Shots were fired, and a page was killed. The ambassador at once left Rome. "Le pape différa tant qu'il put la réparation, persuadé qu' avec les Français il n'y a qu' à temporiser, et que tout s'oublie." He hanged, however, a Corsican, and he took other measures to appease Lewis XIV. He learnt with alarm that the French troops were entering Italy, and that Rome was threatened with a siege. "Dans d'autres temps les excommunications de Rome auraient suivi ces outrages; mais c'étaient des armes usées et devenues ridicules." He was forced to give full satisfaction. The pyramid mentioned by Boswell was set up, but in a few years the French King allowed it to be destroyed.--See Voltaire's "Siècle de Louis XIV.," chap. vii.--ED.] [Footnote 152: Corps Diplomatique, anno 1664.] Le Brun, whose royal genius could magnify and enrich every circumstance in honour of his sovereign, has given this story as a medallion on one of the compartments of the great gallery at Versailles. France appears with a stately air, shewing to Rome the design of the pyramid; and Rome, though bearing a shield marked S.P.Q.R. receives the design with most submissive humility. I wish that France had never done the Corsicans greater harm than depriving them of the honour of being the Pope's guards. Boisseux and Maillebois[153] cannot easily be forgotten; nor can the brave islanders be blamed for complaining that a powerful nation should interpose to retard their obtaining entire possession of their country and of undisturbed freedom. [Footnote 153: The commanders of the French troops that invaded Corsica in 1738 and 1739.--ED.] M. de Marboeuf appeared to conduct himself with the greatest prudence and moderation. He told me that he wished to preserve peace in Corsica. He had entered into a convention with Paoli, mutually to give up such criminals as should fly into each others territories. Formerly not one criminal in a hundred was punished. There was no communication between the Corsicans and the Genoese; and if a criminal could but escape from the one jurisdiction to the other, he was safe. This was very easily done, so that crimes from impunity were very frequent. By this equitable convention, justice has been fully administered. Perhaps indeed the residence of the French in Corsica, has, upon the whole, been an advantage to the patriots. There have been markets twice a week at the frontiers of each garrison-town, where the Corsican peasants have sold all sorts of provisions, and brought in a good many French crowns; which have been melted down into Corsican money. A cessation of arms for a few years has been a breathing time to the nation, to prepare itself for one great effort, which will probably end in a total expulsion of the Genoese. A little leisure has been given for attending to civil improvements, towards which the example of the French has in no small degree contributed. Many of the soldiers were excellent handi-craftsmen, and could instruct the natives in various arts. M. de Marboeuf entertained himself by laying out several elegant pieces of pleasure ground; and such were the humane and amicable dispositions of this respectable officer, that he was at pains to observe what things were most wanted in Corsica, and then imported them from France, in order to shew an example to the inhabitants. He introduced, in particular, the culture of potatoes, of which there were none in the island upon his arrival.[154] This root will be of considerable service to the Corsicans, it will make a wholesome variety in their food; and as there will thereby, of consequence, be less home consumption of chestnuts, they will be able to export a greater quantity of them. [Footnote 154: About the year 1750 potatoes were not commonly known in Kidderminster, as I know from an anecdote recorded by my grandfather.--ED.] M. de Marboeuf made merry upon the reports which had been circulated, that I was no less than a minister from the British court. The "Avignon Gazette" brought us one day information that the English were going to establish Un Bureau de Commerce in Corsica. "O Sir," said he, "the secret is out. I see now the motive of your destination to these parts. It is you who are to establish this Bureau de Commerce." Idle as these rumours were, it is a fact that, when I was at Genoa, Signor Gherardi, one of their secretaries of state, very seriously told me, "Monsieur, vous m'avez fait trembler quoique je ne vous ai jamais vu. Sir, you have made me tremble although I never saw you before." And when I smiled and assured him that I was just a simple traveller, he shook his head; but said, he had very authentick information concerning me. He then told me with great gravity, "That while I travelled in Corsica, I was drest in scarlet and gold; but when I payed my respects to the Supreme Council at Corte, I appeared in a full suit of black." These important truths I fairly owned to him, and he seemed to exult over me. I was more and more obliged to M. de Marboeuf. When I was allowed by my physician, to go to his Excellency's table where we had always a large company, and every thing in great magnificence, he was so careful of me, that he would not suffer me to eat any thing, or taste a glass of wine, more than was prescribed for me. He used to say, "I am here both physician and commander in chief; so you must submit." He very politely prest me to make some stay with him, saying, "We have taken care of you when sick, I think we have a claim to you for a while, when in health." His kindness followed me after I left him. It procured me an agreeable reception from M. Michel, the French chargé d'affaires at Genoa; and was the occasion of my being honoured with great civilities at Paris, by M. L'Abbé de Marboeuf conseiller d'etat, brother of the Count, and possessing similar virtues in private life. I quitted Corsica with reluctance, when I thought of the illustrious Paoli. I wrote to him from Bastia, informing him of my illness, which I said, was owing to his having made me a man of so much consequence, that instead of putting me into a snug little room, he had lodged me in the magnificent old palace, where the wind and rain entered. His answer to my first letter is written with so much spirit, that I begged his permission to publish it, which he granted in the genteelest manner, saying, "I do not remember the contents of the letter; but I have such a confidence in Mr. Boswell, that I am sure he would not publish it if there was any thing in it improper for publick view; so he has my permission." I am thus enabled to present my readers with an original letter from Paoli. "TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ., "OF AUCHINLECK, SCOTLAND. "STIMATISSIMO SIGNOR BOSWELL. "RICEVEI la lettera che mi favori da Bastia, e mi consolo assai colla notizia di essersi rimessa in perfetta salute. Buon per lei che cadde in mano di un valente medico! Quando altra volta il disgusto de' paesi colti, ed ameni lo prendesse, e lo portasse in questa infelice contrada, procurerò che sia alloggiata in camere più calde, e custodita di quelle della casa Colonna in Sollacarò; mà ella ancora dovrà contentarsi di non viaggiare quando la giornata, e la stagione vogliono che si resti in casa per attendere il tempo buono. Io resto ora impaziente per la lettera che ha promesso scrivermi da Genova, dove dubito assai che la delicatezza di quelle dame non le abbia fatto fare qualche giorno di quarantena, per ispurgarsi di ogni anche più leggiero influsso, che possa avere portato seco dell' aria di questo paese; e molto più, se le fosse venuto il capriccio di far vedere quell' abito di veluto Corso, e quel berrettone, di cui i Corsi vogliono l'origine dagli elmi antichi, ed i Genovesi lo dicono inventato da quelli, che, rubando alla strada, non vogliano essere conosciuti: come se in tempo del loro governo avessero mai avuta apprensione di castigo i ladri pubblici? Son sicuro però, che ella presso avrà il buon partito con quelle amabili, e delicate persone, insinuando alle medesime, che il cuore delle belle è fatto per la compassione, non per il disprezzo, e per la tirannia; e cosi sarà rientrato facilmente nella lor grazia. Io ritornato in Corte ebbi subito la notizia del secreto sbarco dell' Abbatucci nelle spiaggie di Solenzara. Tutte le apparenze fanno credere che il medesimo sia venuto con disegni opposti alla pubblica quiete; pure si è constituito in castello, e protesta ravvedimento. Nel venire per Bocognano si seppe, che un capitano riformato Genovese cercava compagni per assassinarmi. Non potè rinvenirne e vedendosi scoperto si pose alla macchia, dove è stato ucciso dalle squadriglie che gli tenevano dietro i magistrati delle provincie oltramontane. Queste insidie non sembrano buoni preliminari del nostro accomodamento colla republica di Genova. Io sto passando il sindicato a questa provincia di Nebbio. Verso il 10 dell' entrante anderò per l'istesso oggetto in quella del Capocorso, ed il mese di Febrajo facilmente mi trattenerò in Balagna. Ritornerò poi in Corte alla primavera, per prepararmi all' apertura della consulta generale. In ogni luogo avrò presente la sua amicizia, e sarò desideroso de' continui suoi riscontri. Frattanto ella mi creda. "Suo affettuosissimo amico "PASQUALE DE' PAOLI." "PATRIMONIO, 23 Decembre, 1765." "MUCH ESTEEMED MR. BOSWELL, "I RECEIVED the letter which you wrote to me from Bastia, and am much comforted by hearing that you are restored to perfect health. It is lucky for you that you fell into the hands of an able physician. When you shall again be seized with a disgust at improved and agreeable countries, and shall return to this ill-fated land, I will take care to have you lodged in warmer and better finished apartments than those of the house of Colonna, at Sollacarò. But you again should be satisfied not to travel when the weather and the season require one to keep within doors, and wait for a fair day. I expect with impatience the letter which you promised to write to me from Genoa, where I much suspect that the delicacy of the ladies will have obliged you to perform some days of quarantine, for purifying you from every the least infection, which you may have carried with you from the air of this country; and still more so, if you have taken the whim to show that suit of Corsican velvet[155] and that bonnet of which the Corsicans will have the origin to be from the ancient helmets, whereas the Genoese say that it was invented by those who rob on the high way, in order to disguise themselves; as if during the Genoese government publick robbers needed to fear punishment. I am sure however, that you will have taken the proper method with these amiable and delicate persons, insinuating to them, that the hearts of beauties are formed for compassion, and not for disdain and tyranny: and so you will have been easily restored to their good graces. Immediately on my return to Corte, I received information of the secret landing of Abbatucci,[156] on the coast of Solenzara. All appearances make us believe, that he is come with designs contrary to the publick quiet. He has however surrendered himself a prisoner at the castle, and protests his repentance. As I passed by Bogognano, I learnt that a disbanded Genoese officer was seeking associates to assassinate me. He could not succeed, and finding that he was discovered, he betook himself to the woods; where he has been slain by the party detached by the magistrates of the provinces on the other side of the mountains, in order to intercept him. These ambuscades do not seem to be good preliminaries towards our accommodation with the republick of Genoa. I am now holding the syndicato in this province of Nebbio. About the 10th of next month, I shall go, for the same object, into the province of Capo Corso, and during the month of February, I shall probably fix my residence in Balagna. I shall return to Corte in the spring, to prepare myself for the opening of the General Consulta.[157] Wherever I am, your friendship will be present to my mind, and I shall be desirous to continue a correspondence with you. Meanwhile believe me to be "Your most affectionate friend "PASCAL PAOLI." "PATRIMONIO, 28 December, 1765." [Footnote 155: By Corsican velvet he means the coarse stuff made in the island, which is all that the Corsicans have in stead of the fine velvet of Genoa.] [Footnote 156: Abbatucci, a Corsican of a very suspicious character.] [Footnote 157: The Parliament of the nation.--ED.] Can any thing be more condescending, and at the same time shew more the firmness of an heroick mind, than this letter? With what a gallant pleasantry does the Corsican Chief talk of his enemies! One would think that the Queens of Genoa should become Rival Queens for Paoli. If they saw him I am sure they would. I take the liberty to repeat an observation made to me by that illustrious minister,[158] whom Paoli calls the Pericles of Great Britain. It may be said of Paoli, as the Cardinal de Retz said of the great Montrose, "C'est un de ces hommes qu'on ne trouve plus que dans les Vies de Plutarque. He is one of those men who are no longer to be found but in the lives of Plutarch." [Footnote 158: The Earl of Chatham. It appears from a letter published in the correspondence of the Earl of Chatham (vol. ii., p. 388) that Boswell had an interview granted him by Pitt. Boswell writes:--"I have had the honour to receive your most obliging letter, and can with difficulty restrain myself from paying you compliments on the very genteel manner in which you are pleased to treat me.... I hope that I may with propriety talk to Mr. Pitt of the views of the illustrious Paoli."--ED.] THE END. APPENDIX A. Under the head of learning I must observe that there is a printing-house at Corte, and a bookseller's shop, both kept by a Luccese, a man of some capacity in his business. He has very good types; but he prints nothing more than the publick manifestoes, calendars of feast days, and little practical devotional pieces, as also the "Corsican Gazette," which is published by authority, from time to time, just as news are collected; for it contains nothing but the news of the island. It admits no foreign intelligence, nor private anecdotes; so that there will sometimes be an interval of three months during which no news-papers are published. It will be long before the Corsicans arrive at the refinement in conducting a news-paper, of which London affords an unparalleled perfection; for I do believe an English news-paper is the most various and extraordinary composition that mankind ever produced. An English news-paper, while it informs the judicious of what is really doing in Europe, can keep pace with the wildest fancy in feigned adventures, and amuse the most desultory taste with essays on all subjects, and in every stile.--Boswell's "Account of Corsica," page 197. APPENDIX B. There are some extraordinary customs which still subsist in Corsica. In particular they have several strange ceremonies at the death of their relations. When a man dies, especially if he has been assassinated, his widow with all the married women in the village accompany the corpse to the grave, where, after various howlings, and other expressions of sorrow, the women fall upon the widow, and beat and tear her in a most miserable manner. Having thus satisfied their grief and passion, they lead her back again, covered with blood and bruises, to her own habitation. This I had no opportunity of seeing while I was in the island; but I have it from undoubted authority.--Boswell's "Account of Corsica," page 221. APPENDIX C. Having said so much of the genius and character of the Corsicans, I must beg leave to present my readers with a very distinguished Corsican character, that of Signor Clemente de' Paoli, brother of the General. This gentleman is the eldest son of the old General Giacinto Paoli. He is about fifty years of age, of a middle size and dark complexion, his eyes are quick and piercing, and he has something in the form of his mouth which renders his appearance very particular. His understanding is of the first rate; and he has by no means suffered it to lie neglected. He was married, and has an only daughter, the wife of Signor Barbaggi one of the first men in the island. For these many years past, Signor Clementi, being in a state of widowhood, has resided at Rostino, from whence the family of Paoli comes. He lives there in a very retired manner. He is of a Saturnine disposition, and his notions of religion are rather gloomy and severe. He spends his whole time in study, except what he passes at his devotions. These generally take up six or eight hours every day; during all which time he is in church, and before the altar, in a fixed posture, with his hands and eyes lifted up to heaven, with solemn fervour. He prescribes to himself, an abstemious, rigid course of life; as if he had taken the vows of some of the religious orders. He is much with the Franciscans, who have a convent at Rostino. He wears the common coarse dress of the country, and it is difficult to distinguish him from one of the lowest of the people. When he is in company he seldom speaks, and except upon important occasions, never goes into publick, or even to visit his brother at Corte. When danger calls, however, he is the first to appear in the defence of his country. He is then foremost in the ranks, and exposes himself to the hottest action; for religious fear is perfectly consistent with the greatest bravery; according to the famous line of the pious Racine, "Je crains DIEU, cher Abner; et n'ai point d'autre crainte." "I fear my GOD; and Him alone I fear." --A FRIEND. In the beginning of an engagement he is generally calm; and will frequently offer up a prayer to heaven, for the person at whom he is going to fire; saying he is sorry to be under the necessity of depriving him of life; but that he is an enemy to Corsica, and Providence has sent him in his way, in order that he may be prevented from doing any farther mischief; that he hopes GOD will pardon his crimes, and take him to himself. After he has seen two or three of his countrymen fall at his side, the case alters. His eyes flame with grief and indignation, and he becomes like one furious, dealing vengeance every where around him. His authority in the council is not less than his valour in the field. His strength of judgement and extent of knowledge, joined to the singular sanctity of his character, give him great weight in all the publick consultations; and his influence is of considerable service to his brother the General.--Boswell's "Account of Corsica," page 222. REVIEWS. DR. JOHNSON: HIS FRIENDS AND HIS CRITICS. BY GEORGE BIRKBECK HILL, D.C.L.[159] [Footnote 159: Smith, Elder, and Co. 1878] OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. "Seldom has a pleasanter commentary been written on a literary masterpiece.... What its author has aimed at has been the reproduction of the atmosphere in which Johnson lived; and he has succeeded so well that we shall look with interest for other chapters of Johnsonian literature which he promises.... Throughout the author of this pleasant volume has spared no pains to enable the present generation to realise more completely the sphere, so near and so far from this latter half of the nineteenth century, in which Johnson talked and taught."--SATURDAY REVIEW, _July 13th, 1878_. "Dr. Hill has written out of his ripe scholarship several interesting disquisitions, all tending to a better understanding of the man and his times, and all written with the ease and the absence of pretence which come of long familiarity with a subject and complete mastery of its facts."--THE EXAMINER, _July 27th, 1878_. "Dr. Hill has published a very interesting little book.... All the chapters are interesting in a high degree."--WESTMINSTER REVIEW, _October, 1878_. "We think Dr. Hill has succeeded in bringing before his readers, vividly and exactly, both the College of Johnson's youth and the University of his later years.... We think he clearly establishes that Boswell, Murphy, and Hawkins were all alike wrong in supposing that the celebrated passage in Chesterfield's letters describing the 'respectable Hottentot' refers to Johnson.... He devotes a chapter each to Langton and Beauclerk, in which he gathers together the various scattered references to them by Boswell and other biographers of Johnson and combines them into admirable sketches of each of these friends of Johnson."--WESTMINSTER REVIEW, _January, 1879_. "With great industry Dr. Hill has illustrated the condition of Oxford as a University in the last century.... His first chapter ... embodies, in a lively and entertaining form, a highly instructive picture of the University, the materials for which only laborious industry could have collected."--THE SPECTATOR, _August 17th, 1878_. "The glimpses which these essays give us of the great men of the days of Burke, Reynolds, and Goldsmith, of Oxford, of London, and of the country, are as full of interest as the most powerful romance. The opening paper on the Oxford of Johnson's time is one of the longest, best, and most original of the whole set."--THE STANDARD, _August 12th, 1878_. "Dr. Hill is at his best in examining the views of Johnson's critics. Macaulay's rough and ready assertions are subjected to a searching criticism, and Mr. Carlyle's estimate of Johnson's position in London society in 1763, if not altogether destroyed, is severely damaged."--THE ACADEMY, _July 27th, 1878_. "Dr. Hill's book is, in fact, a supplement to Boswell, is brimful of original and independent research, and displays so complete a mastery of the whole subject, that it must be regarded as only less essential to a true understanding of Johnson's life and character than Boswell himself."--THE WORLD, _July 17th, 1878_. "Dr. Hill's 'Johnson: his Friends and his Critics' is a volume which no reader, however familiar with Boswell, will think superfluous. Its method is, in the main, critical; and even so far it possesses striking novelty from the tendency of the writer's judgment to obviously juster estimates than those of previous critics, both friendly and unfriendly."--THE DAILY NEWS, _August 24th, 1878_. "The charming papers ... now published by Dr. Hill, under the title of 'Dr. Johnson: his Friends and his Critics,' will be, to admirers of the great eighteenth century lexicographer, like the discovery of some new treasure.... It is not too much to say that it is a volume which will henceforth be indispensable to all who would form a full conception of Johnson's many-sided personality."--THE GRAPHIC, _August 3rd, 1878_. "Dr. Hill's work is certainly not the outcome of any sudden itch to give forth a fresh estimate of the great lexicographer, but the result of long and careful studies and researches; very natural indeed in a member of Johnson's College at Oxford, Pembroke, but not such as any man, that was not gifted with the kind of genius which is patience, would be inclined to undertake. The first chapter, 'Oxford in Dr. Johnson's Time,' is one of the most admirable summaries of the kind we have ever read--doubly admirable here, as forming so fitting and illustrative an introduction to his work, which is very complete and thorough."--THE BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW, _October, 1878_. "Dr. Hill has produced an entertaining and instructive book, based on careful and minute research, which has been prompted by keen interest in his subject. The introductory sketch of Oxford in Johnson's time is admirably executed."--THE SCOTSMAN, _August 8th, 1878_. "Every reader who would be fully informed about the period of English literature, and the men and women who then figured in society, must read Dr. Hill's volume, or miss much that is essential to a full comprehension of it."--THE NONCONFORMIST, _August 28th, 1878_. "This work is the result of long study, has been accomplished with care and diligence, and is not only in itself a piece of very pleasant reading, but tends to place before us, in a truer light than anything that has before been written, the character of a man who did so much for the English language, and who deserves better than to be forgotten by his countrymen."--THE MORNING POST, _October 15th, 1878_. 
20296	----	Transcriber's note: Original spellings (and their inconsistencies) have been maintained. A few obvious printer's error have been corrected: a list of this corrections can be found at the end of the text. THE STRANGER IN FRANCE: OR, A TOUR FROM DEVONSHIRE TO PARIS. ILLUSTRATED BY ENGRAVINGS IN AQUA TINTA OF SKETCHES, TAKEN ON THE SPOT, BY JOHN CARR, Esq. LONDON: PRINTED FOR J. JOHNSON, NO. 72, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD. SOLD ALSO BY W. HANNAFORD, TOTNES. _Bryer, Printer, Bridge Street, Black Friars._ 1803. PREFACE. The little tour which gave birth to the following remarks, was taken immediately after the exchange of the ratifications of a peace, necessary, but not inglorious to my country, after a contest unexampled in its cause, calamity, extension, vicissitudes and glory; amidst a people who, under the influence of a political change, hitherto unparallelled, were to be approached as an order of beings, exhibiting a moral and political form before but little known to themselves and to the world, in the abrupt removal of habits and sentiments which had silently and uninterruptedly taken deep root in the soil of ages. During a separation of ten years, we have received very little account of this extraordinary people, which could be relied upon. Dissimilar sensations, excited by their principles and proceedings, ever partially and irregularly known, have depicted unaccording representations of them, and, in the sequel, have exhibited rather a high-coloured, fanciful delineation, than a plain and faithful resemblance of the original. Many are the persons who have been thus misled. These fugitive sketches, in which an attempt is made to delineate, just as they occurred, those scenes which, to _my_ mind at least, were new and interesting, were originally penned for the private perusal of those whom I esteem; and by their persuasion they are now offered to the public eye. Amongst them I must be permitted to indulge in the pride and pleasure of enumerating William Hayley, esq. a name familiar and dear to every elegant and polished mind. Enlightened by his emendations, and supported by the cherishing spirit of his approval, I approach, with a more subdued apprehension, the tribunal of public opinion; and to my friends I dedicate this humble result of a short relaxation from the duties of an anxious and laborious profession. If, by submitting to their wishes, I have erred, I have only to offer, that it is my first, and shall be my last offence. _Totnes, August, 1802._ JOHN CARR. [Symbol: right pointing index] The engravings which accompany this work, are of sketches made on the spot by an untutored pencil, and are introduced for the purpose of illustration only. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. _Torr Abbey.--Cap of Liberty.--Anecdote of English Prejudice.--Fire Ships.--Southampton River.--Netley Abbey._ page 1. CHAPTER II. _French Emigrants.--Scene on the Quay of Southampton.--Sail for Havre.--Aged French Priest.--Their respectable Conduct in England.--Their Gratitude.--Make the Port of Havre.--Panic of the Emigrants.--Landing described.--Hôtel de la Paix.--Breakfast Knife.--Municipality._ p. 6. CHAPTER III. _Passports procured.--Coins.--Town of Havre.--Carts.--Citoyen.--Honfleur.--Deserters.--Prefect de Marine.--Ville de Sandwich.--French Farmers.--Sir Sydney Smith.--Catherine de Medicis.--Light Houses.--Rafts._ p. 20. CHAPTER IV. _Cheap travelling to Paris.--Diligences.--French Postilions.--Spanish Postilions.--Norman Horses.--Bolbec.--Natives of Caux.--Ivetot.--Return of Religion.--Santerre.--Jacobin.--The Mustard-pot.--National Property._ p. 31. CHAPTER V. _A female french fib.--Military and Civil Procession.--Madame G.--The Review.--Mons. l'Abbé.--Bridge of Boats.--The Quay.--Exchange.--Theatre.--Rouen.--Cathedral.--St. Ouens.--Prince of Waldec.--Maid of Orleans._ p. 40. CHAPTER VI. _First Consul's Advertisement.--Something ridiculous.--Eggs.--Criminal Military Tribunal.--French Female Confidence.--Town House.--Convent of Jesuits.--Guillotine.--Governor W----._ p. 50. CHAPTER VII. _Filial Piety.--St. Catharine's Mount.--Madame Phillope.--General Ruffin's Trumpet.--Generosity.--Love Infectious.--Masons and Gardeners._ p. 62. CHAPTER VIII. _Early dinner.--Mante.--Frost.--Duke de Sully.--Approach the Capital.--Norman Barrier.--Paris.--Hôtel de Rouen.--Palais Royal._ p. 72. CHAPTER IX. _French Reception.--Voltaire.--Restaurateur.--Consular Guard.--Music.--Venetian Horses.--Gates of the Palace.--Gardens of the Thuilleries.--Statues.--The faithful Vase.--The Sabine Picture.--Monsieur Perrègaux.--Marquis de Chatelet.--Madame Perrègaux.--Beaux and Belles of Paris._ p. 79. CHAPTER X. _Large Dogs.--A Plan for becoming quickly acquainted with Paris.--Pantheon.--Tombs of Voltaire and Rousseau.--Politeness of an Emigrant.--The Beauty of France.--Beauty evanescent.--Place de Carousel.--Infernal Machine.--Fouché.--Seine.--Washerwomen.--Fisherwomen.--Baths._ p. 90. CHAPTER XI. _David.--Place de la Concorde.--L'Église de Madeleine.--Print-shops.--Notre Dame.--Museum or Palace of Arts.--Hall of Statues.--Laocoon.--Belvidere Apollo.--Socrates._ p. 101. CHAPTER XII. _Bonaparte.--Artillery.--Mr. Pitt.--Newspapers.--Archbishop of Paris.--Consular Colours.--Religion.--Consular Conversion.--Madame Bonaparte.--Consular Modesty.--Separate Beds.--A Country Scene.--Connubial Affection.--Female Bravery._ p. 113. CHAPTER XIII. _Breakfast.--Warmth of French Expression.--Rustic Eloquence.--Curious Cause assigned for the late extraordinary Frost.--Madame R----.--Paul I.--Tivoli.--Frescati._ p. 128. CHAPTER XIV. _Convent of blue Nuns.--Duchesse de Biron.--The bloody Key.--Courts of Justice.--Public Library.--Gobelines.--Miss Linwood.--Garden of Plants.--French Accommodation.--Boot Cleaners.--Cat and Dog Shearers.--Monsieur S---- and Family._ p. 140. CHAPTER XV. _Civility of a Sentinel.--The Hall of the Legislative Assembly.--British House of Commons.--Captain Bergeret.--The Temple.--Sir Sydney Smith's Escape.--Colonel Phillipeaux._ p. 150 CHAPTER XVI. _A fashionable Poem.--Frere Rickart.--Religion.--Hôtel des Invalides.--Hall of Victory.--Enemies' Colours.--Sulky Appearance of an English Jack and Ensign.--Indecorum.--The aged Captain.--Military School.--Champ de Mars.--The Garden of Mousseaux._ p. 163. CHAPTER XVII. _Curious Method of raising Hay.--Lucien Bonaparte's Hôtel.--Opera.--Consular Box.--Madame Bonaparte's Box.--Feydeau Theatre.--Belle Vue.--Versailles.--The Palace of the Petit Trianon.--The Grounds._ p. 175. CHAPTER XVIII. _Bonaparte's Talents in Finance.--Garrick and the Madman.--Palace of the Conservative Senate.--Process of transferring Oil Paintings from Wood to Canvas.--The Dinner Knife.--Commodities.--Hall of the National Convention.--The Minister Talleyrand's Levee._ p. 188. CHAPTER XIX. _The College of the Deaf and Dumb.--Abbé Sicard.--Bagatelle.--Police.--Grand National Library.--Bonaparte's Review.--Tambour Major of the Consular Regiment.--Restoration of Artillery Colours._ p. 201. CHAPTER XX. _Abbè Sieyes.--Consular Procession to the Council Chamber.--10th of August, 1792.--Celerity of Mons. Fouche's Information.--The two Lovers.--Cabinet of Mons. le Grand.--Self-prescribing Physician.--Bust of Robespierre.--His Lodgings.--Corn Hall.--Museum of French Monuments.--Revolutionary Agent.--Lovers of married Women._ p. 214. CHAPTER XXI. _Picturesque and Mechanical Theatre.--Filtrating and purifying Vases.--English Jacobins.--A Farewell.--Messagerie.--MalMaison.--Forest of Evreux.--Lower Normandy.--Caen.--Hon. T. Erskine.--A Ball.--The Keeper of the Sachristy of Notre Dame.--The two blind Beggars.--Ennui.--St. Lo.--Cherbourg.--England._ p. 230. GENERAL REMARKS. p. 252. [Illustration: _Torr Abbey_] THE STRANGER IN FRANCE CHAPTER I. _Torr Abbey.--Cap of Liberty.--Anecdote of English Prejudice.--Fire Ships.--Southampton River.--Netley Abbey._ It was a circumstance, which will be memorable with me, as long as I live, and pleasant to my feelings, as often as I recur to it, that part of my intended excursion to the Continent was performed in the last ship of war, which, after the formal confirmations of the peace, remained, of that vast naval armament, which, from the heights of Torbay, for so many years, presented to the astonished and admiring eye, a spectacle at once of picturesque beauty, and national glory. It was the last attendant in the train of retiring war. Under the charming roof of Torr Abbey, the residence of George Cary, esq., I passed a few days, until the Megæra was ready to sail for Portsmouth, to be paid off, the commander of which, captain Newhouse, very politely offered to convey my companion, captain W. Cary, and myself, to that port. In this beautiful spot, the gallant heroes of our navy have often found the severe and perilous duties of the boisterous element alleviated by attentions, which, in their splendid and cordial display, united an elegant taste to a noble spirit of hospitality. In the Harleian Tracts there is a short, but rather curious account preserved of the sensation produced at the Abbey on the 5th of November, 1688, after the prince of Orange had entered the bay with his fleet, on their passage to Brixham, where he landed:-- "The prince commanded captain M---- to search the lady Cary's house, at Torr Abbey, for arms and horses. The lady entertaining them civilly, said her husband was gone to Plymouth: they brought from thence some horses, and a few arms, but gave no further disturbance to the lady or her house." Throughout this embarrassing interview, the lady Cary appears to have conducted herself with great temper, dignity and resolution, whilst, on the other hand, the chaplain of that day, whose opinions were not very favourable to the revolution, unlike his present amiable and enlightened successor[1], left his lady in the midst of her perplexities, and fled. [1] Rev. John Halford. In the Abbey, I was much pleased with an interesting, though not very ornamental trophy of the glorious victory of Aboukir. The truckle heads of the masts of the Aquilon, a french ship of the line, which struck to the brave captain Lewis, in that ever memorable battle, were covered with the bonnet rouge; one of these caps of liberty, surmounted with the british flag, has been committed to the care of the family, by that heroic commander, and now constitutes a temporary ornament of their dining-room. Here we laid in provision for our little voyage, without, however, feeling the same apprehension, which agitated the mind of a fair damsel, in the service of a lady of rank who formerly resided in my neighbourhood, who, preparing to attend her mistress to the Continent, and having heard from the jolly historians of the kitchen, that the food in France was chiefly supplied by the croaking inhabitants of the green and standing pool, contrived, very carefully, to carry over a piece of homebred pork, concealed in her workbag. Early in the morning after we set sail, we passed through the Needles, which saved us a very considerable circuitous sail round the southern side of the Isle of Wight, a passage which the late admiral Macbride first successfully attempted, for vessels of war, in a ship of the line. The vessel, in which we sailed, was a fireship; a costly instrument of destruction, which has never been applied during the recent war, and only once, and that unsuccessfully, during the preceding one. We had several of them in commission, although they are confessedly of little utility in these times, and from the immense stores of combustibles with which they are charged, threaten only peril to the commander and his crew. We soon after dropped anchor, and proceeded to Portsmouth, in search of a packet for Havre-de-Grace. In the street, our trunks were seized by the custom-house officers, whilst conveying to the inn, but after presenting our keys, and requesting immediate search and restoration, they were returned to us without further annoyance. Finding that the masters of the french packets were undetermined when they should sail, we resolved upon immediately leaving this celebrated seaport, and proceeding by water to Southampton, distant about twenty-four miles; where, after a very unpleasant passage, from its blowing with considerable violence soon after we left Portsmouth, we arrived, in a little wherry, about twelve o'clock at night, at the Vine inn, which is very conveniently situated for passengers by the packets. It will not be required of me, to attempt a minute description of the Southampton river, at a time when I expected, with some reason, as I afterwards understood, to sink to the bottom of it. An observation very natural to persons in our situation occurred to me all the way, viz. that the shores seemed to be too far distant from each other, and that had there been less water, the scenery would have been more delightful; an observation which, however, the next day confirmed, when it presented the safe and tranquil appearance of a mirror. [Illustration: _Southampton._] Finding that the packet for France was not likely to sail immediately, we hired a boat, and proceeded down the river, to view the beautiful ruins of Netley Abbey, in the great court of which we dined, under the shade of aged limes, and amidst the flappings of its feathered and restless tenantry. As I am no great admirer of tedious details, I shall not attempt an antiquarian history of this delightful spot. I shall leave it to more circumstantial travellers, to enumerate the genealogies of the worthies who occupied it at various eras, and to relate, like a monumental entablature, when, where, and how they lived and died; it will be sufficient to observe, that the site of this romantic abode was granted by Henry VIII, in 1757, to a sir William Paulet, and that after having had many merry monks for its masters, who, no doubt, performed their matutinæ laudes and nocturnæ vigiliæ with devout exactness; that it is at length in the possession of Mr. Dance, who has a very fine and picturesque estate on that side of the river, of which these elegant ruins constitute the chief ornament. The church still exhibits a beautiful specimen of gothic architecture, but its tottering remains will rapidly share the fate of the neighbouring pile, which time has prostrated on the earth, and covered with his thickest shade of ivy. Our watermen gave us a curious description of this place, and amused us not a little with their ridiculous anacronisms. "I tell you what," said one of them, contradicting the other, "you are in the wrong, Bob, indeed you are wrong, don't mislead them gentlemen, that there Abbey is in the true roman style, and was built by a man they call----, but that's neither here nor there, I forget the name, however, its a fine place, and universally allowed to be very old. I frequently rows gentlefolks there, and picks up a great deal about it." On our return the tide was at its height, the sun was setting in great glory, the sky and water seemed blended in each other, the same red rich tint reigned throughout, the vessels at anchor appeared suspended in the air, the spires of the churches were tipped with the golden ray; a scene of more beauty, richness, and tranquillity I never beheld. CHAPTER II. _French Emigrants.--Scene on the Quay of Southampton.--Sail for Havre.--Aged French Priest.--Their respectable Conduct in England.--Their Gratitude.--Make the Port of Havre.--Panic of the Emigrants.--Landing described.--Hotel de la Paix.--Breakfast Knife.--Municipality._ During the whole of the second day after our arrival, the town of Southampton was in a bustle, occasioned by the flocking in of a great number of french emigrants, who were returning to their own country, in consequence of a mild decree, which had been passed in their favour. The scene was truly interesting, and the sentiment which it excited, delightful to the heart. A respectable curé, who dined in the same room with us at our inn, was observed to eat very little; upon being pressed to enlarge his meal, this amiable man said, with tears starting in his eyes, "Alas! I have no appetite; a very short time will bring me amongst the scenes of my nativity, my youth, and my happiness, from which a remorseless revolution has parted me for these ten long years; I shall ask for those who are dear to me, and find them for ever gone. Those who are left will fill my mind with the most afflicting descriptions; no, no, I cannot eat, my good sir." About noon, they had deposited their baggage upon the quay, which formed a pile of aged portmanteaus, and battered trunks. Parties remained to protect them, previous to their embarkation. The sun was intensely hot, they were seated under the shade of old umbrellas, which looked as if they had been the companions of their banishment. Their countenances appeared strongly marked with the pious character of resignation, over which were to be seen a sweetness, and corrected animation, which seemed to depict at once the soul's delight, of returning to its native home, planted wherever it may be, and the regret of leaving a nation, which, in the hour of flight and misery, had nobly enrolled them in the list of her own children, and had covered them with protection. To the eternal honour of these unhappy, but excellent people, be it said, that they have proved themselves worthy of being received in such a sanctuary. Our country has enjoyed the benefit of their unblemished morals, and their mild, polite, and unassuming manners, and wherever destiny has placed them, they have industriously relieved the national burden of their support by diffusing the knowledge of a language, which good sense, and common interest, should long since have considered as a valuable branch of education. To those of my friends, who exercise the sacred functions of religion, as established in this country, I need not offer an apology, for paying an humble tribute of common justice to these good, and persecuted men; who, from habit, pursue a mode of worship, a little differing in form, but terminating in the same great and glorious centre. The enlightened liberality of the british clergy will unite, in paying that homage to them, which they, in my presence, have often with enthusiasm, and rapture, offered up to the purity, and sanctity of their characters. Many of them informed me, that they had received the most serviceable favours from our clergy, administered with equal delicacy, and munificence. Amongst these groups were some females, the wives and daughters of toulonese merchants, who left their city when lord Hood abandoned that port. The politeness and attention, which were paid to them by the men, were truly pleasing. It was the good breeding of elegant habits, retaining all their softness in the midst of adversity, sweetened with the sympathy of mutual and similar sufferings. They had finished their dinner, and were drinking their favourite beverage of coffee. Poor wanderers! the water was scarcely turned brown with the few grains which remained of what they had purchased for their journey. I addressed them, by telling them, that I had the happiness of being a passenger with them, in the same vessel; they said they were fortunate to have in their company one of that nation, which would be dear to them as long as they lived. A genteel middle aged woman offered to open a little parcel of fresh coffee, which they had purchased in the town for the voyage, and begged to make some for me. By her manner, she seemed to wish me to consider it, more as the humble offering of gratitude, than of politeness, or perhaps both were blended in the offer. In the afternoon, their baggage was searched by the revenue officers, who, on this occasion, exercised a liberal gentleness, which gave but little trouble, and no pain. They who brought nothing into a country but the recollection of their miseries, were not very likely to carry much out of it, but the remembrance of its generosity. At seven o'clock in the evening we were all on board, and sailed with a gentle breeze down the river: we carried with us a good stock of vegetables, which we procured fresh, from the admirable market of Southampton. Upon going down into the cabin, I was struck, and at first shocked, with seeing a very aged man, stretched at his length upon pillows and clothes, placed on the floor, attended by two clergymen, and some women, who, in their attentions to this apparently dying old gentleman, seemed to have forgotten their own comfortless situation, arising from so many persons being crowded in so small a space, for our numbers above and below amounted to sixty. Upon inquiry, they informed me, that the person whose appearance had so affected me, had been a clergyman of great repute and esteem at Havre, that he was then past the age of ninety five years, scarcely expected to survive our short voyage, but was anxious to breathe his last in his own country. They spoke of him, as a man who in other times, and in the fulness of his faculties, had often from his pulpit, struck with terror and contrition, the trembling souls of his auditors, by the force of his exalted eloquence; who had embellished the society in which he moved, with his elegant attainments; and who had relieved the unhappy, with an enlarged heart and munificent hand--A mere mass of misery, and helpless infirmities, remained of all these noble qualities! During the early part of the night, we made but little way--behind, the dark shadowy line of land faded in mist; before us, the moon spread a stream of silver light upon the sea. The soft stillness of this repose of nature was broken only by the rippling of the light wave against the head and sides of the vessel, and by the whistling of the helmsman, who, with the helm between his knees, and his arms crossed, alternately watching the compass and the sail, thus invoked the presence of the favouring breeze. Leaving him, and some few of our unfortunate comrades, to whom the motion of the sea was more novel than gratifying, we descended into the steerage, (for our births in the cabin were completely occupied by females). As we were going down the ladder, the appearance of so many recumbent persons, faintly distinguishable by the light of a solitary taper, reminded us of a floating catacomb; here, crawling under a cot which contained two very corpulent priests, upon a spare cable, wrapt up in our own great coats, we resigned ourselves to rest. The next day, without having made much progress in our little voyage, we arose, and assembled round the companion, which formed our breakfast table; at dinner, we were enabled to spread a handsome table of refreshments, to which we invited all our fellow passengers who were capable of partaking of them, many of whom were preparing to take their scanty meal, removed from us at the head of the vessel. For this little act of common civility, we were afterwards abundantly repaid, by the thankfulness of all, and the serviceable attentions of some of our charming guests, when we landed; an instance of which I shall afterwards have occasion to mention. The wind slackened during the day, but in the evening it blew rather fresh, and about nine o'clock the next morning, after a night passed something in the same way as the former, we were awakened being informed that we were within in a league of Havre; news by no means disagreeable, after the dead dulness of a sea calm. The appearance of the coast was high, rugged, and rocky; to use a good marine expression, it looked ironbound all along shore. To the east, upon an elevated point of land, are two noble light houses, of very beautiful construction, which I shall have occasion to describe hereafter. At some little distance, we saw considerable flights of wild ducks. The town and bason lie round the high western point from the lights, below which there is a fine pebbled beach. The quays are to the right and left within the pier, upon the latter of which there is a small round tower. It was not the intention of our packet captain to go within the pier, for the purpose of saving the port-anchorage dues, which amount to eight pounds sterling, but a government boat came off, and ordered the vessel to hawl close up to the quay, an order which was given in rather a peremptory manner. Upon our turning the pier, we saw as we warped up to the quay, an immense motley crowd, flocking down to view us. A panic ran throughout our poor fellow passengers. From the noise and confusion on shore, they expected that some recent revolution had occurred, and that they were upon the point of experiencing all the calamities, which they had before fled from; they looked pale and agitated upon each other, like a timid and terrified flock of sheep, when suddenly approached by their natural enemy the wolf. It turned out, however, that mere curiosity, excited by the display of english colours, had assembled this formidable rabble, and that the order which we received from the government boat, was given for the purpose of compelling the captain to incur, and consequently to pay, the anchorage dues. In a moment we were beset by a parcel of men and boys, half naked, and in wooden shoes, who hallooing and "sacre dieuing" each other most unmercifully, began, without further ceremony, to seize upon every trunk within their reach, which they threw into their boats lying alongside. By a well-timed rap upon the knuckles of one of these marine functionaries, we prevented our luggage from sharing the same fate. It turned out, that there was a competition for carrying our trunks on shore, for the sake of an immoderate premium, which they expected to receive, and which occasioned our being assailed in this violent manner. Our fellow-passengers were obliged to go on shore with these vociferous watermen, who had the impudence and inhumanity to charge them two livres each, for conveying them to the landing steps, a short distance of about fifty yards. Upon their landing, we were much pleased to observe that the people offered them neither violence nor insult. They were received with a sullen silence, and a lane was made for them to pass into the town. The poor old clergyman who had survived the passage, was left on board, in the care of two benevolent persons, until he could be safely and comfortably conveyed on shore. We soon afterwards followed our fellow-passengers in the captain's boat, by which plan we afforded these extortioners a piece of salutary information, very necessary to be made known to them, that although we were english, we were not to be imposed upon. I could not help thinking it rather unworthy of our neighbours to exact from us such heavy port dues, when our english demands of a similar nature, are so very trifling. For such an import, a vessel of the republic, upon its arrival in any of the english ports, would only pay a few shillings. Perhaps this difference will be equalized in some shape, by the impending commercial treaty, otherwise, a considerable partial advantage will accrue to the french from their passage packets. Upon our landing, and entering the streets, I was a little struck with the appearance of the women, who were habited in a coarse red camlet jacket, with a high apron before, long flying lappets to their caps, and were mounted upon large heavy wooden shoes, upon each of which a worsted tuft was fixed, in rude imitation of a rose. The appearance and clatter of these sabots, as they are called, leave upon the mind an impression of extreme poverty and wretchedness. They are, however, more favoured than the lower order of females in Scotland. Upon a brisk sprightly chamber-maid entering my room one day at an inn in Glasgow, I heard a sound which resembled the pattering of some web-footed bird, when in the act of climbing up the miry side of a pond. I looked down upon the feet of this bonny lassie, and found that their only covering was procured from the mud of the high street--adieu! to the tender eulogies of the pastoral reed! I have never thought of a shepherdess since with pleasure. I could not help observing the ease, dexterity, and swiftness, with which a single man conveyed all our luggage, which was very heavy, to the custom-house, and afterwards to the inn, in a wheelbarrow, which differed from ours, only in being larger, and having two elastic handles of about nine feet long. At the custom-house, notwithstanding what the english papers have said of the conduct observed here, we were very civilly treated, our boxes were only just opened, and some of our packages were not examined at all. Away we had them whirled, to the Hôtel de la Paix, the front of which looks upon the wet-dock, and is embellished with a large board, upon which is recorded, in yellow characters, as usual, the superior advantages of this house over every other hôtel in Havre. Upon our arrival, we were ushered up a large dirty staircase into a lofty room, upon the first floor, all the windows of which were open, divided, as they always are in France, in the middle, like folding doors; the floor was tiled, a deal table, some common rush chairs, two very fine pier glasses, and chandeliers to correspond, composed our motley furniture. I found it to be a good specimen of french inns, in general. We were followed by our hostess, the porter, two cooks, with caps on their heads, which had once been white, and large knives in their hands, who were succeeded by two chamber-maids, all looking in the greatest hurry and confusion, and all talking together, with a velocity, and vehemence, which rendered the faculty of hearing almost a misfortune. They appeared highly delighted to see us, talked of our dress, sir Sidney Smith, the blockade, the noble english, the peace, and a train of etceteras. At length we obtained a little cessation, of which we immediately seized the advantage, by directing them to show us to our bedrooms, to procure abundance of water hot and cold, to get us a good breakfast as soon as possible, and to prepare a good dinner for us at four o'clock. Amidst a peal of tongues, this clamorous procession retired. After we had performed our necessary ablutions, and had enjoyed the luxury of fresh linen, we sat down to some excellent coffee, accompanied with boiled milk, long, delicious rolls, and tolerably good butter, but found no knives upon the table; which, by the by, every traveller in France is presumed to carry with him: having mislaid my own, I requested the maid to bring me one. The person of this damsel, would certainly have suffered by a comparison with those fragrant flowers, to which young poets resemble their beloved mistresses; as soon as I had preferred my prayer, she very deliberately drew from her pocket a large clasp knife, which, after she had wiped on her apron, she presented to me, with a "voila monsieur." I received this dainty present, with every mark of due obligation, accompanied, at the same time, with a resolution not to use it, particularly as my companions (for we had two other english gentlemen with us) had directed her to bring some others to them. This delicate instrument was as savoury as its mistress, amongst the various fragrancies which it emitted, garlic seemed to have the mastery. About twelve o'clock we went to the hall of the municipality, to procure our passports for the interior, and found it crowded with people upon the same errand. We made our way through them into a very handsome antiroom, and thence, by a little further perseverance, into an inner room, where the mayor and his officers were seated at a large table covered with green cloth. To show what reliance is to be placed upon the communications of english newspapers, I shall mention the following circumstance: my companion had left England, without a passport, owing to the repeated assurances of both the ministerial and opposition prints, and also of a person high in administration, that none were necessary. The first question propounded to us by the secretary was, "citizens, where are your passports?" I had furnished myself with one; but upon hearing this question, I was determined not to produce it, from an apprehension that I should cover my friend, who had none, with suspicion, so we answered, that in England they were not required of frenchmen, and that we had left our country with official assurances that they would not be demanded of us here. They replied to us, by reading a decree, which rigorously required them of foreigners, entering upon the territories of the republic, and they assured us, that this regulation was at that moment reciprocal with every other power, and with England in particular. The decree of course closed the argument. We next addressed ourselves to their politeness (forgetting that the revolution had made sad inroads upon it) and requested them, as we had been misled, and had no other views of visiting the country, but those of pleasure, and improvement, that they would be pleased to grant us our passports for the interior. To this address, these high authorities, who seemed not much given to "the melting mood," after making up a physiognomy, as severe, and as _iron bound_ as their coast, laconically observed, that the laws of the republic must be enforced, that they should write to our embassador to know who we were, and that in the mean time they would make out our passports for the town, the barriers of which we were not to pass. Accordingly, a little fat gentleman, in a black coat, filled up these official instruments, which were copied into their books, and both signed by us; he then commenced our "signalement," which is a regular descriptive portrait of the head of the person who has thus the honour of sitting to the municipal portrait painters of the département de la Seine inferieure. This portrait is intended, as will be immediately anticipated, to afford encreased facilities to all national guards, maréchaussées, thief takers, &c. for placing in "durance vile" the unfortunate original, should he violate the laws. The signalement is added in the margin, to the passport, and also registered in the municipal records, which, from their size, appeared to contain a greater number of heads and faces, thus depicted, than any museum or gallery I ever beheld. How correct the likenesses in general are, I leave to the judgment of others, after I have informed them, that the hazle eyes of my friend were described "yeux bleu" in this masterly delineation. If the dead march in Saul had been playing before us all the way, we could not have marched more gravely, or rather sulkily, to our inn. Before us, we had the heavy prospect of spending about ten days in this town, not very celebrated for either beauty, or cleanliness, until the municipality could receive an account of us, from our embassador, who knew no more of us than they did. The other english gentlemen were in the same predicament. However we determined to pursue the old adage, that what is without remedy, should be without regret, and, english like, grew very merry over a good dinner, consisting of soups, and meat, and fowls, and fish, and vegetables (for such is the order of a french dinner) confectionary and a desert, accompanied with good Burgundy, and excellent Champaign. Our misfortunes must plead our excuse, if the dinner is considered extravagant. Uncle Toby went to sleep when he was unhappy; we solicited consolation in another way. Our signalements afforded us much diversion, which at length was a little augmented by a plan which I mentioned, as likely to furnish us with the means of our liberation. After dinner I waited upon a young gentleman who was under the care of a very respectable merchant, to whom I had the good fortune to have letters of introduction. Through his means I was introduced to Mons. de la M----, who received me with great politeness. In the hurry and occupations of very extensive commercial pursuits, this amiable old gentleman had found leisure to indulge himself in works of taste. His noble fortune enabled him to gratify his liberal inclinations. I found him seated in his compting-house, which, from its handsome furniture and valuable paintings, resembled an elegant cabinet. I stated the conduct of the municipality towards us, and requested his assistance. After he had shown me his apartments, a fine collection of drawings, by some of the first masters, and some more excellent paintings, we parted, with an assurance that he would immediately wait upon the mayor, who was his friend, and had no doubt but that he should in the course of the next day enable us to leave Havre when and in what manner we pleased. With this agreeable piece of intelligence, I immediately returned to the inn, where it induced us to drink health and success to the friendly merchant in another bottle of champaign. CHAPTER III. _Passports procured.--Coins.--Town of Havre.--Carts.--Citoyen.--Honfleur.--Deserters.--Prefect de Marine.--Ville de Sandwich.--French Farmers.--Sir Sydney Smith.--Catherine de Medicis.--Light Houses.--Rafts._ If Havre had been a Paradise, the feelings of restraint would have discoloured the magic scenery, and turned the green to one barren brown. As we could relish nothing, until we had procured our release, the first place we visited the next morning was, once more, the residence of the municipality, where we found that our worthy friend had previously arranged every thing to our wishes, and upon his signing a certificate, that we were peaceable citizens, and had no intention to overturn the republic, our passports were made out, and upon an exchange of a little snuff, and a few bows, we retired. The other two englishmen had their wishes gratified, by the same lucky incident, which had assisted us. Having changed our guineas for french money, and as in future, when money is mentioned, it will be in the currency of the country, it perhaps may not be unacceptable to subjoin a table of the old, and new, and republican coins. For every guinea of full weight, which we carried over, we received twenty-four livres, or a louis d'or, which is equal to twenty shillings sterling, of course we lost one shilling upon every good guinea, and more, according to the deficiency of weight. The course of exchange and commission, with our country, I afterwards found at Paris, to be one shilling and eight pence, in the pound sterling, against us, but the difference will be progressively nearer par, as the accustomed relations of commerce resume their former habits. I was surprised to find the ancient monarchical coin in chief circulation, and that of the republic, very confined. Scarce a pecuniary transaction can occur, but the silent, and eloquent medallion of the unhappy monarch, seems to remind these bewildered people of _his_ fate, and _their_ past misfortunes. Although the country is poor, all their payments are made in cash, this is owing to the shock given by the revolution, to individual, and consequently to paper credit. To comprehend their money, it must be known, although the french always calculate by livres, as we do by pounds sterling, that the livre is no coin, but computation. MONARCHICAL COINS. GOLD. _s._ _d._ A louis d'or is twenty four livres french, or 20 0 English. SILVER. A grand ecu, or six livre piece, 5 0 An ecu, or three livre piece, 2 6 The vingt quatre sols piece, 1 0 A douze sols piece is twelve pence french, or 0 6 A six sols piece is 6d french, or 0 3 COPPER MIXED WITH SILVER. A deux sols, or two pence french, and one penny english, is nearly the size of our sixpence, but is copper, with a white or silverish mixture, twelve of these make a vingt quatre sols piece, or one shilling english. They have also another small piece of nearly the same size and colour, but not so white, and rather thinner, which is one sol and a half, three halfpence french, or three farthings english. COPPER. A sol is like our halfpenny, value one penny french, or a halfpenny english, twenty-four of these make an english shilling. A deux liard piece is half a sol french, or a farthing english. A liard is a farthing french, and of the value of half a farthing english. NEW COIN. A thirty sols piece, is a very beautiful and convenient coin, worth one shilling and three pence english, having a good impression of the late king's head on one side, and the goddess of liberty on the other; it was struck in the early part of the revolution. REPUBLICAN COIN. SILVER. A fifteen sols piece is half of the above and very convenient. COPPER. A six liard is a bit of copper composition, such as the fine cannon are made of, and is worth three sols french, or a halfpenny, and a farthing english. A cinq centimes is worth a halfpenny and half a farthing english. The centimes are of the value of half farthings, five of which are equal to the last coin, they are very small and neat. An early knowledge of these coins, is very necessary to a stranger, on account of the dishonest advantages which french tradesmen take of their english customers. To return to my narrative: finding ourselves at liberty to pursue our route, we went from the municipality to the bureau des diligences, and secured our places in the voiture to Rouen, for the next day. After this necessary arrangement, we proceeded to view the town, which is composed of long and narrow streets. The fronts of the houses, which are lofty, are deformed by the spaces between the naked intersections of the frame work being filled up with mortar, which gives them an appearance of being very heavy, and very mean. The commerce formerly carried on at Havre, was very extensive. There is here also large manufactories for lace. The theatre is very spacious, well arranged, and as far as we could judge by day-light, handsomely decorated. The players did not perform during our stay. In the vegetable market place, which was much crowded, and large, we saw at this season of the year abundance of fine apples, as fresh in appearance as when they were first plucked from the tree. In our way there we were accosted by a little ragged beggar boy, who addressed himself to our compassionate dispositions, by the appellation of "très charitable citoyen," but finding we gave nothing, he immediately changed it to "mon chère très charitable monsieur." The strange uncouth expression of citoyen is generally laid aside, except amongst the immediate officers under government, in their official communications, who, however, renounce it in private, for the more civilized title of "monsieur." The principal church is a fine handsome building, and had been opened for worship, the Sunday before we arrived: On that day the bell of the Sabbath first sounded, during ten years of revolution, infidelity, and bloodshed!!! The royal arms are every where removed. They formerly constituted a very beautiful ornament over the door of the hotel of the present prefect, at the head of the market place, but they have been rudely beaten out by battle axes, and replaced by rude republican emblems, which every where (I speak of them as a decoration) seem to disfigure the buildings which bear them. When I made this remark, I must, however, candidly confess, that my mind very cordially accompanied my eye, and that natural sentiment mingled with the observation. The quays, piers, and arsenal are very fine, they, together with the docks, for small ships of war and merchandize, were constructed under the auspices of Lewis XIV, with whom this port was a great favourite. We saw several groups of men at work in heavy chains. They were soldiers who had offended. They are dressed in _red_ jackets and trowsers, which are supposed to increase their disgrace, on account of its being the regimental colour of their old enemy, the english. When my companion, who wore his regimentals, passed them, they all moved their caps to him with great respect. The town, and consequently the commerce of Rouen, was most successfully blockaded, for near four years, by british commanders, during the late war, and particularly by sir Sidney Smith. It was here, when endeavouring to cut out a vessel, which in point of value, and consideration was unworthy of such an exposure, that this great hero, and distinguished being was made a prisoner of war. The inhabitants, who never speak of him, but with emotions of terror, consider this event as the rash result of a wager conceived over wine. Those who know the character of sir Sidney, will not impute to him such an act of _idle_ temerity. No doubt he considered the object, as included in his duty, and it is only to be lamented, that during two lingering years of rigorous, and cruel confinement, in the dungeons of the unhappy sovereign, his country was bereaved of the assistances of her immortal champion, who, in a future season, upon the shores of Acre, so nobly filled up the gloomy chasm of suspended services, by exploits, which to be believed, must not be _adequately_ described, and who revenged, by an act of unrivalled glory, the long endurance of sufferings, and indignities hateful to the magnanimous spirit of modern warfare, and unknown to it, until displayed within the walls of a prussian dungeon[2]. [2] The cruel imprisonment of la Fayette is alluded to. I shall hereafter have occasion to mention this extraordinary character, when I speak of his escape from the Temple, the real circumstances attending which are but little known, and which I received from an authority upon which the reader may rely. This town is not unknown to history. At the celebrated siege of it, in the time of Catharine de Medicis, that execrable princess, distinguished herself by her personal intrepidity. It is said, that she landed here, in a galley, bearing the device of the sun, with these words in greek, "I bring light, and fine weather"--a motto which ill corresponded with her conduct. With great courage, such as seldom associates with cruel, and ferocious tyrants, she here on horseback, at the head of her army, exposed herself to the fire of the cannon, like the most veteran soldiers, and betrayed no symptoms of fear, although the bullets flew about her in all directions. When desired by the duke of Guise, and the constable de Montmorenci not to expose her person so much, the brave, but sanguinary Catharine replied, "Have I not more to lose than you, and do you think I have not as much courage?" The walk, through la ville de Sandwiche, to the light houses, which are about two miles from Havre, is very pleasing. The path lay through flax and clover fields. In this part of the country, the farmers practise an excellent plan of rural economy, which is also used in Dorsetshire, and some few other counties, of confining their cattle by a string to a spot of pasture, until they have completely cleared it. [Illustration: _Light-house at Havre_] Upon the hill, ascending to the cliffs, are several very elegant chateaus and gardens, belonging to the principal inhabitants of the town. Monsieur B----, the prefect de marine, has a beautiful residence here. We were accidentally stopping at his gate, which was open, to view the enchanting prospects, which it presented to us, when the polite owner observed us, and with that amiableness, and civility, which still distinguish the descendants of the ancient families of rank in France, of which he is one, requested us to enter, and walked with us round his grounds, which were disposed with great taste. He afterwards conducted us to his elegant house, and gave us dried fruit, and excellent burgundy, after which we walked round the village to the light houses. From him we learnt, that the farmers here, as in England, were very respectable, and had amassed considerable wealth during the war. The approach to the light houses, through a row of elms, is very pleasant; they stand upon an immense high perpendicular cliff, and are lofty square buildings, composed of fine light brown free stone, the entrance is handsome, over which there is a good room, containing four high windows, and a lodging room for the people, who have the care of the light, the glass chamber of which we reached, after ascending to a considerable height, by a curious spiral stone stair case. The lantern is composed, of ninety immense reflecting lamps, which are capable of being raised or depressed with great ease by means of an iron windlass. This large lustre, is surrounded with plates of the thickest french glass, fixed in squares of iron, and discharges a prodigious light, in dark nights. A furnace of coal, was formerly used, but this has been judiciously superseded by the present invention. Round the lantern, is a gallery with an iron balustrade, the view from this elevation upon the beach, the entrance of the Seine, Honfleur (where our Henry III is said to have fought the french armies, and to have distinguished himself by his valour) the distant hills of Lower Normandy, and the ocean, is truly grand. It brought to my mind that beautiful description of Shakspeare-- ------------------The murmuring surge That on th' unnumbered idle pebbles chafes, Cannot be heard so high: I'll look no more, Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight Topple down headlong. We did not visit the other tower, as it was uniform with this. The woman who has the charge of the light, was very good humoured, and very talkative, she seemed delighted to show us every thing, and said she preferred seeing englishmen _in_ her tower as friends, to the view she frequently had of them _from_ it as enemies, alluding to the long, and masterly blockade of this port by a squadron of english frigates. She carried us to her little museum, as she called it, where she had arranged, very neatly, a considerable collection of fossils, shells, and petrefactions. Here she showed us with great animation, two british cannon balls, which during the blockade, had very nearly rendered her husband and herself, as cold and as silent as any of the petrefactions in her collection. In this little cabinet was her bed, where amidst the war of winds and waves, she told us she slept as sound as a _consul_. In the basins of Havre, we saw several rafts, once so much talked of, constructed for the real, or ostensible purpose of conveying the invading legions of France, to the shores of Great Britain. I expected to have seen an immense floating platform, but the vessels which we saw, were made like brigs of an unusual breadth, with two low masts. The sincerity of this project has been much disputed, but that the french government expended considerable sums upon the scheme, I have no doubt. I must not omit to mention, the admirable mode, which they have here, and in most parts of France, of constructing their carts. They are placed upon very high wheels, the load is generally arranged so as to create an equipoise, and is raised by an axle, fastened near the shafts. I was informed by a merchant, that a single horse can draw with ease thirty-six hundred weight, in one of these carts. These animals have a formidable appearance, owing to a strange custom which the french have, of covering the collar, with an entire sheep's skin, which gives them the appearance of having an enormous shaggy mane. At night, we settled our bills which amounted to forty livres each. A considerable charge in this country, but we had lived well, and had not thought it worth our while, on account of the probable shortness of our stay, to bargain for our lodging, and board, a plan generally proper to be used by those, who mean to remain for some length of time, in any place in France. [Illustration: _Paris Diligence._] CHAPTER IV. _Cheap travelling to Paris.--Diligences.--French Postilions.--Spanish Postilions.--Norman Horses.--Bolbec.--Natives of Caux.--Ivetot.--Return of Religion.--Santerre.--Jacobin.--The Mustard-pot.--National Property._ Before I proceed on my journey, I must beg leave to present a very cheap mode of travelling to Paris, from Havre, to those who have more time at their command than I had. It was given to me by a respectable gentleman, and an old traveller. _Sols._ From Havre to Honfleur, by the passage-boat 10 From Honfleur to Pontaudemar, by land 3 From Pontaudemar to Labouille 3 From Labouille to Rouen, by water 12 From Rouen to Rolleboise, by land 6 From Rolleboise to Pontoise, by water 30 From Pontoise to Paris, by land 30 This progress, however, is tedious and uncertain. At day-break we seated ourselves in the diligence. All the carriages of this description have the appearance of being the result of the earliest efforts in the art of coach building. A more uncouth clumsy machine can scarcely be imagined. In the front is a cabriolet fixed to the body of the coach, for the accommodation of three passengers, who are protected from the rain above, by the projecting roof of the coach, and in front by two heavy curtains of leather, well oiled, and smelling somewhat offensively, fastened to the roof. The inside, which is capacious, and lofty, and will hold six people with great comfort, is lined with leather padded, and surrounded with little pockets, in which the travellers deposit their bread, snuff, night caps, and pocket handkerchiefs, which generally enjoy each others company in the same delicate depositary. From the roof depends a large net work, which is generally crouded with hats, swords, and band boxes, the whole is convenient, and when all parties are seated and arranged, the accommodations are by no means unpleasant. Upon the roof, on the outside, is the imperial, which is generally filled with six or seven persons more, and a heap of luggage, which latter also occupies the basket, and generally presents a pile, half as high again as the coach, which is secured by ropes and chains, tightened by a large iron windlass, which also constitutes another appendage of this moving mass. The body of the carriage rests upon large thongs of leather, fastened to heavy blocks of wood, instead of springs, and the whole is drawn by seven horses. The three first are fastened to the cross bar, the rest are in pairs, all in rope harness and tackling. The near horse of the three first, is mounted by the postilion, in his great jack boots, which are always placed, with much ceremony, like two tubs, on the right side of his Rosinante, just before he ascends. These curious protectors of his legs, are composed of wood, and iron hoops, softened within by stuffing, and give him all the dignity of riding in a pair of upright portmanteaus. With a long lash whip in his hand, a dirty night cap and an old cocked hat upon his head, hallooing alternately "à gauche, à droit," and a few occasional sacre dieus, which seem always properly applied, and perfectly understood, the merry postilion drives along his cattle. I must not fail to do justice to the scientific skill with which he manages on horseback, his long and heavy coach whip; with this commanding instrument, he can reanimate by a touch, each halting muscle of his lagging animals, can cut off an annoying fly, and with the loud cracking of its thong, he announces, upon his entrance into a town, the approach of his heavy, and clattering cavalcade. Each of these diligences is provided with a conducteur, who rides upon the imperial, and is responsible throughout the journey, for the comfort of the passengers and safety of the luggage. For his trouble the passenger pays him only thirty sols for himself, and fifteen more for the different postillions, to be divided amongst them, for these the donor is thanked with a low bow, and many "bien obligés," in the name of himself and his contented comrades. Our companions proved to be some of our old friends the emigrants, who had thrown aside their marine dishabille, and displayed the appearance of gentlemen. We were much pleased with again meeting each other. Their conversation upon the road was very interesting, it was filled with sincere regret for the afflictions of their country, and with expressions of love and gratitude towards the english. They told us many little tales of politeness, and humanity which they had received from my countrymen in the various towns, where their destiny had placed them. One displayed, with amiable pride, a snuff box, which he had received as a parting token of esteem, another a pocket book, and each was the bearer of some little affectionate proof of merit, good conduct, or friendship. One of these gentlemen, the abbè de l'H----, whose face was full of expression, tinctured with much grief, and attendant indisposition, with a manner, and in a tone, which were truly affecting, concluded a little narrative of some kindness which he had received, by saying, "if the english and my country are not friends, it shall not be for want of my prayers. I fled from France without tears, for the preservation of my life, but when I left England, I confess it, I could not help shedding some." They did not disgrace the generous abbè--such a nation was worthy of such feelings. Our horses were of the norman breed, small, stout, short, and full of spirit, and to the honour of those who have the care of them, in excellent condition. I was surprised to see these little animals running away with our cumbrous machine, at the rate of six or seven miles an hour. We traced the desolating hand of the revolution as soon as we ascended the first hill. Our road lay through a charming country. Upon the sides of its acclivities, surrounded by the most romantic scenery of woods and corn fields, we saw ruined convents, and roofless village churches, through the shattered casements of which the wind had free admission. We breakfasted at a neat town called Bolbec, seven leagues from Havre, where we had excellent coffee, butter, and rolls. All the household of our inn looked clean, happy, and sprightly. This is the principal town of the province of Caux, the women of which dress their heads in a very peculiar, and in my humble opinion, unbecoming manner. I made a hasty sketch of one of them who entered the yard of the inn with apples for sale. [Illustration: _A Woman of the province of Caux in Normandy._] Such a promontory of cap and lace I never before beheld. She had been at a village marriage that morning, and was bedecked in all her finery. The people of this province are industrious and rich, and consequently respectable. At the theatre at Rouen I afterwards saw, in one of the front boxes, a lady from this country, dressed after its fashion; the effect was so singular that it immediately induced me to distinguish her, from the rest of the audience, but her appearance seemed to excite no curiosity with any other person. Our breakfast cost us each fifteen sous, to which may be added two sols more, for the maids, who waited upon us with cheerful smiles, and habited in the full cushvois costume, and which also entitled us to kisses and curtsies. I beg leave to oppose our breakfast charge to the rumours which prevailed in England, that this part of France was then in a state of famine. From this town, the road was beautifully lined with beech, chesnut, and apple trees. The rich yellow of the rape seed which overspread the surface of many of the fields on each side, was very animating to the eye. From this vegetable the country people express oil, and of the pulp of it make cakes, which the norman horses will fatten upon. We had an early dinner at Ivetot, five leagues distant from Bolbec. In ancient periods this miserable town was once the capital of a separate kingdom. In our dining room were three beds, or rather we dined in the bed room. I use the former expression out of compliment to the pride of our little host, who replied with some loftiness to one of our companions, who, upon entering the room, and seeing so many accommodations for repose, exclaimed, with the sharpness of appetite, "my good host, we want to eat, and not to sleep;" "gentlemen," said our mortified little maitre d'hôtel, "this chamber is the dining room, and it is thought a very good one." From its appearance I should have believed him, had he sworn that it was the state room of the palace of this ancient principality, of which this wretched town was once the capital. It reminded me of an anecdote related by an ancient english lady of fashion, when she first paid her respects to James I, soon after his accession to the crown of England. She mentions in her memoir, that his royal drawing room was so very dirty, that after the levee she was obliged to recur to her comb for relief. In plain truth, James I and his court were lousy. Our master of the house was both cook and waiter. At dinner, amongst several other dishes, we had some stewed beef, I requested to be favoured with a little mustard, our host very solemnly replied, "I am very sorry, citizen, but I have none, if you had been fortunate enough to have been here about three weeks since, you might have had some." It was more than I wished, so I ate my beef very contentedly without it. With our desert we had a species of cake called brioche, composed of egg, flour, and water; it is in high estimation in France. It was in this town _only_ that I saw a specimen of that forlorn wretchedness and importunity, which have been said to constitute the general nuisance of this country. In the shop of a brazier here, was exposed, a new leaden crucifix, about two feet and a half high, for sale; it had been cast preparatory to the reinauguration of the archbishop of Rouen, which was to take place upon the next Sunday week, in the great cathedral of that city. In consequence of the restoration of religion, the beggars, who have in general considerable cleverness, and know how to turn new circumstances to advantage, had just learnt a fresh mode of soliciting money, by repeating the Lord's Prayer in French and Latin. We were treated with this sort of importunate piety for near a mile, after we left Ivetot. I have before mentioned, that the barbarous jargon of the revolution is rapidly passing away. It is only here and there, that its slimy track remains. The time is not very distant when Frenchmen wished to be known by the name of Jacobins; it is now become an appellation of reproach, even amongst the surviving aborigines of the revolution. As an instance of it, a naval officer of rank and intelligence, who joined us at Ivetot, informed us, that he had occasion, upon some matters of business, to meet Santerre a few days before; that inhuman and vulgar revolutionist, who commanded the national guards when they surrounded the scaffold during the execution of their monarch. In the course of their conversation, Santerre, speaking of a third person, exclaimed, "I cannot bear that man; he is a Jacobin." Let all true revolutionary republicans cry out, Bravo! at this. This miscreant lives unnoticed, in a little village near Paris, upon a slender income, which he has made in trade, not in the _trade of blood_; for it appears that Robespierre was not a very liberal patron of his servants. He kept his blood-hounds lean, and keen, and poorly fed them with the rankest offal. After a dusty journey, through a very rich and picturesque country, of near eighty miles, we entered the beautiful boulevards[3] of Rouen, about seven o'clock in the evening, which embowered us from the sun. Their shade was delicious. I think them finer than those of Paris. The noble elms, which compose them in four stately rows, are all nearly of the same height. Judge of my surprise--Upon our rapidly turning the corner of a street, as we entered the city, I suddenly found coach, horses and all, in the aisle of an ancient catholic church. The gates were closed upon us, and in a moment from the busy buzzing of the streets, we were translated into the silence of shattered tombs, and the gloom of cloisters: the only light which shone upon us, issued through fragments of stained glass, and the apertures which were formerly filled with it. [3] Environs of a town, planted with stately trees. My surprise, however, was soon quieted, by being informed, that this church, having devolved to the nation as its property, by force of a revolutionary decree, had been afterwards sold for stables, to one of the owners of the Rouen diligences. An old unsaleable cabriolet occupied the place of the altar; and the horses were very quietly eating their oats in the sacristy!! At the Bureau, we paid twelve livres and a half for our places and luggage from Havre to this town. [Illustration: _Rouen, from Mount St. Catherine._] CHAPTER V. _A female french fib.--Military and Civil Procession.--Madame G.--The Review.--Mons. l'Abbé.--Bridge of Boats.--The Quay.--Exchange.--Theatre.--Rouen.--Cathedral.--St. Ouens.--Prince of Waldec.--Maid of Orleans._ Having collected together all our luggage, and seen it safely lodged in a porter's wheelbarrow, Captain C. and I bade adieu to our fellow travellers, and to these solemn and unsuitable habitations of ostlers and horses, and proceeded through several narrow streets, lined with lofty houses, the shops of which were all open, and the shopkeepers, chiefly women, looked respectable and sprightly, with gay bouquets in their bosoms, to the Hôtel de l'Europe; it is a fine inn, to which we had been recommended at Havre, kept by Madame F----, who, with much politeness, and many captivating movements, dressed à-la-Grec, with immense golden earrings, approached us, and gave us a little piece of information, not very pleasant to travellers somewhat discoloured by the dust of a long and sultry day's journey, who wanted comfortable rooms, fresh linen, a little coffee, and a good night's repose: her information was, that her house was completely full, but that she would send to an upholsterer to fit up two beds for us, in a very neat room, which she had just papered and furnished, opposite to the porter's lodge (all the great inns and respectable townhouses in France have great gates, and a porter's lodge, at the entrance.) As we wished to have three rooms, we told her, we were friends of Messrs. G----, (the principal merchants of Rouen). She said, they were very amiable men, and were pleased to _send all their friends to her house_ (a little french fib of Madame F----'s, by the by, as will appear hereafter); and she was truly sorry that she could not accommodate us better. We looked into the room, which also looked into the street, was exposed to all its noise, and very small. So we made our bows to Madame F----, and proceeded with our wheelbarrow to the Hôtel de Poitiers--a rival house. It is situated in the beautiful boulevards, which I have mentioned, and is part of a row of fine stonebuilt houses. Upon our ringing the bell, Madame P---- presented herself. We told her, we were just arrived at Rouen, that we had the honour of being known to Messrs. G----, and should be happy to be placed under her roof, and wished to have two lodging rooms and a sitting room to ourselves. Madame P----, who possessed that sort of good and generous heart, which nature, for its better preservation, had lodged in a comfortable envelope of comely plumpness, observed, that Messrs. G---- were gentlemen of great respectability, were her patrons, and always _sent their_ friends to _her_ house (a point upon which these rival dames were at issue, but the truth was with Madame P----); that she would do all in her power to make us happy; but at present, on account of her house being very crowded, she could only offer us two bedrooms. We were too tired to think of any further peregrinations of discovery; so we entered our bed-rooms, which, like most of the chambers in France, had brick floors without any carpetting; they were, however, clean; and, after ordering a good fire in one of them (for the sudden and unusual frost, which, in the beginning of summer, committed so much ravage throughout Europe, commenced the day we had first the honour of seeing Madame P----); and, after enjoying those comforts which weary wanderers require, we mounted our lofty beds, and went to rest. The next day we presented our letter, and ourselves, to Madame G----, the amiable mother of the gentlemen I have mentioned. She received us with great politeness, and immediately arranged a dinner party for us, for that day. It being rather early in the morning, we were admitted into her chamber, a common custom of receiving early visits in France. About eleven o'clock we saw a splendid procession of all the military and civil authorities to the hôtel[4] of the prefect, which was opposite to our inn. [4] Hôtel, in France, means either an inn, or private house of consequence. The object of this cavalcade was to congratulate the archbishop of Rouen (who was then upon a visit to the prefect, until his own palace was ready to receive him) on his elevation to the see. This spectacle displayed the interference of God, in thus making the former enemies of his worship pay homage to his ministers, after a long reign of atheism and persecution. About twelve o'clock, which is the hour of parade throughout the republic, we went to the Champ de Mars, and saw a review of the 20th regiment of chasseurs, under the command of generals St. Hiliare and Ruffin, who, as well as the regiment, had particularly distinguished themselves at Marengo. The men were richly appointed, and in general well mounted. They all wore mustachios. They were just arrived from Amiens, where, as a mark of honour, they had been quartered during the negotiation. The officers were superbly attired. St. Hiliare is a young man, and in person much resembles his patron and friend, the first consul; and, they say, in abilities also. Some of the horses were of a dissimilar size and colour, which had a bad effect; but I was informed, upon making the remark, that they had lost many in battle, and had not had time properly to replace them. They were all strong and fiery, and went through their evolutions with surprising swiftness. At dinner our party was very agreeable. Next to me sat a little abbè, who appeared to be in years, but full of vivacity, and seemed to be much esteemed by every person present. During the _time of terrour_ (as the French emphatically call the gloomy reign of Robespierre) the blood of this good man, who, from his wealth, piety, and munificence, possessed considerable influence in Rouen, was sought after with keen pursuit. Madame G---- was the saviour of his life, by concealing him, previous to her own imprisonment, for two years, in different cellars, under her house, which she rendered as warm and as comfortable as circumstances, and the nature of the concealment, would allow. In one of these cells of humane secresy, this worthy man has often eaten his solitary and agitated meal, whilst the soldiers of the tyrant, who were quartered upon his protectress, were carousing in the kitchen immediately above him. Soon after our coffee, which, in this country, immediately succeeds the dinner, we went to view the bridge of boats, so celebrated in history. This curious structure was contrived by an augustine friar named Michael Bougeois, it is composed of timber, regularly paved, in squares which contain the stories, and is 1000[5] feet in length; it commences from the middle of the quay of Rouen, and reaches over to the Fauxbourg of St. Sever, and carries on the communication with the country which lies south of the city. It was begun in the year 1626, below it are the ruins of the fine bridge of 13 arches, built by the empress Maud, daughter of Henry I of England. This ingenious fabric rests upon 19 immense barges, which rise and fall with the flowing and subsiding of the tide. When vessels have occasion to pass it, a portion of the platform sufficient to admit their passage is raised, and rolled over the other part. In the winter, when any danger is apprehended from the large flakes of ice, which float down the river, the whole is taken to pieces in an hour. The expense of keeping it in repair is estimated at 10000 livres, or 400 pounds sterling per annum, and is defrayed by government, it being the highroad to Picardy. Upon the whole, although this bridge is so much admired, I must confess it appeared to me a heavy performance, unsuitable to the wealth, and splendour of the city of Rouen, and below the taste and ingenuity of modern times. A handsome light stone structure, with a centre arch covered with a drawbridge, for the passage of vessels of considerable burden, or a lofty flying iron bridge, would be less expensive, more safe, and much more ornamental. [5] The french feet are to the english as 1068 to 1000. The view from this bridge up the Seine, upon the islands below mount St. Catharine, is quite enchanting. Upon the quay, although it was Sunday, a vast number of people were dancing, drinking, and attending shows and lotteries. Here were people of various nations, parading up and down in the habits and dresses of their respective countries, which produced quite the effect of a masquerade. The river Seine is so deep at this place, that ships of three hundred tons burden are moored close to the quay, and make a very fine appearance. The exchange for the merchants is parallel with the centre of the quay, and is a long paved building of about 400 feet in length, open at top, having a handsome iron balustrade, and seats towards the Seine, and a high stone wall towards the town. Over all the great gates of the city, is written, in large characters, "Liberty, Equality, Humanity, Fraternity or Death:" the last two words have been painted over, but are still faintly legible. In the evening we went to the french opera, which was very crowded. The boxes were adorned with genteel people, and many beautiful young women. The theatre is very large, elegant, and handsome, and the players were good. I was struck with the ridiculous antics, and gestures of the chef in the orchestra, a man whose office it is to beat time to the musicians. In the municipality box which was in the centre, lined with green silk, and gold, were two fine young women who appeared to be ladies of fashion, and consequence; they were dressed after the antique, in an attire which, for lightness, and scantiness I never saw equalled, till I saw it surpassed at Paris. They appeared to be clothed only in jewels, and a little muslin, very gracefully disposed, the latter, to borrow a beautiful expression, had the appearance of "woven air."--From emotions of gratitude, for the captivating display which they made, I could not help offering a few fervent wishes, that the light of the next day might find them preserved from the dreaded consequences of a very bitter cold night. Rouen, upon the whole, is a fine city, very large, and populous. It was formerly the capital of the kingdom of Normandy. It stands upon a plain, screened on three sides, by high, and picturesque mountains. It is near two leagues in compass, exclusive of the fauxbourgs of St. Severs, Cauchoise, Bouveul, St. Hiliare, Martainville and Beauvisme. Its commerce was very celebrated, and is returning with great rapidity. Most of the fine buildings in this city, and its environs are Anglo-Norman antiquities, and were founded by the English before they left Normandy. The cathedral is a grand, and awful pile of gothic architecture, built by our William the Conqueror. It has two towers, one of which, is surmounted by a wooden spire covered with lead, and is of the prodigious height of 395 french feet, the other is 236 feet high. The additional wooden spire, and the inequality of the towers produce rather an unfavourable effect. During the revolution, this august edifice was converted into a sulphur and gunpowder manufactory, by which impious prostitution, the pillars are defaced, and broken, and the whole is blackened, and dingy. The costly cenotaphs of white marble, enriched with valuable ornaments containing the hearts of our Henry III, and Richard I, kings of England, and dukes of Normandy, which were formerly placed on each side of the grand altarpiece, were removed during the revolution. The altarpiece is very fine. Grand preparations were making for the inauguration of the archbishop, which was to take place the following Sunday. There were not many people at mass; those who were present, appeared to be chiefly composed of old women, and young children. Over the charity box fastened to one of the pillars was a board upon which was written in large letters "Hospices reconnoissance et prospérité à l'homme généreux et sensible." I saw few people affected by this benedictory appeal. I next visited the church of St. Ouens, which is not so large as the cathedral, but surpasses that, and every other sacred edifice I ever beheld, in point of elegance. This graceful pile, has also had its share of sufferings, during the reign of revolutionary barbarism. Its chaste, and elegant pillars, have been violated by the smoke of sulphur and wood; and in many places, present to the distressed eye, chasms, produced by massy forges, which were erected against them, for casting ball. The costly railing of brass, gilt, which half surrounded the altar, has been torn up, and melted into cannon. The large circular stained window over the entrance called La Rose du Portail is very beautiful, and wholly unimpaired. The organs in all the churches are broken and useless. They experienced this fate, in consequence of their having been considered as fanatical instruments during the time of terrour. The fine organ of St. Ouens is in this predicament, and will require much cost to repair it[6]. [6] The ornaments of the churches of England experienced a similar fate from the commissioners of the Long Parliament, in 1643. I cannot help admiring the good sense which in all the churches of France is displayed, by placing the organ upon a gallery over the grand entrance, by which the spectator has an uninterrupted view, and commands the whole length of the interior building. In the English cathedrals, it is always placed midway between the choir and church, by which, this desired effect is lost.--St. Ouens is now open for worship. In spite of all the devastations of atheistic Vandalism, this exquisite building, like the holy cause to which it is consecrated, having withstood the assailing storm, and elevating its meek, but magnificent head above its enemies, is mildly ready to receive them into her bosom, still disfigured with the traces of blind and barbarous ferocity. Behind the altar, I met the celebrated prince of Waldec. He, who possessed of royal honours, and ample domains, revolted in the day of battle, from his imperial master, and joined the victorious and pursuing foe. I beheld him in a shaded corner of one of the cloisters of St. Ouens, in poor attire, with an old umbrella under his arm, scantily provided for, and scarcely noticed by his _new_ friends. A melancholy, but just example of the rewards due to treachery and desertion. I have described these churches only generally, it cannot be expected of me to enter into an elaborate history of them, or of any other public edifices. The detail, if attempted, might prove dull, and is altogether incompatible with the limited time, and nature of my excursion. After we left St. Ouens, we visited the Square aux Vaux, where the celebrated heroine of Lorrain, Joan d'Arc, commonly called the Maid of Orleans was cruelly burnt at the stake, for a pretended sorceress, but in fact to gratify the barbarous revenge of the duke of Bedford, the then regent of France; because after signal successes, she conducted her sovereign, Charles, in safety, to Rheims, where he was crowned, and obtained decisive victories over the English arms. We here saw the statue erected by the French, to the memory of this remarkable woman, which as an object of sculpture seems to possess very little worthy of notice. CHAPTER VI. _First Consul's Advertisement.--Something ridiculous.--Eggs.--Criminal Military Tribunal.--French Female Confidence.--Town House.--Convent of Jesuits.--Guillotine.--Governor W----._ Upon looking up against the corner wall of a street, surrounded by particoloured advertisements of quack medicines, wonderful cures, new invented essences, judgments of cassation, rewards for robbers, and bills of the opera, I beheld Bonaparte's address to the people of France, to elect him first consul for life. I took it for granted that the spanish proverb of "tell me with whom you are, and I will tell you what you are," was not to be applied in this instance, on account of the company in which the _Consular application_, by a mere fortuitous coincidence, happened to be placed. A circumstance occurred at this time, respecting this election, which was rather ridiculous, and excited considerable mirth at Paris. Upon the first appearance of the election book of the first consul, in one of the departments, some wag, instead of subscribing his name, immediately under the title of the page, "shall Napoleone Bonaparte be first consul for life?" wrote the following words, "I can't tell." This trifling affair affords rather a favourable impression of the mildness of that government, which could inspire sufficient confidence to hazard such a stroke of pleasantry. It reached Mal Maison with great speed, but is said to have occasioned no other sensation there, than a little merriment. Carnot's bold negative was a little talked of, but as it was solitary, it was considered harmless. To the love of finery which the french still retain to a certain degree, I could alone attribute the gay appearance of the eggs in the market, upon which had been bestowed a very smart stain of lilac colour. The effect was so singular that I could not help noting it down. On the third day after our arrival in this city, we attended the trial of a man who belonged to one of the banditti which infest the country round this city. The court was held in the hall of the ancient parliament house, and was composed of three civil judges (one of whom presided) three military judges, and two citizens. The arrangements of the court, which was crowded, were excellent, and afforded uninterrupted accommodations to all its members, by separate doors and passages allotted to each, and also to the people, who were permitted to occupy the large area in front, which gradually rose from the last seats of the persons belonging to the court, and enabled every spectator to have a perfect view of the whole. Appropriate moral mottoes were inscribed in characters of gold, upon the walls. The judges wore long laced bands, and robes of black, lined with light blue silk, with scarfs of blue and silver fringe, and sat upon an elevated semicircular bench, raised upon a flight of steps, placed in a large alcove, lined with tapestry. The secretaries, and subordinate officers were seated below them. On the left the prisoner was placed, without irons, in the custody of two gendarmes, formerly called maréchaussées, who had their long swords drawn. These soldiers have a very military appearance, and are a fine, and valuable body of men. I fear the respectable impression which I would wish to convey of them will suffer, when I inform my reader, that they are servants of the police, and answer to our Bow-street runners. The swiftness with which they pursue, and apprehend offenders, is surprising. We were received with politeness, and conducted to a convenient place for hearing, and seeing all that passed. The accusateur general who sat on the left, wore a costume similar to that of the judges, without the scarf. He opened the trial by relating the circumstances, and declaiming upon the enormity of the offence, by which it appeared that the prisoner stood charged with robbery, accompanied with breach of hospitality; which, in that country, be the amount of the plunder ever so trifling, is at present capital. The address of the public accuser was very florid, and vehement, and attended by violent gestures, occasionally graceful. The pleaders of Normandy are considered as the most eloquent men in France, I have heard several of them, but they appear to me, to be too impassioned. Their motions in speaking frequently look like madness. He ransacked his language to furnish himself with reproachful epithets against the miserable wretch by the side of him, who with his hands in his bosom appeared to listen to him, with great sang froid. The witnesses who were kept separate, previous to their giving their evidence, were numerous, and proved many robberies against him, attended with aggravated breaches of hospitality. The court entered into proofs of offences committed by the prisoner at different times, and upon different persons. The women who gave their testimony, exhibited a striking distinction between the timidity of english females, confronting the many eyes of a crowded court of justice, and the calm self possession with which the french ladies here delivered their unperturbed testimony. The charges were clearly proved, and the prisoner was called upon for his defence. Undismayed, and with all the practised hardihood of an Old Bailey felon, he calmly declared, that he purchased the pile of booty produced in the court, for sums of money, the amount of which, he did not then know, of persons he could not name, and in places which he did not remember. He had no advocate. The subject was next resumed, and closed by the official orator who opened it. The court retired, and the criminal was reconducted to the prison behind the hall. After an absence of about twenty minutes, a bell rang to announce the return of the judges, the prisoner entered now, escorted by a file of national guards, to hear his fate. The court then resumed its sitting. The president addressed the unhappy man, very briefly, recapitulated his offences, and read the decree of the republic upon them, by which he doomed him to lose his head at four o'clock that afternoon. It was then ten minutes past one!! The face of this wretched being presented a fine subject for the pencil. His countenance was dark, marked, and melancholy; over it was spread the sallow tint of long imprisonment. His beard was unshorn, and he displayed an indifference to his fate, which not a little surprised me. He immediately retired, and upon his return to his cell, a priest was sent for to prepare him for his doom. At present, in the provinces, all criminal offences are tried before military tribunals, qualified, as I have described this to be, by a mixture of civil judges and bourgeois. It is one of the peculiar characteristics of such tribunals, to order immediate punishment after conviction. In the present instance, the fate of the offender was well known, for his crimes were many, and manifest, and as the interval allowed by military courts between the sentence, and its fulfilment, is so very short, the administrators of the law had postponed his trial for five months from the period of his commitment, for the purpose of affording him an indulgent procrastination. This mode, although arising from merciful motives, is, I am aware, open to objection; but it would be unfair to comment upon laws, which prevailed in times of revolution, and are permitted only to operate, until the fine fabric of french criminal jurisprudence, which is now constructing, shall be presented to the people. To the honour of our country, and one of the greatest ornaments of the british bar, the honourable T. Erskine, in the year 1789, furnished the french, with some of these great principles of criminal law, which it was impossible to perfect during the long æra of convulsion, and instability which followed, and which will constitute a considerable part of that great, and humane code, which is about to be bestowed upon the nation, and which will, no doubt, prove to be one of the greatest blessings, which human wisdom can confer upon human weakness. Its foundation is nearly similar to that of our own. The great and enlightened genius whose name I have mentioned, has provided that the contumacy of _one_ juryman shall not be able to force the opinion of the rest. After the court had broken up, I visited the town house, which, before the revolution, was the monastery of the benedictines, who, from what appeared of the remains of their establishment, must have been magnificently lodged, and well deserved during their existence, to bear the name of the blessed. The two grand staircases are very fine, and there is a noble garden behind. Upon entering the vestibule of the council chamber, formerly the refectory, I thought I was going behind the scenes of a theatre. It was nearly filled with allegorical banners, pasteboard and canvas arches of triumph, altars, emblems of liberty, and despotism, and all the scenic decorations suitable to the frenzied orgies of a republican fête. Thank God! they appeared to be tolerably well covered with dust and cobwebs. At the end of this noble room, seated upon a high pedestal, was the goddess of liberty, beautifully executed in marble. "Look at that sanguinary prostitute," cried Mons. G----, to me, pointing to the statue, "for years have we had liberty and bloodshed, _thank Heaven!_ we are now no longer _free_." Upon which, he wrote his name in the first consul's book, which was here lying open, upon a table, for the purpose of receiving the suffrages of the department. The laconic irony, and manner of the speaker, afforded me a tolerably good display of the nature of the blessings conferred upon the french, by their late political philosophy. From this place I proceeded to the ci-devant convent of the jesuits, built by one of the munificent dukes de Bourbon. It is a magnificent oblong stone building. In the centre of the court was a tree of liberty, which, like almost all the other trees, dedicated to that goddess, which I saw, looked blighted, and sickly. I mention it as a fact, without alluding to any political sentiment whatever. It is a remark in frequent use in France, that the caps of liberty are without heads, and the trees of liberty without root. The poplar has been selected from all the other trees of the forest, for this distinguished honour, from a whimsical synonymy of its name with that of the people. In french, the poplar is called peuplier, and the word peuple signifies people. This fine building is now converted into an university of learning, and the fine arts. From the number of the students, I should suppose the fashionable fervour of study had not as yet reached Rouen. The professor of philosophy, with great politeness sent a young man to show me the museum of pictures, for which purpose the church of the jesuits, is at present used. There are several paintings in it, the only fine one, was a dying Jesus by Vandyke, which was exquisite. Upon my expressing my admiration, a young student near me said "oui monsieur c'est très jolie." This misapplied remark, from an easy and natural combination of sound, could not fail of seeming a little singular as applied to such a subject, but every thing that pleases in France is très jolie. From this painting, I was, by importunity, led to view the other parts of the collection, which were composed of large pictures, by french masters; and so natural is local prejudice, every where, that I was almost held down, before the works of the _best artists of Rouen_, upon which, as I am at liberty _here_, I shall beg to make no comment. In the students' room, below, were some paintings curious, and valuable only, from their great antiquity, and a few good copies by the pupils. A picture was pointed out to me as a very fine thing, the subject was a fat little cherub, with a full flowing wig, fiddling to St. Francis, who from his gloomy appearance seemed not to possess half the musical genius of a dancing bear. Upon my return through the market place, I beheld the miserable wretch, at whose trial I was present in the morning, led out to execution. He was seated upon the bottom of a cart, stripped above to his shirt, which was folded back, his arms were pinioned close behind, and his hair was closely cropped, to prevent the stroke of the fatal knife from being impeded. A priest was seated in a chair beside him. As the object of my excursion was to contemplate the manners of the people, I summoned resolution to view this gloomy and painful spectacle, which seemed to excite but little sensation in the market place, where its petty traffic and concerns proceeded with their accustomed activity, and the women at their stalls, which extended to the foot of the scaffold, appeared to be impressed only with the solicitude of selling their vegetables to the highest bidder. A small body of the national guards, and a few boys and idlers surrounded the fatal spot. The guillotine, painted red, was placed upon a scaffold, of about five feet high. As soon as the criminal ascended the upper step which led to it he mounted, by the direction of the executioner, a little board, like a shutter, raised upright to receive him, to which he was strapped, turned down flat, and run into a small ring of iron half opened and made to admit the neck, the top part of which was then closed upon it, a black leather curtain was placed before the head, from which a valve depended, which communicated to a tub, placed under the scaffold to receive the blood, the executioner then touched a long thin iron rod, connected with the top of the instrument, and in a moment the axe descended, which was in the form of a square, cut diagonally, heavily charged with lead. The executioner and his assistants placed the body in a shell, half filled with saw dust, which was almost completely stained over with the brown blood of former executions; they then picked up the head, from a bag into which it had fallen, within the curtain, and having placed it in the same gloomy depository, lowered the whole down to the sextons, who covering it with a pall bore it off to the place of burial. The velocity of this mode of execution can alone recommend it. The pangs of death are passed almost in the same moment, which presents to the terrified eye of the sufferer the frightful apparatus of his disgraceful dissolution. It is a dreary subject to discuss; but surely it is a matter of deep regret, that in England, criminals doomed to die, from the uncertain and lingering nature of their annihilation, are seen writhing in the convulsions of death during a period dreadful to think of. It is said, that at the late memorable execution of an african governor for murder, the miserable delinquent was beheld for _fifteen minutes_ struggling with the torments of his untimely fate! The guillotine is far preferable to the savage mode, formerly used in France, of breaking the criminal upon the wheel, and leaving him afterwards to perish in the most poignant agonies. As I have alluded to the fate of governor W----, I will conclude this chapter by relating an anecdote of the terror and infatuation of guilt, displayed in the conduct of this wretched man, in the _presence_ of a friend of mine, from whom I received it--A few years before he suffered, fatigued with life, and pursued by poverty, and the frightful remembrance of his offences, then almost forgotten by the world, he left the south of France for Calais, with an intention of passing over to England, to offer himself up to its laws, not without the cherished hope that a lapse of twenty years had swept away all evidence of his guilt. At the time of his arrival at this port town, the hotel in which Madame H---- was waiting for a packet to Dover was very crowded--the landlord requested of her, that she would be pleased to permit two gentlemen, who were going to England, to take some refreshment in her room; these persons proved to be the unfortunate Brooks, a king's messenger, charged with important dispatches to his court, and governor W----. The latter was dressed like a decayed gentleman, and bore about him all the indications of his extreme condition. They had not been seated at the table long, before the latter informed the former, with evident marks of perturbation, that his name was W----, that having been charged in England with offences, which, if true, subjected him to heavy punishment, he was anxious to place himself at the disposal of its laws, and requested of him, as he was an english messenger, that he would consider him as his prisoner, and take charge of him. The messenger, who was much surprised by the application told him, that he could not upon such a representation take him into custody, unless he had an order from the duke of Portland's office to that effect, and that in order to obtain it, it would be proper for him to write his name, that it might be compared with his hand writing in the office of the secretary at war, which he offered to carry over with him. Governor W---- still pressed him to take him into custody, the messenger more strongly declined it, by informing him that he was the bearer of dispatches of great importance to his court, that he must immediately cross the Channel, and should hazard a passage, although the weather looked lowering, in an open boat, as no packets had arrived, and that consequently it was altogether impossible to take him over, but again requested him to write his name, for the purpose already mentioned; the governor consented, pens and paper were brought, but the hand of the murderer shook so dreadfully, that he could _not write it_, and in an agony of mind, bordering upon frenzy, he rushed out of the room, and immediately left the town. The messenger entered the boat, and set sail; a storm quickly followed, _the boat sunk in sight of the pier_, and all on board but one of the watermen, perished!!! The great disposer of human destiny, in vindication of his eternal justice, rescued the life of this infatuated delinquent from the waves, and from a sudden death, to resign him to the public and merited doom of the laws. CHAPTER VII. _Filial Piety.--St. Catharine's Mount.--Madame Phillope.--General Ruffin's Trumpet.--Generosity.--Love Infectious.--Masons and Gardeners._ I have before had occasion to mention the humane conduct of Madame G---- towards the persecuted abbè; she soon afterwards, with the principal ladies of the city, fell under the displeasure of Robespierre, and his agents. Their only crime was wealth, honourably acquired. A committee, composed of the most worthless people of Rouen, was formed, who, in the name of, and for the use of the nation, seized upon the valuable stock of Messrs. G----, who were natives of France. In one night, by torchlight, their extensive warehouses were sacked, and all their stores were forcibly sold in the public marketplace to the best bidder: the plundered merchants were paid the amount of the sale in assignats, in a paper currency which then bore an enormous discount, and shortly afterwards retained only the value of the paper upon which the national note was written. In short, in a few hours an honourable family, nobly allied, were despoiled of property to the amount of 25,000_l._ sterling. Other merchants shared the same fate. This act of robbery was followed by an act of cruelty. Madame G----, the mother, who was born in England, and who married a French gentleman of large fortune, whom she survived, of a delicate frame and advanced in years, was committed to prison, where, with many other female sufferers, she was closely confined for eleven months, during which time she was compelled to endure all sorts of privations. After the committee of rapine had settled their black account, and had remitted the guilty balance to their employers, the latter, in a letter of "friendly collusion, and fraudulent familiarity," after passing a few revolutionary jokes upon what had occurred, observed that the G----s seemed to bleed very freely, and that as it was likely they must have credit with many persons to a large amount, directed their obedient and active banditti to order these devoted gentlemen to draw, and to deliver to them, their draughts upon all such persons who stood indebted to their extensive concern. In the words of a celebrated orator[7], "Though they had shaken the tree till nothing remained upon the leafless branches, yet a new flight was on the wing, to watch the first buddings of its prosperity, and to nip every hope of future foliage and fruit." [7] Vide Sheridan's oration against Hastings upon the Begum charge. The G----s expected this visit, and, by an ingenious, and justified expedient, prevented their perdition from becoming decisive. Soon after the gates of the prison were closed upon Madame G----, her eldest son, a man of commanding person, and eloquent address, in defiance of every friendly, and of every affectionate entreaty, flew to Paris. It was in the evening of the last winter which beheld its snows crimsoned with revolutionary carnage, when he presented himself, undismayed, before that committee, whose horrible nature will be better described by merely relating the names of its members, then sitting, than by the most animated and elaborate delineations of all its deadly deeds of rapine and of blood. At a table, covered with green cloth, shabbily lighted, in one of the committee rooms of the national assembly, were seated Robespierre, Collot d'Herbois, Carnot, and David. They were occupied in filling up the lists for the _permanent_ guillotine, erected very near them, in la Place de la Revolution, which the executioners were then clearing of its gore, and preparing for the next day's butchery. In this devoted capital more blood had, during that day, streamed upon the scaffold, than on any one day during the revolution. The terrified inhabitants, in darkness, in remote recesses of their desolate houses, were silently offering up a prayer to the great God of Mercy to release them, in a way most suitable to his wisdom, from such scenes of deep dismay, and remorseless slaughter. Robespierre, as usual, was dressed with great neatness and gayety; the _savage_ was generally _scented_, whilst his associates were habited, en Jacobin, in the squalid, filthy fashion of that era of the revolution, in the dress of blackguards. Mr. G---- bowed, and addressed them very respectfully. "I am come, citizens, before you," said this amiable son, "to implore the release of my mother; she is pining in the prison of Rouen, without having committed any offence; she is in years; and if her confinement continues, her children whose fortunes have been placed at the disposal of the national exigencies, will have to lament her death; grant the prayer of her son, restore, I conjure you, by all the rights of nature, restore her to her afflicted family." Robespierre looked obliquely at him, and with his accustomed sharpness, interrupted him from proceeding further, by exclaiming, "what right have _you_ to appear before us, miscreant? you are an agent of Pitt and Cobourg (the then common phrase of reproach) you shall be sent to the guillotine--Why are you not at the frontiers?" Monsieur G----, unappalled, replied, "give me my mother, and I will be there to morrow, I am ready instantly to spill my blood, if it must be the price of _her_ discharge." Robespierre, whose savage soul was occasionally moved by sights of heroic virtue, seemed impressed by this brave and unusual address. He paused, and after whispering a few words to his associates, wrote the discharge, and handing it over to a soldier, for the successful petitioner, he fiercely told him to retire. Mr. G---- instantly set out for Rouen, where, after a long, and severe journey, he arrived, exhausted with fatigue, and agitation of mind; without refreshment, this excellent man flew to the gates of the prison, which contained his mother, and presented the discharge to the gaoler, who drily, with a brutal grin, informed him, that a trick had been played off upon him, that he had just received a counter order, which he held in his hand, and refused to release her!!! It turned out, that immediately after Mr. G---- had left the committee room, the relenting disposition, which he had momentarily awakened in the barbarous breast of Robespierre, had subsided. The generous sentiment was of a short, and sickly growth, and withered under the gloomy, fatal shade of his sanguinary nature. A chasseur had been dispatched with the counterorder, who passed the exulting, but deluded G---- on the road. A short time after this, and a few days before Madame G----, and her unhappy companions were to have perished on the scaffold, the gates of their prison flew open, the world was released from a monster--Robespierre was no more. This interesting recital I received from one of the amiable sufferers, in our way to St. Catharine's Mount. The story afforded a melancholy contrast to the rich and cheerful scenes about us. From the attic story of a lofty house, built under this celebrated cliff, we ascended that part of it, which, upon the road to Paris, is only accessible in this manner. When we reached the top, the prospect was indeed superb; on one side we traced for miles, the romantic meanders of the Seine, every where forming little islands of poplars; before us, melting away in the horizon, were the blue mountains of Lower Normandy; at their feet, a variegated display of meadows, forests, corn fields, and vineyards; immediately below us, the city of Rouen, and its beautiful suburbs. This delicious, and expanded prospect, we enjoyed upon a seat erected near a little oratory, which is built upon the top of the mountain, resting, at one end, upon the pedestal of a cross, which, in the times of the revolution, had been shattered and overturned. From this place, before dinner, we proceeded to la Montagne; a wild and hilly country, lying opposite to St. Catharine's. Here we were overtaken by a storm, upon which, a curé, who had observed us from his little cottage, not far distant, and who had been very lately reinstated in the cure of the church, in the neighbouring village, came out to us, with an umbrella, and invited us to dinner. Upon our return to our inn, to dress, we were annoyed by a nuisance which had before frequently assailed us. I knew a man, who in a moment of ill humour, vented rather a revengeful wish that the next neighbour of his enemy might have a child, who was fond of a _whistle_ and a _drum_! A more insufferable nuisance was destined for us; the person who lodged in the next room to mine, was a beginner (and a dull one too) upon the _trumpet_. It was general Ruffin, whom I have mentioned before, forcing from this brazen tube, sounds which certainly would have set a kennel of hounds in a cry of agony, and were almost calculated to disturb the repose of the dead. General Ruffin, in all other respects, was a very polite, and indeed a very _quiet_ young man, and a brave warrior; but in the display of his passion for music, I fear he mistook either his talent or his instrument. At one time we thought of inviting him to dine with us, that we might have a little respite, but after debating the matter well over, we conceived that to entertain an italian hero, as he ought to be received by those who admire valour even in an enemy, was purchasing silence at a very advanced price, so we submitted to the evil with that resignation which generally follows the incurable absence of a remedy. We now addressed ourselves to Madame P----, to know how long the general had learned the trumpet, and whether his leisure hours were generally occupied in this way. Madame P. was, strange to tell, not very able to afford us much information upon the subject. She was under the influence of love. The natural tranquillity of her disposition, was improved by the prospect of connubial happiness, which, although a widow, and touching the frontier of her eight and thirtieth year, she shortly expected to receive from the son of a neighbouring architect, who was then a minor. In this blissful frame of mind, our fair hostess scarcely knew when the trumpet of general R---- sounded. Her soul was in harmony with all the world, and it was not in the power of the demon of discord, nor even of this annoying brazen tube, to disturb her. Madame P---- well deserved to be blessed with such equanimity, and if _she_ liked it, with such a lover, for she was a generous and good creature. A gentleman to whom I was afterwards introduced, when the revolution began to grow hot, fled with his lady and his children into a foreign country, where, upon the relics of a shattered fortune he remained, until things wore a better aspect, and enabled him, with a prospect of safety, to return to his native country. In better times, upon his annual visits to a noble chateau, and large estates which he once possessed in this part of Normandy, he was accustomed to stop at the Hôtel de Poitiers. His equipage was then splendid, and suitable to his affluent circumstances. Upon his return to France, this gentleman, harassed by losses, and fatigued by sickness, arrived with his accomplished lady, and their elegant children, in a hired cabriole, at the gate of Madame P----. As soon as their name was announced, the grateful hostess presented herself before them, and kissing the children, burst into tears of joy; when she had recovered herself, she addressed her old patron, by expressing her hopes, that he had amended his fortune abroad, and was now returning to enjoy himself in tranquillity at home. "Alas! my good Madame P----," said this worthy gentleman, "we left our country, as you know, to save our lives, we have subsisted upon the remains of our fortune ever since, and have sustained heavy and cruel losses; we have been taken prisoners upon our passage, and are now returning to our home, if any is left to us, to solicit some reparation for our sufferings. Times are altered, Madame P----, you must not now consider me as formerly, when I expended the gifts of Providence in a manner which I hope was not altogether unworthy of the bounty which showered them upon me, we must bow down to such dispensations, you see I am candid with you; we are fatigued, and want refreshment, give us, my good landlady, a little plain dinner, such as is suitable to our present condition." Madame P---- was so much affected, that she could make no reply, and left the room. Immediately all the kitchen was in a bustle, every pot and pan were placed in instant requisition, the chamber-maids were sent to the neighbouring confectioners for cakes, and the porter was dispatched all over the city for the choicest fruits. In a short time a noble dinner was served up to this unfortunate family, followed by confectionary, fruits, and burgundy. When the repast was over, Mons. O---- ordered his bill, and his cabriole to be got ready. Madame P----entered, and in the most amiable manner requested him, as she had exceeded his orders, to consider the dinner as a little acknowledgement of her sense of his past favours; money, though earnestly pressed upon her, she would not receive. The whole of this interesting party were moved to tears, by this little act of nature and generosity. When they entered their carriage, they found in it bouquets of flowers, and boxes of cakes for the little children. No doubt Madame P----moved lighter that day, than she ever did in her life, and perhaps found the remembrance of her conduct upon the occasion almost as exquisite as the hours of love, which she appeared most happily to enjoy, when we had the honour of being under her roof. Monsieur O---- could not help exhibiting much feeling, when he related this little event to me. I must not fail to mention that all the house seemed, for the moment, infected with the happy disease of the mistress. General Ruffin's valet de chambre was in love with Dorothée, our chamber-maid; the porter was pining for a little black eyed grisette, who sold prints and pastry, in a stall opposite; and the ostler was eternally quarrelling with the chef de cuisine, who repelled him from the kitchen, which, in the person of the assistant cook, a plump rosy norman girl, contained all the treasure of his soul--love and negligence reigned throughout the household. We rang the bells, and sacre dieu'd, but all in vain, we suffered great inconvenience, _but who could be angry?_ In the course of our walks, and conversations, with the workmen, whom we met, we found that most of the masons, and gardeners of Rouen, had fought in the memorable, bloody, and decisive battle of Marengo, at which it appears that a great part of the military of France, within four or five hundred miles of the capital, were present. The change they presented was worthy of observation; we saw men sun-browned in campaigns, and enured to all the ferocity of war, at the sound of peace assuming all the tranquil habits of ingenious industry, or rustic simplicity. Some of them were occupied in forming the shapeless stone into graceful embellishments for elegant houses, and others in disposing, with botanic taste, the fragrant parterre. After spending four very delightful days in this agreeable city, I bade adieu to my very worthy companion, captain W. C----, whose intention it was to spend some time here, and those friends, from whom I had received great attention and hospitalities, and wishing the amiable Madame P---- many happy years, and receiving from her the same assurances of civility, about seven o'clock in the evening I seated myself in the diligence for Paris, and in a comfortable corner of it, after we had passed the pavé, resigned myself to sleep. CHAPTER VIII. _Early dinner.--Mante.--Frost.--Duke de Sully.--Approach the Capital.--Norman Barrier.--Paris.--Hôtel de Rouen.--Palais Royal._ At day break, the appearance of the country in all directions was delightful. The faint eastern blush of early morn, threw a mild, refreshing light over the moist and dew-dripping scenery. The spirit of our immortal bard, awaking from the bosom of nature, seemed to exclaim-- ------------Look love, what envious streaks Do lace the severing clouds, in yonder east; Night's candles are burnt out; and jocund Day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops. About eight o'clock in the morning, we arrived at Mante, a picturesque town, built upon a fertile mountain, at the base of which the Seine flowed along, rippling against its many islands of beautiful poplars. At this hour, upon our alighting at the inn, we found a regular dinner ready, consisting of soups, meats, fowls, and confectionary. To the no small surprise of the host, I expressed a wish to have some breakfast, and at length, after much difficulty, procured some coffee and rolls. The rest of the party, with great composure, tucked their napkins in the buttonholes of their waistcoats, and applied themselves to the good things before them, with very active address. What a happy race of people! ready for every thing, and at all times; they scarcely know the meaning of inconvenience. In the midst of difficulty, they find accommodation; with them, every thing seems in harmony. After paying thirty sols for my repast, a charge which announced our approach to the capital, I walked on, and made my way to the bridge over another winding of the Seine, at the bottom of the town; which is a light, and elegant structure. The houses along the sides of the river are handsome, and delightfully situated. The principal church is a fine gothic building, but is rapidly hastening to decay; some of its pinnacles are destroyed, and all its windows broken in. A small chapel, in the street opposite, which had an appearance of considerable elegance, was converted into a slaughter-house. Embosomed in woods, on the other side of the bridge, is a fine chateau, formerly belonging to the count d'Adhemar; here, while enjoying the enchanting prospect about me, I heard the jingling approach of our heavy diligence, in which, having reseated myself, we proceeded upon a fine high road, through thick rows of walnut, cherry, mulberry, and apple trees, for several miles, on each side of which, were vineyards, upon whose promising vintage, the frost had committed sad devastation. For a vast extent, they appeared blackened and burnt up. It was said that France sustained a loss of two millions sterling, by this unusual visitation. In the course of our journey, I experienced in the conduct of one of our two female companions, an occurrence, allied to that, which is related by Sterne, of Madame de Rambouillet, by which he very justly illustrates the happy ease, with which the french ladies prevent themselves from ever suffering by inconvenient notions of delicacy. A few miles from Mante, on the borders of the Seine, we passed one of the venerable chateaus of the celebrated duke de Sully, the faithful, able, and upright minister, of Henry IV of France, one of those great geniuses, who only at distant æras of time, are permitted to shine out amongst the race of men. Historians unite in observing that the duke performed all the duties of an active and upright minister, under a master, who exercised all the offices of a great and good king; after whose unhappy fate, this excellent man retired from the busy scenes of the world, and covered with time and honours expired in the eighty-second year of his age in the year 1641, at his castle of Villebon. The house is plain, and large. The grounds are disposed after the fashion of ancient times. As we approached the capital, the country looked very rich and luxuriant. We passed through the forest of St. Germains, where there is a noble palace, built upon a lofty mountain. The forest abounds with game, and formerly afforded the delights of the chase to the royal Nimrods of France. Its numerous green alleys are between two and three miles long, and in the form of radii unite in a centre. The forest and park extend to the barrier, through which, we immediately entered the town of St. Germains, distant from Paris about twelve miles, which is a large and populous place, and in former periods, during the royal residence, was rich and flourishing, but having participated in the blessings of the revolution, presents an appearance of considerable poverty, and squalid decay. Here we changed horses for the last post, and ran down a fine, broad paved, royal road through rows of stately elms, upon an inclined plane, until the distant, and wide, but clear display of majestic domes, awful towers, and lofty spires, informed us that we approached the capital. I could not help comparing them with their cloud-capped brethren of London, over whose dim-discovered heads, a floating mass of unhealthy smoke, for ever suspends its heavy length of gloom. Our carriage stopped at the Norman Barrier, which is the grand entrance to Paris, and here presents a magnificent prospect to the eye. The barrier is formed of two very large, and noble military stone lodges, having porticoes, on all sides, supported by massy doric pillars. These buildings were given to the nation, by the national assembly in the year 1792, and are separated from each other, by a range of iron gates, adorned with republican emblems. Upon a gentle declivity; through quadruple rows of elms, at the distance of a mile and a half, the gigantic statues of la Place de la Concorde (ci-devant, de la Revolution) appear; beyond which, the gardens, and the palace of the Thuilleries, upon the centre tower of which, the tricoloured flag was waving, form the back scene of this splendid spectacle. Before we entered la Place de la Concorde, we passed on each side of us, the beautiful, and favourite walks of the parisians, called les Champs Elysées, and afterwards, on our left, the elegant palace of the Garde-meuble; where we entered the streets of Paris, and soon afterwards alighted at the bureau of the diligences; from which place, I took a fiacre (a hackney coach) and about six o'clock in the evening presented myself to the _mistress_ of the hôtel de Rouen, for the women of France generally transact all the masculine duties of the house. To this hotel I was recommended by Messrs. G----, upon mentioning whose name, I was very politely shown up to a suite of pleasant apartments, consisting of an antiroom, bedroom, and dressing-room, the two latter were charmingly situated, the windows of which, looked out upon an agreeable garden belonging to the palace of the Louvre. For these rooms I paid the moderate price of three livres a day. Here, after enjoying those comforts which travellers after long journies, require, and a good dinner into the bargain, about nine o'clock at night I sallied out to the Palais Royal, a superb palace built by the late duke d'Orleans, who when he was erecting it, publickly boasted, that he would make it one of the greatest brothels in Europe, in which prediction he succeeded, to the full consummation of his abominable wishes. This palace is now the property of the nation. The grand entrance is from the Rue St. Honorè, a long street, something resembling the Piccadilly of London, but destitute, like all the other streets of Paris, of that ample breadth, and paved footway, for the accommodation of pedestrian passengers, which give such a decided superiority to the streets of the capital of England. After passing through two noble courts, I entered the piazza, of this amazing pile; which is built of stone, upon arches, supported by corinthian pilasters. Its form is an oblong square, with gardens, and walks in the centre. The whole is considered to be, about one thousand four hundred feet long, and three hundred feet broad. The finest shops of Paris for jewellery, watches, clocks, mantuamakers, restaurateurs[8], china, magazines, &c., form the back of the piazza, which on all the sides, of this immense fabric, affords a very fine promenade. These shops once made a part of the speculation, of their mercenary, and abandoned master, to whom they each paid a rent after the rate of two or three hundred pounds sterling per annum. This place presents a scene of profligate voluptuousness, not to be equalled upon any spot in Europe. Women of character are almost afraid to appear here at noon day; and a stranger would conceive, that at night, he saw before him, one third of the beauty of Paris. [8] Restaurateur is now universally used instead of traiteur. Under the roof of this palace are two theatres, museums of curiosities, the tribunate, gaming houses, billiard rooms, buillotte clubs, ball rooms, &c., all opening into the gardens, the windows of which threw, from their numerous lamps, and lustres, a stream of gay and gaudy light upon the walks below, and afforded the appearance of a perpetual illumination. At the bottom was a large pavilion, finely illuminated, in which were groups of people regaling themselves with lemonade, and ices. Upon this spot, in the early part of the revolution, the celebrated Camille Desmoulins used to declaim against the abuses of the old government, to all the idle and disaffected of Paris. It is said that the liveries of the duc d'Orleans gave birth to the republican colours, which used to be displayed in the hats of his auditors, who in point of respectability resembled the motley reformers of Chalk Farm. From the carousing rooms under ground, the ear was filled with the sounds of music, and the buzzing of crowds; in short, such a scene of midnight revelry and dissipation I never before beheld. Upon my return to my hôtel, I was a little surprised to find the streets of this gay city so meanly lighted. Lamps placed at gloomy distances from each other, suspended by cords, from lofty poles, furnish the only means of directing the footsteps of the nocturnal wanderer. CHAPTER IX. _French Reception.--Voltaire.--Restaurateur.--Consular Guard.--Music.--Venetian Horses.--Gates of the Palace.--Gardens of the Thuilleries.--Statues.--The faithful Vase.--The Sabine Picture.--Monsieur Perrègaux.--Marquis de Chatelet.--Madame Perrègaux.--Beaux and Belles of Paris._ I forgot, in my last chapter, to mention that I paid for my place, and luggage in the diligence, from Rouen to Paris, a distance of ninety miles, twenty-three livres and eighteen sols. The next morning after my arrival, and a good night's repose in a sopha bed, constructed after the french fashion, which was very lofty, and handsome, and very comfortable, I waited upon my accomplished friend, Madame H----, in the Rue Florentine. I had the honour of knowing her when in England, from very early years; I found her with her elegant and accomplished daughter, in a suite of large rooms, very handsomely furnished after the _antique_, which gives to the present fashionable furniture of France, its form and character. These rooms composed a floor of a noble stone built house, which contained several other families; such is the customary mode of being lodged in the capital. She received me in the most charming manner, and had expected me for some days, previous to my arrival, and was that evening going to her country house at Passi, a few miles from Paris, whither she pressed me to accompany her, but I declined it, on account of the short time which I had before me to spend in Paris. Madame H---- was not only a beauty, but a woman of wit and learning, and had accordingly admitted Voltaire amongst the number of her household gods; the arch old cynic, with his deathlike sarcastic face, admirably represented, by a small whole length porcelain statue, occupied the centre of her chimney piece. Upon finding that I was disposed to remain in town, she recommended me to a restaurateur, in the gardens of the Thuilleries, one of the first eating houses in Paris, for society, and entertainment, to the master of which she sent her servant, with my name, to inform him, that she had recommended an english gentleman of her acquaintance to his house, and requested that an english servant in his service might attend to me, when I dined there. This was a little valuable civility, truly french. This house has been lately built under the auspices of the first consul, from a design, approved of by his own exquisite taste; he has permitted the entrance to open into the gardens of the consular palace. The whole is from a model of one of the little palaces of the Herculaneum, it is upon a small scale, built of a fine white stone, it contains a centre, with a portico, supported by doric pillars, and two long wings. The front is upon the terrace of the gardens, and commands an enchanting view of all its beautiful walks and statues. On the ground floor the house is divided into three long and spacious apartments, opening into each other through centre arches, and which are redoubled upon the view by immense pier glasses at each end. The first room is for dinner parties, the next for ices, and the third for coffee. In the middle is a flying staircase, lined on each side with orange trees, which ascends into a suite of upper dinner rooms, all of which are admirably painted after the taste of the Herculaneum, and are almost lined with costly pier glasses. My fair countrywomen would perhaps be a little surprised to be told, that elegant women, of the first respectability, superbly dressed for the promenade, dine here with their friends in the public room, a custom which renders the scene delightful, and removes from it the accustomed impressions of grossness. Upon entering, the guest is presented with a dinner chart, handsomely printed, enumerating the different dishes provided for that day, with their respective prices affixed. All the people who frequent this place are considered highly respectable. The visitor is furnished with ice for his water decanters, with the best attendance at dinner, and with all the english and foreign newspapers. I always dined here when I was not engaged. After parting from Madame H----, who intended returning to town the next day, I went to see the consular guard relieved at the Thuilleries. About five companies of this distinguished regiment assemble in the gardens, exactly at five minutes before twelve o'clock, and, preceded by their fine band of music, march through the hall of the palace, and form the line in the grand court yard before it, where they are joined by a squadron of horse. Their uniform is blue, with broad white facings. The consular guard were in a little disgrace, and were not permitted to do the entire duty of the palace at this time, nor during several succeeding days, as a mark of the first consul's displeasure, which had been excited by some unguarded expression of the common men, respecting his conduct, and which, to the jealous ear of a new created and untried authority, sounded like the tone of disaffection. Only the cavalry were allowed to mount guard, the infantry were, provisionally, superseded by a detachment from a fine regiment of hussars. On account of the shortness of this parade, which is always dismissed precisely at ten minutes past twelve o'clock, it is not much attended. The band is very fine, they had a turkish military instrument, which I never heard before, and was used instead of triangles. It was in the shape of four canopies, like the roofs of chinese temples, one above another, lessening as they ascended, made of thin plates of brass, and fringed with very little brass bells, it was supported by a sliding rod which dropped into a handle, out of which, when it was intended to be sounded, it was suddenly jerked by the musician, and produced a good effect with the other instruments. The tambour major is remarked for his noble appearance, and for the proportions of his person, which is very handsome: his full dress uniform on the grand parade is the most splendid thing, I ever beheld. The corps of pioneers who precede the regiment, have a singular appearance. These men are rather above six feet high, and proportionably made, they wear fierce mustachios, and long black beards, lofty bear skin caps, broad white leathern aprons, which almost touch their chins, and over their shoulders carry enormous hatchets. Their strange costume seemed to unite the dissimilar characters of high priest, and warrior. They looked like _military magi_. The common men made a very martial appearance. Their officers wore english riding boots, which had an unmilitary effect. Paris at present exhibits all the appearances of a city in a state of siege. The consular palace resembles a line of magnificent barracks, at the balconies, and upon the terraces of which, soldiers are every where to be seen lounging. This palace is partitioned between the first and second consuls, the third principal magistrate resides in a palace near the Louvre, opposite to the Thuilleries. The four colossal brazen horses, called the venetian horses, which have been brought from Venice, are mounted upon lofty pedestals, on each side of the gates of the grand court yard of the palace. When the roman emperor Constantine founded Constantinople, he attached these exquisite statues to the chariot of the Sun in the hippodromus, or circus, and when that capital was taken possession of by the venetian and french crusading armies, in 1206, the venetians obtained possession of them, amongst many other inestimable curiosities, and placed these horses in four niches over the great door of the church of St. Marco. Respecting their previous history, authors very much differ; some assert that they were cast by the great statuary Lysippus, in Alexander's time, others that they were raised over the triumphal arch of Augustus, others of Nero, and thence removed to the triumphal arch of Constantine, from which he carried them to his own capital. They are said to be composed of bronze and gold, which much resembles the famous composition of the corinthian brass. Although these statues are of an enormous size, they are too diminutive for the vast pile of building which they adorn. The same remark applies to the entrance gates, of massy iron, which have just been raised by the directions of the first consul. The tricolour flag, mounted upon the centre dome of the palace, is also too small. From the court yard I entered the gardens, which are very beautiful, and about seven o'clock in the evening, form one of the favourite and fashionable walks of the parisians. They are disposed in regular promenades, in which are many fine casts from the ancient statues, which adorn the hall of antiques, and on each side are noble orange trees, which grow in vast moveable cases; many of these exotics are twenty feet high. Until lately many of the antiques were placed here, but Bonaparte, with his accustomed judgment and veneration for the arts, has had them removed into the grand national collection, and has supplied their places by these beautiful copies, amongst which I particularly distinguished those of Hippomanes, and Atalanta, for the beauty of their proportions, and the exquisite elucidation of their story. Here are also some fine basins of water, in the middle of which are jets d'eau. The gravel walks of the gardens are watered every morning in hot weather, and centinels are stationed at every avenue, to preserve order: no person is admitted who is the carrier of a parcel, however small. Here are groups of people to be seen, every morning, reading the prints of the day, in the refreshing coolness of the shade. For the use of a chair in the gardens, of which there are some hundreds, the proprietor is thankful for the smallest coin of the republic. At the bottom of the steps, leading to the terrace, in front of the palace, are some beautiful vases, of an immense size, which are raised about twelve feet from the ground: in one of them, which was pointed out to me, an unpopular and persecuted Parisian saved nearly all his property, during the revolution. A short time before the massacre of the 10th of August, 1792, when the domiciliary visits became frequent and keen, this man, during a dark night, stole, unobserved by the guards, into the garden, with a bag under his arm, containing almost all his treasure; he made his way to the vase, which, from the palace, is on the right hand, next to the Feuillans, and, after some difficulty, committed the whole to the capacious bosom of the faithful depositary: this done, he retreated in safety; and when the time of terrour was passed, fearful that he should not be able to raise his bag from the deep bottom of the urn without a discovery, which might have rendered the circumstance suspicious, and perhaps hazardous to him, he presented himself before the minister of the police, verified the narrative of the facts, and was placed in the quiet possession of his property, which in this manner had remained undisturbed during all that frightful period. From the gardens I went to the exhibition of David's celebrated painting of the suspension of the battle between the Sabines and the Romans, produced by the wives of the latter rushing, with their children in their arms, between the approaching warriors. David is deservedly considered as the first living artist in France, and this splendid picture is worthy of his pencil. It is upon an immense scale. All the Figures (of which there are many) are as large as life. The principal female raising her terrified infant, and the two chief combatants, are inimitable. I was informed, by good authority, that the court of Russia had offered 7000_l._ sterling for it, an unexampled price for any modern painting! but that David, who is very rich, felt a reluctance in parting with it, to the emperor, on account of the climate of Russia being unfavourable to colour. From this beautiful painting, I went to pay my respects to Mons. O----, who resided at the further end of Paris, upon whom I had a letter of credit. Upon my arriving at his hotel, I was informed by the porter that his master was at his chateau, about ten miles in the country, with his family, where he lay extremely ill. This news rendered it necessary for me to leave Paris for a day and a night at least. From Mons. O---- I went to Mr. Perregaux, the rich banker and legislator, to whom I had letters of introduction. He lives in the Rue Mont Blanc, a street, the place of residence of the principal bankers, and is next door neighbour to his rival Mons. R----, whose lady has occasioned some little conversation. Mons. P----'s hotel is very superb. His chief clerks occupy rooms elegantly fitted up, and decorated with fine paintings. He received me in a very handsome manner, in a beautiful little cabinet, adorned with some excellent, and costly paintings. After many polite expressions from him, I laughingly informed him of the dilemma in which I was placed by the unexpected absence of Mons. O----; upon which Mons. P---- in the most friendly manner told me that the letters which I had brought were from persons whom he highly esteemed; and that Mr. O---- was also his friend; that as it might prove inconvenient for me to wait upon him in the country, he begged to have the pleasure of furnishing me with whatever money I wanted, upon my own draughts. I felt this act of politeness and liberality very forcibly, which I of course declined, as I wished not only to take up what money I wanted in a regular manner, but I was desirous of seeing Mr. O----, who was represented to me as a very amiable man, and his family as elegant and accomplished. I was much charmed with the generous conduct of Mons. P----, from whom I afterwards received great attentions, and who is much beloved by the English. I felt it a pleasurable duty not to confine the knowledge of such an act of liberality to the spot where it was so handsomely manifested. The sessions of the legislative assembly had closed the day before my arrival, a circumstance I much regretted, as through his means I should have been enabled to have attended their sittings. The bankers of France are immensely rich, and almost command the treasury of the nation. Mons. P----, with the well-timed, silent submission of the flexible reed, in the fable, has survived the revolutionary storm, which by a good, but guiltless policy, has passed over him, without leaving one stain upon his honourable character, and has operated, like the slime of the Egyptian inundation, only to fructify, and increase his fortunes. He once however narrowly escaped. In the time of Robespierre, the Marquis de Chatelet, a few nights before his execution, attempted to corrupt his guards, and told them, if they would release him, Mons. P---- would give them a draft to any amount which they might choose then to name. The centinels rejected the bribe, and informed their sanguinary employer of the offer, who had the books of Mons. P---- investigated: he was in no shape concerned in the attempted escape; but hearing, with extraordinary swiftness, that the marquis, whose banker he had been, and to whom an inconsiderable balance was then due, had implicated him in this manner, he instantly with dexterity, removed the page which contained the last account of the unhappy nobleman, and also his own destiny, and thus saved his life. Mons. P---- is a widower; his daughter, an only child, is married to a wealthy general, a man of great bravery, and beloved by Bonaparte. I dined this day at the Restaurateur's in the Thuilleries, and found the effect of Madame H----'s charming civility to me. There were some beautiful women present, dressed after the antique, a fashion successfully introduced by David. This extraordinary genius was desirous of dressing the beaux of Paris after the same model; but they politely declined it, alleging that if Mons. David would at the same time create another climate, warmer, and more regular for them, they would then submit the matter to a committee of fashion. The women, though said, in point of corporal sufferance, to be able to endure less than men, were enchanted with the design of the artist, and, without approaching a single degree nearer to the sun, unmindful of colds, consumptions, and death, have assumed a dress, if such it can be called, the airiness of which to the eye of fancy, looked like the mist of incense, undulating over a display of beauty and symmetry, only to be rivalled by those exquisite models of grecian taste which first furnished them with these new ideas of personal decoration. The French ladies every morning anoint their heads with the antique oil, scented; their sidelocks are formed into small circles, which just touch the bosom; and the hair behind is rolled into a rose, by which they produce a perfect copy of the ancient bust. CHAPTER X. _Large Dogs.--A Plan for becoming quickly acquainted with Paris.--Pantheon.--Tombs of Voltaire and Rousseau.--Politeness of an Emigrant.--The Beauty of France.--Beauty evanescent.--Place de Carousel.--Infernal Machine.--Fouché.--Seine.--Washerwomen.--Fisherwomen.--Baths._ In the streets of Paris, I every where saw an unusual number of very large, fierce looking dogs, partaking of the breed of the newfoundland, and british bulldog. During the time of terrour, these brave and faithful animals were in much request, and are said to have given the alarm of danger, and saved, in several instances, the lives and property of their masters, by their accustomed fidelity. Upon my arrival in this great capital, I was of course desirous of becoming acquainted with its leading features as soon as possible, for the purpose of being enabled to explore my way to any part of it, without a guide. The scheme which I thought of, for this purpose, answered my wishes, and therefore I may presume to submit it to others. On the second day after my arrival, I purchased a map of Paris, hired a fiacre, and drove to the Pantheon. Upon the top gallery which surmounts its lofty and magnificent dome, I made a survey of the city, which lay below me, like the chart with which I compared it. The clouds passed swiftly over my head, and from the shape of the dome, impressed me with an idea of moving in the air, upon the top, instead of the bottom of a balloon. I easily attained my object, by tracing the churches, the temple, the abbey, the palaces, large buildings, and the course and islands of the river, after which I seldom had occasion to retrace my steps, when I was roving about, unaccompanied. On account of no coal being used in Paris, the prospect was perfectly clear, and the air is consequently salubrious. The Pantheon, or church of St. Genevieve, is a magnificent building from the designs of Mons. Soufflet, one of the first architects of France: it was intended to be the rival of the St. Paul's of London; but, though a very noble edifice, it must fail of exciting any emotions of jealousy amongst the admirers of that national building. It is a magnificent pile, and when completed, is destined to be the principal place of worship, and is at present the mausoleum of the deceased great men of France. Upon the entablature over the portico is written, in immense characters, "AUX GRANDS HOMMES--LA PATRIE RECONNOISANTE." Parallel with the grand entrance, are colossal statues, representing the virtues imputed to a republic. Soon after the completion of the inner dome, about two years since, one of the main supporting pillars was crushed in several places by the pressure. The defective column has been removed, and until it can be replaced, its proportion of weight is sustained by a most ingenious and complicated wooden structure. Upon the spot where the altar is to be erected, I saw another goddess of liberty, with her usual appendages carved in wood, and painted, and raised by the order of Robespierre, for a grand revolutionary fête, which he intended to have given, in this church, upon the very day in which he perished. The interior dome is covered with two larger ones, each of which is supported by separate pillars, and pilasters, and the whole is constructed of stone only. The interior of the lower dome is covered with the most beautiful carvings in stone. The peristyle, or circular colonnade round the lower part of the exterior of the dome, is very fine, but I must confess, I do not like an ancient fashion which the french have just revived in their construction of these pillars, of making the thickest part of the column a little below the centre, and lessening in size to the base. Under this immense fabric are spacious vaults, well lighted; supported by doric pillars, the depositaries of the illustrious dead of France. At present there are only two personages whose relics are honoured with this gloomy distinction. Rousseau and Voltaire very quietly repose by the side of each other. Their remains are contained in two separate tombs, which are constructed of wood, and are embellished with various inscriptions. Hamlet's remark over the grave of Ophelia, strongly occurred to me. "Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? not one now to mock your own grinning? quite chapfallen?" At either end of the tomb of Jean Jacques, are two hands, darting out of the gates of death, supporting lighted torches, and below, (it is a little singular) are inscriptions illustrating the _peaceful_, and benevolent virtues of the enclosed defunct! Peace to their manes! may they enjoy more repose, than that troubled world which their extraordinary, yet different talents seemed equally destined to embellish and to embroil, though it would be difficult to name any two modern writers, who have expressed, with more eloquence, a cordial love of peace, and a zealous desire to promote the interests of humanity!! The church of St. Genevieve is entirely composed of stone and iron, of the latter very little is used. It has already cost the nation very near two millions sterling. As I was returning from the Pantheon, I was addressed by one of our emigrant companions, to whom I have before alluded. He had just arrived in Paris, intended staying about a month, and then returning to Toulon. He warmly made me an offer of his services, and during my stay here, sent every morning to know if he should attend me as a friendly guide, to conduct me to any place which I might wish to see, or to prevent me from suffering any imposition from tradesmen. His attentions to me were always agreeable, and sometimes serviceable, and strongly impressed upon my mind, the policy, as well as the pleasure, of treating every being with civility, even where first appearances are not favourable, and where an expectation of meeting the party again is not probable. In the course of the day I was introduced to Madame B----, who resides, by permission of the first consul, in a suite of elegant apartments in the Louvre, which have been granted to her on account of her merits and genius, and also in consideration of the losses which she has sustained by the revolution. In her study she presented me to Mademoiselle T----, the then celebrated beauty of Paris; her portrait by David, had afforded much conversation in the fashionable circles; she was then copying, with great taste, from the antique, which is generally the morning's occupation of the french ladies of fashion. She is certainly a very handsome young woman: but I think if the painter of France was to visit a certain western county of England, he would discover as many attractions for the display of his admirable pencil, as were at this time to be found in the study of Madame B----. When we left her, Madame B----asked me what I thought of her; I candidly made the above remark to her, "Ah!" said she, "you should have seen her about a month since, she was then the prettiest creature in all France;" how so, has she suffered from indisposition? "oh no," replied Madame B----, smilingly, "but a _month_, you know, makes a considerable difference upon the face of beauty." I was much obliged to Madame B---- for the remark, which is greatly within an observation which I have frequently made, on the evanescent nature of youthful beauty. Madame B----'s calculations of the given progress of decay, were eighteen times more swift than mine. The subject of our conversation, and the busts by which we were surrounded, naturally led us to talk of the french ladies, and they reminded us, though _slightly_, of their present _dress_. Madame B----entered into a particular account of the decorations of a lady of fashion in France. I have not patience enough to enumerate them here, except that the wife of a fournisseur will not hesitate paying from three to four hundred pounds for a Cachemire shawl, nor from four to five hundred pounds for a laced gown, nor a much larger sum for diamonds cut like pearls, and threaded. In this costly manner, does the ingenuity of art, and the prodigality of wealth do homage to the elegance of nature. The entrance to Madame B----'s apartments seemed at first, a little singular and unsuitable, but I soon found that it was no unusual circumstance, after groping through dirty passages, and up filthy staircases to enter a noble hall and splendid rooms. Upon leaving Madame B---- I passed the Place de Carousel, and saw the ruins of the houses, which suffered by the explosion of the infernal machine, which afforded so much conversation in the world at the time, by which the first consul was intended to have been destroyed in his way to the National Institute of Music. This affair has been somewhat involved in mystery. It is now well known that Monsieur Fouché, at the head of the police, was acquainted with this conspiracy from its first conception, and by his vigilant agents, was informed of the daily progress made in the construction of this destructive instrument, of the plan of which he had even a copy. The conspirators proceeded with perfect confidence, and as they thought with perfect security. Three days before it was quite completed, and ready for its fell purpose, from some surprise or dread of detection, they changed their place of meeting, and in one night removed the machine from the spot where it had been usually deposited. The penetrating eye of the police lost sight of them. Fouché, and his followers exercised their unrivalled talents for pursuit and discovery to no purpose. The baffled minister then waited upon Bonaparte, to whom he had regularly imparted the result of every day's information respecting it, and told him that he could no longer trace the traiterous instrument of his assassination, and requested him, as he knew it must be completed by this time, not to go to any public places, until he had regained a knowledge of it. Bonaparte replied, that fear only made cowards, and conspirators brave, and that he had unalterably determined to go with his accustomed equipage to the National Concert that very evening. At the usual hour the first consul set off undismayed from the Thuilleries, a description of the machine, which was made to resemble a water cask, being first given to the coachman, servants, and guards. As they proceeded, the advance guard passed it unobserved, but the coachman discovered it just as the consular carriage was on a parallel with it; instantly the dexterous and faithful charioteer lashed his horses into full speed, and turned the corner of the Rue Marcem. In one moment after, the terrible machine exploded, and covered the street with ruins. The thunder of its discharge shook the houses of Paris, and was heard at a considerable distance in the country. The first consul arrived in safety at the Hall of Music, and with every appearance of perfect tranquillity, entered his box amidst the acclamations of the crowded multitude. The range of buildings which was shattered by the explosion, has long offended the eye of taste, and presented a gloomy, and very inconvenient obstruction to the grand entrance of the palace. Bonaparte, with his usual judgment, which converts every event into some good, immediately after this affair, purchased the houses which were damaged, and the whole of this scene of ruins and rubbish is removing with all possible expedition, to the great improvement of this grand approach. Whilst I was strolling along the banks of the Seine, I could not help remarking that it would suffer much by a comparison with the Thames, so finely described by sir John Denham-- Though deep, yet clear, though gentle yet not dull: Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full. The Seine is narrow, and very dirty; its waters, which are finely filtrated when drawn from the fountains of Paris, produce an aperient effect upon strangers, who are generally cautioned not to drink much of them at a time. The tide does not reach further than several miles below Paris; to this cause I can alone attribute, though perhaps the reason is insufficient, that the river is never rendered gay by the passing, and repassing of beautiful pleasure boats, to the delights of which the parisians seem total strangers. Its shores are sadly disfigured by a number of black, gloomy, and unwieldy sheds, which are erected upon barges, for the accommodation of the washerwomen, who, by their mode of washing, which is, by rubbing the linen in the river water, and beating it with large flat pieces of wood, resembling battledores, until the dirt, and generally a portion of the linen retire together, make a noise very similar to that of shipwrights caulking a vessel. This is an abominable nuisance, and renders the view up the river, from the centre of the Pont de la Concorde, the most complete mélange of filth and finery, meanness and magnificence I ever beheld. Whilst I am speaking of these valuable, but noisy dames, I must mention that their services are chiefly confined to strangers, and the humbler class of parisians. The genteel families of France are annoyed by the unpleasant domestic occurrence of washing, when in town only once, and when in the country only twice in the course of the year. Their magazines of clothes are of course immense, for the reception and arrangement of which several rooms in their houses are always allotted. It is the intention of the first consul gradually to unkennel this clattering race of females, when it can be done with safety. To force them to the tub, and to put them into the suds too suddenly, might, from their influence amongst the lower classes of citizens, be followed by consequences not very congenial to the repose of the government. To show of what importance the ladies of the lower class in Paris are, I shall relate a little anecdote of Bonaparte, in which he is considered to have exhibited as much bravery as he ever displayed in the field of battle. The poissardes, whose name alone will awaken some emotion in the mind of the reader, from its horrible union with the barbarous massacres which discoloured the capital with blood during the revolution, have been from time immemorial accustomed, upon any great and fortunate event, to send a deputation of their sisterhood to the kings and ministers of France, and since the revolution to the various rulers of the republic, to ofter their congratulations, accompanied by a large bouquet of flowers. Upon the elevation of Bonaparte to the supreme authority of France, according to custom, they sent a select number from their body to present him with their good wishes, and usual fragrant donation. The first consul sternly received them, and after rejecting their nosegay, fiercely told them to retire, and in future to attend to their husbands, their children, and their fisheries, and never more to attempt an interference in matters relating to the state. Upon which he ordered the pages in waiting to close the door upon them. He thought no doubt that "Omnium manibus res humanæ egent: paucorum capita sufficiunt."--"Human affairs require the hands of all, whilst the heads of few are sufficient." These formidable dames, so celebrated for their ferocity, retired chagrined and chapfallen from the presence of the imperious consul, and have not attempted to force either their congratulations, or their bouquets upon any of the public functionaries since that period. Such a repulse as this, offered to a body of people, more formidable from their influence than the lazzaroni of Naples, would in all human probability have cost any one of the kings of France his crown. I received this anecdote from the brother of one of the ministers of France to whom this country is much indebted. Before the high daring of Bonaparte, every difficulty seems to droop, and die. Near the Pont de la Concorde is a handsome, and ornamental building, which is erected upon barges, and contains near three hundred cold and tepid baths, for men and women. It is surrounded by a wooden terrace, which forms an agreeable walk upon the water, and is decorated with shrubs, orange trees, and flowers, on each side. This place is very grateful in a climate which, in summer, is intensely warm. There are other public baths, but this is chiefly resorted to by people of respectability. The price is very moderate, thirty sols. CHAPTER XI. _David.--Place de la Concorde.--L'Église de Madeleine.--Print-shops.--Notre Dame.--Museum or Palace of Arts.--Hall of Statues.--Laocoon.--Belvidere Apollo.--Socrates._ During my stay in Paris I visited the gallery of David. This celebrated artist has amassed a fortune of upwards of two hundred thousand pounds, and is permitted by his great patron, and friend Bonaparte, to occupy the corner wing of the old palace, from which every other man of genius and science, who was entitled to reside there, has been removed to other places, in order to make room for the reception of the grand National Library, which the first consul intends to have deposited there. His apartments are very magnificent, and furnished in that taste, which he has, by the influence of his fame, and his elegance of design, so widely, and successfully diffused. Whilst I was seated in his rooms, I could not help fancying myself a contemporary of the most tasteful times of Greece. Tunics and robes were carelessly but gracefully thrown over the antique chairs, which were surrounded by elegant statues, and ancient libraries, so disposed, as to perfect the classical illusion. I found David in his garden, putting in the back ground of a painting. He wore a dirty robe, and an old hat. His eyes are dark and penetrating, and beam with the lustre of genius. His collection of paintings and statues, and many of his own studies, afforded a perfect banquet. He was then occupied in drawing a fine portrait of Bonaparte. The presence of David covered the gratification with gloom. Before me, in the bosom of that art, which is said, with her divine associates, to soften the souls of men, I beheld the remorseless judge of his sovereign, the destroyer of his brethren in art, and the enthusiast and confidential friend of Robespierre. David's political life is too well known. During the late scenes of horror, he was asked by an acquaintance, how many heads had fallen upon the scaffold that day, to which he is said coolly to have replied, "_only one hundred and twenty!!_ The heads of twenty thousand more must fall before the great work of philosophy can be accomplished." It is related of him, that during the reign of the Mountain, he carried his portfolio to the front of the scaffold, to catch the last emotions of expiring nature, from the victims of his revolutionary rage. He directed and presided at the splendid funeral solemnities of Lepelletier, who was assassinated by Paris, in which his taste and intimate knowledge of the ceremonies of the ancients, on similar occasions, were eminently displayed. Farewell, David! when years have rolled away, and time has mellowed the works of thy sublime pencil, mayst thou be remembered only as _their_ creator; may thy fame repose herself upon the tableau of the dying Socrates, and the miraculous passage of the Alpine hero, may the ensanguined records of thy political frenzy, moulder away, and may science, who knew not blood till thou wert known, whose pure, and hallowed inspirations have made men happier, and better, till thou wert born, implore for thee forgiveness, and whilst, with rapture she points to the immortal images of thy divine genius, may she cover with an impenetrable pall, the pale, and shuddering, and bleeding victims of thy sanguinary soul! The great abilities of this man, have alone enabled him to survive the revolution, which, strange to relate, has, throughout its ravages, preserved a veneration for science, and, in general, protected her distinguished followers. Bonaparte, who possesses great taste "that instinct superior to study, surer than reasoning, and more rapid than reflection," entertains the greatest admiration for the genius of David, and always consults him in the arrangement of his paintings and statues. All the costumes of government have been designed by this artist. David is not without his adherents. He has many pupils, the sons of respectable, and some of them, of noble families residing in different parts of Europe. They are said to be much attached to him, and have formed themselves into a military corps, for the purpose of occasionally doing honour to him, and were lately on the point of revenging an insult which had been offered to his person, in a manner, which, if perpetrated, would have required the interest of their master to have saved them from the scaffold. But neither the gracious protection of consular favour, nor the splendour of unrivalled abilities, can restore their polluted possessor, to the affections and endearments of social intercourse. Humanity has drawn a _sable circle_ round him. He leads the life of a proscribed exile, in the very centre of the gayest city in Europe. In the gloomy shade of unchosen seclusion, he passes his ungladdened hours, in the hope of covering his guilt with his glory, and of presenting to posterity, by the energies of his unequalled genius, some atonement for the havoc, and ruin of that political hurricane, of which he directed the fury, and befriended the desolations, against every contemporary object that nature had endeared, and virtue consecrated. After leaving the gallery of David, I visited la Place de la Concorde. This ill fated spot, from its spaciousness, and beauty of situation, has always been the theatre of the great fêtes of the nation, as well as the scene of its greatest calamities. When the nuptials of the late king and queen were celebrated, the magnificent fireworks, shows, and illuminations which followed, were here displayed. During the exhibition, a numerous banditti, from Normandy, broke in upon the vast assemblage of spectators: owing to the confusion which followed, and the fall of some of the scaffolding, the supporters of which were sawed through by these wretches, the disorder became dreadful, and universal; many were crushed to death, and some hundreds of the people, whilst endeavouring to make their escape, were stabbed, and robbed. The king and queen, as a mark of their deep regret, ordered the dead to be entombed in the new burial ground of l'Église de Madeleine, then erecting at the entrance of the Boulevard des Italiens, in the neighbourhood of the palace, under the immediate inspection and patronage of the sovereign. This building was never finished, and still presents to the eye, a naked pile of lofty walls and columns. Alas! the gloomy auguries which followed this fatal spectacle, were too truly realized. On _that_ spot perished the monarch and his queen, and the flower of the french nobility, and many of the virtuous and enlightened men of France, and in _this_ cemetery, their unhonoured remains were thrown, amidst heaps of headless victims, into promiscuous graves of unslacked lime! How inscrutable are the ways of destiny! This spot, which, from its enchanting scenery, is calculated only to recall, or to inspire the most tender, and generous, and elegant sentiments, which has been the favoured resort of so many kings, and the scene of every gorgeous spectacle, was doomed to become the human shambles of the brave and good, and the Golgotha of the guillotine! In the centre, is an oblong square railing, which encloses the exact spot where formerly stood that instrument of death, which was voted permanent by its remorseless employers. A temporary model in wood, of a lofty superb monument, two hundred feet high, intended to be erected in honour of Bonaparte and the battle of Marengo, was raised in this place, for his approval, but from policy or modesty, he declined this distinguished mark of public approbation. I was a little surprised to observe, in the windows of the principal print shops, prints exposed to sale, representing the late king, in his full robes of state, under which was written, Le Restaurateur de la liberté, (an equivoque, no doubt) and the parting interview between that unhappy sovereign and his queen and family in the temple, upon the morning of his execution. This little circumstance will show the confidence which the present rulers feel in the strength and security of the present government; for such representations are certainly calculated to excite feelings, and to restore impressions which might prove a little hazardous to both, were they less powerfully supported. I was also one morning a little surprised, by hearing from my window, the exhilarating song of "Rule Britannia" played upon a hand organ; upon looking down into the street, I beheld a Savoyard very composedly turning the handle of his musical machine, as he moved along, and a french officer humming the tune after him. Both were, no doubt, ignorant of the nationality of the song, though not of the truth of its sentiment. In the course of one of my morning walks, I went to the metropolitan abbey of Notre Dame, which is situated at the end of a large island in the Seine, which forms a part of Paris, and is filled with long narrow streets. It is a fine gothic pile, but in my humble opinion, much inferior to our Westminster abbey, and to the great churches of Rouen. From this building I visited, with a large party, the celebrated museum, or palace of the arts, which I afterwards generally frequented every other day. This inestimable collection contains one thousand and thirty paintings, which are considered to be the chefs d'oeuvre of the great ancient masters, and is a treasury of human art and genius, unknown to the most renowned of former ages, and far surpassing every other institution of the same nature, in the present times. The first apartment is about the size of the exhibition room of Somerset house, and lighted as that is, from above. It contains several exquisite paintings, which have been presented to Bonaparte by the princes, and rulers of those states which have been either subdued by his arms, or have cultivated his alliance. The parisians call this apartment Bonaparte's nosegay. The most costly pictures in the room, are from the gallery of the grand duke of Tuscany. Amongst so many works, all exquisite and beautiful, it is almost temerity to attempt to select, but if I might be permitted to name those which pleased me most, I should particularize the Ecce Homo, by Cigoli Ludovico Cardi. The breast of the mild and benevolent Saviour, striped with the bruises of recent punishment, and his heavenly countenance, benignly looking forgiveness upon his executioners, are beautifully delineated. L'Annonciation, by Gentileschi, in which the divine look of the angel, the graceful plumage of his wings, and the drapery of the virgin, are incomparable. La Sagesse chassant les Vices, which is a very ancient and curious painting, by Andrea Mantegna, in which the figure of Idleness, without arms, is wonderfully conceived. Les Noces de Cana, by Paul Veronese, which is considered to be the best of his works. It is the largest painting I ever beheld. The figures which are seated at the banquet, are chiefly the portraits of contemporary royal personages of different nations. From this room we passed into the gallery of the Louvre. I cannot adequately describe the first impressions which were awakened, upon my first entering it, and contemplating such a galaxy of art and genius. This room is one thousand two hundred feet long, and is lined with the finest paintings of the french, flemish, and italian schools, and is divided by a curious double painting upon slate, placed upon a pedestal in the middle of the room, which represents the front and back view of the same figures. The first division of this hall contains the finest works of le Brun, many of which are upon an immense scale. L'Hyver ou le Deluge, by Poussin, is truly sublime, but is unfortunately placed in a bad light. There are also some beautiful marine paintings, by Verney. Les Religieuses, by Philipe de Champagne, is justly celebrated for the principal figure of the dying nun. Vue de Chevet d'une eglise, by Emanuel de Witte, is an exquisite little cabinet picture, in which the effect of a ray of light shining through a painted window, upon a column, is inimitable, and the perspective is very fine. There are here also some of the finest works of Wouvermans, and a charming picture by Teniers. La Vierge, l'enfant Jesus, la Madeleine, et St. Jerome, by Antoine Allegri Correge, is considered to be a picture of great beauty and value. There are also some glorious paintings by Reubens. I have thus briefly selected these pictures from the rest, hoping, at the same time, that it will not be inferred that those which I have not named, of which it would be impossible to offer a description without filling a bulky volume, are inferior to the works which I have presumed to mention. The recording pen must rival that matchless pencil, which has thus adorned the walls of the Museum, before it can do justice to such a magnificent collection. This exhibition is public three days in the week, and at other times is open to students and to strangers, upon their producing their passports. On public days, all descriptions of persons are here to be seen. The contemplation of such a mixture is not altogether uninteresting. The sun-browned rugged plebeian, whose mind, by the influence of an unexampled political change, has been long alienated from all the noble feelings which religion and humanity inspire, is here seen, with his arms rudely folded over his breast, softening into pity, before the struggling and sinking sufferers of a deluged world, or silently imbibing from the divine resigned countenance of the crucified Saviour, a hope of unperishable bliss, beyond the grave. Who will condemn a policy by which ignorance becomes enlightened, profligacy penitent, and which, as by stealth, imparts to the relenting bosom of ferocity the subdued, and social dispositions of _true_ fraternity? To amuse, may be necessary to the present government of France, but surely to supplant the wild abandoned principles of a barbarous revolution, with _new_ impressions, created by an unreserved display of the finest and most persuasive images of resigned suffering, heroic virtue, or elegant beauty, cannot be deemed unworthy of the ruler of a great people. At this place, as well as at all the other national exhibitions, no money for admission is required or expected. No person is admitted with a stick, and guards attend to preserve the pictures from injury, and the exhibition from riot. The gallery of the Louvre is at present, unfortunately, badly lighted throughout, owing to the light issuing chiefly on one side, from long windows. This inconvenience, however, is soon to be remedied; by observing the same manner of lighting, as in the adjoining apartment. From the museum, we descended into la Salle des Antiques, which contains all the treasury of grecian and roman statuary. The first object to which we hastened, was the statue of Laocoon, for so many ages, and by so many writers admired and celebrated. This superb specimen of grecian sculpture, is supposed to be the united production of Polydorus, Athenodorus, and Agesander, but its great antiquity renders its history somewhat dubious. In the beginning of the sixteenth century it was discovered at Rome amongst the ruins of the palace of Titus, and deposited in the Farnese palace, whence it has been removed to Paris, by the orders of Bonaparte, after the conquest of Italy. It represents Laocoon, the priest of Apollo and Neptune, and his two sons writhing in the folds of two hideous serpents. The reader will remember the beautiful lines of Virgil upon the subject, "----------------et primum parva duorum Corpora natorum serpens amplexus uterque Implicat, et miseros morsu depascitur artus. Post, ipsum auxilio subeuntem ac tela ferentem Corripiunt, spirisque ligant ingentibus: et jam Bis medium amplexi, bis collo squamea circum Terga dati, superant capite et cervicibus altis. Ille simul manibus tendit divellere nodos--" Or, in the english habit which Dryden has given them, "And first around the tender boys they wind, Then with their sharpen'd fangs, their limbs and bodies grind. The wretched father, running to their aid, With pious haste, but vain, they next invade: Twice round his waist the winding volumes roll'd, And twice about his gasping throat they fold. The priest, thus doubly chok'd, their crests divide, And tow'ring o'er his head in triumphs ride. With both his hands he labours at the knots--" Pliny mentions this statue as the admiration of the age in which he flourished. I fear that I shall be guilty of a sort of profanation when I remark, that the figures of the two sons of Laocoon appear to exhibit rather more marks of maturity, and strength of muscle than are natural to their size, and to the supposed tenderness of their age. It is, however, a glorious work of art. We next beheld the Belvidere Apollo. This statue, in my humble opinion, surpasses every other in the collection. All the divinity of a god beams through this unrivalled perfection of form. It is impossible to impart the impressions which it inspires. The rivetted beholder is ready to exclaim, with Adam, when he first discerns the approach of Raphael, "--------------behold what glorious shape Comes this way moving: seems another morn, Risen on mid-noon; some great behest from Heav'n." The imagination cannot form such an union of grace and strength. During my stay in Paris, I frequently visited this distinguished statue, and discovered fresh subjects of amazement, and admiration as often as I gazed upon it. One of its remarkable beauties, is its exquisite expression of motion. Its aerial appearance perpetually excites the idea of its being unstationary, and unsupported. As it would be a rash, and vain attempt to give a complete description of this matchless image, I must, reluctantly, leave it, to inform my reader, that on the other side of the Hall are the original Diana (which is wonderfully fine) and several very beautiful Venuses. The Venus de Medicis is not here. There are also some fine whole length statues of roman magistrates, in their curule chairs. In the Temple of the Muses, are exquisite busts of Homer and Socrates. Pliny informs us that the ancient world possessed no original bust of the former. That of the latter seems to have been chisseled to represent the celebrated athenian before he had obtained his philosophical triumph over those vices, which a distinguished physiognomist of his time once imputed to him from the character of his features. CHAPTER XII. _Bonaparte.--Artillery.--Mr. Pitt--Newspapers.--Archbishop of Paris.--Consular Colours.--Religion.--Consular Conversion.--Madame Bonaparte.--Consular Modesty.--Separate Beds.--A Country Scene.--Connubial Affection.--Female Bravery._ A little anecdote is related of Bonaparte, which unfolded the bold, and daring character of this extraordinary man in early life: when he was about fifteen years of age, and a cadet in the military school at Paris--by the by, the small distance between this seminary and his present palace, and the swiftness of his elevation, afford a curious coincidence--in the vast plain of the Champ de Mars, the court, and the parisians were assembled to witness the ascent of a balloon. Bonaparte made his way through the crowd, and unperceived, entered the inner fence, which contained the apparatus for inflating the silken globe. It was then very nearly filled, and restrained from its flight by the last cord only. The young cadet requested the aeronaut to permit him to mount the car with him; which request was immediately refused, from an apprehension that the feelings of the boy might embarrass the experiment. Bonaparte is reported to have exclaimed, "I am young, it is true, but I neither fear the powers of earth, nor of air," and sternly added, "will you let me ascend?" The aeronaut, a little offended at his obtrusion, sharply replied, "No, Sir, I will not; I beg that you will retire." Upon which the little enraged officer, drew a small sabre, which he wore with his uniform, instantly cut the balloon in several places, and destroyed the curious apparatus, which the aeronaut had constructed, with infinite labour and ingenuity, for the purpose of trying the possibility of aerial navigation. Paris was almost unpeopled this day, to view the spectacle. The disappointment of the populace, which was said to have exceeded seven hundred thousand persons, became violent and universal. The king sent to know the reason of the tumult, when the story was related to him, the good humoured monarch laughed heartily, and said, "Upon my word that impetuous boy, will make a brave officer."--The devoted king little thought that he was speaking of his successor.--The young offender was put under arrest, and confined for four days. This man is certainly the phenomenon of the present times. It is a circumstance worthy of remark, that the artillery has furnished France with most of its present distinguished heroes, who have also been bred up in the same military school with Bonaparte. A short time before my arrival at Paris, this great genius, who displays a perfect knowledge of mankind, and particularly of the people over whom he rules, discovered that the parisians, from a familiarity with his person, and from his lady and his family having occasionally joined in their parties of amusement, began to lose that degree of awe and respect for him, which he so well knows how to appreciate, as well as to inspire. In consequence of this, he gradually retired from every circle of fashion, and was at this period, almost as inaccessible as a chinese emperor. The same line of conduct was also adopted by the principal officers of government. He resided almost wholly at Mal Maison, except on state days, when only those strangers were permitted to be introduced to him, who had satisfired the ambassadors of their respective nations, that they had been previously presented at their own courts. If Bonaparte is spared from the stroke of the assassin, or the prætorian caprice of the army, for any length of time, he will have it in his power to augment the services which he has already afforded to the republic, by rebuilding the political edifice of France, with many meliorations, for which some materials may be collected from her own ruins, and some from the tried and approved constitutions of other countries. If his ambition will permit him to discharge this great undertaking faithfully, in a manner uniform with that glory which he has acquired in the field, and influenced only by the noble desire of giving rational liberty, and practicable happiness to the people over whom he sways, they will in return, without jealousy or regret, behold the being to whose wisdom and moderation they will be thus indebted, led to the highest seat amongst them--they will confer those sanctions upon his well merited distinction, without which all authority is but disastrous usurpation--a comet's blaze, flaming in a _night of dismay_, and _setting in gloom_. The dignity of such a legislator will be self-maintained, and lasting. Upon him, the grateful french will confer those unforced, unpurchased suffrages, which will _prevent_ that fate, which, in their absence, the subtilty of policy, the fascinations of address, the charm of corruption, and even the terror of the bayonet can only _postpone_.--Yes, Bonaparte! millions of suffering beings, raising themselves from the dust, in which a barbarous revolution has prostrated them, look up to thee for liberty, protection, and repose. They _will_ not look to thee in vain. The retiring storm still flashing its lessening flame, and rolling its distant thunders will teach thee, _were it necessary_, not to force them to remeasure their vengeance by their wrongs. In Paris, the achievements of the first consul are not much talked of, so true is the old adage, that no man is a hero to his own domestic. The beauties of a colossal statue, must be contemplated at a distance. The french at present work, walk, eat, drink, and sleep in tranquillity, and what is of more consequence to them, they dance in security, to which may be added, that their taxes are neither very heavy, nor oppressive. In every party which I entered, I found the late minister of Great Britain was the prevailing subject of curiosity. I was overpowered with questions respecting this great man, which in their minute detail, extended to ascertain what was the colour of his eye, the shape of his nose, and whether in a morning he wore hussar boots, or shoes. This little circumstance could not fail of proving pleasant to an englishman. They informed me, that throughout the war, they regularly read in their own diurnal prints, our parliamentary debates, and the general outline of most of our political schemes, which were furnished by people in the pay of the french government, who resided in England notwithstanding the severity of the legislative, and the vigilance of the executive authorities. Whilst I am mentioning the subject of newspaper intercourse, I cannot help lamenting, that since the renewal of national friendship, the public prints of both countries are not more under the influence of cordiality and good humour. The liberty of the press is the palladium of reason, the distributor of light and learning, the public and undismayed assertor of interdicted truth. It is the body and the _honour guard_ of civil and political liberty. Where the laws halt with dread, the freedom of the press advances, and with the subtle activity of conscience, penetrates the fortified recesses and writes its _fearful sentence on the palace wall_ of recoiling tyrants. As an englishman, my expiring sigh should be breathed for its preservation; but as an admirer of social repose and national liberality, I regret to see its noble energies engaged in the degrading service of fretful spleen, and ungenerous animadversion. When the horizon is no longer blackened with the smoke of the battle, it is unworthy of two mighty empires to carry on an ignoble war of words. If peace is their wish, let them manifest the great and enlightened sentiment in all its purity, and disdain to irritate each other by acts of petulant and provoking recrimination. A short time preceding my arrival in France, Bonaparte had rendered himself very popular amongst the constitutional clergy, by a well timed compliment to the metropolitan archbishop. The first consul gave a grand dinner to this dignified prelate, and to several of his brethren. After the entertainment, Bonaparte addressed the archbishop by observing, that as he had given directions for the repairing of the archiepiscopal palace, he should very much like to take a ride in the archbishop's carriage, to see the progress which the workmen had made. The prelate bowed to the first consul, and informed him that he had no carriage, otherwise he should be much flattered by conducting him thither. Bonaparte good humouredly said, "how can that be? your coach has been waiting at the gate this half hour," and immediately led the venerable archbishop down the steps of the Thuilleries, where he found a plain handsome carriage, with a valuable pair of horses, and a coachman, and footmen dressed in the livery which Bonaparte had just before informed him would be allotted to him, when his establishment was completed. The whole was a present from the private purse of the first consul. Upon their arrival at the palace, the archbishop was agreeably surprised by finding that the most minute, and liberal attention had been paid to his comfort and accommodation. The clergy seem to be in favour with Bonaparte. When he assisted in the last spring at the inauguration of the archbishop of Paris, in the metropolitan church of Notre Dame, and gave to the restoration of religion "all the circumstance of pomp" and military parade, he was desirous of having the colours of his regiment consecrated by the holy prelate, and submitted his wishes to his soldiers. A few days afterwards, a deputation waited upon their general in chief, with this reply, "Our banners have already been consecrated by the blood of our enemies at Marengo; the benediction of a priest cannot render them more sacred in our eyes, nor more animating in the time of battle." Bonaparte prudently submitted himself to their prætorian resolution, and the consular colours remain to this hour in the same _unchristianlike_ condition, as when they first waved at the head of their victorious legions. This anecdote will in some degree prove a fact which, notwithstanding the counter reports of english newspapers, I found every where confirmed, that although religion is _new_ to the french, yet that the novelty has at present but little charm for them. I had frequent opportunity of making this remark, as well in the capital as in the departments of the republic through which I passed. In Paris, the Sabbath can only be considered as a day of dissipation to the lovers of gayety, and a day of unusual profit to the man of trade. Here, it is true, upon particular festival days, considerable bodies of people are to be seen in the act of worship, but curiosity, and the love of show assemble them together, if it was otherwise their attendance would be more numerous and regular. The first consul does not seem to possess much fashionable influence over the french in matters of religion, otherwise, as he has the credit of attending mass, with very pious punctuality, in his private chapel at Mal Maison, it might be rather expected, that devotion would become a little more familiar to the people. Upon another subject, the _profession_ of the chief magistrate has been equally unfortunate. To the few ladies who are admitted into his social circles, he has declared himself an enemy to that dress, or undress (I am puzzled to know what to call it) which his friend, David, has, so successfully, recommended, for the purpose of displaying, with the least possible restraint, the fine proportions of the female form. Madame Bonaparte, who is considered to be in as good a state of subordination to her _young_ husband, as the consular regiment is to their _young_ general, contrives to exhibit her elegant person to great advantage; by adopting a judicious and graceful medium of dress, by which she tastefully avoids a load of decoration, which repels the eye by too dense a covering, and that questionable airiness of ornament which, by its gracious and unrestrained display, deprives the imagination of more than half its pleasures. Bonaparte is said not to be indifferent to those affections which do honour to the breast which cherishes them, nor to the morals of the people whom he governs. It is well known that in France, in the house of a new fashionable couple, _separate chambers_ are always reserved for the _faithful_ pair, which after the solemnities of marriage very seldom remain long unoccupied. The first consul considers such separations as unfriendly to morals. A few months since, by a well timed display of assumed ignorance, he endeavoured to give fashion to a sentiment which may in time reduce the number of these _family accommodations_. The noble palace of St. Cloud was at this time preparing for him; the principal architect requested of him to point out in what part of the palace he would wish to have his separate sleeping room. "I do not know what you mean," said the young imperial philosopher, "crimes only divide the husband from his wife. Make as many bed rooms as you please, but only _one_ for me and Madame Bonaparte." I must now quit the dazzling splendour of imperial virtues for the more tranquil, but not less fascinating appearance of retired and modest merit. It was in the afternoon of one of the finest days in June, when Madame O----, with her nephew, a very amiable young man, called in their carriage and took me to the chateau of her husband, to whom I had letters of introduction. After passing through a charming country for nine miles, adorned on each side with gardens and country houses, we arrived at the pleasant village of la Reine. As soon as we entered it, the sight of the carriage, and of their benefactress, seemed to enliven the faces of the villagers, who were seated in picturesque groupes at the doors of their cottages. Such animated looks were not lighted up by curiosity, for they had seen Madame O---- a thousand and a thousand times, but because they had seldom seen her without experiencing some endearing proof of her bountiful heart. We left the village to the right, and proceeded through a private road, lined with stately walnut trees, of nearly a mile in length, which led to Monsieur O----'s. It was evening; the sky was cloudless, the sun was setting in great glory, and covered the face of this romantic country with the richest glow. Near the gate of a shrubbery I beheld a very handsome boy, whose appearance at once bespoke him to be the son of a gentleman, the animated smile of Madame O----, immediately convinced me that it was her son; "see," said the delighted mother, "it is my little gardener;" the little graceful rustic had a small spade in his hand, which he threw down, and ran to us. We alighted at the entrance of the garden, into which we entered, under a beautiful covered treillage, lined with jessamine and honeysuckles. At the end were two elegant young women, waiting, with delight, to receive their mother, from whom they had been separated only a few hours. With this charming family I entered the house, which was handsome but plain. The hospitable owner rose from his sofa, and, after embracing his elegant lady with great affection, he received me with all the expressions and warmth of a long friendship. Soon afterwards his servant (a faithful indian) entered, and spread upon the table, Madeira, Burgundy, and dried fruits. It was intensely hot: the great window at the end of the room in which we were sitting, opened into the gardens, which appeared to be very beautiful, and abounded with nightingales, which were then most sweetly singing. "They are my little musicians," said Monsieur O----, "we have made a pleasant bargain together, I give them crumbs of bread and my bowers to range in, and they give me this charming music every evening." Monsieur O---- was an invalide, the revolution, poignant vexations, heavy losses, and a painful separation from his native country, for the preservation of his life, and that of his family, had undermined his health. Grief had made sad inroads upon a delicate constitution. It was his good fortune to be the husband of one of the finest, and most amiable women in France, and the father of an affectionate, beautiful, and accomplished family. His circumstances had been once splendid; they were then respectable, but he had passed through events which threatened his _all_. Those sufferings which generous souls sustain for the sake of others, not for themselves, had alone destroyed the resemblance which once existed between this excellent man and his admirable portrait, which, at the further end of the room, presented the healthy glow, and fine proportions of manly beauty. He expressed to me, in the most charming manner, his regret, that indisposition confined him to the country, and prevented him from receiving me in Paris suitable to his own wishes, and to those claims which I had upon his attentions, by the letters of introduction which I had brought to him; but added, that he should furnish me with letters to some of his friends in town, who would be happy to supply his absence, and to make Paris agreeable to me. Monsieur O---- was as good as his word. This amiable gentleman possessed a countenance of great genius, and a mind full of intelligence. After an elegant supper, when his lady and daughters had withdrawn, he entered into a very interesting account of his country, of the revolution, and of his flight for the salvation of himself and family. A tolerably good opinion may be formed of the devastation which have been produced by the late republican government, by the following circumstance, which Monsieur O---- assured me, on the word of a man of honour, was correct. His section in Paris was composed of one thousand three hundred persons, of rank and fortune, of whom only five had escaped the slaughter of the guillotine!! Madame O---- and her charming family, seemed wholly to occupy his heart and affections. He spoke of his lady with all the tender eulogium of a young lover. Their union was entirely from attachment, and had been resisted on the part of Madame O----, when he first addressed her, only because her fortune was humble, compared with his. He informed me, and I must not suppress the story, that in the time of blood, this amiable woman, who is remarkable for the delicacy of her mind, and for the beauty and majesty of her person, displayed a degree of coolness and courage, which, in the field of battle, would have covered the hero with laurels. One evening, a short period before the family left France, a party of those murderers, who were sent for by Robespierre, from the frontiers which divide France from Italy, and who were by that archfiend employed in all the butcheries, and massacres of Paris, entered the peaceful village of la Reine, in search of Monsieur O----. His lady saw them advancing, and anticipating their errand, had just time to give her husband intelligence of their approach, who left his chateau by a back door, and secreted himself in the house of a neighbour. Madame O----, with perfect composure, went out to meet them, and received them in the most gracious manner. They sternly demanded Mons. O----, she informed them that he had left the country, and after engaging them in conversation, she conducted them into her drawing room, and regaled them with her best wines, and made her servants attend upon them with unusual deference and ceremony. Their appearance was altogether horrible, they wore leather aprons, which were sprinkled all over with blood, they had large horse pistols in their belts, and a dirk and sabre by their sides. Their looks were full of ferocity, and they spoke a harsh dissonant patois language. Over their cups, they talked about the bloody business of that day's occupation, in the course of which they drew out their dirks, and wiped from their handles, clots of blood and hair. Madame O---- sat with them, undismayed by their frightful deportment. After drinking several bottles of Champaign and Burgundy, these savages began to grow good humoured, and seemed to be completely fascinated by the amiable and unembarrassed, and hospitable behaviour of their fair landlady. After carousing till midnight, they pressed her to retire, observing that they had been received so handsomely that they were convinced Monsieur O---- had been misrepresented, and was no enemy to the _good cause_; they added that they found the wines excellent, and after drinking two or three bottles more, they would leave the house, without causing her any reason to regret their admission. Madame O----, with all the appearance of perfect tranquillity and confidence in their promises, wished her unwelcome visitors a good night, and after visiting her children in their rooms, she threw herself upon her bed, with a loaded pistol in each hand, and, overwhelmed with suppressed agony and agitation, she _soundly_ slept till she was called by her servants, two hours after these wretches had left the house. He related also another instance of that resolution which is not unfrequently exhibited by women, when those generous affections, for which they are so justly celebrated, are menaced with danger. About the same period, two of the children of Monsieur O---- were in Paris at school: A rumour had reached him, that the teachers of the seminary in which they were placed, had offended the government, and were likely to be butchered, and that the carnage which was expected to take place, might, in its undistinguishing fury, extend to the pupils. Immediately upon receiving this intelligence, Monsieur O---- ordered his carriage, for the purpose of proceeding to town. Madame O---- implored of him to permit her to accompany him; in vain did he beseech her to remain at home; the picture of danger which he painted, only rendered her more determined. She mounted the carriage, and seated herself by the side of her husband. When they reached Paris, they were stopped in the middle of the street St. Honoré, by the massacre of a large number of prisoners who had just been taken out of a church which had been converted into a prison. Their ears were pierced with screams. Many of the miserable victims were cut down, clinging to the windows of their carriage. During the dreadful delays which they suffered in passing through this street, Madame O---- discovered no sensations of alarm, but stedfastly fixed her eyes upon the back of the coach box, to avoid, as much as possible, observing the butcheries which were perpetrating on each side of her. Had she been observed to close her eyes, or to set back in the carriage, she would have excited a suspicion, which, no doubt, would have proved fatal to her. At length she reached the school which contained her children, where she found the rumour which they had received was without foundation; she calmly conducted them to the carriage, and during their gloomy return through Paris, betrayed no emotions; but as soon as they had passed the barrier, and were once more in safety upon the road to their peaceful chateau, the exulting mother, in an agony of joy, pressed her children to her bosom, and in a state of mind wrought up to frenzy, arrived at her own house, in convulsions of ghastly laughter. Monsieur O---- never spoke of this charming woman, without exhibiting the strongest emotions of regard. He said, that in sickness she suffered no one to attend upon him but herself, that in all his afflictions she had supported him, and that she mitigated the deep melancholy which the sufferings of his country, and his own privations, had fixed upon him, by the well-timed sallies of her elegant fancy, or by the charms of her various accomplishments. I found myself a gainer in the article of delight, by leaving the gayest metropolis that Europe can present to a traveller, for the sake of visiting such a family. CHAPTER XIII. _Breakfast.--Warmth of French Expression.--Rustic Eloquence.--Curious Cause assigned for the late extraordinary Frost.--Madame R----.--Paul I.--Tivoli.--Frescati._ In the morning we breakfasted in the drawing room, in which the murderous myrmidons of Robespierre had been regaled. It was beautifully situated. Its windows looked into a grove which Monsieur O---- had formed of valuable american shrubs. His youngest daughter, a beautiful little girl of about five years of age, rather hastily entered the room with a pair of tame wood pigeons in her hands, which, in her eagerness to bring to her father, she had too forcibly pressed, who very gently told her, it was cruel to hurt her little favourites, more particularly as they were a species of bird which was remarkable for its unoffending innocence. The little creature burst into tears, "my little Harriet, why do you weep?" said her father, kissing her white forehead, and pressing her to him. "Why do you rebuke me?" said the little sufferer, "when you know I love you so much that I could kiss your naked heart." I mention this circumstance, to show how early in life, the french children imbibe the most charming expressions, by which their more mature conversation is rendered so peculiarly captivating. During our repast, a circumstance occurred, which produced an unusual vivacity amongst all the party, and afforded a specimen of the talent and pleasantry of the french country people. The gardener entered, with the paper, and letters of the day. Amongst them, was a letter which had been opened, appeared very much disordered, and ought to have been received upon the preceding day. Monsieur O----seemed much displeased, and called upon his man to explain the matter. The gardener, who possessed a countenance which beamed with animation and good humour, made a low bow, and without appearing to be, in the least degree, disconcerted, proceeded to unfold the affair, with the most playful ingenuity. He stated that the dairy maid was very pretty, that she made every body in love with her, and was very much in love herself, that she was accustomed to receive a great number of billet doux, which, on account of her education having been very far below her incomparable merits, she was not able to understand, without the assistance of Nicolene, the groom, who was her confident, and amanuensis; that on the day before, he gave her the letter in question, with directions to carry it to his master, that under the influence of that thoughtful absence which is said to attend the advanced stages of the tender passion, she soon afterwards conceived that it was no other than a customary homage from one of her many admirers, upon which she committed the supposed depositary of tender sighs and brittle vows, to the warm custody of her glowing bosom, than which, the gardener, (who at this moment saw his master's eyes were engaged by the _sullied_ appearance of the letter) declared that nothing was fairer; he again proceeded, by observing, that in the course of the preceding evening, as she was stooping to adjust her stool in the meadow, the cow kicked, and the epistle tumbled into the milk pail; that she afterwards dried it by the kitchen fire, and gave it, for the reasons before assigned, to her confidential friend to explain to her, who soon discovered it to be a letter of business, addressed to his master, instead of an impassioned love ditty for the tender Marie; that, finally, all the principals concerned in this unhappy affair were overwhelmed with distress, on account of the sad disaster, and that the kitchen had lost all its vivacity ever since. No advocate could have pleaded more eloquently. All the family, from its chief, to little Harriet, whose tears were not yet dried, were in a continued fit of laughing. The gardener, whose face very largely partook of the gaiety which he had so successfully excited, was commissioned, by his amiable master, to tell the distressed dairy maid, that love always carried his pardon in his hand for all his offences, and that he cheerfully forgave her, but directed the gardener, to prevent a recurrence of similar accidents, not again to trust her with his letters until the tender disease was radically removed. The rustic orator gracefully bowed; and left us to finish our breakfast with increased good humour, and to carry forgiveness and consolation to poor Marie and all her condoling friends in the kitchen. Before we had completed our repast, a little deformed elderly lady made her appearance, whose religion had been shaken by the revolution, into a crazy and gloomy superstition. She had scarcely seated herself, before she began a very rapid and voluble comment upon the change of the times, and the devastations which the late extraordinary frost had committed upon the vineyards of France, which she positively asserted, with the confidence which only the arrival of her tutelar saint with the intelligence ought to have inspired, was sent as an _appropriate_ judgment upon the republic, to punish it, for suffering the ladies of Paris to go so thinly clothed. Monsieur O---- heard her very patiently throughout, and then observed, that the ways of Heaven were inscrutable, that human ingenuity was baffled, in attempting to draw inferences from its visitations, and that it did not appear to him at least, that an offence which was assuredly calculated to inspire sensations of warmth and tenderness, was _appropriately_ punished by a chastisement of an _opposite_ tendency, to which he added, that some moralists who indulged in an endeavour to connect causes and effects, might think it rather incompatible with their notions of eternal equity, to endeavour to clothe the ladies, by stripping the land to nakedness--here the old lady could not help smiling. Her amicable adversary pursued the advantage which his pleasantry had produced, by informing her, that prognostications had been for a long period discountenanced, and that formerly when the ancient augurs, after the ceremonies of their successful illusions were over, met each other by accident in the street, impressed by the ridiculous remembrance of their impositions, they could not help laughing in each other's faces. Madame V----laughed too; upon which Monsieur O----, very good humouredly told her, that as a soothsayer, she certainly would not have smiled, unless she intended to retire for ever from the office. Previous to my taking leave of Monsieur O----and his charming family, we walked in the gardens, where our conversation turned upon the extraordinary genius, who in the character of first consul of the french, unites a force, and extent of sway unknown to the kings of France, from their first appearance, to the final extinction of monarchy. He told me that he had the honour of knowing him with intimacy from his youth, and extolled, with high eulogy, his splendid abilities, and the great services which he had rendered France. He also related several amiable anecdotes of the minister Talleyrand, who, when in America, had lived with him a considerable time under the same roof. At length the cabriolet, which was to bear me from this little Paradise, approached the gate, and the moment arrived when I was to part with one of the most charming families to be found in the bosom of the republic. As Monsieur O---- pressed me by one hand, and placed that of his little Harriet in my other, a tear of exquisite tenderness rolled down his cheek, it seemed to express that we should never meet again on this side the grave. Excellent being! if it must be so, if wasting and unsparing sickness is destined to tear thee ere long from those who delight thine eye, and soothe thine heart in the midst of its sorrows, may the angel of peace smile upon thee in thy last moments, and bear thy mild and generous, and patient spirit, to the realms of eternal repose! Adieu! dear family of la Reine. Upon my return to Paris, I proceeded to the hotel of Monsieur R----. Curiosity led me to view the house, and the celebrated bed of his lady, who was then in London. The little vanities and eccentricities of this elegant and hospitable woman, will find immediate forgiveness, when it is known that she is now very young, and was married, when a spoiled child of the age of fourteen, to her present husband. She is one of David's most enthusiastic admirers, and has carried the rage for grecian undress, to an extremity, which, even in the capital, left her without a follower. In the public walks of the Champs Elysées, she one evening presented herself in a dress which almost rivalled the robes of Paradise; the parisians, who are remarkable for their politeness to women, and are not remarkable for scrupulous sentiments of delicacy, were so displeased with her appearance, that they made a lane to the entrance for her, and expelled the modern Eve from the Elysian Fields, not with a "flaming sword of wrath," but with hisses softly uttered, and by gentle tokens of polite disapprobation. She tells her friends, that her cabinet is crowded with letters of the most impassioned love, from persons of the first fame, distinction, and opulence. In her parties, when conversation begins to pause, she introduces some of these melting epistles, which she is said to read with a bewitching pathos, and never fails to close the fond recital by expressions of the tenderest pity for the sufferings of their ill-starred authors. She has declared, that some of her lovers equal the Belvidere Apollo in beauty, but that she never has yet seen that being, who was perfect enough to be entitled to the possession of her affections. Do not smile. Madame Ris a disciple of Diana, even slander pays incessant homage to her chastity. Rumour has whispered, in every corner of Paris, that her husband is only admitted to the honour of supplying the finances of her splendid and costly establishment. Madame R---- has not yet produced any of the beautiful and eloquent arguments of Cornelia, to disprove the strange assertion. Her chamber, which constitutes one of the sights of Paris, and which, after what has been just mentioned, may be justly considered, in or out of France, as a great curiosity, is fitted up in a style of considerable taste, and even magnificence. The bed upon which this charming statue reposes, is a superb sofa, raised upon a pedestal, the ascent to which is by a flight of cedar steps, on each side are altars, on which are placed Herculaneum vases of flowers, and a large antique lamp of gold; the back of the bed is formed by an immense pier glass, and the curtains, which are of the most costly muslin, festooned with golden tassels, descend in beautiful drapery from a floral crown of gold. It is said that the late emperor of Russia, after the laborious and successful diplomatic intrigues of messrs. Talleyrand and Sieyes, and a certain lady, became enamoured, by description, with the immaculate goddess of Mont Blanc, and that he sent confidential commissioners to Paris, to report her daily dress, and to order copies of her furniture. The story may be believed, when the hero of it was well known to be fully qualified for one of the deepest dungeons of a madhouse. I hope, for the sake of society, and the repose of the world, that the rest of Madame R----'s admirers have not united to their passion the bewildered imagination, which fatally distinguished, and finally closed the career of her imperial lover. Mr. R---- is very polite to the english, and his letters ensure the greatest attention wherever they are produced. From Mont Blanc I proceeded to the Hotel de Caramand, the residence of the british ambassador, to whom I had a letter of introduction, from a particular friend of his, and who received me with great politeness. His apartments were handsome, and looked into some beautiful gardens. Amongst the english, who were at this time in Paris, a little prejudice existed against the representative of the british monarch, from a reason, which within the jurisdiction of the lord mayor of London and of most corporate towns in England, will be considered to carry considerable weight. The envoy did not celebrate the late birthday of his sovereign by a jolly, and convivial dinner. The fact was, Mr. M----, who by the sudden return of Mr. J----, became unexpectedly invested with the dignity of an ambassador, was in constant expectation of being recalled, to make room for the intended appointment of lord W---- to the consular court, in consequence of which, he had not prepared for the display of those splendid hospitalities, which, on such occasions, always distinguish the table of a british house of embassy. On a Sunday evening, I went with a party to Tivoli, a favourite place of amusement with the parisians. At the entrance we found, as at all the public places, a guard of horse, and foot. The admission is twenty sols. The evening was very fine. We passed immense crowds of people, who were flocking to the same place. Amongst them were many elegant, well dressed women, wholly unattended by gentlemen, a circumstance by no means unusual in Paris. This place seemed to be raised by the magic touch of enchantment. We entered upon gravelled walks, which were cut through little winding, and intersecting hillocks of box; those which formed the sides were surmounted by orange trees, which presented a beautiful colonnade; immediately after we had passed them, we entered an elegant treillage of honeysuckles, roses, and eglantine, which formed the grand entrance to the garden. Here a most animated scene of festivity opened upon us. On one side were rope dancers, people riding at the ring, groups of persons playing at shuttlecock, which seemed to be the favourite, and I may add, the most ridiculous diversion; on the other side, were dancers, tumblers, mountebanks, and parties, all with gay countenances, seated in little bowers enjoying lemonade, and ices. In the centre as we advanced, were about three hundred people, who were dancing the favourite waltz. This dance was brought from Germany, where, _from its nature_, the partners are always engaged lovers; but the french, who think that nothing can be blamable which is susceptible of elegance, have introduced the german dance, without adhering to the german regulation. The attitudes of the waltz are very graceful, but they would not altogether accord with english female notions of delicacy. At a late fashionable parisian ball, a gentleman present was requested by the lady of the house, to waltz with a friend of hers, who was without a partner. The person of this neglected fair, was a little inclined to the meagre. The gallant, without the least embarrassment, declined, observing, "Ah! ma chere Madame qu'exigez vous de moi, ne savez vous pas qu'elle n'a point de sein?" In the middle of the platform of the dancers, a very fine full band was playing. At the end of this raised stage, a very capacious indian marquee was erected, which was beautifully illuminated with variegated lamps, and under its broad canopy, a large concourse of people was seated, some were enjoying conversation, some were playing at buillotte, drinking coffee, &c.; behind this building, was a noble corinthian temple, from the doors of which, were covered trellis walks, leading to spacious gardens, which were formed to display the different tastes of the english, french, and dutch nations, whose respective names they bore. These gardens are intersected by little canals, upon which several persons were amusing themselves with the diversion of canoe racing. The whole was illuminated by large patent reflecting lamps, which shed a lustre almost as brilliant as the day. A few english were present, amongst them were the duchess of Cumberland, and a few other ladies. These gardens, previous to the revolution, were the property of a wealthy minister of France, who, it is said, expended near one hundred thousand pounds sterling, in bringing them to perfection, which he just saw accomplished, when he closed his eyes upon the scaffold. The nation became their next proprietor, who sold them for a large sum of money to their present owners. From this place we went to Frescati, which is the promenade of the first beauty, and fashion of Paris, who generally assemble about half past ten o'clock, after the opera is concluded. No admission money is required, but singular as it may seem, no improper intruder has yet appeared, a circumstance which may be accounted for by the awe which well bred society ever maintains over vulgarity. Frescati is situated in the Italian Boulevard; was formerly the residence of a nobleman of large fortune, and has also undergone the usual transition of revolutionary confiscation. The streets leading to it were filled with carriages. After ascending a flight of steps, from a handsome court yard, we entered a beautiful hall, which was lined with pier glasses, and decorated with festoons of artificial flowers, at the end of it was a fine statue of Venus de Medicis. On one side of this image was an arch, which led into a suite of six magnificent apartments, which were superbly gilt, painted, and also covered with pier glasses, and lustres of fine diamond cut glass, which latter, looked like so many little glittering cascades. Each room was in a blaze of light, and filled with parties, who were taking ices, or drinking coffee. Each room communicated with the others, by arches, or folding doors of mirrors. The garden is small, but very tastefully disposed. It is composed of three walks, which are lined with orange and acacia trees, and vases of roses. At the end is a tower mounted on a rock, temples, and rustic bridges; and on each side of the walks, are little labyrinth bowers. On the side next to the Boulevard, is a terrace which commands the whole scene, is lined on each side with beautiful vases of flowers, and is terminated at each end by alcoves, which are lined with mirrors. Here in the course of an hour, the astonished, and admiring stranger may see near three thousand females of the first beauty and distinction in Paris, whose cheeks are no longer disfigured by the corrosion of rouge, and who, by their symmetry and grace, would induce him to believe, that the loveliest figures of Greece, in her proudest era, were revived, and moving before him. CHAPTER XIV. _Convent of blue Nuns.--Duchesse de Biron.--The bloody Key.--Courts of Justice.--Public Library.--Gobelines.--Miss Linwood.--Garden of Plants.--French Accommodation.--Boot Cleaners.--Cat and Dog Shearers.--Monsieur S---- and Family._ The english convent, or as it is called, the convent of blue nuns, in the Rue de St. Victoire, is the only establishment of the kind, which throughout the republic, has survived the revolution. To what cause its exclusive protection is attributable, is not, I believe correctly known. But though this spot of sacred seclusion, has escaped the final stroke of extermination, it has sustained an ample share of the general desolation. During the time of terrour, it was converted into the crowded prison of the female nobility, who were here confined, and afterwards dragged from its cloisters, and butchered by the guillotine, or the daggers of assassins. I had a letter of introduction to Mrs. S----, one of the sisterhood, a lady of distinguished family in England. I found her in the refectory. A dignified dejection overspread her countenance, and her figure seemed much emaciated by the scenes of horrour through which she had passed. She informed me, that when the nuns were in a state of arrestation by the order of Robespierre, the convent was so crowded with prisoners, that they were obliged to eat their wretched meals in three different divisions. The places of the unhappy beings who were led off to execution, were immediately filled by fresh victims. Amongst those who suffered, was the beautiful young duchesse de Biron, said to be one of the loveliest women of the french court. Her fate was singular, and horrible. One morning, two of the assistant executioners came into one of the rooms, and called upon the female citizen Biron to come forward, meaning the old duchesse de Biron, the mother, who was here immured with her daughter; some one said, which of them do you require? The hell-hounds replied, "Our order was for one only, but as there are two, we will have both, that there may be no errour." The mother and daughter were taken away, locked senseless in each others arms. When the cart which carried them arrived at the foot of the scaffold, the chief executioner looked at his paper, which contained a list of his victims, and saw the name of only one Biron; the assistants informed him that they found two of that name in the convent, and to prevent mistake, they had brought both. The principal, with perfect sang froid, said it was all well, wrote with a pencil the article "les" before the name Biron, to which he added an s, and immediately beheaded both!!! Mrs. S---- led me to the chapel, to show me the havoc which the unspairing impious hands of the revolution had there produced. She put into my hand an immense massy key to open the door of the choir. "That key," said she, "was made for the master-key of the convent, by the order of Robespierre. In the time of terrour, our gaoler wore it at his belt. A thousand times has my soul sunk within me, when it loudly pushed the bolt of the lock aside. When the door opened, it was either a signal to prepare for instant death to some of those who were within, or for the gloomy purpose of admitting new victims." When we entered the chapel, my surprise and abhorrence were equally excited. The windows were beaten through, the hangings were flapping in the wind, the altar was shattered in pieces and prostrate, the pavement was every where torn up, and the caves of the dead were still yawning upon us. From their solemn and hallowed depths, the mouldering relics of the departed had been raised, by torch light, and heaped in frightful piles of unfinished decay against the walls, for the purpose of converting the lead, which contained these wretched fragments of mortality, into balls for the musketry of the revolution. The gardens behind the chapel must have been once very pleasant, but they then had the appearance of a wilderness. The painful uncertainty of many years, had occasioned the neglect and ruin in which I saw them. Some of the nuns were reading upon shattered seats, under overgrown bowers, and others were walking in the melancholy shade of neglected avenues. The effect of the whole was gloomy and sorrowful, and fully confirmed the melancholy recital which I received from Mrs. S----. Bonaparte, it is said, intends to confirm to these nuns their present residence, by an act of government. Upon leaving the convent I visited the seats of cassation, and justice, in the architectural arrangement of which, I saw but little worthy of minute notice, except the perfect accommodation which pervades all the french buildings, which are appropriated to the administration of the laws. The hall of the first cassation, or grand court of appeal, is very fine. The judges wear elegant costumes, and were, as well as the advocates, seated upon chairs, which were constructed to imitate the seats of roman magistracy, and had a good effect. I was informed that the whole of the ornamental arrangement was designed by David. From the courts of justice, I went to the second national library, which is very noble and large, and has a valuable collection of books. Several students were arranged with great silence and decorum, at long tables. In one apartment is a very large, and ingenious model of Rome in a glass case, and another of a frigate. Upon leaving the library I proceeded to the Gobelins, so called from one Gobel, a noted dyer at Rheims, who settled here in the reign of Francis I. This beautiful manufactory has a crowd of visitors every day. Upon the walls of the galleries the tapestry is suspended, which exhibits very exquisite copies of various historical paintings, of which there are some very costly and beautiful specimens. The artists work behind the frame, where the original from which they copy is placed. The whole is a very expensive national establishment, much of its production is preserved for presents to foreign princes, and some of it is disposed of by public sale. Upon the comparison between the works of the Gobelins and the beautiful works of Miss Linwood, I could not help feeling a little degree of pride to observe that my ingenious countrywoman did not appear to suffer by it. Too much praise cannot be bestowed upon the tasteful paintings of her exquisite needle. This elegant minded woman has manifested by her charming exhibition, that great genius is not always separated from great labour, and unwearied perseverance. From the Gobelins I visited the garden of plants, which is considered to be the largest, and most valuable botanical collection in Europe, and was founded by the celebrated Buffon. The garden is laid out into noble walks, and beds containing the rarest plants from all parts of the world, each of which is neatly labelled for the use of the students. On the right of the entrance is a park containing all sorts of deer, and on the left are vast hothouses and greenhouses; in the centre, enclosed in iron lattice work, is a large pond for the reception of foreign aquatic animals, very near which is a large octagon experimental beehive, about ten feet high, and at the end, near the banks of the Seine, is a fine menagerie, in which, amongst other beasts, there are some noble lions. Many of the animals have separate houses, and gardens to range in. Adjoining is the park of the elephant. This stupendous animal, from the ample space in which he moves, is seen to great advantage, and is considered to be the largest of his species in Europe. Near the entrance, on the right, is the museum of natural curiosities, the collection of which is very valuable, and admirably arranged. There is here a fine giraffe, or camelopard, of an amazing height, stuffed. This surprising animal is a native of Ethiopia, and some other parts of Africa, and has scarcely ever been seen in Europe. From the garden of plants, I made all possible dispatch to Madame C----'s, in the Boulevard Italien, where I was engaged to dinner. Upon crossing the Pont Neuf, where there are a number of little stalls erected, the owners of which advertise upon little boards, which are raised upon poles, that they possess extraordinary talents for shearing dogs and cats; I could not help stopping and laughing most heartily to observe the following address to the public from one of these canine and grimalkin functionaries: "Monin, tondit et coupe les chiens la chatte et sa femme---- vat en ville." Which runs in this ridiculous manner in english: "Monin shears and cuts dogs and cats and his wife---- goes on errands." As I had no time to return to my hotel to dress, I was initiated into a mode of expeditiously equipping myself, by a young friend who was with me, to which I was before a stranger, and which shows in the most trifling matters, that the french are good adepts in expedition and accommodation. In passing through the Palais Royal, we entered the little shop of a boot cleaner. In a moment I was mounted upon a dirty sopha, to which I ascended by steps, and from which I had a complete commanding view of the concourse of gay people, who are always passing and repassing in this idle place; the paper of the day, stretched upon a little wooden frame was placed in my hand, each foot was fixed upon an iron anvil, one man brushed off the dirt, and another put on a shining blacking, a third brushed my clothes, and a fourth presented a basin of water and towel to me. The whole of this comfortable operation lasted about four minutes. My dirty valets made me a low bow for four sols, which, poor as the recompense was, exceeded their expectations by three pieces of that petty coin. In the evening, I had the happiness of being introduced to Monsieur S----. Under his noble and hospitable roof, amidst his affectionate, beautiful, and accomplished family, and in the select circle of his elegant and enlightened society, I passed many happy hours. Monsieur S---- was of a noble family, and previous to the revolution was one of the fermiers generaux, and possessed a very noble fortune. In discharging the duties of his distinguished and lucrative office, he conciliated the affections of every one, who had the good fortune to be comprehended within the compass of his honourable authority, and when the revolution stripped him of it, it found his integrity without a stain, except what, in the bewildered interpretation of republican fury, adhered to him from his connection with the old established order of things. In the general, and undistinguishing cry for blood, which yelled from the remorseless assassins of Robespierre, this admirable man was consigned to a dungeon, and doomed to the scaffold. Two hours before he was to suffer, the remembrance of the noble victim, and of a series of favours, of kindness, and of generosity, flashed, with momentary but irresistible compunction, upon the mind of one of his sanguinary judges, who, suspending the bloody proceedings which then occupied the court, implored the compassion of his fell associates. He pleaded until he had obtained his discharge, and then at once forgetting the emotions of mercy, which had inspired his tongue with the most persuasive eloquence, he very composedly resumed the functions of his cruel occupation, and consigned to the fatal instrument of revolutionary slaughter, other beings, whose virtues were less renowned, or less fortunate in their sphere of operation. Monsieur S---- had reached his sixty-eighth year, but seemed to possess all the vivacity and health of youth. His lady was a very amiable, and enlightened woman. Their family consisted of a son, and three daughters, all of them handsome, and very highly accomplished. The eldest, Madame E----, excelled in music; the second, Madame B----, in poetry and the classics; and the youngest, Mademoiselle Delphine, in drawing and singing. I shall, perhaps, be pardoned for introducing a little impromptu compliment, which the pure, and unassuming merits of the youngest of the family, drew from my pen, in consequence of the conversation one evening, turning upon the indecorum of the tunic dress, amongst the elegantes of Paris. TO MADEMOISELLE D.S. Whilst art array'd in _tunic_ robe, Tries over fashion's gaudy globe, To hold resistless force, Thy merits shall impede her course, For grace and nature gain in thee, A chaste, decisive victory. From the general wreck of property Monsieur S---- has been fortunate enough to save a considerable portion of his former fortune. A similar favourable circumstance has, in general, rewarded the fortitude and constancy of those who, in the political storm, refused to seek a dastard safety by flight. Influenced by the reputation of the integrity, talents, and experience of Monsieur S----, the first consul has deservedly placed him at the head of the national accounts, which he manages with great advantage, and honour to the government. I was pressed to make this charming house my home. Upon a noble terrace, which communicated with the drawing room, and commanded a view of all the gayety, and fashion of the Italien Boulevard, which moved below us, in the circle of some of the most charming people of Paris, we used to enjoy the refreshing coolness of the evening, the graceful unpremeditated dance, or the sounds of enchanting music. In this happy spot all parties assembled. Those who had been divided by the ferocity of politics, here met in amiable intercourse. I have in the same room observed, the once pursuing republican conqueror, in social converse with the captive vendeean general, who had submitted to his prowess, and to the government. The sword was not merely sheathed--it was _concealed_ in flowers. To please, and to be pleased; to charm, and to enlighten, by interchanges of pleasantry, and politeness, and talents, and acquirements, seemed alone to occupy the generous minds of this charming society. The remembrance of the hours which I passed under this roof, will afford my mind delight, as long as the faculty of memory remains, or until high honour, and munificent hospitality have lost their value, and genius and beauty, purity and elegance have no longer any attractions. CHAPTER XV. _Civility of a Sentinel.--The Hall of the Legislative Assembly.--British House of Commons.--Captain Bergevet.--The Temple.--Sir Sydney Smith's Escape.--Colonel Phillipeaux._ One morning, as I was entering the grand court of the hall of the Legislative Assembly, I was stopped by a sentry. I told him I was an Englishman. He politely begged my pardon, and requested me to pass, and called one of the housekeepers to show me the apartments. This magnificent pile is in the Fauxbourg St. Germain, and was formerly the palace of the Bourbons. After passing through a suite of splendid apartments, I entered, through lofty folding doors, into the hall, where the legislators assemble. It is a very spacious semicircular room, and much resembles, in its arrangements the appearance of a splendid theatre before the stage. The ascent to the seat of the president is by a flight of light marble steps; the facing of his bureau is composed of the most costly marble, richly carved. On each side of the president's chair are seats for the secretaries; and immediately below them is the tribune, into which the orator ascends to address the House. On each side of the seat of the president are antique statues of eminent patriots and orators, which are placed in niches in the wall. Under the tribune, upon the centre of the floor, is the altar of the country, upon which, in marble, is represented the book of the laws, resting upon branches of olive. Behind it, upon semicircular seats, the legislators sit, at the back of whom are the boxes of the embassadors, and officers of state, and immediately above them, within a colonnade of corinthian pillars, the public are admitted. Round the upper part of the cornice, a beautiful festoon of lilac coloured cloth, looped up with rich tassels, is suspended, for the purpose of correcting the vibration of the voice. The whole is very superb, and has cost the nation an immense sum of money. The principal housekeeper asked me "whether our speakers had such a place to declaim in," I told him, "that we had very _great_ orators in England, but that they were content to speak in very little places." He laughed, and observed, "that frenchmen never talked to so much advantage as when their eye was pleased." This man I found had been formerly one of the door keepers of the national assembly, and was present when, after having been impeached by Billaud, Panis, and their colleagues, Tallien discharged the pistol at Robespierre, whom he helped to support, until the monster was finally dispatched by the guillotine, on the memorable 9th of Thermidor. The french are amazingly fond of finery and stage effect. The solicitude which always first manifested itself after any political change in the course of the revolution, was the external decoration of each new puppet who, arrayed in the brief authority of the fleeting moment, was permitted to "play his fantastic tricks before high Heaven." The poor battered ark of government was left overturned, under the protection of an escort of assassins, in the ensanguined mud, upon the reeking bodies of its former, headless, bearers, until its new supporters had adjusted the rival pretensions of silk and satin, and had consulted the pattern book of the laceman in the choice of their embroidery. On one side of the arch which leads into the antiroom of the legislative assembly, are suspended patterns and designs for tickets of admission to the sitting, elegantly framed, and near the same place, in a long gallery which leads to the dressing-rooms of the legislators, are boxes which contain the senatorial robes of the members. The meetings of our house of commons would inspire more awe, and veneration, if more attention was paid to decorum, and external decoration. A dignified and manly magnificence would not be unsuitable to the proceedings of the sanctuary of british laws, and the seat of unrivalled eloquence. What would a perfumed french legislator say, accustomed to rise in the rustling of embroidered silks, and gracefully holding in his hand, a cap of soft and showy plumes, to address himself to alabaster statues, glittering lustres, grecian chairs, festoons of drapery, and an audience of beings tricked out as fine as himself, were he to be suddenly transported into a poor and paltry room, meanly lighted, badly ventilated, and inconveniently arranged, and to be told that, in that spot, the representatives of the first nation in the world, legislated for her subjects? What would he say, were he to see and hear in the mean attire of jockeys and mechanics, such orators as Greece and Rome never saw or heard in the days of their most exalted glory; unfolding with the penetration of a subordinate Providence, the machinations of a dark and deep conspiracy, erecting elaborate laws to shelter the good, against the enemies of repose, or hurling the thunder of their eloquence against the common foes of their country. The astonished frenchman would very likely say, "I always thought that the english were a strange set of beings, but they now exceed the powers of my comprehension, they can elicit wit in the midst of gloom, and can say such things in a plain unbrushed coat of _blue_ cloth, as all the robes, plumes, and finery of the republic, in her gaudy halls of deliberation, cannot inspire." From the legislative assembly I went to pay my respects to the gallant captain Bergeret, to whom I had letters of introduction. It will be immediately remembered, that this distinguished hero, in the Virginie, displayed the most undaunted courage, when she was engaged by sir Edward Pellew, in the Indefatigable, to whose superior prowess and naval knowledge, he was obliged to strike the tricolour flag. His bravery and integrity have justly entitled him to the admiration and lasting friendship of his noble conqueror, and to the esteem of the british nation. When sir Sidney Smith was confined in the Temple, and captain Bergeret a prisoner in England, the latter was sent to France upon his parole, to endeavour to effect the exchange of sir Sidney. The french government, which was then under the direction of some of the basest and meanest of her tyrants, refused to listen to the proposal; and at the same time resisted the return of their own countryman. The gallant Bergeret was resolved to preserve his word of honour unsullied, or to perish in the attempt. Finding all his efforts to obtain the liberation of the illustrious captive unavailing, menaced with death if he departed, and invited by promised command and promotion if he remained, he contrived to quit his own country by stealth, and returned a voluntary exile to his generous and confiding conquerors. From captain B----'s hotel I went to the Temple, so celebrated in the gloomy history of the revolution. It stands in the Rue du Temple, in the Fauxbourg of that name. The entrance is handsome, and does not much impress the idea of the approach to a place of such confinement. Over the gates is a pole, supporting a dirty and tattered bonnet rouge, of which species of republican decoration there are very few now to be seen in Paris. The door was opened to me by the principal gaoler, whose predecessor had been dismissed on account of his imputed connivance in the escape of sir Sidney Smith. His appearance seemed fully to qualify him for his savage office, and to insure his superiors against all future apprehension, of a remission of duty by any act of humanity, feeling, or commiseration. He told me, that he could not permit me to advance beyond the lodge, on account of a peremptory order which he had just received from government. From this place I had a full command of the walk and prison, the latter of which is situated in the centre of the walls. He pointed out to me the window of the room in which the royal sufferers languished. As the story of sir Sidney Smith's escape from this prison has been involved in some ambiguity, a short recital of it will, perhaps, not prove uninteresting. After several months had rolled away, since the gates of his prison had first closed upon the british hero, he observed that a lady who lived in an upper apartment on the opposite side of the street, seemed frequently to look towards that part of the prison in which he was confined. As often as he observed her, he played some tender air upon his flute, by which, and by imitating every motion which she made, he at length succeeded in fixing her attention upon him, and had the happiness of remarking that she occasionally observed him with a glass. One morning when he saw that she was looking attentively upon him in this manner, he tore a blank leaf from an old mass book which was lying in his cell, and with the soot of the chimney, contrived, by his finger, to describe upon it, in a large character, the letter A, which he held to the window to be viewed by his fair sympathizing observer. After gazing upon it for some little time, she nodded, to show that she understood what he meant, sir Sidney then touched the top of the first bar of the grating of his window, which he wished her to consider as the representative of the letter A, the second B, and so on, until he had formed, from the top of the bars, a corresponding number of letters; and by touching the middle, and bottom parts of them, upon a line with each other, he easily, after having inculcated the first impression of his wishes, completed a telegraphic alphabet. The process of communication was, from its nature, very slow, but sir Sidney had the happiness of observing, upon forming the first word, that this excellent being, who beamed before him like a guardian angel, seemed completely to comprehend it, which she expressed by an assenting movement of the head. Frequently obliged to desist from this tacit and tedious intercourse, from the dread of exciting the curiosity of the gaolers, or his fellow prisoners, who were permitted to walk before his window, sir Sidney occupied several days in communicating to his unknown friend, his name and quality, and imploring her to procure some unsuspected royalist of consequence and address sufficient for the undertaking, to effect his escape; in the achievement of which he assured her, upon his word of honour, that whatever cost might be incurred, would be amply reimbursed, and that the bounty and gratitude of his country would nobly remunerate those who had the talent, and bravery to accomplish it. By the same means he enabled her to draw confidential and accredited bills, for considerable sums of money, for the promotion of the scheme, which she applied with the most perfect integrity. Colonel Phelipeaux was at this time at Paris; a military man of rank, and a secret royalist, most devoutly attached to the fortunes of the exiled family of France, and to those who supported their cause. He had been long endeavouring to bring to maturity, a plan for facilitating their restoration, but which the loyal adherent, from a series of untoward and uncontrollable circumstances, began to despair of accomplishing. The lovely deliverer of sir Sidney, applied to this distinguished character, to whom she was known, and stated the singular correspondence which had taken place between herself and the heroic captive in the Temple. Phelipeaux, who was acquainted with the fame of sir Sidney, and chagrined at the failure of his former favourite scheme, embraced the present project with a sort of prophetic enthusiasm, by which he hoped to restore, to the british nation, one of her greatest heroes, who, by his skill and valour, might once more impress the common enemy with dismay, augment the glory of his country, and cover himself with the laurels of future victory. Intelligent, active, cool, daring, and insinuating, colonel Phelipeaux immediately applied himself to bring to maturity, a plan at once suitable to his genius, and interesting to his wishes. To those whom it was necessary to employ upon the occasion, he contrived to unite one of the clerks of the minister of the police, who forged his signature with exact imitation, to an order for removing the body of sir Sidney, from the Temple to the prison of the Conciergerie: after this was accomplished, on the day after that on which the inspector of gaols was to visit the Temple and Conciergerie, a ceremony, which is performed once a month in Paris, two gentlemen of tried courage and address, who were previously instructed by colonel Phelipeaux, disguised as officers of the marechaussee, presented themselves in a fiacre at the Temple, and demanded the delivery of sir Sidney, at the same time showing the forged order for his removal. This the gaoler attentively perused and examined, as well as the minister's signature. Soon after the register of the prison informed sir Sidney of the order of the directory, upon hearing which, he at first appeared to be a little disconcerted, upon which the pseudoofficers gave him every assurance of the honour and mild intentions of the government towards him, sir Sidney seemed more reconciled, packed up his clothes, took leave of his fellow prisoners, and distributed little tokens of his gratitude to those servants of the prison, from whom he had experienced indulgencies. Upon the eve of their departure, the register observed, that four of the prison guard should accompany them. This arrangement menaced the whole plan with immediate dissolution. The officers, without betraying the least emotion, acquiesced in the propriety of the measure, and gave orders for the men to be called out, when, as if recollecting the rank and honour of their illustrious prisoner, one of them addressed sir Sidney, by saying, "citizen, you are a brave officer, give us your parole, and there is no occasion for an escort." Sir Sidney replied, that he would pledge his faith, as an officer, to accompany them, without resistance, wherever they chose to conduct him. Not a look or movement betrayed the intention of the party. Every thing was cool, well-timed, and natural. They entered a fiacre, which, as is usual, was brought for the purpose of removing him, in which he found changes of clothes, false passports, and money. The coach moved with an accustomed pace, to the Faubourg St. Germain, where they alighted, and parted in different directions. Sir Sidney met colonel Phelipeaux at the appointed spot of rendezvous. The project was so ably planned and conducted, that no one but the party concerned was acquainted with the escape, until near a month had elapsed, when the inspector paid his next periodical visit. What pen can describe the sensations of two such men as sir Sidney and Phelipeaux, when they first beheld each other in safety? Heaven befriended the generous and gallant exploit. Sir Sidney and his noble friend, reached the french coast wholly unsuspected, and committing themselves to their God, and to the protective genius of brave men, put to sea in an open boat, and were soon afterwards discovered by an english cruising frigate, and brought in safety to the british shores. The gallant Phelipeaux soon afterwards accompanied sir Sidney in the Tigre to Acre, where, overwhelmed by the fatigue of that extraordinary campaign, in which he supported a distinguished part, and the noxious influence of a sultry climate, operating upon a delicate frame, he expired in the arms of his illustrious friend, who attended him to his grave, and shed the tears of gratitude and friendship over his honoured and lamented obsequies. But ere the dying Phelipeaux closed his eyes, he received the rewards of his generous enterprise. He beheld the repulsed legions of the republic, flying before the british banners, and the irresistible prowess of his valiant companion; he beheld the distinguished being, whom he had thus rescued from a dungeon, and impending destruction, by an act of almost romantic heroism, covered with the unparticipated glory, of having overpowered a leader, who, renowned, and long accustomed to conquest, saw, for the first time, his _invincible troops_ give way; who, inflamed to desperation, deemed the perilous exposure of his person necessary, to rally them to the contest, over bridges of their slaughtered comrades, but who at length was obliged to retire from the field of battle, and to leave to the heroic sir Sidney, the exclusive exultation of announcing to his grateful and elated country, that he had fought, and vanquished the laurelled conqueror of Italy, and the bold invader of Egypt. Sir Sidney has no vices to conceal behind his spreading and imperishable laurels. His public character is before the approving world. That peace which his sword has accelerated, has afforded us an undisturbed opportunity of admiring his achievements in the field, and of contemplating his conduct in the retired avenues of private life, in which his deportment is without a stain. In him there is every thing to applaud, and nothing to forgive. Yet thus glorious in public, and thus unsullied in private, the conqueror of Bonaparte, and the saviour of the east, owes the honours, _which he adorns_, to foreign and distant powers. To the _grateful_ government of his own country, he is indebted for an ungracious paltry annuity, inadequate to the display of ordinary consequence, and wholly unequal to the suitable support of that dignity, which ought for ever to distinguish such a being from the mass of mankind. The enemies of sir Sidney, for envy furnishes every great man with his quota of such indirect eulogists, if they should honour these pages with a perusal, may, perchance, endeavour to trace the approving warmth with which I have spoken of him, to the enthusiasm of a friendship dazzled, and undiscriminating; but I beg to assure them, that the fame of sir Sidney is better known to me than his person, and that his noble qualities have alone excited the humble tribute which is here offered to one, for whom delighted Nature, in the language of our immortal bard, "--------------------------------might stand up, and say to all the world, this _is_ a man----" CHAPTER XVI. _A fashionable Poem.--Frere Richart.--Religion.--Hôtel des Invalides.--Hall of Victory.--Enemies' Colours.--Sulky Appearance of an English Jack and Ensign.--Indecorum.--The aged Captain.--Military School.--Champ de Mars.--The Garden of Mousseaux._ The conversation whilst I was at Paris, was much engaged by a poem, describing the genius and progress of christianity written in imitation of the style of Ossian, which excited very considerable curiosity. From the remarks of some shrewd acquaintances of mine, who had perused the work, I learnt that the principles of the poem seemed strongly tinctured with the bewildered fancies of a disordered mind, conveyed in very heavy _prosaic_ blank verse. "It was the madness of poetry, without the inspiration." This composition may be considered as a curiosity, from other reasons than those which mere criticism affords. The poem was bad, the readers were many. The subject was sacred, the author a reputed atheist, and the profits which it produced exceeded two thousand pounds sterling. The fortunate writer relieved himself from the jaws of famine by this strange incomprehensible eulogy on the charms and advancement of christianity, which has been received in Paris, with a sort of fashionable frenzy. Another pseudobard has announced his intention very shortly of issuing from the press, a work which he conceives will be more saleable and a greater favourite with the public, in which he intends ironically to combat the doctrine of the Trinity, by gravely resembling it to the Deity taking snuff between two looking glasses, so that when he sneezes, two resemblances of him are seen to sneeze also, and yet that there are not three sneezers, but one sneezer. Some other outlines of this work were imparted to me at Paris, but the pen turns with disgust and detestation, from such low and nauseous profanation. I have only condescended to mention the composition, and the last anecdote, to show how much the world is deluded, by the received opinion that the french are become a new race of exemplary devotees. The recoil from atheism to enthusiasm, is not unusual, but the french in general have not, as yet, experienced this change. That they are susceptible of extraordinary transitions, their history and revolution have sufficiently manifested. In the Journal de Paris, written in the reigns of Charles VI and VII, is preserved rather a curious account of the velocity with which religious zeal has, in former periods, been excited. "On the 4th day of April, 1429," says the journal, "the duke of Burgundy came to Paris, with a very fine body of knights and esquires; and eight days afterwards there came to Paris, a cordelier, by name Frere Richart, a man of great prudence, very knowing in prayer, a giver of good doctrine to edify his neighbour, and was so successful, that he who had not seen him, was bursting with envy against those who had. He was but one day in Paris, without preaching. He began his sermon about five o'clock in the morning, and continued preaching till ten or eleven o'clock, and there were always between five and six thousand persons to hear him preach. This cordelier preached on St. Mark's Day, attended by the like number of persons, and on their return from his sermon, the people of Paris were so turned, and moved to devotion, that in three or four hours time, there were more than one hundred fires lighted, in which they burnt their chess boards, their back gammon tables, and their packs of cards." To this sort of fanaticism, the parisians are unquestionably not arrived. A more eloquent man than the Frere Richart, must appear amongst them, before such meliorations as are recorded in the Paris journal, can be effected in the dissolute and uncontrolled habits of that gay and voluptuous city. I do not mean, from any previous remark which I have made, to infer that there are not many good and very pious people in France, and it has been a favourable circumstance to the ancient religion of France, that the revolution never attempted any reform in it, or to substitute another mode of worship. That great political change in the ebullition of its fury, prostrated the altars of the old church, without raising others of a new, or improved construction. It presented a hideous rebellion against the glorious author of all good, and declared an indiscriminate war of extermination against his ministers and followers, and every principle of the Gospel and morality. Every form of faith, every mode of adoration, fell indiscriminately under the proscriptions of its unsparing wrath. The towering abbey and humble oratory, were alike swept away in the general tornado, and mingled their ruins together. But the race of the good were not all expelled from this scene of havoc and outrage. The voice of piety still found a passage to her God. The silent prayer pierced through the compact covering of the dungeon, and ascended to Heaven. Within the embowering unsearchable recesses of the soul, far beyond the reach of revolutionary persecution, the pure unappalled spirit of devotion erected her viewless temple, in secret magnificence, sublime, and unassailable! The child who had never heard the bell of the sabbath sound, who had never beheld the solemn ceremonies of authorized adoration, was told that those awful and splendid piles, which filled his eyes with wonder, and his mind with instinctive reverence, were raised for other purposes than those of becoming auxiliary to the ferocity of war. That genius and taste, and toil and cost, had not thus expended their unrivalled powers, and lavished their munificent resources, in erecting _gothic_ magazines of gunpowder, and _saxon_ sheds for the accommodation of atheistic fabricators of revolutionary cannon balls. The young observer in private, and by stealth imbibed, from parental precept or example, the sentiment of a national religion, suppressed, not extinguished, or in the gloomy absence of all indications of it, remained unsolicited by any rival mode of worship to bestow his apostacy upon an alien creed. Thus the minds of the rising generation, who were engaged in favour of the catholic persuasion, during the frightful period of its long denunciation, by stolen, secluded and unfinished displays of its spirit and form, contemplated its return with animated elation, or beheld its approach, unimpressed with those doubts or prejudices which religious, as well as secular competitions, very frequently excite; in that auspicious hour, when the policy, if not the piety of a powerful government, restored it to the French people. The subject is highly interesting; but I must resign it to abler pens for more ample discussion. I was much gratified by being presented to the celebrated philosopher Mons. Charles, by Madame S----. He has a suite of noble apartments in the Louvre, which have been bestowed upon him by the government, as a grateful reward for his having presented to the nation his magnificent collection of philosophical apparatus. He has also, in consideration of his ability and experience, been constituted the principal lecturer on philosophy. In these rooms his valuable and costly donation is arranged. In the centre of the dome of the first apartment, called the Hall of Electricity, is suspended the car of the first balloon which was inflated with inflammable air, in which he and his brother ascended in the afternoon of the 1st of December, 1783, in which they continued in the air for an hour and three quarters; and after they had descended, Mons. C----rose alone to the astonishing height of 10,500 feet. In the same room are immense electrical machines and batteries, some of which had been presented to him by Madame S----. In this room, amongst many other fanciful figures, which are used for the purpose of enlivening the solemnity of a philosophical lecture by exciting sentiments of innocent gayety, was a little Cupid. The tiny god, with his arrow in his hand, was insulated upon a throne of glass, and was charged with that electric fluid which not a little resembles the subtle spirit of his nature. The youngest daughter of Madame S----, who accompanied us, was requested to touch it. In a moment it discharged its penetrating spark--"Oh! how that little god has alarmed me!" said the recoiling fair one, whose youthful countenance surprise had imbued with new beauties; "but yet," said she, recovering herself, "_he does not hurt_." This little sally may be considered as a specimen of that playful sprightliness which is so much the characteristic of the french female. In the centre of another room, dedicated to optics, as we entered, we saw a beautiful nosegay in a vase, which appeared to be composed of the rarest flowers. I approached it with an intention of inhaling its fragrance, when, lo! my hand passed through it. It was an exquisite optical illusion. "Ah!" said my elegant and moralising companion, Madame S----, smiling, "of such flowers has Happiness composed _her_ wreath: it is thus she gladdens with it the eye of Hope; but the hand of Expectation can never grasp it." The graceful moral deserves a more lasting record than it will find in these few and perishable pages. In the other rooms are all sorts of apparatus for trying experiments in the various branches of that department of science, over which Mons. C---- so ably presides. The merit of Mons. C---- has no rival but in his modesty. Considering the rank and estimation which he bears in the republic, his external appearance is singularly unassuming. I have been with him in the gardens of the Thuilleries, when they were thronged with the fashion and gayety of Paris, where he has appeared in a suit of plain brown cloth, an old round hat with a little national cockade in it, under which he presented a countenance full of character, talent and animation. In this homely puritan garb, he excited more respectful curiosity, wherever he moved, than some generals who paraded before us in dresses upon which the tailor and embroiderer had long laboured, and who added to their stature by laced hats entirely filled with gaudy buoyant plumes. From Mons. Charles we went to the church of St. Rocque, in the Rue St. Honorè. As we entered, the effect of a fine painting of our Saviour crucified, upon which the sun was shining with great glory, placed at the extremity of the church, and seen through several lessening arches of faint, increasing shade, was very grand. This church has been more than once the scene of revolutionary carnage. Its elegant front is much disfigured, and the doors are perforated, in a great number of places, by the ball of cannon and the shot of musketry. Mass was performing in the church; but we saw only few worshippers, and those were chiefly old women and little girls. From St. Rocque we proceeded to the Hôtel des Invalides, the chapel and dome of which are so justly celebrated. The front is inferior to the military hospital at Chelsea, to which it bears some resemblance. The chapel is converted into the Hall of Victory, in which, with great taste, are suspended, under descriptive medallions, the banners of the enemies of the republic, which have been taken during the late war, the numbers of which are immense. The same decoration adorns the pilasters and gallery at the vast, magnificent dome at the end of the hall. My eye was naturally occupied, immediately after we had entered, in searching amongst the most _battered_ of the banners, for the british colours: at last I discovered the jack and ensign of an english man of war, pierced with shot-holes, and blackened with smoke, looking very sulky, and indignantly, amongst the finery, and tawdry tatters of italian and turkish standards. In the course of this pursuit, I caught the intelligent eye of Madame S----. She immediately assigned to my search the proper motive. "Ah!" said she, laughingly, and patting me on the arm with her fan, "we are, as you see, my dear Englishman, very vain; and you are very proud." A stranger to the late calamitous war, unable to marshal in his mind the enemies of the republic, might here, with a glance of his eye, whilst contemplating this poor result of devastation, enumerate the foes of France, and appreciate the facilities or difficulties of the victory. In observing, amidst this gaudy show of captive colours, only two hardworn banners of their rival enemy, he would draw a conclusion too flattering and familiar to an English ear, to render it necessary to be recorded here. Upon the shattered standards of Austria he would confer the meed of merited applause for heroic, although unprevailing bravery. To the banners of Prussia he would say, "I know not whether principle or policy, or treachery, or corruption, deterred you from the field--Your looks exhibit no proofs of sincere resistance--However, you never belonged to cowards." The neapolitan ensign might excite such sentiments as these: "You appear for a short time to have faced the battle--You were unfortunate, and soon retired." To the gaudy drapeaus of the italian and turkish legions, which every where present the appearance of belonging to the wardrobe of a pantomimic hero, he would observe, "The scent of the battle has not perfumed you; its smoke has not sullied your shining, silky sides. Ye appear in numbers, but display no marks of having waved before a brave, united and energetic band." In this manner might he trace the various fate of the war. Upon several of the staffs only two or three shreds of colours are to be seen adhering. These are chiefly Austrian. On each side of the chapel are large, and some of them valuable paintings, by the french masters, representing the conquests of the french armies at different eras. It is a matter not unworthy of observation, that although the revolution with a keen, and savage eye, explored too successfully, almost every vestige of a royal tendency, the beautiful pavement under the dome of the invalides has escaped destruction. The fleur de lis, surmounted by the crown of France, still retains its original place, in this elegant and costly marble flooring. The statues of the saints have been removed; and their places are supplied by the new order of revolutionary deities; but the names of the ancient figures have not been erased from the pedestals of the new ones: to which omission the spectator is indebted for a smile when contemplating the statue of Equality, he reads, immediately below his feet, "_St. Louis_." There is here a costly monument erected to the memory of the brave marshal Turenne, who was killed by a cannon ball in 1675. In my humble opinion, it is too much in the false taste of french statuary. A groupe of weeping angels surround the recumbent hero, in the attitudes of operatic figurantes, in whose faces, and forms, the artist has attempted, too laboriously and artificially, to delineate the expressions of graceful grief. On each side of the vast arch which divides the dome from the chapel, are raised the tablets of military honour, on which, in characters of gold, the names of those soldiers are recorded who have distinguished themselves for their achievements in the late war. As we were contemplating a painting upon a very large scale, in which, amongst other figures, is an uncovered whole length of a warrior, a prudish-looking lady, who seemed to have touched the age of desperation, after having very attentively beheld it with her glass for some time, observed to her party, that there was a great deal of indecorum in the picture. Madame S---- very shrewdly whispered in my ear, that the indecorum was in the remark. When we were just leaving the chapel, we overheard a sun-browned soldier, who had lost both his legs, observe to his companion, to whom he was explaining the colours, pointing to the banners of the turkish cavalry, the tops of whose staffs were surmounted with horses' tails, "Look at those ribbands; they are not worthy of being worn when won." This military hospital is capable of accommodating 3,000 soldiers. The bedrooms, kitchens, refectory and outoffices are very capacious, and, what is rather unusual in France, clean and comfortable. The day before we were there, the first consul paid a visit to its veteran inhabitants. Amongst them, he recognised an old, and very brave soldier, whose exploits were the frequent theme of his aged comrades. The young general told him that he should die a captain, took him in his carriage to dine with him at Mal Maison, presented him with a medallion of honour, and conferred upon him the rank of a captain, in one of the most distinguished regiments. From this place we went to the military school adjoining, in which Bonaparte received the rudiments of that education which was destined to form the foundation of his future glory. The building is large and handsome, and is, from a very natural sentiment, in high favour with the first consul. There is nothing in it particular to describe. The grounds and gardens are very spacious and fine. In the front of the military school is the celebrated Champ de Mars, which is an immense flat space of ground. On each side are rising terraces of earth, and double rows of trees; and at the further end, the river Seine flows. On days of great national celebrations, this vast plain is surrounded with Gobelins tapestry, statues, and triumphal arches. After contemplating these objects of public curiosity, we returned to Mons. S---- to dinner, where we met a large party of very pleasant people. Amongst them I was pleased with meeting a near relative of an able and upright minister of the republic, to whose unwearied labours the world is not a little indebted for the enjoyments of its present repose. After dinner we drove to the beautiful garden of Mousseau, formerly the property of the duc d'Orleans. It is laid out with great taste, and delights the eye with the most romantic specimens of improved rural beauty. It was originally designed by its detestable owner for other purposes than those of affording to a vast and crowded city the innocent delights and recreations of retired and tasteful scenery. In the gloom of its groves, all sorts of horrible profanations were practised by this monster and his midnight crew, at the head of whom was Legendre the Butcher. Every rank recess of prostitute pollution in Paris was ransacked to furnish materials for the celebration of their impure and impious orgies. The ode to Atheism, and the song of Blasphemy, were succeeded by the applauding yells of Drunkenness and Obscenity. At the time we visited this garden it belonged to the nation, and was open, on certain days, to well-dressed people. A few days afterwards, it was presented, as a mark of national esteem, to Cambaceres, the second consul. Here we rambled till the evening. The sun was setting. The nightingales were singing in great numbers. Not a cloud to be seen. A breeze, blowing through a plantation of roses, refreshed us with its coolness and fragrance. In a sequestered part of this beautiful ground, under the embowering shades of Acacia trees, upon the ruins of a little temple, we seated ourselves, and were regaled by some charming italian duets, which were sung by Madame S---- and her lovely daughter, with the most enchanting pathos. I hope I shall be pardoned for introducing some lines which were written upon our return, by an enthusiastic admirer of merit and music. TO MADEMOISELLE D. S----. In Mousseau's sweet arcadian dale, Fair Delphine pours the plaintive strain; She charms the list'ning nightingale, And seems th' enchantress of the plain. Blest be those lips, to music dear! Sweet songstress! never may they move But with such sounds to soothe the ear, And melt the yielding heart to love! May sorrow never bid them pour From the torn heart one suffering sigh, But be thy life a fragrant flow'r, Blooming beneath a cloudless sky. CHAPTER XVII. _Curious Method of raising Hay.--Lucien Bonaparte's Hôtel.--Opera.--Consular Box.--Madame Bonaparte's Box.--Feydeau Theatre.--Belle Vue.--Versailles.--The Palace of the Petit Trianon.--The Grounds._ The people of Paris, who keep horses in stables at the back of their houses, have a singular mode of keeping their hay in the lofts of their dwelling houses. At the top of a spacious and elegant hotel, is to be seen a projecting crane in the act of raising loads of winter provision for the stable. When I first saw this strange process, my surprise would scarcely have been increased, had I beheld the horse ascending after the hay. I must not forget to offer some little description of the opera, where, during my stay, through the politeness of Madame H----, I had free access to a private box. This spacious and splendid theatre is lighted from above by an immense circular lustre of patent lamps. The form of this brilliant light is in the antique taste, and it is said to have cost two thousand pounds sterling. The effect which it produces in the body of the theatre, and upon the scenery, is admirable. It prevents the sight from being divided, and distracted by girandoles. This establishment is upon so vast a scale, that government, which is the proprietor, is always a loser upon balancing the receipts and disbursements of each night. The stage and its machinery have for many years occupied a great number of the subordinate classes of people, who, if not employed in this manner, would in all probability become burdensome, and unpleasant to the government. To this circumstance is attributable the superiority of the machinery, and scenery, over every other theatre which I ever saw. In the english theatres, my eye has often been offended at the representations of the internal parts of houses, in which not a chair, or table is introduced, for the purpose of carrying on the ingenious deception. Upon the stage of the french opera, every scene has its appropriate furniture, and distinctive appendages, which are always produced as soon as the scene drops, by numerous attendants. From this attention to the minute circumstances of the drama, the illusion becomes enchanting. The orchestra is very fine, and is composed of ninety eminent musicians. The corps de ballet consists of between eighty and ninety fine dancers, of whom Monsieur Deshayes is the principal. His movements are more graceful, his agility more surprising, and his step more light, firm, and elastic, than those of any dancer whom I have ever seen. He is very justly considered to be the first in Europe. The first consul has a private box here, on one side of which, a lofty, hollow, decorative column rises, the flutes of which are open, and through which he views, [printing unclear: unseen,] the audience and performers. The beholder might be almost inclined to think that this surprising man had borrowed from our immortal bard, his notions of exciting the impression of dignity, by a rare, and well timed display of his person. "Thus did I keep my person fresh, and new; My presence like a robe pontifical, Ne'er seen but wondered at: and so my state Seldom, but sumptuous shewed, like a feast And won by rareness such solemnity." Madame Bonaparte's box is on the left side of the stage, over the door, in which the hapless queen has frequently displayed her beautiful person to the enraptured audience. The Feydeau theatre is very elegant; and on account of its excellent arrangements, good performers, and exquisite machinery, is much resorted to, and is in general preferred to the fourteen other dramatic spectacles which, in this dissipated city, almost every night present their tribute of pleasure to the gay, and delighted parisians. A frenchman once observed to me, that a Sunday in London was horrible, on account of there being no playhouses open at night! The decorum and good manners which are even still observed in all the french places of public amusement, are very impressive, and agreeable. Horse and foot soldiers are stationed at the avenues, to keep them clear, to prevent depredation, and to quell the first indications of popular commotion. I was much gratified by an excursion to Versailles, which had been some time planned by the charming family of the S----'s. We set off early in the morning, in one of the government carriages, and after a delightful ride, through a very rich, and luxuriant country, of about twelve miles, the vast, and magnificent palace of Versailles, opened upon our view, at the end of a street nearly two miles long, lined on each side with noble hotels, and gardens. It was on a Sunday, the day on which the palace is opened to the public. On the road, we passed several hundreds of persons in carriages, cabrioles, or walking; all with merry faces, in showy clothes, and adorned with bouquets, on their route to this spot of favourite delight. About four miles from Paris we saw Belle Vue, formerly the residence of Mesdames; soon afterwards we passed the noble palace, and park of St. Cloud, which was preparing for the reception of the first consul. At the entrance of the village of St. Cloud, on the left, after we had passed the bridge, we saw a very pretty house, and grounds, belonging to a tanner, who had amassed considerable wealth by a discovery of tanning leather in twenty-four hours, so as to render it fit for the currier. Whether he possesses this faculty or not, I cannot from my own experience say, but I can venture to affirm, that the leather of France is very bad. In the village is a very noble porcelain manufactory, which unfortunately we had not time to inspect. Whilst our horses were refreshing themselves with a little water, we were beset by the agents of the different hotels, and restaurateurs of Versailles, who presented us with little cards, announcing in a very pompous manner the superiority of their employers accommodations. The stables of Versailles, to the right, and left, are from the designs of Mansart, in the form of a crescent, and have the appearance of princely residences. Here the late King kept in the greatest style six hundred of the finest horses. On the left of the grand gateway, is a military lodge for the accommodation of cavalry. It represents in shape, an immense turkish marquee. After we had passed the pallisades of the first court, we more distinctly saw this amazing pile of irregular buildings, which consists of the old castle, the new palaces, the houses of the ministers of state, and servants, two opera houses, the chapel, military schools, museums, and the manufactory of arms, the whole of which are now consolidated, and form one palace. The beautiful pavement of black and white marble in the court yards, is much defaced, and their fountains are totally destroyed. The first place we visited was the manufactory of small arms; the resident workmen in which exceed two thousand men. Here we saw all the ingenious process of constructing the musket, pistol, and sabre, of which there are an immense collection; and also several carbines, and swords of honour, intended as presents from the first consul to officers and soldiers of distinguished merit. From the manufactory of small arms, we returned to the grand court, and entered a suite of rooms, which contain the relics of the former valuable cabinet of curiosities. Several of those which we saw, were worthy of attention. From these rooms, we passed to the late king's private opera house, which surpasses in magnificence, and costly decoration, every thing of the kind I ever beheld. The facing of the whole of the inside is of carved wood, richly gilt. The dome is beautifully painted. Upon the scenery of the stage being removed, and temporary columns, and galleries raised; all of which can be effected in twenty-four hours, that part of the theatre presents a counterpart of the other, and the whole forms a most splendid oblong ball room, very deservedly considered to be the finest in Europe: it used to be illuminated by ten thousand wax lights. The concert rooms, and retiring apartments are also very beautiful. From the opera, we visited the chapel, which is very fine, and costly, in which there are many large, and valuable paintings. After leaving this deserted place of royal worship, we passed through the Halls of Plenty, Venus, Mars, Mercury, Apollo, and the Hall of the Billiard Table, finely painted by Houasse, le Brun, Champagne, and other eminent artists, to the grand gallery, which is seventy-two yards long, and fourteen broad, and has seventeen lofty windows on one side, which look into the gardens, and seventeen immense pier glasses on the opposite side to correspond. In this gallery, the kings of France were accustomed to receive ambassadors, and ministers of state. We next entered the bedroom of the late queen and beheld the door, which, on the night of the 6th of October, 1789, the frantic, and sanguinary mob, headed by the infamous Legendre, burst open, for the purpose of dispatching her with daggers, in her bed, on that frightful night, which preceded the return of the royal family to Paris, under the protection of the marquis de la Fayette, through an enraged multitude, which extended itself from Versailles to Paris. The miserable queen saved herself by escaping into an adjoining apartment. Her bed was pierced through and through with poignards. The door is nailed up, but the marks of that horrible outrage still remain. In this, and in the adjoining chambers, are some very beautiful and valuable paintings. I must not omit to mention, although the sentiment which it inspires is not very pleasant, the representation of the capture of an english frigate, by la Bayonne, a french corvette, after a desperate engagement, in which victory for once decided in favour of the enemy, who opposed, on this occasion, an inferior force. This is a picture of infinite merit, and possesses a novelty of arrangement, and strength of colouring, which I never saw equalled in any other naval representation. The subject seldom admits of much variety. The french, of course, are very much pleased with it. There are here also some curious old clocks. It was in one of these apartments, that Prior, the celebrated poet, when secretary to the earl of Portland, who was appointed ambassador to the french court, in the year 1698, made the following memorable answer. One of the french king's household was showing the bard the royal apartments and curiosities of this palace, and particularly pointed out to his notice, the paintings of le Brun, now removed to the museum of the arts, in which the victories of Lewis the XIVth are described, and asked him, whether the actions of king William were to be seen in his palace? No, sir, replied the loyal wit, "the monuments of my master's glory are to be seen every where but in his own house." Through the interest of Monsieur S---- we were admitted into a private room below stairs, in which several portraits of the late royal family have been preserved from destruction, during the late revolution. That which represents the queen and her young family, is very fine, and displays all the bewitching beauty and vivacity of that lovely and unfortunate personage. Into this room no one was admitted with us. Here is a very curious piece of mechanism: it is a painting, containing two hundred little figures, in the act of enjoying the various pleasures of rural sport, which are separated from the back ground of the picture, and are set in motion by springs; and admirably imitate all the movements natural to their different occupations. A fisherman throws in his line, and draws up a little fish, a regular chase is displayed, and a nuptial procession appears, in which little figures, riding in tiny carriages, nod to the spectators. There are also many other curious figures. It is glazed and framed, and at a distance, when its motion has ceased, it has the appearance of a tolerably good painting. We next quitted the palace, and entered upon the grand terrace, from which it makes the finest appearance. This enormous pile of building is here united by a centre, and corresponding wings, of great extent and magnificence. From this elevated spot, the beholder contemplates the different waterworks, walks, and gardens, which cover several miles. The orangery is a beautiful specimen of tuscan architecture, designed by le Maitre, and finished by Mansart. It is filled with lofty orange trees in full bearing; many of which, in their tubs, measure from twenty to thirty feet high. Amongst them is an orange tree which is upwards of four hundred years old. The cascades, fountains, and jets d'eau, are too numerous to admit of minute description. They are all very fine, and are supplied by prodigious engines across the Seine, at Marli, about three miles distant. The Trianon is a little marble palace, of much beauty, and embellished with the richest decoration. It stands at the end of the great lake, in front of the palace; and was, by its late royal owners, considered as a summer house to the gardens of Versailles. The whole of this vast building and its grounds, were improved and beautified by Lewis XIVth, for the well known purpose of impressing his subjects, and particularly his courtiers, with the highest opinion of his greatness, and the lowest of their comparative littleness. Amongst the lords of his court he easily effected his wishes, by accommodating them in a manner unsuitable to their dignity. [Illustration: _Ruins of the Queen's Farm-house in the Petit Trianon._] After being astonished at such a display of gorgeous magnificence, I approached, with increased delight, the enchanting little palace and grounds of the late queen, distant from Versailles about two miles, called the Petit Trianon, to which she very justly gave the appellation of her "little Palace of Taste." Here, fatigued with the splendours of royalty, she threw aside all its appearances, and gave herself up to the elegant pleasures of rural life. It is a princely establishment in miniature. It consists of a small palace, a chapel, an opera house, out offices and stables, a little park, and pleasure grounds; the latter of which are still charming, although the fascinating eye, and tasteful hand of their lovely but too volatile mistress, no longer pervade, cherish and direct their growth and beauty. By that reverse of fortune, which the revolution has familiarized, the Petit Trianon is let out by the government to a restaurateur. All the rooms but one in this house were preoccupied, on the day of our visit, in consequence of which we were obliged to dine in the former little bed room of the queen, where, like the idalian goddess, she used to sleep in a suspended basket of roses. The apertures in the ceiling and wainscot, to which the elegant furniture of this little room of repose had once adhered, are still visible. After dinner we hastened through our coffee, and proceeded to the gardens. After winding through gravelled walks, embowered by the most exquisite and costly shrubs, we entered the elegant temple of Cupid, from which the little favourite of mankind had been unwillingly, and rudely expelled, as appeared by the fragments of his pedestal. Thy wrongs little god! shall be revenged by thy fair friend Pity. Those who treated thee thus, shall suffer in their turn, and she shall not console them! From this temple we passed through the most romantic avenues, to a range of rural buildings, called the queen's farm, the dairy, the mill, and the woodmens cottages; which, during the queen's residence at the Petit Trianon, were occupied by the most elegant and accomplished young noblemen of the court. In front of them, a lake terminated on one side by a rustic tower, spreads itself. These buildings are much neglected, and are falling into rapid ruin. In other times, when neatness and order reigned throughout this elysian scenery, and gracefully spread its luxuriant beauties at the feet of its former captivating owner, upon the mirror of that lake, now filled with reeds and sedges, in elegant little pleasure boats, the illustrious party was accustomed to enjoy the freshness of the evening, to fill the surrounding groves with the melody of the song, which was faintly answered by the tender flute, whose musician was concealed in that rustic tower, whose graceful base the honeysuckle and eglantine no longer encircle, and whose winding access, once decorated with flowers of the richest beauty and perfume, is now overgrown with moss, decayed, and falling piecemeal to the ground. Near the farm, in corresponding pleasure grounds, the miller's house particularly impressed us with delight. All its characteristics were elegantly observed. A rivulet still runs on one side of it, which formerly used to turn a little wheel to complete the illusion. The apartments, which must have been once enchanting, now present nothing but gaping beams, broken ceilings, and shattered casements. The wainscots of its little cabinets, exhibit only a tablet, upon which are rudely penciled, the motley initials, love verses, and memorandums of its various visitors. The shade of the ivy, which, upon all occasions, seems destined to perform the last offices to the departing monuments of human ingenuity, has here exercised its gloomy function. Whilst we were roving about, we were obliged to take refuge from a thunder storm, in what appeared to us a mere barn; upon our entering it, we found it to be an elegant little ball room, much disfigured, and greened over by damp and neglect. In other parts of this _petit Paradis_, are caves of artificial rock, which have been formed at an immense expense, in which were formerly beds of moss, and through which clear streams of water glided, Belvidere temples, and scattered cottages, each differing from its neighbour in character, but all according in taste and beauty. The opera house, which stands alone, is a miniature of the splendid one in the palace of Versailles. The sylvan ball room, is an oblong square, lined with beautiful treillages, surmounted with vases of flowers. The top is open. When the queen gave her balls here, the ground was covered by a temporary flooring, and the whole was brilliantly lighted. As we passed by the palace, we saw, in the queen's little library, several persons walking. Could the enchanting beauty of Austria, and the once incensed idol of the gay, and the gallant, arise from her untimely tomb, and behold her most sacred recesses of delight, thus rudely exposed, and converted into scenes of low, and holiday festivity, the temples which she designed, defaced, their statues overthrown, her walks overgrown and entangled, the clear mirror of the winding lake, upon the placid surface of which once shone the reflected form of the Belvidere, and the retreats of elegant taste covered with the reedy greenness of the standing pool, and all the _fairy fabric_ of her graceful fancy, thus dissolving in decay; the devoted hapless Marie would add another sigh to the many which her aching heart has already heaved! It would be a very desirable thing if Bonaparte would make this his country palace instead of St. Cloud. Upon our return, as we approached Paris, the illuminated bridges of the Seine looked very beautiful, and we were much pleased with some fireworks, which had a singular effect upon the water. In the evening, we had some music at Monsieur S----'s, where we were joined by general Marescot, a brave and distinguished officer, much esteemed by Bonaparte. He informed us that he was on the point of setting out to view and report the condition of all the maritime fortifications in the republic. "You must go with me as my aide-de-camp," said the general to Mademoiselle D----. "I am not fierce enough for a soldier," replied the fair one, with a bewitching smile. "Well then," observed the sun-browned general, "should the war ever be renewed, you shall attend me to charm away its calamities." Madame S----, like a true french mother, was delighted with the little compliment, and presenting her snuff box to the gallant Marescot, she said, "thank you, my dear general, the brave always think generously of the fair." CHAPTER XVIII. _Bonaparte's Talents in Finance.--Garrick and the Madman.--Palace of the Conservative Senate.--Process of transferring Oil Paintings from Wood to Canvas.--The Dinner Knife.--Commodities.--Hall of the National Convention.--The Minister Talleyrand's Levee._ The first consul is said to add to his other extraordinary powers, an acute and comprehensive knowledge of finance. Monsieur S---- informed me, that whenever he waited upon him in his official capacity, with the national accounts, he displayed an acquaintance with the most complicated statements, which seemed intuitive. He exhibits the same talents in philosophy, and in matters which are foreign to those vast objects of public employ, which have raised him to his present height of glory, and which in general preclude the subordinate enjoyment of elegant study. Those acquirements, which providence in its wisdom has thinly scattered amongst mankind, and which seldom ripen to full maturity, although cherished by the most propitious advantages, and by the unreposing labours of a long, and blissful existence, spread their rich abundance, in the May morning of life, before this extraordinary being, who in the commencement of that very revolution, upon the ruins of which he has stepped to supreme authority, was a beardless stripling. From the great performers upon the public stage of life, our conversation, one evening, at Madame S----'s, by a natural transition, embraced a review of the wonderful talents, which have at various times adorned the lesser drama of the theatre. Madame S---- made some judicious remarks upon the french players of distinction, to all of whom she imputed a manner, and enunciation which have been imbibed in a school, in which nature has not been permitted to preside. Their tragedy, she said, was inflated with too much pomp, and their elegant comedy suffered by too volatile an airiness. She bestowed upon our immortal Garrick, the most decided preference, and superiority to any actor whom she had ever seen. The opportunity which she had of judging of his powers, was short, and singular, but fully enabled her to form a decisive opinion. When Garrick visited Paris for the last time, she was just married. This celebrated actor had letters of introduction to Monsieur S----. At a large party, which Monsieur S---- formed for the purpose of doing honour to his distinguished visitor, he exhibited several specimens of his unrivalled talents. Amongst others, he represented in dumb show, by the wonderful powers of his expressive countenance, the feelings of a father, who in looking over a lofty balcony with his only child in his arms, by accident dropped it. The disaster drove the unhappy parent mad. Garrick had visited him in his cell; where the miserable maniac was accustomed, several times in the course of the day, to exhibit all those looks and attitudes which he had displayed at the balcony[9]. On a sudden he would bend himself forward, as if looking from a window into the street, with his arms folded as if they embraced a child, then he would start back, and appear as if he had lost something, search the room round and round, run again forward, as to the railing of a window, look down, and beat his forehead, as if he had beheld his infant bleeding, and breathless upon the pavement. Garrick's imitation was exquisite. The feelings of his beholders were wrought up to horror. The tears, and consternation of a gay fashionable french party, were applauses more flattering to the british Roscius, than the thunder of that acclamation, which, in the crowded theatre, followed the flash of his fiery eye, or the close of his appalling speech. [9] The cause which induced Garrick to visit this unhappy person was, it is said, to render the representation of his King Lear more perfect. The english drama, however, has not escaped the animadversions of a french critic, whose taste and liberality are not very congenial with those of my charming, and generous friend. "Their tragedies," he says, (speaking of the english) "it is true, though interesting, and replete with beauties, are nevertheless dramatic monsters, half _butchery_, and half _farce_. Grotesque characters, and extravagant pleasantry constitute the chief part of their comedies. In one of them, (not named) the devil enters sneezing, and somebody says to the devil, _God bless you_. They are not, however, all of this stamp. They have _even some_ in very good taste." Yes, Monsieur Dourx, I agree with you, I think we have _some_ in very good taste. I know not in what dramatic work the facetious frenchman has discovered the introduction of his satanic majesty under the influence of a cold, and receiving, as he enters, the usual deprecation on such occasions. I rather suspect that the adventures of Punch, and his fickle lady, who are always attended by a dancing demon, have afforded the materials for this sapient observation. In the course of one of my morning rambles in Paris, I visited the ruins of the celebrated Bastille, of which prison, only the arsenal, some fragments of its massy walls, and two or three dungeons remain. The volcanic vengeance of the people, has swept away this mighty fabric, which the revolting mind of republican liberty denounced as the frightful den of despotism, upon the approach to which no marks of returning footsteps were imprinted, whilst, in her mad career, she converted every private dwelling in the metropolis into a revolutionary prison: So much for popular consistency! In the mutations of time, to what different purposes are the same places applied! Where the consuming martyr expired[10], the unwieldy prize hog is exposed to sale; and the modern parisian derives the sources of warmth and comfort, from a place, the very name of which, once _chilled_ the circulation of his blood. The site of the Bastille is now a magazine of wood, which supplies the city with fuel. [10] Smithfield. Every lover of pure liberty must leap with delight upon the disincumbered earth, where once stood that gloomy abode of "broken hearts," and reflect upon the sufferings of the wretched Latude, and the various victims of capricious pique, or prostitute resentment. It was here that, in the beautiful lines of Cowper, the hopeless prisoner was doomed "To fly for refuge from distracting thought To such amusements as ingenious woe Contrives, hard shifting, and without her tools-- To read, engraven on the mouldy walls, In stagg'ring types, his predecessor's tale, A sad memorial, and subjoin his own-- To turn purveyor to an overgorg'd And bloated spider, till the pamper'd pest Is made familiar, watches his approach, Comes at his call, and serves him for a friend--" The cells of the Bastille were constantly filled, during the syren reign of la Pompadour over the gloomy affections of Lewis the XVth. The overthrow of this dungeon has not rendered state prisons out of fashion in the republic, although it has mitigated the severity of their internal government. The towers of the Temple, look down upon the prostrate ruins of the Bastille. From this memorable spot of ground, I went to the Observatory. In the rooms, which open upon an artificial terrace, were some prodigious astronomical apparatus. A very ingenious frame was then constructing, for elevating, or depressing the astronomer, and the telescope at the same time, by an easy, and simple process of machinery. The Observatory is a noble building, and contains libraries, students rooms, and apartments for the various artificers, and machinists who are occupied in fabricating the apparatus, and instruments necessary to the science of astronomy. From the exterior of the dome, there is a fine view of the city, suburbs, and country. From the Observatory, I visited the Conservative Senate, formerly the Palace of the Luxembourg. The back of this beautiful building is in the Rue de Vaugirand, in the Fauxbourg of St. Germains. The gardens of this noble pile, are receiving great improvement, and alteration, from designs which have been approved of by the first consul, who in his wise policy, intends that they shall, in time, rival those of the Thuilleries, for the purpose of affording an elegant, and fashionable promenade to the people who reside in this part of the capital, who are considerably removed from the beautiful walks which adorn the consular palace. Here I saw the Hall of Deliberation, in which the Conservative Senate assembles. It is nothing more than a large, handsome drawing-room, in which are placed, upon rising platforms, sixty armed chairs, for so many members, the chair of the president, and the tribune. This magnificent palace is repairing, and fitting up for the residence, and accommodation of its members. I was introduced to the artist who has the care of the gallery here, and who, with his assistants, was very busily occupied in a process for removing the oil colours of a painting from wood, and transferring them to canvas. He received me with great politeness, and explained to me the mode of doing it, in which there appeared to be more toil, nicety, and steadiness required, than ingenuity. The painting is laid upon a cloth stretched upon a marble slab, and the wood behind is shaved off until nothing but the picture, like a flat cake, or rather a sheet of goldbeater's skin, remains, a piece of canvas coated with a cement is then placed upon it, to which it adheres, and presents all the appearance of having been originally painted upon it. The pictures from the subject of St. Bruno, were then undergoing this operation. The apartments in which these people were at work, presented very convincing indications of the mutability of human ambition. This palace was allotted to the celebrated Council of Five Hundred. During their ephemeral reign, these very rooms were designed for their halls of audience, and levees, the rich mouldings, and cornices of which were half gilt, and covered with silver paper to preserve them: the poor council were never indulged in a house warming. The pictures, which were collected by Henry IV, and deposited in the gallery there, which bears his name, are said to be valuable. I did not see them, on account of their having been removed into store rooms during the repairs of the palace. It was late when I left the Luxembourg, and somewhat exhausted for want of refreshment, I determined upon dining at the first restaurateur's which I could meet with, instead of going to the Gardens of the Thuilleries. To find such an accommodation in Paris, is no difficult thing. A stranger would naturally suppose, from the frequency with which the words caffé, limonade, and restaurateur present themselves to the eye, that three parts of the inhabitants had turned their talents to the valuable study of relieving the cravings of an empty stomach. I had not moved three yards down the Rue de Tournon, before, on my left, I saw the welcome board which, in large golden characters, announced the very best entertainment within. At this moment, the celebrated picture of the banquet in the Louvre, could scarcely have afforded me more delight. I had an excellent dinner, wine, and fruit for four livres. In the course of my repast, I begged that a knife, might be permitted to aid the services of a three pronged silver fork, which graced my plate on the left. After rather a laborious search, my wishes were gratified by an instrument, which certainly was entitled to the name of one, but was assuredly not the handsomest of its species. Whether there had been any dispute between the handle, and the blade, I know not, but there were very evident appearances of an approaching separation. Not wishing to augment the rupture, between two personages so necessary to each others service, and to those who were to be benefitted by it, I begged of my fair hostess, who, with two pretty girls (her daughters), were picking the stalks from some strawberries, which were intended for my desert, at the other end of the room, that she would favour me with another knife. The maitresse d'hôtel, who had a pair of fine dark expressive eyes, very archly said, "Why would you wish to change it, Sir? it is an english one." It certainly looked like one; no compliment could be neater. Whether I gave it too great a latitude of interpretation, I will not pretend to say, but it led me into such a train of happy _comparative thinking_, that I ate my dinner with it very comfortably, without saying another word. I have since thought, that the maitresse d'hôtel had not another knife in her house, but what was in use. In France, I have before had occasion to remark, that fanciful notions of excessive delicacy, are not permitted to interfere with comfort, and convenience. Amongst these people, every thing turns upon the principle of accommodation. To this motive I attribute the frequent exhibition, over the doors of respectable looking houses, in the fashionable walks, and in different parts of Paris, of the following characters, "Commodités pour Hommes, et Femmes." An english prude would start to read these words. I mention this circumstance, for the purpose of communicating some idea of the people, convinced, as I well am, that it is only by detail, that we can become acquainted with the peculiar characteristics of any community. I very often passed by the ci-devant Hall of the National Convention; in which the hapless king and queen were doomed to the scaffold, where murder was legitimated, religion denounced, and the grave declared to be the bed of _eternal repose_. In vindication of the ways of eternal justice, even upon earth, this polluted pile is participating the fate of its devoted members. Those walls which once resounded with the florid, heightened declamation of republican visionaries, the most worthless, imposing, and desperate of mankind, are prevented, for a short time, by a few crazy props, from covering the earth below with their dust and ruins. The famed temple of the Goddess of Liberty, is not tenantable enough to cover the Babel Deity from the peltings of the midnight storm. Where is now the enthusiastic Gironde, where the volcanic mountain, the fiery, and eloquent Mirabeau, the wily Brissot, the atheistic Lequinios, the remorseless Marat, the bloody St. Just, and the chief of the deplumed and fallen legions of equality? All is desolate and silent. The gaping planks of the guillotine are imbued with their last traces. The haunt of the banditti is uncovered. The revolution has preyed upon her own children, and metaphysical murderers have perished by the daggers of speculative republicans. About two years since this place was converted into a ménagerie. The cave, and the wilderness, the desert, and the jungle, presented to the eye of the beholder, representative successors of those savages who, with more powers and more ferocity, were once enclosed within the same den. From the remembrance of such miscreants, I turn, with increased satisfaction, to the traces of approaching civilization, which mark the career of the present government, in which the want of suitable splendour no longer repels the approach and friendship of those nations which once shuddered at the idea of coming into contact with the infected rags of visionary fraternity. Some indications of this change I saw pourtrayed at the levee of Monsieur Talleyrand, the minister of foreign relations, when I had the honour of being presented to that able and celebrated politician by Mr. B. The hotel of Talleyrand is very superb. We entered the court yard through two lines of about twenty carriages in waiting. Under the portico, were several turks seated, who formed a part of the suite of the turkish embassador, who had just arrived, and was then closetted with Monsieur T----. We passed through several noble apartments, preceded by servants, to a magnificent levee room, in which we met most of the foreign embassadors who were then at the consular court. After waiting some time, the folding doors of the cabinet opened, the turkish embassy came out, making their grand salams, followed by Talleyrand, in his rich costume of embroidered scarlet, his hair full dressed, and a shining sabre by his side. In his person, he is small and thin, his face is "pale and penetrating." He always looks obliquely, his small quick eyes and features, very legibly express mildness, wit, and subtilty. His right leg appears contracted. His address is insinuating. As the spirit of aggrandizement, which is said to have actuated the public and private conduct of Monsieur T----has been so much talked of, it may, perhaps, excite some surprise, when it is mentioned that several persons who know him well, some of whom esteem him, and with some of whom he is not a favourite, declare, notwithstanding the anecdotes related of X Y, and Monsieur Beaucoup d'Argent, in the american prints, that they consider him to be a man, whose mind is raised above the influence of corruption. Monsieur T----may be classed amongst the rarest curiosities in the revolutionary cabinet. Allied by an illustrious ancestry to the Bourbons, and a royalist from his birth, he was, with unusual celerity, invested with the episcopal robe and crosier[11]. During the temporary triumph of the abstract rights of man, over the practicable rights of reason, he moved with the boisterous cavalcade, with more caution than enthusiasm. Upon the celebrated national recognition of the sovereignty of man's _will_, in the Champs de Mars, the politic minister, adorned in snowy robes, and tricolor ribands, presided at the altar of the republic as its high priest, and bestowed his patriarchal benedictions upon the standard of France, and the banners of her departments. [11] Monsieur Talleyrand is ex-bishop of Autun. Some time afterwards, in the shape of a secret unaccredited negotiator, he was discovered in the metropolis of England, and immediately transferred, upon the spread wings of the alien bill, to his own shores. Since that period, after having dissociated and neutralized the most formidable foes of his country, by the subtle stratagems of his consummate diplomacy, we beheld him as the successor of la Croix, armed with the powers, and clothed in the gaudy costume of the minister of foreign relations. In the _polished Babel_ of the antichamber of this extraordinary man, I have beheld the starred and glittering representatives of the most distinguished princes of the earth waiting for hours, with exemplary resignation, contemplating themselves, in all their positions, in his reduplicating mirrors, or examining the splendour and exquisite ingenuity of his time pieces, until the silver sound of his little bell announced, that the invoked and lagging moment of ministerial leisure was arrived. It is certain that few people possess the valuable qualities of imperturbable calmness and self possession, more than Monsieur T----. Balanced by these amiable and valuable qualities, he has been enabled to ride the political whirlwind, and in the diplomatic cabinet, to collect some advantage from the prejudices or passions of all who approached him. The caution and cunning of T---- have succeeded, where the sword and impetuous spirit of Bonaparte would have been unavailing. The splendour of his apartments, and of many of the personages present, displayed a very courtlike appearance, and inclined a stranger, like myself, to think, that nothing of the old government was missing, but the expatriated family of France. CHAPTER XIX. _The College of the Deaf and Dumb.--Abbé Sicard.--Bagatelle.--Police.--Grand National Library.--Bonaparte's Review.--Tambour Major of the Consular Regiment.--Restoration of Artillery Colours._ I had long anticipated the delight which I expected to derive from the interesting public lecture of the abbé Sicard, and the examination of his pupils. This amiable and enlightened man presides over an institution which endears his name to humanity, and confers unfading honour upon the nation which cherishes it by its protection and munificence. My reader will immediately conclude that I allude to the College of the Deaf and Dumb. By the genius and perseverance of the late abbé Charles Michael de l'Epée, and his present amiable successor, a race of fellow beings, denied by a privation of hearing, of the powers of utterance, insulated in the midst of multitudes bearing their own image, and cut off from the participation, within sight, of all the endearing intercourses of social life, are restored, as it were, to the blessings of complete existence. The glorious labours of these philanthropists, in no very distant ages, would have conferred upon them, the reputation and honours of beings invested with superhuman influence. By making those faculties which are bestowed, auxiliary to those which are denied, the deaf are taught to hear, and the dumb to speak. A silent representative language, in which the eye officiates for the ear, and communicates the charms of science, and the delights of common intercourse to the mind, with the velocity, facility, and certainty of sound, has been presented to these imperfect children of nature. The plan of the abbé, I believe, is before the world. It cannot be expected, in a fugitive sketch like the present, to attempt an elaborate detail of it. Some little idea of its rudiments may, perhaps, be imparted, by a plain description of what passed on the examination day, when I had the happiness of being present. On the morning of the exhibition, the streets leading to the College were lined with carriages, for humanity has here made a convert of fashion, and directed her wavering mind to objects from which she cannot retire, without ample and consoling gratification. Upon the lawn, in front of the College, were groups of the pupils, enjoying those sports and exercises which are followed by other children, to whom Providence has been more bountiful. Some of their recreations required calculation, and I observed that their intercourse with each other appeared to be easy, swift, and intelligible. They made some convulsive movements with their mouths, in the course of their communication, which, at first, had rather an unpleasant effect. In the cloister I addressed myself to a genteel looking youth, who did not appear to belong to the College, and requested him to shew me the way to the theatre, in which the lecture was to be delivered. I found he took no notice of me. One of the assistants of the abbé, who was standing near me, informed me, he was deaf and dumb, and made two or three signs, too swift for me to discriminate; the silent youth bowed, took me by the hand, led me into the theatre, and, with the greatest politeness, procured me an excellent seat. The room was very crowded, and in the course of a quarter of an hour after I had entered, every avenue leading to it was completely filled with genteel company. The benches of the auditors of the lecture, displayed great beauty and fashion, a stage, or tribune, appeared in front, behind was a large inclined slate, in a frame, about eight feet high, by six long. On each side of the stage the scholars were placed, and behind the spectators was a fine bust of the founder of the institution, the admirable de l'Epée. The abbé Sicard mounted the tribune, and delivered his lecture with very pleasing address, in the course of which he frequently excited great applause. The subject of it was an analysis of the language of the deaf and dumb, interspersed with several curious experiments upon, and anecdotes of his pupils. The examination of the scholars next followed. The communication which has been opened to them in this singular manner, is by the _philosophy of grammar_. The denotation of the tenses is effected by appropriate signs. The hand thrown over the shoulder, expressed the past, when extended, like the attitude of inviting, it denoted the future, and the finger inverted upon the breast, indicated the present tense. A single sign communicated a word, and frequently a sentence. A singular instance of the first occurred. A gentleman amongst the spectators, who appeared to be acquainted with the art of the abbé, was requested to make a sign, to the pupil then under examination, the moment it was made, the scholar chalked upon the slate, in a fine swift flowing hand, "une homme." The pupil erred; the gentleman renewed the sign; when he immediately wrote, "une personne," to the astonishment of every person present. This circumstance is a strong instance of the powers of discrimination, of which this curious communication is susceptible. Some of the spectators requested the abbé to describe, by signs, several sentences which they repeated from memory, or read from authors, which were immediately understood by the pupils, and penciled upon the slate. The lecture and examination lasted about three hours. Upon the close of this interesting exhibition, a silent sympathy reigned throughout the spectators. Every face beamed with satisfaction. A tear was seen trembling in the eyes of many present. After a momentary pause, the hall rang with acclamations. Elegant women pressed forward in the crowd, to present some little token of their delighted feelings to the children protected by this institution. It was a spectacle, in which genius was observed assisting humanity, and nature in a suffusion of gratitude, weeping over the hallowed and propitious endeavours of the good, the generous, and the enlightened. Well might the elegant and eloquent Kotzebue select from such a spot, a subject for his pathetic pen, and give to the british Roscius of the present day[12], the power of enriching its drama, by a fresh display of his unrivalled abilities. The exhibition of the Deaf and Dumb will never be eradicated from my mind. The tears which were shed on that day, seemed almost sufficient to wipe away the recollection of those times, in which misery experienced no mitigation; when every one trembling for himself, had no unabsorbed sensation of consoling pity to bestow upon the unfortunate. Those times are gone--May their absence be eternal! This institution is made serviceable to the state. A pupil of the College is one of the chief clerks of the national lottery office, in which he distinguishes himself by his talents, his calculation, and upright deportment. [12] Mr. Kemble brought out the pathetic play of Deaf and Dumb, in which he sustains the character of the abbé de l'Epée with admirable effect. Whilst the subject is before me, I beg leave to mention a curious circumstance which was related by a very ingenious and honourable man, in a party where I happened to be present, to prove the truth and agreement of nature, in her association of ideas. A blind man was asked by him, to what sound he resembled the sensation produced by touching a piece of red cloth, he immediately replied, to the sound of a trumpet. A pupil of the College of the Deaf and Dumb, who could faintly hear a loud noise, if applied close to his ear, was asked, to what colour he could compare the sound of a trumpet, he said, it always excited in his mind, the remembrance of scarlet cloth[13]. Two pupils, male and female, of the same College, who had been placed near cannon, when discharged, without being susceptible of the sound, were one day taken by their humane tutor, into a room where the harmonica was playing; a musical instrument, which is said to have a powerful influence over the nerves. He asked them by signs, if they felt any sensation. They replied in the negative. He then placed the hand of the girl upon the instrument, whilst it was playing, and repeated the question, she answered, that she felt a new pleasure enter the ends of her fingers, pass up her arms, and penetrate her heart. [13] The first experiment is well known. It is also noticed in Locke upon the Human Understanding. The same experiment was tried upon her companion, who seemed to be sensible of similar sensations of delight, but less acutely felt. The emotions of sympathy are, perhaps, more forcibly excited by music than by any other cause. An illustrious example of its effect is introduced into Boerhaave's academical lectures on the diseases of the nerves, published by Van Eems. Theodosius the Great, by levying an excessive tribute, inflamed the minds of the people of Antioch against him, who prostrated his statues, and slew his ambassadors. Upon coolly reflecting on what they had done, and remembering the stern and ruthless nature of their sovereign, they sent deputies to implore his clemency and forgiveness. The tyrant received them, without making any reply. His chief minister lamenting the condition of these unhappy people, resolved upon an expedient to move the soul of his offended prince to mercy. He accordingly instructed the youths whose office it was to entertain the emperor with music during dinner, to perform an affecting and pathetic piece of music, composed for the purpose. The plaintive sounds soon began to operate. The emperor, unconscious of the cause, bedewed his cup with tears, and when the singers artfully proceeded to describe the sufferings of the people of Antioch, their imperial master could no longer contain himself, but, moved by their pathos, although unaccustomed to forgive, revoked his vengeance, and restored the terrified offenders to his royal favour. Madame E----, who is considered the first dilettante mistress of music in Paris, related to me, an experiment which she once tried upon a young woman who was totally deaf and dumb. Madame E---- fastened a silk thread about her mouth, and rested the other end upon her piano forte, upon which she played a pathetic air. Her visitor soon appeared much affected, and at length burst into tears. When she recovered, she wrote down upon a piece of paper, that she had experienced a delight, which she could not express, and that it had forced her to weep. I must reluctantly retire from this pleasing subject, by wishing that the abbé may long enjoy a series of blissful years, and that his noble endeavours, "manifesting the enlightened times in which we live," may meet with that philanthropic success, which, to _his_ generous mind, will be its most desired reward _here_; assured, as he is, of being crowned with those unfading remunerations which are promised to the good _hereafter_. [Illustration: _Bagatelle in the Bois de Boulogne._] I one day dined at Bagatelle, which is about four miles from Paris, in the Bois du Bologne, the parisian Hyde Park, in which the fashionable equestrian, upon his norman hunter, --------------------------"with heel insidiously aside, Provokes the canter which he seems to chide." The duellist also, in the covert windings of this vast wood, seeks reparation for the trifling wrong, and bleeds himself, or slaughters his antagonist. Bagatelle was formerly the elegant little palace of the count d'Artois. The gardens and grounds belonging to it, are beautifully disposed. What a contrast to the gloomy shades of Holyrood House, in which the royal fugitive, and his wretched followers, have found an asylum! The building and gardens are in the taste of the Petit Trianon, but inferior to it. As usual, it is the residence of cooks, and scullions, tenants of the government, who treat their visitors with good dinners, and excellent wine, and take good care to make them pay handsomely for their faultless fare. Returning to my hotel rather late at night, I passed through the Champs Elisees, which, at this hour, seemed to be in all its glory. Every "alley green," was filled with whispering lovers. On all sides the sounds of festivity, of music, and dancing, regaled the ear. The weather was very sultry, and being a little fatigued with rather a long walk, I entered through a trellis palisade into a capacious pavilion, where I refreshed myself with lemonade. Here I found a large bourgeois party enjoying themselves, after the labours of the day, with the waltz, and their favourite beverage, lemonade. A stranger is always surprised at beholding the grace, and activity, which even the lowest orders of people in France, display in dancing. Whiskered corporals, in thick dirty boots, and young tradesmen, in long great coats, led off their respective femmes de chambre and grisettes, with an elegance, which is not to be surpassed in the jewelled birth night ball room. Nothing could exceed the sprightly carelessness, and gay indifference which reigned throughout. The music in this place, as in every other of a similar description, was excellent. The french police, notwithstanding the invidious rumours which have been circulated to its prejudice, is the constant subject of admiration with every candid foreigner, who is enabled under the shelter of its protection, to perambulate in safety every part of Paris, and its suburbs, although badly lighted, at that hour of the night, which in England, seldom fails to expose the unwary wanderer to the pistol of the prowling ruffian. An enlightened friend of mine, very shrewdly observed, that the english police seems to direct its powers, and consideration more to the apprehension of the robber, than to the prevention of the robbery. In no country is the _art_ of thief catching carried higher, than in England. In France, the police is in the highest state of respectability, and unites force to vigilance. The depredator who is fortunate enough to escape the former, is seldom able to elude the latter. The grand National Library of Paris, is highly deserving of a visit, and is considered to be the first of its kind in Europe. In one of the rooms is a museum of antiques. The whole is about to be removed to the old palace. In one of the wings of this noble collection, are the two celebrated great globes, which rest upon the ground, and rise through the flooring of the first story, where there is a railing round them. These globes I should suppose to be about eighteen feet high. From the Grand National Library, I went with a party to the military review of all the regiments in Paris, and its suburbs by the first consul, in the Place de Carousel, within the gates, and railing which he has raised for this purpose. We were introduced into the apartments of general Duroc, the governor of the palace, which were upon the ground floor of the Thuilleries, and which afforded us an uninterrupted view of the whole of this superb military spectacle. A little before twelve o'clock, all the regiments of horse and foot, amounting to about 7000 men, had formed the line, when the consular regiment entered, preceded by their fine band, and the tambour major, who was dressed in great magnificence. This man is remarked in Paris for his symmetry and manly beauty. The cream-coloured charger of Bonaparte, upon which, "labouring for destiny, he has often made dreadful way in the field of battle," next passed us, led by grooms in splendid liveries of green and gold, to the grand entrance. As the clock struck twelve, the first consul, surrounded by a chosen body of the consular guard, appeared and mounted. He immediately rode off in full speed, to the gate nearest to the gallery of the Louvre, followed by his favourite generals, superbly attired, mounted upon chargers very richly caparisoned. My eye, aided by a good opera-glass, was fixed upon the first consul. I beheld before me a man whose renown is sounded through the remotest regions of the earth, and whose exploits have been united by the worshippers of favoured heroism to the conqueror of Darius. His features are small and meagre. His countenance is melancholy, cold and desperate. His nose is aquiline. His eyes are dark, fiery, and full of genius. His hair, which he wears cropped and without powder, is black. His figure is small, but very muscular. He wore a blue coat, with broad white facings and golden epaulets (the uniform of his regiment) a small cocked hat, in which was a little national cockade. In his hand he carried a small riding whip. His boots were made in the fashion of english riding boots, which I have before condemned on account of their being destitute of military appearance. The reason why they are preferred by the french officers is on account of the top leather not soiling the knees of the pantaloons when in the act of putting one leg over the other. Bonaparte rode through the lines. His beautiful charger seemed conscious of the glory of his rider, and bore him through the ranks with a commanding and majestic pace. The colours of one of the regiments was stationed close under the window, where I had the good fortune of being placed. Here the hero stopped, and saluted them. At this time I was close to him, and had the pleasure of completely gratifying that curiosity of beholding the persons of distinguished men, which is so natural to all of us. A few minutes after Bonaparte had passed, I saw a procession, the history of which I did not understand at the time, but which fully explained its general purport. About two years since, one of the regiments of artillery revolted in battle. Bonaparte in anger deprived them of their colours, and suspended them, covered with crape, amongst the captive banners of the enemy, in the Hall of Victory. The regiment, affected by the disgrace, were determined to recover the lost esteem of their general and their country, or perish to the last man. When any desperate enterprise was to be performed, they volunteered their services, and by this magnanimous compunction covered their shame with laurels, and became the boast and pride of the republican legions. This day was fixed upon for the restoration of their ensigns. They were marched up under a guard of honour, and presented to the first consul, who took the black drapery from their staves, tore it in pieces, threw it on the ground, and drove his charger indignantly over it. The regenerated banners were then restored to the regiment, with a short and suitable address. I faintly heard this laconic speech, but not distinctly enough to offer any criticism upon the eloquence of the speaker. This exhibition had its intended effect, and displayed the genius of this extraordinary man, who, with unerring acuteness, knows so well to give to every public occurrence that dramatic hue and interest which are so gratifying to the minds of the people over whom he presides. After this ceremony, the several regiments, preceded by their bands of music, marched before him in open order, and dropped their colours as they passed. The flying artillery and cavalry left the parade in full gallop, and made a terrific noise upon the pavement. Each field-piece was drawn by six horses, upon a carriage with large wheels. Here the review closed. "Farewell, the neighing steed, and the shrill trump, The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife, The royal banner, and all quality, Pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war." Bonaparte returned to the palace, where he held a splendid levee, at which the new turkish embassy was introduced. In the evening I saw Bonaparte and his lady at the opera, where he was received with respect, but without any clamorous acclamation. Madame Bonaparte appears to be older than the first consul. She is an elegant woman, and is said to conduct herself in her high station with becoming dignity and prudence. CHAPTER XX. _Abbè Sieyes.--Consular Procession to the Council Chamber.--10th of August, 1792.--Celerity of Mons. Fouche's Information.--The two Lovers.--Cabinet of Mons. le Grand--Self-prescribing Physician.--Bust of Robespierre.--His Lodgings.--Corn Hall.--Museum of French Monuments.--Revolutionary Agent.--Lovers of married Women._ A neat remark was made upon the abbè Sieyes, to whose prolific mind the revolution and all its changes have been imputed. This extraordinary man has a noble house in the Champs Elisées, and is said to have the best cook in Paris. As a party in which I was, were passing his hotel, a near relation of the abbè, who happened to be with us, commented upon the great services which the cloistered fabricator of constitutions had afforded to France, and adverted to his house and establishment as an unsuitable reward for his labours. A gentleman, who was intimate with the abbè, but was no great admirer of his morals, said, "I think, my dear madam, the abbè ought to be very well satisfied with his destiny; and I would advise him to live as long as he can in the Champs Elisées; for when he shall happen to experience that mysterious transition to which we are all hastening, I think the chances will be against his finding good accommodations in any other Elysium." As I was passing one morning through the hall of the Thuilleries, the great door of the council chamber was opened, and the second and third consuls, preceded and followed by their suite in full costume, _marched_ with great pomp to business, to the roll of a drum. This singular procession from one part of the house to the other, had a ridiculous effect, and naturally reminded me of the fustian pageantry which, upon the stage, attends the entries and exits of the kings and queens of the drama. I have often been surprised to find that the injuries which the cornice of the entrance, and the capitals of the columns in the hall of the Thuilleries, have sustained from the ball of cannon, during the horrible massacre of the 10th of August, 1792, have never been repaired. Every vestige of that day of dismay and slaughter ought for ever to be effaced; instead of which, some labour has been exercised to perpetuate its remembrance. Under the largest chasms which have been made by the shot is painted, in strong characters, that gloomy date. In the evening of that day of devastation, from which France may date all her sufferings, a friend of mine went into the court-yard of the Thuilleries, where the review is now held, for the purpose of endeavouring to recognise, amongst the dead, any of his acquaintances. In the course of this shocking search, he declared to me, that he counted no less than eight hundred bodies of Swiss and French, who had perished in that frightful contest between an infatuated people and an irresolute sovereign. I will not dilate upon this painful subject, but dismiss it in the words of the holy and resigned descendant of Nahor, "Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it; let darkness and the shadow of death stain it; let a cloud dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it." I have before had occasion to notice the promptitude and activity of the french police, under the penetrating eye of Mons. Fouche. No one can escape the vigilance of this man and his emissaries. An emigrant of respectability assured me, that when he and a friend of his waited upon him for their passports to enable them to quit Paris for the South of France, he surprised them by relating to them the names of the towns, the streets, and of the people with whom they had lodged, at various times, during their emigration in England. Whilst I was at Paris, an affair happened very near the hotel in which I lodged, which in its sequel displayed that high spirit and sensibility which appear to form the presiding features in the french character, to which may be attributed all the excesses which have stained, and all the glory which has embellished it. A lady of fortune, and her only daughter, an elegant and lovely young woman, resided in the Fauxbourg St. Germain. A young man of merit and accomplishments, but unaided by the powerful pretensions of suitable fortune, cherished a passion for the young lady, to whom he had frequent access, on account of his being distantly related to her. His affection was requited with return; and before the parent suspected the attachment, the lovers were solemnly engaged. The indications of pure love are generally too unguarded to escape the keen, observing eye of a cold, mercenary mother. She charged her daughter with her fondness, and forbade her distracted lover the house. To close up every avenue of hope, she withdrew with her wretched child into Italy, where they remained for two years; at the expiration of which, the mother had arranged for her daughter a match more congenial to her own pride and avarice, with an elderly gentleman, who had considerable fortune and property in the vicinity of Bourdeaux. Every necessary preparation was made for this cruel union, which it was determined should be celebrated in Paris, to which city they returned for that purpose. Two days before the marriage was intended to take place, the young lover, wrought up to frenzy by the intelligence of the approaching nuptials, contrived, by bribing the porter whilst the mother was at the opera with her intended son-in-law, to reach the room of the beloved being from whom he was about to be separated for ever. Emaciated by grief, she presented the mere spectre of what she was when he last left her. As soon as he entered the room, he fell senseless at her feet, from which state he was roused by the loud fits of her frightful maniac laughter. She stared upon him, like one bewildered. He clasped her with one hand, and with the other drew from his pocket a vial containing double distilled laurel water: he pressed it to her lips, until she had swallowed half of its contents; the remainder he drank himself.--The drug of death soon began to operate.--Clasped in each other's arms, pale and expiring, they reviewed their hard fate, and, in faint and lessening sentences, implored of the great God of mercy, that he would pardon them for what they had done, and that he would receive their spirits into his regions of eternal repose; that he would be pleased, in his divine goodness, to forgive the misjudging severity which had driven them to despair, and would support the unconscious author of it, under the heavy afflictions which their disastrous deaths would occasion. They had scarcely finished their prayer, when they heard footsteps approaching the room. Madame R----, who had been indisposed at the opera, returned home before its conclusion, with the intended bridegroom. The young man awoke, as it were, from his deadly drowsiness, and, exerting his last strength, pulled from his breast a dagger, stabbed the expiring being, upon whom he doated, to the heart; and, falling upon her body, gave himself several mortal wounds. The door opened; the frantic mother appeared. All the house was in an instant alarmed; and the fatal explanation which furnished the materials of this short and sad recital, was taken from the lips of the dying lover, who had scarcely finished it before he breathed his last. Two days afterwards, the story was hawked about the streets. From this painful narrative, in which the French impetuosity is strongly depicted, I must turn to mention my visit to Mons. le G----, who lives in the Rue Florentine, and is considered to be one of the first architects in France; in which are many monuments of his taste and elegance. It is a curious circumstance that all artists exercise their talents more successfully for their patrons than for themselves. Whether it is the hope of a more substantial reward than that of mere self-complacency, which usually excites the mind to its happiest exertions, I will not pretend to determine; but the point seems to be in some degree settled by the conduct of a celebrated Bath physician, of whom it is related, that, happening once to suffer under a malady from which as his skill had frequently relieved others, he determined to prescribe for himself. The recipe at first had not the desired effect. The doctor was surprised. At last he recollected that he had not feed himself. Upon making this discovery, he drew the strings of his purse, and with his left hand placed a guinea in his right, and then prescribed. The story concludes by informing its readers, that the prescription succeeded, and the doctor recovered.--In adorning the front of his own hôtel, Mons. le G----, in my very humble opinion, has not exhibited his accustomed powers. In a small confined court-yard he has attempted to give to a private dwelling the appearance of one of those vast temples of which he became enamoured when at Athens. The roof is supported by two massy fluted pilastres, which in size are calculated to bear the burthen of some prodigious dome. The muscular powers of Hercules seem to be here exercised in raising a grasshopper from the ground. The genius of Mons. le G----, unlike the world's charity, does not begin at home, but seems more disposed to display its most successful energies abroad. His roof, however, contains such a monument of his goodness and generosity, that I must not pass it over. This distinguished architect is one of those unfortunate beings who have been decreed to taste the bitterness, very soon after the sweets of matrimony. Upon discovering the infidelity of his lady, who is very pretty and prepossessing, the distracted husband immediately sought a divorce from the laws of his country. This affair happened a very short time before the revolution afforded unusual acceleration and facilities to the wishes of parties, who, under similar circumstances, wished to get rid of each other as soon as possible. The then "law's delay" afforded some cause of vexation to Mons. le G----, who was deeply injured. Before his suit had passed through its last forms, the father of his wife, who at the time of their marriage lived in great affluence, became a bankrupt. In the vortex of his failure, all the means of supporting his family were swallowed up. The generous le G----, disdaining to expose to want and ignominy the woman who had once been dear to him, would proceed no further. She is still his wife; she bears his name, is maintained by him, and in a separate suite of apartments lives under the same roof with him. But Mons. and Madame le G---- have had no intercourse whatever with each other for eleven years. If in the gallery or in the hall they meet by accident, they pass without the interchange of a word. This painful and difficult arrangement has now lost a considerable portion of its misery, by having become familiar to the unfortunate couple. In the valuable and curious cabinet of Mons. le G----, I found out, behind several other casts, a bust of Robespierre, which was taken of him, a short period before he fell. A tyrant, whose offences look white, contrasted with the deep delinquency of the oppressor of France, is said to be indebted more to his character, than to nature, for the representation of that deformity of person which appears in Shakspeare's portrait of him, when he puts this soliloquy in his lips:-- "I that am curtail'd of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature, by dissembling Nature, Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time, Into the breathing world, scarce half made up; And that so lamely and unfashionably, That dogs bark at me, as I halt by them." History, enraged at the review of the insatiable crimes of Robespierre, has already bestowed upon him a fanciful physiognomy, which she has composed of features which rather correspond with the ferocity of his soul, than with his real countenance. From the appearance of this bust, which is an authentic remblance of him, his face must have been rather handsome. His features were small, and his countenance must have strongly expressed animation, penetration and subtlety. This bust is a real curiosity. It is very likely that not another is now to be found, Mons. le G---- is permitted to preserve it, without reproach on account of his art. I can safely say, he does not retain it from any emotions of veneration for the original. It is worthy of being placed between the heads of Caligula and Nero. Very near the residence of Mons. le G---- is the house in which Robespierre lodged. It is at the end of the Rue Florentine, in the Rue St. Honore, at a wax chandler's. This man is too much celebrated, not to render every thing which relates to him curious. The front windows of his former lodgings look towards the Place de la Concorde, on the right of which his prime minister, the permanent guillotine, was quartered. Robespierre, who, like the revolting angel, before the world's formation, appears to have preferred the sceptre of Hell and chaos, to the allegiance of order and social happiness, will descend to posterity with no common attributes of distinction and preeminence. His mind was fully suited to its labours, which, in their wide sphere of mischief, required more genius to direct them than was bestowed upon the worst of the tyrants of Rome, and a spirit of evil which, with its "broad circumference" of guilt, was calculated to darken the disk of their less expanded enormity. From Robespierre's lodgings, curiosity led me to visit the building in which the jacobin club held their Pandemonium. It is a noble edifice, and once belonged to the Order of Jacobins. Near this church stands the beautiful fabric of the Corn Hall of Paris, designed by Monsieur le Grand. The dome of the bank of England is in the same style, but inferior, in point of lightness and elegance. That of the Corn Hall resembles a vast concavity of glass. In this noble building the millers deposit their corn for sale. Its deep and lofty arches and area, were nearly filled with sacks, containing that grain which is precious to all nations, but to none more than the french; to a frenchman, bread is most emphatically the staff of life. He consumes more of it at one meal than an englishman does at four. In France, the little comparative quantity of bread which the english consume, is considered to form a part of their national character. Before I left Paris, I was requested to visit a very curious and interesting exhibition, the Museum of French Monuments; for the reception of which, the ancient convent of the monks of the Order of les Petits Augustines, is appropriated. This national institution is intended to exhibit the progress of monumental taste in France, for several centuries past, the specimens of which have chiefly been collected from St. Denis, which formerly was the burial place of the monarchs of France, and from other churches. [Illustration: _Museum of French Monuments._] It will be remembered by the reader, that in the year 1793, Henriot, a vulgar and furious republican, proposed setting off for the former church, at the head of the sans culottes, to destroy all these curious and valuable relics, "to strike," as he said, "the tyrants in their tombs," but was prevented by some other republicans of influence, who had not parted with their veneration for works of taste, from this impious and impotent outrage. In the first hall, which is very large, and impresses a similar awe to that which is generally felt upon entering a cathedral, are the tombs of the twelfth century. Amongst them I chiefly distinguished that of Henry II, upon which are three beautiful mourning figures, supporting a cup, containing his heart. In the second hall, are the monuments of the thirteenth century, most of them are very fine; that of Lewis the XIIth and his queen, is well worthy of notice. I did not find much to gratify me in the hall of the fourteenth century. In that of the fifteenth century are several noble tombs, and beautiful windows of stained glass. In the hall of the sixteenth century is a fine statue of Henry the IVth, by Franchville, which is considered to be an admirable likeness of that wonderful man. In the hall of the seventeenth century, is a noble figure, representing religion, by Girardon. In the cloisters are several curious statues, stained glass windows, and tesselated pavement. There is here also a good bust of Alexis Peron, with this singular epitaph, Ci git qui ne fut rien, Pas même académicien. In the square garden within the cloisters, are several ancient urns, and tombs. Amongst them is the vase which contains the ashes, if any remain, of Abelard and Heloise, which has been removed from the Paraclete to the Museum. It is covered with the graceful shade of an Acacia tree, which seems to wave proudly over its celebrated deposit. Upon approaching this treasurable antique, all those feelings rushed in upon me, which the beautiful, and affecting narrative of those disastrous lovers, by Pope, has often excited in me. The melancholy Heloise seemed to breathe from her tomb here, "If ever chance two wandering lovers brings, O'er the pale marble shall they join their heads, And drink the falling tear each other sheds: Then sadly say, with mutual pity mov'd, Oh! may we never love, as these have lov'd." National guards are stationed in every apartment of the Museum, and present rather an unaccording appearance, amidst the peaceful solemnity of the surrounding objects. This exhibition is not yet completed, but, in its present condition, is very interesting. Some hints, not altogether useless, may be collected from it. In England, our churches are charnel houses. The pews of the congregation are raised upon foundations of putrefaction. For six days and nights the temple of devotion is filled with the pestilent vapours of the dead, and on the seventh they are absorbed by the living. Surely it is high time to subdue prejudices, which endanger health without promoting piety. The scotch never bury in their churches, and their burial places are upon the confines of their towns. The eye of adoration is filled with a pensive pleasure, in observing itself surrounded with the endeavours of taste and ingenuity, to lift the remembrance of the great and good beyond the grave, in that very spot where the frailty of our nature is so often inculcated. Such a display, in such a place, is rational, suitable, and admonitory. The silent tomb becomes auxiliary to the eloquence of the pulpit. But the custom which converts the place of worship into a catacomb, can afford but a mistaken consolation to posthumous pride, and must, in some degree, contaminate the atmosphere which is contained within its walls. One evening as I was passing through the Boulevard Italien, in company with a gentleman from Toulon, we met a tall, dark, hollow eyed, ferocious looking man, of whom he related the following story. Immediately after the evacuation of Toulon by the english, all the principal toulonese citizens were ordered to repair to the market place; where they were surrounded by a great military force. This man who, for his offences, had been committed to prison, was liberated by the french agents, in consequence of his undertaking to select those of the inhabitants who had in any manner favoured the capitulation of the town, or who had shown any hospitality to the english, whilst they were in possession of it. The miscreant passed before the citizens, who were drawn out in lines, amounting to near three thousand. Amongst whom he pointed out about one thousand four hundred persons to the fury of the government; without any other evidence, or further examination, they were all immediately adjudged to be shot. For this purpose a suitable number of soldiers were drawn out. The unhappy victims were marched up to their destruction, upon the quay, in sets of three hundred, and butchered. The carnage was dreadful. In the last of these unfortunate groups, were two gentlemen of great respectability, who received no wound from the fire, but, to preserve themselves, dropped with the rest, and exhibited all the appearances of having participated in the general fate. This execution took place in the evening: immediately after its close, the soldiers, fatigued, and sick with cold-blooded slaughter, marched back to their quarters, without examining whether every person upon whom they had fired, had fallen a victim to the murderous bullet. Soon after the soldiers had retired, the women of Toulon, allured by plunder, proceeded to the fatal spot. Mounted upon the bodies of the fallen, they stripped the dead, and dying. The night was stormy. The moon, emerging from dark clouds, occasionally, shed its pale lustre upon this horrible scene. When the plunderers had abandoned their prey, during an interval of deep darkness, in the dead of the night, when all was silent, unconscious of each other's intentions, the two citizens who had escaped the general carnage, disencumbered themselves from the dead, under whom they were buried; chilled and naked, in an agony of mind not to be described, they, at the same moment, attempted to escape. In their agitation, they rushed against each other. Expressions of terror and surprise, dropped from each of them. "Oh! God! it is my father!" said one, "my son, my son, my son," exclaimed the other, clasping him in his arms. They were father and son, who had thus miraculously escaped, and met in this extraordinary manner. The person from whom I received this account, informed me, that he knew these gentlemen very well, and that they had been resettled in Toulon about two years. The wretch who had thus directed the ruthless vengeance of a revolutionary banditti, against the breasts of his fellow citizens, was, at this time, in Paris, soliciting, from the present government, from a total misconception of its nature, those remunerations which had been promised, but never realized by his barbarous employers. I need scarcely add, that although he had been in the capital several months, he had not been able to gain access to the minister's secretary. The time of terror was over--the murderer's occupation was gone--the guillotine, with unsatiated hunger, after having gorged the food which was thrown to it, had devoured its feeder. I must leave it to the ingenuity of my reader, to connect the observation with which I shall close this chapter, with the preceding story, for I am only enabled to do so, by observing, that an impressive instance of the subject of it, occurred immediately after my mind had been harrowed up, by the narrative which I have just related. The married women of France feel no compunctious visitings of conscience, in cherishing about them a circle of lovers, amongst whom their husbands are _merely_ more favoured than the rest. I hope I shall not be considered as an apologist, for an indulgence which, in France, excites no jealousy in _one_, and no surprise amongst the many, when I declare, that I confidently believe, in most instances, it commences, and guiltlessly terminates in the love of admiration. I know, and visited in Paris, a most lovely and accomplished young woman, who had been married about two years. She admitted the visits of men, whom she knew were passionately fond of her. Sometimes she received them in the presence, and sometimes in the absence of her husband, as accident, not arrangement, directed. They approached her with all the agitation and tenderness of the most ardent lovers. Amongst the number, was a certain celebrated orator. This man was her abject slave. A glance from her expressive eye raised him to the summit of bliss, or rendered his night sleepless. The complacent husband of Madame G----regarded these men as his most beloved friends, because they enlarged the happiness of his wife; and, strange as it may appear, I believe that he had as little cause to complain as Othello, and therefore never permitted his repose to be disturbed by those suspicions which preyed upon the vitals of the hapless moor. The french Benedict might truly exclaim, "--------------------'Tis not to make me jealous, To say my wife is fair, feeds well, loves company, Is free of speech, sings, plays, and dances well; Where virtue is, these are more virtuous; Nor from my own weak merits will I draw The smallest fear, or doubt of her revolt." CHAPTER XXI. _Picturesque and Mechanical Theatre.--Filtrating and purifying Vases.--English Jacobins.--A Farewell.--Messagerie.--Mal Maison.--Forest of Evreux.--Lower Normandy.--Caen.--Hon. T. Erskine.--A Ball.--The Keeper of the Sachristy of Notre Dame.--The two blind Beggars.--Ennui.--St. Lo.--Cherbourg.--England._ I visited, one evening, a very beautiful exhibition, which I think worthy of being noticed; it was the picturesque and mechanical theatre. The company present were select and genteel. The room and stage were upon a small scale; the former was very elegantly fitted up. The spectacle consisted of scenery and appropriate little moving figures. The first scene was a view of a wood in early morning, every object looked blue, fresh, and dewy. The gradations of light, until the approach of meridian day, were admirably represented. Serpents were seen crawling in the grass. A little sportsman entered with his fowling-piece, and imitated all the movements natural to his pursuit; a tiny wild duck rose from a lake, and flew before him. He pointed his gun, changed his situation, pointed it again, and fired. The bird dropped; he threw it over his shoulders, fastened to his gun, and retired. Waggons, drawn by horses about four inches high, passed along; groups of peasantry followed, exquisitely imitating all the indications of life. Amongst several other scenes was a beautiful view of the bay of Naples, and the great bridge; over which little horses, with their riders, passed in the various paces of walking, trotting and galloping. All the minutiæ of nature were attended to. The ear was beguiled with the patting of the horses' hoofs upon the pavement; and some of the little animals reared, and ran before the others. There were also some charming little sea-pieces, in which the vessels sailed with their heads towards the spectators, and manoeuvred in a surprising manner. The whole concluded with a storm and shipwreck. Sailors were seen floating in the water, then sinking in the surge. One of them rose again and reached a rock. Boats put off to his relief, and perished in the attempt. The little figure was seen displaying the greatest agonies. The storm subsided; tiny persons appeared upon the top of a projecting cliff, near a watch tower, and lowered a rope to the little sufferer below, which he caught, and, after ascending to some height by it, overwhelmed with fatigue, lost his hold. After recovering from the fall, he renewed his efforts, and at length reached the top in safety, amidst the acclamations of the spectators, who, moved by this enchanting little illusion, took much interest in the apparent distress of the scene. Upon quitting the theatre, we found a real storm without. The lightning flamed upon us from every quarter, and was succeeded by loud peals of thunder. Whilst we were contemplating the tempest from the balcony of Madame S----, a ball of fire fell very near us, and filled the room with a sulphureous stench. A servant soon afterwards entered, almost breathless, to inform his mistress, Madame R----, who was of the party, that the fire-ball had penetrated her house, which was close adjoining, without having effected any injury. Madame R---- laughed heartily, and observed, "Well, it is very droll that the lightning should make so free with my house when I am not at home." This little sprightly remark dispersed the gloom which had overshadowed most of the ladies present. All the large houses in Paris are well protected against the perilous effect of electric fluid, by conductors, which are very judiciously disposed. An invention has lately made its appearance in Paris, which is as full of utility as it is of genius. A house has been lately opened for the sale of filtrating and purifying vases, to which the ingenious constructor has given the most elegant etruscan shapes. They are capable of refining the most fetid and corrupt water, by a process which, in its operation, lasts about four minutes. The principle is the same as in nature. The foul water is thrown into the vase, where it passes through various strata of earth, which are compressed in a series of little apartments, which retain its offensive particles, and from which it issues as clear and as sweet as rock water. This discovery will prove of infinite consequence to families who reside in the maritime parts of Holland, and to many inland towns in France, where the water is frequently very bad. I most cordially hope that the inventor will meet with the remuneration which is due to his humane philosophy. After having experienced a most cordial display of kindnesses and hospitalities, I prepared to return to my own country, "that precious stone set in the silver sea." I had to part with those who, in the short space of one fleeting month, had, by their endearing and flattering attentions, rivetted themselves to my affections, with the force of a long, and frequent, and cherished intercourse, who, in a country where I expected to feel the comfortless sensations of a foreigner, made me forget that I was even a _stranger_. Amongst those who excited a considerable share of my regret upon parting, were the elegant and charming family of the S----s. As I was preparing to take my leave, Madame S---- said, "You must not forget us because a few waves divide our countries." "If he will lend me his pocket-book," said one of her lovely daughters, "I will try and see if my pencil will not preserve us in his memory, at least for a little time." I presented it to her, and in a few minutes she made an elegant little sketch, which she called "The affectionate Mother." Amiable young artist! may Time, propitious to the happiness of some generous being, who is worthy of such an associate, hail thee with the blissful appellation! and may the graceful discharge of those refined and affecting duties which flow from connubial love, entitle thee, too much esteemed to be envied, to the name of the modern Cornelia! Several Englishmen, whilst I was at Paris, met with very vexatious delays in procuring their passports to enable them to leave it, from a mistaken course of application. Instead of applying to M. Fouche, or any other municipal officer, I would recommend them to procure their passport from their own embassador, and send it to the office of Mons. Talleyrand for his endorsement; by which means they will be enabled to quit the republic in two or three days after their application. Having previously determined to return by the way of Lower Normandy, upon the beauty and luxuriance of which I had heard much eulogy, about half past five o'clock in the morning of the 21st of Prairial, I left my hotel, and proceeded to the Messagerie, from which the diligences, all of which are under the control of the nation, set out. The morning was very beautiful. I was much entertained before I mounted that cumbrous vehicle, which was to roll me a little nearer to my own coast, by viewing the numerous groups of travellers and their friends, who surrounded the different carriages as the horses were tackling to them. In different directions of my eye, I saw about thirty men kissing each other. The women in France never think their prerogatives infringed by this anti-anglo mode of salutation. Some shed tears at parting; but the cheek down which they trickled never lost its colour or vivacity. All were animated; every eye looked bright; there was a gayety in their very grief. "Bon voyage, bon voyage--Dieu vous benisse, Dieu vous benisse," reiterated on all sides from sprightly faces, stretched out of the window frames of the massy machine, as it rattled through the gates of the yard, to the incessant crackings of the postilion's long lash. I soon afterwards found myself seated in the diligence for Cherbourg, in company with two ladies, and three gentlemen, who were all polite and pleasing. In the cabriole, forward, was a french captain in the army, who had been in Tippoo's service at the time of the surrender of Seringapatam. He looked abominably dirty in his travelling habiliments; but that, in France, is now no just indication of inferiority or vulgarity. We passed by the Place de la Concorde, upon the statues and buildings of which, and the gardens of the Thuilleries, the fresh and early sun shone most beautifully. My merry, but feeling fellow travellers, waving their hands, addressed a short apostrophe to these suburb objects, and exclaimed, "adieu ma tres jolie ville--ah! tres jolie ville adieu." For near three miles after leaving the barrier, we passed through plantations of roses, which supply the markets of Paris with that beautiful flower, which, transferred thence, adorn the toilets, the vases, and the bosoms of the fair parisians, and form the favourite bouquets of the petite maitres; on each side of the road were cherry trees, in full bearing, which presented a very charming appearance. We soon reached the water works of Marli, which supply the jets d'eau of Versailles. They are upon a vast scale, and appear to be very curious. A little further on we passed Mal Maison, the country, and chief residence of the first consul and his family. It is an ancient house, embosomed in beautiful woods and gardens. At the entrance are large military lodges, for the accommodation of a squadron of the consular cavalry, who mount guard when their general is here. [Illustration: _Malmaison._] At St. Germain's we breakfasted, upon pork cutlets, excellent bread, wine, and cherries, for twenty sols, or ten pence english. At Mante we had an excellent dinner, of several dishes, for thirty sols, or one shilling and three pence english. Soon after we had passed Mante, we left the higher norman road, and entered a country extremely picturesque and rich. We were conducted through the forest of Evreux, by an escort of chasseurs. This vast tract of land is infested by an immense banditti, who live in large excavations in the earth, similar to the subterranean apartments of the celebrated robbers, in whose service Gil Blas was rather reluctantly enrolled, and generally assail the traveller, with a force which would render common resistance perilous, and unavailing. This forest, in the course of the year, furnishes considerable employ for the guillotine of Caen, where the tribunal of justice is seated. The appearance of our guards was terrific enough to appal such valiant souls, as once animated the frames of _prince Hal_, and his merry friend _Ned Poins_. They wore roman helmets, from which descended, to the bottom of their backs, an immense tail, of thick black horsehair, their uniform was light green, and looked rather shabby. We passed the forest without any molestation, and supped at the town of Evreux, which is very pleasant, where we halted for about four hours. As we were afterwards proceeding, I prepared myself to enjoy a little sleep, and as I reclined for this purpose with my hat over my face, in a corner of the carriage, I overheard one of my fellow travellers observe to the other, "the englishman is sleeping," to which he replied, "no, he is not sleeping, he is only thinking, it is the character of his nation." The french cannot bear the least appearance of thought; they have a saying, "un homme qui rit ne sera jamais dangereux." The next morning we breakfasted at Lisieux, an ancient town, in which are the remains of a fine convent, which formerly belonged to the Order of the Capuchins. For four or five miles before we approached the town, the laughing and animated faces of groups of peasantry, all in their jubilee dresses, the old mounted upon asses, and the young walking by the sides of them, hastening to the town, announced to us, that a fair, and merry making was to be held there, on that day. Lisieux was quite in a bustle. About six o'clock in the evening of the same day, we arrived at Caen, the capital of Lower Normandy. My fare to this city from Paris, amounted to thirty livres, including my luggage. I had not completed my dinner at the Hôtel de la Place, before an english servant entered my room, to inform me, that his mistress, Mrs. P----, who, with her daughters, and another young lady, had the rooms over mine, presented her compliments to me, and requested me to take my coffee with them that evening. I must confess I was at first a little surprised at the message, for the english are not very remarkable for politeness and attention to one another in a foreign country. [Illustration: _Caen._] After I had finished my desert, I made my bow to Mrs. P----, and her family, who proved to be very pleasant, and accomplished people, and were making the tour of France with english servants. They had been in Caen near three weeks, where they had a large acquaintance of the first respectability. This unexpected introduction became additionally agreeable, upon my discovery at the Messagerie, that the diligence for Cherbourg would not proceed, till three days from the time of my arrival. The next morning I rambled with my new friends about the city, which is large, and handsome, and is watered by the river Orne. It is much celebrated for its lace trade; on that day I dined with Mrs. P----, and a french party, and was regaled with an english dinner, cooked, and served up by her own servants. The filth of the french kitchen is too well known, to make it necessary for me to say how delicious such a dinner was. The french admit themselves that their cooks are destitute of cleanliness. The Convent of the Benedictines, which is converted into the palace of the prefect, is a noble building. The gardens belonging to it are well arranged. The promenade called de la Cour is very charming, from which the city is seen to great advantage. The water of the Orne is rather nauseous, but is not considered unwholesome. The Palais de Justice is a fine modern structure. In its courts of law, I had again an opportunity of hearing the forensic elocution of Normandy. The gestures, and vehemence of the orators here, as at Rouen, appeared to me to be tinctured with the extravagance of frenzy. But perhaps my ears, and eyes have been rendered somewhat too fastidious by having been frequently banqueted with the grace, animation, and commanding eloquence of the unrivalled advocate of the british bar; who, when he retires from the laborious duties of the crowded, and admiring forum, where his acute sagacity has so often unfolded the dark compact involutions of human obliquity, where his wit and fancy have covered with the choicest flowers, the dreary barrenness of technical pleading; will leave behind him that lasting, and honourable respect and remembrance, which faculties so extensively beneficial, must ever excite in the minds of men who have been instructed, delighted, and benefited by their splendid, and prosperous display. In this city was pointed out to me, the house in which the celebrated Charlotte Corday resided, who, by her poniard, delivered France of the monster, Marat, on Sunday, the 14th of July, 1793. There is some coincidence in the crimes, and fate of Caligula and Marat, both perished by the avengers of their country, whilst in the act of approaching their baths. Posterity will embalm, with its grateful remembrance, the patriotic heroism of this great, and distinguished female, and in her own firm, and eloquent language, will say of her, "that crime begets disgrace, and not the scaffold." On the evening after my arrival at Caen, I was invited to an elegant ball, which was given by the lady of the paymaster general of the district, in one of the government houses. I had before witnessed the dancing of the higher orders of people in Paris, and from this reason was not surprised in contemplating the exquisite grace which was here displayed. The party consisted of near eighty persons. Amongst them were the judges of the district, and the principal officers quartered in the city, and its neighbourhood, the latter were attired in superb military dresses. Amongst the ladies were several beautiful, well dressed young women, who exhibited their persons to great advantage. The grave, and elderly part of the company played at buillotte, which is at present the favourite french game. In France to please and to be pleased, seem to be the two presiding principles in all their meetings. An elegant young officer, who had distinguished himself at the battle of Marengo, observing that the musicians appeared to be a little fatigued, by the contribution of their exhilarating services towards the festivity of the evening, supplied their room, whilst they refreshed themselves, and struck up an english country dance on one of the violins. The party attempted to dance it, but to show how arbitrary habit is, in the attempt, all those powers of grace, which they had before so beautifully displayed, retired as if influenced by the magic of some unpropitious spirit. Amongst the party, was a little girl, about nine years old, who was dressed in the highest style of fashion, and looked like a fashionable milliner's doll. This little spoiled child was accustomed to spend an hour at her toilette every morning, and to be tricked out in all the ephemeral decoration of the haut ton. This little coquette already looked out for admiration, and its foolish mother expressed the greatest satisfaction, when any one, out of politeness to her, paid attentions to the pert premature nursling. Our entertainment concluded with a handsome supper, and we parted, highly delighted, at the dawn of day. Nothing could be more flattering, than the attentions which, as an englishman, I received from every one present. After a few hours repose, I went with a large party to the church of Notre Dame; in which there is a very fine altar piece. The keeper of the sachristy, who was a very arch-looking little fellow, in spite of the solemnity of the place in which we were, made us all smile (even a young lady who was going to be confessed for the first time the next day, lost a considerable proportion of her gravity) by informing us, that during the time of terror he had run off with the Virgin Mary, pointing to the image, and that to prevent the detection of Robespierre's agents, he had concealed her in his bed for three years. Nothing could exceed his joy in having saved her from the hatchet, or the flames, from which impending fate, she was restored to her former situation in this church; and was, when we saw her, by the extravagance of her sprightly, and ardent protector, dressed in a white muslin gown, spotted with silver; a little bouquet of artificial flowers graced her bosom, and her wig was finely curled, and powdered. The figure in her arms, which was intended to represent the infant Jesus, was dressed in a style equally unsuitable; his hair was also curled, and powdered, and a small cocked hat placed upon his head. Our delighted guide, whose eyes sparkled with self-complacency, asked us if we had ever seen a prettier Virgin Mary, or one dressed more handsomely. We were all much amused by the quaintness of this man's conduct, although I am confident he had no intention of exciting unbecoming sensations, for in saving this image, he had exposed his life. From Notre Dame, we went to the Abbaye aux Hommes, built by William the Conqueror. It is a large lofty plain pile of building. The spires are well proportioned, and very high. The pillars in the choir are, in my humble opinion, too massy. Preparations were here making for the celebration of the great festival called the Feast of God. We presented to one of the priests, who, in the sachristy, was adorning the cradle of our Saviour's image with flowers, some very fine moss roses, which in France are very rare, which he received with great politeness. This festival before the revolution was always superbly celebrated. It was then renewed for the first time since the proscription of religion, during which, all the costly habits of the priests, and rich vessels used in the ceremonies of the church have been stolen, sold, or melted down. Near the altar, which has been shattered by the axe of the revolution, is the vault of the norman conqueror. Upon our return to our hotel, we saw a considerable crowd assembled near the bridge leading to de la Cour. Upon inquiring into the cause of this assemblage, we found it was owing to a curious rencounter between two blind beggars, who, in total darkness, had been waging an uncertain battle for near six minutes. It appeared that one of them had for several months, enjoyed quiet possession of the bridge, which happened to be a great thoroughfare, and had during that time, by an undisputed display of his calamity, contrived to pick up a comfortable recompense for it; that within a few days preceding this novel fracas, another mendicant, who had equal claims to compassion, allured by the repute of his success, had deserted a less frequented part of the city, and had presented himself at the other corner of the same bridge, where by a more masterly selection of moving phrases, he soon not only divided, but monopolized the eleemosynary revenues of this post of wretchedness. The original possessor naturally grew jealous. Even beggars "can bear no brother near the throne." Inflamed with jealousy, he silently moved towards his rival, by the sound of whose voice, which was then sending forth some of its most affecting, and purse-drawing strains, he was enabled to determine whether his arm was within reach of the head of his competitor, which circumstance, having with due nicety ascertained, he clenched his fist, which in weight, size, and firmness, was not much surpassed by the hard, and ponderous paw of a full-grown tiger, and with all the force of that propulsion, which a formidable set of muscles afforded, he felled his rival to the ground, and not knowing that he was fallen, discharged many other blows, which only served to disturb the tranquillity of the air. The recumbent hero, whose head was framed for enterprises of this nature, soon recovered from the assault, and, after many unavailing efforts in the dark, at length succeeded in opening one of the vessels of the broad nose of his brawny assailant, whose blood, enriched by good living, streamed out most copiously. In this condition we saw these orbless combatants, who were speedily separated from each other. Some of the crowd were endeavouring to form a treaty of pacification between them, whether they succeeded I know not, for we were obliged to leave the bridge of battle, before these important points were arranged, to join a pleasant party at Mons. St. J----'s, an opulent banker at Caen, to whom I had letters of introduction from Mons. R----, the banker of Paris. After spending the short time, during which I was detained at Caen, very pleasantly, I resumed my seat in the diligence for Cherbourg, in which I found a very agreeable woman, her two daughters, two canary birds, a cat, and her kitten, who were, I found, to be my companions all the way. After we left Caen, the roads became very bad. Our ponderous machine, frequently rolled from one side to the other, and with many alarming creakings, threatened us with a heavy, and perilous overthrow. At length we arrived at Bayeux, where we dined, at the house of a friend of my fair fellow traveller, to which she invited me with a tone of welcome, and good wishes, which overpowered all resistance. We sat down to an excellent dinner, at which was produced the usual favourite french dish of cold turbot, and raw artichokes. After our repast, a fine young woman, the daughter of the lady of the house, in a very obliging, but rather grave manner, poured out a tumbler full of some delicious potent liqueur, which, to my no small surprise, she presented me with; upon my only tasting it, and returning it, she appeared to be equally surprised, and confused. Her mother, observing our mutual embarrassment, informed me, that in France it was understood that the english were troubled with the ennui, or tristesse de coeur, and that they drank large draughts of wine and spirits to expel the gloomy malady. I softened this opinion of our common character, as well as I could, for, I fear, without offering considerable outrage to truth, I could not wholly have denied it. After dinner, we walked to the cathedral, which is a noble gothic pile, and, upon our return, found the diligence in waiting for us. My companions were attended to the door of the carriage by their hospitable friends, between whom several kisses were interchanged. I took an opportunity, just before I mounted the step, of stealing one of these tokens of regard from the fair young damsel who had so courteously offered me the liqueur, at the same time telling her, that in England, a kiss was always considered as the best remedy for the tristesse de coeur.--Away trotted our little norman steeds; and, notwithstanding they had come all the way from Caen, they soon carried us over the hills on this side of Bayeux. The eye communicated delight to the heart, whilst it contemplated the vast extent of corn fields, which in this fertile province undulated on all sides of us, in waves of yellow exuberance, over which, embosomed in trees, at short distances, peeped the peaceful and picturesque abode of the prosperous cottage farmer. The prospect afforded an impressive contrast to the impolitic agricultural system, which has lately obtained in England, by which cottage farms are consolidated into ample domains of monopoly, and a baneful preference is given in favour of the rearing of cattle, to the vital and bountiful labours of the plough. A celebrated writer, who well knew in what the real wealth of a nation consisted, has observed, that he who could make two ears of corn grow upon a spot of ground, where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind than the whole race of politicians. The high roads of Normandy are unnecessarily broad; hence considerable portions of land remain uncultivated. A spacious road, like every thing which is vast, excites an impression of grandeur; but in this prolific department, the facilities of travelling, and the dignity of the country, might be consulted with less waste. This prodigality is perhaps attributable to the highways in France having shared but little of its legislative attention; and accommodation appears to have been sought rather by a lavish allotment of space, than by a judicious formation, and frequent repair. The inns along the road are very poor, although over the door of almost every little cottage is written, in large characters, "Bon Cidre de Victoire." There are also no regular post-horses to be met with. The country, on all sides of us, was very mountainous and luxuriant, and much resembled the southern parts of Devonshire. About seven o'clock in the evening of the same day, we arrived at St. Lo, which is, without exception, the cleanest and most charming, romantic little town, I saw in France. It is fortified, and stands upon the top of a mountain, at whose base is expanded a luxuriant scenery of woods and villages, through which the riviere de Ville winds in beautiful meanders. The inhabitants of this town appeared to be rich and genteel. In the evening I supped at the table d'hôte, where there were several pleasant people. At this town we slept, and set off, the next morning, very early, for Valogne, where we dined; and in the evening, after passing a considerable extent of rich meadow land, and descending a very steep hill, the freshness of the sea air announced to us our near approach to Cherbourg, where, at the hôtel d'Angleterre, I was soon afterwards landed. For my place and luggage to this place I paid twenty-four livres. My expenses upon the road were very reasonable. Here I had the good fortune to find a packet which intended to sail to England in two days, the master of which asked me only one guinea for my passage in the cabin, provisions included. However, thinking that the kitchen of a french vessel might, if possible, be more uncleanly than the kitchen of a french inn, I resolved upon providing my own refreshments for the little voyage. [Illustration: _Cherbourg_] Cherbourg is a poor and dirty town. After having heard so much of its costly works and fortifications for the protection of its harbour, my surprise was not little, upon finding the place so miserable. It is defended by three great forts, which are erected upon rocks in the sea. The centre one is about three miles off from shore, and is garrisoned by 1200 men. At a distance, this fort looks like a vast floating battery. Upon a line with it, but divided by a distance sufficient for the admission of shipping, commences the celebrated, stupendous wall, which has been erected since the failure of the cones. It is just visible at low water. This surprising work is six miles in length, and three hundred french feet in breadth, and is composed of massy stones and masonry, which have been sunk for the purpose, and which are now cemented, by sea weed, their own weight and cohesion, into one immense mass of rock. Upon this wall a chain of forts is intended to be erected, as soon as the finances of government will admit of it. The expenses which have already been incurred, in constructing this wonderful fabric, have, it is said, exceeded two millions sterling. These costly protective barriers can only be considered as so many monuments, erected by the french to the superior genius and prowess of the british navy. Whilst I was waiting for the packet's sailing, I received great civilities from Mons. C----, the banker and american consul at Cherbourg, to whom I had letters from Mons. R----. I rode, the second evening after my arrival, to his country house, which was about nine miles from the town. Our road to it lay over a prolific and mountainous country. From a high point of land, as we passed along, we saw the islands of Guernsey, Jersey and Alderney, which made a beautiful appearance upon the sea. Upon our return, by another road, I was much pleased with a group of little cottages, which were embosomed in a beautiful wood, through which there was an opening to the sea, which the sinking sun had then overspread with the richest lustre. As we entered this scene of rustic repose, the angelus bell of the little village church rang; and a short time afterwards, as we approached it, a number of villagers came out from the porch, with their mass-books in their hands, their countenances beaming with happiness and illuminated by the sinking sun, which shone full upon them. The charms of this simple scene arrested our progress for a short time. Under some spreading limes, upon a sloping lawn, the cheerful cottagers closed the evening with dancing to the sounds of one of the sweetest flagelets I ever heard, which was alternately played by several performers, who relieved each other. In France, every man is a musician. Goldsmith's charming picture of his Auburn, in its happier times, recurred to me:-- "When toil remitting, lends its turn to play, And all the village train, from labour free, Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree." The cross roads of France are very bad; but, to my surprise, although we never could have had a worse specimen of them than what this excursion presented to us, yet the norman hunter upon which I was mounted, carried me over the deepest ruts, and abrupt hillocks, without showing the least symptom of infirmity which so much prevails amongst his brethren of the Devonshire breed. The norman horses are remarkable for lifting their feet high, and the safety and ease with which they carry their riders. In the morning of the day in which the packet was to sail, a favourable breeze sprung up; and, after undergoing the usual search of the revenue officers, in the execution of which they behaved with much civility, I embarked, and bade adieu to continental ground. The vessel had the appearance of being freighted with hot bread, with which the deck was covered from one end to the other. This immense collection of smoking loaves was intended for the supply of six men, and one woman, during a passage which we expected to accomplish in thirty hours, or less! The faithful associate of our young captain, to whom she had just been married, either from motives of fondness or distrust, resolved upon sharing with him the perils of the ocean. The sea-sufferings of this constant creature, and the resignation with which she endured them, sufficiently manifested the strength of her affections; for she was obliged to keep below all the time, and could afford but very little assistance in reducing the prodigious depot of bread which we had on board. Credulous mariners describe a species of the fair sex (I believe the only one) who appear to much advantage upon the briny wave; but the nature of our commander's lady not happening to be amphibious, she gave such unequivocal proofs of being out of her proper element, that my wishes for shore increased upon me every minute. During our passage, I could not help contrasting the habits of the english with the french sailors. The british tar thinks his allowance of salt beef scarcely digestible without a copious libation of ardent spirits, whilst the gallic mariner is satisfied with a little meagre soup, an immoderate share of bread, and a beverage of water, poor cider, or spiritless wine. At length, after a passage of a day and a night, in which we experienced the vicissitudes of a stiff breeze, and a dead calm, we beheld ----"That pale, that white-fac'd shore, Whose foot spurns back the ocean's roaring tides, And coops from other lands her islanders, That water-walled bulwark, still secure And confident from foreign purposes." After passing another tedious night on board, owing to our being becalmed within the Needles, I stepped upon the same landing stone from which I first embarked for a country, where, in the centre of proscriptions, instability and desolation, those arts which are said to flourish only in the regions of repose, have, by their vigour and unrivalled bloom, excited the wonder and admiration of surrounding nations; where Peace, by her sudden and cherished reappearance, is calling forth all the virtues from their hiding places, to aid in effacing the corroding stains of a barbarous revolution, and in restoring the moral and social character to its pristine polish, rank and estimation. GENERAL REMARKS. The fact seems at first singular. Two of the greatest nations under Heaven, whose shores almost touch, and, if ancient tales be true, were once unsevered, call the natives of each other foreigners. Jealousy, competition, and consequent warfare, have, for ages, produced an artificial distance and separation, much wider, and more impassable, than nature ever intended, by the division which she has framed; hence, whilst the unassisted eye of the islander can, from his own shores, with "unwet feet," behold the natural barrier of his continental neighbour, he knows but little more of his real character and habits, than of those of beings, who are more distantly removed from him, by many degrees of the great circle. The events which have happened in France for the last eleven years, have rendered this separation more severe, and during that long and gloomy interval, have wholly changed the national character. Those who once occupied the higher class in the ascending scale of society, and who have survived the revolution without leaving their country, are no longer able to display the taste and munificence which once distinguished them. In the capital, those who formerly were accustomed to have their court yards nightly filled with carriages, and their staircases lined with lacqueys, are now scarcely able to occupy one third of their noble abodes. They cannot even enjoy the common observances of friendship, and hospitality, without pausing, and resorting to calculation. A new race of beings called the "nouveaux enrichés," whose services have been chiefly auxiliary to the war, at present absorb the visible wealth of the nation. Amongst them are many respectable persons. The lower orders of the people have been taught, by restless visionaries, to consider the destinations of Providence, which had before, by an imperceptible gradation of social colouring, united the russet brown to the magisterial purple, as usurpations over those natural rights which have been impressed without illustration, and magnified by a mischievous mystery. In the fierce pursuit of these imaginary immunities, which they had been taught to believe had been long withheld, they abruptly renounced all deference and decorum, as perilous indications of the fallacy of their indefinable pretensions, and were not a little encouraged by the disastrous desertion of their superiors, who fled at the first alarm. In short, the revolution has, in general, made the higher orders poor, and dispirited, and the lower barbarous, and insolent, whilst a third class has sprung up, with the silence and suddenness of an exhalation, higher than both, without participating in the original character of either, in which the principles of computation, and the vanity of wealth, are at awkward variance. Until lately, the ancient french and the modern french were antipodes, but they are now converging, under a government, which, in point of security, and even of mildness, has no resemblance, since the first departure from the ancient establishments. The french, like the libertine son, after having plunged in riot and excesses, subdued by wretchedness, are returning to order and civilization. Unhappy people, their tears have almost washed away their offences--they have suffered to their heart's core. Who will not pity them to see their change, and hear their tales of misery? Yet, strange to relate, in the midst of their sighs and sufferings, they recount, with enthusiasm, the exploits of those very men, whose heroic ambition has trampled upon their best hopes, and proudest prosperity. Dazzled by the brilliancy of the spreading flame, they forget that their own abode is involved in its desolation, and augments the gloomy grandeur of the scene. To this cause may, perhaps, be traced that singular union of grief and gayety, which affords rather an impressive contrast to the more solemn consistency of english sadness. The terrible experiment which they have tried, has, throughout, presented a ferocious contest for power, which has only served to deteriorate their condition, sap their vigour, and render them too feeble either to continue the contest, or to reach the frontier of their former character. In this condition they have been found by a man who, with the precedent of history in one hand, and the sabre in the other, has, unstained with the crimes of Cromwell, possessed himself of the sovereignty; and, like Augustus, without the propensities which shaded his early life, preserved the _name_ of a republic, whilst he well knows that a decisive and irresistible authority can alone reunite a people so vast and distracted; who, in the pursuit of a fatal phantom, have been inured to change, and long alienated from subordination. I would not wish such a government to be perpetual, but if it be conducted with wisdom and justice, I will not hesitate to declare, that I think it will ultimately prove as favourable to the happiness, as it has been propitious to the glory of the french. A government which breathes a martial spirit under a thin appearance of civil polity, presents but a barren subject to the consideration of the inquirer. When the sabre is changed into the sceptre, the science of legislation is short, simple, and decisive. Its energies are neither entangled in abstract distinctions, nor much impeded by the accustomed delays of deliberation. From the magnitude of the present ruling establishment in France, and the judicious distribution of its powers, and confidence, the physical strength can scarcely be said to reside in the _governed_. A great portion of the population participates in the character of the government. The bayonet is perpetually flashing before the eye. The remark may appear a little ludicrous, but in the capital almost every man who is not _near sighted_ is a soldier, and every soldier of the republic considers himself as a subordinate minister of state. In short the whole political fabric is a refined system of knight's service. Seven centuries are rolled back, and from the gloom of time behold the crested spirit of the norman hero advance, "with beaver up," and nod his sable plumes, in grim approval of the novel, gay, and gaudy feodality. If such an expectation may be entertained, that time will replace the ancient family on the throne, I am far from believing that it can offer much consolation to the illustrious wanderer, who as yet, has only tasted of the name of sovereignty. If the old royalty is ever restored, it is my opinion, and I offer it with becoming deference, that, from personal hatred to the present titular monarch, and the dread of retaliation by a lineal revival of monarchy, the crown will be placed upon the brows of one of the _collateral_ branches of the expatriated family. The prince de Condé is the only member of that august house, of whom the french speak with esteem, and approbation. The treasury of the french is, as may be expected, not overflowing, but its resources must speedily become ample. The necessities of the state, or rather the peculations of its former factious leaders, addressed themselves immediately to the purses of the people, by a summary process completely predatory. Circuitous exaction has been, till lately, long discarded. The present rulers have not yet had sufficient time to digest, and perfect a financial system, by which the establishments of the country may be supported by indirect, and unoffending taxation. Wisdom and genius must long, and ardently labour, before the ruins, and rubbish of the revolution can be removed. Every effort hitherto made to raise the deciduous credit of the republic has been masterly, and forcibly bespeaks the public hope, and confidence in favour of every future measure. The armies of the republic are immense; they have hitherto been paid, and maintained by the countries which they have subdued; their exigencies, unless they are employed, will in future form an embarrassing subject of consideration in the approaching system of finance. This mighty body of men, who are very moderately paid, are united by the remembrance of their glory, and the proud consideration that they constitute a powerful part of the government; an impression which every french soldier cherishes. They also derive some pride, even from their discipline: a military delinquent is not subject to ignoble punishment; if he offend, he suffers as a soldier. Imprisonment, or death, alone displaces him from the ranks. He is not cut down fainting, and covered with the ignominious wounds of the dissecting scourge, and sent to languish in the reeking wards of hospitals. In reviewing the present condition of France, the liberal mind will contemplate many events with pleasure, and will suspend its final judgment, until wisdom, and genius shall repose from their labours, and shall proclaim to the people, "behold the work is done." It has been observed, that in reviewing the late war, two of the precepts of the celebrated author of "The Prince," will hereafter be enshrined in the judgments of politicians, and will be as closely adhered to, as they have been boldly disregarded by that great man, who, till lately, has long presided over the british councils. Machiavel has asserted, that no country ought to declare war with a nation which, at the time, is in a state of internal commotion; and that, in the prosecution of a war, the refugees of a belligerent power ought not to be confidentially trusted by the opposite nation which receives them. Upon violating the former, those heterogeneous parties, which, if left to themselves, will always embarrass the operations of their government, become united by a common cause; and by offending against the latter clause of this cautionary code, a perilous confidence is placed in the triumph of gratitude, and private pique, over that great love which nature plants and warmly cherishes in the breast of every man, for his country. In extenuation of a departure from these political maxims it may be urged, that the french excited the war, and that in the pursuit of it, they displayed a _compound_ spirit, which Machiavel might well think problematical, for whilst that country never averted its eye from the common enemy, it never ceased to groan under the inflictions of unremitting factions. Rather less can be said in palliation of the fatal confidence, which was placed by the english government in some of the french emigrants. I have mentioned these unhappy people in the aggregate, with the respect which I think they deserve. To be protected, and not to betray, was all that could in fairness, and with safety be expected from them; it was hazarding too much to put swords in their hands, and send them to their own shores to plunge them in the breasts of their own countrymen: in such an enterprise ------------------"The native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." The brave have not frequently wept over such a victim as Sombrieul. Whether the experiment of repelling those machinations which warred against all established order, and all sanctioned usage, by a novel, and unnatural opposition, is attributable to any other cause, than that of a misjudging principle, must be decided by Him, whose mighty hand suspended the balance of the battle, and whose eye can, at a glance, pierce through the labyrinth of human obliquity, however compact, shaded, or concealed. If the late minister is chargeable with a prolongation of the war, if he is responsible for having misplaced his confidence, and if brave men have perished by the fatal delusion, he will find some, if not ample consolation, in reflecting, that by his vigilance, and vigour, he has saved his country from the miseries of a revolutionary frenzy, which has rendered, even our enemies, the objects of our sympathy, and compassion. Such is the narrowness of our nature, that we know not how adequately to appreciate our preservation from an _intercepted_ evil: it is indistinctly seen, like a distant object. The calamity must _touch_ before its powers and magnitude can be estimated. The flames of the neighbouring pile, must stop at our very doors, before our gratitude becomes animated with its highest energies. If Providence were to unfold to us all the horrours which we have escaped; if all the blood which would have followed the assassin's dagger were to roll in reeking streams before us; if the full display of irreligion, flight, massacre, confiscation, imprisonment and famine, which would have graced a revolutionary triumph in these realms, were to be unbarred to our view, how should we recoil from the ghastly spectacle! With what emotions of admiration and esteem should we bend before the man, whose illumined mind and dignified resolution protected us from such fell perdition, and confined the ravages of the "bellowing storm" within its own barrier. The dazzling and perilous claims of the Rights of Man in the abstract, have had a long and ample discussion before the sanguinary tribunals of another country; and the loud decree of an indignant and insulted world has pronounced their eternal doom. Other contests may arise; but the powers of a prophet are not necessary to assert, that such rights will form no part of their provocation. In France, I was repeatedly asked my opinion of the probable stability of the peace. The question was always addressed in this rather curious shape: "Thank God, we have peace! _Will your_ country let us enjoy it?"--My answer was, "You may be assured of it; for it will not cease to be prepared for war." Alas! the restless spirit of ambition seldom long delights in repose. The peaceful virtues, under whose influence Nations flourish and mankind rejoice, possess no lasting captivations for the Hero. The draught of conquest maddens his brain, and excites an insatiable thirst for fresh atchievements--He "Looks into the clouds, scorning the base degrees By which he did ascend"---- May that extraordinary Being in whose hands the fate of millions is deposited reverse the gloomy picture, and restore to a country long wasted by revolutions, and warfare, and languishing in the midst of the monuments of her glory, the benign blessings of enduring tranquillity. But if this hope prove fruitless, if all the countries of continental Europe are destined to be compressed into one empire, if their devoted princes are doomed to adorn the triumphs of the chief of that mighty republic, which now towers above the surrounding nations of the earth, like the pyramid of the desert, what have we to fear even though the ocean which divides us should become the _soldiers_ element? When an enlightened frenchman is asked what he thinks of his government, his answer is, "We want repose." For this alone, a stranger to the recent occurrences of the world would think he had toiled, just as valetudinarians take exercise for the purpose of securing sleep. Even those who have profited of eleven years of desolation, are ready to acknowledge that war is not pastime, and that a familiarity with its horrours does not lessen them. The soldier, drooping under the weight of booty, pants for the refreshing shades of his native village, and for the hour which is to restore him to his alienated family. I am satisfied, that both in France and England, one desire pervades all classes of people, that two nations, so brave, and so worthy of reciprocal esteem, may at last grow wise and virtuous enough to abstain from those ebullitions of furious hostility which have stained so many centuries with blood. Peace is the gem with which Europe has embellished her fair but palpitating bosom; and may disappointment and dishonour be the lot of that ambitious and impolitic being who endeavours or who wishes to pluck it from her! FINIS. ERRATA. _Page_ 2, _l._ 21, _for_ Lewis, _read_ Louis. 13, 3, _for_ English, _read_ own. Ibid. 4, _for_ import, _read_ impost. 17, 25, _for_ bleu, _read_ bleus. 44, 9, _for_ stories, _read_ stones. 53, 17, _for_ entered now, _read_ reentered. 77, 21, _for_ perpetual, _read_ vast. 120, 1, _for_ profession, _read_ will. 151, 18, _for_ the, _read_ his. 164, 19, _for_ France, _read_ the country. 169, 6, _for_ at, _read_ of. 169, 26, _for_ hardworn, _read_ hardwon. 188, Chap. XVIII, for _Commodities_, _read_ _Commodités_. 197, _l._ 7, _for_ heightened, _read_ high toned. 203, 21, _for_ is, _read_ was. 210, ult. _after_ to, _add_ those of. 221, 14, _for_ remblance, _read_ resemblance. DIRECTIONS TO THE BINDER FOR PLACING THE PLATES. Place Torr Abbey facing page 1 Southampton 4 Light-house at Havre 27 Paris Diligence 31 Woman of Caux 35 Rouen 41 Ruins in the Petit Trianon 183 Bagatelle in the Bois de Boulogne 207 Museum of French Monuments 223 Malmaison 235 Caen 237 Cherbourg 247 Bryer, Printer, Bridge Street, Black Friars. Transcriber's note: List of corrections: p.46 indispostion = > indisposition p.86 surprsie = > surprise p.104 terruor = > terrour p.119 recal = > recall p.196 musuem = > museum p.199 cieling = > ceiling p.210 scarely = > scarcely 
20304	----	[Illustration: FRONTISPIECE EXECUTIONS _at_ PARIS _with a Beheading Machine_. _Vide page 32_] A TRIP TO P A R I S, IN JULY and AUGUST, 1792. _LONDON_: PRINTED AT THE Minerva Press, AND SOLD BY WILLIAM LANE, LEADENHALL-STREET, AND BY MRS. HARLOW, PALL-MALL. M.DCC.XCIII. PRICE THREE SHILLINGS Entered at Stationers Hall. * * * * * CONTENTS. Road from Calais, Unneccessary Passports. Chantilly. 1 Expenses 6 Miscellaneous observations. Chess-men. Tree of Liberty. Crucifixes. Virgins. Saints. Bishops, Old Women 8 Wall round Paris. New Bridge. Field of the Federation. Bastille 15 Coins and Tokens 19 Theatres 24 Pantheon. Jacobins. Quai Voltaire. Rue Rousseau. Cockades 27 Execution of two criminals with a beheading machine 32 Versailles. Botany, Sounding meridians 38 Dogs and Cats. Two-headed Boy 50 Miscellanies. Books burnt. Chess, Convents 54 Dress. Inns 65 Assignats 66 Battle and massacre at the Tuileries 71 Statues pulled down. New names 84 Beheading. Dead naked bodies 90 Courage and curiosity of the fair sex. Massacre in 1572 93 Miscellanies. Number of slain 99 Breeches. Pikes. Necessary Passports 105 Miscellanies. Dancing. Poultry, Taverns. Wig 111 Extent, Population, &c. of France 116 Emendations and Additions. Return to Calais 123 Epilogue 129 * * * * * A TRIP TO PARIS. ROAD FROM CALAIS. UNNECESSARY PASSPORTS. CHANTILLY. THE following excursion was undertaken for several reasons: the first of which was, that though I had been many times in Paris before, yet I had not once been there since the Revolution, and I was desirous of seeing how far a residence of a few years in France might be practicable and agreeable; secondly, a Counter-Revolution, or, at least, some violent measures were expected, and I was willing to be there at the time, if possible; and lastly, I wanted to examine the gardens near Paris. I must here premise that I sent for a passport from the Secretary of State's office, which I knew could do no harm if it did no good, thinking I should have it for nothing, and obtained one signed by Lord Grenville, but at the same time a demand was made for _two guineas and sixpence_ for the fees; now, as I have had passports from almost all the European nations, _all and every one_ of which were _gratis_, I sent the pass back; it was however immediately returned to me, and I was told that, "A passport is never issued from that office without that fee, even if the party asking for it changes his mind." _I paid the money, and that is all I shall say about the matter._ _Mr. Chauvelin_ (the minister from France) sent me his pass _gratis_; those which I afterwards received in Paris from _Lord Gower_, and the very essential one from _Mr. Petion_, were likewise _gratis_. That of _Mr. Chauvelin_ has at the top a small engraving of three _Fleurs de Lys_ between two oak branches, surmounted by a crown: at the bottom is another small engraving, with his cypher F. C. it was dated London, _17th_ July, 1792, 4th year of Liberty. _No passport of any kind is necessary to enter France._ At Calais one was given to me by the magistrates, mentioning my age, stature, complexion, &c. and this would have been a sufficient permit for my going out of France by sea or by land, if the disturbances in Paris, of the 10th of August, had not happened. I embarked at Dover on the 25th July, at one in the afternoon, and landed at Calais after a pleasant passage of three hours and a half. I immediately procured a national cockade, which was a silk ribband, with blue, white, and red stripes; changed twenty guineas for forty livres each, in paper, (the real value is not more than twenty-five livres) hired a _cabriolet_, or two wheeled post-chaise of _Dessin_, (which was to take me to Paris, and bring me back in a month) for three _louis d'ors_ in money, bought a post-book, drank a bottle of Burgundy, and set off directly for _Marquise_ (about fifteen miles) where I passed the night. The next day, 26th, I proceeded only to _Abbeville_, and it was ten at night when I got there, because a gentleman in the chaise with me, and another gentleman and his wife, who had not been in France before, and who accompanied us all the way to Paris, wished to see Boulogne. We accordingly walked round the ramparts, and then went on. The 27th we remained a few hours at _Amiens_, and saw the cathedral and the engine which supplies the city with water, called _La Tour d'Eau_. We slept at _Breteuil_ which is a paltry town (_Bourg_.) The 28th. We were five hours occupied in seeing _Chantilly_. This palace is the most magnificent of any in Europe, not belonging to a sovereign. In the cabinet of natural history, which has lately been very considerably augmented, by the addition of that of _Mr. Valmont de Bomare_ (who arranged the whole) I observed the _foetus_ of a whale, about fourteen inches long, preserved in spirits; and the skin of a wolf stuffed. I saw this identical wolf at _Montargis_, a palace beyond _Fontainebleau_, in 1784, soon after it had been shot. The carp came, as usual, to be fed by hand. Some of them are said to have been here above a century. As to the gardens, they are well known; all that I shall say is, that they do not contain a single curious tree, shrub, or flower. We hired a landau, at the inn, to drive us about these gardens, and in the evening proceeded to _St. Denis_, which is only a single post from Paris, where we remained, as it would not have been so convenient to seek for a lodging there at night. The next day, Sunday 29th, early in the morning, we entered Paris, and put up at the _Hôtel d'Espagne_, _Rue du Colombier_, and in the evening went to the opera of _Corisandre_. EXPENCES. THE whole expences of our journey from Calais to Paris was as follows. The distance is thirty-four posts and a half, the last of which must be paid double.[1] The two chaises were each drawn by two horses, at 30 sous per horse, and 20 sous to each postillion per post, is 35 and half posts, at eight _livres_, is _Livres_ 284. [Note 1: A post is about two leagues, or between four and six miles, as the posthouses are not exactly at the same distance from each other.] Greasing the wheels and extra gratifications to drivers, about 32 The fees for seeing _Chantilly_, including the hire of a carriage, 24 Inns on the road, four days and four nights, about 200 ------ _£._ 540 This, at 40 livres per guinea, amounts to thirteen guineas and a half; to which must be added, for the hire of the two chaises to Paris, three _Louis_ in money, adequate to three pounds sterling, which altogether does not amount to four guineas each person, travelling post above two hundred miles, and faring sumptuously on the road, drinking Burgundy and Champagne, and being as well received at the inns as if the expences had been quadrupled. One hot meal a day, at three _livres_ a head, one _livre_ for each bed, and the wine paid for apart, was the customary allowance. After this manner I have travelled several times all over France, to _Bourdeaux_, _Toulouse_, _Montpelier_, _Marseille_, _Toulon_, _Hieres_, _Avignon_, _Lyon_, _&c._ Had the exchange been at par, the expence would have been doubled, in English money; but even then would have been very reasonable, compared to the cost of a similar journey in England. At Paris I received 42 livres 15 sous for each guinea; soon after which I was paid forty-two livres for every pound sterling which I drew on London: on my return to Calais I found the exchange to be forty-four livres per guinea, and once it was as high as forty-nine. This, of course, very much injures the trade between England and France; but, for the same reason, English families residing in France at present, more than double their income, by drawing bills on London for such income, and it will probably be many years before the exchange will be at _par_ again. MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS. CHESSMEN. TREE OF LIBERTY. CRUCIFIXES,VIRGINS. SAINTS. BISHOPS. OLD WOMEN, &C. THE whole way from Calais to Paris the land was in the highest state of cultivation. The sandy soil near the gates of Calais abounded with the _Chelidonium Glaucium_, or common yellow horned poppy. The first vines on this road are about a mile on this side of Breteuil. Between St. Just and Clermont is a magnificent _château_ and garden belonging to the _ci-devant Duc de Fitzjames_: this seat has never been described; it is not shewn to strangers at present, as the proprietor is emigrated. The country all around Chantilly, consists of cornfields; formerly it appeared barren, because the immense quantity of game which infested and over-ran it devoured all the crops and ruined the farmers, who were sent to the gallies if they shot a bird. I passed this way in 1783 and 1784, and saw vast numbers of pheasants, partridges, and hares cross the road, and feed by the side of it, as tame as poultry in a farm-yard; but at present the game is all destroyed; neither are there any more wild boars in the forest, which is of 7600 acres. These animals still inhabit the forest of _Fontainebleau_. This forest (which covers almost four times as much ground as that of _Chantilly_)[2] contains a greater number of trees, of a more enormous size, than I have seen in any other part of Europe, growing amongst rocks and stones equally remarkable for their dimensions. I know not of any parallel to the _sublime-beautiful_, and to the wild and romantic grandeur of the scenery here displayed. The landscapes of _Salvator Rosa_ appear to have been taken from natural objects, similar to those which are here seen. It is only forty miles from Paris. [Note 2: It is about five square miles, or rather, eight miles in length from two to four miles in breadth.] In the treasury of the Abbey at _St. Denis_ were formerly preserved the Chess-men of _Charlemagne_; these I described in the first volume of _Chess_, published in 1787; they are now either _stolen or strayed_, and will probably never more be heard of. All the horses (many of which were stone-horses) we had occasion to make use of along this road were very gentle, and so were the cattle which were feeding on the grass growing on the borders of the cornfields, (without any inclosure) which they were prevented from entering by a string tied to their horns, one end of which was sometimes held by a child of five or six years old. The people here are very merciful and kind to their beasts. I have seen droves of oxen walking leisurely through the green markets in the cities, smelling at the vegetables, and driven to the slaughter-house by children. There are no instances here of mad oxen, mad dogs, or run-away horses. In every one of the towns between Calais and Paris a full-grown tree (generally a poplar) has been planted in the market-place, with many of its boughs and leaves; these last being withered, it makes but a dismal appearance; on the top of this tree or pole is a red woollen or cotton night-cap, which is called the _Cap of Liberty_, with streamers about the pole, of red, blue and white ribbands. I saw several statues of saints, both within and without the churches (and in Paris likewise) with similar caps, and several crucifixes with the national cockade of ribbands tied to the left arm of the image on the cross, but not one with the cockade in its proper place; the reason of which I know not. I was both surprised and sorry to see the wooden images, many of them as large as the life, on crosses, painted with the natural colours, to the amount of perhaps twenty between _Calais_ and _Paris_, still suffered to remain nuisances on the side of the road. The _perpendicular_ of each cross being seasoned, by having been exposed many years to the open air, might make a couple of excellent pike staves;[3] but the remainder would, as far as I know, be of no other use than for fuel. [Note 3: This was written after I had become familiarized to pikes.] Another absurdity which has not been attended to as yet is, that most of the almanacks, even that which is prefixed to Mr. _Rabaut's_ Account of the Revolution, contains against every day in the year, the name of some saint or other, male or female; some of them martyrs, and others not, others archangels, angels, arch-bishops, bishops, popes, and virgins, to the number of twenty-four, and of these, four were martyrs into the bargain; and this at a time when churches are selling by auction and pulling down, when the convents are turned into barracks, when there is neither monk nor nun to be seen in the kingdom, nor yet any _Abbe_, and when no priest dares appear in any sacerdotal garment, or even with any thing which might mark him as an ecclesiastic. It must however be acknowledged, that the saints have lost all their credit in France, and of course so have the _Bienheureux_, or _Blessed_. In order to arrive at saint-hood, the candidate must first have died _en odeur de Sainteté_, which, were it not too ludicrous, might be translated _smelling of holiness_; he was then created a _Bienheureux_, and after he had been dead a century, the pope might canonize him if he pleased; after which he, the saint, might work miracles if he could, or let it alone. France formerly contained eighteen arch-bishopricks, and one hundred and thirteen bishopricks; the _Arch ones_ are all abolished, and likewise forty-seven of the others; there are, however, plenty remaining, no less than seventy-three, which includes seven new ones, and one in _Corsica_. The churches in Paris are not much frequented on the week days, at present; I found a few old women on their knees in some of them, hearing mass; and, at the same time, at the other end of one of these churches commissaries were sitting and entering the names of volunteers for the army. The iron rails in the churches which part the choir from the nave, and also those which encompass chapels and tombs, are all ordered to be converted into heads for pikes. On Sundays, before the 19th of August, the churches were still resorted to, but by no means crowded; I know not whether this be the case now. All the _jours de fête_, holidays, are very judiciously abolished, and likewise _les jours gras, et maigres_, (Flesh and meagre days.) All shops are allowed to be open, and every trade carried on on Sundays, notwithstanding which, few are open excepting those where provisions are sold; the inhabitants choosing to have one day's relaxation in seven, to take a little fresh air, and to appear well dressed. WALL ROUND PARIS. NEW BRIDGE. FIELD OF THE FEDERATION. BASTILLE. THERE is a Wall which encompasses Paris, of about twelve feet high and two feet thick, about nine miles long on the North side, and five on the South side; this was built just before the Revolution, and was intended to prevent goods from being smuggled into Paris. On the North side are thirty-six barriers, and on the other side eighteen; of these fifty-four I saw only ten. They were intended for the officers of the customs; at present they are used as guardrooms. Most of them are magnificent buildings, of white stone, some like temples, others like chapels; several of these are described in the new _Paris Guides_; but views of none of them have as yet been engraven.[4] [Note 4: The _Rotunda D'Orleans_, in this wall, at the back of the gardens of the _ci-devant_ Duke of that name is worthy of observation.] A bridge of white stone was just finished and opened for the passage of carriages; it was begun in 1787, it is of five arches, the centre arch is ninety-six feet wide, the two collateral ones eighty-seven feet each, and other two seventy-eight, each of these arches forms part of a circle, whose centre is considerably under the level of the water; it is thrown over the river from the _Place de Louis XV._ to the _Palais Bourbon_. The _Champ de la Federation_, formerly _Champ de Mars_, is a field which served for the exercises of the pupils of the Royal Military School; it is a regular parallelogram of nine hundred yards long, and three hundred yards broad, exclusive of the ditches by which it is bounded, and of the quadruple rows of trees on each side; but if these are included the breadth is doubled. At one extremity is the magnificent building above-mentioned,[5] and the river runs at the foot of the others. In this field is formed the largest _Circus_ in the world, being eight hundred yards long and four hundred broad; it is bordered by a slope of forty yards broad, and of which the highest part is ten feet above the level ground; the lower part is cut into thirty rows, gradually elevated above each other, and on these rows or ridges a hundred and sixty thousand persons may fit commodiously; the upper part may contain about a hundred and fifty thousand persons standing, of which every one may see equally well what is doing in the _Circus_. The National confederation was first held here, 14th July, 1790, and at that time a wooden bridge was thrown on boats over the river for convenience. [Note 5: In 1788 the school was suppressed, the scholars were placed in the army, or in country colleges, and the building is intended, when the necessary alterations are completed, to be one of the four hospitals which are to replace that of the _Hôtel-Dieu_. This hospital is in such a bad situation, being in the midst of Paris, that a quarter of the patients die. It contains only two thousand beds; each of the four new hospitals is to contain twelve hundred beds.] Of the _Bastille_ nothing remains but the foundations; it was demolished and levelled with the ground in about eleven months; the expences at the end of the first three months amounted to about twenty thousand pounds sterling. The materials were sold for half that sum, and the nation paid the remainder. And on the 14th of July, 1790, the anniversary of the day of its having been taken, a long mast was erected in the middle of the place where it stood, crowned with flowers and ribbands, and bearing this simple and expressive inscription; _Ici on Danse_. Here is dancing. COINS AND TOKENS. IN the _Hôtel de la Monnoye_ (the Mint) I procured some new coins. The silver crown piece of six livres has on one side the king's head in profile, round which is _Louis XVI. Roi des François_, 1792; over this date is a small lion passant, being a Mint mark. The reverse, is a human figure with an enormous pair of wings,[6] holding a book in its left hand, which book rests on an altar, and with its other is represented as if writing in it; the word _Constitution_ is already seen there. The figure is naked, except a slight drapery on the left arm; behind the figure is a bundle of staves, like the Roman Fasces, surmounted by the cap of liberty, and behind the altar is a cock standing on one leg; the inscription is _Regne de la Loi_. _L'An 4 de la Liberté._ Besides this, there are two other Mint marks, one a small lyre, and the other the letter A; at the foot of the altar is _Dupre_, the name of the person who engraved the die; and on the edge is _La Nation_, _La Loi_, _et le Roi_, in _Relievo_. [Note 6: There is to be a new coinage without the king's profile, and it is to be hoped these wings, or rather the whole figure, will be left out.] There are no new half crowns. The dies of the new thirty and fifteen sol pieces are just like that of the crown, except that their value is stamped on them 30 _Sols_, 15 _Sols_, and that there is no inscription on the edge. There are two other coins, made of a sort of bell-metal; one of two _Sols_, with the king's profile; inscription and date like those on the silver coin, and on the reverse the _Fasces_ and cap, between two oak branches, and the inscription, _La Nation, Le Loi, Le Roi. L'an_ 4 _de la Liberté. 2 S_. The other of half this size, and with the same impressions, except that its value is specified thus, 12 D. or _Deniers_, equal to one _Sol_. I have not seen any new Louis. No paper money or assignats is known in the Mint; I bought some coins here, and paid for them in guineas, which are currant for twenty-five livres. There are twelve or fourteen mills, which were all at work in coining crown pieces, and likewise several hammering machines, one of which was coining 2 _Sols_ pieces. Besides the national coins, several tradesmen have been permitted to fabricate silver and copper medals or _tokens_, for public convenience, the most beautiful of which are those of _M. Monneron_. The largest is of almost pure copper, exactly of the size and thickness of the crown piece; in an oval is represented a female figure with a helmet on, sitting on an elevated place, on which is _Dupre f._ (or fecit) holding a book, inscribed _Constitution des François_; at her side is a shield with the arms of France, and at her feet an altar, on one side of which is the profile of the king; several soldiers are represented extending their right arms, as if taking the oath; at top is _Pacte Federatif_; at bottom 14 _Juillet_, 1790; round the oval _vivre libres ou mourir_, which is repeated in one of the banners carried by a soldier. On the reverse, in a circle, is _Medaille de confiance de cinq-sols remboursable en assignats de_ 50L _et au dessus_. _L'An IV. de la Liberté_; round this is _Monneron Freres Negocians à Paris_, 1792; and on the edge is cut _Departemens de Paris_, _Rhone et Loire_. _Du Gard_. I have another of these pieces, not quite so large nor so well executed; one of the sides is similar to that already described; on the other is _Medaille qui se vend_ 5 _Sols à Paris chez Monneron patenté_. _L'An IV. de la Liberté_. Round this is, _Revolution Française_, 1792; and on the edge, _Bon pour les_ 83 _Departemens_. I am told this was made at Birmingham. The other token of the same merchant is rather larger and thicker than our halfpenny. On one side is a woman sitting, with a staff in her right hand with the cap of liberty; her left arm leans on a square tablet, on which are the words, _Droits de l'Homme. Artic. V._[7] the sun shines just over her head, and behind her is a cock perched on half a fluted column; round the figure, _Liberté sous la Loi_, and underneath, _L'An III. de la Liberté_. On the reverse, _Medaille de confiance de deux sols à echanger contre des assignats de 50L et au dessus. 1791_. Round this the merchant's name, as in the first; and on the edge, _Bon pour Bord. Marseil. Lyon. Rouen. Nant. et Strasb_. [Note 7: This article is, "The law has the right of prohibiting only those actions which are hurtful to society."] I have seen a silver token almost as big as a shilling. On one side is represented a woman sitting, leaning with her left arm on a large open book, at her right is a cock perched on half a fluted column; and the inscription round these figures is, _Le Fevre, Le Sage et Compie. ngt. à Paris_. On the reverse is _B.P._ (bon pour) 20 _Sols à echanger en assignats_ de 50L and round this, _et au dessus l'an 4 me de la Liberté_, 1792.[8] [Note 8: This and the former _echanger_, &c. and _remboursable_, &c. appear to be superfluous.] In this Hôtel is the cabinet of the royal school of mineralogy, which Mr. Le Sage has been four and twenty years in forming and analyzing; it is contained in a magnificent building, with a dome and gallery almost entirely of marble. THEATRES. AT this time there were ten regular theatres open every evening. The first and most ancient of which is the Opera, or Royal Academy of Music. The old house which was in the Palais Royal, was burnt in 1781, and the present house, near St. Martin's Gate, was built in seventy-five days. The number of performers, vocal and instrumental, dancers, &c. employed in this theatre is about four hundred and thirty. The price of admission to the first boxes is seven livres ten sous, about six shillings and eight pence, (or three shillings and four pence as the exchange then was.) 2. The _French_ playhouse is at present called _Theatre de la Nation_. In the vestibule or porch is a marble statue of _Voltaire_, sitting in an arm chair; it is near the Luxembourg. 3. The Italian theatre behind the _Boulevart Richelieu_. Notwithstanding the name, nothing but French pieces, and French music, are performed here. 4. Theatre _de Monsieur_. _Rue Feydeau_. Comedies and operas are performed here, three times a week in the Italian, and the other days in the French language; for which purpose two sets of players are engaged at this house. 5. Theatre Français. Rue de Richelieu. At these four theatres the price of admission into the boxes was a crown. 6. Theatre de la Rue de Louvois. 7. Theatre Français. Rue de Bondy. 8. Theatre de la Demoiselle Montansier, au Palais Royal. The box price of these three last was half a crown. 9. Theatre du Marais, quartier St. Antoine. 10. Theatre de Moliere. Rue St. Martin. To these must be added about five and twenty more; the best of which is the _Theatre de l'ambigu comique_, on the _North Boulevarts_;[9] the box price was half a crown. The others were rope dancers, and such kind of spectacles as _Sadler's Wells, &c._ and the prices were from two shillings down to sixpence. The French themselves, laughing at the great increase of their theatres, said, "We shall shortly have a public spectacle per street, an actor per house, a musician per cellar, and an author per garret." [Note 9: These _Boulevarts_ were made in 1536, and planted with four rows of trees in 1668; these beautiful walks are too well known to be described here; they are 2400 _Toises_ (4800 yards, or almost three miles) long. The South Boulevarts are planted in the same manner, were finished in 1761, and are 3683 _Toises_, or fathom (above four miles) in length.] PANTHEON. JACOBINS. QUAI VOLTAIRE. RUE ROUSSEAU. COCKADES. THE new church of _Sainte Genevieve_ was begun in 1757; but the building was discontinued during the last war; in 1784 it was resumed, and is at present almost finished. The whole length of the front is thus inscribed in very large gilt capitals: _Aux grands hommes: la Patrie reconnoissante_. To great men: their grateful country. And over the entrance: _Pantheon Français. L'An III de la Liberté_. As to the size of Paris, I saw two very large plans of that city and of London, on the same scale, on which it was said, that Paris covered 5,280,000 square _Toises_, and London only 3,900,000. A _Toise_ is two yards; and from the plan it appeared to be near the truth. The new buildings which surround the garden of the Palais Royal form a parallelogram, that for beauty is not to be matched in Europe. They consist of shops, coffee-houses, music rooms, four of which are in cellars, taverns, gaming-houses, &c. and the whole square is almost always full of people. The square is 234 yards in length, and 100 in breadth; the portico which surround it consists of 180 arches. The celebrated _Jacobins_ are a club, consisting at present of about 1300 members, and so called, because the place of meeting is in the hall which was formerly the library of the convent of that name, in the _Rue St. Honoré_, about 300 yards distant from the National Assembly. The proper name of the club is, _Society of the Friends of the Constitution_. There are three or four other societies of less note. The _Quai_, which was formerly called _des Theatins_ is at present named _Quai Voltaire_, in honor of that philosopher, who died there in the house of the Marquis de _Villette_, in 1778. The street which was formerly called _Platriere_, and in which the general post-office is situated, is called _Rue Jean Jaques Rousseau_, in honour of this writer, who resided some time in this street. I found him here in 1776, and he copied some music for me; he had no other books at that time than an English _Robinson Crusoe_ and an Italian _Tasso's Jerusalem_. He died 1st July, 1778, very soon after Voltaire, at the country seat of le Marquis _de Girardin_ about ten leagues from Paris; and is buried there, in a small island. And the street which was formerly called _Chaussée d'Antin_ is now named _Rue de Mirabeau_, in honour of the late patriot of that name. The church _des Innocens_ was pulled down in 1786, and the vast _cimetiére_ (burying ground) was filled up. Every night, during several months, carts were employed in carrying the bones found there, to other grounds out of Paris; it is now a market for vegetables. Very near this place was a fountain, which is mentioned in letters patent so long ago as 1273. It was rebuilt with extraordinary magnificence in 1550, repaired in 1708, and at last, in 1788, carefully removed to the center of the market, where it now stands. The new _Quai de Gesvres_ was constructed in 1787, and all the shops which formed a long narrow alley for foot passengers only, were destroyed. At this time no person was permitted to walk in any other part of the _Tuileries_ gardens than in the terrace of the _Feuillans_, which is parallel to the _Rue St. Honoré_, and under the windows of the _National Assembly_; the only fence to the other part of the garden was a blue ribband extended between two chairs. Hitherto cockades of silk had been worn, the _aristocrats_ wore such as were of a paler blue and red, than those worn by the _democrats_, and the former were even distinguished by their carriages, on which a cloud was painted upon the arms, which entirely obliterated them, (of these I saw above thirty in the evening _promenade_, in the _Bois de Boulogne_:) but on the 30th of July, every person was compelled by the people to wear a linen cockade, without any distinction in the red and blue colours. EXECUTION OF TWO CRIMINALS, WITH A BEHEADING MACHINE. ON the 4th of August a criminal was beheaded, in the _Place de Grêve_. I did not see the execution, because, as the hour is never specified, I might have waited many hours in a crowd, from which there is no extricating one's self. I was there immediately after, and saw the machine, which was just going to be taken away. I went into a coffee-house and made a drawing, which is here engraven. It is called _la Guillotine_, from the name of the person who first brought it into use in Paris: that at _Lisle_ is called _le Louison_, for a similar reason. In English it is termed a maiden.[10] [Note 10: Mr. Pennant, in the second volume of his Tour in Scotland, has given a long account of such a machine, from which the following particulars are taken. "It was confined to the limits of the forest of Hardwick, or the eighteen towns and hamlets within its precincts. The execution was generally at Halifax; Twenty five criminals suffered during the reign of Queen Elizabeth; the records before that time were lost. Twelve more were executed between 1623 and 1650, after which it is supposed the privilege was no more exerted.----This machine is now destroyed, but there is one of the same kind, in a room under the Parliament house, at Edinburgh, where it was introduced by the Regent Morton, who took a model of it as he passed through Halifax, and at length suffered by it himself. It is in form of a painters easel, and about ten feet high: at four feet from the bottom is a cross-bar, on which the felon laid his head, which was kept down by another placed above. In the inner edges of the frame are grooves; in these is placed a sharp axe, with a vast weight of lead, supported at the summit by a peg; to that peg is fastened a cord, which the executioner cutting, the axe falls, and beheads the criminal. If he was condemned for stealing a horse or a cow, the string was tied to the beast, which pulled out the peg and became the executioner."] I have seen the following seven engravings of such an instrument. The most ancient is engraven on wood, merely outlines, and very badly drawn; it is in _Petrus de Natalibus Catalogus Sanctorum, 1510_. There was a German translation of some of _Petrarch's_ Works, published in 1520; this contains an engraving in wood, representing an execution, with a great number of figures, correctly drawn. _Aldegrever_, in 1553, published another print on this subject. The fourth is in _Achillis Bocchii Quæstiones Symbolicæ_, 1550. There is one in _Cats's_ Dutch Emblems, 1650. And the two last are in _Golfrieds's_ Historical Chronicles, in German, folio, 1674. These five last are engraven on copper. In all these representations the axe is either straight or semicircular, but always horizontal. The sloping position of the French axe appears to be the best calculated for celerity. Machines of this kind are at present made use of for executions throughout all France, and criminals are put to death in no other manner. The following is the account of an execution, which I had from an eye-witness. The crowd began to assemble at ten in the morning, and waited, exposed to the intense heat of the sun in the middle of July, till four in the afternoon, when the criminals, a Marquis and a Priest, were brought, in two coaches; they were condemned for having forged _assignats_. The Marquis ascended the scaffold first; he was as pale as if he had already been dead, and he endeavoured to hide his face, by pulling his hair over it; there were two executioners, dressed in black, on the scaffold, one of which immediately tied a plank of about 18 inches broad, and an inch thick, to the body of the Marquis, as he stood upright, fastening it about the arms, the belly, and the legs; this plank was about four feet long, and came almost up to his chin; a priest who attended, then applied a crucifix to his mouth, and the two executioners directly laid him on his belly on the bench, lifted up the upper part of the board which was to receive his neck, adjusted his head properly, then shut the board and pulled the string which is fastened to the peg at the top of the machine, which lifted up a latch, and down came the axe; the head was off in a moment, and fell into a basket which was ready to receive it, the executioner took it out and held it up by the hair to show the populace, and then put it into another basket along with the body: very little blood had issued as yet. The Priest was now taken out of the coach, from which he might have seen his companion suffer; the bloody axe was hoisted up and he underwent the same operation exactly. Each of these executions lasted about a minute in all, from the moment of the criminal's ascending the scaffold to that of the body's being taken away. It was now seen that the body of the Marquis made such a violent expiration that the belly raised the lid of the basket it was in, and the blood rushed out of the great arteries in torrents. The windows of the _Place de Grêve_ were, as usual on such occasions, filled with ladies.[11] Many persons were performing on violins, and trumpets, in order to pass the time away, and to relieve the tediousness of expectation. [Note 11: Mrs. Robinson tells me, that when she was at Paris, a few years ago, her _valet de place_, came early one morning, informing her there would be a _grand spectacle_, and wanted to know if he should hire a place for her. This superb spectacle was no other than the execution of two murderers, who were to be broken alive on the wheel, in the Place de Grêve, on that day. She however says, that she declined going.] I have on several other days seen felons sitting on stools on this scaffold, with their hands tied, and their arms and bodies fastened to a stake by a girth, bareheaded, with an inscription over their heads, specifying their crimes and punishment; they are generally thus exposed during five or fix hours, and then sent to prison, or to the gallies according to the sentence. VERSAILLES. BOTANY. SOUNDING MERIDIANS. I went once to Versailles; there is hardly any thing in the palace but the bare walls, a very few of the looking-glasses, tapestry, and large pictures remaining, as it has now been near two years uninhabited. I crossed the great canal on foot; there was not a drop of water in it. In the _Menagerie_ I saw the Rhinoceros, which has been 23 years there; there is likewise a lion, with a little dog in the same den, as his companion, and a zebra. The collection of orange trees cannot be matched in any country where these trees do not grow naturally; the number is about six hundred, the largest trunk is about fifteen inches in diameter, and the age of the most ancient of these trees exceeds three centuries. The _Jardin Potager_, or kitchen garden, is of fifty acres, divided into about five or six and twenty small gardens, of one, two, or three acres, walled round, both for shelter to the plants, and for training fruit trees against. One of these gardens, of two acres, was entirely allotted to the culture of melons, and these were all of the warty _rock cantalupe_ kind, and were growing under hand-glasses, in the manner of our late cucumbers for pickling. The season had been so unfavourable for wall-fruit, that (as the gardener told me) all these gardens had yielded less than a dozen peaches and nectarines. The fruit was sent regularly to the Royal Family in Paris. There is a botanical garden at the _Petit Trianon_ in the park of Versailles, but the person who shews it was out of the way, so that I did not see it. I passed several mornings in the Botanical National Garden, (_ci-devant Jardin du Roi_.) That part of the garden which contains the botanical collection is separated from the other part, which is open to the public at large, by iron palisades. The names of the plants are painted on square plates of tin, stuck in the ground on the side of each plant. I saw a _Strelitzia_, which was there called _Ravenala_, (probably from some modern botanist's name) _Mr. Thouin_, who superintends this garden, said to me, "We will not have any aristocratic plants, neither will we call the new Planet by any other name than that of its discoverer, _Herschel_." I neglected to ask him why the plant might not retain its original and proper name of _Heliconia Bihai_? [Illustration: ANASTATICA or ROSE of JERICHO] I here found the _Anastatica Hierochuntica_ or _Rose of Jericho_, which I sought for in vain for several years, and advertised for in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, for January 1791, and in the newspapers. Many descriptions and figures of this plant are to be found in old books, and the dried plants are frequently to be met with. Old _Gerard_ very justly says, "The coiner spoiled the name in the mint, for of all plants that have been written of, there is not any more unlike unto the rose." The annexed figure represents a single plant; it had been transplanted into a deep pot, which had been filled with earth, so as to make it appear like two plants. The stalks are shrubby, the leaves are fleshy, and of a glaucous or sea-green colour. The _corolla_ consists of four very small white petals. Its scientific description may be found in _Linnæus_[12]. One of the _silicles_ is drawn magnified. [Note 12: _Genera plantarum_, 798.] Mr. Thouin pointed out to me a new and very beautiful species of _Zinnia_, of which the flower is twice the size of that of the common sort, and of a deep purple colour: a new _verbascum_, from the Levant; it was about four feet high, the leaves were almost as woolly as those of the _Stachys lanata_, and terminated in a point like a spur; it had not yet flowered. And a new _solanum_, with spines the colour of gold. He recommended the flower of the _spilanthus brasiliana_, which our nurserymen call _Verbesina_ _acmella_ as an excellent dentifrice. I also found here the _amethystea, coerulea_: this annual has been lost in England above twenty years.[13] [Note 13: The seeds which are sold in the London shops, for those of this plant, are those of the _hyssopus bracteatis_.] The _datura fastuosa_, the French call _Trompette du jugement à trois fleurs l'une dans l'autre_; I have myself raised these with triple flowers, both purple and white, though some of our nurserymen pretended the flowers were never more than double. The _anthemis arabica_, a very singular and pretty annual. A _zinnia hybrida_, which last has not yet been cultivated in England. Twenty-two sorts of _medicago polymorpha, (snails and hedgehogs_) of these I had seen only four in England. Here was a small single moss-rose plant, in a pot, which is the only one I ever saw in France. The air is too hot for those roses, and for the same reason none of the American plants, such as the _magnolia_ (tulip tree) _kalmia_, &c. thrive in France, though kept in pots in the shade and well watered; the heat of the atmosphere dries the trunk of these trees. But there are many other plants, to the growth of which the climate is much more favourable than it is in England. In the open part of this garden are a great number of _bignonia-catalpa_ trees, which were then in flower, resembling horse-chesnut flowers at a distance, but much larger and more beautiful; and many _nerium oleander_ trees, in wooden chests; several of these trees are about eight feet high and the trunk a foot in diameter; they were then full of flowers of all the sorts, single and double, red and white; these are placed in the green-house in the winter. On a mount in this garden is a _meridien sonnant_ (sounding meridian) this is an iron mortar which holds four pounds of gunpowder, it is loaded every morning, and exactly at noon the sun discharges the piece by means of a burning glass, so placed that the _focus_ at that moment fires the powder in the touch-hole. The first meridian that was made of this kind is in the garden of the _Palais Royal_, at the top of one of the houses; I could not see it, but it is thus described in the _Paris Guide_: "The touch-hole of the cannon is two inches long and half a line (the twentieth part of an inch) broad, this length is placed in the direction of the meridian line. Two _transoms_ or _cross-staves_ placed vertically on a horizontal plane, support a _lens_ or burning glass, which, by their means, is fixed according to the sun's height monthly, so as to cause the _focus_ to be exactly over the touch-hole at noon. It is said to have been invented by _Rousseau_." Small meridians of this sort are sold in the shops; these are dials of about a foot square, engraven on marble, with a little brass cannon and a _lens_. The market for plants and flowers in pots, and for nosegays, is kept on the _Quai de la Megisserie_, twice a week, very early in the morning; the following were the most abundant: _Nerium_ double flowering pomegranate, _vinca rosea_, (Madagascar periwinkle) _prickly lantana, peruvian heliotropium_ (turnsole) tuberoses, with very large and numerous single and double flowers, and very great quantities of common sweet basil, which is much used in cookery. I visited the apothecaries garden, and also two or three nursery gardens in that neighbourhood, but found nothing remarkable in them. There are many gardens in the environs of Paris which are worthy of notice, but I was prevented from seeing them in consequence of the disturbances hereafter mentioned. In the books which describe these places, I find the village of _Montreuil-sous-le-Bois_ particularly mentioned on account of its fertility. In the _Tableau de Paris_ it is said, "Three acres of ground produce to the proprietor twenty thousand livres annually, (near 800 guineas.) The rent of an acre is six hundred livres, and the king's tax sixty (together about six and twenty guineas.) The peaches which are produced here are the finest in the world, and are sometimes sold for a crown a piece. When a prince has given a splendid entertainment, three hundred Louis d'ors worth of these fruits have been eaten." It is situated on a hill, just above _Vincennes_, about three miles from the fauxbourg _Saint Antoine_, and is likewise celebrated for its grapes, strawberries, all sorts of wall fruit, pease, and every kind of esculent vegetables. In the garden called _Mouceaux_ which belongs to the _ci-devant Duke of Orleans_; at the extremity of the _fauxbourg du Roule_ are, it is said, magnificent hot-houses, of which I have no recollection, though I was in the garden in 1776. There is a description of these gardens in print, with sixteen copper plates. In the _Luxembourg_ gardens only common annuals were growing, such as marigolds, sun-flowers, &c. probably self sown; neither were there in the _Tuileries_ gardens, which I afterwards saw, any remarkable plants. I bought very large peaches in the markets at 30 _sous_ each, the ordinary ones were at 10 _sols_. The melons (which are brought to market in waggons, piled up like turnips in England) were all of the netted sort, and of so little flavor, that they would not be worth cultivating, were it not for the sake of cooling the mouth in hot weather; they were sold at 15 or 20 sous each. Strawberries were still plentiful (second week in August.) _Cerneaux_, which are the kernel of green walnuts, were just coming into season. I had now no opportunity of acquiring any more knowledge of the plants in France, and shall only add, that I passed the winter of 1783 and 1784, at _Marseille_ and at _Hieres_; and that besides oranges, lemons, cedras,[14] pistachios, pomegranates, and a few date palm trees, I found several species of _geranium_, myrtles, and _cactus opuntia_, (Indian fig) growing in the soil, and likewise the _mimosa farnesiana_, sweet scented sponge tree, or fragrant acacia, the flowers of which are there called _fleurs de cassier_; these flowers, together with those of the jasmine, and those which fall from the orange and lemon trees, are sold to the perfumers of _Provence_ and _Languedoc_. [Note 14: These trees are planted as close together as possible, hardly eight feet asunder, and no room is left for any walks, so that these gardens are, properly speaking, orange orchards. The oranges were then sold at the rate of ten for a penny English.] Among the small plants, the _arum arisarum_, (friar's cowl) and the _ruscus aculeatus_ (butcher's broom) were the most conspicuous, this latter is a pretty ever-green shrub, and the berries were there as large as those of a common _solanum pseudo capsicum_, (Pliny's _amomum_, or winter cherry) and of a bright scarlet colour, issuing from the middle of the under surface of the leaves; I never saw any of these berries any where else. _Parkinson_, in his _Theater of Plants_, 1640, says, after describing three or four species of this genus, "They scarse beare flower, much lesse fruite, in our land." Perhaps the berries might ripen in our hot-houses. Many _arbutus_, or strawberry-trees, grow here, but they are not equal in size and beauty to many which I saw both in Portugal and in Ireland. In 1784, _M. J. J. de St. Germain_, a nurseryman in the _Fauxbourg St. Antoine_, published a book in 8vo of 400 pages, entitled _Manuel des Vegetaux_, or catalogue in Latin and French, of all the known plants, trees, and shrubs, in the world, arranged according to the system of _Linnæus_; those plants which grow near Paris are particularly specified, and a very copious French index is added to the Latin one. The author died a few years ago; the plants were sold, and the nursery ground is at present built upon. DOGS AND CATS. TWO-HEADED BOY. LION Dogs and Cats are common in Paris. The lion-dog greatly resembles a lion in miniature; the hair of the fore part of its body is long, and curled, and the hinder part short; the nose is short, and the tail is long and tufted at the extremity; the smallest are little larger than guinea-pigs; these are natives of Malta, and are the most valuable; those which are produced in France are considerably larger, and the breed degenerates very soon. Their general colour is white; they are frequently called _Lexicons_, which word is derived, not from a dictionary, but from a French compound word of nearly the same sound, descriptive of one of their properties. The lion-cat comes originally from _Angora_, in _Syria_. It is much larger than the common cat; its hair is very long, especially about the neck, where it forms a fine ruff, of a silvery whiteness and silky texture, that on the tail is three or four inches long; these cats frequently spread their tails on their backs, as squirrels do. The colour is generally white, but sometimes light brown; they do not catch mice. This beautiful species does not degenerate speedily, and it appears to thrive better in Paris than in any other part of Europe. The figures of both these animals are in _Buffon's Natural History_. About the _Palais Royal_ persons are frequently found who offer for sale white mice in cages; these are pretty little animals, their fur is snow white, and their eyes are red and sparkling. Other persons carried for sale canary-birds, linnets, and two or three other sorts of small birds, perched on their fingers; these birds had been rendered so tame that they did not attempt to fly away. But the greatest curiosity in Natural History which I saw there, was a male child with two heads and four arms; it was then three months old, the two faces were perfectly alike, the noses aquiline, the eyes blue, and the countenances pleasing; the two bodies were joined together at the chest, and the remainder was just like that of a common male child; one navel, one belly, one _penis_ one _anus_, and two legs. The two bodies were face to face, so that they could embrace and kiss each other; in their natural position they formed an angle of 65 degrees, like the letter Y. I remained above an hour with this child, it's mother and the nurse, and saw it suck at both breasts at the same time. It was tolerably strong, the skin was very soft, and almost transparent, the arms and legs were very lean, and the latter were crossed, and appeared incapable of being extended voluntarily; so that if the child should live two or three years, which I do not think probable, it is not likely it will ever be able to walk. One head would laugh while the other cried, one head would sleep whilst the other was awake; the inspiration and expiration of the breath, in each, was alternate, that is to say, one inspired while the other expired its breath. There was nothing remarkable in the mother (a peasant's wife) except her obstinacy in refusing to disencumber these two poor heads from a couple of thick quilted blue sattin caps with which they had dressed them, and which I endeavoured to convince both her and the nurse would heat the heads, so as to be the means of shortening the child's life, and consequently of curtailing the profits arising from this _unique_ exhibition. To this description an English physician, who likewise saw it, adds, "It must have had two brains, as motion and sensation were equal, and apparently perfect, in each head and chest, and in all the four arms. It had two hearts, and two sets of lungs; it had also two passages into the stomach, but, as was supposed, only one set of _abdominal viscera_, as the belly was not larger than that of a common child of that age usually is. The hearts and arteries beat more strongly than was consistent with a long continuance of health. The action of the arteries was plainly seen under the skin." Mr. Buffon, in the Supplement to his Natural History, has given the figure and description of a monster something similar to this, part of which description I shall give in a note, as a parallel to that of the living child.[15] [Note 15: "In 1701 there were born in Hungary two Girls who were joined together by the loins; they lived above twenty-one years. At seven years old they were shown almost all over Europe; at nine years of age a priest purchased them, and placed them in a convent at Petersburg, where they remained till their death, which happened in 1723. An account of them was found among the papers of the surgeon who attended the convent, and was sent to the Royal Society of London in 1757. In this account we are told, that one of these twins was called _Helen_, the other _Judith_. _Helen_ grew up and was very handy, _Judith_ was smaller and a little hump-backed. They were joined together by the reins, and in order to see each other they could turn their heads only. There was one common _anus_, and of course there was only one common need of going to stool, but each had her separate urinary passage, and separate wants, which occasioned quarrels, because when the weakest was obliged to evacuate, the strongest, who sometimes would not stand still, pulled her away; they perfectly agreed in every thing else, and appeared to love each other. When they were seen in front, they did not differ apparently from other women. At six years old _Judith_ lost the use of her left side by a paralytick stroke; she never was perfectly cured, and her mind remained feeble and dull; on the contrary, _Helen_ was handsome, intelligent and even witty. They had the small-pox and the measles at the same time, but all their other sicknesses indispositions happened to each separately. _Judith_ was subject to a cough and a fever, whereas _Helen_ was generally in good health. When they had almost attained the age of twenty-two _Judith_ caught a fever, fell into a lethargy and died. Poor _Helen_ was forced to follow her fate; three minutes before the death of _Judith_ she fell into an agony, and died nearly at the same time. When they were dissected it was found, that each had her own entrails perfect, and even, that each had a separate excretory conduit, which however terminated at the same _anus_." _Linnæus_ has likewise described this monster. Many figures of double children of different kinds may be seen in _Licetus de Monstris_, 4to. 1665; and in the _Medical Miscellanies_, which were printed in Latin at Leipzig, in several quarto volumes, in 1673.] I went several times to the National Assembly; the _Tribunes_, or _Galleries_, (of which there are three) entered warmly, by applauses and by murmurs and hisses, into the affairs which were treated of. Letters are franked by the assembly as far as the frontiers, by being stamped with red printers ink, _Ass. Nationale._ About this time many hundreds of folio volumes of heraldry, and of the registers of the nobility, were publicly burnt in _la Place Vendôme_, after due notice had been given of the time and place by advertisements pasted against the walls. A wicked wag observed, that it was a pity all their books of divinity, and almost all those of law and physic, were not added to the pile but he comforted himself with reflecting that _ça viendra_. All the coats of arms which formerly decorated the gates of _Hôtels_ are taken away, and even seals are at present engraven with cyphers only. _The Chevaliers de St. Louis_ still continue to wear the cross, or the ribband, at the button-hole; all other orders of knighthood are abolished. No liveries are worn by servants, that badge of slavery is likewise abolished; and also all corporation companies, as well as every other monopolizing society; and there are no longer any _Royal_ tobacco nor salt shops. I went once to the _Café de la Regence_,[16] with the intention of playing a game at chess, but I found the chess-men so very little different in colour, that I could not distinguish them sufficiently to be able to play. It seems it is the fashion for chess-men at present to be made of box-wood, and all nearly of the same colour. I then went to another coffee-house frequented by chess-players, and here the matter was worse; they had, in addition to the above-mentioned fashion, substituted the _cavalier_, or _knight_, for the _fou_, or _bishop_, and the _bishop_ for the _knight_, so that I left them to fight their own battles. [Note 16: Rousseau used to play at chess here almost every day, which attracted such crowds of people to see him, that the _Lieutenant de Police_ was obliged to place a sentinel at the door.] Books of all sorts are printed without any _approbation_ or _privilêge_. Many are exposed on stalls, which are very improper for the public eye. One of these was called the _Private Life of the Queen_, in two volumes, with obscene prints. The book itself is contemptible and disgusting, and might as well have been called the _Woman of Pleasure_. Of books of this sort I saw above thirty, with plates. Another was on a subject not fit even to be mentioned. I read a small pamphlet, entitled "_le Christ-Roi_, or a Parallel of the Sufferings of Lewis XVI. &c." I can say nothing in favor of it. I found no new deistical books, the subject has already been exhausted, and every Frenchman is a philosopher now; it may be necessary here to recollect, that there are gradations in philosophy. Since the Revolution, monarchs and courts are not quite so respectfully mentioned in books as they were formerly. The following few examples are taken from _Mr. du Laure's_ Curiosities of Paris, in two volumes, 1791, third edition. [17] "Louis XIV. has his bust in almost every street in Paris. After the most trifling reparation of a street it was customary to place his great wig-block (_tête à perruque_) there. The saints have never obtained such multiplied statues. That bully (_Fanfaron_) as _Christina_, Queen of Sweden, used to call him, wanted to be adored even in turn-again alleys (_culs-de-Sac._") Courtiers are here termed _canaille de la cour_ (the rabble of the court;) the former aldermen of Paris (_echevins_) _machines à complimens_ (complimenting machines;) and monks _des bourreaux encapuchonnés_ (cowled executioners.) [Note 17: The same author has likewise published, _Historical Singularities_ of Paris, in a single volume, and a Description of the Environs, in two volumes, 1790.] All the following articles of information are taken from the same work: The colossal statue of _St. Christopher_ is no longer in the church of _Notre-Dame_; "He was, without doubt, the greatest _Saint Christopher_ in all France. This ridiculous monument of the taste and devotion of our ancestors has lately been demolished." "The court before the porch of this church was considerably enlarged in 1748, and at the same time a fountain was destroyed, against which leaned an old statue, which had successively been judged to be that of _Esculapius_, of _Mercury_, of a Mayor, and of a Bishop of Paris, and lastly, that of J.C." "Entering the street which leads to the _Pont-rouge_, by the cloisters of this church, the last house on the right, under the arcades, stands where the canon _Fulbert_, uncle to _Eloisa_, lived. Although it has been several times rebuilt during 600 years, there are still preserved two stone medallions, in _basso-relievo_, which are said to be the busts of _Abelard_ and _Eloisa_." The number of inhabitants in Paris is computed at one million, one hundred and thirty thousand, (including one hundred and fifty thousand strangers) two hundred thousand of which are, through poverty, exempt from the poll-tax, and two hundred thousand others are servants. In 1790 there were in Paris forty-eight convents of monks, containing nine hundred and nine men; the amount of their revenue was estimated at two millions, seven hundred and sixty thousand livres; five abbeys or priories, estimated at six hundred and twelve thousand livres; seventy-four convents of nuns, containing two thousand, two hundred and ninety-two women, their income two millions and twenty-eight thousand livres. When to these we add the revenue of the archbishoprick, and of the fifteen collegiate churches, of one million, six thousand and five hundred livres, we shall have a total of upwards of seven millions of livres for the former ecclesiastical revenue in Paris only.[18] [Note 18: Almost £300,000 sterling, about a tenth part of the Church income of the whole kingdom. The establishment for the Royal Family, or Civil List, is said to have been forty millions of livres. Thus the Religion and the Monarch cost one hundred and ten millions of livres annually (about five millions sterling) the greater part of which sum is now appropriated to other uses. The convents are converted, or perverted, into secular useful buildings, and their inhabitants have been suffered to spend the remainder of their lives in their former idleness, or to marry and mix with society. Annuities have been granted to them from thirty-five to sixty louis per annum, according to their age.] There are about six hundred coffee-houses in Paris. In the saloon of the _Louvre_ every other year is an exhibition of pictures, in the months of August and September. The Pont-neuf is one hundred toises in length and twelve in breadth.[19] [Note 19: 1020 feet by 72. Westminster-bridge is 1220 feet long, but only 44 feet wide.] The cupola of the _Halle au Bled_, or corn and flour market, is one hundred and twenty feet in diameter; it forms a perfect half circle, whose centre is on a level with the cornice, forty feet from the ground. The vault or dome is composed merely of deal boards, four feet long, one foot broad and an inch thick.[20] [Note 20: The inner diameter of the dome of St. Peter's, at Rome, 138 feet, which is the same size as that of the pantheon in Rome. St. Paul's in London 108. The Invalids in Paris 50.] Describing the church of _St. John of the Minstrels_, so called, because it was founded by a couple of fidlers, in 1330. _M. du Laure_ says, "Among the figures of saints with which the great door is decorated, one is distinguished who would play very well on the fiddle, if his fiddle-stick were not broken." There is a parcel-post as well as a letter penny-post in Paris. The salary of the executioner was eighteen thousand livres _per annum_; [21] his office was to break criminals on the wheel, and to inflict every punishment on them which they were sentenced to undergo. [Note 21: £750 sterling; I know not the present salary.] There are no longer any _Espions de Police_, or spies, employed by government. "That army of thieves, of cut-throats, and rascals, kept in pay by the ancient police, was perhaps a necessary evil in the midst of the general evil of our old administration. A body of rogues and traitors could be protected by no other administration than such a one as could only subsist by crimes and perfidy. Those were the odious resources of despotism. Liberty ought to make use of simple and open means, which justice and morality will never disavow." There is a school at the point of the isle of St. Louis, in the river _Seine_, to teach swimming; persons who chuse to learn in private pay four _louis_, those who swim among others, half that sum, or half-crown a lesson; if they are not perfect in that art in a season, (five summer months) they may attend the following season _gratis_. DRESS. INNS. THE common people are in general much better clothed than they were before the Revolution, which may be ascribed to their not being so grievously taxed as they were. An English Gentleman who has gone for many years annually from Calais to Paris, remarks, that they are almost as well dressed on working days at present, as they were on Sundays and holidays formerly. All those ornaments which three years ago were worn of silver, are now of gold. All the women of the lower class, even those who sit behind green-stalls, &c. wear gold ear-rings, with large drops, some of which cost two or three _louis_, and necklaces of the same. Many of the men wear plain gold ear-rings; those worn by officers and other gentlemen are usually as large as a half-crown piece. Even children of two years old have small gold drops in their ears. The general dress of the women is white linen or muslin gowns, large caps which cover all their hair, excepting just a small triangular piece over the forehead, pomatumed, or rather plaistered and powdered, without any hats: neither do they wear any stays, but only _corsets_ (waistcoats or jumps.) Tight lacing is not known here, nor yet high and narrow heeled shoes. Because many of the ladies _ci-devant_ of quality have emigrated or ran away, and that those which remain in Paris, keep within doors, I saw no face that was painted, excepting on the stage. Most of the men wear coats made like great-coats, or in other words, long great-coats, without any coat: this in fine weather and in the middle of summer made them appear to me like invalides. There is hardly any possibility of distinguishing the rank of either man or woman by their dress at present, or rather, there are no ranks to distinguish. The nation in general is much improved in cleanliness, and even in politeness. The French no longer look on every Englishman as a lord, but as their equal. The inns on the road from _Calais_ to _Paris_, are as well furnished, and the beds are as clean at present as almost any in England. At _Flixcourt_ especially, the beds are remarkably excellent, the furniture elegant, and there is a profusion of marble and of looking-glasses in this inn. The plates, dishes, and basons which I saw in cupboards, and on shelves in the kitchen, and which are not in constant use, were all of silver, to which being added the spoons and forks of the same metal, of which the landlord possesses a great number; the ladies and gentlemen who were with me there, going to and returning from Paris, estimated the value at, perhaps, a thousand pounds sterling. Now, if we allow only half this sum to be the value, it is, notwithstanding, considerable. Every inn I entered was well supplied with silver spoons, of various sizes, and with silver four pronged forks; even those petty eating-houses in Paris, which were frequented by soldiers and _sans-culottes_. There are no beggars to be seen about the streets in Paris, and when the chaise stopped for fresh horses, only two or three old and infirm people surrounded it and solicited charity, whereas formerly the beggars used to assemble in hundreds. I did not see a single pair of _sabôts_ (wooden-shoes) in France this time. The table of the peasants is also better supplied than it was before the revolution. ASSIGNATS. EXCEPTING the coins which I purchased at the mint in Paris, I did not see a piece of gold or silver of any kind; a few brass sols and two sols were sometimes to be found in the coffee-houses, and likewise _Mouneron's_ tokens. The most common _assignats_ or bills, are those of five _livres_, which are printed on sheets; each sheet containing twenty of such _assignats_, or a hundred _livres_; they are cut out occasionally, when wanted for change. I do not know that there are any of above a thousand _livres_. The lowest in value which I saw were of five _sols_, and these were of parchment. Those of five _livres_ and upwards, have the king's portrait stamped on them, like that on the coins. Besides the national _assignats_, which are current all over France, every town has its own _assignats_, of and under, but not above five _livres_; these are only current in such town and its neighbourhood. The _assignats_ of and above five _livres_ are printed on white paper, those which are under, are for the convenience of the lower class of people, of which few can read, printed on different coloured paper according to their value; for instance, those of ten _sols_ on blue paper, those of thirty on red, &c. though this method is not correctly adhered to. I had projected many excursions in the neighbourhood of Paris, which were all put a stop to, in consequence of the events of the tenth of August, of which I shall give a true and impartial narrative, carefully avoiding every word which may appear to favour either party, and writing not as a politician, but as a spectator. I had written many anecdotes, as well aristocratical as democratical, but as I was unable properly to authenticate some of them, and that others related to excesses which were inevitable, during such a time of anarchy, I thought it not proper to prejudice the mind of the public, and have accordingly expunged them all. I have only recounted facts, and the readers may form their own opinion. Some particulars relative to the massacre in August, 1572, are inserted to corroborate the description of the similar situation of Paris, in August, 1792, though not from similar causes. The execrable massacre above-mentioned was committed by raging fanatics, cutting the throats of their defenceless fellow-creatures, merely for difference in religious opinion. BATTLE AND MASSACRE AT THE TUILERIES. ON Thursday, the 9th of August, the legislative body completed the general discontent of the people, (which had been raised the preceding day, by the discharge of every accusation against _la Fayette_) by appearing to protract the question relative to the king's _déchéance_ (forfeiture) at a time when there was not a moment to lose, and by not holding any assembly in the evening. The fermentation increased every minute, in a very alarming manner. The mayor himself had declared to the representatives of the nation, that he could not answer for the tranquillity of the city after midnight. Every body knew that the people intended at that hour to ring the alarm-bell; and to go to the _château_ of the _Tuileries_, as it was suspected that the Royal Family intended to escape to Rouen, and it is said many trunks were found, packed up and ready for taking away, and that many carriages were seen that afternoon in the court-yard of the _Tuileries_. At eight in the evening the _generale_,(a sort of beat of drum) was heard in all the sections, the _tocsin_ was likewise rung, (an alarm, by pulling the bells of the churches, so as to cause the clappers to give redoubled strokes in very quick time. Some bells were struck with large hammers.) All the shops were shut, and also most of the great gates of the hotels; lights were placed in almost every window, and few of the inhabitants retired to their repose: the night passed however without any other disturbance; many of the members of the National Assembly were sitting soon after midnight, and the others were expected. _Mr. Petion_, the mayor, had been sent for by the king, and was then in the _château_; the number of members necessary to form a sitting, being completed, the _tribunes_ (galleries) demanded and obtained a decree to oblige the _château_ to release its prey, the mayor; he soon after appeared at the bar, and from thence went to the _commune_ (mansion-house.) It was now about six o'clock on Friday morning (10th) the people of the _fauxbourgs_ (suburbs) especially of _St. Antoine_ and _St. Marcel_, which are parted by the river, assembled together on the _Place de la Bastille_, and the crowd was so great that twenty-five persons were squeezed to death.[22] At seven the streets were filled with-armed citizens, that is to say, with _federates_ (select persons sent from the provinces to assist at the _Federation_, or confederacy held last July 14) from _Marseille_, from _Bretagne_, with national guards, and Parisian _sans-culottes_, (_without breeches_, these people have _breeches_, but this is the name which has been given to the mob.) The arms consisted of guns, with or without bayonets, pistols, sabres, swords, pikes, knives, scythes, saws, iron crows, wooden billets, in short of every thing that could be used offensively. [Note 22: According to the _Journal de la seconde legislature_, _seance de la nuit_ II _Août_.] A party of these met a false patrol of twenty-two men, who, of course, did not know the watch-word. These were instantaneously put to death, their heads cut off and carried about the streets on pikes (_on promena leurs têtes sur des piques._) This happened in _la Place Vendôme_; their bodies were still lying there the next day. Another false patrol, consisting of between two and three hundred men, with cannon, wandered all night in the neighbourhood of the _theatre français_: it is said they were to join a detachment from the battalion of Henri IV. on the _Pont-neuf_, to cut the throats of _Petion_ and the _Marseillois_, who were encamped on the _Pont St. Michel_ (the next bridge to the _Pont-neuf_) which caused the then acting parish assemblies to order an honorary guard of 400 citizens, who were to be answerable for the liberty and the life of that magistrate, then in the council-chamber. _Mandat_, commander-general of the National Guard, had affronted _M. Petion_, when he came from the _château_ of the _Tuileries_, to go to the National Assembly; he was arrested and sent to prison immediately. The insurrection now became general; the _Place du Carrousel_ (square of the _Carousals_, a square in the _Tuileries_, so called from the magnificent festival which Lewis XIV. in 1662, there gave to the queen and the queen-mother) was already filled; the king had not been in bed; all the night had probably been spent in combining a plan of defence, if attacked, or rather of retreat; soon after seven the king, the queen, their two children (the dauphin, seven years old, and his sister fourteen) Princess Elizabeth, (the queen's sister, about 50 years old) and the Princess _de Lamballe_, crossed the garden of the _Tuileries_, which was still shut, escorted by the National Guard, and by all the Swiss, and took refuge in the National Assembly, when the Swiss returned to their posts in the _château_. The alarm-bells, which were incessantly ringing, the accounts of the carrying heads upon pikes, and of the march of almost all Paris in arms; the presence of the king, throwing himself, as it were, on the mercy of the legislative body; the fierce and determinate looks of the _galleries_; all these things together had such an effect on the National Assembly, that it immediately decreed the suspension of Lewis XVI. which decree was received with universal applause and clapping. At this moment a wounded man rushed into the Assembly, crying, "We are betrayed, to arms, to arms, the Swiss are firing on the citizens; they have already killed a hundred Marseillois." This was about nine o'clock. The democrats, that is to say, the armed citizens, as beforementioned, had dragged several pieces of cannon, six and four pounders, into the _carousel_ square, and were assembled there, on the _quais_, the bridges, and neighbouring streets, in immense numbers, all armed; they knew the king was gone to the National Assembly, and came to insist on his _déchéance_ (forfeiture) or resignation of the throne. All the Swiss (six or seven hundred) came out to them, and permitted them to enter into the court-yard of the Tuileries, to the number of ten thousand, themselves standing in the middle, and when they were peaceably smoking their pipes and drinking their wine, the Swiss turned back to back, and fired a volley on them, by which about two hundred were killed;[23] the women and children ran immediately into the river, up to their necks, many jumping from the parapets and from the bridges, many were drowned, and many were shot in the water, and on the balustrades of the _Pont-royal_, from the windows of the gallery of the _Louvre_. [Note 23: This is asserted on the authority of all the French newspapers, and of several eye-witnesses. It will never be possible to know the exact truth, for the people here said to be the aggressors are all slain.--These Swiss had trusted that they would have been backed by the National Guard, who, on the contrary, took the part of the people, and fired on the Swiss (who ran into the château as soon as they had discharged their pieces) by which several were killed.] The populace now became, as it were, mad, they seized on five cannon they found in the court yard, and turned them against the château; they planted some more cannon on the _Pont-royal_ and in the garden, twenty-two pieces in all, and attacked the château on three sides at once. The Swiss continued their fire, and it is said they fired seven times to the people's once; the Swiss had 36 rounds of powder, whereas the people had hardly three or four. Expresses were sent several miles to the powder-mills, for more ammunition, even as far as _Essonne_, about twenty miles off, on the road to _Fontainebleau_. The people contrived however to discharge their twenty-two cannon nine or ten times.[24] From nine to twelve the firing was incessant; many waggons and carts were constantly employed in carrying away the dead to a large excavation, formerly a stone quarry, at the back of the new church _de la Madeleine de la ville l'Eveque_ (part of the _Fauxbourg St. Honoré_, thus called.) [Note 24: The balls did no other damage to the palace than breaking the windows, and leaving impressions in the stones, perhaps an inch in depth.] Soon after noon the Swiss had exhausted all their powder, which the populace perceiving, they stormed the _château_, broke open the doors, and put every person they found to the sword, tumbling the bodies out of the windows into the garden, to the amount, it is supposed, of about two thousand, having lost four thousand on their own side. Among the slain in the _château_, were, it is asserted, about two hundred noblemen and three bishops: all the furniture was destroyed, the looking-glasses broken, in short, nothing left but the bare walls. Sixty of the Swiss endeavoured to escape through the gardens, but the horse (_gendarmerie nationale_) rode round by the street of _St. Honoré_, and met them full butt at the end of the gardens; the Swiss fired, killed five or six and twenty horses and about thirty men, and were then immediately cut to pieces; the people likewise put the Swiss porters at the _pont-tournant_ (turning bridge) to death, as well as all they could find in the gardens and elsewhere: they then set fire to all the _casernes_ (barracks) in the _carousel_, and afterwards got at the wine in the cellars of the château, all of which was immediately drank; many citizens were continually bringing into the National Assembly jewels, gold, louis d'ors, plate, and papers, and many thieves were, as soon as discovered, instantly taken to lamp irons and hanged by the ropes which suspend the lamps. This timely severity, it is supposed, saved Paris from an universal pillage. Fifty or sixty Swiss were hurried by the populace to the _Place de Grêve_, and there cut to pieces. At about three o'clock in the afternoon every thing was tolerably quiet, and I ventured out for the first time that day.[25] [Note 25: The whole of the foregoing account is taken from verbal information, and from all the French papers that could be procured.] The _quais_, the bridges, the gardens, and the immediate scene of battle were covered with bodies, dead, dying, and drunk; many wounded and drunk died in the night; the streets were filled with carts, carrying away the dead, with litters taking the wounded to hospitals; with women and children crying for the loss of their relations, with men, women, and children walking among and striding over the dead bodies, in silence, and with apparent unconcern; with troops of the _sans-culottes_ running about, covered with blood, and carrying, at the end of their bayonets, rags of the clothes which they had torn from the bodies of the dead Swiss, who were left stark naked in the gardens.[26] [Note 26: Although I was not an eye-witness, I was however an ear-witness of the engagement, being only half a mile distant from it.] One of these _sans-culottes_ was bragging that he had killed eight Swiss with his own hand. Another was observed lying wounded, all over blood, asleep or drunk, with a gun, pistols, a sabre, and a hatchet by him. The courage and ferocity of the women was this day very conspicuous; the first person that entered the _Tuileries_, after the firing ceased, was a woman, named _Teroigne_, she had been very active in the riots at _Brussels_, a few years ago; she afterwards was in prison a twelvemonth at _Vienna_, and when she was released, after the death of the Emperor, went to _Geneva_, which city she was soon obliged to leave; she then came to _Paris_, and headed the _Marseillois_; she began by cleaving the head of a Swiss, who solicited her protection, and who was instantaneously cut in pieces by her followers. She is agreeable in her person, which is small, and is about twenty-eight years of age. Many men, and also many women, as well of the order of _Poissardes_ (which are a class almost of the same species and rank with our fishwomen, and who are easily distinguished by their red cotton bibs and aprons) as others, ran about the gardens, ripping open the bellies, and dashing out the brains of several of the naked dead Swiss.[27] [Note 27: At the taking of the Bastille, on the day of which only eighty-three persons were killed on the spot, though fifteen died afterwards of their wounds, these _Poissardes_ were likewise foremost in bravery and in cruelty, so much, that the Parisians themselves ran away from them as soon as they saw them at a distance. They are armed, some with sabres and others with pikes.] At six in the evening I saw a troop of national guards and _sans-culottes_ kill a Swiss who was running away, by cleaving his skull with a dozen sabres at once, on the _Pont-royal_, and then cast him into the river, in less time than it takes to read this, and afterwards walk quietly on. The shops were shut all this day, and also the theatres; no coaches were about the streets, at least not near the place of carnage; the houses were lighted up, and patroles paraded the streets all night. Not a single house was pillaged. The barracks were still in flames, as well as the houses of the Swiss porters at the end of the gardens; these last gave light to five or six waggons which were employed all night in carrying away the dead carcases. STATUES PULLED DOWN. NEW NAMES. THE next day, Saturday the 11th, about an hundred Swiss who had not been in the palace placed themselves under the protection of the National Assembly. They were sent to the _Palais Bourbon_ escorted by the Marseillois, with _Mr. Petion_ at their head, in order to be tried by a court-martial. The people were now employed, some in hanging thieves, others with _Mademoiselle_ _Teroigne_ on horseback at their head, in pulling down the statues of the French Kings. The first was the equestrian one in bronze of Lewis XV. in the square of the same name, at the end of the _Tuileries_ gardens; this was the work of _Bouchardon_, and was erected in 1763. At the corners of the pedestal were the statues, also in bronze, of strength, peace, prudence, and justice, by _Pigalle_. Many smiths were employed in filing the iron bars within the horse's legs and feet, which fastened it to the marble pedestal, and the _sans-culottes_ pulled it down by ropes, and broke it to pieces; as likewise the four statues above-mentioned, the pedestal, and the new magnificent balustrade of white marble which surrounded it. The next was the equestrians statue of _Lewis XIV._ in the _Place Vendôme_, cast in bronze, in a single piece, by Keller, from the model of Girardon; twenty men might with ease have sat round a table in the belly of the horse; it stood on a pedestal of white marble of thirty feet in height, twenty-four in length, and thirteen in breadth. This statue crushed a man to pieces by falling on him, which must be attributed to the inexperience of the _pullers-down_. The third was a pedestrian statue of _Lewis XIV._ in the _Place Victoire_, of lead, gilt, on a pedestal of white marble; a winged figure, representing victory, with one hand placed a crown of laurels on his head, and in the other held a bundle of palm and olive branches. The king was represented treading on _Cerberus_ and the whole group was a single cast. There were formerly four bronze slaves at the corners of the pedestal, each of twelve feet high; these were removed in 1790. The whole monument was thirty-five feet high, and was erected in 1689, at the expence of the Duke _de la Feuillade_, who likewise left his duchy to his heirs, on condition that they should cause the whole group to be new gilt every twenty-five years; and who was buried under the pedestal. On Sunday the 12th, at about noon, the equestrian statue, in bronze, of _Henry IV._ which was on the _Pont-neuf_, was pulled down; this was erected in 1635, and was the first of the kind in Paris. The horse was begun at Florence, by _Giovanni Bologna_, a pupil of _Michael Angelo_, finished by _Pietro Tacca_, and sent as a present to _Mary of Medicis_, widow of _Henry IV._ Regent. It was shipped at _Leghorn_, and the vessel which contained it was lost on the coast of Normandy, near _Havre de Grace_, the horse remained a year in the sea, it was, however, got out and sent to Paris in 1614. This statue used to be the idol of the Parisians; immediately after the revolution it was decorated with the national cockade; during three evenings after the federation, in 1790, magnificent festivals were celebrated before it. It was broken in many pieces by the fall; the bronze was not half an inch thick, and the hollow part was filled up with brick earth. The fifth and last was overthrown in the afternoon of the same day; it was situated in the _Place Royale_; it was an equestrian statue in bronze, of Lewis XIII. on a vast pedestal of white marble; it was erected in 1639. The horse was the work of _Daniel Volterra_; the figure of the king was by _Biard_. The people were several days employed in pulling down all the statues and busts of kings and queens they could find. On the Monday I saw a marble or stone statue, as large as the life, tumbled from the top of the _Hôtel de Ville_ into the _Place de Grêve_, at that time full of people, by which two men were killed, as I was told, and I did not wish to verify the assertion myself, but retired. They then proceeded to deface and efface every crown, every _fleur de lis_, every inscription wherein the words king, queen, prince, royal, or the like, were found. The hotels and lodging-houses were compelled to erase and change their names, that of the _Prince de Galles_ must be called _de Galles_ only; that of _Bourbon_ must have a new name; a sign _au lys d'or_ (the golden lily) was pulled down; even billiard tables are no longer _noble_ or _royal_. The _Pont-royal_, the new bridge of _Lewis XVI._ the _Place des Victoires_, the _Place Royal_, the _Rue d'Artois, &c._ have all new names, which, added to the division of the kingdom into eighty-three departments, abolishing all the ancient noble names of _Bourgogne, Champagne, Provence, Languedoc, Bretagne, Navarre, Normandie, &c._ and in their stead substituting such as these: _Ain, Aube, Aude, Cher, Creuse, Doubs, Eure, Gard, Gers, Indre, Lot, Orne, Sarte, Tarne, Var, &c._ which are the names of insignificant rivers; to that of Paris into forty-eight new sections, and to all titles being likewise abolished, makes it very difficult for a stranger to know any thing about the geography of the kingdom, nor what were the _ci-devant_ titles of such of the nobility as still remain in France, and who are at present only known by their family names. BEHEADING. DEAD NAKED BODIES. BUT to return to those "active citizens, whom aristocratic insolence has stiled _sans-culottes, brigands_."[28] [Note 28: These are the words of a French newspaper, called, _Journal universel, ou Revolutions des Royaumes, par J. P. Audarin_. No. 994, for Sunday, 12 August, 4th year of Liberty, under the motto of Liberty, Patriotism and Truth.] On Sunday, they dragged a man to the _Hôtel de Ville_, before a magistrate, to be tried, for having stolen something in the _Tuileries_ as they said. He was accordingly tried, searched, and nothing being found on him, was acquitted; _n'importe_, said these citizens, we must have his head for all that, for we caught him in the act of stealing. They laid him on his back on the ground, and in the presence of the judge, who had acquitted him, they sawed off his head in about a quarter of an hour, with an old notched scythe, and then gave it to the boys to carry about on a pike, leaving the carcase in the justice-hall.[29] [Note 29: This is inserted on the authority of a lady, a native of the French West-India isles, who resided in the same hotel with me, and who, with two gentlemen who attended her, were witnesses to this transaction, which they told to whoever chose to listen.] At the corner of almost every chief street is a black marble slab, inserted in the wall about ten feet high, on which is cut in large letters, gilt, _Loix et actes de l'autorité publique_ (laws and acts of the public authority) and underneath are pasted the daily and sometimes hourly decrees and notices of the National Assembly. One of these acquainted the citizens, that _Mandat_ (the former commander-general of the national guards) had yesterday undergone the punishment due to his crimes; that is to say, the people had cut off his head. During several days, after _the day I_ procured all the Paris newspapers, about twenty, but all on the same side, as the people had put the editors of the aristocratic papers, _hors d'état de parler_ (prevented their speaking) by beheading one or two of them, and destroying all their presses. They, about this time, hanged two money changers (people who gave paper for _louis d'or_, crowns, and guineas) under the idea that the money was sent to the emigrants. On the Saturday morning, at seven, I was in the _Tuileries_ gardens; only thirty-eight dead naked bodies were still lying there; they were however covered where decency required; the people who stript them on the preceding evening, having cut a gash in the belly, and left a bit of the shirt sticking to the carcase by means of the dried blood. I was told, that the body of a lady had just been carried out of the _Carousel_ square; she was the only woman killed, and that probably by accident. Here I had the pleasure of seeing many beautiful ladies (and ugly ones too as I thought) walking arm in arm with their male friends, though so early in the morning, and forming little groups, occupied in contemplating the mangled naked and stiff carcases. The fair sex has been equally courageous and curious, in former times, in this as well as in other countries; and of this we shall produce a few instances, as follows: COURAGE AND CURIOSITY OF THE FAIR SEX. MASSACRE IN 1572. ON the 24th of August, St. Bartholemew's day, 1572, the massacre of the Hugonots or or Calvinists, began by the murder of Admiral _Coligni_ the signal was to have been given at midnight; but _Catherine of Medicis_, mother to the then King Charles IX. (who was only two and twenty years of age) _hastened the signal more than an hour_, and endeavoured to encourage her son, by quoting a passage from a sermon: "What pity do we not shew in being cruel? what cruelty would it not be to have pity?" In _Mr. Wraxall's_ account of this massacre, in his _Memoirs of the Kings of France of the Race of Valois_, compiled from all the French historians, he says, _Soubise_, covered with wounds, after a long and gallant defence, was finally put to death under the queen-mother's windows. The ladies of the court, from a savage and horrible curiosity, went to view his naked body, disfigured and bloody. "An Italian first cut off _Coligni's_ head, which was presented to _Catherine of Medicis_. The populace then exhausted all their brutal and unrestrained fury on the trunk. They cut off the hands, after which it was left on a dunghill; in the afternoon they took it up again, dragged it three days in the dirt, then on the banks of the _Seine_, and lastly carried it to _Montfaucon_ (an eminence between the _Fauxbourg St. Martin_ and the _Temple_, on which they erected a gallows.) It was here hung by the feet with an iron chain, and a fire lighted under it, with which it was half roasted. In this situation the King and several of the courtiers went to survey it. These remains were at length taken down privately in the night, and interred at _Chantilly_." "During seven days the massacre did not cease, though its extreme fury spent itself in the two first." "Every enormity, every profanation, every atrocious crime, which zeal, revenge, and cruel policy are capable of influencing mankind to commit, stain the dreadful registers of this unhappy period. More than five thousand persons of all ranks perished by various species of deaths. The _Seine_ was loaded with carcases floating on it, and _Charles_ fed his eyes from the windows of the _Louvre_, with this unnatural and abominable spectacle of horror. A butcher who entered the palace during the heat of the massacre, boasted to his sovereign, baring his bloody arm, that he himself had dispatched an hundred and fifty." "_Catherine of Medicis_, the presiding demon, who scattered destruction in so many shapes, was not melted into pity at the view of such complicated and extensive misery; she gazed with savage satisfaction on the head of _Coligni_ which was brought her." _Sully_ only slightly mentions this massacre of which he was notwithstanding an eye-witness, because he was but twelve years of age. _Mezeray_ gives the most circumstantial account of it; he says, "The streets were paved with dead or dying bodies, the _portes-cochêres_, (great gates of the hotels) were stopped up with them, there were heaps of them in the public squares, the street-kennels overflowed with blood, which ran gushing into the river. Six hundred houses were pillaged at different times, and four thousand persons were massacred with all the inhumanity and all the tumult than can be imagined." "Among the slain was _Charles de Quelleue Pontivy_, likewise called _Soubise_, because he had married _Catherine_, only daughter and heiress of _Jean de Partenay_ Baron _de Soubise_: this Lady had entered an action against him for impotence; His naked dead body being among others dragged before the _Louvre_, there were ladies curious enough to examine leisurely, if they could discover the cause or the marks of the defeat of which he had been accused." _Brantome_, in his memoirs of _Charles IX._ says, "As soon as it was day the king looked out of the window, and seeing that many people were running away in the _fauxbourg St. Germain_, he took a large hunting _arquebuse_, and shot at them many times, but in vain, for the gun did not carry so far."[30] [Note 30: The king was shooting from the _Louvre_, and the _Fauxbourg_ St. _Germain_ is on the other side of the river.] "He took great pleasure in seeing floating in the river, under his windows, more than four thousand dead bodies." A French writer, _Mr. du Laure_, in a Description of Paris, just published, says, "About thirty thousand persons were killed on that night in Paris and in the country; few of the citizens but were either assassins or assassinated. Ambition, the hatred of the great, of a woman, the feebleness and cruelty of a king, the spirit of party, the fanaticism of the people, animated those scenes of horror, which do not depose so much against the French nation, at that time governed by strangers, as against the passions of the great, and the ill-directed zeal of the religion of an ignorant populace." A few more modern instances of female fortitude are given in a note.[31] [Note 31: On the 28th of March, 1757, _Damiens_, who stabbed _Lewis_ XV. was executed in the _Place de Grêve_, four horses were to pull his arms and legs from his body: they were fifty minutes pulling in vain, and at last his joints were obliged to be cut: he supported these torments patiently, and expired whilst the tendons of his shoulders were cutting, though he was living after his legs and thighs had been torn from his body; his right hand had previously been cut off. I was in Paris in 1768, and then, and at various times since have been assured by eye-witnesses, that almost all the windows of the square where the execution was performed were hired by ladies, at from two to ten _louis_ each. Mr. Thicknesse in his "_Year's journey through France and Part of Spain_," in a letter dated _Dijon_,_ in Burgundy_, 1776, mentions a man whom he saw broke alive on the wheel by, "the executioner and _his mother_, who assisted at this horrid business, these both seemed to enjoy the deadly office." I have formerly given an account of the Spanish ladies enjoying the barbarities of the bull-fights.] MISCELLANIES. NUMBER OF SLAIN. ON that same Saturday morning the dead Swiss, the broken furniture of the palace, and the burning woodwork of the barracks, were all gathered together in a vast heap, and set fire to. I saw this pile at twenty or thirty yards distance, and I was told that some of the women who were spectators took out an arm or a leg that was broiling, to taste: this I did _not see_, but I see no reason for _not believing it_. On the afternoon of this day, the coffee-houses were, as usual, filled with idle people, who amused themselves with playing at the baby-game of _domino_. No coaches except fiacres (hackney-coaches) were now to be seen about the streets; the theatres continued on the following mornings to advertise their performances, and in the afternoon fresh advertisements were pasted over these, saying, there would be _relâche au theatre_ (respite, intermission.) A few days after, some of the theatres advertised to perform for the benefit of the families of the slain, but few persons attended the representation, through fear; because the _sans-culottes_ talked of pulling down all the theatres, which, they said, _gataient les moeurs_, (corrupted the morals) of the people. Ever since the 10th, I knew the barriers had been guarded, to prevent any person from leaving Paris, but I now was informed that that had been the case, three days previous to that day, which may seem to imply that some apprehensions were formed, that violent measures would take place somewhere. About this time the officers were obliged by the _sans-culottes_ to wear worsted instead of gold or silver shoulder-knots; and no more _cloudy_ carriages were to be seen in the streets. Portraits of the king, with the body of a hog, and of the queen, with that of a tygress were engraven and publicly sold. A book was published, entitled, _Crimes of Louis_ XVI. the author of which advertised that he was then printing a book of the _Crimes of the Popes_, after which he intended to publish the crimes of all the potentates in Europe. As I could not get out of Paris, to make any little excursions to nursery and other gardens, to _Vincennes_, to _Montreuil_, and as the inhabitants of Paris were too much alarmed to retain any relish for society, (public places out of the question,) I was desirous of getting away as soon as possible, and applied first to the usual officers for a pass, which was refused. That of _Lord Gower_ (the ambassador) was at this time of no use, but it became so afterwards, as shall be mentioned. On the Monday (13th August) I wrote a letter of about ten lines to the President of the National Assembly, soliciting a pass. This I carried myself, and sent it in by one of the clerks. The President immediately read the letter, and the Assembly decreed a pass for me; but the next day, when I applied for it to the _comité de surveillance_, (committee of inspection) it, or they, knew nothing of the matter. I then went to the _mairie_ (mayoralty house) but in vain. Here an officer of the national guard who had been present during the whole of the battle of the 10th, said to me, "La journeé a _eté un peu forte, nous avons eu plus de quinze cens des notres de tués_," (the day was rather warm; we have had more than fifteen hundred of our own people killed.) This was confirmed by many more of the officers there, with whom I had a quarter of an hour's conversation, and they all estimated the number of the slain at above six thousand, which may probably be accounted for in the following manner, but a demonstration is impossible. Some assert that there were eight hundred Swiss soldiers in the _château_ of the _Tuileries_; others but five hundred: let us take the medium of six hundred and fifty. They had, as every one allows, six and thirty charges each, and they fired till their ammunition was expended. This makes above three and twenty thousand shot, every one of which must have taken place, on a mob as thick as hailstones after a shower: but allowing for the Swiss themselves, who were killed during the engagement, which diminishes the number of shot, and then allowing likewise, that of two thousand persons who were in the palace, we here say nothing of the remaining thirteen or fourteen hundred, most of whom were firing as well as they could, perhaps it may not appear exaggerated to say, that out of above twenty thousand shot, four thousand must have taken place mortally; and this includes the fifteen hundred of the national guard, which were _certainly_ known to be missing. Of the other two thousand five hundred slain, the number could not so correctly be ascertained, as they consisted of citizens without regimentals or uniform, and of _sans-culottes_, none of whom were registered. All the persons in the palace were killed; of these, few, if any, were taken away immediately, whereas when any of the adverse party were killed, there were people enough who were glad of the opportunity of escaping from this slaughter, by carrying away the corpse. We must then reflect on the number of waggons and carts employed all night in the same offices, and then we shall see great reason to double the number of the slain, as has been done in various publications. No idea of this number could be formed by seeing the field of battle, because several bodies were there lying in heaps, and of the others not above two or three could be seen at a time, as the streets were after the engagement filled with spectators, who walked among and over the carcases. Of the feelings of these spectators, I judge by my own: I might perhaps have disliked seeing a single dead body, but the great number immediately reconciled me to the sight. BREECHES. PIKES. NECESSARY PASSPORTS. ANOTHER particular relative to the _sans-culottes_ is their standard, being an old pair of breeches, which they carry on the top of a pike, thrust through the waistband: the _poissardes_ likewise use the same standard, though it so happened that I never saw it. On the memorable 20th of June last, a pike-man got on the top of the Tuileries, where he waved the ensign, or rather shook the breeches to the populace. The pike-staves for the army are of different lengths; of six, nine, and twelve feet: by this means three ranks of pike-bearers can use their arms at once, with the points of the three rows of pikes evenly extended. The letter which I had written to the President, notwithstanding its eventual ill success, caused several English persons jointly to write a somewhat similar letter; in which, after having represented that their _wives_ and children _wanted_ them, they said, they hoped their reasons would appear _vrai-semblables_, or have the semblance of truth. The Assembly on hearing this burst into a laugh, and passed on to the order of the day. On the 16th I carried a passport from _Lord Gower_ to the office of _Mr. le Brun_, the minister for foreign affairs; here I was told to leave it, and I should have another in its stead the next day. The next day I applied for it, and was told, no passports could be delivered. The matter now appeared to me to become serious, as the courier who had carried the account of the affair of the 10th to London was not yet returned, and that rumours were spread, that the English in Paris were almost all _grands seigneurs & aristocrates_; so that I saw only two probable means of safety; one of which was, to draw up a petition to the National Assembly, in behalf of all the British subjects, to get it signed by as many as I could find, and who might chuse to sign it, and to carry it to the Assembly in a small body, which might have been the means of procuring a pass; and in case this was refused, the other plan would have been for all the British to have incorporated themselves into a _Legion Britannique_, and offered their services according to the exigence of the case.[32] This petition was accordingly, on the 18th, drawn up by a member of the English Parliament; translated into French, and carried about to be signed; when at the bankers we fortunately met with a person who informed us, that our passes were ready at the moment, at _Mr. Le Brun's_: thither we went; I obtained my pass at two o'clock afternoon, the petition was torn and given to the winds; I took a hackney coach that instant, to carry me to the _Poste aux chevaux_, ordered the horses, and before three I was out of the barriers of Paris. [Note 32: Before, and on the 10th of August, there were not above thirty British travellers in Paris, but after that day, in less than a week it was supposed that above two thousand had from all parts of the kingdom resorted to the capital, in order to obtain passports to get away.] Here follows a copy of my passport. At the top of the paper is an engraving of a shield, on which is inscribed _Vivre libre ou mourir_ (live free or die,) supported by two female figures, the _dexter_ representing _Minerva_ standing, with the cap of liberty at the end of a pike; the _sinister_, the French constitution personified as a woman sitting on a lion, with one hand holding a book, on which is written _Constitution Française, droits de l'homme_, and with the other supporting a crown over the shield, which crown is effaced by a dash with a pen. Then follows: _La nation, la loi, le roi_; this is also obliterated with a pen, and instead is written: _Liberté, Egalité_ _Au nom de la nation_. À tous officiers, civils et militaires, chargés de surveiller et de maintenir l'ordre public dans les differents departemens du Royaume, et à tous autres qu'il appartiendra il est ordonné de laisser librement passer _T---- anglais retournant en angleterre, porteur d'un certificat de son ambassadeur_.[33] Sans donner ni souffrir qu'il lui soit donné aucun empéchement, le present passe-port valable pour _quinze jours_ seulement. Donné à _Paris_ le 16 aoust l'an 4 de la liberté _Vû à la Mairie le_ 17 _aoust_ 1792. _L'an 4e de la liberté._ _Petion_. [Note 33: What is here in italics is in manuscript in the original. There is no _Monsieur_ nor _Madame_, the word _anglais_ showing the gender of the person to whom the pass was granted, and is sufficient for the purpose.] Here is an impression, in red wax, of the arms of Paris, which are _gules_, a three-mast ship in full sail, a chief _azur_, _semé_ with _fleurs de lis, or_, the shield environed with oak branches and the cap of liberty as a crest. The inscription underneath is _Mairie de Paris_, 1789. On one side of this seal is an escutcheon with the arms of France, crowned, and over the crown there is a dash with a pen. And underneath, Gratis. Le ministre des affaires etrangeres. _Vu passer Abbeville en Le Brun_. _Conseil permanent le_ 20 _Aoust_ 1792. Signed by a municipal officer. And on the back of the passport, _Vû au comité de la section poissonniere_ _ce 18 aoust_ 1792. Signed by two commissaries at the barriers of St. Denis, at Paris. _Permis d'embarquer à Calais le 22 aoust_ 1792. Signed by a Secretary. MISCELLANIES. DANCING. POULTRY. TAVERNS. WIG. SOME days before the demolition of the statue of _Henri_ IV. on the _Pont-neuf_, there was a flag placed near that statue, on which was painted _citoyens la Patrie est en danger_; (citizens, the mother-country is in danger) and it still remained there when I came away. On the Monday after _the_ Friday, I saw a paper on the walls, among those published by authority, wherein a person acquainted the public, that on the preceding Saturday, in consequence of some suspicions which had been entertained of his principles, his house had been visited by above thirty thousand persons;[34] and that notwithstanding masons and smiths had been employed in pulling down, breaking open and scrutinizing, the people had _found nothing_ to criminate him, and he had _found nothing_ missing in consequence of their scrutiny. I had the pleasure of reading this aloud to an assemblage of elderly ladies, not one of whom could see to read it, as it was placed out of their _focus_, or too high, as they said. [Note 34: _Poco más o menos_,(a little more or less) as the Spaniards say when they are complimented with _Viva V. S. mil años_ (may you live a thousand years.)] Before the 10th I saw several dancing parties of the _Poissardes_ and _sans-culottes_ in the beer-houses, on the _Quai des Ormes_ and the _Quai St. Paul_, and have played the favourite and animating air of _ça ira_, on the fiddle, to eight couple of dancers; the ceiling of these rooms (which open into the street) is not above ten feet high, and on this ceiling (which is generally white washed) are the numbers 1 2 to 8, in black, and the same in red, which mark the places where the ladies and gentlemen are to stand. When the dance was concluded I requested the ladies to salute me (_m'embrasser_) which they did, by gently touching my cheek with their lips. But a period was put to all these amusements by the occurrences of the 10th; after which day, most of my time was employed in endeavouring to obtain a passport. On the _Quai des Augustins_, at six or seven in the morning, may be seen a market of above a quarter of a mile long, well stocked with fowls, pigeons, ducks, geese and turkies: these birds are all termed _Volaille_. Rabbits are likewise sold in this market. I also saw here a few live pheasants, red-legged partridges and quails in cages, for sale. I did not see a _louis d'or_ this time in Paris, it is probable that a new golden coin may be struck of a different value and name, and _without_ the name of the die-engraver. There are few, if any, _tables d'hôte_ (ordinaries) in Paris at present, except at the inns. I have not seen any for many years, because the hour of dining at them is about one o'clock, and that is customary to be served in those coffee-houses which are kept by _restaurateurs and traiteurs_ (cooks) after the English manner, at small tables, and there are bills of fare, with the prices of the articles marked. The most celebrated of these houses is called _la Taverne de Londres_, in the garden of the _Palais-Royal_: here are large public rooms, and also many small ones, and a bill of fare printed on a folio sheet, containing almost every sort of provision, (carp, eels, and pickled salmon are the only fish I have seen there.) An Englishman may here have his beef-steak, plum-pudding, Cheshire cheese, porter and punch just as in London, and at about the same price, (half the price as the exchange then was.) Thirty-five sorts of wine are here enumerated. That of _Tokay_ is at two _livres_ for a small glass, of which a quart-bottle may contain about fifteen. _Rhenish, Mountain, Alicante, Rota,_ and red _Frontignan_ at 6 livres. _Champagne, Claret, Hermitage,_ 4 _l._ 10_f._ _Port_ 3_l._ 10_f._ _Burgundy_ 3_l._ _Porter_ 2_l._ 10_f._ Most of the dishes are of silver, and I dined at two or three other taverns where all the dishes and plates were of silver. The barbers or hair-dressers have generally written on their sign _Ici on rajeunit: rajeunir_ means properly to colour or die the hair, but in this instance it only expresses, here people are made to look younger than they are, by having their hair dressed. I saw a peruke-maker's sign representing the fable of _the man and his two wives_, thus: A middle-aged gentleman is fitting in a magnificent apartment, between an old lady and a young one, fashionably dressed. His head is entirely bald, the old lady having just pulled out the black hairs, as the young one did the grey: and Cupid is flying over his head, holding a nice periwig ready to put on it. EXTENT, POPULATION, &C. OF FRANCE. THE authorities for a great part of what follows are _Mr. Rabaut's_ History of the Revolution, 1792; _Mr. du Laure's_ Paris, 1791, _Geographie de France_, 1792, second edition, and _Voyage dans les Departemens de la France_, 1792. France is a country which extends nine degrees from North to South, and between ten and eleven from East to West, making six and twenty thousand square leagues, and containing twenty-seven millions of people. In 1790, "There were four millions of armed men in France; three of these millions wore the uniform of the nation." The number of warriors, or fighting men is very considerably increased since that time. "In this immense population is found at least three millions of individuals of different religions, whom the present catholicks look upon with brotherly eyes. The protestant and the catholick now embrace each other on the threshold where _Coligni_ was murdered; and the disciples of _Calvin_ invoke the Eternal after their manner, within a few paces[35] of the balcony from whence _Charles IX._ shot at his subjects." [Note 35: The church of _St. Louis du Louvre_ is at present made use of as a place of worship by protestants. All the church lands are reverted to the nation. In a speech which the Abbé _Maury_ made in the National Assembly, about two years ago, he estimated the value of the property belonging to ecclesiasticks in France at two thousand two hundred millions of livres, _(Deux milliards deux cens millions_) near ninety-two millions sterling, the interest or produce of which, at 3-1/4 per cent. per annum, amounts to the three millions beforementioned. France suffices to itself; it contains all the indigenous productions of Europe. The French hope, that the number of foreigners who will resort to their country, after it shall be more settled, will abundantly compensate the loss of the emigrants.] The capital, when compared to London, for extent is as 264 to 195, (nearly as 7 to 5) that is to say, according to the calculation beforementioned (p. 28) Paris stands on 6-99/121 square miles of ground, and London on 5-35/968. It contains a million and 130 thousand inhabitants, which is fifty thousand more than it did two years ago; these formerly inhabited _Versailles_, and left it at the time the court did. _Lyon_ contains 160 thousand persons. _Marseille_, the most populous, in proportion to the size, of any city in Europe, contains, in a spot of little more than three miles in circumference, 120 thousand persons, which includes about 30,000 mariners on board of the ships in the harbour.[36] [Note 36: I was there in 1768, and again in 1783 and 1784, above four months. People of all nations are there seen in their proper habits; all languages are spoken; it is a free port, and the staple of the Levant trade, as well as of the West-Indian commerce.--There are regular vessels which sail monthly to Constantinople.] _Bordeaux_, 100,000. The population of many more cities is given in a note,[37] besides which there are others, the number of whose inhabitants I cannot learn, such as _Toulouse, Toulon, Brest, Orange, Blois, Avignon_, &c. [Note 37: _Thousand_ must be read after all the following figures. _Dunkerque_ - 80|_Besançon_ - - 26|_La Rochelle_ - 16 _Rouen_ - - - 73|_Aix_- - - - - 25|_Poitiers_ - - 16 _Lille_ - - - 65|_Bourges_- - - 25|_Auxerre_ - - 16 _Nantes_- - - 60|_Tours_ - - - 22|_Perpignan_- - 16 _Nismes_- - - 50|_Arras_ - - - 22|_Chalons_ - - 15 _Strasbourg_- - 46|_Limoges_- - - 22|_Beauvais_ - - 15 _Amiens_- - - 44|_Abbeville_- - 20|_Riom_ - - - 15 _Metz_ - - - 40|_Verdun_ - - - 20|_Nevers_- - - 14 _Caen_ - - - 40|_Arles_- - - - 20|_Boulogne_ - - 12 _Orleans_ - - 40|_Dijon_- - - - 20|_Bayonne_ - - 12 _Rennes_- - - 35|_Valenciennes_ 20|_Soissons_ - - 12 _Nancy_ - - - 34|_St. Malo_ - - 18|_Angoulême_- - 11 _Montpellier_ - 32|_Beziers_- - - 18|_Pau_- - - - 11 _Reims_ - - - 30|_Sedan_- - - - 18|_Alby_ - - - 10 _Clermont_ - - 30|_Carcassonne_- 18|_Alais_ - - - 10 _Troyes_- - - 30|_Havre de Grace_18|_Grasse_- - - 10 _Grenoble_ - - 30|_Moulins_- - - 17|_Versailles_ - 10] The nation gains five millions sterling _per annum_ by the reduction of its expences, and by not having any unnecessary clergymen to maintain,[38] and the forfeited estates of the emigrants are estimated at immense sums.[39] [Note 38: By a decree in November, 1789, no curate is to have less salary than fifty _Louis_ per annum, not including his house and garden. Many of the French at present think that clergymen should be retained like physicians, and paid by those only who want them. By this means, they say, religious quarrels would be avoided; of all quarrels the most absurd, because nobody can understand any thing about the matter. "Personne n'y entend rien."] [Note 39: The civil list mentioned in page 62, was according to the old establishment. In January, 1790, the king was requested to fix a sum for the civil list himself, and in June following he sent a letter to the National Assembly, demanding five and twenty millions of livres. It was decreed that instant.] The heavy taxes on salt (_la gabelle_) and on Tobacco are suppressed, and those two articles are allowed to be objects of commerce.[40] [Note 40: Salt, which was formerly sold at fourteen _sols_ per pound, is now at a single sol. Tobacco is permitted to be cultivated by "whoever will."] "No city in the world can offer such a spectacle as that of Paris, agitated by some great passion, because in no other the communication is so speedy, and the spirits so active. Paris contains citizens from all the provinces, and these various characters blended together compose the national character, which is distinguished by a wonderful impetuosity. Whatever they will do is done." Witness the taking of the _Bastille_ in a single day, which had formerly withstood the siege of a whole army during three and twenty days. And witness the 10th of August. I have been frequently told by persons in England, that a regular and disciplined army may easily crush a herd of raw and inexperienced rabble, such as they supposed the French were, although ten times more numerous. This may possibly be the event in small numbers, but if we state the case with large numbers, for instance fifty thousand men of the greatest courage, and of the most perfect discipline, and who are fighting for pay, without any personal motive, against five hundred thousand men, whom we shall suppose utterly ignorant of the art of war, but who conceive they are fighting for their liberty and their country, for their families and their property, and then reflect on the courage and bravery of these very men, on their impetuosity, their _acharnement_, or desperate violence in fight, which may be compared to the irresistible force of water-spouts, and of whirlwinds, it may not appear too partial to conjecture, that such persons may perceive some little reason for suspending, if not for altering, their opinion,[41] and may now estimate the degree of danger this nation may apprehend from the attacks of extraneous powers, _provided its own people are unanimous_. [Note 41: I saw many thousands of these men (from my windows) on their way to the _Tuileries_, early on _the_ Friday morning; their march was at the rate of perhaps five miles an hour, without running or looking aside; and this was the pace they used when they carried heads upon pikes, and when they were in pursuit of important business, rushing along the streets like a torrent, and attending wholly and solely to the object they had in view. On such occasions, when I saw them approaching, I turned into some cross street till they were passed, not that I had any thing to apprehend, but the being swept along with the crowd, and perhaps trampled upon. I cannot express what I felt on seeing such immense bodies of men so vigorously actuated by the same principle. I saw also many thousands of volunteers going to join the armies at the frontiers, marching along the _Boulevarts_, almost at the same pace, accompanied as far as the Barriers by their women, who were carrying their muskets for them; some with large sausages, pieces of cold meat, and loaves of bread, stuck on the bayonets, and all laughing, or singing _ça ira_. The French writers themselves say, "In all popular commotions the women have always shown the greatest boldness."] EMENDATIONS AND ADDITIONS. RETURN TO CALAIS. THE paragraph at the bottom of page 11, is intended to be merely descriptive, but not ludicrous, so that the reader is requested to expunge the word _night_. In the enumeration of the Bishopricks (page 14) I unaccountably omitted the ten metropolitan sees, which are those of _Paris, Lyon, Bourdeaux, Rouen, Reims, Besançon, Bourges, Rennes, Aix_ and _Toulouse_: Thus there are eighty-three bishopricks, or one for each department. After what is said (in page 89) relative to the division of the country, there should, in justice, be added: "To the confused medley of _Bailiwicks, Seneschal-jurisdictions, Elections, Generalities, Dioceses, Parliaments, Governments, &c._ there succeeded a simple and uniform division; there were no longer any provinces, but only one family, one nation: France was the nation of eighty-three departments." Notwithstanding this, I regret the ancient _names_ of the provinces. The old _Atlas_ of France is become useless, as the whole of its geography is altered. The land is at present divided into nine regions, and each of these into nine departments; Paris and the country about ten miles around (24 square leagues) forms one, and the Island of _Corsica_ another department. In the modern _Atlas_, after every new name, is put _ci-devant_, and then the old name, thus: _Region du Levant, departement de la côte d'or, ci-devant Bourgogne_. I called one day, after dining in a tavern, for a bottle of wine of the _Departement de l'Aube, Region des Sources,_ the landlord consulted his _Atlas_, and then brought the bottle of _Champagne_ I required. It will be some time before foreigners are sufficiently familiarized to the new phrases which must be used for _Gascon, Normand, Breton, Provençal, Picard, &c._[42] [Note 42: The author of the _Voyage de France_ says, "The actual division of France may appear to geographers as defective as the ancient one. Perhaps artists should have been more consulted. Then there would not have been shown in it so much of the spirit of party, which, in great assemblies, too often smothers the voice of reason, nor so many effects of the ignorance of political measurers, who lightly stride over barriers which nature has opposed to them, and who appear to have forgotten the necessity of communications."] The following paragraphs are taken from the new _Voyage de France_. "During fourteen hundred years, priority in follies, in superstition, in ignorance, in fanaticism, and in slavery, was the picture of France. It was just, therefore, that priority in philosophy, and in knowledge, should succeed to so many odious pre-eminences." "The French people, to whom liberty is now new, are like the waves of the sea, which roll long after the tempest has ceased: and of which the agitation is necessary to depose on the shores the scum which covers them." "The confusion inseparable from a new order of things, has necessarily caused Paris to swarm with vagabonds; so that far from being surprized that some crimes have been committed, we ought rather to wonder that they are not more frequent." "When _Louis XVI._ was brought back to Paris (25 June, 1791) the inhabitants of _fauxbourgs_ pasted a placard (advertisement) against the walls, saying, 'Whoever applauds him shall be cudgelled, whoever attacks him shall be hanged.' An awful silence was observed." After the account of the Pantheon (p. 28) should be added: In April, 1791, the body or _Mirabeau_ was deposited here; and in July following that of _Voltaire_. Soon after this it was decreed, that _Rousseau_ had merited the honours due to great men, but that his ashes should remain where they were. To the lift of engravings of the _Maiden_ must be added another, prefixed to a little tract, called _Gibbet-Law_. By _premier An de l'Egalité_,(first year of Equality) it is not to be understood that every person in France is equal, but that as they have no sovereign, no person is above, but every person is equally under the protection of the law. This matter has been both misunderstood and misrepresented in England. On the 18th I was out of the barriers of Paris by three in the afternoon, and proceeded to _Chantilly_, where we[43] arrived at nine, and remained for the night. We were informed that two hundred _Sans-culottes_ and _Marseillois_ had walk'd here from Paris, (28 miles) two or three days before, had pulled down an equestrian statue, (probably that of the Constable _de Montmorenci_) cut off a man's head, carried it about the streets on a pike, _à la mode de Paris_, caught and eat most of the carp which had been swimming in the ponds which surround the palace above a hundred years, were then in the stables and intended to return to Paris the next day. They did no other damage to the building than breaking the _Condé_ arms, which were carved in stone. [Note 43: The Gentleman who came with me, an English and an Irish Gentleman, with their Ladies, in their own chaises. There is an octavo Description of _Chantilly_ just published, with a map, and twenty _mezzotinto_ views of the gardens.] The night of the next day we passed at _Flixcourt_, and that of the Monday at the Post-house, at the foot of the hill on which _Boulogne_ is situated. On Tuesday the 21st we arrived at Calais in the morning; the wind was so violent and unfavorable that we were detained here till the 24th, when we failed, and had a passage of seven hours to Dover. There was nothing to remark on the road from Paris to Calais, except that the harvest was not yet got in, for want of hands, that the corn was _lodged_, and sowing itself again; that every person and thing was as quiet as if nothing had happened in Paris, and that no one knew the particulars of what _had_ happened. At Calais many person wore trowsers, after the fashion of the _Sans-culottes_. EPILOGUE. SOON after my return to London the two following paragraphs appeared in the newspapers. "T. has been over to France, botanizing, and has gotten what he went to seek." "I'll tell you, my Lord Fool, From this Nettle danger we pluck the _Flower_ safety." This I insert merely on account of the Bêtise of the quotation. The Dutch inscription on sticks of sealing-wax would have been as applicable. "T. the Tourist was the first to fly from Paris on the prospect of the tumults of the 10th of August. He is now writing a History of the Bloody Murders which distinguished that day." I suspect that the ingenious Genius who wrote this knew he was mistaking as to the former part of this paragraph. He may say _Trippist_ now. I should not have seen either of these, had they not been pointed out to me by some of my "damned good-natured friends." I am in hopes of seeing a number of very pretty criticisms on the foregoing pages; many passages were written purposely to catch critics, as honey catches gnats; if just, they shall be attended to, should there be another edition; and if they are merely absurd, they shall be collected, and faithfully presented to the gentle reader. I have told the truth, and have not "set down aught in malice." THE END. *** There are a few trifling typographical errors in the foregoing sheets, which I shall leave to the correction of the reader, as not one of them affects the sense. 
20464	----	[Illustration: Typical French Soldier in Uniform.] A Journey Through France in War Time By JOSEPH G. BUTLER, JR. Member of The American Industrial Commission to France. THE PENTON PRESS CLEVELAND 1917 [Illustration: inscription by author.] Copyright, 1917, by Joseph G. Butler, Jr., Youngstown, O. One hundred copies of this edition have been printed of which this is number 39 _Second Edition_ TO THE MEN AND WOMEN OF FRANCE WHO AMID INEXPRESSIBLE SORROWS AND INFINITE CARES EXTENDED A GRACIOUS WELCOME TO THE AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL COMMISSION AND TO THE AUTHOR THIS BOOK IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED ***** CONTENTS CHAPTER I Origin of the Purpose of the Trip. CHAPTER II Crossing the Atlantic. CHAPTER III Bordeaux and Paris. CHAPTER IV Meeting England's Premier. CHAPTER V The Birthplace of Lafayette. CHAPTER VI A Great Munitions Plant. CHAPTER VII Art and Architecture of Aries. CHAPTER VIII Along the Mediterranean. CHAPTER IX Towns in Southern France. CHAPTER X The Creusot Gun Works. CHAPTER XI Approaching the Front. CHAPTER XII Within Sound of the Guns. CHAPTER XIII The Story of Gerbeviller. CHAPTER XIV On the Main Front. CHAPTER XV Reims and the Trenches. CHAPTER XVI Back to Paris. CHAPTER XVII On the Way Home--England. CHAPTER XVIII On the Broad Atlantic. CHAPTER XIX The French Steel Industry in War Time. CHAPTER XX Where War Has Raged. CHAPTER XXI General Joffre. CHAPTER XXII The Work of Reconstruction. CHAPTER XXIII French Business Organizations. CHAPTER XXIV The Carrel Method of Treating Wounds. CHAPTER XXV A City in an Army's Path. CHAPTER XXVI Some impressions of France and the French. ILLUSTRATIONS Typical French Soldier in Uniform Photograph of Commissioners, Taken on Train Leaving Paris for Limoges The Author's Passport Autograph Signatures of the Commission Grand Theatre, Bordeaux. Closed Until the War Ends Miniature French Flag Carried by the Author Through France. The Waving of This Flag by an American Aroused Much Enthusiasm Lloyd George, Who Says "England is Fighting a Battle for Civilization" Miss Winifred Holt, "Keeper of the Light House of France" Ancient Bridge at Limoges--Built by the Romans Two Thousand Years Ago and Still in Use Tapestry Workers at Aubusson Lafayette's Deathbed, With Commission's Flag and Flowers Monastery of St. Michael, at le Puy Silk Tapestry Menu Used at Dinner to the Commission at St. Etienne Col. Rimailho With 155-mm. Gun (upper) and Famous 75-mm. Gun (lower) Perfected by Him Women Employed in Munitions Factories Arlesiennes--Types of Southern France Old Roman Arena at Aries--Still Used for Bull Fights and Other Amusements Shore of the Mediterranean Near Marseilles. In the distance Chateau D'If, Made Famous by Dumas Types From the French Provinces Monastery of Chartreuse New 520-mm. Gun, Carrying Projectile Seven Feet in Length and Weighing 3,100 lbs., Seen at Creusot Works German Prisoners Passing Through the Village of St. Etienne The Lion of Belfort Battlefield of La Chipotte, Showing Monument and Markers on Graves Ruins of Gerbeviller Sister Julie Cathedral at Nancy German Trenches Captured by the French The Reims Cathedral Before its Destruction Ruins at Reims. Upper and Lower Plates--The Cathedral. Middle Plate--The Archbishop's Palace Key of Archbishop's Palace at Reims and Bone From Twelfth Century Tombs Opened by German Shells Trenches Visited by the Commission King Albert's Address to the Belgians Photograph of King Albert of Belgium, with the Royal Autograph French Marines Operating 75-mm. Gun on Shipboard Nancy--Place Stanislas Ruins of Village--St. Die The Prefecture at Reims After Bombardment Portrait in Tapestry--General Joffre Ruins at Nancy Trenches Occupied by French Soldiers Proclamation Posted in Reims Just Before the French Fell Back to the Marne Arrival of Wounded Soldiers at Chalons, on the Marne Proclamation by the Mayor of Reims, Issued on the day the Germans Entered that City, September 4, 1914 First Order From the Invaders Second German Proclamation Citizens Warned of Danger Citizens Warned that Hostages May be Hanged Postal-card Painted by Artist Soldier in French Trenches FOREWORD Of all that has been written, or is to be written, by Americans concerning the tragedy overwhelming the Old World, much must naturally be descriptive of conditions in France, since that country is, among those affected by military occupation, most accessible and most closely in sympathy with American ideals and American history. While the ground covered by these pages may be, therefore, not unfamiliar, the motives prompting their preparation are probably unique. It has been undertaken at the request of friends, but not entirely for their pleasure; since the author hopes that those who read it may see in the patriotic devotion and courage of the French people something of the spirit that should animate our country, whose aspirations toward liberty the French aided even before they were themselves free. Written in hours snatched for the task amid the press of other duties, these pages endeavor to present a simple, intimate and personal story of experiences enjoyed and impressions gained under most unusual circumstances and herein shared with my friends as one of the most interesting incidents of a long and busy life. * * * A Journey Through France in War Time ORIGIN OF THE PURPOSE OF THE TRIP In the Autumn and Winter of 1915, a body of distinguished and representative Frenchmen visited the United States, their object being to make an investigation of conditions here, having in mind the great need of France in war munitions, the steel in ingot and bar form very much needed for the manufacture of war materials, and the numerous other commodities necessary for prosecution of the war, which had been in progress more than a year. The finances of France were also very much in evidence in the minds of the visitors. The names and occupation of this French Trade Commission appear following: Chairman--Monsieur Maurice Damour, Secretary of the French Deputies' Commission on Appropriations. Monsieur Jacquez Lesueur, Delegate of the Ministry of Agriculture. Monsieur L. Trincano, Director of the Horological School of Besancon. Monsieur Jacquez de Neuflize, Banker. Monsieur M. Chouffour, of the Credit Francais. Monsieur L. Vibien, Director of the National Bank of Credit. Monsieur E. Delassale-Thiriez, Secretary of the Syndicate of Spinners. Monsieur M. Saladin, Delegate of the Creusot Factory. Monsieur Joseph Guinet, Delegate of the Chamber of Commerce of Lyons. This Commission visited various parts of the United States, principally the great iron and steel centers, Pittsburgh, Youngstown and Chicago. Much attention was shown the party in their journey through our land. An introductory luncheon to this French Commission was given by The American Manufacturers Export Association at the Hotel Biltmore, New York, Tuesday, November 23rd, 1915. This luncheon was attended by a representative number of American manufacturers and bankers, and the object of the visitors fully discussed. On this occasion it was suggested by Mr. E. V. Douglass, the efficient secretary of the Export Association, that a return visit of Americans would be in order and would assist in accomplishing the object of the visitors. This suggestion was followed up early in 1916 and took form later on in the appointment and selection of the members of "The Commission Industrielle Americaine en France", the expedition being organized and financed under the direction of The American Manufacturers' Export Association, located at 160 Broadway, New York City. This association has an active membership of over five hundred manufacturers, firms and corporations engaged in the production of all kinds of fabricated materials, from steel to women's lingerie. The president of the association, Mr. E. M. Herr, of Pittsburgh, closely associated with the Westinghouse interests, was the moving spirit in creating and selecting the organization and formulating the plans and policy of the Industrial Commission, even to the extent of selecting the chairman. The membership of the commission, their occupations, business and professional status, is given herewith: M. W. W. Nichols, President; Vice President "American Manufacturers' Export Association." President, Adjount du Conseil d'Administration "Allis-Chalmers Mfg. Co., Inc.," New York, N. Y. M. J. G. Butler, Jr., Fabricant de fer et d'acier, Vice-president "Brier Hill Steel Company", Youngstown, Ohio. M. A. B. Farquhar, President "A. B. Farquhar Co., Ltd., York, Pa." Vice-president "National Chamber of Commerce of the United States." M. G. B. Ford, New York, Urbaniste-Conseil. M. S. F. Hoggson, Conseil-Expert en matieres et materiaux de construction; President "Hoggson Bros. & Co., Inc." New York, N. Y. M. F. J. Le Maistre, Ingenieur-Chimiste-Conseil E. I. du Pont de Nemours et Co., Wilmington, Del. M. J. R. Mac Arthur, President Mac Arthur Bros., Co., New York, N. Y.; Ex-Sous-Secretaire du Department d'Etat, Washington, D. C. M. Le Dr. C. O. Mailloux, Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur, Ingenieur-Electricien, New York, N. Y., Ancien President "American Institute of Electrical Engineers." M. C. G. Pfeiffer, Vice-president "Geo. Borgfeldt et Co.," New York, Importateurs et Exportateurs; Member of "National Chamber of Commerce of the United States." M. J. E. Sague, Poughkeepsie, N. Y., Ingenieur-Mecanicien. Ancien New York Public Service Commissioner; Ancien Vice-president "American Locomotive Co.", New York, N.Y. M. E. A. Warren, Expert en matieres et precedes textiles; Vice-president "Universal Winding Co.", Boston, Mass. M. E. V. Douglass, Secretaire General; Secretaire "American Manufacturers' Export Association." M. E. Garden, Secretaire Francais. [Illustration: Photograph of Commissioners Taken on Train Leaving Paris for Limoges.] This roster is taken from the previously mentioned booklet, "The Commission Industrielle Americaine en France." The object of the Commission is carefully set forth in the opening, in French, and for the benefit of readers who speak English only, a translation follows: The American Industrial Commission in France, organized under the auspices of the American Manufacturers' Export Association, with the cordial approval of France and of the United States, principally for a sympathetic study of industrial and commercial conditions in France. At the time of the visit to America by the French Commercial Commission in the winter of 1915-1916, the idea was proposed to different American industrial and commercial associations, to organize a similar mission for the purpose of returning this visit to France. This idea was taken up by the American Manufacturers' Export Association, which, incorporated in 1911, numbers among its membership more than five hundred organizations of great importance in the American industrial world. This organization is co-operative in character, with the general idea of developing and maintaining commercial relations between the United States and foreign countries. The importance of the proposed mission becomes more apparent through a detailed analysis of its program, which comprises a study of the most practical means of utilizing the resources and experience of America for the reconstruction which France desires to make of its communities and of its industries, during and after the war. The Association has succeeded in organizing a commission made up of men well qualified to render the service desired. The American Industrial Commission in France will strive to establish an active co-operation with its French associates, with a view of developing the commercial and industrial relation already existing between the two nations and to make them more cordial and more satisfactory on both sides. The Association hopes to succeed through the work of the Commission in contributing in some measure to this happy result, and at the same time strengthen the friendship and sympathy which has existed between these two nations for more than a century. A circular issued by The American Manufacturers' Export Association is of interest in this connection and was sent to members under consideration and to manufacturers, soliciting subscriptions for the expenses of the Commission. This circular is herein reproduced. * * * AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL COMMISSION TO FRANCE August-September, 1916 OBJECTS Primarily, to make a thorough and technical investigation of present conditions in France looking to the reconstruction and re-organization of her communities and industries which will take place during and after the war to an extent unparalleled in history, and further, to determine the best and most complete manner in which the United States may contribute from her resources to accomplish these results; to arrange for largely increased purchases of French products and fully reciprocal commercial relations. In the cause of a thorough neutrality, it should be distinctly understood that this undertaking is based upon cordial proposals which came to us unsolicited, and that we stand ready to do likewise in all other directions under similar conditions. METHODS Commissioners of known technical experience--members of the American Manufacturers' Export Association and others--will be chosen to investigate the present industrial situation in France in order to aid by American brains, energies and facilities the rehabilitation of a structure seriously damaged, and in many instances destroyed, by the ravages of war. Extraordinary and unprecedented facilities have been granted by the French Government to aid the Commission in its endeavors, affording every assurance of a successful outcome. An official account of the Commission's visit, with a summary of conclusions regarding each phase of its investigation, will later be reported and published for general distribution under the authority of the American Manufacturers' Export Association. REPRESENTATION It is intended to include all the industries of the United States concerned in French trade under the following classifications: I. Prime Movers: (Steam, Gas and Oil Engines; Pumping Engines, Steam and Hydraulic, Turbines, Condensers, Generators and all other adjuncts.) Heavy Machinery: (Rolling Mills, Iron and Steel Products, etc.) II. Machine-Tools, Wire, Transmission and Textile Machinery. III. Milling Machinery: (Flour and Saw Mills; Cement, Milling, Smelting, Agricultural and Road Machinery.) IV. Electrical Apparatus. V. Transportation: (Locomotives, Cars, Naval Vessels, etc.) VI. Importers: (Textile, including Laces; Dry-Goods of all kinds; Porcelains, Groceries and Wines; Toys.) VII. Synthetic Products based on chemical processes; Chemicals, Explosives, etc. VIII. Bankers. IX. Factory Architects, Engineers and Contractors. PERSONNEL Commissioners of broad experience in their respective lines will be chosen--men of national reputation who will lend dignity and standing to the enterprise and guarantee a result both conclusive and effective. ITINERARY With the co-operation of the French authorities an itinerary has been tentatively prepared covering the principal industrial cities and sections of France and consuming, together with ocean passages approximately 60 days. A definite program is being arranged with the cordial aid of French chambers of commerce and the great economical associations in the localities to be visited, and this work is now proceeding with the authority and full approval of the French Government. Railway and other transportation throughout France will be provided for the American Commission by the Government. The proposed visit has aroused intense interest on every side, and extensive plans have been made for the reception and instructive entertainment of the American delegation. MANAGEMENT One of the commissioners will be appointed to take general charge of the Commission on behalf of the American Export Association and it will be the duty of this representative to collaborate with the French authorities, appointed for this purpose, in the consummation of plans; to assume executive charge of the work of the Commission; and to organize the details necessary to the preparation of the official report to be issued for the full benefit of American industry. To insure absolute regularity and efficiency of progress the Commission as a body, will be subject to this Commissioner General. * * * My connection as a member of the Commission came about through the suggestion made to Mr. E. M. Herr, by Mr. James A. Farrell, President of the United States Steel Corporation, Mr. E. A. S. Clarke, President of the Lackawanna Steel Company, and Mr. Willis Larimer King, Vice-president of The Jones & Laughlin Steel Company. I was not the first choice, however, as a number of gentlemen had been previously considered and had either declined the honor or had been eliminated from the list of candidates. The pressure upon me from numerous friends in the steel business to accept the task was persistent and continuous, and upon receipt of a telegram from Mr. Farrell, telling me, within a week of the proposed sailing of the Commission, that if I did not accept, the great iron and steel industries of the United States would be unrepresented, the matter was settled and I decided that it was due to my fellow manufacturers, many of whom had been kind to me over a long period of time and who had helped me in many ways, that I should accept the position. I notified Mr. Herr to that effect just one week prior to the date of sailing. [Illustration: The Author's Passport.] I had intended to take an active part in the political campaign pending and such a trip involved keen disappointment in this connection, as I felt that a change of the administration was necessary for the best interests of the country. I had voted for every Republican president from Lincoln to Taft and wanted very much to be somewhat instrumental in the election of Mr. Hughes. The McKinley Birthplace Memorial needed my attention, as well as other matters of a public nature, to say nothing about the various business enterprises in which I am still active. All these obligations were temporarily abandoned and hurried preparations were made for the long and, as thought by many, dangerous journey. II. CROSSING THE ATLANTIC The French Line was selected by the sponsor for the trip as being the safest route and somewhat as a compliment to the French nation. Passage was engaged for the entire party on the Lafayette, booked to sail from New York, August 26th, 1916, at 3 P. M., destination, the French Port Bordeaux. I reached New York Friday morning, August 25th, and immediately set about getting my passport properly vised by the French Consul. This was accomplished with less difficulty than one would imagine and the precious document finally made ready. A luncheon was given the Commission at the Hotel Biltmore at noon by Mr. E. M. Herr, which gave the members their first opportunity to become somewhat acquainted. Addresses were made by Mr. Herr and others connected with the launching of the enterprise. We were told to be neutral, and this was emphasized by the chairman from the day of sailing until the journey was over. I received this admonition with a decided mental reservation. It impressed me as being incongruous and entirely out of place for a delegation of Americans to plan a visit to France and not be in accord with that sorely stricken people. It occurred to me also, then and there, that if the Commission expected to accomplish its object it would be necessary to show a genuine sympathy with the Allied cause, and I acted on this theory during the entire journey. A majority of the members cherished the same sentiments, which most of them managed to conceal with more or less success. Arriving at the dock of the Compagne General Transatlantique, soon after noon on Saturday, August 26th, an inspection of the luggage was made. This was a tedious and thorough process, requiring the unpacking and repacking of all the contents of the trunks and valises, thereby insuring the absence of dynamite, bombs and other destructive material. Numerous devoted friends were on hand to say good bye and "bon voyage", but they were permitted only on the dock. Passports were carefully examined by a group of inspectors and the voyagers were permitted to go on board the waiting steamer. The members of the Commission were next grouped together, photographed and motion-pictured, thus beginning the publicity considered necessary for the success of the enterprise. The departure of the Lafayette was a stirring affair. Promptly at three o'clock P. M. the vessel moved away from her moorings, amidst the din of the band, the waving of flags, the whir of the movie machine, the blowing of whistles and the cheers of friends of the passengers. Soon after sailing the members of the Commission were formally introduced to each other and, strange to relate, with but a single exception, no two of the party had ever met before beginning the journey. It was discovered that several of the commissioners--myself not among the number, spoke excellent French. This proved a great advantage to the French-speaking members during the journey and, incidentally, to the members who understood English only. Among the passengers aboard and attached to the Commission was Mr. Harrison Reeves, a noted war correspondent, formerly connected with The New York Sun. He had been several times at the Front in France in a representative capacity, had lived a number of years in France, spoke and wrote the French language fluently and has a fine personality. His presence was much appreciated, his knowledge of recent events in France and his large acquaintance with men of affairs proving invaluable to the commissioners. On Monday, August 28th, a meeting of the Commissioners was called for organization and consultation. At this meeting various committees were agreed upon and appointed by the chairman. It was also arranged that daily sessions were to be held and the work of the commission laid out so far as possible in advance. The chairman had prepared an address outlining the duties of the Commission, which is here reproduced. * * * Aboard Steamship "Lafayette" En-route to France, August 28th, 1916. To the Members of the American Industrial Commission to France. Gentlemen: We are bound on an errand of constructive friendship. Through the encouragement of the authorities of France and the public spirit of American business men, we are enabled to go on this mission of good will and service. France, in her griefs and her joys, is always a land of inspiration; she is the classic creator and promoter of the arts which make for civilization. In many ways American life is the richer because France exists. What greater service can a representative company of thinking Americans render to their land than to visit and touch at first hand the sources of so much that is valuable to the world, and to carry home lessons and messages which may easily be potent in forming stronger ties in the old time intimate relationship between our country and France. Primarily, we go, then, to learn in meeting our oversea friends face to face, and, if our errand succeeds, to be of any service possible. The great question then becomes: how can we serve best? By keeping our eyes, ears, minds and spirits open and alert to the facts and the possibilities founded on such facts which unfold before us in the course of our visit. Our trip has been announced as an investigation or survey of the industrial situation in France. Our mission appears to be to examine the present economic life and activities in France, and, in a study of such life as we find it, endeavor to ascertain what the future is likely to bring forth for industrial France. It is obvious that an intelligent examination of the rich economic development of France must yield valuable byproducts of observation and instruction. The human values in this economic structure are of fundamental importance; civil, social and general economic progress proceeding from the French economic effort will be of wide interest to us. Undoubtedly in the coming years France will make extraordinary strides in industrial progress. She is planning--indeed has already under way, many projects of manufacture, transportation, housing, labor-conservation and municipal life; projects of deep interest and importance to every American business man and citizen. It may be our special privilege to be taken behind the scenes of this tremendous expansion, see some of the beginnings and, if we are fortunate, to make such contribution as France may desire from the good will, experience and certain peculiar knowledge we can offer for her use in any way that may enable her to attain the end she seeks. In this commission we represent something more than a body of men who have been selected because of special distinction in fields of their own. Each commissioner touches large circles of interest and capacity. If the opportunity comes to us to indicate to French business up-builders how to come into sympathetic working relations with the enterprise and progressive affairs of our own country, we shall achieve the high purpose of our Commission. (Signed) W. W. NICHOLS, Chairman of the Commission. * * * Before leaving New York a handsome booklet had been prepared and printed. The brochure contained the names of the commissioners, their public records, halftone portraits and a carefully prepared statement of the objects of the expedition. Twenty-five hundred copies were printed and were to be delivered on board the Lafayette by the printer. After sailing, it was discovered by a thorough search that the much needed booklets were not on board. These documents were for distribution after our arrival in France and were sorely missed. Subsequently the booklet was produced in Paris, but in somewhat different form, and it was near the end of the journey before the duplicate copies were ready for distribution. The loss of the American made edition was a serious handicap. A word or two about the personnel of the Commission. Mr. Nichols, the chairman, is a man about sixty with a grave, clerical appearance, formerly a professor or teacher and at one time superintendent of the Chicago Telephone Company. A man of various business experiences, at present connected with the Allis Chalmers Company in its New York office. He is excessively cautious and delivered a daily lecture on neutrality, fearing evidently that some of the members might break away from his idea of being strictly neutral and thus thwart or defeat the objects of the Commission. Mr. Nichols is thoroughly honest and conscientious; he had the success of the venture very much at heart and labored from his viewpoint to that end, priding himself in his broken French. Mr. John R. MacArthur was a member of the Philippine Commission, is a fine French scholar, a ready conversationalist in both English and French, and has a keen sense of humor. He was a constant help to the non-French speaking members of the Commission. Dr. Mailloux is an electrical engineer of established reputation and large experience. He had been in previous commissions to all parts of the world; a thorough French scholar, he had lived many years in France and had done much work for the French Government. His knowledge of the French people was invaluable to some of his fellow commissioners but was not utilized to its full extent. Mr. Edward A. Warren, of Boston, represented the textile industry and is well posted in that line. He was the modest man of the commission, rarely asserting himself and deferring too much to the views of his companions. He is possessed of rare good common sense, but, as stated, kept himself too much in the background, thereby lessening his influence in the work of the commission. Mr. James A. Sague, at one time vice-president of The American Locomotive Company; is a technically educated man, genial and companionable, and was a useful personage on the commission. Mr. A. B. Farquhar, is a real veteran of the Civil War, nearly eighty years of age but possessing remarkable physical vigor. He was the friend of Lincoln, heard the Gettysburg address delivered, saved his town (York, Pennsylvania) from destruction by the Confederates, and had much to do with the reconstruction period after the War. He labored under the difficulty of defective eyesight, this somewhat impairing his usefulness on the Commission. Mr. N. B. Hoggson, a gentleman of infinite jest, genial and persuasive; a great mixer and constant worker, proved a very useful member of the commission in diving after facts and making notes thereof. Mr. Geo. B. Ford, a well known architect of the firm of Geo. B. Post & Company, New York, was a rather quiet undemonstrative member, but a worker and investigator in his particular line. His observations and recommendations should have great weight in the work reconstructing and rebuilding the destroyed portions of France. Mr. F. J. LeMaistre, a chemical engineer, quite scientific; not particularly unselfish in his dealings with his fellow commissioners, was nevertheless a useful member of the commission, contributing much to its success. He is connected with the duPont Powder Company in an important capacity. His chemical knowledge came into good play in the journeyings of the Commission. Mr. C. G. Pfeiffer was, physically, the giant of the Commission. An exporter and importer, a splendid French scholar, utilized on all occasions when a knowledge of French was needed; a hard, conscientious worker, quite close to the chairman and of decided use to the head of the Commission from start to finish--he frequently steered the ship from shallow shoals and dangerous rapids. Mr. E. V. Douglass, the efficient secretary of the Commission, is entitled to much commendation. His work was heavy and unending. To look after a body of men, many of whom he had never previously met; to deal with their idiosyncrasies and at times somewhat unreasonable demands, and come through with success, was no mean task. Mr. Douglass lived in France and had a wide acquaintance. His knowledge of the French language was of very great service. I think all members of the Commission will unite in saying; "Well done good and faithful servant." Mr. Emile Garden, the French secretary of the Commission, was very helpful to Mr. Douglass as well as to the chairman. Mr. Harrison Reeves, a well known writer and newspaper correspondent, had special charge of the publicity work of the Commission and was present and took part in all the meetings of the Commissioners, a trusted attache of the enterprise. Monsieur Henri Pierre Roche, a French soldier, on leave of absence, one of the editors of the Paris Temps, was also a valuable attache. He accompanied the commission on its travels and returned with the commissioners to America for the express purpose of translating into French, for final distribution in France, the report of the Commission. Our first news from home came by wireless on Tuesday, August 29th. It disclosed that Germany was reaching out for Rumania. We also got more or less news about the railroad troubles. At one of our meetings Mr. Nichols presented a letter which Governor Herrick had written to him and which proved to be quite useful. We found, wherever we travelled abroad, that the name of Governor Herrick was a household word. This letter is reproduced as follows:-- * * * August 24th, 1916. Mr. W. W. Nichols, The American Manufacturers' Export Association, 50 Church St., New York, N. Y. My dear Mr. Nichols:-- It gives me great pleasure to take advantage of your kind invitation to send by the American Industrial Commission of the American Manufacturers' Export Association, a message to Industrial France. France has met in a way that evokes the admiration of the whole world, even of her enemies, the recurring emergencies of this greatest of wars. The patriotic self-sacrifice, the valor, the uncomplaining endurance, the ingenuity which the French people have shown during these two years of war reveal what is in truth the "birth of a new nation". To an extent which scarcely seemed possible, France has discovered within herself the resources of men and materials with which to meet the demands of the struggle. Europe has learned many important lessons, not only in military science but also in industrial efficiency, since 1914. She has much to impart to the United States in these matters. Yet such has been the wide-spread destruction of men and property that France, and indeed all Europe, must needs call upon other countries after the war for assistance in rehabilitating her industrial and commercial life. France will need to draw upon our stores of food until all her fields are again producing; she will need our materials for reconstruction where war has brought waste and desolation; she will need our machines and implements to carry on the manifold pursuits of agriculture, manufacturing and commerce. To France, as to all the countries where war is causing destruction, America opens her vast stores of goods. The American Industrial Commission will be doing service not only to Europe and to America but to all humanity, if it can discover the ways by which the wealth that nature has so lavishly showered upon the New World, may be most effectively poured out for the restoration of the Old World. Very sincerely yours, (Signed) MYRON T. HERRICK. * * * The time on the boat was largely occupied in meetings of the commissioners and the formulation of plans for the work in hand; committees were appointed and a great deal of work done. Among the various discussions, the subject of people living to a great age in Bulgaria was brought up. Specific instances were noted; one, a pair of Bulgarian twins both of whom lived to be one hundred and twenty years of age and both died on the same date. It was suggested that the two oldest members of the Commission, Mr. Farquhar and myself, should emigrate to Bulgaria and take a fresh start. The Lafayette had, mounted on its stern, one of the favorite French guns known as a 75-millimeter. The captain told us he had orders to fire on the Deutschland if the submarine happened to turn up. The first officer, under instruction from the captain, showed the operation of the gun to the commissioners. This was very interesting; everything was done except to fire off the gun; all the maneuvers were gone through and we discovered on the lower deck enough shells to fight a good sized battle. On Saturday, previous to landing, a bazaar was held on the boat for the benefit of the French hospitals. This was a very successful affair; contributions were made or supposed to be made by all the passengers. Among other things, I donated a quart bottle of champagne. This was sold at auction, the first bid was one dollar, made with the understanding that the last bid was to be no higher, but was to get the champagne. These bids continued until the bottle finally brought seventy-five dollars. It turned out to be a very good article with all that. We were also informed before entering port that we were protected by two submarine destroyers. [Illustration: Autograph Signatures of the Commission.] We discovered on arising, Sunday morning, September 3rd, that we were in the Bay of Biscay and two cruisers were circling around and gradually escorting us into the port of Bordeaux. We were told subsequently that the wireless apparatus has been disconnected and we had been chased by a submarine. The first land seen was the shore of Spain, the course of the vessel having been diverted on account of pursuit by the submarine. At four P. M. on Sunday a commission from Bordeaux came out in a tug boat to meet us. This delegation consisted of the prefect of Bordeaux district, the mayor of the city and other notables. They boarded the boat and we entertained them with a dinner party. We reached the Bordeaux dock about ten o'clock on Sunday evening, but did not land until the following morning. III. BORDEAUX AND PARIS Upon going ashore, we discovered on the docks a number of stalwart laborers. We wondered why they were not in the army, but were told they were Spaniards. The docks were covered with motor trucks from Cleveland, piles of copper bars, and also very large quantities of munitions and barbed wire made by The Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company and the American Steel & Wire Company. We also saw on the docks steel bars furnished by our own Brier Hill Steel Company. We were first impressed by the very large number of women employed. We visited several telegraph offices and all were "manned" exclusively by women. We also saw women driving large army trucks and milk carts, and women selling newspapers, some of them anywhere from seventy to eighty years of age. Newsboys are apparently unknown in France. We were given a reception by the Bordeaux Chamber of Commerce, and quite an address was delivered by the president. We then visited the docks, which are extensive. The improvements contemplated will make Bordeaux one of the great world ports. In going about the streets we were struck by the number of women in mourning; in fact I can hardly recall any women, except the servants in the hotel, who were not in mourning. The shop windows were filled with mourning goods and people passing on the streets were either women in mourning or soldiers home on leave of absence, many of them crippled. We were next taken to the prison camp where the prisoners of war were held. We happened to reach it when the prisoners were having a siesta. There were about four thousand in the camp, some hired out to contractors. We talked to some of these contractors, who in turn had talked with the prisoners, and were told that a great many of them were such voluntarily; that is to say, they were very glad to surrender when the opportunity presented. The prisoners were mostly Germans, but there were some Austrians and a few Bavarians. The French people never speak of them as Germans; they always call them "Boches", which, rendered in English, means vandal. They were fat and healthy and apparently contented. [Illustration: Grand Theatre, Bordeaux. Closed until the War Ends.] In the evening at Bordeaux a banquet was given in honor of Monsieur Gaston Doumergue, Minister of Colonies. All the commissioners were invited. On my left was Monsieur Etienne Hugard, Vice-president of the Chamber of Commerce and a soldier who had been in battle within a week previous. On my right sat Monsieur G. Chastenet, Senateur de la Gironde. Very choice wines were served and the champagne was reserved for the last. There was a speech by the Mayor and a response by the Minister of Colonies. We were given information as we went along and some of this I will record. We were told that a great many submarines had been captured by the French in nets. The popular impression is that when captured the submarines are left under water six or seven days, then brought up to the surface and the bodies of the officers and seamen, who in the meantime have died, are either burned or buried. The submarine is then manned by a French crew and thus turned into the French service. We made some inquiries in regard to the labor situation and we were informed that before the war a common laborer received four francs per day, about eighty cents of our money, and that they are now receiving five francs. The women received two francs before the war and they are now receiving three. There are no labor unions in Bordeaux or in the vicinity. We had here our first visit from newspaper correspondents. A number of important Paris papers were represented, with the New York Herald, the Chicago Tribune and other leading American papers. We met the general of the Gironde and the marine official. We were told that at any of these functions we were not to mention the names of the officials to whom we were introduced, and this enabled us to talk quite freely. One of the generals whom I met at this banquet said that the war would end in December, 1917. On Tuesday, September 5th, the Bordeaux Fair was dedicated. The commission was invited and we took part in the exercises. These fairs are an annual event in many parts of France. There is a very large theatre in Bordeaux, which has not been opened since the war. We were given an invitation to enter it. It is certainly finer than any theatre I had seen previously. We were then taken to the celebrated wine vaults of Bordeaux, owned by J. Calvert & Co. and Bardin & Gustier. Some of these wines date back to the early part of the last century and the vintages are all the way from five to ninety years old. There were sixty thousand casks of wine stored and about ten million bottles of champagne. The money value of the stocks is very large. We were told that America was one of the best customers for these high grade wines. In the evening we attended a reception to the Minister of Colonies at Ville de Bordeaux. This was a very enjoyable affair and we met some noted French people. Wednesday, September 6th, was the birthday of Lafayette. We had been invited by the American Chamber of Commerce to assist in their celebration at Paris, but were unable to reach that city in time. Instead of going to Paris on this date we visited the Chateau Margaux, built in 1780. We were shown through the private vaults. We met the Duchess, a most charming personage, a grandmother at the age of thirty-five, a very plain, unassuming lady. I supposed up to the time I was introduced to her that she was a newspaper correspondent. During the tour through these private vaults, the guide discoursed on the making of wine, from the planting of the vines to the bottling and selling process. This was all very interesting. The different sized bottles of wine were described as follows: half pints for sick rooms, pints, and then quarts, with all of which we were familiar. He then told us of the magnum, holding two quarts; the Jereboam, holding three quarts, the imperial, holding five quarts, and the Nebuchadnezzar, holding the Lord only knows how many quarts--pretty nearly as big as a barrel. In the port of Bordeaux were a great many neutral boats. On the sides of these boats in very large letters, appeared the names of the boats and the flag of the particular country, also the name of the country. We saw vessels from Italy, Greece, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Holland. We were told that no nation at the beginning was prepared for war except Germany. It seemed to be the unanimous opinion that the war would last at least one year longer. Monsieur Gustier, president of the Bordeaux Chamber of Commerce, departed at one o'clock for Paris in a de luxe car. This car was the one usually occupied by President Poincaire and known as the president's car. Before departing we were given a noonday luncheon at the Hotel Terminal by the "Committee General Franco-American Society." We were now for the first time told that we were being entertained by the French government, through its different chambers of commerce. On the way, two of the general officers of the railroad company boarded the train. We noticed on passing through the country, that all the people working on the farms were either old men, women or children, the young men all being in the army. One of the things, earnestly desired by the French people is to increase the birthrate. A bonus system has been proposed as well as all sorts of plans for increasing the size of families. We learned here that four million men and women in France were engaged in the wine industry. We arrived in Paris at 10:30, September 6th. The only light visible was the moon. The Hotel de Crillon, formerly a castle occupied by the French nobility and transformed into a very comfortable and aristocratic hotel, was our stopping place. Early on Thursday morning, September 7th, I paid my first visit to the American Ambulance. I met Dr. Metcalf, a former Youngstown physician. He has charge of the New York and the Frank H. Mason wards. At the time we were there six hundred soldiers were under treatment. Deaths run about two per cent. This was my first visit to an army hospital and the impression will never be forgotten. There were men in all different stages of wounds, some of them convalescent; others on the dividing line; with others the treatment was just starting. This American Ambulance is considered the best managed hospital in all France. General Frank H. Mason, who had been consul general and in the consular service more than thirty years, had charge of it up to the time of his death. He was succeeded by Monsieur Benet. It is a thorough business organization. On this same day I visited Mrs. Frank H. Mason, the venerable widow of General Mason. We drove out together and I again visited the Ambulance in her company. She has been active in benevolent work for many years and was greeted everywhere with signs of affection. She took great pride in the ward named for her husband. In this ward most of the soldiers under treatment are officers. I also met at the Ambulance Major Kipling, the head of the "flying corps". They have there about a dozen military ambulances that go to the front and bring back the wounded. Over seven thousand have been brought in since March. Two trips are made daily. I also met at the Ambulance Mrs. Benet, a society woman, but in nurse's garb and actively at work. [Illustration: Miniature French Flag carried by the Author through France. The Waving of this Flag by an American Aroused much Enthusiasm.] I next visited the Church of the Holy Trinity. This is the American church in Paris. It was built in 1842 and is now in charge of Dr. Watson, well known to all Americans who visit Paris. In the urn room are the remains of General Mason and his mother-in-law, Mrs. Judge Birchard. Her husband was in partnership with the late Governor Tod, and it was in Judge Birchard's office that Governor Tod studied law. On Friday, September 8th, the commission was given a reception by the Association Nationale De Expansion Economique and the Paris Chamber of Commerce, jointly. There was an animated discussion at this luncheon with members of the Paris Chamber of Commerce, all of it in French. Some of the commissioners got badly tangled up, but we got through by the aid of our French-speaking commissioners and matters were pretty well straightened out. We were given a luncheon on this same day by the Paris Chamber of Commerce at the Armenonville. We met at this luncheon a great many Paris notables, many of them members of the French parliament, and others prominent in business and finance. In the evening I visited the Rejane Theatre and saw some wonderful moving pictures, taken by means of periscopes; they showed the inside of the trenches, prisoners being taken, big guns firing, one mine explosion, the visit of King George and also of King Albert of Belgium; in fact it was the representation of a real battle and most thrilling. On Saturday, September 9th, quite to the surprise of many of the commissioners, we were invited to inspect a noted dressmaking establishment, the Callot Saurs, otherwise the Callot Sisters, at No. 11 Avenue Marigon. We could hardly understand what this visit to the dressmakers had to do with our investigating French industrial establishments, but light was thrown on the subject when we learned that these sisters had three thousand employees, principally women. I made the remark that I supposed Worth was the French authority on women's gowns, but was told that Worth was a back number. It was a remarkable experience; we were taken into a large room and for a period of more than two hours were shown marvelous creations in the way of women's gowns. It really looked like a play. There were some lightning changes. We timed some of the models and they changed their entire costumes in less than three minutes. It goes without saying that some of the costumes did not cover enough of the models to require very much time for a change. It was really quite an experience, and some of the commissioners wondered if we could not go back again the next day. In the evening we were invited to the aviation camp in the suburbs of Paris. This is a school and turns out three hundred aviators monthly. We were given a special exhibition and saw as many as thirty of the aeroplanes go through maneuvers. I was struck by the deafening noise made when the machines arose. One accident occurred while we were there; a machine got out of order and fell to the ground, seriously injuring two of the aviators in charge. The average is one death daily. During the maneuvers a real war call came from the front and four of the largest machines started off. These aeroplanes travel at the rate of over one hundred miles an hour and can reach the front in from twelve to fifteen minutes from Paris. Since these aviators have been guarding Paris, the Germans have given up sending their machines over that city. The plant at the camp manufactures fifty aeroplanes daily. After this notable aviation exhibition, we called on Robert Bliss, Charge de'affaires at the American Embassy, Mr. Sharp being absent. On this day we had our first experience in government automobiles. Five military automobiles were placed at our disposal with soldiers for chauffeurs, two in charge of each machine. These automobiles are large and powerful and hold seven persons. In them we saw many interesting sights about Paris and in that section of France, only a few of which may be described. IV. MEETING ENGLAND'S PREMIER On Sunday, September 10th, I had the good fortune to meet Lloyd George. He had been paying a visit to General Joffre, and was registered at the same hotel as the Commission. Through his secretary, and through the persistence of some of the commissioners, arrangements were made to meet this celebrated man. I happened to be the first one of the commissioners introduced. During my youthful days, while a clerk in a company store at Niles, Ohio, I had learned some Welsh, and in this language I greeted Lloyd George. He seemed surprised and was kind enough to remark "That is very good Welsh". This put me in close touch with him and I had quite a conversation. He fired questions quite rapidly. He asked me what business I was in and at the same time what chances Hughes had for being elected. I told him I had been in the steel business for a great many years, and that I was a delegate to the convention which nominated Hughes. I told him I had heard Mr. Hughes' father preach at Mineral Ridge, a suburb of Niles. All the other commissioners were introduced. During the interview, Mr. George made this remark: "I hope your mission will be successful and help France; I hope you can also help England, and when we have settled our little difficulties, help Germany. The world is big enough for us all." Mr. George spoke very kindly to me of both Hughes and Roosevelt, and at the close of the interview said with earnestness: "We are fighting the battle for all civilization. We are fighting for you as well as for ourselves, and you are deeply interested." I had the impression that the famous Englishman was of large stature, but was mistaken. He is a man about five feet, five inches tall, of slender build, with keen, penetrating eye and somewhat nervous manner; he is certainly one of the great men of the world. In the afternoon with Dr. Mailloux, a member of the Commission, I paid a visit to General Gosselin, formerly chief of munitions, who had been in America on business for the French Government. He spoke very highly of the steel material furnished by the various American manufacturing plants, and said it would have been impossible for the French to succeed as they had without this help. He urged the shipping of steel on contracts with all possible dispatch. General Gosselin is an important personage, quiet and modest. I was told he had already been of great service to his country. [Illustration: Lloyd George, Who Says "England is Fighting a Battle for Civilization."] In the evening we visited "Le Phare de France," or "The Light House of France." This is one of the noblest of the many humane institutions being maintained in France by American means. It is under the management of Miss Winifred Holt, who represents the New York Association for the Blind, and is doing an angel's work among the men blinded in battle, of whom there are more in this war than in any other in history, owing to the many new methods employed and the manner in which battles are fought. Miss Holt is known as "Keeper of the Light House," and is much beloved in France. She is a most engaging young woman and deserves all the kind things said about her by the admiring French. Miss Holt is ably assisted by Miss Cleveland, the charming daughter of the late President Cleveland. This institution is under the direct patronage of the President of France and a committee composed of the highest officials of that country, although the funds to support it are contributed by wealthy Americans, prominent among whom are the Crockers, of San Francisco. In it the men whose sight has been destroyed are being taught useful occupations and cheered with the hope that they will be able to earn a living. They are also taught to read letters for the blind and thus some of the everlasting darkness to which they had been condemned by the horrors of war is dispelled. It is said that many men who could with difficulty be kept from committing suicide in their despair have become cheerful since entering this institution. [Illustration: Miss Winifred Holt, "Keeper of the Light House of France."] On Monday we visited the famous china establishment Sevres. This is one of the oldest works of the kind in France and its product is known everywhere. The plant has now been taken over by the government and used for making gas containers and other accessories used by the army. Following the visit to Sevres we were entertained in Paris at luncheon by the Circle Republican. On my right sat David Mennet, President of the Paris Chamber of Commerce; on my left sat Monsieur Laffere, Deputy Minister of Labor. Much valuable information was obtained from both of these gentlemen, but it was not of a nature to be recorded. In the afternoon we visited the famous Renault automobile plant. This plant has been taken over by the government and is employed in making war materials, automobile trucks, automobiles for military use and munitions. The plant employs twelve thousand men and five thousand women. They are engaged twelve hours daily, with one hour off at noon for luncheon. This was our first visit to a munition plant and we were cautioned to be careful in what we might record concerning what we saw. I was struck by the earnestness of the workmen; the expression on their countenances could be universally interpreted, "We are working for France". After this visit to the Renault plant we inspected the plant of Andre Citroon, a Hollander, but a generalle in Paris. He manufactures munitions only, employing seven thousand, five hundred women and twenty-five hundred men. In both of these plants we saw piles of steel made in America and labeled "Youngstown", "Pittsburgh", "Harrisburg" or "Cleveland". In the evening we were given a banquet by the American Chamber of Commerce at the Hotel Palais d'Orsay. On my right sat Consul General Thackara, whom I had known for a great many years. His wife was a daughter of the late General Sherman, who said, it will be remembered, "War is Hell". In view of what we saw later I think he was quite right. On my left was First Secretary of Legation, American Embassy, Arthur Hugh Frazier. The Herald gives an account of this banquet as follows: Between ninety and a hundred members of the American colony in Paris met at the Hotel Palais d'Orsay yesterday evening at a banquet given by the American Chamber of Commerce for the delegation of the American Manufacturers' Export Association, which has just arrived in France. The large dining-hall of the hotel was tastefully decorated with roses, carnations and dahlias, and hardly a seat was vacant when dinner was served, about eight o'clock. After an excellent dinner, which began with "Tortue clair" and went on by easy stages from "Langouste muscovite" and an excellent "Baron de Pauillac" to the "Parfait glace Palais d'Orsay", and dessert, Judge Walter V. R. Berry, Vice-president of the Chamber of Commerce in Paris, and acting as chairman in the absence of the president, Mr. Percy Peixotto, addressed the company, as follows: We have all heard so often about the caravels of Columbus and about the Mayflower that, perhaps a hundred years from now, in a brand-new Palais d'Orsay Hotel, an eloquent member of the Chamber of Commerce will refer to nineteen hundred and sixteen as the year in which the good ship Lafayette brought over for the first time a great American Industrial Commission to explore Darkest France. Anyone who views with a philosophic mind the tremendous cataclysm that is convulsing the world must reach this conclusion: that its results will be more profound, more far-reaching, more epoch-making than were the results of the Revolution of 1789. Where, under the new conditions, will the United States find itself? It is a difficult problem to solve; but if one cannot answer, it will be at least a step forward to put the right questions. Gentlemen of the Commission, it is for you, on your return to America, to formulate these questions. Heretofore it has been impossible to get together in Europe a delegation of Americans, each one of whom was ready to sink his private interests. This is the first time that an American Commission has come abroad, forgetting the individual, looking only to the welfare of the State. Gentlemen, I congratulate you on your public spirit and your patriotism. I congratulate you, too, on your opportunity, the magnificent opportunity of bringing home to the American people the urgent necessities that confront them. After the sustained applause had subsided Mr. W. W. Nichols gave a brief account of the objects for which the American Industrial Commission came to France. He referred to the impetus which had been given to the whole idea by M. Damour, the French deputy and leader of the French Commission which recently visited the United States, and declared that the representatives of French and American manufacturers and industries might help mutually in solving the industrial problem which affected the sister republics. "Our aim," said Mr. Nichols, "is reciprocity in personal conduct and co-operation which will lead to the solution of many minor difficulties. Our possibilities are enormous." Mr. Nichols concluded with an expression of thanks for the welcome which the Commission had received in France and an acknowledgment of the services which the American Chamber had rendered both to France and to the United States. On Tuesday we visited the school for maimed soldiers in Paris. At this place the men who are unable to return to the front are taught all kinds of trades--barbering, soap-making, shoe making, etc. On Wednesday, September 13th the Commission made a trip to Rouen. Women in knitting mills there earn four francs daily, working eleven hours; in the webbing mills they earn five francs daily, working eleven hours. There are no unions. A great deal of the product had been marketed in Germany but this market was lost. At Rouen we saw a large British steamer loaded with soldiers enroute to the front. They saluted the American flag. The harbor was full of shipping. The boats draw twenty feet of water. I met J. M. Belin, a manufacturer of tubes used in flying machines. I had a very interesting talk with Monsieur Belin. He told me there were ten thousand German soldiers being killed daily on all the fronts and that seventy per cent of the iron and coal formerly belonging to France was now in the hands of the Germans. On Thursday, September 14th, we left Paris for Limoges, arriving there at five P.M. We were given a reception by the mayor of the town and the president of the Chamber of Commerce at the Chamber of Commerce Rooms. We were driven through the town, across the River Vienne. We saw an ancient Roman bridge, said to be more than two thousand years old. [Illustration: Ancient Bridge at Limoges--Built by the Romans Two Thousand Years Ago and Still in Use.] Also a very old cathedral. A very interesting sight, which I had seen in oil paintings, was that of women washing on the banks of the river. The river was lined for nearly a mile with women all occupied in this useful way. Limoges is the center of the porcelain industry in France. Its exports to the United States are very large. The consul at Limoges was instructed to do all possible to aid the Commission, and, per contra, the Consul at Rouen was instructed not to accept any invitations or recognize the Commission in an official way. We visited the Martin china works and saw a veritable "Bull in a china shop", that is to say, there was a pair of bullocks hitched to a wagon going through the warehouse while we were there. We visited the celebrated Haviland plant at Limoges, and met Geo. Haviland, who is well known in America. With him we had quite a discussion regarding the manufacturers at Limoges increasing their output of low grade wares. At noon on this day we had a conference with the Chamber of Commerce of Limoges. At this conference I was permitted to say a few words, which were translated for the audience as follows: Gentlemen, I have been criticised by my fellow Commissioners for not taking part in the discussions. I speak English only, and have hesitated to enter these arguments. It seems to me, though, that instead of trying to enter on the increase of your common product, such as any china manufacturer in the United States can make, you should increase the production of your high grade product. There are high grade porcelains made in Austria and a lot of this comes to us from Germany. Your product is known all over the world--the name "Haviland" is a household word. In my opinion if your manufacturers here at Limoges went into the production of the common qualities of porcelain, it would lower your reputation. My recommendation, therefore, is that if possible you increase the production of the artistic porcelains. In the evening a banquet was given us at the Hotel Rue de Lu Paix. On my right was Eugene L. Belisle, American Consul, and on my left was Leon Pinton, Vice-president of the Chamber of Commerce. The banquet table was a beautiful sight. French and American flags were entwined. Speeches were made by members of the Chamber of Commerce and responses by Mr. Nichols in broken French. I had a most interesting talk with Consul Belisle. He said that one year ago the French would have made a much better settlement of the war than today. They are now better prepared and would demand the return of territory, including Alsace Lorraine, the French people being educated up to this point. He said also that he had come in contact with German prisoners and they were discouraged and would be glad to surrender. We met at this banquet General Comby, district commander of the twelfth regiment. Dr. Mailloux and Mr. MacArthur had a very interesting talk with General Comby, Thursday night after the banquet was over. General Comby was in active service at the front after the opening of the war. He described to us particularly what he had seen of warfare at the time of the battle of the Marne. He said it was called the battle of the Marne because of the lack of any other name to give it, but the battle took place over a period of some thirty odd days and covered a considerable region, much of which was far away from the Marne. He informed us that the fresh troops who have not before experienced the severity of battle go into a desperate fight with the greatest valor and heroism; that after troops have seen a long session of fighting, and have been through the hardships of many engagements they lose, and he thinks it is natural they should lose, much of the spirit that accompanies them in their first engagements. He told us of the very severe losses that were suffered in these first actions of the war; greater than at any other time. Mr. MacArthur understood him to regard this so-called Battle of the Marne as perhaps the bloodiest and most terrible of all battles in history. He informed us that it was not one single battle, but a succession of almost continuous struggles, day and night, over a period of three or four weeks. General Comby had under his immediate command 18,000 troops, of whom he lost 13,500 in these engagements. He said, however, that in spite of all these losses, he had never found himself nor his troops in the position of defeat; that defeat is largely a matter of sentiment and valor. An army with comparatively slight losses might consider itself defeated if it chose to do so. An army of troops like some of those he had could be cut almost to pieces, and yet, if there was a remnant sufficient and disposed to come together again, they formed a still undefeated and effective body. The general spoke particularly of a battalion of zouaves that he had, numbering about 1,000, and which was cut down until there were only 280 left. Yet they came together undefeated and effective troops. He said that since the Battle of the Marne the war has taken on a different character. He considered the German defeat as taking place at and by reason of this battle. Had they not been checked then, and turned, there is no telling what the Germans might have done. But they were checked and turned, which constituted their defeat, and all operations that have and are now taking place are simply operations to follow up the victory that was realized at the Marne. On Saturday, September 16th, we arrived at Aubusson, the centre of the tapestry industry of France, as it has been for the past five centuries. Aubusson is located in a beautiful country. On our way to that city we noticed women attending sheep, just as we had seen in pictures by Millet and other painters. These women, with only a dog as companion, knit as they tend their flocks. We arrived in Aubusson at 10:30 A.M. We were first taken to the town hall, where there was a general exhibit of the products of the district on view. I was greatly impressed with a portrait, in tapestry, of General Joffre, the great French commander, idolized by the French people and hero of the Battle of the Marne. It did not occur to me at the moment of examining this tapestry portrait that it might be purchased; but afterwards, while we were at luncheon, I thought possibly it might be bought, and asked Monsieur Damour, who sat next to me, what he thought about it. He expressed the belief that it was not for sale and would not be permitted to go out of France. He said, however, that he would make an investigation, and sent his secretary, who came back in a very short time with the information that the portrait would be sold to an American only. The price was named and without any further negotiations I accepted the offer, making only one condition, that it was not to be duplicated. I had the portrait taken from its frame and brought it with me, having it retrained upon my arrival home. It is certainly a beautiful piece of work, as well as unique; no one but an expert could tell at first glance that it is not a portrait done in oil. It was copied by one of the greatest tapestry artists in France from the oil painting made of General Joffre by a noted French artist. [Illustration: Tapestry Workers at Aubusson.] We visited a number of the manufactories owned by different corporations and individuals. I was personally impressed by one piece of tapestry which had been in the making for a period of four years and would require at least one year longer to complete. It depicted the marriage of Napoleon and Josephine. This piece is about thirty feet by twenty feet in size, and contains forty thousand shades of color. It was not for sale, and we were told it was to be held to take part in a celebration of the Allied victory in the Champs Elysees. The French people are so confident of victory that the windows facing the Arc de Triomphe have already been engaged to view the event. We noticed there in the textile factories old women winding yarn, many of them eighty years of age, but still vigorous and hard at work. A photograph of a group of young girls was taken by one of the Commissioners and is reproduced in these pages. A little incident occurred at the luncheon before mentioned which is worthy of record. I noticed a coarse looking American flag suspended in the dining room. I made inquiry of the woman who waited upon us at the table and she said that she had never seen an American flag, but had read about it and had reproduced what she thought was a copy from memory. It was made from a piece of awning containing stripes, with blue stars sewn in. This waitress said she had worked at night on it and got as near as possible to her idea of an American flag. While it was not a work of art, it was a homely representation of the Stars and Stripes and a tribute from an humble citizen of France to America. In our wanderings about Aubusson we came across an old man who said he was so old that he had forgotten his age. However, in a broken way, he told of having taken part in the Franco-Prussian war, and remembered having seen the great Napoleon. Inquiry made of some of the citizens revealed the fact that his age was supposed to be upwards of one hundred years. We visited a very old church with the distinction of having two bells which ring simultaneously. As we left this historic place it was an inspiring sight. Nearly the entirely populace was present and gave us any number of cheers as the military automobiles took their departure. At seven P. M. we arrived at Bourboule and had dinner at the Palace Hotel. We met here Col. Cosby, military attache of the American Embassy in Paris. This is a watering place and contains a very large convalescent hospital where soldiers, largely officers, are sent to finally recuperate before going back to the front. The waters contain arsenic, are highly medicinal, and known the world over. We saw at this place the adopted child of Helen Gould. We also met another bright youth about eleven years of age, who spoke some English. He asked one very pertinent question, "Why don't you Americans send your navy over here to help France?" We were served at dinner by an Amazon waitress. Without measuring her stature, I should say that she was six feet, four inches in height and formed in proportion. Nevertheless she was very alert and active on her feet. She waited on the entire Commission without help, quickly and efficiently. The chief decoration was a large American flag in the center of the table. This was made of flowers and was unique and beautiful. Bourboule is in a mountainous country and early the next day we were taken to the top of a mountain, a distance of nearly a mile, on what was termed the "Funicular Railroad". We were served luncheon at the Hotel de Funicular, on the top of the mountain, back of the town. The view from this elevation was wonderful and worth the trip to France. When the war is over this locality will no doubt be a leading watering place. In the afternoon we motored to Clermont-Farrand. We stopped at Mont Dore and at Royal to see the baths, which are noted for their cure for asthmatic affections. We were given a reception at both places, and waited upon by very handsome waitresses wearing most artistic hats. I tried to secure one of these as a souvenir, but without avail, as I was told they were made especially for this institution and were of a special design. On this journey we saw many interesting sights. Carts with donkeys attached, resembled somewhat the jaunting car in Ireland. Wild flowers were in great abundance and we stopped many times by the wayside to purchase them from the little girls. We stopped at Salvador Rock and listened to an echo which was remarkable; standing on the crest of the rock, tones almost a whisper could be heard reverberating for some time. The rock was surrounded by trees resembling very much the pine in Arizona and the Lake Superior region. Next we visited a fine old castle, Chateau Miral, and arrived at Clermont-Farrand at seven P. M. Here we were given a banquet at the Grand Hotel by the Chamber of Commerce. We met a number of prominent people, among others Ferdinand Ferryrolles, who manages several hotels at Monte Carlo. We also met Emmanuel Cheneau, Henri Roche, editor of the Paris Temps, Etienne Morel and Leon Bernardaud. We left Clermont-Farrand early on Monday, in military automobiles for St. Etienne. V. THE BIRTHPLACE OF LAFAYETTE The question of visiting the birthplace of the immortal Lafayette came up at this time, and some of the members insisted on a trip to this historic spot. The majority carried and we made a detour of nearly one hundred miles to reach St. George's D'Aurac, near which stands the stately Chateau Chavagnac, object of our reverent curiosity. At the time of our visit it was owned by Mr. de Sahame, son of the niece of Lafayette, bearing the title of Marquis of Lafayette, and residing at Neuilly, near Paris. We were met by the mayor of the small village, quite near, and the caretaker of the Chateau, which was in a very good state of preservation, but not at that time occupied. The prefect of the district appeared soon and the Commission presented to the ownership of the Chateau two very beautiful flags, one an American and the other French, together with a large bouquet of palms and roses. These flags and the floral offering were placed in the bed where Lafayette was born. Mr. Nichols, our Chairman, then made the following address: In a large sense, this auspicious occasion is the most appropriate event of our trip, because it brings us closer to that which has been a constant bond of sympathy between the French and American people. We are more than happy to stand here in the home of our Washington's intimate friend, where he spent his days of peace, and whither he retired when cares of state weighed too heavily upon him. It is not hard to believe that here also was the birthplace of his greatest thoughts, the beginnings of his noblest aspirations. Lafayette, the apostle of liberty, came to struggling America at the opportune time, and in ways that every school child at home knows, cast his lot with ours in that perfect sympathy which constituted Washington's greatest support. History's record, complete as it is, cannot account for the countless things Lafayette did for us, which many times perhaps changed the course of events in our favor and brought us that freedom of thought, that liberty of action, which he ever craved. When we stop to reflect that it all began here, our souls may well be moved beyond the mere expression of words. After a century and a quarter we treasure Lafayette's memory and it grows with an increasing realization of the merit of the assistance he rendered us. Our two nations today are the embodiment of the principles he stood for, perhaps was a great factor in inculcating in the minds of our ancestors, to be transmitted by inheritance to us. We rejoice that he lived; that a land like France gave him birth; that the friendship he began continues to make the world better. May we realize the dream ever present with him, to judge from his actions, which speak more insistent than words, of a mutuality of our national interests; that hand in hand the two great republics may together work out their great destinies, together set an example for the world worthy of its emulation, an example of a fraternity of purpose and attempt which by its very strength will compel the better things of life. [Illustration: Lafayette's Deathbed, with Commission's Flag and Flowers.] Gentlemen: In reverence to the memory of our great compatriot, let us devote a moment to silent contemplation of the great thoughts that inspired the great deeds of our great brother, Lafayette. There was a response by the prefect and the mayor of the nearby village. This visit was an historical event. I had made up my mind, and so talked with another member of the Commission, that it would be a fine thing to purchase this property, endow it with a fund which would keep it always open as a museum and present it to the French Government. Since our return to America the property has been acquired by a group of prominent American men and women, headed by Mrs. William Astor Chanler, for the same purpose that some of the members of our Commission had in mind, a most worthy project. This birthplace is known as The Chateau de Chavagnac-Lafayette. It is the hope of the purchasers to make it "A French Mount Vernon". The Marquis Gilbert de Lafayette was born at the Chateau de Chavagnac, in the French province of Auvergne, on September 6th, 1757. It is some four hundred miles from Paris, in southern France. The crowning architectural feature of this little settlement of some five hundred souls, it stands, sentinel-like, among the sixty red-tiled roofs of the village. The little church at which Lafayette worshipped is only a step from the Chateau gates. The original Chateau de Chavagnac dates from the fourteenth century. It was destroyed by fire in 1701, but was very soon afterward rebuilt from the original plans. It is the purpose of the French Heroes' Fund to make this Chateau in France a complement to Mount Vernon. In it are to be kept records of Colonial days, as well as those of the present war. There is to be a room dedicated to the British; one to the Legion; another to the American Ambulance and still another to aviation. It is also to be made a home for orphans and for soldiers who have been disabled. After a collation, we visited the reception room, which contains a number of old-time engravings, facsimiles of the Declaration of Independence, a bronze bust of Lafayette, a marble bust of Lafayette and a bronze bust of Franklin. Overhanging the bed in which Lafayette was born is a fine portrait of Benjamin Franklin. Although Lafayette died in Paris, the bed in which he died was brought to the Chateau, and we were shown this also. Among other things in the reception room was a large placard with the heading "North American United States Constitution Explained". There was also a billiard table which looked as if it had seen much service. I have alluded to this visit to the birthplace of Lafayette in a little address which I made at Besancon, and which will appear later. Some photographs of the Commission were taken before leaving. Quite a large sum was raised among the Commissioners and given to the mayor to be distributed among the poor of the village. Our next objective was LePuy, where we arrived at 4:30 P.M. and had breakfast, so-called, although the detour to the birthplace of Lafayette made us about ten hours late. We were met by the prefect, the mayor and the president of the Chamber of Commerce. We visited a church built on the top of a rock, the ascent to which was by three hundred perpendicular steps, two feet wide. It was said that these steps were built in this way as an opportunity for penance, it being a very hard operation to climb to the top. Some of our people made the ascent, myself among the number. When we reached the top we were rewarded by a magnificent view of the surrounding country. At the highest point is a statue of the Virgin Mary, made of Russian cannon, recast after capture by Napoleon. While at LePuy we were shown the only spot where the immortal Caesar was defeated; otherwise his reign was triumphant. Leaving LePuy we arrived at St. Etienne at midnight, after a most perilous ride. A banquet had been planned at St. Etienne, but had been postponed. On the following day we visited the establishment of the Giron Brothers, ribbon manufacturers. This establishment dates back to the very early part of the Nineteenth century, and at present has two thousand employees, nearly all women. Its trade is largely with the United States. On account of the labor situation the factory is working only half time. The men are at war, the women in the munition plants and factories. Wage earners make four, and not to exceed five, francs per day and consider themselves well paid. [Illustration: Monastery of St. Michael at Le Puy.] We also visited the silk manufacturing plant of P. Staron, Jr. We saw here the most beautiful silks and brocades. Among other fine things were ribbons in the Fleur de Lis design, the national flower of France. On account of the war the employees at work were few. Here we met Mr. Wm. H. Hunt, American consul and the last appointee of President McKinley before his untimely death. At St. Etienne I went into a barbershop to get a shave, sat down in the chair, and a youth not over twelve years of age started to lather me. I supposed, of course, that he was getting me ready for the barber, who would soon appear; instead of that he proceeded with the work himself. He spoke a little English, telling me his father was in the army and he was running the business. He gave me one of the best shaves I received in France. My next experience with the youth of France was with a boy chauffeur. Our military automobiles had disappeared for the time being and I engaged a taxicab. [Illustration: Silk Tapestry Menu Used at Dinner to the Commission at St. Etienne.] The boy who ran this was not over eleven or twelve years of age, but he did the work well. On the evening of September 19th, we were given a banquet by the Chamber of Commerce at St. Etienne. It was a very successful affair. I met here Theodore Laurent, a prominent steel manufacturer whom I had met at Brussels in 1911, when the American Iron and Steel Institute made its famous visit to England and the continent. At this banquet we met also the prefect and other notables. VI. A GREAT MUNITIONS PLANT Wednesday, September 20th, we left St. Etienne for St. Charmond to visit the plant at which Mr. Laurent is director general. His company owns several plants, this being the most important and one of the oldest manufactories of cannons and munitions in France. We met here Colonel Rimialho, who is the inventor of the seventy-five-millimeter gun and has general charge of the artillery and munitions manufactured in France. The plant at the present time makes only cannon and munitions. There are no blast furnaces at the works. They use the Siemens-Martin process and melt about seventy-five to eighty per cent. scrap. They also use a quantity of vanadium steel imported from America and furnished by the American Vanadium Company. We were told that France produces five hundred thousand shells or projectiles daily. This plant turns out twenty-eight thousand of this number, besides one hundred and twenty thousand fuses, or detonators. Before the war the works produced one hundred and twenty thousand annually; they now make this number daily. They have sixteen thousand employees, five thousand of whom are women. We saw here a number of Amazonian Junos doing men's work while wearing leather aprons, and were informed that they were fully as efficient as men and are paid the same wages. We saw at these works a number of the now famous "caterpillars", an armored car moving on a broad track which it lays down as it goes. This machine was invented by an American, and I have seen it at work on the Pacific coast. After an examination of the works, we were taken to the suburbs of the town and a special test of the big guns was made for our benefit, the firing going to the hill. We were instructed to put cotton in our ears and keep our mouths open, and faithfully observed this injunction. The seventy-five millimeter fired twelve shots in thirty-six seconds, by my watch. The target was brought to us afterwards and we were shown that the projectiles went straight through without a side dent. We were also treated to the firing of some of the very large guns, and by the time this was over I was ready to visit an ear doctor, if there had been one convenient. When this interesting exhibition was ended we were entertained for the first time in a real French home. Mr. Laurent took us to his home and gave us a luncheon. We met Mrs. Laurent and two daughters, but the four sons had joined the colors. Two of them had already lost their lives in battle. We met at this luncheon Sir Thomas Barclay, of London, who has taken an active part in the humanitarian work of England, with headquarters in Paris. [Illustration: Col. Rimailho with 155-mm. Gun (upper) and Famous 75-mm. Gun (lower) Perfected by Him.] The party reached Lyons at 6:20 P.M. by military automobiles and at once had a conference with Mayor Heriot. It appeared that there was some discussion between this official and the president of the Chamber of Commerce as to who should head the entertaining. We were greatly impressed with M. Heriot, but he took a night train for Paris and we were left in the hands of the Chamber of Commerce. We were given a reception by this body, and spent the night at Lyons. On the afternoon of the following day we visited the textile museum. We also visited the government munitions plant, which was formerly the Lyons fair, but had been taken over by the government, stripped of everything and made the most efficient munitions plant in all France. We met Thadee Natanson, Director General. He is a wonderful character. Our impression of him was very good and he later addressed us in strong but broken English and said he hoped he would learn something from us, and, if we had, in visiting the plant, any suggestions to make, he wanted to hear them. The plant employs twelve thousand, one-half women and the remainder men. The product is shells, cartridges, fuses, and detonators. We were told that this is the only place in France where a projectile is entirely completed, ready to fire. We met Andre Foulcher, engineer of the plant. The production of this plant is twenty-eight thousand shells and twenty-five thousand fuses daily. We were told that here the women were more efficient than the men. At these works we were taken into the most dangerous part of the plant, where frequent explosions have occurred. We met here George Martin, editor of the Paris "Progress", and also Capt. J. Barret, who had recently lost in the army his only son. Our tour of Lyons included the Lyons electric light and gas plant. On this side trip we met an entire regiment of Algerian soldiers, black as the traditional ace of spades, but fine specimens of manhood. Their uniforms were almost identical with the uniform worn by our soldiers in the Civil War. They wore light blue overcoats, such as Governor Tod furnished the first company which marched from Youngstown. Over the door of the gas plant were the words "Defense D'Entrer", with skull and cross bones underneath and with the further words, "Danger de Mort". At this place we received our first home letters, which were very welcome. In the evening we were given a banquet by the Chamber of Commerce. The invitation received from the Lyons Chamber, translated, is as follows: Lyon, Chamber of Commerce. The Lyons Chamber of Commerce beg you to be so kind as to accept a private invitation at dinner which it will give to the members of the Commission of the United States on Thursday, September 21st, 7 o'clock P. M. at Berrier and Millet, 31 Bellecour Square. Business dress. R.S.V.P. We were welcomed in English by the vice-president of the Chamber of Commerce, and discussed the following menu: Supreme of Lobster A l'amiral Tenderloin a la bearnaise Artichoke Hearts Chantilly style Roast Truffled Bresse Chicken Scotch Salad Havana Ice Desert Wines Fleurie (Beaujolais) in Decanter Pouilly (Maconnais) in Decanter White Hermitage 1904 Chateau Vaudieu 1904 Saint-Peray frappe On my right was General d'Armade, one of the noted generals of the French army, who had seen service all through the present war. On my left was M. Farrand. My talk with General d'Armade was most interesting. He said the best soldiers of both the French and the German armies were gone; that they had been destroyed in the early part of the war and that the soldiers now fighting were civilians who had been trained for two years. He declared that a French soldier was always a French soldier. He had no doubt of the ultimate victory of the Allies. In addition to General d'Armade's experience in the present war, he had been in Morocco and the Sudan with important commands. On Friday, the day following, we were entertained by the directors of the Lyons Fair. On my left was Charles Cabaud, Russian Consul General. On my right sat Dr. Jules Courmont, who in time of peace is Professor of the faculty of medicine and physician to the hospitals of Lyons, but who now, in time of war, is in the War Department, has the rank of general, and is charged with the hygiene of the army. We found him a very competent and interesting gentleman. He accompanied us in the private car which the railroad furnished us, and went south with us some distance to where there is a large government garrison, and where he had an inspection to make. During the trip on the train Dr. Courmont told us many interesting things about the hygiene of the army. He said that the warfare of today is very different from the warfare of former times in respect to the hygiene; that contrary to what was commonly supposed, the hygiene of the trenches is excellent; that the soldiers are in better condition, most of them, than they are in time of peace. They are more regularly and better fed, and are strong, well nourished and hearty. The experience has been the regeneration of very many of them physically. This is due, he says, to the fact that they have their food served to them regularly and abundantly; whereas in former wars it was a matter of the greatest difficulty for troops to be provisioned. We asked him whether or not the water in the trenches was harmful to the soldiers and he replied that they had very little rheumatism, and the men did not seem to suffer from it. He said there was almost, or in fact, no smallpox, and there was comparatively no typhoid. All of the soldiers are innoculated against typhoid, receiving on the first innoculation three or four injections, and subsequently being innoculated about once in every six months, receiving then two injections. This is for soldiers, whereas civilians are usually innoculated about once every three years, if it is desired that they should be kept immune from typhoid. He says they use with best results the system of Dr. Vidal, of Paris, employing a serum in which the bacteria have been destroyed by heat rather than by boiling. They find the effect of this serum much better than that of others. He says that tuberculosis does, of course, exist, because tuberculosis exists among most civilized peoples. There is even more tuberculosis now among the troops than at the beginning of the war; but this is not due to an increase of tuberculosis, but is due to the fact that the later levies of troops have included many soldiers who at the beginning would not have been accepted, because they either had the disease or had a tendency toward it. He then spoke about the effect of various weapons in use. He was asked whether the modern rifle wound was serious. He said it was either so serious as to kill the soldier by passing-through the brain, the heart, or some other vital part, or else it was a matter of more or less indifference. If a rifle ball went through the fleshy part of the body, you could pretty safely say it was not a grave wound, because the bullets passing through the air are so cleansed and heated that when they go through the fleshy part of the body they leave no germs and do little harm unless they fracture a bone. We asked if they did not carry into the wound infected pieces of the soldiers' clothing, and he said no, that they did not find that to be the case; that the bullet went through so quickly that it separated the clothing, and went through the flesh clean. He even stated that a bullet could pass through the lungs; that the wounded soldier would spit up blood, but that when attended to at once, and the wound dressed, it would be a matter of only eight or ten days when he would be again in fairly good condition. He said, however, that wounds from fragments of shrapnel were of quite a different character; that they were ragged, unclean and usually gave much concern. He said, also, as a matter of fact, that the gun or rifle was performing a less and less important function in warfare. That many were even in favor of abandoning the rifle entirely as a weapon. That the war, as carried on today, is carried on in personal assaults mainly through the effectiveness of the grenades, handknives, revolvers and similar weapons; that the trenches and trench warfare are not suited to close hand-to-hand encounters, as there is not usually room enough to manipulate a gun and bayonet. (This agrees with what was told us by our Negro friend, Bob Scanlon, whom we met at Clermond, and who said all he wanted and carried in an assault or a fight were grenades, a knife and a good club, preferably of iron.) The doctor said that for the warfare of today reliance is mainly upon the mitrailleuse, which fires 300 shots a minute. He says that nothing living within the range of these guns, and exposed to them, can possibly stand. This is the small arm which had such great effect for the French in the first days of the war. The Germans had very few guns of this kind in the beginning, but they have since provided themselves with them. He said that outside of these guns the most effective are the famous 75 mm. and the 155 mm. rifles. He asked us to recall the fact that both of these guns were fired for our benefit at St. Charmond, under the direction of Col. Rimailho, whom we had the pleasure of meeting there, and who was one of the important men co-operating in building the "75", and who was, himself, the inventor and author of the "155". These are the guns of lighter caliber which do such effective work in the field. Of course, in addition, the French are also using guns of very large caliber, for instance the 350 mm. These, of course, are for the reduction of forts, and the enemy's line prior to assault. [Illustration: Women Employed in Munitions Factories.] Dr. Courmont wanted to know whether we had seen the new armored caterpillar cars which they were preparing, and we told him we had seen them at St. Charmond. He said they were to be equipped with one "75" gun and with two or three mitrailleuses (the rapid fire gun), and that an equipment like this, armored against the shrapnel of the enemy, would doubtless be most effective for the French, as a similar caterpillar had been for the English. VII. ART AND ARCHITECTURE OF ARLES We left Lyons for Arles, in the military automobiles, passing through and stopping for a brief time at Tarascon, made famous by Daude in his novel, "Tartarin of Tarascon". Here we were given the usual reception and pretty much the entire population of the town turned out to greet us. The following leaflet by the Arles Chamber of Commerce outlines the program: * * * Reception of the Economical Commission of the United States Friday, September 22nd 5 o'clock 25' P.M. Reception of the Commission at the station by the Chamber of Commerce and the officials of the City of Arles. 7 o'clock 45' P.M. Dinner given by the Chamber of Commerce (Hotel Du Nord). Saturday, September 23rd 8 o'clock 30' A.M. Leave the Forum Square for the visit of the monuments and museums of Arles. 11 o'clock 25' Luncheon given by the Chamber of Commerce (Forum hotel). 1 o'clock 10" P.M. Leave Forum Square for the station. * * * At the evening banquet at the Hotel Du Nord, on my right was J. E. Agate, an English army officer. He had been in the quartermaster's department, engaged in purchasing supplies for the English army. On my left was M. Bonnet Guillaume, vice-president of the Chamber of Commerce, and who lives at Tarascon. We met at this banquet Henri Brenier, advance agent of the Marseilles Chamber of Commerce. He distributed a handsome booklet prepared by the Marseilles Chamber. [Illustration: Arlesiennes--Types of Southern France.] Mr. Geo. B. Ford, of the Commission, delivered the following address before the Arles Chamber of Commerce: Yesterday afternoon I went to the Arena alone, and climbed up as high as I could and studied it while the sunset shadows crept high and higher and the great arches gradually faded into gloom. The wonderful history of Arles passed before me. I saw it as the great imperial Roman city dominating the valley. I saw it during the Christian times in the building of the portal of St. Trophime, and saw it during the Gothic times leading in the history of the Church, and then again in the Renaissance presenting the world with the most beautiful example of the work of Mansard, the City Hall. It seemed that most that was best in the history of architecture in France was epitomized in the monuments of Arles. To the connoisseur in America, Arles is well-known. I remember many years ago their pointing out to me the portal of Trinity Church in Boston, saying it was inspired from a church called St. Trophime in a town called Arles in France. The architect of that church, Richardson, our greatest American architect, was a great lover of Arles. He came here often for inspiration. Through him, Arles had a great influence on American architecture of the time. Recently there was in New York City a competition among leading architects for a great court house. The design which won was frankly admitted by its author--Guy Lowell--to be inspired by the Arena of Arles, of which he is a most enthusiastic admirer. A number of outdoor theatres have sprung up of late throughout America. The Roman theatre at Arles is their model. There is an impression prevalent in France that the average American thinks only of business; that the higher things of life have no interest for him. It is far from true. The members of this Industrial Commission are truly representative of the average interest and point of view of the American business man, manufacturer and technical man, and yet each one of them has gone out of his way to express his delight in his visit to Arles. All consider it one of the most valuable parts of the trip. Yes, a marked change is coming over the American business man. He is recognizing that there is far more in life than being tied to his job without a let-up. He is relaxing now and then, and in his relaxation he is discovering the France that his wife and daughter know. He should come to Arles. He has begun to come a little. We hope he will come in far greater numbers in the future. It remains for you to spread broadcast the virtues of Arles. We sincerely hope that you will miss no opportunities to do this for we believe it will tend to weave another important bond of understanding and sympathy between the two countries. We visited Angna Castle in Arles, to which the Popes were once exiled, even yet known as the "Home of Popes", or "Popes' Castle". Arles contains convalescent hospitals, and Red Cross girls, with their cans, having a slot, were collecting coins everywhere. Arles is an ancient Roman town. We visited the famous Hotel de Ville, or Town Hall, which dates back to the Seventeenth century. The architect was Mansard, for whom the Mansard roof, known in America, is named. The Town Hall is covered by a curious roof, with supports which hold up the entire building. In the square is an Egyptian obelisk four thousand years old. We visited another ancient museum and were shown among other things a very ancient lead pipe six inches in diameter and in a good state of preservation. In a sarcophagus of the second century were the remains of a Roman musician, with an inscription thereon. In addition there was a statue of Emperor Augustus and a statue of Venus of Arles, with some original and some restored jars and vases more than two thousand years old. We visited an old church founded by St. Trophime, noted in the Bible in the epistles of St. Paul. Barbarossa, Emperor of Germany, was crowned in this church. I was struck by a tablet of "Moses crossing the Red Sea" on one of the walls. This tablet, a most beautiful and interesting piece of art, reminded me of an experience of my younger days which served to fix in my mind the celebrated passage of the Israelites in a manner the effectiveness of which would be envied by the average Sunday School teacher, even if it was not entirely due to reverence. I had often told this story to my friends and again told it that evening to some of the members of the Commission, who seemed to enjoy it well enough to justify its repetition here. About the close of the Civil War in 1865, I paid a visit to a younger brother who was managing a small charcoal blast furnace in Tennessee. I had never been in this part of the South before and had received minute instructions as to how to find the place. Embarking at Nashville on a Cumberland river boat, after a day's ride, I left the boat in accordance with my brother's instructions at a small landing and, crossing the river on a ferry, remained over night at a cabin occupied by a pious old Negro. A horse was sent me at this humble abode the following morning. Some little time after finishing a hearty meal composed almost wholly of corn pone, the old gentleman brought out a time worn Bible and read two or three chapters. He then announced that we would all unite in prayer. We all kneeled down. He invoked the Divine blessing upon the rulers of the earth, the President of the United States and almost everything else movable and immovable, on land, under the sea and over the sea. After he had prayed fully a half hour, tired and sleepy, I became impatient and nudged the half-grown boy next to me with a query as to how long the prayer would last. Meantime the boy had fallen asleep. However my nudge woke him up and, repeating my inquiry, I was answered with the question:--"Has pap got to where Moses crossed de Red Sea"? "No, he has not got to that yet," was my answer. "Well, when Pap gets to where Moses done crossed de Red Sea, he am jes half through." We saw also in this church the tomb of Montcalm, grandfather of Montcalm, the French general who fell at the taking of Quebec in the French and English war during the Seventeenth century. We visited Roman walls and ramparts built by Julius Caesar, and saw an ancient cemetery directly opposite a munitions factory, which we thought was a very appropriate location. This cemetery had been pillaged and the ancient things carried away as relics. We also visited, while at Arles, a convalescent camp, and saw a number of Moroccan soldiers. A point of great interest is the ancient Roman Theatre, built by Augustus Caesar and containing a statue of that Emperor. Another is the Arena, built in the first century, restored and reconstructed, and now used as an outdoor theatre. Sarah Bernhardt played there two years ago in a Shakesperian representation. It was used in the olden days for the entertainment of royalty, for gladiatorial contests, and battles of wild beasts. It is frequently used now for bull rights, as this part of France is near the Spanish border. In front of the Hotel Du Nord is the statue of Mistral, the great poet of Provence. We visited the Palace of Constantine, Roman Emperor in the fourth century. In this place remains a pool with means for heating water which would be considered in good form at the present day. Arles is a famous centre of architecture and has been visited by all the great architects of the world. Here many received high inspiration, as stated in the address given by Mr. Ford. En route to Arles we had noticed an old Roman theatre in the village of Orange. We noticed also, which seemed to be common in South France, that the horses wore a leather horn on the tops of their collars. This is said to be a usage handed down from the Middle Ages. In this region we passed whole train loads of grapes, which looked from a short distance like carloads of anthracite coal. Our next destination was Marseilles, and here Henri Brenier met us. We stopped at Martique, which was the home of Ziem, the great French painter, now deceased. We visited the Ziem museum. The lake of Martique is where the new port of Marseilles is to be located. This town dates back six hundred years B. C. We met here the president, Adrien Artaud, and the vice-president, Hubert Giraud, of the Chamber of Commerce of Marseilles. [Illustration: Old Roman Arena at Arles--Still Used For Bull Fights and Other Amusements.] VIII. ALONG THE MEDITERRANEAN Arriving at De Rove, the south end of the tunnel, on Saturday, September 23rd, I had my first view of the Mediterranean. It was a most beautiful sight, and the water as blue as pictured in paintings. We were rowed in a small boat across an arm of the Mediterranean to the town of Marseilles. We first visited the new part of Marseilles; then the old. Upon our arrival there was a tremendous gathering to greet us; not less than ten thousand children were shouting "Viva la Amerique". The whole city was decorated with American and French flags intertwined. The crowd lined upon the wharf so thickly we could scarcely pass through it. This reception was the greatest we had received anywhere in France. We visited the Hotel de Ville and were greeted by the mayor, with a response by Mr. Nichols, interpreted by Dr. Mailloux. We were then taken to the Hotel Regina and in the evening given a banquet by the Chamber of Commerce. This chamber was organized in 1599 and is the oldest chamber of commerce in the world. Our invitation to this banquet read as follows: * * * The President of the Marseilles Chamber of Commerce begs you to honor him by your presence at the luncheon which will be given to the members of your Commission on Monday, September 25th 12:30 P. M. at the Restaurant de la Re'serve. (31 F Promenade de la Corniche) * * * At this banquet, on my right sat Maurice Damour, French deputy in charge of the Commission, and on my left Hubert Giraud, vice-president of the Chamber of Commerce. He made a fine address and I asked him for a copy, which he gave me. It is reproduced herewith: * * * Mr. President-- Gentlemen: I am desired by my President to give you in your own language the welcome of the Chamber of Commerce of Marseilles. You will certainly lose more than gain in hearing me instead of President Artaud, and I must apologize, as my knowledge of English is far from being adequate to my task. Anyhow, it is possible my words may be by a few of our guests more easily translated than if delivered in French. Gentlemen, the oldest Chamber of Commerce in France, and maybe in the world, is exceedingly proud of entertaining tonight the highly qualified representatives of the American Commerce and Industry. We are most thankful to your party to have agreed to spend some of your valuable time in our city. We are sorry to say that we have not this good fortune as often as we would like, and that your fellow-citizens generally pay very little care to our old harbour and town. They are rather exclusively attracted by our great capital, Paris, and when coming to enjoy the splendid winters of the French Riviera, they reach it direct by rail or by sea, and seem to be quite ignorant of Marseilles, where they could find at least what is our city's glory: LIGHT, LIFE and LABOUR. I think that Marseilles deserves more attention, and that the old ties between America and Marseilles should be better known. I would recall that our history, especially the history of our Chamber of Commerce, records the old sympathy of Marseilles for America. It is as old as your nation herself. At the end of the eighteenth century, when the stars of young America just appeared on the Atlantic horizon, French warships fought for your fathers' independence. Some ships of Admiral d'Estaing's French squadron bore names such as "LE MARSEILLAIS", "LA PROVENCE". In the year 1782 the French fleet was increased by a new warship of 118 guns, built and armed at the expense of the Chamber of Commerce of Marseilles. Her cost was 1,200,000 francs, a very small sum of money in our days, but rather a large one in those remote times. She was offered to King Louis XVI for the very purpose of helping in the American war, and she was named by the King "Le Commerce de Marseille." Gentlemen, it is for the successors of the "echevins" of the year 1782 a great joy to meet in Marseilles the sons of the glorious soldiers of the Independence War, sustained so many years ago with the assistance of the warship bearing their own name. Gentlemen, Marseilles may be somewhat ignored, but France was not forgotten by America. I need not mention the numerous proofs our country has received of your country's sympathy. But I only fulfill a duty in emphasizing the very great help we have found in America in the course of this terrible war, the greatest human cataclysm which ever stormed the human world. All of us are aware that France found in America another kind of help than material, steel and grain. France found amongst you any sort of goods, but also--and over all--kindness and pity. American ambulances, splendidly organized, afforded invaluable relief to our wounded on the front. May I mention not that American airmen rendered to our army the most useful services, and that American lives were lost for France. America helps us by sea, on land and in the air. Your country knows that France is not fighting for power or profit, but that she is pouring the best of her children's blood for Freedom and Humanity. Gentlemen, we used to say in France that good accounts, that is good settlements of business, make good friends. I believe that the words may be reversed and that good friendship may lead to good business. I trust that after this war, trade between America and Marseilles will be largely extended. We have shown you that, notwithstanding the present worries and difficulties, we are pushing on our harbor improvements and preparing large accommodation for shipping and industry. We strongly believe that, in the near future, Marseilles must become the most important harbor and center of commerce for the whole Mediterranean Sea. We think that the American trade will find in our city the best center of distribution for your large exports of commodities such as petroleum, harvesting machinery, tobacco, and that they should be forwarded through Marseilles to all the Mediterranean shores. I have no doubt your visit in our city will allow you to observe that you can find here produce of our land or of our industry, most convenient for American requirements, and that in the mutual interest of your and our cities the trade between Marseilles and American ports will be proportionate to the friendship of the Nations. Mr. President, Gentlemen, I propose your good health and the good health of your friends, and the prosperity of our sister Republic, The United States of America. * * * [Illustration: Shore of Mediterranean near Marseilles. In the Distance Chateau D'If, Made Famous by Dumas.] There was greeting by M. Artaud, president of the Chamber of Commerce, and a response by Mr. Nichols. We were given an ovation by the most representative people of Marseilles. We met at this dinner, A. Gaulin, American Consul General, and he was most cordial. The next day was Sunday. In the afternoon we visited the Marseilles Art Museum. We saw a bust, recently found, which dates back to the Second century; it resembles very closely the work of Rodin. In this museum we saw an old bell, labeled 1840, and an old straw hat, labeled 1820. We drove all over the city, visited the old docks and noted the cosmopolitan conglomeration of people in streets. We were taken to the Chateau D'If, which is a quarter of a mile out at sea, made world-famous by Dumas in the noted novel "The Count of Monte Cristo". We all resolved, right then and there, that when we got home we would re-read "The Count of Monte Cristo". In our drive we saw Longchamp palace, which resembles very much the court of honor in the National McKinley Birthplace Memorial at Niles, Ohio. The entrance to the port of Marseilles resembles the Golden Gate at San Francisco. We gathered considerable information in our talks with the people we met at Marseilles, being told among other things, that all the officials of the French government are to hold over until the war is over, that is to say, elections are suspended for the time being. The efficiency and preparedness of the Germans was enlarged upon, it being stated, as is very well known, that Germany was the only country prepared at the time the war broke out. We visited at Marseilles the birthplace of Rouget de l'Isle, the author of the Marseilles hymn. This hymn was first sung by a lady at an evening party in Straussburgh, Germany, and it was then called the "Hymn of the Soldier from Marseilles", but afterwards became known as "The Marsellaise Hymn". It is the national anthem of France; the words are inspiring and no one, whether American or French, can listen to the music of this hymn without being stirred to the depths. We heard much of the vast stores of zinc and iron ores in Tunisia and Algeria, and were given much information about French colonies. France, including its colonies, has nearly one hundred million people. The Trans-Africa Railroad takes in a population of more than two hundred million people along the Mediterranean, including France, Spain and Italy. One of the largest dams in the world, "La Durance Dame," 429 feet across, is in France, not far from Marseilles. Before the war Germany marketed a large amount of its coal in France, three hundred thousand tons annually. Bauxite or aluminum ore is mined in France, and 60 per cent. of the output of the world is French product. Algeria contains millions of acres of virgin forests, ready to be explored. The cork oak is one of the important trees. Large exports of iron ore are made to England. At the end of the war the French expect to market ore and coal from the fields of Lorraine. In our travels through Marseilles, we did not observe anywhere play grounds or amusements of any kind for the workmen. Marseilles has a number of convalescent hospitals. We saw in the streets on Sunday, soldiers wandering about, English, French, Russian, Tunisian, Algerian, Hindu-Chinese, Moroccan, Australian, Canadian, Corsican; natives of Madagascar and Negroes from South Africa--soldiers from eleven different nations. There is a plan projected to connect Marseilles with a system of French canals, so as to afford direct water communication between the Mediterranean, the North Sea and thus to the English Channel. Marseilles antedates the Christian era by five hundred years. In 1782 a man-of-war mounting one hundred and eighteen guns, named "La Commerce de Marseilles" was built at the expense of the Marseilles Chamber of Commerce and presented to Louis XVI for the fleet sent by the French Government to fight for American independence. Marseilles, later on, became prominent in the French Revolution and gave its name to the French national hymn. The largest tunnel in the world is now well under course of construction in France, its object being to give the city of Marseilles connection with Paris and the interior in general by rail and water. This tunnel will provide an ample waterway for barges. The entire project involves the building of a new harbor and the cutting of a ship canal, actually tunneled through solid rock for five long miles, joining the old harbor and the Mediterranean to the River Rhone. The Rhone's upper stretches are placid and already are used extensively for barge navigation, but near Marseilles the stream is far too turbulent for commerce. A range of hills had prevented the construction of a canal in days gone by. Now, with France energized by the war, and with the necessity for the canal emphasized thereby, the tunnel is being pushed and the canal will soon be opened. It will connect Marseilles with the network of canals which extends throughout the country. There are longer tunnels in the world, but none so large, for this is seventy-two feet wide and nearly forty-seven feet high. The work was begun in 1911-12 and has been continued through the war. The project is being put through by the Marseilles Chamber of Commerce, which found $8,000,000 of the $18,280,000 required to do the work. The balance will be paid by vessel tolls. The canal runs from Arles to the Mediterranean, a distance of fifty-one miles, making a navigable waterway to the usable portion of the Rhone and the Saone, opening 337 miles of water capable of bearing 600-ton lighters. By this canal and links already available, barges can be sent from the Mediterranean to the English Channel. On Monday, September the 25th, I called upon the Consul General A. Gaulin. I found him a very agreeable gentleman and quite devoted to his work, a great deal of which consisted in helping needy Americans stranded in France. The Commission was invited to luncheon at the Hotel Reserve, overlooking the Mediterranean and the Chateau D'If. On my right sat the president of the Marseilles Chamber of Commerce, Adrien Artaud, and on my left sat Lucien Estrine, former president of the Marseilles Chamber of Commerce. At this elevated hotel, tradition has it, the Count of Monte Cristo and his bride had their wedding breakfast. In the afternoon an open meeting was held by the Chamber of Commerce at the Regina Hotel. This meeting was attended by citizens of Marseilles interested in the import and export business. The question of credits was pretty thoroughly discussed. It was stated by a number of Frenchmen present that the coveting of the iron ore and coal deposits of France by the Germans was the real cause of the war. IX. TOWNS IN SOUTHERN FRANCE We left Marseilles on Tuesday, September 26th, at 6 A. M. for Grenoble. The sunrise was very beautiful; along the way you can see trees, the tops of which have been chopped off. We were told that the annual crop of fire-wood in France is just the same as the annual crop of wheat or any other product. Fast growing trees are planted and the branches and twigs are utilized for fuel. We were met at the Grenoble station by eight entirely new Dodge automobiles. At Grenoble, we visited the glove factory of Perrin & Co. This firm is well known in the United States and we were informed that our country is its best customer. In normal times the concern employes twenty thousand men and women, equally divided. The product is twenty million pairs of gloves annually. Much of the work is taken home for execution. The shop is well lighted and the sanitary conditions seem to be all of the very best. We visited the Raymond button factory and the candy factory of Davin & Company. This was a very interesting experience. At the close, or rather before leaving the factory, we were permitted to witness the decoration of a workman who had been in the employment of the company for thirty-five years. It was really an affecting sight. We were told that in all that time he had not lost a day from sickness and the time had arrived when he was entitled to a pension. He was decorated by the head of the firm. At the close of the ceremonies he was surrounded by his family, relatives and members of the firm, and greeted in the usual way of the French with their own countrymen, that is to say, by kissing and embracing. On Wednesday, September 27th, at seven in the morning, we left Grenoble for the French Alps. We had as a guide John Steel, an American who had been in France for fifteen years and had become a French citizen. He gave us much valuable information. He said, among other things, that when the railroads in France take freight they guarantee the time of delivery, if desired, and include an extra charge in the rate. On this trip we passed three companies of mounted guns, the technical name being mountain artillery. This was an interesting sight. A portion consisted of donkeys with all the paraphernalia of a soldier strapped to their backs, together with rapid firing mitrailleuses. The soldiers were unusually fine looking men from the Alpine district, a portion of France near the Swiss border. [Illustration: Types from French Provinces.] We visited a paper mill where the entire product was cardboard. We passed the "Escole de Garcons," otherwise a school for teaching waiters. We were told by Mr. Steel that in the valley adjoining that in which we were driving anthracite coal exists in abundance but has not been worked to any great extent. We passed mountain villages and noticed the cultivation of the sides of mountains almost perpendicular. It was a wonderful ride, amid splendid scenery, with numerous waterfalls, snow and glaciers in great abundance; in other words, we were going through the Switzerland of France. We passed a flock of sheep, more than five thousand in number, cared for by a head shepherdess, with several assistants and a number of dogs. We had luncheon at the Grand Hotel Bourg D'Oison and stopped briefly at the hotel de La Meige. On our return down the mountain we visited an electric manufacturing plant, the products being aluminum, magnesium, sodium, peroxide, sodium, oxolyte, calcium, and hydrated calcium. In this factory one of the commissioners had a narrow escape from certain injury, if not death, by attempting to taste the chemicals. He was stopped just in time. We then visited the Chateau Vizille, built in the seventeenth century and at one time occupied by Casimer de Perier, President of France. Vizille was one of the three great marshalls of France, and the chateau is called the "Cradle of Liberty". The first French Revolutionary meeting was held here. The castle contained old cannon and splendid old furniture, while the surrounding grounds were beautiful. On Thursday, September 28th, we visited the paper manufacturing plant of Berges at Lancey. There is an immense water-power installation here, the capacity of the plant being one hundred tons daily of all grades of paper. There are two plants, one a very old one, dating back nearly two hundred years, and the other a new one, not quite completed. We saw here one machine which cost one hundred and sixty thousand dollars, a remarkable piece of mechanism, almost human in its workings. The waterfall is six hundred feet in a short distance. Adjoining this paper mill was a small munition plant. Most of the employes were women, dressed in the American bloomer costume. In the afternoon we had a meeting with the citizens and the Chamber of Commerce of Grenoble. The discussion took a very wide range--from the tariff question to the latest news from the front. Next the party visited a plant for the manufacture of sheet steel by electricity. In the evening we were banqueted at the Grand Hotel. On my right sat M. Paisant, Director General; on my left was Mr. Thomas W. Mutton, Vice-consul of the United States of America at Grenoble; near was was Mr. Tenot, Prefect of the district. This part of France is noted for the amount of cement manufactured. Walnuts are grown in this section in large quantities. I discussed these things with Mr. Murton. There was a discussion at the banquet over female suffrage and the birthrate, and this grew very animated. On Friday, September 29th, we left Grenoble and stopped at Voiron and were here treated, at 9:30 A. M., with a "petit dejeuner". We next visited the monastery Grande. This was founded in the Twelfth century by St. Bruno. The present building was commenced and completed in the sixteenth century and the community originally had forty-two monks or fathers. This monastery is where the celebrated liquor, "Chartreuse", was manufactured, the basis of which is brandy, distilled flowers, and herbs. This formula was known only to the monks. While at the monastery in France each monk had an individual garden and an individual cell. When an extra penance seemed necessary special silence was given them and they were compelled to remain in their cells for months at a time. There were long corridors and in the basement places for servants and retainers. In the center of the grounds was a very beautiful place where the fathers were buried. We were told that the order was recruited mainly from the intellectual class, many of them widowers. Special rooms were reserved for travelers without money and without price. [Illustration: Monastery of Chartreuse.] The Carthusian order of Monks established themselves at Grenoble, France, in 1132. The original receipe for the famous cordial was given them in 1602 by Marshall d'Estress. Friar Jerome Maubec arranged the present formula in 1755, and it remained unchanged until their expulsion by the French Government, July 2nd, 1901. More than two hundred ingredients go to make up Chartreuse, and nowhere else in the world can this cordial be manufactured. Chartreuse is the unsolved enigma of French compounders of liqueurs. Its manufacture has ceased. It is quite true that at Tarragona, Spain, the monks still continue to make cordial under the name of "Peres Chartreux", but it is generally agreed that, owing to the change of locality and climate, the "Peres Chartreux" now made there is not equal to the old Chartreuse. There are a number of people in Grenoble who make imitation Chartreuse, but it is not so good as the real thing. The monastery library contained twenty-two thousand volumes. These monks were also known as the Chartreusers, or Carthusian Monks. This was the head monastery, but there were branches in Italy, Spain, and Portugal. The fathers lived on a simple diet and no meat was allowed. They were not allowed to speak to each other except twice a week, on Sunday and Thursday. This old monastery is now used as a hospital for convalescents. After this most interesting visit we were taken to luncheon at the Hotel du Grand Som, and later for a ride of one hundred miles in the military automobiles, through a mountainous country. We arrived at Annecy at 8 P. M. and stopped at the Imperial Palace Hotel. This is one of the finest watering places in France. A beautiful lake surrounds the hotel, with mountains in the distance. The next morning we called upon the Mayor and went through the usual speeches. We were given a boat ride on the lake. Then we visited an old castle. The coast looked very much like the coast of Maine between Bath and Squirrel Island. We were taken by boat from Annecy to Menthon and had luncheon at the Palace Hotel. Here Mr. Damour made his first speech, which was received so enthusiastically that he was kissed by nearly all the Frenchmen present. We then visited an electric steel plant at Acierils, the French name being the "Electriques of Ugine". We were greeted by, among other things, a couple of American flags, but they were upside down. We left Annecy at 5 P. M. for Lyons and stopped at the Terminus Hotel. We saw a number of tattooed soldiers, that is tattooed with powder marks, they having seen service. On Sunday, October 1st, at 8 A. M. we left Lyons for Le Creusot, where the great French steel plant is located. A serious discussion was held on the train about going to the front and the dangers were depicted quite vividly. We stopped at Chagny, after passing a very old church dating back to the Tenth century. We saw, as we passed along, droves of beautiful white cows, with not a speck of color. X. THE CREUSOT GUN WORKS Arriving in Le Creusot we stopped at the Grand Hotel Moderne and had a most enjoyable Sunday evening. It was discovered that our French secretary, Emile Garden, had quite a tenor voice. He started in to sing the Marseilles Hymn, and it was not long until all the Commission joined, and then the hotel employes. Before we got through scores of people came in from the street to see what was going on. The incident was telegraphed by the newspaper correspondents to the Paris papers, and it aided in the work of the commissioners by showing their patriotism and sympathy for France. We were told that there had been no strike at Le Creusot for twenty-five years. The employes wear a special sleeve decoration which indicates that they are in the same class as soldiers; that is to say, they are making cannon and munitions and working for France. We were given a breakfast at the Schneider club house and then visited the plant. We were refused admission to the munitions plant. The works employ about twenty thousand men and two thousand women. The output of the plant is large projectiles, and for this reason the number of women employed is relatively small. A number of five hundred and twenty millimeter shells were shown to us; these shells are more than seven feet long and weigh a ton and a half. We were also shown the guns from which they are fired, but these were not quite completed. This plant contains four blast furnaces of very small capacity, making special grades of pig iron. The initial heat is not used, the steel being reheated and repoured. A good deal of Vanadium alloy is used, and this is made in America. At this plant we met Mr. Edmond Lemaitre, an engineer who had been in Youngstown employed as an inspector. All the employes, both men and women, wear wooden shoes. We noticed an absence of safety devices and safety notices. Armored cars were being manufactured for the government as well as armor plate, but this armor plate mill was away behind the mills in our own country. We had luncheon at the club house, but no speeches were made. None of the proprietors or directors of the company was present. We then visited the company hospital, a part of which was occupied by electric devices for treating the wounded. Then we came to the home where the orphans of the employes are taken care of. [Illustration: New 520-mm. Gun, Carrying Projectile Seven Feet in Length and Weighing 3,100 lbs., seen at Creusot Works.] A great deal of attention is paid to the sanitary conditions and also to the uniforms of the men, and a great deal that is done for the workmen could be copied in our American plants. The history of these works, the greatest of their kind in France, is interesting. Their former ore supply, or at least a large part of it, was captured by the Germans near Verdun. The name Creusot was first mentioned in an old charter in 1253. In the year 1502 coal was discovered there, and the year 1793 saw the opening of the Canal du Centre. During the French Revolution the plant was taken and exploited by the state and a little before the year 1800 was given back to its owners. During the Napoleonic wars much work was done here. In the year 1815, gun making was stopped and only coal mining was allowed. The dynasty of the Schneiders continued for four generations; the last one, Charles Eugene Schneider, was born in 1868. The first French locomotive was built at this plant and, in 1841, the first hammer moved by steam power. In the year 1855 the Crimean war led to much activity at this plant. In 1867 ten thousand workmen were employed. In the year 1870 the first Bessemer steel produced in France, was made here, although the process had then been in use in the United States for six years. Since 1884 these works have been exporting guns to many foreign countries. In 1897 a large plant was built near Le Havre for the manufacture of naval guns. In 1882 they built large naval works near Bordeaux, and since 1906 they have been building the largest warships at that place. In 1909, at Hyeres, near Toulon, studying and making of torpedoes was begun, and this was followed in 1910 by submarines. Five plants are now scattered through France for this kind of work. The Creusot works do not employ children under fourteen years of age. There are often three generations employed in this same kind of work, and some families have up to twenty members working in one plant. They have always been spared epidemics of any serious nature. With sanitary and prosperous homes, few deaths have occurred in the first year of life. The rate of deaths at Le Creusot is only ten per thousand while the average in France is 16 per thousand, and in bad industrial centers 25 per thousand. Eighty per cent. of the children are nursed by the mother. After the seventh month before birth mothers rest, and for a period after and during this time they receive the usual wages. The first school was opened here in 1787. At the age of fourteen children can become apprentices and those of other towns or villages are often attracted. After they have a school certificate, entrance to the works is optional. From the age of twelve to sixteen years they must do military preparation, with flags and musical band. The brightest children go to high school to become engineers, and they are taught by the best professors in France. They pay back the cost of their education only when they have secured a good position. A thorough medical examination is necessary. Since the year 1875 savings banks for children have existed. The first domestic science school was organized in Europe in the year 1865 at Goteborg. At first all the mothers were opposed to these schools, but they soon favored them. One cannot enter these schools without a diploma from the common schools. Each teacher is given twenty-four pupils. The girls are taught to make their own apparel, gardening, cooking, washing, ironing, mending and keeping home expense accounts. There are three classes of workmen. Ten selected, twenty auxiliaries, thirty uneducated laborers. In January, 1912 there were twenty thousand men employed. They all sign a full contract, after reading it, before getting into the works. The contract can be cancelled by either party with one week's notice. No proprietor of a saloon can work in the plant. From 1837 to 1911 the salaries have increased 130 per cent. In the year 1911 the total of salaries was nearly thirty-three million francs. The annual donations amount to three million francs. Delegates are nominated by the workmen for conference with the employers to suggest better conditions and improvements in working methods. Sixty-six per cent. of their suggestions or demands have been adopted and the result is peace and confidence. The company provides swimming pools, divided into two parts, one-half for adults and the other half for younger men and boys. The homes are subject to constant sanitary inspection and all unsanitary buildings are destroyed. Safety appliances and all protecting apparatus are painted in brilliant red. There has been a constant study of the workman's house, since the eighteenth century. In 1840 the company had one hundred workmen's houses; in 1912 two thousand five hundred, and in addition to this hundreds of these houses have been bought by the workmen by slow annual payments added to the rent. The types of houses vary for one to four families. The rents are low and do not pay regular interest on the investment. Ground space for gardens is furnished by the company, with annual competitions and rewards for the best results. Trees and seeds are furnished at nominal prices. There are two thousand, two hundred and fifty gardens under cultivation. The savings bank is managed by the company and safe investments are made for the workmen, returns of from three to five per cent, on savings being guaranteed. In the year 1911, eight thousand workmen's accounts reached thirteen million francs. The chief use of the savings is to buy homes. The total amount advanced to workmen for building houses since 1845 was five million francs, of which only eighty-three thousand, five hundred are not yet paid back. Co-operative societies for reducing the cost of living are organized to enable the workmen to get supplies at cost. They were started and managed by the Schneider Company and gradually left in the hands of the workmen themselves. Club houses are maintained with tennis courts, fencing bouts, games, gymnasiums, a children's theatre, gun clubs, rowing clubs and musical societies. The time spent in rehearsing for orchestras is not deducted from the pay. Free medical attendance for the workman and his family is given. Emergency and base hospitals are provided by the company. Modern and up-to-date mutual benefit societies are managed by the workmen. Old age pensions have been financed differently during the last century and are now supported by one per cent. from the workman, two per cent. from the Schneider Company, and three per cent. from the State. Houses are provided for men over sixty years of age, and when it is possible aged couples are kept together. We reached Dole at 9 o'clock P. M. on Monday, October 2nd. Dole is the birthplace of Pasteur, the great French scientist who discovered the antidote for hydrophobia. His name is known throughout the world. XI. APPROACHING THE FRONT After leaving Dole, the next stop on our itinerary was Besancon, from which we entered the zone of actual hostilities. For us this town was the gateway to "The Front" and therefore a point of more than usual interest. Here we were asked to sign the following paper, which all members of the commission did on October 4th, we having reached the town at midnight on October 2nd. Besancon, October 4, 1916. The itinerary arranged for the American Industrial Commission includes several days' sojourn at the "front", which is considered of importance in the prosecution of its investigation, particularly as preliminary to a conference in Paris with the "American Centrale pour la Reprise de l' Activite Industrielle dans Les Regions Envahies." The danger of such a trip is fully recognized and hereby admitted, and although the extraordinary risk inseparably connected with a trip to Europe at this time has been accepted by us all, yet, in the present case Each of the undersigned by this means records for himself his voluntary assumption by him of all responsibility in connection therewith, and furthermore, asserts that neither by coercion, persuasion, nor even by suggestion on the part of the Chairman, or otherwise, has his course been determined. M. W. W. Nichols, M. J. G. Butler, Jr. M. A. B. Farquhar, M. G. B. Ford, M. S. F. Hoggson, M. J. F. Le Maistre, M. J. R. Mac Arthur, M. Le Dr. C. O. Mailloux, M. C. G. Pfeiffer, M. J. E. Sague, M. E. A. Warren, M. E. V. Douglass, M. E. Garden. We were met by the military automobiles at the station, two soldiers in each auto. I was accosted at the station by a number of wounded English soldiers. It seemed good to hear a little English spoken. One of the soldiers reached out his hand as I passed and said, "How are you?" We were domiciled at the Hotel Europe. The windows were barred with iron shutters excluding light and fresh air. Early the following morning we were treated to the sight of more than one thousand German prisoners, just captured and being taken to the camp at Besancon. This was the birthplace of Victor Hugo, who was born February 26th, 1802. Old Roman ruins were very much in evidence, among them an old Roman citadel and a Roman theatre. By tradition, St. John the Baptist was buried here. We visited the underground water works and the Cathedral of St. Jean and saw in this church many paintings of the Holy Family and other religious representations. There were two immense holes in this cathedral, the result of bombs fired from the German guns in 1914, in the beginning of the war. [Illustration: German Prisoners Passing Through the Village of St. Etienne.] I saw here a girl and a dog hitched to the same cart, hauling a load of vegetables; they both seemed contented. Luncheon was served by the Chamber of Commerce at the Resturant De Besancon. In the evening we were given a banquet at the Besancon Hotel de Ville. Up to this time I had been with the Commission five weeks, but on account of my patriotic utterances in private and my quite apparent sympathy with the French people, was not urged to speak. It had been, however, arranged that I was to talk at Le Creusot, but there was not a representative gathering to talk to there, and this Besancon banquet seemed to be the proper place. After some pressure of other members of the Commission I was requested to speak. This was really the first note of human sympathy sounded. I first spoke in English, which not more than two or three in the audience, outside of the Commissioners, understood, although there were about one hundred present. At the conclusion of my talk it was translated into French by Mr. MacArthur. When he got through I was surrounded by the Frenchmen present and congratulated as well as embraced by practically the entire audience. This address is reproduced by special request of some of the members of the Commission who heard it. Gentlemen:-- I am afraid my aeroplane French will not be understood by our good friends present. I tried it on a number of our Franco-American orators, and they, with one accord, said it was fine and beautiful, but they could not understand a word I was saying. I will, therefore, ask my fellow-traveler and sympathizer, Mr. MacArthur, to read the brief address I have prepared, apologizing through him for the lamentable fact that I speak English only. This gives me an opportunity of saying that by special letter of authorization issued by Dr. Ricketts President of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, I represent that important organization during our mission in France. The American Institute of Mining Engineers is composed of more than six thousand members, all technical, scientific and practical men. The organization has been in existence more than a quarter of a century, and has rendered invaluable service to our mining and manufacturing interests in the United States. This scientific body of men stand ready to render such service to France as France may desire and it is hoped this suggestion may receive serious consideration. Gentlemen: When our good ship, the Lafayette, passed through the river entering the port of Bordeaux, we beheld a most beautiful sunset, such as Cazin would have painted. As we beheld this glorious vision, it flashed through my mind that France is fighting for its existence among nations, and my heart went out to all France in loving sympathy. As we landed and progressed on our journey, this feeling of reverence and affection for the French people became intensified. The French spirit insures victory--a victory which, when gained, will be substantial and enduring, worthy of the great people who are pouring out their life blood and treasure to attain this end. Everywhere we have been impressed with the earnestness of the women in France. All the thousands we have seen at their employment impressed me with their desire to help save the country. In a word, as I looked upon their faces, all seemed to express the thought, "We are working for France". This slogan goes all over your fair land and is a mighty factor in the progress of the conflict. Signs of loss were everywhere from Bordeaux to Paris, and in our wanderings since, but not a word of complaint have we heard. Our visit to the birthplace of your countryman, Lafayette, was looked forward to with intense interest, and the visit was a keen realization of the expectation. As our worthy President, Mr. Nichols, raised his glass and asked that we pause for a moment in silence and think of the great man who was the companion and aide of Washington, "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen," there was not a dry eye in the room. All present realized the close relationship between France and the United States--cemented and welded for all time to come by the early sympathy of France for our struggling colonies, and the great assistance rendered by Lafayette to Washington in our time of need, and which resulted in our independence. In the present struggle of France, we owe it to the French people to aid in all possible ways. I believe that a great majority of the citizens of the United States are in sympathy with France and their prayers are for your success and freedom. It may not be out of place in this connection to mention, although somewhat personal, that when Lafayette, visited the United States in 1824, my grandfather, whose name I bear, attended a reception given the great Frenchman in Philadelphia, and has often told me about it, dwelling upon the enthusiasm with which Lafayette was everywhere greeted during his triumphant tour through the country. I have also in my autograph collection a three page patriotic letter written by Lafayette in 1824 during his visit. I prize this letter most highly. Another fact I may mention, and it gives me profound pleasure to do so. France, in spite of her troubles, carried out her compact, and sent to the Panama-Pacific Exposition at San Francisco, a magnificent collection of paintings and sculpture. Many examples of both were loaned from the Luxembourgh, and there were a number of pieces of priceless sculpture by Rodin, your great sculptor, whose work is famous the world over. The exhibit also contained many notable examples of work by other French and Belgian artists. After the exhibition closed we were fortunate enough to have the collection exhibited at my home, Youngstown, Ohio, for a period of thirty days, under the auspices of The Mahoning Institute of Art. We were told that some of the examples were for sale, and if sold, the proceeds would help the artists, and assist in the great work being carried on to aid the hospitals of France. We, therefore, made a common cause, buying a number of paintings and one piece of sculpture, thus doing our bit to help the good work along, besides securing for our country some splendid examples of the art of France. The exhibit was obtained through the courtesy of Monsieur Jean Guiffrey, Minister of Fine Arts in France, and to whom we are profoundly grateful. In this connection I may add that the United States is largely indebted to France for influence upon American art. Nearly all of our great painters and sculptors received their initial education in France and the influence upon American art and artists by French masters is incalculable. This is one of the debts of the United States to France which can never be fully repaid. The commission is in France, first, bearing America's good will, and second, to investigate and render such substantial aid to France as may be in our power, having in mind always the great friendship existing between the two republics, and which we hope our mission will strengthen. We venture to hope that our journey through France in war time will also result in the increased exchange of commodities between the two countries, a consummation devoutly to be wished. I thank you, gentlemen, from the bottom of my heart and bid you God speed in the great work of saving France. At this noted banquet there were several generals present, some of whom had been in the service but a short time previous, and one of them famous the world over. We were not permitted to mention the names of any of the generals we met while in the war zone. XII. WITHIN SOUND OF THE GUNS On Wednesday, October 4th, we left for the front in military automobiles. We passed through a farming district and through several small villages. Nearly all who were at work in the fields were women. It all seemed quite peaceful, considering that the battle fields were so near. We stopped at Monte Billiard, in the Champagne district, where we were addressed by the mayor and a response was made by Mr. Pfeiffer. Cuvier, the great French scientist, was born here in the year 1769, and died in 1832. We were now, as I should have mentioned before, in that part of Alsace-Lorraine again in possession of the French. We visited at Monte Billiard, a Fifteenth century castle and a new hospital. Red Cross girls were very much in evidence, a number of them American and English. We were quartered at the Hotel de la Balanie, built in 1790. We visited the factory of Japy Freres. This concern makes a specialty of steel helmets, canteens and porcelain ware for the use of the army. We arrived at Beaucort at midnight, and after settling down to rest, were awakened by the booming of cannon, which was continuous during the night. We were aroused the following morning by the town crier, passing along the street, wearing a peculiar uniform, beating a drum and calling out the news. At Beaucort we were shown through a castle now occupied as a hospital. It was originally a chateau, and at that time a citadel with moat and draw-bridge. In company with Mr. Warren, I visited the village blacksmith, being reminded of my boyhood days. He had old-fashioned bellows and, with an assistant, was in a small way finishing up some work for the army. We arrived at Belfort at about noon, and first saw the "Belfort Lion" by Bartholdi, the sculptor of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. It is seventy-three feet long, forty-three feet high and is carved in a cliff below the citadel. This statue celebrates the stubborn resistance of the town of Belfort, which has never surrendered, although besieged on numerous occasions. Belfort has been exposed to German guns, less than ten miles away, for two years, and it is much shattered from bombardments. Many of the citizens are still engaged in their ordinary pursuits, but live in the cellars of their domiciles. We were quartered at the Le Grande Hotel, and could hear the cannons roaring as we sat at luncheon. We were warned not to go out of the hotel without a companion. There was a cave underneath with both an inside and an outside entrance and we were told that in case the shelling was resumed we should get into this cave. There had been, however, no shelling for eight days. The town was shelled immediately after the departure of the Canadian Industrial Commission, which had recently visited Belfort. [Illustration: The Lion of Belfort.] The shutters of the hotel were closed at six P. M. I was taken to my room by the chambermaid and handed a candle and a box of matches. With all the lights of the hotel out, the cannon could be heard booming during the entire night. Belfort is under martial law, or, as it is called in France, military control. Just before retiring for the night we were reminded that the city was frequently shelled and that nearly all the inhabitants slept in the caves, a pleasant thought to go to bed with. However, strange to say, I had a most excellent night's rest. No one was permitted outside the hotel unless he had with him a card to show the police of the town. Belfort contains numerous monuments. One series of statues is of three generals who defended Belfort during the three sieges successfully resisted. Two of these sieges occurred during the time of Napoleon and one during the Franco-Prussian war, 1870-1871. We walked about in a body, escorted by a military officer and a number of soldiers. We visited a large part of the city and at nearly every corner there were signs showing the entrances to caves and stating the number of persons each cave would hold--all the way from twenty to seventy. Evidence was all around of bombs dropped from aeroplanes by the Germans and shells fired by them from many miles away, there being hundreds of shattered windows and holes in the sidewalks. We remained in Belfort two nights. The morning after our departure the city was bombarded and some fifteen or twenty people killed. On Friday, October 6th, we left Belfort in the military autos, under sealed orders, and knew not where we were going. We passed several squads of German prisoners, among them one very large company. We were frequently challenged by sentinels in passing, for miles, along the front of Alsace-Lorraine. Alsace-Lorraine has had forty-five years of German rule. The elder people are not Germanized, and it is quite evident that France will not be satisfied until the whole province has been restored. We stopped for luncheon at Remiremont, in the Vosges mountains, and while here visited an old church dating back to the Eleventh century. This church contained, among other things, a statue of the Virgin Mary carved in cedar, the gift to the church of Charlemagne. There is also at this place a Thirteenth century arcade, through which we passed. We bought a few relics and then left Remiremont at 4:30 P. M. for a dash into Alsace and close up to the battle-front. We arrived at Bussane at 5 P. M., after being held up several times. We next reached Thann, a village once in German hands and two miles from the German lines. This town had been bombarded by the Germans early in the war. The destruction was fearful to look at; buildings were damaged beyond repair, and one church nearly ruined. As we passed along in a dense fog, one of the guides ran past each machine saving; "Shentlemen, this is a beautiful sight, but you can't see it." At Thann we were shown the spot where the son of Prime Minister Borthon, of France, was killed by a bomb. After an inspection of Thann, we drove to Gerardmere to spend the night. It was bright moonlight and we were told there was a great deal of danger from German aeroplanes. This was a long night ride, but considered much safer than going through this part of the country in day-light. We experienced great difficulty in getting back to the French line from Alsace-Lorraine. In doing so we passed through a tunnel entering Alsace-Lorraine territory, within a half-mile of the German firing line. We saw a hill which has been taken and retaken a number of times and was then in possession of the Germans. We were exposed to the German guns for half an hour and could hear the roaring constantly. At this point the soldier chauffeurs put on steel helmets and placed revolvers near their right hands, taking from boxes in the machine a number of hand grenades. This was all very cheerful for the occupants of the car to witness, inasmuch as we did not have any helmets or hand grenades or anything else which would enable us to help ourselves in case of conflict. We reached Gerardmere in time for dinner and stopped over night at the Hotel de la Providence. This was a most interesting French village. We were called the advance guard of tourists and were really the first to have visited the place. Signs of war could be seen everywhere. We saw here pontoon wagons. We also saw immense loads of bread being hauled around in army wagons and looking like loads of Bessemer paving block. During the night of our stay in Gerardmere, we were awakened by the booming of cannons. We left Gerardmere, going north and, passing a hill named "Bonhomme", over which French and Germans have fought back and forward. It is now in possession of both forces, armies being entrenched on either side of the hill and within one mile of the summit. We passed through a number of small villages completely riddled; one village had but a single house left untouched. Our next stop was at St. Die. This is the village where the word "Amerique" was first used in France. A tablet recalls this circumstance, the wording on it being as follows: Here the 15th April 1507 has been printed the "Cosmographic Introduction" where, for the first time the New Continent has been named "America." Leaving St. Die we began a trip of more than fifty miles along the battle front. This trip required two days, and we were never beyond the sound of the guns. Our first stop was at the battlefield of La Chipotte, where was fought one of the most sanguinary of the earlier battles of war, resulting in a great French victory, but entailing terrific losses on both sides. In the greater part of this region we saw forests which had been stripped by shells and the trees of which were only beginning to grow again. In some places they will never grow, having been stripped of every leaf and limb and finally burned by the awful gunfire. The battle of La Chipotte was fought in 1914. Sixty thousand French drove back a larger army of Germans after several days of fighting. The French loss was thirty thousand, and no one knows what the German loss amounted to. The woods are filled with crosses marking burial places, where often as many as fifty bodies were entombed together. The French buried their dead separately from the German dead, but the community graves are all marked in the same way--with a simple cross. Some of these crosses recite the names of the companies engaged, but few of them give the names of the dead. Most of them simply record the number of French or Germans buried beneath. At a central part of the battlefield the French have erected a handsome monument, with the following inscription: "They have fallen down silently like a wall. May their glorious souls guide us in the coming battles." After leaving the battlefield of La Chipotte, we next reached the village of Roan Estape. It was full of ruins and practically deserted. Beyond this village we passed for miles along roads lined on either side with the crosses which indicate burial places of soldiers. The battle front here extended for a long distance and the fighting was bloody along the whole line. Much of this righting was done in the old way, trench warfare having only just begun. [Illustration: Battlefield of La Chipotte, Showing Monument and Markers on Graves.] Next we came to Baccarat, where nearly all the houses and the cathedral were utterly wrecked. For twenty miles beyond this town we passed along the battle front of the Marne, within three miles of where the main struggle had taken place, and saw everywhere graves and signs of destruction. It was surprising how the country had begun to resume its normal aspect and green things begun to take hold again. Our next stop was Rambevillers, where we had luncheon at the Hotel de la Porte. XIII. THE STORY OF GERBEVILLER After luncheon at Rambevillers, we drove to the famous village of Gerbeviller--or rather to what is left of it. This little town is talked of more than any other place in France, and is called the "Martyr City". Its story is one of the most interesting told us, and to me it seemed one of the most tragic, although the residents of the town all wanted to talk about it with pride. While on the way to Gerbeviller we had to show our passes, and it was lucky they were signed by General Joffre, since nothing else goes so close to the front. We were made to tell where we were going, how long we meant to stay, and what route we would take coming back. Prefect Mirman, of the Department of Meurthe and Moselle, one of the most noted and most useful men in France, escorted the commission on this trip. Gerbeviller is located near the junction of the valleys of Meurthe and Moselle, and occupied a strategic situation at the beginning of the war. This and the heroic defense made of the bridge by a little company of French soldiers, was, the French believe, responsible for its barbarous treatment by the Germans. In the other ruined towns the destruction was wrought by shell fire. Here the Germans went from house to house with torches and burned the buildings after resistance had ceased and they were in full possession of the town. The French say it was done in wanton revenge and it looks as if that were true. Here is the story as it was told to us in eager French and interpreted for us by one of the party. A bridge leading from the town crosses the river to a road which goes straight up a long hill to a main highway leading to Luneville, five miles away. We passed over this bridge and were asked to note its width--only enough to permit the passage of one car at a time. Two roads converge at it and lead to the little town. During one of the important conflicts an army of 150,000 Germans was sent around by way of Luneville to cross the river at Gerbeviller and fall upon the right flank of the French army. The French had been able to spare but few troops for this point, but they had barricaded the streets of the town and posted a company of chasseurs, seventy-five in number, at the bridge with a mitralleuse. This was an excellent position, as there was a small building there which screened the chasseurs from view. [Illustration: Ruins of Gerbeviller.] At 8 o'clock in the morning the German advance body, twelve thousand strong, appeared at the intersection of the road near the top of the hill across the river. They advanced in solid formation, marching in the goose step and singing, to the music of a band, their war hymn, "Deutchland Uber Alles." It was a beautiful morning and the sun glistened on the German helmets as they came down the slope, an apparently innumerable army. In this form they reached the end of the bridge opposite to where the chasseurs were located. The captain of that little band of French ordered them to halt, and they did so, the rear ranks closing up on those in front before the order could be passed along by their commander. In a moment, however, the column began to move again and then the captain of the chasseurs waved his hand and the mitralleuses opened on the advancing host. The range was point blank and there was absolutely no protection. The hail of bullets mowed down the Germans and they broke ranks, fleeing back up the hill and out of range. All was quiet for half an hour and then a detachment of cavalry, evidently ordered to rush the bridge, came down at a gallop, having been formed in the shelter of a road branching off the main highway a short distance from the bridge. They were met by a hail of bullets and nearly all went down before they reached the bridge, while the few who did so fell on it or tumbled, with their horses, into the river. The whole German force was delayed until a battery could be brought up from the rear and trained on the small building sheltering the chasseurs and their machine guns. For some reason, the gunners could not get the range on this small building, and after firing a few shots in its direction, turned their guns on the magnificent chateau, a short distance down the river. At this point there was a small foot bridge, and the German commander evidently meant to try to rush it. Before doing so, however, he was going to make certain that the Chateau, which commanded it, did not conceal another band of defenders. This seems to be the only explanation for the bombardment of the Chateau, which was one of the finest country homes in France and entirely unoccupied. At any rate, they fired shell after shell at the building. I secured a picture of this which shows the work of the guns. But, as the French tell the story, no effort was then made to cross the foot bridge below the town. A battery was swung down the hill to the end of the bridge, apparently to shell the defenders from that point. The machine guns barked again and every man with the battery fell. Scores more were killed before it could be withdrawn and the way cleared. Owing to the steep banks it seemed hard for the Germans to locate a battery in an unexposed position, and they considered again. Finally they shelled the Chateau some more and then sent a detachment to take that bridge, expecting to get around in the rear of the chasseurs. A machine gun had been sent to the footbridge in the meantime, and the Germans did not get across it until the ammunition ran out and two hundred of them were killed. When they did cross, the little band at the main bridge, of whom one had been killed and six wounded, retreated to the main army, and then the Germans crossed in force and started to burn the town. The heroes of the bridge had held the German advance guard, numbering 12,000 men, from 8 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon, and in the meantime the great battle they had expected to win had been fought and lost. Naturally the Germans were angry, and apparently they vented their spleen upon the village. The great Chateau, its pride and chief attraction, had been destroyed, but the conquerors at once begun to burn the little town, evidently determining to reserve only enough to make a place for headquarters for their general. They did burn it, but not so completely as they had intended. [Illustration: Sister Julie.] Here is where Sister Julie comes in. Sister Julie is the most popular woman in France as well as the most famous. We heard of her long before we got to Gerbeviller and long after we left, but we were not fortunate enough to meet her, as she was away at the time the Commission reached the town. Although a member of a religious order, she has been decorated with the grand cross of the Legion of Honor--the highest decoration France confers upon her heroes. To pin this on her habit President Poincaire journeyed all the way from Paris with his suite, and now Sister Julie will not wear it. She says that religeuse do not wear decorations--they are doing the work of the Lord. In describing Sister Julie and her work the people of Gerbeviller are even more enthusiastic than in recounting the manner in which seventy-five Frenchmen stopped twelve thousand Germans. It seems that when the German forces crossed the bridge and began to burn the houses they met with little resistance until they came to the convent where Sister Julie and her companions had a house filled with wounded, including the wounded chasseurs. The sister met them at the door and defied them to burn her convent. She ordered them off and made a such a show of determination that they went. No, they will tell you, these French people, Sister Julie is not an Amazon. She is a little woman. Her voice is usually mild and sweet and she smiles all the time. But when they tried to burn her temporary hospital, it was different. She scared them off and they did not come back. Not only that, but she made the Germans carry water and put out the fires they had started in the neighborhood, and made them fill wash tubs with water and leave them in her hall, so they would be handy if more fires threatened. Besides that, she organized the men and went to the barns where cattle had been burned and had these dressed and the meat prepared for use. Then she made great kettles of soup and fed the people who had no homes and nothing to eat. In all of this she defied the Germans and told their commander to mind his own business--she was going to attend to hers. When some of the German soldiers came and wanted to take the food prepared for the homeless people, Sister Julie ordered them away and made them go. There were five other nuns in this convent. Under the leadership of this heroine they did a tremendous amount of good in the stricken community. They used the building next door to the convent for a hospital and there cared for hundreds of wounded soldiers. They assumed charge of the demoralized town and kept the people from starving. No one gives them greater credit than Prefect Mirman, who has also done great work in his department. We were shown through the convent and hospital under the care of these sisters, and saw many places where bullets had penetrated the walls, these were fired by the Germans after they crossed the bridge. In this hospital the sisters cared for the German wounded as tenderly as for the French, and they won the respect of the invaders in this way, otherwise it would have probably been impossible for them to do the work they did. We saw the camp chair on which Sister Julie sat all night in front of the hospital and kept the Germans out. The Commission spent the greater part of the day in Gerbeviller, visiting the bridge where the seventy-five chasseurs held up the German advance, as well as that where one lone chasseur--a regular "Horatio at the Bridge", kept back the attacking party at the Chateau. We went through this chateau, which is owned by a resident of Paris and was one of the sights of the village. It is seven or eight hundred years old and is a very large building, handsomely finished in the interior. Before the bombardment, which was a ruthless and unnecessary piece of vandalism, it contained many fine tapestries and countless precious heirlooms of the Bourbon times. The great strength of the walls resisted the effects of artillery, but the interior was entirely ruined by fire. The grand marble staircase was splintered, but the Bourbon coat of arms above it was not touched. Strewn about in corners and on the floors were fragments of vases and art work that must have been priceless. Even these fragments were valuable. We secured a number of small pieces, some of which I brought home as relics. While viewing the ruins of the chateau we could hear the guns booming. It was while we were still here that we received news that bombs had been dropped on Belfort that morning, twenty-four hours after we left that place, and that a number of persons had been killed, among them some women and children. Gerbeviller is an almost complete ruin. Beyond the convent and hospital, and a few buildings saved for headquarters for the commanding general by the Germans, all the rest of the town was destroyed. The people who remain there are living in temporary buildings or mere sheds built on the ruins of their homes, which they do not want to leave under any circumstances. This little town, which has won its place in history, was one of the most interesting and melancholy sights we saw in all France. On the following day, Saturday, October 7th, we visited the villages of Luneville and Vitrimont. We were now in the "devastated region" for sure. On every hand was evidence of the ruin wrought by shells, with long lines of trenches that had once been filled with soldiers. Some of these were green again, but the trees presented a woeful appearance. The next stop after leaving Rambevillers was the little town of Vitrimont. This is a small village in France, almost wholly ruined by the Germans in 1914, preceding the battle of the Marne. We found there Miss Daisy Polk, of San Francisco, a wealthy, young and attractive woman, whose work is being financed largely by the Crockers, of San Francisco. She is living in one of the small houses untouched by the Germans. She has undertaken the rebuilding of the village of Vitrimont as a modern sanitary proposition and to serve as a model for what may be done in rebuilding all the destroyed parts of France. She is the great-granddaughter of President Polk. It is a splendid work and should receive support. I have since received the following letter from Miss Polk: * * * Vitrimont, par Luneville, Meurthe et Moselle, France. October 18th, 1916 Dear Mr. Butler:-- Your note, with the Commission booklet, received and I want to thank you for remembering me. The visit of the Industrial Commission was a most delightful surprise to me here in the midst of my ruins and it is very nice to have a souvenir--especially such a nice souvenir, with all the names and photographs. Vitrimont looks very much as it did when you were here except that the work is a little more advanced in spite of the rain. We are not hoping any longer that the war will end this winter--so we are sad. Especially when we have to see our men go back to the front after their all too short leaves. This has happened three times since you were here, all three going back to the Somme, too, which they all say is much worse than Verdun ever was. However, they have the satisfaction, as one of our men said today, (a fine industrious farmer) of hoping that if they don't come back, at least their wives and children will have their homes rebuilt. This is my hope too. Thanking you again for your letter. Very sincerely yours, (Signed) DAISY POLK. * * * Miss Polk is a most charming young woman, filled with enthusiasm. She lives in a small house with but two rooms. XIV. ON THE MAIN FRONT We arrived at Nancy October 7th, at six o'clock P. M. and spent the evening at a reception given by the Prefect L. Mirman. We met here Madam Mirman and her two daughters. In the entrance to the prefect's residence were several large holes which had been blown out by the German shells. During the reception we were shown an embroidered sheet, filled with holes. This was taken from the window of a hospital, fired on by the Germans, July, 1916. The name of the hospital was Point Au Mousson. The sheet was hanging in a window when the shrapnel was fired into it. This was considered ample proof that the hospital was fired upon with the full knowledge that it was a hospital. This visit to prefect Mirman's home was a red letter event in our trip. He is one of the important men of France and is devoting much of his time to the care of refugees and other good work. As we stopped at the entrance of Nancy, we saw an aeroplane flying over the town. This aeroplane was intended to convoy us to our destination. Next day we were driven to the village of Luneville. At this place, as in nearly all the towns of France, there is a public market house, with stalls usually presided over by women. Late in September the Germans dropped from aeroplanes a number of bombs on this market house. The entire building was destroyed and forty-one women killed, besides a number of children who were playing about. We saw the ruins of the market house. This sort of battle waging is called "German terrorism", otherwise, a "stepping stone to kultur". There is an immense palace in Luneville called the Palace of Stanislaus, occupied by a former King of Poland. Our headquarters were at Nancy, where we remained for two days. We were shown every possible attention by the prefect and under his guidance visited various parts of the city. Among other places "The Golden Gates" of Louis XVI and the gate of the old town erected in 1336. We visited the park and were shown a hole where a German shell had penetrated, the hole being fully fifty feet deep. We visited the cathedral of St. Elme and were shown where the beautiful stained glass had been blown out of the windows. We visited the Ducal Chapel, which dates back to the Tenth century, where the princes of the House of Hapsburg are entombed. Sand bags were piled up everywhere to prevent further ruin to this ancient place. We were shown the ruins of the cooking school reported by German aviators as a military building and for that reason destroyed. [Illustration: Cathedral at Nancy.] Practically one-half of the town is in ruins. The military barracks are now used for housing and caring for refugees from all over France and this is done with great system. The expense is figured down to one franc per day for each person. We saw there a children's school, playground, orphanage and Cinema show, and attended church services at which were present several thousand refugees. We could hear the cannon booming during the entire services. Many of the refugees were at work making bags for the trenches and embroidering. We visited the museum and were shown tombs and urns dating back to the Second century. During a luncheon at the Cafe Stanislaus an impassioned address was made by the prefect. We left Nancy at 2 P. M. for Chalons on the Marne, one of the three important military supply centers of France. En-route we passed a number of ruined villages with scarcely a house left and with but few inhabitants. We passed through Bar Le Duc also, another distributing center. On this memorable part of the journey we skirted three battle fronts, Verdun, Somme and the Marne. We noticed numerous trench soldiers in squads, enroute to and from the trenches. The discipline of the French army is very much different from that of the English and Germans. The officers and the French soldiers are comrades. The German and French soldiers have no tents, they sleep in their overcoats. I expected that when we got into the war zone we would see tents everywhere, but there was not a tent in sight. The distance from Nancy to Chalons on the Marne is 108 miles. All this distance we travelled close in the rear of the French army and much of it near the German army. In the early part of the year this ground was occupied by the Germans, being afterwards retaken by the French. We were closest to the trenches when passing St. Miheil, where the famous German salient was still held. We reached Chalons on the Marne at 10 o'clock on the evening of October 8th, after a busy and most interesting day. We were quartered here for the night and remained part of the next morning. During our stay we could hear the booming of guns continuously, and saw many evidences of military occupation. At this time the Germans had been forced back about thirty miles from Chalons on the Marne, and their shells were no longer feared in this immediate vicinity. The cannon we heard along the greater portion of the route after passing Bar Le Duc must have been French guns, although the German big guns can be heard for fifty miles under favorable circumstances. At Chalons on the Marne an incident occurred which made a deep impression on me, although it was in itself simple enough. It was my custom to go about much seeking to see whatever was to be seen at all of our stops. Usually I had a companion, but sometimes went alone. On this occasion Mr. Warren, of the Commission, was with me. We had entered the Cathedral of Notre Dame, to inspect its interior and arrived just as a funeral service was ending. It was one of those pathetic funerals, now common enough in France, at which the body is not present, in this case being that of a young man killed in the army and evidently an only son. The services ended with a procession around the church and this brought the mourners to where we were. We fell in with them, this being our natural impulse and also, we believed, the proper and courteous thing to do, rather than to rudely retire. When the party reached the main aisle, the friends gathered around the father and mother and two daughters, weeping with them and kissing them in the demonstrative way the French have of showing both grief and affection. Before we knew just what to do, the mourners melted away, taking with them the mother and daughters. Mr. Warren also had disappeared and I was left practically alone with the father of the dead boy. He approached me and extended his hand, having perhaps read in my face something of my feelings. He knew no English and I knew no French, but the language of human sympathy is universal. We grasped hands and the only word uttered was my crude "Americaine." None other was needed. I could tell by the pressure of the hand holding mine that my sympathy was appreciated, even though I was from across the seas and an utter stranger, and any doubts I had felt about the propriety of remaining were thoroughly dispelled. [Illustration: German Trenches Captured by the French.] Funerals such as this are very frequent in France. Scarcely a family but has suffered its loss, and in some cases several sons have been taken from one home. Among the hundreds of personal cards brought back with me from France, an astonishing number are bordered deeply with black. These are the cards of the most prominent people in the places we visited, the members of the Commission having met few others, and the mourning border on so many of them shows that in France as well as in England, the upper classes have borne their full share of the terrific toll levied by the war. Before leaving Chalons on the Marne we visited the canal, the banks of which were lined with flowers and ivy. We crossed here a bridge built in the Seventeenth century and still in good condition. XV. REIMS AND THE TRENCHES Some time during the forenoon of the day following our arrival at Chalons on the Marne we left in the military automobiles for Reims. This city is on the south branch of the river Aisne, on which the Germans made their stand after the battle of the Marne, and had been within reach of their guns constantly since they stopped retreating after that battle. It is about ninety miles from Paris. The city was at that time less than two miles from the actual battle line, trenches extending close up to its edges. The Germans were very busy and there was abundant evidence of the fact in the sound of cannon. It was here that we were to be allowed a visit to the trenches. On the way we passed a large number of Hindu-Chinese and Russian soldiers. We saw two captive balloons, used by the French to direct artillery fire on their enemies. Thousands of soldiers were coming and going between the trenches and the encampments behind. On this trip we passed through and stopped briefly at an aviation camp, where the aviators were tending their machines and waiting to be called for duty in the air. A short stop was also made at a large encampment, where there must have been at least twenty thousand French soldiers. This was the largest number we saw at any one time. Here we were shown concealed trenches and batteries so skillfully hidden that they could not be seen until you were right upon the guns. We also saw on this ride several illustrations of how bridges and other military works can be hidden from aviators by painted scenery and the use of trees. By 11 A.M. of this day we had come within five miles of the German trenches, behind which, we were told, were more two million German soldiers and across from them at least an equal number of French. Of this vast number of warriors we saw at no time more than twenty thousand. Many were in the trenches and others in encampments on both sides, within easy reach of the lines but secure from gun fire. We came to the top of a ridge near Reims, and just before reaching the summit orders were given by the sentinels to separate the automobiles and run them half a mile apart, as they would be within range of German guns and might draw the fire if seen in a company. At this point two members of the Commission suddenly lost their interest in the scenes ahead and refused to go any further. From this time until we entered Reims, batteries, many of them concealed, with other signs of real war, became more numerous. [Illustration: The Reims Cathedral Before Its Destruction.] At 11:30 A. M. we entered the famous Champagne district, known all over the world as the locality where grapes for making champagne can be raised better than anywhere else. We saw here farmers and women working in the fields and vineyards within a mile of the actual front. They were within range of German guns and in great danger, but they worked on, seemingly careless of the fact. We passed many "dugouts" occupied by soldiers, and saw soldiers digging trenches. All the time the guns were roaring, apparently just beyond the city of Reims. This ground had all been at one time in the hands of the Germans. We reached Reims at noon and were taken direct to the City Club. Here the Commission was entertained by Robert Lewthwaite, the head of the great wine firm of Heidsick & Company. At this luncheon we met Col. Tautot, chief of staff under General Lanquelot, commander in the Reims sector. Col. Tautot represented his superior, who could not be present, probably because of more important engagements with the Germans. We also met Captain Talamon, a staff officer, and Jacques Regnier, sub-prefect of the Reims district. Col. Tautot had been invested with the ribbon of the Legion of Honor and within a week of our visit had been in active service. Out of fifteen members originally on the staff, he alone survived, all the others having been killed in action or died of wounds. In the room where luncheon was served at the City Club was a great hole, made through the wall by a shell and not yet closed. We were told that this shell had arrived a few days before our visit. This was quite appetizing information, but our hosts assured us that we were comparatively safe, as there had been no firing for some time. I took their word for it and enjoyed the luncheon after the long and keenly interesting ride. At this luncheon a curious toast was offered by the host--"I looks toward you." The proper response was--"I likewise bows." After the luncheon Colonel Tautot and the sub-prefect led the Commission to inspect the ruined cathedral. This was a pitiful and fascinating sight. This once famous cathedral is practically a wreck. I doubt very much if it can ever be restored. We were taken into the interior and were shown how wonderful stained glass windows had been blown out. We picked up a number of the pieces of fine glass from the ground. The making of this glass is a lost art and the coloring is most beautiful. I brought home some of the glass and had it used as settings for a number of rings which I presented to friends. The sub-prefect presented me, as a relic, a bone--the front part of a forearm. This cathedral was the burying place of number of archbishops and ancient royal personages, and all these tombs were blown up. [Illustration: Ruins at Reims. Upper and Lower Plates--The Cathedral. Middle Plate--The Archbishop's Palace.] Adjoining the cathedral was the archbishop's palace, famous the world over, and its contents priceless. This was utterly destroyed. One of our party, in looking about the ruins, picked up a large sized key, which proved afterwards to be the key to the archbishop's residence. He was given permission by the sub-prefect to retain this, and I subsequently acquired it. We also visited the market place and the old Notre Dame church built in 1149 by Charlemagne. This was a most beautiful church, the windows almost equalling those of the Cathedral of St. Elme at Nancy, but inferior to those in the Reims cathedral, said to have been the most beautiful in the world. In this church we saw a statue of Jeanne D'Arc, and a very fine painting of the "Ascension". We were taken to the city hospital at Reims, which had been fired upon and almost completely destroyed by the Germans while occupied by French wounded. The range was obtained by the aviators, and then incendiary bombs were fired. These bombs set fire to the buildings with which they came in contact. We were told that hundreds of French soldiers were killed with this mode of warfare. We could hear the bombs on the Aisne front exploding while we were visiting the ruins of the hospital. We were next shown around to view the ruins of the town. Twenty-five hundred acres of houses were almost blown to pieces. We were told that thousands of bodies of men, women and children were still under the ruins. In an isolated part of these ruins, absolutely alone, we found and talked to an old French woman, still occupying her house. She had refused to move and insisted upon staying in her little home, one or two rooms having been left. Following this visit to the ruins we were permitted to enter the trenches. A number of the party did not go to the end of the trenches. However, I concluded to see all there was to be seen, and with Deputy Damour and Mr. MacArthur, went, escorted by a staff officer detailed for that duty, to the extreme limit. We went through the trenches to within one thousand feet of the German firing lines. We could see the German sentinels through periscopes, and were told to be careful and not show our heads, which admonition was religiously obeyed. This visit to the trenches was one of the most interesting parts of the trip, and in spite of the danger, I was very glad that I had gone and had nerve enough to go to the limit. We entered what is known as a "communication" trench, leading from the edge of the city toward the front. This was necessary, as the terrain was open and under range of the German guns. Going down through this long trench we encountered a network of others, apparently leading in all directions. Our guide knew them well and led us forward until we could, by means of a contrivance for that purpose, look over the top and see the German trenches, less than one thousand yards away. We saw few German soldiers, although occasionally we were shown where a sentinel was on duty, carefully concealed to save himself from French bullets. The trenches in this section are irregular in width and depth. As a general thing they are not more than three feet wide at the bottom and about five feet deep. The earth is thrown up at the side next to the enemy. At short intervals along the trench holes are scooped out, into which the soldiers can go when fighting is not actually in progress. Some of these caves were quite large and had in them straw and sometimes a bench. There were cooking utensils and buckets for water. The bottoms of the trenches are generally dry, or were when we saw them. In some places they have boards on the bottom. The sides are steep and are constantly crumbling. Some of the trenches we entered had been made by the Germans, others by the French. Those close up to the front seemed to have been dug but a short time, but farther back they were already beginning to look ancient. In some places grass was growing in the sides and here and there flowers. Some of these trenches had not been used to any extent during the summer. They are so arranged that each line is connected with the one in its front and rear by cross trenches, and it is through these that the soldiers enter and leave the actual fighting zone. [Illustration: Key of Archbishop's Palace at Reims and Bone from Twelfth Century Tombs Opened by German Shells.] We saw many French soldiers in the trenches. They seemed to be well fed and comfortable. At the time we were there there was no actual fighting, of course, but an occasional shot rang out across "no man's land," when sentries on either side thought they saw a chance to do execution. The ground between Reims and the battle line is a complete network of these trenches, and years will be required to level it again after the war is over. From the advanced trench toward the German lines, at the points where we looked, there was no sign of war except an occasional shell hole and the barbed wire entanglements. The country was green and seemed to be at peace, except for the sound of the guns. It was hard to believe that we were looking across a narrow strip, on the other side of which were millions of armed men and every form of death and destruction that has been invented. Yet all this was there. Upon coming out of the trenches we were unable to find our automobiles, the military authorities having ordered them to separate, so that they would not prove an attraction to the German aeroplanes, otherwise they would undoubtedly have been fired upon. [Illustration: Trenches Visited by the Commission] Following this visit to the trenches, we were taken to the famous wine cellars of Heidsick & Co., containing twelve miles of underground vaults. A few days previous to our visit a German bomb had struck the Heidsick wine cellar and destroyed forty thousand bottles of champagne, believed to be the largest number of bottles opened at any one time in the history of the world. These vaults, during the bombardments, which were numerous, are a safety place for the inhabitants and thousands take refuge in the wine cellars. We were told that there was not a single bottle of champagne missed, a testimony to the honesty of the French people. This visit to the wine cellars was intensely interesting. While driving about the ruined town, the automobile in which I happened to be was guided by a chauffeur unfamiliar with the location, and he drove us across the German lines within three minutes ride of the German headquarters. The major in charge of the automobile squad discovered the error. We were told afterwards that we had a narrow escape from being made prisoners. While at Reims we were at all times within twenty-five minutes walk of the Germans and within ten minutes ride in the motor. The population at Reims before the war was one hundred and eighteen thousand. It is now reduced to eighteen thousand, the other hundred thousand having become refugees, soldiers and "missing". We visited a Twelfth century cathedral which, strange to say, had not been touched. While in this cathedral we could hear the guns booming. We returned to Chalons on the Marne the same evening, arriving there at 8:30 P.M., it being considered unsafe to remain at Reims. After our dinner at Chalons on the Marne, Dr. Mailloux timed the firing of the cannon and announced that for a space of half an hour there was one fired every two seconds. We left Chalons on the Marne at 11:30 A.M. on the following day by railroad. The train was filled with officers returning from the front. We saw a number of Red Cross girls on this train. One had a double decoration. As we passed along we saw thousands of soldiers enroute to the front, among them one full regiment. We also saw a large detachment of German prisoners being transferred, with the letters "P. G." quite large on the back of each prisoner. "P. G." means prison garb. In the railroad trains in both England and France appears the following:-- Be Silent! Be watchful! Hostile ears are listening to you! Issued by the Minister of War. XVI. BACK TO PARIS We arrived at Paris at three o'clock P.M., October 17th, and here received our first news of the submarine work off Nantucket. In the evening we met Antoine Borrel, deputy from Savoy, on six days' leave of absence from the Alsace Lorraine district. He entered the war a common soldier and now has the Legion of Honor on his breast. On Wednesday, October 11th, we visited Consul Thackara and arranged about our passports. I succeeded in securing some fine war relics and a partial line of French war posters which I brought home with me. On Thursday, October 12th, with Mr. Weare, of the United States Steel Corporation, I called upon Consul Thackara, Charge d'Affairs Bliss, and other friends at the Embassy. We also visited the general offices of the Schneider Company. On Friday, October 13th, a meeting of the Commissioners was held and, although our passage had been engaged on the Rochambeau of the French line, it was decided to cancel the passage and return to America by way of the American line. This was a disappointment to some of the Commissioners, although the change appeared to be inevitable. The secretary of the Commission then set about to get us safely across the Channel. We were told we would be convoyed by a British vessel, usually used in carrying soldiers. We were fed on this information for three days, telegrams were sent to the American Embassy in London and a lot of valuable time wasted. The whole scheme proved to be a myth, and we were obliged to content ourselves with getting to England the same as ordinary mortals. On Friday, October 13th, Charge d'Affairs Bliss gave a luncheon to some of the members of the Commission, and this was an enjoyable affair. We were informed in the evening that accommodations had been secured on the steamer "Philadelphia", of the American line, sailing October 21st, from Liverpool. Deputy Damour was greatly disappointed, as he had planned a farewell dinner at Bordeaux and great preparations had been made by the Bordeaux Chamber of Commerce for this event. An informal supper was given Deputy Damour at the Hotel de Crillon at which some of the members of the Commission were present. [Illustration: King Albert's address to the Belgians when he took command of the army A neighbour haughty in its strength without the slightest provocation has torn up the treaty bearing its signature and has violated the territory of our fathers because we refused to forfeit our honor. It has attacked us. Seeing its independence threatened the nation trembled and its children sprang to the frontier, valiant soldiers in a sacred cause. I have confidence in your tenacious courage. I greet you in the name of Belgium a fellow citizen who is proud of you. King Albert's Address to the Belgians.] Notwithstanding the war, we noticed some signs of gaiety in Paris. On Saturday evening I visited the Follies Bergere, where there was fine music and some dancing. The audience contained principally soldiers on six days' leave of absence from the front. On Sunday, October 15th, we had a joint meeting with the American Chamber of Commerce and discussed the tariff question, credits and other things too numerous to mention. On Sunday afternoon I visited the American Ambulance for the third time. I paid particular attention to the pathological department. I was shown a piece of spine with an imbedded bullet visible, and other specimens entirely too realistic for me to look at. I was shown an electric apparatus for locating bullets and shells, without X-ray treatment, I saw a badly wounded soldier undergoing the Carrel treatment. Dr. Sherman, chief surgeon of the Carnegie Steel Company, had spent two months in France investigating this treatment. He was most thoroughly imbued with its usefulness and enthusiastic about introducing it in the hospitals of the Steel Corporation in the United States. My own belief is that this is an advanced stage in surgery and, in fact, is an epochal discovery. It will no doubt be adopted, not only in the military hospitals of the world, but in other hospitals. A description of the treatment was furnished me by Dr. Lee, of the University of Pennsylvania, who had spent several months in Paris hospitals, and also by Mr. Bennet, who was the superintendent of the American ambulance. These descriptions follow in later pages, the subject being of vast importance to those interested in the cause of humanity. On Monday, October 16th, we met, at the Hotel de Crilion, the Belgian Chamber of Commerce. This was a notable gathering. The president of the Chamber of Commerce, Rene Nagelmackers, made a passionate and forceful address, thanking all the United States for the aid and assistance rendered the Belgians and setting forth their needs. He said a line of vessels had already been arranged for and financed, and that it was the intention of the Belgian Government to bring to France and deposit where they could be quickly reached, machinery, tools and everything needed to immediately rehabilitate Belgium. The intention was to have these in readiness so that restoration can be promptly effected and all Belgians returned to their native soil. The president and other members of the Chamber expressed a belief that all Belgium will again be restored to its rightful owners. On materials and machinery they will want fair prices, but they will be in need of large quantities of these and the United States will, on equal terms, be given the preference. A number of other members of the Belgian Chamber of Commerce spoke, some of them in English and some in French. Victor Haardt, a member residing temporarily in Paris, suggested that the meeting was important and should be brought to the attention of the Belgian Government. When it became known that I was a personal acquaintance of King Albert, a number of the delegates suggested that I write to him and give an account of the conference and they would in turn write an official account of it. This I proceeded to do, the King's military address having been furnished me by one of the members. I gave the King in my letter full particulars of the meeting and in response received the following letter from his secretary soon after my arrival home: [Illustration: Photograph of King Albert of Belgium, with the Royal Autograph.] * * * La Cambre, Belgium, October 29th, 1916. Office of the Secretary to the King and Queen. Mr. J. G. Butler, Jr. Youngstown, Ohio. Dear Sir:-- I was particularly pleased to read to his Majesty your good letter, and to receive the pamphlet. I am charged by the King to thank you for the sentiments which you have expressed and for your sympathy for Belgium. Our Sovereign wishes you to know that he recalls with pleasure the meeting with the Directors of the American Iron and Steel Institute at Brussels. I beg you to accept, dear sir, the assurance of my highest regards, J. INGENBLECK, Secretary. * * * I spent a good part of the following day in buying war relics, many of them made by the soldiers in the trenches out of such material as exploded shells, buttons from the uniforms of dead soldiers, etc. I purchased some unique postal cards, painted by hand in the trenches by soldiers who were artists. Other relics consisted of hat pins, napkin rings, bracelets and finger rings, all made as before stated, from war material. A copy of an English publication was brought to my attention during the Belgian conference, and I was struck by a paragraph which is quoted:-- SUBMARINING AMERICA What Germany is Doing now is Submarining the Monroe Doctrine and that is Submarining America. In this connection there was some discussion and I was surprised to learn that the French, even those who are at the head of things, have a very hazy idea of what the Monroe Doctrine is. I explained to them that it was a statement made in a message to Congress by President Monroe in 1823, in which he laid down in a few words the principle that America, because of her history and the form of government established in the western world, was not a proper place for the exploitation of despotic governments, and that any attempt on the part of European nations to gain a foothold or to extend their territorial interests on the American continent would be regarded as an act unfriendly to the United States. I explained that this statement was never questioned and had become an accepted principle. The explanation seemed to please the French and Belgians to whom it was translated, and they apparently approve of the idea. Coming back to America, by the way, I found that there was no occasion to be surprised at lack of understanding of the Monroe Doctrine abroad, as few of us understand just what it is at home. On October 17th, I visited the American Embassy and met there, among others, Captain Eugene Rosetti, a captain in the Foreign Legion. This Legion was recruited from friends of France who were not Frenchmen, but largely Americans. When the war broke out this body was thirty-six thousand strong, and on the date I talked with Captain Rosetti there were but thirteen hundred survivors. The Foreign Legion was largely in evidence at the early part of the war and stories of its bravery were heard everywhere. In the evening Dr. Veditz made an address before the Commissioners, telling of the work he was engaged in and what he had accomplished. On October 18th, the Commission gave a luncheon to Wilbur J. Carr, Consul in Europe with headquarters in Washington. Some very plain talk was in evidence as to the inefficiency of some of the American consuls. Consul Carr delivered a very forceful address. He had been in the consular service for nearly a quarter of a century and is working, with much success, to better the service. XVII. ON THE WAY HOME--ENGLAND On this date, October 18th, the commission left Paris for Havre at 4:50 P.M., its destination being London, by way of Southampton. We boarded the boat at Havre after a very rigid inspection of passports, baggage, etc. It was a rough night and many were seasick. The boat was crowded to repletion and the trip was a very uncomfortable experience. We had been escorted from Paris to Havre by Captain Sayles, of the American Embassy. This was one of the many courtesies shown us by the American Embassy in Paris under the direction of Robert Bliss, Charge d'Affaires, in the absence of Ambassador Sharp. I had a very interesting talk with Captain Sayles. His first question came out quickly and rather abruptly. "What most impressed you on your trip?" I replied, without hesitation: "The spirit of France and the morale of the French soldier and the French people. All France is thinking and working and trying to do what they can to help save France." Captain Sayles said it was a tradition that when events required it, France always rose to the occasion and passed the crisis successfully. He said also that the battle of the Marne, as has been said previously by many others, settled the war. That the Kaiser and the Prussian militants knew then they were beaten and have been trying for a year and a half to find a way out. There is no doubt in the opinion of Captain Sayles, that the German people are deceived and still think that Germany will win the war. They are fed upon false information. In this connection I had a talk with Allyn B. Carrick, an American who had spent several months in Germany during the past year and had recently returned from there. He was an American and understood German, and was a good listener. He said the people in Germany are talking among themselves, criticising the government, especially the Kaiser and the Crown Prince, and he felt that some day something would happen which would bring trouble. He said there was great distress all over Germany. Mr. Carrick got his information by keeping his ears open in cafes, railroad stations, hotels and passenger trains. When the conflict is over it is my judgment that international law will be overhauled and some of the German methods of war on innocent women and children will be eliminated, such as the shelling of non-combatants and bomb-throwing. Terrorism in ghastly forms is now a part of the German method of fighting the enemy. The Kaiser has for many years considered himself a Charlemagne, Frederick the Great and Napoleon the First rolled into one. Results are developing which put him in the class of Napoleon the Third, or even below that monarch in ability. We arrived at Southampton on Thursday, October 19th, at 9 A.M. There was much red tape in evidence and many questions asked the commissioners. We were warned that no letters could be carried for delivery, and that a violation of this order would result in arrest of anyone guilty. After some little delay and much needed assistance from friends of America, our baggage was registered and incidentally "greased" through to London. We arrived in London at 1 P.M. Considerable evidence was here apparent of the recent visit of the Zeppelins. One had been captured and partially destroyed, and I was fortunate in securing some pieces as relics. I met here Dr. Sherman, who has been in close touch with and assisted Alexander Carrel with reference to the Carrel technique, the recent antiseptic discovered for wounds and injuries, used so successfully for the prevention of blood poisoning. The fluid is a solution of bleaching lime with bi-carbonate of soda, filtered or poured through the wounds. Thousands of lives have been saved by this discovery. The method has been adopted by the Italian, French and Belgian governments, and is being considered by the English government. On the day following our arrival in London, I called upon Consul General Skinner and found him busy at work. Inquiries resulted in receiving a most excellent account of his stewardship. He is very much alive to American interests. I also met H. W. Thornton, formerly a high official in the Pennsylvania Railroad system, but now in charge of the Great Eastern Railroad in England. He is an important personage, and, from information obtained, has made good. He is one of the counsellors in close touch with the war department. While in London we were at the Savoy hotel. I was struck by a notice posted on the bedroom-door. DEFENCE OF THE REALM ACT. Important notice. Visitors occupying rooms are now held responsible by the Authorities for the proper control of the lights in the rooms they occupy. It is absolutely necessary that they should see that the blinds and curtains of the rooms they occupy are closely drawn so that no light can leak through. It is imperative also to switch off all lights before attempting to open or close a window, if this necessitates drawing the blinds. These regulations apply to all rooms occupied, including bathrooms. I attended the Hippodrome in London, walking through the darkness escorted by a friend. The show was pretty much with reference to the war. I was attracted by the notice at the bottom of the program, which is copied below. [Illustration: French Marines Operating 75-mm Gun on Shipboard.] Arrangements have been made that warning of a threatened air raid will be communicated by the Military Authorities to this theatre. On receipt of any such warning the audience will be informed, with a view to enable persons who may wish to proceed home, to do so. The warning will be communicated, so far as possible, at least 20 minutes before any actual attack can take place. There will, therefore, be no cause for alarm or undue haste. Those who decide to leave are warned not to loiter about the streets, and if bombardment or gunfire commences before they reach home, they should at once take cover. By order of The Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis. New Scotland Yard, S. W. The anniversary of Trafalgar Day was celebrated while we were in London. This was one of the most decisive battles in the history of the world. As an English view of the battle of Trafalgar I copy below the editorial from the Daily-Graphic, and might add, in my own words, that but for the British navy our sea-coast cities, both on the Atlantic and Pacific, might easily have been wiped out before this time. TRAFALGAR DAY To-day is the anniversary of one of the most decisive battles in the history of the world. Our minds rest naturally enough on Waterloo as the battle which finally destroyed Napoleon's power in 1815, to the great relief of France, as well as of all the rest of Europe. But it was the battle of Trafalgar, ten years previously, which secured to Great Britain the command of the sea and so prepared the way for Napoleon's downfall. The same factors that operated a century ago are operating today. There has been no Trafalgar to wipe the enemy's ships off the sea, but our sea supremacy was so well secured before the war began that the enemy has only once ventured to challenge it, with disastrous results to himself off the Jutland coast. The effect of British sea supremacy has been felt from the first day of the war. We were able by our intervention at once to prevent Germany from carrying out her scheme of a naval descent on the French coast. The same sea-power has since enabled us to transport in safety armies probably aggregating over two million men to France, the Dardanelles, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Salonica, the Cameroons and German East Africa. The larger portion of these armies has naturally been drawn from the United Kingdom, but large contingents have come from Canada, Australia, India, South Africa and the West Indies. None of these movements of troops would have been possible unless we had secured the command of the sea. In addition, our sea supremacy has enabled us to maintain our commerce with the whole of the world, while blocking German commerce wherever we chose to use our power. The British Navy is the force which has determined the final defeat of Germany, and so long as we maintain that force at adequate strength we can face without flinching any danger that may threaten us from any part of the world. Saturday, October 21st, was the day of sailing from Liverpool. We left London at 10:20 A.M. on the London & Northwestern Railroad for Liverpool and arrived at the latter place at 2:30 P.M. We boarded the steamer Philadelphia, of the American line, and noticed on the side of the boat an immense American flag painted in colors, as well as the words "American Line". There was also a row of electric lights, visible several miles distant, surrounding the flag and the name of the boat. There were five lights on each side of the boat and each light had five incandescent bulbs, making fifty lights in all. The flag painted on the side of the steamer was 8 x 15 feet. The Philadelphia left the dock at Liverpool at 4 P.M. on a rough sea. Mr. E. A. Warren, a member of the Commission, stopped over a day in Manchester and was in close communication with friends in that city. Manchester has a population of half a million people. It is the center of the cotton manufacture of the world. Mr. Warren is a manufacturer of textile machinery and represented the textile industry on the Commission. He reported that all the manufacturers of textile machinery in England are running on war munitions. The entire steel industry in England is under the control of the government, and the sale of steel for any purpose cannot be made without governmental consent. Mr. Warren reported also, as coming from friends, that England was at that time growing uneasy over the fact that the United States government requested that British war vessels keep away from our coast and then allowed the U-boat 53 to land at Newport and obtain information in regard to the sailing of vessels, which it then proceeded to torpedo. This occurred about the time of the blowing up of vessels off Nantucket. The Manchester stock exchange has a membership of ten thousand and is open every day except Sunday. There are no auction sales, no excitement or loud talk, no gesticulating, as is the case in New York, particularly on the curb. The business is all done in a quiet, conversational tone. Cotton is the principal commodity traded in. A feeling is growing in England that the United States should have entered the war, which the English believe they are fighting for the cause of civilization and for the preservation of the liberty of the United States as well as of England. The feeling is also somewhat prevalent that the United States is only interested so far as making money is concerned. This feeling was apparently very bitter. England today is an armed camp. From end to end of the country there is hardly a man, woman or half-grown child who is not working, making ammunition, guarding the coast, doing police duty, watching for Zeppelins, making uniforms or shoes, or moving provisions or supplies of all kinds for an army of five million men, with the British navy thrown in. There are two thousand munition factories in England and more under construction. I was told of one plant being built in units extending for eight miles. These munition factories employ one million men and women. There are other works being built to make aeroplanes, cannons, machine guns and hand grenades. All this since the war opened. Great Britain has mobilized the ship yards and they are working overtime to build vessels. This has more than offset the loss of vessels destroyed by the Germans. America is doing a great deal in the way of Red Cross and relief work, but it is a mere bagatelle compared with the activities of England in this direction. The women of England are as fully awake as are the women of France. Thousands are at work in hospitals and caring for the refugees. Girls are at work making horse-shoes for the army horses. These girls are cultivated, aristocratic women, members of golf and hockey clubs. Others are working on farms, handling teams, pitching hay, or driving cattle to market. Thousands of women are occupied as chauffeurs at the various fronts. Hundreds of English women are living through all kinds of weather in tents just behind the firing lines, acting as stretcher bearers and driving ambulances. [Illustration: Nancy--Place Stanislas] While in London I met a number of old friends, many of them incidentally connected with the government and very much alive to the situation. The concensus of opinion of these friends is that failure of the Allies to win the war means the death-warrant of France and the British Empire; that there is no middle course; that the war will be fought to a finish and the Allies will be victorious; that the Kaiser and the Prussian military system will be annihilated, the German people will arise, and the Republic of Germany will be the result. Among other things spoken of there was the incident of Dewey at Manila and the near clash over Samoa. It will be remembered that Dewey fired a shot across the bows of a German vessel. To people in London the Venezuelan embroglio proved that the Kaiser had in mind smashing the Monroe Doctrine. Germany yielded to us in both cases. President Cleveland was at the helm when the Venezuelan controversy came and the immortal McKinley was in the chair when Manila was taken. Cleveland, Harrison and McKinley all stood up for our rights and Germany backed clear down, facts which the English have not overlooked. XVIII. ON THE BROAD ATLANTIC During Sunday following our sailing we passed through the Irish Sea, which was very rough. The davits were taken down and the passengers ordered below. On Monday the sea was somewhat calmer. During the day I met Dr. Lee, who had been in the service of the American Ambulance for a year and a half. He is quite familiar with and believes in the Carrel treatment. He said that nearly two million British soldiers had been innoculated against typhoid fever and only twenty-five had died out of this vast number during a period of eighteen months. On Tuesday, October 24th, we encountered another very rough sea. Old ocean travelers said it was the roughest day they had ever experienced in crossing the ocean. I was loath to admit seasickness, but when I found the dining room vacant and everyone on board, including some of the crew, unable to be about, I was forced to recognize myself among the number so affected. On this day the ocean was a sight to behold. I could see the dashing waves break high, not on a rock-bound coast, but on top of the ship, inundating my cabin. The waves were at times fully fifty feet high; stanchions on deck were crushed and the passengers were ordered to their cabins. Thursday, October 26th, found the ocean calm and the sun shining. On this date I was expected in St. Louis at the semi-annual meeting of the American Iron & Steel Institute, and was booked for an address. All I could do was to send a Marconigram: "Gary, American Steel Institute, St. Louis: Absence regretted. Kind wishes for all members." Friday, October 27th, was a bright, clear morning and the boat was making good time, with prospects of landing early Sunday morning. With the aid of Mr. Roche I completed the translation of the Le Creusot welfare book. I had the pleasure of meeting on the boat Mr. H. P. Davison, a member of the firm of J. P. Morgan & Co. He is a plain-spoken gentleman with a strong personality. He is one of the leading partners in the firm of J. P. Morgan & Co. and talks and thinks in millions. On the boat I talked with an Englishman who saw the last Zeppelin come down near London. He said the English aviators have solved the problem of destroying Zeppelins. The Zeppelin contains a large amount of liquid explosives and firing with incendiary bombs it takes but a few minutes to destroy the huge air vessel. We reached the dock in New York on Saturday evening and remained on board over night. Early Sunday morning the quarantine officer appeared. The good old Philadelphia docked at 9 A.M. and after the inspection of baggage, which was more rigid than usual, the journey was over. We were met on the boat by numerous reporters. I gave an interview of which the following is a copy:-- ALLIES WILL WIN WAR, SAYS MR. BUTLER "Kitchener Right Predicting Three-Year Conflict." That the Entente Allies, by the greatness and efficiency of their military preparations and by their wonderful financial strength, will push the European war to a complete victory regardless of the cost in life and treasure, is the opinion expressed by Joseph G. Butler, President of the American Pig Iron Association, on his arrival here today on board the steamship Philadelphia' of the American line, from Liverpool. Mr. Butler was a member of the American Industrial Commission which went abroad late in August to study economic conditions in France, and hence had excellent opportunities to see the great military preparations being made by France. He was one out of the twelve members of the commission who returned today by the Philadelphia. A Vast Military Camp "All France is a vast military camp," he said, "and her people from the President down are deadly in earnest and determined to continue their victories regardless of the cost in life and treasure. England is fully as much in earnest as France and has buckled down to the task of winning the fight for civilization, as Mr. Lloyd George phrased it in an interview I had with him in Paris. "I firmly believe that the Allies will win. I feel certain that the Kaiser and the Prussian military authorities realize that they have lost and are casting about for some means of bringing the war to a close, hoping that better terms can be obtained now than later on. The German people must sooner or later learn the real condition of affairs, and then I believe they will make themselves heard in no uncertain manner. Will Never Let Up "The battle of the Marne settled the controversy in favor of France and her allies," he continued. "Earl Kitchener predicted a three-year war, and I believe he did not underestimate it. "The Allies will never let up until they have won a complete and final victory. "I am more convinced of this now than I have been on the ground and learned first hand not only of their complete equipment of men and munitions, but also of their wonderful financial strength. We in America know altogether too little of the astonishing richness of both England and France, and the sooner we wake up to our opportunities and encourage in every way the increasing of our trade with them the better off we will be." I reached home early Monday morning glad to be again in my native town. Before landing I had written an account of the French steel industry in war-time and had obtained permission from Mr. Nichols, as Chairman, to make an advance publication of this document in the Iron Age and the Iron Trade Review. I had in mind that something of this kind would be expected by my fellow steel manufacturers, and if we waited until the full report of the Commission was made, the information would be stale. This article appeared in many of the trade journals and is republished in the chapter following. XIX. THE FRENCH STEEL INDUSTRY IN WAR TIME The individual report on the condition of the iron and steel industries in France, referred to in the proceeding chapter, together with the comments of The Iron Age thereon, were as follows: Joseph G. Butler, Jr., Youngstown, Ohio, who represented the steel trade of the country on the American Industrial Commission to France, arrived in New York on the return journey of the commission on Oct. 29. While the general report of the commission, which went out under the auspices of the American Manufacturers' Export Association, will not be published until late in the year, The Iron Age is able to give its readers below Mr. Butler's report of his investigations into the war status of the iron and steel industry of France. * * * W. W. Nichols, Chairman American Industrial Commission to France. My dear Sir:-- In accordance with your request, I beg to submit the following report, which is the result of observations and information obtained, regarding the particular industry represented by me. Quite unfortunately, there were only a few visits to steel plants of any importance and the information gained is rather superficial. I noticed a dearth of labor-saving devices, and quite prominently the absence of safety appliances. I also observed that notices to the employees calling attention to probable dangers were not as plentiful as in any model plant in the United States. It is quite probable that there are many plants in France that are more up-to-date than those we visited. I have information in regard to the condition of the iron and steel business in France at the outbreak of the war, but we are only concerned with its present condition and its probable condition when the war is ended. The acquisition by Germany at the close of the so-called Franco-Prussian war resulted, as in well known, in Germany taking over the tremendous fields of iron ore and coal located in Alsace-Lorraine. It is my belief that this absorption is largely responsible for the prosperous condition of the iron and steel business in Germany and its being in second place in the world's production. I am assured by men prominent in the iron and steel trade in France, and by others connected with the government, that the war will not end until these valuable mineral deposits have been restored to France. It is remarkable that with this serious handicap, France has been able to accomplish so much in the way of steel supplies for its munition plants and other plants making war material accessories. From my observation, nearly all the iron and steel now produced in France is being turned into war material and materials required for other purposes have been furnished in a minimum and scanty way. In other words, the whole of the iron and steel interests in France have been mobilized by the French Government. The last report I have seen on steel and iron production in France is dated May, 1915, but I am told on good authority that since that date the production has doubled. With the reacquisition of the Alsace-Lorraine iron and coal deposits and possibly the acquirement of other fields which our French friends seem to have in mind there will still be a shortage of coal. However, it is expected that after the war closes, France will necessarily be obliged to export a good portion of its production of iron and steel, by reason of the increased productive capacity of its iron and steel plants. Incidentally I might mention that, when we were in Marseilles my attention was called by the Chamber of Commerce to the fact that France would be in a condition to export large quantities of iron ore from Algeria to the United States, and if this project could be worked out and return cargoes of American coal brought to France it would be very desirable, meeting the shortage of coal, which is inevitable. The analysis of this Algerian ore shows the quality to be such as would produce high-grade steel materials. A detailed analysis will be furnished to any one who may be interested. It is interesting to note that in the departments of Calvados, Manche and Orne, there are rich deposits of iron ore yielding in some cases 45 to 50 per cent metallic iron. These deposits before the war were leased by the Thyssen group of German steel manufacturers, but are now in the hands of the French sequestrators. I understand that quantities of this ore also were in great demand, and frequently shipped to the iron works of South Wales. I examined the steel plant making steel by the electrical process, but the examination was very brief. I have assurance, however, that the manufacture of steel by electricity in France has been very successful not only mechanically but financially and is sure to grow. There seems to be a large area in the eastern part of France where water-power is available, and I think that many new plants, and much activity will prevail in this particular region, when affairs again become settled. The use of water-power will overcome to a large extent the shortage of coal. I think that when the war ends, the imports to France from the United States of iron and steel will be confined to special forms and that France will be able to compete not only with the United States, but also with other countries in the matter of exports of general iron and steel products. With the port improvements contemplated at Bordeaux and Marseilles, world-wide markets will be opened for France. The contemplated improvements at both these places will, no doubt, be fully cared for in other special reports, or perhaps in the general body of the report which the commission may issue. The canal at Marseilles should receive special mention in the general report. The tariff question in France is in about the same condition as in the United States, with the exception that in France custom duties are handled quickly and settled expeditiously by the government. Duties may be raised or lowered over night to meet contingencies. The labor in French iron and steel plants is paid very much less than in the United States; in many instances one-half and even less. There are very few disturbances, and dictatorial labor unions such as we have in the United States are unknown in France. A large number of women are employed in France doing men's work, which keeps wages at a lower level than would otherwise be possible. All the members of the commission have seen in their travels women doing men's work, and performing manual labor which in our country would not be thought of for a moment. Employment of women in steel and munition plants has, of course, increased the number of women workers since the war commenced. This, I think, is largely brought about by the patriotic feeling which prevails all over France. "Working for France" is a slogan rooted and imbedded in the minds of the people, whether they are soldiers, or engaged in any other occupation which may tend to end the war and save France. Cooperation in France among all manufacturers of iron and steel and in fact all other industrial works, is marvelous, and could well be imitated in our own country. The various special branches of metal trades have both local and national syndicate organizations for the discussion of their trade problems, and means of voicing the particular needs of their trade, on which a majority sentiment has been expressed. These chamber syndicates are in turn combined into a National Union. These national unions are members of the Comite des Forges de France, which is the cap stone of the trade organizations of the steel and iron industries. The most striking fact to an American regarding the personnel of the governing board and general committee of the Comite des Forges de France is that a considerable number of its members are in one or the other of the legislative bodies, and practically hold positions at the head of the Government Committees, organized to look after the very business in which they are engaged. In spite of the fact that at the beginning of trench warfare, France had lost behind the German line 80 per cent of her normal pig-iron production, and 70 per cent of her steel production, it has been possible by the utilization of lower grade ore in other districts of France, and which were not exploited to any extent previously, to increase the steel production of the country 100 per cent over that of last year. The interesting fact regarding this is that of the production which has been cut off the larger part in pig iron is of so-called Thomas iron (non-Bessemer), and in the case of steel, mostly "Martin" or acid open hearth. Neither of these products enters to any considerable extent into the manufacture of projectiles. The plants in the center and southern part of France were already producing the special qualities of steel required for artillery use, hence the amount of special quality steel brought in from foreign countries, in both the raw and semi-manufactured state, was an immediate necessity for the country at outbreak of hostilities. It is also noticeable, and based on information obtained from leading steel manufacturers, that many idle and in some cases abandoned plants have been rehabilitated and utilized as far as possible. As a matter of fact, I am told that there is not a single idle plant of any kind formerly engaged in the manufacture of fabrication of steel that is not now in full operation, either in its original form or by being transformed into a munitions plant. It is only too evident that the present pre-occupation of steel manufacturers is to bend every effort to assist in the final military victory of the Allies. However, I met steel manufacturers, conversing with them freely, and their mental attitude is that when the military victory has been achieved and France has again entered into possession of her own, they are determined to succeed in producing a close union with the British producers and thus prevent a rapid return of German industrial prosperity. With this fact in mind, it seems clear to me that the United States will have to make up its mind in which field it will choose to work. It certainly will be impossible to continue to hold a position of theoretical neutrality. Welfare work in Le Creusot is in a high state of efficiency. Comfortable modern dwellings are furnished the employees at low rental. Hospital facilities are of the best and everything is done to bring the workman in close and harmonious relations with his employer. It has been suggested that I embody in this report something with reference to the mines in France, but as the data concerning them has been printed in public documents of the French Minister of Mines, I will omit this detail with the single word that these reports include minerals of all kinds. I am indebted to John Weare, representative of the United States Steel Products Company in France, for valuable information in the preparation of this brief report. JOSEPH G. BUTLER, Jr. * * * In the early part of December I was requested by the Financial editor of the New York Times to give my views on the present outlook and more particularly with reference to the condition of the American Iron and Steel industry, brought about by the war. This letter to Mr. Phillips is copied. * * * December 20th, 1916. Mr. Osmund Phillips, New York, N. Y. My dear Mr. Phillips:-- I have before me your circular letter of the 8th instant and your kind favor of recent date. In reply to your question--What is the outlook for business in the early months of 1917? The outlook is good. Our mills and plants for several months could not nil the domestic orders even if the war orders were entirely withdrawn. I am told that all the recent orders placed are firm and are to be filled regardless of the ending of the war. Will the end of the European war mark the end of the present period of prosperity? This is a broad and doubtful question. I do not think the end of the war will end the present period of prosperity. There will be a temporary halt. I might add in this connection, that in my judgment the last overture from the Kaiser may result in the cessation of the war, but I believe this period to be quite a distance off. There are three parties in Germany. First, the Kaiser and the Prussian Military circle, who have been in charge and have carried their own way up to very nearly the present time. Second, there are the people of Germany who are the common people, the good substantial people, the majority of whom have been kept in ignorance of the real beginning of the war and the cause for its continuing. These people are commencing to get information and as time goes on will be in full possession of the facts. Third, the business men of Germany. There are no better nor more substantial business men any place in the world than those in Germany; these men are really responsible for the building up of Germany and it is my opinion that these people are now responsible for the pressure that is undoubtedly being brought on the Kaiser and the military party for the settlement of the war. I believe that this pressure will continue until a settlement is made. These business men recognize that the longer the settlement is put off the harder it will be for Germany. In your opinion, what proportion of the country's total trade, both foreign and domestic, during the past year, was due to the war? I think about one-half of the trade of the country is due greatly, directly and indirectly to the war. Do you think that labor demands have exceeded labor's fair share of the increase in profits? I do not think labor demands have exceeded labor's fair share. The high cost of living fully offsets the greater wages paid. Do you think present wage rates can be maintained? I do not think that present wages can be maintained indefinitely. There will undoubtedly be a reaction with a certain reduction in the cost of living and labor will have to share in the reduction. What do you think of the important legislation passed in 1916 affecting business, including the eight hour day, increase in income tax, the shipping bill, retaliation against foreign trade interference, etc.? The eight hour a day law was an abnormal affair undoubtedly forced through for political purposes, and never should have been passed and should be promptly repealed. The increase in the income tax is all right. The shipping bill will be valuable if the right kind of men are put on the Commission. Some of these under consideration are wholly incapable. I believe this answers all your questions. Very truly yours, J. G. BUTLER, Jr. * * * When the special report I had prepared and published reached France I was favored with a number of letters from prominent people in that country, containing comments on the same. There were probably one hundred of these letters, from among which I have selected the following as of sufficient interest, either because of their comments or the prominence of the writers, to make them worthy of reproduction here: * * * French Republic. Mr. J. G. Butler, Jr., Youngstown, O. Dear Sir:-- I thank you for the interesting data which you kindly sent me on the development of the French Steel Industry during the war. My compatriots cannot be otherwise than sensible of the praise which you have given them. They will find in your report an authorized opinion of the efforts which they have made to make secure the National defense. Yours very truly, A. MIRMAN, Minister of Commerce and Industry. * * * Consulate-General of the United States of America. 1, Rue Des Italians (28, Boulevard Des Italiens) Paris, December 6, 1916. Joseph G. Butler, Jr., Esquire, Youngstown, Ohio, United States of America. My dear Mr. Butler:-- I am in receipt of your good favor of November 9, 1916, enclosing a reprint of your report on the French Steel Industry, for which you have my best thanks. I have read it with a great deal of interest and must congratulate you upon getting a great many solid facts into a very small compass. In my opinion you have covered the situation very intelligently and the information you give ought to be of great value to our manufacturers in the United States. I cannot tell you how glad I was to see you over here and I only wish that more of our people would come abroad to study conditions at first hand. I have also received a letter from your friend, Mr. Warren, and from Mr. Douglass saying all sorts of nice things about me which, I hope, were merited. Very sincerely yours, A. M. THACKARA. * * * Republican Committee of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture. Paris, November 30th, 1916. Mr. J. G. Butler, Jr., Member of the Industrial Commission of France. Youngstown, Ohio. Dear Sir:-- I acknowledge receipt of the interesting report that you have made on your return from France, and I trust that this voyage will have allowed you to learn to appreciate our fine country, and that the results of your visit will be good and fruitful for the exchange of our products with North America. You need not thank us for the reception that we have given to the American delegation in France. It was our duty to receive heartily our American friends; it was for us a cherished duty to tighten again the bonds of cordiality which exist between the two countries. Personally I myself have been very glad to be introduced to you. Yours Very truly, MONCURAND, Senateur de la Seine. * * * Meurthe & Moselle, Office of the Prefect. Nancy, France, November 28th, 1916. Dear Sir:-- I have read with the greatest interest the interview which you gave upon your landing in America to the American newspapers. I feel very much impressed by your own remembrance and I myself feel honored, as a French citizen, by your sympathy for my country. The poor city of Nancy has suffered since your visit. We buried yesterday, the victims of the Friday bombardment. Big shells have been thrown on the city. One fell right in the center, in this vicinity, in a populous street, many women and children have been killed, a mother and her two little girls--what a dreary sight is war, the way of the war inaugurated by the Germans, for it is the shame of all humanity. We have inhumed our poor victims, washed the blood that reddened pavements, put in order the rubbish of the houses and have come back again to our daily work. Yours very truly, MIRMAN, Prefect. To J. G. Butler, Jr. * * * Lyon, Le 28 November 1916. Consulat Imperial de Russie a Lyon Mr. Joseph G. Butler, Jr. Youngstown, Ohio. United States. Dear Sir:-- I am pleased to acknowledge receipt of your favour of the 9 November, and of the copy of your report respecting the French Steel Industry. I thank you for same. I have read your report with high interest, on various questions referred to, and particularly the Comite des Forges de France, and the works of Messrs. Schneider & Co. at Le Creusot. I should be happy if a further good opportunity could afford me the pleasure of meeting you again, and I remain, dear sir, Very truly yours, C. CALOR. * * * Chambre Des Deputes Commission du Budget. Paris, le November 30th, 1916. Mr. Joseph G. Butler, Jr. Youngstown, Ohio, U. S. A. My dear Mr. Butler:-- I duly received your favor of Oct. 31st, and of Nov. 10th, and also the documents which you kindly sent me. I have read them with greatest interest. Of course, I have at once communicated your report in French to the Chambers of Commerce and I was pleased to place such a useful and well established document at their disposal. I trust to hear from you soon, and with very kind regards. I beg to remain, Cordially yours, MAURICE DAMOUR. Depute de Lands. * * * Bordeaux the 29th November, 1916. Dear Mr. Butler:-- I beg to tender you my very best thanks for the copy of your report on French Steel Industry in war time you so kindly sent me. I learned a lot by reading it, and it is comforting to know that on the other side of the Atlantic, we have friends not sparing their time and their energy, for helping us through the tremendous struggle we are fighting. Your flag is made of the same colors as our flag, both are the same symbol of human rights and Liberty. Yours very truly, D. G. MESTREZAT. * * * Joseph G. Butler, Jr., Esq., Member of the American Commission to France, Youngstown, Ohio, U. S. A. * * * 11 Ironmonger Lane London 31st January, 1917. J. G. Butler, Jr., Esq., Youngstown, O. My dear Mr. Butler:-- I have received your lines of the 29th ultimo, and your most charming verses which accompanied them; also your report on the French Steel Industry, which I read with very much interest. The people on your side do things in a very thorough manner. For instance, I do not think that we have sent a deputation to consider the state of trade in France, but numerous committees, dealing with various important trades of the country, are conferring in regard to "trade after the war conditions"--I hope with advantage. I trust that out of all the trials of war time there will emerge a period when the angel of co-operation with healing in his wings will again have a chance of being heard. My wife sends you her kindest regards, as I do also. I have most pleasant memories of my visits to the United States and of the hospitalities which you and your hospitable brethren invariably extended to me. Believe me, Yours sincerely, WM. R. PEAT. Lyon, Nov. 23rd, 1916. * * * Ministere de la Guerre Inspections Generales 5e Arrondissement Lyon 9, Rue President Carnot My dear Sir:-- I beg to thank you sincerely for that reprint of your report on the French Steel Industry, which I have read through with great pleasure and most interest. Besides, I am glad to take such an opportunity to remember the time we spent together so agreeably in Lyons, and remain, dear sir, Yours very truly, A. D'AMAND. Paris, Dec. 27th, 1916. * * * Mr. J. G. Butler, Youngstown, O., U. S. A. Dear Sir:-- I have the honor to acknowledge receipt of your letters of November 6th and 9th, in which you send to me the text of the report of your trip in France and an interview that you have granted to a representative of a newspaper before landing. I thank you very kindly for this information and I wish to testify to the pleasure afforded me by the good impression which you brought back of your trip. I beg you to be so kind as to excuse me for delaying so long in answering your letter--a delay caused by the work that we give to the intensive effort toward the production of war material. As you have made the request of me, I shall tell you very frankly the few observations which have been suggested to my by the reading of your report. First of all you have noted the lack of any safety apparatus in the factories and the lack of placards by means of which, in the United States, the attention of the laborer is called to the probable dangers of his profession. The last part of the observation is particularly well founded, but you must not forget that working conditions in France are quite different from those existing in the United States. In our country, the metal workers are taught more slowly; as a rule they start their apprenticeship earlier and their professional education wards them against the dangers of the plant. As to the safety apparatus, perhaps they have been neglected in some workshops erected during the war, but they are required by law and always installed in times of peace. I can tell you that as far as the Schneider's establishments are concerned, special safety regulations were established twenty years ago, with such care that they are actually in use almost without modifications up to the present time. I have had looked up, some records on the fatal accidents in the French and in the American metallurgical factories. I notice that, according to the report of conditions of employment in the Iron and Steel Industry in the United States, the percentage of fatal accidents in America was 1.86 for 1000 laborers in 1909 and 1910, while in France it was only 0.6 for 1000 laborers. The comparison of these figures will show you the accuracy of what I have just indicated to you. As to wages it is certain that the French wages have nothing in common with the American prices, but the cost of living is much less. One cannot therefore compare the figures according to the report which gives the exchange between the monetary units of the two countries. Finally, in the chapter "Collaboration between the Manufacturers" it is shown that the production of which the French industry has been deprived, consisted entirely of Thomas, or Basic (Bessemer) Steel and acid Open Hearth Steel. In reality the East and North departments of France, which have been invaded, were producing chiefly Basic Bessemer pig iron and steel. Open Hearth, Acid and Basic steel figured only as a relatively small tonnage. As you take an interest in the social question, I thought I was doing right in having addressed to you, by the same mail, a copy of our pamphlet on social economy. I trust that the materials which you will find in it will allow you to complete the data that you have been able to gather in the course of your trip. Yours very truly, SCHNEIDER & CO. H. COQUEUGNOT * * * Paris, December 2nd, 1916. Mr. J. G. Butler, Jr., Youngstown, O. Dear Sir:-- I have had the honor to receive your letter of November 9th and was very much pleased to note your very interesting report on the French Steel Industry. I thank you for sending this document which I immediately communicated to our several metallurgical departments concerned. I thank you, too, for the kind mention you make of our relations during your stay in France and beg you to believe dear sir, in the assurance of my best regards. Yours very truly, SCHNEIDER & COMPANY. MAURICE DEVIES. * * * Arles-sur-Rhone, Dec. 10th, 1916. Mr. J. G. Butler, Jr., Youngstown, Ohio. Dear Sir:-- I have received with your favor of the 19th of last November, the copy of the report which you drew up following your trip to France about the steel business in France during the war. I have had it translated, for, as I very much regret to be obliged to tell you, I do not know the English language, which deprived me of the extreme pleasure of conversing directly with you and obliged me to remain your silent neighbor, when I had the privilege of being near you. The reading of your report has interested me very keenly and informed us in France of many things about France. You have been so kind as to add a very elegant piece of poetry about our two flags comprising the same colors that the sun blends in its radiant light, but which none the less preserve their symbolical import. May they continue to float thus together as formerly for the glory of our two nations, which are actuated by a common impulse, though differing in expression. I trust your visit to France at this unfortunate time through which we are living, will have a happy effect upon the continuance of the good relations between our two countries. Thanking you deeply for your considerate attention, I beg to extend to you and the other members of your Commission the expression of my sincere regards, believe me, sir, Yours very truly, A. VERAN, Architecte des Monuments Historiques. * * * French Embassy. Washington, D. C., Feb. 21, 1917. I offer you, my dear Colonel, my best thanks for the most interesting account you kindly sent me of your experience in France and of the sentiments inspired to you by your stay among my compatriots. Sincerely yours, JUSSERAND. * * * Louis Nicolle 17, Avenue Bosquet Paris December, 1916. My dear Sir:-- I am much obliged to you for the reprint of your report you kindly sent me. I have read through it with the greatest interest, and although I am a textile manufacturer, I found some very interesting suggestions in it, and at the same time compliments to my country of which I am very proud. I hope some further opportunity may bring us into contact again and in the meantime, I remain, Yours very sincerely, LOUIS NICOLLE. * * * Reims, December 15th, 1916. Dear Mr. Butler:-- I thank you for your very interesting communication on the Steel Industry in France and on its future. I am quite of the same opinion with you and I congratulate you for what you have brought to us. I cherish the best remembrance of the visit to Reims of the American Commission and I hope to have the pleasure of meeting you again. I forwarded your kind regards to Mr. Representative Damour, who begged me to send you his regards. Ever at your service for all that could be service to you, I beg you to accept, dear Mr. Butler, the expression of my sympathy and of my most devoted friendship. JACQUES REGNIER, Sub-prefect, Reims. * * * Paris, Dec. 23rd, 1916. Mr. J. G. Butler, Jr., Youngstown, O. Dear Sir:-- I duly received your letter of November 9th, in which you were so kind as to enclose a copy of the report on the French Steel Industry which you made out following the trip which the American Commission has made recently in France. After reading carefully this report which interested me very keenly, I can tell you that it represents precisely the actual situation of our Steel Industry. With my best thanks, I remain, Yours very truly, J. MAURICE. XX. WHERE WAR HAS RAGED In spite of the tremendous nature of the present war and its duration for more than two years at the time of our visit, comparatively little of France had been visited with the indescribable destruction marking the struggle. No war in history has been so intense, and few wars have been so long confined to such small areas as that on the western front. It was about the first of October that we reached Belfort, and here we saw the first signs of havoc wrought by gunfire. At Paris we had been within twenty miles of the battlefield where the German hosts were first turned back, but there was not much ruin wrought to buildings at the Marne. Men, unprotected by trenches or any of the later found defensive methods, bore the brunt of the cannon there. At Belfort we saw signs of bombardment, but they were not so shocking. The shell fire had been at long range and was apparently brief and inaccurate. This seemed to be the case at all of the towns between Belfort and St. Die. Apparently the Germans had not used so many heavy guns in this region, or perhaps they had not yet become so desperate and ruthless as later on. At any rate, it was at St. Die where we first saw a whole town ruined. The ruined portion of France extends in a narrow strip around the frontier from the Alps to the North Sea. Very little of this section, about three hundred and twenty-five miles in length and varying from ten to fifty miles in breadth, escaped the fearful blast of war. Few towns located in it can ever be restored to their original condition. After the great German army had crushed Liege and captured Antwerp, one section came up the valley of the Meuse and the other up the valley of the Schelde, uniting at a point between Namur and Mons. At the latter place Sir John French had gathered his hastily formed army of one hundred and twenty-five thousand men, and with this made a gallant defense. The British were soon forced back with tremendous losses, but they delayed the Germans until the French army, hastily mobilized on the German frontier east of Paris, could be reformed on the Marne. The great German machine drove rapidly down the valleys over the wide and splendid roads, forcing the English backward toward the sea and spreading out to meet the French front so hastily interposed between it and Paris. In this way the German line became extremely long before the Battle of the Marne began. The Kaiser's army had spread itself out like a fan. I was shown maps illustrating this mightiest of all military movements, and it was made plain how the English, hanging on the German flank, had placed the invaders in such a position that a skillful attack at the right time and in the right place forced them to fall back and strengthen their lines. [Illustration: Ruins of Village--St. Die.] It was while they were attempting to do this that the French attacked them with all the fierceness of patriots defending their most beloved city. Then what the German commander, Von Kluck, had meant to be only a halt to reform his lines became a retreat that ended only when the Teutons had gained the hills beyond the Aisne. In their retreat they destroyed, or the French were forced to destroy, most of the towns in a section fifty miles wide and two hundred miles long--the fairest part of France--Artois and Champagne. The surge of battle--such a battle as the world never saw before--swept over all these towns, but it was strange to see how much more some of them suffered than others. At Belfort, the town famous for withstanding sieges, comparatively little harm was done. Rambevillers, in the path of the stream of destruction, was almost unharmed. Gerbeviller, on the other hand, was entirely destroyed, probably out of revenge for the stubborn opposition of its defenders. St. Die was badly wrecked, as were Raon l'Etape and Baccarat. It was the same all along the front. We saw some towns absolutely ruined, others very badly damaged, and still others in which the shells seem to have fallen in places where they did little harm, or where, perhaps, there was not time for the complete shelling that had made heaps of brick and stone of other thriving towns. The smaller towns appeared to have suffered worse than the large cities. Nancy was badly battered, but not entirely destroyed. Reims, which was under the fire of German guns for many months, and where the wonderful cathedral was destroyed, apparently with malice, had lost about one-fourth of its buildings by fire and explosions resulting from the bombardment. In the country, the territory once occupied by the Germans and now in possession of the French is seamed with trenches and pitted with shell craters in all directions. To all appearances about every foot of it has seen the tread of either French soldiers or their foes. Back from the lines a short distance in some cases, the fields had become green again, and the trees were trying to send forth new growth from then-burned and battered trunks; but it will be a long time before this part of France loses all of its scars. The filling of the trenches and leveling of the fields will be no mean task of itself. Few farm houses, which in France are built in groups of half a dozen or so, are to be seen. Stone heaps fill their places. The roads over which we passed were in good condition, having been kept in repair. We were told, however, that many of the finest roads near the front had been badly torn up and that it would require much work to restore them. Hundreds of bridges have been destroyed, and most of the rivers and canals, of which there are many, are now crossed by temporary structures. We were given a glimpse of the complicated system of railroads, built in large part since the war and to supply the armies with food and other necessaries. These roads were all laid hurriedly, but they seem to be in good condition and are invaluable to the French. Some of them have been laid with rails taken up in other places where they were not so badly needed. In this system of railroads and roads one gets a striking illustration of the huge task it is to feed an army. The Commission was given figures showing the total number of buildings destroyed in France, with an estimate of their value. These figures had been compiled in July, 1916, and were reasonably accurate at the time we were there, since the Germans had yielded little ground in the interim and there had been less wanton destruction than in the first months of the war. According to this official report, more than half the houses had been destroyed, either by flames or gunfire, in one hundred and forty-eight towns. In the greater portion of these towns nearly all of the houses had been ruined. Besides this there were scores of towns suffering from gunfire which did not lose so large a part of their buildings. Among the buildings destroyed were two hundred and twenty-five city halls, three hundred and seventy-nine schools, three hundred and thirty-one churches, and more than three hundred other public buildings of various kinds and sizes. The mills and factories, like all of the larger buildings, suffered severely, more than three hundred having been totally destroyed. [Illustration: The Prefecture at Reims after Bombardment.] Most of the towns suffering were of the smaller class, although four cities of more than one hundred thousand people were bombarded or burned by the Germans. These are Lille, Roubaix, Nancy and Reims. The section swept by the German advance and suffering even worse in the retreat is the most populous in France. It covered about ten thousand square miles. No one has yet undertaken to figure the loss in property sustained in this region. The Germans have still possession of about five million acres of French soil, including seventy per cent, of the iron ore mines and a large part of the coal supply. The farmers are already back at work on a great part of the territory ravaged by the war. Farming under such conditions as we saw, where men and women worked in the fields within range of the guns and amid their constant roaring, or with the eternal white crosses for company, may be more exciting than the usual occupation of the agriculturist, but it must be a sad, discouraging and difficult task. XXI. GENERAL JOFFRE Perhaps no other man in France is so talked of so much as General Joffre. Certainly he is the idol of the French people. They look on him as their hero and savior, and his name is mentioned among them with a sort of half-worship. No other people have ever depended on their leaders as have the French. They believe with the right sort of leadership they can do anything. This is the impression you get in talking to them. They say that since the Franco-Prussian War they have looked forward to the time when they might have a general with Napoleon's genius and some other name--for even the name Napoleon now prevents a man from fighting for France, at least if he is of the royal line. You may be certain that we all looked forward to meeting this great man. We did not meet him after all at close range, having to content ourselves with a view of the busiest man in France as he rode by in an automobile at top speed. General Joffre, as we learned, has been at the head of the French Army for two years before the war. He first came into notice when, at the last grand maneuvers, he jarred military circles and greatly pleased the people by unceremoniously dismissing from their command five gold-laced generals whose methods did not meet with his approval. But Joffre first showed what sort of stuff was in him when he met the Germans at the Marne. It will be recalled that the French, never suspecting that Germany would invade Belgium and having all their military plans laid for mobilizing on the German frontier, were more or less demoralized when they found an entirely new line of defense necessary. They had no railroads built to help reform their line, and the moving of a vast army is a perplexing task. Without a leader in whom the whole army had supreme confidence, and with the German host sweeping across Belgium and hurling back the English, it would have been a hopeless situation. But while what the Kaiser called "Sir John French's contemptible little army" was holding back for a few days the German onrush at terrific cost, Joffre was busy realigning his forces between the invaders and his beloved Paris, which seemed doomed to all but him. He had studied the situation carefully and detected the fact that the long flank of Von Kluck's army left an opening. This opening was found by the Army of Paris, augmented in every possible way and finally reinforced by every available soldier, rushed from Paris in every kind of automobile to be found. The Germans were stopped at the Marne--twenty miles from Paris. Not only was the capital of France saved, but the invaders were steadily driven back until they were sixty miles away before they could make a successful stand. [Illustration: Portrait in Tapestry--General Joffre.] It was then that France found Joffre, so the people say. Up to that time they had heard little of him and nobody knew who he was or where he had come from. At once they began to inquire. Few of the soldiers had ever seen him, and there had been nothing much in the newspapers about the man who had managed all this. After the Germans had been forced across the Aisne and there was time to breathe, the French decided to have a review of that part of the army that could be spared. It was here that everybody watched for Joffre. The French tell it in their own way and it is interesting to hear one of them explaining, with the usual gestures, just how the hero looked on the day of that review. It was not much of a display of military style. The troops reviewed had been in the thick of the fight and there was an enormous amount of mud. There was no reviewing stand except a muddy elevation, on which the commander was to stand. Nobody seemed to know where he was or where he would come from, but it was passed around that he was to be there and the soldiers watched for him eagerly. Most of them thought that he was a little, fat man. They had unconsciously absorbed this idea from pictures of Napoleon, and, forgetting the terrible stress of the past weeks in the temporary flush of victory, they expected to see their general come to the stand with a blaze of glory. They looked for silken flags and gaudy uniforms and a regular French military parade. This was as little as they thought would do proper honor to the victorious commander of the Allied armies, and they were right, because General Joffre is at the head of the greatest force of men ever gathered together. As you are told about this in France, the day came and at the spot selected for the review, an open field somewhat back of the lines, with plenty of freshly planted crosses in sight and evidence all around that the peace and quiet had not always been there, a few generals and officers gathered. Finally, a regimental band, playing the first martial music heard since before the battle of the Marne, swung out of the woods at the head of a body of troops. Then a large man, tall and heavy and wearing an ordinary soldier's overcoat, but with the laurel band around his hat that showed him to be a general, came out of the woods behind the little knoll and walked rapidly toward the group of officers. Every hand went up in salute. Then they knew it was Joffre. He went to the muddy knoll, and stood there watching keenly while the soldiers marched past, the bugles blowing and the bands playing. In spite of their muddy uniforms and the hard fight they had just gone through, the French say that these soldiers looked spic and span as they passed their general. Their rifles went up in salute as straight and accurately as if they had just come from quarters and were marching over a level parade ground, instead of over fields filled with shell holes and slippery with mud--or perhaps something worse. Joffre is a silent man, they say. This does not interfere in the least with the adoration of the French, who are usually great talkers. They believe in him to the utmost, and they will follow him to the limit of endurance. So long as Joffre is at the head of the French army, the spirit of victory will remain. Since Joffre has become famous, of course much is known about him. He was born in the Midi, as they call the southern part of France. Trained as a soldier, he saw service in the East, where he did that which he set out to do. There is no particular incident that points to the discovery of his genius, although he must have done unusual things to get to the top. He is known to have been a modest, quiet, home-loving sort of man, spending much time with his family at Auteil, and showing while there that he was very fond of fishing. Fishing is a good recreation for the man who wants to think, and the French believe that while Joffre was doing that he must have been evolving plans for settling with the hated Germans. He likes to fish yet, and when he can get away from the war zone, he hunts a small stream and spends his leisure hours along it. During his brilliant career since the war began Joffre has developed some of the qualities notable in our own General Grant. There is not a particle of show or bluster about him. He dresses as plainly as possible, talks little and seems to prefer solitude. But his will is imperious and he does not hesitate when anything is to be done, whether it is pleasant or otherwise. For his men he has the greatest consideration, but they say in France that, like Lincoln, he has little regard for Generals. Some of the things told about him remind you of the story of Lincoln. In this story a Confederate raid had resulted in the capture of two generals and a number of privates. When the story was brought to Lincoln, he said it was too bad about the men. Someone suggested that it was a pity the generals had been taken, but Lincoln said that did not matter much, as he could make some more. Joffre has made it uncomfortable for the inefficient generals in France. Many of them have lost their commands and most of them live in fear of his quiet but inexorable discipline. Joffre does not look kindly on visitors to the Front, and nobody gets there without his permission. He signed the passes on which the Commission traveled, but he did not seem overjoyed at our coming enough to look us up while we were there. Apparently he regarded us as people who could not help in his big job and who were likely in some way or other to become nuisances. When you talk with people who know this man you are at once impressed with the fact that he appreciates his great responsibility and that there is nothing on his mind but how to win this war for France. They say he has a clipping bureau that saves for him all that is being printed about the war. He probably expects to read it somewhere after the war is over, but he will not likely be able to do this in the remainder of an ordinary lifetime. Time only will decide whether Joffre is really a great military genius, or whether he is merely a good general, conscientiously doing his best and fortunate enough to become a popular hero. Modern war is so different from old time variety that no one can judge results up to this time. It is at least certain that Joffre has beaten the Germans back and back, slowly, but surely forcing them out of France. He says himself that he "has been nibbling at them." There can be no doubt that at the time this is written he has reached the pinnacle of fame in France. He is the man in all France who is most talked about, most admired and most trusted. Were he to die now, as Kitchener died, his place in History would be secure. What will happen before the war is over is another matter. But, having heard the French talk about "Father Joffre" so much and so lovingly, and having been given the most useful thing in France, if you want to see the front--a pass by him in spite of the great cares resting on his shoulders, I hope that fate will be kind to him and that he will remain the idol of his people to the end. As might be expected, France is full of the sayings of Joffre. Everyone you meet can tell you a new one. Some of the aphorisms credited to him that I can now recall are: "Go where the enemy is not expecting you"; "No soldier is expected to think of retreating"; "Now is the time to stand and die rather than yield". This last is said to have been his utterance before the beginning of the Battle of the Marne. XXII. THE WORK OF RECONSTRUCTION While no estimate can be made of the cost of rebuilding the towns and cities destroyed in France until after the war is over and it is known what further damage has been done, this matter is already receiving earnest consideration. The French are confident of victory and are satisfied that they will soon be able to rebuild their cities and reorganize their industries. They are a frugal and thrifty people, and usually have more private means than the average American whose manner of living would indicate that he is wealthy. On this account it is my impression that France will recover very rapidly after the war and will soon be as well off in property as before it began. The chief loss of the French is likely to be their young manhood. Houses can be rebuilt. Factories will spring up over night where there is capital and faith to invest it. Even the fine old cathedrals may be restored or replaced with something that will serve equally well in a practical sense. But the young men--the flower of the French nation--whose lives have been offered on the altar of national defense--these cannot be replaced. Generations must pass before the terrific price of national existence will be fully paid in this direction. Most Frenchmen feel this way about the situation. From a material standpoint they expect to soon be as well off as ever. They do not seem to mind the loss in wealth destroyed by the great war. But they are bowed down with grief at the thought of the young men who have been slain and the years that will be required to replace them. Although they do not care to discuss this phase of the situation, the French have already begun nobly to meet the problem of the lame, halt and blind who are a part of the legacy of every war and an exceedingly prominent part of that left by this one. It is surprising to learn that the Belgians, whose little country has been crushed under the heel of the invader so that its government retains only a narrow corner behind the British army, are even more optimistic than the French. They are determined that the Germans must be driven out and are already laying elaborate plans for reconstruction of their farms and villages and cities. Almost before the Commission had reached Paris we were asked by the Belgians to hold a meeting with their chamber of commerce in that city in order to discuss the problems of Belgium's rehabilitation. [Illustration: Ruins at Nancy.] When this meeting did finally take place, on October 16th, we were all impressed with the pathetic earnestness of the Belgians upon this subject. Some of the most prominent citizens of Belgium took part in the discussion. It was easy to see, even from the meagre translations we were able to get on the moment, that the Belgians realize that they have been martyrs and expect the world to render them substantial aid when the time comes to restore their national entity and rebuild their war torn country. In fact I was compelled to admit with reluctance that their enthusiasm was greater than their business acumen, for they seemed to have very little tangible information on which plans could be laid for helping them. It was explained afterward that these Belgians have no means of securing the information they need, as the Germans have almost absolute possession of their country and are, as might be expected, not furnishing any information as to the amount of destruction, or the quantity of materials which can be used again, or in any other way. It is stated that the Germans have practically looted the whole country, carting off the machinery in most of the factories, and even forcing the Belgians to work on military defenses to be used against them and their allies. Under such conditions it was not to be expected that the Belgian chamber of commerce would be in possession of definite information. The impassioned belief of these gentlemen in the magnanimity and wealth of America was inspiring, and I sincerely hope that when the time comes to reconstruct this stricken land our people will have as large a part as the Belgians expect and one much more generous than they have had in the saving of the Belgians from starvation. [Illustration: Trenches Occupied by French Soldiers] At this meeting I heard many kind things said about the Americans who are working in Belgium and about how much this country has done to save the people there from suffering. Great praise was also given to the English, who have aided most nobly to prevent the absolute destruction of the Belgian nation. XXIII. FRENCH BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS To the members of our Commission one of the most interesting things found in France was the organization of chambers of commerce, or bodies whose purpose is to promote the industrial and financial welfare of the communities where they exist. Unlike the situation in America, where chambers of commerce are purely local organizations, without power or even much prestige in the regulation of municipal affairs, the French have a system of such bodies that is probably the most important single force to be reckoned with in the republic. We were entertained at almost every city where we made a stop by the chamber of commerce, and were given every opportunity to ascertain how these organizations work. We found their system admirable, and many features of it should be copied in this country. Before this can be done, however, we must have more liberal and sensible legislation on the question of co-operation among productive organizations. The French chambers of commerce are officially recognized by the government and given certain powers which, to a large extent, place every community under their care, at least in so far as its business interests and development of its resources go. No chamber can be organized except by governmental decree, and this provision naturally prevents them from interfering with the legitimate prerogatives of the government, while giving them powers that enable them to be of real service to the community. Everywhere we went we found that the chamber of commerce was regarded as the guardian of the public interest, and we were told how these bodies took action frequently with much success in matters that in this country would be regarded as far beyond the scope of a chamber of commerce. They have power to represent the towns where they exist in all matters regarding industrial, agricultural and transportation problems. They are under the direct control of the department of industry, and the charter of each is signed by the minister of commerce then in office. Their members are elected much as we elect regular city officials, and the number cannot be less than nine or more than twenty-one, except in Paris, where there are forty at this time. The number is fixed for each chamber by government decree and depends on the population of the district. The members must be thirty years of age and citizens in good standing. Bankrupts are not allowed to serve. In every way these bodies are made thoroughly representative of the best citizenship, and it is regarded as quite an honor to be permitted to serve on them without pay. These chambers usually meet twice each month and they keep in close touch with each other, working out plans that will be for the good of the whole country as well as for their special localities. Many of the largest undertakings in France have been begun and carried out largely by chambers of commerce. The new port at Marseilles, which will cost about two hundred million francs, is an example. For this work the chamber of commerce raised six million francs, the government provided a like amount, and with this the chamber was able to finance the improvement, depending on tolls and other revenues to pay the balance in due time. The feature which appealed most strongly to me in these chambers of commerce was the manner in which they are dovetailed with the government in the performance of duties of a nature such as, in spite of their tremendous importance, we Americans generally regard as nobody's business in particular, and which are therefore usually left undone. A national organization of chambers of commerce is maintained in Paris. Part of the expense of each chamber, as well as of this body, is paid by the government. The secretaries of the local chambers have also an organization, and all these seem to work in perfect harmony for the general good. The secretaries are usually professionals, and special courses of training may be had in France for this work. We found that nearly every chamber had its own building and that all were handsomely housed, well financed and extremely effective. They have become a most important part of the government, handling with success many problems that are difficult for a government and which, at the same time, require a certain amount of governmental authority if they are to be disposed of in an efficient manner. In my opinion this country could copy the French system of chambers of commerce with much profit. We are in advance of them in many things, especially in the matter of industrial operations, but they are a century in advance of us in the co-operation needed between the citizens and the government for the highest development of community life and progress. XXIV. THE CARREL METHOD OF TREATING WOUNDS So much interest has been expressed in the new method of treating wounds discovered by Dr. Carrel and bearing his name, and the subject being of such great importance to the cause of humanity and the preservation of human life, I have thought it worth while to give here the following authoritative descriptions of this new and epochal discovery in the science of medicine. It is now generally known as the Carrel-Dakin treatment. Reference has been made to meeting Dr. Sherman in London. On discovering that this physician had enjoyed considerable experience with the Carrel treatment and was thoroughly familiar with it, I invited him to deliver an address on this subject at my home town after his return from Europe. He readily agreed to do this, speaking to an interested audience under the auspices of the Mahoning County Medical Society on Dec. 19, 1916. A newspaper account of this address is appended. This will, in a measure, serve to show the importance of the Carrel treatment. Out of the horror and carnage that is raging across the seas some inconceivable good must come. This is the opinion of all who have been close to the din of battle, who have visited hospitals and seen with their own eyes the human wrecks wrought by grape shot, shrapnel and bursting shells. Dr. William O'Neill Sherman's visit to this city Tuesday night, when he opened the eyes of the medical profession here to new and greater things, is the first inkling of one great good that is to come out of this war. To treat the millions of wounded and maimed, medical genius has been taxed to the limit. As in all great times, great minds have come to the rescue and found a way. The old saying that where there is a will there is a way, has been clearly proven. Particularly is this true in the medical world. Dr. Sherman came here from Pittsburgh, the invited guest of the Mahoning County Medical Society, at the suggestion of J. G. Butler, Jr., who wanted him to tell the physicians of this city and county the many things he had learned by close application and association with conditions in European hospitals and trenches. Dr. Sherman was filled with an enthusiasm that he made every man who attended the annual banquet of the Mahoning Medical Society feel. Particularly was he anxious to bring the local medical fraternity to a realization of the methods and treatments developed by the horrible carnage raging now in the European countries. He drove home his point without gloves when he told physicians of Youngstown that medical men throughout this country were given too much to criticising new methods rather than investigating them. The Carrel method, he explained at length. It is simply a newly discovered antiseptic solution, conceived by Dr. Alexis Carrel, which sterilizes wounds and arrests infection and inflammation before they have an opportunity to spread and result in blood poisoning and death. * * * [Illustration: Proclamation Posted in Reims Just Before the French Fell Back to the Marne. (See Chap. XXV.)] TRANSLATION REPUBLIC OF FRANCE CITY OF REIMS TO THE INHABITANTS At the moment when the German army is at our gates, and will probably enter the city, the municipal authorities request you to preserve all your presence of mind, and all calmness necessary to permit you to undergo this trial. There must not be any manifestations, any riotous gatherings, any outcries to trouble the tranquility of the streets. Public Service, Charity, Health, and street maintenance should continue to be safe. You must co-operate with us. You must remain in the city to help the unfortunate. We shall remain with you at our post to defend your interests. It does not devolve upon you, the population of an unfortified city, to alter events. It does devolve upon you not to aggravate the consequences. To this end it is necessary to keep silence, dignity and prudence. We rely upon you, you may rely upon us. Reims, September 3, 1914. DR. LANGLET, Mayor. * * * Mr. Butler said to visit European capitals is to witness a revelation difficult to convey in mere words. Soldiers of every nationality are treated by the expert and world famed in medicine. Human wrecks, victims of shot and shell, are repaired and rebuilt. It matters little whether a man is friend or foe, as long as a spark of life is there, he is picked tenderly from the trench and everything known to medical science done to bring about his recovery. The mind is filled with horror and wonder of it all. New thoughts bombard the mind as one looks on. A man is brought in. His face is practically shot away. It seems that even should he recover he will be so disfigured that life will not be worth the living. The Carrel solution is applied. By plastic surgery and other means the disfigured mass is shaped. In a few short weeks the man again begins to resemble a human being and eventually is well, with little more than a few indistinct scars. Not infrequently he returns to the trenches. Some of the things that shock the mind are metal jaws, screened behind false beards, artificial noses, ears, cheeks, eyes and limbs. Sometimes when a man is facially disfigured beyond repair, that is, when nature can never replace the countenance, a copper mask is fitted. These sculptors in flesh-and-blood do their work with such precision and accuracy that it is startling and cannot be believed unless it is seen. The war has seen the springing up of many hospitals of special character. There are groups of institutions where only faces are treated, eyes, ears and nose, maimed limbs, etc. Medical attention in most cases begins in the trenches and the patient is carefully watched while being transported to the hospital. By sterilizing wounds shortly after they occur, infection and pus are robbed of their chance to hinder nature and the patient recovers in a few weeks from a frightful wound that if infected would take that many months. There are many things of today that help in the preservation of human life. The highly developed X-ray has played an important part in this great war. Electricity, new antiseptics and anaesthetics have been at the finger's end of the skilled medical profession, to work what can honestly be called miracles and wonders. One of the strange things of this great war is the fact that new, unheard of diseases are developed. It has tended to make common rare diseases and greatly increased those that are usual. Thousands die, having no mark upon their body. Post-mortems held have disclosed in nearly every case that such deaths were caused by shell shock. Bombs from the huge guns dropping near a company of men will often so disarrange organs that death follows quickly. Many who survive lose mind, sight, hearing, speech, and so on. This has become one of the common things of this great war. As a result the warring countries will find themselves confronted with a new and difficult problem when peace comes and normal times are again established. There will be hundreds of thousands to pension and no doubt insane institutions will have to be enlarged. Rest is often a saviour. Men taken away from the fronts, minds blank, in the quiet of home often regain their reason. There is the large percentage that God in his goodness does not see fit to restore that will form an elephantine problem. There will have to be vast pension lists, for these men often have large families. The way men may be pieced and patched together is one of the finds of the new medical era. It has been discovered that bones in legs and arms practically shot in two can be brought together by means of silver and vanadium steel plates fitted with screws and that the bones will knit and after a period the afflicted can walk almost as satisfactorily as if nothing had happened. Dr. Sherman while in this city this week displayed a steel plate that he worked out and used with marked success in the hospitals of France. These plates are applied in what would seem to be a very simple manner. A man may have a leg or an arm practically shot off. By placing the broken bones together, after a treatment with the Carrel solution to keep down infection, a plate is fitted on either side of the fracture and screws are applied. This holds the two members solidly together and in a few short weeks the bones knit. In time this place is practically the strongest part of the limb. What this means can best be told by explaining that before the discovery, an arm or a leg so badly shattered was simply amputated because this was the only safe and logical way to save the life of the individual. In the olden days gangrene would invariably set in and the patient die within a short time unless amputation was performed promptly following the accident. Dr. Carrel has gone a long way to eliminate this danger. Having seen with my own eyes the wonderful results of this treatment during my visits to the American Ambulance and other hospitals in France, I requested Mr. Laurence V. Benet, superintendent of the American Ambulance, to furnish me with an authoritative description of the treatment. The chief purpose of this is to enable medical authorities in this country, particularly those connected with hospitals maintained by iron and steel plants, to gain a reliable outline of the treatment. Dr. Benet, in spite of the fact that he is one of the busiest men in France, kindly agreed to furnish this information. In doing so he accompanied the description with the following letter: * * * 1 Avenue De Camoens Paris, October 26, 1916. Mr. Joseph G. Butler, Jr., Youngstown, O. My dear Mr. Butler:-- In compliance with my request, Dr. Joseph Lawrence, of the American Ambulance, has kindly prepared a short note on the Carrel treatment of wounds, and this I am now enclosing. I trust that you will find it sufficiently explicit for your purposes, and that it will be of use and interest to you. Now that you are again home I hope that your wonderful trip in France will be less than a mere memory and that the labors of the Industrial Commission will prove, as they should, most valuable to the manufacturers and exporters of the United States. Believe me that it was to me a great privilege as well as a great pleasure to have met you and your distinguished colleagues, and that my only regret is that I was unable to be of greater use to the Commission. I am, with very kind regards, Sincerely yours, LAURENCE V. BENET 1 encl. * * * The Carrel Treatment of Wounds. The Carrel treatment consists in thorough irrigation guided by the bacteriological observation of the wound. For the irrigation of the wound, Carrel has chosen a certain size of rubber tube about 4 mm. in diameter into which he punches small holes at intervals. The one end of this tube is shut, the other end is allowed to protrude from the dressing. On the surface wound, the tube is laid over the wound in the direction of the greatest diameter of the wound with the open end towards the most elevated part. In perforating wounds, the tube or several tubes, when the wound is large, are passed through from both sides, or pushed into cavities or pockets that may exist. If the wound is not a perforating wound, but a deep wound, the tubes are planted deep into the cavity that may be formed. These tubes are always of sufficient number to thoroughly irrigate the broken surface. Over the uninjured skin, about the wound, is placed thin strips of gauze which have been steeped in vaseline, the skin having been thoroughly washed before with soap and water. To keep these tubes in place, a bandage wet with Dakin's solution is placed over them. The wound is flushed every two hours with Dakin's solution. The amount of solution used per wound, varies in proportion to the size of the wound from 500 c.c. per day up. Wounds are dressed daily. The bacteriological observation is made by taking a smear from the most vicious part of the wound at intervals of two or three days. The number of bacteria on these smears is noted and counted per oil immersion field. A count of more than 75 bacteria per field is considered infinity. When there are less than 10 bacilli to the field, and not less than 5 to the field, three fields are counted. When less than 5, and not less than 7, five fields are counted. When less than one, from five to twenty fields will be counted. A wound that retains a count of one bacillus to two fields or less for three observations, is considered bacteriologically clean, and suitable for operation. If the wound is a compound fracture, it is advisable to close the wound, converting it into a simple fracture. If this can be done without exerting too great tension on the sutures. If the wound is a flesh wound, and can be drawn together without too great tension, its closure is indicated. [Illustration] The important parts of the treatment consist in thorough irrigation, and careful bacteriological observation. The bacteriological observations are charted on charts similar to temperature charts. Dakin's Solution. (Sodium Hypochlorite at 0.50%) 1--To prepare 10 litres of solution, weight exactly: Chloride of Lime (Bleaching Powder) 200 grms. Carbonate of Soda (dried) 100 grms. or if used in crystals 200 grms. Bi-carbonate of Soda 200 grms. 2--Put the Chloride of Lime into a large mouthed bottle of about 12 litres capacity. Add 5 litres of water (half the quantity) and shake well two or three times. Let this stand all night. 3--Dissolve in another 5 litres of water of two Soda salts 4--Pour this latter solution directly into the bottle containing the maceration of lime. Stir well and let the solution stand in order to allow the precipitate of Carbonate of Lime to settle. 5--At the end of half an hour, siphon the clear liquid and filter by means of a paper, in order to have a perfectly clear solution. This should be kept away from the light. 6--No heat should be employed in the manufacture of Dakin's and ordinary Tapwater should be used. * * * Preparation of Dakin Solution. Technique of Dr. Daufresne. The solution of sodium hypochlorite for surgical use must be free of caustic alkali; it must only contain 0.45% to 0.50 of hypochlorite. Under 0.45% it is not active enough and above 0.50 it is irritant. With chloride of lime (bleaching powder) having 25% of active chlorine, the quantities of necessary substances to prepare ten litres of solution are the following:-- Chloride of Lime (bleaching powder) 25% CI act....200 gr. Sodium Carbonate, dry (Soda of Solway) 100 gr. Sodium Bi-carbonate....80 gr. Pour into 12 litre flask the two hundred grammes of chloride of lime and five litres of ordinary water, shake vigorously for a few minutes and leave in contact for six to twelve hours, one night for example. (Shake until dissolved) at least the big pieces are dissolved, large pieces float--notice only floating pieces. At the same time, dissolve in five litres of cold ordinary water the carbonate and bi-carbonate of soda. After leaving from six to twelve hours, pour the salt solution in the flask containing the macerated chloride of lime, shake vigorously for a few minutes and leave to allow the calcium carbonate to be precipitated. In about half an hour, siphon the liquid and filter with a double paper to obtain a good, clear liquid, which should always be kept in a dark place. Tritration of Chloride of Lime (Bleaching Powder). Because of the variation of the products now obtained in the market, it is necessary to determine the quantity of active chlorine contained in the chloride of lime which is to be used. This, in order to employ an exact calculated quantity according to its concentration. The test is made in the following manner:-- Take from different parts of the bar a small quantity of beaching powder to have a medium sample, weigh 20 grammes of it, mix as well as possible in a litre of tap water and leave in contact for a few hours. Measure 10 c.c. of the clear liquid and add 20 c.c. of a 10% solution of potassium iodide, 2 c.c. of acetic acid or hydrochloric acid, then put drop by drop into the mixture a decinormal solution of sodium hyposulfite (2.48%) until decoloration. The number "N" of cubic centimeters of hyposulfite employed multiplied by 1,775 will give the weight "N" of active chloride contained in 100 grammes of chloride of lime. The test must be made every time a new product is received. When the result obtained will differ more or less than 25%, it will be necessary to reduce or enlarge the proportion of the three products contained in the preparation. This can be easily obtained by multiplying each of the three numbers--200, 100, 60 by the factor N/25 in which N represents the weight of the active chlorine per cent of chloride of lime. Measure 10 c.c. of the solution, add 20 c.c. of potassium iodide 1/10, 2 c.c. of acetic acid and drop by drop a decinormal solution of sodium hyposulfite until decoloration. The number of cubic centimeters used multiplied by 0.03725 will give the weight of the hypochlorite of soda contained in 100 c.c. of the solution. Never heat the solution and if in case of urgency one is obliged to resort to trituration of chloride of lime in a mortar, only employ water, never salt solution. Test of Thetalkalinity of Dakin Solution:-- To easily differentiate the solution obtained by this process from the commercial hypochlorites, pour into a glass about 20 c.c. of the solution and drop on the surface of the liquid a few centigrammes of phenol-phthaleine in powder. The correct solution does not give any coloration while Lebarraque's solution and Rau de Javel will give an intense red color which shows in the last two solutions existence of free caustic alkali. TECHNIQUE--Dakin Solution. The procedure is very simple. The solution, however, must be between 45 to 50% hypochlorite. Anything above this strength will burn and anything below is too weak. The edges of the wound should be covered with gauze which has been well soaked in vaseline, the solution should then be introduced into the wounds from an irrigator every two hours. A stopcock should be put on the tube and only sufficient solution should be allowed to enter the wound to completely saturate all parts of the wound. In other words, the wounds should be bathed with the solution every two hours--do not mistake this and irrigate continuously. You can easily tell how much solution it takes to keep the wound wet. Rubber tubes are used. The end of the tube is tied off and six to eight small perforations are made so that the solution can run into all parts of the wound. If the wounds are superficial, the same kind of a tube can be used to which a cuff of turkish towel is wrapped around the end of the tube. If you feel that the wounds are sure to be infected, it would be well to lay them open freely and immediately start this treatment, be sure to have the skin well protected with the vaseline and gauze and see that the solution does not run out of the wound on the bed. Just keep the wound bathed every two hours. I have been informed that a movement is on foot to inaugurate the use of this remarkable discovery in the United States military hospitals, and that the Rockefeller Foundation has in view the erection at New York of a large hospital where the treatment may be studied and still further perfected for the benefit of this country. * * * [Illustration: Proclamation by the Mayor of Reims Issued on the Day the Germans Entered that City, Sept. 4, 1914.] TRANSLATION APPEAL TO THE POPULATION OF REIMS. Dear Citizens: To-day and in the days following, many from among you, both prominent citizens and workmen, will be kept as hostages to guarantee to the German authorities the quiet and good order which your representatives have promised in your name. It is to your security and to the safety of the City and to your proper interests that you do nothing which may break this agreement and compromise the future. Have realization of your responsibility and facilitate our task. Men, women, children, remain as far as possible in your homes, avoid all discussion. We depend upon you to be equal to this occasion. All riotous gathering is absolutely forbidden and will be immediately dispersed. J. B. LANGLET, Mayor. L. ROUSSEAU, DR. JACQUIN, E. CHARBONNEAUX, J. De BRUIGNAC. Assistants. * * * XXV. A CITY IN AN ARMY'S PATH Few who read this book have ever been in contact with actual war. In order that they may have an idea of what happens to a city which finds itself in the path of an irresistible enemy, some account will be given here of what happened to Reims, a city about the size of Youngstown, having a population of one hundred and twenty-five thousand and being situated on the north bank of the river Aisne, in north-eastern France. When the Germans attacked France they hurled their great armies by three routes. Not only did they violate the neutrality of Belgium and Luxembourg, but they also sent an army across the frontier between Verdun and Belfort, this being the force stopped by the chasseurs at Gerbeviller, as has been told elsewhere. France had trusted too much and was in a desperate plight because her troops had been mobilized on the wrong front. The first Germans crossed the frontier of little Luxembourg on the morning of August 2, 1914. They were met by the Grand Duchess, who disputed their passage and pleaded with them to turn back. Her little army of four hundred and thirty men could do nothing, and when she turned her car across the road the German soldiers gathered around and, on the order of their commander, pushed it to one side and passed on. The Germans entered Belgian territory at Gemmenich on August 3, 1914. The next day they attempted to take by assault the city of Liege, Belgium's greatest industrial center, and failed. This city, with its ring of nine forts, blocked the passage of their troops and held the main roads into Germany. After a most bloody and unsuccessful assault, the Germans brought up their big guns and blew the forts to pieces. But they had been delayed five days. Then their hosts swept across Belgium and soon came in touch with the French and English. The English army of one hundred and twenty-five thousand men met them at Mons. The French met them between Mons and Verdun. At this time the Allied lines swung like a huge gate from Verdun west toward the sea, barring the Kaiser's passage. The Germans then had a million of men, with hordes of the famous lancers, and clouds of these horsemen hung on the right flank of the English, swinging out and around them so as to force Sir John French to fall back or suffer the turning of his flank. Von Kluck was in command of this turning movement, which was made possible by the fall of Namur, Lille and Charleroi. Things then looked desperately bad for the Allies. * * * [Illustration: First Order From the Invaders.] TRANSLATION ORDER Having taken possession of the City and the fortress of Reims I command the following: Railroads, routes of communications, both telegraph and telephone, not only of the City of Reims, but also throughout the immediately outlying districts, must be protected against all possibility of destruction; it is absolutely necessary to protect by a minute surveillance the public buildings along the lines of communication. The City will be held responsible for disobedience to this order: the guilty ones will be pursued and shot; the City will be levied for considerable contributions. I add also that it will be to the interest of the population to conform to the foregoing commands, at the same time going about their ordinary occupations; thus the inhabitants will avoid having new and serious losses. THE GERMAN GENERAL Commander in Chief. * * * This notice on a white card, 45 by 56 centimeters, was posted on the walls of the City of Reims by German authority during the occupation of September 4th to 12th, 1914. As they were forced back toward Paris, not so much by actual fighting as by the necessity to keep their lines clear and avoid the turning movement of the swift German division under Von Kluck, the Allied armies swung, like a gate with its hinges at Verdun and the outer edge at Mons, back until they stretched between Verdun and Paris. This movement uncovered the beautiful city of Reims, with its countless art treasures, its magnificent cathedral and its thriving population of more than a hundred thousand people, all of which, as the swinging movement continued, were left to the mercy of the German army. The French evacuated Reims with nothing more than some rear-guard fighting and fell back southward to take their places in the great battle line which Joffre had planned somewhere north of Paris--on the Marne, as it was later evident. As the Allied forces swung backward to this then unknown position, they were hard pressed by the advancing German hosts. Their retreat will stand as one of the most masterly in history, for during ten days these vast armies retired more than two hundred miles on their left flank without disorder and without excessive loss of men or material. The English army occupied the side toward the sea in these grand maneuvers for position. Sir John French moved swiftly backward, fighting as he went and constantly swinging outward to prevent Von Kluck from encircling his flank. On the morning of September 3rd, he reached a point between Paris and the sea, actually a little north of that city. Suddenly in response to orders from Joffre, he marched his tired troops through Paris to Lagny, twenty miles east of the capital, where he took up a position on the Marne front. Von Kluck was almost in sight of Paris in hot pursuit of the English when he found how he had been tricked. He could not attack the defenses, and it was urgently necessary for him to join the main army on the Marne front. To do this he had to circle to the north, around the outer fortifications of Paris a much longer march than that of the English. The French government had packed its belongings and left for Bordeaux on the morning of the day the English passed through Paris, and the people thought the Germans were about to besiege the city. All buildings in the line of fire had been destroyed, the civilian population sent south, and every preparation made for defense. Joffre only knew the real plan. The Parisians were amazed when the Germans scarcely stopped in front of their city. They could not understand why Von Kluck should suddenly withdraw to the east, because they did not know how badly he was needed on the Marne front. But Von Kluck must have suspected, for it is said that he told an aide that, "We have met with a great misfortune." Von Kluck was right, for the masterly strategy of Joffre had won the battle of the Marne before a shot had been fired in that historic struggle. These facts were gleaned from military men whom we met in France. They show how little the civilian population of a military zone, or even the soldiers themselves, know of the movements in which they are engaged. Evidently Joffre had not confided his plans even to the government authorities at Paris, preferring to have the seat of government move and the population flee rather than take chances of these plans being learned by the enemy. So also at Reims. The French who had been stubbornly defending the city they love best next to Paris from German "Kultur," were forced to move through Reims and to the south to take their place in the great battle line on the Marne. They went reluctantly and the Germans followed them into the city. This explains the situation shown in the poster on page 245. The Germans were just outside of Reims on September 3rd, and the Mayor knew that the French army was moving south and leaving the city at their mercy. He counselled his people concerning their conduct, warning them to interfere in no rear-guard action such as was likely to occur. This proclamation was dated September 3, 1914. * * * [Illustration: Second German Proclamation.] TRANSLATION PROCLAMATION All authorities of the French Government and Municipal authorities are advised as follows: 1st--All peaceable inhabitants may follow their regular occupations in full security without being disturbed. Private property will be absolutely respected by the German troops. Provisions of all sorts suitable for the needs of the German army will be paid for as purchased. 2nd--If, on the contrary, the population dares in any form, whether openly or disguised, to take part in hostilities against our troops the most diverse punishments will be inflicted upon the guilty ones. 3rd--All firearms must be deposited immediately at the Mayor's office; all individuals bearing arms will be put to death. 4th--Whoever cuts or attempts to cut telegraph or telephone wires, destroys railroad tracks, bridges, roadways, or who plans any action whatsoever to the detriment of the German troops will be shot on the spot. 5th--The inhabitants of the city or of the villages who take part in the battle against our troops, who fire on our baggage trains or on our commissary, or who attempt to hinder any enterprises of the German soldiers, will be shot immediately. The civil authorities alone are in a position to spare the inhabitants the terrors and scourge of war. They are the ones who will be responsible for the inevitable consequences resulting from this proclamation. Chief of Staff, Major General of the German Army VON MOLTKE * * * White card, 45 x 56, posted on the walls of the city of Reims by German authority during the occupation of September 4th to 12th, 1914. On September 4th the Germans entered Reims, having met with no resistance. They occupied the city without interruption until after the battle of the Marne, which historic struggle began at sunrise on September 6th and continued along a front of about 140 miles until September 12th. In this battle, which was lost to the Germans because they had been out-maneuvered and compelled to shorten their front so that they were rolled up on both right and left wings, two million, five hundred thousand men were engaged--the greatest number taking part in one battle in the history of the world. Of these nine hundred thousand were Germans and the remainder Allies, principally French, the English having only a little more than one hundred thousand men in France at that time. On account of their superiority of numbers, the Allies were able to extend their front and thus threaten the Germans with envelopment at both ends of the long battle line, which reached from Meaux, twenty miles east of Paris, to the fortress of Verdun. The losses in this tremendous battle are said to have been exceeded only by those of the battle of Flanders, which began October 13, and in which more than three hundred thousand men were slain. The losses at the Marne have never been officially stated. * * * [Illustration: Citizens Warned of Danger.] MAYOR'S OFFICE REIMS IMPORTANT NOTICE The inhabitants are requested to abstain absolutely from touching shells which have not been exploded and are requested to notify immediately the police department, Rue de Mars regarding any such. The least shock may cause the explosion of the projectile. Reims, September 7, 1914. DR. LANGLET, Mayor. Notice posted in Reims by order of the Mayor, September 7th, 1914. * * * Next followed the battle of the Aisne, in which the invaders were again defeated and forced to retreat. It was in this battle that the Germans made their last stand south of Reims. They had prepared strong positions on the right bank of this river as they moved toward Paris and in these tried to stem the tide of battle without avail. They were pushed back slowly out of these positions, some of which we were shown, and after being driven to the north of Reims, they began, on September 20th, the bombardment that destroyed the famous cathedral and many of the finest structures in the city. It will be seen that the Germans, on their entry into Reims, guaranteed the safety of life and property. They had forgotten this when, on September 15, the victorious French reoccupied the city. Five days later, without reason or any other motive than revenge, the Germans, now making another stand in the trenches to the north of the city, opened fire on the cathedral and the bishop's palace nearby, destroying both beyond repair. * * * [Illustration: Citizens Warned that Hostages may be Hanged.] TRANSLATION PROCLAMATION In case a battle takes place today or very soon in the environs of Reims or in the city itself, the inhabitants are advised that they should keep absolutely calm and are not to take part in the battle in any manner. They must not attempt to attack isolated soldiers nor detachments of the German army. It is formally forbidden to build barricades or tear up pavement of the streets in such a fashion as to hinder the movement of the troops. In a word nothing must be done which will in any way tend to hinder the German army. In order to insure sufficiently the safety of the troops and in order to keep the population of Reims calm, the persons named below have been taken as hostages by the commanding general of the German army. Those hostages will be hanged at the least sign of disorder. At the same time the city will be entirely or partially burned and the inhabitants hanged if any infraction whatsoever is committed against the preceding rules. On the other hand if the city remains absolutely tranquil and calm, the hostages and the inhabitants will be placed under the safeguard of the German Army. By order of German authority, Reims, September 12, 1914. DR. LANGLET, Mayor. * * * Both armies surged backward and forward over Reims twice, and it is not surprising that the city suffered severely. Nevertheless, the French officer who gave us the information outlined above was firmly of the opinion that the cathedral had been wantonly destroyed in revenge for the defeat and humiliation suffered by the German commanders at the Marne and the Aisne. Whatever may have been the motive, and regardless of how great may have been the excuse, the two illustrations of this splendid structure shown in a previous chapter are sufficient to stamp its destruction as a crime that can hardly be justified by the plea of military necessity. Reims, when we saw it, with the story that is told by the proclamations reproduced, furnishes strong evidence that General Sherman was right when he described war. XXVI. SOME IMPRESSIONS OF FRANCE AND THE FRENCH In closing this work it is my hope that the reader will consider that its inspiration and purpose have been stated with sufficient clearness, but in this final chapter I am venturing to record my general impressions of a truly great nation seen during a period which must be regarded as part of the most vital epoch in its history. This concluding chapter will have accomplished my purpose if it portrays the patriotic nationality of the French under existing conditions, in such manner as to be considered worthy of emulation in our own country. During the necessarily brief and hurried visits made by our Commission to many parts of France, I met many notables, generals, under officers, parliament members, prefects, as well as great commercial leaders, but regret that owing to lack of time and my ignorance of the French language, opportunity for investigation and conversation with the bourgeoise was slight. Nevertheless it would be impossible to travel through afflicted France as our Commission did without experiencing an acute impression of the solidarity and quiet, determined patriotism of the French people. They stand as one to fight the war to a decisive finish. They treat the war as some gigantic job, about which there is to be no questioning, no weighing of sacrifices of life, comfort or finances, and which simply must go on until finished satisfactorily. This development of the French character must come as a revelation to those who have in the past regarded the French as a volatile, frivolous, impulsive people, virile, yet lacking the accredited determination and persistency of the Teuton. This impression has been a great mistake. The faces of the men and women of France alike show no sign of vacillation. The French are counting the terrific cost, as becomes the thriftiest of nations, expecting to collect a bill that in their opinion has been running since the Franco-Prussian war and through the humiliating and irksome years which followed under the "favored nation" clause. From any other standpoint I believe few Frenchmen ever permit themselves to dwell upon the ruin and suffering the present cataclysm has brought upon their country. Upon comprehending this attitude of the French, the thinking American cannot avoid speculation as to what would happen in these United States should a like emergency confront us. We may not dismiss such thought with the statement that such an emergency is impossible. It is a most unpleasant possibility and must be faced. We might be unconquerable, in the sense that Russia cannot be conquered because of her magnificent distances and natural barriers against a foe; but without the preparedness and the single-hearted patriotism of the French, an invader would find nothing in America to prevent him from working destruction beyond calculation and inflicting humiliation that would be even worse. [Illustration: Postal-card Painted by Artist Soldier in French Trenches.] As these lines are written we are still at peace with all the warring nations. Our neutrality has been preserved only by submitting to outrages such as have been endured without forcible protest by no other great nation in the history of the world. If our patience with Germany serves as an example to the world of how a great and magnanimous nation may make sacrifices to encourage peace, our policy will prove to be wise. If, on the other hand, it serves only to make the Germans believe that we are too mercenary or two weak-kneed to defend ourselves and thus encourages further transgressions, our peaceable policy will have been a great mistake. After an opportunity to observe at close hand the methods and motives of the German war party, I am frankly afraid that the latter situation will prove to be the outcome. We shall be indeed fortunate if we can keep out of the war that has involved half the civilized world. Nations like men profit by experience. The French people have records of history and civilization extending beyond the days of the Roman Empire, and that civilization has gone steadily forward through many centuries. No wonder then that they excel us in many things; the wonder is that they do not excel in all. In architecture and the arts, France leads America. This must be admitted by any fair-minded person familiar with the facts. But in industrial affairs the story is different. Our country has adopted more progressive and efficient methods in the industrial field than can be found in France, where efficiency is not the word so much as is the comfort of the workers. This is particularly true of the iron and steel business. We saw in France not a single steel plant that could compare in efficiency with the great plants of this country. By this is meant that in none of the plants visited was the output per man nearly so great or the share enjoyed by the worker nearly so large, as is the rule in this country. Since we did not see the plants to the north which had been captured by the Germans, perhaps it is not altogether fair to make this comparison. Nevertheless the same impression was gained in the inspection of other industrial operations. The French workman is more artistic but he does not move so rapidly or produce so much as does the American. Neither of course, does he enjoy so large a remuneration. On the whole, wages are much less in proportion to individual production in France than in this country. To the resident of a country which has not had a war within the memory of a generation, it is hard to convey by written or printed words a just conception of what a great war means to any country involved. The outward, visible evidence of individual restraint was one of the most vivid things witnessed on our trip through France: at least this was the case with me and, I believe, with some others of the Commission. In France the individual has disappeared; he has been swallowed by the State; the nation in its dire necessity, obeying the law of self-preservation has practically obliterated the individual as such. He has become simply a small part of a great whole, a whole so inconceivably more important than any of its parts that all of them are completely subordinated. The average American citizen would resent with heat the regulations regarded as a matter of course in France. He would fume and fret and all but rebel, if asked to live as the French people are forced to live during the war. From what we could learn the submersion of the individual is far greater in Germany than in France, but to a healthy American citizen, accustomed to doing about as he pleases so long as he is able to pay the price and injures no one else, there is abundant restriction on personal liberty at this time in France. Possibly under similar circumstances we would as a people show an equal spirit of self-repression for the benefit of the national welfare. The first great lesson taught by war to the death--as this war is for all concerned--is the great outstanding fact that people as individuals must surrender their rights to the people as a whole. Obedience to constituted authority must be absolute. Personal tastes and interests must be ignored or suppressed. The whole nation must work as one man, under the direction of one head, to keep it from being made subject to some other nation having less regard for personal liberty and more respect for efficiency. I took particular pains to ascertain directly and indirectly from all classes the feeling of the French people towards Germany and the Germans. Prior to the declaration of war it is safe to say the feeling was not wholly unfriendly. Only three months before war was declared a similar commission came from Germany. The German commissioners were treated with great consideration. Plants and industrial establishments were shown, views exchanged and entertainments were the order of the day, or rather of the night, and everything possible done by the French to foster a good feeling, having in mind increased trade facilities between the two nations. But after war was declared, French territory invaded and the unspeakable and unwritable deeds of the German soldiers made manifest, this previous feeling changed to one of hatred and revenge which it will take generations to eradicate. In our intercourse with the French people a kindly appreciative feeling was manifest towards the English and Americans; a feeling of deep gratitude towards England for the great part she has taken in the war and to America for the generous aid and assistance rendered in many ways. Hospital work and the great aid rendered by American aviators were much dwelt upon, the personal work of American men and women being everywhere in evidence. Since my return I have been asked by a great many people as to the revival or otherwise of religious feeling as the result of the war, also as to the food situation, the general appearance of the country in France, the manner in which the dwelling houses are built, the maintenance of public roads, the school system of France and its efficiency as well as to the conditions prevailing now compared with former visits. France has never been deeply religious. Catholicism prevails to a great extent at present and has for centuries, although certain parts of France are Protestant. Such divisions and subdivisions of Protestant churches as prevail in the United States are unknown. A Frenchman or a Frenchwoman is either a Catholic or Protestant. Religious feeling is no doubt deeper in the country districts than in the larger cities, and this is particularly true of the Catholics. From the brief talk I had with French people on this particular subject I should say the war has made no difference and the religious attitude is about the same. The thoughts of the French people are so concentrated upon the war and its consequences that but little else occupies their minds. During our sojourn in France, food seemed plenty and we heard no complaint of shortage. The French are proverbially thrifty and can and do live comfortably upon the equivalent of what Americans waste. When a Frenchman finishes his meal there is nothing left on the plate, on dishes or in the glasses. This was particularly noticeable at all the banquets and luncheons which we attended. We had but little opportunity of ascertaining prices. The market houses in the small villages seemed well stocked with provisions. Going to school in France is a governmental affair as all the schools are run by the Government, excepting only the convent schools, where higher education is taught to private pupils. France contains many high grade "polytechnique" schools, arts, military and schools of mines, all regulated and managed through the government department of education. I should say the common school system is not as thorough as in Germany, where education is wholly compulsory. Military education and training in France is a part of the established system of the public schools and is rigidly enforced. There are schools for training of officers the equivalent of our own West Point. Children of the wealthier class in France are taught and trained by private tutors. Retired army officers are largely employed in the military schools. Our journey through France was largely through the devastated districts. I am certain that when this portion of France is rebuilt it will be done on a more sanitary scale, as indicated by the beginning of the reconstruction by Miss Daisy Polk and her associates at Vitrimont. I was specially impressed by the magnificent scenery we saw and passed through during the latter part of our journey. The French Alps are considered in scenic effects equal to the world famous views in Switzerland. We were treated by the authorities directing the movements of the military automobiles with a perilous night ride from Le Puy to St. Etienne. Starting about eight o'clock we were taken a distance of nearly a hundred miles around, over and across gorges, steep inclines and winding roads innumerable. We got through safely but were warned from time to time by the peasantry that the ride had never previously been attempted except in day-light. We were several times lost and traced and retraced our steps time and again. But few of the party knew of the real danger we had passed through until told the following day. Concluding I may say adieu to the reader by adding that the Commission has issued a printed report of its labors, the information contained in that book being the joint and collaborative work of all the commissioners. I have availed myself of some of the information contained in the two chapters in this commission report "The Work of Reconstruction" and "French Business Organizations". 
21256	----	TRAVELS THROUGH THE SOUTH OF FRANCE, AND IN THE INTERIOR OF THE PROVINCES OF PROVENCE AND LANGUEDOC, IN THE YEARS 1807 AND 1808, BY A ROUTE NEVER BEFORE PERFORMED, BEING ALONG THE BANKS OF THE LOIRE, THE ISERE, AND THE GARONNE, THROUGH THE GREATER PART OF THEIR COURSE. MADE BY PERMISSION OF THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT. BY LIEUTENANT-COLONEL PINKNEY, OF THE NORTH AMERICAN NATIVE RANGERS. _LONDON_: PRINTED FOR T. PURDAY AND SON, NO. 1, PATERNOSTER-ROW, AND TO BE HAD OF ALL BOOKSELLERS: BY B. McMILLAN, BOW STREET, COVENT GARDEN. 1809. CONTENTS. CHAP. I. _Anxiety to see France--Departure from Baltimore--Singular Adventures of the Captain--Character--Employment during the Voyage--Arrival at Liverpool--Stay--Departure for Calais_ CHAP. II. _Morning View of Port--Arrival and landing--A Day at Calais--French Market, and Prices of Provisions_ CHAP. III. _Purchase of a Norman Horse--Visit in the Country--Family of a French Gentleman--Elegance of French domestic Economy--Dance on the Green--Return to Calais_ CHAP. IV. _French Cottages--Ludicrous Exhibition--French Travellers--Chaise de Poste--Posting in France--Departure from Calais--Beautiful Vicinity of Boulogne_ CHAP. V. _Boulogne--Dress of the Inhabitants--The Pier--Theatre--Caution in the Exchange of Money--Beautiful Landscape, and Conversation with a French Veteran_--_Character of Mr. Parker's Hotel_--_Departure, and romantic Road_--_Fête Champetre in a Village on a Hill at Montreuil_--_Ruined Church and Convent_, CHAP. VI. _Departure from Montreuil_--_French Conscripts_--_Extreme Youth_--_Excellent Roads_--_Country Labourers_--_Court for the Claims of Emigrants_--_Abbeville_--_Companion on the Road_--_Amiens_, CHAP. VII. _General Character of the Town_--_Public Walk_--_Gardens_--_Half-yearly Fair_--_Gaining Houses_--_Table d'Hôtes_--_English at Amiens_--_Expence of Living_, CHAP. VIII. _French and English Roads compared_--_Gaiety of French Labourers_--_Breteuil_--_Apple-trees in the midst of Corn-fields_--_Beautiful Scenery_--_Cheap Price of Land in France_--_Clermont_--_Bad Management of the French Farmers_--_Chantilly_-_Arrival at Paris_, CHAP. IX. _A Week in Paris_--_Objects and Occurrences_--_National Library_--_A French Rout_--_Fashionable French Supper_--_Conceits_--_Presentation at Court_--_Audience_, CHAP. X. _Departure from Paris for the Loire_--_Breakfast at Palaiseau_--_A Peasant's Wife_--_Rambouillet_--_Magnificent Chateau_--_French Curé_--_Chartres_--_Difference of Old French and English Towns--Subterraneous Church_--_Curious Preservation of the Dead_--_Angers_--_Arrival at Nantes_, CHAP. XI. _Nantes_--_Beautiful Situation_--_Analogy of Architecture with the Character of its Age_--_Singular Vow of Francis the Second_--_Departure from Nantes_--_Country between Nantes and Angers_--_Angers_, CHAP. XII. _Angers_--_Situation_--_Antiquity and Face of the Town_--_Grand_ _Cathedral_--_Markets_--_Prices of Provisions_--_Public Walks_--_Manners and Diversions of the Inhabitants--Departure from_ _Angers_--_Country between Angers and Saumur_--_Saumur_, CHAP. XIII. _Tours_--_Situation and general Appearance of it_--_Origin of the Name of Huguenots_--_Cathedral Church of St. Martin_--_The Quay_--_Markets_--_Public Walk_--_Classes of Inhabitants_--_Environs_--_Expences of Living_--_Departure from Tours_--_Country between Tours and Amboise_, CHAP. XIV. _Lovely Country between Amboise and Blois--Ecures_--_Beautiful Village_--_French Harvesters--Chousi_--_Village Inn_--_Blois_--_Situation_--_Church_--_Market_--_Price of Provisions_, CHAP. XV. _Houses in Chalk Hills_--_Magnificent Castle at Chambord_--_Return from Chambord by Moon-light_--_St. Laurence on the Waters_, CHAP. XVI. _Comparative Estimate of French and English Country Inns--Tremendous Hail Storm_--_Country Masquerade_--_La Charité_--_Beauty and Luxuriance of its Environs_--_Nevers_--_Fille-de-Chambre_--_Lovely Country between Nevers and Moulins_-_Treading Corn_--_Moulins_--_Price of Provisions_ CHAP. XVII. _Country between Moulins and Rouane_--_Bresle_--_Account of the Provinces of the Nivernois and Bourbonnois_--_Climate_--_Face of the Country_--_Soil_--_Natural Produce_--_Agricultural Produce_--_Kitchen Garden--French Yeomen--Landlords_--_Price of Land_--_Leases_--_General Character of the French Provincial Farmers_ CHAP. XVIII. _Lyons_--_Town-Hall_--_Hotel de Dieu_--_Manufactories_--_Price of Provisions_--_State of Society_--_Hospitality to Strangers_--_Manners_--_Mode of Living_--_Departure_--_Vienne_--_French Lovers_ CHAP. XIX. _Avignon_--_Situation_--_Climate_--_Streets and Houses_--_Public Buildings_--_Palace_--_Cathedral_--_Petrarch and Laura_--_Society at Avignon--Ladies_--_Public Walks-_--_Prices of Provisions_--_Markets_ CHAP. XX. _Departure from Avignon_--_Olive and Mulberry Fields_--_Orgon_--_St. Canat_--_French Divorces_--_Inn at St. Canat_--_Aix_--_Situation_--_Cathedral_--_Society_--_Provisions_--_Price of Land--Marseilles_--_Conclusion_ A TOUR, &c. &c. CHAP. I. _Anxiety to see France--Departure from Baltimore--Singular Adventures of the Captain--Character--Employment during the Voyage--Arrival at Liverpool--Stay--Departure for Calais._ FROM my earliest life I had most anxiously wished to visit France--a country which, in arts and science, and in eminent men, both of former ages and of the present times, stands in the foremost rank of civilized nations. What a man wishes anxiously, he seldom fails, at one period or other, to accomplish. An opportunity at length occurred--the situation of my private affairs, as well as of my public duties, admitted of my absence. I embarked at Baltimore for Liverpool in the month of April, 1807. The vessel, which was a mere trader, and which had likewise some connexions at Calais, was to sail for Liverpool in the first instance, and thence, after the accomplishment of some private affairs, was to pass to Calais, and thence home. I do not profess to understand the business of merchants; but I must express my admiration at the ingenuity with which they defy and elude the laws of all countries. I suppose, however, that this is considered as perfectly consistent with mercantile honour. Every trader has a morality of his own; and without any intention of depreciating the mercantile class, so far I must be allowed to say, that the merchants are not very strict in their morality. Trade may improve the wealth of a nation, but it most certainly does not improve their morals. The Captain with whom I sailed was a true character. Captain Eliab Jones, as he related his history to me, was the son of a very respectable clergyman in the West of England. His mother died when he was a boy about twelve years of age, leaving his father with a very large family. The father married again. Young Eliab either actually was, or fancifully believed himself to be, ill-treated by his step-mother. Under this real or imaginary suffering he eloped from his father's house; and making the best of his way for a sea-port, bound himself apprentice to the master of a coasting vessel. In this manner he continued to work, to use his own expressions, like a galley-slave for five years, when he obtained the situation of mate of an Indiaman. He progressively rose, till he happened unfortunately to quarrel with his Captain, which induced him to quit the service of the Company. In the course of his voyages to India, and in the Indian seas, he made what he thought an important discovery relative to the southern whale fishery: he communicated it to a mercantile house upon his return, and was employed by them in the speculation. He now, however, became unfortunate for the first time: his ship was wrecked off the island of Olaheite, and the crew and himself compelled to remain for two or three years on that barbarous but beautiful island. Such is the outline of Captain Eliab's adventures, with the detail of which he amused me during our voyage. His character, however, deserves some mention. If there is an honest man under the canopy of Heaven, it was Captain Eliab; but his honesty was so plain and downright, so simple and unqualified, that I know not how to describe it than by the plain terms, that he was a strictly just and upright man. He had a sense of honour--a natural feeling of what was right--which seemed extraordinary, when compared with the irregular course of his life. Had he passed through every stage of education, had he been formed from his childhood to manhood under the anxious supervision of the most exemplary parents, he could not have been more strict. I most sincerely hope, that it will be hereafter my fortune to meet with this estimable man, and to enumerate him amongst my friends. I must conclude this brief character of him by one additional trait. A more pious Christian, but without presbyterianism, did not exist than Captain Eliab. He attributed all his good fortune to the blessing of Providence; and if any man was an example that virtue, even in this life, has its reward, it was Captain Eliab. In dangers common to many, he had repeatedly almost alone escaped. I had no other companion but the worthy Captain: I was his only passenger, and we passed much of our time in the reading of his voyages, of which he had kept an ample journal. His education having been rude and imperfect, the style of his writing was more forcible than pure or correct. I thought his account so interesting, and in many points so important, that I endeavoured to persuade him to give it to the public; and to induce him to it, offered to assist him, during our voyage, in putting it into form. The worthy man accepted my offer, but I found that I had undertaken a work to which I was unequal. I laboured, however, incessantly, and before our arrival had completed so much of it, as to induce the Captain to put it into the hands of a bookseller, by whom, as I have since understood, it was transferred into the hands of a literary gentleman to complete. In some misfortune the manuscript has been lost; and the Captain being in America, there is probably an end of it for ever. All I can now say is, that the public have sustained an important loss. In this employment our voyage, upon my part at least, passed unperceived, and I was at Liverpool, before I was well sensible that I had left America. Nothing is more tedious than a sea voyage, age, to those whose minds, are intent only upon their passage. In travelling by land, the mind is recreated by variety, and relieved by the novelty of the successive objects which pass before it; but in a voyage by sea, it is inconceivable how wearisome are the sameness and uniformity, which, day after day, meet the eye. When I could not otherwise occupy my mind, I endeavoured to force myself into a doze, that I might have a chance of a dream. One of the best rules of philosophy is, that happiness is an art--a science--a habit and quality of mind, which self-management may in a great degree command and procure. Experience has taught me that this is true. I had made many sea voyages before this, and therefore had repeated proofs of the observation of Lord Bacon, that, of all human progresses, nothing is so barren of all possibility of remark as a voyage by sea; nothing, therefore, is so irksome, to a mind of any vigour or activity. If a man, by long habit, has obtained the knack of retiring into himself--of putting all his faculties to perfect rest, and becoming like the mast of the vessel--a sea voyage may suit him; but to those who cannot sleep in an hammock eighteen hours out of the twenty-four, I would recommend any thing but travel by sea. Cato, as his Aphorisms inform us, never repented but of two things; and the one was, that he went a journey by sea when he might have gone it by land. The sight of land, after a long voyage, is delightful in the extreme; and I experienced the truth of another remark, that it might be smelt as we approached, even when beyond our sight. I do not know to what to compare its peculiar odour, but the sensations very much resemble those which are excited by the freshness of the country, after leaving a thick-built and smoky city. The sea air is infinitely more sharp than the land air; and as you approach the land, and compare the two, you discover the greater humidity of the one. The sea air, however, has one most extraordinary quality--it removes a cough or cold almost instantaneously. The temperance, moreover, which it compels in those who cannot eat sea provisions, is very conducive to health. We reached Liverpool without any accident; and as the Captain's business was of a nature which would necessarily detain him for some days, I availed myself of the opportunity, and visited the British metropolis. No city has been more improved within a short period than London. When I saw it before, which was in my earlier days, there were innumerable narrow streets, and miserable alleys, where there are now squares, or long and broad streets, reaching from one end of the town to the other: I observed this particularly, in the long street which extends from Charing Cross to the Parliament Houses. In England, both government and people concur in this improvement. From London, finding I had sufficient time, I visited Canterbury, and thence Dover. If I were to fix in England, it should be in Canterbury. The country is rich and delightful; and the society, consisting chiefly of those attached to the cathedral church, and to such of their families as have fixed there, elegant, and well informed, I have heard, and I believe it, that Salisbury and Canterbury are the two most elegant towns, in this respect, in England, and that many wealthy foreigners have in consequence made them their residence. Dover is an horrible place--a nest of fishermen and smugglers: a noble beach is hampered by rope-works, and all the filth attendant upon them. I never saw an excellent and beautiful natural situation so miserably spoilt. The Captain being ready, and my necessary papers procured, I joined, and having set sail, we were alternately tossed and becalmed for nearly three weeks, and almost daily in sight of land. Some of the spring winds in the English seas are very violent. A favourable breeze at length sprung up, and we flew before the wind. "If this continues," said our Captain, "we shall reach Calais before daylight." This was at sunset; and we had been so driven to sea by a contrary wind on the preceding day, that neither the coast of England nor France were visible. From Dover to Calais the voyage is frequently made in four hours. Several observations very forcibly struck me in the course of my passage, one of which I must be allowed to mention. I had repeatedly heard, and now knew from experience, the immense superiority of the English commerce over that of France and every nation in the world; but till I had made this voyage, I never had a sufficient conception of the degree of this superiority. I have no hesitation to say, that for one French vessel there were two hundred English. The English fleet has literally swept the seas of all the ships of their enemies; and a French ship is so rare, as to be noted in a journal across the Atlantic, as a kind of phenomenon. A curious question here suggests itself--Will the English Government be so enabled to avail themselves of this maritime superiority, as to counterweigh against the continental predominance of the French Emperor?--Can the Continent be reconquered at sea?--Will the French Emperor exchange the kingdoms of Europe for West India Colonies; or is he too well instructed in the actual worth of these Colonies, to purchase them at any price?--These questions are important, and an answer to them might illustrate the fate of Europe, and the probable termination of the war. I must not omit one advice to travellers by sea. The biscuit in a long voyage becomes uneatable, and flower will not keep. I was advised by a friend, as a remedy against this inconvenience, to take a large store of what are called gingerbread nuts, made without yeast, and hotly spiced. I kept them close in a tin cannister, and carefully excluded the air. I found them most fully to answer the purpose: they were very little injured when I reached Liverpool, and, I believe, would have sustained no damage whatever, if I had as carefully excluded the air as at first. CHAP. II. _Morning View of Port--Arrival and landing--A Day at Calais.--French Market, and Prices of Provisions._ THE Master's prediction proved true, and indeed in a shorter time than he had expected. An unusual bustle on the deck awakened me about midnight; and as my anxious curiosity would not suffer me to remain in my hammock, I was shortly upon deck, and was told in answer to my inquiries, that a fine breeze had sprung up to the south-west, and that we should reach the port of our destination by day-break. This intelligence, added to the fineness of the night, which was still clear, would have induced me to remain above, but by a violent blow from one of the ropes, I was soon given to understand that it was prudent for me to retire. The crew and ship seemed each to partake of the bustle and agitation of each other; the masts bent, the timbers cracked, and ropes flew about in all directions. It may be imagined, that though returning to my hammock, I did not return to my repose. I lay in all the restlessness of expectation till day-break, when the Captain summoned me upon deck by the grateful intelligence that we were entering the port of Calais. Hurrying upon deck, I beheld a spectacle which immediately dispelled all the uneasy sensations attendant upon a sleepless night. It was one of the finest mornings of the latter end of June; the sun had not risen, but the heavens were already painted with his ascending glories. I repeated in a kind of poetical rapture the inimitable metaphoric epithet of the Poet of Nature; an epithet preserved so faithfully, and therefore with so much genius, by his English translator, Pope. The rosy-fingered morn, indeed, appeared in all her plenitude of natural beauty; and the Sun, that he might not long lose the sight of his lovely spouse, followed her steps very shortly, and exhibited himself just surmounting the hills to the east of Calais. The sea was unruffled, and we were sailing towards the pier with full sail, and a gentle morning breeze. The land and town, at first faint, became gradually more distinct and enlarged, till we at length saw the people on shore hurrying down to the pier, so as to be present at our anchoring and debarkation. The French in general are much earlier risers than either the Americans or the English; and by the time we were off the pier, about seven in the morning, half of the town of Calais were out to receive and welcome us. The French, moreover, as on every occasion of my intercourse with them I found them afterwards, appeared to me to be equally prominently different from all nations in another quality--a prompt and social nature, a natural benevolence, or habitual civility, which leads them instinctively, and not unfrequently impertinently, into acts of kindness and consideration. Let a stranger land at an English or an American port, and he is truly a stranger; his inquiries will scarcely obtain a civil answer; and any appearance of strangeness and embarrassment will only bring the boys at his heels. On the other hand, let him land in any French port, and almost every one who shall meet him will salute him with the complacency of hospitality; his inquiries, indeed, will not be answered, because the person of whom he shall make them, will accompany him to the inn, or other object of his question. I have frequently heard, and still more frequently read, that the English nation were characteristically the most good-natured people in the world, and that the Americans, as descendants from the same stock, had not lost this virtue of the parent tree. I give no credit to the justice of this observation. Experience has convinced me, that neither the English nor the Americans deserve it as a national distinction. The French are, beyond all manner of doubt, the most good-humoured people on the surface of the earth; if we understand at least by the term, _good-humour_ those minor courtesies, those considerate kindnesses, those cursory attentions, which, though they cost little to the giver, are not the less valuable to the receiver; which soften the asperities of life, and by their frequent occurrence, and the constant necessity in which we stand of them, have an aggregate, if not an individual importance. The English, perhaps, as nationally possessing the more solid virtues, may be the best friends, and the most generous benefactors; but as friendship, in this more exalted acceptation of it, is rare, and beneficence almost miraculous, it is a serious question with me, which is the most useful being in society--the light good-humoured Frenchman, or the slow meditating Englishman? There was the usual bustle, as to who should be the bearers of our luggage; a thousand ragged figures, more resembling scarecrows than human beings, seized them from the hands of each other, and we might have bid our property a last farewell perhaps, had it not been for the ill-humour of our Captain. He laid about him with more vigour than mercy, and in a manner which surprised me, either that he should venture, or that even the miserable objects before us should bear. Had he exerted his hands and his oar in a similar manner either in England or in America, he would have been compelled to vindicate his assumed superiority by his superior manhood. Here every one fled before him, and yielded him as much submission and obedience, as if he had been the prefect himself. The French seem to have no idea of the art of pugilism, and with the sole exception of the military, no point of honour which renders them impatient under any merited personal castigation. They take a blow with great _sang froid_. Whether from good humour, or cowardice; whether that they thought they deserved it, or that they feared to resent it, the single arm of our Captain chastised a whole rabble of them, and they made a lane for as many of us as chose to land, accompanied by such porters as we had ourselves selected. Three or four of them, however, were still importuning us to permit them to show us to an inn; but as we had already made our selection in this point likewise, our Captain returned them no answer, but by a rough mimickry of their address and gesticulation. After our luggage had undergone the customary examination by the officers of the customs, in the execution of which office a liberal fee procured us much civility, we were informed that it was necessary to present ourselves before the Commissary, for that so many Englishmen had obtained admission as Americans, that the French government had found it necessary to have recourse to an unusual strictness, and that the Commissary had it in orders not to suffer any one to proceed till after the most rigid inquiry into his passport and business. Accordingly, having seen our luggage into a wheel-barrow, which the Captain insisted should accompany us, we waited upon the Commissary, but were not fortunate enough to find him at his office. A little dirty boy informed us, that Mons. Mangouit had gone out to visit a neighbour, but that if we would wait till twelve o'clock (it was now about nine), we should infallibly see him, and have our business duly dispatched. The office in which we were to wait for this Mons. Mangouit for three hours, was about five feet in length by three in width, very dirty, without a chair, and in every respect resembling a cobler's stall in one of the most obscure streets of London. Mons. Commissary's inkstand was a coffee-cup without an handle, and his book of entries a quire of dirty writing-paper. This did not give us much idea either of the personal consequence of Mons. Mangouit, or of the grandeur of the Republic. The boy was sent out to summon his master, as a preferable way to our waiting till twelve o'clock. Monsieur at length made his appearance; a little, mean-looking man, with a very dirty shirt, a well-powdered head, a smirking, bowing coxcomb. He informed us with many apologies, unnecessary at least in a public officer, that he was under the necessity of doing his duty; that his duty was to examine us according to some queries transmitted to him; but that we appeared gentlemen, true Americans, and not English spies. After a long harangue, in which the little gentleman appeared very much pleased with himself, he concluded by demanding our passport, upon sight of which he declared himself satisfied, and promised to make us out others for passing into the interior. We were desired to call for these in the evening, or he would himself do us the honour to wait upon us with them at our hotel. Considering the latter as a kind of self-invitation to dine with us, we mentioned our dinner hour, and other _et ceteras_. Mons. Mangouit smiled his acquiescence, and we left him, in the hopes that he would at least change his linen. Upon leaving the Commissary, our wheel-barrow was again put in motion, and accompanied us to Dessein's. This hotel still maintains its reputation and its name. After seeing almost all France, we had no hesitation in pronouncing it to be the only inn which could enter into any reasonable comparison with any of the respectable taverns either of England or America. In no country but in America and England, have they any idea of that first of comforts to the wearied traveller, a clean and housewife-like bed. I speak from woeful experience, when I advise every traveller to consider a pair of sheets and a counterpane as necessary a part of his luggage as a change of shirts. He will travel but few miles from Calais, before he will understand the necessity of this admonition. We ordered an early dinner, and sallied forth to see the town. It has nothing, however, to distinguish it from other provincial towns, or rather sea-ports, of the second order. It has been compared to Dover, but I think rather resembles Folkstone. The streets are irregular, the houses old and lofty, and the pavement the most execrable that can be imagined. There was certainly more bustle and activity than is usual in an English or in an American town of the same rank; and this appeared to us the more surprising, as we could see no object for all this hurry and loquacity. To judge by appearance, the people of Calais had no other more important business than to make their remarks upon us as we passed their doors or shops. There was no shipping in the harbour, and even the stock in the shops had every appearance of having remained long, and having to remain longer in its fixed repose. Being the market-day, we had the curiosity to inquire the price of several articles of provision, and to compare them with those of their neighbours on the opposite side of the channel. The market was well stocked; there was an incredible quantity of poultry, lamb, butter, eggs, and herbs. A couple of fowls were three livres, at a time that they were seven or eight shillings in London; a young goose, two livres twelve sous (2_s._ 2_d._). Lamb was sold as in England, by the quarter or side, and was about sixpence English money per pound; beef about fourpence halfpenny, and mutton (not very good) fourpence. Upon the whole, the money price of every thing appeared about one-half cheaper than in England; but whether this difference is not in some degree compensated in England by the superiority of quality, is what I cannot exactly decide. The beef was certainly not so good as that to which I had been accustomed in London; but, on the other hand, in the progress of my journey, the mutton and lamb, when I could get it dressed to my wishes, appeared sweeter. The short feed gives it the taste of Welsh mutton, but the consumption of it is scarcely sufficient to encourage the feeders. The manner, moreover, in which these meats are employed and served in French cooking, is such as not to encourage the feeder to any superior care. Lean meat answers the purposes of _bouillé_ as well as the fat meat, and it is of little concern what that joint is which is only to be boiled down to its very fibres. The old proverb, that God sent meats, and the d--- l cooks, is verified in every kitchen in France. We returned to Quillac's to dinner, which, according to our orders, was composed in the English style, except a French dish or two for Mons. Mangouit. This gentleman now appeared altogether as full-dressed as he had before been in full dishabille. We exchanged much conversation on Calais and England, and a word or two respecting the French Emperor. He appeared much better informed than we had previously concluded from his coxcomical exterior. He seemed indeed quite another man. He accompanied us after dinner to the comedy: the theatre is within the circuit of the inn. The performers were not intolerable, and the piece, which was what they call a proverb (a fable constructed so as to give a ludicrous verification or contradiction to an old saying), was amusing. I thought I had some obscure recollection of a face amongst the female performers, and learned afterwards, that it was one of the maids of the inn; a lively brisk girl, and a volunteer, from her love of the drama. In this period of war between England and France, Calais has not the honour of a dramatic corps to herself, but occasionally participates in one belonging to the district. The play being over very early, we finished the evening in our own style, a proceeding we had cause to repent the following day, as the _Cote rolie_ did not agree with us so well as old Port. I suffered so much from the consequent relaxation, that I never repeated the occasion. It produced still another effect; it removed my previous admiration of French sobriety. There is little merit, I should think, in abstaining from such a constant use of medicine. CHAP. III. _Purchase of a Norman Horse--Visit in the Country--Family of a French Gentleman--Elegance of French domestic Economy--Dance on the Green--Return to Calais._ NOTWITHSTANDING the merited reprobation to be met with in every traveller, of French beds and French chamberlains, we had no cause to complain of our accommodation in this respect at Dessein's. This house, though it has changed masters, is conducted as well as formerly, and there was nothing in it, which could have made the most determined lover of ease repent his having crossed the Channel. After our breakfast on the morning following our arrival, I began to consider with myself on the most suitable way of executing my purpose--of seeing France and Frenchmen, the scenery and manners, to the best advantage. I called in my landlord to my consultation; and having explained my peculiar views, was advised by him to purchase a Norman horse, one of which he happened to have in his stables; a circumstance which perhaps suggested the advice. Be this as it may, I adopted his recommendation, and I had no cause to repent it. The bargain was struck upon the spot; and for twenty-seven Louis I became master of a horse, upon whom, taking into the computation crossroads and occasional deviations, I performed a journey not less than two thousand miles; and in the whole of this course, without a stumble sufficient to shake me from my seat. The Norman horses are low and thick, and like all of this make, very steady, sure, and strong. They will make a stage of thirty miles without a bait, and will eat the coarsest food. From some indications of former habits about my own horse, I was several times led to conclude, that he had been more accustomed to feed about the lanes, and live on his wits, as it were, than in any settled habitation, either meadow or stable. I never had a brute companion to which I took a greater fancy. Having a letter to a gentleman resident about two miles from Calais, I had occasion to inquire the way of a very pretty peasant girl whom I overtook on the road, just above the town. The way was by a path over the fields: the young peasant was going to some house a mile or two beyond the object of my destination, and, as I have reason to believe, not exactly in the same line. Finding me a stranger, however, she accompanied me, without hesitation, up a narrow cross-road, that she might put me into the foot-path; and when we had come to it, finding some difficulty in giving intelligibly a complex direction, she concluded by saying she would go that way herself. I was too pleased with my companion to decline her civility. I learned in the course of my walk that she was the daughter of a small farmer: the farm was small indeed, being about half an arpent, or acre. She had been to Calais to take some butter, and had the same journey three mornings in the week. Her father had one cow of his own, and rented two others, for each of which he paid a Louis annually. The two latter fed by the road-sides. Her father earned twenty sols a day as a labourer, and had a small pension from the Government, as a veteran and wounded soldier. Upon this little they seemed, according to her answers, to live very comfortably, not to say substantially. Poultry, chesnuts, milk, and dried fruit, formed their daily support. "We never buy meat," said she, "because we can raise more poultry than we can sell." The country around Calais has so exact a resemblance to that of the opposite coast, as to appear almost a counterpart, and as if the sea had worked itself a channel, and thus divided a broad and lofty hill. It is not, however, quite so barren and cheerless as in the immediate precincts of Dover. Vegetation, what there was of it, seemed stronger, and trees grow nearer to the cliffs. There were likewise many flowers which I had never seen about Dover and the Kentish coast. But on the whole, the country was so similar that I in vain looked around me for something to note. The gentleman to whom I had brought a letter of introduction was at Paris; but I saw his son, to whom I was therefore compelled to introduce myself. The young man lamented much that his father was from home, and that he could not receive me in a manner which was suitable to a gentleman of my appearance; the friend of Mr. Pinckney, who was the beloved friend of his father. All these things are matter of course to all Frenchmen, who are never at a loss for civility and terms of endearment. A young English gentleman of the same age with this youth (about nineteen), would either have affronted you by his sulky reserve, or compelled you as a matter of charity to leave him, to release him from blushing and stammering. On the other hand, young Tantuis and myself were intimates in the moment after our first introduction. Upon entering the house, and a parlour opening upon a lawn in the back part, I was introduced to Mademoiselle his sister, a beautiful girl, a year, or perhaps more, younger than her brother. She rose from an English piano as I entered, whilst her brother introduced me with a preamble, which he rolled off his tongue in a moment. A refreshment of fruit, capillaire, and a sweet wine, of which I knew not the name, was shortly placed before me, and the young people conversed with me about England and Calais, and whatever I told them of my own concerns, with as much ease and apparent interest, as if we had been born and lived in the same village. Mademoiselle informed me, that the people in Calais had no character at all; that they were fishermen and smugglers, which last business they carried on in war as well as in peace, and had no reputation either for honesty or industry; that she had no visiting society at Calais, and never went to the town but on household business; that the price of every thing had doubled within four years, but that the late plenty, and the successes of the Emperor, were bringing every thing to their former standard; that her father payed very moderate taxes; her brother stated about five Louis annually; but they differed in this point. The house was of that size and order, which in England would have paid at least thirty pounds, and added to this was a domain of between sixty and seventy arpents. The dinner, whether in compliment to me, or that things have now all taken this turn in France, was in substance so completely English, and served up in a manner so English, as almost to call forth an exclamation of surprise. When we enter a new country, we so fully expect to find every thing new, as to be surprised at almost any necessary coincidence. This characteristic difference is very rapidly wearing off in every kingdom in Europe. A couple of fowls, a rice-pudding, and a small chine, composed our dinner. It was served in a pretty kind of china, and with silver forks. The cloth was removed as in England, and the table covered with dried fruits, confectionary, and coffee; a tall silver epergne supporting small bottles of capillaire, and sweetmeats in cut glass. The fruits were in plates very tastily painted in landscape by Mademoiselle; and at the top and bottom of the table was a silver image of Vertumnus and Pomona, of the same height with the epergne in the centre. The covering of the table was a fine deep green cloth, spotted with the simple flower called the double daisy. I am the more particular in this description, as the dinner was thus served, and the table thus appointed, without any apparent preparation, as if it was all in their due and daily course. Indeed, I have had occasion frequently to observe, that the French ladies infinitely excel those of every other nation in these minor elegancies; in a cheap and tasteful simplicity, and in giving a value to indifferent things by a manner peculiar to themselves. Mademoiselle left us after the first cup of coffee, saying, that she had heard that it was a custom in England, that gentlemen should have their own conversation after dinner. I endeavoured to turn off a compliment in the French style upon this observation, but felt extremely awkward, upon foundering in the middle of it, for want of more familiar acquaintance with the language. Monsieur, her brother, perceived my embarrassment, and becoming my interpreter, helped me out of it with much good-humour, and with some dexterity. I resolved, however, another time, never to tilt with a French lady in compliment. Being alone with the young man, I made some inquiries upon subjects upon which I wanted information, and found him at once communicative and intelligent. The agriculture of the country about Calais appears to be wretched. The soil is in general very good, except where the substratum of chalk, or marle, rises too near the surface, which is the case immediately on the cliffs. The course of the crops is bad indeed--fallow, rye, oats. In some land it is fallow, wheat, and barley. In no farm, however, is the fallow laid aside; it is considered as indispensable for wheat, and on poor lands for rye. The produce, reduced to English Winchester measure, is about nineteen bushels of wheat, and twenty-three or twenty-four of barley. Besides the fallow, they manure for wheat. The manure in the immediate vicinity of Calais is the dung of the stable-keepers and the filth of that town. The rent of the land around Calais, within the daily market of the town, is as high as sixty livres; but beyond the circuit of the town, is about twenty livres (sixteen shillings). Since the settlement of the Government, the price of land has risen; twenty Louis an acre is now the average price in the purchase of a large farm. There are no tithes, but a small rate for the officiating minister. Labourers earn thirty sous per day (about fifteen-pence English), and women, in picking stones, &c. half that sum. Rents, since the Revolution, are all in money; but there are some instances of personal service, and which are held to be legal even under the present state of things, provided they relate to husbandry, and not to any servitude or attendance upon the person of the landlord. Upon the whole, I found that the Revolution had much improved the condition of the farmers, having relieved them from feudal tenures and lay-tithes. Oh the other hand, some of the proprietors, even in the neighbourhood of Calais, had lost nearly the whole of the rents, under the interpretation of the law respecting what were to be considered as feudal impositions. The Commissioners acting under these laws had determined all old rents to come under this description, and had thus rendered the tenants under lease proprietors of the lands. The young lady who had left as returned towards evening, and by her heightened colour, and a small parcel in her hand, appeared to have walked some distance. Her brother, doubtless from a sympathetic nature, guessed in an instant the object of her walk. "You have been to Calais," said he. "Yes," replied she, with the lovely smile of kindness; "I thought that Monsieur would like some tea after the manner of his countrymen, and having only coffee in the house, I walked to Calais to procure some." I again felt the want of French loquacity and readiness. My heart was more eloquent than my tongue. I rose, and involuntarily took and pressed the hand of the sweet girl. Who will now say that the French are not characteristically a good-humoured people, and that a lovely French girl is not an angel? I thought so at the time, and though my heart has now cooled, I think so still. I feel even no common inclination to, describe this young French beauty, but that I will not do her the injustice to copy off an image which remains more faithfully and warmly imprinted on my memory. The house, as I have mentioned, opened behind on a lawn, with which the drawing-room was even, so that its doors and windows opened immediately upon it. This lawn could not be less than four or five English acres in extent, and was girded entirely around by a circle of lofty trees from within, and an ancient sea-stone wall, very thick and high, from without. The trunks of the trees and the wall were hid by a thick copse or shrubbery of laurels, myrtles, cedars, and other similar shrubs, so as to render the enclosed lawn the most beautiful and sequestered spot I had ever seen. On the further extremity from the house was an avenue from the lawn to the garden, which was likewise spacious, and surrounded by a continuation of the same wall. In the further corner of the latter was a summer-house, erected on the top of the wall, so as to look over it on the fields and the distant sea. Tea was here served up to us in a manner neither French nor English, but partaking of both. Plates of cold chicken, slices of chine, cakes, sweetmeats, and the whitest bread, composed a kind of mixed repast, between the English tea and the French supper. The good-humour and vivacity of my young friends, and the prospect from the windows, which was as extensive as beautiful, rendered it a refreshment peculiarly cheering to the spirits of a traveller. Before the conclusion of it, I had another specimen of French manners and French benevolence. A party of young ladies were announced as visitors, and followed immediately the servant who conducted them. Speaking all at once, they informed Mademoiselle T----, that they had learned the arrival of her English friend (so they did me the honour to call me), and knowing her father was at Paris, had hurried off to assist her in giving Monsieur a due welcome. They mentioned several other names, which were coming with the same friendly purpose; a piece of information, which caused the young Monsieur T---- to make me a hasty bow, and leave me with the ladies. He returned in a short time, and the sound of fiddles tuning below on the lawn, rendered any explanation unnecessary. We immediately descended; the promised ladies, and their partners, soon made their appearance; and the merry dance on the green began. As the stranger of the company, I had of course the honour of leading Mademoiselle T----. In the course of the dance other visitors appeared, who formed themselves into cotillions and reels; and the lawn being at length well filled, the evening delightful, and the moon risen in all her full glory, the whole formed a scene truly picturesque. After an evening, or rather a night, thus protracted to a late hour, I returned to Calais; and was accompanied to the immediate adjacency by one of the parties, consisting of two ladies and a gentleman. I was assailed by many kind importunities to repeat my visit; but as I intended to leave Calais on the morrow, I made my best possible excuses. CHAP. IV. _French Cottages.--Ludicrous exhibition.--French Travellers--Chaise de Poste.--Posting in France.--Departure from Calais.--Beautiful Vicinity of Boulogne._ TWO days were amply sufficient to see all that Calais has to exhibit. After the first novelty is over, no place can please, except either by its intrinsic beauty, or the happy effect of habit. Calais, has no such intrinsic charms, and I was not disposed to try the result of the latter. I accordingly resolved to proceed on my road; but as the heat was excessive, deferred it till the evening. The exercise of the preceding night had produced an unpleasant ferment in my blood, attended by an external feeling of feverish heat, and checked perspiration. Every traveller should be, in a degree, his own physician. I had recourse to a dip in the sea, and found immediate relief. Nothing, indeed, is so instantaneous a remedy, either for violent fatigue, or any of the other effects following unusual exercise, as this simple specific. After a ride of sixty or seventy miles through the most dusty roads, and under the hottest sun of a southern Midsummer, I have been restored to my morning freshness by the cold bath. By the buildings which I observed to be going forward, I was led to a conclusion that Calais is a flourishing town; but I confess I saw no means to which I could attribute this prosperity. There was no appearance of commerce, and very little of industry. One circumstance was truly unaccountable to me. Though there were two or three ships laying unrigged, but otherwise sound, and in the best navigable condition, there was a building-yard, in which two new vessels were on the stock. These vessels, indeed, were of no considerable tonnage; but I confess myself at a loss to guess their object. About a mile from Calais, is a beautiful avenue of the finest walnut and chesnut trees I have ever seen in France. They stand upon common land, and, of course, are public property. In the proper season of the year, the people of Calais repair hither for their evening dance; and such is the force of custom, the fruit remains untouched, and reserved for these occasions. Every one then takes what he pleases, but carries nothing home beyond what may suffice for his consumption on the way. In my walk thither I passed several cottages, and entered some. The inhabitants seemed happy, and to possess some substantial comforts. The greater part of these cottages had a walnut or chestnut tree before them, around which was a rustic seat, and which, as overshadowed by the broad branches and luxuriant foliage, composed a very pleasing image. The manner in which the sod was partially worn under most of them, explained their nightly purpose; or if there could yet be any doubt, the flute and fiddle, pendant in almost every house, spoke a still more intelligible language. I entered no house so poor, and met with no inhabitant so inhospitable, as not to receive the offer either of milk, or some sort of wine; and every one seemed to take a refusal as if they had solicited, and had not obtained, an act of kindness. If the French are not the most hospitable people in the world, they have at least the art of appearing so. I speak here only of the peasantry, and from first impressions. The rent of one of these cottages, of two floors and two rooms on each, is thirty-five livres. They have generally a small garden, and about one hundred yards of common land between the road and the house, on which grows the indispensable walnut or chestnut tree. The windows are glazed, but the glass is usually taken out in summer. The walls are generally sea-stone, but are clothed with grape vines, or other shrubs, which, curling around the casements, render them shady and picturesque. The bread is made of wheat meal, but in some cottages consisted of thin cakes without leven, and made of buck-wheat. Their common beverage is a weak wine, sweet and pleasant to the taste. In some houses it very nearly resembled the good metheglin, very common in the northern counties of England. Eggs, bacon, poultry, and vegetables, seemed in great plenty, and, as I understood, composed the dinners of the peasantry twice a week at least. I was surprised at this evident abundance in a class in which I should not have expected it. Something of it, I fear, must be imputed to the extraordinary profits of the smuggling which is carried on along the coast. I was pleased to see, that even the horrible Revolution had not banished all religion from Calais. I understood that the church was well attended, and that high mass was as much honoured as hitherto. Every one spoke of the Revolution with execration, and of the Emperor with satisfaction. Bonaparte has certainly gained the hearts of the French people by administering to their national vanity. Returning home from my walk, I was witness to a singular exhibition in the streets. A crowd had collected around a narrow elevated stage, which, at a distant view, led me to expect the appearance, of my friend Punch. I was not altogether deceived: it was a kind of Bartholomew drama, in which the parts were performed by puppets. It differed only from what I had seen in England by the wit of the speakers, and a kind of design, connexion, and uniformity in the fable. The name of it, as announced by the manager, was, The Convention of Kings against France and Bonaparte. The puppets, who each spoke in their turn, were, the King of England, the King of Naples, the Emperor of Austria, the Pope, and the Grand Signor. The dialogue was indescribably ridiculous. The piece opened with a council, in which the King of England entreated all his brother sovereigns to declare war against France and the French Emperor, and proceeded to assign some ludicrous reasons as applicable to each. "My contribution to the grand alliance," concludes his Majesty, "shall be in money; both because I have more Louis to spare, and because the best advantage of a rich nation is, that it can purchase others to light its battles!" The Grand Signor approves the proposal, and throws down his cimeter. "I will give my cimeter," says he; "but being a prophet as well as a sovereign, and having such a family of wives, I deem it unseemly to use it myself. Let England take it, and give it to any one who will use it manfully." The Pope, in his turn, gives his blessing. "If the war should succeed, you will have to thank my benediction for the victory; if it should fail, it will be from the efficacy of the blessing that a man of you will be saved alive." The Emperor then asks what is the amount of England's contribution; and his British Majesty throws him a purse. His Imperial Majesty, after feeling the weight, takes up the cimeter of the Grand Signor, and retires. The drama then proceeds to the representation of the different battles of Bonaparte, in all of which it gave him the victory, &c. After a light dinner, in which with some difficulty I procured fish, and with still more had it dressed in the English mode, I mounted my horse, and proceeded on my journey in the road to Boulogne. I had now my first trial of my Norman horse; he fully answered my expectations, and almost my wishes. He had a leisurely lounging walk, which seemed well suited to an observant traveller. It is well known of Erasmus, that he wrote the best of his works, and made a whole course of the Classics, on horseback; and I have no doubt but that I could have both read and written on the back of my Norman. To make up, however, for this tardiness, he was a good-humoured, patient, and sure-footed beast; but would stretch out his neck now and then to get a passing bite of the wheat which grew by the road side. I wished to get on to Boulogne to sleep, and therefore tried all his paces; but found his trotting scarcely tolerable by human feeling. The road from Calais, for the first twelve miles, is open and hilly. On each side of the main way is a smaller road, which is the summer, as the other is the winter one. The day being very fine, and not too warm, I enjoyed myself much. I passed many fields in which the country people were making hay: they seemed very merry. The fellow who loaded the cart had a cocked hat, and by his erectness I should have thought to have been a soldier, but that every one who passed me had nearly the same air, and the same hat. Some of the hay-makers called to me, but in such barbarous _patois_, that I could make nothing of them. One company of them, saluting me from a distance, deputed a girl to make known their wishes. Seeing her to be young, and expecting her to be handsome, I checked my horse; but a nearer view correcting my error, and exhibiting her only a coarse masculine wench, I pushed forwards, without waiting her embassy. The peasant women of France work so hard, as to lose every appearance of youth in the face, whilst they retain it in the person; and it is therefore no uncommon thing to see the person of a Venus, and the face of an old monkey. I passed by a set of these labourers sitting under a tree, and taking that repast which, in the North of England, is called "fours," from being usually taken by harvest labourers at that time of the day. The party consisted of about a dozen women and girls, and but one man. I was invited to drink some of their wine, and being by the road side, could not refuse. My horse was led under the tree: I was compelled to dismount, and to share their repast, such as it was. Some money which I offered was refused. I made my choice amongst one of my entertainers, and could do no less than salute her. This produced great noise and merriment, and gave free reins to French levity and coquetry; in a word, I was obliged to salute them all. My favourite and first choice gave me her hand on my departure: she might have sat for Prior's Nut-Brown Maid. The main purpose of my journey being rather to see the manners of the people, than the brick and mortar of the towns, I had formed a resolution to seek the necessary refreshment as seldom as possible at inns, and as often as possible in the houses of the humbler farmers, and the better kind of peasantry. About fifteen miles from Calais my horse and myself were looking out for something of this kind, and one shortly appeared about three hundred yards on the left side of the road. It was a cottage in the midst of a garden, and the whole surrounded by an hedge, which looked delightfully green and refreshing. The garden was all in flower and bloom. The walls of the cottage were robed in the same livery of Nature. I had seen such cottages in Kent and in Devonshire, but in no other part of the world. The inhabitants were simple people, small farmers, having about ten or fifteen acres of land. Some grass was immediately cut for my horse, and the coffee which I produced from my pocket was speedily set before me, with cakes, wine, some meat, and cheese, the French peasantry having no idea of what we call tea. Throwing the windows up, so as to enjoy the scenery and freshness of the garden; sitting upon one chair, and resting a leg upon the other; alternately pouring out my coffee, and reading a pocket-edition of Thomson's Seasons, I enjoyed one of those moments which give a zest to life; I felt happy, and in peace and in love with all around me. Proceeding upon my journey, two miles on the Calais side of Boulogne I fell in with an overturned chaise, which the postillion was trying to raise. The vehicle was a _chaise de poste_, the ordinary travelling carriage of the country, and a thing in a civilized country wretched beyond conception. It was drawn by three horses, one in the shafts, and one on each side. The postillion had ridden on the one on the driving side; he was a little punch fellow, and in a pair of boots like fire-buckets. The travellers consisted of an old French lady and gentleman; Madame in a high crimped cap, and stiff long whalebone stays. Monsieur informed me very courteously of the cause of the accident, whilst Madame alternately curtsied to me and menaced and scolded the postillion. The French postillions, indeed, are the most intolerable set of beings. They never hesitate to get off their horses, suffer them to go forwards, and follow them very leisurely behind. I saw several instances in which they had suffered the traces to twist round the horses' legs, so that on descending an hill, their escape with life must be a miracle. I shall briefly observe, now I am upon this subject, that posting is nearly as dear in France as in England. A post in France is six miles, and one shilling and threepence is charged for each horse, and sevenpence for the driver. The price, therefore, for two horses would be three shillings and a penny; but whatever number of persons there may be, a horse is charged for each. The postillions, moreover, expect at least double of what the book of regulations allows them, as matter of right. I reached Boulogne about sunset, and was much pleased with its vicinity. On each side of the road, and at different distances, from two hundred yards to a mile, were groves of trees, in which were situated some ancient chateaux. Many of them were indeed in ruin from the effects of the Revolution. Upon entering the town, I inquired the way to the Hotel d'Angleterre, which is kept by an Englishman of the name of Parker, Bonaparte having specially exempted him from the edicts respecting aliens. I had a good supper, but an indifferent bed, and the close situation rendered the heat of the night still more oppressive. Mr. Parker himself was absent, and had left the management with a French young woman, who would not suffer me to write uninterrupted, and seemed to take much offence that I did not invite her to take her seat at the supper table. I believe I was the only male traveller in the inn; and flattery, and even substantial gallantry, is so necessary and so natural to French women, that they look to it as their due, and conceive themselves injured when it is withholden. CHAP. V. _Boulogne--Dress of the Inhabitants--The Pier--Theatre--Caution in the Exchange of Money--Beautiful Landscape, and Conversation With a French Veteran--Character of Mr. Parker's Hotel--Departure, and romantic Road--Fête Champetre in a Village on a hill at Montreuil--Ruined Church and Convent._ I had heard so bad a report of Boulogne, as to be agreeably surprised when I found it so little deserving it. I spent the greater part of a day in it with much pleasure, and but that I wished to get to Paris, should have continued longer. Boulogne is very agreeably situated, and the views from the high grounds on each side are delightful. The landscape from the ramparts is not to be exceeded, but is not seen to advantage except when there is high water in the river. There is an evident mixture of strangers and natives amongst the inhabitants. There are many resident English, who have been nationalized by express edict, or the construction of the law. I heard it casually mentioned, that these were not the most respectable class of inhabitants, though many of them are rich, and all of them are active. The English and French women, whom I met with in the streets, were each dressed in their peculiar fashion; the English women as they dress in the country towns of England; the French without hats, with close caps, and cloaks down to the feet. This fashion I found to be peculiar to Boulogne and its promenade. The town is, upon the whole, clean, lively, brisk, and flourishing; the houses are in good repair, and many others were building. I walked down to the pier, and my conclusion was, that the English Ministry were mad when they attempted any thing against Boulogne. The harbour appeared to me impregnable. I must confess, however, that the French appeared to me equally mad, in expecting any thing from their flotilla. Three English frigates would sink the whole force at Boulogne in the open sea. The French seem to know this; yet, to amuse the populace, and to play upon the fears of the English Ministry, the farce is kept up, and daily reports are made by the Commandant of the state of the flotilla. There is a delightful walk on the beach, which is a flat strand of firm sand, as far as the tide reaches. In the summer evenings when the tide serves, this is the favourite promenade this is likewise the parade, as the soldiers are occasionally here exercised. There is a tolerable theatre, but the dramatic corps are not stationary. They were not in the town whilst I was there, so that I can speak of their merits only by report. One of the actresses was highly spoken of, and had indeed reached the reward of her eminence; having been called to the Parisian stage. Bonaparte is notoriously, perhaps politically, attached to the drama, and is no sooner informed of any good performer on a provincial stage, than he issues his command for his appearance and engagement at Paris. The principal church at Boulogne is a good and respectable structure, and I learned with much satisfaction and some surprise, that on the Sabbath at least it was crowded. The people of Boulogne execrate the Revolution, and avert from all mention and memory of it, and not without reason, as their environs have been in some degree spoiled by its excesses. Several miles on the road from Boulogne, those sad monuments of the popular phrensy, ruined chateaux, and churches converted into stables or granaries, force the memory back upon those melancholy times, when the property and religion of a nation became the but of bandits and atheists. May the world itself perish, before such an era shall return or become general! I had received from an American house in London some bills on a mercantile house at Boulogne; a very convenient method, and which I would therefore recommend to other travellers, as they hereby save very considerably, such bills being usually given at some advantage in favour of those who purchase them by coin. Bills on Boulogne, Bourdeaux, and Havre, are always to be had of the American brokers, either in London or in New York. One advantage in this exchange is, that bills may be had of any date, in which case you may suit the occasions, and put the discount into your own pocket. My bill on Boulogne was for 3000 francs, about 130_l._ English. I received it in Louis d'ors and écus. In the progress of my journey, several of the Louis were refused, as deficient in weight, and I was advised in future never to take a Louis without seeing that it was weight. The French coin is indeed in a very bad state, which here, as elsewhere, is attributed to the Jews. On the Paris side of Boulogne is a landscape and walk of most exquisite beauty. The river, after some smaller meanders, takes a wide reach through a beautiful vale, and shortly after flows into the sea through two hills, which open as it were to receive it. I walked along the banks to have a better view, and got into converse with a soldier, who had been in the battle of Marengo. He gave me a very lively account of the conduct of that extraordinary man, the French Emperor, in this grand event of his life. His expression was, that he looked over the battle as if looking upon a chess-board: that he made it a rule never to engage personally, till he saw the whole plan of the battle in execution; that he would then ride alternately to each division, and encourage them by fighting awhile with them: that he visited all the sick and wounded soldiers the day after the battle, inquired into the nature of their wound, where and how it was received; and if there were any circumstances of peculiar merit or peculiar distress, noted it down, and invariably acted upon this memorandum: that he punished adultery in a soldier's wife, if they were both in the camp, by the death of the woman; if the offending was not in the field, and therefore not within the reach of a court-martial, the soldier had a divorce on simple proof of the offence before any mayor or magistrate. I demanded of this veteran, pointing to the flotilla, when the Emperor intended to invade England? He perceived the smile which accompanied this question, and instantaneously, with a fierce look of suspicion and resolution, demanded of me my passport. Though the abruptness of his conduct startled me, I could not but regard him with some admiration. A long, thin, spare figure of 55, was so sensible of the honour of his country, as to take fire even at a jest at it as at a personal insult. It is to this spirit that France owes half her victories. As soon as the heat of the day had declined, having satisfied my curiosity as to Boulogne, I called for my bill and my horse, intending to get on to Montreuil, where I had fixed upon sleeping. My bill was extravagant to a degree; a circumstance I imputed to the want of some due attentions to Madame. These kind of people have always the revenge in their own hands. As I did not see Mr. Parker, I know not whether to recommend his inn or not. He has some excellent Burgundy, but the charges are high, the attendance not good, and the situation in summer close and stifling. Madame, however, is a very pretty woman, and seems a very good-humoured one, if her expectations are answered. She is a true French woman, however, and expects gallantry even from a weary traveller. I found the road improve much as I advanced; the country became more enclosed, and bore a strong resemblance to the most cultivated parts of England. The cherry trees standing in the midst of the corn had a very pretty effect; the fields had the appearance of gardens, and some of the gardens had the wildness of the field. The season was evidently more advanced than in England; there were more fruits and flowers, and the bloom was more bossy and luxuriant. Several smaller roads led from the main road, and the spires of the village churches, as seen in the side landscape, rising above the tops of the trees, invited the fancy to combine some rural images, and weave itself at least an imaginary Arcadia. The persons I met or overtook upon the road were not altogether in unison with what I must call the romance of the scene. Every carter drove his vehicle in a cocked-hat, and the women had all wooden shoes. Boys and girls of twelve years old were in rags, which very ill covered them. Nor was there any of the briskness visible on a high road in England. A single cart, and a waggon, were all the vehicles that I saw between Boulogne and Abbeville. In England, in the same space, I should have seen a dozen, or score. Not being pressed for time, the beauty of a scene at some little distance from the road-side tempted me to enter into a bye-lane, and take a nearer view of it. A village church, embosomed in a chesnut wood, just rose above the trees on the top of a hill; the setting sun was on its casements, and the foliage of the wood was burnished by the golden reflection. The distant hum of the village green was just audible; but not so the French horn, which echoed in full melody through the groves. Having rode about half a mile through a narrow sequestered lane, which strongly reminded me of the half-green and half-trodden bye-roads in Warwickshire, I came to the bottom of the hill, on the brow and summit of which the village and church were situated. I now saw whence the sound of the horn proceeded. On the left of the road was an ancient chateau situated in a park, or very extensive meadow, and ornamented as well by some venerable trees, as by a circular fence of flowering shrubs, guarded on the outside by a paling on a raised mound. The park or meadow having been newly mown, had an air at once ornamented and natural. A party of ladies were collected under a patch of trees situated in the middle of the lawn. I stopt at the gate to look at them, thinking myself unperceived: but in the same moment the gate was opened to me by a gentleman and two ladies, who were walking the round. An explanation was now necessary, and was accordingly given. The gentleman informed me upon his part, that the chateau belonged to Mons. St. Quentin, a Member of the French Senate, and a Judge of the District; that he had a party of friends with him upon the occasion of his lady's birth-day, and that they were about to begin dancing; that Mons. St. Quentin would highly congratulate himself on my accidental arrival. One of the ladies, having previously apologized and left us, had seemingly explained to Mons. St. Quentin the main circumstance belonging to me, for he now appeared, and repeated the invitation in his own person. The ladies added their kind importunities. I dismounted, gave my horse to a servant in waiting, and joined this happy and elegant party, for such it really was. I had now, for the first time, an opportunity of forming an opinion of French beauty, the assemblage of ladies being very numerous, and all of them most elegantly dressed. Travelling, and the imitative arts, have given a most surprising uniformity to all the fashions of dress and ornament; and, whatever may be said to the contrary, there is a very slight difference between the scenes of a French and English polite assembly. If any thing, however, be distinguishable, it is more in degree than in substance. The French fashions, as I saw them here, differed in no other point from what I had seen in London, but in degree. The ladies were certainly more exposed about the necks, and their hair was dressed with more fancy; but the form was in almost every thing the same. The most elegant novelty was a hat, which doubled up like a fan, so that the ladies carried it in their hands. There were more coloured than white muslins; a variety which had a pretty effect amongst the trees and flowers. The same observation applies to the gentlemen. Their dresses were made as in England; but the pattern of the cloth, or some appendage to it, was different. One gentleman, habited in a grass-coloured silk coat, had very much the appearance of Beau Mordecai in the farce: the ladies, however, seemed to admire him, and in some conversation with him I found him, in despite of his coat, a very well-informed man. There were likewise three or four fancy dresses; a Dian, a wood-nymph, and a sweet girl playing upon a lute, habited according to a picture of Calypso by David. On the whole, there was certainly more fancy, more taste, and more elegance, than in an English party of the same description; though there were not so many handsome women as would have been the proportion of such an assembly in England. A table was spread handsomely and substantially under a very large and lofty marquee. The outside was very prettily painted for the occasion--Venus commemorating her birth from the ocean. The French manage these things infinitely better than any other nation in the world. It was necessary, however, for the justice of the compliment, that the Venus should be a likeness of Madame St. Quentin, who was neither very young nor very handsome. The painter, however, got out of the scrape very well. A small party accompanied me into the village, which was lively, and had some very neat houses. The peasantry, both men and women, had hats of straw; a manufactory which Mons. St. Quentin had introduced. A boy was reading at a cottage-door. I had the curiosity to see the book. It was a volume of Marmontel. His mother came out, invited us into the house, and in the course of some conversation, produced some drawings by this youth; they were very simple, and very masterly. The ladies purchased them at a good price. He had attained this excellence without a master, and Mons. St. Quentin, as we were informed, had been so pleased with him, as to take him into his house. His temper and manners, however, were not in unison with his taste, and his benefactor had been compelled to restore him to his mother, but still intended to send him to study at Paris. The boy's countenance was a direct lie to Lavater; his air was heavy, and absolutely without intelligence. Mons. St. Quentin had dismissed him his house on account of a very malignant sally of passion: a horse having thrown him by accident, the young demon took a knife from his pocket, and deliberately stabbed him three several times. Such was a peasant boy, now seemingly enveloped in the interesting simplicity of Marmontel. How inconsistent is what is called character! I had a sweet ride for the remaining way to Montreuil by moon-light, accompanied by two gentlemen on horseback, who lived in that town. They related to me many melancholy incidents during the revolutionary period. Montreuil was formerly distributed into five parishes, and had five churches; but the people doubtless thinking that five was too many for the religion of the town, destroyed the other four, and sold the best part of the materials. Accordingly, when I entered the town, my eye was caught by a noble ruin, which upon inquiry I found to be the church of Notre Dame. This ruin is beautiful beyond description. The pillars which remain are noble, and the capitals and carving rich to a degree. It is astonishing to me that any reasonable beings, the inhabitants of a town, could thus destroy its chief ornament; but in the madness of the revolutionary fanatics, the sun itself would have been plucked from Heaven, if they could have reached it. I was sincerely happy to learn that religion had returned, and that there was a general inclination to subscribe for the repair, or rather rebuilding, of Notre Dame. My friends took leave of me after recommending to me an inn kept by two sisters, the name of which I have forgotten. They were so handsome as to resemble English women, and what is very uncommon in this class of people in France, were totally without rouge. Whilst my supper was preparing, I had a moon-light walk round the town. The situation of it is at once commanding and beautiful. The ruins of a chateau, seen under the light of the moon, improved the scenery, and was another memento of the execrable Revolution. There are a number of pretty houses, and some of them substantial. One of them belonged to one of the gentlemen who accompanied me from Mons. St. Quentin's, and was his present residence, being all that remained to him of a noble property in the vicinity. This property had been sold by the nation, and the recovery of it had become impossible, though the gentleman was in tolerable favour with the government. Bonaparte had answered one of this gentleman's memorials by subscribing it with a sentence in his own writing: "We cannot re-purchase the nation." This gentleman spoke highly, but perhaps unjustly, of the vigour of Bonaparte's government, of his inflexible love of justice, and his personal attention to the administration. I compelled him, however, to acknowledge, that in his own immediate concerns, the justice of the French Chief was not proof against his passions. I mentioned the Duke of Enghien; the gentleman pushed on his horse, and begged me to say no more of the matter. Upon my return I had an excellent supper, and what was still more welcome, a bed which reminded me of those at an English coffee-house. CHAP. VI. _Departure from Montreuil--French Conscripts--Extreme Youth--Excellent Roads--Country Labourers--Court for the Claims of Emigrants--Abbeville--Companion on the Road--Amiens._ AS I wished to reach Paris as soon as possible, I had ordered the chambermaid to call me at an early hour in the morning; but was awakened previous to the appointed time by some still earlier travellers--a very numerous detachment of conscripts, who were on their march for the central _depôt_ of the department. The greater part of them were boys, and were merry and noisy in a manner characteristic of the French youth. Seeing me at the window, one of them struck up a very lively _reveillée_, and was immediately joined by others who composed their marching band. They were attended, and their baggage carried, by a peculiar kind of cart--a platform erected on wheels, and on which they ascended when fatigued. The vehicles were prepared, the horses harnessed, and the young conscripts impatiently waiting for the word to march. When I came down into the inn-yard, no one was stirring in the house except the ostler, who, upon my mentioning the component items of my entertainment, very fairly, as I thought, reckoned them up, and received the amount, taking care to remind me of the chambermaid. Having with some difficulty likewise procured from him a glass of milk, I mounted my horse, and followed the conscripts, who, with drum and fife, were merrily but regularly marching before me. The regularity of the march continued only till they got beyond the town, and down the hill, when the music ceased, the ranks broke, and every one walked or ran as he pleased. As they were somewhat too noisy for a meditating traveller, I put my horse to his mettle, and soon left them at a convenient distance. I must cursorily observe, that the main circumstance which struck me in this detachment, was the extreme youth of the major part. I saw not a man amongst them, and some of them had an air the most perfectly childish. Bonaparte is said to prefer these young recruits. No army in Europe would have admitted them, with the exception of the French. The road was truly excellent, though hilly, and indeed so continued till within a few miles of Abbeville. The present Emperor acts so far upon the system of the ancient monarchy, and considers the goodness of the highways as the most important and most immediate object of the administration; accordingly, the roads in France are still better than under the Bourbons, as Bonaparte sees every thing with his own eyes. Nothing, indeed, is wanting to quick travelling in France, but English drivers and English carriages. How would a mail-coach roll upon such a road! The French postillions, and even the French horses, such as I met on the road, have a kind of activity without progress--the postillions are very active in cracking their whips over their heads, and the horses shuffle about without mending their pace. I passed several country labourers, men and women, going to their daily toil. I was informed by one of them, that he worked in the hay-field, and earned six-and-thirty sous (1_s._ 6_d._) a day; that the wages for mowers were fifty sous (2_s._ 1_d._), and two bottles of wine or cyder; that his wife had fourteen sous and her food; and boys and children old enough to rake, from six to twelve sous. He paid 25 livres annually for the rent of his cottage. When he had to support himself, he breakfasted on bread, and a glass or more of strong wine or brandy; dined on bread and cheese, and supped on bread and an apple. He wore leather shoes, except in wet weather, when he wore _sabots_, which cost about twelve sous per pair. I passed more _chateaux_ in ruins, and others shut up and forsaken. Some of them were very prettily situated, in patches of trees and amidst corn-fields. Several, as I understood, belonged to emigrants, whom Bonaparte had recalled by name, but who had not as yet returned. I learned with some satisfaction, that some shew of justice was still necessary. Where the property of the emigrants is unsold, and still in the hands of the nation, the emigrated proprietor is not totally without a chance of restitution. If he can come forwards, and prove, in a court established for the purpose, that he has merely been absent; that his absence was not without sufficient reasons; that he has not taken up arms against France; and finally, had returned as soon as he possessed the means--under these circumstances, the lands are restored. Even his children may succeed where himself shall fail. Upon proof of infancy at the time of emigration, and that they have at no time borne arms against the empire, the lands are not unfrequently decreed to them, even when the father's claim has been rejected. I reached Bernay to breakfast, and, for the first time in France, met with a surly host and a sour hostess. The bread being stale, salt, and bitter, I desired it to be changed. The host obeyed, so far as to carry it out of the room and bring it in again. It was in vain, however, that I insisted upon the identity, till I desired him to bring what he had removed, and to compare it with what he had brought. He then flatly told me, that I must either have that or none; that it was as good bread as any in France, and that he intended to eat it for his own breakfast. His wife came in, hearing my raised voice, and maintained her husband's assertions very stoutly. For the sake of peace, I found it necessary to submit. He is a true hero who can support a contest with a man and his wife. The girl who waited on me seemed made of kinder materials. She laughed with much archness when I shewed her the bread, and its vigorous resistance to the edge of my knife. She was born in Musilius, and told me, with true French coquetry, that her sisters were as handsome as herself. She mentioned some English name (that of a valet, I suppose), and asked me if I knew him in London. If I should hereafter meet him, I was to remind him of Bernay. The charges, contrary to my expectations, were as moderate as the breakfast was indifferent; and the host did me the honour to wish me good morning. The hostess, however, was inflexibly sour, and saw me depart without a word, or even a salutation. I had a most unpleasant ride to Abbeville, the heat of the day being extreme, and the road totally without any shelter. I imagined, however, that the heat was less oppressive than heat of the same intensity in England; but I know not whether this difference was any thing but imaginary. In foreign countries, we are so much upon the hunt for novelty, and so well predisposed to find it, that in things not strongly nor immediately the objects of sense, our impressions are not altogether to be trusted. Abbeville, which I reached in good time for the _table d'hôte_, which is held on every market-day, is a populous but a most unpleasant town. The inhabitants are stated to exceed 22,000; but I do not conceive that they can amount to one half of that number. The town has a most ruinous appearance, from the circumstance of many of the houses being built with wood; and by the forms of the windows and the doors, some of them must be very ancient. There are two or three manufactories of cloth, but none of them were in a flourishing condition. I went to visit that of Vanrobais, established by Louis XIV. and which still continues, though in ruins. The buildings are upon a very large scale; but too much was attempted for them to execute any thing in a workmanlike manner. There are different buildings for every different branch of the manufacture. I cannot but think, however, that they would have succeeded better if they had consulted the principle of the sub-division of labour. A man who is both a weaver and a spinner, will certainly not be both as good a weaver and as good a spinner, as another who is only a spinner or only a weaver: he will not have the same dexterity, and therefore will not do the same work. No business is done so well as that which is the sole object of attention. I saw likewise a manufactory of carpets, which seemed more flourishing. In the cloth manufactory, the earnings of the working manufacturers are about 36 sous per diem (1_s._ 6_d._): in the carpet manufactories, somewhat more. The cloths, as far as I am a judge, seemed to me even to exceed those of England; but the carpets are much inferior. From some unaccountable reason, however, the cloths were much dearer than English broad cloth of the same quality. Whence does this happen, in a country where provisions are so much cheaper? Perhaps from that neglect of the sub-division of labour which I have above noticed. Abbeville, like all the other principal towns through which I passed, bore melancholy marks of the Revolution. The handsome church which stood in the market-place is in ruins--scarcely a stone remains on the top of another. Many of the best houses were shut up, and others of the same description, evidently inhabited by people for whom they were not built. In many of them, one room only was inhabited; and in others, the second and third floors turned into granaries. Indeed, along the whole road from Abbeville to Paris, are innumerable _chateaux_, which are now only the cells of beggars, or of the lowest kind of peasantry. An officer who was going to Amiens, joined company with me on the road to Pequigny, and, like every Frenchman of this class, became communicative almost in the same instant in which we had exchanged salutes. I found, however, that he knew nothing, except in his own profession; and I very strongly suspect, that he even here gave me some details of battles in which he had never been, or at least he made two or three geographical mistakes, for which I cannot otherwise account. He made no scruple of moving the Rhine a few degrees easterly; and constructed a bridge over the Adige without the help of the mason. I have not unfrequently, indeed, been surprized at the unaccountable ignorance betrayed by this class of men. It is to be hoped, that in another age this will pass away. My companion, however, had a good-humour which compensated for his ignorance; he alternately talked, sung, and dismounted from his horse to speak to every peasant girl who met us on the road; he seemed at home with every one, and made the time pass agreeably enough. He sung, at my request, the Marseillois, and sung it with such emphasis, energy, and attitude, as to make me sincerely repent the having called forth such a deafening exhibition of his powers. Though one or two travellers passed us whilst he was thus exhibiting, my gentleman was not in the slightest degree discomposed, but continued his song, his attitudes, and his grimaces, as if he were in the midst of a wood. After a very long journey, in which my little Norman had performed to admiration, I reached Amiens about eight o'clock, on the sweetest summer evening imaginable. The aspect of Amiens, as it is approached by the road, resembles Canterbury--the cathedral rising above the town--the town, as it were, gathering around it as its parent and protector. My companion would not leave me till he had seen me to the inn, the _Hotel d'Angleterre_, when he took a farewell of me as if we had been intimate for years, and I have no doubt, thought no more of me after he had turned the corner of the street. These attentions, however, are not the less pleasing, and answer their purpose as well as if they were more permanent. Having ordered my supper, and seen my horse duly provided for, I walked through the town, which is clean, lively, and in many respects resembling towns of the third rate in England. I visited the cathedral, which pleased me much; but has been so often described, that I deem it unnecessary to say more of it. It was built by the English in the time of Henry VI. and the regency of the Duke of Bedford, and has much of the national taste of that people, and those times. Though strictly Gothic, it is light, and very tastefully ornamented: it infinitely exceeds any cathedral in England, with the exception of Westminster Abbey. I went to see likewise the _Chateau d'Eau_, the machine for supplying Amiens with water. There is nothing more than common in it, and the purpose would be answered better by pipes and a steam-engine. It excited one observation which I have since frequently made--that the French, with all their parade of science and ostentation of institutions, are still a century behind England in real practical knowledge. My Tour in France has at least taught me one lesson--never to be deceived by high-sounding names and pompous designations. I have not visited their schools for nothing. The French talk; the English act. A steady plodding Englishman will build an house, while a Frenchman is laying down rules for it. There is more of this idle pedantry in France than in any country on the face of the globe: every thing is done with science, and nothing with knowledge. Walking through the market-place, my attention was taken by an unusual bustle--the erecting of scaffolds, booths, and other similar preparations. I learned, upon inquiry, that the half-yearly fair was to be held on the following day; a piece of information which confirmed my previous intention of passing that day at Amiens. Upon returning to the inn, I had a supper as comfortable as any I had ever sat down to, even in England. The landlord, at my particular request, took his seat with me at table. He complained bitterly of the oppression of the taxes, and more particularly of their uncertainty, which was so indeterminate, according to his assertions, that the collectors took what they pleased, and employed their offices as means of favour, or to gratify their personal piques. One of the collectors of Amiens, it seems, was likewise an inn-keeper, who availed himself of the power of his office to harass his rival. There is no appeal, as long as the collector is faithful to the government, and pays in what he receives. The manner in which defaulters are treated, is peculiar to the French government. If the sum assessed be not paid within the appointed time, a soldier is billeted at the house of the defaulter, and another is daily added till the arrear be cleared. The greater part of the taxes have been imposed during the strong days of the Revolution; and as they are sufficiently productive, and the present government have not the odium of their first institution, they are suffered to continue upon their old foundation--that is to say, upon an infinite number of successive decrees, many of which contradict each other. No one, therefore, knows exactly what he has to pay, and any one may be made to pay according to the caprice of the collector. CHAP. VII. _General Character of the Town--Public Walk--Gardens--Half-yearly Fair--Gaming Houses--Table d'Hôtes--English at Amiens--Expence of Living._ THE noise of the people collecting for the fair, and the consequent bustle of the inn, awoke me at an early hour in the morning; and after a breakfast which reminded me of England, I sallied forth to see the town and the lions. A vast multitude of people had assembled from the surrounding country, and were collected around the several booths. The day was fine, the bells were ringing, and the music playing; every one was dressed in their holiday clothes, and every one seemed to have a happy and careless face, suitable to the festivity of the occasion. Amiens is most delightfully situated, the country around being highly cultivated. It is, in every respect, one of the cleanest towns in France; and the frequent visits and long residence of Englishmen, have produced a very sensible alteration in the manner of living amongst the inhabitants. Though some of the houses are very ancient, and the streets are narrow, it has not the ruinous nor close appearance of the other towns on the Paris road. It has been lately newly paved; and there is something, of the nature of a parish-rate for keeping it clean, and in summer for watering the streets. Though Amiens has suffered very considerably by the war, it has still, in appearance at least, an extensive trade. The manufactures are of the same kind as those at Abbeville. Besides their cloths, however, they work up a considerable quantity of camblets, callimancoes, and baizes, chiefly red and spotted, for domestic consumption. They were in great distress for wool, and could procure none but by land-carriage from Spain, Portugal, and Flanders. Upon examining two or three of their articles, I thought them very dear, but very good. I visited two or three of their manufactories, and upon inquiring for others, was informed that they had been shut up. The effect of the war had been, to raise prices to double their former rate: every one expressed an anxious wish for peace, and imputed the continuance of the war to the English Ministry. The general character of the people of Amiens is, that they are lively, good-humoured, and less infected by the revolutionary contagion than any town in France: as many of them as I had an opportunity of conversing with, spoke with due detestation of jacobinism, and with an equal wise submission to the present order of things. Besides the native inhabitants, there are many foreign residents, and some English. As these are in general in good circumstances, they have usually the best houses in the town, and live in the substantial style of their respective countries. The English denizens very well understand that they are constantly under the eye of the French government, and its spies: they live, therefore, as much as possible in public; and in their balls, and dinners, and entertainments, have a due mixture of French visitants. Several of them avoid this restraint by passing for Americans; but the detection of this deception is most severely punished. The English have contrived, however, to procure both the good will and the good word of the people of Amiens, and even the French government seems to regard them with peculiar favour. Every considerable town in France has its public walk, and Amiens has one or more of singular beauty; but being situated in an unenclosed country, and amongst corn-fields, its private walks are still more frequented than its ancient promenade. I was informed that the English had brought these private walks into general fashion, and I considered it as an additional proof of their good sense and natural taste. The multitude of people assembled from every part of the province, gave me an opportunity of seeing the national costume of the peasantry. The habits of the men did not appear to me so various, and so novel, as those of the women. The greater part of the former had three-cocked hats, some of straw, some of pasteboard, and some of beaver; jackets, red, yellow, and blue; and breeches of the same fancy colours. The women were dressed in a variety both of shape and colour, which defies all description. When seen from a distance, the assembly had a very picturesque appearance: the sun shining on the various colours, gave them the appearance of so many flowers. The general features of the fair did not differ much from the fairs in England and America. There were two streets completely filled with booths: the market-place was occupied with shows, and temporary theatres. I observed, however, two or three peculiar national amusements; one of them called the _Mats de Cocagne_, the other the _Mats de Beaupré_. The _Mats de Cocagne_ are long poles, some of them thirty feet in height, well greased, and erected perpendicularly. At the top of them is suspended by a string, a watch, a shirt, or other similar articles, which become the prize of the fortunate adventurer who can ascend and reach them. A few sous are paid to the proprietor of the _mat_, for the chance of gaining the prize; it is the fault, therefore, of the proprietor, if the _mat_ be not so well greased as to render the ascent almost impossible. I saw many fruitless attempts made: one fellow had nearly gained the top, and was within reach of the prize; he stretched his hand out to take it, and having by this act diminished his hold, came down with the most frightful rapidity. The crowd laughed; and another adventurer, nothing dismayed, succeeded him in the attempt, and in the failure. The prize, however, was at length obtained; but the adventurer, I should think, had not much cause to congratulate himself on his good luck. His descent was of a rapidity which caused the blood to gush out of his mouth and his nose, and for some time, at least, frightened the multitude from repeating the same sport. The _Mats de Beaupré_ are upon the same principle; they are soaped poles, laid horizontally, but very high from the ground. At the further extremity of them are the same prizes, and which are gained upon the same condition--the men to walk over, the women to scramble over them in any manner which they might deem best. To break the violence of the fall, the ground immediately under the poles was thickly laid with straw. Several women, and innumerable girls, made an attempt to gain the prize at these _Mats de Beaupré_, and in the course of their efforts had some tumbles, which much delighted the mob. Indeed, this kind of sport seemed peculiarly intended for the females: the men seemed to prefer the _Cocagnes_. The chief enjoyment of the multitude, however, seemed to be dancing. Several scaffolds, with benches rising one above another, were erected in every part of the town: these were the orchestras, which, as far as I saw, were supported by the voluntary contributions of the companies which danced to their music. A subscription was always made after every dance, and each dancer subscribed a sous. The ladies, I believe, were excused by the payment of their partners. The dancing was excellent, and the music by no means contemptible. The shows were much of the same kind as those in Bartholomew fair, in London, and which travel from town to town during the summer in America. The mountebanks and merry-andrews appeared more dexterous and more humorous. One of the former seeing me, entreated the crowd to make way for me; and when I turned my back, "Nay, my good friend," said he, "do not mistake me. I have no intention of asking you for the money which you owe to me for your last cure; you are very welcome to it. I delight in doing good. I am paid sufficiently by your recovery. If you choose, however, to remember, my young man"--The merry-andrew was here at my side, and I deemed it most prudent to drop a few sous into his cap, and effect my escape. The crowd understood the jest, and laughed heartily. One of them, however, of more decent appearance, made me a very pleasing apology, repeating at the same time a French proverb--that a pope and a mountebank were above all law. Amongst the commodities exhibited for sale, I was agreeably surprised to find two or more booths well supplied with English and French books; and my surprise was still greater, to find that the former had many purchasers. I took up several of them, and found them to be English Gazetteers, Tours in England, Wales, Scotland; Travels in America, Dictionaries, and Grammars. From some cause or other, the English seem in particular favour in and about Amiens, and Lord Cornwallis is still remembered with respect and affection. There, were other booths which excited less pleasing reflections; these were the temporary gaming tables, the admission to which was from six to twelve sous. I had the curiosity to enter one of them: it was already full. One party was at eager play, and others were waiting to succeed them. I could make nothing of the game, only that it was one of chance, and that the winnings and losings were determined in every three casts. I saw a decent young man take off and stake his neckcloth: fortune favoured him, and he had the uncommon fortitude to retire, and play no more. There was another booth of rather a singular kind--a temporary pawnbroker's, and who appeared to have a good brisk trade. My attention, however, was more peculiarly attracted by a marquee, open on all sides, and with an elevated floor: a chair, covered with green velvet, was here placed, and occupied by a man of much apparent gravity. I found, upon inquiry, that this was the president, judge, or magistrate of the fair; that he was elected by votes of the booth-holders, and determined all disputes on the spot; that his authority was supported by the police, and his sentence enforced by the municipality. He was a portly man, wore a three-cocked hat, and an old scarlet cloak, which had served the same purpose time out of mind. I returned to my hotel to dinner; and being informed that there was a _table d'hôte_, and that it would be very numerously attended, I preferred it to dining in my own apartment, and at the appointed hour took my seat. The company was indeed numerous--men, women, girls, and children; officers of the army, exhibitors of wild beasts, actors and actresses of the booth-theatres. A separate table was set for the officers of the army. I had here a specimen of the manners of the French revolutionary officers. A party of them, to the number of fifteen or twenty, had already placed themselves at table, when the commandant, or at least a superior officer, entered the room. They all immediately got up to make room for him, and handed him a chair in a manner the most servile and fawning. "I hope I disturb no one," said he, at the same time throwing himself into the chair, but not offering to move his hat. He continued during the whole of the dinner the same disgusting superiority, and the subordinate officers several times called out silence to the adjoining table, that they might better hear the vapid remarks of their commander. The waiters, and even the whole _table d'hôte_ seemed in great awe of these military gentlemen; and one fellow excused himself for leaving a plate before me by hastily alleging that the commander was looking around him for something. I was still more disgusted by one of the officers rising, and proposing this important gentleman's health to both tables; and my surprise was greater by recognizing, in the tone of this proposal, the barbarous twang of an Irishman. Some of the French regiments are half filled with these Irish renegades. I cannot speak of them with any patience, as I cannot conceive any voluntary degradation more contemptible, than that of passing from any thing British or American into any thing French or Italian. I have a respect for the Irish in the German service; they are still members of a people like themselves. I say not this in contempt of the French themselves, but of the English or Irish become French. In the evening I went to one of the theatres, accompanied by an English physician, with whom I dined at the _table d'hôte_. This gentleman came into France after the peace of Amiens, and was of course included in the number detained by the French Emperor. Having some friends in the Institute, they had drawn up a memorial in his favour, in which they represented him, and very justly, as a man of science, who had come into France to compare the English and French system of medicine, and whose researches had already excited much interest and inquiry amongst the French physicians. This memorial being delivered into the hands of the Emperor himself, was subscribed by him in the following words: "Let him remain in France during the war, on his parole that he will not leave the French territories, and will have no correspondence with England." The performance at the theatre was too contemptible for mention, and in the pantomime, or rather spectacle, became latterly so indelicate, that I found it necessary to withdraw. I should hope that the performances are not always of the same character: perhaps something must be allowed for the occasion. The French, however, have no idea of humour as separated from indecencies. In this respect they might take a very useful lesson from the English. The English excel in pantomime as much as the French in comedy. Dr. M---- returned to supper with me, and gave me some useful information. Every trace of the Revolution is rapidly vanishing at Amiens. Religion has resumed her influence: the cathedral is very well attended, but auricular confession is not usual. The clergy of Amiens, however, are very poor, having lost all their immense possessions, and having nothing but the national stipend. The cathedral had been repaired by public subscription. The poor are sent to the armies. There were no imposts but those paid to the government. Amiens is still a very cheap town for permanent residence, though the war has very seriously affected it. A good house may be rented for thirty pounds per annum, the taxes upon the mere house being about a Louis. Mutton seldom exceeds threepence English money per pound, and beef is usually somewhat cheaper. Poultry of all kinds is in great plenty, and cheap: fowls, ducks, &c. about two shillings per couple. A horse at livery, half a Louis per week; two horses, all expences included, a Louis and two livres. Board and lodging in a genteel house, five-and-twenty Louis annually. Dr. M---- agreed with me, that for three hundred a year, a family might keep their carriage and live in comfort, in Amiens and its neighbourhood. I must not forget another observation; the towns in France are cheaper than the villages. The consumption of meat in the latter is not sufficient to induce the butchers to kill often; the market, therefore, is very ill supplied, and consequently the prices are dear. A few miles from a principal town, you cannot have a leg of mutton without paying for the whole sheep. A stranger may live at an inn at Amiens for about five shillings, English money, a day. The wine is good, and very cheap; and a daily ordinary, or _table d'hôte_, is kept at the _Hotel d'Angleterre_. Breakfast is charged one livre, dinner three, and supper one: half a livre for coffee, and two livres for lodging; but if you remain a week, ten livres for the whole time. The hotels, of which there are two, are as good as those of Paris, and lodgings are far more reasonable. A _restaurateur_ has very lately set up in a very grand style, but the population of the town will scarcely support him. The company at the _table d'hôte_ usually consists of officers, of whom there is always a multitude in the neighbourhood of Amiens. Some of them, as I was informed, are very pleasant agreeable men; whilst others are ruffians, and have the manners of jacobins. CHAP. VIII. _French and English Roads compared--Gaiety of French Labourers--Breteuil--Apple-trees in the midst of Corn-fields--Beautiful Scenery--Cheap Price of Land in France--Clermont--Bad Management of the French Farmers--Chantilly--Arrival at Paris._ I left Amiens early on the following morning, intending to reach Clermont in good time. The roads now became very indifferent, but the scenery was much improved. I could not but compare the prospect of a French road with one of the great roads of England. It is impossible to travel a mile on an English road without meeting or overtaking every species of vehicle. The imagination of a traveller, if as susceptible as a traveller's imagination should be, has thus a constant food for its exercise; it accompanies these several groups to their home or destination, and calls before its view the busy market, the quiet village, the blazing hearth, the returning husband, and the welcoming wife. No man is fit for a traveller who cannot while away his time in such creations of his fancy. I pity the traveller from my heart, who in a barren or uniform road, has no other occupation but to count the mile-stones, and find every mile as long as the three preceding. Let such men become drivers to stage-coaches, but let them not degrade the name of travellers by assuming it to themselves. On a French road, there is more necessity than objects for this exercise of the imagination. A French road is like a garden in the old French style. It is seldom either more or less than a straight line ruled from one end of the kingdom to the other. There are no angles, no curvatures, no hedges; one league is the exact counterpart of another; instead of hedges, are railings, and which are generally in a condition to give the country not only a naked, but even a slovenly, ruinous appearance. Imagine a road made over an heath, and each side of it fenced off by a railing of old hurdles, and you will have no imperfect idea of a French great road. Within a mile, indeed, of the neighbourhood of a principal town, the prospect usually varies and improves. The road is then planted on each side, and becomes a beautiful avenue through lofty and shady trees. This description, however, will only apply to the great roads. Some of the cross and country roads, as I shall hereafter have occasion to mention, not only equal, but greatly exceed, even the English roads, in natural beauty and scenery. In the course of the road between Amiens and Clermont, I had again too frequent opportunity to remark the slovenly management of the French farmers, as compared with those of England, and even with those of America. In America, the farmers are not without a very sufficient excuse. The scarcity of hands, the impossibility of procuring labourers at any price, compel an American farmer to get in his harvest as he can, to collect the crop of one field hastily, and then fly to another. In France there is no such excuse, and therefore there should be no such slovenly waste. Yet in some of the hay-fields which I passed, at least one-fifth _of_ the crop was lying scattered on the roads and in the fields. The excuse was, that the cattle would eat it, and that they might as well have it one way as another. It would be folly to say any thing as to such an argument; yet in these very fields the labour was so plentiful and minute, that the greater part of the crop was carried from the fields on the shoulders of the labourers, men, women, and boys. It is difficult to reconcile such inconsistencies. In such of the fields as I saw carts, the most severe labour seemed to be allotted to the share of the women. They were the pitchers, and performed this labour with a very heavy, and as it appeared to me, a very awkward fork. Whilst the women were performing this task, two or three fellows, raw-boned, and nearly six feet high, were either very leisurely raking, or perhaps laying at their full length under the new-made stacks. In other fields I saw more pleasing groups. At the sound of a horn like the English harvest horn, the pitchers, the loaders, and every labourer on the spot, left their work, and collected around some tree or hay-cock, to receive their noon refreshment. The indispensable fiddle was never wanting. Even the horses, loosened from the carts, and suffered to feed at liberty, seemed to partake in the general merriment, and looked with erect ears at the fiddler and his dancing group. When, the hour allotted to this relaxation expired, the labourers were again called to the several duties by the summons of the same horn, which was now sounded from the top of the loaded cart, as it had before been sounded under the tree or hay-cock. I had forgotten to mention, that the tree or hay-cock, the appointed place of refreshment, was distinguished by pennants of different coloured ribbons attached to a stick as a flag-staff, and which waving in the wind, under a beautiful midsummer sky, had an effect peculiarly pleasing. As I saw the same spectacle in several fields, I believe it to be national. Breteuil, which I reached in time for a late breakfast, is a very paltry town; the houses are all built in the ancient style, and bear an unfavourable resemblance to English farm-houses; their gable-ends are turned to the streets, and the chimneys are nearly as large as the roofs. There was no appearance of business, not even of a brisk retail, or of a lively thoroughfare. A crowd collected around us as I entered the inn, as if a decent stranger, travelling on horseback, were a miracle in that part of the country. Whatever, however, was wanting in the town, was more than made up by the surrounding country, which becomes very beautiful in the immediate environs of Breteuil. For the five or six miles beyond the town, towards Clermont, the scenery is enchanting. The vines, which here commence, were in bloom, the road fringed with orchards, and even the corn-fields hedged round with apple-trees. In the middle of every field was an elm or a chesnut, which by the luxuriance of its foliage seemed planted in other ages. On each side of the road, moreover, at the distance of a mile or a league, were the towers of village churches rising from amidst similar groves, whilst a chateau perhaps crowned the hill, and completed the landscape. Bye-paths, and narrow roads, leading to one or other of these villages, intersected the corn-fields in every direction; and as the corn was full-grown and yellow, and the day beautifully serene, nothing could be more grateful than this prospect. The heart of man seems peculiarly formed to relish the beauties of Nature, and to feel the bounties of Providence. What artificial beauty can equal that of a corn-field? What emotion is so lively, and so fully pervades every feeling, as that excited by the cornucopia of Nature, and the flowery plenty of the approaching harvest? The same scenery continues with little variation to Clermont, the country improving, and the roads becoming worse. In this interval, however, I passed several chateaux in ruins, and several farms and houses, on which were affixed notices that they were to be let or sold. On inquiring the rent and purchase of one of them, I found it to be so cheap, that could I have reconciled myself to French manners, and promised myself any suitable assistance from French labourers, I should have seriously thought of making a purchase. An estate of eleven hundred acres, seven hundred of which were in culture, the remainder wood and heath, was offered for sale for 8000 Louis. The mansion-house was indeed in ruin beyond the possibility of repair, but the land, under proper cultivation, would have paid twenty-five per cent. on the purchase-money. The main point of such purchases, however, is contained in these words: Under proper cultivation. Nothing is so absurd as the expectation of a foreign purchaser, and particularly of a gentleman, that he will be able to transfer the improved system of cultivation of his own country into a kingdom at least a century behind the former. As far us his own manual labour goes, as far as he will take the plough, the harrow, and the broadcast himself, so far may he procure the execution of his own ideas. But it is in vain to endeavour to infuse this knowledge or this practice into French labourers; you might as well put a pen in the hand of a Hottentot, and expect him to write his name. The ill success of half the foreign purchasers must be imputed to this oversight. An American or an Englishman passes over a French or German farm, and sees land of the most productive powers reduced to sterility by slovenly management. A suggestion immediately arises in his mind--how much might this land be made to produce under a more intelligent cultivation? Full of this idea he perhaps inquires the price, and finding it about one-tenth of what such land would cost in England, immediately makes his purchase, settles, and begins his operations. Here his eyes are soon opened. He must send to England for all his implements; and even then his French labourers neither can or will learn the use of them. An English ploughman becomes necessary; the English ploughman accordingly comes, but shortly becomes miserable amongst French habits and French fellow-labourers. In this manner have failed innumerable attempts of this kind within my own knowledge. It is impossible to transplant the whole of the system of one country into another. The English or the American farmer may emigrate and settle in France, and bring over his English plough and English habits, but he will still find a French soil, a French climate, French markets, and French labourers. The course of his crops will be disturbed by the necessity of some subservience to the peculiar wants of the country and the demands of the market. He cannot, for example, persevere in his turnips, where he can find no cattle to eat them, no purchasers for his cattle, and where, from the openness of the climate in winter, the crop must necessarily rot before he can consume it. For the same reason, his clover cultivation becomes as useless. To say all in a word, I know not how an English or an American farmer could make a favourable purchase in France, though the French Government should come forward with its protection. The habits of the country have become so accommodated to its agriculture, that they each mutually support the other, and a more improved system can only be introduced in the proportion in which these national habits can be fundamentally changed. But such changes must necessarily be gradual and slow, and must not be reckoned upon by an individual. I found myself so indisposed at Clermont, that I retired very early to my bed. My complaint was a giddiness in the head, brought on by riding in the sun. Every country has its peculiar medicine as well as its religion, and in every country there are certain family receipts, certain homely prescriptions, which, from their experienced efficacy, merit more attention than a member of the faculty would be inclined to give them. My host at Clermont accordingly became my physician, and by his advice I bathed my feet in warm water, and getting into bed between the blankets, after drinking about a quart of cold spring-water, I can only say that the remedy had its full effect. After a violent perspiration in the night I fell into a sound sleep, and awoke in the morning in such complete health and spirits, as to ride to Chantilly to breakfast. Throughout the morning's journey, the scenery was very nearly similar to what I had previously passed, except that it was richer and more varied with habitations. The peasantry, moreover, were occupied in the same manner in getting in their hay-harvest, which, from reasons that I cannot comprehend, seemed more backward as I approached to the metropolis. This may partly, indeed, be owing to what will appear a very extraordinary cause--the excellence of the climate. The French farmer can trust the skies; he sees a cloudless sky in the night, and has no fear that its serenity will be shortly disturbed. He is a total stranger to that vicissitude of sunshine, rain, and tempest, which in a moment confounds all the labours of the English husbandmen. The same sun that shines to-day will shine to-morrow. In this happy confidence he stacks his hay in small cocks in the field where it grows, and only carries it away at his leisure. His manner of carrying is as slovenly as all his other management. Annette carries an apron-full, Jeannette an handkerchief-full, and Lubin a barrow-full. Some of it is packed in sheets and blankets. Some of this hay was very bad in quality, and as crops, still worse in quantity. Being too much exposed to the sun, it was little better than so much coarse straw. Being merely thrown together, without being trodden, when carried into the hay-loft, it loses whatever fragrance it may have hitherto retained. I do not think an English horse would eat it. Chantilly totally disappointed my expectations. The dæmon of anarchy has here raised a superb trophy on a monument of ruins. The principal building has been demolished for the sake of the materials; the stables, and that part of the ancient establishment denominated Le petit Chateau, are all that remain. I was informed by the people of the inn, that the whole had been purchased in the revolutionary period by a petty provincial builder, who had no sooner completed his installments, than he began the demolition of the building, and the cutting down the trees in the grounds. Buonaparte, fortunately for Chantilly, became Chief Consul before the whole was destroyed; Chantilly was then re-purchased, and is now the property of the Government. The road now began to have some appearance of an approach to the capital of the kingdom. I could not however but still observe, that there were but few carriages compared to what I had seen within a similar distance of London, and even of New York. The several vehicles were mostly constructed in the same manner as vehicles of the same distinction in England. The charette, or cart in common use, was the only exception on the favourable side. This vehicle seemed to me so well adapted to its purpose, as to merit a particular description. The charette, then, consists principally of two parts--the carriage, and the body. The carriage part is very simple, being composed of two long shafts of wood, about twenty feet in length, connected together by cross bars, so as to form the bed, and on which boards are laid, as the occasion may require. In the same manner the sides, a front, and back, may be added at pleasure. The axle and wheels are in the usual place and form. Upon this carriage is fixed the moveable body, consisting of a similar frame-work of two shafts connected by cross bars. This body moves upon an axletree, and extending some feet beyond the carriage behind, it is let down with ease to receive its load, which the body moving, as before described, on a pivot, or axle, is easily purchased up from before. Nearly half way between Chantilly and Paris, I passed a handsome chateau to the right, which is now occupied as a school. This establishment was commenced by an Englishman, in the short interval of the peace of Amiens, and he was upon the point of making a rapid fortune, when in common with the other Englishmen at that time in France, he was ordered to Verdun. His school now passed to his French usher, who continuing to conduct it upon the same plan, that is, with the order and intelligence common in every English school, has increased its reputation, and reaps his merited reward by general encouragement. The rate of the boarders at this academy may serve to illustrate the comparative cheapness of every thing in France. The boarders are provided with classic instruction of every kind, as likewise the most eminent masters in all the fine arts, and personal accomplishments, to which is to be added clothes, at forty guineas per annum. An English or American school on the same plan, and conducted in the same style, could not be less than double, if not triple the above-mentioned sum. I reached Paris at an early hour in the afternoon, and having letters for Mr. Younge, the confidential secretary to Mr. Armstrong, immediately waited upon him, that his information might assist me as to finding suitable apartments. Lodgings in Paris are infinitely more expensive than in London, and with not one-half the comfort. I did not find Mr. Younge at his house; but upon hearing my name, his Lady received me as an expected friend, and relieved me from the necessity of further search, by informing me that Mr. Younge had expected me, and provided apartments for me in his own house. I shall have future occasion to mention, that the beautiful Lady of this Gentleman was a Frenchwoman, and that he had been about six months married to her when I arrived in Paris. She was the niece of the celebrated Lally Tolendal, and had all the elegance, beauty, and dignity which seems characteristic of that family. I never saw a woman, whose perfect beauty excited in me at first sight such a mixed emotion of wonder, awe, and pleasure. CHAP. IX. _A Week in Paris--Objects and Occurrences--National Library--A French Route--Fashionable French Supper--Conceits--Presentation at Court--Audience._ AS my purpose in visiting France was not to see Paris, I resolved to make my stay in this gay capital as short as possible. I entered it on the Tuesday afternoon, and determined to leave it and pursue my journey into the provinces on the following Monday. I had therefore little time to see the singularities of this celebrated metropolis; but I made the best of this time, and had the advantage of Mr. Younge's knowledge and guidance. There is no place in the world, perhaps, more distinguished for literary eminence, in every part of art and science, than Paris. The literary institutions of Paris, therefore, were the objects of my first visit. Every capital has its theatres, public gardens, and palaces; but Paris alone has its public libraries on a scale of equal utility and magnificence. In Paris alone, science seems to be considered as an object of importance to mankind, and therefore as a suitable object for the protection of Government. In Paris alone, to say all in a word, the poorest student, the most ragged philosopher, has all the treasures of princes at his command; the National Library opens at his call, and the most expensive books are delivered for his use. On the morning following my arrival, Mr. Younge accompanied me to the National Library. On entering it, we ascended a most superb staircase painted by Pellegrine, by which we were led to the library on the first floor. It consists of a suite of spacious and magnificent apartments, extending round three sides of a quadrangle. The books are ranged around the sides, according to the order of the respective subjects, and are said to amount to nearly half a million. Each division has an attending librarian, of whom every one may require the book he wishes, and which is immediately delivered to him. Being themselves gentlemen, there is no apprehension that they will accept any pecuniary remuneration; but there is likewise a strict order that no money shall be given to any of the inferior attendants. There are tables and chairs in numbers, and nothing seemed neglected, which could conduce even to the comfort of the readers. The most complete department of the library is that of the manuscripts. This collection amounts to nearly fifty thousand volumes, and amongst them innumerable letters, and even treatises, by the early kings of France. A manuscript is shewn as written by Louis the Fourteenth: it is entitled, "Memoirs of his own Time, written by the King himself." I much doubt, however, the authenticity of this production. Louis the Fourteenth had other more immediate concerns than writing the history of France. France is full of these literary forgeries. Every king of France, if the titles of books may be received as a proof of their authenticity, has not only written his life, but written it like a philosopher and historian, candidly confessing his errors and abusing his ministers. The second floor of the building contains the genealogies of the French families. They are deposited in boxes, which are labelled with the several family names. They are considered as public records, and are only producible in the courts of justice, in order to determine the titles to real property. No one is allowed to copy them except by the most special permission, which is never granted but to histriographers of established name and reputation. The cabinet of antiques is stated to be very rich, and, to judge by appearances, is not inferior to its reputation. The collection was made by Caylus. It chiefly consists of vases, busts, and articles of domestic use amongst the Romans. The greater part of them have been already copied as models, in the ornamenting of furniture, by the Parisian artists. This fashion indeed is carried almost to a mania. Every thing must be Greek and Roman without any reference to Nature or propriety. For example, what could be so absurd as the natural realization of some of these capricious ornaments? What lady would chose to sleep in a bed, up the pillars of which serpents were crawling? Yet is such realization the only criterion of taste and propriety. The cabinet of engravings detained us nearly two hours. The portfeuilles containing the prints are distributed into twelve classes. Some of these divisions invited us to a minute inspection. Such was the class containing the French fashions from the age of Clovis to Louis the Sixteenth. In another class was the costume of every nation in the world; in a third, portraits of eminent persons of all ages and nations; and in a fourth, a collection of prints relating to public festivals, cavalcades, tournaments, coronations, royal funerals, &c. France is the only kingdom in the world which possesses a treasure like this, and which knows how to estimate it at its proper value. From the National Library we drove to the Athenée, a library and lecture institution, supported by voluntary subscription. It is much of the same nature as an institution of a similar kind in London, termed the British Institute; but the French Athenæum has infinitely the advantage. The subscription is cheaper, being about four Louis annually, and the lectures are more elegant, if not more scientific. There are usually three lectures daily; the first on sciences, and the other two on belles lettres. The lecture on science is considered as very able, but those on the belles lettres were merely suited, as I understood, to French frivolity. The rooms were so full as to render our stay unpleasant, and we thereby lost an anatomy lecture, which was about to commence. I should not forget to mention, that all the Parisian journals and magazines, and many of the German periodical works, were lying on the tables, and the library seemed altogether as complete as it was comfortable. The subscribers are numerous, and the institution itself in fashion. How long it will so last, no one will venture to predict. The library of the Pantheon and that of the Institute finished our morning's occupation. They are both on the same scale and nearly on the same general plan as the National Library. The library of the Institute, however, is only open to foreigners and the members of the Institute. The Institute holds its sitting every month, and, according to all report, is then frivolous enough. I had not an opportunity of being present at one of these sittings, but from what I heard, I did not much regret my disappointment. We returned home to dress for dinner. Mr. Younge informed, me, that he expected a very large party in the evening, chiefly French, and as his lady herself was a French woman, and had arranged her domestic establishment accordingly, I felt some curiosity. About eight, or nearer nine, Mr. Younge and myself, with two or three other of the dinner company, were summoned up to the drawing-room. The summons itself had something peculiar. The doors of the parlour, which were folding, were thrown open, and two female attendants, dressed like vestals, and holding torches of white wax, summoned us by a low curtsey, and preceded us up the great staircase to the doors of the anti-chamber, where they made another salutation, and took their station on each side. The anti-chamber was filled with servants, who were seated on benches fixed to the wall, but who did not rise on our entry. Some of them were even playing at cards, others at dominos, and all of them seemed perfectly at their ease. The anti-chamber opened by an arched door-way into an handsome room, lighted by a chandelier of the most brilliant cut glass; the pannels of the room were very tastily painted, and the glasses on each side very large, and in magnificent frames. The further extremity of this room opened by folding doors into the principal drawing-room, where the company were collected. It was brilliantly lighted, as well by patent lamps, as by a chandelier in the middle. The furniture had a resemblance to what I had seen in fashionable houses in England. The carpet was of red baize with a Turkish border, and figured in the middle like an harlequin's jacket. The principal novelty was a blue ribbon which divided the room lengthways, the one side of it being for the dancers, the other for the card-players. The ribbon was supported at proper distances by white staves, similar to those of the court ushers. The ball had little to distinguish it from the balls of England and America, except that the ladies danced with infinitely more skill, and therefore with more grace. The fashionable French dancing is exactly that of our operas. They are all figurantes, and care not what they exhibit, so as they exhibit their skill. I could not but figure to myself the confusion of an English girl, were she even present at a French assembly. Yet so powerful is habit, that not only did the ladies seem insensible, but even the gentlemen, such as did not dance, regarded them with indifference. Cotillons and waltzes were the only dances of the evening. The waltzes were danced in couples, twenty or thirty at a time. The measure was quick, and all the parties seemed animated. I cannot say that I saw any thing indecorous in the embraces of the ladies and their partners, except in the mere act itself; but the waltz will never become a current fashion in England or America. There is no precedency in a French assembly except amongst the Military. This is managed with much delicacy. Every group is thrown as much as possible into a circle. The tables are all circular, and cotillons are chiefly preferred from having this quality. I did not join the card-players; there were about half a dozen tables, and the several parties appeared to play very high. When the game, or a certain number of games were over, the parties rose from their seats, and bowing to any whom they saw near them, invited them to succeed them in their seats. These invitations were sometimes accepted, but more frequently declined. The division of the drawing-room set apart for the card-players served rather as a promenade for the company who did not dance; they here ranged themselves in a line along the ribbon, and criticised the several dancers. Some of these spectators seemed most egregious fops. One of them, with the exception of his linen, was dressed completely in purple silk or satin, and another in a rose-coloured silk coat, with white satin waistcoat and small clothes, and white silk stockings. The greater part of the ladies were dressed in fancy habits from the antique. Some were sphinxes, some vestals, some Dians, half a dozen Minervas, and a score of Junos and Cleopatras. One girl was pointed out to me as being perfectly _á l'Anglaise_. Her hair, perfectly undressed, was combed off her forehead, and hung down her back in its full length behind. She reminded me only of a school-boy playing without his hat. We were summoned to the supper table about three in the morning. This repast was a perfect English dinner. Soup, fish, poultry and ragouts, succeeded each other in almost endless variety. A fruit-basket was served round by the servants together with the bread-basket, and a small case of liqueurs was placed at every third plate. Some of these were contained in glass figures of Cupids, in which case, in order to get at the liqueur, it was necessary to break off a small globule affixed to the breast of the figure. The French confectioners are more ingenious than delicate in these contrivances; but the French ladies seem better pleased with such conceit in proportion to their intelligible references. Some of these naked Cupids, which were perfect in all their parts, were handed from the gentlemen to the ladies, and from the ladies to each other, and as freely examined and criticised, as if they had been paintings of birds. The gentlemen, upon their parts, were equally as facetious upon the naked Venuses; and a Swan affixed to a Leda, was the lucky source of innumerable pleasant questions and answers. Every thing, in a word, is tolerated which can in any way be passed into an equivoque. Their conversation in this respect resembles their dress--no matter how thin that covering may be, so that there be one. So much for a French assembly or fashionable rout, which certainly excells an English one in elegance and fancy, as much as it falls short of it in substantial mirth. The French, it must be confessed, infinitely excell every other nation in all things connected with spectacle, and more or less this spectacle pervades all their parties. They dance, they converse, they sing, for exhibition, and as if they were on the stage. Their conversation, therefore, has frequently more wit than interest, and their dancing more vanity than mirth. They seem in both respects to want that happy carelessness which pleases by being pleased. A Frenchwoman is a figurante even in her chit-chat. It may be expected that I did not omit to visit the theatres. Mr. Younge accompanied me successively to nearly all of them--two or three in an evening. Upon this subject, however, I shall say nothing, as every book of travels has so fully described some or other of them, that nothing in fact is further required. I had resolved not to leave Paris without seeing the Emperor, and being informed that he was to hold an audience on the following day, I applied to Mr. Younge to procure my formal introduction. With this purpose we waited upon General Armstrong, who sent my name to the Grand Chamberlain with the necessary formalities. This formality is a certificate under the hand of the Ambassador; that the person soliciting the introduction has been introduced at his own Court, or that, according to the best knowledge of the Ambassador, he is not a Merchant--a _Negociant actuel_. It may be briefly observed, however, that the French Negotiant answers better to the English Mechanic, than to the honorable appellation, Merchant.--General Armstrong promised me a very interesting spectacle in the Imperial audience. "It's the most splendid Court in Europe," said he: "the Court of London, and even of Vienna, will not bear a comparison with it." Every one agreed in the justice of this remark, and my curiosity was strongly excited. On the appointed day, about three o'clock, Mr. Younge accompanied me to the Palace, where we were immediately conducted to a splendid saloon, which is termed the Ambassadors' hall. Refreshments were here handed round to the company, which was very numerous, and amongst them many German Princes in their grand court dress. The conversation became very general; those who had seen Bonaparte describing him to those who were about to be introduced. Every one agreed that he was the most extraordinary man that Europe had produced in many centuries, and that even his appearance was in no slight degree indicative of his character. "He possesses an eye," said one gentleman, "in which Lavater might have understood an hero." Mr. Younge confirmed this observation, and prepared me to regard him with more than common attention. The doors of the saloon were at length thrown open, and some of the officers of the Grand Chamberlain, with white wands and embroidered robes and scarfs, bowing low to the company, invited us, by waving their staves, to follow them up the grand staircase. Every one now arranged themselves, in pairs, behind their respective Ambassadors, and followed the ushers in procession, according to the precedence of their respective countries, the Imperial, Spanish, and Neapolitan Ambassadors forming the van. The staircase was lined on both sides with grenadiers of the Legion of Honour, most of whom, privates as well as officers, were arrayed in the order. The officers, as we passed, exchanged salutes with the Ambassadors; and as the Imperial Ambassador, who led the procession, reached the door of the anti-chamber, two trumpeters on each side played a congratulatory flourish. The ushers who had led us so far, now took their stations on each side the door, and others, in more splendid habits, succeeded them in the office of conducting us. We now entered the anti-chamber, in which was stationed the regular guard of the palace. We were here saluted both by privates and officers, the Imperial Guard being considered as part of the household. From the anti-chamber we passed onwards through nearly a dozen most splendid apartments, and at length reached the presence-chamber. My eyes were instantly in search of the Emperor, who was at the farther extremity, surrounded by a numerous circle of officers and counsellors. The circle opened on our arrival, and withdrew behind the Emperor. The whole of our company now ranged themselves, the Ambassadors in front, and their several countrymen behind their respective Ministers. Bonaparte now advanced to the Imperial Ambassador, with whom, when present, he always begins the audience. I had now an opportunity to regard him attentively. His person is below the middle size, but well composed; his features regular, but in their _tout ensemble_ stern and commanding; his complexion sallow, and his general mien military. He was dressed very splendidly in purple velvet, the coat and waistcoat embroidered with gold bees, and with the grand star of the Legion of Honour worked into the coat. He passed no one without notice, and to all the Ambassadors he spoke once or twice. When he reached General Armstrong, he asked him, whether America could not live, without foreign commerce as well as France? and then added, without waiting for his answer, "There is one nation in the world which must be taught by experience, that her Merchants are not necessary to the existence of all other nations, and that she cannot hold us all in commercial slavery: England is only sensible in her compters." The audience took up little less than two hours, after which the Emperor withdrew into an adjoining apartment; and the company departed in the same order, and with the same appendages, as upon their entrance. CHAP. X. _Departure from Paris for the Loire--Breakfast at Palaiseau--A Peasant's Wife--Rambouillet--Magnificent Chateau--French Curé--Chartres--Difference of Old French and English Towns--Subterraneous Church--Curious Preservation of the Dead--Angers--Arrival at Nantes._ ON my first arrival at Paris, I had intended to remain there only till the following week; but the kind importunities of Mr. Younge and his family, induced me to consent to prolong my stay for some days, and an arrangement was at length made, which caused me most cheerfully to protract it still further. This arrangement was, that if I would remain in Paris till after the National Fêtes, Mr. Younge, his lady, and her niece, Mademoiselle St. Sillery, would form a travelling party, and accompany me in my tour along the banks of the Loire, and thence along the Southern Coast. As I had no other purpose but to see France, its scenery and its manners, nothing could possibly have fallen out more correspondent with my wishes. I shall here cursorily mention, that Mademoiselle St. Sillery, with the single exception of her aunt, was the handsomest woman I had yet seen in France. If I pass over the National Fêtes, it is because they differed nothing from those which preceded them, and which have been minutely detailed by every Traveller who has written his Tour. These national spectacles have nothing in them which rewards the trouble of pressing through the mob to see them. It consisted of nothing but a succession of buffooneries and fire-works. The fire-works were magnificent--all the other sports contemptible. In a word, I was so anxious to leave Paris, and to get into the woods and fields, that the bustle around me scarcely attracted my attention. At length, the morning of the 28th of July arrived, and after all due preparations, I had the long wished-for pleasure of seeing Mr. Younge's coach at the door, with its travelling appendages. Mr. Younge preferring to accompany me on horseback, the coach was left to the ladies. In this manner we left Paris at six o'clock on a lovely summer's morning, and in less than half an hour were three miles on the road to Chartres, which we hoped to reach to sleep. I had again occasion to observe, how much the environs of Paris differed from those of London. Scarcely had we reached our first stage (about seven miles), before every appendage of a metropolitan city had disappeared. With the single exception of the road, which still continued worthy of a great nation, the scenery and objects were as retired as in the most remote corner of England. This absence of commercial traffic has, however, one advantage--it adds much to the beauty and romance of the country. In England, the manners, habits, and dress of the capital, pervade to the remotest angle of the kingdom: there is little variety in passing from London to Penzance. On the other hand, in France, every Province has still its characteristic dress and manners; and you get but a few miles from Paris, before you find yourself amongst a new order of beings. We breakfasted at Palaiseau, a beautiful village, about twelve miles from Paris. The inn being dirty, and having no appearance of being in a situation to accommodate us to our wishes, Mr. Younge ordered the coach to drive to a small cottage at the further end of the village. Our party here dismounted; a small trunk, containing a breakfast equipage, was taken from the coach, and the table was covered in an instant. The woman of the house had been a servant of Mrs. Younge's, and married from the family; her husband was a petty farmer, and was out in his fields. Nothing could persuade Susette to sit in the presence of our ladies; but she was talkative in the extreme, and seemed to be much attached to Mrs. Younge, playing as it were with her hair as she waited behind her chair. To Mr. Younge's questions, whether she was happy, and how she liked her new state, she replied very carelessly, that her husband was as good as husbands usually are; that, indeed, he had an affair with another woman; but that he was gay, and not jealous, and therefore that she overlooked it. Whilst she was saying this, the latch of the door was raised, and a sturdy young peasant made his appearance; but seeing an unexpected company, drew back in some confusion. Mr. Younge cast a significant look at the ladies and Susette, whose looks explained that they were not without foundation. Such are the morals, or rather the manners, of the lower order of French wives. Gallantry is, in fact, as much in fashion, and as generally prevalent through all orders, as in the most corrupt æra of the monarchy--perhaps, indeed, more so; as religion, though manifestly reviving, has not yet recovered its former vigour. Having remounted our horses, and the ladies re-ascended into their coach, we continued our journey through a country continually changing. My observations on the road, undeceived me in a point of some importance. I had hitherto believed France to have been an open country, almost totally without enclosures, except the pales and ditches necessary to distinguish properties. This opinion had been confirmed by the appearances of the road from Calais to Paris. It was now, however, totally done away, as the country on each side of me was as thickly enclosed, as any of the most cultivated counties in England. Hereafter, let no traveller assert that France is a country of open fields; three-fourths of the kingdom is enclosed, even to the most minute divisions. The enclosures, indeed, have not the neatness of those of England; the hedges are rough and open, and there are few gates, and no stiles. The French farmers, however, have already began to adopt much of the English system in the management of their farms. According to the information of Mr. Younge, many of the emigrés having returned to France, have given some valuable instructions to the people in these important points; France is accordingly much better cultivated than hitherto. Mr. Younge had the politeness to answer my questions respecting the country through which we were passing, in the utmost possible detail; and as he himself had traversed France in all directions, and was not without some purpose of future settlement, his information was accurate and valuable. He gave me to understand that, with the single exception of the good enclosures, nothing could be so miserable as the system of agriculture along the whole road from Paris to Mans. The general quality of the soil is light and sandy, and exactly suited to the English system of alternate crops of corn and roots; yet on such a soil, the common course is no other than, fallow, wheat, barley, for nine years successively; after which the land is pared and burnt, and then suffered to be a fallow in weeds for another year, when the same course is recommenced. "Under such management," continued Mr. Younge, "you will not be surprised that the average produce of the province of Bretagne does not exceed twelve bushels of wheat, and eighteen of barley. Turnips they have no idea of; and as the proportion of cattle is very small, the land is necessarily still farther impoverished from want of manure. The rents are about 18 livres, or 15_s._ English; the price in purchase from 15_l._ to 18_l._ English. The size of the farms is generally about 80 acres English; they are usually held from year to year, but there are some leases. Having got rid of tithes, and the taxes being very moderate," said Mr. Younge, "the price of land in France, both as to rent or purchase, is certainly very moderate; and if we could but import English or American workmen, or bring the French labourers to English or American habits, no good farmer would hesitate a moment as to settlement in France. But the French labourers are obstinate in proportion to their ignorance, and without exception are the most ignorant workmen in the world. Nothing is to be done with them; and though the Emperor has issued a decree, by which foreigners settling with a view to agriculture or manufactures, and giving security that they will not leave the kingdom, may become denizens, I must still hesitate as to recommending a foreigner to seek a French naturalization." In this conversation, after a long but not wearisome journey, we reached Rambouillet. The trunk was again brought from the coach, and a table furnished with knives, spoons, and clean linen--a kind of essentials seldom to be seen in a French inn, and more particularly in such inns as we had reason to expect at some of our stages, in the course of our long tour. A servant had likewise been sent before, so that a tolerable dinner was already in a state of preparation. Being informed, however, that we had an hour still good, Mr. Younge and Mademoiselle St. Sillery insisted upon taking me to see the celebrated chateau in which Francis the First, breathed his last. Nothing can be more miserable, nothing more calculated to inspire melancholy, than the situation and approach to this immense and most disproportioned building. It is situated in a park, in the midst of woods and waters, and most unaccountably, the very lowest ground in a park of two thousand acres is chosen for its site. The approach to it from the village is by a long avenue, planted on both sides by double and treble rows of lofty trees, the tops of which are so broad and thick as almost to meet each other. This avenue opens into a lawn, in the centre of which is the chateau. It is an heavy and vast structure, entirely of brick, and with the turrets, arches, and corners, characteristic of the Gothic order. The property of it belongs at present to the Nation, that is to say, it was not sold amongst the other, confiscated estates; something of an Imperial establishment, therefore, is resident in the chateau, consisting of a company of soldiers, with two officers, and an housekeeper. One of the officers had the politeness to become our guide, and to lead us from room to room, explaining as he went whatever seemed to excite our attention. Louis the Fourteenth held his court in this castle for some years; and from respect to his memory, the apartment in which he slept and held his levee, is still retained in the same condition in which it was left by that Monarch. This chamber is a room nearly thirty yards in length by eighteen in width, and lofty in proportion: the windows like those of a church. On the further extremity is a raised floor, where stands the royal bed of purple velvet and gold, lined with white satin painted in a very superior style. The colours, both of the painting and the velvet, still remain; and two pieces of coarse linen are shewed as the royal sheets. The counterpane is of red velvet, embroidered as it were with white lace, and with a deep gold fringe round the edges: this is likewise lined with white satin, and marked at the corners with a crown and fleur de lys. On each side of the bed are the portraits of Louis the Fourteenth and Fifteenth, of Philip the Fourth of Spain, and of his Queen. The portrait of Louis the Fourteenth more peculiarly attracted my attention, having been mentioned by several historians to be the best existing likeness of that celebrated Monarch. If Louis resembled his picture, he was much handsomer than he is described to have been by the memoir-writers of his age: his countenance has an air of much haughtiness and self-confidence, but without any mixture of ill-humour. The chief peculiarity in his habit was a deep lace ruff, and a doublet of light blue, very nearly resembling the jacket of the English light cavalry. This portrait was taken when the King was in his twenty-eighth year, and therefore is probably a far more correct resemblance than those which were taken at a more advanced period--so true is the assertion, of the poet, that old men are all alike. Immediately over that line of the apartment where the raised floor terminates, is a gilded rod extending along the ceiling. When the King held his court at Rambouillet, a curtain only separated his chamber and the levee-room. In the latter room are several portraits of the Peers of France during the reign of Louis the Fifteenth, with those of some Spanish Grandees. We visited several other rooms, all of them magnificently furnished, and all the furniture apparently of the same æra. The grand saloon appeared to me to be the largest room I had ever seen; the floor is of white marble, as are likewise two ranges of Corinthian pillars on each side of the apartment. Its height, however, is not proportioned to its length, a defect which, added to its narrowness, gives it the air of a gallery rather than of a banquetting-room. We had not time enough to walk over the gardens; but, from a cursory view of them, did not much regret our loss. They appeared spacious enough; but so divided and intersected into plots, borders, narrow and broad walks, terraces, and flowerbeds in the shape of stars, as to resemble any thing but what would be called a garden in England and America. This style of gardening was introduced into France by Le Notre, and some centuries must yet pass away before the French gardeners will acquire a more correct taste. What would not English taste have effected with the capabilities of Rambouillet? A park of two thousand acres in front, and a forest of nearly thirty thousand behind--all this, in the hands of Frenchmen, is thrown away; the park is but a meadow, and the forest a neglected wood. Upon our return to dinner, we found the _Curé_ of the village in rapid conversation with Madame. The appearance of our equipage, consisting of four horses in the coach, and three riding horses, had attracted him to the inn; and Madame, having seen him, had invited him to join us at dinner. He was a pleasant little man, and related to us many traditional anecdotes of Louis the Fourteenth. This King was notoriously one of the most gallant of the race of Capet. "Whilst resident at Rambouillet," said the Curé, "being one day hunting, and separated from his suite, he fell in with two young girls, the daughters of the better kind of French farmers. The girls were nutting in the forest, and perfectly strangers to the King's person. Louis entered into conversation with them, and--" The good Curé's narrative was here interrupted by dinner, much to the disappointment of Mademoiselle St. Sillery, who entreated him to resume his narrative upon the disappearance of the first dish. "I should think, Angela," said Mrs. Younge, "that Monsieur Curé would continue it to more advantage in the coach. The gentleman has informed me," continued she, addressing herself to Mr. Younge, "that he has some business at Chartres; and thinking it would add much to our general pleasure, I have invited him to take the spare seat in our carriage." Mr. Younge could do no less than second this invitation, and our party was thus reinforced by the addition of a little gossiping French Curé. Monsieur Guygny, the name of this gentleman, was not however so much a Curé, as to be deficient in gallantry to the ladies, and Mademoiselle St. Sillery, as I thought, seemed to consider him as a valuable acquisition to our travelling suite; she re-ascended the coach with increased spirit, and the good Curé followed with true French agility. Thus is it with French manners. Upon inquiry from Mr. Younge I learnt, that not one of the party had ever seen or heard of Monsieur Guygny before they had now met at Rambouillet. I felt some curiosity as to the interrupted narrative, even in despite of the evident frivolity of the narrator. The arrangement of the party in the coach compelled me to hear it at second hand, and I found it less frivolous than I had anticipated: it was an amour between the King and a peasant's daughter, in which the King conducted himself in a manner as little excusable in a monarch, as in a more humble individual. The amour was at length discovered by the pregnancy of the unfortunate girl, who believed herself married to the King in the character of an officer of his suite, and who, upon discovering the deception, died of shame and grief. Her tomb is said to be still extant, and to be distinguished by a fleur de lys impressed on it by command of the King. The story is said to be well founded: be this as it may, our ladies seemed to have received it as gospel. We readied Chartres by sunset. Nothing could be more delightful than the approach to the town, which is situated upon the knoll of an hill, the houses intermixed with trees, and the wetting sun gilding the spires of the churches and convent. The town is divided into two parts by a small river; the further part was situated upon the ascent, the other part upon the banks of the river. On each side of the town are hills, covered with woods, from the midst of which were visible the gilded spires of convents and churches, whilst the intervening plains were covered with corn-fields. The peasantry, as we passed them, seemed clean, well-fed, and happy; we saw several groups of them enjoying themselves in the evening dance. Our carriage was overtaken by them more than once; they presented flowers and fruits to our ladies, and refused any return. Some of the younger women, though sun-burnt, were handsome; and many of them, from their fanciful dresses, resembled the cottagers as exhibited on the stage. The men, on the other hand, were a most ugly race of beings, diminutive in size, and with the features of an old baboon. Mr. Younge, indeed, in some degree accounted for this, by the information that the best men had been taken for the armies. Having taken our tea, and seen the necessary preparation for our beds, our ladies changed their dresses, and, attended by the Curé, sallied forth to the evening promenade still customary in all the French towns. Mr. Younge and myself availed ourselves of this opportunity to visit the curiosities of the town. I have frequently had occasion to remark, that the old French towns have a very prominent distinction. The inland towns of England, be their antiquity what it may, retain but little of their ancient form; from the necessary effects of a brisk trade, the several houses have so often changed owners, and the owners have usually been so substantial in their circumstances, that there is scarcely a house, perhaps, but what in twenty years has been rebuilt from its fundamental stone. It is not the same with the houses in the old towns of France. A French tradesman's house is like his stocking--he never thinks that he wants a new one, as long as he can in any way darn his old one; he never thinks of building a new wall, as long as he can patch his old one; he repairs his house piece-meal as it falls down: the repairs, therefore, are always made so as to match the breach. In this manner the original form of the house is preserved for some centuries, and, as philosophers say of the human body, retains its identity, though every atom of it may have been changed. It is thus with Chartres, one of the most ancient towns in France, which in every house bears evident proofs of its antiquity, the streets being in straight lines, and the houses dark, large, but full of small rooms. The town, as I have before said, is divided into two parts, by the river Eure, and thence, according to the French historians, was called _Autricum_ by the Romans. It is surrounded by a wall, and has nine gates, the greater part of them of stone, and of a very ancient architecture; they are all surmounted by a figure of the Holy Virgin, the former patroness of the city. The cathedral church, if the traditional accounts may be believed, was formerly a temple of the Druids, dedicated to the _Virgo Paritura_; and though this antiquity may be fairly disputed, the structure is evidently of the most remote ages. According to the actual records, it was burnt by lightning in the year of our Lord 1020, and was then rebuilt upon its ancient foundations, and according to its former form, by Fulbert, at that time the Bishop. It is thus, in every respect, the most ancient monument in France, and is well deserving of being visited by travellers. We were lost in astonishment as we descended from the upper church into a subterraneous one, extending under the whole space of the one above it, and having corresponding walls, choir, and even stalls. The bishops, chapter, and principal persons of the city, are here buried. From the cathedral church, we were conducted to the other curiosities of the city, one of which is well worthy of mention. This is a cave or vault in the parish church of St. André. Upon descending it, our guide removed successively the covers of six coffins, and desired us to examine the bodies. They consisted of four men and two women; the faces, arms, and breasts were naked, and had all the freshness as if dead only the preceding day. One of the men had the mark of a wound under his left breast; it seemed as if made by a pointed sword or pike, and was florid, red, and fresh. "These persons," said our guide, "as you may see by the inscriptions, have been buried from fifty to an hundred years; the wounded man was the Mayor of the town about sixty years since, and was wounded in an affray, of which wound he died." Upon receiving this information, I had the curiosity to examine the vault more accurately: it was walled all around, paved with stones closely cemented, and was evidently more than commonly dry. We remained at Chartres the whole of the following day; and on the morning of the next, still accompanied by the Curé, continued our journey to Le Mans, where we likewise remained a day, and thence proceeded for Angers. As our projected Tour along the Loire was to commence at Nantes, we were eager to gain that city, and indeed scarcely made use of our eyes, however invited, till we reached it. Mr. Younge and myself had an hour's walk over Angers; but as we saw it more in detail as we descended the Loire, in the progress of our future Tour, I shall say nothing of it in this place. Throughout the greater part of this road, as well as of that from Angers to Nantes, nothing could be more delightful than the scenery on both sides, and nothing better than the roads. From La Fleche to Angers, and thence to Ancennis, the country is a complete garden. The hills were covered with vines; every wood had its chateau, and every village its church. The peasantry were clean and happy, the children cheerful and healthy-looking, and the greater part of the younger women spirited and handsome. There was a great plenty of fruit; and as we passed through the villages, it was invariably brought to us, and almost as invariably any pecuniary return refused with a retreating curtsey. One sweet girl, a young peasant, with eyes and complexion which would be esteemed handsome even in Philadelphia, having made Mr. Younge and myself an offering of this kind, replied very prettily to our offer of money, that the women of La Fleche never sold either grapes or water; as much as to say, that the one was as plentiful as the other. Some of these young girls were dressed not only neatly, but tastily. Straw hats are the manufacture of the province; few of them, therefore, but had a straw bonnet, and few of these bonnets were without ribbons or flowers. We were most unexpectedly detained at Chantoce by an accident to our coach, which was three days before it was repaired. We the less, however, regretted our disappointment, as it rained incessantly, with thunder and lightning, throughout the whole of this time. The weather having cleared, our coach being repaired, and our spirits being renovated by the increased elasticity of the air, the preceding heat having been almost intolerable, we resumed our progress, and at length reached Nantes on or about the evening of the 1st of August. CHAP. XI. _Nantes--Beautiful Situation--Analogy of Architecture with the Character of its Age--Singular Vow of Francis the Second--Departure from Nantes--Country between Nantes and Angers--Angers._ THE plan of our Tour was, to descend the Loire from Nantes, and thence traversing its banks through nearly two-thirds of its course, cross it by La Charité, and continue our journey in the first place for Languedoc, and thence across that delightful province into Provence, and along the shores of the Mediterranean. Chance in some degree varied our original design; but it will be seen in the sequel, that we executed more of it than we had any reason to anticipate. A traveller in France cannot reckon upon either his road, or his arrival, with as much certainty as in England. Some of the cross roads are absolutely impassable; and the French gentry of late have become so fond of jaunts of pleasure, that if a travelling family should visit them in passing, they will have great difficulty to get away without some addition to their party, and some consequent variation from their projected road. We remained at Nantes three days, during which time I had leisure enough to visit the town and the neighbourhood. Nantes is one of the most ancient cities in France; it is the _Condivunum_ of the Romans, and the _Civitas Namnetum_ of Cæsar. It is mentioned by several Latin writers as a town of moat considerable population under the Roman prefects; and there is every appearance, in several parts of the city, that it has declined much from its original importance. It is still, however, in every respect, a noble city, and, unlike most commercial cities, is as beautifully as it is advantageously situated. It is built on the ascent and summit of an hill, at the foot of which is the Loire, almost as broad, and ten times more beautiful, than the Thames. In the middle of the stream, opposite the town, are several islets, on which are houses and gardens, and which, as seen by the setting sun, about which time there are dancing parties, and marquees ornamented with ribbons, have a most pleasing effect. The town, however, has one defect, which the French want the art or the industry to remove: the Loire is so very shallow near the town, that vessels of any magnitude are obliged to unload at some miles above it. This is a commercial inconvenience, which is not compensated by one of the finest quays in Europe, extending nearly a mile in length, and covered with buildings almost approaching to palaces. If Spain, as the proverb says, have bridges where there is no water, I have seen repeated instances in France where there are quays without trade. This is not, however, the case with Nantes: it has still a brisk interior commerce, and the number of new houses are sufficient proofs that its inhabitants increase in opulence. Nantes was the residence and the burying place of the ancient Dukes of Bretagne; in the town and neighbourhood, therefore, are many of the relics of these early sovereigns. On an hill to the eastward is the castle in which these princes used to hold their court: it is still entire, though built nearly nine hundred years ago; and the repairs having been made in the character of the original structure, it remains a most perfect specimen of the architecture of the age in which it was built. One room, the hall or banquetting-room, as in all Gothic castles, is of an immense size, and lofty in proportion. The ornaments likewise partake of the character of the age; they are chiefly carved angels, croziers, and other sacred appendages. A remark here struck me very forcibly, that many curious conclusions as to the characters, manners, and even of the detail of domestic economy of men in the early ages, might be deduced from the remains of their architecture. I have read very curious and detailed histories founded only on the figures on medals; the early history of Greece, and that of the lower empire of Rome, have scarcely a better foundation. Now, why may not the same use be made of architecture? Is not the religion of our ancestors legible in the very ornaments of their house? Are not their excessive ignorance and credulity equally visible in the griffins, sphinxes, dragons, mermaids, and chimeras, which are so frequently carved in Gothic roofs, and which are so absurdly mistaken for angels and devils? The analogy might be extended much farther. The monument of Francis the Second, Duke of Bretagne, and father to Anne of Bretagne, the Queen of France, is one of the most magnificent of the kind in France, and from this circumstance, I suppose, has been suffered to survive the Revolution undefaced. This monument was the work of Michael Colomb, and is one of those works of art which, like the Apollo Belvidere, is sufficient of itself to immortalize its artist. The figures are a curious mixture of the wives and children of the deceased Duke, with angels, cherubs, &c.; but this was the taste of the age, and must not be imputed to Michael Colomb. The heart of Anne is likewise buried in a silver urn in the same vault. The inscription on the tomb relates a vow made by Francis to the Holy Virgin, that if he should obtain a child by his second marriage, he would dedicate a golden image to the Virgin. The prince obtained the child, and the image was made and dedicated. It would be an injustice, in this account of Nantes, not to mention the inn called the Hotel of Henry the Fourth. It is one of the largest and most magnificently furnished in Europe. It makes up 60 beds, and can take in 100 horses, and an equal proportion of servants. The rooms are let very cheap, considering their quality: two neat rooms may be had for four shillings a day; and a traveller may live very comfortably in the house, and be provided with every thing, for about two guineas per week. Horses are charged at the rate of two shillings only for a day and night. And one thing which ought not to be forgotten, the beds are made, and ladies are attended, by female servants, all of whom are neat, and many of them very pretty girls. The contrary practice, which is almost universal in France, is one of the most unpleasant circumstances to a man educated in old English habits; for my own part, I never could divest myself of my first disgust, at the sight of a huge, bearded, raw-boned fellow, having access to the chamber at all hours, and making the beds, and removing any of the usual appendages of a chamber, in the presence of the ladies. Having seen enough of Nantes, and exchanged our coach for a kind of open barouche, particularly adapted for the French cross roads, being very narrow, and composed entirely of cane, with removable wheels, so as to take to pieces in an instant, we resumed the line of our Tour, and took the road along the Loire for Ancennis. It was a beautiful morning, and there being a fair at Mauves, a village on the road, nothing could be more gay than our journey at its commencement. I have forgotten to mention, that Mr. Younge and myself, at the proposal of the ladies, had sent our horses forwards, and therefore had taken our seats in the landau. The conversation of the ladies was so pleasing and so intelligent, that hereafter I adopted this proposal as often as it was offered, and as seldom as possible had recourse to my horse. Mauves, which was our first stage, is most romantically situated on a hill, which forms one of the banks of the Loire. The country about it, in the richness of its woods, and the verdure of its meadows, most strongly reminded me of England; but I know of no scenery in England, which together with this richness and variety of woodland and meadow, has such a beautiful river as the Loire to complete it in all the qualities of landscape. On each side of this river, from Nantes, are hills, which are wooded to the summit, and there are very few of these wood-tufted hills, which have not their castle or ruined tower. In some of these ancient buildings, there was scarcely any thing remaining but the two towers which guarded the grand portal; but others, being more durably constructed, were still habitable, though still retaining their ancient forms. I have frequently had occasion to observe, that the French gentry, in making their repairs, invariably follow the style of the building; whether through natural taste, or because they repair by piece-meal, and therefore do only what is wanted, I know not. But there is one necessary consequence from this practice, which is, that the remains of antiquity are more perfect in France than in any other kingdom in Europe. From Mauves to Oudon, where we dined, the country is still very thickly wooded and inclosed; the properties evidently very small, and therefore innumerable cottages and small gardens. These cottages usually consist of only one floor, divided into two rooms, and a shed behind. They were generally situated in orchards, and fronted the Loire. They had invariably one or two large trees, which are decorated with ribbons at sunset, as the signal for the dance, which is invariably observed in this part of France. Some of the peasant girls, which came out to us with fruit, were very handsome, though brown. The children, which were in great numbers, looked healthy, but were very scantily clad. None of them had more than a shift and a petticoat, and some of them girls of ten or twelve years of age, only a shift, tied round the waist by a coloured girdle. As seen at some distance, they reminded me very forcibly of the figures in landscape pictures. We remained at Oudon till near sunset, when we resumed our road to Ancennis, where we intended to sleep. As this was only a distance of seven miles, we took it very leisurely, sometimes riding, and sometimes walking. The evening was as beautiful as is usual in the southern parts of Europe at this season of the year. The road was most romantically recluse, and so serpentine as never to be visible beyond an hundred yards. The nightingales were singing in the adjoining woods. The road, moreover, was bordered on each side by lofty hedges, intermingled with fruit-trees, and even vines in full bearing. At every half mile, a cross road, branching from the main one, led into the recesses of the country, or to some castle or villa on the high grounds which overlook the river. At some of these bye-ways were very curious inscriptions, painted on narrow boards affixed to a tree. Such were, "The way to 'My Heart's Content' is half a league up this road, and then turn to the right, and keep on till you reach it." And another: "The way to 'Love's Hermitage' is up this lane, till you come to the cherry-tree by the side of a chalk-pit, where there is another direction." Mademoiselle Sillery informed me, that these kind of inscriptions were characteristic of the banks of the Loire. "The inhabitants along the whole of the course of this river," said she, "have the reputation, from time immemorial, of being all native poets; and the reputation, like some prophecies, has perhaps been the means of realizing itself. You do not perhaps know, that the Loire is called in the provinces the River of Love; and doubtless its beautiful banks, its green meadows, and its woody recesses, have what the musicians would call a symphony of tone with that passion." I have translated this sentence verbally from my note-book, as it may give some idea of Mademoiselle Sillery. If ever figure was formed to inspire the passion of which she spoke, it was this lady. Many days and years must pass over before I forget our walk on the green road from Oudon to Ancennis--one of the sweetest, softest scenes in France. We entered the forest of Ancennis as the sun was setting. This forest is celebrated in every ancient French ballad, as being the haunt of fairies, and the scene of the ancient archery of the provinces of Bretagne and Anjou. The road through it was over a green turf, in which the marks of a wheel were scarcely visible The forest on each side was very thick. At short intervals, narrow footpaths struck into the wood. Our carriage had been sent before to Ancennis, and we were walking merrily on, when the well-known sound of the French horn arrested our steps and attention. Mademoiselle Sillery immediately guessed it to proceed from a company of archers; and in a few moments her conjecture was verified by the appearance of two ladies and a gentleman, who issued from one of the narrow paths. The ladies, who were merely running from the gentleman, were very tastily habited in the favourite French dress after the Dian of David; whilst the blue silk jacket and hunting cap of the gentleman gave him the appearance of a groom about to ride a race. Our appearance necessarily took their attention; and after an exchange of salutes, but in which no names were mentioned on either side, they invited us to accompany them to their party, who were refreshing themselves in an adjoining dell. "We have had a party at archery," said one of them, "and Madame St. Amande has won the silver bugle and bow. The party is now at supper, after which we go to the chateau to dance. Perhaps you will not suffer us to repent having met you by refusing to accompany us." Mademoiselle Sillery was very eager to accept this invitation, and looked rather blank when Mrs. Younge declined it, as she wished to proceed on her road as quickly as possible. "You will at least accompany us, merely to see the party."--"By all means," said Mademoiselle Sillery. "I must really regret that I cannot," said Mrs. Younge. "If it must be so," resumed the lady who was inviting us, "let us exchange tokens, and we may meet again." This proposal, so perfectly new to me, was accepted: the fair archers gave our ladies their pearl crescents, which had the appearance of being of considerable value. Madame Younge returned something which I did not see: Mademoiselle Sillery gave a silver Cupid, which had served her for an essence-bottle. The gentleman then shaking hands with us, and the ladies embracing each other, we parted mutually satisfied. "Who are these ladies?" demanded I. "You know them as well as we do," replied Mademoiselle Sillery. "And is it thus," said I, "that you receive all strangers indiscriminately?"--"Yes," replied she; "all strangers of a certain condition. Where they are evidently of our own rank, we know of no reserve. Indeed, why should we? It is to general advantage to be pleased, and to please each other."--"But you embraced them, as if you really felt an affection for them."--"And I did feel that affection for them," said she, "as long as I was with them. I would have done them every service in my power, and would even have made sacrifices to serve them."--"And yet if you were to see them again, you would perhaps not know them."--"Very possibly," replied she. "But I can see no reason why every affection should be necessarily permanent. We never pretend to permanence. We are certainly transient, but not insincere." In this conversation we reached Ancennis, a village on a green, surrounded by forests. Some of the cottages, as we saw them by moon-light, seemed most delightfully situated, and the village had altogether that air of quietness and of rural retreat, which characterizes the scenery of the Loire. Our horses having preceded us by an hour or more, every thing was prepared for us when we reached our inn. A turkey had been put down to roast, and I entered the kitchen in time to prevent its being spoilt by French cookery. Mademoiselle Sillery had the table provided in an instant with silver forks and table-linen. Had a Parisian seen a table thus set out at Ancennis, without knowing that we had brought all these requisites with us, he would not have credited his senses. The inns in France along the banks of the Loire, are less deficient in substantial comforts than in these ornamental appendages. Poultry is every where cheap, and in great plenty; but a French inn-keeper has no idea of a table-cloth, and still less of a clean one. He will give you food and a feather-bed, but you must provide yourselves with sheets and table-cloths. Our accommodations, with respect to lodging for the night, were not altogether so uncomfortable: the house had indeed two floors, but there were no stairs; so that we had to ascend by a ladder, and that not the best of its kind. There being, moreover, but two rooms, the one occupied by the landlord, his wife, and two grown girls, there was some difficulty as to the disposal of Mademoiselle Sillery and myself. It was at length arranged, that all the females in the house should sleep in one room, and all the males in another. When I came to take possession of my bed, I found that Mrs. Younge had contrived to exempt her husband from this arrangement: he was now sleeping by the side of the handsomest woman in France, whilst I was lying at one end of a dirty room, the other being occupied by the snoring landlord. Fatigue, however, according to the proverb, is better than a bed of down; I accordingly soon fell asleep, and Mademoiselle Sillery was not absent from my dreams. I should not forget to mention, as another specimen of French manners, that I learned from this lady on the following day, that she had slept with her sister and her husband. Such are French manners. On the following morning, induced by the example of the landlord, and by the beauty of the rising sun, I rose early, and accompanied by my host, walked into the fields round the village. The environs of Ancennis appeared to me extremely beautiful; whether from the mere effect of novelty, or that they really were so, I know not. Some of the neater cottages were situated in gardens very carefully cultivated, and so much in the style of England, that, but for some characteristic frivolities, I could scarcely believe myself in France. In every garden, or orchard, I invariably observed one tree distinguished above the rest; it had usually a seat around its trunk, and where its top was large enough, a railed seat, or what is called in America a look-out, amongst its branches. I had the curiosity to ascend to some of these, for the garden gates were invariably only latched, and small pieces of wood were nailed to the trunk, so as to assist the ascent of the women. The branches, which formed the look-out, were carved with the names of the village beauties, and in one of the seats I found a French novel, and a very pretty paper work-box. I saw enough to conclude, that Ancennis was not without the characteristic French elegance; and I must once for all say, that the manners of Marmontel are founded in nature, and that the daughters of the yeomanry and humbler farmers in France have an elegance, a vivacity, and a pleasantry, which is no where to be found out of France. On my return I found Mademoiselle Sillery at the breakfast table; and in answer to her inquiries as to the object of my walk, informed her of my observations. She replied, that they were very well founded, and added a reason for it which seemed to me very satisfactory. "The French girls," said she, "all at least who learn to read, are formed to this elegance and softness by the very elements of their education; their class-book is Marmontel, and La Belle Assemblée, the last, one of the prettiest novels in France. They are thus taught love with their letters, and they improve in gallantry as they improve in reading; and I will venture to say," continued this elegant girl, "that by this method of instruction we make a great earned where there is a love-story at the end of it." We shortly afterwards resumed our progress, and passed through a country of the same kind as on the preceding day, alternate hill and valley. The Arno, as described by the Tuscan poets, for I have never seen it, must bear a strong resemblance to the Loire from Ancennis to Angers; nothing can be more beautiful than the natural distribution of lawn, wood, hill and valley, whilst the river, which borders this scenery, is ever giving it a new form by its serpentine shape. The favourite images in the landscapes of the ancient painters here meet the eye almost every league: cattle resting under the shade, and attentively eyeing the river, whilst the country around is of a nature and character, which the fancy of a poet would select for the haunt of Dian and her huntresses. The peasantry, as many of them as we met, seemed to have that life and spirits the sure result of comfort; if they were not invariably well clothed, they seemed at least sufficiently so for the climate of the province. The younger women had dark complexions and shining black eyes; their shapes were generally good, and their air and vivacity, even in the lowest ranks, such as peculiarly characterize the French people. If addressed, they were rather obliging than respectful, and had all of them a compliment on their tongues' end. It was not indeed easy to get rid of them with a mere word or question. I must add, however, that I am here describing their manner towards Mr. Younge and myself. Towards the ladies it was somewhat different. When Madame or Mademoiselle spoke to them, they seemed modest and respectful in the extreme; to the latter, indeed, they were more familiar, and many of them, on giving the adieu after a ten minutes' conversation, very prettily embraced her, gently putting their arms round her neck, and kissing the left shoulder; a form of salutation very common in the French provinces. In a word, the more I saw of the French character, the more did I wish that the more weighty and valuable qualities of the English and American character, their honesty and their sincerity, were accompanied by the gentleness, the grace, the affectionate benevolence, which characterise the French manners. Ingrande, where we dined, is the last town of the province of Bretagne, on the Loire, and thenceforwards we had entered Anjou. It is a town of above three hundred houses, built round the base of a sandy hillock, the church being on the hill. The houses are intermingled with trees, and the country very prettily planted. It is not to be expected that the habitations in such a town could be any thing better than cottages; but they were tolerably clean, and not very ruinous. We had now passed through the province of Bretagne as it lies along the Loire, and it is but justice to say, that in point of natural scenery, in the wildness and tranquillity which constitute what I should term the romance of landscape, it exceeds every thing in Europe. Along the banks of the Loire, France has meadows, the verdure of which will not sink in comparison with those of England. Along the banks of the Loire, moreover, France has woodlands, and lawns, and an, intermixture of wood and water, and of every possible variety of surface, which no country in the world but France can produce. The Loire is perhaps the only river in Europe which is bordered by hills and hillocks, and which, in so long a course, so seldom passes through a mere dead level. Accordingly, from the earliest times of the French monarchy, the rising grounds of the Loire have been selected for the sites of castles, monasteries, abbeys, and chateaux, and as the possessors have superadded Art to Nature, this natural beauty of the grounds has been improving from age to age. The Monks have been immemorially celebrated for their skill as well in the choice of situations as in their improvement of natural advantages; their leisure, and their taste, improved by learning, have naturally been employed on the scenes of their residence, on their vineyards and their gardens. Innumerable are the still remaining vestiges of their taste and of their industry, and I have a most sincere satisfaction in thus doing them justice; in thus bearing my testimony, that, so far from being the drones of the land, there is no part of a province which they possessed, but what they have improved. The scenery along the Loire has a character which I should think could not be found in any other kingdom, and on any other river. Towns, windmills, steeples, ancient castles and abbeys still entire, and others with nothing remaining but their lofty walls; hills covered with vines, and alternate woods and corn-fields--altogether form a landscape, or rather a chain of landscapes, which remind one of a poem, and successively refresh, delight, animate, and exalt the imagination. Is there any one oppressed with grief for the loss of friends, or what is still more poignantly felt, for their ingratitude and unkindness? Let him traverse the banks of the Loire; let him appeal from man to Nature, from a world of passion and vice, to scenes of groves, meads, and flowers. His must be no common sorrow who would not forget it on the banks of the Loire. After a short rest at Chantoce, a village of the same rank and character with Mauves, we arrived at Angers, where we proposed to remain till the following Monday, having arrived there on the Thursday evening. We had scarcely reached the inn, before a gentleman of the name of Mons. de Corseult, to whom we had sent forwards our letters from Nantes, addressed himself to us, and insisted that we should continue our journey to his house, about half a mile on the other side of the town. The ladies at length acceded to this proposal, on the condition that our horses, servants, &c. should be sent back to the inn, and that ourselves only should be the visitors of Mons. de Corseult. CHAP. XII. _Angers--Situation--Antiquity and Face of the Town--Grand Cathedral--Markets--Prices of Provisions--Public Walks--Manners and Diversions of the Inhabitants--Departure from Angers--Country between Angers and Saumur--Saumur._ WE had intended to have reposed ourselves at Angers, but Mons. de Corseult, having been very lately married, had his house daily full of visitors, and as we were strangers, parties were daily made for us. Whatever time I could steal from this unintermitting round, I employed in walks to the town, and in the neighbourhood. Mr. Younge generally accompanied me, but I was sometimes fortunate enough to be honoured with Mademoiselle St. Sillery, an happiness of which I should have been more sensible, had it not usually tempted the intrusion of some coxcomb, who converted a tour of information into a mere lounge of levity and senseless gallantry. How miserable would have been an English girl, of the beauty and wit of this young lady, with such gallants! Or is it with ladies as with the poet in Don Quixotte--are love and flattery sweet, though they may come from a fool and a madman? I should hope not, or at least with Mademoiselle St. Sillery. In despite, however, of these intrusions, we had two or three pleasant walks through Angers, in which the curiosity of Mademoiselle was of much use to me. He must be less than a man, who could be wearied even by the most minute interrogations of an handsome woman. Mademoiselle St. Sillery, as if resolved to be ignorant of nothing, put the most endless questions to those who accompanied us about the town; and with true French gallantry, the answers even exceeded the questions. I had little to do but to look and to listen. Angers is situated in a plain, which, in the distance being fringed with wood, and being very fertile in corn and meadow, wants nothing of the richness and beauty which seem to characterize this part of the province. It is parted into two by a river called the Mayenne, which is a small branch of the Loire, and again falls into the main river about five miles from the town. The French, like the Dutch, seemed to be peculiarly attached to this kind of site, having a river run through their towns, one half being built on one side, and one on the other. The water of the Mayenne is so harsh, that it cannot be drunk or used for cookery, and were it not for the proximity of the Loire, and some aqueducts, Angers, though built on a river, must necessarily become desolate for want of water. The same improvidence is visible in many towns in France, and still more in Holland. The walls round this city were built by King John of England, and though six centuries, have elapsed, are still nearly entire. Part of them were indeed demolished by Louis the Eighth, but they were restored in their original form by his successor, and remain a proof of the durable style of building of that Age (1230). The castle of Angers was built at the same time. It is situated on a rock which overhangs the river, and though now in decay, has still a very striking appearance. The walls are lofty and broad, the towers numerous, and the fosses deep. They are cut out of the solid rock, and must have required long and ingenious labour. The cathedral of Anjou, the inner part of which exactly resembles Westminster Hall, is chiefly celebrated for containing the monument of Margaret of Anjou, the queen of Henry the Sixth of England. This woman was in every respect a perfect heroine, and worthy of her illustrious father, René, King of Sicily. She was taken prisoner in the battle of Tewkesbury, and immediately committed, to the Tower, from which she was ransomed by Louis the Eleventh, of France. This King, however, who was never known to forget himself, and act otherwise than selfishly, had a very different motive than humanity for this apparent generosity: having gained possession of the person of Margaret, he immediately rendered her his own prisoner, and caused her father to be informed that if he wished to ransom her, he must give up all his hereditary rights to the duchies of Anjou and Lorrain. So tenderly did René love his daughter, that he made the sacrifice without hesitation. The history of this princess, as collected from the French memoirs, has an air rather of romance than of real history. Though the English historians all concur in her praise, they seem to know very little of her. A remark here suggested itself: that the best of the English historians seem totally to have overlooked all the French records, and to have confined themselves to the writers of their own country. The general appearance of Angers does not correspond with the magnificence of its walls, its castle, and its cathedral. Its size is respectable; there are six parish churches, besides monasteries and chapters, and the inhabitants are estimated at 50,000. The streets, however, are very narrow, and the houses mean, low, and huddled: there is the less excuse for this, as ground is plentiful and cheap; there is scarcely a good house inhabited within the walls. The towns in France differ in this respect very considerably from those in England: in a principal town in England you will invariably find a considerable number of good houses, where retired merchants and tradesmen live in the ease and elegance of private gentlemen. There is nothing of this kind in the French towns. Every house is a shop, a warehouse, a magazine, or a lodging house. I do not believe that there is one merchant of independent fortune now resident within the walk of Angers. This, indeed, may perhaps arise from the difference in the general character of the two kingdoms: in England, and even in America, there are few tradesmen long resident in a town, without having obtained a sufficiency to retire; whilst the French towns being comparatively poor, and their trade comparatively insignificant, the French tradesman can seldom do more than obtain a scanty subsistence by his business. In all the best French towns, the tradesmen have more the air of chandlers than of great dealers. There are absolutely no interior towns in France like Norwich, Manchester, and Birmingham. In some of their principal manufacturing places, there may indeed be one or two principal men and respectable houses; but neither these men nor their houses are of such number and quality, as to give any dignity or beauty to their towns beyond mere places of trade. The French accordingly, judging from what they see at home, have a very contemptible idea of the term merchant; and if a foreign traveller of this class should wish to be admitted into good company, let him pass by any other name than that of a marchand or negociant. To say all in a word, this class of foreigners are specifically excluded from admission at court. I visited the market, which in Angers, and I believe throughout France, is held on Sunday. This is one of the circumstances from which a foreigner would be very apt to form a wrong estimate of the French character, which now, whatever it might be, is decidedly religious. But the Roman Catholics have ever considered Sunday as at once a day of festivity and a holiday; they have no scruple, therefore, to sing and dance, and to hold their markets on this day; all they abstain from is the heavier kind of work--labour in the fields and warehouses. A French town, therefore, is never so gay as on a Sunday. I inquired the prices of provisions. Beef and mutton are about 2_d._ per pound; a fowl 5_d._; and turkies, when in season, from 18_d._ to 2_s_.; bread is about 1-1/2_d._ a pound; and vegetables, greens, &c. cheap to a degree. A good house in Angers about six Louis per year, and a mansion fit for a prince (for there are some of them, but without inhabitants) from forty to fifty Louis, including from thirty to forty acres of land without the walls. I have no doubt but that any one might live at Angers on 250 Louis per annum, as well as in England for four times the amount. And were I to live in France, I know no place I should prefer to the environs of this town. The climate, in this part of France, is delightful beyond description. The high vault of heaven is clad in ethereal blue, and the sun sets with a glory which is inconceivable to those who have only lived in more northerly regions; for week after week this weather never varies, the rains come on at once, and then cease till the following season. The tempests which raise the fogs from the ocean have no influence here, and they are strangers likewise to that hot moisture which produces the pestilential fevers in England and America. There are sometimes indeed heavy thunder storms, when the clouds burst, and pour down torrents of rain: but the storm ceases in a few minutes, and the heavens, under the influence of a powerful sun, resume their beauty and serenity. The soil in the neighbourhood of Angers (I speak still with reference to its aptitude for the residence of a foreigner, for I confess this dream hung very strongly on my imagination) is fertile to a degree, and as far as I could understand, is very cheap. Every house, as I have before said, without the walls, has its garden, and all kind of fruits and vegetables were in the greatest plenty. The fences around the gardens of the villages were very fantastically interwoven with the wreaths of the vine, which would sometimes creep up the trunk of a tree, and sometimes hang over the casements. Nothing can be more delightful than the vine when flourishing in all this unbridled wildness of its natural luxuriance, and as if justly sensible of its beauty, the French cottagers convert it to the double purpose of ornament or utility. Whilst travelling along, my spirits frequently felt the cheering influence of the united images of natural beauty and of human happiness. Often have I seen the weary labourer sitting under a sunny wall, his head shaded by the luxuriant branches of the vine, the purple fruit of which furnished him with his simple meal. Bread and fruit is the constant summer dinner of the peasantry of the Loire. Upon this subject, the general plenty of the country, I should not have forgotten to mention, that in the proper season partridges and hares are in great plenty, and being fed on the heath lands of Bretagne and Anjou, are said to have the best flavour. An Englishman will scarcely believe, that whilst he is paying 12_s._ a couple for fowls, half a guinea for a turkey, seven shillings for a goose, &c. &c.: whilst such I say are the market prices in London, the dearest price in the market of Angers is 10_d._ a couple for fowls, a shilling a couple for ducks, 1_s._ 6_d._ for a goose. As to the quality of these provisions, the veal and the mutton being fed in the meadows on the Loire, are entirely as good as in England; but the beef, not being in general use except for soups and stews, is of a very inferior kind. Wood is the only article which is dear; but an Englishman in this country would doubtless rise above the prejudices around him, and burn coal, of which there is a great plenty in every part of France. I must not take leave of Angers without mentioning, that it was a favourite station of the Romans, who, like the monks, always consulted natural beauty in the site of the towns and permanent encampments. Many remnants of this people are still visible: some of the arches of an aqueduct are yet entire, and without a guide speak their own origin. Accompanied by Mr. Younge and Monsieur de Corseult, I visited the Caserne and the National School. The Caserne was formerly a Riding School of general reputation, and is one of the most superb buildings of the kind in the world. Peter the Great of Russia was here instructed in the equestrian art, and many other illustrious men are on its list of scholars. The National School has nothing worthy of peculiar remark. Angers before the Revolution was celebrated as a seat of literature: its university, founded in 1246, was only inferior to that of Paris; and its Academy of Belles Lettres, founded in 1685, was the first after that of the Nation. The chapel of the university is now a gallery for paintings. The professors of these literary institutions have very competent salaries: the sciences taught are Mathematics, Medicine, Natural and Experimental Philosophy, and the Fine Arts. The best quality, however, of these institutions is that the instructions, such as they are, are gratuitous; the doors are open to all who choose to enter them; those only who can afford it are expected to pay. Angers, being so near La Vendée, suffered much by the Chouans, and still retains many melancholy traces of the siege which it had to maintain. The people, with feelings which are better conceived than expressed, spoke with great reluctance on their past sufferings: there seems indeed one great maxim at present current in France, and this is to forget the past as if it had never happened. A foreigner is sure to offend, who interrogates them upon any thing connected with the horrible Revolution. Nothing can be more delightful than the environs of Angers, whether for those who walk or ride. The country is thickly enclosed, and on each side of the river varied with hill and dale, with woodland and meadow. The villages and small towns along the whole bank of the Loire are numerous, and invariably picturesque and beautiful. In the vicinity of Angers the vineyards are very frequent, and cover the hills, and even the valleys, with their luxuriance; nothing can be more beautiful than the natural festoons which are formed by their long branches as they project over the road, and when the grapes are ripe, the landscape wants nothing of perfect beauty. The peasantry, the Vignerons as they are called, live in the midst of their vineyards: their habitations are usually excavated out of the rocks and small hillocks on which they grow their vines, and as these hillocks are usually composed of strata of chalk, the cottages are dry and comfortable. Some of them, as seen from the road, being covered even over their doors by the vine branches, had the appearance of so many nests, and as many of them as had two stories, were picturesque in the extreme. Upon the whole, the condition of the peasantry in this part of France is very comfortable: they are temperate, unceasingly gay, and sufficiently clad; their wants are few, and therefore their labour, added to the fertility of the soil, is sufficient to satisfy them. They repine not for luxuries of which they can have no notion. We took leave of Monsieur de Corseult on the Wednesday instead of the Monday, but he insisted upon accompanying us on horseback half way to Saumur, where we proposed sleeping. The ladies could not but accept this obliging offer, and the information which Mons. de Corseult was enabled to give us, rendered his society equally agreeable to Mr. Younge and myself. We learned from this gentleman, that though Anjou is reputed to have a great proportion of heath and barren land, it does not yield to any province in France either for beauty or fertility. As much of it as lays along the Loire, I have already had occasion to describe, and what we were now passing through was not a whit behind it. Every village was most romantically situated; some in orchards, some in fenced gardens, some in corn-fields, and others in vales and in recesses on each side of the road. The corn being ripe, added much to the beauty of the landscape. In some fields the reapers were at work, and the harvest was going on with true French gaiety. Sometimes we would see them dancing in the field; sometimes sitting round some central tree sporting and gamboling with the women and girls. I never saw a scene in England which could enter into comparison with a French harvest. I was sorry, however, to see that the women had more than their due share of the labour; they reaped, bound, and loaded. Some of the elder women were accordingly very coarse, but the girls were spirited, and pleasing. They nodded to us whenever we caught their eyes, and if we stopt our horses, would come to us, at whatever distance, as if to satisfy our inquiries. We happened to pass an estate which was for sale, and the house being at hand, inquired the price and particulars. There were six hundred acres of land, a good house, and the purchase-money was five thousand pounds English. Four hundred acres were arable, the other wood and heath. In England, the price of such an estate would have been at least twenty thousand pounds. The land, though stony, was good, and under the hands of a tolerable farmer, might have cleared the purchase-money in five years. There was a trout stream and fish-ponds, and the whole country was even infested with game. The chateau itself would certainly have required some repairs; it was large and rambling, and seemed to have more wood than brick. The land, however, was richly worth the money four times over. We reached Saumur very late in the evening; it is a small, but very pretty town, on the southern bank of the Loire. There are here two bridges over the river; the one from the northern shore to an island in the middle of the river; the other from the island to the southern shore. Saumur was formerly a fortified city, and though the fortifications are now neglected and in perfect ruin, it still maintains its rank as a military town, and the names of travellers are formally required, and formally registered. The inn at which we put up was very comfortable; but the beds were so scented with lavender as to prevent me from sleeping. Here likewise, I had the happiness of being again waited upon by females. A young woman, the daughter of the landlord, not only lighted me to my room, but took her seat at the window, and retained it till she saw that I was in bed. The French women have none of that bashful modesty which characterises the women of England and America. Before getting into bed I was about to close a door, which I perceived half open at the extremity of the room opposite to that occupied by my bed; but Felice prevented me, by informing me that her sister and herself were to sleep there, and as a further proof, shewing me the bed. "Then I must leave my own chamber-door open," said I. "Certainly," said she, "if you are not afraid of my sister and me: I have only to see if Madame and Mademoiselle are in want of any thing, and then I shall come to bed." "Where does Mademoiselle sleep?" said I. "In the same chamber with Monsieur and Madame; it is a double-bedded room, on the first floor, fronting the road; you might have observed the casements of it shaded with the barberry tree. But you seem curious as to Mademoiselle. Perhaps there is a _petite affaire_ of the heart between you. Well, Heaven bless Monsieur, and may you dream that you are walking with your love in the corn-fields!" Saying this, the sprightly girl left me with the characteristic trip of French gaiety. I had the curiosity to remain awake till her sister and herself passed through my chamber to their own. The girls laughed as they went through the room, and had not even the modesty (for so I must call it) to close their own door. It remained a third part open during the whole night; and as they talked in bed, they prevented my sleep. One of these young women might be twenty; the other, though tall, could not be more than fourteen. I rose early in the morning with the purpose of a walk in the fields around the town, and finding Felice was going to fetch some milk from a village about half a mile distant, I accompanied her. It is needless to say that she played off all the coquetries which are natural to French girls in whatever station. By dint of frequent questions, however, I collected from her some useful information. I had adopted it as a rule, to obtain information on three points in every French town or village where I might happen to stop--the price of provisions, the price of land, and the price of house-rent. The price of provisions at Saumur, as I learned from this girl, was very cheap: beef, not very good, that is, not very fat, about 1-1/2_d._ (English) per pound; mutton and veal about 2_d._;--two fowls 8_d._; two ducks 10_d._; geese and turkies from 1_s._ 6_d._ to 2_s._ 6_d._.;--fuel, as much as would serve three fires for the year, about 5_l._;--a house of two stories and garrets, two rooms in front and two in back in each story, such being the manner in which they are built, a passage running through the middle, and the rooms being on each side--such a house, resembling an English parsonage, about five Louis a year; or with a garden, paddock, and orchard, about eight Louis;--butter 8_d._ per pound; cheese 4_d._; and milk a halfpenny a quart. According to the best estimate I could make, a family, consisting of a man, his wife, three or four children, two maid-servants, a man-servant, and three horses, might be easily kept at Saumur, and in its neighbourhood, for about 100_l._ a year. I am fully persuaded that I am rather over than under the mark. The country immediately about Saumur is as lively and beautiful as the town itself. It chiefly consists of corn-fields studded with groves, or rather tufts of trees, and divided by green fences, in which were pear and apple-trees in full bearing. The fields near the town had paths around them and across them, where the towns-folk, as I understood from my informer, were accustomed to walk in the evening and which, the corn being ripe and high, were pleasantly recluse. Felice and myself crossed three or four of them, and if I may judge from the little scrupulosity with which she ran amongst the corn, the proprietors of the lands must gain little from their fields being the customary promenade of their townsmen. One thing, however, I have observed peculiar to the landholders in France--that wherever the free use of their property can contribute in any thing to the enjoyment of others; wherever their fields, or even their parks and gardens, lie convenient for a promenade, those fields, parks, and gardens, are thrown open, and whatever they contain, flowers, fruits, and seats, are all at the public disposal. A Frenchman never thinks of stopping up a bye-path, because it passes within half a mile of his window; a Frenchman never thinks of raising the height of his own wall, in order to interrupt the prospect of his neighbour. One quality, in a few words, pervades all the actions, all the words, and all the thoughts of a Frenchman--a general benevolence, an anxious kindness, which is daily making sacrifices to oblige and even assist others. Upon my return to the inn, I found Mademoiselle at the breakfast table, which was set in a back room fronting a very pleasant garden. She rallied me pleasantly enough, but as I thought with an air of pique, upon my morning walk and my fair companion, and Felice happening to enter the room, asked her how she should like a foreign husband. "Very well, Mademoiselle," replied the girl with great innocence, "after I had taught him to talk in French: and I believe you are of the same opinion, Mademoiselle," added she with more pertness. Mademoiselle, with true French dexterity, here dropt a cup on the floor, and thus saved the necessity of reply, and furnished an excuse for the confusion into which the girl's impertinence had evidently thrown her. Shall I confess that my vanity was gratified, but I will defy any one to travel through France, without becoming something of a coxcomb. Having resumed our journey, we proceeded merrily, under a cheering sun refreshed by a morning breeze, on the road for Tours, through les Trois Volets, and Langes. The road was still along the banks of the Loire, and continued on the southern side till we reached Chousay, a very sweet village, about twelve miles from Saumur. We had here a repast of bread, grapes, and a sweet wine peculiar to the country, but the name of which I have not noted; and though together with our servants we drank nearly four quart bottles, and ate a good quantity of grapes and bread, our reckoning did not exceed seven francs. Nothing indeed surprised me so much as the uncommon cheapness in this country. The country to Chousay had a very near resemblance to what we had passed through the preceding day, except that it was more hilly, and the hills being clothed in vines, more beautiful. On some of these hills, moreover, amidst groves or tufts of trees, and lawns extending down the declivity, were some very pretty chateaus, which being white and clean, looked gay and animated. The landscape, indeed, seemed to improve upon us as we advanced; every mile was as charming as the preceding, but every mile began to have a new character. Sometimes the river ran through a plain in which the peasants were gathering in their harvest, to the very brink of the water. Sometimes, the banks on each side were covered with forests, from the centre of which were visible steeples, villas, windmills, and abbeys. At Chousay, I saw the cleanly way in which the Vignerons of the Loire bruise their grapes. In Spain and Portugal, they are put into a mash tub, and the juice is trodden from them by the bare feet of men, women, and girls hired for the purpose: here the practise is to use a wooden pestle. The grapes being collected and picked, are put into a large vat, where they are bruised in the manner I have mentioned, and are thence carried to the press. The vintage had not indeed as yet begun, but I saw the process performed on a small quantity of grapes, which had been ripened in a garden. Every vineyard proprietor, besides his stock-fruit, has some peculiar species of grape from which he makes the wine for his own use and that of his immediate friends: these grapes are very carefully picked and culled, and none but the soundest and best are thrown into the tub. The wine thus made is infinitely superior to the stock-wine for sale: when old, it is not inferior to Hock, and I believe is frequently sold as such by the foreign purchasers. Our next post was Planchoury, a small village, which we reached about six o'clock in the evening, and where we agreed to remain for the night, that our horses might have a rest, which they seemed to require. Our inn here was a farm-house. We had for our supper a couple of roasted fowls, and a dish which I had never seen before, some new wheat boiled with pepper and salt. It was so savoury, and I have reason to believe so wholesome, that I have frequently taken it since. I can say from experience, that it is a powerful sudorific, and very efficacious in a cold. I must not forget to mention that I slept on some straw, in a kind of hay-oft, and to the best of my memory never slept more delightfully. When I opened my razor case on the following morning, I found a paper, upon unrolling of which I found a ringlet of hair, with the word Felice on the envelope. Once for all, the French women can think of nothing but gallantry, and live for nothing but love. Sweet girl, I will keep thy ringlet, and when weary of the world, will remember thee, and acknowledge that life may still have a charm. We remained at Planchoury till the noon of the following day, when we resumed our journey, with the intention of dining at Tours. From Planchoury throughout the whole way to Tours, the scenery exceeded all the powers of description. The Loire rolled its lovely stream through groves, meads, and flowers. On both sides was a border of meadow clad in the richest green, varied sometimes by hills which hung over the river, the sides of these hills robed in all the rich livery of the ripening grape, and the towers and battlements of castles just surmounting the woods in which they were embosomed. How delightful must it be to wander in a summer's evening along these lovely banks, far from the din of the distant world, and where the deep tranquillity is only interrupted by the song of the nightingale, the whistle of the swain returning from labour, or the carol of the milkmaid as she is filling her pail. Surely man was formed most peculiarly to relish the charms of Nature. Would Heaven grant me my fondest wish, it would be to wander with * * * * on the banks of the Loire. How sweetly, and even justly, did Felice express the true image of love, when she wished me the golden dream,--that I was wandering with my love in the corn-fields of Saumur. We passed through Langeais, a small town, celebrated for its melons, with which it supplies Paris, and all France. This town was known to the Romans, by whom it was called Alingavia. We stopped to examine its castle, which is celebrated in the history of France, as the scene of the marriage of Charles the Eighth and Anne of Bretagne. The castle, as may be expected, is now in ruins; but enough remains of it, to prove its former magnificence. It frowns with much sublimity over the subject land. I never remember to have passed through a more lovely country, more varied scenery, abounding in vines, corn, meadow, wood, and water, than the whole of the road between Saumur and Tours. Well might Queen Mary of Scotland exclaim, when leaving the vines and flowers of France for her Scotch kingdom, "Dear, delightful land, must I indeed leave thee! Gay, lovely France, shall I never see thee more!" We reached Tours somewhat later than we expected. According to our previous arrangement, we were to stay there only the whole of the following day, but we again broke our resolution, and extended our time from one day to three. I envy not that man's heart who can travel France by his watch. CHAP. XIII. _Tours--Situation and general Appearance of it--Origin of the Name of Huguenots--Cathedral Church of St. Martin--The Quay--Markets--Public Walk--Classes of Inhabitants--Environs--Expences of Living--Departure from Tours--Country between Tours and Amboise._ WE remained at Tours three days, and though nearly the whole of this time was occupied in an unceasing walk over the town and environs, I was still unwearied, and my subject still unexhausted. Nothing can be more charming than the situation of this town. Imagine a plain between two rivers, the Loire and the Cher, and this plain subdivided into compartments of every variety of cultivated land, corn-fields studded with fruit-trees, and a range of hills in the distance covered with vineyards to their top, whilst every eminence has its villa, or abbey, or ruined tower. The cities in France, at least those on the Loire, have all somewhat of a rural character; this may be imputed to their comparative want of that trade and manufactures, which in England, and even in America, convert every thing in the vicinity of a town into store-yards. In France, trade has more room than she can well fill, and therefore has no occasion to trespass beyond her limits. There are few towns but have larger quays than their actual commerce requires, and still fewer but what have more manufactories than they have capitals to keep them in work. The general appearance of Tours, when first entered by a traveller, is brisk, gay, and clean; a great part of it having been burnt down during the reign of the unfortunate Louis, nearly the whole of the main street was laid out and rebuilt at the expence of that Monarch. What before was close and narrow, was then widened and rendered pervious to a direct current of air. The houses are built of a white stone, so as to give this part of the town a perfect resemblance to Bath. Some of them, moreover, are spacious and elegant, and all of them neat, and with every external appearance of comfort. The tradesmen have every appearance of being in more substantial circumstances than is usual with the French provincial dealers; their houses, therefore, are neat and in good repair, the windows are not patched with paper, the wood-work is fresh painted, and the pavement kept clean. The name of the Huguenots, a party which so fatally divided France during three reigns, originated in one of the gates of this city, which is called the Hugon gate, from Hugo, an ancient count of Tours. In the popular superstition and nursery tales of the country, this Hugo is converted into a being somewhat between a fairy and a fiend, and even the illustrious De Thou has not disdained to make mention of this circumstance: "_Cæsaro duni_," says this celebrated historian, "_Hugo Rex celebratur, qui noctu Pomæria civitatis obequitare, et obvios homines pulsare et rapere dicitur_." Be this as it may, the party of the Huguenots, according to Davila, having originated in this city, they were thence called Huguenots, as a term of derision and reproach. We visited the cathedral, which, with more decency than in England, is open at all hours of the day, and is not exhibited for money. There might be some excuse for this, where any of the subjects of exhibition are portable, and such as might be carried away. But who would feel any disposition to pilfer the wig of Sir Cloudesley Shovel, or the hat of General Monk, in Westminster Abbey? Why, therefore, is not this disgraceful practice thrown aside? Why is a nation converted into a puppet-show? The English Minister would doubtless be ashamed to bring the returns of these exhibitions amongst the ways and means of the year; yet it is effectually the same to suffer these taxes to be taken as the prices for seeing the public buildings of the nation. There is nothing of this kind in America, or in any other kingdom in the world. The cathedral of Tours has nothing to distinguish it except its antiquity, two beautiful towers, and a library of most valuable manuscripts. Amongst these there is a copy of the Pentateuch, written in the alphabet of the country, upwards of eleven hundred years ago. There is likewise a copy of the four Evangelists, written in Saxon letters, in the beginning of the fifth century, about fifty years after Constantine declared Christianity to be the religion of the Roman Empire. Next to the cathedral, St. Martin's church is usually shewn to strangers. It is the largest church in France, but very dark, damp, and built in a very bad taste. The tomb of St. Martin, whom tradition reports to be buried here, is behind the great Altar; it is of black marble, and though very simple, is very striking. The ancient kings of France used to come to this tomb previous to any of their important expeditions, and after having made the usual prayers of intercession used to take away the mantle of the Saint as the banner under which they were to fight: this mantle still remains. The quay is broad, brisk, and clean. Even the French merchants seem never to lose sight of the union of pleasure and profit: their quays are terraces, and serve them as well for promenades as for business. One reason, however, for the superiority of the French over the English quays, may be, that the French Government consider these quays as public and national works, and therefore puts them, I believe, under the same system of management as the roads. What Government does, and does with attention, will be done well, because Government consults for the general good; whilst individual proprietors are only actuated by their own immediate interest. If the wharfs and quays on the Thames had been laid out by the English Government, would they have so totally defaced and degraded the banks of that noble river? There is an excellent market for provisions; I had not the opportunity of seeing it on the market day, but was informed in answer to my inquiries, that every article was plentiful, and very cheap. Wood, which is so dear in every other part of France, is here very cheap, the country being overspread with forests, and the river furnishing a ready transportation. Houses are good and cheap: the rent of a house consisting of a ground floor, two stories above, and attics, the windows in front of each floor being from six to eight, with coach-house, stables, garden and orchards, is about 20_l._ English money, the taxes from 1_l._ 10_s._ to 2_l._, and parish rates about 10_s._ annually. I should not forget to mention, that the gardens are large, sometimes two or three acres, encompassed with high walls, and well planted with fruit-trees, and particularly wall-fruit. In the back part of these gardens are usually gates opening into the fields, which I have before mentioned have walks around and across them, and are the common promenade of all who choose to use them. In the season of harvest or vintage, nothing can be more charming than these walks; the French gaiety and simplicity, not to say puerility, is then seen in all its perfection; it is then a common sport amongst the ladies and the gallants of the town to chase each other amongst the standing corn, and as they endeavour to keep to the furrows, which are too narrow for their feet, the chace is generally terminated by the fall of the runners, the one over the other. The interest of the farmers cannot but suffer by these frolics; but as they participate in the enjoyment, for every one may salute a lady whom he finds in the corn, there is no complaint, and indeed care is taken to do as little mischief as possible. In the summer evenings these fields are almost the sole promenade; and the Mall, or public walk of the town is entirely deserted. On Sundays, however, the Mall has its turn, and all the beauty of the province, and the fashion of the town, may be seen walking up and down this beautiful avenue, being nearly a mile and half in length, and planted on both sides with ranges of elms apparently almost as ancient as the town. The magistrates are so careful of this ornament of their town, that they suffer no one to walk there after rain, and penalties are imposed on every species of nuisance or abuse. The society of Tours is infinitely beyond that of any other provincial town in France. I have already mentioned, that there are some excellent houses within the city, and they are in great numbers in the immediate vicinity. Tours, in this respect, resembles Canterbury or Salisbury, in England. It is the favourite retreat of such advocates as have made fortunes in their profession. The noblesse of the province have their balls and assemblies almost weekly during the summer months; and even in the winter, Tours is by many preferred to Paris. It would be an unpardonable omission, whilst I am upon this subject, not to notice the uncommon beauty of the younger women; a beauty, the effect of which is much raised by their vivacity, and unwearied gaiety. Love and gallantry seem the main business of the town, and whilst we were there, we were amused with two or three stories of infidelities on all sides. There is a very pretty custom at their balls: if a lady accepts a partner, she presents him, if in summer, with a flower; if in winter, with a ribbon of what she has adopted as her colour. Every unmarried lady has a colour which she has adopted as her own, and which she always wears on some part of her dress. Tours was formerly celebrated for its silk manufactory, and enough of it still remains to invite and to gratify the curiosity of a traveller. The attention of the French Government is now unintermittingly occupied in efforts to raise the manufactures of the kingdom, but whilst the war makes such large demands, trade must necessarily be cramped. The manufactories, however, still continue to work, and produce some beautiful flowered damasks, and brilliant stuffs. The weavers for the most part work at their own houses, and have so much by the piece, the silk being furnished them by their employers. The prices vary with the pattern and quality of the work; two livres per day is the average of what can be earned by the weavers. The women weave as well as the men, and their earnings may be estimated at about one half. Upon the whole, however, these manufactures are in a very drooping condition, and are scarcely visible to a foreign visitant, unless the immediate object of his inquiry. There is likewise a ribbon manufactory, but the ribbons are very inferior to those of England. About 1000 persons may be employed in these two manufactories. We visited the castle of Plessis les Tours, which is not more than a mile from the city. This chateau was built by that execrable tyrant, Louis the Eleventh, was his constant residence during his life-time, and the scene of his horrible death. This monarch is one of those whom all concur in mentioning with execration; Richard of England has found apologists in this ingenious age, but no one has come forward to defend the memory of the French Tiberius. The castle is built of brick, and is very pleasantly situated, being surrounded by woods. In the chapel is a portrait of Louis the Eleventh; he is painted as in the act of saluting the Virgin Mary, and our Saviour as an infant. His features are harsh, and something of the tyrant is legible even through the adulation of the painter. The castle, though built about 1450, is still perfect in all its parts, and has some large apartments. I believe I have already mentioned, that when I had occasion to stop in any town, which I thought had a _primâ facie_ appearance of being a place of pleasant residence or settlement for a foreigner, the main object of my inquiries went to ascertain all those points which were necessary to determine this question. Of all the cities which I had yet seen, Tours appeared to me the best adapted for such a residence. The country is delightful and healthy, the society good, and every necessary article of life plentiful and cheap. Beef, veal, and mutton, are to be had in great plenty, and the two latter excellent. Poultry is equally plentiful and cheap. Fuel, to those who have horses, amounts almost to nothing; house-rent likewise very reasonable. Land in purchase about 15_l._ per acre, one with another--wood, heath, and arable. In the immediate neighbourhood of the town the meadow land is dear. I believe I have now mentioned every thing. Young persons would find Tours a delightful residence, as there is a never-ceasing course of balls and parties. A carriage may be kept cheaply; in a word, I would venture positively to say, that for 250_l._ English money annually, a family might live at Tours in plenty and elegance; but let them not have English or American servants. Having seen enough of Tours, we resumed our journey after our breakfast on the third day, proposing to go no farther on that day than Amboise, a distance short of twenty miles. Every traveller must have observed, that the exhilaration of the animal spirits is never greater than after an interval of fatigue succeeded by sufficient repose. A spirited horse, for example, will perform his second stage, after a sufficient bait, with more animation than his first: it is the same with travellers, or at least I must assert it of myself. My satisfaction is always greater in the progress, than in the commencement of a journey. There is a dilatoriness, a _vis inertiæ_, which hangs on me on my first departure, and which does not pass away, till worked off by the fermentation of the blood and spirits. The whole party, and myself amongst the number, left Tours in this enviable state of spirits; the sun shone brightly, but a refreshing breeze, and intervals of the road well shaded, softened an heat, which might otherwise have been oppressive. Mr. Younge and myself rode on each side of the carriage, and travelling slowly, as our proposed day's journey was short, enjoyed at once the scenes of nature, and the conversation of these lovely women. "The next village we shall come to," said Mademoiselle St. Sillery, "will be a singularity. Unless we were with you, you might perhaps pass through it without seeing it. You might pass through the midst of three or four hundred inhabitants without seeing either house, man, woman, or child." "You are speaking of Mont Louis," said Mr. Younge. "Yes," replied Mademoiselle, "but I will not anticipate Monsieur's gratification by more fully informing him." Mr. Younge, in the course of this conversation, gave me some important information with respect to the climate of this part of France. I have entered it in my note book as nearly as possible in his own words, and therefore shall give it as such. "If an American, an English, or a Swedish gentleman, wished to settle in France," said he, "I would recommend above all provinces either Tourraine or the Limosin. What the country is as to natural beauty, and as to fertility of soil, you may see through every league; it is that mixture of the wild and of the cultivated, of the field, of the wood, of the vineyard, and of the garden, which is not to be equalled in Europe, and which has rendered this part of France the favourite of painters and poets from time immemorial. Here the Troubadours have built their fairy castles, have settled their magicians, and bound their ladies in enchanted gardens; and even the popular superstition of the country seems to have taken its tone and colour from the images around. Tourraine, and all the country on the banks of the Loire, has a kind of popular mythology of its own; it is the land of fairies and elfins, and there is scarcely a glen, a grove, or a shady recess, but what has its tale belonging to it. What one of the French poets has said of the Seine, may be said with more truth of the Loire--all its women are queens, and all its young men poets. If Mademoiselle St. Sillery were speaking," continued he, smiling at this young lady, "she would say, that love reigned triumphant amidst the charms of Nature. "The climate exactly corresponds to this singular beauty of the country. In many years there is no such thing as snow, and frosts are not frequent, and never severe. The rainy weather comes usually at once, and is confined to the spring. There are no fogs and vapours as is usual in the northern kingdom: the spring is a continuance of such weather as is seen in England about the middle of May. The harvest begins about the latter end of June, but is sometimes so late as the middle of July; it continues a month. The vent de bize is very rare in these provinces. The great heats are from the middle of July to the middle of August During this time, the climate of Touraine certainly exceeds any thing that is common in England. The heaths are covered with thyme, lavender, rosemary, and the juniper-tree: nothing can be more delightful than the scent of them, when the wind blows over them. The hedges are every where interspersed with flowers; there are blossoms of some kind or other throughout the year. I must not, however, disguise from you, that there are some drawbacks from this excellence: the countries south of the Loire are subject to violent storms of rain and hail, and the latter particularly is occasionally so violent, as to beat down and destroy all the corn and vintage on which it may fall. These hail-storms, however, at least in this excessive degree, are not very frequent; they sometimes do not occur once in five years. Some years ago, they were more frequent than they are at present: they used to come on at that time with a violence which swept every thing before them, even destroying the cattle, and it is said that even men have been killed by these hail-stones. Such storms, however, are now considered as natural phenomena. "The plenty of these provinces, I speak of Touraine and Anjou, is such as might be expected from their climate, and the fertility of the soil. I am persuaded, that a family or an individual might live at one-fourth of the expence which it would cost them either in England or in America. Bread is cheaper by two-thirds, and meat of all kinds is about one-fourth of the London market. Land, both in rent and purchase, is likewise infinitely cheaper than in England, and if managed with any skill, would replace its purchase-money in seven years. The French farmers, for want of capital, leave half their land totally uncultivated, and the other half is most scandalously neglected. An English farmer would instantaneously double or quadruple the produce of the province. The government, moreover, admits foreigners of any country as denizens, under the condition that they shall apply themselves to agriculture or manufactures. I am not, however, certain that agriculture is included in this permission, but I am inclined to believe that it is comprehended in it. Of one thing I am sure, that the government would not refuse its protection, and if required, its special licence, to any foreign agriculturist, who should be desirous of purchasing and settling." In this and similar conversation we reached Mont Louis, and it exactly answered the description which the ladles had given of it. We were in the midst of the village and its inhabitants before we saw it. Imagine a number of sandy hills on each side of the road, and the sides of them scooped out into houses or rather caves, and you have a sufficient idea of this French village, containing some hundreds of inhabitants. The hills being hollowed out on the further extremity from the road, a traveller might certainly pass through it, without perceiving any thing of it. This style is even carried where there is not the same natural advantage of a hill to hollow out. The village extends into the plain, which is likewise dug out into subterraneous houses, and which are only visible by the smoke issuing from the chimnies. I could not understand the convenience or necessity for these kind of habitations. The ground, indeed, being chalky, is at once dry and easily dug, but on the other hand, the country so abounds in wood and clay, that a very little industry, and a very little expence, might have provided these living human beings with something better than a grave. Mademoiselle St. Sillery, however, made a remark which I must not pass over. "You must not," said this lady, "necessarily infer the misery of our peasantry, because you see them in such unfit habitations. When you compare the French poor, with the poor in your own country, you must take all circumstances with you. When you see the French peasantry so ill lodged, and so scantily clad, you must bring into your view at the same time the difference of the climate. Here, the same sun which now shines upon us, shines on us the whole year round; our rains are short, and all confined to their season; we know nothing of the northern damps: a piece of muslin or fine linen hung in one of those caves for six months, would be dry and unsullied when removed. Those caves, moreover, bad as they are, belong to their inhabitants; the property is their own. Can your peasantry say the same? Believe me, Monsieur, there are many very happy, aye and very lovely faces, under those turf dwellings." We reached Amboise in good time, and as we intended leaving it on the following morning, Mr. Younge and myself walked over the town, in the interval between dinner and tea. The ladies reserved themselves for the promenade, which in the provincial towns usually begins at seven, and continues till nine. Amboise, like all the towns on the Loire, is very pleasantly situated, but has nothing in its structure to recommend it to particular notice. It consists of two streets and a chateau. Before the Revolution it was very singularly divided into two parishes and two churches: all gentlemen, all military officers, all landed proprietors who possessed honorary fiefs, and all strangers who were temporary residents, were considered as belonging to one parish, and the people and the bourgeois were attached to the other. The Revolution has annihilated these absurd distinctions, and every one now belongs to the parish in which he resides, or has property. We visited the chateau, or castle, which is indeed well worthy of the particular attention of travellers. It is built upon a lofty and craggy rock, and overhangs the Loire, which flows at the bottom; the side on the Loire is perpendicular, and of great height, so as to render it almost inaccessible. This vast structure was not all the work of one time, or of one author. The present castle was built upon the ruins of one which was destroyed by the Normans in the year 882, but having gone into decay, was repaired and enlarged by Francis the First and Charles the Eighth. The latter prince was born in this castle, and during his whole reign it was the constant summer residence of the court. The most remarkable part of this structure is what is called the oratory of Louis the Wicked; it is at a great depth beneath the foundation of the castle, and the descent to it is by spiral or well-stairs. It is literally nothing more than a dungeon, on a platform, in which is a prostrate statue representing the dead body of our Lord, as taken from the Cross, covered with streaks of blood, and the skin in welts, as if fresh from the scourge. According to the tradition of the neighbourhood, this was the daily scene of the private devotions of Louis the Eleventh; and the character of the place and of the images around, have certainly some symphony with the known disposition of that monarch. No one, even in the horrible Revolution, has disturbed these relics; it is still exhibited as the tyrant's dungeon, and no one enters or leaves it without feeling a renewed idea of the character of that execrable monster. The conspiracy of Amboise having originated in this city, the walls and dungeons of the castle still retain some relics of the ferocious cruelties exercised by the triumphant party of the Guises. Spikes, nails, and short iron gibbets and chains, are still shewn on the walls, on which were suspended the bodies of the prisoners who fell into their hands. How difficult is it to reconcile such ferocity to the known greatness of the Duke of Guise; but religious fury has no limits, and a true enthusiast comforts himself that he tortures the body to save the soul. Thank Heaven, that the days of such infuriate zeal are over: but Heaven forbid that we should pass to the other extreme. Great as may be the evils of bigotry, the mischief of religious indifference, or in other words, of no religion at all, would be infinitely greater. The one may affect the world as a storm, the other is a perpetual pestilence, beneath the influence of which every thing that is generous and noble, morals, and even private honor, must fall to the ground. CHAP. XIV. _Lovely Country between Amboise and Blois--Ecures--Beautiful Village--French Harvesters--Chousi--Village Inn--Blois-- Situation--Church--Market--Price of Provisions._ ON the following morning we resumed our journey for Blois, a distance of thirty miles, which we proposed to reach the same day. The country for some leagues very nearly resembled that through which we had passed on the preceding day, except that it was more thickly spread with houses, and better cultivated. Windmills are very frequent along the whole line of the Loire, the wheat of the country being ground in the vicinity of the river, so as to be more convenient for transportation. These mills are beautifully situated on the hills and rising grounds, and add much to the cheerfulness of the scenery. The road, moreover, was as various as it was beautiful. Sometimes it passed through open fields, in which the peasantry were at work to get in their harvest. Upon sight of our horses, the labourers, male and female, ceased from their work, and ran up to the carriage: some of the younger women would then present us with some wheat, barley, or whatever was the subject of their labour, accompanying it with rustic salutations, and more frequently declining than accepting any pecuniary return. This conduct of the French peasantry is a perfect contrast to what a traveller must frequently meet in America, and still more frequently in England. Amongst the inferior classes in England and America, to be a stranger is to be a subject for insult. So much I must say in justice for the French of the very lowest condition, that I never received any thing like an insult, and that they no sooner understood me to be a stranger, than they were officious in their attentions and information. I enquired of Mr. Younge what were the wages of the labourers in this part of France. "Their wages," said he, "are very different according to the season. In harvest-time, they have as much as 36 sols, about 1_s._ 6_d._ English money. The average daily wages of the year may amount to 24 sols, or a shilling English; they are allowed moreover, three pints of the wine of the country. Their condition is upon the whole very comfortable: the greater part of them have a cow, and a small slip of land. There is a great deal of common land along the whole course of the Loire, and the farmers have a practice of exchanging with the poor. The poor, for example, in many districts, have a right of commonage, during a certain number of days, over all the common fields; the farmers having possession of these lands, and finding it inconvenient to be subject to this participation, frequently buy it off, and in exchange assign an acre or more to every collage in the parish. These cottages are let to the labourers for life at a mere nominal rent, and are continued to their families, as long as they remain honest and industrious. There is indeed no such thing as parochial taxes for the relief of the poor, as in England, but distress seldom happens without being immediately relieved." "In what manner," said I, "do the French poor live?" "Very cheaply, and yet all things considered, very sufficiently. You, who have lived almost the whole of your life in northern climates, can scarcely form any idea, what a very different kind of sustenance is required in a southern one. In Ireland, however, how many robust bodies are solely nourished on milk and potatoes: now chesnuts and grapes, and turnips and onions in France, are what potatoes are in Ireland. The breakfast of our labourers usually consists of bread and fruit, his dinner of bread and an onion, his supper of bread, milk, and chesnuts. Sometimes a pound of meat may be boiled with the onion, and a bouillé is thus made, which with management will go through the week. The climate is such as to require no expence in fuel, and very little in clothes." In this conversation we reached Ecures, a village situated on a plain, which in its verdure, and in the fanciful disposition of some trees and groves, reminded me very strongly of an English park. This similitude was increased by a house on the further extremity of the village: it was situated in a lawn, and entirely girt around by walnut trees except where it fronted the road, upon which it opened by a neat palisadoed gate. I have no doubt, though I had no means of verifying my opinion, that the possessor of this estate had been in England. The lawn was freshly mown, and the flowers, the fresh-painted seats, the windows extending from the ceiling to the ground, and even the circumstance of the poultry being kept on the common, and prevented by a net-work from getting on the lawn--all these were so perfectly in the English taste, that I offered Mr. Younge any wager that the possessor had travelled. "He is most probably a returned emigrant," said Mr. Younge; "it is inconceivable how much this description of men have done for France. The government, indeed, begins to understand their value, and the list of the proscribed is daily diminishing." From Ecures to Chousi the country varies very considerably. The road is very good, but occasionally sandy. To make up for this heaviness, it is picturesque to a degree. The fields on each side are so small as to give them a peculiar air of snugness, and to suggest the idea to a traveller, how delightful would be a fancy-cottage in such a situation. For my own part, I was continually building in my imagination. These fields were well enclosed with thick high hedges, and ornamented with hedge-rows of chesnut and walnut trees. There were scarcely any of them but what had a foot-path on the side of the road; in others there were bye-paths which led from the road into the country, sometimes to a village, the chimnies only of which were visible; at other times to a chateau, the gilded pinnacle of which shone afar from some distant hill. I observed several fields of flax and hemp, and we passed several cottages, in the gardens of which the flax flourished in great perfection, Mr. Younge informed me, that every peasant grew a sufficient quantity for his own use, and the females of his family worked them up into a strong, but decent looking linen. "This is another circumstance," said he, "which you must not forget in your comparison between the poor of France and other kingdoms. The French peasantry, and particularly the women, have more ingenuity than the English or American poor; they universally make every thing that is connected with their own clothes. Their beds, blankets, coats, and linen of all kind, are of the manufacture of their own families. The produce of the man's labour goes clear to the purchase of food: the labour of his wife and daughters, and even a small portion of their labour, is sufficient to clothe him and to provide him with his bed." We passed several groups of villagers reposing themselves under the shade: I should not indeed say reposing, for they were romping, running, and conversing with all the characteristic merriment of the country. They saluted us respectfully as we passed them. In one of these groups was a flageolet-player; he was piping merrily, his comrades accompanying the tune with motions of their hands and neck. "Confess," said Mademoiselle St. Sillery, "that we are a happy people: these poor creatures have been at their labour since sunrise, and yet this is the way they repose themselves." "Are they never wearied?" said I. "Never so much so, but what they can sing and dance: their good-humour seems to hold them in the stead of the more robust nerves of the north. Even labour itself is not felt where the mind takes its share of the weight." "You are a philosopher," said Mr. Younge to her, smiling. "I am a Frenchwoman," replied she, "and would not change my cheerful flow of spirits for all the philosophy and wisdom in the universe. Nothing can make me unhappy whilst the sun shines." I know not whether I have before mentioned, that a great quantity of maize is cultivated in this part of the kingdom. The roofs of the cottages were covered with it drying in the sun; the ears are of a bright golden yellow, and in the cottage gardens it had a beautiful effect. I observed moreover a very striking difference between the system of cultivating the flax in England and in France. In England the richest land only is chosen, in France every soil indiscriminately. The result of this difference is, that the flax in France is infinitely finer than in England, a circumstance which may account for the superiority of their lawns and cambrics. We reached Chousi to an early dinner. The woman of the house apologised that she had no suitable room for so large a company, "but her husband and sons were gathering apples in the orchard, and if we would dine there, we should find it cheerful enough." We readily adopted this proposal, and had a very pleasant dinner under an apple tree. Mademoiselle and myself had agreed to divide between us the office of purveyor to the party. It was my part to see that the meat or poultry was not over-boiled, over-hashed, or over-roasted, and it was her's to arrange the table with the linen and plate which we brought with us. It is inconceivable how much comfort, and even elegance, resulted from this arrangement. Mr. Younge and myself being engaged in an argument of some warmth, in which Mrs. Younge had taken part, Mademoiselle St. Sillery had given us the slip, and the carriage being ready, I had to seek her. After much trouble I found her engaged in a childish sport with some boys and girls, the children of the landlord: the game answered to what is known in America by the name of hide and seek, and Mademoiselle St. Sillery, when I found her, was concealed in a _saw-pit_. I have mentioned, I believe, that this young lady was about twenty years of age; an elegant, fashionable girl, and as far removed from a romp and a hoyden as it is possible to conceive; yet was this young lady of fashion now engaged in the most puerile play, and even seemed disappointed when she was called from it. Such is the French levity, that sooner than not be in motion, the gravest and most dignified of them would join in an hunt after a butterfly. I have frequently been walking, with all possible gravity, with Mademoiselle St. Sillery, when she has suddenly challenged me to run a race, and before I could recover my astonishment, or give her an answer, has taken to her heels. We reached Blois rather late; we had intended to have staid there only the night, but as it was too late to see the town, and the following morning was showery, we remained there the whole day, and very pleasantly passed the afternoon in walking over the town, and informing ourselves of its curiosities. The situation of Blois is as agreeable as that of all the other principal towns on the Loire. The main part of it is built upon an hill which descends by a gentle declivity to the Loire; the remaining part of it is a suburb on the opposite side of the river, to which it is joined by a bridge resembling that at Kew, in England. From the hill on which the town stands is a beautiful view of a rich and lovely country, and there is certainly not a town in France or in Europe, with the exception of Tours and Toulouse, which can command such a delightful landscape. It appeared, perhaps, more agreeable to us as we saw it after it had been freshened by the morning rain. The structure of the town does not correspond with the beauty of its site. The streets are narrow, and the houses low. There are some of the houses, however, which are very respectable, and evidently the habitation of a superior class of inhabitants. They reminded me much of what are common in the county towns of England. But the boast and ornament of Blois is its chateau, or castle. We employed some hours in going over it, and I shall therefore describe it with some fullness. The situation of it is extremely commanding, and therefore very beautiful. It is built upon a rock which overhangs the Loire, all the castles upon this river being built with the evident purpose of controuling and commanding the navigation. What first struck us very forcibly was the variety and evident dissimilarity of the several parts. This circumstance was explained to us by our guide, who informed us that the castle was the work of several princes. The eastern and southern fronts were built by Louis the Twelfth about the year 1520, the northern front was the work of Francis the First, and the western side of Gaston, duke of Orleans. Every part accordingly has a different character. What is built by Louis the Twelfth is heavy, dark, and gothic, with small rooms, and pointed arches. The work of Francis the First is a curious specimen of the Gothic architecture in its progress, perhaps in its very act of transit, into the Greek and Roman orders; and what has been done by Gaston, bears the character of the magnificent mind and bold genius of that great prince. This comparison of three different styles, on the same spot, gave me much satisfaction. The rooms, as I have said, such as were built by Louis the Twelfth, are small, and those by Francis spacious, lofty, and boldly vaulted. Nothing astonished me more than the minor ornaments on the points of the arches; they were so grossly, so vulgarly indecent, that I was fearful the ladies might observe me as I looked at them: but such was the taste of the age. Others of the ornaments were less objectionable: they consisted of the devices of the several princes who had resided there. We were shewn the chamber in which the celebrated Duke of Guise was assassinated, and the guide pointed out the spot on which he fell. A small chamber, or rather anti-chamber, leads to a larger apartment: the Duke had passed through the door of this anti-chamber, and was opening the further door which leads into the larger apartment, when he was assassinated by order of Henry the Third. His body was immediately dragged into the larger apartment, and the king came to view it. "How great a man was that!" said he, pointing to his prostrate body. Historians are still divided on the quality of this act, whether it is to be considered as a just execution, or as a cowardly assassination. Considering the necessary falsehood, and breach of faith, under which it must have been perpetrated, the moralist can have no hesitation to execrate it as a murder. We passed from this part of the castle to the tower at the western extremity, called La Tour de chateau Regnaud, and so called, because a seigniory of that name, though distant twenty-one miles, is visible from its summit. The Cardinal of Guise, being seized on the same day in which his brother was assassinated, was imprisoned in this castle, and after passing a night in the dungeons, was executed on the day following. The dungeons are the most horrible holes which it is possible to conceive: the descent to them entirely indisposed us from going down. Imagine a dark gloomy room, itself a horrible dungeon, and in the centre of the floor a round hole of the size and shape of those on the paved footpaths in the streets in London for shooting coals into the cellars. Such is the descent to these dungeons: and in such a place did the great and proud Cardinal of Guise terminate a life of turmoil and ambition. We next visited the Salle des Etats, or the States-hall, so called because the States General were there assembled by Henry the Third: it is a large and lofty room, but the part of it which chiefly attracts the attention of travellers is the fire-place, where the bodies of the Guises were reduced to ashes on the day following their murder. It is not however easy to conceive, why vengeance should be carried so far. The western front of the castle, which was built by Gaston, Duke of Orleans, is in every respect worthy of that great prince, and of the architect employed by him, the illustrious Mansard. This architect laboured three years upon this front, and having already spent three hundred and thirty thousand livres, informed the prince, that it would require one hundred thousand more to render it habitable. The prince, however eager both to encourage the artist and to have the work finished, could not muster up the money, which in that age was an immense sum: the front, therefore, was left in the state in which it now remains. It is as much to the credit of the Duke as to that of the architect, that this noble front constituted his pride, and that he felt the value of this work of Mansard. The gardens of the castle are worthy of the structure to which they are attached: Henry the Fourth divided them by a gallery into the upper and lower gardens, but nothing now remains of this gallery but the ruins. The garden itself is now sold or let to private persons. Blois has several other buildings which are worthy of the attention of a leisurely traveller: amongst these is the college, which formerly belonged to the Jesuits, and which is at present a national school. The church attached to the college combines every order of architecture: there are two splendid monuments, moreover, the one to Gaston Duke of Orleans, the other to a daughter of this prince. The courts, likewise, in which the police is administered, are not unworthy of a cursory attention; they are very ancient, having been built by the former Counts of Blois. We were shewn likewise the aqueducts: the waters rise from a deep subterraneous spring, and are conveyed in a channel cut in a rock. This channel is said to be of Roman construction, and from its characteristic boldness, and even greatness, it most probably is so. Whence is it, that this people communicated their characteristic energy even to trifles. The channel of the aqueduct empties itself into a reservoir adjoining the city walls, whence they are distributed in pipes through all quarters of the city. CHAP. XV. _Houses in Chalk Hills--Magnificent Castle at Chambord--Return from Chambord by Moon-light--St. Laurence on the Waters._ ON the following morning we resumed our journey. The country continued very similar to that through which we had previously past, except that it was more populous, and there were a greater number of chateaus. On some parts of the road, the chalk hills on the side of the river presented a very curious spectacle: smoke issued out of an hundred vents on the sides and summits, and gave them the appearance of so many volcanoes. The fact was, that the descent fronting the river was scooped into houses or rather caves for the peasantry, and the roof was cut upwards for the chimney. I was informed by Mr. Younge, that the other circumstances of these houses and their inhabitants did not correspond with the implied poverty in their construction. "The fronts of these cottages," said he, "are very picturesque; they have casements, and the walls are deeply shaded and embossed with vines. These caverns are in some places in rows one above another. They are not all of them the property of those who live in them: some of them are constructed at the expence of the farmers, and are let out at a yearly hire of four or five livres. The fronts are masonry: the small gardens which you see above, belong to these cottagers; many of them have moreover a cow, which they feed in the lanes and woods. Altogether, their condition is more comfortable than you would imagine." As the distance between Blois and Orleans was too much for one day, we had divided it into two, and arranged it so as to comprehend Chambord in the first. This route indeed was considerably out of our direct way, but Mr. and Mrs. Younge resolved that I should see Chambord, and would hear of no excuses. In pursuance of this plan we turned out of the main road, and entered a narrow one, which by its recluseness and solitude seemed to lead us into the recesses of the country. Nothing can be more beautiful than these bye-roads both in France and England. On the highways, and in the vicinity or route of central and populous towns, the spirit of improvement, and the caprice of wealth, too frequently destroy the scenes of nature: the artist in fashion is set at work, and the field and the meadow is supplanted by the park, the lawn, and the measured avenue. In the bye-lanes, on the contrary, the country is generally left in its natural rudeness, and therefore in its natural beauty: no one thinks of improving the house, orchard, and fields of his tenant; no one cares whether his gates are painted, or his hedges are trim and even. The bye-road, therefore, has always been my favourite haunt; and if ever I should make a pedestrian tour through Europe, I should go in a track very different from any who have gone before. The scenery in this cross-road to Chambord, as to its general character, was exactly what I had anticipated; recluse and romantic to the most extreme degree. The fields were small, and thickly enclosed; nothing could be more beautiful than the shocks of corn as seen through the thick foliage of the hedges. "How pleasant," said Mademoiselle to me, "would be a walk by sunset under those hedge-rows." I agreed in the observation, and repeat it as conveying an idea of the character of the scenery. The gates and stiles to these several fields seemed as if they had been made by Robinson Crusoe: there is nothing in America more rough and aukward. We passed several cottages very delightfully situated, and without a single exception covered with grapes. The gradual approach to them had something which spoke both to the imagination and the feelings. Imagine the carriage driving very slowly onwards, when you suddenly hear a sweet female voice carrolling away in all the wildness of nature, and this without knowing whence it comes. On a sudden, coming nearer the bottom of the hill, you see on one side of the road a cottage chimney, peeping as it were from a tuft of trees in a dell, and immediately afterwards, coming in front, behold a girl picking grapes for the press, and chearfully singing over her toil. There are few of these cottages but what have a garden fronting the road, and some of these gardens, in the season of fruit and flowers, are inimitably beautiful. Where is it that I have read, that a Frenchman has no idea of gardening? Nothing can be more false: the French peasants infinitely excell the English of the same order in the knowledge and practice of this embellishment. Nothing can be more obscure, more melancholy, than the situation of Chambord; it is literally buried in woods, and the building, immense as it is, is not visible till you are within some hundred yards of it. The woods are not merely on one side, but entirely surround it, leaving only a park in front, through the midst of which slowly flows a narrow river. The day was overclouded, and I think I never beheld a more melancholy scene. The style of building is strictly Gothic, and the architecture, considering the order, is very good. It was built by Francis the First, who, on his return from Spain, commanded the ancient chateau of the Counts of Blois to be destroyed, and built this in its place. He is said to have employed eighteen hundred workmen for twelve years, and even then it was left unfinished. It is moated and walled round, and has every appendage of the Gothic castle, innumerable towers and turrets, drawbridges and portals. If seated upon an hill, it would be impossible to conceive a finer object. The apartments correspond with its external magnitude; they are large and spacious, but the effect of them is destroyed by what is very common in old Gothic buildings; cross-beams from one side of the room to the other. There is a silly story, that Catherine of Medicis had them so placed by the advice of an astrologer, who having cast her nativity discovered that she was in danger of perishing by the fall of an house. The great Marshal Saxe lived and died in this chateau: the room in which he breathed his last, is still shewn with great veneration. There is a tradition that he was killed in a duel by the Prince of Conti, and that his death was concealed. The Marshal lived here in great state; he had a regiment of 1500 horse, the barracks of which are in the immediate vicinity of the castle. The apartments which he occupied are in very good taste; the ceilings are arched, and the proportions are excellent. In one of the rooms is an admirable picture of Louis the Fourteenth on horseback. The spiral staircase is a contrivance which it is impossible to explain; it is so managed, as to contain two distinct staircases in one, so that people may go up and down at the same time, without seeing each other. The apartments are said to exceed twelve hundred. This castle was the favourite residence of Francis the First, and it was here that he so magnificently received and entertained the Emperor Charles the Fifth. Francis the First was in every respect a true French Knight; gallant, magnificent, and religious in the extreme. There was formerly a pane of glass in one of the windows of this chateau, on which Francis the First had written the two following lines; Toute Femme varie, Mal Habil qui s'y fie. This glass is now lost, and I transcribe the verses from a detailed description of this chateau published at Paris. The castle has been deserted since the death of Louis the Fourteenth. This monarch used occasionally to hunt in its forests, but never made it a permanent residence. We proposed to sleep at St. Laurence on the Waters, a beautiful village on the high road to Orleans, and distant about twelve miles from Chambord. It was evening before we left the castle, and the moon, though not at the full, had risen, before we had performed the half our road. Nothing could be more picturesque than the scenery, as now half illuminated and half shaded. The cottage gardens looked like so many fairy scenes. The peasant girls looking out of their windows, as they were going to bed, added much to our mirth; and more particularly, as our carriage was on a level with their windows. Whether the moon suited their complexions better than the sun, or that they were different individuals from those we had passed in the morning, I know not, but so much I can say, that they appeared to me more delicate and beautiful. One girl had the face of an angel: it is still imprinted on my mind, and were I a painter, I could exhibit a most perfect resemblance of her, by transferring the copy from my imagination to the canvass. There are some faces which it is impossible to forget. We passed a group of gipsies: they were seated under a broad branching oak by the road-side; there were twenty or more of them collected in a circle, in the midst of which was a fire, and a pot boiling. "These people," said Mademoiselle St. Sillery, "are realising the wish of our good King Henry the Fourth: he wished that every peasant in France might have a fire in his chimney, and a fowl in his pot:--- and fowls must be very scarce, when these good folks are in want of them." "Whence is it," said I, "that such notorious thieves are tolerated." "From the humanity," said Mr. Younge, "which prevails from an indistinct reference to their origin. They are generally considered as the refugees from some persecution in their native land: they have fled from towns and cities to the shelter of woods and fields. On the continent they are almost universally called Bohemians, and regarded as the descendants of those unfortunate exiles, who were driven out of that kingdom in the religious wars. By others, they have been considered as descendants from the Jews expelled from Syria and Judæa under the Roman emperors. In short, every tradition concurs in representing them as having their origin in some persecution." "But whatever this original stock must have been," said I, "it must doubtless have long since perished, even in its posterity. Their unsettled life is very unsuitable to keeping up their generation." Mr. Younge suggested, that the species had been supported by subsequent additions; that it was a standing receptacle for all vagabonds and beggars: "but there is something in the true gipsey," said he, "which I cannot but consider as characteristic of a certain definite origin. They are all tall, raw-boned, and with raven locks; and though like the Jews of different countries they may have national traits, these traits are never sufficient to merge a certain essential character; they seem chiefly only minor differences added to others more strong and indelible." We reached St. Laurence rather late, but were fortunate enough to procure a good supper, two fowls being killed for the purpose. The night, from some cause or other, was so chill, that we found it necessary to have a fire, and being in excellent spirits, we sate up late and talked merrily. On the following morning we continued our progress. The scenery had so great a resemblance to the road of the preceding day, that I saw nothing worthy of detailed remark. The country was rich in views and in fertility. The agriculture, as far as I could judge of it, is very slovenly: the wheat is mowed, and gathered in by hand and in small carts. The labourers, however, appeared in tolerable good condition, and what cottages we passed by the road side, had every appearance of much comfort, and some substance. I must not forget to mention that I saw no cottage without a slip of land, and in many parts of the road, on the waste by its side, were single fruit trees railed round, which as I understood from Mr. Younge were the property of labourers, whose cottages were perhaps removed a league from their trees. These trees, which were in full bearing, are so much respected by the usage of the country, that they are never invaded. I was pleased with this trait of general honesty and confidence: it is common in America, but not in England. We passed several chateaus in meadows and lawns by the road side: some of them were altogether in the ancient style, and so truly characteristic of the French country house, as to merit a more detailed description. In the ordinary construction of a French chateau, there is a greater consumption of wood than brick, and no sparing of ground. It is usually a rambling building, with a body, wings, and again wings upon those wings; and flanked on each side with a pigeon-house, stables, and barns, the pigeon-house being on the right, and the barns and stables on the left. The decorations are infinitely beneath contempt; painted weathercocks and copper turrets, and even the paint apparently as ancient as the chateau. The windows are numerous, but even in the best chateaus there is strange neglect as to the broken glass; sometimes they are left as broken, but more frequently patched with paper, coloured silk, or even stuffed with linen. The upper tier of windows, even in the front of the house, is usually ornamented with the clothes of the family hanging out to dry, a piece of slovenliness and ill-taste for which there can assuredly be no excuse in the country where there is surely room enough for this part of household business. Upon the whole, the appearance of a French chateau, in the old style, resembles one of those deserted houses which are sometimes seen in England, where the plaister has been peeled or is peeling off, and where every boy that passes throws his stone at the windows. The pleasure grounds attached to the chateau, very exactly correspond with its style: the chateau is usually built in the worst possible site of the whole estate. It generally stands in some meadow or lawn, and precisely in that part of it which is the natural drain of the whole, and where, if there were no house, there would necessarily be an horse-pond. A grand avenue, planted on each side with noble trees, leads up to the house, but is usually so overgrown with moss and weeds, as to convey a most uncomfortable feeling of cold, dampness, and desolation. The grass of the lawn is equally foul, and every thing of dirt and rubbish is collected under the windows in front. The gardens behind are in the same execrable state: gravel-walks over-run with moss and weeds; flower beds ornamented with statues of leaden Floras, painted Mercurys, and Dians with milk-pails. Every yard almost salutes you with some similar absurdity. The hedges are shaped into peacocks, and not unfrequently into ladies and gentlemen dancing a minuet. Pillars of cypress, and pyramids of yew, terminate almost every walk, and if there is an hollow in the garden, it is formed into a muddy pond, in which half a dozen nymphs in stone, are about to plunge. The ill-taste of these statues is not the worst; they are grossly indecent: nothing is reserved, nothing is concealed; and yet the master of the house will not hesitate to exhibit these to his female visitors, and what is worse, his female visitors will look at them with a pleasant smile. Once for all, there is no such thing as decency, as it is understood in other kingdoms, to be found in France. Nature is the fashion of the day, and according to the French philosophy, the passions are the best index to what is natural. With a very few exceptions, the French women act up to this doctrine, and are as natural as any one could wish them. We passed through many pretty villages, and amongst them Clery, where Louis the Eleventh was buried. We visited the tomb of that memorable tyrant: it is of white marble, and the taste of it is good. The King is represented as kneeling, and in the attitude of addressing his prayers to the Virgin. The church of Clery was built by this King, and it was his express wish that he should be interred in it. The monument was raised by Louis the Thirteenth. It contains likewise the heart of Charles the Eighth, and the body of Charlotte of Savoy, the wife of Louis the Eleventh. This monument has been much defaced, the hatred of the tyrant extending to his remains. Clery was formerly a place of pilgrimage for the devout of all Europe. There is an absurd story of a great bell in the church, which was said to toll of itself, whenever any one, being in danger of any mischief by sea or land, made a vow to the Holy Virgin, that if he escaped, he would make a pilgrimage to Clery. The tolling of the bell was the acceptance of the vow on the part of the Virgin. What a pity, that credulity should injure the cause of true religion! We passed over the bridge of Mesmion, where Francis Duke of Guise was assassinated. There is an ancient abbey of the Order of St. Benedict in this village: The vineyards in this district were beautiful, and apparently fertile to a degree. They are said * * * *. We reached Orleans to dinner, and whilst it was preparing had a walk round the town. The ladies reserved themselves for the promenade, as we intended to remain till the following morning. Orleans has a very near resemblance to Tours, though the latter town is certainly better built, and preferable in situation; Orleans, however, is situated very beautifully. The country is uneven and diversified, and the fields have the air of pleasure grounds, except in the luxuriant wildness of the hedges, and the frequent intermixture of orchard and fruit trees. As seen from the road, the aspect of Orleans is extremely picturesque: it reminded me strongly of some towns I had seen in the interior of England. The interior of the town does not altogether correspond with the beauty of the country in which it stands: some of the streets are narrow, the houses old, and most execrably built. The principal street is in no way inferior to that of Tours: it is terminated by a noble bridge, which has lately been repaired from the ruinous state in which it was left by the Chouans. The Grand Place is spacious, and has an air of magnificence. The cathedral is worth peculiar attention: the first stone of it was laid in the year 1287, but it was not finished till the year 1567. The party of the Huguenots, having seized Orleans, destroyed a considerable part of the cathedral; but Henry the Fourth, having visited the town, caused it to be rebuilt. The chapels surrounding the altar are wainscotted with oak, and the pannels are deeply cut into representations of the histories of the New Testament. The representation of our blessed Saviour on the cross, and the figures of St. John and others of the Apostles, are very masterly. They are the work of Baptiste Tubi, an Italian sculptor who sought refuge in France. The two towers built at the western extremity by Louis the Fifteenth, are generally known and celebrated; by some they have been considered as too highly ornamented, but their effect is great. Perhaps the ornaments may indeed lose their own effect by being attached to a building which, by exciting stronger emotions, necessarily merges the less. The prospect from the summit of these towers exceeds all powers of description. The country seems one boundless garden covered with vineyards, the richness of which at this season of the year must be seen to be understood. No description can convey it with force to the imagination. The Maid of Orleans, and the history of the times connected with her, are too well known to render any detail of interest;--suffice it therefore to say, that there are still several relics of her, and that her memory is still held in veneration. In the Hotel de Ville is a portrait of her at full length: her face is extremely beautiful, a long oval, and has an air of melancholy grandeur which appeals forcibly to the heart. She wears on her head a cap, or rather a bonnet, in which is a white plume; her hair is auburn, and flows loosely down her back. Her neck is ornamented with a necklace, surmounted by a small collar. Her dress is what is termed a Vandyke robe; it fits closely, and is scolloped round the neck, arms, and at the bottom. She holds a sword in her hand. This picture is confirmed by its resemblance to her figure in a monument in the main street. Charles the Seventh and the Maid of Orleans are here represented kneeling before the body of our Saviour, as it lies in the lap of the Virgin Mary. The King is bare-headed, his helmet lying by him. The Maid of Orleans is opposite to him, her eyes attentively fixed on Heaven. This monument was executed by the command of Charles the Seventh, in the year 1458, and is therefore most probably a correct representation both of the figure of the King himself and of the Maid of Orleans. We attended the ladies in the evening to the promenade, or to the parade, as it has now become the fashion to call it, since France, and every thing in France, has taken a military turn. I was much pleased with the beauty of the ladies, and still more with a modesty and simple elegance in their dress, which I had not expected. But I have observed more than once, that the fashions of the capital have improved as they have travelled downwards into the provinces. They lose their excess, or what we should call in wine, their rawness and their freshness. The bosom which was naked in Paris has here at least some covering, and there is even some appearance of petticoats. The colours, as being adapted to the season, purple and straw, I thought elegant. There were two or three of the younger ladies in the dresses of bacchanals; they were certainly tasty, but they did not please me. We left Orleans at an early hour on the following day. The scenery continued to improve as we advanced farther on the banks of the Loire. For several miles it was so highly cultivated, and so naturally beautiful, as to resemble a continued garden: the houses and chateaus became neater, and every thing had an air of sprightliness and gaiety, which might have animated even Despair itself. We observed that the fields were even infested with game; they rose in the stubbles as we passed along, and any one might have shot them from the road. Though there are no game-laws in France, there is a decency and moderation in the lower orders which answers the same purpose. No one presumes to shoot game except on land of which he is the proprietor or tenant. I know not whether I have before remarked, that almost every chateau has a certain number of fish-ponds, and a certain quantity of woodland, and that these are considered as such necessary appendages, that an house is scarcely regarded as habitable without them. The table of a French gentleman is almost solely supplied from his land. Having a plenty of poultry, fish, and rabbits, he gives very little trouble to his butcher. Hence in many of the villages meat is not to be had, and even in large towns the supply bears a very small proportion to what would seem to be the natural demand of the population. Of all the provinces of France, those which compose the department of the Loire are the richest, and best cultivated; and if any foreigner would wish to fix his residence in France, let it be on the banks of this river.--Fish, as I have said before, is cheap and plentiful, and fowls about one-fourth of the price in England. The climate, not so southerly as to be intolerably hot, nor so northerly as to be continually humid, is perhaps the most healthy and pleasant in the world--the sun shines day after day in a sky of etherial blue; the spring is relieved by frequent intervals of sun, and the summer by breezes. The evening, in loveliness and serenity, exceeds all powers of description. The windows may be left safely open during the night; and night after night have I laid in my bed, and watched the course of the moon ascending in the fretted vault. Society, moreover, in this part of the kingdom, is always within the reach of those who can afford to keep it, and the expences of the best company are very trifling. I have mentioned, I believe, that an establishment of two men servants, a gardener, three maids, a family of from four to six in number, and a carriage with two horses, might with great ease be kept in the French provinces on an annual income from 250_l._ to 300_l._ per annum. One distinction of French and English visiting I must not omit. In England, if any one come from any distance to visit the family of a friend, he of course takes his dinner, and perhaps his supper, but is then expected to return home. Unless he is a brother or uncle, and not even always then, he must not expect to have a bed. To remain day after day for a week or a fortnight, would be considered as an outrage. On the other hand, in France, a family no sooner comes to its chateau for the summer (for since the Revolution this has become the fashion), than preparation is immediately made for parties of visitors. Every day brings some one, who is never suffered to go, as long as he can be detained. Every chateau thus becomes a pleasant assemblage, and in riding, walking, and fishing, nothing can pass more agreeably than a French summer in the country. As we passed along, we met several of these parties in their morning rides; they invariably addressed us, and very frequently invited us to their houses, though perfectly strangers to us. The mode of living in these country residences differs very little from what is common in the same rank of life in England. The breakfast consists of tea, coffee, fruits, and cold meat. The dinner is usually at two o'clock, and is served up as in England. The French however have not as yet imitated the English habit of sitting at table. Coffee in a saloon or pavilion, fronting the garden and lawn, immediately follows the dinner: this consumes about two hours. The company then divide into parties, and walk. They return about eight o'clock to tea. After tea they dance till supper. Supper is all gaiety and gallantry, and the latter perhaps of a kind, which in England would not be deemed very innocent. The champagne then goes round, and the ladies drink as much as the gentlemen, that is to say, enough to exhilarate, not to overwhelm the animal spirits. A French woman with three or four glasses of wine in her head, would certainly make an English one stare; but France is the land of love, and it is an universal maxim that life is insipid without it. We slept in a village, of which I have not noted the name: the ladies, as usual, were huddled in one room, and Mr. Younge, as usual, was not excluded from their party. For my own part I can sleep any where, and I slept this night in the kitchen. The landlord, from civility, insisted on having the honour of sleeping in the opposite corner. I very willingly acceded to his request, and having made up a cheerful fire, we composed ourselves in two chairs. The landlady seemed very indignant that her husband should desert her bed: she was sure that Monsieur was not afraid of remaining by himself. Her husband, she added, had a rheumatism, and the night air might injure him. I was resolved, however, for once to do mischief, or perhaps to do good, so said nothing, and the husband was accordingly obliged to abide by his offer, and remain in the kitchen. CHAP. XVI. _Comparative Estimate of French and English Country Inns--Tremendous Hail Storm--Country Masquerade--La Charité--Beauty and Luxuriance of its Environs--Nevers--Fille-de-Chambre--Lovely Country between Nevers and Moulins--Treading Corn--Moulins--Price of Provisions._ WE were two more days on our journey to La Charité: the scenery continued the same, except that the surface became more level. On both sides of the Loire, however, there was that appearance of plenty and of happiness, of the bounty of Nature and of the cheerful labour of man, which inspirits the heart of the beholder. The painters have very justly adopted it as a maxim, that no landscape is perfect, in which there are not the appendages of life and motion. The truth is, that man, as a being formed for society, is never so much interested as by man, and it is hence a maxim of feeling, as well as of moral duty, that nothing is foreign to him as an individual which is connected with him in nature. In this part of our journey we saw more of French inns of all degrees than we had hitherto experienced. I believe I have already mentioned, that a very wrong idea prevails as to their comparative merit. In substantial provision and accommodation, the French inns are not a whit inferior to English of the same degree; but they are inferior to them in all the minor appendages. In point of eating and drinking the French inns infinitely exceed the English: their provisions are of a better kind, and are much cheaper: we scarcely slept any where, where we could not procure fowls of all kinds, eggs and wine. It is too true, indeed, that their mode of cooking is not very well suited to an English palate; but a very little trouble will remedy this inconvenience. The French cooks are infinitely obliging in this respect--they will take your instructions, and thank you for the honor done them. The dinner, moreover, when served up, will consist of an infinite variety, and that without materially swelling the bill. Add to this the dessert, of which an English inn-keeper, except in the most expensive hotels, has not a single idea. In France, on the other hand, in the poorest inns, in the most ordinary hedge ale-house, you will have a dessert of every fruit in season, and always tastily and even elegantly served. The wine, likewise, is infinitely better than what is met with on the roads in England. In the article of beds, with a very few exceptions, the French inns exceed the English: if a traveller carry his sheets with him, he is always secure of an excellent hair mattrass, or if he prefer it, a clean feather-bed. On the other side, the French inns are certainly inferior to the English in their apartments. The bed-room is too often the dining-room. The walls are merely whitewashed, or covered with some execrable pictures. There are no such things as curtains, or at least they are never considered as necessary. There is neither soap, water, nor towel, to cleanse yourself when you rise in the morning. A Frenchman has no idea of washing himself before he breakfasts. The furniture, also, is always in the worst possible condition. We were often puzzled to contrive a tolerable table: the one in most common use is composed of planks laid across two stools or benches. The chairs are usually of oak, with perpendicular backs. There are no bells; and the attendants are more frequently male than female, though this practice is gradually going out of vogue. There is a great change moreover, of late years, in the civility of the landlords--they will now acknowledge their obligations to you, and not, as formerly, treat you as intruders. To sum up the comparison between a French and English provincial inn, the expences for the same kind of treatment, allowing only for the necessary national differences, are about one-fourth of what they would be in England. In the course of our tour, we were repeatedly detained for days together at some of the inns on the road, and our whole suite, amounting to seven in number, never cost us more than at the rate of an English guinea a day. In England I am confident it would have been four times the sum. The last post but one before we reached La Charité, we were overtaken by a tremendous shower of hail, a calamity, for such it is, which too frequently afflicts this part of France. The hail-tones were at least as large as nuts: some trees were at hand, under which we drove for shelter. Had we been in an open exposed road, I have no doubt but that the horses must have been hurt. I was informed, that these storms are sometimes so violent as to kill the lambs, and even to wound in a very dangerous manner the larger cattle. They usually happen about the end of the spring and the summer. We passed some very pretty peasant girls, dressed in bodices laced crossways with ribbon. They informed us that they were the daughters of a small farmer, and were going to a neighbouring chateau to dance at the birth-day of one of the ladies of the family. Mr. Younge complimented them on their beauty; they smiled with more grace than seemed to belong to their station. Our ladies at this instant came up; the young peasants made a curtsey, which instantly betrayed their secret to Mrs. Younge and Mademoiselle St. Sillery. "Where is the masque?" said the latter. "In the Chateau de Thiery," replied one of them, "about a fourth part of a league through this gateway; perhaps, if you are going only to the next post, you will join us. Papa and Mamma will be honored by your company." The invitation was declined with many thanks to the charming girls. It is needless to add, that they were young ladies habited as peasants, and that there was a masque at the chateau. This kind of entertainment is very common in this part of France. We reached La Charité in such good time, that we resolved to push on for Nevers. I had a walk round the town whilst our coffee was preparing. The interior of the town does not merit a word; the streets are narrow, the houses low and dark, and this too in a country where the Loire rolls its beautiful stream through meadows and plains, and where ground is plentiful and cheap. I can readily account for the narrow streets in capital cities, where locality has an artificial value, and where the competition is necessarily great. But whence are the streets thus huddled together, and the air thus carefully excluded, where there is no such want of ground or value of building lots? It must here originate purely in that execrable taste which characterized the early ages. The environs of the town, the fields, the meadows, the gently rising hills, and the recluse vallies, compensate for the vile interior: Nature here reigns in all her loveliness, and a poet, a painter, even any one of ordinary feeling, could not see her without delight and admiration. There are innumerable nightingales in the woods at a small distance from the town. If the French noblesse had the taste of the English, the vicinity of La Charité would be covered with villas. We took our coffee on a kind of raised mound, at the extremity of a garden, which overhung the Loire. A lofty and spreading tree overshadowed us, and stretched its branches over the river. In the fork, formed where the trunk first divides into the greater branches, was a railed seat and table. The view from hence over the meadow on the opposite bank, was gay and picturesque. The peasant girls were milking their cows and singing with their usual merriment. Parties of the townsmen were playing at golf; others were romping, running, walking, with all the thoughtless erility of the French character. I never enjoyed an hour more sensibly. The evening was delightful, and all around seemed gay and happy. Our journey to Nevers was partly by moon-light. The road exceeds all powers of description. It was frequently bordered by hedges of flowering shrubs, and such cottages as we passed seemed sufficient for the climate. Why might not Marmontel have lived in such a cottage? thought I, as I rode by more than one of them. This spot of France certainly excells every part of the world. Even the clay and chalk-pits are verdant: the sides are covered with shrubs which are raised with difficulty even in the hot-houses of England. Our inn at Nevers, the Grand Napoleon, had nothing to correspond with its sounding title; our bed-chambers, however, were pleasantly situated, and for once since we had left Orleans, we had each of us his own apartment. The fille-de-chambre too was handsome and cleanly-looking, but somewhat more loquacious than a weary traveller required. She endeavoured to bring me into a conversation on the subject of Mademoiselle St. Sillery's beauty. The familiar impertinence of these girls must be seen to be understood. One maxim is universal in France--that difference of rank has no place between a man and a woman. A fille-de-chambre is on a perfect footing of equality with a marshal of France, and will address, and converse with him as such. They enter your room without knocking, stay as long as they like, and will remain whilst you are undressing. If you exhibit any modest unwillingness, they laugh at you, and perhaps two or three of them will come in to rally Monsieur. I must do them the justice, however, to add, that though their raillery will be sometimes broad enough, it is never verbally indelicate. There is less of this in the lower ranks in France than in England. The decencies are observed in word, however violated in fact. Nevers is a pleasant town, and very agreeably situated on the declivities of an hill, at the bottom of which flows the Loire. On the summit of the hill is what remains of the palace of the ancient Counts; it has of course suffered much from time, but enough still remains to bear testimony to its original magnificence. We visited some of the apartments. The tapestry, though nearly three centuries old, still retains in a great degree the original brilliancy of its colours: the figures are monstrous, but the general effect is magnificent. There is a portrait of Madame de Montespan, the second acknowledged mistress of Louis the Fourteenth. According to the fashion of the age, her hair floats down her shoulders. She is habited in a loose robe, and has one leg half naked. Her face has the French character; it is long, but beautiful: its principal expression seemed to me voluptuousness, with something of the haughty beauty. It is well known that her temper was violent in the extreme, and perhaps the knowledge of this circumstance might have impressed me with an idea which I have imputed to the expression of the picture. The cathedral of Nevers is one of the most ancient in France. About one hundred years since, in digging a vault, a body was discovered enveloped in a long robe; some very old coins were found in the coffin, and the habit in which the body was wrapped was of itself of the most ancient fashion. According to the French antiquaries, this was the body of one of the ancient dukes of Nevers. There are many other antiquities in the town, but I do not find that I have noted them, except that they exist in sufficient numbers to establish the ancient origin of this capital of the Nivernois. Nothing can be more picturesque than the country between Nevers and Moulins. Natural beauty, and the life and activity of cultivation, unite to render it the most complete succession of landscape in France. The road is gravel, and excellent to a degree. It is bordered by magnificent trees, but which have been so planted, as to procure shade without excluding air; the road, therefore, is at once shady and dry. The chesnut trees, which are numerous in this part of the Bourbonnois, in beauty at least, infinitely exceed the British oaks: they have a bossy foliage, which reminds one of the Corinthian volutes. The French peasantry are not insensible of this beauty--wherever there was a tree of this kind of more than common luxuriance in its foliage, a seat was made around the trunk, and the turf mowed and ornamented, so as to shew that it was the scene of the village sports. Though England has many delightful villages, and rustic greens, France beats it hollow in rural scenery; and I believe I have before mentioned, that the French peasantry equally exceed the English peasantry in the taste and rustic elegance with which they ornament their little domains. On the great scale, perhaps, taste is better understood in England than in France, but as far as Nature leads, the sensibility of the French peasant gives him the advantage. Some of the gardens in the provinces of France are delightful. We passed several fields in which the farming labourers were treading out their corn; indeed the country all around was one universal scene of gaiety and activity in the exercise of this labour. The manner in which it is done is, I believe, peculiar to France. Three or four layers of corn, wheat, barley, or pease, are laid upon some dry part of the field, generally under the central tree; the horses and mules are then driven upon it and round it in all directions, a woman being in the centre like a pivot, and holding the reins: the horses are driven by little girls. The corn thrashed out is cleared away by the men, others winnow it, others heap it, others supply fresh layers. Every one seems happy and noisy, the women and girls singing, the men occasionally resting from their labour to pay their gallant attentions. The scene is so animated as to inspirit the beholder. It is evident, however, that this cheap method of getting up their harvest, is only practicable in countries where the climate is settled: even in this province they are sometimes surprised with a shower, but as the sun immediately bursts out with renewed fervour, every thing is soon put to rights. In Languedoc, as I understood, they have no barns whatever, and therefore this practice is universal. The wheat was not very heavy, it resembled barley rather than wheat; the average crop about sixteen English bushels. Nothing is so vexatious as the French measures; I do not understand them yet, though I have inquired of every one. Moulins somewhat disappointed my expectation. It is indeed, beautifully situated, in the midst of a rising and variegated country, with meadows, corn-fields, hills, and woods, to which may be added the river Allier, a stream so recluse and pretty, and so bordered with beautiful grounds, as to give the idea of a park. These grounds, moreover, are laid out as if for the pleasure of the inhabitants: the meadows and corn-fields are intersected by paths in every direction; and fruit-trees are in great number, and to all appearance are common property. There is something very interesting in these characteristics of simple benevolence; they recall the idea of the primæval ages. I have an indistinct memory of a beautiful passage in Ovid, which describes the Golden Age. I am writing, however, without the aid or presence of books, and therefore must refer the classical reader to the original. The interior of the town does not merit description: the streets are narrow, the houses dark, and built in the worst possible style. The architect has carried the idea of a city into the country: there is the same economy of ground and light, and the same efforts for huddling and comprehending as much brick and mortar as possible in the least possible space. Its origin was in the fourteenth century. The Dukes of Bourbon selected it as a place of residence during the season of the chace, and having built a castle in the neighbourhood, their suite and descendants shortly founded a town. This, indeed, was the usual origin of most of the provincial towns in Europe; they followed the castle or the chateau of the Baron. As seen in the fields and meadows in the vicinity of the town, Moulins has a very agreeable appearance. The river, and the beautiful scenery around it, compensate for its disagreeable interior; and some trees being intermixed with the buildings of the town give an air of gaiety and the picturesque to the town itself. The market-place is only worthy of mention as introducing the price of provisions. Moulins is as cheap as Tours: beef, and mutton, and veal, are plentiful; vegetables scarcely cost any thing, and fuel is very moderate. Fruit is so cheap as scarcely to be sold, and very good; eggs two dozen for an English sixpence; poultry abundant, and about sixpence a fowl. A good house, such a one as is usually inhabited by the lawyer, the apothecary, or a gentleman of five or six hundred per annum, in the country towns in England, is at Moulins from twelve to fourteen pounds per year, including garden and paddock. Our inn at Moulins, however, was horrible: our beds would have frightened any one but an experienced traveller. CHAP. XVII. _Country between Moulins and Rouane--Bresle--Account of the Provinces of the Nivernois and Bourbonnois--Climate--Face of the Country--Soil--Natural Produce--Agricultural Produce--Kitchen Garden--French Yeomen--Landlords--Price of Land--Leases--General Character of the French Provincial Farmers._ ON the following day we left Moulins for Lyons. The distance between the two places exceeds an hundred miles; we distributed, therefore, our journey into three days, making Rouane on the Loire, and Bresle, our intermediate sleeping places. Between Moulins and Rouane, that is to say, during the whole of our first day's journey, the country is a succession of hills and valleys, of open and inclosed, of fields and of woodland, which render it to the eyes of a northern traveller the most lovely country in the world. In proportion, however, as the country becomes mere fertile, the roads become worse. We had got now into roads comparatively very bad, but still not so bad as in England and America. The beauty of the scenery, however, compensated for this defect of the roads. We met many waggons, the hind wheels of which were higher than those in front. This is one of the few things in which the French farmers exhibit more knowledge than the English. These wheels of the waggons were shod with wood instead of iron. We passed several vineyards, in which the vines were trained by maples, and festooned from tree to tree. They looked fanciful and picturesque. The vines of this country, however, are said to yield better in quantity than in quality. They produce much, but the wine is bad, and not fit for exportation. In every hedge we passed were medlars, plumbs, cherries, and maples with vines trained to them. This abundance of fruit gives an air of great plenty, and likewise much improves the beauty of the country. The French fruit of almost every kind exceeds the English. An exception must be made with respect to apples, which are better in England than in any country in the world. But the grapes, the plumbs, the pears, the peaches, the nectarines, and the cherries of France, have not their equal all the world over. They are of course cheap in proportion to their abundance. The health of the peasantry may perhaps in good part be imputed to this vegetable abundance. It is a constant maxim with physicians, that those countries are most healthy, where from an ordinary laxative diet, the body is always kept open. Half the diseases in the world originate in obstructions. Rouane is a considerable town on the Loire; it is very ancient in its origin, and its appearance corresponds with its antiquity. It is chiefly used as an entrepôt for all the merchandize, corn, wine, &c. which is sent down the Loire. It is accordingly a place of infinite bustle, and in despite of the river, is very dirty. He must be more fastidious than belongs to a traveller, who cannot excuse this necessary appendage of trade, and particularly in a town on the Loire, where a walk of ten minutes will carry him from the narrow streets into one of the sweetest countries under Heaven. Even the necessary filth of commerce cannot destroy, or scarcely deface the beauty of the country. Our inn at Rouane was execrable beyond measure. Without any regard to decency, we were introduced into a sleeping room with three beds, and informed that Monsieur and Madame Younge were to sleep in one, Mademoiselle St. Sillery in another, and myself in the third. It was not without difficulty that I could procure another arrangement. The beds, moreover, were without pillows. From Rouane to Bresle the country assumes a mountainous form, and the road is bordered with chesnut trees. We had got now into the district of mulberries, and we passed innumerable trees of them. Like other fruit-trees, they grow wild, in the middle of fields, hedge-rows, and by the road side. A stranger travelling in France is led to conclude, that there is no such thing as property in fruit. Every one may certainly gather as much as he chuses for his own immediate use. The peasants of this part of the province are land proprietors; some of them possess twelve or fourteen acres, others an hill, others a garden or a single field. They appeared poor but comfortable. They raise a great quantity of poultry and pigs, and reminded me very forcibly of the Negroes in the West India Islands--a hard-working, happy, and cheerful race. I should not, perhaps, omit to mention, that the houses of the peasants were very different from any that I had yet seen. For the most part, they are square, white, and with flat roofs. They are almost totally without glass in the windows; but the climate is generally so dry and delightful, that glass perhaps would rather be an annoyance. We are apt to attach ideas of comfort or misery according to circumstances peculiarly belonging to ourselves. Tell an English peasant that a Frenchman has neither glass to his windows, nor sheets to his bed, and he will conclude him to be miserable in the extreme. On the other hand, tell a French peasant, that an English rustic never tastes a glass of wine once in seven years, and he will equally pity the Englishman. Bresle is one of those villages which impress a traveller with a strong idea of the beauty of the country, and of the state of the comfort of its inhabitants. It is broad, clean, and most charmingly situated. On every side of it rises a wall of mountains, covered to their very summits with vines, and interspersed with the cottages of the Vignerons. The river Tardine flows through the valley. This is what is termed a mountain river, being in summer a brook, and in winter a torrent. In the year 1715 it rose so high as to sweep away half the town: the inhabitants were surprised in their beds, and many of them were drowned. The river, when we passed, had no appearance of being capable of this tremendous force: it resembled a little brook, in which a shallow stream of very transparent water rolled over a bed of gravel. "How happy might an hermit be," said Mademoiselle St. Sillery, "in a cottage on the side of one of those hills! There is a wood for him to walk in, and a brook to encourage him, by its soft murmurs, to sleep." I agreed in the observation which exactly characterizes the scenery. Our inn at this town was in the midst of a garden, covered with fruits and flowers. Our beds reminded me of England, except that again there were no pillows, and absolutely nothing in the chamber but a bed. Every thing, however, was delightfully clean; and as I lay in my bed, I was serenaded by a nightingale. The road between Moulins and Lyons is certainly the most picturesque part of France; every league presented me with something to admire, and to note. My observations were accordingly so numerous, that I have deemed it necessary to arrange them in some form, and to present them in a kind of connected picture. Mr. Younge had the kindness to answer all my questions as far as his own knowledge went; and where he was at a loss himself, seized the first opportunity of inquiry from others. In France, this is more practicable than it would be in any other country. The French of all classes, as I have repeatedly had occasion to observe, are unwearied in their acts of kindness; they offer their minor services with sincerity, and you cannot oblige them more than by accepting them, nor disappoint them more than by declining them. They have nothing of the surliness of the Englishman. It would be considered as the most savage brutality to hesitate in, and more particularly to refuse with rudeness, any possible satisfaction to a stranger. To be a stranger is to be a visitor, and to be a visitor is to have a claim to the most extreme hospitality and attention. I can never enough praise the French people for their indiscriminate, their natural, their totally uninterested and spontaneous benevolence. I wish to convey a clear idea of this garden of France: I shall therefore give my observations in full under the heads of, its climate, its produce, its agriculture, and the manners of its provincial inhabitants. The climate of the departments of the Nievre and the Allier, which include the provinces of the Nivernois and Bourbonnois, is the most delightful under Heaven, being at once most healthy, and such as to animate and inspirit the senses and the imagination: it is an endless succession of the most lovely skins, without any interruption, except by those rains which are necessary to nourish and fertilize. The winters are mild, without fogs, and with sufficient sunshine to render fires almost unnecessary. The springs answer to the ordinary weather of May in other kingdoms. The summer and autumn--with the exception of hail and thunder, which are certainly violent, but not frequent--are not characterized by those heavy humid heats, which are so pestilential in some parts of South America: they are light, elastic, and cheering. The windows of the bed-chambers, as I have before mentioned, are almost all without glass; or, if they have them, it is for show rather than for use: the universal custom is, to sleep with them open. It is nothing uncommon to have the swallows flying into your chamber, and awakening you by early dawn with their twittering. When these windows open into gardens, nothing can be more pleasant: the purity of the air, the splendor of the stars, the singing of nightingales, and the perfume of flowers, all concur to charm the senses; and I never remember to have enjoyed sweeter slumbers, and pleasanter hours, than whilst in this part of France. In March and April, the ground is covered with flowers; and many which are solely confined to the gardens and hot-houses in England, may be seen in the fields and hedge-rows. The colours are perhaps not altogether so brilliant as in more humid climates, but be they what they may, they, give the country an appearance of a fairy land. Pease are in common use on every table in March, and every kind of culinary vegetable is equally forward. The meadows are covered with violets, and the gardens with roses: the banks by the side of the road seem one continued bed of cowslips. In plain words, Spring here indeed seems to hold her throne, and to reign in all that vernal sweetness and loveliness which is imputed to her by the poets. The health of the inhabitants corresponds with the excellence of the climate. Gouts, rheumatisms, and even colds, are very rare, and fevers not frequent. The most common complaint is a dysentery, towards the latter end of the autumn. The face of the country throughout the two departments of the Nievre and the Allier, is what has been above described--an uninterrupted succession of rich landscape, in which every thing is united which constitutes the picturesque. The country sometimes rises into hills, and even mountains; none of which are so barren but to have vineyards, or gardens, to their very summits. In many of them, where the surface is common property, the peasantry, in order to make the most of its superficial area, have dug it into terraces, on which each of them has his vineyard, or garden for herbs, corn, and fruits. The industry of the French peasantry is not exceeded in any part of the world: wherever they possess a spot of land, they improve it to its utmost possible capacity. Under this careful cultivation, there is in reality no such thing in France as a sterile mountain. If there be no natural soil, they will carry some thither. There are numerous woods and forests in these departments. The wood being interspersed amongst the hills and valleys, contribute much to the beauty of the scenery: the same circumstance contributes more, perhaps, to the comfort of the inhabitants. Fuel, so dear in almost every other part of France, is here cheap to an extraordinary degree. Coal is likewise found at some depth from the surface; but, of course, no use is made of it. The French woods are more luxuriant, and generally composed of more beautiful trees than those in England and in America. The chesnut-tree, so common in France, is perhaps unrivalled in its richness of foliage. The underwood, moreover, is less ragged and troublesome. Nothing can be more delightful than an evening walk in a French wood. The soil of the department of the Allier is rather light: on the hills it is calcareous; in the vales it is a white calcareous loam, the surface of which is a most fertilizing manure of marl and clay. The hills, therefore, are peculiarly adapted for vines, which they produce in great quantities; and when on favourable sites, that is to say, with respect to the sun, the quality of the wine corresponds with the quantity. In this province, perhaps, there is a less proportion of waste land than in any other department in France. The people are industrious, and the soil is fruitful. There are certainly some wastes, which, under proper cultivation, might be rendered fertile. I passed over many of these, when an idea naturally arose in my mind, what a different appearance they would assume under English or American management. But the bad management of the French farmers is no derogation from the just praise of its rich soil. The natural and agricultural produce is such, as to render these provinces worthy of their characteristic designation--they are truly the garden of France. The most beautiful shrubs are common in the woods and hedges: not a month in the year but one or other of them are in full flower and foliage. The botanist might be weary before he had concluded his task. To a northern traveller, nothing appears more astonishing than the garden-like air of the fields in France: he will see in the woods and forests, what he has been hitherto accustomed to see only in hot-houses. The natural history of these provinces would be an inexhaustible subject: the cursory traveller can only describe generally. Wheat, barley, oats, grasses, roots, and vines, are the staple agricultural produce. The wheat is certainly not so heavy as that in England, but the barley is not inferior to any barley in the world. The French farmers calculate upon reaping about sevenfold; if they sow one bushel, they reap, between six and seven. Potatoes have likewise, of late years, become an article of field-culture and general consumption in every department of France, and particularly in those of the Loire, the Allier, and the Nievre. Every city is supplied with them almost in as much abundance as the cities of England and America. Where wheat is scarce, the peasantry substitute them as bread. To say all in a word, they have of late years got into general consumption; though before the Revolution they were scarcely known. The kitchen-garden in the French provinces is by no means so contemptible as it has been described by some travellers. In this respect they have done the French great injustice. I will venture to assert, on the other hand, that nothing is cultivated in the kitchen-gardens of England and America, but what, either by the aid of a better climate, or of more careful and assiduous culture, is brought to more perfection, and produced in greater plenty, in the kitchen-gardens of France. I have already mentioned potatoes, which are cultivated both in the garden and in the field: artichokes and asparagus are in great plenty, and comparatively most surprisingly cheap--as many may be bought for a penny in France as for a shilling in England. The environs of Lyons are celebrated for their excellent artichokes; they are carefully conveyed in great quantities to the tables of the rich all over the kingdom. Pease, beans, turnips, carrots, and onions, are equally plentifully cultivated, equally good, and equally cheap. I have frequently had occasion to speak of the slovenly agriculture of the French farmers, and I am sorry to have to add, that the fertility of the provinces of Nivernois and the Bourbonnois, is rather to be imputed to the felicity of their soil and climate than to their cultivation. There is certainly a vast proportion of waste land in these provinces, which only remains waste, because the French landlords and farmers want the knowledge to bring it into cultivation. Many hundreds of acres are let at about twelve sols (sixpence) per acre, and would be sold at about a Louis d'or, which in three years, under English management, would be richly worth thirty pounds. What a country would this be to purchase in, if with himself an Englishman or an American could transport his own labourers and ideas. But nothing is to be done without assistance. Many of the French landlords retain a great portion of their estates in their own hands, and cultivate it with more knowledge and with more liberality than their farmers. A gentleman, farming his own lands, is always useful to the country, if not to himself. He may improve his lands beyond their worth--he may ruin himself, therefore, but the country is proportionately benefitted by having so many good acres where it had before so many bad. Some of the restored Emigrants have most peculiarly benefitted France, by bringing into it English improvements. I have more than once had occasion to remark, that this change is visible in many parts of the kingdom, and will produce in time still more important effects. The price of land is by two-thirds cheaper than in England, I am speaking now of the Nivernois and Bourboranois. It is generally about eighteen or twenty years purchase of the rent. If the rent be about 300_l_. English for about five hundred acres of land--half arable, a fourth forest, and a fourth waste--the purchase will be about 5500 guineas. The very same estate in any part of England would be about 15,000. But in England the forest and waste would be brought into cultivation. The forest is here little better than a waste, and the waste is turned to as little purpose as if it were the wild sea beach. The farms in the Nivernois are very small; the farmers are by natural consequence poor. They have neither the spirit nor the means of improvement. They are in fact but a richer kind of peasantry. Those writers have surely never lived in the country, who urge the national utility of small farms. The immediate consequences of small farms are an overflow of population, and such a division and sub-division of sustenance, as to reduce the poor to the lowest possible point of sustenance. Population, within certain limits, may doubtless constitute the strength of a nation; but who will contend, that a nation of beggars, a nation overflowing with a starved miserable superfluity, is in a condition of enviable strength? There are few or no leases in these provinces, and this is doubtless one of the reasons why agriculture has remained where it now is for these four or five last centuries. The common course of the crops is wheat, barley, fallow; or beans, barley, and wheat, and fallow. In some of the provinces, it is wheat, fallow, and wheat, fallow, in endless succession. I do not understand enough of the vine culture to give any opinion as to the French vineyards, but by all that I have observed, I must fully assent to the generally received opinion, that the vine is better understood in France than in Portugal, and that wines are, in fact, the natural staple in France. It is the peculiar excellence of the vine, that it does not require fertile land. It will most flourish where nothing but itself will take root. How happy therefore is it for France, that she can thus turn her barrens into this most productive culture, and make her mountains, as it were, smile. If an Englishman or an American were inclined to give a trial to a settlement in France, I would certainly advise them to fix on one of these central departments. They will find a soil and climate such as I have described, and which I think has not its equal in the world. They will find land cheap; and as it may be improved, and even the cheap price is rated according to its present rent, they will find this cheapness to be actually ten times as cheap as it appears. They will find, moreover, cheerful neighbours, a people polished in their manners from the lowest to the highest, and naturally gay and benevolent. CHAP. XVIII. _Lyons--Town-Hall-Hotel de Dieu--Manufactories--Price of Provisions--State of Society--Hospitality to Strangers--Manners--Mode of Living--Departure--Vienne--French Lovers._ WE reached Lyons in the evening of the third day after we left Moulins. We remained there two days, and employed nearly the whole of the time in walks over the city and environs. I adopted this practice as the invariable rule on the whole course of my tour--to have certain points where we might repose, and thence take a view both of the place itself, and a retrospect of what we had passed. Nothing can be more delightful to the eye than the situation of Lyons. Situated on the confluence of two of the most lovely rivers in the world, the Rhone and the Saone, and distributed, as it were, on hills and dales, with lawn, corn-fields, woods and vineyards interposed, and gardens, trees, &c. intermixed with the houses, it has a liveliness, an animation, an air of cleanness, and rurality, which seldom belong to a populous city. The distant Alps, moreover, rising in the back ground, add magnificence to beauty. Beyond all possibility of doubt, Lyons is unrivalled in the loveliness of its situation. The approach to it is like the avenue to fairy-land. The horrible ravage of the Revolution has much defaced this town. La Place de Belle Cour was once the finest square which any provincial town in Europe could boast. It was composed of the most magnificent houses, the habitations of such of the nobility as were accustomed to make Lyons their winter or summer residence. That demon, in the human shape, Collot d'Herbois, being sent to Lyons as one of the Jacobin Commissioners, by one and the same decree condemned the houses to be razed to the ground, and their possessors to be guillotined. A century will pass before Lyons will recover itself from this Jacobin purgation. In this square was formerly an equestrian statue of Louis the Fourteenth, adorned on the sides of the pedestal with bronze figures of the Rhone and the Saone. This statue is destroyed, but the bronze figures remain. The town-hall of Lyons is in every respect worthy of the city. It is in the form of a parallelogram, with wings on each side of the front, each wing being nearly one hundred and fifty yards in length. The middle of the wings are crowned with cupolas, and the gates have all Ionic pillars. The walls and ceilings are covered with paintings. There are several inscriptions in honour of the Emperor Napoleon; but as these have been already noted in other books of travels, I deem it unnecessary to say more of them. But the best praise of Lyons is in its institutions for charity, in its hospitals, and in its schools. In no city in the world have they so great a proportion to the actual population and magnitude of the town. They are equal to the support of one eighth part of the inhabitants. The Hotel Dieu is in fact a palace built for the sick poor. The rooms are lofty, with cupolas, and all of them very carefully ventilated. The beds are clean to an extreme degree, as was likewise every utensil in the kitchen, and the kitchen itself. The nursing, feeding, &c. of the sick is performed by a religious society of about one hundred men, and the same number of women, who devote themselves to that purpose. The men are habited in black; the women in the dress of nuns. This charity is open to all nations; to be an admissible object, nothing further is necessary than to stand in need of its assistance. This is true charity. The cathedral is beautifully situated by the river: it is dedicated to St. John, and is built in the ancient Gothic style. The clock is a great favourite with the inhabitants. It is ornamented by a cock, which is contrived so as to crow every hour. Before the Revolution, the church of Lyons was the richest in France, or Europe. All the canons were counts, and were not admissible, till they had proved sixteen quarters of nobility. They wore a gold cross of eight rays. Since the Revolution, the cathedral has fallen into decay; but it is to be hoped that, for the honour of the town, it will be repaired. Lyons has two theatres, Le Grand, and Le Petit Spectacle. Neither of them deserve any more than a bare mention. The performers had so little reputation, that we had no wish to visit either of them. The manufactories of Lyons, being confined in their supply to the home market, are not in the same flourishing state as formerly. They still continue, however, to work up a vast quantity of silk, and on the return of peace, would doubtless recover somewhat of their former prosperity. Some years since, the silk stockings alone worked up at Lyons, were estimated at 1500 pair daily. The workmen are unhappily not paid in proportion to their industry. They commence their day's labour at an unusual hour in the morning, and continue it in the night, yet are unable to earn enough to live in plenty. Lyons appeared to me, from the cursory information which I could obtain, to be as cheap as any town in France. Provisions of all kinds were in great plenty, and were the best of their kind. There are three kinds of bread--the white bread, meal bread, and black or rye bread. The latter is in most use amongst the weavers. It is very cheap, but the measures differ so much in this part of France, that I could not reduce them to English pounds, except by a rough estimate. The best wheaten bread is about one-third or rather more of the price that it is in England; beef and mutton in great plenty, and proportionately cheap; a very large turkey for about two shillings and sixpence, English money. Pit coal is in common use in almost every house in Lyons: it is dug in the immediate neighbourhood, and is very cheap. The best land in the province may be had for about fifteen pounds (English) per acre in purchase. In the neighbourhood of Lyons, the land lets high, and therefore sells proportionately. Vegetables are of course in the greatest possible plenty, and fruit so cheap and so abundant, as to be sold only by the poorest people. Whoever is particularly fond of a dessert, let him seek it in France: for a livre he may set out a table, which in London would take him at least a Louis. Lyons has given birth to many celebrated men. Amongst them was De Lanzy, the celebrated mathematician, and friend of Maupertuis. He lived to such an extreme age as to survive his memory and faculties; but when so insensible as to know no one about him, Maupertuis suddenly asked him what was the square of 12, and he readily replied, 144, and died, as it is said, almost in the same moment. This illustrious genius was as simple as he was learned. His character, as given amongst the history of the French literati, is very amiable--of great learning, of extreme industry, simple and amiable to a degree, and invariably benevolent and good-tempered. He was yet more distinguished by his charities than by his learning. The learned Thon likewise was a native of this town. The society at Lyons very much resembles that of Paris; it is divided into two classes--those in trade, _i. e._ merchants, and those out of trade; the military, gentry, &c. The military, though many of them are certainly of rather an humble origin, are characterized by elegant manners, by great politeness, and by a gallantry towards the ladies which would have done honour to the old court. It gave me great satisfaction to hear this character of them. I should put no value on any society in which the ladies did not hold their due place and perform their due parts, and this is never the case, except where they are properly respected. Gallantry has the same effect upon the manners which Ovid attributes to learning--"_Emollit mores nec sinit esse feros_." A stranger at Lyons, who makes the city his temporary residence, is received with the greatest hospitality into all the parties of the town; he requires nothing but an introduction to one of them; and even if he should be without that, an unequivocal appearance of respectability would answer the same end. The fashionable world at Lyons, however, are not accustomed to give dinners; they have no notion of that substantial hospitality which characterizes England. Their suppers however are very elegant: they have always fish, and sometimes soup, roasted poultry, and in the proper season, game--pease, cauliflowers, and asparagus, almost the whole year round. The sparkling Champagne then goes round, and French wit, French vivacity, and French gallantry, are seen in perfection. There is certainly nothing in England equal to the French supper. It is usually served in a saloon, but the company make no hesitation, in the intervals of conversation and of eating, to visit every room in the house. Every room is accordingly lighted and prepared for this purpose; the beds thrust into cupboards and corners, and the whole house rendered a splendid promenade, most brilliantly lighted with glass chandeliers and lustres. This blaze of light is further increased by reflection from the large glasses and mirrors which are found in every room. In England, the glasses are pitiful to a degree. In France, even in the inns, they reach in one undivided plate from the top of the room to the bottom. The French furniture moreover is infinitely more magnificent than in England. Curtains, chair-covers, &c. are all of silk, and the chairs fashioned according to the designs of artists. The French music too, such as attends on their parties, exceeds that of England; in a few words, a party in France is a spectacle; it is arranged with art; and where there is much art, there will always be some taste. In the neighbourhood of Lyons are numerous chateaus, most delightfully situated, with lawns, pleasure-grounds, gardens, and green-houses, in the English taste. In the summer season, public breakfasts are almost daily given by one or other of the possessors. Marquees are then erected on the lawn, and all the military bands in the town attend. The day is consumed in dancing, which is often protracted so late in the night, as almost to trespass on the day following. These kind of parties are perhaps too favourable for intrigue, to suit English or American manners, but they are certainly delightful in a degree, and recall to one's fancy the images of poetry. The French ladies, as I believe I have before mentioned, are fond of habiting themselves as harvesters: they frequently visit the farmers thus _incog._ and hire themselves for the day. Though the farmer knows them, it is the established custom that he should favour the sport by pretending ignorance, and treating them in every respect as if they were what they seemed. This is another means of indulging that general disposition to gallantry which characterizes a Frenchwoman. They must have lovers of all degrees and qualities; for vanity is at the bottom of this assumed humility. Lodging at Lyons, in which I include board, is extremely cheap: for about thirty pounds per annum you may board in the first houses, and I was informed that every one is welcome but Italians. The French have an extreme contempt for Italians. A house at Lyons may likewise be hired very cheap. The pleasantest houses, however, are situated out of the town; and I have no doubt, but that such an house as would cost in England one hundred per annum, might be hired in the environs of Lyons, in the loveliest country in the world, by the sides of the Rhone and the Saone, and with a view of the Alps, for about twenty-five Louis annual rent. Every house has a garden, and many of them mulberry orchards, a wood, and pleasure-grounds. We left Lyons on the morning of the third day after our arrival, much pleased with our stay, and with the general appearance of the city and the inhabitants. Avignon was the next main point of our destination. As the distance between Lyons and Avignon is about 120 miles, we distributed our journey into three divisions, and as many days. Lyons is connected by a stone bridge with the beautiful village La Guillotiere; it consists of twenty arches, and is upwards of 1200 feet in length. I believe I have before observed, that the provincial bridges, as well as the roads in France, are infinitely superior to any thing of the kind in England, and that the cause of this superiority is, that they are under the controul and supervision of the government. Every thing connected with the facility of general access is considered as of public concern, and therefore as an object of government. In England, the roads are made and mended by the vicinity. In France, this business belongs to the state and to the administration of the province. For many miles from Lyons, the road continued very various, occasionally hill and dale, bordered by hedges, in which were flowers and flowering shrubs, that perfumed the air very delightfully. It is not uncommon to find even orange trees in the open fields: the very air of the country seemed different from any through which I had before passed. There were many of the fields planted with mulberry trees; I observed that this tree seemed to flourish best where nothing else would grow--on stony and gravelly soils. This indeed seems to be the common excellence of the mulberry and the vine, that they may be both cultivated on lands which would otherwise be barren. We passed several flower-mills on the river Gere; a beautiful stream, occasionally very thickly wooded, and passing in a channel, which, as seen from the road, has any appearance but that of a level. The smaller rivers in France, like the bye lanes, are infinitely more beautiful than the larger; the water, passing over a bed of gravel, is limpid and transparent to a degree, and the grounds through which they roll, being left in their natural rudeness, have a character of wildness, romance, and picturesque, which is not to be found in the greater navigable streams. An evening stroll along their banks, would favour the imagination of a poet. I feel some surprize, that a greater proportion of the writers of France are not their descriptive poets. The Gere is animated by numerous flower-mills; there are likewise many paper-mills. They chiefly pleased me by their lovely situation. Mademoiselle St. Sillery repeatedly sung a line of a French song, "O that I were a miller's maid." It is but justice to this lady to say, that she possessed a sensibility to the charms of Nature, which is seldom found in tempers so apparently thoughtless. As we passed several cottages by the road-side, we saw the peasant girls spinning; some of them were working in silk, others in cotton. They all seemed happy, gay, and noisy; and where there were one or two of them together, seemed to interrupt their labour by playing with each other. It is impossible that a people of this kind can feel their labour. Some of them, moreover, were really handsome. We reached Vienne to a late dinner, and resolved to remain there for the night. Our inn had nothing to recommend it but its situation. Our dinner however was plentiful, and what is not very common, was very well dressed. The vegetables would not have disgraced an hotel in London. Potatoes are becoming as common in France as in England, and the greens of all sorts are to the full as good. "Confess," said Mr. Younge, "that you would not have dined better in London, and the price will be about one-fourth." "And confess," said Mademoiselle St. Sillery, "that in London you would not have had such an accompaniment to your dinner, such a lovely sky, and a garden so luxuriant in flowers." The windows were open, and looked backwards into the garden, which was certainly beautiful and luxuriant to a degree. On the other side of the hedge, which was at the further extremity, some one was playing on the flageolet: the tune was simple and sweet, and perfectly in unison with the scene. "Who is it," demanded I, "that plays so well?" "Some one who has been at the wars," said Madame Younge. "The French boys in the army, if they signalize themselves by any act of bravery, have sometimes one year's leave of absence given them as a reward. This is some fifer who has obtained this leave." We had coffee, as is still the custom in the provinces, immediately after dinner; it was brought in by a sweet girl, who blushed and smiled most charmingly as she fell over the corner of a chair. Her father afterwards related her simple history in brief. She was the belle in Vienne, and was courted by two or three of her own condition, but was inflexibly attached to a young conscript. "You will doubtless hear him before you depart," continued the landlord, "for he is almost always behind that garden hedge, playing on his flageolet."--The lover it seems was the young fifer. Mademoiselle St. Sillery now became very restless. "You wish to see this gentleman," said Mrs. Younge to her, smiling. Mademoiselle made no other answer than by beckoning to me, and in the same moment putting on her bonnet. I could do no less than accompany her. We went into the garden, and thence over a rough stile into the fields. Much to our disappointment, Corydon was not to be seen. "I am sure he must be a gentleman, by his taste and delicacy," said Mademoiselle. We had not time to see much of the town, nor did it appear much to deserve it. It is certainly very prettily situated on the Gere and the Rhone, and is surrounded by hills, which give it pleasantness and effect. It seemed to us to be comparatively a busy and thriving town--I say comparatively, for as compared with the towns of England or America, its trade was contemptible. There are two or three hardware manufactories, where the steel is said to be well tempered. The town is of great antiquity, and carries its age in its face. The streets are irregular; the houses dark; one room in almost every house is very large, and all the others most inconveniently small. This is the invariable characteristic of the house architecture of towns of a certain age. I understood from inquiry, that, with the exception of wood for fuel, every thing was very reasonable in Vienne. Provisions were in great plenty, and very cheap. The town, as I have said, is dull, but the environs, the fields, and the gardens, delightful. On the following day we continued our journey, and having sent our horses forward, took our seats in the carriage with the ladies. The young conscript seemed to fill the head of Mademoiselle St. Sillery. "These kind of adventures," said she, "are not so romantic in France as they would be in England, and more particularly since the conscription makes no distinction of ranks. It is reckoned an honour, or at least no disgrace, to be a private in the conscripts. It is incredible, how great a number of gentlemen fill the ranks of the French army. A foreigner cannot conceive it." Mr. Younge confirmed this remark, and imputed much of the success of the French arms to the spirit of honour and emulation which resulted from this constitution. "Every conscript," said he, "indeed every French soldier, knows that all the dignities of the army are open to him, and he may one day be himself a General, if he can render himself prominent. The chevaliers, moreover, are not only animated by a gallant spirit themselves, but they infuse it into the army, and give it a character and self-esteem, the effect of which is truly wonderful." We passed through some pleasant villages, and amongst these Condrieux, which is celebrated in France for its excellent wine: it is thick and sweet, and resembles Tent. The price is high, and as usual in the wine countries, none that is good is to be had on the spot. The country about this village was rugged, uneven, but wild and picturesque; it resembled no part that I had before seen. The fields were still planted with mulberry trees, and the hedges (for the country is thickly enclosed), were perfumed with scented shrubs. We saw some women driving oxen carts. One of them was a tall, and as far as good features went, a good-looking girl, but her fate sun-burnt, and her legs naked. She handled the whip moreover with great strength, and apparently with little temper. She returned our smile as we passed her, but bowed her body to the ladies. "Is it possible," said I, "that there can be any gentleness in that creature?" "If by gentleness you mean a taste for gallantry, and an expectation of it as her right," replied Mr. Younge, "she has it as much as any Parisian belle. In France, indeed, gallantry is like water; it is considered as a thing of common right; it is as unnatural to withhold it as it is natural to receive it. If you were to meet that lady in a village walk, she would think herself very ill treated, if you had not a compliment on your tongue, and at least the appearance of a sentiment in your heart." Several waggons of the country passed us; their construction was awkward to a degree. The French are very far behind the English in the ingenuity of the lower order of their artisans. A French watchmaker usually exceeds an English one; but a French blacksmith, a French carpenter, are as infinitely inferior. The things in common use are execrable: not a window that shuts close, not a door that fits; every thing clumsy, rough hewn, and as if made by Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday. We reached St. Valier to sleep. It is a small town, but prettily situated, and the environs fertile, highly cultivated, and naturally beautiful. The landlord of the inn was a true Boniface; he had nothing of the Frenchman but his civility to the ladies. In assisting Mrs. Younge from the carriage, he contrived it so awkwardly that he fell on his back, and pulled the lady upon him; the matter, however, was a mere trifle to a Frenchwoman, and had no other effect but to raise her colour. If there are any ladies in a carriage, it is the invariable privilege of the French hosts that they hand them from their seats. Boniface, however, compensated his personal awkwardness by setting before us an excellent supper; indeed, the farther we travelled, the cheaper and the better became our fare. The hostess was likewise a true character: she made some observations so free, and even indelicate, in the hearing of the ladies, as in some degree confounded me. But modesty is certainly no part of the virtues of a Frenchwoman. My bed-chamber was scented with orange trees which occupied one end of the room. The hostess herself came up to wish me good night, and to express her compassion for Mademoiselle St. Sillery and me, because truly, not being married together, we were obliged to sleep separate, though so near each other. It came very strongly into my mind, that she had been making a similar observation to Mademoiselle. The French women certainly talk with a freedom which would startle an English or American female. With the greatest possible _sang froid_ they will seat themselves on the side of the bed, and remain in conversation with you till they have fairly seen you in. They seem indeed to consider this office as a matter of course. They enter your chamber at all times with equal freedom; and if there happen to be two or more filles-de-chambre, they will very coolly seat themselves and converse together. There is indeed but one invariable rule in France, and that is, that a fille-de-chambre is company for an emperor. Being very tired, I had slept sounder than usual, when I was called by the landlady, accompanied by Mademoiselle St. Sillery. The latter indeed remained at the door of the apartment, but the good-humoured boisterous landlady awoke me with some violence by a toss of the clothes. "Rise, Monsieur," said she, "and attend your mistress through the town; she wants a walk. Shame upon a chevalier to sleep, whilst so much beauty is awake!" I have translated literally, that I may give an idea of that tone of compliment, and even of language, which characterizes the French men and women, in speaking to or of each other. Mademoiselle St. Sillery, in the course of our journey, was as warmly complimented for her beauty by the women as by the gentlemen. One woman in particular, and an elderly one, embraced her with a kind of rapture, saying at the same time, that she was as lovely as an angel. This extravagance of the women towards each other is peculiar to France, or at least I have never seen it elsewhere. As the morning was delightful, we resolved, much to the discontent of the landlady, to reach Thein to breakfast. The horses were accordingly ordered, and after much reluctance, and some grumbling, we procured them, and departed. The road was continually on the ascent, and in every mile opened the most lovely prospects. The trees in this part of France are uncommonly beautiful; and where there are any meadows, as along the banks of the rivers, they are adorned with the sweetest flowers, which here grow wild, and attain a more than garden-sweetness and brilliancy. The birds, moreover, were singing merrily, and all Nature seemed animate and gay. I felt truly happy, and Mademoiselle St. Sillery was in such life and spirits, that it was not without difficulty that we detained her in her seat. Thein, where we breakfasted, was the Teyna of the Romans: it is delightfully situated at the bottom of an hill, called the Hermitage, and celebrated over all Europe and the world for its rich wines. The soil on which these vineyards grow is a very light loam, supported by a pan of granite, in which it resembles what is denominated in England the Norfolk soil. Another hill on the opposite side of the river produces the wine called the _côte rotie_. The average yearly produce is nearly one thousand hogsheads, and the price of the wine on the spot, in retail, is about 3_s._ 6_d._ English money the bottle. From the window of the apartment in which we breakfasted, we had a view of the town of Tournon, and the ruins of an old castle, which very pleasantly invited our imagination into former times. Proceeding on our journey, ourselves, our horses, and our carriage, were all transported over the river in a boat, which instead of being ferried over by men, was dragged over by a pulley and rope on the opposite side. I should imagine that this method is not very safe, but it certainly saves labour and trouble; and it is impossible to build a bridge over a river like the Rhone and the Isere. This river is very rapid, but not very clear. Its banks are rocky, hilly, and occasionally open into the most beautiful scenery which it is possible for poet or painter to conceive. The Isere was well known to the ancients. We dined at Valence, which is delightfully situated in a plain six or eight miles in breadth. It was well known to the Romans by the name of Valentia, and is supposed to have been so called from its healthy scite, or, according to other writers, from the military strength of its situation. The rocks in its vicinity gave it an air of great wildness, and there are many popular stories as to its former inhabitants. The town however has nothing but its scite to recommend it. The streets are narrow, without air, and therefore very dirty. There is a church of the most remote antiquity: I had not leisure to examine it, but its external appearance corresponded with its reputed age. It was evidently built by the Romans, but has been so much altered, that it is difficult to say whether its original destination was a theatre or a temple. In the Roman ages, theatres were national works, and therefore corresponded with the characteristic greatness of the empire, and every thing which belonged to it. What play-house in Europe would survive two thousand years! This single reflection appears to me to put the comparative greatness of the Romans in a most striking point of view. They built, indeed, for posterity, and their architecture had the character of their writing--it passed unhurt down the stream of time. The inn-keeper at Valence amused us much by his empty pomposity. He was a complete character, but civility made no part of his qualities. His dinner however was excellent and possible humour on the following day. Mrs. Younge replied very smartly to some questions of her husband. This lady had a true affection, and I will take upon me to say, that the fidelity of Mr. Younge was such as to merit it. Our road to Montelimart, our first or second stage (I really forget which) was lined on each side with chesnut and mulberry trees. We passed many vineyards, and innumerable orchards. For mile succeeding to mile it was more like a garden than an open country. The fields, wherever there was the least moisture, were covered with flowers; the hedges of the vineyards breathed forth a most delightful odour; there was every thing to cheer the heart and to refresh the senses. Some of the cottages which we passed were delightfully situated: they invariably, however, whether good or bad, were without glass to their windows; and the climate is so dry and so mild, that they sleep with them thus exposed. Montelimart is situated in a plain, which is covered with corn and vineyards; and being here and there studded with tufts of chesnut trees, has a rural and pleasing appearance. It is built on the bank of a small river which runs from the Rhone, is a walled town, and has usually a tolerably strong garrison. It has the same character, however, as all the other towns on the Rhone--the streets are narrow, and the houses low. In plain words, the town is execrable, but its scite delightful. From Montelimart to where we slept, the name of which I have not noted, the country improved in beauty; but we passed many peasant women, who certainly were not so beautiful as the country. Their costume reminded me very forcibly of Dutch toys--very broad-brimmed straw hats, and petticoats not reaching to the knees. Add to this, naked legs, &c. Our ladies smiled at my astonishment, and I smiled too, when I reflected to what feelings and to what ideas people might be reduced by habit. In the West Indies, a white lady feels no reluctance, no modest confusion, at the sight of the nakedness of her male slave; and Madame Younge and Mademoiselle St. Sillery, certainly the most modest women in France, only smiled at my surprise, when these short petticoated women passed me. So it is with custom. Time was, that many things startled me, which I can now see or hear without wonder. But nothing, I hope, will ever eradicate that modesty which is inseparable from a reflecting mind, and which acts as a barrier against inordinate passions. The peasantry in this part of the country seemed very poor, though contented and happy. Many of them were employed on a labour for which their pay must have been very small--picking stones from the fields, and dung from the roads. The dung is dried and burned, and is said to be an healthy fuel to those who use it. On the following day we dined at Orange, but did not remain long enough to examine the town, which was well worthy of minute attention. Mademoiselle St. Sillery was seized with the symptoms of an indisposition, which happily passed away, but whilst it lasted, left us no inclination for any other employment but to assist and console her, and to press forwards to Avignon, to procure medical assistance. Fortunately, it turned out to be nothing but a mere dizziness resulting from exposure to the sun. Under these circumstances we reached Avignon on the evening of the fourth day after leaving Lyons; and whether the fear of the physician had any effect, so much is certain, that Mademoiselle seemed to have completed her recovery almost in the same instant in which the battlements of the city saluted her eyes. CHAP. XIX. _Avignon--Situation--Climate--Streets and Houses--Public Buildings--Palace--Cathedral--Petrarch and Laura--Society at Avignon--Ladies--Public Walks--Prices of Provisions--Markets._ WHEN we left Angers, we had ordered our letters to be addressed for us at Avignon. I was daily in expectation of receiving one of a very important nature, and General Armstrong, who was in the habit of a state correspondence with Marseilles, and was allowed for that purpose an extra post, had promised to dispatch it for me to Avignon, as soon as it should reach him. This circumstance delayed us for some days at Avignon; but I believe none of us regretted a delay, which gave us time to see and to survey this celebrated city and its neighbourhood. The situation of this city is in a plain, equally fertile and beautiful, about fifteen miles in breadth and ten in length. On the south and east it is circled by a chain of mountains. The plain is divided into cultivated fields, in which are grown wheat, barley, saffron, silk, and madder. The cultivation is so clean and exact, as to give the grounds the appearance of a garden. As the French farms are usually on a small scale, they are invariably kept cleaner than those in England and America. Not a weed is suffered to remain on the ground. The French want nothing but a more enlarged knowledge and a greater capital, to rival the English husbandmen. They have the same industry, and take perhaps more pride in the appearance of their fields. This detailed attention greatly improves the face of the country; for miles succeeding miles it has the air of a series of parks and gardens. The English mansion is alone wanting to complete the beauty of the scenery. From the high ground in the city nothing can be finer than the prospect over the plain and surrounding country. The Rhone is there seen rolling its animated through meadows covered with olive trees, and at the foot of hills invested with vineyards. The ruined arches of the old bridge carry the imagination back into the ancient history of the town. On the opposite side of the Rhone are the sunny plains of Laguedoc, which, when refreshed by the wind, breathe odours and perfumes from a thousand wild herbs and flowers. Mont Ventoux, in the province of Dauphiny, closes the prospect to the North: its high summit covered with snow, whilst its sides are robed in all the charms of vegetable nature. On the east are the abrupt rocks and precipices of Vaucluse, distant about five leagues, and which complete, as it were, the garden wall around Avignon and its territory. The climate of Avignon, though so strangely inveighed against by Petrarch, is at once healthy and salubrious. There are certainly very rapid transitions from extreme heat to extreme cold, but from this very circumstance neither the intensity of the heat nor of the cold, is of sufficient duration to be injurious to health or pleasure. The air, except in actual rain, is always dry, and the sky is an etherial Italian blue, scarcely ever obscured by a cloud. When the rains come on they are very violent, but fall at once. The sun then bursts out, and the face of Nature appears more gay, animated and splendid than before. I do not remember, that amongst all the pictures of the great masters, I have ever seen a landscape in which a southern country was represented after one of these showers. Homer has described it with equal force and beauty, in one of his similies: but as the book is not before me, I must refer to the memory of the classic reader. There is one heavy detraction, however, from the excellence of the Avignonese climate. This is the wind denominated the Vent de Bize. The peculiar situation of Avignon, at the mouth of a long avenue of mountains, gives rise to this wind: it collects in the narrow channel of the mountains, and bursts, as from the mouth of a barrel, on the town and plain. Its violence certainly exceeds what is common in European climates, but it is considered as healthy, and it very rarely does any considerable damage. Augustus Cæsar was so persuaded of its salutary character, that he deified it, as it were, by raising an altar to it under the name of the Circian wind. The winters of Avignon, however, are sometimes rendered by it most distressingly cold. The Rhone is frequently covered with ice sufficiently strong to support loaded carts, and the olive trees sometimes perish to their roots. Avignon is surrounded by walls built by successive Popes; they still remain in perfect beauty and preservation, and much augment, particularly in a distant view, the beauty of the town. They are composed of free-stone, are flanked at regular distances with square towers, and surmounted with battlements. The public walks are round the foot of this wall. The alleys fronting the river, and which are bordered by noble elms, are the summer promenade--here all the fashion of the city assemble in the evening, and walk, and sport, and romp on the banks. In the winter, the public walk is on the opposite side. The fields likewise have their share, and the environs being naturally beautiful, the spectacle on a summer's evening is gay and delightful in the extreme. The interior of the city is ill built: the streets are narrow and irregular, and the pavement is most troublesomely rough. There is not a lamp, except at the houses of the better kind of people; the funds of the town are still good, but they are all expended on the roads, public walks, and dinners. The necessity of a constant attention to paving and lighting, never enters into the heads of a French town-administration; they seem to think that the whole business is done when the town is once paved. From the nature of the climate, however, the streets are necessarily clean. A hot drying sun, and frequent driving winds, remove or consume all the ordinary rubbish; or if anything be left, the winter torrent of the Rhone, rising above its bed, sweeps it all before it. Avignon, therefore, is naturally a clean city. The police, moreover, is very commendably attentive, to the price of provisions, and to the cleanliness of the markets. I had the curiosity to enter some of the houses, and found them to correspond with what I have before described as constituting the character of house-architecture in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. They had one large room, and all the others small; a great waste of timber and work in their construction; the walls being built as thick as if intended for fortifications, and the beams being large timber trees. Our ancestors thought they could never build too substantially. The palace, the former residence of the Papal Legates, is well worthy of being visited: it was founded by Benedict the Twelfth but is better known as the subject of the elegant invective of Petrarch. The arsenal still remains, containing 4000 stand of arms and as these instruments of war are ranged according to their respective æras, the spectacle is interesting, and to antiquaries may be instructive. The papal chair, from respect to its antiquity, still remains, but the pannels of the state rooms, which were composed of polished cedar, have disappeared. The most curious parts of the palace, however, are the subterraneous passages, the entrance to which is usually through some part of the pillars; perfectly imperceptible till pointed out by the guide. According to the tradition of the town, these passages have been the scene of many a deed of darkness. A statue of Hercules was found on the scite of the palace, and buried by Pope Urban, that the figure of a Heathen Deity might not disgrace a papal town. The cathedral still retains many of its ancient decorations, and amongst these, the monument of Pope John, who died in the year 1384. In the year 1759, the body was taken up to be removed, when it was found entire, and with some of the vestments retaining their original colour. The first wrapper round the body was a robe of purple silk, which was then enveloped in black velvet embroidered in gold and pearls; the hands had white satin gloves, and were crossed over the breast. The above description is exhibited in writing to all travellers. The monument of Benedict the Twelfth is likewise here. This Pope was as remarkable for his integrity of life and simplicity of manners, as for his humility. There are many illustrious men who lie buried beneath the cathedral, but as I could give little account of them but their names, I shall pass them over. We next visited the convent of St. Claire, where Petrarch first beheld his mistress. From respect to the poet, or to his mistress, this convent has survived the fury of the times, and is still entire. The description of the first meeting of Laura and Petrarch is perhaps the best, because the most simple and unlaboured part of his works.--"It was on one of the lovely mornings of the spring of the year, the morning of April 6th, 1327, that being at matins in the convent of St. Claire, I first beheld my Laura. Her robe was green embroidered with violets. Her features, her air, her deportment, announced something which did not belong to mortal. Her figure was graceful beyond the imagination of a poet--her eyes beamed with tenderness, and her eye-brows were black as ebony. Her golden ringlets, interwoven by the fingers of Love, played upon shoulders whiter than snow. Her neck, in its harmony and proportion, was a model for painters; and her complexion breathed that life and soul which no painters can give When she opened her mouth, you saw the beauty of pearls, and the sweetness of the morning rose. The mildness of her look, the modesty of her gait, the soft harmony of her voice, must be seen and felt to be conceived. Gaiety and gentleness breathed around her, and these so pure and happily attempered, as to render love a virtue, and admiration a kind of divine tribute." Our curiosity naturally passed from the convent of St. Claire to the church of the Cordeliers, where Laura is reputed to have reposed in peace. Her tomb is in a small chapel, dark, damp, and even noisome: it is indicated only by a flat unadorned stone. The inscription, which is in Gothic letters, is rendered illegible by time. The congenial nature of Francis the First of France caused the tomb to be opened, and a leaden box was found, containing some bones, and a copy of verses, the subject of which was the attachment of the two lovers. Petrarch, with all his conceits, which are sometimes as cold as the snows on Mount Ventoux, well merits his reputation. His verses are polished, and his thoughts almost always elegant and poetical. He must not be judged, on the point of a correct taste, with those who followed him. He was the first, as it were, in the field; he is to be considered as an original poet in a dark age; or, according to his own beautiful comparison, as a nightingale singing through the thick foliage of the beech tree. Petrarch was truly an original; I know no one to whom he can be compared. He has no resemblance to any English, French, or Italian. He has more ease, more elegance, and a more poetic vein than Prior; he resembles Cowley in his conceits, and Waller in his grace and sweetness. He possesses, moreover, one quality in common with the Classic poets of Italy--that he never has, and perhaps never will be, sufficiently translated. No translation can give the elegant neatness of his language. He is simple, tender, and sweet as his own Laura: time has stampt his reputation, and posterity will receive him to her last limit. We next visited the convent of the Celestins, which was founded by Charles the Sixth of France, and in its architecture and dimensions is worthy of a royal founder. The piety of the early ages has done more to ornament the kingdoms of Europe than either public or private magnificence. If we would become properly sensible how much we owe to the early ages, let us divest a kingdom of what has been built by our ancestors; let us pull down the churches, the convents, and the temples, and what shall we leave?--The present town-administration of Avignon extends a very commendable attention to its several public buildings, the consequence of which is, that the town flourishes, and is much visited both by travellers and distant residents. Avignon, however, is chiefly celebrated for its hospitals, the liberal foundation and endowment of which have originated, perhaps in the misfortunes of the city, and in the sympathy which is usually felt for evils which we ourselves have experienced. Avignon has suffered as much as Florence itself by the plague. In the year 1334 the city was almost depopulated by this dreadful pestilence. It was in the nature of a dry leprosy; the skin peeled off in white scales, and the body wasted till the disease reached the vitals. In fourteen years afterwards the city was again attacked, and the beautiful Laura became its victim. It is stated to have swept off upwards of one hundred thousand inhabitants. The reigning pope contrived to escape the contagion by shutting himself up in his palace, carefully excluding the air, and heating the rooms. Another period of fourteen years elapsed, and the plague again made its appearance, and nearly twenty thousand people, including a dozen cardinals and an hundred bishops, fell its victims. Of late years, there has fortunately been no appearance of this horrible disease. It was at the time imputed to an extraordinary drought, attended by an uncommon heat and stillness of the air, which, being without motion, and confined as it were in a narrow channel, became putrid and pestilential. The vent de bize is perhaps a greater blessing to this country than it has been imagined. Avignon, with the above exceptions, would be a delightful place of residence to a foreigner, and particularly if his circumstances permitted him to live in an extended society. It constitutes, as it were, a little kingdom in itself, and the inhabitants have clearly and distinctly a character, and peculiar manners belonging to themselves. We visited the public walks of the town every evening during our stay, and as the weather was delightful, and there was a division of soldiers with their bands of music on the spot, they were always thronged, and always gay and animated to a degree. The Avignonese ladies appeared to me very beautiful, and whether it was fancy or reality, I thought I could trace in many of them the features which Petrarch has assigned to Laura. I no doubt whatever, but that the recorded loves of these accomplished persons have a very strong influence on the character of the town. If I should have an Avignonese for a mistress, I should most certainly expect to find in her some of the characteristic traits of Laura. It must not, indeed, be concealed, that these ladies have not the reputation of being virtuous in the extreme: to say the truth, they are considered as dissolute, and as having little restraint even in their married conduct. I cannot say this of them from any thing which I observed myself--to me they appeared gay, tender and interesting. In speaking of ladies, it would be unpardonable to omit something of their dress. The ladies of Avignon follow the Paris fashions, but have too much natural elegance to adopt them in extremes. On the evening parade, they were habited in silk robes, which in their form resembled collegiate gowns, and being of the gayest colours, gave the public walk a resemblance to a flower-garden. Lace caps were the only covering of their heads. The necks were not so exposed as at Paris, but were open as is usual in. England and America in full dress. The gown was likewise silk, embroidered in silver, gold, or worked flowers. The shoes of velvet, with silver or gold clasps. The terms were naked almost up to the shoulders, indeed almost indecently so. Being strangers, we were of course objects of curiosity; when our eyes, however, met those of the gazers, they invariably saluted us with a friendly smile. Mademoiselle St. Sillery was much distressed that she had no dress so tasty as those of the ladies. We could not at last persuade her to accompany us. This young lady, with all her charms, and she possessed as many as ever fell to the lot of woman, had certainly her share of vanity--an assertion, however, which I should not have the presumption to make, if she had not herself most frequently acknowledged it. Every thing connected with household economy is extremely cheap at Avignon; a circumstance which must be imputed as much to the moderation of the inhabitants as to the plenty of the country. An Avignonese family seems to have no idea of a dinner in common with an Englishman or an American. A couple of over-roasted fowls will be meat enough for a party of a dozen. The most common dish is, I believe, a fowl stewed down into soup, with rice, highly seasoned. It is certainly very savoury, only that according to French cookery, too much is made of the fowl. The Avignonese, whilst under the papal jurisdiction, bore a general reputation for the utmost profligacy both of principles and conduct. This character has now passed away, and, with the exception of what is termed gallantry, the Avignonese seem a gay, moral, and harmless people. The poetry of Petrarch is perhaps too much read, and it is impossible to read him without inspiring a warmth of feeling and imagination, which is not very friendly to a correct virtue. Plato would certainly have banished him from his republic, and the Avignonese would do well to keep him out of their schools and houses. They will catch his ardour, who want his moral sense and religious principles. We took our leave of Avignon, much delighted with the town and its inhabitants, and, as I have before said, I saw many figures which recalled most forcibly to my imagination the Laura of Petrarch. It may be perhaps said, that every one has an image of his own fancy, which he assigns to Laura, and that from the general description of the poet, it is impossible to collect any thing of the personal lineaments of his mistress. This is very true; but it is equally so, that the ladies of Avignon appear to have certain characteristic features, and that many of them possess that soft, sweet, and supreme beauty, which inspired Petrarch to sing in strains, which still sound melodious in the ears of his posterity. Avignon is the capital of the department of Vaucluse, the department being so named rather from the celebrity of the poet, than from its local relations. CHAP. XX. _Departure from Avignon--Olive and Mulberry Fields--Orgon--St. Canat--French Divorces--Inn at St. Canat--Air--Situation--Cathedral--Society--Provisions--Price of Land--Marseilles--Conclusion._ THE letters which I had expected reached me at Avignon, and the result of their perusal was the information, that my presence was necessary in America. I have not, however, contracted so much of the impertinence of a Frenchman by my tour in France, as to trouble the reader of my Notes with my domestic affairs. Suffice it therefore to say, that some family occurrences, of which I obtained some previous information, required my immediate departure from France, and that in consequence I resolved to embark at Marseilles. With this resolution, therefore, I left Avignon for Marseilles, a distance of about seventy miles. We divided it therefore into two days; arranging so as to reach St. Canat on the first night, and Marseilles on the second. The road to Orgon, where we dined, presented us with a great variety of scenery, though the surface was rather level. All the country was covered with olive and mulberry trees, and innumerable fruit-trees grew up wild in the fields, as likewise flowering shrubs in the hedges. The climate of this part of France is so delightful, that every thing here grows spontaneously which is raised only by the most laborious exertions in northern countries. The cottages which we passed on the road were picturesque to a degree: they were usually thatched, and vines or barberry trees, or honey-suckles, entirely enveloped the walls or casements. The peasantry, moreover, though without stockings, appeared happy; the women were singing, and the men, in the intervals of their work, playing with true French frivolity. We saw many women working in the fields: the French women are invariably industrious and active. It may be supposed that this labour and exposure to a southern sun is not very favourable to beauty. Accordingly, we saw few good-looking damsels, but many with good shapes and good eyes. How is it, that the French, so generally gallant, can suffer their women to take the fork and hoe, and work so laboriously in the fields? Orgon had nothing which merits even mention; I believe, however, it was well known to the ancients, and is mentioned in some of the Latin itineraries. A convent, very picturesquely situated, is now converted into a manufacturing establishment. The town is surrounded by chalk-hills and quarries, from which is dug a free-stone, of the most delicate white. The town, on the whole, had an air of rusticity and recluseness which might have delighted a romantic imagination. Between Orgon and St. Canat we travelled in a road occasionally bordered by almond trees. The country on each side was rather barren, but being an intermixture of rock and plain and being moreover new to us, it did not appear tedious or uninteresting. We passed several houses of the better sort, some in ruins, others evidently inhabited by a class of people for whom they were not intended. This is one of the effects of the Revolution. Where the proprietor emigrated, or was assassinated, the nearest tenant moved into the mansion-house, and if he distinguished himself by a violent and patriotic jacobinism, his possession, for a mere trifle to the national fund, was converted into a right. In this manner innumerable low ruffians have obtained the estates and houses of their lords; but, faithful to their old habits and early origin, they abuse only what they possess; live in the stables, and convert the castle into a barn, a granary, a brew-house, a manufactory, or sometimes dilapidate it brick by brick, as their convenience may require. The inn at St. Canat will be long remembered by me, for the unusual circumstance of a most hearty welcome from a good-humoured host, a widower, and his two daughters. The eldest was the most beautiful brunette I have ever seen. She was as coquettish as if educated in Paris, and as easy, as familiar, as inclined to gallantry, as this description of ladies, in France at least, universally are. She had been married during the æra of jacobinism, and had divorced her husband, _because they could not agree_. "He was so triste, and withal very jealous, which was the more absurd, because he was old."--This young woman was tall, elegant, and with the most fascinating features; her age might be about four and twenty; her teeth were the whitest in the world, and her smile was a paradise of sweets. She had the fault, however, of all the French filles--a most invincible loquacity, and would not move from the chamber till repeatedly admonished to call me early in the morning. I was awoke in the morning by a sweet-toned lark, which rising in the ethereal vault of Heaven, made his watch-tower, as the poet calls it, ring with his matin song. I know nothing more pleasing to a traveller than to pass a night at one of these provincial inns, provided he gets a good bed and clean blankets. The moon shines through his casement with a soft and clear splendor unparalleled in humid climates; and in the morning he is awoke by the singing of birds, whilst his senses are hailed by the perfume of flowers and by the freshness of a pure æther. Having resumed our journey, we reached Aix at an early hour on the following day, and passed an hour very pleasantly in walking over the town and neighbourhood. Aix, the capital of Provence, is very pleasantly situated in a valley, surrounded by hills, which give it an air of recluseness, and romantic retirement, without being so close as to prevent the due circulation of air. It is surrounded by a wall, but which, from long neglect, originating perhaps in its inutility, has become dilapidated, and interests only as an ancient ruin. In the former ages, when France was subdivided into dutchies and minor kingdoms, and when her neighbours were more powerful, such walls were a necessary defence to the town: a change in manners and government has now rendered them useless, and in few centuries they will wholly disappear all over Europe. The interior of the town very well corresponds with the importance of its first aspect. It is well paved, the houses are all fronted with white stone, and the air being clear, it always looks clean and sprightly. Many of them, moreover, have balconies, and some of them are upon a scale, both outside and inside, which is not excelled by Bath in England. Aix is almost the only town next to Tours, in which an English gentleman could fix a comfortable residence. The society is good, and to a stranger of genteel appearance, perfectly accessible either with or without introduction. The cathedral of Aix is an immense edifice; the architecture is the oldest Gothic, and has all the strength, the substance, and I was going to add, all the tastelessness which characterizes that Order. The front is ornamented with figures of saints, prophets, and angels, grouped together in a manner the most absurd, and executed as if by the hands of a working bricklayer. The grand portal, however is very striking. On the side of the great altar is the magnificent tomb of the Counts of Provence; the figures here, however, are as ridiculous as the style itself is grand. The Gothic architects had better ideas of proportion than of delicacy or beauty; they seldom err on the former point, whilst their execution in the latter is contemptible in the extreme. Our Saviour, and the Virgin Mary, have always enough to do on every tomb in France; they are invariably introduced together, sometimes in a manner and with circumstances, which really shock any one of common piety. Several pictures, and some ancient jewellery, which have survived the Revolution, are still shewn to all strangers: amongst them is a golden rose, which Pope Innocent the Fourth gave to one of the Counts of Provence six hundred years since. There are two or three other churches and convents, but which have suffered so much by the execrable Revolution, as to have little left that is worthy of remark. The piety of the inhabitants of Aix, however, saved the greater part of the pictures and jewellery; and with still more piety, have returned them to the churches. The promenade, or public walk, equals, if not excells, any thing of the kind in Europe--it consists of three alleys, shaded by four rows of most noble elms, in the middle of a wide street, the houses on each side being on the most magnificent scale, and inhabited by the first people of the city and province. There were several parties walking there even at the early hour in the morning when we saw it, and I understood upon enquiry, that in the evening it is exceedingly thronged both with walkers and carriages. I did not omit to make my usual enquiries, as to the prices of land, provisions, and the state of society, for a foreigner who should select it as a place of residence. The following was the result: Land within a few miles of Aix, is very reasonable; in a large purchase it will not exceed five or six pounds (English money) per acre. In rating French and English purchases, there is one considerable point of difference: English estates are usually mentioned as being worth so many years purchase, in which the purchase is rated according to the rent, and the rent is considered as being the annual value of the land. In France, where there is scarcely such a thing as an annual pecuniary rent equal to the annual value of the land, the price must be estimated by the acre. In large purchases, therefore, as I have said before, land is very cheap: in small purchases it is very dear. The difference indeed is surprising, but must be imputed to the strong repugnance of the small proprietors to part with their paternal lands. In the town there are some very handsome houses: a palace almost, with a garden of some acres, an orchard, and land enough for four horses and three cows, may be hired for about thirty pounds per annum. Provisions of all kinds are in the greatest possible plenty: fish is to be had in great abundance, and the best quality; meat is likewise very reasonable, and tolerably good; bread is about a penny English by the pound; and vegetables, as in other provincial towns, so cheap as scarcely to be worth selling. The baths of Aix are very celebrated, and the town is much visited by valetudinarians: they are chiefly recommended in scorbutic humours, colds, rheumatisms, palsies, and consumptions. The waters are warm, and have in fact no taste but that of warm water. Upon the whole, Aix is most delightfully situated, and the environs are beyond conception rural and beautiful. They are a succession of vineyards relieved by groves, meadows and fields. I did not leave them without regret. The carriage drove slowly, but even under these circumstances we repeatedly stopt it. We reached Marseilles without further occurrence; and as a ship was ready there, after two or three days spent in the company of my friends, who very kindly refused to leave me, I took my departure, and left a kingdom which I have since never ceased to think. THE END. 
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21996	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 21996-h.htm or 21996-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/1/9/9/21996/21996-h/21996-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/1/9/9/21996/21996-h.zip) Transcriber's note: In the original book, all the illustrations were on the inside of the book's front and back covers. In this e-text they have been distributed where they fit the book's text. RIVIERA TOWNS by HERBERT ADAMS GIBBONS Illustrations by Lester George Hornby New York Robert M. McBride & Company 1931 Copyright, 1920, by Robert M. McBride & Co. Copyright, 1917, 1918, 1920, by Harper & Brothers To Helen and Margaret Who Indulge The Author and the Artist ACKNOWLEDGMENT We wish to thank the editors of _Harper's Magazine_ for allowing the republication of articles and illustrations. H. A. G. L. G. H. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. GRASSE II. CAGNES III. SAINT-PAUL-DU-VAR IV. VILLENEUVE-LOUBET V. VENCE VI. MENTON VII. MONTE CARLO VIII. VILLEFRANCHE IX. NICE X. ANTIBES XI. CANNES XII. MOUGINS XIII. FRÉJUS XIV. SAINT-RAPHÄEL XV. THÉOULE ILLUSTRATIONS "A grandfather omnibus, which dated from the Second Empire." "The hill of Cagnes we could rave about." "The houses in the courts were stables downstairs." The river was swirling around willows and poplars. "Down the broad road of red shale past meadows thick with violets." Medieval streets and buildings have almost disappeared. "The Old Town takes you far from the psychology of cosmopolitanism and the philosophy of hedonism." "La Napoule, above whose tower on the sea rose a hill crowned with the ruins of a chapel. Behind were the Maritime Alps." RIVIERA TOWNS CHAPTER I GRASSE For several months I had been seeing Grasse every day. The atmosphere of the Midi is so clear that a city fifteen miles away seems right at hand. You can almost count the windows in the houses. Against the rising background of buildings every tower stands out, and you distinguish one roof from another. From my study window at Théoule, Grasse was as constant a temptation as the two islands in the Bay of Cannes. But the things at hand are the things that one is least liable to do. They are reserved for "some day" because they can be done "any day." Since first coming to Théoule, I had been a week's journey south of Cairo into the Sudan, and to Verdun in an opposite corner of France. Menton and St. Raphaël, the ends of the Riviera, had been visited. Grasse, two hours away, remained unexplored. I owe to the Artist the pleasure of becoming acquainted with Grasse. One day a telegram from Bordeaux stated that he had just landed, and was taking the train for Théoule. The next evening he arrived. I gave him my study for a bedroom. The following morning he looked out of the window, and asked, "What is that town up there behind Cannes, the big one right under the mountains?" "Grasse, the home of perfumes," I answered. "I don't care what it's the home of," was his characteristic response. "Is it old and all right?" ("All right" to the Artist means "full of subjects.") "I have never been there," I confessed. The Artist was fresh from New York. "We'll go this morning," he announced. From sea to mountains, the valley between the Corniche de l'Estérel and Nice produces every kind of vegetation known to the Mediterranean littoral. Memories of Spain, Algeria, Egypt, Palestine, Asia Minor, Greece and Italy are constantly before you. But there is a difference. The familiar trees and bushes and flowers of the Orient do not spring here from bare earth. Even where cultivated land, wrested from the mountain sides, is laboriously terraced, stones do not predominate. Earth and rock are hidden by a thick undergrowth of grass and creepers that defies the sun, and draws from the nearby mountain snow a perennial supply of water. Olive and plane, almond and walnut, orange and lemon, cedar and cork, palm and umbrella-pine, grape-vine and flower-bush have not the monopoly of green. It is the Orient without the brown, the Occident with the sun. The Mediterranean is more blue than elsewhere because firs and cedars and pines are not too green. The cliffs are more red than elsewhere because there is no prevailing tone of bare, baked earth to modify them into brown and gray. On the Riviera one does not have to give up the rich green of northern landscapes to enjoy the alternative of brilliant sunshine. As we rode inland toward Grasse, the effect of green underground and background upon Oriental foliage was shown in the olives, dominant tree of the valley and hillsides. It was the old familiar olive of Africa and Asia and the three European peninsulas, just as gnarled, just as gray-green in the sun, just as silvery in the wind. But its colors did not impress themselves upon the landscape. Here the olive was not master of all that lives and grows in its neighborhood. In a landscape where green replaces brown and gray pink, the olive is not supreme. Its own foliage is invaded: for frequently rose ramblers get up into its branches, and shoot out vivid flashes of crimson and scarlet. There is also the yellow of the mimosa, and the inimitable red of the occasional judas-tree. Orange trees blossom white. Lilacs and wisteria give the shades between red and blue. As if in rebellion against too much green, the rose-bushes put forth leaves of russet-brown. It is a half-hearted protest, however, for Grasse rose-bushes are sparing of leaves. Carefully cultivated for the purpose of bearing to the maximum, every shoot holds clusters beyond what would be the breaking-point were there not artificial support. Nature's yield is limited only by man's knowledge, skill and energy. As we mounted steadily the valley, we had the impression that there was nothing ahead of us but olives. First the perfume of oranges and flowers would reach us. Then the glory of the roses would burst upon us, and we looked up from them to the flowering orange trees. Wherever there was a stretch of meadow, violets and daisies and buttercups ran through the grass. Plowed land was sprinkled with mustard and poppies. The olive had been like a curtain. When it lifted as we drew near, we forgot that there were olives at all! The Artist developed at length his favorite theory that the richest colors, the sweetest scents were those of blossoms that bloomed for pure joy. The most delicate flavors were those of fruits and berries that grew without restraint or guidance. "Nature is at her best," he explained, "when you do not try to exploit her. Compare wild strawberries and wild asparagus with the truck the farmers give you. Is wisteria useful? What equals the color of the judas-tree in bloom? Do fruit blossoms, utilitarian embryo, compare for a minute with real flowers? Just look at all these flowers, born for the sole purpose of expressing themselves!" All the while we were sniffing orange-blossoms. I tried in vain to get his honest opinion on horse-chestnut blossoms as compared with apples and peaches and apricots. I called his attention to the fact that the ailanthus lives only to express itself, while the maple gives sugar. But you can never argue with the Artist when he is on the theme of beauty for beauty's sake. From the fairyland of the valley we came suddenly upon the Grasse railway station, from which a _funiculaire_ ascends to the city far above. Thankful for our carriage, we continued to mount by a road that had to curve sharply at every hundred yards. We passed between villas with pergolas of ramblers and wisteria until we found ourselves in the upper part of the city without having gone through the city at all. We got out at the promenade, where a marvelous view of the Mediterranean from Antibes to Théoule lies before you. The old town falls down the mountain-side from the left of the promenade. We started along a street that seemed to slide down towards the cathedral, the top of whose belfry hardly reaches the level of the promenade. Before we had gone a block, we learned that the flowers through which we had passed were not blooming for pure joy. Like many things in this dreary world of ours, they were being cultivated for money's sake and not for beauty's sake. Grasse lives from those flowers in the valley below. We had started to look for quaint houses. From one of the first doors in the street came forth an odor that made us think of the type of woman who calls herself "a lady." I learned early in life at the barber's that a little bit of scent goes too far, and some women in public places who pass you fragrantly do not allow that lesson to be forgotten. Is not lavender the only scent in the world that does not lose by an overdose? The Artist would not enter. His eye had caught a fourteenth-century _cul-de-sac_, and I knew that he was good for an hour. I hesitated. The vista of the street ahead brought more attraction to my eye than the indication of the perfume-factory to my nose. But there would still be time for the street, and in the acquisition of knowledge one must not falter. I knew only that perfumes were made from flowers. But so was honey! What was the difference in the process? Visiting perfumeries is evidently "the thing to do" in Grasse. For I was greeted cordially, and given immediately a guide, who assured me that she would show me all over the place and that it was no trouble at all. Why is it that some of the most delicate things are associated with the pig, who is himself far from delicate? However much we may shudder at the thought of soused pigs' feet and salt pork and Rocky Mountain fried ham swimming in grease, we find bacon the most appetizing of breakfast dishes, and if cold boiled ham is cut thin enough nothing is more dainty for sandwiches. Lard _per se_ is unpleasant, but think of certain things cooked in lard, and the unrivaled golden brown of them! Pigskin is as _recherché_ as snakeskin. The pig greets us at the beginning of the day when we slip our wallet into our coat or fasten on our wrist-watch, and again when we go in to breakfast. But is it known that he is responsible for the most exquisite of scents of milady's boudoir? For hundreds of years ways of extracting the odor of flowers were tried. Success never came until someone discovered that pig fat is the best absorbent of the bouquet of fresh flowers. Room after room in the perfume factory is filled with tubs of pig grease. Fresh flowers are laid inside every morning for weeks, the end of the treatment coming only with the end of the season of the particular flower in question. In some cases it is continued for three months. The grease is then boiled in alcohol. The liquid, strained, is your scent. The solid substance left makes scented soap. Immediately after cooling, it is drawn off directly into wee bottles, the glass stoppers are covered with white chamois skin, and the labels pasted on. I noticed a table of bottles labeled _eau-de-cologne_. "Surely this is now _eau-de-liége_ in France," I remarked. "Are not German names taboo?" My guide answered seriously: "We have tried our best here and in every perfumery in France. But dealers tell us that they cannot sell _eau-de-liége_, even though they assure their customers that it is exactly the same product, and explain the patriotic reason for the change of name. Once we launched a new perfume that made a big hit. Afterwards we discovered that we had named it from the wrong flower. But could we correct the mistake? It goes today by the wrong name all over the world." I was glad to get into the open air again, and started to walk along the narrow Rue Droite--which makes a curve every hundred feet!--to find the Artist. I had seen enough of Grasse's industry. Now I was free to wander at will through the maze of streets of the old town. But the law of the Persians follows that of the Medes. Half a dozen urchins spied me coming out of the perfumery, and my doom was sealed. They announced that they would show me the way to the confectionery. I might have refused to enter the perfumery. But, having entered, there was no way of escaping the confectionery. I resigned myself to the inevitable. It was by no means uninteresting, however,--the half hour spent watching violets, orange blossoms and rose petals dancing in cauldrons of boiling sugar, fanned dry on screens, and packed with candied fruits in wooden boxes for America. And I had followed the flowers of Grasse to their destination. The Artist had finished his _cul-de-sac_. I knew that to find him I had only to continue along the Rue Droite to the first particularly appealing side street. He would be up that somewhere. The Artist is no procrastinator. He takes his subjects when he finds them. The buildings of the Rue Droite are medieval from _rez-de-chaussée_ to cornice. The sky was a narrow curved slit of blue and gray, not as wide as the street; for the houses seemed to lean towards one another, and here and there roofs rubbed edges. Sidewalks would have prevented the passage of horse-drawn vehicles, so there were none. The Rue Droite is the principal shopping-street of Grasse. But shoppers cannot loiter indefinitely before windows. All pedestrians must be agile. When you hear the _Hué!_ of a driver, you must take refuge in a doorway or run the risk of axle-grease and mud. Twentieth-century merchandise stares out at you from either side--Paris' hats and gowns, American boots, typewriters, sewing-machines, phonographs, pianos. One of the oldest corner buildings, which looks as if it needed props immediately to save you from being caught by a falling wall, is the emporium of enamel bathtubs and stationary washstands, with shining nickel spigots labeled "Hot" and "Cold." These must be intended for the villas of the environs, for surely no home in this old town could house a bathroom. Where would the hot water and cold water come from? And where would it go after you opened the waste-pipe? But there are sewers, or at least drains, on the hillside. Grasse has progressed beyond the _gare-à-l'eau_ stage of municipal civilization. Before your eyes is the evidence that you no longer have to listen for that cry, and duck the pot or pail emptied from an upper window. Pipes, with branches to the windows, come down the sides of the houses. They are of generous size, as in cities of northern countries where much snow lies on the roofs. Since wall-angles are many, the pipes generally find a place in corners. They do not obtrude. They do not suggest zinc or tin. They were painted a mud-gray color a long time ago. After lunch, we strolled along the Boulevard du Jeu-de-Ballon, the tramway street. In old French towns, the words boulevard and tramway are generally anathema. They suggest the poor imitation of Paris, both in architecture and animation, of a street outside the magic circle of the unchanged which holds the charm of the town. But sometimes, in order to come as near as possible to the center of population, the tramway boulevard skirts the fortifications of the medieval city, or is built upon their emplacement. It is this way at Grasse. One side of the Boulevard du Jeu-de-Ballon is modern and commonplace. The other side preserves in part the buildings of past ages. Here and there a bit of tower remains. No side street breaks the line. You go down into the city through an occasional arched passage. We stopped for coffee at the Garden-Bar, on the modern side of the boulevard. The curious hodge-podge opposite, which houses the Restaurant du Cheval Blanc and the Café du Globe, had caught the Artist's eye. The building, or group of buildings, is six stories high, with a sky-line that reflects the range of mountains under which Grasse nestles. Windows of different sizes, placed without symmetry or alignment, do not even harmonize with the roof above them. Probably there was originally a narrow house rising directly above the door of the Cheval Blanc. When the structure was widened, upper floors or single rooms were built on _ad libitum_. The windows give the clew to this evolution, for the wall has been plastered and whitewashed uniformly to the width of over a hundred feet, and there is only one entrance on the ground floor. Working out the staircases and floor levels is a puzzle for an architect. We did not even start to try to solve it. The Artist's interest was in the "subject," and mine in the story the building told of an age when man's individual needs influenced his life more strongly than they do now. We think of the progress of civilization in the terms of combination, organization, community interest, the centralized state. We have created a machine to serve us, and have become servants of the machine. When we thank God unctuously that we live not as our ancestors lived and as the "uncivilized" live today, we are displaying the decay of our mental faculties. Is it the Arab at his tent door, looking with dismay and dread at the approach of the Bagdad Railway, who is the fool, or we? Backed up at right angles to the stoop of the Cheval Blanc was a grandfather omnibus, which certainly dated from the Second Empire. Its sign read: GRASSE-ST. CÉZAIRE. SERVICE DE LA POSTE. The canvas boot had the curve of ocean waves. A pert little hood stuck out over the driver's seat. The pair of lean horses--one black, the other white--stood with noses turned towards the tramway rails. The Artist was still gazing skylineward. I grasped his arm, and brought his eyes to earth. No word was needed. He fumbled for his pencil. But to our horror the driver had mounted, and was reaching for the reins. I got across the street just in time to save the picture. Holding out cigars to the driver and a soldier beside him on the box, I begged them to wait--please to wait--just five minutes, five little minutes. [Illustration: "A grandfather omnibus, which dated from the Second Empire."] "There is no place for another passenger. We are full inside," he remonstrated. But he had dropped the reins to strike a match. In the moment thus gained, I got out a franc, and pressed it into his hand. "Your coach, my friend," I said, "is unique in all France. The coffee of that celebrated artist yonder sitting at the terrace of the Garden-Bar is getting cold while he immortalizes the Grasse-St. Cézaire service. In the interest of art and history, I beg of you to delay your departure ten little minutes." The soldier had found the cigar to his liking. "A quarter of an hour will do no harm at all," he announced positively, getting down from his place. The driver puffed and growled. "We have our journey to make, and the hour of departure is one-thirty. If it is not too long--fifteen minutes at the most." He pocketed the franc less reluctantly than he had spoken. The soldier crossed the boulevard with me. Knowing how to appreciate a good thing, he became our ally as soon as he had looked at the first lines of the sketch. When the minutes passed, and the soldier saw that the driver was growing restless, he went back and persuaded him to come over and have a look at the drawing. This enabled me to get the driver tabled before a tall glass of steaming coffee with a _petit verre_. Soon an old dame, wearing a bonnet that antedated the coach, stuck out her head. A watch was in her hand. Surely she was not of the Midi. Fearing that she might influence the driver disadvantageously to our interests, I went to inform her that the delay was unavoidable. I could not offer her a cigar. There are never any bonbons in my pocket. So I thought to make a speech. "All my excuses," I explained, "for this regrettable delay. The coach in which you are seated--and in which in a very, very few minutes you will be riding--belongs to the generation before yourself and me. It is important for the sake of history as well as art that the presence in Grasse of my illustrious artist friend, coincident with the St. Cézaire coach before the door of the Cheval Blanc, be seized upon to secure for our grandchildren an indelible memory of travel conditions in our day. So I beg indulgence." Two schoolgirls smothered a snicker. There was a dangerous glitter in the old dame's eye. She did not answer me. But a young woman raised her voice in a threat to have the driver dismissed. Enough time had been gained. The Artist signified his willingness to have the mail leave now for St. Cézaire. Off went the coach, white horse and black horse clattering alternately hoofs that would gladly have remained longer in repose. The soldier saluted. The driver grinned. We waved to the old woman with the poke bonnet, and lifted our glasses to several pretty girls who appeared at the coach door for the first time in order that they might glare at us. I am afraid I must record that it was to glare. Our friendly salutation was not answered. But we had the sketch. That was what really mattered. We were half an hour late at the rendezvous with our carriage man for the return journey to Cannes. But he had lunched well, and did not seem to mind. Americans were scarce this season, and _fortes pourboires_ few and far between. On the Riviera--as elsewhere--you benefit by your fellow-countrymen's generosity in the radiant courtesy and good nature of those who serve you until you come to pay your bill. Then you think you could have got along pretty well with less smiles. We knew that our man would not risk his _pourboire_ by opposing us, so we suggested with all confidence that he drive round the curves alone and meet us below by the railway station in "half an hour." We wanted to go straight down through the city. The _cocher_ looked at his watch and thought a minute. He had already seen the Artist stop suddenly and stay glued on one spot, like a cat patiently waiting to spring upon a bird. He had seen how often oblivion to time comes. The lesser of two evils was to keep us in sight. So he proposed with a sigh what we could never have broached to him. "Perhaps we can drive down through the city--why not?" "Why not?" we answered joyously in unison, as we jumped into the victoria. Down is down in Grasse. I think our _cocher_ did not realize what he was getting into, or he would have preferred taking his chances on a long wait. He certainly did not know his way through the old town. He asked at every corner, each time more desperately, as we became engaged in a maze of narrow streets, which were made before the days of victorias. There was no way of turning. We had to go down--precipitously down. With brake jammed tight, and curses that echoed from wall to wall and around corners, the _cocher_ held the reins to his chest. The horses, gently pushed forward, much against their will, by the weight of the carriage, planted all fours firm and slid over the stones that centuries of sabots and hand-carts had worn smooth. The noise brought everyone to windows and doors, and the sight kept them there. Tourist victorias did not coast through Grasse every day. Advice was freely proffered. The angrier our _cocher_ became the more frequently he was told to put on his brake and hold tight to the reins. After half an hour we came out at the funicular beside the railway station. "How delightful, and how fortunate!" exclaimed the Artist. "That certainly was a short cut. We have saved several kilometers!" I thought the _cocher_ would explode. But he merely nodded. Far be it from me to say that he did not understand the Artist's French for "short cut." Perhaps he thought best to save all comment until the hour of reckoning arrived. He did not need to. The ride back to the sea was through the fairyland of the morning climb, enhanced a thousandfold, as all fairylands are, by the magic of the twilight. One never can make it up to hired horses for their work and willingness and patience. But we did live up to local American tradition in regard to the _cocher_. CHAPTER II CAGNES American and English visitors to the Riviera soon come to know Cagnes by name. It is a challenge to their ability to pronounce French--a challenge that must be accepted, if you are in the region of Grasse or Nice or Antibes. Two distinct tramway lines and several roads lead from Grasse to Cannes and Cagnes. Unless you are very careful, you may find yourself upon the wrong route. Once on the Cagnes tramway, or well engaged upon the road to Cagnes, when you had meant to go to Cannes, the mistake takes hours to retrieve. At Nice, chauffeurs and _cochers_ love to cheat you by the confusion of these two names. You bargain for the long trip to Cannes, and are attracted by the reasonable price quoted. In a very short time you are at Cagnes. The vehicle stops. Impossible to rectify your mispronunciation without a substantial increase of the original sum of the bargain. Antibes is between Cagnes and Cannes. Cagnes is nearer, and it is always to Cannes that you want to go. Spell the name, or write it on a piece of paper, if you are to be sure that you will be taken west instead of east. The place, as well as the name, is familiar to all travelers--from a distance. Whether you move by train, by tramway or by automobile, you see the city set on a hill between Cannes and Nice. But express trains do not stop. The tramway passes some distance from the old town, and prospect of the walk and climb is not alluring to the tramway tourist, whose goal is places important enough to have a map in Baedeker, or a double-starred church or view. If motorists are not in a hurry to get to a good lunch, their chauffeurs are. You signal to stop, and express a desire to go up into Cagnes. The hired chauffeur declares emphatically that it cannot be done. If you do not believe him, he drives you to the foot of the hill, and you see with your own eyes. Regretfully you pass on to towns that are _plus pratiques_. More than once I had done this: and I might have done it again had not the Artist come to the Riviera. We were afoot (the best way to travel and see things) on an April Sunday, and stopped for lunch at the restaurant opposite the Cagnes railway station. The Artist was not hungry. While I ate he went out "to find what sort of a subject the _ensemble_ of the city on the hill over there makes." He returned in time for cheese and fruit, with a sketch of Cagnes that made the waitress run inside to get better apples and bananas. She insisted that we would be rewarded for a climb up to the old town, and offered to keep our coats and kits. Along the railway and tramway and motor-road a modern Cagnes of villas and hotels and pensions, with their accompaniment of shops and humbler habitations, has grown for a mile or more, and stretched out across the railway to the sea. Two famous French artists live here, and many Parisians and foreigners. There is also a wireless station. All this shuts off from the road the town on the hill. Unless you had seen it from the open country, before coming into the modern Cagnes, you would not have known that there was a hill and an old city. It was not easy for us to find the way. Built for legs and nothing else, the thoroughfare up through Cagnes is a street that can be called straight and steep and stiff, the adjectives coming to you without your seeking for alliteration, just as instinctively as you take off your hat and out your handkerchief. "No livery stable in this town--come five francs on it," said the Artist. "Against five francs that there are no men with a waistline exceeding forty-five inches!" I answered, feelingly and knowingly. But we soon became so fascinated by our transition from the twentieth century to the fifteenth that we forgot we were climbing. Effort is a matter of mental attitude. Nothing in the world is hard when you are interested in doing it. Half way and half an hour up, we paused to take our bearings. The line of houses, each leaning on its next lower neighbor, was broken here by a high garden wall, from which creepers were overhanging the street, with their fresh spring tendrils waving and curling above our heads. There was an odor of honeysuckle and orange-blossoms, and the blood-red branch of a judas-tree pushed its way through the green and yellow. The canyon of the street, widening below us, ended in a rich meadowland, dotted with villas and trees. Beyond, the Mediterranean rose to the horizon. While the Artist was "taking it," the usual crowd gathered around: children whose lack of bashfulness indicated that many city people were here for the season or that tourists did find their way up to Cagnes; women always eager to gossip with strangers, especially with those from lands across the sea; old men proud to tell you that their city was the most interesting, because the most ancient, on the Riviera. When we resumed our climb, the whole town seemed to be going our way. Sunday-best and prayer-books gave the reason. Just as we were coming to the top, our street made its first turn, a sharp one, and in the bend was a church tower with a wee door under it. Houses crowded closely around it. The tower was the only indication of the church. An _abbé_ was standing by the door, calling in the acolytes and choir boys who were playing tag in the street. The Artist stopped, short. I went up to the _abbé_, who by features and accent was evidently a Breton far from home. "Do any fat men live up here?" I asked. "Only one," he answered promptly, with a hearty laugh. "The _curé_ has gone to the war, and last month the bishop sent a man to help me who weighs over a hundred kilos. We have another church below in the new town, and there are services in both, morning and afternoon. Low mass here at six, and high masses there at eight and here at ten. Vespers here at three and there at four-thirty. On the second Sunday my coadjutor said he was going to leave at the end of the month. So, after next week, there will be no fat man. Unless you have come to Cagnes to stay?" The _abbé_ twinkled and chuckled. "It is not to laugh at," broke in an oldest inhabitant who had overheard. "We live from ten to twenty years longer than the people of the plain, who have railways and tramways and carriages and autos right to their very doors. We get the mountain air from the Alps and the sea air from the Mediterranean uncontaminated. It blows into every house without passing through as much as a single neighbor's courtyard. But our long lease on life is due principally to having to climb this hill. Stiffness, rheumatism--we don't know what it means, and we stay fit right to the very end. Look at me. I was a grown man when people first began to know who Garibaldi was in Nice. We formed a corps of volunteers right here in this town when Mazzini's republic was proclaimed to go to defend Rome from the worst enemies of Italian unity, those Vatican--But I beg M. le Curé's pardon! In those days of hot youth the church, you know, did not mean--" The _abbé_ twinkled and chuckled again, and patted the old man's shoulder affectionately. "When you did not follow Briand ten years ago, it proved that half a century had wrought a happy change. I understand anyway. I am a Breton that has taken root, as everyone here does, in this land of lofty mountains and deep valleys, of wind and sun, of sea and snow. Mental as well as physical acclimatization comes. The spirit, the life, the very soul of the _Risorgimento_ had nothing Italian in it. It was of Piedmont and Savoy and the Riviera--a product of the Alpes Maritimes." I would have listened longer. But the bell above us began to ring, several peals first, and then single strokes, each more insistent than the last. The _abbé_ was still in the Garibaldi mood, and the volunteer of '49 and I were in sympathy. He knew it, and refused to hear the summons to vespers. But out of the door came a girl who could break a spell of the past, because she was able to weave one of the present. She dominated us immediately. She would not have had to say a word. A hymn book was in her hand, opened at the page where she intended it to stay open. "This afternoon, M. l'Abbé, we shall sing this," she stated. "No, we cannot do it!" he protested rather feebly. "You see, the encyclical of the Holy Father enjoins the Gregorian, and I think the boys can sing it--" The organist interrupted: "You certainly know, M. l'Abbé, that we cannot have decent singing for the visits to the stations, unless the big girls, whom I have been training now for two months--" "But we must obey the Papal injunction, Mademoiselle Simone," put in the priest still more mildly. Mademoiselle Simone's eyes danced mockingly, and her mow confirmed beyond a doubt the revelation of clothes and accent. Here was a twentieth-century Parisienne in conflict with a reactionary rule of the church in a setting where turning back the hands of the clock would have seemed the natural thing to do. "Pure nonsense!" was her disrespectful answer. "With all the young men away, the one thing to do is to make the music go." I had to speak in order to be noticed. "So even in Cagnes the young girls know how to give orders to M. le Curé? The Holy Father's encyclical--" I could stop without finishing the sentence, for I had succeeded. The dancing eyes and the _moue_ now included me. "M. l'Abbé, it is time for the service," she said firmly. "If this _Anglais_ comes in, he will see that I have reason." She disappeared. The _abbé_ looked after her indulgently, shrugged his shoulders, with the palms of his hands spread heavenward, and followed her. In the meantime the worshipers, practically all of them women and children, had been turning corners above and below. I made the round of the group of buildings, and saw only little doors here and there at different levels. There was no portal, no large main entrance. When I came back to the bend of the road, the music had started. I was about to enter the tower door--Mademoiselle Simone's!--when I saw the Artist put up his pencil. The service would last for some time, so I joined him, and we continued to mount. Above the church tower, steps led to the very top of the hill, which was crowned by a château. Skirting its walls, we came to an open place. On the side of the hill looking towards the Alps, a spacious terrace had been built out far beyond the château wall. Along the parapet were a number of primitive tables and benches. The tiny café from which they were served was at the end of a group of nondescript buildings that had probably grown up on a ruined bastion of the château. Seated at one of these tables, you see the Mediterranean from Nice to Antibes, with an occasional steamer and a frequent sailing-vessel, the Vintimille _rapide_ (noting its speed by the white engine smoke), one tramway climbing by Villeneuve-Loubet towards Grasse and another by Saint-Paul-du-Var to Vence, and more than a semi-circle of the horizon lost in the Alps. The Sunday afternoon animation in the _place_ was wholly masculine. No woman was visible except the white-coiffed grandmother who served the drinks. The war was not the only cause of the necessity of Mademoiselle Simone's opposition to antiphonal Gregorian singing. I fear that the lack of male voices in the vesper service is a chronic one, and that Mademoiselle Simone's attempt to put life into the service would have been equally justifiable before the tragic period of _la guerre_. For the men of Cagnes were engrossed in the favorite sport of the Midi, _jeu aux boules_. I have never seen a more serious group of Tartarins. From Monsieur le Maire to cobbler and blacksmith, all were working very hard. A little ball that could be covered in one's fist is thrown out on the common by the winner of the last game. The players line up, each with a handful of larger wooden balls about the size and weight of those that are used in croquet. You try to roll or throw your balls near the little one that serves as goal. Simple, you exclaim. Yes, but not so simple as golf. For the hazard of the ground is changed with each game. Interest in what people around you are doing is the most compelling interest in the world. Train yourself to be oblivious to your neighbor's actions and your neighbor's thoughts, on the ground that curiosity is the sign of the vulgarian and indifference the sign of the gentleman, and you succeed in making yourself colossally stupid. Here lies the weakest point in Anglo-Saxon culture. The players quickly won me from the view. Watch one man at play, and you can read his character. He is an open book before you. Watch a number of men at play, and you are shown the general masculine traits of human nature. Generosity, decision, alertness, deftness, energy, self-control--meanness, hesitation, slowness, awkwardness, laziness, impatience: you have these characteristics and all the shades between them. The humblest may have admirable and wholesome virtues lacking in the highest, but a balance of them all weighs and marks one Monsieur le Maire or the stonebreaker on the road. The councils of Generals at Verdun did not take more seriously in their day the problem of moving their men nearer the fortress than were these players the problem of rolling their big balls near the little ball. Had the older men been the only group, I should have got the idea that _jeu aux boules_ is a game where the skill is all in cautious playing. But there were young _chasseurs alpins_, home on leave from the front, who were playing the game in an entirely different way. Instead of making each throw as if the destinies of the world were at stake, the soldiers played fast and vigorously, aiming rather to knock the opponent's ball away from a coveted position near the goal than to reach the goal. The older men's balls, to the number of a couple of dozen, clustered around the goal at the end of a round. Careful marking, by cane-lengths, shoe-lengths and handkerchief-lengths preceded agreement as to the winner. At the end of a round of the _chasseurs alpins_, two or three balls remained: the rest had gone wide of the mark, or had been knocked many feet from the original landing-place by a successor's throw. During half an hour I did not see the young men measure once. The winning throw was every time unmistakable. The Artist leaned against the château wall, putting it down. The thought of Mademoiselle Simone, playing the organ, came to me. How was the music going? I must not miss that service. The view and the château and the _jeu aux boules_ no longer held me. Down the steps I went, and entered the first of the church doors. It was on the upper level, and took me into the gallery; I was surprised to find so large a church. One got no idea of its size from the outside. The daylight was all from above. Although only mid-afternoon, altar and chancel candles made a true vesper atmosphere, and the flickering wicks in the hanging lamps gave starlight. This is as it should be. The appeal of a ritualistic service is to the mystical in one's nature. Jewels and embroideries, gold and silver, gorgeous robes, rich decorations, pomp and splendor repel in broad daylight; candles and lamps sputter futilely; incense nauseates: for the still small voice is stifled, and the kingdom is of this world. But in the twilight, what skeptic, what Puritan resists the call to worship of the Catholic ritual? I had come in time for the intercessory visit to the stations of the cross. Priest and acolytes were following the crucifix from the chancel. Banners waved. Before each station the procession stopped, the priest and acolytes knelt solemnly (with bowed heads) and prayers were said. While the procession was passing from station to station, the girls sang their hymn in French. It was the age old pageantry of the Catholic church, a pageantry that perhaps indicates an age old temperamental difference between the Latin and the Anglo Saxon. When the service was over, I went around to the door under the tower. Of course, it was to meet the _abbé_. Still, when I realize that I had missed the organist, I was disappointed. The _abbé_ soon appeared from the sacristy. I gave one more look around for Mademoiselle Simone while he was explaining that he had just twenty minutes before it was necessary to start down to the other church, but that it was long enough to take me through the Moorish quarter. Although I had come to Cagnes to see the old town, and to get into the atmosphere of past centuries, I must confess that I followed him regretfully. The houses of the Moorish quarter are built into the ancient city walls. Baked earth, mixed with straw and studded with cobblestones, has defied eight centuries. There are no streets wide enough for carts, for they hark back to the days when donkeys were common carriers. And in hill-towns the progressive knowledge of centuries has evolved no better means of transport. You pass through _ruelles_ where outstretched hands can touch the houses on each side. Often the _ruelle_ is like a tunnel, for the houses are built right over it on arches, and it is so dark that you cannot see in front of you. The _abbé_ assured me that there were house doors all along as in any other passage. People must know by instinct where to turn in to their houses. When the _abbé_ left me to go to his lower vesper service, after having piloted me back to the main streets, I decided to go up again to the _place_ to rejoin the Artist. But under an old buttonwood tree, which almost poked its upper branches into the château windows, stood Mademoiselle Simone, waving good-by to another girl who was disappearing around the corner of a street above. Her aunt, she declared, was waiting for her at a villa half-way down the hill, at five. Just then five struck in the clock-tower behind us. "Had you looked up before you spoke?" I asked. "Clocks do strike conveniently," she answered. Although Mademoiselle Simone repulsed firmly my plea that she become my guide through the other side of the town, where two outlying quarters, the _abbé_ had said, contained the best of all in old houses, queer streets and an ivy-covered ruin of a chapel, she lingered to talk under the buttonwood tree of many things that had nothing to do with Cagnes. When I tried to persuade her to show me what I had not yet seen, on the ground that I had made the climb up to the top because of my interest in hill cities and wanted to write about Cagnes, she immediately answered that she would not detain me for the world and made a move to keep her rendezvous with the aunt. So I hastened to contradict myself, and assure her that I had no interest whatever in Cagnes, that I was stuck here waiting for the Artist, who would come only with the fading light. After Mademoiselle Simone left me under the buttonwood tree, I thought of the Artist. He had finished and was smoking over a glass of vermouth at one of the tables by the parapet of the _place_. "Great town," he said. "Bully stuff here. In buildings and villagers have you found anything as fascinating as that purple and red on the mountain snow over there? It just gets the last sun, the very last." "Yes," I answered, "but neither in a building or a villager of Cagnes. There is a Parisienne--" And I told him about Mademoiselle Simone. He was silent, and his fingers drummed upon the table, tipity-tap, tipity-tap. "Show me your sketches," I asked. "No," he said scathingly. "No! You are not interested in sketches. Nor should I have been, had you been more generous. You had the luck in Cagnes." The prospect of a trout dinner at Villeneuve-Loubet took us rapidly down the hill. We soon passed out of the fifteenth century into the twentieth. Modern Cagnes, with its clang of tramway gong, toot of locomotive whistle, honk-honk of motor horn, café terraces crowded with Sunday afternooners, broad sidewalks and electric lights was another world. But it was our world--and Mademoiselle Simone's. That is why coming back into it from the hill of Cagnes was really like a cold shower. For a sense of refreshment followed immediately the shock--and stayed with us. The hill of Cagnes we could rave about enthusiastically because we did not have to go back there and live there. It will be "a precious memory," as tourists say, precisely because it is a _memory_. The bird in a cage is less of a prisoner than we city folk of the modern world. For when you open the cage door, the bird will fly away and not come back. We may fly away--but we do come back, and the sooner the better. We love our prisons. We are happy (or think we are, which is the same thing) in our chains. And in the brief time that we are a-wing, do we really love unusual sights and novel things? In exploring, is not our greatest joy and delight in finding something familiar, something we have already known, something we are used to? An appreciative lover and frequenter of grand opera once said to me, "'The Barber of Seville' is my favorite, because I know I am going to have the treat of 'The Suwanee River' or 'Annie Laurie' when I go to it." There is an honest confession, such as we must all make if we are to do our souls good. [Illustration: "The hill of Cagnes we could rave about."] So you understand why there is so much of Mademoiselle Simone in my story of Cagnes, and why the Artist had a grouch. His afternoon's work should have pleased him, should have satisfied him. He would not have finished it had he met Mademoiselle Simone. He knows more of Cagnes than I do, but he would rather have known more of Mademoiselle Simone. CHAPTER III SAINT-PAUL-DU-VAR At the restaurant opposite the Cagnes railway station the waitress welcomed us as old friends. She told us how lucky we were to come on a Friday. Fish just caught that morning--the best we would ever eat in our lives--were waiting for us in the kitchen. We flattered ourselves that the disappointment was mutual when we had to tell her that there was time only for an _apéritif_. Precisely because it was Friday and not Sunday, there was no reasonable hope of running into Monsieur le Curé or Mademoiselle Simone or a game of _boules_, if we climbed the steep hill to Cagnes. On our last visit, we had seen from the top of Cagnes a walled city crowning another hill several miles inland. Saint-Paul-du-Var was our goal today. Electric trams run to Grasse and to Vence from Cagnes. The lines separate at Villeneuve-Loubet, a mile back from the Nice-Cannes road. The Vence tram would have taken us to Saint-Paul-du-Var along the road that began to avoid the valley after passing Villeneuve-Loubet. It was one of those _routes nationales_ of which the France of motorists is so proud, hard and smooth and rounded to drain quickly, never allowing itself a rut or a steep grade or a sharp turn. This national highway was like all the easy paths in life. It meant the shortest distance comfortably possible for obtaining your objective. It eliminated surprises. It showed you all the time all there was to see, and kept you kilometrically informed of your progress. It was paralleled by the electric tram line. It enabled you to explore the country in true city fashion. We were walking, and the low road, signpostless, attracted us. It started off in the same general direction, but through the valley. It was all that a country road ought to be. It had honest ruts and unattached stones of various sizes. Cows had passed along that way. Trees met overhead irregularly, and bushes grew up in confusion on the sides. The ruthlessness of macadam, the pressure of fat tires, the scorching of engines, had not banished the thick grass which the country wants to give its roads, and would give to all its roads if the country were not being constantly "improved." There were places where one could rest without fear of sun and ditch-water and clouds of dust. Why should one go from the city to the country to breathe tar and gasoline? Why should one have to keep one's eyes wandering from far ahead to back over one's shoulder for fifty-two weeks in the year? We wanted to get away from clang-clang and honk-honk and puff-puff. Since the real vacation is change, we welcomed the task of looking out for hostile dogs instead of swiftly moving vehicles. Our noses wanted whiffs of hay and pig, and our boots wanted unadulterated mud. We were not allowed to have our way without a warning. There always is someone to keep you in the straight and narrow path. As we were turning into the low road a passer-by remonstrated. "If you're going to Saint-Paul-du-Var," he explained, "you want to keep to the high road. It's very muddy down there, and will take you longer." When our adviser saw that we did not stop, he raised his voice and called, "There are no signposts and you may get lost." "You take the high road and we'll take the low," sang back the Artist. He who had meant well disappeared, shaking his head. No doubt, as he shuffled along, he was muttering to himself over the inexplicable actions of _ces drôles d'Anglais_. The miles passed coolly and pleasantly. Trees and bushes did not allow many glimpses of the outside world. The dogs that barked were behind farmhouse gates, and we had use for our stones only at an occasional jackrabbit. "At" is a convenient preposition. It gives one latitude. Jackrabbits on the Riviera are not like human products of the south. They jump quickly. They jump, too, in directions that cannot be foretold. After one particularly bad throw, the Artist explained that he did not enjoy inflicting pain. His boyish instincts had long ago been controlled by reading S. P. C. A. literature. I told him that I thought he had given up baseball too early in life. So had I. The jackrabbits escaped. I am rarely oblivious to the duty of the noon hour. Although I knew the Artist's habit of stopping suddenly, and the hopelessness of budging him by plea or argument as long as the reason for stopping remained, it had not occurred to me that there would be a risk in taking the low road. We had started in plenty of time, and as we were out for a medieval town, I thought he would not be tempted until we reached the vicinity of a restaurant. But about a mile below Saint-Paul-du-Var the low road brought us to a view of the city that would have held me at any other time than twelve noon. I tried the old expedient of walking faster, and calling attention to something in the distance. When the Artist halted, moved uncertainly a few yards, and stopped again, we were lost. He did not need to pronounce the inevitable words, "I'll just get this little bit." The Artist's "just" means anything from twenty to ninety minutes. Food without companionship is not enjoyable, least of all on a holiday. There was no use suggesting that we could come back this way, and advancing that the light would be so much better later. The Artist had started in. I cast around for some way of escape from an impossible situation. The only farmhouse in sight was at the end of a long lane, and did not look as if it could produce the makings of a meal. The poorest providers and preparers of foodstuffs are their producers. Who has not eaten salt pork on a cattle ranch and longed for cream on a dairy farm? What city boarder has not discovered the woeful lack of connection between the cackling of hens and the certitude of fresh eggs on the table at the next meal? What muncher of Maine doughnuts in a Boston restaurant has not thought of the "sinkers" offered to him when he was on his last summer's vacation? A bridge crossed a stream just ahead of us. On the other side was a thick clump of trees. I walked forward with the thought that a drink of water at least might not be bad. When I got to the bridge I heard plaintive barking and a man's voice. The man was explaining to the dog why he ought not to be impatient. He would have his good bone, with plenty of meat on it, in a little quarter of an hour. A house-wagon was standing back from the side of the road. The owner was shaking a casserole over a fire, and the dog was sniffing as near as he dared. The dog gave me his attention, and the man turned. It was a favorite waiter of a favorite Montparnasse café. "Pierre," I cried, "where did you drop from? What luck!" Pierre put the casserole on the window ledge, out of the dog's reach, and greeted me. You never could surprise Pierre. He was always master of the situation. One has to be in a Montparnasse café. I noted with approval the precaution that Pierre had taken. Either the dog was very hungry or there was something particularly tempting in the casserole. Pierre had gone to join his regiment on the second day of the war. I had not seen him or heard of him since then. He told me that he had been unable to shake off a _bronchite_, caught in the trenches. It was the old story. When he left the hospital, the medical board declared him unfit for further service and warned him against returning soon to city life. The hope of recovery lay in open air and sunshine. "I determined to get well, Monsieur," he said. "I had money saved up. I bought this wagon and a cinematograph outfit. I go to the little towns in the Midi. One can take only four sous--two from the children--but I get along. Now, when I am well, I shall not go back to Paris. Have you ever lived in a wagon, Monsieur? No? Well, never do it, if you do not want to realize that it is the only life worth living." Pierre was interested in the gossip of the Quarter. A frequent "_c'est vrai_" and "_dîtes donc_" punctuated my news of American artists who had gone home at last. When I told him of the few who had sold pictures in America, his comment was "_épatant_," which he meant in no uncomplimentary sense. The Artist was an old favorite of Pierre's. I restrained his impulse to go right out to greet the Artist. Pierre entered into my idea with alacrity. The dog was given a bone and chained. The coal box was brought out from the wagon, and turned upside down for a table beside a fallen tree. When all was ready, I watched Pierre surprise the Artist. He put a napkin over his arm, and froze his face. Then he tip-toed up to the Artist's elbow, and announced, "_Monsieur est servi._" For once I was able to get the Artist away from his work. What a meal we did have there beside that little stream! There were bottles in Pierre's wagon, and he insisted upon opening more than one. When we finally left Pierre to his dishes, we were well fortified for the climb to Saint-Paul-du-Var, and in the mood to appreciate enthusiastically all that was before us. Above on the left we could see the high road that we had deserted at Villeneuve-Loubet. It did not come out of its way for Saint-Paul-du-Var, but went straight on inland Vence-wards. A side road, on the level, came over towards the gate of Saint-Paul-du-Var. To this road ours mounted, and joined it just outside the town. In climbing we had the opportunity, denied to the conventional, of seeing that Saint-Paul-du-Var was really on the top of a hill. The walls rose sheer, and only the outer houses, directly behind the ramparts, were in our line of vision. Nearly up to the entrance to the city we passed between a tiny stone chapel and a mill, whose wheel was a curious combination of metal and wood. The Artist exclaimed that it would make a bully sketch. He saw its picturesque possibilities. I wondered, on the other hand, whether it would work and how it worked. Moss and grass on a millwheel in the Midi are no surer signs of abandonment and disuse than a dry millrace. Where things die fast they grow fast. A little water brings forth vegetable life in a single day. Southern streams are not perennial. On the Riviera, they are fed from nearby mountains, and are intermittent even in their season. When the water ceases, the sun quickly bakes a crust of silt and dries the stones of the river-beds gray-brown. A dwarf could hardly have said mass in the chapel. Its rear wall was the rising ground, and there seemed to be a garden on the roof. Burial space extending no farther than the roots of a sentinel cypress told the tale of one man's vanity or devotion. The situation of the chapel prompted us to look over the ground for traces of a lunette bastion on the counterscarp. We found that the chapel was built upon an earlier foundation of stone taken from a fortification wall, and that later builders had made over the chapel into a belvedere. Steps on the side of the slope led to the roof, upon which two benches had been placed. What past generations have left us we use for purposes of our own. We talk sentimentally of our traditions, but we test them by their utility. Saint-Paul-du-Var fails to satisfy twentieth-century standards. It is not a thriving, bustling city. It is not a tourist center. The walls are as they were five centuries ago. The space inside is sufficient for the population, and one gate serves all needs. The medieval aspect is not destroyed by buildings outside the walls, and the medieval atmosphere is undisturbed by hotel touts and postcard vendors. When we presented ourselves before the gate, not a soul was in sight. A bronze cannon of Charles-Quint's time stuck its nose out of the ground by the portcullis. We had to pull off grass and dirt to find the inscription. While we were examining the towers that flanked the gate, a wagon rattled slowly by. The driver did not look at us. A woman with a basket of vegetables on her head met us under the arch. She did not look at us. We found the same indifference in the town. Even the small boys refrained from staring or grinning or yelling or asking for pennies. None volunteered to show us around. "The interest in our arrival at Saint-Paul-du-Var," commented the Artist, "is all on our side." Human nature is full of contradictions. We should have been annoyed if people had bothered us. We were as much annoyed when they paid no attention to us. We went up in one of the towers to reach the ramparts. Keeping on the walls all the way around the town involved an occasional bit of climbing. We had to forget our clothes. That was easy, however, for every step of the way was of compelling interest _extra et intra muros_. Outside, the panorama of the Riviera, sea and mountains, towns and valleys, lay before us to the four points of the compass. Inside, houses of different centuries but none post-Bourbon, each crowding its neighbor but none without individuality of its own, faced us and curved with us. For once, the Artist failed to single out a subject. Seaward, beyond the valley through which we had come, were Villeneuve-Loubet and Cagnes. On the right we could see to the Antibes lighthouse, and on the left, across the Var, to the point between Nice and Villefranche. Landward were Vence and the wall of the Alpes Maritimes. The afternoon sun fell full on the snow and darkened the upper valleys of the numerous confluents of the Var and Loup rivers. Sketching was tomorrow's task. There was time only for exploration of the city before sunset. We came down at the tower opposite the one from which we had started on our round. On the road to the electric tram, we saw the _restaurant-hôtel_, a cube of whitewash, but we were far from the temptation of banalities. Tea or something, and a place to spend the night, could be found within the walls. Saint-Paul-du-Var caught us in its fascinating maze. We forgot that we were thirsty. There was just one street. It zigzagged its way across the town from the gate. You lost the points of the compass and hardly realized that you were going over the top of a hill. The street curved every hundred yards, and frequently turned around three sides of a single building. Fountains were at the bends. One of them, opposite the market, fed a square pool that was the city laundry. Women, kneeling on the edge, were at the eternal task. We passed the centers of municipal life, post-office, _mairie_, _gendarmerie_, school and church. Churches of Riviera towns, like the character and speech and features of the people, are a reminder of the recency of the French occupation. There is a replica of the church of Saint-Paul-du-Var in a thousand Italian cities. When you enter the colorless building from the plain curved porch, the chill strikes right into your bones. Windows do not compete with candles. You have to grope your way toward the altar. Unless you strain your eyes, or lamps are burning, side chapels pass unnoticed. If you are looking for inscriptions or want to admire the old master's picture, with which every church claims to be endowed, you must get the verger with his taper. Altars are gaudily decorated and statues bejeweled and be (artificial) flowered in Hispano-Italian fashion. The _mairie_, reconstructed from an ancient palace or castle, was more interesting. Beside the mairie a medieval square tower, which may have been a donjon, was occupied on the ground floor by the _gendarmerie_. Bars on the upper windows indicated that it was still the prison. We tried the alleys that led off from the street, thinking each might be a thoroughfare to take us back to the ramparts. They ended abruptly in a _cul-de-sac_ or court. The _culs-de-sac_, uninviting to eye and nose, were as Italian as the church. The houses in the courts were stables downstairs. Man and beast lived together. Flowers and wee bushes grew up around the wells in the center of the courts. Everything was built of stone and red-tiled. But there was none of the dull gray-and-red monotony of northern towns near the sea or of the sharp gray-and-red monotony of towns of the Mediterranean peninsulas. Grass sprouted out between the stones of the walls and the tiles of the roofs. From window-ledges and eaves hung ferns. A blush of moss on the stones added to the green of plant life, and softened the austerity of the gray. Nature was successful in asserting herself against man and sun and sea. [Illustration: "The houses in the courts were stables downstairs."] We were expressing our enthusiasm in a court where the living green combined with age to glorify the buildings. We did not see the dilapidation, we did not smell the dirt, we did not feel the squalor. A woman was lighting a fire in a brazier on her doorstep. She looked hostilely at us. We beamed in counteraction. She looked more hostilely. As the Artist wanted to sketch her house, some words seemed necessary. I detailed our emotions. Was not her lot, cast in this picturesque spot, most enviable? "We want to take away with us," I said, "a tangible memory of this beautiful, this picturesque, this verdant court in which you live." "If you had to live here," she announced simply, "you'd want to go away and forget it." The fumes had burned from the charcoal. The woman picked up the brazier, carried it inside without another word or look, and slammed the door behind her with her foot. The Artist was already in his sketch, but he paused to growl and philosophize. "If she had waited a minute longer," he complained, "I should have had her and the brazier. Funny how unappreciative people are. You and I, _mon vieux_, would like nothing better than to stay here. From the other side of her house that woman must have a great view of the sea and the mountains. Is she going to watch the sunset? No, she is going to make soup for her man on that brazier in a dark hole of a room, and feel sorry for herself because she doesn't live in Paris where she could go to the movies every night." Our ardor for Saint-Paul-du-Var lasted splendidly through the sunset on the ramparts. We had found the ideal spot. Hoi polloi could have their Nice and their Cannes! But when night fell, there were few lights on the street, and shopkeepers looked at us in stupid amazement when we inquired about lodgings. We did not dare to ask in the drinking places, for fear they might volunteer to put us up. In the _épiceries_, we were offered bread and sardines. There was no butter. So we went rather less reluctantly than we had thought possible an hour earlier out of the gate towards the _hôtel-restaurant_. An old man was camped against the wall in a wagon like Pierre's. He had been sharpening Saint-Paul-du-Var's scissors and knives. We confided in him, and asked if he thought the _hôtel-restaurant_ would give us a good dinner and a good bed. The scissors-grinder wrinkled his nose and twinkled his eyes. "The last tram from Vence to Cagnes stops over there at eight-ten," he said decisively. "You have five minutes to catch it. Get off at Villeneuve-Loubet, and go to the Hôtel Beau-Site. The proprietor is a _cordon bleu_ of a _chef_. He has his own trout, and he knows just what tourists like to eat and drink. Motorists stop there over night, so you need have no fear." "But--" I started to remonstrate. The Artist was already hurrying in the direction of the tram. I followed him. The next morning the Artist went back to Saint-Paul-du-Var for his sketches. I did not accompany him. Saint-Paul-du-Var was a delightful memory, and I wanted to keep it. CHAPTER IV VILLENEUVE-LOUBET On a hill a mile or so back from the Cannes-Nice road, just before one reaches Cagnes, a castle of unusual size and severity of outline rises above the trees of a park. The roads from Cagnes to Grasse and Vence bifurcate at the foot of the hill on which the castle is built. What one thinks of the castle depends upon which road one takes. The traveler on the Vence road sees a pretentious entrance, constructed for automobiles, with a twentieth-century iron gate and a twentieth-century porter's lodge. The park looks well groomed. The wall along the Vence side is as new as the gate and the lodge. The stone of the castle is white and fresh. One dismisses the castle as an imitation or a wholesale restoration by an architect lacking in imagination and cleverness. But if the left hand road toward Grasse is taken, one sees twelfth-century fortifications coming down from the top of the hill to the roadside. There are ruins of bastions and towers overgrown with bushes and ivy. Farther along an old town is revealed climbing the hill to the castle. There is nothing _nouveau riche_ about Villeneuve-Loubet. The only touches of the modern are the motor road with kilometer stones, the iron bridge over the Loup, and the huge sign informing you that the hotel is near by. Had we limited our inland exploration to the Vence side of the hill, the Artist and I would not have discovered Villeneuve-Loubet. Had we been hurrying through toward Grasse in automobile or tram, we would probably have exclaimed "how picturesque" or "interesting, isn't it?" and continued our way. Luck saved us. A scissors-grinder at the gate of Saint-Paul-du-Var recommended the trout and beds of the Villeneuve-Loubet hotel. Just as the moon was coming up one April evening, we got off the Vence-Cagnes tram at the junction of the Grasse tramway, and walked to the revelation of what the castle really was. We decided to eat something in a hurry, and go around the town that very evening. When, helped by the sign, we reached the Hôtel Beau-Site, the proprietor came forward with his best shuffle and bow. Trout? Of course there were trout, plenty of them. Alas, in these days when business was very, very bad, when people had no money to travel, and visitors accordingly were scarce, there were too many trout. But that was to the advantage of _messieurs_. He, Jean Alphonse, could give a large choice, and the dinner would have all his attention. It was his pride and rule to give personal attention always to every dish that left his kitchen, but with the _monde_ of a regular season, he could not take every fish out of the pan himself, and see that the slices of lemon were cut, and the parsley put, just as he had always done when he was the _chef_ of Monsieur Blanc. We knew Monsieur Blanc. Monsieur Blanc died eight years ago, but that was the way of the world. Now messieurs could go right along with him and pick out their own fish. The net was down by the pool, and he would get a lamp in just one little minute. For that would be best. The moon was coming up, true. But one could not trust the moonlight in choosing fish. The garden of the Hôtel Beau-Site contains a curious succession of bowers made by training bamboo trees for partitions and ceilings. As we went through them, Jean Alphonse explained that these natural _salons particuliers_, where parties could have luncheon out-of-doors and yet remain sheltered from the sun and in privacy, combined with the trout to give his hotel a wonderful vogue in tourist season. We, of course, insisted that the reputation of the chef must be the third and controlling attraction. The pool was full, and the trout had no chance. It was not a sporting proposition; but just before dinner one does not think of that. Even our choice out of the net was gently guided by Jean Alphonse. Since human nature is the same the world over, is it surprising that the tricks calculated to captivate and deceive are the same? I recalled a famous restaurant in Moscow, where one went to the fountain with a white-robed Tartar waiter and thought he picked his fish. I have no doubt that Jean Alphonse believed that his idea was original, and that we were experiencing a new sensation. Jean Alphonse did not boast idly of his cuisine. He possessed, too, the genius of the successful boniface for knowing what would please his guests. He sensed our lack of interest in the wines of the Midi, and, helped by the Artist's checked knickers and slender cane, set forth a bottle of old Scotch. We refused to allow him to open the dining-room for us, and had our dinner in a corner of the café. Villeneuve-Loubet's _élite_ gathered to see us eat. The _garde-champêtre_, the veteran of 1870, the chatelain's bailiff, the local representative in the Legion of Honor (rosette, not ribbon, if you please), and two _chasseurs alpins_, home from the maneuvers on sick leave, ordered their coffee or liqueur at other tables, but were glad to join us when we said the word. Soon we had a dozen around us. The history of the war--and past and future wars--and of Villeneuve-Loubet was set forth in detail. Had it not been for the moon, we should certainly have gone from the table to our rooms. But the full moon on the Riviera makes a more fascinating fairyland than one can find in dreams. We did not hesitate, when the last of our friends left, to follow them out-of-doors. Villeneuve-Loubet might prove to be a modest town tomorrow, old, of course, and interesting: but we were going to see it tonight under the spell of the moon. We were going to wander where we willed, with all the town to ourselves. We were going to live for an hour in the Middle Ages. For if there was anything modern in Villeneuve-Loubet, the moonlight would hide it or gloss it over; if there was anything ancient, the moonlight would enable us to see it as we wanted to see it. I pity the limited souls who do not believe in moonshine, and use the word contemptuously. One is illogical who contends that moonshine gives a false idea of things; for he is testing the moonshine impression by sunshine. It would be as illogical to say that sunshine gives a false idea of things on the ground that moonshine is the standard. If sunshine is reality, so is moonshine. The difference is that we are more accustomed to see things by sunlight than by moonlight. Our test of reality is familiarity, and of truth repetition. Villeneuve-Loubet is built against a cliff. The houses rise on tiers of stone terraces. They are made of stone quarried on the spot. Red tiles, the conspicuous feature of Mediterranean cities, are lacking in Villeneuve-Loubet. The roofs are slabs of stone. The streets are the surface of the cliff. We climbed toward the castle through a ghost-city. The moon enhanced the gray-whiteness that was the common color of ground, walls and roofs. The shadows, sharp and black, were needed to set forth the lines of the buildings. The picture called for a witch. The silence was broken by the tapping of a cane. Around the corner the witch hobbled into the scene, testing each step before her. She was dressed in black, of course, and bent over with just the curve of the back the Artist loves to give to his old women. She was a friendly soul, and did not seem amazed to find strangers strolling late at night in her town. We were "_Anglais_," and that was explanation enough to one who had seen three generations of tourists. She stopped to talk with us. When had we arrived at Villeneuve-Loubet? Had we come up from Nice that afternoon and did we plan to stay for a day or two with Jean Alphonse at the Hôtel Beau-Site? Did we not agree that Villeneuve-Loubet was superb? Perhaps we were artists? So many artists came here to paint and sketch the old houses. What was our impression of her country? We knew that she meant by "country" not France but Villeneuve-Loubet, and mustered our best vocabulary to admire the town, the solid foundations, the houses, the protecting castle, and above all, the unique streets of stone. "But it must be very difficult to go up and down in winter. How do you manage when the rock is frozen over with snow and ice?" I asked. "It does not freeze here," she answered. The moon-whiteness had made me think of winter, and it had not occurred to me that there would be no snow and ice. Ideas are pervasive. We place them immediately and unquestioningly upon the hypothesis that happens to fit. The church, of eighteenth-century architecture, is the last building at the upper end of the town. It stands on a terrace outside the lower wall of the castle, an eloquent witness of the survival of feudal ideas. In order that the lord of the manor need not go far to mass, when there happened to be no private chaplain in the castle, the town-folk must climb to their devotions. I tried the church door from habit. It was not locked. The Artist refused to go in. "Why should one poke around a church, especially at night and this night?" he remonstrated, and walked over to the wall of the terrace. "There may be something inside," I urged. "There _is_ something outside," he answered, with his back turned upon the castle as well as church. I could see my way around, for the windows of nave and transept were large, and had plain glass. Moonlight was sufficient to read inscriptions that set forth in detail the pedigree of the chatelains. The baptismal names overflowed a line, and were followed by a family name almost as long, MARCH-TRIPOLY DE PANISSE-PASSIS. Longest of all was the list of titles. The chatelains were marquesses and counts and knights of Malta and seigneurs of a dozen domains of the northlands as well as of Provence. March-Tripoly and some of the seigneural names told the story that I have often read in church inscriptions near the sea in Italy, in Hungary, in Dalmatia and in Greece, as well as in Provence and Catalonia. The feudal families of the Mediterranean are of Teutonic and Scandinavian origin. They were founded by the stock that destroyed the Roman Empire, barbarians, stronger, more energetic, more resourceful, more resolute than the southerners whom they made their serfs. When feudalism, through the formation of larger political units by the extension of kingly rights, began to decline, the chatelains preserved their prestige by supporting the propaganda to redeem the Holy Sepulcher. They took the Cross and went to fight the Saracens in Africa and Asia. When climate rather than culture latinized them, later northmen came and dispossessed them. The men of the north have always been fighting their way to the Mediterranean. Are Germans and Russians disturbing the peace of Europe any more or any differently than Northern Europeans have always done? Since the dawn of history, the Mediterranean races have had to contend with the men of the north seeking the sun. Behind the church, ruins of centuries, overgrown with shrubbery and ivy, cling to the side of the cliff from the castle to the valley road. The great square mass of the castle rises on top of a slope far above the church terrace. A moat, filled with bushes, is on a level with the terrace, and beyond the moat is a wall. An unkept path leads through the moat to a modest door. From the towers and arch above one can see that the former entrance to the castle, by means of a portcullis, was on this side. But the outer wall has been rebuilt, leaving only a servants' door. Evidently the chatelain used to enter by climbing up through Villeneuve-Loubet as we had done. Since the motor road was made on the other side of the hill, he and his guests can ignore Villeneuve-Loubet. The Artist was sitting on the wall of the terrace, engrossed in midnight labor. He was willing to stop for a pipe. Above us the castle, dominated by a pentagonal tower, rose toward the moon. Below us, the blanched roofs of Villeneuve-Loubet slanted into the valley. As long as the pipe lasted, I was able to talk to the Artist about the men of the north seeking the sun. But when the bowl ceased to respond to matches, he said; "All very well, but I know one man of the north who is going to seek his bed." Before reaching the Hôtel Beau-Site, however, a street on the left attracted us. It seemed to end in a flight of steps that dipped under arches, and we could hear the swift rush of water. We were not so sleepy as we thought, for both of us were still willing to explore. The steps led to the flour mill. We followed the mill-race until we reached the Grasse tram road near the river. By the tram station, a light was shining from the open door of a café in a wooden shanty. We went in, and found Villeneuve-Loubet's officer of the Legion of Honor smoking his pipe over a cup of _tilleul_. "There has been an accident in the gorge of the Loup," he said. "The last tram from Grasse was derailed, and two automobiles from Cagnes went up an hour ago. As I am the _maire_, I must wait for news. There may be something for me to do." Monsieur le Maire told us that he had spent his life in the West African coast trade, with headquarters in Marseilles. If he had stayed there to end his days, he would have been one of a hundred thousand in a great city, cast aside and ignored by the new generation. But in his native _pays_ he was in the thick of things. To return to their old home is not wholly a question of sentiment with Frenchmen who retire from business in the city or the colonies. Money goes farther, and one can be an official, with public duties and honors, and enjoy the privilege of writing on notepaper bearing the magic heading, _République Française_. Monsieur le Maire told us that the chatelain came often, and never forgot to invite him to meet the guests at the castle. Some years ago I used to think that it was a peculiar characteristic of the French to enjoy being made much of and exercising authority. But since I have traveled in my own and many other countries I have come to realize that this characteristic is not peculiarly French. When Monsieur le Maire spoke of the chatelain, I had my opening. Full of the idea of the men of the north seeking the sun, I was ready to spread to others the impression I had made upon myself of my own erudition and cleverness. At the risk of boring the Artist, I repeated and enlarged upon my deductions from the inscription of the March-Tripoly de Panisse-Passis. Monsieur le Maire looked at me with malicious amazement. "_La-la-la!_" he cried. "Not so fast. You haven't got it right at all, at all, at all! The castle of Villeneuve-Loubet is the only one in this corner of Provence that belongs to its pre-Revolutionary owners, but there are many centuries between feudal days and our time. Castles remain, but history changes. The March-Tripoly de Panisse-Passis are not a feudal family, and they do not come from the north. The African part of the name is due to an unproven claim of descent from a French consular official in Tripoli of the sixteenth century. The château, after a succession of proprietors, came to the Panisse family through marriage with the daughter of a Marseilles notary, who got the château by foreclosing a mortgage. During the Revolutionary period, the property was saved from confiscation by a clever straddle. The owner stayed in France, and supported the Revolution, while the son emigrated with the Bourbons. The peerage was created just a hundred years ago by Louis XVIII, in reward for the refusal of the Panisses to follow Napoleon a second time after the return from Elba." Another pervasive idea! "The Moon got you," was the laughing comment of the Artist. Historical reminiscences died hard, however. We discussed the possible Saracen origin of the pentagonal tower, and the vicissitudes of the castle during the struggles between Mohammedans and Christians, feudal lords and kings, Catholics and Protestants, Spaniards and French. Monsieur le Maire was a Bonapartist, and he insisted that the chief glory of Villeneuve-Loubet was the association with Napoleon. "When Napoleon was living at Nice," he said, "he used to come out here often. Napoleon thought that the view of sea and mountains from Villeneuve-Loubet was the finest on the Riviera. He could stand up there and look out towards his native island, and contemplate the mountains the crossing of which was his first great step to fame. Napoleon (and here Monsieur le Maire winked at the Artist) was a man of the sun seeking the north--just like Caesar, ho! ho!" The arrival of the tram, which had recovered its equilibrium, helped me to recover mine. We said good night to Monsieur le Maire, and before turning in went out on the iron bridge that spanned the Loup. The river, swollen by the spring thaw and rains, had overflowed its banks, and was swirling around willows and poplars. It was not deep, and the water flashed in the moonlight as it rippled over the stones. There was a smell of fresh-cut logs. We looked beyond a sawmill into a gorge of pines that ended in a transversal white mountain wall. [Illustration: The river was swirling around willows and poplars.] "Bully placer ground!" I exclaimed. The Artist leaned over the bridge, looked down, and sighed just one word, "Salmon!" We sought the Hôtel Beau-Site in silence. Monuments of men's making create a diversity of atmospheres and call forth a diversity of reminiscences. They cause imagination to run riot in history. But nature is the same the world over, and there would be reactions and yearnings if one knew nothing of the past from books. There is no conflict. Nature transcends. We dreamed that night not of crusaders, but of Idaho and the Bitter Root Range. CHAPTER V VENCE The most picturesque bit of mountain railway on the Riviera is the fourteen miles from Grasse to Vence. Yielding to a sudden impulse, we took it one afternoon. The train passed from Grasse through olive groves and fig orchards and over two viaducts. A third viaduct of eleven arches took us across the Loup. We were just at the season when the melting snows made a roaring torrent of what was most of the year a little stream lost in a wide gravel bed. The view up the gorge gave us the feeling of being in the heart of the mountains. And yet from the opposite windows of the train we could see the Mediterranean. Then we circled the little town of Tourettes at the foot of the Puy de Tourettes, with high cliffs in the background, and a wild luxurious growth of aloes below. We almost circled the village, crossing the ravines on either side on viaducts. A sixth long viaduct brought us to Vence. We had a rendezvous that evening at Cannes. There was no time to stop. We kept on to Nice to make the only connection that would get us back to Cannes. Afterwards the Artist and I spoke often of Vence. Twice we planned to go to Vence, but found the fascination of Villeneuve-Loubet and Saint-Paul-du-Var justifiable deterrents. On the terrace of our favorite café in the Allées de la Liberté at Cannes on Easter evening we announced the intention of making a special trip to Vence the next day. "Tomorrow is Easter Monday, and the children have no school," said the Artist's hostess. "We shall make a family party of it, train to Cagnes where I may have a chance to see your Mademoiselle Simone, a trout luncheon at Villeneuve-Loubet with the rest of that bottle of which you boys spoke, and Vence in the afternoon." The orders had been given. There was an early morning stir at the Villa Étoile, a scramble to the Théoule railway station, and before nine o'clock we were all aboard for the hour's ride to Cagnes. When we got off the train, there was just one _cocher_ available. He looked at papa and mamma and Uncle Lester and the four babies and their nurse, and raised his hands to heaven. But Villeneuve-Loubet was not far off and we were careful to say nothing of the afternoon's program. Léonie and the children were packed into the carriage. The rest of us followed afoot. Our cheerful host at Villeneuve-Loubet greeted us effusively. He had many holiday guests, but he remembered the Artist and me, and the splendid profit accruing from every drink out of the bottle only _les Anglais_ called for. There were plenty of trout, fresh sliced cucumbers, and a special soup for the kiddies. The _cocher_ was so amenable to Léonie's charms and to drinks that cost less than ours that he consented to further exertion for his horse. But the climb to Vence was out of the question--a physical impossibility, he declared. And we, having seen the horse at rest and in action, could only sorrowfully agree. It was too much of a job to maneuver all the children (the baby could not walk) to the tramway halt, nearly a mile away, and on and off the cars. The mother said that she could not be a good sport to the point of abandoning all her handicaps for several hours in a place where the river flowed fast and deep. So it was agreed that she would have at least the excursion to Saint-Paul-du-Var, and the Artist and I, determined this time on Vence, would see her the next evening for dinner at Cannes. So we made our adieux, and hurried off to get the tram at the bifurcation below the castle. Half an hour later our tram passed the carriage jogging up the hill. As luck had it, we turned out just then on a switch to let the down car pass. The temptation of Vence was too much for Helen. The _cocher_ seemed a fatherly sort of a man. There was a quick consultation from tram to carriage. A reunion with the handicaps was set for two hours later in front of the triple gate of Saint-Paul-du-Var, and another passenger got on the tram. Around a curve we waved farewell to our children. After all, Vence was only three miles beyond Saint-Paul. As we passed the Saint-Paul halt, our old friend, the postman, was on the platform to receive the mailbag. We told him that the kiddies were coming, and slipped him ten francs to look after them until our return. "_Soyes tranquilles, M'sieu-dame,_" he reassured us. "_Moi, je suis grand'père._" Beyond Saint-Paul the tramway left the road and climbed over a viaduct to Vence. Ventium Cassaris was a military base of great importance in the days of imperial Rome. It was the central commissariat depot for the armies in Gaul, and had a forum and temples. During the Middle Ages it was a stronghold of the Holy Roman Empire. It stands on the side of a fertile hill more than a thousand feet above the sea. The site was probably chosen because of the wall of rocks on the north which shelter it from the mistral, a wind that the Romans found as little to their liking as later interlopers. In peace as in war the outside world has never been able to keep away from the Riviera. The Artist announced his intention of spending a couple of days sketching, and left us to seek a hotel. Helen and I found that there was no tram to Saint-Paul-du-Var that would enable us to pick up the children in time for the train to Théoule unless we returned without seeing Vence. So we decided to give an hour to the town and walk back to Saint-Paul. As at Grasse a boulevard runs along the line of the old fortifications. Some of the houses facing it have used the town wall for foundations or are themselves remnants of the wall. But at Vence the _boulevard de l'enceinte_ is circular--a modest _Ringstrasse_, marking without interruption the old town from the new. We dipped in and out of alleys under arches, and made a turn of the streets of the old town. Much of the medieval still survives in Vence, as in other hill towns of the Riviera. But only behind the cathedral did we find a remnant of imperial Rome. A granite column supporting an arch, and reliefs and inscriptions built in the north wall of the cathedral, are all that we saw of Vence's latinity. The cathedral, however, is the most interesting we found on the Riviera. It is a Romanesque building, built on the site of the second-century temple, and its tall battlemented tower harks back to a tenth-century _château fort_. The interior is striking: double aisles, simple nave with tiers of arches of the tenth century, a choir with richly carved oak stalls, a fourth-century sarcophagus for altar, and a font and lectern of the Italian Renaissance. It was just a glimpse. But sometimes glimpses make more vivid memories than longer acquaintance. At the end of our hour we left Vence and hurried down the broad road of red shale past meadows thick with violets. We went through the deep pine-filled ravine over which we had crossed on the viaduct. Then the climb to Saint-Paul-du-Var. [Illustration: "Down the broad road of red shale past meadows thick with violets."] We might have taken our time. Christine and Lloyd and Mimi came running to greet us, bringing with them little friends who had probably never before played with children from Paris. We did not need to ask what kind of a time they had been having. Children are the true cosmopolitans. Hope lay under a tree on her blanket playing with her pink shoes. Nearby, at a table in front of the Café de la Porte, Léonie was treating the _cocher_ and the postman to a glass of beer. "I got bread and honey and milk for the children's _goûter_," explained Léonie, "and _Monsieur le cocher_ and I are having ours with _Monsieur le facteur_." As the children did not seem to be tired and the _cocher_ was in no hurry, Helen and I made a tour of the walls, and took a photograph of our handicaps and their faithful attendants in front of the great gate built by Francis I, who prized Saint-Paul-du-Var as the best spot to guard the fords of the river against Charles V. A reader of this manuscript declares that the chapter on Vence ought to be struck out. "They [I suppose she means the home folks] will never understand," she insists. I am adamant. "When they come to the Riviera, they will understand," I answer. Between Saint-Raphaël and Menton the most sacred responsibilities do not weigh one down all the time. CHAPTER VI MENTON In architectural parlance the cornice is the horizontal molded projection crowning a building, especially the uppermost member of the entablature of an order, surmounting the frieze. The word is also used in mountaineering to describe an overhanging mass of hardened snow at the edge of a precipice. In the Maritime Alps it has a striking figurative meaning. There are four _corniches_--the main roads along the two sections of the Riviera, Menton to Nice and Théoule to Saint-Raphaël, where the mountains come right down to the sea and nature affords no natural routes. The Grande Corniche and the Petite Corniche run from Nice to Menton, and the Moyenne Corniche from Nice to Monte Carlo. The Corniche d'Or or Corniche de l'Estérel is the new road from Théoule to Saint-Raphaël. The word is incorrectly used, for the most part, concerning the two coast roads, the Petite Corniche and the Corniche l'Estérel. For although these beautiful roads do at many points stand high above the sea, they descend as often as possible to connect with the coast towns. But the analogy with the architectural term is perfect in so far as the Grande Corniche and the Moyenne Corniche are concerned. At every point these wonderful roads, undisturbed by tramways and unbroken by towns (except La Turbie on the Grande Corniche and Éze on the Moyenne Corniche), you feel that you are traveling along a horizontal molded projection above temples built with hands and the activities of humankind. From Nice to the Italian frontier the railway, darting in and out of tunnels, keeps near sea level. A small branch climbs from Monte Carlo to La Turbie. The tramway from Nice to Menton follows the Petite Corniche, with a branch to Saint-Jean on Cap Ferrat. For tourists, Nice is the center of the Riviera, the place to come back to every night after day excursions. Everything is so near that this is possible. Nice is the terminus of railways and tramways east and west. It is the home of the ubiquitous Cook. You can buy all sorts of excursion tickets, and by watching the bulletin posted in front of the Cook office on the Promenade des Anglais, it is possible to "cover" the Riviera in a fortnight. But this means a constant rush, perched on a high seat, crowded in with twenty others, on a _char à banes_, and only a kaleidoscopic vision of Mediterranean blue, hillside and valley green and brown, roof-top red, wall gray and mountain white. At the end of your orgy, instead of distinct pictures, you carry away an impression of the Riviera in which the Place Masséna is a concrete image and the rest no more than dancing bits of colored glass. Saint-Raphaël and Menton are the luncheon breaks of two days, and the Grande Corniche is a beautiful vague mountain road over which you whizzed. And yet there are those who go to the Riviera every year for a daily ride over the Grande Corniche, and who dream during ten months of two months at Menton! Sitting with our legs daggling over the stone coping at the entrance of the port in Nice, the Artist and I figured out--on the basis of just time for a glimpse and a few sketches--how long it would take us to wander through the Riviera. Reserving March and April each year, we discovered that the allotted three score and ten, seeing that we had already come to half the span, would be inadequate. And there were other parts of the world! So we decided to see what we could, eschew the "day excursions," draw on the memories of former years, and let it go at that. Grande Corniche and Moyenne Corniche would be explored afoot on sunny days and gray; shelter would be sought at Menton; and on the return to Nice, Monte Carlo and Villefranche would be the only tramway stops for us. To Ventimiglia, as if he foresaw what part of the Riviera would eventually fall to France, Napoleon I was the builder of La Grande Corniche. His engineers, planning for horse-drawn vehicles in an age when time was not money, made the ascent easy by striking inland for several kilometers up from the valley of the Paillon and circling Mont Gros and Mont Vinaigrier. For the first two miles you have Nice and Cimiez below you. Then the road turns, passes the observatory of Bischoffsheim (who won posthumous fame by his having built the house where Wilson lost the battle of Paris in 1919), and goes over the Col des Quatre Chemins. Here begins the matchless succession of views of the loveliest portion of the Riviera coast. Below you is the harbor of Villefranche, between Montboron, which hides Nice, and Cap Ferrat jutting far into the sea with Cap de l'Hospice breaking out to the left. The sea is always on your right as you continue to climb. Ancient Éze is on a lower hill midway between you and the Mediterranean. If you have made an early start from Nice, La Turbie will come most conveniently in sight a little before noon. The only town of the Grande Corniche high up from the sea is on the line given in ancient maps as the frontier between Gaul and Italy, and it is evident that the Roman road followed here the route chosen by Napoleon. For here the Senate raised the _trophaeum Augusti_ to commemorate the subjugation of the Gauls and the new era of tranquillity from invasion for the Empire. On its site one of the most interesting medieval towers in southern France was the ruin par excellence of the Riviera until a few years ago. It is now "restored" so well that it leaves nothing to the imagination--a crime quite in keeping with the spirit of the new age of the "movies." Its architect wanted you to see at a glance just what it used to be. You feel that he would have put arms on the Venus de Milo! As we stood there, a guide came up and began to tell us the history of the tower. We moved over to the terrace. From Montboron to Bordighera the Riviera lay below us, a panorama which commanded silence. Up came the guide fellow, and started to name each place. "I am about to commit murder," I cried. "I'll save you the bother by telling him to chase himself with this franc," said the Artist, pulling out the coin. "If only the restorer of the Tower of Augustus were around, he'd come in for a franc too." La Turbie is not a town to hurry away from after lunch. Its old gateways and leaning houses brought out the Artist's pencil. I tried to explore the paths up the Tête du Chien. _Défense de pénétrer_--and then selections from the Code about how spies are treated. The same fate met me on the Mont de la Bataille. France may love Italy just now--but she is taking no chances! As far as I could judge, every high slope was fortified. I had tea at one of the hotels perched above the town, counted my money, and suggested to the Artist that we slip down to Monte Carlo for the night. The next morning we took the little railway back to La Turbie and continued our walk. From La Turbie the Grande Corniche makes a gradual descent behind the principality of Monaco to Cabbé-Roquebrune, and joins the Petite Corniche at Cap Martin. Three miles farther on the Promenade du Midi leads into Menton. This is the most beautiful stretch of the Grande Corniche; and it is paralleled by no other road, as the new Moyenne Corniche ends at Monte Carlo. The view is before you as you go down. The vegetation becomes more tropical. You are nearer the sea, and the feeling of _dolce far niente_ gets into your bones as you approach Cap Martin. Mont Agel's limestone side gives you back the heat of the sun. It is a radiator. No wonder lemons flower all the year round, and you discover on the same tree buds, flowers, green and yellow fruit. No wonder the palms are not out of their setting as at Cannes and Nice. Locusts, flourishing where there is seemingly no ground to take root in, live from the air, and give forth pods that almost hide the leaves in their profusion. The undergrowth of myrtle and dwarf ilex above becomes aloes and sarsaparilla and wild asparagus as we go down to the sea. We have left the cypresses and cork-trees, and eucalyptus struggles in our nostrils with orange and lemon. Even the ferns are scented! The Artist looks with apathetic eye on the rocks and ruined castle of Roquebrune. When we reach Menton we are willing to sink into cane-seated rockers on the Hôtel Bristol porch, call for something in a tall glass with ice in it, and let the morning walk count for a day's journey. The tourists who know Menton only as a mid-day luncheon break have robbed themselves of an experience that no other Riviera town offers. The Promenade des Anglais at Nice is interesting in the sense that the Avenue des Champs-Elysées is interesting. The Mediterranean is accidental--an unimportant accessory. The Promenade du Midi at Menton is another world. And this other world, with its other world climate, reveals itself to you with increasingly keen delight, as you ride (you do not walk at Menton) around Cap Martin, up the mountain to old Sainte-Agnès, in the gorge of Saint-Louis, along the Boulevard du Garavan, and out to the Giardino Hanbury. You say _giardino_ instead of _jardin_ because Mortola is just across the Italian frontier. The eccentric Englishman chose this spot, without regard to political sovereignty present or future, as the best place to demonstrate the catholicity of the Riviera climate to tropical flora. I simply mention these drives; for you do not ride at Menton any more than you walk. The man who wants to keep his energy and work on the Riviera must not go farther east than Nice. But why another world? And another world even from that of the rest of the French Riviera? It is partly the climate and the consequent flora, but mostly the light. The general aridity of the Riviera, with the prevalence of everbrowns and evergreens, strikes unpleasantly at first the visitor from the North. Sunshine and riotous colors of flowers and blossoming trees do not make up for the absence of water-fed green. When it rains, the Northerner's depression cannot be fought off. The chill gets to his soul as well as to his bones. He prays for the sun he has come south to seek. But when the sun returns, the dust annoys him. The high wind gets on his nerves. The casual tourist, whose stay is brief, even if he has come in the most favorable season, is "not so sure about the Riviera, you know." He is impatient with himself because, after the first vivid impression, panoramas and landscapes leave him unsatisfied. There is no compensation for the absence of water-fed green in the canvas of nature _until one becomes responsive to other colors_. I do not mean particular patches of color in flowers and blossoms. These are of a season. Often they pass in a week. The sun that gives rich life kills quickly. The glory of south lands, especially along the sea, is the constant changing of colors. These colors you will drink in only when by familiarity you have become sensitive to lights and shadows. If you stay long enough at a place like Menton you will be ready for Southern Italy and Greece. You will be able to drink in the beauty of landscapes without foliage. And when you have acquired this sense, your own country will be a new world to you. Never again, as long as you live, will you tire of any landscape. The sun veils and unveils itself more often and more quickly and more unexpectedly at Menton than at any place on the Riviera. And the setting for watching the changes is perfect. Menton can say, in the words of the old sundial, "Son figlia del sole, Eppure son ombre." CHAPTER VII MONTE CARLO San Marino and Andorra have maintained their independence from the Middle Ages, but as republics. The only reigning families who kept their domains from being engulfed in the evolution of modern Europe are those of Liechtenstein and Monaco. What will happen to Liechtenstein with the disappearance of the Hapsburg Empire is uncertain. Wedged in between the Vorarlberg portion of the Austrian Tyrol and Switzerland, Liechtenstein is almost as out of the way, as forgotten, as unimportant, as San Marino and Andorra. Monaco is in a different situation. The smallest country in the world covers only eight square miles, and never was very much larger than it is today. Until half a century ago Monaco was an Italian principality and not at all an anomaly. For Italy had been broken up into small political units from the Roman days. At the time of the unification of Italy, the Italians had to part with a portion of the Riviera to France. Monaco lost a bit of her coast line--the Menton district--and became an enclave in France. Because of the traditional friendship of the Grimaldi family for France, the principality was saved from extinction when the protectorate of Savoy (established by the Congress of Vienna) was withdrawn in 1861. In fact, the male line of the Grimaldi died out just after the War of Spanish Succession, and the present house is of French descent. But whether Grimaldi or Matignon, the princes of Monaco have fought for a thousand years on the side of France against the British especially, but also against the Italians, Spanish and Germans. As unhesitatingly as his predecessors had always done, Prince Albert espoused the cause of France in 1914; his son fought through the war in the French army. And there is another reason for the continued independence of Monaco. Republics have no sense of gratitude. After the fall of Napoleon III Monaco would hardly have survived save for the gambling concession. Four years before the Franco-Prussian War, a casino and hotels built on the Roche des Spélugues had been named Monte Carlo in honor of the reigning prince. The concession, granted to a Frenchman, François Blanc, was too valuable to spoil by having Monaco come under French law! The Republic tolerated Monaco--on condition that no French officer in uniform and no inhabitant of the Département des Alpes-Maritimes (which surrounds Monaco) be allowed in the gaming rooms of the Casino. It was also agreed that except in petty cases handled in a magistrate's court all crimes should be judged by French law and the criminals delivered for punishment to France. The arrangement is admirable from the French point of view. The Riviera has its gambling place of world-wide fame with no opprobrium or responsibility attaching to the French Government. The extra-territoriality does not extend to criminals. The inhabitants of the neighboring French towns are not demoralized by the opportunity to gamble. French army officers are protected from corruption. It is presumed that the rest of the world, which can afford a trip to the principality, will be able to take care of its own morals! The Monégasques are similarly protected by their sovereign. They, too, are forbidden to gamble. They profit from the concession in that there are no taxes to pay in the rich little principality and in that several hundred thousand foreigners come every year to give big prices for every little service. But they run no risk of being caught by the snare they set for others. Prince and people, the Monégasques are like the wise old bartender, who said in a tone of virtuous self-satisfaction, "I never drink." When Tennyson, traveling along the Grande Corniche, saw Monaco, it was of the old medieval principality that he could write: "How like a gem, beneath, the city Of little Monaco, basking, glow'd." The old walled town, on its promontory, must indeed have seemed a gem in an unsurpassed setting in the time of Tennyson. For the little Port of Hercules and the other promontory, Spélugues, were tree- and shrub- and flower-lined. There was nothing to break the spell of old Monaco. Now, alas, the Casino and hotels of Monte Carlo cover Spélugues, and between the promontories La Condamine has sprung up, a town of red-roofed villas, larger than either Monaco or Monte Carlo and forming with them an unbroken mass of buildings. Monaco is simply an end of the city, distinct from the rest of the agglomeration only because it is high up and on a cape jutting out into the sea. Unless one went up to explore the old town, one would not realize that it was more than the palace with its garden and the post-Tennyson cathedral, too prominent for the good of the medieval spell. La Condamine and Monte Carlo have reached the limit of expansion. In front is the sea, behind the steep wall of the mountain. The principality is all city. But the mountains and sea prevent the exclusion of nature from the picture. Despite the modern growth of Monaco, from the Grande Corniche the words of the poet still hold good. Monaco is no longer a predominantly medieval picture perhaps--but it is still a gem. The old town is as attractive in walls and buildings as other rock villages of the Riviera. Three main streets, Rue Basse, Rue du Milieu and Rue des Briques, run parallel from the Place du Palais out on the promontory. They are crossed by the narrowest of city alleys, _à l'Italienne_, and to the right of the Rue des Briques, around the Cathedral, is the rest of the town. Nowhere does the old town extend to the sea. On the sites of the ancient fortifications the present ruler, Prince Albert, has made gardens and built museums for his collections of prehistoric man and of ocean life. One ought never to dip into museums. If you have lots and lots of time (I mean weeks, not hours), or if you have special interest in a definite field of study, museums may be profitable. But "doing" museums is the last word in tourist folly. Yes, I know that skeletons and the cutest little fish are in those museums. I am not ashamed to confess that I never darkened their doors. Life is short, and while the Artist revels in his subjects, I find more interest in studying the living Monégasques than their--and our--negroid ancestors. For there is a separate race, with its own patois, in Monaco. You would never spot it in the somewhat Teutonic cosmopolitanism of the Condamine and Monte Carlo tradesmen and hotel servants. It is not apparent in the impassive _croupiers_ of the Casino. But within a few hundred yards, in half a dozen streets and lanes, the physiognomy, the mentality, the language of the people make you realize that regarding Monaco as a separate country is not wholly a polite fiction to relieve the French Government of the responsibility for the Casino. These people are different, children as well as grown-ups. They are neither French nor Italian, Provençal nor Catalan, but as distinct as mountain Basques are from French and Spanish. It is not a racial group distinction, as with the Basques. In blood, the Monégasques are affiliated to their Provençal and Italian neighbors. What one sees in the old town of Monaco is a confirmation of the assertion of many historians that nationality, in our modern political sense of the word, and patriotism, as a mass instinct shared by millions, are phenomena of the nineteenth century. Steam transportation, obligatory primary education, universal military service, are the factors that have developed national consciousness, and the exigencies and opportunities and advantages of the industrial era have furnished the motive for binding people together in great political organisms. Today if there were no outside interests working against the solidarity of human beings leading a commonwealth existence in the same country, the political organism would soon make the race rather than the race the political organism. San Remo and Menton and Monaco are Riviera towns all within a few miles of each other. People of the same origin have three political allegiances. In half an hour your automobile will traverse the territories of three nations. Italians and French fight under different flags and were within an ace of being lined against each other in the war. Monégasques do not fight at all. Taxes and tariff boundaries, schools and military obligations, make the differences between the three peoples. Put them all under the same dispensation and where would be your races? In the old days the _raison d'être_ of the principality was the power to prey upon commerce. From their fortress on the promontory the Grimaldi organized the Monégasques to levy tolls on passing ships. Italy was not a united country. France had not yet extended her frontiers to the Riviera. This little corner of the Mediterranean escaped the Juggernaut of developing political unity that crushed the life out of a dozen other feudal robber states. And when the logical moment for disappearance arrived, Monte Carlo saved Monaco. Another means of preying upon others was happily discovered. The Monégasques abandoned pistols and cutlasses for little rakes. The descendants of those who stood on the poops of ships now sit at the ends of green tables. The gold still pours in, however, and no law reaches those who take it. There is this difference: you no longer empty your pockets to the Monégasques under compulsion, and the battlements of old Monaco play no part in your losses. The proverb dearest to American hearts says that a sucker is born every minute. It is incomplete, that proverb. It should be rounded out with the axiom that at some minute every person born is a sucker. So I look over to the great white building which is the salvation of the Monégasques--their symbol of freedom from taxes and military service--and know that the strength of Monaco is the weakness of the world. I return to the Place du Palais. The Artist is reluctantly strapping up his tools. We glance for a brief moment at the best sunset view on the Riviera. Ships sail by unmolested. No more have they fear of the Tête du Chien and of the huge stone _boulet_ that Fort Antoine used to lance if a merchantman dared to be deaf to the call of the galley darting forth from the Port of Hercules. But we? The Artist's fingers are nimble with the buckle after a day with the pencil. Pipe is filled from pouch with an inimitably deft movement of one hand. Reluctant is generally the right word to use when I speak of the Artist leaving his work. I am not so sure now. As I hope, he does not suggest a west-bound tram at the foot of the Palais or the 6:40 train; he says, "If we alternate eighteen and thirty-six this evening, putting by half each time we win--" "Like that English old maid we saw last week," I interrupted, "who doubled just once instead of splitting. I can see the drop of the jaw now. Even without the false teeth, it would have been hideous." "On the red then as long as we last," conceded the Artist, who knew my horror of complicated figure systems, "and there's the sign." He pointed to the red fringe that lit up fading Cap Martin. "If we do not get over soon," I answered, "black will be the latest tip of nature." The Riviera towns under the lee of mountains do not have a lingering twilight. But when we had finished dinner an _affiche_ announcing _Aïda_ turned us from the Salles de Jeu to the Salle du Théâtre. To most people gambling is a pastime not taken seriously. Only when it is a passion does one find in it the exclusive attraction of Monte Carlo. This is proved by the excellence of Monte Carlo opera. No metropolis boasts of a better orchestra and chorus; and the most famous singers are always eager to appear at Monte Carlo. CHAPTER VIII VILLEFRANCHE During the heat of the war, shortly after the intervention of the United States, I wrote a magazine article setting forth for American readers the claims of France to Alsace-Lorraine and trying to explain why the French felt as they did about Alsace-Lorraine. Of course I spoke of Strasbourg and Mulhouse; but a copy-reader, faithfully making all spellings conform to the Century Dictionary, changed my MS. reading to Strassburg and Mulhaüsen. Can you imagine my horror when I saw those awful German names staring out at me under my own signature--and in an article espousing the side of France in the Alsace-Lorraine controversy? Perhaps not--unless you understand the feeling of the actual possessor and the aspirant to possession of border and other moot territories. "By their spelling ye shall know them!" is their cry. Later, I happened to be in America when that dear good faithful copy-reader changed my Bizerte to the dictionary's Bizerta in an article on Tunis, and was able to go to the mat with him. I explained that the spelling was an essential part of the political tenor of the article. All this I repeated to the wife and critic combined in one delightful but Ulster-minded person who insisted that in English Menton must be spelled Mentone. "You write Marseilles instead of Marseille and put the 's' on Lyon too: I've seen you do it!" she cried. "And the French call London Londres!" "But those cities happen not to be in _terre irredente_," I explained. "Menton lies too near the Italian frontier for a friend of France to call it Mentone, whatever the English usage may be. If we retain Mentone, why have we abandoned Nizza for Nice, Eza for Éze, Roccabruna for Roquebrune, Monte Calvo for Mont Chauve, Testa del Can for Tête du Chien, Villa Franca for Villefranche?" "Since you have at last arrived at Villefranche, you had better start your chapter," was her woman's answer. You may have a confused picture, you may even forget many places you have visited in your travels, but Villefranche? Never! Whether you have first seen Villefranche as you came around the corner of Montboron from Nice or across the neck of Cap Ferrat from Beaulieu on the Petite Corniche, as you came through the Col des Quatre Chemins on the Grande Corniche, or as you climbed up behind Fort Montalban on the Moyenne Corniche, the memory is equally indelible. But each _corniche_ gives a different impression of the only natural harbor on the Riviera. The Petite Corniche, which mounts rather high around Montboron, is the near view. You see only the _rade_ with Cap Ferrat as a background. Approaching in the opposite direction, Montboron is the background. On the Moyenne Corniche the _rade_ comes gradually into your field of vision. You are way above the sea, but the harbor still forms the principal part of the water foreground in the picture. On the Grande Corniche, where the Riviera coast from Cap d'Antibes to Cap Martin is before you, and the Mediterranean rises to meet the sky, every outstanding feature of the picture is a cape or town, fortification or lighthouse, except at Villefranche. Here the land is the setting. The water of the harbor, changing as you look to green and back to blue until you are not sure which is the color, is the feature that attracts and holds you. Montboron, the littoral and Cap Ferrat are as secondary as the prongs and ring which hold a precious stone. The water edge of the harbor has become conventionalized to a large extent by the artificial stone wall built at the inner end and part-way along the Montboron slope, to make possible railway and carriage road, and by the quays and breakwaters. But enough of the unimproved line remains to indicate how the harbor must have looked before the masons got to work. The rocks of Villefranche are copper with streaks of brown-gray that change in depth of color as the sunlight changes in intensity. Water and rocks are not afraid to compete with flowers and trees and mountain shades for the Artist's attention. Villefranche as a maritime picture wins. And yet foliage and flora are no mean rivals. Turning the point of Montboron from Nice has brought you from the climate where many southland growths are exotic to the beginning of the tropical portion of the Riviera which extends into Italy, with Menton and Bordighera as its most typical spots. Villefranche comes close after Menton--and ahead of Beaulieu and Monte Carlo and Condamine--in the claim to a perennial touch of the south. From Montboron to the hills east of Oneglia the mountain wall protects from the north wind and radiates the sun. But there is no deep harbor like that of Villefranche: and no other place has a Cap Martin to form a windshield from strong sea breezes. Climate as much as the safe anchorage attracted pirates. From the Caliph Omar to the last of the Deys of Algiers, Mohammedan corsairs swept the Mediterranean. Because the Maritime Alps deprived the inhabitants of the Riviera of retreat to or succor from the hinterland, this coast was the joy of Saracens and Moors, Berbers and Turks. It is hard to believe that up to a hundred years ago the Riverains--the inhabitants of all the Mediterranean littoral, in fact, from Gibraltar to Messina--were constantly in danger of corsair raids just as our American pioneer ancestors were of Indian raids. The lay of the land and the lack of a powerful suzerain state to defend them made the Riverains facile prey. Villefranche afforded the easiest landing. Try to climb up from Villefranche over crags and through stone-paved and rock-lined ravines to the Moyenne Corniche, and then on to the higher mountain-slopes, and you can imagine how difficult it was to get away from raiders, and why the Barbary pirates took a full bag of luckless Riverains on every raid. You comprehend the raison d'être of the fortified hill towns, and Éze, perched on her cliff, has a new meaning as you look down on Villefranche. This fastness was held by the Saracens long after the crescent yielded elsewhere to the cross--and then became a frequent refuge for the descendants of the victors in the medieval struggle. From the moment the French entered Algiers at the beginning of the July Monarchy, they felt that their claim to the gratitude of the Riverains justified the annexation of a portion of the Riviera. The treaty that extended French sovereignty to beyond Menton was signed at Villefranche, and immediately the little harbor was transformed into a French naval port. Until warships became floating fortresses Villefranche was useful to France. Now it sees only torpedo-boats and destroyers, and the lack of direct communication with the interior has prevented its commercial development. Better an artificial breakwater with no Alps behind than a natural harbor with a Cap Ferrat. Occasionally a huge ocean liner, chartered by an American tourist agency for an Eastern Mediterranean tour, drops into Villefranche roadstead. These chance visits, to give the tourists a day at Nice and Monte Carlo, demonstrate that Villefranche could be a port of call for the leviathans, commercial and naval, of the twentieth century. How much easier it would be to go to the Riviera directly from London and New York, instead of having a wearisome train journey added to the ocean voyage! But freights pay a large part of passenger rates, and the routing from great port to great port is as rigid and unalterable as the fact that a straight line is not the shortest distance between two points on land. Trains and ships must pass by way of great centers of population. A naval cemetery is the memorial of Villefranche's naval past in the last brilliant decade of the Second Empire and the early years of the Third Republic. A little American corner, which our Paris Memorial Day Committee never forgets, bears witness to the period when the American flag was known everywhere in the Mediterranean. We used to have the lion's share of the carrying trade, and Villefranche was a frequent port of call for American warships. Now we have rarely even single warships or freighters in the Mediterranean. The only American passenger line that serves Mediterranean ports is the old Turkish Hadji Daoud Line of five small and dirty Levantine ships, which ply along the coast of Asia Minor and in and out of the Greek islands, camouflaged under our flag. The old town of Villefranche is on the western side of the harbor between the Petite Corniche and the water. Like all Riviera towns on a main road it has grown rapidly and medieval streets and buildings have almost disappeared, giving way to the banal architecture of the end of the nineteenth century. The garish brick villas of the head of the gulf are excrescences in their lovely garden setting. But after one has reached the eastern side of the harbor and gone through Font Saint Jean, the tramway road, with its noise and dust and variegated bourgeois fantasies, can be abandoned. [Illustration: Medieval streets and buildings have almost disappeared.] If we except Cap Martin, no Riviera walks are lovelier than those of Cap Ferrat. On the Villefranche side, until you have passed through Saint Jean, the alternative to the tramway road is an inhospitable though tantalizing lane. For large estates, shut off by walls and hedges, are between you and the harbor. Unless you are lucky enough to know one of the owners, you will not see the harbor of Villefranche from the best of the lower vantage points. This side of Villefranche is so sheltered that one resident, an American, has been able to transform his garden into a bit of old Japan where the cherry trees blossom in Nippon profusion and colors. It is best to pass across the cape, not turning in at the tramway bifurcation, until you reach the Promenade Maurice-Rouvier, which skirts the Anse des Fourmis along the sea from Beaulieu to Saint Jean. After you have reached Saint Jean the peninsula is before you. A maze of superb roads tempt you, circling the fort several hundred feet above sea level, crossing the peninsula on the slopes of the fort, and following the sea. Returning to Saint Jean, there is still another walk directly ahead of you to the east. The Cap du Saint Hospice is pine-clad, with a sixteenth-century tower at its end. The Artist and I made a mistake of twelve hours in our visit to Saint Hospice. We should have come in the morning for the sunrise. To remedy the error we decided to spend the night at the Hôtel du Pare Saint Jean. But the sun got up long before we did. "Our usual luck," said the Artist with a grin that had nothing of regret in it. CHAPTER IX NICE Unless the traveler has some special reason for starting at another point, he first becomes acquainted with the Riviera at Nice, and radiates from Nice in his exploration of the coast and hinterland. The Artist confessed to me that in student days the Riviera meant Nice to him, with the inevitable visit to lay a gold piece on the table at Monte Carlo. And it was Nice of the Carnival and Mardi-Gras. I in turn made a similar avowal. We knew well the Promenade des Anglais, the Casino and the Jardin Public opposite, the Place Masséna beyond the garden, where you take a tram or a _char à banc_ to almost anywhere, and the Avenue de la Gare. The Artist had the advantage of me in his intimate sketching knowledge of the old Italian city back from the Quai du Midi, while I knew better than he the Avenue de la Gare. How many times have I pushed a baby carriage up and down that street while my wife shopped! Nice was to us a resort, cosmopolitan like other famous playgrounds of the world, and where one strictly on pleasure bent had the same kind of a time he would have at Aix-les-Bains or Deauville, Wiesbaden or Ostend, Brighton or Atlantic City. You strolled among crowds, you bought things you did not want, you could not get away from music, you danced and went to the theater or opera, and you spent much too much of your time in hotels and restaurants. If you went on excursions, you enjoyed them, of course. But you always hurried back to Nice in order not to miss doing something of exactly the same kind that you could have done any day in the place you came from. You have to give Nice time, and get out of your rut, before you awaken to its unique characteristics. Then, if you detach yourself from the amusement-seekers, the time-killers, the apathetic, the bored, the _blasé_ and the conscientious tourists, you begin to realize that the metropolis of the Riviera (including its suburbs and Monte Carlo) is a world in itself--an inexhaustible reservoir for exploration and reflection. Because it is the only place in Europe where Americans (North and South) can honestly say that they feel at home, because it was made for and by everybody and caters to everybody, Nice stands the test of cosmopolitanism. Every great capital and every seaport at the cross-roads of world trade is cosmopolitan, but in a narrower sense than Nice. Capitals and seaports have the general character, in the last analysis the atmosphere, of the country they administer and serve. None has the _sans patrie_ stamp of Nice. If Edward Everett Hale had allowed his hero to go to Nice, the man without a country would not have felt alone in the world. I was on the Suez Canal when the Germans heralded the Verdun offensive. I hurried back to France, and spent a couple of days with my wife at Nice before going on to the front. They were, perhaps, the most critical days of the war, when one watched the _communiqué_ with the same intensity as one tried to read hope into serious bulletins from a loved one's bedside. After leaving Nice, I discovered that the pall of death did hang over France. But in Nice there seemed to be no mass instinct of national danger, no sickening anxiety. On the Avenue de la Gare I noticed hundreds pass by the newspaper bulletins without displaying enough interest to stop and read. Two years later, at another critical moment when the Germans were once more closing in on Paris and bombarding the city with the long-distance cannon, I spoke at the Eldorado. The meeting, organized by the Préfet and Maire, drew a large and sympathetic audience. Among residents and visitors are to be found thousands of intense patriots. But when I left the theater and walked back to my hotel, I realized that Nice in 1918 was like Nice in 1916. The population as a whole, inhabitants and guests, had no French national consciousness. When I delivered the same message in the municipal casino of Grasse the next day, I knew that I was again in France. Frenchmen themselves attribute the lack of war spirit in Nice to the general indifference and lesser patriotism of the Midi! But this is because Nice means the Midi to most of them. They are unfair to the Midi. In no way does Nice represent the Midi of France except that it basks in the same sun. The common explanation of the failure of France to assimilate Nice is that only sixty years have passed since the annexation and that a large portion of the Niçois are Italian in blood and culture and instincts. There may be some truth in all this. But two generations is a long time, and France has proved her ability to make six decades count in attaching to herself and stamping in her image other border populations. Two factors have worked against the assimilation of Nice: the maintenance of the independence of Monaco, with privileges and no responsibilities for its inhabitants; and the enormous number of foreign residents, who have lost their attachment to their own countries and who do not care to give or are incapable of giving allegiance to the country in which they live. Add to these demoralizing influences, at work throughout the sixty years, the flood of tourists and temporary residents of all nations; and is it to be wondered at that the Niçois, native and alien, have so little in common with France? When you stroll along the Promenade des Anglais, with its hotels and palm-surrounded villas, the Mediterranean coast line extending alluringly from the distant lighthouse of Antibes in the west to the Château, set in green, in the foreground to the east, you feel that you are in one of the fairy spots of the earth. The sea, the city climbing up the hill to Cimiez, the white-capped mountains beyond, and on the handsome promenade the best-gowned of Europe, all in the brilliant sunshine of a soft spring day--what could be more charming? And then, suddenly, your unwilling nostrils breathe in a strong whiff of sewage. Have you been mistaken? Surely you are dreaming. The Casino dances on the water. A bevy of girls come out of the Hôtel Ruhl to join the Lenten noon-day throng. Nothing disagreeable like sewage--but there it is again! Whew! Where can that sewer empty? Fault of French engineering, an American would say. But the sea has brought me that smell on the boardwalk in front of the Traymore at Atlantic City. It is difficult to get ahead of nature, and the undertow does bring back what you thought you were rid of. Figuratively speaking, the surprise on the Promenade des Anglais meets you every day in your study of Nice. The city charms: and it repels. You have been drinking in its beauty and its fascination. Suddenly something sordid, ugly, disgusting, breaks the spell. On the Promenade des Anglais sewage greets the eye as well as the nose. Not vicious women and poor little dolls alone, but cruel and weak faces, shifty and vapid faces, self-centered and morose faces, leech faces, pig faces, of well-tailored men--you watch them pass, you remember what you have seen at the tables, in near-by Monte Carlo, and the utter depravity of your race frightens you. Except clothes and jewels and the ability to get a check cashed, what is the difference between these people and the sailors from a hundred ships, making merry with their girls in the narrow streets back from the Vieux Port of Marseilles? The law of compensation often comforts and cheers. But as often it is remorseless. Broken health and empty purses, desperation, mute suffering and madness, we saw at Monte Carlo. Where the world flocks for pleasure, agony of soul reveals itself more readily than elsewhere because of its incongruity. Nice is full of tragedy, and none takes the pains to conceal it as at Monte Carlo. The casual visitor creates his own atmosphere in Nice, and he goes away with the most pleasant memory, having found what he sought. But you cannot stroll day after day on the Promenade without marking many that do not smile. You watch them and you see unhappiness, unrest, despair, and resignation. It you become acquainted with the life and gossip of the various colonies, you will not need a Victor Marguerite to reveal to you the inner life of the world's "playground." More frequently than not it is a case of on with the dance. What a price people do pay to play! Just one illustration. The Russians used to be an important factor in the social life of Nice. They had money and they could give an American points on spending. Attracted by the sun, many made their homes in Nice. They lived like the lilies of the field. They could count on a sure thing. The moujiks of great estates toiled for them, and from the days of their great-great-grandfathers the revenues had never ceased. During the first years of the World War, the Russians were in high favor at Nice. They were the powerful allies of France, brothers-in-arms, who fought for the common cause. Then came the Revolution. Cosmopolitan Nice would have forgiven the defection of Russia. But when the revenues from Petrograd and Moscow banks no longer came in, that was another matter! Where the pursuit of pleasure is king, there is no pity for the moneyless courtier, whatever the cause of his change of fortune. The Russians sold their jewels and their fur coats, the rugs and furniture of their villas, and then the villas themselves. Perhaps they were "accommodated" a little bit at first. But they were soon left to their own resources. Before the end of the war, the center of the Russian colony was a soup kitchen on a side street, presided over by princesses and served by beautiful million-heiresses of the old régime. Good stuff in those girls, too, who smiled as gayly as of old and talked to me eagerly about becoming governesses or stenographers. And real _noblesse_ in the old men who climbed up the narrow stairs with their pails, coming to fetch their one meal of the day. In one of them I recognized a former ambassador to France. The last time I had seen him he was on horseback between Czar Nicholas and President Loubet crossing the Point Alexandre III on the opening day of the Paris Exposition of 1900. Enough of shadows! None ever went to Nice in search of them, and comparatively few stay long enough to find them. They are in the picture, and there would be no true picture without them. But they ought to stay in the background. They do stay there. You smell the sewage rarely. The all-pervading sunshine is a tonic. Speculating about why others came here and what they are doing with their lives may hold you through the rainy season. The Carnival puts you in a more material frame of mind. Unless Lent is early, the sun begins to warm the cockles of your heart on Mardi-Gras, and by May it will almost blind you on the water-front. One is not in the mood to let the misfortunes and unhappiness and evil of others cloud his joy. After all, of the quarter million pleasure-seekers who come to Nice each year, the greater part are in as good moral health as yourself, and very few of them have any more reason than you to be "in the dumps." Unless one becomes engrossed in the study of cosmopolitan human nature to the point of being sunshine-proof, one soon tires of the foreign residential and hotel and shopping quarters of the city. They lack "subjects," as the Artist would put it. But at the eastern end of Nice, the Old Town, home of Garibaldi and many another Red Shirt, takes you far from the psychology of cosmopolitanism and the philosophy of hedonism. This is the direction of Grande Corniche, of villa-studded winding and mounting roads, of the best views (if we except Cimiez) of city and sea. [Illustration: "The Old Town takes you far from the psychology of cosmopolitanism and the philosophy of hedonism."] A mountain stream of varying volume, but always a river before the end of Lent, separates the _ville des étrangers_ from the _vieille ville_. The Paillon, as it is called, disappears at the Square Masséna, and finds its way to sea through an underground channel. From the center of the city you cross the Paillon by the Pont Garibaldi or the Pont Vieux. Or you can enter the Old Town from the Place Masséna and the Rue Saint-François de Paule, which leads into the Cours Saleya. Here is the most wonderful flower market in the world, with vegetables and fruit and fowls encroaching upon the Place de la Préfecture. Behind the Préfecture you can lose yourself in a labyrinth of narrow streets that indicate the Italian origin of Nice. If you bear always to the right, however, you either make a circle or come out at the foot of the Château. East of the Jardin Public, the Promenade des Anglais becomes the Quai du Midi, renamed Quai des Etats-Unis in the short-lived burst of enthusiasm of 1918. At least, the aldermen of Nice were more cautious than those of most French cities, and did not call it Quai du Président-Wilson _nel dolce tempo de la prima etade_! Following the quay and keeping the Old Town on the left, you come to the castle hill, still called the Château, although the great fortress of the Savoyards was destroyed by the Duke of Berwick in the siege of 1706. The hill is now a park, surmounted by a terrace, and is well worth the climb to look down upon the city and the Baie des Anges, especially at sunset. At the end of the Quai du Midi (excuse my diffidence, the Quai des Etats-Unis) stands the low Tour Bellanda, the only tower remaining of the old fortifications. The Château is a promontory, and when you take the road which skirts it, be sure to hold tight to your hat. The Niçois call the windy corner Rauba Capéu (Hat Robber). Now you are in still another Nice, the Port, protected by a long jetty, on which is perched a lighthouse. The Niçois, traditionally seafaring folk, are proud of their little port, with its clean-cut solid stone quays. Steam-born transportation on land and sea, demanding facilities undreamed of in the good old days and tending to concentration of trade at Marseilles and Genoa, has prevented the maritime development of Nice. But there is local coast traffic and competition with Cannes and Monte Carlo for yachts. Fishing and pleasure sailing add to the volume of tonnage. And the Niçois do not let you forget that their city is the port for Corsica. Beyond the harbor, the Boulevard de l'Impératrice de Russie leads to Villefranche. Another name to change! In the midst of what is most beautiful we cannot get away from tragedies, from reminders of blasted hopes. CHAPTER X ANTIBES Between Menton and Monte Carlo the coast is broken by Cap Martin, between Monte Carlo and Nice by Cap Ferrat, between Nice and Cannes by Cap d'Antibes. The capes are larger and longer as we go west, just as the distances between more important towns grow longer. Although it does not seem so to the tourist, it is much farther from Nice to Cannes than from Nice to Menton. The eastern end of the Riviera is so crowded with things to see, and town follows town in such rapid succession, that you think you have gone a long way from Nice to the Italian frontier. And except for skipping the two larger promontories, railway and tramway alike follow right along the coast. From Nice to Cannes, the tramway is inland from the railway. So is the automobile road. You fly along at a rapid rate, with only rare glimpses of the sea, and pass through few villages until you reach Antibes. From Nice, from Saint-Paul-du-Var, and from Cagnes you cannot see the Riviera coast beyond Antibes. The Cape, with its lighthouse and fort, is your horizon. This corresponds with history as well as with geography: for the Cap d'Antibes was the old Franco-Italian frontier. It is still in a very real sense a boundary line. The word Riviera, which has kept its Italian form, was applied historically to the coast lands of the Gulf of Genoa. From Antibes to Genoa we had the Riviera di Ponente, and from Genoa to Spezia the Riviera di Levante. Only after Napoleon III exacted the district of Nice as part payment for French intervention in the Italian war of liberation was the term "French Riviera" gradually extended to include the coast far west of Antibes. What was added to France under Napoleon III has lost its purely Italian character. But it has not gained the stamp of France. From Antibes to Menton, the Riviera is more remarkably and undeniably international than any other bit of the world I have ever seen. Some of the old towns back from the coast are becoming French in the new generation. But along the coast you are not in France until you reach Antibes. You may have thought that you were in France at Menton and Beaulieu and Nice. But the contrast of Antibes and Grasse, which are French to the core, makes you realize that sixty years is not sufficient to destroy the traditions and instincts of centuries. At Antibes and along the closely built up coast and between Antibes and Cannes, the international atmosphere is by no means lost. It requires the contrast of Cannes with Saint-Raphaël to show the difference between a cosmopolitan and a genuine French watering place. But the French atmosphere begins to impress one at Antibes. A knowledge of history is not needed to indicate that here was the old frontier. Since the days of the Greeks Antibes has been a frontier fortress. Ruins of fortifications of succeeding centuries show that the town has always been on the same site, on the coast east of the Cape, looking towards Nice. Antipolis was a frontier fortress, built by the Phoceans of Marseilles to protect them from the aggressive Ligurians of Genoa. Nice was an outpost, whose name commemorates a Greek victory over the Ligurians. At the mouth of the Var, from antiquity to modern times, races and religions, building against each other political systems for the control of Mediterranean commerce, have met in the final throes of conflicts the issue of which had been decided elsewhere--and often long before the fighting died out here. Phoenicians and Greeks, Carthaginians and Romans, Greeks and Romans, Romans and Gauls, Gauls and Teutonic tribes, Franks and Saracens, Spanish and French and Italians met at the foot of the Maritime Alps. There was never a time in history when governmental systems or political unities did not have as a goal natural boundaries, and, once having reached the goal, did not feel that security necessitated going farther. Invasions thus provoked counter-invasions. On sea it has been as on land. Something is acquired. Immediately something more must be taken to safeguard the new acquisition. All this comes to one with peculiar force at Antibes. You look at Nice from your promontory, and your eye follows the coast from promontory to promontory, and you can picture how the Phoceans, once established at Antibes, were tempted to extend the protective system of Marseilles. You have only to turn around and follow the coast beyond the Estérel to understand how the Ligurians, if they had captured Antibes, would still have felt unsafe. And then your eye sweeps the range of the white Maritime Alps. Hannibal had to cross them to carry the war into Italy. So did Napoleon. And Caesar, to save the Republic from a recurrence of the menace of the Cimbri and Teutoni, brought his armies into Gaul. The Saracens were once on this coast. When they were expelled from it, the French went to Africa as the Romans before them had gone to Africa after expelling the Carthaginians from Europe. Of the medieval fortress, erected against the Saracens, two square keeps remain. The strategic importance of Antibes during the heyday of the Bourbon Empire is attested by the Vauban fortifications. The high loopholed walls enclosing the harbor have not been maintained intact, but the foundation, a pier over five hundred feet long, is still, after two centuries and a half, the breakwater. The view towards Nice from Vauban's Fort Carré or from the larger tower, around which the church is built, affords the best panorama of the Maritime Alps on the Riviera. Nowhere else on the Mediterranean coast, except from Beirut to Alexandretta or on the Silician plain or in the Gulf of Saloniki, do you have so provoking a contrast of nearby but unattainable snow with sizzling heat. This may not be always true. The day of the aeroplane, as a common and matter-of-fact means of locomotion, is coming. Looking towards the Alps from the Fort Carré, the donjon of Villeneuve-Loubet and the hill towns of Cagnes and Saint-Paul-du-Var, where we had passed happy days, seem as near as Nice. Farther off on the slope of Mont Férion we could distinguish Tourette and Levens side by side with their castles, and in the foreground Vence. To the left was Tourrettes. Back from the Valley of the Loup was exploration and sketching ground for another season. But just a few kilometers ahead of us, halfway to Villeneuve-Loubet, Biot tempted us. We had driven through this town not mentioned by Baedeker, and had promised ourselves a second visit to the old church of the Knights Templar. But life consists of making choices, and one does not readily turn his back on the Cap d'Antibes. In the town you are just at the beginning of the peninsula whose conical form and unshutinness (is that a word: perhaps I should have used hyphens?) enables you to walk five miles punctuating every step with a new exclamation of delight. Only we did not walk. Joseph-Marie, who would have been Giuseppe-Maria at Nice, stopped to look over the Artist's shoulder and incidentally to suggest that we might have cigarettes. A veteran of two years at twenty, his empty left sleeve told why he was _reformé_. Glad to get out of the mess so easily, he explained to us laconically; and now he was eking out his pension by driving a cart for the Vallauris pottery. The express train "burned" (as he put it) the pottery station, and he had come to put on _grande vitesse_ parcels at Antibes. Cannes was a hopeless place for the potters: baskets of flowers always took precedence there over dishes and jugs. The Artist believed that Joseph-Marie's horse could take us around the cape with less effects from the heat than we should suffer, and that for ten francs Joseph-Marie could submit to his boss's wrath or invent a story of unavoidable delay. I agreed. So did Joseph-Marie. If we proved too much heavier than pottery, we would take turns walking. At any rate, the Artist's kit had found a porter. We took the Boulevard du Cap to Les Nielles, were lucky in finding the garden of the Villa Thuret open, and then let our horse climb up the Boulevard Notre-Dame to the lighthouse on top of La Garoupe, as the peninsula's hill is called. Here the Riviera coast can be seen in both directions. The view is not as extended as that of Cap Roux, for Cannes is shut off by the Cap de la Croisette. But in compensation you have Nice and the hill towns of the Var, and while lacking the clear detail of Cap Ferrat and Cap Martin you get the background of the Maritime Alps which is not visible east of Nice. And the Iles de Lérins look so different from their usual aspect as sentinels to Cannes that it is hard to believe they are the same islands. Near the lighthouse and semaphore a paved path, marked with the stations of the cross, leads to a chapel. The Villa Thuret is the property of the state, and is used as a botanical nursery for the Jardin des Plantes at Paris. In variety, however, it does not rival the Giardino Hanbury near Menton, and in beauty it is surpassed by the private garden of Villa Eilenroc, near the end of the Cap d'Antibes. These two gardens, the most remarkable of the Riviera, were made by Englishmen who preferred the sun and warmth of the Riviera to their native land. The most wonderful garden on Cap Ferrat is the creation of an American. Cannes was "made" by Lord Brougham. The other important estate of the Cap d'Antibes, Château de la Garoupe, is the property of an Englishman. As at Arcachon and Biarritz and Pau, as at Aix-les-Bains, Anglo-Saxon ownership of villas and German ownership of hotels and the prevalence of Teutons as shopkeepers and waiters prove the passion of men of the north for lands of the south. Twenty years ago, just after Fashoda, there was a strong current of uneasiness among British residents on the Riviera. The experiences of civilians caught by Napoleon and kept prisoners for years had passed into English history and literature. British consuls were surprised to find that thousands of their compatriots, of whom they had had no previous knowledge, were living all the year round on the Riviera. These people came to make inquiry about what would be done to them if France did declare war suddenly against Great Britain. Would they be given time to leave the country? Fifteen years later the calamity of a sudden interruption of a peaceful existence, basking in the sun, did fall upon foreigners, but statesmen had shuffled the cards around, and this time the civilians caught in the net were Germans and Austrians. The Napoleonic principle still held. Italy could be seen with the naked eye. But none were allowed to pass out. Tourists and residents, subjects of the Central Powers, were arrested and imprisoned on the Iles de Lérins, where they remained five years, many of them in sight of their villas on the coast and the hotels they had built and managed. They stayed longer than Marshal Bazaine, who managed to escape, but not as long as the mysterious Man with the Iron Mask. One of the keepers at the Antibes lighthouse had been an auxiliary soldier in the fort of Sainte-Marguerite during the early years of the war. He told us that some of the trapped tourists were very restive, but that most of the German civilians who were residents of the Riviera were far from being discontented with their lot. Better a prison on the Ile Sainte-Marguerite than exile from the Riviera! This was better taste and wiser philosophy than we expected of Germans. One could go far and fare worse than an enforced sojourn on one of the loveliest islands of the Mediterranean, whose pine forests are reminiscent of Prinkipo. From 1914 to 1919 life was much harsher beyond those Alps. Saint-Honorat, the smaller island half a mile from Sainte-Marguerite, was a monastic establishment from the fourth century to the French Revolution. It passed into ecclesiastical hands again in the Second Empire and became a Cistercian monastery. Although the restoration was accomplished with distressing thoroughness forty years ago, some parts of the chapel date back to the seventh century, and a huge double donjon--the dominating feature of the island from the coast--remains from the twelfth-century fortifications. A road, on which are ruins of four medieval chapels, runs round the island. We were unable to visit Sainte-Marguerite and on Saint-Honorat pencil and paper had to be kept out of sight. But I must not wander to another day. Joseph-Marie liked our tobacco and the horse did not mind stopping en route. It was six o'clock when we reached Juan-les-Pins, only a mile from Antibes on the other side of the cape. Two miles farther along the coast, at Golfe-Juan, where the road turns in to Vallauris, we climbed down from the cart, brushed much dust from our clothes, and started home along the coast road to Cannes. Joseph-Marie waved his empty sleeve in farewell, happy in our promise to look him up some day in Vallauris with a pocketful of cigarettes. CHAPTER XI CANNES Of one-half of Tarascon the prince whom Tartarin met in Algiers displayed an astonishingly detailed knowledge. Concerning the rest of the town he was as astonishingly noncommittal. When it leaked out that the prince had been in the Tarascon jail long enough to become familiar with what could be seen from one window, Tartarin understood his limitation. My picture of Cannes is as indelible as the prince's picture of Tarascon. For most of my Riviera days were spent in a villa across the Golfe de la Napoule from Cannes. Not infrequently our baby Hope gave us the privilege of seeing Cannes by sunrise. We ate and worked on a terrace below our bedroom windows. Every evening we watched Cannes disappear or become fairyland in the moonlight. What we saw from the Villa Étoile was the Golfe de la Napoule from the Pointe de l'Esquillon to the Cap de la Croisette. The Corniche de l'Estérel rounded the Esquillon and came down to sea level at Théoule through a forest of pines. It passed our villa. The curve of the gulf between us and Cannes was only seven miles. First came La Napoule, above whose old tower on the sea rose a hill crowned with the ruins of a chapel. A viaduct with narrow arches carried the railway across the last ravine of the Estérel. In the plain, between two little rivers, the Siagne and the Riou, was a grove of umbrella pines. Here began the Boulevard Jean Hibert, protected by a sea-wall in concrete, leading into Cannes. The town of Cannes, flanked on the left by Mont Chevalier and on the right by La Croisette, displayed a solid mass of hotels on the water front. Red-roofed villas climbed to Le Cannet and La Californie, elbowing each other in the town and scattering in the suburbs until the upper villas were almost lost in foliage. Behind were the Maritime Alps. Not far beyond La Croisette, the Cap d'Antibes jutted out into the sea. At night the lighthouses of Cannes and Antibes flashed alternately red and green, and between them Cannes sparkled. Inland to the left of Cannes were Mougins on a hill and Grasse above on the mountain side. Occasional trails of smoke marked the main line of the railway along the coast and the branch line from Cannes to Grasse. In the sea lay the Iles de Lérins, Sainte-Marguerite almost touching the point of La Croisette. [Illustration: "La Napoule, above whose tower on the sea rose a hill crowned with the ruins of a chapel. Behind were the Maritime Alps."] But unlike the Prince, we did have a chance to see Cannes at other angles. Cannes was the metropolis to which we went hopefully to hire cooks, find amusement, and buy food and drink. Théoule had neither stores nor cafés, and after the Artist came we were glad to vary the monotony of suburban life. It is always that way with city folk. How wonderful the quiet, how delightful the seclusion of the "real country"! But after a few weeks, while you may hate yourself for wanting noise and lights, while you may still affect to despise the herding instinct, you find yourself quite willing to commune with nature a little less intimately than in the first enthusiastic days of your escape from the whirl and the turmoil of your accustomed atmosphere. Not that Cannes is ever exactly "whirl and turmoil;" but you could have tea at Rumpelmayer's, you could dance and listen to music and see shows at the Casino, and you could look in shop windows. On the terrace of the Villa Étoile we thanked God that we were out in the country, and we loved our walks on the Corniche road and back into the Estérel. But it was a comfort to have Cannes so near! We were not dependent upon the twice-a-day _omnibus_ train, which made all the stops between Marseilles and Nice. An hour and a half of brisker walking than one would have cared to indulge in farther east on the Riviera took us to Cannes, and the _cochers_ were always reasonable about driving out to Théoule in the evening. From our villa to La Napoule we were still in the Estérel. Then we crossed the mouth of the Siagne by a bridge, and came down to the sea on the Boulevard Jean Hibert. Between the mouth of the Siagne and Mont Chevalier are the original villas of Cannes and the hotels of the Second Empire. Here Lord Brougham built the Villa Eleonore Louise in 1834, when Cannes was a fishing village, not better known than any other hamlet along the coast. Here are the Château Vallombrosa (now the Hôtel du Pare), the Villa Larochefoucauld and the Villa Rothschild, whose unrivaled gardens are shut off by high walls and shrubbery. They are well worth a visit: but you must know when and how to get into them. As you near Mont Chevalier, the sea wall, no longer needed to protect the railway (which for a couple of miles had to run right on the sea to avoid the grounds and villas laid out before it was dreamed of), recedes for a few hundred feet and leaves a beach. On Mont Chevalier is the Old Town, grouped around a ruined castle and an eleventh-century tower. The parish church is of the thirteenth century. The buildings on the quay below, facing the port, are of the middle of the nineteenth century. But they look much older. For they were built by townspeople, and serve the needs of the small portion of the population which would be living in Cannes if it were not a fashionable watering place. Despite its marvelous growth, Nice has always maintained a life and industries apart from tourists and residents of the leisure class. Cannes, on the other hand, with the exception of the little Quartier du Suquet, is a watering place. It needs Mont Chevalier, as Monte Carlo needs Monaco, to make us realize that Cannes existed before this spot was taken up and developed by French and British nobility. The square tower and the cluster of buildings around it, the hotels and restaurants of fishermen on the Quai Saint Pierre, dominate the port. This bit out of the past, and of another world in the present, is at the end of the vista as one walks along the Promenade de la Croisette: and the Boulevard Jean Hibert runs right into it. The touch of antiquity would otherwise be lacking, and the Artist would scarcely have considered it worth his while to take his kit when we went to Cannes. The port is formed by a breakwater extending out from the point of Mont Chevalier, with a jetty opposite. Except for the fishermen, who are strong individualists and sell their catch right from their boat, the harbor's business is in keeping with the city's business. Its shipping consists of pleasure craft. Among the yachts whose home is Cannes one used to see the _Lysistrata_ of Commodore James Gordon Bennett. How many times have I received irate messages and the other kind, too, both alike for my own good, sent from that vessel! In the garden of his beautiful home at Beaulieu, between Villefranche and Monaco, the Commodore told me of the offer he had received from the Russian Government for this famous yacht. Not many months after the _Lysistrata_ disappeared from its anchorage at Cannes, the man who had been the reason--and means--of Riviera visits to more journalists than myself died at Beaulieu. Only on the side of Mont Chevalier has the harbor a quay. The inner side is bordered by the Allées de la Liberté, a huge rectangle with rows of old trees under which the flower market is held every morning. At the Old Town end is the Hôtel de Ville and at the east end the Casino. Running out seaward from beside the Casino is the Jetée Albert Edouard. To its very end the jetty is paved, and when a stiff sea wind is blowing you can drink in the spray to your heart's content. Behind the Casino is a generous beach. This is one great advantage of Cannes over Nice, where instead of sand you have gravel and pebbles. The Riviera is largely deserted before the bathing season sets in, but one does miss the sand. At Cannes kiddies are not deprived of pails and shovels and grownups can stretch out their blankets and plant their umbrellas. The Promenade de la Croisette runs along the sea from the Casino to the Restaurant de la Réserve on La Croisette. The difference between the Promenade de la Croisette and the Promenade des Anglais was summed up by an English friend of mine in five words. "More go-carts and less dogs," he said. "More wives and less _cocottes_," the Artist put it. Of course there are some children at Nice and some _cocottes_ at Cannes. And where fashion reigns the difference between _mondaine_ and _demi-mondaine_ is unfortunately not always apparent. Gold frequently glitters. But Cannes is less garish than Nice in buildings and in people. Doubling the Cap de la Croisette, we are in the Golfe Juan, with the Cap d'Antibes beyond. Here Napoleon, fearing his possible reception at Saint-Raphaël, landed on his return from Elba. A column marks the spot. Bound for the final test of arms at Waterloo, Napoleon little dreamed that twenty years later his English foes would begin to make a peaceable conquest of this coast, and that within a hundred years French and English would be fighting side by side on French soil against the Germans. How much did the Englishman's love of the Riviera have to do with the Entente Cordiale? What part did the Riviera play in the Franco-Russian Alliance? British and Russian sovereigns always showed as passionate a fondness for this corner of France as their subjects. There were even English and Russian churches at Cannes and Nice. Men who played a vital part in forming political alliances were regular visitors to the Riviera. At the beginning of the Promenade de la Croisette, only three miles from the Napoleon column, stands Puech's remarkable statue of Edward VII, who spoke French with a German accent, but who never concealed his preference for France over the land of his ancestors. One charm of Cannes is the feeling one has of not being crowded. At Nice and along the eastern Riviera hotels and villas jostle each other. Around Cannes the gardens are more important than the buildings. Striking straight inland from the Casino past the railway station, the broad Boulevard Carnot gradually ascends to Le Cannet. This is the only straight road out of Cannes. All the other roads wind and turn, bringing you constantly around unexpected corners until you have lost your sense of direction. Branches of trees stick out over garden walls overhung with vines. Many of the largest hotels can be reached only by these _chemins_. You realize that the city has grown haphazard, and that no methodical city architect was allowed to make boulevards and streets that would disturb the seclusion of the villa-builders, who plotted out their grounds with never a thought of those who might later build higher up. So roads skirted properties. The result does not commend itself to those who are in a hurry. But it gives suburban Cannes an aspect unique on the Riviera. Many of the hotels thus hidden away are built on private estates, and if you want to get to them you have to follow all the curves. The labyrinthine approach adds greatly to the delight of a climb to La Californie. If you go by carriage, unless you have a map, you are tempted to feel that the _cocher_ is taking a roundabout route to justify the high price he asked you. But if you go afoot--and without a map--you may find yourself back at the point of departure before you know it. But however extended your wanderings, the beauty of the roads is ample compensation, and when you reach at last the Square du Splendide-Panorama, nearly eight hundred feet above the city, you are rewarded by a view of mountains and sea, from Nice to Cap Roux, which makes you say once more--as you have so often done in Riviera explorations--"This is the best!" After lunch at the observatory we decided to walk on to Vallauris and look up our friend of Antibes at the pottery. A _cocher_ without a fare persuaded us to visit the aqueduct at Clausonne en route to Vallauris. He painted the glories of the scenery and of Roman masonry. "You will never regret listening to me," he urged. We followed the wave of his hand, and climbed meekly aboard, although at lunch we had been carrying on an antiphonal hymn of praise to the pleasure and benefit of shanks' mare. We did not regret abandoning our walk. I managed to get the Artist by the Chapelle de Saint-Antoine on the Col de Vallauris and to limit him to a hasty _croquis_ of the Clausonne Aqueduct. We were out for pleasure, with no thought of articles. When you feel that you are going to have to turn your adventures to a practical use, it does take away from the sense of relaxation that a writer like anyone else craves for on his day off. On the road to Vallauris we were more struck by the heather than any other form of vegetation. The mountains and hills were covered with it, and whatever else we saw, heather was always in the picture on the hills and mimosa along the roadside. From the roots of transplanted Mediterranean heather--and not from briar--are made what we call briarwood pipes. When a salesman assures you that the pipe he offers is "genuine briar," if it really was briar, you would think it wasn't. When names have become trademarks, we have to persist in their misuse. Vallauris was called the golden valley (_vallis aurea_) because of the pottery the Romans discovered the natives making from the fine clay of the banks of the little stream that runs into the Golfe Juan. For twenty centuries the inhabitants of Vallauris have found no reason to change their _métier_. They are still making dishes and vases and statuettes, and there is still plenty of clay. Moreover, modern methods have not found a substitute either for the potter at his wheel or for the little ovens of limited capacity when it comes to turning out work that is flawless and bears the stamp of individuality. We can manufacture almost everything en masse and in series except pottery. Joseph-Marie was not in evidence at Vallauris: but we found the potters glad to show us their work, seemingly for the pride they had in it. Of course you did have a chance to buy: but salesmanship was not obtrusive. The great industry of Cannes is fresh cut flowers. The flower market of a morning in the Allées de la Liberté is richer in variety than that of Nice. There is less charm, however, in the sellers. In Nice you simply cannot help buying what is offered you. Pretty faces and soft pleading voices draw the money from your pocket. You look from the flowers to those who offer them: and then you buy the flowers. At Cannes, on the other hand, you ask yourself first what in the world you are going to do with them after you have them. Perhaps this difference in your mood is the reason of the enormous industry that has been developed in Cannes. You are not asked to buy flowers because a seller wants you to and is able to lure you with a smile. You are told that here is the unique chance to send your friends in Paris and London a bit of the springtime fragrance of the Riviera. "Three francs, five francs, ten francs, _monsieur_, and tomorrow morning in Paris or tomorrow evening in London the postman will deliver the flowers to your friend." Pen and ink, cards, gummed labels or tags are put under your nose. You are shown the little reed baskets, in rectangular form, that will carry your gift. If your Paris or London friend knows Latin, and thinks a minute, he will realize that Cannes is living up to her name in thus utilizing her reeds to send out over Europe an Easter greeting, jonquils, carnations, roses, geraniums with the smell of lemons, orange blossoms, cassia, jessamine, lilacs, violets and mimosa. CHAPTER XII MOUGINS We were about to enter the Casino at Cannes. The coin had been flipped to decide which of us should pay, and we were starting up the steps when a yell and a clatter of horses' hoofs made us look around. A victoria was bearing down upon us. The _cocher_ was waving his whip in our direction. We recognized the man who had driven us to Grasse. "A superb afternoon," he explained, "and Mougins is only twelve kilometers away. With Mougins at twelve kilometers, it is incredible to think that you would be spending an afternoon like this in the Casino. I would surely be lacking in my duty--" "What is Mougins?" I interrupted. "All that is beautiful," explained the _cocher_ enthusiastically. "A city on a hill. A glorious view." "That settles it," said the Artist, turning away. "Every city is on a hill, and all views are glorious." "But Mougins is different," insisted the _cocher_, "and the view is different. Besides, the wine is unique. It is sparkling, and can be taken at five o'clock with little cakes. There are roads you have not seen, and pretty girls at work in the rose fields. We shall drive slowly." There had been much wandering during the past fortnight and we were ready for a quiet afternoon at the Casino. But we allowed ourselves to be persuaded. The Casino was always there, and we had never heard of _vin mousseux_ on the Riviera. Baedeker, as if in duty bound to miss nothing, records the existence of Mougins, three kilometers east of the Cannes-Grasse road after you pass the ten-kilometer stone on the way to Grasse--then gives the next town. Mougins is not starred, and nothing around Mougins is starred. Was not that a reason for going there? English royalty used to come to Cannes, and every season more middle class Britishers woke up to the fact that it would be pleasant to write home to one's friends from Cannes. Hôtels and villas increased rapidly. When English royalty went elsewhere, Russian Grand Dukes and Balkan princelings saved the day for the snobs. Consequently, the town has spread annoyingly into the country. A row of hotels faces the sea, and on side streets are less pretentious hotels, invariably advertised as a minute's walk from the sea. A mile inland is another quarter of fashionable hotels for those whom the splashing of the waves makes nervous. Then the interminable suburbs of villas and _pensions_ commence. When city people seek a change of climate, they do not always want a change of environment. They are intent upon living the same life as at home, upon following the same round of amusements. They cannot be happy without their comforts and conveniences, and this means the impossibility of getting away from streets and buildings and noises and crowds. The class that has monopolized the Riviera has tried to recreate Paris in the Midi. If one wants to find the country right on the sea coast, one must get off the train before reaching Cannes. Between Cannes and the Italian frontier, one does not have the sea without the city. Only by going inland can one find the country without missing the sight and feel of the sea. For everywhere the land rises. The valleys rise. Roads keep mounting and curving to avoid heavy grades, and foothills do not hide the Alps and the Mediterranean. After escaping from Cannet, the outermost suburb, the road to Mougins goes through a valley of oranges and roses. There are stone farmhouses with thatched roofs and barns that give forth the smell of hay. There are cows and chickens. We were congratulating ourselves upon having given up the casino long before we reached Mougins. We forgave the _cocher_ his exaggeration about the workers in the rose fields. When one sees in paintings and in the cinematograph pretty girls engaged in agricultural pursuits, it is more than even money that they are models and actresses in disguise. I am enthusiastic in my cult of the country, but I have never carried it to the point of becoming ecstatic over country maidens. There must be, of course, as many good-looking girls in the country as in the city. But could a chorus of milkmaids to satisfy New York or Paris be recruited outside New York or Paris? When we reached the uncompromising stretch of road that led up to Mougins, we took mercy upon the horses. The _cocher_ had not driven them as slowly as he had promised. We walked a mile through olive orchards, and were in the town before we realized it. Unlike other hill cities of the Riviera that we had visited, Mougins has no castle and no walls. Few traces remain of outside fortifications. All around Mougins the land is cultivated. One does not realize the abruptness of the hilltop, for the city rises from fields and vineyards and orchards. Saint-Paul-du-Var and Villeneuve-Loubet remind one of the days when self-defense was a constant preoccupation. Mougins long ago forgot feudal quarrels, foreign invasions and raids of Saracens and Barbary pirates. The peasants still live together on a hilltop, going forth in the morning and coming back in the evening. But they have taken the stone of their walls for fences, and of their towers for barns. They have brought their tilled land up the hillside to the city. On the main street, we had the impression that the medieval character of Mougins was lost by rebuilding. Ailanthus trees and whitewashed walls and red-tiled roofs greeted us. The church and the market-place were of the Third Republic. Sleepy cafés displayed enameled tin advertisements of Paris drinks. The signs in front of the notions shop declared the merits of rival Paris newspapers. But when we were hunting out a vantage point from which to get the view of Cannes and the Mediterranean, the Artist saw much to tempt his pencil. Back from the main street, old Mougins survived, none the less charming from the constant contrasts of old and new. The arch of a city gate, perfectly preserved on one side, lost itself in a modern building across the street. A woman, leaning out of a window, wanted to know what the Artist was doing. I explained our interest in the arch. Had there been a gate in her grandmother's time? Why, when so much of a former age had disappeared, did this half-arch remain? The woman was puzzled. It was incomprehensible that anyone should be interested in the arch, which had always been there. I thought I would try her on other subjects. "Did many travelers come to Mougins from America?" I asked. "Oh, yes. And you are an American, aren't you?" Obviously America was a more interesting subject than archaeology. While the Artist was finishing his sketch she chatted pleasantly with me. Yes, she had often talked with American visitors. She revealed, however, the French provincial's customary ignorance of our life and asked the usual questions about our wealth and our skyscrapers. I am not altogether sure that I set her right about her fabulous misconception when the Artist's drawing was completed. Mougins lives in medieval fashion, if not wholly in medieval houses. Dependent upon occasional water from the heavens for carrying sewage down the hillside, Mougins has no use for gutters and drains. Rubbish is thrown from windows, and tramped down into last year's layer of pavement. Goats enjoy the rich pasturage of old boots and cans and papers and rags and vegetables that had lived beyond their day. Although, as we walked through the alleys, we saw no one, heard no one, the houses were inhabited: for much of the garbage was painfully recent, and clothes flapped on lines from window to window over our heads. The Artist suggested that the townspeople might be taking a siesta. But it was late in the afternoon for that. Then we remembered that Mougins was an agricultural community, and that the work of the town was in the fields. This explained also why we saw no shops and no evidences of trade. Olives, flowers, wine, fruit and vegetables are taken to the markets of Cannes and Grasse, and the people of Mougins buy what they need where they sell. Mougins has only bakeries and cafés. Bread and alcohol alone are indispensable where people dwell together. We circled the city, and came out on the promenade across which we had entered Mougins. Every French town has an illustrious son, for whom a street is named, on whose birthplace a tablet is put, and to whom a monument is raised. Our tour had taken us through the Rue du Commandant Lamy. We had read the inscription on his home, and were now before his monument, a bust on a slender pedestal, with the glorious sweep of La Napoule for a background. The peasants of Mougins, as they go out to and return from the labor of vineyard, orchard and field, pass by the Lamy memorial. Even when they are of one's own blood, is there inspiration in the daily reminder of heroes? How many from Mougins have followed Lamy's example? I have often wondered whether monuments mean anything except to tourists. As I had recently been writing upon French colonial history, Lamy's daring and fruitful journeys in Central Africa were fresh in my mind, and I remembered his tragic death in the Wadai fifteen years ago. An old man had just come up the hill, and was dragging weary legs encased in clay-stained trousers across the promenade. A conical basket of lettuce heads was on his back, and he used the handle of his hoe as a cane. "Did you know Lamy?" I inquired. "Lamy was a boy in this town when I was a grown man going to my work. I used to pass him playing on this very spot," he answered. As we walked along toward the main street, we asked whether there were others from Mougins who, like Lamy, had played a part in the history of France abroad. No, the people of Mougins liked to stay at home. Fortunately for the prosperity of the country, the young men returned after their military service, and the attractions and opportunities of city life rarely took them and held them farther away than Cannes and Grasse. The Artist had his eye on the lettuce basket and the hoe, and I wanted to hear more of life in Mougins. We asked the old man to share a bottle with us. The _cocher_ was waiting in front of a café, and corroborated the statement on a huge painted sign, that here was to be found the true _vin mousseux_ of Mougins. It was evident that we were not the first tourists to come from Cannes. The _cocher_ was a friend of the proprietress, who made us welcome in the way tourists are greeted. Little cakes and a dusty bottle were produced promptly, and in the stream of words that greeted us we could gather that this was a red-letter occasion for us, and that it was possible to have the _vin mousseux_ of Mougins shipped to Paris by the dozen or the hundred. This annoyed us and dampened our ardor for the treat. The Artist and I share a foolish feeling of wanting to be pioneers. We like to believe that our travels take us out of the beaten path, and that we are constantly discovering delectable places. After us the tourists--but not before! The corkscrew of the proprietress, however, consoled us. A corkscrew through whose handle the beaded pressure of gas escapes before the cork is drawn may be common enough. But the fact remains that neither of us had seen one. We expressed our delight and wonder, and the Artist naïvely told the proprietress, before he tasted the wine, that he felt rewarded for the trip to Mougins just for the discovery of the corkscrew. After the first sip, I added that now we knew why we had walked up the long hill. The proprietress and the _cocher_ beamed. Our enthusiasm meant money to them. The old man twisted his mouth contemptuously. "Tell me, then," he said, "what was your thought of me when you saw me coming up the hill to the promenade with my burden of lettuce heads? And when I told you that I had seen Lamy playing as a boy on the spot where his statue stands? Sorry for me, were you not? Lamy had the good sense, you think, to quit Mougins, and go out to glory. I and the rest of Mougins, you think, have stayed here because we do not know any better. It is all in the point of view. One of you is enthusiastic over a patent corkscrew, and the other over the wine. You tourists from the city cannot understand us. It is because you carry your limitations with you. You think you lead a large, broad, varied life. You do not. Finding the greatest interest of Mougins in a patent corkscrew and sparkling wine betrays you." "_Ces messieurs_ have a passion for the country and for towns away from the railroad," remonstrated the _cocher_. "This afternoon I tempted them from the Casino at Cannes. They are a thousand times enthusiastic about Mougins, your homes, your streets, your views, and all they have seen in the valley coming here. If they had limitations, would they have wanted to come? It is senseless to think that they make the effort, that they spend the money, just to be pleased with what they see from their own world or what reminds them of their own world. I spend my life with tourists, and they always appreciate, I have never known them to fail to thank me for having brought them to Mougins." Our critic--and, indeed, our judge--turned on the _cocher_. "Tell me," he said sharply, raising his voice witheringly, "would you risk bringing tourists to Mougins if there were not this café and the _vin mousseux_?" The _cocher_ puffed his cigar vigorously. The Artist, highly delighted, broke an almost invariable rule to prove that the greatest interest of Mougins was not the corkscrew. He opened his sketch-book. While the old man was fingering the sketches, I ordered another bottle. Our guest had been the vanguard of the homeward procession. All Mougins was now passing before us. "Now you see," continued our mentor, "what it is to live. A score of men who knew Lamy have passed before you. They did not go to Africa to hunt negroes and to put our flag on the map at the same time as the names of unknown towns. They are here, and will eat a good dinner tonight. Lamy is dead. Now I do not say that we are heroes, and that our point of view is heroic. But I do say that we are not to be pitied. And I say, moreover, that we do as much for France as Lamy did. If we had all gone to Africa, there might be more names on the map, but there would be less food in the markets of Grasse and Cannes." "Oh, for the ghost of Gray," commented the Artist "He would be face to face with the 'unseen flower'--but not blushing!" "A case of _auream quisquis mediocritatem diligit_," I answered. We were getting classical as well as philosophical, and it was time to go. To whom was the mediocrity? CHAPTER XIII FRÉJUS The ride from Théoule to St. Raphaël, by the Corniche de l'Estérel, gives a feeling of satiety. The road along the sea is a succession of curves, each one leading around a rocky promontory into a bay that causes you to exclaim, "This is the best!" For thirty-five kilometers there is constantly a new adjustment of values, until you find yourself at the point where comparatives and superlatives are exhausted. The vehicle of language has broken down. Recurrent adjectives become trite. When the search for new ones is an effort, you realize that nature has imposed, through the prodigal display of herself, a limit of capacity to enjoy. Of copper rocks and azure sea; of mountain streams hurrying through profusely wooded valleys; of cliffs with changing profiles; of conifers; of enclosed parks, whose charm of undergrowth run wild and of sunlit green tree-trunks successfully hides the controlling hand of man to the uninitiated in forestry; of hedges and pergolas and ramblers and villas and lighthouses and islets and yachts, we had our fill. But at La Napoule a Roman milestone announced that we were on the road to Forum Julii: and the very first thing that attracted us when we reached St. Raphaël was a bit of aqueduct on the promenade. It looked singularly out of place right by the sea, and surrounded by an iron fence quite in keeping with those of the hotels across the street. The inscription (Third Republic, not Roman) told us that this portion of the aqueduct from the River Siagne to Fréjus was removed from its original emplacement and set up here under the prefectship of Monsieur X, the subprefectship of Monsieur Y, and the mayorship of Monsieur Z. The fishing village that has rapidly grown into one of the most important "resorts" of the Riviera claims distinction on historical grounds. Napoleon landed at St. Raphaël on his return from Elba. Gounod composed Romeo and Juliet here. General Galliéni was cultivating his vineyard here when the war of 1914 broke out, and the call to arms sent him from his seclusion to become the savior of Paris. But when ruins became fashionable in the last decade of Queen Victoria, it was necessary for St. Raphaël to have an ancient monument. An arch of the aqueduct was imported to the beach with as little regard for congruous setting as Mr. Croesus-in-Ten-Years shows in importing an English lawn to his front yard at Long Branch and a gallery of ancestral portraits to his dining-room on Fifth Avenue. The Artist looked at the ruins in silence. He tried to gnaw the ends of his mustache. His eyes changed from amusement to contempt, and then to interest. I was ready for his question. "Say, where is this town Fréjus?" The _cocher_ protested. He had bargained to take us to St. Raphaël, the horses were tired, and anyway there was no good hotel, no food, nothing to do at Fréjus. "Where is Fréjus?" repeated the Artist. The _cocher_ pointed his whip unwillingly westward along the shore. The Artist turned to me with his famous nose-and-eyes-and-chin-up expression. "What do you say, _mon vieux_?" "Decidedly Fréjus," I answered. Accustomed to American queerness, the _cocher_ resigned himself to the reins for another five kilometers. Since the River Argens began to flow, it has been depositing silt against the eastern shore of the Gulf of Fréjus, at the point of which stands St Raphaël. Consequently the road, sentineled by linden trees, crosses a rich plain, and is more than a mile from the sea when it reaches the city of Julius Caesar. The upper ends of the mole of the ancient port, high and dry like ships at low tide, join the walls of the canal. You have to look closely to distinguish the canal and the depression of the basin into which it widens near the town. For where land has encroached upon sea, vegetable gardens and orchards have been planted. Inland, the arches from the aqueduct of the Siagne shed their bricks in wheat fields and protrude from clumps of hazels. As it enters the city, the road turns back on itself and mounts to the market-place. The sharp outward bend of the elevation above the narrow stretch of lowland suggest that there was a time, long before Roman days, when Fréjus, like the towns of the Corniche de l'Estérel, was built on a promontory. Fréjus belongs to no definite period. It is not Roman, medieval, modern. It is not a watering-place fashionable or unfashionable, a manufacturing town prosperous or struggling, a port bustling or sleepy, a fishing-village or a flower-gathering center. Fréjus suggests no marked racial characteristics in architecture or inhabitants. It is neither distinctly Midi nor distinctly Italian--as those terms are understood by travelers. Fréjus is unique among the cities of the Cote d'Azur because it has no unmistakable _cachet_. Fréjus suggests Rome, the Middle Ages, the twentieth century. Fréjus embraces pleasure-seeking, industries, fish, flowers, and soldiering. Mermaids, delightfully reminiscent of the Lido and Abbazia in garb, dive from the end of the mole into a safe swimming-pool; children of the proletariat in coarse black _tabliers_, who have not left sandals and white socks on the beach behind them, fish for crabs; naval aviators start hydroplanes from an aerodrome beside the Roman amphitheater; fishermen, of olive Mediterranean complexion, dry copper-tinted nets on the beach, laying them, despite the scolding of the Senegalese guards, upon piles of granite and cement blocks with which laborers are building a new pier. We had come to the beach for an after-luncheon smoke, and when we were not looking at the Senegalese and workmen, our eyes wandered from hydroplanes and machine-gun-armed motor-boats to the mermaids on the Roman mole. Not till we ran out of tobacco and the mole ran out of mermaids did we realize that Fréjus was still unexplored and unsketched. We gave ourselves a six o'clock rendezvous on the beach. The Artist started to seek Roman ruins, while I turned towards the market-place, cathedral bound. Sea-level villas came first, and then a quarter of sixteenth-century houses, many of which showed on the ground floor medieval foundations. In two places I got back to the Romans. A cross section of thin flat bricks with generous interstices of cement in the front wall of a greengrocer's opposite, indicated the line of the Roman fortification. Walking around the next parallel street, I managed to get into a garden where a long piece of the wall remained. I came out to the St. Raphaël carriage road at a corner where arose a huge square tower of the Norman period. Almost to its crumbling top, houses had been built against it on two sides. The angle formed by the alley through which I came and the main street had fortunately kept the other two sides clear. The tower was the home of a wine and coal merchant, who had laid in a supply of cut wood on his roof to the height of several feet above the irregular parapet. Outside one of the narrow vertical slits, which in ages past had served as vantage point for a vizored knight fitting arrow to bow, hung a parrot cage. "Coco" was chattering Marseilles sailor French. A single gargoyle remained. It was a panther, elongated like a dachshund. He was desecrated and humiliated by having tied around his middle the end of the clothesline that stretched across the alley. This proved, however, that he still held firmly his place. The panther, ignoring change of fortune, looked down as of yore, snarling, and with whiskers stiffened to indicate that if he had been given hind legs, they would be ready for a spring. So worn was the gargoyle that ears and chin and part of forehead had disappeared. But you can see the snarl just as you can see the Sphinx's smile. When a thing is well done, it is done for all time. If a poor workman had fashioned that gargoyle, there would have been no panther and no snarl when it was put up there. But a master worked the stone, and what he wrought is ineradicable. It will disappear only with the stone itself. When we speak of ruins, we mean that a part of the material used in expressing a conception has not resisted climate and age and earthquake and vandalism. Armless, Venus de Milo is still the perfect woman. Headless, Nike of Samothrace is still symbolic of the glory of prevailing. In the morning, before reaching St. Raphaël, we passed an African soldier limping along the dusty road. He was dispirited even to the crumpled look of his red fez, and the sun, shining mercilessly, glinted from his rifle-barrel to the beads of perspiration on the back of his neck. We were going fast, and had just time to wave gayly to cheer him up. He did not return our salute. This struck us as strange. Fearing that he might be ill, we made the _cocher_ turn round, and went back to pick him up. He declared that a sprained ankle made it impossible for him to keep up with his regiment, which had been marching since early morning. He was grateful for the lift, and beamed when we assured him that we could take him as far as St. Raphaël. At that time we were not thinking of going to Fréjus, the garrison town of the African troops. When we overtook the regiment and reached his company, we tried to intercede with the French sergeant. The sergeant was adamant and positive. "A thousand thanks, but the man is shamming. He is lazy. He must get out." We had to give up our soldier. The sergeant knew his men, and justice is the basic doctrine which guides the discipline of the French colonial army. The regiment of Algerians must have stopped for lunch or maneuvers. For they were just coming through the Place du Marché when I reached there. Only the colonel was on horse. At the turn of the road, the captains stood out of rank to watch their companies wheel. Our soldier of the morning passed. He had forgotten his limp. The sergeant recognized me, and pointed to the soldier. His left upper eyelid came down with a wink, as if to say, "Don't I know them!" There is a spirit of _camaraderie_ between officers and men in Fréjus that one never sees in native regiments of the British army. The French have none of our Anglo-Saxon feeling of caste and race prejudice, which makes discipline depend upon aloofness. French officers can be severe without being stern: and they know the difference between poise and pose. We Anglo-Saxons need to revise radically our judgment of the French in regard to certain traits that are the _sine qua non_ of military efficiency. Energy, resourcefulness, coolness, persistence, endurance, pluck--where have these pet virtues of ours been more strikingly tested, where have they been more abundantly found, than in the French army? The sign of the French colonial army is an anchor, and Fréjus is full of officers who wear it. They are mostly men of the Midi, Roman Gauls every inch of them. The Lamys, the Galliénis, the Joffres, the Fochs, the Lyauteys were born with a genius for leadership in war. Their aptitude for African conquest and their joy in African colonization are the heritage of their native land. The fortunes of southern France and northern Africa were inseparable through the ten centuries of the spread of civilization and the Latin and Teutonic invasions in the Western Mediterranean. The connection was unbroken from the time that Hannibal marched his African troops through Fréjus to Italy until the Omayyads conquered Tunis, Algeria and Morocco. It is the most natural thing in the world to see African troops in Fréjus. They belong here now, because since men began to sail in ships, they have always been at home here as friends or enemies. Mediterranean Africa and Mediterranean France received simultaneously political, social and religious institutions, and from the same source. As the Crescent wanes, Gaul is coming back into her own. Fréjus shopkeepers suffer from the proximity of the upstart St. Raphaël. Fréjus keeps the bishop, but St. Raphaël has taken the trade. There is now only one business street. It runs from the Place du Marché through the center of the city to the Place du Dôme. You can get from one _place_ to the other in about five minutes. Few people were on this street in mid-afternoon. None were going into the shops. I chose the department store, and asked the only saleswoman in sight for a collar. She brought down two styles, both of which were bucolic. Matched with a beflowered tie, either would have gone perfectly around the neck of a Polish immigrant in New York on his wedding day. I suggested that I be shown some other styles. The saleswoman gazed at me stonily. "A bus leaves the corner below here for St. Raphaël every hour. You are there in twenty minutes. Or you can go by train in six minutes." Up went the boxes to their shelf. There was nothing for me to do but get out. One says Place du Dôme or Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, depending upon whether sympathies are ultramontane or anti-clerical. For cathedral and city hall touch each other at right angles. LIBERTÉ-ÉGALITÉ-FRATERNITÉ is the legend in large letters on the cathedral wall: the one notice posted on the Hôtel de Ville is a warning of the last day to pay taxes. Two beggars stand guard at the cathedral portal: Senegalese with fixed bayonets flank the archway leading to the municipal courtyard. The Hôtel de Ville is a modern building, typical of French official taste of the present day: the cathedral is an edifice of several epochs, with a brick facade reminiscent of Bologna. The episcopal palace, adjacent to the cathedral, is part of the same structure. But it is used for government offices, and the entrance to its upper floor is by a staircase from the vestibule of the cathedral. The _Service de Santé Municipale_ occupies the rooms along the portico that faces the cloister. The cure of souls has been banished to a private house across the street. The cathedral quarter is wholly Louis XVI and First Empire. If I had begun my ramble there, I should have found much to admire. But I had been spoiled by the Louis XIII quarter nearer the sea. Travel impressions are largely dependent upon itinerary. I am often able to surprise a compatriot whose knowledge of Europe is limited to one "bang-up trip, and there wasn't much we missed, y'know," by being able to tell him the order in which he visited places. It is an easy thing to do. You simply have to notice how the tourist compares cities and other "sights." He is blissfully ignorant of the fact that his positive judgments, his unhesitating preferences are accidental. They do not express at all his real tastes and his real appreciation of values. However cultivated and intelligent an observer he may be, unless he has carefully weighed and made proper allowance for the influence of itinerary, his judgments and preferences are not to be taken seriously. For years I honestly believed that the Rue de la Porte Rosette was one of the finest streets in the world. I told my friends of it. But when Alexandria was revisited, the Rue de la Porte Rosette was a shabby thoroughfare. After a year in the interior of Asia Minor, the Rue de la Porte Rosette was the first street through which I drove in coming back to European civilization. The next time I saw it I was fresh from years of constant residence in Paris. In my memory, Sofia is a gem of an up-to-date city, while Bucharest is a poor imitation of the occidental municipality. The chances are more than even that my comparative estimate of the two Balkan capitals is wholly wrong. For each time I have visited Sofia, it was in coming from Turkey, while stops at Bucharest have followed immediately after Buda-Pest and Odessa. I wandered through the cathedral quarter with less enthusiasm than was its due, and soon decided to rejoin the Artist. He was not in the neighborhood of any of the Roman ruins. He was not sitting behind an _apéritif_ on a café terrace. He was not watching soldiers play football in the courtyard of the barracks. He was not sketching the Norman tower. He was not exploring alleys of the medieval quarter. He was not looking at hydroplanes over the fence of the aerodrome. My quest had led me unconsciously back to the beach. There was still an hour before our rendezvous. But where we had stretched in the sand after lunch was a delightful spot, and I had remembered to have my pouch filled at a tabac. I was not going to feel bored waiting for him. Where the laborers were working on the pier, the black soldier guards called out to me to beware of danger. Not being skilled in dodging construction machinery I gave it a wide berth. The place of our siesta had to be reached by going through ruins and climbing over a dune. The Artist was there. "You know," he explained, ignoring with the sweep of his hand the Roman mole where a new bevy of mermaids had appeared, "the progress of aviation has fascinated me ever since that July day at Rheims when Wright went up and stayed up. Just look what those fellows are doing!" Hydroplanes were appearing from the aerodrome. When they struck the water there was a hiss, which grew in volume and acuity as they skimmed the waves. After a few hundred yards, the machines rose as easily as from land, circled up to the clouds and into them. Coming down, the aviators practiced dipping and swerving by following and avoiding the purposely irregular course of motor-boats. An officer, who spoke to us to find out, I suppose, who we were and why we were there, remarked that the aviators were beginners. We were astonished. If this was learning to fly, what was flying? "Our boys need little teaching to learn to fly," he explained. "That comes naturally. What they are learning is how to use their machines for fighting. Science and training and practice come in there. A world-old game is before you. It is only the medium that is new." Words of wisdom. A bit of aqueduct led us to Fréjus in the hope of tasting the charm of a more ancient past than we had found in other Riviera cities. We were not disappointed. The charm was there. But we would not have found it, had we tried to dissociate it from the present, had we ignored or deplored its setting. Nothing that lives assimilates what is foreign to its nature: nothing that lives survives dissection. We took Fréjus as Fréjus was, and not as we wanted it to be or thought it must be. We took the aerodrome with the hippodrome, the coal merchant with the Norman tower, the parrot with the gargoyle, the Hôtel de Ville with the cathedral, and the mermaids with the mole. CHAPTER XIV SAINT-RAPHAEL On the terrace of our little home at Théoule, a lover of the Riviera read what I had written about Fréjus. "If you have any idea of making a book out of your Riviera articles," she said positively, "do not think you can dismiss the Estérel and Saint-Raphaël in so cavalier a fashion. That may be all right for Lester Hornby and you and serve as a good introduction to a story on Fréjus, but in your project of a book on Riviera towns--" There is no need to say more. I looked over to the hills of the Estérel and felt sorry I had neglected them. I thought of past experiences, and agreed that there was something more to write about the French end of the Riviera. And then we put our heads together over a time table, planned to go to Agay by train, and walk on the rest of the way to Saint-Raphaël. If the weather was good, we should climb Mont Vinaigre, and see the Estérel from its highest point. "I don't care whether it affords good subjects for Lester or not," declared my boss. "I've done the trip, and I know it will be fun--and remember what Horatio was told!" Humankind and human habitation had occupied the Artist and myself on almost every day afield from, Théoule. Of course we had taken in the scenery, sketched it and spoken about it, but only as a background or accompaniment. From Cannes to Menton it is the human side of the Riviera that gets you. Nature is a sort of musical accompaniment to the song of human activity. Between Cannes and the Italian frontier, where the railway does not skirt the coast, you have the tramway. It is with you always, night and day, and makes itself heard at every curve. (The road is all curves!) As a result of the tramway, or perhaps as its cause, the Cannes-Menton stretch of the Riviera is solidly built up. Where the towns do not run into each other, an unbroken line of villas links them up. It is all the city--you cannot get away from that. The road we follow to Fréjus was opened in 1903, a gift to the nation from the initiative and enterprise of the Touring-Club de France. The building of a tram line was fortunately forbidden. But with the railway and rapidly-developing use of the automobile, the little villages of the Estérel coast are being rapidly built up. Around the cape from Théoule, Le Trayas will soon rival Saint-Raphaël as a center for Estérel excursions. Then we have Anthéor, Agay, and Boulouris before reaching the long and charming villa-covered approach to Saint-Raphaël. But we do not need to worry yet about what is going to happen. The blessed fact remains that the Estérel, between Théoule and Saint-Raphaël, is not yet closely populated like the rest of the Riviera. The tramway has not come. The railway frequently goes out of sight, if not out of hearing, for a mile or two. You have nature all by herself, with no houses, no human beings, no human inventions. The interior of the Estérel is as refreshingly different from the hinterland of the rest of the Riviera as most of the coast. There are no cities and towns back on the hills, no railways and tramways, no fine motor roads to make the pedestrian's progress a disagreeable and almost continuous passage through clouds of dust. The Estérel is hills and valleys, streams and forests and birds. You do not even have poles and wires to remind you of the world you have left for the moment. The only way one comes to know this country is to have a villa on its fringe, as we did, and get lost in it every time you try to explore it. But such good fortune does not fall to everyone--nor the time--so it is comforting to point out that much of interest in the Estérel can be visited by motorists from the Corniche. Between La Napoule and Agay, the Touring-Club de France has put sign-posts at every little path leading from the Corniche back into the interior. Some paths, also, where the road mounts on Cap Roux, lead down to grottoes on the water's edge or out to cliffs. Each sign gives the attraction and the distance. In our walks from Théoule we explored most of these, but discovered that one must not have an objective for lunch. For there is no connection between the number of kilometers and the time you must take. A map and compass are wise precautions. Some paths are scarcely marked at all, and when you have to slide down the side of a volcanic hill into a ravine and try to guess where you are supposed to go next, a woodsman's instinct is needed. The excursions are surer because more frequented, but none the less charming, after you have rounded the cape and crossed the little River Agay. Agay, the Agathon of Ptolemy, boasts of the only harbor on the Estérel. On one side is the Pointe d'Anthéor and on the other Cap Dramont. Right behind the harbor rises the Rastel d'Agay, a jagged mass of copper rock a thousand feet high, climbing which is an excellent preparation for and indication of what one may expect in Estérel exploration. The way is not made easy for you as it is in the eastern end of the Riviera. But unless you strike an exceptionally warm day you have the will for pushing on afoot that is completely lacking at Monte Carlo and Menton. The most ambitious and most interesting excursion into the Estérel that can be made in a day's walk is to go to Saint-Raphaël from Agay by way of Mont Vinaigre. You must make an early start and be ready to put in from five to six hours if you want to eat your lunch on the highest peak of the Estérel. It took us from seven o'clock to noon, and we kept going steadily. Crossing the railway, we struck out to the right of the Agay through forests of pine and cork to Le Gratadis, then along the Ravin du Pertus, pushing through the underbrush in blossom and skirting the many walls of rock that served to indicate where the path was not. It would have been easier to have made the round trip from Saint-Raphaël. But we should not have the full realization of the wild beauty of the Estérel nor that joyful feeling of reaching _astra per aspera_. The way down to Saint-Raphaël, after descending to Le Malpey, less than an hour from the summit, is by a carriage road. We wished we could have seen the stars from Mont Vinaigre. There was a belvedere, and if we had only brought our blankets! But however warm the day, the nights are cool, especially two thousand feet up. Only those who have slept out at night in Mediterranean countries know how cold it can get. The top of Mont Vinaigre, almost in the center of the Estérel, affords a view of the ensemble of volcanic hills crowded together by themselves that makes you realize why it is so easy to get lost in the valleys between them. The forests are thick and the ravines go every which way. Inland the Estérel is separated from the foothills of the Maritime Alps by the valleys of the Riou Blanc and Siagne through which runs the main road to Grasse, with a branch down the Siagne to Mandelieu. On the northern slope of the mountain is the road from Fréjus to Cannes, which leaves the Estérel at Mandelieu. It is one of the oldest roads in France. Several Roman milestones have recently been unearthed here. In these hills the Romans found coal and copper, and from the quarries along the coast at Boulouris and on Cap Dramont the quarries of blue porphyry are still worked. In mining possibilities the whole region is as rich as it was twenty centuries ago; but, as in many other parts of France, little has been done to take advantage of them. Some years ago an American friend of mine, motoring with his wife from Fréjus to Cannes, discovered coal fields, formed a company, and is now drawing a revenue from hills whose former owners knew them only as preserves for shooting wild boar and other wild game. Within her own boundaries France has coal enough for all her needs if only she would mine it. But the French love to put their money into safe bonds of their own and foreign governments. The woolen stocking does not give up its hoarded coins for such enterprises as mines and domestic industries. Daughter's _dot_ must be in a form acceptable to the prospective bridegroom's family. And then the French do not breed the new generation sufficiently large to furnish laborers for developing the natural resources of the country. They are hostile to immigration. When the war came Asia and Africa were called upon to man munition plants. After the lesson of the war the French have tried to make their own country give up more of its wealth. However, though they are now more skeptical than ever of investing abroad, they still pursue an aggressive foreign policy to open up and protect fields of capital far from home. On the edge of the Estérel, a dozen miles away, at Fréjus, Saint-Raphaël and Cannes, the people have lost much money in Russian and Turkish bonds, Brazilian railways and coffee plantations. Their sons go to Algeria and Morocco to seek a fortune. Is this why only the coming of tourists and residents from a less hospitable clime has wrought any change in the country during the nineteenth century? From the standpoint of natural production the Riviera is relatively less important, less self-supporting than before the railway came. By the forester's house of Le Malpey, after an hour's descent, we strike the carriage road. An hour and a half brings us to Valescure, an English colony built in pine woods. Another half hour and we are at Saint-Raphaël. The next morning we discovered that Saint-Raphaël had its Old Town, which escaped us on our trip to Fréjus. Only the new name of the main street--Rue Gambetta--indicated that we were in France of the Third Republic. But, as in Grasse, we felt that we were really in France of all the centuries. There was none of that unmistakably Italian atmosphere that still makes itself felt in Nice, once you wander into quarters east of the Place Masséna. The thick walls of the old church--far too massive for its size--bear witness to the period when Mediterranean coast town church was sanctuary more than in name. To the church the people fled when the Saracen pirates came, and while the priests prayed they acted on the adage that God helps those who help themselves, pouring molten lead from the roof and shooting arbalests through _meurtrières_ that can still be distinguished despite bricks and plaster. This is the Saint-Raphaël that Napoleon knew when he returned from Egypt and, fifteen years later, sailed for his first exile at Elba. But we found much that was attractive in the new Saint-Raphaël, which is as French as the old. The English keep themselves mostly at Valescure. Tourists come on _chars-à-bancs_ for lunch, and hurry back to Nice. Saint-Raphaël has developed as a French watering place. It does not have the protection of the high wall of the Maritime Alps. When the mistral, bane of the Midi, is not blowing, however, you wonder whether the native-born have not picked out for a seashore resort a more delightful bit of the Riviera coast than foreigners. A Frenchman once told me that Saint-Raphaël was the logical Riviera town for the French simply because the night train from Paris landed a traveler there in time for noon lunch. "This fact alone," he declared to me, "would induce me to choose Saint-Raphaël in preference to Cannes and Nice. You know that when twelve o'clock has struck the day is ruined for a Frenchman if he is not reasonably sure of being able to sit down pretty soon to a good hot meal. The P.-L.-M. put Cannes and Nice just a little bit beyond our limit." As you emerge from the Old Town, at the harbor, you pass by a large modern church in Byzantine style, whose portal shows to excellent advantage six porphyry columns from the nearby Boulouris quarries. Along the sea is the Boulevard Felix-Martin, which runs into the Corniche de l'Estérel. For several miles you feel that there is nothing to detract from the spell of the sea. Elsewhere on the Riviera you have promenades embellished by great buildings and monuments and forts and exotic trees. You have coves and capes and villa-clad hills with the Alpine background. You climb cliffs and see the Mediterranean at bends, through trees and across luxurious gardens. Panorama after panorama with distractions galore react on you like a picture gallery. But at Saint-Raphaël the sea dominates. The Mediterranean alone holds you. This is why you cannot endorse the bald statement flung at you by the famous sundial of the Rue de France at Nice: "Io vado e vengo ogni giorno, Ma tu andrai senza ritorno." It may be true enough of Nice that you will not go back. One has the confusion of human activities everywhere and tires of it everywhere. But just the sea alone is always new. Of course in the end the immortal sun has the better of you. But as long as life does last the effort will be made to get back to the Boulevard Felix-Martin at Saint-Raphaël. For there, better than anywhere else on the Riviera, one can look at the sea. CHAPTER XV THÉOULE From Cannes to Menton the Riviera is cursed with electric tram lines. We were led beyond Cannes to the Corniche de l'Estérel by the absence of a tram line. We could not get away from the railway, however, without abandoning the coast. Is there any place desirable for living purposes in which the railway does not obtrude? When choosing a country residence, men with families, unless they have several motors and several chauffeurs, must stick close to the railway. Monsieur l'Adjoint was showing us the salon of his villa when a whistle announced the Vintimille express. He hastened to anticipate the train by reassuring us that there was a deep cut back of the villa and that the road-bed veered away from us just at the corner of the garden. It was in the neighboring villa that trains were really heard. We were to believe him--at that moment chandeliers and windows and two vases of dried grasses on the mantelpiece danced a passing greeting to the train. Monsieur l'Adjoint thought that he had failed to carry the day. But we live on a Paris boulevard, and know that noises are comparative. Vintimille expresses were not going to pass all the time. We were glad that the railway had not deterred us. It was good to be right above the water. Some people do not like the glare of sun reflected from the sea. But they are late risers. Parents of small children are accustomed to waking with the sun. On the first morning in the Villa Étoile the baby chuckled early. Sun spots were dancing on the ceiling, and she was watching them. The breakfast on the terrace was no hurried swallowing of a cup of coffee with eyes fixed upon a newspaper propped against a sugar bowl. The agreement of the day before had been tripartite. The proprietor was easily satisfied with bank notes. But the wife had not consented to leave the freedom of the hotel until it had been solemnly agreed that newspapers were to be refused entrance into the Villa Étoile, and that watches were not to be drawn out (even furtively) from waistcoat pockets. Unless agreements are fortified by favorable circumstances and constantly recurring interest, they are seldom lived up to. When promises are difficult to keep, where are the men of their word? Doing what one does not want to do is a sad business. That is why Puritanism is associated with gloom. On the terrace of the Villa Étoile no man could want to look at a newspaper or a watch. Across the Gulf of La Napoule lies Cannes. Beyond Cannes is the Cap d'Antibes. Mountains, covered with snow and coming down to the sea in successive chains, form the eastern horizon. Inland, Grasse is nestled close under them. Seaward, the Iles de Lérins seem to float upon the water. For on Sainte-Marguerite the line of demarcation between Mediterranean blue and forest green is sharp, and Saint-Honorat, dominated by the soft gray of the castle and abbey, is like a reflected cloud. Between Théoule and Cannes the railway crosses the viaduct of the Siagne. Through the arches one can see the golf course on which an English statesman thought out the later phases of British Imperialism. To the west, the Gulf of La Napoule ends in the pine-covered promontory of the Esquillon. Except for a very small beach in front of the Théoule hotel, the coast is rocky. From February to May our terrace outlook competed successfully with duties elsewhere. Young and old in Théoule have to make a daily effort to enjoy educational and religious privileges. We wondered at first why the school and church were placed on the promontory, a good mile and a half from the town. But later we came to realize that this was a salutary measure. The climate is insidious. A daily antidote against laziness is needed. I was glad that I volunteered to take the children to school at eight and two, and go after them at eleven and four, and that they held me to it. In order to reach a passable route on the steep wall of rock and pine, the road built by the Touring-Club de France makes a bend of two kilometers in the valley behind Théoule. By taking a footpath from the hotel, the pedestrian eliminates the bend in five minutes. In spite of curves, the road is continuously steep and keeps a heavy grade until it reaches the Pointe de l'Esquillon. I never tired of the four times a day. Between the Villa Étoile and the town was the castle, built on the water's edge. After Louis XIV it became a soap factory, and was restored to its ancient dignity only recently. I ought not to say "dignity," for the restorer was a baron of industry, and his improvements are distressing. The entrance to the park created on the inner side of the road opposite the château is the result of landscape dentistry. The creator did not find that the natural rock lent itself to his fancies, and filled in the hollows with stones of volcanic origin. On the side of the hill, fountains and pools and a truly massive flight of steps have been made. Scrawny firs are trying to grow where they ought not to. Quasi-natural urns overflow with captive flowers, geraniums and nasturtiums predominating. Ferns hang as gracefully as shirtings displayed in a department store window. Stone lions defy, and terra cotta stags run away from, porcelain dogs. There are bowers and benches of imitation petrified wood. American money may be responsible for the château garden, but the villas of Théoule are all French. Modern French artistic genius runs to painting and clothes. There is none left for building or house-furnishing. French taste, as expressed in homes, inside and outside, is as bad as Prussian. We may admire mildly the monotonous symmetry of post-Haussmann Paris. When we get to the suburbs and to the provincial towns and to summer and winter resorts, we have to confess that architecture is a lost art in France. In America, especially in our cities, we have regrettable traces of mid-Victorianism, and we have to contend with Irish politicians and German contractors. In the suburbs, and in the country, however, where Americans build their own homes, we have become accustomed to ideas of beauty that make the results of the last sixty years of European growth painful to us. Our taste in line, color, decoration, and interior furnishing is at hopeless variance with that of twentieth-century Europe. We admire and we buy in Europe that which our European ancestors created. Our admiration--and our buying--is confined strictly to Europe of the past. Present-day Europe displays German _Schmuck_ from one end to the other, and France is no exception. On the walk to school you soon get beyond the château and the villas. But even on the promontory there is more than the dodging of automobiles to remind one that this is the twentieth century. The Corniche de l'Estérel has been singled out by the moving-picture men for playing out-of-door scenarios. When the sun is shining, a day rarely passes without film-making. The man with a camera has the rising road and bends around which the action can enter into the scene, the forest up and the forest down, the Mediterranean and mountain and island and Cannes backgrounds. Automobile hold-ups with pistols barking, the man and the maid in the woods and on the terrace, the villain assaulting and the hero rescuing the defenseless woman, the heroine jumping from a rock into the sea, and clinging to an upturned boat--these are commonplace events on the Corniche de l'Estérel. The world of cinemas and motors does not rise early. On the morning walk, children and squirrels and birds were all one met. Children go slowly, and squirrels and birds belong to nature. There was always time to breathe in the forest and the sea and to look across to the mountains. When _cartables_ and _goûters_ were handed over at the school gate, parental responsibility ceased for three hours. One had the choice of going on around the point towards Trayas or down to the sea. The people of Théoule say that Corsica, sixty miles away, can be seen from the Esquillon. All one has to do is to keep going day after day until "atmospheric conditions are favorable." The Touring-Club de France has built a Belvedere at the extremity of the Esquillon. Arrows on a dial indicate the direction of important places from Leghorn to Marseilles. The Apennines behind Florence, as well as Corsica, are marked as within the range of visibility. The Apennines had not been seen for years, but Corsica was liable to appear at any time. The first day the Artist went with me to the Esquillon, an Oldest Inhabitant said that we had a Corsica day. A milkwoman _en route_ reported Corsica in sight, and told us to hurry. Towards nine o'clock the sun raises a mist from the sea, she explained. In the belvedere we found a girl without a guide book who had evidently come over from Trayas. She was crouched down to dial level, and her eyes were following the Corsica arrow. She did not look up or move when we entered. Minutes passed. There was no offer to give us a chance. We coughed and shuffled, and the Artist sang "The Little Gray Home in the West." I informed the Artist--in French--that a specialist had once remarked upon my hyperopic powers, and that if Corsica were really in sight I could not fail to see it. Not until she had to shake the cramp out of her back did the girl straighten up. "Corsica is invisible today," she announced. "Yes," I answered sadly. "Ten minutes ago the mist began to come up. You know, sun upon the water--" A look in her eyes made me hesitate. "And all that sort of thing," I ended lamely. "Nonsense," she said briskly. She surveyed the Artist from mustache to cane point and turned back to me. "You, at least," she declared, "are American, but of the unpractical sort. And you are as unresourceful as you are ungallant, Monsieur. How do I know? Well, you were complaining about my monopolizing the dial. There is a map on the tiles under your feet, and a compass dangles uselessly from your watch-chain. I wonder, too, if you _are_ hyperopic. You know which is the Carlton Hôtel over there in Cannes. Tell me how many windows there are across a floor." The atmosphere was wonderfully clear, and the Carlton stood out plainly. But I failed the test. The girl laughed. I did not mind that. When the Artist started in, I turned on him savagely. "Well, you count the Carlton windows," I said. "No specialist ever told me I was hyperopic," he came back. I had to save the day by answering that I was glad to be myopic just now. Who wanted to see Corsica any longer? The girl knew interesting upper paths on the western side of the promontory. She had as much time as we, or rather, I must say regretfully, she and the Artist had more time than I. For eleven o'clock came quickly, and I hurried off to fulfill my parental duty. The Artist told me afterwards that there was a fine _cuisine_ at the Trayas restaurant. I did think of my compass one day: for I had sore need of it. But, as generally happens in such cases, I was not wearing it. Between Théoule and La Napoule, the nearest town on the way to Cannes, a tempting forest road leads back into the valley. A sign states that a curious view of a mountain peak, named after Marcus Aurelius, could be had by following the road for half a dozen kilometers. It was one of the things tourists did when they were visiting the Corniche for a day. Consequently, when one was staying on the Corniche, it was always an excursion of the morrow. During the Artist's first week, we were walking over to Mandelieu to take the tram to Cannes one morning, and suddenly decided that the last thing in the world for sensible folks to do was to go to Cannes on a day when the country was calling insistently. We turned in at the sign. After we had seen the view, we thought that it would be possible to take a short cut back to Théoule. The wall of the valley that shut us off from the sea must certainly be the big hill just behind the Villa Étoile. If, instead of retracing our steps towards La Napoule, we kept ahead, and remembered to take the left at every cross path, we would come out at the place where the Corniche road made its big bend before mounting to the promontory. It was all so simple that it could not be otherwise. We were sure of the direction, and fairly sure of the distance, since we had left the motor road between Théoule and La Napoule. There was an hour and a half before lunch. A lumber road followed the brook, and the brook skirted the hill beyond which was Théoule and the Villa Étoile. It was a day to swear by, and April flowers were in full bloom. It was delightful until we had to confess that the hill showed no signs of coming down to a valley on the left. Finally, at a point where a path went up abruptly from the stream, we decided that it would be best to cut over the summit of the hill and not wait until the Corniche road appeared before us. In this way we would avoid the walk back from the hotel to our villa, and come out in our own garden. But on the Riviera nature has shown no care in placing her hills where they ought to be and in symmetrizing and limiting them. They go on indefinitely. So did we, until we came to feel that we would be like the soldiers of Xenophon once we spied the sea. But the cry "Thalassa" was denied us. Eventually we turned back, and tried keeping the hill on the right. This was as perplexing as keeping it on the left had been. A pair of famished explorers, hungry enough to eat canned tuna-fish and crackers with relish, reached a little town inland from Mandelieu about seven o'clock that night with no clear knowledge of from where or how they had come. Between the town of Théoule and the belvedere of the Esquillon, down along the water's edge, one never tires of exploring the caves. Paths lead through the pines and around the cliffs. The Artist was attracted to the caves by the hope of finding vantage points from which to sketch Grasse and Cannes and Antibes and the Alps and the castle on Saint-Honorat. But he soon came to love the copper rocks, which pine needles had dyed, and deserted black and white for colors. When the climate got him, he was not loath to join in my hunt for octopi. The inhabitants tell thrilling stories of the monsters that lurk under the rocks at the Pointe de l'Esquillon and forage right up to the town. One is warned to be on his guard against long tentacles reaching out swiftly and silently. One is told that slipping might mean more than a ducking. Owners of villas on the rocks make light of octopi stories, and as local boomers are trying to make Théoule a summer resort, it is explained that the octopi never come near the beach. Even if they did, they would not be dangerous there. How could they get a hold on the sand with some tentacles while others were grabbing you? I have never wanted to see anything quite so badly as I wanted to see an octopus at Théoule. Octopus hunting surpasses gathering four-leaf clovers and fishing as an occupation in which hope eternal plays the principle role. I gradually abandoned other pursuits, and sat smoking on rocks by the half day, excusing indolence on the ground of the thrilling story I was going to get. I learned over again painfully the boyhood way of drinking from a brook, and lay face downward on island stones. With the enthusiastic help of my children, I made a dummy stuffed with pine cones, and let him float at the end of a rope. Never a tentacle, let alone octopus, appeared. I had to rest content with Victor Hugo's stirring picture in "The Toilers of the Sea." A plotting wife encouraged the octopus hunts by taking part in them, and expressing frequently her belief in the imminent appearance of the octopi. She declared that sooner or later my reward would come. She threw off the mask on the first day of May, when she thought it was time to return to work. She announced to the Artist and me that the octopi had gone over to the African coast to keep cool until next winter, and that we had better all go to Paris to do the same. We were ready. Théoule was still lovely, and the terrace breakfasts had lost none of their charm. But one does not linger indefinitely on the Riviera unless _dolce far niente_ has become the principal thing in life. 
22956	----	ROLLO IN PARIS, BY JACOB ABBOTT. BOSTON: W. J. REYNOLDS AND COMPANY, No. 24 CORNHILL, 1854. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by JACOB ABBOTT, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. STEREOTYPED AT THE BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY. G. C. RAND BOOK AND WOOD CUT PRINTER. [Illustration: Restaurant (Café) on the Boulevards. Page 223.] [Illustration: ROLLO'S TOUR IN EUROPE.] ROLLO'S TOUR IN EUROPE. ORDER OF THE VOLUMES. ROLLO ON THE ATLANTIC. ROLLO IN PARIS. ROLLO IN SWITZERLAND. ROLLO IN LONDON. ROLLO ON THE RHINE. ROLLO IN SCOTLAND. PRINCIPAL PERSONS OF THE STORY. ROLLO; twelve years of age. MR. and MRS. HOLIDAY; Rollo's father and mother, travelling in Europe. THANNY; Rollo's younger brother. JANE; Rollo's cousin, adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Holiday. MR. GEORGE; a young gentleman, Rollo's uncle. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I.--THE ARRANGEMENTS, 11 II.--CROSSING THE CHANNEL, 34 III.--JOURNEY TO PARIS, 56 IV.--THE GARDEN OF THE TUILERIES, 80 V.--THE ELYSIAN FIELDS, 100 VI.--A GREAT MISTAKE, 122 VII.--CARLOS, 143 VIII.--THE GARDEN OF PLANTS, 162 IX.--AN EXCURSION, 183 X.--ROLLO'S NARRATIVE, 202 XI.--CONCLUSION, 222 ENGRAVINGS. FRONTISPIECE. PAGE THE DINNER AT NEW HAVEN, 32 ENTERING DIEPPE, 49 THE ARRIVAL, 77 THE OBELISK, 105 THE HIPPODROME, 140 THE RESTAURANT, 179 SINGING IN THE OPEN AIR, 197 PERFORMANCE ON THE BOULEVARDS, 219 ROLLO IN PARIS. CHAPTER I. THE ARRANGEMENTS. Gentlemen and ladies at the hotels, in London, generally dine about six or seven o'clock, each party or family by themselves, in their own private parlor. One evening, about eight o'clock, just after the waiter had removed the cloth from the table where Rollo's father and mother, with Rollo himself and his cousin Jennie, had been dining, and left the table clear, Mr. Holiday rose, and walked slowly and feebly--for he was quite out of health, though much better than he had been--towards a secretary which stood at the side of the room. "Now," said he, "we will get out the map and the railway guide, and see about the ways of getting to France." Rollo and Jennie were at this time at the window, looking at the vehicles which were passing by along the Strand. The Strand is a street of London, and one of the most lively and crowded of them all. As soon as Rollo heard his father say that he was going to get the map and the railway guide, he said to Jane,-- "Let's go and see." So they both went to the table, and there, kneeling up upon two cushioned chairs which they brought forward for the purpose, they leaned over upon the table where their father was spreading out the map, and thus established themselves very comfortably as spectators of the proceedings. "Children," said Mr. Holiday, "do you come here to listen, or to talk?" "To listen," said Rollo. "O, very well," said Mr. Holiday; "then I am glad that you have come." In obedience to this intimation, Rollo and Jane took care not to interrupt Mr. Holiday even to ask a question, but looked on and listened very patiently and attentively for nearly half an hour, while he pointed out to Mrs. Holiday the various routes, and ascertained from the guide books the times at which the trains set out, and the steamers sailed, for each of them, and also the cost of getting to Paris by the several lines. If the readers of this book were themselves actually in London, and were going to Paris, as Rollo and Jennie were, they would be interested, perhaps, in having all this information laid before them in full detail. As it is, however, all that will be necessary, probably, is to give such a general statement of the case as will enable them to understand the story. By looking at any map of Europe, it will be seen that England is separated from France by the English Channel, a passage which, though it looks quite narrow on the map, is really very wide, especially toward the west. The narrowest place is between Dover and Calais, where the distance across is only about twenty-two miles. This narrow passage is called the Straits of Dover. It would have been very convenient for travellers that have to pass between London and Paris if this strait had happened to lie in the line, or nearly in the line, between these two cities; but it does not. It lies considerably to the eastward of it; so that, to cross the channel at the narrowest part, requires that the traveller should take quite a circuit round. To go by the shortest distance, it is necessary to cross the channel at a place where Dieppe is the harbor, on the French side, and New Haven on the English. There are other places of crossing, some of which are attended with one advantage, and others with another. In some, the harbors are not good, and the passengers have to go off in small boats, at certain times of tide, to get to the steamers. In others, the steamers leave only when the tide serves, which may happen to come at a very inconvenient hour. In a word, it is always quite a study with tourists, when they are ready to leave London for Paris, to determine by which of the various lines it will be best for their particular party, under the particular circumstances in which they are placed, to go. After ascertaining all the facts very carefully, and all the advantages and disadvantages of each particular line, Mr. Holiday asked his wife what she thought they had better do. "The cheapest line is by the way of New Haven," said Mrs. Holiday. "That's of no consequence, I think, now," said Mr. Holiday. "The difference is not very great." "For our whole party, it will make four or five pounds," said Mrs. Holiday. "Well," said Mr. Holiday, "I am travelling to recover my health, and every thing must give way to that. If I can only get well, I can earn money fast enough, when I go home, to replace what we expend. The only question is, Which way will be the pleasantest and the most comfortable?" "Then," said Mrs. Holiday, "I think we had better go by the way of Dover and Calais, where we have the shortest passage by sea." "I think so too," said Mr. Holiday; "so that point is settled." "Father," said Rollo, "I wish you would let Jennie and me go to Paris by ourselves alone, some other way." The reader who has perused the narrative of Rollo's voyage across the Atlantic will remember that, through a very peculiar combination of circumstances, he was left to make that voyage under his own charge, without having any one to take care of him. He was so much pleased with the result of that experiment, and was so proud of his success in acting as Jennie's protector, that he was quite desirous of trying such an experiment again. "O, no!" said his father. "Why, father, I got along well enough in coming over," replied Rollo. "True," said his father; "and if any accident, or any imperious necessity, should lead to your setting out for Paris without any escort, I have no doubt that you would get through safely. But it is one thing for a boy to be put into such a situation by some unforeseen and unexpected contingency, and quite another thing for his father deliberately to form such a plan for him." Rollo looked a little disappointed, but he did not reply. In fact, he felt that his father was right. "But I'll tell you," added Mr. Holiday. "If your uncle George is willing to go by some different route from ours, you may go with him." "And Jennie?" inquired Rollo. "Why! Jennie?" repeated Mr. Holiday, hesitating. "Let me think. Yes, Jennie may go with you, if she pleases, if her mother is willing." Jennie always called Mrs. Holiday her mother, although she was really her aunt. "Are you willing, mother," asked Rollo, very eagerly. Mrs. Holiday was at a loss what to say. She was very desirous to please Rollo, and at the same time she wished very much to have Jennie go with her. However, she finally decided the question by saying that Jennie might go with whichever party she pleased. Rollo's uncle George had not been long in England. He had come out from America some time after Rollo himself did, so that Rollo had not travelled with him a great deal. Mr. George was quite young, though he was a great deal older than Rollo--too old to be much of a companion for his nephew. Rollo liked him very much, because he was always kind to him; but there was no very great sympathy between them, for Mr. George was never much interested in such things as would please a boy. Besides, he was always very peremptory and decisive, though always just, in his treatment of Rollo, whenever he had him under his charge. Rollo was, however, very glad when his father consented that he and his uncle George might go to Paris together. Mr. George was out that day, and he did not come home until Rollo had gone to bed. Rollo, however, saw him early the next morning, and told him what his father had said. "Well," said Mr. George, after hearing his story, "and what do you propose that we should do?" "I propose that you, and Jennie, and I should go by the way of New Haven and Dieppe," replied Rollo. "Why?" said Mr. George. "You see it is cheaper that way," said Rollo. "We can go that way for twenty-four shillings. It costs two and three pounds by the other ways." "That's a consideration," said Mr. George. "For the pound you would save," said Rollo, "you could buy a very handsome book in Paris." Rollo suggested these considerations because he had often heard his uncle argue in this way before. He had himself another and a secret reason why he wished to go by the New Haven route; but we are all very apt, when giving reasons to others, to present such as we think will influence them, and not those which really influence us. Mr. George looked into the guide book at the pages which Rollo pointed out, and found that it was really as Rollo had said. "Well," said he, "I'll go that way with you." So that was settled, too. A short time after this conversation, Rollo's father and mother, and also Jennie, came in. Mr. Holiday rang the bell for the waiter to bring up breakfast. Jennie, when she found that it was really decided that her father and mother were to go one way, and her uncle George and Rollo another, was quite at a loss to determine which party she herself should join. She thought very justly that there would probably be more incident and adventure to be met with in going with Rollo; but then, on the other hand, she was extremely unwilling to be separated from her mother. She stood by her mother's side, leaning toward her in an attitude of confiding and affectionate attachment, while the others were talking about the details of the plan. "I rather think there is one thing that you have forgotten," said Mr. Holiday, "and which, it strikes me, is a decided objection to your plan; and that is, that the steamer for to-morrow, from New Haven, leaves at midnight." "That's the very reason why I wanted to go that way," said Rollo. "Why, Rollo!" exclaimed his mother. "Yes, mother," said Rollo. "There would be so much fun in setting out at midnight. Think, Jennie!" added Rollo, addressing his cousin, "we should sit up till midnight! And then to see all the people going on board by the light of lanterns and torches. I wonder if there'll be a moon. Let's look in the almanac, and see if there'll be a moon." "But, George," said Mrs. Holiday, "you will not wish to set off at midnight. I think you had better change your plan, after all." But Mr. George did not seem to think that the midnight departure of the boat was any objection to the New Haven plan. He had noticed that that was the time set for leaving New Haven the next night, and he thought that, on the whole, the arrangement would suit his plans very well. He would have a good long evening to write up his journal, which he said was getting rather behindhand. The water, too, would be more likely to be smooth in the night, so that there would be less danger of seasickness. Besides, he thought that both Rollo and himself would become very sleepy by sitting up so late, and so would fall directly to sleep as soon as they got into their berths on board the steamer, and sleep quietly till they began to draw near to the coast of France. The distance across the channel, at that point, was such, that the steamer, in leaving at midnight, would not reach Dieppe till five or six o'clock the next morning. Accordingly, the arrangements were all made for Rollo's departure the next day, with his uncle George, for New Haven. Jennie finally decided to go with her father and mother. The idea of sailing at midnight determined her; for such an adventure, attractive as it was in Rollo's eyes, seemed quite formidable in hers. Rollo had a very pleasant ride to New Haven, amusing himself all the way with the beauties of English scenery and the continual novelties that every where met his eye. When they at last arrived at New Haven, they found that the harbor consisted merely of a straight, artificial canal, cut in from the sea, where probably some small stream had originally issued. The sides of this harbor were lined with piers, and on one of the piers was a great hotel, forming a part, as it were, of the railway station. There were a few houses and other buildings near, but there was no town to be seen. The railway was on one side of the hotel, and the water was on the other. When the train stopped, one of the railway servants opened the door for Mr. George and Rollo to get out, and Mr. George went directly into the hotel to make arrangements for rooms and for dinner, while Rollo, eager to see the ships and the water, went through the house to the pier on the other side. He found that there was a pretty broad space on the pier, between the hotel and the water, with a shed upon it for merchandise, and extra tracks for freight trains. The water was quite low in the harbor, and the few vessels that were lying at the pier walls were mostly grounded in the mud. There was one steamboat lying opposite the hotel, but it was down so low that, at first, Rollo could only see the top of the smoke-pipe. Rollo went to the brink of the pier and looked down. The steamer appeared very small. It was painted black. There were very few people on board. Rollo had a great mind to go on board himself, as there was a plank leading down from the pier to the top of the paddle box. But it looked rather steep, and so Rollo concluded to postpone going on board till Mr. George should come out with him after dinner. Rollo looked about upon the pier a few minutes, and then went into the hotel. He passed through a spacious hall, and then through a passage way, from which he could look into a large room, the sides of which were formed of glass, so that the people who were in the room could see out all around them. The front of the room looked out upon the pier, the back side upon the passage way. A third side was toward the vestibule, and the fourth toward the coffee room. There were shelves around this room, within, and tables, and desks, and people going to and fro there. In fact, it seemed to be the office of the hotel. Rollo advanced to one of the openings that was toward the passage way, and asked which was the way to the coffee room. The girl pointed to the door which led to it, and Rollo went in. He found a large and beautiful room, with several tables set for dinner in different parts of it, and sideboards covered with silver, and glasses against the walls. On one side there were several large and beautiful windows, which looked out upon the pier, and opposite to each of these windows was a small dinner table, large enough, however, for two persons. Mr. George had taken one of these tables, and when Rollo came in he was sitting near it, reading a newspaper. "Come, Rollo," said he, "I have ordered dinner, and we shall just have time to arrange our accounts while they are getting it ready." So saying, Mr. George took out his pocket book, and also a small pocket inkstand, and a pen, and put them all upon the table. "Your father's plan," he continued, "is this: He is to pay all expenses of transportation, at the same rate that he pays for himself; so that, whatever you save by travelling in cheap ways, is your own." "Yes," said Rollo, smiling, "I mean to walk sometimes, and save it all." "He is also to pay the expense of your lodgings." "Yes," said Rollo. "Generally, of course, you will have lodgings with him, but sometimes you will be away from him; as, for instance, to-night. In such cases, I pay for your lodgings, on your father's account." "Yes," said Rollo, "I understand that." "He also pays the expense of all casualties." "So he said," replied Rollo; "but I don't understand what he means by that, very well." "Why, you may meet with accidents that will cost money to repair, or get into difficulties which will require money to get out of. For instance, you may lose your ticket, and so have to pay twice over; or you may get lost yourself, in Paris, and so have to hire a man with a carriage to bring you home. For all such things, the money is not to come from your purse. Your father will pay." "Suppose it is altogether my fault," said Rollo. "Then I think I ought to pay." "But your father said that he was sure you would not be to blame for such accidents; though I think he is mistaken there. I have no doubt, myself, that nearly all the accidents that will happen to you will come from boyish heedlessness and blundering on your part." "We'll see," said Rollo. "Yes," said Mr. George, "we'll see." "Then, as to your board," continued Mr. George, "your father said that you might do as you pleased about that. He would pay it, or you might, and be allowed five francs a day for it." "Five francs is about a dollar, is it not?" asked Rollo. "Yes," replied Mr. George, "very nearly. But you had better not reckon by dollars, now, at all, but by francs altogether. That's a franc." So saying, Mr. George took a silver coin out of his pocket, and showed it to Rollo. It was nearly as large as a quarter of a dollar, or an English shilling, but not quite. A quarter of a dollar is worth twenty-five cents, an English shilling twenty-four, and a franc about twenty cents. "You can have five of those a day to pay your own board with." "And how much would it cost me at a boarding house, in Paris, to pay my board?" asked Rollo. "Why, we don't board at boarding houses in Paris," said Mr. George. "We have rooms at a hotel, and then we get breakfast and dinner wherever we please, at coffee rooms and dining rooms all over the city, wherever we happen to be, or wherever we take a fancy to go. You can get a very excellent breakfast for a franc and a half. A beefsteak, or an omelet, and bread and butter and coffee." "That's enough for breakfast," said Rollo. "And then, dinner?" "You can get a first-rate dinner for two francs, or even less. That makes three francs and a half." "And tea?" "They never take tea in Paris," said Mr. George. "The French don't take tea." "Why not?" asked Rollo. "I don't know," replied Mr. George, "unless it is because the English _do_. Whatever is done in London, you generally find that just the contrary is done in Paris." "Don't we have any thing, then, after dinner?" asked Rollo. "Yes," said Mr. George. "The French generally go and take a seat at a little round table on the sidewalk, and have a little glass of brandy and a cigar." Here Rollo threw his head back, and laughed loud and long. He was greatly amused at the idea of his making an allowance, in calculating how far his five francs would go, for a glass of brandy and a cigar. Mr. George himself, sedate as he was, could not but smile. "The fact is," said he, at length, "there are only two meals to calculate for, and they will not cost, upon an average, more than three francs and a half, if we are prudent and economical, and go to plain and not expensive places. But then there is the immense amount that you will be always wishing to spend for cakes, and candy, and oranges, and nuts, and bonbons of all sorts and kinds. There is an endless variety of such things in Paris. You will find half a dozen cake shops in every street, with fifty different kinds of gingerbread and cake in them, all of the richest and most delicious description." "Yes," said Rollo, "I shall want some of those things." "No doubt," said Mr. George, "you will make yourself sick eating them, I'll venture to say, before you have been in Paris twenty-four hours." "No," said Rollo, shaking his head resolutely; "and I think I had better take the five francs and pay my own board." "Very well," said Mr. George, "and that provides for every thing except incidentals. Your father said that I might pay you five francs a day for incidentals and pocket money. That is to include all your personal expenses of every kind, except what we have already provided for. There will be excursions, and tickets to concerts and shows, and carriage hire, and toys that you will want to buy, and all such things. The amount of it is, that your father pays all your expenses for transportation, for lodging, and for casualties. You pay every thing else, and are allowed ten francs a day for it. I am to be treasurer, and to have the whole charge of your funds, except so far as I find it prudent and safe to intrust them to you, and you are to buy nothing at all against my consent." "Nothing at all?" asked Rollo. "No," said Mr. George, "nothing at all. You are not to expend a single centime in any way that I object to." "What is a centime?" asked Rollo. "It is of the value of less than one fourth of a cent," replied Mr. George. "But I should think I might buy such little things as that would come to, of myself," said Rollo. "Suppose I should wish to buy a small piece of gingerbread for a cent." "Say for a sou,"[A] replied Mr. George. "There are no cents in Paris." [A] Pronounced _soo_. "Well," rejoined Rollo, "suppose I should wish to spend a _sou_ for gingerbread, and eat it, and you should object to it." "Very well," replied Mr. George; "and suppose you were to wish to spend a sou for poison, and drink it." "But I should not be likely to buy poison," said Rollo, laughing. "Nor should I be likely to object to your buying gingerbread," rejoined Mr. George. "A boy, however, may, it is clear, do mischief with a little money as well as with a great deal; and, therefore, the power in his guardian should be absolute and entire. At any rate, so it is in this case. If I see fit to forbid your expending a single sou for any thing whatever, I can, and you will have no remedy till we see your father again; and then you can ask him to put you under some other person's care. Until he does this, however, the control is absolute and entire in my hands. I would not take charge of a boy on any other terms." "Well," said Rollo, "I agree to it." "And now," said Mr. George, "I am ready to begin your account." Mr. George then took a small account book from his pocket book as he said this, and, opening it at the beginning, he wrote across the top of the two pages which came together the words, _Rollo Holiday, in Account with his Father._ On the corner of the left-hand page he wrote Dr., which stands for debtor; and on that of the right-hand page, Cr., which stands for creditor. "There," said he, "now I shall enter, from time to time, on the creditor side, all the money that becomes due to you; and on the debtor side, all that I pay to you. Then, by striking a balance, we can always tell how much of your money there is in my hands. "Let me see," continued Mr. George. "Your father and mother concluded finally to go by the way of Folkstone. The fare that way is two pound eleven. This way, it is one pound four. I am to pay you the difference. The difference is one pound seven; and one pound seven, in francs, is--let me see how much." Mr. George made a calculation with a pencil and paper, and found that it amounted to thirty-three francs seventy-five centimes. "I don't understand reckoning by francs and centimes very well," said Rollo. "No," replied Mr. George, "that is your misfortune; and you'll have to bear it as well as you can till you get out of it." So Mr. George entered the francs--thirty-three seventy-five--in Rollo's book. "You have got thirty-three francs to begin with," said he; "that's a pretty good stock. "Now, there is your allowance of ten francs per day. I will enter that weekly. There are three days in this week, including to-day and Sunday. That makes thirty francs." So Mr. George entered the thirty francs. "There," said he, "the whole amount due you up to Monday morning is sixty-three francs seventy-five centimes. That is sixty-three francs and three fourths. A hundred centimes make a franc. "And now," continued Mr. George, "I will make you a payment, so as to put you in funds, and that must be put down on the other side. How much would you like?" "I don't know," said Rollo; "a few francs, I suppose." "Have you got a purse?" asked Mr. George. "Let me see it." So Rollo took out a small leather bag which he had bought in London. "That's it," said Mr. George. "I'll give you ten francs. When you want more, you can have it--that is, provided it is due to you." Here Mr. George rang a bell, and a waiter came in immediately. Mr. George handed the waiter a sovereign, and asked him to get change for it in French money. The waiter took the money, and presently came in with five five-franc pieces. These he presented very respectfully to Mr. George. Mr. George took two of them and gave them to Rollo. The others he put into his own pocket. The five-franc pieces were very bright and new, and they were of about the size of silver dollars. Rollo was very much pleased with his portion, and put them in his purse, quite proud of having so much spending money. "And you say that I must not spend any of it without first asking you," said Rollo. "O, no," replied Mr. George, "I have not said any such thing. That would be a great deal of trouble, both for you and for me." "But I thought you said that I was not to spend any thing without your consent." [Illustration: THE DINNER AT NEW HAVEN.] "No," said Mr. George, "I said _against_ my consent. I may forbid your spending whenever I think proper; but I shall not do so, so long as I find you always ask me in doubtful cases. Spend for yourself freely, whenever you are sure it is right. When you are not sure, ask me. If I find you abuse the privilege, I shall have to restrict you. Otherwise, not." Rollo was well satisfied with this understanding of the case; and just then the waiter came in, bearing a handsome silver tureen containing soup, which he put down upon the table, between Mr. George and Rollo. So the writing materials and the purses were put away, and the two travellers were soon occupied very busily in eating their dinner. CHAPTER II. CROSSING THE CHANNEL. Mr. Holiday had two reasons for making the arrangements described in the last chapter, in respect to Rollo's expenses. In the first place, it would gratify Rollo himself, who would feel more independent, and more like a man, he thought, in being allowed thus, in some measure, to have the charge and control of his own expenditures. But his second and principal reason was, that he might accustom his son, in early life, to bear pecuniary responsibilities, and to exercise judgment and discretion in the use of money. Many young men never have any training of this sort till they become of age. Before that time, whenever they wish for money, they go to their father and ask for it. They take all they can get; and when that is gone, they go and ask for more. They have no direct personal motive for exercising prudence and economy, and they have no experience of the evils that result from thriftlessness and prodigality. It is much better for all children that they should have pecuniary responsibilities, such as are suited to their years, thrown upon them in their youth, when the mistakes they make in acquiring their experience are of little moment. The same mistakes made after they become of age might be their ruin. In carrying the system into effect in Rollo's case, there seemed to be something very abrupt, at least, if not positively harsh, in Mr. George's mode of dealing with him. And yet Rollo did not dislike it. He felt that his uncle was treating him more like a man, on this account, or rather more like a large boy, and not like a child. In fact, a part of the rough handling which Rollo got from his uncle was due to this very circumstance--Mr. George having observed that he did not mind being knocked about a little. After dinner, Rollo proposed to his uncle that they should go out and take a walk. "I will go with you a few minutes," said Mr. George, "and then I must return to my room, and write up my journal." "Say half an hour," rejoined Rollo. "Well," replied Mr. George, "we will say half an hour." So they sallied forth upon the pier behind the hotel. Mr. George took a general survey of the harbor, and of the vessels that were lying in it, and also of the peaks and headlands which were seen at the mouth of it, toward the sea. "I should like to be on that hill," said Mr. George, "to look off over the channel, and see if I could discern the coast of France from it." "Let's go there," said Rollo. "That would take more than half an hour," replied Mr. George. "Well, at any rate, let's go on board the steamer," said Rollo. So, taking Mr. George by the hand, he led him along to the brink of the pier. Mr. George looked over, and saw the steamer lying at rest in its muddy bed below. "Is it possible?" said Mr. George, in a tone of great astonishment. "Can it be possible?" repeated Mr. George. "What?" inquired Rollo. "What is it that surprises you so much?" "Why, to find such a steamer as this for the travel on one of the great thoroughfares between England and France. Let's go down on board." So Mr. George led the way, and Rollo followed down the plank. The plank landed them on the top of the paddle box. From that place, a few steps led to the deck. They walked along the deck a short distance toward the stern, and there they found a door, and a small winding staircase leading down into the cabin. They descended these stairs, one before the other, for the space was not wide enough to allow of their going together; and when they reached the foot of them they found themselves in a small cabin, with one tier of berths around the sides. The cabin was not high enough for two. There were berths for about twenty or thirty passengers. The cabin was very neatly finished; and there was a row of cushioned seats around it, in front of the berths. In one corner, by the side of the door where Mr. George and Rollo had come in, was a small desk, with writing materials upon it. This Rollo supposed must be the "captain's office." While Mr. George sat surveying the scene, and mentally comparing this insignificant boat to the magnificent steamers on the Hudson River, in America, with their splendid and capacious cabins on three different decks, their promenade saloons, sometimes one hundred and fifty feet long, with ranges of elegant state rooms on either hand, and sofas, and couches, and _tête-à-têtes_ without number, in the middle, his perplexity increased. "I do not understand it at all," said he to Rollo. "I thought that there would at least be as much travelling between London and Paris, the two greatest cities in the world, as between New York and Albany. And yet there are half a dozen steamers every day on the North River, carrying from five hundred to one thousand passengers; while here, on the most direct and cheapest route between London and Paris, is one single steamer, that could not possibly carry one hundred passengers, and she only goes once in two days." Just then a young man, who seemed to be the clerk of the boat, came down the cabin stairs, and, seeing Mr. George and Rollo there, he asked them if they had taken their berths. They said that they had not; but they immediately proceeded to choose their berths, or rather their _places_, for there were no divisions separating the sleeping-places from each other except what was formed by the cushions. There was a long cushion for each sleeper, covered with crimson velvet or plush; and a round cushion, shaped like a bolster, and covered in the same way, for his head. On these cushions the passengers were expected to lie down without undressing, placing themselves in a row, head to head, and feet to feet. Mr. George chose two of these sleeping-places, one for himself, and the other for Rollo, and the clerk marked them with a ticket. Our two travellers then went up on deck again, and from the deck they ascended the plank to the pier. It was now nearly sunset, and it was a very pleasant evening. They sauntered slowly along the pier, until they came to a place where some steps led down to the water. There were several small boats at the foot of the steps, and in one of them was a man doing something to the rudder. Rollo saw that on the other side of the water was another long staircase leading down from the bank there, so as to form a landing-place for small boats at all times of tide. He also looked up and down the harbor, but he could see no bridge, and so he supposed that this must be a sort of ferry for the people who wished to cross from one side to the other. As soon as the man who was in the boat saw Mr. George and Rollo standing upon the pier, he rose up in his boat, and touching his hat at the same time, or rather making a sort of jerk with his hand, which was meant to represent a touch of the hat, he asked him if he would like to be rowed across to the other side. "Why, I don't know," said Mr. George. "What's the ferriage?" "That's just as the gentleman pleases," said the man, with another jerk at his hat. "And how much do they generally please?" said Mr. George. "What's the common custom?" "O, gentlemen gives us what they likes," said the man. "We always leaves it to them entirely." Mr. George was silent. After a moment's pause, the boatman said again,-- "Would you like to go, sir? Very nice boat." "Not on those terms," said Mr. George. "If you will tell me what the usual ferriage is, I can then tell you whether we wish to go or not." "Well, sir," replied the man, "gentlemen usually gives us about twopence apiece." "Twopence apiece. Very well, we will go." Mr. George did not wait to ask Rollo whether he would like to go before he decided the question. He would have considered this a mere waste of time, for Rollo was always ready to go, no matter where. So they got into the boat, and were rowed across the water. They ascended the stairs on the other side, and walked a little way in a smooth road which led along the bank. Rollo wished to go farther; but Mr. George said that his time had expired, and that he must go back. "But you may stay," said he to Rollo, "as long as you please, provided that you come back before dark." Rollo was much pleased with this permission, as he wished to go to the top of the hill, at the outlet of the harbor, and look at the prospect. He promised to return before dark. "Have you any change," said Mr. George, "to pay your ferriage back?" "No," said Rollo, "I have nothing but my five-franc pieces." "Then I will lend you twopence," said Mr. George. "You can pay me the first change you get in France." "But I cannot get any pennies in France," said Rollo. "True," said Mr. George; "you will get sous there. You must pay me four sous. A penny is equal to two sous. "I will pay your bill at the hotel, too," continued Mr. George, "as I suppose they will make out yours and mine together, and you can pay me your share to-morrow, when we land. Here is your ticket, however. You must take charge of that." "But suppose I lose it?" asked Rollo. "Then you will have to pay over again," said Mr. George; "that is all. You will lose about twenty francs; unless, indeed," he continued, "your father should call it a casualty." So Mr. George went back to the boat, and Rollo continued his walk, thinking on the way of the question which his uncle had suggested, whether his father would consider the loss of his ticket a casualty or not. He determined, however, very resolutely, that he would not lose it; and so he put it away safely in his wallet, and then went on. The road was very smooth and pleasant to walk in, being bordered by green fields on the one hand, and the water of the harbor on the other. Rollo came at length to the hill. There were successive terraces, with houses built upon them, on the sides of the hill, and paths leading to the summit. Rollo had a fine view of the sea, and of the vessels and steamers which were passing slowly in the offing, on their way up and down the channel; but though he looked long and eagerly for the coast of France, it was not to be seen. Rollo rambled about the hill for a considerable time; for at that season of the year the twilight continued very long, and it did not become dark till quite late. When, at length, the shadows of the evening began to shut in upon the landscape, he returned to the ferry, and the ferryman rowed him back again to the hotel. It was now nearly nine o'clock, and, of course, three hours remained before the time of embarkation would arrive. Rollo was not sorry for this, as he thought that there would be enough to amuse and occupy him all this time on and around the pier. His first duty, however, was to go and report himself to Mr. George as having returned from his walk. This he did. He found his uncle very busy in his room, writing his journal. "Now, Rollo," said Mr. George, "it is three hours before we are to leave. What are you going to do all that time?" "O, I shall find plenty to amuse myself with," said Rollo. "Very well," said Mr. George. "You may play about wherever you are sure it is safe. Don't go near the edge of the pier, unless there is somebody at hand to pull you out of the water with a boathook, if you fall in. Amuse yourself as long as you can; and when you are tired of taking care of yourself, come to me, and I will tell you what to do." Rollo, having received these instructions, left his uncle to his work, and went away. He descended the stairs, and went out upon the pier again, and after amusing himself, by examining every thing there, he concluded to go on board the steamer. A train of cars had arrived from London while he and his uncle had been on the other side of the water, and there were now several new passengers in the cabin, who were choosing and marking their berths, or talking together about the voyage. Rollo thought that, in order to make sure that his ticket was all right, he would climb up into his berth and see; and then, when he was there, it seemed to him a very funny place to sleep in; so he laid down his head upon the round cushion to try it. While he was in this position, his attention was attracted by the sound of children's voices on the stairs, talking French. Presently these children came into the cabin. Their mother was with them. There were two of them, and they were not more than five or six years old. Rollo was exceedingly astonished to hear such little children talk French so well. Rollo listened to see if he could understand what they said. He had studied French himself for a year or two, and could say a great many things. In fact, he had been accustomed to consider himself quite a good French scholar. But he now found that all his acquisitions dwindled into utter insignificance, when compared with the power over the language possessed by those little girls. The French party did not remain very long in the cabin where Rollo was, but passed at once through a door which led to a small ladies' cabin near. There were other persons, however, continually coming and going, and Rollo was interested in watching their movements, and in listening to the fragments of conversation which he heard. He found his position very comfortable, too, and the sounds around him produced so lulling an effect, that, before long, he insensibly closed his eyes. In a word, in less than fifteen minutes after he climbed up into his berth to see what sort of a place it was, he had put it fully to the test of experiment, by going fast asleep in it. In about half an hour after this, Mr. George, coming to the end of a paragraph in his journal, laid down his pen, drew a long breath, looked out the window, and then rang the bell. In a few minutes the chambermaid came. "Mary," said he, "I wish to ask the porter to go out and look about on the pier, and in the packet, and see if he can see any thing of that boy that came with me." "Very well, sir," said Mary, with a quick courtesy; and she immediately disappeared. In about five minutes she came back, and said that the young master was in his berth in the packet, sound asleep. "Very well," said Mr. George, in his turn. "Much obliged to you." He then went on with his writing. The first thing that Rollo himself was conscious of, after falling asleep in his berth, was a feeling of some one pulling him gently by the shoulder. He opened his eyes, and saw before him a face that he did not exactly know, and yet it was not entirely strange. The man had his hand upon Rollo's shoulder, and was endeavoring to wake him. "Your ticket, if you please, sir." Rollo stared wildly a minute, first at the man, and then about the cabin. It was night. Lamps were burning, and the cabin was full of people. Some were in their berths, some in groups on the seats, and one or two were just preparing to lie down. The engine was in motion, and the ship was evidently going fast through the water. In fact, the steamer was rocking and rolling as she went on, indicating that she was already far out at sea. "Your ticket, if you please, sir," repeated the clerk. Rollo glanced around to his uncle's berth, and there he saw his uncle lying quietly in his place, his head being on a cushion close to the one on which Rollo's head had been lying. "Uncle George," said Rollo, "he wants my ticket." "Well," said Mr. George, without moving, "give him your ticket." Rollo then recollected that he had his ticket in his wallet. So, after fumbling for a time in his pocket, he brought out his wallet, and produced the ticket, and handed it to the clerk. "Thank you, sir," said the clerk, taking the ticket. At the same time he put two other tickets in Rollo's wallet, in the place of the one which he had taken out. As he did this, he pointed to one of the small ones, saying,-- "That's for the landing." Rollo shut up his wallet, and put it in his pocket. "A shilling, if you please," said the clerk. Rollo had no shilling, and was still not much more than half awake. So he turned to his uncle again. "Uncle George," said he, "he wants a shilling." "Well, pay him a shilling, then," said Mr. George. Rollo now felt for his purse, and taking out one of his five-franc pieces, he gave it to the clerk, who, in return, gave him back a quantity of change. Rollo attempted to count the change, but he soon perceived that his ideas of francs and shillings were all in confusion. So he turned the change all together into his purse, put the purse back into his pocket, lay his head down upon his cushion again, shut his eyes, and in one minute was once more fast asleep. Some hours afterward he woke again, of his own accord. He opened his eyes and looked about him, and perceiving that it was morning, he climbed down from his berth, and then went up upon the deck. The coast of France was all before him, in full view, and the steamer was rapidly drawing near to it. He went to the bow of the vessel to get a nearer view. He saw directly before him a place where there were piers, and batteries, and other constructions indicating a town, while on either hand there extended long ranges of cliffs, with smooth, green slopes of land above, and broad, sandy shores below. In half an hour more the steamer arrived at the entrance of the harbor, which was formed of two long piers, built at a little distance from each other, and projecting quite into the sea. The steamer glided rapidly along between these high walls of stone, until, at length, it entered a broad basin, which was bordered by a continuation of these walls, and hemmed in on every side beyond the walls of the pier with ranges of the most quaint, and queer, and picturesque-looking buildings that Rollo ever saw. [Illustration: ENTERING DIEPPE.] These buildings were not close to the pier, but were back far enough to leave room for a street between them and the water. Such a street is called a _quay_.[B] Quays are built in almost all the cities of Europe where there are rivers or basins of water for shipping; and they are very pleasant streets to walk in, having usually large and elegant buildings on one side, and vessels and steamers on the other. [B] Pronounced _kee_. By the time that the steamer had entered the port, almost all the passengers had come up from below, and Mr. George among the rest. Mr. George came, expecting to find that, as they were now about to land, the baggage would be brought out, and that the several passengers would be called upon to select their own. But there was no movement of this kind. The baggage had all been put down into the hold the night before, and now the hatches were still closed, and there seemed to be no signs of any preparation to open them. In the mean time, the steamer gradually drew near to the pier. The engine was stopped. Ropes were thrown out. People in queer dresses, some of them soldiers, who were standing on the pier, caught the ropes and fastened them. The steamer was thus brought to her place and secured there. There was now, however, no rush to get on shore,--such as Rollo had always been accustomed to witness on board an American steamer on her arrival,--but every thing was quiet and still. By and by a plank was laid. Then the passengers were called upon to get out their tickets. Then they began to walk over the plank, each one giving up his landing ticket as he passed. When Mr. George and Rollo reached the pier, they found, on looking around them, that they were not yet at liberty. On the opposite side of the quay was a building, with a sign over it, in French, meaning custom-house office for packet boats; and there were two long ropes stretched, one from the stem and the other from the stern of the steamer, to the opposite sides of the door of this building, so as to enclose a space on the quay, in front of the building, in such a manner as to hem the passengers in, and make it necessary for them to pass through the custom house. The ropes were guarded by soldiers, dressed in what seemed to Rollo the queerest possible uniforms. They all talked French--even those who had talked English when they came on board the packet boat on the other side. "I can't understand a word they say," said Rollo. "Nor I," said Mr. George; "but we can watch and see what they will do." It did not require long watching, for no sooner had Mr. George said these words than he observed that the passengers were all going toward the door of the custom-house, and that, as they went, they were taking their passports out. Nobody can enter France without a passport. A passport is a paper given to the traveller by his own government. This paper tells the traveller's name, describes his person, and requests that the French government will allow him to pass through their country. Frenchmen themselves must have a passport too, though this is of a little different kind. All must have a passport of some kind or other, and all this machinery of ropes and soldiers was to make it sure that every one of the passengers had the proper document. The passengers accordingly took out their passports as they went into the custom-house door, and there passed, in single file, before an officer seated at a desk, who took them in turn, opened them, copied the names in his book, and then gave them back to the owners. Mr. George and Rollo followed on in the line. When their passports had been given back to them, they went on with the rest until they came out from the custom-house at another door, which brought them upon the quay outside of the ropes. "What's to be done next?" said Rollo. "I am sure I don't know," said Mr. George, "I suppose we shall see." There was an omnibus standing near, marked, "For the Iron Road,"--that being the French name for railroad,--but nobody seemed to be getting into it. In fact, the passengers, as fast as they came out from the custom-house, seemed all very quiet, as if waiting for something. A great many of them seemed to be French people, and they fell into little groups, and began to talk very volubly together, some finding friends who had come down to the quay to meet them, and others making friends, apparently, for the occasion, of the soldiers and idlers that were standing around. "Could not you ask some of them," said Rollo, "what we are to do next?" "I don't believe they would understand my French," said Mr. George. "I am sure I don't understand theirs." In a moment, however, he turned to a young man who was standing near, who seemed to be a waiter or servant man belonging to the place. "Do you speak English?" "Yes, sir," said the man, in a very foreign accent, but yet in a very pleasant tone. "What are we waiting for?" asked Mr. George. "You will wait, sir, for the baggages, and then for the visit of the baggages." "How long?" said Mr. George. "Twenty minutes," said the man. He also gave Mr. George to understand that he and Rollo might go and have some breakfast, if they chose. But Mr. George thought it was not safe for them to go away from the spot. So they waited where they were. In a few minutes the hatches were opened on board the vessel, and the sailors began to hoist out the trunks. As fast as they were brought up to the decks men took them on shore, and carried them into the custom-house by the same door where the passengers had entered. When all the baggage was carried in, the ropes were taken down, and the passengers went to the custom-house door again, to attend to the examination of the baggage. A soldier stood at the door to prevent too many going in at a time. Mr. George and Rollo followed the rest, and at length it came their turn to have their trunks examined. This was done very quick--the officers appearing to think, from the appearance of the travellers, that they would not be likely to have any smuggled goods in their possession. The officer, accordingly, just looked into the trunks, and then shut down the lids, and marked them passed. A porter then took them out at the side door. There, on Mr. George's telling them in French that they were going to Paris by the railroad, the trunks were put upon a cart, while Mr. George and Rollo got into the omnibus, and then they were very soon driving along the quay, in the direction, as they supposed, of the Paris railway station. CHAPTER III. JOURNEY TO PARIS. The omnibus which Mr. George and Rollo had entered contained several other passengers, some of whom had carpet bags and valises with them, as if they, too, were going to Paris. Besides the driver, there was a conductor, whose place was upon the step of the omnibus, behind. The conductor opened and shut the doors for the passengers when they wished to get in or out, and took the fare. "How much is the fare?" said Rollo to Mr. George. "I don't know," said Mr. George, shaking his head. He spoke, however, in a very unconcerned tone, as if it were of very little consequence whether he knew or not. "What are you going to do about it, then?" said Rollo. "I shall say, 'How much?' to him, when we get out; and then, if I do not understand his answer, I shall give him a large piece of money, and let him give me back as much change as he likes." Rollo resolved that he would do so too. Next to Mr. George and Rollo in the omnibus there sat a gentleman and lady, who seemed to be, as they really were, a new-married pair. They were making their bridal tour. The lady was dressed plainly, but well, in travelling costume, and she had a handsome morocco carriage bag hanging upon her arm. The gentleman was quite loaded with shawls, and boxes, and umbrellas, and small bags, which he had upon his lap or at his feet. Besides this, the lady had a trunk, which, together with that of her husband, had been left behind, to come on the cart. She was very anxious about this trunk, for it contained all her fine dresses. Her husband was interested in the novel sights and scenes that presented themselves to view in passing along the street; but she thought only of the trunk. "What strange costumes, Estelle!" said he. "Look! See that woman! What a funny cap!" "Yes," said Estelle; "but, Charley, don't you think it would have been better for us to have brought our trunks with us on the omnibus?" "I don't know," said her husband. "It is too late to think of that now. I've no doubt that they are safe enough where they are. Look! There's a girl with wooden shoes on. Those are the wooden shoes we have read about so often in books. Look!" Estelle glanced her eyes, for an instant, toward the wooden shoes, and then began to look back along the street again, watching anxiously for the trunks. At length the omnibus approached the station. It entered through a magnificent portal, under an arch. There was a soldier walking back and forth, with his musket in his hand, bayonet fixed, to guard the entrance. None but actual travellers were allowed to enter. The omnibus, having entered the court, stopped before a splendid portico, where there was a door leading into the building. The passengers paid their fares, and got out. On entering the building, they found themselves in a spacious apartment, with a great variety of partitions, offices, enclosures, and railings, presenting themselves on every hand, the meaning of all which it was very difficult to understand. There were also signs marked first class, and second class, and third class, and placards of notices to travellers, and time tables, and various similar things. On the back side of the room were doors and windows, looking out to a platform, where the train of cars was seen, apparently all ready to set off. But the partitions and railings which were in the way prevented the company from going out there. There were a number of travellers in this room, several parties having arrived there before the omnibus came. Many of these persons were waiting quietly, talking in little groups, or resting themselves by sitting upon their carpet bags. Others were looking about eagerly and anxiously, wondering what they were to do, or trying to find somebody who could tell them about the baggage. Estelle was the most restless and uneasy of all. She went continually to the door to look down the road, to see if the cart was coming. "Charles," said she, "what a shame it is that they don't come with the trunks! The train is all ready, and will go off before they come." "O, no," said her husband; "I think not. Don't be anxious about them. I've no doubt they will be here in time. Come with me, and let us look about the station, and see how it differs from ours." But Estelle would not allow her thoughts to be diverted from her trunk. She remained on the steps, looking anxiously down the road. Some of the other passengers who were unused to travelling, seeing her look so anxious, and not understanding what she said, supposed that some accident had happened, or that some unusual delay had occurred, and they began to be anxious too. Just then a bell began to ring out upon the platform. "There!" exclaimed Estelle. "The train is going! What shall we do? Why _can't_ you ask somebody, Charles?" "Why, I can't speak French," said Charles; "and they would not understand me if I ask in English." "Yes they would," said Estelle; "I'm sure they would. There are so many English travellers going on these roads now, that it must be that they have men here that speak English. There's a man," said she, pointing to a person in livery who was standing within a sort of enclosure. Mr. Charles, thus urged, walked across the hall to the railing, though very reluctantly, and asked the man if he could tell him why the trunks did not come. "Sir?" said the man, in French, and looking as if he did not understand. "Do you speak English?" asked Mr. Charles. "There," said the man, pointing across the room. Mr. Charles looked, and saw another man, who, by the livery or uniform which he wore, seemed to be a porter belonging to the station, standing by a window. He accordingly went across to ask the question of him. "Do you speak English, sir?" said he. "Yes, sare," replied the man, speaking with great formality, and in a very foreign accent, making, at the same time, a very polite bow. "What is the reason that our baggage does not come?" asked Mr. Charles. "_Yes_, sare," replied the porter, speaking in the same manner. "Why does not it come?" asked Mr. Charles again. "We put it upon a cart at the custom-house, and why does not it come?" "Yes, sare," replied the porter, with another very polite bow. Mr. Charles, perceiving that the porter's knowledge of English consisted, apparently, in being able to say, "Yes, sir," and mortified at the absurd figure which he made in attempting to make useless inquiries in such a way, bowed in his turn, and went back to Estelle in a state of greater alienation of heart from her than he had ever experienced before. And as this book may, perhaps, be read sometimes by girls as well as boys, I will here, for their benefit, add the remark, that there is no possible way by which a lady can more effectually destroy any kind feeling which a gentleman may entertain for her than by forcing him to exhibit himself thus in an awkward and ridiculous light, by her unreasonable exactions on journeys, or rides, or walks, or excursions of any kind that they may be taking together. Rollo and his uncle George had witnessed this scene, and had both been much interested in watching the progress of it. Rollo did not know but that there was some real cause for solicitude about the baggage, especially as several of the lady passengers who were standing with Estelle at the door seemed to be anxiously looking down the road. "Do you feel any anxiety about our trunks coming?" asked Rollo. "Not the least," said Mr. George, quietly. "Why not?" asked Rollo. "Are you sure that they will come?" "No," said Mr. George; "but there are a good many excellent reasons why I should not feel any anxiety about them. In the first place, I have some little confidence in the railway arrangements made in this country. The French are famous all the world over for their skill in systematizing and regulating all operations of this kind, so that they shall work in the most sure and perfect manner. It does not seem at all probable to me, therefore, that they can manage so clumsily here, on one of the great lines between England and France, as to get all the trunks of a whole steamer load of passengers upon a cart, and then loiter with it on the way to the station, and let the train go off without it." "Well," said Rollo, "that's a good reason; but you said there were several." "Another is, that, if they are capable of managing so clumsily as to have such a thing happen, we cannot help it, and have nothing to do but to bear it quietly. We put our trunks in the proper place to have them brought here. We could not have done otherwise, with propriety, for that was the regular mode provided for conveying the baggage; and if there is a failure to get it here, we are not to fret about it, but to take it as we would a storm, or a break down, or any other casualty--that is, take it quietly." "Yes," said Rollo; "that's a good reason. Are there any more?" "There is one more," said Mr. George; "and that is, I am not anxious about the trunks coming in season, for I don't care a fig whether they come or not." "O, uncle George!" exclaimed Rollo. "I do not," said Mr. George; "for if they do not come, the only consequence will be, that we shall have to wait two or three hours for the next train, which will give us just time to ramble about a little in this queer-looking town of Dieppe, and get some breakfast, and perhaps have some curious adventures in trying to talk French. In fact, I rather hope the baggage won't come." Mr. George was destined to be disappointed in this rising desire, for, while he and Rollo were talking, Estelle came running in to her husband with a countenance full of joy, saying that the cart had come, and urging him to come and get their trunks off as quick as possible. Her eagerness was increased by hearing the bell again, which now began to toll, leading her to think that the train was going off immediately. The porters, however, whose business it was to carry the trunks in, did not seem to be at all disturbed by the sound, but began to take off the trunks, one by one, and convey them up into the station. Here they were placed upon a sort of counter, from whence they were taken off on the other side, and weighed in a curiously contrived pair of scales placed there for the purpose. If any trunk weighed over a certain number of pounds,--the amount which, according to the regulations of the road, each passenger was allowed to carry,--then the surplus had to be paid for. There was a little office close to the weighing machine; and as fast as the trunks were weighed, the result was reported to the clerk, who made out a bill for the surplus, whatever it was, and the passenger paid it through an opening. If there was no surplus weight, then they gave the passenger a similar bill, which was to be his check for his trunk at the end of the journey. Every thing was, however, so admirably arranged, that all this was done very rapidly. Mr. Charles, when he found that the trunks were all to be weighed, proposed to go with Estelle to the cars, so as to get a good seat for her; but Estelle chose to remain and make sure that her trunk was attended to. It happened that Mr. George's trunk and Rollo's were weighed among the first; and as soon as they got their checks, Mr. George said,-- "Now for our seats in the cars." "But which way are we to go?" said Rollo. "I don't know," said Mr. George. "Go and show that man your ticket, and ask him where we are to go." "In French?" said Rollo. "Yes," said Mr. George. So Rollo went to the man who was standing by a sort of gateway which led through a partition railing, as if he were there to guard the passage; and holding up his little pasteboard ticket, he said, in French,-- "Where to go?" The man looked at the ticket, and, seeing that first class was printed upon it, he pointed in a certain direction, and said something in French, speaking, however, in so rapid and voluble a manner, that Rollo could not understand a single word. He, however, understood the sign. "This way, uncle George," said Rollo. "He says we must go this way." Following the indication which the man had given, Mr. George and Rollo passed out upon the platform, where they found the train ready for them. There were various attendants upon the platform, dressed in a quaint sort of uniform, the livery, as it were, of the railroad company. One of them looked at Rollo's ticket, and then opened the door of a first-class car. The cars were made like those in England, in separate compartments, each compartment being like a large coach, with one front seat, and one back, facing each other. There were four places; that is, room for four passengers on each seat. Of course, only those at the ends were near the window. Rollo and Mr. George took the two seats nearest the window on the side where they got in, as one of the seats at the opposite side was already occupied by a gentleman. The gentleman seemed to be an Englishman, for he was reading the London Times. Rollo and Mr. George had been seated only two or three minutes before Estelle and her husband came along, Estelle leading the way. The attendant opened the door of the car, and Estelle, followed by her husband, got in. They passed between Mr. George and Rollo, and stood there for a moment, looking about for a good seat. A freight train was slowly trundling by at this time on an adjoining track, so that what they said was not very audible; but still, Mr. George and Rollo could hear it. "I want a seat by the window," said Estelle, "where I can look out and see the country. Ask that gentleman if he would not be willing to take a middle seat, and let us sit together by the window." "We had better go to some other car," said her husband, in an undertone. "_He_ wishes to see the country, probably, himself, and has come early, perhaps, so as to get a good seat." "O, no," said Estelle; "this is a very nice car; and he would just as soon change as not, I have no doubt. Ask him, Charley; do." So Estelle moved to one side for her husband to pass. Mr. Charles, thus urged, approached the gentleman, and said, in a very bland and respectful manner,-- "Should you have any objection, sir, to move your seat, so as to let this lady sit by the window?" The gentleman raised his eyes from his paper, and looked at Mr. Charles an instant, and then answered quietly,-- "I prefer this seat, sir." He then went on with his reading as before. Estelle pouted her lip, and said, though in a tone too low, perhaps, for the gentleman to hear, "What a rude man!" "We will give you _these_ seats, sir," said Mr. George, "if you would like them." "Yes, they'll do just as well," said Estelle, speaking to her husband. Mr. George rose, and saying, "Come, Rollo," he left the car. Mr. George had some trouble in looking for other seats; but at length he succeeded in finding two that were as good as those which they had left. "I think she might at least have thanked you for giving up your seat to accommodate her," said Rollo. "I did not do it to accommodate her," said Mr. George; "I did it to get out of the sight and hearing of her. I would not ride from here to Paris in the same car with such a fussmaker for all the prospects in France. I had rather be shut up in a freight car." "How much trouble she makes her husband!" said Rollo. "It is not the trouble," said Mr. George, "it is the mortification and annoyance. She is a perpetual torment. If that's the way that young wives treat their husbands on the bridal tour, I'm thankful that I am not a bridegroom." The train soon set out, and Mr. George and Rollo, forgetting Estelle, soon began to enjoy the ride. They were both extremely interested in the views which they obtained from their windows as they passed along, and with the antique and quaint appearance of the country--the ancient stone cottages, with thatched roofs; the peasants, in their picturesque dresses; the immense tracts of cultivated country, divided in green and brown patches, like the beds of a garden, but with no fences or enclosures of any kind to be seen; the great forests, with trees planted closely in rows, like the corn in an American cornfield; and the roadways which they occasionally passed--immense avenues, bordered on either hand with double rows of majestic trees, and extending across the country, as straight as the street of a city, till lost in the horizon. These and a thousand other things, which were all the time presenting themselves to view, kept the travellers continually full of wonder and delight. After going on thus for several hours, the train stopped in a very spacious depot, where there was a large refreshment room; and as one of the attendants called out that there would be ten minutes of rest, both Mr. George and Rollo got out, and went into the refreshment room. They found a great multitude of cakes and meats spread out upon an immense counter, and dishes of every kind, all totally unknown to them. They, of course, could not call for any thing; but, after taking a survey, they helped themselves to what they thought looked as if it might be good, and then paid in the same way, by letting the girls that attended the tables help themselves to money which the travellers held out to them in their hands. They then took their seats again in the car, and soon afterward the train moved on. The place where they had stopped was Rouen, which, as well as Dieppe and Paris, the reader will find, on examining any map of France. In the course of the ride from Rouen to Paris, Mr. George and Rollo fell into quite a conversation, in which Rollo received a great deal of very good advice from Mr. George in respect to the care of himself when he should get to Paris. "I suppose that I should be sure to get lost," said Rollo, "if I should attempt to go out in such a great city alone." "No," said Mr. George, "not at all. A person can walk about a great way, sometimes, in a strange city, without getting lost. All he has to do is to take care, at first, to go only in such directions as that he can keep the way home in his mind." "I don't know what you mean, exactly, by that," said Rollo. "Why, suppose you were in a great city, and you come out at the door of your hotel, and there you find a long, straight street. You walk along that street half a mile. Then don't you think you could find your way home?" "Yes," said Rollo. "Certainly," said Mr. George, "because you have it in your mind that the way home is directly back by that same street, till you come to the hotel. Now, suppose that, after going along in that street for half a mile, you should come to a great church, upon a corner, and should turn there to the right, and go for some distance in another street leading off from the first one; don't you think you could _then_ find your way home?" "Yes," said Rollo, "I should go back to the church, and then turn to the left, and so go home." "Very well," said Mr. George; "by proceeding cautiously in that way, carrying your way home in your mind with you all the time, you can ramble a great deal about a strange city without getting lost, and go farther and farther every day. "Then, besides, if you do get lost, it is of no consequence. You can always ask the way back; or, if worst comes to worst, you can take a cab, and tell the man to drive you home." "Yes," said Rollo, "I suppose I could always do that." "Only you must be sure," said Mr. George, "not to forget the name of your hotel. Once I was walking about in Paris, and I saw a colored girl on the sidewalk, before me, who seemed to be inquiring something of the people that she met, without appearing to get any satisfactory answer. I thought she was an American girl; and so I went to her, and asked her in French what she wanted to know--for I observed that she was speaking French. She said she wished to know what was the name of the hotel where most of the Americans lodged. I could not speak French very well myself, and so I could not ask her for any explanations; but I supposed that she belonged to some American party, and had lost her way in going somewhere of an errand, and had forgotten the name of the hotel. So I told her the names of two or three hotels where Americans were accustomed to lodge, and she went away." "Did she find her own hotel?" asked Rollo. "I don't know," said Mr. George. "I never knew what became of her." "How did she learn French, do you suppose?" asked Rollo. "I presume she came from New Orleans," replied Mr. George, "where nearly all the people speak French." Thus our two travellers beguiled their journey, by talking sometimes about the novel and curious objects which presented themselves to view, in the landscape, as the train rolled rapidly along on its way, and sometimes about what they expected to see and to do on their arrival in Paris. At length, the indications that they were approaching the great capital began to multiply on every hand. The villages were more frequent. Villas, parks, and palaces came into view; and here and there an ancient castle reposed on the slope of a distant hill, or frowned from its summit. At length, Rollo, turning his head to the window opposite to the one where he had been looking out, exclaimed suddenly,-- "Look there! Uncle George, what's that?" Mr. George said that that was Napoleon's famous Triumphal Arch, that forms the grand entrance to Paris, on the way to the royal palaces. It was a large, square building, splendidly adorned with sculptures and architectural ornaments, and towering high into the air out of the midst of a perfect sea of houses, streets, avenues, trees, gardens, and palaces, which covered the whole country around. It stood upon a commanding elevation, which made its magnitude and its height seem all the more impressive. Through the centre of it was a magnificent archway, wide enough for four carriages to pass abreast. "It is the Triumphal Arch," said Mr. George, "by which all grand processions enter Paris on great public days of rejoicing. We will go out and see it some day. It is called the Triumphal Arch of Neuilly, because it is on the road that leads to Neuilly."[C] [C] It is also called the Arc de l'Etoile. Etoile means _star_, and the French give that name to a place where several roads diverge from one point. Roads so diverging form a sort of star. The reader will find this arch on any map of Paris, with the roads diverging from it. By this time the Triumphal Arch had passed out of view, and presently the train of cars began to be shut in by buildings, and the usual indications appeared of the approach to a great station. Queer-looking signals, of mysterious meaning,--some red, some blue, some round, some square,--glided by, and men in strange and fantastic costumes stood on the right hand and on the left, with little flags in their hands, and one arm extended, as if to show the locomotive the way. At length the convoy (as the French call a railway train) came to a stand, and an attendant, in uniform, opened the door of the car. Mr. George and Rollo got out and looked about, quite bewildered with the magnificence of the scene around them. The station was very extensive, and was very splendid in its construction, and there were immense numbers of people going and coming in it in all directions. Still, every thing was so well regulated that there was no disorder or confusion. There was a line of carriages drawn up in a certain place near the platform; but the coachmen remained quietly by them, awaiting calls from the passengers, instead of vociferously and clamorously offering their services, as is customary at the stations in America. Nor was there any pushing or crowding for trunks and baggage. In fact, the trunks were all to be examined before they could go into the city; for there are separate duties for the city of Paris, in addition to those for France. The baggage was, therefore, all taken from the baggage car, and arranged in an immense apartment, on counters, which extended all around the sides, and up and down the middle; and then, when all was ready, the passengers were admitted, and each one claimed his own. Mr. George and Rollo easily found their trunks, and, on presenting their tickets, an officer required them to open the trunks, that he might see if there was any thing contraband inside. As soon, however, as he perceived that Mr. George and Rollo were foreigners, and that their trunks had come from beyond sea, he shut down the lids again, saying, "It is well." A porter then took the trunks and carried them out to a carriage. "Hotel of the Rhine, Place Vendome," said Mr. George, in French, to the coachman, by way of directing him where to go. [Illustration: THE ARRIVAL.] "Yes--yes--yes--yes," said the coachman. It is so natural and easy for the French to talk, that they generally use all the words they can to express their meaning, besides an infinity of gestures. Thus, when they wish to say yes, they often repeat the yes four or five times, in a very rapid manner, thus:-- Yes--yes--yes--yes. Mr. George got into the coach, and Rollo followed him. As they drove along the streets, Rollo tried to look out the window and see; but the window was so small, and the streets were so narrow, and the coachman, moreover, drove so fast, that he had very little opportunity to make observations. At length he caught a momentary glimpse of a monstrous column standing in the middle of an open square; and immediately afterward the carriage drove in under an archway, and came to a stand, in a small, open court, surrounded with lofty buildings. This was the hotel. There was a small room, which served as a porter's lodge, in this court, near where the coach stopped. A girl came to the door of this lodge to receive the guests. She bowed to Mr. George and Rollo with great politeness, and seemed glad to see them. Mr. George spoke to her in French, to say what rooms he wished to engage. What he said, literally translated, was this:-- "We want two chambers for ourselves, at the third, and an apartment of three pieces, at the second, for a gentleman, lady, and their young girl, whom we attend to-morrow." The girl, who was very neatly and prettily dressed, and was very agreeable in her manners, immediately said, "Very well," and rang a bell. A servant man came at the summons, and, taking the trunks, showed Mr. George and Rollo up to their rooms. CHAPTER IV. THE GARDEN OF THE TUILERIES. The first Sunday that Rollo spent in Paris he met with quite a singular adventure. His father and mother had arrived the evening before, and had established themselves quite comfortably in the "apartment of three pieces," which Mr. George had engaged for them. An apartment, according to the French use of the term, is not a single room, but a group of rooms, suitable to be occupied by one family. The number of _pieces_ is the number of rooms. Mr. Holiday's three rooms were a small but beautifully furnished parlor, where they had breakfast, and two bed rooms. One bed room was for himself and Mrs. Holiday, and the other was for Jennie. There were a great many splendid mirrors in these rooms, and other elegant furniture. The floors were not carpeted, but were formed of dark and polished wood, curiously inlaid, with rugs here and there at the doors and before the sofas and chairs. There was a small, square rug before every chair, and a large one before the sofa. There were a great many other curious things to be observed in the arrangements of the room. The fireplace, for example, was closed by plates of sheet iron, which could be shoved up and down like the sashes of a window; while the windows themselves opened like doors, each having a great brass fastening, like a latch, in the middle, and hinges at the sides. Rollo had gone with his father and mother to church in the morning, and at about one o'clock they returned. Rollo and Jennie remained at home, after one, for an hour or two, waiting for their uncle George to come. He had gone away somewhere, and had not yet returned. While thus waiting, the children sat at the window of their parlor, which they opened by swinging the two sides of the sash entirely back, so that they could see out to great advantage. The window opened down quite low; but there was a strong iron bar passing across from side to side, to keep them from falling out. The children sat at this window, amusing themselves with what they could see in the square. The name of the square was the Place Vendome. There was a very large and lofty column in the centre of it. This column is very greatly celebrated for its magnitude and its beauty. It is twelve feet in diameter, and nearly a hundred and forty feet high. But what is most remarkable is, that the whole exterior of it, enormous as the mass is, is formed of brass. The brass was obtained by melting up the cannons which Napoleon took from his enemies. At the end of one of his campaigns he found that he had twelve hundred cannons which he had taken from the Russians and Austrians, with whom he had been at war; and after reflecting for some time on the question, what he should do with them, he concluded to send them to Paris, and there to have them made into this enormous column, to ornament the centre of the Place Vendome. The column, though made of brass, is not bright upon the outside, but dark, like bronze, and the surface is ornamented with figures in what are called bas relief, representing the battles and victories in which the cannon out of which the column was composed were taken from the enemy. Rollo and Jennie, in looking at this column from the window of their hotel, observed that around the foot of it there was a square space enclosed by an iron railing, forming a sort of yard. There was a gate in the front side of this railing. This gate was open; but there were two soldiers standing by it, with guns in their hands, as if to prevent any body from going in. The column itself, as is usual with such columns, did not stand directly upon the ground, but upon a square pedestal, which was built of massive blocks of granite, resting on a deep and strong foundation; and as the column itself was twelve feet in diameter, the pedestal, being necessarily somewhat larger, was quite a considerable structure. In the front of it, opposite the gate in the iron railing, was a door. The door was open, but nothing was to be seen but darkness within. "I wonder what they do in there?" said Rollo. "The gate is open, and the door is open; but I suppose the soldiers would not let any body go in to see. Do you suppose, Jennie, that it can be possible that there is any way to get up to the top of the column by going in at that door?" "Yes," replied Jennie; and so saying, she pointed eagerly to the top of the column, and added, "For there are some boys up there now." Rollo looked up to the top of the column. There was a statue of Napoleon upon the summit, which appeared to be of about the ordinary size of a man, though it is really about eight times as large as life, being twice as large in every dimension. It looks small, on account of its being so high in the air. Beneath this statue and around the top of the column the children saw that there was a small gallery, with a railing on the outside of it. Several persons were standing on this gallery, leaning on the railing. At first Rollo thought that they were sculptured figures placed there, like the statue of Napoleon on the top, for ornament; but presently he saw some of them move about, which convinced him that they were real men. Two of them were soldiers, as was evident from the red uniform which they wore. But they all looked exceedingly small. "There must be a staircase inside," said Rollo, "or else some ladders. If not, how could those men get up?" "Yes," said Jennie. "I should like to go up there very much," said Rollo, "if I could only get by the soldiers." "I should not dare to go up to such a high place," said Jennie, shaking her head solemnly. At the foot of the column and outside of the railing which formed the enclosure around the pedestal was a very broad and smooth place, as smooth as a floor, and raised like a sidewalk above the street. It was very broad, and people walked over it in passing through the square. There was only one way of passing through the square, and that was from north to south. From east to west there was no street, but the ranges of houses and palaces continued on those sides unbroken. These edifices presented a very fine architectural frontage toward the square, and gave to the whole space which they enclosed a very rich and grand appearance. Over the doors of two or three of the houses there were small tricolored flags flying; and wherever these flags were, there were soldiers on the sidewalk below guarding the doors. But neither Rollo nor Jennie was able to imagine what this could mean. About three o'clock, when Rollo and Jennie had began to be tired of looking at the column, their mother came into the room. She said that Mr. Holiday was fatigued and was going to lie down, and that neither he nor herself would go out again. Rollo then asked if he and Jennie might go out and take a walk. His mother seemed to hesitate about it, but presently said that she would go and ask Mr. Holiday if he thought it would be safe. She accordingly went into the bed room, and very soon returned, saying that Mr. Holiday thought it would be safe for them to go if he gave them some directions. "He says," added Mrs. Holiday, "that you may get ready, and then go into his room, and he will give you the directions. Only you must not talk much with him, for it hurts him to talk. Hear what he has to say, and then come out immediately." So the children made themselves ready, and then went into their father's room. They found him sitting in a great arm chair by a window where the sun was shining. He looked pale and tired. When the children came in, however, he turned to them with a smile, and said,-- "Children, I am glad you are going out to take a walk. You can go very safely, if you follow my directions. "This is the Place Vendome. There are only two ways of going out of it. One leads to the north, and the other to the south. "If you take the road which goes to the north, that is, that way," said Mr. Holiday, pointing, "you will go out by the street which is called the Street of Peace.[D] The Street of Peace is straight, and pretty broad; and if you follow it to the end of it, you will come to the Boulevards." [D] Mr. Holiday called this street, of course, by its French name; but we give its name here in English, for the convenience of the reader, who may, perhaps, not be able to pronounce French. "What are the Boulevards?" asked Rollo. "Hush!" said Jennie, gently touching Rollo at the same time with her hand. "Boulevards," said Mr. Holiday, "means bulwarks. A great many years ago there was a line of bulwarks or fortifications all around Paris; but at length, when the city grew too large for them, they levelled them down and made a very broad and handsome street where they had been, and then afterward made a new line of fortifications farther out. This broad and handsome street, or rather, series of streets, is called the Boulevards. It extends almost entirely around the city. Of course, when you get into the Boulevards, you are in no danger of losing yourselves; for you can go on as far as you please, either way, and then come back to the Street of Peace again, and then come home." "Yes," said Rollo, "I understand." Here Jennie gently touched Rollo again, to remind him that he was not to talk. "You will know the Boulevards at once when you come to them," continued Mr. Holiday, "they are so much broader and more beautiful than any of the other streets of Paris. Even the sidewalks are as wide as many ordinary streets; and there are rows of young trees along the edges of the sidewalks. Now, if you choose, you can go out from the Place Vendome on the northern side, by the Street of Peace, and so walk on till you come to the Boulevards. Then you can walk along the Boulevards as far as you please. "Or," continued Mr. Holiday, "you can take the opposite course. You can go out of the Place Vendome on the southern side. That will bring you directly in the garden of the Tuileries." "I should like to go into a garden," said Jennie, "and see the flowers." "You will see," continued Mr. Holiday, "as soon as you begin to go out of the Place Vendome, at a little distance before you, perhaps as far as two or three blocks in New York, a wall of green trees." "A wall of green trees!" exclaimed Rollo. "Yes," said his father. "It is a thick row of trees growing in the garden, and having the side toward the street trimmed smooth and straight like a wall. The entrance through this range of trees, opposite the gateway where you go into the garden, looks like an archway in a green wall. You will see it before you as soon as you turn the corner of this hotel into the street that leads that way. You can walk straight on till you come to the place. There you will find the entrance to the garden. There is a very high iron palisade along the side of the garden toward the street, with the rows of trees which I have spoken of inside of it. There is a gateway through this palisade where you can go in. There are two soldiers there to guard the gateway." "Then how can we get in?" asked Jennie. "O, go right in," replied Mr. Holiday. "Pay no attention to the soldiers. They will not say any thing to you. They are only sentinels. "After you pass through the gateway, you keep on in the same direction, without turning to the right hand or to the left, just as if you were going across the garden. You go on in this way till you get to the middle alley, which is a very wide alley, that runs up and down the middle of the garden. This alley is called the Grand Alley, and it is a very grand alley indeed. It is as broad as a very wide street, and it is nearly two miles long.[A] It begins at the palace of the Tuileries, in the middle of the city, and extends through the whole length of the gardens of the Tuileries; and then, passing out through great gates at the foot of the garden, it extends through the Elysian Fields, away out to the great Triumphal Arch of the Star, which you saw from the cars when you were coming into the city. "Now, when you get into the Grand Alley, which you will know by its being the broadest, and smoothest, and most splendid grand walk that you ever saw, you must stop for a minute, and look both ways. I'll tell you what you will see. First, if you turn to the left, that is, toward the east, you will see at the end of the alley, in that direction, a long range of splendid buildings, extending across from side to side. In the opposite direction, at the top of a long, gentle slope, a mile and a half away, you will see the grand Triumphal Arch. That is at the barrier of the city. The view is not entirely open, however, out to the arch. About midway, in the centre of the Grand Alley, is a tall obelisk, standing on a high pedestal, and farther along there are one or two fountains. Still you can see the Triumphal Arch very plainly, it is so large, and it stands so high. "Now, the Grand Alley is nearly two miles long, and, wherever you may be in it, you can always see the palace at one end, the arch at the other, and the Egyptian obelisk in the middle. So that, as long as you walk back and forth in this alley, keeping these things in sight, you cannot lose your way. "Only I ought to say," continued Mr. Holiday, "that the garden does not extend all the way to the barrier. The garden extends, perhaps, half a mile. Near the bottom of it is a great basin or pond of water, with a stone margin to it all around. You will have to go round this basin, for the centre of it is exactly in the middle of the Grand Alley. Then you come very soon to the end of the garden, and you will go out through great iron gates, but still you will keep on in the same direction. Here you will come to a very large, open square, with the obelisk in the centre of it, and fountains and statues in it all around. Still you will keep straight on across this square, only you will have to turn aside to go round the obelisk. After you pass through the square, the Grand Alley still continues on, though now it becomes a Grand Avenue, leading through pleasure grounds, with ranges of trees and of buildings on either side. It becomes very wide here, being as wide as two or three ordinary streets, and will be filled with carriages and horsemen. But there will be good broad sidewalks for you on either hand, under the shade of the trees; and you will know where you are all the time, for you can always see the palace at one end of the view, and the great Triumphal Arch at the other, with the obelisk in the middle between them. "The amount of it is," added Mr. Holiday, speaking in a tone as if he were about finishing his instructions, "you can go out of the Place Vendome to the north, and keep straight on till you come to the Boulevards, and walk there either way as far as you like. Or you can go south, and keep straight on till you come to the middle of the Grand Alley of the garden of the Tuileries, and then walk in the Grand Alley and the Grand Avenue which forms the continuation of it as long as you like. Which way will you go?" "I would rather go to the garden," said Rollo, looking toward Jennie. "Yes," said Jennie, "and so would I." Thus it was settled that they were to take the street which led toward the south from the Place Vendome; and so, bidding their father good by, they went away. Before leaving the house, however, Rollo went to a secretary which stood in the parlor, and took down a map, in order to show Jennie the places which his father had mentioned, and to make it sure that they understood the directions which they had received. Rollo found the Place Vendome very readily upon the map, and the street leading to the gardens. He also found the Grand Alley running through the garden; and following this alley between the rows of trees, he showed Jennie a small circle which he thought must be the basin of water, and the place where the obelisk stood; and finally he pointed out the place where the Grand Alley widened out into the Grand Avenue and led on toward the barrier. Jennie did not understand the map very well; but she seemed satisfied with Rollo's assurances that he himself could find all the places. "It is all right, you may depend," said Rollo. "I can find the way, you may be sure." So he put up the map, bade his mother good by, and then he and Jennie sallied forth. The hotel was situated on the corner of the Place Vendome and the street which led toward the garden; and as soon as the children had turned this corner, after coming out from under the archway of the hotel, they saw at some distance before them, at the end of the street, the iron palisade, and the green wall of trees above it, which formed the boundary of the garden. "There it is!" exclaimed Rollo. "There is the garden and the gateway! and it is not very far!" The children walked along upon the sidewalk hand in hand, looking sometimes at the elegant carriages which rolled by them from time to time in the street, and sometimes at the groups of ladies and children that passed them on the sidewalk. At the first corner that they came to, Rollo's attention was attracted by the sight of a man who had a box on the edge of the sidewalk, with a little projection on the top of it shaped like a man's foot. Rollo wondered what it was for. Just before he reached the place, however, he saw a gentleman, who then happened to come along, stop before the box and put his foot on the projection. Immediately the man took out some brushes and some blacking from the inside of the box, which was open on the side where the man was standing, and began to brush the gentleman's boot. "Now, how convenient that is!" said Rollo. "If you get your shoes or your boots muddy or dusty, you can stop and have them brushed." So saying, he looked down at his own boots, almost in hopes that he should find that they needed brushing, in order that he might try the experiment; but they looked very clean and bright, and there seemed to be no excuse for having them brushed again. Besides, Jennie was pulling him by the hand, to hasten him along. She said at the same time, in an undertone,-- "Look, Rollo, look! See! there is a blind lady walking along before us!" "Blind?" repeated Rollo. "Yes," said Jennie; "don't you see the little dog leading her?" There was a little dog walking along at a little distance before the lady, with a beautiful collar round his neck, and a cord attached to it. The lady had the other end of the cord in her hand. "I don't believe she is blind," said Rollo. As the children passed by the lady she turned and looked at them, or seemed to look, and manifested no indications of being blind. Afterward Jennie saw a great many other ladies walking with little dogs, which they led, or which led them, by means of a cord which the owner of the dog held in her hand. There were so many of these cases that Jennie was compelled to give up the idea of their being blind; but she said that she never knew any body but blind people led about by dogs before. At length the children arrived at the entrance to the garden. It was on the farther side of a broad and beautiful street which ran along there, just outside of the enclosure. The palisades were of iron, though the tops were tipped with gilding, and they were very high. They were more than twice as high as a man's head. The lower ends of them were set firmly in a wall of very substantial masonry. The gateway was very wide, and it had sentry boxes on each side of it. A soldier, with his bayonet fixed, was standing in front of each sentry box. When Jennie saw these soldiers she shrank back, and seemed afraid to go in. In fact, Rollo himself appeared somewhat disposed to hesitate. In a moment, however, a number of persons who came along upon the sidewalk turned in at the gates, and went into the yard. The soldiers paid no attention to them. Rollo and Jane, seeing this, took courage, and went in, too. On passing through the gates, the children found themselves on a very broad terrace, which ran along on that side of the garden. The surface of the terrace was gravelled for a walk, and it was very smooth and beautiful. While standing on, or walking upon it, you could look on one side, through the palisade, and see the carriages in the street, and on the other side you could look over a low wall down into the garden, which was several feet below. The descent into the garden was by a flight of stone steps. The children, after staying a little time upon the terrace, went down the steps. They came out upon a very broad avenue, or alley, which formed the side of the garden. This alley was very broad indeed, so broad that it was divided into three by orange trees, which extended up and down in long rows parallel to the street, almost as far as you could see, and forming beautiful vistas in each direction. These orange trees, though very large, were not set in the ground, but were planted in monstrous boxes, painted green and set on rollers. The reason of this was, so that they could be moved away in the winter, and put in a building where they could be kept warm. This broad alley, the great side alley of the garden on the side toward the city, was called the Alley of the Oranges. There is another similar alley on the opposite side of the garden, which is toward the river, and that is called the Alley of the Riverside. Passing across the three portions of the Alley of the Oranges, the children went on toward the centre of the garden. Instead, however, of such a garden as they had expected to see, with fruits and flowers in borders and beds, and serpentine walks winding among them, as Jennie had imagined, the children found themselves in a sort of forest, the trees of which were planted regularly in rows, with straight walks here and there under them. "What a strange garden!" said Jennie. "Yes," said Rollo. "But we must not stop here. We must go straight on through the trees until we come to the Grand Alley." In fact, Rollo could see the Grand Alley, as he thought, at some distance before him, with people walking up and down in it. There were several people, too, in the same walk with Rollo and Jane, some going with them toward the Grand Alley, and others coming back from it. Among these were two children, just big enough to go alone, who were prattling in French together very fluently as they walked along before their father and mother. Jennie said she wondered how such little children could learn to speak French so well. Another child, somewhat older than these, was trundling a hoop, and at length unfortunately she fell down and hurt herself. So, leaving her hoop upon the ground, she came toward the maid who had care of her, crying, and sobbing, and uttering broken exclamations, all in French, which seemed to Rollo and Jane very surprising. At length the children came out into the Grand Alley. They knew it immediately when they reached it, by its being so broad and magnificent, and by the splendid views which were presented on every hand. "Yes," said Rollo, "this is it, I am sure. There is the obelisk; and there, beyond it, on the top of that long hill, is the Triumphal Arch; and there, the other way, is the palace of the Tuileries. Here is a seat, Jennie. Let's go and sit down." So saying, Rollo led Jennie to a stone seat which was placed on one side of the alley, at the margin of the grove; and there they sat for some time, greatly admiring the splendid panorama which was spread out before them. What happened to them for the remainder of their walk will be described in the next chapter. CHAPTER V. THE ELYSIAN FIELDS. After sitting a little time upon the stone bench, Rollo and Jennie rose and resumed their walk. The alley was extremely broad, and it was almost filled with parties of ladies and gentlemen, and with groups of children, who were walking to and fro, some going out toward the Triumphal Arch, and some returning. Rollo and Jennie, as they walked along, said very little to each other, their attention being almost wholly absorbed by the gay and gorgeous scene which surrounded them. At length they perceived that, at a little distance before them, the people were separating to the right hand and to the left, and going round in a sort of circuit; and, on coming to the place, they found that the great basin, or pond of water, which Mr. Holiday had described to them, was there. This pond was very large, much larger than Rollo had expected from his father's account of it. It was octagonal in form, and was bordered all around with stone. There were a number of children standing in groups on the brink, at different places; some were watching the motions of the gold fish that were swimming in the water, and others were looking at a little ship which a boy was sailing on the pond. The boy had a long thread tied to the bow of his ship; and when the wind had blown it out upon the pond to the length of the string, he would pull it back to the shore again, and then proceed to send it forth on another voyage. Rollo thought it strange that they should be thus employed on the Sabbath; for he had been brought up to believe, that, although it was very right and proper to take a quiet walk in a garden or in the fields toward the close of the day, it was not right, but would, on the other hand, be displeasing to God, for any one, old or young, to spend any part of the day which God had consecrated to his own service and to the spiritual improvement of the soul in ordinary sports and amusements. Jennie, too, had the same feeling; and accordingly, after standing with Rollo for a moment near the margin of the water, looking at the fishes and the vessels, and at the group of children that were there, she began to pull Rollo by the hand, saying,-- "Come, Rollo, I think we had better go along." Rollo at once acceded to this proposal, and they both walked on. They soon found themselves passing out of the garden, though the space on each side of the broad alley in which they were walking was bordered with so many walls, palisades, terraces, statues, and columns, and the gateway which led out from the garden into the square was so broad, and was so filled up, moreover, with the people who were going and coming, that it was difficult to tell where the garden ended and the great square began. At length, however, it began to be plain that they were out of the garden; for the view, instead of being shut in by trees, became very widely extended on either hand. It was terminated on one side by ranges of magnificent buildings, and on the other by bridges leading across the river, with various grand and imposing edifices beyond. In the centre of the square the tall form of the obelisk towered high into the air, gently tapering as it ascended, and terminating suddenly at its apex in a point. The square, though open, was not empty. Besides the obelisk, which stood in the centre of it, on its lofty pedestal, there were two great fountains and colossal statues of marble; and lofty columns of bronze and gilt, for the gaslights; and raised sidewalks, smooth as a floor, formed of a sort of artificial stone, which was continuous over the whole surface, which was covered by it, without fissure or seam. There were roadways, also, crossing the place in various directions, with carriages and horsemen upon them continually coming and going. The great fountains were very curiously contrived. The constructions were thirty or forty feet high. They consisted of three great basins, one above the other. The smallest was at the top, and was, of course, high in the air. A column of water was spouting out from the middle of it, and, after rising a little way into the air, the water fell back into the basin, and, filling it full, it ran over the edge of it into the basin below. This was the middle basin, and, besides the water which fell into it from the basin above, it received also a great supply from streams that came from the great basin below, like the jets from the hose of a fire engine when a house is on fire. There was a row of bronze figures, shaped like men, in the water of the lowest basin of all, each holding a fish in his arms; and the jets of water which were thrown up to the middle basin from the lower one came out of the mouths of these fishes. The fishes were very large, and they were shaped precisely like real fishes, although they were made of bronze. The children looked at the fountains as they walked along, and at length came to the foot of the obelisk. They stopped a minute or two there, and looked up to the top of it. It was as tall as a steeple. Rollo was wondering whether it would be possible in any way to get to the top of it; and he told Jennie that he did not think that there was any way, for he did not see any place where any body could stand if they should succeed in getting there. While they both stood thus gazing upward, they suddenly heard a well-known voice behind them, saying,-- "Well, children, what do you think of the Obelisk of Luxor?" They turned round and beheld their uncle George. They were, of course, very much astonished to see him. He was walking with another young gentleman, a friend of his from America, whom he had accidentally met with in Paris. When the children had recovered from the surprise of thus unexpectedly meeting him, he repeated his question. "What do you think of the obelisk?" "I don't believe it is so high," replied Rollo, "as the column in the Place Vendome." "No," replied Mr. George, "it is not." "Nor so large," added Rollo. "No," said Mr. George. "And I don't believe that there is any way to get to the top of it," added Rollo. "No," said Mr. George, "there is not. The column in the Place Vendome is hollow, and has a staircase inside; but this obelisk is solid from top to bottom, and is formed of one single stone. That is the great wonder of it." [Illustration: THE OBELISK.] "Look up," said Mr. George, "to the top of it. It is as high as a steeple. See how large it is, too, at the base. Think how enormously heavy such an immense stone must be. What a work it must have been to lift it up and stand it on its end! Besides, it does not rest upon the ground, but upon another monstrous stone, the pedestal of which is nearly thirty feet high; so that, in setting it up in its place, the engineers had not only to lift it up on end, but they had to raise the whole mass, bodily, twenty or thirty feet into the air. I suppose it was one of the greatest lifts that ever was made. "There is another thing that is very curious about the obelisk," continued Mr. George, "and that is its history. It was not made originally for this place. It was made in Egypt, thousands and thousands of years ago, nobody knows how long. There are several others of the same kind still standing. Some years ago, this one and another were given to the French by the government of Egypt, and the French king sent a large company of men to take this one down and bring it to Paris. They built an immense vessel on purpose for transporting it. This vessel they sent to Egypt. It went up the Nile as near to the place where the obelisk stood as it could go. The place was called Luxor. The obelisk stood back at some distance from the river; and there were several Arab huts near it, which it was necessary to pull down. There were also several other houses in the way by the course which the obelisk must take in going to the river. The French engineers bought all these houses, and pulled them down. Then they made a road leading from the place where the obelisk stood to the river. Then they cased the whole stone in wood, to prevent its getting broken or injured on the way. Then they lowered it down by means of immense machines which they constructed for the purpose, and so proceeded to draw it to the river. But with all their machines, it was a prodigiously difficult work to get it along. It took eight hundred men to move it, and so slowly did it go that these eight hundred men worked three months in getting it to the landing. There they made a great platform, and so rolled it on board the float. There was a steamer at hand to take it in tow, and it was brought to France. It then took five or six months to bring it across the country from the sea shore to Paris. "When, at last, they got it here, it took them nearly a year to construct the machines for raising it. They built the pedestal for it to stand upon, which you see is as high as a two-story house, and then appointed a day for the raising. All the world, almost, came to see. This whole square was full. There were more than a hundred thousand persons here. The king came, and his family, and all his generals and great officers. It was the greatest raising that ever was seen." "Why, there must have been just as great a raising," said Rollo, "when they first put it up in Egypt." "No," said Mr. George; "because there it stood nearly upon the ground, but here it is on the top of a lofty pedestal. Look there! Those are pictures of the machines which they raised it by." So saying, Mr. George pointed to beautifully gilded diagrams which were sculptured upon one side of the pedestal. There were beams, and ropes, and pulleys without number, with the obelisk among them; but Rollo could not understand the operation of the machinery very well. The obelisk itself was covered on all sides with ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, deeply cut into the stone; but the children could not understand the hieroglyphics any better than they could the machinery. After looking some time longer at the obelisk and the various objects of interest that were around it, the whole party walked on together. Mr. George said that he and his friend were going up the avenue of the Elysian Fields, and that, if Rollo and Jennie would walk along behind them, they would not get lost. Jennie was very glad of this; for the crowd of people that were coming and going was getting to be very great, and she was a little afraid. Rollo, on the other hand, was rather sorry. The Triumphal Arch at the farther end of the avenue was in full view, and thus he felt sure of his way; and he was ambitious of the honor of being the sole guide in the excursion which he and Jane were taking. He, however, could not well decline his uncle's invitation; so, when the two gentlemen moved on, Rollo and Jennie followed them. The Grand Avenue was a very broad and beautiful roadway, gently ascending toward the barrier, and now perfectly thronged with carriages and horsemen. There were also two side avenues, one on each side of the central one. These were for foot passengers. There were rows of trees between. Beyond the side avenues there extended on either hand a wood, formed of large and tall trees, planted in rows, and standing close enough together to shade the whole ground. They were, however, far enough apart to allow of open and unobstructed motion among them. Under these trees, and in open spaces which were left here and there among them, there were booths, and stalls, and tables, and tents, and all sorts of contrivances for entertainment and pleasure, with crowds of people gathered around them in groups, or moving slowly from one to the other. There were men, some dressed like gentlemen, and others wearing blue, cartmen's frocks; and women, some with bonnets and some with caps; and children of all ages and sizes; and soldiers without number, with blue coats, and dark-red trousers, and funny caps, without any brim, except the visor. In the midst of all these multitudes Mr. George and the gentleman who was with him slowly led the way up the side avenue, Rollo and Jennie following them, quite bewildered with the extraordinary spectacles which were continually presenting themselves to view on every hand. The attention of the children was drawn from one object or incident to another, with so much suddenness, and so rapidly, that they had no time to understand one thing before it passed away and something else came forward into view and diverted their thoughts; and before they had recovered from the surprise which this second thing awakened, they had come to a third, more strange and wonderful, perhaps, than either of the preceding. A boy, very young, and very fantastically dressed, came riding along through the crowd, mounted on the smallest and prettiest black pony that Rollo had ever seen, and distributing as he passed along some sort of small printed papers to all who came near enough to get them. Rollo tried to get one of the papers to see what it was, but he did not succeed. "How I wish I had such a pony as that!" said Rollo. "So do I," said Jennie. "But what are the people doing in that ring?" Rollo saw a close ring of people all crowding around something on the ground. There was a man inside the ring, calling out something very loud and very incessantly. Rollo put his head between two of the spectators to see. There was a man seated in the centre, on the ground, with a cloth spread out before him, on which was a monstrous heap of stockings, of all kinds and colors, which he was selling as fast as possible to the men and women that had gathered around him. He sold them very cheap, and the people bought them very fast. He put the money, as fast as he received it, in his cap, which lay on the ground before him, and served him for a cash box. "Come, Rollo," said Jane, pulling Rollo by the hand, "we must go along. Uncle George is almost out of sight." Rollo turned back into the avenue again, and began to walk along. In a moment more he saw a large boy standing behind a curious-looking stove in an open space near, and baking griddle cakes. There was a very nice table by his side, covered with a white cloth, and a plate, on which the boy turned out the griddle cakes as fast as they were baked. There were several children about him, buying the cakes and eating them. "Ah, Jennie," said Rollo, "look at these cakes! How I should like some of them! If it were not that it is Sunday, I would go and buy some." "O Rollo!" exclaimed Jennie, "look here! See what's coming!" Rollo looked, and saw that the ladies and gentlemen on the broad walk before them were moving to one side and the other, to make room for a most elegant little omnibus, drawn by six goats, that were harnessed before it like horses. The omnibus was made precisely like a large omnibus, such as are used in the streets of Paris for grown persons; only this one was small, just large enough for the goats to draw. It was very beautifully painted, and had elegant silken curtains. It was full of children, who were looking out the windows with very smiling faces, as if they were enjoying their ride very much. A very pretty little boy, about seven years of age, was holding the reins of the goats, and appearing to drive; but there was a large boy walking along by the side of the goats all the time, to take care that they did not go wrong. The omnibus belonged to his father, who kept it to let children ride in it on their paying him a small sum for each ride. Jennie was very much pleased with the omnibus; but what followed it pleased her still more. This was a carriage, made in all respects like a real carriage, and large enough to contain several children. It was open, like a barouche, so that the children who were riding in it could see all around them perfectly well. It had two seats inside, besides a high seat in front for the coachman, and one behind for the footman. There were children upon all these seats. There was one on the coachman's box to drive. The carriage, like the omnibus, was drawn by goats, only there were four instead of six. The coachman drove them by means of long, silken reins. As soon as the omnibus and the carriage had passed by, and the crowd had closed again behind them so as to conceal them from view, Rollo and Jennie looked about for Mr. George and the other gentleman; but they were nowhere to be seen. Jane was quite frightened; but Rollo said he did not care. "Look there!" said Rollo, pointing back. "What is it?" said Jennie. "The obelisk," said Rollo. Jane saw the tall, needle-like form of the obelisk towering into the air from the middle of the great square behind them, and a part of the long front of the Tuileries, at the end of a vista of trees, far beyond. "As long as we have the obelisk in sight," said Rollo, "we cannot get lost." Just then Rollo's attention was called to a broad sheet of paper fastened up upon a tree that he was passing by. He stopped to see what it was. A little girl, about as old as Jennie, came up at the same time, leading the maid who had the care of her by the hand. This child began to read what was printed on the card. She read aloud, enunciating the words very slowly, syllable by syllable, and in a voice so clear, and rich, and silvery, that it was delightful to hear her. She seemed pleased to observe that Rollo and Jane were listening to her; and when she got through she turned to them, as if to apologize for not reading better, and said, in French, and with a pleasant smile upon her countenance,-- "I am learning to read; but I cannot read too much yet, you see." By too much she meant very well, that being the way that the French express themselves in such a case. Rollo understood what she said, but he did not think it prudent to attempt to reply in the same language; so he said simply, in English,-- "And yet I think my father would give five hundred dollars if I could read French like that. He'd be _glad_ to do it." As Rollo spoke these words the child looked earnestly in his face, the smile gradually disappearing from her features and being replaced by a look of perplexity and wonder. She then turned and led the maid away. There were a great many booths and stands about, some in open spaces and some under the trees. At one they had all sorts of cakes for sale; at another toys of every kind, such as hoops, balls, kites, balloons, rocking horses, and all such things; and at a third pictures, some large, some small, some plain, and some beautifully colored. At one place, by the side of the avenue where most of the people were walking, there stood a man, with a tall and gayly-painted can on his back. It was covered with common drapery below; but the top was bright, and towered like a spire above the man's head. There was a round bar, like the leg of a chair, which went from the bottom of the can to the ground, to support it, and take the weight off the man's shoulders when he was standing still. The man was standing still now, and was all the time tinkling a little bell, to call the attention of the people to what he had to sell. It was something to drink. There were two kinds of drink in the can, separated from each other by a division in the interior. There were two small pipes, one for each kind of drink, leading from the bottom of the can round by the side of the man to the front, with stopcocks at the end, where he could draw out the drink conveniently. There was also a little rack to hold the glasses. There were three glasses; for the man sometimes had three customers at a time. While Rollo and Jane were looking at this man, a boy came up for a drink. The man took one of the glasses from the little rack, and filled it by turning one of the stopcocks. When the boy had taken his drink and paid the money, the man wiped the glass with a towel which he kept for the purpose; and then, putting it back in its place on the rack, he went on tinkling his little bell. In the mean time, the crowd of people seemed to increase, and it appeared to Rollo and Jennie, when they came to observe particularly, that they were nearly all walking one way, and that was up the avenue, as if there were some place in that direction where they were all going. Rollo supposed that, of course, it was a church. He had been told by his father, when they were travelling in England, that when he was in any strange place on Sunday, and wished to find the way to church, one good method was to observe in the streets whenever he saw any considerable number of people moving in the same direction, and to join and follow them. He would, in such cases, his father said, be very sure to be conducted to a church, and after going in he would generally find some one who would show him a seat. Rollo and Jennie had often practised on this plan. In fact, they took a particular interest and pleasure in going to church in this way, as there was something a little of the nature of adventure in it. When, accordingly, the children observed that the great mass of the people that filled the two side avenues, as well as the carriages that were in the central one, were all moving steadily onward together, paying little attention to the booths, and stalls, and other places and means of amusement which were to be seen under the trees on either hand, he concluded that, while some of the people of Paris were willing to amuse themselves with sports and exhibitions on Sunday, the more respectable portion would not stop to look at them, but went straight forward to church; and he and Jennie resolved to follow their example. "I should like to see all these things very much," said Rollo, "some other day; but now we will go on, Jennie, to the church, where the rest of the people are going." Jennie very cordially approved of this plan, and so they walked on together. It happened that, at the time when they came to this determination, there was walking just before them a party, consisting apparently of a father and mother and their two children. The father and mother walked together first, and the two children, hand in hand, followed. The oldest child was a girl, of about Jennie's age. The other was a very small boy, just beginning to learn to talk. Rollo and Jennie came immediately behind these children, and were very much interested in hearing them talk together, especially to hear the little one prattling in French. He called his sister Adrienne, and she called him Antoine. Thus Rollo and Jennie knew the names of the children, but they had no way of finding out what were the names of the father and mother. "Now, Jennie," said Rollo, in a low tone, "I think we had better follow this party, and keep close to them all the time, and then, when we get to the church, perhaps they will give us a seat." Jennie liked this proposal very much, and so she and Rollo walked along after Adrienne and Antoine, not too near them, but so near as to keep them always in sight. Sometimes the party turned aside from the avenue to walk under the trees, and sometimes they stopped a few minutes to look at some curious exhibition or spectacle which was to be seen. At one place a man had a square marked off, and enclosed with a line to keep the crowd back; and in the middle he had an electrical machine, with which he gave shocks to any of the bystanders who were willing to take them. A boy kept turning the machine all the time. At another place was a little theatre, mounted on a high box, so that all could see, with little images about as large as dolls dancing on the stage, or holding dialogues with each other. The words were really spoken by a man who was concealed in the box below; but as the little images moved about continually, and made all sorts of gesticulations, corresponding with what was said, it seemed to the bystanders precisely as if they were speaking themselves. Besides this, the images would walk about, scold each other, quarrel and fight each other, run out at little doors, and then come in again, and do a great many other things which it was very wonderful to see such little figures do. There were places, too, where there were great whirling machines, under splendid tents and canopies, with horses, and boats, and ships, and cradles at the circumference of them, all of which were made to sail round and round through the air, carrying the children that were mounted on the horses or sitting in the ships and boats. There were also several places for shooting at a mark with little spring guns, which were loaded with peas instead of bullets. There were figures of bears, lions, tigers, ducks, deer, and other animals at a little distance, which were kept moving along all the time by machinery, for the children to shoot at with the peas. If they hit any of them they drew a prize, consisting of cake or gingerbread, or of some sort of plaything or toy, of which great numbers were hanging up about the shooting place. All these, and a great many other similar contrivances for amusing people, Rollo and Jane saw, as they passed along; but they did not stop to look at them, excepting when the gentleman and lady stopped whom they were following. This was seldom, however; and so they went, on the whole, very steadily forward, up the long and gentle ascent, until, at length, they reached the great Triumphal Arch at the Neuilly Barrier. CHAPTER VI. A GREAT MISTAKE. As they approached the arch, the children gazed upon it with astonishment, being greatly impressed with its magnitude and height. There were a great many men on the top of it. Their heads and shoulders were visible from below, as they stood leaning over the parapet. They, however, looked exceedingly small. Rollo and Jennie would have liked to stop and look longer at the arch; but they did not wish to separate from Adrienne and Antoine, who kept walking steadily on all the time with their father and mother. Rollo supposed, as has been said before, that this party were going to some church; but they were not. They were going to a place called the Hippodrome. The Hippodrome, far from being a church, is a place of amusement. It is used for equestrian performances, and feats of strength and agility, and balloon ascension, and all similar entertainments. The Hippodrome is a long, oval enclosure, with eight or ten ranges of seats extending all around it, and rising one above another, like the seats of the Coliseum at Rome. There is a roof extending all around over the seats; but the area within is so large that it could not well be covered with a roof. Besides, if there were a roof over it, how could the balloons go up? Then, moreover, the spectacles which are exhibited in the Hippodrome appear to much better advantage when seen in the open light of day than if they were under the cover of a roof, so long as the spectators themselves are protected from the sun and from any sudden showers. The area in the middle of the Hippodrome is about one hundred yards long and fifty yards wide. It is so large that there is room for a good wide road all around it, and also for another road up and down the middle, with little gardens of grass and flowers between. At the very centre is a round area, where there is a concealed canal of water to represent a stream. This water is ordinarily covered with planks, and the planks are covered with a very thick canvas carpet, and this with sand; so that the water is entirely concealed, and the horsemen ride over it just as they do over any other part of the area. When they wish to use it, to show how the horses could leap over streams, they take off the sand, roll up the carpet, and carry away the planks; and there they have a very good representation of a stream. The performances at the Hippodrome are very various. Sometimes whole troops of horse come in from between two great curtains at one end, all elegantly caparisoned and mounted, some by men and some by girls, but all, whether men or girls, dressed in splendid uniforms. These troops ride round and round the area, and up and down in the middle of it, performing a great variety of evolutions in the most rapid and surprising manner. Then there are races of various kinds. Some are run by beautiful girls, who come out mounted on elegant gray horses that are mottled like leopards, each of the riders having a scarf over her shoulders of a different color from the rest, so that they may be all readily distinguished from each other in the race. Then there are races of chariots, three running at a time, round and round the area; and of small ponies, with monkeys on them for riders. There are various contrivances, too, for athletic and gymnastic feats, such as masts and poles for climbers to ascend, and other similar apparatus. All these things give the interior of the Hippodrome quite a gay and lively appearance, and the area necessary for them is so large that the ranges of seats surrounding it are sufficient to accommodate ten thousand spectators. It was to this place that Adrienne and Antoine, with their father and mother, were going, while Rollo and Jennie supposed that they were going to a church. There was nothing to lead Rollo to suspect his mistake in the aspect of the building as he approached the entrance to it; for the sides of it were hidden by trees and other buildings, and the portal, though very large and very gayly decorated, seemed still, so far as Rollo could get a glimpse of it through the crowds of people, only to denote that it was the entrance to some very splendid public edifice, without at all indicating the nature of the purposes to which it was devoted. The immense concourse of people which were pouring into the Hippodrome divided themselves at the gates into two portions, and passed up an ascent to enter at side doors. Rollo and Jane, following their guides, went toward the right. They observed that the father of Adrienne and Antoine stopped at a little window near the entrance, to pay the price of admission for himself and wife and his two children and to get the tickets. He paid full price for his two children, and so took four full tickets. Rollo and Jane did not see him pay the money. They only observed that there was a crowd at the little window, and they saw Antoine's father take the tickets. They did not know what this meant, however; but they followed on. When they all came to the doorway which led up to the ranges of seats, the man whose duty it was to take the tickets supposed that the four children all belonged to the same family, and that they had been admitted at half price, and that, accordingly, two of the tickets were for the father and mother, and the other two for the four children. So he let them all pass on together, especially as there was, at that time, such a throng of people crowding in that there was no time to stop and make any inquiries. Rollo and Jane were carried along by the current up a flight of stairs, which came out among the ranges of seats; and after moving along for some distance till they came to a vacancy they sat down, and began to look around and survey the spacious and splendid interior into which they had entered. They were at once overwhelmed with the magnificence of the spectacle which was presented to view. Instead of a church, they found a vast open area extended before them, surrounded with long ranges of seats, and laid out in the interior in the most graceful and beautiful manner. "Jennie," said Rollo, after gazing about for some moments, almost bewildered, "if this is any kind of meeting at all, I think it must be a camp meeting." Jennie was completely bewildered, and had no opinion on the subject whatever; so she said nothing. "That's the place for the choir, I suppose," said Rollo, pointing to a sort of raised platform with a balustrade in front, which was built among the seats in the middle of one of the sides of the Hippodrome. "But then," he added, after a moment's pause, "I don't see any pulpit, unless that is it." As he said this, Rollo pointed to a balcony with a rich canopy over it, which was built up among the seats, directly opposite to the musician's gallery, on the other side of the arena. This balcony was for the use of the emperor, and his family and friends, when they chose to come and witness the spectacles in the Hippodrome. These speculations of Rollo's were suddenly interrupted by the striking up of martial music, by a full band of trumpets, drums, clarinets, hautboys, and horns, from the musician's gallery. Soon afterwards the curtains opened at the farther end of the arena, and a magnificent troop of horse, mounted by male and female riders, all dressed in the gayest and most splendid costumes, came prancing in. As soon as Rollo had recovered from his astonishment at this spectacle, he turned to Jennie, and said,-- "Jennie, it is not any church or meeting at all; and I think we had better go home." "I think so too," said Jennie. "I should like to come here some other day," added Rollo; "and I mean to ask my father to let us come. Uncle George will come with us. But _now_ we had better go home." So the children rose from their seats and began to move toward the door. It was some time before they could get out, so great was the number of people still coming in. They, however, finally succeeded, and were quite relieved when they found themselves once more in the open air. They turned their steps immediately toward home. Jane, however, soon began to feel very tired; and so Rollo said he would stop the first omnibus that came along. The avenue was full of carriages of every kind; and pretty soon an omnibus, headed down the obelisk, appeared among them. Rollo made a signal for the conductor to stop, and he and Jennie got in. They had a very pleasant ride back through the Elysian Fields, and around the great square where the obelisk stands. They then entered the street which runs along by the side of the gardens of the Tuileries, and advanced in it toward the heart of the city. Rollo made a sign for the conductor to stop when the omnibus reached that part of the street which was opposite to the entrance into the garden where he and Jennie had gone in. This was, of course, also opposite to the street leading into the Place Vendome. It was but a short walk from this place to the hotel. About six o'clock the children arrived at the hotel, and the table was already set for dinner. Mr. Holiday was reclining on a couch in the room, and Mrs. Holiday had been reading to him. Rollo's uncle George was also in the room. Mrs. Holiday laid down her book when the children came in. Rollo and Jennie sat down upon a sofa, not far from their father's couch. They were glad to rest. "Well, children," said Mrs. Holiday, "have you had a pleasant walk?" "Yes," said Rollo, "a very pleasant walk indeed. We have seen a great many very curious things. But I believe we made a mistake." "What mistake?" asked Mrs. Holiday. "Why, we followed a great many people that we thought were going to church; but, instead of that, they led us into a great place that I think was some sort of circus." Here Mr. George looked up very eagerly and began to laugh. "I declare!" said he. "I shouldn't wonder if you got into the Hippodrome." "I don't know what it was," said Rollo. "When we first went in we saw that it was not a church; but we did not know but that it might be some sort of camp meeting. But pretty soon they began to bring horses in and ride them around, and so we came out." Here Mr. George fell into a long and uncontrollable paroxysm of laughter, during the intervals of which he said, in broken language, as he walked about the room endeavoring to get breath and recover his self-control, that it was the best thing he had heard since he landed at Liverpool. The idea of following the crowd of Parisians in the Champs Elysées on Sunday afternoon, with the expectation of being conducted to church, and then finally taking the Hippodrome for a camp meeting! Rollo himself, though somewhat piqued at having his adventure put in so ridiculous a light, could not help laughing too; and even his father and mother smiled. "Never mind, Rollo," said his mother, at length. "I don't think you were at all to blame; though I am glad that you came out when you found what sort of a place it was." "O, no," said Mr. George, as he gradually recovered his self-control, "you were not to blame in the least. The rule you followed is a very good one for England and America; but it does not apply to France. Going with the multitude Sunday afternoons, in Paris, will take you any where but to church." Notwithstanding the concurrence of opinion between Rollo's mother and his uncle that he had done nothing wrong, neither he nor Jennie could help feeling some degree of uneasiness and some little dissatisfaction with themselves in respect to the manner in which they had spent the afternoon. They had both been accustomed to consider the Sabbath as a day solemnly consecrated to the worship of God and to the work of preparation for heaven. It is true that the day sometimes seemed very long to them, as it does to all children; and though they had always been allowed to take quiet walks in the gardens and grounds around the house, still they usually got tired, before night came, of being so quiet and still. Notwithstanding this, however, they had no disposition to break over the rule which, as they supposed, the law of God enjoined upon them. They fully believed that God himself had ordained that there should be one day in seven from which all the usual occupations and amusements of life should be excluded, and which should be consecrated wholly to rest, to religious contemplation, and to prayer; and they were very willing to submit to the ordinance, though it brought with it upon them, as children, burdens and restrictions which it was sometimes quite onerous for them to bear. When night came, Rollo found that he always felt much happier if he had kept the Sabbath strictly, than when he attempted, either secretly or openly, to evade the duty. There was a sort of freshness and vigor, too, with which he engaged in the employments of the week on Monday morning, which, though he had never stopped to account for it philosophically, he enjoyed very highly, and which made Monday morning the brightest and most animated morning of the week. So Rollo was accustomed to acquiesce very willingly in the setting apart of the sacred day to religious observances and to rest, thinking that the restraints and restrictions which it imposed were amply compensated for by the peace and comfort which it brought to his mind when he observed it aright, and by the novelty and freshness of the charm with which it invested the ordinary pursuits and enjoyments of life when it was over. Accordingly, on this occasion, feeling a little dissatisfied with himself and uneasy in mind, in consequence of the manner in which he had spent the afternoon, Rollo determined to make all the atonement for his fault, if fault it was, that was now in his power. Accordingly, when the family rose from the table after dinner, which was about seven o'clock, and his father and mother went and sat upon the sofa together, which stood in the recess of a window looking out upon the Place Vendome, Rollo said to Jane, in an undertone,-- "Jennie, come with me." He said this in the tone of an invitation, not of command; and Jennie understood at once, from her experience on former occasions, that Rollo had some plan for her entertainment or gratification. So she got down from her chair and went off with him very readily. They went out at a door which led into their mother's bed room. "Jennie," said Rollo, as he walked along with her across the room, "I am going to get the Bible and sit down here by the window and read in it. Would not you like to read with me?" "Yes," said Jennie, "if you will find a pretty story to read about. There are a great many toward the first part of the Bible." "Yes," said Rollo, "I will." "And let us go into my room to read," said Jennie. "I like my room the best." "Well," said Rollo, "I like your room best, too." So Rollo took the Bible off from the table of his father's room, and then he and Jennie went on together into Jennie's room. This room was a little boudoir, which opened from Mr. and Mrs. Holiday's room; it was a charming little place, and it was no wonder that Jennie liked it. It was hung with drapery all around, except where the window was, on one side, and a large looking glass and a picture on two other sides. There was even a curtain over the door, so that when you were in, and the door was shut, and the curtain over it was let down, you seemed to be entirely secluded from all the world. This drapery was green, and the room, being entirely enclosed in it, might have seemed sombre had it not been for the brilliancy and beauty of the furniture, and the variegated colors and high polish of the floor. There was an elegant bedstead and bed in the back part of the room, with a carved canopy over it. There was a bureau also, with drawers, where Jennie kept her clothes; and a little fireplace, with a pretty brass fender before it; and a marble mantel piece above, with a clock and two vases of flowers upon it. There were a great many other curious and beautiful articles of furniture in the room, which gave it a very attractive appearance, and made it, in fact, as pretty a place of seclusion as a lady could desire to have. Jennie enjoyed this room very much indeed; but still, after all, notwithstanding the expensiveness and beauty of the decorations which adorned it, I do not know that Jennie enjoyed it any more than she did a little seat that she had under some lilac bushes, near the brook at the bottom of her father's garden, at home. There was a small couch in the recess of the window in Jennie's boudoir; and here she and Rollo established themselves, with the Bible lying open before them upon a small table which they had placed before the couch to hold it. They raised their own seats by means of large, square cushions which were there, so as to bring themselves to the right height for reading from the book while it lay upon the table; and they put their feet upon a tabouret which belonged to the room. The tabouret was made for a seat, but it answered an admirable purpose for a foot-stool. As soon as the two children were thus comfortably established, they opened the Bible, and Rollo began to turn over the leaves in the books of Samuel and of Kings, in order to find something which he thought would interest Jennie. At length he found a chapter which seemed, so far as he could judge by running his eye along the verses, to consist principally of narration and dialogue; and so he determined to begin the reading at once. "Now," said he, "Jennie, I will read one verse, and then you shall read one, and I will tell you the meaning of all the words that you don't know." Jennie was much pleased with this arrangement, and she read the verses which came to her with great propriety. It is true that there were a great many words at which she was obliged to hesitate some little time before she could pronounce them; and there were others which she could not pronounce at all. Rollo had the tact to wait just long enough in these cases. By telling children too quick when they are endeavoring to spell out a word, we deprive them of the pleasure of surmounting the difficulty themselves; and, by waiting too long, we perplex and discourage them. There are very few children who, when they are hearing their younger brothers and sisters read, have the proper discretion on this point. In fact, a great many full-grown teachers fail in this respect most seriously, and make the business of reading on the part of their pupils a constant source of disappointment and vexation to them, when it might have been a pleasure. Rollo, too, besides the patient and kind encouragement which he afforded to Jane in her attempts to read her verses herself, read those which fell to his share in a very distinct and deliberate manner, keeping the place all the while with his finger, so that Jennie might easily follow him. He stopped also from time to time to explain the story to Jennie, and to talk about the several incidents that were described in it, in order to make it sure that Jennie understood them all. It would have been much easier for him to have taken the book himself, and to have read the whole chapter off at once, fluently. But this would have defeated his whole object; which was, not to do what he could do most easily, but to do good and help Jennie. If a boy were going up a high hill, with his sister in his company, it would be easier for him to go directly on and leave his sister behind. A selfish boy would be likely to do this; but a generous-minded boy would prefer to go slowly, and help his sister along over the rocks and up the steep places. Rollo and Jane both became so much interested in their reading that they continued it almost an hour. It then began to be dark, and so they put the book away. Their mother came in about that time, and was very much pleased when she found how Rollo and Jennie had been employed; and Rollo and Jennie themselves experienced a substantial and deeply-seated feeling of satisfaction and comfort that all the merry-making of the Elysian Fields could never give. If any of the readers of this book have any doubt of this, let them try the experiment themselves. At some time, after they have been spending a portion of the Sabbath in such a way as to give them an inward feeling of uneasiness and self-condemnation, let them engage for a time in the voluntary performance of some serious duty, as Rollo did, and in the spirit and temper which he manifested, and see how strongly it will tend to bring back their peace of mind and restore them to happiness. To try the experiment more effectually still, spend the whole Sabbath in this manner, and then see with what a feeling of quiet and peaceful satisfaction you will go to bed at night, and with what a joyous and buoyant spirit you will awake on Monday morning. Before Rollo left Paris, he went, one Tuesday afternoon, with his mother and Jennie and his uncle George, to see the performances at the Hippodrome, and he enjoyed the spectacle very much indeed. Besides the performances which have already been described, there were two others which astonished him exceedingly. In one of these a man came into the middle of the area, and there the assistants lifted up a large and heavy pole, which they poised in the air, and then set the lower end of it in a sort of socket which was made in an apron which the man wore, which socket was fastened securely to the man's hips and shoulders by strong straps, so that he could sustain the weight of the pole by means of them. The pole was about thirty feet high, and the top was branched like a pitchfork. It was shaped, in fact, exactly like a pitchfork, except that there was a bar across from the top of one branch to the top of the other, and a rope hanging down from the middle of the bar half way down to the place of bifurcation--that is, to the place where the straight part of the pole ended and the branches began. Things being thus arranged, a boy, who was about twelve years old, apparently, came out, and, leaping up upon the man's shoulders, began to climb up the pole. When he reached the top of it he took hold of the rope, and by means of the rope climbed up to the bar. Here he began to perform a great variety of the most astonishing evolutions, the man all the time poising the pole in the air. The boy would climb about the bar in every way, drawing himself up sometimes backwards and sometimes forward, and swinging to and fro, and turning over and over in every conceivable position. He would hang to the bar sometimes by his hands and sometimes by his legs--sometimes with his head downward, sometimes with his feet downward. He would whirl round and round over the bar a great many times, till Rollo and Jane were tired of seeing him, and then he would rest by hanging to the pole by the back_ of his head_, without touching the bar with any other part of his body. All this time the man who held the pole kept it carefully poised, moving to and fro about the area continually in following the oscillations. [Illustration: THE HIPPODROME.] The other performance was in some respects more extraordinary still. There was a mast set up in the ground, thirty or forty feet high. At the ground, ten feet from the foot of the mast, there commenced an inclined plane, formed of a plank about a foot or eighteen inches wide, which ascended in a spiral direction round and round the mast till it reached the top. A man ascended this plane by means of a large ball, about two feet in diameter, which he rolled up standing upon it, and rolling it by stepping continually on the ascending side. There was no ledge or guard whatever to keep the ball from rolling off the plane--nothing but a narrow plank ascending continually, and winding in a spiral manner around the mast. This experiment it was quite frightful to see. Several of the children who were sitting near Mr. George's party began to cry, saying, "O, he will fall--he will fall!" In fact, Jennie could not bear to look at him, and so she shut her eyes; and even Mrs. Holiday looked another way. But Rollo watched it through, and saw the man go on up to the very top of the mast, and stand there on his ball on the top, forty feet above the ground, with his hands extended in triumph. After remaining there a short time, he came down as he had gone up; and when he reached the ground, he rolled his ball along, keeping on it all the time, till he came to a chariot which was waiting to receive him. He stepped from the ball off to the chariot, and was then driven all around the ring, being received every where, as he passed, with the acclamations of the spectators. CHAPTER VII. CARLOS. One morning, just after breakfast, when Rollo and Jennie were sitting at the window of their hotel, looking at a band of about forty drummers that were arranging themselves on the Asphaltum, in the Place Vendome, in front of the column, preparatory to an exercise of practice on their instrument, Mr. George came into the room. Mr. George took up a newspaper which was lying upon the table, and, seating himself in a large arm chair which was near, he read from it for a few minutes, and then, laying down the paper, said,-- "Rollo, how do you pronounce L-o-u-v-o-i-s?" Mr. George did not speak the word, but spelled it letter by letter. "I don't know," said Rollo. "Because," said Mr. George, "that is the name of the hotel where I have gone." "What made you go away from this hotel, uncle George?" asked Jennie. "Didn't you like it?" "Yes," replied Mr. George, "I liked it very much. But I wanted to change the scene. I had become very familiar with every thing in this part of the city, and with the modes of life in this hotel. So I thought I would change, and go to some other quarter of the city, where I could see Paris, and Paris life, in new aspects." "I wish I had gone with you," said Rollo. "I wonder if my father would not let me go now. Is there a room for me at your hotel?" he added, looking up eagerly. "I don't know," said Mr. George. "You can ask when you go there. But to day I am going to see the Garden of Plants; and you may go with me, if you like." "Well," said Rollo, "I should like to go very much." "And may I go, too?" said Jennie. "Yes," said Mr. George, "if your mother is willing." "Well," said Jennie, joyfully, "I'll go and ask her. Only I wish it was a garden of flowers instead of a garden of plants." So Jennie went to ask her mother if she might go with her uncle George. She soon returned with her shawl and bonnet on, and then, Mr. George leading the way, they all went together down stairs, and got into a carriage which was waiting for them at the door. The carriage was an open one, with the top turned back, so that they all had a fine opportunity to see the streets and the persons passing as they rode along. Mr. George directed the coachman to drive first to his hotel; and the carriage, leaving the Place Vendome on the northern side, entered into a perfect maze of narrow streets, through which it advanced toward the heart of the city. After a time, they came to a long, straight street, which led across the city, through the centre of it, from the river to the Boulevards; and when they were about in the middle of this street, the attention of the children was attracted by a very long and gloomy-looking building, which formed one side of the street for a considerable distance before them. It had no windows toward the street, but only a range of square recesses in the walls, of the form of windows, but without any glass. Jennie asked Mr. George if it was the prison. "Not exactly," said Mr. George; "and yet there is one room in it where there are more than a hundred men, and they are not permitted to speak a loud word." "Let's go and see them," said Rollo. "Very well," said Mr. George; "we will." So saying, he called upon the coachman to stop opposite to a great archway which opened through the building near the middle of it. Mr. George and the children descended from the carriage and went in under the archway. Looking through, they saw a large court yard, with grass, and trees, and a fountain. They did not, however, go on into this court yard, but turned to the right to a very broad flight of steps which seemed to lead into the building. There was a man in uniform, with a cocked hat upon his head, who stood in the passage way to guard the entrance. He made no objection, however, to the party's going in; and so they all went on up the stairway. After passing through a series of magnificent passages and vestibules, with very broad staircases, and massive stone balustrades, and other marks of a very ancient and venerable style of architecture, Mr. George led the way through an open door, where the children saw extended before them, as far as the eye could reach, a long range of rooms, opening into one another, and all filled with bookshelves and books. The rooms had windows only on one side; that is, on the side next the courtyard; and the doors which led from one room to the other were all near that side of the room. Thus three sides of each room were almost wholly unbroken, and they were all filled with bookshelves and books. The doors which led from one room to another were all in a range; so that standing at one end, opposite to one of these doors, the spectator could look through the whole range of rooms to the other end. The distance was, moreover, so great, that, though there was a group of several persons standing at the farther end of the range of rooms at the time that Rollo entered, they looked so small and so indistinct that Rollo could not count them to tell how many there were. "It is a library," said Rollo. "Yes," said Mr. George, "it is the National Library of Paris, one of the largest libraries in the world. The books have been accumulating here for ages." "I don't see what can be the use of such a large library," said Rollo; "nobody can possibly read all the books." "No," said Mr. George, "they cannot read them all; but they may wish to consult them. There are often particular reasons for seeing some particular book, which was published so long ago that it is not now to be found in common bookstores; in such cases, people come here, and they are pretty sure to find the book in this collection." There were several parties of ladies and gentlemen to be seen, at different distances, walking along the range of rooms, all of whom seemed to be visitors. Mr. George, himself, walked on, and the children followed him. They passed from one apartment to another, amazed at the number of books. They were all neatly arranged on bookshelves, which extended from the floor to the ceiling, and were protected by a wire netting in front; so that, although the visitors could see the books, they could not take them down. Mr. George and the children walked on, until, at length, they came to the end of the range of rooms, and there they found another range, running at right angles to the first, back from the street. They turned and walked along through these rooms, too. The floors of all the rooms were very smooth and glossy, being formed of narrow boards, of dark-colored wood, curiously inlaid, and highly polished. Rollo told Jennie that he believed he could slide on such floors as well as he could on ice, if he thought they would let him try. He knew very well, however, that it would not be proper to try. Besides, he observed that there were standing at different distances along the range of rooms certain men, in uniform, who seemed to be officers stationed in the library to guard against any thing like irregularity or disorder on the part of the visitors. Besides the books, there were a great many other things to interest visitors in the rooms of the library, such as models of buildings, statues, collections of coins, medals, and precious gems, and other similar curiosities. These things were arranged on tables and in cases made expressly for them, and placed in the various rooms. The tables and cases occupy, generally, the central parts of the rooms that they were placed in, so as not to interfere with the use of the sides of the rooms for books. In one place was a collection of some of the oldest books that ever were printed, showing the style of typography that prevailed when the art of printing was first discovered. Mr. George took great interest in looking at these. Rollo and Jennie, however, did not think much of them; and so, while their uncle was examining these ancient specimens, they went to the windows and looked out into the court yard. This court formed a green and beautiful garden, shaded with trees and adorned with fountains and walks. The visitors could see that the buildings of the library extended in long ranges all around it. At length, at the end of the second range of rooms, the party came to a third range, which was parallel to the first, and which extended along the back side of the court yard. The children could not go into these apartments, for the entrance to them was closed by a glass partition. They could, however, look through the partition and see what there was within. They beheld a very long hall, which was several hundred feet in length, apparently, and quite wide, and it was lined on both sides with bookshelves and books. Long tables were extended up and down this hall, with a great number of gentlemen sitting at them, all engaged in silent study. Some were reading; some were writing; some were looking at books of maps or engravings. There were desks at various places up and down the room, with officers belonging to the library sitting at them, and several messengers, dressed in uniform, going to and fro bringing books. Mr. George explained to the children that there was another entrance to this room, leading from the court yard by a separate staircase, and that any person who wished to read or study might go in there and sit at those tables, only he must be still, and not disturb the studies of the rest. If he wished for any book, he could not go and get it from the shelves, but must write the title of it in full on a slip of paper, and carry it to one of the desks. The officer would take the slip and give it to one of the messengers, who would then go and get the book. After looking through the glass partition at this great company of readers and students until their curiosity was satisfied, the children turned away, and Mr. George conducted them back through the long ranges of rooms by the same way that they came. When, at length, they got back to the staircase where they had come up, Mr. George, instead of going out where he had come in, descended by another way, through new corridors and passages, until he came to a room where a considerable number of people were sitting at tables, looking at books of engravings. The sides of this room, and of several others opening into it, were filled with bound volumes of prints and engravings, some plain and some colored, but very beautiful. Many of the volumes were very large; but however large they might be, it was very easy to turn over the leaves and see the pictures, for the tables, or rather, desks, in the middle of the room, were so contrived that a book, placed upon them, was held at precisely the right slope to be seen to advantage by persons sitting before it. Mr. George told the children, in a whisper, that any one might ask for any book there was there, and the attendants would place it on one of the tables for him, where he might sit and look at the prints in it as long as he pleased. "Some day," continued Mr. George, "we will come here and look over some of these books; but to-day we must go to the Garden of Plants." Mr. George then led the children back to the carriage, and ordered the coachman to drive to his hotel. The hotel was situated on the site of an open square, which, though by no means so grand and magnificent as the Place Vendome, was still a very pleasant place. There was a fountain in the centre, with a large basin of water around it. Outside of this basin the square was paved with asphaltum, and was as hard and smooth as a floor. The pavement was shaded with trees, which were planted at equal distances all over it; and under the trees there were seats, where various persons were sitting. There were many children, too, playing about under the trees, some trundling hoop, some jumping rope, and some playing horses. The carriage stopped at the door of the hotel, and Mr. George took the children up to his room. It was a front room, and it looked out upon the square. The children went to the window, and, while Mr. George was getting ready to go, they amused themselves by looking at the children that were playing on the square. Among the other children, there was a boy, apparently about eight years of age, who was sitting apart from the rest of the children, on a bench by himself. His complexion was dark, and his hair very black and glossy. He was very neatly and prettily dressed, though in a very peculiar style, his costume being quite different from any thing that Rollo had ever before seen. He had a ball in his hand, which now and then he tossed into the air. "He has not any body to play with," said Rollo to Jennie. "I have a great mind to go down and play with him while uncle George is getting ready." "Very well," said Mr. George; "you can go. I shall not be ready for nearly half an hour. We do not wish to get to the Garden of Plants before twelve o'clock." Rollo hesitated a little about going down, and while he was hesitating the boy rose from his seat and came toward the hotel. He entered under the archway, and presently Rollo heard him coming up the staircase. He then determined to hesitate no longer; so he went out into the passage way to see him. The boy had reached the top of the staircase when Rollo went out, and was just then coming along the hall. He looked at Rollo with a smile as he came toward him, and this encouraged Rollo to speak to him. "Can't you find any one to play with you?" said Rollo. The boy shook his head, but did not speak. He meant by this that he did not understand what Rollo said; but Rollo thought he meant that he could not find any one to play with him. "I will play with you," said Rollo; and as he spoke he held out his hands, with the wrists together and the palms open between them, in a manner customary with boys for catching a ball. The boy understood the sign, though he did not understand the words. He tossed the ball to Rollo, and Rollo caught it. Rollo then tossed it back again. Presently Rollo made signs to the boy to sit down upon the floor at one end of the hall, while he sat down at the other, explaining his wishes also at the same time in words. The boy talked too, in reply to Rollo, accompanying what he said with signs and gestures. They got along thus together in their play very well, each one imagining that he helped to convey his meaning to the other by what he said, while, in fact, neither understood a word that was spoken by the other, and so took notice of nothing but the signs. Rollo listened attentively once or twice to short replies that his new friend made to him, in order to see if he could not distinguish some words in it that he could understand; but he could not; and he finally concluded that it must be some other language than French that the boy was speaking. He was sorry for this; for he could understand short sentences in French pretty well, and could speak short sentences himself in reply. When, however, he tried to speak to the boy in French, he observed that he did not appear to understand him any better than when he spoke in English. This confirmed him in the opinion that the boy must belong to some other nation. After playing together for some time with the ball, the two boys began to feel quite acquainted with each other. Rollo wished very much to find out his new companion's name; so he asked him, in English,-- "What is your name?" The boy smiled, and throwing the ball across again to Rollo as he spoke, said something in reply; but it was a great deal too much to be his name. What he said was, when interpreted into English, "My father bought this ball for me, and gave two francs for it." Then Rollo thought he would try French; so he translated his question, and asked it in French. "And I am going to carry it with me to Switzerland and Italy," said the boy, speaking still in the unknown tongue. "That can't be your name, either," said Rollo, "I am very sure." Then, after a moment's pause, he added, in an eager voice and manner, as if a new idea had suddenly struck him,-- "We are going to the Garden of Plants--uncle George, and Jennie, and I; wouldn't you like to go, too?" The boy smiled, and held out his hands for Rollo to roll the ball to him, saying something at the same time which to Rollo seemed totally unmeaning. "He does not understand me, I suppose; but I know how I can explain it to him." So he rose from the floor, and, by means of a great deal of earnest gesticulation and beckoning, he induced the boy to get up too, and follow him. Rollo led the way into his uncle's chamber. The boy seemed pleased, though a little timid, in going in. "Uncle George," said Rollo, "here is a boy that cannot talk. Are you willing that I should invite him to go with us to the Garden of Plants?" "Yes," said Mr. George; "though I don't see how you are going to do it." Rollo led the boy to the window, and pointed to the carriage, which stood down before the door below. Then he opened a map of Paris which lay upon the table, and found the Garden of Plants laid down upon it, and showed it to the boy. Then he pointed to his uncle George, to Jennie, and to himself, and then to the carriage. Then he made a motion with his hand to denote going. By these gesticulations he conveyed the idea quite distinctly to his new acquaintance that they were all going to the Garden of Plants. He then finally pointed to the boy himself, and also to the carriage, and looked at him with an inquiring look, which he meant as an invitation to the boy to accompany them. The boy paid close attention to all these signs; and when Rollo had finished, instead of either nodding or shaking his head, in token of his accepting or declining the invitation, as Rollo expected he would have done, he took up the map, and, making certain mysterious gestures, which Rollo could not comprehend, he walked off rapidly out of the room. Rollo looked at his uncle George with an expression of great astonishment on his countenance. "What does that mean?" said he. "Perhaps he has gone to ask his father or his mother," suggested Mr. George. "He has," exclaimed Rollo, "he has; that's it, I'm sure." So Rollo went out immediately into the hall to wait till the boy came back. In a few minutes a door opened, which led into a suite of apartments in the rear of the hotel, and the boy, with the map in his hand, came into the hall, nodding his head, and looking very much pleased; talking all the time, moreover, in a very voluble but perfectly unintelligible manner. A moment after he came the door opened again, and a very respectably dressed man, of middle age, came into the hall. The boy pointed to Rollo, and said something to this man. "Are you going to the Garden of Plants?" said the man to Rollo, speaking in English, though with a very decidedly foreign accent. "Yes, sir," said Rollo. "And did you invite Carlos to go with you?" "Yes, sir," said Rollo; "only I did not know that his name was Carlos. He told me something very different from that. What language is it that he talks? Is it French?" "No," replied the man, "it is Spanish. He is a Spanish boy. He cannot understand a word of French or English. But he may go with you to the Garden of Plants." "Are you his father, sir?" asked Rollo. "No," replied the man, "I am his father's courier."[E] [E] A courier is a traveling servant. A good courier understands all the principal languages of Europe, and is acquainted with all the routes and modes of travelling. He takes all the care of the party that employs him; makes bargains for them; finds out good hotels for them to go to; pays the bills; obtains all necessary information; and does every thing for them, in fact, which is required in making the tour of Europe. So saying, the man passed on, leaving Rollo and Carlos together. "Come, Carlos," said Rollo, "let us go into uncle George's room, and see if he is not ready to go." Rollo beckoned as he spoke, and Carlos, understanding his action, though not his words, immediately followed him. In fact, during all his subsequent intercourse with Carlos, Rollo continued to talk to him just as if he could understand, and Carlos talked also in reply. It is true, that, if Rollo had been asked whether he supposed that Carlos understood what he said, he would have answered no; and yet he continually forgot to act upon this belief, but talked on, under the influence of a sort of instinctive feeling that good plain English, such as he took care to speak, could not fail to convey ideas to any boy that heard it. Under the influence of a similar feeling, Carlos talked Spanish to Rollo, each imagining that the other understood him, at least in some degree, while, in fact, neither understood any thing but the signs and gestures which accompanied the language. Just as they were about to set out, one of Mr. George's friends called to see him; and when he found that the party were going to the Garden of Plants, he wished to go too. There was scarcely room for so many in the carriage, and so Rollo proposed that he and Carlos should go in an omnibus. "There is an omnibus," said he, "that goes there through the Boulevards, close by here; and Carlos and I will go in that, and then we can find you in the garden." "Very well," said Mr. George. "Come, Carlos, come with me," said Rollo; "we are going to find an omnibus." Carlos perceived that Rollo was proposing that they should go somewhere together, but he did not know where, or for what; nor did he care. He was ready to assent to any thing. So he and Rollo, leaving the rest of the party in the act of getting into the carriage, walked along up the street which led to the Boulevards. CHAPTER VIII. THE GARDEN OF PLANTS. Rollo and Carlos had not gone far before they came to a place where two children had set up what they called a _chapel_, under the archway which led to the interior of the house where they lived. A real chapel, in Catholic countries, is any consecrated place, large or small, containing an altar, and a crucifix, and other sacred emblems, where masses are said and other religious services are performed. Real chapels are made in the alcoves of churches, in monuments over tombs, and in other similar places, and children have toy chapels to play with. There are little crucifixes, and candlesticks, and communion cups, and other similar things for sale at the toy shops. Sometimes the children buy these things and arrange them on a small table, in a corner of the room, for play, just as in Protestant countries they arrange a pulpit and chairs for a congregation, and so make believe have a meeting. Sometimes the children bring out their chapel and set it near the sidewalk, by the street, and then hold out a little plate to ask the passers by for contributions. There are almost always some people more good matured than wise, who will give them a sou or two; and thus they often made up quite a little purse of money. In this case, as Rollo and Carlos were passing along, the little girl, who was very nicely dressed in holiday costume, held out a small plate, saying,-- "One sou, gentlemen, if you please, for the little chapel." Rollo and Carlos stopped to look at the chapel. "What pretty little candles!" said Rollo, talking half to himself and half to Carlos, "and how tall! I wish I had some of them for Jennie." "I have got a chapel at home," said Carlos. "She wants us to give her a sou," continued Rollo. "Would you?" "And I will show it to you if you ever come to Barcelona," said Carlos. "I don't know whether to give her a sou or not," said Rollo. "Would you, Carlos?" "My candlesticks are of real silver," said Carlos, "but these are not." Rollo finally concluded to give the girl a sou, thinking that he was in some measure bound to do it, after having stopped so long to look at her chapel; and then he and Carlos walked on as before. As they went on they continued to talk together, from time to time, Rollo in English and Carlos in Spanish, neither of them, however, paying any attention to what the other said. This was a very good plan, for there was a sense of companionship in this sort of conversation, though it communicated no ideas. They took the same kind of pleasure in it, probably, that birds do in the singing of their mates. In fact, it often happens, when a group of children are talking together in a language which they all understand, that each one talks for the pleasure of talking, and none of them pay any attention to what the others say. Presently the two boys reached the Boulevard. It was a very broad and magnificent street, and the sidewalks were very wide. The sidewalks, wide as they were, were thronged with foot passengers, and the street itself was full of carriages. Very soon an omnibus came along; but it was full. There are a great many curious contrivances about a French omnibus; one of which is, that there is a sign, with the word _complete_, in French, painted upon it in large letters. The sign is placed directly over the door of the omnibus behind, and is attached to the top of the coach by a hinge at the lower edge. When the omnibus is full, the conductor who rides on the step behind pulls up this sign, by means of a cord attached to it, and then all the people on the sidewalks can see that there is no room for them. When any passengers get out so as to make room for others, then the conductor lets this sign down, and it lies flat upon the top of the coach, out of sight, until the omnibus gets full again, when it is drawn up as before. "Complete," said Rollo, pointing to the sign, which was up and in full view. "That omnibus is full." "Yes," said Carlos, "I see him. His cap is so high that he can't wear it in the omnibus, and so he has to take it off." "But there will be another one pretty soon," said Rollo. "If I were a soldier," said Carlos, "I would never get into an omnibus at all. I would have an elegant black horse with a long tail, and I would go galloping through the streets on my horse." At length an omnibus came along which was not full, and Rollo and Carlos got into it. After meeting with various adventures on the way, and changing from one omnibus to another, according to the system which prevails in Paris, they finally reached the gates of the garden. There was a sentry box on each side of the gates, and soldiers, with bayonets fixed, guarding the entrance. There were, however, a great many people going in. The soldiers did not prevent them. They had orders to allow all persons who were quiet and orderly, and had no dogs with them, to enter freely. So Rollo and Carlos passed directly in. Rollo's first feeling was that of astonishment at the extent and variety of the scenes and prospects which opened before him. Instead of a small garden, laid out in gravel walks, and beds of flowers, as he had imagined, he found himself entering a perfect maze of winding walks, which were bordered on all sides by an endless variety of enclosures, groups of shrubbery, groves, huts, cabins, yards, ponds of water, and every other element of rural scenery. The whole, as it first burst upon Rollo's eye, formed a most enchanting landscape, and extended farther than he could see. The walks meandered about in the most winding and devious ways. The spaces between them were enclosed by neat little fences of lattice work, and were divided into little parks, or fields, in each of which some strange and unknown animals were feeding. There were ponds, with a quantity of birds of the gayest plumage sailing upon them; and green slopes, with goats, or deer, or sheep, of the most extraordinary forms and colors, grazing in them. At one place Rollo stopped to look at a small basin of water, with a broad stone margin all around it, which was completely covered with turtles and tortoises of all colors and sizes. The animals were lying there asleep, basking in the sun. A little farther on was a beautiful little yard, almost surrounded with trees and shrubbery, where three or four ostriches, with long necks, and heads higher than Rollo's, were walking about with a very majestic air. And farther still there was a little field, the occupants of which excited the astonishment of the boys to a still higher degree. They were three giraffes. One of them, with his head twenty feet in the air, was cropping the leaves from the top of a tall tree. The second was standing still, quietly looking at the groups of visitors that were gazing upon him from without the paling; while the third was amusing himself by galloping about the yard, with a sort of rolling motion that it was most astonishing to see. Rollo and Carlos advanced among these scenes, drawn from one to the other by the new objects which every where presented themselves to view, and uttering to each other continual exclamations of astonishment. In fact, they talked incessantly to one another as they walked on, pointing out, each to the other, whatever attracted their attention, and making all sorts of comments upon what they saw. Presently a low, bellowing sound was heard among the trees at a little distance. "Hark!" said Rollo, in English, putting his hand upon Carlos's shoulder. "What's that? I hear a roaring." "Hark!" said Carlos, in Spanish. "What's that? I hear a roaring." Neither of the boys understood the words which the other spoke; but they knew very well that they were both listening to and talking about the roaring. "Let's go and see what it is," said Rollo. "We'll go and see," said Carlos. So off they started together in the direction of the sound. They walked along a short distance, passing several beautiful little enclosures, where quiet and gentle-looking animals, of various forms, were grazing in their mimic pastures, or lying at rest before the doors of the thatched-roofed cabins that had been built for them instead of barns, until at length they came to a place where a long range of buildings opened to view before them, the fronts of which, instead of showing doors and windows, were formed of gratings of iron. The interior of this range was divided into compartments, each one of which formed an immense cage. These cages were all filled with lions, tigers, panthers, leopards, hyenas, and other ferocious beasts of prey. Some were walking to and fro restlessly in their narrow prisons; others were lying down; and others still were crouched in a corner of their cage, where they remained motionless, gazing with a sullen air upon the visitors who stood looking at them from without the grating. Rollo and Carlos walked back and forth in front of these cages several times, looking at the animals. They admired the beauty and grace of the tigers and leopards, and the majestic dignity of the lions. There were a lion and a lioness together in one cage. The lioness was walking restlessly to and fro; while the lion sat crouched in the back part of the cage, with an expression upon his countenance in which the lofty pride and majesty of his character, and the patience and submissiveness which pertained to his situation, were combined. "Poor fellow!" said Rollo; "if I had you and your cage in Africa, where you belong, I would open the door and let you go." Just at this moment the attention of both Rollo and Carlos was suddenly arrested by a most unearthly sound at a little distance from them, which seemed to be intermediate between a scream and a roar. It was so loud, too, as to be truly terrific. "What's that?" said Rollo, suddenly, in English. "Ah, what a dreadful bray that is!" said Carlos, in Spanish. "Would you go out there and see what it is?" said Rollo. "Hark! Let's go there and see what it is," said Carlos. So the boys started together to go in the direction of the sound. It is impossible, however, for a stranger in the Garden of Plants to be sure of going any considerable distance in any one direction, for the walks are meandering and circuitous beyond description. They wind about perpetually in endless mazes; and the little fields, and parks, and gardens that are enclosed between them are so enveloped in shrubbery, and the view, moreover, is so intercepted with the huts and cabins built for the animals, and with the palings and networks made to confine them, that it is impossible to see far in any direction. Besides, there is so much to attract the attention, and to excite curiosity and wonder, at every step, that one is continually drawn away from one alley to another, till he gets hopelessly bewildered. The huts and cabins which were made for the animals were very curious, and many of them were so pretty, with their rustic walls and thatched roof, that Rollo was extremely pleased with them. He stopped before one of them, which was the residence of a pair of beautiful lamas, and told Carlos that he meant to ask his uncle George to take particular notice how it was made, and so make one for him for a play-house when he got home. "And I wonder," said he, "where my uncle George and Jennie are. I don't see how we are ever to find them. I did not know that this garden was so large and so full of trees and bushes." "Look there!" said Carlos, pointing through an opening in the shrubbery along the winding walk. "What are they doing there?" Rollo, understanding the gesture, though not the words, turned in the direction that Carlos indicated, and saw that there was quite a crowd of men, women, and children at the place, all engaged, evidently, in looking at something or other very intently. "Let's go and see," said Rollo. So the boys went along that way together. They soon came in view of a very high and strong palisade, which, though it was half concealed by trees and shrubbery, evidently enclosed quite a considerable area, in the centre of which was a large stone building, like a castle, with projecting wings and towers, and immense gateways opening into it on various sides. This building was the residence of all the _monsters_--the elephants, the giraffes, the rhinoceros, and the hippopotamus. Each of these species had its own separate apartment in the castle; and the ground surrounding it, within the great palisade, was divided into as many yards as there were doors; so that each kind of animal had its own proper enclosure. In one of these enclosures the rhinoceros was walking about, clothed in his plated and invulnerable hide; and in the next there were two elephants. The crowd of people were chiefly occupied in looking at the elephants. The palisade was very heavy and strong, being formed of timbers pointed at the top, and nearly as high as the elephants could reach. These palisades were, however, not close together. They were far enough apart to allow of the elephants putting their trunks through to the people outside, and also to give the people a good opportunity to look. Though these timbers were thus set at some distance apart from each other, they wore still connected together, and all held firmly in their places, by two iron rails which passed through them all, one near the top, and the other near the bottom, of the palisade, all along the range. They thus formed a fencing so heavy and strong that even the elephants could not break it down. The visitors could not come quite up to the elephants; for outside of this great palisade, at a distance of about three feet from it, there was a high paling, made expressly to keep the spectators back. At the time when Rollo and Carlos came to the place the elephants were putting their trunks through to the people, in order to be fed with nuts, cake, gingerbread, and other such things which the people had ready to give them. Sometimes they would order the elephants to hold up their trunks and open their mouths, and then the men would try to toss pieces of gingerbread in. The elephants were always ready to do this when ordered, though their mouths, when they opened them, were so small that the people very seldom succeeded in aiming the missile so that it would go in. Rollo and Carlos looked about among the crowd that were assembled at this place to see if Mr. George was among them; but he was not; and so, after amusing themselves for some time with the elephants, they walked along to see what else there was in the garden. There were a great many people in the garden besides those who seemed to have come to see the animals. There were groups of children, that seemed to belong in the vicinity, playing in the _walks, some jumping ropes, and others_ building little houses of gravel stones. There were women seated on benches in various little shady nooks and corners, some sewing, others taking care of babies; while others, at little stands and stalls, sold gingerbread and cakes. At one place Rollo stopped to look at two little children that were playing in the gravel and throwing the little pebble stones about. Their grandmother, who was sitting near, said something to them in French. "What does she say?" asked Carlos. "She says," replied Rollo, "you must not throw gravel in your little sister's face." The question in this case and the answer fitted each other very well; but it was a mere matter of accident, for neither of the boys understood what the other had said. Pretty soon the boys came to a place where a great number of people were standing on a sort of parapet, and leaning upon an iron railing, where they seemed to be looking down into some cavity. They hurried to the place, and, stepping up upon the parapet, they looked down too, and found there a range of dens below the surface of the ground, all full of bears. These dens were sunken yards, six or eight feet deep, and enclosed with perpendicular walls all around, so that the bears could not possibly get out. There were iron railings around the top, and a great many people were standing there looking down to the bears. There were four or five of these yards, all in a row; and as there were many great trees overshadowing them, the place was cool and pleasant. Some of the bears were walking about on the stone pavement which formed the bottom of the dens; others were sitting on their hind legs, and holding up their fore paws to catch the pieces of gingerbread which were thrown down to them by the people above. There were a number of little birds hopping about there, picking up the crums that were left, though they took care to keep out of the way of the bears. Rollo and Carlos bought some cakes of gingerbread of a woman who kept a stall near by, and, breaking them into pieces, they threw them down to the bears. They threw the most to a great white bear that was in one of the dens, and who particularly attracted their attention. Rollo told Carlos that he supposed this bear must have come from the north pole. The boys were both by this time rather hungry; but they were so much interested in seeing the bears try to catch the pieces of gingerbread that they did not think to eat any of it themselves, but threw it all down to them, all except one piece which Rollo gave to a little girl who stood beside him, to let her throw it, because she had none of her own. For this kindness the girl thanked Rollo, in French, in a very polite and proper manner. After being satisfied with seeing the bears, the boys wandered on wherever they saw the most to attract them, until at length they came to what is called the palace of the monkeys, which pleased them more than any thing they had seen. This palace is an enormous round cage, as high as a house, and nearly a hundred feet in diameter, with a range of stone buildings all around it on the back side. These buildings have little rooms in them, where the monkeys live in the winter, and where they always sleep at night. They go out into the cage to play. The cage is formed of slender iron posts and railing, so that the people standing outside can see the monkeys at their sports and gambols. They play with each other in every possible way, and frolic just as if they were in their native woods. They climb up the smooth iron posts, pursuing one another; and then, leaping across through the air, they catch upon a rope, from which they swing themselves across to the branch of a tree. Some of these branches have bells attached to them; and the monkey, when he gets upon such a one, will spring it up and down till he sets the bell to ringing, and then, assisted by the return of the branch, he bounds away through the air to some rope, or pole, or railing that he sees within his reach. The agility which these animals display in these feats is truly astonishing. Rollo and Carlos watched their evolutions with great interest. There was an excellent place to see, for the land opposite the cage ascended in such a manner that those more remote could look over the heads of those that were nearer. Besides this, there were quite a number of chairs under the trees, at the upper part of this ascent; and Rollo, perceiving that several of them were vacant, sat down in one, and made a sign to Carlos to sit down in another. They could now look at the monkeys, and rest at the same time. Presently a woman came along and said to Rollo, in French,-- "Please pay the chairs, sir." Rollo recollected immediately that at all such places in Paris chairs were kept to be let, those who used them paying two sous apiece for the privilege. So he took out four sous and gave the woman. "I did not think of there being any thing to pay for these chairs," said he to Carlos. "But then, I don't care. It is worth four sous to get a good rest, as tired as I am. I'm pretty hungry, too. I wish I had not given all my gingerbread to the bears." Carlos made no reply to this suggestion; though there is no doubt that he would have readily assented to what Rollo said, if he had understood it. The boys remained some time looking at the monkeys, and then strolled away into other parts of the garden. Very soon they came to a place where Rollo spied at some distance before him, under some immense old trees in a sort of a valley, what he thought was a restaurant. "See these monstrous big trees!" said Carlos; "and there are tables under them." The boys made all haste to the spot, and found to their great joy that it was a restaurant. There was a plain but very picturesque-looking house, antique and venerable; and before it, on a green, under the spreading branches of some enormous old trees, a number of small tables, with seats around them. "Now, Carlos," said Rollo, "we will have some bread and butter and a good cup of coffee." [Illustration: THE RESTAURANT.] So they sat down at one of the pleasantest tables, and very soon a waiter came to see what they would have. Rollo called for coffee and bread and butter for two. In a short time the waiter came, bringing two great cups, which he filled half with coffee and half with boiled milk. He brought also a supply of very nice butter, and a loaf of bread shaped like a stick of wood. It was about as large round as Rollo's arm, and twice as long. The waiter laid this bread across the table for Rollo and Carlos to cut off as much from it as they might want. This is what they call having "bread at discretion." The boys enjoyed this banquet very much indeed. Besides the coffee, they had water, which they sweetened in the tumblers with large lumps of white sugar. They talked all the time while they were eating, each in his own language, and laughed very merrily. "After all," said Rollo, "this is the very best place in the whole garden. Feeding the bears is very good fun; but this is infinitely better." After remaining for half an hour at the table, and eating till their appetites were completely satisfied, they concluded to go back and see the monkeys again. In the mean time, Mr. George and his friend, with Jennie, had been engaged in an entirely different part of the garden; for the whole enclosure is so large that it takes many days to see the whole. On one side, bordering on a street, there is a long row of houses and gardens, occupied by professors, who give courses of lectures on the plants and animals which the garden contains. On another is a magnificent range of buildings, occupied as a museum, containing endless collections of dried plants, of minerals and shells, of skeletons, and the stuffed skins of birds and beasts. Then there is a very large tract of level land, between two splendid avenues, all laid out in beds of plants and flowers, forming a series of parterres, extending as far as the eye can reach, and presenting the gayest and most beautiful combination of colors that can be conceived. Jennie was very much delighted with all these things, as she walked about in these parts of the garden with her uncle, though she was somewhat uneasy all the time because she could not see any thing of Rollo. "I don't believe," said she at last to her uncle, as they were standing on the margin of a beautiful little artificial pond, full of lilies and other aquatic plants, "I don't believe that we can find him at all in such a large garden." "Yes," said Mr. George; "there'll be no difficulty. There is one universal rule for finding boys in the Garden of Plants." "What is that?" asked Jennie. "Go to the places where they keep the monkeys and the elephants," said Mr. George; "and if you don't find them there at once, wait a few minutes, and they'll be pretty sure to come." It was as Mr. George had predicted; for, on going to the palace of the monkeys, there they found Rollo and Carlos laughing very heartily to see a big monkey holding a little one in its arms as a human mother would a baby. The party, when thus united, went together once more over the principal places where the two divisions of it had gone separately before, so that all might have a general idea of the whole domain; and then, going out at a different gate from the one by which they had entered, they went home, all resolving to come again, if possible, at some future day. CHAPTER IX. AN EXCURSION. ONE day, about one o'clock, after Rollo had been in Paris about a fortnight, he came into the hotel from a walk which he had been taking, and there found his mother and Jennie putting on their bonnets. He asked them where they were going. They said they were going to take a ride with Mr. George. "May I go, too?" asked Rollo. "Why--yes," said his mother, hesitatingly. "I suppose there will be room. Or you may stay at home here with your father. He is asleep in his room." It is generally the case with children, both boys and girls, when they are young, that if they can get any sort of consent, however reluctant, from their parents, to any of their requests, they are satisfied, and take the boon thus hesitatingly accorded to them as readily as if it had been granted to them in the freest and most cordial manner. With gentlemen and ladies, however, it is different. They generally have more delicacy, and are seldom willing to accept of any favor unless circumstances are such that it can be granted in a very free and cordial manner. They will scarcely ever, in any case, ask to be permitted to join any party that others have formed; and when they do ask, if they perceive the slightest doubt or hesitation on the part of their friends in acceding to their proposal, they infer that it would be, for some reason or other, inconvenient for them to go; and they accordingly, at once, give up all intention of going. Rollo, though still a boy, was beginning to have some of the honorable sentiments and feelings of a man; and when he perceived that his mother hesitated a little about granting his request, he decided immediately not to go and ride. Besides, he liked the idea of staying with his father. "Well," said he, "I will stay here. My father may wish for something when he wakes up." "I don't suppose, however, after all," added his mother, "that it is really necessary for you to stay on his account. His bell is within reach; and Alfred will come immediately when he rings." "But I should _like_ to stay," said Rollo; "and besides, I can get ahead one more day in my French." Rollo was writing a course of French exercises, and his task was one lesson for every day. The rule was, that he was to write this exercise immediately after breakfast, unless he had written it before; that is, either on the same day before breakfast, or on a previous day. Now, Rollo desired to be free after breakfast, for that was a very pleasant time to go out. Besides, there were often plans and excursions formed for that time, which he was invited to join; and he could not join them unless his lesson for the day had been written. So he took pains to write his exercises, as much as possible, in advance. Whenever there came a rainy day he would write two or three lessons, and sometimes he would write early in the morning. He was now nearly a week in advance. Instead of being satisfied with this, however, he began to be quite interested in seeing how far ahead he could get. This feeling was what led him to think that he would take this opportunity to write a French lesson. Accordingly, when his mother and Jennie had gone, he seated himself at his table and began his work. The writing of the exercise took about an hour. When the work was finished, and while Rollo was preparing to put his books away, he heard a movement in his father's room. He got up from his seat and opened the door, gently, saying,-- "Father, are you awake?" "Yes," said his father. "Are you there, Rollo?" Rollo found his father sitting up in a great arm chair, by the side of his bed. He had a dressing gown on. "How do you feel, father?" said Rollo. "I think I feel better," said Mr. Holiday. As he said this he put on his slippers, and then stood up upon the rug that lay in front of his bed. "Yes," said he, "I certainly feel better--a great deal better." "I am very glad," said Rollo. "Where is your mother?" asked Mr. Holiday, as he walked across the room to the glass. "She has gone out to take a ride," said Rollo, "with uncle George and Jennie." "That's right," said Mr. Holiday. "I am very glad that she has gone. And have you been staying here to take care of me?" he asked. "Yes, sir," said Rollo. "I have been writing another French lesson. I have got them all written now to next Friday." "Ah," said Mr. Holiday, "that's excellent. That's what the farmers call being forehanded." "Now, Rollo," said Mr. Holiday, after a little pause, "I feel so much better that I should like to go somewhere and take a ride myself. I don't care much where. If there is any where that you wish to go, I will go with you. Come, I will put myself entirely at your disposal. Let us see what you can do to give me a ride and entertain me." Rollo was very much pleased indeed with this proposal. He decided instantly what he would do. He had seen that morning an _affix_, as the French call it, that is, a placard posted on a wall among a hundred others, setting forth that there was to be a balloon ascension that afternoon at the Hippodrome, at three o'clock, to be followed by various equestrian performances. Rollo immediately mentioned this to his father, and asked him if he should be willing to go there. His father said that he should; adding, that he would like to see the balloon go up very much. "Then when we come home," said Rollo, "you must ride slowly along through the Elysian Fields, and let me see the booths, and the games that they are playing there." "Very well," said his father; "I will take some newspapers with me, and I will sit still in the carriage while you go and see the booths and the games." This plan being thus resolved upon, and all arranged, Alfred was summoned and ordered to get the carriage ready, and to put the top down. When Alfred reported that the carriage was at the door, Mr. Holiday and Rollo went down and got in, and were soon in the midst of the stream of equipages that were going up the grand avenue of the Elysian Fields. They arrived at the Hippodrome in time to get an excellent seat, and they remained there two hours. They saw the balloon, with a man and young girl in the car below it, rise majestically into the air, and soar away until it was out of sight. The fearless aeronauts seemed entirely at their ease while they were ascending to the dizzy height. They sat in the car waving banners and throwing down bouquets of flowers as long as they could be seen. After this there was a series of performances with horses, which delighted Rollo very much. Troops of men came out upon the arena, mounted on beautiful chargers, and armed with lances and coats of mail, as in ancient times. After riding their elegantly caparisoned horses round and round the ring several times, they formed into squadrons and attacked each other with their lances in sham battles. After this, fences of hurdles were put up across the course, in various places, and girls, mounted on beautiful white horses and elegantly dressed, rode around, leaping over the fences in a surprising manner. These and similar performances continued until near five o'clock, and then the immense assembly broke up, and the people, some in carriages and some on foot, moved away over the various roads and avenues which diverge from the Star. Rollo and his father got into their carriage, which had been waiting for them all this time, and passing the Triumphal Arch, they entered the Grand Avenue of the Elysian Fields, on their return to the city. They descended the slope which led down to the Round Point at a rapid rate. Here, after passing the Round Point, the road became level, and the region of groves and booths, and of games and frolicking, began. "Now," said Rollo, "I should like to drive slowly, so that, if I come to any thing that I wish to get out and see, I can see it." "Very well," said his father; "give Alfred your orders." "Alfred," said Rollo, "draw up as near as you can to the sidewalk on the right hand, and walk the horses, so that I can see what there is." "And in the mean time," said Mr. Holiday, "I will read my papers." So Mr. Holiday took his newspapers out of his pocket and began to read them, while Rollo, standing up in the carriage, began to survey the crowd that filled the walks and groves that bordered the avenue, in order to select some object of attraction to be examined more closely. "Only I wish, father," said Rollo, "that I had somebody here with me to go and see the things--Jennie or Carlos. I wish Carlos was here." "It is very easy to go and get him," said his father, with his eyes still on his newspaper. "May I?" said Rollo. "Any thing you please," said Mr. Holiday. "You are in command this afternoon. You may give Alfred any orders you please." "Then, Alfred," said Rollo, "drive to the Hotel Louvois as fast as you can." As he said this, Mr. Holiday folded up his paper and Rollo took his seat, while Alfred, turning the horses away from the sidewalk, set them to trotting briskly along the avenue. "Only, father," said Rollo, "I shall prevent your reading your papers." "No matter for that," said Mr. Holiday. "I shall like a good brisk ride along the Boulevards quite as well." The horses, kept always by Alfred in the very best condition, trotted forward at a rapid rate, leaving scores of omnibuses, cabs, and citadines behind, and keeping pace with the splendid chariots of the French and English aristocracy that thronged the avenue. Presently Rollo observed a peculiar movement among the carriages before them, as if they were making way for something that was coming; and at the same time he saw hundreds of people running forward from the groves and booths, across the side avenues, to the margin of the carriage way. "The emperor!" said Alfred, drawing in his horses at the same time. An instant afterward, Rollo, who, on hearing Alfred's words, started from his seat and stood up in the carriage to look, saw two elegantly dressed officers, in splendid uniforms, galloping along toward them in the middle of the avenue. They were followed at a little distance by two others; and then came a very beautiful barouche, drawn by four glossy black horses, magnificently caparisoned. Two gentlemen were seated in this carriage, one of whom bowed repeatedly to the crowd that were gazing at the spectacle from the sides of the avenue as he rode rapidly along. Behind this carriage came another, with a gentleman and a lady in it, and afterward two more troopers. The whole cavalcade moved on so rapidly, that, before Rollo had had scarcely time to look at it, it had passed entirely by. "The emperor!" said Alfred to Rollo. "He is going out to take a ride." "Is that the emperor?" exclaimed Rollo. "He looks like any common man. But if I had four such beautiful black horses as he has got, I should be glad. I would drive them myself, instead of having a coachman." The movement and the sensation produced by the passing of the emperor and his train along the avenue immediately subsided, and the other carriages resumed their ordinary course. Alfred's horses trotted on faster than ever. A thousand picturesque and striking objects glided rapidly by--the trees and the booths of the Elysian Fields; the tall, gilded lampposts, and the spouting fountains of the Place de la Concorde; omnibuses, cabs, wagons, chariots, and foot passengers without number; and, finally, the tall column of the Place Vendome. Winding round in a graceful curve through this magnificent square, the carriage rolled on in the direction of the Boulevards, and, after going rapidly on for nearly half a mile in that spacious avenue, it turned into the street which led to the hotel. It stopped, at length, before the door, and Rollo got out, while Mr. Holiday remained in the carriage. Rollo went up stairs, and after about five minutes he came down again, bringing not only Carlos with him, but also his uncle George. Mr. Holiday invited Mr. George to go with them for the remainder of the ride. This invitation Mr. George accepted; and so the two gentlemen taking the back seat, and Rollo and Carlos the front, Alfred took them all back to the Elysian Fields together. They remained nearly an hour in the Elysian Fields. During this time Rollo's father and his uncle George staid in the carriage by the roadside, talking together, while Rollo and Carlos went in among the walks and groves to see the various spectacles which were exhibited there. They would come back from time to time to the carriage, in order that Rollo might describe to his father what they found, or ask permission to take part in some amusement. For instance, at one time he came and said, very eagerly,-- "Father, here is a great whirling machine, with ships and horses going round and round. Carlos and I want to ride on it. The horses are in pairs, two together. Carlos can get on one of them, in one of the pairs, and I on the other. We can go round twenty times for two sous." "Very well," said his father. So Rollo and Carlos went back to the whirling machine. It was very large, and was very gayly painted, and ornamented with flags and banners. The vessels and the horses were attached to the ends of long arms, which were supported by iron rods that came down from the top of the central post, so that they were very strong. The horses were as large as small ponies, and the vessels were as big as little boats--each one having seats for four children. When Rollo and Carlos went back, the machine had just taken up its complement of passengers for one turn, and was then commencing its rotation. There were a great many persons standing by it, pleased to see how happy the children were in going round so merrily. There was an iron paling all around the machine, to keep the spectators at a safe distance, otherwise they might come too near, and so be struck, and perhaps seriously hurt, by the horses or the boats, when they were put in motion. As soon as the twenty turns had been taken the machine stopped, and the children who had had their ride were taken off the horses and out of the boats, all except a few who were going to pay again and have a second ride. Rollo and Carlos then went inside the enclosure, and, going up some steps placed there for the purpose, they mounted their horses. Very soon the machine began to revolve, and they were whirled round and round twenty times with the greatest rapidity. The arms of the machine, too, were long, so that the circle which the horses and the vessels described was quite large, and the whole twenty revolutions made quite a considerable ride. After finishing their circuit and dismounting from their horses, the boys next came to a whirling machine, which revolved vertically instead of horizontally; that is, instead of whirling the rider round and round near the level of the ground, it carried them up, over, and down. There was a great wheel, which revolved on an axis, like a vertical mill wheel. This wheel was double, and between the two circumferences the seats of the passengers were hung in such a manner that in revolving they swung freely, so as to keep the heads of the people always uppermost. These seats had high backs and sides, and a sort of bar in front for the people to take hold of, otherwise there would have been great danger of their falling out. As it was, they were carried so swiftly, and so high, and the seats swung to and fro so violently when the machine was in rapid motion, that the men and girls who were in the seats filled the ear with their screams and shouts of laughter. Rollo and Carlos, after seeing this machine revolve, went to the carriage to ask if they might go in it the next time. "No," said Mr. Holiday. "I am not sure that it is safe." So the boys went away from the carriage back under the trees again, and walked along to see what the next exhibition might be. The carriage moved on in the avenue a little way to keep up with them. The boys strolled along through the crowd a little while longer, looking for a moment, as they passed, now at the stalls for selling gingerbread and cakes, now at a display of pictures on a long line,--the sheets being fastened to the line by pins, like clothes upon a clothes line,--now at a company of singers, singing upon a stage under a canopy, and now again at a little boy, about seven or eight years old, who was tumbling head over heels on a little carpet which he had spread on the ground, and then carrying round his cap to the bystanders, in hopes that some of them would give him a sou. At length their attention was attracted by some large boys, who were engaged at a stand at a little distance in shooting at a mark with what seemed to be small guns. These guns, however, discharged themselves by means of a spring coiled up within the barrel, instead of gunpowder; and the bullets which they shot were peas. Rollo had seen these shooting-places before, when he went through the Fields on the first Sunday after he came; so he did not stop long here, but called Carlos's attention to something that he had never seen before, which was going on at a place a little under a tree, a little farther along. A large boy seemed to be pitching quoits. There were a number of persons around him looking on. There was a sort of box placed near the tree, the bottom of which was about two feet square. It had a back next the tree, and two sides, but it had no front or top. In fact, it was almost precisely like a wheelbarrow without any wheel, legs, or handles. [Illustration: SINGING IN THE OPEN AIR.] The bottom or floor of this box had a great many round and flat plates of brass upon it, about four inches in diameter, and about four inches apart from each other. The player had ten other plates in his hand, of the same size with those which were upon the bottom of the plate. He took these, one by one, and standing back at a certain distance, perhaps about as far as one good long pace, pitched them, as boys do quoits, in upon the floor of the box. What he tried to do was, to cover up one of the disks in the box so that no part of it could be seen. If he did so he was to have a prize; and he paid two sous for the privilege of playing. The prizes consisted of little articles of porcelain, bronzes, cheap jewelry, images, and other similar things, which were all placed conspicuously on shelves against the tree, above the box, in view of the player. It seemed to the bystanders as if it would be not at all difficult to toss the disks so as with ten to cover one; but those who tried seemed to find it very difficult to accomplish the object. Even if the disks which they tossed fell in the right place, they would rebound or slide away, and sometimes knock away those which were already well placed. Still, after trying once, the players wore usually unwilling to give up without trying a second, and even a third and fourth time, so that they generally lost six or eight sous before they were willing to stop; especially as the man himself would now and then play the disks, and he, having made himself skilful by great practice, found no difficulty in piling up his ten disks wherever he wished them to go. "I could do it, I verily believe," said Rollo. "I should like to try. I mean to go and ask my father if I may." So Rollo went to the carriage to state the case to his father, and ask his permission to see if he could not pitch the disks so as to cover one of the plates on the board. His father hesitated. "So far as trying the experiment is concerned," said Mr. Holiday, "as a matter of dexterity and skill, there is no harm; but so far as the hope of getting a prize by it is concerned, it is of the nature of gaming." "I should think it was more of the nature of a reward for merit and excellence," said Mr. George. "No," said Mr. Holiday; "for in one or two trials made by chance passengers coming along to such a place, the result must depend much more on chance than on adroitness or skill. "I will tell you what you may do, Rollo," continued Mr. Holiday. "You may pay the man the two sous and try the experiment, provided you determine beforehand not to take any prize if you succeed. Then you will pay your money simply for the use of his apparatus, to amuse yourself with a gymnastic performance, and not stake it in hope of a prize." "Well," said Rollo, "that is all I want." And off he ran. "It seems to me that that is a very nice distinction that you made," said Mr. George, as soon as Rollo had gone, "and that those two things are very near the line." "Yes," replied Mr. Holiday, "it is a nice distinction, but it is a very true one. The two things are very near the line; but then, one of them is clearly on one side, and the other on the other. For a boy to pay for the use of such an apparatus for the purpose of trying his eye and his hand is clearly right; but to stake his money in hopes of winning a prize is wrong, for it is gaming. It is gaming, it is true, in this case, on an exceedingly small scale. Still it is gaming, and so is the beginning of a road which has a very dreadful end. Is not it so?" "Yes," said Mr. George, "I think it is." As might have been expected, Rollo did not succeed in covering one of the disks. The disks that he threw spread all over the board. The money that he paid was, however, well spent, for he had much more than two sous' worth of satisfaction in making the experiment. Rollo found a great many other things to interest him in the various stalls and stands that he visited; but at length he got tired of them all, and, coming back to the carriage, told his father that he was ready to go home. "Very well," said his father. "I don't know but that your uncle George and I are ready, too, though we have not quite got through with our papers. But we can finish them at home." So Rollo and Carlos got into the carriage, and all the party went home to dinner. CHAPTER X. ROLLO'S NARRATIVE. One evening, when Rollo had been making a long excursion during the day with his uncle George, and had dined with him, at the close of it, at a restaurant's in the Boulevards, he went home about eight o'clock to the hotel to see his father and mother and Jennie, and tell them where he had been. He found his mother in her room putting on her bonnet. She said she was going to take a ride along the Boulevards with a gentleman and lady who were going to call for her. "And where is father?" said Rollo. "He has gone to bed, and is asleep by this time. You must be careful not to disturb him." "And Jennie?" asked Rollo. "She has gone to bed, too," said his mother; "but she is not asleep, and I presume she will be very glad to see you. You can go in her room." "Well, I will," said Rollo. "But, mother, I should like to go and ride with you. Will there be room for me?" "Yes," said his mother. "There will be room, I suppose, in the carriage; but it would not be proper for me to take you, for I am going on an invitation from others. The invitation was to me alone, and I have no right to extend it to any body else. "But this you can do, if you please," continued his mother. "You can take our carriage, and let Alfred drive you, and so follow along after our party. Only in that case you would not have any company. You would be in a carriage alone." "Never mind that," said Rollo. "I should like that. I would put the top back, and then I could see all around. I should have a grand ride. I'll go. I wish Jennie had not gone to bed; she could have gone with me." "No," replied his mother; "Jennie is not well to-night. She has got cold, and she went to bed early on that account. But she will be very glad to have you go and see her." So Rollo went into Jennie's room. As soon as he opened the door, Jennie pushed aside the curtains, and said,-- "Ah, Rollo, is that you? I am very glad that you have come." "I can't stay but a little while," said Rollo. "I am going to take a ride with mother." "Are you going with mother?" asked Jennie. "Not in the carriage with her," replied Rollo; "but I am going in the same party. I am going to have a carriage all to myself." "O, no, Rollo," said Jennie, in a beseeching tone. "Don't go away. Stay here with me, please. I am all alone, and have not any body to amuse me." "But you will go to sleep pretty soon," said Rollo. "No," replied Jennie; "I am not sleepy the least in the world. See." Here Jennie opened her eyes very wide, and looked Rollo full in the face, by way of demonstrating that she was not sleepy. Rollo felt very much perplexed. When he pictured to himself, in imagination, the idea of being whirled rapidly through the Boulevards, on such a pleasant summer evening, in a carriage which he should have all to himself, with the top down so that he could see every thing all around him, and of the brilliant windows of the shops, the multitudes of ladies and gentlemen taking their coffee at the little round tables on the sidewalk in front of the coffee saloons, the crowds of people coming and going, and the horsemen and carriages thronging the streets, the view was so enchanting that it was very hard for him to give up the promised pleasure. He, however, determined to do it; so he said,-- "Well, Jennie, I'll stay. I will go out and tell mother that I am not going to ride, and then I will come back." For the first half hour after Mrs. Holiday went away, Rollo was occupied with Jennie in looking over some very pretty French picture books which Mrs. Holiday had bought for her that day, to amuse her because she was sick. Jennie had looked them all over before; but now that Rollo had come, it gave her pleasure to look them over again, and talk about them with him. Jennie sat up in the bed, leaning back against the pillows and bolsters, and Rollo sat in a large and very comfortable arm chair, which he had brought up for this purpose to the bedside. The books lay on a monstrous square pillow of down, half as large as the bed itself, which, according to the French fashion, is always placed on the top of the bed. Rollo and Jennie would take the books, one at a time, and look them over, talking about the pictures, and showing the prettiest ones to each other. Thus the time passed very pleasantly. At length, however, Jennie, having looked over all the books, drew herself down into the bed, and began to ask Rollo where he had been that day. "I have been with uncle George," said Rollo. "He said that he was going about to see a great many different places, and that I might go with him if I chose, though he supposed that most of them were places that I should not care to see. But I did. I liked to see them all." "What places did you go to?" asked Jennie. "Why, first we went to see the workshops. I did not know before that there were so many. Uncle George says that Paris is one of the greatest manufacturing places in the world; only they make things by hand, in private shops, and not in great manufactories, by machinery. Uncle George says there must be as much as eight or ten square miles of these shops in Paris. They are piled up to six or eight stories high. Some of the streets look like ranges of chalky cliffs facing each other, such as we see at some places on the sea shore." "What do they make in the shops?" asked Jennie. "O, all sorts of curious and beautiful things. They have specimens of the things that they make up, put up, like pictures in a frame, in little glass cases, on the wall next the street. We walked along through several streets and looked at these specimens. There were purses, and fringes, and watches, and gold and silver chains, and beautiful portemonnaies, and clocks, and jewelry of all kinds, and ribbons, and opera glasses, and dressing cases, and every thing you can think of." "Yes," said Jennie, "I have seen all such things in the shop windows in the Palais Royal and in the Boulevards." "Ah, those are the shops where they sell the things," said Rollo; "but these shops that uncle George and I went to see are where they make them. We went to one place where they were making artificial flowers, and such beautiful things you never saw. The rooms were full of girls, all making artificial flowers." "Why did not you bring me home some of them?" asked Jennie. "Why--I don't know," replied Rollo. "I did not think to ask if I could buy any of them. "Then, after we had gone about in the workshops till we had seen enough, we went to the Louvre to see the paintings; though on the way we stopped to see a _crèche_." Rollo pronounced the word very much as if it had been spelled crash. "A crash!" exclaimed Jennie. "Did a building tumble down?" "O, no," said Rollo, "it was not that. It was a place where they keep a great many babies. The poor women who have to go out to work all day carry their babies to this place in the morning, and leave them there to be taken care of, and then come and get them at night. There are some nuns there, dressed all in white, to take care of the babies. They put them in high cradles that stand all around the room." "Were they all crying?" asked Jennie. "O, no," said Rollo, "they were all still. When we went in they were all just waking up. The nuns put them to sleep all at the same time. Every cradle had a baby in it. Some were stretching their arms, and some were opening their eyes, and some were trying to get up. As fast as they got wide awake, the nuns would take them up and put them on the floor, at a place where there was a carpet for them to creep upon and play." "I wish I could go and see them," said Jennie. "You can," replied Rollo. "Any body can go and see them. The nuns like to have people come. They keep every thing very white and nice. The cradles were very pretty." "Did they rock?" asked Jennie. "No," replied Rollo; "they were made to swing, and not to rock. They were up so high from the floor that they could not be made to rock very well. We stayed some time in this place, and then we went away." "And where did you go next?" asked Jennie. "We went to the Louvre to see the famous gallery of paintings. It is a quarter of a mile long, and the walls are covered with paintings on both sides, the whole distance." "Except where the windows are, I suppose," said Jennie. "No," replied Rollo, "there are no interruptions for windows. The windows are up high in the ceiling, for the room is very lofty. There is room for two or three rows of paintings below the windows. It is a splendid long room." "Were the pictures very pretty?" asked Jennie. "Not very," said Rollo. "At least, I did not think so; but uncle George told me it was a very famous gallery. There were a great many other rooms besides, all carved and gilded most magnificently, and an immense staircase of marble, wide enough for an army to go up and down. There were several large rooms, too, full of ancient marble statues; but I did not like them very much. They looked very dark and dingy. The paintings were prettier than they. "There were a great many persons in the painting gallery at work copying the paintings," continued Rollo. "Some were girls, and some were young men. There was one boy there not much bigger than I." "I don't see how so small a boy could learn to paint so well," said Jennie. "Why, he was not so very small," said Rollo. "He was bigger than I am, and I am growing to be pretty large. Besides, they have excellent schools here where they learn to draw and to paint. We went to see one of them." "Did it look like one of our schools?" asked Jennie. "O, no," replied Rollo; "it seemed to me more like a splendid palace than a school. We went through an iron gate into a court, and across the court to a great door, where a man came to show us the rooms. There were a great many elegant staircases, and passage ways, and halls, with pictures, and statues, and models of cities, and temples, and ruins, and every thing else necessary for the students." "Were the students there?" asked Jennie. "No," replied Rollo; "but we saw the room where they worked, and we saw the last lesson that they had." "What was it?" asked Jennie. "It was a subject which the professor gave them for a picture; and all of them were to paint a picture on that subject, each one according to his own ideas. We saw the paintings that they had made. There were twenty or thirty of them. The subject was written on a sheet of paper, and put up in the room where they could all see it." "What was the subject?" asked Jennie. "It was something like this," replied Rollo: "An old chestnut tree in a secluded situation, the roots partly denuded by an inundation from a stream. Cattle in the foreground, on the right. Time, sunset." "And did all the pictures have an old chestnut tree in them?" asked Jennie. "Yes," said Rollo; "and the roots were all out of the ground on one side, and there were cows in the foreground of them all. But the forms of the trees, and the position of the cattle, and the landscape in the back ground were different in every one." "I should like to see them," said Jennie. "Then," said Rollo, "when we came away from this place we walked along on the quay by the side of the river, looking over the parapet down to the bank below." "Was it a pretty place?" asked Jennie. "Yes," said Rollo, "a very pretty place indeed. There were great floating houses in the water, for the baths, with wheels turning in the current to pump up water, and little flower gardens along the brink of the stream. At least, in some places there were flower gardens; and in others there was a wall along the water, with boys sitting on the edge of it, fishing. Presently we came to a place where there was an opening in the parapet and stairs to go down to the water. You go down two or three steps first, and then the stairs turn each way. At the turning there was a man who had fishing poles, and nets, and fishing lines to sell or let. He had some to let for three sous an hour. I proposed to uncle George that we should hire two of them and go down and fish a little while." "And what did he say?" asked Jennie. "He laughed, and said that for him to spend his time while he was in Paris in fishing in the Seine would be perfectly preposterous. He said that his time in Europe cost him not less than a dollar for every hour." "A dollar for every hour?" exclaimed Jennie. "Yes," replied Rollo. "He says that his two passages across the Atlantic will have cost three hundred dollars, and the other expenses of his tour as much as five hundred more, which makes eight hundred dollars, and that he will not have more than one hundred days, probably, from the time of his landing in England to the time of his sailing again. That makes it about eight dollars a day. Now, there are not more than eight hours in a day suitable for going about and seeing what is to be seen; so that his time in the middle of the day costs him a dollar an hour; and he could not afford, he said, to spend it in fishing. "However," continued Rollo, "he said that I might look at the man's fishing apparatus; and if I found that it was different from that which the boys used in America, I might buy some of it to carry home." "And did you?" asked Jennie. "Yes," replied Rollo. And so saying, he put his hand in his pocket and took out a small parcel put up in a piece of French newspaper. He unrolled this parcel and showed Jennie what it contained. Jennie sat up in bed very eagerly in order to see it. First there came out a small net. "This net, you see," said Rollo, "is to be put upon a hoop or a ring of wire when I get to America. I did not buy a hoop, because it would fill up my trunk too much. But I can make one when I get home. "Then here are the fishing lines," continued Rollo. "I bought two of them. They were very cheap." The fishing lines were very pretty. Each had a small round cork upon the end of a quill. The corks were red, touched with blue. There was a sinker for each, made of large shot. "The man put in several spare sinkers for me," resumed Rollo, "in case these should come off." So saying, he opened a small paper and showed Jennie several large-sized shot, each of which had a cleft in the side of it for putting in the line. The intention was that the lead should be closed over the line, after the line had been inserted in it, by means of a light blow with a hammer, and thus the sinker would be secured to its place. "I like a net best to catch fishes with," said Jennie, "because that does not hurt them." "True," said Rollo, "a net is a great deal better on that account. You see I put a hoop around to keep the mouth of the net open, and then fasten it to the end of a long handle. Then you stand on the bank of the brook and put the net down into the water, and when a fish comes along you dip him up." "Yes," said Jennie, "that is an excellent way." "Then you could put him in a small pail of water," said Rollo, "and carry him home, and then you could put him in a bowl and see him swim about." "Yes," said Jennie, "I wish you would give me this net." "Well," said Rollo, "I will. I shall go down by the river again some day, and then I can buy another for myself." "So you can," said Jennie: "or, if you don't get another, I can lend you mine when you wish to fish with it." So Rollo put up his fishing tackle again, and then Jennie asked him where else he went. "Why, we walked along the quay," said Rollo, "a long way, past several bridges, until at last we came to a bridge leading over to an island in the river, where there was a great cathedral church, which uncle George said he wished to see. It was the Church of Notre Dame. It was an immense great church, with two towers very high; but it was very old. The outside of it seemed to be all crumbling to pieces." "Did you go in?" asked Jennie. "Yes," replied Rollo. "It is open all the time, and people are all the time going and coming. We went in. There was an old woman sitting just inside the door, with a string of beads in her hands, counting them. There were two or three other old women there, knitting. I could not see much of the inside of the church when we first went in, there were so many columns; but I could hear the birds flying about and singing away up high among the vaults and arches." "The birds inside the church!" said Jennie. "I should think they would drive them out." "I don't know how they could drive them out," said Rollo, "it was so high up to where they were flying. The arch of the ceiling seemed like a stone sky. There were so many pillars to keep up this roof, that, when we first went in, we could not see any end to the church at all. However, we walked along, and after a while we came to the end. "There were a great many curious things to see in the church," continued Rollo. "There were a great many little chapels along the sides of it, and curious images sculptured in stone, and people doing curious things all about in different places. We walked about there for half an hour. At last we found a congregation." "A congregation!" "Yes," said Rollo, "we came to a place, at last, which was divided off by a kind of railing; and there was a congregation there, sitting in chairs. Some were kneeling in chairs, and some were kneeling on the stone floor. They were reading in little prayer books and looking about." "Was any body preaching to them?" asked Jennie. "No," said Rollo, "but there were some priests at the altar doing something there; but I could not understand what they were doing. We stopped there a little while, and then we came away. We walked along to another part of the church, and at length we came to another enclosure, where a great many people were collected. Mr. George went up to see what it was, and he said he believed it was a baptism; but I could not get near enough to see." "And what did you do next?" asked Jennie. "Why, we came out of the church, and crossed over by a bridge to this side of the river, and then walked down along the quay till we came to a place where there was a tall bronze column, somewhat like this column in the Place Vendome. Uncle George said that he wished to see it, because it stood on the place where a famous old castle and prison used to stand in former times, called the Bastile. He said that the people made an insurrection and battered the old prison down, because the government was so cruel in shutting up innocent prisoners in it. They built fires against the doors, and battered against them with heavy timbers until they broke them in, and then they let the prisoners out and set the prison on fire. Uncle George said that I should take great interest in reading about it one of these days; but I think I should like to read about it now." "I should, too," said Jennie. "They afterward took away all the stones of the Bastile," continued Rollo, "and made this tall bronze column in its place. There is a figure of a man on it, standing on tiptoe." "I should think he would blow down in a high wind," said Jennie. "I don't know why he does not, I am sure," rejoined Rollo. "I wanted to go up to the top of the column and see how he was fastened there; but uncle George said he was too tired. So we came away. In fact, I was very willing to come away, for I saw a great crowd at a certain broad place on the sidewalk, not far from there, and I wished to go and see what it was." "And did you go?" asked Jennie. "Yes," replied Rollo, "and I found it was a man who had made a great ring of people all about him, and was trying to get them to give fifteen sous to see him shut himself up in a small box. The box was on the pavement, all ready. It was quite small. It did not seem possible that a man could be shut up in it." "How big was it?" asked Jennie. "O, I don't know, exactly," said Rollo. "It was quite small." "Was it no bigger than that," said Jennie, holding her two hands a few inches apart, so as to indicate what she would consider quite a small box. "O, yes," said Rollo, "it was a great deal bigger than that. It was only a little smaller than you would think a man could get into. The box was square, and was made of tin, but painted black. [Illustration: PERFORMANCE ON THE BOULEVARDS.] "There was an organ at one end of the ring, with a man playing upon it, to draw the crowd together. In front of the organ was a woman, with a baby in her arms, and another little child playing about her. The man said that this was his family, and that he had to support them by his experiments. In front of the woman was the box. In front of the box was the man, who stood there, generally, telling what he was going to do, and calling upon the people to throw in their sous. In front of the man was a carpet, on the pavement, and in the middle of the carpet a tin plate. From time to time the people would throw sous over into the circle. The man would then pick them up and put them into the plate, and tell the people how many there lacked. There must be fifteen, he said, or he could not perform the experiment. He kept talking all the time to the people, and saying funny things to make them laugh. "At last all the fifteen sous were in, and then the man went to the box. He brought out a soldier who was standing among the people, and placed him near the box, so that he might shut the cover down when the man was in. The man then stepped into the box. The upper edge of it was not higher than his knees. He then began to kneel down in the box, crossing his legs under him; and then he crouched his body down into it, and curled in his head, and then---- "Jennie!" said Rollo, interrupting himself. He observed that Jennie was very still, and he was not sure that she was listening. Jennie did not answer. She was fast asleep. "She's gone to sleep," said Rollo, "without hearing the end of the story. However, the soldier put the lid down, and shut the man entirely in." Rollo thought that, as he was so near the end, he might as well finish the story, even if his auditor was asleep. CHAPTER XI. CONCLUSION. Rollo's adventures in Paris were brought, at length, for the time being, to a somewhat abrupt termination, by an invitation which he received suddenly at breakfast one morning, from his uncle George, to set off with him the next day for Switzerland. Rollo was very eager to accept this invitation from the moment that it was offered him. It is true that he was not at all tired of Paris; and there were a great many places, both in the city and in the environs, that he was still desirous to see. Rollo had only one day's notice of the proposed journey to Switzerland, and that day was spent almost entirely in getting the passports ready. This business devolved on Rollo himself, as his uncle was engaged in some other way that day; and he proposed, therefore, that Rollo should undertake the work of getting the passports stamped. Rollo accordingly did so. He took a carriage and went round to the various offices, and attended to the business very well, though he encountered some difficulties in doing it. His uncle George was very much pleased when he came home that night and found that Rollo had got the passports all ready. Carlos went with Rollo to the passport offices, for company, though he could not, of course, render him any assistance.[F] [F] A full account of Rollo's adventures in getting the passports stamped will be given in the first chapter of Rollo in Switzerland. Rollo dined that evening with his uncle George and Carlos at a restaurant. There are hundreds of these restaurants scattered all over the city of Paris, and many of them are furnished and decorated in a style of splendor that is magnificent beyond description. Mr. George took Rollo and Carlos to one of the finest of them. It was in the Boulevards. The aspect of the room, when Rollo entered it, was very imposing. It was lined on all sides with mirrors, with carved and gilded pilasters between them, and a richly ornamented cornice above. The ceiling, overhead, was panelled, and was painted in fresco with the most graceful and elegant devices. The floor was laid in a beautiful mosaic of wood, brilliantly polished. The room was filled with tables, all set out for dinner in the nicest manner, with silver plate, elegant porcelain, and glasses that reflected the light in the most resplendent manner. A great many gay groups of ladies and gentlemen were seated at these tables, taking dinner; while the waiters, with snow-white napkins on their arms, were walking about in a rapid, but in a very gentle and noiseless manner, to wait upon them. At the back side of the room there sat two beautiful young women, behind a sort of counter, which was raised a little above the rest of the floor, so that they could survey the whole scene. It was the duty of these young women to keep the accounts of what was ordered at the several tables, and to receive the money which was paid by the guests, the waiters carrying it to them from the different parties at the tables when they paid. These ladies were the presiding officers, as it were, in the saloon; and the guests all bowed to them very respectfully, both when they came in and when they went away. Mr. George selected a table for himself and the two boys, and they had an excellent dinner there. There was a printed book, large though thin, on every table, giving a list of the different articles--more than five hundred in all. From these Mr. George and the boys selected what they liked, and the waiters brought it to them. The party remained at this restaurant, eating their dinner and taking their coffee after it, for more than an hour; and then they went away. That evening Rollo went into his father's room to bid his father good by, for he expected to set off for Switzerland the next morning very early. He found his father sitting in an arm chair by a window, reading a book. Mr. Holiday laid his book down and talked for some time with Rollo about his proposed tour in Switzerland, and gave him a great deal of preparatory information about the mountains, the glaciers, the torrents, the avalanches, and other wonderful things that Rollo expected to see. Rollo was very much interested in these accounts. "I am very glad that uncle George invited me to go with him," said he. "So am I," said his father. "Because," added Rollo, "I expect to have a very pleasant time." "True," replied his father; "but that is not the reason precisely why _I_ am glad that he invited you." "What is your reason, then?" asked Rollo. "I am glad," replied Mr. Holiday, "because his asking you to go with him into Switzerland is a sign that you have been a good boy while under his care here in France. Boys that are selfish, troublesome, and disobedient, in one ride or journey, find usually that their company is not desired a second time. It is now two or three weeks since your uncle George invited you to come with him from London to Paris, and during all this time you have been mainly under his care; and now he invites you to go with him on a still more extended tour. I think you must have conducted yourself in a very considerate or gentlemanly manner, and proved yourself a pleasant travelling companion, or you would not have received this new invitation." Rollo was very much gratified at hearing his father speak in this manner. So he shook hands with him, and bade him good by. 
23460	----	[Illustration: Cover] [Illustration: ABROAD] [Illustration] [Illustration] BON VOYAGE LAST YEAR, DEAR FRIENDS, WE MET "AT HOME," AND NOW "ABROAD" WE MEAN TO ROAM: WITH ALL WHO CHOOSE TO SPARE THE TIME WE'LL WANDER TO A NEIGHBOURING CLIME. NOR NEED YOU LEAVE YOUR OWN FIRESIDE, FOR WITH FAIR FANCY FOR OUR GUIDE, OUR WINGED THOUGHTS, IN SWALLOW-FLIGHT, SHALL CROSS THE CHANNEL SMOOTH AND BRIGHT: AND IN DESPITE OF WIND OR WEATHER, WE'LL MAKE OUR LITTLE TOUR TOGETHER. NOW ON OUR PICTURES YOU SHALL LOOK:-- TO YOU WE DEDICATE OUR BOOK. [Illustration] [Illustration] ABROAD Thos · Crane Ellen · E · Houghton BELFAST · MARCUS · WARD · & · CO · NEW-YORK · LONDON · [Illustration: Printed and bound by · Marcus Ward & Co · LONDON BELFAST] CONTENTS PAGE "Bon Voyage" 3 LONDON: "Packing"--_Frontispiece_ " The Departure--_Title-page_ On the Way 8 FOLKESTONE: Going on Board 9 Crossing the Channel 10 BOULOGNE: The Buffet 12 " The Hotel 13 " The Quay 14 " The First Morning in France 15 ROUEN: "Good-night" 16 " Church of St. Ouen 17 " Blind Pierre 19 " Rue de l'Epicerie 20 " The Crèche 21 " The Schoolroom 22 " School Drill 23 CAEN: The Arrival 24 " The Hotel 25 " The Hotel Kitchen 26 " The Washerwomen 27 " The Knife-grinder 28 " Chocolate and Milk 29 " The Lacemakers 31 En Route--A Railway Crossing 32 " A Railway Station 33 PARIS: The Gardens of the Palais Royale 34 " On the Boulevard 35 " The Tuileries Gardens 36 " Punch and Judy 37 " Musée de Cluny 38 " Staircase of Henry II. 39 " The Man in Armour 40 " The "Zoo" 41 " The Pony Tramway 42 " The Swans 43 " A Flower Stall 44 " A Day at Versailles 45 " La Fontaine des Innocents 47 " The Markets 49 " The Luxembourg Gardens 51 " The Merry-go-round 52 The Night Journey to Calais 53 CALAIS: The Water-Gate 54 DOVER: Homeward Bound 55 "Bon Retour" 56 THE VERSES ARE BY VARIOUS WRITERS [Illustration] My readers, would you like to go _abroad_, for just an hour or so, With little friends of different ages? Look at them in these pictured pages-- Brothers and sisters you can see,--all children of one family. Their father, too, you here will find, and good Miss Earle, their teacher kind. Three years ago their Mother died, and ever since has Father tried To give his children in the Spring some tour, or treat, or pleasant thing. Said he, last Easter, "I propose, for Nellie, Dennis, Mabel, Rose, A trip abroad--to go with me to Paris and through Normandy." Then all exclaimed, "Oh! glorious!"--"But may not Bertie go with us?--" Said Rose--"We can't leave _him_ at home." Then Father said he too should come. Turn to the Frontispiece and see the children packing busily. The next page shows them in the station at Charing Cross. Their great elation Is written plainly on their faces.--Bell rings--"Time's up--Come, take your places!" * * * * * The "Folkestone Express" sped on like a dream, And there lay the steamer fast getting up steam. [Illustration] Then at the Folkestone harbour, down they go Across the gangway to the boat below; Mabel and Rose just crossing you can see, Each holding her new doll most carefully. Nellie, Miss Earle, and Bertie too appear, Whilst Dennis, with the rugs, brings up the rear. May looks behind her with an anxious air, Lest Father, at the last, should not be there. Our children once on board, all safe and sound, Watch with delight the busy scene around. The noisy steam-pipe blows and blows away,-- "Now this is just the noise we like," they say. But while the turmoil loud and louder grows, "I'm glad the wind blows gently," whispers Rose. And as the steamer swiftly leaves the quay, Mabel and Dennis almost dance with glee. [Illustration] CROSSING THE CHANNEL. The sea is calm, and clear the sky--only a few clouds scudding by: The Passengers look bright, and say, "Are we not lucky in the day!" The Mate stands in the wheelhouse there, and turns the wheel with watchful care: Steering to-day is work enough; what must it be when weather's rough? Look at him in his sheltered place--_he_ hasn't got a merry face-- 'Tis not such fun for _him_, you know, he goes so often to and fro. Nellie and Father, looking back, glance at the vessel's lengthening track-- "How far," says Nellie, "we have come! good-bye, good-bye, dear English home!" Dennis and Rose and Mabel, walking upon the deck, are gaily talking-- Says Mabel, "No one must forget to call my new doll 'Antoinette'; Travelling in France, 'twould be a shame for her to have an English name." Says Dennis, "Call her what you will, so you be English 'Mabel' still." Says Rose, to Dennis drawing nigher, "I think the wind is getting higher;" "If a gale blows, do you suppose, we shall be wrecked?" asks little Rose. [Illustration] [Illustration] While chatting with Dennis, Rose lost all her fear; And the swift Albert Victor came safe to the pier At Boulogne, where they landed, and there was the train In waiting to take up the travellers again. But to travel so quickly was not their intent: On a little refreshment our party was bent. Here they are at the Buffet--for dinner they wait-- And the tall _garçon_, André, attends them in state. At a separate table sits Monsieur Legros, And behind him his poodle, Fidèle, you must know, Who can dance, he's so clever, and stand and on his head, Or upon his nose balance a morsel of bread. Mabel takes up some sugar to coax him, whilst Nell Calls him to her--Fidèle understands very well-- "Why! he must have learnt English, he knows what we say," Mabel cries, "See!--he begs in the cleverest way." [Illustration] Then to the Hotel on the quay they all went; To remain till the morrow they all were content: After so much fatigue Father thought it was best, For the children were weary and needed the rest. Pictured here is the room in that very Hotel, Where so cosily rested Rose, Mabel, and Nell. Mabel dreamed of the morrow--of buying French toys: Rose remembered the steam-pipe, and dreamed of its noise. Nellie's dreams were of home, but she woke from her trance Full of joy, just to think they were _really_ in France. Very early next morning, you see them all three Looking out from their window that faces the sea. [Illustration] THE FIRST MORNING IN FRANCE. Here they see a pretty sight, Sunny sky and landscape bright: Fishing-boats move up and down, With their sails all red and brown. Some to land are drawing near, O'er the water still and clear, Full of fish as they can be, Caught last night in open sea. On the pavement down below, Fishwives hurry to and fro, Calling out their fish to sell-- "What a noisy lot," says Nell, "What a clap--clap--clap--they make With their shoes each step they take. Wooden shoes, I do declare, And oh! what funny caps they wear!" After breakfast all went out To view the streets, and walk about The ancient city-walls, so strong, Where waved the English flag for long. Toy shops too they went to see, Spread with toys so temptingly: Dolls of every kind were there, With eyes that shut and real hair-- And, in a brightly-coloured row, Doll-fisherfolk like these below. Prices marked, as if to say, "Come and buy us, quick, to-day!" One for Mabel, one for Rose, _Two_ for Bertie I suppose, Father bought.--Then all once more Set off travelling as before. [Illustration] [Illustration] To Rouen next they went, that very day, And heard strange places called out by the way, Where bells kept tinkling while the train delayed: At Amiens ten minutes quite they stayed. Dennis bought chocolate to make a feast-- They had _three_ dinners in the train, at least. At Rouen here they are at last, though late-- The bedroom clock there shows 'tis after eight! Mabel looks tired--she lies back in her chair Beside the wood fire burning brightly there. Rose says--"Good-night!"--to Bertie fast asleep, While her own eyes can scarcely open keep. Next morning, through the quaint old streets of Rouen They went to see the old church of Saint Ouen, With eager feet, and chatting as they walked, About the ancient Town, together talked. [Illustration] ÉGLISE de ST · OEUN Said Dennis, first, "This city bold Belonged to us In days of old." Said Nellie, "Here Prince Arthur wept-- By cruel John A prisoner kept. Here Joan of Arc Was tried and burned, When fickle fate Against her turned." Said Rose, "Oh dear! It makes me sad To think what trouble People had Who lived once in This very town, Where we walk gaily Up and down." [Illustration] Now they have come into the entrance wide Of great St. Ouen's Church; see, side by side, Dennis and Nellie going on before: The others watch yon beggar at the door-- Poor blind Pierre; he always waits just so, Listening for those who come and those who go. He tells his beads, and hopes all day that some May think of him, 'mongst those who chance to come. Though he can't see, he is so quick to hear, He knows a long, long time ere one draws near, And shakes the coppers in his well-worn tin-- "Click, click," it goes--see, Bertie's gift drops in. 'Tis his _one_ sou that Bertie gives away-- It might have bought him sweets this very day. When through St. Ouen's Church they'd been at last, Along its aisles and down its transept passed, They went to the Cathedral, there to see The tomb of Rolf, first Duke of Normandy. But Mabel said, "Why should we _English_ care About that Rolf they say was buried there?" Then she ran on, not waiting for reply-- My little reader, can _you_ tell her why? [Illustration] ROUEN RUE DE L'ÉPICERIE The Cathedral was cold, With its dim solemn aisles, But outside our friends found The sun waiting, with smiles, To show them their way, So hither they came Along an old street With a hard French name. And still walking onward, Through streets we can't see, At length reached the Crèche Of "Soeur Rosalie"-- Where poor women's children Are kept all day through, Amused, taught, and tended, And all for one _sou_. [Illustration] Children are happy with "Sister" all day, Mothers can't nurse them--they work far away. Good Sister Rosalie, she is so kind, E'en when they're troublesome, she doesn't mind. Here in the first room the Babies we see, sitting at _dejeuner_ round Rosalie. Dodo is crying, he can't find his spoon--some one will find it and comfort him soon. Over yon cradle bends kind Sister Claire, Dear little Mimi is waking up there. Sister Félicité, sweetly sings she, "Up again, down again, _Bébé_, to me." [Illustration] The school-room of the _Crèche_ is wide, The children sit there, side by side, While "Sister" hears their lessons through, And when there's no more work to do They all get up, and form a ring, And as they stand, together sing. Now hand in hand, tramp, tramp they go, Now in a line march to and fro, For with the rattle in her hand The "Sister" makes them understand When to advance and when draw back-- Click-clack it goes, click-clack, click-clack. On Stéphanie now turn your eyes, She's only five, but she's so wise-- She knows the alphabet all through, And, more than that, can teach it too. Just now, she moves her wand to J, And tells the children what to say. But 'tis no use to tell Ninette, For she is but a _bébé_ yet. [Illustration] ARRIVAL AT CAEN. Through Rouen when our friends had been, And all its famous places seen, They travelled on, old Caen to see, Another town in Normandy. Arrived at Caen, the travellers here Before the chief Hotel appear, Miss Earle, Rose, Bertie you descry-- The rest are coming by-and-by. _Monsieur le Maître_, with scrape and bow, Stands ready to receive them now, And Madame with her blandest air, And their alert _Commissionaire_. Next up the staircase see them go, With _femme de chambre_ the way to show. Father and Dennis, standing there, Are asking for the bill of fare. _Monsieur le Maître_, who rubs his hands And says, "What are _Monsieur's_ commands?" With scrape and bow, again you see-- The most polite of men is he. [Illustration] [Illustration] Now that dinner is ordered, we'll just take a peep At the cooks in the kitchen--just see! what a heap Of plates are provided, and copper pans too;-- They'll soon make a dinner for me and for you. French cookery's famous for flavouring rare, But of _garlic_ I think they've enough and to spare. If we ask how their wonderful dishes are made, I'm afraid they won't tell us the tricks of the trade. Do they make them, I wonder, of frogs and of snails? Or are these, after all, only travellers' tales? The names are all down on the "Menu," no doubt, But the worst of it is that we can't make them out. THE WASHERWOMEN OF CAEN Here the children Came next morn, Walking by The river Orne; Near the poplars On the green, Where the Washerwives Are seen. Here they looked At old Nannette, Wringing out The garments wet; Saw how Eugénie, Her daughter, Soaked them first In running water; Watched the washers Soaping, scrubbing, With their mallets Rubbing, drubbing-- Working hard With all their might, Till the clothes Were clean and white. THE KNIFE-GRINDER OF CAEN. "L'homme qui passe," in France they call The man who thrives By grinding knives-- Who never stays at home at all, But always must be moving on. He's glad to find Some knives to grind, But when they're finished he'll be gone. With dog behind to turn the wheel, He grinds the knife For farmer's wife, And pauses now the edge to feel: The dog behind him hears the sound Of cheerful chat On this and that, And fears no knife is being ground. The man makes jokes with careless smile, He doesn't mind The dog behind, But goes on talking all the while. CHOCOLATE AND MILK. Little Lili, whose age isn't three years quite, Went one day with Mamma for a long country walk, Keeping up, all the time, such a chatter and talk Of the trees, and the flowers, and the cows, brown and white. Soon she asked for some cake, and some chocolate too, For this was her favourite lunch every day-- "Dear child," said Mamma, "let me see--I dare say "If I ask that nice milkmaid, and say it's for you, Some sweet milk we can get from her pretty white cow." "I would rather have chocolate," Lili averred. Then Mamma said, "Dear Lili, please don't be absurd; My darling, you cannot have chocolate now: You know we can't get it so far from the town.-- Come and stroke the white cow,--see, her coat's soft as silk." "But, Mamma," Lili said, "if the _White_ cow gives milk, Then chocolate surely must come from the _Brown_." [Illustration] [Illustration] LACE MAKERS OF CAEN In many a lowly cottage in France The bobbins keep threading a mazy dance The whole day long, from morning to night, Weaving the lace so pretty and light. How swiftly the nimble fingers twist The threads on the pillow--not one is missed: Each bobbin would seem to rise from its place To meet the fingers that form the lace. How wondrously quick the pattern shows From the threads, as under our eyes it grows:-- How quickly follow stem, leaves, and flower, As if under the spell of enchanter's power. Look at old Nannette--she can scarcely see, Yet none can make lovelier lace than she; And her grand-daughter Julie--just seven years old, Is learning already the bobbins to hold. Without drawings to follow, or patterns to trace, How can these poor cottagers fashion their lace? From the plant and the flower and unfolding fern And the frost on the pane their patterns they learn,-- From gossamer web by the spider wove,-- From natural taste and natural love For every form of beauty and grace, They've learned to fashion their wonderful lace. [Illustration] For Paris quite an early start They made the following day, And out of windows every one Kept looking, all the way. And many a pretty road like this The train went whizzing past, Where gatekeeper, with flag and horn, Stood by the gates shut fast. That's Marie you see standing there: Now, do you wonder why A _woman_ has to blow the horn Before the train goes by?-- Her husband is a lazy man, He's in his cottage near, He would not stir a step, although The train will soon be here. And Marie called him, "Paul, be quick-- Go shut the gate," she cried-- "Don't hurry me, there's time enough," The lazy man replied. So Marie had to go, you see, And take the horn, and blow.-- And every day it's just the same, She always has to go. [Illustration] EN ROUTE Clatter! clatter! on they go, Past stream and gentle valley, Until the engine wheels turn slow, And stop at length to dally For dinner-time full half-an-hour Within a crowded station, While hungry little mouths devour The tempting cold collation Spread in the dining-room at hand; And then, when that is finished, The children sally in a band, With appetites diminished, To look at all the folk they meet,-- The porters in blue blouses, The white-robed priests, the nuns so neat, The farmers and their spouses, And all the other folk that make A crowd in France amusing:-- Till hark! their places all must take, Without a minute losing. The engine puffs--away they fly, And soon leave all behind them; Now turn the page, and you and I In Paris safe will find them. [Illustration] [Illustration] Paris, gay Paris! so bright and so fair, Your sun is all smiles, and there's mirth in your air. The children, though tired with their travelling, found That the first night in Paris one's sleep is not sound, For the hum of the streets makes one dream all the night Of the wonderful sights that will come with the light. The morning was fine, and--breakfast despatched-- They soon made their way to the Gardens attached To the old Royal Palace, and there met a throng Of French children, and joined in their games before long. One boy lent his hoop, and gave Bertie a bun. And--talking quite fast--seemed to think it great fun With nice English girls like our Nellie to play, Though not understanding a word she might say. On leaving the Gardens, the party were seated Outside of a _café_, and there Papa treated Them all to fine ices and chocolate too; They could hardly tell which was the nicer--could you? Paris, gay Paris, So bright and so fair! Your sun is all smiles, And there's mirth in your air! [Illustration] IN THE TUILERIES GARDENS. In the Tuileries gardens, each afternoon, A little old man comes walking along: Now watch what happens! for just as soon As they see him, the birds begin their song, And flutter about his hands and head, And perch on his shoulder quite at their ease, For he fills his pockets with crumbs of bread To feed his friends who live in the trees, And well they know he loves them so That into his pockets they sometimes go. But hark to what's going on over there! 'Tis surely a Punch-and-Judy man, Making old Judy, I do declare, Talk French as fast as ever she can! And I think, from the looks of poor Mr. P., He's getting it hot from his scolding wife; But just wait a minute, and then you'll see He'll beat her within an inch of her life. Walk in! take a seat and you'll see her beat, And a penny is all you pay for the treat. [Illustration] [Illustration] MUSÉE DE CLUNY Where shall we go to next? they still would say, And still they found new pleasures every day. At times Miss Earle took Bertie for a ride, With little Rose and Mabel side by side; And then their father took the elder two To see the picture galleries, and view Historic buildings, where they sometimes rested, And many a bit of history was suggested. They saw a wedding at the Madeleine, Then went to "Notre Dame," close by the Seine, And climbed the lofty tower, to see the view Which cannot be surpassed the whole world through. One day their father took them all to see A great museum, full as full could be Of rare old furniture, of every kind The artists of the "Middle Age" designed;-- And precious things in silver and in gold, Made by the best artificers of old. Now while another way the party's eyes Are turned, "King Henry's Staircase" Bertie spies, And climbing up, with help from sister May, He calls to Dennis, when he gets half-way, "Come catch me quick!"--and then runs off, with peals Of merry laughter,--Dennis at his heels. [Illustration] [Illustration] Bertie was first. "I've won the race," he cried; But soon upon his lips the triumph died, And Bertie back in fear to Dennis ran:-- "Oh Dennis, look! I ran against that man! He shook and rattled so, and wagged his head, And gave me such a fright!" "Pooh!" Dennis said, "He will not hurt!" And then he made a bow:-- Good-bye, old soldier, we must leave you now. Next afternoon, while at the Zoo', a little tale they heard Of the elephant that's there, and you shall hear it word for word. [Illustration] Mumbo and Jumbo, two elephants great, From India travelled, and lived in state, In Paris the one, and in London the other: Now Mumbo and Jumbo were sister and brother. A warm invitation to Jumbo came, To cross the Atlantic and spread his fame. Said he, "I really don't want to go-- But then, they're so pressing!--I can't say No!" So away to America Jumbo went, But his sister Mumbo is quite content To stay with the children of Paris, for she Is as happy an elephant as could be: "I've a capital house, quite large and airy, Close by live the Ostrich and Dromedary, And we see our young friends every day," said she: "Oh, where is the Zoo' that would better suit me?" [Illustration] A Steady steed is Mumbo, if just a trifle slow; Upon her back you couldn't well a-steeple-chasing go: But other opportunities there are to have a ride, For there's a stud of ponies, and a camel to bestride-- A cart that's drawn by oxen can accommodate a few, And if such queer conveyances don't please you at the Zoo', There are little tramway cars too, with seats on either side, Which will take you through the gardens, and through the _Bois_ beside:-- Take the ticket on the other page, and with it you may go From the lake within the garden to the gate that's called _Maillot_. [Illustration] THE SWANS. "Ho! pretty swans, Do you know, in our Zoo' The swans of old England Are just like you?" "Don't tell me!" Said a cross old bird; "I know better, The thing's quite absurd. "Their figures, I'm sure, Are not worth a glance: If you want to see style, You _must_ come to France." With a scornful whisk The swan turned tail, Spread its wings to the breeze, And was off full-sail. "Ho! pretty swan, Do you know, in our Zoo' The swans are not half So conceited as you?" [Illustration] A FLOWER STALL ON THE BOULEVARDS Look at Mère Victorine At her stall in the street, With the lily and rose, And the white _marguerite_, She makes pretty _bouquéts_ The whole of the day: There are buyers in plenty Who pass by that way. Little Basil and Amélie, Watching her, stand: Up to Mère Victorine Basil stretches his hand, "Can't you spare me," says he, "A morsel of green, Or _one_ sweet little flower, Good Mère Victorine?" "If you come for a flower, Pray where is your _sou_?" Answers Mère Victorine, "I can't _give_ one to you-- Such flowers as mine Are for selling, you know; You must go to the country, Where _wild_ flowers grow." [Illustration] A DAY AT VERSAILLES. At Versailles, as perhaps you have heard, Countless pictures of fights Form the chief of the sights: Could so many great battles have ever occurred? No wonder our children the gardens preferred:-- For the fountains were really so pretty a sight, That Bertie declared--and I think he was right-- It was better to play Like the fountains all day, Than such terrible battles to fight. [Illustration] [Illustration] LA FONTAINE DES INNOCENTS Round this pretty fountain here Sparrows gather all the year; In its sparkling waters dip, From its basin freely sip, Round about their fountain play, Safe and happy all the day;-- Little "innocents" are they. That is Antoine, bread in hand; See him by his mother stand: Saucy little birdies spy Antoine's bread, and at it fly, Trying each to get a share, Frightening little Antoine there. Antoine does not _wish_ to share, Thinks the bread is all _his_ right, Just to suit his appetite. Mother says, "Be kind, my son, There is more when this is done; Bread enough for thee at home:-- Let the pretty sparrows come; Give them each a little crumb." Here our little family Near the fountain too, we see, Walking through the open space To the covered market-place. [Illustration] [Illustration] THE MARKETS OF PARIS Here from morning till night they are selling and buying, And from morning till night their market wares crying: All around you will find there is food of each kind; There are flesh, fowl, and fish here for every dish. The fish-market you see on the opposite page: On this stall that is nearest, the shell-fish appear; But were I to begin, it would take me an age To tell you the names of the fish you find here. See! there's puss looking out for what she can get, And that little boy who is laughing is Paul,-- The girl with the lobster is sister Lisette, And he's watching to see if it nips her at all. Madame Blaise, there, tells Nellie her mussels are good, But Nellie smiles sweetly and goes on her way, And I venture to doubt if she quite understood All the funny French things Madame Blaise had to say. Other parts of the market contain butchers meat, And poultry, and fruit, and salads, and greens, And here, if you want them, quite young, fresh and sweet, Are the _haricóts verts_ which we know as "French beans." For, from morning till night here they're selling and buying, And from morning till night their market wares crying. [Illustration] [Illustration] IN THE LUXEMBOURG GARDENS. Rose and Bertie have a ride; Mabel, walking at their side, Carries both the dolls, and so By the Luxembourg they go. Over in that Palace soon-- For the clock is marking noon-- The "Senate" will together come (Like our "House of Lords" at home). Hear that woman, "Who will buy Windmill, ball, or butterfly"-- Josephine and Phillipe, see, Eager as they both can be. Charles before her, silent stands, With no money in his hands, No more _sous_--he spent them all On that big inflated ball. Be content, my little friend, Money spent you cannot spend; With your good St. Bernard play, Buy more toys another day. [Illustration] A MERRY-GO-ROUND IN THE CHAMPS ELYSEES Here all the day long, Are race-horses for hire, That never go wrong. And besides, never tire. Here all the day long, Are race-horses for hire. Who will come for a ride? Horses, lions, all ready! Bear or tiger astride, You shall sit safe and steady. Who will come for a ride? Lions, horses, all ready! Round and round they canter slow--soon they fast and faster go; Look at Louis, all in white, Gaspard, almost out of sight, Rose and Mabel side by side;--Bertie watching while they ride. Dennis waits till they have done,--much too big to join the fun; Brother Paul, with serious air, minds his little sister Claire, Thinking if _he_ had a sou, _she_ should have some pleasure too. [Illustration] Now, with regret, they've said Good-bye to Paris bright and gay; To Calais they are drawing nigh--you see them on their way. To travel thus, all through the night, at first they thought was fun. But by degrees they grew less bright, as hours passed one by one. Then Nellie to her sisters said, "Let's have an extra rug. And make-believe we're home in bed, and cuddle close and snug, And try, until the night has passed, which can most quiet keep." Then all were tucked up warm and fast, and soon fell sound asleep. The happy time abroad, again in dreams is all gone o'er-- Again in Paris, as it seems, they watch the crowd once more. The "Elysian Fields," beneath the trees, are peopled with a throng Of loveliest dolls, which at their ease converse, or ride along; And wondrous "Easter Eggs" in nests, abundant lie around, And "April Fish" with golden vests and silver coats, abound! Such fleeting fancies Dreamland lends to pass the time away Until the railway journey ends, just at the break of day. [Illustration] PORTE DE LA MER, CALAIS. The last place where they stopped abroad was Calais, which, you know, Belonged to England once--though that was many a year ago: It has a beautiful old Tower, all weatherworn and brown, And here's the Sea-Gate, opening from the walls that guard the town. But now Farewell to Merry France! the vessel ready waits To take our party back again across the Dover Straits. [Illustration] HOMEWARD BOUND. Hurrah! we're afloat, and away speeds the boat as fast as its paddles can go, With the wind on its back, and a broad foaming track behind it, as white as the snow. On board, every eye is strained to descry the white cliffs of our own native land, And brightly they gleam, as onward we steam, till at length they are close at hand. The sun shines with glee on the rippling sea, and the pennant strung high on the mast. But at length it sinks down behind the grey town, and tells us the day is nigh past. See, there is the port, and near it a fort, and the strong old Castle of Dover-- We're close to the shore--just five minutes more, and the Channel Crossing is over. Then all safe and sound upon English ground, we bid farewell to the sea-- Jump into the train, and start off again as fast as the engine can flee. We run up to town, and thence travel down to the home in the country, at night; Then, I'm sorry to say, dear Nellie and May, Rose, Dennis, and Bertie bright, We must leave in their home till next holidays come, when, let all of us hope, it may chance That our trip will, next Spring, be as pleasant a thing as our swallow-flight over to France. [Illustration] · BON RÉTOUR · NOW THAT AT LAST WE'RE SAFELY BACK AGAIN, AND AS UPON THE RAILWAY BRIDGE THE TRAIN IS STAYED SOME MOMENTS, LET US SAY GOOD-BYE, AND ASK IF YOU'VE ENJOYED THE TRIP, AND TRY TO THINK THAT SOON AGAIN WE'RE SURE TO MEET, ON COUNTRY ROAD OR IN THE CROWDED STREET, AND ERE WE PART, STILL LINGER FOR A WHILE, VIEWING THIS TRANQUIL SCENE WITH PENSIVE SMILE,-- THE EVENING GLOW, THE RIVER'S FALLING TIDE, SAINT PAUL'S FAMILIAR DOME AND LONDON'S PRIDE. · AU REVOIR BIENTÔT · * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Obvious punctuation errors repaired. Page 22, "Créche" changed to "Crèche" (of the _Crèche_) Page 24, twice, "Maitre" changed to "Maître" (Monsieur le Maître) 
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20891	----	Hughes South of France ONLY TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY COPIES PRINTED. "----I informed my friend that I had just received from England a journal of a tour made in the South of France by a young Oxonian friend of mine, a poet, a draughtsman, and a scholar--in which he gives such an animated and interesting description of the Château Grignan, the dwelling of Madame de Sevigné's beloved daughter, and frequently the place of her own residence, that no one who ever read the book would be within forty miles of the same without going a pilgrimage to the spot. The Marquis smiled, seemed very much pleased, and asked the title at length of the work in question; and writing down to my dictation, 'An Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone made during the year 1819, by John Hughes, A.M. of Oriel College, Oxford,'--observed, that he could now purchase no books for the Château, but would recommend that the Itineraire should be commissioned for the Library to which he was abonné in the neighbouring town,"--_Sir Walter Scott's Quentin Durward_. Thomas White, Printer, Johnson's Court. * * * ITINERARY OF PROVENCE & THE RHONE, MADE DURING THE YEAR 1819. BY JOHN HUGHES, M.A. OF ORIEL COLLEGE OXFORD. [Illustration: J. Hughes Esq. del. W. Woolnoth, SG. ISLE OF ST. MARGUERITE NEAR CANNES AND PRISON OF MASQUE DE FER.] SECOND EDITION. LONDON: JAMES CAWTHORN. MD.CCCXXIX. PREFACE. IT has been the Author's object to render the following volume a companion to persons visiting the country described. He has therefore not so much studied to compile from known books of historical reference, as to answer those plain and practical questions which suggest themselves during an actual journey, and to enable those whose time is limited, and who wish to employ it actively, to form the necessary calculations as to what is to be seen and done. The best points of view, and the parts which may be passed over rapidly, are therefore specified, as well as the places where good accommodation are to be expected, or imposition to be guarded against. The subjects of the Illustrations will be mentioned in the course of the Itinerary, for the information of collectors, of whose notice it is trusted they will be rendered worthy by the well-known talents of Mr. Dewint and the Messrs. Cookes. CONTENTS. CHAP. I.--Paris to Rochepot CHAP. II.--Rochepot to Lyons CHAP. III.--Lyons CHAP. IV.--Lyons to Montelimart CHAP. V.--Château Grignan CHAP. VI.--Orange--Avignon CHAP. VII.--Avignon--Murder of Brune--Hôpital des Fous--Mission of 1819 CHAP. VIII.--Pont du Gard--Nismes--Montpelier--Cette CHAP. IX.--Tarascon--Beaucaire--St. Remy--Orgon--Lambesc CHAP. X.--Aix--Marseilles CHAP. XI.--Ollioules--Toulon CHAP. XII.--Frejus--Cannes--Isle of St. Marguerite--Antibes CHAP. XIII.--Nice--Col di Tende--Conclusion * * * AN ITINERARY, &c. * * * CHAP. I. PARIS TO ROCHEPOT. NO one, I imagine, ever yet left an hotel in a central and bustling part of Paris, without feeling the faculty of observation strained to the utmost, and experiencing a whirl and jumble of recollections as little in unison with each other as the well known signs of that whimsical city, the _Boeuf à-la-mode_, (with his cachemire shawl and his ostrich feathers) and the _Mort d'Henri Quartre_. The contrasts and varieties of the grave and gay, the affecting and the burlesque, the magnificent and the paltry, which exist and may be sought out in abundance in every great capital, are perhaps more vividly concentrated at Paris than any where else, and brought with less trouble under the eye of those whose spirits or leisure may not allow them to mix in society. In London every thing wears a busy uniform exterior, varied only by the apparition of a Turk, a Lascar, or a Highlander; and home appears to be the place reserved for the development of character: but in Paris, from the fashion of living almost in public, and the freedom which every one enjoys of following his own taste in dress or amusement without notice, the history of most individuals appears to a certain degree written on their exterior; and a morning's walk brings you in contact with all the diversities of character which rapidly succeeding events have created. The old beau, with the identical toupet of 1770; the musty, moth-eaten nondescripts sometimes seen at the mass of Notre Dame, which remind you of a still earlier period; the faded royalist, with a countenance saddened by the recollection of former days; the ex-militaires, whose looks own no friendship with "the world or the world's law;" the old bourgeois riding in the same roundabout with his grandchildren, and enjoying the _jeu de bague_ as cordially,--revolve in succession like the different figures in a magic lantern, while the place of Punch and Pierrot is supplied by a host of laborious drolls and _gens à l'incroyable_. The various members of this motley assemblage appear also more distinct from each other, as connected in the recollection with places so strongly marked by historical events, or bearing in themselves so peculiar a character:--the place Louis Quinze, the grim old Conciergerie, the deserted Fauxbourg St. Germain, with the grass growing in its streets; the Place de Carousel, the Boulevards, and the Catacombs, the Palais Royal and the Morgue. To attempt, however, to say any thing new of a place so well known and so fully described as Paris, would be as superfluous as to write the natural history of the dog or cat. The peculiarities of such animals are continually striking one in new and amusing points of view; but verbal delineation has already done its utmost in acquainting us with them. In like manner, every thing relating to Paris, and illustrative of it at a period of interest which probably will not arise again for centuries, has been already made known in Paul's admirable letters, in poor Scott's powerful but unmerciful satire, and finally in a host of books, booklings, and bookatees, teaching us how to spend any period of time at Paris from three to three hundred and sixty-five days; how to enjoy it, how to eat, drink, see, hear, feel, think, and economise in it. Kotzebue has devoted sixty pages to its bon bons and savories; others more modestly give you only a diary of their own fricasseed chicken and champagne, and information of a still lower sort is supplied by the delectable Mr. Hone, for the instruction of our Jerries and Corinthian Toms. I shall commence dates, therefore, from the 26th of April, on which day we quitted the Hôtel de l'Europe, Rue Valois, not sorry to obtain a respite from sounds and sights. Though in such a country as Tuscany, where every furlong of ground affords a new and rich subject for the pencil, the voiture mode of travelling is preferable to posting; yet no one, I think, would recommend it in traversing the tedious interval which separates Paris from the southern provinces. We had adopted this species of conveyance from the idea that it would afford more leisure for observation to those of the party to whom France was new; but we found in reality that by subjecting us to a dependence on hours, it diverted our attention from those places where we might have spent half a day to advantage, and familiarized us only with one branch of knowledge,--the merit and demerit of most of the inns on the roads, whose characters I shall not fail to give as we found them. Homely as this species of information may be, I have often regretted the want of it beforehand; and concluding that others may be of the same opinion, I shall therefore afford it as far as I am able: premising, that it is as well not to vary, on this or any other road, from the practice of ascertaining beforehand the rate of the aubergiste's charges. The traveller's first impulse certainly is to save himself trouble, by paying whatever is demanded, and not to expend time and attention on a series of petty disputes, which make no great difference in his travelling expenses. There is, however, in all or most of those who are fitted to conduct the business of life, a feeling of shame at being outwitted even in trifles, which naturally rebels against this easy mode of proceeding, and inclines one rather to take the trouble of asking a few questions, than to be laughed at as a _grand seigneur_ by a cunning landlord. This trouble after all may be taken by a servant, and need not subject the master to the necessity of entering every inn like an angry terrier, with his bristles up and ready for battle; and the settlement of preliminaries does not lead to any want of attention on the part of the people of the inn. We neglected this precaution at Essonne, where we breakfasted on leaving Paris, and where accordingly we paid about double the charge which Tortoni or the Cafe Hardy would have made. It appears, in truth, that at the Croissant d'Or, as at the Emperor Joseph's memorable German inn, "though eggs are not scarce, yet gentry are." The distance from Paris to this place is about 24 miles: the road of course excellent, as is uniformly the case in the route to Chalons; but the only thing during the stage which remains on my recollection, is an obelisk inscribed, "Dieu, le Roi, et les dames;" a melange perhaps compounded in compliment to Louis XV. who greatly improved a part of this road, which was once nearly impassable. Corbeil, a neat flourishing town within half a mile of Essonne, and possessing large cotton manufactories, derives some interest from the celebrated siege it sustained during the war of the league. Two miles beyond Essonne we remarked, at a short distance to the right, Château Moncey, once the seat of the gay and brilliant Duke de Villeroi and his descendants; and on a hill to the left, Château Coudray, the former residence of the Prince de Chalot. Both the possessors of these estates were guillotined during the reign of terror, and their places are filled by Marechal Jourdan, and some _nouveau riche_, whose very name the peasants seemed never to have heard, or to have forgotten from want of interest. We found the Hôtel de la Ville de Lyon at Fontainebleau a good inn, and fair in its charges. The old palace, though not intrinsically worth a visit in point of architecture, yet conveys one of those "sermons in stones," in which the Fauxbourg de St. Germain so much abounds; and presents also more pleasing recollections of Louis Quatorze (a prince possessing many of the good points of the _bon Henri_) than the bombastic personification of him as Jupiter Tonans, in the palace of Versailles, which is on a par as a painting with Tom Thumb as a tragedy. April 27.--To Fossard, eighteen miles: the first six through the forest, just sufficiently sylvan to suffer by a comparison with that of Windsor. At the end of two more miles we crossed the valley, in which is situated the town of Moret, to which is attached a history equally curious, as Anquetil observes, with that of the Iron Mask. The following is the extract from the Duke de St. Simon's Memoirs, which he introduces as relative to it. "Il y avoit à Moret, petite ville auprès de Fontainebleau, un petit couvent, où étoit professé une Mauresse inconnue, et qu'on ne montroit a personne. Bontemps, Gouverneur de Versailles, par qui passoient les choses du secrèt domestique du roi, l'y avoit mise toute jeune, avoit payé une dot assez considerable, et continuoit à lui payer une grosse pension tous les ans. Il avoit attention qu'elle eût son necessaire, que tout ce qu'elle pouvoit desirer en agrémens et douceurs, et qui peut passer pour abondance pour une religieuse, lui fut fourni. La reine y alloit souvent de Fontainebleau, et prenoit grand soin du bien-être du couvent; et Mad. de Maintenon après elle. Ni l'une ni l'autre ne prenoit de cette Mauresse un soin direct, et qui peut se remarquer. Elles ne la voyoient même toutes les fois qu'elles alloient au couvent, mais elles s'informoient curieusement de sa santé, de sa conduite, et de celle de la superieure à son egard. Quoiqu'il n'y eût dans cette maison personne d'un nom connu, Monseigneur (le Dauphin) y a été quelquefois; les princes, ses enfans, aussi; et tous demandoient et voyoient la Mauresse. Elle étoit dans un couvent avec plus de consideration que les autres, et se prevaloit fort des soins qu'on prenoit d'elle, et du mystère qu'on en faisoit. Quoiqu'elle veçut très-religieusement, on s'appercevoit bien que sa vocation avoit été aidée. Il lui echappoit une fois, entendant Monseigneur chasser dans le forêt, de dire negligemment, 'c'est mon frère qui chasse.' On dit qu'elle avoit quelquefois des hauteurs, que sur les plaintes de la superieure, Mad. de Maintenon alla un jour exprès pour tâcher de lui inculquer des sentimens plus conformes a l'humilité religieuse; que lui ayant voulu insinuer qu'elle n'étoit pas ce qu'elle croyoit, elle lui repondit, 'Si cela n'étoit pas, Madame, vous ne prendriez pas la peine de venir me le dire!' Ces indices ont fait conjectures qu'elle étoit fille du roi et de la reine, et que sa couleur l'avoit fait sequestrer, en publiant que la reine avoit fait une fausse couche." In addition to this extract, Anquetil adds, "En effet, la fantaisie de garder devant ses yeux une naine monstreuse (her favourite negress mentioned previously), peut faire conjecturer que Marie Therèse n'aura pas été assez exacte à detourner ses regards d'objets qu'une femme prudente doit s'interdire; qu'elle les aura fixés sur les negres que le progrès du commerce maritime commençoit de rendre communs en France; et que de là sera venue la couleur de cette infortunée, qu'il aura fallu cacher dans un cloître. Cette Mauresse et l'homme au masque de fer sont les deux mystères du regne de Louis XIV. Le redacteur des Memoires de St. Simon dit qu'elle est morte à Moret en 1732, et que son portrait étoit encore en 1779 dans le cabinet de l'abbesse, d'où, quand cette maison a été réunie ou Prieuré de Champ Benôit à Provins, il a passé dans le cabinet des antiques et curiosités de l'abbaye de St. Genevieve du Mont à Paris, où il est encore. On lit au bas de ce portrait, ces mots, Religieuse de Moret." Such are the words of the extract relative to this singular person. The Hôtel de Poste, (as it chooses to style itself) at Fossard, is a dismal pot-house; and the people possess none of that good humour and alacrity which cover a multitude of faults. Having swallowed some of their gritty coffee, which might have been very delectable to the palate of a Turk, we walked about a mile and a half to the bridge[1] of Montereau-sur-Yonne, on which John Duke of Burgundy was murdered by Tannegui de Chastel, in the presence, and probably with the connivance of the Dauphin, afterwards Charles VII. Near this spot we remarked a small mass of ruins, the only remains of the once magnificent Château Varennes. Its former owner, the Duke de Châtelet, as we were informed by some market-people, resided for six months in the year at this seat, maintaining or employing most of the poor within his reach, and entertaining his peasantry with a weekly dance at the Château. Like many others, he fell a victim to the guillotine during the reign of terror; his lands, with the exception of a portion recovered by his heirs, were alienated, and the fragment which we observed was the only part of his residence left standing. From the tone and manner in which the French peasantry appear to speak of these very common occurrences, I should judge that the effects of the revolution have not yet eradicated that "subordination of the heart," which is natural among a simple and industrious people, and which nothing but very gross neglect or misconduct on the part of their superiors, or the unchecked licence of political quacks, can destroy. Most of the ravages in question might no doubt be traced to bands of plunderers, organized from the most desperate and notorious characters in many different parishes, and sufficiently countenanced by the revolutionary tribunals to overawe the peaceable and unarmed mass of the population, whom it would be hardly fair to confound with them. Let us fancy for a moment, how quickly, under similar political circumstances, a moveable Spencean brigade might be collected in any district of England from poachers, sheep-stealers, gypsies, incendiaries, and those whose latent love of mischief might be drawn out by proper encouragement, and we may find reason not to condemn the French peasantry in general, as sharers in the outrages which they probably abominated, but could not prevent. [Footnote 1: In 1419, John Duke of Burgundy, and the Dauphin, against whom he had taken part during the troubles of France, agreed to a reconciliation. "An interview was fixed to take place on the bridge of Montereau-sur-Yonne, where a total amnesty was to be concluded, to be followed by an union of arms and interests. Every precaution was taken by the duke for his safety; a barrier was erected on the bridge; he placed his own guard at one end, and advancing with only ten attendants, threw himself on his knees before the Dauphin. At this instant Tannegui de Chastel, making the signal, leaped the barrier with some others, and giving him the first blow, he was almost immediately despatched. Though the Dauphin was in appearance only a passive spectator of this assassination, there can be no doubt that he was privy to its commission."--_Wraxall's Valois_.] From Fossard to Sens, 21 miles: the country uninteresting as far as Pont-sur-Yonne. Chapelle de Champigny affords a tolerably exact idea of a Spanish village; each farm-house and its premises forming a square, inclosed in blank walls, and opening into the street by folding gates, with hardly a window to be seen. From Pont-sur-Yonne to Sens, the road becomes more cheerful; and its fine old cathedral forms a good central object in the valley, along which the Yonne is seen winding. The principal inn at Sens being full for the night, we found neat and comfortable accommodations, with great civility, at the Bouteille. Whether there be any object worthy of notice in this cheerful little city, besides its cathedral, I do not know; but the latter possesses works of art which deserve an early and attentive visit. Nothing can be more minutely beautiful than the small figures and ornaments on the tomb of the Cardinal du Prat, which is sufficient in itself to give a character to any one church. But the grand object of interest is a large sepulchral group in the centre of the choir, to the memory of the Dauphin and his consort, the parents of Louis XVI. The grace and classical contour of this monument, which is executed by the well-known Nicholas Coustou, would excite admiration even in the studio of Canova, while the deep tone of genuine feeling displayed, particularly in the figure of Hymen quenching his torch, is worthy of the chisel of our own Chantry. Somewhat might perhaps be owing to an evening light, which cast strong mellow shades on the figures, and gave an effect of reality to the fine white marble of which they are composed; but their merits are very striking, and are quite unalloyed by the graphic bombast of which the most able French artists have been with too much truth accused. The character of the Dauphin, whose exemplary life in the midst of a corrupt court, was a tacit reproof which his haughty father could ill brook, is well known. Ostendunt terris hunc tantum fata, neque ultrâ Esse sinunt. He was snatched in the flower of his age, in the year 1765, from an evil which was even then brooding, and which might have brought his grey hairs to a bloody end at a more advanced period: and his consort survived him about a year and a half. "They were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their deaths they were not divided." The latter monument, as well as others of inferior merit, owed its preservation from revolutionary fury to the conduct and firmness of Mons. Menestrier, an avocat, and mayor of Auxerre during the reign of terror. _Ce brave homme_ (I like the old sacristan's term of _brave homme_, as it is one of the few untranslateable French words) flew to the cathedral at the moment that a horde of brigands had entered it to commence the work of mutilation; and, seconded by nothing but his known character for resolution, and an athletic person, fairly intimidated and turned them out for the time. Losing not a moment, he removed to a place of safety the Dauphin's monument, the avowed object of their vengeance, before a second visit took place; and desirous also to preserve a fine bas relief which stands in another part of the church, representing St. Nicholas portioning three orphan girls, he engraved on the wall under it an inscription to Benevolence in the republican style, which produced the desired effect. Not very long afterwards he fell a victim to a fever caught by over-exertion in advocating the cause of a poor family; and his wife survived him only a few days, exhibiting an humble copy of the conjugal affection of those whose memorials her husband had so loyally preserved. Whether to give full credit or not to the old sacristan's narration, I do not know; but it appears more probable that even so large a monument was removed piecemeal at short notice, than that the malice of the brigands would have allowed it to stand unhurt; and there is besides an ingenuity and presence of mind shown in the preservation of St. Nicholas, quite consistent with the character of M. Menestrier, as described by the old man. Had the latter felt that inclination to romance, which is not uncommon among his brethren, he would probably have adopted the hacknied legend, that both monuments were miraculously secreted from the eyes of the marauders. April 28.--To Joigny, where we breakfasted, twenty-one miles. Passed through Villeneuve, a decayed old town, with two singular gateways. Even this place emulates Paris in the possession of a Tivoli, which, in the present instance, consisted of a walled square of court-yard (for garden it could not be called), measuring about thirty yards by twenty, and overshadowed by poplars from three to four feet high: a most pleasant representative, in truth, of the wild olive woods, the sequestered waterfalls, and the classical ruins of the original Tivoli. Domus Albunese resonantis, Et præceps Anio, et Tiburni lucus. On leaving Joigny, a neat pleasant town, extending in one wide street along the Yonne, and crowned by a handsome château, left unfinished by the Due de Villeroi, we reached the heart of the wine district of Burgundy. The country here assumes the appearance of a garden, both from the steep and regular form of the hills, which exactly resemble the Dutch slopes in old-fashioned gardens, and from the high state of culture to which their thin gravelly soil is brought. The hoe and the pruning-knife seem never at rest, and not a weed is to be seen; while the slightest portion of manure dropt on the high road becomes a prize, if not an object of contention, to the nearest vignerons. The air of cheerfulness and beauty, however, which we annex to our notions of high cultivation, is wholly wanting. The appearance of the vines was that of sapless black stumps, about thirty inches high, and pruned so as to leave only four or five eyes; and though the subject of poverty is too serious to joke on, the withered and stunted appearance of the country people exactly corresponded to that of these dry pollards. I trust that we were in some degree deceived by their natural ugliness, and that hard labour and scanty profits are not the only reasons which render their _tout ensemble_ such a contrast to the healthy robust looks of the Normans and Picards, whose very horses show the effects of their abundant corn harvests. From Joigny to Auxerre, twenty-one miles. We arrived too late to visit the interior of the cathedral, which was not mentioned to us as containing any thing remarkable. Its exterior, however, is fine and venerable, and affords a beautiful evening study, viewed from the opposite bank of the Yonne, about half a mile on the Vermanton road. The rest of the town, seen from this point, is broken into fine masses of conventual and other old buildings; and the river and bridge complete a landscape very well worthy of an accurate sketch. The excellence of the Hôtel de Beaune, at Auxerre, "tenu par Boillet, gendre Mineau," as his cards inform us, deserves notice. This is one of those palm-islands among a desert of dirty pothouses, most treacherously adapted to lure onward a certain class of fair weather pilgrims, whom one wonders to meet with beyond Paris, and whose dolorous complaints of thin milk and large coffee-spoons, have afforded me no small amusement in casual rencounters. The most fastidious, however, of this class of smelfungi, would find but little to carp at under the roof the civil Mr. Boillet; and would do well to lay in a stock of comfortable recollections in this place, on which to feast as far as Chalons; for the interval between Auxerre and the latter city will prove but a dreary one to a traveller of the gastronomic school. The general air of Auxerre is ancient and respectable; but conveys no ideas of populousness or commerce. In the opinion, however, of an old sub-matron of the Enfans Trouvées (who looked over my shoulder while sketching, and whom, by way of something to say, I ignorantly complimented on her fine family of grandchildren), there is nothing, or, according to Malthus, much to complain of in the former respect. "Ah, Monsieur, que voulez vous? ce sont les militaires, ils vont par çi, ils vont par là, et puis--voilà des enfans, et où chercher les peres?" April 29.--To Vermanton, our first stage, eighteen miles: a succession of fine vineyards and square steep hills, such as Uncle Toby might have constructed for his amusement, with Gargantua for an assistant instead of the corporal. About six miles short of Vermanton, at the bottom of a long descent, we remarked Cravant, a little town to the right, fortified in an ancient and picturesque manner, and which, the peasants said, had been the seat of much fighting in days of old. Our informant was ploughing in a fierce cocked hat, with a team composed of a cow and an ass. Query, might not cocked hats, which appear to our ideas an exclusively military costume, have originated in such countries as these, among the vine-dressers? who flap down the sides alternately, in a manner that shows they understood the true use of them as a parasol. Vermanton is a small obscure place, affording an inn slovenly enough, though not glaringly bad. From hence to Lucy le Bois, where the horses were baited, fifteen miles. A pretty sequestered valley occurs about three miles beyond Vermanton; but the whole of the road, like that of the day before, may be travelled in the dark without any loss: the best part of it consists of a distant view of the vale and town of Avalon, backed by the Nivernois hills. In the old French Fablieux, the valley of Avalon is selected as the spot where a fairy confined Sir Lanval, her mortal lover; but whether the French Avalon, or the beautiful vale of Glastonbury was meant, appears doubtful, as the latter formerly bore the same name. There is a resemblance between the two districts, which amounts to an odd coincidence, particularly with regard to one of the Nivernois hills in the back ground, which presents a strong likeness of Glastonbury Tor. We should have passed through Avalon, but for a trick of the voiturier, who took a cross road to avoid paying the post duty there, and save his money at the expense of our bones. For this manoeuvre he might have been severely punished, had we chosen to interfere. From Lucy le Bois to Rouvray, where we slept, the level of the country becomes gradually more elevated, and its general features much more English, consisting of corn, woody copses, and pastures full of cowslips. I cannot say, however, that we found any thing to remind us of England at the detestable inn where we were quartered for the night, and have no doubt but that Lucy le Bois or Avalon would have afforded somewhat much better. The only civilized person was a large black baker's dog, who, like Gil Blas's first travelling acquaintance, seemed free of the house, and did the honours of the supper to us with an assiduity as disinterested, "Ah, messieurs," said his civil master, when we stept across the street in the morning, to return the dog's visit in form, "je suis charmé que vous trouvez l'Abri si beau; je suis au desespoir qu'il ne soit pas chez lui a present, mais je vais le chercher partout afin qu'il vous fasse ses hommages." The good man could not have spoken of a favourite son with more unsuspecting complacency. April 30.--To Saulieu, where we breakfasted at a tolerably good inn, fifteen miles: the morning intensely cold, and one of those white frosts on the ground, which so much endanger the vintage at this season. We observed, however, no vineyards on the elevated ridge of country along which we were travelling, and which was perfectly English. A respectable old château, with a rookery, quick hedges, and extensive woods, thick enough for a fox covert, kept up the illusion agreeably. This style of ground continues beyond Saulieu; and between the latter place and Arnay le Duc, eighteen miles farther, its features are not unromantic. One or two castles of a very baronial air occur; the first of which, reduced to ruins, is visible at about a mile beyond Saulieu, occupying an insulated hill at some distance from the road, and much resembling the remains of an Italian freebooter's stronghold. Another, situated at the head of a glen, about six miles farther on, and overlooking a small village, is more perfect and striking in its appearance. It is the property, as we were informed, of the widow of M. Fenou, a royalist, who, during the revolution, stood a siege within its walls equal to that of Tillietudlem, repulsing a strong body of republicans with considerable loss. Buonaparte subsequently recalled M. Fenou, with the grant of a free pardon; and the estate was, in the course of things, restored to his widow. Such, as far as we could collect from the account of our informant, was the history belonging to Château Torcy la Vachere, which bears some resemblance, in situation and general outline, to Eastnor Castle, the seat of the Earl of Somers, at the foot of the Malvern hills. Arnay le Duc, a town situated on commanding ground, where we slept, boasts of an earlier celebrity, having been the scene of one of Admiral de Coligni's victories. It possesses several convents, now private property, and one or two fragments of building of a peculiarly antiquated style. Among these I particularly remarked an old iron-shop, supposed, as a bourgeois informed me, to be more than seven hundred years old, and which seems to have communicated with the ancient walls as a guard-house. While busied in sketching this singular relic, we were saluted gracefully by an old chevalier de St. Louis, who was passing, and whose distinguished air would have become the person of Coligni himself. On casually inquiring the name of this gentleman, we learnt that he had been one among the many imprisoned during the reign of terror, and would have fallen by the guillotine, had the fall of Robespierre happened four-and-twenty hours later. This, it must be owned, is a trite and common story; but it is, perhaps, by the very triteness and frequency of such hair-breadth escapes, more than by any other circumstance, that the extent and ferocity of the revolutionary massacres are brought home to the imagination. The appointed victims, whom the delay of a day or an hour preserved from destruction at this crisis, still survive in all parts of France, like widely-scattered land-marks, to remind one of the numbers swept away in the previous deluge of murder. May 1.--To Rochepot twenty-one miles. We were not sorry to leave the Hôtel de Poste, at Arnay le Duc, which, with higher pretensions than the inn at Rouvray, only differs from it in the ratio of "dear and nasty" to "cheap and nasty;" and to commence a stage which promised more to the eye than any part of our former route. The country still continues to rise in this direction, and soon assumes the air of an extensive forest or chase, enlivened by half-wild herds of cattle, and opening into green glades and vistas of distant ranges of hills. At Ivry, we wound up a steep hill; the summit of which, a wide naked common, might match most parts of Dartmoor in height and bleakness. I had observed heaps of granite and micaceous stone at a much lower elevation in the course of the day before; and conclude that we were now on one of the highest inhabited points which occur in the interior of France. We had not leisure to walk to a telegraph on the right, which, to judge from the occasional glimpses which we had, must command a splendid map of the country near Autun. It had been recommended to us to take the route to Chalons through the latter town, as affording the most objects of interest; but, on the whole, I doubt whether that which we had adopted as the least circuitous, be not also preferable, as possessing the striking panoramic point to which we had climbed. After two or three more miles over an expanse of parched turf, we reached what geologists would call the bluff escarpment of the stratum. The descent before us was so precipitous, as to leave us at first at a loss to make out how the road could be conducted down it: and the prospect which burst upon us in front, had apparently no limit but the power of human vision. Beyond the foreground, which was formed by a series of rocky glens diverging from below the point on which we stood, the immense vale of the Saone extended like a bird's-eye view of the ocean, its relative distances marked by towns and villages glittering like white sails. Above the flat line of haze, which, at the first glance, appears to terminate the prospect at the distance of sixty miles, or more, we distinguished a faint blue outline of lofty mountains, which must have been the barrier separating France from Switzerland; and, as occasional gleams of sunshine broke out, the glittering and jagged lines of a barrier still more distant, and apparently hanging in mid air, became distinctly visible. Among these I recognised, at last, the features of Mont Blanc, in whose peculiar outline I could not be mistaken, and which, according to the map, cannot be less than 110 or 120 miles distant, in a direct line from the Montagne de Rochepot. It is, perhaps, not necessary to be a mountaineer, like Jean Jacques, by birth and education, in order to feel the peculiar expansion of mind, which he describes as caused by breathing mountain-air, and contemplating prospects like this of which I speak.[2] A boundless plain, and enormous mountains, such as the Alps, whether viewed individually, or contrasted with each other, are objects not physically grand alone, but affording also food for deep and enlarged reflection. The mind, while expatiating over the mass of feelings and projects, of hopes and fears, which are passing within the limits of the wide map below, feels the nothingness of the atom which it animates, and the comparative insignificance of its own joys and griefs in the scale of creation, and retires at last into itself, sobered into that calm state which is so favourable to the formation of any momentous decision, or the prosecution of a train of deep thought. A moment's glance changes the scene from culture and population to the silence and solitude of a dead icy desert; from the redundancy of animal and vegetable life to its "solemn syncope and pause." The ideas of obscurity, danger, and infinity, all powerful and acknowledged sources of the sublime, are excited at the view of a range of frozen summits, cold, fixed, and everlasting as the imaginary nature of those destinies, with whom a noble bard has peopled them; alternately glittering in sunshine, and enveloped in clouds, and from the well-known effects of haze and distance, appearing suspended in the air in their full dimensions and relative proportions. The imagination dwells upon the appalling hazards peculiar to their few accessible parts, and on the almost total extinction of life and animal powers, which is the penalty of a few hours sojourn there. And here again, too, the mind is forcibly impressed with the utter helplessness of the speck of dust which it inhabits, and that momentary dependence on Providence, which must be so convincingly felt in traversing such regions. Ascending in the scale of comparison, it may reflect, that these gigantic forms, which fill the eye at a distance at which cities and pyramids would fade into imperceptible specks, are but excrescences on the face of that earth, which itself is but an atom in the map of the universe. But I am wandering from my subject, and from the route, which, in this quarter, is somewhat precipitous. I shall, therefore, only remark what has frequently struck me as not an improbable conjecture, that Milton might have formed his splendid conception of the icy region of Pandæmonium from some of these colossal ranges of Alps with which his eye must have been familiar, seen through the vistas of a stormy sky. In the well-known passage which I shall take the liberty of quoting, one seems to recognise the deep drifts of snow, and the blue crevasses which abound in such a spot as the Mer de Glace, as well as the castellated peaks and glaciers which border on it, and the biting atmosphere which prevails among their summits. [Footnote 2: The Welsh proverb, that a man who sleeps on the top of Snowdon, must awake either a fool or a poet, refers as probably to the effect produced on the mind by the prodigious mountain panorama discernible from thence, as to any fancied influence of the genius loci.] "Beyond this flood a frozen continent Lies dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms Of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm land Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems Of ancient pile; or else deep snow and ice, A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog 'Twixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, Where armies whole have sunk: the parching air Burns frore, and cold performs th' effect of fire." CHAP. II. ROCHEPOT TO LYONS. "MON Dieu, ma fille," says Madame de Sevigné in one of her letters to Mad. de Grignan, "que vous avez raison d'etre fatiguée de cette Montagne de Rochepot! je la hais comme la mort; que de cahots, et quelle cruauté qu'au mois de Janvier les chemins de Bourgogne soient impracticables!" Allowing this to have been the case in her days, I can hardly wonder that even Mad. de Sevigné was insensible to the magnificence of the prospect from this elevated point; and thought only of the safety of her neck. No danger however exists at present, as the road descending to Rochepot is good, and judiciously conducted down the brow of the hill; though the nature of the ground gives no very pleasing idea of what it must have been as a cross-country track. The inn also at Rochepot, situated at the junction of four roads, is clean and comfortable. A household loaf, weighing not less than thirty pounds, stood on the table to welcome us on our arrival, and we saw for the first time straw hats bearing a full proportion to it, the rim of which equalled in size a moderate umbrella. After breakfast we visited the ruined castle of Rochepot,[3] on which we had at first looked down, but which, seen from the village, bears a strong resemblance to Harlech Castle in North Wales, both in its form, and its position upon a commanding rock. We found upon inquiry that it had been tenanted at a much later period than its appearance would have led us to suppose. M. Blancheton, the proprietor, had made it his chief residence some thirty years ago, and kept it up in a style imitating as nearly as possible its ancient feudal grandeur. At the Revolution however it was forfeited, and has since been sold twice; but though each purchaser has pulled down a part, and sold the materials, enough still remains to give a perfect idea of its former strength and massiveness. M. Blancheton now resides, as we were informed, near Beaune, regretted as a _bon seigneur_ by his poorer neighbours, whom he has not visited since the demolition of his paternal seat. "It would break his heart," said a poor old woman, "to see it as it now is." I could not help thinking of Campbell's "Lines on visiting a spot in Argyleshire," which bear the impress of a real occasion of this sort. [Footnote 3: Vide Cooke's View.] From Rochepot to Chalons-sur-Saone, eighteen miles; commencing with a steep hill, to the left of which winds a rocky valley of a singular description, cultivated to the very top of the abrupt heights which surround it, and so bare of soil, that the eye is surprised by the flourishing state of its corn and fruit-trees. The heat reflected from the rocks upon the thin gravel which supports its vineyards, must boil their juices to a liqueur; at least such was its effect on ourselves, while winding along a series of these natural forcing-houses, through which the road is conducted into the great plain of Chalons. From the ridges which border these valleys, the wide extent of the latter, and its border of Alps, are visible, though not so finely as from the elevation which we had descended. "Mont Blanc, the monarch of mountains," was however more plainly discernible than before, like a thin distinct fabric of vapour, with his "diadem of snow faintly lighted up by the sun;" and I never recollect to have seen this white-headed patriarch of the Alps before in any position which gave so fully the effect of his enormous height, I will not even except the spot near Merges, where from a gap in the intervening mountains, he appears almost to rest his base upon the lake of Geneva. On emerging from the hilly country near Rochepot, the road to Chalons passes along a dead flat, cheerful from its richness, but rather monotonous. To the right, we looked back upon a semicircular range of well wooded hills, in front of which, on an eminence, stands a stately old château belonging to the Count de Rouilly. It answers very much to the beau ideal of what a French château ought to be, but seldom is. I say "ought to be," premising that most of us have formed our first ideas of French châteaux, from those works of imagination which endow such places so liberally with gothic architecture and haunted woods. The mansion of the Count de Rouilly would not greatly disappoint a reader of Mrs. Ratcliffe's romances; and bears a strong resemblance to Westwood, near Ombersley, in Worcestershire, the seat of Sir John Packington, which is said to have been once a conventual building. With no small pleasure did we arrive at the handsome town of Chalons, our patience being nearly exhausted by the tiresome running base with which our Noah's ark accompanied the driver's abuse of his clumsy grey mares. _Grand chameau, sacre vache_, and _canaille_, where the most genteel and decent terms with which he favoured them, and his perverseness was in proportion. For this precious commodity, selected I should conceive from the most consummate ragamuffins on the road, we were indebted to Mons. Picon, a master voiturier at Paris, who imposed on us both as to the number of horses, and the length of time in which we were to be conveyed to Chalons. "Hic niger est; hunc tu, Romane, caveto." Having met with a respectable voiturier, named Veroux, who conveyed us admirably from Calais to Paris, my habitual distrust of this class of gentry had relaxed just at the wrong time, for the benefit of M. Picon. If cities are to be estimated by their appearance of neatness and opulence, Chalons deserves to be marked on the map in more capital letters than the imposing names of Sens or Auxerre. To no town indeed does it bear a greater resemblance than to Tours, both from the modern air of its houses, and from its noble river, adapted for every purpose of internal commerce. The Hôtel des Trois Faisans is also an excellent inn, and, like that at Auxerre, sufficiently well frequented to find no account in these little beggarly impositions which are practised at inferior places. May 2.--We walked before breakfast to St. Marcel, a village about a mile from Chalons, to visit the church and monastery where Abelard, after his removal from Cluni, died and was buried. Our excursion however only answered in affording us an hour's healthy exercise; for the monastery has been destroyed, and the church stript of what ornaments it possessed, during the time of the Revolution; and the monument of Abelard is removed to Paris. Nor does the town of Chalons itself, handsome and cheerful as it is, present any food for the pencil, the more particularly as its flat situation offers no favourable point of perspective. The spot from which its stately quay, and its stone bridge ornamented with obelisks, are seen to the most advantage, is about a mile down the river;--in fact from the deck of the coche d'eau, in which we embarked at noon for Lyons. This excellent conveyance is a large covered boat, towed at the rate of six miles an hour by four post-horses, or, when necessary, by six; and performs the journey from Chalons to Lyons, a distance of about ninety miles, in twenty-eight or thirty hours, affording ample time for rest and refreshment at a line of inns of a superior description. The reasonable amount of the fare paid by each person at the bureau des diligences, (nine francs fourteen sous) might induce a fastidious or inexperienced traveller to form an indifferent idea both of the company and accommodations of the coche d'eau. Both however appear unexceptionable in their way, as this is the mode of conveyance adopted for the royal mail, and as generally preferred for the sake of comfort and expedition, as the Margate or Glasgow steam-boats. It affords the range of a tolerably spacious deck, and a couple of cabins, to which the passengers may retire in inclement weather. Had it indeed been less convenient or agreeable, we should have found it a blessed respite after the rumbling tub of penance in which we had been cooped. Indeed, the abuse which our voiturier had vented on the _desagremens et disgraces_ of the coche d'eau, in order to secure himself our company to Lyons, had determined us on trying this conveyance; for the habit of lying is so constant and inveterate in this class of fellows, as to possess all the advantages of truth; inasmuch as you have only to believe the direct contrary of what they say. The only inconvenient and perplexing liars are those who sometimes speak truth by accident; and their fictions moreover are seldom extravagant enough to afford the amusement created by romancers of the former class; among whom I may reckon a beggar, who beset us on the quay of Chalons, maintaining in a strong French accent, that he was the son of a carman of Thames-street, in the parish of St. George Hanovre, and had only been a few months in France. The _élite_ of our company consisted of a tall well-looking officer, wearing the croix d'honneur; a shrewd old Provençal merchant, to whom we were indebted for much valuable travelling information; two young friends, one of whom sang very agreeably and unaffectedly, and the other, a lively French Falstaff ate and talked enough for both; and last, not least, an old gentleman of the name of C. travelling to his campagne in Languedoc, whose arch quiet manners answered very much to my idea of the imaginary Hermite en Province. At Tournus, we took in a host of additional passengers, not so polished, but unobtrusive and well-behaved. I question however, whether, in the event of a rainy day, we should have found this mode of travelling very desirable; as the common cabin is but small in proportion to the number of persons capable of being accommodated on deck. There is indeed a smaller cabin adjoining, which, though the exclusive right of the diligence passengers from Paris, is usually shared by them with the rest. It is distinguished by the words over the door, "Chambre de Pairs," which some wag had altered into "Chambre des Paris," or the Upper House, inscribing the other cabin with his pencil as the Chambre des Deputés. Many a person fond of indulging in classical reveries, and not aware of the real breadth of the Clitumnus, may have formed a very spacious idea of that celebrated stream, and longed to contemplate its wide reaches from the foot of its well-known temple. As however the Clitumnus is in this identical spot, not broader than what a Yorkshire farmer would call "a bonny beck," and a Yorkshire fox-hunter would ride at without hesitation, the imaginary picture of it may with real propriety be transferred to the Saone near Tournus, winding as it does through the extensive meadows of a rich champaign country, and reflecting in its broad blue mirror the herds of fine white cattle which we saw paddling in every creek. It bears a strong resemblance to many parts of the Po, excepting in the stillness of its current, which was so great, that it would have been easy while leaning over the bow of the vessel, to fancy the Saone into the blue sky, and the coche d'eau, into Southey's vessel of the Suras, or Wordsworth's ærial skiff. At seven in the evening we came within view of the stately towers of Mâcon, a town, to all appearance, fully equal to Chalons in size and opulence, and much exceeding it as a subject for the pencil. Its fine navigation, the general richness of the country, and the productive vineyards on the neighbouring hills, all unite to render it a central point of business and bustle. There are several inns on the quay, of a good appearance; but we found the Hôtel de l'Europe, to which we had been directed, in every respect deserving of its high reputation, and inferior, perhaps, to no country inn on the continent. After reconnoitring Mont Blanc again from the windows of the clean and airy bed-rooms to which we had been shown, we dined at the table d'hôte, which was served within a quarter of an hour after the arrival of the coche. Among the more polished company present, I was not a little diverted by some scattered specimens of the French gentleman-farmer, present for the express purpose of wallowing for once in a dinner drest by the Duc d'Angouleme's ci-devant cook; fat and well-clad; their countenances wearing a sort of awkward purse-proud defiance to the cool sarcastic look with which the Parisian travellers eyed them; and their conscious shame struggling with the desire to appropriate all the good things before them. Numps, in the well-known old tale, was but a type of these honest personages, who seemed to be considered as "de trop" by the majority. In spite of the mixtures (I do not mean those made in the stomach) which must necessarily take place on these occasions, and allowing for the English prejudice in favour of privacy, there are advantages in dining at all French table d'hôtes, frequented by tolerable company. To the epicure it ensures better fare and attendance than he can command by any other means, as the landlord and his attendants feel both their credit and interest concerned in displaying the most alacrity, and producing the greatest variety of dishes before a large party; while chance customers, after waiting for a long hungry interval, may have to encounter tired waiters, and partake of the tossed-up leavings of this very table d'hôte; Which, certainly, these gentlemen must own, Is much more dignified than entertaining, as Colman pleasantly saith. There is a better and more satisfactory reason for this practice, which is, that it affords the best opportunity of ascertaining those points of local knowledge, which at once give an interest to the district through which you are travelling, and instruct you in the best methods of doing and seeing every thing. A Frenchman's manners and acquirements ought never to be judged of by his travelling suit, which is always avowedly the refuse of his wardrobe; and the importance which he is apt to attach to everything connected with his own town or district, if it leads to ridiculous minuteness, at least insures the accuracy of his details. The marked civility and attention of the French to strangers is too well known to be commented on, particularly to those who pay them the compliment of acquiescing in their national customs. I think I never saw the temper of French travellers thoroughly ruffled but on one occasion, when a shabby-looking Englishman and his gawky son, who had arrived in a cabriolet, made a fruitless attempt to exclude a large diligence party from any share in the table and fire of a country inn. Had they been contented to make their bread-and-butter arrangements in concert with the party, which included a member of the chamber of deputies, and a young officer, their company would have been considered as a pleasure. May 3.--We embarked at five o'clock in the morning, in the face of a very strong gale, which rendered six horses necessary, and tempted us to wish for warmer clothing. The morning, however, was beautifully clear and bright; and Mont Blanc, which is perceptible even from the low level of the river, was without a cloud. To the right, the Beaujolois hills, at the foot of which Mâcon stands, accompanied us as far as Trevoux, presenting an outline not unlike that of our own Malverns; but more varied and rich, as well as occasionally more lofty, and sprinkled with thousands of white farm-houses and villas: many of the parts are similar, and almost equal, to the hills which front Florence on the Fiesole side. At noon we stopped to breakfast, or rather dine, at Trevoux. Here the Beaujolois hills (or, at least, a range which runs in an uniform line with them) recede, and conduct the eye to a distant vista of higher mountains, toward the south; while, to the left, the river takes a sudden turn among the steep but cultivated sides of the Limonais. This curve brought us all at once upon such a green sunny nook, as might have served for the hermitage of Alexander Selkirk, in the island of Juan Fernandez; in the centre of which stands Trevoux, crowned by the ruins of an old castle, and overlooking the beautifully fertile valley which skirts the foot of the Limonais hills. From its situation, and the form and disposition of its houses, piled tier above tier to the top of a woody bank, Trevoux affords a perfect idea of a little Tuscan town. The Hôtel du Sauvage, and the Hôtel de l'Europe, are equally well frequented; and, like Oxford pastry-cooks, take care to employ the fair sex as sign-posts to their good cheer. Each inn has its couple of waiting-maids stationed at the waterside, in the costume of shepherdesses at Sadler's Wells, full of petits soins and agrémens, and loud in the praises of their respective hotels. By these pertinacious damsels every passenger is sure to be dragged to and fro in a state of laughing perplexity, like Garrick, contended for by the tragic and comic muse, in Sir Joshua's well-known picture; nor do their persecutions cease, till all are safely housed. We went to the Hôtel de l'Europe, whose table may be supposed not deficient in goodness and variety, from the specimen of one man's dinner eaten there. I shall enumerate its particulars, without attempting to decide on the question so often canvassed, whether our neighbours do not exceed us in versatility and capacity of stomach. Our young Falstaff then (for it was he of whom I speak), ate of soup, bouilli, fricandeau, pigeon, boeuf piquée, salad, mutton cutlets, spinach stewed richly, cold asparagus, with oil and vinegar, a roti, cold pike and cresses, sweetmeat tart, larded sweetbreads, haricots blancs au jus, a pasty of eggs and rich gravy, cheese, baked pears, two custards, two apples, biscuits and sweet cakes. Such was the order and quality of his repast, which I registered during the first leisure moment, and which is faithfully reported; and, be it recollected, that he did not confine himself to a mere taste of any one dish. Perhaps I may be borne out by the experience of those who have had the patience to sit out an old Parisian gourmand, by the help of coffee and newspapers, and observed him employed corporeally and mentally for nearly two hours, digesting and discriminating, with the carte in one hand, and his fork in the other. The solemn concentration of mind displayed by many of these personages is worthy of the pencil of Bunbury; and though French caricaturists have done no more than justice to our guttling Bob Fudges, I question whether they would not find subjects of greater science and physical powers among their own countrymen. On our return to the coche d'eau, our fat companion lighted his cigar, and hastened to lie down in the cabin, observing, "Il faut que je me repose un peu, pour faire ma digestion;" and Monsieur C., instead of leaving him quietly in his state of torpidity, like a boa refreshed with raw buffalo, began to argue with us on the superior nicety of the French in eating. "Nous aimons les mets plus delicats que vous autres," quoth he; at which we laughed, and pointed to the cabin. We found, upon explanation, however, that Mr. C., though well-informed in general upon the subject of English customs, entertained an idea not uncommon in France, viz. that we always despatch the whole of those hospitable haunches and sirloins, which appear at an English table, at one and the same sitting: with this notion, his observation was certainly natural enough. From Trevoux, the Saone winds between narrow, steep, and picturesque banks as far as Lyons, near which place they close in upon its channel, exhibiting more varieties of rock and wood than before. For the good taste displayed by the rich Lyonnais in their villas and gardens, which began to peep upon us at every step, I cannot in truth say much; but our French companions, who had overlooked the merely natural beauties of the country, found much to commend in these little vagaries of art. A lively bourgeoise, on whom we stumbled the next day behind the counter of a glove-shop, ran up, openmouthed, to explain to us the beauties of one of their show spots, in view of which a sudden turn of the river was just bringing us. A conspicuous inscription on a large vulgar-looking house painted red and yellow, informed us that it was styled the "Hermitage du Mont d'Or." In the space of not quite an acre of ground, on the side of a wooded hill of the highest natural loveliness, the proprietor had contrived to commit a host of the most outrageous and fantastical absurdities, which were hailed with a smile from Mons. C., and a burst of approbation from the rest of the party. At the top of the hill were four scattered pillars of different diminutive forms, with gilt balustrades; all painted with gaudy colours, and none large enough for a moderate tea-garden, or sufficiently solid to have resisted the point-blank stagger of a drunken man. Lower down were two holes in the rock, which, from their size and appearance, I should have taken for a rabbit-burrow and a badger's earth, but for the young lady's joyous exclamation--"Ah! voilà les hermitages. Messieurs, il y a deux hermites là-dedans." "À la bonne heure, Mademoiselle; ils sont vivans, sans doute"--. "Mais pour cela--pas absolument--c'est que--ils sont de cire, voyez vous, mais d'une beauté! ah, c'est une chose à voir!" Then came an inclosure so thickly studded with pillars of different sizes, as to resemble a Mahometan burying ground. "Vous y trouverez des inscriptions de toute espèce, et là vous voyez la colonne de Trajan." This was a wooden obelisk about ten feet high, painted white, at the base of which ROME was written in large black letters, occupying the whole of one side. Immediately above the house stood a small wooden building, with a red and white dome, and pillars and windows painted on the sides. The name COSMORAMA, which took up half the height of the side fronting us, still left us in doubt as to its use or intention; and our fair cicerone could no more explain the nature of her favourite building, than Bardolph could the meaning of the word "accommodate." "Eh, Monsieur, c'est ce qu'on appelle Cosmorama; je ne saurois vous dire precisement; peut-être il y a des bêtes sauvages;--ou--quelque chose de gentil, voyez vous--mais enfin c'est un Cosmorama." "Mais voilà ce qui est vraiment joli," resounded on all sides; and so general and good-humoured was their admiration of this rickety bauble, that we did our best to acquiesce in it. After all, we could admire, without any breach of sincerity, the natural beauties of this spot, which very much resembles the more open parts of the glen where Matlock is situated, and which all these abominations could not entirely deface. How to account for this perversion of eye in a people of sensibility and taste, I am rather at a loss; but this last is by no means a singular instance. "Bientôt vous allez sortir de ces tristes bois," compassionately observed a very gentleman-like officer, with whom we had fallen in during a stage of beautiful forest scenery; and not a soul in a voiture which breakfasted in the salle à manger at Rochepot, could understand why we stopped to admire the distant prospect of the Alps. Not to multiply instances of the indifference to the beauties of simple nature, which will, I think, be allowed to exist in the French, as contrasted with ourselves, I am inclined to extend the line of distinction still farther, and to affirm, that this deficiency in taste appears generally to distinguish the Teutonic from the Southern blood. It is no exaggeration to say, that for one French or Italian traveller in Switzerland, twenty English, or ten Germans, may be reckoned. The French taste in landscape gardening is well known, and that of the Italians[4] is but a shade or two better: witness the detestable baby-house with which they have defaced one of the finest scenes in the world, and which they distinguish, _par excellence_, as the Isola Bella; to say nothing of a host of similar instances, as contrasted with our own Longleat and Rydal Park. [Footnote 4: The characteristic beauties of Italy are no proof of the picturesque taste of the Italians themselves, as planners and architects. The commanding situation of their villages, and the small proportion of window to wall, are circumstances favourable to landscape, but intended merely as the means of catching and retaining cool air. Their classical ruins are preserved as a source of pride and profit, and the natural features of the country cannot be altered.] The fairest account of the matter, perhaps, is, that this inferiority in one branch of taste may result from a difference of temperament in our lively southern neighbours, which, in other respects, has its advantages. Restless, acute, and loquacious, they delight more naturally in those objects which remind them of the "busy hum of men:" and, whatever the force of circumstances may have effected in particular cases, it may be safely asserted, that the diplomatist and man of the world is the indigenous growth of France and Italy, while the powers of abstraction and meditation exist more naturally in English and German minds, inducing the love of solitary nature. The styles of Claude, who was a German by birth, and of our own Wilson, are strongly contrasted with that of Vernet, as illustrative of the present subject. In the admirable paintings of the latter, bustle and motion are generally the characteristics of the scene represented, and the features of nature seem intended to be subordinate to some human action which is going on. In the pictures of Claude, the combinations of scenery are every thing, and the figures nothing, or rather, merely introduced to illustrate and harmonize with the effect which the landscape itself is to produce: and nothing is allowed to disturb the repose and serenity of the whole. Of Wilson, who delighted more in storms and convulsions of nature, it may be said, that his figures, also are merely subordinate to the effect of a dashing sea, a thunder-cloud, or a forest waving and crashing with the wind; and that they are not strongly enough marked to interrupt the eye in the contemplation of these objects. Gaspar Poussin, I must own, is an instance that a French painter can understand and represent the deep repose of nature; but the style of Poussin is certainly not that of the French school in general, nor that of Salvator to be considered as establishing a rule by which to judge of Italian taste. Mais revenons à nos moutons. We were surprised to observe how much our fellow-passengers interested themselves about the characters of the royal family of England. Several of its members underwent a free review, though not an ill-natured one; but all who spoke of our late queen Charlotte, did her more justice than has, perhaps, been done in England, and particularly praised the purity of her court, and the excellent domestic example which her private life afforded to Englishwomen in general. On this point we cordially agreed with them; but our sly acquaintance, Mons. C., was not disinclined to lead us to ground more debateable, and lay a trap for our national vanity. The master of the vessel had a wooden leg, which led to the subject of artificial limbs, and the perfection to which the art of making them had arrived in England. We accidentally mentioned the case of Lord Anglesey. "Et qui est ce Lord Anglesey?" said M.C., looking archly. "Un de nos plus grands seigneurs, Monsieur." Still he persisted in inquiring how he lost his leg. "C'était in Flandres." "Ah, vous voulez dire à Vaterloo, n'est ce pas?" said the old gentleman, with a smile, not displeased to observe the motive of our hesitation. He would not allow us to use the word _emprunter_, as applied to the conduct of his countrymen, with regard to the Louvre collection, "Non, _voler_, voilà le mot." The little bourgeoise, who had lionized the Hermitage du Mont d'Or so eloquently, grew very communicative on the strength of the display which she had made, and M.C.'s good humour; and volunteered her sentiments on the folly of reflecting too deeply, observing, that all but the old ought to banish the idea of death and such dismal bugbears from their minds. "Mais, songez, Mademoiselle," quoth he, interrupted in some observation rather better worth hearing, "que tout le monde ne possède pas votre force de caractère;" a compliment to which the young lady assented with a grateful curtsy. By the time F. had finished his sleep and digestion, as he had proposed to do, and learned "Pescator dell' Onda," by repeated trials and lessons, we arrived at the Pierre Incise, at the corner of which the Saone enters Lyons. Tradition says that this spot, which reminded me of St. Vincent's rocks, near Clifton, derives its Latinized name from the great work performed by Agrippa in cutting through the solid rock, and enlarging the channel of the river. The site of the castle of Pierre Incise, formerly a prison, and destroyed at the Revolution, is still visible on a strong height overhanging the river to the right; the bottom of which appears to have been cut away artificially. On another height, to the left, stands an old fort; on passing which, an abrupt turn of the Saone brought us into the centre of dirt, bustle, and business. Its course becomes in a moment confined between masses of tall, smoky, old houses, and its azure colour stained by party-coloured streams from dyers' shops, and a thousand other abominations, which would defy the pen of a Smollett to describe, and all the breezes from the Alps to purify. There are several bridges in this quarter, mostly appearing from their paltry and irregular character, to have been erected on some sudden emergency; from these, however, the noble Pont de Tilsit, near the cathedral, claims an exception. Long before we approached this last bridge, however, the boat reached the diligence office, and our porter dived with us to the left, through a succession of courts and streets as high and gloomy as the cavern of Posilipo. We emerged into the Place de Terreaux, and took up our quarters opposite to the Hôtel de Ville, a formal, but fine old building. CHAP. III. LYONS. EVERY traveller on his first arrival at a large place of any interest, and where his time is limited, must have experienced a difficulty in classing and forming, as it were, into a mental map, the various objects around him, and in familiarizing his eye with the relative position of the most striking features. To meet this difficulty, I should advise any one visiting Lyons, to direct his first walk to the eastern bank of the Rhone, and after crossing a long stone bridge called the Pont la Guillotiere, to follow the course of the river for about a mile along the meadows, towards its junction with the Saone. From this point of view, Lyons really presents a princely appearance.[5] The line of quays facing the Rhone, and which constitute the handsomest and most imposing part of the city, extend along the opposite bank in a lengthened perspective, in which the Hôtel Dieu and its dome form a central and conspicuous feature. In the back ground, the heights which divide the Rhone and Saone from each other rise very beautifully, covered with gardens and country seats. More to the left, and on the other side of the Saone, the hill of Fourvières (anciently Forum Veneris) presents a bold landmark, and forms a very characteristic back-ground to the city. Instead of continuing his walk towards the junction of the Rhone and the Saone, which possesses nothing worthy of notice, I should recommend the traveller to re-cross the Pont la Guillotiere, and make for this eminence. In his way he may pass through the Place Louis le Grand, formerly the Place de Bellecour, of the architecture of which the Lyonnais are very proud, and which is a marked spot in the revolutionary history of Lyons. Though on a costly and extensive plan, its proportions want breadth, and are too much frittered away to convey the idea of grandeur or solidity; and the inscription Vive le Roi, which occupies a place on two of its sides, in enormous letters, assists in giving it the air of a temporary range of building for a loyal fête. Not so the beautiful[6] Pont de Tilsit, by which you cross the Saone soon afterwards. This bridge, built by Buonaparte, to commemorate the treaty of Tilsit, unites elegance, solidity, and chasteness of design in a very great degree. Some of the stones, which I measured, are eighteen feet in length, and proportionably large, and altogether it reminded me of Waterloo bridge upon a smaller scale, and divested of its columns. The cathedral, which stands on the other side of the Saone, nearly at the foot of this bridge, is a venerable black old building of great antiquity, and though far inferior to those of Beauvais, Tours, Abbeville, or Rouen, in its general outline, possesses many detached parts of rich and curious architecture. It bears no marks of the devastation which it suffered in the Revolution, or during the late war, when, as we were told, the Austrians stabled their horses in it. Much of its repair has been owing to Cardinal Fesch, the late archbishop. The windows, rich as they are, have a gloomy effect, from being entirely composed of painted glass; and prevented us from distinguishing much very clearly. A statue of John the Baptist, however, crowned with artificial roses, should not be forgotten. A considerable part of the old town of Lyons lies on this side of the Saone; but as it will not repay the trouble of exploring, the traveller will do well to proceed immediately, or rather climb, to the church of Notre Dame de Fourvières. The fame of peculiar sanctity which this church enjoys, attracts many daily visitors from Lyons, though from its situation, it reminds one of the chapel in Shropshire, which as country legends tell, "the devil removed to the top of a steep hill to spite the church-goers." The continual resort of all ranks hither has attracted also a host of beggars, who have taken their stations in the only footway leading up to the church, some singly, some in parties, every four or five yards, and all besetting you in full chorus. The same cause has drawn to the terrace in front of the church a seller of Catholic legends, who to suit all tastes, mingles the spiritual, the secular, and the loyal, in his profession. The legend of St. Genevieve, Le Testament de Louis XVI., L'Enfant Prodigue, Damon and Henriette, Judith and Holofernes, and Le Portrait du Juif ambulant, might all be bought at his stall, adorned with blue and red wood-cuts. Poor Damon cut but a sorry figure in this goodly company; for though adorned with a crook secundum artem, he looked more rawboned and ugly than Holofernes, and more villainous than the wandering Jew: fully justifying the scorn with which the stiff-skirted Henriette seemed to treat him. It is almost misplaced however to enumerate such follies in a place, which on a fine day presents perhaps one of the most varied and magnificent views in the world: and which a person who had only an hour to spare in Lyons, ought to visit, to the exclusion of every other object of curiosity. By changing one's position from the terrace of the church to some rude and imperfect remains of Roman masonry on the western side of it, a complete panorama of the surrounding country is obtained. The Rhone and Saone are both seen inclining towards each other from the north and north-east, like the two branches of the letter Y; the former issuing like a narrow white thread from the distant gorges of the Alps, and widening into broad reaches through the intermediate plain; and the latter issuing suddenly from among the hills of the Mont d'Or: till after inclosing the peninsula in which the principal part of Lyons is situated, and which lies like a map under your feet, they unite towards the south; and the broad and rapid body of water formed by their junction, loses itself at length among ranges of hills surmounted by Mont Pilate, a lofty mountain near Valence. Towards the east, north-east, and south-east, the view is of the same description as that from Rochepot; a wild chain of Alps seen over a plain of great extent and richness. In a western direction, the broad hilly features of the adjoining country are enlivened by a continual succession of vineyards, woods, gardens, and villas of all sizes, absolutely perplexing to the eye from its undulating richness: with which the sober gray of distant ranges of mountains contrasts well. One cannot form a better idea of this part of the view, than by fancying the most hilly parts of the country near Bath, clothed in a lively French dress; the only deformity of which consists in the high stone walls that enclose every tenement, and whose long white lines cut the eye unpleasantly. Most persons can point out the Château Duchere, which is visible from this spot at the distance of about a mile on the north-west side, and was the scene of a sharp action between the French and Austrians in 1814. [Footnote 5: Vide Cooke's View.] [Footnote 6: Vide Cooke's Views.] If an hour or two of leisure remain after this walk, they may be filled up by a visit to the public library and the Palais des Arts. The former contains, they say, ninety thousand volumes, rather an embarrass de richesses to a hurrying traveller. I confess I was more amused by the importance with which the little old woman, who acted as concierge, talked of the "esprit mal tournu de Voltaire." The latter building adjoins the Hôtel de Ville, in the Place des Terreaux, the scene of one of the revolutionary fusillades. It contains, besides, several good pictures hung in bad lights, a large collection of Roman altars and sepulchral monuments, arranged in a cloister below, which serves as the exchange; and a cabinet of Roman antiquities found in the environs. The Hôtel de Ville itself is a massy stone building, a good deal in the taste of the Tuileries, and containing two fine statues of the rivers Rhone and Saone, which deserve notice. Whether the interior of Lyons can boast of any thing else worth notice I know not, but from the specimen which we had, too minute a survey of it can hardly be edifying to any one but a scavenger; and no single building can be named of any particular beauty, though its masses of tall well-built houses are imposing at a distance. To complete the short general survey of Lyons, which I mentioned, another not very long walk will suffice; traversing first the fine line of quays which front the Rhone, from the Pont la Guillotiere to the Quai St. Clair. From this point ascend the highest part of the city, called the Croix Rousse, and inquire for a place called Château Montsuy, which stands bordering upon its outskirts, and is best described as the most elevated spot on this line of heights.[7] From hence the view of Mont Blanc and the vale of the Rhone is peculiarly fine on a bright evening; and the whole prospect as rich and extensive as that from Fourvières. Beware of being persuaded by the laquais de place to visit La Tour de la belle Allemande, which is one of their show spots, and so called from some old legend of the imprisonment of a German lady. The view from Château Montsuy must, from the nature of the ground, be just the same, or, perhaps, even superior: and, what is more to the purpose, the Baroness de Vouty, in whose garden this old tower stands, seldom admits either Lyonnese or strangers to see it. On descending from the Croix Rousse, cross the Rhone by the Pont Morand, the wooden bridge next to that of La Guillotiere. Near the foot of this bridge is situated a large open space of ground, called Les Brotteaux, where the most atrocious of the revolutionary massacres took place. The site of the fusillade, by which two hundred and seven royalists perished at one time, is marked by a large chapel, dedicated to the memory of the victims, in the erection of which they are now proceeding. Three only are said to have escaped from this massacre, and to be still living. One of them finding his cords cut asunder by the first shot that reached him, escaped in the confusion, and plunging amid the thick bushes and dwarf willows which bordered upon the Rhone, baffled the pursuit of several soldiers. There is nothing remarkable in the appearance of the Brotteaux at present; but no true lover of his country ought to neglect visiting a spot associated with such warning recollections. One of the stanzas inscribed by Delandine on the cenotaph of his countrymen (which has been removed to make room for the chapel above mentioned), expresses briefly, and much in the spirit of Simonides's well known epitaph on the Spartans, the impressions conveyed by the sight of this Aceldama: Passant, respecte notre cendre; Couvrez la d'une simple fleur: À tes neveux nous te chargeons d'apprendre "Que notre mort acheta leur bonheur." This passage is, indeed, prophetic of the salutary effects of a lesson, which these and a thousand more voices from the tomb will proclaim to future ages; if, indeed, future ages will believe, that a[8] dastardly stroller was allowed to glut his full vengeance on the kindred of those who had hissed him from their stage, and to vow in a fit of wanton frenzy, that an obelisk only should mark the site of the second city in France; that he found himself seconded in this plan of destruction by thousands of hands and voices; that one citizen was executed for supplying the wounded with provisions, another for extinguishing a fire in his own house; and that when these pretexts failed, such ridiculous names as "quadruple" and "quintuple counter-revolutionist" were invented as terms of accusation. Such facts as these, written in the blood of thousands, furnish a strong practical comment on the consequences of anarchy, and the uncompromising firmness which should be displayed in checking its first inroads; the nature of which was never more eloquently or instructively described than in Lord Grenville's words. "What first occurred? the whole nation was inundated with inflammatory and poisonous publications. Its very soil was deluged with sedition and blasphemy. No effort was omitted of base and disgusting mockery, of sordid and unblushing calumny, which could vilify and degrade whatever the people had been most accustomed to love and venerate. * * * * * * * And when, at last, by the unremitted effect of all this seduction, considerable portions of the multitude had been deeply tainted, their minds prepared for acts of desperation, and familiarized with the thought of crimes, at the bare mention of which they would before have revolted, then it was that they were encouraged to collect together in large and tumultuous bodies; then it was that they were invited to feel their own strength, to estimate and display their numerical force, and to manifest in the face of day their inveterate hostility to all the institutions of their country, and their open defiance of all its authorities." [Footnote 7: Vide Cooke's Views.] [Footnote 8: Collot d'Herbois.] A vivid description this, and strikingly applicable to the operations of that evil spirit which is still at work, with less excuse and provocation than France could plead for her atrocities. Such are the first and second acts of the drama of modern sedition; the fifth is well delineated in a tract by M. Delandine, the public librarian of Lyons in 1793, as introduced in Miss Plumtre's Tour in France. This interesting narrative, intitled "An Account of the State of the Prisons at Lyons during the Reign of Terror," bears a character of truth and feeling, which bespeaks him an eye-witness of the horrors he describes. Torn from his family without any assignable cause, and imprisoned in the hourly expectation of death, his own apprehensions seem at no time to have absorbed his interest in the fate of his suffering friends; and to their merit and misfortunes he does justice in the verses before alluded to. The following is a free translation of them. Oft, Lyonnese, your tears renew To those who died upon this spot; Their valour's fame descends to you, In life, in death, forget them not. Here calm they drew their parting breath, Soul-weary of their country's woes, Here, fearless, in the stroke of death Met honour,--victory,--repose. Pilgrim, revere their dust, and strew One flow'ret on this lowly tomb; Then say unto thy sons, "For you, "Children of France! they braved their doom." Thou fatal, hallow'd spot of earth, Immortal shrines shall mark thy place! Alas! what genius, valour, worth, Lie mouldering in thy narrow space! Within less than half an hour's walk of the Brotteaux, and on the same side of the river, stands the Château la Motte, in which Henry IV. received Mary de Medicis as his bride. The way thither is best found by following the street leading to the Turin road for about a mile, when a turn to the right, not far from the junction of the road to Vienne, brings you in the course of a few minutes to the castle. When seen at a distance either from the Croix Rousse or Fourvières, its four turrets and a watch-tower give it an air of grandeur consistent with its former history, and distinguish it from the adjoining suburb. In a nearer point of view, indeed, its patched and dilapidated appearance shows the vain attempts which have been made to repair the ravages of the Revolution. At that period it belonged, as we were informed, to M. de Verres, a brave royalist gentleman, whose activity against the Revolutionists drew their marked vengeance upon himself and his possessions. At the time of the siege of Lyons, he garrisoned the Château la Motte with a strong detachment of chasseurs; and, as a peasant informed us, "fought like a devil incarnate," obstructing the operations of the sans-culotte army materially, and retarding their success against Lyons by his obstinate resistance. The position of his extensive premises, detached from the rest of the suburb, and surrounded with a wall, added to the advantage of a gently rising ground, must have enabled him to prolong the contest with effect. His fate was like that of so many other loyal and intrepid Lyonnese: being forced at last to surrender, he underwent, as may be supposed, a very summary trial, and was shot on the Brotteaux, in sight of the distant turrets of his own house. The property was confiscated, and great part of the château pulled down; but fortunately the round tower, containing Henry the Fourth's bed-room, still remains, rather owing in all probability to the ignorance of the Jacobins, than their good will. A part of the estate has been restored to his daughter, Mad. d'A., together with the château, which she inhabits; but I have reason to fear this part is but an inconsiderable one. Observing us wandering round the château with an air of curiosity, she politely sent to invite us to walk in. The room in which she was sitting opened upon a terrace, commanding a fine view down the Rhone towards Mont Pilate; and its interior was decorated with a few specimens of magnificent old furniture, which contrasted strongly with the air of desolation visible throughout. Two fauteuils of rich crimson velvet, with massy gilt frames, and two commodes inlaid and ornamented with brass, seem all the remains of the splendour of this once royal residence. From hence we visited Henry's apartment, which occupies the middle story of a large turret. It commands a fine view of Lyons and its noble environs; and the ceiling and walls bore some remains of the golden fleurs-de-lys on a blue ground, which had once ornamented them. Nearly the whole, however, had been white-washed during the Revolution; and on the advance of the Austrians, in 1814, the whole building suffered more by the hands of the combatants, than during the former sanguinary times. "Cependant il est bien connu," as Mad. d'A. answered with a proud smile, when we expressed our surprise at having found a well dressed person who could not direct us to Château la Motte. It may claim, indeed, to be well known to every good Frenchman, both from its former and latter history. It is singular, that in the course of the same day we should receive attentions from two persons, both of whom had lost their dearest friends in the carnage which followed the siege of Lyons. While I was sketching Mont Blanc and the course of the Rhone from the environs of Château Montsuy, a tall genteel old man, looking very like a Castilian, accosted us civilly, and, having peeped over my shoulder for a moment or two, invited us into his garden, which commanded the same view in a much superior manner. His sister-in-law, who was walking with him, had, he informed us, lost her husband and son in the fusillade. Yet, perhaps, when we consider the extent of the havoc, it would seem more singular to find a family who had not suffered, nearly or remotely, from its consequences. In returning over the Pont la Guillotiere, we were led to remark the probable antiquity of its construction. The centre still retains the drawbridge; and the whole fabric appears to have been widened, when wheel carriages came into fashion, with a supplementary parallel slice, riveted on to it by iron bolts. This expedient rather reminded me of a story which I had heard in my infancy, of a prudent housewife, who first roasted half a turkey for the family dinner, and when it had been twenty minutes on the spit, sewed on the remaining half to welcome an unexpected guest. Our excursion on the Saone had in every respect answered so well, that we were tempted to make inquiry whether the Rhone was also practicable as far as Avignon. Learning, however, that this mode of conveyance was seldom resorted to, and not liking the appearance of the passage-boats which we saw, we concluded, and found afterwards, that there were sufficient objections against it, excepting to those who wish to save time and expense. The rapidity of the current, and the violence and uncertainty of the winds which prevail upon the Rhone, render it necessary to employ a very skilful boatman; and, in a picturesque point of view, as much is lost by the intervention of the high banks of the Rhone, which shut out the distant parts of the landscape, as is gained by the perpetual accompaniment of water as a foreground. On the whole, we found reason to prefer the land route by Vienne and Valence, for which our arrangements were made accordingly. I think it is an observation of Cowper, that "God made the country, and man made the town;" and not even the centre of Lombard-street itself affords a truer illustration of the sentiment, than this town of mud and money, contrasted with its beautiful environs. The distant view of Lyons is imposing from most points; but the interior presents but few objects to repay the traveller for its closeness, stench, and bustle (not even good silk stockings). Its two noble rivers have had no apparent effect in purifying it, nor the easterly winds from the Alps, which stand in full sight, in ventilating its narrow smoky streets: and though usually considered the second city of the empire in wealth and importance, the houses and their inhabitants appear marvellously inferior to Bordeaux and the Bordelais in the air of neatness and fashion which might be expected to mark this distinction. In every thing relating to Bordeaux there is an easy elegant exterior, which conveys the idea of an independent and frequented capital of a kingdom, and an eligible residence; whereas Lyons bears the obvious marks of its manufacturing origin, defiling, like our own Colebrook Dale, a lovely country by its smoke and stench, and leaving hardly one of the five senses unmolested. Those fine buildings of which it can boast, take their place amid the general mass, like a fastidious courtier in low company, "Wondering how the devil they came there." Whereas the elegant theatre of Bordeaux appears just in its proper situation, and supported by suitable accompaniments of well-dressed people and airy streets. After the sight of the Hôtel Dieu, a standing proof that the Lyonnese can employ their money laudably and well, I will not pretend to judge whether there is any truth in the charge of avarice brought against them, and which Voltaire slyly admits in a professed eulogium on Lyons. There are other reasons accounting in a degree for its inferiority to Bordeaux in appearance, and the sordid impression which it leaves on the mind. In the first place, to judge from the innumerable quantities of villas of all sizes within reach of the town, it seems that the rich Lyonnese appreciate their fine environs as they deserve, and consider the country as the scene of display and enjoyment, while they treat Lyons as a mere counting-house. On the contrary, the villas in the neighbourhood of Bordeaux appear comparatively few, and business and pleasure to unite in the town itself. The imagination also may have some share in giving the preference, particularly after reading[9] M. de Ruffigny's tirade against his infantine life in the silk mills of Lyons. One fancies the merchant conversant with a higher and less sordid class of persons and details than the master spinner, and vineyards more agreeable objects than dying-houses and treddles. Be this as it may, appearances are certainly in favour of Bordeaux as the second city in France. [Footnote 9: See Godwin's St. Leon.] CHAP. IV. LYONS TO MONTELIMART. MAY 7.--From Lyons to St. Symphorien, our breakfast-stage, twelve miles. For the first seven, the outskirts of Lyons, extending along the western bank of the Rhone, continue to exhibit one unvarying appearance of wealth and population. The Archbishop's palace, which stands about two miles out of the city, on a hill overlooking the river, does not add much to the beauty of the country, as it strongly resembles a large manufactory. St. Symphorien, a neat small town, marked by a ruined watch-tower to the left of the road, possesses no inn at which a tolerable breakfast can be procured; but we fared well, in this respect, at a coffee-house in the middle of the town, situated under the Mairie. To Vienne, nine miles more. During this stage, the Alps become again visible in full majesty, from a high terrace overlooking a range of woody rising ground; and extend as far as the eye can reach from north to south. Mont Blanc and Monte Viso, the Gog and Magog of this gigantic chain, preserve their pre-eminence; the distant pyramid of the latter, which shoots into the clouds like the Peak of Teneriffe, from a cluster of lower mountains, contrasting with the massy dome of the former. From its figure and position in the map, I judged it could be no other than Monte Viso, which is so strikingly conspicuous on the road from Coni to Turin. Mont Pilate, towards the foot of which the Rhone wound to the right, sinks into utter insignificance when compared with these Alps, though of a height and grandeur which would render it a leading feature in Wales or Cumberland. It is considered in this neighbourhood as stored with rich specimens of botany, and its appearance, much less scorched and barren than the mountains of a southern climate usually are, renders this probable. The view of Vienne, as you descend into the narrow green valley in which it is situated, crowned by the dark ruins of an old Roman castle, and watered by a deep and rapid reach of the Rhone, combines beauties calculated to please all tastes. On the opposite side of the river, overlooking the ruins of a bridge with which it probably once communicated as a guard-house, stands a tall, square, Roman tower, called the Tour[10] de Mauconseil. The legends of the country affirm, that this was the abode of Pontius Pilate,[11] and that, in a fit of despair and frenzy, he threw himself from its windows into the Rhone, where he perished. This point the good Catholics must settle as they can with the Swiss, who maintain that he drowned himself in a little Alpine lake on the mountain which bears his name; and that the storms by which it is frequently agitated are occasioned by the writhings of his perturbed spirit. Nothing shows more forcibly the power of association in minds not capable of discriminating, than that the name of a man so obviously a reluctant instrument in the hands of God, and who declared by a public act his abhorrence of the part he was forced to act, should be selected as synonymous to every thing fiendlike and murderous. [Footnote 10: Vide Cooke's Views.] [Footnote 11: There is, I believe, positive historical authority, which fixes Vienne as the place of Pilate's banishment and death.] The cathedral of Vienne was shut, and its external appearance did not tempt us to make further inquiries; but we were directed to a Roman temple, which, like that at Nismes, is called the Maison Carrée. It can only boast of the remains of lofty pilasters, and the marks of what was once an inscription; and the inside being converted into a paltry-looking palais de justice, will hardly repay the trouble of waiting for the concierge. We departed from Vienne with too unfavourable an impression of its dirty inn, and of the place in general, to render us desirous of spending the night there. The squalid, dispiriting appearance of the town itself, indeed, forms a strong contrast both to the fine country in which it stands, and the capital letters which decorate its name in the map of France. Instead of loitering in its smoky, desolate streets, while horses are changing, I should recommend the traveller to walk on and await their arrival at the Aiguille, an old Roman monument so called, which stands close to the road on the right, within about a mile of the town. This singular pyramidical relic commands a beautiful view of the Rhone, winding into the sequestered vallies at the foot of Mont Pilate; and the variety of coins and other small relics, found there, indicate the ancient boundaries of the city as extensive, and comprising both this building and the temple above-mentioned; The inhabitants, forgetting that a person once set afloat "in the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone," would probably find no grave but the gulf of Lyons, have denominated this building the tomb of Pilate. Near Vienne the country of silk-worms begins, every tree almost being a mulberry; and on the steep hills, which inclose the channel of the Rhone during two days journey from this town, the celebrated Cote-Roti wine is chiefly produced. The vineyards are in the highest state of cultivation; and, as in Burgundy also, the nature and position of the soil seem to operate as a forcing-wall upon the vines, which had, at this early season, made immense shoots from their knotty close-pruned stumps. Here I frequently observed the industrious expedient practised in many parts of Valencia and Catalonia. On the steepest parts of the hills, terraces above terraces, of loose stones, are built to secure and consolidate the scanty portion of earth which would otherwise be washed away from the roots of their vines by the first winter storm; and not a spot is neglected, however unpromising and difficult of access, where a barrow-full of mould can be raked together, and increased by hand-carriage. One cannot witness such industry without wishing that it could procure more of the comforts of life; but here, as in Burgundy, the exertions of the inhabitants seem hardly repaid by a bare subsistence, if one may judge by the general appearance of their houses and persons. Those travellers who have not yet learned to button themselves up in total indifference, will find, that the interest and pleasure derived from a tour depend on nothing more than on the apparent well-being of those whom they see around them. It is this circumstance which, viewed in the mind's eye, throws a perpetual sunshine over the fine scenes of Tuscany and Catalonia, and lends a charm even to the flat uninteresting corn-fields of Picardy. The absence of it, on the contrary, disfigures the finest scenes in the south of Italy, and causes Naples, the most delightful spot on earth, perhaps, for situation and climate, to dwell on the recollection like a whited sepulchre, a gilded lazar-house of helpless and incurable wretchedness. A Roman beggar, glaring at you from the arches of a ruined temple, like one of Salvator Rosa's Radicals, with a look at once abject and ferocious, may be, perhaps, a characteristic accompaniment to the scene; but the active, erect walk, the frank countenance, and cheerful salutation of a peasant of the Val d'Arno, leave a more pleasing recollection on the mind, as connected with the ideas of comfort, manliness, and independence. About five miles from Vienne, we ascended a steep hill to the left, leaving on the opposite side of the Rhone a well-wooded château, belonging to a Mons. d'Arangues; which forms a good accompaniment to the view of Mont Pilate. By the road side was a very primitive mill, near which we saw a woman sifting corn as we walked up the hill. The corn is laid in the circular trough, and ground by a stone revolving round the shaft in the centre; which is probably worked by an ass. Such little circumstances as these frequently remind us more strongly of the change of place, than the difference of language and costume, which we are prepared to witness in the different provinces of a wide empire. Nothing, for instance, forms a stronger or more distinct feature in one's recollections of the south of France, than the enormous remises which are annexed to every paltry inn on the road from Lyons to the southward, and which serve both as warehouse and stable to the hosts of stout Provençal carriers, who travel with wine, oil, and merchandise to the interior. The remise at Vienne was sixty feet square, without compartment; its roof-timbers were worthy of Westminster Hall, and for its folding doors "The gates wide open stood, That with extended wings a banner'd host, Under spread ensigns marching, might pass through, With horse and chariots ranked in loose array; So wide they stood!" Independent of the uses to which these capacious buildings are properly applied, they furnish the most agreeable place for rest and refreshment, during the heat of the day, being, as the traveller will frequently experience, the coolest and the sweetest place belonging to the inn. During the rest of our day's journey, nothing occurred worthy of attention, until the descent into Peage de Rousillon, where we slept. Here the Rhone, of which we had lost sight, again appears winding through the broad rich valley which opens at the foot of the hill; and Mont Pilate also, after you have lost sight of it for the last seven or eight miles, and expect to see it behind you, again makes its appearance at a distance seemingly undiminished. So difficult is it to judge of the real bearings of objects in this clear air, which in fact is less favourable to the display of the grander features of nature, than our own misty Ossianic climate. Our inn at Peage de Rousillon, although the only place in the neighbourhood at which we could have slept in any comfort, somewhat resembled, in its general style, those recorded in Don Quixote, and afforded similar adventures. In the midst of our supper, (which was by no means a bad one of the kind), in burst a fat German woman in a transport of fury, who thought herself ill-used in the allotment of the rooms; squabbling in a very discordant key with the landlady, who followed her "blaspheming an octave higher." Both were apparently viragos of the first order, and the keen encounter of their wits was so loud, that we turned a deaf ear to the German's appeal, and insisted on their choosing another field of battle. Battle however was the order of the day, or rather night, for both myself and my servant were roused in the middle of the night to put a stop to a drunken quarrel on the staircase, which we effected by ordering down stairs the Maritornes, who proved the bone of contention. The Hôtel du Grand Monarque, is evidently on a par with that class of inns in our English country towns, which bear the royal badge of the George and Dragon, through some fatality attendant on high names and dignities. From Peage de Rousillon to St. Vallier, you traverse eighteen miles of flat road, only enlivened by the hills to the right of the Rhone, which, becoming gradually more rocky and abrupt, meet at length with a corresponding barrier on the left, and enclose the river in a narrow valley. Just beyond its entrance, which we had distinguished from above Peage de Rousillon, stands the town of St. Vallier, where the conducteur intended that we should breakfast. The Hôtel de Poste is a most dismal hole indeed, in every respect, and no appearance of any other inn: but soon after we learnt by experience, that wherever there is a café of tolerable appearance, it affords a much better chance for breakfast than any inn of the same rank. Neatness is the more the trade of the cafêtier, and his notions of breakfast much more English, than those of the inn-keeper, who is usually put completely out of his way by our habits. "Eh! Messieurs," said a well-dressed bourgeoise, who saw us sauntering about near the door of her shop, "vous irez sans doute voir notre beau château: il fut donné par Jean de Poitiers au premier Seigneur de St. Vallier, et il a descendu jusqu'à Mons. de St. Vallier l'actuel proprietaire." Nothing could be more acceptable to idle wanderers than this information, and off we set at a round pace up a most filthy street, according to our directions; our heads full of crenelles, pont-levis, donjon, fosse, and the proper etceteras. I am not sure that we did not half expect to meet M. de St. Vallier himself, (a good baronial name) cap-a-pie at the barbacan gate, his lance in rest, and his visor down, like Sir Boucicault, or the Lord de Roye, or the doughtiest of Froissart's heroes. A long white-washed mud wall, with green folding gates, began somewhat to cool our Gothic enthusiasm--. "Perhaps the portcullis was destroyed at the Revolution." A bell hung at the gate. "Pshaw, it ought at least to have been a bugle-horn." When we had rung, instead of sounding a blast, not a dwarf, but a slipshod dirty girl, not much bigger, opened the door cautiously. "Il ne faut pas entrer: Monsieur ne permet personne de voir le château." We made involuntarily two steps forward; when lo! the end of a modern house, with a pea-green door and sash windows, and a shrubbery of lilacs interspersed with Lombardy poplars, blasted our sight. No longer ambitious of pursuing the lord of St. Vallier in flank, we hoped at least that a front view of his castle from the road to Avignon might afford some remains of feudal splendour. Off we set accordingly, and emerging from the dirty town as quickly as possible, beheld on turning round!--a large modern front, in the full smile of complacent ugliness, with a Grecian portico, not of masonry, but of red and yellow paint à la Lyonnaise; the whole edifice quite worthy of the Hermitage du Mont d'Or. The two short round towers on the sides might have been originally Gothic; but if really so, they had been most effectually disguised by white-washing, and new tiled tops, which very much resembled Grimaldi's red cap and his whited face. In front of the windows, instead of the sweeping lawns and dark avenues of which Mrs. Ratcliffe is so liberal, stood a large close-pruned vineyard, inclosed by a high white wall; at one end of which, and facing the front of his red and yellow château, M. de St. Vallier had built a red and yellow summer-house, with green shutters, to keep it in countenance. Very much diverted at our ludicrous disappointment, we sauntered along the road, which followed the course of the Rhone. At two miles distance, just where the river winds with a broad and rapid sweep into a woody gorge, with one blue mountain peeping over it, a black venerable old ruin, with turret and watch-tower, and every thing to render it complete, stood cresting an abrupt rock which hung over the river. Nothing, said I, shall persuade me that this castle is not the genuine gift of John of Poitiers, and the real object of our search. Down we sat at all events to sketch it, and meeting by good fortune a communicative young officer on the road, we learnt that this castle, called[12] Château la Serve, had in reality been the residence of the lords of St. Vallier; that many years ago it had been reduced by an accidental fire to its present state, and was finally wrested from the family at the Revolution. Of the present Château St. Vallier, and the estate annexed, they have remained in uninterrupted possession; and all admirers of the Gothic must rejoice that the ruin has been purchased by the commune of La Serve: for, standing as it does within view of the new château, no doubt it would have been brought to the state of that delectable domicile by the aid of the trowel and paint-brush. [Footnote 12: Vide Cooke's Views.] From La Serve to Tain, the same style of country continues, without much alteration. The utmost exertions of the inhabitants seem necessary to struggle against the stony ungenial nature of the soil; and a black storm which was rolling to the right over Mont Pilate, appeared to menace the scanty crops of vines which their labour had produced. In every hamlet we heard the bells ringing, and saw the poor peasants crowding to the church to put up prayers against the coming hail, which at this season of the year is peculiarly fatal. If this be a superstition, it is surely not a contemptible or uninteresting one to witness: nor can one wonder at the influence gained over peasants thus instructed to associate Heaven with their daily hopes and fears. To our great satisfaction, after two or three vivid flashes of lightning, the clouds broke away to the north-west, and a light rain fell partially, more beneficial to the parched vineyards than hurtful to the hay, which even at this early season was in great forwardness in most places. On the whole, I should say that the district lying fifty miles south of Lyons, is a month more early than our own in point of climate and productions. At Tain, the Rhone forces for itself a narrow passage into the vale of Valence, from among the rugged skirts of Mont Pilate, leaving on the one side Tain, and on the other Tournon; both backed by strong heights, which seem to guard the entrance of the defile. The situation of Tournon is striking, and very much corresponds with the ideas which one forms of a strong baronial hold upon the Rhine. A large portion of the precipitous hill which commands it, is connected with the town by a broken line of grim old walls and towers, which betoken the former importance of this position. Its castle, a building of a heavy conventual style of architecture, and standing on a fortified terrace, formerly belonged to the Prince de Soubisc, but is now converted, as we were informed, into a prison. To this purpose it is well adapted, as a leap from one of the round towers which breast the river at the angles of its terrace, would be fatal; and the character of despotism impressed on its walls seems to say, that in former times its uses were not very different. The resemblance indeed which it bears to the Château d'Amboise on the Loire, the scene of the Duke de Guise's murder, may possibly assist its effect on the imagination. On issuing from this gloomy but not uninteresting spot, the eye opens upon an extensive prospect, rich in many of those features which we find scattered through the works of Claude and Salvator. To the right, the hills which hung[13] over the road to Tain, recede into a long perspective, terminated in the distance by a ruined castle on a pyramidical rock, near Valence; and the Rhone, following the same direction, winds away from the road in a slower and wider current than before. To the left, the outskirts of the Dauphiné Alps form a singularly wild and fantastic barrier, sometimes rising in abrupt pinnacles, and sometimes rent as if by an earthquake into precipices of some thousand feet of sheer perpendicular descent. The vale inclosed between these rough walls, and in the centre of which the Isere unites itself to the Rhone, appears a perfect garden in point of richness, cheerfulness, and high cultivation. We crossed the Isere, a strong and rapid stream, by a ferry, for our Itineraire, with its usual accuracy, forgot to mention that the bridge of which it speaks was broken down by Augereau on the advance of the Austrians. Within two or three miles of Valence, a rising ground, fringed with scattered oak underwood, affords a more distinct and striking semicircular view of the mountains to the left; and glimpses of others yet more distant, bordering an immense plain, through which the Rhone takes its course towards Avignon. [Footnote 13: Vide Cooke's Views.] As we approached Valence, the ancient Civitas Valentinorum, we again observed the ruined castle which we had at first remarked, called Château Crussol. It stands on a conical cliff on the opposite side of the river, overlooking the town at about two cannon-shots distance. On inquiring into the history of this eagle's nest, we found that it had been in days of yore the fortress of a petty free-booting chieftain, who kept the inhabitants of Valence in a perpetual state of war and annoyance; a history which almost appears fabricated to suit its appearance and character. It bears a very strong resemblance, in point of situation, to the ruin within a mile of Massa di Carrara; which the tradition of the peasants assigns as the abode of Castruccio Castracani, the scourge of the Pisans. Seeing it relieved by a gleam of sunshine from a dark evening cloud behind it, we could fancy, without any great effort of imagination, that, like the bed-ridden Giant Pope in honest John Bunyan, it was grinning a ghastly smile of envy at the prosperity which it could no longer interrupt. Or, if this idea should seem extravagant, at least the two opposite neighbours present as lively a personification as stone and mortar can afford, of their respective inhabitants; the town of Valence flourishing in industrious cheerfulness, and the castle domineering, savage, poverty-stricken, and formed only for purposes of plunder and mischief. In the suburbs of Valence we found an excellent inn, called the Croix d'Or, worthy to be recommended both for comfort, civility, and fair charges. A walk into the town of Valence itself has very little in it to repay the traveller, with the exception of the Champ de Mars, a sort of public garden bordering on the Rhone. Certainly no place ever united such a degree of dirt and closeness to so smiling an exterior. Its old Gothic walls still remain, and the streets therefore are probably built on the same scale as in those times when they crowded together for security against feudal aggressors. May 9.--To Loriol five miles. The road passes through a country as beautiful and diversified as before, seldom deviating above a mile or two from the course of the river: corn and hay-fields, the latter fit for cutting, mulberry, almond, and fig-trees, cover every inch of ground. About a mile before we reached Loriol, and just after passing a small town called Livron, we crossed the Drome, over a noble bridge of three arches, constructed of a rough sort of whitish marble, and reminding us somewhat of a reduced section of the Strand bridge. Its massy solidity is not misplaced, as a view up the mountain glen to the left of it convinced us. Though the river was at this time low, the immense extent of dry beds of gravel showed what its volume and force must be when swoln by rain; and the cluster of gloomy mountains which close the valley from whence it issues, seem the perpetual abode of storms. In one of them I recognised the Montagne de Midi, whose form is so remarkably perpendicular when seen from Tain; and altogether, I have no idea of forms more wild and extraordinary upon so large a scale. The rocks of St. Michel, in Savoy, near St. Jean de Maurienne, are a miniature resemblance of them; but a better idea as to size and wildness, may be formed by those who recollect the mountains of Nant Francon, in Wales, and can imagine them not yet settled into place, after the first confusion of the Titanic war. "Ter sunt conati imponere Pelio Ossam Scilicet, atque Ossâ frondosum involvere Olympum; Ter pater exstructos dejecit fulmine montes." The view is worth several hours of an artist's time, and its effect is considerably increased by a solitary tower, resembling a moss-trooper's abode, which stands in the middle distance. It is called, as we understood, the Château de Crest, and is the relic of a state prison. On passing a corner of rising ground this wild valley disappears, and the same rich and cheerful country as has been already described recommences. The same unbroken rocky barrier bounds the Rhone on the right, while in front numberless peaks of very distant mountains become visible over the plain through which its windings are traced. The neat-looking inn at Loriol probably affords better breakfasts than the café, which, in spite of its neat outside, is dirty and imposing, an exception to the usual rule. To Montelimart fifteen miles: the first three we walked, and rested on a rising ground, commanding in each direction a long day's journey through this fine district. Our walk perhaps made us relish the more a bottle of the vin du pays, which Derbieres, a little village a mile or two farther on, afforded; but I have no doubt that worse is sold in Paris at seven or eight francs a bottle, under the name of pink champagne: it is at least worth the while of any thirsty traveller to try the experiment, if it were merely for the sake of the civil old landlady of the little inn. We could obtain no information from her respecting the history of a singular ruin on the opposite side of the river, excepting that it was called Château Crucis, and about seven hundred years ago was an abbey. Somewhat beyond this black pile stand two or three pyramidical rocks, projecting from the general line of hills, the same probably which the French Itineraire mentions as commanding a celebrated view, and exhibiting in themselves a geological curiosity. I doubt, however, whether any person would do well to cross the Rhone to explore them, upon the mere credit of that wise octavo. Montelimart is a large old town, the ancient fortifications of which, as of Valence, remain in perfect preservation. The approach to it from Loriol gives by no means so favourable an idea of it as it deserves; and to estimate its beauties fully, it is necessary to visit the citadel, now used as a prison, which stands on a height above the town.[14] The view which it commands is uniformly mountainous in the back grounds, and flat and rich in its nearer details; but the finest part of it is towards the east. The snowy Alps near Grenoble, and the line of mountains from whence the Drome issues, and at whose foot Château Grignan is situated, are its prominent features; and the little farm-houses and tufts of trees in the rich pasture grounds which intervene, seem disposed by the hand of a painter. [Footnote 14: Vide Cooke's Views.] Not to omit the luxuries of the palate as well as those of the eye, it is worth while to procure at Montelimart a wedge or two of the nogaux, or almond-cakes, which Miss Plumptre so particularly recommends. The genuine sort is as glutinous as pitch, and made in moulds, from whence it is cut like portable soup; and the makers at Montelimart, like the rusk-bakers of Kidderminster, have, I understand, refused a large sum for the receipt. Another of the good things of Provence, to which Miss Plumptre's Tour introduced us, was the confiture de menage, or fruit boiled up with grape juice instead of sugar. This is a preserve which you meet with in most of the commonest inns, but which is so easily made and little esteemed, that they do not bring it without a particular order. It is very much like asking for treacle at an English inn; nevertheless I, for my part, felt obliged to the fair tourist for an information which has served to mend many a bad breakfast; and a bad breakfast, as the world doth know, is the stumbling-block, or the grumbling-stock, of most Englishmen, travelled or untravelled. The inn at Montelimart is excellent; but Madame must not be left to make her own charges. We should, however, have parted from her in good humour, had not her avarice affected persons less able to help themselves. The poor maid, who appeared jaded to the bone, confessed that her mistress detained half her etrennes, and I have reason to believe that she spoke truth. To the classical ground of Château Grignan, which we visited next day, I shall devote a separate chapter. CHAP. V. CHÂTEAU GRIGNAN. MAY 10.--This was the day of the greatest interest and fatigue which we had as yet passed; and moreover afforded us a tolerably accurate idea, at the risk of our bones, of the nature of French crossroads. Having understood that the road from Montelimart to Grignan was inaccessible to four-wheeled carriages, we set off at four in the morning in a patache, the most genteel description of one-horse chair which the town afforded. Let no one imagine that a patache bears that relation to a cabriolet which a dennet does to a tilbury; for ours, at least, would in England have been called a very sorry higgler's cart. The inside accommodations were so arranged, that we sat back to back, and nearly neck and heels together, after swarming up a sort of dresser or sounding-board in the rear, which afforded the most practicable entrance. "Mais montez, montez, Messieurs, vous y serez parfaitement bien," quoth our civil conducteur, haranguing, handing, and shoving at the same time. The alacrity with which he and his merry little dog Carlin did the honours of the vehicle, and the stout active appearance of the horse (to say nothing of the whim of the moment, and the fine morning), reconciled us to a mode of conveyance no better than that which calves enjoy in a butcher's cart; and for the first few miles we forgot even the want of springs. After travelling a league or two, the road began to wind into the outskirts of the range of mountains which we had first seen from Tain, and reminded us, in its general features, of some of the most sequestered parts of South Wales. The soil is generally poor, but derives an appearance of verdure and cheerfulness from the large walnut and mulberry-trees which shade the road, and the stunted oak copses through which it occasionally winds. We passed an extensive pile of building, of a character which we had not before observed, consisting of a number of small awkwardly-contrived rooms, without any uniformity, piled like so many inhabited buttresses against the outside and inside of a circular wall. This, it seems, is the property and habitation of one person, a M. Dilateau; but it certainly has more the appearance of the residence of a whole Birkbeck colony, each back-settler established in his own nook, amid the contents of his travelling waggon. A little farther, on the summit of a bare rocky ridge to the left, stands a castle of a more Gothic character, but equally uncouth and comfortless. It was demolished, as we understood, at the time of the Revolution; but in its best days must have been but a wretched residence, as no trace remains within many hundred yards of it, of any soil where tree or garden could have stood. To the genuine admirers of Mad. de Sevigné, however, even these cheerless mountain holds present an interesting object, as having been peopled by the honest country families whose ceremonious visits to Grignan afforded her many a good-natured laugh.[15] Or to treat the Château Race-du-fort (for such we understood to be the name of this last castle) with more respect, we may fancy its proprietor sallying forth, like old Hardyknute, at the head of his armed sons and servants, to join the seven hundred country gentlemen who volunteered their services, with the Count de Grignan at their head, in besieging the rebellious town of Orange. [Footnote 15: "See Mad. de S.'s Letters."] We found it necessary, both from common consideration for the patache-horse, and our own necks, to walk up the two miles of steep ascent, which occur after passing this last castle. On the top of the hill all vegetation appears to cease, excepting a few shrubby dwarf firs, and a profusion of aromatic plants, such as juniper, lavender, southernwood, and wild thyme, which delight in the stony hot-bed afforded by the interstices of disjointed rocks. The view from the high table of ground to which we climbed at length fully repaid our exertions, and may be almost compared, for extent and beauty, to those from the church of Fourvières, and the Montagne de Rochepot. Towards the north we surveyed not only the valleys of Montelimart and the Drome, but nearly the whole of the route of the three preceding days, bordered on the one side by the abrupt and lofty mountains, from which the latter river takes its source, and on the other by the steep banks of the Rhone. On proceeding a little farther, over a road which consisted of the native rock in all its native inequality, we caught sight of the Comtat Grignan, and the great plain of Avignon, into which that district opens in a south-western direction, flanked on the east by a colossal Alp, called Mont Ventou, on whose long ridge traces of snow were still visible. In the centre of the Comtat, [16]Château Grignan is easily distinguished by the grandeur of its outline and proportions, and the tall insulated rock on which it stands, somewhat resembling that on which Windsor Castle is situated, though inferior in size. Its effect is somewhat heightened by several other smaller crags at different distances, which thrust themselves through the scanty stratum of soil, each crowned with a solitary tower, or little fortalice. In the feudal days of the Adhemars, ancestors of the Grignan family, who possessed the whole of the Comtat, these were probably the peel-houses, or outposts, of the old Château, in the quarter from which it would have been most exposed to attack. The Château Race-du-fort was, in all likelihood, also the key of the mountain glen leading to the hill which we were descending, and formed the line of communication with Montelimart, which was formerly included in the family territory. The records on this subject trace the foundation of the lordship of Grignan up to the days of Charlemagne, who is said to have created Adhemar,[17] one of his paladins, Duke of Genoa, as a reward for having re-conquered Corsica from the Saracens. Adhemar having fallen in a second expedition against the same enemy, his children divided his possessions: the elder remaining Duke of Genoa, another possessing the towns of St. Paul de Trois Château et Mondragon; and a third, the sovereignty of Orange. A fourth possessed the town of Monteil, called after him Monteil Adhemar, or Montelimart; and in 1160, the emperor Frederic I. granted to Gerard Adhemar de Monteil, his descendant and heir, the investiture of Grignan, with many sovereign rights, such as that of coining money. It was to this noble family that the Count de Grignan, whose third wife was the daughter of Madame de Sevigné, traced his blood and inheritance in a direct line. [Footnote 16: Vide Cooke's Views.] [Footnote 17: "Je me réjouis, avec M. de Grignan, de la beauté de sa terrasse; s'il en est content, les ducs de Genes, ses grands pères, l'auraient été; son gout est meilleur que celui de ce temps-là; * * * * * ces vieux lits sont dignes des Adhemars."--_Mad. de Sevigné_.] As we reached the level of the plain, and approached the castle, its commanding height and structure seemed completely to justify Mad. de S.'s expression to her daughter, "Votre château vraiment royal." Few subjects certainly ever had such a residence as this; which, though reduced to a mere shell by the ravages of the Revolution, still seems to bespeak the hospitable and chivalrous character of its former possessor. It rises from a terrace of more than a hundred feet in height, partly composed of masonry, and partly of the solid rock. The town of Grignan, piled tier above tier, occupies a considerable declivity at the foot of this terrace, and communicates with the castle by a road which winds round the ascent, and terminates in a massy gateway. On entering the town, we were directed to the Bons Enfans, kept by a man of the name of Peyrol; which, contrary to the expectations we had naturally formed of an inn not much frequented, provided us with a breakfast, which even the editor of honest Blackwood would delight to describe in all its minutiæ, for it was quite Scotch in variety and excellence, and served up with great cleanliness. It may be well to remark, that as far as I could judge from the appearance of the rooms, a family might spend two or three days here without sacrificing their comfort to their curiosity, and would be as well off as at the Quatre Nations at Massa, or the Tre Maschere at Caffagiolo, the models of little country inns. Our host, we found, was entrusted with the privilege of showing the castle by the Count de Muy, in whose family he had been a servant; and he accordingly accompanied us in our visit thither. On gaining the level of the terrace, we found the wind, which had been imperceptible in the town, blowing with such force, as to account for[18] Mad. de Sevigné's fears lest her daughter should be carried away from her "belle terrasse" by the force of the Bise. Persons travelling to the south of France for the sake of health, should be particularly on their guard against this violent and piercing wind, as well as that called the Mistral; both of which are occasionally prevalent in this country at most seasons of the year, and render warm clothing adviseable. I shall quote, as illustrative of the power with which the Bise blows, an extract from a letter by an intelligent traveller, written previous to the destruction of Château Grignan: "En faisant le tour du Château, je remarquais avec surprise que les vîtres du coté du nord étaient presque toutes brisées, tandis que celles des autres faces étaient entières. On me dit, que c'était la Bise qui les cassait; cela me parut incroyable; je parlai à d'autres personnes, qui me firent la même reponse: et je fus enfin forcé de le croire. La Bise y souffle avec une telle violence, qu'elle enleve le gravier de la terrasse, et le lance jusqu'au second étage, avec assez de force pour casser les vîtres." From the violence of the Bise wind this morning, and my subsequent experience of its force at Beaucaire, I have but little difficulty in believing this account; and conceive that the danger of yielding to the occasional temptation of heat, and wearing light clothing, cannot be too strongly insisted on in this country. Persons, indeed, who have not visited the south of France, connect its very name with the idea of uniform mildness; but in reality, its caprices render it, without proper caution, a more dangerous climate than our own. [Footnote 18: "L'air de Grignan me fait peur pour vous; me fait trembler; je crains qu'il n'emporte, ma chere enfant, qu'il ne l'épuise, qu'il ne la dessèche--." "Voilà le vent, le tourbillon, l'ouragan, les diables dechaînés qui veulent emporter votre château; quel ébranlement universel! quelle furie! quelle frayeur répandue partout!"--_Mad. de Sevigné_.] On advancing to the balustrades of what appeared a projecting part of the terrace, we were surprised to find that it formed one of the towers of the lofty church of Grignan, on the top of which, as on a massy buttress, we were standing. A trap-door, formed by a moveable paving stone, admitted us upon the leads of the church, which are secured from the effects of weather by the additional casing which the terrace affords. Its interior communicates with the lower rooms of the castle by a passage, terminating in a stone gallery, where from its height above the body of the church, the family could hear mass unperceived, as in a private oratory. The establishment of this church, founded entirely at the private expense of the Count de Grignan's ancestors, was very rich, and consisted of a deanery, twenty-one canonries, and a numerous and well-appointed choir. From its lofty proportions, I should suppose that the internal decorations had also been costly; but much mischief, we were informed, had been done to it during the time of the Revolution by the same troop of brigands which burnt the castle, and which consisted of the refuse of the neighbouring towns, countenanced by the revolutionary committee of Orange. With a natural aversion to every thing noble, these ragamuffins directed their outrages particularly against the statue of the founder of the church, whose grim black trunk stands in the vestibule, deprived of its head. One almost regrets that the figure did not possess the miraculous power of revenge which the corpse of Campeador[19] exerted when the Jew plucked his beard, and fall headlong of its own accord into the thick of its assailants. The remains of Mad. de Sevigné, and of the Grignan family, however, were safe from their violence, as the adherents of the castle had taken the precaution of changing the position of the flat black stone inscribed with the name of the former, which marked the entrance of the family vault; and which has since been restored to its original place. The inscription on this stone, which stands, a little to the right of the communion-table, is simply, "Cy git Marie de Rabutin Chautal, Marquise de Sevigné;" the date of her death, April 14, 1696, annexed. Such a name, in truth, does not need the assistance of owl-winged cherubs, brawny Fames, and blubbering Cupids, those frequent appendages of departed vanity and selfishness; which would have been probably as repugnant to the wishes of the good marchioness, as inconsistent with her simple and unassuming character. [Footnote 19: See Southey's translation of the Cid.] To return to the subject of the revolution, as it affected Château Grignan. Miss Plumptre, a writer of much research and general accuracy, and whose book would furnish twenty gentlemen-tourists with good materials, has, I believe, been misled as to one circumstance, the disinterment of Mad. de Sevigné, which, as far we could ascertain by inquiry, never took place from causes to which I have just alluded. The silk wrapping-gown, the expression of the features, and the respect with which the brigands beheld the corpse, are circumstances which Miss Plumptre's French informant appears to have accumulated, "pour faire une sensation;" and, had they taken place, our communicative guide, who was rather given to the melting mood, would have dwelt on them for the same purpose. They appear, however, to know nothing about the matter at Grignan, a place which Miss P. acknowledges herself never to have visited. The work of destruction was more complete in the castle than in the church. The Count de Muy, whose family had become possessed by purchase of this splendid pile of building, inhabited it for half the year, doing extensive good, if one may trust the partial account of his old servant, and maintaining a mode of living which would have done honour to a legitimate descendant of the Adhemars. Eighty-four lits de maître, and servants' beds in proportion, were made up, we understood, during a visit paid to the count by the present king, then Count of Provence. These hospitable doings, however, were not to last long. The revolutionists broke into the castle, and having pillaged it of whatever they could turn to any use, burnt the remainder of the furniture, pictures, &c., in the market-place, to the amount of 20,000 francs. One fellow, now residing at Montelimart, had the good taste to select for his share the dressing-glass and writing-table known as those of Mad. de Sevigné. The castle, which they set on fire, continued burning for two or three days: yet such was the solidity and goodness of the masonry, that an imposing mass still remains, sufficient to give an idea of what it must have once been. "Qualem te dicam bonam Antehac fuisse, tales cum sint reliquiæ!" As the terrace remains uninjured, and many of the walls are still perfect, the castle might be rendered again habitable at a comparatively reasonable expense. But the Count de Muy is seventy, has no children, and has lost 25,000 pounds per annum by the revolution; a combination of circumstances not very favourable to the spirit of improvement. "C'est là," said Peyrol, pointing out a small house at the foot of the terrace, "c'est là que demeure l'homme d'affaires de M. le Comte; il y vient tous les ans pour peu de jours; moi je lui fais son petit morceau; et souvent je le vois se promener sur cette belle terrasse, les larmes aux yeux; c'est que Monsieur aimait passionnement ce beau château. Ah, mon Dieu! ça me fait pleurer; moi qui ai tout perdu; ma place, mon bon maître, et puis je gagne le pain ici avec beaucoup de peine: cette pauvre ville est abîmée; nous avons perdu tous nos droits, notre bailliage, notre cour de justice, tout, tout--" &c. Our host had apparently imbibed all his master's enthusiastic respect for the house of Grignan; for, finding that we had purposely deviated from our route to behold the residence of Mad. de Sevigné, his delight and loquacity appeared to know no bounds. The space of years, and the succession of owners from the time of the good Marquise and her son-in-law, to that of his own master, seemed to have no place in his mind. He had her letters by heart, I believe, for he quoted them with great volubility and correctness, a-propos to almost every question which we asked; and seemed fairly to have worked himself, by their perusal, into the idea that he had seen and waited on her. "C'est ici qu'elle dormait; voilà le cabinet où elle écrivait ses lettres; c'est ici qu'elle prisait ses belles idées." Nothing indeed could be more delightful, or more calculated to inspire fine ideas, than the situation of the ruined boudoir into which he conducted us at these words. It occupies one floor of a turret, about fifteen feet in diameter, and opens into the shell of a large bedchamber. Its large croisees, which look out in three directions, command an extensive bird's eye view of the Comtat Grignan, surmounted by the long Alpine ridge of Mont Ventou, and an amphitheatre of other smaller mountains: and enough remained of both apartments to give a full idea of the lightness and airiness of their situation, and of their former magnificence. The walls, on which some gilding still remained, the stone window-frames, and the chimney-pieces, were still entire. From the door, we looked out into the long gallery[20] built by the Count de Grignan, and communicating with different suites of handsome rooms, or at least their remains. We explored them as far as was consistent with safety, and descended to the "belle terrasse," now over-run with weeds and lizards, in order to take[21] another survey of the castle, and form a general idea of the parts which we had separately visited. Though built at different periods of time, each part is in itself regular and handsome. The two grand fronts are the north and west, the former of which is represented in Mr. Cooke's first engraving of Grignan. The eastern part, facing Mont Ventou, is in a more ornamental style of architecture, somewhat resembling that of the inside square of the Louvre.[22] The southern part, affording a view of Mad. de Sevigné's window, and of the collegiate church founded by the family, is represented in the second engraving, the subject of which was sketched on the road to La Palud, whither we were bound for the night. In our way thither, we made a short detour, accompanied by our host, to the Roche Courbiere, a natural excavation on the rock, within sight of the terrace, and to the left of the road. This cool retreat, it may be recollected, was discovered and chosen by Mad. de Sevigné, as a sort of summer pavilion; and was embellished by the Count de Grignan with a marble table, benches of stone, and a stone bason, which collected the filterings of a spring that took its source from this cavern. I have since seen a drawing made previous to the Revolution, which confirms Peyrol's account. Even this modest hermitage, however, was not spared by the systematic spite of the brigands who destroyed the castle. Only one stone bench remains; the table and bason are demolished, and the spring now oozes over the damp floor as it did in a state of nature. On returning from this spot to the road, we crossed an open common field on the south side of the castle, planted with corn, and apparently of a better quality than the land in its vicinity. "Voilà le jardin," said our guide; "c'étoit là où il y avoit de ces belles figues, ces beaux melons, ce delicieux. Muscat dont Madame parle." The fine trees, which marked the limits of the garden, have all been cut down and burnt, with the exception of a row of old elms on the western side, forming part of the avenue which flanked the mail, or ball-alley, a constant appendage in days of old to the seats of French noblemen. The turf of the mail is even and soft still, and the wall on both sides tolerably perfect--"And now, Messieurs," said mine host, "you may tell your countrymen, that you have walked in the actual steps of the Marquise. C'est ici qu'elle jouoit au mail avec cette parfaite grace--et M. le Comte aussi--ah! c'étoit un plaisir de les voir." We hardly knew whether to laugh at, or be interested by the comical Quixotism of this man, who I verily believe had, by dint of residence on the spot, and thumbing constantly a dirty old edition of Madame's letters, worked himself up to the notion that he had witnessed the scenes which he described. We were induced, in the course of our walk, to inquire somewhat into his own history, which appeared rather a melancholy one, though common enough in the times through which he had lived. About a week after the pillage and destruction of Château Grignan, he was denounced as a royalist, and immured in the prison of Orange, in company with several gentlemen of the neighbourhood, acquaintances of his master. By means of a friend in the town, (for they were not all devils at Orange, as he emphatically assured us), he was enabled to procure a few common necessaries, to improve the scanty prison allowance of some of the more infirm; but his charitable labour soon ceased, for all were successively dispatched by the guillotine in a short space of time. In the course of three months, 378 persons perished by decree of the miscreants composing the Revolutionary tribunal at Orange, whose names were Fauvette, Fonrosac, Meilleraye, Boisjavelle, Viotte, and Benôit Carat, the greffier. One of their first victims was an aged nun of the Simiane family, canoness of the convent of Bollene, accused of being a counter-revolutionist; so lame and infirm, that her executioners were forced to carry her to the scaffold. Madame d'Ozanne, Marquise de Torignan, aged ninety-one, and her grand-daughter, a lovely young woman of twenty-two, perished in the same massacre. The personal beauty of the latter, which was much celebrated in the neighbourhood, had interested one of the brigands of Orange in her fate, who promised to exert his influence with the council of five, to save the life of the grandmother, on condition of receiving the hand of Mademoiselle d'Ozanne. The poor girl overcame her horror and reluctance for the sake of her aged relative, and promised to marry this man on condition of his success in the promised application. The life, however, of so formidable a conspirator as a superannuated and dying woman, was too great a favour to be granted even to a friend; and the only boon which he could obtain was the promise of Mademoiselle d'Ozanne's life, in consideration of her becoming his wife. "Eh bien! il faut mourir ensemble;" was her answer without a moment's deliberation, and next day, accordingly, both the relatives perished on the same scaffold. Poor Peyrol himself, after expecting the fatal _Allons_ for many a morning, was at length relieved from his apprehensions by the fall of Robespierre, and obtained his release, on condition of serving in the army. After fighting for four years, with a cordial detestation of the cause in which he was engaged, he was disabled for the time by a severe wound, and obtained leave to return to Grignan, where he settled in the little inn; but the most severe blow of all was yet in store for him; for his wife died not long after, leaving him with five children. "Ainsi vous voyez, Monsieur, que j'ai connu le malheur. Au reste, Mons. de Muy m'a donné la clef de ce château, et cela me vaut quelque chose; car il y a du monde qui viennent quelquefois le voir." Then, relapsing into his habitual strain of complaint, he ended with, "Oh mon pauvre cher maître! ce beau, ce grand château! ah, j'ai tout perdu!" One bright moment, however, as he exultingly remarked, occurred during his compulsory service in the army; for it so chanced that he was one of the guard on duty during the execution of his former oppressor, Fauvette. "Moi à mon tour je l'accompagnois a cet echafaud où il m'auroit envoyé; il avoit la mine triste, un fleur de jasmin à la bouche; ma foi, ça ne sentoit pas bon pour lui." Such is an exact transcript of our communicative host's conversation, which, notwithstanding the suspicion with which I regard the prattle of foreign guides, seemed to me not so much a well-conned lesson, as the genuine overflowing of such a disposition as honest Thady M'Quirk's. His interest in the persons and events of which he spoke, appeared as warm and genuine as his _naïveté_ was amusing and we took leave of him with a strong feeling of good will towards himself and his little clean inn. [Footnote 20: Eighty feet by twenty-four, according to a measurement made previous to the burning of the castle.] [Footnote 21: Pour entrer au vestibule (says the same letter which I quoted before, written before the Revolution) on monte par un escalier, car les appartemens sont tous au premier. Il y a quatre beaux salons, qui s'appellent la salle du roi, la salle de la reine, la salle des evêques, et la galerie: le reste de la maison, qui est vaste, est distribuêe en divers appartemens, dont chacun est composé d'une chambre a coucher, un grand cabinet, et un cabinet à toilette.] [Footnote 22: Vide Cooke's Views.] It is as needless to apologize for devoting a whole chapter to local circumstances connected with Madame de Sevigné's life, as it would be to detail the well-known social virtues which have erected this amiable and unpretending woman into a sort of household deity in the eyes of so large a class of persons, while the Lauzuns, the Montespans, and other gay and brilliant favourites of that period, are only recollected with disgust. CHAP. VI. ORANGE--AVIGNON. OUR road to La Palud lay along the rocky vale first discovered from the heights above Château Grignan, which in fact is not so much a vale as a high plateau of ground enclosed between hills, like many parts of Castille. To the latter country, indeed, the Comtat Grignan bears a striking resemblance in the characteristic features which prevail through the greater part of it. The insulated grey rocks have forced themselves through the starved soil, like projecting bones; the parched fields are more full of pebbles than corn; and the stunted evergreen oaks, with their diminutive tough leaves of a dingy grey, though well enough adapted to the inhospitable ground in which they grow, present an appearance quite repugnant to our English ideas of verdure and vegetation. The immediate neighbourhood of Château Grignan, indeed, seems tolerably fertile, but it is difficult nevertheless to conceive from whence the adequate supplies for the Count's immense table were procured, or how the feudal contributions of such a country could have supported in earlier days the number of castles and towers, whose ruins we saw on the summits of every detached rock. These, from their resemblance to the "antiguas obras de Moros," which the muleteers used to point out, presented another feature strongly reviving my Spanish recollections. In the days of romance, this country must have been the Utopia of Troubadours, where each might in the compass of a short walk have taken morning draught, breakfast, nooning, dinner, and supper, at the strong holds of different barons. The first of these fortalices, called Chamaret le Maigre, presents a striking landmark from the town of Grignan; but, on a nearer approach, consists of little more than a tall slender tower upon an insulated rock; the rest is in ruins. At a short distance beyond this spot stands Montsegur, a little old fortified town upon a hill, which, from its name and appearance, may have been one of those cradles of civil liberty, where the "bon homme Jacques" first found refuge from his haughty feudal oppressors. A ruin of a more lordly description close to it, is called, as we understood, the Château Beaume: but the number of less important ruins, which occurred in this day's journey, is too great to admit of a particular description. A turn to the right between a couple of commanding heights, brought us out of this barren country into the wide and fertile plain of the Rhone, and under the walls of St. Paul de Trois Châteaux, the ancient Augusta Tricastinorum. From the respectable appearance of this town, we conceived ourselves in the high road to La Palud, and likely to be soon indemnified by dinner and rest, for the joltings of the day; but our driver, instead of taking the proper direction, lost himself in a series of inextricable cross roads, which terminated in a quagmire. In this slough of despond the unfortunate patache, from which we had descended, might have stuck for ever, but for the assistance of two shepherds, as wild in their attire, and as civil, as Don Quixote's friendly goatherds. By dint of their exertions and those of the floundering and groaning horse, the vehicle, which was too deeply imbedded in the muddy ruts to dread an overturn, was dragged out by main force; the driver sometimes wringing his hands in King Cambysses' vein, and sometimes strenuously applying his shoulder to the wheel. A franc or two dismissed our bare-legged friends grinning to their very earrings, and we pursued our road without further interruption, quite satisfied with this specimen of the loamy fatness of the soil. From the experience of this day, I certainly should recommend no one to make the detour to Grignan in a wheeled carriage of any sort. An active person might accomplish on foot, before breakfast, the whole distance from Montelimart to Grignan, and might reach St. Paul de Trois Châteaux, or perhaps La Palud, by night; but even lady travellers would find less fatigue in hiring saddle-horses and mules from Montelimart, than in being bumped at the rate of two miles and a half per hour, over roads which frequently seem a jumble of unhewn paving-stones. We afterwards understood that there was a direct road from Grignan to Orange, which would have saved us some distance, and could not have been worse than that which we travelled this evening. At La Palud we found the servants and voiture established in the second inn, the name of which I forget. The accommodations, however, were decent and comfortable, and the charges moderate: and, on the whole, the appearance of this inn was nearly, or quite as good as that of the Hôtel d'Angouleme. The people of the latter house, to which the servants were originally directed, concluding that they had positive orders to await us there, persisted in demanding a price for every thing which more than doubled any charge yet attempted; an instance of pertinacious rascality which it is not amiss to mention, and which would have diverted us by its very absurdity, had we not been too tired to find amusement in any thing but supper and beds. In the course of this day and the next, we heard, for the first time, the Provençal patois, which seems a bad compound of French, Spanish, and Italian, with an original gibberish of their own. As far, indeed, as a slight and partial observation enables me to judge, I have been much struck by a similarity which the inhabitants of the Mediterranean coast bear to each other in language and character, a similarity so great, as to lead one to suppose them descended from the same original stock. The same savage originality of manner, (accompanied frequently by much good-humour and civility), the same extravagance of gesture, which seems the overflow of bodily vigour and animal spirits, the same red cap, and lastly, the same villainous compound of languages, mixed up in discordant cadences and terminations, appear to distinguish the inhabitants of Provence, Languedoc, Naples, and Genoa, and last and noblest of all, the Catalans. May 11.--To Orange eighteen miles, through the same rich and extensive plain, from which the barrier of hills that accompanied us before, receded to a considerable distance; but which is still interrupted and broken occasionally by rocks of the wildest and most abrupt shape possible, with the addition in general of a frowning castle in ruins. The little towns of Montdragon[23] and Mornas, which we passed this morning, are each situated under heights of this description. The castle of the former, of which a plate is given in Mr. Cooke's work, I think even superior to that of Caerphilly, in South Wales, in the "awsome eyriness," as a Scotsman would express it, with which its detached masses are grouped. The castle of Mornas is not so remarkable, but the rocks on which it stands are very striking; for if they have any inclination out of the perpendicular, it is rather towards than from the road. It is indeed impossible, when you stand under the shade of this lofty barrier, and look up to the clouds drifting over it, to fancy that it is not in the act of toppling down upon your head. We had not as yet emerged from the land of castles, for, as in yesterday's route, almost every little town possessed some vestige of ancient fortification, a silent testimony to the peaceful virtues of "the good old days." The heat of the weather at this comparatively early season of the year, induced us to congratulate ourselves that we had not chosen a month, or even a fortnight later, for our excursion, particularly as the mulberry-trees, which in this thrifty country form almost the only shade, were beginning to lose their covering of leaves. Every where we met women and children carrying ladders, shaped exactly like those used by cocks and hens in roosting, or perched high in trees, stripping them for the food of the silk-worms. The natural gracefulness of the mulberry foliage is entirely destroyed by the unmerciful pruning and pollarding which it undergoes in this country, in order to concentrate it for gathering. Very little fruit, and that small and tasteless, is produced from these cabbage-cut trees; a circumstance which I mention to prevent disappointment, since, no doubt, many a gentle traveller may indulge, as I confess to have done, the luxurious hope of feasting on this fruit in perfection under every hedge-row in Provence. Another month would have rendered the heat of the country insufferable, and stript it of much of its beauty, by reducing to bunches of bare poles those trees which still continued to afford verdure and finish to the prospect. [Footnote 23: Vide Cooke's Views.] Within a few miles of Orange we crossed the river Aigues by a handsome stone bridge, commanding a magnificent view of Mont Ventou. This mountain seems the most conspicuous landmark in the part of France which we were traversing, continuing visible as it does for two or three days journey with very little alteration of outline. To judge from its situation on the map, it could not be less than twenty-five or thirty miles from the place where we stood, though from the deception caused by its enormous length and height, and not uncommon in mountain scenery, it appeared accessible in a walk of two or three hours. I well remember, as an instance illustrative of this deception, the surprise of a Berkshire servant at Capel Curig, when informed that he really could not take an evening's walk to the top of Snowdon after littering up his horses, and return to supper. The effect in question is increased, and rather to the detriment of picturesque beauty, by the less hazy atmosphere of southern countries; but I never recollect so strong an instance of it, as in the view of Mont Ventou of which I am speaking. I was struck also by its great similarity to drawings which I had seen of Ætna from the Catanian coast, as well its outline, as the manner in which it rises from a cluster of satellite hills into the borders of the snowy region. Several scattered snow-ridges were visible near its top, contrasting curiously with the effect of the sun's rays reflected from its sides, which, instead of Campbell's picturesque "cliffs of shadowy tint" appeared a red-hot stony mass, and might be fancied by a slight effort of imagination, into Ætna covered with an eruption of burning cinders. The approach to the celebrated arch of Orange, commemorating Marius's victory over the Cimbri, is marked by an avenue of Lombardy poplars which line the high road. The classical and sombre stone pine, which gives so striking an effect to the tomb of the Scipios (as it is styled) near Tarragona, would have been more in character as an accompaniment to this proud monument also; but since the days of [24] Alpheus and his red silk stockings, the taste for _quelque chôse de gentil_ has constantly poisoned those classical associations of which the French are so fond. The grave Patavinian is still designated by the tom-tit appellation of Tite Live; and the majestic arch, whose history would have been so well illustrated by his lost annals, is tricked out with a poplar avenue, like a summer-house on Clapham-common. [Footnote 24: See the Spectator.] The townsmen of Orange, however, deserve credit for the substantial style in which they have repaired one end of it, to prevent farther dilapidation, and for the manner in which the road is diverted from it on both sides in a handsome sweep, leaving a green space in the middle, in which the arch stands. We returned to it immediately after breakfast, and our second impressions were fully equal to the first. As[25] a work of art, it is certainly worthy of one of the proudest places in the Campo Vaccino, though of course its effect is more striking in the neighbourhood[26] of the victory which it commemorates. The bas relief on the side facing Orange, would not be unworthy of a place between the well-known statues of Dacian captives, which ornament the arch of Constantine. Different as were their respective æras, the stern thoughtful dignity of the barbarian chiefs, and the spirit which animates "The fiery mass Of living valour, rolling on the foe," as represented in the battle of Marius, appear to have been conceived by the same powerful mind, and embodied by the same master hand. The same chastened energy and unaffected greatness of design which characterizes the poetry of Milton, the painting of Michael Angelo, and the music of Handel, is conspicuous in both. The bas relief which I have mentioned forms the principal ornament of the arch; but the trophies, the rostra, &c. which appear in other parts, are in a style of simple and soldier-like grandeur corresponding with its character and the achievement which it commemorates. I do not pretend to consider this monument as comparable on the whole to the arch of Constantine; but still it is of a very different school of art from that which produced the arch of Severus. On the bas relief representing Marius's victory, one might fancy the most high born and athletic of Achilles's Myrmidons in the full "tug of war;" whereas the swarms of crawling pigmies which burlesque the triumph of Severus might be supposed the original Myrmidon rabble, just hatched, as the fable reports, from their native ant-hills, and basking in the sun like so many tadpoles. [Footnote 25: Vide Cooke's Views.] [Footnote 26: Marius's victory is said to have been gained near Aix (Aquæ Seætiæ).] The Roman colony of Orange, to judge from the relative positions of the arch and circus, must have been very considerable, and have occupied a far larger space than the present town. The arch stands detached from its entrance, as I mentioned, on the Lyons' side, and the circus at the extreme end, in the direction of Avignon; yet the former we may suppose to have joined on to the ancient town, and the latter to have stood in the same central position which the Colosseum occupied in Rome. Of the circus nothing now remains but the chord of the semicircle, or, to express it more familiarly, the straight line of the D figure, in which it was built. As far as I could guess, from pacing the length of this enormous wall, encumbered and buttressed as it was by dirty shops, it is in length nearly or quite a hundred yards, and of a height proportionate. The point of view from which it appears to the most advantage, is on the road to Avignon, about two or three furlongs out of the town. When viewed in this direction, it stands with a commanding air of a grim old Roman ghost among a group of men of the present day; forming, by its blackness and colossal scale of proportions, a striking contrast to every thing around it, and overtopping houses, church-tower, and every thing near, excepting a circular hill at the foot of which it stands. The latter is marked as the position of the ancient Roman citadel by the remains of tower and wall, half imbedded in turf, which surround it: and one veteran bastion still stands firm and unbroken, in a position facing the Circus, its companion through the silent and ruinous lapse of so many centuries. Without the affectation of decrying well-known and celebrated monuments of antiquity, or the wish to put any thing really in comparison with the ruins of ancient Rome, I must still own, that the unexpected view which I caught of the citadel and Circus from this position, realized more strongly to my mind the august conceptions so well expressed in Childe Harold, than any view in Rome itself, hardly excepting the Colosseum. O'er each mouldering tower Dim with the mist of years, grey flits the shade of power. The stanza concluding with these lines involuntarily occurs to the mind, while viewing Orange in the direction of which I now speak; and the lofty visions of the noble author, which are, perhaps, too over-wrought and ideal to harmonize with the sober contemplations of the closet, seem in this spot to assume "a local habitation and a name." Undoubtedly they ought to do so more particularly at Rome, and would so in every instance, but that much of the effect of the "Eternal City" is lost from the deserved eminence in which we know it to stand, and the consequent familiarity which we have acquired with it through the works of Piranesi and innumerable other artists. Thus its very celebrity lessens its effect, as the commendations bestowed on a celebrated beauty frequently occasion disappointment. The _on admire ici_ of the well-bound Itineraire, the elaborate descriptions of Vasi, and the _Ecco Signore_ of your obliging cicerone, produce the same effect upon the mind, which the mistaken attentions of Koah, the South Sea priest, did on the stomach of Captain Cook. The meat was good, but honest Koah spoiled its relish by proffering it ready chewed; and in the same manner, the effect of what is really most admirable in nature and art is weakened by the impertinent obtrusion of ready-made ecstasies. It is no reflection on human perverseness to say, that every one has his own way of admiring, and loves to feel and observe for himself; as well as to chew with his own teeth. For my own part, I never could appreciate the stupendous beauties of Rome as I wished, until I managed to abstract myself from the notion that I was come to admire as thousands had done before, and from the recollection of the unclassical comforts of the excellent inn in the Piazza di Spagna. An English letter, or newspaper, is an excellent preparative for this purpose; and when once absorbed in the train of thought which it creates, the sudden transition to the mighty scenes before you, produces by contrast the effect which it ought to do. I have been led into these observations, to account for the reason why Orange struck me so much; a place of which I had heard and read little or nothing. No attentive and intelligent cicerone anticipated our reflections in this place; nor did the creature-comforts of a good inn debase our Roman reveries, though we could well have pardoned their so doing. Madame Ran, of the Croix Blanche, was as mean and dirty as the hole in which she lived; and looked as malevolent as Canidia, Erichtho, or any other classical witch; and as to the inhabitants of Orange, though the revolutionary anecdotes which we have heard of them at Grignan might create some prejudice to their disadvantage, I think, in truth, that I never beheld a more squalid, uncivilized, ferocious-looking people. A grin of savage curiosity, or a cannibal scowl, seems almost universally to disfigure features which are none of the best or cleanest; and their whole appearance is as direct a contrast as can well be imagined, to the hale, honest Norman, or le franc Picard, as he is proverbially styled. We turned our backs upon them with pleasure, after casting back one lingering look at the noble old Circus; and soon found ourselves in the centre of the extensive plain in which Avignon stands. The forwardness of the climate, and the skilful system of irrigation pursued here, afforded us, at this early time of the year, the spectacle of hay-making in many places. An English farmer might be shocked by the rudeness of the method here pursued, the hay being mostly carried in sail-cloth sheets, and turned with large wooden forks. With respect to the former practice, I have nothing to say; but, having attentively observed their method of using these forks, I am confident that they are better adapted to the purpose of turning the hay than our heavy prongs of ash and iron. They are at once lighter in hand, and, from the length of their teeth, they take up a larger portion of hay at once; and must therefore be well calculated for making the most of the fine weather, which, in our climate, cannot always be calculated upon, and occasions a scarcity of working hands. At three or four miles from Avignon, and before any other part of the town becomes visible,[27] the legate's palace appears conspicuously Rising with its tiara of proud towers At airy distance, with majestic motion; and a more splendid Gothic building, both as to outline and dimensions, cannot be imagined. On a nearer approach, a long and wide reach of the Rhone, winding round the base of this noble pile, and reflecting its figure in a deep mirror, adds greatly to its effect. In Mr. Cooke's work, the palace is represented nearly in this direction, from a point somewhat diverging to the right of the road, so as to introduce a broken Gothic bridge, and a part of the Roche Don, or Roche Notre Dame (for I believe it bears both names). The rest of the town of Avignon, placed as it is on a low level, affords no striking coup d'oeil, from the direction in which we approached it: the ancient walls, however, which inclose its whole circumference, unbroken and perfect, and beautifully crenated in every part, are a very remarkable feature. I know but of one other instance of this continuity of Gothic wall, which occurs at Valencia; but the fortifications of the Spanish town, though they far exceed those of Avignon in dimensions and strength, fall as short of them in beauty. We had a full opportunity of examining the merits of the latter, as the police had unaccountably thought fit to shut up all the entrances to the town but one or two; which obliged us, on arriving at the foot of the walls, to add two miles more to our day's journey before we could reach their interior. We found the Hôtel de l'Europe, kept by the widow Pierron, a superior inn in every respect, both in the comfort and liberality of the establishment, and the cleanliness of the servants. [Footnote 27: Vide Cooke's Views.] CHAP. VII. AVIGNON--MURDER OF BRUNE--HOSPITAL DES FOUS--MISSION OF 1819. ON the opposite side of the square in which our inn was situated, stands the Hôtel du Palais Royal, the scene of Brune's assassination. The account which M. Joüy gives in the Hermite en Provence, of this horrible transaction, corresponds as nearly as possible with the particulars which we heard upon the spot. Being summoned on the restoration of Louis to answer the charge of treason, and having stopped with his escort at Avignon for the purpose of changing horses and refreshing himself, the marshal was recognized by the populace as one of the supposed murderers of the Princess de Lamballe. A ferocious mob soon assembled at the door of the hôtel, broke in by force, and after deliberately shooting him, dragged the body to the adjoining bridge, and with every mark of contumely threw it into the Rhone. Such is the brief outline of the murder of a defenceless man, on a charge which, whether true or not, should have rested between God and his conscience. Joüy may indeed be pardoned for commenting and enlarging on this story, though the simple facts address themselves more strongly to the mind, than when dressed up with stage effect, and must be better adapted to produce the impression probably desired by that author. In the detestable ruffians who disgraced the good cause of loyalty on this occasion, we recognize the same black and fiery blood which flowed in the veins of the Marseillois assassins of 1793, and of the fanatics of Nismes: and whose ebullitions render them equally hateful as friends or enemies. There are many strange historical discoveries which would surprise me more than to learn that the Moorish blood remained in this part of France unextirpated by the victories of Charles Martel;[28] for to a person who knows them only by report and casual observation, the _tout ensemble_ of its inhabitants seems to differ totally from that of the Gascon and the Basque; names which, like the name of Norman, convey to the mind an image of frankness and gallantry. [Footnote 28: "Cette memorable bataille, sur laquelle nous n'avons aucun détail, nous sauva du joug des Arabes, et fut le terme de leur grandeur. Depuis ce revers, ils tenterent encore de pénétrer dans la France; ils s'emparerent même d'Avignon; mais Charles Martel les défit de nouveau, réprit cette ville, leur enleva Narbonne, et leur ota pour jamais l'espérance dont ils s'étaient flattés si longtemps."--_Florian's Précis Historique sur les Maures._] On the morning after our arrival, we ascended first of all the Roche Don, a hill enclosed within the walls of the town, and backing the ruined palace of the legate; being desirous, as in Lyons, to begin our survey from a point which might serve as a general key to the whole, and instruct us in the bearings of different objects. From this elevated spot, situated at the north-western extremity of the city, we looked to the east, north, and south, over a plain as rich in verdure and cultivation as the finest parts of Lombardy; to which the stately towers of the palace, and the clustering spires and battlemented walls of Avignon form a fine foreground. The distant hills, at the foot of which Vaucluse is situated, form the eastern boundary of this plain; and are succeeded and overtopped to the northward by a chain of the Dauphiné Alps, among which the long sweeping mass of Mont Ventou predominates. From the latter quarter the Rhone is traced winding up in a wide and rapid current, till it reaches the highly cultivated islands at the foot of Mont Don, and pursues its course with increased grandeur towards the southward. The neighbourhood of its junction with the Durance is marked in this quarter by a barrier of mountains of less height than those above-mentioned, but more abrupt and wild in their forms, at whose foot appear casual glimpses of the two rivers, winding like narrow silver threads into the horizon. "Vous avez passé ce diantre de Rhone," says Madame de Sevigné, "si fier, si orgueilleux, si turbulent; il faut le marier avec la Durance quand elle est en furie; ah le bon ménage!" The good people of Lyons have, however, settled this point otherwise by their inscriptions and statues in the Hôtel de Ville, which certify this river-god as already married to the Saone: the Durance, therefore, can hold no higher rank than that of his termagant mistress, while the gentle, even, beneficent character of her rival, and the priority of her claims, suit much better with the title of wife. If it be permitted me to quote Mad. de Sevigné once more, I should remark, that the broken Gothic bridge beneath our feet, which forms so picturesque an object in every point of view, is the same against the piers of which Mad. de Grignan was nearly lost.[29] It formerly connected the Roche Don with the heights on the western side of the Rhone, up which the road to Nismes winds near Fort Villeneuve; and is well worthy of a nearer survey as an architectural relic. The few arches which remain have the same bold span and elegant lightness of design so remarkable in the celebrated Pont y Prydd in South Wales; and the piers, which appear slight at a distance, are nevertheless solid and well adapted to the nature of the Rhone, whose current they cut like the sharp bow of a canoe. Its remarkable narrowness, which hardly allows two horses to pass abreast, and the ancient guard-house in the centre, secured by gates on both sides, carry the mind strongly back to those days of distrust and violence, which have by some been called "the good old times:"-- "Ego me nunc denique natum Gratulor." [Footnote 29: As late as 1688, Louis XIV. seized on the territory of Avignon in consequence of disagreements with Innocent XI., and the Count de Grignan held the city as his viceroy for two subsequent years. Mad. de Sevigné, in her letters written at this period of time, congratulates her daughter (whose boat was nearly overset against the piers of this identical bridge), on the dignity of the situation conferred on the count, and the more solid advantages which might accrue from it. "Vous prenez, ma chere fille, (says she) une fort honnete resolution d'aller à votre terre d'Avignon, voir des gens qui vous donnent de si bon coeur ce qu'ils donnoient au vicelegat."--June, 1689. "Quelle difference de la vie que vous faites à Avignon, toute à la grande, toute brillante, toute dissipée, avec celle que nous faisons ici!"--_Les Rochers_. June, 1689. "Toutes vos descriptions nous ont divertis au dernier point; nous sommes charmés, comme vous, de la douceur de l'air, de la noble antiquité des eglises honorées comme vous dites, de la presence et de la residence de tant de Papes, &c. &c."--June 26, 1689.] At the period when the territory of Avignon was styled by the kings of France the "derriere du Pape," from the convenient posture in which it lay for their correction, one may fancy the same scenes to have taken place on a larger scale, which are described as occurring at the bridge of Kennaquhair, the same struggle between secular and monastic authority, the same sullen important bridgeward, and the same forcible arguments employed by wandering troops of jackmen to effect a passage. In Mr. Cooke's first view of the legate's palace, this bridge appears projecting from the part of the Roche Don where we stood, a spot marked with two round buildings, like small Martello towers. The window marked by two birds flying directly over it, and second from the highest in the same tower, has acquired a bloody notoriety. From this giddy height, as we were informed by an inhabitant whom we met, the half-murdered victims of revolutionary massacre were thrown, to put an end to their sufferings: and their remains heaped up for a time in the square building which stands below, originally erected for the purpose of an ice-house. Having familiarized ourselves with the leading features of Avignon and its vicinity, as viewed from this commanding point, we descended into the town to take a more particular survey. Rhetor comes Heliodorus, Græcorum longè doctissimus. To translate Horace freely, our companion was a rhetorician, or talker by profession, and the most learned of his class in extraordinary legends and fabrications; in other respects an useful civil fellow, with an Irish brogue, which his service in the French army had not been able to eradicate, or even weaken, and the established cicerone of the place. To account satisfactorily for his wooden leg and French uniform, he anticipated our inquiries by informing us, that he had been crippled by a shipwreck on the French coast, and through the recommendation of his friends the _Duchess_ of Westmoreland and _Countess_ of Devonshire, patronized by Louis, "who allowed him this uniform coat to wear, and two _males_ a-day." In England, one would not have borne the sight of such a lying varlet another instant, but I must confess that the mere sound of our own language in a foreign town, disarmed our indignation, and we bore with the fellow, whom we found not unamusing, and from his local knowledge, serviceable. A very small degree of merit indeed suffices to open one's heart towards a fellow-countryman in a strange land; a truth no doubt known and acted on by knights of industry, matrimonial speculators, and "Broken dandies lately on their travels." The legate's palace is now divided into barracks and a prison, and the nakedness of its appearance upon a nearer view make its lofty proportions more striking. We were expressing to each other our wonder at its size, when our guide interrupted us with an original observation of his own:--"The reason of its size, sir, is quite _clare_. The pope, you see, always went about with such a _hape_ of monks--and of nuns--and of all them kind of people, that the big number of rooms which you see could hardly hold them any how." After all, if the annals of former times have been truly written, the Milesian's account of this merry menage might be nearer the truth than he knew or suspected. The Papal Chapel exhibits now but few remains of its former probable grandeur, its inside having been defaced with the most persevering animosity during the Revolution, and presenting little more than a damp bare shell, filled with the broken remains of monumental figures. Headless popes and crippled cardinals lie together in heaps, mingled in a manner which will render it impossible to restore to each his proper allotment of limbs, when the projected repairs of the chapel are put in execution. One tomb, broken up and shattered to pieces more than the rest, was pointed out by the old woman as the sepulchre of La belle Laure, an honour which, for aught I know, may be claimed by a tomb in every church of Avignon. An assertion apparently still more apocryphal, however, is that one of the small side chapels was built by Constantine. The interior of Avignon affords a much more agreeable promenade than that of Lyons, from the superior cleanliness of its inhabitants, and the moderate height of the houses. These circumstances tend to disperse the combinations of ill smell, and purify the thick, vapid, flagging air which is felt so perceptibly at Lyons. It may, perhaps, be beneath the dignity of a _printed book_ to enumerate such circumstances as these, but they occupy in fact a high place in the scale of human comfort; and, joined to the cheapness of the necessaries of life, (which we inferred from the price of two or three articles of consumption,) must have their weight in rendering Avignon a desirable place of banishment. Banishment, I say; for I have no better name by which to express a prolonged residence abroad, especially in cases where the mind has lost its power of deriving amusement from trifles. With the exception of its fine walls, its Gothic bridge, and the legate's palace, Avignon possesses in itself no remarkable architectural feature, or fine combination of buildings. Its churches are numerous; but no one remarkable above the rest, as far at least as external appearance is concerned; and we had not time for a very minute internal survey. The Hôpital des Fous, however, is an establishment well calculated to gratify the laudable curiosity of the humane; and to judge from all we witnessed, may perhaps exhibit points of internal regulation worthy the attention of professional men. Nothing indeed can exceed the quiet, orderly behaviour of the patients there confined, whom we found walking about at perfect liberty in a square court planted with trees. Many of them wore a certain air of content and satisfaction which could not be mistaken, and all seemed much gratified by the notice of the mild sensible ecclesiastic who accompanied us, and who presides over the establishment. No coercion, as we understood from him, is used, save restriction from walking with their fellow patients, and the restraint of handcuffs, when rendered necessary in cases of violent conduct. I particularly observed also, that he had never any occasion to exert that command of the eye, on which so much stress is laid as a means of intimidation, but passed all their little follies off with a smile, in which we were frequently inclined to join. One poor patient accosted us with high titles of nobility, dwelling on the peculiar pleasure he experienced from our visit; another, an old man of a very venerable appearance, called our attention to a dirty stone which he held in his hand, affirming it to be a piece of Henri Quatre's identical foot: but none were troublesome or obtrusive, and most appeared to be deriving as much enjoyment from their own little vagaries as their melancholy state would admit of.[30] Their apartments, built round the square, are neat and airy, each furnished with a bed, dressing table, and a few plain utensils. In one large room are a row of hot and cold baths, which are frequently and regularly used; and nothing, the good priest said, has been found to produce so desirable an effect on the mind and body as this custom. The rank of the patients is various; the poorer sort are supported by voluntary contributions; and many persons in the higher ranks are also placed here at their own expense, or that of their friends. Among others, there is a general who became deranged, as we were assured, on hearing of the abdication of his patron Napoleon; the most unequivocal instance of misplaced fidelity, which I have ever heard. How this poor man contrives to agree with the partizan of Henry IV., I am at a loss to make out: and he was not then visible to answer for himself. At the time of the Revolution, the estates belonging to the hospital were confiscated; and the establishment itself would have been abolished, had not one of the members of the council at Avignon observed, half in jest, that they might possibly be one day glad themselves of such a retreat. It is now, as I mentioned, maintained by private donations, and by the salaries paid for the accommodation of the richer patients. The only objects of taste belonging to the institution are a fine altar-piece attributed to Murillo, and an ivory crucifix carved by Jean Guillermin, in 1659. The latter is not above two feet in length; but the manner in which every muscle and vein indicate suffering, and the mingled expression of pain and resignation in the countenance, place it on the footing of a statue; and I could hardly have supposed that a small piece of ivory-carving could do such justice to a sacred subject. The worthy priest dwelt, with great exultation, on the precautions he had taken to secure this favourite relic from revolutionary pillage, slightly alluding to the circumstance of having been forced to fly for his life to Italy, as a matter of minor importance to himself. [Footnote 30: It is to be hoped that Adam Smith has taken a correct view of the subject of madness in his Moral Sentiments. "Of all the calamities," says he, "to which the condition of mortality exposes mankind, the loss of reason _appears_ by far the most dreadful; and we behold that last stage of human wretchedness with deeper commisseration than any other. But the poor wretch who is in it, laughs and sings, perhaps, and is altogether insensible of his own misery. The anguish therefore which humanity feels at the sight of such an object, cannot be the reflection of any sentiment of the sufferer. The compassion of the spectator must arise altogether from the consideration of what he would himself feel if he were reduced to the same situation, and, what perhaps is impossible, were at the same time able to regard it with his present reason and judgment.] The admirers of show houses, may find some gratification in visiting the hotel of M. De Leutre, the banker; which was purchased of M. Villeneuve, an emigré, and contains, besides the usual etceteras of carving and gilding, orange-trees, and gold fish, a curious collection of prints representing Chinese battles, and supposed to be the only perfect duplicate of that in the royal collection. A sight more interesting is presented in the hospital of invalid soldiers, established in the place; 1500 of whom are maintained as in-pensioners, apparently in great comfort. "On est bien ici," said a blind veteran, who, hearing the voices of strangers, invited us to walk in; and indeed most of those whom we saw strolling in the garden, or sitting under the shade of the trees, seemed very cheerful, though some of them, and those very young men, were dreadfully mutilated, and the loss of both legs very common. The two buildings which accommodate them were formerly the Convent des Celestins, and that of the Dames de St. Louis. Two other handsome convents have been converted to uses less beneficent, one being now a gunpowder manufactory, and the other a cannon foundery. In the evening we walked across the long wooden bridge adjoining our hotel,[31] towards the western bank of the Rhone; and the expectations which we had formed of the view from this quarter, were not disappointed. The Roche Don terminates more abruptly on the side of the river than in any other part, and in a manner which sets off strikingly the commanding height of the legate's palace. With this princely pile of building, the broken Gothic bridge and its guard-house, the ancient palace of the archbishop, and a portion of the battlemented walls of Avignon, combine to form a striking architectural group, whose unity of character is hardly at all broken by meaner objects; and the whole is well backed by Mont Ventou and the Dauphiné Alps. From this spot we again returned to Roche Don, a station to which every visitor of Avignon may return twice or thrice in the day with undiminished pleasure. In our way we fell in with a procession of children, the eldest of whom could not be more than seven years of age, in pairs, and with lighted candles in their hands, escorting a cross of lath and a very indifferent daub, which represented some female saint, and screaming in chorus with all their might. Those who had no candles, ran about with little dishes, vociferously begging money to buy some; and in spite of the respect with which one would wish to consider whatever fellow Christians choose to denominate, in pure earnest, a religious ceremony, it was impossible not to be reminded, by the petitions of these sucking Catholics, of Guy Fawkes's little votaries on the fifth of November. We thought involuntarily of a boy who had followed us that very morning into the church of St. Didier, tossing a ball in his hand, and after crossing himself with great gravity, immediately began his game again. Whether the interests of religion gain or suffer most by the familiarity with the ordinary business of life which it assumes in Catholic countries, is a point which I cannot presume to determine. It is true, that it may frequently occasion such ridiculous scenes as those which I have mentioned; and our habits of mind, as Protestants, may lead us to conceive that such familiarity may tend to generate levity and indifference. On the other hand, however, amidst all the mummery which may mix itself up with the occasional ceremonies of the Catholic service, there is much worthy of commendation in the more common ordinances, to which alone a sensible Catholic must look for religious improvement. I particularly allude to the shortness and frequent recurrence of the mass (such as it is), and the constant access afforded to Catholic churches, in which some service or other appears to be carried on during great part of the day. These regulations are well adapted to take advantage of those serious trains of thought which often arise most forcibly at accidental times, and from unpremeditated causes. The attention is thus excited without being fatigued, and the privacy of the closet is combined with that solemnity which attaches itself to the house of God. It may be said, indeed, that to consult the caprices and associations of the human mind, is to lower the dignity of religion; but surely a good end must justify any means which are not in themselves culpable or ridiculous. The mechanic, for instance, in returning from his daily labour, enters an open church from accident or curiosity, crosses himself from habit, and is led on by the momentary feeling of reverence which that act must generally awaken, to employ five minutes in his devotions, a well spent portion of time, which probably would not otherwise have been rescued from the business of the day, but which may influence his conduct during the rest of it. [Footnote 31: Vide Cooke's Views.] On ascending the Mont Don, we found it the scene of a graver ceremony than the infantine gambols which we had just witnessed. In the centre of the terrace facing the river, a new and highly gilt crucifix of colossal size has been erected at the expense of the Mission, round which a number of monks and inhabitants were collected on their knees, the still evening increasing the effect of a solemn mass which they were singing, and in which we heard the name of St. Paulus several times repeated. Several nuns, belonging to an establishment lately revived, knelt on the steps of the cross, enveloped in their black hoods; and the prisoners at the palace window united their deep tones to the chant, pausing every now and then to solicit the charity of passers by. Scattered at different distances from the cross, eight or ten separate groups of persons were kneeling farther off, in attitudes of the deepest devotional abstraction, though surrounded on all sides by sauntering soldiers, children playing, and groups of loungers laughing or whispering. The different distances at which they knelt were regulated, as we were told, by the degrees of penance imposed upon them, and the place which their respective consciences allowed them to assume. Some, in the true spirit of the poor Publican, were kneeling at a considerable distance, just within view of the cross, to which they hardly lifted their eyes; others, whose penance was originally lighter, or its term abridged by frequent visits to this place, had approached the cross more nearly, and with greater signs of satisfaction. I must confess, that we observed these poor penitents with an interest and attention which the other parts of the ceremony had failed to excite. The manifestation of a deep and genuine religious feeling is respectable in Catholic, Turk, or Bramin, and seldom or never to be mistaken; and though attended by no circumstances of external pomp, must impress upon serious beholders of every creed a reverence which trappings and mummery fail to excite. It should seem indeed that Providence, wishing gently to humble the pride of men, delights in producing by the simplest means those physical and moral effects, which they waste toil and expense in bringing about. The splendid procession, for instance, which takes place on the day of Corpus Christi at Rome, with all its assemblage of monks, horse and foot guards, cardinals, choristers, and banners, would dwindle before the eye of reason into "shreds and patches, were it not for the figure of the truly venerable man who now fills the papal chair, kneeling with the same humility and abstraction from the busy scene around him, which marked the deportment of the penitents just mentioned. Time, which decides all questions when they have ceased to be any longer interesting, will probably show whether the celebrated Mission, which has excited such a sensation in many parts of France, be a mere political manoeuvre to strengthen the hands of government by calling in the aid of superstition, or (which is at least as probable) a sincere and well-meant attempt to awaken the forgotten spirit of religion. In the mean while, it is a desirable thing to have turned the attention of the French to a subject which, by all accounts, is become nearly obsolete among the higher orders of the nation. Even with a view to the ascendancy which a more simple and purified religion may ultimately obtain under an improved and free constitution, it is better that a religious feeling of some sort should exist. The worst and most twisted crabstock, if alive, possesses an active principle, which allows of successful grafting; not so with a dead branch. I shall annex a statement of the proceedings of the Mission at Avignon, during the Lent of 1819, copied and abridged from a short pamphlet, written by a M. Fransoy, a lawyer of that city; which being published by a layman on the spot where the events in question recently took place, possesses the most probable claim to accuracy and impartiality. The writer begins by describing the demoralization and ignorance occasioned by the Revolution, "which had completely realised," he observes, "in the kingdom of the lilies all the misfortunes foretold by the prophet Jeremiah. The people of Avignon, who had remained without instruction during this period of horror and barbarism, were soon infected with that gross ignorance which assimilates men to brutes: and in a short time this field of the Lord, once so fertile, only produced brambles and thorns; the evil plants choked the good, and the tares every where devoured the corn. Scarcely, however, was the Catholic worship restored in France by the concordat, before religion shed among us some rays of its former light. Dazzled by the majesty of religious ceremonies, the people were jealous to emerge from their revolutionary blindness. The dearth of ministers was the cause that instruction only distilled drop by drop upon this people famishing with want." The scanty manner in which this dearth had been occasionally supplied for some time, excited a longing to participate in the instructions of the new Mission, which had already visited Arles, Valence, and Tarascon, under the sanction of the state; and whose claims to religious authority the writer defends by precedents unnecessary to enumerate here. On the first Sunday in Lent, 1819, its proceedings were commenced at Avignon, by a solemn procession, which made the circuit of the principal streets of the town, singing penitential psalms, and halted on the hill of Notre Dame; where an inaugural sermon was delivered on a spot called Calvary, and supposed to represent that sacred place. The multitude, assembled by curiosity or a better feeling, was so great, that two of the missionaries found it expedient to address them at the same time from different stations. One of these was M. Guyon, the director of the Mission; of whose eloquence and animation, as a preacher, the author speaks highly. On the succeeding day, the nine ecclesiastics composing the Mission attached themselves respectively to the different churches of the town, and called in the assistance of the neighbouring clergy, as confessors to those persons whom their discourses might affect most strongly. This step was rendered the more necessary, inasmuch as the common people of the vicinity understand French merely as the Welsh do English, and converse only in their native Provençal with any facility. If we may believe their zealous eulogist, the effects which the missionaries had anticipated immediately followed, and their utmost exertions, as well as those of their new associates, were taxed to satisfy the spiritual wants of the populace. "The Avignonese," says the narrative, "hungered so after the word of God, that the gates of the churches were besieged from three hours before daybreak, by those who flocked to be present at the morning exhortation. The inhabitants of the country and the neighbouring communes walked during a part of the night, in order to secure seats; each anxiously sought to place his chair many hours beforehand, and caused it to be kept, in fear that another might deprive him of it; the churches were so full, that it was hardly possible to move in them. The eagerness to obtain room was so great, that indecorous and even scandalous scenes took place among the wives of the populace; they quarrelled for chairs and seats with a ferocity, _qui les mettoit souvent hors du cercle de la politesse civile et Chretienne_." (Perhaps, as a townsman, he is unwilling to be more particular). "More than twenty thousand individuals were assembled in the churches at every service; and a circumstance which proves how admirably each missionary and associate fulfilled his particular task is, that each parish gave the preference to the persons attached to it, and none allowed the superiority to its neighbouring quarter. Like mothers, who can see nothing more perfect than the children to whom themselves have given birth, each parishioner acknowledged no better men than the missionaries appointed to his own church. MM. Guyon, Menoult, and Bourgin, shone as much at St. Agricol, as MM. Ferrail and Levasseur at St. Pierre; and MM. Gerard and Rodet in the church of St. Didier, as much as MM. Fauvet and Poncelet in that of St. Symphorien." To the character of M. Levasseur[32] the writer bears honourable testimony, as a young man who had devoted time, talents, and a liberal private fortune, to the cause; and whose exertions on this occasion impaired a naturally delicate constitution. "From four in the morning to eight or nine at night, their time," he says, "was for many days occupied in public or private instruction, and in visiting the hospitals and prisons; and forty missionaries would have been necessary to have completely accomplished what these nine took cheerfully upon them." [Footnote 32: "Ce vertueux jeune homme paroit dejà consommé dans l'art Evangelique; ses instructions sont aussi sublimes qu'elles sont precises et pathetiques; il joint a ses grandes qualités un amour ardent pour les pauvres; il consomme annuellement les revenus d'un patrimoine majeur a de bonnes oeuvres dans les cours des Missions. Une foule de faits attestant ses liberalitês journalieres."--_Fransoy's Memoir_.] The effects of their preaching were manifested by the number of penitents who flocked to confession, which, during the second week of the mission, increased to such an extent as to render access difficult. The missionaries, unable to meet the wishes of all at once, gave an obvious preference, not to the more habitually devout, but to those classes of persons whose attendance was most unexpected. "Dissipated young coxcombs, disabled soldiers, dragoon officers with fierce mustaches, and worldly-wise men with formal wigs," says our author, "met with attention and encouragement, to the exclusion of those whose habits of piety deserved it better." The apparent injustice of this procedure he excuses by the plea, "that it was necessary to quit the regular fold in order to recover these lost sheep"--that "the stouter and better worth catching the fish were, the more anxious should they be to secure them in the net of the Prince of Apostles." When separated from the figurative bombast by which a Frenchman frequently obscures a sensible reason, this plea seems fair enough: provided that the motives of the missionaries were unmixed with spiritual vanity, and the pride of creating a strong sensation. It was no doubt most consonant to the purposes of a special mission like this, to accomplish that which was most difficult, and to make an impression, while the opportunity lasted, on a class of persons least accessible to the usual means of religious instruction. The example of such, if permanently reclaimed, would naturally be more striking than that of others, and influence public opinion more strongly, and this may furnish some excuse for a conduct which, in the ordinary course of things, would have been unjust and out of place. A large part of the tract is occupied by accounts of several solemn ceremonies which ensued, "for the purpose," says the author, "of striking the senses of the lower orders, who are not sufficiently affected by argument." These, as in the instance of the general communion, were rendered more imposing by the attendance of the civil and military authorities, and most persons of rank and wealth in the vicinity. Nor did they degenerate into mere processions and pompous forms, if the narrative is to be trusted. The missionaries appear on every occasion to have availed themselves of the excitation of the moment, in calling forth such feelings as must be approved by Christians of every country and persuasion, and which, among Frenchmen, may not be the less sincere for being expressed somewhat extravagantly. In the account of the Amende Honorable, a solemn act of profession of repentance, the following passage occurs:--"He (the missionary) drew an affecting picture of our unhappy country, oppressed by the burden of impiety and anarchy. He rapidly enumerated the series of crimes produced by license and want of faith. He implored the pardon of the most holy God in the name of all; and he proclaimed in a loud tone of voice, mutual forgiveness between enemies. All his questions were interrupted by the tears and sobs of his audience. 'Do you feel contrition and repentance,' said he, 'for your offences against God?'--'Yes.' 'Do you ask pardon sincerely?' The congregation again answered 'Yes.' 'Does every one of you individually pardon his neighbour all the injuries and offences which he may have received from him?'--'Yes.' 'Do you renounce all hatred, all enmity, all revenge?'--'Yes.' 'Do you promise God to live in future as becomes good Christians, in a perfect union and concord among yourselves?'--'Yes.' 'Do you promise fidelity, respect, and love, to the monarch who governs France, to the princes of his blood, and his representatives, and submission to the laws?'--'Yes.' The pen can but imperfectly describe the effect produced by these questions of the missionaries, and the answers of the congregation. No countenance but wore the expression of grief and repentance, no cheek but was wet with tears. The officiating priest who held the host in his hand, then pronounced in the name of the God of mercy, his holy pardon; the Magnificat, the Benedictus, and the Te Deum, were thundered forth; and the festival concluded with the benediction of the host. The innumerable crowd of individuals present, each holding a lighted taper, presented a magnificent spectacle." In describing the renewal of the baptismal vow, the next ceremony which took place, the author says,--"This act was held in so solemn a manner, that it will remain eternally engraved in the memory of the Avignonese. A magnificent altar was displayed to the sight of the faithful: a great number of priests in their sacerdotal habits encircled this altar, which a thousand tapers and a thousand sacred objects rendered more dazzling, and the holy sacrament was majestically exposed on it. After the performance of the anthems appropriate to this august ceremony, the missionary delivered a discourse, as forcible as it was sublime, on the object of the festival, which produced the greatest impression on his congregation. The eternal book of the gospel was then held up to the people. They were summoned to swear to the observance of the precepts of the Lord, contained in that book.--'We swear it,' answered the congregation. All their baptismal vows were in turn repeated, ratified, and confirmed by the congregation, with an effusion of tears which might have affected the hardest hearts. Their cries, their tears, and their sobs, were more eloquent than the addresses of the missionaries. The minister in his chair seemed to receive the promises and the vows of his parishioners, as Ezra formerly received those of the people of Israel." After the consecration of the Avignonese and their children to the service of the Virgin Mary and the general communion, which followed the ceremonies last described, the great cross, which now stands near the cathedral, was carried in procession to the place of its erection, on the 18th of April. So great a sensation had been excited by the expectation of this ceremony, and so anxious were all ranks to participate in it, that "the town," says the narrator, "swarmed like an ant-hill (fourmilloit) with strangers, the inns and private houses afforded no more room, and they who could find no quarters, covered the roads during the whole of the preceding night." The number of persons employed to assist in the procession amounted to twenty thousand, including the civil and military authorities, the monastic establishments, the neighbouring clergy, and a limited number of inhabitants from each parish. The cross, amounting in weight to three tons and a half, was supported on a frame constructed so as to admit one hundred and twenty bearers at once. These were relieved from station to station by detachments from all ranks and professions, selected from innumerable claimants, and amounting altogether to two thousand men. Having thus traversed thirty principal streets, the inhabitants of which vied with each other in decorating their windows with garlands and tapestry, the cross was borne to the terrace on the Roche Don, and erected in sight of more than eighty thousand individuals, who crowded the hill above, the extensive space of ground adjoining, and the windows and roofs of the houses. "The whole discourse pronounced on the occasion," says the narrator, "was as affecting as it was energetic. The orator at length closed it, by exhorting his audience not to forget the cross and their religion. 'Remember,' said he, 'that you are Christians and Frenchmen; fly to the foot of the cross as Christians in all your misfortunes, and it will be your consolation; as Frenchmen, you will there learn to be faithful to your country, and submissive to your king.--Et d'un ton plein de franchise il s'ecria, Vive la Croix, vive la Religion, vive la Roi--L'auditoire repeta les mêmes mots avec la même enthousiasme, et y ajouta, 'Vive les Missionaries.'" On the 19th, the following day, a solemn service was performed for the dead in the cemetry of St. Roch; and the Mission was closed by sermons, exhorting the people to perseverance in the religious vows which they had voluntarily made. Having thus performed their proposed duties, the missionaries prepared for a private departure. The affectionate zeal of the people, however, would not allow the execution of this plan; and numbers, consisting chiefly of the national guards, kept watch at the doors of their lodgings all night; and in the morning they were besieged by a crowd of persons desirous to take leave of them. At the special request of these visitors, among whom were some of the most distinguished inhabitants of Avignon, they performed an additional service at the foot of the newly-erected cross, and were escorted out of the town amidst the acclamations of the multitude, who persisted in drawing their carnages a certain distance. Many persons accompanied them on horseback and in coaches as far as Orange. To the practical effects of the Mission, the writer bears the following testimony.--"Prudence restricts us from naming individuals; and yet we can vouch, that many husbands, separated from their wives and living in concubinage, have put away their mistresses and re-established their legitimate wives in their houses. After the revolutionary horrors which have afflicted our city, there existed inveterate hatreds and animosities, founded on real offences. Well! union and concord have removed many of these intestine divisions, many deadly enmities have been laid at rest, many resentments have been stifled; great numbers of enemies have made the sacrifice of all their revengeful feelings. A citizen, round whose neck one of the revolutionary hangmen had actually fixed the noose for the fatal suspension, perceived his executioner in a state of penitence during the Mission, and approaching the communion table--'I congratulate you,' said he, 'on your reformation, and I pardon your offences against me, as I would God may grant me his pardon and peace.' The porters of the Rhone, who had been long at variance, have been many of them cordially reconciled: the invalids of the national guard have also mutually vowed a perpetual friendship." Whatever the interests and prejudices of M. Fransoy may be, it is improbable that he would have risked his professional and private reputation, by misrepresenting recent occurrences on the spot where they took place; and certainly his narrative places the Mission in a new point of view, both as to its conduct, its reception, and its effects. It is, indeed, natural enough that such wits as do not affect either much knowledge or much interest on religious subjects, should indulge in desultory sarcasms (and the Hermite en Provence prudently does no more) on such instances of spiritual Quixotism as may possibly have occurred. The absurd[33] choice of hymn tunes, the petulant zeal of one or two ecclesiastics, and the rueful countenances of some of the penitents, though they prove nothing as to the main question, present a ludicrous picture to the imagination, and have been made the most of by the fictitious correspondent of the Hermite. It is also natural enough that the violent Liberaux, who view with distrust every measure countenanced by government, should treat the Mission as a mere engine of policy; that the avaricious should consider the donatives received on its behalf as squandered away; and that a large class of persons, who are inveterately sceptical as to their neighbour's good motives, and childishly credulous as to his bad ones, should pronounce it a mere manoeuvre of bigotry. The little tract in question, however, addressed to the experience of eye-witnesses of all that it describes, tells a different story, though its effect may be weakened by the ludicrous _naïveté_ of its style. It describes the missionaries as addressing themselves particularly to those who stood most in need of their instructions, and who were most likely to treat them with derision; as availing themselves of the favourable reception which they experienced from the Avignonese, to preach the duties of forgiveness and reconciliation, both private and political, and to dwell on the practical and fundamental parts of Christianity. [Footnote 33: See the letter introduced in Joüy's Hermite en Provence.] Had they, indeed, in a public manner, denounced the vengeance of Heaven against the murderers of the unfortunate Brune, or pointedly rebuked the religious and political animosities subsisting in the south of France, they would have given a proof of their sincerity, but at the risk of much of that good which it was desirable to use their temporal influence in effecting. Instead, therefore, of giving unnecessary offence, they laboured to eradicate from the minds of their hearers the seeds of hatred and uncharitableness, and to divert their attention from their private bickerings and dissensions, to the common guilt of all in the sight of Heaven. The very object which, from all we learn respecting the state of feeling in Languedoc and Provence, appears particularly desirable, appears also to have been sought, not only by repeated and fervent exhortations, but by the exaction also of public vows and promises, so as to enlist the sense of shame as much as possible, in favour of the general forgiveness which the missionaries preached. Their exertions also, always supposing the tract in question to be entitled to credit, were rewarded by the conduct of their penitents, some of whom put away their vices, and others their mutual animosities. If this be fanaticism, then it were to be wished that such fanaticism should prevail widely in the south of France. "Out of the same mouth cannot proceed blessing and cursing;" and if the secret object of the Mission be to denounce the disaffected, or preach crusades against Protestants, it must be owned that their public labours at Avignon savour but little of such a purpose, as far as all appearances go. There is, it is true, something extravagant and bordering on stage effect, in many of the ceremonies performed, and expressions used, as recorded by the pen of M. Fransoy. An Englishman, however, is not always a fair judge of the best means of influencing the mind of a Frenchman, more particularly a south-eastern one. The Provençaux possess, both in appearance and in character, the strong characteristics of a people born under a burning sun; at once lively and ferocious, strongly led away by the excitement of the moment, and ardent in their partialities and antipathies: in short, the same romance of character is perceptible among them, which, in the dark ages, peopled the country with troubadours. The mass of such a people, particularly when profoundly ignorant, may not be accessible to cool argument; and the manner and style of oratory which would disgust a reasoning Scotch peasant, or English mechanic, may be exactly adapted to act on the temperament of an Avignonese. The surest test, therefore, of the character and design of the Mission, will be the practical effects which it produces on the conduct of its congregation, as well as the future application of those liberal donatives, which have excited so much unfavourable feeling against it. Time and fair play alone can justify the motives of those who planned and conducted it. The question in the mean time is, not whether they may or may not have occasionally gone to the lengths of a "zeal without knowledge," but whether or not their purpose has been to instruct and benefit their fellow-countrymen according to the best of their power and belief, and without reference to political party. CHAP. VIII. PONT DU GARD--NISMES--MONTPELIER--CETTE. MAY 13.--This day was fixed on for a journey to Vaucluse, the road to which is better adapted for the accommodation of two wheels than of four. M. Durand, our voiturier, attended accordingly with one of his portly mares harnessed to a sort of cabriolet, very much resembling an Irish noddy. Its high boarded front reaching to our chins, and the little fat person of Durand rather incommoded than accommodated on a cushion tied to the shaft, and much too near the mare on every account, formed a grotesque combination but little in character with what ought to have been a voyage of sentiment. The deficiency in pathos, however, was made up by the poor mare, who bewailed her absent companion with such incessant roarings, as to draw many cuts of the whip, and "sacra carognas," from the unrelenting Durand. We were struck, by-the-by, more than once during this day's route, by the Spanish and Italian terminations of the Provençal patois. A village which we passed, on an insulated height commanding the road, and crowned by ruined fortifications, is laid down as Château Neuf in the map, and called by the peasants Castel Novo. A man of whom we inquired the distance to Avignon, answered "Tres horas," using not only the words, but the method of computation which a Spaniard would employ. Whether we really reached our place of destination, or were stopped short by intense heat and execrable roads, were interested, or overturned, this deponent saith not, nor indeed is it necessary. One may be pardoned for omitting the mention of a subject already so fully described as Vaucluse, its rocks and fountain, its associations, and even its eatables; for some travellers have dwelt on the subject of its excellent bisque, or crayfish soup, and its eels, a solace, no doubt, to[34] that gentle degree of melancholy, which Fielding affirms to be a whet to the appetite. [Footnote 34: "And do not forget the toasted cheese." Vide _Matilda Pottingen_ in "The Rovers."] "And, says the anatomic art, The stomach's very near the heart;" as Peter Pindar also maintains. Some also, with an accuracy worthy Moubrays treatise on domestic fowls, have informed us that the hens near the fountain of Vaucluse are peculiarly prolific in fine eggs, and so on. For my own part, I may as well honestly confess that I am more partial to the memory of Petrarch as a philosopher, a patriot, and reviver of ancient learning, than as the Werter of Troubadours, though in the latter capacity he has stood unrivalled for five hundred years. I must own, also, that the hermitage whither he retired to stifle his rebellious passion for the wife of another, however melancholy and impressive the ideas may be which it would of itself excite, is poisoned, in my mind, by the pestilent frivolities with which the mawkish of all ages have defaced its sombre features, in violation of truth and sound feeling. What syllables of dolour the forgotten Della-Cruscan school may have yelled out on the subject, is not worth ascertaining, and probably recollected by few or none. The French, who with all their ingenuity, are not very apt at comprehending the madness of contemplative minds, have caricatured the shade of poor Petrarch most woefully, and[35] the Abbé Delille (peace to his ashes!) has teazed the innocent trees of Vaucluse with embarrassing questions, fitter for the mouths of Susanna's elders. Under such blighting influence, the stern rocks of Vaucluse are transformed into a sentimental tea-garden, the high-minded and melancholy Petrarch into a more ingenious Piercie Shafton, and the virtuous Laura, who probably never saw the place, into a starched Gloriana of the old school, paraded and gallanted round it with all due form. It is, perhaps, a judgment on Petrarch's adulterous Platonism, that it has laid him open to impertinences like these, which would torture his sensitive ghost almost as keenly as oblivion itself, and which very strongly remind one of Punch's intrusion at a tragedy. Such ideas cannot be engrafted on the [36]Nonwenwerder, or the [36]Pena de los Enamorados, spots on which a simple and obscure legend has thrown an interest which Vaucluse cannot really possess, though embellished by every thing which poetry can do for it. [Footnote 35: See the Quarterly Review, to which I am obliged for the Abbé's remark.] [Footnote 36: See Campbell's ballad of "The Brave Roland," in one of the numbers of the New Monthly Magazine; and Southey's tale of Manuel and Leila, in his early productions.] It were to be wished, that the shade of Petrarch could return to his former haunts, to frighten away frivolous visitors, and read a lesson to the thinking. Instead of rejoicing at the posthumous fame which his poetical talents have earned, he would probably dwell on the insufficiency of the highest mental endowments without conduct and self-command. He would also probably describe his passion as fostered by the pedantic and high-flown gallantry of the age, and the applauses bestowed on his verses; as increasing and strengthening, after the marriage of Laura had rendered it criminal, without any purpose which his better conscience dared avow, till his eyes at length opened themselves too late to its culpable nature. His mind, of that high-wrought and desponding tone which often characterizes extraordinary genius, and too sincere to trifle with impunity, struggled then fruitlessly against a fatality formerly imagined, but become real; and the flower of his life was passed amid illusions and conflicts, in alternate self-deception and self-reproach, in wild and beautiful visions from which he awoke to sickness of heart and weariness of himself and all things, like the victim of a powerful opiate. Compromising weakly between his passion and his conscience, he would say, he secluded himself at Vaucluse from a society which had become dangerous to him, and by the verses which he composed as a vent to his feelings, fixed the illusion too deep to be eradicated by lapse of time, or the indifference of Laura. Such voluntary mental martyrdom resembles the punishment inflicted by some tyrant of history on his prisoners, whom he commanded to embrace his Apega, a beautiful automaton so constructed as to plunge a concealed dagger into their hearts. The better feelings of Petrarch's readers will dwell with the least alloy on the period after the death of Laura, when he contemplated her as beyond the reach of human ties, affections, or jealousies, and sought only to rescue from oblivion the virtues and purity which had strengthened and refined his passion, while they rendered it hopeless. There is a beautiful passage in Campbell which appears exactly written to express his state of mind at this time, and the retrospective glance which he must have often cast on his past life. "And yet, methinks, when wisdom shall assuage The griefs and passions of our greener age, Though dull the close of life, and far away, Each flower that hailed the dawning of our day, Yet o'er her lovely hopes that once were dear, The time-taught spirit, pensive, not severe, With milder griefs her aged eye shall fill, And weep their falsehood, though she love them still!" The private memorandum,[37] written in the manuscript Virgil, of this extraordinary man, which is shown in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, may be considered as expressing his most undisguised feelings, as excited by an event which dissolves trifling attachments, while it gives permanence to those of a genuine nature. It was probably intended for no eye but his own. I annex as literal a translation as possible, and from the beauty and ease of their latinity, have been tempted to precede it with the original words. [Footnote 37: I had procured this document from Milan, and translated it for the press, previous to reading the version of it which is given in the Quarterly.] "Laura, propriis virtutibus illustris, et meis longum celebrata carminibus, primum oculis meis apparuit sub primum adolescentiæ meæ tempus, anno Domini 1327, die 6 mensis Aprilis, in ecclesiâ sanctæ Claræ Avinioni, horâ matutinâ. Et in eâdem civitate, eodem mense Aprilis, eodem die 6, eâdem horâ primâ, anno autem Domini 1348, ab hac luce lux illa subtracta est, cum ego forte Veronæ essem, heu fati mei nescius! Rumor autem infelix, per literas Ludovici mei, me Parmæ reperit, anno eodem, mense Maii, die mane. "Corpus illud castissimum ac pulcherrimum in loco Fratrum Minorum repositum est ipsâ die mortis ad vesperam. Animam quidem ejus, ut de Africano ait Seneca, in coelum, unde erat, rediisse, mihi persuadeo. "Hæc autem, ad acerbam rei memoriam, amarâ quâdam dulcedine scribere visum est; hoc potissimum loco, qui sæpe sub oculis meis redit, ut cogitem nihil esse debere quod amplius mihi placeat in hac vitâ, et effracto majori laqueo, tempus esse de Babylone fugiendi, crebrâ horum inspectione, ac fugacissimæ ætatis æstimatione, commonear. Quod, præviâ Dei gratiâ, facile erit, præteriti temporis curas supervacuas, spes inanes, et inexpectatos exitus acriter ac viriliter cogitanti." "Laura, illustrious for her own virtues, and long celebrated by my verses, first appeared to my eyes, in the time of my early youth, on the morning of the sixth day of April, in the year of our Lord 1327, in the church of St. Clare at Avignon; and in the same month of April, on the same first hour of the morning, in the year of our Lord 1348, that light was removed from this light of day, while I by chance was at Verona, unconscious, alas! of my fate. The unhappy news, however, reached me at Parma, in a letter from my friend Ludovico, on the morning of the 19th of May. "Her most chaste and fair body was buried in the evening of the day of her death, in the convent of the Fratres Minores; but her soul, as Seneca saith of the soul of Africanus, hath returned, I am persuaded, to the heaven from whence it came. "I have felt a kind of bitter pleasure in writing the memorial of this mournful event, the rather in this place, which so often meets my eyes, to the end that I may consider there is nothing left which ought to delight me in this world; and that I may be reminded by the frequent sight of these words, and the due appreciation of this fleeting life, that my principal tie to the world being broken, it is time for me to fly from this Babylon; which, through the preventing grace of God, will be an easy task, when I reflect deeply and manfully on the superfluous cares, the vain hopes, and the unlooked for events of the time past." This simple and affecting tribute, written, as it evidently seems, under such solemn impressions, clears the memory of Laura from the imputation of any thing trifling or criminal, while it sufficiently establishes the identity of "a nymph," according to Gibbon, "so shadowy, that her existence has been questioned." May 14.--We left Avignon this morning, with a more favourable impression of its cleanliness and comfort than any other town had as yet left on our minds. The road to Nismes, winding up a hill on the opposite side of the river, above Fort Villeneuve, is remarkably adapted also to display its numerous spires, and the grand Gothic mass of the legate's palace, to the utmost advantage: and we watched with something like regret the disappearance of these objects over the brow of the hill which we had ascended, more especially as on this spot the eye takes leave, for some time, of every thing agreeable. The view here consists of a high dull flat, with hardly a tree, and the road of rolling stones and dust; and a high wind prevailed, which seemed a combination of the Bise and Mistral, aided by all the bottled stores of a Lapland witch, and very nearly blew poor Durand off his box. After passing Fouzay and Demazan, two Little villages, adorned each à la Provençale, with a ruined castle, we turned out of the road to Nismes at Remoulin, where the features of the country somewhat improve. Another mile and a half brought us to an indifferent inn within a ten minutes' walk of the Pont du Gard. It is adapted for nothing more than a baiting-place for a few hours, and not at all of that description which so well-known a ruin would be in most cases capable of maintaining. The landlord, however, "a sallow, sublime sort of Werter-faced man," was civil, and inclined to do his best, and gathered us some double yellow roses, of a sort we had never seen before, to season his bad fare. The Pont du Gard, which we were not long in visiting, is seen to the greatest advantage on the side on which we approached it from the inn. The deep mountain glen, inhabited only by goats, whose entrance it crosses from cliff to cliff, forms a striking back-ground, and serves as a measure to the height of the colossal arches which appear to grow naturally, as it were, out of the gray rocks on which they rest.[38] There is certainly something more poetical in the stern and simple style of architecture of which this noble aqueduct is a specimen, than in the more florid and graceful school of art. The latter speaks more to the eye, but the former to the mind, possessing a superiority analogous to that which the great style of painting (as it is termed) boasts over the florid and ornamental Venetian school. Our own Stonehenge is too much, perhaps, in the rude extreme of this branch of architecture to be quoted as a favourable instance of it; but few persons can come suddenly in sight of Stonehenge on a misty day without being struck by its peculiar effect; and the Pont du Gard, placed in as lonely a situation, exhibits materials almost as gigantic in detail, and knit into a towering mass which seems to require no less force than an earthquake, or a battery of cannon, to change the position of a single stone. A large and solid bridge which has been built against it by the states of Languedoc, appears by comparison to shrink into insignificance, and shelter itself behind the old Roman arches, the lower tier of which, eleven in number, overtop it in height by about three-fifths. The span of the largest arch is about 78 feet; of the other ten, 66 each: and they are surmounted by a row of thirty-five smaller arches. With the exception of two or three of these last, the whole fabric is complete, and, if unmolested, appears likely to witness more changes of language and dynasty than it has already done. I do not know that the mind is ever more impressed with the idea of Roman power and greatness, than by contemplating such structures as these, erected for subordinate purposes at a distance from the main seat of empire. It is like discovering a broken hand or foot of the Colossus of Rhodes, and estimating in imagination the height and bulk of the whole statue from the size of its enormous extremities. [Footnote 38: Vide Cooke's Views.] From the Pont du Gard the road to Nismes has little to recommend it excepting the high state of cultivation of the country, and this is not of a nature to gratify an eye accustomed to English verdure. Olive-groves, it is true, have been naturalized in poetry as conveying an image of beauty and freshness; but in reality nothing can be more opposed to the oaks and elms of an English hedge-row, than the pale shining gray of this stunted tree, which has more of a metallic than a vegetable appearance. Nor does a perpetual succession of corn-fields, however rich in reality, present the same appearance of luxuriant vegetation as an English pasture. There is, besides, nothing in the nearer approach to Nismes, which reminds one of the environs of an opulent commercial town, and its precincts would cut a poor figure when compared with those of Leeds or Bristol. The transition is immediate, from a dull range of corn-fields, without a gentleman's house, to a long dirty suburb. On emerging, however, from the latter into the better and more central part of the town, one is surprised to find wide and elegant streets well watered and planted, and public buildings, whose beauty and good taste show that the citizens of Nismes have made a good use of the fine architectural models afforded by the ancient Nemausis. The Palais de Justice deserves to be particularly remarked for its classical elegance, and contrasts well with the black solid arches of the Arenes, near which it is placed. "_Monsieour!_ les antiquités!--_Heou! Monsieour!_ les Arenes!--Commissionaire pour voir la Maison Carrée!--_Heou--ou! Monsieour!_ decrotteur, s'il vous plait!--Le Temple de Diane, _Monsieour!_" are the cries with which every third or fourth ragamuffin at Nismes salutes you, enforcing his application by a peculiar yell, of which no combination of letters can give an idea uncouth enough. As it is hardly possible to walk in the central part of Nismes without seeing its antiquities before you, it is best to avoid a troublesome live appendage of this sort, by appearing totally deaf. The Arenes are nearly in front of the Hôtel du Louvre, and the Maison Carrée is within two or three minutes' walk of it: the Temple of Diana and the Baths are situated in the most conspicuous spot in the public gardens, whither a perpetual concourse of people may be seen thronging; and the Pharos overlooks them from the summit of a small precipitous hill, which may be ascended in five minutes by a good walker. Every thing therefore lies within the compass of an evening's stroll. The Maison Carrée is a beautiful bijou, better known than any other of the curiosities of Nismes. I believe the opinion of Mons. Seguier (formed from a laborious examination of the nail-holes belonging to its last bronze inscription) is generally adopted; viz. that it was a temple dedicated to Caius and Lucius Cæsar, grandsons of Augustus. A perfect copy of it, built from actual measurement, may be found in the Temple of Victory and Concord, in the Duke of Buckingham's gardens at Stowe. So admirable is the preservation of the original in every part, owing to the dry and pure air of Languedoc, as almost to operate as a disadvantage. Its freshness and compactness suggest rather too much the idea of a modern pavilion of twenty or thirty years standing, instead of that of a temple; and if I may venture to say so, the same want of the ærugo of age, which renders it more valuable as an architectural relic, produces an incongruous and unpoetical effect on the imagination. Age, in fact, has its own characteristic branch of beauty. An old man with curly hair and a fresh smooth complexion, like Godwin's Struldbrugg, St. Leon, would be an unpleasant and unnatural object. There is a masculine and imposing medium between youthful vigour and decay, in which the leading features of the former man may be distinctly traced; as in Wordsworth's beautiful description of the old knight of Rylstone, and Sir Walter Scott's fine portraiture of Archibald Bell-the-Cat: and I think the analogy holds good in classical remains. Somewhat should be decayed for effect's sake; and those parts only left which are strikingly beautiful, or of a leading and important nature. The Arena, which we next visited, is perhaps more consonant to this standard than the Maison Carrée. Its structure is similar to that of the Colosseum at Rome, of which, however, it falls infinitely short in size and grandeur, while at the same time it so far exceeds it in perfectness, as to give a complete idea to an inexperienced eye of its original figure and arrangement, and of the admirable system of accommodation which such places possessed. It has just enough of the graceful decay of age to render it picturesque, and enough of freshness to answer the questions of the antiquarian: and neither too much nor too little is left to the imagination. Mr. Albanis Beaumont, in his work on the Maritime Alps, calculates the number of persons which this building must have held at 16,599, and the spectators in the Colosseum at 34,000. He also states the widest interior circumference of the Arena, as 1110-1/2 feet. The plate engraved in his work, dated 1795, represents two square towers over the principal entrance, erected perhaps by Charles Martel, when he converted the building into a citadel; they have however been since destroyed, and the work of clearing away the houses which defaced both its inside and outside, commenced originally by Louis XVI., has been completed. It now stands in a broad open space, adapted to set off its full height and proportions. The public garden also presents a well-arranged group of interesting objects; but to behold them to any advantage, it is necessary to turn your back upon a pert little café, roofed with party-coloured tiles like the scales of a fancy fish, which glares from under the shade of the trees. From hence you look over a handsome balustrade into a large excavated space adorned with stone steps, which collects the waters of a fine fountain, and in which the foundations of the ancient Baths are still visible. On the summit of the opposite cliff, from whence these waters issue, the ruined Pharos, which forms the principal landmark of Nismes, rises with great majesty, and at its foot, immediately to the left of the fountain, the ruined temple of Diana, though not individually striking, combines admirably with the general group. From the fountain arises a beautifully clear stream, which is distributed in wide and deep stone channels through some of the principal streets at Nismes, and greatly contributes to the ornament and cleanliness of the town. The Pharos, or Tour Magne, to which I scrambled from the Baths, fully answers to its distant appearance. There is a peculiar dignity and solidity in a figure approaching to the pyramidical, when placed on the top of a rock; and independent of its height, which is between eighty and ninety feet, the Pharos has this recommendation also. Its interior appears a curious work of masonry. A high wide conical vault, without pillar or buttress, constitutes almost the whole internal space, admitting just light sufficient to render "the darkness visible," and give additional solemnity to a mere shell of brickwork. We found the Hôtel du Louvre (to which we had been recommended in preference to the Hermite's inn, the Hôtel du Luxembourg) excellent in every respect. The two hotels adjoin one another so closely, be it observed, and are so similar in appearance, that one may walk into the wrong salle-à-manger, and only discover the mistake through the difference of the waiter's faces. May 15.--Seventeen miles to New Lunel, where we breakfasted indifferently enough, not liking French customs sufficiently to qualify the bad coffee with a glass of the brandy of this place, which is as celebrated as its wine. New Lunel, which has grown on the back of the old town, in consequence of a branch of the Languedoc canal which runs close to it, is a neat and thriving place, but possesses no feature worthy of remark. The country is of the same character as the town, a dull rich flat, over which one may sleep with the soothing consciousness that every thing is going on well with its trade and agriculture. To Montpelier eighteen miles. Within the last league or two, the country begins rather to improve, and rise into somewhat of an undulating form; but no romantic or interesting feature marks the approach to this celebrated town. "How I envy you the sight of that delightful Montpelier, of which one reads and hears so much!" exclaims many an untravelled lady, no doubt, to her travelled brother or cousin. No place certainly sounds more familiarly in the ear as a novel-scene; and its very name is associated with ideas of beauty, verdure, retirement, orange groves, hanging woods, and all the et ceteras of a spot. "Where simply to feel that we breathe, that we live, Is worth the best joy that life elsewhere can give." The truth is, that the Montpelier of the imagination may be found at Vico, Sorrento, Massa di Carrara; or, with a little alteration, in some spots of our own Devonshire coast. The real Montpelier is a large, opulent, well-frequented provincial capital, full of noise and dress, and possessing an air of neatness and fashion, but totally devoid of any thing allied to the poetry of nature. It stands on a round sweeping hill, commanding a considerable extent of land and sea; but the sea-coast is chiefly an expanse of low ground and etangs, or salt-water lakes; and the neighbouring hill country, resembling in form a succession of cultivated downs, has neither height nor variety to recommend it. The most interesting spot in Montpelier is the Place Peyrou, a public garden raised on high terraces, in a situation commanding the rest of the town. At the extremity of the principal walk stands an elegant open building of the Grecian order, overarching a basin into which the waters of the celebrated aqueduct of Montpelier are received, and from thence distributed through the town. The aqueduct itself, which springs from the foot of this pavilion, and conveys the water from the crest of an opposite hill, is a truly noble work, and, though modern, worthy in every respect of a Roman ædile. It was erected by the states of Languedoc in honour of Louis XIV. whose statue is placed in the garden. Like the Pont du Gard, it consists of two tiers of arches, fifty of which we counted in the lower range, and one hundred and fifty in the upper, until the lessening perspective baffled all farther attempts at reckoning. The architecture is inferior in dignity and massiveness to that of the Roman work, but exceeds it in extent, and probably in the quantity of masonry employed. Nothing can be more elegant than its general form, and the manner in which it is united to the terrace of the Place Peyrou. Whatever natural objects are interesting in the environs, may be seen also from this elevated spot, though I am inclined to think that the views of distant Pyrenees which we were taught to expect, are a fiction existing in the minds of some travellers. At all events, the glimpses must be partial, and only to be obtained on a fine day. The Cevennes mountains rise, however, to a tolerable height in the distance to the west; and to the south-east, the remains of the old town and cathedral of Maguelone, form a striking distant group, projecting like a low reef of rocks into the sea at the distance of three or four miles. To judge from the site of this ancient town, which tradition describes as the original nucleus of Montpelier, the sea must have made great inroads on the neighbouring coast. The air, it is said, is growing less wholesome than formerly, owing probably to the accumulation of the etangs. From the edge of the coast to Maguelone, the distance cannot be much less than a mile and a half at low water. The Montpelliards are considered a scientific people; and, at all events, they seem to have found out the secret of perpetual motion, if we may judge from the experience of the first night we spent in the town. At half past nine, the principal street, which our hotel overlooked, began to swarm with heads. The whole population were on the alert, promenading during the greater part of the night; and such a busy hum arose from beneath the windows, which the heat obliged us to keep open, that it was impossible even to think of sleeping till daybreak. Our accommodations indeed were not of the most tempting sort; for finding the Hôtel du Midi full of travellers, and consequently saucy and unaccommodating, we had tried the Cheval Blanc, described to us as the next best hotel; and detestable enough we found it. On stepping however next morning into a café and restaurant in the Place de Comedie, whose superior appearance had attracted us, we found that M. Pical, the master of it, was in the habit of letting rooms, and we immediately removed to his house. Nothing indeed could be more clean and elegant than its accommodations, or more refreshing after the dusty journey of the former day, and the nightly bustle of the streets, than its quiet and coolness, situated as it is in a large area in the suburbs or boulevards. The salle-à-manger partakes of the same character with the rest of the house, and the carte contains a list of many more good things than we were inclined to do justice to. In short, no traveller can do better than order himself to be driven directly to this house, which comprises all the advantages of a private residence at a reasonable charge, with the recommendations of great attention and civility. This day, May 16, we attended service at the French Protestant Church, and were gratified both with spending a morning on the shores of the Mediterranean in a manner which reminded us of an English Sunday, and witnessing also the full and respectable attendance of fellow Protestants. The service was performed in the following order:--1, a psalm; 2, a general confession of sins; 3, another psalm; 4, a sermon; 5, the commandments and the creed; 6, a long prayer for the sick and distressed, the king and the royal family; 7, another psalm, and the blessing. The singing was impressive, not so much from any intrinsic merit in the performance, as the earnestness in which the whole congregation joined in it, "singing praises lustily with a good courage," instead of deputing this branch of religious duty to half a dozen yawning and jangling charity children, assisted by the clerk and parish tailor. I believe it is an observation of Dr. Burney, in his History of Handel's Commemoration, that no sound proceeding from a great multitude can be discordant. In the present instance, certainly, the separate voices qualified and softened down each other, so as to produce a good compound. Of the sermon I cannot speak so favourably, for in truth it savoured somewhat of the conventicle style. Its theme was chiefly the raptures which persons experience under the influence of the Holy Spirit, and it was calculated to discourage all whose imaginations were not strong enough to assist in working them into this state. The manner of the preacher was however good, and his delivery fluent; and so great was the attention of the congregation, that during three quarters of an hour not a sound interrupted his voice, until, on his pausing to use his handkerchief, a general chorus of twanging noses took place, giving a ludicrous effect to what was, in fact, a mark of restraint and attention. In the evening we departed for Cette. The road, according to the set phrase of the French Itineraire, is through a "campagne de plus agréables;" but our observation showed us only a bleak high common to the right, and to the left a succession of etangs and sandy flats, affording a prospect at once desolate and uninteresting. The space between the etangs and the road is generally marshy; and instead of a fine blue expanse of sea in motion, the horizon is commonly bounded by a long white sandy line, over which the sails of the little vessels appear very oddly. One or two houses erected on these ridges, which border the etangs, give to the view, if possible, a still more desolate appearance, being totally unaccompanied by even a tree or a patch of verdure, and only serve to remind you of the nakedness of the land. Near Frontignan the prospect improves, as far merely as concerns its fertility; for it is in the vicinity of this town that the famous Frontignac wine, or to denominate it more correctly, the Muscat de Frontignan, is made. The only thing during this evening's route which could be considered as a feature, was the lofty cape at whose foot Cette stands; a perfect idea of which, from the side on which we approached it, is given by Vernet's picture of that port, in the Louvre. A bridge of fifty-one arches, traversing a series of swampy ground and etangs, connects this promontory with terra-firma, and crosses the great Languedoc canal, which communicates at this spot with the sea. A beautiful sunset, which made the whole expanse of back-water appear of a rose-colour, and which, I confess, I have seldom seen equalled in England, gave as much richness to the view as it was capable of receiving. There is naturally but little in it; and the effect of Vernet's view is derived from accidental circumstances purposely introduced; so that, on the whole, we wished that our evening's excursion had been confined to the Place Peyrou. I should, however, conceive the air of Cette to be much better adapted to tender lungs than that of Montpelier, as well from the difference of temperature, perceptible even to a person in sound health, as from the superior shelter which its situation affords; while the high and exposed site of Montpelier leaves a doubt whether, in most cases it would not be more hurtful than salutary. The productions of the neighbourhood of Cette are also in a more forward condition than those of Montpelier. We saw hedges of arbor vitæ in full flower; and peaches two-thirds grown, in almost a wild state. May 17.--We rose at five in the morning, desirous to secure a cool walk to the Tour des Pilotes, a signal post on the high cape above Cette. The sun was however prepared for us, and continued to grill us alive from the first moment; and, after all, the prospect from this station, to which you climb as if ascending the steep roof of a house, is not of a nature to repay the exertion. We went to satisfy our consciences that there was nothing to see, and we saw nothing. The Pyrenees, so far from being visible near Montpelier, cannot be distinguished even from this nearer point, excepting, perhaps, on a peculiarly clear day; and no other feature worth mentioning occurs. The coast presents a bare and uninhabited appearance, arising partly from the almost total want of trees. Our perquisitions in the town of Cette itself were more fortunate, though, by-the-by, it exceeds Lyons itself in dirt and ill smells. It is a place of considerable trade in proportion to its size, and is employed chiefly as an entrepôt for goods, which may be landed and reshipped without paying duty: and a walk on the quay affords, in consequence, considerable varieties of the human face divine, neat as imported. I recognised a group of Catalan sailors by their brown jackets embroidered with shreds of gaudy cloth, their red night-caps, and the redicillas in which their hair was bagged. No race of men with whom I am at all acquainted bear so marked a character of animation and decision in every movement of ordinary life as these sturdy provincials, or would be more remarked by a stranger among a mixed concourse of different nations. The same exuberance of animal motion which degenerates into restlessness and buffoonery in the Neapolitan, or the native of Languedoc, assumes a more dignified character in the Catalan, who is certainly a gentleman of Nature's own making. One of the crew, a tall athletic fellow, was holding forth to the rest on some trivial matter with a varied and graceful action, which might have served as a model to a painter. The rest were at breakfast; but even their mode of pouring the wine on their tongues at arm's length, from the long spout of a sort of glass kettle, had somewhat classical in it, and reminded me of the recumbent figure in the Herculanean painting, who is drinking in the same manner. Simple as it may appear, this knack is not to be acquired without a long apprenticeship, and I was ludicrously reminded of my abortive efforts to master it by the sight of the party on the quay. It certainly is adapted for making the most of any liquid, and might have been adopted during such a scarcity of water as the Hanoverian consul informed us existed in Cette during the former year. Not a drop of rain fell for ten months, and water at last became dearer than wine. On crossing the bridge, we observed a man on one of the piers, spearing aiguilles de mer, a beautiful silvery fish, of which he had taken several. They were about two feet long, and of the shape of an eel, excepting in the form of their long picked heads and jaws, which correspond exactly with their name. The tunny is also caught in abundance near this part of the coast; and Vernet has introduced the fishery, from a lack of picturesque circumstances, into one of his sea-ports, painted by royal order. No other fish can better deserve this particular compliment, uniting, as it does, size, flavour, and the merits of both fish and flesh in a great degree. The "thon mariné" is its plainest and best preparation, and is preferable, with a dish of salad, to all the high-seasoned dishes which form a Provençal bill of fare; in short, if our national sirloin obtained knighthood, such a good lenten substitute as the tunny deserves canonization.[39] I cannot say so much for the dish, common enough among Frenchmen, which a well-dressed man, the harlequin to a troop of comedians, was eating in the salle-à-manger when we entered; viz. a raw artichoke with oil and vinegar. Sterne, it appears, little knew the extent of the ass's good taste, when he deprived him of this article in the Tabella Cibaria, "to see how he would eat a macaroon." [Footnote 39: A similar dignity was conferred by some heathen poet, I believe, on the _potnia sykê_ (the august, or god-like fig).] We set off at two o'clock in the day on our return to Montpelier, not a little envying the horses and mules their cool quarters in the immense remise. Within a mile of Cette lies the breakwater of rough stones, which forms a prominent object in the foreground of Vernet's picture, and serves to ascertain the spot from whence he took his design. At Villeneuve, where we stopped to bait the horses, we were diverted by a scene characteristic of the country. A bag had just been found on the road by the conductor of the Cette diligence, which drove up to the inn while we were there; and on Durand disowning it, a shabby-looking foot passenger claimed it, but could not establish his plea by identifying a single article. In a few seconds every soul in the inn, excepting ourselves, was assembled to take part in the discussion, and argued the pro and con with a vehemence of voice and action, which would have made a stranger believe it was a matter of life and death to each. A female inside-passenger, with an infant in her arms, which she nearly let drop in her energies, was the coryphée of this chorus of tongues, which could be compared to nothing but bees in the act of swarming, or the cackle which the entrance of a fox causes in a hen-roost. We were no longer surprised at hearing the peasants whom we met conversing in a tone which we had mistaken for quarrelling. The French generally, indeed, are fond of noise and action and emphasis about what does not concern their own interests a jot, while a London mob indulges an equal degree of curiosity by silent gaping; but these good folks certainly outdid anything I ever witnessed in France before. An action for defamation brought in Languedoc[40] might, with propriety, be worded, "that the defendant did, with four-and-twenty mouths, four-and-twenty tongues, and four-and-twenty pair of lungs, vilify and damnify his neighbour's reputation;" for it is probable that a scolding match could not take place in the open air of that country, without enlisting volunteer seconds to that amount on both sides, all equally bawling and violent. At Nismes, a fellow bellows across the street to offer himself as cicerone, in a tone which seems intended to warn you of a mad dog at your heels; and, in general, the lungs of Languedoc appear constructed on a larger and more discordant scale than is usual, and their volubility is rather a contradiction to the yea and nay appellation of the country. A respectable Frenchman informed us, that the peasants of Languedoc were considered to possess much wit and ingenuity by those who could understand their patois, which he frankly owned was unintelligible to himself. Their liveliness and animal exuberance are as strong a contrast to the immoveable form into which they are swathed when infants, as the flutter of a butterfly is to its torpidity as a chrysalis; indeed a fanciful person might be apt to suppose, that on emerging from their bandages, they indemnify themselves for the previous constraint by a life of perpetual fidget, and that the same re-action takes place as in the case of Munchausen's horn, which played for half an hour of its own accord when unfrozen. To speak seriously, nothing can be more piteously ridiculous than the state of a poor Languedoc child, swathed and bandaged into all the rigidity of a mummy, and totally motionless. Our friend H. declares, that his attention was once drawn behind a door by a faint cry, and that he there discovered and took down one of these little teraphims from the hook by which it hung suspended by a loop, like a young American savage. "C'est la mode du pays," is the only account of the practice which you get either here or at Nice; and it is fortunate that they have not still improved on it by a hint from the black nurses of Barbadoes, who embalm weakly young Creoles in wrappers lined with assa-foetida, and think it prejudicial to "burst their cerements" more than once in a fortnight. [Footnote 40: The word Oc, according to tradition, meant in the old patois of the country "yes:" hence the original derivation of "Langue d'Oc."] After our horses had eaten a pound of honey with their corn, which honest Durand considered a powerful cordial, we resumed our route, and reached Montpelier to a late dinner, enjoying in no small degree the coolness and quiet of Pical's house. It was indeed the love of quiet, and the dislike to a constant ferment, which drove our landlord from Nismes to settle in this place. The bigotry and party zeal of the former town, in truth, appear to have been hardly exaggerated in the accounts which have reached England, and to exist in such a degree as to render Nismes an unsafe place for a moderate man, who is owned by neither party. The spirit of discord and enmity is instilled by the more violent of both parties into their children as a duty, so that it will probably descend from generation to generation. Both parties, indeed, might adopt as a crest and motto a boot-maker's sign in Montpelier, which is somewhat diverting from its bombast, when merely applied as honest Crispin meant it. A lion is represented tearing a boot, with the inscription, "Tu peux me dechirer, mais jamais me decoudre." Construe it, "You may cut my throat, but not alter me," and it will show the pleasant state of party spirit at Nismes, if what we heard so near the scene of action be true. We returned to Nismes on the 18th with associations not so pleasant as had been created by its beautiful walks and buildings, and the civility with which our questions were answered by the inhabitants. We might have seen the country between Montpelier and Nismes to greater advantage, the dust being somewhat less stifling than before; but unluckily there was nothing worth seeing. The district is certainly a garden, but then it is a flat uninteresting kitchen garden, for the supply of the Lunel brandy merchants, and the rich Nismes manufacturers, who appear too polite in their tastes to venture into it. Hardly a single thing that can be called a gentleman's house occurs, and that not for want of culture or opulence. The case seems to be this; the people of Nismes, like the Bordelais, are proud of their elegant and airy city, embellished with classical relics, and uniting most of the advantages of town and country, and are well satisfied without the campagne which a rich Lyonnais, carrying on his business in a close town, considers as his paradise. Although this system of "rus in urbe" gives but a mean and poor appearance to the environs of a town, it produces much pleasure and convenience to such resident strangers as can enjoy the society of Nismes, which, by all accounts, must somewhat resemble sleeping in Exeter 'Change, the keepers, in the shape of a strong preventive force of military, on the alert, it is true, and the bars are well secured, but the beasts only watch their opportunity to tear each other to pieces. How an Englishman would fare in a public disturbance is difficult to say. It is probable that the Catholics would abominate him as a heretic, and the Protestants denounce him as an anti-Buonapartist, and that he would consequently be thrust from the one to the other, like a new comer between two roguish school-boys. This, however, was no concern of ours, as we left Nismes the next morning on the road to Beaucaire. The old Pharos was the last landmark we took leave of, as it was the first of which we caught sight. It contrasts with the Maison Carrée as a wild legend of the dark ages would with a letter of Pliny; and though rough in its fabric, and uncertain in its history, dwells as strongly on the recollection as that highly-finished gem. "The tower by war or tempest bent, While yet may frown one battlement, Demands and daunts the stranger's eye, Each ivied arch and pillar lone Pleads haughtily for glories gone!" CHAP. IX. TARASCON--BEAUCAIRE--ST. REMY--ORGON--LAMBESC. TO Tarascon 19 miles of road for the most part bad and sandy. I am not geologist enough to decide with accuracy on the formation of that part of the banks of the Rhone which we were approaching, but the detached specimens of rock are of a curious nature. After passing a little village called St. Vincent, we came to an open plain, bounded in front by several singular round hills on the summit of one of which, called the Roche Duclay, was a rock so exactly resembling an old castle in size and shape, that a nearer inspection alone satisfied us as to its real nature. There is also a great singularity of outline in the hills which became soon visible in the distance on the other side of the Rhone, one or two of which appeared as if they had shells upon their backs. Beaucaire, with its old castle overhanging the Rhone, soon came in sight. "Jeunet encore, étois sortant de page, Lorsque à Beaucaire ouvrit un grand tournoi. Maint chevaliers y firent maint exploits, Dames d'amour animoient leur courage;" says the French Roman: and in the old fabliaux also, the scene of Aucassin and Nicolette is laid in this place. These are, I believe, but a small portion of the claims which Beaucaire possesses to chivalrous celebrity, and its very name is in a manner connected with knights and ladies, tourneys and pageants. There is something in its appearance also which does not belie these associations, although it was crowded with farmers and market people at the time of our arrival: and those too of the vulgar bettermost sort, which is the most hopelessly unchivalrous.[41] The castle stands detached from the town, on as bold and perpendicular a cliff as any romance writer could wish, and overlooking one of the broadest and most rapid reaches of the Rhone; an extensive green[42] meadow planted with trees, and large enough for a tournament on the most extensive scale, or another Champ du Drap d'Or, divides the steep side of this rock from the river; and on the land side it is backed by another cliff garnished with as many windmills as Don Quixote himself could have desired. We crossed the Rhone on a bridge of boats to a long narrow island, from whence the view on both sides is striking. Beaucaire, with the accompaniments I have just described, and Tarascon, flanked by the large ancient castle of the counts of Provence, front each other on the opposite banks of the Rhone, which rushes and thunders on both sides of the isle, making the cables by which the floating bridge is lashed, creak most fearfully every moment.[43] From this point I made a drawing of Tarascon in defiance of a violent wind, which forced me to place my paper on the lee side of a stranded boat, and to sketch in the attitude of a plasterer white-washing a ceiling. Another bridge of boats conducted us to Tarascon;[44] where we walked out while the horses were baiting, the whole inn being in the same confusion from market people as Beaucaire itself, and not seeming of the most comfortable description. Being driven by a heavy scud of rain into a shoemaker's shop, we found a civil and intelligent guide in his son, from whom, however, we could not ascertain that there was any thing worthy of notice in this populous place, except the castle. We passed the Maison de Charité, in front of which is a new cross lately erected by the Mission, on the scale of that at Avignon, and profusely gilt and ornamented. The same agency also has lately re-established an Ursuline convent of fifty-two nuns in this place. The cathedral is old and mean, and apparently under no very strict regulations, for an old woman was selling cakes in the aisle close to one of the chapels. We went into a vault beneath to see a marble statue of St. Martha, which has merit in itself, and by the light of a single wax candle, had a striking effect: the great admiration, however, in which it is held here may chiefly arise from an opinion of its miraculous powers. "Elle devenoit invisible pendant la Revolution," whispered our young Crispin.--"Oui, elle étoit cachée, voilà ce que tu veux dire, mon petit--." "Eh! non, pardon, Messieurs, elle se cacha; mais il y a trois ans qu'elle se montre encore," replied the little fellow, with the most confident gravity. I trust that this monstrous fiction did not originate in the Ursuline convent which he mentioned; and that the fifty-two good ladies employ their time in more charitable and useful actions than in filling the heads of poor children with stories so hurtful to the real interests of religion. However credulous our young guide was, he was not mercenary, being with difficulty persuaded to accept a franc or two for what he styled the pleasure of having conducted us. We next visited the castle of Tarascon, now used as the public prison, and in which 1500 English were confined during the war. The enormous height and massiveness of its walls, which overtop the weather-cock of the cathedral, and the smallness of its few windows, qualify it well for this purpose; and a greater appearance of strength and solidity is given by the solid rock in which its foundations are embedded, and which in some places is shaped into wall and moat. We crossed a drawbridge into a court flanked by four round towers, and having a square keep in its centre. On the top of one of these towers is an esplanade, from whence the view of the course of the Rhone, and the great plain of Arles, is fine: the latter town, which is about nine miles distant, was seen distinctly. We were rather disappointed by the inside of the castle, which seemed chiefly to consist of small mean rooms: perhaps the baronial hall might be the dormitory of the prisoners, and not in a presentable state; but we saw nothing which recalled any idea of feudal magnificence. The same description which serves for the tower of Westburn-flat, in the Black Dwarf, allowing for the difference of size and finish, would exactly suit the cubical shape and high blind walls of this castle, which probably was intended to serve similar purposes in the days of club law. Its durability is not so remarkable as the fresh colour and sharpness of every part of the carving, and it might pass for a modern gothic edifice of twenty years standing, but for the solidity and frowning grandeur which characterise it. The air of Provence appears more clear and dry than even that of Italy, and to be more favourable to the preservation of old buildings. Its clearness certainly is remarkable, particularly in diminishing the effect of distance; and on Monday night, at Montpelier, I recollect that we could plainly discover with the naked eye the stars of the milky way, which are commonly imperceptible without a glass. I cannot say that our route from Tarascon to St. Remy was well calculated to show the climate of Provence in this light. The whole eleven miles were performed in almost a perpetual storm of rain and wind, which prevented our seeing much of the rich plain we were traversing. What we could see, however, was pleasing: every inch teemed with olives, vines, mulberries, corn, onions, and lucerne. We remarked many sheep sheared in a comical manner, with two or three tufts, like pincushions, running down the centre of their backs, and painted red. Circumstances like these, though trivial, are or ought to be pleasing, as they indicate that something like comfort or leisure exists, and that the farmer's business is partly become an amusement. A needy peasant, pinched by high rents or bad seasons, would have but little inclination to ornament his favourite wether in this absurd manner; and though Forsyth's remark is very true, that a peasant never attempts to become fine but he is hideous, such hideous attempts[45] are grateful to the mind's eye from the cheerfulness and play of mind which they indicate. Within a little distance of St. Remy the storm cleared sufficiently to enable us to discern the line of hills to the right, the foot of which we were skirting, and which border the great plain of Avignon to the south. There is something very singular in the outline of these rocks, which are a miniature resemblance of the wild mountains near Valence, but more savage and fantastic, presenting the appearance of the sea turned to stone in its wildest state of commotion, or in the powerful words of Manfred, "The aspect of a tumbling tempest's foam Frozen in a moment; a dead whirlpool's image." [Footnote 41: Vide Cooke's Views.] [Footnote 42: The celebrated fair of Beaucaire, which may be almost called the carnival of the Mediterranean, is held in this meadow yearly.] [Footnote 43: Vide Cooke's Views.] [Footnote 44: For an account of the Tarasque, or fabulous dragon, which infested the country, and the ceremonies commemorative of it, see Miss Plumptre's tour. The name of Tarascon, she says, is derived from this animal.] [Footnote 45: I do not except even John Bull's favourite yew peacocks and dragons, at least when they decorate the garden of a poor man.] At the foot of one of these barren gray rocks, which, from its shape and perforation, exactly resembles the barbacan and gate of a castle, St. Remy is situated. The Hôtel de la Graille, where we took up our abode for the night, was as comfortable as most French inns, excepting those in the large towns: and though the _gros chien de menage_, for whose company we always stipulated, was perfectly agreeable, and of a gigantic size, yet he was by no means, as is frequently the case, the only civilized person in the house. This _gros chien du menage_, be it known, is a person of great responsibility in a Provençal inn, as well as of formidable strength and size, and is entrusted for the night with the care of the remise, and all the live and dead stock, horses, carriages, and waggons, which it contains; and a more effectual guard cannot well be: his manners during the day are very mild and gentleman-like, as if he acted as master of the ceremonies; and he generally steals in at supper-time, as if to inform you that all is safe, and to claim a pat of your hand, and a pairing of your fricandeau in acknowledgment of his professional care. The greasy landlord will stand staring at his kitchen door, the landlady will not be very attentive to your accommodation when you are once safely housed, and the dirty, bare-legged fille will poison you with steams of garlic; but the _gros chien_ will always make amends to a genuine lover of dogs. May 21.--We were tempted by a beautiful morning to rise somewhat before four o'clock, in order to visit the Roman ruins near this place, before our departure for Orgon. A walk of ten minutes conducted us up a gentle terrace on which they were situated, and which rises between the town and the fantastic hills we had remarked the day before. Having heard but little of these classical remains, we were most agreeably surprised to find them in such perfect preservation, and so beautiful in themselves. They consist of a mausoleum and an arch, which stand within a few yards of each other, and appear to have formed the principal objects in a public square or place; the area of which is evidently marked out by a row of solid stone seats, well adapted for the accommodation of gazers[46] at these beautiful gems. The arch has suffered the most decay of the two: or rather, it most exhibits the effects of violence; for the unmutilated parts are as sharp and bold as if fresh from the hand of the sculptor. The human figures on each side have suffered the most, either perhaps from some party commotion of past ages, or the same wanton propensity which leads man to disfigure his fellow-creature's image in preference to any other work of art; and to which we owe the demolition of André and Washington's heads in Westminster Abbey. The fretted compartments in the inside, and the border which surrounds the bend of the arch, are in the highest preservation. The latter represents clusters of grapes, olives, figs, and pomegranates with the accuracy of a miniature, and in a free and natural style. One of the pomegranates was represented as ripe and cracking, and every seed distinctly expressed. The mausoleum is, I should venture to say, a building perfectly unique in its way, as a remnant of antiquity; and therefore more difficult to describe by a recurrence to any known work of art. I cannot better, however, describe its effect on the mind than by saying, that it ought to be removed to Pompeii in company with the arch. It is certainly superior, as a work of art, to any thing yet discovered in that singular place; while it possesses the same indescribable domestic character which seems to bring you back to the business and bosoms of the ancients, in a manner which nothing at Rome can do. As far as I could judge by the eye, it is from forty to fifty feet in height. An open circular lanthorn of ten Corinthian pillars, surmounted by a conical roof of stone, and containing two standing figures, rests on a square base, presenting an open arch on each side, which is in its turn supported by a solid pedestal, exhibiting on each of its four sides a bas relief corresponding to the respective arch. There is great spirit and fine grouping in the bas reliefs, which represent battles of cavalry and infantry. The standing figures before-mentioned, to whose honour the mausoleum may be supposed to have been erected, are in the civil garb: and there is an ease and repose in their attitudes, corresponding with the grave, calm expression of the heads, of which necessary appendage the merciless French Itineraire has guillotined them without warrant. The colour of the freestone of which it is built is as fresh as that of the castle of Tarascon. The building is constructed with a thorough knowledge of what the human eye requires, tapering and becoming more light towards its conical top. It is also of size sufficient for all purposes of effect, though not too large for a private monument. The situation in which these relics stand is sufficient to add beauty to objects of less merit. They are placed, as I mentioned, on a cultivated rising ground, at the foot of the wild gray rocks which ran parallel to the former day's route, and which assume from this spot a more castellated appearance than when viewed from the road. On the other side a fine and boundless view opens into the great plain of Avignon and the Rhone, almost perplexing to the eye by its variety and number of objects: in which we distinguished Avignon itself, and Mont Ventou many leagues behind it, rising in height apparently undiminished, with light hazy clouds sailing along its middle, and backed by the wild Dauphiné mountains, near Château Grignan. We could also distinguish Beaucaire, Tarascon, and a large part of the former day's route, to the extreme left; and the right opened into various vistas of the hilly country which we had to cross in our road to Marseilles. The whole scene was lighted up and perfumed by the effects of the shower of rain which had fallen in the night, and without which a summer landscape in this country is a dusty mass oppressive to the eyes. The thyme and lavender on which we sat, and the mulberries and standard peaches which shaded us, seemed, as well as the vineyards, to be actually growing; and the catching lights were thrown in such a manner as to make every distant object successively distinct. After a couple of hours survey, we took leave of the ancient Glanum Livii, convinced that we had as yet seen nothing more perfect in its way than their tout ensemble, when combined with the surrounding scenery. [Footnote 46: Vide Cooke's Views.] To Orgon twelve miles: winding still round the base of the cluster of rocks which form the southern barrier of the vale of Avignon, and which assumed every variety of whimsical shape during our morning's route. At about a mile and a half from the conclusion of our stage, we joined the high road from Avignon to Marseilles, which renders the Hôtel de la Poste at Orgon, a good and well-accustomed inn. While we were at breakfast, a Soeur de la Charité called on us to beg for an hospital newly established, and in truth her request was but reasonable, for the town seems poor enough, and unequal to the maintenance of such an establishment. Several of the houses are well built, but wear a decayed appearance, as if they had seen much better days. Orgon still deserves notice from its beautiful situation, and from its having been the place where Buonaparte met with so narrow an escape from the fury of the inhabitants during his journey to Elba. "Vous allez sans doute voir la Pierre Percée," said every body at the inn, whom we interrogated as to what was best worth seeing in the compass of an hour's walk. To the Pierre Percée we went accordingly, and found it nothing but a common tunnel cut in a neighbouring rock, to draw off the waters of the Durance when swoln with avalanches, from the vale of Avignon, and supply a canal communicating with the Etang de Berre.[47] The summit of the rock affords by far the best view of Orgon, and one which seems expressly constructed for the purposes of landscape: nothing can group better together than an old ruined castle just above it, and a dilapidated convent on the summit of the hill, standing out in bold relief from the narrow vale of the Durance, up which we traced the course of our next stage; and the variety of exotic dwarf shrubs, which grew on the cliff where we were standing, gave great richness to the foreground. These, and the hedges of cypress and cane, which we occasionally saw, began to give an Italian character to this part of France. [Footnote 47: Vide Cooke's Views.] The adjoining part of the vale of the Durance is called the district of the Cheval Blanc, and, like its namesake, the vale of White Horse in Berks, is celebrated for its fertility. To Lambesc twelve miles. For six or seven miles the road follows the course of the Durance, which, to judge from the extent of its stony shoals, must be a tremendous stream at high water, and deserving the termagant appellations which Mad. de Sevigné bestowed upon it. The back of the rocks of Orgon, which we traversed during the first mile, and on which the convent stands, is very singular, and resembling more a mass of strange petrifactions than any regular stratum. At Senas, we saw the ruins of a handsome house belonging to a M. de B. to whom his property has been restored since the Revolution; but the gentleman was disgusted at the woods having been cut down and sent to Toulon for ship-building, and resides entirely at Aix. An English squire in M. de B.'s case would have rebuilt his ruined mansion, and raised a belt of young forest trees in a very few years. For some miles during this stage the face of the country was interesting and rich in cultivation, with a ruined castle or two, which form striking features; but on turning to the right up a long hill which led to Lambesc, and leaving the vale of the Durance behind us, backed by its high barrier of table-shaped mountains, the country became very monotonous. It is on a higher level, and though tolerably fertile, is deficient in verdure, the olive being almost the only tree met with. Lambesc, like Orgon, which it much exceeds in size, has an air of faded gentility and desertion, and its fine public fountains tell a tale of better days. In this town the states of Provence were convened annually in the reign of Louis XIV.; and it possessed also many of the privileges of a capital in the days of the counts of Provence, but at present it is celebrated for nothing but the growth of the best Provence oil. This is no small distinction in the _almanac des gourmands_, as there is no article in which it is so difficult to hit the critical taste of a Provençal. I have seen them often make hideous faces at the twang of oil which a Spaniard would abuse, and an Englishman admire, for its tastelessness. A Provençal lady, with the knowing air of a _bonne menagére_, told us, that no traveller could meet with really good oil, for that the ordinary sort which we ignorantly thought excellent, was made from heaps of olives laid to ferment in order to increase the quantity of produce. The best (which answers, I suppose, to the Cayenne pepper sent in presents) is made by the proprietors in small quantities for their own use, from the natural runnings of choice fresh-picked olives, like cold drawn castor oil, and has a greenish tinge; and this the good lady assured us was the only true thing. No more, when ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise; more particularly in matters relating to the palate. We walked to see the house where the Count de Grignan resided in state, during his official visits to Lambese: like many other dilapidated mansions in the place, it bears the marks of fallen greatness. There is a handsome stone gateway belonging to it, decorated with a carved coat of arms supported by lions; but the house, like the poor Palazzo Foscari at Venice, is tenanted only by a nest of squalid families. The Hôtel du Bras d'Or is a plain, comfortable country inn, civil and reasonable. CHAP. X. AIX--MARSEILLES. MAY 22.--To Aix sixteen miles. Though the country during the first part of the stage is hilly without any romantic character, and rather unpromising, the difference of climate was already apparent from the strong and brilliant colours of the very hedge flowers, of which we observed an endless variety. After passing St. Canat, the first post, the country improves a little, and the [48]mountain under which Aix is situated begins to thrust its lofty head above the intervening line of hills. In proceeding a little further, we caught a distant glimpse of the Etang de Berre to the west, and presently distinguished Aix in a deep vale under our feet, into which the descent is long and steep. A cart escorted by five gens d'armes, in which we saw a priest and another person quietly ensconced, and exposed to a burning sun, was toiling up the hill on a very different errand from ours. We were surprised to see a grave character in so equivocal a situation, but found on inquiry that he had benevolently offered his assistance in escorting a woman on her journey to Arles, where she was to be executed for a murder. The circumstances under which it had been committed, struck us as more atrocious than common. About seven years before, this person, in concert with her husband, who was since dead, invited an old lady, their friend and patroness, and godmother to one of their children, to walk and eat grapes in their vineyard. Watching their opportunity, they cut her throat, buried her on the spot, and possessed themselves of her property, with which they removed from the neighbourhood of Arles, where the murder was committed. [Footnote 48: According to Sanson's excellent Atlas, the French part of which was laid down from measurement, in the reign of Louis XIV., this mountain is the Mont St. Victoire, near which Marius gained his celebrated victory over the Cimbri. The field of battle is fixed by history as near Aquæ Sextiæ.--(_Aix_.)] Arles and its environs, it seems, are a sort of French Lancashire in point of brutal ferocity, and are celebrated for murders as much as for pork sausages; not that I mean to connect the two things together, as in the well-known nursery tale. The Hôtel des Princes at Aix is justly to be praised for cleanliness and excellent accommodations; but Madame Alary is too well aware of its merits to lose by them. It is somewhat ridiculous to pay, in this fine fruit country, three francs for a small coffee-saucer of marmalade, with which we were charged as a separate item in the breakfast; and those therefore who intend staying a couple of days at this inn, should make their bargain first. Mons. Gibelin, a physician residing in the Rue Italienne at Aix, possesses, and obligingly allows to be shown, some good pictures, including original portraits of Mad. de Sevigné and her daughter. Finding him from home, and the house shut up, we extended our walk further into the town, which, in point of airy streets and cleanliness, deserves to hold a very high rank indeed among French cities. The houses are generally stately, regular, and well built, and give you the idea both of former and of present gentility and opulence. It is in some degree cooled by several fine fountains, a circumstance of no small importance at this season of the year, for the effects of the "beau soleil de Provence" began to exceed even my recollections of Naples. Speaking merely at hazard on the subject, I should doubt whether any place in the south of France is better adapted for the cure of pulmonary complaints than Aix. It stands on the side of a rising ground, facing a delightfully well-watered and fertile valley to the south-west, and sheltered from the piercing winds, so prevalent in Provence at some seasons, by a mountainous barrier which rises to the north and north-east. Its situation is thus at once sheltered, airy, and cheerful, and does the greatest honour to the taste of King Réné[49] in selecting it for his capital. [Footnote 49: For an account of the curious ceremonies and processions instituted by this monarch, see Miss Plumptre, under the heads of "Leis Razcassetos," "Lou Juec des Diables," &c. I cannot say but that the enumeration reminds me of the merry court of Old King Cole, with his fiddlers three, his tailors three, and the long list of et ceteras detailed in the well-known song.] To Marseilles sixteen miles. At the end of a mile and a half, the road ascends a hill to the south, marked by a clump of stone pines, which commands the best view of Aix and its environs. The vale running up to the right under Mont St. Victoire deserves particular mention, as uniting the highest degree of beauty and verdure with a certain wildness of feature; and would give a fair idea of the best parts of Italian scenery to a person not desirous of crossing the Alps. After taking leave of this valley, which better deserves to be called the garden of Provence than any other district I have yet seen, the face of the country is less pleasing, but in some places more singular and original. The first few miles were dull enough, it is true; and to add to our pleasure intensely hot, and destitute of any sort of shade. It was therefore with no small satisfaction that we stopped for a few minutes under a grove of tall old trees which overshadowed the road, with a fountain spouting up in the midst, which completely altered the atmosphere. No palm island in the deserts of Arabia was ever more welcome than this cool spot, which belonged, we understood, to the adjoining Château Albertas. Whoever was the planner of it, he has discovered more true taste and gentlemanly feeling than if he had built the finest possible entrance or lodge as a mere tribute to self-love: and were pride alone consulted as a motive, nothing leaves so striking a recollection on the minds of strangers, or so strongly disposes them to inquire the name of the proprietor of a spot, as an elegant proof of attention to their convenience, like the one in question. Having traversed a second interval of dry parched country, we crossed another pleasant valley, in which is situated the Château Simiane. This seat, visible about a mile to the left, was the residence of Pauline de Grignan, wife of the Marquis de Simiane; who is said to have inherited much of the talent and liveliness of her grandmother and mother. Her verses beginning with "Lorsque j'étois encore cette jeune Pauline," &c. jesting on the annoyance of a lawsuit in which she had to defend her title to the Grignan estates, are still on record. After passing the Château Simiane, the country became wild and singular in parts. We particularly remarked a small village built round the base of one of those castellated rocks which abound in the neighbourhood of Beaucaire, as also a singular defile near the post-house of La Pin. The high gray rocks which inclose this spot appear as if seared to the quick with drought, and for some distance leave room only for the road and a narrow riband-shaped line of rich cultivated ground of a few yards in breadth; which is again succeeded by a small village, whose houses completely block up the defile. From this point you creep and wind gradually to the hill called La Viste, from which we were instructed to expect the most celebrated view of Marseilles. It fully equals all that can be said of it; and, though inferior to the bays of Naples and Genoa, possesses features which strongly remind one of both. On reaching a wood of stone pines on the summit of the hill, the bay of Marseilles bursts on you all at once, in an immense sheet of bright blue, studded with sunny islands, among which the Château d'If, a little spot fortified to the teeth, and commanding the entrance of the inner port, is most conspicuous. On advancing a little further, the shores of the bay are seen lengthening themselves into a half moon, one horn of which is formed by a line of mountains of no remarkable outline, and the other by a more lofty chain, communicating with Mont St. Baume and Mont Victoire, and the out-post of which is formed by a lofty and barren cape jutting into the sea at the back of Marseilles. The town itself possesses no remarkable feature from this point, except the fort of Notre Dame de la Garde, which crowns and commands it at the top of a lofty hill; but its environs, which rise in an amphitheatre from the sea to the adjoining mountains, are one perpetual succession of white villas, vineyards, orange, lemon and fruit-tree groves, and every thing in short which can enrich and enliven a prospect. Too much certainly is not said by the French of this celebrated Viste, which deserves at least a quarter of an hour's attention; and there are one or two decent cabarets on the top of it, the resort of the Marseillois for cool air and refreshment, where the horses can be baited while a survey or a sketch is taken. After the descent of this hill, nothing worth notice occurs, till you have passed a long and uninteresting suburb, and enter Marseilles by the Cours, the first effect of which is striking, as it runs in a straight line dividing the town into two parts. We turned off to the right, towards the stately quarter which Vernet has represented in his celebrated view from the inner harbour; and took up our abode at the Hôtel de Beauveau, which we found in every way deserving the rank which it holds among the number of excellent hotels in this place. We rose soon after day-light the next morning, to walk to the fort and signal post of Notre Dame de la Garde, the most conspicuous object in a distant view of Marseilles, and which we had observed rearing its flag-staff at the end of almost every vista of street, like the castle of St. Elmo at Naples. In our walk we picked up a species of locust, the sauterelle of this country, of a pale, dirty brown, and somewhat more than three inches in length. Thanks to the great cleanliness of the Hôtel de Beauveau, this was the first insect which we had as yet met with at Marseilles. In a climate, indeed, of a certain degree of heat, perpetual scouring and sweeping becomes absolutely necessary in all comfortable establishments, and these little evils are more completely eradicated than in those places where they are less natural. The simple precaution of shutting the windows before candles are brought, is commonly sufficient to keep off the mosquitos; and as for the scorpions, this formidable bug-bear exists only in the imaginations of travelling ladies, in glass jars at apothecaries' shops, and occasionally in the poorer houses of the old town, where the dirt and rubbish afford it a shelter. On ascending the hill of Notre Dame de la Garde, we found reason to approve our choice of it as a point of general survey. It commands not only the whole bay, but also the flat space of land encircled by mountains, in which Marseilles is enclosed as between hot walls, and the town itself lies like a map under it. As a point, however, for a general sketch, I should prefer the island of Ratoneau, which possesses sufficient elevation for all purposes of the picturesque, and brings in the sea and the Château d'If as a front ground, grouping at the same time the masses of building of Marseilles better than a mere bird's eye view would do. The chapel of this fort, like that of Notre Dame de Fourvières at Lyons, possesses a great reputation for sanctity, and much resembles it also in its steep ascent, which one would suppose that some austere monk had in both cases contrived as a penance to short breathed devotees. The same hosts of beggars also besiege both places, of all ranks and pretensions, from those who stand silent in a white sheet for drapery, to those who obstreperously exhibit their want of any drapery at all. The chapel is hung with little pictures, dedicated to the Virgin by the honest sailors and peasants, and representing different providential escapes: the wretched daubing of which is somewhat atoned for by the good feeling which placed them there. One of them represents the Virgin appearing to a ship in a storm, with a visage and demeanor which might as well accompany a flying mermaid; another describes a man run over by a cart, and preserved unhurt by a similar interference; a third, the recovery from a sick bed, and the joy of the friends on the occasion, whose countenances not a little reminded us of our grim friends Damon and Holofernes. Some offerings of a better and richer description were pillaged at the time of the Revolution. We descended from this airy situation down a range of streets as precipitous as the roof of a house, the slope of which probably counteracts the effect of heat, and prevents the stagnation of air in the crowded situations of the old town: Marseilles is said to be healthy in consequence; and the generally active and fine appearance of its population confirms it. The heat, however, to judge from a comparison with Naples at the hottest season of the year, must be tremendous. It struck on us at nine in the morning, on re-entering the town, like the air from the mouth of an oven; and the herds of poor goats who compose the walking dairies of Marseilles and the environs, dead asleep on the trottoirs, formed, with a few strolling Turks, almost all the out-of-doors population in the principal streets. We had no objection whatever to imitate the general practice, and to sit still in a cool room for the rest of the morning, reserving ourselves for an evening's walk on the quay. I have as yet seen no place where a promenade of this sort is so fraught with little circumstances of amusement, or where such a variety of different ideas can be taken in by the eyes alone. "Greeks, Romans, Yankeedoodles, and Hindoos," and more nations than could be described in a whole stanza of names, may be found clustering in knots, or lounging under the awnings of their different coffee-houses; while new detachments of fresh-men are seen continually landing, with lank staring quarantine faces, and elbowed in every direction by the busy Marseillois, whose curiosity is too much deadened by continual importations, to be excited by the newest or strangest costume. In short, the memorable political masquerade which was got up so awkwardly by Anacharsis Clootz and his friends from the Fauxbourg St. Antoine, might here be represented almost every day in the week by real and genuine actors, in every possible variety. May 24.--I cannot say much for the old cathedral; and as far as I can collect from the conversation of a scientific Englishman, who has dropt his watch into one of the boiling vats, while minuting some process, the great soap manufactory of this place offers nothing very different from other places of the same sort. Our morning's walk was therefore confined principally to the Cours, the shade of whose spreading trees, and the profusion of fine bouquets and cheerful faces in the flower-market at one end of it, render it a most agreeable promenade. The pleasure of lounging, which in the spirit-stirring climate, and among the busy faces of England is the offspring of conceit, becomes in such places as this, and to an unoccupied person, a real and physical satisfaction, and we much preferred it to the lions of Marseilles, which are not many. In the evening we explored the western side of the bay, and the low reef of rocks opposite to the Lazaretto, which may someday or other be known by the name of Alfieri's[50] seat, as he has described it in his life with sufficient accuracy to mark the spot. It commands one of the best and most cheerful views of Marseilles, including several features of the prospect afforded from the Viste, but of course on a lower elevation. [Footnote 50: Vide Cooke's Views.] CHAP. XI. OLLIOULES--TOULON. MAY 23.--From Marseilles to Cujes twenty-four miles. From the views which we had from the Viste and Notre Dame de la Garde, we were prepared to expect much from the nearer acquaintance with the environs of Marseilles, which the first seven or eight miles would afford us. In this case, however, as in Campbell's mountain, "'Twas distance lent enchantment to the View;" for that which as a distant whole presented a scene of the highest beauty, and the richest cultivation, was nothing better in detail than a drive between stone walls. I have always thought that the ostentation of riches, or of those things which they will procure, was not a subject of vanity so common in France as in England; but there is a medium in all things, and it would be as well if the Marseillois and their countrymen of Lyons, had a little of that social and respectable pride, which induces every cit of Hampstead or Clapham to set off his little box to the best advantage. They seem to prefer the philosophical sulkiness which Shakspeare's Iden describes himself as enjoying between four garden walls.[51] On passing Aubagne, however, the valley of Gemenos makes ample amends to the eye, uniting the verdure and wild character of a Swiss vale, to the rich productions of Provence. After about three miles, the road narrows to a mere cleft in the hills, which we threaded for several miles, emerging at last upon the green bason of ground on which Cujes stands. Here, for the first time, we saw capers, with a profusion of every sort of esculent vegetable, which the inhabitants cultivate with great assiduity, losing not an inch of ground. To such a pitch, indeed, does their laudable economy proceed, that every inhabitant of Cujes keeps a pet dunghill before his house, fearing no doubt to lose sight of it; and in this wilderness of sweets the good women sat basking and gossiping with great satisfaction. [Footnote 51: See Second Part of Henry VI. Act 4.] At Cujes we breakfasted in the same salle-à-manger with an agreeable old Marseillois and his wife, who confirmed Peyrol's account of the bloody revolutionary committee at Orange, and added circumstances which, at this distance of time, seemed still fresh in their minds. The latter had been confined four months in the prison at L'Isle, near Avignon, from which detachments of persons were daily sent to be tried at Orange, none of whom returned. Among the sufferers were a Mad. Vidou, a superannuated widow of ninety, who was guillotined in company with her son, an amiable and respectable man, and was unconscious of her fate till the last. Forty nuns of the convent of Bollene were also among the prisoners, accused of a plot to bring about a counter-revolution, and four had been already guillotined on this charge when the fall of Robespierre took place. Three of this lady's friends had been reported as emigrants, and lost their property, merely from not having been at home when the commissaires made their visit. The wife of one of these offered to recall him in ten minutes, if necessary: "Non, Citoyenne, c'est egal;" and he was accordingly enrolled and treated as an emigrant, though he never had been absent a single day from his home. In a nation where almost every person of a certain age has such incidents as these burnt into his recollection, it is not wonderful that the general character should somewhat alter, and that the lively thoughtless Frenchmen of Sterne should become nearly an obsolete race. It may be perhaps a fanciful idea to trace to the same source the nature of a Frenchman's vanity, which has generally more reference to mental qualities, than to those goods of which fortune or the will of a despot may deprive him in an instant. "Bene vixit qui bene latuit" should seem the motto of the bulk of the nation. The first part of the road from Cujes to Toulon traverses great inequalities of ground, affording very odd bird's eye glimpses of the sea through little chasms in the line of cliffs to the right. Beausset, through which we passed, is as filthy a town as Cujes, and the country as beautifully cultivated, and as rich in flowers, fruit, and corn; it is difficult, indeed, to find animal and vegetable nature more strongly contrasted. If I may be allowed to parody the words of a noble poet-- "They are brown as the dunghills whereon they decline, "And all, save the dwelling of man, is divine." About three miles from Beausset, the road inclines towards a barrier of high and nearly perpendicular rock to the right, which it appeared impossible either to penetrate or ascend. A large string of mules, however, which met us from Toulon, loaded with barilla for the great glass works at Beausset, showed us that the one or the other was practicable, and on advancing a little farther, we distinguished the chasm through which the road to Toulon is conducted, surmounted by the black ruins of an old castle to the left. On the right of the road in this place, a singular cluster of conical rocks occurs, which, both from their form and position, seem exactly like a heap of gigantic shells, piled up to batter the old ruin on the opposite cliff. Their appearance was that of a mass of large pebbles, held together by indurated clay; but as each probably weighed some scores of tons, it was impracticable to bring away one as a geological specimen; nor would such specimen give a more accurate idea of the singular and wild effect of the whole mass, than a single corner stone of the Colosseum would of the grandeur of the whole amphitheatre. The country name of the castle is Château Negro, as we understood from some gens d'armes whom we met in the pass; and the houses adjoining it, which seem actually overhanging the perpendicular edge of the rock, belong to the ancient bourg of Emenos. Nothing, one would suppose, but the overruling motive of security, ever could have induced human beings to take up their abode in such an eagle's nest as this, and its date is therefore probably as ancient as it professes to be. In days of old, the castle must have been completely the key of the pass, many hundred yards of which would have been exposed to stones and arrow-shot from it. A turn to the right conducted us into the heart of the Val d'Ollioules, as this mountain chasm is called, which is somewhat on the scale of the celebrated pass of Pont Aberglasllyn in Wales, but far exceeds it in striking effect. A dreary whiteness, unrelieved by hardly a single blade of vegetation, covers the whole, as if it had been recently cleft by a volcanic eruption, and had as yet had no time to smooth down the sharpness of its original fissure; and nothing occurs to break the silence, except the trickling of a narrow brook, which just finds room to creep along the side of the road, the distant bleating of numberless adventurous goats, climbing over head from the mere love of peril, and the occasional echo of large stones disengaged by their leaps. One of these, of a size which would have shattered the carriage to pieces, came whirling and crashing down just in the direction which it had quitted. The whole spot, in short, is such as Tasso might have imagined to be the scene of Ismeno's incantation, and the congress of devils whom he convoked; and at a sudden turn of the road, the Château Negro peeps from between the opposite heights in such a new and striking position, as to seem, without much stretch of imagination, the abode of the wizard himself. After threading all the sharp angles of this savage pass, some of which are chiseled out to admit the road, the eye is at length relieved by a vista of sky, and the sight of the little town of Ollioules close at hand, sheltered in a grove of orange trees and olives, and just filling up the entrance of the pass. The view is completed by some singular gothic ruins to the right, and by the town of Six Fours in the distance, which is situated on such a commanding conical hill, that we mistook it for the citadel of Toulon. On emerging from the pass, we turned abruptly to the left, pursuing our route along the foot of the mountain barrier through whose bowels we had just penetrated, and which acts on the climate and productions of Toulon like a high south wall. Some corn was already reaped at Ollioules; and it may be said almost without exaggeration, that the two last miles of the road make a difference of at least a degree in latitude, if one could be allowed to judge by one's feelings. There is nothing remarkable in the situation of Toulon itself, which is flat and uninteresting; but the shores of the bay possess great beauty and variety, and the mountains which overhang the town are very bold in their outline. The bastides of the wealthy inhabitants are sprinkled along the foot and sides of this abrupt range, overlooking extensive views of the bay and its vicinity, and disposed with better taste and less encumbered with walls than those in the neighbourhood of Marseilles. Instead of a multitude of white spots, vying in numbers with the trees which surround them, the mansions of the Toulonais are placed just thickly enough to agreeably enliven the woods, pleasure grounds, and vineyards from which they peep at scattered and irregular distances. We found ourselves well accommodated at the Croix de Malte, situated in one of the best parts of the town, which although airy, neat, and well watered by little streams conducted through the streets, possesses no building or feature worth recollection, save its strong and regular fortifications. May 26.--A morning of very pleasant lounging, without any particular object. We rose at five, and not obtaining admission to the platform of the Fort du Malgue, walked about on the heights near it, which are situated on the south-east of the town, and form one of the best panoramic points in its vicinity. The mountain cape to the south, under which the entrance to the harbour winds, the distant islands of Hieres, and in a different direction, the town of Six Fours, are striking objects from this place. There is certainly more local propriety in this latter name, than in its more classical and ancient appellation, Sextii Forum, from which it has probably been corrupted in the derivation by some wag, for no one would suppose that such a situation afforded room to heat more than six ovens, or indeed bread to fill even one. The town of Hieres, seen at a distance in a contrary direction, appears to much more advantage. The nature of its soil is said to be peculiarly favourable to the growth of the orange and lemon trees, for which it is celebrated, but the climate can hardly exceed that of Toulon in mildness. We were particularly struck with the softness of the sea breeze during this morning's walk, and the vivid verdure of every thing around us, contrasting strongly with the dry and naturally sterile character of the immediate neighbourhood of Marseilles. The vegetable productions of the latter place seem wrung by the hand of industry from a rocky and hide-bound soil, whereas a walk near Toulon almost realizes the ideas of some favoured green spot in a tropical climate, where the sun has both soil and moisture to act upon. The pleasure of sitting down upon cushions of lavender and other aromatic plants, under myrtle hedges in flower, of gathering capers in their natural state, and tracing the most curious and rich varieties of our own wild and garden flowers, amid the infinite profusion of others which we could not name, may seem trifling to a scientific botanist, but is no small addition to the morning's walk of a plain traveller. A visit to the Jardin des Plantes will complete the illusion to the most critical eye: and the lovers of romance may fancy themselves at once in Juan Fernandez, or in the Isle of France, as they walk in the open air, under the shade of palm-trees, and seeing tea, coffee, guava fruit, and a hundred other exotic luxuries, growing in their natural state. This establishment, which we visited in the course of the day, appears a favourite walk of the inhabitants of Toulon, and is conducted in a manner which reflects the highest credit on their taste and liberality. The system of irrigation is well contrived, and the whole, from its variety and extent, interesting to the commonest observer. We were unsuccessful in our attempts to see the arsenal, the object best worth attention in Toulon; as it is open to none but naval officers, the very class of men, one would suppose, whose prying eyes it would be least desirable to admit. The young officer at the gate, however, was very pleasant and communicative, and conversed with us in excellent English; a language which he had partly acquired as a prisoner during the war, and partly by his education at the Marine School of this place, where our language is one of the first things taught. An inveterate John Bull might remark, "Ay, these fellows know they are sure to be made prisoners, if they fight with us; and that is the reason they take this precaution." Our English pride was certainly gratified this evening, but it was by the voluntary civility which we experienced during our walk from this young man and several others who had been prisoners in our country. It is peculiarly pleasing to find those who visited England under circumstances commonly the most unfavourable, expressing grateful recollections of their treatment, and ready to acknowledge them by little attentions. We found, indeed, nothing but friendly faces among that very class of people of whom we should have been most shy of making inquiries, and at the very place where we should have expected them to excite the least pleasant recollections. Two marines accosted us on the quay, to point out a sand-bank which the English had attempted to cut through during the siege of Toulon, in order to facilitate the entrance into the harbour; and on our inquiry whether they had penetrated as far as a station where we saw a 140 gun ship and some others laid up, they answered with a laugh, "Ah oui, Messieurs, ils étoient là, et encore plus loin, je vous en reponds." It were to be wished on many accounts, that the French government would keep their galley-slaves as much out of sight as they do their arsenal. Under the ancient regime, these unfortunate creatures were only employed in the works of the latter place, which they never left; but under the present system, those only who are condemned for life are so treated, and the rest are employed in different parts of the port, where they perform the work of horses, in the most public manner, chained by the leg in pairs. Some were drawing timber, and stone carts; and others, rather more favoured, were laying the pavement of the pier, with a single heavy iron link on one leg. How far economy may justify this arrangement, or whether the exposure of incorrigible offenders may answer as a public example, it is not for a mere visitor to determine; but certainly a plan more adapted to deaden and sear the sense of shame which may still remain in them, and brutalize their minds by constant irritation, can hardly be devised. The mildness and temper with which the guard and superintendants appear to behave is not likely to counteract sufficiently the effect of the constant gaze of passengers, a circumstance which to judge by one's own sensations must tend to stifle those feelings of repentance which solitary confinement naturally induces, and harden every manly particle of the mind into rebellion. It is hard to reproach them with the natural effects of this rough mode of regeneration; but I think I never saw a worse or more obdurate set of countenances. One fellow in particular, when civilly directed by the overseer to change the position of a stone, gave him a look of deadly malignity when his back was turned, which reminded me strongly of the look of Kemble in Zanga, while pronouncing the emphatic "Indeed!" Strange as it may appear, we were informed that there were several colonels, generals, priests, and men who could afford to spend 300 francs a day, among this body. These contrive, it seems, by bribery, to procure more variety of food than the bread, soup, and vegetables, which are the regular allowance; and are permitted to purchase better linen than the ordinary convicts; but the dress and regulations are to outward appearance the same in all. Those condemned for military insubordination are marked by a bullet round their necks, and the convicts cast for life by a green cap. The individuals whose term of confinement is nearly expired wear only an iron ring round the ankle, as it is presumed they will not incur the penalty of fifty blows and three years additional confinement by an attempt to escape: there are others, however, sentenced for five, ten, fifteen, or twenty years, and these are heavily ironed and more strictly watched. A detachment of the celebrated Thibet goats, who are to make the fortune of the French shawl-manufacturers, is now in harbour, and others are performing quarantine at Marseilles. The specimen of their fleece which was shown us, resembles the coat of the musk ox. The wool of which the shawls are made grows at the roots of the longer hair, and is of a warm and delicately fine texture; a circumstance which should seem to prove these animals natives of the cold and mountainous districts of Thibet, and capable by dint of British skill and enterprise, of being naturalized in our own country. CHAP. XII. FREJUS--CANNES--ISLE OF ST. MARGUERITE--ANTIBES. MAY 27.--From Toulon to Puget les Crottes, 23 miles. On passing the small town of La Valette, from which the road to Hieres diverges, the mountain barrier under which Toulon is situated ends abruptly in a precipice, fortified by a strong redoubt. From this spot a detachment of the combined forces were driven by the republicans, who scaled the rock during the night at the most imminent risk; and the evacuation of Toulon was the ultimate consequence of this daring coup de main, in which Buonaparte is said to have first distinguished himself. After passing this point, and leaving on the right the distant hills of Hieres, no remarkable feature presents itself. The country is chiefly an extensive olive forest, varied by a few vineyards, and enlivened by hedges of pomegranate, and Spanish broom. We found Puget les Crottes but a bad exchange for the fountains, and clean airy streets of Toulon: and it better deserves the name of Puget le Crotté, by which it is laid down by some mistake in some maps. The inn was perfectly worthy of the place; a frowzy kennel of bustling Yahoos, totally deficient in that readiness and attention which can put a reasonable traveller in good humour with the worst accommodations. Our servant fought his way to the kitchen fire to execute our orders; finding them neither attended to by the old dame who presided in the kitchen, of whom Gil Blas's Leonarda was a faint type, nor by the maid who screamed rejoinders at the top of the stairs, to the ravings of her mistress at the bottom, in a tone that deafened us. The arrival of the Draguignan diligence, which we had passed on the road, heavily laden with money and passengers, and travelling at a foot pace, escorted like a condemned cart by two gens d'armes, accounted for this mighty sensation. We were glad enough to escape from the din of tongues and the steams of garlic, and resume our road, which did not offer any variety, till we had nearly reached La Luc, 17 miles from Puget, whose situation and red sandy soil reminded us of a Herefordshire glen. The junction of two main roads has created a tolerable inn at this small place, which may with safety be recommended to persons on an abstemious regimen, and to none else. May 28.--To La Muy 19 miles, without any remarkable feature, though the character of the country is rather pleasing. La Muy is a wretched village, whose _tout ensemble_ is completed by a ruinous house of the Count de Muy: this, as well as his castle at Grignan, was destroyed in the Revolution, and the annexed property alienated from him. To Frejus 12 miles: the few last of which improve as to scenery. We saw cork trees for the first time, and a profusion of myrtle in hedges and bushes. There is something peculiarly stagnant and wo-begone in the appearance of Frejus, which, however, is in more strict poetical character with its Roman ruins, than the populous and wealthy streets of Nismes would be. The inn where we dined and slept preserved the same character most rigidly; indeed, Madame, whose ideas seemed perfectly in unison with those of mine hostess of La Luc, wished apparently that our feast at Forum Julii should be entirely intellectual, and that we should rise from dinner with unclouded heads, to enjoy a walk among its antiquities. We were really diverted by the formal parsimony with which the good woman had contrived to invent a dinner for four, out of what would have hardly have sufficed as a whet to an English farmer. Were I blest with the culinary accuracy of the facetious Christopher North, or his friend Dr. Morris, I could better record a bill of fare which would form a complete contrast to the vaunted luxuries of their inspiring deity, Mr. Oman of Edinburgh. Suffice it, as a specimen, that three pettitoes of an unfortunate roasting-pig, or rather pigling, which I fear must have died a natural death, formed the most substantial part of our repast. The amphitheatre of Frejus, to pass to a more dignified subject, is situated without the walls of the town, on the side by which we had entered from Toulon; and is sufficiently perfect to be interesting, though it must suffer by a comparison with the better known, and finer specimens of the same sort which exist. There is also a temple, and an arch, the latter known by the name of the Porte Dorée, neither of which possesses any thing remarkable when compared with the ruins of Nismes and Orange. The aqueduct built by Vespasian, and situated to the north-east of the town, is on a more extensive scale, and taken with its concomitants, better merits the attention of a painter: even when viewed from under the walls of Frejus, which it adjoins at one end, it possesses as sombre a character of repose as Poussin could have wished, and which is unbroken by the intervention of mean houses, and busy figures. Its scattered groupes recede from the eye up a solitary valley, interspersed with clumps of olive trees, and backed by pine forests, and the foreground derives a degree of wildness from the profusion of Spanish broom of an unusual size and beauty, with which its scattered blocks are fringed. We walked also to the small village of St. Raphael, a mile or two from the town, which is the modern port of Frejus, and stands in what was formerly the main sea; while the Pharos which marked the entrance of the ancient harbour is now surrounded by an alluvial meadow, and in place of the numerous vessels which must have crowded the ancient quay, a brig, and two or three feluccas, were quietly at anchor. A change like this, of the very soil, and local features, speaks more strongly to the imagination than the most mighty and extensive ruins. 29th.--We rose at a very early hour to pursue our route, ----for our sleep Was airy light, from pure digestion bred, And temperate vapours bland, thanks to the precautions of mine hostess of the Chapeau Rouge: the first part of our road lay almost parallel with the line of ruins, marking the course of the aqueduct, and afforded a more just idea of its extent and size than the view which we had taken before. To judge from the scattered groupes of arches, it must have extended as far as the hills bounding the bay of Napoule, up whose sides we began to wind, at the distance of about two miles from Frejus, and continued to ascend for six more. This morning's drive was agreeable enough from its novelty, so little reminding us of the usual features of France. The bold and sombre character of its fine woods, undiversified save by an occasional patch of cultivation, or a solitary hut, and swept by bodies of clouds in their progress from the Mediterranean, reminded us more of the descriptions of Norwegian forests, and of the mountains haunted by the Wild Huntsman, than of Provençal scenery. The enormous extent of these forests has not, as may well be supposed, improved the state of society. About fifteen years ago a banditti, composed of deserters, and of the peasantry of the country, and regularly organized, held them for a length of time, and defied the efforts of a numerous body of gend'armerie sent to subdue them. We observed also the traces of a wider spread conflagration, which we understood to have caused damage to the amount of a million of francs, and the perpetrators of which had equally escaped detection: it had made but a small comparative gap in these immense tracts of wood. Soon after passing the post-house of Estrelles, situated on the summit of the mountain, the view which opens on the other side becomes strikingly fine, and extensive. The shores of the bay of Napoule, beautifully wooded and interspersed with white villas, lie under foot in a complete bird's-eye view, backed by the sweeping mountains of the neighbourhood of Grasse, and terminated by the cape where Antibes stands. Farther still the back-ground is surmounted by the colossal groups of the Maritime Alps. The descent from this hill to level ground is about seven miles of road as excellent as the former part of the stage; the whole having been very much improved by Buonaparte; and although the distance from Frejus to Cannes cannot be less than twenty-eight miles, it appears to occupy a shorter space of time than many much shorter stages. A nearer approach to Cannes in no way disappointed us: the bay of Napoule, in the centre of which it is situated, presents, in different points of view, every variety of Italian scenery; and there may be conjectures less probable than that it was called originally by mariners the bay of Napoli, from some fancied likeness. To the latter celebrated spot it bears somewhat of a resemblance, but a stronger still to the Porto Venere, or bay of Spezia, both in the wilder and the softer part of its features; and the illusion is kept up by the grouping and form of the houses, and the Italian patois of the inhabitants, who are mostly a colony of Genoese fishermen. Nor ought the Hôtel des Trois Pigeons to be forgotten, though its cleanliness and comfort, and the cheerful alacrity of its inmates, remind the traveller more of some quiet country inn on the Devon or Somerset coast, than of any thing Italian or French. It stands on a little rock just out of the town, looking on the sea, and facing the island of St. Marguerite; and there is perhaps no scene in which more historical recollections are combined under one point of view, than that which its windows command. The island, whose garrison and buildings are distinguishable by the naked eye, was for many years the prison of the mysterious Masque de Fer, whose identity, like that of Junius, has hitherto baffled conjecture. In the room where we were sitting Murat passed some of the time intervening between his expulsion from Naples, and the crisis of his fate; and on the sands about half a mile to the left, is the spot where Buonaparte first landed from Elba, and bivouacked during the night, surrounded by numbers whom curiosity had drawn out of the town to behold him. There is perhaps something characteristic of the different fortunes of this singular man, in the place from which he had embarked for Elba a year before, and in that where he first set foot on his return, full of hope and confidence. The former was Frejus, a place dreary and comfortless, surrounded by memorials of departed greatness, shrunk within a small part of its former limits, and deserted by the very sea, and it might have been mercifully chosen on purpose as the scene of his exit, in order to blunt his regret at leaving France. The latter was Cannes, a place,[52] as I have fully described it, full of cheerfulness, beauty, and rich distant prospects, corresponding almost in brilliancy to those which his mind was forming at the time. [Footnote 52: Vide Cooke's Views.] Far different must have been the feelings of Murat during the anxious interval of forced leisure which he spent at this place; and I will confess, that while listening to the landlord's simple account of the manner in which he passed his time, we forgot the massacre of Madrid in the well-known anecdote of the drowning officer's rescue. During the first eight days he remained shut up in the bed-room or sitting-room which we occupied, in expectation of despatches from Buonaparte, to whom he wrote on his arrival at Cannes. At the end of this time, having received no answer, he used to beguile his impatience by rambling on the sea shore, or watching the sports of the peasants, till at length, evidently heart-sick and desperate, he set out for Toulon on the rash expedition which closed his career. "Toujours, toujours, il avoit la mine triste.--Ah! si vous l'aviez connu, vous auriez pleuré son sort--il étoit un si bel homme!--d'une taille superbe!" said our honest host, whose knowledge of Murat was probably confined to his soldier-like figure, and his desolate state: he could have been no judge of the small extent of Buonaparte's obligations to his brother-in-law, whose former defection was but repaid in kind. He pointed out a green spot under the walls of an old castle which overlooked the inn, where he had frequently observed Murat lying with his face concealed in his hands, or in his more cheerful moments, watching the dances of the country people who resorted thither, and whose sports seemed to interest him considerably. It would be a task for the hand of a master poet or painter, to describe an ambitious and desperate man, softened for a time by disappointment, overleaping in thought the immeasurable distance between his present and his former self, and contemplating the sports of his youth with a sort of melancholy pleasure, yet under the influence of the strong fatality which hurried him to his end. It is by mixing somewhat of this feeling in the character of Macbeth, that Shakspeare has excited a momentary interest even for a murderer and usurper, who perceives "his life fallen into the sere and yellow leaf," and pauses for a moment in melancholy reflection as he rushes to "die with harness on his back." "Out, out, brief, candle," &c. Having spent an hour among the sunny basking places which abound in the rocks of this place, we hired a fishing-boat to convey us to the island of St. Marguerite. It was impossible to help being diverted by the uncouth appearance of our new conductors, which was two or three degrees wilder than that of poor Murat's amphibious subjects: one fellow in particular, was "A man, Cast in the roughest mould Dame Nature boasts, With back much broader than a dripping pan, And legs as thick about the calves as posts,"[53] or indeed thicker, and tanned a bright copper colour by sun and salt water; his broad face grinning with good humour, from beneath a mane as shaggy as a lion's. It may be supposed that two or three such rowers, proud of the new honour of officiating in a pleasure-boat, got us on more quickly than the less athletic boatmen of show lakes, and we soon landed at the small fort which was the object of our pursuit, and which the commandant politely allowed us to explore. At its eastern extremity is situated a guard-house, a chamber of which on the ground floor served as the prison of the mysterious captive; it is airy and commodious enough, in comparison with places of the sort in general; but the height of its only window, strengthened by treble bars from the sea, and the perpendicular cliff which it overhangs, with the dangerous breach under it, are sufficient protections against any escape. For the last five years no persons have been confined in this fort, which was formerly used exclusively as a state prison, but in the Revolution its benefits were extended to persons of all ranks. Restraint, indeed, is not at present the order of the day within its precincts, to judge from appearances. The soldiers seemed to have little or nothing to do, but to flirt with two or three gaudily-dressed negresses, who showed their white teeth and their black muzzles from the doors of the casernes, and to laugh at the chaplain of the garrison, for such I conclude was the grade of the old priest, who met us, toddling about in a state of drunken fatuity, very much resembling the condition of Obadiah in the Committee, with a nose exhibiting the visible effects of a fight or a fall. Having escaped at last from the good man's persecuting attentions, we got back to Cannes in time to make a sketch from the precise spot where Buonaparte landed.[54] [Footnote 53: See Colman.] [Footnote 54: Vide Cooke's Views.] May 30.--From Cannes to Antibes eleven miles; a pleasant drive, chiefly running close to the sea. Though considerably flattered in Vernet's beautiful picture at the Louvre, Antibes, nevertheless, leaves a pleasing impression on the mind, from its airy, well-frequented, prosperous appearance, and the bustle arising from the presence of a garrison. Its inner harbour, and the neck of land which defends it, terminated by a little picturesque fort, seem beautifully constructed by nature for their respective purposes; but I do not know of any thing else meriting notice. CHAP. XIII. NICE--COL DE TENDE--CONCLUSION. FROM Antibes to Nice, sixteen miles, along a beautiful sweep of coast, the whole extent of which, crowned by the gigantic chain of Maritime Alps, lies in full view for the whole way. No sketch, much less any description, can give an idea of the combined effect of this extensive bay, or the air of cheerfulness spread over the whole; among all the celebrated first views of Italy, there are probably few which speak to the imagination in a more imposing as well as pleasing manner. We crossed the frontier by a long wooden bridge over the Var, a broad, wild stream, roaring down with violence after the storm of the preceding night. We were immediately struck with the different culture of the vines, festooning as near Naples, over the other trees, in a manner more picturesque than useful. The straw hats of the Nissardes, also resembling an inverted wicker corn basket, gave quite a new and laughable character to the human apex. Such little novelties as this, which would excite no more attention in a professed book of costumes, than a view into an old fancy clothes shop, are nevertheless recollected with interest when seen in travelling, as connected with particular trains of thought or association, which they preserve fresh in the mind; and to forget these extraordinary potlids of straw, and the fanciful little red toques occasionally substituted for them, would be to forget an important feature of the Italian frontier. Much as I had heard of Nice, I was not disappointed either in the first view, or in the nearer survey of it. The situation of its ruined citadel on a commanding and insulated rock, and its narrow valley of almost tropical richness, surrounded by tier above tier of mountains, and studded with villas and orange-groves, present every variety of beauty; and there is a stateliness of proportion, and a careless elegance in its white houses, and an airiness in their situation, which very much remind the eye of the best parts of Naples near the Chiaja and Villa Real. The first glance of Nice, in short, bespeaks a higher and more fashionable tone of society than that of any French town, excepting Paris, through which we had passed. It is impossible, nevertheless, for a person looking beyond the mere amusement of the moment, to banish a certain train of morbid ideas which connect themselves with the sight of this beautiful town. There are few persons perhaps moving in good English society, whose ears do not familiarly recognise the hopeless phrase of "being sent to die at Nice," and many have watched the departure of the wrecks of what was once health, strength, and beauty, consigned to this painted sepulchre with the certainty of never returning from it. Thus the very efficacy of the air of Nice, which has brought it into vogue when all other resources have failed, has inseparably connected it in the mind with despondency and decay. If such ideas occurred to us, they were certainly not removed by the sight of a funeral which past the windows of the inn, within an hour or two after our arrival; the corpse laid on an open bier, the hands crossed, and ornamented with flowers, and the monks and attendants all joining in a solemn chant. A bell was also tolling in another quarter, the signal that a man just condemned to the galleys was passing in procession through the town, as is customary. "But let the stricken deer go weep, The hart ungalled play." The English dance and dress during an assize week, and the lively Nissards, more naturally still, enjoy their fine climate, and elegant town, without entering into the gloomy reflections which haunt the mind of an Englishman on his arrival. The cafés and public walks were swarming with company, and the whole place appeared to take its tone of gaiety from the gaudy young officers, whose troops were quartered in the extensive barracks; the peasants were dancing their grand round on the quay, or fighting between jest and earnest with open hands; the native dandies managed their green fans with the same adroitness as their fair companions; the shops displayed every luxury and accommodation; and every thing, in short, savoured of the habits of a continental Cheltenham. The Hôtel des Étrangers, where we established ourselves, is somewhat high in its charges, but proportionably good, and possesses a delightful garden of orange-trees adjoining. After being kept awake by mosquitos, which seem more prevalent than at Marseilles, and whose little angry note of preparation had apprized us of an attack, we walked in the morning to the citadel hill, whose solid masses of ruin had attracted our notice on the first view of the town. This point affords the best general idea of Nice and its vicinity, though in the month of May, it is not attained without a roasting walk. The heat indeed was tremendous, as may be expected in a triangular tongue of land only a few miles in extent, and encircled by lofty mountains; and the mildness of the climate in winter, as we were informed, bears a full proportion to its oppressiveness in summer. Green peas are to be had all the year: mulberries and gourds were already ripe, and every garden was a wood of the finest orange and lemon-trees loaded with ripe fruit. The thermometer too is seldom or never lower than 55 in the depth of winter. At the foot of the citadel hill is a road blasted out of the solid rock, running along the edge of the sea, and connecting Nice with its port; along which we walked towards the afternoon. I should be inclined to remark this spot, near which is an esplanade of good houses, as the most sheltered and desirable quarter of Nice. The breeze, which had begun to freshen, was just perceptible where we stood, though its effects in the open sea were visible by the plunging of the waves under our feet; and it appears hardly possible for any but a south or south-west wind to get at this point. Whether or not the part of Nice north of the citadel be equally calculated for an invalid, I should doubt. The mountain gully running up towards Escarene may possibly bring down searching winds from the north-east; and on the whole the marine esplanade seems to afford a situation cooler in summer, and warmer in winter, than the interior of the town. Such as are tolerably active pedestrians will find themselves well repaid for an evening's toilsome walk to the height which divides Nice from Ville Franche, and whose situation is marked by a small fort.[55] [Footnote 55: Vide Cooke's Views.] From hence the view to the west is very wide, including nearly the route of the two preceding days. Towards the east it is less extensive, but more striking. The town of Ville Franche, and the beautiful little basin which forms its port, appear as completely under the feet, as if you could leap over them to the opposite side of the water; and the headland between that town and Monaco, up and down which the road to Savona is seen meandering, is more boldly defined and on a larger scale than that of Lulworth Cove, and though strongly resembling it possesses greater beauty and variety. One of Buonaparte's projects was to render the Corniche, as this giddy track is expressively called, practicable for carriages; but the Sardinian government, instead of completing, have defaced (as we heard, out of jealousy) the part which he had begun: this is, I think, rather too absurd for belief. It is at the same time probable enough, that the undertaking has been abandoned for want of adequate funds. We were lighted homewards by myriads of fire-flies, a circumstance which produces on a person unaccustomed to the sight, a more novel and brilliant effect than any other accompaniment of an Italian climate. June 2.--Our original idea had been to have proceeded to Genoa either by a felucca or the Corniche, but learning that the latter route was impracticable, excepting on mules, and that the variable nature of the wind on this coast rendered feluccas a dangerous and uncertain mode of performing the journey, we preferred the road into Italy by the Col di Tende. To Escarene twelve miles: the first four skirt along the beautiful valley at whose mouth Nice stands, following, and sometimes crossing, the course of the river Poglion; the rest gradually winds up into the heart of the mountains, through deep ravines and woods of gigantic olives, which in this district become picturesque forest-trees. We breakfasted at Escarene, a quiet pretty village, possessing tolerable accommodation. To Sospello fifteen miles of good road, the first seven or eight of which ascend the lofty wall of mountain which closes up the entrance of the valley, and appears at a distance like a score of corkscrews laid in a Vandyke figure. Up the whole of this we walked, mounting, by an easy but tedious circuit of good road, a long series of crags, and courses of torrents, and sometimes looking almost perpendicularly down upon the point which we had passed half an hour ago. Nothing can be more bare or desolate than the rocky mountain ridge in which this ascent terminates, and on which vegetation seems at its last gasp. A dance of Satyrs might be appropriately introduced to complete the wildness of a sketch from this spot, but that it does not afford a single berry or blade of grass to regale them, even if they could live like their cousins the goats. A large family of peasants, as wild and merry as these "hairy sylvans," accompanied us up the mountain with their cattle, on their way to the summer chalets, exhibiting the laughing side of human nature in a manner which it is delightful to witness in the poor. "Pleased with a feather, tickled with a straw," and grateful for the slightest civility, they seemed to consider the mere change of place as a festival. The wife had twitched off her husband's cocked hat, which she wore in frolic; the bare-legged children appeared ready to dance to their own voices as they walked; and the very infant, committed in his cradle to the entire discretion of the family donkey, was equally pleased and satisfied with his own situation, as he headed the patriarchal cavalcade. The view of the Mediterranean and the coast of France, which this point commands, is prodigious; and the intermediate ranges of mountains which shut out Nice, and which appeared elevated peaks when seen from its citadel, seem from this spot only masses of wavy ground. From hence a descent much steeper than the ascent and almost equally long, conducted us into the rich and well-inhabited valley in which Sospello stands. The inn at this place is rather below mediocrity; the mistress sturdy and rapacious in her demands, and shameless in retracting them when forced to do so. From the valley of Sospello, which appears as completely insulated by nature from the society of the world as Rasselas's happy valley, we wound next morning up another eight miles of ascent as steep and tedious as the last. On a wild heath between the tops of two mountains called the Col de Brouais, in which this ascent terminated, we unexpectedly discovered a hut tenanted by an old gend'arme, a pet lamb, a kid, and two tame hares, to all which quadrupeds we were introduced by the master with great glee, while waiting for the carriage under his roof. We were so much pleased and diverted by the whimsical manner in which this merry contented mortal lived among his menagerie, that we sent the horses on to Breglio, and complied with his eager desire of entertaining us at his cabaret, if a hut the size of a tea-caddy, without another human habitation visible for four miles, could be so called. He produced, to our surprise, bread, milk, cheese, fresh curd, eggs, fruit, and preserves, all clean and neatly served, and was equally surprised at our giving him two francs a head, which tender he at first remonstrated against with great naivété as too extravagant. The trouble which he had taken in fetching most of these articles from a distance of five miles appeared not to enter into this honest fellow's calculation. The French were encamped in some force on the Col de Brouais at the time of the session of the Comtat of Nice and of Savoy by the king of Sardinia in 1796. It was, also, about four years previous to our visit, infested by a band of robbers, to whom its lofty situation afforded great facilities: these were, however, swept off and conveyed to the galleys by the exertions of the mountain patrole, of whom our host was one, and the whole of the country is now perfectly safe and undisturbed. After contemplating for a short time the principal summit of the Col de Tende, which from this point appears at its full height, we dived into the intervening valley of Breglio by a rapid descent, like the road into a mine. The trout stream, which runs past this place in its way to Vintimiglia, is such as would cause a traveller fond of fishing, to regret the want of his rod and tackle. After leaving Breglio we ascended the course of this river till it narrowed into a defile between two rocks; on entering which the town of Saorgio appears, after a mile or two, piled on the top and shelving side of the precipice to the right in a singular manner. The architect who planned it must have taken his idea from a colony of swallows' nests in a sand-rock, for it seems hardly possible to get to or from it without wings: to judge of it from the road, there is no room or footing for streets; a man might jump down the chimney of his neighbour's house, or be dashed to pieces on its roof, by leaping from his own ground floor; and the fall of a house in the upper tier would probably open a clear downward passage to the valley. A traveller desirous of making a sketch of what is an unique thing in its way, would do well to get three hours start of his carriage from Breglio,[56] and scramble among the heights to the right of the river, for a point which gives a more accurate idea of Saorgio than we could obtain from the valley. The view is attempted in aquatinta in Beaumont's Maritime Alps, and badly as it is executed, the original drawing must have been good, and, as far as I can judge, have given an accurate idea of it. The peasants call the place by some name sounding in their patois like Chavousse; it cannot, however, be mistaken. This is the only spot between Breglio and Tende which would be adapted for a drawing; but the scenery, nevertheless, is of the most stupendous and extraordinary nature I ever witnessed, exceeding, on the whole, the defile of Gondo and Iselle in the route of the Simplon, and more decided, though less varied in its features, than that justly admired spot. The pass is not on a larger scale than the Val d'Ollioules, as far as Saorgio; but after leaving the latter village, the rocks rise to a much greater height, and assume a more savage character. It is impossible to form an adequate idea of the depth of the defile and its effect on the eye, without actual inspection; the nearest approach to it will be made by conceiving a chasm rent from top to bottom by an earthquake through Snowdon, or any other mountain of similar height. For about twelve miles you travel in the condition of those fabled criminals, "Quos super atra silex jamjam lapsura, cadentique Imminet assimilis." [Footnote 56: There is, I believe, no inn at Saorgio.] Jutting rocks, whose gradual change of posture is marked by the inclination of the pines on them, hang toppling over your head at a height to which the strongest voice could not be heard from the valley; and above and between them just peep glimpses of still more elevated heights, where a tree appears hardly of the size of a pin's head. A peculiar gray, sombre atmosphere overspreads the whole at noon day, similar to that which prevails during a solar eclipse; and the deep echo of the river is the only sound heard for miles. On the whole, I never saw any place so calculated to convey gloomy and wild ideas, and the Sicilian name of "Val Demone," or John Bunyan's "Valley of the Shadow of Death," would be appropriately applied to this savage spot. Nor would the danger be imaginary at the breaking up of a frost, or after violent rains, which might bring one of the highest rocks perpendicularly down without the intervention of a single crag to give warning and break its fall. The visible rents made in the road from time to time, and the obstructions in the deep bed of the stream, show sufficient marks of these formidable incursions. In one place the valley originally afforded only a passage for the river, and the road has been cut and blasted along the cheek of the rock: Close to this spot an inscription on the stone informs you that this road was the work of the late king of Sardinia; and he had in truth a right to be proud of such an undertaking. The whole road from Nice to Turin is admirable, presenting hardly a single mauvais pas. The natural difficulties which the construction of the road presents have been surmounted in a manner which might be a study to a civil engineer, and the whole is, perhaps, as fine a specimen of labour and skill as Buonaparte's route over Mont Cenis or the Simplon. The natural features of its wilder parts resemble those in the pictures of Salvator Rosa, but on a larger scale than he ever attempted to give an idea of. Within a mile or two of Tende,[57] the chasm in the rocks (for it was no more) widens into a small narrow valley of a peculiarly quiet character, in which the monastery of St. Gervase occupies one of those retired green spots which prove so well the good taste of the monks of old. A turn which this valley takes to the left affords the view, first, of the old castle of Tende, looking quite ghastly in the dusk of evening, and next of the town of Tende itself, which stands piled like Saorgio, against the shelving side of the valley. Tende is a large and apparently flourishing town, affording two inns of very respectable appearance. The Albergo Imperiale is high in its charges, but makes amends for it by the liberality and comfort of its appointments. It fronts one of the principal peaks which form the chain of the Col di Tende, which we contemplated as it caught the last rays of the evening sun, forming different guesses how we were to get up it. [Footnote 57: Vide Cooke's Views.] June 4.--From Tende to Limone 15 miles. We left Tende at a quarter before four: after twisting and re-twisting for about an hour and a half among narrow defiles, through which the first part of the rise is gradually conducted, we reached a mountain valley at a high level above the sea, closed at the opposite end by the main ridge of the Col di Tende. Here the chief ascent commences, in a regular zigzag up a jutting shoulder of the mountain. The road is wide and good, and free from ravine or precipice; but from its continual turns, (of which I counted not less than sixty-five) is difficult and embarrassing to any but a crane-necked carriage; though in no place could an overturn produce worse consequence than a roll of a few yards. The distance may be abridged on foot, either by crossing the zig-zags, or by taking the summer path to the right through a fine range of Alpine pasture, which exhibits a profusion of hardy flowers growing up to the edge of the snow-drifts: amongst many others, whose names were unknown to us, we observed blue and yellow crocusses, hearts-ease, oxlips, cowslips, primroses, and two sorts of gentianella. In this direction the road cannot be missed to the turf cabaret which stands on the sharp edge of the mountain. It is curious to look back a moment from this elevated spot down the narrow valley behind you, and observe the road curling from below your feet into blue distance, like the coils of an immeasurable white snake. At this fine season of the year, it exhibits a busy scene of passengers and loaded strings of mules, toiling up in your rear, or lessening in the perspective till hardly visible at the bottom of the ascent. The site of the cabaret borders on the line of perpetual snow, and though inferior in height to the crest of the Simplon road, stands in a situation, I should conceive, much more exposed to the effects of sudden hurricanes and snow storms. The road appears to be commanded by no spot where avalanches could accumulate, as on the precipice where you first overlook Brieg, and must, therefore, during the winter, be rather difficult than dangerous. On the other hand, no mountains intervene on the Turin side, to blunt the edge of the north winds from the Savoy Alps; and in the direction of Nice, the south-west winds must be concentrated and driven up the mountain avenue of Tende with the roar of artillery. I can, therefore, easily credit Beaumont's account, that many mules are annually lost in consequence of the tempestuous weather on the Col. We did not, however, taste any of the mule-hams at the cabaret, which, according to that writer, are afforded to the frugal natives by these casualties, but contented ourselves with a spoonful of brandy, and a taste of their good brown bread. Had our stomachs been desperate, other refreshments, I believe, were to be had. The view to the north from this "raw and gusty" ridge affords a more striking idea of height and space combined, than any other prospect with which I am acquainted; though not on the whole so imposing as the first glimpse of the Swiss side of the Simplon. The eye is carried directly over two or three lower peaks of the Col, grinning with snow drifts, to the great range of Alps south-west of Mont Cenis, which appear hanging in mid air like the domains of a cloud-king; their jagged and glittering tops distinctly defined, but their bases melting into the hazy abyss which the plain of Piedmont presents. As far as I can estimate, we were about five hours in performing the ascent from Tende. Two more hours took us to Limone, at a jog trot, down a zigzag road, less abrupt in its turns than that on the other side. At Limone the post-road to Turin begins. The post-house is a tolerably good inn: the douaniers, the most troublesome we had yet met with, refusing to compound for the customary donation, and asking for money when their search was ended. We had, therefore, the sweet revenge of first watching them as pick-pockets, and next refusing them as beggars. To Coni fifteen miles; the first seven or eight through a beautiful valley fringed with chestnut woods; every thing, however, appeared diminutive, as our eyes had not yet recovered the strain which the enormous scenery of the Col had occasioned. In this fine open valley, goitres abound as much as near Sion; this malady, therefore, cannot be attributed, as some think, to the stagnation of air. Coni, a neat arcaded town, deserves mention for the beauty of its situation, and the fine Alpine panorama which it commands. The glittering pinnacle of Monte Viso, is the most striking feature through this and the following day's journey. June 5.--Breakfasted at Savigliano, a large flourishing town; slept at Carignan, and reached Turin to breakfast next day. June 6.--The best of Turin is seen in the general survey of the town and its princely environs, particularly on the Moncaliere side. Our principal amusement was derived from Zuchelli's masterly performance at the Opera Buffa. The plot of the piece turned partly on the discomfitures and discontents of a supercilious English dandy, which part this singer performed with an immoveable countenance, which kept us in a roar of laughter, his grave rich toned bass voice giving a double effect to the solemn absurdity of the character. For the sake of avoiding open offence to our countrymen, the hero was styled a Danish count; but the portrait was perfect to the very tail of the coat, and could not be mistaken, and the countenances of some of his prototypes in the next box showed, that the satire, fair and gentlemanly as it was, cut deeper than the awkward puppet-show of "Les Anglaises pour rire." The Neapolitan character was handled more unmercifully in the part of a guttling, fulsome old coxcomb, as cowardly as the Dane was quarrelsome. Milan, its inimitable cathedral, and its other curiosities, have, I am aware, been well-trodden ground for some years. No one, however, appears to notice the courier's little spaniel in the Archduke Rainier's hall, who has watched for his master's return from Russia more than a year without stirring from his mat, and whom the good-natured Viceroy feeds and protects without allowing him to be disturbed. I hope he will find a place in some future animal biography, for the credit of his species. As to the splendid Fête Dieu, which we just arrived in time to witness, with its military, civil, and ecclesiastical pageantry,--the beggar-boys plucking the guttering wax from the long tapers of the priests, and the priests occasionally singeing their noses in return, I could no more undertake to describe, than to sort a bag of gaudy feathers of different birds. The best companion over the Simplon with which I am acquainted, is a little French tract, written, I think, by a M. Mallet, and touching slightly, but sufficiently, on all subjects of interest connected with that stupendous route. The short account which it gives of the life of Cardinal Borromeo may be read through while walking up the hill of Arona to visit his colossal statue, which deserves a higher rank than perhaps it holds, either as a work of art or an achievement of labour. The attitude of the figure is easy and graceful, and the artist has managed the flowing cardinal's robe with great taste. There is also an expression of benevolence and majesty in the countenance and extended hand, suitable to one's conceptions of this apostolic character, who seems looking and waving a blessing on his native Arona. The height of the figure and pedestal is stated at 104 feet; but the effect of its grace and proportion renders this difficult of belief, until you look back at the distance of two miles on the road to Baveno, and see it like a walking giant overtopping the neighbouring woods by more than the head and shoulders. With this noble statue ends my admiration of Borromean taste: for it is not to be borne that the Isola Bella, which nature intended as a central finish to such a fairy land as the Lago Maggiore, should have been tortured into a piece of confectionary less elegant than the good taste of Gunter or Grange would have devised as the centre of a bowl of lemon cream. The Isola Madre, it is true, is beautiful; for no Italian landscape gardener has yet assailed it with his line and rule. Our welcome into Switzerland was novel, but pleasing to lovers of animals. Several herds of cattle met us on our road to Brieg, accompanying their masters to the mountain chalets, and fairly beset us with their attentions. The cows crowded and shouldered each other to be scratched; one large goat; slipping under their legs, put her head under my arm, and took my hand in her mouth; and a whole flock of sheep turned round and ran after us in order to obtain more notice. I had no idea before that any animal but the dog might be tamed to such a degree of instinctive tact, as to perceive whether or not its caresses will be acceptable to a stranger; and I am convinced, that the celebrated Ritson might have made more converts to his Braminical system by importing and exhibiting a Swiss flock, than by writing a book against animal food, and classing eggs as a vegetable succedaneum. It would be as superfluous to describe the well-known ground of Switzerland, as that of Cumberland; and indeed when once within sight of Geneva, one is almost at home. One and one only stage seems to remain, more desirable still. "Cum peregrino, Labore fossi venimus larem ad nostram, Desideratoque acquiescimus lecto." THE END. * * * BOOKS PUBLISHED BY JAMES CAWTHORN, COCKSPUR STREET. ITINERARY OF PROVENCE AND THE RHONE, made during the Year 1819, By JOHN HUGHES, A.M. of Oriel College, Oxford: Illustrated by the following Views, engraved in the line manner from Drawings by Dewint, by W.B. Cooke, G. Cook, and J.C. Allen. Royal Quarto or Imperial Octavo. Isle of St. Marguerite, the Prison of the Masque de Fer--Château Rochepot--Lyons--Lyons Cathedral--Mont Blanc from a height above Lyons--Tower of Mauconseil, Vienne--Château La Serve--Valence and Dauphine Mountains--Montelimart--Château Grignan, Two Views--Castle of Montdragon--Triumphal Arch at Orange--Avignon, Two Views--Aqueduct of Pont du Gard--Castle of Beaucaire and Bridge of Boats--Tarascon--Arch and Mausoleum at St. Remy--Orgon--Bay of Marseilles--Cannes, where Buonaparte remained the night of his landing from Elba, and where Murat sheltered when he fled from Naples, Two View--Maritime Alps, from the Castle of Nice--Castle of Tende. *** This Work is sold with or without the Illustrations. "I informed my friend that I had just received from England a journal of a tour in the South of France by a young Oxonian friend of mine, a poet, a draughtsman, and a scholar,--in which he gives such an animated and interesting description of the Château Grignan, the dwelling of Madame de Sevigné's beloved daughter, and frequently the place of her own residence, that no one who ever read the book would be within forty miles of the same, without going a pilgrimage to the spot. The Marquis smiled, seemed very much pleased, and asked the title at length of the work in question; and writing down to my dictation, 'An Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone made during the Year 1819, By John Hughes, A.M. of Oriel College, Oxford,'--observed, he could now purchase no books for the château, but would recommend that the Itineraire should be commissioned for the library to which he was abonné in the neighbouring town."--_Sir Walter Scott's Quentin Durward_. "The tower of Mauconseil must have been very difficult to express; for the water on the right is between a light coloured stone-quay and the tower itself, also very bright; yet the artist, W.B. Cooke, has contrived to give it a fine and natural transparency entirely in keeping with the scenery around. The second is a simple and lovely landscape, with a sky exquisitely managed: but Avignon is still a greater favourite with us. The rich architectural structures on one hand, the silvery river, the picturesque bridge, the distant Alps of Dauphiné, and the little bit of rustic scenery on the foreground of the left, all combine to render this a very charming view; and Mr. Allen has great merit in executing it as he has done. The Château Grignan is of a different and darker character, and an extremely interesting performance. Upon the whole, the lovers of elegant art will find this publication well entitled to their attention."--_Literary Gazette_, No. 309. A JOURNEY THROUGH ALBANIA and other Provinces of TURKEY in Europe and Asia, in Company with the late Lord Byron; including a Life of Ali Pasha, and illustrated by Views of Athens, Constantinople, and various other Plates, Maps, &c. By JOHN CAM HOBHOUSE, Esq. M.P. Second Edition, with Corrections. 2 vols. 4to. 5l. 5s. boards. "Both the general reader and the scholar may look for no small portion of information and amusement from the present volume. The work itself will have a standard place in all Collections of Voyages and Travels; a place which it will fully merit, by the industry and ardour of research conspicuous throughout, as well as by the spirit vivacity and good sense of the general narrative."--_Quarterly Review_, XIX. "The narrative which he has produced bears unquestionable marks of a curious, capacious and observant mind; and the same may be said of the poetical production of his friend Lord Byron, who accompanied him on his Travels. As Reviewers are sometimes charged with a propensity to cavilling, we will not close these introductory remarks without declaring in round terms in justice to Mr. Hobhouse, and in vindication of ourselves, that we have received as much pleasure and instruction from the perusal of these Travels as from that of any others which have ever come before us," &c. &c.--_British Review_, No. IX. HORÆ IONICÆ, descriptive of the Ionian Isles and Part of the adjacent Coast of Greece, together with other Poems. By WALLER RODWELL WRIGHT, Esq. Third Edition. 7s 6d. boards. "Wright?[58] 'twas thy happy lot at once to view Those shores of glory, and to sing them too; And sure no common muse inspired thy pen To hail the land of gods and godlike men." [Footnote 58: 'Mr. Wright, late Consul General for the Seven Islands, is author of a very beautiful Poem just published: it is entitled Horæ Ionicæ, and is descriptive of the Isles and the adjacent Coast of Greece.'--_Lord Byron's English Bards_.] AN HISTORICAL SKETCH of the LAST YEARS of the REIGN of GUSTAVUS the FOURTH, late KING OF SWEDEN, including a Narrative of the Causes, Progress, and Termination of the late Revolution; and an Appendix containing Official Documents, Letters, and Minutes of Conversations between the late King and Sir John Moore, General Brune, &c. &c. 10s. 6d. boards. BEAUTIES of DON JUAN; including those Passages only which are calculated to extend the real fame of Lord Byron. 10s. 6d. "This is a very captivating volume with all the impurities of Don Juan expurgated, and yet displaying a galaxy of connected lustre, which is well calculated to throw a halo of splendour round the memory of Lord Byron. It may with perfect propriety be put into female hands, from which the levities and pruriences of the entire poem too justly excluded it in spite of all its charms of genius."--_Literary Gazette_, 599. "We cannot conclude our observations without again congratulating the Compiler upon the success which has attended his labour, and strongly recommending the work to those who desire that the female branches of their family should participate in the beauties of this modern Prince of Poesy."--_Public Ledger_. AN ACCOUNT of the EMPIRE of MOROCCO and the DISTRICT of SUSE, compiled from Miscellaneous Observations during a long Residence in and various Journies through those Countries. To which is added, an interesting Account of TIMBUCTOO, the great Emporium of Central Africa. By J.G. JACKSON, Esq. Quarto. Second Edition. 2L. 12s. 6d. boards. "The observations which he has himself made upon these parts, and the notices which he has collected respecting the interior from native travellers, form a work of considerable value both in a commercial and literary view, and leads us to rejoice that merchants who have resided in foreign countries are beginning more and more to communicate information on their return home," &c. &c.--_Edinburgh Review_. MELANGES et LITTERATURE D'HISTOIRE de MORALE et de PHILOSOPHIE, par COMTE D'ESCHERNEY. 3 vols. 1l. 1s. THE WONDERS of a WEEK AT BATH, in a Doggrel Address to the Hon. T. S----, from F. T----, Esq. of that City. Price 7s. boards. It contains a satirical description of the present style of life and amusements at Bath, with delineations of some individual characters. His lines are easy and flowing, and his _general_ satire not wanting in vivacity," &c. &c.--_British Critic_. MEMOIRS of the LIFE of MRS. ELIZABETH CARTER, with a New Edition of her Poems. By the Rev. MONTAGU PENNINGTON, M.A. 2 vols. 8vo. Second Edition. 10s. 6d. boards. TRAITS and TRIALS; a Novel. 2 vols. 14s. boards. "A pretty little tale, in which we find more discernment of character and acquaintance with human nature than are usually discoverable in the first attempts of novel writers,"--_Monthly Review_. OURIKA; a Tale by the Duchess de DURAS. 2s. 6d. "About a month ago a very pretty story under this title was published in Paris. It soon not only attracted attention but became quite the rage; and every thing in fashion and drama and picture has since been Ourika. There are Ourika dresses, Ourika Vaudevilles, Ourika prints. Madlle. Mars blacked her face to perform Ourika, but did not like her appearance in the glass, and refused the character. Such an event, like Mad. George's insult, was enough to set all that sensitive metropolis in a flame; and every mouth and every journal has rung and is ringing with Ourika."--_Literary Gazette_, 383. THE LAY of the SCOTTISH FIDDLE; a Poem in Five Cantos. 7s. 6d. boards. "I believe that the nature of this American Poem was known to the proprietor of the Quarterly Review. So far as it was a burlesque on the Lay of the Last Minstrel, I know it was; yet was he as a publisher so anxious to get it, that he engaged Lord Byron to use his utmost influence with me to obtain it for him, and his Lordship wrote a most pressing letter upon the occasion. He asked me to let Mr. Murray, who was in despair about it, have the publication of this Poem as the greatest possible favour."--_Dallas's Recollections of Byron_, p. 270. ADRASTUS; a Tragedy: AMABEL, or the Cornish Lovers; and other Poems. By R.C. DALLAS, Esq. 7s. 6d. boards. ANECDOTES, hitherto _unpublished_, of the PRIVATE LIFE of PETER THE GREAT, on the Authority of Mons. Stehling, Member of the Council of State to the EMPRESS CATHARINE, and Translated from the French of The Count D'Escherney, Chamberlain to the King of Wirtemberg. 5s. boards. "These are some very entertaining anecdotes of Peter the Great, and place the private character of that Sovereign in a most amiable point of view," &c. &c.--_Gentleman's Mag._ A CATALOGUE of a MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTION of BOOKS, New and Second-hand, on Sale for Ready Money. * * * The Public are most respectfully informed, they can be supplied with Clean and Perfect Copies of most of the New and Costly Works _as soon us the first demand has subsided_, at half the Publication Price. 
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28959	----	THE ILLUSTRATED WORKS OF GORDON HOME Author and Painter By Gordon Home AN INDEX Edited by David Widger Gordon Home (1878-1969) Project Gutenberg Editions CONTENTS ## Normandy ## Yorkshire ## Yorkshire�Coast and Moorlands ## England of My Heart�Spring ## Beautiful Britain ## The Evolution Of An English Town VOLUMES, CHAPTERS AND STORIES Normandy PREFACE LIST OF COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS LIST OF LINE ILLUSTRATIONS CHAPTER I Some Features of Normandy CHAPTER II By the Banks of the Seine CHAPTER III Concerning Rouen, the Ancient Capital of Normandy CHAPTER IV Concerning the Cathedral City of Evreux and the Road to Bernay CHAPTER V Concerning Lisieux and the Romantic Town of Falaise CHAPTER VI From Argentan to Avranches CHAPTER VII Concerning Mont St Michel CHAPTER VIII Concerning Coutances and Some Parts of the Cotentin CHAPTER IX Concerning St Lo and Bayeux CHAPTER X Concerning Caen and the Coast Towards Trouville CHAPTER XI Some Notes on the History of Normandy LIST OF COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS MONT ST MICHEL FROM THE CAUSEWAY ON THE ROAD BETWEEN CONCHES AND BEAUMONT-LE-ROGER This is typical of the poplar-bordered roads of Normandy. THE CHATEAU GAILLARD FROM THE ROAD BY THE SEINE The village of Le Petit Andely appears below the castle rock, and is partly hidden by the island. The chalk cliffs on the left often look like ruined walls. A TYPICAL REACH OF THE SEINE BETWEEN ROUEN AND LE PETIT ANDELY On one side great chalk cliffs rise precipitously, and on the other are broad flat pastures. THE CHURCH AT GISORS, SEEN FROM THE WALLS OF THE NORMAN CASTLE THE TOUR DE LA GROSSE HORLOGE, ROUEN It is the Belfry of the City, and was commenced in 1389. THE CATHEDRAL AT ROUEN Showing a peep of the Portail de la Calende, and some of the quaint houses of the oldest part of the City. THE CATHEDRAL OF EVREUX SEEN FROM ABOVE On the right, just where the light touches some of the roofs of the houses, the fine old belfry can be seen. A TYPICAL FARMYARD SCENE IN NORMANDY The curious little thatched mushroom above the cart is to be found in most of the Norman farms. THE BRIDGE AT BEAUMONT-LE-ROGER On the steep hill beyond stands the ruined abbey church. IN THE RUE AUX FEVRES, LISIEUX The second tiled gable from the left belongs to the fine sixteenth century house called the Manoir de Francois I. THE CHURCH OF ST JACQUES AT LISIEUX One of the quaint umber fronted houses for which the town is famous appears on the left. FALAISE CASTLE The favourite stronghold of William the Conqueror. THE PORTE DES CORDELIERS AT FALAISE A thirteenth century gateway that overlooks the steep valley of the Ante. THE CHATEAU D'O A seventeenth century manor house surrounded by a wide moat. THE GREAT VIEW OVER THE FORESTS TO THE SOUTH FROM THE RAMPARTS OF DOMFRONT CASTLE Down below can be seen the river Varennes, and to the left of the railway the little Norman Church of Notre-Dame-sur-l'Eau. THE CLOCK GATE, VIRE A VIEW OF MONT ST MICHEL AND THE BAY OF CANCALE FROM THE JARDIN DES PLANTES AT AVRANCHES On the left is the low coast-line of Normandy, and on the right appears the islet of Tombelaine. THE LONG MAIN STREET OF COUTANCES In the foreground is the Church of St Pierre, and in the distance is the Cathedral. THE GREAT WESTERN TOWERS OF THE CHURCH OF NOTRE DAME AT ST LO They are of different dates, and differ in the arcading and other ornament. THE NORMAN TOWERS OF BAYEUX CATHEDRAL OUISTREHAM LIST OF LINE ILLUSTRATIONS THE CHATELET AND LA MERVEILLE AT MONT ST MICHEL The dark opening through the archway on the left is the main entrance to the Abbey. On the right can be seen the tall narrow windows that light the three floors of Abbot Jourdain's great work. THE DISUSED CHURCH OF ST NICHOLAS AT CAEN A COURTYARD IN THE RUE DE BAYEUX AT CAEN Yorkshire CHAPTER I CHAPTER II CHAPTER III CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V CHAPTER VI CHAPTER VII CHAPTER VIII CHAPTER IX CHAPTER X CHAPTER XI CHAPTER XII CHAPTER XIII CHAPTER XIV CHAPTER XV CHAPTER XVI CHAPTER XVII CHAPTER XVIII CHAPTER XIX CHAPTER XX CHAPTER XXI CHAPTER XXII CHAPTER XXIII CHAPTER XXIV CHAPTER XXV ILLUSTRATIONS York from the Central Tower of The Minster Sleights Moor from Swart Houe Cross Runswick Bay Robin Hood's Bay Sunrise from Staithes Beck The Red Roofs of Whitby Whitby Abbey from the Cliffs An Autumn Day at Guisborough The Skelton Valley In Pickering Church The Market-place, Helmsley Richmond Castle from the River A Rugged View Above Wensleydale A Jacobean House at Askrigg Aysgarth Force View up Wensleydale from Leyburn Shawl Ripon Minster from the South Fountains Abbey Knaresborough Bolton Abbey, Wharfedale Settle Wolds Filey Brig The Outermost Point of Flamborough Head Hornsea Mere The Market-place, Beverley Patrington Church Coxwold Village The West Front of the Church Of Byland Abbey Bootham Bar, York Kirkstall Abbey, Leeds Yorkshire�Coast and Moorlands CHAPTER I��ACROSS THE MOORS FROM PICKERING TO WHITBY CHAPTER II��ALONG THE ESK VALLEY CHAPTER III��THE COAST FROM WHITBY TO REDCAR CHAPTER IV��THE COAST FROM WHITBY TO SCARBOROUGH CHAPTER V��SCARBOROUGH CHAPTER VI��WHITBY CHAPTER VII��THE CLEVELAND HILLS CHAPTER VIII��GUISBOROUGH AND THE SKELTON VALLEY CHAPTER IX��FROM PICKERING TO RIEVAULX ABBEY England of My Heart�Spring INTRODUCTION CHAPTER I CHAPTER II CHAPTER III CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V CHAPTER VI CHAPTER VII CHAPTER VIII CHAPTER IX CHAPTER X CHAPTER XI CHAPTER XII CHAPTER XIII CHAPTER XIV CHAPTER XV CHAPTER XVI CHAPTER XVII CHAPTER XVIII CHAPTER XIX CHAPTER XX CHAPTER XXI LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Shooters' Hill Dartford Church and Bridge The Gateway of the Monastery Close, Rochester Rochester Canterbury Cathedral from Christchurch Gate West Gate, Canterbury On the Stour Near Canterbury Chilham A Corner of Romney Marsh Rye Winchelsea Church Battle Abbey Lewes Castle The Downs The Weald of Sussex, North Of Lewes Arundel Castle The Market Cross, Chichester Bosham The Tudor House, Opposite St Michael's Church, Southampton In the New Forest Romsey Abbey North Transept, Winchester Cathedral St Cross, Winchester Selborne from the Hanger Beautiful Britain CHAPTER PAGE I. THE PILGRIM'S APPROACH TO THE CITY 5 II. THE STORY OF CANTERBURY 9 III. THE CATHEDRAL 40 IV. THE CITY 56 INDEX LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PLATE 1. THE NAVE OF CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL Frontispiece FACING PAGE 2. CHRIST CHURCH GATE 9 3. THE CATHEDRAL FROM NORTH-WEST 16 4. THE "ANGEL" OR "BELL HARRY" TOWER AND THE LAVATORY TOWER OF THE CATHEDRAL 25 5. THE CHAPEL OF "OUR LADY" IN THE UNDERCROFT OF THE CATHEDRAL 27 6. THE WARRIOR'S CHAPEL 30 7. THE MARTYRDOM IN THE NORTH-WEST TRANSEPT 32 8. THE DOORWAY FROM THE CLOISTERS TO THE MARTYRDOM 43 9. THE GREYFRIARS' HOUSE IN CANTERBURY 46 10. THE HOUSE OF THE CANTERBURY WEAVERS 49 11. WESTGATE CANTERBURY FROM WITHIN 56 12. THE NORMAN STAIRCASE TO THE KING'S SCHOOL On the cover 13. PLAN OF CANTERBURY. 5 14. PLAN OF CANTERBURY CASTLE. 63 The Evolution Of An English Town PREFACE. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. INTRODUCTION CHAPTER I CONCERNING THOSE WHICH FOLLOW CHAPTER II THE FOREST AND VALE OF PICKERING IN PALAEOLITHIC AND PRE-GLACIAL TIMES CHAPTER III THE VALE OF PICKERING IN THE LESSER ICE AGE CHAPTER IV THE EARLY INHABITANTS OF THE FOREST AND VALE OF PICKERING CHAPTER V HOW THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN AFFECTED THE FOREST AND VALE OF PICKERING, B.C. 55 TO A.D. 418 CHAPTER VI THE FOREST AND VALE IN SAXON TIMES, A.D. 418 TO 1066 CHAPTER VII THE FOREST AND VALE IN NORMAN TIMES, A.D. 1066 TO 1154 CHAPTER VIII THE FOREST AND VALE IN THE TIME OF THE PLANTAGENETS, A.D. 1154 TO 1485 CHAPTER IX THE FOREST AND VALE IN TUDOR TIMES, A.D. 1485 TO 1603 CHAPTER X THE FOREST AND VALE IN STUART TIMES, A.D. 1603 TO 1714 CHAPTER XI THE FOREST AND VALE IN GEORGIAN TIMES, A.D. 1714 TO 1837 CHAPTER XII THE FOREST AND VALE FROM EARLY VICTORIAN TIMES UP TO THE PRESENT DAY, A.D. 1837 TO 1905 CHAPTER XIII Concerning the Villages and Scenery of the Forest and Vale of Pickering CHAPTER XIV Concerning the Zoology of the Forest and Vale Books of Reference List of the Vicars of Pickering Index THE PURPOSE OF THE FOOTNOTES Having always considered footnotes an objectionable feature, I have resorted to them solely for reference purposes. Therefore, the reader who does not wish to look up my authorities need not take the slightest notice of the references to the footnotes, which in no case contain additional facts, but merely indications of the sources of information. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Pickering Church from Hall Garth (Coloured) Pickering From The North-West Rosamund Tower, Pickering Castle Kirkdale Cave Hyænas' Jaws Elephants' Teeth Bear's Tusk Pickering Lake in Ice Age Newtondale in Ice Age Pickering Lake, Eastern End Scamridge Dykes Pre-Historic Weapons Leaf-shaped Arrow Head Lake Dwellings Relics Remains of Pre-Historic Animals from Lake Dwellings Skeleton of Bronze Age A Quern Urns in Pickering Museum Sketch Map of Roman Road and Camps The Tower of Middleton Church Ancient Font and Crosses Saxon Sundial at Kirkdale Saxon Sundial at Edstone Pre-Norman Remains near Pickering Saxon Stones at Kirkdale Saxon Stones at Sinnington South Side of the Nave of Pickering Church Norman Doorway at Salton Norman Work at Ellerburne The Crypt at Lastingham Norman Font at Edstone Wall Paintings in Pickering Church The Devil's Tower, Pickering Castle Wall Painting of St Christopher Wall Painting of St Edmund and Acts of Mercy Wall Painting of Herod's Feast and Martyrdom of St Thomas a Becket Effigy of Sir William Bruce Effigies in Bruce Chapel Holy Water Stoup in Pickering Church Sanctus Bell Cattle Marks Section of Fork Cottage Details of Fork Cottage Pickering Castle from the Keep Pre-Reformation Chalice Font at Pickering Church Alms Box at Pickering Church House in which Duke of Buckingham Died Maypole on Sinnington Green Inverted Stone Coffin at Wykeham Magic Cubes Newtondale, showing the Coach Railway Relics of Witchcraft A Love Garter Horn of the Sinnington Hunt Interior of the Oldest Type of Cottage Ingle-Nook at Gallow Hill Farm Autographs of Wordsworth and Mary Hutchinson Riding t' Fair Halbert and Spetum Old Key of Castle Pickering Shambles The Old Pickering Fire-Engine Market Cross at Thornton-le-Dale Lockton Village The Black Hole of Thornton-le-Dale Hutton Buscel Church Sketch Map of the Pickering District 
22718	----	CATHEDRALS AND CLOISTERS OF THE SOUTH OF FRANCE [Illustration: _Rodez._ "Sheer and straight the pillars rise, ... and arch after arch is lost on the shadows of the narrow vaulting of the side-aisle."] CATHEDRALS _and_ CLOISTERS OF THE SOUTH OF FRANCE BY ELISE WHITLOCK ROSE WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPHS BY VIDA HUNT FRANCIS _IN TWO VOLUMES_ _VOLUME I._ G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK AND LONDON The Knickerbocker Press 1906 Copyright, 1906 by G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS PREFACE. For years the makers of this book have spent the summer time in wandering about the French country; led here by the fame of some old monument, or there by an incident of history. They have found the real, unspoiled France, often unexplored by any except the French themselves, and practically unknown to foreigners, even to the ubiquitous maker of guide-books. For weeks together they have travelled without meeting an English-speaking person. It is, therefore, not surprising that they were unable to find, in any convenient form in English, a book telling of the Cathedrals of the South which was at once accurate and complete. For the Cathedrals of that country are monuments not only of architecture and its history, but of the history of peoples, the psychology of the christianising and unifying of the barbarian and the Gallo-Roman, and many things besides, epitomised perhaps in the old words, "the struggle between the world, the flesh, and the devil." In French, works on Cathedrals are numerous and exhaustive; but either so voluminous as to be unpractical except for the specialist--as the volumes of Viollet-le-Duc,--or so technical as to make each Cathedral seem one in an endless, monotonous procession, differing from the others only in size, style, and age. This is distinctly unfair to these old churches which have personalities and idiosyncrasies as real as those of individuals. It has been the aim of the makers of this book to introduce, in photograph and in story,--not critically or exhaustively, but suggestively and accurately,--the Cathedral of the Mediterranean provinces as it exists to-day with its peculiar characteristics of architecture and history. They have described only churches which they have seen, they have verified every fact and date where such verification was possible, and have depended on local tradition only where that was all which remained to tell of the past; and they will feel abundantly repaid for travel, research, and patient exploration of towers, crypts, and archives if the leisurely traveller on pleasure bent shall find in these volumes but a hint of the interest and fascination which the glorious architecture, the history, and the unmatched climate of the Southland can awaken. For unfailing courtesy and untiring interest, for free access to private as well as to ecclesiastical libraries, for permission to photograph and copy, for unbounding hospitality and the retelling of many an old legend, their most grateful thanks are due to the Catholic clergy, from Archbishop to Curé and Vicar. For rare old bits of information, for historical verification, and for infinite pains in accuracy of printed matter, they owe warm thanks to Mrs. Wilbur Rose, to Miss Frances Kyle, and to Mrs. William H. Shelmire, Jr. For criticism and training in the art of photographing they owe no less grateful acknowledgment to Mr. John G. Bullock and Mr. Charles R. Pancoast. E. W. R. V. H. F. CONTENTS. PAGE THE SOUTH OF FRANCE I. THE SOUTH OF FRANCE 3 II. ARCHITECTURE IN PROVENCE, LANGUEDOC, AND GASCONY 29 PROVENCE I. THE CATHEDRALS OF THE SEA 55 Marseilles--Toulon--Fréjus--Antibes--Nice II. CATHEDRALS OF THE HILL-TOWNS 72 Carpentras--Digne--Forcalquier--Vence--Grasse III. RIVER-SIDE CATHEDRALS 101 Avignon--Vaison--Arles--Entrevaux--Sisteron IV. CATHEDRALS OF THE VALLEYS 178 Orange--Cavaillon--Apt--Riez--Senez--Aix LANGUEDOC I. CATHEDRALS OF THE CITIES 237 Nîmes--Montpellier--Béziers--Narbonne--Perpignan-- Carcassonne--Castres--Toulouse--Montauban Illustrations Page RODEZ _Frontispiece_ "Sheer and straight the pillars rise, ... and arch after arch is lost on the shadows of the narrow vaulting of the side-aisle." "CARCASSONNE, THE INVULNERABLE" 5 "THE TOWER OF AN EARLY MARITIME CATHEDRAL"--_Agde_ 10 "A NAVE OF THE EARLIER STYLE"--_Arles_ 15 "A NAVE OF THE LATER STYLE"--_Rodez_ 19 "THE DELICATE CHOIR OF SAINT-NAZAIRE"--_Carcassonne_ 23 "A CLOISTER OF THE SOUTH"--_Elne_ 27 "A ROMANESQUE AISLE"--_Arles_ 31 "THE SCULPTURED PORTALS OF SAINT-TROPHIME"--_Arles_ 33 "A GOTHIC AISLE"--_Mende_ 35 "CORRESPONDING DIFFERENCES IN STYLE"--_Carcassonne_ 39 "FORTIFIED GOTHIC BUILT IN BRICK"--_Albi_ 43 "A CHURCH FORTRESS"--_Maguelonne_ 45 "STATELY GOTHIC SPLENDOUR"--_Condom_ 47 ENTREVAUX 52 "People gather around the mail-coach as it makes its daily halt before the drawbridge." "THE NEW CATHEDRAL"--_Marseilles_ 57 "THE DESECRATION OF THE LITTLE CLOISTER"--_Fréjus_ 65 "THE MILITARY OMEN--THE TOWER"--_Antibes_ 70 "THE INTERIOR OF NOTRE-DAME-DU-BOURG"--_Digne_ 77 "THE INTERIOR HAS NEITHER CLERESTORY NOR TRIFORIUM"--_Digne_ 81 "A LARGE SQUARE TOWER SERVED AS A LOOKOUT"--_Forcalquier_ 86 "A SUGGESTIVE VIEW FROM THE SIDE-AISLE"--_Forcalquier_ 87 "THE OLD ROUND ARCH OF THE BISHOP'S PALACE"--_Vence_ 92 "THE LOW, BROAD ARCHES, AND THE GREAT SUPPORTING PILLARS"--_Vence_ 93 "HIGHER THAN THEM ALL STANDS THE CATHEDRAL"--_Grasse_ 97 "THE PONT D'AVIGNON" 99 "THE INTERIOR HAS A SHALLOW, GRACEFULLY BALUSTRADED BALCONY"--_Avignon_ 103 "THE PORCH, SO CLASSIC IN DETAIL"--AVIGNON 107 From an old print "NOTRE-DAME-DES-DOMS"--_Avignon_ 111 "THE TOWER OF PHILIP THE FAIR"--_Villeneuve-les-Avignon_ 114 "THE GREAT PALACE"--_Avignon_ 119 "ON THE BANKS OF A PLEASANT LITTLE RIVER IS VAISON" 123 "THE RUINED CASTLE OF THE COUNTS OF TOULOUSE"--_Vaison_ 125 "THE WHOLE APSE-END"--_Vaison_ 127 "THE SOUTH WALL, WHICH IS CLEARLY SEEN FROM THE ROAD"--_Vaison_ 129 "TWO BAYS OPEN TO THE GROUND"--_Vaison_ 131 "THE GREAT PIERS AND SMALL FIRM COLUMNS"--_Vaison_ 133 "IN THE MIDST OF THE WEALTH OF ANTIQUE RUINS"--_Arles_ 135 "THE FAÇADE OF SAINT-TROPHIME"--_Arles_ 137 "RIGHT DETAIL--THE PORTAL"--_Arles_ 141 "LEFT DETAIL--THE PORTAL"--_Arles_ 145 "THROUGH THE CLOISTER ARCHES"--_Arles_ 147 "A NAVE OF GREAT AND SLENDER HEIGHT"--_Arles_ 149 "THE BEAUTY OF THE WHOLE"--_Arles_ 151 "THE GOTHIC WALK"--Cloister--_Arles_ 153 "THIS INTERIOR"--_Entrevaux_ 156 "THE ROMANESQUE WALK"--Cloister--_Arles_ 157 "ONE OF THE THREE SMALL DRAWBRIDGES"--_Entrevaux_ 159 "THE PORTCULLIS"--_Entrevaux_ 160 "A FORT THAT PERCHES ON A SHARP PEAK"--_Entrevaux_ 161 "A TRUE 'PLACE D'ARMES'"--_Entrevaux_ 163 "THE LONG LINE OF WALLS THAT ZIGZAG DOWN THE HILLSIDE"--_Entrevaux_ 165 "THE CHURCH TOWER STOOD OUT AGAINST THE ROCKY PEAK"--_Entrevaux_ 169 "THE CATHEDRAL IS NEAR THE HEAVY ROUND TOWERS OF THE OUTER RAMPARTS"--_Sisteron_ 172 "THE BRIDGE ACROSS THE DURANCE"--_Sisteron_ 173 "ENTRANCES TO TWO NARROW STREETS"--_Sisteron_ 176 "IT WAS A LOW-VAULTED, SOMBRE LITTLE CLOISTER"--_Cavaillon_ 182 "THE CATHEDRAL'S TOWER AND TURRET"--_Cavaillon_ 187 "THE MAIN BODY OF THE CHURCH"--_Apt_ 191 "THE VIRGIN AND SAINT ANNE--BY BENZONI"--_Apt_ 194 "SAINT-MARTIN-DE-BRÔMES WITH ITS HIGH SLIM TOWER" 197 "THE FORTIFIED MONASTERY OF THE TEMPLARS"--_near Gréoux_ 199 "THE TOWER OF NOTRE-DAME-DU-SIÈGE"--_Riez_ 201 "NOTHING COULD BE MORE QUAINTLY OLD AND MODEST THAN THE BAPTISTERY"--_Riez_ 202 "BETWEEN THE COLUMNS AN ALTAR HAS BEEN PLACED"--Baptistery, _Riez_ 203 "THE BEAUTIFUL GRANITE COLUMNS"--_Riez_ 207 "THE MAIL-COACH OF SENEZ" 211 "THE OPEN SQUARE"--_Senez_ 213 "THE PALACE OF ITS PRELATES"--_Senez_ 214 "THE CATHEDRAL"--_Senez_ 215 "THE CATHEDRAL"--_Senez_ 218 "TAPESTRIES BEAUTIFY THE CHOIR-WALLS"--_Senez_ 219 "BETWEEN BRANCHES FULL OF APPLE-BLOSSOMS--THE CHURCH AS THE CURÉ SAW IT"--_Senez_ 221 "THE SOUTH AISLE"--_Aix_ 224 "THE ROMANESQUE PORTAL"--_Aix_ 225 "THE CLOISTER"--_Aix_ 227 "THE CATHEDRAL"--_Aix_ 231 "AN AMPHITHEATRE WHICH RIVALS THE ART OF THE COLISEUM"--_Nîmes_ 238 "THE GENERAL EFFECT IS SOMEWHAT THAT OF A PORT-COCHÈRE"--_Montpellier_ 244 "THE FINEST VIEW IS THAT OF THE APSE"--_Montpellier_ 245 "THE CLOCK TOWER IS VERY SQUARE AND THICK"--_Béziers_ 248 "THE QUAINT AND PRETTY FOUNTAIN"--_Béziers_ 250 "THE DOOR OF THE CLOISTER"--_Narbonne_ 255 "THIS IS A PLACE OF DESERTED SOLITUDE"--_Narbonne_ 257 "THESE FLYING-BUTTRESSES GIVE TO THE EXTERIOR ITS MOST CURIOUS AND BEAUTIFUL EFFECT"--_Narbonne_ 261 "ALL THE OLD BUILDINGS OF THE CITY ARE OF SPANISH ORIGIN"--_Perpignan_ 265 "THE UNFINISHED FAÇADE"--_Perpignan_ 267 "THE STONY STREET OF THE HILLSIDE"--_Carcassonne_ 269 "THE ANCIENT CROSS"--_Carcassonne_ 272 "OFTEN TOO LITTLE TIME IS SPENT UPON THE NAVE"--_Carcassonne_ 275 "THE CHOIR IS OF THE XIV CENTURY"--_Carcassonne_ 279 "THE FAÇADE, STRAIGHT AND MASSIVE"--_Carcassonne_ 281 "PERSPECTIVE OF THE ROMANESQUE"--_Carcassonne_ 283 "THE NAVE OF THE XIII CENTURY IS AN AISLE-LESS CHAMBER, LOW AND BROADLY ARCHED"--_Toulouse_ 291 "THE PRESENT CATHEDRAL IS A COMBINATION OF STYLES"--_Toulouse_ 294 LIST OF WORKS CONSULTED. BAYET. _Précis de l'Histoire de l'Art._ BODLEY. _France._ BOURG. _Viviers, ses Monuments et son Histoire._ CHOISY. _Histoire de l'Architecture._ COUGNY. _L'Art au Moyen Age._ COOK. _Old Provence._ CORROYER. _L'Architecture romane._ " _L'Architecture gothique._ COX. _The Crusades._ DARCEL. _Le Mouvement archéologique relatif au Moyen Age._ DE LAHONDÈS. _L'Église Saint-Etienne, Cathédrale de Toulouse._ DEMPSTER. _Maritime Alps._ DUCÉRÉ. _Bayonne historique et pittoresque._ DURUY. _Histoire de France._ FERREE. _Articles on French Cathedrals appearing in the "Architectural Record._" GARDÈRE. _Saint-Pierre de Condom et ses Constructeurs._ GOULD. _In Troubadour Land._ GUIZOT. _Histoire de France._ " _Histoire de la Civilisation en France._ HALLAM. _The Middle Ages._ HARE. _South-eastern France._ " _South-western France._ _History of Joanna of Naples, Queen of Sicily_ (_published_ 1824). HUNNEWELL. _Historical Monuments of France._ JAMES. _A Little Tour through France._ _Le Moyen Age_ (_avec notice par Roger-Milès_). LARNED. _Churches and Castles of Mediæval France._ LASSERRE, L'ABBÉ. _Recherches historiques sur la Ville d'Alet et son ancien Diocèse._ LECHEVALLIER CHEVIGNARD. _Les Styles français._ MACGIBBON. _The Architecture of Provence and the Riviera._ MARLAVAGNE. _Histoire de la Cathédrale de Rodez._ MARTIN. _Histoire de France._ MASSON. _Louis IX and the XIII Century._ " _Francis I and the XVI Century._ MÉRIMÉE. _Études sur les Arts au Moyen Age._ MICHELET. _Histoire de France._ MICHELET AND MASSON. _Mediævalism in France._ _Monographie de la Cathédrale d'Albi._ MONTALEMBERT. _Les Moines d'Occident._ MILMAN. _History of Latin Christianity._ PALUSTRE. _L'Architecture de la Renaissance._ PASTOR. _Lives of the Popes._ PENNELL. _Play in Provence._ QUICHERAT. _Mélanges d'Archéologie au Moyen Age._ RENAN. _Études sur la Politique religieuse du Règne de Philippe le Bel._ RÉVOIL. _Architecture romane du Midi de la France._ ROSIERES. _Histoire de l'Architecture._ SCHNASSE. _Geschichte der bildenden Künste._ (_Volume III, etc._) SENTETZ. _Sainte-Marie d'Auch._ SORBETS. _Histoire d'Aire-sur-l'Adour._ SOULIÉ. _Interesting old novels whose scenes are laid in the South of France_:-- " "_Le Comte de Toulouse._" " "_Le Vicomte de Béziers._" " "_Le Château des Pyrénées_," _etc._ STEVENSON. _Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes._ TAINE. _The Ancient Regime._ " _Journeys through France._ " _Origins of Contemporary France._ " _Tour through the Pyrénées._ _'Twixt France and Spain._ VIOLLET-LE-DUC. _Histoire d'une Cathédrale et d'un Hôtel-de-Ville._ _Entretiens sur l'Architecture._ _Dictionnaire raisonné de l'Architecture française du XI^e au XVI^e siècle._ The South of France. I. THE SOUTH OF FRANCE. If it is only by an effort that we appreciate the valour of Columbus in the XV century, his secret doubts, his temerity, how much fainter is our conception of the heroism of the early Mediterranean navigators. Steam has destroyed for us the awful majesty of distance, and we can never realise the immensity of this "great Sea" to the ancients. To Virgil the adventures of the "pious Æneas" were truly heroic. The western shores of the Mediterranean were then the "end of the earth," and even during the first centuries of our own era, he who ventured outside the Straits of Gibraltar tempted either Providence or the Devil and was very properly punished by falling over the edge of the earth into everlasting destruction. "Why," asks a mediæval text-book of science, "is the sun so red in the evening?" And this convincing answer follows, "Because he looks down upon Hell." For centuries before the Christian era the South of France, with Spain, lay in the unknown west end of the Sea. Along its eastern shores lay civilisations hoary with age; Carthage, to the South, was moribund; Greece was living on the prestige of her glorious past; while Rome was becoming all-powerful. Legend tells that adventurous Phoenicians and Greeks discovered the French coasts, that Nîmes was founded by a Tyrian Hercules, and Marseilles, about 600 B.C., by a Phoenician trader who married a chief's daughter and settled at the mouth of the Rhone. But these early settlements were merely isolated towns, which were not interdependent;--scarcely more than trading posts. It was Rome who took southern Gaul unto herself, and after Roman fashion, built cities and towns and co-ordinated them into well-regulated provinces; and it is with Roman rule that the connected history of Gaul begins. From the outset we meet one basic fact, so difficult to realise when France is considered as one country, the essential difference between the North and the South. Cæsar found in the South a partial Roman civilisation ready for his organisation; and old, flourishing cities, like Narbonne, Aix, and Marseilles. In the North he found the people advanced no further than the tribal stage, and Paris--not even Paris in name--was a collection of mud huts, which, from its strategic position, he elevated into a camp. The two following centuries, the height of Roman dominion in France, accentuated these differences. The North was governed by the Romans, never assimilated nor civilised by them. The South eagerly absorbed all the culture of the Imperial City; her religions and her pleasures, her beautiful Temples and great Amphitheatres, finally her morals and effeminacy, till in the II century of our era, anyone living a life of luxurious gaiety was popularly said to have "set sail for Marseilles." To this day the South boasts that it was a very part of Rome, and Rome was not slow to recognise the claim. Gallic poets celebrated the glory of Augustus, a Gaul was the master of Quintilian, and Antoninus Pius, although born in the Imperial City, was by parentage a native of Nîmes. [Illustration: "CARCASSONNE, THE INVULNERABLE."] Not to the rude North, but to this society, so pagan, so pleasure-loving, came the first missionaries of the new Christian faith, to meet in the arenas of Gaul the fate of their fellow-believers in Rome, to hide in subterranean caves and crypts, to endure, to persist, and finally to conquer. In the III and IV centuries many of the great Bishoprics were founded, Avignon, Narbonne, Lyons, Arles, and Saint-Paul-trois Châteaux among others; but these same years brought political changes which seemed to threaten both Church and State. Roman power was waning. Tribes from across the Rhine were gathering, massing in northern Gaul, and its spirit was antagonistic to the contentment of the rich Mediterranean provinces. The tribes were brave, ruthless, and barbarous. Peace was galling to their uncontrollable restlessness. The Gallo-Romans were artistic, literary, idle, and luxurious. They fell, first to milder but heretical foes; then to the fierce but orthodox Frank; and the story of succeeding years was a chronicle of wars. Like a great swarm of locusts, the Saracens--conquerors from India to Spain--came upon the South. They took Narbonne, Nîmes, and even Carcassonne, the Invulnerable. They besieged Toulouse, and almost destroyed Bordeaux. Other cities, perhaps as great as these, were razed to the very earth and even their names are now forgotten. Europe was menaced; the South of France was all but destroyed. Again the Frank descended; and like a great wind blowing clouds from a stormy sky, Charles Martel swept back the Arabs and saved Christianity. Before 740, he had returned a third time to the South, not as a deliverer, but for pure love of conquest; and by dismantling Nîmes, destroying the maritime cities of Maguelonne and Agde, and taking the powerful strongholds of Arles and Marseilles, he paved the way for his great descendant who nominally united "all France." But Charlemagne's empire fell in pieces; and as Carlovingian had succeeded Merovingian, so in 987 Capetian displaced the weak descendants of the mighty head of the "Holy Roman Empire." The map changed with bewildering frequency; and in these changes, the nobles--more stable than their kings--grew to be the real lords of their several domains. History speaks of France from Clovis to the Revolution as a kingdom; but even later than the First Crusade the kingdom lay somewhere between Paris and Lyons; the Royal Domain, not France as we know it now. The Duchy of Aquitaine, the Duchy of Brittany, Burgundy, the Counties of Toulouse, Provence, Champagne, Normandy, and many smaller possessions, were as proudly separate in spirit as Norway and Sweden, and often as politically distinct as they from Denmark. In the midst of these times of turmoil the Church had steadily grown. Every change, however fatal to North or South, brought to her new strength. Confronted with cultured paganism in the first centuries, the blood of her martyrs made truly fruitful seed for her victories; and later, facing paganism of another, wilder race, she triumphed more peacefully in the one supreme conversion of Clovis; and the devotion and interest which from that day grew between Church and King, gradually made her the greatest power of the country. After the decline of Roman culture the Church was the one intellectual, almost peaceful, and totally irresistible force. The great lords scorned learning. An Abbot, quaintly voicing the Church's belief, said that "every letter writ on paper is a sword thrust in the devil's side." When there was cessation of war, the occupation of men, from Clovis' time throughout Mediævalism, was gone. They could not read; they could not write; the joy of hunting was, in time, exhausted. They were restless, lost. The justice meted out by the great lords was, too often, the right of might. But at the Council of Orléans, in 511, a church was declared an inviolable refuge, where the weak should be safe until their case could be calmly and righteously judged. The beneficent care of the Church cannot be overestimated. Between 500 and 700 she had eighty-three councils in Gaul, and scarcely one but brought a reform,--a real amelioration of hardships. Something of the general organisation of her great power in those rude times deserves more than the usual investigation. Even in its small place in the "Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France," it is an interesting bit of Church politics and psychology. The ecclesiastical tradition of France goes back to the very first years of the Christian era. Lazarus, Mary Magdalene, Martha, and Mary the Mother of James, are only a few of those intimately connected with Christ Himself, who are believed to have come into Gaul; and in their efforts to systematically and surely establish Christianity, to have founded the first French Bishoprics. This is tradition. But even the history of the II century tells of a venerable, martyred Bishop of Lyons, a disciple of that Polycarp who knew Saint John; and in the III century Gaul added no less than fourteen to the Sees she already had. Enthusiastic tradition aside, it is evident that the missionary ardour of the Gallic priests was intense; and the glory of their early victories belongs entirely to a branch of the Church known as "the Secular Clergy." [Illustration: THE TOWER OF AN EARLY MARITIME CATHEDRAL.--AGDE.] The other great branch, "the Religious Orders," were of later institution. From the oriental deserts of the Thebaid, where Saint Anthony had early practised the austerities of monkish life, Saint Martin drew his inspiration for the monasticism of the West. But it was not until the last of the IV century that he founded, near Poitiers, the first great monastery in France. The success of this form of pious life, if not altogether edifying, was immediate. Devotional excesses were less common in the temperate climate of France than under the exciting oriental sun, yet that most bizarre of Eastern fanatics, the "Pillar Saint," had at least one disciple in Gaul. He--the good Brother Wulfailich--began the life of sanctity by climbing a column near Trèves, and prepared himself to stand on it, barefooted, through winter and summer, till, presumably, angels should bear him triumphantly to heaven. But the West is not the East. And the good Bishops of the neighbourhood drew off, instead of waiting at the pillar, as an exalted emperor had humbly stood beneath that of Saint Simeon Stylites. Far from being awe-struck, they were scandalised; and they forced Wulfailich to descend from his eminence, and destroyed it. This is one of the first Gallic instances of the antagonisms between the "secular" and the "regular" branches of the reverend clergy. Within the French Church from early times, these two great forces were arrayed, marching toward the same great end,--but never marching together. It is claimed they were, and are, inimical. In theory, in ideal, nothing could be further from truth. They were in fact sometimes unfriendly; and more often than not mutually suspicious. For the great Abbot inevitably lived in a Bishop's See; and with human tempers beneath their churchly garb, Abbot and Bishop could not always agree. Now the Bishop was lord of the clergy, supreme in his diocese; but should he call to account the lowest friar of any monastery, my Lord Abbot replied that he was "answerable only to the Pope," and retired to his vexatious "imperium in imperio." The beginning of the VI century saw much that was irregular in monastic life. The whole country was either in a state of war or of unrestful expectation of war. Many Abbeys were yet to be established; many merely in process of foundation. Wandering brothers were naturally beset by the dangers and temptations of an unsettled life; and if history may be believed, fell into many irregularities and even shamed their cloth by licentiousness. Into this disorder came the great and holy Benedict, the "learnedly ignorant, the wisely unlearned," the true organiser of Western Monachism. Under his wise "Rules" the Abbey of the VI century was transformed. It became "not only a place of prayer and meditation, but a refuge against barbarism in all its forms. And this home of books and knowledge had departments of all kinds, and its dependencies formed what we would call to-day a 'model farm.' There were to be found examples of activity and industry for the workman, the common tiller of the soil, or the land-owner himself. It was a school," continues Thierry, "not of religion, but of practical knowledge; and when it is considered that there were two hundred and thirty-eight of such schools in Clovis' day, the power of the Orders, though late in coming, will be seen to have grown as great as that of the Bishops." From these two branches sprang all that is greatest in the ecclesiastical architecture of France. As their strength grew, their respective churches were built, and to-day, as a sign of their dual power, we have the Abbey and the Cathedral. The Bishop's church had its prototype in the first Christian meeting places in Rome and was planned from two basic ideas,--the part of the Roman house which was devoted to early Christian service, and the growing exigencies of the ritual itself. At the very first of the Christian era, converts met in any room, but these little groups so soon grew to communities that a larger place was needed and the "basilica" of the house became the general and accepted place of worship. The "basilica" was composed of a long hall, sometimes galleried, and a hemicycle; and its general outline was that of a letter T. Into this purely secular building, Christian ceremonials were introduced. The hemicycle became the apse; the gallery, a clerestory; the hall, a central nave. Here the paraphernalia of the new Church were installed. The altar stood in the apse; and between it and the nave, on either side, a pulpit or reading-desk was placed. Bishop and priests sat around the altar, the people in the nave. This disposition of clergy, people, and the furniture of the sacred office is essentially that of the Cathedral of to-day. There were however many amplifications of the first type. The basilica form, T, was enlarged to that of a cross; and increasingly beautiful architectural forms were evolved. Among the first was the tower of the early Italian churches. This single tower was doubled in the French Romanesque, often multiplied again by Gothic builders, and in Byzantine churches, increased to seven and even nine domes. Transepts were added, and as, one by one, the arts came to the knowledge of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, each was pressed into the service of the Cathedral builders. The interior became so beautiful with carvings, windows of marvellously painted glass, rich tapestries and frescoes, that the ritual seemed yearly more impressive and awe-inspiring. The old, squat exterior of early days was forgotten in new height and majesty, and the Cathedral became the dominant building of the city. Although the country was early christianised, and on the map of Merovingian France nearly all the present Cathedral cities of the Mediterranean were seats of Bishoprics, we cannot now see all the successive steps of the church architecture of the South. The main era of the buildings which have come down to us, is the XI-XIV centuries. Of earlier types and stages little is known, little remains. [Illustration: A NAVE OF THE EARLIER STYLE.--ARLES.] In general, Gallic churches are supposed to have been basilican, with all the poverty of the older style. Charlemagne's architects, with San Vitale in mind, gave a slight impetus in the far-away chapel at Aix-la-Chapelle, and Gregory of Tours tells us that Bishop Perpetuus built a "glorious" church at Tours. But his description is meagre. After a few mathematical details, he returns to things closer to his heart,--the Church's atmosphere of holiness, the emblematic radiance of the candle's light, the ecstasy of worshippers who seemed "to breathe the air of Paradise." And Saint Gregory's is the religious, uncritical spirit of his day, whose interest was in ecclesiastical establishment rather than ecclesiastical architecture. Churches there were in numbers; but they were not architectural achievements. Their building was like the planting of the flag; they were new outposts, signs of an advance of the Faith. With this missionary spirit in the Church, with priests still engaged in christianising and monks in establishing themselves on their domains, with a very general ignorance of art, with the absorbing interest of the powerful and great in warfare, and the very great struggle among the poor for existence, architecture before the X century had few students or protectors. France had neither sufficient political peace nor ecclesiastical wealth for elaborate church structures. No head, either of Church or State, had taste and time enough to inaugurate such works. Many causes have combined to destroy such churches as then existed. If they escaped the rasings and fires of a siege, they were often destroyed by lightning, or decayed by years; and some of the fragments which endured to the XIII century were torn down to make room for more beautiful buildings. It was the XI and XII centuries which saw the important beginnings of the great Cathedrals of both North and South. These were the years when religion was the dominant idea of the western world,--when everything, even warfare, was pressed into its service. Instead of devastating their own and their neighbour's country, Christian armies were devastating the Holy Land; doing to the Infidel in the name of their religion what he, in the name of his, had formerly done to them. The capture of Jerusalem had triumphantly ended the First Crusade; the Church was everywhere victorious, and the Pope in actual fact the mightiest monarch of the earth. These were the days when Peter the Hermit's cry, "God wills it," aroused the world, and aroused it to the most diverse accomplishments. One form of this activity was church building; but there were other causes than religion for the general magnificence of the effort. Among these was communal pride, the interesting, half-forgotten motive of much that is great in mediæval building. The Mediævalism of the old writers seems an endless pageant, in which indefinitely gorgeous armies "march up the hill and then march down again;" in newer histories this has disappeared in the long struggle of one class with another; and in neither do we reach the individual, nor see the daily life of the people who are the backbone of a nation. Yet these are the people we must know if we are to have a right conception of the Cathedral's place in the living interest of the Middle Ages. For the Bishop's church was in every sense a popular church. The Abbey was built primarily for its monks, and the Abbey-church for their meditation and worship. The French Cathedral was the people's, it was built by their money, not money from an Abbey-coffer. It did not stand, as the Cathedral of England, majestic and apart, in a scholarly close; it was in the open square of the city; markets and fairs were held about it; the doors to its calm and rest opened directly on the busiest, every-day bustle. It is not a mere architectural relic, as its building was never a mere architectural feat. It is the symbol of a past stage of life, a majestic part of the picture we conjure before our mind's eye, when we consider Mediævalism. [Illustration: A NAVE OF THE LATER STYLE.--RODEZ.] Such a picture of a city of another country and of the late Middle Ages exists in the drama of Richard Wagner's Meistersinger; and his Nuremberg of the XVI century, with changes of local colour, is the type of all mediæval towns. General travel was unknown. The activity of the great roads was the march of armies, the roving of marauders, the journeys of venturesome merchants or well-armed knights. Not only roads, but even streets were unsafe at night; and after the sun had set he who had gone about freely and carelessly during the day, remained at home or ventured out with much caution. When armies camped about her walls, the city was doubtless much occupied with outside happenings. But when the camp broke up and war was far away, her shoemaker made his shoes, her goldsmith, fine chains and trinkets, her merchants traded in the market-place. Their interests were in street brawls, romancings, new "privileges," the work or the feast of the day--in a word town-topics. Yet being as other men, the burghers also were awakened by the energy of the age, and instead of wasting it in adventures and wars, their interest took the form of an intense local pride, narrow, but with elements of grandeur, seldom selfish, but civic. This absence of the personal element is nowhere better illustrated than in Cathedral building. Of all the really great men who planned the Cathedrals of France, almost nothing is known; and by searching, little can be found out. Who can give a dead date, much less a living fact, concerning the life of that Gervais who conceived the great Gothic height of Narbonne? Who can tell even the name of him who planned the sombre, battlemented walls of Agde, or of that great man who first saw in poetic vision the delicate choir of Saint-Nazaire in Carcassonne? Artists have a well-preserved personality,--cathedral-builders, none. Robert of Luzarches who conceived the "Parthenon of all Gothic architecture," and the man who planned stately Sens and the richness of Canterbury, are as unknown to us as the quarries from which the stones of their Cathedrals were cut. It is not the Cathedral built by Robert of Luzarches belonging to Amiens, as it is the Assumption by Rubens belonging to Antwerp. It is scarcely the Cathedral of its patron, Saint Firmin. It is the Cathedral of Amiens. [Illustration: "THE DELICATE CHOIR OF SAINT-NAZAIRE."--CARCASSONNE.] We hear many learned disquisitions on the decay of the art of church building. Lack of time in our rushing age, lack of patience, decline of religious zeal, or change in belief, these are some of the popular reasons for this architectural degeneracy. Strange as it may seem none of these have had so powerful an influence as the invention of printing. The first printing-press was made in the middle of the XV century,--after the conception of the great Cathedrals. In an earlier age, when the greatest could neither read nor write and manuscripts even in monasteries were rare, sculpture and carving were the layman's books, and Cathedrals were not only places of worship, they were the people's religious libraries where literature was cut in stone. In the North, the most unique form of this literature was the drama of the Breton Calvaries, which portrayed one subject and one only,--the "Life and Passion of Christ," taken from Prophecy, Tradition, and the Gospels. Cathedrals, both North and South, used the narrative form. They told story after story; and their makers showed an intimate knowledge of Biblical lore that would do credit to the most ardent theological student. At Nîmes, by no means the richest church in carvings, there are besides the Last Judgment and the reward of the Evil and the Righteous,--which even a superficial Christian should know,--many of the stories of the Book of Genesis. At Arles, there is the Dream of Jacob, the Dream of Joseph, the Annunciation, the Nativity, Purification, Massacre of the Innocents, the Flight into Egypt; almost a Bible in stone. In these days of books and haste few would take the trouble to study such sculptured tales. But their importance to the unlettered people of the Middle Ages cannot be overestimated; and the incentive to magnificence of artistic conception was correspondingly great. The main era of Cathedral building is the same all over France. But with the general date, all arbitrary parallel between North and South abruptly ends. The North began the evolution of the Gothic, a new form indigenous to its soil; the South continued the Romanesque, her evolution of a transplanted style, and long knew no other. She had grown accustomed to give northward,--not to receive; and it was the reign of Saint Louis before she began to assimilate the architectural ideas of the Isle de France and to build in the Gothic style, it was admiration for the newer ideals which led the builders of the South to change such of their plans as were not already carried out, and to try with these foreign and beautiful additions, to give to their churches the most perfect form they could conceive. And thus, from a web of Fate, in which, as in all destinies, is the spinning of many threads, came the Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South. Are they greater than those of the North? Are they inferior to them? It is best said, "Comparison is idle." Who shall decide between the fir-trees and the olives--between the beautiful order of a northern forest and the strange, astounding luxuriance of the southern tangle? Which is the better choice--the well-told tale of the Cathedrals of the North, with their procession of kingly visitors, or the almost untold story of the Cathedrals of the South, where history is still legend, tradition, romance--the story of fanatic fervour and still more fanatic hate? [Illustration: A CLOISTER OF THE SOUTH.--ELNE.] II. ARCHITECTURE IN PROVENCE, LANGUEDOC, AND GASCONY. No better place can be found than the Mediterranean provinces to consider the origins of the earliest southern style. Here Romanesque Cathedrals arose in the midst of the vast ruins of Imperial antiquity, here they developed strange similarities to foreign styles, domes suggesting the East, Greek motives recalling Byzantium, and details reminiscent of Syria. And here is the battle-field for that great army who decry or who defend Roman influences. Some would have us believe that the Romanesque dome is expatriated from the East; others, that it is naturalised; others, that it is native. The plan of the Romanesque dome differs very much from that of the Byzantine, yet the general conception seems Eastern. If conceivable in the Oriental mind, why not in that of the West? And yet, in spite of some native peculiarities of structure, why should not the general idea have been imported? Who shall decide? In a book such as this, mooted questions which involve such multitudinous detail and such unprovable argument cannot be discussed. It is unreasonable to doubt, however, that Roman influences dominated the South, herself a product of Roman civilisation; and as in the curious ineradicable tendency of the South toward heresy we more than suspect a subtle infiltration of Greek and Oriental perversions, so in architecture it is logical to infer that Mediterranean traders, Crusaders, and perhaps adventurous architects who may have travelled in their wake, brought rumours of the buildings of the East, which were adopted with original or necessary modifications. Viollet-le-Duc, in summing up this much discussed question, has written that "in the Romanesque art of the West, side by side with persistent Latin traditions, a Byzantine influence is almost always found, evidenced by the introduction of the cupola." In the lamentable absence of records of the majority of Cathedrals, reasonings of origin must be inductive, and more or less imaginative, and have no legitimate place in the scope of a book which aims to describe the existing conditions and proven history of southern Cathedrals. [Illustration: A ROMANESQUE AISLE.--ARLES.] Quicherat, who has had much to say upon architectural subjects, defines the Romanesque as an art "which has ceased to be Roman, although it has much that is Roman, and that is not yet Gothic, although it already presages the Gothic." This is not a very helpful interpretation. Romanesque, as it exists in France to-day, is generally of earlier building than the Gothic; it is an older and far simpler style. It was not a quick, brilliant outburst, like the Gothic, but a long and slow evolution; and it has therefore deliberation and dignity, not the spontaneity of northern creations; strength, and at times great vigour, but not munificence, not the lavishness of art and wealth and adornment, of which the younger style was prodigal. Few generalisations are flawless, but it may be truly said that Romanesque Cathedrals are lacking in splendour; and it will be found in a large majority of cases that they are also without the impressiveness of great size; that they are almost devoid of shapely windows or stained glass, of notable carvings or richness of decorative detail. Their art is a simple art, a sober art, and in its nearest approach to opulence--the sculptured portals of Saint-Trophime of Arles or Saint-Gilles-de-Languedoc--there is still a reserved rather than an exuberant and uncontrolled display of wealth. [Illustration: "THE SCULPTURED PORTALS OF SAINT-TROPHIME."--ARLES.] By what simple, superficial sign can this architecture be recognised by those who are to see it for the first time? It exists "everywhere and always" in southern France; but, side by side with the encroachments and additions of other styles, how can it be easily distinguished? Quicherat writes that the principal characteristic of the Romanesque is "la voûte," and the great, rounded tunnel of the roofing is a distinction which will be found in no other form. But the easiest of superficial distinctions is the arch-shape, which in portal, window, vaulting or tympanum is round; wherever the arcaded form is used,--always round. With this suggestion of outline, and the universal principles of the style, simplicity and dignity and absence of great ornamentation, the untechnical traveller may distinguish the Romanesque of the South, and if he be akin to the traveller who tells these Cathedral tales, the interest and fascination which the old architecture awakes, will lead him to discover for himself the many differences which are evident between the ascetic strength of the one, and the splendour and brilliance of the other. [Sidenote: Provence.] [Illustration: A GOTHIC AISLE.--MENDE.] The three provinces which compose the South of France are Provence, Languedoc, and Gascony, and of these Provence is, architecturally and historically, the first to claim our interest. During the era of colonisation it was the most thoroughly romanised, and in the early centuries of Christianity the first to fall completely under the systematic organisation of the Church. It has a large group of very old Cathedrals, and is the best study-ground for a general scrutiny and appreciation of that style which the builders of the South assimilated and developed until, as it were, they naturalised it and made it one of the two greatest forms of architectural expression. Provence does not contain the most impressive examples of Romanesque. Two Abbeys of the far Norman North are more finished and harmonious representations of the art, and Languedoc, in the basilica of Saint-Sernin of Toulouse, has a nobler interior than any in the Midi, and many other churches of Languedoc and Gascony are most interesting examples of a style which belonged to them as truly as to Provence. Yet it is in this province that the Romanesque is best studied. For here the great internecine struggles--both political and religious--of the Middle Ages were not as devastating as in Languedoc and Gascony; Provence was a sunny land, where Sonnets flourished more luxuriantly than did Holy Inquisition. Her churches have therefore been preserved in their original form in greater numbers than those of the two other provinces. They are of all types of Romanesque, all stages of its growth, from the small and simple Cathedrals which were built when ecclesiastical exchequers were not overflowing, to the greater ones which illustrate very advanced and dignified phases of architectural development; and as a whole they exhibit the normal proportion of failure and success in an effort toward an ideal. [Sidenote: Languedoc.] Léon Renier, the learned lecturer of the Collège de France, says: "It is remarkable that the changes, the elaborations, the modifications of the architecture given by Rome to all countries under her domination were conceived in the provinces long before they were reproduced in Italy. Rome gave no longer; she received ... a transfusion of a new blood, more vital and more rich." In Languedoc, the greater number of monuments of this ancient architecture have been destroyed; and those of their outgrowth, the later Romanesque, were so repeatedly mutilated that the Cathedrals of this province present even a greater confusion of originalities, restorations, and additions than those of Provence. To a multitude of dates must be added corresponding differences in style. Each school of architecture naturally considered that it had somewhat of a monopoly of good taste and beauty, or at least that it was an improvement on the manner which preceded it; and it would have been too much to expect, in ages when anachronisms were unrecognised, that churches should have been restored in their consonant, original style. Architects of the Gothic period were unable to resist the temptation of continuing a Romanesque nave with a choir of their own school, and builders of the XVIII century went still further and added a showy Louis XV façade to a modest Romanesque Cathedral. Some churches, built in times of religious storm and stress, show the preoccupation of their patrons or the lack of talent of their constructors; others belong to Bishoprics that were much more lately constituted than the Sees of Provence, and in these cases the new prelate chose a church already begun or completed, and compromised with the demands of episcopal pomp by an addition, usually of different style. The numerous changes, political and religious, of the Mediævalism of Languedoc, had such considerable and diverse influence on the architecture of the province that it is not possible, as in Provence, to trace an uninterrupted evolution of one style. The Languedocian is generally a later builder than the Provençal; he is bolder. Having the Romanesque and the Gothic as choice, he chose at will and seemingly at random. He had spontaneity, enthusiasm, verve; and when no accepted model pleased his taste, he re-created after his own liking. Languedoc has therefore a delightful quality that is wanting in Provence; and in her greater Cathedrals there is often an originality that is due to genius rather than to eccentricity. There is delicate Gothic at Carcassonne, lofty Gothic at Narbonne, Sainte-Cécile of Albi is fortified Gothic built in brick. The interior of Saint-Sernin of Toulouse is an apotheosis of the austere Romanesque, and Saint-Etienne of Agde is a gratifying type of the Maritime Church of the Midi. [Illustration: "CORRESPONDING DIFFERENCES IN STYLE."--CARCASSONNE.] This Cathedral of the Sea is a fitting example of a peculiar type of architecture which exists also in Provence,--a succession of fortress-churches that extend along the Mediterranean from Spain to Italy like the peaks of a mountain chain. Nothing can better illustrate the continuous warrings and raidings in the South of France than these strange churches, and their many fortified counterparts inland, in both Languedoc and Gascony. Castles and walled towns were not sufficient to protect the Southerner from invasions and incursions; his churches and Cathedrals, even to the XIV century, were strongholds, more suitable for men-at-arms than for priests, and seemingly dedicated to some war-god rather than to the gentle Virgin Mother and the Martyr-Saints under whose protection they nominally dwelt. Although most interesting, the military church of the interior is seldom the Bishop's church. The maritime church on the contrary is nearly always a Cathedral, with strangely curious legends and episodes. The French coast of the Mediterranean was the scene of continuous pillage. Huns, Normans, Moors, Saracens, unknown pirates and free-booters of all nationalities found it very lucrative and convenient to descend on a sea-board town, and escape as they had come, easily, their boats loaded with booty. "As late as the XII century," writes Barr Ferree, "buccaneers gained a livelihood by preying on the peaceful and unoffending inhabitants of the villages and cities. The Cathedrals, as the most important buildings and the most conspicuous, were strongly fortified, both to protect their contents and to serve as strongholds for the citizens in case of need. In these churches, therefore, architecture assumed its most utilitarian form and buildings are real fortifications, with battlemented walls, strong and heavy towers, and small windows, and are provided with the other devices of Romanesque architecture of a purely military type." [Illustration: "FORTIFIED GOTHIC BUILT IN BRICK."--ALBI.] "Time has dealt hardly with them. The kingly power, being entrenched in Paris, developed from the Isle de France. The wealth that once enriched the fertile lands of the South moved northwards, and the great commercial cities of the North became the most important centres of activity. Then the southern towns began to decline," and the buildings which remain to represent most perfectly the "Church-Fortress" are not those of Provence, which are "patched" and "restored," but those of Languedoc, Agde, and Maguelonne, and Elne of the near-by country of Rousillon. [Illustration: "A CHURCH FORTRESS."--MAGUELONNE.] [Sidenote: Gascony.] Gascony, the last of the southern provinces and the farthest from Rome, had great prosperity under Imperial dominion. Many patricians emigrated there, roads were built, commerce flourished, and as in Provence and Languedoc, towns grew into large and well-established cities. Christianity made a comparatively early conquest of the province; and at the beginning of the IV century, eleven suffragan Bishoprics had been established under the Archbishopric of Eauze. Gascony has many old Cathedral cities, and has had many ancient Cathedrals; but after the fall of the Roman Empire in the V century, a series of wars began which destroyed not only the Christian architecture, but almost every trace of Roman wealth and culture. Little towers remain, supposed shrines of Mercury, protector of commerce and travel; pieces of statues are found; but the Temples, the Amphitheatres, the Forums, have disappeared, and even more completely, the rude Christian churches of that early period. Although the province has no Mediterranean coast and could not be molested by the marauders of that busy sea, it lay directly upon the route of armies between France and Spain; and it is no "gasconading" to say that it was for centuries one of the greatest battle-fields of the South. Vandals, Visigoths, Franks, Saracens, Normans,--Gascons against Carlovingians, North against South, all had burned, raided, and destroyed Gascony before the XI century. It is not surprising, then, that there are found fewer traces of antiquity here than in Provence and Languedoc. Even the few names of decimated cities which survived, designated towns on new sites. Eauze, formerly on the Gélise, lay long in ruins, and was finally re-built a kilometre inland. Lectoure and Auch had long since retired from the river Gers and taken refuge on the hills of their present situations, while other cities fell into complete ruin and forgetfulness. [Illustration: STATELY GOTHIC SPLENDOUR.--CONDOM.] The year 1000, which followed these events, was that of the predicted and expected end of the world. The extravagances of Christians at that time are well known, the gifts of all property that were made to the Church, the abandonment of worldly pursuits, the terrors of many, the anxiety of the calmest, the emotional excesses which led people to live in trees that they might be near to heaven when the "great trump" should sound,--"Mundi fine appropinquante." But the trumpet did not sound, and Raoul Glaber, a monk of the XI century, writes that all over Italy and the Gaul of his day there was great haste to restore and re-build churches, a general rivalry between towns and between countries, as to which could build most remarkably. "This activity," says Quicherat, "may show a desire to renew alliance with the Creator." It certainly proves that the generation of the year 1000 had fresh and new architectural ideas. This was the period of recuperation and re-building for Gascony. The monks of the VIII, IX, and X centuries had devoted themselves with zeal and success to the cultivation of the soil. They had acquired fertile fields, and desiring peace, they had placed themselves in positions where their strength would defend them when their holy calling was not respected. These monasteries were places of refuge and soon gave their name and their protection to the towns and villages which began to cluster about them. Except the declining settlements of Roman days, Gascony had few towns in the X century; and many of her most important cities of to-day owe their foundation, their existence, and their prosperity to these Benedictine monasteries. Eauze regained its life after the establishment of a convent, and in the XI, XII, and XIII centuries, the Abbots of Cîteaux, Bishops, and even lords of the laity, occupied themselves in the creation of new cities. Many of the towns of mediæval creation possessed broad municipal and commercial privileges, they grew to the importance of "communes" and Bishoprics, and some even styled themselves "Republics." Although these were times of much re-building, restoring, and carrying out of older plans of ecclesiastical architecture, the XI and XII centuries were none the less filled with innumerable private wars, and in 1167 began the bloody and persistent struggle with England. The city of Aire was at one time reduced to twelve inhabitants, and the horrors of the mediæval siege were more than once repeated. In these wars, Cathedrals, as well as towns and their inhabitants, were scarred and wounded. Hardly had these dissensions ended in 1494, when the Wars of Religion commenced under Charles IX, and Gascony was again one of the most terrible fields of battle. Here the demoniac enthusiasm of both sides exceeded even the terrible exhibitions of Languedoc. The royal family of Navarre was openly Protestant and contributed more than any others to the military organisations of their Faith. Jeanne d'Albret, in 1566, wishing to repay intolerance with intolerance, forbade religious processions and church funerals in Navarre. The people rose, and the next year the Queen was forced to grant toleration to both religions. Later the King of France entered the field and sent an army against the Béarnaise Huguenots, Jeanne, in reprisal, called to her aid Montmorency; and with a thoroughness born of pious zeal and hatred, each army began to burn and kill. All monasteries, all churches, were looted by the Protestants; all cities taken by Montluc, head of the Catholics, were sacked. Tarbes was devastated by the one, Rabestans by the other, and the Cathedral of Pamiers was ruined. With the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew, in 1572, the struggle began again, and the League flourished in all its malign enthusiasm. "Such disorder as was introduced," says a writer of the period, "such pillage, has never been seen since war began. Officers, soldiers, followers, and volunteers were so overburdened with booty as to be incommoded thereby. And after this brigandage, the peasants hereabouts [Bigorre] abandoned their very farms from lack of cattle, and the greater number went into Spain." During long centuries of such religious and political devastation the architectural energy of Gascony was expended in replacing churches which had been destroyed, and were again to be destroyed or injured. It would be unfair to expect of this province the great magnificence which its brave, cheerful, and extravagant little people believe it "once possessed," or to look, amid such unrest, for the calm growth of any architectural style. It is a country of few Cathedrals, of curious churches built for war and prayer, and of such occasional outbursts of magnificence as is seen in the Romanesque portal of Saint-Pierre of Moissac and in the stately Gothic splendour of the Cathedrals at Condom and at Bayonne. It is a country where Cathedrals are surrounded by the most beautiful of landscapes, and where each has some legend or story of the English, the League, of the Black Prince, or the Lion-hearted, of Henry IV, still adored, or of Simon de Montfort, still execrated, where the towns are truly historic and the mountains truly grand. Provence. I. THE CATHEDRALS OF THE SEA. [Sidenote: Marseilles.] Perhaps a Phoenician settlement, certainly a Carthaginian mart, later a Grecian city, and in the final years of the pagan era possessed by the Romans, no city of France has had more diverse influences of antique civilisation than Marseilles, none responded more proudly to its ancient opportunities; and not only was it commercially wealthy and renowned, but so rich in schools that it was called "another, a new Athens." It was also the port of an adventurous people, who founded Nice, Antibes, la Ciotat, and Agde, and explored a part of Africa and Northern Europe; and at the fall of the Roman Empire it became, by very virtue of its riches and safe harbour, the envy and the prey of a succession of barbaric and "infidel" invaders. In the Middle Ages it had all the vicissitudes of wars and sieges to which a great city could be subjected. It had a Viscount, and from very early days, a Bishop; it was at one time part of the Kingdom of Arles; and later it recognised the suzerainty of the Counts of Provence. When these lords were warring or crusading, it took advantage of their absence or their troubles and governed itself through its Consuls; became a Provençal Republic after the type of the Italian cities and other towns of the Mediterranean country; treated with the Italian Republics on terms of perfect equality; and although finally annexed to France by the wily Louis of the Madonnas, its people were continually haunted by memories of their former independence, and not only struggled for municipal rights and liberties, but took sides for or against the most powerful monarchs of continental history as if they had been a resourceful country rather than a city. It succored the League, defied Henry IV and Richelieu; and treating Kings in trouble as cavalierly as declining Counts, Marseilles tried at the death of Henry III to secede from France and recover its autonomy under a Consul, Charles de Cazaulx. Promptly defeated, it still continued to think independently, and struggle, as best it might, for freedom of administration; and although from the time of Pompey to that of Louis XIV it has had an ineradicable tendency to stand against the government, it has survived the results of all its contumacies, its plagues, wars, and sieges, and the destructiveness of its phase of the Revolution, when it had a Terror of its own. Notwithstanding modern rivals in the Mediterranean, Marseilles is to-day one of the largest and most prosperous of French cities. Built in amphitheatre around the bay, it is beautiful in general view, its streets bustle with commercial activity, and its vast docks swarm with workmen. The storms of the past have gone over Marseilles as the storms of nature over its sea, have been as passionate, and have left as little trace. Instead of Temples, Forum, and Arena, there are the Palais de Longchamps, the Palais de Justice, and the Christian Arch of Triumph. Instead of the muddy and unhealthy alley-ways of Mediævalism, there are broad streets and wide boulevards, and in spite of its antiquity Marseilles is a city of to-day, in monuments, aspect, spirit, and even in class distinction. "Here," writes Edmond About, "are only two categories of people, those who have made a fortune and those who are trying to make one, and the principal inhabitants are parvenus in the most honourable sense of the word." [Illustration: _Entrevaux._ People gather around the mail-coach as it makes its daily halt before the drawbridge.] [Illustration: THE NEW CATHEDRAL.--MARSEILLES.] "In the most honourable sense of the word," the Cathedral of Marseilles is also typical of the city, "parvenue." Its first stone was placed by Prince Louis Napoleon in 1852, and as the modern has overgrown the classic and mediæval greatness of Marseilles, so the new "Majeure" has eclipsed, if it has not yet entirely replaced, the old Cathedral; and except the stern Abbey-church of Saint-Victor, an almost solitary relic of true mediæval greatness, it is the finest church of the city. The new Cathedral and the old stand side by side; the one strong and whole, the other partly torn down, scarred and maimed as a veteran who has survived many wars. Even in its ruin, it is an interesting type of the maritime Provençal church, but so pitiably overshadowed by its successor that the charm of its situation is quite lost, and few will linger to study its three small naves, the defaced fresco of the dome, or even the little chapel of Saint-Lazare, all white marble and carving and small statues, scarcely more than a shallow niche in the wall, but daintily proportioned, and a charming creation of the Renaissance. Fewer still of those who pause to study what remains of the old "Majeure," will stay to reconstruct it as it used to be, and realise that it had its day of glory no less real than that of the new church which replaces it. In its stead, Saint-Martin's, and Saint-Cannat's sometimes called "the Preachers," have been temporarily used for the Bishop's services. But now that the greater church, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, has been practically completed, it has assumed, once and for all, the greater rank, and a Cathedral of Marseilles still stands on its terrace in full view of the sea. Tradition has it that a Temple of Baal once stood on this site and later, a Temple to Diana; that Lazarus came in the I century, converted the pagan Marseillais and built a Christian Cathedral here. A more critical tradition says that Saint Victor first came as missionary, Bishop, and builder. All these vague memories of conversion, more or less accurate, all the legends of an humble and struggling Christianity, seem buried by this huge modern mass. It is not a church struggling and militant, but the Church Established and Triumphant. It is a vast building over four hundred and fifty feet long, preceded by two domed towers. Its transepts are surmounted at the crossing by a huge dome whose circumference is nearly two hundred feet, a smaller one over each transept arm, and others above the apsidal chapels. The exterior is built with alternate layers of green Florentine stone and the white stone of Fontvieille; and the style of the church, variously called French Romanesque, Byzantine, and Neo-Byzantine, is very oriental in its general effect. An arcade between the two towers forms a porch, the entrance to the interior whose central nave stretches out in great spaciousness. The lateral naves, in contrast, are exceedingly narrow and have high galleries supported by large monolithic columns. These naves are prolonged into an ambulatory, each of whose chapels, in consonance with the Cathedral's colossal proportions, is as large as many a church. The building stone of the interior is grey and pink, with white marble used decoratively for capitals and bases; and these combinations of tints which would seem almost too delicate, too effeminate, for so large a building, are made rich and effective by their very mass, the gigantic sizes which the plan exacts. All that artistic conception could produce has been added to complete an interior that is entirely oriental in its luxury of ornamentation, half-oriental in style, and without that sober majesty which is an inherent characteristic of the most elaborate styles native to Western Christianity. Under the gilded dome is a rich baldaquined High Altar, and through the whole church there is a magnificence of mosaics, of mural paintings, and of stained glass that is sumptuous. Mosaics line the arches of the nave and the pendentives, and form the flooring; and in the midst of this richness of colour the grey pillars rise, one after the other in long, shadowy perspective, like the trees of a stately grove. In planning this new Provençal Cathedral its architects did not attempt to reproduce, either exactly or in greater perfection, any maritime type which its situation on the Mediterranean might have suggested, nor were they inspired by any of the models of the native style; and perhaps, to the captious mind, its most serious defect is that its building has destroyed not only an actual portion of the old Majeure, but an historic interest which might well have been preserved by a wise restoration or an harmonious re-building. And yet, with the large Palace of the Archbishop on the Port de la Joliette near-by, the statue of a devoted and loving Bishop in the open square, and the majestic Cathedral of Sainte-Marie-Majeure itself, the episcopacy of Marseilles has all the outward and visible signs of strength and glory and power. [Sidenote: Toulon.] Toulon, although a foundation of the Romans, owes its rank to-day to Henry IV, to Richelieu, and to Louis XIV's busy architect, Vauban. It is the "Gibraltar of France," a bright, bustling, modern city. Sainte-Marie-Majeure, one of its oldest ecclesiastical names, is a title which belonged to churches of both the XI and XII centuries; but in the feats of architectural gymnastics to which their remains have been subjected, and in the wars and vicissitudes of Provence, these buildings have long since disappeared. A few stones still exist of the XI century structure, void of form or architectural significance, and the ancient name of Sainte-Marie-Majeure now protects a Cathedral built in the most depressing style of the industrious Philistines of the XVII and XVIII centuries. It is not a Provençal nor a truly "maritime" church, it is not a fortress nor a defence, nor a work of any architectural beauty. It has blatancy, size, pretension,--a profusion of rich incongruities; and although religiously interesting from its chapels and shrines, it is architecturally obtrusive and monstrous. The vagaries of the architects who began in 1634 to construct the present edifice, are well illustrated in the changes of plan to which they subjected this unfortunate church. The length became the breadth, the isolated chapel of the Virgin, part of the main building; the choir, another chapel; and the High Altar was removed from the eastern to the northern end, where a new choir had been built for its reception. This confusion of plan was carried out with logical confusion of style and detail. The façade has Corinthian columns of the XVII century; the nave is said to be "transition Gothic," the choir is decorated with mural paintings, and the High Altar, a work of Révoil, adds to the banalities of the XVII and XVIII centuries a rich incongruity of which the XIX has no reason to be proud. The whole interior is so full of naves of unequal length, and radiating chapels, of arches of differing forms, tastes, and styles, that it defies concise description and is unworthy of serious consideration. Provence has modest Cathedrals of small architectural significance, but except Sainte-Réparate of Nice, it has none so chaotic and commonplace as Sainte-Marie-Majeure of Toulon. [Sidenote: Fréjus.] Fréjus, which claims to be "the oldest city in France," was one of the numerous trading ports of the Phoenician, and later, during the period of her civic grandeur, an arsenal of the Roman navy. Her most interesting ruins are the Coliseum, the Theatre, the old Citadel, and the Aqueduct, suggestions of a really great city of the long-gone past. Fréjus lost prestige with the decadence of the Empire, and after a destruction by the Saracens in the X century, Nature gave the blow which finally crushed her when the sea retreated a mile, and her old Roman light-house was left to overlook merely a long stretch of barren, sandy land. Owing to this stranded, inland position, she has escaped both the dignity of a modern sea-port and the prostitution of a Rivieran resort, and is a little dead city, the seat of an ancient Provençal "Cathedral of the Sea." This Cathedral is largely free from XVII and XVIII century disfigurements; and the pity is that having escaped this, a French church's imminent peril, it should have become so built around that the character of the exterior is almost lost. The façade is severely plain, an uninteresting re-building of 1823, but the carved wood of its portals is beautiful. The towers, as in other maritime Cathedrals of Provence, recall the perils and dangers of their days; and these towers of Fréjus, although none the less practically defensive, have a more churchly appearance than those of Antibes, Grasse, and Vence. Over the vestibuled entrance rises the western tower. Its heavy, rectangular base is the support of a super-structure which was replaced in the XVI century by one more in keeping with conventional ecclesiastical models. Then the windows of the base, whose rounded arches are still traceable, were walled in; and the new octagonal stage with high windows of its own was completed by a tile-covered spire. The more interesting tower is that which surmounts the apse. This was the lookout, facing the sea, the really vital defence of the church. Its upper room was a storage place for arms and ammunition, and on the side which faces the city was open, with a broad, pointed arch. Above, the tower ends in machiolated battlements and presents a very strong and stern front seaward, perhaps no stronger, but more artistic and grim than towers of other Provençal Cathedrals. The entrance of the church is curiously complicated. To the left is the little baptistery; directly before one, a narrow stairway which leads to the Cloister; and on the right, a low-arched vestibule which opens into the nave of the Cathedral. The interior of Saint-Etienne is dark and somewhat gloomy, but that is an inherent trait of a fortress-church, for every added inch of window-opening brought an ell of danger. The nave is unusually low and broad, and its buttressed piers are of immense weight, ending severely in a plain, moulded band. On these great piers rest the cross-vaults of the roof and the broad arches of the wall. The north aisle, disproportionately narrow, is a later addition. Behind the altar is a true Provençal apse, shallow and rectangular, and beyond its rounded roof opens the smaller half-dome. Architecturally, this is an interesting interior; but the traveller who has not time to spend in musings will fail to see it in its original intention;--cold, severely plain, heavy, with perhaps too many arch-lines, but sober and simple. A futile wooden wainscot now surrounds the church and breaks its wall space, liberal coats of whitewash conceal the building material, and taking from the church the severity of its stone, give it an appearance of poor deprecatory bareness. [Illustration: "THE DESECRATION OF THE LITTLE CLOISTER."--FRÉJUS.] Near the entrance of the Cathedral is its most ancient portion, the baptistery, formerly a building apart, but now an integral part of the church itself. It is perhaps the most interesting Christian monument in Fréjus, a reminder of those early centuries when, in France as in Italy, the little baptistery was the popular form of Christian architectural expression. Here it has the very usual octagonal shape; the arches are upheld by grayish columns of granite with capitals of white marble, and in the centre stands the font. Between the columns are small recesses, alternately rectangular and semi-domed, and above all, is a modern dome and lantern. Structurally interesting, and reminiscent of the stately baptistery of Aix, the effect of this little chamber, like the church's interior, is marred by the whitewashes from whose industrious brushes nothing but the grayish columns have escaped. And here again, the traveller who would see the builders' work, free from the disfigurements of time, must pause and imagine. Yet even imagination seems powerless before the desecration of the little Cloister. Charming it must have been to have entered its quiet walks, with their slender columns of white marble, to have seen the quaint old well in the little, sun-lit close. Now, between the slender columns, boards have been placed which shut out light and sun. The traveller sat down on an old wheel-barrow, waiting till he could see in the dim and misty light. All around him was forgetfulness of the Cloister's holy uses; signs of desecration and neglect. One end of the cloister-walk was a thoroughfare, where the wheel-barrow had worn its weary way; and even in the deserted corners there was the dust and dirt of a work-a-day world. The beautiful little capitals of the slender columns rose from among the boards, clipped and worn; above, he dimly saw the curious wooden ceiling which would seem to have taken the place of the usual stone vaulting; through chinks of the plank-wall he caught glimpses of a little close; and at length, having seen the most melancholy of "Cathedrals of the Sea," in its disguise of whitewash, decay, and misuse, he went his way. [Sidenote: Antibes.] That part of the southern coast of France called the Riviera seems now only to evoke visions of the most beautiful banality; of a life more artificial than the stage--which at least aims to present reality--transplanted to a scene of such incomparable loveliness that Nature herself adds a new and exquisite sumptuousness to the luxury of civilisation. The Riviera means a land of many follies and every vice;--each folly so delicious, each vice so regal, they seem to be sought and desired of all men. Where else can be seen in such careless magnificence Dukes of Russia with their polish of manner and their veiled insolence; Englishmen correct and blasé; Americans a bit vociferous and truly amused; great ladies of all ages and manners; adventurers high and low; and the beautiful, sparkling women of no name, bravely dressed and barbarously jewelled? Such is the Riviera of to-day; the life imposed upon it by hordes of foreign idlers in a land whose warmth and luxuriance may have lent itself but too easily to the vicious and frivolous pleasures for which they have made it notorious, but a land which has no native history that is effeminate, nor any so unworthy as its exotic present. "The Riviera" may be Nice, Beaulieu, and their like, but the Provençal Mediterranean and its neighbouring territory have been the fatherland of warriors in real mail and of princes of real power, of the Emperor Pertinax of pagan times, of those who fought successfully against Mahmoud and Tergament, and of many Knights of Malta, long the "Forlorn Hope" of Christendom. Discreetly hidden from vulgar eyes that delight in the architecture of the modern caravanserai, are the ruins of these older days--Amphitheatres, Fountains, Temples, and Aqueducts of the Romans; the Castles, Abbeys, and Cathedrals of mediæval times. Here are the larger number, if not the most interesting, of those curious churches of the sea, which protected the French townsman of the Mediterranean coast from the rapacity of sea-rovers and pirates, and many more orthodox enemies of the Middle Ages. From the great beauty of its situation, the small city of Antibes is at once a type of the old régime and of the new. Lying on the sea, with a background of snow-capped mountains, it has not entirely escaped the fate of Nice; neither has it yet lost all its old Provençal characteristics. It is a pathetic compromise between the quaint reality of the old and the blatancy of the new. The little parish church is of the very far past, having lost its Cathedral rank over six hundred years ago to Sainte-Marie in Grasse, a town scarcely younger than its own. It is the type of the church of this coast, with its unpretentious smallness, its strength, and its disfiguring restorations; and it is, especially in comparison with Vence and Grasse, of small architectural interest. The façade, and the double archway which connects the church and the tower, are of the unfortunate XVIII century, the older exterior is monotonous, and the interior, an unpleasing confusion of forms. [Illustration: "THE MILITARY OMEN--THE TOWER." ANTIBES.] The real interest of the little Cathedral is its ancient military strength, neither very grand nor very imposing, but very real to the enemy who hundreds of years ago hurled himself against the hard, plain stones. From this view-point, the mannered façade and the inharmonious interior matter but little. Toward the foe, whose sail might have arisen on the horizon at any moment, the protecting church presented the heavy rounded walls and safely narrowed windows of its three apses, and behind them the military omen of the severe, rectangular tower. High in every one of its four sides, seaward and landward, was a window, from which many a watcher must have looked and strained anxious eyes. This is the significance of the little sea-side Cathedral, this the story its tower suggests. And now when the sea is sailed by peaceful ships, and the Cathedral only a place of pious worship, the tower with its gaping windows is the only salient reminder of the ancient dignity of the church; the reminder to an indifferent generation of the days when Antibes fulfilled to Christians the promise of her old, pagan name, Antipolis, "sentinel" of the perilous sea. [Sidenote: Nice.] The situation of its Cathedral reveals a Nice of which but little is written, the city of a people who live in the service of those whose showy, new villas and hotels stretch along the promenades and lie dotted on the hills in the Nice of "all the world." Besides this exotic city, there is "the Nice of the Niçois," a small district of dark, crowded streets that are too full of the sordid struggles of competing work-people to be truly picturesque. Here, in the XVI century, when the Citadel of Nice was enlarged and the Cathedral of Sainte-Marie-de-l'Assomption destroyed, the Church of Sainte-Réparate was re-built, and succeeded to the episcopal rank. Standing on a little open square, surrounded by small shops and the poor homes of trades-folk, it seems in every sense a church of the people. Here the native Niçois, gay, industrious, mercurial, and dispossessed of his town, may feel truly at home. Finished in the most exuberant rococo style, it is an edifice from which all architectural or religious inspiration is conspicuously absent. It is a revel of luxurious bad taste; a Cathedral in Provence, a Cathedral by the Sea, but neither Provençal nor Maritime,--rather a product of that Italian taste which has so profoundly vitiated both the morals and the architecture of all the Riviera. II. CATHEDRALS OF THE HILL-TOWNS. [Sidenote: Carpentras.] Carpentras is a busy provincial town, the terminus of three diminutive railroads and of many little, lumbering, dust-covered stages. It stands high on a hill, and from the boulevards, dusty promenades under luxuriant shade-trees, which circle the town as its walls formerly did, there is an extended view over the pretty hills and valleys of the neighbouring country. At one end of the town the Hospital rises, an immense, bare, and imposing edifice of the XVIII century, built by a Trappist Bishop; and at the other is the Orange Gate, the last tower of the old fortifications. Between these historic buildings and the encircling boulevards are the narrow streets and irregular, uninteresting buildings of the city itself. It is strange indeed that so isolated a place, which seems only a big, bustling country-town, should have been of importance in the Middle Ages, and that bits of its stirring history must have caused all orthodox Europe to thrill with horror. Stranger still would be the forgetfulness of modern writers, by whom Carpentras is seldom mentioned, were it not that the city's real history is that of the Church political, a story of strange manners and happenings, rather than a step in the vital evolution towards our own time. In the Middle Ages Carpentras was an episcopal city, the capital of the County Venaissin, governed by wealthy, powerful, and ambitious Bishops, who took no small interest in worldly aggrandisement. Passing by gift to the Papacy, after the sudden death of Clement V it was selected as the place of the Conclave which was to elect his successor. The members were assembled in the great episcopal Palace, when Bertrand de Goth, a nephew of the dead Pope, claiming to be an ally of the French prelates against the Italians in the Conclave, arrived from a successful looting of the papal treasury at Montreux to pillage in Carpentras. He and his mercenaries massacred the citizens and burned the Cathedral. The episcopal Palace caught fire, and their Eminences--in danger of their lives--were forced to squeeze their sacred persons through a hole which their followers made in the Palace wall and fly northward. This unfortunate raid left Carpentras with many ruins and a demolished Cathedral, deserted by those in whose cause she had unwittingly suffered. The new Pontiff was safely elected in Lyons, and upon his return to the papal seat of Avignon he administered Carpentras by a "rector," and it continued as it had been before, the political capital of the County. During the reigns of succeeding Popes it was apparently undisturbed by dangerous honours, until the accession of the Anti-Pope, Benedict XIII. So great was this prelate's delight in the city that he reserved to himself the minor title of her Bishop, re-built her walls, and was the first patron of the present and very orthodox Cathedral, Saint-Siffrein. By a curious destiny, the church had this false prelate not only as its first patron, but as its first active supporter; and in 1404 he sent Artaud, Archbishop of Arles, in his name, to lay its first stone. Wars and rumours of wars soon possessed the province. Benedict fled, and through unrest and lack of money the work of Cathedral building was greatly hindered. In the meantime the ruins of the former Cathedral seem to have been gradually disintegrating, and in 1829 the last of its Cloister was destroyed, to be replaced by prison cells; and now only the choir dome and a suggestion of the nave exist, partly forming the present sacristy. From these meagre remains and from writings of the time, it may be fairly inferred that Saint-Pierre was a Cathedral of the type of Avignon and Cavaillon and the old Marseillaise Church of La Majeure, and that, architecturally considered, it was a far more important structure than Saint-Siffrein. With this depressing knowledge in mind the traveller was confronted with a sight as depressing--the present Cathedral itself. Fortunately, churches of a period antedating the XVII century are seldom so uninteresting. Nothing more meagre nor dreary can be conceived than the façade with its three, poor, characterless portals. They open on a large vaulted hall, with chapels in its six bays and a small and narrow choir. The principal charm of the interior is negative; its dim misty light, by concealing a mass of tasteless decorations and the poverty and bareness of the whole architectural scheme, gives to the generous height and size of the room an atmosphere of subdued and mysterious spaciousness. The south door is the one bit of this Gothic which passes the commonplace. Set in a poor, plain wall, the portal has a graceful symmetry of design; and its few carved details, probably limited by the artistic power of its builder, are so simple and chaste that they do not inevitably suggest poverty of conception. The tympanum holds an exotic detail, a defaced and insignificant fresco of the Coronation of the Virgin; and on the pier which divides the door-way stands a very charming statue of Our Lady of Snows, blessing those who enter beneath her outstretched hands. This simple portal, and indeed the whole church, is a significant example of Provençal Gothic, a style so foreign to the genius of the province that it could produce only feeble and attenuated examples of the art. Compared with its northern prototypes, it is surprisingly tentative; and awkward, unaccustomed hands seem to have built it after most primitive conceptions. [Sidenote: Digne.] Well outside the Alpine city of Digne, and almost surrounded by graves, stands a small and ancient church which is seldom opened except for the celebration of Masses for the Dead. Coffin-rests stand always before the altar, and enough chairs for the few that mourn. There are old candlesticks for the tapers of the church's poor, and hidden in the shadows of the doors, a few broken crosses that once marked graves, placed, tenderly perhaps, above those who were alive some years ago and who now rest forgotten; on battered wood, one can still read a baby's age, an old man's record, and the letters R. I. P. In this strange, melancholy destiny of Notre-Dame-du-Bourg there seems to be a peculiar fitness. The mutability of time, forgetfulness, and at length neglect, which death suggests, are brought to mind by this old church. Once the Cathedral of Digne, but no longer Cathedral, it stands almost alone in spite of its honours and its venerable age. After the desecration by the Huguenots, its episcopal birthright was given to a younger and a larger church; the city has moved away and clusters about its new Cathedral, Saint-Jérome; and Notre-Dame-du-Bourg is no longer on a busy street, but near the dusty high-road, amid the quiet of the country and the hills. Parts of its crypt and tower may antedate 900, but the church itself was re-built in the XII and XIII centuries. The course of time has brought none of the incongruities which have ruined many churches by the so-called restorations of the last three hundred years, and although its simple Romanesque is sadly unrepaired, it is a delight to come into the solitude and find an unspoiled example of this stanch old style. [Illustration: THE INTERIOR OF NOTRE-DAME-DU-BOURG.--DIGNE.] The Romanesque shows forth its great solidity in the exterior of its churches, and nowhere more than in Digne's deserted Cathedral. Flat buttresses line the walls, the transepts are square and plain, and on either side the façade wall is upheld by a formidable support. This severity of line is not greatly modified by the deep recesses of a few windows; nor is the tower--which lost its spire three hundred years ago--of less sober construction, less solidly built. Below the overhanging eaves of a miserable roof and the curious line of the nave vault which projects through the wall, is a round window with a frame of massive rolls and hollows; and below this again, under a narrow sloping covering, is the deep arch of the Cathedral's porch. This, in its prime, must have been the church's ornamental glory. Beneath the outer arch, which is continued to the buttresses by half-arches, are the great roll-mouldings that twist backward to a plain tympanum. Capitals still support these massive curves of stone, but the niches in which the columns formerly stood are empty, and grinning lions, lying on the ground, no longer support the larger columns of the plain arch. All stands in solemn decay. The traveller entered a battered, brass-nailed door and saw before him the stretch of a single, empty nave, a choir beneath whose lower vault are three small windows, and on either side the archways which he knew must lead to narrow transepts. In the south side, plain, rounded windows give a glimmering light, and over each projects an arch, the modest decoration of the walls. Far above rises the tunnel-vault, whose sheer height is grandly dignified; the arches rest on roughly carved capitals, and the outer rectangle of the piers is displaced for half a column. The rehearsal of these most simple details seems but the writing of "the letter which killeth," and not the portrayal of the spirit that seems to live within these walls. Details which seem so poorly few when read, are nobly so when seen. This small old church has a true religious stateliness, and it seemed as if a priest should bring the Sanctuary-light which says, "The Lord is in His holy temple." Saint-Jérome was built between 1490 and 1500, a hundred years before its episcopal elevation, and forms a most complete antithesis to Notre-Dame-du-Bourg which it supplanted in 1591. Where Notre-Dame is small, Saint-Jérome is large, where the old church is simple, the newer one is either pretentious or sumptuous, and where the one is Romanesque, the other is Gothic. The present Cathedral stands on the heights of the city; and from one side or another its clean, straight walls can be seen in all their large angularity and absence of architectural significance. Towers rise conventionally above the façade; and a big broad flight of white stone steps leads to three modern portals that have been built in an economical imitation of the sculptured richness of the XIII century. The interior, also Gothic, has neither clerestory nor triforium, and its naves are covered by a vaulting which springs broadly from the round, supporting piers. The conception is not noble, it has no simplicity, and no more of spiritual suggestion than a Madonna of Titian; but the space of the nave is so largely generous and the new polychrome so richly toned that the church has majesty of space and harmony, deep lights and subdued colourings; it is large and sumptuous with the munificence of a Veronese canvas, a singular and most curious contrast to the cold severity of its outer walls. [Illustration: "THE INTERIOR HAS NEITHER CLERESTORY NOR TRIFORIUM."--DIGNE.] Before the High Altar of this Church lies buried one whose spirit suggests the Christ, a Bishop, yet a simple priest, whose life deserves more words than does the whole of Saint-Jérome, once his Cathedral-church. He was a Curé of Brignoles, one of those keen, yet simple-hearted and hard-working priests who often bless Provençal towns. He had no great ambitions, no patronage, no ties except a far-off brother who was an upstart general of that most upstart Emperor, Napoleon. One day while the priest was pottering in his little garden,--as Provençal Curés love to dig and work,--a letter was handed him, marked "thirty sous of postage due." He was outraged. His shining old soutane fell from the folds in which he had prudently tucked it, he shrugged his shoulders and protested,--"A great expense indeed for a trivial purpose. Where should he find another thirty sous for his poor? He never wrote letters. Therefore by no argument of any school of logic could he be compelled to receive them. Obviously this was not for him." The unexpected letter was one for which his brother had asked and which Napoleon had signed, a decree which made him Bishop. Long afterwards this simple, saintly prelate saved a man from crime, and history relates that this same man died at Waterloo as a good and faithful soldier fighting for the fatherland. His benefactor, that loyal servant of Christ and His Church, soon followed him in death, and unlike many a Saint whom this earth forgets his memory lives on, not only in the little city of the snow-clad Alps, but in the hearts of those who read of his good deeds. For Monseigneur Miollis of Digne is truly Monseigneur Bienvenu of "Les Misérables," and only the soldier of Waterloo was glorified in Jean Valjean. [Sidenote: Forcalquier.] If it is difficult to picture sleepy, stately Aix as one of the most brilliant centres of mediæval Europe, and the garrisoned castle of Tarascon filled with the gay courtiers and fair ladies of King René's Court, it will be almost impossible to walk in the smaller Provençal "cities," and see in imagination the cavalcades of mailed soldiers who clattered through the streets on their way to the castle of some near-by hill-top, my lord proudly distinguishable by his mount or the length of his plume, a delicate Countess languishing between the curtains of her litter, or a more sprightly one who rode her palfrey and smiled on the staring townsfolk. It is almost impossible to conceive that the four daughters of Raymond Bérenger, a Queen of the Romans, of France, of Naples, and of England, were brought up in the castle of the little hillside hamlet of Saint-Maime Dauphin. Provence is quiet, rural, provincial; a land of markets, busy country inns, and farms; not of modern greatness nor of modern renown. Its children are a fine and busy race, no less strong and fine than in the land's more stirring times, but they live their years of greatness in other, "more progressive" parts of France, and the Provençal genius, which remains very native to the soil, is broadly known to fame as "French." Like some rich old wine hidden in the cellars of the few, Provence lies safely ensconced behind Avignon and Arles, and only the epicures of history penetrate her hills. Her mediæval ruins seem to belong to a past almost as dead and ghostly as her Roman days, and to realise her Middle Ages, one must leave the busy people in the town below, climb one of the hills, and sitting beside the crumbling walls of some great tower or castle, watch the hot sun setting behind the low mountains and lighting in a glow the bare walls of some other ruined stronghold on a neighbouring height. The shadows creep into the valleys, the rocks grow grey and cold, and the clusters of trees beside them become darkly mysterious. Then far beneath a white thread seems to appear, beginning at the valley's entrance and twisting along its length until it disappears behind another hill. This is the road; and by the time the eye has followed its long course, daylight has grown fainter. Then Provence takes on a long-lost splendour. To those who care to see, cavalcades of soldiers or of hunters come home along the road, castles become whole and frowning, the dying sun casts its light through their gaping window-holes, as light of nightly revels used to shine, and a phantom Mediævalism appears. One of the powerful families of the country, the Counts of Forcalquier, sprang from the House of Bérenger in the XI century, and a hundred and fifty years later, grown too great, were crushed by the haughty parent house. More than one hill of Eastern Provence has borne their tall watchtowers, more than one village owed them allegiance, and a large town in the hills was their capital and bore their name. And yet not a ruined tower that overlooks the Provençal mountains, not a village, gate, or castle--Manosque or old Saint-Maime,--but speaks more vividly of the old Counts than does Forcalquier, formerly their city, now a mere country town which has lost prestige with its increasing isolation, many of its inhabitants by plagues and wars, and almost all of its picturesque Mediævalism through the destructiveness of sieges. Long before this day of contented stagnancy, in 1061, when Forcalquier, fortified, growing, and important, claimed many honours, Bishop Gérard Caprérius of Sisteron had given the city a Provost and a Chapter, and created the Church of Saint-Mary, co-cathedral with that of Notre-Dame of Sisteron. Not contented with this honour, Forcalquier demanded and received a Bishopric of her own. Her hill was then crowned by a Citadel, her Cathedral stood near-by, her walls were intact. Now the Citadel is replaced by a peaceful pilgrims' chapel, the walls are gone, Saint-Mary, ruined in the siege of 1486, is recalled only by a few weed-covered stumps and bits of wall, and its title was given to Notre-Dame in the lower part of the town. No Cathedral is a sadder example of architectural failure than Notre-Dame of Forcalquier because it has so many of the beginnings of real beauty and dignity, so many parts of real worthiness that have been unfortunately combined in a confused and discordant whole. If, of all little cities of Provence, Forcalquier is one of the least unique and least holding, its Cathedral is also one of the least satisfying. It is not beautiful in situation nor in its own essential harmony, and the fine but tantalising perspectives of its interior may be found again in happier churches. The exterior shows to a superlative degree that general tendency of Provençal exteriors to be without definite or logical proportions. A large, square tower, heavier than that of Grasse, served as a lookout, a tall, thin little turret served as a belfry. In the façade there is a Gothic portal which notwithstanding its entire mediocrity is the chief adornment of the outer walls. They are irregular and uncouth to a degree and their only interesting features are at the eastern end. Here the smaller, older apses on either side betray the church's early origin. The central apse, evidently of the same dimensions as the Romanesque one originally designed, was re-built in severe, rudimentary Gothic. Looking at this shallow apse alone, and following its plain lines until they meet those of the big tower, there is a straight simplicity that is almost fine,--but this is one mere detail in a large and barren whole, and the Cathedral-seeker turns to the nearest entrance. [Illustration: "A LARGE, SQUARE TOWER SERVED AS A LOOKOUT."--FORCALQUIER.] [Illustration: "A SUGGESTIVE VIEW FROM THE SIDE AISLE."--FORCALQUIER.] The first glimpse of the interior is so relieving that one is not quick to notice its lack of architectural unity. The few windows give a soft light, and the brown of the stone has a mellowness that is both rich and reposeful. If the Cathedral could have been finished in the style of the first bays of the nave, it would have been a nobly dignified example of the Romanesque. Could it have been re-built in the slender Gothic of the last bay, it would have been an exquisite example of Provençal Gothic. Rather largely planned, its old form of tunnel vaulting and the fine curve of its nave arches and heavy piers are in violent contrast to the Gothic bay, with its pointed arch, its clustered columns and carved capitals, which, even with the shallow choir and its long, slim windows, is too slight a portion of the Cathedral to have independence or real beauty. From its ritualistic position, it is the culminating point of the church, and its discord with the Romanesque is unpleasantly insistent. The side aisles, which were built in the XVII century, are low, agreeable walks ending in the chapels of the smaller apses. They are neither very regular nor very significant; but they give the church pleasant size and perspectives, and by avoiding the unduly large and shining modern chandeliers which hang between the nave arches, one gets from these side aisles the suggestive views which show only too well what true and good architectural ideas were brought to confusion in the re-building, the additions, and the restorations of the centuries. In painting, anachronisms may be quaint or even amusing; but in architecture, they are either grotesque or tragic, and in a church of such fine suggestiveness as Notre-Dame at Forcalquier, one is haunted by lingering regrets for what might and should have been. [Sidenote: Vence.] A founder of the French Academy and one of its first immortal forty was Antoine Godeau, "the idol of the Hôtel Rambouillet." His mind was formed, as it were, by one of the most clever women of that brilliantly foolish coterie, he sang frivolous sonnets to a beautiful red-haired mistress whom he sincerely admired, and when he entered Holy Church, none of his charming friends believed that he would do more than modify the proper and agreeable conventionalities of his former life. They thought that he would add to the grace of his worldly manner the suavity of the ecclesiastic, that he would choose a pulpit of Paris, and that, sitting at his feet, they could enjoy the elegant phrases with which he would embellish a refined and delicately attenuated religion. But an aged prelate of the far South judged the new priest differently, he had sounded the heart of the man who, at the age of thirty, had quietly renounced a flattering, admiring world; and his dying prayer to Richelieu was that Godeau should succeed him in the See of Vence. The keen worldly wisdom of the Cardinal confirmed the old Bishop's more spiritual insight, and Godeau was named Bishop of the neighbouring Grasse. Far away in his mountain-city of flower gardens and sweet odours, the new Bishop wrote to his Parisian friends that, for his part, he "found more thorns than orange-blossoms." The Calvinists, from the rock of Antibes, openly defied him; in spite of the vehement opposition of their Chapters and against his will, the Bishoprics of Grasse and Vence were united, and he was made the Bishop of the two warring, discontented Sees. He was stoned at Vence; and even his colleague in temporal power, the Marquis of Villeneuve, showed himself as insolent as he dared. At length the King came to his aid, and being given his choice of the Sees, Godeau immediately left "the perfumed wench," as he called Grasse, and chose to live and work among his one-time enemies of Vence. This gentle and courageous prelate is typical of the long line of wise men who ruled the Church in the tight little city of the Provençal hills. From Saint Véran the wonder-worker, and Saint Lambert the tender nurse of lepers, to the end, they were men noted for bravery, goodness, and learning, and it was not till the Revolution that one was found--and fittingly the last--who, hating the "Oath" and fearing the guillotine, fled his See. This city of good Bishops was founded in the dim, pagan past of Gaul. From a rocky hill-top, its inhabitants had watched the burning of their first valley-town and they founded the second Vence on that height of safety to which they had escaped with their lives. Here, far above the Aurelian road, the Gallic tribes had a strong and isolated camp. Then the prying Romans found them out, and priests of Mars and Cybele replaced those of the cruder native gods, and they, in turn, gave way to the apostle of the Christians. Where a temple stood, a church was built; and unlike many early saints who looked upon old pagan images as homes of devils and broke them into a thousand pieces with holy wrath and words of exorcism, the prelate of Vence buried an image of a vanquished god under each and every pillar of his church, in sign of Christian triumph. These early days of the Faith were days of growth for the little city, and she prospered in her Mediævalism. High on her hill, she was too difficult of access to suffer greatly from marauding foes, and hidden from the sea, she did not excite the cupidity of the Mediterranean rovers. When Antibes and Nice were sacked, her little ledge of rock was safe; and people crowded thick and fast behind her walls, until no bee-hive swarmed so thick with bees as her few streets with citizens. Here were arts and occupations, burghers and charters, riches and liberties. Here came the Renaissance, and Vence had eager, if not famous sculptors, painters, and organ-builders, and a family of artists whom even the dilettante Francis I deigned to patronise. Such memories of a busy, energetic past seem fairy-tales to those who walk to-day about the dark and narrow streets of Vence. She scarcely has outgrown her ancient walls, her civic life is dead, and in her virtual isolation from the modern world she lives a dreary, quiet old age. The old Cathedral, Notre-Dame, lies in the heart of the town; and takes one back along the years, far past the Renaissance, to those grim mediæval days when even churches were places of defence. It is a low, unimpressive building, said to have been built on the site of the Roman Temple in the IV century. Enlarged or re-built in the X century, it was then long and narrow, a Latin cross. But in the XII century, deep, dark bays were added; in the XV, tribunes were built, the form of the apse was changed to an oval and it was decorated in an inharmonious style; and a hundred years ago the nave vault was re-built in an ellipse. [Illustration: "THE OLD ROUND ARCH OF THE BISHOP'S PALACE."--VENCE.] In the side wall there is a low portal of a late, decadent style, which opens on the little square, but there is no real façade; and to see the church, the traveller passed under the old round arch of the Bishop's Palace, through a small, damp street to another tinier square where the apse and tower stand. The little Cathedral-churches of Provence are always simply built, but here a rectangle, a low gabled roof, a small, round-headed window in the wall, would have been architectural bareness if a high, straight tower had not crowned it all. This crenellated tower is a true type of its time, square, yet slim and strong, and crudely graceful as some tall young poplar of the plains beneath. In the XI and XII centuries, its early days, it was the city's lookout. Families lived high up in its walls, and the traveller could imagine, in this little old, deserted square, the crowds who gathered round the tower's base, and called for news of enemies and battle as moderns gather about the more prosaic bulletin of printed news. He could see them surging, peering up; and from above he almost heard the watcher's cry, "They're coming on,"--with the great answering howl beneath, and the rush to arms. Or, "They pass us by," and then what breaking into little laughing groups, what joy, what dancing, and what praying, that lasted far into the evening hours. [Illustration: "THE LOW, BROAD ARCHES AND THE GREAT, SUPPORTING PILLARS."--VENCE.] The traveller came back in thought to modern times and went into the church, that church of five low naves and many restorations, that product of most diverse fancies. It is painted in lugubrious white, and its pillars have false bases in a palpable imitation of veined red marble. Its pure and early form, the Latin cross, is gone, its fine old stalls are hidden in a gallery, and at the altar Corinthian columns desecrate its ancient Romanesque. Yet in spite of the incongruities the atmosphere of the church is truly that of its dim past. There are the low broad arches, the great, supporting pillars that are massive buttresses; there is the simple practicality of a style that aimed at a protecting strength rather than at any art of beauty; there is the semi-darkness of the small, safe windows, and the little, guarded space where the praying few increased a thousand-fold in times of danger. This is, in spite of all defects, the small Provençal church where in days of peace cloudy incense slowly circled round the shadowy forms of chanting priests, and where in times of war a crowd of frightened women and their children prayed in safety for the men who sallied forth to fight in their defence. [Sidenote: Grasse.] He who is unloving of the past may well rush by its treasures in a puffing automobile, he who is bored by olden thoughts can hurry on by rail, but the man who wishes to know the old hill-towns of France, to see them as they seemed to their makers, and realise their one-time magnificence and strength, must walk from one town to the next, and climb their steep heights; must see great towers rise before him, great walls loom above him, and realise how grandly strong these places were when it was man to man and sword to sword, strength against strength. He must arrive, dust-covered, at the cities' gates or drive into their narrow streets on the small coach which still passes through,--for they are of the times when great men rode and peasants walked and steam was all unknown. Then he will realise how very large the world once was, how far from town to town; and once within those high, protecting walls, he will understand why the citizen of mediæval days found in his town a world sufficient to itself, and why he was so often well content to spend his life at home. The power and the force of an isolated, self-concentrated interest is well illustrated in the history of the free cities of the Middle Ages, and Grasse may be counted one of these. Counts she had in name; but the Bérengers and Queen Jeanne had granted her charters which she had the power to keep; she was once wealthy enough to declare war with Pisa, and in the XII century the leaders of her self-government were "Consuls by the grace of God alone." Therefore when Antibes continued to be greatly menaced by blasphemous pirates, the Bishopric was removed to Grasse, rich, strong, and safe behind the hills, where it endured from 1244, through all the perils of the centuries, until by a pen-stroke Napoleon wiped it out in 1801. [Illustration: "HIGHER THAN THEM ALL STANDS THE CATHEDRAL."--GRASSE.] To come to Grasse on foot or in the stage, will well repay the traveller of old-fashioned moods and fancies. Afar, her houses seem to crowd together, as they used to crowd within the walls, her red roofs rise fantastically one above the other, and higher than them all stands the Cathedral with its firm, square tower. Such must have been old Grasse, perched on the summit of her hill. But once inside the town, these illusions cease. Here are the hotels and the Casino of a thermal station, and the factories of a new world. The traveller finds that the broad upper boulevards are filled with tourists and smart English visitors; and in the narrow streets pert factory-hands come noisily from work. Still he climbs on toward the Cathedral, through tortuous streets and little alley-ways. And in the gloomiest of them all there is no odour of a stale antiquity, but the perfume of a garden-full of roses, of a thousand orange-blossoms, and of locusts, honey-sweet, and he begins to think himself enchanted. He feels the dark, old houses are unreal, as if, instead of cobble-stones beneath his feet, there must be the soft and tender grass of Araby the Blest. Such is the magic of a trade, the perfume industry of Grasse that for so many hundreds of years has made her meanest streets full of refreshing fragrance. Breathless from the climb, the traveller stepped at length into the little square, before a most ungainly Cathedral. "Chiefly built in the XII century," it may have been, but so bedizened by the Renaissance that its heavy old Provençal walls and massive pillars seem to exist merely as supports for additions or unreasonable decorations of a poor Italian style. A certain Monseigneur of the XVII century re-built the choir in a deep, rectangular form; another prelate enlarged the church proper and ruined it by constructing a tribune over the aisles, and desiring the revenues of a new burial-place, he ordered Vauban to accomplish the daring construction of a crypt. Still another Bishop with like architectural tastes built a large new chapel which opens from the south aisle; and with these additions and XVIII century changes in the façade, the original style of the church was obscured. In spite of the pitiful remains of dignity which its three aisles, its firm old pillars, and its height still give to the interior, it is as a whole so mean a building that it has fittingly lost the title of Cathedral. [Illustration: THE "PONT D'AVIGNON."] III. RIVER-SIDE CATHEDRALS. [Sidenote: Avignon.] Everything which surrounds the Cathedral of Avignon, its situation, its city, its history, is so full of romance and glamour that it is only after very sober second thought one realises that the church itself is the least of the papal buildings which majestically overtower the Rhone, or of those royal ruins which face them as proudly on the opposite bank of the river. Yet no church in Provence is richer in tradition, and in history more romantic than tradition. The foundation of this church goes back to the first Avignon, a small colony of river-fishermen which gave way before the Romans, who established a city, Avernio, on the great rocky hill two hundred feet above the Rhone. Some hundreds of years later the first Christian missionaries to Gaul landed near the mouth of this river,--Mary the mother of James, Saint Sara the patron of gypsies, Lazarus, his sister Martha, and Saint Maximin. Before these storm-tossed Saints lay the fair and pagan country of Provence, the scene of their future mission; and if tradition is to be further believed, each went his way, to work mightily for the sacred cause. Maximin lived in the town that bears his name, Lazarus became the first Bishop of Marseilles, and Saint Martha ascended the Rhone as far as Avignon and built near the site of the present Cathedral an oratory in honour of the Virgin "then living on the earth." Two early churches, of which this chapel was perhaps a part, were destroyed in the Saracenic sieges of the VIII century; an inscription in the porch of the present Cathedral records the very interesting mediæval account of its re-building and re-consecration nearly a hundred years later. It was, so runs the tale, the habit of a devout woman to pray in the church every night; and after the Cathedral had been finished by the generous aid of Charlemagne, she happened there at midnight, and witnessed the descent of Christ in wondrous, shining light. There at the High Altar, surrounded by ministering angels, he dedicated the Cathedral to His Mother, Our Lady of Cathedrals; and so it has been called to the present day. If it is an impossible and ungrateful task to disprove that the re-construction, or at least the re-founding of this Cathedral was the work of Charlemagne, so munificent a patron and dutiful a son of the Church, to prove it is equally impossible. A martyrology of the XI century speaks of a dedication in 1069, but as this ceremony had been preceded by another extensive re-building, and was followed by many other changes, the oldest portions of the present church are to be most accurately ascribed to the XI, XII, and XIV centuries. The additions of the centuries following the papal return to Rome have greatly changed the appearance of the church. A large chapel, built in 1506, gives almost a northern nave. In 1671, Archbishop Ariosto thought the interior would be gracefully improved by a Renaissance gallery which should encircle the entire nave from one end of the choir to the other. To accomplish this new work, the old main piers below the gallery were cut away, the wall arches were changed, and columns and piers, almost entirely new, arose to support a shallow, gracefully balustraded balcony and its bases of massive carving. Nine years later a new Archbishop added to the north side a square XVII century chapel, richly ornamental in itself, but entirely out of harmony with the fundamental style of the church. Other chapels, less distinguished, which have been added from time to time, line the nave both north and south, and all are excrescent to the original plan. Of the exterior, only the façade retains its primitive character. The side-walls, "entirely featureless," as has been well said, "reflect only the various periods of the chapels which have been added to the Cathedral," and the apse was re-built in 1671, in a heavy, uninteresting form. [Illustration: "THE INTERIOR HAS A SHALLOW, GRACEFULLY BALUSTRADED BALCONY."--AVIGNON.] These additions, superimposed ornamentations, and rebuildings, together with the very substantial substructure of the primitive Cathedral, form to-day a small church of unimpressive, conglomerate style, and except for its history, unnoteworthy. It is therefore a church whose interest is almost wholly of the past; and the traveller goes back in imagination, century after century, to the era of Papal residency, when the Cathedral was not only ecclesiastically important, but architecturally in its best and purest form. This church, which Clement V found on his removal to Avignon, and which may still be easily traced, was of the simple, primitive Provençal style. No dates of that period are sufficiently accurate to rely upon; but its interest lies not so much in chronology as in its portrayal of the general type. The interior is the usual little hall church of the XI century, with its aisle-less nave of five bays, and plain piers supporting a tunnelled roof, with double vault arches. Beyond the last bay, over the choir, is the Cathedral's octagonal dome, and from the rounded windows of its lantern comes much of the light of the interior, which is sombre and without other windows of importance. The façade is architecturally one of the most significant parts of the church. Above the portal the wall is supported on either side by plain heavy buttresses, and directly continued by the solid bulk of the tower. In 1431 this tower replaced the original one which fell in the earthquake of 1405. It is conjecturally similar, a heavy rectangle which quite overweighs the church; plain, with its stiff pilasters and two stories of rounded windows; without grace or proper proportion, but pleasing by the unblemished severity of its lines. Above the balustrade with which the tower may be properly said to terminate, the religious art of the XIX century has erected as its contribution to the Cathedral a series of steps, an octagon, and a colossal, mal-proportioned statue of the Virgin. These additions are inharmonious; and the finest part of the façade is the porch, so classic in detail that it was formerly supposed to be Roman, a work of the Emperor Constantine. Like the rest of the church, its general structure is plain and somewhat severe, with small, richly carved details, in this instance closely Corinthian. The rounded portal of entrance is an entablature, enclosed as it were by two supporting columns; and above, in the pointed pediment, is a circular opening curiously foreshadowing that magnificent development of the North--the rose-window. Passing through the vestibule, whose tunnel-vault supports the tower, the minor portal appears, almost a replica of the outer door, and the whole forms an unusual mode of entrance, graceful in detail, ponderous in general effect. Far behind the tower of the façade rises the last significant feature of the exterior, the little lantern. It is an octagon with Doric and Corinthian motifs, continuing the essential characteristics of the interior, and exceedingly typical of Provence. [Illustration: "THE PORCH SO CLASSIC IN DETAIL."--AVIGNON. _From an old print._] Into this church, with its few, unusually classic details, its Provençal simplicity, its very modest size and plainness, the munificence of papal pomp was introduced. This was in 1308, an era of papal storm and stress. Not ten years before, Boniface VIII, with the tradition of Canossa spurring his haughty ambitions, had launched a bull against Philip III, whom he knew to be a bad king and whom he was to find an equally bad, rebellious Christian. "God," said the Prelate, from Rome, "has constituted us, though unworthy, above kings and kingdoms, to seize, destroy, disperse, build, and plant in His name and by His doctrine. Therefore, do not persuade thyself that thou hast no superior, and that thou art not subject to the head of the ecclesiastical hierarchy; he who thinks thus is insensate, he who maintains it is infidel." Past indeed was the time of Henry of Germany, long past the proud day when a Pope received an Emperor who knelt and waited in the snow. Philip burned the Bull; and to prevent other like fulminations, sent an agent into Italy. Gathering a band, he found the aged Pontiff at Anagni, his birthplace, seated on a throne, crowned with the triple crown, the Cross in one hand and in the other Saint Peter's Keys, the terrible Keys of Heaven and Hell. They called on him to abdicate, but Boniface thought of Christ his Lord, and cried out in defiant answer, "Here is my neck, here is my head. Betrayed like Jesus Christ, if I must die like him, I will at least die Pope." For reply, Sciarra Colonna, one of his own Roman Counts, struck him in the face. Buffeted by a noble, and openly defied by a king, Boniface died "of shame and anger." A month later, this same king rejoiced, if nothing more, at the death of the Pope's successor; and in the dark forests of Saint-Jean-d'Angély, Philip bargained and sold the great Tiara to a Gascon Archbishop who, if Villani speaks truly, "threw himself at the royal feet, saying, 'It is for thee to command and for me to obey; such will ever be my disposition!'" As was not unnatural, the will of the French king was that the Pope should remain within the zone of royal influence. So Clement lived at Bordeaux and at Poitiers, and finally retired to the County of Venaissin which the Holy See possessed by right, and established the pontifical court at Avignon. This transfer of the papal residence to Avignon has left many and deep traces on the history of French Catholicism. The Holy See was no longer far remote; the French ecclesiastic desirous of promotion had no dangerous mountains to traverse, no strange city to enter, no foreign Pontiff to besiege, ignorant or indifferent to his claims. The next successor of Saint Peter would logically be a Frenchman, and there was not only a possibility, but a probability for every man of note, that he might be either the occupant of the Sacred Chair or its favoured supporter. So Avignon became a city of priests as Rome had been before her; and as France was the richest country in Europe and the Church regally wealthy, splendour, luxury, and constant religious spectacles rejoiced the city, and Bishop, Archbishop, and Abbot, brazenly neglecting the duties of their Sees, lived here and were seldom "in residence." Every one had a secret ambition. Of such a situation, the Popes were not slow to reap the benefits. Difference of wealth, which brought difference of position, counted much and was keenly felt. Abbots of smaller monasteries found themselves inferior to Bishops, especially in freedom from papal interference; while from the inherent wealth and power of their foundations, the heads of the great monasteries ranked sometimes with Archbishops, sometimes even with Cardinals. The Pope had the right to elevate an Abbey or a Priory into a Bishopric, and those who could offer the "gratification" or the "provocative," might reasonably hope for the desired elevation which at once increased their local importance, belittled a neighbouring diocese, and freed them to some extent from the direct intermeddling of the Pope. The applications for such an increase of power became numerous, and by 1320 a number of Benedictine Abbeys had been made Bishoprics. Their creation greatly decreased the direct and intimate power of the Papacy, but temporarily increased the papal treasury; and John XXII, who left ten million pieces of silver and fifteen million in gold with his Florentine bankers, seems to have thought philosophically, "After us, the deluge." [Illustration: NOTRE-DAME-DES-DOMS.--AVIGNON] Another favourite diplomatic and financial device, which was invented by these famous Popes of Avignon, was the system of the "Commende," which enabled relatives of nobles and all those whom it was desirable to placate, not alone ecclesiastics, but mere laymen and bloody barons, to become "Commendatory Abbots" or "Commendatory Priors," and to receive at least one-third of the monastery's revenues, without being in any way responsible for the monastery's welfare. This care was left to a Prior or a Sub-prior, a sort of clerical administrator who, crippled in means and in influence, was sometimes unable, sometimes unwilling, to carry out the duties and beneficences of past ages, and who was always the victim of a great injustice. The depths of uselessness to which this infamous practice reduced monastic establishments may be inferred, when it is remembered that before the XVIII century the famous Abbey of La Baume had had thirteen Commendatory Abbots, and that the bastards of Louis XIV were Commendatory Priors in their infancy. The Popes found the Commende useful, not only as a means of income, but as a method--at once secure and lucrative--of gaining to their cause the great feudal lords of France, and making the power of these lords an added buffer, as it were, between Avignon and the grasping might of the French Kings. For although the Popes were under "the special protection" of the Kings, it was as sheep under the special protection of a shearer, and they found that they must protect themselves against a too "special" and royal fleecing. For they did not always agree that-- "'Tis as goodly a match as match can be To marry the Church and the fleur-de-lis Should either mate a-straying go, Then each--too late--will own 'twas so.'" [Illustration: "THE TOWER OF PHILIP THE FAIR."--VILLENEUVE-LES-AVIGNON.] Haunted by the humiliation of their heaven-sent power, caged in "Babylonish captivity," it is conceivable that the Popes were too occupied or, perhaps too distracted, to object to the unsuitable modesty of Notre-Dame-des-Doms. When a Pope swept forth from his Cathedral, new-crowned, to give "urbis et orbi" his first pontifical benediction, his eye glanced, it is true, on the crowds prostrate before him, before the church, awed and breathless; but it fell lingeringly--it was irresistibly drawn--across the swift Rhone to the town of the kings who had defied his power, to the royal city of Villeneuve, and to the strong tower of Philip the Fair, standing proudly in the sunlight. Would it be thought strange if their thoughts wandered, or if the portraits of the "French Popes" which hang about the Cathedral walls at Avignon, show more worldly preoccupation than is becoming to the successors of Saint Peter and Vicars of Christ? Little indeed in the days of their residency did the Popes add to Notre-Dame-des-Doms. A fragile, slender marvel of Gothic architecture, the tomb of John XXII, was placed in the nave before the altar; and a monument to Benedict XII was raised in the church. But their Holinesses incited others in Avignon to good works so successfully that Rabelais laughingly called it the "Ringing city" of churches, convents, and monasteries. The bells of Saint-Pierre, Saint-Symphorien, Saint-Agricol, Sainte-Claire, and Saint-Didier chimed with those of chapels and religious foundations; the Grey Penitents, Black Penitents, and White Penitents, priests, and nuns walked the streets, and Avignon grew truly papal. Clement V and his successors proceeded to the safeguarding of their temporal welfare in truly noble fashion; and scarcely fifty years later they had become so well pleased with their new residence that the magnificent Clement VI refused to leave in spite of the supplications of Petrarch and Rienzi and a whole deputation of Romans. During the reign of this Pontiff, the Papal Court became one of the gayest in Christendom. Clement was frankly, joyously voluptuous; and his life seems one moving pageant in which luxurious banquets, beautiful women, and ecclesiastical pomps succeeded each other. The lovely Countess of Turenne sold his preferments and benefices, the immense treasure of John XXII was his, and he showered such benefits on a grateful family that of the five Cardinals who accompanied his corpse from Avignon, one was his brother, one his cousin, and three his nephews; and that the Huguenots who violated his tomb at La-Chaise-Dieu, should have used his skull as a wine-cup, seems an horrible, but not an unfitting mockery. It was in vain that Petrarch hotly wrote, "the Pope keeps the Church of Jesus Christ in shameful exile." The desire for return to Rome had passed. Avignon was not an original nor a plenary possession of the Holy Fathers, but "the fairest inheritance of the Bérengers," and it was from that family that half of the city had to be wrested--or obtained. Now the lords of Provence were Kings of Naples and Sicily, and therefore vassals of the Holy See. For when the Normans took these Southern states from the Greeks and thereby incurred the jealousy of all Italy, they had warily placed themselves under the protection of the Pope and agreed to hold their new possessions as a papal investiture. It happened at this time that the vassal of the Pope in Naples and in Sicily was the beauteous "Reino Joanno," the heiress of Provence. What she was no writer could describe in better words than these, "with extreme beauty, with youth that does not fade, red hair that holds the sunlight in its tangles, a sweet voice, poetic gifts, regal peremptoriness, a Gallic wit, genuine magnanimity, and rhapsodical piety, with strange indecorum and bluntness of feeling under the extremes of splendour and misery, just such a lovely, perverse, bewildering woman was she, great granddaughter of Raymond-Bérenger, fourth Count of Provence,--the pupil of Boccaccio, the friend of Petrarch, the enemy of Saint Catherine of Siena, the most dangerous and most dazzling woman of the XIV century. So typically Provençal was this Queen's nature, that had she lived some centuries later, she might have been Mirabeau's sister. The same 'terrible gift of familiarity,' the same talent of finding favour and swaying popular assemblages, the same sensuousness, bold courage, and great generosity were found in this early orphaned, thrice widowed heiress of Provence. To this day, the memory of the Reino Joanno lives in her native land, associated with numbers of towers and fortresses, the style of whose architecture attests their origin under her reign. It says much for her personal fascinations that far from being either cursed or blamed she is still remembered and praised. The ruins of Gremaud, Tour Drainmont, of Guillaumes, and a castle near Roccaspervera, all bear her name: at Draguignan and Flagose, they tell you her canal has supplied the town with water for generations: in the Esterels, the peasants who got free grants of land, still invoke their benefactress. At Saint-Vallier, she is blessed because she protected the hamlet near the Siagne from the oppression of the Chapters of Grasse and Lérins. At Aix and Avignon her fame is undying because she dispelled some robber-bands; at Marseilles she is popular because she modified and settled the jurisdiction of Viscounts and Bishops. Go up to Grasse and in the big square where the trees throw a flickering shadow over the street-traders, you will see built in a vaulted passage a flight of stone steps, steps which every barefoot child will tell you belong to the palace of 'La Reino Joanno.' Walls have been altered, gates have disappeared, but down those time-worn steps once paced the liege lady of Provence, the incomparable 'fair mischief' whose guilt ... must ever remain one of the enigmas of history." This "enigma" has strange analogies to one which has puzzled and impassioned the writers of many generations, the mystery of that other "fair mischief" of a later century, Mary Queen of Scots. Like Mary, Jeanne was accused of the murder of her young husband, and being pressed by the vengeance of his brother--no less a person than the King of Hungary,--she decided to retreat to her native Provence and appeal to the Pope, her gallant and not over-scrupulous suzerain. "Jeanne landed at Ponchettes," continues the writer who has so happily described her, "and the consuls came to assure her of their devotion. 'I come,' replied the heiress, whose wit always suggested a happy phrase, 'to ask for your hearts and nothing but your hearts.' As she did not allude to her debts, the populace threw up their caps; the Prince de Monaco, just cured of his wound at Crécy, placed his sword at her service; and the Baron de Bénil, red-handed from a cruel murder, besought her patronage which, perhaps from a fellow-feeling, she promised with great alacrity. At Grasse she won all hearts and made many more promises, and finally, arriving at Avignon, she found Clement covetous of the city and well-disposed to her. Yet morality obliged him to ask an explanation of her recent change of husbands, and before three Cardinals, whom he appointed to be her judges, the Queen pleaded her own cause. Not a blush tinged her cheek, no tremor altered her melodious voice as she stood before the red-robed Princes of the Church and narrated, in fluent Latin, the story of the assassination of Andrew, the death of her child, and her marriage with the murderer, Louis of Tarento, who stood by her side. The wily Pope noted behind her the proud Provençal nobles, the Villeneuves and d'Agoults, the de Baux and the Lescaris, who brought the fealty of the hill-country, and who did not know that, having already sold her jewels to the Jews, their fair Queen was covenanting with the Pope for Avignon. The formal trial ended, the Pontiff solemnly declared the Queen to be guiltless,--and she granted him the city for eighty thousand pieces of gold." [Illustration: "THE GREAT PALACE."--AVIGNON.] Clement enjoyed ownership in the same agreeable manner as his predecessors, "without the untying of purse-strings." Perhaps he used the purse's contents for the more pressing claim of the great Palace of which he built so large a part; perhaps he handed it, still filled, to Innocent VI who built the famous fortifications of Avignon and protected himself against the marauding "White Companies," perhaps it was still untouched when Bertrand du Guesclin and his Grand Company stood before the gate and demanded "benediction, absolution, and two hundred thousand pounds." "What!" the Pope is said to have cried, "must we give absolution, which here in Avignon is paid for, and then give money too--it is contrary to reason!" Du Guesclin replied to the bearer of these words, "Here are many who care little for absolution, and much for money,"--and Urban yielded. Gregory XI, the last of the "French Popes," returned to Rome, and at his death the "Great Schism" followed;--Clement VII, in Avignon, was recognised by France, Spain, Scotland, Sicily, and Cyprus; Urban VI, in Rome, by Italy, Austria, and England. The County Venaissin was ravaged by wars and the pests that come in their train. At length the Avignonnais, who had not enjoyed greater peace under their anointed rulers than under worldling Counts, rose against Pierre de Luna, the "Anti-pope" Benedict XIII, who fled. From that time no Pontiff entered the gates, and the city was administered by papal legates. In later days, in spite of the sacred character of its rulers and his own undoubted orthodoxy, Louis XIV seized Avignon several times; and Louis XV, in unfilial vengeance for the excommunication of the Duke of Parma, took possession of the city. But it was not until after the beginning of the French Revolution, in 1791, that the Avignonnais themselves arose, chased the Vice-Legate of the Pope from the city, and appealed for union with France; and it was at this period that the Chapel of Sainte-Marthe, the Cloister, and the Chapter House were swept away. Thus ended the temporal power of the Papacy in France, planned for worldly profit and carried out with many sordid compromises;--a residency unnoted for great deeds or noble intentions and whose close marked the "Great Schism." To-day papal Avignon is become French Avignon, a pleasant city where the Provençal sun is hot and where the Mistral whistles merrily. Above the banks of the Rhone the simple Cathedral stands, with its priests still garbed in papal red, its Host still carried under the white papal panoply. Here also is the great Palace of the Popes, "which is indeed," says Froissart, "the strongest and most magnificent house in the world." And yet its grim walls suggest neither peace nor rest; and to him who recalls, this great, impressive pile tells neither of glories nor of triumphs. Bands of unbelieving Pastoureaux marched toward it; soldiers of the "White Companies" and soldiers of du Guesclin gazed mockingly at it; it was the prison of Rienzi, and the home of the harassed Popes who had ever before them, just across the river, the menacing tower of that "fair king" who had led them into "Babylonish captivity." [Sidenote: Vaison.] On the banks of a pleasant little river among the Provençal hills is Vaison, one of the ancient Gallic towns which became entirely romanised; and many illustrious families of the Empire had summer villas there as at Arles and Orange. Barbarians of one epoch or another have devastated Vaison of all her antique treasures, except the remains of an Amphitheatre on the Puymin Hill. Germanic tribes who swooped down in early centuries destroyed her villas and her greater buildings; and vandals of a later day have scattered her sculptures and her tablets here and there. Some are in the galleries of Avignon; a Belus, the only one found in France, was sent to the Museum of Saint-Germain; and in the multitude of treasures in the British Museum, the most beautiful of all her statues, a Diadumenus, is artistically lost. In the days when it still adorned the city, during the reign of the Emperor Gallienus, Vaison was christianised by Saint Ruf, her Bishopric was founded, and in 337 the first General Council of the Church held in Gaul assembled here. Another Council in the V century, and still another in the VI, are proof of her continued importance. [Illustration: "ON THE BANKS OF A PLEASANT LITTLE RIVER IS VAISON."] [Illustration: "THE RUINED CASTLE OF THE COUNTS OF TOULOUSE."--VAISON.] Among the first of Gallo-Roman cities, she was also among the first to suffer. Chrocus and his horde who sacked Orange, seized her Bishop and murdered him; and Alains, Vandals, and Burgundians, following in their wake, brought disaster after disaster to the cities lying near the Rhone. Vaison, by miracle, did not lose her prestige. In the X and XI centuries she built her fine Cathedral with its Cloisters, and in 1179 she was still great enough to excite the covetousness of Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse. This magnificent and ambitious prince built a castle on a height above the city, and as he had before terrorised my Lord Bishop of Carpentras, so now he seized the anointed person of Bérenger de Reilhane, who was not only Vaison's Bishop, but her temporal prince as well. Bérenger was a sufficiently powerful personage to make an outcry which re-echoed throughout Christendom; the Pope and the Emperor came to his aid; and in the Abbey Church of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, Raymond VI did solemn penance, and, before receiving absolution, was publicly struck by the Papal Legate with a bundle of birch rods. Above the Bishop's Palace the great castle still loomed in menace, but on that day Bérenger de Reilhane triumphed and Vaison was at peace. It was a peace which presaged her quiet, uneventful downfall. For other interests were growing stronger in the country, other cities grew where she stood still, and in the XIV century, when Avignon became the seat of papal power, Vaison had passed from the world's history. Her Bishopric endured till 1801, but her doings are worthy only of provincial chronicles and to-day she is but a little country town, served by the stage-coach. She still lies on both banks of the river; the "high city," with long rows of deserted houses, climbs the side of the steep hill and is dominated by the ruins of the great castle, which Richelieu destroyed. The "lower city," which is the busier of the two, lies on the opposite bank; and on its outskirts, in a little garden-close, almost surrounded by the fields, is the Cathedral,--solitary, lonely, and old. [Illustration: "THE WHOLE APSE-END."--VAISON.] [Illustration: "THE SOUTH WALL WHICH IS CLEARLY SEEN FROM THE ROAD."--VAISON.] The decoration of the exterior is slight, a dentiled cornice and a graceful foliated frieze extend along the top of the side-walls, which although most plainly built, are far from being severely angular or gaunt and have a quaint and pleasing harmony of line. The west front is so featureless that it scarcely deserves the title of façade. The south wall, which is clearly seen from the road, has a small portal and plain buttresses that slope at the top. The central apse is rectangular and heavy, the little southern apse is short and round, and that of the north is tall and thin as a pepper-box. Behind them rise the pointed roof of the nave and the heavy tower. The whole apse-end is constructed in most picturesque irregularity, and the new red of the roof-tiles and sombre grey of the old stone add greatly to its charm. Unlike many churches of its period Notre-Dame of Vaison is three-aisled. Slender, narrow naves, whose tunnel vaults are not extremely lofty, end in small circular apses. The nave is a short one of three irregular bays, and over the last, which precedes the choir, is the little eight-sided dome, which instead of projecting above the roof is curiously placed a little lower than the tunnel vaulting of the other bays. The High Altar, which originally belonged to an older church, is well placed in the simple choir; for it belongs in style, if not in actual fact, to the first centuries of the Faith; and in the semi-darkness behind the altar, the old episcopal throne still stands against the apse's wall, in memory of the custom of the Church's early days. The low arches of the aisles, the dim lighting of the church, its simple ornaments of classic bands and little capitals, its slight irregularities of form and carvings, make an interior of fine and strong antique simplicity. A little door in the north wall leads to the Cloisters, which are happily in a state of complete restoration, and not as a modern writer has described them, "practically a ruin." The wall which overlooks them has an inscription that adjures the Canons to "bear with patience the north aspect of their cells." The short walks have tunnel vaults with cross-vaults in the corners and in parts of the north aisle. Great piers and small, firm columns support the outer arches; and on the exterior of the Cloister the little arches of the columns are enclosed in a large round arch. Many of the capitals are uncarved, some of the piers have applied columns, but many are ornamented in straight cut lines. On one side, two bays open to the ground, forming an entrance-way into the pretty close, where the bushy tops of a few tall trees cast flickering shadows on the surrounding walls and the little grassy square. [Illustration: "TWO BAYS OPEN TO THE GROUND."--VAISON.] [Illustration: "THE GREAT PIERS AND SMALL FIRM COLUMNS."--VAISON.] The Cloister is small and simple in its rather heavy grace. Noise and unrest seem far from it, and underneath its solid rounded vault is peace and shelter from the world. And in its firm solidity of architecture there is the spirit of a perfect quiet, a tranquil charm which must insensibly have calmed many a restless spirit that chafed beneath the churchly frock, and fled within its walls for refuge and for helpful meditation. Few Provençal Cathedrals have the interest of Vaison and its Cloister. Lying in the forgotten valley of the Ouvèze, in an old-fashioned town, all its surroundings speak of the past and its atmosphere is quite unspoiled. The church itself has been spared degenerating restorations; and although it has no sumptuousness as at Marseilles, no grandeur as at Arles, no stirring history as the churches that lay near the sea, although it is one of the smallest and most venerable of them all, no Cathedral of the Southland has so great an architectural dignity and merit with so ancient and so quaint a charm. [Sidenote: Arles.] In the midst of the wealth of antique ruins, near the Theatre, the Coliseum, and the Forum of this "little Rome of the Gauls," stands a noble monument of the ruder ages of Christianity, the Cathedral, Saint-Trophime. Here Saint Augustine, apostle to England, was consecrated; here three General Councils of the Church were held, here the Donatists were doomed to everlasting fire, and here the Emperor Constantine, from his summer palace on the Rhone, must have come to "assist" at Mass. The building in which these solemn scenes of the early Church were enacted soon disappeared and was replaced by the present one whose older walls Révoil attributes to the IX century. The present Cathedral's first documentary date is 1152, in the era of the Republic of Arles. The name of Saint-Etienne was changed, and the body of Saint-Trophime, carried in state from the ruined Church of the Aliscamps, was buried under a new altar and he was solemnly proclaimed the Patron of the richest and most majestic church in all Provence. [Illustration: "IN THE MIDST OF THE WEALTH OF ANTIQUE RUINS."--ARLES.] [Illustration: THE FAÇADE OF SAINT-TROPHIME.--ARLES.] Nearly eight hundred years later a traveller stood before the portal of this church. In the midst of his delighted study he suddenly felt the attraction of a pair of watchful eyes, and turned to find a peasant woman gazing fixedly at him. In her strange fascination she had placed beside her, on the ground, two huge melons and a mammoth cabbage, and her wizened hands were folded before her, Sunday-fashion. She was a little witch of a woman, old and bent and brown. "Yes, my good gentleman," she said, "I have been looking at you,--five whole minutes of the clock, and much good it has done me. In these days of books and such fine learning there is not enough time spent before our door; and I who pass by it every day, year in, year out, I have watched well, and only two except yourself have ever studied it. The foreigners come with red books and look at them more than at the door itself,--they stay perhaps three minutes, and go off, shaking their wise heads. Our people, passing every day, see but a door, a place for going in and coming out." She paused for breath. "And what do you see?" asked the traveller. "You ask me?" She smiled wisely. "But you know, since you are standing here and looking too. Listen!" And her old eyes began to gleam. "I'll tell you of a time before you were born. I was a child then; and we marched here every Sunday, other little girls and myself, and we stood before this door. And the nuns--it was often Sister Mary Dolorosa--told us the stories of these stones. See! Here is Our Lord Who loves all mankind, but has to judge us too;--and there is Saint-Trophime. But I cannot read, Monsieur. An old peasant woman has no time for such fine things, and you will laugh at me for telling you what you have in your books,--but I have them all here, here in my heart, and many a time I too come to refresh my old memory, and to pray. Those pictures tell great lessons to those that have eyes to see them. Well, well-a-day, I must pick up my melons and begone, for I have taken up your time and said too much. But you will excuse it in an old woman who is good for little else than talking now." They parted in true French fashion, with "expressions of mutual esteem," and the traveller turned to the portal which was still fulfilling its ancient mission of teaching and of making beautiful the House of God. Applied to a severe façade typical of the plainness of Provençal outer walls, this is one of the noblest works of Mediævalism, the richest and most beautiful portal of the South of France; and no others in the Midi, except those of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard and Moissac, are worthy of comparison with it. In boldness and intellectuality of conception it excels many of the northern works and equals the finest of them. For the builder of the northern portal seems to have held closely to one architectural form, the beautiful convention of the Gothic style; and within that door he placed, in a more or less usual way, the subjects which the Church had sanctioned. In nearly every case the treatment of the subject is subordinated to the general architectural plan and symmetry. At Saint-Trophime there was the limit of space, the axiom that a door must be a door, and doubtless many allowable subjects. But within these necessary bounds the unknown sculptor recognised few conventionalities. The usual place for the portrayal of the Last Judgment, the tympanum, was too small for his conception of the scene; the pier that divides his door-way was not built to support the statue of the church's patron saint; he had a multitude of fancies, and instead of curbing them in some beautiful conventionality of form, as one feels great northern builders often did, this artist made a frame within which his ideas found free play, and, forcing conventionality to its will, his genius justified itself. For not only is the portal as a whole, full of dignity and true symmetry, but its details are thoughtfully worked out. They show, with the old scholastic form of his Faith, the grasp of the unknown master's mind, the intellectuality of his symbolism, and few portals grow in fascination as this one, few have so interesting an originality. [Illustration: RIGHT DETAIL, PORTAL.--ARLES.] In design it is simple, in execution incomparably rich. The principal theme of the Last Judgment has Christ seated on a throne as the central figure, and about him are the symbols of the four Evangelists. This is the treatment of the tympanum. Underneath, Patriarchs, Saints, Just, and Condemned form the beautiful frieze. The Apostles are seated; and to their left is an angel guarding the gates of Paradise against two Bishops and a crowd of laymen who have yet to fully expiate their sins in Purgatory. Behind them, naked, with their feet in the flames, are those condemned to everlasting Hell; and still beyond is a lower depth where souls are already half-consumed in hideous fires. On the Apostles' extreme right is the beginning of our human history, the Temptation of Adam and Eve; and marching toward the holy men, on this same side, is the long procession of those Redeemed from Adam's fall, clothed in righteousness. An angel goes before them, and hands a small child--a ransomed soul--to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The end panels treat the last phases of the dominant theme;--a mammoth angel in the one weighs the souls of the dead; and an equally awe-inspiring devil in the other is preparing to cast two of the Lost into a sea of fire. The remainder of the portal tells of many subjects, and represents much of the theological symbolism of its time. Light, graceful columns, with delicately foliated capitals and bases rich with meaning sculptures, divide the lower spaces into niches, and in these niches stand statues of Apostles and of Saints, each having his story, each his peculiar attributes; and about these chief figures are carved rich designs, strange animals, and numberless short stories of the Bible. Above there is a small, subsidiary frieze; below, the pedestals which tell the tale of those who stand upon them. The figures have life and meaning, if not a true plasticity; and in this portal there is instruction, variety, and majesty, wealth of allegory and subtle symbols for those who love religious mysteries, and splendour of sculpture for those who come in search of Art. There are those to whom a simple beauty does not appeal. After the richness of the portal's carving, the interior of Saint-Trophime is to them "far too plain;" in futile comparison with the Cloister's grace, it is found "too severe;" and one author has written that only "when the refulgence of a Mediterranean sun glances through a series of long lances, ... then and then only does the Cathedral of Saint-Trophime offer any inducement to linger within its non-impressive walls." It may not be denied that, together with nearly all the Cathedrals of Provence, this interior has suffered from the addition of inharmonious styles. The most serious of these is its Gothic choir of the XV century, which a certain Cardinal Louis Allemand applied to the narrower Romanesque naves. With irregular ambulatory, chapels of various sizes, and a general incongruity of plan, this construction has no architectural importance except that of a prominent place in the church's worship. The remaining excrescences, Gothic chapels, Ionic pilasters, elliptical tribune, and the like, are happily hidden along the side aisles or in the transepts; and during the restoration of Révoil the naves were relieved of the disfiguring "improvements" of the XVII century, and stand to-day in much of their fine old simplicity. Beyond the fifth bay, and rising in the tower, is the dome of dignified Provençal form that rests on the lower arches of the crossing. Small clerestory windows cast sheets of pale light on the plain piers, rectangular and heavy, that rise to support a tunnel vault and divide the church into three naves of great and slender height. The stern, ascetic style of the XI and XII centuries has given the nave piers mere small, plain bands as capitals, and for churchly decoration has allowed only a moulding of acanthus leaves placed high and unnoticed at the vaulting's base. There is no pleasing detail and no charming fancy; but a fine, exquisite loftiness, a faultless balance of proportion, are in this severe interior, and its solemn and majestic beauty is not surpassed in the Southern Romanesque. [Illustration: LEFT DETAIL, PORTAL.--ARLES.] Beyond the south transept, a short passage and a few steps lead to the Cloisters, the most famous of Provence, perhaps of France. Large, graceful, and magnificent in wealth of carving, they have yet none of the poetic charms that linger around many a smaller Cloister. The vaultings are not more beautiful than other vaults less known; although they have the help of the great piers, the little, slender columns seem too light to support so much expanse of roof, and even the church's tower, square and high, looks dwarfed when seen across the close. The very spaciousness is solitary, and the long vista of the walks conduces to vague wonderings rather than to peaceful hours of thought. It has not the dreamy solitude of Vaison, nor the bright beauty of Elne's little close, nor any of the sunny cheerfulness that brightens the decaying walls of Cahors. [Illustration: THROUGH THE CLOISTER-ARCHES.--ARLES.] The marvel of these Cloisters is the sculptured decorations of their piers and columns. Those of the XII century are the richest, but each of the later builders seems to have vied as best he might, in wealth of conception and in lavishness of detail, with those who went before, and, even in enforced re-building, the addition of the Gothic to the Romanesque has not destroyed the harmony of the effect. In all the sculptors' schemes, the outer of the double columns were given foliated patterns or a few, simple symbols, and the outer of the piers were channelled and conventionally cut; and although the fancy of the sculptor is marvellously subtle and full of grace, his greatest art was reserved for the capitals of the inner columns and the inner faces of the piers, which meditating priests would see and study. The symbolism authorised by Holy Church, the history of precursors of Our Lord, the incidents of His life and the more dramatic doings of the Saints, all these are carved with greatest love of detail and of art; and in them the least arduous priest could find themes for a whole year of meditation, the least enthusiastic of travellers, a thousand quaint and interesting fancies and imaginations. It is not so much the beauty of the whole effect that is entrancing in these Cloisters, nor that most subtle influence, the good or evil spirit of a past which lingers round so many ancient spots, as that mediæval thought and mediæval genius that found expression in these myriad fine examples of the sculptor's art. [Illustration: "A NAVE OF GREAT AND SLENDER HEIGHT."--ARLES.] [Illustration: "THE BEAUTY OF THE WHOLE."--ARLES.] Alexandre Dumas has written of Arles: "Roman monuments form the soil; and about them, at their feet, in their shadow, in their crevasses, a second Gothic city has sprung--one knows not how--by the vegetative force of the religious civilisation of Saint Louis. Arles is the Mecca of archæologists." It is also the Mecca of those who love to study people and customs, for, in spite of the railroad, and the consequent influx of "foreign French," it has preserved the old græco-roman-saracenic type which has made its beautiful women so justly famous, and, underneath its Provençal gaieties, their classic origins may easily be traced. One should see the Roman Theatre, the solitary Aliscamps, by moonlight, the busy market in the early day, the Cathedral at a Mass, and a fête at any time,--for "When the fête-days come, farewell the swath and labour, And welcome revels underneath the trees, And orgies in the vaulted hostelries, Bull-baitings, never-ending dances, and sweet pleasures." [Sidenote: Entrevaux.] The most celebrated fortified town in France is the Cité of Carcassonne, yet, even in the days of its practical strength, it was scarcely a type. It was rather a marvel, a wonder,--the "fairest Maid of Languedoc," "the Invincible." And now the citadel is almost deserted. The inhabitants are so few that weeds grow in their streets, and one who walks there in the still mid-day feels that all this completion of architecture, these walls, perfect in every stone, may be an enchanted vision, a mirage; he more than half believes that the cool of the sunset will dispel the illusion, and he will find himself on a pleasant little hill of Languedoc, looking down upon the commonplace "Lower City" of Carcassonne. At Entrevaux there is no suggestion of illusion. This is not a show-place that once was real; it is one of a hundred little agglomerations of the French Middle Ages. They had no great name to uphold; no riches to expend in impregnable walls and towers. They clung fearfully together for self-preservation, built ramparts that were as strong as might be, and dared not laugh at the "fortunes of war." Except that there is safety outside the walls, and a tiny post and telegraph office within, they are now as they were in those dangerous days. The fortress of Carcassonne is dead; but in the back country of Provence, Entrevaux is living, and scarcely a jot or tittle of its Mediævalism is lost. Among high rocks that close around it on every side, where, according to the season, the Chalvagne trickles or plunges into the river Var, and dominated by a fort that perches on a sharp peak, is the strangest of old Provençal towns. [Illustration: THE GOTHIC WALK, CLOISTER.--ARLES.] The founding of the tiny episcopal city was after this wise. Toward the close of the XIV century, in a time of plagues, Jewish persecutions, the growth of heresies, and the uncurbed ravages of free-booters, the city of Glandèves, seat of an ancient Bishopric, was destroyed. The living remnant abandoned its desolate ruins. Searching for a stronger, safer home, they chose a site on the left bank of the Var, and commenced the building of Entrevaux. The Bishop accompanied his flock, and although he retained the old title of Glandèves, in memory of the antiquity of the See and its lost city, the Cathedral-church was established at Entrevaux. The first edifice, Saint-Martin's, built shortly after the founding of the town, has long been destroyed; and the second, begun in 1610, to the honour of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, held episcopal rank until the See was disestablished by the great Concordat. Although this Cathedral was built in the XVII century, a date perilously near that of decadence in French ecclesiastical architecture, it was situated in so obscure a corner of Provence that its plan was unaffected by innovating ideas; it is of the old native type, a building of stout walls and heavy buttresses, a single tower, square and straight, and a tunnel-vaulted room, the place of congregation. This interior, with no beautiful details that may not be found in other churches, has as many of the defects of the Italian school as the treasury could afford,--marble columns, frescoes, gilding, and other rococo decorations which show that the people of Entrevaux had no higher and no better tastes than those of Nice; and that the old, simple purity of the church's form was rather a matter of ignorance or necessity than of choice. The attraction of the episcopal church pales before the quaint delight of the episcopal city, and it is as part of the general civic defence that it shares in the interest of Entrevaux. [Illustration: "THIS INTERIOR."--ENTREVAUX.] [Illustration: THE ROMANESQUE WALK, CLOISTER.--ARLES.] [Illustration: "ONE OF THREE SMALL DRAWBRIDGES."--ENTREVAUX.] [Illustration: "THE PORTCULLIS."--ENTREVAUX.] Leaving the train at the nearest railroad station, the traveller followed the winding Var, and he had scarcely walked four miles when he saw, across the river, the sharp peak with its fort, and the long lines of walls that zigzag down the hillside till they reach the crowded roofs that are clustered closely, in charming irregularity, near the bank. Along the water's edge, the only part of the town that is not protected by rocks and hills, there is another line of stout walls and two heavy, jutting bastions. From a mediæval point of view Entrevaux looks strong indeed. The only means of entrance, now as in those olden days, is by one of three small drawbridges, and so narrow is every street of the town that no wagon is allowed to cross, for if it made the passage of the bridge it would be caught hard and fast between the houses. As the traveller put foot on the drawbridge he felt as though he were a petty trader or wandering minstrel, or some other figure of the Middle Ages, entering for a few hours' traffic or a noon-day's rest, and when he paused under the low arch of the portcullis-gate, people stared at him as they do at a stranger in little far-off towns. Once inside, he turned into a street, and was immediately obliged to step into a door-way, for a man leading a horse was approaching, and they needed all its breadth. Houses, several stories high, bordered these incredibly dark, narrow ways, and some of the upper windows had the diminutive balconies so dear to the South. It was a bright, hot day, but the sun seldom peeped into these streets; and in the shops the light was dull at mid-day. As he thought of the men and women of Mediævalism, who did not dare to wander in the fields beyond the town, because their safety lay within its ramparts, suddenly, the little public squares of walled towns appeared in all the real significance of their light and breadth and sunshine. Space is precious in Entrevaux, and open places are few. There is one where the hotels and cafés are found, another across the drawbridge behind the Cathedral-tower, and a tiny one before the church itself. This is the most curious of them all; for, far from being a "Place de la Cathédrale," it is a true "Place d'Armes." Near the portals, on whose wooden doors the mitre and insignia of papal favour are carved, a few steps lead to a narrow ledge where archers could stand and shoot from the loop-holes in the walls. As the traveller sat on this ledge and wondered what scenes had been enacted here, how many deadly shots had sped from out the holes, what crowds of excited townsfolk had gathered in the church, what grave words of exhortation and of blessing had been spoken from the altar or the threshold by anxious prelate, robed and mitred for the Mass of Supplication to a God of Battles, an humble funeral appeared,--a priest, a peasant bearing a black wooden Cross with the name of the deceased painted on it, a rope-bound coffin carried by hot and sorrowing women, and a little procession of friends. The pomps and vanities of the past disappeared as a mist from the traveller's mind, and he saw Entrevaux as it really is, without the comforts of this world's goods, without the greatness of a Bishopric, a small Provençal village whose perfection of quaintness--so charming to him who passes on--means hardship and discomfort to those who have been born and must live and die there. [Illustration: "A FORT THAT PERCHES ON A SHARP PEAK."--ENTREVAUX.] [Illustration: "A TRUE PLACE D'ARMES."--ENTREVAUX.] And yet so potent is that charm, when the traveller re-crossed the drawbridge and looked up at the sharp teeth of the portcullis that may still fall and bite, when he had passed out on the high-road and turned again and again to watch the fading sunlight on the tangled mass of roofs, the illusion had returned. The bastions stood out in bold relief, the church tower with its crenellated top stood out against the rocky peaks, the sun fell suddenly behind the hill, and the traveller felt himself again a minstrel wandering in a mediæval night. [Illustration: "THE LONG LINES OF WALLS THAT ZIGZAG DOWN THE HILLSIDE."--ENTREVAUX.] [Sidenote: Sisteron.] The traveller is curious,--frankly curious. Almost every time that he enters a Cathedral, his memory recalls the words of Renan, "these splendid marvels are almost always the blossoming of some little deceit," and after he has feasted his eye, he thinks of history and of details, and of Renan, prejudiced but well-informed, and wonders what was here the "little deceit." At Grasse, he had longed for the papers a certain lawyer has, which tell much of the city's life a hundred and fifty years ago, and at Sisteron, he sat by the Durance, wondering how he could induce a kind and good old lady of a remote corner of Provence to lend him an ancient manuscript, which even the gentle Curé said she "obstinately" refused to "impart." Blessed are they who can be satisfied with guide-books, as his friends who had visited Avignon and Arles, Tarascon and the Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, and had seen Provence to their entire edification while he was merely peering about Notre-Dame-des-Doms and the Fort Saint-André. Of a more indolent and leisurely turn of mind, he suffers--and perhaps justly--the penalty of his joyous idleness, for even lawyers and good ladies with hidden papers are rare. Revolutionary sieges, fires, and a wise discretion have led to the destroying of many a fine old page, and it is often in vain one goes to these decaying cities of Provence. "We see," he said, gesticulating dejectedly, "we see their towers and their walls, but if we say we know that place, how many times do we deceive ourselves. It is too often as though we claimed to know the life and thought and passions of a man from looking on his grave." But--to consider what we may know. Sisteron is an old Roman city, most strongly and picturesquely built in a narrow defile of the Durance. On one side the river is the high, bare rock of La Baume; on the other, a higher rock where houses, supporting each other by outstretched buttresses, seem to cling to the sheer hillside as shrubs in mountain crevasses, and are dominated and protected by a large and formidable fortress-castle that crowns the very top of the peak. The town walls are almost gone; the fortress is abandoned; since the Revolution there are no longer Bishops in Sisteron; but the old town has lost little of its war-like and romantic atmosphere of days when it commanded an important pass, and when the way across the Durance was guarded by a drawbridge, and a big portcullis that now stands in rusty idleness. [Illustration: "THE CHURCH TOWER STOOD OUT AGAINST THE ROCKY PEAKS."--ENTREVAUX.] It is claimed that the Bishopric of this stronghold was founded in the IV century, and grew and flourished mightily, until the Bishop dwelt securely on his rock, his Brother of Gap had a "box" on the opposite bank, the Convent of the little Dominican Sisters was further up the river, and, besides this busy ecclesiastical life, there was the world of burghers in the town and its Convent of Ursulines. Here came once upon a time a sprightly lady who added a thousand lively interests. This was Louise de Cabris, sister of the great Mirabeau, "who, when a mere girl, had been married to the Marquis de Cabris. Part knave, part fool, the vices of de Cabris sometimes ended in attacks of insanity. His marriage with one who united the violence of the Mirabeaus to the license of the Vassans was unfortunate; ... and after Louise began to reign in the big dark house of the Cours of Grasse, life never lacked for incidents." Matters were not mended by the arrival of her brother, twenty-four and wild, and supposed to be living under a "lettre de cachet" in the sleepy little town of Manosque. The two were soon embroiled in so outrageous a scandal that their father, who loved a quarrel for its own sake, sided with the prosecution; and declaring that "no children like his had ever been seen under the sun," took out a "lettre de cachet" for Louise, who was sent up to Sisteron, where he requested her to "repent of her sins at leisure in the Convent of the Ursulines." Inheriting a brilliant, restless wit and unbridled morals, her life with the stupid, vicious Marquis had not improved her natural disposition, and she soon set Sisteron agog. On pretence of business all the lawyers flocked to see her; and with no pretence at all the garrison flocked in their train. When the Ursulines ventured to remonstrate, she diverted them with such anecdotes of gay adventure as were never found between the pages of their prayer-books. Finally the whole town was divided into two camps; her foes called her "a viper," and many an eye peered into the dark streets, many a head was judiciously hidden behind bowed shutters, to see who went toward the Convent; till by wit and scheming and after some months of most surprising incident, Louise carried her point, left the good Ursulines to a well-merited repose, and returned to the Castle of Mirabeau,--to laugh at the townsfolk of Sisteron. [Illustration: "THE CATHEDRAL IS NEAR THE HEAVY, ROUND TOWERS OF THE OUTER RAMPARTS."--SISTERON.] [Illustration: "THE BRIDGE ACROSS THE DURANCE."--SISTERON.] When in the city, the prelates occupied their Castle of the Citadel with the high lookouts and defences, far from their Cathedral, which is in the lower town near the heavy, round towers of the ramparts. This church, which has been very slightly and very judiciously restored, is of unknown date, probably of the XII century, it is faithful to the native architectural tradition, and in some details more interesting than many of the Provençal Cathedrals. Its exterior is small and low. There are the familiar, friendly little apses of the Romanesque; near them, above the east end of the north aisle, the squat tower with a modest, modern spire; and at its side, above the roof-line, is the octagon that stands over the dome. All this structure is unaffectedly simple. The walls and buttresses which enclose the aisles are plain, and it is only by comparison with this architectural Puritanism that the façade may be considered ornate. Near the top of its wall, which is supported by sturdy piers, are three round windows, with deep, splayed frames. The largest of them is directly above the high, slender portal that is somewhat reminiscent of the Italian influence, so elaborately marked further up the valley, at Embrun. The rounded arch of the door-way and its pointed gable are repeated, on either side, in a half-arch and half-gable. An allegorical animal, in relief, stands above the central arch, and a few columns with delicate capitals complete the adornment of the entrance-way, which, in spite of being the most decorative part of the church, is most discreet. Nine steps lead down into an interior that is small, very usually planned, and much defaced by XVII century gilt--yet is essentially dignified and impressive. Eliminate the tawdry altars, take away the stucco Saints and painted Virgins, let the chapels be mere shadowy corners in the dark perspective, and the little church appears like the meeting-place of the Faithful of an early Christianity. Its nave and each of the narrow side aisles rise to round tunnel-vaults; there are but five bays, and the last is covered by a small, octagonal dome. The whole church is built of a dark stone that is almost black, its lighting is very dim, and centres in the little apses where the holiest statues stand and the most sacred rites are celebrated; and the worshippers, shrouded in twilight, have more of the atmosphere of mystery than is usual in the Cathedrals of Provence, the subtle influence of quiet shadowy darkness that is so potent in the churches of the Spanish borderland. [Illustration: "ENTRANCES TO TWO NARROW STREETS."--SISTERON.] Many will pass through Sisteron and enjoy its rugged strength, its sun-lit days, its narrow streets, and the peaks that stand out in solemn sternness against the dark blue sky at night. Notre-Dame-de-Pomeriis has none of the salient beauty of any of these, and to appreciate its ancient charm, it must not be forgotten that the Provençal Cathedral has not the distinction of size or the elaboration of the greater Cathedrals of Gascony, that it is far removed from the fine originalities of Languedoc, that it is conventional, and, as it were, clannish, and that its highest dignity is in a simple quiet that is never awe-full. There is, in truth, more than one church of this country that needs the embellishment of its history to make it truly interesting. But Notre-Dame of Sisteron is not of these. It is not the big, empty shell of Carpentras, nor the little rough Cathedral of Orange. It is the smaller, more perfect one, of finer inspiration, which the many will pass by, the few enjoy. IV. CATHEDRALS OF THE VALLEYS. [Sidenote: Orange.] Lying on the Rhone, and almost surrounded by the papal Venaissin, is a tiny principality of less than forty thousand acres. This small state has given title to more than one distinguished European who never entered its borders, and who was alien to it not only in birth, but in language and family. So great was the fame of its rulers that this small, isolated strip of land suffered for their principles, and probably owes to them much of its devastation in the terrible Wars of Religion. From the well-known convictions of the Princes of Orange, the country was always counted a refuge for heretics of all shades, and in 1338 they were in sufficient force to demolish the tower of the Cathedral. Later in history, Charles IX declared William of Nassau "an outlaw" and his principality "confiscate"; and in 1571, there was a three days' massacre of Protestants. In spite of this horrid orgy the Reformers rose again in might and soon prevented all celebration of Catholic rites. Refugees fleeing from the Dragonnades of Dauphiné and of the Cévennes poured into the principality; and when the Princes of Orange were strong enough to protect their state, its Catholics lived restricted lives; but when the Protestant power waned, Kings and Captains of France raided the land in the name of the Church. And at the death of William of Orange, King of England, Louis XIV seized the capital of the state, razed its great palace and its walls, and after the Treaty of Utrecht had awarded the principality to the French crown, treated the defenceless Huguenots with the same impartial cruelty he had meted to their fellow-believers in other parts of the kingdom. Orange's changes in religious fate are not unlike those of Nîmes, with this essential difference, that here Catholicism has conquered triumphantly. Where ten worship in the little Protestant temple, a thousand throng to the Mass. Both in history and its monumental Roman ruins, the capital of this province, Orange, is one of the richest cities of the Southland, but its Cathedral is very poor and mean. The plan is one of the simplest of the Provençal conceptions, a "hall basilica," archæologically interesting, but in its present state of patch and repair, architecturally commonplace and unbeautiful. In spite of Protestant attacks and Catholic restorations, the XI century type has been maintained, a rectangle whose plain double arches support a tunnel vault and divide the interior into four bays. The piers are heavy and severe; and between them are alcoves, used as chapels. The choir, narrower than the nave, is preceded by the usual dome, and beyond it is a little unused apse, concealed from the rest of the interior by a wall. Unimportant windows built with distinctly utilitarian purpose successfully light this small, simple room, and no kindly shadow hides its bareness or diminishes the unhappy effect of the paintings which disfigure the walls. The Cathedral's exterior is so surrounded by irregular old houses that the traveller had discovered it with some difficulty. It has little that is worthy of description, and after having entered by a conspicuously poor Renaissance portal only to go out under an uninteresting modern one, he found himself lost in wonder that the Cathedral-builders of Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth should have utterly failed in a town which offered them such inspiring suggestions as the great Arch of Triumph and the still greater Imperial Theatre, besides all the other remains of Roman antiquity which, long after the building of Notre-Dame, the practical Maurice of Orange demolished for the making of his mediæval castle. [Sidenote: Cavaillon.] It was growing dusk, of a spring evening, when the traveller arrived at Cavaillon and wandered about the narrow streets and came upon the Cathedral. Glimpses of an interesting dome and a turret-tower had appeared once or twice above the house-tops, leading him on with freshened interest, and there was still light enough for many first impressions when he arrived before the low cloister-door. But here was no place for peaceful meditation. An old woman, coiffed and bent, brushed past him as she entered, a chair in each hand; and as he effaced himself against the church wall, a younger woman went by, also chair-laden. Two or three others came, talking eagerly, little girls in all stages of excitement ran in and out, and little boys came and went, divided between assumed carelessness and a feeling of unusual responsibility. Then a priest appeared on the threshold, not in meditation, but on business. Another, old and heavy, and panting, hurried in; and through the cloister-door, Monsieur le Curé, breviary in hand, prayed watchfully. A little fellow, running, fell down, and the priest sprang to lift him; the child was too small not to wish to cry, but too much in haste to stop for tears. The priest watched him with a kindly shrug and a smile as he ran on;--there was no time for laughing or crying, there was time for nothing but the mysterious matter in hand. "What is it?" the traveller finally asked. "Ah, Monsieur, to-morrow is the day of the First Communion. We all have just prayed, just confessed, in the church; and our parents are arranging their places. For to-morrow there will be crowds--everybody. You too, Monsieur, are coming perhaps? The Mass is at half-past six." Such was the living interest of the place that the traveller moved away without any very clear architectural impression of the Cathedral, except of the curiously narrow bell-turret and of the height of the dome. He did not see the early Mass, but toward ten wandered again to the Cathedral and entered the cloister-door. It was a low-vaulted, sombre little Cloister which all the chattering, animated crowds could not brighten. Formerly two sides were gated off, and priests alone walked there. The other sides were public passage-ways to the church. Now only the iron grooves of the gates of separation remain, and the four walks were thronged with people. Little girls in the white dresses of their First Communion, veiled and crowned with roses, were hurrying to their places; an old grandmother, with her arm around one of the little communicants, knelt by a column, gazing up to the Virgin of the cloister-close; proud and anxious parents led their children into church, and friends met and kissed on both cheeks. In one corner, an old woman was driving a busy trade in penny-worths of barley candy. Diminutive altar-boys in white lace cassocks and red, fur-trimmed capes, offered religious papers for sale. It was a harvest day for beggars, and "for the love of the good God" many a sou was given into feeble dirty hands. [Illustration: "IT WAS A LOW-VAULTED, SOMBRE LITTLE CLOISTER." CAVAILLON.] For a time the traveller walked about the Cloister, so tiny and worn a Cloister that on any other day it must have seemed melancholy indeed. So low a vaulting is not often found, massive and rounded and seeming to press, lowering, above the head. The columns, which help to support its weight, are short and heavy and thick, so worn that their capitals are sometimes only suggestive and sometimes meaningless. On one side the carving is distinctly Corinthian; on another altogether lacking. Between the columns, one could glance into a close so small that ten paces would measure its length. It was a charming little spot, all filled with flowers and plants that told of some one's constant, tender care. From above the nodding flowers and leaves rose the statue of the Madonna and the Child. The tolling bell called laggards to Mass. With them, the traveller entered the church, and found it so crowded that it was only after receiving many knocks from incoming children, and sundry blows on the head and shoulders from ladies who carried their chairs too carelessly, after minutes of time and a store of patience, that he finally reached a haven, a corner of the Chapel of Saint-Véran. There, under the care of the Cathedral's Patron, he escaped further injuries and assisted at a long, interesting ceremony. Mass had already begun, but the voice of the priest and the answering organ were lost in the movement of excited friends, the murmur of questions, and the clatter of nailed shoes on the stone floor. A Suisse, halberd in hand, and gorgeous in tri-cornered hat and the red and gold of office, kept the aisle-ways open with firm but kind insistence; and the priests who were directing the children in the body of the church, were wise enough to overlook the disorder, which was not irreverence, but interest. For days, everybody had been thinking of this ceremony; everybody wanted "good places." But few found them. For the little nave of the church was chiefly given up to the communicants. They sat on long benches, facing each other. The boys, sixty or seventy of them, were nearest the Altar; the girls, even more numerous, nearest the door. A young priest walked between the rows of boys and the old, panting Father directed the girls. The whole interior of the church, at whose consecration no less a prelate than Pope Innocent IV had presided, is small and its plan is essentially of the Provençal type. The high tunnel vault rests, like that of Orange, on double arches; and as the nave is very narrow and its light very dim, the church seems lofty, sombre, and impressive, with a very serious dignity which its detail fails to carry out. The chapels, which lie between the heavy buttresses, are dim recesses which increase the darkened effect of the interior. Of the ten, only three differ essentially from the general plan; and although of the XVII century, their style is so severe and they are so ill-lighted that they do not greatly debase the church. The choir is entered from under a rounded archway, and its dome is loftier than the nave and much more beautiful than the semi-dome of the apse, whose roof, in these practical modern times, has been windowed. That which almost destroys the effect of the church's fine lines and would be intolerable in a stronger light, is the mass of gilt and polychrome with which the interior is covered. The altars are monstrously showy, the walls and buttresses are coloured, and even the interesting, sculptured figures beneath the corbels have been carefully tinted. The dead arise with appropriate mortuary pallor, the halo of Christ is pure gold, and all the draperies of God and His saints are in true, primary shadings. From the contemplation of this misuse of paint, and of a sadly misplaced inner porch of the XVII century, the traveller's attention was recalled to the old priest. His hand was raised, the eye of every little girl was fixed on him and instantly, in their soft, shrill voices, they began the verse of a hymn. The traveller glanced down the nave. Every boy was on his feet, white ribbons hanging bravely from the right arm, the Crown of Thorns correctly held in one white-gloved hand, a Crucifix fastened with a bow of ribbon to the coat lapel. Every eye was on the young priest, who also raised his hand. Then they sang, as the girls had sung, and with a right lusty will. And then, under the guiding hands, both boys and girls sang together. There was a silence when their voices died away, and from the altar a deep voice slowly chanted "Ite; missa est," and the High Mass of the First Communion Day was over. Outside, little country carts stood near the church, and fathers and brothers in blue blouses were waiting for the little communicants who had had so long and so exciting a morning. Walking about with the crowds, the traveller saw an exterior whose façade was plainly commonplace and whose bare lateral walls were patched, and crowded by other walls. Finally he came upon the apse, the most interesting part of the church's exterior; and he leaned against a café wall and looked across the little square. Externally, the apse of Saint-Véran has five sides, and each side seems supported by a channelled column. The capitals of these columns are carved with leaves or with leaves and grotesques; on them round arches rest; and above is a narrow foliated cornice. In relieving contrast to the artificial classicism of the Renaissance of the interior, the feeling of this apse is quite truly ancient and pagan, and it is not less unique nor less charming because it is placed against a plain, uninteresting wall. The eye travelling upward, above the choir-dome, meets the lantern with its rounded windows and pointed roof, and by its side the high little bell-turret which completes a curious exterior; an exterior which is interesting and even beautiful in detail, but irregular and heterogeneous as a whole. The Cathedral of Cavaillon is one of many possibilities. Although small like those of its Provençal kindred, it has more dignity than Orange, more simplicity of interior line than the present Avignon, and it is to be regretted that it should have suffered no less from restoration than from old age. [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL'S TOWER AND TURRET.--CAVAILLON.] [Sidenote: Apt.] Few of the Cathedral-churches of the Midi are without holy relics, but none is more famous, more revered, and more authentic a place of pilgrimage than the Basilica of Apt. It came about in this way, says local history. When Martha, Lazarus, and the Holy Marys of the Gospels landed in France, they brought with them the venerated body of Saint Anne, the Virgin's Mother; and Lazarus, being a Bishop, kept the holy relic at his episcopal seat of Marseilles. Persecutions arose, and dangers innumerable; and for safety's sake the Bishop removed Saint Anne's body to Apt and sealed it secretly in the wall. For centuries, Christians met and prayed in the little church, unconscious of the wonder-working relic hidden so near them; and it was only through a miracle, in Charlemagne's time and some say in his presence, that the holy body was discovered. This is the history which a sacristan recites to curious pilgrims as he leads them to the sub-crypt. The sub-crypt of Sainte-Anne, one of the earliest of Gallo-Roman "churches," is not more than a narrow aisle; its low vault seems to press over the head; the air is damp and chill; and the one little candle which the patient sacristan moves to this side and to that, shows the plain, un-ornamented stone-work and the undoubted masonry of Roman times. It was part of the Aqueduct which carried water to the Theatre in Imperial days, and had become a chapel in the primitive Christian era. At the end which is curved as a choir is a heavy stone, used as an altar; and high in the wall is the niche where the body of the church's patron lay buried for those hundreds of years. It is a gloomy, cell-like place, most curious and most interesting; and as the traveller saw faith in the earnest gaze of some of his fellow-visitors, and doubt in the smiles of others, he wondered what ancient ceremonials, secret Masses, or secret prayers had been said in this tiny chamber, and what rows of phantom-like worshippers had filed in and out the dark corridor. Directly above is the higher upper crypt of the church, a diminutive but true choir, with its tiny altar and ambulatory,--a jewel of the Romanesque, heavy and plain and beautifully proportioned, with columns and vaulting in perfect miniature. This, from its absolute purity of style, is the most interesting part of the church; and being a crypt, it is also the most difficult to see. In vain the sacristan ran from side to side with his little candle, in vain the traveller gazed and peered,--the little church was full of shadows and mysteries, dark and lost under the weight of the great choir above. [Illustration: "THE MAIN BODY OF THE CHURCH."--APT.] Even the main body of the church, above ground, is dimly lighted by small, rounded windows above the arches of the nave, and from the dome of Saint Anne's Chapel. Doubtless, on Sundays after High Mass, when the great doors are opened, the merry sun of Provence casts its cheerful rays far up the nave. But this is a church which is the better for its shadows. A Romanesque aisle of the IX or X century, built by that same Bishop Alphant who had seen the construction of the little crypt church, a central nave of the XI century, Romanesque in conception, and a north aisle of poor Provençal Gothic make a large but inharmonious interior. Restoration following restoration, chapels of the XVIII century, new vaultings, debased and conglomerate Gothic, and spectacular decorations of gilded wood have destroyed the architectural value and real beauty of the Cathedral's interior. Yet in the dim light, which is the light of its every-day life, the great height of the church and its sombre massiveness are not without impressiveness. The exterior dominates the city, but it is so hopelessly confused and commonplace that its natural dignity is lost. The heavy arch which supports the clock tower forms an arcade across a narrow street and makes it picturesque without adding dignity to the church itself. The walls are unmeaning, often hidden by buildings, and there is not a portal worthy of description. There is the dome of Saint Anne's Chapel with a huge statue of the Patron, and the lantern of the central dome ending in a pointed roof; but each addition to the exterior seems only an ignorant or a spiteful accentuation of the general architectural confusion. To the faithful Catholic, the interest of Sainte-Anne of Apt lies in its wonderful and glorious relics. Here are the bodies of Saint Eléazer and Sainte Delphine his wife, a couple so pious that every morning they dressed a Statue of the Infant Jesus, and every night they undressed it and laid it to rest in a cradle. There is also the rosary of Sainte Delphine whose every bead contained a relic; and before the Revolution there were other treasures innumerable. During many years Apt has been the pilgrim-shrine of the Faithful, and great and small offerings of many centuries have been laid before the miracle-working body of the Virgin's sainted Mother. [Illustration: THE VIRGIN AND SAINT ANNE. _By Benzoni._] The most famous of those who came praying and bearing gifts was Anne of Austria, whose petition for the gift of a son, an heir for France, was granted in the birth of Louis XIV. In gratitude, the Queen enriched the church by vestments wrought in thread of gold and many sacred ornaments; and at length she commanded Mansart to replace the little chapel in which she had prayed, by a larger and more sumptuous one, a somewhat uninteresting structure in the showy style of the XVII century, which is now the resting-place of Saint Anne. In this chapel is the most beautiful of the church's treasures which, strange to say, is a piece of modern sculpture given by the present "Monseigneur of Avignon." It is small, and badly placed on a marble altar of discordant toning, with a draped curtain of red gilt-fringed velvet for its background. Yet in spite of these inartistic surroundings it has lost none of its tender charm. Seated, with a scroll on her knees, the aged mother is earnestly teaching the young Virgin who stands close by her side. The slender old hand with its raised forefinger emphasises the lesson, and the loving expression of the wrinkled, ascetic face, the attentiveness of the Virgin and her slim young figure, make a touching picture, and a beautiful example of the power of the modern chisel. Yet faith in shrines and miraculous power is not, in this XX century, as pure nor as universal as in the days of the past; and Faith, in Provençal Apt which possesses so large a part of the Saint's body, is not as simple, and therefore not as strong as in Breton Auray which has but a part of her finger. Republicanism in the south country is not too friendly to the Church, kings and queens no longer come with prodigal gifts, and Sainte-Anne of Apt has not the peasant strength of Sainte-Anne of Auray. And in spite of the great feast-day of July, in spite of Aptoisian pride, in spite of the devotion and prayers of faithful worshippers, the Cathedral of Apt is a church of past rather than of present glories. [Sidenote: Riez.] Just as the church-bells were chiming the morning Angelus, and the warm sun was rising on a day of the early fall, a traveller drove out of old Manosque. He had no gun,--therefore he had not come for the hunting; he had no brass-bound, black boxes, and therefore could not be a "Commis." What he might be, he well knew, was troubling the brain of the broad-backed man sitting before him, who, with many a long-drawn "Ou-ou-u-u-" was driving a fat little horse. But native courtesy conquered natural curiosity and they drove in silence to the long, fine bridge that spans the river of evil repute: "Parliament, Mistral, and Durance Are the three scourges of Provence." At that time of year, however, the Durance usually looks peaceable and harmless enough; half its great bed is dry and pebbly, and the water that rushes under the big arches of the bridge is not great in volume. But the size and strength of the bridge itself and certain huge rocks, placed for a long distance on either side of the road, are significant of floods and of the spring awakening of the monstrous river that, like Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, has two lives. [Illustration: "SAINT-MARTIN-DE-BRÔMES WITH ITS HIGH, SLIM TOWER."] [Illustration: "THE FORTIFIED MONASTERY OF THE TEMPLARS."--(NEAR GRÉOUX).] The road wound about the low hills of the Alps, past a massive, fortified monastery of the Templars whose windows gape in ruin; past Saint-Martin-de-Brômes with its high, slim, crenellated watch-tower; past many quiet little villages where in the old times, Taine says, "Good people lived as in an eagle's nest, happy as long as they were not slain--that was the luxury of the feudal times." Between these villages lay vast groves of the grey-green olive-trees, large flourishing farms, and, further still, the bleak mountains of the Lower Alps. It was toward them the driver was turning, for rising above a smiling little valley, surrounded by fields of ripened grain, lay Riez. A donjon stands above a broken wall, on the hillside houses cluster around a church's spire, and alone, on the top of the hill, stands the little Chapel of Saint-Maxime, the only relic of the Great Seminary that was destroyed by the Revolutionists of '89. Here, after the destruction of one of the several Cathedrals of Riez, the Bishop celebrated Masses, but the little chapel was never consecrated a Cathedral. It has been recently restored and re-built in an uninteresting style,--the exterior is bare to ugliness, the interior so painted that the six old Roman columns which support the choir are overwhelmed by the banality of their surroundings. The plateau on which the chapel is built is now almost bare; olive-trees grow to its edges and there is no trace of the Seminary that was once so full of active life. The traveller, sitting in the shade of the few pine-trees, looked over the broad view toward the peaks whose bare rocks rise with awful sternness, and the little hills that stand between them and the valley, till finally his eyes wandered to the town beneath, and the firm, broad roads which approach it from every direction. For Riez, although in the lost depths of Provence, far from railways and tourists, is a bee-hive of industry, largely supplying the necessities of these secluded little towns. Its hat-making, rope factories, and tanneries are quite important; the shops of its main streets are not without a tempting attractiveness, and there is all the provincial stateliness of Saint-Remy with much less stagnancy. Riez was the Albece Reiorum Apollinarium in the Colonia Julia Reiorum of the Romans, but there are very few traces of the city with this high-sounding name. The whole atmosphere of the little town is XII century. Two of its old gates, part of the wall, and the crenellated tower still stand, with ruined convents and monasteries of Capuchins, Cordeliers, and Ursulines; and it may be inferred from the remains of the Bishop's Palace and the broad promenade which was one of its avenues, and from the episcopal château at Montagnac, that ecclesiastical state was not less worthily upheld at Riez than in the other Sees of the South of France. Many difficulties, however, had beset the Cathedral-building prelates. Their first church, Notre-Dame-du-Siège, dating partly from the foundation of the See in the IV century, partly from the X and XII centuries, was destroyed by storm and flood, and its site near the treacherous little river being considered too perilous, a new Cathedral of Notre-Dame-du-Siège and Saint-Maxime was begun; and it was then that the Bishops celebrated temporarily at Saint-Maxime's on the hill. During the Revolution the See was suppressed; the church has been much re-built and changed; so that only a tower which is part of the present Notre-Dame-du-Siège, and the traces of the earliest foundation near the little Colostre, remain to tell of the different Cathedrals of Riez. [Illustration: "THE TOWER OF NOTRE-DAME-DU-SIÈGE."--RIEZ.] Near the site of the oldest church is one of the few monuments of a very early Christianity which have escaped the perils of time. It is of unknown date, and although it is said to have been part of the Cathedral which stood between it and the river, it appears to have been always an independent and separate building. The peasants say that in the memory of their forefathers it was used as a chapel, they call it indefinitely "the Pantheon," "the Temple," or "the Chapel of Saint-Clair," but it was almost certainly a baptistery of that curious and beautiful type which was abandoned so early in the evolution of Christian architecture. [Illustration: "NOTHING COULD BE MORE QUAINTLY OLD AND MODEST THAN THE BAPTISTERY."--RIEZ.] Following the road which his innkeeper pointed out, the traveller became so absorbed in the busy movement of the communal threshing-ground, the arrival of the yellow grain, the women who were wielding pitchforks, and the horses moving in circles, with solemn rhythm, that he nearly passed a low building, the object of his search. Nothing could be more quaintly old and modest than the baptistery of Riez. It is a small square building of rough cemented stone whose stucco has worn away. The roof is tiled, and from out a flattened dome, blades of grass sprout sparsely. A tiny bell-turret and an arch in the front wall complete the ornamentation of this humble, diminutive bit of architecture, and except that it is different from the usual Provençal manner of construction, one would pass many times without noticing it. [Illustration: "BETWEEN THE COLUMNS AN ALTAR HAS BEEN PLACED."--BAPTISTERY, RIEZ.] Walking down the steps which mark the differences that time has made in the levels of the ground and entering a small octagonal hall, one of the most interesting interiors of Provence meets the eye. "Each of its four sides," writes Jules de Laurière, "which correspond to the angles of the outer square, has a semicircular apse built in the walls themselves. The eight columns, placed in a circle about the centre of the edifice, divide it into a circular nave and a central rotunda, and support eight arches which, in turn, support an octagonal drum, and above this is the dome." This room is of simple and charming architectural conception, and even in melancholy ruin, it has much beauty. It gains in comparison with the re-constructed baptisteries of Provence, for something of a primitive character has been preserved to which such modern altars and XVII century trappings as those of Aix and Fréjus are fatal. Under the heavy dust there is visible an unhappy coating of whitewash, traces of a fire still blacken the walls, fragments of Roman sculpture are scattered about, and between the columns a pagan altar has been placed for safe-keeping. The columns themselves are of pagan construction, and as they differ somewhat in size and capitals, it is not improbable that they came from the ruins of several of the great public buildings of Riez. At the time of the baptistery's construction, the barbaric invasion had begun, and these Roman monuments may have been in ruins; but in any case, it was a pious and justifiable custom of Christians to take from pagan structures, standing or fallen, stones and pillars that would serve for building churches to the "one, true God." The pillars procured for this laudable purpose at Riez, with their beautiful, carved capitals, gave the little baptistery its one decoration, and far from disturbing the simplicity of its style, they add a slenderness and height and harmony to a room which, without them, would be too stiffly bare. In the rotunda which they form, excavations have brought to light a baptismal pool, and conduits which brought to it sufficient quantities of water for the immersion--whole or partial--that was part of the baptismal service of the early Church. But the archæological work has abruptly ceased, and it is to be deeply regretted that here, in this deserted place, where the Church desires no present restorations in accordance with particular rites or modern styles of architecture, there should not be a complete rehabilitation, a baptistery restored to the actual state of its own era. [Illustration: "THE BEAUTIFUL GRANITE COLUMNS."--RIEZ.] Wandering across the fields, with the re-constructive mania strong upon him, the traveller came across the beautiful granite columns which with their capitals, bases, and architraves of marble, are the last standing monument of Riez's Roman greatness. Fragments of sculpture, bits of stone set in her walls, exist in numbers; but they are too isolated, too vague, to suggest the lost beauty and grandeur which these lonely columns express. He gazed at them in wonder. Was he stepping where once had been a grand and busy Forum, was he looking at the Temple of some great Roman god? The voices of the threshers sounded cheerily, the Provençal sun shone bright and warm, but one of the greatest of mysteries was before him,--the silent mystery of a dead past that had once been a living present. He sat by the river, and tossed pebbles into its shallow waters; the slanting rays of the sun gave the columns delicate tints, old yellows and greys and violets, and at length, as evening fell, they seemed to grow higher and whiter in the paler light, until they looked like lonely funereal shafts, recalling to the memory of forgetful man, Riez's long-dead greatness. [Sidenote: Senez.] In the comfortable civilisation of France, the stage-coach usually begins where the railroad ends; and however remote a destination or tedious a journey, an ultimate and safe arrival is reasonably certain. This was the reflection which cheered the traveller when he began to search for Senez, an ancient city of the Romans which was christianised in the early centuries and enjoyed the rank of Bishopric until the Revolution of '89. In spite of this dignified rank and the tenacity of an ancient foundation, it lies so far from modern ken that even worthies who live fifty miles away could only say that "Senez is not much of a place, but it doubtless may be found ten--perhaps fifteen--or even twenty kilometres behind the railroad." "If Monsieur alighted at Barrême, probably the mail for Senez would be left there too. And where letters go, some man or beast must carry them, and one could always follow." With these vague directions, the traveller set gaily out for Barrême, where a greater than he had spent one bleak March night on the anxious journey from Elba to Paris. The town shows no trace of Napoleon's hurried visit. It looks a mere sleepy hamlet, and when the traveller left the train he had already decided to push his journey onward. "To Senez?" A man stepped up in answer to his inquiry. "Certainly there was a way to get there, the mail-coach started in an hour. And a hotel? A very good hotel--not Parisian perhaps, but hot food, a bottle of good wine, and a clean bed. Could one desire more on this earth?" The traveller thought not, and left the station--to stand transfixed before the most melancholy conveyance that ever bore the high-sounding name of "mail-coach." A little wagon in whose interior six thin persons might have crowded, old windows shaking in their frames, the remains of a coat of yellow paint, and in front a seat which a projecting bit of roof protected from the sun,--this was the mail-coach of Senez, drawn by a dejected, small brown mule, ragged with age, and a gaunt white horse who towered above him. To complete the equipage, this melancholy pair were hitched with ropes. In due course of time the driver came, hooked an ancient tin box marked "Lettres" to the dash-board, threw in a sacking-bag, and cap in hand, invited the traveller to mount with him "where there was air." The long whip cracked authoritatively, the postilion, a beautiful black dog, jumped to the roof, and the mail-coach of Senez, with rattle and creak, started on its scheduled run. "Houp-là, thou bag of lazy bones done up in a brown skin! Ho-là, thou whited sepulchre, thinkest thou I will get out and carry thee? Take this and that." [Illustration: "THE MAIL-COACH OF SENEZ."] On either side the whip hit the road ferociously, but the old beasts of burden shook their philosophic heads and slowly jogged on, knowing well they would not be touched. The hot sun of Provence, which "drinks a river as man drinks a glass of wine," shone on the long, white "route nationale" that stretched out in well-kept monotony through a valley which might well have been named "Desolation." On either hand rose mountains that were great masses of bare, seared rocks, showing the ravages of forgotten glaciers; the soil that once covered them lay at their feet. Scarcely a shrub pushed out from the crevices, and even along the road, the few thin poplars found the poorest of nourishment. Crossing a small bridge, there came into view an ancient village, a mere handful of clustered wooden roofs, irregular, broken, and decayed. "It was a city in the days when we were Romans," said the Courier, "and they say that there are treasures underneath our soil. But who can tell when people talk so much? And certainly two sous earned above ground buy hotter soup than one can gain in many a search for twenty francs below." He whipped up for a suitable and striking entry into town, turned into a lane, and with much show of difficulty in reining up, stood before the "hotel." The traveller, having descended, entered a room that might have been the subject of a quaint Dutch canvas. He saw a low ceiling, smoky walls, long rows of benches, a sanded floor, and pine-board tables that stretched back to an open door; and through the open door, the pot swinging above the embers of the kitchen fire. The mistress of the inn, a strong white-haired woman of seventy, came hurrying in to greet her guest. "It was late," she said, and quickly put a basin full of water, a new piece of soap, and a fresh towel on a chair near the kitchen door; and as the traveller prepared himself for dinner he heard the crackling of fresh boughs upon the fire and the cheerful singing of the pot. Little lamps were lighted, and when he came to his table's end, he found good country wine and a steaming cabbage-soup. Others came in to dine and smoke and talk, and later from his bed-room window, he saw their ghostly figures moving up and down the unlighted streets and heard them say good-night. The inn-door was noisily and safely barred, and when the retreating footsteps and the voices had died away, the quiet of the dark remained unbroken until a watchman, with flickering lantern, passed, and cried aloud "All's well." [Illustration: "THE OPEN SQUARE."--SENEZ.] Next morning the sun shone brightly on Senez, and the traveller hurried to the open square. A horse, carrying a farmer's boy, meandered slowly by, a chicken picked here and there, and water trickled slowly from the tiny faucet of the village fountain. [Illustration: "THE PALACE OF ITS PRELATES."--SENEZ.] In this quiet spot, near the lonely desolation of the hills, is the Cathedral. The Palace of its prelates, which is opposite, is now a farm-house where hay-ricks stand in the front yard, and windows have been walled up because Provençal winds are cold and glass is dear. [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL.--SENEZ.] Looking at this residence, one would think that the last Bishops of Senez were insignificant priests, steeped in country wine and country stagnancy. But such a supposition is very far from true. For we know that in the XVIII century, Jean Soannen, Bishop of the city, was called before a Council at Embrun to answer a charge of resistance to the far-famed Bull "Unigenitus," and so strong were his convictions and so great his loyalty to his conscience, that he resisted the Council as well as the Bull, and was deprived of his See as a Jansenist and recalcitrant, and exiled to the Abbey of La-Chaise-Dieu. In quiet Senez there must always have been time for reflection, and one can imagine the bitter struggle of this brave man as he walked the rooms of the Palace, as he crossed and re-crossed the small square to the Cathedral. One can imagine his wrestling with God and his conscience every time that he celebrated a Mass for the people before the Cathedral's altar. One can understand the bitter fight between two high ideals, irreconcilable in his life,--that of work in God's vineyard or of doctrinal purity as he saw it. He had to choose between them, this Bishop of Senez, and when he left the town to answer the summons of the Council at Embrun, his heart must have been sore within him, he must have said farewell to many things. Few decisions can be more serious than the renunciation of family and home for the service of God, few more solemn than the struggles between the flesh and the spirit; but no more pathetic picture can exist than that sad figure of Jean Soannen; for he had renounced family and the world, and for the sake of "accepted truth" which was false to him, endured helpless, solitary insignificance under the espionage of suspicious and unfriendly monks. The traveller remembered his tomb, that tomb in a small chapel near the foot of the stair-case in the famous Abbey far-away, and sighing, hoped that in his mournful exile, the Bishop may have realised that "they also serve who only stand and wait." The Bull Unigenitus, which caused his downfall, is believed to have caused, during the last years of Louis XIV's bigotry, the persecution of thirty thousand respectable, intelligent, and orderly Frenchmen. De Noailles, several Bishops, and the Parliament of Paris refused to accept it, though they stopped short of open rebellion, and even Fénélon "submitted" rather than acceded to it. This famous and vexatious document was an unhappy emanation of Pope Clement XIII. Hard pressed by his faithful supporters, the Jesuits, he promulgated it in 1713, and it condemns with great explicitness one hundred and one propositions which are taken from Quesnel's Jansenistic "Réflexions morales sur le Nouveau Testament." The Jesuits held the Jansenists in a horror which the Jansenists reciprocated; the Pope owed almost too heavy a debt of gratitude to the order of Saint Ignatius and was constrained to repay. But the Bull, instead of procuring peace, brought the greatest affliction and desolation of mind to His Holiness, and when later, the French envoy asked him why he had condemned such an odd number of propositions, the Pope seizing his arm burst into tears. "Ah Monsieur Amelot! Monsieur Amelot! What would you have me do? I strove hard to curtail the list, but Père Le Tellier"--Louis XIV's last confessor and a devoted Jesuit--"had pledged his word to the King that the book contained more than one hundred errors, and with his foot on my neck, he compelled me to prove him right. I condemned only one more!" The Cathedral of Senez is an humble village church where frank and simple poverty exists with the remains of ancient splendour. It is small, as are all churches of its style, and although it does not lack a homely dignity, it is a modest work of XII century Romanesque, and the sonorous title of its consecration in 1242, "the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary," suggests an impressiveness which the Cathedral never had. Two heavy buttresses that support the façade wall are reminiscent of the more majestic Notre-Dame-du-Bourg of Digne, and on them rest the ends of a pointed gable-roof. Between these buttresses, the wall is pierced by a long and graceful round-arched window, and below the window is the single, pointed portal whose columns are gone and whose delicate foliated carvings and mouldings are sadly worn away. A sun-dial painted on the wall tells the time of day, and at the gable's sharpest point a saucy little angel with a trumpet in his mouth blows with the wind. [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL.--SENEZ.] Entering the little portal, the traveller saw the poor wooden benches of the congregation massed together, and beyond them, the stalls of long-departed Canons. In front of these old stalls, stood the church's latest luxury, a melodeon, and above them hung the tapestries of its richer past. Tapestries also beautify the choir-walls, and on either side, are the narrow transepts and the apses of a good old style. There are also poor and tawdry altars which stand in strange, pitiable contrast with the old walls and the fine tunnel vaulting, the dignified architecture of the past. [Illustration: "TAPESTRIES BEAUTIFY THE CHOIR WALLS."--SENEZ.] Leaving the interior, where a solitary peasant knelt in prayer, the traveller saw side-walls bare as the mountains round about, the squat tower that rises just above the roof, and coming to the apse-end he found the presbytery garden. From the garden, beyond the fallen gate, he saw the church as the Curé saw it, the three round apses with their little columns, the smaller decorative arches of the cornices, the pointed roof, and between branches full of apple blossoms, the softened lines of the low square tower. Here, trespassing, the Curé found him. And after they had walked about the town, and talked the whole day long of the great world which lay so far beyond, they went into the little garden as the sun was going down, and fell to musing over coffee cups. The priest was first to speak. "Perhaps, buried under those old church walls, lie proofs of our early history, the stones of some old Temple, or statues of its gods; for we were once Sanitium, a Roman city in a country of six Roman roads. Perhaps all around us were great monuments of pagan wealth, a Mausoleum near these bare old rocks like that which stands in loneliness near Saint-Remy, Villas, Baths, or Triumphal Arches." The keen eyes softened, as he continued in gentle irony, "Down in this little valley of the Asse de Blieux, our town seems far away from any scene in which the great ones of earth took part. Although I know that it is true, it often seems to me a legend that the gay and gallant Francis I, rushing to a mad war, stopped on his way to injure us; and that four hundred years ago a band of Huguenots raved around our old Cathedral, and tried to pull it to the ground." "And do you think it can be true," the traveller asked, "that Bishops held mysterious prisoners in that tower for most dreary lengths of time?" [Illustration: "BETWEEN BRANCHES FULL OF APPLE-BLOSSOMS, THE CHURCH AS THE CURÉ SAW IT."--SENEZ.] The Curé smiled, and shook his white head. "That is a story which the peasants tell,--an old tradition of the land. It may be true, since priests are mortal men and doubtless dealt with sinners." He smiled indulgently. "Through the many years I have been here, I have often wondered about all these things, but it is seldom I can speak my thoughts. Sometimes when I am here alone, I lose the sense of present things and seem to see the phantoms of the past. Then the dusk comes on, as it is coming now; the night blots Senez from my sight as fate has blotted out its record from history,--and I realise that our human memory is in vain." [Sidenote: Aix.] The old Cathedral of Saint-Sauveur at Aix is not one of those rarely beautiful churches where a complete and restful homogeneity delights the eye, nor is it a church of crude and shocking transitions. It is rather a well-arranged museum of ecclesiastical architecture, where, in sufficient historical continuity and harmony, many Provençal conceptions are found, and the evolution of Provençal architecture may be very completely followed. As in all collections, the beauty of Saint-Sauveur is not in a general view or in any glance into a long perspective, but in a close and loving study of the details it encloses; and so charming, so really beautiful are many of the diverse little treasures of Aix, that such study is better repaid here than in any other Provençal Cathedral. For this is one of the largest Cathedrals of the province, and the buildings which form the ecclesiastical group are most complete. With its baptistery, Cloister, church, and arch-episcopal Palace, it is not only of many epochs and styles, but of many historical uncertainties, and the hypotheses of its construction are enough to daze the most hardened archæologist. [Illustration: "THE SOUTH AISLE."--AIX.] The oldest part of the Cathedral is the baptistery, and the date of its origin is unknown. Much of its character was lost in a restoration of the XVII century, but its old round form, the magnificent Roman columns of granite and green marble said to have been part of the Temple to Apollo, give it an atmosphere of dignity and an ancient charm that even the XVII century--so potent in architectural evil--was unable to destroy. [Illustration: THE ROMANESQUE PORTAL.] In 1060, after the destructive vicissitudes of the early centuries, Archbishop Rostaing d'Hyères issued a pastoral letter appealing to the Faithful to aid him in the re-building of a new Cathedral; and it may be reasonably supposed that the nave which is at present the south aisle, the baptistery, and the Cloisters were the buildings that were dedicated less than fifty years later. They are the only portions of the church which can be ascribed to so early a period, and with the low door of entrance, the single nave and the adjoining cloister-walk, they constitute the usual plan of XI century Romanesque. Considering this as the early church, in almost original form, it will be seen that the portal is a very interesting example of the Provençal use not only of Roman suggestion, but of the actual fragments of Roman art which had escaped the invader; that the south aisle, in itself a completed interior, bears a close resemblance to Avignon; and that the Cloister, although now very worn and even defaced, must have been one of the quaintest and most delicate, as it is one of the tiniest, in Provence. Three sides of its arcades support plain buildings of a later date; the fourth stands free, as if in ruin. Little coupled columns, some slenderly circular, some twisted, and some polygonal, rest on a low wall; piers, very finely and differently carved, are at each of the arcade angles; the little capitals of the columns were once beautifully cut, and even the surfaces of the arches have small foliated disks and rosettes and are finished in roll and hollow. Unfortunately, a very large part of this detail-work is so defaced that its subjects are barely suggested, some are so eaten away that they are as desolate of beauty as the barren little quadrangle; and the whole Cloister seems to have reached the brink of that pathetic old age which Shakespeare has described, and that another step in the march of time would leave it "sans everything." [Illustration: THE CLOISTER.--AIX.] About two hundred years later, in 1285, the Archbishop of Aix found the Cathedral too unpretending for the rank and dignity of the See, and he began the Gothic additions. Like many another prelate his ambitions were larger than his means; and the history of Saint-Sauveur from the XIII to the XIX century, is that oft-told tale of new indulgences offered for new contributions, halts and delays in construction, emptied treasuries, and again, appeals and fresh efforts. The beginnings of the enlarged Cathedral were architecturally abrupt. The old nave, becoming the south aisle, was connected with the new by two small openings; it retained much of its separateness and in spite of added chapels much actual isolation. The Gothic nave, the north aisle and its many chapels, the apse, and the transepts, whose building and re-construction stretched over the long period between the XIII and XVII centuries, are comparatively regular, uniform, and uninteresting. The most ambitious view is that of the central nave, whose whole length is so little broken by entrances to the side aisles, that it seems almost solidly enclosed by its massive walls. Here in Gothic bays, are found those rounded, longitudinal arches which belong to the Romanesque and to some structure whose identity is buried in the mysterious past. The choir, with its long, narrow windows, and clusters of columnettes, is very pleasing, and its seven sides, foreign to Provence, remind one of Italian and Spanish constructive forms and take one's memory on strange jaunts, to the far-away Frari in Venice and the colder Abbey of London. From the choir of Saint-Sauveur two chapels open; and one of them is a charming bit of architecture, a replica in miniature of the mother-apse itself. The paintings of this mother-apse are neutral, its glass has no claim to sumptuousness, and the stalls are very unpretending; but above them hang tapestries ascribed to Matsys, splendid hangings of the Flemish school that were once in old Saint Paul's. With these beautiful details the rich treasure-trove of the interior is exhausted, and one passes out to study the details of the exterior. The Cathedral's single tower, which rises behind the façade line, was one of the parts that was longest neglected,--perhaps because a tower is less essential to the ritual than any other portion of an ecclesiastical building. Begun in 1323, the work dragged along with many periods of absolute idleness, until 1880, when a balustrade with pinnacles at each angle was added to the upper octagonal stage, and the building of the tower was thus ended. The octagon with its narrow windows rests on a plain, square base that is massively buttressed. It is a pleasant, rather than a remarkable tower, and one's eye wanders to the more beautiful façade. Here, encased by severely plain supports, is one of the most charming portals of Provençal Gothic. Decorated buttresses stand on either side of a large, shallow recess which has a high and pointed arch, and in the centre, a slim pier divides the entrance-way into two parts, pre-figuring the final division of the Just and the Unjust. A multitude of finely sculptured statues were formerly hidden in niches, under graceful canopies, and in the hundred little nooks and corners which lurk about true Gothic portals. Standing Apostles and seated Patriarchs, baby cherubs peering out, and the more dramatic composition of the tympanum--the Transfiguration,--all lent a dignity and wealth to Saint-Sauveur. Unfortunately many of these sculptures were torn from their crannies in the great Revolution; and it is only a few of the heavenly hosts,--the gracious Madonna, Saint Michael, and the Prophets,--that remain as types of those that were so wantonly destroyed. The low, empty gables that sheltered lost statues, their slender, tapering turrets, and the delicate outer curve of the arch, are of admirable, if not imposing, composition. The portal's wooden doors, protected by plain casings, abound in carvings partly Renaissance, partly Gothic. The Sibyls and Prophets stand under canopies, surrounded by foliage, fruits, and flowers, or isolated from each other by little buttresses or pilasters. This Gothic portal quite outshines, in its graceful elaboration, the smaller door which stands near it, in the simpler and not less potent charm of the Romanesque. And side by side, these portals offer a curiously interesting comparison of the essential differences and qualities of their two great styles. If the Romanesque of Saint-Sauveur is far surpassed at Arles and Digne and Sisteron, nowhere in Provence has Gothic richer details; and if the noblest of Provençal creations must be sought in other little cities, the lover of architectural comparisons, of details, of the many lesser things rather than of the harmony of a single whole, will linger long in Aix. [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL.--AIX.] The old city itself shows scarcely a trace of the many historic dramas of which it has been the scene,--the lowering tragedy of the Vaudois time,--the bright, gay comedy of good king René's Court,--the shorter scenes of Charles V's occupation,--the Parliament's struggle with Richelieu and Mazarin,--the day of the fiery Mirabeau,--the grim melodrama of the Revolution,--all have passed, and time has destroyed their monuments almost as completely as the Saracens destroyed those of the earlier Roman days. Only a few, unformed fragments of the great Temple of Apollo remain in the walls of Saint-Sauveur. The earliest Cathedral, Sainte-Marie-de-la-Seds, has entirely disappeared, the old thermal springs are enclosed by modern buildings, and only the statue of "the good King René" and the Church of the Knights of Malta give to Aix a faint atmosphere of its past distinction. Who would dream that here were the homes of the elegant and lettered courtiers of King René's brilliant capital, who would think that this town was the earliest Roman settlement in Gaul, the Aquæ Sextiæ of Baths, Temples, Theatres, and great wealth? Aix is a stately town, a provincial capital which Balzac might well have described--with old, quiet streets that are a little dreary, with a fine avenue shaded by great trees in whose shadows a few fountains trickle, with lines of little stages that come each day from the country,--a city whose life is as far in spirit from the near-by modernity of Marseilles as it is from that of Paris, as quaintly and delightfully provincial as that other little Provençal city, the Tarascon of King René and of Tartarin. Languedoc. I. CATHEDRALS OF THE CITIES. [Sidenote: Nîmes.] Entering Languedoc from the valley of the Rhone, the Cathedral-lover is doomed to disappointment in the city of Nîmes. All that intense, intra-mural life of the Middle Ages seems to have passed this city by, and its traces, which he is so eager to find, prove to be neither notable nor beautiful. [Illustration: "AN AMPHITHEATRE WHICH RIVALS THE ART OF THE COLISEUM."--NÎMES.] The great past of Nîmes is of a more remote antiquity than the Cathedral Building Ages. A small but exquisite Temple, a Nymphæum, Baths, parts of a fine Portal, Roman walls, and an Amphitheatre which rivals the art of the Coliseum,--these are the ruins of Nîmean greatness. She was essentially a city of the Romans, and that, even to-day, she has not lost the memory of her glorious antiquity was well illustrated in 1874, when the Nîmois, with much pomp and civic pride, unveiled a statue to "their fellow-countryman," the Emperor Antoninus Pius. These are the memories in which Nîmes delights. Yet her history of later times, if not glorious, is full of strange and curious interest. Like all the ancient cities of the South, she fell into the hands of many a wild and alien foe, and at length in 737, Charles Martel arrived at her gates. Grossly ignorant of art, no thing of beauty that stood in his path escaped fire and axe; and smoke-marks along the arena walls show to-day how narrowly they escaped the irreparable destruction which had wiped out the Forum, the Capitol, the Temple, the Baths, and all the magnificence of Roman Narbonne. To both the early and the later Middle Ages, Roman remains had scarcely more meaning than they had for the Franks. The delicate Temple of Trajan's wife, scorned for its pagan associations, was used as a stable, a store-house, and, purified by proper ceremonials, it even became a Christian church. The Amphitheatre has had a still stranger destiny. To a mediæval Viscount, it was naturally inconceivable as a place of amusement, and as naturally, he saw in its walls a stronghold where he could live as securely as ever lord in castle. As a fortress which successfully defied Charles Martel, it was a place of no mean strength, and in 1100 it had become "a veritable hornets' nest, buzzing with warriors." A few years before, Pope Urban II had landed at Maguelonne and ridden to Clermont to preach the First Crusade. On his return he stopped at Nîmes and held a Council for the same holy purpose. Raymond de Saint-Gilles, Count of Toulouse and overlord of Nîmes, travelled there to meet the Sovereign Pontiff, and amid the wonderful ferment of enthusiasm which the "Holy War" had aroused, the South was pledged anew to this romantic and war-like phase of the cause of Christ. Trencavel, Viscount of Nîmes, loyal to God and his Suzerain, followed Raymond to Palestine. Its natural protectors gone, the city formed a defensive association called the "Chevaliers of the Arena." As its name implies, this curious fraternity was composed of the soldiers of the ancient amphitheatre. Like many others of the time it was semi-military, semi-religious, its members bound by many solemn oaths and ceremonies, and thus, by the eccentricity of fate, this old pagan playground became a fortress consecrated to Christian defence, the scene of many a solemn Mass. The divisions in the Christian faith, which followed so closely the fervours of the Crusades, were most disastrous to Nîmes. From the XIII until the XVII centuries, wars of religion were interrupted by suspicious and unheeded truces, and these in turn were broken by fresh outbursts of embittered contest. An ally of the new "Crusaders" in Simon de Montfort's day, Nîmes became largely Protestant in the XVI century; and in 1567, as if to avenge the injuries their ancestors had formerly inflicted on the Albigenses, the Nîmois sacked their Bishop's Palace and threw all the Catholics they could find down the wells of the town. This celebration of Saint Michael's Day was repaid at the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew. The wise Edict of Nantes brought a truce to these hostilities,--its revocation, new persecutions and flights. A hundred years later the Huguenots were again in force, and, aided by the unrest of the Revolution, successfully massacred the Catholics of the city; and during the "White Terror" of 1815 the Catholics arose and avenged themselves with equal vigour. When it is remembered that this savage and vindictive spirit has characterised the Nîmois of the last six hundred years, it is scarcely surprising that they should prefer to dwell on the remote antiquity of their city rather than on the unedifying episodes of her Christian history. Between the glories of her paganism and the disputes of Christians, the Faith has struggled and survived; but in the Cathedral-building era, religious enthusiasm was so often expended in mutual fury and reprisals that neither time nor thought was left for that common and gentle expression of mediæval fervour, ecclesiastical architecture. And the Church of Notre-Dame-et-Saint-Castor, which would seem to have suffered from the neglect and ignorance of both patrons and builders, is one of the least interesting Cathedrals in Languedoc. A graceful gallery of the nave, which also surrounds the choir, is the notable part of the interior, and the insignificance of the exterior is relieved only by a frieze of the XI and XII centuries. On this frieze is sculptured, in much interesting detail, the Biblical stories of the early years of mankind; but it is unfortunately placed so high on the front wall that it seems badly proportioned to the façade, and as a carved detail it is almost indistinguishable. As has been finely said the whole church is "gaunt" and unbeautiful; it is a depressing mixture of styles, Roman, Romano-Byzantine, and Gothic; and in studying its one fine detail, a photograph or a drawing is much more satisfactory than an hour's tantalising effort to see the original. [Sidenote: Montpellier.] Montpellier is "an agreeable city, clean, well-built, intersected by open squares with wide-spread horizons, and fine, broad boulevards, a city whose distinctive characteristics would appear to be wealth, and a taste for art, leisure, and study." The "taste" and the "art" are principally those of the pseudo-classic style, an imitation of "ancient Greece and imperial Rome," which the French of the XVIII century carried to such unpleasant excess. The general characteristics of the imitation, size and bombast, are well epitomised in the principal statue of Montpellier's fine Champ de Mars, which represents the high-heeled and luxurious Louis XIV in the unfitting armour of a Roman Imperator, mounted on a huge and restive charger. Such affectation in architectural subjects is the death-blow to all real beauty and originality, and Montpellier has gained little from its Bourbon patrons except a series of fine broad vistas. No city could offer greater contrast to the ancient and dignified classicism of Nîmes. If the mediæval origin of Montpellier were not well known, one would believe it the creation of the Renaissance, and the few narrow, tortuous streets of the older days recall little of its intense past, when the city grew as never before nor since, when scholars of the genius of Petrarch and the wit of Rabelais sought her out, when she belonged to Aragon or Navarre and not to the King of France. This is the interesting Montpellier. In the XIII century, she had a University which the Pope formally sanctioned, and a school of medicine founded by Arabian physicians which rivalled that of Paris. More significant still to Languedoc, her prosperity had begun to overshadow that of the neighbouring Bishopric of Maguelonne, and a bitter rivalry sprang up between the two cities. From the first Maguelonne was doomed. She had no schools that could rival those of Montpellier; she ceased to grow as the younger city increased in fame and size, till even history passed her by, and the stirring events of the times took place in the streets of her larger and more prosperous neighbour. Finally she was deserted by her Bishops, and no longer upheld by their episcopal dignity, her fall was so overwhelming that to-day her mediæval walls have crumbled to the last stone and only a lonely old Cathedral remains to mark her greatness. In 1536 my Lord Bishop, with much appropriate pomp and ceremony, rode out of her gates and entered those of Montpellier as titular Bishop for the first time. He did not find the townsmen so elated by the new dignity of the city as to have broken ground for a new Cathedral, nor did he himself seem ambitious, as his predecessors of Maguelonne had been, to build a church worthy of his rank. However, as a Bishop must have a Cathedral-church, the chapel of the Benedictine monastery was chosen for this honour and solemnly consecrated the Cathedral of Saint-Pierre of Montpellier. This chapel had been built in the XIV century, and at the time of these episcopal changes, only the nave was finished. It was, however, Gothic; and as this style had become much favoured by the South at this late period, the Bishop must have believed that he had the beginning of a very fine and admirable Cathedral. In the religious wars which followed 1536, succeeding prelates found much to distract them from any further building; the Cathedral itself was so injured that such attention as could be spared from heretics to mere architectural details was devoted to necessary restorations and reconstructions, and the finished Saint-Pierre of to-day is an edifice of surprising modernity. In the interior, the nave and aisles are partially of old construction, but the beautiful choir is the XIX century building of Révoil. Of the exterior, the entire apse is his also, and as the portal of the south wall was built in 1884 and the northern side of the Cathedral is incorporated in that of the Bishop's Palace, only the tower and the façade are mediæval. [Illustration: "ITS GENERAL EFFECT IS SOMEWHAT THAT OF A PORTE-COCHÉRE."--MONTPELLIER.] None of the towers have much architectural significance, either of beauty or originality. In comparison with the decoration of the façade they make but little impression. This decoration has more original incongruity than any detail ever applied to façade, Gothic or Romanesque, and is an extreme example of the license which southern builders allowed themselves in their adaptation of the northern style. It is a vagary, and has appealed to some Anglo-Saxon travellers, but French authorities, almost without dissent, allude to it apologetically as "unpardonable." Its general effect is somewhat that of a porte-cochère, whose roofing, directly attached to the front wall, is gothically pointed, and supported by two immense pillars. The pillars end in cones that resemble nothing in the world so much as sugar-loaves, and the whole structure is marvellously unique. Yet strange to say, the effect of the façade, with the smoothness and roundness of its pillars and the uncompromising squareness of its towers, while altogether bad, is not altogether unpleasing. Standing before it the traveller was both bewildered and fascinated as he saw that even in the extravagance of their combinations, the builders, with true southern finesse, had avoided both the grotesque and the monstrous. [Illustration: "THE FINEST VIEW IS THAT OF THE APSE."--MONTPELLIER.] As a whole, Saint-Pierre is a fine Cathedral; through many stages of building, enlarging, and re-constructing, its style has remained consonant; but the general impression is not altogether harmonious. The perspective of the western front, which should be imposing, is destroyed by a hill which slopes sharply up before the very portal. The façade is attached to the immense, unbroken wall of the old episcopal Palace, and the majesty, which is a Cathedral's by very virtue of its height alone, is entirely destroyed by a seemingly interminable breadth of wall. Reversing the natural order of things, the finest view is that of the apse. And this modern part is, in reality, the chief architectural glory of this comparatively new Cathedral and its comparatively modern town. [Sidenote: Béziers.] "You have only to look from a distance at any old-fashioned Cathedral-city and you will see in a moment the mediæval relations between Church and State. The Cathedral is the city. The first object you catch sight of as you approach is the spire tapering into the sky, or the huge towers holding possession of the centre of the landscape--majestically beautiful--imposing by mere size. As you go nearer, the pinnacles are glittering in the tints of the sunset, when down below among the streets and lanes twilight is darkening. And even now, when the towns are thrice their ancient size, ... the Cathedral is still the governing force in the picture, the one object which possesses the imagination, and refuses to be eclipsed." These words are the description of Béziers as it is best and most impressively seen. From the distance, the Cathedral and its ramparts rise in imposing mass, a fine example of the strength, pride, and supremacy of the Church. As we approach, the Cathedral grows much less imposing, and its façade gives the impression of an unpleasant conglomeration of styles. It is not a fortress church, yet it was evidently built for defence; it is Gothic, yet the lightness and grace of that art are sacrificed to the massiveness and resistive strength, imperatively required by southern Cathedrals in times of wars and bellicose heretics. The whole building seems a compromise between necessity and art. It is, however, a notable example of the Gothic of the South, and of the modifications which that style invariably underwent, through the artistic caprice of its builders, or the political fore-sight of their patrons, the Bishops. The façade of Saint-Nazaire of Béziers has a Gothic portal of good but not notable proportions, and a large and beautiful rose-window. As if to protect these weaker and decorative attempts, the builder flanked them with two square towers, whose crenellated tops and solid, heavy walls could serve as strongholds. Perhaps to reconcile the irreconcilable, crenellations joining the towers were placed over the rose-window, and at either end of the portal, a few inches of Gothic carving were cut in the tower-wall. The result is frank incongruity. And the traveller left without regret, to look at the apse. It cannot be denied that the clock-tower which comes into view is very square and thick; but in spite of that it has a simple dignity, and as the apse itself is not florid, this proved to be the really pleasing detailed view of the Cathedral. The open square behind the church is tiny, and there one can best see the curious grilled iron-work, which in the times of mediæval outbreaks protected the fine windows of the choir and preserved them for future generations of worshippers and admirers. It was after noon when the traveller finished his investigations of Saint-Nazaire; and as the southern churches close between twelve and two, he took déjeuner at a little café near-by and patiently waited for the hour of re-opening. Had there been nothing but the interior to explore, he could not have spent two hours in such contented waiting. But there was a Cloister,--and on the stroke of two he and the sacristan met before the portal. [Illustration: "THE CLOCK-TOWER IS VERY SQUARE AND THICK."--BÉZIERS.] In describing their "monuments," French guide-books confine themselves to facts, and the adjectives "fine" and "remarkable"; they are almost always strictly impersonal, and the traveller who uses them as a cicerone, has a sense of unexpected discovery, a peculiar elation, in finding a monument of rare beauty; but he is never subjected to that disappointed irritation which comes when one stands before the "monument" and feels that one's expectations have been unduly stimulated. The Cloister of Béziers is a "fine monument," but as he walked about it, the traveller felt no sense of elation. He found a small Cloister, Gothic like the Cathedral, with clustered columns and little ornamentation. It was not very completely restored, and had a sad, melancholy charm, like a solitary sprig of lavender in an old press, or a rose-leaf between the pages of a worn and forgotten Missal. In the Cloister-close, stands a Gothic fountain; but the days when its waters dropped and tinkled in the stillness, when their sound mingled with the murmured prayers and slow steps of the priests,--those days are long forgotten. The quaint and pretty fountain is now dry and dust-covered; while about it trees and plants and weeds grow as they may, and bits of the Cloister columns have fallen off, and niches are without their guarding Saints. [Illustration: "THE QUAINT AND PRETTY FOUNTAIN."--BÉZIERS.] By contrast, the Cathedral itself seems full of life. Its interior is an aisle-less Gothic room, whose fine height and emptiness of column or detail give it an appearance of vast and well-conceived proportions. Except the really beautiful windows of the choir, which are a study in themselves, there is very little in this interior to hold the mind; one is lost in a pleasant sense of general symmetry. As the traveller was sitting in the nave, a few priests filed into the choir, and began, in quavering voices, to intone their prayers, and in the peacefulness of the church, in the trembling monotony of the weak, old voices, his thoughts wandered to the stirring history which had been lived about the Cathedral, and within its very walls. For Béziers was and had always been a hot-bed of heretics. Here in the IV century, long before the building of the Cathedral, the Emperor Constantius II forced the unwilling Catholic Bishops of Gaul to join their heretical Aryan brethren in Council; here the equally heretical Visigoths gave new strength to the dissenters; and here, again, after centuries of orthodoxy which Clovis had imposed, a new centre of religious storm was formed. It was about this period, the XII and XIV centuries, that the Cathedral was built; and it is perhaps because of the strength of those French protestants against the Church of Rome, the Albigenses, that its essentially Gothic style was so confused by military additions. At the beginning of the troublous times of which these towers are reminders, Raymond-Roger of Trencavel, the gallant and romantic Lord of Carcassonne, was also Viscount of Béziers; and contrary to the fanatical enthusiasm of his day, was much disposed toward religious toleration; therefore in the early wars of Catholics and Protestants the city of Béziers became the refuge not only for the terrified Faithful of the surrounding country, but for many hunted Protestants. In the XIII century, the zeal of the Catholic party, reinforced by the political interests of its members, grew most hot and dangerous. Saint Dominic had come into the South; and in his fearful, fiery sermons, he not only prophesied that the Albigenses would swell the number of the damned at the Day of Judgment, but also advocated that, living, they should know the hell of Inquisition. Partisans of the Catholic Faith were solemnly consecrated "Crusaders" by Pope Innocent III, and wore the cross in these Wars of Extermination as they had worn it in the Holy Wars of Palestine. In 1209 their army advanced against Béziers, and from out their Councils the leaders sent the Bishop of the city to admonish his flock. All the inhabitants were summoned to meet him, and they gathered in the choir and transepts of the Cathedral,--the only parts which were finished at that time. One can imagine the anxious citizens crowding into the church, the coming of the angered prelate, whose state and frown were well calculated to intimidate the wavering, and the tense silence as he passed, with grave blessing, to the altar. In a few words, he advised them of their peril, spiritual and material; he told them he knew well who was true and who false to the Church, that he had, in written list, the very names of the heretics they seemed to harbour. Then he begged them to deliver those traitors into his hands, and their city to the Legate of the Holy Father. In fewer words came their answer; "Venerable Father, all that are here are Christians, and we see amongst us only our brethren." Such words were a refusal, a heinous sin, and dread must have been written on every face, as without a word or sign of blessing, the outraged Bishop swept from the church and returned to the camp of their enemy. The Crusaders' Councils were stormy; for some of the nobles wished to save the Catholics, others cried out for the extermination of the whole rebellious place, and finally the choleric Legate, Armand-Amaury, Abbot of Cîteaux, could stand it no longer, and cried out fiercely, "Kill them all! God will know His own." The words of their Legate were final, the army attacked the city, and--as Henri Martin finely writes,--"neither funeral tollings nor bell-ringings, nor Canons in all their priestly robes could avail, all were put to the sword; not one was saved, and it was the saddest pity ever seen or heard." The city was pillaged, was fired, was devastated and burned "till no living thing remained." "No living thing remained" to tell the awful tale, and yet with time and industry, a new and forgetful Béziers has risen to all its old prestige and many times its former size; the Cathedral alone was left, and its most memorable tale to our day is not that of the abiding peace of the Faith, but that of the terrible travesty of religion of the twenty-second of July, hundreds of years ago. [Sidenote: Narbonne.] "Narbonne is still mighty and healthful, if one is to judge from the activities of the present day; is picturesque and pleasing, and far more comfortably disposed than many cities with a more magnificently imposing situation." These words, which were running in the traveller's mind, grew more and more derisive, more and more ironical, as he walked about Narbonne. Not in all the South of France had he seen a city so depressing. Her decline has been continuous for the long five hundred years since the Roman dykes gave way and she was cut off from the sea. Agde, almost as old, displays the decline of a dignified, retired old age; Saint-Gilles-du-Gard was as dirty, but not a whit as pretentious; Nîmes was majestically antique; Narbonne, simply sordid. It is sad to think that over two thousand years ago she was a second Marseilles, that she was the first of Rome's transalpine colonies, and that under Tiberius her schools rivalled those of the Capital of the world. It is sadder to think that all the magnificence of Roman luxury, of sculptured marble--a Forum, Capitol, Temples, Baths, Triumphal Arches,--stood where dreary rows of semi-modern houses now stand. It is almost impossible to believe in the lost grandeur of this city, and that it was veritably under the tutelage of so great and superb a god as Mars. The eventful Christian period of Narbonne was very noted but not very long. Her melancholy decay began as early as the XIV century. Of her great antiquity nothing is left but a few hacked and mutilated carvings; of her ambitious Mediævalism, nothing but an unfinished group of ecclesiastical buildings. Long gone is the lordly "Narbo" dedicated to Mars, gone the city of the Latin poet, whose words repeated to-day in her streets are a bitter mockery, and gone the stronghold of mediæval times. There remains a rare phenomenon for cleanly France,--a dirty city, whose older sections are reminiscent of unbeautiful old age, decrepit and unwashed; and whose newly projected boulevards are distinguished by tawdry and pretentious youth. In the midst of this city, stands a group of mediæval churchly buildings, the Palace of the prelate, his Cathedral, and an adjoining Cloister. They are all either neglected, unfinished, or re-built; but are of so noble a plan that the traveller feels a "divine wrath" that they should never have reached their full grandeur of completion, that this great architectural work should have been begun so near the close of the city's prosperity, and that in spite of several efforts it has never been half completed. It is as if a fatality hung over the whole place, and as if all the greatness Narbonne had conceived was predestined to destruction or incompletion. [Illustration: "THE DOOR OF THE CLOISTER."--NARBONNE.] Of the three structures, the least interesting is the former Palace of the Archbishops. This is now the Hôtel-de-Ville, and as all the body of the structure between the towers of the XII century was built in our day by Viollet-le-Duc, very little of the old Palace can properly be said to exist. Besides its two principal towers, a smaller one, a gate, and a chapel remain. Viollet-le-Duc has constructed the Hôtel-de-Ville after the perfectly appropriate style of the XIII century, but its stone is so new and its atmosphere so modern and republican that the traveller left it without regret and made his way up the dark, steep, badly-paved alley-way which leads to the door of the Cloister. This Cloister, which separated the Palace from the Cathedral, is now dreary and desolate and neglected. Like the Cathedral, it is Gothic, with sadly decaying traces of graceful ornament. The little plot of enclosed ground, which should be planted in grass or with a few flowers, is a mere dirt court, tramped over by the few worshippers who enter the Cathedral this way. Two or three trees grow as they will, gnarled or straight. The sense of peaceful melancholy which the traveller had felt in the Cloister of Béziers is wanting here. This is a place of deserted solitude; and with a sigh for the beauty that might have been, the traveller crossed the enclosure and entered the church by the cloister-door. [Illustration: "THIS IS A PLACE OF DESERTED SOLITUDE."--NARBONNE.] Architecturally dissimilar, the fate of this Cathedral is not unlike that of Beauvais. Each was destined to have a completed choir, and each to remain without a nave. At Beauvais the addition of transepts adds very materially to the beauty of the Cathedral. At Narbonne no transepts exist. There is simply a choir, which makes a very singular disposition of the church both religious and architectural. Entering the gates which lead from the ambulatory to the choir, the traveller found that Benediction had just begun. On his immediate right, before the altar all aglow with lights, were the officiating priests and the altar-boys; on his left, in the choir, was the congregation in the Canons' stalls; and at the back, as at the end of a nave, rose the organ. The traveller walked about the ambulatory, and leaning against the farthest wall, tried to view the church, only to be baffled. There was no perspective. The ambulatory is very narrow and the choir-screen very high. The impressions he formed were partly imaginative, partly inductive; and the clearest one was that of sheer height, straight, superhuman height that is one of the unmatchable glories of French Gothic. Here the traveller thought again of Beauvais, and wished as he had so often wished in the northern Cathedral and with something of the same intensity, that this freedom and majesty of height might have been gloriously continued and completed in the nave. Such a church as his imagination pictured would have been worthy of a place with the best of northern Gothic. Now it is a suggestion, a beginning of greatness; and its chief glory lies in the simplicity and directness of its height. Clustered columns rise plainly to the pointed Gothic roof. There is so marked an absence of carving that it seems as if ornamentation would have been weakening and trammelling. It is not bareness, but beautiful firmness, which refreshes and uplifts the heart of man as the sight of some island mountain rising sheer from the sea. The exterior of the Cathedral, imposing from a distance, is rather complicated in its unfinished compromise of detail. In the XV century, two towers were built which flank the western end as towers usually flank a façade; and this gives the church a foreshortened effect. Of real façade there is none, and the front wall which protects the choir is plainly temporary. In front of this wall there are portions of the unfinished nave, stones and other building materials, a scaffolding, and a board fence; and the only pleasure the traveller could find in this confusion was the fancy that he had discovered the old-time appearance of a Cathedral in the making. The apse is practically completed, and one has the curious sensation that it is a building without portals. Having no façade, it has none of the great front entrances common to the Gothic style; neither has it the usual lateral door. The choir is entered by the temporary doors of the pseudo-façade; the ambulatory is entered through the Cloister, or a pretty little Gothic door-way which if it were not the chief entrance of the church, would properly seem to have been built for the clergy rather than for the people who now use it. If these portals are strangely unimportant, their insignificance does not detract materially from the stateliness of the apse, which is created by its great height--one hundred and thirty feet in the interior measurement--and the magnificent flying-buttresses. These flying-buttresses give to the exterior its most curious and beautiful effect. They are a form of Gothic seldom attempted in the South, and exist here in a rather exceptional construction. Over the chapels which surround the apse rise a series of double-arched supports, the outer ones ending in little turrets with surmounting crenellations. On these supports, after a splendid outward sweep, rest the abutments of the flying arches. These have a fine sure grace and withal a lightness that relieves the heaviness imposed on the church by the towers and the immense strength of the body of the apse. They are the chief as well as the most salient glory of the exterior, and give to the Cathedral its peculiar individuality. [Illustration: "THESE FLYING-BUTTRESSES GIVE TO THE EXTERIOR ITS MOST CURIOUS AND BEAUTIFUL EFFECT."--NARBONNE.] Apart from its buttresses, Saint-Just has little decorative style. Its crenellations and turrets are military and forceful, not ornate. For the church had its defensive as truly as its religious purpose, and formerly was united on the North with the fortifications of the Palace, and contributed to the protection of its prelates as well as to their arch-episcopal prestige. In spite of the fostering care of the French government, the Palace, the Cloister, and the Cathedral seem in the hands of strangers. The traveller who had longed to see them in their finished magnificence realised the futility of this wish, but he turned away with another as vain, that he might have known them even in incompletion, when they were in the hands of the Church, when the Archbishop still ruled in his Palace, when the Canons prayed in the Cloister, and the Cathedral was still a-building. [Sidenote: Perpignan.] Perpignan, like Elne, is in Rousillon. The period of her most brilliant prosperity was that of the Majorcan dominion in the XII century. Later she reverted to Aragon, and was still so fine a city that for two hundred years France coveted and sought her, until she finally yielded to the greedy astuteness of Richelieu and became formally annexed to the kingdom of Louis XIII. Perpignan is a gay little town, much affected by the genius and indolence of the Spanish race. Morning is work-time, noon-tide is siesta, but afternoon and evening were made for pleasure; and every bright day, when the sun begins to cast shadows, people fill the narrow, shady streets and walk along the promenade by the shallow river, under the beautiful plane-trees. The pavements in front of the cafés are filled with little round tables, and here and there small groups of men idle cheerfully over tiny glasses of liqueur and cups of cool, black coffee; perhaps they talk a little business, certainly they gossip a great deal. Noisy little teams filled with merry people run down from the Promenade to the sea-shore; and after an hour's dip, almost in the shadow of the tall Pyrénées, the same merry people return, laughing, to a cooler Perpignan. In the evening, they seek the bright cafés and the waiters run busily to and fro among the crowded little tables; the narrow streets, imperfectly lighted, are full of moving shadows, and through the open church-doors, candles waver in the fitful draught, and quiet worshippers pass from altar to altar in penance or in supplication. All the old buildings of the city are of Spanish origin. The prison is the brick, battlemented castle of a Majorcan Sancho, the Citadel is as old, and the Aragonese Bourse is divided between the town-hall and the city's most popular café. The Cathedral of Saint-Jean, which faces a desolate, little square, was also begun in Majorcan days and under that Sancho who ruled in 1324. At first it was merely a church; for Elne had always been the seat of the Bishopric of Rousillon, and although the town had suffered from many wars and had long been declining, it was not shorn of its episcopal glory until there was sufficient political reason for the act. This arose in 1692, and was based on the old-time French and Spanish claims to the same county to which these two cities belonged. [Illustration: "ALL OF THE OLD BUILDINGS OF THE CITY ARE OF SPANISH ORIGIN."--PERPIGNAN.] Over a hundred years before Charles VIII had plenarily ceded to Ferdinand and Isabella all power in Rousillon, even that shadowy feudal Suzerainty with which, in default of actual possession, many a former French king had consoled himself and irritated a royal Spanish brother. Ferdinand and Isabella promptly visited their new possessions, and made solemn entry into Perpignan. Unfortunately the Inquisition came in their train, and the unbounded zeal of the Holy Office brought the Spanish rule which protected it into ever-increasing disfavour. In vain Philip III again bestowed on Perpignan the title of "faithful city," which she had first received from John of Aragon for her loyal resistance to Louis XI; in vain he ennobled several of her inhabitants and transferred to her, from Elne, the episcopal power. The city was ready for new and kinder masters than the Most Catholic Kings, and in 1642 the French were received as liberators. During all these years the Cathedral had grown very slowly. Commenced in 1324, over a century elapsed before the choir was finished and the building of the nave was not begun until a hundred years later. The High Altar, a Porch, and the iron cage of the tower were added with equal deliberation, and even to-day it is still unfinished. The most beautiful part is the strongly buttressed apse; the poorest, the unfinished façade, which has been very fitly described as "plain and mean." Looking disconsolately at it from the deserted square, scarcely tempted to go nearer, the traveller was astounded at the thought that for several centuries this unsightly wall had stared on generations of worshippers without goading them into any frenzy of action,--either destructive or constructive. His only comfort lay in the scaffolding which was building around it, and which seemed to promise better things. [Illustration: "THE UNFINISHED FAÇADE."--PERPIGNAN.] The interior of the Cathedral is very large and lofty. It is without aisles and the chapels are discreetly hidden between the piers. Far above one's head curves the ribbed Gothic vaulting, and all around is unbroken space that ends in darkness or the vague outline of an altar, dimly lighted by a flickering candle. The walls are painted in rich, sombre colours, and the light comes very gently through the good old stained-glass windows. It is a southern church, dark, cool, and somewhat mysterious; quite foreign to the glare and heat of reality. People are lost in its solemn vastness, and even with many worshippers it is a solitude where most holy vigils could be kept, a mystic place where the southern imagination might well lose itself in such sacred ardours as Saint Theresa felt. The traveller liked to linger here; in the day-time when he peered vainly at the re-redos of Soler de Barcelona, at Mass-time, when the lighted altar-candles glimmered over its fine old marble, but best of all he liked to come at night. Those summer nights in Rousillon were hot and full of the murmur of voices. The Cathedral was the only silent place; more full than ever of the mysterious--the felt and the unseen. As one entered, the sanctuary light shone as a star out of a night of darkness; in a near-by chapel, a candle sputtered itself away, and a woman--whether old or young one could not see--lighted a fresh taper. Sometimes a man knelt and told his beads, sometimes two women entered and separated for their differing needs and prayers. Sometimes one sat in meditation, or knelt, unmoving, for a space of time; once a child brought a new candle to Saint Antony; always some one came or some one went, until the hour of closing. Then, the bell was rung, the door shut by a hand but dimly seen, and the last few watchers went out--across the little square, down this street or that, until they were lost in the darkness of the summer's night. [Illustration: "THE STONY STREET OF THE HILLSIDE."--CARCASSONNE.] [Sidenote: Carcassonne.] The train puffed into the station at Carcassonne, and the impatient traveller, throwing his bags into an hotel omnibus, asked for the Cathedral and walked eagerly on that he might the more quickly "see in line the city on the hill," "the castle walls as grand as those of Babylon," and "gaze at last on Carcassonne." His mind was full of the poem, and faithfully following directions, he hurried through clean, narrow streets until he came at length, not upon a poetic vision of battlemented walls and towers, but on the most prosaic of boulevards and the Church of Saint-Michel which has been the Cathedral since 1803, a large, uncouth building with a big, unfinished tower. There is no façade portal, and a small door-way in the north side leads into the great vaulted hall, one of the most usual and commonplace forms of the Gothic interior of the South. This room, which is painted, receives light from a beautiful rose-window at the West, and a series of small roses, like miniatures of the greater one, are cut in the upper walls of the nave; and little chapels, characterised by the same heavy monotony which hangs like a pall over the whole Cathedral, are lost in the church's capacious flanks. [Illustration: "THE ANCIENT CROSS."--CARCASSONNE.] Having lost much of his enthusiasm, the traveller asked for the old--he had almost said the "real"--Cathedral, and with new directions, he started afresh. Leaving the well-built, agreeable, commonplace "Lower city" of the plain, he came to the bridge, and there, sitting on its parapet, near the ancient Cross, he feasted his longing eyes on that perfect vision of Mediævalism. The high, arid, and almost isolated hill of the Cité stood before him, and at the top rose battlements and flanking towers in double range, bristling, war-like, and strong; yet beautiful in their mass of uneven, peaked tower-roofs and crenellations. He climbed wearily up the stony street of the hillside, and as he passed through the open gate, he realised that Hunnewell had written truly when he said "Carcassonne is a romance of travel." For he went into a town so quiet, into streets so still, so weed-grown, and lonely, and yet so well built, that he felt as a "fairy prince" who has penetrated into some enchanted castle, and it seemed as if the inhabitants were asleep in the upper rooms, behind those bowed windows, and as if, when the mysterious word of disenchantment should be uttered, all would come trooping forth, men-at-arms hurrying to clean their rusty swords, old women trudging along to fill their dusty pitchers at the well, and younger women staring from doors and windows to see the stranger within their streets. The Cadets de Gascogne knew the city before the evil spell of modern times was cast about it. They know and miss it now. And although they may no longer wear the plumed hat and clanking sword of their ancestors, the spirit beneath their more conventional garb is as gay and daring as that of Cadets more picturesque. They have conceived a plan as exciting as any old adventure, an idea which they present to the world, not as Cyrano, their most famous member, was wont to convey his thoughts at the end of a sword, but none the less dexterously and delightfully. This plan, like the magic word of the traveller's fancy, is to make the old Carcassonne live again, not as the traveller had timidly imagined, in time of peace, but in the stirring times of war and battle, and its magic word is "the siege of Carcassonne." Truly it is but a matter of bengal lights, blank cartridges, and fire-crackers, though for the matter of that, Cinderella's coach was but a pumpkin, yet the effect was none the less real. [Illustration: "OFTEN, TOO LITTLE TIME IS SPENT UPON THE NAVE."--CARCASSONNE.] On the evening of "the siege," a rare, great fête, the forces of the Cadets with their lights and ammunition are in the "upper town", and long before dark, their friends and every inhabitant of the country for miles around have gathered in the houses which face the Cité, on the bridges, and along the banks of the little Aude. As the sunlight fades and the shadows creep along, a strange feeling of expectancy comes over everybody, a hush, almost a dread of danger. The towers on the hill-top loom dark against the sky and the battlements bristle in the moonlight, no sound comes from the Cité, and it seems to lay in unconcerned security. Memories of besieging armies which have vainly encamped in this valley return to the traveller's mind, memories of the treacheries of Simon de Montfort, and he wonders if any "crusading" sentinel ever paced where he now stands watching along the Aude, if any spy or even the terrible Simon himself had ever crept so near the walls to reconnoitre. Suddenly every one is startled by the sound of distant shots, which are repeated nearer the walls. Every one peers into the darkness. There is no sign of life on wall or tower, the attacking force must still be climbing the hill, out of range of the stones and burning oil of the defenders. More shots are fired, and now there are answering shots from the besieged; and so naturally does the din increase, that one can follow, by listening, the progress of the attack and the slow, sure gain of the invader. Some of the illusion of the anxiety and mental tension which war brings, steals over the watching crowd, and they breathlessly await the outcome of the struggle. The attacking party is now seen under the walls--now on them--they throw wads of burning cotton, which are at first extinguished. They still gain--they fire the walls in several places; and the defenders, who can be seen in the flashes of light, run frantically to the danger spots; but they are gradually overcome, beaten back by the intensity of the heat. Flames now burst forth from a tower; there is an explosion, and the fire curls and creeps along the walls unchecked. Another explosion follows, another burst of flames which soar higher and higher. The men of the Cité seem still more frantic and powerless. All the towers now stand out in bold relief,--as if they were just about to crumble into the seething mass below. Roofs within the walls are on fire, and finally a red tongue licks the turret of the Cathedral. In a few seconds its walls are hideously aglow, and the people in the valley--although they know the truth--groan aloud, so real is the illusion. The nave lines of the Cathedral are silhouetted as it burns, the fires along the walls growing brighter, spread gradually at first,--then rapidly, and the whole Cité is the prey of great, waving clouds of flame and smoke. Men and women, as if fascinated by this lurid and magnificent destruction, press forward to get the last view of the Cathedral's lovely rose, or the peaked roof of some tower which is dear to them. But slowly the deep red flames are growing paler, less strong, and less high. Then the glare, too, begins to die away; the fire turns to smoke and the light becomes grey and misty. "It is all over," some one whispers, and with backward glances at the charred, smoldering hill-top, they turn silently towards home. A few, sitting on the stone parapet of the bridge, remain to talk of the evening's magic, of the inspiration of the Cadets de Gascogne, and other scenes which their memory suggests, of wars and rumours of other wars. And when at length they turn to go, they see the moonlight on the glimmering Aude, the peaceful lower city, and above, Carcassonne--the Invincible--rising from her ashes. [Illustration: "THE CHOIR IS OF THE XIV CENTURY."--CARCASSONNE.] [Illustration: "THE FAÇADE--STRAIGHT AND MASSIVE."--CARCASSONNE.] The Cathedral of the Cité is worthy of great protecting walls and there are few churches whose destruction would have been so sad a blow to the architecture of the Midi. Saint-Nazaire is typical at once of the originality of the southern builders, of their idealism, and their joyous freedom from conventional thrall. The façade, straight, and massive, has the frowning severity of an old donjon wall. Its towers are solid masses of heavy stone; instead of spires, there are crenellations; instead of graceful flying-buttresses at the sides, there are solid, upright supports on the firm, plain side-walls. This is the true old Romanesque. A few steps further, and the apse appears, as great a contrast to the body of the church as a bit of Mechlin lace to a coat-of-mail. A little tower with gargoyles, another with a fine-carved turret, windows whose delicate traceries could be broken by a blow, and an upper balustrade which would have been as easily crushed as an egg-shell in the hands of the lusty Huguenots,--these are the ornaments of its wall, as true XIV century Gothic as the nave is XII century Romanesque. It is sadly disappointing to find the Cloisters in uninteresting ruin, but the church within is so full of great beauty that all other things are unimportant. The windows glow in the glory of their glass, and the tombs, especially those of the lower Chapel of the Bishop, are wonderfully carved. The first burial place of de Montfort, terrible persecutor of his Church's foes, lies near the High Altar, and in the wall, there is a rude bas-relief representing his siege of Toulouse. All these admirable details are puny in comparison with the interior which contains them. It is to be feared that often, too little time is spent upon the nave. Even in mid-day, lighted by the southern sun, its beautiful, severe lines are mellowed but little, and one turns too instinctively to the Gothic, the greater lightness beyond. Yet it is a nave of exceedingly fine, rugged strength, and to pass on lightly, to belittle it in comparison with its brighter choir, is to wantonly miss in the great round columns, the heavy piers, and the dark tunnel vaulting, the conception of generations of men who had ever before their mind--and literally believed--"A mighty fortress is our God." The choir is of the XIV century, a day when the "beauty of holiness" seems to have been the Cathedral architect's ideal. Delicate, clustered columns from which Saints look down, long windows beautifully veined, a glorious rose at each transept's end, and high vault arches springing with a slender pointed grace, all these are of exquisite proportions; and the brilliant stained-glass adds a softening warmth of colour, but not too great a glow, to the cold fragility of the shafts of stone. Nothing in the Gothic art of the South, little of Gothic elsewhere, is more thoughtfully and lovingly wrought than this choir of Saint-Nazaire, and few churches in the Romanesque form are more finely constructed than its nave. On the exterior, the Gothic choir and the Romanesque nave are so different in style it seems they must be, perforce, antagonistic, that the grace of the Gothic must make Romanesque plainness appear dull, or that the noble simplicity of the rounded arch must cause the Gothic arches, here so particularly tall and slender, to seem almost fragile and undignified. In reality, this juxtaposition of the styles has justified itself; and passing from one to the other, the traveller is more impressed by the subtle analogies they suggest than by the differences of their architectural forms. On week-days, when the church is empty, they seem to prefigure the two ideals of the religion which they serve--the stern, self-conquering asceticism of a Saint Dominic, and the exquisite, radiant visions which Saint Cecelia saw when heavenly music was vouchsafed her. Or, if one has time to fancy further, the nave is the epic of its great religion; the choir, a song which is the expression of most delicate aspiration, most tender worship. On Sunday, when to this beauty of the godly habitation is added all the beauty of worship, the music of the oldest organs in France, slow-moving priests in gorgeous vestments, sweet smelling incense, chants, and prayers of a most majestic ritual, one is tempted to read into these stones symbolical meanings,--as if the heavy nave, where the dim praying figures kneel, were typical of their life of struggle--and their glances altarward, where all is light and beauty, presaged their final coming into the presence and glory of God. [Illustration: PERSPECTIVE OF THE ROMANESQUE.--CARCASSONNE.] Hunnewell has finely written, that "while the passions and the terrors of a fierce, rude age made unendurable the pleasant land where we may travel now so peacefully, ... and while Religion, grown political, forgot the mercy of its Lord and ruled supreme, ... an earnest faith and consecrated genius were creating some of the noblest tributes man has offered to his Creator," and it may be truly said that of these one of the noblest is the church begun in that most cruel age of Saint Dominic and de Montfort, in the very heart of the country they laid waste, in the city which one conquered by ruse and the other tortured by inquisition, the old Cathedral of Saint-Nazaire in Carcassonne. [Sidenote: Castres.] In the VII century Castres, which had been the site of a Roman camp, became that of a Benedictine Abbey; and around this foundation, as about so many others, a town grew through the Middle Ages, and came safely to prosperity and importance. Untrue to its early protectors and in opposition to the fervent orthodoxy of the neighbouring city of Albi, Castres became a Protestant stronghold, and its fortunes rose and fell with the chances of religious wars. It was, perhaps, one of the most intrepid and obstinate of all the centres of heresy, and the centuries of struggle seem only to have strengthened the fierceness of its faith. In 1525, when the Duke de Rohan was absent and a royal army again summoned it to submission and conversion, the Duchess had herself carried from a sick bed to the gate of the city which was threatened, and it is related that the inhabitants of all classes, men, women, and children, without distinction of sex or age, armed themselves and rushed victoriously to her aid. Thirty-five years later, their children sacked churches, destroyed altars and images, and drove out monks and nuns. Bellicose incidents make history a thrilling story, but they are accompanied by such material destruction that they too often rob a city of its greatest treasures, and leave it, as far as architectural interest is concerned, an arid waste. Such a place is Castres, prosperous, industrial, historically dramatic, but actually commonplace. Old houses, picturesque and mouldy, with irregular, overhanging eaves, lean along the banks of the little river as they are wont to line the banks of every old stream of the Midi, and they are nearly all the remains of Castres' Mediævalism. For her streets are well-paved, trolleys pass to and fro, department stores are frequent, and that most modern of vehicles, the automobile, does not seem anachronistic. No building could be more in harmony with the city's atmosphere of uninteresting prosperity than its Cathedral, and he who enters in search of beauty and repose, is doomed to miserable disappointment. Confronted in the XIV century by a growing heresy, John XXII devised, among other less Christian methods of combat, that of the creations of Sees, whose power and dignity of rank should check the progress of the enemies of the Church; and in 1317, that year which saw the beginning of so many of these new Sees, the old Benedictine Abbey of Castres, lying in the very centre of Protestantism, was created a Bishopric. The century, if unpropitious to Catholicism, was favourable to architecture, the Abbey was of ancient foundation, and from either of these facts, a fine Cathedral might reasonably be hoped for,--a dim Abbey-church whose rounded arches are lost in the gloom of its vaulting, or a bit of southern Gothic which the newly consecrated prelate might have ambitiously planned. But the Cathedral of Saint-Benoît is neither of these, for it was re-constructed in the XVII century, the XVII century in all its confusion of ideas, all its lack of taste, all its travesty of styles. There is the usual multitude of detail, the usual unworthiness. Portals which have no beauty, an expanse of unfinished façade, dark, ugly walls whose bareness is not sufficiently hidden by the surrounding houses, heavy buttresses, ridiculously topped off by globes of stone,--such are the salient features of the exterior of Saint-Benoît. The "spaciousness" of the interior has given room, if not for an impartial representation, at least for a reminder of all the styles of architecture to which the XVII century was heir. There is the Renaissance conception of the antique in the ornamental columns; in the rose-window, there is a tribute to the Gothic; the tradition of the South is maintained by a coat of colours--many, if subdued; and the ground plan of nave and side-chapels might be called Romanesque. Although the vaulting is high and the room large, there is no simplicity, no beauty, no artistic virtue in this interior. Opposite the church is the episcopal Palace which Mansart built, a large construction that serves admirably as a City Hall. Behind it, along the river, are the charming gardens designed by Le Nôtre, where Bishops walked and meditated, looking upon their not too faithful city of Castres. Upon this very ground was the ancient Abbey and close of the Benedictines; and as if in memory of these monkish predecessors, Bishop and builder of the XVII century left in an angle of the Palace the old Abbey-tower. This is the treasure of Castres' past, a Romanesque belfry with the pointed roofing of the campanile of Italy, heavy in comparison with their grace, and stout and strong. [Sidenote: Toulouse.] Toulouse is one of the most charming cities of the South of France. It is also one of the largest; but in spite of its size, it is neither noisy nor stupidly conventional; it is, on the contrary, an ideal provincial "capital," where everything, even the climate, corresponds to our preconceived and somewhat romantic ideal of the southern type. When the wind blows from the desert it comes with fierce and sudden passion, the sun shines hot, and under the awnings of the open square, men fan themselves lazily during a long lunch hour. Under this appearance of semi-tropical languor, there is the persistent energy of the great southern peoples, an energy none the less real because it is broken by the long siestas, the leisurely meal-times, and the day-time idling, which seem so shiftless and so strange to northern minds. This is the energy, however, which has made Toulouse a rich, opulent city,--a city with broad boulevards, open squares, and fine buildings, and a city of the gay Renaissance rather than of the stern Middle Ages. Yet for Toulouse the Middle Ages were a dark time. What could be gotten by the sword was taken by the sword, and even the mind of man, in that gross age, was forced and controlled by the agony of his body. It is a time whose most peaceful outward signs, the churches, have been preserved to Toulouse, and the war-signs, towers, walls, and fortifications, dungeons, and the torture-irons of inquisition, are now--and wisely--hidden or destroyed. Of the fierce tragedies which were played in Toulouse, even to the days of the great Revolution, few traces remain,--the stern, orthodox figure of Simon de Montfort, and of Count Raymond, his too politic foe, and the anguish of the Crusaders' siege, the bent form of Jean Calas and the shrewd, keen face of Voltaire, who vindicated him from afar, these memories seem dimmed; and those which live are of light-hearted troubadours and gaily dressed ladies of the city of the gay, insouciant Renaissance to whom an auto-da-fè was a gala between the blithesome robing of the morning and the serenade in the moonlight. Fierce and steadfast, sentimentally languishing, dying for a difference of faith, or dying as violently to avenge the insult of a frown or a lifted eye-brow, such are the Languedocians whom Toulouse evokes, near to the Gascons and akin to them. Here is the Académie des Jeux-Floreaux, the "College of Gay Wit" which was founded in the XIV century, and still distributes on the third of every May prizes of gold and silver flowers to poets, and writers of fine prose; and here are many "hôtels" of the Renaissance, rich and beautiful homes of the old Toulousan nobility whose courts are all too silent. Here is the Hôtel du Vieux-Raisin, the Maison de Pierre, and the Hôtel d'Assézat where Jeanne d'Albret lived; and near-by is a statue of her son, the strongest, sanest, and most debonnaire of all the great South-men, Henry of Navarre. Here in Toulouse is indeed material for a thousand fancies. [Illustration: "THE NAVE OF THE XIII CENTURY IS AN AISLE-LESS CHAMBER, LOW AND BROADLY ARCHED."--TOULOUSE.] And here the Cathedral-seeker, who had usually had the proud task of finding the finest building in every city he visited, was doomed to disappointment. In vain he tried to console himself with the fact that Toulouse had had two Cathedrals. Of one there was no trace; in the other, confusion; and he was met with the axiom, true in architecture as in other things, that two indifferent objects do not make one good one. The "Dalbade," formerly the place of worship of the Knights of Malta, has a more elegant tower; the Church of the Jacobins a more interesting one; the portal of the old Chartreuse is more beautiful; the Church of the Bull, more curious; and the Basilica of Saint-Sernin so interesting and truly glorious that the Cathedral pales in colourless insignificance. Some cities of mediæval France possessed, at the same time, two Cathedrals, two bodies of Canons, and two Chapters under one and the same Bishop. Such a city was Toulouse; and until the XII century, Saint-Jacques and Saint-Etienne were rival Cathedrals. Then, for some reason obscure to us, Saint-Jacques was degraded from its episcopal rank and remained a simple church until 1812 when it was destroyed. The present Cathedral of Saint-Etienne is a combination of styles and a violation of every sort of architectural unity, and realises a confusion which the most perverse imagination could scarcely have conceived. According to every convention of building, the Cathedral is not only artistically poor, but mathematically insupportable. The proportions are execrable; and the interior, the finest part of the church, reminds one irresistibly of a good puzzle badly put together. The weak tower is a sufficient excuse for the absence of the other; from the tower the roof slopes sharply and unreasonably, and the rose-window is perched, with inappropriate jauntiness, to the left of the main portal. The whole structure is not so much the vagary of an architect as the sport of Fate, the self-evident survival of two unfitting façades. Walking through narrow streets, one comes upon the apse as upon another church, so different is its style. It is disproportionately higher than the façade; instead of being conglomerate, it is homogeneous; instead of a squat appearance, uninterestingly grotesque, it has the dignity of height and unity. And although it is too closely surrounded by houses and narrow streets, and although a view of the whole apse is entirely prevented by the high wall of some churchly structure, it is the only worthy part of the exterior and, by comparison, even its rather timid flying-buttresses and insignificant stone traceries are impressive. [Illustration: "THE PRESENT CATHEDRAL IS A COMBINATION OF STYLES."--TOULOUSE.] The nave of the early XIII century is an aisle-less chamber, low and broadly arched. As the eye continues down its length, it is met by the south aisle of the choir,--opening directly into the centre of the nave. Except for this curiously bad juxtaposition, both are normally constructed, and each is of so differing a phase of Gothic that they give the effect of two adjoining churches. The choir was begun in the late XII century, on a new axis, and was evidently the commencement of an entire and improved re-construction. In spite of the poorly planned restoration in the XVII century, the worthy conception of this choir is still realised. It is severe, lofty Gothic, majestic by its own intrinsic virtue, and doubly so in comparison with the uncouth puzzle-box effect of the whole. Its unity came upon the traveller with a shock of surprise, relieving and beautiful, and after he had walked about its high, narrow aisles and refreshed his disappointed vision, he left the Cathedral quickly--looking neither to the right nor to the left, without a trace of the temptation of Lot's wife, to "glance backward." [Sidenote: Montauban.] Although Montauban was founded on the site of a Roman station, the Mons Albanus, it is really a city of the late Middle Ages, re-created, as it were, by Alphonse I., Count of Toulouse in 1144. And it was even a greater hot-bed of heretics than Béziers. Incited first by hatred of the neighbouring monks of Le Moustier, and then by the bitter agonies of the Inquisition, it became fervently Albigensian, and as fervently Huguenot; and even now it has many Protestant inhabitants and a Protestant Faculty teaching Theology. The Montauban of the present day is busy and prosperous, very prettily situated on the turbid little Tarn. In spite of her constant loyalty to the Huguenot cause, perhaps partly because of it, she has had three successive Cathedrals; Saint-Martin, burned in 1562; the Pro-cathedral of Saint-Jacques; and, finally, Notre-Dame, the present episcopal church, a heavy structure in the Italian style of the XVIII century. Large and light and bare, the nudeness of the interior is uncouth, and the stiff exterior, decorated with statues, impresses one as pleasantly as clothes upon crossed bean-poles. It is artificial and mannered; the last of the City Cathedrals of Languedoc and the least. If the notorious vices of the XVIII century were as bad as its style of ecclesiastical architecture, they must have been indeed monstrous. END OF VOLUME I. 
20124	----	(http://dp.rastko.net/) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 20124-h.htm or 20124-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/0/1/2/20124/20124-h/20124-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/0/1/2/20124/20124-h.zip) Transcriber's note: The original spelling and puncturation have been retained. BÉARN AND THE PYRENEES: A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre. by LOUISA STUART COSTELLO, Author of "The Bocages and the Vines," "A Pilgrimage to Auvergne," Etc. With numerous Illustrations. In Two Volumes. London: Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street, Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty. 1844. Printed by R. Clay, Bread Street Hill. TO MISS BURDETT COUTTS, THESE VOLUMES ARE DEDICATED WITH MUCH RESPECT AND AFFECTION BY HER SINCERELY OBLIGED HUMBLE SERVANT, LOUISA STUART COSTELLO. LONDON, MARCH 16, 1844. INTRODUCTION. When I first indulged the inclination, which I had long entertained, of visiting the famous castle of Chinon, and the equally interesting abbey of Fontevraud--the palace and tomb of our English kings--and paused on my way in "the lovely vales of Vire," and gathered in romantic Brittany some of her pathetic legends, I thought I should have satisfied my longing to explore France; but I found that every step I look in that teeming region opened to me new stores of interest; and, encouraged by the pleasure my descriptions had given, I set out again, following another route, to the regal city of Rheims, visiting the vine-covered plains of Champagne and Burgundy, and all their curious historical towns, till I reached the _dominion_ of Charles the Seventh at Bourges, to become acquainted with whose gorgeous cathedral and antique palaces is worth any fatigue. From thence I wandered on to the beautiful Monts Dores, and the basaltic regions of unexplored Le Vellay; and, after infinite gratification, I once more turned my steps homeward; but, like Sindbad, I felt that there was much more yet to be explored; and I had visions of the romantic and delightful realms, which extend where once the haughty heiress of Aquitaine held her poetical courts of Love and Chivalry. The battle-fields of our Black Prince were yet to be traced; the sites of all the legends and adventures of the most entertaining of chroniclers, Froissart, were yet to be discovered; and the land of mountains and torrents, where the Great Béarnais passed his hardy childhood, was yet unknown to me. I therefore again assumed my "cockle hat and staff," and, re-entering the Norman territory, commenced exploring, from the stone bed of the Conqueror, at Falaise, to the tortoise-shell cradle of Henry of Navarre, at Pau. Not inferior to my two former pilgrimages, in interest, did this my third ramble prove. How many "old romantic towns" I passed through; how much of varied lore I heard and found amongst the still original and, even now, unsophisticated peasantry; how numerous were the recollections which places and things recalled, and how pleasant were the scenes I met, I have endeavoured to tell the lovers of easy adventure--for any traveller, with the slightest enterprise, could accomplish what I have done without fatigue, and with the certainty of being repaid for the exertion of seeking for amusement. In succession, I paused at Le Mans, the scene of the great Vendéean struggle, where the majestic cathedral challenges the admiration of all travellers of taste; at Poitiers, full of antique wonders; in the region of _the Serpent lady_, Melusine; at Protestant La Rochelle, with all its battlements and turrets, and the most beautiful bathing-establishment in Europe. At mysterious Saintes, and all its pagan temples and arches; at Bordeaux, the magnificent; on the Garonne, and by its robbers'-castles; at Agen, with its _barber troubadour_; in the haunts of Gaston de Foix and Jeanne d'Albret and her son; in the gloomy valleys of the proscribed Cagot; and where the mellifluous accents of the Basquaise enchant the ear. All the impressions made by these scenes I have endeavoured to convey to my readers, as I did before, inviting them to follow my footsteps, and judge if I have told them true. CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME. INTRODUCTION CHAPTER I. Honfleur--Dejazet--The Sailor Prince--Le Mari--Lisieux--La Croix Blanche--Arrival at Falaise--Guibray--Castle of Falaise--The little Recess--Arlette--The Father--The Infant Hero--The Uncle--Arlette's Tears--Her Reception. CHAPTER II. Prince Arthur--Want of Gallantry Punished--The Recreant Sow--The Rocks of Noron--La Grande Eperonnière--Le Camp-ferme--Antiquities of Falaise--Alençon--Norman Caps--Geese--Le Mans--Tomb of Bérangère--Cathedral--Ancient Remains--Streets--The Veiled Figure. CHAPTER III. Tomb of Bérangère--Wives of Coeur de Lion--Tombs--Abbey Churches--Château of Le Mans--De Craon--The Spectre of Le Mans--The Vendéeans--Madame de la Roche-Jaquelin--A Woman's Perils--Disasters of the Vendéeans--Henri--Chouans. CHAPTER IV. The Museum of Le Mans--Venus--Mummy--Geoffrey-le-Bel--His Costume--Matilda--Scarron--Hélie de la Flèche--Rufus--The White Knight. CHAPTER V. Lude--Saumur Revisited--The Garden--La Petite Voisine--The Retired Militaire--Les Pierres Couvertes--Les Petites Pierres--Loudun--Urbain Grandier--Richelieu--The Nuns--The Victim--The Fly--The Malle Poste--The Dislodged Serpents. CHAPTER VI. Poitiers--Battles--The Armies--King John of France--The Young Warrior--Hôtel des Vreux--Amphitheatre--Blossac--The Great Stone--The Scholars--Museum--The Demon's Stone--Grande Gueule. CHAPTER VII. Notre Dame--The Keys--The Miracle--Procession--St. Radegonde--Tomb of the Saint--Foot-print--Little Loubette--The Count Outwitted--The Cordelier--Late Justice--The Templars. CHAPTER VIII. Château de la Fée--King René--The Miniatures--The Post-Office Functionary--Originality--The English Bank-note--St. Porchaire--The Dead Child--Montierneuf--Guillaume Guy Geoffroy--Thomas à Becket--Choir of Angels--Relics--The Armed Hermit--A Saint--The Repudiated Queen--Elionore--The Bold Priest--Lay. CHAPTER IX. Melusine--Lusignan--Trou de la Fée--The Legend--Male Curiosity--The Discovery--The Fairy's Shrieks--The Chronicler--Geoffrey of the Great Tooth--Jaques Coeur--Royal Gratitude--Enemies--Jean du Village--Wedding--The Bride--The Tragedy of Mauprier--The Garden--The Shepherdess--The Walnut-Gatherers--La Gâtine--St. Maixant--Niort--Madame de Maintenon--Enormous Caps--Chamois Leather--Duguesclin--The Dame de Plainmartin--The Sea. CHAPTER X. La Rochelle--Les Trois Chandeliers--Oysters--Bathing Establishment--Gaiety--Military Discipline--Curious Arcades--Story of Auffrédy. CHAPTER XI. Towers--Religion--Maria Belandelle--Storm--Protestant Retreat--Solemn Dinners--"Half-and-half"--Go to sleep!--The Brewery--Gas Establishment--Château of La Font--The Mystery explained--Triumph of Scenery over Appetite--Slave Trade--Charles le Bien Servi--Liberality of Louis-Philippe--Guiton--House of Le Maire Guiton--The Fleets--The Fight--The Mayor and the Governor. CHAPTER XII. Rochefort--The Curious Bonne--Americanisms--Convicts--The Charente--"Tulipes"--Taillebourg--Henry the Third--St. Louis--False Security--Romegoux--Puytaillé CHAPTER XIII. Saintes--Roman Arch of Triumph--Gothic Bridge--The Cours--Ruined City--Cathedral--Coligny--Ruined Palace--St. Eutrope--Amphitheatre--Legend of Ste. Eustelle--The Prince of Babylon--Fête--The Côteau--Ste. Marie CHAPTER XIV. Frère Chrétien--Utility of Custom-house Search--Bold Voyager--Pauillac--Blaye--The Gironde--Talbot--Vines--The Landes--Phantom of King Arthur--The Witch-finder--The Landes--Wreckers CHAPTER XV. Ports--Divona--Bordeaux--Quinconces--Allées--First Impression--Chartrons--Bahutier--Bacalan--Quays--White Guide--Ste. Croix--St. Michel--St. André--Pretty Figure--Pretty Women--Palais Gallien--Black Prince's Son, Edward. CHAPTER XVI. The Garonne--The Lord of Langoyran--Miracle of the Mule--Castle of the Four Sons of Aymon--The Aged Lover--Gavaches--The Franchimans--Count Raymond--Flying Bridges--The Miller of Barbaste--The Troubadour Count--The Count de la Marche--The Rochellaises--Eugénie and her Song. CHAPTER XVII. Agen--La Belle Esther--St. Caprais--The Little Cherubs--Zoé at the Fountain--The Hill--Le Gravier--Jasmin, the Poet-Barber--The Metaphor--Las Papillotas--Françonnette--Jasmin's Lines on the Old Language--The Shepherd and the Gascon Poet--Return to Agen--Jasmin and the King of France--Jasmin and the Queen of England. BÉARN AND THE PYRENEES. VOL. I. CHAPTER I. HONFLEUR--DEJAZET--THE SAILOR PRINCE--LE MARI--LISIEUX--LA CROIX BLANCHE--ARRIVAL AT FALAISE--GUIBRAY--CASTLE OF FALAISE--THE LITTLE RECESS--ARLETTE--THE FATHER--THE INFANT HERO--THE UNCLE--ARLETTE'S TEARS--HER RECEPTION. WITHIN ten leagues of the interesting town of Caen, where William of Normandy and his queen lie buried, the traveller, who devotes a short space of time to a search after the picturesque, may, without straying too far a-field, find what he desires in the clean, bright, gay town of Falaise, where the hero of the Conquest was born. From Southampton to Havre it requires only twelve hours to cross, and, as was the case with myself and my companions, when, at the end of August 1842, we began a journey, whose end was "to be" the mountains which divide France from Spain, if the city of parrots is already familiar to the tourist, he has only to take the steam-packet, which in four hours will land him at Caen, or enter the boat which crosses the fine bold river to Honfleur. In an hour you arrive at Honfleur, after a very pleasant voyage, which the inhabitants of Havre are extremely fond of taking: a diligence starts from the quay, and proceeds through an avenue of a league's length between beautiful hills, orchards, and corn-fields, to the strange old town of Lisieux, to which we proceeded. One of our fellow-travellers in the diligence was a smart, lively looking young woman, whose resemblance to the celebrated actress Dejazet, whom we had very lately seen in London, was so striking as to be quite remarkable. Her tone of voice, her air and manner, as well as her features, reminded us strongly of the _artiste_ whose warm reception in England, where we are supposed to be correct even to fastidiousness, has not a little amused the Parisians at our expense. Whatever may be the objections to Dejazet's style, certain it is that her imitation of the manners of the class of _grisettes_ and peasants is inimitable; not a shade, not a tone, is forgotten, and the _truth_ of her representations is proved at every step you take in France, either in the provinces or in Paris. Our little talkative companion had much to relate of herself and her husband, whom she described as a piece of perfection; he had just returned from a whaling expedition, after several years' absence, and they were now on their way to Lisieux to visit her relations, and give him a little shooting. He had brought back, according to her account, a mine of wealth; and, as she had incurred no debts during his absence, but had supported herself by opening a little _café_, which she assured us had succeeded admirably, they were proceeding, with well-filled purses, to see their only child who was in the keeping of its grandmother. She told wondrous histories of his exploits amongst the ice, of his encounters with the natives--"_les Indiens_," of the success of all his voyages, and the virtues of his captain, who was an Englishman and _never spoke to his crew_, but was the most just man in the world, and ended by saying that when she met with English people she felt _in Paradise_. Although we listened to her continued chattering with amused attention, it was far otherwise with some quiet, silent, women who sat beside us; we soon gathered, by certain contemptuous glances which they exchanged, that they did not give credit to half our little Dejazet was telling; and when to crown the whole, she related a story of a beautiful maiden of Lisieux, who had been distinguished by the notice of the Duke de _Nemours_ when he visited that place on his way to join _his ship_ at Havre, they could support their impatience no longer, and broadly contradicted her on the ground that the Prince de Joinville and _not_ Nemours was the sailor. Nothing daunted, our gay whaler's wife insisted on every part of her history being true, asserting that she must know best, and if the young prince had _left the navy_ since, it was not her affair. As she approached Lisieux she became more and more animated, darting her body half way out of the window every minute to look out for her _papa_ or her other relations;--at length, with a scream which would have secured Dejazet three rounds of applause, she recognised her parent in a peasant _en blouse_, trudging along the road carrying his bundle--on his way, no doubt, as she assured us, to see her sister, who lived at a village near. Tears and smiles alternately divided the expression of her countenance, as she now feared her sister was ill, and now rejoiced at seeing her father. All was however happily settled when the coach stopped and she sprang out into the arms of her papa, who had followed the diligence, and came up out of breath; and it was then that we became aware that a remarkably ill-looking, dirty, elderly, Jewish featured man, to whom she had occasionally spoken on the journey, was the identical perfection of a _mari_, of whom she had been boasting all the way. The incredulous listeners, whom she had so annoyed, now revenged themselves by sundry depreciatory remarks on the appearance of this phoenix, whom they pronounced to have the air of a tinker or old clothesman, and by no means that of the hero he had been represented. As it was raining violently on our arrival at Lisieux, the town presented to us but an uncomfortable appearance; and as we had to search for an hotel, and were at last obliged to be content with one far from inviting, our first impression was by no means agreeable; nor does Lisieux offer anything to warrant a change in the traveller's opinion who considers it dreary, slovenly, and ruinous. There is much, however, to admire in the once beautiful cathedral, and the church of St. Jacques, both grand specimens of the massive architecture of the twelfth century. In this town lived and died the traitor Bishop of Bayeux, Pierre Cauchon, who sold the heroic Jeanne d'Arc for English gold. An expiatory chapel was erected by him in the cathedral, where it was hoped the tears of the pious would help to wash his sins away; but no one now remembers either him or his crime, for we asked in vain for the spot; and when prayers are offered at the shrine of the Virgin in the chapel dedicated to her, which we eventually discovered to be its site, not one is given to the cruel bishop, whose ill-gotten money was therefore expended in vain; for the centuries it must have required to rescue his soul from purgatory cannot have expired by this time. The churches are being restored, and building, as usual in all French towns, is going on: when numerous ugly striped houses are removed, and their places filled up, the principal square of Lisieux may deserve to be admired, though whether it will ever merit the encomium of an old lady who resides in it, and who assured us it would in a short time be _superbe_, time will determine. The public promenades are good, and the views round the town pretty, but we did not feel tempted to wait for finer weather, and took our departure for Falaise with little delay. The drive from Lisieux to Falaise is charming; and, although the appearance of the hotels is not in their favour, there is nothing to complain of in regard to cleanliness or attention: at least so we found it at La Croix Blanche, where the singular beauty of our hostess added to the romance of our position, perched, as we were, on a balcony without awning, in a building which had evidently been part of an old tower. It is true that we should have preferred something rather less exposed when we found ourselves confined for a whole day, in consequence of the pouring rain, and found that a stream of water had made its way from our balcony into each of our rooms; whose bricked floors were little improved by their visit. Our suggestion of covering the way, in order that, in wet weather, both the dinner and its bearers might be sheltered, appeared to excite surprise, though our attendants came in constantly with their high caps wet through and their aprons soaked. Our nearly exhausted patience, as we gazed hopelessly on the dull sky of an _August_ day, was at length rewarded; and the sun, which had obstinately concealed himself for several days, burst forth on the second morning of our arrival, and changed by its power the whole face of things at Falaise. We lost no time in taking advantage of the fine day which invited us, and sallied forth, all expectation, into the streets, which we found, as well as the walks, as dry as if no rain had fallen for months; so fresh and bright is the atmosphere in this beautiful place. The town is clean and neat; most of the ruinous, striped houses, with projecting stories, such as deform the streets of Lisieux, being cleared away; leaving wide spaces and pure air, at least in the centre-town, where the best habitations are situated. There are other divisions, less airy and more picturesque, called the fauxbourgs of Guibray and St. Laurent, and le Val d'Ante; where many antique houses are still standing, fit to engage the pencil of the antiquarian artist. The churches of Falaise are sadly defaced, but, from their remains, must have been of great beauty. The Cathedral, or Eglise de St. Laurent, is partly of the twelfth century; the exterior is adorned with carving, and gargouilles, and flying-buttresses, of singular grace; but the whole fabric is so built in with ugly little shops, that all fine effect is destroyed. The galleries in the church of La Trinité are elaborately ornamented, as are some of the chapels, whose roofs are studded with pendants. Much of this adornment is due to the English, under Henry V., and a good deal is of the period of the _renaissance_. The church of Guibray was founded by Duke William, as the Norman windows and arches testify; but a great deal of bad taste has been expanded in endeavouring to turn the venerable structure into a Grecian temple, according to the approved method of the time of Louis XIV. A statue of the wife of Coeur de Lion was once to be seen here, but has long disappeared. That princess resided in this part of Falaise, at one period of her widowhood, and contributed greatly to the embellishment of the church. There are many columns and capitals, and arches and ornaments of interest in the church of St. Gervais, defaced and altered as it is; but it is impossible to give all the attention they deserve to these buildings, when the towers of the splendid old castle are wooing you to delay no longer, but mount at once the steep ascent which leads to its walls. Rising suddenly from the banks of a brawling crystal stream, a huge mass of grey rocks, thrown in wild confusion one on the other, sustains on its summit the imposing remains of the castle, whose high white tower, alone and in perfect preservation, commands an immense tract of smiling country, and seems to have defied the attacks of ages, as it gleams in the sun, the smooth surface of its walls apparently uninjured and unstained. This mighty donjon is planted in a lower part of the height; consequently, high as it appears, scarcely half of its real elevation is visible. Its walls are of prodigious thickness, and seem to have proved their power through centuries of attack and defence to which it has been exposed; careless alike of the violence of man and the fury of the elements. Adjoining the keep are ranges of ruined walls, pierced with fine windows, whose circular arches, still quite entire, show their early Norman construction. Close to the last of these, whose pillars, with wreathed capitals, are as sharp as if just restored, is a low door, leading to a small chamber in the thickness of the wall. There is a little recess in one corner, and a narrow window, through whose minute opening a fine prospect may be seen. This small chamber, tradition says, was once adorned with "azure and vermilion;" though it could scarcely have ever presented a very gay appearance, even when used as the private retreat of the luxurious master of the castle. However, such as it is, we are bound to look upon this spot with veneration; for it is asserted, that here a child was born in secrecy and mystery, and that here, by this imperfect light, his beautiful mother gazed upon the features of the future hero of Normandy. However unlike a bower fitted for beauty and love, it is said that here Arlette, the skinner's daughter, was confined of William the Conqueror. It is said, too, that from this height, the sharp-sighted Duke his father, gazing from his towers, first beheld the lovely peasant girl bathing in the fountain which still bears her name. In this retreat, concealed from prying eyes, and where inquisitive ears found it difficult to catch a sound, the shrill cry of the wondrous infant was first uttered,--a sound often to be repeated by every echo of the land, when changed to the war note which led to victory. Little, perhaps, did his poor mother exult in his birth, for she was of lowly lineage, and had never raised her eyes to the castle but with awe, nor thought of its master but with fear; her pleasures were to dance, on holidays, under the shade of trees with the simple villagers, her companions; her duties, to wash her linen on the stones of the silver stream, as her townswomen do still at the present day--that silver stream which probably flowed past her father's cottage, as it still flows, bathing the base of cottages as humble and as rudely built as his could have been. There might, perchance, have been one, amongst the youths who admired her beauty, whom she preferred to the rest; her ambition might have been to become his bride, her dreams might have imaged his asking her of her father, whose gracious consent made them both happy: in her ears might have rung the pealing bells of St. Gervais--the vision of maidens, in bridal costumes, strewing flowers in her path, might have risen before her view--her lover with his soft words and smiles--his cottage amongst the heath-covered rocks of Noron--all this might have flitted across her mind, as she stood beside the fountain, beneath the castle walls, unconscious that eyes were gazing on her whose influence was to fix her destiny. A mail-clad warrior, terrible and powerful, whose will may not be resisted, whose gold glitters in her father's eyes, or whose chains clank in his ears, has seen and coveted her for his own, and her simple dream must be dispersed in air to make way for waking terrors. The unfortunate father trembles while he feebly resists, he listens to the duke's proposal, he has yet a few words of entreaty for his child: he dares not tell her what her fate must be, he hopes that time and new adventures will efface Arlette from the mind of her dangerous lover; but, again, he is urged, heaps of gold shine before him, how shall he turn from their tempting lustre? Is there not in yonder tower an _oubliette_ that yawns for the disobedient vassal? He appeals to Arlette, she has no reply but tears; men at arms appear in the night, they knock at the skinner's door and demand his daughter, they promise fair in the name of their master; they mount her on a steed before the gentlest of their band, his horse's hoofs clatter along the rocky way--the father hears the sobs of his child for a little space, and his heart sinks,--he hides his eyes with his clenched hand, but suddenly he starts up--his floor is strewn with glittering pieces--he stoops down and counts them, and Arlette's sorrows are forgotten. Arlette returns no more to her father's cottage. She remains in a turret of the castle, but not as a handmaiden of the duchess; her existence is not supposed to be known, though the childless wife of Duke Robert weeps in secret, over her wrongs. All this is pure fancy, and may have no foundation in reality. "Look here upon this picture and on that." Perhaps Arlette did not repine at her fate; she might have been ambitious and worldly, vain and presuming, have possessed cunning and resolve, and have used every artifice to secure her triumph. Some of the stories extant of her would seem to prove this, and some to exculpate her from blame, inasmuch as she believed herself to have fulfilled a sacred duty in conforming to her master's will. When she told her lover that she had dreamt "a tree sprang from her bosom which overshadowed all Normandy," there was more evidence of policy than simplicity in the communication which was so well calculated to raise the hopes of a great man without an heir; and perhaps it was she herself who dictated the saying of the _sage femme_ at her son's birth, who, having placed him _on straw_ by her side, and observing that the robust infant grasped in his tiny hands as much as he could hold, cried out--"_Par Dieu_! this child begins early to grasp and make all his own!" At all events the little hero was "honourably brought up," and treated as if legitimate. Another version of the story of Arlette is given by an ancient chronicler, (Benoit de St Maur,) which is certainly a sufficient contrast to the view I ventured to take of the affair, probably with but little correctness, considering the manners of the period. It appears that the scruples of the fair daughter of _Vertprès_, the skinner, for his name seems to be known, were dispersed by the advice and injunction of her uncle, a holy personage, of _singular_ piety, who dwelt in a hermitage in the wood of Gouffern. Convinced, by his arguments, that Heaven had directed the affection of the duke towards her, she no longer resisted her father's wish, and made preparations as if for a bridal, providing herself with rich habiliments calculated to enhance her beauty. When the messengers of the duke came to fetch her, they requested that she would put on a cloak and cape, and conceal her rich dress, for fear of the jeers of the common people, who would perhaps insult her if she appeared publicly with them; but she replied boldly and proudly, "Does the duke send for me after this manner, as if I were not the daughter of an honourable man? Shall I go secretly, as if I were but a disgraced woman? That which I do is in all honour and respectability, not from wickedness or weakness, and I am not ashamed that men should see me pass. If I am to be taken to the duke, it shall not be on foot and hidden--fetch, therefore, your palfrey, and let me go as it becomes me." Her dress is thus described:--"She had clothed her gentle body in a fine shift, over which was a grey pelisse, wide and without lacings, but setting close to her shape and her arms: over this she wore a short mantle conformable and of good taste; her long hair was slightly bound with a fillet of fine silver. It was in this guise, beautiful to behold, that she mounted the courser which was brought for her, and saluted her _father and mother_ as she rode away; but at _the last moment she was seized with a trembling, and burst into weeping, covering her fair bosom with her tears_." When she arrived, "by a fine moon-light," at the castle gate, her attendants made her alight, and opened a wicket for her to enter, but she drew back, saying, "The duke has sent for me, and it would seem that he esteems me little if his gates are not to be opened for my passage. Let him order them to give me entrance, or send me back at once. _Beaux amis, ouvrez-moi la porte_." The messengers, awed by her dignity, hesitated not to obey her, and she was presently conducted into the presence of Duke Robert, who awaited her coming in a vaulted chamber, adorned with gilding, where "fine images were represented in enamel and colours." There he received her with great joy and honour, and from that time she possessed all his love. CHAPTER II. PRINCE ARTHUR--WANT OF GALLANTRY PUNISHED--THE RECREANT SOW--THE ROCKS OF NORON--LA GRANDE EPERONNIÈRE--LE CAMP-FERME--ANTIQUITIES OF FALAISE--ALENÇON--NORMAN CAPS--GEESE--LE MANS--TOMB OF BÉRANGÈRE--CATHEDRAL--ANCIENT REMAINS--STREETS--THE VEILED FIGURE. CLOSE to the natal chamber of Duke William may be seen another recess in the thick walls, still smaller and more dismal, to which a ruined window now gives more light than in the days when poor young Arthur of Brittany looked sadly through its loop-holes over a wide extent of country, now all cultivation and beauty, but probably then bristling with forts and towers, all in the hands of his hard-hearted uncle John. After having made his nephew prisoner in Anjou, John sent him to Falaise, and had him placed in this dungeon in the custody of some severe but not cruel knights, who treated him with all the respect they dared to show. An order from their treacherous master soon arrived, directing that he should be put to death; but they refused obedience, and indignantly exclaimed, that the walls of the castle of Falaise should not be sullied by such a crime. Arthur was therefore removed to Rouen, and there less conscientious men were found to execute the tyrant's will, if tradition, so varied on the point, speak true. Stephen maintained himself in the castle of Falaise against the father of Henry II., and these walls have probably echoed to the lays of minstrels, whose harps were tuned in praise of the beautiful and haughty heiress of Aquitaine. The fair wife of Coeur de Lion had this castle for her dower, and, for some time, is said to have lived here. Philip Augustus accorded some singular privileges to Falaise, two of which deserve to be recorded. If a woman were convicted of _being fond of scandal_, and known to backbite her neighbours, they had the right of placing cords under her arms and ducking her three times in the water: after this, if a man took the liberty of reproaching her with the circumstance, he was compelled to pay a fine of ten sous, or else he was plunged into the stream in a similar manner. If a man were so ungallant as to call a woman _ugly_, he was obliged to pay a fine. This offence was indeed worthy of condign punishment, if the women of Falaise were as pretty formerly as they are now: with their neat petticoats, smart feet in sabots, high butterfly or mushroom caps, as white as snow, scarlet handkerchiefs and bright-coloured aprons, with their round healthy cheeks, lively eyes, and good-humoured expression of countenance, the Falaisiennes are as agreeable a looking race as one would wish to see, and more likely to elicit compliment than insult. Many curious customs prevailed in the middle ages in this old town; and one was formerly portrayed on the walls of a chapel in the church of the Holy Trinity. It was the representation of an execution: the delinquent had injured a child, by disfiguring its face and arms, and suffered in consequence. The culprit was no other than a sow; and when the crime committed was brought home to her, the learned judges assembled on the occasion pronounced her as guilty of malice prepense; and in order to hold her up as an example to all sows in time to come, her _face_ and _fore legs_ were mutilated in a similar manner to those of her victim. The spectacle of her punishment took place in a public square, amidst a great concourse of spectators, the father of the child being brought as a witness, and condemned to stand by during the infliction, as a due reward for not having sufficiently watched his infant. The "viscount-judge" of Falaise appeared on the solemn occasion "on horseback, with a plume of feathers on his head, and _his hand on his side_." The sow was dragged forth dressed in the costume of a citizen, in a vest and breeches, and "_with gloves on_, wearing a mask representing the face of a man." What effect this wise judgment had is not related; probably it produced as salutary a result as most of those exhibitions designed for the amusement or instruction of an enlightened multitude. The chain of the rocks of Noron, on part of which the castle is situated, is singularly picturesque; and from those opposite, rising from the side of Arlette's fountain, the fine ruins have a most majestic effect; and the prospect for leagues round is extremely beautiful. A soft turf, covered with wild thyme, heath, and fern, makes the meandering walks amongst the huge blocks of moss-mantled stone, tempting and delightful, in spite of their steepness; and the delicious perfume of the fragrant herbs, growing in great luxuriance everywhere, is refreshing in the extreme. The snowy tower of strength, rising from its bed of piled up rock--the broad high walls, and their firm buttresses and circular windows, through which the blue sky gleams--the nodding foliage and garlands of ivy which adorn the huge towers--and, far beyond, a rich and glowing country, altogether present a scene of beauty, difficult to be equalled in any part of Normandy, rich as that charming province is in animated landscape. We spent many hours of a brilliant summer's day, climbing amongst the rocks, and making sketches of the castle in its different phases, all of which offer studies to an artist: here the majestic donjon forms a fine object; there the ruined arsenal; and farther off the battered walls, separated and hurled down by the cannon of Henri IV. when through this breach his white plume was seen triumphantly waving as he cheered his warriors on to the attack, changing the _six months_ proposed by Brissac into _six days_, during which he took the fortress and the town. An anecdote is related of a heroine of Falaise, whose exploits are recorded with pride by her countrymen, by whom she is called _La Grande Eperonnière_. She had headed a party of valiant citizens, who defended one of their gates, and fought with such determination, as to keep her position for a long time against the soldiers of Le Vert Galant. The king, when the town was in his power, summoned her before him: she came, and approaching with the same undaunted air, interrupted him, as he was about to propose terms to her, and demanded at once the safety of all the women and aged men of the town of Falaise. Henry was struck with her courage, and desired her to shut herself up in a street with the persons she wished to save, together with all their most precious possessions, and gave her his word that no soldier should penetrate that retreat. He, of course, kept his promise; and she assembled her friends, took charge of most of the riches of the town, closed the two ends of the street in which she lived, and, while all the rest of Falaise was given up to pillage, no one ventured to enter the sacred precincts. The street is still pointed out, and is called _Le Camp-fermant_, or _Camp-ferme_, in memory of the event. The heroic Eperonnière was fortunate in having a chief to deal with, who gladly took advantage of every opportunity to exercise mercy. The town of Falaise is well provided with water, and its fountains stand in fine open squares: a pretty rivulet runs through the greatest part, and turns several mills for corn, oil, cotton and tan; it is called the Ante, and gives name to the valley it embellishes as it runs glittering along amongst the rugged stones which impede its way with a gentle murmur, making a chorus to the voices of the numerous Arlettes, who, kneeling at their cottage doors, may be seen rubbing their linen against the flat stones over which the stream flows, bending down their heads which, except on grand occasions, are no longer adorned with the high fly-caps which are so becoming to their faces, but are covered with a somewhat unsightly cotton nightcap, a species of head-gear much in vogue in this part of lower Normandy, and a manufacture for which Falaise is celebrated, and has consequently obtained the name of _the city of cotton nightcaps_. However, there is one advantage in this usage--the women have better teeth than in most cider countries, owing perhaps to their heads being kept warm, and, ugly as the cotton caps are, they deserve admiration accordingly. A house is shown in one of the streets, called the House of the Conqueror, and a rudely sculptured bust is exhibited there, dignified with his name. Some few tottering antique houses still contrive to keep together in the oldest parts of the town, but none are by any means worthy of note; one is singular, being covered with a sort of coat of mail formed of little scales of wood lapping one over the other, and preserving the remains of some carved pillars, apparently once of great delicacy. One pretty tower is still to be seen at the corner of the Rue du Camp-ferme, which seems to have formed part of a very elegant building, to judge by its lightness and grace; it has sunk considerably in the earth, but from its height a fine prospect may be obtained. There is a public library at Falaise, that great resource of all French towns, and several fine buildings dedicated to general utility; but the boys of the college the most excite the envy of the stranger, for their abode is on the broad ramparts, and their playground and promenades are along the beautiful walks formed on the ancient defences of the castle. Our way to Alençon, where we proposed to stop a day, lay through Argentan on the Orne, a pretty town on a height commanding a fine view of plain and forest; the country is little remarkable the whole way, but cultivated and pretty. At Seez the fine, delicate, elevated spires of the Cathedral mark the situation of the town long before and after it is reached; but, besides that, it possesses no attractions sufficient to detain the traveller. Alençon, the capital of the department of Orne, is a clean, open, well-built town, situated in a plain with woods in all directions, which entirely bound its prospects. The public promenades are remarkably fine, laid out with taste, and a great resource to the inhabitants, who consider them equal to those of Paris, comparing them to the gardens of the Luxembourg. The cathedral, once fine, is dreadfully defaced, and the boasted altars and adornments of the chapels are in the usual bad taste so remarkable at the present day. A few fine round towers remain of the ancient château, now a prison, which is the only vestige of antiquity remaining. There was an exhibition of works of industry and art going on, which we went to see, and were much struck with the extreme beauty of some specimens of the lace called Point d'Alençon. The patterns and delicate execution of this manufacture are exquisite, equalling ancient point lace and Brussels. Some very fine stuffs in wool, transparent as gossamer and of the softest colours, attracted us, but the severity of an official prevented our examining them as closely as we wished, and as there was no indication of the place where they could be beheld at liberty, we were obliged to content ourselves with the supposition that they were the produce of the workshops of Alençon. As the large gallery in which the exhibition took place was principally filled with peasants in blouses and women with children, perhaps the vigilance of the attendants might not be useless; but whether their proceeding was judicious in refusing information to strangers or persons who might be able to purchase goods which pleased them, is questionable. Amongst the customary Norman caps to be seen here, we remarked one which we recognised at once as Breton. The girl who wore it was very pretty, and in spite of the grave demeanour peculiar to her country and a distinguishing trait, was pleased at my wishing to sketch her singular-shaped head-dress, _en crète de coq_: she was from St. Malo, as I had no difficulty in guessing. Through alleys of crimson-apple trees our road continued, and we were forcibly, and not very agreeably reminded, at almost every step, that there is a large trade carried on in this part of the country in goose down, for flocks of these unfortunate animals were scattered along the road, their breasts entirely despoiled of their downy beauties, offering a frightful spectacle; the immense numbers exceed belief, and all appear of a fine species. At every cabaret we passed, notices were stuck up informing those whom it might concern, that accommodation for four or five hundred oxen was to be had within; but we met no private carriages, nor, even in the neighbourhood of large towns, horsemen or pedestrians above the rank of peasants. This is a circumstance so universal in every part of France, that it becomes a mystery where the other classes of society conceal themselves--on the promenades, in the streets and shops, to see a well-dressed person is a prodigy, and the wonder is to whom the goods are sold, which are certainly sparingly enough exhibited. We had looked forward to much pleasure in a visit to the ancient town of Le Mans, and its treasure, the tomb of Bérangère, for the discovery of which, although a benefit unacknowledged, France and the curious are indebted to the zeal and perseverance of the late lamented Stothard, who sought for and found one of the most beautiful statues of the time under a heap of corn in an old church formerly belonging to the convent of Epau, but converted into a granary in 1820, when, by his entreaties and resolution, the lost beauty was restored to daylight and honour. Not a word of all this is, however, named by any French chronicler, although Bérangère is now the heroine and the boast of Le Mans, the object of interest to travellers, the gem of the cathedral, and the pride of Le Maine. Nothing can be more majestic, more imposing, or more magnificent than the huge and massive building which towers above the town of Le Mans, and now adorns one side of a wide handsome square, where convents, churches, houses, and streets have been cleared away, without remorse, to leave a free opening in front of this fine cathedral. The _place_ is named _des Jacobins_, from one of the vanished monasteries, which a beautiful theatre now replaces, one of the most elegant I ever saw in France, and yet unopened, at the back of which spreads out a promenade in terraces, the site of a Roman amphitheatre. All the houses round this square are handsome, and a broad terrace before the arcades of the theatre completes its good effect. Numerous flying buttresses and galleries and figures combine to give lightness to the enormous bulk of the cathedral, which, being without spires, would otherwise be heavy; but the want of these graceful accessories is scarcely felt, so grand is the general character given to it by the enormous square tower, which appears to protect it, and the smaller ones, its satellites. Statues of the countesses of Maine, of nuns, and queens, may still be seen in niches at different heights of the tower, and the portals are enriched with saints and bishops, angels and foliage astonishing the eye with their elaborate grace and beauty. There are thirteen chapels projecting from the main building, that which forms the termination towards the square being the largest. One rose window is remarkable for the elegance of its stone-work, and the form of all the windows is grand and imposing. This glorious fabric, equal to that of Beauvais, which it resembles, and more extensive, is sufficient of itself to render Le Mans interesting, but it is a town full of objects that delight and please. The streets are all wide, clean, and well-paved; there are good squares and handsome houses; and its position on the pretty, clear river Sarthe, from which the banks rise gracefully, crowned with foliage and adorned with towers and churches, makes the place really charming. There is a promenade, called Du Greffier, formed evidently on the ramparts of an old castle, part of whose massive walls may still be traced among the trees, which are planted in terraces above the river, whose water is as bright and glittering as those of the Loire itself: green meadows and pretty _aits_ adorn the stream, and the usual picturesque idleness of fishing is carried on by its banks, while groups of wading washerwomen, in high-coloured petticoats and white caps, enliven the little quays. The weather was very propitious while we were at Le Mans, and all appeared attractive and agreeable, and we enjoyed our unwearied walks, both in the environs, and in the town, extremely. Although there is a great deal that is entirely new in the principal quarter of the town, where our Hotel du Dauphin, in the spacious Place aux Halles, was situated, yet, to the antiquarian, there is no lack of interest in the antique parts, where much of the original city remains even as it might have been in the earliest times. Roman walls and towers extend in every direction between the three bridges of Ysoir, St. Jean, and Napoleon; and, in the old quartiers of Gourdaine and du Pré, arches, pillars, and ruins, attest the antiquity of the spot. We hesitated not to enter these singular old streets, where the lowest of the population reside, and, as is almost invariable in France, we always found civility and a cheerful readiness to afford us information. The inquisitive stranger is generally, however, obliged, after going through several of the narrow ways which excite his curiosity, to abandon his search after uncertain antiquities, from the inodorous accompaniments which are sure to assail him; and so it was with us when we had visited the Rue _Danse Renard_, Rue _de la Truie qui File_, _Vert Galant_, the _Grande_ and _Petite Poterne_, &c. We found ourselves wandering in circles, amongst dwellings that looked as if they must be the same inhabited by the original Gaulish inhabitants, and at length, anxious to pay our daily devotions at the shrine of Bérangère, we ventured on the ascent of an apparently interminable flight of stone steps, between immensely high massive walls, called _Les Pans de Gorron_. We paused every now and then, on our ascent, to wonder at the appearance of the town, of which, and the river, we caught glimpses at intervals, and to gaze upwards at the strange old Roman walls above us, and the high houses, some with five and six rows of windows in their shelving roofs. At length, after considerable toil, we reached the platform where once stood the château, and where still stands a curious building, all towers and tourelles, some ugly, and some of graceful form, the latter apparently of the period of Charles VI. Immediately before the steps in the square above us rose the cathedral, which we came upon unawares; and, exactly in front of us, in an angle, partly concealed by the broad shadow, we perceived a figure so mysterious, so remarkable, that it was impossible not to create in the mind of a beholder the most interesting speculations. This extraordinary figure deserves particular description, and I hope it may be viewed by some person more able than myself to explain it, or one more fortunate than I was in obtaining information respecting it. To all the questions I asked of the dwellers in Le Mans, the answers were exclamations of surprise at a stranger having noticed that which had never been remarked at all by any one of the passers by, who classed it with the stones of the church or the posts of the square. Yet surely the antiquarian will not be indifferent to the treasure which, it appears to me, he should hail with as much delight as the discovery of a Druidical monument or a Roman pavement. Seated in an angle of the exterior walls of the cathedral, on a rude stone, is a reddish looking block, which has all the appearance of a veiled priest, covered with a large mantle, which conceals his hands and face. The height of the figure is about eight feet as it sits; the feet, huge unformed masses, covered with what seems drapery, are supported on a square pedestal, which is again sustained by one larger, which projects from the angle of the building. The veil, the ample mantle, and two under-garments, all flowing in graceful folds, and defining the shape, may be clearly distinguished. No features are visible, nor are the limbs actually apparent, except through the uninterrupted waving lines of the drapery, or what may be called so. A part of the side of what seems the head has been sliced off, otherwise the block is entire. It would scarcely appear to have been sculptured, but has the effect of one of those sports of Nature in which she delights to offer representations of forms which the fancy can shape into symmetry. There is something singularly Egyptian about the form of this swathed figure, or it is like those Indian idols, whose contours are scarcely defined to the eye; it is so wrapped up in mystery, and is so surrounded with oblivion, that the mind is lost in amazement in contemplating it. Did it belong to a worship long since swept away?--was it a god of the Gauls, or a veiled Jupiter?--how came it squeezed in between two walls of the great church, close to the ground, yet supported by steps?--why was it not removed on the introduction of a purer worship?--how came it to escape destruction when saints and angels fell around?--who placed it there, and for what purpose?--will no zealous antiquarian, on his way from a visit to the wondrous circle of Carnac and the gigantic Dolmens of Saumur, pause at Le Mans, at this obscure corner of the cathedral, opposite the huge Pans de Gorron, and tell the world the meaning of this figure with the stone veil? * * * * * Since I left Le Mans, a friend, who resided there some years, informs me the tradition respecting this stone is, that an _English Giant_ brought the block from the banks of the river, up the steep ascent of the Pans de Gorron, and cast it from his shoulders against the wall of the cathedral, where it now stands. Imagination may easily, here in the country, where the sage bard, the great Merlin, or Myrdhyn, lived, induce the belief that this mysterious stone represents the Druid lover of the fatal Viviana;--may this not be the very stone brought from Brociliande, within, or under, which he is in durance; or rather is not this himself transformed to stone? Thus runs the tradition:-- THE DRUID LOVER. "Myrdhyn the Druid still sleeps under a stone in a forest in Brittany; his Viviana is the cause; she wished to prove his power, and asked the sage the fatal word which could enchain him; he, who knew all things, was aware of the consequences, yet he could not resist her entreaties; he told her the spell, and, to gratify her, condemned himself to eternal oblivion." I know to tell the fatal word Is sorrow evermore-- I know that I that boon accord Whole ages will deplore. Though I be more than mortal wise, And all is clear to gifted eyes; And endless pain and worlds of woe May from my heedless passion flow, Yet thou hast power all else above,-- Sense, reason, wisdom, yield to love. I look upon thine eyes of light, And feel that all besides is night; I press that snowy hand in mine, And but contemn my art divine. Oh Viviana! I am lost; A life's renown thy smile hath cost. A stone no ages can remove Will be my monument of love; A nation's wail shall mourn my fate, My country will be desolate: Heav'n has no pardon left for me, Condemn'd--undone--destroy'd--by thee! Thy tears subdue my soul, thy sighs Efface all other memories. I have no being but in thee; My thirst for knowledge is forgot, And life immortal would but be A load of care, where thou wert not. Wouldst thou but turn away those eyes I might be saved--I might be wise. I might recal my reason still But for that tongue's melodious thrill! Oh! wherefore was my soul replete With wisdom, knowledge, sense, and power, Thus to lie prostrate at thy feet, And lose them all in one weak hour! But no--I argue not--'tis past-- Thus to be thine, belov'd by thee, I seek but this, even to the last, For all besides is vain to me. I gaze upon thy radiant brow, And do not ask a future now. Thou hast the secret! speak not yet! Soon shall I gaze myself to stone, Soon shall I all but thee forget, And perish to be thine alone. Ages on ages shall decline, But Myrdhyn shall be ever thine! CHAPTER III. TOMB OF BÉRANGÈRE--WIVES OF COEUR DE LION--TOMBS--ABBEY CHURCHES--CHÂTEAU OF LE MANS--DE CRAON--THE SPECTRE OF LE MANS--THE VENDÉEANS--MADAME DE LA ROCHE-JAQUELIN--A WOMAN'S PERILS--DISASTERS OF THE VENDÉEANS--HENRI--CHOUANS. HOWEVER interesting the exterior of the Cathedral of St. Julien may be, the interior entirely corresponds with it. The windows of painted glass are of the very first order, and of surpassing beauty, nearly entire, and attributed to Cimabue. The double range in the choir, seen through the _grille_, or from the exterior aisle--for there are two on each side--present a magnificent _coup d'oeil_. The architecture is of different periods; specimens may be observed belonging to the 12th century and reaching to the 17th; but some of the finest is that of the Norman era; the zigzags of the portals, and the billets, rose mouldings, &c., being of peculiar delicacy and boldness. There is a great deal of ornament composed of those extravagant forms of animals which, at a distance, are confounded with the foliage to which they are attached, but which, viewed nearly, are mysteriously extraordinary. The circular arch reigns throughout, but many in _ogive_ also occur in different parts. The arcades and galleries of the choir are of the utmost delicacy and elegance of form; but the chief attraction is the tomb of the widow of Richard Coeur de Lion, placed in one of the wings of the cross. The Lady Chapel is undergoing repair, and is being restored in the very best style. The new screen is beautiful, and the figures of the Virgin and Child in very good taste, as are all the ornaments, which exactly follow the fine originals. The exterior repairs are carried on with equal skill; and this precious monument will soon be in perfect order. As I looked at the pure, dignified, and commanding outline of the face of Bérangère, she appeared to me to have been a fitting wife for the hero whose effigy had inspired me with so much admiration when I visited it a few years since, at Fontevraud. Her nose is slightly aquiline, her upper lip short and gracefully curved, her chin beautifully rounded, as are her cheeks; her eyebrows are clearly marked, and her eye full though not large; but, even in stone, it has a tender, soft expression, extremely pleasing, and there is a sadness about the mouth which answers well to the tenderness of the eye. The forehead is of just proportion, and shaded by a frill which passes across, over which an ample veil is drawn: the whole confined by a diadem, the only part of the statue rather indistinct. Round her fine majestic throat is a band, to which a large ornament is attached, which rests on her chest; her head reclines on an embroidered pillow; her drapery falls over her figure and round her clasped hands in graceful folds, and the dog and lion at her feet complete the whole of this charming statue, which is of workmanship equal to that of the exquisite _four_ in the little vault at Fontevraud.[2] Bérangère was daughter of Sancho VI., king of Navarre--not, as some historians say, a princess of Castile or Arragon. After Richard's death, Philip-Augustus confirmed to her the dominion of Maine, in exchange for part of Normandy, which had been settled on her as her dower. She lived for more than twenty years in the town of Le Mans, where her memory was long preserved as _La Bonne Reine Bérangère_. She founded the monastery of Epau, near Le Mans, where the mausoleum was erected which now adorns the Cathedral of St. Julien. [Footnote 2: See a description of the statues of Coeur de Lion, Henry and Elionor, and Isabella of Angoulême, in "A Summer amongst the Bocages and the Vines."] Two houses are pointed out in the Grande Rue, said to have formed part of her palace; and the singularity of the ornaments which can be traced amidst their architecture, makes it probable that the tradition is not incorrect. The abbey of Epau formerly stood about half a league from Le Mans, on the banks of the river Huisne, in the midst of a fertile plain; the widow of Richard founded it, in 1230, for Bernardins of the order of Citeaux. The inhabitants of Le Mans destroyed the monastery, after the battle of Poitiers, in 1365, fearing that the English would take possession of it and render it a place of defence; and it was reconstructed early in the fifteenth century. The church alone remains, which, after the Revolution, was desecrated, as has been related, and the tomb of the foundress treated so unceremoniously. There seems a question, which has not yet been fully resolved, as to the identity of the wives of Richard; by some authors a certain Rothilde, otherwise called Bérangère of Arragon, is described as his queen; who, "owing to some misunderstanding, caused a part of the city of Limoges to be destroyed, and salt strewn amongst the ruins; three days after which she died, and was buried under the belfry of the abbey of St. Augustine, in 1189 or 1190. Her mausoleum and statue were afterwards placed there." This could scarcely be _our_ Bérangère of Navarre, since mention is made of her in public acts as late as 1234. In the annals of Aquitaine, by Bouchet, it is set forth, that, "in 1160, Henry, Duke of Aquitaine, and Raimond, Count of Barcelona, being at Blaye, on the Gironde, made and swore an alliance, by which Richard, surnamed Coeur de Lion, second son of the said Henry, was to marry the daughter of the said Raimond, when she should be old enough, and Henry promised to give, on the occasion of the said marriage, the duchy of Aquitaine to his son. This Raimond was rich and powerful, being Count of Barcelona in his own right, and King of Arragon in right of his wife." The Princess Alix of France--about whose detention from him, Richard afterwards quarrelled with his father--never became his wife; but whether it is she who is meant by the queen buried at Limoges, in 1190, does not appear. That he married Bérangère in 1191, in the island of Cyprus, seems an ascertained fact; and that she died at Le Mans appears also certain; but whether Richard really had two wedded wives it is difficult to determine. On the Monday of Pentecost, the Abbey of Epau was for centuries the scene of a grand festival, in honour of the patron saint, and the ceremony was continued, to a late period, of passing the day there in gaiety and amusement. All the families of the neighbourhood sought the spot on foot, and every kind of country entertainment was resorted to. Although the object is now changed, an expedition to the remains of the Abbey of Epau is still a favourite one with the inhabitants of Le Mans; it is a kind of _Longchamps_, where all the fashion and gaiety of the town is displayed. The only tombs, besides that of Bérangère, remaining in the cathedral of Le Mans, are those in white marble, of Charles of Anjou, Count of Maine and King of Jerusalem and Sicily, who died in 1472. Opposite this, is a finely-sculptured tomb, worthy of the school of Jean Goujon, of Langey du Bellay; the carving of the fruits and flowers which adorn it is attributed to Germain Pilon. There is some good carving, also, in a neighbouring chapel, by Labarre, done in 1610; but little else of this kind remarkable in the church; all the other tombs of countesses, dukes, and princes, having long since disappeared. However, Bérangère, perhaps, appears to the greater advantage, reigning, as she does, in solitary grandeur in this magnificent retreat. The abbey churches of La Couture and Du Pré, are fine specimens of early architecture. In the chapel of the former, an inscription was once to be found on the walls, to the memory of a certain innkeeper and postilion, who, wishing that his name should be handed down to posterity, had set forth the fact of his having conducted the carriages of four kings of France, and after passing sixty-four years as a married man, died in 1509: he adds a prayer to this important record, that Heaven would provide a second husband for his widow, whose age appears to have reached not less than _sixteen lustres_. The subterranean church of La Couture is very remarkable, and is, no doubt, of Roman construction; the capitals of the pillars are extremely curious, and its height and dryness are peculiar. The famous warrior, Hélie de la Flèche, so often named in the wars of the eleventh century, was here buried; and here, it is said, was deposited the body of the blessed St. Bertrand. It is a very grand and interesting church in all its parts, and preserves some curious memorials of Roman and early Norman architecture. The abbey church of Du Pré is equally curious, and its circular arches, strange capitals, niches and ornaments, prove its extraordinary antiquity. There are a great many houses still existing in the oldest part of Le Mans which retain part of their original sculpture, and are of great antiquity, though it is not likely that they reach so far back as the time of Bérangère, or La Reine Blanche, as she is traditionally called--a designation always given to the widowed queens of France. The house in the Grande Rue--one of the most dilapidated streets in the town--said to have formed part of her palace, is now divided into two poulterers' shops; and when we visited it, the chamber called that of the widow of Coeur de Lion, was occupied by seven women, not employed in weaving tapestry or stringing pearls, but in plucking fowls. The chimney-piece is curious, adorned with two fine medallions of male heads, in high relief, very boldly executed. The outside of the house has some curious carving of eagles with expanded wings, strange monkey-shaped figures, lions _couchant_, crosslets and scrolls; but the façade is so much destroyed, that it is difficult to connect any of these ornaments. The crosslets were the arms of Jerusalem, of which the counts of Anjou called themselves kings; but to what period all these sculptures belong it is difficult to say. The Grande Rue is full of these remains; in the Rue des Chanoines, some circular-arched windows, ornamented with roses, stars, and _toothed_ carving, indicate that here once stood the church founded by St. Aldric, in the ninth century; and some pieces of wall and brick still prove its original Roman construction. In the Place St. Michel, a stone house of ancient date is shown as having been inhabited by Scarron; and in almost every street of the old town, some curious bits, worthy of an artist's attention, may be found; but the search after them is somewhat fatiguing, and involves a visit to not the most agreeable part of the pretty city: all of which is interesting, whether new or old. Of the once famous Château of Le Mans, erected long before the time of William the Conqueror, who destroyed it in part, nothing now remains but the Pans de Gorron, and a few _tourelles_. Yet it was, in the turbulent times when such fortresses were required, a place of enormous strength; and its two forts, one called Mont Barbet, and one Motte Barbet, defied many an attack. It appears that the Manceaux were impatient of the yoke of the _conquering hero_, who endeavoured to make all the territory his own which approached his domains; and three times they gave him the trouble of besieging their town; he, at length, having raised fortifications sufficient to intimidate them, placed in command in the château a female, whose warlike attainments had rendered her famous even in those days of prowess. She was an English woman by birth, the widow of a Norman knight, and called Orbrindelle. The fort in which she took up her head quarters, and from whence she sent forth the terror of her power, was called after her; but, by corruption, was afterwards named Ribaudelle. This castle was destroyed by royal order in 1617, and at its demolition several Roman monuments and inscriptions were found on the walls and beneath the foundations. King John of France was born in the Château of Le Mans, and several monarchs made it their temporary abode. The Black Prince sojourned within its walls till Duguesclin, the great captain, disturbed his repose. The unfortunate Charles VI., whom fate persecuted to the ruin of France, was at Le Mans when that fearful event occurred to him, which decided his future destiny. From the alleys of a great forest, now no longer existing, issued forth that mysterious vision which no sage has yet entirely explained. It is impossible to be at Le Mans, without recollecting the curious story connected with the poor young king, though the town is too light and cheerful-looking at the present day, to allow of its being a fitting scene either for so gloomy a legend, or for the sad events which modern days brought forth within its precincts. The circumstances which caused the madness of the son of Charles the Wise, may not, perhaps, be immediately present to the reader's mind: they were as follows:-- Pierre de Craon, lord of Sablé and Ferté Bernard, an intriguing man, who held a high place in the consideration of Mary of Brittany, the regent of Anjou and Maine in the absence of her husband, who was prosecuting his designs against Naples and Sicily, had proved himself a faithless treasurer of large sums of money confided to him by his mistress; which sums had been wrung from the two provinces of Maine and Anjou. De Craon had dissipated this money in extravagance, instead of supplying the army of Prince Louis, who died in consequence of disappointed hope and his unsuccessful struggles. The traitor made his appearance in Paris without fear; for he was protected by the powerful duke of Orleans, brother of the king. Shortly afterwards, however, having had a dispute with the Constable, Olivier de Clisson, he laid wait for him, accompanied by a set of wretches in his pay, and fell upon the great captain unawares, wounding him in the head, and leaving him for dead. After this cowardly exploit, De Craon fled, and threw himself under the protection of the Duke of Brittany, who, although not his accomplice, was weak enough to take his part. Pierre de Craon was condemned for contumacy; several of his people were punished with death, in particular a poor curate of Chartres, who was entirely innocent: his dwelling was razed to the ground, and its site given to a neighbouring church for a cemetery: and the Duke of Brittany was summoned by King Charles to deliver up the craven knight to justice. This command, however, was treated with contempt, and the king accordingly put himself at the head of his troops, and set forth to attack the duke: it was at Le Mans that he arrived with his army. Charles was greatly excited, and his nerves appear to have been agitated at this time, owing to various causes. The weather was intensely hot, and the sun struck full upon him as he rode in advance of his army, surrounded by his guard of honour. He entered the Forest of Le Mans, and was proceeding down one of its glades, when suddenly a gigantic black figure, wild, haggard, and with hair floating in dishevelled masses over his face, darted suddenly from a deep recess, and, seizing the bridle of the king's horse, cried out, in a sepulchral voice, "Hold, king!--whither ride you?--go no further!--you are betrayed!" and instantly disappeared amidst the gloomy shades of the wood, before any one had time to lay hands on him. Charles did not turn back, but continued his way in silence; he emerged from the forest on to a wide sandy plain, where the heat was almost intolerable, and where there was nothing to shelter him from the burning rays. A page was riding near him, who, overcome with fatigue, slept in his saddle, and let the lance he held fall violently on the helmet of one of his companions. The sharp sound this occasioned roused the king from his gloomy reverie: he started in sudden terror; his brain was confused and heated; he imagined that the accomplishment of the spectre's denunciation was at hand, and, losing his senses altogether, he drew his sword, and, with a wild cry, rushed forward, hewing down all before him, and galloping distractedly across the plain, till, exhausted by fatigue and excitement, he fell from his horse in a swoon. He was instantly surrounded by his people, raised from the ground, and conveyed with all care to Le Mans, where he remained till he was thought sufficiently recovered to be removed to Paris. The storm about to fall on the head of the Duke of Brittany was thus turned aside, and the troops who had received orders to attack him were withdrawn. Whether this was a scene got up by the Duke of Brittany, in order to work on the diseased mind of the unfortunate monarch, or was merely the effect of an accidental meeting with a maniac, or whether the king's uncles, who disapproved of his just indignation at De Craon's conduct, had arranged the whole, it is impossible to say: but poor Charles was surrounded by traitors, foreign and domestic, and evidently had no good physician at hand, whose timely skill might have saved years of misery and bloodshed to France. Throughout the deadly wars of the League, and the contentions between Catholic and Protestant, which desolated France, Le Mans and the whole of the department of Maine took a prominent part, and its streets, houses, churches, and villages were burnt and destroyed over and over again. The last stand of the unfortunate Vendéeans was at Le Mans. "Sad and fearful is the story" of the fight there, as it is told by Madame de la Roche-Jaquelin, whose pictures draw tears from every eye, and whose narrative, read at Le Mans, is melancholy indeed. After dreadful fatigues and varying fortune, during which the devoted town was taken and retaken several times, the harassed Vendéeans, more remarkable for their valour than their prudence, remained in possession of the town on the night of the 10th of December, 1793, and gave themselves up to the repose which they so much needed, but without arranging any means of security, though a vigilant enemy was on the watch to take advantage of their state. They abandoned themselves, with characteristic superstition, to the care of Heaven alone; placing no sentinels, no out-posts, no guard whatever: and, although the next day the chiefs visited the town and its issues, no precaution was taken against the possibility of an attack,--no measures to secure a retreat, nor council held as to whither their course should be directed in case of such a necessity. The time was consumed in disputes, as to whether the wearied Vendéean army should pursue its transient success, and go on to Paris, or yield to the desire of the generality of the soldiers, and return to their beloved home, by crossing the Loire, which so many regretted ever to have passed. It appears that there were from sixty to seventy thousand persons in Le Mans, of the royalist party; including women, children, and servants, with baggage and money to a large amount. The republican army, commanded by Marceau and Westermann, surprised the town at night. In spite of the active bravery of La Roche-Jaquelin, and the energy he displayed when the danger was so apparent, a fearful slaughter ensued. Street by street, and square by square, the Vendéeans disputed every inch of ground, till the corpses of the slain lay in heaps in the narrow ways; every house was a fortress,--every lane a pass desperately defended. The intrepid young leader had two horses killed under him, and was obliged to absent himself a moment to seek for others. No sooner did his people lose sight of him than a panic took possession of them; they thought all lost,--became confused and disordered. Many of them, waked from sleep, or from a state of inebriety, in which the Britons are too apt to indulge, horrified at the shrieks of their women, stunned by the sound of the cannon, which roared through the dark streets, and startled at the glare of artillery suddenly blazing around them,--entirely lost all presence of mind, and fled in every direction; killing and wounding friends and foes in their precipitous retreat. Horses, waggons, and dead bodies impeded their flight, and Le Mans was one scene of carnage and terror. Their leaders stood their ground, and kept the great square of Le Mans for more than four hours, performing prodigies of valour. But the republicans at last were victors: and horribly did they pursue their advantage; sparing neither age nor sex, and exulting in the most atrocious cruelties. The peasants of Le Mans and its environs, taking part with the stronger side, pursued the vanquished with disgraceful energy, and murdered the unfortunate Vendéeans in the woods and fields, and in every retreat where those devoted people sought shelter and safety. The state of the unfortunate women, whose husbands, sons, and fathers were being slaughtered with every volley which rung in their ears, is horrible to imagine. Madame de la Roche-Jaquelin thus describes her own position in moving language: "From the beginning, we foresaw the result of the struggle. I was lodged at the house of a lady who was very rich, very refined, but a great republican. She had a large family, whom she tenderly loved, and whom she carefully attended. I resolved to confide my daughter to her, as one of her relations had already taken charge of little Jagault. I entreated her to protect her,--to bring her up as a mere peasant only,--to instil into her mind sentiments of honour and virtue. I said that, should she be destined to resume the position in which she was born, I should thank Heaven for its mercy; but I resigned myself to all, provided she was virtuously brought up. She assured me that, if she took my child, she would educate her with her own. I used all the arguments a mother could in such circumstances, and was interrupted by the cry that announced retreat. She quitted me instantly; and I, losing at once all hope, but trusting at least to save my daughter's life, placed her secretly in the bed of the mistress of the family, certain that she could not have the cruelty to abandon the innocent little creature. I then descended the stairs: I was placed on horseback; the gate was opened; I saw the square filled with a flying, pressing crowd, and in an instant I was separated from every one I knew. I perceived M. Stofflet, who was carrying the colours: I took advantage of his presence to try to find the road; I followed him across the square, which I supposed was the way; I kept close to the houses; and at length reached the street which led in the direction I sought, towards the road of Laval. But I found it impossible to advance; the concourse was too great,--it was stifling: carts, waggons, cannon, were overturned; bullocks lay struggling on the ground, unable to rise, and striking out at all who approached them. The cries of persons trodden underfoot echoed everywhere. I was fainting with hunger and terror: I could scarcely see; for daylight was nearly closed. At the corner of a street I perceived two horses tied to a stake, and they completely barred my passage; the crowd pressed them against me; and I was squeezed between them and the wall: I screamed to the soldiers to take and ride off with them; but my voice was not heard or attended to. A young man on horseback passed by me, with a mild and sad countenance: I cried out to him, catching his hand, 'Oh! sir, have pity on a poor woman, near her confinement, and perishing with want and fatigue: I can go no further.' The stranger burst into tears, and replied: 'I am a woman, too: we shall perish together; for nothing can penetrate into yonder street.' We both remained expecting our fate. "In the meantime, the faithful Bontemps, servant of M. de Lescure, not seeing my daughter, sought for her everywhere,--found her at length, and carried her off in his arms. He followed me, perceived me in the crowd, and called out, 'I have saved my master's child!' I hung down my head, and resigned myself to the worst. In a moment after I saw another of my servants: I called to him; he caught my horse by the bridle; and, cutting his way with his sabre, we entered the street. With incredible trouble, we reached a little bridge in the faubourg, on the road to Laval: a cannon was overturned upon it, and stopped up the way: at length we got by, and I found myself in the road; where I paused, with many others. Some officers were there, trying to rally their soldiers; but all their efforts were useless. "The republicans, hearing a noise where we were, turned their cannon upon us from the height of the houses. A bullet whizzed past my head: a moment afterwards a fresh discharge startled me; and, involuntarily, I bent myself low upon my horse. An officer near reproached me bitterly for my cowardice. 'Alas!' replied I, 'it is excusable in a wretched woman to crouch down when a whole army has taken to flight!' In fact, the firing continued so violently that all of our people who had paused recommenced flying for their lives. Had it been daylight, perhaps they might have been recalled. "A few leagues from Le Mans, I beheld the arrival of my father. He and Henri had been for a long time vainly endeavouring to reanimate the soldiers. Henri hurried towards me, exclaiming, 'You are saved!'--'I thought you were lost," cried I, 'since we are beaten.' He wrung my hand, saying, 'I would I were dead!' "About twelve leagues from Le Mans, I stopped in a village: a great part of the army had also halted there. There was scarcely any one in the cottages: the road was covered with poor wretches, who, fainting with fatigue, were sleeping in the mud, without heeding the pelting rain. The rout of Le Mans cost the lives of fifteen thousand persons. The greatest part were not killed in the battle; many were crushed to death in the streets of Le Mans; others, wounded and sick, remained in the houses, and were massacred. They died in the ditches and the fields: a great number fled on the road to Alençon, were there taken, and conducted to the scaffold. * * * * * "Such was the deplorable defeat of Le Mans, where the Vendéean army received a mortal blow: it was an inevitable fatality. The day that they quitted the left bank of the Loire, with a nation of women, children, and old people, to seek an asylum in a country unknown, without being aware what route they should take, at the beginning of winter, it was easy to foretell that we should conclude by this terrible catastrophe. The greatest glory that our generals and soldiers can claim is that they retarded its accomplishment so long. "The unfortunate and intrepid Henri did not abandon his cause till not a hope was left; and even at the last he lingered at Le Mans, and fought desperately in the Place de l'Eperon, establishing a battery of cannon which long kept the enemy at bay. But all was unavailing, and he yielded to necessity. He arrived at Laval at the close of day, spent and exhausted, and entered a house where he entreated to be allowed to rest. He was warned that he might run the risk of being surprised by Westermann,--'My greatest want,' said he, 'is not to live, but to sleep.'" The Vendéeans had left behind them so much gold and merchandize, so much furniture, and such precious possessions, that, far from these sad events being a cause of ruin to the inhabitants of Le Mans, they were the means of establishing prosperity in the town in many instances, and its commercial influence increased very sensibly from that period. It is at this moment a town which appears in a very flourishing state, and is on the whole one of the most agreeable and interesting in this part of France. The misfortunes and troubles which the ill-fated army of royalists experienced, did not prevent their renewal a few years after, when the sad events of the wars of the Chouans brought back all the miseries which the desolated country was but little able to contend with. However high-sounding the supposed motives might be which re-illumed the war, it is now generally acknowledged that only a few enthusiastic men acted from a sense of honour and patriotism: the greatest part being influenced by less worthy ideas. Had it not been so, the excesses committed by the Chouans would never have disgraced the annals of warfare: wretches without religion, morality, or feeling, mere brigands and marauders, under the sacred banner of patriotism, ravaged the country, burning, torturing, and destroying, pillaging, and committing every crime, dignified meantime by the appellation of heroes, which one or two amongst them might have deserved if they had fought in better company, and been better directed. It is strange that any one, particularly at the present day, can be found to magnify into heroism the misguided efforts of a set of turbulent school-boys, who, again, at a later period, were made the tools of villains for their own purposes of plunder; yet, very recently, works have appeared in which the _petite Chouannerie_ is exalted into a praiseworthy community. Pity for the sacrificed children who were betrayed, and the bereaved mothers who wept over the disobedience of their sons, is all that belongs to those concerned in the useless revolt which caused ruin to so many. "The intention of the Chouans in taking arms," says M. de Scépeaux, in his letters on the Chouans of Bas-Maine, "was to _defend and preserve_, not _to attack and destroy_; and, like the soldiers of Pelayo, who kept the rocks of Asturias as a last stronghold against their besiegers, the Chouans made their Bocages a last asylum for the French monarchy." This is a fine _phrase_, but the facts are very far removed from this assertion. The Chouans were a terror and a scourge to their fellow-citizens: farms burnt, unoffending citizens robbed and murdered, all their possessions seized on and appropriated, stabbing in the dark, and cowardly cruelties of all kinds characterized these "honourable men," who were _guerillas_ and nothing more. They took names such as in former times distinguished the bands of brigands who were the terror of the middle ages, and their acts rendered the similitude more striking. Some of these chiefs signed themselves, Joli-coeur, Sans-peur, Monte-à-l'assaut, Bataillon, &c. It was a fearful time, and violence and cruelty reigned triumphant whichever party took the field. The province of Le Maine suffered severely in the struggle. Le Mans was again the scene of contention, and the streets of the town the theatre of slaughter. Who, to look at the quiet, tranquil town now, would think how much it has suffered! and who but must feel indignant at the pretended patriot who is not grateful to the existing government, under whose wise sway the cities of France are recovering their beauty and importance after long years of torture and desolation! CHAPTER IV. THE MUSEUM OF LE MANS--VENUS--MUMMY--GEOFFREY LE BEL--HIS COSTUME--MATILDA--SCARRON--HÉLIE DE LA FLÈCHE--RUFUS--THE WHITE KNIGHT. THE Museum of Le Mans is in the Hôtel de la Prefecture, and as we heard that the famous enamel of Geoffrey Plantagenet, formerly on his tomb in the cathedral, was preserved there, we hastened to behold so interesting a remain of early art. A remarkably obtuse female was the exhibitor on the occasion, and, on my asking her to point out the treasure, she took me to a collection of Roman coins and medals, assuring me they were very old and very curious. It was impossible not to agree with her, and to regard these coins with interest, particularly as they were all found in the immediate neighbourhood of Le Mans; however, as a glance at them was sufficient, we proceeded to examine all the cases, hoping to discover the object of our search. We were arrested before a case filled with objects of art found principally at the ruins of Alonnes, near Le Mans, which commune is a perfect emporium of Roman curiosities, where no labourer directs his plough across a field, or digs a foot deep in his garden, without finding statues, pillars, baths, medals, &c., in heaps. All these things are of fine workmanship, and thence, lately, two little wonders have been rescued from oblivion, which are really gems. One is a small female bust of white marble, perfect, and of singular grace; the other the entire figure, having only one arm wanting, of a Venus twenty-one inches high, and of exquisite proportion; she sits on the trunk of a tree; her beauty is incomparable, and she must owe her birth to an artist of very superior genius. As if to prove how worthless is that beauty which attracts and rivets the attention, even in stone, close by is one of the finest and most perfectly-preserved female mummies I ever beheld,--hideous in its uninjured state, grinning fearfully with its rows of fine ivory teeth a little broken, glaring with its still prominent eyes, and appalling with its blackened skin drawn over the high cheekbones. Why might not this carefully-attended and richly-adorned queen be the beautiful and fatal "serpent of old Nile"--the fascinating Cleopatra herself? The features are fine and delicate in spite of the horrible hue of the skin, and though it revolts the mind at first, one can even fancy that mass of horror might, in life, have been beautiful. This valuable specimen was brought from Egypt by M. Edouard de Montulé, a zealous and enterprising young traveller, too early snatched from science and the world at the age of thirty-six. A gentleman, drawing in the museum, who had arrived after us, hearing our questions to our guide, very politely stepped forward and offered to show us the objects of interest which he saw we might otherwise miss. He led us at once to the enamel we so much desired to see, and we had ample time to contemplate one of the most remarkable curiosities of art which perhaps exists anywhere. Geoffrey le Bel, surnamed Plantagenet, the second husband of the haughty Empress Matilda, who considered her dignity compromised in being obliged to marry a simple Count of Anjou, was, nevertheless, the handsomest man of his day, and apparently one of the most distinguished _dandies_. Jean, the monk of Marmontier, in his description of the fêtes given by the count at Rouen, speaks of the splendid habiliments of this prince--of his _Spanish barb_, his helmet, his buckler, his lance of _Poitou steel_, and his celebrated sword taken from the treasury of his father, and renowned as the work of "the great _Galannus_, the most expert of armourers." Even in this very guise does Geoffrey appear. He holds the sword, considered as magical, unsheathed in his right hand; his shield or target covers his shoulders, and descends in a point to his feet. It is charged azure, with four rampant golden leopards; only the half of the shield appears, consequently all its blazonry is not visible. He wears a sort of Phrygian cap ornamented with a golden leopard; he has a dalmatic robe, and a capacious mantle edged with ermine, his scarf and waistband are of the same form, and all are of rich colours--red, green, and purple--such as appear in stained glass. It is painted with great detail, and the features are very distinct; they convey very little idea of beauty, but have sufficient character to indicate likeness. The copy, which Stothard made with great care, is extremely correct, much more so than the drawing he gave of Bérangère, whose beauty he entirely failed to represent: none but an accomplished artist, indeed, could do so, and the indefatigable antiquarian, who lost his life in his zeal for his pursuit, was more accustomed to the quaint forms exhibited on windows and brasses. The inscription formerly to be read beneath the effigy of Geoffrey, on the tomb, was as follows:-- "Thy sword, oh! Prince, has delivered our country from the hordes of brigands who infested it, and given to the Church entire security under the shadow of peace." There is something of melancholy and quiet about this portrait, which accord with the character given of the prince by historians, who represent him mild and good, generous, brave, and magnanimous; an encourager of the arts and poetry, and a lover of order; but forced into wars by the haughty temper of his wife, and obliged to distress his subjects for supplies in consequence. His marriage with Matilda took place in 1127, with great pomp, at Le Mans, in the palace of the Counts of Anjou; and the solemnities attending it lasted for three weeks. All the vassals of Henry I. of England, father of the bride, and of Foulques, father of Geoffrey, were summoned to attend under pain of being considered enemies of the public good. As Henry delayed putting his son-in-law in possession of Normandy, as had been agreed on, Matilda excited her husband to go to war with him, and a series of conflicts ensued which entailed much misery on the country. Geoffrey le Bel died in 1151, of pleurisy, in consequence of bathing imprudently in the Loire. His body was brought to Le Mans and buried in the cathedral, and his son, the illustrious Henry II. of England, succeeded him; a prince superior to his time, but destined to continued vexations from his family and his friends. The proud Matilda, too,--so like the haughty heiress of Aquitaine,--need not have murmured at the lot which made her mother and grandmother of such kings as Henry and Coeur de Lion. The pictures in the museum of Le Mans possess no sort of merit: there is a series of paintings coarsely done from the "Roman Comique" of Scarron, representing the principal scenes in his strange work; but they have no other value than that of having been painted at the period when he was popular, and being placed there in consequence of his having resided at Le Mans, though I believe it was not the place of his birth. It was here, at all events, that his imprudence caused his own misfortune; for in the exuberance of his gaiety, he resolved, on occasion of a fête, which annually takes place on the route of Pontlieue, to amuse himself and the Manceaux, by a childish exhibition of himself _as a bird_. To this end, he actually smeared himself with honey, and then having rolled in feathers, and assumed as much as possible the plumed character he wished to represent, he sallied forth and joined the procession astonishing all beholders; but he had not reckoned on the effect his appearance would produce on the boys of the parish, ever ready for mischief. Delighted at such an opportunity, they pursued the unfortunate wit without mercy, pelting and chasing him. His fear of being recognised, and his anxiety to escape them, caused him to fly for refuge, heated as he was with his extraordinary exertions, under an arch of the old bridge, where he was exposed to a severe draught. The cold struck to his limbs, and the consequence was that he became paralysed for the rest of his life, an affliction which he names at the beginning of his famous romance. The commune of Alonnes, from whence so many antique treasures are derived, is about a league from Le Mans, and is looked upon with much superstitious veneration by the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages. Not only are fine Roman remains discovered there, but, by the rude pottery continually turned up, it appears to have been a considerable city of the Gauls; for the singular forms exhibited on their vases and stones are altogether different from those of a more refined people. To neither of these nations, however, was Alonnes supposed to belong, but to one more powerful and mysterious still: no other than the fairies, who may, even now, on moon-light nights, be seen hovering round their _Tour aux fées_, of which a few stones alone remain. A subterranean way (aqueduct) is supposed to have communicated with the ancient castle; and no doubt its recesses are the scene of many a midnight revel carried on by those unseen visitants of ruins. Numerous baths of Roman construction have been found, and more yet remains to be discovered. About fifty years since, some workmen making excavations observed the opening of a covered way which they followed for some distance, expecting to find treasure. They had not gone far, when they were surprised by suddenly entering vast chambers, covered with the remains of columns, vases, and ornamental architecture: instead of continuing their search, they were seized with a panic, and fled from the spot without attempting to penetrate further. If more valorous seekers were to prosecute the adventure, at the spot where they left it, no doubt very interesting discoveries might be made, which would repay the attempt. One of the chief heroes of Le Mans and Maine, and he who is the most continually spoken of in its history, is Hélie de la Flèche. He was one of the most generous and valiant knights of his time, and to him his supine and cowardly cousin, Hugues, tired of the frequent struggles which he found it necessary to sustain in order to keep in possession of his rights, resigned the dominion of Maine, much to the delight of the Manceaux, who received their young lord with open arms. Hélie showed himself a friend to his new people, and entered into an alliance with Geoffrey IV. Count of Anjou. After which, being ready to set out for the crusades, according to the fashion of the times, and finding that Robert of Normandy had already departed, he went to Rouen, to William Rufus, in the hope of obtaining his acknowledgment of his rights to the county of Maine. He, however, failed in this expectation, and put himself in array to contend with this formidable adversary, in whose alliance was a very unpleasant and dangerous neighbour, the perfidious Count of Belesme and Baron du Saosnois, Robert II., called Talvas, generally known as _Robert le Diable_. This treacherous prince laid a snare for Hélie, into which he fell, and he delivered him up to William Rufus. Kept prisoner at Rouen, and fearing that the Count of Anjou would enter into an accommodation with William Rufus, which would compromise the interests of his patrimony of La Flèche, which he knew had long been coveted by those of Anjou, Hélie made up his mind to treat for his ransom, by which he consented to give up the province of Maine to the King of England, and to do him homage for his lordship of La Flèche, as his father had done before. He obtained his liberty at this price, and was brought before William, who ordered the chains with which he was bound to be removed, as Wace relates-- "Dunc le fist li Reis amener Et des _buies_ le fist oster." He then offered to attach himself to William, as one of his most faithful officers; but this being declined, murmurs escaped him, which roused the king's anger, as the old chronicler has recounted. "Count Hélie's steed he ordered forth, With housings dight of regal worth; 'Mount straight, sir knight, and go,' he cried; 'Wherever it may list you ride, But guard you well another tide. My prison shall be deep and strong If you again my thrall should be, And trust me 'twill be late and long Ere, once my captive, you are free. In future, Count, I bid you know I am your ever-ready foe; Where'er you go, it shall not lack, But William shall be on your back!' I know not if Count Hélie found Words to reply. He turned him round, And little he delayed, I ween, To make their distance great between!" As might be anticipated, Hélie was not content to sit down patiently with so bad a bargain as he had made. He had yielded his right in Le Maine, and by resisting he placed himself in the position of a rebel to his liege lord; nevertheless, scarcely had William returned to England, thinking himself secure, than Hélie began to make a struggle to recover what he had lost. No sooner, however, did William hear of his proceeding than he hurried back from England, and in an incredibly short space of time was at Le Mans: he found his vassal more powerful than he expected, and much violence ensued. Obliged to return to England, not long after this his sudden death ensued. Hélie, aided by the Count of Angers, attacked and took possession of Le Mans, and besieged the castle: two Norman officers in command had, in the meantime, received orders from the new King of England to treat with Hélie; and when he presented himself before the walls, they requested him to clothe himself in his white tunic, which had gained him the surname of the White Knight. With this he complied; and on his re-appearance before them, they received him with smiles, saying,-- "Sir White Knight, you may now rejoice to good purpose, for we have reached the term so long desired by you; and if you have a good sum of money for us, we will make a good bargain. If we chose to resist we have still arms, provisions, and valour; but the truth is, we want a legitimate master to whom we can dedicate our service. For which reason, noble warrior, knowing your merit, we elect and constitute you henceforth Count of Le Mans." Hélie, after this, took part against Robert and the Count of Mortain at the battle of Tinchebray, where he commanded an army composed of Bretons and Manceaux. He distinguished himself wherever he appeared in battle, and died in 1110, and was buried in the abbey church of La Couture, where his tomb was formerly seen. He was the hero of his age. Pious, loyal, and valiant, his device expressed his qualities:--"No glory without honour, and no honour without glory." He was active, vigilant, and just, says one of his biographers, as great in his reverses as in his successes; he added to the merit of a great captain the talents of a sound politician, and the enlightened mind of a statesman; but his highest praise is that he merited and obtained the affection of his vassals. His memory was long cherished in Le Mans, even till the events of the great Revolution swept away all records but that of the crimes then committed. CHAPTER V. LUDE--SAUMUR REVISITED--THE GARDEN--LA PETITE VOISINE--THE RETIRED MILITAIRE--LES PIERRES COUVERTES--LES PETITES PIERRES--LOUDUN--URBAIN GRANDIER--RICHELIEU--THE NUNS--THE VICTIM--THE FLY--THE MALLE POSTE--THE DISLODGED SERPENTS. LEAVING Le Mans, and all its recollections, we continued our way towards the Loire, which we proposed crossing at Saumur, not only with a pleasing memory of our former visit there, when the sight of Fontevraud and its treasured tombs of our English kings first delighted us, but because, with all my wish to leave nothing unnoticed in the interesting towns of France, I had quitted Saumur without having made a _pilgrimage_ to some of its most singular and important monuments. It was only on reading a passage in Michelet's History of France, when he alludes to the "_prodigious Dolmen_" of Saumur, that I found there was still something of interest which I had neglected. Doubtless this has often been the case in my wanderings; and, probably, there is scarcely a town where some new treasure may not be discovered by some fresh traveller, where there is so much to excite attention. I determined, therefore, to pause at Saumur, to enjoy its beauties once more, and pass a day with its Druids. Lude was in our way, where, on the banks of the Loire, stands a magnificent castle; now a private residence, kept up in great style, and surrounded with beautiful gardens, better attended to than any I ever saw in France, where the name of _Jardin Anglais_ is, usually, another term for a wilderness. Lude belonged to a Breton nobleman, M. de Faltröet, and now to his son, for the inhabitants were just deploring his recent death, and, what is sufficiently unusual in France, naming a man of rank with respect and affection. He appears to have been one of the most amiable and considerate of men, and to be sincerely lamented. The young woman from the inn, who was our guide there, spoke of his death with great sorrow, and was eloquent in his commendation, as the friend of the people and the poor. The castle is very extensive and in high preservation: we could not see the interior, which I am told is very interesting: rooms being named after Francis I. and Henry IV., who are both said to have visited here; and the furniture of their time is preserved or introduced. The exterior walls are adorned with medallions of extraordinary size, in the style peculiar to Francis I., and the huge round towers are similarly decorated: much of the building between these towers is of more modern date, but all is in good keeping and handsome. Several fine willows dip their boughs into the river, which bathes one side--but what was the moat on all the others, is now filled up with flowering trees and shrubs, and the ramparts laid out in terraces, covered with a luxuriant growth of every kind of rare and graceful plant. There is a charming view from the gardens, and the abode altogether is delightful. The country is rich and fertile, covered with fields of Indian corn, flax, and hemp; here and there are large plantations of fir-trees; the chestnut-trees we observed were very luxuriant, loaded with fruit; the apples thickly clustered in the numerous orchards, and everything abundant and smiling. We rejoiced at once more beholding the Loire at the spot where, on our former visit, we most admired it. Saumur is, however, greatly increased and improved during the three years which had elapsed since we first made its acquaintance. New houses are built, old ones pulled down, and active measures taken to beautify and adorn the town. The same slovenliness struck us as before on the promenade by the river, where the idea of sweeping up fallen leaves, or cleaning steps, never seems to have occurred, and the theatre walls look as desolate and ill-conditioned as formerly. The baths, which attracted my admiration before, seated on an islet amidst flowering shrubs, had lost the brightness of their then newly-painted outside, and had rather a forlorn effect; the old Hôtel de Ville and its towers and turrets looked as venerable as ever, and the Loire showed much less sand and more of its crystal water. The magnificent Donjon towered majestically on its height, and all the caves of the chain of rocks beneath showed their mysterious openings as when they first excited my surprise. We visited almost all our old friends--the venerable monuments of times gone by--in the town, and discovered several towers which the removal of houses have rendered evident. We were remarking a building of this kind, whose turrets could have been erected only by Foulques Nera himself, when we were invited into a garden opposite by the proprietors, who took an interest in our curiosity. This garden, and the family that owned it, were quite _unique_ in their way; the master was a retired _militaire_, the mistress a smart, managing woman; and their delight and treasure a little boy of about ten, and a tiny garden enclosed between two walls, with a pavilion at each end, and filled with shrubs and flowers exquisitely beautiful, and tended as garden never was tended since Eve herself spent all her time in restraining the growth of her garlands. Tea-scented roses, roses of all hues and perfumes, rare plants, seldom seen but in hot-houses, all fresh and flourishing, occupied every nook of this little retreat, the _délices_, as they assured us, of this couple, whose content and satisfaction at the perfection of their dwelling overflowed at every word. "You see," said the hostess, as she led us through the little alleys, and made us pause at the minute alcoves--"nothing can be more complete; we have a perfect little paradise of flowers, and a little world of our own; we have no occasion to go out to be amused, for, let us throw open our _jalousies_ in our _salon_ at the corner of this tower, and we see all the world without being seen; when we shut it we are in solitude, and what can we require beyond? My little son," she continued, pointing to the other object of her care, who was seated beside a pretty little girl, tuning a small instrument, "occupies himself with his violin, and he can touch the guitar prettily, also; he is now playing to a _petite voisine_ who often comes to keep him company: he has considerable parts, and is well advanced in his Latin. We let our large house to M. le Curé, and live in the small one at the other end of our garden; it is large enough for us, and nothing can be so convenient." While she continued to converse, setting forth the advantages of her position, the _bon garçon_ of a husband, who seemed second in command, followed with assenting smiles. I asked if he smoked in his little summer-house sometimes, but saw that my question was _mal-à-propos_, for his wife replied quickly, that he had not that bad habit, and, indeed, would not endure smoking any more than herself. He looked somewhat slily as he remarked, that since he had left the army he had never _indulged_ in it. We returned to our inn laden with bouquets, forced upon us by these happy, hospitable people, whose content, and the beauty of their little garden, so like numerous others in charming Saumur, confirmed our notion of its being the most agreeable place in France to live at. The evening was oppressively hot, and we walked on the fine bridge, hoping to meet a breeze. The shallow river was like glass, so transparent, that every pebble seemed clearly defined at the bottom. Sunset made the sky one sheet of ruby colour, and the stars, rising in great splendour, shone with dazzling brilliancy; the deep purple of the glowing night which succeeded was like sapphire, every building, every tower, every hill, was mirrored in the waters, and the spires of every church threw their delicate lines along the still expanse. The gigantic castle looked down from its height as if protecting all; and the few white motionless sails at a distance, pausing near the willowy islands, where not a leaf moved, made the whole like enchantment. I never beheld a more exquisite night, nor saw a more beautiful scene. The next day was brilliant; but the stillness of the air had given place to a fresh wind, which made our long walk across the Roman arched bridge, towards the famous _Pierres Couvertes_, less fatiguing. Though the way to it is by nearly a league of hot dusty road, yet the surprise and pleasure of the sight on arriving at this extraordinary monument quite repays all toil. In a woody dell, not far from the main road, stand these wonderful stones, in all their mysterious concealment, puzzling the mind and exciting the imagination with their rude forms and simple contrivances. Before we left England we had made an excursion to Stonehenge, that most gigantic of all Druidical remains, and had carried with us a perfect recollection of all its proportions. The temple of Saumur is not a quarter its height, but is _entirely covered_ in, and apparently of _ruder_ construction, there being no art whatever used to keep the stones together except that of placing them one over the other. We measured the length and height in the best way we could, and found it to be eighteen yards long, from the entrance to the back, which is closed in by a broad flat stone, five yards and a-half in length within and eight yards without. The height is not more than three yards from the ground; but it has evidently sunk in the earth considerably. The sides incline inwards, leaving the covering stones projecting like a cottage roof, and the great stone at the back has also lost its perpendicular; nevertheless, there are none displaced of this chamber. It appears, by several broad slabs which lie scattered about, that there must have been more compartments of the temple: an outer court existed, and a narrower part at the entrance, the stones of which are still upright. This treasure is preserved from injury by a palisade round the piece of ground on which it stands, in its little grove, and a wooden door shuts it in, which is in the custody of an old woman who keeps a school close by and receives the offerings of the curious. Her pupils, of tender age, pursue some of their studies in a small hall where she presides; but their chief pursuit seems to be amusement, to judge by the laughter and general hilarity which prevailed, as they ran gambolling amongst the venerable shades, peeping slily at the strangers, whose contemplations they were commanded not to interrupt. From the _Grandes Pierres Couvertes_, we continued our way, through vines and fields, to the top of a neighbouring hill, which commanded a charming view of the town and castle, and fine country round. There, in the midst of heath and wild thyme and nodding harebells, at the extremity of a ploughed field, overhanging a deep rocky road, stands another temple of the Gauls. It is called _Les Petites Pierres Couvertes_, and is similar in construction to the large one, but not a quarter its size. Its position is most picturesque, and the landscape spread out before its rugged arch exquisite. It is covered in, and its walls are firm and close; though, from its exposed situation, one would expect that it must long ago have fallen. Remains of large stones lie around, partly covered with vegetation, and many, no doubt, are embedded in the earth. Perhaps the two temples communicated once on a time, and covered the whole space between; where probably waved a gigantic forest. The wind had risen violently as we sat, in the sun, beside the _Petites Pierres_, and our walk back to Saumur promised us a great deal of dust, for we saw it eddying in the valleys beneath, like wreaths of mist. We, however, contrived to avoid the high road, and found our way, by a very pleasant path, to the town, before the threatened storm arrived which night brought. By a fine star-light evening of the following day, which we had spent amongst the hills and in visiting the fortifications of the castle, we took our departure for Poitiers--the next great object of our interest. We reached Loudun in the dark, consequently had no opportunity of judging of its appearance; but, as far as we could observe, there seemed little to please the eye. The place itself is no further interesting than as having been the scene of that frightful tragedy which disgraced the seventeenth century, and which, though a story often told, may not be familiar to every reader; at least, its particulars may not immediately recur to all who hear the name of Loudun. The revolution which destroyed so much, has left scarcely any traces of the famous convent of Ursulines, where the scenes took place which cast a disgraceful celebrity on its community. The curé and canon of St. Peter of Loudun, was a young man, named Urbain Grandier, remarkable not only for his learning and accomplishments, but for his great beauty, and the grace of his manners, together with a certain air of the world, which was, perhaps, an unfortunate distinction for one in his position. His gallantry and elegance would have graced a Court, but his lot had cast him where such _agrémens_ were not only unnecessary, but misplaced. Urbain had, besides, been favoured by fortune, in having obtained two benefices; a circumstance witnessed with envy by several of the ecclesiastics, his contemporaries; who felt themselves thrown constantly into the shade by his superiority in this as in other respects. The priests, his companions, were not inclined to be indulgent to any weakness shown by their young and admired rival; the husbands of some of his fair parishioners looked on him with an evil eye, while the ladies themselves could see nothing to blame in his deportment, ever devoted and amiable as he was to them. All the learned men of the country sought his society; all the well-meaning and generous spirits of the neighbourhood found answering virtues in Urbain Grandier, and he was not aware that he had an enemy in existence. He had forgotten that he had once been so unfortunate as to offend a man who never forgave, and who, from being merely the prior of Coussay, had risen to a high rank in the church, and was now all-powerful, and able to take revenge for any petty injury long past, but carefully treasured, to be repaid with interest when occasion should serve.[3] [Footnote 3: A wretched and pointless satire had appeared under the title of _La Cordonnière de Loudun_, in which the Cardinal figured: Père Joseph insinuated that Grandier was the author, and the supposed insult was readily credited.] The Cardinal de Richelieu, from the height of his grandeur, suddenly condescended to remember his old acquaintance, the curé Grandier, and was only on the look-out for a moment at which to prove to him that nothing of what had once passed between them had escaped his recollection. A means was soon presented, and, without himself appearing too prominently in the affair, the cardinal arrived at his desired end. It happened that some young and giddy pupils of the Convent of Ursulines, bent on a frolic, resolved to terrify the bigoted and ignorant nuns of the community, by personating ghosts and goblins, and they succeeded to their utmost wishes, having acted their parts to admiration; but they were far from dreaming of the fatal consequences of their success. The disturbed nuns, worried and frightened from their propriety, went in a body to a certain curé, named Mignon, one of the most spiteful and envious of Grandier's rivals, and related to him the fact of their convent being disturbed by ghostly visitants, who left them no peace or rest. The thought instantly occurred to Mignon, that he might turn this accident to account at the expense of the handsome young priest whom he detested. Instead of ghosts and spirits, he changed the mystery into witchcraft and _possession by the devil_, and contrived so artfully, that he induced many of the nuns to imagine themselves a prey to the evil one, and to assume all the appearance of suffering from the influence of some occult power. His pupils became quite expert in tricks of demoniacal possession, falling into convulsions and trances, and going through all the absurdities occasionally practised at the present day, by the disciples of Mesmer. These foolish, rather than wicked, women, were led to believe that, by acting thus, they were advancing the interests of religion, and they allowed themselves to fall blindly into the scheme, devised for the purpose of ruining the devoted curé. A public exorcism took place, at which scenes of absurdity, difficult to be credited, took place, and when the possessed persons were questioned as to how they became a prey to the evil spirit, they declared that the devil had entered into them by means of a bouquet of roses, the perfume of which they had inhaled; when asked by whom these flowers had been sent them, they replied that it was Urbain Grandier! This was enough to seal his doom; on the 3d of December, 1633, the Councillor Laubardemont arrived secretly at Loudun, caused the young curé to be arrested, as he was preparing to go to church, and had him carried off to the castle of Angers. The devils, supposed to possess the nuns, were severally questioned, _and replied_, they were Astaroth, of the _order of_ Seraphins, the head and front of all, Easas, Celcus, Acaos, Cedon, Asmodeus, _of the order_ of Thrones, Alez, Zabulon, Nephtalim, Cham, Uriel, Achas, of the order of Principalities! In the following April he was brought back to Loudun, and consigned to the prison there. The farce of exorcism was now recommenced; but the fatigue of sustaining the parts they had assumed, and perhaps a conviction of the fearful nature of the deceptions they had practised, caused some of the actors in this drama to rebel, and they actually made a public retractation of what they had before advanced. It was, however, now too late; no notice was taken of their denial of their former charges against the victim whose fate was agreed upon, and in August, 1634, a commission was duly appointed, at the head of which were Laubardemont and his satellites, who pronounced Urbain Grandier guilty, and convicted of the crime of magic. His sentence condemned him to be burned alive, but, resolved to carry vengeance to the utmost extent, he was made to undergo the torture, suffering pangs too horrible to think of. He was then conveyed to Poitiers, where he suffered at the stake, and by his unmerited fate left an indelible blot on the age in which such monstrous cruelty could be perpetrated, or such ignorant barbarity tolerated. He endured his torments with patience and resignation. While he was suffering, a large fly was observed to hover near his head. A monk, who was enjoying the spectacle of his execution, and who had heard that Béelzébub, in Hebrew, signified _the God of the Flies_, cried out, much to the edification of all present, "Behold yonder, the devil, Beelzebub, flying round Grandier ready to carry off his soul to hell!"[4] [Footnote 4: A very excellent picture on this subject, by Jouy, is in the Musée at Bordeaux: I did not see it, but it has been described to me by a person on whose judgment I can depend, who considers it of very high merit, and worthy of great commendation.] The unpleasant recollections raised by the neighbourhood of Loudun were dispelled as we hurried on to the next post, which was at Mirebeau, where we were not a little entertained at the primitive manner in which our _malle poste_ delivered and received its despatches. The coach stopped in the middle of the night in the silent streets of Mirebeau, and the conductor, stationing himself beneath the window of a dwelling, called loudly to the sleepers within; no answer was returned, nor did he repeat his summons; but waited, with a patience peculiar to _conducteurs_, who do not care to hurry their horses, till a rattling on the wall announced the approach of a basket let down by a string. Into this he put the letters he had brought, and it re-ascended; after waiting a reasonable time, the silent messenger returned, and from it a precious packet was taken; nothing was said, the _conducteur_ resumed his seat on the box, the horses were urged onwards, and we rattled forward on our way to Poitiers. Mirebeau, though now an insignificant bourg, was formerly a place of some consequence. Its château was built by Foulques Nera, the redoubted Count of Anjou; and here, in 1202, Elionor of Aquitaine sustained a siege directed against her by the partisans of the Count of Bretagne, her grandson. Close by is a village, the lord of which had an hereditary privilege sufficiently ludicrous. It appears that at Puy Taillé there must have been a remarkable number of serpents, who refused to listen to the voice of the charmer until the lord of the castle, _wiser_ than any other exorciser, took them in hand. He was accustomed, at a certain period, to set forth in state, and, placing himself at a spot where he presumed he should be heard, raised his voice, and, in an authoritative tone, commanded the refractory animals to quit his estates. Not one dared to refuse; and great was the rustling, and hissing, and sliding, and coiling as the serpentine nation prepared to _déménager_, much against their inclination no doubt, but forced, by a power they could not withstand, to obey. None of these creatures interrupted our route, although there has long ceased to be a lord at Puy Taillé, and we arrived before day-break safely at the Hôtel de France, at Poitiers. CHAPTER VI. POITIERS--BATTLES--THE ARMIES--KING JOHN OF FRANCE--THE YOUNG WARRIOR--HÔTEL DU VREUX--AMPHITHEATRE--BLOSSAC--THE GREAT STONE--THE SCHOLARS--MUSEUM--THE DEMON'S STONE--GRANDE GUEULE. POITIERS is a city of the past: it is one of those towns in which the last lingering characteristics of the middle ages still repose; although they do so in the midst of an atmosphere of innovation. Modern improvement, slowly as it shows itself, is making progress at Poitiers, as at every town in France, and quietly sweeping away all the records of generations whose very memory is wearing out. If new buildings and walks and ornamental _alentours_ were as quickly erected and carried out as they are conceived, it would be a matter of rejoicing that whole cities of dirt and wretchedness should be made to disappear, and new ones to rise shining in their place; but, unfortunately, this cannot be the case. There are too many towns in France in the same position as Poitiers, all requiring to be rebuilt from the very ground to make them _presentable_ at the present day; blocks of stone strew every road, brick and mortar fill every street; a great deal of money is expended, but a great deal more is required; and, in the meantime, the new and the old strive for mastery, the former growing dull and dirty by the side of the latter, and, before the intended improvements are realized, becoming as little sightly as their more venerable neighbours. Much of _old_ Poitiers has been destroyed; and _new_ Poitiers is by no means beautiful. It is better, therefore, except in a few instances, to forget that modern hands have touched the sacred spot, and endeavour to enjoy the reminiscences still left, of which there are a great number full of interest and variety. When we sallied forth into the streets of Poitiers, our first impression was that of disappointment; but we had not long wandered amongst its dilapidated houses and churches before the enthusiasm we expected to feel there was awakened, and the spirit of the Black Prince was appeased by our reverence for everything we met. Poitiers belongs to so many ages--Gaul, Roman, Visigoth, Frank, English--that it holds a place in every great event which has occurred in France during the last nineteen centuries. Four important battles were fought in its neighbourhood: those of Clovis, of Charles Martel, of Edward of England, and of Henry III. of France; all these struggles brought about results of the utmost consequence to the country. The fields where these battles were fought are still pointed out, though the site of each is violently contested by antiquarians. That between Clovis and Alaric is now _said to be_ determined as having occurred at Voulon, on the banks of the Clain, instead of Vouillé, which has long been looked upon as the scene. In the same manner, furious disputes have prevailed as to where the defeat of Abderraman, by Charles Martel, took place; but we are bound now to believe that it was neither near Tours, Amboise, nor Loches, but at Moussais-la-Bataille, close to Poitiers, in the _delta_ formed by the waters of the Vienne and the Clain. The fatal fight, in which King John and all his chivalry were defeated by the Prince of Wales, is said, in like manner, to be between Beauvoir and Nouaille, and not at Beaumont, as has been asserted. There no longer exists a place called _Maupertuis_, which once indicated the spot; but it is ascertained that the part called La Cardinerie was once so designated, and, hard by, at a spot named _Champ-de-la-Bataille_, have been found bones and arms; which circumstance seems to have set the matter at rest. It matters little where these dreadful doings took place; all round Poitiers there are wide plains where armies might have encountered; but it would seem probable that the spot where the battle so fatal to France was really fought, must have been situated so as to have afforded the handful of English some signal advantage; or how was it possible for a few hundred exhausted men to conquer as many thousands! The English crossbows, which did such execution, were most likely stationed at some pass in the rocky hills of which there are many, and their sudden and unexpected onset must have sent forth the panic which caused the subsequent destruction of the whole French army. In fact, Froissart describes their position clearly enough. He names Maupertuis as a place two leagues to the north of Poitiers, and the spot chosen by the Black Prince as a hill full of bushes and vines, impracticable to cavalry, and favourable to archers: he concealed the latter in the thickets, connected the hedges, dug ditches, planted pallisades, and made barricades of waggons; in fact, formed of his camp a great redoubt, having but one narrow issue, guarded on each side by a double hedge. At the extremity of this defile was the whole English army, on foot, compact and sheltered on all sides; while, behind the hill that separated the two armies, was placed an ambuscade of six hundred knights and cross-bowmen. The French army was divided into three parts, and disposed in an oblique line. The left and foremost wing was commanded by the king's brother, the Duke of Orleans, the centre by the king's sons, and the reserve by the unfortunate monarch himself. Already the cry of battle was heard, when two holy men rushed forward to mediate between the foes; but in vain. The Prince of Wales,--that mighty conqueror,--knowing his weakness, and feeling his responsibility, would have even consented to give back the provinces he had taken--the captives of his valour--and agreed to remain for seven years without drawing the sword. But King John demanded that he should yield himself prisoner, with a hundred of his knights; and, confident in his strength, he had no second proposal to make. Sixty thousand warriors, full of pride, hope, and exultation, had spread themselves over the plains, confident of success, and looking forward to annihilate at a blow the harassed enemy which had so long annoyed them, but which were now hunted into the toils, and could be made an easy prey. The redoubtable Black Prince would no longer terrify France with his name: he knew his weakness, and had sent to offer terms the most advantageous, provided he and his impoverished bands might be permitted to go free; but, with victory in their hands, why should the insulted knights of France agree to his dictation? it were better to punish the haughty islanders as they deserved, and at once rid their country of a nest of hornets which allowed her no peace. The king, his four sons, all the princes and nobles of France were in arms, and had not followed the English to listen to terms at the last moment. King John,--the very flower of chivalry, the soul of honour and valour,--rode through his glittering ranks, and surveyed his banners with delight and pride. "At Paris, at Chartres, at Rouen, at Orleans," he exclaimed, "you defied these English; you desired to encounter them hand to hand. Now they are before you: behold! I point them out to you. Now you can, if you will, take vengeance for all the ills they have done to France; for all the slaughter they have made. Now, if you will, you may combat these fatal enemies." The signal was given: the gorgeous troops rushed forth, their helmets glittering with gold and steel, their swords bright, and their adornments gay; their hearts full of resolve, and their spirits raised for conquest. A short space of time sufficed to produce a strange contrast: twenty thousand men, with the Dauphin of France at their head, flying before six hundred tattered English! Chandos and the Black Prince behold from a height the unexpected event: they follow up the advantage; the hero of so many fights rouses himself, and becomes resistless as Alexander: "See how he puts to flight the gaudy Persians With nothing but a rusty helmet on!" Of all his hosts,--of all his friends, and guards, and warriors, and nobles, what remains to the French king? He stands alone amidst a heap of slain, with a child fighting by his side: their swords fall swiftly and heavily on every one that dares approach them; their armour is hacked and hewn; their plumes torn; the blood flows from their numerous wounds; but they still stand firm, and dispute their lives to the last. The boy performs prodigies of valour; he is worthy to be the son of Edward himself; but he is at last struck down, while his frantic father deals with his battle-axe blows which appal the stoutest heart. No one dares to approach the lion at bay: they hem him in; they call to and entreat him to lay down his arms; he is blinded with the blood which flows from two deep wounds in his face; and, faint and staggering, he gazes round on the slaughtered heaps at his feet, and gives his weapon into the hands of an English knight. Over and over again has the story of this defeat been told, yet is the relation always stirring, always exciting, and the remainder full of romance and glory to all parties concerned. The only blot upon the _ermine_ is, that the valorous boy who so distinguished himself should, a few years later, forget the lesson of honour and magnanimity he then learnt, and, by his disgraceful breach of faith, expose the father he defended to so much sorrow and humiliation. The _Roman_ remains at Poitiers claim the first attention of the traveller; and we, therefore, soon after our arrival, walked down the rugged Rue de la Lamproie to an _auberge_ which has for its sign a board on which is inscribed, "Aux _Vreux_-Antiquités Romaines." The meaning of this mysterious word, which has puzzled many people, is this: Here formerly existed a house which belonged to a bishop of Evreux; and was, consequently, called Hôtel d'Evreux. The last proprietor, imagining that the word _Evreux_ meant _Roman Antiquities_, was seized with the happy thought of changing it to _Vreux_, as simpler and more expressive; and so it has remained. The _Vreux_ are very curious, and give a stupendous idea of the size of the amphitheatre which once existed on this spot. The whole of the court and large gardens of this inn offer remains of the seats, steps, temples, and vaults. One huge opening is fearful to look at, and preserves its form entire: it appears to have been an entrance for the beasts and cars and companies of gladiators, which figured in the arena. Garlands of luxuriant vines, with white and black grapes in clusters, now adorn the ruined walls; and fruit-trees and flowering shrubs grow on the terraces. It requires some attention to trace the form of the amphitheatre; as so many houses and walls are built in, and round about its site. The foundation is attributed to the Emperor Gallienus, and occurred probably in the third century. Medals of many kinds of metal have been frequently found in excavating, which prove the period; but the learned have not been silent on so tempting a theme, and the history of the Arènes de Poitiers has occupied the attention of all the antiquaries of France. It appears that the size was greater than that of Nismes. It is strange that so much of the ruins should still remain of the amphitheatre in spite of so many centuries of destruction acting upon it, and, notwithstanding its having been constantly resorted to as a quarry, whenever materials were required for construction. In one of the quarters of the town, the Rue des Arènes and the Bourg Cani, where the poorest people live, almost all the houses are formed of the chambers belonging to a Roman establishment. The roofs of almost all are Roman: the cellars, the stables, and the granaries. No doubt Poitiers was a place of the greatest importance under their sway, as these extensive ruins indicate. The park of Blossac is the most attractive promenade of Poitiers: it is beautifully laid out, and well kept. An intendant of Poitou, M. de la Bourdonnaye-Blossac, established it in 1752, with the benevolent intent of giving employment, in a hard winter, to the poor. In constructing it, a great many sepulchres of the Gauls, and funereal vases, were discovered; some of which are preserved in the museum. The view is charming from the terrace of Blossac above the Clain, and one is naturally led to pursue the agreeable walks which invite the steps at every turn. We found that, by following as they pointed, we should arrive at most of the places we desired to see; and, as the interior of the town has few attractions in itself, we resolved to skirt it, and continue our way along the ramparts. They extend a long way, and are extremely pleasant in their whole extent. Remnants of ancient towers and rampart walls appear here and there, the river runs clear and bright beneath, and beyond are gently undulating hills; while, occasionally, heaps of grey rocks, of peculiar forms, some looking like temples, others like towers, rise suddenly from their green base, surprising the eye. In the direction of the most remarkable of these, may be found a _pierre levée_, said, by veracious chroniclers, to have been raised on the spot by the great saint of Poitiers, Sainte Radegonde, who is reported to have brought the great stone on her head, and the pillars which support it in the pockets of her _muslin apron_: one of these pillars fell from its frail hold to the ground, and the devil instantly caught it up and carried it away, which satisfactorily accounts for the stone being elevated only at one end. Unfortunately the same legend is so often repeated respecting different saints, and in particular respecting _Saint_ Magdalen, who has often been known to establish herself in wild places, bringing her rugged stool with her, that it would seem some or other of these holy people _plagiarised_ from the other. Rabelais attributes this stone to Pantagruel, who, "seeing that the scholars of Poitiers, having a great deal of leisure, did not know how to spend their time, was moved with compassion, and, one day, took from a great rock, which was called Passe-Lourdin, an immense block, twelve toises square, and fourteen _pans_ thick, and placed it upon four pillars in the midst of a field, _quite at its ease_, in order that the said scholars, when they could think of nothing else to do, might pass their time in mounting on the said stone, and there banqueting with quantities of flagons, hams, and pasties; also in cutting their names on it with a knife: this stone is now called La Pierre Levée. And in memory of this, no one can be matriculated in the said University of Poitiers who has not drunk at the cabalistic fountain of Croustelles, been to Passe-Lourdin, and mounted on La Pierre Levée." Bouchet's opinion is, that the stone was placed by Aliénor d'Aquitaine, about 1150, to be used at a fair which was held in the field where it stands. It is, no doubt, one of the Dolmen, whose strange and mysterious appearance may well have puzzled both the learned and unlearned in every age since they were first erected. One of the most interesting monuments in Poitiers is the museum; for it is a Roman structure--a temple or a tomb--almost entire, and less injured than might have been expected, serving as a receptacle for all the antiquities which have been collected together at different periods, in order to form a _musée_. They are appropriately placed in this building, and are seen with much more effect in its singular walls than if looked at on the comfortable shelves of a boarded and white-washed chamber. As is usual in those cases, disputes run high respecting the original founder and the destination of this building, unique in its kind. Some insist that it is a tomb erected to Claudia Varenilla, by her husband, Marcus Censor Pavius; others see in it a pagan temple, transformed into a place of early Christian worship; others, the _first cathedral_ of Poitiers. It has undergone numerous changes of destination, at all events, having been used as a church, as a bell-foundry, as a depôt for _economical soup_, and as a manufactory. The Society of Antiquaries have at length gained possession of it, and it is to be hoped that it will know no further vicissitudes. In this temple may be seen numerous treasures of Gaulic and Roman and Middle-age art of great interest: sepulchral stones inscribed with the names of Claudia Varenilla, Sabinus, and Lepida; Roman altars, military boundary-stones, amphoræ, vases, capitals, and pottery, all found in the neighbourhood of Poitiers: a good deal of beautiful carving from the destroyed castle of Bonnivet, fine specimens of the Renaissance, and numerous relics of ruined churches. Among the treasures is a block of stone, said to be one on which the Maid of Orleans rested her foot when she mounted her horse, in full armour, to accompany Charles VII. on his coronation. A piece of stone from the old church of St. Hilaire is exhibited, which, when struck, emits so horrible an effluvia as to render it unapproachable. The church is said to have been built of this stone; if so, the workmen must have been considerably annoyed while constructing it, and deserved _indulgences_ for their perseverance in continuing their labour. It would appear that this is a calcareous[5] rock, which has been described by several French naturalists who have met with it in the Pyrenees, at the Brèche de Roland, and on the height of Mont Perdu, and whose odour of _sulphureous hydrogen_ is supposed to arise from the animal matter enclosed in its recesses. Some marbles have the same exhalation, yet are employed in furniture: as the smell does not appear to be offensive unless the stone is struck with some force, it may, perhaps, be unobserved; but I could scarcely regret that the church of St. Hilaire was almost totally destroyed when I heard that such disagreeable materials entered into its construction. No doubt the presence of the arch-enemy was considered as the cause of this singular effluvia in early times, and the monks turned it, as they did all accidents, to good account. [Footnote 5: Calcaire hépathique. The stone used for the casing of the exterior of the Great Pyramid, and for the lining of the chambers and passages, was obtained from the Gebel Mokattam, on the Arabian side of the valley of the Nile. It appears to be similar to that named above, as it is described as being "a compact limestone," called by geologists "swine stone," or "stink-stone," from emitting, when struck, a fetid odour.] The Grand Gueule, a horrible beast, discovered in the caverns of the abbey of Sainte Croix, who had eaten up several nuns, was probably found out by the smell of sulphur which pervaded his den, and brought forth to punishment by the holy men who were guided to his retreat by this means,--their instrument being a criminal condemned to death, who combated the beast, and killed him. The dragon was usually carried in processions, following the precious relic of a piece of the true cross which had vanquished him; and his effigy in wood, with the inscription, _Gargot fecit_, 1677, exists still, though it has ceased to be used. CHAPTER VII. NOTRE DAME--THE KEYS--THE MIRACLE--PROCESSION--ST. RADEGONDE--TOMB OF THE SAINT--FOOT-PRINT--LITTLE LOUBETTE--THE COUNT OUTWITTED--THE CORDELIER--LATE JUSTICE--THE TEMPLARS. POITIERS is one of the largest towns in France, but is very thinly inhabited; immense gardens, orchards, and fields, extend between the streets; the spaces are vast, but there is no beauty whatever in the architecture or the disposition of the buildings. The squares are wide and open, but surrounded by irregular, slovenly-looking houses, without an approach to beauty or elegance; the pavement is rugged, and cleanliness is not a characteristic of the place. The churches are extremely curious, although, in general, so battered and worn as to present the aspect of a heap of ruins at first sight. This is particularly the case with Notre Dame, so revered by Richard Coeur de Lion, in the great _place_, before which a market is held. I never saw a church whose appearance was so striking, not from its beauty or grace, but from the singularly devastated, ruined state in which it towers above the buildings round, as if it belonged to another world. Nothing about it has the least resemblance to anything else: its heaps of encrusted figures, arches within arches, niches, turrets covered with rugged scales, round towers with countless pillars, ornaments, saints, canopies, and medallions, confuse the mind and the eye. All polish is worn from the surface, and so crumbling does it look, that it would seem impossible that the rough and disjointed mass of stones, piled one on the other, could keep together; yet, when you examine it closely, you find that all is solid and firm, and that it would require the joint efforts of time and violence to throw it down, even now. The peculiar colour of the stone of which it is built, assists the strangeness of its effect; for it has an ancient, ivory hue, and all its elaborate carving is not unlike that on some old ivory cabinet grown yellow with age. A long series of scriptural histories, from the scene in Eden, upwards, are represented on this wonderful façade; besides much which has not yet been explained. Its original construction has been attributed to Constantine, whose equestrian statue once figured above one of the portals. St. Hilaire, St. Martin, and all the saints in the calendar, still fill their niches, more or less defaced; row after row, sitting and standing, decorate the whole surface, in compartments; choirs of angels, troops of cherubims, surround sacred figures of larger size; and when it is recollected that all this was once covered with gilding and colours, it is difficult to imagine anything more splendid and imposing than it must have been. The interior suffered dreadfully from the zeal of the Protestants, who destroyed tombs and altars without mercy. One group--the Entombment of Christ--common in most churches, is remarkable for the details of costume it presents, and the excellence of its execution. It belonged formerly to the abbey of the Trinity, and has been transferred to Notre Dame. The date seems to be about the end of the fifteenth century; the figures are of the natural size, and the original colouring still remains; the anatomical developments are faithful to exaggeration, and the finish of every part is admirable. Some of the female heads are charming, with their costly ornaments, hoods, and embroidered veils; and the male figures, with the strange hats of the period, like that worn by Louis XI., have a singularly battered and torn effect, in spite of the smart fringed handkerchiefs bound round them, with ends hanging down and pieces of plate armour depending from their sides. Several of the adornments of the altars are those formerly belonging to the church of the Carmelites, now the chapel of the _grand seminaire_. Above the crucifix which surmounts the tabernacle, is attached to the roof a bunch of keys: these are, according to tradition, the same miraculous keys taken from the traitor who proposed to deliver them to the English. The history of this transaction is as follows:-- In 1202, Poitou had risen against John Lackland, of England, Duke of Aquitaine and Count of Poitou, taking the part of young Arthur, whom he had just made prisoner at Mirebeau. The town of Poitiers had closed its gates against John, warned by the example of Tours, which he had lately sacked and burnt. The King had posted his troops in the towns of Limousin and Perigord, with orders to his captains to endeavour to take Poitiers by surprise. The mayor of Poitiers had a secretary who was both cunning and avaricious, who, bribed highly by the English, had consented to deliver the town to them. Accordingly, on Easter eve, a party of the enemy, under false colours, arrived at the Porte de la Tranchée; the secretary repaired instantly to the chamber of the mayor, to which he had access, expecting, as usual, that the keys would be found there; but, to his surprise, they were removed, nor could he find them in any other accustomed place. The traitor hastened to inform the English of the fact, by throwing a paper to them from the ramparts, requesting that they would wait till four o'clock in the morning, when he should be able to execute his purpose. At this hour he re-entered the mayor's chamber, and telling him that a gentleman wished to set out on a mission to the king of France at that early hour, begged that the keys might be delivered to him. The mayor sought for the keys, but they were nowhere to be found: he suspected some treason; and without loss of time assembled the inhabitants, and required that they should go at once to the Porte de la Tranchée, in arms, to be ready in case of surprise. The report soon spread that the English were at the Tranchée, and the belfry sent forth its peals to summon all men to arms: in a very short space the whole town was roused, and every one hurried to the gates, where a strange spectacle met their view from the turrets. They beheld upwards of fifteen hundred English, dead or prone on the ground, and others killing them! The gates were thrown open, and the inhabitants sallied forth, making the remainder an easy prey, and taking many prisoners: the which declared to the mayor and the dignitaries of the town all the treason which had been arranged; and further related, that at the hour agreed on, they beheld before the gates a queen more richly dressed than imagination can conceive, and with her a nun and a bishop, followed by an immense army of soldiers, who immediately attacked them. They instantly became aware that the personages they saw were no other than the Blessed Virgin, St. Hilaire, and Ste. Radegonde, whose bodies were in the town, and, seized with terror and despair, they fell madly on each other and slaughtered their companions. All the towns-people, on hearing this, offered thanks to God, and returned to keep their fast with great devotion. As for the disloyal secretary, his fate was not known, for he was never seen afterwards; and, says the chronicler, "it is natural to suppose that by one of the other gates he cast himself into the river, _or_ that the devil carried him off bodily." The miracle had not ended there; for while these things were going on at the gates, the poor mayor, in great perturbation, had hurried to the church of Notre Dame la Grande, and throwing himself before the altar, recommended the town to the protection of God and the Mother of Mercy. "While he was praying, all on a sudden _he felt the keys in his arms_; at which he returned thanks to Heaven, as did many pious persons who were with him." Bouchet, who relates this _fact_, adds:--"In memory of this _fine miracle_, the inhabitants of the said Poitiers have ever since made, and continue, a grand and notable procession of all the colleges and convents, every year, all round the walls of the said town, within, the day before Easter: the which extends for more than a league and a half. And in memory of the said miracle, _I have made these four lines of rhythm_:-- "L'an mil deux cens deux comme on clame, Batailla pour ceux de Poietiers, Contre les Anglois nostre Dame, Et les garda de leurs dangiers." In commemoration of this event, statues of the three saviours of the town were erected above the gate, and in a little chapel near: chapels to the Virgin were placed in every possible nook, and a solemn procession was instituted to take place every year, on Easter Monday, when the mayor's lady had the privilege of presenting to the Virgin the magnificent velvet robe, which she wore on the occasion. This ceremony was continued as late as 1829, since when the _cortège_ no longer goes round the town as formerly, but a service is performed in the church. The belief of this miracle seems to form an article of faith; for the story was told me by three persons of different classes, all of whom spoke of it as a tradition in which they placed implicit credit. Sainte Radegonde seems to hold, however, the highest rank of the three defenders of Poitiers. "She is a great saint," said the exhibitor of the Museum to me, "and performs miracles every day." "Ste. Radegonde," said the bibliothécaire--"is a great protectress of this town, and has personally interfered to assist us in times of need--but, perhaps, you are not Catholic." "The great saint," said a votaress, who was selling _chapelets_ at her tomb, "does not let a month escape without showing her power; only six weeks ago a poor child, who was paralyzed, was brought here by its mother, having been given up by the doctors; and the moment it touched the marble where it was laid, all its limbs became as strong as ever, and it walked out of the church." We, of course, lost as little time as possible in paying our _devoirs_ to so wondrous a personage. The church is a very venerable structure, surmounted by a spire covered with slate. The Saint was the wife of Clotaire the First, and quitted her court to live a religious life, having built a monastery in honour of the true cross, a piece of which had been sent to her from Constantinople by the Emperor Justinian. She erected a church in honour of the Virgin, which should serve for a burial-place for her nuns; this was beyond the walls of her monastery, and a college of priests was added to it to supply religious instruction to her community. The church was finished, and its foundress died in 587. She was interred there by the celebrated Gregory of Tours. The tomb, of the simplest construction of fine black marble, still exists in a subterranean chapel, the object of religious pilgrimages without end; and when, in the fourteenth century, it was opened by Jean, Duc de Berry, Count of Poitou, brother of Charles the Wise, the body was found in perfect preservation. In 1562 the Protestants took possession of the church, and broke open the tomb, scattering and burning the bones; but some of them were, nevertheless, gathered together and replaced in the marble, which was joined by iron cramps, and does not exhibit much injury. This huge mass of black marble has a very disgusting appearance, from being entirely covered (except at one little corner, kept clean to show its texture) with the runnings of the countless candles perched upon it by the pilgrims, who arrive in such crowds at some periods of the year, that the vault becomes so hot and close as to be unsafe to remain in long. These candles are kept constantly burning, and the devotion to the Saint also burns as brightly as ever. St. Agnes and St. Disciolus repose near their abbess. Pepin, King of Aquitaine, lies somewhere in their neighbourhood; but the exact spot is not ascertained. A miraculous foot-print is still shown, which it is recorded that Jesus Christ left _when_ he visited the cell of the holy abbess: the stone, carefully preserved, is called Le Pas de Dieu, and was formerly in the convent of St. Croix. We had some difficulty to escape from the earnest exhortations of numerous devout sellers of rosaries, who insisted on our buying their medals, _chapelets_, &c., assuring us that they were of extraordinary virtue; and we could scarcely believe that we had not been transported several centuries back, when we saw the extreme devotion and zeal they showed, both towards the Saint, and the money she might bring from devotees. Close to Ste. Radegonde is the cathedral church of St. Pierre, principally built by Henry II. of England, a very fine specimen of the grandest style of art; vast and beautiful, but with its naves rather too low. The principal portals are very much ornamented, and its towers have much elegance: but the restorations it has undergone have been injudicious, and the modern painted glass which replaces the old is extremely bad; but many of the windows are of fine forms, and, on the whole, there is a good deal to admire in St. Pierre. But little vestige remains now of the once famous convent of St. Pierre le Puellier, which owed its foundation to a miracle: it is one very often told as having occurred on like occasions; but is apparently still believed in Poitiers, where devotees of easy credence seem to abound. Loubette was a young girl in the service of the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine, and had been witness in Jerusalem of the discovery of the true cross. She was a native of Brittany; and how she came to the holy city does not appear; suffice it that she wished to return to her own country. The empress, in dismissing her, made her a present of a piece of the true cross, and a part of the crown of thorns. Loubette placed the relics in her _little bag_, and set out on her journey _on foot_. She was of very small stature, lame, and crooked, extremely weak, and hardly able to move; however, such as she was, she took her way from Jerusalem to Poitiers, where _having arrived_, and feeling fatigued, she lay down before she entered the town under a willow, hanging her little bag (_gibecière_) on a branch, and went to sleep. When she awoke she looked for her bag; but the branch she had hung it on--similar to the steeple to which the horse of the Baron, of veracious memory, was attached--had risen in the night to such a height, "that," says the chronicler, "the said virgin could not reach her said _gibecière_." She immediately sought the Bishop of Poitiers, who, struck with the miracle, recommended her to present herself to the Count of Poitou, and solicit of his piety the means of raising a church, and supporting a chapter of clerks and priests to do duty there. The Count of Poitou is said to have been joyous and pleased when he heard her relation; but it does not appear that his generosity equalled his delight, for he did not seem disposed to grant anything to Loubette for the establishment of her church; however, unable at last to resist her entreaties, he agreed to give her as much ground as so lame and weak a creature could creep over in a day: it appears that he was not aware of her expedition from the Holy Land. He soon had cause to repent of his jest, for scarcely had Loubette commenced her walk, accompanied by the servants of the Count, than she distanced them all, and got over so much ground that they were terrified; for, wherever she stepped, the ground rose and marked what was hers. The Count hurried after her in great alarm, and, stopping her progress, entreated her to be content with what she had already gained, as he began to think she would acquire all his domain.[6] [Footnote 6: The same legend is told as having happened in England on the domains of the family of Titchborne.] On the banks of the Clain is still pointed out a mound of earth on the spot where _Saint_ Loubette crossed the river without wetting her feet. There is no end to the miracles wrought in this favoured city: one is told so remarkable that it deserves to be recorded. It occurred in favour of Gauthier de Bruges, bishop of Poitiers--a very virtuous and learned man, who had from a simple _cordelier_ been placed on the episcopal throne by Pope Nicholas III. A question of supremacy having arisen between the archbishops of Bourges and Bordeaux, Gauthier declared for the former, and was charged by him to execute some acts of ecclesiastic jurisdiction against his rival. The archbishop of Bordeaux afterwards became pope, under the name of Clement V., protected by Philippe le Bel, and in memory of his opposition deposed Gauthier, enjoining him to retire into his convent. The bishop of Poitiers was obliged to submit to the authority of the sovereign pontiff; but at the same time protested against the abuse of power of which he was the victim; and he appealed against the sentence of deposition _to God and the council to come_. He died shortly after, and desired to be buried with his act of appeal in his hand. When Clement V. came to Poitiers to treat with Philippe le Bel on _important and secret_ affairs--nothing less than the suppression of the order of the Templars--he lodged at the Cordelier convent, in the very church where Gauthier was buried. Being informed of the act of appeal which the unfortunate bishop would not part with at the time of his death, he had a great desire to see it, and commanded that his tomb should be opened. Accordingly, in the dead of night, by the light of torches, his desire was fulfilled. One of the pope's archdeacons descended into the vault, and in the dead hand of the bishop beheld the scroll: he endeavoured to take possession of it, but found it impossible to do so, so firmly was it grasped by the bony fingers. The pope ordered the archdeacon to enjoin the dead man to give it up on pain of punishment, which the other having done, and added, that he pledged himself to restore the paper when the pope had read it, the hand relaxed its grasp, and the act was released. The archdeacon handed it up to the pope; but when he tried to leave the vault, he found that a secret power prevented him from stirring from the place, and he was forced to remain there as hostage till the scroll was read and replaced in the hand of the bishop; he then found that his limbs had resumed their power, and he was able to quit the spot. Clement V., anxious to repair his injustice, afterwards paid extraordinary honours to the memory of Bishop Gauthier. It was at this time, in 1306, the interview took place which decided the fate of the Templars; the pope lodged with the Cordeliers, the King with the Jacobins, and, in order that they might confer more readily, a bridge was thrown across the street, forming a communication between the two convents. For sixteen months Clement remained at Poitiers on this important business; and here he had interviews with the master of the Templars, summoned from Cyprus for the occasion: here, most of the plans, destined to overthrow their dangerous power, were concocted, with less reference to justice than expediency. The ancient palace of the Counts of Poitou is now the Palais de Justice. A fine Grecian portico which we had passed several times in our search for what we expected would be a Gothic entrance, leads to the only part which remains of the ancient building: namely, a magnificent hall of very large dimensions, surrounded by circular arches and delicate pillars, and having a good deal of fine carving, and an antique roof of chestnut wood. The exterior, which is adorned with figures of the sovereigns of Poitou, we could not get a glimpse of, as the palace is so hemmed in by buildings that it is only from the gardens and windows of some private houses that any view of it can be obtained. Elionore of Aquitaine, her husband and sons, often inhabited this abode; and it was in the great hall that Charles VII. was proclaimed King of France. One can but regret that so little remains of the original structure, and that the buildings which modern taste and necessity have added, should so ill accord with the old model; for nothing can be more misplaced than the _classic temple_ which conducts to a Norman hall. CHAPTER VIII. CHÂTEAU DE LA FÉE--KING RENÉ--THE MINIATURES--THE POST-OFFICE FUNCTIONARY--ORIGINALITY--THE ENGLISH BANK-NOTE--ST. PORCHAIRE--THE DEAD CHILD--MONTIERNEUF--GUILLAUME GUY GEOFFROY--THOMAS À BECKET--CHOIR OF ANGELS--RELICS--THE ARMED HERMIT--A SAINT--THE REPUDIATED QUEEN--ELIONORE--THE BOLD PRIEST--LAY. ONE of the most remarkable houses in Poitiers, of which not many ancient remain, is one now used as a school by the Christian Brothers. It is in the Rue de la Prévôté, close to the Place de la Pilori, and has been a prison. The door and windows are finely ornamented, as is the whole façade, with curiously-carved figures and foliage. Melusine, with her serpent's or fish's tail, and her glass and comb, appears amongst them--that inexplicable figure so frequently recurring in almost every part of France, and even yet requiring her riddle to be solved. As we knew that this part of the world was her head-quarters, we resolved to visit her at her own castle of Lusignan, which would be in our way when we left Poitiers. In this we were confirmed when we went to the Bibliothèque, for the gentleman to whom we were indebted for much attention in showing us the chief treasures there contained, recommended us not to pass by without seeing the ruins of the _château de la Fée_. The university of Poitiers formerly held a very high rank, and was frequented by scholars from every part of the world. France, England, Scotland, Ireland, and Germany, sent their students: it was founded by Charles VII., and Pope Eugène IV., and was in great esteem in spite of the jests of Rabelais and others at its expense. One old author speaks somewhat irreverently of the learned town; calling its students "the flute-players and professors of the _jeu de paume_ of Poitiers." Corneille makes his Menteur a pupil of the college of Poitiers; but Menot, a preacher of the period of the League, has a passage in one of his sermons which is sufficiently complimentary: in relating the Judgment of Solomon, he makes him say to one of the women, "Hold your tongue, for I see that you have never studied at Angers or Poitiers, and know not how to plead." It is now the head of an academy which comprises the four departments of Vienne, Deux-Sèvres, La Vendée, and Charente Inférieure. The public library is very extensive, and possesses many valuable volumes. The first library named in French history is that of William the Ninth, Count of Poitiers and Duke of Aquitaine, which was preserved in his palace at Poitiers. At the revolution, all that ages had accumulated was dispersed, but much has since been recollected, and amongst the twenty-five thousand volumes there are many very precious. There are more than fifteen hundred works relative to the history of Poitou, and it has, within a few years, been enriched by a present from the British government of a fine collection of historical and legal documents connected with this part of the country. That which, however, interested me most, was a beautiful manuscript, said to have been executed by no other hand than the royal one of the good King René. I have no doubt it was done by a very skilful artist whom his munificence protected; but if, as is probable, he painted the work on chivalry now in the King's library at Paris, he did _not_ paint the beautiful leaves of the Psalter which is attributed to him; there is too much knowledge of art in the latter to permit one to imagine that the same person could do both; for though the work on chivalry has great merit, it is of an inferior kind to this. The birds, the flowers, the foliage, and the miniatures, are in perfection, and betray an Italian touch; true it is that the celebrated partridges, which King René loved so well to paint, are frequently repeated, and the legend is told while the manuscript is being looked at, of his occupation in depicting his favourite bird, when he was informed of the loss of his kingdom, and so interested was he in his work that he never laid down his pencil, but proceeded to finish it off as if nothing had happened. Still, I think, whoever painted this book was the royal amateur's master in the art; it appears certain that the beautiful volume was presented by him to Jeanne de Laval, his wife: it is decorated with the arms of Anjou, Sicily, and Laval, and the gold and azure are brilliant beyond description, the doves and other birds are of glittering plumage, and the flowers charming. Another psalter, of still more exquisite execution, is of later date, 1510; and though the gold is far less dazzling than that which adorns René's book, nothing can exceed the beauty of the birds and flowers introduced on the margins. One leaf, _all owls_, has a peculiarly _feathered_ appearance; the solemn birds sit on wreaths in the most elegant attitudes, and at the top of the page one _Grand Duke_, larger and more dignified than the rest, seems to look down on his people with satisfaction. The lupins, monkshood, marguerites, and other simple flowers, so often introduced in illuminated borders, are done with infinite skill, and _strewn_ about the gold ground as if scattered there by chance: some with their stalks upwards and in disorder, evidently showing that they were painted from nature, probably from the artist's own garden in his convent. We found in Poitiers amongst the people, very little pride of their town; they seem in fact to be inspired with a spirit of depreciation, which surprised me; and I have seldom found in any French town so much difficulty in discovering old houses and sites. "Ah, ça ne vaut pas la peine, ma foi! c'est bien vieux!" was the general answer given to any inquiry. I had occasion to go to the post-office for letters from England, having sent the _commissionnaire_ of the inn in vain. I knew that several were waiting for me, but being positively told that there were none, was going away, much disappointed, when a man ran after me across the great square, begging that I would return, as the director wished to speak to me. I did so immediately, when I was accosted by a person I had not before seen, who, instead of producing my letters, began a conversation on the subject of Poitiers, and my journey to it; having informed himself where I came from, with all the minuteness of an American questioner, he proceeded to say there were letters for a person of my name; but as he required my passport, which I found to my vexation I had left at the inn, I was tantalized with a view of the handwriting of my friends through a grating. The functionary, however, detained me still to entreat that I would satisfy his curiosity as to what we could possibly have been admiring the evening before on the ramparts near the Porte du Pont Joubert, on the banks of the Clain. "I observed you, ladies," said he, "pointing to the opposite hills, which are nothing but blocks of grey rocks, ordinary enough, and leaning over the walls watching the course of the river, which is but a poor stream; and remarking the trees on the promenades, which, after all, are but trees; in fact, it puzzled me to think what strangers could find at Poitiers to like." Much amused at his originality, and the singular way in which he showed it, I replied that we found much to admire in the walks, the scenery, and the churches, and were surprised that he thought so little of his native town. He seemed, as well as several of his assistant clerks, and a person who patiently waited for his letters till the interview was concluded, to think me much the most original of the two; and, having no more to say, handed me my letters with the remark that I need not fetch my passport, as he had no doubt they were really destined for me. It was then evident to my mind that he had laid this plan to detain the inquisitive travellers who had excited his curiosity, till he could catechise them himself, and to that end had lured us _in person_ to the post-office, and detained us and our letters till his pleasure was secured. We were not sorry that nothing more was likely to arrive at Poitiers for us, as we were to pay so much for the delivery. It appears that strangers rarely remain more than a few hours here, which may account for so much interest being excited in the solitary town by our strolling. We had delayed changing some English money, and thinking it best to do so in case of necessity, inquired the way to a banker's. We were directed to several; but, apparently, business was not very urgent with them, for at most of the houses we found the head person gone into the country, and no delegate left. At last, we met with one at home; but he appeared utterly at a loss when he looked at the unlucky English bank-note which we presented to be changed, never, as he assured us, having seen such a _bit of paper_ before; but kindly offering, if we would leave it a few hours, to have it seen and commented on, and then, if approved, and we liked to pay a somewhat unreasonable number of francs, the sum should be delivered to us. We thought the whole transaction so _bizarre_ that we declined his offer, resolving rather to trust to chance till we reached La Rochelle,--our next destination--than put ourselves to the charges he recommended. He returned our note with a mortified air, saying, "Very well; as you please; but there are people in Poitiers who would not give two sous for your bit of paper." The house in which he lived had a very antique appearance, and we had mounted a curious tower with winding-staircase to reach his bureau; I therefore asked him if there was anything remarkable attached to its history; but he seemed never to have thought about it, and merely remarked that it was "bien vieille; mais rien de plus." He looked after us with pity, as we took our leave, and probably entertained himself afterwards at our expense with his townsman of the post-office: "Ces Anglais! sont-ils originaux! par exemple!" Nothing daunted, we proceeded to visit the curious old church of St. Porchaire, once a monastery dependent on the chapter of St. Hilaire le Grand. The church of the priory is that part which remains. The interior is quite without beauty; but what is worthy of note is its fine Roman tower, and a portal of great singularity. The latter is ornamented with medallions of the rudest workmanship; one capital represents Daniel and the prophet Habakkuk, with lions of a strange shape; but, in order that no mistake may arise as to their identity, besides the inscription which surrounds the medallion, _Hic Daniel Domino vincit coetum leonum_, the artist has engraved, in conspicuous letters, between the animals, the word _Leones_. The church of St. Hilaire--a great saint in Poitiers--has been so much altered as to leave little very interesting of its original construction. This saint was much distinguished for the miracles he performed; the memory of one is still preserved by a pyramid, with mutilated bas-reliefs, recording the facts thus related by the annalist of Aquitaine:-- "When St. Hilaire visited the churches of the city, as he went through the streets he was followed by so many people that he could hardly be seen, for he was on foot. A woman, who lived in a house now situated before the _Grands Escolles_, knowing that he was passing her dwelling, while she was bathing her infant, seized with an ardent desire to behold the saint, left it in the bath, and ran out; when she returned she found her child drowned. Whereupon she called out, 'Oh, my God! shall I lose my child for having done that which was praiseworthy!' and in a rage of grief took her little dead child in her arms, covered with a piece of linen, and carried it to St. Hilaire, to whom she declared the case and the accident, praying him, in great faith and hope, to entreat of God that her child might be restored to life. "St. Hilaire, seeing the grief of the poor mother, who had but this only child, and also her great reliance, and considering that the infant had died in consequence of the mother's great desire to see him, set himself to pray, prostrating himself on the earth with great humility and tears, where he remained a long time. And he, who was of a great age, would not rise from that posture till God had, at his request, resuscitated the child. He then, taking it in his arms, presented it to the mother, who gave it nourishment before all the people, who, full of wonder, gave thanks to God and St. Hilaire." The church of Montierneuf is one of the most ancient in Poitiers. It contains the tomb of its founder, Guillaume Guy Geoffroy, Count of Poitiers and Aquitaine; who, having led a very irregular life, thought to atone for all, by erecting a magnificent monastery for Cluniac monks. Except this tomb, there is little remaining of interest; but the effigy of Guillaume is well executed and curious, as he lies with his long curled hair and his crown, his _aumônière_, and his singularly-shaped shoes. He was one of the most daring of those wild Williams who distinguished themselves for profligacy; but this pious act of his seems entirely to have redeemed his memory. It is recounted that, while the abbey was in progress, the King of France, Philippe I., came to Poitiers, hoping to induce William to assist him against the Duke of Normandy. The monarch, struck with the grandeur of the new constructions, exclaimed that they were "worthy of a king;" to which the Count replied, haughtily, "Am I not, then, a king?" Philippe did not see fit to make any further rejoinder on so delicate a subject. The tomb of this redoubted prince was opened in 1822, and the body found quite perfect; as this circumstance, which is by no means unusual, was in former times always considered as a proof of the sanctity of the person interred, it is to be hoped all the stories of Count William's vagaries are mere scandals, invented by evil-disposed persons; and that the history of his having established a convent, all the nuns of which were persons of more than suspected propriety, and having placed a female favourite of his own at their head, had no foundation in truth. Something similar is told of several powerful princes, so it may well be a fable altogether. The botanical garden of Poitiers now occupies the place where the abbey of St. Cyprian stood, with all its dependencies; we sat on some reversed capitals, which now form seats in a flowery nook, and climbed a stair of a tower where seeds are dried,--the only morsel of the great convent now existing. Bouchet tells one of his strange stories of a monk of this monastery, which is curious, as it relates to that dangerous and powerful subject of the harassed King of England, Henry II., who must have had enough to do to circumvent the art and cunning of the wily archbishop who was always working for his ruin and the exaltation of the Church. The annalist relates that-- "At this period, Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury, in England, was a fugitive from his country, because the English princes desired to kill _and_ put him to death: for that he would not agree to certain constitutions, statutes, and ordinances, that Henry II. and the princes of England had made against the liberties and privileges of the Church, and the holy canons thereof. For they wished to confer dignities and other benefices and take the fruits, thereby profaning the sanctuary of God. And the said archbishop was seven years, or thereabouts, in France, which land is the refuge of popes and holy personages; and he had great communication and familiarity with the said Pope Alexander, he being in the town of Sens, where he chiefly staid while in France. And the archbishop was sometimes at the abbey of Pontigny, and sometimes at the monastery of St. Columbe. Now, I read what follows in an ancient _pancarte_ of the abbey of St. Cyprian of Poitiers, brought there by a monk of the said, called Babilonius, who, for some grudge owed him by his abbot, was driven from his abbey, and went to complain of his wrong to Pope Alexander at Sens, while the Archbishop Thomas sojourned there; from whom this monk received a holy vial to place in the church of St. Gregory, where reposes the body of the blessed Saint Loubette. I have translated the said writing from Latin into the vulgar tongue, seeing that it contains some curious things. It begins, 'Quando ego Thomas Archiepiscopus,' &c. "When I, Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury, exiled from England, took refuge with Pope Alexander, who was also fugitive, in the town of Sens, and there represented to him the bad habits and abuses that the King of England had introduced into the Church; one night as I was in the church of Sainte Colombe, engaged in prayer, supplicating the Queen of Virgins that she would vouchsafe grace to the King of England and his successors, that they might have power and will to be obedient to the Church as her children, and that our Lord Jesus Christ would cause them more fully to love the said Church, suddenly appeared to me the Blessed Virgin Mary, having on her breast a drop of water, glittering like fine gold, and holding in her hand a little vial (_ampoule_) of stone. And after she had taken from her breast the drop of water and put it in the vial, she spoke to me these words: 'This is the unction with which the kings of England shall be anointed; _not those who reign now, but those who are to reign_; for those who reign now are wicked, and so will be their successors, and, for their iniquity shall lose many things. However, kings of England shall come, and shall be anointed with this unction, and shall be benign and obedient to the Church, and shall not possess their lands or lordships until they are so anointed. The first of these shall recover, without violence, the countries of Normandy and Aquitaine, which their predecessors had lost. This king shall be great amongst kings, and it will be he who shall re-edify many churches in the Holy Land, and drive all the pagans from Babylon, where he shall erect rich monasteries, and put all the enemies of religion to flight. And when he wears about his neck this drop of golden water, he shall be victorious and augment his kingdom. _As for thee, thou shall die a martyr for sustaining the rights of the Church._' I then prayed the holy and sacred Lady to tell me in what sanctuary I should place this sacred deposit; and she replied, that there was in this city a monk of the monastery of St. Cyprian of Poitiers, named Babilonius, who had been unjustly driven forth by his abbot, where he desired to be reinstated by apostolic authority; to him I was ordered to give this vial, in order that he might carry it to the city of Poitiers, and place it in the church of St. Gregory, which is near the church of St. Hilaire, and put it at the extremity of the said church, towards the east, under a great stone, _where it would be found_ when the proper hour arrived to anoint the kings of England, and _that the chief of the Pagans should be the cause of the discovery of the said golden drop_. Accordingly I enclosed this treasure in a leaden vessel, and gave it to the said monk, Babilonius, to bear to the church of St. Gregory, as it was commanded." What object _Saint_ Thomas of Canterbury had in thus mystifying the monks of Poitiers, or to what _prince_ or _pagan_ he pointed at, remains a secret: whether the holy vial ever was found cannot now be known; or, if any discovery of such was made in that period of discoveries, the great Revolution, it was probably consigned to destruction with numerous other equally authentic relics. The most remarkable sentence in this _pancarte_ is, perhaps, the prophecy of his own death by the martyr, always admitting that the whole was not composed and arranged after the event had happened. Bouchet, glad of the opportunity of dwelling on wonders, finishes his tale by relating the circumstances of Becket's murder, and how at his burial a choir of angels led the anthem, which the monks followed: also how the cruel homicides by the judgment of God were suddenly punished; for some of them _ate their own fingers_, others became mad and demoniacs, and others lost the use of all their limbs. The relics in the churches of Poitiers were of the most extraordinary value; each vied with the other in wonders of the kind, until all the bones of all the saints in the calendar seemed gathered together in this favoured city. Whenever a prince had offended the Church, he made his peace by presenting some precious offering which was beyond price; as, for instance, in 1109, the Duke of Aquitaine, father of Elionore, after having been pardoned for one of his numerous offences, caused to be enclosed in a magnificent shrine of gold, _two bones_ and _part of the beard_ of the blessed Saint Peter, prince of apostles, which St. Hilaire himself had brought to his church. Soon after, to prove his repentance of some new peccadillo, Guillaume gave certain _dismes_ to the monks and priests of St. Hilaire, with the use of the forest of Moulière. St. Bernard himself was obliged on one occasion to come to Poitiers to admonish the refractory duke, who chose to have an opinion of his own in acknowledging the pope, and many miracles were performed during his stay. Once St. Bernard severely reprimanded the duke at the altar, in the cathedral, who was for the moment terrified at his denunciations; but no sooner had he left the church than he ordered the altar at which the saint had stood to be demolished; and a priest to proclaim and command the adherence of all persons to whatever pope their duke had adopted; but this impiety was signally visited, for the priest fell down dead at the altar as he was uttering the words. Also the dean, under whose auspices St. Bernard's altar had been destroyed, _fell sick_ immediately, and died mad and in despair, for he cut his throat in his bed: besides which, one of the refractory bishops--he of Limoges--fell from his mule to the ground, and striking his head against a stone, was killed on the spot; and for these _reasons_ and _evident signs_, Duke William acknowledged his error, and replaced the Bishop of Poitiers, whom he had deposed, in his chair. This is the William, known by his romantic adventures as "The Armed Hermit," who, no doubt, disgusted with the tyranny of the Church, whose members at that time never ceased to interfere with the monarchs of Europe, resolved to abandon his kingdom, and embrace a life of quiet, as he supposed, "in some _horrible desert_." He was encouraged in the idea by interested persons, and _feigning to die_, left a will, by which his young daughter, Elionore, became the heiress of Aquitaine; he then secretly quitted the court, directing his steps to the shrine of St. James, in Galicia, where he joined a holy hermit, and put himself under his tuition. By _diabolic temptation_ it seems, however, that he could never be content in any of the deserts; where, still clothed in armour, _cap-à-pié_, he endeavoured in vain to forget his belligerent propensities, for, every now and then, when he heard of a siege toward, he would suddenly sally forth, and having assisted in the skirmish, again seized with a fit of repentant devotion, would hurry back to some desolate retreat, and endeavour, by penitence and fasts, to obliterate the sin he had committed. His death was attended by so many miracles that it became necessary to canonize him; and orders of hermit monks rose up in every quarter, bearing his name of Guillemins, the chief of which were the Blanc Manteaux of Paris. The example of sanctity he had set in the latter part of his life seemed to have been lost on the turbulent and coquettish Queen of the Court of Love, his daughter, Elionore, and to have been also sufficiently disregarded by his grandsons. Not that Elionore neglected to build and endow churches and monasteries in every part of her dominions, particularly at Poitiers; and, probably, she considered all offences wiped out by so doing: not excepting her criminal project, recorded by Bouchet, of quitting her husband, Louis of France, and "_espousing the Sultan Saladin_, with whose image and portraiture she had fallen in love." Whatever motives Louis le Jeune had in getting rid of his powerful wife, policy could not be one; for never was a more foolish business; he did not, perhaps, contemplate, in his shortsightedness, that she would marry his rival, and carry all her possessions to the crown of England; but he was sure that by dissolving his marriage he was injuring France. The account of the state of the great heiress, insulted and injured in so vital a point, is piteous enough, and not unlike, in position, to the case of Queen Catherine when repudiated by Henry VIII. "This dissolution and separation was signified to Queen Elionore by the bishops, who undertook the task with great regret, for they knew it would be very displeasing to the poor lady, who, as soon as the decision was announced to her, fell in a swoon from the chair on which she sat, and was for more than two hours without speaking, or weeping, or unclosing her clenched teeth. And when she was a little come to herself, she began, with her clear and blue (_vers_) eyes, to look around on those who brought her the news, and said, 'Ha! my lords, what have I done to the king that he should quit me? in what have I offended him? what defect finds he in my person? I am not barren, I am not illegitimate, nor come of a low race. I am wealthy as he is by my means. I have always obeyed him; and if we speak of lineage, I spring from the Emperor Otho the First and King Lothaire; descended in direct line from Charlemagne; besides which we are relations both by father and mother if he requires to be informed of it.'" "Madam," said the Archbishop of Limoges, "you speak truth indeed. You are relations; but of that the king was ignorant, and it is for that very cause that he finds you are not in fact his wife, and the children you have borne him are not lawful; therefore is this separation necessary, much to the king's discomfort; he laments it as much or more than you can do; but he finds that for the safety of your souls this thing must be done." The poor queen could only reply that the pope had the power to grant a dispensation; but she had no longer any relations to support her, and still less had she friends; and was obliged to submit. She was then about six-and-twenty, and the most beautiful woman in France. Henry of Normandy lost no time in making his proposals to her, which she at first rejected, being, as she said, resolved never to trust another man; but his eloquence, and other qualities, and the policy of placing herself in a powerful position as his queen, heir as he was of England, caused her to alter her mind; and Henry gained the richest wife in Europe and lost his happiness for ever. There is a frequently-repeated story told of one of the most celebrated counts of Poitiers, though attributed sometimes to William VIII. and sometimes to William IX. The series of _Williams_ all appear to have been more or less _de rudes seigneurs_, who were divided between the vices and virtues of their period. There is William _Tête d'Etoupes_, William _Fier-à-bras_, William _the Great_, and William _the Troubadour_; the latter--now pious, now profane--was at one time fighting foremost in the christian ranks against the Paynim; at another, "playing on pipes of straw and versing love" to fair ladies, to whom he had no right to make himself captivating. He is said to have repudiated his wife, Phillippa, or Mahaud, and espoused Malberge, the wife of the Viscount de Châtelleraud, in the life-time of her husband. For this offence the Bishop of Poitiers resolved to punish him, and, accordingly, on occasion of a grand public solemnity, in the face of the assembled multitude, he began the formula of excommunication against the offending count, regardless of consequences. When William heard, as he sat with his bold and beautiful lady-love, the first words of the anathema, he started from his seat, in a transport of surprise and rage, and, drawing his sword, rushed upon the unflinching churchman, who entreated him to allow him a short delay. The count paused, and, taking advantage of the circumstance, the bishop raised his voice, and finished the form of excommunication in which he had been interrupted. "Now," said he, "you may strike; I have done my duty and am ready." William was abashed and humbled, and, returning his sword to its scabbard, exclaimed, "No, priest, I do not love you well enough to send you straight to Paradise." He had not, however, the grace to pardon the intrepid priest, for he banished him to Chauvigny, where he shortly afterwards died, in 1115. The following is one of the lays of this famous Troubadour, whose songs are the earliest extant: Anew I tune my lute to love, Ere storms disturb the tranquil hour, For her who strives my truth to prove, My only pride, and beauty's flower; But who will ne'er my pain remove, Who knows and triumphs in her power. I am, alas! her willing thrall; She may record me as her own: Nor my devotion weakness call, That her I prize, and her alone: Without her can I live at all, A captive so accustom'd grown? What hope have I?--Oh lady dear! Do I then sigh in vain for thee; And wilt thou, ever thus severe, Be as a cloistered nun to me? Methinks this heart but ill can bear An unrewarded slave to be! Why banish love and joy thy bowers-- Why thus my passion disapprove? When, lady, all the world were ours If thou couldst learn, like me, to love. CHAPTER IX. MELUSINE--LUSIGNAN--TROU DE LA FÉE--THE LEGEND--MALE CURIOSITY--THE DISCOVERY--THE FAIRY'S SHRIEKS--THE CHRONICLER--GEOFFROY OF THE GREAT TOOTH--JACQUES COEUR--ROYAL GRATITUDE--ENEMIES--JEAN DU VILLAGE--WEDDING--THE BRIDE--THE TRAGEDY OF MAUPRIER--THE GARDEN--THE SHEPHERDESS--THE WALNUT GATHERERS--LA GÂTINE--ST. MAIXANT--NIORT--MADAME DE MAINTENON--ENORMOUS CAPS--CHAMOIS LEATHER--DUGUESCLIN--THE DAME DE PLAINMARTIN--THE SEA. FULL of anxiety to visit the famous Château of Lusignan--the very centre of romance and mystery--we left Poitiers in the afternoon, and, in two hours, reached the prettily-situated bourg on the banks of the river Vanne. We looked out constantly for the towers of the castle of Melusine, but none appeared. At last I descried a building on an eminence, which I converted at once into the object desired; but, as the rain had come on violently and the atmosphere was somewhat dull, I was not surprised that I did not obtain a better view of the turrets and donjon, which no doubt frowned over the plain beneath. Our vehicle stopped in the middle of a very unpromising stony street, before a house which presented no appearance of an inn. Here, however, we were told that we were to alight; and, having done so in a somewhat disconsolate mood, for the storm had increased in violence, our baggage was to be disengaged from the huge pile on the top of the diligence, while we stood by to recognise it. The whole town, meantime, seemed to have arrived in this, the principal street; and a host of men in blouses paused round us, all looking with wonder on our arrival, apparently amazed at our absurdity in stopping at Lusignan; in which reflection we began to share, as they took possession of our trunks, and examined them without ceremony, while the conducteur searched his papers, in a sort of frenzy, to find our names inscribed, and convince himself that we were the persons named there as his passengers. As we had only been "set down" as "Dames Anglaises," he seemed inclined to dispute our identity; and he, and a man who acted as post-master, conned over the paper together, while all the inhabitants who could get near endeavoured to catch a peep, not only at the scroll, but the suspected persons. At length, as we protested against lingering in the rain any longer, further enquiries were abandoned; the conducteur mounted his box; the post-master called porters; and the crowd made way for us, while we followed half-a-dozen guides, who made as much of their packages as they could; and we at last found shelter. The aspect of affairs now changed: a very neat landlady, and a smart waiting-maid, ushered us into a pretty, clean, decorated, raftered room,--the best in the Lion d'Or,--up a flight of tower stairs; our porters disappeared; the street was cleared; curiosity seemed amply gratified; and we were left to a good dinner, and in comfortable quarters. The sun broke forth, and all looked promising; but where were the towers of the castle? This question we repeated frequently, and the answers assured us that _là haut_ we should see the castle and the "_Trou Meluisin_." We slept well in our snow-white beds; occasionally hearing, during the night, the cracked, hollow, unearthly sound of the great church bell of the Lusignans, to which an equally ghost-like voice on the stair replied. At day-break the noise of hilarity roused us, and we found that a rural meeting was taking place below, in the _grand salon_. Our friends of the day before seemed all met previous to setting out to begin the walnut gathering; and they uttered strange jocund sounds, more wolfish than human, without a word which could be, by possibility, construed into the French language. We hurried up the rugged way which was to lead us to the castle; but, having reached the height, I rubbed my eyes, for I thought the fairy had been busy during the night, and, by a stroke of her wand, had swept away every vestige of the castle. Certain it was that not a stone was left,--not a solitary piece of wall or tower, to satisfy our curiosity! A pretty little girl of fifteen, who had hurried after us, now approached, and offered to be our _guide_. We accepted her civility, as we hoped something would ensue: she led us to a heap of bushes, and, stooping down and pulling them aside, proclaimed to us, as she pointed to a dark chasm beneath, that we stood at the entrance of the "Trou de la Fée." "This," said she, "is the hole which she used to enter, and it has a way which leads to the wood yonder: she could there rise up at her fountain, where she bathed; and from thence there is another way leading as far as Poitiers itself." We asked her if the fairy ever appeared now; but she laughed, and said, contemptuously, "Oh! no, that is all fable: it was a great while ago." She had a tragical story of a soldier who descended, resolving to attempt the adventure; but he was never seen afterwards, as might easily be expected. She, however, accounted for his fate without attributing it to supernatural causes: the superstition of Melusine has disappeared with the turrets of her castle. The church is curious, though very much defaced: in the sacristy is a circular-arched door, elaborately sculptured with the signs of the Zodiac; but the formerly-existing stones on which the effigy of the fairy appeared have been entirely swept away. The castle of Lusignan was once one of the most beautiful and powerful _châteaux forts_ in France; so strong and so singular in its construction that it was attributed to an architect of a world of spirits,--the famous witch, or fairy, Melusine; about whom so much has been written and sung for ages, and who still occupies the attention of the curious antiquary. Her story may be thus briefly told: She was married to the Sire Raymondin, of Poitiers; who, struck with her surpassing beauty, and aware of her great wealth and possessions, had won her from a host of suitors. He was, however, ignorant that her nature was different from that of others; and, when she informed him that, if she consented to be his wife, he must agree that she should, once a week, absent herself from him, and must promise never to attempt to penetrate the retreat to which she retired, he gave an unconditional assent. They had been married some time, and their happiness was complete; but at length Raymondin's mind began to be disturbed with uneasy thoughts, and the demon of curiosity took possession of him. His wife disappeared every week for a single day--some say Saturday--and he had no idea where she went, or what she occupied herself about. Was it possible, thought he, that she had some other attachment? Could she be capable of deceiving his affection? Every time she returned to him she looked more lovely than ever; and there was a satisfaction in her aspect that was far from pleasing him. She never alluded to the circumstance of her retreat; but redoubled her tenderness and kindness to him; and, but for the growing and increasing anxiety he felt to know the truth, he might have been the happiest of men. Melusine had, according to her wont, taken leave of him on the accustomed night of her retirement; and he found himself alone in his chamber. He mused, long and painfully, till he could endure his thoughts no longer; and, catching up his sword, he rushed to the tower, at the door of which he had parted with his mysterious lady. The door was of bronze, elaborately ornamented with strange carvings: it was thick and strong; but, in his frenzy of impatience, he did not hesitate to strike it violently with his sharp sword; and, in an instant, a wide cleft appeared, disclosing to him a sight for which he paid dear. In the centre of the chamber he beheld a marble basin, filled with crystal water; and there, disporting and plunging, was a female form with the features of his wife. Her golden hair, in undulating waves, fell over her white bosom and shoulders, and rested on the edge of the basin, and on the surface of the water; her hands held a comb and a mirror; and in the latter she occasionally gazed intently as a series of figures passed across it. Down to her waist it was Melusine; but below it was no longer the body of a woman, but a scaly marine monster, who wreathed a glittering tail in a thousand folds; dashing and casting the silver waves in every direction, and throwing a veil of shining drops over the beautiful head above, till the walls and ceiling shone with the sparkling dew, on which an unearthly light played in all directions! Raymondin stood petrified, without power to speak or move. An instant sufficed to disclose to him this unnatural vision; and an instant was enough to show the fairy that her secret was discovered. She turned her large lustrous eyes upon him, uttered a loud, piercing shriek, which shook the castle to its foundation, and all became darkness and silence. The lord of the château passed the rest of his life in penitence and prayer; but the lady was never afterwards seen by him. She had not, however, abandoned her abode; and, always, from that time till within a few years, she returned whenever any misfortune threatened the family of Lusignan, screaming round the walls, and rustling with her serpent folds along the passages, announcing the event. In 1575 the castle was razed, by order of the Duke de Moutpensier, and for several nights previous to its demolition, Melusine startled the country round with her piercing cries. It is even said that certain ancient women in Lusignan hear her occasionally; but we were not so fortunate as to meet with any who had been so favoured. Bouchet, in his chronicle, acknowledges himself greatly puzzled to account for the legend of Melusine; for, though he does not hesitate to believe anything advanced by the Church, he does not feel bound to put entire faith in a book of romance. "As for me," he says, "I think and conjecture, that the sons of Melluzine performed many fine feats of arms; but not in the manner related in the romance; for it must be recollected that at the period of 1200 were begun to be made many books, in gross and rude language, and in rhythm of all measure and style, merely for the pastime of princes, and sometimes for flattery, to vaunt beyond all reason the feats of certain knights, in order to give courage to young men to do the like and become brave; such are the said Romance of Melluzine, those of Little Arthur of Brittany, Lancelot du Lac, Tristan the Adventurous, Ogier the Dane, and others in ancient verse, which I have seen in notable libraries: the which have since been put into prose, in tolerably good language, according to the time at which they were written, in which are things _impossible to believe, but at the same time delectable to read_. But, in truth, all that romance of Melluzine is a dream, and cannot be supported by reason. You may see, in the said romance, that the children of Melluzine, Geoffrey la grande-dent, and Guion, and Raimondin, her husband, a native of Forez, were Christians, and that they fought against, and conquered, the Turks, and that the said Raimondin was nephew to a Count of Poictou, named Aymery, who had a son called Bertrand, who was count after him, and a daughter, Blanche. Now I have not been able to find in any history, letter, nor _pancarte_, _though I have carefully searched_, that, since the passion of our Lord, there has been a duke or count in Poictou, called either Bertrand or Aymery; nor that there have been any such but what I have enumerated. And as for those events having happened before, it could not be; for there were then no Christians living, our Lord and Redeemer not being then on earth." The confused chronicler then proceeds to tell the whole serpent-story, hinting his suspicions that the lady was discovered by her husband to be unfaithful, and giving an etymology to her name, similar to one we heard on the spot, namely, that she was lady of _Melle_, a castle near. Our village archæologist added, however, that this castle was called Uzine, and as both belonged to her, she was so called, Melle-Uzine. In the fourteenth century, the estates of Lusignan passed into royal possession. Hugues le Brun left in his will great part of the estates to the King of France, Phillippe le Bel. His brother, Guy, irritated at this disposition of the property, cast his will into the fire; on which the king had him accused of treason, and took possession of the county of Lusignan, which became confiscated to the crown. It was on this sad occasion that, for twelve successive nights, the spirit of Melusine appeared on the platform of the castle, wailing and lamenting in a pitiable manner, and making the woods and groves re-echo with her sorrows. There is another account, that the castle was greatly added to by a powerful lord, called _Geoffrey of the Great Tooth_, son of Melusine, whose effigy might once be seen over the principal entrance of the donjon-tower; but his existence is as great a problem as that of the fairy herself. Henry II. of England took the castle, and came here in triumph with his warriors. Louis XII. when Duke of Orleans, passed several sad years in these walls as a prisoner. It was taken by Admiral de Coligny, in 1569; but it was lost soon after, and again and again retaken, partially destroyed, and rebuilt, and at length swept away altogether, leaving nothing but recollections, a piece of old tower, and Le Trou de Melusine. It once had three circles of defence, bastions, esplanades, moats, and walls; embattled gates, one called the Gate of Geoffrey of the Great Tooth, one the Gate of the Tour Poitevine, and the gigantic Tour de Melusine in the centre of all; its subterranean ways, strange legends, mysterious passages, and enormous strength, made it a marvel in all times, and a subject for romance from the earliest ages. M. Francisque Michel is the last who has endeavoured to collect its curious records, and throw some light on its strange history. In this castle was imprisoned, during his iniquitous trial, which is an eternal blot on the name of his ungrateful _friend_, Charles VII. of France, the rich and noble merchant of Bourges, Jacques Coeur, whose purse had been opened to the destitute king in his emergencies, and who had devoted all the energies of his mind to save his country from the ruin which the idle favourites who surrounded the throne were assisting as much as possible. His princely liberality, his foresight, and promptitude, had rescued Charles from perils which seemed insurmountable. He had come forward with a sum of great magnitude, at the moment when his royal master was so distressed that he could not undertake the conquest of Normandy, then possessed by the English. He paid and supported an army, and Normandy was restored to France. He rescued the country from poverty and misery, placed its finances in a flourishing condition, drove marauders from the desolated land, and saw the little King of Bourges the powerful monarch of regenerated France. Then came his reward. His inveterate "adversary and enemy, the wicked Haman," who had been for years watching to accomplish his downfal, because his evil was not good in the sight of the right-minded and true-hearted friend of his country,--the detestable Antoine de Chabannes, Count of Dammartin, rightly judging that Charles would be glad to rid himself of so enormous a burthen of gratitude as he owed to Jacques Coeur, concerted with other spirits as wicked as himself, and succeeded but too well. The first step was to shake the public faith in those at the head of the financial department; but they feared to attack the friend of Charles, and the acknowledged benefactor of France, _at first_. Money they were resolved to have, at any rate, without delay, and their first victim was Jean de Xaincoings, receiver-general. A series of charges were got up against him, which he was unable to overcome; he was convicted, sentenced, imprisoned, and his property confiscated. Great was the exultation of the dissolute lords of the Court, when, in the scramble, each got a share of the spoil. Dunois--_Le Gentil Dunois_!--the hero of so many fights--was one of the first to profit by the downfal of this rich man: his magnificent hôtel at Tours was bestowed on the warrior, who did not blush to receive it. Encouraged by this success, and becoming more greedy as they saw how easy it was to work on the king, when money was in view, the foes of Jacques Coeur set about accomplishing a similar work, with his colossal fortune in view as their prize. At first, there seemed danger in proposing to the weak monarch to despoil his friend, and to annihilate a friendship of years, and obligations of such serious moment; but, to their surprise and delight, they found his ears open to any tales they chose to bring; and having, in a lucky hour, fixed on an accusation likely to startle such a mind, they found all ready to their hands. Dammartin brought forward a woman, base enough to swear that the fair and frail Agnes Sorel had been poisoned by his treasurer. The infamous Jeanne de Vendôme, wife of the Lord of Mortagne sur Gironde, was the instrument of Chabannes, and her accusation was believed and acted upon. A host of enemies, like a pack of wolves eager for prey, came howling on, and the great merchant was dragged from his high seat and hunted to the death. In this very castle of Lusignan, where the fairy Melusine might well lament over the disgrace of France, in a dungeon, removed from every hope, languished the man who had, till now, held in his hand the destinies of Europe; whose galleys filled every port, whose merchandise crowded every city, who divided with Cosmo de Medici the commerce of the world. Here did Jacques Coeur reflect, with bitter disappointment, on all the selfishness, cruelty, meanness, and ingratitude, of the man he had mainly assisted to regain the throne of his ancestors. It was here he was told that the falsehood of the charge against him had been proved; but when he quitted this, the first prison which the gratitude of the king had supplied him with, it was but to inhabit others; while a crowd of new accusations were examined, one of which was enough to crush him. The game was in the hands of his foes; his gold glittered too near their eyes; their clutches were upon his bags; their daggers were ready to force his chests; they were led on by one whose avarice was only equalled by his profligate profusion, and he was a prisoner kept from his own defence. The wealth of Jacques Coeur was poured into the laps of _Charles_ and his harpy courtiers, and the victim was consigned to oblivion. Of all he had saved and supported, one man alone was grateful--_Jean du Village_, _his clerk_, devoted himself to his master's interests, and his life, and part of his property abroad, were saved. The fate of the great merchant is still a mystery. His mock trial was decided by the commission appointed to examine him at the castle of Lusignan, in May, 1453, and judgment was pronounced by Guillaume Jouvenel des Ursins, chancellor of France, after the king _had taken cognisance of and approved it_![7] [Footnote 7: For account of Jacques Coeur and his dwelling at Bourges, see "Pilgrimage to Auvergne."] A wedding was going on while we were wandering between the castle and the church, and we met the party on our way, preceded by the usual violin accompaniment. Our young guide was greatly interested in the proceedings, and told us the names and station of the parties concerned. "What an odd thing it is," said she, "to be married. For two or three days everybody runs out of their houses to stare at the bride and bridegroom, as if they were a king and queen, though one has seen them a thousand times before, and, after that, they may pass in the street and nobody thinks of looking at them." Marie Poitiers and René Blanc were the happy pair on this occasion; the name of the bridegroom amused me, as I was reminded of the perfumer and poisoner of Queen Catherine, René Bianco, who had lately furnished me with a _hero_ for a romance. This René was, however, a very harmless-looking personage, a daily labourer, but "bien riche," as was his bride, who also worked in the fields, but had a very good property near Lusignan. "All the family are very well off; but, they work like other people. Only you see," said our guide, "that the bride's sister, who is so pretty, dresses in silk like a _grande dame_, and does not wear the peasant's cap like the rest." The cap of the bride was worthy of attention, as were those of most of the party. As they were amongst the first of the kind we had seen, they attracted us extremely, though we afterwards got quite familiar with their strange appearance. In this part of the country, the peasants wear a cap, large, square, and high, of a most inconvenient size, and remarkably ugly shape: they get larger and squarer as you approach La Rochelle, and cease before you arrive at Bordeaux. The bride's was of thin embroidered muslin, edged with lace, placed in folds over a high, square quilted frame, which supported it as it spread itself out, broad and flaunting, making her head look of a most disproportionate size. Silver ribbon bows and orange flowers were not omitted, and she wore a white satin sash tied behind, which floated over her bright gown and apron. A large silver cross hung on her breast, her handkerchief was richly embroidered, and her stockings very white and smart, though her feet and legs were somewhat ponderous, and did not seem accustomed to their adornment of the day, _sabots_ of course being her ordinary wear. She was led by her father, whom I mistook for the mayor, he was so decorated with coloured ribbons, and strode along with so dignified an air, his large black hat shading his happy, florid face. The bridegroom closed a very long procession, as he led the bride's mother along: they were going to the Mairie, where, after signing, Made. Blanc would take her husband's arm, and walk back again through the town to hear mass, when _ses bagues_ would be presented to her by her lord. Great excitement seemed to prevail in Lusignan, in consequence of this event, and smiles and gaiety were the order of the day. Our hostess proposed accompanying us to a château not far distant, in order that we might see the country, and as it was fine and not very damp we set out with her, having stopped in the town at a little chandler's shop for her sister who wished to be of the party. Their mother--a dignified old lady, who looked as if she had been a housekeeper at some château--welcomed us into her shop, and set chairs while her daughter was getting ready, when she resumed her knitting, and conversed on the subject of their metropolis, Poitiers, with which she appeared partially acquainted. She detailed to us several of the miracles of Ste. Radegonde, for whom she had an especial respect, and assured us there was no saint in the country who had so distinguished herself. I was surprised, after this, that she treated the story of Melusine as a fable, though she believed in the existence of the subterranean way, and told us of the riches supposed still to exist beneath the castle and in the ruins. One man, lately, in taking away stones to build a house, stumbled on a heap of money which had evidently been placed for concealment beneath the walls, and coins of more or less value, and of various dates, are found, from time to time, as the large stones are removed for building, any one being at liberty to demolish whatever ancient wall they find in the neighbourhood. Our walk was an extremely pleasant one, for the country round is very pretty and rural; it terminated at the Château de Mauprier, a private residence, which appears to have been formerly a fortified manor-house, to judge by its moat and the square and round towers which still remain. The "park" leading to it is a series of beautiful alleys, some of the trees of which are allowed to grow naturally, others are cut into form, with fine grassy walks between, covered with rich purple heath here and there in nooks. The walks branch off from space to space in stars, leaving open glades of emerald turf between. As we approached the lodge through the slovenly gate half off its hinges, the sound of wailing reached us from within, and, entering the room whence it proceeded, we became witnesses of a sad scene of desolation. There was no fire on the hearth, all looked dismal and wretched; a great girl of twelve stood sobbing near the table, a younger one sat at the door, and, with her feet on the damp earthen floor, rocking herself backwards and forwards on a low chair, sat a small, thin woman, moaning piteously, and wringing her hands. Of course we thought she was bewailing some severe domestic bereavement, and our companions, who were full of friendly commiseration, began to question her, but could obtain no answer but tears and cries. At length, by dint of coaxing and remonstrance, we discovered that the tragedy which had happened was as follows: The gardener-porter was entrusted by his master with the care of the live stock of the farm; his wife had sent a child of about eight years of age into the woods with a flock of turkeys; the young guardian had been seduced by fruit or flowers to wander away, forgetting her charge, and they followed her example, and dispersed themselves in all directions. The consequence was, that an ill-disposed fox, who was lying in wait, took the opportunity of way-laying them, and no less than seven had become his victims: the little girl had returned to tell her loss, was beaten and turned out of doors; the husband's rage had been fearful, and, though a night and day had elapsed, and the second evening was coming on, the disconsolate wife had not risen from her chair, nor ceased her lamentations. The turkeys must be replaced; the little girl was not her own, but an _enfant trouvée_, whom she had nursed and loved as her own--and how was she to be received after her crime! the husband was irate, the children were miserable, neither cookery nor fire were to be seen, and despair reigned triumphant. A small present, and a good deal of reasoning, brought her a little to herself; and we persuaded the eldest girl to light the fire, and give her mother something to revive her; the father was sent for; but the poor woman fainted, and we lifted her into bed; where we at length left her now repentant husband attending her, and promising to reproach no one any more about the fox and the turkeys. Nothing could possibly do less credit to the gardener than the appearance of the grounds, where liberty reigned triumphant; every thing, from enormous gourds of surprising size to grapevines in festoons, being allowed to grow as it listed; yet the original laying out was pretty, and if half-a-dozen men were employed, as would be the case in England, the gardens might be made very agreeable. The proprietor is, however, an old man who spends a great deal of his time in Poitiers; and, as all French people do when at their country places, merely conceals himself for a few months, and cares little about appearances, provided his fruit and vegetables are produced in the required quantity. We heard that he was a most excellent and indulgent man, very liberal to the poor, and generous to his people; and our hostess assured us, that if he knew of the wretchedness the loss of his turkeys had caused in his gardener's family, it would give him real pain, and he would at once forgive them their debt to him. Perhaps the knowledge of his kindness might be one reason of his servant's vexation; but though that feeling was honourable to him, we could not forgive him for his severity to his poor, silly terrified little wife. As we returned by another, and a very pretty way, we met a young girl, to whom our guides, who were zealous in the cause, told the story of her neighbour's illness; she promised to go to her and offer her aid as soon as she could, and expressed her disgust at the cruelty of the husband, whose character, she said, was brutal in the extreme. While they were talking, I remarked the appearance of the shepherdess, who was certainly one of the most charming specimens of a country Phillis I ever beheld. Her age might be about eighteen; she was tall, and well made, with a healthy, clear complexion, a good deal bronzed with the sun; teeth as white as pearls, and as even as possible; rather a wide, but very prettily shaped mouth; fine nose; cheeks oval and richly tinted; fine black eyes filbert shaped, and delicately-pencilled eyebrows, perfectly Circassian; a small white forehead, and shining black hair in braids: the expression of her smile was the most simple and innocent imaginable, and the total absence of anything like thought or intellect, made her face a perfect reflection of that of one of her own lambs. Her costume was extremely picturesque; and her head-dress explained at once the mystery of the cap of Anne Boleyn, of which it was a model, no doubt an unchanged fashion from the time of, and probably long before, Marguerite de Valois. It was of white, thick, stiff muslin, pinched into the three-cornered shape so becoming to a lovely face, precisely like the Holbein head, but that the living creature was much prettier than the great master usually depicted his princesses. Her petticoat was dark blue, her apron white, and so was her handkerchief, and round her handsome throat was a small hair chain, or ribbon, with a little gold cross attached. Her feet were in _sabots_; and she held a whip in her hand, with which to chastise her stray sheep; on her arm hung a flat basket, in which were probably her provisions for the day, or she might have filled it with walnuts which were being gathered close by. I never saw a sweeter figure altogether, and her merry, ringing laugh, and curious _patois_ sounded quite in character; she was just the sort of girl Florian must have seen to describe his Annette from; but I did not meet with any peasant swain in the neighbourhood worthy to have been her Lubin. Her beauty was, however, rare, for we were not struck with any of the peasants besides, as more than ordinarily good-looking; but, seen anywhere, this girl must have attracted attention. We soon, on entering a long avenue, came upon a party of walnut-gatherers, to whom the tragedy of the fox was again detailed, while groups came round us to hear and comment on the event, which appeared to be formed to enliven the monotony of a country existence as much as a piece of scandal in a town. Seated on the ground, quietly eating walnuts, in the midst of a ring of other children, sat the little delinquent of the tale, as unmoved and unconscious as if she had not caused a perfect hurricane of talk and anxiety in the commune; she turned her large gypsy black eyes on me with an expression almost of contempt, as I asked her a few questions, and recommended her caution in future. As one of the reports we had gathered on our way was, that the child, after being beaten, had run away into the woods and had not since re-appeared, we were not sorry to find her here; but as she looked saucy and careless, and able to bear a good deal of severity, and was besides several years older than had been represented, our sympathy was little excited in her favour. "She has acted in this way often before," said a bystander, "and cannot be made to work or to do anything she is told." She had strangely the appearance of a Bohemian, and her fondness for the _dolce far niente_ increased my suspicions of her parentage. The tenderness of her foster-mother for her was, however, not to be changed by her ill-conduct, for she was said to prefer her to her own children, in spite of her faults: so capricious is affection. The road from Lusignan to Niort is through a very pleasing country, sometimes _bocage_, and sometimes _gâtine_: the latter term being generally applied to a country of rocks, where the soil does not allow of much cultivation. This is, however, not always the case, for on several occasions I have heard, as at Chartres, a little wood called _la gâtine_; and once at Hastings was surprised, on inquiring my way in the fields, to be directed to pass the _gattin_ hard by; namely a small copse. The word is said to be Celtic, and may be derived either from _geat_, which means a plot of ground, or _geas_, a thick branch. We were much struck with the town of St. Maixant; which is approached by beautiful boulevards, and the environs are very rich and fine; the road does not lead within the walls, but outside; and there was no reason to regret this, as the streets are narrow and ill-built, while the promenades round are charming. The Sèvre Niortaise bathes the foot of the hill on which St. Maixant stands, and beyond rises the forest of Hermitaine, once part of the celebrated Vauclair, where some famous hermits took up their abode, and made the spot holy. Clovis assisted the recluses who had chosen this retreat as their abode, and granted them land and wood; a monastery was soon formed and the town grew round it. There is a fine cascade near La Ceuille, of which, or rather of the stream which flowed from it, we caught a glimpse on approaching St. Maixant; it falls from the _cóteau_ called Puy d'Enfer, and it is one of the wonders of the neighbourhood. The old walls of the town now appear to enclose gardens, and all looks smiling and gay; but they have sustained many a rude siege at different periods, and suffered much during the wars of La Vendée. At mid-day we reached Niort, a fine, clean, good-looking new town, with scarcely any antiquity left, though of ancient renown: a Celtic city with a Celtic name; a castle whose date cannot be ascertained; a palace inhabited by the great heroine of the country, Elionor; and convents and monasteries of infinite wealth and celebrity. That singular and famous community established by the Troubadour Count of Poitou, Guillaume IX., was at Niort, and was replaced by the holy Capuchin brothers, who must have been sufficiently scandalized at the conduct of the fair devotees who preceded them in their cells. The Duchess Elionor was married to Henry II. at Niort, and lived here frequently. We hoped to see some remains of her palace, but found only a large square building which might have formed a part of it; though its form, which is an isolated tower, makes it difficult to imagine how it could be in any way connected with the rest of the palace; this tower is now used as the Hôtel de Ville; its lozenge and circle ornaments appear not to be of older date than Francis I.; and we could scarcely persuade ourselves, however ready to believe in antiquities, that the all-powerful lady of Aquitaine, or her warrior husband, ever sat within these walls. A curious privilege was granted by the pope, in 1461, to the mayor, aldermen, sheriffs, councillors, peers, and citizens of Niort, to be buried in the habit, and with the cord round their waists, of the Cordeliers: it is not recorded that the ladies of the town petitioned to be dressed as well in their coffins as the nuns whose beauty delighted William the Ninth, or they might have gone to their last fête in-- "A charming chintz and Brussels lace." The most remarkable recollection connected with Niort, is that, in the prison of the town, called La Conciergerie, where her father was confined for the crime of forgery, was born Françoise D'Aubigné, afterwards the wife of Scarron, and by the favour of Louis XIV., Marquise de Maintenon, in whom the triumph of hypocrisy was complete. One of the streets is called by her name; but it is not recorded that she ever did anything for her native town; probably she was not anxious to perpetuate the memory of any part of her early life, not seeing fit to be quite so communicative on the subject as her brother, whose tongue she had so much difficulty in keeping quiet. Niort is a very pleasant, lively-looking town--that is, for a French town, where the nearest approach to gaiety is the crowd which a weekly market brings, or the groups of laughing, talking women, which the ceaseless occupation of washing collects on the banks of the river. We were much amused here with the latter, and stood some time on the bridge below the frowning round towers, of strange construction, which serve as a prison, to observe the manoeuvres of the washerwomen, who, in their enormous, misshapen, towering, square caps, were beating and scrubbing away at their linen. Nothing can appear so inconvenient as this head-dress when its wearer is engaged in domestic duties; yet the women are constantly to be seen with it; rarely, as in Normandy, contenting themselves with the under frame alone, and placing the huge mass of linen or muslin over it when their work is done. On one occasion we travelled with a _bourgeoise_ whose cap was so enormous, that she could scarcely get into the coach, and when once in had to stoop her head the whole time to avoid crushing the transparent superstructure of lace and muslin, which it is the pleasure of the belles of Poitou to deform themselves with. We were, however, assured that this costume was becoming, and that many a girl passed for pretty who wore it, who would be but ordinary in a plain, round, every-day cap. Sometimes this monstrosity is ornamented with gold pins, or buttons, all up the front, and the variety of arrangement of the muslin folds, both before and behind, is curious enough. It has occasionally frilled drapery depending from its height, hanging about half way down behind, or crossed over and sticking out at the sides, making it as wide as possible; I have seen some that could not be less than a foot and a half wide, and about a foot high; but some are even larger than this, extravagant as the description appears. The pyramidal Cauchoise caps are as high, it is true, or even higher, but there is an approach to grace in them, while those of Poitou are hideous as to form, even when the materials are light; those of the commonest sort are of coarse linen or cotton, and reach the very acme of ugliness. One of the great articles of commerce here is the preparation of chamois leather, which is said to be brought to great perfection; but, perhaps, like the cutlery so celebrated in so many towns, and boasted of as _equal to the English_, this famous production might be looked upon by an English tradesman as mere "leather and prunella." There is an attempt at a _passage_ here--the great ambition of country towns which think to rival Paris; but, as usual, it appears to be a failure, the shops looking common-place and shabby, and the place deserted and dismal. The public library is good, and there are several handsome public buildings; the churches are without interest, except one portal of Notre Dame, where we observed some mutilated, but very beautiful, twisted columns, whose wreaths were continued round a pointed arch in a manner I never recollect to have seen before, and which seems to indicate that the church must once have been extremely elaborate in its ornament. Niort was a great object of contention during the wars of the Black Prince. The famous Duguesclin is said to have taken the town by stratagem from the English. At the siege of Chisey, where Duguesclin had been successful, he had killed all the English garrison; and, taking their tunics, had clothed his own people in them, over their armour: so that, when those of Niort saw his party approaching, and heard them cry, "St. George!" they thought their friends were returning victors, and readily opened their gates; when they were fatally undeceived; being all taken or put to the sword. Here Duguesclin, and his fortunate band, remained for four days; reposing and refreshing themselves. After which they rode forth to Lusignan: where they found the castle empty; all the garrison having abandoned it as soon as the news of the taking of Chisey reached them. The French, therefore, without trouble, took possession of "this fine and strong castle," and then continued their way to that of Chatel-Acart, held by the Dame de Plainmartin, for her husband Guichart d'Angle, who was prisoner in Spain. When the lady found, says Froissart, that the constable Duguesclin was come to make war upon her, she sent a herald to him, desiring to be allowed a safe conduct, that she might speak with him in his tent. He granted her request; and the lady accordingly came to where he was encamped in the field. Then she entreated him to give her permission that she might go safely to Poitiers, and have audience of the Duke de Berry. Duguesclin would not deny her, for the love of her husband, Guichart; and, giving her assurance that her lands and castle should be respected during her absence, she departed, and he directed his troops to march on Mortemer. Such good speed did the lady of Plainmartin make, that she soon arrived in Poitiers; where she found the Duke de Berry. He received her very graciously, and spoke very courteously to her, as was his wont. The lady would fain have cast herself on her knees before him; but he prevented her. She then said: "My lord, you know that I am a lone woman, without power or defence, and the widow of a living husband, if it so pleases God; for my lord Guichart is prisoner in Spain, and in the danger of the king of that country. I therefore supplicate you, that, during the enforced absence of my husband, you will grant that my castle, lands, myself, my possessions, and my people, shall be left at peace; we engaging to make no war on any, if they do not make war on us." The Duke de Berry made no hesitation in granting the prayer of the lady; for, although Messire Guichart d'Angle, her husband, was a good and true Englishman, yet was he by no means hated by the French. He, therefore, delivered letters to her, with guarantee of surety; with which she was fully satisfied and much comforted. She then hastened back to her castle, and sent the orders to the constable, who received them with much willingness and joy. He was then before the castle of Mortemer; the lady of which at once yielded it to him, out of dread, and placed herself in obedience to the king of France, together with all her lands and the castle of Dienne. We left Niort at day-break and continued our way through a very cultivated and rich country, admirably laid out, neatly enclosed, and with a great extent of very carefully-pruned vines, which had here lost the grace which distinguishes them in the neighbourhood of the Loire, where they are allowed to hang in festoons, and grow to a reasonable height. Here they are kept low, and seem attended to with care. The road is level, but the scenes pleasing and the air fine; though, as you advance in the ancient Aunis, towards the sea, low grounds, which have been marshes, extend to a considerable distance. As we approached La Rochelle this was very apparent; but still all looked rich and agreeable, and the idea of soon feeling the sea-breeze was so comforting that our spirits were greatly raised; and when on a sudden a broad glare, at a distance, of bright sunshine on an expanse of water broke on our view, we were quite in ecstasies. We could distinguish white sails, and towers, and spires, on the shore; and all the memories of the Protestant town came crowding on our minds, as we turned every windmill we saw into an ancient tower formerly defended by a brave Huguenot against a host of besiegers. There are no want of these defences round La Rochelle; and every windmill has a most warlike aspect, as they are all built in the form of round towers, of considerable strength; probably owing to the necessity of making them strong enough to resist the gales which frequently prevail. CHAPTER X. LA ROCHELLE--LES TROIS CHANDELIERS--OYSTERS--BATHING ESTABLISHMENT--GAIETY--MILITARY DISCIPLINE--CURIOUS ARCADES--STORY OF AUFFRÉDY. ON arriving at La Rochelle, early in a bright morning at the beginning of September, we found the town so full that we had immediately to institute a search for an hotel, as that at which we stopped had no accommodation. We judged so before we alighted from the _coupé_, by the air of indifference visible on the face of every waiter and chambermaid, to whom our arrival seemed a matter of pity, rather than congratulation. After seeking through the greatest part of the town, we were conducted to a curious-looking street, from the roofs of almost every house in which projected grinning _gargouilles_, whose grotesque faces peeped inquisitively forth from the exalted position which they had maintained for several centuries; and, glaring in inviting grandeur, swung aloft a board on which was depicted three golden candlesticks. At Les Trois Chandeliers, accordingly, we applied, and found admission; the slovenly, but good-humoured landlady bestirring herself instantly to get ready the only room she had vacant. She was assisted in her various arrangements, or rather attended, by a sulky-looking girl with a hideous square cap; who stood by while her mistress heaped mattress upon mattress, and bustled about with zealous noise and clatter. She gave us to understand that certain of her neighbours were apt to give themselves airs, and accept or refuse visitors as their caprice dictated; but, for her part, she had no pride, and never acted in so unkind a manner: she always attended to everything herself; so that every one was satisfied in her house, and the Trois Chandeliers maintained its reputation of a century, during which time it had always been kept by one of the family. Considering these facts, the state of the entrance and kitchen, through which, as is usual in France, visitors must pass to arrive at the _salon_, somewhat surprised us. The wide, yawning, black gulf, down which we had dived from the street, reminded us strongly of the entrance of the Arènes, at Poitiers, which gave passage to the beasts about to combat: it was a low, vaulted passage, encumbered with waggons and diligences and wheelbarrows, with no light but what it gained from the street and a murky court beyond; it was paved with uneven stones, between which were spaces filled with mud; dogs and ducks sported along the gutter in the centre, following which, you arrived at some dirty steps leading to the kitchen, or, if you preferred a longer stroll amidst the shades, you might arrive at a low door which led through another court to the dining-room, which was a handsome apartment adorned with statues and crimson-and-white draperies, with a flower-garden opening from it. This room we were not sorry to enter, lured by the promise of some of the finest oysters in Europe. We had heard their eulogium before from a very talkative artist of Poitiers, who described them as of enormous, nay incredible, size, but delicate as _natives_: we were, therefore, surprised to see perfect miniatures, not larger than a shilling, very well-flavoured, but _unfed_. They form the _délices_ of all this part of the world, at this season, and are eagerly sought for from hence to the furthest navigable point of the Garonne. We were particularly fortunate in the weather, which was bright, warm, and inspiriting; and when we reached the walk which leads to the baths, we were in raptures with the whole scene which presented itself. The fine broad sea, smooth and green, lay shining in the sun, without a ripple to disturb its serenity; and for about a quarter of a mile along its margin extended one of the most beautiful promenades I ever beheld. The first part of it is planted with small young trees, on each side of a good road, which extends between verdant plains where _glacis_ are thrown up. This leads to the great walk; a thick grove of magnificent trees, shading a very wide alley of turf of _English_ richness. Here and there are placed seats, and all is kept with the greatest neatness. The establishment of the baths is ornamental, and pretty, and very extensive. About half way up this promenade, next the sea, grounds laid out with taste, and affording shade and pastime in their compartments, surround the building. A Chinese pagoda, a Grecian temple, numerous arbours and seats are there for strollers; and swings and see-saws for the exercise of youthful bathers after their dips. Altogether, it is the most charming place of the kind I ever saw: the warm baths are as good as possible, and the arrangement of those in the sea are much better than at Dieppe, Havre, or Granville. There is a row of little pavilions on the edge of the sea, where bathers undress; and a paved way leads them to an enclosed space where are numerous poles fixed, with ropes reaching from one to the other at different depths. The bathers hold by these ropes: and a large company can thus assemble in the water together, and take as much of the sea as they please, unaccompanied by guides; but, if they are timid, there are _men_ ready to attend and protect them. The costume is a tunic and trowsers of cloth or stuff, with a large handkerchief over the head. Hour after hour will the adventurous bathers continue in the water; dancing, singing, and talking, while the advancing waters dash, splash, and foam all round them, exciting peals of laughter and screams of delight. Separated by a high partition, and at a little distance, overlooked, however, by the strollers in the gardens above, is the gentlemen's compartment. These bathers usually run along a high platform, considerably raised, and leap into the sea beneath them; diving down, and re-appearing, much to the amusement of each other; while a guide sits on a floating platform near, ready to lend assistance, or give instruction in natation, if required. The season, we understood, had been particularly brilliant this year, and was scarcely yet over; though the ball-room and reading-rooms were less crowded than a few weeks before, when we were told that all that was gay and splendid in France _et l'Etranger_ was to be seen beneath the striped canopies of the sea-baths of La Rochelle. Certainly a more enjoyable place cannot be found anywhere; and I was not surprised that anything so rare and really comfortable and agreeable should meet with success. With any of the brilliant _toilettes_ which were described to me I did not, however, meet; as all the bathers I saw were in cloaks and slouch bonnets, and the company we met appeared by no means distinguished; peasants forming a great proportion. However, the season was nearly over, and one could not expect to see the _élégans_ so late; but I have always observed that the accounts I have heard of the brilliancy of French fashionable meetings are by no means borne out by the reality. At Néris, at the Monts Dores, and other places, I have been equally disappointed on seeing the manner of French living at watering-places; but it always appears to me that, except in Paris, there is no attempt at out-of-door style or gaiety anywhere. A solitary equipage, filled with children, met us every day in our walks, and a hired barouche, for the use of the baths, toiled backwards and forwards, hour after hour; but, except these, we saw no carriages at all, and the walkers were principally tradespeople in smart caps and shawls. One morning, indeed, we were surprised by the sound of musical strains and the appearance of an officer or two on horseback, followed by a regiment, on their way to exercise; every man of one company was singing at the top of his voice, joined by the officer who marched in front, and who kept beating time, a very merry song and chorus, which we stopped to listen to, _only a moment_, as the words were not quite so much to be admired as the air. This seemed to us a strange, and not very decorous scene, and was so little in accordance with our ideas of propriety or good taste that we turned away in disgust. However, since it is the custom for officers and men in France to sit together in _cafés_, playing at dominos, drinking wine and beer, and putting no restraint upon their conversation, or acknowledging any superiority, there was nothing extraordinary in the familiarity I had witnessed. How this sort of association can be relished by officers of gentle breeding I cannot conceive; and many of them must be so, though a great part are men who, having risen from the ranks, have not been accustomed to more refined companionship. If it be true that "Strict restraint, once broken, ever balks Conquest and fame," and that it is dangerous for those under command to "----Swerve From law, however stern, which tends their strength to nerve," it is difficult to comprehend how the French army is regulated. The next company which followed the vocal party, came hurrying along, helter-skelter, as if no drilling had ever been thought necessary in their military education; but, while we were remarking the "admired disorder" of their march, we heard their commanding officer's voice loud in reprobation; we could scarcely help comparing the whole scene to that which a militia regiment might present in some country town in England: "What are you all about?" cried the commander; "Eh, mon Dieu! One would say it was a flock of sheep instead of a party of soldiers!" This admonition brought them into some order, and they advanced a little less irregularly, but still in as slovenly a manner as could well be conceived. If the French were not known to be good soldiers, one would think this laxity of discipline little likely to make them so; but they are, like French servants, good enough in their way, though careless in the extreme, and too tenacious to be spoken to. La Rochelle is a more remarkable town, from the characteristic features it exhibits, than any we had met with since we set out on our tour. Although there is a great deal new in the streets and outskirts, yet much that originally existed remains. For instance, almost the whole centre of the town is built in the same manner: namely, in arcades. These arcades project from the ground-floors, are more or less high and broad, and more or less well paved; but they run along uninterruptedly, forming a shelter from sun or rain, as it may happen, and extending along the whole length of the streets on each side. They are generally of stone, with heavy pillars and circular arches, quite without grace or beauty, but peculiar, and giving an Oriental character to the place. In some streets arcades, higher and wider, have been newly erected, which are tolerably ornamental; but the more antique they are, the lower, narrower, and closer. The Rochellois are very proud of their arcades, boasting that they are, by their means, never kept prisoners or annoyed by either rain or sun; they forget that these heavy conveniences completely exclude the light in winter from the lower part of their houses, and, confining the air, must make the town damp and unwholesome. When we first walked along beneath these awnings we found it extremely difficult to distinguish one street from another, and were continually losing ourselves, as they branch off in all directions, with no change of aspect to distinguish them: "Each alley has a brother, And half the _covered way_ reflects the other," but we got used to them by degrees. There is a sort of _Palais Royal_ effect in the pretty shops under the neatest piazzas; and from the beautiful wooded square, the Place d'Armes, the range which forms one side looks remarkably well. This Place is peculiarly fine and agreeable; it was formed on the sites of the ancient château, demolished in 1590, of the chapel of St. Anne and its cemetery, of the grand Protestant temple, and the old Hôtel des Monnaies; it, therefore, occupies a large space, and is planted on two sides with fine trees, called the _Bois d' Amourettes_, and closed on the fourth by the cathedral; part of the ramparts of the town, open towards the sea, are behind, and thus a good air is introduced into the square. On moon-light nights it is a charming promenade; for the effects of the sky here are admirable: a range of handsome _cafés_ extends along one part, whose lights, gleaming between the trees, have a lively appearance, and the groups of lounging citizens seated under the shades give a life to the scene which the rest of the town does not possess. La Rochelle is, however, infinitely less dull than the generality of French towns; and the quays and shipping, and the constantly-changing sea, prevent it from wearing the sad aspect which distinguishes France in her country places. Notwithstanding all that travellers are in the habit of saying about the liveliness of France, I never can cease to think that it is a dull country; for, except Paris in its season, there is no movement, no activity, no bustle, in its towns, save, now and then, the confusion of market-days. Why England is considered _triste_, either in town or country, I cannot imagine: the brilliancy of its shops alone, compared to the little dark, dingy cells always met with abroad, even in the most fashionable quarters, might rescue our much-maligned country from the reproach which does not belong to it. The cathedral of La Rochelle is a modern building; still unfinished, and possessing no interest: it is very vast, for it stands where once stood the antique church--older than the town itself--of Notre Dame de Cougnes. Here and there, outside, a projecting buttress and part of an arch, built up, betrays its venerable origin; but, besides this, nothing remains of the original foundation. At the back of the cathedral we remarked, as we passed through the street, a very large building, with a great many windows, above the portal of which were inscribed the words, _Hôpital M. Auffrédy_. We were puzzled to make out what this could mean, as the hospital was so large and important that it scarcely would appear to be the institution of a private person. Our inquiries gained us no information, and we continued to pass and repass still wondering who this _Monsieur Auffrédy_ could be whose name was so conspicuous. When, at length, I found how much interest attached to this place I reproached myself that I should have gone near it without reverence, or have carelessly named its institutor; whose romantic story is as follows, as near as I have been able to gather it: STORY OF ALEXANDER AUFFRÉDY. At the time when the beautiful and wealthy, the admired and accomplished, heiress of Aquitaine, presided over her courts of Love, now in one city of her extensive dominions, now in another, delighting and astonishing the whole troubadour world with her liberality, her taste, her learning, grace, and gaiety, lived, in the city of La Rochelle, a rich merchant, named Alexander Auffrédy, young, handsome, esteemed and envied. His generosity and wealth, added to his personal attractions, made him an object of observation and remark, and it was not long before his name reached the ears of Queen Elionore, who, always desirous to surround herself with all that was gay, brilliant, and distinguished, sent an invitation, or rather a command, to the young merchant to appear at her Court at Poitiers. Auffrédy went; and but a short time elapsed before he became the favourite of that brilliant circle where beauty and genius reigned triumphant; for it was discovered that his talent for music was of the highest order; his voice, in singing, of rare perfection; his verses full of grace and fire, his manners equal to those of the most finished courtier; and his judgment in the weighty decisions of the courts of Love, sound and good. Even the poets and musicians, who saw him distinguished for the time above themselves, felt little envy towards him, since they shared his profuse liberality, and were encouraged by his generous admiration, loudly expressed. He was passionately attached to literature, and had so correct a taste that whatever he admired was the best in its kind, and his criticisms were so judicious that not a doubt could remain on the minds of any who listened to his opinion; yet he was never harsh, and, wherever it was possible, showed indulgence; it was only to the presuming and superficial that he was severe; and amongst that class he was by no means beloved; for, after his expressed contempt and censure had laid open to view the faults of many compositions, whose false glare had attracted praise, their authors sunk at once into the obscurity which they deserved. His chief friends were Bernard de Ventadour, whose lays, mysteriously addressed to _Bel Viser_ and _Conort_, had gained him so much fame; Rudel, the enthusiast, who devoted his life to an imaginary passion; Adhemar and Rambaud d'Aurenge, whose songs were some of the sweetest of their time; and Pierre Rogiers, who sighed his soul away for "Tort n'avetz;" and, amongst them all, his poems were held in the greatest esteem. The beautiful and coquettish mistress of the revels was not insensible to his qualities, and was anxious to appropriate him to herself; greedy of praise, and ever desirous of admiration, she used every art to enthral him, and to render the passion real, which it was the fashion at her Court to feign, towards herself; but, though flattered and delighted at the preference shown him by her whom all were trying to please, it was not towards the Queen that Auffrédy turned the aspirations of his soul. There was at Court a young and beautiful girl, the orphan of a knight who had fallen in the holy wars, and who was under the guardianship of her uncle, the Baron de Montluçon; she was as amiable in disposition as lovely in person. Auffrédy soon found that his liberty was gone while he gazed upon her, but his modesty prevented his attempting to declare his passion, though in his lays he took occasion to express all the feelings he experienced, and he saw with delight, not only that the charming Beatrix listened with pleased attention when he sung, but was even moved to tears when he uttered the lamentations of an unhappy lover. Upon one occasion he sang a lay which Queen Elionore imagined was inspired by herself; but which, in reality, he intended should convey to Beatrix his timid passion; it was as follows--in the style of the Eastern poets, then so much imitated and admired:-- LAY. "I only beg a smile from thee For all this world of tenderness; I let no eye my weakness see, To none my hopes or fears express; I never speak thy praises now, My tongue is mute, and cold my brow. "Even like that fabled bird am I Who loves the radiant orb of night, Sings on in hopeless melody And feeds upon her beams of light; But never does the planet deign To pity his unceasing pain." As he sung he would observe the eyes of Beatrix fixed on him with a tender expression; but their meaning was still obscure; for her thoughts appeared pre-occupied, and it might be more the sentiment than the author which attracted her. Just at this time he was suddenly astounded by the information, that the uncle of her he loved had announced his intention of marrying her to a man of noble lineage and great wealth, and Auffrédy woke from his dream of happiness at once. His strains were now all gloom and sadness, and Elionore heard, with something like astonishment, the melancholy and despairing lays, to which alone he tuned the harp that all delighted to hear. Beatrix, too, whose wishes had not been consulted on a subject so important to herself, appeared quite changed from the tune the tidings first reached her; and her pale cheek and starting tears proved too plainly her aversion to the proposed union. Still did she linger near when Auffrédy sung; and when, in a passion of sorrow, he poured forth the lay here given, Beatrix betrayed an emotion for which he feared to account. LAY. "Like that fair tree whose tender boughs Wave in the sunshine green and bright, Nor bird nor insect e'er allows To seek its shelter morn or night, My heart was young, and fresh, and free, And near it came nor care nor pain; But now, like that same tender tree, When once rude hands its fruit profane, Ill-omen'd birds and shapes of ill Troop to its branches, crowding still,-- And sorrows never known till now Have cast their shadows on my brow: A ruin is my heart become Where brooding sadness finds a home; See--those bright leaves fall, one by one, And I--my latest hopes are gone!" This was the last time he had ever an opportunity of pouring forth his feelings in the presence of Beatrix; for she disappeared suddenly from Court, and, to the amazement of all, it was announced by her uncle, that her vocation for a religious life had been so decidedly manifested, that he had yielded to her entreaties, and permitted her to enter a convent. This news made a strange impression on the mind of Auffrédy,--could it be possible, after all, that she loved him? yet, he argued, even if it were so, it was evident that her pride of birth had overcome her preference, and she had sacrificed the feelings of her heart rather than descend to be the bride of a merchant, who, though wealthy beyond all the nobles of the land, was yet no match for one born in her exalted rank. From that time the troubadour sang no more; and as the Queen found he had no longer incense to lay on her shrine, her preference for him waned away, and he found that the permission he asked, to absent himself from her Court was not withheld. "Poor Auffrédy," said Elionore, somewhat contemptuously, as he departed; "he has seen a wolf and has lost the use of speech; let him go, we have many a young poet who can well replace him." The admired favourite of a capricious beauty accordingly returned to La Rochelle, changed in heart and depressed in spirits. "And this, then," he mused, "is the reward which the world offers to genius, taste, truth, and feeling! and this is all the value set on qualities which excite admiration, enthusiasm, rapture!--a brief season suffices to weary the most zealous and devoted--a few months, and that which was deemed wit and talent, and wisdom and grace, is looked upon as flat, tame, and unworthy attention. As long as vanity is pleased, and novelty excites new ideas, the poet is welcomed and followed; but, let sadness or sorrow overtake him, of all his admirers not one friend remains! How childish is the thirst for such trivial fame as that a poet gains! It is like the pursuit of the gossamer, which the least breath sweeps away. I will sing no more. I will forget the brilliant scenes that have bewildered me too long; but to what do I now return? Alas! I have no longer a relish for that which interested me before--to what end do I seek to gain wealth? for whom should I hoard treasure? I shall in future take no interest in my successes; all appears a blank to me, and my existence a cold, monotonous state of being. These heaps of gold that fill my coffers are worthless in my eyes; these crowding sails that return to harbour, bringing me ceaseless wealth, are fraught only with care. Why was I born rich, since I must live alone and unblest!" Still he could not help, in spite of his professions of indifference, being flattered by the manner in which his return to his native town was celebrated. The bells of the churches sounded to welcome him, the young girls of the villages round, came out, in their holiday costumes, to greet him on his way, they strewed flowers in his path and sang verses in his praise: the people of La Rochelle even went so far as to offer prayers at the shrine of the Virgin, to thank Heaven for restoring to them so honoured and beloved a citizen. Full of gratitude for all this kindness and affection, Auffrédy bestowed liberal presents upon all: he presented dowers to several of the young maidens who were foremost in doing him honour: he gave large sums to the town, to be laid out in charities and in erecting new buildings, and he sent donations to the churches and convents. His mind was calmed, and his heart touched when he saw in what esteem he was held. "It is something yet," said he, "to gain the good-will of one's fellow-men, and to witness their attachment. Wealth is certainly a blessing, since it enables one to show gratitude." About this period great preparations were being made for an expedition to the Holy Land, which was to be led by young Prince Henry, the heir of Aquitaine, Normandy, and England; and all the lords and knights of the three countries vied with each other in splendid equipments. They borrowed money in all directions, and, amongst those who were capable of lending, it was not likely that the rich merchant of La Rochelle would be forgotten. On the contrary, from numerous quarters came applications for assistance; even Queen Elionore condescended to request that he would contribute to the splendour of those who should accompany her son, and the generous and ever ready hand of Auffrédy was employed from morning till night, in lending and giving to those whose means did not keep pace with their desires. Still, therefore, did he repeat to himself that wealth had its advantages, as he cheerfully dispensed his benefits on all sides. At length he was fairly obliged to desist, for his liberality had brought him to the end of his stores, and he could not but smile, as he remarked to a friend that, if he did not expect in a few weeks the return of all his vessels which were trading in the East, and regularly brought back increased wealth at every voyage, he should be a poor man. "I have nothing left now," said he, "but my plate and jewels, and the furniture of my house; and, should my fleet delay, I will sell all rather than a single knight should be kept from joining the glorious expedition." As if he had foreseen the event, it so happened: although there were no storms to prevent it, the return of the expected vessels was indeed delayed, and, fresh and pressing applications pouring in upon him, Auffrédy found himself actually under the necessity of disposing of his personal possessions, in order to advance the ready-money required. He was now in a novel position, without money altogether, and he had sold all he possessed of land and houses. "It matters not," said he to the friend at whose house he was staying, at his earnest and affectionate entreaty; "in a day or two I shall have more than I ever yet could call my own; for my last advices, brought by a pilgrim from the country of Manchou Khan, tell me, that all my ventures have been successful, and that this time my faithful agent, Herbert de Burgh, has excelled himself in ability." "And even should it not be so," said his friend, "think you that the grateful town of La Rochelle would not be proud to support for years, nay, for ever, if need were, the benefactor to whom every citizen is more or less indebted?" "I doubt it not," returned the merchant, "and it would be even a gratification to me to be reduced to poverty, which such generous friends would relieve." But a great and most unexpected change was about to take place in the fortunes of Auffrédy: a change which neither he nor his friends had ever contemplated, and which put quite a different face upon everything. The fleet from the East did not arrive. Day after day, week after week, month after month, the first, the second, year had passed, and the chain at the harbour of La Rochelle was not loosened to give passage to his vessels. Hope had slowly faded, expectation declined, and, at length, expired,--and the powerful, wealthy, and beloved Auffrédy was a beggar. Where was he at the expiration of the second year? What friend's mansion did he still honour with his presence, and which of his admirers was made happy by seeing him partake of his hospitality? Who, of all those he had rescued from poverty, danger, and affliction, was so blest as to show how strong the tide of gratitude swelled in their hearts? Auffrédy was heard of no more! His native town had forgotten his name: to speak of him was interdicted; he was a reproach to La Rochelle, a disgrace to the city whom his misfortune left without a merchant able to assist monarchs and fit out armies. Every individual felt injured, every one resented his affront. Not a door but was closed against the bankrupt spendthrift--the deceiver who spoke of wealth which was but a vision, who encouraged hopes which had no foundation. Vessel after vessel arrived from different quarters, but none had met with Herbert de Burgh or his charge; it was doubtful if he had ever even sailed: it was possible, nay probable, indeed it soon was received as a certainty, that the fleet which was talked of had no existence but in the crazed imagination of a profuse dreamer, who fancied argosies and made the world believe he possessed them. It was enough that the drama was ended, and no one cared now, after so long a time, to ask what was become of the principal actor. One bright summer morning, when the sun shone with dazzling lustre on the dancing waves outside the harbour of La Rochelle, and, inside, the water was as calm as glass, a little fishing-boat came gliding along, her red sail gleaming in the light. She was guided by a single sailor--a young man whose remarkably handsome face and figure was little set off by his rough habiliments, which were of the meanest kind; indeed, his boat and all belonging to it indicated little wealth, and seemed to have seen, like himself, much service; but there was a cheerful sparkle in his speaking eye which spoke of content and happiness; and, as he leaped on shore and prepared to unload his little cargo of fish, his animated manner and quick and ready movements showed that, if he were poor, he gained enough by his industry to support himself, and cared for nothing but the present moment, without concerning himself for the future. He had arrived but a few minutes when a slight woman, wrapped in a long black cloak, with the peaked hood tightly drawn over her head and quite concealing her face, emerged from a neighbouring street, and, bounding forward, stood by the side of the young man, who, with a joyful exclamation, caught her in his arms, and embraced her tenderly. Together they collected the fish, which filled his boat, into baskets, and placed them on the edge of the path where frequenters of the markets must pass, and before long their little stock was sold, and they were in possession of a small sum of money, which the young fisherman put into his purse with an air of satisfaction, as, fastening his boat to the shore, and gathering up his baskets, he gave his arm to the girl, who apparently was his wife, and they left the quay. Just as they were entering the small narrow Rue de la Vache, they observed, standing under an archway, a man, of ragged and miserable appearance, who, approaching, offered to be the bearer of their baskets to their home; he spoke in a low, hollow voice, and said, "Employ me: it will be a charity; I have not tasted bread these two days." Although the young couple, linked arm in arm, close together, and looking in each other's eyes, were talking in gay, cheerful accents, and, apparently, exclusively occupied with each other, yet there was something so sad, so desolate, in the tone of the poor man's voice who addressed them, that they both stopped and turned towards him. "Good friend," said the young man, "you seem in great straits; the blessed Virgin knows I am little able to help you; but take the baskets my wife is carrying, though you look but ill able to bear them. We live hard by, and we have a morsel of bread to give you, if you will." The man made no reply, but took the burthen from the young woman and followed the merry pair, who resumed their talk and their cheerful laugh as they went on. "I need not go out again for at least three days," said the husband, "since this venture has been so lucky; you see how well we can live, and how happy one can be, after all, on nothing." "Yes," answered the wife; "but, at least, while the weather is so fine, I see no reason why I should be left at home. I could be so useful in the boat, and it would make me so happy. I know when it blows hard, it is useless to ask you, but now"--"Well, you shall go, dearest, next time, if this lasts," was the answer; "what a good sailor you will make, as well as a housekeeper!" They both laughed, and at this moment they reached the door of a very humble dwelling, with only just furniture enough to prevent its being called empty; but they stepped into it, and, the porter placing the baskets on the floor, they sat down and invited him to do the same, while they shared with him a cake and some water, which was already placed on a table. The poor man, after eating a morsel, appeared suddenly faint, and, uttering a deep sigh, fell on the ground motionless: they raised him up, and, with the utmost kindness, endeavoured to restore him: his worn and haggard countenance told of long and hard suffering; his white hair, that hung in matted locks on his shoulders, seemed blanched by misery, not age; for he appeared a young man, and his emaciated hands were white and more delicate than is usual in his station. After some time he recovered a little, and, thanking them for their help, attempted to rise and leave the house; but both, moved with compassion, insisted on his lying down on their only bed and taking some repose. "You are ill," said the husband, "and have been too long without food--rest quiet--we will get you some more suitable nourishment, and when you are better, we will hear of your leaving us." From that day the sick man remained a guest with these poor people, till, his illness increasing, he begged they would procure him admittance into some hospital, if possible, that he might cease to be a burthen on their benevolence: finding their means running very short, owing to the uncertain success of the fisherman's trade, they consented to attempt getting him admitted to the hospital established by the monks of St. Julien, who kindly received the unfortunate man: but, not content with doing this, it was agreed between the young couple that, during the husband's absence, the wife should be his nurse, and attend to him while in the asylum which was afforded him. For several weeks he lay, apparently, at the point of death; but after that time began to recover, and, though weak and emaciated, appeared to have escaped danger. As soon as he was sufficiently recovered to attempt it, he resumed the occupation of porter on the quay, which his sickness had interrupted, and, as he grew daily in strength and health, he was able to gain a little, which he insisted on adding to the small stock of the charitable persons who had saved his life by their kindness. Sometimes he accompanied the husband on his expeditions, and was serviceable to him in his perilous ventures, for his nautical knowledge seemed great, and his skill and readiness made themselves apparent. Though full of gratitude in all his actions, he never expressed in words the feelings their conduct naturally inspired: he was silent and thoughtful, and seemed labouring under some overwhelming grief which no consolations could soften: he never spoke of any person in the town, nor seemed to know anything belonging to it, by which they judged he was a stranger; but, as he evidently did not desire to be communicative, they never urged him with questions, nor required to be informed of his former life. It sufficed to them that he was unfortunate, and that they had ameliorated his condition, and all three lived together, happy and content, without knowing any circumstances of each other's previous condition. Several months passed in this manner, winters and summers fled away, and the returning seasons found them still poor, still labouring, and still content. The porter improved, not only in strength, but in spirits; for he felt that he was able to be of service to those who had befriended him, and the gloom which chained his tongue and clouded his brow, wore, in a great degree, away. They had no friends in the town, nor sought for acquaintances; the young woman always concealed her face when she went out, which she never did, but to meet her husband, or to buy necessaries for their simple household. His boat had been replaced by one larger and more commodious, and his gains were greater; by degrees their circumstances improved, and, as they sat by their fireside, they were accustomed to say that they were rich enough, and desired nothing more. Although the fisherman and his now constant companion had been out in all weathers, they had never yet encountered any dangerous storms, and the wife was now quite tranquil, from the constant habit of seeing them return safely, and complaining little. One day, in early spring, they had set out with a clear sky and fair wind, and had had one of the most fortunate voyages of any they had yet made on the Breton coast, when, just as they were within sight of the Point de Ray, which raises its bare and jagged head three hundred feet above the noisy waves which brawl at its base, an ominous cloud suddenly overspread the heavens, and the symptoms of a coming storm were but too apparent. With silent awe the solitary mariners beheld, sailing heavily along the darkening sky, two birds, of sable plumage, whose flight seemed directed towards the fatal Baie des Trépassés, so often the grave of the adventurous seaman. "Alas!" said the young husband, as he marked their flight, "those birds bode no good: they are the souls of King Grallon and his daughter, who appear always before a storm; if we escape the perils of the Isle de Sein, we shall be indeed fortunate." "Is this coast, then, indeed, so dangerous?" asked the porter. "It is the abode of spirits," answered the young man; "and was the cradle of Merdynn the Bard; the city where he lived, is engulphed below those black rocks yonder, whose spires, like those of churches, are only visible when destruction threatens those who are found on the coast. We have, hitherto, been fortunate in all our undertakings; but there must come an evil day, which generally arrives when one is least prepared." "It is too true," said his companion; "for me, I thought all my misfortunes were past, and death alone could be the ill left to reach me. I have, of late, felt it _would_ be an ill since I have lived again in you and yours--before that time, I prayed for it in vain." A furious gust of wind at this instant swept past them, their frail vessel shook in every timber, and, mounting on a sweeping wave that came howling along, was sent forward with frightful impetuosity to a great distance; when, as if the angry billow disdained its weight, it was precipitated into a gulf of foam which dashed above the sunken rocks whose points received it. "Oh, Beatrix!" exclaimed the young fisherman; "it is all over; we shall meet no more; our fate has overtaken us at last! My friend," he added, grasping the arm of his companion; "if you survive, promise to protect her. We have suffered much, and borne our fortune as we could. I have brought this wretchedness upon her by my love; but neither she nor I have ever repented the lot we chose. She will tell you our story, and you will continue to comfort and support her when I am no more." "Be not cast down," answered his friend; as, buffeted by the storm, they clung together to the creaking mast; "I know your story already, and have known it from the first. You are the troubadour, Anselm, once the ornament of the Court of Elionore, and Beatrix de Montluçon is your devoted wife. She was said to have died in the convent of St. Blaise, and you to have perished in the Holy Land." The shrieking of the wind, and the roaring of the awakened thunder, drowned the reply of the young man: a crash, a shock, and their boat was split into several parts; they each clung to a piece of wreck, and used every effort to overcome the fury of the elements. Anselm's hold, however, was suddenly loosened by the falling of the mast upon his arm, and his friend saw him no more for several instants; he re-appeared, however, and a returning wave dashed him on a rock, which the porter reaching by a spring, he caught him by the hand and dragged him to the summit. There they stood clasping each other, and expecting every moment to be washed off by the boiling surge. For some time they, nevertheless, kept their stand, and, though not a vestige of their boat was to be seen, they still lived and still hoped, for their hopes rose with the danger, and, as they offered up their fervent prayers to the Mother of mercy, they felt not altogether abandoned. All night were they in this perilous position, hearing the waters around them howling, and climbing to reach the spot where, almost by miracle, they were placed. Day broke, and with morning came a brightened prospect; by degrees the sea sank, the winds subsided, and all trace of the storm was gone. But their situation seemed still little better than before; must they not perish on this barren rock, without food or shelter, if not washed off by the next tide, which might bring back the sleeping vengeance of the enraged elements? While they hung exhausted on the perilous edge of the peak, something in the distance caught their view. It grew more distinct; it came nearer; and they were aware that a sail was passing: not one, however, but many; like the glittering of the wings of a flight of sea-birds, sail after sail hove in sight, and a gallant fleet came full in view almost as soon as they had descried the first. Loud and long were their cries; hope gave them fresh force, and their voices were sent over the now quiet waves, echoing till they reached the ears of those in the foremost vessel. The mariners, directed by the continued sound of distress, were able to steer towards them; and having at length discovered in the specks at a distance, amidst the waves, the unfortunate friends, a boat was sent through the sea to the rock, and at once received the rescued pair. They were taken on board and tended carefully; and, the wind being fair, the vessels continued their course, which they declared was to La Rochelle, much to the delight of those they had delivered from death. The port so much desired was almost reached; and the high towers of the Château de Vauclair, of the cathedral, and the Grosse Tour de la Chaine, shone boldly forth against the clear blue sky. The captain walked the deck, and gazed long and anxiously forth; every now and then tears started into his eyes, which he brushed away; at length his feelings appeared to overcome him, and, burying his face in his hands, he sobbed aloud. The two grateful friends whom he had saved were standing by; he raised his head and addressed them; "You who are of La Rochelle," said he, "can you not, perchance, tell me if one whom I left ten years ago in that town still lives and is well? Fears and forebodings oppress me as I approach the shore, for it is long since I have heard tidings of him, and much does it import me to know that he exists, and that my enforced absence has not caused him misfortune. Is the great merchant, Alexander Auffrédy, still, as he once was, the ornament and benefactor of his native town?" "Alas!" replied the youngest of the shipwrecked men, "you ask after one long since forgotten in La Rochelle. It is now ten years since he was a ruined man, and, having nothing more to give to his ungrateful fellow-citizens, was abandoned to his fate, and has been no more heard of." "Unhappy destiny!" cried the captain, turning pale and clasping his hands; "but he was rich, and his stores were immense; not twice ten years' absence of his fleets could have caused him to become bankrupt." "But he gave all he had to the knights bound for the Holy Wars; his agent, Herbert de Burgh, was either faithless, or the fleets entrusted to him were lost; he never returned from his last voyage to the East, and the unfortunate merchant, reduced to penury and driven to despair, is said to have destroyed himself." As Anselm uttered these words the captain became convulsed with agony; his face was livid, his eyes rolled, his teeth were clenched. "Wretch that I am!" cried he; "who am the cause of all! I wrote to my dear master and told him of my intention to attempt a new discovery in a new world filled with riches unheard of before; but I waited not his permission; I set out without his leave, and, not content with what I had already gained for him, I resolved to seek more wealth; to what end have I gained it--to what end have I returned with riches enough to purchase Europe; all of which these vessels bear, if he, the generous, trusting, kind, indulgent, and deceived owner is no more? Where shall I hide my head?--where lose my shame?--and how survive his loss!" They entered the harbour of La Rochelle; and as the gallant train of ships swept proudly along, the whole population of the town came forth until they lined the shores in every direction. It was soon known, by the ensigns they bore, that they were the long-lost vessels of Auffrédy; and many a conscious cheek turned pale, and many an eye glared with amazement as the gorgeous galleys covered the waters. But the captain was lying prone on the deck; his face was haggard, his look wild, and he tore his hair in distraction. "My master, my poor master!" cried he; "I have murdered thee by my mercenary wickedness; oh, holy Virgin! forgive me, for I am a sinner!" "Look up, Herbert de Burgh," said a voice beside him; "the Mother of mercy is never appealed to in vain; she can restore the dead to life; she can, though late, re-illume joy in the heart; she can revive long-abandoned hope. Look up and say if in this wretched, wasted, meagre form you can recognise one whom you loved; one who loved and trusted you with reason; who never doubted your integrity, and who mourned you lost more than all his wealth, which you restore!" Herbert de Burgh looked up and beheld, leaning over him, the form of Alexander Auffrédy. A few words sufficed of explanation: joy took the place of despair, exultation of tears, and the minstrel, Anselm, heard, with feelings of emotion difficult to describe, that the wretched man whom he had saved from starvation was the rich merchant of La Rochelle. Loud and joyous were the notes of triumph which sounded from every vessel as the news became known; the clarions and trumpets rent the air; wild exclamation of happiness and congratulation rose above the pealing music which ushered in the fleet to its haven; and strange was the revulsion of feeling on shore when the despised porter stepped from his boat, attended by Herbert de Burgh, who proclaimed him as his master. Those who had shunned and injured the now wealthy merchant were astounded; and who were there, amongst the whole population, who had befriended him, or who deserved aught but contempt and hatred at his hands? There was _but one_, and she is clasped in her husband's arms, and sees, in the man she had protected, her lover, whose songs she had so often sung to her husband! Auffrédy kept their secret, and to none but himself was it ever known that the rich man who afterwards became governor of La Rochelle, and his beautiful wife, supposed to be a native of some foreign land, were the troubadour, Anselm, and Beatrix of Montluçon. All the revenge Auffrédy took upon his townsmen was to reject their offers of friendship, to refuse to take his place amongst them, and to avoid appearing in their sight. The bulk of his great wealth was dedicated to the foundation of a hospital for naval and military patients, and the rest of his days he passed in attendance on the sick. This is the story of Auffrédy, the great merchant, the Jacques Coeur of the thirteenth century; and this is the history of the magnificent Hospital of La Rochelle, which he founded, and which is to be seen at the present hour, the most conspicuous object in the town. CHAPTER XI. TOWERS--RELIGION--MARIA BELANDELLE--STORM--PROTESTANT RETREAT--SOLEMN DINNERS--"HALF-AND-HALF"--GO TO SLEEP!--THE BREWERY--GAS ESTABLISHMENT--CHÂTEAU OF LA FONT--THE MYSTERY EXPLAINED--TRIUMPH OF SCENERY OVER APPETITE--SLAVE TRADE--CHARLES LE BIEN SERVI--LIBERALITY OF LOUIS PHILIPPE--GUITON--HOUSE OP LE MAIRE GUITON--THE FLEETS--THE FIGHT--THE MAYOR AND THE GOVERNOR. IT appears that, from the position of the town of La Rochelle, it was not difficult for the vessels of an enemy to reach its walls, and even to penetrate its harbour; the latter was formed outside the town, and the access to it was by numerous gates. The entrance, nevertheless, was defended by two towers, which still exist, if not in all their original strength, yet exhibiting an aspect of defiance, and recalling recollections of times long past, such as few towns in France can now do. These towers, which stand, like Sir Bevis and Sir Ascapart, bold and menacing, and forbidding the entrance to any but a friend, are called La Tour de la Chaine and La Tour de St. Nicolas. The first is a rugged, round tower of great height and bulk, apparently of Roman construction; it was formerly called La Petite Tour de la Chaine, because it assisted its opposite sister, La Grosse Tour, to sustain the enormous chain which still, on occasion, closes the mouth of the harbour. The latter is now called St. Nicolas, and presents a most extraordinary and _old world_ appearance: higher than the first, its form is so irregular, that it would be difficult to decide what shape it could be called: round on one side, square on another, with little round, square, and octagon turrets rising out of it, the whole mass has the strangest effect imaginable. Within it is just as mysterious, having chambers built up and down, and communicating with each other in the most unexpected manner, so that the whole interior is a perfect labyrinth of galleries, cells, hiding-places, and rooms on different stages. This is just the sort of tower which seemed fitted for that inscrutable tyrant, Louis XI.; who wrote upon one of the windows, with a diamond, these words: "_O la grande Folie_!" alluding, it was believed, to what he considered his weakness, in having abandoned Guienne to his brother. The fortifications of La Rochelle were very extensive formerly, the gates numerous. La Porte Malvaut or Mauléon, La Porte Rambaud, du Petit Comte, de St. Nicolas, de Vérité, des Canards, de Mauclair, de la Vieille Poterie, de la Grande Rue du Port, de la Petit Rue du Port, de Pérot and du Pont-Vert, tell their age by their antique names. There are but few vestiges of any of these gates, except that of Cougnes, of the ancient Porte Neuve, and la Porte Maubec: but, besides all these, there are seven still existing. To complete the defences, there were formerly, _without_ the gates, two forts of great strength, one called St. Louis and Des Deux Moulins, the ruins of which still exist near the fine pyramidal Tour de la Lanterne, the most conspicuous of all, now used as a prison, which raises its head far above every tower and spire of La Rochelle, and which must show its _pharos_ at a great distance at sea. The architecture of this tower is remarkable, and its ornaments very beautiful: the spire that sustains its lantern is like that of a church adorned with graceful foliage to the top: it dates from 1445, and has been repaired at different periods. Medals were struck at the time of the siege, in 1628, which represent this tower, having the following motto round:--_Lucerna impiorum extinguetur_ (the light of the impious shall be extinguished). It was at this time that Cardinal Richelieu caused the great _digue_, as it is called, to be made to the south-west of the town, with enormous labour and expense, in order to prevent supplies reaching the Rochellois who held out against him. At low water this _digue_ is visible, and remains a memorial of the cruelty and harshness of the tyrant priest who ruled France. One of the numerous towers which formerly protected the town is called the Demi-bastion _des Dames_, so named from its having been defended by the ladies of La Rochelle, whose heroic devotion at the time of the siege by the duke of Anjou, in 1573, has rendered them famous in history. They were not less active half a century later, when, for thirteen months, La Rochelle withstood the united forces of Catholic France bent on its destruction. The scenes which took place at these periods have made this interesting town classic ground: there is not a wall, a tower, or a street, which has not some tale of heroism attached to it, and some noble trait may be recounted as having occurred in every quarter.[8] [Footnote 8: In the Romance of the Queen Mother, I have given a detailed account, from the most correct chroniclers, of the siege of La Rochelle, and its defence, in 1573.] There are no interesting churches in La Rochelle, the wars of religion having destroyed all the antique buildings of worship, both Catholic and Protestant. Nothing now remains of the extensive possessions of the Templars, or the Knights of Malta, who both had _commanderies_ here. The reformed religion, of which La Rochelle afterwards became the stronghold, is said to have been first introduced by a young girl of humble station, Maria Belandelle, into this part of the country. Strong in her conviction, and anxious to spread the truth, this person, more zealous than prudent, ventured to come forward, in 1534, as antagonist to, and disputant against, a Franciscan friar. However good her arguments might be, the result of the controversy had of course been previously decided on by the strongest party. She was convicted of heresy and impiety, and condemned to the stake; which _righteous_ judgment was carried into effect, and poor Marie was publicly burnt in the great square, to the refreshment and edification of her _soi-disant_ fellow-Christians! Calvinism, however, gained ground in spite of this example of its dangers, and many were the secret meetings held in concealed places; sometimes under-ground, like the early Christians; till in 1558 a minister, previously a priest of the diocese of Agen, named David, preached in the church of St. Barthélemi (ominous name!) the new doctrines, in the presence of the King and Queen of Navarre, parents of Henry IV. A few years later, under these powerful auspices, other ministers ventured to emerge from their hiding-places, and proclaim the "glad tidings" to their brethren. With more or less danger and indulgence, the Protestants pursued their reform for some time--now persecuted, now permitted--till, by the edict of pacification of 1570, it was agreed that persons of both religions should in future _live together in good intelligence_. The immortal horrors of St. Bartholomew, however, changed the face of things, and a long straggle ensued; during which, at different times, the Rochellois showed themselves undaunted defenders of the faith. Always opposed and persecuted, the Protestants were never publicly allowed, by the State, to follow the exercise of their religion, till the great revolution swept away all barriers; and, from that time alone, those who professed that faith could do so openly. Several houses are shown in the town where the Calvinists were accustomed to meet secretly, and to one of them an accident introduced us. Every morning before breakfast we were accustomed to go down to the baths of the beautiful _Mail_, and as the walk through the town, under the interminable arcades, was both hot and tedious, we always chose a longer, but very agreeable, way, by the boulevards of the ancient ramparts; which are extremely pleasant, varied, and delightful, offering here and there fine views of the country beneath, and affording thick shade under their magnificent trees; some of the best houses open at the back on these ramparts, from whence their fine gardens, full of flowers and vine-trellices, can be occasionally seen. We had been a week at La Rochelle; every morning enjoying our walk, for the weather was perfection, a warm, bright sun and fresh sea-breeze inspiriting us to take so very long a promenade twice a day, in order that we might lose nothing of the splendour of the sea. One day the sun deceived us; we set out as usual; but had not got half to the end of the ramparts, when a series of dark clouds came creeping over the blue sky; a hollow wind began to sigh amongst the leaves, and the light became fitful and lurid, till, on a sudden, a loud crack in the sky was heard, and in an instant down rushed the rain in a perfect deluge. We had reached the most exposed part of the boulevard; all the trees here were young; indeed, as we observed the quick flashes of lightning, we were scarcely sorry to be at a distance from the larger ones. We stood close to the old wall, and covering ourselves with our parasols as well as we could, paused, hoping the fury of the storm would soon subside. We were wet through instantly; for it seemed as if the Spirits of the shower took a pleasure in drenching us without mercy; such a roaring, and creaking, and flashing echoed around us, that it was impossible not to fancy they were enjoying our distress. Finding that there was no chance of the storm abating, we determined to continue our way, and, by getting into the streets, escape the danger of the lightning; accordingly, at the first opening, which was near the Ecluse de la Verdière, we hurried down; but here the storm-fiend became so furious, the wind so terrific, and the rain so persevering, that, seeing an open door, we darted into it, and in an instant found ourselves under shelter. When we could breathe we looked round, and could not help laughing to see where we had been so lucky as to place ourselves. It was a huge dark cavern, where coals and other fuel were heaped in all directions; long aisles seemed to diverge from it with low arches leading further into the building, and apparently descending. A small, pointed window at the back just gave light enough to show its retreats, and we became convinced that this was one of the very places where of old our Protestant brethren were accustomed to meet to exercise their religion. It answered precisely to a description I had read of one of them, situate beneath the ramparts, and it was a great comfort in our emergency to think that we had thus discovered a secret haunt which must otherwise have escaped us. The owner of the shed, or a workman, soon arrived, and seemed somewhat amused, as well as astonished, to see how we had taken possession of his grot; we had not Imogen's excuse-- "Before I entered here I called;" but he gave us welcome, nevertheless, till the storm disappearing, as suddenly as it had arrived, we were able to pick our way home to Les Trois Chandeliers. One of the least agreeable things which we encountered in our inn, was the manner in which our dinners were conducted; we were not allowed the privilege, which we generally claimed, of dining in our own apartments; but were given to understand that at the _table d'Hôte_ we should meet with the best attendance and entertainment. Accordingly, we became guests in the fine _salon_ I have before described, where a party were assembled in solemn silence, as if a serious meeting, instead of one somewhat lively, was on the _tapis_. The cross-looking, silent damsel of the huge square cap slowly placed the dishes on the table, and every one sat down; but not a single individual, male or female, attempted to help his neighbour to anything; not a word was spoken, except in whispers; and very soon she of the square cap began to remove several of the untouched viands; as the soup, for which we had ventured to ask, was particularly bad, we did not interfere to prevent this proceeding. The next course appeared; but still, except a solitary individual, who made a desperate move, and cut up a fowl which he handed round, no one put out a finger; as we were quite at the lower end of the table, and saw with consternation that our appetites, sharpened with the fine air of the sea, were not likely to be satisfied, and not relishing this Governor Sancho's fare, we beckoned to a mute female, who had entered with the second course, and stood by as if a spectator of the solemnity, and remonstrated on the absurdity, entreating to have something brought us; she answered gravely, that _in our turn_ we should be attended to; and in the end we were fortunate enough to procure a little cream, of which we took possession; and then, wearied out with the tedium of the proceeding, rose and made a retreat, leaving the rest of the taciturn company to wait for and contemplate their dessert. It was not so much the supineness of the attendants as the apathy of the guests that amazed us; having generally observed in France, that _mauvaise honte_ by no means stood in the way of hungry persons, and that a French appetite is with difficulty appeased, even after partaking of every dish on the table: a fact of which we had lately been reminded at Poitiers, where a set of men, who ate in a most prodigious manner, after the last condiment had disappeared exclaimed, one to the other, "_Eh, mon Dieu! on ne fait que commencer, il me semble._" Our desertion being reported to the lady of the Three Candlesticks, she came to apologise; fearing that her enforced absence had caused something to go wrong at the dinner. She told us that she was obliged to attend to the domestic arrangements of her hotel, and to superintend fifteen workmen who were busied in some necessary duties; but, _as she always saw to everything herself_, we should have no cause to complain another day. We had meditated finding out another place to dine at, but this disarmed us; and, day after day, we were obliged to submit to something very similar, being forced to make a perfect struggle for our dinner, and submit to the studiedly tedious movements of the Breton girl, whose frowns and scowls accompanied every action. We found, one day, a champion in an old gentleman, who, a stranger and traveller, like ourselves, endeavoured to create a reform; but was only partially successful. This person had been to England, and preserved pleased recollections of London "_half-and-half_" which he seemed to consider little short of nectar, and was astonished at my ignorance when, appealed to, I was obliged to plead guilty of not being acquainted with its virtues. He was the first Frenchman I ever heard refute the calumnies against our climate; for, though he agreed that we had fogs in London occasionally somewhat denser than in Paris, he had not fallen into the error,--which it is thought heresy to dispute,--that, at Brighton, Richmond, or Windsor, the blue sky is never seen. A very supercilious man who sat near him, annoyed at his praises of England, and his raptures at the Tunnel,--that great object of foreign admiration,--endeavoured to silence him by pronouncing that London had no monuments, and was not half as big as Paris; for, though he lived in Poitou, he had seen the capital. The comic look which our champion gave us when this oracle was pronounced was irresistible. We had inquired for the fountain and castle of La Font, famous in the annals of the Liege; and our hostess, finding that we were bent on seeing all the sights that La Rochelle could furnish, when she met us one morning at her door, where we had been greeted by her husband, who officiated as cook in the dark retreat which we had to cross on our exit, with the salutation of "_Go to sleep_;"--which English phrase he considered as expressive as any other,--proposed to show us the way to the village of La Font, and its château--a short walk from La Rochelle. We accepted her offer; and, accompanied by her little girl--a forward, clever child of about seven years old, and two friends,--in one of whom we recognised one of the solemn officials of the dinner-table, who, it seems, was playing only an amateur part on that occasion,--we set out. The ideas of all French people, in every part of France, it appears to me, are the same respecting sights and views: to take a walk means, with them, to put on your best gown and cap, take your umbrella, and proceed, at a sauntering pace, talking all the way, down some hot, dusty road, where the _monde_ is expected to be met with. The end of the journey is usually at some shabby cottage, or _cabaret_, where seats are set out in the sun, and refreshments are to be had. I think lanes and meadow-paths do not exist in France; or, if they do, they are carefully avoided by all but shepherds and shepherdesses, who are obliged to take them occasionally; but who much prefer, as do their charges, the sheep and cows, the high road, all dust and bustle. The first place we stopped at, we were assured, was very interesting: the permission to see it had been graciously granted to our hostess, for us, by the proprietor, who usually dined at the _table d'hôte_,--one of our silent _companions_, no doubt;--and we could, consequently, do no less than appear grateful for the favour. Our patience was, however, put to the test when what we hoped, by its ruinous appearance, would turn out an antique church or tower was announced to be an infant _brewery_, in a very early stage of its existence. We stood by while our companions talked to a very pretty, indolent-looking woman, surrounded by black-eyed children, whose ages and habits were dilated on, and all of whom were scattered about the premises--sitting or lying on tubs and heaps of wood; while the husband and father sauntered through something like work, which was to bring the erection, in the course of time, to a close. He seemed glad of an opportunity of leaving off what he was supposed to be doing, to show us the garden of the establishment,--a wilderness full of mignionette, and cabbages, and vines, and pumpkins. As an excuse for the failure of this sight, we were told that the principal works could not be shown, which, had we seen, would have amazed us not a little; but, to make up for the disappointment, we should be introduced to another _fabrique_, which should well repay us. When near the Porte Dauphine, we found this treat was no other than a gas establishment; and, terrified at the odour which spread from it far and wide, which, added to the heat of a very sunny day, warned us to forego the temptation of becoming acquainted with the method of meting out gas to the town of La Rochelle, we protested against being forced to enter; contenting ourselves with admiring the tall pillar, which, being new, is an object of great exultation to the inhabitants. The air, in this part, was quite poisoned with the effluvia from the gas; and we were not surprised to hear that the soldiers, in the barracks close beneath, suffered continually from sickness since the period when the gas-works had been established. Unpleasant smells, however, seldom seem to distress French organs; and our disgust only amused our companions, who seemed now, for the first time, to perceive that it was not as agreeable as the mignionette beds we had left. We were not sorry to reach the beautiful promenade of the Champ de Mars and the Fontaine de la Maréchale; a fine walk planted with numerous trees, with alleys diverging towards the village of La Font. Gardens, with high walls, extend for half a league in this direction; for here all the rich merchants of the town have their country-houses, and here they usually spend the summer months. Being enclosed, however, the perfume of the flowers alone, and an occasional opening, betray their existence; and the walk is hot and dusty, without any view of sea, or landscape, to repay the toil. At length we found ourselves at the end of the longest village I ever was in; all composed of good square houses, the backs only of which were visible. We turned aside, along an avenue planted with young trees, to the château of La Font; but what was our vexation to find at its extremity a range of little huts, and a black, soapy pool, at which numbers of washerwomen were busy at their ceaseless occupation. "_Voilà_!" exclaimed our hostess, in exultation, and with an air which said, You must be gratified now; "_Voilà_! this is the famous fountain _where all the linen of La Rochelle is washed_! and there is the château where my washerwoman lives,--a very respectable mother of a family;--and there are her turkeys and her farm-yard; and there is her market-garden! Oh! it is a sweet spot!" Beyond the group of _blanchisseuses_--to whom she stopped to talk about her household arrangements,--we saw a ruined tenement flanked with round towers, very much dilapidated, and preserving but little of their ancient character, owing to having been pierced with modern windows; certainly sufficiently ruinous, if that was to be an object of attraction, but not otherwise worthy of note. Girls and women, in wooden shoes, were sitting about in a slovenly yard before it, and we were welcomed as guests by one who got chairs and placed them in sight of the farm-yard wonders for our accommodation: after which she disappeared with our hostess to show the washing establishment, which we declined visiting, in spite of repeated invitations, given with all the _bonhommie_ in the world, as if there had really been anything to see but dirty water and soap-suds. We comprehended, afterwards, as we sat musing in the farm-yard, watching the vagaries of some angry turkeys, whose combs became perfectly white with passion, as they contended with their fellows, that the reason of so much pride and admiration on the part of our hostess and the mistress of the _Château_ de La Font was, that the washing here was carried on _under cover_; whereas, that operation usually takes place by the side of rivers and brooks, in the open face of nature, without hot water or tubs. No wonder that our apathy annoyed the parties, who had so just a reason to "be vaunty" of so expensive an establishment! This, then, is all that remains of the castle of La Font, once a place so contended for during the numerous sieges, and which the Duke of Anjou, afterwards Henry III., took possession of, when he ordered his soldiers to destroy all the fountains which supplied the besieged town of La Rochelle with water. On this spot, where Protestants and Catholics fought deadly battles, and disputed every inch of ground, the battle of a couple of turkeys, and the splashing and thumping of a group of washerwomen, were all that existed to interest the beholder. We walked round the towers and into the field at the back, but scarcely a bit of old wall repaid our trouble; and finding that the subject of washing became all engrossing to our hostess, who seemed to have forgotten that the hotel of the Three Candlesticks and its dinner-hour had existence, we rose and left the party, directing our way back to the town. We had managed to make our escape quietly, but our defection once perceived, consternation ensued, and the departure of La Noue from the Protestant camp could scarcely have created more sensation. We were pursued, and accompanied home to the hotel, with repeated apologies for having been allowed to remain alone until we became _ennuyées_; and so persecuted were we with politeness, that we were not sorry to take refuge in the solemn _salle-à-manger_, where, though nearly two hours past dinner-time, we found no preparations yet on foot for our relief. It was impossible, considering the well-meant intention of our hostess, to be angry at anything; but, without exception, the whole arrangement at this most unique of all inns, was the least comfortable that any unfortunate traveller ever had to put up with. Every day we meditated leaving, and every day her good-humour, and a bath and walk at the delicious sea-side, made us abandon our resolve, and-- "Tempered us to bear; It was but for a day." Indeed, it was impossible to be otherwise than content, to find oneself seated in one of the pretty alcoves of the Bath gardens, with a magnificent expanse of sparkling sea before the eye, a gentle murmur of waters at the feet, a hundred gleaming sails, white and red, gliding along the surface of the glittering wave, the towers of the distant town shining out from the mass of buildings which surround them, the full harbour, the green alleys, the superb trees, the pretty shrubs, the distant island shores, everything, in fact, smiling and gay and beautiful around. To forget Les Trois Chandeliers, and to grudge the time necessary for finding a new domicile, was a natural consequence; and the want of _matériel_ to satisfy the sea-side appetite--sure to be gained after a whole day's sojourn on the beach--became an after consideration, our domestic privations were therefore constantly neglected, bewailed, and forgotten again next day while eating grapes and bread in the beloved alcove. There appears to be much ease in the circumstances of the inhabitants of La Rochelle: we understood that there were not many persons of very large fortune, but few positively poor. The commerce is inferior now to what it has been; as, for instance, in the _glorious_ time of the _slave trade_; but there appears still to be a good deal of bustle on the quays: however, to an English eye, all French trade seems dull when compared to the movement in our own ports. There is always building going on here, as in every other town in France, where one might imagine everything had been at a stand-still for a century, and had suddenly been endowed with new life and activity. The cities of France seem--like the enchanted domains of the marble prince of the Arabian Nights--to have been doomed to a long inaction, and restored to existence by an invisible power. The magic which changed the blue and red fishes into men, was less potent than the wise rule of the present sovereign of the kingdom, under whom his country flourishes; not a town or village being forgotten in his endeavours to rescue them from the long night of wretchedness into which war and misrule had cast them. Everywhere his donations and encouragement cause ruins and filth to disappear, and splendour and neatness to take their place: yet, in spite of all this, and obvious as the benefit is to a traveller who hears of his benefactions wherever he passes, few of the subjects of this considerate and liberal monarch seem sufficiently grateful for his patriotic endeavours to exalt their position. "He has not done _much_ for _us_," is the general remark; a rather startling one, when one recollects the hundreds of towns, villages, and bourgs which his care has reached. The French are certainly neither grateful nor just; for they seldom remember or acknowledge obligation either to individuals or kings. They seem, also, wilfully blind to the blessings of the peace, which Louis Philippe so offends their warlike propensities by insisting on: even while they are restoring all their battered towns and erecting new edifices, of which they are proud enough, they would willingly leave them half done to draw the sword against some windmill giant, and buckle on their armour to encounter some puppet-show termagant. The public buildings of La Rochelle are fine, but the narrowness of most of the streets in which they are placed, prevents their showing to advantage. If the Palais de Justice stood in the fine square opposite the cathedral, for instance, it would have a very imposing effect; but, as it is, one passes under its arcades, and under the arcades opposite, half-a-dozen times before its beauties become apparent. It is a modern building of great taste and delicacy, in the style of the Renaissance; the friezes and entablatures being executed with extreme skill and grace. The Bourse is also a beautiful building, having a gallery supported by a colonnade, which connects two of its wings, and which separates the court from a pretty plantation of ornamental trees, which agreeably adorns the edifice. But the ancient building of the Hôtel de Ville is that which most attracts, both for its beauty and its recollections. The taste of Francis I. and Henry II. is evident in its architecture. Henry IV.'s additions are also obvious, and more modern _improvements_ have considerably altered its original appearance. The entrance is comparatively modern and ugly; which is the more to be regretted, since, from this spot the Maire Guiton--the great hero of La Rochelle, spoke to the people when obliged to consent to the capitulation of the town. However, the site itself cannot but be interesting; and all that surrounds it remains as it must have been at his time. The singular gallery, and its ornamented roof in compartments, with a thousand interlaced letters and devices, as mysterious as those at the house of Jacques Coeur, at Bourges, the façade, and statues, and foliage, and ornamental mouldings, the curious windows, the ancient screen, the outer walls, and _tourelles_ of the thirteenth, and battlements and door-ways of the fifteenth century, all are singular and attractive. It was, probably, in this palace that the accident happened to Charles the Seventh, _Le Bien Servi_, told with so much characteristic simplicity by Mezeray. When the news of the death of his father, the unfortunate Charles the Sixth, was brought to the Dauphin, says the Chronicler, "he was then at Espally, in Auvergne, a castle belonging to the Bishop of Le Puy. He wore mourning only one day; and the next morning changed this sad colour to scarlet. In this habit he went to hear mass in the chapel of the castle; as soon as it was over he ordered the banner of France to be displayed, at the sight of which all present cried out, _Vive le Roy_! And from that time he was recognised and called king by all good Frenchmen. But as he had neither Paris nor Rheims in his possession, he repaired to Poitiers to be crowned, where his parliament then was, and there received the oaths and homage of all who acknowledged him as sovereign. From Poitiers he took his way to La Rochelle, on a warning which was given him that the Duke of Brittany had secret designs, and that he was making warlike and powerful preparations to take possession of this province." "There he nearly lost his life by a strange invention--the machination of some of his enemies; for, as he was holding his council in a great hall, the beams having been sawn asunder, the ceiling gave way and fell, burying every one beneath the ruins. Jacques de Bourbon, Seigneur de Preaux, died in consequence, several others were grievously wounded, but the king, by a good fortune, almost miraculous, escaped. This was a certain presage, that, after great danger, Divine Providence, in the end, would save him, and draw him forth from the ruins of his empire against all human expectation." Thus was saved the most ungrateful of all monarchs; one who suffered his friends to exert every nerve in his favour, while he sat carelessly by and saw them betrayed and slaughtered for his sake, of him Lahire said, "On ne pouvait perdre son royaume plus gaiement." He was urged to action only, at last, by superstition; and when all was gained for him, had nothing with which to reward his devoted friends but banishment and confiscation, as in the case of Jacques Coeur, his ill-used friend, whose money had gained him back his kingdom. Yet, at last, his death was as wretched as if he had perished in the hall at La Rochelle, for he died of famine, to avoid being poisoned by his unnatural son. We entered the great hall at the top of the flight of steps in the centre of the building, and followed a party who were visiting the interior, by which means, although the hall was otherwise closed, we were able to see the great picture recently _given by the king_, with his usual liberality, to the town of La Rochelle. In this _salle_ is still seen the marble table, and the chair of the Maire Guiton; a mark across the marble is shown as that made by his sword when, in his agony, he struck the table, as he rose, indignant at the proposals of surrender made to him. There is nothing else in the hall which is not modern, even its form, which has been changed for the convenience of the meetings which take place here. The picture is one of very exciting interest, and is very well executed; it is the work of M. Omer Chartel--a native, I believe, of La Rochelle--and is a most appropriate present to the town in which the circumstances it depicts took place. Jean Guiton was mayor of La Rochelle at the time when, in 1628, Louis XIII., or rather the Cardinal de Richelieu, besieged the Protestants in the town. His mysterious disappearance, the uncertainty attached to his fate, the suspicions of his motives,--notwithstanding the grandeur of his character, and the determination of his resistance,--altogether invest him with singular interest, and every particular of his history which can be collected must be eagerly sought for. He was appointed to the office of chief-magistrate at a moment of great danger; and on the occasion made this celebrated speech: "Fellow-citizens, I accept the honour you design me, on this condition only, that I shall have a right to pierce with this sword the heart of him who shall be base enough to speak the words of peace, or who shall dare to talk of submission. Should I be cowardly enough to do so, let my blood expiate my crime, and let the meanest citizen be my executioner: the sacred love of his country will exculpate him for the act. Meantime let this poniard remain upon the council-table, an object of terror to the craven and betrayer." The siege went on, and the unfortunate Rochellois were reduced to the last extremity; famine and misery brought them to the lowest ebb of human suffering; and, in spite of their valour and high resolves, it was evident that nothing but submission could save them from the most horrible fate. Their implacable enemy had wound his coils around their town, the fatal _digue_, thrown up with labour, incredible and impossible to all but hate, prevented any succours reaching them; there it lay, circling their port like a huge constrictor waiting patiently for its exhausted prey,--there was no remedy, and the chief persons of the town repaired in a body to Guiton to represent the state of the inhabitants and to propose a surrender. They bade him look around on the famishing wretches who lay about the streets; they bade him look on his perishing wife and dying child; they described the hopeless state of things, the cruel perseverance of their foes, and they besought him to give consent that they should treat with the besiegers. "Is it even so?" said Guiton; "you all desire it? Take, then, this poniard; you know the condition on which I accepted office, you know I swore to stab to the heart the first man who should speak of surrender; let me be the victim; but never hope that I will participate in the infamy which you propose to me." These words produced their effect; those most resolved on submission were turned from their project, and all retired from his presence abashed, and determined to suffer still. But the famine continued, increased, no succour arrived, and human fortitude could endure no more; the Rochellois opened their gates, and Richelieu was triumphant. But where was Jean Guiton?--that question remains to be answered to this day. He was never seen more; some have thought that he was assassinated by those who feared his resentment or his opposition; or by those who considered him still formidable, though fallen; others imagined that the king, to whom his talents as a seaman were known, and who admired the firmness of his character, had seduced him, by offers of great advantage, to abandon his party and enter his service. There is a tradition that he distinguished himself in the armies of Louis, under an assumed name, and became a terror to the enemies of France. Again, he is said to have been condemned to perpetual imprisonment; and again, to have spent his days in exile from his native land, having fled from the town at the time of its reduction. Whatever his fate may have been, it is unknown; and conjecture alone fills up the blank. It is difficult to imagine that a man such as he could listen to offers of advantage, or would have betrayed the cause for which he was ready to sacrifice his life: that he died in exile, unable to endure to see the destruction of his hopes, is more probable. The painter has chosen the moment when the citizens are making their last appeal, and he has succeeded in conveying the feeling and interest of the scene in an eminent degree; it is impossible to look at the picture without tears, which certainly must speak a great deal in its favour; criticism may come afterwards, and a few defects may make themselves observed; but the first impression is, that of pity and commiseration for the actors in the sad drama represented. The Mayor of La Rochelle, with a mournful countenance, is listening to the words of Etienne Gentils, who was deputed as spokesman on the sad occasion: the commandant, Perrot, and his son stand by, and by their gestures confirm his statements. The Marquis de Feuquières--a Catholic prisoner, who had become a friend of the Rochellois, and anxiously strove to obtain for them favourable terms--is a prominent person. Paul Yvon, sire de Laden, the former mayor, adds his entreaties--Madame de Maisonneuve, his daughter, has cast herself at the feet of Guiton, with her two children, and points to the pale and fainting wife of the inflexible citizen, who lies prostrate on the ground with his dying child in her arms. The scene is fearful, and the struggle terrible; he holds the dagger in his hand, and his look, though full of sorrow, speaks of no indecision. You feel that it must have been impossible to gain over such a man to the opposite party; and you cannot but thank the artist for rescuing his memory from the reproach endeavoured to be cast upon it. Altogether, the picture is most appropriate and interesting, and we rejoiced that we were so fortunate as to arrive at La Rochelle just at the moment that it was being placed in the Grande Salle. With infinitely more interest than before, we now walked down to the Marché Neuf, where several elegant _tourelles_, at the corners of a street of arcades, had previously attracted our attention, for we found that the street was called Rue Guiton, and the tourelles formed part of a beautifully-ornamented house, whose façade runs along one side of the market-place. This was the mansion of the unfortunate mayor, and magnificent it must have been; it is built in the style of the Renaissance, and in the same taste as parts of the Hôtel de Ville; but the carved ornaments are more delicate. It is to be regretted that the whole house could not be preserved as a memorial; but still the little that remains must be hailed with pleasure, though built into shops, and serving as receptacles for different wares. One _tourelle_ is particularly sharp and fine, and does not seem to have sustained the slightest injury from time. No doubt the house was very extensive; probably the gardens occupied the space where now the market is kept. In the centre of the square is one of the numerous fountains, for which the town is famous: this is called La Fontaine des Petits Bancs, and no doubt formerly one on the same spot adorned the gardens of the mayoralty. No sooner had Louis XIII. gained possession of the Protestant city, than he began the work of _Reformation_. He had his monks ready in the camp, "like greyhounds on the slip," and three Minimes from Touraine, who had been sent as almoners, immediately commenced the building of a convent, which took the place of the Huguenot temples, under the name of Notre Dame de la Victoire. Where it stood, now stands a fort and a lazaretto. Another convent was established at La Font, not a vestige of which remains. The cathedral was once more restored to the old worship, and on the great Fontaine du Château, in the square in front of it, the enemies of the Protestant party placed _brass_ tablets, full of insult to those who had so nobly defended their town, and who, from a generous foe, would have commanded respect. These injurious inscriptions were, however, removed one night; nor was it ever known by whom; and the authorities did not think it advisable to replace them: the marks of their existence still remain. Another mayor of La Rochelle obtained celebrity in much earlier times, for conduct not quite so heroic as that of Guiton. Amongst the many scenes of war which have taken place before La Rochelle, not the least curious is one related by Froissart, which occurred at the time when France was making a desperate struggle to recover her towns from the power of England. The Earl of Pembroke had been sent by his father, King Edward, with the famous Captain Messire Guichart d'Angle, to Poitou, with vessels and money; they set forth, commending themselves to the grace of God and St. George, and, wind and weather favouring them, the gallant fleet soon reached the coast of Poitou, with every prospect of success in their adventure. But the King of France, Charles the Wise, who always managed to get information of everything done by his enemies--whether by means of the prescience of his astrologers or his spies is not known,--having heard that Guichart had visited England with a view of getting supplies and a new commander, had secretly prepared a hostile fleet ready to way-lay the English. Forty large ships and thirteen barges, well manned and provided, were furnished by the King of Castile, and were commanded by four men whose names were a terror at the period. These were, Ambrosio de Bocca Negra the Grand Admiral of Spain, Cabeza de Vaca, Ferrant de Pion, and Radigole Roux, or Riu Diaz de Rojas. These valiant captains had moored their fleet opposite the harbour of La Rochelle, awaiting the expected arrival of the English and their allies, for whose sails they looked anxiously forth. It was on the Vigil of St. John the Baptist's Day, 1372, that the Spaniards espied the English approaching in gallant array, and _they_ discovered that the entrance to the town of La Rochelle was stopped, and that a contest must ensue. The English were greatly inferior in ships and numbers; but there was no want of spirit amongst them. The Earl of Pembroke made several knights on the occasion, and every nerve was strained to support the character of British valour. They had fearful odds to sustain, and terrible was the battle which was fought, in which such deeds of arms were done, that Palmerin of England, and Amadis de Gaul, seemed leading on the combatants. But it soon became too evident that the brave handful of English, and the small vessels, were no match for the opposing power. This, the inhabitants of La Rochelle were aware of, but they were ill-disposed to interfere or to assist the English. When Messire Jean de Harpedane, the seneschal of La Rochelle, heard the _estrif_ and _riote_ which took place without, and found in what straits his friends were placed, he implored the mayor and people of La Rochelle to arm and go to the relief of the English; he entreated them to send out the numerous vessels which crowded their quays, to aid and comfort those who were so valiantly fighting against odds. But his animated harangue was met with silence and coldness, and he found, to his great vexation, that there was no sympathy for King Edward's people. Harpedane had been supported in his generous desire by three brave and bold knights, the Lord of Tonnay-Boutonne, Jacques de Surgières, and Maubrun de Linières; and when they found that no one would listen to their representations, they resolved to embark, together with all their people, and go to the succour of the English. At day-break they sailed forth, and, with some difficulty, reached the fleet, where they were joyfully welcomed, notwithstanding that they brought bad news, and confirmed the doubts of the English that no succour awaited them. They, however, resolved to fight to the last, and remained prepared for the attack of the Spaniards, who, favoured by the wind, came down upon them, and casting out irons, grappled with their ships and held them close. Then ensued a terrible contest, in which the greatest part of the English were killed, the treasure-vessels sunk, and all the others destroyed; and the day closed by the capture of the Earl of Pembroke, Guichart d'Angle, and all the brave knights of their company. The Spaniards then made great rejoicings, and sailed away with all their prisoners; but, meeting with adverse winds, they were obliged to put into the port of Santander in Biscay, where they carried them to a fortress and cast them into a deep dungeon, loading them with chains: "No other courtesy had these Spaniards to offer them!" After this the Rochellois threw off their obedience to the English, and declared themselves friends and subjects of France: the manner in which this event occurred is thus related:-- The mayor of the town, Jean Coudourier, or Chaudrier, was secretly friendly to the French, and had agreed with the famous Captain Ivan, of Wales, who was before La Rochelle, to deliver the town to him. The stratagem he used was characteristic, for the governor of the Castle, Phillippot, though a brave and good knight, was in the case of William of Deloraine,-- "Of letter or line knew he never a one;" and by this neglect in his education was he betrayed. The artful Chaudrier, who appeared to be his intimate friend, invited the governor to dine with him one day, with some of the citizens of the town, and took occasion, before dinner, to say that he had just received news from England which concerned him. The governor desiring to know them, he replied, "Of course you shall hear; I will fetch the letter, and it shall be read to you." He then went to a coffer and took out an open letter, sealed, indeed, with the great seal of Edward of England, but which, in fact, related to quite other matters; the governor recognised the seal, and was satisfied that it was an official communication; but, as for the writing, "he was ignorance itself" in that. A clerk, in the plot, was ordered to enlighten him as to its contents, and read that the King desired the mayor to send him an exact account of all the forces in La Rochelle and the castle, by the bearer of that letter, as he desired to know, and hoped soon to visit the town himself. Thereupon the mayor begged that on the day following a muster should be made, in the grand square, of all these men-at-arms, and he offered to lend money to the governor, being so directed by the King, to pay his troops. All this was done as was projected, and the muster took place, every man-at-arms leaving the château, and only a few servants remaining there. Meantime the cunning mayor had provided an ambush of four hundred men, who concealed themselves in _old houses uninhabited which were in the square_, and, when all the troops were assembled, these issued out, and intercepting the return, took possession of the castle, and became masters of the citadel. Resistance was now in vain: the governor was completely tricked, and the artful traitor had gained his end. La Rochelle became French, and the first step that was taken for the security of the town, in case of its again falling into the hands of the English, was to raze the castle to the ground, and destroy that means of defence. CHAPTER XII. ROCHEFORT--THE CURIOUS BONNE--AMERICANISMS--CONVICTS--THE CHARENTE--"TULIPES"--TAILLEBOURG--HENRY THE THIRD--ST. LOUIS--FALSE SECURITY--ROMEGOUX--PUYTAILLÉ. OUR good fortune in respect to the weather, which we so much enjoyed at La Rochelle, seemed to have taken leave of us when we quitted that charming town and took our way southward. It rained in torrents when we got into the diligence for Rochefort, and continued to do so throughout our journey. The country is very flat for several leagues, and possesses no remarkable beauties; occasionally a turn of the road brought us close to the sea-shore; and its fine waves, dashing against the shingles, made music to our ears, and we regretted leaving it behind us. The sea seems always to me like a friend; it offers, besides, a means of escape; it appears to tell one that a vessel is ready to take the tired wanderer back to England: there is something like _home_ in its vicinity, and I can well imagine with what sensations an exile might "come to the beach," and sigh forth his soul towards his native land. But that I had interests still greater awaiting me at Bordeaux, I should have been even more sorry to have quitted this coast; and every time we caught another glimpse of the waves, we hailed them with pleasure. We arrived at Rochefort, as we had frequently done at other towns in France--where the climate is supposed to be better than our own--in pouring rain; but, this time, with a little difference, inasmuch as the diligence stopped in the midst of a large square outside the town, planted with trees, with hotels in different directions, and the bureau within twenty yards: nevertheless, the conducteur's pleasure was to stop his horses exactly midway between us and shelter: all the doors were thrown open, the horses were taken off, and the passengers were free to get out and paddle to the nearest inn as best they might. Calling and exclaiming were of no use; no one attended to our remonstrances; and, scrambling out _over the wheel_--for the coupé has not the advantage of a step--while a deluge of rain and a hurricane were striving against us, we managed to reach the wet ground; but, being required, peremptorily, to show ourselves at the bureau, we were not permitted to wade to an opposite hotel, and, therefore, took our station, with other discontented individuals, under a shed where building was going on, and where our wet feet stuck in the lime and mortar which covered the floor. While we waited till our conducteur had ceased to rave at his horses and assistants, a sudden cry warned us to remove, for the diligence, pushed in by several men, was coming upon us to discharge its baggage. Having escaped this danger by flying into a neighbouring passage, we obeyed the summons of our tyrant; and having discharged his demands, a latent pity seemed to take possession of his bosom, for he allowed us to depart, having bestirred himself to send our baggage before us to the nearest hotel. There we found the hour of the _table d'hôte_ dinner had arrived, and much entreaty was necessary to induce the hostess to permit us to dine alone, the absurdity of the wish seeming to strike her as extraordinary:--"It would be so much more gay down stairs," she observed. Wet and tired, we had no mind for the festivity which might reign in her halls, and at length gained our point: having served us, a pretty young country maid, in a large cap, who had looked at us with wonder from the first, seemed resolved to fill up the little leisure left her, by contemplating closer the extraordinary animals that chance had brought to her mistress's hotel. She put her hands on her sides, and, opening her black eyes wide, gave us a long stare, exclaiming, "Eh, mon Dieu! est-ce donc possible!" We asked her if many English came to Rochefort; to which she replied, as we expected, that she had never _seen one_ before. We wished her good night; she was some time in taking our hint, but, as she was good-humoured, her determined delay did not annoy us, as a similar intrusion had done at La Rochelle, when the cross _bonne_, on the evening of our arrival, took her seat at the window, and looked out into the street to amuse herself; and, on our intimating that she might retire, turned round fiercely, and remarked, "You can't be going to bed yet." These _Americanisms_ are common enough in this most polite of nations; but are simply amusing from such unsophisticated beings as the attendant at Rochefort. Rochefort is a handsome, clean, open, well-built town, quite without antiquities; but, as our next destination was Saintes--one of the oldest towns in France--we were content with its more modern appearance, though not with its pavement, which is particularly bad and rugged. It is surrounded with very handsome ramparts, or boulevards, planted with fine trees, and the principal streets have avenues, in one of which the large market is held, which has a picturesque effect--the high poplars and spreading acacias throwing their flickering shadows on groups of peasants in lively-coloured costumes, giving a brilliancy and life to the scene, which is not found in the other parts of the remarkably dull town of Louis XIV. Rochefort is the third important port in France; but as nothing can be so uninteresting to me, who do not understand these details, as to look on fortifications, and the bustle of a port when there is no sea to repay one--and Rochefort is only on the Charente, four leagues from the sea--I did not attempt to visit the quays; the hospitals are said to be fine; also, the school of artillery, and several commercial establishments of great consequence; but the trade of Rochefort does not appear very flourishing, to judge by the desolate appearance of the streets and squares. The only place we visited, was the Jardin des Plantes, which is charmingly laid out in alleys and parterres; but a circumstance occurred which entirely destroyed the pleasure of our walk, and brought thoughts of woe and crime into the midst of beautiful nature and elegant art. As we hung over the parapet of a wall, we observed a party of men passing beneath, dressed in a singular costume: they were singing rather vociferously, and it struck me that, as they moved, a clanking sound accompanied their steps, for which I feared to account. As I turned away from these, my eye was attracted by a group of gardeners, in an alley near, who wore the same dress of dull yellowish red. One of them was a tall, fine, handsome man, who seemed busy in his occupation; the others were indolently using their spades and brooms; and as they moved, I saw that all had irons round their legs. A shudder came over me, and a sort of fear, which I could not shake off, as I looked round to see that we did not share these groves alone with such companions, of whom we were not long in taking our leave;--not that there was anything hostile or alarming in their appearance; but, though one may every day jostle a robber or a murderer, ignorantly, in the streets, yet to be "innocent of the knowledge" of his character, is much more agreeable to one's nerves, than the certainty of his being a culprit. Although we had taken every precaution, by warning all the servants of our intention of departing by the steam-boat for Saintes,--had paid our bill, and been ready an hour before the time, yet the _garçon_ who was to accompany us to the quay was nowhere to be found when we required his aid. When a diligence is to start, it is the custom, as we well knew, always to announce its time of departure an hour, or sometimes two, before it goes, as the _monde_ is supposed to be never in time; but, even in France, time must be kept when tide is in question; and we, therefore, were very much afraid that our dilatory waiter would cause us to lose our passage. It would seem that the French can do nothing without being frightened into action; and that they enjoy putting themselves into frights and fevers; for our porter, when he did appear, had to hurry, with his great barrow, through numerous streets, calling all the way, and begging that the boat would stop for _des dames_, till he was almost exhausted. The captain, who must have been used to these scenes, took compassion on him, I suppose, and we stept at length into the steamer, amidst the congratulations of the crowd, and a whole host of porters, who brought every article of baggage singly on board, in order to make the most of their zeal. Henry IV., who liked to pay compliments to his people, and gain "Golden opinions from all sorts of men," was accustomed, it is said, to call the river Charente "the prettiest stream in his kingdom;" and it certainly deserves much admiration, for the borders are rich, varied, and graceful; and the voyage along its verdant banks is extremely agreeable on a calm, fine day: such as we were fortunate enough to choose. There is no want of variety; for heights, crowned with towers and turrets and woods and meadows, succeed each other rapidly, offering pleasing points of view, and reviving recollections of ancient story; and though the Charente by no means deserves to be compared to the Loire, ambitious as the natives of the department are that it should be considered equal in beauty and interest to that famous river; yet there is quite enough charm belonging to it to please the traveller who seeks for new scenes. In few parts of France do the English travel so little as in this direction; and I believe the pretty river Charente has been rarely visited. A summer at La Rochelle could, nevertheless, be pleasantly spent, and the facilities of steam-boats in so many directions, is a great advantage, as there is much worth seeing in this agreeable country. We were much struck with the extremely beautiful effect produced by the fairy-like, delicate appearance of a sort of crocus--of a pale, clear, lilac colour--which entirely covered the meadows, the light as it shone through their fragile stems making them look aërial. All along the banks, for leagues, these pretty flowers[9] spread themselves over the ground, in a perfect cloud of blossoms, reaching to the very wave, and, shaking their gossamer heads to the breeze, gleaming their golden centres through the transparent petals, like a light in an alabaster vase. As we admired them, a young woman near us, in the boat, shook her head, and exclaimed that we were not, perhaps, aware that those pretty '_tulipes_' were deadly poison, and that very lately, a man of a village near this, had employed their bulbous roots as onions, and given the soup made with them to his wife and a neighbour, to whom he bore a spite: that they both died, and he was found to be the murderer, and suffered accordingly. My thoughts recurred, as she spoke, to the convicts in the garden of Rochefort, and with no very pleasant sensations. I was sorry she had spoilt the pleasure I had taken in looking at these beautiful flowers, which she seemed to regard with horror. [Footnote 9: The _Iris zippium_.] There are several fine suspension-bridges over the river; this part of the country is celebrated for them; that of Charente is considered very remarkable of its kind, and it is a usual excursion from La Rochelle to visit it. At St. Savinien is a venerable church and tower, which make an imposing appearance, on a height, and the ruins of the once redoubtable castle of Taillebourg frown majestically from the rocky hills they cover. All this coast was the scene of the contentions of our early kings; and Coeur de Lion and his father were actors in several of the dramas here performed. The great hero, but disobedient son, Richard, after being forced by Henry II. to quit Saintes where he had entrenched himself, fled to this very fortress of Taillebourg, and there defied attack. Henry III. of England, more than half a century later, made this part of the river the theatre of his contentions with St. Louis, as Joinville relates. Henry had disembarked at Royan--now a fashionable bathing-place, at the mouth of the Charente--and resolved, if possible, to gain back all that John Lackland had lost, led his army from town to town, taking possession of all in his way, till the sudden arrival of St. Louis stopped his career. The King of France laid siege to Tonnay-Boutonne, of which strong place scarcely anything now remains, took it, and reconquered several other fortresses. At length Louis sat down before Taillebourg, then held by Geoffrey de Rancon for the King of England. It was here, in these crocus-covered meadows, opposite the blackened walls of this crumbling ruin, that the great monarch pitched his tents and placed his camp, intending from thence to attack his enemy at Saintes. Henry, meantime, felt secure that the Lord of Taillebourg would stand his friend, and that his strong castle would be a powerful protection to the English army, and he should be able materially to molest the French; but the grim Baron de Rancon was in his heart a foe to the English, and had embraced their cause upon compulsion: he waited but a favourable moment to betray them; and when, from his towers, he saw the French army encamped in the meadows beneath them, he threw open his gates and sallied forth, followed by a numerous band of warriors, visited King Louis in his tent, and offered him his castle to abide in. His invitation was accepted, and Louis and his knights returned with him to his castle. Henry, hearing of this arrangement, took counsel with his general, Hugues de Lusignan, and removed his head-quarters immediately to the neighbourhood of De Rancon's fortress, placing his troops in the meadows immediately opposite those occupied by the soldiers of Louis; the river only separated them, and across it was a long bridge, part of the ruins of which, evidently of Roman construction, may still be seen far away in the flat meadows. Henry's force was much inferior to that of his opponent, and he declined coming at once to battle, as Louis desired: he drew off his soldiers, leaving a strong defence on the bridge; by this movement wishing to indicate that he did not intend engaging; but the French could not be restrained, and Louis, giving way to their impetuosity, charged the defenders of the bridge at the head of five hundred knights. Immediately the river was covered with soldiers, who leaped into boats, and, hastening across the river, fell upon the English with great fury. The shock was well sustained; Duke Richard, brother to Henry, Lusignan, De Montford, and others, brought up their troops to the conflict. St. Louis ran great risks that day; for Joinville says, that for every man with him the English had a hundred: as he was in the thick of the fray, his life was in great peril; but he was successful, and remained in possession of the bridge, and the left bank of the Charente. Had he pursued his advantage, the English might have been entirely routed; but, reflecting that the next day was Sunday, and should be devoted to prayer, he consented to the truce proposed by Duke Richard, and ordered his men to re-cross the bridge. Richard cunningly took advantage of this circumstance, and hurrying back to his brother's tent, exclaimed, "Quick, quick! not a moment is to be lost; let us fly or we are defeated!" As rapidly as possible the tents were struck, the baggage prepared, and every man in readiness; and, in the darkness of night, King Henry mounted his good steed, and never slackened rein till he reached the walls of Saintes, followed by his soldiers, who, harassed and fatigued, were not sorry to find themselves once more in security. The astonishment of Louis was great, when, at break of day, he looked from his castle windows, and saw no vestige of the great army which had covered the country on the preceding night: he very quietly ordered his troops to cross the bridge, and they took possession of the spot just left by the English. The next day he prepared to march on Saintes, and sent couriers forward to reconnoitre the country: a shepherd, who had observed these movements, hastened to warn the Count de la Marche, who, with his two sons, and his vassals, were in the Faubourg de St. Eutrope. Hugues de Lusignan marched forth immediately to meet the French _avant-garde_, without naming his intention to the King of England who was lodged in the town. Count Alfonse de Boulogne coming up at the moment with his party, joined the _avant-garde_, and a furious combat took place: the first who fell was the châtelain of Saintes, who held the banner of the Count de la Marche. On both sides resounded the terrible war-cries of "Aux armes! Aux armes!" and "Royaux! Royaux!" and "Mont-joie! Mont-joie!" according to the usage of both nations. These cries, the neighing of horses, and the clash of arms, were heard to a great distance, and reached the ears of the King of England, who demanded the cause: he was told that the Count de la Marche, resolved to repair his honour, which he considered that their late retreat had sullied, had attacked the French. At this news Henry called for his armour, assembled his warriors, and hastened to the succour of his father-in-law. At this juncture arrived King Louis. Mortified to be forestalled by an enemy, who he considered had basely quitted the field, he gave the signal, and the soldiers of France fell pell-mell on the Anglo-Aquitainians, who received them firmly. A general mêlée then took place beneath the walls of Saintes; and in the midst of the vines, amongst the groves, in the fields, on the high roads, a frightful carnage ensued. The French fought with fury, increased by the resistance they met with; the English ranks began to thin; overpowered by numbers, their battalions became broken, the men turned their backs, and fled in disorder to the gates of the town, to which the French pursued them with fearful slaughter. In vain Henry and Hugues de Lusignan endeavoured to rally the dispersed troops; their expostulations were drowned in the noise and confusion, and they were themselves carried away by the stream of fugitives. Many of the French, in the ardour of the combat, entered the town with the enemy, and were made prisoners. Louis then sounded a retreat, and fixed his camp a short distance from the walls. The following days were employed in secret negotiations between the Count de la Marche and St. Louis, which ended in their reconciliation, and the Count's abandonment of the English monarch. Meantime Henry, with his usual carelessness, after the first trouble was over, blindly deceived himself into security, and resolved to spend the heats of the month of August in quiet and enjoyment, forgetting that he was little better than a prisoner in Saintes, and taking no heed of the treachery of his friends without. Four days he allowed to pass as if no enemy were at his gates; he even made parties of pleasure, and seemed resolved to think no more of the war, when he was suddenly roused from his false security by his brother, Richard, who had been warned of the dangers which threatened them by a French knight, whose life he had saved in Palestine. By this means the self-deceiving monarch learnt that preparations were being made by Louis to invest the town with all his forces, and that the next day at day-break the siege was to commence. When this intelligence reached Henry he was just about to sit down to table; at the same time he learnt that the citizens of Saintes proposed to treat with his foes; and he had not an instant to lose. He promptly gave orders that the houses of the _bourgeois_ should _be set on fire_, and, mounting his horse, set out, hungry and fatigued as he was after a day's excursion of amusement, towards Blaye, as fast as speed could take him. His captains were soon informed of his flight; they left their half-cooked viands, as did all the army, who were still fasting, and the confusion of departure exceeded belief; all hurried towards Blaye, where they sought refuge, exhausted and worn, and but for a few berries which they gathered to satisfy the cravings of their hunger, they had nearly all perished on the way. The following day the citizens and clergy of Saintes, in solemn procession, repaired to the camp of St. Louis, bringing with them the keys of the town, and swearing oaths of fealty. The King of France entered in triumph, occupied all the evacuated posts, and placed a garrison in the old citadel of the capital. His next care was to subdue all the lords of the neighbouring castles, which, having done, he commenced building a new line of walls to replace the dilapidated Anglo-Roman line, which was falling in ruins. After this, says the chronicler, St. Louis returned to his dominion of France, leaving garrisons in all the strong places of Saintonge and Aunis. The ruins of the castle of Taillebourg serve, like most fortresses in France now-a-days, as promenades to the town to which they belong; all along the top of the massive walls, which extend to some distance, is a line of open balustrades, which has, from the river, a very ornamental and somewhat Italian effect. Spreading trees rise above this, which appear to form part of a plantation within, and placed, as the castle is, on a very great elevation, at a turn of the river, which it must have commanded, it has a peculiarly imposing and picturesque effect. The town by no means answers to the beauty of its promenades; but that is very frequently the case, and need not be a matter of surprise. A series of rugged rocks, continued for some distance along the shore, add much to the beauty of the scenery. The next castle is that of Bussac, which retains a part of its old walls and towers, though a modern building fills up the vacancies between. It stands well, and must have been a fitting neighbour to Taillebourg; beyond this is a magnificent wood, Le Bois de Sainte Marie, which covers the hills for nearly a league, and has a very grand appearance. During the wars of religion the river Charente, from the first fortress we passed of Tonnay Charente, the site of which and a few stones alone remain, to the town of Saintes, was a continued theatre of contention and violence. One scene is curious; its hero was another of the redoubtable barons of Taillebourg named Romegoux, whose singular expedition is thus recounted: The town of Saintes, having changed masters several times, was in the hands of the Huguenot party, and the governor was the lord of Bussac when Charles IX. sent the Duke of Anjou into that part of the country; and, under his orders, the Sieur de la Rivière-Puytaillé made several attempts on the town; but Bussac's vigilance foiled him continually. As he was returning to his fortress of Tonnay-Charente, there to wait for another occasion of molesting the enemy, in passing the castle of Taillebourg he was attacked by the Huguenot garrison. After a brisk skirmish the latter returned to his stronghold, growling like a disturbed bear, and longing for an opportunity to vent his rage. Meantime, Puytaillé was again summoned to the walls of Saintes, for the citizens had risen; and fearing that an army would besiege them if they held for the Protestants, they resolved to turn out those who were within their walls, and give themselves up to the king's officer. Bussac was obliged therefore to yield, and was allowed to march out of one gate as Puytaillé marched in at the other. When the Baron de Romegoux heard this he was greatly enraged, and resolved to make an effort to regain the place; he accordingly invited five or six hundred men, whom he thought as zealous as himself, to a rendezvous, but only twenty-five attended his summons. This handful showing themselves little disposed to attempt so perilous an adventure, Romegoux was almost distracted with vexation; he wept, tore his hair, and used every entreaty he could think of to induce them to join him, for he was certain of success. At length he succeeded in inspiring them with his own ardour, and they consented to accompany him wherever he should lead them. Armed with axes, and furnished with ladders, they set out, in the middle of the night, for Saintes. They fixed their ladder near the Porte Aiguières; as they were mounting, Romegoux heard a patrol passing; as soon as it was gone he and his companions lost no time in hurrying into the town; he divided his party into two, placing them at a small distance from the rampart, to protect his retreat in case of surprise; then, followed by the most determined of his band, he marched straight to the lodging of Combaudière, who had been left by Puytaillé in his place to command in his absence. Romegoux broke open the door, surprised the governor in his bed, forced him to rise, and, without giving him time to dress himself, obliged him to march before them; but so paralysed was he with terror, that he had scarcely the power to move. One of the Huguenots, therefore, placed him on his shoulders, and carried him rapidly off towards the Porte Aiguières, intending to descend by the ladders which had given them entrance: but their companions had, in the meantime, broken the bar of the gate, and lowered the drawbridge. Romegoux and his people made their exit in good order through this door, to the sound of the tocsin, the drums and the cries of alarm of the garrison and citizens, who, awaked from their slumbers, were hurrying hither and thither in the utmost confusion. The victorious party paused only at the end of the faubourg, to allow the governor to dress himself, and then went off with their prize. Romegoux, however, though he gained great reputation by this daring adventure, was unable to carry his design further, owing to want of means, and he was so disappointed and annoyed at being forced to stop in mid-career, that he was nearly dying with vexation. In this castle of Taillebourg was afterwards established a Protestant chapel, and _there_ were buried, after the fatal battle _des Arènes_, at Saintes, the _four brothers_ Coligny, of whom d'Aubigné says, "They were similar in countenance, but still more in probity, prudence, and valour." After a very agreeable voyage, we, at length, saw the towers and spires of the old town of Saintes rising from the waters, and landed, for the first time, _from a steam-boat_, without much confusion: we resigned ourselves at once to the care of a very little boy, who bustled about with great importance, and conducted us in triumph to the Hôtel de La Couronne, by a long and beautiful boulevard of majestic trees, which gave a very imposing impression of the town. CHAPTER XIII. SAINTES--ROMAN ARCH OF TRIUMPH--GOTHIC BRIDGE--THE COURS--RUINED CITY--CATHEDRAL--COLIGNY--RUINED PALACE--ST. EUTROPE--AMPHITHEATRE--LEGEND OF STE. EUSTELLE--THE PRINCE OF BABYLON--FÊTE--THE CÔTEAU--STE. MARIE. OF course the earliest object which one hastens to see in Saintes, is the famous Roman arch. We beheld it first by moon-light, when its large, spectre-like proportions, as it stood in shadow, at the extremity of the bridge, gave a solemn character to the scene suitable to its antiquity: the uncertain light softened all the inequalities of its surface, and it seemed a monument of the magnificence of the days of old, which time and tempest had spared; but it was far otherwise in the morning, when we paid it our second visit, and a broad glare of sun-light brought out all its age and _infirmities_: then became apparent the rents and ravages which had entirely deprived it of the original polish of its surface; and it seems to totter, as if the first gale would hurl its ruins into the waters beneath. Not a stone looks in its place; they appear as if confusedly heaped one on the other, after having been destroyed and built up again: it is, therefore, with infinite surprise that you find, on approaching nearer and nearer, that its solidity is still so great--that the melted lead inserted between the stones, which binds it so firmly, is as strong as ever, and that parts of the interior of the arch are even and smooth; much, however, of this has been restored. After looking at this magnificent arch a little while, you begin to imagine it, in the glare of day, as perfect as it appeared when the moon-beams played above, and showed it in such perfection; and all the modern buildings round, look like houses built of dominos compared to its gigantic form. It is as if an old Roman were standing at the entrance of the town, silent, stern, and proud, and gazing with contempt on the ephemeral creatures of an age he knew nothing of, and who were unworthy to pass him by. Everything about this singular monument is mysterious: it seems difficult to determine how it came in its present position, for the bridge on which it stands is of considerably later date than itself, although that is of Gothic construction. It would appear that, at the time it was built, the waters of the Charente did not run in that direction, and having changed their course, the bridge was built from necessity, and joined the arch which existed long before: but then it must always have stood as high above the bed of the river as it does now, which puzzles one again. It is true that traces are still to be found of the ancient bed of a river, and, in a house in the Faubourg des Dames, an arch, called by tradition _Le Pont-Amillon_, has been discovered. The date of the monument is given as the year 774 of Rome, and 21 A.D. It has two circular arches, supported by Corinthian pillars, and a broad entablature; on which the curious can read an inscription, some of the letters of which, with difficulty, we could decipher. Above the cornice, is a double range of battlements, which have a most singular appearance, as they do not, by any means, amalgamate with the rest of the building: they are, nevertheless, very boldly constructed, and appear to form part of the original design. There is, however, no doubt that they are the work of a Gothic hand, and may, probably, date with the bridge. The stones of which it is composed, are masses of four and five French feet long, and two and a half thick, placed at equal distances, without cement, and rendered solid by the introduction of melted lead and iron hooks, some of which may still be seen in the intervals between the stones. The stone is from the neighbourhood of Saintes, and is full of shells and fossils: its height is twenty metres, French measurement: and it is three metres thick, and fifteen wide. Great precautions were taken, in 1666, to preserve this precious monument, at the expense of M. de Bassompierre, Bishop of Saintes; but so disjointed are some of its parts, that, except the utmost care is continued, it can scarcely be expected to survive the demolition of the ancient bridge, on which it stands, and which is doomed to destruction. I heard with consternation that such was about to be the case, and that a suspension-bridge is to replace it. What they will do with _the old Roman_ it is difficult to say, or how they are to preserve it, standing, as it does, almost in the centre of the river, or what effect it will produce in so isolated a position, if permitted to stand, are questions which naturally occur. It is to be hoped that the inhabitants will delay its fate as long as possible, and, considering how very much must be done in Saintes before, by any possibility, it can be made to approach to anything like a habitable town, it seems a pity that one of its most interesting and famous possessions should be torn from it. When its Arch of Triumph falls, much of the glory of Saintes will fall with it; but it will probably one day become a commercial town; the steam-boats, which now stop below the venerable old bridge, will sweep over the spot where it stood for ages, and the old Roman arch will be considered in the way, and will be _removed_! The inscriptions on the _attic_, which is divided into three parts, I give from a work on the subject, as it may interest _archæological readers_:-- INSCRIPTION ON THE ATTIC, NEXT THE TOWN. "To Germanicus Cæsar, son of Tiberius Augustus, grandson of the divine Augustus, great grandson of the divine Julius, augur, priest of Augustus, consul for the second time, emperor for the second time. "To Tiberius Cæsar, son of the divine Augustus, grand pontiff, consul for the fourth time, emperor for the eighth time the year of his tribunitian power. "To Drusus Cæsar, son of Tiberius Augustus, grandson of the divine Augustus, great grandson of the divine Julius, pontiff, augur." * * * * * INSCRIPTION ON THE FRIEZE, NEXT THE TOWN. "Caius Julius Rufus, son of Caius Julius Ottuaneunus, grandson of Caius Julius Gededmon, great grandson of Epotsorovidus, priest, consecrated to the worship of Rome and Augustus in the temple, which is at the confluence, in his quality of intendant of works, has made the dedication of this monument." The inscription on the frieze, at the side of the Faubourg, is the same repeated. There seems, however, to be much uncertainty as to who the monument was dedicated to, and the subject is a constant source of dispute with the learned: the inscription can hardly be said to exist at present, so much obliterated are the letters; but enough seems to remain to revive inquiry and puzzle conjecture. The arch is more massive, but scarcely so beautiful as the arches at Autun, with which we were so much delighted: it is much more conspicuous and higher: both of those being on low ground. There is no occasion to seek for this of Saintes; for it stands, like a huge baron of old, guarding the river: we saw a company of soldiers pass beneath it, as we lingered at a distance, and we felt astonished to think how, in the midst of the centuries of violence it had seen, in all the stormings and batterings and besiegings, it could possibly have escaped, and be still there, a monument of the power of the most redoubtable warriors of all. Saintes is one of the most extraordinary towns I ever saw: it somewhat reminded me of Autun, of Provins, of Château Thierry; yet it is very different from either, and in fact "None but itself can be its parallel." It is separated into three towns, quite distinct one from the other, yet joined, like a trefoil. As you stand on the broad boulevard leading above the first town, the other two spread out beneath on either hand. The churches of Notre Dame, of St. Eutrope, and the cathedral of St. Pierre, each claim a part. Descending the _Cours_, the aspect of that division which claims the stupendous church of St. Eutrope[10] is wondrously imposing. I never beheld anything more so, and we stood some time on the high-raised road which commanded the view, rapt in astonishment at the ruined grandeur before us. The enormous tower of St. Eutrope rises from a mass of buildings which appear Lilliputian beside it; gardens and vines and orchards slope down from it, and low in the meadows a long series of arches betray the celebrated amphitheatre--another of the wonders of this remarkable place. What convents and churches and castles and towers have been cleared away to form the _Cours_ which extend from town to town, I cannot say; but it appears as if not a quarter of the original site can now be occupied; indeed, one is perfectly bewildered at every step with the piles of ruin and rubbish scattered about, the remains of old buildings destroyed to make room for new, which, begun and left unfinished, or completed and then abandoned, have added a series of modern ruins to those which are antique. There is not a single street, or place, or road in Saintes, which can be called finished: materials for building are scattered in all directions, and, in many parts, moss and weeds have grown up amidst the piles of stone destined to construct some new house or temple: in the meantime the streets are without pavement, or as bad, hollow, damp, dirty, and dreary; the houses are unpainted, slovenly, neglected, and ugly: the churches are dilapidated, or but half restored; grass grows in the newly-projected squares, and all is in a state of confusion and litter. It seems as if the task of regenerating Saintes, rebuilding it from the ground, in fact, had been undertaken in a moment of desperation, and the project had been abandoned as suddenly as conceived. [Footnote 10: Since this was written, I grieve to observe, by the French newspapers, that the tower and part of the church of St. Eutrope, have been destroyed by lightning.] All attention seems now directed to the river side. The erection of a new quay absorbs every mind; and all the workmen that can be procured are busy hurrying to and fro, amidst the mud and water of the spot where passengers land from the steam-boat. One would wonder why any body should think of coming to Saintes at all, except from curiosity, as we did; but that it is the direct route to the Gironde; where, from Mortagne, another steam-boat, in communication with the Charente, conveys passengers to Bordeaux. Since the establishment of these boats a great change has been operated in Saintes, and probably its condition will now improve. Notwithstanding this _too true_ description of the once important capital of Saintonge, it possesses an interest which may well attract the antiquarian visitor to its walls. The ruins of the Arch and those of the Amphitheatre alone would be attraction enough for many; and as the hotels are remarkably good, clean, and comfortable, a sojourn of a few days in Saintes will quite repay the traveller who comes, as we did, out of his way to visit its battered walls. We were not fortunate, as at La Rochelle, in the weather, for most of our excursions were performed in the midst of showers. I cannot but think, from the experience of several years' travelling, that there is even more uncertainty in the weather in France than in England; and I was particularly struck with the fact, that the nearer we approached the south, the colder, damper, and less genial it became. It is a mere absurdity to talk of the difference of our climate and that of France, in any part: it is assuredly _warmer_ in England, and not a whit more changeable. We took advantage of the first gleams, after a wet night, to explore the strange old town, once said to contain a hundred thousand inhabitants, and, both in the time of the Gauls and the Romans, to have been of the utmost importance. The cathedral is a monument of the violence of religious fanaticism; it was almost torn to pieces by the Huguenots; in the sixteenth century, all its fine architecture was defaced, its saints dragged from their niches, and its ornaments destroyed. The principal entrance must, originally, have been very grand; but is so much injured that little but its form remains. The most remarkable part of the building is the enormous tower, which rises to a gigantic height above all the edifices of the town on the side next the river, vying with that of St. Eutrope in the opposite quarter. This tower is supported by flying buttresses, of great strength and beauty: the Calvinists had resolved on its destruction, and had already begun its demolition, when it was represented to Admiral Coligny that the fall of so gigantic a mass would probably occasion serious accidents; and that if it were fortified it might be turned to great advantage for the defence of the town. Fortunately, this advice was taken, and the fine tower remains in all its stupendous grandeur, with its flying buttresses, crocketed pyramids and arches, unique in their form; it is said to be one of the largest in Europe, and one of the finest specimens of the decorated style of Gothic architecture. The interior of the church is so much altered as to have little of the original left; however, a few bits show how fine it must once have been: the mean buildings which formerly hemmed it in are removed, and an open space is left, which allows it to be seen to some advantage. On the spot where once stood the capitol, the civil hospital now crowns the height, and a fine view of the country and the river may be had from that point, though the road to it is sufficiently difficult to deter one from approaching it. A fine military hospital is placed in an elevated position answering to the other. The college, founded by Henry IV., is said to be good, and the prison very admirable in its way. The rest of the public buildings are no more to be admired than the private ones. We remarked a very handsome house, forming one side of a neglected square, whose grand terraces and fine wings spoke it something of consequence. We found it was once the bishop's palace, but had been long left to go to ruin; and a part of it was now used by some Sisters of Charity for a school. It was but of a piece with the rest of Saintes, desolate and degraded, and "fallen from its high estate." St. Eutrope lay in our way to the ruins of the great amphitheatre, and we paused as we passed it at an open door, which was too tempting a circumstance to be neglected on a rainy morning, when there might be some trouble in finding the sacristan, and we rightly judged this would lead to the famous crypt, the object of admiration and surprise to antiquarians. Down a steep inclination we pursued our way towards a dark nook, and there, through an iron grating, we discovered before us the subterranean church, of immense size, and in perfect preservation; its massive pillars and sharpcut capitals, its high-curved roof and circular arches, all perfect, and its floor and walls undergoing restoration. We resolved to see it more in detail hereafter, and, in the meantime, went on to a lower part of the dim passage, where, turning aside, we found ourselves close to a huge well of fearful depth, all round which were ranged stone coffins, of primitive forms, one, in particular, still preserving its cover, and of a most mysterious shape, which must have belonged to some early inhabitant of this holy pile. While we were speculating on the subject, a voice at a distance reached our ears, requesting to know how long we intended to remain in that retreat: we returned, and found, stationed at the door by which we had entered, a young woman with pails of water by her side: she laughed good-humouredly, and remarked--"I would not disturb you as I saw you looking through the bars of the old church as I came back from drawing water; but you staid so long that I began to think it time to call out, as I must lock the door and go home now." We accordingly accompanied her out, resolving to resume our visit on our return from the Arènes, to which she directed us. We followed a very steep path; and, keeping a range of ruined arches in view, threaded the mazes of a long lane, till we arrived at the irregular space where once stood the famous Roman amphitheatre. The diameter of this building is the same as that of Nîmes, and it, apparently, could have held about five thousand spectators: the ruins are scattered over a very large extent in confused heaps; but there are a great many vaulted arches, small and great, still standing, some covered with weeds and grass, and overhung with wild vines and flowering shrubs. There appears little doubt that here was a Naumachia, from different discoveries that have been made of vaults which must have conducted the waters to this spot. The meadows and little hills all around are covered with remains of this once important place of amusement; and the labourer is for ever turning up, with his spade or plough, coins and capitals and broken pillars and pavement, belonging to the period of its existence. There still exists in the centre of what was the Naumachia, a well, called La Fontaine de Sainte-Eustelle, to which miraculous virtues are even now attributed, and to which the following legend belongs: Eustelle was the daughter of an officer high in command in Saintonge: a man of great power and severity, and a pagan: he had a particular horror of the sect called Christians, who had begun to spread themselves over the country, and were slowly, but surely, making their way. It was far different with his beautiful daughter, whose nurse having imbibed the principles of the true faith, had communicated her knowledge to her foster-child, who listened with delight to her lessons, and, from year to year, as she grew up, more than ever abhorred the superstitious observances of her father and her friends. In the huge hollow stones worshipped as gods, she saw only profanation; and, while compelled to offer sacrifice to an imaginary deity, she in her heart addressed prayers to a superior Being, that he would condescend to enlighten those who were led astray, and assist her in her secret faith. It was at this period that her father resolved to bestow her in marriage on the son of Xerxes, King of Babylon; and as the prince was shortly expected to arrive in Saintonge, he bade her prepare to receive her intended husband. Eustelle heard these tidings with despair, secretly resolving never to become the wife of a heathen, such as she was certain the Prince of Babylon must be: her tears and entreaties, however, had no effect on her father, who began to suspect her change of faith, and resolved to secure the alliance at once. Preparations on a magnificent scale were being made, and in a few days the bridegroom elect was expected to arrive, when news was suddenly brought that the prince had disappeared from his father's court, and was nowhere to be found. The father of Eustelle hastened to her chamber to prepare her for the disappointment, when, to his surprise, he found her not; and on the couch where she usually slept a golden cross was laid; but no one could give any account of her. The country was searched in all directions in vain; and it was at length supposed that Eustelle had destroyed herself. It was, however, far otherwise, for, in a cavern by the side of a fountain, on the spot where now stand the ruins of the Roman amphitheatre, Eustelle had concealed herself, having been guided thither by a shining light, which flitted before her to the spot, and rested at the mouth of the cavern: there she was miraculously supported, drinking only of the waters of the fountain, which not only served her for nourishment, but so increased her beauty, that she was a marvel to behold. One morning, as she came forth from her cavern to perform her usual devotions at the side of the fountain, she was surprised to see a young man kneeling on the ground in devout prayer, so absorbed that he did not perceive her approach; but as he raised his eyes, her figure becoming suddenly visible to him, he exclaimed, "Oh, blessed Heaven! my prayers are then heard--the Holy Virgin is herself before me!" Eustelle started, and amazed at his words, demanded who he was, and whether he was indeed a Christian, like herself, as his exclamation made it appear. "Beautiful lady," replied he, "since you are not, as I supposed, a heavenly visitant, know that I am Eutrope, the son of the King of Babylon, fled from a marriage which I detested with a pagan of this country. I am, indeed, a Christian and a priest, and obliged to conceal my faith from the persecutors of those who hate us. The time will come when we can declare ourselves, for already we increase in numbers as in faith." Eustelle, as she looked upon his features and heard the soft tones of his voice, felt a momentary regret that he had been so precipitate in rejecting the supposed pagan wife offered him; but considering such feelings a crime, she replied: "Holy father, you see before you one who has also fled from persecution, and sought a solitude where she can worship the only true God in safety. I am she who was destined to be your wife, had not a better fate been prepared for us both. In future, we can serve and pray, and our spirits will together praise Him, who has directed us thus to meet." What passed in the mind of Eutrope, when he heard these words, it is difficult to say; but he resigned himself at once to the lot which was appointed for him. He built himself a hut at a small distance from the cavern, and, devoting himself to prayer and thanksgiving, he permitted his mind only to regard Eustelle in the light of a holy sister, while she on her part held him as a saint sent to confirm her in her belief. By the side of the miraculous fountain, many a time did the holy pair sit in pious converse, mutually instructing each other, while angels hovered above them, and joined in the chorus of praise which they sang. St. Eutrope afterwards became the first bishop of Saintes, and St. Eustelle lived a recluse in her cavern, where miracles were long afterwards performed by her, and where she expired at the same moment that her holy companion suffered the martyrdom which secured him a crown of glory to all eternity. The fête of the two saints is kept together on the 30th of April, and, for eight days after, the otherwise quiet town of Saintes is a scene of gaiety and rejoicing: a fair is held, and minstrels, jugglers, and merchants of all kinds add to the liveliness of the scene. Why such demonstrations should be made in honour of two persons whose lives were spent in solitude and self-denial, it is somewhat difficult to understand; and how the dull, dreary, desolate, and ruined town can ever be made to wear a brilliant aspect, is equally difficult of comprehension; but such _is said_ to be the case. On the morning of the fête, great honours were paid, formerly, to St. Eustelle, which are not even yet altogether discontinued. An image of the holy Virgin is suspended in the grotto near the miraculous well, and there the water is dispensed to believers in its efficacy "for a consideration." It is principally visited by young girls, who are anxious to secure a happy issue to an existing attachment, or to obtain, through the medium of the indulgent saint, a lover before the end of the year. The way to obtain this is to throw a pin into the fountain, and to drink a little of the water. It is not impossible, after this, that a prince of Babylon will make his appearance. Every year, however, this superstition is wearing out, and probably will soon be forgotten altogether. The sun shone, and, the day being mild, we lingered for some time amongst these extensive ruins, climbing and exploring and looking down caverns and ravines in the rocks, beneath one of which rolls a dark stream, doubtless the source of those waters which were formerly directed into the arena to serve the Naumachia. There is something fearful in knowing that beneath your feet, as you wander in these ruined places, exist gulphs of darkness, into which a false step amongst treacherous bushes and weeds might precipitate the unwary. We were driven from both the beauties and dangers of the spot by the beginning of a shower, and determined on making a retreat to St. Eutrope, whose enormous tower beckoned us from the hill above. We had not, however, gone many steps when the storm came down with all the impatient fury of _French rain_, and we were glad to take shelter in a wood-shed, at a house which we should have endeavoured to visit had no accident introduced us to its premises. This house, now entirely modern, belongs to a farmer, and is called _The Côteau_; in the garden is an _oyster bank_ of some extent, which is looked upon as one of several proofs that the sea once bathed the walls of Saintes; and beneath the building is a subterranean range, formerly communicating with the amphitheatre, which is distant the length of several fields from the house. As accidents might occur in consequence of the great extent and ruined state of the galleries and arches of this singular building, the proprietor has lately closed up the entrance, and there is now no possibility of exploring; but the wonders of this place have been described by different writers who have occupied themselves with the antiquities of Saintes, of which there is so much to be said and seen that it is almost a dangerous subject to touch upon. Certainly it is a town which presents a wide field of enquiry and interest to archæologists, and as it now lies in the highway to Bordeaux, the curious may be attracted to its walls, and will be rewarded by their visit. Then, perchance, may be fitly described by a Gally Knight, the Camp _de César_, the _Terrier de Toulon_, the _Tour de Pyrelonge_, the Aqueduct of _Font-Giraud_, the Cavern of _Ouaye-à-Métau_, the _Grand-Font-du-Douhet_, the _Font-Morillon_, the _Plantes des Neuf-puits_, all works of the Gauls and Romans, of which, wells and arches, and baths and subterranean temples, still excite the astonishment, not only of the peasants who are constantly stumbling on their remains, but of the antiquary who ventures into the long galleries and ruined chambers which speak to him of the glories of a people who once swayed the country they rendered powerful and beautiful by their architecture, the traces of which time itself cannot entirely sweep away. We found, on visiting St. Eutrope on our return, that little interest attaches to the church itself, scarcely any part of its interior having been spared by the numerous hostilities which it has had to undergo; some parts of the exterior are, however, beautiful, and the crypt lost none of its interest on a second view. It is, after that of Chartres, the most perfect and the most extraordinary in France, and formerly extended as far again as at present. The fine bold circular arches, of different sizes and heights; the massive cylindrical pillars, the rich sharp capitals, and _still fresh_ gothic character of the cornices, astonish the beholder; it is undergoing restoration in parts, which appears sufficiently judicious. So solemn and silent was the sacristan who conducted us over this subterranean church, that we imagined for some time he was dumb, till we were undeceived on his expressing his pleasure at the small donation we bestowed on him for his trouble; as it is somewhat difficult, at the present day, in France, to meet the exalted expectations of the numerous guides who exhibit to English travellers the lions of their towns, we were amused at the satisfaction betrayed by our silent cicerone. The once beautiful church of Notre Dame, or Ste. Marie, serves now as the stables of the garrison, and all its fine remains are hidden from public view; parts of its exterior still attract the eye, and make one regret that it has fallen into such utter decay. It was once covered with statues of great beauty, some of which remain; but that of Geoffrey Martel, its founder, is destroyed, with a host of others, once its pride; enough, however, is to be seen which is well worthy of attention; but, from its present occupation, we did not do more than attempt to find it out in its degradation. The cells of the nuns are now occupied by dragoons. CHAPTER XIV. FRÈRE CHRÉTIEN--UTILITY OF CUSTOM-HOUSE SEARCH--BOLD VOYAGER--PAUILLAC--BLAYE--THE GIRONDE--TALBOT--VINES--THE LANDES--PHANTOM OF KING ARTHUR--THE WITCH-FINDER--THE LANDES--WRECKERS. OUR destination was now the Gironde, and we found our only plan was to set out in the middle of the night for Mortagne, where the steam-boat to Bordeaux from Royan touched for passengers. We accordingly secured our places in the _coupé_, and, having been quite punctual to the hour of twelve, we expected to begin our journey. At the appointed time, however, neither horses nor _conducteur_ were to be found, and the diligence remained for a full hour beneath the trees of the _cours_, filled with its impatient passengers, without any appearance of moving. The pause was enlivened by a violent altercation between a passenger on the roof and the proprietor, which caused a great encounter of tongues, so furious that we dreaded that blows must ensue, when we heard the vociferous individual who had usurped somebody's place, favoured by the darkness, kicking and resisting as he was dragged from his exalted station. However, as is almost always the case in France, the moment the culprit--who was loud in his threats of vengeance when too far off to execute them--descended to earth, and had an opportunity of making them good, he became mute and humble, and made his escape at once, amidst the jeers of those who had also threatened to annihilate him as soon as he was within their reach. This scene, taking place at midnight, beneath the high trees of the great avenue in the gloomy ruined town of Saintes, was sufficiently unpleasant, as there seemed less and less chance of our ever stirring from the spot, and a great probability of our arriving, at any rate, too late for the steamer at Mortagne; but a priest, who was our companion, and who seemed to have previously filled up the lonely hours of evening by potations, seemed greatly to enjoy the bustle, till a remark of mine, on the unsuitableness of the scene to one of his order, acted like magic on him, and he ceased the _swearing_ and encouraging exclamations in which he had before indulged, and became as meek and demure as he probably passed for, being amongst those whose eyes he knew to be on him. He was of the order of Christian Brothers: a community by no means remarkable for the edification of their manners and demeanour. It is customary with _conducteurs_, when very much behind their time, to regain it by furious driving; and this being the case in our instance, we got to the inn at Mortagne in time, the boat being, as it happened, later than usual. In the midst of the rain we were obliged to obey the custom-house summons to produce our keys, in order that our trunks might be inspected, and if _bales of cotton_ should be found amongst our caps and gowns, we might suffer according to our offence against the laws. After much uncording and dashing and knocking about of baggage, the person who officiated proceeded to drag open the suspected packages rather unceremoniously. An exclamation, which one of our party made in English, seemed to put an end, however, to the search, for, looking up and bowing, he said, "Oh, English ladies,--that's enough!" Having escaped this _necessary_ ceremony, we had to walk about half a mile in the mud and rain to the pier, though there was no sort of reason why the coach should not have taken us all with our goods to the shore; except, indeed, that by so convenient an arrangement, the demands of a whole host of porters would have been evaded. We were huddled into a clumsy boat, some standing and some sitting on the wet seats, and paddled off to the steamer which stood off; our baggage strewn on the pier, to be transported hereafter, if the captain chose to wait. And in this unpleasing state of uncertainty, at six o'clock in the morning, in a pouring rain, we were put on board the vessel which was to transport us to Bordeaux. In spite, however, of the wondrous confusion which made it probable that accidents of all kinds would ensue, nothing tragical happened, and nothing was lost. One little stout man, in a long cloak, attached himself to our side, not so much with a view of affording us _his_ protection, as to obtain it at our hands. He looked very pale and cold; and as he trudged along in the mud, addressed me frequently, in tremulous tones, requesting to know my opinion as to the state of _the ocean_; whether I did not fear that it would be very rough and very dangerous, confessing that he felt pretty sure such would be the case, though he had never seen the sea before, and hoping I would not be alarmed. I assured him I had no fears on that head, as, in the first place, wide as the expanse before us appeared, it was not the _sea_, but the _river_, several leagues from its _embouchure_; next, that it was as calm as a mill-pond, without a breath of wind to ruffle its thick yellow waters. "Hélas!" said he, "you do not seem to care; but perhaps you have no baggage as I have, otherwise you would feel great uneasiness." I found him afterwards on board almost crying after his _effêts_, which consisted of a hat-box, carpet-bag, and little bundle, all of which were safely produced. When we had proceeded about an hour, he came strutting up to us, and, with a patronizing air, exclaimed, "There, you see, there is no reason to be alarmed; I told you so." I gratified him exceedingly by agreeing that he was perfectly right. The Gironde is, indeed, at this part, like the sea: the opposite shores cannot be distinguished, so broad and fine is the expanse; and the exceedingly ugly colour of the water is, at first, forgotten in the magnitude of the space which surrounds the voyager. But that we had resolved to make ourselves acquainted with the Roman city of Saintes, we should have followed the usual course, and, on leaving Rochefort, proceeded across the country to Royan, once an insignificant village, now a rather important bathing-place. By this means the whole of the banks of the Gironde may be seen; and it is a charming voyage. The first object of interest is the famous Tour de Corduan, built on a bank of rocks, and placed at the entrance of the river, with its revolving light to warn mariners of their position. It was originally constructed in 1548, by the celebrated engineer, Louis de Foix, whose works at Bayonne have rendered his name illustrious. Pauillac is the _chef-lieu_ of the last canton of Haut-Medoc, and its port being good, many vessels, which cannot reach so high as Bordeaux, stop here, and discharge their cargo. Here grow the wines, called Château Lafitte, and Château Latour. There is nothing very remarkable in the appearance of the town but a long pier, of which many of our passengers took advantage to land, and our steward to go to market, returning with a store of eatables, for which every one seemed quite ready. The weather had now cleared, and the aspect of things was, consequently, much brightened; and, as we approached Blaye, the skies were fine, and the air fresh and agreeable. A group of islands, called _Les Isles de Cazau_, rises from the waters; and on one of them appears the singularly-shaped tower of Blaye, so like a _pâté de Perigord_, that it is impossible, on looking at it, not to think of Charlemagne, or his nephew, the famous paladin, Rolando, who should be the presiding genii of the scene. All along the left bank of the river extend, in this direction, the far-famed plains of Medoc--once the haunt of wolves and wild boars, now covered with the vines renowned throughout Europe. The first place, after Mortagne--where once stood the castle of that Jeanne de Vendôme who falsely accused Jacques Coeur--is Pauillac, a town of some commercial importance; and near is an island, called Patiras, formerly the abode of a pirate, called Monstri, whose depredations were so extensive that the parliament of Bordeaux was obliged to send a considerable naval force to put him down. But Monstri was not the only depredator who found the Gironde a fitting theatre for his piracy. Amongst all that _coquinaille_,--as Mezeray designates the notorious Free Companies who, after their services were no longer required to drive the English from the recovered realm of Charles VII., exercised their cruelties and indulged their robber-propensities on the people of France, wherever they came,--was a knight and a noble, who may serve as a type of those of his time, Roderigue de Villandras, known as _Le Méchant Roderigue_; together with Antoine de Chabannes, Lord of Dammartin, the Bâtard de Bourbon, and others; Villandras led a troop of those terrible men, who boasted of the name of _Ecorcheurs_. It was true that, in the lawless period when the destitute _Roi de Bourges_ had neither money nor power, they had done great service to his cause--as a troop of trained wolves might have done--ravaging and destroying all they came near; but the end once accomplished, the great desire of all lovers of order was to get rid of the scourge which necessity had obliged the king to endure so long. To such a pitch of insolence had these leaders arrived, that, not content with despoiling every person they met, Villandras had, at last, the effrontery to attack and pillage the baggage of the king himself, and to maltreat his people. Enraged at finding the vexations of which his suffering subjects had so long bitterly complained, come home to himself, personally, Charles resolved on vigorous measures, and gave instant command that these companies should be pursued and hunted from society: that every town and village should take up arms against them, and, as for Chabannes, Roderigue, &c., they were banished from the kingdom. Roderigue, however, retired, with a chosen band, to the Garonne, and there, entrenching himself in one of the islands, carried on the trade of a pirate, destroying the country on each side of the river, and murdering the inhabitants without mercy. This state of things lasted for some time: the labouring people and proprietors, unable to resist these incursions, left their land in despair, and fled for protection into the towns: the consequence of which was, that plague and famine ensued, and their miserable country became a prey to a new species of wretchedness. In less than six weeks, fifty thousand people died in Paris alone, until the city became so emptied of inhabitants that not more than three persons were left to each street. It is recorded that famished wolves came down upon the great capital, and prowled about the streets as if they had been in a forest, devouring the bodies scattered about unburied, and attacking the few living creatures in this great desert. Meantime, the revolt of the disaffected lords, who composed what was called the Praguerie, gave new employment to all the _mauvais sujets_ of the kingdom, and Chabannes and Villandras did not neglect so fine an opportunity of committing additional outrages; and, for a time, they carried their terrors throughout Poitou and Champagne. Being taken in arms, the fearful Bâtard de Bourbon met his deserved fate by being sewn in a sack and thrown into the river; but Villandras escaped the justice of the king, in consideration of services required of him and his band of robbers; and De Chabannes was reinstated in the favour of Charles, being too powerful and dangerous to offend. One is not surprised to be told that the fortress of Blaye is called _Le Paté_: it is, doubtless, of great strength and importance, but not imposing, in consequence of its want of height, and its flat, crushed appearance on a marshy island. The exterior walls appear very ancient, but all the centre of the tower is fitted up with modern buildings, having common-looking roofs, quite destroying all picturesque effect. The steamer made the entire tour of the island; so that we saw the fort on every side, and presently came in full view of the town and citadel of Blaye, partly on a height and partly on a level with the river. No part of it offers any beauty; nor does it possess features of majesty and grandeur, though its recollections cannot fail to excite interest. The Duchess of Berry must have found her sojourn in this desolate castle dismal enough: it is an excellent place for a prison; and was, formerly, no doubt of the utmost importance to Charlemagne, as it probably continues to be to this day to the ruling powers. The body of Rolando, after the fatal day when "Charlemagne and all his peerage fell At Fontarabia," was brought here; and, several centuries afterwards, his tomb was removed to the church of St. Seurin, at Bordeaux. King Chérébert, grandson of Clovis, has also his tomb on this rock; but no remains of it, I believe, are now shown. Our troops, in 1814, could tell of the obstinate resistance of the citadel, and were well able to measure its strength. The banks of the river are, from hence, covered with vines, and are higher and more rocky. Numerous dwellings cut in the rocky face of the hills remind one of the same appearance on the borders of the Loire; but in no other respect can the clay-coloured river claim resemblance with that crystal though sand-encumbered stream. Several bold rocks diversify the prospect here,--one called the Roque-de-Tau, and another the Pain-de-Sucre. The space where the two rivers, Dordogne and Garonne, meet, and falling together into one, form the Gironde, is called _L'Entre-Deux-Mers_; and the shore the Bec d'Ambez. This part is sometimes dangerous; and, I dare say, our timid fellow-voyager felt a little nervous; but nothing happened to our boat, as we fell quietly into the Garonne, leaving the sister river, and its boasted Pont de Cubzac,--the object sought by the spy-glasses of all on board,--in the distance. We were now passing along between the shores of the famous river Garonne--always the scene of contentions, from its importance, and particularly so during the long wars between France and England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Although but few of the castles whose turrets once frowned along the hills above the waters now remain, even in ruins, yet, in those days, they were nearly as numerous as the trees which have now taken their place. Many a time has the banner of the Black Prince been displayed on the waves of this river, and been saluted or attacked according as he was victor or besieger. Every inch of land and water, from the Tour de Corduan to the walls of Bordeaux, and, indeed, to Agen, has been disputed by struggling thousands, from the time of Elionore of Guienne to the Duke of Wellington! But it was at the time when the star of France emerged from its dark clouds, and shone above the head of Charles VII., that the French shook off the foreign yoke which had so long kept from them this--one of the finest rivers in their realms. Charles VII., after having despoiled his friends and reduced his enemies, was endeavouring to shut out from his memory the visions of the betrayed heroine of Orleans and the persecuted merchant of Bourges, the lost Agnes Sorel and the turbulent and revolted Dauphin; and had retired to his castle of pleasure at Mehun-sur-Yevre, where he could best conceal from prying eyes the idle occupations and degrading enjoyments which filled the time of the hero _of other's swords_. He had just concluded a peace with Savoy, and had rejected, as vexatious, the petitions of his subjects of Gascony, who were writhing under the exactions of his ministers. He felt that all was now at his feet; and he would not permit his loved ease and quiet to be disturbed by appeals to his justice and humanity. The people of Guienne, therefore, saw that it was in vain that they had submitted, and had consented to give up the English rule, to which they had been so long accustomed, and under which they had flourished. Several of the higher families allied with that country, had endured the alienation with uneasiness. Amongst others, Pierre de Montferrant, who bore the singular title of Souldich de l'Estrade, or de la Trau, had married a natural daughter of the Duke of Bedford: he had been forced to capitulate when taken prisoner at Blaye; but he preserved his ancient attachment to England; and, taking advantage of the discontent which prevailed, he sent messages to Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, recommending him to attempt the re-conquest of the Bordelais, which promised to be an easy prize. The lords of Candale and l'Esparre confirmed his statements, in an interview with the earl, in London, where they had remained after the treaty. They assured him that, if the English landed a small force at Bordeaux, they would certainly be joined by the disaffected, and had little to contend with; for Charles had withdrawn most of his troops, to send them against Savoy, and, it was thought, against the Dauphin himself. This was followed by the announcement that the powerful lords of Rosan, Gaillard de Durfort, Jean de la Linde, and the Sire de Langlade, with many other gentlemen of the country, had proclaimed their intention of rising as soon as the English flag should be displayed on the Garonne. The Archbishop of Bordeaux and the Bishop of Oleron had entered into the plot; for there is proof that they had solicited new favours from Henry VI. before the return of the English to Guienne. A favourable turn in the affairs of Henry seemed to render the moment propitious; and Marguerite d'Anjou seized the occasion of success against her opponents, to despatch Talbot, as the lieutenant of the king in Aquitaine, with an army of between seven and eight thousand men, with ample powers to pardon all offences committed against England. The aged chief, favoured by the wind and weather, arrived at Bordeaux, and was introduced into the city, by the citizens, before the soldiers of Charles VII. had even dreamed of his approach. The seneschal, the under-mayor, and almost all the French garrison, were instantly surprised and taken prisoners. Talbot, delighted at his prompt success, roused all his old energy, and, in an incredibly short space of time, had retaken all the places which had been lost to the English, in the preceding year, in the Bordelais, the Agenois, and the Bazadois. Eighty vessels arrived with provisions from England, and all went well with the conquerors. The French who held out were obliged to retire to their ancient frontiers, and do their utmost to defend the remainder of Guienne against the fortunate invaders. Meantime, the King of France was dreaming away his life, as he had formerly done, while the English were lords of his kingdom; but the news of their return woke him from his slumbers, and, hurrying to Lusignan, and assembling his forces in haste, he set forth in his character of warrior, and paused not till he had reached the Dordogne. The two famous brothers Bureau brought up their sappers and miners, and their tremendous artillery; nobles and knights flocked to his standard, and Talbot found that the foe he held in utter contempt, presented an aspect of resolve worthy of his attention. The old general was about to hear mass when it was falsely announced to him that a party of his people had routed the French, who had abandoned their park of artillery, before Chatillon en Perigord. He started up, and exclaimed, as he interrupted the ceremony, "I swear that I will never hear mass again till I have swept away the French from before me." So saying, he rushed to arms, called out his troops, and marched forth with impetuosity, uttering his war-cry, "Talbot! Saint George!" Fatal was his haste, and fatal was the misrepresentation made to him; in the battle that ensued the gallant veteran and his son were slain, with upwards of four thousand men; the French were too much harassed to pursue their victory; but, finding the body of Talbot amongst the heaps of dead, it was proclaimed to France that their most dreaded enemy was no more. "Talbot is slain!--the Frenchman's only scourge; Their kingdom's terror, and black Nemesis!" "Whose life was England's glory--Gallia's wonder." The face of things was now essentially changed; all the influences were turned to the advantage of 'Charles the Victorious.' One after another the towns and fortresses on the Garonne, Blancafort, Saint Macaire, Langon, Villandras, Cadillac, were forced to surrender. And all the country "_between the two seas_" was in the hands of the French. The Gironde was filled with vessels sent to the aid of France by Castile, Burgundy, Bretagne, and all the province of Poitou. On the other hand, the fleet of England and the Bourdelaise were at anchor half a league below Bordeaux, and formidable did both appear. The men of Bordeaux beginning to fear that all was lost, had already proposed a surrender, on condition of free pardon; but the answer of Charles had not been favourable; he consented to receive all of English birth to ransom, but those of his own subjects he insisted should be left to his mercy. While they paused, reflecting upon the amount of mercy they might expect, the English, careful only of their own weal, decided for them, and agreed to the terms, leaving the unfortunate Gascons, their companions in arms, to their fate. Charles began by putting to death Gaillardet, the brave commander of Cadillac; whom he condemned as a rebel, although he had merely done his duty in obeying the head of a house which his ancestors had been accustomed to serve for three centuries. The fevers of Autumn had now begun to appear; several of the generals of the French king had fallen victims to it; and as Bordeaux still held out and refused to surrender without certain concessions, dictated by Le Camus, who refused to sacrifice the Gascons under his command, Charles was obliged to listen to his representations. He agreed to pardon the citizens and their adherents, reserving twenty of the most guilty, whose estates were confiscated, and they banished for ever from the kingdom. It was on the 19th of October, 1453, that the City of Bordeaux opened its gates to Charles _the Well-Served_, and the discomfited English sailed mournfully away from its walls, never to return as its masters. All the vines along the shores of the Garonne are famous. Cantemerle, Sauves, Cantenac, and the mighty monarch, Château Margaux; Ludon, Parampuire, and Blanquefort; St. Louis de Montferrant, and Bassens. These renowned vineyards cover the country with riches; but fever reigns here triumphant throughout the year, and the coast denies its advantages to any but vine-growers. M. de Peyronnet, the ex-minister, has a château in a pretty situation on the river; but whether this particular site is unhealthy we did not hear. From the Tour de Cordouan to the Port of Bordeaux, extending far over the wide and marshy country, which spreads out its sandy and unhealthy plains towards Bayonne, superstition formerly held her head-quarters; and though, within a few years, belief in the supernatural has lost its force, the dreams and fancies of the dark ages are not quite effaced. There is hardly any extravagance credited by the inhabitants of Brittany, which has not been held as an article of faith in the Landes, and cast its influence over the departments bordering on the Pyrenees. There is an idea, not altogether worn out, that certain families are under a spell, and subject to strange visitations; they are supposed to be recognized by their heavy, sullen air, and their aversion to society in general: these are called _Accus_, and are as much avoided as possible, as they are suspected of witchcraft and other mal-practices; they are said to have too much experience in the nocturnal amusements of those mysterious beings called Loups-garoux, so generally known and dreaded throughout France and Germany. That the evil one delights in this part of the country is not to be questioned; and there may be some risk in passing along the river towards nightfall, because the fiend and his company are apt to haunt those meadows closest to the waters, and there they may be occasionally seen dancing in circles, where their hoofs spoil the grass, which refuses to grow again where once their steps have been. Perhaps the rapidity of the steam-boat may now prevent their being so often perceived; or, indeed, its introduction may have offended, and chased away, the _mesnie_ of the fiend altogether. Between the Dordogne and the Garonne, l'Entre-deux-Mers, it is generally believed that a male child who has never known his father, as well as a _fifth_ son, have the power to cure certain maladies by the touch. And it is in these parts that the once famous Dragon of Bordeaux used principally to sojourn, much to the terror of the surrounding neighbourhood. There is scarcely any malignant spirit, from a _loup-garou_ to _an ague_, which cannot be found in the deserts of Aquitaine. Often do the peasants of Medoc hear in the air, sometimes in mid-day, sometimes in the clear nights of summer, the horns and cries of the phantom hunter, Arthur and his men. If he is, indeed, the same King Arthur, whose fame is enshrined in the legends of Wales and Brittany, he must have been a prince with even a more extended domain than that of Henry, the husband of Queen Elionore, for he carries on his chace on the banks of the Gave of Pau, and still further into the Pyrenees. He was a very excellent and pious prince, valiant and courteous; but he had one great fault, an inordinate love of hunting, which in the end proved his bane. For once, on the occasion of some solemn fête, while he was in the church assisting at the mass, some mischievous friend brought him word, that a fine wild boar had just appeared at a very short distance from the holy precincts. In a moment, his respect for religion, his reverence for the sacred ceremony in which he was engaged, all were put to flight; he uttered a joyous shout, seized his spear, and rushed forth to the sport. He enjoyed a most animated hunt, but-- "So comes the reck'ning when the banquet's o'er,-- A dreadful reck'ning--and men smile no more!" From that day he _hunted eternally_ and _in vain_!--for ever is he traversing the vast field of air, urging on his steed, hallowing to his hounds, sounding his horn, and madly rushing over mountain and plain, reflected in the sky; but he has never yet, nor ever will attain the object of his pursuit! There are certain spots in the Landes where trees of strange appearance grow, which may be recognised as those under which the evil one distributes poison to his human friends, to dispense to those who have fallen under their displeasure: the districts where these meetings take place are fortunately known and avoided, but to such a height had grown the daring of the friends of Satan at one time, that the King of France,--no other than Henry the Fourth (!)--under the ministry of Sully (!) sent persons into these climes to root out the evil. The famous _witch-finder_, Pierre de Lancre, has recorded his successes in this particular. "The King," says he, "being informed that his country of Labourt was greatly infested with sorcerers, gave commission to a president and a counsellor of the court of parliament of Bordeaux, to seek out the crime of sorcery in the said country, about the year 1609. "This commission was entrusted to the Sieur Despagnet and I: we dedicated four months to the search, during which happened an infinity of _unknown things, strange, and out of all belief_, of which books written on the subject have never spoken: such for instance, as _that the devil came and held his meetings at the gates of Bordeaux, and in the quarter of the Palais Gallien_, which _fact_ was declared at his execution by Isaac Dugueyran, a notable sorcerer, _who was put to death_ in 1609. It appears to me that it will be extremely useful, nay necessary, to France and the whole of Christendom, to have this account in writing for many reasons. "All this must convince the most obstinate, stupid, blind, and _ignorant_, that there is no longer a doubt that sorcery exists, and that the devil can transport sorcerers really and corporally to his sabbath: and that there is no longer any excuse for disputing on the subject, for all nations are agreed concerning the truth, aided by _ocular_ demonstration, permitted to an impartial judge and good Christian. _Too much mildness is shown in France towards sorcerers:_ all good judges should in future resolve to punish with death all such as have been convicted of attending the devil's assemblies, even if no harm has immediately resulted therefrom: for to such an extent has witchcraft spread that it has passed the frontier and reached the city of Bayonne, which is cruelly afflicted in consequence. Satan having made great advances and spread his sabbaths over an infinity of places in our deserts and Landes of Bordeaux."[11] [Footnote 11: This part of the world seemed always to be looked upon as the head quarters of sorcery; for in the Chronicles of Bordeaux we find, in the year 1435, the following notice:--"Les environs de Bordeaux sont _fort travaillez_ par les sorciers et empoisonneurs, dont aucuns furent exécutes à mort et brûlé tous vifs."] In consequence of the representations of this righteous judge, _eight hundred victims_ were condemned to the flames for this pretended crime: and this, incredible as it may appear, by command of Le Bon Henri and his Protestant minister, Sully! At the very period, too, permission was refused to the unfortunate Moors, then driven by bigotry from Spain, to establish themselves in the Landes, where their industry and perseverance would soon have converted the barren waste into a fertile and smiling country, instead of remaining for centuries an unwholesome marsh. Neglected and uncultivated as this extended country has long been--only _now_, in fact, assuming an aspect of improvement--it is not surprising that superstition has lingered longer amongst its uneducated people than with their more fortunate neighbours. Within ten years new roads have been made, new buildings erected, and a rail-road is projected across the Landes from Bordeaux to Bayonne: it may, therefore, be now expected that the last vestige of idle belief in witches and demons will shortly disappear; but, in the meantime, much of such weakness is lingering still. For instance, the Landais believe that in certain maladies the physician has no power, and that recourse must be had, for relief, to certain gifted persons, who will propitiate the evil spirit who caused the ill. They attribute great virtue to what they call _les Veyrines_, namely, narrow openings in the thickness of the pillars of a church: persons affected with rheumatic diseases, have only to pass through these narrow spaces, repeating at the time certain prayers, having previously made the circuit of the pillar nine times. His head is first inserted, and the rest of his body is pushed through by his friends. These practices are, in spite of the exertions of the clergy, said to be still carried on in secret. In the month of May they strew the street before their houses with reeds, on fête days, and there they frequently pass their evenings, sitting in groups, and telling to each other superstitious stories, which are eagerly listened to, and thus handed down from father to son. The _orfraie_ and the screech-owl are looked upon with terror in the Landes: their approach to any dwelling bodes evil in all forms: the dead quit their tombs at night and flit about in the fens, and covered with their white shrouds come wandering into the villages, nor will they quit them till the prayers and alms of their friends have calmed their perturbed spirits. The various tribes of the Landes, form, as it were, in the midst of France, a separate people, from their habits and customs: they are called, according to their locality, Bouges, Parants, Mazansins, Couziots, or Lanusquets: they are generally a meagre race, and subject to nervous affections; taking little nourishment, and living a life of privation and fatigue. Obliged to labour for their support, like most people in the departments of the Pyrenees, and to dispose of the products of their industry, they have usually fixed places of repose; each peasant drives his cart drawn by two oxen, and carries with him the food for those patient animals, who are the very picture of endurance. His own food is generally coarse, ill-leavened bread, very hardly baked, and made of coarse maize, or rye-flour, which he sometimes relishes with _sardines_ of Galicia. He gives his oxen a preparation of dried linseed from which the oil has been extracted, and which he has made into flour, and he then lets them loose on the Landes for a time, while he snatches a hasty sleep, soon interrupted to resume his journey. The dwellings of these people are sufficiently wretched: low, damp, and exposed to both the heat and cold by the rude manner in which they are constructed; a fire is kept in the centre of the principal room, from which small closets open: they sleep in general under two _feather beds_, in a close, unwholesome air, many in the same room. Still their domestic arrangements seem a degree better than those of the Bretons, and their dirt does not appear so great, bad as it must necessarily be. The dress of the men is a large, heavy, brown stuff cloak, or a long jacket of sheepskin, with the fur outwards; to which, when gaiters of the same are added, there is little difference between them and the animals they tend: a very small _berret_, the cap of the country, covers merely the top of their heads, and is but of little use in sheltering them in rainy weather. The women wear large round hats with great wings, adorned with black ribbon, and sometimes with a herb, which they call Immortelle de Mer;[12] the young girls frequently, however, prefer a small linen cap, the wings of which are crossed over the top of the head. [Footnote 12: See for these particulars, Athanasie Maritime.--_Du Mège_.] Shepherds are almost always clothed in sheepskins, and in winter they wear over this a white woollen cloak with a very pointed hood. These are the people who make their appearance on stilts, called _Xicanques_, and traverse the Landes with their flocks, crossing streams of several feet deep, and striding along like flying giants. They have always a long pole, with a seat affixed, and a gun slung at their backs, to defend them from the attack of wolves. Monotonous enough must be the lives of these poor people, for months together, alone, in a solitary waste, where not a tree can grow, with nothing but a wide extent of marshy land around, and only their sheep and dogs as companions; but they are accustomed to it from infancy, and probably are comparatively insensible to their hardships, at least it is so to be hoped. Seated on his elevated seat, the shepherd of the Landes occupies himself in knitting or spinning, having a contrivance for the latter peculiar to this part of the country. Their appearance, thus occupied, is most singular and startling. A dignitary of Bordeaux is said once to have prepared a fête to an Infanta of Spain, the destined bride of a French prince, in the Landes; in which he engaged a party of these mounted shepherds, dressed in skins, and covered with their white mantles and hoods, to figure, accompanied by a band of music, and passing under triumphal arches formed of garlands of flowers: a strange scene in such a desert, but scarcely so imposing to a stranger as the unexpected apparition of these beings in the midst of their native desolation. The Landais seldom live to an advanced age: they marry early, are very jealous, and are said to enjoy but little of the domestic happiness attributed to the poor as a possession; they are accused of being indifferent to their families, and of taking more care of their flocks and herds than of their relations: they are docile and obedient to authority; honest, and neither revengeful nor deceitful. Whether from affection or habit, they show great sensibility on the death of neighbours or friends. The women cover their heads, in the funeral procession, with black veils or aprons, and the men with the pointed hood and cloak. During the whole year, after the decease of a father or mother, all the kitchen utensils _are covered with a veil_, and _placed in an opposite direction to that in which they stood before_; so that every time anything is wanted the memory of the dead is revived. The Landais, on the sea-coast, are, like the Cornish people, reproached, perhaps falsely, with being _wreckers_; and their cry of "Avarech! Avarech!" is said to be the signal of inhumanity and plunder. Their marriages are attended with somewhat singular ceremonies, and their method of making love is equally strange: after church, on a fête day, a number of young people, of both sexes, dance together to a monotouous tune, while others sit round in a circle on their heels, watching them. After dancing a little time, a pair will detach themselves from the rest, squeeze each other's hand, give a few glances, and then whisper together, striking each other at the same time; after which they go to their relations, and say they _are agreed_, and wish to marry: the priest and notary are called for, the parents consent, and the day is at once fixed. On the appointed day, the _Nobi_ (future husband) collects his friends, and goes to the bride's house, where he knocks; the father, or some near relation, opens to him, holding by the hand an _old woman_, whom he presents: she is rejected by the bridegroom, who demands her who was promised. She then comes forward with a modest air, and gives her lover a flower; who, in exchange, presents her with a belt, which he puts on himself. This is very like the customs in Brittany, where scenes of the kind always precede weddings. When the bride comes to her husband's house, she finds at the door a broom; or, if he takes possession of her's, a ploughshare is placed there: both allegorical of their duties. The distaff of the bride is carried by an old woman throughout the ceremonies. The Landais, altogether, both as to habits, manners, and general appearance, form a singular feature in the aspect of this part of France. CHAPTER XV. PORTS--DIVONA--BORDEAUX--QUINCONCES--ALLÉES--FIRST IMPRESSION--CHARTRONS--BAHUTIER--BACALAN--QUAYS--WHITE GUIDE--S^{TE} CROIX--ST. MICHEL--ST. ANDRÉ--PRETTY FIGURE--PRETTY WOMEN--PALAIS GALLIEN--BLACK PRINCE'S SON EDWARD. TAVERNIER has said, in speaking of the most celebrated ports, "three only can enter into comparison, one with the other, for their beauty of situation and their _form of a rainbow_, viz., Constantinople, Goa, and Bordeaux." The poet, Chapelle, thus names this celebrated city:-- Nous vîmes au milieu des eaux Devant nous paraître Bordeaux, Dont le port en croissant resserre Plus de barques et de vaisseaux Qu'aucun autre port de la terre. The commendatory address to his native city, by the poet, Ausonius, is often quoted; and has been finely rendered by M. Jouannet, whom I venture to translate. I was to blame; my silence far too long Has done thy fame, my noble country, wrong: Thou, Bacchus-loved, whose gifts are great and high, Thy gen'rous sons, thy senate, and thy sky, Thy genius and thy grace shall Mem'ry well Above all cities, to thy glory, tell. And shall I coldly from thy arms remove, Blush for my birth-place, and disown my love? As tho' thy son, in Scythian climes forlorn, Beneath the Bear with all its snows was born. No, thy Ausonius, Bordeaux! hails thee yet; Nor, as his cradle, can thy claims forget. Dear to the gods thou art, who freely gave Their blessings to thy meads, thy clime, thy wave: Gave thee thy flow'rs that bloom the whole year through, Thy hills of shade, thy prospects ever new, Thy verdant fields, where Winter shuns to be, And thy swift river, rival of the sea. Shall I describe thy mighty walls revered,-- Thy ramparts, by the god of battle feared,-- Thy gates,--thy towers, whose frowning crests assay Amidst the clouds towards Heaven to force a way? How well I love thy beauties to behold, Thy noble monuments, thy mansions bold, Thy simple porticos, thy perfect plan, Thy squares symmetrical: their space, their span. And that proud port which Neptune's lib'ral hand Bade from thy startled walls its arms expand, And show the way to Fortune! Twice each day Bringing his floods all crown'd with glittering spray, And foaming from the oar, while, gleaming white, A host of vessels gaily sweep in sight. It would appear by this description, that Bordeaux was, under its Roman masters, a very magnificent city; the famous _Divona_, the beneficent fountain, so celebrated by Ausonius, has left no trace of its existence, and has employed the learned long to account for its disappearance. Probably it was from some plan of Roman Bordeaux, that the present new town was built; for the above lines might almost describe it as it now stands: certainly, except the gigantic towers, the old city has no claim to praise for wide streets, fine houses, porticos, or symmetrical squares; probably, the architects of the Middle Ages destroyed its _perfect plan_, and swept away most of the beauties and grandeur which inspired the muse of the classic minstrel. Like most pompous descriptions, this was, perhaps, overdrawn at the time as much as, it appeared to me, the accounts of modern travellers have exaggerated the effect of a first arrival by water at Bordeaux. As Bordeaux is approached, the banks on one side become more picturesque, and at Lormont, where was once an extensive monastery, the scenery is fine: its promise is, however, forgotten by degrees, and I was surprised not to see any fine houses on the banks, as I had understood was the case. The few that are seen have a slovenly, neglected appearance, by no means announcing the splendours and riches of the great mercantile city we had now nearly reached. Paltry wine-houses, with shabby gardens, border the river, and flat meadows and reclaimed marshes give a meagre effect to the whole scene. Mast after mast now, however, began to appear, and in a short time we were steaming along between a forest of vessels of all nations, the reading of whose names not a little amused us as we hurried by them. English, Russian, Dutch, French, succeeded each other; the _coup d'oeil_ was extremely imposing, and the long wide quays, which seemed to know no end, announced a city of great importance. The small steamer continued its way, more fortunate than that which arrives from England, which, from its size, cannot go far up the shallow river, and stops half a league from the town at a faubourg called Barcalan; but we were enabled, from our comparative insignificance, to reach to the very finest point of Bordeaux, and land at the foot of the grand promenade _Des Quinconces_--the glory of the Garonne. The extreme flatness of the town, built as it is on marshes, takes from its effect; and I was surprised that it struck me as so little deserving its great reputation, compared, as it has been, to Genoa, Venice, and Constantinople, and imagining, as I did, that I should see its buildings rising in a superb amphitheatre from the waves, and crowning heights, like those we had passed, with towers and spires. The quays, also, had been so much vaunted to me that I expected much finer mansions on their sides; whereas they are principally warehouses, and those not very neatly kept: there was little of the bustle and stir of business which one, accustomed to London, may picture: all seemed sufficiently quiet and still, except the clamour of the commissioners, who contended for the possession of the passengers in our vessel, whose arrival in this commercial port made much more stir than seemed reasonable in so great a city. The _immense_ space of the Quinconces passed, we crossed an _immense_ street to an _immense_ irregular square, from whence lead _immensely_ wide _cours_ in various directions; and we stood before one of the largest theatres in one of the widest spaces I ever saw in a town: here, after much contention with our vociferous attendants, we resolved to pause, choosing the hotel the nearest to this magnificent building, and which promised to be most airy and quiet; the river running at the bottom of the long street in which it was situated, the theatre before it, and the great square left at its side, with all its rattle of carts and wheelbarrows, and screaming commissioners. In the handsome, clean Hôtel de Nantes we were accordingly deposited, and had reason to congratulate ourselves on our choice while we staid at Bordeaux. It appears almost heresy to every one in France to find fault with Bordeaux, which it is the custom to consider all that is grand, magnificent, and beautiful; yet, if I were to be silent as to my impressions, I should feel that I was scarcely honest. We stayed nearly a fortnight at Bordeaux, and, in the course of that time, had a variety of weather, good and bad; so that I think we could not be influenced by the gloom which at first, unexpectedly, damp, chill and uncongenial skies spread around. A few days were very brilliant, but still the waters of the Garonne kept their thick orange hue, without brilliancy or life, and this circumstance alone suffices to prevent the great city from deserving to be called attractive. The quays on its banks are extremely wide; but, except for a short space on each side the Quinconces, the houses which border them are no finer nor cleaner than in any other town in France; the pavement is very bad near them, and there are no _trottoirs_ in this part: incumbrances of all sorts cover the quays in every direction, so that free walking is impossible; and the irregularity of the pavement next the river is so great that it is constantly necessary to resume the rugged path on the stones, among the bullock-carts and market-people, who frequent this part in swarms at all times of the day. The bridge is extraordinarily long, over the clay-coloured river, but appears too narrow for its great length, and the entrances to it struck me as poor and mean. From the centre is the best view of the town; but, though very _singular_, from the strange shapes of its towers and spires, the mass of dark irregular buildings it presents cannot be called fine. The hills on the opposite side relieve the extreme flatness; but there is no remarkable effect of the picturesque amongst them. The boast of Bordeaux is its wide _allées_, which are avenues of trees, bordered with uniform houses of great size; its enormous square next the river surrounded with a grove of trees; its theatre, certainly magnificent, and its wide _spaces_, not to be called _squares_. The new town is _all space_; and if in space consists grandeur, it cannot be denied that there is a great deal of it; but, to me, these wide, rambling places appeared ungraceful and slovenly, wet and exposed in winter, and glaring and dusty in summer. The splendid theatre stands in one corner of a great space, from which several wide streets diverge: some old and dark, some new. The best street, the Rue du Chapeau Rouge, which is of great width, runs along on one side; it is short, but continued, with another name, across the Place, and leads from one end of this part of the town to the other. There is a good deal of foot-pavement in this street, and here are the smartest shops; but, compared with Paris or London, or any great English town, they are contemptible. The fine Allées de Tourny traverse the town in the form of a star, and the rays meet in a great square,--the Place Dauphine--which, if cleaner and less neglected, would be extremely magnificent. The Place Tourny and the Place Richelieu are also fine openings; and there are said to be no less than forty public squares altogether, which must give a good circulation to the air in most parts. The old town is, however, close, dirty, damp and dingy, beyond all others that I have ever seen, and, in common with all the _new_ part of Bordeaux, the worst paved, perhaps, of any in France. Here it is crowded enough, and forms a singular contrast with the deserted appearance of the gigantic squares in the sister town. Nevertheless, although I am by no means able to agree in attributing extraordinary beauty to Bordeaux, there is no denying that there is much to be astonished at in its magnitude, and to congratulate its inhabitants upon, in the facilities afforded them of enjoying the air in streets which would be shady, from the trees on each side, if they were not so wide; in alleys and walks apparently interminable, where the whole population can promenade, if they please, without appearing crowded; in squares where they may lose themselves; and the most magnificent theatre in Europe, which they generally neglect for several smaller in other parts of the town. Still it appears to me impossible to forget that Bordeaux is built on a marsh, and is surrounded by immense marshes, for leagues; and that, go out of it which way you will, there is no fine country nor any agreeable views. All its alleys and gardens are flat and formal, and all in the midst of the town itself, surrounded by colossal houses, and only bounded by a thick clayey river, which it is unpleasing for the eye to rest upon. The sight of several of the most admired and important towns in France, has reconciled me, in a singular degree, with that of Tours, whose fame appeared to me, when I first saw it, to be undeserved. I judged, as one accustomed to English splendour, and English neatness, and I scarcely gave Tours all the credit it deserved. When I compare the clear, rapid, sparkling Loire--shallow though it be--with the ugly waters of the sluggish Garonne, I feel that it is indeed superior to most other French rivers; and when I recollect the long, broad, extensive street which divides Tours into two parts, is paved throughout, and connects it with a bridge of noble proportions and most splendid approach, I am not surprised that Tours is so much the object of a Frenchman's pride; and I confess, that, if I had seen it after the boasted city of Bordeaux, its river, and its bridge, I should have found little to find fault with; for though it lies in a plain, it is not a marsh; and though it is glaring and flat, it is dry and sandy, and not damp and unwholesome. Bordeaux is--notwithstanding that it failed to impress me with a sense of admiration of its _beauty_--full of interest in every way, and worthy of the most minute inspection and examination. We scarcely neglected a single street, of all its mazes, and scarcely left unvisited a single monument. As in all other French towns, building is actively going on, and new public works are in progress: some on a very grand scale. The antique buildings, so curious from their history, have, in spite of repeated wars and the efforts of time, preserved a great deal of their original appearance, and some of them are as fine as any to be found in France. Amongst these, is the Portal of St. Seurin, and the façade of St. Michel and St. André. Bordeaux is a city which seems to belong to two periods, totally unlike each other. The old town, full of old houses--one of which, called _Le Bahutier_, is a specimen of others--is an historical monument of the Middle Ages, while the new is an epitome of La Jeune France, with all its ambitious aspirations, its grand conceptions, and its failures. There is no attempt, in the restoration of French towns in general, to bring the new style as near the old as possible; on the contrary, it would seem that modern architects were only glad of the vicinity of antique fabrics, in order that they might show how superior was their own skill, and how far they could deviate from the original model. In Bordeaux, this is very striking. It appears as if the new city ought to have been built by itself on another site, leaving the gloomy recesses of the ancient city to themselves, for all that now surrounds it is incongruous and inharmonious. Taken by itself, modern Bordeaux is to be admired; but, backed and flanked as it is by a dense mass of blackened buildings belonging to another age, it is singularly out of keeping. All the way from the great square of the Quinconces, with its Rostral pillars, to the port of Bacalan, a series of wide quays border the broad river; the Quai des Chartrons is considered one of the finest in France, and, for commercial purposes, no doubt is so. Some parts of these quays are bordered with trees, and, from the river, have a good effect. The whole of this faubourg is on a grand scale. The appellation of Chartrons, is said to be derived from Chartreux, a convent of that order having existed here. The inhabitants of this quarter call themselves _Chartronnais_, and a remarkable difference is supposed to exist between them, both in countenance and manners, and those of the other Bordelais. It is a common expression to say, _on va Chartronner_, when a person takes a walk along the quay. We had occasion to do so several times, as we were expecting friends from England, who were to arrive by the packet, not long established between Southampton and Bordeaux, and, on one occasion, on reaching the village of Bacalan, we hoped to be able to while away the time of waiting, by a walk into fields, or by some path near the river; but our hopes were in vain; there seem never to be any walks or paths in fields, lanes, or by rivers, in France, except in Normandy; no one cares, or is expected to care, for anything but the high road, or the public promenade. The fields are generally marshy, and the borders of the streams impracticable; except, therefore, one has a taste for rough pavement, or can admire long ranges of warehouses, of great size, the best way is to remain stationary, as we did, if necessity calls one to Bacalau, seated on felled trees, under the shade of others growing by the river, careless of inodorous vicinity or dust. We were surprised to find that the expected arrival of the packet from England created no sort of interest in any one's mind in Bordeaux; but this fact was explained, when we heard that it was a private undertaking of English merchants, which, as it interfered with the vessels to Havre, was by no means popular, and was little likely, in the end, to answer. The same thing has been several times attempted in Bordeaux, but has always been abandoned, not meeting with encouragement, although it would seem to be a great convenience to persons visiting the South of France. It was not thought that the steam-boat we were expecting would make many more voyages, and, to judge by the small number of passengers who arrived by it, there was little reason to expect that it could be made to answer. In order to become well acquainted with the quays of Bordeaux, we made a pilgrimage along their whole extent, by following the line, on the other side of the Quinconces, as far as the old church of Sainte Croix--one of the most ancient, as well as most curious, in Bordeaux. Our remarks, and frequent pauses, on our way, as we passed the ends of different streets which we destined for future explorings, attracted the attention of a person whom, as he had an intelligent face, we addressed, begging him to direct us in our way to Sainte Croix, as we began to think it could not be so very far from the point where we, started, and we feared we might have to retrace our steps over the uneasy pavement. Our new acquaintance assured us, however, we were in the right road, and with great zeal began to describe to us how many more ends of streets we must pass before we should reach the desired spot. His costume was somewhat singular, and we might have taken him for a character in the Carnival,--if it had been the proper season--or one _voué au blanc_, for he was entirely dressed in white, cap and all, following, we presume, the calling of a baker or a mason. He expressed his pleasure that we thought it worth while to go and see _his_ poor old church of Sainte Croix, for he came from that _quartier_, and had a fondness for it: "It is past contradiction," said he, "the most ancient and beautiful in Bordeaux, though I say it, and deserves every attention, though it has been dreadfully battered about at different times. People have tried to run it down, and have asserted that the sculpture on its façade, represented _des bétises_; but all that has now disappeared. It was built in the time of the Pagans, when the Protestant religion--to which," he continued, bowing, "no doubt you belong--was unknown, and when they were ignorant, and did many improper things. But, I assure you, now, you will find the old arches very interesting; the church has been restored, and is in very good condition. But that I have pressing business another way, I should have made it a duty and a pleasure to have been your guide, and pointed out the beauties of the old place to you; but, as I cannot do so, I recommend you to the politeness of any one, on your route, for all will consider themselves honoured in indicating to you the exact position of the church, which is still at some distance." So saying, our white spirit, pulling off his nightcap again, and, with many bows, disappeared down a dark alley, carrying his refinement to the doors of his customers. He must have been a good specimen of the urbanity and good manners of his class in Bordeaux, and certainly no finished cavalier could have expressed himself better. We had not gone far before he re-appeared, to beg us not to forget, on our return, to visit the church of St. Michel. We promised to neglect nothing, and parted. Sainte Croix does indeed deserve a visit from the curious, though the lovers of neatness would be somewhat shocked at the extraordinary state of filth and slovenliness in which the area of ruin where it stands is left. To look on either side of the path which leads to the façade would cause feelings of disgust almost fatal to even antiquarian zeal, and the wretched dilapidation of the space formerly occupied by the immense convent once flourishing here cannot be described. The Saracens, it seems, destroyed great part of the church and convent, which dates from the seventh century, or earlier, and one would imagine it had remained in the same state of ruin ever since; though it has probably been rebuilt and re-destroyed fifty tunes. Much still remains, in spite of all the efforts of time and force, to make Sainte Croix an object of singular interest; some of the circular arches are quite perfect, with their zig-zag ornaments, as freshly cut and sharp as possible; many of the pillars of the interior remain in their original state--huge blocks out of which the columns have not yet been carved, in the same manner as those at St. Alban's Abbey, in Hertfordshire. Some of the string-courses are interrupted, being adorned with foliage and other ornaments to a certain distance, and then stopping suddenly, as if an incursion of new barbarians had frightened the workmen from their labours. The space of the church is extremely fine, the roof lofty, and the whole imposing; what is left of the exterior of the principal entrance is very beautiful; but the carved figures round the door-way are scarcely distinguishable; many of them were, it is said, removed not long since, having been considered objectionable, and not calculated to inspire piety in the beholders. All the tombs and relics of this famous abbey have disappeared, and no one can now read the epitaph on St. Maumolin, Abbé of Fleury, by whose zeal the bones of St. Benedict were brought to Sainte Croix, and who was of singular piety; here he was buried, says his chronicler, at the age of _three hundred and seventy years_. From Sainte Croix we directed our steps towards St. Michel, whose giant tower had attracted us on our way, but, deterred by the extraordinary filthiness and closeness of the nearest streets leading to it, we chose a very circuitous route, outside the former enclosure of the town; and, by this means, came unexpectedly on a large building of very imposing appearance, which we found was the Abattoir: we did not care to linger long near this place, but escaped, as soon as we could, from the droves of bullocks which we met patiently plodding their way to their doom. For a considerable distance we followed the walls, which had all the appearance of being of Roman construction; and, dirty as our walk was, we could not but prefer the free air in this part to the interior; we had frequently occasion to ask our way, and invariably met with marked civility; every one leaving their work to run forward, and point out to us the nearest point we wished to reach. It appeared as if we should never gain the entrance to this immense town again, so many streets and alleys and gates did we pass; at length we came to one which was to lead us down to St. Michel. Long boulevards did we traverse in this direction, handsome and open; and in one part we were followed for some time by a regiment going out to exercise with one of the finest bands I ever heard, which, echoing along the extended parade, had a very splendid effect. We reached at length the church of St. Michel, the caverns of the tower of which are remarkable for their power of preserving the bodies buried in them from putrefaction; ranges of skeletons, still covered with the dried flesh, hideous and fearful, scowl on the intruder from their niches, and present a most awful spectacle. The belfry has often served, in times of civil war, as a beacon-tower, dominating, as it does, the whole country and town; it is of the most marvellously-gigantic construction, and appears to have been originally highly ornamented. It stands isolated from the church itself, whose façades present the most exquisite beauties; and are singularly preserved at every entrance. The principal façade, however, is the most perfect as well as the most beautiful; its rose window, its ranges of saints, its pinnacles, and wreathed arches, are as much to be admired as any in France, and rivet the attention by the delicacy and minuteness of their details. Its date is of the twelfth century, and the utmost taste and cost were bestowed on its construction; although, on the side of the tower there is a space filled with trees, and unencumbered, yet it is to be regretted that, on the side next the chief entrance, the church is blocked up with the houses of a dark, narrow, and filthy street, so that its beauties are sadly hid. Surely it would have been worth while to have cleared away the encumbrances which surround this fine building, so as to show it well, instead of much that has been done in the way of addition in the new town. The only comparatively modern church in Bordeaux, which is much vaunted, is Notre Dame, erected in 1701; it is lofty, and large, and of Grecian architecture; but did not impress me with any feelings of admiration; and it stands at the end of a narrow street in a corner, shown to little more advantage than the neglected St. Michel itself. Before the cathedral of St. André, which we next visited, a space has been cleared away; and at St. Seurin, also, where a grove of trees has been planted, which adds greatly to the venerable appearance of the building. St. André is of the thirteenth century, and is wonderfully magnificent and curious. Its tower, called De Payberland, stands alone, like that of St. Michel; and is only less stupendous than that wonder of architecture. The size and height of the aisles and choir are amazing, and the nave of the choir is bold and grand in the extreme. The two spires of the southern portal are of great beauty, and the whole fabric is full of interest, though scarcely a tomb remains. There are, however, several exquisitely-carved canopies where tombs have been, and, standing close to one of the large pillars behind the choir, is a group which excited my utmost interest; it seems to represent the Virgin and St. Anne, but might have another meaning. A figure in a nun's habit stands close against a pillar in a niche, and by her side is a little girl of about eleven years of age, in the full costume of the thirteenth century, one of whose hands touches her robe, and who appears under her protection. This charming little figure represents what might well be a young princess in flowing robes; the upper one is gathered up, and its folds held under one arm: her waist is encircled by a sash, the ends of which are confined by tassels. A necklace of beads is round her neck; the body of her gown is cut square. Her hair hangs in long thick tresses down her back, and over her shoulder, and is wreathed with jewels. A small cap, _delicately plaited_, covers the fore-part of her head, and a rich wide band of pearls and gems surmounts it. The features are very youthful, but with a grave majesty in their expression; the attitude is queenly, and the whole statue full of grace and simplicity. The nun has a melancholy, benevolent cast of features, inferior in style to the little princess, but extremely pleasing. I imagined this to be the effigy of Elionore, the young heiress of Aquitaine, under the care of a patron saint; and, thinking the pretty group was in marble, had visions of the queen of Henry II. having erected these figures in her life-time, in the cathedral which she built; but, on requesting a person, on whose judgment I could rely, to examine it for me, he discovered that the whole was _only plaster_; and, consequently, as he added in the language of an antiquarian, "presenting no possible interest." I gave up my theory with reluctance; although I ought to have been certain that, had any such statue existed of her time, it was more likely to be found amongst the rubbish of the ruined cloisters, where many are still seen, than in the body of the cathedral. Close to the group is a picture--at the altar of _Sainte Rote_, who also wears a nun's habit. Probably my favourite has some connexion with her legend. The once fine cloisters of the Cathedral are in ruins. A few door-ways remain, which seem of an earlier date than the church itself; and some very antique tombs, with effigies, are thrown into corners totally uncared for. If these were restored to some of the empty niches they would be more in place. At one end of the Cathedral, under the organ-loft, are some very curious bas-reliefs, in which there seems a singular jumble of sacred and profane history. They are very well executed, and worthy of minute attention. An arcade of the time of the Renaissance, extremely beautiful, but incongruous, encloses these carvings. But, perhaps, the most remarkable of all the churches of Bordeaux is St. Seurin: its portico is one of the richest and most elaborate I ever saw, and the beauty and delicacy of its adornments are beyond description. The church itself, except this precious _morceau_, is not so interesting as others; although here once reposed the body of the famous paladin, Rolando, whose body was brought, by Charlemagne, from Blaye. There, on his tomb, rested his wondrous sword, Durandal, which was afterwards transported to Roquemador en Quercy. This was the weapon with which he, at one stroke, clove the rock of the Pyrenees which bears his name.[13] His tomb and his bones must be sought elsewhere now, with those of many other of the knights who fell at Roncesvalles' fight. Where his famous horn was deposited after it came from Blaye does not appear. [Footnote 13: See description of _the Breche_, in the second volume of this work.] Another long ramble, which exhibited to us more of the curiosities of Bordeaux, brought us to the Roman building which still rises, in ruins, in one of the distant quarters of the town, and is called the Palais Gallien. This fabric has a singular appearance, its strong arch, which still serves as a passage from one street to another, its thick walls of brick and small stone, its loops, through which the blue sky shines, and its ivy-covered masses make it very imposing. The learned are divided as to its date: Ausonius does not name it in his enumeration of the works of Bordeaux; but its Roman origin, of whatever age, is undoubted. It stands in a state of squalid neglect and dirt, sharing the fate of most of the antiquities of Bordeaux. If the space were cleared, and the surrounding huts removed, a decent walk made, and the whole enclosed, this monument of former days might form an attractive object: as it is, the struggle to escape entanglement in every sort of dirt, while fighting one's way to the ruined amphitheatre, is almost too disheartening. When these circumstances accompany a visit to antiquities in out-of-the-way places, such as Saintes, and distant and anti-commercial towns, such as Poitiers, one has no reproach to make to the inhabitants; but what is to be said for rich and flourishing Bordeaux,--the rival of Paris,--when she allows her monuments to remain in so degraded a state! One of the glories of Bordeaux is having been the birth-place of Montaigne, whose tomb is in the church of the Feuillants, now the college. There are two inscriptions,--one Greek and one Latin; both of which appear unsuitable and extravagant. Another great man, born near Bordeaux, was Montesquieu: to see whose château of La Brède, about four leagues off, is one of the usual excursions of tourists; but we were prevented visiting it by bad weather. Whatever may be the effect of Bordeaux, as a city, one charm it has which can hardly be disputed, namely, the remarkable beauty of its young women of the _grisette_ class, and the peculiar grace with which they wear the handkerchief, which it is usual to wreath round the head in a manner to display its shape to the greatest advantage, and which is tied with infinite taste; showing the form of the large knot of hair behind, which falls low upon the neck, in the most classical style. They have generally good complexions, rich colour, fine dark eyes and very long eye-lashes, glossy dark hair, and graceful figures. As they flit and glide about the streets,--and you come upon them at every turn,--in their dark dresses and shawls, with only a lively colour in the stripe of their pretty head-dress, a stranger cannot fail to be exceedingly struck with their countenances and air. Black and yellow predominate in the hues; but sometimes a rich chocolate colour, with some other tint rather lighter, relieves the darkness of the rest of the costume. A gold chain is worn round the throat, with a golden cross attached; and a handsome broach generally fastens the well-made gown, with its neatly-plaited collar, rather more open in front than is usual in France. They are said to be great coquettes; and certainly worthy of the admiration which they are sure to attract. When one observes how flat and marshy all the ground about Bordeaux is, even now, one need not be surprised at the illness it must have engendered in the time of the Black Prince, nor that his health suffered so fatally from its influence. He appears to have deferred his departure from this uncongenial climate as long as possible, until the loss of his eldest son, Prince Edward, at the interesting age of six years, decided him to trust it no longer. The poor child died the beginning of January 1371, to the extreme grief of his parents; "as," says the chronicle, "might well be." It was then recommended to the Prince of Wales and Aquitaine that he should return to England, in order that, in his native country and air, he might recover his health, which was fast failing. This counsel was given him by the surgeons and physicians who understood his malady. The prince was willing to follow their advice, and said that he should be glad to return. Accordingly he arranged all his affairs, and prepared to leave. "When," says the chronicler, "the said prince had settled his departure, and his vessel was all ready in the Garonne, at the harbour of Bordeaux, and he was in that city with madame his wife, and young Richard their son, he sent a special summons to all the barons and knights of Gascony, Poitou, and all of whom he was sire and lord. When they were all come and assembled in a chamber in his presence, he set forth to them how he had been their father, and had maintained them in peace as long as he could, and in great prosperity and power, against their neighbours, and that he left them only and returned to England in the hope of recovering his health, of which he had great want. He therefore entreated them, of their love, that they would serve and obey the Duke of Lancaster his brother, as they had obeyed him in time past: for they would find him a good knight, and courteous, and willing to grant all, and that in their necessities he would afford them aid and counsel. The barons of Aquitaine, Gascony, Poitou, and Saintonge, agreed to this proposition; and swore, by their faith, that he should never find them fail in fealty and homage to the said duke; but that they would show him all love, service, and obedience; and they swore the same to him, being there present, and each of them _kissed him on the mouth_. "These ordinances settled, the prince made no long sojourn in the city of Bordeaux, but embarked on board his vessel, with madame, the princess, and their son, and the Earl of Cambridge, and the Earl of Pembroke: and in his fleet were five hundred men-at-arms, besides archers. They sailed so well that, without peril or harm, they reached Hampton. There they disembarked, and remained to refresh for three days; and then mounted on horseback--_the prince in his litter_--and travelled till they came to Windsor, where the king then was; who received his children _very sweetly_, and informed himself, by them, of the state of Guienne. And when the prince had remained a space with the king, he took leave and went to his hotel at Berkhampstead, about _twenty leagues_ from the city of London." CHAPTER XVI. THE GARONNE--THE LORD OF LANGOYRAN--MIRACLE OF THE MULE--CASTLE OF THE FOUR SONS OF AYMON--THE AGED LOVER--GAVACHES--THE FRANCHIMANS--COUNT RAYMOND--FLYING BRIDGES--THE MILLER OF BARBASTE--THE TROUBADOUR COUNT--THE COUNT DE LA MARCHE--THE ROCHELLAISE--EUGÉNIE AND HER SONG. AT four o'clock, on a September morning, we followed our _commissionnaire_ from the Hôtel de Nantes, at Bordeaux, along the now solitary quay, for nearly a mile, the stars shining brightly and the air soft and balmy, to the steam-boat, which was to take us along the Garonne to Agen--a distance of about a hundred and twelve miles. The boat was the longest and narrowest I ever saw, but well enough appointed, with very tolerable accommodation, and an excellent _cuisine_. As soon as it was daylight, we began to look out for the beauties of the river, which several persons had told us was, in many respects, superior to the Loire; consequently, as we continued to pass long, marshy fields, without an elevation, covered with the blue crocus, and bordered with dim grey sallows, we were content, expecting, when we were further from the neighbourhood of Bordeaux, that these beauties would burst upon our view. For many hours the boat pursued its way against the stream, but nothing striking came before our view: the same clay-coloured river, the same flat bank, with here and there a little change to undulating hills of insignificant height, and occasionally some village, picturesquely situated, or some town, with a few ruined walls, which told of former battles and sieges. All these banks were the scenes of contention between the Lusignans and the Epernonists, in 1649; and here are many famous vineyards; amongst them Castres and Portets, renowned for their white wines; close to which is La Brède, where Montesquieu was born. The scenery about this part began to improve; some ruins, crowning a height, appeared, which we found had once been the Château de Langoyran; about a lord of which an anecdote is told, characteristic of the period when it occurred. François de Langoyran carried on constant contention with two neighbouring chiefs, who were friends to England; and, one day, with forty lances, he presented himself before the walls of Cadillac, occupied by an English garrison: "Where is Courant, your captain?" said he; "let him know that the Sire de Langoyran desires a joust with him: he is so good and so valiant, he will not refuse, for the love of his lady; and if he should, it would be to his great dishonour; and I shall say, wherever I come, that he refused a joust of lances from cowardice." Bernard Courant accepted the challenge, and a deadly strife began, in which Langoyran was wounded and thrown to the earth. Seeing that his troop were coming to his rescue, Courant summoned his adversary to yield; but, he refusing to do so, Courant drew his dagger, stabbed him to the heart, and rode out of the lists, leaving the imprudent knight dead on the spot. A later lord of Langoyran became a firm ally of the English, till they were expelled under Charles le Bien Servi. Cadillac, where once stood a magnificent castle, built by the Duke d'Epernon, where Louis XIII. and all his court were entertained with great pomp, in 1620, and which cost above two millions of francs, offers now but a retreat for convicts. Barsac is not far off, well known for its fine white wines; and beyond, is Sainte Croix de Mont, a village placed on rather a bold eminence. At Preignac the little river Ciron runs into the Garonne, and brings on its current wood from the Landes. Sometimes this small stream becomes so swollen, that it overflows, and renders the road in its neighbourhood dangerous. After the battle of Orthez, the mutilated remains of the French army crossed the valley, which this river had rendered a perfect marsh, at the peril of their lives, in order to pursue their melancholy journey, flying from the British arms. Close by is Garonnelle, a port of the _Verdelais_, where, situated a little way up the country, is a famous chapel, dedicated to Notre Dame du Luc, to which pilgrims resort, on the 8th of September, from all parts of France--so great is her renown. The chapel was founded in the twelfth century, by a Countess of Foix, and re-edified by another, or, as some say, built first in 1407, under the following circumstances:-- One day, as Isabella de Foix, wife of Archambaud de Grailli, Count of Bénauge, was visiting her domains, she had occasion to pass through a wood, when suddenly the mule on which she was riding, stopped, and would not stir from the spot either one way or the other. It was found that his foot had sunk into a _very hard_ stone, to the depth of four or five inches, his iron-shod hoof imprinting a mark on the substance. The lady, much _surprised_ at such a circumstance, which could be no other than a prodigy, descended from the animal, had the stone raised, and beheld, as well as all those who accompanied her, and as all may see who visit the holy chapel raised in the wood, a perfect portrait of the blessed Virgin, where the hoof of the mule had been! This sanctuary was given in charge to the monks of the order of Grand Mont. The Huguenots pillaged and burnt the chapel, in 1562. It was again constructed, and given to the Father Celestins, in the seventeenth century; but in all its perils and dangers the miraculous stone has remained uninjured, and attracts the same veneration as ever. Perhaps it is its vicinity which has imparted such virtues to a vineyard near, which produces the far-famed "Sauterne" known throughout Europe. We came to a great many suspension-bridges on our way: the French seem to have a perfect passion for throwing them across their rivers in this region; and, it is said, not all of them are safe; as, for instance, the admired and vaunted Cubzac, which, it is now generally feared, will give way. One of these bridges is at Langon; once a very important town, and one of late much improved in commerce, in consequence of the traffic caused by the steam-boats from Bordeaux to Agen. A famous siege was sustained here, against the Huguenots, in 1587, when the Lord of Langon defended himself in a gallant manner, though abandoned by all his people, _his wife alone_ sharing his danger, and fighting by his side to the last, and even after his castle was taken, resisting still. The grand route from Bordeaux to Bayonne passes by Langon. There is no vestige of its castle; but a fine church, built by the English, exists, where the arms of England are even now conspicuous. Scattered about, here and there, but distant from the river, ruins of castles are still to be seen: amongst others, that of Budos is very picturesque. At St. Macaire, where furious contentions once took place, during the wars of religion;--two hundred English prisoners were taken at the time of the battle of Toulouse. The church has an imposing effect. Soon after this, the banks of the river become rocky, and are full of caverns, inhabited in a similar manner to those which so much struck me on the Loire; but they by no means present so singular or picturesque an appearance. The remains of the ancient stronghold of Castets look well placed on a height in this neighbourhood; but the scattered ruins which cover a hill near, are more interesting than any, although there are now but little traces of a fortress once the theme of minstrels and romancers. This is no other than the castle of the Four Sons of Aymon. The little port of Gironde is remarkable for a dreadful event which happened there in the last century. There was formerly a ferry where the bridge now extends; and one day the ferryman insisted on being paid double the usual fare. There were no less than eighty-three passengers on board his boat, all of whom resisted the imposition. The "_ferryman-fiend_" was so enraged, that, just as they reached the shore, he ran the boat against a projecting point, and overturned it. Only three persons, besides himself, escaped: the rest were all lost. The wretch fled instantly, and was never taken; he was condemned to death, and hung in effigy; and since then an annual procession takes place on the banks of the Drot, where the catastrophe occurred, and solemn service is performed for the victims. The town of La Réole has an imposing effect, rising from the waters. It has shared the fate of all the other towns on the banks, during the ceaseless troubles which for ages made this river roll with blood. When Sully was but fifteen, he was amongst a successful party who took possession of this place; he entered, at the head of fifty men, and gained it in most gallant style; but it was lost the next year, under the following circumstances, which prove that Henry IV. carried his love of jesting considerably beyond the bounds of prudence. The command of La Réole, says Péréfixe, was given to an old Huguenot captain, named Ussac, who was remarkably ugly, to a degree which made him a mark of observation; nevertheless, his heart was too tender to resist the fascinations of one of the fair syrens who aided the plans of Catherine, the Queen-mother. The Vicomte de Turenne, then aged about twenty, could not resist making the passion of the old soldier a theme of ridicule among his companions; and Henry, instead of discouraging this humour, joined in it heartily, making his faithful servant a butt on all occasions. Ussac could not endure this attack on so very tender a point, and, rendered almost frantic with vexation, forgetting every consideration of honour and religion, abandoned the cause of Henry, and delivered over the town of La Réole to the enemy. In this part of the country are to be found that race of persons known to the original natives as _Gavaches_: the word is one of contempt, taken from the Spanish; and the habit of treating these people with contumely, which is not even yet entirely worn out, comes from an early time: that is to say, so long ago as 1526; at which period a great part of the population on the banks of the Drot, and round La Réole and Marmande, was carried off by an epidemic; so that the country was completely desolate; and where all was once fertile and flourishing, nothing but ruin and misery was to be seen. Henry d'Albret, King of Navarre, anxious to save it from sterility, and to restore a happy state of things, re-peopled the lands with emigrants, whom he induced to come and settle there, from Anjou, Angoumois, and Saintonge. They united themselves to the very small remnant of those remaining, who had escaped the contagion, and, in a short time, forty-seven _communes_ recovered their prosperity. The strangers who thus filled the places of the former inhabitants, brought their customs and manners with them; Du Mège remarks that, "to them are owing the style of building which may be observed in some of the old houses in this neighbourhood, namely, the very pointed and inclined roofs, which belong rather to a country accustomed to snow,[14] than to this where it is not usual." [Footnote 14: _Du Mège (Statistique_ III.) This observation scarcely appears to me correct, since the countries bordering on the Loire are certainly not more used to snows than those closer to the mountains. In Béarn these shelving roofs are constantly to be seen.] The descendants of these new colonists have not forgotten their origin; they inherit the manners of their fathers; wear the same thick hair and long coats. Their drawling pronunciation, peculiar idiom, and the slowness of their movements, make them easily distinguished from the lively Gascons. A curious mixture of dialect resulted from the re-union of so many provinces with the _patois_ of the country, and the language still heard there is a jargon of strange sounds. The capital of what was called _La Gavacherie_, was placed at Castelmoron-d'Albret, which is now one of the finest and most fertile cantons in the diocese of Bazas. There exists a propensity, it seems, in the people of this part of the country, particularly about Agen, to fix contemptuous epithets on strangers who settle amongst them; it matters not from what land they come,--it is sufficient that the Gascon idiom is unknown to them. The foreigner is generally called, in derision, _lou Franchiman_;[15] and is, for a long time after his first arrival, an object of suspicion and dislike. [Footnote 15: See the Poems of Jasmin.] This term evidently belongs to the period of the English possession, when a _Frenchman_ was another word for an enemy. On these shores, traces of the dwellings of the Romans are constantly found in Mosaic pavements, and ruins and coins. At Hures, in particular, some fine specimens have been lately discovered: amongst others, fragments of pillars of _verd-antique_ and fine marbles of different sorts. There is also a marvellous rock at Hures, where an invisible miraculous virgin is still in the habit of performing wonders, though her statue has been long since removed. A high hill, once crowned with a castle, rises from the river after a series of flat meadows. This was once Meilhan, one of the finest castles in the Garonne, belonging to the Duke de Bouillon, who, suspected of treason, blew up his magnificent abode, destroying with it the abbey and church beneath. An immense forest spread far into the Landes from this point, only a few trees of which remain. When the castle was destroyed, the clock of the Benedictine church rolled down into the river, and was afterwards raised in the night, and taken possession of by the Marmandais; the Meilhanais even still insist on its being their property. There are some ruins, in the quarter called La Roque, of a rampart, from whence is a perilous descent to the shore: here once stood a tower, through a breach in which it is said that the Maid of Orleans conducted the soldiers of Charles VII., and took the town. This tower was seen at so great a distance that it gave rise to a proverb: "He who sees Meilhan is not within side it." Over the principal entrance of the castle was a sculptured stone--still preserved, but in a most ignoble position: it represented a cavalier armed with a lance, with a shield on his left arm; by the form of which it would appear to belong to those used by the ancient Franks. The arms of Meilhan are _three toads_, doubtless the most familiar animal in so damp and marshy a country. At a village called Couture, a phrase is left from very old times, when _a_ Raymond, Count of Toulouse, happening to stop there to rest, asked for a measure of wine, which he drank off at a draught, though it was no small quantity; instead, therefore, of saying a bottle of two _litres_, it is usual to say in this country, "_A measure of Count Raymond's_." The _Roc de Quatalan_ is near this point, whose name has been derived from _quatre-a-l'an_; because it causes so many wrecks in the course of the year. There is nothing very striking in the appearance of Marmande, once remarkable for its castle and churches and abbeys; but now only a place of commerce connected with Bordeaux. Nevertheless, the Romans, Goths, and Saracens, made it a place of importance, and severally destroyed it in their turn. Richard Coeur de Lion rebuilt and fortified it, only to be again ravaged and pillaged by the party of Montford, and, under the Black Prince, it was taken and retaken. Henry IV. besieged it, and, in 1814, the town of Marmande had to sustain its last attack. It has a good port, and, apparently, some pretty public walks, and is about half-way between Bordeaux and Agen. Caumont appears next, once not only famous for its castle, but its tyrannical lord; who, in the time of Louis XIII., was governor of this part of the river, and carried on a system of oppression which became unbearable. He cast an iron chain across the river, to prevent the passing of vessels, on which he laid his hands in the most unpitying manner, taking possession of all he could meet with. At length, the relation of his cruelties and rapines found a hearing with the King, who, without consulting any one, had the detested lord of Argilimont, as his stronghold was called, arrested and condemned; his sentence was executed at Bordeaux the day after he was taken, and his castle and estates were bestowed on the Sire d'Estourville. If half the castles which once bordered this river existed now, the scenery would be wonderfully improved; but they live in memory alone, and their sites are all that remain. Gontaud and Tonneins, where proud towers once frowned, are but insignificant villages now; at the first, a _patois_ song is said still to be popular, the chorus of which commemorated the loss of all the people of Gontaud, put to the sword by Biron, in revenge for the death of one of his best officers: it runs thus:-- "Las damos, que soun sul rempart Cridon moun Diou! Biergé Mario! Adiou, Gountaou, bilo jolio!" Perhaps that which is most worthy of remark on the Garonne, is the number of _flying bridges_ which cross it, replacing many an old stone or wooden one, or a ferry, with which the inhabitants of these parts were so long contented. It is to the Messrs. Seguin that France is indebted for these beautiful constructions, the hint of which they are said to have taken in England. I had seen few of them when I visited his _family of beauties_ in the valley near Montbard, whose accomplishments and singular attractions furnished me with a romantic chapter in my _last pilgrimage_.[16] [Footnote 16: "See Pilgrimage to Auvergne," chap. xiii. p. 271.] A stone bridge, built by Napoleon, however, crosses the river at Aiguillon, which stands at the confluence of the Lot and Garonne, and is famous for its castle, built by the Duke d'Aiguillon--that minister who, protected by Mde. du Barry, gave his aid towards preparing the downfal of France, undermined by the acts of a series of worthless characters, in every department of the state, from the monarch downwards. Marie Antoinette held him in especial odium, and he was exiled, by her desire, to his gorgeous château on the Lot, where he was, in fact, a prisoner, not being allowed to sleep out of it; on one occasion, when he visited Agen for two days, word was sent to him that it was expected he should not prolong his stay. The castle, in his time, was a Versailles in miniature, and was not entirely finished at the Revolution. An ancient Roman tower, of which a few walls only now remain, on the route to Agen, was once a conspicuous object from the river: it was called _La Tourrasse_, ("_enormous tower_" in _patois_), and many discoveries prove the importance of this place in the time of the Romans. The Baïse is the next river that falls into the Garonne, following whose banks towards Nerac is Barbaste and its old château, of which Henri Quatre was fond of calling himself _The Miller_, which title, on one occasion, stood him in good stead when a great danger threatened him; a soldier of the opposite party, who came from this part of the country where the prince was always beloved, could not resolve to see the destruction which awaited him if he had advanced a step towards a mine which was just on the point of blowing up. At the critical instant, he called out, in _patois_, which none but Henry understood, "Moulié dé Barbaste, pren garde a la gatte qué bay gatoua:"--'Millar of Barbaste, beware of the cat' (_gatte_ means, indifferently, _cat_ or _mine_) 'which is going to kitten' (_gatoua_ has the meaning of _blowing up_, as well.) Henry drew back in time, just as the mine exploded. Thanks, therefore, to his readiness, and the expressive nature of the Gascon _patois_, the hero was, for that time, saved; he took care not to lose sight of his deliverer, and, on a future occasion, rewarded him amply for the service he had rendered. The little port of St. Marie, well known as a safe harbour to the fishermen of the Garonne, once formed part, with the town, of the possessions of Raymond, the last Count of Toulouse; who, after a series of persecutions from the Pope and the King of France, (St. Louis,) to induce him to give up the protection of the Albigenses, was permitted to retain this portion, only on condition of destroying the fortifications of the strong castle which existed there. Guy, Viscount de Cavaillon, his friend and fellow troubadour, on one occasion addressed to him the following lines, to which he returned the answer subjoined; but, nevertheless, was obliged to submit to the power of the Church, like the rest of the world: "GUY DE CAVAILLON TO THE COUNT OF TOULOUSE. "Tell me, Count, if you would rather Owe your lands and castles high To the Pope, our holy father, Or to sacred chivalry? Were it best a knight and noble Conquer'd by his sword alone, Bearing heat, and cold, and trouble, By his arm to gain his own?" "ANSWER OF COUNT RAYMOND TO GUY DE CAVAILLON. "Guy, much sooner would I gain All by valour and my sword, Than by other means obtain What no honour can afford. Church nor clergy I despise, Neither fear them, as you know; But no towers or castles prize Which their hands alone bestow: Holding honour above all Gifts or conquests, great or small." The evening was drawing in too much by the time we reached that part of the shore, where the few walls of the once stupendous château of the Lusignans appear, and we could see nothing but the shadow--it might be of the wings of the fairy, Melusine, hovering in the dim light over this, one of her numerous castles. Here lived and contended Hugues de Lusignan, Counte de la Marche, who had married his first love, the beautiful Isabeau d'Angoulême, widow of King John of England; whose effigy so delighted me at Fontevraud, lying beside that of her brother-in-law, Coeur de Lion.[17] But, if that lovely face and delicate form truly represented the princess, her character is singularly at variance with her gentle demeanour. She was the most imperious, restlessly proud, and vindictive woman of her time, and kept up a constant warfare with her husband and the King of France; to whom she could not endure that the Count de Lusignan should be considered a vassal. "I," she cried, "the widow of a king! the mother of a king and an empress! am, then, to be reduced to take rank after a simple countess! to do homage to a count!" This was on the occasion of the marriage of the brother of Louis IX., with Jeanne, Countess and heiress of Toulouse, to whom the Count of Lusignan owed homage. "No," she continued, with indignant fury, "you shall not commit so cowardly an action: resist: my son, and my son-in-law, will come to your aid. I will raise the people of Poitou--my allies, my vassals--and, if they are not enough, I have power alone to save you from such disgrace." Hugues, thus excited, agreed to follow her counsel; and a long struggle ensued, sometimes attended with triumph to the haughty countess, sometimes with discomfiture; and ending by the ruin of her husband and children, and the confiscation of much of their domains to the crown of France. This was she to whom the troubadour count addressed these lines, amongst others: "So full of pleasure is my pain, To me my sorrow is so dear, That, not the universe to gain Would I exchange a single tear. "What have I said?--I cannot choose, Nor would I seek to have the will; How can I when my soul I lose In thought and sleepless visions still, Yet cannot from her presence fly, Altho' to linger is to die." [Footnote 17: See "A Summer amongst the Bocages and the Vines," vol. ii. chap. i. page 15.] We were seated in the cabin of the steam-boat, resigning ourselves to patience until Agen should be reached--for it was now dark, and a shower had fallen which made the decks wet--when we were summoned to brave all by the promise of a treat above. We had observed, in the course of the day, a party of young women, each wrapped in a large black cloak, the pointed hood of which was either drawn over the head or allowed to fall behind, showing the singular square cap, which at once told they were Rochellaises. They were at the opposite end of the long vessel; and, as some were below, we had no idea that they mustered so large a party, for it appeared that there were no fewer than twenty-one, all from La Tremblade, or the other islands in the neighbourhood of La Rochelle. They were taking their usual autumn voyage up the Garonne, and, from Agen, were destined to various towns as far as the Pyrenees, where they remain all the oyster season, receiving, by the boat, twice a week, a consignment of oysters to be disposed of, on the spot where their residence is fixed. They were generally young, some extremely so, and very well conducted; sitting together in groups, and talking in an under tone; but, at this hour of the evening, they all congregated on deck, and were singing some of their songs as the boat went rapidly on, and the soft breeze caught up their notes. When I first joined them, it was so dark that I could distinguish their figures with difficulty, and only knew, by the murmurs of applause which followed the close of their chaunt, that they were surrounded by all the crew, who were attentively listening to their strains. When they found some strangers had come amongst them they were seized with a fit of shyness, which I feared would put a stop to the scene altogether; for the chief songstress declared herself hoarse, and uttered "her pretty oath, by yea and nay, she could not, would not, durst not" sing again: however, at last the spirit came again, and, after a little persuasion, she agreed to recollect something. "Ah, Ma'amselle Eugénie," said one of the older girls, "if I had such a voice I would not allow myself to be so entreated." Accordingly she began, and the chorus of her song was taken up by all the young voices. I never heard anything more melodious and touching than the song altogether: Eugénie's voice was soft, clear, and full, and had a melancholy thrill in it, which it was impossible to hear without being affected; she seemed to delight in drawing out her last notes, and hearing their sound prolonged on the air. The ballads she chose were _all sad_, in the usual style of the Bretons: one was expressive of sorrow for absence, and was full of tender reproaches, ending in assurances of truth, in spite of fate; and one, "Dis moi! dis moi!" was a lament for a captive, which, as well as I could catch the words,--partly French and partly _patois_--was full of mournful regret, and seemed to run thus at every close: "The north wind whistles--the night is dark; at the foot of the hill the captive looks forth in vain,--ah! he is weeping still! always at the foot of that hill you may hear his sighs. "'Alas!' he says, 'what is there in the world that can compare to liberty? and I am a prisoner. I weep alone!'--he sees a bird fly by, and exclaims, 'There is something still left worth living for--I may be one day free!'" "Hélas! le pauvre enfant--il pleure toujours: Il pleure toujours! au fond de la colline." Perhaps this song might allude to some of those unfortunate patriots of La Vendée, whose fate was as sad as any romance could tell. I never remember to have heard what seemed to me more real melody than this singing; and was very sorry when the young girls insisted, in return for their compliance, on one of the crew obliging them with a song; for he obeyed, and, in one of the usual cracked voices, which are so common in France, raised peals of laughter by intoning an _English air_--no other than "God Save the King." This effectually spoilt the pretty romance of the veiled Rochellaises; not one of whom we could see, in the darkness, and their voices seemed to come from the depths of the Garonne, as if they were the spirits of its waters, who had taken possession of our vessel, and were beguiling us with their sweet voices into their whirlpools and amongst their sands. I thanked them for my share of the amusement, and remarked to one near me how beautiful the voice of Eugénie was. "Yes," said she, "she is celebrated in the country for singing so well; but, even now, her mother sings the best; you never heard such a lovely tone as her's; they are a musical family: every one cannot have such a gift as Eugénie." This seemed a good beginning for the music and poetry of the south, and promised well for all that was to come; _but that music was the last_, as it had been the first, I had heard in France; where, in general, there is no melody amongst the people, in any part that I have visited. As for its poetry, we were approaching a place where a celebrated _patois_ poet resided, who is the boast, not only of Agen, but of Gascony, and who has made, of late, a great sensation in this part of France. CHAPTER XVII. AGEN--LA BELLE ESTHER--ST. CAPRAIS--THE LITTLE CHERUBS--ZOÉ AT THE FOUNTAIN--THE HILL--LE GRAVIER--JASMIN, THE POET-BARBER--THE METAPHOR--LAS PAPILLOTAS--FRANÇONNETTE--JASMIN'S LINES ON THE OLD LANGUAGE--THE SHEPHERD AND THE GASCON POET--RETURN TO AGEN--JASMIN AND THE KING OF FRANCE--JASMIN AND THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND. IT was night when we reached Agen, and, amidst a tumult of _patois_, which sounded like Spanish, and was strange to our unaccustomed ears, we landed, and had our goods torn from us by peremptory porters, who, in spite of remonstrance, piled every one's baggage together in carts, and, ordering all the passengers to follow as they might, set off with it to some unknown region. The stars were bright, and the night fine, as we scrambled along over a very rugged road for more than a mile--for, the new pier not being yet finished, the boat was obliged to land its cargo at a distance from the town. Up and down, in and out, we pursued our way, guided by the lanthorns of our tyrants, and at last found ourselves in a boulevard, planted with large high trees, which we followed till a shout announced to us that the Hôtel de France was reached. By what seemed little less than a miracle, all our baggage was safely brought after us, our troubles were quickly over, and we took possession of spacious and lofty chambers, in a very imposing-looking hotel. The next morning the weather was magnificent, and Agen came out in great splendour, with its fine promenades, handsome bridge, its beautiful hills and river, and its fine clear fresh air, so different from the dull atmosphere of Bordeaux. The first figure we saw on going out, was one of the Rochellaises seated at the inn door, installed with her oyster-baskets, and receiving the congratulations of all her friends of the hotel, who hastened to welcome her annual return to Agen. It seems, she takes up her abode at the hotel during her stay, and her arrival is considered quite an event, as we found at breakfast, where numerous Frenchmen were conversing with great animation on the subject. _La Belle Esther_ seemed to be a general favourite, as well as her merchandise, and she was so remarkably pretty, modest and graceful, that I was not surprised at the fact. Every one of her admirers gave her an order as he arrived, and her pretty little hands were busily engaged in opening oysters for some time, which having done, she brought them in herself, on a dish, to each guest. I was sorry to see that she had abandoned her costume, and was dressed merely like any other _grisette_; but this is very much the case everywhere. She told me, on great fête days, however, she occasionally appeared in it; but she seemed to think it more convenient to wear the little flat frilled cap of the town, rather than the square winged machine of her province. I had heard before that she was so well behaved, and so graceful in her manners, that she was occasionally invited to the public balls of Agen; but she only answered by a deep blush, when I asked if it was so; and said, she _seldom went to soirées_. She is about three or four-and-twenty; and if the rest of her party who sang to us in the boat were as pretty, they must have been as dangerous as Queen Catherine's band of beauties, when their black hoods were thrown back. She was, however, not one of the singers herself; but I recognised, in her voice, the reproving sister who urged Eugénie to sing, and told me of her mother's talent. I afterwards met with more of my acquaintances in the dark, who were scattered through the towns of Gascony. The town of Agen is very agreeably situated on the right bank of the Garonne: the river is here, though by no means clear, less muddy than at Bordeaux; and its windings add much to the beauty of the landscape. Between the suspension-bridge and the town is a magnificent promenade, formed of several rows of fine trees--one of the most majestic groves I ever saw: it is called Le Gravier. There are two others, each extremely fine: one of which is planted with acacias. The town has nothing to recommend it, being dull, and ill-paved, with scarcely a building worthy of notice; the strange old clock-tower of the Mairie, looks as if it had once formed part of a ponderous building; but it has no beauty of architecture. Some of the oldest streets and the market-place are built with arcades, in the same fashion as La Rochelle, and they are very dark and dilapidated. The cathedral, dedicated to St. Caprais, is, however, a monument of which the Agenois have reason to be proud: it has been cruelly ill-used, and its exterior is greatly damaged; but it is undergoing repair, and the restorations both within and without are the most judicious I had observed anywhere. The beautiful, ornamented, circular arches are re-appearing in all their purity; and the fine sculptured façade is shining out from the ruin which has long encompassed it; a wide space is opened all round the building; and, when the restorations are completed, the effect will be very grand. In the interior are some most beautiful specimens of early architecture; galleries above galleries, of different periods, all exquisite, and one row of a pattern such as I had never before met with, almost approaching the Saracenic. The grace and lightness of the whole is quite unique, and we sat for an hour enjoying the cool retreat of the aisle, endeavouring to follow the elaborate tracery of the arches, and admiring the effect of the sun-light streaming in at the open door, which gave entrance to a procession of priests, and children of very tender age, who were about to undergo the ordeal of examination. As we sat, by degrees, first one little stray black-eyed creature, in a tight skull-cap and full petticoat, then another, came and placed themselves before us, immovable and curious, like so many tame gazelles; we pretended to be angry, and drove them away; but, while we went on with our sketches of some of the arches, the little things came back again with the same imperturbable look of silent amazement and curiosity as before. There were four or five, all very round and rosy-cheeked and pretty, and, though their vicinity rather interrupted us, we were sorry when the zealous beadle appeared, at the distant glimpse of whose portly form the troop rattled off, making their wooden shoes ring along the pavement, and disappeared in the sun-gleam of the old Roman door-way, like so many cherubs in the costume of the Middle Ages. The morning was magnificent when we mounted the high hill which overlooks the town, and which is called _Le Mont Pompéian_, or De l'Ermitage; the banks were covered with box and purple heath and wild thyme, the air full of freshness and fragrance, and all was "balmy summer." The ascent to the top is extremely steep, and must be very toilsome to the peasants, some of whom were climbing up, bending under different loads. A party, however, who kept pace with us, told us they were merely out taking a walk, as it was such a fine day, to do the children good; and they seemed to enjoy the prospect and the warm sun as much as we did, and be quite in the same humour for idling their time away. On the top of the hill is a telegraph, from whence there is a beautiful view; and the vine-field, full of ripe purple grapes, looked very inviting; jasmine grew wild in the hedges, and perfumed the air; and, altogether, the hills of Agen gave a promise of southern beauty, which, alas! I found, on advancing nearer to Spain, was by no means realized. We remained for some hours, choosing different retreats from whence to enjoy the views, which are varied and beautiful in the extreme. After passing fields of high Indian corn, gay with its tasselled blossoms, we came to a splendid opening, where we beheld the broad Garonne, winding through a landscape of great richness and variety, glittering in the sun, and spreading wide its majestic arms over the country. Through a long lane of purple grapes and crimson leaves, we pursued our way, until we came to a ruined fountain, of very picturesque appearance, extremely deep, and the water sparkling at the bottom like a diamond in the dark; the mouth covered with shrubs and flowers of every hue, and straggling vines, with their now purple and crimson leaves, making a bower around it. Two women and a boy were resting near, and we entered into conversation with them; there was something interesting in the worn features of the younger female; who told us she was from Le Mans, a great way off, in a charming country, which she said, with a sigh, that she had not seen since she was a girl, before she made the imprudent match which had reduced her to work hard in the fields of Agen to support a large family; for her husband had deserted her, and she had no one to look to. "I dare say," she said, "Le Mans is much altered now, since I saw it; there is no chance of my ever going home again now:" these words were uttered in so sad a tone that we were quite affected. She had been very pretty, and was even now agreeable-looking, though, so very pensive; her name, she told us, was Zoë, and she seemed glad to hear news of her native town, though the recollection revived, evidently, very painful thoughts. As we sat drawing, these poor people remained wandering about, picking up sticks and resting in the shade; the ground was damp, and the old woman--who had asked her companion, in patois, the subject of her talk with us, as she did not understand French--looked very benevolently towards us, and presently took off her apron, and came insisting that we should use it as a seat, as she said it was dangerous for such as us to sit on the bare ground; "we are used to it, and it does us no harm; but you are wrong to risk it," was her remark; and, with all the kindness imaginable, she made us accept her courtesy. We have often met with similar demonstrations of kind feeling from the peasantry in France; who, when not spoilt by the town and trade, are generally amiable, and anxious to oblige on all occasions. Nothing could be more lovely than the extensive view before us from this spot; hills covered with vines and rich foliage, fields of Indian corn, bright meadows and banks of glowing flowers, with the river winding through all, wide and bright; the town, picturesque in the distance, undulating hills, and a clear blue sky. At the end of a large field, we came to a pretty bower, formed of vines, on the edge of the wooded declivity; probably used as a retreat by the master and his family, in the time of the vintage; it looked quite Italian, and we were not sorry to shelter there from the hot sun. Half-way down from the telegraph hill is a cavern called the Hermitage, which once was the retreat of a holy anchorite; but, being now chosen as a place for fêtes, has become a sort of cockney spot, and has lost its character of solemnity; but it is the great object of attraction to the inhabitants of Agen, who flock there in crowds on saints'-days and Sundays. We had made an appointment, on our return from wandering amongst the heights, to pay a visit to a very remarkable personage, who is held, both in Agen and throughout Gascony, to be the greatest poet of modern times. We had heard much of him before we arrived, and a friend of mine had given me some lines of his with the music, in England; one song I published in a recent work;[18] but I was not then aware of the history of the author, of whom the ballad "Mi cal mouri!" was one of the earliest compositions, and that which first tended to make him popular. My friend, who possesses very delicate taste and discrimination, was much struck with the grace and beauty of this song; though the reputation of its author has reached its height since the time when she first met with his melody. [Footnote 18: "Pilgrimage to Auvergne," chap, xiii, p. 210.] At the entrance of the promenade, Du Gravier, is a row of small houses--some _cafés_, others shops, the indication of which is a painted cloth placed across the way, with the owner's name in bright gold letters, in the manner of the arcades in the streets, and their announcements. One of the most glaring of these was, we observed, a bright blue flag, bordered with gold; on which, in large gold letters, appeared the name of "Jasmin, Coiffeur." We entered, and were welcomed by a smiling dark-eyed woman, who informed us that her husband was busy at that moment _dressing a customer's hair_, but he was desirous to receive us, and begged we would walk into his parlour at the back of the shop. There was something that struck us as studied in this, and we began to think the reputation of the poet might be altogether a _got-up_ thing. I was obliged to repeat to myself the pretty song of "Mi cal mouri," to prevent incredulous doubts from intruding; but as I recollected the sweet voice that gave the words effect, I feared that it was that charm which had misled me. His wife, meantime, took the advantage of his absence, which had, of course, been arranged _artistically_, to tell us of Jasmin's triumphs. She exhibited to us a _laurel crown of gold_ of delicate workmanship, sent from the city of Clemence Isaure, Toulouse, to the poet; who will probably one day take his place in the _capitoul_. Next came a golden cup, with an inscription in his honour, given by the citizens of Auch; a gold watch, chain, and seals, sent by the King, Louis-Philippe; an emerald ring worn and presented by the lamented Duke of Orleans; a pearl pin, by the graceful duchess, who, on the poet's visit to Paris accompanied by his son, received him in the words he puts into the mouth of Henri Quatre.[19]-- "Brabes Gascous! A moun amou per bous aou dibes creyre: Benès! benès! ey plazé de bous beyre: Aproucha bous!" A fine service of linen, the offering of the town of Pau, after its citizens had given fêtes in his honour, and loaded him with caresses and praises; and nick-nacks and jewels of all descriptions offered to him by lady-ambassadresses, and great lords; English "_misses_" and "_miladis_;" and French, and foreigners of all nations who did or did not understand Gascon. [Footnote 19: On his statue at Nerac.] All this, though startling, was not convincing; Jasmin, the barber, might only be a fashion, a _furor_, a _caprice_, after all; and it was evident that he knew how to get up a scene well. When we had become nearly tired of looking over these tributes to his genius, the door opened, and the poet himself appeared. His manner was free and unembarrassed, well-bred, and lively; he received our compliments naturally, and like one accustomed to homage; said he was ill, and unfortunately too hoarse to read anything to us, or should have been delighted to do so. He spoke in a broad Gascon accent, and very rapidly and eloquently; ran over the story of his successes; told us that his grandfather had been a beggar, and all his family very poor; that he was now as rich as he wished to be, his son placed in a good position at Nantes; then showed us his son's picture, and spoke of his disposition, to which his brisk little wife added, that, though no fool, he had not his father's genius, to which truth Jasmin assented as a matter of course. I told him of having seen mention made of him in an English review; which he said had been sent him by Lord Durham, who had paid him a visit; and I then spoke of 'Mi cal mouri' as known to me. This was enough to make him forget his hoarseness and every other evil: it would never do for me to imagine that that little song was his best composition; it was merely his first; he must try to read me a little of l'Abuglo--a few verses of "Françouneto;"--"You will be charmed," said he; "but if I were well, and you would give me the pleasure of your company for some time; if you were not merely running through Agen, I would kill you with weeping--I would make you die with distress for my poor Margarido--my pretty Françouneto!" He caught up two copies of his book, from a pile lying on the table, and making us sit close to him, he pointed out the French translation on one side, which he told us to follow while he read in Gascon. He began in a rich soft voice, and as he advanced, the surprise of Hamlet on hearing the player-king recite the disasters of Hecuba, was but a type of ours, to find ourselves carried away by the spell of his enthusiasm. His eyes swam in tears; he became pale and red; he trembled; he recovered himself; his face was now joyous, now exulting, gay, jocose; in fact, he was twenty actors in one; he rang the changes from Rachel to Bouffé; and he finished by delighting us, besides beguiling us of our tears, and overwhelming us with astonishment. He would have been a treasure on the stage; for he is still, though his first youth is past, remarkably good-looking and striking; with black, sparkling eyes of intense expression; a fine ruddy complexion; a countenance of wondrous mobility; a good figure; and action full of fire and grace; he has handsome hands, which he uses with infinite effect; and, on the whole, he is the best actor of the kind I ever saw. I could now quite understand what a troubadour or _jongleur_ might be, and I look upon Jasmin as a revived specimen of that extinct race. Such as he is might have been Gaucelm Faidit, of Avignon, the friend of Coeur de Lion, who lamented the death of the hero in such moving strains; such might have been Bernard de Ventadour, who sang the praises of Queen Elionore's beauty; such Geoffrey Rudel, of Blaye, on his own Garonne; such the wild Vidal: certain it is, that none of these troubadours of old could more move, by their singing or reciting, than Jasmin, in whom all their long-smothered fire and traditional magic seems re-illumined. We found we had stayed hours instead of minutes with the poet; but he would not hear of any apology--only regretted that his voice was so out of tune, in consequence of a violent cold, under which he was really labouring, and hoped to see us again. He told us our countrywomen of Pau had laden him with kindness and attention, and spoke with such enthusiasm of the beauty of certain "misses," that I feared his little wife would feel somewhat piqued; but, on the contrary, she stood by, smiling and happy, and enjoying the stories of his triumphs. I remarked that he had restored the poetry of the troubadours; asked him if he knew their songs; and said he was worthy to stand at their head. "I am, indeed, a troubadour," said he, with energy; "but I am far beyond them all; they were but beginners; they never composed a poem like my Françounete! there are no poets in France now--there cannot be; the language does not admit of it; where is the fire, the spirit, the expression, the tenderness, the force of the Gascon? French is but the ladder to reach to the _first floor_ of Gascon--how can you get up to a height except by a ladder!" This last metaphor reminded me of the Irishman's contempt for an English staircase in comparison to his father's ladder; and my devotion to the troubadours and _early_ French poets received a severe shock by the slight thrown on them by the bard of Agen. We left him, therefore, half angry at his presumption; and once out of his sight I began again to doubt his merit, not feeling ready to accord the meed of applause to conceit at any time; I forgot that Jasmin is a type of his kind in all ways, and "is every inch" a _Gascon_. His poems, of which I am tempted to give some specimens, must speak for him, although they necessarily lose greatly by transmission into a language so different to the Gascon as English. The last volume he published we brought away with us. It is called _Los Papillotos[20] de Jasmin, coïffeur_, and contains a great many poems, all remarkable in their way, even including those complimentary verses addressed to certain "_Moussus," (Messieurs_.) [Footnote 20: The curl-papers.] The history of this singular person is told by himself in a series of poems called "His recollections," which present a sad and curious picture of his life in its different stages. It appears that Jacques Jasmin, or as he writes it in Gascon, _Jaquou Jansemin_, was born in 1797 or 1798. "The last century, old and worn out," (says his eulogist, M. Sainte-Beuve,) "had only two or three more years to pass on earth, when, at the corner of an antique street, in a ruined building peopled by a colony of rats, on the Thursday of Carnival week, at the hour when pancakes are being tossed, of a hump-backed father and a lame mother was born a child, a droll little object; and this child was the poet, Jasmin. When a prince is born into the world, the event is celebrated by the report of cannon; but he, the son of a poor tailor, had not even a pop-gun to announce his birth. Nevertheless, he did not appear without _éclat_, for at the moment he made his appearance, a _charivari_ was given to a neighbour, and the music of marrowbones and cleavers accompanied a song of thirty-stanzas, composed for the occasion by his father. This father of his, who could not read, was a poet in his way, and made most of the burlesque couplets for salutations of this description, so frequent in the country. Behold, then, a poetical parentage, as well established as that of the two Marots." The infant born under so auspicious an aspect, grew and throve in spite of the poverty to which he was heir. He was allowed, when a few years had passed over his head, to accompany his father in those concerts of rough music to which he contributed his poetical powers; but the chief delight of the future troubadour was to go, with his young associates, into the willow islands of the Garonne to gather wood. "Twenty or thirty together, we used to set out, with naked feet and bareheaded, singing together the favourite song of the south, 'The lamb, that you gave me.' Oh! the recollection of this pleasure even now enchants me." Their faggots collected, these little heroes returned to make bonfires of them; on which occasion many gambols ensued. But, in the midst of the joyous _escapades_ which he describes, he had his moments of sadness, which the word "_school_" never failed to increase, for the passion of his soul was to gain instruction, and the poverty of his family precluded all hope. He would listen to his mother, as she spoke in whispers to his grandfather, of her wish to send him to school; and he wept with disappointment, to find such a consummation impossible. The evidences of this destitution were constantly before him; his perception of the privations of those dear to him became every day keener; and when, after the fair, during which he had filled his little purse by executing trifling commissions, he carried the amount to his mother, his heart sank as she took it from him with a melancholy smile, saying--"Poor child, your assistance comes just in time." Bitter thoughts of poverty would thus occasionally intrude; but the gaiety of youth banished them again, until one sad day the veil was wholly withdrawn, and he could no longer conceal the truth from himself. He had just reached his tenth year, and was one day playing in the square, when he saw a chair, borne along by several persons, in which was seated an old man: he looked up and recognised his grandfather, surrounded by his family. He sprang towards him, and throwing himself into his arms, exclaimed--"Where are they taking you, dear grandfather? why do you weep? why do you leave us who love you so dearly?" "My son," replied the old man, "I am going to the hospital; it is there that all the Jasmins die." A few days after, the venerable man was no more, and from that hour Jasmin never forgot that they were indeed poor. This melancholy incident closes the first canto of the poet's "Recollections." The second opens with a description of his wretched dwelling, and the scanty support gained by labour _and begging_, shared by nine persons: his grandfather's wallet, from which he had so often received a piece of bread, unknowing how it had been obtained, now hung a sad memorial of his hard life, and told the story of his trials, when he went round to his former friends, from farm to farm, in the hope of filling it for a starving family. At last, one day, the ambitious mother entered out of breath, announcing the joyous tidings that her son was admitted _gratis_ into a free school. He became a scholar in a few months, a chorister in a few more, his fine voice doubtless recommending him; he gained a prize, and was in a fair way of advancement, when some childish frolic, punished too severely, caused him to be expelled. On reaching his home, he found all in consternation, for his bad conduct had been visited on his family, and the portion of food sent to them weekly he found was discontinued. His mother tried to console him, and to conceal their real state; but while he saw his little brothers and sisters provided with food, which, his mother smilingly dispensed, he discovered to his horror that she no longer wore her ring: it had been sold to buy bread. The second canto here finishes. The third introduces us to the hero in his capacity of apprentice to the same craft of which he still continues a member, and here his comparative prosperity begins. He falls in love, writes verses, sings them, becomes popular, is able to open a little shop on his own account, and burns the old arm-chair in which his ancestors were carried to the hospital. His wife, who was at first an enemy to pen and ink, finding the good effect of his songs, was soon the first to urge him to write; his fellow-citizens became proud of him, his trade increased, and at length he was able to purchase the house on the promenade, where he now lives in comfort; with sufficient for his moderate wishes, always following his trade of hair-cutting, and publishing his poems at the same time. The first of his poems that appeared was called "The Charivari." It is burlesque, and has considerable merit: it is preceded by a very fine ode, full of serious beauty and grace of expression; this was as early as 1825. Several others of great beauty followed, and some of his songs became popular beyond the region where they were first sung. But his finest composition was a ballad, called "The Blind Girl of Castel-Cuillé," which at once crowned him with fame and loaded him with honours. The last volume he has published is that which I now introduce to the reader: it contains, besides several already known, many new poems, and a ballad, called "Françouneto," which is acknowledged as a successful rival to "The Blind Girl." The rustic character of his descriptions, and the rustic dialect in which they are conveyed, give a tone of novelty and reality to his works quite peculiar to themselves. The force and powerful effect of the Gascon language is lost in reading the French version, appended to the original; but a very little attention will make that original understood, and the reward well repays the study. The "Abuglo" (the Blind Girl) thus opens-- "Del pè d'aquelo haouto mountagno Oùn se pinquo Castel-Cuillé; Altenque lou poumé, lou pruné, l'amellé, Blanquejâbon dens la campagno, Baci lou chan qu'on entendêt, Un dimècres mati, beillo de Sent-Jouzèt." "At the foot of the high mountain, where Castle-Cuillé stands in mid-air, at the season when the apple-tree, the plum, and the almond, are whitening all the country round, this is the song that was sung one Wednesday morning, the eve of St. Joseph." Then comes the chorus, which is no invention of the poet, but a refrain of the country, always sung at rustic weddings, in accordance with a custom of strewing the bridal path with flowers: "The paths with buds and blossoms strew! A lovely bride approaches nigh: For all should bloom and spring anew, A lovely bride is passing by." A description then follows of a rural wedding, introducing habits and superstitions, which remind one of Burns and Hallow-e'en. This picture of youth, gaiety, and beauty, is full of truth and nature; and the contrast is affecting, of the desolate situation of the young blind girl, who should have been the bride, but whom Baptiste, her lover, had deserted for one richer, since a severe malady had deprived her of her sight. Poor Marguerite (_Margarido_) still thinks him faithful, and expects his return to fulfil his vow, when the sound of the wedding music, and the explanation of her little brother, reveal to her all her misfortune. The song of hope and fear, as she sits expecting him, is extremely beautiful; and some of the expressions, in the original singular yet musical Gascon, must lose greatly by translation, either in French or English. Her lamentations on her blindness remind one of Milton's heart-rending words on the same subject:-- "Jour per aoutres, toutjour! et per jou, malhurouzo, Toutjour ney, toutjour ney!" "MARGARIDO'S REFLECTIONS." "After long months of sad regret Returned!--return'd? and comes not yet? Although to my benighted eyes He knows no other star may rise: He knows my lonely moments past, Expecting, hoping to the last. He knows my heart is faithful still, I wait my vows but to fulfil. Alas! without him what have I? Grief bows my fame and dims my eye; For others, day and joy and light, For me, all darkness--always night! "What gloom spreads round where he is not: How cold, how lonely, he away! But in his presence all forgot, I never think of sun or day. What has the day? a sky of blue-- His eyes are of a softer hue, That light a heaven of hope and love. Pure as the skies that glow above. But skies, earth, blindness, tears, and pain, Are all forgot, unfelt, unknown, When he is by my side again, And holds my hand within his own!" When the unfortunate girl finds that her lover is untrue, despair takes possession of her mind; she causes herself to be conducted to the church, where the ceremony of the marriage is taking place; and at the moment when Baptiste pronounces the words which seal his fate with that of her rival, Angela, she rushes forward, and draws a knife to stab herself; but at the instant she falls dead at his feet, before her hand has accomplished the fatal blow. The poet here congratulates his heroine on having died _without crime_, her _intention_ going for nothing, and the angels bearing her soul to heaven as immaculate. There is little in the plot of this story--its beauty lies in the grace, and ease, and simplicity of the language, and the pathos of the situations. The same may be said of the ballad of "Françouneto," the latest work of the author, which is just now making a great sensation in France. The close of both these stories is somewhat weak and hurried, and both fail in effect, except when Jasmin reads them himself,--then there appears nothing to be desired. Françonnette is a village beauty and coquette, promised to Marcel, a young soldier, but attached to Pascal, a peasant, whose poverty and pride prevent his declaring the passion he feels for the volatile but tender maiden, who "Long had fired each youth with love, Each maiden with despair;" but, unlike the Emma of the English ballad, Françonnette is too conscious of being fair, and torments her admirers to death. She becomes, at length, the object of suspicion and hatred to her fellows, in consequence of a rumour circulated by her disappointed lover, Marcel, that her Huguenot father had sold her to the evil one, and that misfortune awaited whoever should love or marry her. Some fearful scenes ensue, in which the poet exhibits great power. The quarrel of the rivals is managed with effect; and the rising of the peasantry against the supposed bewitched beauty; the discovery of Pascal's love, and the consequent revolution the knowledge effects in the mind of the deserted girl; his tender devotion, her danger, and Marcel's subsequent remorse, are admirably told; and, on the whole, the story of Françonnette must be acknowledged as a great advance upon the "Aveugle;" and its superiority promises greater things yet from the poet of Agen. "FRANÇONNETTE'S MUSINGS. "On the parched earth when falls the earliest dew, As shine the sun's first rays, the winter flown, So love's first spark awakes to life anew, And fills the startled mind with joy unknown. The maiden yielded every thought to this-- The trembling certainty of real bliss: The lightning of a joy before unproved, Flash'd in her heart, and taught her that she loved. "She fled from envy, and from curious eyes, And dream'd, as all have done, those waking dreams, Bidding in thought bright fairy fabrics rise To shrine the loved one in their golden gleams. Alas! the Sage is right, 'tis the distrest Who dream the fondest, and who love the best!" But, perhaps, a better idea can be conveyed, by giving a version in prose of the whole story. The story of Françonnette. It was at the time when Blaise de Montluc, the sanguinary chief, struck the Protestants with a heavy hand, and his sword hewed them in pieces, while, in the name of a God of mercy, he inundated the earth with tears and blood. At length he paused from fatigue: it was ended; no more did the hills resound with the noise of carbine or cannon: the savage leader, to prop the cross, which neither then nor now tottered, had slain, strangled, filled the wells with slaughtered thousands. The earth gave back its dead at Fumel and at Penne: fathers, mothers, children, were nearly exterminated, and the executioners had time to breathe. The exhausted tiger--the merciless ruffian--dismounted from his charger, re-entered his fortress, with its triple bridge, and its triple moat, and, kneeling at the altar, uttered his devout prayers, received the communion, while his hands were yet reeking with the blood of innocence with which he had glutted his cruelty. Meantime, in the hamlets, young men and maidens, at first terrified at the bare name of Huguenot, devoted their hours to love and amusement as formerly. And in a village, at the foot of a strong castle, one Sunday, a band of lovers were dancing on the votive feast of Roquefort, and, to the sound of the fife, celebrated St. Jacques and the month of August--that lovely month, which, by the freshness of its dew, and the fire of its sun, ripens our figs and grapes. There had never been seen a finer fête. Under the large parasol of foliage, where the crowd were every year seen in groups--all was full to overflowing. From the heights of the rocks to the depths of the valleys, from Montagnac and Sainte Colombe, new troops of visitors arrived; still they come--still they come--and the sun is high in heaven, like a torch. There is no lack of room where they are met, for the meadows here serve for chambers, and the banks of turf for seats. What enjoyment!--the heat makes the air sparkle: nothing is more pleasing than to see those fife-players blowing, and the dancers whirling along. Cakes and sweetmeats are taken from baskets; fresh lemonade! how eagerly the thirsty drink it down! Crowds hurry to see Polichinelle--crowds hurry to the merchant whose cymbals announce his treasures--crowds everywhere! But who is she advancing this way? Joy, joy! It is the young Queen of the Meadows. It is she--it is Françonnette. Let me tell you a little concerning her. In towns as well as in hamlets, you know there is always the pearl of love, precious above all the rest; well, every voice united proclaim her, in the canton, the Beauty of Beauties. But I would not have you imagine that she is pensive--that she sighs--that she is pale as a lily--that she has languishing, half-closed eyes, blue and soft--that she is slight, and bends with languor, like the willow that inclines beside a clear stream. You would be greatly deceived: Françonnette has eyes brilliant as two sparkling stars; one might think to gather bunches of roses on her rounded cheeks; her chestnut hair waves in rich curls; her mouth is like a cherry; her teeth would make snow look dim; her little feet are delicately moulded; her ankle is light and fine. In effect, Françonnette was the true star of beauty in a female form, grafted here below. All these charms, too evident to all, caused ceaseless envy amongst the young girls, and many sighs amongst the swains. Poor young enthusiasts, there was not one who would not have died for her: they looked at her--they adored her as the priest adores the cross. The fair one saw it with delight; and her countenance was radiant with pride and pleasure. Nevertheless, she has a secret dawn of vexation; the finest flower is wanting in her circlet of triumph. Pascal--the handsomest of all the youths--he who sings the best--appears to avoid and to see her without love. Françonnette is indignant at his neglect; she believes that he is hateful to her, when she reflects on his conduct; she prepares a terrible vengeance, and waits but the moment when, by a look, she shall make him her slave for ever. Is it not always so! From all time a maiden so courted is sure to become vain and proud; and, young as she is, it is easy to see she is like the rest. Proud she was, to a certain degree, and a coquette she was becoming--a rural one, however, not artful; she loved none, yet many hoped she did. Her grandmother would often say to her--"My child, remember the country is not the town--the meadow is not a ball-room; you know well that we have promised you to the soldier, Marcel, who loves you, and expects you to be his wife. You must conquer this fickleness of mind. A girl who tries to attract all, ends by gaining none." A kiss and a laugh and a caress were the answer; and, while she bounded away, she would sing, in the words of the song-- "I have time enough, dear mother, Time enough to love him yet; If I wait and choose no other, All Love's art I should forget: And if all is left for one, 'Twere as well be loved by none." All this finished by creating much jealousy, suffering, and unhappiness; nevertheless, these shepherds were not of those that make lays full of grace and tenderness, and who, dying of grief, engrave their names on poplars and willows. Alas! these shepherds could not write! besides which, though Love had turned their heads, they preferred to suffer and live on: but, oh! what confusion in the workshops!--oh, what ill-dressed vines--what branches uncut!--what furrows all irregular! Now that you know this heedless little beauty, do not lose sight of her;--there she is! see, how she glides along! now she dances with Etienne the _rigaudon d'honneur_: every one follows her with straining eyes and smiles: every one gives her glances of admiration. She loses not one of their regards; and she dances with added grace. Holy cross! holy cross! how she turns and winds, with her lizard-shaped head, and her little Spanish foot, and her wasp-like waist!--when she slides, and whirls, and leaps, and the breeze waves her blue handkerchief, what would they not all give to impress two kisses on her pretty cheek! One will be so happy! for it is the custom to kiss your partner if you can tire her out; but a young girl is never tired till she chooses to be so; and, already, Guillaume, Louis, Jean, Pierre, Paul--she has wearied them all: there they stand, out of breath, and can boast of having gained no kiss of Françonnette. Another takes her hand: it is Marcel, her betrothed: a soldier, in favour with the redoubted Montluc; he is tall and powerful; he wears a sabre, a uniform, and has a cockade in his cap; he is as upright as a dart; well made; bold, with a generous heart, but fiery and proud. Presuming and intrusive--caring little to be invited, but ready to claim whatever he pleases; a boaster, sportive but dangerous, _like a caterpillar_. Marcel doating on Françonnette, flirts with all, endeavours to rouse her jealousy, and has tales to tell of his successes. Disgusted at his presumption, his betrothed dislikes, at length, to see him; he perceives her repugnance, and, to revenge himself, proclaims that he knows himself beloved; proud of having said it, he increases his boasting; and, the other day, at a meeting, as he broke his glass, he took an oath that no one but himself should have the privilege of kissing Françonnette. It was curious to behold, as they danced together, how the crowd pressed forward, anxious to see if the handsome soldier would gain the reward which he boasted that none but he should obtain. At first he smiled, as he led her forward, and his eyes entreated hers; but she remained mute and cold, and her activity appeared but to increase. Marcel, piqued and annoyed, resolved to conquer her; and the vain lover who would rather gain one kiss before all the world than twenty granted in secret, exerts all his powers, leaps, hurries, whirls, and, to fatigue her, would willingly give his sabre, his cap, his worsted embroidery,--aye, if it had been all of gold instead! But when the game is displeasing, the maiden is strong to resist. Far from giving in, Françonnette confuses, tires him, till his breath is gone; passion exhausts him as much as her swiftness; his face becomes crimson--he is ready to fall--he gives in. On goes the dance--Pascal stands in his place; he has scarcely made two steps, and changed sides, when his pretty partner smiles, reels, pauses; she is tired out, and she turns her blushing cheek to him--oh! she did not wait long for his kiss. Instantly a shout is heard--clapping of hands in all directions: all plaudits for Pascal, who stands confused and abashed. What a scene for the young soldier, who loved in good truth!--he shuddered as he saw the kiss given; he rose, and drew himself up to his full height. "Thou hast replaced me too quickly, peasant!" cried he, in a thundering voice; and, to enforce his insulting words, he struck the young man a violent blow. Heavens! how ready is pain to usurp the place of the sweetest pleasure! A kiss and a blow! glory and shame! light and darkness! fire and ice! life and death! heaven and hell! All this shook the mind of Pascal; but when a man is insulted, he can revenge himself, though he is neither gentleman nor soldier. No. Look upon him! the tempest is not more fearful. His eyes dart lightning--thunder is in his voice--he raises his arm, and it descends upon Marcel like a bolt. In vain the soldier seeks to draw his sword--stands on his guard; Pascal, whose size seems to increase with fury, seizes him by his waist, strains him in his grasp, and, with a fierce gripe, forces him to the ground, where he dashes him, crushed and senseless. "Hold!--the peasant grants your life!" cried Pascal, as he stood over him. "Kill him!--you are wounded--you are all blood," exclaimed a hundred voices. Pascal's blood flowed, he knew not how. "It is enough," he returned; "I pardon him now. The wicked man when defeated excites only pity." "No, no--kill him, tear him to pieces," howled the enraged people. "Back, peasants, back!" cried a knight, spurring forward, to whom every one gave way. It was Montluc, attracted to the spot by the tumult, as he was passing with the Baron of Roquefort. But the fête was over--no more amusement: the young girls, terrified, fled like hares, two by two, from the spot; the young men surrounding Pascal--the handsome, brave Pascal--accompanied him on his way, as though it was his wedding-day. Marcel, furious and discomfited, struggled to renew the contest; but his lord's voice restrained him; a word of command silenced him: he ground his teeth with rage, and cried-- "They love each other,--they will do everything to thwart me. This will be but sport to her. 'Tis well; but by St. Marcel, my patron, they shall pay dear for this jesting, and Françonnette shall be mine, and none other's!" PART II. One, two, three months passed away--all fêtes, dances, games, and harvest-homes; but all these gaieties must end with the falling leaves. All things, in winter, assume a mournful aspect,--all beneath the vault of heaven becomes aged. After nightfall no one now ventured out: all grouped themselves around the bright hearth; for it was known that loup-garoux, and sorcerers whose acts make the hair stand on end, and spread terror in house and hut, now kept their sabbath beneath the naked elms, and round about the straw-rick. At length, Christmas-morning shone, and Jean the crier hastened through the town with his tambour, calling out, "Be ready, young maidens, at the Buscou: a grand Winding meeting takes place on Friday, New Year's Eve." Oh! how the young girls and youths proclaimed in every quarter the news of the old crier! his news was of that kind which, rapid as a bird, lends wings to speech. Scarcely, therefore, was the air warmed by the sun's rays, than his intelligence was spread from hearth to hearth, from table to table, from cottage to cottage. Friday came; and, in the dusk of the evening, seated beside a cold forge, a mother was complaining: and thus she spoke to her son:-- "Have you, then, forgotten the day when, before our shop, I saw you arrive, with the sound of music, faint, wounded, and bleeding? I have suffered much since, for the wound was envenomed; we feared you must lose your arm. Let me entreat, go not out to-night--for I dreamt of flowers--what do they always announce, Pascal?--but sorrows and tears." "Dear mother, you are too timid; all seems gloomy in your eyes; you know Marcel comes no more amongst us; there is now no reason for your fears." "Take heed of yourself, nevertheless. The sorcerer of the Black Wood has been wandering in this neighbourhood,--you recollect the great mischief he did last year. Well, it is said that a soldier was seen to leave his cave yesterday, at day-break. Should it be Marcel! Beware, my child. Every mother gives relics to her child--take you mine, and oh, my son, go not forth." "I only ask one little hour, to see my friend, Thomas." "Your friend!--ah, tell the truth, and say to see Françonnette; for you, too, love her, like all the rest. You think I see it not--away!--I have long read it in your eyes. You fear to distress me, you sing, you seem gay; but you weep in secret, you suffer, you are wretched, and I am unhappy for your sake. I pine away. Hold, Pascal! something tells me a great misfortune awaits you. She has such power over those who love her, one would say she was a witch; but with her magic what does she seek? Can it be fortune?--it has been offered her twenty times, and she refuses all; however, they say she now pretends to be attached to rich Laurent de Brax, and they are soon to be betrothed. Oh, what confusion she will make this evening, vain creature! Think no more of her, Pascal; leave her, it is for your good;--hear me! she would hold a poor blacksmith in contempt, whose father is old, infirm, and poor,--for we are poor, indeed; alas! you know it well. We have parted with all; we have only a scythe left. It has been a dark time with us since you fell sick; now that you are well, go, dearest, and work. What do I say? we can suffer still; rest yourself, if you please, but, for the love of God, go not forth this evening." And the poor mother in despair wept, as she implored her son, who, leaning against the forge, stifled a sigh which rose from his oppressed heart, and said, "You are right, mother: I had forgotten all,--we are poor, indeed. I will go and work." Two minutes after, the anvil was ringing; but whoever had seen how often the young blacksmith struck the iron falsely, would have easily seen that he thought of something besides the hammer he held in his hand. Meantime few had failed at the Buscou, and every one came from all parts to divide their skein at the Fête of Lovers. In a large chamber, where already a hundred windles were turning, loaded with flax, girls and youths, with nimble fingers, were winding thread as fine as hair. It was soon all finished; and white wine and _rimottes_ were placed, boiling, in glasses and basins, from which rose a burning smoke which set the love-powder in a flame. If the prettiest there had been the most rapid, I should have pointed out Françonnette; but the Queen of the Games is the last at work, and this is the time when her reign begins. Only listen; how she amuses every one,--how she governs and regulates all; one would say she had spirit enough for three. She dances, she speaks, she sings; she is all-in-all. When she sings, you would say she had the soul of the dove; when she talks, the wit of an angel: when she dances, you would imagine she had, the wings of the swallow: and this evening she sang, and danced, and talked--oh! it was enough to turn the wisest head! Her triumph is complete; all eyes are upon her. The poor young men can resist no more; and her bright eyes, which enchant them, shine and sparkle as they see how the spell works. Then Thomas rose, and, looking at the lovely coquette with tender glances, sang, in a flute-toned voice, this new song: "Oh tell us, charming maid, With heart of ice unmoved, When shall we hear the sound Of bells that ring around, To say that you have loved? Always so free and gay, Those wings of dazzling ray, Are spread to ev'ry air,-- And all your favour share; Attracted by their light, All follow in your flight. But, ah! believe me, 'tis not bliss, Such triumphs do but purchase pain; What is it to be loved like this, To her who cannot love again? "You've seen how full of joy We've marked the sun arise; Even so each Sunday morn, When you, before our eyes, Bring us such sweet surprise, With us new life is born: We love your angel face, Your step so debonaire, Your mien of maiden grace, Your voice, your lip, your hair: Your eyes of gentle fire, All these we all admire! But, ah! believe me, 'tis not bliss, Such triumphs do but purchase pain; What is it to be loved like this, To her who cannot love again. "Alas! our groves are dull, When widowed of thy sight, And neither hedge nor field Their perfume seem to yield; The blue sky is not bright: When you return once more, All that was sad is gone, All nature you restore; We breathe in you alone. We could your rosy lingers cover With kisses of delight all over! But ah! believe me, 'tis not bliss, Such triumphs do but purchase pain; What is it to be loved like this, To her who cannot love again! "The dove you lost of late, Might warn you, by her flight; She sought in woods her mate, And has forgot you quite; She has become more fair, Since love has been her care. 'Tis love makes all things gay, Oh follow where he leads-- When beauteous looks decay, What dreary life succeeds! And ah! believe me, perfect bliss, A joy, where peace and triumph reign, Is when a maiden loved like this, Has learnt 'tis sweet to love again." The song is ended; and the crowd, delighted at its meaning, are full of applause, and clap their hands in praise. "Heavens! what a song!--how appropriate! who composed so sweet a lay?" "It was Pascal," replied Thomas. "Bravo, Pascal,--long live Pascal!" was the general cry. Françonnette is silent; but she feels and enjoys it all,--she is proud, and exults: she has the love of all--of all now. It is told her, a song has been made for her; and she hears it sung before every one--yes, every one knows she is the person meant. She thinks on Pascal, too, and becomes grave. "He has no equal," she mused. "How brave he is! every one holds him in esteem; all are on his side. How well he can paint love! doubtless they all love him. And what a song! what tender meaning!" Not a word has escaped her. "But, if he loves, why does he thus conceal himself?" She turned to his friend, and exclaimed: "It seems long since we saw him. I would fain tell him how beautiful we think his song. Where is he?" "Oh! he is obliged to stay at home," said Laurent, jealous and piqued. "Pascal has no more time, methinks, for song making. Poor man! his ruin is not far off; his father is infirm, and cannot leave his bed; he is in debt everywhere; the baker refuses to trust him." Françonnette became very pale. "He--so amiable--so good! alas! he is much to be pitied. Is he, then, indeed so wretched?" "Too true," said Laurent, affecting a compassionate air. "It is said he lives on alms." "You have lied," cried Thomas: "may your tongue be blistered! Pascal is unfortunate; and all has not gone well with him since he met that hurt in the arm, for Françonnette; but he is well again; and, if no envious person injures him, he will recover himself soon; for he has industry and courage." Whoever had looked narrowly would have seen a tear in the eye of Françonnette. The games begin: they sit in a circle; they play at _cache-couteau_. Françonnette is challenged by Laurent: he claims the kiss which she has forfeited. She flies like a bird from the fowler; he pursues; but, when he has nearly reached her, he falls, and has broken his arm. A sudden gloom succeeds to gaiety; terror takes possession of all. When suddenly a door opens, and an aged man, whose beard hangs to his girdle, appears. He comes like a spectre: they start away in alarm; the Sorcerer of the Black Wood stands before them. "Unthinking beings!" he exclaims, "I have descended from my rock to warn you. You all fix your thoughts upon this girl, Françonnette, who is accursed; for her father, while she was yet in her cradle, became a Huguenot, and sold her to the devil. Her mother died of grief; and the demon, who watches over that which is his, follows her everywhere in secret. He has punished Pascal and Laurent, who have sought her. Be warned; ill-fortune attends whoever would espouse her. The demon has alone a claim to her possession; and her husband would fall a victim." The sorcerer ended: sparks of fire surrounded him, and showed his wrinkled face more clearly: he turned four times round in a circle, and disappeared. Every hearer seemed changed to stone. Françonnette alone showed signs of life: she did not give way at once to the misfortunes which threatened her: she hoped the scene would pass as a jest: she laughed cheerfully--advanced towards her friends; but all drew back with a shudder; all cried out, "Begone!" Then she felt she was abandoned; a cold tremor came over her, and she fell senseless to the ground. Thus ended a fête which had begun so gaily. The next day--the first of the year--the rumours of this event spread from house to house and from meadow to meadow. Oh! the terror of the evil one, which at the present day scarcely exists, at that time was fearful, particularly in the country. A thousand things were remembered, before never dreamt of: some had heard in her cottage the noise of chains: her father had disappeared mysteriously: her mother was said to have died mad: nothing ever failed with her; her harvest always ripened first; and when hail destroyed other fields, her's were full of grapes and corn. None hesitated to believe what was said; daughters, mothers, grandmothers exaggerated the first reports; children trembled at her name; and, at length, when the poor girl, with depressed brow, came forth to seek necessaries for her aged relative, no one spoke to her: all shrunk from her; or, pointing with their fingers, cried out--"Fly! behold one sold to the demon!" PART III. Beside the town of Estanquet, on the banks of a sparkling stream, whose waters run bubbling all the year long over the pebbles, a beautiful girl was gathering flowers, last year, amongst the turf: she sang so sweetly and so joyously, that the birds were jealous of her voice and of her song. Why does she sing no more? Hedges and meads are green again; the nightingales come even into her garden to invite her to join their lays. Where is she? Perhaps she is departed. But no; her straw hat lies on the accustomed bench, but is no longer adorned with a bright ribbon: her little garden is neglected: her hoe and rake lie on the ground amongst the jonquils: the rose branches stray wildly; there are thistles at their feet, and the little paths, which used to be so neat, are filled with nettles. Something must have happened. Where is the lively maiden? Do you not see her cottage shining white through the thick hazel branches? Let us approach: the door is open; softly--let us enter. Ah! there, in her arm-chair, sits the grandmother, asleep; and I see behind the window the fair girl of Estanquet; but she is in grief--what can ail her? Tears are falling on her little hand: some dark cloud has passed over her heart. Oh yes! dark indeed! for yonder sits Françonnette: there she sits, bowed down with the blow which has overwhelmed her: she weeps in her chamber, and her heart knows no relief. Young girls often weep, and forget their sorrow quickly; but she----her grief is too deep, and it is one which tears cannot soften. The daughter of a Huguenot! one banished from the Church--sold to the demon! ah! it is too horrible! The grandmother tells her in vain--"My child, it is false!" She does not listen: there is none but her father can resolve her doubts, and prove to her that it is not true; but no one knows his place of abode; she is alone--she is terrified--oh! so terrified, that she believes it. "What a change!" she cries. "I who, but now, was so happy--I, who was Queen of the Meadows and could command all--I, for whom every youth would have gone barefooted amongst a nest of serpents--to be contemned, avoided, the terror of the country! And Pascal--he also flies me, as if I were a pest: yet I pitied him in his wretchedness; perhaps he has no pity to bestow on me." It was not so; and she has yet some comfort in her misery: she learns that Pascal is her defender: this is a balm to her wounded spirit; and, as her only relief, she thinks of him often. Suddenly she hears a cry; she flies to her grandmother, who has just waked from sleep: "The fire is not here; the walls do not burn! Oh God, what a mercy!" "What were you dreaming, dear grandmother--answer me--what is it?" "Unfortunate girl! I dreamt it was night; brutal men came to our house, and set it on fire. You cried; you exerted yourself to save me, but you could not, and we both were burnt. Oh, I have suffered much! come to my arms! let me embrace my child!" And the aged woman strained her in her withered arms, and pressed her tenderly to her heart, her white hair mingling with the golden ringlets of Françonnette. "Dearest," said she, "your mother, the day of her marriage, came from the castle a bride; her dower came from thence; and thus we are not rich from the demon; every one must know that. It is true that while you were an infant, my angel, and yet in the cradle, we heard every night a strange noise, and we found you always out of the cradle; and on the edge of your little bed three drops of blood appeared; but we said a prayer, and they disappeared; does not this prove that you are not sold to the evil one? Some envious person has invented this. Be of good cheer, and do not weep like a child; you are more lovely than ever: show yourself again: let your beauty once more appear. Those who hide from envy give the wicked more space. Besides, Marcel still loves you; he has sent secretly to say he is your's when you will--you love him not! Marcel will be your protector; I am too old to guard you. Hearken! to-morrow is Easter-day; go to mass, and pray more fervently than of late; take some of the blessed bread, and sign yourself with the cross. I am certain that God will restore your lost happiness, and will prove, by your countenance, that He has not erased you from the number of those He calls his own." The hope she had conjured up irradiated the face of the poor woman; her child hung round her neck, and promised to do her bidding; and peace was restored for a while to the little white cottage. The next day, when the Hallelujah was ringing from the bells of St. Pé, great was the astonishment of all to behold Françonnette kneeling with her chaplet in the church,--her eyes cast down in prayer. Poor girl! well might she pray to be spared; there was not a young woman who spared her as she passed: the less so, that Marcel and Pascal appeared to feel pity for her. They were very cruel to her; not one would remain near; so that she found herself, at last, kneeling alone in the midst of a wide circle, like one condemned who has a mark of shame on his forehead. Her mortification is not yet complete, for the uncle of Marcel--the churchwarden, who wears a vest of violet with large skirts--the tall man who offers the blessed bread at Easter--passes on when she puts out her hand to take her portion, and refuses to allow her to share the heavenly meal. This was terrible! She believes that God has really abandoned her, and would drive her from His temple; she trembles, and sinks back nearly fainting; but some one advances--it is he who asks to-day for the offerings; it is Pascal, who had never quitted her with his looks, who had seen the meaning glance which passed between the uncle and nephew--he advances softly, and taking from the shining plate that part of the bread which is crowned with a garland of choice flowers, presents it to Françonnette. What a moment of delicious joy to her! Her blood runs free again; she feels no longer frozen to stone; her soul had trembled; but it seems as if the bread of the living God, as she touched it, had restored her life. But why is her cheek so covered with blushes? It is because the Angel of Love had, with his breath, drawn forth the flame that slept in her heart; it is that a feeling, new, strange, subtle, like fire, sweet as honey, rises in her soul, and makes her bosom beat. Oh! it is that she lives with another life. Now, she knows herself; she feels what she really is: now she understands the magic of love. The world--the priest--all disappears; in the temple of the Lord there is but a human creature she beholds--the man she loves--the man to whom she had faltered her thanks. Now, let us quit all the envy and jealousy that might be seen exhibited on the way-side from St. Pé, and the triple scandal of cruel tongues; let us follow Françonnette, who carries home to her grandmother the blessed bread crowned with its garland, and who, having given it into her hands, retires to her chamber _alone with her love_! First drop of dew in the time of drought, first ray of sun-light in winter, thou art not more welcome to the bosom of the parched earth in sadness, than this first flame of affection to the awakened heart of the tender girl! Happy--overwhelmed--she forgets herself, and, by degrees, gives up all her being to the new, rapturous delight of loving! Then, far from the noise of evil tongues, she did what we all do; she dreamt with unclosed eyes, and without stone or implements she built herself a little castle, where, with Pascal, all was shining, all was brilliant, all was radiant with happiness. Oh! the sage is right--the soul in affliction loves the strongest! She gave herself up entirely to her love; she feels she loves for ever, and all in nature seems to smile for her. But the honey of love too soon becomes bitter. Suddenly, she recollects herself--she shudders--she becomes as if frozen. At the stroke of a fearful thought, all her little castle is demolished. Alas! wretched girl, she dreamt of love, and love is forbidden to her. Did not the sorcerer say she was sold to the evil one, and that man bold enough to seek her would find only death in the nuptial chamber? She! must she behold Pascal dead before her? Mercy, oh God! oh God, pity! And, bathed in tears, the poor child fell on her knees before an image of the Virgin. "Holy Virgin," said she, "without thy aid I am lost; for I love deeply. I have no parents, and they say I am sold to the demon. Oh, take pity on me! save me, if it be true: and if it is but the saying of the wicked, let my soul know the truth; and when I offer thee my taper at the altar of Notre Dame, prove to me that my prayer is accepted." A short prayer, when it is sincere, soon mounts to heaven. She felt certain that she was heard; but she thought constantly of her project, though at times she shuddered, and fear rendered her mute; still hope would come like a lightning flash in the night, and satisfy her heart. PART IV. At length the day arrived so feared and so desired. At day-break long lines of young girls, all in white, extended in all directions, and advanced to the sound of the bells; and Notre Dame, in the midst of a cloud of perfume, proudly looked down on three hamlets in one. What censers! what crosses! what nosegays! what tapers! what banners! what pictures! Then come all Puymirol, Artigues, Astafort, Lusignan, Cardonnet, Saint Cirq, Brax, Roquefort; but those of Roquefort, this year, are the first--the most numerous: and to see them in particular the curious hastened forward, for everywhere, in all places, the story of the young girl sold to the demon spread, and it is known that to-day she comes to pray to the Virgin to protect her. Her misfortune has inspired pity amongst them; every one looks at her and laments; they trust that a miracle will be operated in her favour, and that the Virgin will save her. She sees the feeling that she has inspired, and rejoices; her hope becomes stronger; "the voice of the people is the voice of God." Oh, how her heart beats as she enters the church! everywhere within the walls are pictures of the Virgin's mercy and indulgence; mothers in grief, young people in affliction, girls without parents, women without children--all are kneeling with tapers before the image of the Mother of heaven, which an aged priest in his robes allows to touch their lips, and afterwards blesses them. No sign of ill has occurred, and they believe; all, as they rise, depart with a happy hope, and Françonnette feels the same, particularly when she sees Pascal praying devoutly; then she has courage to look the priest in the face. It appears as if love, music, the lights, the incense--all was united to assure her of pardon. "Pardon! pardon!" murmured she, "oh, if that were mine! and Pascal"-- She lighted her taper in order, and, the light and her bouquet in her hand, she took her place. Every one, from compassion, made way that she might kneel the foremost. The silence is breathless; there is neither movement nor gesture; all eyes are turned on her and on the priest; he takes the sacred image, and holds it forth to her; but scarcely has it touched the lips of the orphan when a loud peal of thunder shakes the church, and rolls away in the distance; her taper is extinguished, and three of those on the altar! Her taper is extinct--her prayer rejected--she is accursed! Oh, God! it is, then, indeed true! she has been dedicated to the evil one, and is abandoned of Heaven! A murmur of terror spread through the crowd; and when the unfortunate girl rose, pale and wild and breathless with horror, all drew back, shuddering, and let her pass. The thunder-clap had begun the storm; fearfully it burst afterwards over Roquefort; the belfry of St. Pierre was destroyed, and the hail driving over the country, swept all away but those who wept to see the ravage. And the pilgrims returned, all ready to relate the disaster they had seen; they returned all--except one--and sang _Ora pro nobis_. Then, to cross the perilous waters, Agen did not possess as now--to make other towns jealous--three great bridges, as though it were a royal town. Two simple barks, urged by two oars, carried persons from one side to the other; but scarcely have they reached the opposite shore, and formed themselves in lines, than the news of the terrible event reaches them. At first, they scarcely credit its extent; but when they advance, and behold the vines and the fields desolated, then they tremble and are seized with despair, and cries of "Misery!" and "Misfortune!" rend the air. Suddenly a voice exclaims, "Françonnette is saved while we are ruined!" the word acts like a spark to gunpowder. "The wretch!--drive her out!--she brings us evil--it is true--she is the cause of all--she may do us more harm!" And the crowd clamoured louder and grew more furious. One cried, "Let us drive her from us! cursed as she is, let her burn in flames like the _Huguenot_, her father!" The coldest became infuriated: "Let her be driven forth!" cried all. To see them thus enraged, with flaming eyes, clenched hands and teeth, it seemed as if Hell inspired them, and that its influence came with the breeze of night, and breathed into their veins the venom of fury. Where was Françonnette? alas! in her cottage, half-dead--cold as marble! holding firmly in her tightened and convulsive grasp the faded wreath given her by Pascal. "Poor garland!" said she; "when I received you from him your perfume told of happiness, and I inhaled it; relic of love! I bore you in my bosom, where you soon faded like my vain dreams. Dear Pascal, farewell! my torn heart weeps to resign thee, but I must say adieu for ever! I was born in an evil hour; and, to save thee from my influence, I must conceal my love. Yet I feel this day thou art dearer than ever; I love with an affection never to be extinguished--with a devotion which is bliss or death on earth; but death is nothing to me if it could save thee!" "Why do you moan thus, Françonnette?" cried out her grandmother; "you told me, with a cheerful air, that the Virgin had received your offering and you were content; yet I hear you sob like a soul in pain; you deceive me, something has happened to you to-day." "Oh, no; be content, grandmother; I am happy--very happy." "'Tis well, my love; for your sorrow wrings my heart; to-day again I passed some fearful hours; this dream of fire recurs so often in spite of myself; and the storms alarm me; hark! I tremble at every sound." What cries are those so near and so loud? "Fire them! burn them! let them burn together!" A flash bursts through the old shutters; Françonnette rushes to the casement. Great Heaven! she sees the rick on fire, and a furious mob howling outside. "We must drive them out--the old hag and the young one; both have bewitched us!--Hence! child of perdition! hence, or burn in thy den!" Françonnette on her knees, with streaming eyes, exclaims, "Oh, pity for my poor old grandmother--do not kill her!" But the deluded populace, more confirmed than ever, by her haggard looks, that she is possessed, howl louder still--"Away with her!" and on they rush, brandishing flaming brands. "Hold--hold!" cried a voice, and Pascal sprang amongst them. "Cowards! would you murder two defenceless women! would you burn their dwelling, as if they had not suffered enough--tigers, that you are--already the walls are hot!" "Let the Huguenots quit the country: they are possessed by the demon. If they stay amongst us God will send down punishment. Let them go instantly, or we burn them!--Who presses forward there?" "Ha!" cried Pascal, "Marcel here! he is her enemy!" "Liar!" cried Marcel; "I love her better than thou, boaster as thou art! What wilt thou do for her--thou whose heart is so soft?" "I come to assist her--to defend her." "And I to be her husband, in spite of all, if she will be my wife." "I come for the same purpose," cried Pascal, without shrinking from his rival's regard; then turning to Françonnette, he said, with firmness, "Françonnette, you are safe no longer; these wretches will pursue you from village to village; but here are two who love you--two who would brave death, destruction, for your sake--can you choose between us?" "Oh, no, no! speak not of marriage. Pascal! my love is death--go! forget me! be happy without me! I dare not be yours!" "Happy without you! it is in vain: I love you too well; and if it be true that you are the prey of the evil one, 'twere better die with you than live away from you!" Doubtless, the beloved voice has power above all things over the softened heart: at the last step of misery we can dare all with desperate courage. Before the assembled crowd she exclaimed: "Oh, yes, Pascal, I do love you--I would have died alone; but, since you will have it so, I resist no longer. If it is our fate--we will die together." Pascal is in heaven--the crowd amazed--the soldier mute. Pascal approaches him. "I am," he said, "more fortunate than you; but you are brave, and will forgive me. To conduct me to my grave,[21] I require a friend--I have none--will you act the part of one?" [Footnote 21: Pascal conceives that, in wedding Françonnette, he is devoted to death.] Marcel is silent--he muses--a great struggle is in his heart--his eye flashes--his brow is bent strongly--he gazes on Françonnette, and the paleness of death creeps over him--he shakes off his faintness, and tries to smile. "Since it is her will," he cries, "I will be that friend." Two weeks had passed,--and a wedding train descended the green hill. In the front of the procession walked the handsome pair. A triple range of people, from all quarters, extended for more than a league: they were curious to know the fate of Pascal. Marcel is at the head of all; he directs all; there is a secret pleasure in his eye, which none can understand. One would say that to-day he triumphs; he insists on arranging the marriage, and it is he who gives to his rival the feast and the ball--his money flows liberally, his purse is open--all is profusion; but there is no rejoicing--no singing--no smiling. The bridegroom is on the brink of the grave--his rival guides him thither, though he looks so gay--the day declines--all hearts sink with fear and pity--they would fain save Pascal, but it is too late: there they all stand motionless--but more as if at a burial than a wedding. Fascinated by love, the pair have sacrificed all; though the gulf yawns for them, they have no ears, no eyes, but for each other; as they pass along, hand-in-hand, the happiness of loving has absorbed all other feeling. It is night. A female suddenly appears: she clings round the neck of Pascal.--"My son, leave her, leave your bride--I have seen the wise woman--the sieve has turned--your death is certain--sulphur fills the bridal chamber--Pascal, enter not in--you are lost if you remain; and I, who loved you thus, what will become of me when you are gone?" Pascal's tears flowed, but he held still firmer his bride's hand within his own. The mother fell at his feet. "Ungrateful son! I will never leave you! if you persist, you shall pass over my body before you enter the fatal house. A wife, then, is all-in-all--a mother nothing! Oh! miserable that I am!" Tears flowed from every eye.--"Marcel," said the bridegroom, "love masters me; should evil befal me, take charge of my mother." "This is too much!" cried the soldier; "I cannot bear your mother's grief. Oh, Pascal! be blest--be content--be fearless--Françonnette is free! she is not sold to the evil one. It is a falsehood--a mere tale made for a purpose. But had not your mother overcome me by her tears, perhaps we should both have perished. You know--you can feel--how much I love her; like you, I would give my life for her. I thought she loved me, for she had my very soul--all! Yet she rejected me, though she knows we were betrothed. I saw there was no way--I devised a plan--I hired the sorcerer to raise a terror amongst all; he forged a fearful tale, chance did the rest. I thought her then securely my own; but when we both demanded her--when for you she braved everything--when she at once confessed how dear you were, it was beyond my power to bear. I resolved that we should both die; I would have conducted you to the bridal chamber--a train is laid there: all three were to have been victims; I would have bid you cease to fear the demon, but behold in me your foe!--but it is past, the crime I had meditated is arrested. Your mother has disarmed me; she reminds me of my own. Live, Pascal, for your mother! you have no more to fear for me. I have now no one; I will return to the wars; it were better for me that, instead of perishing with a great crime on my conscience, a bullet should end my life." He spoke no more, and rushed from their presence: the air resounded with shouts, and the happy lovers fell into each other's arms: the stars at that moment shone out. Oh! I must cast down my pencil--I had colours for sorrow--I have none for such happiness as theirs! Lines by Jasmin ADDRESSED TO M. DUMON, DEPUTY, WHO HAD CONDEMNED OUR OLD LANGUAGE. THERE'S not a deeper grief to man Than when his mother, faint with years, Decrepit, old, and weak, and wan, Beyond the leech's art appears; When by her couch her son may stay, And press her hand and watch her eyes, And feel, though she revive to-day, Perchance his hope to-morrow dies. It is not thus, believe me, sir, With this enchantress--she we call Our second mother: Frenchmen err, Who, cent'ries since, proclaim'd her fall! Our mother-tongue--all melody-- While music lives, can never die. Yes!--she still lives, her words still ring; Her children yet her carols sing: And thousand years may roll away, Before her magic notes decay. The people love their ancient songs, and will, While yet a people, love and keep them still: These lays are as their mother; they recal, Fond thoughts of mother, sister, friends, and all The many _little things_ that please the heart-- The dreams, the hopes, from which we cannot part: These songs are as sweet waters, where we find, Health in the sparkling wave that nerves the mind. In ev'ry home, at ev'ry cottage door, By ev'ry fireside, when our toil is o'er, These songs are round us, near our cradles sigh, And to the grave attend us when we die. Oh! think, cold critics! 'twill be late and long, Ere time shall sweep away this flood of song! There are who bid this music sound no more, And you can hear them, nor defend--deplore! You, who were born where its first daisies grew, Have fed upon its honey, sipp'd its dew, Slept in its arms and wakened to its kiss, Danced to its sounds, and warbled to its tone-- You can forsake it in an hour like this! --Yes, weary of its age, renounce--disown-- And blame one minstrel who is true--alone! For me, truth to my eyes made all things plain; At Paris, the great fount, I did not find The waters pure, and to my stream again I come, with saddened and with sobered mind; And since, no more enchanted, now I rate The little country far above the great. For you--who seem her sorrows to deplore, You, seated high in power, the first among, Beware! nor make her cause of grief the more; Believe her mis'ry, nor condemn her tongue. Methinks you injure where you seek to heal, If you deprive her of that only weal. We love, alas! to sing in our distress; It seems the bitterness of woe is less; But if we may not in our language mourn, What will the polish'd give us in return? Fine sentences, but all for us unmeet-- Words full of grace, even such as courtiers greet: A deck'd-out Miss, too delicate and nice To walk in fields, too tender and precise To sing the chorus of the poor, or come When Labour lays him down fatigued at home. To cover rags with gilded robes were vain-- The rents of poverty would show too plain. How would this dainty dame, with haughty brow, Shrink at a load, and shudder at a plough! Sulky, and piqued, and silent would she stand As the tired peasant urged his team along: No word of kind encouragement at hand, For flocks no welcome, and for herds no song! Yet we will learn, and you shall teach-- Our people shall have double speech: One to be homely, one polite, As you have robes for diff'rent wear, But this is all:--'tis just and right, And more our children will not bear. Lest we a troop of buzzards own, Where nightingales once sang alone. There may be some, who, vain and proud, May ape the manners of the crowd, Lisp French, and lame it at each word, And jest and gibe to all afford:-- But we, as in long ages past, Will still be poets to the last! Hark! and list the bridal song, As they lead the bride along: "Hear, gentle bride! your mother's sighs,[22] And you would hence away!-- Weep, weep, for tears become those eyes." ----"I cannot weep--to-day." Hark! the farmer in the mead Bids the shepherd swain take heed: "Come, your lambs together fold, Haste, my sons! your toil is o'er: For the morning bow has told That the ox should work no more." Hark! the cooper in the shade Sings to the sound his hammer made: "Strike, comrades, strike! prepare the cask, 'Tis lusty May that fills the flask: Strike, comrades! summer suns that shine Fill the cellars full of wine." Verse is, with us, a charm divine, Our people, loving verse, will still, Unknowing of their art, entwine Garlands of poesy at will. Their simple language suits them best: Then let them keep it and be blest. But let wise critics build a wall Between the nurse's cherish'd voice, And the fond ear her words enthral, And say their idol is her choice: Yes!--let our fingers feel the rule, The angry chiding of the school; True to our nurse, in good or ill, We are not French, but Gascon still. 'Tis said that age new feeling brings, Our youth returns as we grow old; And that we love again the things, Which in our memory had grown cold. If this be true, the time will come When to our ancient tongue, once more, You will return, as to a home, And thank us that we kept the store. Remember thou the tale they tell, Of Lacuée and Lacepède,[23] When age crept on, who loved to dwell, On words that once their music made: And, in the midst of grandeur, hung, Delighted, on their parent tongue. This, will you do: and it may be, When, weary of the world's deceit, Some summer-day we yet may see Your coming in our meadows sweet; Where, midst the flowers, the finch's lay Shall welcome you with music gay. While you shall bid our antique tongue Some word devise, or air supply, Like those that charm'd your youth so long And lent a spell to memory! Bethink you how we stray'd alone, Beneath those elms in Agen grown, That each an arch above us throws, Like giants, hand-in-hand, in rows. A storm once struck a fav'rite tree, It trembled, shook, and bent its boughs,-- The vista is no longer free: Our governor no pause allows. "Bring hither hatchet, axe, and spade, The tree must straight be prostrate laid!" But vainly strength and art were tried, The stately tree all force defied. Well might the elm resist and foil their might, For though his branches were decay'd to sight, As many as his leaves the roots spread round, And in the firm set earth they slept profound! Since then, more full, more green, more gay, His crests amidst the breezes play: And birds of ev'ry note and hue Come trooping to his shade in Spring, Each Summer they their lays renew, And while the year endures they sing. And thus it is, believe me, sir, With this enchantress--she we call Our second mother; Frenchmen err, Who, cent'ries since, proclaim'd her fall. No: she still lives, her words still ring; Her children yet her carols sing, And thousand years may roll away Before her magic notes decay. [Footnote 22: Jasmin here quotes several _patois_ songs, well known in the country.] [Footnote 23: Both Gascons.] THE SHEPHERD AND THE GASCON POET. To the Bordelais, on the grand Fête given me at the Casino. IN a far land, I know not where, Ere viol's sigh, or organ's swell, Had made the sons of song aware That music is a potent spell, A shepherd to a city came, Play'd on his pipe, and rose to fame. He sang of fields, and at each close Applause from ready hands arose. The simple swain was hail'd and crown'd In mansions where the great reside, And cheering smiles and praise he found, And in his heart rose honest pride: All seem'd with joy and rapture gleaming,-- He trembled that he was but dreaming. But, modest still, his soul was moved; Yet of his hamlet was his thought,-- Of friends at home, and her he loved,-- When back his laurel-branch be brought: And, pleasure beaming in his eyes, Enjoy'd their welcome and surprise. 'Twas thus with me, when Bordeaux deign'd To listen to my rustic song; Whose music praise and honour gain'd More than to rural strains belong. Delighted, charm'd, I scarcely knew Whence sprung this life so fresh and new. And to my heart I whisper'd low, When to my fields return'd again, "Is not the Gascon Poet now As happy as the shepherd swain?" The minstrel never can forget The spot where first success he met; But he, the shepherd who, of yore, Had charm'd so many a list'ning ear, Came back, and was beloved no more;-- He found all changed and cold and drear! A skilful hand had touch'd _the flute_;-- His _pipe_ and he were scorn'd--were mute. But I, once more I dared appear, And found old friends as true and dear-- The mem'ry of my ancient lays Lived in their hearts--awoke their praise. Oh! they did more;--I was their guest; Again was welcomed and caress'd: And, twined with their melodious tongue, Again my rustic carol rung; And my old language proudly found Her words had list'ners, pressing round. Thus, though condemn'd the shepherd's skill, The Gascon Poet triumph'd still. I returned by Agen, after an absence in the Pyrenees of some months, and renewed my acquaintance with Jasmin and his dark-eyed wife. I did not expect that I should be recognised; but the moment I entered the little shop I was hailed as an old friend. "Ah!" cried Jasmin, "enfin la voila encore!" I could not but be flattered by this recollection, but soon found it was less on my own account that I was thus welcomed, than because a circumstance had occurred to the poet which he thought I could perhaps explain. He produced several French newspapers, in which he pointed out to me an article headed "Jasmin à Londres;" being a translation of certain notices of himself, which had appeared in a leading English literary journal.[24] He had, he said, been informed of the honour done him by numerous friends, and assured me his fame had been much spread by this means; and he was so delighted on the occasion, that he had resolved to learn English, in order that he might judge of the translations from his works, which, he had been told, were well done. I enjoyed his surprise, while I informed him that I knew who was the reviewer and translator; and explained the reason for the verses giving pleasure in an English dress, to be the superior simplicity of the English language over modern French, for which he has a great contempt, as unfitted for lyrical composition. He inquired of me respecting Burns, to whom he had been likened; and begged me to tell him something of Moore. The delight of himself and his wife was amusing, at having discovered a secret which had puzzled them so long. [Footnote 24: The Athenæum.] He had a thousand things to tell me; in particular, that he had only the day before received a letter from the Duchess of Orleans, informing him that she had ordered a medal of her late husband to be struck, the first of which would be sent to him: she also announced to him the agreeable news of the king having granted him a pension of a thousand francs. He smiled and wept by turns, as he told all this; and declared, much as he was elated at the possession of a sum which made him a rich man for life, the kindness of the duchess gratified him even more. He then made us sit down while he read us two new poems; both charming, and full of grace and _naïveté_; and one very affecting, being an address to the king, alluding to the death of his son. As he read, his wife stood by, and fearing we did not quite comprehend his language, she made a remark to that effect: to which he answered impatiently, "Nonsense--don't you see they are in tears." This was unanswerable; and we were allowed to hear the poem to the end; and I certainly never listened to anything more feelingly and energetically delivered. We had much conversation, for he was anxious to detain us, and, in the course of it, he told me that he had been by some accused of vanity. "Oh!" he rejoined, "what would you have! I am a child of nature, and cannot conceal my feelings; the only difference between me and a man of refinement is, that he knows how to conceal his vanity and exultation at success, which I let everybody see." His wife drew me aside, and asked my opinion as to how much money it would cost to pay Jasmin's expenses, if he undertook a journey to England: "However," she added, "I dare say he need be at no charge, for, of _course_, your queen has read _that article_ in his favour, and knows his merit; she will probably send for him, pay all the expenses of his journey, and give him great fêtes in London." I recommended the barber-poet to wait _till he was sent for_; and left the happy pair, promising to let them know the effect that the translation of Jasmin's poetry produced on the royal mind:--their earnest simplicity was really entertaining. END OF VOL. I. * * * * * VOL. II. CONTENTS TO THE SECOND VOLUME. CHAPTER I. Renown of Pau--Lectoure--The Labourer-Duke--Auch--Tarbes--The Princess and the Count--Costume--Arrival at Pau--The Promenades--The Town--Improvements--First Impressions--Walks--Buildings--Hotels--The Magnificent Baker--The Swain--Tou-Cai! CHAPTER II. The Climate of Pau--Storms--Fine Weather--Palassou--Reasons for going to Pau--The Winter CHAPTER III. The Castle of Henri Quatre--- The Furniture--The Shell--The Statue--The Birth--Castel Beziat--The Fairy Gift--A Change--Henri Quatre CHAPTER IV. Troubadour CHAPTER V. Road from Pan to Tarbes--Table Land--The Pics--The Haras of Tarbes--Autumn in the Pyrenees--Mont l'Héris--Gabrielle d'Estrées--Chasseaux Palombes--Penne de l'Héris--Pic du Midi--Charlet the Guide--Valley of Campan--La Gatta--Grip--The Tourmalet--Campana del Vasse--Barèges--Luz--Cagot Door--Gavarine--The Fall of the Rock--Chaos--Circus--Magnificence of Nature--Pont de Neige--Roland--Durendal--Izards--Les Crânes--Pierrefitte--Cauteretz--Cerizet--Pont d'Espagne--Lac de Gaube--Argelez CHAPTER VI. Vallée d'Ossau--Le Hourat--The Rio Verde--Eaux Chaudes--Eaux Bonnes--- Bielle--Izeste--Saccaze, the Naturalist CHAPTER VII. Gabas--Popular Songs--Pont Crabe--The Recluse of the Vallée d'Ossau--Marguerite--The Springs CHAPTER VIII. Peasants of Ossau--Capitivity of Francis the First--Death of Joyeuse--Death of the Duke de Maine--Dances CHAPTER IX. Coarraze--Orton--The Pont Long--Les Belles Cantinières--Morlàas--The Curé--Resintance to Improvement--Uzain--Lescar--Reformation in Navarre--Tombs--François Phoebus--The Mother CHAPTER X. The Romances of the Castle of Orthez--Tour de Moncade--The Infants--The Son of Gaston Phoebus--Legends--The Oath--The bad King of Navarre--The Quarrel--The Murder--Death of Gaston Phoebus--Paradise the Reward of Hunters--The Captive--The Step-Mother--The Young Countess--The Great Bear--The Return--The Real Cause--The Meeting in the Forest--The Mass CHAPTER XI. The Countess of Comminges--The Charge--The persecuted Heiress--The Bridge--The Cordelier--Costume--Aspremont--Peyrehourade CHAPTER XII. Bayonne-Public Walks--Biaritz--Atalaya--Giant Fernagus--Anne of Neubourg--The Dancing Mayor CHAPTER XIII. Basque Language--Dialects--Words--Poetry--Songs--The Deserter--Character--Drama--Towns CHAPTER XIV. Cagots--Cacous of Brittany CHAPTER XV. The Cagot--Vallée d'Aspe--Superstitions--Forests--Despourrins--The two Gaves--Bedous--High-road to Saragossa--Cascade of Lescun--Urdos--A Picture for Murillo--La Vache CHAPTER XVI. Aramitz--The Play--Mauléon--The Sisters--Words--St. Jean CHAPTER XVII. Arneguy--The Cacolet--Rolando's Tree--Snow-white Goats --Costume--Sauveterre--The Pastor--Navarreux--Spanish Air BÉARN AND THE PYRENEES. VOL. II. CHAPTER I. RENOWN OF PAU--LECTOURE--THE LABOURER-DUKE--AUCH--TARBES--THE PRINCESS AND THE COUNT--COSTUME--ARRIVAL AT PAU--THE PROMENADES--THE TOWN--IMPROVEMENTS-FIRST IMPRESSIONS--WALKS--BUILDINGS--HOTELS--THE MAGNIFICENT BAKER--THE SWAIN--TOU-CAI! WE left Agen on our way to Pau, where we proposed taking up our winter quarters, having so frequently heard that it was one of the best retreats for cold weather in the South of France: its various perfections casting into the shade those, long-established, but now waning, of Montpelier, Nice, &c. At Lectoure we changed horses, and remained long enough to admire the fine view from its exalted position, and a few of the humours of its population of young ragged urchins, whose gambols with a huge Pyrenean dog diverted us for some time. Lectoure is situated on the summit of an immense rock, surrounded by hills and deep valleys. It was formerly very strongly fortified, as the remains of its Roman and Middle-Age walls attest. The tower of the church, partly Roman, partly English, is a very striking object, from its extreme height and apparent fragility, which is, however, merely imaginary; for it has resisted the efforts of time and war for centuries: it once had a steeple of stupendous height; but as it was continually attracting the stray lightnings, and was, besides, much dilapidated, it was demolished. The episcopal palace, now the Mairie, is near it, bought for the town by Marshal Lannes, Duke de Montebello. The statue of this hero of Napoleon is in the grand square, and his portrait, as well as those of other great men born in Lectoure, adorn the walls of the interior. There are many fine promenades, from whence delicious views can be enjoyed; from that of Fleurance it is said that, on a clear day, the towers of the cathedral of Auch are seen; and the view is bounded by the snowy giants of the Pyrenees. Although the day was fine, we could not, however, distinguish either. This public walk was made at the time when Lannes was a simple labourer in his native place; and he, with others, received six sous a-day for his work. The Duke de Montebello is said afterwards to have sat beneath the trees which overshadow it, and told his companions in arms how his youth was passed, and what his pay was at that time. This is a trait which does the brave soldier's memory infinite honour. The country is agreeable and diversified on the way to Auch, and the two towers of the cathedral are seen at a great distance, crowning the height on which the town stands. They have so much the aspect of a feudal castle, that it is difficult to believe that one is looking on a church. The nearer you approach, the more determined seems the form: and walls, and bastions, and turrets, and ruins, seem rising out of the hill: all, however, as you come quite close, subside into a huge mass, which gives a promise of magnificence and grandeur by no means realized; for there is more of Louis XIV. and XV., than Charles VIII., who began the building, about the architecture; and the towers, which appeared so grand at a distance, have a singularly poor and mean appearance attached to the façade, and compared to the enormous bulk of the fabric. The boast and glory of the cathedral of Auch are the series of painted windows in the choir, of remarkable beauty, and in wonderful preservation: the colours vivid, and the size of the figures colossal; but though extremely gorgeous, they cannot compare, in purity of effect, to earlier specimens, where less is attempted and more accomplished. I never saw such large paintings of the kind: the nearest approach to it being those of the same period at Epernay, amongst the vines of Champagne. There is a great deal of rich sculpture, both in the stalls and in the surrounding tombs, but the taste did not accord with mine, and, on the whole, I felt but little interest in the cathedral: we were spared the usual fearful exhibition in the winding staircase of one of the towers, where a little child, to earn a few sous, is in the habit of suspending itself by a rope, over the well, formed by the twisting steps, and sliding down to the bottom with terrific celerity. The town of Auch did not please me enough to induce us to stay longer than to wait for the diligence, which was passing through to Tarbes; and, having secured the _coupé_ we continued our journey. Before we had travelled half a league, on descending a hill, suddenly, a line of singularly-shaped objects, quite apart from all others in the landscape, told us at once that the purple Pyrenees were in sight; and we indeed beheld their sharp pinnacles cleaving the blue sky before us. For some distance we still saw them; but, by degrees, they vanished into shade as evening came on, and we lost them, and all other sights, in the darkness of night; in the midst of which we arrived at Tarbes. "Tharbes is a large and fine town, situated in a plain country, with rich vines: there is a town, city, and castle, and all closed in with gates, walls, and towers, and separated the one from the other; for there comes from the heights of the mountains of Béarn and Casteloigne the beautiful _River of Lisse_, which runs all throughout Tharbes, and divides it, the which river is as clear as a fountain. Two leagues off is the city of Morlens, belonging to Count de Foix, and at the entrance of the country of Béarn; and beneath the mountain, at six leagues from Tharbes, is the town of Pau, also belonging to the said Count." This is Froissart's description of Tarbes, in his time; and, as far as regards its beautiful sparkling river, which is _not the Lisse_, but the Adour, might apply to it now; for the streams that appear in all directions, in and round the town, are as clear as crystal, and run glittering and murmuring through streets, roads, and promenades, as if the houses and squares had no business there to intercept its mountain-torrent. We were much struck, when we first issued from our hotel in the Place-Maubourguet, to behold, opposite, framed, as it were, in a square opening between the streets, a gigantic mass of blue mountains shining in the sun. They appeared singularly near; and one cannot fail to regard them with a certain awe, as if a new nature had dawned, different from any one had known before. This is the most interesting spot in Tarbes; and its beautiful promenade by the river is also attractive. There are no monuments,--no buildings worth notice. The once fine castle may be traced in a few solid walls, and its moated position; but this tower was one of the first indications we had that all specimens of architectural art had ceased, and in future, with a few exceptions, it must be nature alone which was to interest us. The red _capelines_ of the market-women, and their dark mantles (_capuchins_), lined with the same colour, give their figures a strange, nun-like appearance, which always strikes a stranger, and at first pleases. As these shrouded forms flit about amongst the trees, they look picturesque and mysterious; but the eye soon wearies of this costume, which is totally devoid of grace. The cloak, being so cut as to prevent its falling in folds, hangs stiffly round the wearer's limbs; concealing the shape, and producing a mean effect. It is a sort of penitential habit; and the peaked hood looks like the dress of the San Benitos, or a lively image of the appropriate costume of a witch who might be an inquisitor's victim. We could not help contrasting it with the beautiful and graceful cloak worn by the charming Granvillaises,--those Spanish-looking beauties whose appearance so delighted us in that distant part of Normandy. The Granville girl has also a black camlet mantle, or _capote_; but the stiff hood is not peaked: it is lined with white, and is worn in the most elegant and coquettish manner; showing the figure to great advantage, and setting off the invariably pretty face, and its snow-white, plaited, turban-like cap, never to be seen in the South. There are so few pretty countenances in the Pyrenees, that perhaps even the Granville drapery would not make much difference; but, certainly, nothing can be uglier than to see the manner in which this scanty shroud is dragged over the form; giving more the idea of a beggar anxious to shield herself from the inclemency of the season, than a lively, smart, peasant girl pursuing her avocations. The scarlet gleams of its lining alone in some degree redeem its ugliness; as, at a distance, the vivid colour looks well amongst more sombre tints. It is difficult, at the present day, to picture Tarbes as it was at the period when the Black Prince, and his Fair Maid of Kent, came to this city of Bigorre, in all the splendour of a conqueror, to see the Count of Armagnac, who was in debt to the magnificent Gaston Phoebus, for his ransom, two hundred and fifty thousand francs. The manner in which the count managed to get off part of his debt is not a little amusing. He had represented his case to Edward, who saw nothing in it but a very ordinary event: "You were taken prisoner," said he, "by the Count of Foix; and he releases you for a certain sum. It would be very unreasonable to expect him to waive his claim. I should not do so; nor would my father, the king, in similar circumstances: therefore, I must beg to decline interfering." The Count of Armagnac was much mortified at this straight-forward answer, and began to devise what could be done. He bethought him of the power of beauty; and applied to the right person. Gaston Phoebus arrived at Tarbes, from Pau, with a retinue of six hundred horse, with sixty knights of high birth, and a great train of squires and gentlemen. He was received with much joy and state by the prince and princess, and entertained with infinite honour. The fair princess chose her moment, and took occasion to beg a boon of the Count of Foix, whose gallantry was proverbial; but, just as he was on the point of granting it without condition, a momentary light made him cautious "Ah! madam," said he, "I am a little man, and a poor bachelor, who have not the power to make great gifts; but that which you ask, if it be not of more value than fifty thousand francs, shall be yours." The princess talked and cajoled, and was as charming and insinuating as possible, in hopes to gain her boon entire; but Gaston began to feel certain that the ransom of the Count d'Armagnac was the object of her demand; he, therefore, kept firm, in spite of her fascinations, and she was obliged to name her request that he would forgive the count his ransom. "I told you," replied he, "that I would grant a boon to the value of fifty thousand francs; therefore, I remit him that sum of what he owes me." And thus did the fair Princess of Aquitaine obtain a remission of part of the ransom of the Count d'Armagnac. We took a carriage from Tarbes to Pau,--our intended resting-place for the winter. The drive, for several leagues, was extremely charming; the banks were covered with rich purple heath; the oak and chestnut growing abundantly and luxuriantly. But though, in our certainty of seeing some _new_ growth as we approached nearer to the sunny South, we transformed the round, thick oaks into _cork trees_, we were obliged to submit to disappointment when we were assured that there was not a cork-tree till the Spanish side of the Pyrenees was reached. Long before we arrived at Pau, the hitherto pleasant, bright day had changed, and a sharp, drizzling, chilly rain accompanied us on the remainder of our journey--mist shutting out the prospect, and all becoming as dreary as a wet day makes things everywhere. We were a little surprised to find that there was no amelioration in this particular, since we looked forth upon the streaming streets of Lisieux! We drove into Pau through an ugly suburb, which gave a sufficiently mean idea of its appearance; but we imagined that the town would repay us for its approach. Still the grey, unpainted shutters of the slovenly-looking houses were not replaced by others of brighter and cleaner aspect: still ruined, barrack-like buildings, dilapidated or ill-constructed, met our view; and, when we drove through the whole of the town to the Grande Place de Henri Quatre, and paused at the Hôtel des Postes, instead of a handsome, flourishing inn, we were astonished to see a wretched, ancient, red, low-roofed tenement, adjoining a somewhat ambitious-looking house without taste or grace. Here we could not find accommodation; and, considering the appearance of what we had heard was the best inn, we did not much regret the circumstance. We were equally unsuccessful at several others; having looked at dirty, dingy, black apartments on a fifth floor as the only ones left: so full was the town of visitors returning, in all directions, from the different baths in the Pyrenees, where, as _it had rained all the summer_, invalids and tourists had been lingering for fine days, until patience was exhausted, and "all betook them home." At length we got housed in very tolerable but desolate cold rooms, with furniture as scanty, and accommodations as meagre, as we had ever met with in towns where no English face had been seen, except _en passant_. This surprised us, as we had heard _comfort_ abounded in Pau, as well as every luxury and beauty which wearied travellers would be glad to call their own; add to which, a soft, mild climate, _which could be depended on_, and the only drawback _too little wind_ and too continuous warmth. This was the third of October, and it was as cold as Christmas; the rain continued without ceasing; and, in spite of our impatience, we were obliged to remain in our inn. The next day, however, brighter skies revived us; and when we stepped forth on the rugged pavement, we felt in better spirits; no change, however, did the fine sun and sky operate on the town, which, it is sufficient to say, is one of the ugliest, worst-paved, "by infinite degrees," and most uninteresting that exist in France. The castle, of course, was the first attraction; and--though without the slightest claim to notice on the score of architecture; though dirty, and slovenly, and rugged, and dilapidated, more than could possibly be expected in a region which is immortalized by the name of Henri Quatre, and being, as it is, the goal sought by all travellers, consequently forming the riches of Béarn, the cause of such a host of travellers and tourists visiting Pau; the subject of all boast, the theme of all pride; though it is neglected and contemned by the ingrates of its neighbourhood,--the castle is, from its recollections, almost worth the long journey which is to find it at its close. We returned to the Place Royale, after lingering long, on this our _first_ visit, in the chambers now in the course of restoration by the most thoughtful and beneficent of sovereigns; and there we lost no time in securing an abode in one of the beautifully-situated pavilions of the Bains de la Place Royale,--a new and well-arranged building, let in _suites_ of apartments, well furnished, and perfectly clean and inviting, having been recently renovated. From the windows of the rooms allotted to us, we beheld the whole of the long chain of the magnificent Pyrenees, from the Pic de Bigorre to the giant du Midi, and the countless peaks beyond. Our first impression was almost wild delight at the prospect of living long in a spot with these splendid objects always before our eyes, in uninterrupted grandeur; with a glowing sun always shining, sheltered from the north wind by the high promenade at the back of the house; with a beautiful little rapid stream running along at the base of our tower, the murmuring, sparkling, angry Gave[25] meandering through the meadows beyond; the range of vine-covered and wooded hills opposite, dotted with villas, which glittered white amidst their luxuriant groves; and, at the back of all, the everlasting awful mountains, purple and transparent and glowing with light. [Footnote 25: _Gave_ is the generic name of all the mountain streams in this region, but that of Pau is called _"the Gave,"_ par excellence.] We were not deceived in the enjoyment we anticipated in this particular, for, to make amends for the unwilling _discoveries_ we made as to the reputation of Pau, our mountains seemed to devote themselves to our pleasure, assuming every form of beauty and sublimity to satisfy and enchant us. When we took our first walk in the promenade, improperly called _the Park_, we were fascinated with the extreme beauty of this charmed grove, which is planted in terraces, on a _cóteau_ bordering the Gave, and is _one of the most_ charming possessed by any town in France: there is the same glorious view of the range of giant mountains even more developed than from the Place Royale; the paths are kept clean and clear and neat; the trees are of the finest growth, and everything combines to make it a most attractive spot, though the usual somewhat Gascon mode of describing it, adopted at Pau, as _"the most beautiful in the world,"_ appears to me rather hyperbolical when I recollect those of Laon, Auxerre, Dijon, Dinan, Avranches, and others; which have not, however, the Pyrenees as a back-ground, it must be confessed. The only part of the town of Pau which will bear mention, is that portion which borders the Gave, above a fine avenue of trees, which extends to a considerable distance along the banks of the small clear stream of the Ousse: that is to say, _the houses_ which face the mountains; but the street in which their entrances are found is narrow, dirty, slovenly, and worse than _ill_-paved. These mansions--for some of them are large and isolated--have a magnificent position, and, seen from the Bois Louis, as the grove below is called, have a very imposing aspect. The principal street, Rue de la Prefecture, is extremely mean, and the shops of the least inviting appearance. It is very badly paved throughout its great extent, for it reaches from one end of the town to the other; but here and there a few flagstones serve to make their absence elsewhere regretted. There is one good square, which might be fine if, as seldom happens in France, the intention had been carried out, or success had attended it. There are two rows of good houses, with paved colonnades, but very few of the shops, which should have made it a _Palais Royal_, are inhabited; consequently, the appearance of poverty and desolation is peculiarly striking. One or two houses are taken, and some windows filled with goods, very different from those, doubtless, originally expected to appear; grocers, sadlers, and wine-merchants occupy the places which should have been filled by _marchandes de modes_, jewellers, toysellers, and ornamental merchants. The Place Henri Quatre is, therefore, a half-executed project, and impresses the stranger with no admiration. Another large, desolate space, called the Place Grammont, contains the Champ de Mars, and is dedicated to the military, whose barracks form one side of the square. A walk, called the Haute Plante, is near this, and, descending from it, the baths of Henri Quatre and the Basse Plante are reached, and the approach to the Park. The great horse fair of Pau is kept in the Haute Plante; but it is by no means an inviting spot: the park is, in fact, the only place where one can walk pleasantly; for the pretty Bois Louis is principally devoted to the washerwomen of the town, and soldiers; and the drains of the streets running down in this direction, generally cause so unpleasant an odour, that a stroll there can rarely be accomplished with pleasure. To reach the park and to return from it, is a work of great pain; the pointed and uneven stones making the walk intolerable, and there is no way by which to arrive there, but through the damp, dirty streets. If, as was once projected, a terrace walk was made to extend from the Place Royale--which is a small square planted with trees in rows, to the castle court, it would be an incalculable advantage; and such a means of arriving at the only objects of interest, would be the saving not only of many a sprained ankle, but many a severe cold, as, at all times, the streets are cold and damp; and the less a visitor sees of the town of Pau, and the more of the mountains, and _côteaux_, and streams, the less likely is he to dissatisfied with a residence in this most favoured and misrepresented of all ugly towns. I am told that Pau is greatly _improved_ from what it was seven or eight years ago; if such is the case, the town must then have been in a deplorable condition indeed: that those who are residents from so early a period should be content with the changes which have relieved them from inconvenience, I can easily understand; but that persons who, in Paris or in Normandy, have been accustomed to superior accommodation can be satisfied with Pau, surprises me. Taken in general, those who reside here all the year round, are Irish, Scotch, or from distant country towns in England, many being quite unused to London or Paris; therefore, they can make no comparisons, and from long habit get accustomed to things which must annoy others; but when persons of wealth and condition, forsaking the great capitals and beautiful watering-places at home, and their own splendid and comfortable establishments, come to Pau, to stay for some months, they must surely find that the representations they have heard of it are strangely at variance with truth. Invalids, of course, are glad to submit to whatever may tend to re-establish their health; and, as several persons speak of having derived benefit during their stay, doubtless there is a class of invalids to whom the climate does good: the only question is, would they not have been as well off nearer home, without the enormous expense of so long a journey, and enduring so complete an expatriation? If one must necessarily go to Pau to meet with charming people and hospitality and attention, I should recommend all the world to hasten thither; but, since this can be found at home or elsewhere, from the same persons, I would not, for that reason alone, counsel a residence there. The accident of finding agreeable society amongst one's own countrymen has nothing to do with the Pyrenees; and we have so usurped the place of the original inhabitants, that only a very few French are left; in the same manner as at Boulogne or Tours. Almost all advantages, therefore, to be derived from foreign society are denied, and the frequent parties at Pau are nearly exclusively English. More than one family whom I saw arrive, amused me by their raptures, similar to our own on the first view, on a fine day, of the mountains from the Place Royale or the park; and their subsequent discontent, when the absence of the fitful sun had entirely changed the scene, leaving only the damp dirty town, and a grey space, where the concealed giants shrouded themselves, sometimes for weeks together. People generally are so impressed at first, by the fascination of the _coup d'oeil_, that they hasten to take a house which they cannot engage for less than six months, or, if for three, the price is advanced; fearing to miss the opportunity of settling themselves, they seldom hesitate about the terms, which are generally very high, and, when once placed, they begin to look about them, and regret that they were so precipitate; for they find themselves condemned to a long, dismal winter, in a very uninteresting, expensive town, without any resource beyond their windows, if they face the mountains; or their fire-side, if their chimney do not smoke--which is a rare happiness. There is scarcely a town in Italy, where numerous galleries are not ready to afford a constant intellectual treat, or where fine buildings cannot present objects of admiration; but in Pau all is barren: there is nothing but the mountains to look at--for the view of the hemmed-in-valley is extremely confined--and the park to walk in; which, after all, is a mere promenade, of no great length and no variety, in spite of its convenience and beauty. The ramparts of most towns in France, which are situated in a fine country, present great changes, and consequent excitement in the view; but at Pau it is always from the same spots that you must seek one prospect. The walks out of the town are unpleasant; for almost every way you must traverse a long, dusty, or dirty suburb, and generally follow a high road to a great distance, before you arrive at the place which is to repay your toil: this is annoying, as--though climbing up _côteaux_ and threading the mazes of vineyards is pleasant--two or three miles of dusty road, encumbered with bullock-carts and droves of pigs on the way and _on the return_, is by no means refreshing. If pedestrians are not to be thought of, this is of no consequence, and, indeed, it is a circumstance which frequently occurs in French towns; those who take rides on horseback and venture a long way off, are more fortunate; for they come upon beautiful spots, and can reach sublime views amongst the mountains: a mere two hours' _drive_ does not change the scene from that which is beheld from Pau, and the great similarity of all the views near greatly reduces their interest. On the Bordeaux road, as Pau is approached, the sudden burst of the mountains on the sight is very fine; but there are no meadows, no lanes, nothing but a broad, _grande route_, from which the pedestrian can behold this. To reach the pretty _côteaux_ of Jurançon and Gelos, one must walk for a mile and a half along a high road, and through a slovenly suburb; to reach the height of Bizanos, where a fine view of the mountains can be obtained, it is necessary to go through the whole straggling village of Bizanos, and run the gauntlet of a whole population of washerwomen, while every tree and hedge is hung with _drapery_ bleaching in the air. Bizanos is called a _pretty village_; but those who so designate it can only be thinking of utility, like our hostess at La Rochelle, when she took us to a grand sight, which turned out to be no other than a washing-establishment. The French have, it is acknowledged, no taste for the picturesque, and it appeared to me as if the complaisance of the English abroad led them to agree that anything is pretty which pleases their foreign friends. No doubt, there is infinitely better accommodation at Pau, than at any other town in the neighbourhood of the baths of the Pyrenees, and those who really require to attend them for several seasons--for it seems that it is generally necessary to do so--are quite right to make Pau their headquarters; but that those who seek amusement should remain at Pau in preference to Italy, or even other towns in France, is inexplicable. I do not know whether many return after they have once departed; but there are seldom fewer than six hundred English and Americans here in the winter. One English family arrived during our stay, took a large house, and made every arrangement for the winter; but, frightened by the continued bad weather, they left it in haste for Paris. I confess I was surprised others did not do the same. All modern French writers describe Pau as "a _charming town_" alluding, of course, to the _society_, which is to them the great desideratum everywhere; besides, they are accustomed to ill-paved streets, and are not fastidious about cleanliness. The guide-books of these parts cite the descriptions of early writers in order to compare its present with its former state; two are given, which are certainly as much at variance as those obtained by strangers at the present day. In a work printed in 1776, the following passage occurs: "The town of Pau is of an ordinary size; the greatest part of its houses are well-built, and covered with slate. It is the seat of a parliament, a university, an academy of _belles lettres_, and a mint. The greatest part of the _noblesse_ of Béarn make it their usual abode; the Jesuits have a large college founded by Louis XIII. There is a seminary under the direction of the brothers of St. Lazare, a convent of Cordeliers, another of Capuchins, and four nunneries. At the western extremity of the town, is an ancient castle, where the princes of Béarn resided, and where King Henry IV. was born." The intendant Lebret said of Pau, in 1700:-- "The town of Pau consists of two streets, tolerably long, but very ill-constructed; it possesses nothing considerable. The _palais_ is one of the worst kept possible--the most incommodious, and the most dirty; the _maison de ville_ is still worse. The parish church cannot contain a quarter of the inhabitants, and is, besides, as ill-supported and as bare of ornament as one would see in the smallest village." Something between these two accounts might serve to give an idea of what the town is now: the public buildings are totally unworthy of mention, indeed, the only one at all remarkable is the new market-place, which is very large, and solidly built. The churches are more in number, but quite as insignificant as when Lebret wrote; the protestant _"temple"_ has not more claim on observation as a piece of architecture, and, being built over the bed of a water-course, is supposed to be in some danger, and is extremely chill in winter. Through the midst of the town runs a deep ravine,--the bed of a stream called the Hédas--which divides it into two, and gives it a very singular effect; a bridge over this connects the two parts; the castle rises from one side, a venerable object; which, whenever seen, excites interest from its history rather than appearance; from this point it looks like an old prison, and the host of grim, dirty houses which clothe the steeps are anything but worthy of admiration. The quarter of the Place Royale is called by the French, _the Chaussée d'Antin_ of Pau--a somewhat ambitious distinction, which must a little surprise a Parisian when he enters it, and observes a shabby row of small low houses and cafés for the soldiery, on one side of the square space planted with trees, where the _élite_ of Pau are supposed to walk. On the opposite side, a large hotel spreads out its courts, and a house with unpainted shutters and weather-stained walls; at the extremity, is what seems a ruined church, but which is, in fact, a building left half-finished to fall to decay, where the wood for the military is kept; nothing can be so desolate as the aspect on this side, and the stranger is amazed at the slovenly and dilapidated scene; but he must suspend his judgment, and walk along one of the short avenues till he reaches a parapet wall, where he forgets Pau and its faults in a single glance; for there the grand prospect of the mountains bursts upon him, and its magnificence can scarcely be exceeded. As soon as the fine weather begins, this place, on a Sunday, is crowded with promenaders, principally tradespeople of the town. A military band is stationed here, and thunders forth peals of music much to the delight of the listeners. A very gay scene is presented on this occasion; but there is little characteristic, as no costumes are to be seen, and the _élégantes_ of Pau are exactly like those of any other town. Along the rugged, damp street, which runs from the back of the Place Royale, are most of the best houses in Pau: those on the side next the valley have the same glorious view as the promenade allows, and are generally taken by the English: one or two of these are fitted up in very good style, and made extremely comfortable; indeed, from this point mansion after mansion has been built, each of which has peculiar attractions; and, though not handsome or elegant, are good, square, large dwelling-houses, sufficiently convenient. These are designated by _French describers as magnifiques hótels_, &c.; and fortunate are the English families who possess them as dwellings: they have all good gardens, and may boast of one of the finest views of the mountains that it is possible to obtain. The college, founded by Henry IV., is a large and airy building, without grace or beauty, and enclosed in high walls: it has an imposing effect, from the height of the village of Bizanos, on the opposite side of the Gave. The Hôtel de la Prefecture, and that where the valuable archives of the town are kept, possess neither beauty nor dignity: the space opposite is now occupied by the new market-house--which appears never to be used, for all the goods are spread out on the stones before it, as if it was only there for ornament: in this space, the guillotine was erected in the time of terror, and the murders of the great, and good, and respectable inhabitants took place. Unfortunately, this is a record, too recent, which every town in France can furnish. It appears to me that the people of Pau are quiet, honest, simple, and obliging; at least, we never saw an instance to the contrary, except on our first arrival, when our driver took off the horses from the carriage in the inn-yard, and refused to go a step further to seek for accommodation for us; but I suspect he was not a native of the town. The landlady of the inn--who came from Bordeaux--with a mysterious wink, assured us we should find all the common people the same--"_Ces Béarnais sont tous brutals!_" was her remark; but we did not find her in the right. The Gascon character, though here a little softened, prevails a good deal, as the continued boasting about their town proves, and a certain pomposity in their demeanour, which, however, is harmless and amusing. We were in the habit of employing a baker, who made what was called English bread, and the magnificent manner in which he paid his visits to our domicile was very comic. Our maid, Jeannotte, being out of the way, we were one day disturbed by a vociferous knocking at our parlour-door--for in general all the passage-doors are left open--and hurrying to admit the clamorous visitant, we beheld the baker's assistant, M. Auguste, with a tray of loaves on his head and one in his hand, which he thrust forth, accompanying the action with a flourish and a low bow, exclaiming, "De la part de César!" We were not then aware that such was the name of our baker, and were much awed by the announcement. Another of our domestic visitors was a source of considerable entertainment to us, and became still more so through the _espièglerie_ of our attendant, Jeannotte, who took occasion to mystify him at our expense. This object of mirth was a little stout mountaineer, who came every week from his home in the mountains--between the valleys of Ossau and Aspe--with a load of butter and cheese, with which his strong, sure-footed horse was furnished. In the severest weather this little man would set out; and on one occasion his horse had to be dug out of the snow in one of the passes; but the desire of gain, which invariably actuates these people, and a carelessness of hardship, made him treat all his dangers lightly. He was in the habit of coming to us every week, and generally made his way to our part of the house, as he appeared amused to _look at us_ as much as we were to converse with him, and ask him questions about bears, wolves, and avalanches. His stock of French was small, and he had a peremptory way of demanding what he required, as he divided his neat pieces of butter for our service. He could not be more than five feet high, but was a sturdy, strong-built man, though of very small proportions. One day when delivering his charge to Jeannotte, she asked him in _patois_,--her own tongue--if he was married; he started at the question, and begged to know her reason for inquiring; she informed him it was for the benefit of Mademoiselle, who wished to know. The little hero paused, and presently, in rather an anxious tone, demanded of Jeannotte what mademoiselle's reason could possibly be for requiring the knowledge. "There is no telling," said she, archly, "Mademoiselle thinks you very amiable." "Is it possible!!" said he, musing; "you don't surely imagine--_do_ you think she would have me?" The laughter of Jeannotte quite abashed the gallant mountaineer, and he replaced his load of butter on his brown _berret_ and disappeared, nor would he for some time afterwards pay us a visit. At length he did so, and I found his modest confusion apparent in his forgetting to take the full change of his money, actually on one occasion abandoning _half a sous_ of his just due, and retiring with a "C'est égal." When we told him we were going away he was much struck, and stayed longer than usual gazing at us, till we thought he intended to open his mind, and declare his intentions to share his mountain-home with one of our party. I therefore gave him a note of recommendation for his butter to a friend, and he retired apparently more satisfied, though with a heavy sigh and a murmured hope--expressed half in _patois_--that we would come back to the Pyrenees in the summer. There is still a good deal of simplicity left amongst this people, and certainly but little wit. Strong affection seems to be felt by them towards their relations, and quarrels seem rare; the Béarnais are said to be drunkards; but I never remember to have seen any instances of this in the streets. They are slovenly, and the lower classes extremely dirty; the market-women, in their white flannel peaked hoods of a hideous form, or their handkerchiefs loosely tied, without grace and merely for warmth, have in the cold season a very unpicturesque appearance, and the shrill shrieking voices of those who scream hot chesnuts to sell about the streets, uttering their piercing cry of "_tou cai, tou cai_!"[26] is anything but pleasing to the ear. The servants, however, seem good, industrious, honest, and very civil; and, as far as our own experience went, we saw only good conduct; while from our hostess at the Bain Royal we met with liberality and extreme courtesy; she, it is true, is from the refined city of Toulouse, but has long resided at Pau, and I should certainly counsel any stranger, whom, they would suit, to choose her apartments as a residence; for her pavilions are situated in the most agreeable position, out of the noise and dampness of the town, and with the whole range of Pyrenees constantly in uninterrupted view. [Footnote 26: All hot! all hot!] CHAPTER II. THE CLIMATE OF PAU--STORMS--FINE WEATHER--PALASSOU--REASONS FOR GOING TO PAU--THE WINTER. ONE of the chief inducements to foreigners, particularly the English, to visit Pau for the winter, is the reputation of its climate for mildness and softness. When we arrived, in October, in a storm of rain, it was, we understood, the continuation of a series of wet weather, which, throughout the year, had made the whole country desolate, and the company at all the baths had, in consequence, left a month sooner than usual; for a fortnight after our establishment at Pau, nothing could be more agreeable than the season, precisely answering to the beautiful weather which my letters announced from different parts of England. During this time the mountains were rarely visible, and when seen appeared indistinctly. This charming fortnight, during which Pau seemed to deserve all the commendations so profusely bestowed on it, was a promise of the calm and peaceful winter which I was told was always to be found in these favoured regions; I bore the sarcasms against the fogs and, above all, the uncertainty of the climate of gloomy England, as well as I could; and my assertion that, till the first week in November, I had last year bathed in the sea at Brighton, was received with indulgent smiles of pity at my nationality, both by French and English; but of course not believed, for the air of France, I have always observed, has such a property of effacing the remembrance of sunny days passed on the other side of the channel, that, by degrees, our countrymen arrive at the belief that nothing but fog and rain are ever to be seen in our ill-fated island, and they imagine that, till they came abroad, their knowledge of blue sky or bright sun was obtained only in pictures, but had no existence on the banks of the Thames or elsewhere, in the desolate regions they had quitted. The morning of the 18th of October rose brilliantly, and was succeeded by a burning day; in the afternoon ominous clouds suddenly appeared, and brought a storm of rain and hail, whose effects were felt in the extreme cold of the atmosphere for some days, when another change came over the face of things, which brought forth the character of this calm, quiet place, where the excessive _stillness_ of the air is cited as almost wearying, in quite a different light. It has been said, and is frequently cited, that a certain sea-captain left Pau in disgust, after passing some months there, because he could never obtain a _capful of wind_. If that anonymous gentleman had had the good fortune to be at Pau on the night of the 23rd of October, I think he would have fixed his domicile for the rest of his life there; for such a furious hurricane he could seldom have had the good fortune to enjoy. For four hours in the dead of night, without intermission, the howling of the wind through the gorges of the mountains, the rush and swell amongst the hills, vales, and across the plains, was perfectly appalling. Every moment seemed to threaten annihilation to all within its reach; chimneys were dashed down in every direction, trees torn up by the roots, and the triumph of the tempest fiend complete. Furious rain and hail succeeded on the following day, with occasional gleams of sun; and then came a calm, beautiful, summer day again, and the mountains shone out as brightly as possible. This gave place to thick fog and a severe frost on the very next day, lasting for several days; rain then diversified the scene, and on the 29th a wind rose in the night almost as furious as the last, which continued the whole of the day following: a cold gloomy morrow, and the next bright, hot, and pleasant, ended October. The next day was a triumph for Pau:--"When," asked every one we met--"when, in_ England_, would you see such a 1st of November?" All my vivid recollections of charming strolls on the beach and downs in Sussex, and in Windsor Park, were looked upon as figments. I heard no boasting on the 2nd, nor for three more days, for it was foggy, and rained hard, and no one could stir out. On the 6th, a heavy fall of snow had clothed the whole country in white; and now, for three days, a sharp, frosty wind prevented any more remarks about the softness of the climate. The frost and snow had disappeared, as by enchantment, on the 11th, the night of which was so sultry that to keep windows shut was impossible. The Fair of Pau was ushered in by rain, on the 12th; the 13th was as hot as the hottest day in July, accompanied by a good deal of fog, for several days: then came violent wind, hail-storms, wind again--louder and more furious--fog, cold, occasionally bright; and November disappeared on a misty morning, which ended in a burning day, without a breath of air, all glare and faintness. We were now told that, though St. Martin had failed to keep his summer at the right time, he was never known to desert his post; and as in almanacks a day before or a day after makes no difference, we were content to accept his smiles for nine days in the beginning of December. Again came the question--"When, in England?" &c. and I began to think we were peculiarly favoured, when, lo! letters arrived from that vexatious clime, speaking of "days perfectly lovely," "new summer," and all precisely like a plagiarism on Pau. Fortunately for the reputation of the Pyrenees, no one would, of course, credit this fact; and the English invalids, who had been covering their mouths with handkerchiefs, and shutting themselves up from the variations of the atmosphere, breathed again, and at once generously forgot all but the bright sun and warm air which had come once more to greet them. It was true that every leaf had long since disappeared from the trees in the park, and that the sun glared fearfully on the high, unsheltered walks; but the partisans of salubrity hastened to disport themselves in its rays, till _three cases in one week_ of _coup de soleil_ began to startle even the most presuming; and the expected death of one of the patients, together with _another change_ of weather to wet, cold, and fog, silenced further remark. We were assured that the extraordinary alternations of climate we had experienced for two months, was a circumstance quite unheard-of before in Pau, and we looked on ourselves as singularly unlucky in having, by chance, chosen a season so unpropitious. A few simple persons, who ventured to remark that the winter of last year was very similar, were told that they must have been mistaken; and some who recollected high winds were considered romancers. We looked at the strong _contre-vents_ placed outside the windows of our dwelling, and wondered why such a work of supererogation should have taken place as to put them there, if the hurricanes we had witnessed were unusual, when I one day, during a high wind, as I sat at home, happened to take up Palassou's Mémorial des Pyrénées, and read as follows:-- "TEMPERATURE OF THE LOWER PYRENEES--ITS EFFECTS OFTEN DANGEROUS. "It is well known that divers places differ in their temperature, although they are situated in the same degrees of latitude; the vicinity of the sea, of great rivers, mountainous chains, &c. renders the air more or less hot or cold, serene or cloudy; the modifications which these circumstances occasion are principally remarked in the countries adjacent to the Pyrenees. Snow, frost, and abundant rains, are, for instance, more frequent than in Languedoc or Provence, although these climates are placed beneath the same degree of latitude as the former. "It is easy to believe that vegetable nature feels this influence. If we except the plains of Roussillon, and some small cantons situated at the foot of the eastern Pyrenees, where a mild temperature may be found, it is to be observed that nowhere, contiguous to this chain, are seen the odoriferous plants and trees common to the South of France. The eye seeks in vain the pomegranate, with its rich crimson fruit; the olive is unknown; the lavender requires the gardener's aid to grow. The usual productions of this part are heath, broom, fern, and other plants, with prickly thorns: these hardy shrubs seem fitted, by their sterility, to the variable climate which they inhabit. "In effect, the snows of winter, covering the summits of the Pyrenees for too long a time, prolong the cold of this rigorous season sometimes to the middle of spring; then come the frosts which destroy the hopes of the vine-grower. "'_Storms are very frequent in Béarn_,' says M. Lebret, intendant of Béarn in 1700; he might have added," continues Palassou, "to the list of dangers to the harvests--_the frequent and destructive fogs_ to which the country is subject. "In the landes of the Pont-Long, I have often seen, in the environs of Pau, fogs rise from those grounds covered with fern, broom, and other naturally growing plants, while in parts more cultivated it was clear. * * * The agriculturists of Béarn have not attempted to till the lands in the neighbourhood of Pau, finding them too stubborn to give hopes of return, and _the climate being so very variable_; cultivated produce being peculiarly sensible to the effects of an air which _is one day burning and the next icy_. "One might write whole volumes if it was the object to relate all the effects of storms which, accompanied with hail, devastate the countries in the neighbourhood of the Pyrenees. It will be sufficient to recount what has come under my own observation. During one violent storm of thunder and lightning, the hail-stones were _as large as hens' eggs_, and desolated the whole range over which it swept. It was immediately followed by a second, less furious, but which did immense damage; and others, little less terrific, followed in the course of the month--June." Palassou here goes on to describe several dreadful storms of peculiar fury, which were more than usually destructive, and are common in these regions. He considers, that the cutting down of the forests on the mountains, which formerly sheltered the plains and valleys, has contributed to increase the storms in latter years. Summer in the midst of winter, seems by no means uncommon, and winter in summer as little so. The _autun_, or south wind, generally brings the burning days which so much surprised me; but, according to this author, _it is extremely unwholesome_ and dangerous to persons inclined to apoplexy; as, indeed, its effects during our stay at Pau led me to imagine. I cannot feel much confidence, I confess, in a climate where you are told that so many precautions must be taken: for instance, you are never to walk in the sun; you must avoid going out in the evening, at all seasons; you must be careful not to meet the south wind; in fact, you can scarcely move without danger. I ask myself, what can possibly induce so many of my countrymen to travel so far for such a climate,--to put themselves to so great an expense for such a result? for, if England is not perfect as to climate, it has at any rate few unhealthy spots from which you cannot readily escape to a better position: we are never in terror of a _sirocco_,--nor need wrap up our mouths in handkerchiefs to avoid breathing _malaria_. Our climate is variable, but less so than in the Pyrenees; and it is scarcely worth while to go so far to find one worse, and more dangerous to life. Hurricanes are rarer with us than there. We may not often have such hot summers in winter, but neither do we _often_ have such cold winters in summer. It frequently rains with us, but it rains as often at Pau; and, however annoying are the variations of which we complain at home, we assuredly do not escape them by travelling eight hundred miles to take up our abode close to icy mountains, in a dirty, damp town, in an uncomfortable house: add to which, we gain little in economy; for Pau is as dear as Paris, without any of the advantages of the capital. Altogether, the more experience I have of the climate of Pau, the more surprised I am at the crowds of English who resort to this town for the winter: the greatest part of them, it is true, are not invalids, but persons seduced into this nook by its reputation, and arriving too late in the season to leave it. They grumble, and are astonished to find themselves no better off than if they had stayed at home; but they are, it would seem, ashamed to confess how much they have been deceived, and, therefore, remain silent on the subject of climate, content to praise the beauty of the country in fine weather, and enjoy the gaieties and hospitalities which they are sure to meet with. If people came only for the latter advantages, I should not be surprised at their trooping hitherward, provided they were robust enough to bear the _mildness_ of climate; but that is not the avowed reason, and those they give are altogether insufficient to account for the mania of wintering at Pau. Perhaps the best means of ascertaining the nature of the climate is by occasionally looking over old newspapers. In a French one of Jan. 10, 1841, I was struck with this announcement: "Pau.--On Thursday last, in the night, the snow fell so abundantly that it was half-way up the legs, in the morning, in the streets. On Friday morning the _porte-cochère_ of one of the _splendid hotels in our Chaussée d'Antin (!)_ opened, and forth issued an elegant sledge, drawn by two _magnificent_ horses, crowned with white plumes. This novel spectacle attracted the attention of the whole town. The elegant vehicle darted along till it reached the Rue de la Prefecture, &c. &c. and the Pont-Long." It must be confessed that it is seldom in any part of our _cold climate_ that we have the power of such an exhibition in the streets. It is reserved for the invalids who fly to the South of France to avoid a severe winter. "23rd Dec. 1840. A great deal of snow has fallen between Bayonne and Peyrehorade: the road is become almost impassable." But I must continue the winter as I found it at Pau in 1842 and 1843. December, with intervals of two days' wind and rain, was extremely pleasant, bright, and clear, and the days very long; for till half-past four one could see to write or read: a circumstance which does not often occur in England during this month. Christmas Day differed but little from many I have known at home: pleasant, bright, sunny, and clear; rather cold, but more agreeable, from its freshness, than the unnatural heat which sometimes accompanies the sun. All the accounts from England proved that the weather was precisely the same. For the two next days, it was fine and very cold, with a high, _easterly_ wind; two days warm and pleasant; then succeeded a sharp frost and bright sun; and December closed, dull, cold, and dark. January began cold, sharp, and gusty--some days biting, and some black and foggy; and from the 5th to the 12th it blew a perfect hurricane, with thunder, one fine day intervening, and occasionally a few bright hours in the course of some of the days. The storm on the night of the 11th was terrific, and it lasted, equally violent, with hail and thunder, all the next day--bright gleams of sun darting out for a moment, and revealing the mountains, to close them in again with mist and rain before you had scarcely time to remark the change. About the middle of the day the wind increased in violence, and the hail came down with fury, thick grey clouds gathered over the sky, the lightning flashed vividly, the thunder echoed far and near, and the gusts howled as if hundreds of wolves were abroad. King Arthur and all his _meinie_ must have been out, for the appearance over the mountains was most singular. A broad space of clear _green-blue_ sky was seen just above the white summits of several of the mountains, clearly showing the large fields of snow which extended along their flat surfaces, which are broken at the sides by projections, like buttresses, of purple rock, on which dark shadows fell; gleams of sun illumined the edges of the snow on the highest peaks, for a brief space, while, by degrees, the other mountains were sinking away into a thick haze which had already covered the nearest hills. The marshy fields on the banks of the murmuring Gave, and the little Ousse, now swelled to large rivers, and as thick and clay-coloured as the Garonne itself, were covered with a coating of hail, and the snow and transparent mist were seen driving along from peak to peak with amazing rapidity, as if they had been smoke. Presently, the narrow space of blue sky was dotted with small grey specks, as if showers were falling from the heavy canopy above, and, shutting closer and closer, the great mass suddenly sank down, concealing the glittering peaks which strove to shine out to the last. Then all became black; the thunder roared, the wind howled, the hail beat, and winter and storm prevailed. I watched all this with delight; for it was impossible to see anything more sublime, and I could not but congratulate myself that the abode we had chosen, just above the valley and detached from the town, at the foot of the promenade of the Place Royale, gave us an opportunity of seeing such a storm in perfection. It was true that we often thus had our rest disturbed at night, by the sweep of the wind along the whole range of the valley between the _côteaux_; but its melancholy sound, bringing news, as it were, from the mountains and the sea, was pleasant music to my ears, and startling and exciting, when it rose to the ungovernable fury with which I became so well acquainted during our winter at this _quiet place for invalids_! If Pau were recommended as a place where storms could be seen in perfection, I should not wonder at persons crowding there, who delight in savage nature. The gales from the 5th to the 15th continued furiously, night and day; the wind howled from all points, rocking the houses, and strewing the ground with ruins--then came a change to hot quiet days for a week. In England, and in all parts of France, the season I am describing was equally violent, but this only proves that Pau has no shelter on these occasions. January ended with fine weather, and occasional fogs, not so dense as in London, certainly, but as thick as in the country in England. The sun, in the middle of the day, being always dangerously hot. My letters from England still announced the same weather, _without the danger_. In February, we had a few days like August, then a heavy fall of snow, which for eight days covered the ground, and was succeeded by burning days; and the month ended with heavy rain and floods. March began with cold winds and rain and sharp frost; and when I left Pau the ground was encrusted with frost in all directions. CHAPTER III. THE CASTLE OF HENRI QUATRE--THE FURNITURE--THE SHELL--THE STATUE--THE BIRTH--CASTEL BEZIAT--THE FAIRY GIFT--A CHANGE--HENRI QUATRE. "Qui a vist le castig de Pau Jamey no a viat il fait." WHEN Napoleon, in 1808, passed through the town of Pau, the Béarnais felt wounded and humbled at the indifference he showed to the memory of their hero, Henri Quatre: he scarcely deigned to glance at the château in which their cherished countryman was born; and with so little reverence did he treat the monument dear to every heart in Béarn, that his soldiers made it a barrack; and, without a feeling of regard or respect for so sacred a relic, used it as cavalierly _as if it had been a church_. They stabled their steeds in the courts of Gaston Phoebus, they made their drunken revelry resound in the chambers of Marguerite de Valois; and they desecrated the retreat where _La brebis a enfanté un Lio_--where Jeanne d'Albret gave birth to him, who, in the language of his mountains, promised that every Frenchman should have a _poule au pot_[27] in his reign. [Footnote 27: The _poule au Pot_ is a general dish with the Béarnais.] That Napoleon should not care for a royal soldier, whose fame he desired his own deeds should eclipse; and of whom, as of all illustrious men, living or dead, the _little_ great man was jealous, is not surprising. He had nothing in common with Henri Quatre; and the Revolution, which had brought him forward, had swept away antique memories. The statue of their once-adored Henri had been cast into the Seine with ignominy, by the French, and his name was execrated, as if he had been no better than the legitimate race whom popular fury condemned to oblivion: Napoleon's policy was not to restore an abandoned worship; and he would have seen the last stone fall from the castle of Pau without notice. But that the long line of kings, who were always boasting of their descent from the immortal Béarnais, should have neglected, contemned, or pillaged his birth-place, reflects little honour on the memory of any. The son of Mary de Medici came only to Béarn after his father's death, to carry off all that was precious in art, collected by the kings and queens of Navarre, for centuries--treasures which, according to the historians of the time, had not their parallel in the sixteenth century. The palace of the Louvre became rich in the spoils of Béarn: tapestry, pictures, furniture, objects of _virtu_ of all kinds were borne away, and nothing left in its original place. Louis the Fourteenth and his successor occupied themselves little with the country, except to levy subsidies upon it: they knew nor cared nothing for Navarre; except as it supplied them with titles or gave them funds. Louis the Sixteenth, the last of the Bourbons who took the oath to observe the _Fors_[28] of Béarn, promised to act differently, and to occupy himself with this forgotten nook of his dominions; but the fatal events, prepared by his profligate predecessors of the last two reigns, which hurled him from his throne, prevented the accomplishment of his intentions. [Footnote 28: The celebrated Laws of Béarn are called _Les Fors_.] As for the sovereign people, when they became rulers, the contempt with which they overwhelmed everything aristocratic, was bestowed in full measure on the abode of him who had been their friend: and the triumph of vengeance, ignorance, and ingratitude, was complete, here as elsewhere. The neglected castle of the sovereigns of Béarn,--for none of whom, except the immediate family of the brave and bold Henry, need one care to be a champion--remained then a mighty heap of ruin, which every revolving year threatened to bring nearer to utter destruction; when another revolution, like an earthquake, whose shock may restore to their former place, rocks, which a preceding convulsion had removed, came to "renew old Æson:" Louis Philippe, to whom every nook and corner of his extensive kingdom seems familiar, so far from forgetting the _berceau_ of his great ancestor, hastened to extend to the castle of Pau a saving hand, and to bring forth from ruin and desolation the fabric which weeds and ivy were beginning to cover, and which would soon have been ranged with the shells of Chinon, Loches, and other wrecks of days gone by. When the architect, employed by the king to execute the Herculean labour of restoring the castle of Pau, first arrived, and saw the state of dilapidation into which it had fallen, he must have been appalled at the magnitude of his undertaking. Seeing it, as I do now,[29] grim, damp, rugged, ruined, and desolate, even in its state of transition, after several years of toil have been spent upon its long-deserted walls; I can only feel amazed that the task of renovating a place so decayed should ever have been attempted; but, after what has been done, it may well be hoped and expected that the great work will be, in the end, fully accomplished; and ten years hence, the visitor to Pau will disbelieve all that has been said of the melancholy appearance of the château of Henri Quatre. [Footnote 29: This was written on the spot.] What must have been the state of things before the pretty bridge, which spans the road and leads from the castle terrace to the walk, called La Basse Plante, existed? I am told that a muddy stream, bordered with piles of rubbish, filled up this portion of the scene; but, in less than a year, all was changed, and the pleasant terrace and neat walks which adorn this side of the castle are promises of much more, equally ornamental and agreeable. Some of the tottering buildings attached to the strangely-irregular mass, were, it seems, condemned by the bewildered architect to demolition, as possessing no beauty, and encumbering the plans of improvement; but the late Duke of Orleans came to visit the castle, and had not the heart to give consent that any of the old walls, still standing, should be swept away. He looked at the place with true poetic and antiquarian feeling, and arrested the hand of the mason, who would have destroyed that part called _La Chancellerie_, which extends between the donjon of Gaston Phoebus to the Tour Montauzet. The prince represented to his father his views on the subject, which were instantly adopted--a question of taste in that family meets with no opposition--and all was to have been arranged according to the ideas of the heir of France, who seemed inclined to make Pau an abode at a _future day_: the King was to have visited the interesting old castle: much animated discussion and much enthusiasm prevailed on the subject in the interior of the royal circle, and the Berceau of Henri Quatre seemed destined to proud days again. "When, hush! hark! a deep sound comes like a rising knell!" The wail of a whole nation tells that that _anticipated future_ may not come! A cloud has again gathered over the valley of the Gave, and a sad pause--the pause of blighted hopes--has chilled the expectations in which Béarn had ventured to indulge. But the castle is not, even now, neglected: the architects are still there; workmen are still busy, chiseling and planing; the beautiful arabesques and reliefs are coming forth to view, restored with all their original delicacy: the ceilings are glowing with fresh gilding, the walls are bright with fresh tapestry, and the rooms are newly floored. But for the dreadful event which must cast a gloom over France for some years, the castle would, probably, have been sufficiently put in order for a royal visitor this year; but all the magnificent furniture, sent down from Paris to fit up the _suite_ intended for use, now stands unarranged, and a stop is put to embellishment. Amongst the most curious and interesting pieces of this furniture, are the bed and chair of Jeanne d'Albret, her screen--perhaps worked by her own hand--and the bed of Henry II.: all fine specimens of art in this style; the latter, in particular, is quite unique, and is one of the most curious I have ever seen: the sculpture is very elaborate; at the foot reclines, in relief, a Scotch guard, such as always lay at the threshold of the sovereign, at the period when this piece of furniture was made. An owl of _singular expression_ sits watching, opposite, surrounded by foliage and poppies, quite in character with the sleepy scene: the posts of the bedstead are beautifully turned: it is so formed as to draw out and close in, forming a _bed by night_, _a cabinet by day_; and the carved arch at the back is sculptured in the most exquisite manner. A _prie-Dieu_ of the same date is near; but all this furniture is merely _housed_ for the present, as nothing is arranged; one, of course, looks at these specimens with an admiration which has nothing to do with Henri Quatre's castle, as they would be equally well placed in M. de Somerard's museum, at the delightful Hôtel de Cluny. A tapestry screen, said to be of the time of Charles VII., has a place in this heterogeneous collection: it represents the Maid of Orleans, crowned by victorious France, whose _lilies_ are restored, and her enemies trampled under her feet; in the back-ground is the sea, with strange-looking monsters huddled into its waves, in apparent terror: these are the Leopards of England taking flight from the shores of France. The colours are well preserved in this piece of work, and the whole composition deserves to be remarked, if not for the correctness of its drawing, for the _naïveté_ of its details. It might have been better to have filled the castle with furniture belonging exclusively to the time, or anterior to that of Henry IV.; and it struck me that much which has arrived from Paris, of the period of Louis XIV., is out of keeping with the _souvenirs_ of the castle of Pau. I almost hope that, if ever it is entirely restored, these pieces of furniture will be banished, and others, more antique, substituted. The tapestry with which the walls are covered is very curious and appropriate; it is chiefly of the time of Francis I.; and some beautiful Gobelins, of modern date, representing different scenes in the life of Henry, equally so. The most, indeed the only, beautiful portions of the castle, are the ceilings of the principal staircase and passages leading from it; the medallions of which present the heads of Marguerite de Valois and her husband, Henry d'Albret, with their interlaced initials and arms on the walls: these again occur on the mantel-pieces, in the midst of very exquisite arabesques, which the skill of the modern sculptor is restoring with singular delicacy. The object which excites the most interest in the castle, is the famous shell of a tortoise, of immense size, said to have served as a cradle to the little hero whose birth was hailed with such rapture by his expectant grandfather. One would fain believe that this is indeed the identical _berceau de Henri IV._ so much talked of; but it is difficult to reconcile all the improbabilities of its being so: the substitution of another, after the real shell had been burnt in the castle-court, may do credit to those who cherish the hero's name; always provided no less generous motive induced the act; but the tale told to prove its identity is, unfortunately, not convincing. The shell is suspended in the centre of a chamber, formerly the _salle de réception_ of Henry II. d'Albret, and surrounded with trophies, in tawdry taste, which it is the intention to have removed, and the gilt helmet and feathers replaced by some armour really belonging to King Henry. Those who contend for this being the genuine shell say, that, when on the 1st of May, 1793, the revolutionary mob came howling into the castle-court, with the intention of destroying every relic of royalty, the precious shell was hastily removed, and _another put in its place_, belonging to a loyal subject who had been induced to sacrifice his own to save the public treasure. M. de Beauregard had, it seems, a cabinet of natural history, in which was a tortoise-shell of very similar size and appearance: this he gave up, and, with the assistance of other devoted persons, it was conveyed to the castle, and put into the accustomed place, while the real shell was carefully hidden in a secure retreat. The mob seized upon the substitute, and, with frantic cries, danced round the fire in the court while they saw it burn to ashes, little dreaming how they had been deceived: years after, the truth was revealed, and the cradle of the Béarnais was produced in triumph. Whether, in the midst of the terror attending the proceedings of savages athirst for blood, it was likely that such cool precautions were taken to save a _relic_ when _lives_ were at stake, is a question which seems easily answered; but there is such a charm about the belief, that, perhaps, _'tis folly to be wise_ on the subject. The fine marble statue of Henry, which is appropriately placed in one of the chambers, was executed soon after the battle of Ivry: it is by Francavilla, and very expressive: it belonged to the Gallery of Orleans, and was presented to the town of Pau by the King. The room said to be that where Henry was born, and where Jeanne d'Albret sang the famous invocation, "_Notre Dame au bout du Pont_," is on the second story of a tower, from whence, as from all this side of the castle, is a magnificent view of the mountains, and the valley of the Gave. There is nothing now left but bare walls; but on the chimney is sculptured the tortoise-shell cradle, and the arms of Béarn and Navarre; these rooms will be all repaired and restored; at present, the whole _suite_ reminded me of the desolation of the castle of Blois, which was desecrated in the same manner by soldiery, who made it a barrack. The room which was Henry's nursery has a few of the original rude rafters of the ceiling remaining, which one would wish should not be removed; but it is said that it is necessary. The thick coating of whitewash cleared away from the chimney-piece will, probably, disclose more sculpture, similar to that in the other rooms. Queen Jeanne had been unfortunate in losing her other children, one of whom died in a melancholy manner. While she was out hunting with her father and her husband, the nurse and one of her companions, being at a loss to amuse themselves, thought of a game, in which they threw the child from one window to the other, catching it in turns. The poor little prince was made the victim to this cruel folly, for he fell on the balcony which extended along the first-floor, and broke one of his ribs. He suffered much, and survived only a few days. No wonder Queen Jeanne sent her little son, Henry, to a cottage, to be nursed, where there was no upper story! Nothing can be less imposing, on the interior side of the court, than the castle of Pau: ruined, dilapidated buildings surround the rugged old well which stands in the centre; towers and _tourelles_, of various shapes, lift their grey and green and damp-stained heads in different angles; low door-ways, encumbered with dust and rubbish, open their dark mouths along the side opposite the red square tower of Gaston Phoebus, which frowns at its equally grim brother, whose mysterious history no one knows; other doors and windows are finely-sculptured; and medallions, much defaced, adorn the walls. On these antique towers, it is said the thunder never fell but once--_that once_ was on the 14th of May, 1610, at the very moment when the steel of Ravaillac found the heart of Henry of Navarre. The event is thus recorded:-- "A fearful storm burst over the town of Pau on this day; a thunderbolt fell, and defaced the royal arms over the castle-gateway; and a fine bull, which was called _the King_, from its stately appearance, the chief of a herd called _the royal herd_, terrified by the noise and clamour, precipitated itself over the walls into the ditch of the castle, and was killed. The people, hurrying to the spot, called out The _King_ is dead! The news of the fatal event in Paris reached Pau soon after, and they found their loss indeed irreparable." The shades of Henry and Sully are said sometimes _to walk_ along the ramparts even now; and it was formerly believed that near the great reservoir, into which it was said Queen Jeanne used to have her Catholic prisoners thrown, numerous ghosts of injured men might be seen flitting to and fro. One evening I was returning, later than usual, from the promenade in the park, and had paused so often on my way to observe the effect of the purple and rosy-tinted mountains glowing with the last rays of sunset, that it was in quite a dim light that I reached the spot beneath which the ivied head of the old, ruined, red Tour de la Monnaie shows the rents of its _machicoulis_. A double row of young trees is planted here, at the foot of the artificial mound which supports the castle walls, and at the end of the alley is the reservoir, with the square tower of Gaston Phoebus above it. I was startled by a sudden apparition, so vivid that it seemed impossible to mistake its form, passing by the reservoir, as if after descending the steep which leads to it. I _seemed to see_ a grey, transparent figure in armour, the head covered with a helmet, with a pointed frontlet, such as I had seen in an old gallery, filled with rusty coats of arms, at the Château of Villebon, near Chartres, where Sully had lived for five-and-twenty years, and where he died. The figure was slight, and moved slowly, waving its head gently: it was in good proportion, but at least eight feet high. I stopped astonished, for the vision was so very plain--and then it was gone. I continued my way, and again I saw it, and it appeared as if several others, less tall, but still in armour, were by its side, by no means so distinct. I paused again, it was growing darker and darker, and I then could distinguish nothing but a row of slender trees, whose delicate leaves were shivering in the evening breeze, and whose stems waved to and fro. I went home--through the chill damp castle court, and across the bridge to the dismal street--impressed with an agreeable, though somewhat tremulous conviction, that I must have seen some of the ghosts which haunt the walks of the old castle. I expected to hear that the memory of Queen Jeanne was venerated on this spot; but was surprised to find that she holds a place in tradition little more honourable than that occupied by our bloody Queen Mary; for there is scarcely any atrocity in history of which she is not the heroine: whatever might have been her fame with her Protestant subjects, those who succeeded them seemed carefully to have treasured the remembrance of all the cruelties executed by her orders, which, it must be acknowledged, were little in accordance with the religion of peace she professed to have adopted. Her son, whose faith was of so changeable a character that it suited all parties, is the pride and boast of the country; but the object of love appears to be the amiable Princess Catherine, his sister, for whom her mother built, in a secluded spot in the royal park, a residence, called _Castel Beziat_, the last stones of which have now disappeared, as well as the _gardens_ originally planted by Gaston XI., in 1460, and said, in the time of Henri II. and Marguerite, _to be the finest in Europe_. It is difficult now to imagine where they were; but they are said to have been on the south side, and probably extended along that part now occupied by the Basse Plante and the baths of Henri Quatre, as far as the present entrance of the park. Catherine was more sought in marriage, perhaps, than any princess of her time; but her only attachment--which was an unfortunate one--was to the Count de Soissons, who, being her brother's enemy, avowed or concealed, was an unfit match for her, and the alliance was opposed by all her friends. She seemed to possess the accomplishments of her grandmother and mother, and was very popular in Béarn, which she governed, during Henry the Fourth's absence, with great justice and judgment; the Béarnais, however, greatly offended her by their violent opposition to her marriage with the person she had chosen; and she left the Castle of Pau in anger, and never returned. She was forced into a marriage with the Duke de Bar, and her people saw her no more. There is a romantic story told of an act of the princess's, which shows her kind character, and amiable feeling. There was formerly in the gardens of Castel (or Castet) Beziat, (the _Castle of the beloved,_) a fountain, afterwards called _Des cents Ecus_, which had its name from the following circumstances: The Princess Catherine of Navarre was one day walking in a musing mood, probably thinking of the many difficulties which opposed her union with him she loved, and almost wishing that her stars had made her one of the careless peasant-girls who tended her flocks in the green meadows beside the murmuring Gave; for happiness was denied her, as she said in after times, when married to a man who was indifferent to her, "Qu'elle n'avait pas son _compte_," mournfully playing on her disappointment. Suddenly she heard voices, and, peeping through the thick foliage, she perceived two young girls seated by the side of the fountain. One was drowned in tears, and the other was leaning over her, with tender words and caresses, endeavouring to console her sorrows. "Alas!" said the fair distressed, "I can see no end to my sorrow, for poverty is the cause; you know, my parents have nothing but what they gain by labour, and though _his_ friends are richer, their avarice is extreme; and they say their son's bride must have a dower of a hundred crowns. Ah! my dear friend, what hope then have I! I have heard that there are fairies who have the power to assist true love; if I knew where they were to be found I would consult them, for never was love truer than ours, or more unfortunate." Her friend did not attempt to combat her affection, but encouraged her with soothing words to have patience, and hope for the best. "Let us meet again here," said she, "every day, and devise some plan; perhaps Heaven will hear our prayers, and take compassion on your sorrow. To-morrow, at this hour, let us meet." "We will so," said the weeping girl, "for if I have no other consolation,--you, at least, give me that of talking of him." The friends departed, leaving the listening princess full of interest and curiosity: she was resolved to surprise and befriend the lovers whose case was so touching. "There is, then, equal sorrow in a lowly state," she mused, "and love seems always doomed to tears; however, there are some obstacles which fortune permits to be removed--would that I could look forward to relief, as I am resolved these shall!" The next day saw the two friends again seated on the borders of the fountain; but scarcely had they taken their accustomed place, when they observed, lying on a stone close by, a little bag which seemed to contain something heavy; they opened it, and found a paper, on which these words were written: "Behold what has been sent you by a _fairy_." The delight of this discovery may be imagined, and the pleasure of the princess, by whose command, a few days afterwards, the union of the lovers was accomplished. It appears that the Castle of Pau was originally built in 1360, or about that time, by the famous prince, Gaston Phoebus, of Foix, who called himself, when addressing the Princess of Wales, "_a poor knight who builds towns and castles._" The great hero of Froissart is even more identified with Pau and its neighbourhood than Henry the Fourth himself, who, though he was born here, lived more at Coarraze and Nerac than in this castle of his ancestors; for he was even nursed in the village of Billières near, where his nurse's house is still shown. Catherine de Medicis, and her beautiful and dangerous _troupe_ of ladies, on the famous progress she made to Bayonne, visited the Castle of Pau, with a deep interest; she there succeeded in detaching the affections of the weak father of Henry from his noble-minded wife, and in laying the foundation of that tragedy which her dauntless and vindictive spirit had conceived. The massacre of St. Bartholomew may be said to have begun on the day that those fatal visitors crossed the drawbridge of the Castle of Pau. Her daughter, Marguerite, the victim of her schemes--an unwilling actor in the drama--suffered much sorrow and privation within these walls, after her marriage with a prince who never could surmount the distaste which circumstances of such peculiar horror as attended their union had given him; and the once cheerful place--the scene of splendour for centuries--lost its glory and its happy character after the beloved family of Queen Jeanne had deserted its towers. Everything connected with the birth of Henry IV. is in general well-known, and has been so frequently repeated, that it is almost unnecessary to relate any circumstances attending that anxiously looked-for event,--cordially hailed by his grandfather, Henry. The account, however, given by Favyn is so characteristic that it cannot but be read with interest _a-propos_ of the château where it occurred: "The Princess of Navarre, being near her term, took leave of her husband, and set out from Compeign the 15th of November. She crossed all France to the Pyrenees, and directed her steps to Pau, where her father, the King of Navarre, then was. She arrived in the town after eighteen days' journey. King Henry had made his will, which the princess was very anxious to see; because it had been represented to her that it was to her disadvantage, and in favour of _a lady who governed_ her father. For this cause, though she had tried every means to get a sight of it, it was a thing impossible; the more so, as, on her arrival, she had found the king ill, and dared not speak to him on the subject. But the coming of his _good girl_, as he called her, so delighted him that it set him on his legs again. The princess was endowed with a fine natural judgment, fostered by the reading of good books, to which she was much addicted; her humour was so lively that it was impossible to be dull where she was; one of the most learned and eloquent princesses of her time, she followed the steps of Marguerite, her mother, and was mistress of all the elegant accomplishments of the age. The king, who was aware of her wish respecting the will, told her she should have it when she had shown him her child; and, taking from his cabinet a great box, shut with a lock, the key of which he wore round his neck by a chain of gold, which encompassed it five-and-twenty or thirty times, he opened the box, and showed her the will. But he only showed it at a little distance; and then locked it up again, saying, 'This box and its contents shall be yours; but, in order that you may not produce me a crying girl or a puny creature, I promise to give you all on condition that, while the infant is being born, you sing a Gascon or Béarnais song; and I will be by.' He had lodged his daughter in a room in the second story of his castle of Pau; and his chamber was immediately beneath: he had given her, to guard her, one of his old _valets de chambre_, Cotin, whom he commanded never to stir from the princess night nor day, to serve her in her chamber, and to come and tell him the instant she was taken ill, and to wake him if he was in ever so deep a sleep. Ten days after the princess's arrival at Pau, between twelve and one o'clock at night, the day of St. Lucie, 13th of December, 1553, the king was called by Cotin, and hurried to her chamber: she heard him coming, and began immediately singing the canticle, which the Béarnais women repeat when lying in: "Noustre Dame deou cap deou poun, Adjoudat me à d'aqueste hore," for at the end of every bridge in Gascony is an oratory, dedicated to the Virgin, called, _Our Lady at the end of the bridge_; and that over the Gave, which passes into Béarn from Jurançon, was famous for its miracles in favour of lying-in women. The King of Navarre went on with the canticle; and had no sooner finished it than the prince was born who now reigns over France. Then the good king, filled with great joy, put the chain of gold round the neck of the princess, and gave her the box containing the will, saying, 'This is your property, and this is mine;' at the same time taking the infant, which he wrapped in a piece of his robe, and carried away to his chamber. The little prince came into the world without crying, and the first nourishment he had was from the hand of his grandfather; for, having taken a clove of garlic, he rubbed his little lips with it; then, in his golden cup, he presented him wine; _at the smell of which, the child having lifted up his head_, he put a drop in his mouth, which he swallowed very well. At which the good king, full of joy, exclaimed, before all the ladies and gentlemen in the room, 'You will be a true Béarnais!' kissing him as he spoke." Every time I pass through the court-yard of this dilapidated building, I feel that it can never revive from its ruin; the desolation is too complete; the defacement too entire. What interest can exist in restorations to effect which so much must be cleared and scraped away that scarcely a trace of what was original can remain? How restore those medallions on the outer walls, which the taste of the first Fair Marguerite, and her Henry, placed in rows at one extremity of the court? how restore those beautifully-carved door-ways, and cornices, and sculptured windows, elaborate to the very roof? or renew the _façade_ next the mountains without effacing that singular line of _machicoulis_ which divides the stages. How replace the terrace--once existing, but long gone--without destroying venerable morsels of antiquity, precious in their ugliness! and how render the whole place sightly without clearing away the rubbish of the old _Tour_ _de la Monnaie_, now built in with shabby tenements? Yet this will probably be done. Considering the state of the town, and the many improvements requisite in it, it would seem more judicious, perhaps, to effect, these, and to abandon the idea of _restoring_ the castle. To repave the court, and clear away dirt, might be done with little time and cost; and the old fabric would not suffer by this act. At present the most neglected part is the entrance; and it is sufficiently unsightly. However, I ought to congratulate myself that I did not see it _when it was worse_--as I am constantly told when I complain of the wretched state of the streets. It is said that part of the royal family are even yet expected to pay a visit to Pau, in the course of next spring, to be present at the inauguration of a new statue of the Great Henry, lately arrived, which is to be erected in the Place Royale.[30] [Footnote 30: Since this was written, the visit has been paid, and the ceremony gone through.] CHAPTER IV. TROUBADOUR. NAVARRE has not produced many poets in early times; and the only troubadour whom it claims, is the famous lover of Blanche of Castile, the accomplished Thibault of Champagne, who rather belongs to Provins, where he lived so much, and sang so many of his beautiful lays, than to the Pyrenees. All critics, ancient and modern, from Dante to the Abbé Massieu, have agreed in admiring his compositions, in which grace, tenderness, and refinement, shine out in every line, encumbered though his language be with its antique costume. His mother was Blanche, daughter of Sancho the Wise, King of Navarre; his birth took place in 1201, a few months after the death of his father; and it was with difficulty the persecuted widow could retain her government of Champagne and Brie. In 1234, he was called to the throne of Navarre, by the death of his maternal uncle, Sancho le Fort. Soon after this, he left for the Holy Land; therefore, what time he spent in Navarre, does not appear. On his return from _Romanie_, he died at Pampluna, in 1253, and was buried at his beloved Provins, that city of nightingales and roses. His songs are very numerous, and have much originality. The following will serve as specimens: CHANSON. * * * * * "Je n'ose chanter trop tart, ne trop souvent." * * * * * "I FEAR to sing too seldom or too long-- I cannot tell if silence be the best, Or if at all to tune my tender song-- For she denies me pity, hope, and rest. Yet, in my lay, I might some note awake, To please her ear more than all lays before; Though thus, she seems a cruel joy to take, That I should slowly suffer evermore. "At once I'd cast my idle lute away, If I were sure no pleasure could be mine; But love has made my thoughts so much his prey, I do not dare to love her, nor resign. Thus I stand trembling and afraid to fly, Till I have learnt to _hate_ her--lovingly. "By love and hate's alternate passions torn, How shall I turn me from my thronging woes? Ah! if I perish, tortured and forlorn, But little glory from such triumph flows. She has no right to keep me her's, in thrall, Unless she will be mine, my own, my all! "Well does she know how to delight--inflame, With soft regards and smiles and words at will, And none within her magic ever came, But learnt to hope he was the favour'd still. She is worth all the conquests she has won: But I may trust too far--and be undone! "She keeps me ling'ring thus in endless doubt, And, as she pleases, holds me in her chain, Grants she no smiles--I can adore without; And this she knows, and I reproach in vain! I am content to wait my chance, even now, If she will but one ray of hope allow." * * * * JEU-PARTIE. "BALDWIN, tell me frank and true, What a lover ought to do; One, who, loving well and long, Suff'ring and enduring wrong, At his lady's summons flies, And presents him to her eyes, With a welcome, when they meet, Should he kiss her lips or feet? "Sire, methinks he would be loth, Not to kiss her rosy mouth; For a kiss at once descends To the heart and makes them friends; Joy and sweetness, hope and bliss, Follow in that tender kiss. "Baldwin, nay, you ought to know, He who dares such freedom show-- As though a shepherd maid were she, Would never in her favour be: I would kneel in humble guise, For I know her fair and wise, And humility may gain Smiles no boldness could obtain. "Sire, though modest semblance oft Meet a guerdon, coy and soft, And timid lovers sometimes find Reward both merciful and kind: Yet to the lips prefer the feet Seems to my mind a care unmeet. "Baldwin--for worlds I would not lose Her mouth, her face, her hand--but choose To kiss her pretty feet, that she May see how humble truth can be. But you are bold and daring still; And know Love's gentle lore but ill. "Sire, he must be a craven knight, Who, with her lovely lips in sight, Is all content and happy found, To kiss her foot-print on the ground! "Baldwin, quick gains are quickly o'er, Got with much ease, and prized no more. When at her feet, entranced, I lie, No evil thought can hover night. And she his love will faithful call, Who asked no boon, and gave her all." CHAPTER V. ROAD FROM PAU TO TARBES--TABLE-LAND--THE PICS--THE HARAS OF TARBES--AUTUMN IN THE PYRENEES--MONT L'HÉRIS--GABRIELLE D'ESTRÉES--CHASSE AUX PALOMBES--PENNE DE L'HÉRIS--PIC DU MIDI--CHARLET THE GUIDE--VALLEY OF CAMPAN--LA GATTA--GRIP--THE TOURMALET--CAMPANA DEL VASSE--BARÈGES-LUZ--CAGOT DOOR--GAVARNIE--THE FALL OF THE ROCK--CHAOS--CIRCUS--MAGNIFICENCE OF NATURE--PONT DE NEIGE--ROLAND--DURENDAL--IZARDS--LES CRÂNES--PIEREFITTE--CAUTERETZ--CERIZET--PONT D'ESPAGNE--LAC DE GAUBE--ARGELEZ. THE road between Pau and Tarbes,[31] like most of the roads south of the Garonne, is an extremely fine one; it is perfectly macadamized, and admirably well kept; indeed, in this respect, the improvement that appears all over France is quite remarkable; but if superiority can be claimed anywhere it certainly belongs to Béarn and Bigorre. It is not, however, the _condition_ of the road between the two towns that forms the attraction; it is the exquisite scenery that meets the eye wherever a break in the woods, or an inequality of the ground reveals the magnificent chain of the Pyrenees. For some distance after leaving Pau the road is nearly level; but about half-way to Tarbes, after passing through a thick wood of oak, and having been rendered impatient by occasional glimpses of the mountains, the traveller climbs a long and winding ascent, and reaches the summit of a fine table-land, from whence an uninterrupted view of this glorious country is obtained. Rich forests of chesnut clothe the steep sides of this table-land, and stretch far away to the southward, mingling with the well-cultivated plains that border the Gave de Pau; beyond these rise, in gradual succession, the lower ranges of the mountains, whose real height is entirely lost in the grandeur of the more stupendous Pyrenean giants, extending as far as the eye can reach, from the Mont Perdu at one extremity, and far beyond the Pic du Midi of the Vallée d'Ossau, at the other. The general colour of these noble mountains is a deep purple, which becomes even more intense, and approaches almost to blackness, until it melts away in the misty valleys beneath. The outline is not only irregular in form, but various in its hue; some of the loftiest heights of the foremost range being patched with snow, while, still more distant and shining in the sun, appear the dazzling peaks of eternal ice, piercing the deep blue sky wherein they dwell. [Footnote 31: For the whole account of the Hautes Pyrénées, I am indebted to my brother, Mr. Dudley Costello, who made the excursion while I remained at Pau.] This table-land is traversed for several miles over a broken common, variegated with heath and fern, and intersected here and there by brawling streams, which take their course to swell the tributaries of the distant Gave. At the eastern extremity of the common, another wide forest of chesnut appears, where the road rapidly descends with many windings to the plain of Bigorre. One of these turns offers the loveliest picture it is possible to imagine. The foreground is formed of steep, rough banks, through which the road winds its sinuous track, the thick yet graceful foliage of the chesnut rises like a frame on either hand, and spreads also in front, while the Pic du Midi de Bigorre, with snow on its summit, and the Pic de Montaigu, with its sharp, dark outline, complete the distance. To give life to the scene, there are the peasants and market-women on their way to the fair of Tarbes,--the former wearing the characteristic brown _berret_, and the latter the black or scarlet-peaked hood, which gives quite a clerical air to their costume. Indeed, to see the women carelessly bestriding their active Bigourdin horses, which they manage with infinite ease, one might readily fancy, at a slight distance, that it was rather a party of monks of the olden time wending to their monastery, than a group of peasants laden with their market-ware. A little further, the road abruptly turns again, and Tarbes lies before us, distant about four or five miles, supported by another range of mountains, amongst which the Pic d'Orbizan is most conspicuous. The plain of Bigorre is now soon gained, and in half an hour we stand in the Place de Maubourguet, in the centre of Tarbes. Tarbes, as a city, has little to recommend it beyond its situation, in the midst of a fertile plain, watered by the Adour, some of whose tributary streams run through the streets, imparting freshness and securing cleanliness. It has nothing to reveal to the lover of antiquity--no vestige remaining of the architecture of the period when Tarbes was celebrated as the place where the Black Prince held his court. The cathedral is a modern building, possessing no claim to notice; and, except the royal _Haras_, there is nothing to detain the traveller. Here, however, are some fine horses,--the best amongst them English, except, indeed, a superb black barb, named Youssouf, once the property of an ex-foreign minister more famous in the Tribune than on the Champ de Mars. In consequence, as I was informed by one of the grooms, of the minister's indifferent equitation, his majesty, Louis-Philippe, purchased the barb and sent it hither. The most noticeable steeds besides, are Rowlestone, Sir Peter, Windcliffe, and Skirmisher--the last thirty-seven years' old--whose names bespeak their origin; there is also a fine Arab from Algiers, named Beni. The Haras is beautifully kept, and is surrounded by a fine garden, from whence the view of the distant mountains, beyond Bagnères de Bigorre, is exceedingly grand. In that direction I decided upon bending my steps, and, returning to my hotel in the Place Maubourguet, my preparations for departure were soon made. The distance from Tarbes to Bagnères de Bigorre is not more than five leagues, and the road thither would seem to be perfectly level, were it not for the impetuous flow of the Adour, along the left bank of which we travel, reminding us of the gradual ascent. The country is everywhere highly cultivated; and the peasants were busily employed with their second crops of hay, and securing their harvest of Indian corn. One historical site attracts attention on leaving Tarbes;--the old Château of Odos, where died, in 1549, "La Marguérite de Marguérites," Queen of Navarre, the sister of Francis the First, whose name will ever be associated with that of her adopted country. On this spot we lay down our recollections of the past, absorbed, as we approach the mountains, in the thoughts which their magnificence inspires,--which, while they, too, speak of the past, are ever appealing to the present, in their changeless forms and still enduring beauty, their might, their majesty, and their loneliness. The watering-place of Bagnères has been described by so many tourists, that I spare the description here; and the more readily as it was nearly deserted when I arrived. This was no drawback to one whose desire was to enjoy the last days of autumn amongst the mountains while the weather yet continued fine,--and lovely that autumn weather is, atoning by the richness of its colours for the absence of beauties which belong to an earlier season. I accordingly made all the necessary arrangements for a guide and horses to cross the Tourmalet on the next day, and devoted the remainder of a lovely afternoon to the ascent of Mont L'Héris--a mountain that supplies the botanist with treasures almost inexhaustible. Crossing the Adour by a rude bridge of only one plank, and traversing some fields, filled with labourers busily employed in getting in their harvest of Indian corn, I reached the pretty little village of Aste, which lies buried in a deep gorge, at the south-eastern base of the mountain. Aste has associations connected with Henri Quatre; for in the castle, now a mere shell, once resided the beautiful Gabrielle d'Estrées, who used here to receive her royal lover. The Seigneur du Village is the Duc de Grammont--a name which appears singularly out of keeping with this romantic and secluded spot. The ascent of Mont L'Héris is steep but not difficult, for the profusion of flowers and richly-scented plants, scattered over the short elastic turf, beguile the climber's path, and lure him pleasantly upward. The first pause I made was on a bold projection, skirting the forest of Haboura on one side, and on the other hanging over the beautiful valley of Campan. Beneath me lay the town of Bagnères, and, far as the eye could reach, extended the plain of Bigorre, with the clear waters of the Adour marking their track like a silver thread. On the slope of a neighbouring mountain the wild-pigeon hunters were spreading their nets; for the _Chasse aux Palombes_ is nowhere so successfully followed as in this part of the Pyrenees. It is a simple sport; but highly productive to those engaged in it. I pursued my route towards the summit of the mountain, the "_Penne de l'Héris_," as it is still called, retaining its Celtic name. To do so, it was necessary to plunge into the thicket, and for a long time I made my way scrambling over the slippery surface of mossy rocks, as best I might, by the aid of the roots and lower branches of the forest-trees. At length I emerged from the wood, and stood upon the fertile pastures of the mountain; from whence the ascent to the immense block of marble which crowns Mont l'Héris, is tolerably easy. It is a singular mass, on the southern side of which is an enormous excavation; amongst the _débris_ of which was a path that led to the top. If the view below was lovely, this was magnificent; my eyes were, however, riveted on one object--the towering height of the _Pic du Midi_, which seemed almost immediately above my head; though the mountain on the other side of the valley of Campan at our feet, showed us how far distant it really was. Directed by the peasant-guide, who had volunteered his services at Aste, I contrived to form a tolerable notion of the track which I was to pursue on the morrow; and it was only the warning shadows which began to creep over the valleys, and the clear tones of the church bells, at Bagnères, marking the hour at which I had promised to join the _table d'hôte_ at the Hôtel de France, that expressively told me to loiter no longer on the mountains, lest darkness should entangle my feet before I had cleared its steep declivities. I made haste, therefore, to return to Bagnères, crossing the Adour this time by a bridge no less picturesque than the former, but somewhat more secure. On the following morning I rose at daylight, and, at the moment fixed upon, Charlet, the guide, whom I had agreed with, rode up to the door of the hotel, leading another small, sturdy, mountain horse, and accompanied by the inseparable companion of his wanderings, a bull-dog named Pluto, which, had sex been considered, should have been called Proserpine, though not for beauty. We were soon clear of the town, and jogged pleasantly along the road, which lay through the lovely valley of Campan--a scene whose beauty cannot be too highly extolled. On the left hand flowed the rapid waters of the Adour, beneath heights which seemed perpendicular, though Charlet pointed to certain irregular lines which marked the track by which the mountaineers descend on horseback, the very idea of which was enough to make one shudder; on the right hand, the valley spread out into a fertile district, whose gentle slopes gradually blended themselves with the hills which formed the spurs of lofty mountains, and finally shut in the view. In front, was constantly visible the snowy height of the _Pic d' Orbizan_, towering 9,000 feet above the level of the valley. It was a delicious morning, and the freshness of the air, the beauty of the scenery, and the novelty of the situation, made me fain to linger in this lovely spot; but there was too much before us to admit of delay, and we trotted on merrily, every pause, as the road became steeper, being filled up by the conversation of Charlet. It is not undeservedly that the Pyrenean guides have acquired the reputation they enjoy for intelligence and civility; and Charlet, of the Hôtel de France, is certainly a most favourable specimen: frugal in his habits, modest in his demeanour, and of great activity of body, he forms the _beau ideal_ of a mountain cicerone. I asked him what superstitions were still current in the mountains: he replied, but few; the increasing intercourse with towns and travellers gradually effacing them from popular belief. One, however, he named, which is curious:--Any one who suddenly becomes rich without any visible means to account for it, is said by the peasants to have found "_la gatta_;" in other words, to have made a compact with the evil one, the evidence of which is afforded by the presence of a black cat, whose stay in the dwelling of the contracting party is productive of a gold coin, deposited every night in his bedchamber. When the term has expired, the cat disappears, and ruin invariably falls upon the unwary customer of the fiend. Charlet accounted for the superstition in a very simple way. As smuggling is constant amongst the mountaineers, so near the Spanish frontier, large fortunes, comparatively speaking, are often made; and accident or envy often deprives the possessor of his suddenly-acquired wealth, who may lose his all by an information, or an unsuccessful venture. Two leagues from Bagnères brought us to Sainte Marie, where the roads separate,--one leading to Luchon, the other, to the right, across the Tourmalet, to Barèges; the latter, which we followed, here makes a very sensible ascent, but continues passable for carriages till we arrive at the little village of Grip--the last cluster of habitations on this side of the chain which divides the valley of Campan from that of the Bartan. It is a wild and lonely place, and the loneliness of its position is increased by our being able to mark with precision the spot where cultivation ceases and nature asserts her uncontrolled dominion. Here the road ceases altogether, a bridle-path alone conducting across the still-distant ridge, called the Tourmalet, which is crowned by the remoter heights of Neouvièlle and the Pic d'Espade, from whose base flows the Adour--a slender but impetuous stream, whose course becomes visible only as it issues from a dense forest of black fir, which stretches half-way up the mountain. The ascent to the Tourmalet occupied about two hours; and at high noon we dismounted on the ridge, with the Bastan before us; on every side innumerable peaks, and, winding along the valley, the road which leads to Barèges. Besides those already named, the most conspicuous heights are the Pic de l'Epée, the Pic de Bergons, and, at the further extremity of the valley, the Monné, which overhangs Cauteretz, and is yet visible from this point. The Valley of the Bastan is singularly desolate, presenting nothing to the eye but the rugged flanks of mountains, scored, as it would seem, by the rush of torrents, and massive rocks, whose _débris_ lie scattered below, often obstructing the course of the Gave, which finds its source in the melted snows of the Neouvièlle. Some of the peaks near the Tourmalet are of peculiar form: one of them, pointed out to me by Charlet, is called the _Campana de Vasse_--the Bell of the Valley--which the mountaineers believe is to awaken the echoes of the Pyrenees on the day of judgment, and call the dead before the last tribunal. After resting about an hour on the ridge of the Tourmalet, enjoying the solitude of a scene which was interrupted but once--by a soldier, a convalescent from the waters of Barèges, on his way back to join his garrison at Tarbes,--we remounted, and rode slowly down the Bastan, every turn of the road disclosing some fresh object to excite admiration or surprise. When we reached Barèges, the place was entirely deserted by visitors--even the houses were gone,--for the greater part of those erected for the company who throng the valley in the summer, being merely of wood, are removed to places of greater security than Barèges, where they run the risk of being destroyed by the floods and "moving accidents" of the mountains. We made no stay, therefore; but, like the Lady Baussière, "rode on" at a leisurely pace, the more fully to enjoy the wondrous beauties of the road between Barèges and Luz, where we arrived about four o'clock in the afternoon. There is only one hotel at Luz; but it is the best in the Pyrenees,--not only for the nature of the accommodation, but the civility and attention of the host, the hostess, and their pretty _protegée_, Marie, who acts as waiter, _femme-de-chambre_, and _factotum_ to the establishment. A good dinner was promised, and the promise was faithfully kept,--bear witness the delicate blue trout, which I have nowhere met with so good, except, perhaps, at Berne. But as there yet remained an hour or two of daylight, I employed the interval in visiting the ruins of the old feudal castle of St. Marie, and in sketching the church built by the Templars, which resembles a fortalice, rather than a place of worship. I examined the building carefully, but could not satisfy myself that I had really discovered the walled-up entrance, by which alone, _it is said_, the wretched cagots were formerly permitted to enter the church. The figures which flitted near, pausing, occasionally, to inspect my work, habited, as they were, in the long cloak and _capuchon_ of the country, might well have passed for contemporaries of the superstitious fear which excluded the unfortunate victims of disease from an equality of rights with their fellow-men; but the cagot himself is no longer visible. Here I loitered, till it was too dark to draw another line; and then wended back to the _Hôtel des Pyrénées_, to recruit myself after the fatigues of the day, and prepare for those of the morrow. Long before the day broke, we were again in the saddle, and, as we passed St. Sauveur, its long range of white buildings could only be faintly traced; but, as we advanced, the snowy peak of Bergons, glowing in the rays of the rising sun, seemed to light us on our way, and coily the charms of the valley revealed themselves to my eager gaze. I have wandered in many lands, and seen much mountain-scenery; but I think I never beheld any that approaches the beauty and sublimity of the road to Gavarnie. There is everything here to delight the eye, and fill the mind with wonder,-- "All that expands the spirit, yet appals." For some miles the road continues to ascend; in many places, a mere horse-track, cut in the mountain side, and fenced by a low wall from an abyss of fearful depth, in whose dark cavity is heard the roar of the torrent which afterwards converts the generic name of Gave into one peculiar to itself. The sides of the mountains are thickly clothed with box, which grows to a great height; and at this season the Autumn tint had given to it the loveliest hues, contrasting well with the dark pines which climb to the verge of vegetation on the far-off slopes. Suddenly, the character of the scene is altered,--the road descends--the foliage disappears, or shows itself only in patches in the ravines, and masses of dark grey rock usurp its place; the noisy waters of the Gave make themselves more distinctly heard, and a few rude cottages appear. This is the village of Gèdre: and here I witnessed one of those mountain-effects which are often so terrible. A week before, two houses stood by the way-side--the homes of the peasants whom we saw at work in a neighbouring meadow. They were then, as now, employed in cutting grass for hay, when a low, rumbling noise was heard in the valley, which soon grew louder; and the affrighted labourers, casting their eyes upwards, saw that an enormous rock had suddenly detached itself from the mountain, and was now thundering down the steep. They fled with precipitation, and succeeded in saving their lives; but when they ventured to return to the spot, they found that an immense block had fallen upon one of the cottages, crushing it into powder, and leaving nothing standing but one of the gable ends. So it still remained,--and so, no doubt, it will continue till the end of time; for the mass is too ponderous to be moved by anything short of a convulsion of nature. I could have wished to have turned aside at Gèdre to visit the Cascade of Saousa, but Gavarnie beckoned onwards to greater attractions; so again we pursued our route, and I speedily lost all thought for other wonders in the tremendous passes which bear the name of Chaos, and of which the best description can give but a faint and imperfect idea. The huge masses of rock, looking like fallen buildings, which are strewn along the valley in inextricable confusion, defy calculation. There they lie, the consequence of some terrific _déboulement_, which must have shaken the mountains to their centre when the mighty ruin was effected. It is supposed that the accident may have occurred in the sixth century, when a fearful earthquake disturbed the Pyrenees; but no written record remains to attest it. On the first view of this scene of disorder, it seems as if all further progress were stopped; but as we descend amongst the enormous blocks, a path is found winding through them, which the perseverance of the mountaineers has formed. Emerging from this terrific glen, the pastures and fields which surround the village of Gavarnie smile a welcome to the traveller, which is but ill-confirmed when he reaches the gloomy inn--the last and worst in France. Here we abandoned our horses, and after glancing at the cascade of Ossonne, I passed hastily through the village, and, mounting on a flat rock, threw myself down to gaze upon the stupendous Circus of Gavarnie, which, though still a full league distant, appears, at the first glance, to be within a quarter of an hour's walk. I was all impatience to reach the foot of that cascade of which I had so often read, but which I scarcely ever hoped to _see_, and, as soon as Charlet had stabled his steeds, we set out. For the first mile the road lay between narrow meadows, which owe their freshness to the Gave; these then gave place to a stony plain, the dry beds of some ancient lakes; and having traversed their expanse, we crossed the last bridge, constructed by the hands of man, over the river, and then climbing a series of sharp, irregular ascents, which would have passed for very respectable hills elsewhere, but here seemed mole-heaps only, we stood, at length, on the perpetual snow, which forms a solid crust at the foot of the circus of Gavarnie. It seemed as if I had at length realised one of those dreams which fill the mind when first we read the wondrous tales of old romance: it was, indeed, the very spot described in one of the most celebrated of the earliest cycle; but my thoughts were less of Charlemagne and his paladins--though the Brèche de Roland was now within reach--than of the stupendous grandeur of the scene. It required very little exercise of fancy to imagine that we had arrived at the end of the world--so perfectly impassable appeared the barrier which suddenly rose before us. The frowning walls of granite which form the lowest grade of this vast amphitheatre, rise to a height of twelve hundred feet perpendicularly, and extend to nearly three-quarters of a league, increasing in width as they ascend to the regions of eternal snow; where may be traced a succession of precipices, until they are lost in the bases of the Cylindre and the Tours de Marboré, themselves the outworks of the Mont Perdu, from whose glaciers flow the numerous cascades which, in summer, shoot from the lower ridge of the Circus. The great waterfall of Gavarnie--the loftiest in Europe--pours its slender stream from a height of upwards of thirteen hundred feet, on the eastern side of the Circus, and in its snow-cold water I dipped my travelling-cup, qualifying with veritable Cognac the draught I drank to the health of distant friends. My great desire was to make the ascent of the Brèche de Roland; but Charlet had learnt, in the village where he made inquiry, that the snow had fallen heavily on the mountains only the day before, and that, consequently, it would be a matter of extreme difficulty and danger to make the attempt. It was now past mid-day, and the time necessary for accomplishing the ascent with the prospect of returning by daylight, was too limited; so, with reluctance, I gave up the idea. The season at which I visited Gavarnie was, indeed, too late (it was the 9th of October,) to admit of being very excursive, for long days and steady weather are absolutely necessary to enable one to do justice to mountain-scenery. I resolved, however, to remain within the Circus as long as I could, and, after descending to the _Pont de Neige_, from whose blue depths rushes the Gave de Pau, I climbed a rock at the edge of the snow, and sat there lost in admiration of the glorious scene. As I looked in the direction of the Brèche, itself invisible from the spot where I was, I observed an eagle soaring majestically above the cleft where tradition points to the last exploit of the valorous nephew of Charlemagne, whose type the imperial bird might well be deemed. It was here, according to the _veracious_ chronicle of Archbishop Turpin, that, after defeating the Saracen king, Marsires, in the pass of Roncesvalles, Roland, grievously wounded, laid himself down to die, the shrill notes of his horn having failed to bring him the succour he expected from his uncle. It is in Roncesvalles that poets have laid the scene of his death, where-- "On Fontarabian echoes borne The dying hero's call" resounded; and, if truth attaches to the received story of his death, Roncesvalles is, no doubt, the site. But the legend has shed its romance on the immortal heights of the towers of Marboré; and, to account for the fissure in the rock, it must be with these in our recollection, that we read that quaint apostrophe to his sword which the chronicler has preserved:-- After laying himself down beneath a rock, Roland drew his sword, Durendal, and regarding it _"with great pity and compassion,"_ he exclaimed, in a loud voice, "plorant et larmoyant:"-- "O très beau cousteau resplendissant, qui tant as duré et qui as ésté si large, si ferme et si forte, en manche de clere yvoire: duquel la croix est faicte d'or et la supface dorée decorée et embellye du pommeau faiet de pierres de beril; escript et engravé du grand nô de Dieu singulier, Alpha et OO. Si bien tranchant en la pointe et environné de la vertu de Dieu. Qui est celluy qui plus et oultre moy usera de ta saincte force, mais qui sera desormais ton possesseur? Certes celluy qui te possédera ne sera vaincu ny estonné, ne ne redoubtera toute la force des ennemys; il n'aura jamais pour d'aucunes illusions et fantasies, car luy de Dieu et de la grace sérôt en profection et sauvegarde. O que tu es eureuse espée digne de mémoire, car par toy sôt Sarrazins destruictz et occis et les gens infidèles mis a mort; dont la foy des Chrestiens est exaltée et la louenge de Dieu et gloire partout le môde universel acquise. O a combien de fois ay je vengé sang de vostre seigneur Jesu-christ par ton puissât moyen, et mis à mort les ennemys de la nouvelle loy de grace en ce nouveau temps acceptable de salut; côbien ay je tranché de Sarrazins; combien de Juifs et aultres mescréant infidèles batus et destruictz, pour exaltation et gloire de la saincte foy Chrestiennie! Par toy noble cousteau tranchant Durendal de longue durée, la chevalerie de Dieu le Créateur est accomplye et les pieds es mainz des larrons acoustuméz qui gastoyent le bien de la chose publicque, gastéz et separéz de leurs corps. J'ay vengé par autant de foys le sang de Jesu-christ respendu sur terre que j'ay mis-à-mort par ton fort moyen aucun Juif et Sarrazin. O, o espée très eureuse de la quelle n'est la semblable n'a esté ne ne sera! Certes celluy qui t'a forgée jamais semblable ne fist devant luy ny après; car tous ceulx qui ont esté de toy blesséz n'ont pu vivre puis après. Si d'aventure aucû chevalier non hardy ou paresseux te possède après ma mort j'en seray grandement dolent. Et si aucun Sarrazin mescréant ou infidèle te touche aucunement j'en suis en grant dueil et angoisse." Having made this lamentation, the valiant Roland, resolving that his weapon should never pass into other hands, raised his arm, and, with the last effort of expiring nature, clove the massy rock in twain, breaking the good sword, Durendal, into a thousand shivers by the force of the blow. The voice of Charlet roused me from the reverie into which I had fallen, desiring me to look in the direction of the great cascade at a troop of izards that were bounding up the rocks. I turned and saw the graceful little creatures scaling, with inconceivable agility, heights which seemed absolutely perpendicular, so slight is the hold which they require for their tiny hoofs. It was but for a minute that I beheld them; in the next they were lost behind a projecting rock, and I saw them no more. We now turned our faces down the valley, often, however, pausing to look back; and before we again entered the village of Gavarnie we stopped at the little old church to inspect the sculls called "Les crânes des douze Templiers," who are said to have been beheaded by order of Philippe le-Bel. Whether true or false, they are the only antiquities here--the church being comparatively modern. At the unpromising inn we found our horses refreshed by rest; and, without more ado, we remounted and returned by the road we came to Luz, which we reached soon after nightfall. Quitting Luz the next morning, with much regret at being unable to remain longer to explore the beauties which surround it, we took the road to Pierrefitte, and, after a pleasant ride of about two hours, in the course of which we passed through the most lovely scenery--the most remarkable features of which are the depth and narrowness of the mountain gorges, and the boldness of the bridges which span them, one in particular bearing the characteristic name of the _Pont d'Enfer_--we arrived at the Hôtel de la Poste at Pierrefitte, where my carpet-bag was deposited, to lighten the load of Charlet's horse, for we had many miles that day to travel. We then pushed on towards Cauteretz, ascending by the old road, which, though steep, saves much time to those lightly mounted; from its point of junction with the new one, it is as fine as any in Europe, and the variety which it offers makes the valley as beautiful as any in the Pyrenees, while it retains its own distinctive character, caused by the greater quantity of foliage, thus gaining in softness what it loses in grandeur. After crossing a fine bridge, about half-way up the valley, the road takes a spiral direction, called _Le Limaçon_, the buttresses which support it being remarkable for the solidity and excellence of the masonry; and having made our way to the summit, the peak of the Monné above Cauteretz became visible for the first time since leaving the Tourmalet. At Cauteretz we merely stopped to breakfast, my object being to visit the Lac de Gaube, at the foot of the Vignemale. It was Sunday morning, and a fair was being held in the market-place, the principal articles for sale being the many-coloured chaplets manufactured at Betharram: there were many pretty faces in the little stalls, and many sweet voices offered their wares for sale; but I resisted the temptation--the more readily, perhaps, from knowing that the glass beads would have very little chance of remaining unbroken in a scrambling mountain-ride. About half-a-mile from Cauteretz we fell in with a party of dragoons, bringing their horses from the mineral springs, whither they are sent--like other invalids--for cure, from the Haras of Pau and Tarbes. The fine animals looked in excellent condition and spirits, and seemed to have benefited wonderfully by the visit. Passing the baths, we ascended the bridle-road above the Gave de Marcadaou, with dark forests of pine on either hand--a favourite resort for bear-hunters. The great charm of this road consists in the numerous cascades which mark the course of the Gave; they are, without question, the most beautiful in the Pyrenees, where the mountain-falls are, for the most part, deficient in volume. The finest of these, where all are striking, is the cascade of the Cerizet, which bears a greater resemblance to the falls of the Aar, in the canton of Berne, than any I remember. It is not so massive a fall, but it gave me the impression of being more picturesque, from the effect produced by the superb pines which hang over it, whose branches, covered with the spray which rises from the cascade, like vapour, "Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees Their medicinal gum----." Charlet told me that we saw the Cerizet at the most fortunate hour; for it is at mid-day that the "sun-bow rays," at this season, "----Arch The torrent with the many hues of heaven," and a lovely iris was settled on it at the moment we descended to a huge rock, on which we stood to watch "the roar of waters." Beyond the Cerizet are two other fine falls--the _Pas de l'Ours_ and the _Coussin_--which we pass on the way to the Pont d'Espagne, where the roads separate; the one in front leading into Spain by the Val de Jarret, and the other--which turns suddenly to the left--crossing the bridge, and conducting to the Lac de Gaube. The Pont d'Espagne is a most picturesque object: two torrents unite a little below it, one of which is the Marcadaou, the other the Gave that issues from the lonely lake; the Marcadaou rushes over a broad, flat rock--foaming and boiling, as if with rage to meet an expected enemy--while the deeper Gave throws itself from its narrow bed, and twists and turns, apparently falling back on itself, as if it sought to avoid the collision: they meet, however, and after the first concussion they flow on, smoothly enough, till a sudden turn hides them from our view, and we hear only their angry voices, caused by some fresh interruption to their course. But to have the finest view of the general effect, the bridge must be seen from below, where a rock stands boldly out, intercepting the heady current. It is constructed of fir-trees, felled on the spot, whose light stems, standing out in relief against the clear blue sky, seem almost too fragile to withstand the concussion caused by the "hell of waters" beneath. Nowhere does the pine appear to so much advantage as beside the Pont d'Espagne; some are the "wrecks of a single winter," others display a profusion of dark foliage, and the branches of all are thickly covered with grey parasitic moss, that hangs to them like hair, and gives to them a most picturesque appearance, like bearded giants guarding the romantic pass. The narrow pathway through the forest, which leads to the Lac de Gaube, is excessively steep, and turns at least twenty times as it pursues its zigzag course. For the first half-hour nothing was visible but pine-trees, firs, and blocks of granite; and the road was difficult even for the sure-footed beasts which we bestrode; at length, we cleared the wood, and at once the Vignemale rose in awful splendour before us, its glaciers glittering in the sun, ten thousand feet above the bed of the dark blue lake, itself at a vast elevation above the level of the sea. Next to Gavarnie, this view of the Vignemale struck me as the most impressive object I had seen, the presence of the still lake reminding me of similar scenes in Switzerland; none of which, however, imparted the sense of solitude so completely as this. It might possibly arise from the associations belonging to the Lac de Gaube, the mournful evidence of which was before my eyes, in the little tomb raised to the memory of the unfortunate husband and wife who were drowned here in the year 1832. It stands on a small, rocky promontory, enclosed by a light iron rail, and the tablet bears the following inscription in French and English, on opposite sides. I transcribed both, and give the latter:-- "This tablet is dedicated to the memory of William Henry Pattisson, of Lincoln's Inn, London, Esq., barrister at law; and of Susan Frances, his wife, who, in the 31st and 26th years of their age, and within one month of their marriage, to the inexpressible grief of their surviving relations and friends, were accidentally drowned together in this lake, on the 20th day of September, 1832. Their remains wore conveyed to England, and interred there at Witham, in the county of Essex." The account given me of the manner in which the accident occurred was, that Mr. and Mrs. Pattison visited the lake from Cauteretz in _chaises à porteurs_, and that Mr. Pattison went first of all alone in the boat, having vainly urged his wife to accompany him: after pulling some distance out, he paused, and, by his voice and gestures, intimated how charmed he was with the effect; he then returned to the shore, and overcame Mrs. Pattison's repugnance to enter the boat. She stepped in, and he again rowed about half a mile, when suddenly he was seen by the men on shore to rise in the boat, and in an instant it was overset, and both were plunged in the lake. Mr. Pattison sunk at once, but his wife's clothes buoyed her up for a considerable time; ineffectually, however, for none of the bearers of the _chaises à porteurs_ could swim; her cries were in vain, and she, too, perished. How the accident arose, none can tell, and a mystery must for ever hang over the fatal event. On seeing the wretched apology for a boat, which is still used by the fisherman who keeps a little _auberge_ beside the lake, and is the same in which the sad catastrophe occurred, no one can be surprised that an accident should have happened; the only wonder is that it did not founder altogether, for it is little better than the trunk of a tree hollowed out, and turned adrift to take its chance of sinking or floating. Into this crazy contrivance I had no desire to venture, the lake appearing too cold for an impromptu bath. Reluctantly, from hence, as from every other spot which I visited in the Pyrenees, I turned away, longing to have ascended the Vignemale, but knowing too well how few were the days allotted to my mountain excursion. We returned by the same route to Pierrefitte, and then bid adieu to the sublimities of the _Hautes Pyrénées_; for, beautiful as the country is at the foot of the mountains, its beauty is tame, and produces, comparatively, little effect on the mind until time has effaced the first impression. It was late that night before we reached Argelez, where the _Hôtel du Commerce_ received us. For fertility, and all the softer charms that render a landscape pleasing, there is, perhaps, no place on earth that exceeds the valley of Lavedan, in which Argelez is situated. It is "a blending of all beauties," tempting the traveller to pause upon the way, and set up his rest in a region where everything seems to speak of peace and happiness. The inhabitants, however, can scarcely be happy, for the disease of _crétinism_ is more widely spread here than in any other place in the department. The valley is famous for the breed of Pyrenean dogs, which are to be met with everywhere in the mountains, guarding the flocks and herds. It was my fortune to acquire a very fine specimen, only a fortnight old, which travelled with me in a basket to London, and six months afterwards, the largest kennel could scarcely contain it. These dogs are excessively strong, and are esteemed fierce; but their fierceness belongs rather to the wild life they lead amidst bears and wolves, to whom they prove formidable antagonists. On one of the hills which skirt the valley of Castelloubon, between Argelez and Lourdes, I once more obtained a view of the Mont Perdu, distant now upwards of forty miles; it was the last glimpse of the wonders of the Hautes Pyrénées that was vouchsafed to me. The garrisoned fortress of Lourdes,--the picturesque bridge and convent of Betharram, and the smiling plain which borders the Gave de Pau, were all passed in turn, and on the evening of the fifth day from my departure I was again in the streets of Pau. CHAPTER VI. VALLÉE D'OSSAU--LE HOURAT--THE RIO VERDE--EAUX CHAUDES EAUX BONNES--BIELLE--IZESTE--SACCAZE, THE NATURALIST. "Salut Ossau, la montagnarde, La Béarnaise, que Dieu garde! Avec bonheur je te regarde, Douce vallée!--et sur ma foy Parmi tes soeurs que je desire, De Leucate à Fontarable Je te dis que la plus jolie Ne peut se comparer à toi." Ancienne Balade. ON rather a cold morning, early in October, we set out from Pau for the Vallée d'Ossau; the road between the hills covered with vines of Jurançon. Gan and Gelos are extremely pretty. We passed a house which was pointed out to us as belonging to the Baron Bernadotte, nephew to the King of Sweden, who, being a native of Pau, divides the honours of the town with Henry IV. Formerly, in this spot stood a castle, where a singularly Arcadian custom prevailed; every shepherd of the Vallée d'Ossau who passed by that spot with his flock, was required to place a small branch of leaves in a large ring fixed on the portal. If their lords insisted on no heavier homage than this, their duty was not very severe. We passed through Gan--a wretched-looking village, once of great importance; one of the _thirteen towns_ of Béarn; originally surrounded by walls and towers, of which nothing now remains except a few stones, which have served to build the houses. A _tourelle_ is shown in the place as having formed part of the house of Marca, the historian of Béarn: there is an inscription on it, and arms, with the date of 1635. The further we advanced the more the scenery improved, and as we followed the course of the beautiful, rapid, and noisy river Nès, which went foaming over its shallow, stony bed, making snowy cascades at every step, we were delighted with the gambols of that most beautiful of mountain-torrents, which appears to descend a series of marble stairs of extraordinary extent, rushing and leaping along the solitary gorge like a wild child at play. The village of Sévignac opens the Vallée d'Ossau; and a host of villages, and a wide spread of pasture-land, with high mountains stretching far away into the distance, were before us. We breakfasted at Louvie, and then continued our route, the road becoming wilder, and having more character, than hitherto; we seemed now to have entered the gorges, and to be really approaching the great mountains, which, in strange and picturesque shapes, rose up in all directions around us. The most striking object here, is an isolated mount, on the summit of which stand the ruins of a feudal tower, called Castel Jaloux, built by Gaston Phoebus, for the convenience of holding the assemblies of Ossau, there to meet the viscounts who were independent of the kingdom of Béarn. The village of Castets is at the base of the rock, concealed amidst thick foliage: this situation is charming, in the midst of gigantic steeps and rich valleys, with the Gave foaming at its foot. Laruns, the chief town of the canton, is a long, straggling town, almost Swiss in the construction of its houses: it has a small antique church, where there is a _bénitier_, curiously ornamented with figures of _syrens_: this is a favourite ornament in this part of the world, difficult to be explained, unless it is intended to represent some water-nymphs of the different Gaves, for it is too far from the sea to have any allusion to an ocean spirit. The road divides here, one route leading to the Eaux Bonnes, the other to the Eaux Chaudes; we proposed visiting the former on our way back, our intention being, if possible, to attempt the ascent of the Pic du Midi d'Ossau. We continued to mount by a fine road, having magnificent views before and around, in order the better to enjoy which, we chose to walk for some distance up the height, between walls of rock, of all colours and shapes, covered with purple heath, and changing leaves, and delicate flowers of various hues. When we reached the summit, we found ourselves in a narrow defile, where a party of peasants were endeavouring, by main force, to assist a huge cart, drawn by labouring and straining horses, up the precipitous ascent--a perilous and painful work, which, however, they accomplished very well. We heard beyond a hoarse murmur, which told us we should soon rejoin the Gave, which here runs under the rocks, and reappears in a bed, upwards of four hundred feet deep. The high rocks seemed nearly to meet, and form a way exactly like the approach to a fortified castle: this pass is called _Le Hourat_. A little chapel is built at the other end of the opening, enclosing a figure of the Virgin--an object of great veneration in the neighbourhood. There was formerly here a long inscription in honour of the visit to the baths of the Princess Catherine, sister of Henry the Fourth; but every trace of it has disappeared, though there are many travellers whose eyes are so good as to be able to discern it, notwithstanding the fact of its having been carefully erased at the time of the great Revolution, when no royal _souvenir_ was permitted to remain. From this point, to the village of the Eaux Chaudes, the way is the most savage, wild, and beautiful that can be imagined: the torrent raving along its rocky bed, and foaming cataracts tumbling into its waters from numerous woody heights; at length we saw the little nest where the baths lie concealed; and descended between steep rocks, which shut the valley in so closely, that it appears almost possible to touch the two sides, which incline as if to form a canopy over the houses. We secured rooms for the night at the hotel--a very large one, and, in moderately warm weather, no doubt pleasant enough; but at this period all was as chill and dreary as if it had been in December. With much delay and difficulty we procured horses, and lost no time in setting out for Gabas, though the ominous appearance of the sky promised but little for our attempt; however, for the seven miles we rode along the exquisite valley--unequalled in its kind--nothing could exceed the delight and admiration I felt at the grandeur of the unexpected scenery; piles of naked rocks rose on one side of the road--which is as good as possible--while on the other they were covered with trees of every growth, with, as we advanced higher, a few pines appearing here and there; the torrent met us, rushing down impetuously over large and more encumbering blocks of stone, which, impeding its course, caused the waters to leap and struggle and foam and dash, till clouds of spray filled the valley, and its thundering voice echoed through the hollow caverns on the banks: its rich _green_ colour, as clear as crystal, came out brilliantly from its crest of foam, so that the stream looked really a _Rio Verde_. Long silver lines of shining water came trickling or rushing down from every height amongst the trees and shrubs, sometimes splashing across our path, and joining a little clear course which was hurrying forward to throw itself down the rock into the bosom of the mother Gave, on the other side. We stopped our horses so often to contemplate the beautiful _accidents_ of rock and torrent, that by the time we reached the village of Gabas the day was closing in, and we found that it would take us two hours to reach the summit of the great mountain, which we scarcely remembered, in our pleasure at the beauties of the ride, had never been visible to us for a moment; in fact, a heavy mist hung over the snowy peaks, all of which were shrouded. Scarcely regretting the necessity for retracing our steps, we turned back, and had another view of the wonders of the lovely valley. The mountains now wore a more sombre hue, and the deepened shadows gave a severer character to the ravines. An eagle sailed majestically over our heads, much to my delight, as it was the only incident which we seemed to want to render the scene complete in lonely grandeur. That which is unaccustomed has a greater power over the imagination; and to me, who had never seen Switzerland or Italy, and to whom eagles were almost a fable, the solemn flight of one of these monarchs of the air, so peculiar in its movements, sailing along the peaks above the cataracts, was very impressive. It was then, by the shaking I experienced at every step, that I was aware how very steep had been our ascent the whole way from the Eaux Chaudes; our little sturdy mountain-ponies had cantered on so gaily, that I imagined we were on even ground: so far from which, we found on the return the motion so painful, that most of us got off our horses and walked. It was nearly dark when we arrived at the hotel, and we were not sorry to crowd round a blazing fire, and find all prepared for our refreshment. The night was like winter, and the incessant roaring of the torrent prevented anything approaching sleep; but the sun rose brightly, and the next day was perfectly warm and genial. We took our way to Bonnes, and found the beauty of the journey increased by the fine effects of light and shade which the improved weather allowed; and, as we mounted the steep hill leading to the village, nothing could exceed the splendour of the view; the snowy top of the Pic de Ger, which the day before was not visible, now came out from a canopy of clouds; and huge rocks and verdant mountains, at different heights, descended in steps to the rich and glowing valley beneath, dotted with white cottages and thick groves: the Gave, on one side spanned by a beautiful picturesque bridge, rushes down on the other into a profound ravine, through which its waters run a subterranean course, till they reappear below the Hourah. The brilliant sun which favoured us exhibited the Eaux Bonnes in its best light, and it seemed a delightful contrast to the chilly gorge we had left at the Eaux Chaudes. The hotels are well furnished, and there appears every convenience for the numerous visitors who crowd here in the summer. We walked to a fine waterfall just behind the inn where we stopped,--formed by the Valentin and the Sonde,--which is grand in the extreme. There are several other fine cascades in the neighbourhood, but this was the only one I saw. A way by a pretty, narrow, winding path to the top of a heathy hill is charming, and here a rustic temple is erected from whence the view is enchanting. Behind rises the majestic Pic de Ger, rugged and hoary, crowned with snow, the first that had shown itself in this region. The rocks and mountains are quite close, pressing in upon the village, and its establishment of baths; but, as the situation is on a height, it has a less confined appearance than the valley of the rival baths, and was, on the day we visited it, like another climate,--warm and genial: it must be extremely hot in the summer, as, indeed, all these gorges cannot fail to be. We talked to a lively young woman at the window of one of the now deserted boarding-houses, who told us she was a native of the Eaux Chaudes, whose merits she considered so superior to those of the Eaux Bonnes, that she had never deigned to cast her eyes, she said, up towards the paltry mountain of Ger, which the people of this gorge had the presumption to compare to that of the Pic du Midi: "One is here buried alive," said she, "with no walks, no mountains, no torrents; it is quite a waste of life, and I am resolved never to go to the top of that mole-hill of Ger, about which they make such a fuss: how disgusted you must be with it after the other!" She had once been to Pau, which she considered another Paris, but not so gay as the Eaux Bonnes; so that we learnt another lesson, which convinced us that every person sees with different eyes from his neighbours, and "proudly proclaims the spot of earth" which has most interest for him, the best. We were free to differ with this fair Ossalaise; for, much as we admired her beautiful valley, we could not but give its rival nearly as much praise; admiring in particular the stupendous waterfall of the Valentin, where we lingered some time, climbing about the rocks, almost stunned by the roar of the waters, which break from the rock in three divisions; and so rushing over the projecting buttresses till they subside in the broad, cold, pebbly lake below. The Vallée d'Ossau is said to combine all the beauties of the Pyrenees; and is certainly one of the most enchanting spots in nature: the scenery reminded me, in some degree, of that at the Mont Dore, in Auvergne; but, though superior in some respects, the magnificent _plateaux_ of gigantic pines were wanting. It is necessary, in the Pyrenees, to ascend much higher than we did to behold this growth,--a few straggling firs of insignificant size are all that are to be seen in the lower range; but I believe they are very fine in some parts. We stopped at Bielle to visit the Roman pavement, which has only lately been discovered; it was shown to us by a woman who was surrounded by five little children with black eyes and rosy cheeks; for this region is the Paradise of children; they all look so healthy and handsome. The mother, though still young, looked ten years older than she really was,--worn and tanned, like all I had hitherto seen; her remarkably small feet were bare, and she wore the fringed leggings peculiar to this part, which have a singularly Indian appearance. Beauty is said to be common in this country; but we had not met a single female who deserved to be called so; nor did the costume strike us as otherwise than coarse and ungraceful: in this particular forming a great contrast to the peasantry of Switzerland, with whose mountains there is here a parallel. The _patois_ spoken by this family sounded very musical and pretty; and we remarked that the villagers in general seemed gentle and civil: a little boy, who constituted himself our guide, was a strange figure, actually covered with rags and tatters, which hung about him in the most grotesque drapery, as if it had been studied to create laughter: the village looked the very picture of poverty, desolation, dirt, and ruin: the church is a piece of antiquity of great interest. It has evidently been a pagan temple; and, ranged in an outer court, surrounded by circular arches, are placed some stone coffins, which excite wonder and interest; three of them have the lid of the ridged form, called _dos d'âne_: the other is flattened, and all are uninjured. They might seem to belong to the period when Charlemagne's knights required so many tombs in this land. It was in re-constructing a new vestry-room that these treasures were discovered beneath the worn stones which had been removed: no inscriptions give a hint to whom they may have belonged, and there they lie, side by side, mysterious relics of the times of chivalry. The pillars inside the church are very celebrated for their extreme beauty: they are of white and blue jasper, found in a quarry near Bielle. A story is told of Henry IV., who greatly admired these pillars, having sent to request the town to make him a present of them, as he found nothing in his capital that could compare with their beauty; he received this answer: "Bous quets meste de noustes coos et de noustes beés; mei per co qui es Deus pialars diu temple, aquets que son di Diu, dab eig quep at bejats." "You may dispose of our hearts and our goods at your will; as for the columns, they belong to God; manage the matter with Him." The Ossalais in this showed no little wit; or, if the tradition is not founded on fact, the story still exhibits their powers of setting a due value on their possessions in a striking light. Bielle was once a place of great importance, and its church belonged to an abbey of Benedictines: there was formerly a stone on the façade, on which was engraved the arms of the Valley--a _Bear and a Bull_, separated by a beech tree, with this device: "_Ussau é Bearn. Vive la Vacca_." The ancient archives of Ossau are kept in a stone coffer at Bielle; and the dignitaries of the country repair to this spot at certain periods of the year to consult on the affairs of the communes. What habitation they find wherein to meet, suitable to their dignity, it would be difficult to say. We stopped an hour at Izeste, and strolled along the one street of this wretched bourg while our horses rested: over almost every house we were surprised to see sculptured stones, with half-effaced arms, showing that once persons of condition inhabited these now degraded dwellings. One in particular, in a singular state of preservation, represented the cognizance of the house of Lusignan, and here we did indeed see the effigy which we had failed to find at the castle near Poitiers, of the serpent-tailed Fairy Melusine. We went into the house of the proprietor, who, with his mother and several of his neighbours, hurried out, after peeping from their windows to watch the operation of the sketching of Melusine, and invited us to see another head of a woman which he had found in the garden of his tenement. We passed along several dim, dark passages, and through large, square, dungeon-like rooms, apparently serving as stables, to the garden, where we found numerous remains of ancient Roman wall and bricks and broken columns, and the head of a statue much defaced. Every house seemed capable of exhibiting similar remains, and on many were dates in stone of 1613, 1660, 1673. One tower of defence is tolerably perfect; and walls and remnants of gates here and there prove how strong and how important Izeste once must have been. We entered a court-yard, where a tailor was sitting working close by a curious door-way, which appeared like the entrance to a church, and was built into a wall, forming part of what was formerly a large mansion. We were so much struck with the extraordinary sculpture round the arch, that we inquired if there was any record of what it had been. The tailor looked up surprised: "Well," said he, "I have lived here all my life, and never took notice of this door-way before: we have plenty of old stones here; but they are worth nothing, and mean nothing, that I know of." The carving which so excited our curiosity was a series of medallions: some circular, some square, very much mutilated, but still traceable. On one compartment were the figures of a bear _rampant_, and--what might be--a bull: they seemed in the act of combat, and possibly might represent the arms of Béarn and Ossau, though I confess I look upon them as of _very early_ date--perhaps the work of the Gauls or Goths, _selon moi_; another enclosed a Sagittarius and a dog; another, an animal like a wolf, holding a club; another, an ape: the rest are too much worn to enable an antiquarian to decide what they were; but the whole offered a very singular and interesting problem, which we found it impossible to solve: the medallions are on stones which have evidently belonged to some other building, and been thus placed over a modern portal. There is a cavern in the neighbourhood of Izeste, which is said to be worth visiting; but the weather was not propitious to our seeing it. We stopped on the way from the Eaux Bonnes, on our return, at a place where our driver purchased us some ortolans, and we were almost stunned with the noise and clamour of a crowd of little urchins, with flowers and without, who, in whining accents, insisted on sous; but there was nothing either pretty or romantic about them or their costume; and we were very glad when, having procured the delicate little birds we waited for, we could resume our route. This was just at the season of _La Chasse des Palombes_--a time of much importance in the valley, when hundreds of a peculiar sort of pigeons are sacrificed. Many of the peaks which had been concealed from us the day before, came forth from their circling mists, at intervals, on our return, and were pointed out to us by their different names; but as we came back in the evening to Pau, the range which was most familiar to us re-appeared in all its splendour, much clearer than when we were nearer to them. At Beost, in the midst of the valley, lives a man, whose industry and genius have made him an object of curiosity and interest in the country, and whose fame must probably cause considerable interruption to his studies in the season of the baths; for it has become quite the fashion to visit him. He is called Pierrine, or Gaston Saccaze; is a shepherd who has always lived in these mountains, and has made himself so thoroughly acquainted with the botany of the district as to have become a valuable correspondent of the members of the Jardin des Plantes at Paris: he taught himself Latin, by means of an old dictionary which he bought for a few sous, and, by dint of extraordinary perseverance, has made himself master of the whole Flora of the Pyrenees. CHAPTER VII. GABAS--POPULAR SONGS--PONT CRABE--THE RECLUSE OF THE VALLÉE D'OSSAU--MARGUERITE--THE SPRINGS. I made another excursion to the Vallée d'Ossau in the February of 1843, when the weather was singularly mild--infinitely more so than when I was first there in October, and the clearness of the sky enabled me to see all the mountains which were before concealed in clouds. With an adventurous party, all anxious to take advantage of the propitious moment, I undertook a long _walk_--for at this season it is difficult to procure horses--towards Gabas, having this time the Pic du Midi bright and clear and close in view. The carriage was able to advance along the steep road which extends above the foaming Gave de Gabas, nearly half way to the desired spot; for the snow had fallen in very small quantity during the winter, and there had been no interruption to the roads. From a certain place, however, where two paths diverged, we found that the height we had reached had brought us to the snows, and that it was too slippery for the horses to proceed; accordingly we alighted and performed the rest of the journey on foot. The walk was very exciting and amusing, our feet sinking deep in snow at every step, while a burning sun, _gaümas_, as the guide said, was shining over our heads, glittering on the white peaks above, and sparkling in the deep, clear, green torrent at the foot of the box-covered hills, over which silver streams of water were flowing from the summits into the murmuring wave, which churlishly received their tributary visits, and disputed the place they took, dashing, foaming, and springing over the enormous masses of rock in their course, till all the valley re-echoed with their ceaseless quarrelling. Every now and then we stopped to look back at the sublime scenery, and to make a hasty sketch of the peaks, which tempted us to pause. Summer and winter seemed combined in our stroll, and it appeared as if we were realizing the fable of "_the man, the sun, and the cloud_," not knowing whether to yield to the heat or the cold. We met two Spaniards hurrying along, who had crossed the mountains from Saragossa: they were fine, strong-looking men, and sufficiently wild; but too dirty and slovenly to excite much admiration _here_; if we had seen them on the opposite side of the ravine they might have passed for picturesque, in the same manner as the singing of our guide might have delighted our ears had we heard him from a distance: as it was, he indulged our request by intoning some of the pastorals of Despourrins, which, if the spirit of the poet of the Pyrenees is wandering amongst the mountains, must have greatly _perturbed_ it. A long, loud, unmelodious drawl, like a dirge, with many a dying fall, was the vehicle in which the tender expressions of the poet were conveyed to our ears; and I was reproached by my companions for having injudiciously praised the verses of the Swan of Béarn: certainly heard in mutilated fragments, and sung by such a musician--"_La Haüt sus las Mountagnes_" and "_La Plus Charmante Anesquette_," were not calculated to excite much admiration. A lady of our party, who was acquainted with the popular songs of Languedoc, repeated a few verses to our guide, who took up the strain, which was not new to him: it is singular how widely these simple songs are spread from one part of France to the other; indeed, they are scarcely confined to any country, and, like traditions, seem to have wandered up and down into all regions. For instance, I was very much surprised, a short time ago, to see in a work on Persian popular literature, an almost literal version of a song, well-known on the Bourbonnais, which I had met with at Moulins. I questioned the guide on the subject of the superstitions of the valley, and found that he had himself _seen_ the fairies called _Les Blanquettes_: those charming mountain-fairies who roam along the peaks singing mournful songs. "I had often heard of them," said he, "and many of my friends had seen them hovering about the mouths of caverns on the highest points of the mountains. I wished, therefore, to satisfy myself, and went to the spot where others had beheld them, and sure enough there they were, figures in white, like women, in a circle round the entrance of a cavern." "And were these fairies?" I asked. He paused a moment, and then said--"As for fairies, that is an old story, which some people believe: these that I saw _were only shadows_." It appears to me that superstition is fast wearing out in the Pyrenees, as well as everywhere else. As we continued our way, we observed, along the snowy path, tracks of the feet of animals--a troop of wild-cats had evidently been before us, and here and there we remarked a print, which could be nothing less than the foot-mark of a wolf. The flight of a large bird, which I believe to have been a vulture, added to the solemnity of the scene; but there were less of these indications of solitude than I hoped to experience, for all was sunshine and gaiety around. We observed near the Pont Crabe, _i.e._ Pont des Chèvres, on the opposite side of the ravine, a desolate-looking mill, placed in so wild and rugged a position, that one could not but pity those whose fortune might have condemned them to a residence there all the year round: a story attached to the cottage made it still more sad. It appears that a young girl, the very flower of maidens in the Vallée d'Ossau, had been deceived and deserted by her lover, and on the point of becoming a mother, when she consulted the priest of her parish, confessing to him her weakness, and entreating his aid to enable her to propitiate offended Heaven. The virtuous and holy man, shocked at the infirmity and want of propriety exhibited by the unfortunate girl, was very severe in his censures, and informed her that there was no way left for her but by penance and mortification to endeavour to wipe away her sin. He condemned her, therefore, to take up her abode in that solitary cottage, far away from all human habitation, to spend her life in prayer and lamentation, and to endeavour, by voluntary affliction, to win her way to heaven. She did so; and she and her child lived for ten years in that secluded spot, where the constant sound of murmuring waters drowned her sighs, and where no intruding foot came to disturb her solitude, except when the good priest, from time to time, visited her, to afford the consolation of his pious prayers. At the end of that time her spirit departed, and her little son was received into the convent, of which he became a member. THE RECLUSE OF THE VALLÉE D'OSSAU. "Say, ye waters raging round, Say, ye mountains, bleak and hoar, Is there quiet to be found, Where the world can vex no more? May I hope that peace can be Granted to a wretch like me! "Hark! the vulture's savage shriek-- Hark! the grim wolf scares the night,-- Thunder peals from peak to peak, Ghastly snows shroud ev'ry height. Hark! the torrent has a tone, Dismal--threat'ning--cold--alone! "Was I form'd for scenes like this, Flattered, trusting, vain and gay-- In whose smile _he_ said was bliss, Who to hear was to obey?-- Yes! weak idol! 'tis thy doom, This thy guerdon--this thy tomb! "When I from my heart have torn All the mem'ries cherish'd long; When my early thought at morn, And my sigh at even-song, Have not all the self-same theme, Peace upon my soul may gleam! "When no more I paint his eyes, When his smile no more I see, And his tone's soft melodies Wake not in each sound to me; When I can efface the past, I may look for calm--at last. "When resentment is at rest, Scorn and sorrow, rage and shame, Can be still'd within my breast-- And I start not at his name; When I weep, nor faint, nor feel, Then my heart's deep wounds may heal. "Years, long years, it yet will take, Spite of pain and solitude, Ere this heart can cease to ache, And no restless dreams intrude: Ere I crush each fond belief, And oblivion vanquish grief. "It might be--but in my child All his father lives the while; Such his eyes--so bright, so wild-- Such his air, his voice, his smile-- Still I see him o'er and o'er, Till I dare to gaze no more! "Is it sin to love him yet? Was it sin to love at all? Is my torture, my regret, For his loss--or for my fall? Change, oh Heaven!--thou canst, thou wilt-- Thoughts that sink my soul in guilt! "Teach me that regret is crime, That my past despair is vain, And my penance through all time Shall be ne'er to hope again,-- Only in His pardon trust-- Pitying, merciful, and just." It is said that La Reine Marguerite, sister of Francis I., wrote the greatest part of her celebrated stories during a sojourn at the Eaux Chaudes: there, surrounded with a brilliant court of ladies and poets, she passed several joyous months, and recruited her health, while she amused her imagination, in wandering amongst the rocks and wild paths of Gabas and La Broussette: in her train were "_joueurs, farceurs, baladins_, and _garnemens de province_," and nothing but entertainment seemed the business of the lives of those fair and gay invalids, who, so long ago, set an example which has not failed to be well followed since. The pompous inscription which once appeared in a chapel at La Hourat, in honour of the passage of the Princess Catherine, sister of Henri IV. is now replaced by a modern exhortation to the traveller to implore the aid of the Virgin before he tempts the perils of the pass: and our guides very reverently took off their _berrets_, as they went by the little niche, where stands the image, which is an object of their adoration and hope. Poor Catherine, always disconsolate at her separation from the object of her choice, found but little relief from the waters--they could not minister to a mind diseased--and she had not the joyous, careless mind of her predecessor and grandmother; nor are we told that she attempted to compose amusing histories to distract her thought, nor could exclaim-- "I write--sad task! that helps to wear away The long, long, mournful melancholy day; Write what the fervour of my soul inspires, And vainly fan love's slow-consuming fires." All was sad and solitary to her; for the only companion she desired was not there to give her his hand along the rugged paths, to support her amongst the glittering snows, and smooth her way through the pleasing difficulties of the abrupt ascents. Cold ceremony, and, at best, mere duty, attended her whose heart sighed for tenderness and affection which she was never destined to know. At that period, there was neither hotel nor street, and the rudest huts sheltered that simple court; but they might perhaps afford, after all, as much comfort as may at the present day be found, in cold weather, in the irreclaimably smoky rooms of the principal inn at the Eaux Chaudes. The accommodation is much superior--at least, _out_ of the season--at the Eaux Bonnes, the situation of which is, as I before observed, infinitely more cheerful; but in hot weather it must be like an oven, closed in as the valley is with toppling mountains, which one seems almost to touch. Rising up, and barring the way immediately at the top of the valley in which the waters spring, is the isolated mountain called _La butte du Trésor_, on the summit of which is erected a little rustic temple, doubtless the favourite resort of adventurous invalids, during their stay at the waters. I cannot imagine the sojourn agreeable at that period to persons in health, who are led there only by curiosity; for often, while balls and parties are going on in the saloons below, some unfortunate victim of disease is being removed from the sick chambers above to his last home. Nothing but insensibility to human suffering can allow enjoyment to exist in such a spot, under such circumstances. I rejoiced that, at the period of both my visits, we had the scenery all to ourselves, with no drawback of melancholy to spoil the satisfaction we experienced. These waters were first used, it is said, by Henri II. of Navarre, after his return from the fatal fight of Pavia, where he was wounded by a musketshot. They, from hence, took the name of Eaux des Arquebusades, as they were found efficacious in cases similar to his own. Michel Montaigne was one of the illustrious visitors to these healing springs, which he calls _Grammontoises_. Jacques de Thou came to the Eaux Bonnes in 1582; and recounts that, in the week which he passed there, he drank twenty-five glasses of water a day; but in this he was exceeded by a German companion, who took no less them _fifty_. These springs were forgotten for more than a century after this; and Barèges was preferred to them. The great physician, Bordeu, of whom Béarn is justly proud, restored their reputation in a great measure: but it is rather within the last thirty years that they have reached the celebrity which they now enjoy. It is generally said that the Vallée d'Ossau combines all the beauties and grandeurs of the Pyrenees; and that the traveller, who has only time to visit this part, has had a specimen of all that is most admirable in this beautiful chain of mountains. For myself, I endeavour to believe this, not having been able to see so much of the Pyrenees as I desired. CHAPTER VIII. PEASANTS OF OSSAU--CAPTIVITY OF FRANCIS THE FIRST--DEATH OF JOYEUSE--DEATH OF THE DUKE DE MAINE--DANCES. A great deal has been said and written about the peasants of the Vallée d'Ossau; and most persons appear to have been guided rather by enthusiasm than truth, exaggerating and embellishing facts as it suited their views or their humour. It is the custom to admire the young girls and children who pester travellers with shabby, faded little bouquets, which they throw into the carriage-windows, and to see something peculiar in the custom; but it does not strike me that there is the slightest difference in this, or any other usage, between the Pyrenees and all parts of France, through which I have passed. On the road from Calais, as well as in the Vallée d'Ossau, ragged dirty groups, eager for sous, place themselves in your way, and endeavour to obtain money: on fête-days they may look better; but on ordinary occasions there is certainly but little to admire, either in their dress or manners. A lively but sarcastic French writer has observed on the proneness of tourists to exalt the peasants of Ossau into the Arcadian beings of Virgil and Theocritus, representing them as assembling together to sing the verses of Despourrins: that--"it is, perhaps, better to see romance than not to see at all; but those who have discovered these pastoral heroes and heroines, can assuredly never have met with them on the Ger or the Pic du Midi: the only songs that one can hear in that neighbourhood are drawling, monotonous lines, without either rhyme or reason,--a sort of ballad like that of the wandering Jew. As for their occupations, they are commonly employed in knitting coarse woollen stockings, or in preparing, in the dirtiest manner in the world, the poorest and most insipid cheese that ever was made. The youths and maidens are by no means Estelles and Nemourins. I am aware that this account will be considered profane, and the writer of these facts, a morose, disagreeable person; but the truth is, nevertheless, better than false enthusiasm, which causes misrepresentation; and, having always before our eyes so much that is glorious and sublime, it cannot be necessary to inflate the imagination for ever _à propos de rien_. "Let those who would form an idea of the singing of the Ossalois observe them on a fête-day, in some of their villages, when the young people are returning home. They separate in two bands: some holding each other by the waist, some round the neck. The foremost party go about thirty steps in silence, while those behind sing a couplet in chorus; the first then stop, sing the second verse, and wait till those behind have joined them; and the latter sing the third verse as they arrive at home. This chant is called, in the country, _Passe-carrère_. Every now and then the song is intermingled with sharp, wild cries, called _arénilhets_, peculiar to the mountaineers; which prove the strength of their lungs, if not their ear for melody. All this is performed slowly and heavily, without any appearance of joyousness or gaiety, and seems singularly ill-adapted to a fête." It must be allowed that, whenever a good voice occurs in this part of the country, it is an exception to the general rule; but this happened not long since, in the case of a young and very handsome girl of Ossau, whose melodious voice and fine execution attracted the notice of an amateur, by whom she was introduced to the theatre at Berlin, and obtained great applause and success. She may be considered as a nightingale who had lost her way amongst a wood of screech-owls; for her talent was quite alone. She used to sing an old historical romance of the valley, composed on the captivity of Francis I., which has seldom since found a voice capable of giving it effect. There is something in this old ballad very like those of Spain, both in character and rhythm; and there exist several others, on historical subjects, which have the same kind of simple merit: THE CAPTIVITY OF FRANCIS I. "Quan lou Rey parti de France," &c. When the king, from France departing, Other lands to conquer sought, 'Twas at Pavia he was taken, By the wily Spaniard caught. "Yield thee, yield thee straight, King Francis, Death or prison is your lot;" "Wherefore call you me King Francis? Such a monarch know I not." Then the Spaniards raised his mantle, And they saw the fleur-de-lys;-- They have chained him, and, full joyous, Bore him to captivity. In a tower, where sun nor moon-light Came but by a window small; There he lies, and as he gazes, Sees a courier pass the wall. "Courier! who art letters bringing, Tell me what in France is said?" "Ah! my news is sad and heavy-- For the king is ta'en, or dead." "Back with speed, oh, courier, hasten-- Haste to Paris back with speed, To my wife and little children; Bid them help me at my need. "Bid them coin new gold and silver, All that Paris has to bring, And send here a heap of treasure, To redeem the captive king."[32] [Footnote 32: The popularity of this ballad is accounted for by the circumstance of the Prince of Béarn, Henry II. d'Albert, having been made prisoner with Francis; he was, however, more fortunate than the king, for he made his escape. The original runs thus:-- THE CAPTIVITY OF FRANCIS I. Quan lou Rey parti de France, Counqueri d'aütes pays, A l'entrade de Pavi Lous Espagnols bé l'an pris. "Renté, renté, Rey de France, Que si non, qu'en mourt ou pris," Quin seri lou Rey de France? Que jamey you nou l'ey bist." Queou lheban l'ale deoü mantoü Troban l'y la flou de lys. Quoü ne prenen et quoü liguen Dens la prison que l'an mis. Dehens üe tour escure, Jamey sour ni lue s'y a bist; Si nou per üe frinistote.... U poustillou bet beni. "Poustillou qué lettres portis Que si counte tà Paris?" "La nouvelle que you porti Lou Rey qu'ere mort ou pris." "Tourne t'en poustillou en poste, Tourne t'en entà Paris. Arrecommandem à ma femme Tabé mous infants petits. "Que hassen batte la mounede, La qui sie dens Paris, Que men embien üe cargue Por rachetam aü pays." The chorus is usually at the end of each verse--"La lyron, la lyré," or "doundoun, doundone."] The following is also a favourite ballad on the battle of Coutras and the death of Joyeuse, the magnificent favourite of Henry III., whose contemptuous remark on his effeminacy was the cause of his exposing himself in the _mêlée_. The episode of the fate of Joyeuse is an affecting one in the life of the valiant and generous Henry of Navarre. The treasure was immense that was taken from the gorgeous army destined to overthrow the harassed Huguenots, but literally cut to pieces by the stern and bold, though ragged warriors. The gold, silver, and jewels that were brought to Henry's tent, after the victory, were heaped on the floor, and the dead body of the beautiful and admired Duke de Joyeuse was brought to him. Henry turned away, sick at heart, and commanded the corpse to be covered with a cloak, and removed carefully; and desired that all the spoil should be divided amongst the soldiers; holding it beneath him to accept any: nor could he restrain his tears at the sight of so much carnage of those whom he looked upon as his subjects. THE DEATH OF JOYEUSE. Between La Roche and Coutras Was heard our battle cry; And still we called--"To arms! to arms!" Our voices rent the sky. Our king was there with all his men, And all his guards beside, Within, the Duke de Joyeuse, And to the king he cried: "Oh, yield, King Henry, yield to me!"-- "What simple squire art thou, To bid King Henry yield him, And to thy bidding bow?" "I an no simple squire, But a knight of high degree; I am the Duke de Joyeuse, And thou must yield to me." The king has placed his cannon In lines against the wall,-- The first fire Joyeuse trembled, The next saw Joyeuse fall. Alas! his little children, How sad will be their fate!-- A nurse both young and pretty, Shall on them tend and wait: And they shall be brave warriors, When they come to man's estate. The next ballad is in the same strain: THE DEATH OF THE DUKE DE MAINE. The noble Duke de Maine Is dead or wounded sore; Three damsels came to visit him, And his hard hap deplore. "Oh! say, fair prince, where is your wound?" "'Tis in my heart," he said, "'Twill not be many moments Ere you will see me dead." "Oh! call my page, and bid my squire;-- They ink and paper bring;-- For I must write a letter To my cousin and my king." And when the king the letter read, Tears from his eyelids fell; "Oh! who shall lead my armies now. Who shall command so well!" "Oh! who shall guide my valiant bands To conquest in the fight!-- The Duke de Vendôme[33] must succeed,-- He is a gallant knight." [Footnote 33: Antoine de Bourbon.] * * * * * It is seldom now that the tamborine or pipe, celebrated by Despourrins, is heard as an accompaniment to the dances of the peasants. A violin is the usual music; and the antique and pastoral character is at once destroyed. Sometimes it is possible to see a real mountain-dance, which is certainly picturesque, if not graceful, and belongs peculiarly to the spot, and the objects which inspired it; as, for instance, _"The Dance of the Wild Goat," "The Dance of the Izard," "La Gibaudrie," "La Ronde du Grand Pic."_ The young men are very agile in these exercises; but, in general, the woman's part is very inferior: they, indeed, seldom dance together, and usually are only spectators. This seems to indicate an Eastern origin. There is one exception to this rule in a _ronde_, executed by both sexes, hand-in-hand; but in this the men leap and cut, while the women move their feet slowly and heavily: in fact, they look half asleep, while the young men seem much more occupied with their own feats of agility than with their partners. As I have not seen any of these dances, nor the peasants in their holiday costumes, I have some difficulty in imagining that there is either beauty or grace amongst them. At the Eaux Bonnes, our female attendant wore her red-peaked _capeline_ in the house, which had a singular effect, but was by no means pretty: indeed, the only impression it gives me is, that it is precisely the costume which seems to suit _a daunce o' witches_; and cannot by possibility be softened into anything in the least pleasing to the eye. All the peasants I saw at different periods of the year had a remarkably slovenly, dirty, squalid appearance; and, except in the instance of one little girl of about thirteen, I saw none who had the slightest claim to beauty, or could excite interest for a moment. There is a humble, civil air about the people in the Vallée d'Ossau, which propitiates one: the _berret_ is always taken off as a stranger passes, and a kind salutation uniformly given. But, beyond this, there is nothing worthy of remark as respects the common people, who appear to be a simple race, content to work hard and live poorly. Our guide pointed out to us a village, from the valley, perched up on a height in the midst of snows, where, he said, the inhabitants, who were all shepherds, _were very learned_. "Not one of them," said he, "but can read and write; and, as they are always in the mountains with a book in their hands, and have nothing to interrupt their studies, they know a great deal, and are brave _gens_." Probably Gaston Saccaze the naturalist belongs to such a fraternity. CHAPTER IX. COARRAZE--ORTON--THE PONT LONG--LES BELLES CANTINIÈRES--MORLAAS--THE CURÉ--RESISTANCE TO IMPROVEMENT--UZAIN--LESCAR--REFORMATION IN NAVARRE--TOMBS--FRANÇOIS PHOEBUS--THE MOTHER. "A très lègues de Pau, a cap à las mountagnes Aprés abé seguit gayhaventes[34] campagnes, Sus û Pic oûn lou Gabe en gourgouils ba mouri Lou Castel de Coarraze aüs oueils qu'es bien ouffri." WITHIN a pleasant drive of Pau is the Castle of Coarraze, where the youth of Henry IV. was passed, under the guardianship of Suzanne de Bourbon-Busset, Barronne de Miossens. Of this castle nothing now remains but one tower, on which may still be traced the motto, "_Lo que ha de ser non puede faltar_," from whence is a magnificent view _into_ the mountains. Of the Castle of Coarraze, it will be seen that more marvellous things are told than that Henri Quatre passed much of his childhood there. [Footnote 34: Smiling.] Froissart has immortalized it as the scene of one of his romances of Orthez; and this is the tale he tells of its lord: It seems, Count Gaston Phoebus had such early knowledge of every event, that his household could only account for the fact by supposing that he possessed some familiar spirit, who told him all that had happened in the country, far and near. This was considered by no means unusual; and when Sir John Froissart expressed his surprise on the subject, a squire belonging to the count related to him a circumstance of a similar nature. "It may be about twenty years ago," said he, "that there reigned, in this country, a baron, who was called Raymond, and who was Lord of Coarraze. Now, Coarraze is a town and castle, about seven leagues from this town of Orthez. The Lord of Coarraze had, at the time of which I speak, a suit before the Pope, at Avignon, respecting the tithes of the church, which were claimed by a certain clerk of Catalonia, who insisted on his right to a revenue from them of a hundred florins a-year. Sentence was given by Pope Urban the Fifth, in a general consistory, against the knight, and in favour of the Churchman; in consequence of which, the latter hastened, with all speed, back to Béarn with his letters and the Pope's bull, by virtue of which he was to enter into possession of the tithes. "The Lord of Coarraze was much incensed at this; and, in great indignation, went to the clerk, and said, 'Master Peter,' or 'Master Martin,'--it matters not for his name--'do you suppose that I shall be content to lose my inheritance for the sake of those letters of yours? I do not believe you to be so bold as to lay your hands on a thing which belongs to me; for, if you do, it is as much as your life is worth. Go elsewhere, and get what you can; as for my inheritance, you shall have none of it, and I tell you so once for all.' "The clerk stood much in awe of the knight at these words, for he knew him to be a determined man, and dared not persevere in his demand; he found it safe to retire to Avignon, or, at all events, out of the count's reach; but, before he departed, he said to him, 'Sire, by force, and not by right, you have taken and kept from me the dues of my church, which in conscience is a great wrong. I am not so strong in this country as you are; but I would have you know, and that soon, that I have a champion, whom you will have cause to fear more than you do me.' The Lord of Coarraze, who cared nothing for his menaces, replied: 'Go, in Heaven's name, and do your worst. I value you as little dead as living; and, for all your words, you shall not get my property.' "Thus they parted: the clerk either to Avignon, or into Catalonia; but he did not forget what he had said to the knight, for soon after there came to his castle of Coarraze, and into the very chamber where he and his lady slept, invisible messengers, who began to riot and overturn everything they found in the castle; so that it seemed as if they would destroy all they came near; so loud were the strokes which they struck against the doors of the bed-rooms, that the lady shook as she lay, and was greatly terrified. The knight heard all; but he took no sort of notice, for he would not seem to be moved by this event, and was bold enough to wait for stranger adventures. "The noise and uproar continued for a long space in different chambers of the castle, and then ceased. The domestics and squires represented what had happened to their master; but he feigned to have heard nothing, and to believe that they had been dreaming: but his lady one day assured him that she had heard the noise but too clearly. "That same night, as he was sleeping in his bed, came the uproar again as before, and shook the windows and doors in a wonderful manner. The knight then could not but rouse himself; and, sitting up, cried out, 'Who knocks so loud at my chamber at such an hour?' "'It is I--it is I!' was the answer. "'And who sends you?' "'The clerk of Catalonia, whom you have wronged out of his property; and I will never leave you in peace till you have reckoned with him for it, and he is content.' "'And what is your name, who are so good a messenger?' "'I am called Orton.' "'Orton,' said the knight, 'the service of a clerk is beneath you; you will find it more trouble than profit; leave it, and serve me--you will be glad of the exchange.' "Now, Orton had _taken a fancy_ to the Lord of Coarraze; and, after a pause, he said, "'Are you in earnest?' "'Certainly,' replied the knight; 'let us understand each other. You must do evil to no one, and we shall be very good friends.' "'No, no,' said Orton, 'I have no power to do evil to you or others, except to disturb them when they might sleep.' "'Well, then, we are agreed,' said the knight; 'in future, you serve me, and quit that wretched clerk.' "'Be it as you will,' said Orton, 'so will I.' "From this time, the spirit attached himself with such affection to the lord, that he constantly visited him at night; and when he found him asleep he made a noise at his ear, or at the doors and windows; and the knight used to wake and cry out, 'Orton, let me alone, I entreat!' "'No, I will not,' was the reply, 'till I have told you some news.' "Meantime, the lady used to lie frightened to death--her hair on end, and her head covered with the bed-clothes. Her husband would say: "'Well, what news have you?--from what country do you come?' "The spirit would answer: "'Why, from England, or Germany, or Hungary, or other countries. I set out yesterday, and such and such things happened.' "In this manner was the count informed of all that occurred in every part of the globe for five or six years: and he could not conceal the truth, but imparted it to the Count of Foix, when he came to visit him. The count was greatly surprised at what he told, and expressed a wish that he possessed such a courier. "'Have you never seen him?' said he. "'Never,' answered the knight. "'I would certainly do so,' said the Count de Foix; 'you tell me he speaks Gascon as well as you or I. Pray see him, and tell me what form he bears.' "'I have never sought to do so,' said the knight; 'but, since you wish it, I will make a point of desiring him to reveal himself.' "The next time Orton brought his news, his master told him he desired to behold him; and, after a little persuasion, he agreed that he should be gratified. 'The first thing you see to-morrow morning,' said he, 'when you rise from your bed, will be me.' "The morning came, and when the knight was getting up, the lady was so afraid of seeing Orton that she pretended to be sick, and would not rise. The knight, however, was resolved, and leapt up with the hope of seeing him in a proper form, but nothing appeared. He ran to the windows, and opened the shutters to let the light in, but still there was no appearance in his room. "At night Orton came, and told him he had appeared in the form of two straws, which, he might have observed, whirled about on the floor. "The knight was much displeased, and insisted on not being thus played with: 'when I have seen you once,' said he, 'I desire no more.' "''Tis well,' replied Orton. 'Remark, then, the first object which meets your eye when you leave your chamber, that will be me.' "The next day the Lord of Coarraze got up, as usual; and when he was ready, he went out of his room into a gallery, which overlooked a court of his castle. The first thing which attracted his notice was a large sow, the most enormous creature he had ever beheld in his life; but she was so thin, that she seemed nothing but skin and bone, and she looked miserable and starved, with a long snout and emaciated limbs. "The lord was amazed and annoyed at seeing this animal in his court-yard, and cried out to his people to drive it away, and set the hounds upon it. This was accordingly done, without delay; when the sow uttered a loud cry, turned a piteous look upon the knight, and disappeared: nor could any one find her again. "The Lord of Coarraze returned to his chamber in a pensive mood; and was now convinced, too late, that he had seen his messenger--who never afterwards returned to him: and the very next year he died in his castle." Beginning almost from the entrance to Pau, extends an immense district of uncultivated land, called the Pont Long. This _lande_ is covered with coarse fern and heath, and is intersected with wide marshes; thirty-two communes have a right in this ground; but it chiefly belongs to the Vallée d'Ossau. It was formerly much more extensive than it now is; but, even yet, a very inconsiderable portion has been reclaimed: its extent is about twelve leagues in length, and one and a half in width. In the centre of this wild country is the ancient town of Morlàas, whose name, tradition says, was derived from the circumstance of a prince--Gaston Centulle--having been there assassinated; from whence it was called _Mort-là_, a derivation, probably, as likely as any other that can be found. We chose a very bright, warm, and beautiful day--during the continuance of fine weather, in November--to drive to Morlàas. Our carriage was stopped, just as we got out of the town, by a regiment of soldiers who were marching out, and, but for the courtesy of the colonel, we should have been impeded for nearly a league: he, however, kindly ordered the ranks to open, and we were allowed to go on between the two lines. This regiment--the 25th of the line--is a remarkably fine one, and appears to be kept in constant activity by its commanders, going out to great distances to exercise in every weather. It is attended by a pretty troop of young women, whose appearance reminded me of Catherine's _petite bande_, so attractive did it seem. I do not know whether this is a common thing, but I never saw such a troop before in company with a regiment. They wear a costume, half feminine half military; have short dresses of grey cloth--the colour of the men's great coats--sitting close to their shape, very full in the skirt, and with cuffs turned up with red facings, red trowsers, and military boots, a white plaited ruff and habit-shirt, a white--neatly frilled and plaited--cap, surmounted with a small, smart glazed hat, round which is the word _Cantinière_: across their shoulder is slung a canteen, and in this equipment they step along with a military air, and in a dashing style which would be invaluable on the stage. I never saw anything more singular and pretty, and to me so new: almost every one of the women was young and very good-looking, extremely well made, and active and strong; as, indeed, they require to be, for they accompany the soldiers on all their expeditions, and remain out all day. It is something as amusing to behold as the troop of _savans and asses_, taken care of by Napoleon in his Egyptian campaign. The road to Morlàas is rather monotonous, and that part which crosses the marsh very bleak and desolate: with the gigantic mountains bounding the horizon, it seems as if the marsh-fiend might here well establish his abode; and the salubrity of the air of the neighbourhood I should somewhat doubt. After a considerable distance, the road quits the _Lande_, and mounts a hill, along and from the summit of which is a very agreeable view, which improves at every step. From this point the Lande below appears cultivated, and vines and fields are seen in all directions. You descend the hill, and Morlàas is in sight: that town was once regal, and of old renown, but is now in the very perfection of ruin and desolation. It was the great market, and our driver was so delighted at the circumstance, that it was with the utmost difficulty we could prevent him from taking us to a plain outside the town, where the horse-fair was going on, as he assured us that there we should see all the _monde_. As we were quite aware of the style of gentry assembled, by the quantity of blue frocks and berrets which we saw from a distance, and by the neighing of steeds which reached our ears, we declined joining the commercial party, and contented ourselves with being jostled and crowded by the assemblage in the streets of Morlàas, whose avenues were blocked up with market-folks, not only from every village and commune round, but from Pau, and Orthez, and Peyrehourade, and Lescar. We stopped at the once magnificent church of Sainte Foix, before a little low porch, where we had to endure much persecution from beggars, _en attendant_ the arrival of the curé who was to show us the interior. We were amused at one of these people, who continued his whining cry of "Charita madama, per l'amor de Déieux!"--half French, half _patois_; till our driver asking him to point out the curé's abode, he answered briskly, in a lively tone; and, having given the required information, resumed the accustomed drawl. The curé seemed very cross, and little propitiated by our apologies for having disturbed him: he looked sleepy and flushed, and had evidently been enjoying a nap, after a hearty meal and a bottle of Jurançon. He hurried us through the ruined church, from which almost every vestige of its early character has disappeared. On a pillar are still seen some Gothic letters, which may be thus read: "In the year of God 1301, this pillar and this altar were made by Téaza, whom God pardon! in honour of God, St. Orens, and Sainte Foi." A picture of the sixteenth century adorns the choir. It represents the Judgment of our Lord; each of the judges is in the costume of the period; and his opinion is expressed by a label attached to his person. One little chapel alone remains of all that must have adorned this church: the sculpture of this is very beautiful, and the grimacing heads introduced amongst the foliage sufficiently grotesque. There is a very large antique baptismal font, and near it is a mutilated statue of the Virgin sustaining the Saviour on her knees, which the curé insisted upon was Nicodemus. His scriptural knowledge seemed about equal to his historical; but he evidently had no mean opinion of his own acquirements, which, he almost told us, were of too high a character to be wasted on mere travellers and foreigners, who knew nothing about Notre Dame or the saints. He would not let us see the belfry-tower, which he assured us was unsafe, and was displeased at our stopping him to remark on the extreme antiquity of two of the huge pillars which support the roof, and which, though much daubed with whitewash, have not lost all their fine _contours_. Having got rid of us, the curé hurried back to his siesta, and we strolled round the church. Beautiful circular arches, with zigzag mouldings, almost perfect, adorned several towers, and showed how admirable must once have been the form of the building. We found ourselves carried away by the crowd into the street again, and were obliged to pause and take breath by the side of the clear rivulet, which, as in most of the towns here, runs swiftly through the streets, rendering them much cleaner than they would otherwise be. Here we were accosted, from an open window, by a female who had been watching our proceedings, from the time of our driving into the town, and who seemed quite distressed to see three ladies alone, without a cavalier. "However," she said, "three of you are company, to be sure, and can take care of each other." She was very eloquent on the subject of Morlàas, and had no idea but that we had purposely chosen the market-day for our visit, in order to be _gay_. We made our way, with some difficulty--through the throng of persons which filled the market-place, and who were busy buying and selling coarse stuffs and mérinos, coloured handkerchiefs, and woollen goods--to the principal façade of the church, against which the ruinous old _halle_ is built; and there we contrived to get a sight of the remains of one of the most splendid portals I ever beheld. Of gigantic proportions, circle within circle, each elaborately carved, with figures, foliage, and intersecting lines, the magnificent door-way of the church of Sainte Foi presents a treasure to antiquarians: equal in riches to, but more delicate, and larger and loftier, than that of Malmsbury Abbey, in Wiltshire, it has features in common with that fine structure; but I never saw so wide a span as the arch, or more exquisite ornaments. It appears that the town of Morlàas, which, ruined as it is, is said to be _rich_ (!) is about to restore this fine entrance. A new town-hall and market-place are being built, and, when completed, the miserable huts which disfigure the church will be cleared away, and the façade allowed to appear. Above this door is a fine steeple, crested with figures, which we could scarcely distinguish, but which we found were the _Cows of Béarn_ clustered round the summit. When Morlàas was the residence of the Viscounts of Béarn, it possessed a sovereign court, and a mint of great celebrity, where copper, silver, and even _gold_ coins were struck. Money seems to have been coined at Morlàas in the time of the Romans; its pieces were much coveted in the country for their purity, and were considered far superior to any other in Gascony. There was a _livre Morlane_ as there was a _livre Tournois_, and it long preserved its celebrity. It was worth triple _the livre Tournois_, and was subdivided into _sols_, _ardits_, and _baquettes_, or _vaquettes_, _i.e. little cows_. A very few of those remarkable coins are still preserved; some exist, in private museums, of the time of the early Centulles and Gastons, of François Phoebus, of Catherine d'Albret, Henry II., Henry IV., and Queen Jeanne. The device they bear is--_"Grâtia Dei sum id quod sum."_ Some Moorish coins, with Arabic inscriptions, have been found in this neighbourhood, which are also preserved in the cabinets of the curious. The Hôtel or Palace of the Viscounts was formerly called the Hourquie, or Forquie: from whence the money was called _moneta Furcensis_: the town itself was occasionally called Furcas. The _patois_ name by which it is known is Morlans. No vestige is left of this magnificent palace; and Morlàas presents, altogether, a most wretched aspect, being literally a heap of stones and ruin. Its situation offers no inducement to its restoration; for, being placed in the midst of marshes, it has no beauty of country which should make it a desirable residence. From time immemorial, prejudice and custom have prevented any attempt being made to cultivate these dismal swamps; or if a few energetic persons have tried to ameliorate their condition, and have taken possession of parts of the waste with such a view, at once the Ossalois have descended from their mountains, with sticks and staves, and driven the invaders from their ground. Even at the present day, as the right remains to the people of Ossau, they have the power, which they are sure to enforce, of preventing any incursions on the _landes_ along the valley of Pau; and, if they please, they can pasture their sheep by the banks of the Gave, and pen them in the lower town, beneath the castle, asking "no bold baron's leave." There is no fear, now, of these fierce mountaineers "sweeping like a torrent down upon the vales," as in the days when Lescar, Morlàas, and Pau, were obliged to shut their gates in terror, when they saw their advance. It is related, that, in 1337, a lord of Serres erected a castle in the midst of the Pont Long, and in a short time nearly two hundred houses were nestling under the protection of his turrets. All was going on well; the ground began to be drained and cultivated, and everything promised a happy result to the undertaking; but a storm of wrath rose in the mountains, the haughty owners of a useless marsh, unwilling that it should serve a good purpose to others, though of no importance to themselves, roused their followers, and, to the number of several hundreds, rushed from their snowy retreats, and, in one night, ravaged and destroyed all they met with. The new settlers fled in consternation, while the Ossalois burnt and threw down their dwellings, leaving a heap of ruins, which may still be traced in the midst of the Pont Long. They took refuge at some distance, where their dangerous neighbours had no right, and built themselves a village, which is that of Serres-Castel at the present time. At one period Henry II., the grandfather of Henry IV., was desirous of forming a park for deer, and, taking possession of a track of ground, he surrounded it with walls. The Ossalois consulted together, and discovered that this ground was one of the dependencies on the Pont Long. Without condescending to remonstrance they assembled in bands, and marching down with flags flying, demolished the enclosures and took back their possession. In the same year, 1543, the sovereign of Béarn was obliged to solicit of these tyrants of the valley permission for his cousin, the Dame d'Artiguelouve, to send her cattle to feed in the Pont Long, to which they consented "_for a consideration_"--_i.e._ by being paid the _baccade_, such as is demanded of the shepherds. The Princess Magdelaine, governess of Prince François Phoebus, in 1472, obtained, _as a favour_, the permission for her physician, Thomas Geronne, to introduce _seven mares_ to feed in the marsh. A letter of the princess entreats, also, at another period, the same grace for the cattle of her treasurer-general. For more than eight centuries the possession of this _precious_ marsh has been the subject of litigation, and it has remained in its barren state. The Vallée d'Ossau has had to defend its rights sometimes against the viscounts of Béarn, sometimes against the monks of Cluny, and the _Poublans_ of Pau. Law or combats have been always necessary to enable them to retain their rights. It was on occasion of a decision in their favour by Gaston IV., that the Ossalois made a gift to that prince of the sum of two thousand four hundred florins, to aid him in finishing the castle of Pau, which was then in the course of erection. This Pont Long, which has so long been an apple of discord to Béarn, is at the present hour likely to have settled bounds; for, in 1837, the members of the Cour-Royal of Pau occupied themselves on the subject, and a chance exists of something useful being done with the ground: there is a project for encouraging mulberry-trees and silk-worms there, and of making a canal to carry off its waters, and render it fit for cultivation. This is the more necessary, as fever and ague are sufficiently common in its neighbourhood. But, even within a very few years, when an enlightened agriculturist, M. Laclède, endeavoured to clear the ground, and plant and improve, the fury of opposition he experienced was disgracefully extraordinary. Under the pretext that their pastures were invaded, the people came with fire and hatchet, and burnt his trees, and cut away his bridges and aqueducts. A spot is shown in the Pont Long, called Henri Quatre's marsh; for it is said that this prince being one day out shooting snipes, got so entangled in the mud that it was with the greatest difficulty he was rescued from his unpleasant predicament. There is an oasis in this desert, the village of Uzein, which is a standing proof of the possibility of effecting all that industry can desire in this condemned place: the people of this flourishing village owe their success to the determined perseverance of their curate, who exhorted and persuaded his parishioners to bring manure for their fields from Serres, and, at the end of a few years, all was brilliant and smiling, and Uzein is considered to produce the best maize in Béarn. There are a few towers still standing, where castles have been erected on the Pont Long; an old grey tower of Navailles, and one of Montaner, so strong as to have proved indestructible: it was built by Gaston Phoebus, at the same time as that of Pau, and what remains of the walls of its donjon are upwards of ten feet thick! Lescar was once an important town of Béarn, and in its fine cathedral princes were buried, whose ashes even rest there no longer, and whose tombs have long since been destroyed. Most of its magnificence disappeared at the period when Queen Jeanne declared her adherence to the new doctrine, and gave her sanction to the enemies of Catholic superstition to pull down the _Pagan images_. Angry and fierce was the discussion which took place between the Queen and the Cardinal d'Armagnac, her former friend, on the occasion of the attack on the cathedral of Lescar: the following extracts from their letters, given by Mr. Jameson in his work on "the Reformation in Navarre," are characteristic on both sides. The cardinal's courier, it seems, waited while Jeanne, without pause or hesitation, wrote her reply to his representation. His letter ran thus: "Madam,--The duty of the service in which I was born, and which I have continued faithfully to fulfil, both to the late sovereigns, your father and mother, as well as to the late king your husband, has so complete an influence on my conduct, that I must ever be attentive to the means of sustaining your welfare, and the glory of your illustrious house. Moved by the zeal which attaches me to your interests, I will never conceal from you whatever it is desirable that you should learn, and which I may have previously heard, trusting that you will receive in good part the representations of your long-tried, most attached, and faithful servant, who will never offer to make them for his own private advantage, but solely for the sake of your conscience, and the prosperity of your affairs. I cannot, then, Madam, conceal from you the deep affliction which penetrates me on account of the information I have received of the overthrow of images and altars, and the pillage of ornaments, silver, and jewels, committed in the cathedral of Lescar, by the agents of your authority, as well as the severity of those agents to the chapter and people, by the interdiction of divine service. This proceeding appears to me to be the more monstrous, since it took place in your presence, and resulted from evil counsels which must lead to your ruin. It is in vain for you to conceive that you can transplant the new religion into your dominions at your pleasure. The wishes of the ministers who have assured you of this are at variance with those of your subjects. They will never consent to quit their religion, as they have declared by their protest at the last meeting of the estates of Béarn. * * * And, even supposing that they were reduced to accept your faith, consider what you would have to fear from the two sovereigns whose territories surround you, and who abhor nothing so much as the new opinions with which you are so delighted. Their policy would lead them to seize your dominions, rather than suffer them to be the prey of strangers. To shelter you from these dangers, you have not, like England, the ocean for a rampart. Your conduct perils the fortunes of your children, and risks the beholding them deprived of a throne. * * * You will thus become worse than an infidel, by neglecting to provide for those of your own house. Such is the fruit of your Evangelism. * * * Has not God, who worked so many miracles through them, (_i.e._ the saints,) manifestly directed us to regard those holy personages rather than Luther, Calvin, Farel, Videl, and so many other presumptuous men, who would desire us to slight those reverend names, and adopt their novelties? Would they have us hold an open council to hear them, or unite in one common opinion against the Catholic Church? * * * Without wasting time in further reflections, let me entreat you to place in their former condition the churches of Lescar, of Pau, and other places, which have been so deplorably desolated by you. This advice is preferable to that given you by your ministers, which it imports you to abandon, &c. &c.--Your loyal and very obedient servant, "THE CARDINAL D'ARMAGNAC. "_Vielleperite_, _Aug_. 18_th_, 1563." * * * * * To this Queen Jeanne replied in the following terms:-- "My Cousin,--From my earliest years I have been acquainted with the zeal which attached you to the service of my kindred. I am not authorized by ignorance of that zeal to refuse it the praise and esteem it merits, or to be prevented from feeling a gratitude which I should be desirous of continuing towards those who, like you, having partaken of the favour of my family, have preserved good-will and fidelity towards it. I should trust you would still entertain those feelings towards me, as you profess to do, without allowing them to be changed or destroyed by the influence of I know not what religion, or superstition. Thanking you, at the same time, for the advice you give me, and which I receive according to its varied character, the dissimilar and mingled points it touches being divided between heaven and earth, God and man! As to the first point, concerning the reform which I have effected at Pau, and at Lescar, and which I desire to extend throughout my sovereignty, I have learnt it from the Bible, which I read more willingly than the works of your doctors. * * * As to the ruin impending over me through bad counsel, under the colour of religion, I am not so devoid of the gifts of God or of the aid of friends, as to be unable to make choice of persons worthy of my confidence, and capable of acting, not under a vain pretence, but with the true spirit of religion. * * * I clearly perceive that you have been misinformed, both respecting the answer of my estates and the disposition of my subjects. The two estates have professed their obedience to religion. * * * I know who my neighbours are; the one hates my religion as much as I do his, but that does not affect our mutual relations: and besides, I am not so destitute of advice and friends as to have neglected all necessary precautions for the defence of my rights in case of attack. * * * Although you think to intimidate me, I am protected from all apprehension; first, by my confidence in God whom I serve, and who knows how to defend his cause. Secondly, because my tranquillity is not affected by the designs of those whom I can easily oppose, * * * with the grace of Him who encompasses my country as the ocean does England. I do not perceive that I run the risk of sacrificing either my own welfare or that of my son; on the contrary, I trust to strengthen it in the only way a Christian should pursue; and even though the spirit of God might not inspire me with a knowledge of this way, yet human intellect would induce me to act as I do, from the many examples which I recall with regret, especially that of the late king, my husband, of whose history you well know the beginning, the course, and the end. Where are the splendid crowns you held out to him? Did he gain any by combating against true religion and his conscience? * * * I blush with shame when you talk of the many atrocities which you allege to have been committed by those of our faith; cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the moat in thy brother's eye: purify the earth that is stained with the innocent blood which those of your party have shed, a fact you can bear testimony to. * * * You are ignorant of what our ministers are, who teach patience, obedience to sovereigns, and the other virtues of which the apostles and the martyrs have left them an example. * * * You affirm that multitudes draw back from our belief, while I maintain that the number of its adherents increases daily. As to ancient authorities, I hear them every day cited by our ministers. I am not indeed sufficiently learned to have gone through so many works, but neither, I suspect, have you, or are better versed in them than myself, as you were always known to be more acquainted with matters of state than those of the church. * * * I place no reliance on doctors, not even Calvin, Beza, and others, but as they follow Scripture. You would send them to a council. They desire it, provided that it shall be a free one, and that the parties shall not be judges. The motive of the surety they require is founded on the examples of John Huss and Jerome of Prague. Nothing afflicts me more than that you, after having received the truth, should have abandoned it for idolatry, because you then found the advancement of your fortune and worldly honours. * * * Read again the passages of Scripture you quote, before you explain them so unhappily on any other occasion: it might be pardonable in me, a female, but you, a cardinal, to be so old and so ignorant! truly, my cousin, I feel shame for you. * * * If you have no better reasons for combating my undertaking, do not again urge me to follow your worldly prudence. I consider it mere folly before God; it cannot impede my endeavours. _Your_ doubts make me tremble, _my_ assurance makes me firm. When you desire again to persuade me that the words of your mouth are the voice of your conscience and your faithfulness, be more careful; and let the fruitless letter you have sent me be the last of that kind I shall receive. * * * Receive this from one who knows not how to style herself: not being able to call herself a friend, and doubtful of any affinity till the time of repentance and conversion, when she will be "Your cousin and friend, "JEANNE." * * * * * We drove to Lescar, which is within a short distance of Pau, anxious to discover some remains of its former grandeur; but, like almost all the towns in this part of France, the glory is indeed departed from it. The situation is remarkably fine; it stands on a high _côteau_, by the side of the road to Bayonne, and from the terrace of the cathedral a magnificent view of the snowy mountains spreads along the horizon. Nothing but dilapidated, ugly stone houses, and slovenly yards, are now to be seen in the town; though it is said the people are by no means poor, as, indeed, the rich gardens and vineyards around testify. There is not a tomb or monument of any kind left in the cathedral; but it is entirely paved with inscribed stones, few of them earlier than the beginning of the seventeenth century. The church itself has been so much altered as to be scarcely the same; it is still of great extent, and is imposing as to size: a few strange old pillars, with grotesque capitals, remain of its earliest date; but, from these specimens, it is plain that there could never have been much architectural grace displayed in its construction. The organ was playing as we walked through the aisles, and is a very fine one: we could not but regret that, at Pau, there should not be a single church where we could have the advantage of hearing similar music; and that the chief town of Béarn should be denuded of every attraction common to even the most neglected French town. No thanks, however, are due to the arms of Montgomery, that one stone remained on another of the cathedral of Lescar; and that all in Pau should have been destroyed in his time, is not surprising. When one thinks on the former magnificence of this town and cathedral, and the pomp and circumstance of all the royal funerals which took place here; of all the gorgeous tombs and splendid ceremonies; and, looking round, beholds only ruined towns and crumbling walls, the contrast is striking to the mind. In the ninth century, this part of the country was covered with a thick forest, called Lascurris. The Duke of Gascony, (Guillaume Sance,) about 980, having excited a knight to murder one of his enemies, was seized with qualms of conscience, and, to relieve his mind, rebuilt the church, which was _then_ fallen to decay, and founded a monastery in the solitude, which he dedicated to Notre Dame. The assassin, sharing his remorse, became a monk, and afterwards abbot there, and is known as Lopoforti. The future abbots seem to have been men of valour; for they armed themselves, when occasion called, against the followers of Mahound, who ventured from the passes of Spain into their territories. The bishops of Lescar had the jurisdiction of 178 parishes, and the diocese comprised two abbeys: it is contended that this was the most ancient bishopric of Béarn; and the town the capital of the country in former days. In the seventeenth century it was certainly a place of importance, and was well defended by walls, gates, and fosses, of which a few picturesque ruins alone remain. In the choir of the cathedral there are still the sculptured stalls of oak, executed in the time of Louis XIII., which are bold and graceful, and in excellent preservation; some mosaic pavement has lately been discovered, which was laid down by Bishop Guy in very early times; and it is to be expected more discoveries could be made if more zeal were roused in the cause. The chapels are richly adorned, and in better taste than usual, and the church is, on the whole, extremely well kept: the vault-like chill one feels, however, on entering does not say much for its salubrity. The most important tombs which once adorned this sanctuary, were those of the young Prince of Béarn and King of Navarre, (François Phoebus,) who died in 1483. Jean II. d'Albret in 1516, and his wife, Catherine de Foix. Marguérite de Valois--the Fleur des Marguérites,--in 1548; and Henry II., her husband--the _immortal grandfather_ of the great Béarnois. It has been said that the body of their daughter, Jeanne d'Albret, was brought here; but this appears to be incorrect, as her tomb is at Vendôme. The death of young François Phoebus is one of the most melancholy episodes in the history of the country. It is thus recounted: He was under the guardianship of his mother, Magdelaine of France, Countess of Foix, a woman of superior mind and qualities, who devoted herself to his interests and those of his kingdom, and spared no pains to foster the noble dispositions which were in her son. The time _was out of joint_, in consequence of civil dissensions, and the unjust claims on Navarre of the King of Arragon; and her position was very critical; but her wisdom and prudence had greatly calmed the turbulence of those with whom she had to deal, and her subjects looked forward with hope and delight to the majority of her son, who was as amiable as he was transcendently beautiful, and whom, in imitation of the title of their hero, Gaston, they had surnamed Phoebus. Magdelaine was aided in her good intentions by her brother-in-law, the Cardinal de Foix, whose sage advice greatly relieved and guided her, and when she saw her beloved son, then aged fifteen, enter his territories in triumph, apparently received with friendly interest by all contending parties, her heart became joyous, and the future seemed all hope and pleasure to her. Several marriages were proposed for him; but she was desirous that as much delay as possible should take place before that important step should be decided. Numerous powerful princes came forward, offering their alliances. Amongst others, Don Ferdinand, of Castile, named his second daughter, Doña Juana, who afterwards inherited all his possessions; but the Countess of Foix rejected this, as it would have given umbrage to Louis XI. of France, whose friendship it was necessary to secure; and whose wily mind was working at his own interest, which prompted him to desire that a young nun of Coimbra should be drawn from her sacred retreat, and made the bride of the young king: this was another Doña Juana, for whose claim to the kingdom of Castile the artful monarch of France chose to contend. Louis, therefore, wishing to avoid the vicinity of Spain for his young _protégé_, persuaded his mother to withdraw him from Pampeluna to his castle at Pau, where he went on with his studies, and, by his amiable and conciliating disposition, won the affection of all his subjects, by whom he was quite adored, as well as by his mother, and his sister, the Princess Catherine, to whom he was tenderly attached. One morning, as they were all three together engaged in their different occupations, a flute was brought to the young prince, who, after a time, took it up with the intention of practising some music; for in this accomplishment he excelled. He had been playing but a short time when his sister observed him turn pale, and the next moment the instrument fell from his hand: he uttered a deep sigh, and dropped senseless on the ground. They lifted him up, used instant means for his recovery, but all was vain; their hope, their joy, their treasure, was gone: François Phoebus--the young, beautiful, and good--was dying. Poison had done its work, and treason was successful: he lived but a few minutes, and his last words were suitable to his pure life. When he saw his distracted mother and sister hanging over him in agony, he whispered, "Do not lament, my reign is not of this world: I leave the things of earth, and go to my father." What a scene of desolation ensued to the country and the bereaved mother, who had so long struggled with accumulated misfortune! To add to the difficulties of her position, her only support, Louis XI., just then died, and, beset by ambitious ministers and selfish counsellors, betrayed, deceived, and thwarted, the unfortunate Magdelaine sunk under her sorrows, and soon followed her fair son to the grave. He was buried in great pomp at the cathedral of St. Marie of Lescar, and his young sister, Catherine, was left to reign in his place. Of her Providence made its peculiar care, and her fate, which threatened ill, was happily turned aside. Olhagaray, the historian of Béarn, gives the affecting answer of the Countess Magdelaine to the ambassador of Spain, who, immediately after her son's death, came to her Court to treat for the hand of the young Queen Catherine. It was thus she spoke, "with an infinity of sobs and tears:" "Gentlemen,--You find me in poor condition to receive you according to your merits: but you see my desolation and misery, and the ruin which is come upon me. This last torrent of misfortune is as a deluge which overwhelms me--a deep abyss of evil in which I am engulphed. Alas! when I consider the just grief which environs me, I know not where I am! Gaston, the brave Gaston, my lord and my husband, while yet I was in the early joy of his sweet society, and was happy in his precious affection, was torn from me. My woes were softened, and the dark night of my widowhood enlightened by the brightness of my Phoebus. Poor, desolate mother that I am! Heaven envied my content, and has hidden him from my eyes. In this sad spot he expired: here, raising his eyes above, he exclaimed, 'My reign is not of this world!' "Did we not, nevertheless, expect much of him! would he not, had he lived, have healed the wounds of his country, have applied salutary remedies to all her evils! He saw the difficulties, he prepared himself to thread the intricate mazes belonging to his crown of Navarre; yet, when he held it in his hands, he said, it was not that crown that he expected. "What means have I now left me in the world that permit me to speak to you of the state of Spain, of the health of the king, the queen, or the court. I have no words but these, no reply but this: go, therefore, and for all answer tell the king of Spain how you found me; say, that my sadness and my tears but ill permitted me to read the letter with which he honoured me; and thank him that he has kept so kind a remembrance of me, praying him to continue me his friendship while I live his humble servant." CHAPTER X. THE ROMANCES OF THE CASTLE OF ORTHEZ--TOUR DE MONCADE--THE INFANTS--THE SON OF GASTON PHOEBUS--- LEGENDS--THE OATH--THE BAD KING OF NAVARRE--THE QUARREL--THE MURDER--DEATH OF GASTON PHOEBUS--PARADISE THE REWARD OF HUNTERS--THE CAPTIVE--THE STEP-MOTHER--THE YOUNG COUNTESS--THE GREAT BEAR--THE RETURN--THE REAL CAUSE--THE MEETING IN THE FOREST--THE MASS. THE most interesting place on the road to Bayonne is Orthez, once the seat of the counts of Foix. We proposed remaining there a short time, in order to visit its remains on our way to Bayonne, and alighted at the hotel of _La Belle Hôtesse_, which is on the site of _La Lune_, where the historian, Froissart, stopped some centuries before us, and where he heard so many stories and legends which he has immortalized in his charming _romantic_ chronicle. The soldiers of Marshal Soult occupied this inn in 1814, when the pale old lady, who is still mistress, then deserved the title which her beauty gave to her house of entertainment. On approaching Orthez we were struck with the appearance, on a height above the town, of the castle ruins, whose battered walls seem so fragile that a breath of wind might blow them away: the upper part of the great tower is much injured, and its irregular stones project in a manner which threatens their fall: the blue sky shone through the arrow slits and windows, and the whole mass gave us an idea of its hastening to immediate dissolution. It has an imposing and venerable effect, and excited in our minds considerable interest: we therefore hastened up the rugged way to the hill on which it stands, and there found ourselves in the midst of the remains of one of the strongest castles of which this part of Béarn could boast, from the earliest time. It is called the castle of Moncade, having been, in 734, the abode of a Catalonian knight of that name, who was accustomed to issue forth from this strong-hold to combat the Moors of Spain. In after times the fortress was possessed by a warlike lady, called La Grosse Comtesse Garsende de Béarn, who, in 1242, offered her services to Henry III. of England; and, after having fought in his cause with her knights and vassals, and received a large sum of money in requital, she returned home, and expended it on the castle, which she rendered impregnable. It was probably a ruin in the time of Garsende; for the reparations she made in the great tower are very evident; the lower part being more discoloured than the upper story, in which there are windows, at a great height, of trefoil form. The shape of the tower itself is very unlike any I had before seen, and seemed to me extremely curious; it is five-sided, each side presenting an acute angle, and one being flattened at about a quarter of the height by a two-sided projection, which is not a tower but probably a recess within from whence to send arrows; yet there are no openings now visible; nor is there, on any side, a means of entrance, except that a square-headed window opens very high up in the wall towards the part where the rest of the castle joined this donjon. A large hole in the wall, towards the open country, made, perhaps, originally by English cannon in 1814, and enlarged since, allows ingress to the interior. There are arches and recesses, and some ornamental architecture to be traced within, but no doors in any direction; and my idea of the fragility of the building was quickly dispelled when I discovered that the solid walls were at least nine feet thick, the angles sharp as a knife, and the apparently tottering stones as firm in their rocky cement as if just built. All round, for some extent, are remains of ruined walls, with a few circular and pointed arches here and there; the clear stream flows beneath where once was the moat, in one part, and on the other sides bushes and brambles fill up the defences. A huge, fearful-looking well, of enormous depth, is in the midst of all; where, perhaps, was once the inner court-yard, and here we saw a group of peasants drawing water; for Orthez is so badly supplied that the townspeople have to mount this steep height, and fill their brass-bound pails, from which they dispense the fine clear water to the inhabitants. This must have been long a great inconvenience and trouble; but we discovered afterwards that another fountain has been found in the town, not far from the bridge, where we saw numerous visitors busy in the same occupation. The view from the castle-height is very fine; the last of the range of snowy mountains seen in such perfection from Pau rises in great majesty, and closes the scene; while the luxuriant plain and hills around are seen to a great distance. The valiant Catalonian, and the fierce countess, must have been dangerous neighbours to their foes, commanding as they did the country, for leagues round. One of the lords of Moncade was father to a chosen Viscount of Béarn, known in the annals of the country, amongst their numerous Gastons, as Le Bon. The story told respecting him is as follows: In the year 1170, Marie, Viscountess of Béarn, a young princess of only sixteen, was induced by interested counsellors to do homage for her domains to Alphonso the Second, King of Arragon. This act, which took place at Jaca, required to be confirmed by the barons of Béarn; but the latter, indignant at the infringement of their rights, and attack on the independence of their country, solemnly protested against the transaction, and proclaimed the young viscountess unfit to govern, deprived her of her power, and proceeded to the election of a new ruler. Their choice fell on a lord of Bigorre, who, not proving himself worthy of his election, but endeavouring to violate the laws, was put to death in open assembly, falling, like Cæsar, by the hand of a patriot. Another took his place, but the Béarnais, it appeared, were particularly unfortunate in their selection, for he turned out no better than the former, and was deposed. It became necessary to fix on a governor, and the great men of the kingdom, consulting together, came to the following conclusion: The young viscountess, after her banishment, married William de Moncade, one of the richest lords of Catalonia, and the issue of this union was twins, both boys. It was agreed that one of these should fill the vacant seat of sovereignty of Béarn, and two of the _prudhommes_ were deputed to visit their father with the proposition. On their arrival at his castle the sages found the children asleep, and observed with attention their infant demeanour. Both were beautiful, strong, and healthy; and it was a difficult matter to make an election between two such attractive and innocent creatures. They were extremely alike, and neither could be pronounced superior to the other; the _prudhommes_ were strangely puzzled, for they had been so often deceived that they felt it to be most important that they should not err this time. As they hung in admiration over the sleeping babes, one of them remarked a circumstance that at once decided their preference, and put an end to their vacillation; one of the little heroes held his hand tightly closed; the tiny, mottled palm of the other was wide open as it lay upon his snowy breast. "He will be a liberal and bold knight," said one of the Béarnais, "and will best suit us as a head." This infant was accordingly chosen, given up by his parents to the wise men, and carried off in triumph to be educated amongst his future subjects. The event proved their sagacity, and Gaston le Bon lived to give them good laws and prosperity. A descendant of this chief was a Gaston, who opposed Edward I., of England, and was thrown into prison by that terrible warrior, who revenged his defeat in Santonge by fearful reprisals, and gave up the town of Orthez to his soldiers, to pillage and destroy as they pleased. Gaston was obliged to agree to a composition with the English prince; and he was released from his dungeon in a castle in Gascony. An appeal to the King of France was agreed on; and, when both were in presence of the suzerain, Gaston threw down his glove of defiance against the King of England, calling him a traitor and felon knight. Edward, starting forward, and commanding his people, who heard the charge with rage, to stand back, picked up the glove himself, and entreated that a single combat might be allowed between them. The King of France, however, opposed this; and the question of their dispute was decided by law--rather an unusual thing in those days. This tower of Moncade,--rendered, it appears, by Gaston, the father of the little open-handed hero, as like as possible to his château in Catalonia,--is the scene of several tragedies; and every stone could tell some tale of sorrow and oppression. There is something singularly fearful in the aspect of its strong walls and donjon, without an outlet. In this very tower died, by his father's hand, the unfortunate son of Gaston Phoebus, whose touching story is recounted by Froissart. Although well-known, it is impossible to pass it over here, or to forget that equally melancholy history of the young Queen Blanche, poisoned by her sister. The Son of Gaston Phoebus. FROISSART, after describing the splendours of the castle of Orthez in glowing terms, continues: "Briefly, and, considering all things, before I came to this court I had visited those of many kings, dukes, princes, counts, and ladies of high quality, but I never was in any which pleased me so well, for feats of arms and gaiety, as that of the Count de Foix. You might see, in the saloons and the chambers and in the courts, knights and squires of honour going and coming; and you might hear them speak of war and of love. All honour might there be found. There I was informed of the greatest part of those feats of arms which took place in Spain, Portugal, Arragon, Navarre, England, Scotland, and the frontiers and limits of Languedoc, &c.; for I met there, on various missions to the count, knights and squires of all these nations. "Once, on a Christmas Day, I there saw at his table four Bishops, two _Clémentins_, and two _Urbanists_ (partisans of the rival popes). There were seated the Count de Foix, and the Viscount de Roquebertin d'Arragon, the Viscount de Bruniquil, the Viscount de Gousserant, and an English knight sent by the Duke of Lancaster, from Lisbon, where he then sojourned. At another table were five abbés and two knights of Arragon; at another, knights and squires of Gascony and Bigorre; and the _sovereign master of the hall_ was Messire Espaign de Lyon, and four knights _maîtres d'hôtel_. And the count's two natural brothers, Messire Ernould Guillaume and Messire Pierre de Béarn, served him, together with his two sons, Messire Yvain de l'Escale and Messire Gratien. I must tell you that there was a crowd of minstrels, as well belonging to the count as strangers, who filled up every interval with specimens of their art. And this day the count gave to both minstrels and heralds the sum of five hundred francs; and habits of cloth of gold, furred with _menu vair_, he gave to the minstrels of the Duke of Touraine; the which dresses were valued at two hundred francs. And the dinner lasted till four hours after noon." One figure is wanting in this brilliant account--the only legitimate son of the magnificent Count of Foix, his child by Agnes of Navarre, whose place, as well as that of her son, is vacant at her husband's table. What might, even then, be the pangs of remorse that shot along the mind of the mighty chief, as he looked round that brilliant assembly and felt that his honours would end with himself? "No son of his succeeding." Where was the young, blooming, accomplished, and promising heir, so loved by his people, and once the object of his pride and hope? Brilliant and gorgeous as was the present scene, what would have been that which should have welcomed the affianced bride of his son to his court? and many such would have hailed the happy events which might have ensued. His two _natural_ sons, Yvain and Gratien, are there, full of beauty, grace, and health; but, as the first approaches, and hands him a cup of wine, he trembles and sets down the goblet, untasted, for an instant. He recovers, however, and quaffs the wine to the health of his friends: the minstrels strike their harps; and one--the chief--bursts forth in a strain of adulation, lauding to the skies the glories and the virtues of the most liberal and magnificent prince of his time. Gaston listens with pride and satisfaction; and, by degrees, the low moaning which had seemed to sound in his ears dies away, and he laughs loud, and dispenses his gracious words around, endeavouring to forget that so great a prince could ever know care, or feel remorse, for what it was his will to do. But it is necessary to tell why Gaston Phoebus felt remorse in the midst of his splendid court. At the conclusion of a long war between the houses of Foix and Armagnac, it was agreed between the chiefs of the contending parties, that a marriage should take place between Gaston, the young heir of Béarn, and the fair Beatrix d'Armagnac. A temporary house was constructed on the confines of the two territories, between Barcelone and Aire, where now a wooden pillar indicates the division of the departments of Les Landes and Gers; and there everything was settled. The Bishop of Lectoure said mass; and an oath of the most terrible description passed between the two princes, that they would never infringe the treaty. Part of the _formula_ ran thus: "And, in case of failing in this promise, they would deny God, _that he might be against them_; and, utterly to damn both their bodies and souls, they would take the devil for their lord, and have their sepulchres in hell, now and for evermore." The young bride, in consideration of twenty thousand francs of gold, which were given her as a dower, renounced all her rights, both paternal and maternal; and the pope, to stop the effusion of blood caused by the quarrels of the two houses, gave all the necessary dispensations required in consequence of parentage. Then the Bishop of Lescar celebrated the betrothment, that same day, in the Château de Monclar. Both bride and bridegroom were very young, full of hope, and with every prospect of happiness. _La gaie Armagnoise_, as the young princess was called, lively and happy, and, according to all historians, a lady of the greatest amiability; the Prince of Béarn affectionate, brave, and handsome. With the whole assembly at Monclar, "All went merry as a marriage bell;" but they had reckoned without Charles the Bad, King of Navarre! Like one of those fell enchanters of romance, who appear suddenly in the midst of rejoicings where they have not been invited, and cast a spell upon the guests, changing joy to mourning, Charles of Navarre's influence blighted the "----bud of love in summer's ripening breath," that "should prove a beauteous flower----." Agnes of Navarre, Countess of Foix, had become the victim of the disputes between her husband and brother: she had been sent from Gaston's court to that of Charles, in order to induce the latter to pay a ransom which he owed the count, and which he treacherously and dishonourably withheld. The unfortunate wife remained at her brother's court, soliciting in vain that he should do justice to the severe husband, to whom she dared not return empty-handed. Her son, attached to his mother, and anxious to receive her blessing on his marriage, entreated permission to visit her in Navarre. He was received there with great demonstrations of honour and affection. Charles the Bad lamented to him the feud between his father and himself, and expressed his regret at the manifest dislike which Count Gaston showed to his wife, and dwelling much on this last cause of sorrow, in which the young prince heartily joined, he gave it as his opinion that the feeling must be occasioned by supernatural means, and could only be combated by a similar power. He had, he said, in his possession a medicine of such virtue that, if it were administered properly, it would counteract any evil influence, and restore the mind of the person to whom it was given to a right tone. "Take, my beloved nephew," said he, "this bag of powder, and when an opportunity presents itself, pour it into your father's cup, or strew it over the meat he eats: it is a love potion--and no sooner shall he have swallowed it, than all his former affection for your dear mother will return. Think, then, what happy days are in store for us all! Agnes will once more take her place amongst you; will bless you and your fair wife; and I, who am banished from that society I most prize, shall once more embrace my friend and witness his happiness." This picture was too flattering to the ardent young boy of fifteen: with all the credulity of his time and the simplicity of his age, he caught at such a means of restoring his family to peace and joy, and, gratefully accepting the present of his uncle, he suspended the little bag containing the wondrous drug round his neck by a ribbon, and departed from the Court of Navarre full of hope and expectation. On his arrival in Béarn he could scarcely refrain, in spite of his uncle's injunctions to the contrary, from communicating his secret to his favourite brother, Jobain (Yvain), his father's natural son, who shared his confidence as well as his couch. Jobain, however, was not long before he observed the ribbon round his brother's neck, and pressed him to explain the meaning of the little bag which he saw suspended there. Young Gaston, confused at finding his secret so nearly discovered, bade him inquire no further,--that there was a mystery attached to it which he dared not tell; "but you will soon see," he added, cheerfully, "a great change in my father: and he and my dear mother will be well together." A few days after this, the brothers were playing at the _jeu de paume_, and a dispute arose between them which grow more and more violent, till Gaston forgot himself so far as to strike Jobain on the face: it was but a childish quarrel, which the next moment might have healed, but Jobain's passion was so excited, that in his first fury he rushed to his father, and accused Gaston of concealing in his bosom a bag of poison, intended to be administered to the count, in order to cause his death. Count Gaston, on hearing this accusation, without giving himself time for a moment's reflection, which would have shown him the improbability of the story, burst into so ungovernable a fury that he became almost frantic, and it was with the utmost difficulty his knights prevented his instantly putting his son to death. The states of Foix and Béarn, to whose judgment he was at length induced to refer the sentence of this involuntary parricide, were more moderate. "My lord," said they, "saving your grace, we will not that Gaston should die: he is your heir, and you have no other." It is even asserted, that those of Foix in particular would not consent to retire until they had received a promise from the count that he would not attempt his son's life. It was, therefore, on the servants of young Gaston that the weight of his fury fell; and he caused no less than fifteen to suffer the utmost extremity of torture, under which they died. As for the unhappy prince, he had already condemned himself. Confined in his tower of Orthez, he had taken to his bed, and there lay, concealing himself in the clothes; and for several days refused all nourishment, giving himself up altogether to despair. Those whose business it was to serve him, finding this, became alarmed, and, hastening to his father, related the fact: "My Lord," said they, "for the love of God, take heed to your son; for he is starving in the prison, where he lies, and has not eaten since he entered there, for his meat remains untouched as when we first took it into the tower." Thereupon the count started up, without uttering a word, and, quitting his chamber, hurried to the prison where his son was, says Froissart, and, "by ill fortune, he held in his hand a _small, long knife_, with which he was cleaning and arranging his nails. He commanded the door of the dungeon to be opened, when he went straight to his son, and, still holding the knife in his hand by the blade, _which did not project from it more than half an inch_, he caught him by the throat, calling out, 'Ha! traitor!--why will you not eat?' and by some means the steel entered into a vein. The count, on this, instantly departed, neither saying or doing more, and returned to his chamber. His poor child, terrified at the sight of his father, felt all his blood turn, weak as he was with fasting, and the point of the knife having opened a vein in his throat, _however small it might have been_,--turned him round--and died! "Thus," continues the chronicler, "it was as I tell you: this was the death of young Gaston de Foix. _His father, in truth, killed him_; but it was the King of Navarre who directed the blow." The agony of remorse or affection of the inhuman count, it is but just to say, was extreme, on finding how all had ended; "and the body of the child was taken away with cries and tears to the _Frères Mineurs_, at Orthez, and there buried." What now remained to the brilliant Gaston Phoebus? He had no legitimate child, and he hated the next heir, Mathieu de Castelbon, "because he was not a valiant knight at arms." His intention was to leave his large possessions to his two natural sons; but, before he had made the proper dispositions to secure it to them, he was surprised by death in the hospital of Orion, two leagues from Orthez, as he was washing his hands on his return from his favourite pursuit of hunting the bear, about which he is eloquent in his work on the Chase; and all that Yvain, the betrayer of young Gaston, could do, was to take possession of his father's ring, and his _little long knife_--that fatal instrument!--and by those tokens procured that the gates of the castle of Orthez should be opened to him; hoping to obtain _a part of the treasures_ of the count, who had not less than a million of crowns of gold in his coffers. It was in the month of August, under a hot sun, that Gaston Phoebus had hunted the bear half the day; and on arriving at Orion, about two leagues from Orthez, he appeared delighted at the coolness of the fresh strewn room, where the dinner was prepared: "This verdure," said he, "does me good, for the day has been fearfully hot!" They brought him water to wash, but no sooner did he feel its coldness on his fingers--which were "_fine, long and straight_"--than he was seized with a fit, probably of apoplexy, and was dead almost immediately, to the extreme terror of all with him. Yvain, it seems, was at first full of grief, but listened to the advice of those who recommended him instantly to repair to the castle of Orthez, and secure what treasure he could. Accordingly he rode off, and by showing the count's ring and knife, was admitted; but the coffer, bound with iron and closed with many locks, was opened by a key, which the count always wore round his neck, in a little bag, and that key was found by the chaplain on his master, after Yvain's departure, who was vainly striving to force open the strong chest. The news, in spite of precaution, soon spread in Orthez; and the citizens, who were all greatly attached to their lord, came in crowds to the court of the castle, demanding news of him. Yvain was obliged to speak to them from a window, and declare the truth; appealing to them to protect his right, and not suffer the castle or its contents to be injured. To this they all agreed, as they deplored his being illegitimate, and consequently incapable of succeeding his father. Then the air rung with lamentations. "Alas!" cried they, "all will go ill with us now! we shall be attacked by all our neighbours: no more peace and safety for us; nothing but misery and subjection, for we have none to defend us now, and none to answer the challenger. Ha, Gaston! unfortunate son! why did you offend your father? We might still have looked to you; for beautiful and great was your beginning, and much comfort were we promised in you. We lost you too young, and your father has left us too soon. Alas! he had seen but sixty-three years--no great age for a knight so powerful and so strong, and one who had all his wishes and desires. Oh, land of Béarn! desolate, and lamenting for thy noble heir, what is to be thy fate? Never shall be seen the peer of the gentle and noble Count of Foix!" With such cries and tears was the body of Gaston Phoebus, "uncovered on a bier," brought through Orthez to the church of the Cordeliers, and there laid in state; with forty-eight squires to guard it, and four-and-twenty large tapers burning by it, night and day. Then came the burial, where knights and lords and bishops assisted; and the new Count of Castelbon, the heir of all the possessions of the magnificent Gaston, showed becoming honour to his remains. Castelbon then took possession; and his first act was to provide for the two sons, who had no inheritance, and to release the prisoners in the tower of Orthez,--"of which," says Froissart, "there were many; for the Count of Foix, of excellent memory, was _very cruel in this particular_, and never spared man, how high soever, who had offended him: nor was any bold enough to plead for the ransom of a prisoner, for fear of meeting the same fate: _they were put in the fosse, and fed on bread and water_. This very cousin, Castelbon, had been his captive in such a dungeon for eight months, and was ransomed only for forty thousand francs, and he held him in great hatred; and, had he lived two years more, he would never have had the heritage." The famous work of the count, on Hunting, he dedicated to the King of France; and in it he endeavours to prove the advantages, both to body _and soul_, of the manly exercise of which he was a passionate lover. His own death appears to disprove his arguments, which are curious enough. He thus expresses himself in his Prologue:--"I, Gaston, by the grace of God, surnamed Phoebus, Count of Foys, and Lord of Béarn, have, all my life, been fond of three things--war, love, and hunting; in the two first others may have excelled me, and been more fortunate; but, in the last, I flatter myself, without boasting, that I have no superior. * * * and, besides treating of beasts of chase and their natures, I am convinced that my book is calculated to prove the great good that may arise from the exercise of hunting. A man, by its means, avoids the seven mortal sins; for he has no time to think of the commission of any while he is engaged with his horses and hounds: he is more lively, more ready, more expert, more enterprising, makes himself acquainted with countries, and is quick and active: all good habits and manners follow, and the salvation of his soul as well; for, by avoiding sin, a Christian shall be saved; and this he does; therefore, a hunter must be saved. His life is full of gaiety, pleasure, and amusement, and he has only to guard against two things: one, that he forgets not the knowledge and service of God, _and does not neglect his duty to his liege lord_. "Now, I will prove this fact. It is well known that idleness is the root of evil; when a man is lazy, negligent, unemployed, he remains in his bed, and in his chamber, and a thousand evil imaginations take possession of him: now a hunter rises at daybreak, and sees the sweet and fresh morning, the clear and serene weather; he hears the song of birds warbling softly and lovingly, each in its language: when the sun is up, he beholds the bright dew glittering with its rays on streams and meadows, and joy is in the heart of the hunter. Then comes the excited delight of the pursuit, the cries, the sound of horns, the cry of dogs, the triumph of success--what time has he to think of evil things! He comes back weary, but satisfied; his early meal was but slight, for he set out so soon; it is late before he seeks a second, and that is seldom otherwise than frugal; he washes, he dresses, and he sups upon his game, and shares it with his friends: then he enjoys the soft air of evening: after his exertions, he lies him down in fine sheets of fresh and fair linen, and sleeps well and healthily, without thinking of evil things. Thus, by frugal living, great exercise, and cheerful occupation, he avoids great maladies, has good health, _and lives long_. And never knew I man, who was attached to hawks and hounds, but was of good disposition and habits; for the love of hunting springs from nobleness and gentleness of heart, whether one be a great lord or a poor man, high or low." The brother of poor young Gaston, who, perhaps, had a deeper motive than momentary passion when he made the accusation to his father which destroyed him, guilty or innocent, afterwards met a dreadful doom. In that fatal masquerade of savages, when Charles VI. was so nearly burnt to death, Yvain de Foix was one of those, whose dress catching fire, and being sewn on close to his skin, could not be taken off, and he died in extreme torture, after lingering two days. If he had, indeed, intended to effect his brother's death, what must have been his feelings under all the frightful sufferings he endured! Alas! the glories of the magnificent Gaston Phoebus were fearfully extinguished in blood and flame! Alas! the splendours of the proud castle of Orthez were dimmed with cruelty and suffering! No wonder that spectres are still said to walk and wail around the ruined tower; no wonder that the moans of the feeble prince, fainting beneath the blow of his mail-clad chief, are heard at night echoing through the loop-holes of the battered walls; or that the plaintive cries of another victim startle the shepherd returning late from the hills. This other victim has also a melancholy story to relate of the injustice and cruelty of near relatives, and the dangers of exalted birth and great possessions. Charles and Blanche of Navarre, brother and sister, were both "done to death" by those nearest to them; and while the pale shade of Queen Blanche still flits along the ruined battlements of Moncade, the spectre of Prince Charles haunts the streets of Barcelona, where he was poisoned; crying out for ever on his murderess, "Vengeance--Vengeance on Doña Juana!" Story of Queen Blanche. The mother of these two died, leaving the youthful Prince of Vienne heir to her kingdom of Navarre, having just married her eldest daughter, Blanche, to Henry, King of Castile, and her younger daughter, Leonore, to the Count of Foix. She was herself the wife of John, King of Arragon; who, after her death, desired to be himself the sovereign of Navarre, in lieu of his son, Charles, whom he instantly confined in a dungeon in Lerida. The prince was, however, beloved by the people, and the Catalans rose in a body to deliver him: they effected their purpose, and bore off the rescued prisoner in triumph, but not before a cruel step-mother, Doña Juana, who had replaced the first wife of King John, had administered to him a potion, whose effects soon showed themselves, for he died in the hands of his deliverers. The young Queen Blanche, of Castile, was now the heiress of Navarre; but she succeeded her brother only in his misfortunes and his fate. Married at twelve years old, her husband, when she was sixteen, had already repudiated her, believing himself bewitched, and in danger in her society. Impressed with this imagination, the King of Navarre, in an interview with his wife's brother-in-law, the Count de Foix, agreed that Blanche should be given up to him, and forced to embrace a life of celibacy, in order that her sister, Leonore, Countess of Foix, should enjoy her possessions. When news was brought to Queen Blanche that she must follow the messengers sent to Olite, to carry her to Orthez, her despair knew no bounds: she felt that her doom was sealed, and her fearful destiny was but too clear to her mind. She even, in her agony, wrote a letter of entreaty to her unnatural husband, to entreat his protection; but he remained deaf and indifferent to her supplications, and the doomed lady was taken away, a prisoner, to the tower of Moncade. Hero, for two years, languished the ill-fated heiress; her captivity embittered by the sad reflection that her sister was her jailor, and her father and husband her betrayers. A ray of hope suddenly gleamed upon her fortunes; but whether, in her secret dungeon, any pitying friend contrived to let her know that she had yet a chance of escape and triumph, does not appear. Louis XI. came into Béarn. It was not any feeling of compassion for a political victim that influenced him to take part with the captive; for he was just the person to approve of an act, however cruel, which would secure power to a sovereign; but his own interests appeared affected by this arrangement of things; and, in a conference at Pampluna, in which the powerful family of Beaumont offered their services to assist the project, it was agreed that the captive Queen should be demanded at the hands of the Count de Foix, and reinstated in her rights. Leonora and her husband saw that the time was come when nothing but a further crime could secure them from danger. Blanche, once dead, nothing stood between her sister and the throne of Navarre; and what was her life in comparison with the great advantages they should derive? A deputation from the states of Béarn arrived; the Beaumonts and King Louis sent imperious messages, which were received with the utmost humility by the Count and Countess of Foix: they had no wish to oppose the general desire; there was but one obstacle to the accomplishment of the end in view. They represented that their beloved sister, whose health had long required extreme care, and who had been the object of their solicitude ever since Prince Charles's death, was on a bed of sickness--every hour she grew worse--and, at length, it was their melancholy duty to announce her death. "Treason had done its worst," and Blanche had breathed her last in the Tour de Moncade. A magnificent funeral was prepared--much lamentation and mourning ensued--and the body of the royal victim was pompously interred with her ancestors, the Princes of Béarn, in the cathedral of Lescar.[35] [Footnote 35: Some historians say that Blanche was confined at the castle of Lescar, but there is no foundation for the assertion: no castle but that of Pau or Orthez would have been sufficiently strong to retain a prisoner of so much importance. Moret, and other Spanish authors, relate the event as above.] Five years after this tragedy, the vengeance of Heaven--still called for by the shades of the brother and sister--overtook Doña Juana, their cruel step-mother. She died in the agonies of a lingering disease, and in her torments betrayed, by her ravings, her crimes to all. Her constant exclamation was, "Hijo! que me caro cuestas!" _Oh, my son! you have cost me dear!_ alluding to her own son, for whose sake she had sacrificed the former children of her husband. She died, deserted by all; for that husband, equally guilty, on hearing that her words had betrayed her, thought it policy to feign indignation at her wickedness, and refused to visit her in her dying moments. The memory of the unnatural father is still preserved in a Spanish proverb, which alludes only to his sole good quality--liberality--in which he was extreme: in application to courtiers--who look for presents which are long coming--it is usual to say, "Ya se muriò rey Don Juan." There is no end to the stories which may be told of the castle of Orthez, and those in its neighbourhood; the knights and squires of Gaston de Foix's court, when not engaged in jousts and tournaments, or in fighting in earnest, seemed never weary of telling histories which their guest, Froissart, listened to with eager attention; amongst them, the following is characteristic of his ready belief, and the credulity of the time: The Great Bear of Béarn. Messire Pierre de Béarn, natural brother of Gaston Phoebus, was the victim of a strange malady, which rendered him an object both of fear and pity: there was a mystery attached to his sufferings which no one of the learned or inquisitive attendants who surrounded him could explain; and when Froissart inquired why it was that he was not married, being so handsome and so valiant a knight, his question was met with "the shrug, the hum, the ha," that denoted some secret. At length, as he was not easily to be satisfied when anything romantic was on the _tapis_, he found a person to explain to him how things stood with respect to the brother of the count. "He is, in fact, married," said the squire who undertook to resolve his doubts; "but neither his wife nor children live with him, and the cause is as follows." He then went on to relate his story: The young Countess Florence, of Biscay, was left an heiress by her father, who had died suddenly in a somewhat singular manner; his cousin, Don Pedro the Cruel, of Castile, being the only person who could tell the reason of his having been put to death. His daughter, who feared that the friendship of such a relation might be as dangerous to herself, being warned to avoid him, as she had fallen under his displeasure in consequence of having hinted that she knew how his wife, the sister of the Duke of Bourbon, and the Queen of France, met her end, thought it better to escape as quickly as she could from Biscay, leaving her estates in his power; and she came to the Basque country a fugitive, with a small retinue, glad to have saved her life, though all besides was his prey. This distressed damsel, knowing that all honour was shown to ladies at the court of Gaston de Foix, lost no time in directing her steps to the Castle of Orthez, where, throwing herself at the feet of the gallant count, she related her wrongs, and implored his assistance. Gaston entreated her to be comforted, and assured her that he was ready to do all in his power to assist her: he consigned her to the care of the Lady of Coarraze, his relation, a high baroness of the country. With all his generosity, Gaston Phoebus never seems to have lost sight of his own interest, and it struck him immediately that the heiress was exactly the match he desired for his brother, Pierre de Béarn. Accordingly, he so arranged matters that the young Countess of Biscay and her domains should remain in his family; he married her to Pierre, and re-conquered her lands from the cruel King of Castile. A son and a daughter were the fruits of this union, which appeared a happy one; but the fates or the fairies did not allow it to remain so. In Béarn, as in other parts of the world, although hunting is a very agreeable amusement, it sometimes brings with it unpleasant consequences, though Count Gaston may say nay. The woods, forests, and mountains, it is well known, belong exclusively to beings who are tenacious of their reign being disturbed, and who generally contrive to revenge themselves on the hardy hunter who ventures to invade their secret retreats. Nevertheless, at all periods, men are found incautious enough to tempt them, and seldom does it happen that they do not suffer for their temerity. Pierre de Béarn, like his brother, Gaston, was remarkably fond of the chase. The Countess Florence, on the contrary, held the pastime in the utmost abhorrence, and to please her he abstained from the sport he loved during the early period of their union; but at length he became weary of this self-denial, and, in an evil hour, he set forth on an expedition into the forests of Biscay to hunt the bear. He had not been fortunate at first in his search, and had climbed some of the highest parts of the mountain in hopes to meet with game worthy of him, when he suddenly came upon the track of a tremendous animal, such as he had never before beheld in his experience. He followed it for some time over plains of ice, his gallant hounds in full chase; at length, the mighty beast--apparently, indignant at their perseverance, just as they had arrived at a gorge of the rocks, beneath which a precipice descended on either side--turned round on his pursuers, and presented a front sufficient to daunt the courage of the boldest. The dogs, however, rushed on him, but, with one blow of his enormous paw, he stretched them dead at his feet; four of the finest met the same fate, and several, disabled and wounded, shrunk howling back to their master, who stood firm, his spear poised, waiting the proper moment of attack. Pierre saw that no time was to be lost, for he was alone, having, in his eagerness, outstripped his companions; his dogs were of no further use, and he must trust now to his own strength and skill. The spear went flying through the air, and struck the monster in the breast; furious with pain, he uttered a hideous howl, and rushed forward, catching, in his long claws, the left arm of the knight, whose right hand was armed with his hunting-knife, which he had hastily drawn from his belt; with this, in spite of the pain he felt, he continued to strike the monster, whose roaring echoed through the caverns of the rock like thunder at every stroke. At this instant, and just as the knight's strength was nearly exhausted, he beheld, with joy, his friends advancing to his aid; two of them sprang forward and discharged their spears; but still, though desperately wounded, the bear would not release the arm he continued to gripe, and, as he turned upon them, dragged his first foe with him. As, however, his head was directed towards the new comers, Pierre, with a strong effort, made another plunge in his neck, which instantly had the effect of making him release his hold; he then drew his dagger--for his knife remained in the animal's body--and, with the assistance of his friends, the bear was despatched. As the body lay on the ground, a pause of astonishment ensued after the shouts of the victors; for never was so gigantic a beast beheld in the Pyrenees, and it seemed a miracle that Pierre had escaped: his arm was fearfully injured, and he was faint with exertion; but his triumph was so great that he hardly permitted his wound to be bound up. They placed the carcase of the bear on their shoulders, and with great difficulty carried it from the spot where it fell; it was then consigned to their attendants, and the whole train returned in great delight to the castle. As they entered the court, they were met by the Countess Florence and her ladies, who had been uneasy at the long absence of her lord. No sooner had she cast her eyes on the huge beast they were carrying, than she turned deadly pale, uttered a loud shriek, and fainted on the ground. The lady was borne to her chamber, and for two days and two nights she uttered not a word; but was in great pain and tribulation, sighing and moaning piteously: at the end of that time she said to her husband, "My lord, I shall never be better till I have been on a pilgrimage to St. James; give me leave to go, and to take with me Pierre, my son, and Adriana, my daughter. I beg it as a boon." Messire Pierre, distressed to see her situation, granted her request too readily. The countess then ordered a great train to be prepared, and set forth on her journey, taking with her treasure and jewels of great value, which was not much remarked at the time; but she knew well that she did not intend to return. Her journey and her pilgrimage accomplished, she announced her intention to pay a visit to her cousins, the King and Queen of Castile; and to their Court she went, and was received with joy. And there the Countess Florence is still, and will not return, nor send back her children. The very night on which he had killed the great bear, Messire Pierre was seized with the malady which has ever since taken possession of him. "He rises," said the squire, "in the night, arms himself, draws his sword, and, with loud and furious cries and gestures, like a man possessed, flies at every one near him, and makes such a terrific noise and confusion that it would seem fiends were in his chamber. His squires and valets awake him, and he is quite unconscious of what has happened, and will not believe those who relate to him what he has done in his sleep. Now, it is said," continued the squire, "that the lady knew well what would happen the moment she saw the great bear; for her father had hunted that very animal, and when he came up to it, he heard a voice which said, 'Why do you persecute me thus? I never did you any ill: you shall die of an untimely death.' And so, indeed, did he, being beheaded by King Pedro the Cruel, without cause. This was the reason she fainted and was in such tribulation; and for this cause she never loved her husband after, for she always feared he would do her a bodily injury; and that harm would happen to her or hers, while she stayed with him." The squire and the historian's comments on this strange story are more amusing than wise. "We know well," said Froissart, "by ancient writings, that gods and goddesses were in the habit of changing into birds and beasts men and women who offended them. It might well, therefore, happen that this great bear was in his time a knight accustomed to hunt in the forests of Biscay; he probably did something to anger some deity of the woods, and consequently lost his human shape, and got changed into a bear, to do penance for his offence." Whether Froissart really believed what he was saying, or whether the opinion was merely advanced to afford him an opportunity to display his classical learning, is not clear; but he forthwith inflicts upon his hearer the story of the "_Joli Chevalier Acteon_;" at which the other is marvellously pleased. They continue to speculate upon the reasons of the Countess Florence for quitting her husband, and conclude that she knew more than she chose to tell. It has been thought that the lady, when very young, was one day in the forest, having strayed from the castle, within whose garden walls she was weary of being kept. She was delighted when she found herself at liberty, and kept wandering on, up one alley and down another, wherever she saw flowers, and the sun streamed through the leaves; till, at last, the evening began to close, and she turned her steps to return; but there was such a labyrinth of trees, and every path was so like another, that she knew not which to choose, and became alarmed lest she should not reach home before night, and her absence would be discovered. She hurried forward in great uncertainty, and her fears increased every moment; for she seemed to be getting further and further in the depths of the forest; suddenly she came upon a great rock in which was a cavern, and at its mouth she paused a moment to look round her, when a sound issued from it which almost paralysed her with terror, and presently forth rushed a huge black bear, who seized her in his paws. She shrieked loudly, for she expected her hour was come, when, to her amazement, she heard a voice from the monster, and these words: "You have intruded on my privacy; I did not seek you; remain and be my companion, or at once I put you to death." She was so amazed that she had scarcely power to answer; but summoning her courage, she replied, "I am a great lady, and the daughter of the lord of Biscay: release me, and it shall be the better for you; kill me, and my father will take a signal revenge." "You shall not quit this forest," replied the monster, "till you promise what I demand. I will then transport you to your father's castle, when you shall make him swear never to hunt in my domains again. If he should do so, he shall die a violent death; and all with whom you shall in future be in connexion shall be under the same promise, or I will cause them to die badly. If any, after this vow, hunt me, and it should happen that I am killed, misfortune shall come on you and your race for my sake." The lady promised, as indeed she had no choice but to do; and the great bear then ordered her to follow him; she did so, and in a few moments she saw the castle in view. "Now," said he, "give me another promise. If I should be killed by any one belonging to you, swear that you will go to the shrine of St. James, of Compostella, and pray for my soul, for I am not a bear, as I appear, but a knight, transformed for my sins." As he spoke, and while Florence made the vow he required, she saw his skin changing by degrees, and his form taking another appearance, till he stood before her, in the misty light, a fair young knight, the handsomest her eyes had ever beheld; he looked mournfully upon her, and disappeared, and she found herself suddenly in her own turret, in her chamber, on her bed, and no one had perceived her absence. She related this adventure to her father, who, much amazed thereat, refused to credit her tale; nor would he give up his accustomed pastime of hunting for all her entreaties, by which stubborn conduct his fate came upon him as has been related. The lady, the more she thought of the beauty of the transformed knight, loved him the more; but she had no hope ever again to see him, and her misfortunes having obliged her to quit her country, and take refuge in Béarn, all happened as has been told. She was not more fortunate with her husband than her father, in preventing his hunting in the forests of Biscay; and when she saw the great bear had been killed, she lamented her lover, as well as the ill fate which he had predicted for her lineage. Certain it is, that she never afterwards returned to Messire Pierre, and that she gave great treasure to the church of St. James, of Compostella, that perpetual mass might be said for _a soul in purgatory_. CHAPTER XI. THE COUNTESS OF COMMINGES--THE CHARGE--THE PERSECUTED HEIRESS--THE BRIDGE--THE CORDELIER--COSTUME--ASPREMONT--PEYREHORADE. ALTHOUGH Count Gaston Phoebus was a tyrant, who spared none in his anger, yet he had all the virtues which were admired by the bold spirits of the men of his time; amongst the chief of which was hospitality. Like a true knight of old, he afforded protection to distressed ladies and damsels, and his Court was a refuge sought, and not in vain, by all who had been injured by those stronger than themselves, or who required assistance in any way. Amongst other ladies who came to throw themselves at the feet of this redoubted righter of wrongs was the Countess Alienor de Comminges, wife of the Count of Boulogne, and the right heiress of the county of Comminges, then in the hands of the Lord of Armagnac, who unjustly detained it. This spirited lady one day made her appearance at the Castle of Orthez, with her little girl of three years old in her hand, and demanded protection of Gaston Phoebus. She was received with great honour and respect, and Gaston listened with great benignity to her complaint. "My lord," said she, "I am on my way to Arragon, to my uncle the Count d'Urgel, and my aunt-in-law, with whom I am resolved to remain; for I have taken a great displeasure against my husband, Messire Jean de Boulogne; for it is his business to recover for me my heritage, kept from me by the Count of Armagnac, who holds my sister in prison; but he will bestir himself in nothing, for he is a craven knight, fond of his ease, and has no care but to eat and drink, and spends his goods upon idle and sensual enjoyment. And he boasts that when he becomes count he will sell his inheritance in order to satisfy his foolish and childish wishes; for this cause I am disgusted, and will live with him no longer; therefore I have brought my little daughter to deliver her into your charge, and to make you her guardian and defender, to keep and educate her according to her station. I know well, that, for the sake of love and relationship, in this my great strait you will not fail me, and I have no safe person with whom to confide my daughter, Jeanne, but you. I have had great difficulty to get her out of the hands of my husband, which I was resolved to do, because I know the danger in which she stands from him, and from those of the house of Armagnac, being, as she is, the heiress of Comminges. I, therefore, beseech you to befriend me, and take charge of her; and when my husband finds she is in your guardianship, he will be himself rejoiced; for he has often said that this child would be a source of great uneasiness to him in the future. "The Count of Foix heard the lady, his cousin, speak these words with great satisfaction, and instantly imagined within himself, for he is a lord of great fancy," says Froissart, "of how much service the charge of this child might be to him, for she might be the cause of making peace with his enemies, and by marrying her in some high place, he could keep them in check; he, therefore, replied, 'Madam and cousin, willingly will I do what you ask, both from affection and parentage, by which I am bound to assist you. Leave your daughter with me, and rely on it she shall be cared for and treated as if she were my own child.' 'I thank you greatly,' said the lady. "The young daughter of the Count of Boulogne was therefore left at Orthez with the Count of Foix, and never departed from thence. And her lady mother took her way to Arragon. She came several times afterwards to see her child, but did not request to have her again: for the count, Gaston Phoebus, acquitted himself of his charge as if she had been his own; indeed, it is said that he has a notion of marrying her to the Duke de Berri, who is a widower, and has a great desire to marry again." Jeanne did in fact become the wife of the Duke de Berri, when she was under thirteen, and he more than sixty; but, after all the care which had been taken of her, and the "coil" that was made for her, she died early, leaving no children. Her mother being dead, the inheritance of Comminges devolved on her aunt, Marguerite, the same who was kept prisoner by the Count of Armagnac. The fate of heiresses in those days was sad enough, and that of this countess particularly so. The Count of Armagnac married her to get her property; after his death she was forced into an alliance with another of the same family, from whom, however, she contrived to get a divorce, and then accepted the hand of a Count de Foix, probably from fear. This latter soon began to ill-treat her, having failed by entreaties to induce her to make over her possessions to him; finding her resolved, he leagued himself with one of her old enemies, Jean d'Armagnac, and they agreed together to share the spoil of her heritage. She was dragged about, from prison to prison, first in one strong castle and then in another, for fear of its being known where she existed; and for many years she languished in this misery. At this time Charles VII. was at the height of his successes, and some friend had contrived to inform her of the changed aspect of affairs in France. In order to induce him to undertake her cause, she, by means of the same friend, let him know that she had named him heir of all her property and estates--knowing, probably, too well, how little weight any consideration but personal interest would have. The tyrants soon discovered what she had done, and her treatment became still worse. The arrogance and presumption of the Count d'Armagnac, who ventured to put after his name, "By the grace of God," and assumed the airs of a sovereign, added to which, _the unjust manner in which he acted_, at length irritated the king to such a degree that he summoned both lords to appear before him at Toulouse, and commanded that they should bring with them the Countess of Comminges. Nothing was now to be done but to obey the strongest; and the two tyrants and their victim came to Charles, as he desired; he then took the lady under his protection, and the Estates pronounced _her will valid_; her husband being permitted to enjoy a certain portion during his life. After this the countess remained with the king, and it is to be hoped enjoyed a short period of repose. She died at Poitiers, upwards of eighty years old, and no sooner was she dead than the turbulent and ambitious Armagnacs took possession, in spite of the king, of all her estates, about which, for long years, continual wars and contentions ensued. * * * * * Of all the castles in Béarn, perhaps that of Gaston Phoebus at Orthez is the most suggestive of recollections; but I fear I have been led into so many long stories beneath its ruined walls that the actual fortress itself is almost forgotten. We stood upon the irregular mound which its accumulated ruins present, remarking the fine effect of the distant line of snowy mountains, whose outlines varied from those familiar to us at Pau, and enjoyed the sunset from that exalted position, which might have often been admired in the same spot centuries before, by the lords, knights, historians, minstrels, and distressed or contented damsels, who filled the courts of the mightiest chieftain of Béarn. We descended from the castle, through a long, dilapidated street, which seemed to know no end, and began to despair of ever reaching the bridge, when we were accosted by a good-natured looking woman, who offered to be our guide. After a long walk, through high, narrow, but not ill-paved, streets, at last we came upon the roaring, foaming Gave: one of the most impatient rivers that ever was confined by a bridge, or pent up by crowding houses. On each side rise wild, grey, rugged rocks, some covered with clinging plants, some naked and barren, over and between which the passionate torrent comes dashing and foaming, as if anxious to escape, as fast as possible, from the town which has intruded streets and mills on its original solitude, since the early period when some chivalric baron, or, perhaps, the Grosse Comtesse herself, threw over it the strange old bridge, and placed in its centre the towered arch which no efforts, early or late, have been able to dislodge. To be sure, this is scarcely surprising, if, as tradition says, it was no mortal architect who built this bridge; but a set of workmen whose erections are not easily destroyed, and who, after all, might have laid the first foundations of the fortress on the height, as well as this huge tower, which seems of a-piece with one of the rocks its neighbours. The fact is, the fairies, who inhabited in former days the caverns of the Gave, and used to come out by moon-light in little boats on its waters, got tired of its continual roaring and foaming, and bethought them of a way to cross to the other side, without being either shaken or tossed by its turbulent waves, or wetting their tiny feet by stepping from stone to stone. They resolved, therefore, to throw a bridge over the stream, and, taking a huge hollowed rock for the purpose, by their united efforts they cast it across; and, as the water-spirits were offended on the occasion, and rose up against them, endeavouring to destroy their labours, they found it requisite to build them a tower in the centre, which they defended against all comers. This was effected in a single night; and the shepherds, who beheld in the morning what had been done, would never have been able to account for it, but that, watching when the moon was at the full, they perceived the fairies passing in crowds along the bridge, and directing their way towards the opposite hill, where the castle stands. They have often been seen dancing round the ruined well there; and, it is thought, can plunge into the spring, and reappear far up in the Gave at their pleasure. The shepherds, also, observed that the castle was under their dominion; for they often remark, as they approach Orthez, on returning from the market at Peyrehorade, that the great tower, which is clearly visible on the height at one moment, sinks gradually into the earth, the nearer they come, and, at last, disappears altogether, nor is observed again, till they have mounted the hill, to see if it really "stands where it did;" where they behold it as firm and as frowning as ever, laughing to scorn time and the elements, and refusing to offer any clue to its mystery. The bridge of Orthez has been the scene of terrible contentions, at different periods. In the tower in its centre is a projecting window, from whence, tradition says, Montgomery, the Protestant leader, by the orders of Queen Jeanne de Navarre,--to whom, in this country, all sorts of horrors are attributed,--caused the priests to be cast into the Gave, who refused to become Calvinists. The window is called _La frineste deüs caperas_ (_the priests' window_). In those times of outrage and violence, this might, or might not, be true; but certain it is that three thousand Catholics, men, women, and children, perished in the siege which Montgomery laid to Orthez, and that the sparkling, foaming torrent which we looked at with such pleasure, then rolled along a current of blood. It is said that, during the assault of the town, a Cordelier was celebrating mass in his convent, and had the courage to finish the ceremony in spite of the tumult around; he then concealed the sacred chalice in his bosom, and cast himself from his convent-window into the Gave. The waters bore him on to the Adour; and his body, tossed and torn by the rocks, was finally deposited on the bank, beneath the walls of a convent of the same order, at Bayonne, where the shuddering monks received and bore his mutilated remains to their chapel, with weeping and lamenting for the misfortunes of their brethren. The "Château Noble" of Gaston Phoebus had then to endure a terrible siege: the Viscount de Terride had sustained himself there as long as possible; but, wanting provisions, was at length obliged to yield, and was, with all his garrison, carried prisoner to Pau. There those officers who, being Béarnais, had been taken in rebellion against their Queen, were served with a banquet called _le repas libre_, at the conclusion of which they were all put to the sword. The costume of the female peasants in this neighbourhood is almost invariably a short scarlet petticoat, and brown or black tucked-up gown, with a bright-coloured handkerchief on the head, tied in the usual _gentil_ style, with all four ends displayed, so as to show their rich hues,--one being allowed to fall longer than the rest; in dirty weather, the legs and feet are bare, and the sabots carried. Many very large straw hats are worn, lined with smart colours, and tied with ribbon; but it must be confessed that most of these are very old, and have long since lost their early brilliancy. There is nothing remarkable in the costume of the men,--the customary _berret_ being the covering of their heads, and either a blue blouse, or a dark dress, with red sash, and sometimes a red waist-coat, diversifying their appearance. We were not struck with the beauty of any of the peasants we met. Being market-day, the road was crowded for several leagues, and we thought we had a good opportunity of judging: however, a French fellow-traveller told us our idea was erroneous, as the young girls were seldom allowed to come to the market, which was generally attended by matrons only. However this might be, we certainly saw nothing beyond very ordinary faces, and the common defect of mountainous countries--the frightful _goître_--too evident. It is the custom with most persons, when they first arrive in a place, to adopt some received opinion, which not the strongest evidence of their senses is allowed afterwards to shake; and thus it appears heresy, either to disbelieve in the salubrity of Pau, or in the beauty of the inhabitants of all the country round. If beauty were merely comparative, the notion may be true; but, though those who are not affected with _goître_, and who are not hollow-cheeked, and thin, and brown, are prettier than those who are, "Yet beautie is beautie in every degree;" and "pretty Bessies" appeared to me to be very rare in Béarn. There is a very imposing building situated on the Gave, of which the townspeople are extremely proud: it is a corn-mill, of great power, lately erected, and extremely successful. It appears that the town of Orthez is in a flourishing condition, as to trade. Here are prepared most of the hams so celebrated throughout France, under the name of Bayonne-hams; and here numerous flocks of the fat geese which furnish the markets of the neighbouring towns with _cuisses d'oies_, so prized by gourmands, are to be seen. But the most picturesque _flocks_ we observed on this road, were those of the round, pretty sheep, with thick snowy fleeces, just returned from the mountains, where, delicate as they look, they have been accustomed, all the summer, and till late in the autumn, to climb to the highest point of the Pic du Midi itself. They were now being conducted to the valleys and plains for the winter, and the meadows were whitened with them in all directions. This part of the country was, formerly, thickly-wooded, and occasionally a few oak woods are passed on the road; but the continuous forest which once spread abroad in this direction has disappeared. On approaching the long, desolate-looking bourg of Peyrehorade,--which, however, on market-days, is bustling and crowded enough--a ruin, on a height not unlike that of Orthez, looks proudly over the plain, where two Gaves unite. It is the Château d'Aspremont, once redoubted, and of great force, and belonging to that good and noble governor of Bayonne, who sent back to Charles IX. the answer so often quoted, when commanded to execute all the Protestants in his town of Bayonne--that he had examined the persons under his command, and had found them brave and true soldiers, but no executioners. The singular-sounding name of _Peyre-Hourade_ has the meaning of _Pierced Stone_, and comes from a Druidical monument in the neighbourhood. These remains are rare in the Pyrenees, though so frequently met with in other parts of France. In a meadow, not far removed from the high-road, is a block of granite, nearly flat, of great height, standing upright on the narrowest end: there is no quarry of similar stone in this part of the country; and its isolation and quality render it a subject of surprise--as much so as the unexplained wonders on Salisbury Plain. The fairies, no doubt, if any fortunate individual could make friends with them now, could set the matter at rest; "But now can no man see none elvés mo!" CHAPTER XII. BAYONNE--PUBLIC WALKS--BIARITZ--ATALAYA--GIANT FERNAGUS--ANNE OF NEUBOURG--THE DANCING MAYOR. FROM Orthez we continued our way to Bayonne, where it was our intention to remain a few days. The entrance to Bayonne, that famous city, whose motto is "Nunquam Polluta"--"_Always pure_," from the separate town of St. Esprit, which is in the department of the Landes, as well as half of the bridge which connects it with its more important sister, is extremely striking. This bridge is over the fine bold river Adour, which joins the Nive here, and, together, they divide the town between them. Although Bayonne has few public monuments of much consequence, yet the cathedral, the towers of the two castles, and other buildings, rise from the rivers in great majesty; and, as we crossed the immensely long wooden bridge at a slow pace, gave us a good impression, which a closer view did not disappoint. It has a singular aspect, unlike that of any other town, and the air all round it is pure and healthy; and we felt happy for the time to have exchanged the icy chill of the snowy mountains for the freshness of the sea breeze. There are few old towns in France, which can be called fine in themselves: their advantages lie in situation, and in the modern additions which have succeeded to the ramparts and close-walled enclosures of the ancient time, when to crowd streets together and fence them in was the principal aim; but Bayonne, although still fortified strongly, is less confined than most cities: a thorough air blows through the tolerably well-paved streets; open spaces occur every now and then, narrow and close places have been cleared, and the two fine rivers and their quays prevent its being so crowded as it might otherwise be. The houses are very high, which makes the streets appear narrower than they really are; but they are not very long, and intersect each other in a manner to prevent their being disagreeable. There are arcades in the old part, as at La Rochelle and Agen, some of which are very dark and narrow, and occasionally strange alleys appear, as sombre and dismal as any in Rouen itself; but this is not the general character of the town. One long, handsomely-paved street, is bordered with fine houses and planted with trees, in the style of Bordeaux, and here are situated most of the hotels; the grand squares of the Theatre and Douane open from this, and the magnificent allées marines extend from this spot. Everywhere in Bayonne, it is easy to escape from the bustle of the city, and find yourself in a beautiful, shaded walk--an advantage seldom possessed by a commercial town. Although many are delightful, and there is only the embarrassment of choice, the most beautiful and agreeable, it must be allowed, are the allées marines, which are walks nicely kept, planted with several rows of fine trees, reaching along the banks of the Adour for an immense distance, with meadows on the other hand, and a range of cultivated hills on the opposite shore. The fine broad, sparkling, agitated river, is dotted with vessels of different sizes, some of them moored to the bank; a fresh breeze from the sea comes sweeping along, bringing health on its wings; the citadel crowns the height of St. Esprit; the cathedral rises above the other town; before is the meeting of the bright waters, trees, groves, and meadows everywhere; murmuring streams, spanned by wooden bridges, hurry along to throw themselves into the bosom of the Adour at intervals, and the whole scene is life and brilliancy. This walk is a kind of shaded jettée, and has, unlike most French promenades, nothing formal or monotonous about it: the trees are allowed to throw their branches out at pleasure, without being clipped into form; they are irregularly planted, so that the favourite straight lines are avoided, and the fine sandy soil does not allow the paths to remain dump half an hour at a time; consequently, it is always a safe lounge, and, assuredly, one of the most charming possessed by any town I ever saw. It is as agreeable, although not resembling it in its features, as the mail which charmed us so much at La Rochelle. The days were very uncertain, and violent showers overtook us every half hour, while we remained at Bayonne; yet we contrived to escape damp in these pretty alleys, which, one minute swimming with water, were, in an incredibly short space, dry and pleasant again. The first anxiety on arriving at Bayonne, is always, of course, to get to the sea; even the cathedral, our usual first visit, we neglected, in order to take advantage of a gleam of sun, and hasten to Biaritz, which lies about a league from the town: there is now a fine road to St. Jean de Luz, by which you reach this celebrated bathing-place; and the often-described cacolets, which even now travellers venture to tell of, are dwindled into a tradition. In the season, one or two of these primitive conveyances may still, it is said, be seen, as the English are amused at endeavouring to ride in them; but, except one has a preference for broken limbs to safety, there is no reason why any one should choose such a carriage. They are, in fact, _now_, two panniers, in which two persons sit on each side of a horse, with the legs hanging down: formerly, it was merely a board slung across the animal's back, on which the traveller sat see-saw with his guide; and numerous are the accounts of perils encountered on a bad road in these conveyances twenty years ago. Omnibuses, cabriolets, and coaches of all kinds are now to be had, and there is neither pleasure nor glory in going uncomfortably in the obsolete _cacolet_. Biaritz has greatly changed its aspect, since Inglis described it as a desolate fishing village: it has grown into a fashionable watering-place, full of fine hotels and handsome houses, with accommodations of all sorts; the sands are, in the bathing-season, covered with pavilions for the bathers, and all the terrors and dangers of the Chambre d'Amour and the Grottos of Biaritz, are over: that is to say, as far as regards persons being carried away by the tide, or surprised by the waves amongst the rocks; for, unless any one was silly enough to place himself in danger, no risk need be run, as it does not _now_ come to seek you. The rocks, however, are still terrible to mariners in a tempest; when, in spite of the warning _pharos_, which crowns the height, the vessel is driven into these little bays, bristling with rocks of all sizes and forms, each capable of causing immediate destruction. No winter passes without dreadful disasters on this beautifully dangerous coast, which looks not half so fatal as it really is. I had so often heard Biaritz described as magnificent, that I had imagined a bold coast of gigantic cliffs and huge blocks of pyramidal stone, piled at distances along the shore, like those at the back of the Isle of Wight, or on the Breton coast. I was, therefore, surprised to find only a pretty series of bays, much lower, but not unlike the land at Hastings, with the addition of small circles of sand, strewn with large masses of rock, over and through which the restless waves drive and foam, and form cascades, and rush into hollows, roaring and beating against the caverned roofs and sides with the noise of cannon, increased in violence according to the state of the elements. In rough weather the sea is so loud here that the reverberation is distinctly heard at Bayonne, as if artillery was being fired, and its hoarse murmur is generally audible there at all times. A fine light-house has been erected on a height; but this precaution does not altogether prevent accidents, and scarcely a winter passes without sad events occurring on this dangerous coast. A few days only before we visited Biaritz, an English vessel had been lost, with all hands on board, except a poor man, who had seen his wife perish, and his two little children washed on one of the rocks: there they lay like star-fish, and were taken off by the pitying inhabitants. I could not learn the exact particulars, but I believe only one survived, which was immediately received into the house of an English family who reside at Biaritz, and who benevolently took the little stranded stranger under their protection. There was always, it seems, a look-out house on the hill above the rocks; and formerly it was requisite to watch lest the vessels of those numerous pirates who infested these seas should come down upon the coast. The mount where it stood is called by its old name, _Atalaya_. Whether it has anything to do with the former inhabitant of a ruined tower which still looks over the ocean, as it did in ages past, does not appear; but it may have been connected with the giant Ferragus, or Fernagus, of whose castle this piece of ruin alone remains. The giant Ferragus was one of those tremendous pagan personages, to conquer whom was the chief aim and end of the Paladins of the time of Charlemagne; and history has recorded the combat of Roland, the great hero of these parts, with this redoubted Paynim. Biaritz was amongst the places in the Pays Basque, named by the cruel inquisitor, Pierre de Lancre, as "_given up to the worship of the devil_;" he tells us that the devils and malignant spirits, banished _from Japan and the Indies_, took refuge in the mountains of Labourd: "and, indeed," continues this miserable bigot, in whose hands was placed the destiny of hundreds of innocent creatures, "many English, Scotch, and other travellers coming to buy wines in the city of Bordeaux, have assured us that in their journeys they have seen great troops of demons, _in the form of frightful men_, passing into France." Above all, he asserts that the young girls of Biaritz, always celebrated for their beauty, have "in their _left eye a mark impressed by the devil_." Bayonne has several new quarters still unfinished, which promise to be very handsome and commodious. There is a sort of imitation of Bordeaux in the style of building, without altogether such good taste: at least, this may be said of the theatre, which, though immensely large, is much less majestic or beautiful; its position is, perhaps, even better than that of Bordeaux, as it stands in a large uninterrupted square, with a fine walk and trees by the quay on one side; and all the streets which extend from it are new and wide. The street in which the principal hotels are placed is very like one on the _cours_ at Bordeaux, and is remarkably striking; but, besides this, there is little to admire in the town, except the singularity of two rivers running through its streets, like another Venice. The residence of the Queen of Spain, Anne of Neubourg, widow of Charles II., at Bayonne, is still remembered, and anecdotes are told of her during her long stay of thirty-two years. She arrived on the 20th September, 1706, and was received with great honours by all the dignitaries: the town was illuminated, and the streets hung with tapestry, as she passed to the Château-Vieux, where she took up her abode. She seems to have been very much beloved, to have shown great benevolence, and made herself numerous friends. Her generosity and profusion, however, caused her to leave on her departure twelve hundred thousand francs of debt, which Ferdinand VI. had to pay. Scandal was not silent concerning her, and a lover was named in the young chevalier Larrétéguy whose brother was at one time confined in the Château d'If for an impertinent exclamation which he made one day when the Queen's carriage was stopped by the crowd on the Pont Majour--"Room for my sister-in-law." A fine complexion and an air of majesty constituted her beauty; but she grew enormously fat, and was not remarkable for her outward attractions. She seems to have exhibited some caprice in her rejection of a palace which she had caused to be built at great expense. It was called the Château de Marrac, and had been erected under her orders with infinite care: when it was finished she refused to occupy it in consequence of one of her ladies having presumed to take possession of a suite of chambers previous to her having been regularly installed as mistress. This was the reason assigned; but she had, it may be imagined, a better to give for abandoning a place which had cost her so much money. She made frequent journeys to St. Jean Pied de Port, Bidache, Cambo, Terciis, &c., for her health, and was always received on her return to Bayonne with sovereign honours. The magistrates of the town went, on one occasion, to meet her with offerings of fruit, flowers, expensive wines, hams, and game, all in silver filigree baskets, beautifully worked. During a dangerous illness which she had, the shrine containing the relics of St. Léon was lowered, as in a period of general calamity; and, on her recovery, prayers and thanksgivings were commanded, and a solemn procession of all the officers of the town, civil and military, took place. In 1738 she returned to Spain, greatly regretted by all who had known her at Bayonne; and, it seems, she was so much impressed with sorrow at having left an abode so agreeable to her that she survived only two years, and died at Guadalajara in 1740. An account of a fête, given by the Queen on occasion of some successes in Spain which greatly rejoiced her, concludes with the following rather amusing sentence: "After the repast was finished, much to the satisfaction of all, a _panperruque_ was danced through the town. M. de Gibaudière led the dance, holding the hand of the _Mayor of Bayonne_; the Marquis de Poyanne bringing up the rear: so that this dance rejoiced all the people, who, on their side, gave many demonstrations of joy. It lasted even till the next day amongst the people, and on board the vessels in the river; and the windows of every house were illuminated." Bayonne has a reputation for being in general extremely healthy; and its position, in reach of the fine fresh sea air, seems to render it probable. To me, after the close atmosphere of Pau, it was peculiarly pleasant; and seemed to give new life, and restore the spirits, depressed by that enervating climate, where, except for invalids, a long residence is anything but desirable. There seems but little commercial movement at Bayonne, and no bustle on the quays; indeed, except at Nantes, I have always, in France, been struck with the quiet and silent aspect of the seaports; so unlike our own. Just at the time we were there, great complaints were being made, in consequence of the prohibition of Spanish ships from touching at any port of the South of France: commerce was at a stand-still, and all persons in trade seemed vexed and disappointed at the bad prospect before them. CHAPTER XIII. BASQUE LANGUAGE--DIALECTS--WORDS--POETRY--SONGS--THE DESERTER--CHARACTER--DRAMA--TOWNS. THE Basque country,--in which the ancient town of Bayonne, or Lapurdum, holds a principal place,--is unequally divided between France and Spain. The one part is composed of La Soule, Basse Navarre, and Labourd, and extends over a surface of about a hundred and forty square leagues; the other portion comprises Haute Navarre, Alava, Guipuscoa, and Biscay, and contains about nine hundred and sixty square leagues: so that the whole country in which the Basque language is spoken, enclosed between the Adour, Béarn, the river Arragon, the Ebro, and the ocean, contains not less than eleven hundred square leagues. Part of this extent is barren, rude, and wooded, and is said to resemble the ancient state of Gaul, as described by historians. Though immense tracts of wood have been cleared away, there is still more in this region than in any other of the Pyrenees; there are three great forests; one of Aldudes, in the valley of Balgorry, where exist the only copper-mines in France; the forest of Irati, near Roncevaux; and that of St. Engrace, which joins the woods of Itseaux. The habits, manners, and language, of this people have engaged the attention of the curious for a series of years; and the speculations and, surmises to which they have given rise are without end. Although it is generally thought that the Basques are descendants of the ancient Iberians, some learned writers contend that the singular language which they speak, and which has no resemblance to that of any of the nations which surround them, approaches very near the Celtic. Whether they are _Vascons_ or _Cantabrians_, they are called, in their own tongues, _Escualdunac_, and their language _Escuara_. Seventy-two towns, bourgs, and villages, are named, by Du Mège, as appropriated to the people of this denomination,--that is, from the mouth of the Adour to the banks of the Soison and the mountains south of the Pays de Soule. He remarks that no historian of antiquity has made mention of this people, or their language, under the name they at present bear; and it was never advanced till the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries, that the inhabitants of Alava, Guipuscoa, and Spanish and French Navarre had preserved the ancient language of the Iberians, and that they were the representatives of that nation; never having been conquered by any foreign invaders, and never having mixed their blood. Du Mège observes, on these pretensions: "History, studied at its purest sources, and from its most authentic documents, proves that, in the most distant times, several nations,--amongst whom, doubtless, should be included those who first inhabited the coasts of Africa,--came and established themselves in Spain. The Pelasgians, the Greeks of Zacinthus, of Samos, the Messineans, the Dorians, the Phoceans, the Laconians, the Tyrians or Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the Celts or Gauls, and the Eastern Iberians. Strabo mentions that in the Peninsula were many different languages _and alphabets_; no doubt, as many alphabets as idioms. Great care has been taken to discover the origin of these alphabets, the letters of which _are still to be found in Spain, in several inscriptions engraved on marble_, and in numerous medals." Nothing satisfactory, however, has been established respecting the language; but a probable one appears to be Velasquez' opinion, that it is formed of dialects of Greek and Hebrew; but this opinion is combated by many learned Spaniards. One author, in particular, was so violent in his enthusiasm, that it led him to discover all the ancient history combined in the Basque language. To him it was of little consequence that the names mentioned by different authors belonged to Spain, Africa, England, or Normandy,--the learned Dr. Zuñiga, curé of Escalonilla, explained them all as _Basque_. Thus, for instance, _Scotland_, called _Escocia_ in Spanish, he asserts was so called from _escuocia_, a _cold hand_! Ireland, which is Irlanda in Spanish, means, in Basque, _Ira-Landa_, i.e., _meadow of fern_: and so on to the end of the chapter, in a strain which becomes highly comic. Another writer followed in his steps,--Don Juan de Erro y Aspiroz,--who surpassed him in absurdity; proving to his own satisfaction, not only that the Basque is ancient, but that its alphabet _furnished one to the Greeks_, and that the same nation instructed the Phoenicians in the use of money; added to which, they passed into Italy, and _from them_ sprung the Romans--those conquerors of the world. Certainly, etymologists do fall into strange errors; as when the forgery _pour rire_ of Count de Gibelin was taken for the Lord's Prayer in Celtic, and explained as such by the famous Lebrïgant! Humboldt, in his "Researches" on the origin of the first inhabitants of Spain, falls into errors which are to be lamented; as his great name may afford sanction to the dreams of others. He acknowledges that he is puzzled to find that there is no trace amongst the ancients of the term Escualdunac. He does not go so far as Zuñiga, who discovers in the name of Obulco, engraved on ancient medals, Tri-Gali, i.e. "laughing corn" or Balza-Gala--"black corn:" that Catalonia (evidently a modern name) signifies, "The country of wild cats." Cascantum--"dirty place;" and Hergaones--"good place of the spinners!" Du Mège observes, that Humboldt has unfortunately followed former writers too much; and though all he writes is worthy of respect, he fails to convince, in this treatise, having begun on false ground. Since then, M. de Montglave has "proved" a fact which is very startling, namely, that there is a great affinity between the Basque language and the dialects of the indigenous nations of South America![36] [Footnote 36: This M. Mazure will by no means allow in his "Histoire du Béarn et du Pays Basque."] This last circumstance, which new observations seem to render more and more probable, would at once put an end, if really proved, to all discussion, and open a new field for speculation. It would be somewhat curious to establish the certainty of the South Americans having discovered and colonized Europe many centuries before they were re-discovered by Europeans!--this, once determined, the Druid stones and the round towers of Ireland might all, by degrees, be explained: the obstinate resolve of all learned persons to derive everything in Europe from the Greeks and Romans, or to go to the far East, when fairly driven there, to find out origins, is very hard upon the enormous double continent of the New World, whose wondrous ruined palaces prove the original inhabitants to have been highly civilized and of immense power: and which, by its extent and variety, might cast into insignificance those proud specks which imagine themselves suns, when they are, perhaps, only motes in the sun's beams. It scarcely appears that the learned and impartial Du Mège has settled the question by his arguments; indeed he seems himself aware that it is yet open, for he rather confutes others than assumes an opinion himself. He concludes, that the ancient Vascons who overran Aquitaine, in 600, are certainly not the same people as those who now speak the Escuara language, and that these _may have been_ "one of those people who invaded the Roman empire in the reign of Probus, or the remains of those tribes to whom, in the time of Honorius, was confided the guardianship of the entrance of the Pyrenees. Thus placed in the defiles of the mountains, _it was easy_ for them to extend themselves successively into Aquitaine, Navarre, Guipuscoa, &c., to impose their _language_ and their laws on the terrified people, and thus _mix themselves with_ the Vascons and Cantabrians of Spain, and the Tarbelli and Sibyllates of Gaul." Whatever may be their origin, the Basques, as they exist at this moment, are a very singular people, both as to their customs and language: there is not the slightest resemblance between them and their neighbours; they are perfectly foreigners in the next village to that which they inhabit. Some _profane_ persons (M. Pierquin, for instance, who goes near to do so, in an article on _la France littéraire_,) have dared to insinuate, that the language of the Basques is nothing more than a mere jargon, _both modern and vulgar_; but this is so cruel an assertion, and one which destroys so many theories, reducing learning to a jest, that no wonder M. Mazure and others are indignant at such boldness. It must be confessed that, since extremes meet, the same arguments used to prove the classical antiquity of the language would serve to convince that it was merely modern, and made use of, by uneducated persons, to express their wants as readily as possible. There are, in the Basque, terms which represent ideas by sounds, explaining, by a sort of musical imitation, many usual acts, and the appearance of objects; but this is frequently brought forward by its defenders in its favour, and as establishing its antiquity. M. Mazure, who appears an enthusiast for the Basque language, produces several words to show the sublimity contained in their signification: for instance, he says, "the radical name of _the Moon_, combined with other terms, gives occasion for superb expressions, full of thought, and of a character which no modern language could furnish: thus--_ilarquia_, the moon, signifies _its light_, or its _funereal_ light; and _illarguia, ilkulcha, ilobia, ilerria, ileguna_, signify the _coffin_, the _grave_, the _churchyard_, the _day of death_. "The days of the week are also extremely expressive--as Friday, Saturday, Sunday, which convey the idea of the _remembrance of the death of the Saviour--the last day of work--the great day_. A strictly Christian nation has left, in these words, their stamp." This being the case, how does it agree with the extraordinarily antique origin of the Basques? However, it appears that these are exceptions; other words being sufficiently unintelligible, that is to say, difficult to explain. M. Mazure considers that the Basque language is, in some respects, the _most perfect_ that exists, from the _unity of the verb_ which it preserves: its system of conjugation alone were enough, in his opinion, to make it an object worthy of study and admiration to all grammarians. To the uninitiated, the very opposite opinions of M. Mazure and M. Pierquin are somewhat amusing: the former insists that the Basque has nothing to do with Hebrew or Phoenician, but inclines to think it a lost _African_ dialect, such as, _perhaps_, might have been spoken by the Moors of Massinissa, who peopled Spain, and probably Aquitaine, at some period unknown. One singular fact with respect to this mysterious dialect is, that it possesses no written nor printed books older than two centuries since; and no alphabet has been discovered belonging to it; consequently it has no literature; but it has preserved many songs and ballads, some of great delicacy and beauty; and its _improvvisatore_, by profession, are as fruitful as the Italians. One popular song, in the dialect of Labourd, may give an idea of the strange language which occupies so much attention. BASQUE SONG. "Tchorittoua, nourat houa Bi hegaliz, aïrian? Espagñalat jouaïteko, Elhurra duk bortian: Algarreki jouanen gutuk Elhurra hourtzen denian. "San Josefen ermitha, Desertian gorada Espagñalat jouaïteko Handa goure palissada. Guibelerat so-guin eta, Hasperenak ardura. Hasperena, babilona, Maïtiaren borthala Bihotzian sarakio Houra eni bezala; Eta guero eran izok Nik igorten haïdala. TRANSLATION. Borne on thy wings amidst the air, Sweet bird, where wilt thou go? For if thou wouldst to Spain repair, The ports are filled with snow. Wait, and we will fly together, When the Spring brings sunny weather. St. Joseph's hermitage is lone, Amidst the desert bare, And when we on our way are gone, Awhile we'll rest us there; As we pursue our mountain-track, Shall we not sigh as we look back? Go to my love, oh! gentle sigh, And near her chamber hover nigh; Glide to her heart, make that thy shrine, As she is fondly kept in mine. Then thou may'st tell her it is I Who sent thee to her, gentle sigh! It appears to me, that there is a very remarkable similarity between the habits of the people of the Basque country and those of Brittany; although they of the South are not rich in beautiful legends, such as M. de Villemarqué has preserved to the world: they have dramas and mysteries just in the same manner: some of which last for days, and are played in the open air by the people. They name their rocks and valleys as the Bretons do: as, for instance, they have the _Vallée du Sang_, the _Col des Ossemens_, the _Forêt du Réfuge_, the _Champ de la Victoire_; and traditions attach to each of these. There is, however, a gayer, livelier character amongst them than that which inspires the pathetic ballads of Brittany. The Basques are very ready to be amused; are more hilarious and less gloomy than the Bretons: yet they have the same love of their country, and regret at leaving it. An author[37] who has written on the subject, says: "To judge properly of the Basque, he should be seen amidst his pleasures and his games; for it is then that he exhibits his brilliant imagination. Often, in the joy of a convivial meeting--when his natural gaiety, excited by wine and good cheer, is arrived at that point of vivacity when man seems united to the chain of existence only by the link of pleasure--one of the guests will feel himself inspired: he rises; the tumult ceases; profound silence is established, and his noisy companions are at once transformed to attentive listeners. He sings: stanzas succeed each other, and poetry flows naturally from his lips. The measure he adopts is grave and quiet; the air seems to come with the words, without being sought for; and rich imagery and new ideas flash forth at every moment, whether he takes for his subject the praise of one of the guests, or the chronicles of the country. He will sing thus for hours together: but some other feels inspired in his turn; a kind of pastoral combat takes place--very like those between the troubadours of old--and the interest of the scene increases. Presently they start into dances, and their steps accompany the words, still more like the custom of the jongleurs. The rivals sing and dance alternately, as the words require it; their movements increase in expression, the most difficult and the prettiest are striven for by the dancers, the time being always well preserved, and the spirit of the poem not lost sight of. When they are obliged to give up, from mere fatigue, a censor pronounces which is the victor: that is, which of the two has given the most gratification to the audience." [Footnote 37: M. Boucher. "Souvenirs du Pays Basque."] The Basque poet has no view in his compositions but the expression of his feelings: he has no idea of gain, or reputation, but sings because he requires to show the emotions which agitate him. It is not a little singular that, in this particular, he resembles the inhabitants of Otaheite; one of whom Bougainville describes as having sung in strophes all that struck him during a voyage. The Basque language seems very well adapted for light poetry; and, indeed, is peculiarly fitted for rhyme, and has a natural ease which helps the verse along, in a manner which belongs to the Italian. The ideas are always tender and delicate, to a surprising degree, as the following songs may prove: BASQUE SONG. "Su garretan," &c. I BURN in flames, because my heart Has loved thee through the dreary past; And in my eyes the tear-drops start, To think I lose thee at the last. My days are pass'd in ceaseless weeping, And all my nights in vain regret; No peace awaits me--waking--sleeping, Until I die, and all forget: And thou who seest me thus repine, Hast not a tear for grief like mine! The Basque poet can seldom read or write: he owes nothing to education: nature alone is his instructress, and she inspires him with ideas the most graceful, tender, and, at the same time, correct, for nothing exceptionable is ever heard in his songs. In many of these there is a strain which might parallel some of the sweetest odes of the Persians; from whom, it is not impossible but that they may have derived them; if, indeed, the early troubadours from the East have not left their traces in such lays as this: BASQUE SONG. "Ezdut uste baden ceruan aingeruric," &c. I CANNOT think in heaven above Immortal angels there may be, Whose hearts can show so pure a love As that which binds my soul to thee: And when, my ceaseless suff'rings past, The grave shall make me all forget, I only ask thee, at the last, One gentle sigh of fond regret. Very often these songs take the form of dialogues: the following is one very well known in the country: BASQUE SONG. "Amodíoac bainarabila choriñoa aircan bezala," &c. _The Lover_. LOVE lifts me gently in the air, As though I were a bird to fly, And nights to me, like days, are fair, Because my gentle love is nigh. _The Mistress_. Thou call'st me dear--ah! seest thou not Those words have only pow'r to grieve me? Why is my coldness all forgot? And why not, at my bidding, leave me? _The Lover_. The love I feel--and canst thou doubt-- I, who would traverse seas for thee! Who have no power to live without, And own thy charms are life to me. _The Mistress_. If I have charms, thine eye alone Behold'st the beauty none can prize; Oh! in the world exists but one Who fills my soul and dims my eyes: That one--ask not who he may be, But leave me--for thou art not he! The following may serve as a specimen of their passionate expressions: BASQUE SONG. "Ene maitcac biloa hori," &c. My fair one, with the golden tresses, With rosy cheeks and hands of snow, With hopeless care each heart oppresses, Around her step such graces glow. A cloud, upon her brow descending, Has dimm'd that eye of dazzling ray, Upon whose glance, the light attending, Has led my giddy heart astray. I see thee, like the flow'r of morning, In sweetness and in beauty shine; None like to thee the world adorning-- My life, my soul, my life is thine! The Basques have compositions in various styles--complaints and satires--like the professors of the _gaie science_. War and peace are celebrated by them: there are poems on La Tour d'Auvergne; Napoleon; Wellington, and the Revolution of July: in tragedy and melo-drama they peculiarly succeed; and there exists a modern Basque drama, of singular merit, called Marie de Navarre, the scene of which is laid in the tenth century, in which great power is exhibited, and considerable dramatic effect produced. There is a saying, well known in the country, _"Ce n'est pas un homme, c'est un Basque;"_ which is intended to express the superiority of the native of these regions over all others. It appears that the Basque is, in fact, of much finer form than the rest of the people of the Pyrenees; and the young women are proverbially handsome. I cannot speak from extensive observation; but of this often-named peculiarity of personal appearance I was by no means sensible in the few specimens I have seen--for all the people of this part of the South seemed to me extremely inferior in beauty to those of the North; and, taken in general, it strikes me that the handsomest natives of France I have seen are to be found in Normandy. I speak merely as comparing the people with the same classes in England: and to one accustomed to the sparkling clear eye, fine delicate complexion, tall stature, and finely-developed figures of both our men and women, the inhabitants of the whole of France seem very inferior: there is a monotony in their tanned faces, spare figures, and black eyes and hair, which wearies, and ceases to create interest after the first. Some individuals in the Basque country, however, struck me as handsome and very intelligent. The Basque is bold and brave, and the French armies never had finer soldiers, as far as regarded spirit, than the natives of these countries: but neither did any region produce so many deserters; for the _maladie du pays_ is strong upon them, and they take the first opportunity of returning to their home amongst the mountains. This is not confined to the Basque, but occurs to all the mountaineers of Béarn. One instance will show this feeling; the story was related by a guide to the Brèche de Roland, who knew the circumstances. A young man had been forced by the conscription to join Napoleon's army: he was very young at the time, and went through all the dangers, hardships, and privations like a mountaineer and a man of courage; but, as soon as he saw an opportunity, he deserted, and sought the land where all his wishes tended. He was pursued and traced from place to place; but, generally favoured by his friends and assisted by his own ingenuity, he always eluded search, and, with the precaution of never sleeping two nights in the same village, he managed for several years to continue free. He was in love with a young girl, and on one occasion, at a _fête_, had come far over the mountains to dance with her: he was warned by a companion that emissaries had been seen in the neighbourhood; but he determined nothing should interfere with the pleasure he anticipated in leading out the lass he loved. He had a rival, however, in the company, who gave notice to the officers of justice that the deserter would be at the dance, and, accordingly, in the midst of the revel--as they were executing one of those agile dances, called _Le Saut Basque_--the object of pursuit became aware that, amidst the throng, were several persons whom he had no difficulty in guessing were his pursuers. They kept their station close to the path he must take when he left the spot where they were dancing, and he, with great presence of mind and determined gallantry, finished the measure with his pretty partner: at the last turn, he looked briskly round, and observing that one of his companions was leaning on a thick stick, he suddenly caught it from his grasp, and with a leap and run, dashed past the party who were waiting for him, brandishing the weapon over his head and keeping all off. They were so taken by surprise, that they had no power to detain him; and the villagers closing round and impeding them as much as possible, the young hero got off to the mountains in safety. He was, however, taken some time after this scene, and carried to Bayonne to be tried, when every one expected that he would meet with capital punishment; but it was found impossible to identify him--no one could be induced to appear against him--and the magistrates, wearied out, at length gave him his discharge, and he returned to live quietly in his village, and marry his love, after having been a hunted man in the woods and mountains for nearly ten years. The Basque is said to be irritable, revengeful, and implacable; but gay and volatile, passionately addicted to dancing and the _jeu de paume_, which he never abandons till compelled by positive infirmity. He is very adventurous, and fond of excitement; it is not, therefore, singular that he should be a hardy smuggler, so cunning and adroit that he contrives to evade the officers of the excise in a surprising manner. If, however, a smuggler falls beneath the shot of one of the guardians of right, all the natives become at once his deadly enemy, and he has no safety but in leaving the country instantly. The women assist their relations in this dangerous traffic, and perform acts of daring, which are quite startling. It is told of one, a young girl of Eshiarce, that, being hard pressed by a party of excise, she ran along a steep ledge of rocks, and, at a fearful height, cast herself into the Nive: no one dared to follow down the ravine; and they saw her swimming for her life, battling with the roaring torrent; she reached the opposite shore, turned with an exulting gesture, although her basket of contraband goods was lost in the stream, and, darting off amongst the valleys, was lost to their view. The Basques have their comedy, which they call _Tobera-Munstruc_, or _Charivari represented_; and they enter into its jokes with the utmost animation and delight. They generally take for their subject some popular event of a comic nature, and all is carried on extempore. The young men of a village meet to consult respecting it; and then comes the _cérémonie du bâton_. Those who choose to be actors, or simply to subscribe towards the expenses, range themselves on one side; two amongst them hold a stick at each end, and all those chosen pass beneath it; this constitutes an engagement to assist; and it is a disgrace to fail. News is then sent to the villages round of the intention to act a comedy; and preparations are made by the select committee. The representations are positive _fêtes_, and are looked forward to with great pleasure; crowds attend them; and their supporters are usually picked men, who have a reputation for talent and wit. Crimes never come under their consideration: it is always something extremely ridiculous, or some ludicrous failing, that is turned into contempt and held up to risibility. It is quite amazing to what an extent the genius of the improvvisatores go at times; they display consummate art and knowledge of human nature, quick _répartie_, subtle arguments, absurd conjunctions, startling metaphors, and are never at a loss to meet the assertions of their adversary on the other side; for it is always in the form of law-pleadings, for and against, that the comedy is conducted. It is usually carried on in the manner following: The crowd assembled, a man on horseback opens the _cortège_: he is dressed in white trowsers, a purple sash, a white coat, and a fine cap, ornamented with tinsel and ribbons; flutes, violins, tamborines, and drums, succeed; then come about forty dancers, in two files, who advance in a cadenced step; this is the celebrated dance called the _Morisco_, which is reserved for great occasions. This troop is in the same costume as the man on horseback; each dancer holding in his right hand a wand, adorned with ribbons, and surmounted by a bouquet of artificial flowers. Then come the poet and a guard, a judge and two pleaders, in robes; and a guard on foot, bearing carbines, close the procession. The judge and advocates take their places on the stage, seating themselves before three tables, the poet being in front on the left. A carnival scene now takes place, in which are all sorts of strange costumes, harlequins, clowns, and jokers; in this a party of blacksmiths are conspicuous, whose zeal in shoeing and unshoeing a mule, on which a _huissier_ sits, with his face to the tail, creates great merriment. When all this tumult is quieted by proclamation, music sounds; the poet advances and improvises an address, in which he announces the subject of the piece; his manner is partly serious, partly jesting. He points out the advocate who is to plead the cause of morals and propriety: this one rises, and, in the course of his exordium, takes care to throw out all the sarcasm he can against his rival, who rouses himself, and the battle of tongues begins, and is carried on in a sort of rhyming prose, in which nothing is spared to give force to jest or argument against the reigning vices or follies of the day. As the orators proceed and become more and more animated on the subject, they are frequently interrupted by loud applause. Sometimes, in these intervals, the poet gives a signal, which puts an end to the discussions before the public are fatigued; and, the music sounding, the performers of the national dance appear, and take the place of the two advocates for a time. These combatants soon re-commence their struggle; and, at length, the judge is called upon to pronounce between them. A farcical kind of consultation ensues between the judge and the ministers around, who are supposed to send messengers even to the king himself by their mounted courier in attendance. The judge at last rises, and, with mock solemnity, delivers his fiat. Then follow quadrilles; and the famous _Sauts Basques_, so well-known and so remarkable, close the entertainments. These _fêtes_ last several days, as in Brittany, and are very similar in their style. I am told, however, that, though very witty, these representations are not fit for _la bonne compagnie_. "If to what we have been able to collect on what are called Basques," says Du Mège, "we add the remarks of General Serviez, _chargé d'administration_ of the department of the Basses Pyrénées, a complete picture is presented of the manners and habits of the descendants of the Escualdunacs, who may be subdivided into three tribes, or families: the _Labourdins_, the _Navarrais_, and the _Souletins_." "They have rather the appearance of a foreign colony transplanted into the midst of the French, than a people forming a portion of the country, and living under the same laws and government. They are extremely brave, and are always the terror of the Spaniards in all wars with them; but their aversion to leaving their homes is very great, and their attachment to their personal liberty is remarkable. They are much wedded to their own habits and customs, and are almost universally _unacquainted_ with the French language. They are said to be the _cleanest people in the world_; in which particular they singularly differ from the Bretons, whom, in some respects, they resemble. "Mildness and persuasion does much with them, severity nothing: they are choleric in temper, but soon appeased; nevertheless, they are implacable in their hatred, and resolute in their revenge. Ready to oblige, if flattered; restless and active, hard-working; _habitually sober and well-conducted_, and violently attached to their religion and their priests. They seem rarely to know fatigue, for, after a hard day's work, they think little of going five or six leagues to a _fête_, and to be deprived of this amusement is a great trial to them. "They are tenacious of the purity of their blood, and avoid, as much as possible, contracting alliances with neighbouring nations; they are impatient of strangers acquiring possessions in their country. They are apt to quarrel amongst each other at home; but there is a great _esprit du corps_ amongst them when they meet abroad. There are shades of difference in their characters, according to their province. In general, the _Souletins_ are more cunning and crafty than the rest, resembling their neighbours of Béarn in their moral qualities. The _Navarrais_ is said to be more fickle. The _Labourdins_ are fonder of luxuries, and less diligent than the others; and it is thought, consequently, less honest; the latter are generally sailors, and are known as good whalers." There seems a desire amongst _improvers_ in France to do away amongst the common people with the original language, or _patois_, which exists in so many of the provinces; and in many of the schools nothing is taught but French. This would seem to be a benefit, as far as regards civilization; but it shocks the feelings of the people, who are naturally fond of the language of their fathers. The Bretons, like the Welsh with us, are very tenacious of this attempt: the people of Languedoc, with Jasmin, their poet, at their head, have made a stand for their tongue; and the Basques, at the present moment, are in great distress that measures are now being taken to teach their children French, and do away altogether with the language of which they are so proud, and which is so prized by the learned. In a late _Feuilleton_ of the Mémorial des Pyrénées, I observed a very eloquent letter on the subject of instruction in French in the rural schools, from which the Basque language is banished. The children learn catechism and science in French, and can answer any question put to them in that language by the master, like parrots, being quite unable to translate it back into the tongue they talk at home, where nothing but Basque meets their ears. It is, of course, quite necessary that they should understand French for their future good; but there does not appear a sufficient reason that they should neglect their own language, or, at any rate, that they should not be instructed in it, and have the same advantage as the Welsh subjects of Great Britain, who did not, however, obtain all they claimed for their primitive language without a struggle. The writer in the Mémorial contends that the children should be taught their prayers in Basque, and should know the grammar of that dialect in order to be able to write to their friends when abroad--for many of them are soldiers and sailors,--in a familiar tongue, since those at home by their fire-sides know nothing of French, and could not understand the best French letter that was ever penned. The question is, could they read _at all_, and if the epistle were read for them by a more learned neighbour, would not French be as easy as Basque? for the friend must have been at school to be of use. Be this as it may, the "coil" made for the beloved tongue shows the feeling which still exists in Navarre for the "_beau dialecte Euskarien_." "Do you know what you would destroy?" exclaims M. de Belsunce, in somewhat wild enthusiasm; "the sacred relic of ages--the aboriginal idiom, as ancient as the mountains which shelter and serve for its asylum! "The Basque language is our glory, our pride, the theme of all our memories, the golden book of our traditions. Proud and free in its accent, noble and learned in its picturesque and sonorous expressions, its formation and grammatical form are both simple and sublime; add to which, the people preserve it with a religious devotion. "It is the language spoken by our illustrious ancestors--those who carried the terror of their arms from the heights of the Pyrenees to Bordeaux and Toulouse. It is the language of the conquerors of Theodobert, Dagobert, and Carebert; and of the fair and ill-fated wife of the latter--the unfortunate Giselle. Were not the sacred cries of liberty and independence uttered amongst our mountains in that tongue, and the songs of triumph which were sent to heaven after the victory of the Gorges of the Soule? It is the dialect named by Tacitus, as that of those who were never conquered--_Cantaber invictus_: immortalized as that of the _Lions of War_: spoken by the most _ancient people in the world_--a race of shepherds with patriarchal manners, proverbial hospitality, and right-mindedness; light-hearted, friendly and true, though implacable in vengeance and terrible in anger as undaunted in courage. "Our chronicles live in our national songs, and our language proves an ancient civilization. To the philosopher and the learned who study it, it presents, from its grandeur, its nobility, and the rich harmony of its expressions, a subject of grave meditation; it may serve as the key of the history of nations, and solve many doubts on the origin of lost or faded languages." Perhaps M. de Belsunce takes a rather pompous view of the subject; but he has, nevertheless, much reason in his appeal. As specimens of this extraordinary language, some of the names of the Basque towns may amuse and surprise the reader; perhaps, in the Marquesas islands, lately taken possession of by the French, they may find some sounds which to Basque sailors, of which a ship's crew is almost certain to have many, may be familiar. Places in the district of Forest of Saint Eugrace. Iratsodoqui. Urruxordoqui. Mentchola. Orgambidecosorhona. Furunchordoqui, near the Port d'Anie. The Pic d'Anie is properly called Ahuguamendi. In Basse Burie occur the following names;-- Iturourdineta. Iparbarracoitcha. Aspildoya. Lehintchgarratia. In the arrondissement of Bayonne may be met with:--Urkheta, Hiriburu, Itsasu, Beraskhoitce, Zubernua, and others equally singular in sound. CHAPTER XIV. CAGOTS--CACOUS OF BRITTANY. ONE of the most puzzling and, at the same time, interesting subjects, which recurs to the explorer in the Pyrenees, is the question respecting that mysterious race of people called Cagots, whose origin has never yet been satisfactorily accounted for. All travellers speak of the Cagots, and make allusion to them, but nothing very positive is told. When I arrived in the Pyrenees, my first demand was respecting them; but those of my countrymen who had ever heard of their existence assured me that their denomination was only another word for _Crétin_ or _Goîtreux_: others insisted that no trace of the ancient _parias_ of these countries remained, and some treated the legends of their strange life as mere fables. I applied to the French inhabitants; from whom I heard much the same, though all agreed that Cagots were to be found in different parts of the mountains, and that they were still shunned as a race apart, though the prejudice against them was certainly wearing away. I inquired of our Béarnaise servant whether she could tell me anything about the Cagots, upon which she burst into a fit of laughter, which lasted some time, on her recovery from which she informed me that they were accustomed to use the word as a term of derision. "Any one," said she, "_whose ears are short--cut off at the tip_, we call Cagot; but it is only _pour rire_, it is not a polite word." I hoped, from her information, and the manner in which she treated the subject, that the Cagots were indeed extinct, and known only as a by-word, which had now no meaning; but I found, by conversing with intelligent persons who had been a great deal in the mountains, and given their attention to such discoveries, that the unfortunate people, once the objects of scorn and oppression to all their fellow-men, are still to be found, and still lead an isolated life, though no longer proscribed or hunted like wild beasts as formerly. I examined, with the aid of a friend in Pau, the archives of the town, and found several times mention made of these people up to a late period, in which they were classed as persons out of the pale of the law; a price is put on their heads, as if they were wolves; they are forbidden to appear in the towns, and orders are issued to the police to _shoot them_ if found infringing the rules laid down; punishments are named as awaiting them if they ventured to ally themselves, in any way, with any out of their own caste, and they are spoken of together with brigands and malefactors, and all other persons whose crimes have placed them out of the protection of their country. In Gascony, Béarn, and the Pays Basque, it is well known that for centuries this proscribed race has existed, entirely separated from the rest of their species, marrying with each other, and thus perpetuating their misfortune, avoided, persecuted, and contemned: their origin unknown, and their existence looked upon as a blot on the face of nature. At one period the Cagots were objects of hatred, from the belief that they were afflicted with the leprosy, which notion does not appear to be founded on fact; in later times, they have been supposed to suffer more especially from _goître_; but physicians have established that they are not more subject to this hideous disease than their neighbours of the valleys and mountains. Nevertheless, a belief even now prevails that this wretched people, and the race of Crétins, are the same, and that they owe their origin to the Visigoths, who subdued a part of Gaul. Ramond, in his "Observations on the Pyrenees," has the following curious passage: "My observations on the Crétins had thrown little light on the subject; and learned persons whom I had consulted had not placed it in a clearer point of view: I found myself obliged to add another proof to the many that exist, to demonstrate that the resemblance of effects is not always a sure indication of the identity of causes; when my habitual intercourse with the people entirely changed the nature of the question, by showing that it was amongst the unfortunate race of Cagots that I should find the Crétins of the Valley of Luchon. "It was with a shyness which I found much difficulty in overcoming, that the inhabitants of this country avowed to me that their valley contained a certain number of families which, from time immemorial, were regarded as forming part of an infamous and cursed race; that those who composed them were never counted as citizens; that everywhere they were forbidden to carry arms; that they were looked upon as slaves, and obliged to perform the most degrading offices for the community at large; that misery and disease was their constant portion; that the scourge of _goître_ generally belonged to them; that they were peculiarly afflicted with the complaint in the valleys of Luchon, all those of the Pays de Comminges, of Bigorre, Béarn, and the two Navarres; that their miserable abodes are ordinarily in remote places, and that whatever amelioration of prejudice has arisen in the progress of time, and the improvement of manners, a marked aversion is always shown towards that set of people, who are forced still to keep themselves entirely distinct from the free natives of the villages in their neighbourhood." There hare, however, many parts of Béarn, Soule, and Navarre, for instance, in following the course of the Gave of Oloron, inhabited by Cagots who are by no means subject to the infirmity of _goître_, by which it appears that it is merely an accidental complaint with them as with others. The prejudice which has peculiarly attributed to them this horrible affliction is therefore erroneous: and equally so is the idea that they carry in their appearance any indication of a difference of species: for, instead of the sallow, weak, sickly hue which it was believed belonged to them, it is known that they differ in nowise from the other natives in complexion, strength, or health. Instances of great age occur amongst them; and they are subject to no more nor less infirmities than others. Beauty or ugliness, weakness or strength, deformity or straightness, are common to the Cagots as to the rest of the human race. This, however, is certain, that in some villages the richest persons are of the proscribed order; but they, nevertheless, are held in a certain degree of odium, and their alliance is avoided: the state of misery and destitution in which they were represented to M. Ramond exists but partially at present; for, being in general more active and industrious than the other inhabitants, they very frequently become rich, although they never are able to assume the position in society which wealth in any other class allows. The following is a fearful picture, which it is to be hoped is exaggerated at the present day. It exhibits the Cagots according to the opinion a few years ago prevalent, and denies to this people the health for which others who defend them contend: "Health," says the French author of "Travels in the French Pyrenees," "that treasure of the indigent, flies from the miserable huts of Agos, Bidalos, and Vieuzac: three villages, so close together, that they constitute one whole: they are situated in the valley called Extremère de Sales. The numerous sources which spring beside the torrent of Bergons, the freshness and solitude of these charming retreats, the rich shade of the thick chesnuts, which in summer form delicious groves--all is obscured by the miserable state of the inhabitants: diseases of the most loathsome kind prevail for ever in this smiling valley: Crétins abound, those unhappy beings _supposed to be the descendants of the Alains_, a part of whom established themselves in the Pyrenees and the Valais. Whether this connexion really exists or not, a stupid indifference, which prevents them from feeling their position, exists in common with the Crétins amongst those people known as Goths, or Cagots, _chiens de Gots_, and _Capots_, who are a fearful example of the duration of popular hatred. They are condemned to the sole occupation permitted to them, that of hewing of wood; are banished from society, their dwellings placed at a distance from towns and villages, and are in fact excommunicated beggars; forced, besides, in consequence of the profession of Arianism, adopted by their Gothic ancestors, to wear on their habits a mark of obloquy in the form of a goose's foot, which is sewn on their clothes; exposed to insult and every species of severity; condemned to the fear of having their feet pierced with hot irons, if they appear bare-footed in towns, and pursued with the most bitter rigour that bigotry and animosity can indulge in." The words, _Stupides, Idiots, Crétins_, and _Cagots_ have been considered synonymous; but this is an error: the last wretched class being separated in their misery, and distinct from the rest. The beautiful valleys of the Pyrenees are frightfully infested with the disease of _goitre_, and few of them are free; but the Cagots merely share the affliction, as has been said before (following the learned and benevolent Palassou) with the rest of the inhabitants. The notion which, at first sight, would seem better founded, is, that the Cagots are descendants of those numerous _lepers_ who formed a fearful community at one period, and were excluded from society to prevent infection; but the more the subject is investigated the less does this appear likely: though banished, from prudential motives, and even held in abhorrence, from the belief that their malady was a judgment of Heaven, those afflicted with leprosy, when healed, had the power of returning to the communion of their fellows: they were not excommunicated, nor placed beyond the mercy of the laws: they were avoided, but not hated; and they had some hope for the future, which was denied to the Cagots. In the Basque country they are called _Agots_, and it is ascertained that, though held in the same aversion as in Bigorre, Navarre, and Béarn, they have no physical defects, nor any difference of manners or appearance to the rest of the natives: they are there also vulgarly said to descend from the Goths. The popular notion of the shortness of the lobe of the ear, which is supposed to be a characteristic of a Cagot, seems to be only worthy of the laughter which accompanied its first announcement to me; yet it is an old tradition, and has long obtained credence. The learned Marca, who has treated this subject, remarks: "These unfortunate beings are held as infected and leprous; and by an express article in the _Coutumes de Béarn_ and the provinces adjacent, familiar conversation with the rest of the people is severely interdicted to them. So that, even in the churches, they have a door set apart by which to enter, with a _bénitier_ and seats for them solely: they are obliged to live in villages apart from other dwellings: they are usually carpenters, and are permitted to use no arms or tools but those expressly required in their trade: they are looked upon as infamous, although they have, according to the ancient _Fors de Béarn_, a right to be heard as witnesses; seven of them being required to make the testimony of _one uninfected_ man." Though previous to the time of Louis VI. called Le Gros, in 1108, the Cagots were sold as slaves _with_ estates, it does not appear that their fate, in this respect, was different from that of other serfs, who were all transferred from one master to another, without reserve. A denomination given to a Cagot, however, in the record of a deed of gift, mentioned by Marca, gives rise to other conjectures, involving still more interesting inquiries. It is there stated, that with a "_nasse_" was given a _Chrétien_, named Auriot Donat; that is to say, the _house_ of a Cagot and himself with it. In the cartulary of the _ci-devant_ Abbey of Luc, in the year 1000, and in the _Fors de Béarn_, they are designated as _Chrestiàs_, and the term _Cagot_, we are informed by Marca, was first employed in acts relative to them in the year 1551. They are called _gaffos_ in an ancient _Fors_ of Navarre, in 1074; and the term _Chrestiàas_ even now is used to denote the villages where the Cagots reside. It appears that the Cagots of the present day are ordinarily denominated _Agotacs_ and _Cascarotacs_, by the peasants of Béarn and the Basque country: that of _Chrétiens_ seemed affixed to them formerly, but was equally so to the lepers who were obliged to live isolated, and their abodes were called _chrestianeries_. As the serfs became emancipated, the Cagots, who had been slaves peculiarly appropriated by the Church, and called by them, it seems, _Chrestiàs_, were allowed similar privileges: added to which, from having belonged to the ecclesiastics, and from not enjoying the rights of citizens, they were exempt from taxes. In later times, this led to innovations by these very Cagots, who, becoming rich, endeavoured to usurp the prerogatives of nobility. The Etats of Béarn, issued a command to the "_Cagot d'Oloron_,"--who appears to have been a powerful person--to prevent him from building a _dovecote_, and to another to forbid him the use of arms and the costume of a gentleman. At the church of St. Croix at Oloron is still to be seen a _bénitier_, set apart for the use of this race; and at the old fortified church of Luz, was a little door, now closed up, by which they entered to perform their devotions. The prohibition to carry arms, which never extended to _lepers_, would seem to indicate that the Cagots, always separately mentioned in all the public acts, were persons who might be dangerous to public tranquillity. And this, together with the appellation of _Christians_, may give colour to another opinion, entertained by those who reject the idea of their being descendants of those Goths who took refuge in the mountains after the defeat of Alaric by Clovis. The opinion to which I allude, and which is adopted by Palassou, is that they come from those Saracens who fled from Charles Martel in the eighth century, after the defeat of their chief, Abderraman, near Tours: these Saracens are supposed to have sheltered themselves from pursuit in the mountains, where, being prevented by the snows from going further, they remained hemmed in, and by degrees established themselves here, and conformed to Christianity; but does this account for the contempt and hatred which they had to endure for so many centuries after? for no race of people, once converted, were any longer held accursed in the country where they lived. If, indeed, they remained pagan, this severity might naturally have visited them; but the Cagots were certainly Christians from early times, as the accommodations prepared for them in churches proves. There seems little doubt that the armies of Abderraman spread themselves over the Pyrenees, where they long kept the French and Gascons in fear: traditions of them still exist, and the name of a plain near the village of Ossun, in Bigorre, called Lane-Mourine, seems to tell its own tale, as well as the relics found in its earth of the skulls of men, pronounced by competent judges to be those of the natives of a warm climate: in other words, of Saracens, or Moors. But still there seems nothing to prove that the Cagots are the children of these identical Moors, who are said to have been infected with leprosy, and consequently shunned by the people amongst whom they had intruded themselves. Lepers, at all times, were ordered to be kept apart from the rest of the people, and were placed under the care of the Church to prevent their wandering and carrying infection with them; and the miserable condition in which the proscribed race of Cagots existed, probably made them more liable to take the hideous disease which would have separated them from their kind, even if not already in that predicament: but there must have been something more than mere disease which kept the line for ever drawn between these poor wretches and the rest of the world. It is expressly defined in the speeches of ministers from the altar to those afflicted with leprosy:--"_As long as you are ill_ you shall not enter into any house out of the prescribed bounds." This applied to _all_ afflicted with leprosy; but the embargo was never taken off the Cagot. At one period, the priests made a difficulty of confessing those who were Cagots, and Pope Leo X. was obliged to issue orders to all ecclesiastics to administer the sacraments to them as well as to others of the faithful. They were during some time called _gezitains_, or descendants of Gehazi, the servant of Elisha, leprous and accursed; but by what authority does not appear. The leprosy was called the _Arab evil_, and supposed to have been brought into Europe by the Saracens: the _suspicion_ of _infection_ which attached to this race might have caused them to be so shunned; and, whether afflicted or not, they never got the better of this suspicion. The greatest number of Cagots are to be found in those parts of the Pyrenees which lead directly to Spain, which may strengthen the supposition that the Moors are really their ancestors. A sad falling off to the glory and grandeur of this magnificent people is the notion that all that remains of them should be a race of outcasts, loathsome and abhorred! I cannot induce myself to adopt this idea till more proof is offered to support it, and better reason given to account for the contempt and hatred shown to a people, who, though once followers of Mahomed had become _Chretiàas_. Amongst other names given them are those of _gahets_ and _velus_, for which there seems no explanation; but every new fact involves the question in still deeper obscurity. It was always enacted that _catechumens_, during the two or three years of probation which they passed previous to being received as children of the Church, should live apart from professed Christians, being neither allowed to eat or frequent the baptized, or give them the kiss of peace: and the Saracens of course were subjected to the same trials, from whence might first have arisen the habit of their living apart, and being looked upon with suspicion, both on account of their former faith and their supposed leprosy. This is, however, I think, scarcely sufficient to warrant the long continuance of the enmity which has pursued them. One of the acts of the parliament of Bordeaux shows with how much harshness they were treated, and what pains were taken to keep them from mixing with the people, long after the panic of leprosy must have disappeared. In 1596 it was ordained that, "conformable to preceding decrees, the _Cagots_ AND _gahets_ residing in the parishes and places circumjacent, shall in future wear upon their vestments and on their breasts a red mark, _in the form of a goose's or duck's foot_, in order to be separated from the rest of the people; they are prohibited from touching the viands which are sold in the markets, under the pain of _being whipped_, except those which the sellers have delivered to them; otherwise, they will be banished from the parish they inhabit: also, it is forbidden to the said _cagots_ to touch the holy water in the churches, which the other inhabitants take." The same decree was issued to put in force ancient ordinances concerning them, in Soule, in the year 1604. Still further animosity was shown to these miserable people in 1606. The three states of the said country of Soule, in a general assembly, passed an order by which it was forbidden "to the Cagots, under pain of whipping, to exercise the trade of a miller, or to touch the flour of the common people; and not to mingle in the dances of the rest of the people, under pain of corporal punishment." Severe as these laws were, those against _lepers_ were still more cautious: for whereas Cagots were allowed to enter the churches by a private way, the lepers were not permitted to attend divine worship at all; and had churches appropriated to them alone, which was never the case with the Cagots, who were merely placed apart in the lowest seats. Much the same arrangements were made respecting the _Cacous_ of Brittany, who were allowed to occupy a distant part of the churches, but not to approach the altar, or touch any of the vestments or vases, under a fine of a hundred sous; but chapels, or _fréries_, were permitted them at the gates of several towns--an indulgence apparently never permitted to the _Cagots_. Lobineau derives their name from Latin and Greek words signifying "_malady_," a denomination which strengthens the opinion of those who imagine the crusaders brought the leprosy back from Palestine on their return from their pilgrimage. That the Cagots were exempt from leprosy, appears from a circumstance which took place in 1460, when "the States of Béarn demanded of Gaston de Béarn, Prince of Navarre, that he would command the rule to be enforced that the Cagots should not walk bare-footed in the streets, for fear of communicating the leprosy, and that it should be permitted, in case of their refusing to comply with the enactment, that their feet should be pierced with a hot iron, and also that they should be obliged, in order to distinguish them, to wear on their clothes the ancient mark of a goose's foot, which they had long abandoned: _which proposition was not attended to_, thereby proving that the council of the Prince did not approve of the animosity of the States, and did not consider the Cagots infected with leprosy." The law was more severe in Brittany, about the same period; for, in 1477, the Duke François II., in order to prevent the _cacous_, _caqueux_, _or caquins_, from being under the necessity of begging, and mingling with persons in health, granted them permission to use, as farmers, the produce of the land near their dwellings, under certain restrictions; and at the same time insisted on their renewing the red mark which they were condemned to wear. He also ordered that all commerce should be interdicted to them except that of _hemp_, from whence it comes that the trade of a cordwainer is considered vile in some cantons of Bretagne, as those of swineherd and boatman were in Egypt. In some places in Brittany, the trade of cooper was looked upon with contempt, and the opprobrious name of _caqueux_ was given to them because they were thought to belong to a _race of Jews_ dispersed after the ruin of Jerusalem, and who were considered _leprous from father to son_. It was _only as late as_ 1723, that the parliament of Bordeaux--which had long shown such tyranny towards this unhappy class--issued an order that opprobrious names should no longer be applied to them, and that they should be admitted into the general and private assemblies of communities, allowed to hold municipal charges, and be granted the honours of the church. They were to be permitted in future to enter the galleries of churches like any other person; their children received in schools and colleges in all towns and villages, and christian instruction withheld from them no more than from another. Yet, in spite of this ordinance, hatred and prejudice followed this people still; though, protected by the laws, they fell on them less heavily. At Auch, a quarter was set apart for the _Cagots_, or _capots_, and _another_ for _the lepers_. The _gakets_ of Guizeris, in the diocese of Auch, had a door appropriated to them in the church, which the rest of the inhabitants carefully avoided approaching. "This prejudice," says Brugèles,[38] "lasted till the visit paid to the church by M. Louis d'Aignan du Sendat, archdeacon of Magnoac, who, in order to abolish this distinction, passed out of the church by the _porte des Cagots_, followed by the _curé_, and all the ecclesiastics of the parish, and those of his own _suite_; the people, seeing this, followed also, and since that time the doors have been used indifferently by all classes." [Footnote 38: "Chroniques Eccl. du Dioc. D'Auch."] Although my idea may be laughed at by the learned, it has occurred to me, that this race might be the descendants of those Goths who were driven from Spain by the Moors, introduced by Count Julian in consequence of the conduct of Don Roderick. There seems scarcely a good reason why the Goths under Alaric should stop in the Pyrenees on their way to a safer retreat, when pursued by the troops of Clovis, the Christian; Spain was open to them, and to remain amongst the enemy's mountains seemed bad policy. Again, why should Abdelrahman, after his defeat, when his discomfited people fled before the _hammer_ of the great Charles, have paused in the Pyrenees? Spain was their's, and surely the remnant would have sought their own land, even if detained awhile by the snows, and not have remained a mark of contempt and hatred in the country of their conquerors. But when Roderick and his Goths fled from the Moors, after the fatal battle of Guadalete, and they remained monarchs of Spain, there was no safety for the ruined remnant but in close concealment; and the Pyrenees offered a safe retreat. The Christians of France, however, would not have received them as friends, and they could not return to their own country; therefore, they might have sheltered themselves in the gorges, and when they appeared have been looked upon with the same horror as the Arians of the time of Alaric, or even have been confounded by the people with those very Moors who drove them out of Spain. The difficulty, which is the greatest by far, is to account for the unceasing contempt which clung to them _after_ they became _Chrestiàas_. An ingenious person of Pau, who has considered the subject in all its bearings, has a theory that the Cagots are, after all, the _earliest Christians_, persecuted by the Romans, compelled, in the first instance, to take shelter in rocks and caves; and, even after the whole country became converted to Christianity, retaining their bad name from habit, and in consequence of their own ignorance, which had cast them back into a benighted state, and made them appear different from their better-instructed neighbours. Their name of _Christians_ appears to have given rise to this notion. I am looking forward very anxiously to a work of M. Francisque Michel, on the subject, of the Cagots, which I hear is now in the press. His unwearied enthusiasm and industry, and the enormous researches he has made both in France and Spain, will, doubtless, enable him to throw some valuable light on the curious question,[39] if not set it at rest for ever. [Footnote 39: M. Francisque Michel's announced work bears the following title: "Recherches sur les Races maudites de la France et de l'Espagne. (Cagots des Pyrénées. Capots du Languedoc. Gahets da la Guienne. Colliberts du Bas Poitou. Caqueux de la Bretagne. Cacous du Mans. Marrons de l'Auvergne. Chreetas de Mayorque. Vacqueros des Asturies.)"] CHAPTER XV. THE CAGOT--VALLÉE D'ASPE--SUPERSTITIONS--FORESTS--DESPOURRINS--THE TWO GAVES--BEDOUS--HIGH-ROAD TO SARAGOSSA--CASCADE OF LESCUN--URDOS--A PICTURE OF MURILLO--LA VACHE. THE subject of the Cagots has occupied the attention of learned and unlearned persons both formerly, and at the present time; and the interest it excites is rather on the increase than otherwise; like the mysterious question of the race and language of the Basques, it can never fail to excite speculation and conjecture. A gentleman, who is a professor at the college of Pau, has devoted much of his time to the investigation of this curious secret, and has thrown his observations together in the form of a romance, in a manner so pleasing, and so well calculated to place the persons he wishes to describe immediately before the mind's eye of his reader, that I think a few extracts from his story of THE CAGOT, yet unpublished, will give the best idea of the state of degradation and oppression in which the Cagots were forced to exist; and exhibit in lively colours the tyranny and bigoted prejudice to which they were victims. I avail myself, therefore, of the permission of M. Badé, to introduce his _Cagot_ to the English reader.[40] The story thus opens: [Footnote 40: Most of the scenes of the story in the Vallée d'Aspe have become familiar to me, and I can vouch for the truth of the descriptions.] THE CAGOT. A BÉARNAIS TALE. "ON a fine night in the month of June, 1386, a mounted party, accompanied by archers and attendants on foot, were proceeding, at a quiet pace, along the left bank of a rivulet called Lauronce, on the way between Oloron and Aubertin. A fresh breeze had succeeded the burning vapours which, in the scorching days of summer, sometimes transform the valleys of Béarn into furnaces. Myriads of stars glittered, bright and clear, like sparkles of silver, in the deep blue sky, and their glimmering light rendered the thin veil still more transparent which the twilight of the solstice had spread over the face of the country; while through this shadowy haze might be seen, from point to point, on the hills, the ruddy flame of half-extinguished fires. "From time to time, those who composed the cavalcade paused as it reached higher ground, in order to contemplate the magnificent spectacle before them and the effect produced by the doubtful and fleeting shadows which rested on the fields, on the dark woods, and on the broken and uncertain line in the southern horizon which indicated the summits of the Pyrenees. The air was full of the perfume of newly-cut hay; the leaves sent forth a trembling murmur; the cricket uttered his sharp chirrup in the meadows; the quail's short, flute-like cry was heard, and all in nature harmonized with the beauty of the summer night." The party, who are travelling at this hour in order to avoid the heats of the day, are then introduced by the narrator as the Baron de Lescun and his niece, Marie, an orphan confided to his care: they are on their way to the Court of Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix, at Orthez, who is about to give a series of _fêtes_ and tournaments: they have been joined by a lady and her son--the Dame d'Artiguelouve (a name of old standing in Béarn, and still existing,)--and the young _domenger_, (the Bérnais title of _Damoiseau_,) Odon, escorted by their pages and valets. Conversation ensues between them, in which the young lady expresses some doubts as to their prudence in choosing so witching an hour, however beautiful the time, for their journey; when it is known that evil spirits and sorcerers are abroad on their foul errands. They presently arrive on the territory of Faget, when they are startled to observe, as if flitting near them, human forms, which glide noiselessly along, like shades in the darkness. Some of these mysterious beings placed themselves in a stooping position on the margin of the streams, with their faces bent close to the water. Others, divesting themselves of their garments, entered, with hurried and noiseless stops, a neighbouring field of oats, and there concealed themselves. Some of the strangers were astonished at what they saw, and could not resolve in their own minds whether or not these were, indeed, phantoms that appeared in their path. "'Midnight must be near, and the _fête_ of St. Jean is about to begin,' said the Sire de Lescun; 'for these are the poor people who are on the watch for the unattainable moment, when, it is thought, the water changes into wine, and has the power of healing all their infirmities: the dew of this night, received on the body in the fields, is also said to be endowed with the same marvellous virtue.'" A confused noise now met their ears as they entered the forest of Lorincq, and a singular spectacle was presented to them: "The forest, all resplendent with illuminations, seemed full of bustle and animation. Numerous torches sparkled amongst the trees to which they were suspended or attached; others were borne along, whirled from place to place, their black smoke sending its long wreaths into the air, and their red flame flashing through the gloom. A thousand voices burst forth, as if simultaneously, from height and valley, above, around, and underneath; an immense crowd hurried along--some mounting, some descending--amongst the crackling branches, until the intricate alleys and close retreats of this labyrinth of verdure were filled with human beings. "The lame and wounded, the infirm and paralytic grouped themselves around the fountains, to be ready at the right moment to plunge their afflicted limbs in the cold waters, and then to cast in their offering of a piece of money: some, providing for the future, busied themselves in filling, from the beneficent source, their vases and pitchers to overflowing; for it was firmly believed, that, in memory of the holy baptism administered by the patron of the _fête_, Heaven had endowed the waters with peculiar powers during that favoured night; allowing the virtue to take effect from midnight to the rising of the sun. "In the humid fern might be seen cattle sent to graze at will, in the hope of being cured of some malady, their tinkling bells indicating where they wandered. Parties of old men, women, and children, dispersed here and there, were eating cakes prepared for the occasion; while young men and girls danced in circles beneath the ash and elm trees, to the sound of the _flute of three notes_, accompanied by the nasal cadence of the lute of six strings. "After halting for a considerable time, and taking their part in the religious advantages of the _fête_, the cavalcade resumed its route; and soon descended into the valley of the Bayse, as the sky began to be tinged with the hue of dawn. When they arrived at the hospital of Aubertin, the first rays of the sun were casting a golden light on the Roman transepts of the church." At the moment that the Dame d'Artiguelouve and her son are alighting from their horses, they are arrested, and impressed with a superstitious feeling of terror, by observing a fine white courser at the door of the church, held by a page. This was, at the period, a bad omen for the stranger who first saw it, and boded no good to any one. "'I would not', said Joan Bordenabe--a peasant standing by,--'for the castle of Artiguelouve, have met with so bad an omen, as the Ena[41] Garsende and her noble son, who have come at once, face to face, with that animal, covered, as it would seem by his colour, with the snows of the Pyrenees: by our Lady of Sarrance, their future years will be as black as he is white!' "'But,' replied his companion, 'if I were the knight to whom the charger belongs, I would part with him instantly, even if, at the same time as I drowned him, I must throw into the Gave my sword and golden spurs: don't you see that spiteful-looking magpie, which has just started up before him, after having chattered in his very face? What awful signs of evil are these! and on such a morning, at the rising of the sun! * * * May the _bon Dieu_, the Holy Virgin, and the white fairies of the subterranean caves, who are always combing their hair at the first glimpse of dawn, and looking into the clear mirror of the fountains, protect that beautiful young lady, who is at this moment entering the church. It is to be hoped she has made an ample provision of fennel to lay under her bed's head, and in her oratory, to counteract the evil influence of the _Brouches_!'"[42] [Footnote 41: En and Ena are titles of Béarnaise nobility, answering to the Spanish Don and Doña.] [Footnote 42: Witches or Sorcerers of Béarn.] While the young lady, Marie de Lignac, enters the church to perform her devotions, the rest of the party leave her, to join the chase of the wild boar, which the Lord of Artiguelouve, the father of Odon, is following, as his horns announce, in the adjacent forest. The Hospital of Aubertin, which still exists, is a building of the twelfth century, and was one of many establishments depending on the order of monks hospitalers of Sainte Christine: it served as an asylum to the pilgrims of St. James, and as a resting-place to travellers going and coming to and from Spain, Marie found the church filled with persons of different professions: merchants from Arragon and Catalonia; pilgrims adorned with palms and cockle-shells, emblems of their wandering; shepherds in their red dresses and brown berret-caps; and wayfarers of many sorts, waiting only for the morning to continue their journey in various directions, and offering up their prayers previously to setting out. Among others, she noticed particularly a young knight (un beau caver[43]) devoutly kneeling at the foot of the altar of the Virgin, while his archers and men-at-arms were engaged in prayer close behind him: she judged that to him must belong the white charger at the church-door, which had inspired the peasants with so much superstitious terror. Nothing appeared to disturb the devotion of the knight; neither the neighing of steeds without, nor the clatter of the hoofs of mules in the court, as the different groups prepared to depart; nor the coming and going of the merely curious, who were busied observing the beauty of the edifice, the materials of which, according to popular belief, were furnished by the Holy Virgin herself, who directed the elaborate and beautiful ornaments of the pillars and cornices still to be seen there. [Footnote 43: _Caver_. Chevalier, knight.] The knight's costume was half civil, half military; of one sombre colour, without blazon or distinction--a circumstance unusual at the period: the expression of his face was grave and melancholy: he was somewhat bronzed with the sun, otherwise his complexion was fair, and his blue eyes were full of character and softness. Even the appearance of the lady does not cause the knight to cease his prayers, and she remains looking upon him, half-divided between her duty and a sudden feeling of admiration and involuntary esteem for which she is unable to account, except by considering him as an apparition sent from heaven,--when a violent noise without, accompanied by the cries of hunters and their horns, effectually put a stop to the religious occupation of all within the church. All hurry out, and, amongst the rest--her orisons over--is the young lady, attended by her page. She had scarcely left the door, and was hastening to the neighbouring hostelry, when she saw before her, at a very short distance, surrounded by a furious pack of hounds, who, bleeding and wounded, were yet attacking their enemy boldly, an enormous wild boar, evidently rendered savage by his sufferings. The beast rushed along, his white tusks gleaming fearfully, and his hot breath already reaching the terrified girl and her feeble protector. Marie turned back, and darted towards the open door of the church, and in another moment might have been out of the reach of the infuriated animal; but a stone imprudently aimed at the boar by a peasant from the wood, sent him, foaming, exactly in the direction she had taken. She saw there was no escape--made a bound, and fell senseless on the threshold of the church: the boar had just reached the spot, and one stroke of his terrible tusk had sufficed to crush the fragile being, who lay extended before him, when a young peasant, with a swiftness almost supernatural, interposed between her and her fate; and, with an axe with which he was armed, discharged so well-directed a blow on the head of the brute, that he extended him dead at his feet. Certainly, never had succour arrived at a time of more need; and it was impossible to deny that the young man's intrepidity had saved the lady's life: nevertheless, when the crowd collected around them, as Marie, assisted by her terrified page, began to recover consciousness, and her deliverer stood, his axe yet reeking with the blood of the animal from whom he had saved her, and whose carcase lay recking, the skull cleft in two,--it was with anything but applause or commendation that this act of self-devotion was hailed by all present. As they cast their eyes on the coarse and ragged garb of the young man, those nearest observed on the breast a certain piece of red cloth, cut in the form of _a goose's foot_: a cry of horror and contempt, mingled with surprise, accompanied this discovery, and the words--"It is a Cagot! it is a Cagot!" rang through the assembly, and was repeated by a hundred voices in different intonations of horror. * * * The object of this popular disgust was a tall, handsome, powerfully-built youth, fair, and of fine complexion: he stood in an easy attitude, in which the majesty of recent action was conspicuous: his colour was heightened, and his bright eyes flashed with satisfaction at the deed he had performed; but when he heard the rage of the people rising, and the fatal and detested name of _Cagot_ sounded in his ears, a far different feeling--the consciousness of his utter degradation, which he had for a moment forgotten, returned to him with added force. Suddenly recalled from his illusion, his head sunk mournfully on his bosom, and he seemed at once to retire within himself, gathering all the courage and patience of which he was capable to enable him to endure the outrages and violence which he knew but too well awaited him. "'Accursed Cagot![44]--down with the accursed Cagot!' repeated a host of confused voices. [Footnote 44: At the period at which this story is laid, the Cagots were called _Chrestiaàs_, but the term _Cagot_, adopted later is more generally known in Béarn.] "'Death to the leprous wretch!--to the river with him!--drag him to the river!--he has infected our fields--the holy dew is on him yet!' "'He has laid his infected hands on our master's goods--he has dared to touch the game!' cried one of the huntsmen, coming up. "'Hound of ill omen!' thundered Odon d'Artiguelouve, dashing through all the crowd, with his lady-mother and all his mounted attendants--'has he dared to place his devilish claw on that which belongs to us?' "'He has bewitched our woods, and blighted our harvests!' exclaimed a peasant, giving him a blow, and spitting in his face. "'To the flames with the sorcerer!--to the fire with the broomstick-rider!--to the fire with the comrade of the infernal spirits!' cried others; and one threw at him a half-burnt log of the St. John's fire, which, striking him on the forehead, sent the unfortunate Cagot reeling to the foot of a tree, against which he leaned for support. This, and much more insult was lumped upon the unfortunate young man, accompanied by furious howlings and execrations, which became every moment louder: hisses, laughter, and showers of mud and stones were sent towards him as he stood, motionless and calm; his eyes half-closed; without uttering a groan or a word; but, apparently, resolved to endure without shrinking the undeserved fate which pursued him. Every moment the crowd increased, and with it the fury of popular hatred, until, at length, fatigued with the patience of their victim, the people proposed at once to drag the Cagot to the river. He was, therefore, seized, bound, and, in spite of his resistance and his strength, they prepared to carry their threats into execution; at the same time uttering those savage cries, known in the country as _les cris Basques_, and imitating, in derision of the wretched creature they were injuring, the sharp voice of the goose, and the nasal call of the duck. The young Ena Marie, for whose sake her deliverer was thus suffering, wept, entreated, and appealed to the senseless multitude in vain, and implored the mercy of Odon and Dame Garsende, who treated her prayers with indifference, and appeared to think the conduct of the mob perfectly justifiable. But, at the moment when all hope seemed lost, the interference of the young knight of the church prevented the execution of the crime about to be perpetrated. Followed by his archers and men-at-arms, he rushed forward, and commanded that the prisoner should be released, in a tone and with gestures so commanding, that the astonished crowd was, for a time, arrested in their project, and a general silence ensued, presently broken by a voice at a distance, which exclaimed--"Noble and generous child! the blessing of Heaven be on thee!" All eyes were directed towards the speaker--an old man with silver hair, clothed in a dark mantle, with the hood drawn over his head: he stood on an elevated mound above the scene of action, and on finding himself observed hurried away from the spot. Meantime, taking advantage of the awe his appearance had excited in the public mind, the knight hastened to the poor Cagot, cut with his sword the cords which bound him, and set him at liberty. Amazement was painted on the victim's countenance, as he observed the relief which approached him: to be the object of care to a noble knight--to be defended, treated like a human creature was indeed a prodigy to him! The being, but an instant before stupified and inert, from whom insult and injury had drawn no cry nor tear, this evidence of humanity touched to the quick: he cast a long look of tenderness and gratitude on his deliverer; and large tears rolled down his bleeding cheeks. But the panic of the instant soon passed away; hoarse murmurs arose, and threatening words, and the tumult recommenced, Odon d'Artiguelouve advanced to the knight, and demanded, in a haughty tone, by what right he interfered with the execution of the laws. "'I am not a stranger to this country,' replied he, calmly, 'though it is some time since I quitted it; and I know its _fors_ and _customs_ probably as well as you can do, Messire.' "'Then,' answered Odon, 'you should know that a Cagot is forbidden to appear in an assembly of citizens, and that all commerce with them is expressly denied him; that he has no right to touch any article intended for their use; and yet you defend this wretch, who has defiled, by the contact of his accursed hand, the game which belongs to a gentleman.' "'It appears, then,' answered the knight, with bitter irony, 'that a gentleman singularly loves his game, since he attaches more value to a boar's head than to the life of a noble lady, which this poor Cagot preserved at the risk of injuring one of these precious animals.' "'Was it for high deeds of this nature,' interposed the Lady of Artiguelouve, seeing that her son's countenance fell, 'that the knight took his vows, when he received the honour of the accolade?' "'I swore, madam,' answered the _caver_, 'to consecrate my arms to the service of religion, and the defence of the widow, the orphan, and the _unprotected_.' "'And by what enchantment,' rejoined Dame Garsende, 'does your knight-errantship behold in us giants or monsters?' "'A loyal and christian knight ever sees a monster in oppression, madam. No man can be punished before he is judged, and I see here neither jury, court of knights, or _cour majour_.' "'If that is all,' cried Odon, 'every formality shall be gone through. Seize this miserable wretch, my friends, and drag him to the justice-seat; we will follow.'" An immediate movement was made to obey this order; but the knight again interfered. "'It is well,' said he; 'but if you have a right to take him before a court, he has that of claiming sanctuary. From whence come you, friend?' he added, turning to the Cagot. "'From the Vallée d'Aspe, sir knight,' was the answer. "'Then, it would suffice to reach the Pène d'Escot, at the entrance of this valley, to be in an inviolable security, and we would, if it were necessary, escort you as far; but closer still a refuge attends you; you have only to reach the _circle of sanctuary_ which yon church of Aubertin offers.'"[45] [Footnote 45: By a charter of 1103, churches allowed an asylum within a space of thirty paces in circumference. _Ecclesiæ salvitatem habeant triginta passuum circumcirca.--Marca._] * * * * * A great struggle now ensues, the Béarnais resolving to oppose the Cagot's entrance to the sanctuary, and the knight and his followers maintaining his attempt. The young Marie of Lignac at length forces her way through the crowd, and laying her hand on the Cagot, demands, by virtue of the _fors et coutumes_, that he be given up to the protection of a noble lady who claims her right to shelter the guilty. This appeal was not to be treated with contempt; and the mob, perhaps tired of the conflict, gave way with a sudden feeling of respect; while Marie led the persecuted Cagot, surrounded by the knight's men-at-arms, to the door of the church, where he entered, and was in safety. * * * * * The next scene of the story introduces the reader to the old knight of Artiguelouve, and the interior of his castle,[46] where the late events are recounted to him by his wife and son, with great bitterness; and envy and offended pride excite the mother and son to resolutions of vengeance, which the father, a man apparently soured with misfortune, and saddened by some concealed sin, can only oppose by expressions of contempt, which irritate the more. [Footnote 46: The castle of Artiguelouve is still standing--a curious monument of ancient grandeur; it is situated near Sauveterre.] The demoiselle de Lignac, meantime, is arrived at the Castle of Orthez, and received, as well as her uncle, with great honour by Gaston de Foix, who proposes instituting his beautiful guest the queen of the approaching tournament. The unknown knight, having left the Cagot with the monks of Aubertin, and acted the part of the good Samaritan by his charge, is next seen pursuing his way southward; where, in the mountains, an interview takes place between him and his father, who is, it seems, a proscribed man. They meet after many years of absence, during which the young knight has won all kinds of honour, having gone to the wars under the care and adoption of a brave champion, Messire Augerot de Domezain; who, dying of his wounds, had recommended his young friend to the King of Castile, from whom he receives knighthood. He learns from his father that the holy hermit, brother of Augerot, under whoso care he was brought up, is dead; and he further learns, that the time is nearly come when the secret of his father's misfortunes will be revealed to him. All that the knight, in fact, knows about himself is, that a cloud hangs over the noble family to which he belongs, and that his father is obliged to conceal himself to escape persecution. The father and son separate: the one retiring to his retreat in the Vallée d'Aspe, the other journeying onwards to the court of Gaston Phoebus. He has arrived at Orthez, and has just reached the famous _Hôtel de la Lune_, described by Froissart, when he falls into an ambush, and is carried off by unknown enemies, and thrown into a dungeon in the ruins of an abandoned castle, situated on a hill to the south of the Valley of Geu, between Lagor and Sauvelade--a spot which may still be seen. Here the unfortunate knight is left to lament and mourn, that all his hopes of distinguishing himself in the tournament, and of again seeing the beautiful Marie, are destroyed at once. The _fêtes_ go on, and every thing at Orthez breathes of gaiety and splendour; the people have their games; the Pyrrhic dances, called _sauts Basques_, are in full force, performed by the Escualdunacs in their parti-coloured dresses, and red sashes; the Béarnais execute their spiral dances,[47] and sing their mountain-songs and ballads; some cast great stones and iron bars, in which exercises is distinguished Ernauton d'Espagne, the strong knight mentioned in Froissart as being able to bring into the hall of Gaston an ass fully laden with fuel, and to throw the whole on the hearth, to the great delight of all present. These scenes give occasion to the author to introduce many of the proverbial sayings of the people, which are curious and characteristic. Their strictures on the dress and appearance of the knights and nobles, are in keeping with the freedom of the habits of the day, when the commonalty, however oppressed in some particulars, were allowed a singular latitude of speech. [Footnote 47: _i.e._ lifting their partners into the air.] Amongst their homely sayings, occur the following:-- "Habillat ù bastou qu', aüra l'air d'ù baron." Dress up a stick, and you can give it the air of a baron. "Nout basquès mey gran hech que non pouchques lheba:" Do not make a larger fagot than you can lift. "Quabaü mey eslurras dap l'esclop que dap la lengue." It is better to slide with _sabots_ than with the tongue. "Yamey nou fondes maysou auprès d'aigue ni de seignou." Never build a house near a torrent nor a great lord. "Las sourciéros et lous loup-garous Aus curés han minya capons." Witches and loup-garoux make priests eat fat capons, _i.e. are to their advantage_--an adage which would seem to infer that the search for sorcery was known to be a _job_ in all ages. The tournament goes on: and, to the great disappointment of the lady of the lists, no stranger-knight appears; and her admirer, Odon, is the victor over all others; when, just at the last moment, the trumpet of the Unknown sounds, and he comes into the arena, and challenges the envious knight, after defeating all the others, Dame Garsende has recourse to a stratagem to overcome him, which fails in regard to him, but overwhelms her son in confusion, and causes his defeat: she cuts the cord of a canopy under which the knight has to pass, in the hope that it will fall in his way, and encumber his advance; but he adroitly catches it on the end of his spear, and Odon, in falling from his horse after the knight's attack, gets entangled in the garlands and drapery, and makes a very ridiculous figure. Of course the stranger-knight is made happy in the chaplet placed on his brow by Marie, and the kiss of custom by which the gift is accompanied. His rival retires, vowing vengeance. A grand feast then takes place; and as the guests arrive they are severally recognised by the people. The stranger-knight, whose device is _a branch of vine clinging to an aged tree_, is hailed with acclamation, and a tumult of enthusiasm, consequent on his successes and his honourable reception by Gaston Phoebus; to whom, when questioned as to his name and family, he replies that he is called Raymond, the adopted son of Messire Augerot de Domezain. Gaston instantly recognises in him a knight whose valorous deeds are on record, and who saved the life of Marie de Lignac's father, at the battle of Aljubarotta. Raymond produces a chain of gold, which the dying knight had charged him to deliver to Gaston, to be sent to his daughter; and the tears and thanks of the young lady are the reward of his accomplished mission. The stranger-knight is now at the height of favour: adopted by Ernauton d'Espagne as his brother-in-arms; welcomed by the gorgeous Gaston Phoebus; hailed by the people; and, above all, loved by Marie. He is, of course, exposed to the evil designs of Garsende and her son, from which he twice escapes; but they are obliged to conceal their enmity, and he is ignorant from whence he is attacked. During a grand banquet, a minstrel, whose verses had warned him to avoid a poisoned cup, unable to approach him near enough to deliver a billet, gives it in charge to one of his favourite men-at-arms, who places it in the sheath of his sword till he can transmit it to his master. This action is observed by Garsende; who, afterwards, taking advantage of the soldier's fondness for the fine vintage of Jurançon, contrives to get possession of the letter, and excites the jealousy of Marie, who imagines it written by a woman, deceived by the expressions, "My beloved Raymond," and the signature of "The Being dearest to your Heart," and the mysterious rendezvous appointed, all of which is, in fact, written by his exiled father. This plot, however, fails, through the candour and devotion of Marie; and the knight keeps the tryst which his father had appointed at a ruined hermitage, formerly tenanted by the preceptor of Raymond, on a lonely hill above the Vallée d'Aspe. Here they meet; and a scene of tenderness on the part of the son, and mystery on that of the father, ensues; in which the latter entreats yet a little time before he discloses certain secrets of moment, concerning the young knight, whose successes appear to produce a strange effect on his mind, almost amounting to regret, for which the other cannot account. When they part, he agrees that, when he has once seen him the husband of Marie,--who, though aware of the mystery which envelopes him, has generously granted him her hand,--and when he knows him to be _removed from all danger_, he will no longer withhold the information he has to give. They separate; but enemies have been on their track; and the father is watched to his concealed retreat, while Raymond remains sleeping at the foot of the altar, in the hermitage. The intention of Odon d'Artiguelouve, who is on the spot, had been to murder him as he slept; but the information brought him by his spies, who have watched the old man, entirely changes his intentions. A more secure revenge is in his power, and he returns to his castle with extraordinary satisfaction; leaving the happy lover of Marie, and the successful victor of the lists, to his dreams of future bliss. The great day arrives on which Gaston de Foix has announced a solemn festival, to be held in honour of the Knight of the Vine-branch, and his affianced bride, Marie de Lignac. All the nobles of the country assemble; and, amongst them, the old "grim baron," Loup Bergund d'Artiguelouve, and his family. Minstrels sing, music sounds, and honours and compliments pour upon the favoured knight; and even his rivals, to judge by their joyous countenances, have only pleasure in their hearts. The Prince of Béarn, and his brilliant court, enter their decorated pavilion amidst the shouts of the assembled guests; the people are admitted to view the jousts; and Raymond advances to the foot of the throne, and receives a paternal embrace from the courteous Gaston Phoebus. The signal is given for the amusements to begin, when a loud voice is heard above the trumpets and the clash of instruments: the herald-at-arms pauses; and Odon d'Artiguelouve, who had cried, "Hold!" stands up in his seat, and thunders forth these ominous words: "'Suspend the solemnities; for I behold here, on this spot, in presence of our august assembly, one of those impure beings on whom the sun shines with disgust,--who excite horror in heaven and on earth,--whose breath poisons the air we breathe,--whose hand pollutes all it touches. Hold! for, I tell you, there is a Cagot amongst us!'" As he spoke, he pointed with a frantic gesture of malevolence towards an aged man, wrapped in a large, dark, woollen cloak, who was vainly endeavouring to conceal himself in the crowd. A cry of horror and indignation burst from all sides: all shrunk back from the profane object indicated; leaving a space around him. A deadly paleness, the effect of amazement and consternation, passed over the face of Raymond; for, in the person of the accused, he recognised--his father! Raymond almost instantly, however, recovers from the effect of this terrific announcement; and springing forward, and placing himself before the old man, cried out, in a loud and firm voice: "'He who dares make such an assertion has lied!' "'How! exclaimed Odon d'Artignelouve; 'dost thou give me the lie? Here is my gage of battle: let him take it up who will.' And, throwing his glove into the midst of the assembly, he continued: "'I, Odon d'Artiguelouve, to all gentlemen present and to come--knights and nobles--offer to maintain my words, with sword, or battle-axe, or lance, against all who shall have the boldness to deny that yonder old man, wrapped in a dark mantle, now before us, has dared to trample under foot our laws and ordinances, and sully by his impure presence our noble assembly; for he is no other than a vile Cagot, leprous and infected, belonging to the Cagoterie of Lurbe, hid, like a nest of snakes, amongst the rocks of Mount Binet, at the entrance of the Vallée d'Aspe.'" A shudder of horror ran through the crowd as these words were uttered. "'And I,' cried the knight, in a voice of furious indignation--'I, Raymond, the adopted son of Augerot de Domezain,--whose real name will, I trust, one day appear,--in virtue of my privileges, my title, and my oath, protest, in defiance of thy rank, thy strength, and thy youth; in despite of thy sword, thy lance, and thy battle-axe,--I protest, in the face of God and the men who hear me, that, from the crown of thy head to the sole of thy foot, thou art an infamous and perjured impostor,--a traitor as black as hell can make thee,--and that thou hast lied in thy throat. My arm and my sword are ready to engrave upon thy body, in characters of blood, the truth of my words!'" The tone of energetic conviction with which Raymond spoke, his bold and martial bearing, the flash of his eye, and the indignant rage of his manner, impressed his hearers as they listened, and a murmur of applause followed his exclamation. Marie, pale as death, sat like a statue of marble; her hands clasped, her breath suspended, and her eyes fixed wildly on the trembling old man,--the object of all attention. Odon was about to reply, when Count Gaston, with a heightened colour and an excited air, rose and spoke: "We are," he said, "deeply displeased that such a discussion should have disturbed the peace of our assembly. You are not ignorant, Sir Raymond, that our laws accord to all men of Béarn the right of combat against the aggressor who has outraged him by the injurious epithets of false and traitor. And you, Sir Odon, remember that here, as in the _Cour Majour_, we owe justice to all,--to the weak as well as the strong; and that, before judgment, proof is necessary." * * * * * The old man is now required by Odon to stand forth and answer in full assembly whether he is not called Guilhem, whether he is not a Cagot, and whether he is not a member of the Cagoterie of Lurbe. A profound silence ensues in the assembly; all, in breathless anxiety, await the answer of the accused, who stands hesitating and apparently unable to utter a word; at length, with an effort, and in a hoarse and trembling voice, he falters from beneath the thick hood which he had drawn over his face, "Heaven has so decreed it--Alas! it is a fatal truth!" Now comes the triumph of the rival of the unfortunate knight; he starts up, wild and fierce, exultation trembling on his envenomed tongue: "Béarnais!" cried he; "listen to me! If this man, who has dared to call me false and traitor, were a knight, as he calls himself, or a noble, like me, he would, by our laws, be entitled to claim the right of duel, to which he had provoked me, on foot or on horseback, armed at all points; or, were he a man belonging to the people, I being a gentleman, he could oppose me with a shield and a club; or were we both equally peasants, we could fight, each armed according to our rank. But, were I ten times the aggressor, and he the offended party, all combat between him and me is impossible, for he is beneath the knight, the noble, the citizen, the serf, the labourer; beneath the lowest degree in the scale of humanity--beneath the beasts themselves; he is a vile Gesitain, a dog of a leper, an infamous and degraded Cagot, and yonder stands his father!" * * * * * Horror takes possession of all--knight, lady, prince, and people. In vain the unfortunate Guilhem, throwing back his cowl and imploring to be heard, proclaims aloud that he is not the father of the noble knight; that Raymond does not belong to their unhappy race, and calls the Redeemer to witness that he speaks the truth; he is treated with scorn and contempt, and the popular fury rises at the disavowal. Gaston Phoebus commands silence, and calls upon the knight to disprove the fact alleged, and confirm the hope he entertains; but Raymond has no words but these: "No, noble Prince; I have no power to speak other than the truth; and were the torments I endure ten times heavier, I have only to confess--this is, indeed, my father." Marie, as he spoke, uttered a wild shriek, and fell senseless to the ground; a yell burst from the crowd, joy and triumph glowed on the countenances of Odon and his mother, and Gaston Phoebus cast himself back in his seat, and covered his face with his robe. "'Go, Cagot!' roared the pitiless Odon; 'who now is a false traitor, who now has lied, and proved himself a vile impostor? Away with thy helmet, thy sword, and thy spurs; away with all the armour of the craven! Let the herald at arms degrade thee before the world! Where is now thy name, thy titles, thy prerogatives? where are thy fiefs and thy domains? Thy name is _Cagot_, thy possessions leprosy, and every foul disease--every impurity of soul and body; thy castle is a mud hut in the Cagoterie of Lurbe, and this is thy blazon!'" As he spoke he raised his arm in the air, and, with the frantic force of hate, dashed in the face of the distracted Raymond a piece of red cloth cut into the form of a _goose's foot_. At the sight of this emblem the populace rose with fury, and rushed in a body, with savage cries, on the unfortunate pair. * * * * * A scene of horror now takes place; Raymond is deserted by all his people but one, his favourite man-at-arms, and the generous Arnauton, who will not quit his adopted brother even in such degradation; together they stand against the mob, whose rage the Prince himself is unable to restrain. Odon leads them on; the poor old man is with difficulty rescued from their grasp by the determined valour of his defenders, who are, however, too few to contend against their foes, and Odon is on the point of attaining the object of his wishes, and beholding the heart's blood of his rival--when assistance comes in the shape of the young Cagot who had saved the life of Ena Marie. At the moment when the blow is falling, and Raymond has no chance of escape, he darts forward, and, seizing Odon in his powerful grasp, drags him to the bridge of the Gave, which is thrown over the torrent, where a mill-wheel is working. There a fearful struggle goes on, which is closed by both combatants being precipitated into the stream, to reappear crushed and mangled by the mighty engine under which they fell. The bravo young Cagot casts one dying look, full of tenderness and gratitude, towards those who watch his end with pity and despair, and all is over. * * * * * On the evening of that fatal day, Guilhem and Raymond, both exhausted and overcome with grief and fatigue, rest themselves in a miserable hut, far away amongst the rocks, in one of the steepest and wildest gorges of Mont Binet. It was one of the accursed and abhorred dwellings of the Cagot village of Lurbe. The night was black and fearful: a tempest raged in all its terrors without, and occasional gusts of wind and rain penetrated the wretched retreat where the unfortunate fugitives sat, their vestments torn, and their bodies as severely wounded as their minds. Several Cagots, both male and female, from other cabins near, hovered round them, tenderly administering to their wants, and preparing such balms to heal their wounds as their simple knowledge afforded. They accompanied these friendly offices with tears and passionate gesticulations, accompanied by half inarticulate exclamations, such as savages, unused to speech, might do in a strange unvisited land. "'It is, then, true, my father,' said Raymond, as he looked round on these beings, ill-clothed, poor, degraded by oppression and contempt, scarcely endowed with common intelligence, and miserable to regard--'It is, then, true, that you are a Cagot, and that these are my brothers and my equals? Ah! why did you let me wander into a world which I ought never to have known? Why did you not let me live and die a Cagot as I was born? These, then, are Cagots!' "'Yes,' cried Guilhem, weeping bitterly; 'Yes, we are Cagots, and all men are our persecutors; and yet, when one of _their_ children falls into our hands, we do not ill-use it, we do not torture it, we do not crush it beneath the wheels of a mill; we do good for evil, and they repay us by evil alone! Ah! I am as if bound on a flaming pile, my tears are like molten lead on my cheeks. I!--a wretched, vile Cagot!--I should die with pity if I saw one of my executioners in the state to which they have reduced me!' "'My father, my dear father, calm yourself,' said Raymond, with tender affection; 'your son, at least, is left you.' "'No, no,' cried the old man, passionately;'my son is not left me; my son is dead; he was torn in pieces by the mill-wheel of Orthez. I am not your father; you are not--you never were, you never can be--my son; this is the first word of the secret I have to tell you.' "'What do you tell me!' cried Raymond, in amazement! 'Your disavowal was not, then, a deception, prompted by paternal affection! What! are you not my father? and was that generous creature, sacrificed for my sake, indeed your son!' "'He was my child, my only child! the only living being attached to me by the ties of blood--the only creature who would have listened to my last agonized sigh at my hour of death. And see what was his fate, for me! I allowed him to venture for my sake amongst the ferocious people; see to what an end his devotion and gratitude to you had led him!' So saying, the unfortunate old man uncovered the mutilated remains of his unfortunate son, rescued from the stream, and transported to the spot by the compassionate care of Arnauton d'Espaigne. The body lay on a rustic couch, enveloped in a white shroud, which is always, according to the usage of the country, prepared long before death, a taper of yellow wax shed its feeble rays on the corpse'." The grief and lamentations of Guilhem are interrupted by the rites which then take place; the men wringing their hands, and gesticulating, and cursing the cruelty of the world: the women weeping and wailing; and one of those endowed with poetical powers, improvising a lament over the body, uttering her words in a melancholy cadence, deeply expressive of the grief of all. "'Alas, Gratien!' she moaned; 'thou hast then left us! thou hast deserted thy aged father--gone without a pressure of the hand! Gratien, may God receive thy soul! To live is to suffer. Life is like the wheel by which thou wert torn. Thou wert in the right to fly it. Happy child! thou art gone to a place where there are no Cagots, no men to persecute thee; thou wilt know now who were the ancestors from whom we descend. Thou hast no more use for the pruning-knife and the infamous axe. No more toil nor suffering await thee; no more contempt nor outrage! Accursed be the wheel, oh, Gratien, which crushed thee! never may the torrent wash out thy blood which stains it; let it turn for ever red and bloody! No bell tolled for thy soul; but the thunder and the wind, oh, Gratien! Toll louder still--no bell for the Cagot! But Heaven weeps with us, the trees groan with us. Old man! thou dost not weep alone. Adieu, dear Gratien, thy body is returned to thy cabin; but thy soul, escaped the demon, is fled on a beam of the moon to the great house of heaven! Yes, he cries--I am in heaven; I am telling the Cagots, our ancestors, that their children are still in suffering!'" * * * * * Guilhem, comforted by the tenderness of Raymond, recovers in some degree his self-possession, and proceeds to relate to the young knight the manner of his falling, when an infant, into his charge. The narrative is as follows:-- "'In 1360, twenty-six years ago, when I was myself thirty-nine years of age, the event happened which I have now to tell you. I was a Cagot from my birth, by my parents and my ancestors--a proscribed outcast of unkind nature, like these you see around--poor, ignorant, timid, and a mark for insult and contempt. I had already suffered much; for God, alas! had given me a heart formed to feel and to love; yet long habits of endurance had, in great measure, rendered it callous and insensible, unaided as I was by intellectual culture. "'I married a woman of my race; but, after a year, she died, leaving me in lonely widowed sorrow, with one child. Alas! he has just rejoined his mother, and rude is the journey which has conducted him to her! "'At this period, as you know, and as I afterwards learnt from the mouth of your venerable preceptor, the holy hermit, all France was overrun with bands of marauders and robbers of every nation, called the _late-comers_.[48] Béarn was no more free from them than other parts of the kingdom. One day, I was returning from Oloron, my heart more sad than usual,--cursing men and life, for I had been the object of new injuries,--when a chief of one of these predatory bands suddenly presented himself before me; and, addressing me, said: 'Good man, will you do a kind action? Take this infant, abandoned to my men-at-arms by an unfaithful servant. I have saved it from their inhumanity: it has that about it which will pay your trouble.' I saw that he held in his arms a child, who was weeping bitterly; when I looked on its lovely face--round, innocent, and rosy--my heart was touched, and I accepted the charge. [Footnote 48: Tard-venus.] "'Alas! the sweet creature knew not that it had fallen into the hands of a Cagot; for no sooner had I received it on my bosom, than it ceased crying; and, so far from showing repugnance to one about to become its father, its hands were stretched towards me, and it smiled in my face. My dear Raymond, thou wert this infant sent by Providence to my care.'" * * * * * The old man then relates his bringing home the child; employing a goat to nourish it; and at length confiding it to the charge and instruction of the hermit of Eysus, the only being whose religion or charity allowed him to listen to the confession of the Cagot. While Raymond, however, was yet an infant, and but a short time after Guilhem had received him, the latter was, one day, returning from an expedition to the town, where the wants of his family obliged him to resort, and passed by the ruins of the old tower (the very place in which Raymond afterwards became a prisoner, and was rescued, by the fortunate familiarity of Guilhem with the spot, in time to appear at the tournament). "'I had,' said he, 'taken from my dress the ignominious mark of my degradation; and, in full security, was gathering at my leisure some herbs destined for your use, when it so happened that some shepherds of the Vallée d'Aspe observed and at once recognised me; and their usual superstition acting on them at the supposed ill-omen of meeting a Cagot picking herbs, they attacked me with one accord, and commenced pelting me with stones, and using every epithet of opprobrium. I was struck to the earth; then they dragged me to the entrance of a sort of inclined cavern, called in the country 'The Den of the Witches'[49]. With coarse jests they thrust me through the opening, exclaiming that, as the evil spirits raised tempests when stones were thrown in there, perhaps they would be appeased by receiving the body of a Cagot. [Footnote 49: Tutte de las bronchos.] "'I fell to some distance, rolling along the declivity; and my body stopped at the bottom on the damp earth. When I had a little recovered, I prepared to attempt an escape, as I heard that my tormentors had departed; but, on reaching the opening, I found a barrier which I had not looked for: these wretched men had lighted a fire of weeds and brushwood at the mouth of the cave. The flames raged violently, excited by the current of air from within, and I soon felt the effect; sparks and pieces of burning timber fell in; and my wounded body was soon a prey to a scorching shower which poured down upon me. "'A greater fire rose within my soul,--my injuries had driven me to despair; my brain reeled, and the torments of hell seemed within me and around. Hatred and bitter vengeance rose boiling from my heart; and I cursed all human nature,--invoking ruin and destruction on mankind, from whom I had never known pity, I raved in my burning prison, and gave myself up to fury and despair, when Heaven took compassion on my misery. A lighted brand which fell from above disclosed, by the vivid flash it cast through the gloom, an opening at the other end; and I clearly distinguished a covered way, evidently made by human hands, which seemed to run along to some distance before me. I retreated into its shelter, and my heart revived once more. "'I advanced some little way and reposed myself, when, suddenly, I thought I could distinguish in the distance vague and interrupted sounds. A shudder came over me; and at first I dreaded to move; but, at length, I forced myself to do so; and, gathering up one of the lighted brands, I yielded to my curiosity, and proceeded forward. "'Presently the sounds became more distinct; and I could not mistake the voice of wailing and lamentation, which found an echo in my own heart and awakened its sympathies. I continued my way cautiously; and, after a few minutes, found myself at an opening, formed in a shelving position, in the manner of a loop-hole, closed with two flagstones, not so near but that a space was left wide enough for me to see into a vaulted chamber beyond, which at the moment was lighted by a torch. "'A young and beautiful woman was seated on the ground, in an attitude of profound grief, leaning against the wall opposite. A man of high stature, and who might be about my own age, stood at a little distance, and looked towards her with a ferocious and menacing air, in which there was, nevertheless, an appearance of what might be thought shame, for the glance was oblique, as if he avoided meeting her eye. The light fell full upon his face, which was so remarkable in its expression, that I could not detach my regard from him, and his features remain deeply graven on my memory. "'You are, then, obstinately resolved to drive me to extremity,' said he, 'and will not consent to my demand?' "'What?' answered the lady, in a voice of grief, but full of energy, 'shall I despoil my son of his rights and his inheritance without knowing that he is dead, and that in favour of my most cruel enemies? No! he may yet live--Providence may yet watch over him--restore him one day to the world, when he will come to claim his own and revenge his mother's wrongs!' "'You have no alternative but a fearful death, remember!' said the man, in hoarse accents. "'Rather any death than abandon my child!' was the answer. "'Then, madam,' returned her companion, 'your will shall be done--impute your fate to your own conduct.' "As he pronounced these words, he approached the door of the dungeon, where stood another female in the shade, who contemplated the scene in silence, with an unmoved and chilling aspect. They then left the place together, fastening the heavy door carefully, while the sound of their keys and chains sent a fearful echo through the vaulted apartment. Their victim fell back in a state of desolation, pitiable to behold, and burst into passionate tears, praying fervently to Heaven, and uttering exclamations which might melt the stoutest heart.' "'I was deeply moved to behold her; and, in a low voice, ventured to exclaim: 'Madam, be of good cheer! Heaven hears you; and has sent one to your aid who is ready to exert every effort, for your relief.' "'What voice is that?' cried she, starting. "'Be not terrified!' I answered; 'it is that of a mortal, guided hither by the hand of God!' "'At the same time I applied myself to loosen the stones at the loop-hole, and with much difficulty succeeded in doing so; but, in spite of all my precautions, the unfortunate lady, bewildered with fear and grief, was so astonished when I appeared through the opening, that she uttered a cry and fainted on the ground. "'Without losing a moment, I took her in my arms, and carried her through to the subterranean way. I then replaced the stones as closely as I could, and hastened to bear her to the mouth of the cave, which I now found without obstacle, the fire extinct, and nothing to impede our progress. "'Oh, Raymond! the ways of Providence are inscrutable! This dungeon, from whence I had rescued that innocent victim, is the same where, a few days since, you were thrown by the hands of enemies; and the lady who had nearly perished there was--your mother!' "'Great Heaven!' exclaimed Raymond, 'my mother! condemned to such horrors--buried in the earth alive;--oh! to find the author of her injuries!' "'I saw that person this very day,' replied Guilhem; 'I recognised him in the old man who was seated on the right of your rival.' "'That was his father, the lord of Artiguelouve,' cried Raymond. "'Then it was no other than the lord of Artiguelouve who was your mother's persecutor.'" * * * * * The Cagot now goes on to relate, that, on bringing the unfortunate lady to this village, she recognised, in the infant he had adopted, her own son. She recounted, that those persons whom he had seen in her dungeon had plotted to remove both her and the infant, as their existence interfered with certain plans of their own. One of her servants had been bribed, who, under pretence of bearing the child to a place of safety, and the better to deceive her, having taken with it jewels of value, had feigned to be set upon by robbers, and had her son forcibly torn from him. Three months afterwards, the man, overcome with remorse and wretchedness for his crime, fell sick, and, on his death-bed, desired secretly to see the mother, who wept for her infant as dead; to whom he related the truth. This information was fatal to herself; for her enemies now threw off the mask, and insisted on her renouncing for her son all claim to the estates and titles of which he was the heir; which she having refused to do, they treated her in the manner that has been related. A mystery still hung over the revelations of the lady, who named no persons in her story, and who appeared to dread to make further disclosures; and, above all, she desired that no vengeance should be taken on the authors of her grief. "'There are crimes,' she said, 'which recoil on those who perpetrate them: he who sows vengeance, reaps not peace: and I would that my son should feel that mercy is the highest attribute of humanity. Keep, therefore, the secret of his birth from him, and let him know only tranquillity and joy.'" The Cagot promised to comply with her christian desire, and, together with the pious hermit of Eysus, to bring up her son in piety, and ignorance of his station, until he should be one day safe from the danger of his enemies. The unfortunate mother left a letter, addressed to the Sire de Lescun--a friend on whom she could rely--which, on some future occasion, was to be delivered to him; but the long absence of the Knight of Lescun, in the wars, had hitherto prevented its being done. Whether the mother of Raymond would have continued in the same intentions, cannot be known; for grief and sickness soon brought her to the close of her sad career. When she was dying, the poor man who had succoured her and her child, conceiving that he was not acting according to his conscience, in withholding from her the exact situation in which he was himself placed, threw himself on his knees at her bed-side, and with tears entreated her forgiveness, for that he had the misfortune to be _a Cagot_. "'Have pity upon me,' said he, 'that I thus add to the weight of sorrow which you carry with you to the tomb.'" Instead of the start of abhorrent contempt which the persecuted man dreaded, she turned upon him a look of the most ineffable benevolence; and, placing her cold hand upon his head, uttered these words:-- "'It is well;--Cagot since thou art, I bless thee; for thy heart is more noble than the proudest blazon could make it.' "No human description can convey an idea of the impression made on the heart of the good man by these few words,--the first of pity and consolation he had ever heard addressed to one of his own fated race. A new life, a new being seemed given him as he heard them; and, from that instant, he vowed to exist only for the salvation of the being left behind by the angel who had shed her benediction upon him. She died, and he kept his word." * * * * * The supreme tribunal of Béarn, the _Cour Majour_, was assembled at Orthez, in one of the grand saloons of the castle of Moncade, to dispense to the people, by its irrevocable decrees, the national justice of its celebrated _Fors_. Great excitement prevailed; for it was known that the Knight-Cagot, or Cagot-Knight, as Raymond was called, was about to appear, to defend himself from his accusers. "The Lord and Lady of Artiguelouve were present in the great assembly, summoned to appear for their deceased son, to support the charge he had made. The fair Marie de Lignac sat pale and agitated, supported by her uncle, the Knight of Lescun. The Bishops of Lescar and Oloron, the eleven judges,[50] and all the nobles of the country attended, and were seated on elevated benches, in due order, near Prince Gaston de Foix." [Footnote 50: The number of twelve was reduced to eleven since the period that the village of Bidous was removed from the territorial jurisdiction of Béarn.] After a consultation of some length, these _equitable_ magistrates had decided that justice should be allowed to the complainant, and punishment awarded to those who had injured him, provided that he could prove that he was _a man_ and not _a Cagot_. Nothing now remains for Raymond but the presentation of his mother's letter, and all the proofs which establish his birth. On opening the paper, and on examining the embroidery on the mantles which wrapped the rescued infant; on looking at the initials of the chain of gold, the Knight of Lescun recognised the son of his cousin, Marguerite d'Amendaritz, first wife of Messire Loup Bergund, who, when he hears the truth, is seized with sudden remorse and amazement, and, being now without an heir, is not sorry to recover him whom he had before abandoned to destruction. In spite, therefore, of the indignation of his wife--and her endeavours to repress his agitation throughout the scene--he starts up, and proclaims himself the father of Raymond: who, he declares aloud, is his long-lost son,--stolen from him by _routiers_--whose loss had cost him the life of a beloved wife, whom he deplored. The result is, however, far different to his expectations, or that of all present. The young knight, on finding that he is the son of a man so laden with crime as Loup Bergund, is seized with a frenzy of contempt and disgust. "His open and expansive forehead became contracted with horror--he stood silent a few seconds, petrified and overwhelmed with his emotions--his body shrinking back in an attitude of repulsion and dislike, as if a venomous reptile were before his sight. His regard then fell full on Loup Bergund, and the terrible severity of its expression made the unworthy tyrant shrink beneath his glance of fire. "_You_ my father!"--exclaimed he, at length, in a terrible voice--"do _you_ open your arms to me as to your son? Hence!--back! there is nothing in common between us--we can be nothing to each other! I know you not. Go--say to your captive of yonder dungeon that her son is dead; that the _routiers_ have stolen him: you my father! no; you have no son--it is a falsehood--you are a great lord, and I a wretched foundling--a being without a name--one disdained by wolves and robbers. No; you are not my father. I have no other but he who stands beside me; I am the son of no other than the poor Cagot." As he spoke, Raymond dashed the chain of gold on the ground, and trampled it under his feet--he seized his mother's letter from the hands of the Knight of Lescun, and thrusting it into the flame of a torch hard by, burnt it to ashes; then, throwing himself into the arms of Guilhem, he burst into a passion of tears. Recovering himself, however, in a few moments--while all looked on silent and aghast--he cried aloud-- "'And now I am, indeed, a Cagot--irrevocably so--and it is my glory and my joy! But hear me all! while I proclaim what you are worth, and those whom you dare to despise, and for whom the Redeemer died, as well as for us all: You are decked in gold and gorgeous raiment, and they are in rags; but they have hearts which beat beneath, and you have souls of ice: you are their executioners, and they are martyrs. You cast your wives and children into the dungeons of your castles, from whence the poor Cagots save them: you are great upon the earth, but they will be great in Heaven!" These last words fell, like thunder, upon the ears of all, but most on those of Gaston Phoebus--who thought of his murdered son--and writhed with agony. Raymond continued: "'God will yet do justice, in his time, to the oppressors of the innocent. Your names, in future ages, will be execrated. Meantime, keep your pomp, your pleasures, your grandeur, and your luxury; while our possessions are opprobrium and contempt, shame, banishment, and suffering--days without sun, and nights without repose or shelter. Yes, drive us from you--you know that we are infectious, that we shall contaminate your purity--Away! Room, room for the Cagots!'" And Raymond and Guilhem retired through the crowd, which shrunk back, appalled, to let them pass. The next day Marie de Lignac received a letter, the contents of which were never seen but by her tear-dimmed eyes; nor ever re-read by her after she entered the convent of Marciniac. The Lord of Artiguelouve, on his death-bed, was a prey to the most bitter repentance: he implored that some priest of more than common sanctity should hear his last confession; and one was discovered in a holy hermit, who, when he was summoned from his retreat, was found kneeling beside a humble tomb, where he passed all his days in prayer, with rigorous fasting and unwearied penance. He obeyed the call of the expiring sinner, and received his last sigh. Thus did the repentant Lord of Artiguelouve meet the forgiveness of his son, Raymond: for it was he that closed his eyes with a blessing, and then returned to his hermitage to weep by the tomb of his father, the Cagot. * * * * * I am indebted to M. Baron du Taya's (of Rennes) learned researches and obliging kindness for a few particulars respecting the Cacous of Brittany. It is thought there that this proscribed race are the descendants of _leprous Jews_, which would at once account for the detestation in which they continued to be held, but for the term _"Chrestaàs"_ applied to them, which destroys that supposition: again, it is said that they are descended from original _lepers_, and that diseases are inherent in their blood--though not leprosy, it may be epilepsy: for this reason, the _rope-makers_ of Ploermel were held in abhorrence, and are even now shunned: they are irritated when the term _caqueux_ is applied to them, but it is common to call them _Malandrins_--a word of opprobrium, only less shocking to their ears. They had always their separate burial-ground and chapel; and, till the revolution of 1789, the prejudice existed against them: even now it is not entirely extinct. Rope-makers, coopers, and _tailors_ are still held in a certain degree of contempt in Brittany, as those of these trades were formerly all looked upon as Cacous. The Cacous of St. Malo met with some compassion from Duke Francis II., the father of Anne of Brittany; and also in the time of Francis I., King of France, ordinances were made in their favour; but they were not so fortunate as their brethren of Rome, who, in the sixteenth century, are said to have sold, in one Holy week, rope to the amount of two thousand crowns, to make _disciplines_. In 1681, a law was passed to this effect; "Seeing that there are no longer any Leprous, _Ladres_, or _Caquins_ at Kerroch, parish of St. Caradec d'Hennebon, there is in future to be no distinction made in the inhabitants of this village--who formerly had their burial-ground and chapel apart--and all shall be admitted to the benefit of parish assistance during their lives, and buried in the church after their death. For it is considered that it _was ill and abusively_ ordained by the Bishop of Vannes, in 1633, that the wives of the said inhabitants should not be purified, except in their own chapels; for it is well ascertained that no native of the said village of Kerroch has ever been afflicted with leprosy." Notwithstanding this sensible and humane act, the people of Kerroch are not free from the absurd suspicion even yet. "It would appear," observes M. Baron du Taya, "that the Cacous were first a subdivision of lepers, and afterwards, by hereditary _remembrance_ of them, the latter were always the objects of commiseration amongst the professors of religion and chivalry. Thus the first Grand Master of St. Lazare was himself a leper. Several great names occur amongst these Grand Masters: such as Jean de Paris, in 1300; a Bourbon in 1521; and, under Henri IV., a Philibert de Nerestang." In 1436 a prohibition was issued against the _Cacosi_ receiving the kiss of peace, and the kiss of the monks, _before men who were whole_; it was not denied them, but they were to be _the last_. In many places in Brittany the rope-makers work out of the towns near those places where lazar-houses were once established. They were not authorized to place their benches in the lower part of the church at Pontivy till after the revolution in 1789! The villagers still look upon certain rope-makers, tailors, and coopers, as possessing _an evil eye_, and are in the habit of concealing their _thumbs_ under the rest of their fingers,[51] and pronouncing the word _argaret_ as a counter-spell: this word is unintelligible even to the Bas-Bretons themselves. The prejudice still exists in Finisterre against the Cacous: the village of Lannistin is one of their abodes. The Cagot girls of Béarn are said never to be able to draw water from a brook or well without spilling half of it: so that their houses are always dirty, and themselves thirsty. Probably the same misfortune exists in Brittany, for there is little cleanliness to be found there. [Footnote 51: This practice is similar to that of the Neapolitans, who wear a little hand in coral (_gettatura_) as a preservative against the evil eye.] Perhaps, after all, the most probable conjecture as to the origin of these unhappy Cagots is, that they were persons _suspected of witchcraft_, and banished in the first instance from society, to which traditional prejudice prevented their return; and, though the cause of their banishment was no longer remembered, the abhorrence they had once inspired did not wear out with ages. The supposition of their having been _the first Christians_, persecuted and contemned, and never regaining the world's good opinion, seems a notion difficult to adopt, except that the first Christians were suspected of sorcery and communication with evil spirits. "He casteth out devils through Beelzebub, the chief of the devils." If such were, indeed, the case, what a lesson for prejudice and superstition, that the descendants of the earliest converts should be persecuted by their Christian brethren! The Vallée d'Aspe, where the scene of the preceding story is laid, is one of the most picturesque of Béarn, and the customs of its people remarkable. The Pic d'Anie, whose solemn height rises above the village of Lescun, is regarded by the Aspois as the sojourn of a malignant deity. From thence come the fearful storms which desolate the country, and no inhabitant of the village will dare to climb the ascent: it is looked upon as a piece of presumption to attempt it; for it is believed that the Jin of the mountain, called the Yona Gorri, or flame-coloured spirit, has there fixed his solitary abode, and has his garden on the summit, which he will not allow to be visited by strangers. Certain evil spirits have occasionally been seen in his company, each holding a lighted torch and dressed in shining scarlet habiliments: they thus surround the chief, and dance round him to the music of an unearthly instrument, like a drum. Loups-garoux, and sorcerers mounted on dragons and other animals, may be seen in the air, wending their way towards Anic, as far as from Jurançon, Gan, and St. Faust. At Escout is a fairy oak, beneath which, whoever places an empty vase, having belief, will find it, after a short period, when he returns, full of gold and silver: there are known to exist persons in the Vallée d'Aspe whose fortune had no other source. There is a famous rock at the entrance of the valley, the object of attraction to all females who desire to become mothers. Many of the superstitions are similar to those in the Landes where the belief in the power of the demon is generally received. The _Homme Noir_--a fearful spirit with large black wings--may frequently be seen perched on the summit of the highest peaks, shaking from his pinions showers of hail, which break the early flowers and crush the rising corn. There are persons, even now--though they are rarer than in the time of that acute discoverer, De Lancre--who are believed to deserve the name of _Poudoueros, Hantaumos, Brouchos, Mahoumos_, for they are votaries of the evil one, and many spells are requisite to avoid their "witch knots," and "combs of care," &c. Presages can be drawn from the croak of a magpie, from the rush of waters, and the howling of dogs. If a flower is seen to expand on a barren rock, or in a place where there is no other vegetation, it is looked upon as an augury of an abundant harvest throughout the country. But if a tree spreads its branches over the roof of a house it announces all sorts of misfortunes: the sons of that house will perish in a foreign land: the lovers of those daughters will be faithless: the parents will be abandoned by their children, and die in aged destitution. If a single rose is left "----Blooming alone, Its lovely companions all faded and gone;" and if it grows with its beautiful head inclined towards a cottage, woe to the inhabitant; he has but a brief space of existence left him! Let every one beware of insulting the fountains; for if a stone or any rubbish is thrown into their waters, the person doing so will perish by thunder! At the entrance of the Vallée d'Aspe, on the Spanish side, is St. Christine, where formerly stood one of those _hôpitaux des ports_, erected by benevolence for the safety of pilgrims and travellers. This was called, in a bull of Innocent III., _one of the three hospitals of the world_; but it has been long since destroyed. The forests of Itseaux, Gabas, Benou, and Irati, were formerly the most considerable in this part of the Pyrenees: that of St. Engrace is still very extensive. About a century ago the forest of Itseaux was so thick, and so little known in its vast extent, that more than one person was lost in its depths. A singular circumstance occurred at that period, which may give an idea of the perfection of its solitude. A young girl of about sixteen or seventeen was found there in a savage state: she had been a denizen of the shades from the age of seven or eight. All that was known of her was, that she had been left by some other little girls in the woods, having been surprised by the snow. The shepherds who found her conducted her to the hospital of Mauléon: she never spoke, nor gave any sign of recollecting the past; they gave her grass and vegetables to eat, but she continued to droop, and in a very short time died of grief for the loss of her liberty. About twenty years after this a wild man was observed in the same forest: he was very tall, and strongly built, hairy like a bear, active as an izard, and perfectly harmless. His delight was in coursing the sheep and dispersing them, uttering loud peals of laughter at the confusion he created. Sometimes the shepherds sent their dogs after him, but he never suffered them to come up with him. Nothing was known or traced respecting his history, and he appears to have finished his wild career in the forest: probably he was some child left by accident or design in that savage solitude; where, like Orson, some bear nursed him, but who never found a Valentine to restore him to humanity. Itseaux still presents an immense extent of wood: it covers one side of the mountains of Lescun, fills the valley of Barétous, and joins the great forest of St. Engrace, to the entrance of the Vallée de Soule. It is the largest of the Pyrenean forests. There is scarcely a valley in the Pyrenees to which some celebrity is not attached. Amongst others, the Vallée d'Aspe resounds with the fame of the pastoral poet, Despourrins: and Ariosto has celebrated that of Gavarnie, where, in the _Tours de Marboré_, he places the abode of some of his heroes. "Charlemagne, Agramont, tous leurs fameux héros; Les Zerbin, les Roger, les Roland, les Renaud: De ces Palais du Temps habitent les ruines. Tout parle d'Arioste en ce fameux vallon Et comme aux champs Troyens, chaque roche à son nom." Cyprien Despourrins, though he wrote as one of the people, and _for_ them, was not a man of obscure birth; his family was originally of a race of shepherds; but one of his ancestors having made his fortune in Spain, returned a great man to his native valley, the beautiful Vallée d'Aspe, and there bought the Abbey of Juzan, and became a proprietor, with many privileges. The father of the poet inherited his estates, and distinguished himself in the career of arms, being cited for his bravery, the character of which bears the impress of the times in which he lived, namely, the end of the seventeenth century. Numerous anecdotes are told of him: amongst others, that he had had a dispute with three foreign gentlemen; and in order to get the quarrel off his hands at once, he challenged them all three at the same time, and came off victorious in the combat. To perpetuate the memory of his victory, he obtained from the King permission to have engraved, over the principal entrance of his house, _three swords_, which may still be seen on the stone of the old building shown as his residence. After this notable exploit, Pierre Despourrins visited the _Eaux de Cauteretz_, where, in the neighbourhood of Argelez he formed an acquaintance with the family of Miramont, and an attachment to the fair Gabrielle, daughter of that house; through his marriage with whom, he afterwards became possessor of the château of Miramont, near St. Savin, destined to become famous by means of his son, the famous poet Cyprien. The château is still to be seen, and is a great lion in the neighbourhood. There are constant disputes between the people of Bigorre and Béarn, as to which has the greater right to claim the poet as their own, for he belonged to both; but as he chose the musical _patois_ of the latter in which to sing his pastorals, it appears but just that the Béarnese should have the preference. He was born at Accous, in 1698: his two brothers, Joseph and Pierre, became, one the vicar, the other the curate of the village, and _he_ was called, _par excellence_, the _chevalier_. There is a curious story told, illustrative of the simple manners of these mountaineer-priests. The two brothers were very musical: one played the flute, the other the violin; and every Sunday their talents were exerted for the benefit of their parishioners. All the young people of the place were accustomed to meet in the court-yard of their house; and, seated at a casement, the reverend pair played to their dancing. As soon as the bell sounded for vespers, the ball was suspended, and all the docile flock accompanied the good pastors to church. The chevalier had inherited his father's warlike qualities, and was, it seems, always ready with his sword. He was at the _Eaux Bonnes_ when he received an affront from a stranger, which--as Sir Lucius O'Trigger has it,--"his honour could not brook." Unluckily, he had not his sword with him, and the affair must be decided at once; he therefore sent his servant to Accous to fetch it, recommending him great promptitude and address in inventing some story to prevent his father from guessing his errand. The servant used his utmost despatch, and thought he had managed very cleverly to avert suspicion: the old knight, however, was too clear-sighted in such matters; and, having divined the state of the case, mounted his mule instantly, and secretly followed the messenger. He traversed the mountains of Escot and Benou, and, braving all their difficulties, arrived at the Eaux Bonnes. On asking for his son, he was informed that he was closeted with a stranger: he repaired thither, and, pausing at the door, heard the clashing of swords. Satisfied that all was as he surmised, the imperturbable old knight remained quietly at his post, awaiting the issue of the combat. At length the noise of arms ceased; young Despourrins came out precipitately, and found his father on the watch, who, embracing him tenderly, exclaimed--"Your servant's hasty departure prevented my setting out with him; but I followed closely, guessing that you had an affair of honour on your hands; and, in case you should fall, I brought my sword with me, which has never yet failed at need." "I am your son," replied the Chevalier; "my adversary is grievously wounded; let us hasten to afford him assistance." After Despourrins, the son, was established near St. Savin, and the estates of the Vallée d'Aspe were abandoned by his father for his new domain, he seems to have given himself up to the charms of poetry and music, living the life of a shepherd, and familiarizing himself with the habits, customs, manners and pleasures of that simple race, until he spoke with their words, and thought with their thoughts. Whoever has visited the beautiful Valley of Argelez, and wandered amongst the wilds in the neighbourhood of the once famous abbey of St. Savin, can well understand the poet's delight in such a retreat, and will not wonder when he is told that Despourrins often passed whole nights in the woods, singing his verses, like one transformed to a nightingale. Even now the songs he sung are remembered and cherished; and though the _pastous_ of his native mountains probably know nothing of the poet, his lays are constantly on their tongues. One of the most famous is a romance, called "La Haüt sus las Mountagnes," which I give entire, with a translation in prose and verse, in order to show the nature of this Troubadour language, which differs from the Gascon dialect, in being softer and less guttural; in fact, resembling rather more the Italian than Spanish language:-- La haüt sus las Mountagnes, û Pastou malhurous Ségut aü pè d'û Haû, négat de plous, Sounyabe aü cambiamen de sas amous. "Cô leüyé, cô boulatye!" disé l'infourtunat, "La tendresse et l'amou qui t'ey pourtat Soun aco lous rébuts qu'ey méritat? "Despuch que tu fréquentes la yen de counditiou Qu'as près û tà haüt bôl, que ma maysou, N'ey prou haüte entà tu d'û cabirou. "Tas oüilles d'ab las mies, nous dégnen plus meacla; Touns superbes moutous, despuch ença, Nou s'approchen deüs més, qu'entaüs tuma "De richesses me passi, d'aünous, de qualitat: You nou soy qu'û Pastou; més noùn n'y a nad Que noüs surpassi touts, en amistat, "Encouère que ay praübé, dens moun pétit estat, Qu'aïmi mey moun Berret tout espélat, Qué nou pas lou plus bèt Chapeü bourdat. "Las richesses deü moundé nou bèn queda turmen; Et lou plus bèt Seignou, dab soun aryen, Nou baü pas lou Pastou qui biü counten. "Adiü, cô de tygresse, Pastoure chens amou, Cambia, bé pots carabia de serbidou: Yamey noun troubéras û tau coum you!" TRANSLATION. High up, amongst the mountains, an unfortunate shepherd was seated at the foot of a beech, drowned in tears, musing on the changes of his love. "Oh light, oh fickle heart!" said the unhappy youth; "for the tenderness and the affection which I have borne towards you, is this wretchedness a fitting reward? "Since you have frequented the society of persons of condition, your flight has been so high that my humble cottage is too low for you by at least a stage. "Your flocks no longer deign to mix with mine; your haughty rams, since that period, never approach mine but a battle ensues. "I am without wealth or dignity; I am but a simple shepherd but there is none that can surpass me in affection. "And methinks, according to my simple ideas, that I prefer my _berret_, old and worn as it is, to the finest ornamented hat that could be given me. "The riches of the world only bring uneasiness with them, and the finest lord with all his possessions cannot compare to the shepherd who lives content. "Adieu, tigress-heart! Shepherdess without affection; change, change, if you will, your adorers, never will you find any so true as I have been." I here give a metrical version of the same song: DESPOURRINS. "La Haut sas las Mountagnes." ABOVE, upon the mountains, A shepherd, full of thought, Beneath a beech sat musing On changes time had wrought: He told to ev'ry echo The story of his care, And made the rocks acquainted With love and its despair. "Oh! light of heart," he murmur'd, "Oh! fickle and unkind! Is this the cold return My tenderness should find? Is this a fit reward For tenderness like mine?-- Since thou hast sought a sphere Where rank and riches shine, "Thou canst not cast a thought Upon my lowly cot; And all our former vows Are in thy pride forgot. For thee to enter in, My roof is far too low, Thy very flocks disdain With mine to wander now. "Alas! I have no wealth, No birth, no noble name, A simple shepherd youth Without a hope or claim; But none of all the train That now thy favours share Can bear, as I have borne, Or with my love compare. "I'd rather keep my habits, Tho' humble and untaught, Than learn the ways of courts, With dang'rous falsehood fraught; I'd rather wear my bonnet, Tho' rustic, wild, and worn, Than flaunt in stately plumes Of courtiers highly born. "The riches of the world Bring only care and pain, And nobles great and grand With many a rich domain, Can scarcely half the pleasures, With all their art, secure, That wait upon the shepherd Who lives content and poor. "Adieu, thou savage heart! Thou fair one without love: I break the chain that bound us, And thou art free to rove. But know, when in thy vanity, Thou wanderest alone, No heart like mine will ever Adore as I have done." The royal circle of Neuilly has been enlivened sometimes by the sound of the Béarnese minstrelsy; and, on one occasion, listened to a band of mountaineers from Luchon, who undertook, a few years since, a journey through Europe, singing their choruses in all the principal cities. On hearing the above song of Despourrins, the King exclaimed, with his usual ready kindness,--"Your songs alone would be sufficient to make one love your country." Several celebrated singers, favourites in the Italian world, were natives of Béarn: one of these, Garat, surnamed "the musical Proteus," was born at Ustaritz. Nothing appeared impossible to this prodigious singer: his voice was splendid and his taste exquisite: his only defect was an inordinate vanity--by no means an uncommon fault in artists of this description. A person on one occasion, thinking to embarrass him, inquired how high in the scale he could go; "I can mount as high as it pleases me to go," was his reply. He used frequently to surprise the Parisians by the introduction of Basque and Béarnese airs, whose peculiarity and originality never failed to cause the most lively admiration and enthusiasm; but he did not announce them as mountain songs till he had secured the praise he sought for them, having passed them for Italian productions. A similar _ruse_ was practised by Mehul, when he brought out his "Irato," which the public was given to imagine was composed by an Italian _maestro_. Its success was very great, and Geoffrey, the editor of a popular paper, in noticing the opera, exclaimed,--"O, if Mehul could compose as well as this, we might be satisfied with him." When the triumphant composer threw off his incognito, the unlucky critic was not a little mortified. The celebrated singer Jelyotte was from Béarn, and Louis the Fifteenth used to delight in hearing him sing his native melodies: in particular one beginning, "De cap à tu soy Marion," one of Despourrins' most spirited pastorals:-- "I am your own, my Marion, You charm me with each gentle art; Even from the first my love was won, Your pretty ways so pleased my heart; If you will not, or if you will, I am compell'd to love you still. "No joy was ever like my joy, When I behold those smiling eyes, Those graceful airs so soft and coy, For which my heart with fondness dies: And when I seek the charm in vain, I dream the pleasure o'er again. "Alas! I have no palace gay, My cottage is but small and plain; No gold, nor marble, nor display, No courtly friends nor glitt'ring train; But honest hearts and words of cheer Are there, and store of love sincere. "Why should we not be quite as blest, Without the wealth the great may own? A shepherd life, methinks, is best, Whose care is for his flock alone; And when he folds them safe and warm, He knows no grief, he dreams no harm. "If you, dear Marion, would be mine, No king could be so blest as I; My thoughts, hopes, wishes, should combine, To make your life pass happily; Caresses, fondness, love, and glee, Should teach you soon to love like me." Another very favourite song is the "Aü mounde nou y a nat Pastou,"[52] in which mention is made of the national dances for which Béarn is celebrated, as well as the _Pays Basque_ which produces _baladins_, famous throughout France for their feats of agility and grace. There is a great variety of these dances, and those executed by the young men of St. Savin are remarkable in their kind: bands of the dancers go from village to village in the times of _fêtes_, and are much sought after: they appear very like our May-day mummers, or morrice-dancers, and have probably the same, namely, an eastern, origin: instead of Robin Hood, the Chevalier Bayard is the personage represented in their disguise, and a female always appears amongst them, who answers to our Maid Marian: they are covered with flaunting ribbons, and hold little flags in their hands. [Footnote 52: There are two songs beginning with the same words: both favourites.] SONG. "There's not a shepherd can compare With him who loves me well and true; French he can speak, with such an air, As if the ways of courts he knew: And if he wore a sword, you'd say, It was the King who pass'd this way. "If you beheld, beneath our tree, How he can dance the Mouchicou,-- Good Heaven! it is a sight to see His Manuguet and Passe-pié too! His match for grace no swain can show In all the Valley of Ossau. "Lest Catti, in the summer day, The noon-day sun too hot should find, A bow'r with flow'rs and garlands gay, By love's own tender hand entwined, Close to our fold, amidst the shade, For me that charming shepherd made." There is considerable variety of style and expression in the poetry of Despourrins, although his subject does not change--being "love, still love." The following might pass for a song by a poet of the school of Suckling:-- SONG. "Malaye quoan te by!" "OH! when I saw thee first, Too beautiful, and gay, and bland, Gathering with thy little hand The flow'r of May, Oh! from that day My passion I have nurst-- 'Twas when I saw thee first! "And ever since that time, Thy image will not be forgot, And care and suff'ring are my lot; I know not why So sad am I, As though to love were crime-- Oh! ever since that time! "Those eyes so sweet and bright, Illume within my trembling breast, A flame that will not let me rest; Oh! turn away The dazzling ray-- They give a dang'rous light, Those eyes so sweet and bright! "Thou hast not learnt to love, But, cruel and perverse of will, Thou seek'st but to torment me still. Faithful in vain I bear my chain, Only, alas! to prove Thou hast not learnt to love!" But, perhaps, one of the most striking of all Despourrins' poems, from the beauty of the _patois_ and the pretty conceits, is the "Deus attraits d'ûc youenne pastoure," which reminds one of Ronsard's "Une beauté de quinze ans, enfantine." POEM. "Tis to a maiden young and fair, That my poor heart has fall'n a prey, And now in tears and sighs of care Pass all my moments, night and day. "The sun is pale beside her face, The stars are far less bright than she, They shine not with so pure a grace, Nor glow with half her charms to me. "Her eyes are like two souls, all fire; They dazzle with a living ray; But ah! their light which I desire Is turn'd from me by Love, away. "Her nose, so delicate and fine, Is like a dial in the sun, That throws beneath a shadowy line To mark the hours that love has run. "The fairies form'd her rosy mouth, And fill'd it with soft words at will, And from her bosom breathes the South-- Sweet breath! that steals my reason still. "Her waist is measured by the zone The Graces long were wont to wear; And none but Love the comb can own, That smooths the ringlets of her hair. "And when she glides along like air, Her feet so small, so slight are seen, A little pair of wings, you'd swear, Were flutt'ring where her step has been. "Dear object of my tender care, My life, my sun, my soul thou art, Oh! listen to the trembling pray'r, That woos thee from this breaking heart." A QUARREL. "Adechat! las mies amous." _He_.--MY pretty Margaret, good day! The mountain air is chill; And if you guide your lambs this way, The cold will do you ill. _She_.--No, gentle friend, tho' cold I seem, The air I need not fear; It is the chillness of your stream That runs so fresh and clear. _He_.--The cock had not begun his song; When with my flocks I came; To meet you here I waited long-- Your haste was not the same. _She_.--My lambs and I were in the mead Before the break of day; And you, methinks, have little need To blame _me_ for delay. _He_.--My sheep, with many a ruddy streak, And bells of jocund sound, Heav'n knows, a lively music make, Which can be heard far round. Come, let our flocks be hither led, Beneath this shade repair; For you have butter, I have bread, And we our meal will share. Feed, pretty lambs, and feed, my sheep, Awhile her flock beside, And, as on flow'rs ye browse and sleep, We'll leave you for a tide. Thou, God of Love, who in the air, Art hov'ring in our view, Guard well our flocks, and to thy care Oh! take two lovers too! _She_.--No,--farewell till to-morrow, dear, I may not now abide; For if I longer tarry here, My friends will surely chide. * * * * * DESPOURRINS. * * * * * "Y Ataü quoan la rose ey naberè." * * * * * "When first the rose her perfume threw, And spread her blossoms to the day, I saw thee, Phillis, blooming too, With all the charms that round her play. "Pure as the sun, thy glace of power, Thy voice has music's softest swell,-- I saw thee in an evil hour, Or never should have loved so well! "Though from thy presence I remove, While I lament I still adore,-- Oh! what can absence do to love, But to increase the feeling more! "Ye simple swains, who know not yet What pleasure and what pain may be, Guard well your hearts from Love's regret, If you would live from danger free." * * * * * DESPOURRINS. * * * * * "Aü mounde nou-y-a nad Pastou, T'à malhurous coum you!" * * * * * "No shepherd in this world can be The child of wretchedness like me: One would not think it, but I know No feeling but continued woe; For Sorrow came into my fold, And there her dwelling loves to hold. "It seem'd the joy of Fate, New pleasures to provide, And, 'midst my happy state, A lamb was all my pride. The sun conceal'd his light, Whene'er she came in sight. "I never dreamt of gold, I lived content and free; The treasure of my fold, Seem'd but to live for me. Alas! those hours that bless, Not long would time allow, My joys, my happiness, Are changed to sorrow now! "She loved my pipe to hear, And midst the flock would pause, And with a smile, so dear, Would give me soft applause: And with her music sweet My notes she would repeat. "How many jealous swains Would look, and sigh, and long: Not one a word could gain, She only heard my song; But now that lamb has stray'd I see her form no more; My ev'ry hope betray'd, My fate let all deplore! My sleep, my rest, is gone, And I am all undone!" * * * * * DESPOURRINS. * * * * * "Moun Diü! quine souffrance-- M'as tu causat!" * * * * * "Of what contentment Those eyes bereft me-- And ah! how coldly Thou since hast left me: Yet didst thou whisper Thy heart was mine,-- Oh! they were traitors Those eyes of thine! For 'tis thy pleasure That I repine. "Alas! how often I sigh'd in vain, And loved so dearly To purchase pain: And all my guerdon To be betray'd, And only absence My safety made, To muse on fondness So ill repaid. "But let me warn thee While time is yet, Thy heart may soften And learn regret: Should others teach thee New thoughts to prove, And all thy coldness Be quell'd by love, Thou mayst glean sorrow For future years,-- Beware--false maiden! Beware of tears!" DESPOURRINS. "Per acère castagnere." BENEATH a chesnut shade A shepherd, drown'd in tears, By her he loved betray'd, Thus sung his grief and fears: "Why dost thou smile," he said, "As all my woes increase? When will my truth be paid, And all thy coldness cease?" The fair one listen'd not,-- And feign'd she had not seen; But sought a distant spot, The furze and heath between, But, as she proudly went, Thorns, in her path that lay, Her little feet have rent, And stopp'd her on her way. She paused, in sudden pain, Her pride aside she laid, And, in soft tone, was fain To ask her lover's aid; She bade, in piteous mood, He would the thorns remove, And take from gratitude The kiss denied to love. That grateful kiss she must Bestow--tho' she deplore it; And he had been unjust Not--doubly--to restore it. DESPOURRINS. "Roussignoulet qui cantes."[53] [Footnote 53: This song singularly resembles Burns' charming "Banks and braes" in its opening, though it is greatly inferior as a whole.] OH! nightingale that sing'st so sweet, Perch'd on the boughs elate, How softly does thy music greet Thy tender list'ning mate. While I, alas! from joy removed, With heart oppress'd, must go, And, leaving her so fondly loved, Depart in hopeless woe. Ah me! I see before me yet Our parting and her pain, My bosom throbb'd with vain regret To hear her still complain. My trembling hand she fondly press'd, Her voice in murmurs died: "Oh! is not our's a fate emblest, Since we must part," she cried. I promised her, whate'er betide, To love her to the last, And Fate, my truth has sadly tried, In all our sorrows past; But she may trust me, tho' we part, And both our lot deplore: Where'er I go, this bleeding heart Will suffer ever more. The clearest streams that gently flow, The river murm'ring by, Not purer than my heart can show, Nor have more tears than I. No book nor scroll can tell a fate Where sorrows so combine; No pen can write, nor song relate, Such misery as mine! Thus, like the turtle, sad and lone, Who leaves his mate in pain, I go, with many a tender moan, And dream of love in vain: By all the ties that bound us long, By all the hopes we knew, Oh I hear thy shepherd's latest song, Receive his last adieu! Anxious to visit a country whose history and traditions had so much excited my interest and curiosity, I accompanied a friend, early in the year 1843, on an expedition to the Vallée d'Aspe, and through part of the Pays Basque. I would willingly have waited for spring, particularly as I heard from everybody in Pau, that to reach the valleys leading to Spain in the month of February was impossible--was worse than folly: in fact, was what none but the English, who are supposed to have taken leave of their senses, would attempt. One French gentleman, who was well acquainted with every part of the Pyrenees, and had twice made the ascent of the Pic du Midi, was indignant at our perseverance, insisting that we should be stopped by the snows--although very little had fallen in the last winter--and that the Basque country was totally uninteresting except in summer. Others told us that it was never worth seeing at any season; but, as I had become aware that persons settled in Pau were bound in a spell, and scarcely ever ventured more than a league from their retreat until, being once in motion, they set forth towards the mountains in the opposite direction, I did not allow myself to be persuaded to remain in the "Little Paris of the South" for carnival balls, and, followed by the pity and surprise of most of our friends, we took our dangerous way, on a sunny morning, as hot as July, towards Oloron. Oloron, finely situated on a height, is a wide, open, clean, and well-built town, with so much open, fresh air, that, after the enervating and confined atmosphere of Pau, one seemed to breathe new life. The walks are good and extensive, and the magnificent range of the snowy mountains very close. Two rushing torrents divide the town between them--the Gaves of Ossau and Aspe--and from the two bridges which span them the view of their impetuous course is extremely imposing. These magnificent torrents are the charm of the Pyrenees; making the country, through which they hurry, one scene of beauty and animation: they do also terrible mischief by their violence when swelled by rains, as we had afterwards occasion to observe; but, at all times, give a character of singular grandeur to the places where they sweep along in uncontrolled majesty. The village, or faubourg, of Ste. Marie d'Oloron joins the main town; and here is situated the cathedral, once of great importance, but now, like all the religious establishments in this part of France, preserving little of its ancient glory. The pillars, however, of its aisles are very grand and massive, and are part of the early structure: the form and height are imposing, and the chapels of the choir graceful; but the chief curiosity is the portal, which bears marks of a Saracenic origin. The arch is a wide circle, finely ornamented, and, in the centre, an Indian-shaped pillar divides it into two smaller circular arches: the base of this pillar is formed of two figures standing back to back, stooping beneath the load they bear on their hands and depressed heads: they are covered with fetters, both on their legs and arms: their striped dresses are quite Indian, and they wear a curious, melon-shaped cap: the faces are hideous and exaggerated, the limbs strong and well made, and they are in perfect preservation. I have not seen any satisfactory account of the cathedral, which might explain these curious supporters: on each side of the portal projects a carved figure--one much defaced, the other representing a leopard or panther. A series of beautiful pillars, forming pedestals to absent saints, fill up the space of the porch, and that beyond is closed by high, open arches--rebuilt, but, doubtless, originally of the same construction as those of the beautiful side-entrance to the cathedral of Bourges, where Moorish carvings also occur. There are no other antiquities in Oloron; but it is an agreeable, healthy town, and looks flourishing and lively; and, I should imagine, must be a cheap place to live in, and has several advantages over its rival, Pau; this, however, is not acknowledged by the partisans of that exclusive town, which is supposed, by those who patronise it, to bear away the bell from every other in Béarn. The Vallée d'Aspe begins its winding way soon after Oloron is past; and the magnificent, broad river dashes along its rocky bed, as green and bright and foaming as its rival of Ossau, which it exceeds in volume. Our destination was to Bedous, where we were to rest for the night; and, as the shades of evening were already coming on, we could not long enjoy the beauty of this lovely valley, which we anticipated seeing on our return, after having visited all the wonders of the pass into Spain, as far as Urdos, where the high road, which is remarkably good, ends. Bedous is a shabby, insignificant, and, at this time of year, desolate-looking town, in the bosom of the mountains, where we were fain to lodge for the night as we best could, having good reason to congratulate ourselves on our precaution in taking provisions, particularly bread, wine, and coffee, as all we found there was bad. There was, however, no want of civility and desire to please; and the attendance, if not good, was, at all events, ample: two of the waiting-maids were extremely handsome--- with dark eyes and fine features, and their handkerchiefs put on very gracefully; but the voices of all the inhabitants of Bedous were cracked and hoarse, and so unmusical, that it was difficult to imagine oneself in the country of Despourrins. As early as possible the next morning we set forth on our journey further up the valley; and, the weather being fine and the sky clear, we were delighted with the aspect of the snowy mountains above and around us. The plain of Bedous is of some extent, and, in the fine season, must be extremely beautiful, being highly cultivated and very picturesque: seven villages are scattered at distances along its expanse--the most conspicuous of which is Accous, where the poet was born; and on a mound without the town stands a pyramid, lately erected to his memory. Nothing can be more beautiful than this position; and, in summer, it must be a little Paradise. The village of Osse, opposite, is a small Protestant retreat in an equally charming spot: hills, called in the country _Turons_, surround this happy valley--_avant-couriers_ of the higher chain, which rise as the Gave is followed into deeper solitude. Marca, the historian of Béarn, cites, in his work, a curious document relative to this valley. It is dated June 1, 1348, and its title is sufficiently singular; it runs thus. "Contract of a peace made between the valleys of Aspe and Lavedan, by order of the Pope, who had absolved the earth, the inhabitants and the castle of Lavedan, from the sin committed by the abbé of St. Savin, in causing the death, _by magic art_, of a great number of the inhabitants of Aspe, in revenge for the rapines and ravages they had committed in Lavedan: _in punishment of which crime, neither the earth, the women, nor the herds of Lavedan had borne fruit for six years."_ The people of this neighbourhood have the credit of being remarkably intelligent, and, at the same time, simple in their habits and manners: there is considerable jealousy between them and those of Ossau: all we could judge of was that the civility appeared equal, and it appeared to us that the beauty of the peasantry was more striking, though in this opinion we are not borne out by that of others. The boasted costumes are rarely seen in winter; but we observed one young woman very picturesquely dressed in an old and faded black velvet boddice, peculiarly shaped, laced with red, which, if it had ever been _new_ in her time, might have been pretty. Every article of their dress, however, looks as if it had descended from generation to generation, till every bit of colour or brilliancy had departed from it, leaving only a threadbare rag, which imagination alone can invest with grace or beauty. The route we were following was the high road to Saragossa, and, occasionally, we met sombre groups of men in black _capotes_, mounted on horses or mules, and others escorting waggons laden with Spanish wool--the chief article of commerce. Flocks of beautiful goats were very frequent, and every object seemed new and singular to our eyes. We dismounted from our carriage at a little bridge over the Gave, and, under the direction of a guide who had accompanied us from Bedous, we set forth, beside its rushing current, towards the cascade of Lescun, far up in the hills. The loud roar and dash of the beautiful torrent, foaming and splashing over its bed, strewn with huge pieces of rock, was the excuse which our guide gave for declining to sing Despourrins' songs, with which he was, however, well acquainted. _"Ils sont plus forts pour ça en Ossau"_ was his remark, in a voice so harsh and coarse that I did not pursue my entreaties. We met a fine old man, whom I took for a shepherd, from his cloak and brown _berret_, and the large Pyrenean dog which followed him, but he turned out to be a rich proprietor of land, showed us part of his domains, and seemed a well-informed man, talking familiarly of England and its _comté de Chester_, asking us our motive for visiting this part of France, which he concluded to be economy, and entertaining us greatly by his remarks. Our walk, or rather scramble, to the cascade was very agreeable, but exceedingly rugged, mounting the whole way between the hills till we reached the spot where the Gave comes foaming over a broad ledge of rock, and falls into the valley below with a thundering sound. It is much interrupted in its descent, and forms new cataracts as it goes: so that the whole side of the mountain is in commotion with its leaps and gambols; clouds of spray, like smoke, curling up from the foamy abyss, and every echo sounding with its hoarse murmurs. It reminded me of some of the falls in the Mont Dore; but without the pines. Meantime, the snowy peaks of the giants of the valley were seen peering over the lower hills, and shining in light; but scarcely had we reached the highest point of the cascade, and were standing on the bridge which spans it, when clouds came over the scene, heavy drops began to fall, and we found it necessary to hasten our return to the high road, where we had left our carriage. To descend the stony and slippery ways was infinitely more difficult than to mount; and I soon found that clinging to the tough branches of box, which here grows luxuriantly, and sheds a fine fresh odour round, was not sufficient assistance. The guide now proved, by the strength of his arm in assisting us, and his agility, that he possessed qualities more useful than the Arcadian accomplishment, the want of which had annoyed me as we came, and I forgave him for being unable to sing the praises of _La Plus Charmante Anesquette_, the words of which ditty he nevertheless repeated, with surprise and pleasure at finding they were old acquaintances of ours. Our way was now towards Urdos, by Cette Eygun, and through Etscau, where the Gave forces its way along the street, and where, on the opposite bank, on a high terrace, stands the antique village of Borce--once of importance and now only picturesque. We did not see the town of Lescun, but the path to it appears most precipitous: the inhabitants are said to be the most daring smugglers in the valley, and the town stands perched like a vulture's nest, closed in by savage hills, and concealed from sight, as if it had much to hide. The Spirit of the Pic d'Anie was evidently offended at our seeking his vicinity at so unaccustomed a season, and sent down one of his storms of rain which are so frequent in the valley. As the weather, however, continued warm we did not heed his anger, and continued our journey through the most magnificent scenery--grander and more surprising at every step--till we reached the huge masses of rock called Le Portalet, where once stood a fort, built by Henri Quatre to arrest the approach of the Spaniards. A little further on is a wondrous path, worked in the rocks, over a tremendous precipice, for the purpose of transporting timber. A new fort is being constructed here, and the appearance of a little toy-like hut, fastened to the entrance of a cave for the convenience of the workmen who are to blast the rock, is startling and curious. Urdos is a wild-looking place, at the extremity of the valley, with no interest belonging to it except that it is the end of the road for carriages, and that at this spot the remainder of the way to Jacca must be made on mules. As the weather was unpropitious, and the snows rendered the _trajet_ uncertain, we did not allow our curiosity to carry us further, and contented ourselves with observing the remarkable groups crowding round the inn-door at which we stopped. Spaniards, in wild costumes, with white leggings buttoned behind, sandaled feet, turbaned heads, and rough cloaks thrown over their shoulders, carrying large bundles of goods, were lounging by the entrance, waiting till the rain should cease that they might pursue their way. Some women were of their party, whose appearance was very singular, and the colours of their dresses varied and brilliant in the extreme: one had thrown her green gown, lined with red, over her head, like a veil, and her face was nearly concealed by its folds; her petticoat was of two other bright hues, and she stood, in a commanding attitude, grasping a large staff, a perfect specimen of a brigand's wife. By degrees, as different guests passed in and out of the inn, and were attracted to the door by the appearance of strangers, we were able to form the most charming pictures, till all Murillo's groups seemed combined in the shifting scene within that narrow frame. At one time, the _tableau_ was complete with the following figures, all coloured in the richest manner, and harmonizing most exquisitely:--a very pretty, intelligent young woman, dressed in green, violet, red, and brown, stood leaning against the doorpost, with an infant in pink, grey, and stone-colour, in her arms: her husband--a handsome, dark Spaniard, with a many-coloured handkerchief with ends twisted round his wild, black, straggling hair--raised his face above her: in shade, behind, stood a sinister-looking smuggler with a _sombrero_, dressed in dark velvet, and a large white cloak thrown over his shoulder: occupying the front space, leant, in a graceful attitude, a female who seemed mistress of the inn. She was a very striking figure, and, both as to costume and feature, might have been the original of many a Spanish Sainte Elizabeth, but younger than she is usually represented. Every part of her dress had a tint of red so subdued into keeping, that it seemed the effect of study, although, of course, mere chance; her gown was rich dark crimson, her apron brighter geranium, her handkerchief, sleeves, and boddice, shades of reddish brown; the large hood on her head a chocolate colour: it was formed of a handkerchief tied negligently under her chin; a second, of rich tint, was bound tightly over her brows, hiding her hair, and her beautiful features came out in fine relief; a delicate blush was on her somewhat tanned cheek, and her eyes were full of calm expression: she had very prettily-shaped hands and feet, and was altogether a model for a painter; struggling through this group, almost at their feet, came, from beneath their drapery, a lovely little brown child, all reds and purples, with glossy black hair, ruddy cheeks, and large black eyes fixed upon us with a sly, smiling gaze. The stained stone, of which the house was built, was of a fine cold colour, and the deep rich shade within made a back-ground which completed the whole. In the door-way of a neighbouring stable was another party watching the rain, nearly as picturesque; and before them was dancing, in grotesque attitudes, a half-crazed old woman, at whose vagaries the lookers-on indolently smiled. Our admiration of the beautiful children quite won the hearts of the mothers, who had, apparently, at first regarded us with a somewhat haughty air, and a few little silver pieces completed our conquest; we, therefore, drove off on our return to Bedous, in high favour with our strange wild friends, and ceased to feel at all alarmed at the possibility of their overtaking us on the mountains. We were obliged to pass another night at the inodorous inn of Bedous, amidst the noise of a carnival night, and the hideous howls of a jovial party who had that day assisted at a wedding, and who seemed bent on proving that music was banished from the valley. I heard the word "_Roncevaux_" in one of their songs; but could distinguish nothing besides to atone for the discord they made, as they danced _La Vache_ under our windows, in the pouring rain, by the light of a dim lanthorn. I was told by the landlady that in the church of Bedous were formerly two _bénitiers_, one within the aisle, and one in the porch; the latter being appropriated to the use of that unfortunate race--the Cagots--about whom I had been so inquisitive ever since I arrived in Béarn. Accordingly, we lost no time in going to seek for these strange relics; after looking about in vain, and discovering only one _bénitier_, we were assisted in our search by a man belonging to the church, and our female guide; who understood only _patois_, and led to the mysterious spot where the worn stone is to be seen on which once stood the vase of holy water into which the wretched outcasts were permitted to dip their fingers. The recess is now used as a closet, which is closed with wooden doors, and the _bénitier_ is removed, "because," said the man, "there is no distinction _now_, and the Cagots use the same as other people,"[54] I inquired if it was known who were Cagot families, and was told "_certainly_;" but little account was taken of the fact. "Bedous," said my informant, "was one of the Cagot villages, but the prejudice is almost worn out now: it is true we do not care to marry into their families if we can help it; not that there is any disease amongst them; it is all mere fancy. Only when people quarrel, they call each other Cagots in contempt; however, we shall soon forget all about it." [Footnote 54: At Utraritz, near Bayonne, they show, in the porch of the church, a similar recess, where once stood the _bénitier_ of the Cagots.] On our return through the valley to Oloron, we paused at Notre Dame de Sarrance, a place of pilgrimage, entirely uninteresting as a church, but placed in a beautiful position amongst the hills. At Oloron, when we passed before, there was no room for us, in consequence of the whole inn being occupied with guests at the wedding of the landlord's fourth daughter, the three others having been lately married. As we arrived the day after the wedding, there still remained sufficient good cheer to supply our wants, and make a pleasing contrast to Bedous. CHAPTER XVI. ARAMITZ--THE PLAY--MAULÉON--THE SISTERS--WORDS--ST. JEAN. OUR intention now was to visit Mauléon, and see as much of the Pays Basque as the uncertain state of the weather would allow. The route to Aramitz is very beautiful, with the fine valley of Barétous, and the Bois d'Erreche stretching out at the foot of the bold hills. When we entered the town of Aramitz the whole population was assembled in a great square; some acting, and others gazing at a carnival play, the performers in which were dressed in flaunting robes, with crowns and turbans; while a troop, in full regimental costume, figured away as a victorious French army, headed by a young Napoleon, who ever and anon harangued his troops and led them on to battle against a determined-looking band of enemies, amongst whom were conspicuous _a bishop_ and _a curé_, in full dress. A combat ensued, when the heroes on each side showed so little nerve, being evidently afraid of their own swords--which seemed _real_ steel, that no child's-play in England could have gone off so tamely: the enemies all fell down at the first attack, and the only comic part was the rushing forward of the fool, and his agonized exclamation of "_O! mon curé!_" as he dragged that reverend gentleman from beneath a heap of slain. We asked our driver how it happened that the clergy of the parish allowed this _travestie_, and how the curé's dress had been procured: he told us that the costume belonged to some one who had _formerly_ been in the Church, and as for the representation no one could prevent it, particularly as the sons of the mayor were amongst the actors. "But," he added, "M. le Curé will _have his revenge_ next Sunday by preaching them a sermon which he intends shall make their ears tingle; though no one will care a bit about it." We observed, that it was wrong to turn the ministers of religion into ridicule, to which our lively guide agreed, concluding with the usual shrug and inevitable remark of all Frenchmen--Béarnais and other--"_Mais, que voulez vous!_" My companion's donation of a franc, was received with rapture by a general and an emperor, who came to our carriage with a plate, in the centre of which was an apple with numerous slits, in which were inserted certain borrowed napoleons, to excite to generosity. We were vehemently invited to mount to a place of honour to view the play at our ease; but we declined, as it was not the dramatic performance that delighted us, but the extraordinary effect of the costumes of the crowd below. All the young girls wore their new and most brilliant handkerchiefs tied on their heads with the utmost care, and exhibiting colours so rich and glowing, that, as they flitted about in the sun, they seemed so many _colibri_ with changeable crests of all the hues of the rainbow. The rich colours worn here give an air of gaiety and cheerfulness, agreeably contrasted with the dark and gloomy tints of the head-dresses at and near Pau; which, though gracefully tied, are usually sombre and dim. The whole town of Aramitz was gay with carnival rejoicings, and as we drove along we came upon another crowd in another square, where we saw a party of six young men in black-and-green velvet dresses, and scarlet sashes, nimbly dancing the _Rondo Basque_; while the gorgeously-adorned young girls stood by, observing, but taking no part in the exercise. They seemed very agile and nimble, and kept up an incessant movement, not without grace; but it had an odd effect to see the men dancing alone, and that circumstance impresses one with the conviction of the dance being of eastern origin. We had not an opportunity of seeing any of the other dances so celebrated in the country, which are precisely similar to our morris-dances still exhibited, occasionally, in the country on May-day. The Basque country, properly so called, begins at Montory, and a perceptible change, singular enough, is observable in the country: a range of hills, of shapes impossible to describe--so witch-like and irregular is their outline--extends for some distance along the way, ushering the traveller into the pretty plain below. At Tardets there is a bridge over the charming Gave of _Uhaitshandia_; and now begin the extraordinary names of places, which French, Béarnais, and Spanish alike find so difficult to pronounce or understand. Now the few familiar words which we comprehended in Béarnais were heard no more, and a language of the most singular yet musical sound took its place. The first objects we saw were two Andalusian women, ragged, filthy, and slovenly, to a degree quite amazing, their dingy white woollen gowns thrown over their heads; faded apple-green petticoats in thick plaits hanging from their shoulders, with no indication of waists, bare legs and feet, and bold, savage aspect. They laughed loudly at some remark _en passant_ of our driver; who seemed accomplished in languages, being able to speak to all he met. Immediately afterwards we met some Basque women, whose costume had no other distinction but that of their headkerchiefs being white; this, however is rare, except on occasions of _fête_, as we always saw the same beautiful brilliant colours as before, throughout our journey. Mauléon, one of the chief towns of the Basque country, is charmingly situated in a rich country, on the Gaison Gave, surrounded by the varied hills of the Bois de Tibarène. Of all its former grandeur and strength scarce a vestige remains: one ruined fort, of a commanding height, above the town, alone attests its ancient glory: from this spot is a charming view, taking in all the town and plain and surrounding mountains. The churches, once of great importance, are dwindled to insignificance; and we were much disappointed to discover nothing interesting either at the antique church of Berautte or Licharre. We found, however, an equivalent in the beauty of the scenery round, and the charm of hearing the sweetest of languages from the lips of two pretty little girls of ten and eleven years of age, the daughters of our hostess, who herself had a melodious voice, and peculiarly pleasing manners. These little fairies constituted themselves our attendants during our stay at Mauléon, and as they spoke, equally well, French and Basque, we enjoyed their innocent prattle and intelligent remarks extremely. They were very eloquent in praise of a certain English traveller named _François_, who had stayed some time at their inn, and wanted to take them away to England, and they tried hard to persuade us that he _must_ be a relation, because he _talked_ and _drew_ like us, and because we wanted to take them away too. I made a little vocabulary of Basque words under their tuition; and it was like listening to music to hear them utter the pretty phrases and words; _maita suthut hanich_--I love you much; _ene-madtea_--my friend; _ama_--my mother; _aita_--my father; _belhara_--grass; _nescatila_--little girl; _minyiate bat_--a fairy; _oheitza_--remembrance. I procured a Basque dictionary at Mauléon, at a somewhat primitive library, where the usual commodities sold were candles and soap. At one end of the shop was a range of books on a shelf; and while the very civil master was gone to look for those more choice volumes which we required, his housekeeper stood by, in a state bordering on distraction at the sacrilege committed by us, in daring to remove from their positions tomes which her master evidently did not permit her to lay a finger on. In Basque, and all the French she had, did she clamour to us to desist, assuring us it was a thing unheard of, and would derange the whole economy of the establishment; and, certainly, as her anger increased with our indifference, she proved to us that it was possible to make discord out of sweet notes; however, the purchase of the books her master had found silenced and confounded her; and we escaped with our prize, much to the delight and amusement of our little guides, who thought it necessary, _en chemin_, to apologize for the old woman's rudeness. The father of our favourites we found, though taciturn at first, a very well-informed man; he confirmed all that I had gathered from works I had read on the subject of the Basques--their language and manners; and regretted that the unpropitious state of the weather prevented our witnessing any of the usual out-of-door amusements, common at the season. He described the eloquence and wit of the common people as something wonderful; but their _comedies_, he said, were seldom fitted for more refined ears than their own. The character of their amusements, he added, was grave, as their improvised tragedies prove; the language lends itself to poetry with such singular facility, that poets are by no means rare; and, amongst the lower class, some are, as I had heard before, singularly gifted, but they never write down their compositions, which are, therefore, difficult to collect. The airs of their songs are almost always melancholy and solemn, and require fine voices to give them effect. I have since been told, by a Basque gentleman of taste and information, precisely the same; and, as he sings well, he kindly allowed me to hear some of their melodies, which remind me much of the saddest of the Irish native airs. His opinion was, that there is great similarity in the character of the Basque and Irish; and he tells me, that the _sound_ of many of their words is alike; but when they speak together all proves to be _mere_ sound; for they do not understand a syllable of either tongue. The greater part of the language seems to me corrupted by the introduction of French and Spanish words, probably required to express wants, which the original Basque had acquired in the course of time; "When wild in woods the noble savage ran," he did not want much that he afterwards sought for words to express his desire to obtain. But the genuine words, in which there is no mixture of another language, may well puzzle the learned; for they are most singular: as for instance, Oghia Bread Uhaitza River Hoora Water Haicha Stars Hala Ship Harhibat Stone Egura Wood Eskia Hand Mahatsac Grapes Sahmahia Horse Etchia Habitation Begitatiha Face Our next destination was to St. Jean Pied de Port; and we took our way across the mountains of Musculdy, the scenery the whole way being exquisitely beautiful, and richly cultivated in the plains. We continued mounting without cessation for nearly two hours; and as we walked the greatest part of the time, we met with a few adventures by the way. We were joined, in a very steep part, by a party who were travelling from Mauléon to St. Just. We had been struck with the brilliant colours of the young woman's dress as we passed her and her mother, and a boy accompanying them; she was leaning against a stone wall, where she had rested her large white bundle, and her attitude was free and graceful in the extreme, as she bent her head on her hand evidently fatigued. She wore a headkerchief of deep chocolate-colour, striped with blue, and bordered with bright yellow; her stuff petticoat was scarlet, edged with black velvet; she had tucked up her green-striped gown, and thus displayed its crimson lining; her shawl was of fine red merinos, embroidered in glowing colours, of Spanish manufacture, as she afterwards informed us, _and smuggled_; her legs were bare, but she wore black shoes; and her umbrella, the constant appendage, was brown; her gait, as she walked along the road, with her white package on her head, was that of a heroine of a melo-drame. I never saw a more striking figure; for she was, though not pretty, remarkably well-made and tall, and all her motions were easy and unconstrained. She did not seem so communicative as her mother,--a pretty little _old_ woman, whose pride was evidently gratified by our admiration of her daughter's finery, and our pleasure in sketching her as she stood; her gratitude was so great on our allowing her boy and her bundles to be put on the carriage, that she became quite enthusiastic in our praise; and the present of a small piece of silver enchanted her. She actually cried with pleasure; and yet we found she was not poor; but had been to see a son, who had amassed several hundred francs and set up in a _cabaret_ at Mauléon: this explained the gorgeousness of his sister's costume, which, at the risk of spoiling, she continued to wear on her journey home to their village, aware of the sensation her macaw-like appearance created wherever she passed. On a high hill, opposite that we were mounting, we observed a chapel, which we found was dedicated to the Sainte Madeleine, and held in much reverence throughout the country: pilgrims coming from great distances to visit her shrine, and sick persons thronging there in the hope of a miracle being performed in their favour. The same occurs at another chapel, on a neighbouring height, dedicated to St. Antoine; but there, it seems, the young men resort, in order, by the saint's intercession, to obtain an exemption from the chance of conscription. They entreat of Heaven that they may choose a _good number_, and be allowed to remain at home; and so firmly are they convinced of the efficacy of the saint's prayers, that hundreds had, we understood, lately taken their way to the holy mountain; for this was the season for the fatal lots to be drawn. CHAPTER XVII. ARNEGUY--THE CACOLET--ROLANDO'S TREE--SNOW-WHITE GOATS--COSTUME--SAUVETERRE--THE PASTOR--NAVARREUX--SPANISH AIR. WE arrived at St. Jean Pied de Port late in the day, and the aspect of affairs at Le Grand Soleil, where we stopped, was by no means exhilarating. Having passed through the black, dirty kitchen, and climbed the dingy staircase, we were shown several rooms, which we _could not have_, by a very sour-looking old woman, who tried to persuade us to content ourselves with apartments without fire-places. This we resisted determinedly, suggesting that ladies had a right to supersede male travellers, and, assisted by the eloquence of our invaluable _cocher_, we at length obtained possession of the disputed chambers. As it was soon discovered that we meditated remaining several days, no further opposition was made to our convenience, and the fat landlady, having reproved her thin sister into good humour, we were allowed to command, in the worst of all possible inns, where good-will held the place of performance in most instances, and where carelessness seemed carried to a perfectly Eastern excess. We began to make immediate enquiries as to the possibility of entering Spain, of visiting the convent of Roncesvalles and the neighbouring mountains; and every sort of contradictory information was given us, enough to bewilder an ignorant traveller into giving up the projected expedition altogether. However, as we resolved that we would not be altogether disappointed, and recollected all the romances invented to deter our daring, by our friends at Pau, we ordered a guide and _cacolet_ and mule to be sent on before, and on the following morning set forth in the carriage as far as Arneguy, the last French town, from whence we were to cross the Gave of Bihobi, and trust ourselves to the perils of a Spanish journey. Accordingly, we pursued the very good road to that frontier village--one of the most miserable I ever beheld, filled with soldiers and mud and ruin: here we alighted, and walked across the little bridge which divides the two kingdoms. Once _in Spain_, and having made a drawing of the spot, as a souvenir, we mounted our mule; seated comfortably in the arm chairs, slung at each side of the patient animal, and, with our muleteer and two servants on foot, began the scrambling ascent of one of the most rugged paths I ever beheld. Every step, however, exhibited new and startling beauties; and the further we advanced the more sublime the mountains became: the foaming stream rushing beneath us, the deep ravines and precipices, the wooded hills and enormous trees, all possessed a character quite unlike that of the two valleys of Béarn, which we had already seen; both of which led into Spain, as did this pass of Roncesvalles; but we now felt ourselves really in another country; and, as we passed the opposite village of Ondarol, and heard that the last houses in France were left behind, and all the mountains, on each side of the ravine, belonged to Spain, there was something singularly agreeable in the idea. Our _cocher François_ had, at the village of Valcarlos, an opportunity of exhibiting his knowledge of Spanish; for the officer there, who took cognizance of us, could not understand either _patois_ or French. We wound along the beautiful ravine of Valcarlos, by a road more stony and rugged than can be described, trusting to our mule, who kept his feet in a manner perfectly surprising; it was like mounting a ruined staircase, so steep was the path in many places; but, going slowly and carefully as we did, and seated in our comfortable panniers, we felt no inconvenience, and were scarcely conscious of the difficulties, sensibly understood by all our companions, who toiled through the mud, and over the stones and torrents with infinite cheerfulness and perseverance. The beeches and chesnuts here grow to an immense size, and look so old in their winter guise that one might almost believe they had spread the shade over the paladins of Charlemagne. We could not do otherwise than indulge in this idea, when we reached a spot where an enormous _plateau_ of rock seemed to bar our further progress; and, beside it, we rested beneath a gigantic chesnut, which threw its naked arms far across the ravine below, and, when covered with leaves, must have been a majestic tree. A huge stone lay amongst others near it, and this was pointed out by our guide as the identical stone thrown by Rolando in his anger when his horse's foot slipped over the rock at the edge of which we stood. The print made by the hoof as it slid along the surface is _clearly visible_ to poetical eyes, and this is one of the numerous _Pas de Roland_ so celebrated in the Pyrenees, where the great hero's course is marked in many directions. As we desired to avoid the possibility of a similar accident happening to us, we dismounted from our _cacolet_, and walked across the ledge to some distance: and, after a short repose beneath the shelter of the overhanging rocks, which a violent shower made most convenient at the moment, we prepared to retrace our steps; satisfied with having advanced so far on the same route taken by "Charlemagne and all his peerage." The return was infinitely less easy than the advance, for we had now to descend; and we felt the motion much more, for the mule could not so well keep its feet in spite of the guide's assistance. We had sundry adventures by the way at _Posadas_--tasted the bitter Spanish _ordinaire_ wine from a wine-skin, and the excellent maize bread and cream cheese of the country, and returned to Arneguy, much gratified with our trip. These mountains must be exquisitely beautiful in summer, when all the fine trees are in full grandeur, for I never saw any larger or more flourishing. It is the custom for the French to decry everything Spanish, even to the natural productions; and I had often been told that the moment the French side was quitted all was barren and worthless; I found, however, on the contrary, that the mountain-scenery greatly increased in sublimity the nearer we advanced towards Roncesvalles, and on our return that which had looked well on our way had dwindled into tameness in comparison with what we had left. Our driver, in the true spirit of his country, laboured to convince us that even the Basque on the Spanish side was inferior to that on the French--a fact we were not in a condition to decide on, as readily as we could with respect to the scenery. I think, as a general rule, that a foreign traveller may always be sure, if a country is abused in France, it possesses attractions for him, and _vice versâ_; for the "toute beauté" of a French amateur is invariably a piece of formality or common-place, unendurable to the lovers of the really beautiful. Flocks of snow-white goats, with long hair, were climbing up the steepest parts of the mountains; and a few stragglers, with their pretty kids, greeted us on our rugged road: a party of Zingari, with scowling brows but civil demeanor, hurried past us, with a swiftness rather unusual to their indolent race, unless indeed they were afraid of pursuit--as our muleteer seemed to hint by his exclamation of alarm as they appeared. Besides these, and a traveller mounted on a mule, who was, we understood, a rich merchant of Pampeluna, who constantly made the _trajet_ by that bad road, we were little disturbed in our solitude. The Gave sounding far below, the smaller brawling cataracts crossing our rocky path, the overhanging rocks and gigantic trees, the constantly-changing scene, and the novelty of the whole, made our wild and strange journey altogether delightful. We were congratulated on our return that the rain, which overtook us on our way, had not been snow; for in these regions the path is sometimes obstructed in the course of half-an-hour; and a sad story was related to us of a courier despatched to Roncesvalles in sunshine, having been overwhelmed by the snow on his return the same evening. Whether this was a _mountain_ fable we could not be sure; but we had heard so many terrors, and experienced none, that we found it difficult to give credit to all the histories of travellers eaten by wolves and destroyed by avalanches, such as had arrived at Pau from the heights of Gabas and Urdos throughout the winter, only to be contradicted after they had had their effect for the given time. From St. Jean Pied de Port--where the female costume is pretty, and whose arsenal, and the fine view from it, are all that claim the slightest attention in the most slovenly of ugly towns, and whose church portal tells of former magnificence long since swept away--we took our departure by St. Palais to Sauveterre, crossing the Pays Basque, which is perfectly lovely as to scenery, and, in fine weather, is worth a long journey to visit--so varied, rich, and agreeable is the country in all directions. Sauveterre is a neat, clear, respectable town, finely situated, well-enough paved, and having many attractions--particularly a magnificent ruin of a strong castle, which is called that of the Reine Jeanne, but is, evidently, originally of much more ancient construction. One high tower is very commanding, and must have been formidable in its time: that of the church, on still higher ground above, is of the same date, and is very curious: on the whole, Sauveterre is as picturesque a town as any we had seen, and we were sorry that bad weather a good deal masked its beauties. We paid a visit to the Protestant church; and the minister's wife, a very simple, kind person, who deeply regretted the absence of her husband--gone to look after his scattered flock, which is dispersed, in distant hamlets, all over that part of the country towards Navarreux. This excellent man is in the habit of walking many leagues, in the severest seasons, to visit his people, who reside by twos and threes in villages far remote; and he seems to spare no pains in his vocation. His establishment is of the simplest and most primitive kind, evidently quite unknown to luxury; and the sight of the good pastor--which we were fortunate enough to get on the morning of our departure--confirmed our preconceived opinion of his benevolence, if countenance be a faithful index of mind. Our interview happened in this sort. We had decided to leave Sauveterre early, fearing the weather, and were just starting, when, at the carriage-door, we beheld two figures, which we at once recognized as the returned pastor and his wife: a violent shower greeted them; but, mindless of it, there they stood, under their umbrellas, determined to make our acquaintance, and to thank my companion for a donation she had sent to the poor Protestants under his charge. His fine open, healthy countenance, and cheerful, good-humoured expression, gentlemanlike manners, and easy address, pleased us extremely; and the unassuming little wife, dressed in a cap like a _bourgeoise_--joining him in kind exclamations of sorrow at losing their friends of the moment--equally amused and gratified us with the _naïveté_ of the whole proceeding. I have no doubt that our apparition in that solitary town was quite an event, and one which the good minister would have been sorry to miss. He had come back late the night before, through a deluge of rain, and by the most difficult cross-roads--of course flooded--after walking twenty or thirty miles; yet he had energy to rise early, dress himself in his best, and come to meet the strangers, before their departure. I think he must really be a pattern of a minister, and is a worthy example for many richer and less zealous clergymen. The French government is not able to allow more than a thousand francs a-year to the Protestant ministers, and out of this he no doubt gives much in charity, for almost all his flock is poor, and I believe he has a family to support besides: yet he seemed cheerful and contented, and probably thinks himself well off, happy in the exercise of his duty, and in relieving the sufferings of his fellows. Navarreux is a strongly-fortified little town, looking extremely warlike, filled with troops: it would be difficult to say why, as it is so far from the frontier; but, probably, they are ready, as at Pau, in case of an outbreak on the part of the Spaniards, which seems improbable, but is talked of.[55] From hence to Pau the country is pretty; but the nearer approach to the wide, marshy lands round, renders the prospect infinitely less interesting, and the air less refreshing. [Footnote 55: This has since occurred, and Espartero is in England and Queen Christine in Spain.] I had now accomplished, however imperfectly, a long-entertained intention of _visiting Spain_; and, although I had merely breathed Spanish air _for a few hours_, yet it has given me a sort of assurance that I shall, one day, be able to put my favourite project in execution--of travelling over that most poetical and interesting of all countries--at a time, I trust, when its government shall be well established, and peace and order so prevail, that the fear of brigands may not deter strangers from seeking its romantic cities, and crossing its wild and wondrous mountains. For the present, I take leave of my readers; hoping that, in my next tour, they will indulgently accompany me to Madrid and the Alhambra. London: Printed by R. Clay, Bread Street Hill. 
33249	----	ROMANESQUE ART IN SOUTHERN MANCHE: ALBUM MARIE LEBERT WITH PHOTOS BY ALAIN DERMIGNY AND CLAUDE RAYON [Author's note: Please forgive my mistakes in English, if any. My mother tongue is French. This album is also available in French, with the title "Art roman dans le Sud-Manche: Album (2)". Each paragraph ends with its associated image filename.] [Illustration] 001. In this album, there are no monuments described in all touristic guides. On the contrary, these twelve Romanesque churches are little known. They are located in Southern Manche, that is to say in the southern part of the department of Manche, in Normandy, along the coast or in the countryside. These churches were built in the 10th, 11th and 12th century by villagers and parishioners, with local stones--schist and granite--on the medieval roads used by pilgrims to reach Mont Saint-Michel, their final destination after travelling for many months. [Illustration] 002. Southern Manche. The map of the region. From north to south, these blue spots show the churches of Saint-Martin-le-Vieux, Bréville, Yquelon, Saint-Pair-sur-Mer, Angey, Saint-Jean-le-Thomas, Dragey, Genêts, Saint-Léonard-de-Vains, Saint-Loup and Saint-Quentin-sur-le-Homme, without forgetting the beautiful Romanesque gate in Sartilly. This map was digitized by Georges Cercel. [Illustration] 003. Southern Manche. An old map of the region. This region has belonged to Cotentin for its northern part and Avranchin for its southern part. The limit between Cotentin and Avranchin is the small river Thar, that flows into the Channel at the south of Granville. In the Middle Ages, this region was rich, with more people living on the coast than inside the land. The economic life was active, with fisheries, salines near Saint-Martin-de-Bréhal, Bréville and Saint-Léonard-de-Vains, pitch sand and kelp used as fertilizers, and a number of intensive cultures. This old map belongs to the collection of the city library in Granville. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-02] [Illustration] 004. Southern Manche. The deanery of Saint-Pair. The parishes of Saint-Martin-le-Vieux, Bréville, Yquelon and Saint-Pair-sur-Mer were part of the deanery of Saint-Pair, one of the five deaneries of the archidiachoné of Coutances. The archidiachoné of Coutances was one of the four archidiachonés of the diocese of Coutances, the other ones being the archidiachonés of Cotentin, Bauptois and Val-de-Vire. Map by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 005. Southern Manche. The deanery of Genêts. The parishes of Angey, Sartilly, Saint-Jean-le-Thomas, Dragey and Genêts were part of the deanery of Genêts and the archidiachoné of Avranches, like the priory of Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. The archidiachoné of Avranches included three other deaneries: the deanery of Avranches, the deanery of Tirepied (that included the parish of Saint-Loup) and the deanery of the Chrétienté (Christendom). The deanery of the Chrétienté included nine parishes around the episcopal town of Avranches, including the parish of Saint-Quentin-sur-le-Homme. Map by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 006. Southern Manche. The medieval roads going to Mont Saint-Michel. This region was crossed by several roads used by pilgrims to reach Mont Saint-Michel. At the north of Avranches, we had from west to east the shore road coming from Saint-Pair-sur-Mer, the road coming from Saint-Pair-sur-Mer (with a different route), the road coming from Coutances, the road coming from Saint-Lô, and the road coming from Caen. At the south of Avranches, a medieval road was used by the pilgrims coming from Tinchebray, Condé-sur-Noireau, Falaise or Lisieux to reach Mont Saint-Michel. Map by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 007. Southern Manche. Geological map. All these churches were built in granite and schist, which were the local stones. Sedimentary grounds formed by schist rocks surround two large granite grounds, those of Vire and Avranches. Laying down from east to west, the granite ground of Vire is around five kilometers large, and ends on the west with the cliffs of Carolles and Champeaux. Laying down from west to east, the granite ground of Avranches is narrower, and only from two to four kilometers large. These granite grounds are both surrounded by a metamorphic ring formed with schist rocks and grauwack (a kind of schist) rocks. The ground of Saint-Pair is a flysch (detritic ground) formed with grauwack rocks, siltit rocks et black argilit rocks with some schist inside. The ground of Granville is a flysch formed with grauwack rocks alternating with schist rocks. Map by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 008. Saint-Martin-le-Vieux. Location. The village of Saint-Martin-le-Vieux is located between Bréhal and the sea, near the haven of the Venlée, 2 kilometers west of Bréhal and 9 kilometers north of Granville. The village was situated on the medieval road coming from Cherbourg and going to Saint-Pair-sur-Mer to reach Mont Saint-Michel, the final destination for many pilgrims. [Illustration] 009. Saint-Martin-le-Vieux. The church, in ruins, stands on a hill. The church was under St Martin's patronage, and the second saint was St. Eutropius. The parish belonged to the deanery of St-Pair and the archidiachoné of Coutances. Foulques Paynel, probably a relative of Guillaume Paynel, founder of the Abbey of Hambye in 1145, gave to the abbey part of the tithe of the parish of Saint-Martin-le-Vieux, a donation mentioned in the cartulary of the Abbey of Hambye. During the French Revolution, the church was used as an arsenal and all its furniture was sold. It became a church again in 1801 but, as it was threatening to collapse around 1804 or 1805, it was no longer used. Since that time, the parish of Saint-Martin-le-Vieux is part of the parish of Bréhal. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-01] [Illustration] 010. Saint-Martin-le-Vieux. The Romanesque ruins, with a double belfry added in the 16th century. The ruins were overgrown by vegetation for a while. The masonry is made of irregular blocks in schist and granite. The arches and abutments of the openings are in granite. The schist is the local stone. The granit could come from the granite ground of Vire a few miles south. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-002] [Illustration] 011. Saint-Martin-le-Vieux. The Romanesque ruins. Between the choir and the nave, a double belfry (double because intended for two bells) was added in the 16th century, and built in pink granite from Chausey (an island not far from Granville). Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-003] [Illustration] 012. Saint-Martin-le-Vieux. The church plan. Regularly oriented from west to east, the rectangular building is formed by a long nave and a flat apse choir. The whole building has an external length of 26,5 meters and an external width of 6,4 meters (width of the front). The double belfry added in the 16th century rises between nave and choir. Plan by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 013. Saint-Martin-le-Vieux. The south wall of the Romanesque nave. The large bay with a lowered centering was probably added in the 16th century, during the building of the double belfry. On the right of this large bay, the centering of the small Romanesque bay is carved in a granite block. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-004] [Illustration] 014. Saint-Martin-le-Vieux. The south wall of the Romanesque nave and its door, with its lowered centering and its abutments with chamfered edges. The small bay on the left is also Romanesque. The masonry of the walls is made of irregular blocks of schist and granite. Elements of opus spicatum (fishbone masonry) are visible, a proof the south wall is the oldest part of the church. Above the door, the little trefoil bay was probably added in the 16th century, during the building of the belfry. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-005] [Illustration] 015. Saint-Martin-le-Vieux. The small Romanesque bay in the south wall of the nave, with its lowered centering and its abutments in granite. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-04] [Illustration] 016. Saint-Martin-le-Vieux. Behind the old cross, the double belfry from the 16th century, built in granite from Chausey. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-05] [Illustration] 017. Bréville. Location. The village of Bréville is located on the coast, about 6 kilometers north of Granville. It was situated on a medieval road that came from Cherbourg to go to Saint-Pair-sur-Mer before reaching Mont Saint-Michel, the final destination for many pilgrims. [Illustration] 018. Bréville. The Romanesque church in front of the line of dunes. In the background, the tip of Granville stands on the left. But, In Medieval Ages, Granville was almost non-existent, and the main town was Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-11] [Illustration] 019. Bréville. The Romanesque church among the trees. In the 12th century, Bréville had an active economic life, with fisheries, salines, pitch sand and kelp used as fertilizers, and intensive crops. The territory of the parish was owned by Mont Saint-Michel since 1022, when Richard II, duke of Normandy, gave the barony of Saint-Pair to Mont Saint-Michel. In the 13th century, the patronage was secular, with Guillelmus de Breinville as the lord between 1251 and 1279. The tithe was shared between the pastor and the abbot of Mont Saint-Michel. In the 16th century, Bréville, with its church and salines, was a prebend for the cathedral of Coutances. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-006] [Illustration] 020. Bréville. The Romanesque church was under the patronage of Our Lady (Notre Dame, in French), and the second saint was St. Helier. The parish belonged to the deanery of Saint-Pair and the archidiachoné of Coutances. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-007] [Illustration] 021. Bréville. The Romanesque church is composed of a two-span nave followed by a two-span choir with a flat apse. The square tower rises between choir and nave. Most of the nave, the tower base and the side walls of the choir are Romanesque, and probably from the second half of the 12th century. The masonry is made of irregular blocks of schist. Granite is used for the buttresses, the abutments of openings, the attached piers, the columns and the arches. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-006] [Illustration] 022. Bréville. The sacristy is the five-sided small building located in the extension of the choir. It was added much later, in the 19th century. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-009] [Illustration] 023. Bréville. The church plan. Regularly oriented from west to east, the rectangular building is formed by a two-row nave and a two-row choir with a flat apse. The whole building has an external length of 27,75 meters and an external width of 7,65 meters (width of the front). The tower rises between choir and nave. The small five-sided building in the extension of the choir houses the sacristy. Plan by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 024. Bréville. The church tower, between choir and nave, has a Romanesque base, while the floor in slight recess and the spire are from the late 15th or early 16th century. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-010] [Illustration] 025. Bréville. The church tower reaching the sky. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-07] [Illustration] 026. Bréville. The first floor and spire of the church tower. The first floor is opened on each side by a long narrow opening. The octagonal stone spire has angles rounded by tori, with a small gable with thin columns in the extension of each opening. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-011] [Illustration] 027. Bréville. The Romanesque gate in the south base of the tower, with a semi-circular arch formed by a grain molded by a torus followed by a chamfer carved with slightly visible saw-teeth. The archivolt is a thick band adorned with saw-teeth in high relief carved with a hollow row of triangular sticks. The archivolt rests on the right on a stone carved with a human head, while disappearing on the left into the masonry of the nave. The central keystone of the arch is adorned with a large human head carved in high relief. The capitals baskets of the attached columns are carved with two angle hooks. The two human heads, carved in a limestone, didn't resist well to the test of time, as well as the angle hooks. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-012] [Illustration] 028. Bréville. Sketch of the Romanesque gate in the south base of the tower. Sketch by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 029. Bréville. Above the Romanesque gate in the south base of the tower, a human head carved in a limestone didn't resist well to the test of time, unlike the heads carved in granite in the south gate of the church of Yquelon. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-013] [Illustration] 030. Bréville. The Romanesque gate in the south base of the tower. The archivolt topping the semi-circular arch rests on a granite stone carved with a human head. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-014] [Illustration] 031. Bréville. A Romanesque modillion carved with a human head, under the cornice. Most other modillions, more recent, are plain and only chamfered. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-015] [Illustration] 032. Bréville. A Romanesque modillion carved with a human head, under the cornice. This modillion is above the bay of the second row of the nave. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-016] [Illustration] 033. Bréville. The choir (inside). Its ribbed vault is from the late 15th or early 16th century. The tiles of the second row of the choir are from 1863. The floor of the first row is covered with schist pavings from Beauchamps laid in 1969. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-017] [Illustration] 034. Bréville. The nave (inside). Its wooden ceiling was replaced by a plaster ceiling in 1852. The door and the large bay visible in the back wall--which is the west wall of the front--doesn't have much character because of the rebuilding of the church front in 1783. The pegged oak door is from 1970. In 1969, the walls were covered with a lime plaster, and the floor with schist pavings from Beauchamps. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-018] [Illustration] 035. Bréville. The nave (inside). The plaster ceiling from 1852 was recently replaced by a wooden ceiling, like in old times. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-09] [Illustration] 036. Bréville. The tower base (inside), between choir and nave. In the foreground, an arch with chamfered edges rests on half-attached columns. This arch between the choir and the tower base was redone during the renovation of the choir in the 15th or 16th century. In the background, the arch between the nave and the tower base belongs to the original Romanesque building. This is a slightly triangular arch with irregular quoins, resting on two thick attached piers. The pier impost is molded with a chemfered band. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-019] [Illustration] 037. Bréville. The main altar, situated in the apse of the choir, with a statue of Our Lady on the left--the church is under her patronage--and a statue of St. Helier--the second saint--on the right. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-020] [Illustration] 038. Bréville. A detail of the main altar, in the apse of the choir. A statue of Our Lady, the patron saint of the church. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-021] [Illustration] 039. Bréville. A detail of the main altar, in the apse of the choir. The statue of St. Helier, second saint of the church. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-022] [Illustration] 040. Bréville. The fountain Saint-Hélier. This fountain was topped by the statue of St. Helier that is now in the background, on the right. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-10] [Illustration] 041. Yquelon. Location. The village of Yquelon is located 2 kilometers from Granville, between the villages of Donville-les-Bains and Saint-Nicolas, at the south of the river Boscq. The name "Yquelon" has Scandinavian roots and means "oak branch". Yquelon was situated on the medieval road coming from Cherbourg and going to Saint-Pair-sur-Mer before reaching Mont Saint-Michel, the final destination for many pilgrims. [Illustration] 042. Yquelon. The Romanesque church. The territory of the parish was part of the barony of Saint-Pair, owned by Mont Saint-Michel since 1022, when Richard II, duke of Normandy, gave the barony to the Mont. The lord of Yquelon, Rogerius de Ikelun, affixed his signature to two main charters of the Abbey of the Lucerne in 1162. In the 13th century, the patronage was certainly secular. The tithe was shared between the pastor, who was receiving most of it, the Abbey of Montmorel (located in Poilley, near Ducey), and the leper hospital Saint-Blaise de Champeaux. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-023] [Illustration] 043. Yquelon. The Romanesque church is under St. Pair's patronage, and the second saint is St. Maur. The parish belonged to the deanery of Saint-Pair and the archidiachoné of Coutances. The churches of Yquelon and Bréville have similarities, because they are near by and were both built in the second half of the 12th century. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-024] [Illustration] 044. Yquelon. The Romanesque church is formed by a two-row nave followed by a two-row choir with a flat apse. The large square tower � with its three floors in slight recess and a saddleback roof--is adjacent to the first row on the north side of the choir. The rectangular openings show that the tower was partly rebuilt since the 12th century. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-12] [Illustration] 045. Yquelon. The church plan. Regularly oriented from west to east, the rectangular building has a two-row nave followed by a two-row choir with a flat apse. The whole building has an external length of 21,75 meters and an external width of 7,6 meters (width of the front). The tower is adjacent to the first row of the north side of the choir. Plan by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 046. Yquelon. The Romanesque church front. Its masonry is made from irregular blocks of schist and granite, that are local stones. The front wall is strengthened at each end by a flat buttress resting on a stone wall. The three semi-circular bays above the portal were opened in 1896, to replace a large rectangular bay, that had itself replaced the two small original Romanesque bays. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-025] [Illustration] 047. Yquelon. The Romanesque church front. Its gable wall is topped by an antefix cross with bifid branches. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-026] [Illustration] 048. Yquelon. The Romanesque church front. The oculus in the gable wall is original. Its band is adorned with billets, with a stone carved with two human heads in high relief in its lower part. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-027] [Illustration] 049. Yquelon. The Romanesque west gate. Its semi-circular arch is formed by a plain grain resting on plain abutments and surrounded by an archivolt. The archivolt is a prominent band adorned with saw-teeth in high relief carved with a hollow row of triangular sticks. Its two ends rest on a granite stone carved with a human head. The keystone of the arch is adorned with a human head in higher relief. The inside abutments are molded with a small column with a square abacus and base. These abutments support a tympanum in granite, which was restored and carved with a cross In Romanesque style in 1897. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-13] [Illustration] 050. Yquelon. Sketch of the Romanesque west gate. This gate has similarities with the south gate in the church of Bréville, located a few kilometers north-west. Sketch by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 051. Yquelon. The Romanesque west gate. Detail of the semi-circular arch of the gate. Its archivolt rests at each end on a granite stone carved with a human head. These granite heads resisted more gracefully to the test of time than the limestone heads in the church of Bréville. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-029] [Illustration] 052. Yquelon. The Romanesque south gate. His semi-circular arch is formed of a grain molded with a torus and topped by a chamfer carved with a row of slightly visible saw-teeth. The arch is surrounded by an archivolt formed by a thick band with chamfered edges. The lower chamfer is also adorned with a row of slightly visible saw-teeth. The inner grain rests on two attached columns through capitals. Their basket, topped by a square abacus, is adorned with small angle hooks. The door certainly underwent an overhaul: both capitals, without an astragalus, are not well connected to the shaft of the columns and to the beginning of the arch, the torus of which is cut. The outer grain and archivolt disappear into the masonry of the nave to the left, whereas they rest on a slightly prominent and chamfered large stone on the right. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-14] [Illustration] 053. Yquelon. Sketch of the Romanesque south gate. This gate also has similarities with the south gate in the church of Bréville, located a few kilometers north-west. Sketch by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 054. Yquelon. The Romanesque choir (inside). The nave opens on the choir with a very thick triumphal arch resting on two piers embedded into the thick wall. The two bays of the choir are separated by another very thick arch. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-030] [Illustration] 055. Yquelon. The Romanesque choir (inside). Each row is topped by a ribbed vault. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-031] [Illustration] 056. Yquelon. The Romanesque vault of the choir. The very large ribs are adorned with two thick angular tori surrounding a small triangular molding. This Romanesque ribbed vault was probably one of the first ribbed vaults in Normandy. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-032] [Illustration] 057. Yquelon. The Romanesque vault of the choir. The ceiling arches and ribs rest on reversed pyramid-shaped bases. Topped with a square abacus slightly chamfered, the central base supports both the fallout of a ceiling arch and the one of two ribs. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-033] [Illustration] 058. Yquelon. The Romanesque vault of the choir. The vault keystones are carved with geometric designs in low relief within a circle. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-16] [Illustration] 059. Yquelon. The enfeu and its tombstone. In the north wall of the nave, an enfeu (recess for a tombstone) with a lowered centering houses a 12th-century tombstone in soft limestone depicting a knight. Mr Lomas described it in a journal named Bulletin of the Society of Antiquaries in Normandy (Bulletin de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie) dated 1886-1887: "The tombstone bears a knight in relief, depicted with his hands clasped, his head resting on a pillow, and his greyhound at his feet. (...) It bears no indication of his name or no indication of a year. It is therefore impossible to specify the person whose remains are covered. What we can say with certainty is that this person belongs to the powerful family of Yquelon, whose family member Roger Yquelon affixed his signature on two main charters of the Abbey of the Lucerne in 1162." Discovered in 1885 in the cemetery adjoining the north of the church, the tombstone was embedded in the enfeu in February 1893. At the length of the enfeu, 2.15 meters, is exactly the length of the tombstone, we can guess the tombstone was probably buried in the cemetery at the time of the French Revolution, before being discovered in 1885 and regaining its original location. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-17] [Illustration] 060. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. Location. The village of Saint-Pair-sur-Mer is located on the coast, 3.5 kilometers south of Granville. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer was a prosperous town and the vital center of the region until the construction of Granville in the 15th century. Many people moved to Granville then, at the expense of Saint-Pair. Saint-Pair grew again in 1880 with the development of seaside resorts. Medieval roads--a coast road and a shore road--were used by pilgrims from Saint-Pair to Mont Saint-Michel, and are still used today by "modern" pilgrims and visitors. [Illustration] 061. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. The church is under St. Pair's patronage, and the second saint is St. Gaud. The church is a place of pilgrimage dedicated to the worship of St. Gaud, whose sarcophagus was found in 1131 during the building of the Romanesque church. Much later, in 1880, the Romanesque nave was demolished to be replaced by a much larger nave and a transept to accommodate the many parishioners of this popular seaside resort. The enlarged church was consecrated on August 26, 1888. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-18] [Illustration] 062. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. The church is shown here from the north-east to get a view of the whole building. Photo by Marie Lebert. [Marie-07] [Illustration] 063. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. The old Romanesque church, after a drawing from E. Biguet published in the journal Le Pays de Granville dated 1934. The Romanesque nave was demolished in 1880 to be replaced by a much larger nave and a transept. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-034] [Illustration] 064. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. The church plan before 1880, as we can imagine it. The total external length was 37,5 meters. The external width of the nave was 11,1 meters (this hasn't changed). Plan by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 065. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. The plan of the present church. Regulary oriented from west to east, the building has a two-row nave with a porch, a large transept and a three-row choir with a semi-circular apse. The external length of the whole building is 57,1 meters. The external width of the nave is 11,1 meters. The square tower rises at the crossing of the transept. The transept arms are opened by two apses on their eastern side. The choir opens north on two chapels, one towards the apse and one towards the tower. At the angle formed by the south transept arm and the choir, a rectangular building houses the sacristy. Plan by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 066. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. The Romanesque tower. We can accurately give a date to the tower foundations, which is very seldom. We know that they date from 1131, thanks to a contemporary manuscript mentioning the discovery of St. Gaud's sarcophagus in the choir during the digging of the foundations. The same manuscript gives the name of the architect � Rogerius Altomansiunculo--who supervised the works. To know an architect's name is quite unusual too, because most architects of the time were remaining anonymous. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-19] [Illustration] 067. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. The Romanesque tower is square, and its two floors are topped by an octogonal spire. A group of two blind arches adorn the first floor, at the north and south. Large twin bays adorn the second floor on all four sides. Divided by a small column with a square abacus and a square base, these twin bays are topped by a semi-circular arch molded with a simple torus and resting on attached columns. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-035] [Illustration] 068. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. The Romanesque tower. The two floors of the tower. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-20] [Illustration] 069. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. The Romanesque tower. Inside, the tower rests on four massive symmetrical piers supporting four slightly triangular arches. These arches surround the groin vault beneath the tower. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-036] [Illustration] 070. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. Sketch of the south-western pier of the tower. This pier is as follows: east, west and south, it is salient. North, an attached pier surrounded by two attached columns rests on a stoneboard. Molded as a champered band, the impost topping the pier forms the abacus of the capitals of the two columns. The capital baskets are carved, with a square base topped by a chamfer. The pier rests on a broader square base with chamfered edges. Sketch by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 071. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. Detail of the north pier of the tower. Resting on a stoneboard, an attached pier surrounded by two attached columns is topped by an impost molded as a chamfered band. The impost also forms the abacus of the capitals. The capital baskets, in granite, are carved with angle hooks. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-037] [Illustration] 072. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. A carved capital basket. Under the tower, a capital of the north-west pier has a granite basket roughly carved in low relief with the bust of a man whose head is big. His right arm is raised and his left arm is folded over his chest. An oak branch is visible on the right. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-038] [Illustration] 073. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. A carved capital basket. Under the tower, another granite basket is carved with an angle hook in low relief. The capital baskets of the north-west, north-east and south-east piers are all adorned with angle hooks of this kind. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-039] [Illustration] 074. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. St. Pair's sarcophagus. A stone altar dating from the 19th century covers the shell limestone sarcophagus of St. Pair. St. Pair (482-565) founded a chapel with St. Scubilion, the foundations of which are still present underneath the choir of the present church. St. Pair also gave his name to the village previously known under the Roman name Scessiacus, or Scissy. St. Pair and St. Scubilion's sarcophagi were found in 1875, during the excavations made by abbot F. Baudry. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-040] [Illustration] 075. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. The plan of the oratory sketched by abbot F. Baudry. In September 1875, during excavations in the church choir, abbot F. Baudry found part of the foundations of the 6th-century oratory and several shell limestone sarcophagi: the sarcophagi of St. Pair and St. Scubilion and, nearby, those of St. Senier and St. Aroaste. St. Gaud's sarcophagus was found in 1131 while digging the foundations of the Romanesque tower. This plan is included in the book of Chanoine Pigeon entitled "Vie des Saints du Diocèse de Coutances et d'Avranches" (Life of the Saints in the Diocese of Coutances and Avranches), published in Avranches in 1888. [Illustration] 076. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. The foundations of the oratory. On the floor of the second row of the present choir, the double line of black tiles surrounded by a row of clear tiles shows the exact place of the foundations of the old oratory. The underneath foundations form a semi-circular apse going on as side walls that disappear in the Romanesque building. Fortunatus (530-600), bishop of Poitiers, wrote in his "Vie de Saint Pair" (St. Pair's Life) that the cells of the early monks were built beside the sea. Then monks move their dwellings on the banks of the river Saigue, at the site of the present church, attracting a population that settled around the oratory. In the foreground, a white gravestone shows the spot where St. Pair's sarcophagus was buried and discovered. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-042] [Illustration] 077. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. St. Gaud's reliquary, on the altar covering his shell limestone sarcophagus. St. Gaud (400-491) has its own chapel, built in the 19th century in the north wall of the choir, the church being a place of pilgrimage dedicated to his worship. After fourty years as the second bishop of Evreux, St. Gaud resigned from office to come and retire in the solitude of Saint-Pair. St. Gaud's sarcophagus was found in 1131 while digging the foundations of the Romanesque tower. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-041] [Illustration] 078. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. St. Gaud's reliquary. In this photo dated 2009, the reliquary is adorned with both ex-votos and flowers. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-21] [Illustration] 079. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. The baptismal font. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-24] [Illustration] 080. Angey. Location. The village of Angey is located 2,5 kilometers west of the village of Sartilly. The parish of Angey has been part of the parish of Sartilly since 1914. The church of Angey is used only very occasionally for weddings and funerals. [Illustration] 081. Angey. The church and its cemetery. The church is under St. Samson's patronage, and the second saint is St. John the Baptist. The parish of Angey belonged to the deanery of Genêts and the archidiachoné of Avranches. In 1162, the church of Angey and its dependencies were given to the Abbey of the Lucerne by William of St. Jean. The abbot of the Lucerne was the lord of the church from then on. Photo by Marie Lebert. [Marie-12] [Illustration] 082. Angey. The church, with its Romanesque choir. The base of the tower may also be Romanesque, but from a later period, because its masonry is slightly different from the masonry of the choir. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-25] [Illustration] 083. Angey. The church plan. Regularly oriented from west to east, the rectangular building is formed by a long nave and a one-row choir. The whole building has an external length of 26,85 meters and an external width of 7,5 meters (width of the front). The tower rises between choir and nave. Plan by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 084. Angey. The choir with a flat apse, and the tower rising between choir and nave. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-26] [Illustration] 085. Angey. The baptismal font, probably from the 14th century, is adorned with carved trefoil arches in low relief. The base of the font is carved with a rope, probably a symbol of the religious community. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-27] [Illustration] 086. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. Location. The village of Saint-Jean-le-Thomas is located on the coast, 12 kilometers south of Granville and 9 kilometers north of Avranches. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas was situated on two medieval roads, the first one coming from Saint-Pair-sur-Mer and the second one coming from Coutances. Another shore road going from Saint-Pair to Mont Saint-Michel was crossing the dunes nearby. [Illustration] 087. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The church is under St. John the Baptist's patronage. The parish of Saint-Jean-le-Thomas belonged to the deanery of Genêts and the archidiachoné of Avranches. In 917, William Longsword, second duke of Normandy, gave to the Abbey of Mont Saint-Michel the village of Saint-Jean-at-the-end-of-the-sea with its church, mill, vineyards and meadows. In the 12th century, the duke Robert I gave again to Mont Saint-Michel the seigneury of Saint-Jean and its dependencies. In 1162, the local lord, William of St. John, second founder of the Abbey of the Lucerne, gave to the abbey the church of Saint-Jean-le-Thomas with its dependencies, including many properties around and in England. In the 15th century, the church was still owned by the Abbey of the Lucerne, the abbot of the Lucerne being the lord of the church. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-28] [Illustration] 088. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The church. Its Romanesque nave is from the 11th century and early 12th century. The pre-Romanesque flat apse choir is probably from the 10th century. The Romanesque gate opened in the south wall of the nave has a large porch from the 15th century. The massive square tower is along the south wall of the nave, with two floors topped by a balustrade with an openwork design. The tower was built in 1895 to replace a timeworn tower, with granite stones from the Saint-James quarries. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-043] [Illustration] 089. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The church plan. Regularly oriented from west to east, the rectangular building is formed by a long nave and a flat apse choir. The whole building has an external length of 31.2 meters and an external width of 8.1 meters (width of the front). The church gate is opened in the south wall of the nave, with a porch. Built along the nave, the tower rises south. Plan by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 090. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The church front and the tower. The wall of the church front is topped with a small glacis covered with schist plates, behind which rises the gable wall. In the middle of the front, a flat buttress ends with a glacis at the base of the gable wall. The two small Romanesque bays on both sides of the buttress were reopened in 1973, during the restoration of the church choir. The massive tower was rebuilt in 1895. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-044] [Illustration] 091. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The pre-Romanesque choir and its south wall. The choir has similarities with the church Notre-Dame-sous-Terre, present in the innards of Mont Saint-Michel and built by the Benedictines shortly after settling down on the Mont in 966. In both buildings, the bay centerings are made of brick quoins, and walls are made of fairly regular small blocks of granite joined with a thick mortar. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-045] [Illustration] 092. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The pre-Romanesque choir. On the left of the large central bay, a small Romanesque bay is clearly visible, with its centering and abutements in granite. Photo by Claude Rayon [Claude-31] [Illustration] 093. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The pre-Romanesque choir and its north wall. High in the wall, the centerings of the pre-Romanesque bays are made of brick quoins. The large semi-circular bay with a trefoil arch was pierced in 1895, when the tower was rebuilt. The pre-Romanesque bays were discovered and reopened during the restoration of the choir in 1965 by Yves-Marie Froidevaux, a chief architect at the (French) Historic Monuments. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-046] [Illustration] 094. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The pre-Romanesque choir and its north wall. The masonry is made of fairly regular small blocks of granite joined with a thick mortar. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-047] [Illustration] 095. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The pre-Romanesque choir. The centering of this small pre-Romanesque bay is made with brick quoins. The same bays are present in the church Notre-Dame-sous-Terre, built around the same time in the innards of Mont Saint-Michel. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-30] [Illustration] 096. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The pre-Romanesque choir (inside) and its north wall. The fairly regular granite blocks of the walls and the brick quoins of the bays are also visible inside, following the restoration of the choir in 1965 by Yves-Marie Froideveaux, a chief architect at the (French) Historic Monuments. The five bays with centerings in brick quoins--three north and two south--were found and reopened at that time. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-048] [Illustration] 097. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The pre-Romanesque choir (inside). The two large semi-circular bays on each side of the choir were added in 1895, during the construction of the new tower. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-049] [Illustration] 098. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The pre-Romanesque choir (inside). The wooden barrel vault was added in 1965 and completed in 1973. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-050] [Illustration] 099. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The Romanesque nave (inside). This nave is probably from the 11th century and early 12th century. In the front wall in the background, the two Romanesque bays were reopened in 1973 after being found under the plaster. The upper bay--a median bay situated in the gable wall--was walled up at the same time, but its granite abutments remain clearly visible. The barrel vault of the nave is in plaster. The floor is covered with large pavings In granite. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-051] [Illustration] 100. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The Romanesque nave (inside). Another view of the nave, this time towards the choir. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-32] [Illustration] 101. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The Romanesque nave (inside). Romanesque murals were found on the south wall of the nave, a very interesting discovery because murals are almost non-existent in the region. The existence of such ancient wall paintings, probably from the 12th century, was unknown until 1974, until the plaster of the walls of the nave was redone. Colour spots attracted the attention of abbot Porée, pastor of the church, who then requested the visit of the fresco specialists of the (French) Fine Arts Department. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-052] [Illustration] 102. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The Romanesque murals, in the south wall of the nave. In this part restored in December 1974, there are three paintings: the struggle of a man against an angel, on the tympanum of the walled-up gate, then a fight between two figures, and finally a country scene. These paintings are surrounded by decorative borders. These murals may be the work of pilgrims going to Mont Saint-Michel on the medieval road along the coast. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-053] [Illustration] 103. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The Romanesque murals, on the south wall of the nave. On the tympanum of the walled-up gate, the battle of a man against an angel, "a fight that could be the one of Jacob against the angel sent by God, or God himself showed in a visible form", according to abbot Porée, pastor of the church at the time of the discovery of the murals in 1974. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-054] [Illustration] 104. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The Romanesque murals. The same scene on the tympanum of the walled-up gate, taken with a different angle to show the two foliage borders. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-33] [Illustration] 105. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The Romanesque murals. The same tympanum of the walled-up gate, seen from the outside. Above the gate, a small Romanesque bay with its centering and abutements in granite. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-29] [Illustration] 106. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The Romanesque murals, in the south wall of the nave. In this country scene, with wheat ears visible on the left, a figure wearing a large cloak holds a flask and pours wine in a cup held by another figure. On the right, a third figure holding a tillage tool is partly erased. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-055] [Illustration] 107. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The Romanesque murals, in the south wall of the nave. The third painting, of which much has disappeared, is the struggle between a figure with a cloack whose head is surrounded with a halo and another armored figure who seems to be on the ground. This could be St. Michael's struggle against the Devil, according to abbot Porée, pastor of the church at the time of the discovery of the murals in 1974. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-056] [Illustration] 108. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The Romanesque murals, in the south wall of the nave. Situated between the country scene and the fight scene, this detail shows that the mural was painted directly on the lime plaster, which explains the clear background. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-057] [Illustration] 109. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The Romanesque murals, in the south wall of the nave. This partial view of the fight scene shows that all contours were drawn in ocher paint, and inside surfaces were painted in ocher and buff. Only these two colors were used, directly on the lime plaster. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-058] [Illustration] 110. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The Romanesque murals, in the south wall of the nave. The paintings are surrounded with a foliage border. The flourishes run between two horizontal stripes. The first stripe is ocher along the flourishes and the second stripe is buff along the ocher stripe, with a row of white dots at the junction of the two colours. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-059] [Illustration] 111. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The Romanesque gate and its porch, in the south wall of the nave. Like often in the region, a porch was built later on--this one is from the 15th century--to offer to pilgrims and parishioners two stone benches and a shelter from rain and western winds coming from the sea. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-54] [Illustration] 112. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The Romanesque gate, in the south wall of the nave. The semi-circular arch of the gate is formed of a grain adorned with a simple torus molding. The arch rests on two attached columns that seem an extension of the torus, with the same diameter. The columns are topped with capitals with a square abacus. The capital baskets are carved with barely visible small angle hooks. The square base is topped by a double torus. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-55] [Illustration] 113. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. Sketch of the Romanesque gate, in the south wall of the nave. Sketch by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 114. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The porch. The stone roof of this 15th century porch is made of irregular schiste plates joined with a thick mortar. The arch of the Romanesque portal is adorned with a torus. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-060] [Illustration] 115. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The Virgin and Child. Situated under the 15th century porch, at the south of the nave, this stone statue stands above the Romanesque gate. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-061] [Illustration] 116. Dragey. Location. The village of Dragey is located on the current coastal road going from Granville to Avranches, 20 kilometers south of Granville and 13 kilometers north of Avranches. Dragey was on the route of three medieval roads, the first one coming from Saint-Pair-sur-Mer, the second one coming from Coutances and the third one coming from Saint-Lô. The shore road coming from Saint-Pair was crossing the dunes of Dragey before reaching Mont Saint-Michel, the final destination for many pilgrims. [Illustration] 117. Dragey. Panorama. On the hill where the church stands, the silhouette of Mont Saint-Michel and Tombelaine emerge from the mist. For pilgrims, this view was announcing the end of a long quest. The church of Dragey was given to Mont Saint-Michel in the 11th century by Robert, duke of Normandy. Dragey and his church were among the dependencies of Saint-Jean-at-the-end-of-the-sea, that later became Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-34] [Illustration] 118. Dragey. The church, built on a hill, is isolated with its rectory at about one kilometer from the village. The church is placed under St. Medard's patronage, and the second saint is St. Eloi. The parish of Dragey belonged to the deanery of Genêts and the archidiachoné of Avranches. The Romanesque nave is from the 11th or 12th century, whereas the tower and choir are from the 13th century. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-062] [Illustration] 119. Dragey. The church is not situated in the village, unlike the other churches in the region. Visible from far out at sea, the tower was a landmark for seamen. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-063] [Illustration] 120. Dragey. The church has a one-row choir and a three-row nave. The tower rises between choir and nave. Only the nave is Romanesque. The choir and the tower, more recent, are from the 13th century. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-35] [Illustration] 121. Dragey. The church plan. Regularly oriented from west to east, the rectangular building is formed by a three-row nave and a one-row choir. This whole building has an external length of 40,8 meters and an external width of 9,1 meters (width of the front). The tower rises between choir and nave. Plan by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 122. Dragey. The church front. Its masonry is made of irregular blocks of schist and granite, which are local stones. The front is strengthened on each side by two thick buttresses that end with a glacis. The large twin bay with a slightly triangular arch is from the 13th century. In 1860, this bay was reopened and restored, and the original gate was replaced by a gate without much character. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-064] [Illustration] 123. Dragey. The south wall of the nave. The 16th century porch before the Romanesque gate was reopened en 1969. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-065] [Illustration] 124. Dragey. The tower base has a gate with a triangular arch from the 13th century. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-066] [Illustration] 125. Dragey. The north wall of the nave (inside). The inner plaster of the side walls was scraped by the villagers to show the opus spicatum (fishbone masonry), at the request of abbot Pierre Danguy, pastor of the church between 1954 and 1974. The opus spicatum--with lines of schist plates arranged horizontally--attests the church was built in the 11th century and early 12th century. The long bay with a deep splay is from the 13th century. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-067] [Illustration] 126. Dragey. The north wall of the nave (inside). Villagers patiently scraped the plaster to show the opus spicatum (fishbone masonry), a sign their church was early Romanesque. The inner plaster now only covers the last top quarter of the walls, probably too hard to reach. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-37] [Illustration] 127. Dragey. The north wall of the nave (inside). The large trefoil bay is from the 13th century. A walled-up Romanesque bay with a deep splay is on the right, with an arch formed by a row of small granite quoins. This Romanesque bay is the only remaining original bay in the church. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-068] [Illustration] 128. Dragey. The north wall of the nave (inside). As the only remaining original bay, this walled-up Romanesque bay has a deep splay, with an arch formed by a row of small granite quoins. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-36] [Illustration] 129. Dragey. The church choir. The bays of the choir we guess on each side were enlarged in the 15th century. The choir was previously quite dark, with a feeble light coming from two small Romanesque bays. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-069] [Illustration] 130. Dragey. The old baptismal font supports a holy water font. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-38] [Illustration] 131. Dragey. The stained glass window of one large twin bay in the south wall of the nave. This window is an ex-voto recounting one of the many drownings occurring in the region. On 5 May 1921, Harry Iselin, the son of a family of landowners near Dragey, drowned with an American friend, back from walking back from Mont Saint-Michel while crossing its dangerous shores. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-39] [Illustration] 132. Dragey. Detail of the stained glass window. On the top, the Mont Saint-Michel, and below, a partial view of archangel St. Michael. This large twin bay with a trefoil arch replaced in 1860 a rectangular opening, that replaced itself a small Romanesque bay in 1790. This was also the case for the other twin bays. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-070] [Illustration] 133. Genêts. Location. The village of Genêts is located on the current coastal road between Granville and Avranches, 6 kilometers north of Avranches. The village is facing Mont Saint-Michel, around 4 kilometers far away. The medieval roads used by pilgrims to go to Mont Saint-Michel started from Saint-Pair-sur-Mer, Coutances, Saint-Lô and Caen to reach Genêts. Then they needed to cross dangerous shores to reach Mont Saint-Michel, their final destination. In addition, the shore road between Saint-Pair and Mont Saint-Michel was crossing Bec d'Andaine, near Genêts. [Illustration] 134. Genêts. The village and its church. The church tower--with its saddleback roof, its balustrade and its gargoyles--emerges above the roofs of the village. Genêts is a very old place. It was the tidal port of Avranches, the capital of the region before its looting by the Norman pirates in the 9th century. The barony of Genêts was given in 1022 to the Abbey of Mont Saint-Michel by Richard II, duke of Normandy, as well as the baronies of Saint-Pair and Ardevon. The center of a barony and a deanery, Genêts became an active town under the early Norman dukes. In the early 14th century, there were nearly 3,000 inhabitants, and the church counted seven chapels and a full clergy. This was the most flourishing period. During the Hundred Years War, Genêts was looted, fleeced and burned by the British troops from 1356 on. During the Religion Wars between Catholics and Protestants, Genêts was again sacked in 1562 by the troops of the Protestant Montgomery. During the French Revolution, Genêts lost its juridiction of a seneschal, its sergentery, its deanery, its fairs and its markets, and went from being a town to being a village. The county town became Sartilly. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-083] [Illustration] 135. Genêts. The church, beautifully made, is the work of Robert Torigni, abbot of Mont Saint-Michel between 1154 and 1186, who built it on the site of an older timeworn church. The Romanesque church was consecrated in 1157 by Herbert, bishop of Avranches, along with Roger, abbot of Bec-Hellouin. The church and cemetery of Genêts were granted the title of (French) Historic Monument in 1959. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-40] [Illustration] 136. Genêts. The church is composed of a broad nave, a transept and a three-row choir with a flat apse. A massive tower topped by a saddleback roof rises at the transept crossing. The Romanesque parts are the transept crossings, part of the transept arms and two-thirds of the tower. The porch before the south gate in the nave is from the 16th century. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-071] [Illustration] 137. Genêts. The church plan. Regularly oriented from west to east, the building is formed by a wide nave, a transept and a three-row choir with a flat apse. The whole building has an external length of 53.7 meters. The external width of the nave is 10.8 meters (width of the front). The first row of the choir opens north and south on two flat apse chapels, that open themselves on the transept arms. Plan by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 138. Genêts. The north wall. The tower is Romanesque for two-thirds of its height. Its upper part was built in the early 16th century. The nave was completely rebuilt in the mid-18th century. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-072] [Illustration] 139. Genêts. The Romanesque transept, with its north part and its gable wall. The masonry is made from irregular blocks of schist and granite. The schist is the local stone. The granite probably came from the granite ground of Avranches a few miles south-east. The gable wall is opened by a large semi-circular bay. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-073] [Illustration] 140. Genêts. The tower is situated at the transept crossing, with two floors. It is Romanesque to two-thirds of his height, with blocks of granite of medium size, while the top is from the early 16th century, with much larger blocks of granite. The lower floor is blind. The upper floor is open to the north, south and west by walled-up Romanesque twin bays, that were extended by Gothic trefoil bays added in the early 16th century. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-074] [Illustration] 141. Genêts. The tower is topped by a saddleback roof, the base of which is hidden north and south by a balustrade with an openwork design. Its corners are adorned with Gothic gargoyles shaped as dogs, wolves and imaginary animals. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-075] [Illustration] 142. Genêts. A Gothic gargoyle at another angle of the balustrade hiding the base of the saddleback roof of the tower. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-41] [Illustration] 143. Genêts. A Gothic gargoyle at another angle of the balustrade hiding the base of the saddleback roof of the tower. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-076] [Illustration] 144. Genêts. The gate in the south transept. This heavy and simple gate is from 11th century, with semi-circular plain grains and thick columns. It probably belonged to the building that was prior to the Romanesque church consecrated in 1157. The semi-circular arch is formed of two thick non-molded grains. The external grain rests on two thick attached columns topped by a square chamfered abacus, which goes on as a chamfered band on the wall. The capital basket is carved with barely visible angle hooks. The outside ground level is now at the same level as the start of the column trunk. The square base is topped by a double torus is below ground level. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-077] [Illustration] 145. Genêts. Sketch of the gate in the south transept. Sketch by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 146. Genêts. The Romanesque transept crossing is bounded by four strong square piers. The two west piers are attached to the transept and the nave. They receive four thick triangular arches that surround the groin vault above the transept crossing. The first row of the choir opens north and south on two flat apse chapels, that open themselves on the transept arms. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-078] [Illustration] 147. Genêts. The Romanesque transept crossing. The piers support four thick slightly triangular arches that surround the groin vault above the transept crossing. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-079] [Illustration] 148. Genêts. The Romanesque transept crossing. The four piers are perfectly symmetrical, with two flat non-molded sides and two other sides with two attached twin columns on a backwall, that support the triangular arches. On one angle of each pillar, an attached column supports the spring of one arris of the vault. Each pillar is topped by a large impost molded with a chamfered band. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-46] [Illustration] 149. Genêts. The Romanesque transept crossing. One of the tower piers. Two sides have a flat non-molded surface. On the other two sides, the arches are received by two attached twin columns on a backwall. In one corner, an attached column receives the spring of one arris of the vault. The carved basket capitals are topped by a thick square abacus. The square bases are topped by a double torus. The pier itself rests on a broader square base. The other three pillars are perfectly symmetrical to this one. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-45] [Illustration] 150. Genêts. Sketch of the south-east pier in the transept crossing. This pier is topped by an impost molded with a chamfered band. East and south, the pier has a flat non-molded surface. North and west, the arches are received by two attached twin columns on a backwall. At the north-west angle, an attached column receives the spring of one arris of the vault. The carved capital baskets are topped by a thick square abacus. The pier itself rests on a broader square base. Sketch by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 151. Genêts. Detail of the north-west pier in the transept crossing. The capital baskets, carved in low relief, are adorned with plant designs such as chestnut leaves, oak leaves with acorns, and vine leaves. Other baskets are carved with grapes, animal designs--such as hares running around--or geometric designs--such as small arches and prominent bands. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-080] [Illustration] 152. Genêts. The porch. This large porch, from the 16th century, stands before the south gate of the nave, which is from the 13th century. The porch has offered pilgrims and parishioners two stone benches and a shelter from rain and western winds coming from the sea. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-44] [Illustration] 153. Genêts. The porch from the 16th century is topped by a wooden frame added in the 18th century. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-082] [Illustration] 154. Genêts. The porch. Detail of the wooden frame added in the 18th century. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-42] [Illustration] 155. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. Location. The village of Saint-Léonard-de-Vains is located at the very end of the cape of Grouin du Sud, 2.5 kilometers from the village of Vains and 7 kilometers from the town of Avranches. The priory church stands in front of the bay of Mont Saint-Michel and the rock of Tombelaine. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains was the final village of the medieval road coming from Caen. Then the pilgrims needed to cross the dangerous shores to reach Mont Saint-Michel, their final destination. The priory church has become a private property since the French Revolution, and the village is now part of the parish of Vains. [Illustration] 156. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. Winter panorama. The village and its priory church under the snow, at the end of the winter. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-084] [Illustration] 157. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. Winter panorama. The village and its priory church, seen a little closer, at the end of the winter. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-085] [Illustration] 158. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. Spring panorama taken from inside the priory. From there, the Mont Saint-Michel seems to open itself to pilgrims and travellers. Saint-Léonard is a very old village. St. Leonard lived there in the 6th century before being elected the eighth bishop of Avranches in 578. The village was then invaded by the Normans in the 9th century. After the Norman conquest, the village was part of the duke of Normandy's territory, and the fief of the lords of Vains. In 1087, shortly before his death, William the Conqueror gave the priory to the Abbey of Saint-Etienne in Caen. In 1158, Henry II confirmed this donation, which included a mansion, arable lands and vineyards, as well as salines with the right to fish and to collect kelp. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-47] [Illustration] 159. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. Spring panorama taken from inside the priory. The priory was a simple priory, that is to say a small monastery where some religious men detached from a main abbey were living under the direction of a prior, but without taking care of other souls (unlike a pastor for his parishoniers). The priory church was the property of the abbey of Saint-Etienne in Caen until the French Revolution. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-50] [Illustration] 160. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. The priory was sold in 1793, during the French Revolution, and the buyer turned the church into a farm building. In an article from the periodical Le Pays de Granville dated December 1976, Jean Bindet recounted that, "after the nationalization of the church properties in November 1789 and the sale of national properties from 1791 on, the priory and dovecote were left abandoned, and their ruins, with the church that had not suffered too much, were sold in 1793 for the sum of 200 francs in banknotes ... The buyer, wanting its purchase to fructify, decided to transform the church into a farm building. The choir of the ancient church became a kitchen with a fireplace built in the apse; the nave became a barn and a stable; the tower itself was used: the base as a cellar, and the floor was divided into a room and an attic, and topped with a chimney." The priory remained a farm for a long time, as evidenced by the cow behind the fence. This old photo was digitized by Claude Rayon. [Claude-48] [Illustration] 161. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. The priory church is still a private property in the late 20th century, but no longer a farm. In cooperation with the (French) Historic Monuments, the owner has turned the nave into a house by opening rectangular windows and revamping the interior. In 1985, date of this photo, the tower and the choir are still in bad shape. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-086] [Illustration] 162. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. The priory church. The nave has become the owner's house in the late 20th century, which explains the rectangular doors and windows. The building has retained its original form though, with a nave strengthened by buttresses and a two-row choir with a flat apse. The tower, between choir and nave, is topped by a saddleback roof. In 1985, the tower and the choir have not been restored yet. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-087] [Illustration] 163. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. The priory church. On this Photo by the 1980s, we still see the stairs leading to the first floor of the tower (they doesn't exist any more), as well as the rectangular openings of the tower and the choir, and the chimney above the choir. Photo by Marie Lebert. [Marie-19] [Illustration] 164. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. The priory church. On this recent Photo by 2009, the large rectangular openings pierced in the choir and the tower have been replaced by small bays of Romanesque style. The stairs leading to the first floor of the tower were removed, like the chimney above the choir. The building is back to its former beauty. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-49] [Illustration] 165. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. The plan of the priory church. Regularly oriented from west to east, the building is formed of a nave and a two-row choir with a flat apse. The whole building has an external length of 32.75 meters and an external width of 9.65 meters (width of the front). The tower rises between choir and nave. Plan by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 166. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. The Romanesque tower is from the early 12th century. Situated in the extension of the choir, its square base is topped by two floors in slight recess. The first floor was probably blind originally, with openings pierced after the French Revolution. The second floor is opened north, east and south by two twin semi-circular arches. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-088] [Illustration] 167. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. The Romanesque tower. The masonry is made of irregular blocks of schist and granite, with a few rows of regular granite blocks. The saddleback roof rests north and south on a cornice supported by modillions. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-089] [Illustration] 168. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. The Romanesque tower. On three sides--north, east and south--the second floor is adorned with two twin semi-circular arches, with a double grain formed by two rows of granite quoins. The arch rests on plain abutments through a square abacus, that goes on as an horizontal band along the wall. The cornice is supported by modillions carved with rough human heads or molded in quarter-round. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-090] [Illustration] 169. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. The Romanesque tower. The second floor of the tower and its saddleback roof. Two birds are resting. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-51] [Illustration] 170. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. The base of the Romanesque tower and its north wall. This wall is strengthened by a central buttress surrounded by two semi-circular bays with an arch formed by a row of granite quoins. The lowered arch and abutments of the door are made of large blocks of granite. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-091] [Illustration] 171. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. The base of the Romanesque tower and its north wall. The lower part of the wall consists of an opus spicatum (fishbone masonry) characterizing the 11th or early 12th century. The masonry of the upper part of the wall is made of regular blocks of granite. A row of badly damaged modillions is still visible above the bays. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-092] [Illustration] 172. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. The base of the Romanesque tower, and its gate with its semi-circular arch and abutments in granite. The opus spicatum (fishbone masonry) of the masonry is a sign the church is early Romanesque. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-52] [Illustration] 173. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. The base of the Romanesque tower. Inside, the tower rests on massive piers. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-53] [Illustration] 174. Saint-Loup. Location. Saint-Loup (also called Saint-Loup-sous-Avranches) is located south-east of Avranches, only 6 kilometers from the town, in a hilly region close to the granite ground of Avranches, making granite stones easily accessible. [Illustration] 175. Saint-Loup. The church is the only entirely Romanesque building remaining in the region. Built by the lords of Saint-Loup, the church was under St. Loup's patronage. The second saint is St. Gilles. The parish belonged to the deanery of Tirepied and the archidiachoné of Avranches. The nave has three rows. The north and south walls are strenghtened by four buttresses on each side. Three small semi-circular bays are still visible, two in the south wall and one in the north wall. The other bays were opened or enlarged thereafter. The church was granted the title of (French) Historic Monument in 1921. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-093] [Illustration] 176. Saint-Loup. The church plan. Regularly oriented from west to east, the building is formed by a two-row nave and a three-row choir with a semi-circular apse. The whole building has an external length of 31 meters and an external width of 8.2 meters (width of the front). The tower rises above the first row of the choir. The north side chapel along the second row of the choir was added in 1602 by the lords of Saint-Loup. Plan by Marie Lebert and Bernard Beck. [Illustration] 177. Saint-Loup. The Romanesque west front. Strenghtened by two buttresses, the front wall is topped by a slight glacis behind which rises the gable wall. The bay with a triangular arch above the Romanesque gate is probably from the 13th century. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-094] [Illustration] 178. Saint-Loup. The Romanesque west gate. Its semi-circular arch is formed of two grains surrounded by a archivolt, which is a chamfered band. Each grain has the following moldings: a thick angle torus, a listel, a shallow cavetto and a row of carved hollow saw-teeth. The grains rest on four attached columns. Molded in quarter-round, the capital abaci go on as an horizontal band along the wall. The baskets are carved with rough sculptures: angle hooks or angle heads whose features were erased with the test of time. The square bases are adorned with a torus topping a chamfer carved with barely visible small claws. They rest on a small stone wall going on along the whole length of the front. The lintel is a big monolith block of granite, and it is topped by an opus reticulatum (diamond-shaped masonry) of diamond-shaped stones. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-095] [Illustration] 179. Saint-Loup. Sketch of the Romanesque west gate. Sketch by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 180. Saint-Loup. The south wall of the choir. In the first row, the south gate is flanked by two flat buttresses. Between these buttresses, above the gate, the masonry is supported by a cornice with three large carved modillions. The first modillion is a grotesque human being putting his right hand to his mouth while folding his left arm. The second modillion is a human head. The third modillion is a crouched human being, with his hands on his knees. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-097] [Illustration] 181. Saint-Loup. The Romanesque tower rises above the first row of the choir. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-096] [Illustration] 182. Saint-Loup. The Romanesque tower. The masonry of its walls is made of regular granite blocks, that are smaller than for other parts of the church. The granite was extracted from the granite ground of Avranches, that is close to Saint-Loup. In the foreground, on the right, this buttress belongs to the north side chapel adjacent to the second row of the choir. This chapel was added in 1602 by the lords of Saint-Loup. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-098] [Illustration] 183. Saint-Loup. The Romanesque tower. This square tower consists of two floors topped by a spire. The first floor is ornated north and south with large blind arcades. The second floor is opened by a bay on each side. The level between the two floors is underlined by a chamfered band. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-099] [Illustration] 184. Saint-Loup. The Romanesque tower. The upper floor is opened by a bay on each side. This bay is surrounded by a semi-circular arch formed by two grains surrounded by a chamfered band. Each grain is molded with a thick angle torus followed by a listel and a broad shallow cavetto. On both sides of the bay, the grains rest on four small attached columns. The basket capitals are carved with geometric designs--angle hooks, half-circles--or human heads. These baskets are topped with a square abacus going on as a square horizontal band along the wall. The square base of the small columns is topped by a double torus. These bays are similar to the west and south gates, with the same moldings for the grains and similar sculptures for the capital baskets. Photo by Marie Lebert. [Marie-22] [Illustration] 185. Saint-Loup. The Romanesque tower. The lower floor is adorned north and south by a double blind semi-circular arch toped by a prominent band going on as an horizontal band on the bare wall and then on the east and west sides. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-100] [Illustration] 186. Saint-Loup. The Romanesque tower. On the lower floor, a small opus reticulatum (diamond-shaped blocks) is present at the corner between the twin arches. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-101] [Illustration] 187. Saint-Loup. The Romanesque tower. The upper floor is opened by a similar bay on each side. The semi-circular arch of the bays is formed of two grains surrounded by a chamfered band and resting on four small attached columns. The capital baskets are carved with geometric designs such as angle hooks and half-circles, while other baskets are carved with human heads. These bays are similar to the west and south gates, with the same moldings for the grains and similar sculptures for the capital baskets. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-102] [Illustration] 188. Saint-Loup. The Romanesque tower. The cornice rests on modillions carved with human heads or molded in quarter-round. Most of the cornice was rebuilt during the rebuilding of the octagon spire on a square base, with skylights. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-103] [Illustration] 189. Saint-Loup. The Romanesque tower. Detail of the cornice and its modillions carved with human heads. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-104] [Illustration] 190. Saint-Loup. The Romanesque south gate, in the first row of the choir. The semi-circular arch is formed of an grain surrounded by an archivolt made of a chamfered band. The grain is molded with a thick angle torus followed by a listel and a large shallow cavetto. The grain rests on two attached columns. The capital baskets carved with human heads are topped with abaci molded in quarter-round. Photo by Marie Lebert. [Marie-21] [Illustration] 191. Saint-Loup. Sketch of the Romanesque south gate, in the first row of the choir. Sketch by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 192. Saint-Quentin-sur-le-Homme. Location. The village of Saint-Quentin-sur-le-Homme is located 5.5 kilometers south-east of the town of Avranches, in the hills of the river Sélune. Saint-Quentin was situated on the medieval road taken by pilgrims from Tinchebray, Condé-sur-Noireau, Falaise or Lisieux to reach Mont Saint-Michael. The parish of Saint-Quentin was one of the nine parishes around the episcopal church of Avranches, grouped in the deanery of Chrétienté (Christendom). This deanery was part of the archidiachoné of Avranches. [Illustration] 193. Saint-Quentin-sur-le-Homme. The large church has a rectangular narthex (wide porch) along the entire length of the front. The base of the tower and the nave are Romanesque--probably from the second half of the 12th century--and have similarities with the church of Saint-Loup. Several parts are from the 13th century: the narthex before the church front, the two floors of the tower, the three-row choir, and finally the south side chapel of the choir. The north side chapel was built later on, in the 15th or 16th century. The walls of the nave still bear the mark of the large bays that were opened in the 18th century to replace the small Romanesque bays. The present bays date from 1951, with a size similar to the original bays. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-105] [Illustration] 194. Saint-Quentin-sur-le-Homme. The church plan. Regularly oriented from west to east, the building is formed of a three-row nave and a three-row choir with a flat apse. The whole building has an external length of 47 meters and an external width of 9.6 meters (width of the front). North and south, two large chapels are adjacent to the first two rows of the choir. They are so large that they look like transept arms. The tower is between choir and nave. The church front has a narthex (wide porch) on its entire length. Plan by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 195. Saint-Quentin-sur-le-Homme. The large tower, between choir and nave, rests on four thick piers that receive east and west two semi-circular arches with a double ring. The row between choir and nave is topped by a groin vault with an oblong plan. In the foreground, the wooden barrel vault of the nave was rebuilt in 1926 and 1927. The nave pavings were laid in 1929. The church walls were covered with lime plaster in 1953. Photo by Marie Lebert. [Marie-24] [Illustration] 196. Saint-Quentin-sur-le-Homme. The large tower has a Romanesque base and two floors from the 13th century, with a saddleback roof. In the foreground rises a Romanesque wayside cross. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-106] [Illustration] 197. Saint-Quentin-sur-le-Homme. Detail of the Romanesque wayside cross situated near the church. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-107] [Illustration] 198. Saint-Quentin-sur-le-Homme. The church front is adorned on its entire length with a rectangular narthex (wide porch) from the 13th century, topped by a balustrade with an openwork design. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-108] [Illustration] 199. Saint-Quentin-sur-le-Homme. The Romanesque gate of the church front. This gate is surrounded by a semi-circular two-groin arch and an archivolt. The grains rest on four attached columns, with square bases adorned with a torus topped by a chamfer. The capitals baskets are carved with balls, heads with a prominent chin, and a human being on all fours. These rough sculptures are in high relief. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-109] [Illustration] 200. Saint-Quentin-sur-le-Homme. The tower base and its Romanesque gate. This walled-up gate is similar to the south gate of the church of Saint-Loup. His semi-circular arch is formed by a grain surrounded by an archivolt with a chamfered band. The grain is molded with a thick angle torus followed by a listel and a shallow cavetto. The grain rests on two thick columns through a band modled in quarter-round forming the abacus of the capitals and going on along the bare wall. The capital baskets are carved with a tree on the right and two human heads on the left. The bases are square. The left base is topped with a chamfer adorned with tiny triangular claws and a torus. The right base is topped by a double torus. The tympanum is formed by a large monolith block of granite resting on inside abutments through a band molded in quarter-round. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-110] [Illustration] 201. Saint-Quentin-sur-le-Homme. Sketch of the south gate, that is walled-up at the base of the tower. Sketch by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 202. Sartilly. Location. The town of Sartilly is located on the road between Granville and Avranches, 15 kilometers south of Granville and 11 kilometers north of Avranches. Sartilly was on the medieval road going from Saint-Lô to Mont Saint-Michel, the final destination for many pilgrims. The parish of Sartilly belonged to the deanery of Genêts and the archidiachoné of Avranches. The church is under St. Pair's patronage. [Illustration] 203. Sartilly. The Romanesque gate was the west gate of the Romanesque church, and is now the south gate of the church that replaced it. The Romanesque church, which was ready to collapse, was demolished and replaced in 1858 by a much larger building of Gothic inspiration. Photo by Marie Lebert. [Marie-10] [Illustration] 204. Sartilly. The Romanesque gate. The capital baskets are carved with various designs like oak leaves, acanthus leaves, scrolls framing an acanthus leaf at the corner, or corner curls. The sculptures, carved in high relief in granite, are much more elegant than in any other small church in the region. The square base of the columns is topped by a double torus. Photo by Marie Lebert. [Marie-11] [Illustration] 205. Sartilly. The old Romanesque church, demolished in 1858, in a drawing from the journal Revue de l'Avranchin dated 1924-1926. This church was described in the Minute Book of the City Council (Registre des Délibérations du Conseil Municipal) of Sartilly of 1837-1864: "The church we should replace is an old building (...) composed of: 1) a dark nave which is 19 meters and 60 centimeters long and 7 meters wide, with the lower part of its walls soaked with moisture and cracked in several places, and not standing straight anymore, particularly towards the end of the church; 2) a tower between the nave and the choir (...); 3) a choir which is 9 meters long and 6 meters wide (...)." Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-118] [Illustration] 206. Sartilly. The Romanesque gate is in granite, which is the local stone, Sartilly being located at the heart of the granite ground of Vire. This gate, probably from the second half of the 12th century, is the most beautiful Romanesque gate in the region. The moldings of the arch and archivolt are the result of meticulous work, as well as the sculptures of the capital baskets, with oak leaves, acanthus leaves and scrolls. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-111] [Illustration] 207. Sartilly. The Romanesque gate. Sketch of the arch, the archivolt and a column. This gate, which was the west gate of the Romanesque church, is now the south gate of the church that replaced it. Sketch by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 208. Sartilly. The Romanesque gate. The arch of the gate is formed of three grains: a grain with a lower centering, and two semi-circular grains surmounted by a archivolt. The first grain is molded with a thick angle torus followed by a listel and a large cavetto adorned with large and slightly rounded bezants. The second grain is molded with a thick angle torus. The third grain is molded with two tori surrounding a listel. The archivolt is a prominent cordon ornated with saw-teeth in high relief carved with a hollow row of triangular sticks. It rests on both sides on two carved heads with well designed features. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-112] [Illustration] 209. Sartilly. The Romanesque gate. The left columns. On each side of the gate, the three grains rest on three attached columns through an impost molded with a cavetto. The square part of the impost is adorned with a small hollow molding. The impost goes on above the external pier supporting the archivolt. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-113] [Illustration] 210. Sartilly. The Romanesque gate. The left side of the archivolt. The archivolt is formed by a band adorned with saw-teeth in high relief carved with a row of triangular sticks. On either side of the arch, it rests on a head carved in the granite. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-114] [Illustration] 211. Sartilly. The Romanesque gate. The left side of the archivolt. Detail showing the same carved head, in profile. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-115] [Illustration] 212. Sartilly. The Romanesque gate. The right side of the archivolt. Detail showing the second carved head on which the archivolt rests. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-116] [Illustration] 213. Sartilly. The Romanesque gate. The right side of the archivolt. Detail showing the same carved head, closer. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-117] [Illustration] 214. End of this album, with a cap and its angel holding a shield, in the church of Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. Special thanks to Alain Dermigny and Claude Rayon for their beautiful pictures. Many thanks to Bernard Beck, Danièle Cercel, Georges Cercel, Philippe Dartiguenave, Al Haines, Nicolas Pewny, Martine Valenti, Marie-Noëlle Vivier and Russon Wooldridge for their kind help over the years. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-22] Copyright © 2010 Marie Lebert, Alain Dermigny, Claude Rayon. All rights reserved. 
2311	----	Travels Through France And Italy By Tobias Smollett INTRODUCTION By Thomas Seccombe I Many pens have been burnished this year of grace for the purpose of celebrating with befitting honour the second centenary of the birth of Henry Fielding; but it is more than doubtful if, when the right date occurs in March 1921, anything like the same alacrity will be shown to commemorate one who was for many years, and by such judges as Scott, Hazlitt, and Charles Dickens, considered Fielding's complement and absolute co-equal (to say the least) in literary achievement. Smollett's fame, indeed, seems to have fallen upon an unprosperous curve. The coarseness of his fortunate rival is condoned, while his is condemned without appeal. Smollett's value is assessed without discrimination at that of his least worthy productions, and the historical value of his work as a prime modeller of all kinds of new literary material is overlooked. Consider for a moment as not wholly unworthy of attention his mere versatility as a man of letters. Apart from Roderick Random and its successors, which gave him a European fame, he wrote a standard history, and a standard version of Don Quixote (both of which held their ground against all comers for over a century). He created both satirical and romantic types, he wrote two fine-spirited lyrics, and launched the best Review and most popular magazine of his day. He was the centre of a literary group, the founder to some extent of a school of professional writers, of which strange and novel class, after the "Great Cham of Literature," as he called Dr. Johnson, he affords one of the first satisfactory specimens upon a fairly large scale. He is, indeed, a more satisfactory, because a more independent, example of the new species than the Great Cham himself. The late Professor Beljame has shown us how the milieu was created in which, with no subvention, whether from a patron, a theatre, a political paymaster, a prosperous newspaper or a fashionable subscription-list, an independent writer of the mid-eighteenth century, provided that he was competent, could begin to extort something more than a bare subsistence from the reluctant coffers of the London booksellers. For the purpose of such a demonstration no better illustration could possibly be found, I think, than the career of Dr. Tobias Smollett. And yet, curiously enough, in the collection of critical monographs so well known under the generic title of "English Men of Letters"--a series, by the way, which includes Nathaniel Hawthorne and Maria Edgeworth--no room or place has hitherto been found for Smollett any more than for Ben Jonson, both of them, surely, considerable Men of Letters in the very strictest and most representative sense of the term. Both Jonson and Smollett were to an unusual extent centres of the literary life of their time; and if the great Ben had his tribe of imitators and adulators, Dr. Toby also had his clan of sub-authors, delineated for us by a master hand in the pages of Humphry Clinker. To make Fielding the centre-piece of a group reflecting the literature of his day would be an artistic impossibility. It would be perfectly easy in the case of Smollett, who was descried by critics from afar as a Colossus bestriding the summit of the contemporary Parnassus. Whatever there may be of truth in these observations upon the eclipse of a once magical name applies with double force to that one of all Smollett's books which has sunk farthest in popular disesteem. Modern editors have gone to the length of excommunicating Smollett's Travels altogether from the fellowship of his Collective Works. Critic has followed critic in denouncing the book as that of a "splenetic" invalid. And yet it is a book for which all English readers have cause to be grateful, not only as a document on Smollett and his times, not only as being in a sense the raison d'etre of the Sentimental Journey, and the precursor in a very special sense of Humphry Clinker, but also as being intrinsically an uncommonly readable book, and even, I venture to assert, in many respects one of Smollett's best. Portions of the work exhibit literary quality of a high order: as a whole it represents a valuable because a rather uncommon view, and as a literary record of travel it is distinguished by a very exceptional veracity. I am not prepared to define the differentia of a really first-rate book of travel. Sympathy is important; but not indispensable, or Smollett would be ruled out of court at once. Scientific knowledge, keen observation, or intuitive power of discrimination go far. To enlist our curiosity or enthusiasm or to excite our wonder are even stronger recommendations. Charm of personal manner, power of will, anthropological interest, self-effacement in view of some great objects--all these qualities have made travel-books live. One knows pretty nearly the books that one is prepared to re-read in this department of literature. Marco Polo, Herodotus, a few sections in Hakluyt, Dampier and Defoe, the early travellers in Palestine, Commodore Byron's Travels, Curzon and Lane, Doughty's Arabia Deserta, Mungo Park, Dubois, Livingstone's Missionary Travels, something of Borrow (fact or fable), Hudson and Cunninghame Graham, Bent, Bates and Wallace, The Crossing of Greenland, Eothen, the meanderings of Modestine, The Path to Rome, and all, or almost all, of E. F. Knight. I have run through most of them at one breath, and the sum total would not bend a moderately stout bookshelf. How many high-sounding works on the other hand, are already worse than dead, or, should we say, better dead? The case of Smollett's Travels, there is good reason to hope, is only one of suspended animation. To come to surer ground, it is a fact worth noting that each of the four great prose masters of the third quarter of the eighteenth century tried his hand at a personal record of travel. Fielding came first in 1754 with his Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon. Twelve years later was published Smollett's Travels through France and Italy. Then, in 1768, Sterne's Sentimental Journey; followed in 1775 by Johnson's Journey to the Hebrides. Each of the four--in which beneath the apparel of the man of letters we can discern respectively the characteristics of police magistrate, surgeon, confessor, and moralist--enjoyed a fair amount of popularity in its day. Fielding's Journal had perhaps the least immediate success of the four. Sterne's Journey unquestionably had the most. The tenant of "Shandy Hall," as was customary in the first heyday of "Anglomania," went to Paris to ratify his successes, and the resounding triumph of his naughtiness there, by a reflex action, secured the vote of London. Posterity has fully sanctioned this particular "judicium Paridis." The Sentimental Journey is a book sui generis, and in the reliable kind of popularity, which takes concrete form in successive reprints, it has far eclipsed its eighteenth-century rivals. The fine literary aroma which pervades every line of this small masterpiece is not the predominant characteristic of the Great Cham's Journey. Nevertheless, and in spite of the malignity of the "Ossianite" press, it fully justified the assumption of the booksellers that it would prove a "sound" book. It is full of sensible observations, and is written in Johnson's most scholarly, balanced, and dignified style. Few can read it without a sense of being repaid, if only by the portentous sentence in which the author celebrates his arrival at the shores of Loch Ness, where he reposes upon "a bank such as a writer of romance might have delighted to feign," and reflects that a "uniformity of barrenness can afford very little amusement to the traveller; that it is easy to sit at home and conceive rocks and heath and waterfalls; and that these journeys are useless labours, which neither impregnate the imagination nor enlarge the understanding." Fielding's contribution to geography has far less solidity and importance, but it discovers to not a few readers an unfeigned charm that is not to be found in the pages of either Sterne or Johnson. A thoughtless fragment suffices to show the writer in his true colours as one of the most delightful fellows in our literature, and to convey just unmistakably to all good men and true the rare and priceless sense of human fellowship. There remain the Travels through France and Italy, by T. Smollett, M.D., and though these may not exhibit the marmoreal glamour of Johnson, or the intimate fascination of Fielding, or the essential literary quality which permeates the subtle dialogue and artful vignette of Sterne, yet I shall endeavour to show, not without some hope of success among the fair-minded, that the Travels before us are fully deserving of a place, and that not the least significant, in the quartette. The temporary eclipse of their fame I attribute, first to the studious depreciation of Sterne and Walpole, and secondly to a refinement of snobbishness on the part of the travelling crowd, who have an uneasy consciousness that to listen to common sense, such as Smollett's, in matters of connoisseurship, is tantamount to confessing oneself a Galilean of the outermost court. In this connection, too, the itinerant divine gave the travelling doctor a very nasty fall. Meeting the latter at Turin, just as Smollett was about to turn his face homewards, in March 1765, Sterne wrote of him, in the famous Journey of 1768, thus: "The learned Smelfungus travelled from Boulogne to Paris, from Paris to Rome, and so on, but he set out with the spleen and jaundice, and every object he passed by was discoloured or distorted. He wrote an account of them, but 'twas nothing but the account of his miserable feelings." "I met Smelfungus," he wrote later on, "in the grand portico of the Pantheon--he was just coming out of it. ''Tis nothing but a huge cockpit,' said he--'I wish you had said nothing worse of the Venus de Medici,' replied I--for in passing through Florence, I had heard he had fallen foul upon the goddess, and used her worse than a common strumpet, without the least provocation in nature. I popp'd upon Smelfungus again at Turin, in his return home, and a sad tale of sorrowful adventures had he to tell, 'wherein he spoke of moving accidents by flood and field, and of the cannibals which each other eat, the Anthropophagi'; he had been flayed alive, and bedevil'd, and used worse than St. Bartholomew, at every stage he had come at. 'I'll tell it,' cried Smelfungus, 'to the world.' 'You had better tell it,' said I, 'to your physician.'" To counteract the ill effects of "spleen and jaundice" and exhibit the spirit of genteel humour and universal benevolence in which a man of sensibility encountered the discomforts of the road, the incorrigible parson Laurence brought out his own Sentimental Journey. Another effect of Smollett's book was to whet his own appetite for recording the adventures of the open road. So that but for Travels through France and Italy we might have had neither a Sentimental Journey nor a Humphry Clinker. If all the admirers of these two books would but bestir themselves and look into the matter, I am sure that Sterne's only too clever assault would be relegated to its proper place and assessed at its right value as a mere boutade. The borrowed contempt of Horace Walpole and the coterie of superficial dilettanti, from which Smollett's book has somehow never wholly recovered, could then easily be outflanked and the Travels might well be in reasonable expectation of coming by their own again. II In the meantime let us look a little more closely into the special and somewhat exceptional conditions under which the Travel Letters of Smollett were produced. Smollett, as we have seen, was one of the first professional men of all work in letters upon a considerable scale who subsisted entirely upon the earnings of his own pen. He had no extraneous means of support. He had neither patron, pension, property, nor endowment, inherited or acquired. Yet he took upon himself the burden of a large establishment, he spent money freely, and he prided himself upon the fact that he, Tobias Smollett, who came up to London without a stiver in his pocket, was in ten years' time in a position to enact the part of patron upon a considerable scale to the crowd of inferior denizens of Grub Street. Like most people whose social ambitions are in advance of their time, Smollett suffered considerably on account of these novel aspirations of his. In the present day he would have had his motor car and his house on Hindhead, a seat in Parliament and a brief from the Nation to boot as a Member for Humanity. Voltaire was the only figure in the eighteenth century even to approach such a flattering position, and he was for many years a refugee from his own land. Smollett was energetic and ambitious enough to start in rather a grand way, with a large house, a carriage, menservants, and the rest. His wife was a fine lady, a "Creole" beauty who had a small dot of her own; but, on the other hand, her income was very precarious, and she herself somewhat of a silly and an incapable in the eyes of Smollett's old Scotch friends. But to maintain such a position--to keep the bailiffs from the door from year's end to year's end--was a truly Herculean task in days when a newspaper "rate" of remuneration or a well-wearing copyright did not so much as exist, and when Reviews sweated their writers at the rate of a guinea per sheet of thirty-two pages. Smollett was continually having recourse to loans. He produced the eight (or six or seven) hundred a year he required by sheer hard writing, turning out his History of England, his Voltaire, and his Universal History by means of long spells of almost incessant labour at ruinous cost to his health. On the top of all this cruel compiling he undertook to run a Review (The Critical), a magazine (The British), and a weekly political organ (The Briton). A charge of defamation for a paragraph in the nature of what would now be considered a very mild and pertinent piece of public criticism against a faineant admiral led to imprisonment in the King's Bench Prison, plus a fine of £100. Then came a quarrel with an old friend, Wilkes--not the least vexatious result of that forlorn championship of Bute's government in The Briton. And finally, in part, obviously, as a consequence of all this nervous breakdown, a succession of severe catarrhs, premonitory in his case of consumption, the serious illness of the wife he adored, and the death of his darling, the "little Boss" of former years, now on the verge of womanhood. To a man of his extraordinarily strong affections such a series of ills was too overwhelming. He resolved to break up his establishment at Chelsea, and to seek a remedy in flight from present evils to a foreign residence. Dickens went to hibernate on the Riviera upon a somewhat similar pretext, though fortunately without the same cause, as far as his health was concerned. Now note another very characteristic feature of these Travel Letters. Smollett went abroad not for pleasure, but virtually of necessity. Not only were circumstances at home proving rather too much for him, but also, like Stevenson, he was specifically "ordered South" by his physicians, and he went with the deliberate intention of making as much money as possible out of his Travel papers. In his case he wrote long letters on the spot to his medical and other friends at home. When he got back in the summer of 1765 one of his first cares was to put the Letters together. It had always been his intention carefully to revise them for the press. But when he got back to London he found so many other tasks awaiting him that were so far more pressing, that this part of his purpose was but very imperfectly carried out. The Letters appeared pretty much as he wrote them. Their social and documentary value is thereby considerably enhanced, for they were nearly all written close down to the facts. The original intention had been to go to Montpellier, which was still, I suppose, the most popular health resort in Southern Europe. The peace of 1763 opened the way. And this brings us to another feature of distinction in regard to Smollett's Travels. Typical Briton, perfervid Protestant of Britain's most Protestant period, and insular enrage though he doubtless was, Smollett had knocked about the world a good deal and had also seen something of the continent of Europe. He was not prepared to see everything couleur de rose now. His was quite unlike the frame of mind of the ordinary holiday-seeker, who, partly from a voluntary optimism, and partly from the change of food and habit, the exhilaration caused by novel surroundings, and timidity at the unaccustomed sounds he hears in his ears, is determined to be pleased with everything. Very temperamental was Smollett, and his frame of mind at the time was that of one determined to be pleased with nothing. We know little enough about Smollett intime. Only the other day I learned that the majority of so-called Smollett portraits are not presentments of the novelist at all, but ingeniously altered plates of George Washington. An interesting confirmation of this is to be found in the recently published Letters of Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe to Robert Chambers. "Smollett wore black cloaths--a tall man--and extreamly handsome. No picture of him is known to be extant--all that have been foisted on the public as such his relations disclaim--this I know from my aunt Mrs. Smollett, who was the wife of his nephew, and resided with him at Bath." But one thing we do know, and in these same letters, if confirmation had been needed, we observe the statement repeated, namely, that Smollett was very peevish. A sardonic, satirical, and indeed decidedly gloomy mood or temper had become so habitual in him as to transform the man. Originally gay and debonnair, his native character had been so overlaid that when he first returned to Scotland in 1755 his own mother could not recognise him until he "gave over glooming" and put on his old bright smile. [A pleasant story of the Doctor's mother is given in the same Letters to R. Chambers (1904). She is described as an ill-natured-looking woman with a high nose, but not a bad temper, and very fond of the cards. One evening an Edinburgh bailie (who was a tallow chandler) paid her a visit. "Come awa', bailie," said she, "and tak' a trick at the cards." "Troth madam, I hae nae siller!" "Then let us play for a pound of candles."] His was certainly a nervous, irritable, and rather censorious temper. Like Mr. Brattle, in The Vicar of Bulhampton, he was thinking always of the evil things that had been done to him. With the pawky and philosophic Scots of his own day (Robertson, Hume, Adam Smith, and "Jupiter" Carlyle) he had little in common, but with the sour and mistrustful James Mill or the cross and querulous Carlyle of a later date he had, it seems to me, a good deal. What, however, we attribute in their case to bile or liver, a consecrated usage prescribes that we must, in the case of Smollett, accredit more particularly to the spleen. Whether dyspeptic or "splenetic," this was not the sort of man to see things through a veil of pleasant self-generated illusion. He felt under no obligation whatever to regard the Grand Tour as a privilege of social distinction, or its discomforts as things to be discreetly ignored in relating his experience to the stay-at-home public. He was not the sort of man that the Tourist Agencies of to-day would select to frame their advertisements. As an advocatus diaboli on the subject of Travel he would have done well enough. And yet we must not infer that the magic of travel is altogether eliminated from his pages. This is by no means the case: witness his intense enthusiasm at Nimes, on sight of the Maison Carree or the Pont du Gard; the passage describing his entry into the Eternal City; [Ours "was the road by which so many heroes returned with conquest to their country, by which so many kings were led captive to Rome, and by which the ambassadors of so many kingdoms and States approached the seat of Empire, to deprecate the wrath, to sollicit the friendship, or sue for the protection of the Roman people."] or the enviable account of the alfresco meals which the party discussed in their coach as described in Letter VIII. As to whether Smollett and his party of five were exceptionally unfortunate in their road-faring experiences must be left an open question at the tribunal of public opinion. In cold blood, in one of his later letters, he summarised his Continental experience after this wise: inns, cold, damp, dark, dismal, dirty; landlords equally disobliging and rapacious; servants awkward, sluttish, and slothful; postillions lazy, lounging, greedy, and impertinent. With this last class of delinquents after much experience he was bound to admit the following dilemma:--If you chide them for lingering, they will contrive to delay you the longer. If you chastise them with sword, cane, cudgel, or horsewhip (he defines the correctives, you may perceive, but leaves the expletives to our imagination) they will either disappear entirely, and leave you without resource, or they will find means to take vengeance by overturning your carriage. The only course remaining would be to allow oneself to become the dupe of imposition by tipping the postillions an amount slightly in excess of the authorized gratification. He admits that in England once, between the Devizes and Bristol, he found this plan productive of the happiest results. It was unfortunate that, upon this occasion, the lack of means or slenderness of margin for incidental expenses should have debarred him from having recourse to a similar expedient. For threepence a post more, as Smollett himself avows, he would probably have performed the journey with much greater pleasure and satisfaction. But the situation is instructive. It reveals to us the disadvantage under which the novelist was continually labouring, that of appearing to travel as an English Milord, en grand seigneur, and yet having at every point to do it "on the cheap." He avoided the common conveyance or diligence, and insisted on travelling post and in a berline; but he could not bring himself to exceed the five-sou pourboire for the postillions. He would have meat upon maigre days, yet objected to paying double for it. He held aloof from the thirty-sou table d'hote, and would have been content to pay three francs a head for a dinner a part, but his worst passions were roused when he was asked to pay not three, but four. Now Smollett himself was acutely conscious of the false position. He was by nature anything but a curmudgeon. On the contrary, he was, if I interpret him at all aright, a high-minded, open-hearted, generous type of man. Like a majority, perhaps, of the really open-handed he shared one trait with the closefisted and even with the very mean rich. He would rather give away a crown than be cheated of a farthing. Smollett himself had little of the traditional Scottish thriftiness about him, but the people among whom he was going--the Languedocians and Ligurians--were notorious for their nearness in money matters. The result of all this could hardly fail to exacerbate Smollett's mood and to aggravate the testiness which was due primarily to the bitterness of his struggle with the world, and, secondarily, to the complaints which that struggle engendered. One capital consequence, however, and one which specially concerns us, was that we get this unrivalled picture of the seamy side of foreign travel--a side rarely presented with anything like Smollett's skill to the student of the grand siecle of the Grand Tour. The rubs, the rods, the crosses of the road could, in fact, hardly be presented to us more graphically or magisterially than they are in some of these chapters. Like Prior, Fielding, Shenstone, and Dickens, Smollett was a connoisseur in inns and innkeepers. He knew good food and he knew good value, and he had a mighty keen eye for a rogue. There may, it is true, have been something in his manner which provoked them to exhibit their worst side to him. It is a common fate with angry men. The trials to which he was subjected were momentarily very severe, but, as we shall see in the event, they proved a highly salutary discipline to him. To sum up, then, Smollett's Travels were written hastily and vigorously by an expert man of letters. They were written ad vivum, as it were, not from worked-up notes or embellished recollections. They were written expressly for money down. They were written rather en noir than couleur de rose by an experienced, and, we might almost perhaps say, a disillusioned traveller, and not by a naif or a niais. The statement that they were to a certain extent the work of an invalid is, of course, true, and explains much. The majority of his correspondents were of the medical profession, all of them were members of a group with whom he was very intimate, and the letters were by his special direction to be passed round among them. [We do not know precisely who all these correspondents of Smollett were, but most of them were evidently doctors and among them, without a doubt, John Armstrong, William Hunter, George Macaulay, and above all John Moore, himself an authority on European travel, Governor on the Grand Tour of the Duke of Hamilton (Son of "the beautiful Duchess"), author of Zeluco, and father of the famous soldier. Smollett's old chum, Dr. W. Smellie, died 5th March 1763.] In the circumstances (bearing in mind that it was his original intention to prune the letters considerably before publication) it was only natural that he should say a good deal about the state of his health. His letters would have been unsatisfying to these good people had he not referred frequently and at some length to his spirits and to his symptoms, an improvement in which was the primary object of his journey and his two years' sojourn in the South. Readers who linger over the diary of Fielding's dropsy and Mrs. Fielding's toothache are inconsistent in denouncing the luxury of detail with which Smollett discusses the matter of his imposthume. What I claim for the present work is that, in the first place, to any one interested in Smollett's personality it supplies an unrivalled key. It is, moreover, the work of a scholar, an observer of human nature, and, by election, a satirist of no mean order. It gives us some characteristic social vignettes, some portraits of the road of an unsurpassed freshness and clearness. It contains some historical and geographical observations worthy of one of the shrewdest and most sagacious publicists of the day. It is interesting to the etymologist for the important share it has taken in naturalising useful foreign words into our speech. It includes (as we shall have occasion to observe) a respectable quantum of wisdom fit to become proverbial, and several passages of admirable literary quality. In point of date (1763-65) it is fortunate, for the writer just escaped being one of a crowd. On the whole, I maintain that it is more than equal in interest to the Journey to the Hebrides, and that it deserves a very considerable proportion of the praise that has hitherto been lavished too indiscriminately upon the Voyage to Lisbon. On the force of this claim the reader is invited to constitute himself judge after a fair perusal of the following pages. I shall attempt only to point the way to a satisfactory verdict, no longer in the spirit of an advocate, but by means of a few illustrations and, more occasionally, amplifications of what Smollett has to tell us. III As was the case with Fielding many years earlier, Smollett was almost broken down with sedentary toil, when early in June 1763 with his wife, two young ladies ("the two girls") to whom she acted as chaperon, and a faithful servant of twelve years' standing, who in the spirit of a Scots retainer of the olden time refused to leave his master (a good testimonial this, by the way, to a temper usually accredited with such a splenetic sourness), he crossed the straits of Dover to see what a change of climate and surroundings could do for him. On other grounds than those of health he was glad to shake the dust of Britain from his feet. He speaks himself of being traduced by malice, persecuted by faction, abandoned by false patrons, complaints which will remind the reader, perhaps, of George Borrow's "Jeremiad," to the effect that he had been beslavered by the venomous foam of every sycophantic lacquey and unscrupulous renegade in the three kingdoms. But Smollett's griefs were more serious than what an unkind reviewer could inflict. He had been fined and imprisoned for defamation. He had been grossly caricatured as a creature of Bute, the North British favourite of George III., whose tenure of the premiership occasioned riots and almost excited a revolution in the metropolis. Yet after incurring all this unpopularity at a time when the populace of London was more inflamed against Scotsmen than it has ever been before or since, and having laboured severely at a paper in the ministerial interest and thereby aroused the enmity of his old friend John Wilkes, Smollett had been unceremoniously thrown over by his own chief, Lord Bute, on the ground that his paper did more to invite attack than to repel it. Lastly, he and his wife had suffered a cruel bereavement in the loss of their only child, and it was partly to supply a change from the scene of this abiding sorrow, that the present journey was undertaken. The first stages and incidents of the expedition were not exactly propitious. The Dover Road was a byword for its charges; the Via Alba might have been paved with the silver wrung from reluctant and indignant passengers. Smollett characterized the chambers as cold and comfortless, the beds as "paultry" (with "frowsy," a favourite word), the cookery as execrable, wine poison, attendance bad, publicans insolent, and bills extortion, concluding with the grand climax that there was not a drop of tolerable malt liquor to be had from London to Dover. Smollett finds a good deal to be said for the designation of "a den of thieves" as applied to that famous port (where, as a German lady of much later date once complained, they "boot ze Bible in ze bedroom, but ze devil in ze bill"), and he grizzles lamentably over the seven guineas, apart from extras, which he had to pay for transport in a Folkestone cutter to Boulogne Mouth. Having once arrived at Boulogne, Smollett settled down regularly to his work as descriptive reporter, and the letters that he wrote to his friendly circle at home fall naturally into four groups. The first Letters from II. to V. describe with Hogarthian point, prejudice and pungency, the town and people of Boulogne. The second group, Letters VI.-XII., deal with the journey from Boulogne to Nice by way of Paris, Lyon, Nimes, and Montpellier. The third group, Letters XIII.-XXIV., is devoted to a more detailed and particular delineation of Nice and the Nicois. The fourth, Letters XXV.-XLI., describes the Italian expedition and the return journey to Boulogne en route for England, where the party arrive safe home in July 1765. Smollett's account of Boulogne is excellent reading, it forms an apt introduction to the narrative of his journey, it familiarises us with the milieu, and reveals to us in Smollett a man of experience who is both resolute and capable of getting below the surface of things. An English possession for a short period in the reign of the Great Harry, Boulogne has rarely been less in touch with England than it was at the time of Smollett's visit. Even then, however, there were three small colonies, respectively, of English nuns, English Jesuits, and English Jacobites. Apart from these and the English girls in French seminaries it was estimated ten years after Smollett's sojourn there that there were twenty-four English families in residence. The locality has of course always been a haunting place for the wandering tribes of English. Many well-known men have lived or died here both native and English. Adam Smith must have been there very soon after Smollett. So must Dr. John Moore and Charles Churchill, one of the enemies provoked by the Briton, who went to Boulogne to meet his friend Wilkes and died there in 1764. Philip Thicknesse the traveller and friend of Gainsborough died there in 1770. After long search for a place to end his days in Thomas Campbell bought a house in Boulogne and died there, a few months later, in 1844. The house is still to be seen, Rue St. Jean, within the old walls; it has undergone no change, and in 1900 a marble tablet was put up to record the fact that Campbell lived and died there. The other founder of the University of London, Brougham, by a singular coincidence was also closely associated with Boulogne. [Among the occupants of the English cemetery will be found the names of Sir Harris Nicolas, Basil Montagu, Smithson Pennant, Sir William Ouseley, Sir William Hamilton, and Sir C. M. Carmichael. And among other literary celebrities connected with the place, apart from Dickens (who gave his impressions of the place in Household Words, November 1854) we should include in a brief list, Charles Lever, Horace Smith, Wilkie Collins, Mrs. Henry Wood, Professor York Powell, the Marquis of Steyne (Lord Seymour), Mrs. Jordan, Clark Russell, and Sir Conan Doyle. There are also memorable associations with Lola Montes, Heinrich Heine, Becky Sharpe, and above all Colonel Newcome. My first care in the place was to discover the rampart where the Colonel used to parade with little Clive. Among the native luminaries are Daunou, Duchenne de Boulogne, one of the foremost physiologists of the last century, an immediate predecessor of Charcot in knowledge of the nervous system, Aug. Mariette, the Egyptologist, Aug. Angellier, the biographer of Burns, Sainte-Beuve, Prof. Morel, and "credibly," Godfrey de Bouillon, of whom Charles Lamb wrote "poor old Godfrey, he must be getting very old now." The great Lesage died here in 1747.] The antiquaries still dispute about Gessoriacum, Godfrey de Bouillon, and Charlemagne's Tour. Smollett is only fair in justifying for the town, the older portions of which have a strong medieval suggestion, a standard of comparison slightly more distinguished than Wapping. He never lets us forget that he is a scholar of antiquity, a man of education and a speculative philosopher. Hence his references to Celsus and Hippocrates and his ingenious etymologies of wheatear and samphire, more ingenious in the second case than sound. Smollett's field of observation had been wide and his fund of exact information was unusually large. At Edinburgh he had studied medicine under Monro and John Gordon, in company with such able and distinguished men as William Hunter, Cullen, Pitcairn, Gregory, and Armstrong--and the two last mentioned were among his present correspondents. As naval surgeon at Carthagena he had undergone experience such as few literary men can claim, and subsequently as compiler, reviewer, party journalist, historian, translator, statistician, and lexicographer, he had gained an amount of miscellaneous information such as falls to the lot of very few minds of his order of intelligence. He had recently directed the compilation of a large Universal Geography or Gazetteer, the Carton or Vivien de St. Martin if those days--hence his glib references to the manners and customs of Laplanders, Caffres, Kamskatchans, and other recondite types of breeding. His imaginative faculty was under the control of an exceptionally strong and retentive memory. One may venture to say, indeed, without danger of exaggeration that his testimonials as regards habitual accuracy of statement have seldom been exceeded. Despite the doctor's unflattering portraits of Frenchmen, M. Babeau admits that his book is one written by an observer of facts, and a man whose statements, whenever they can be tested, are for the most part "singularly exact." Mr. W. J. Prouse, whose knowledge of the Riviera district is perhaps almost unequalled out of France, makes this very remarkable statement. "After reading all that has been written by very clever people about Nice in modern times, one would probably find that for exact precision of statement, Smollett was still the most trustworthy guide," a view which is strikingly borne out by Mr. E. Schuyler, who further points out Smollett's shrewd foresight in regard to the possibilities of the Cornice road, and of Cannes and San Remo as sanatoria." Frankly there is nothing to be seen which he does not recognise." And even higher testimonies have been paid to Smollett's topographical accuracy by recent historians of Nice and its neighbourhood. The value which Smollett put upon accuracy in the smallest matters of detail is evinced by the corrections which he made in the margin of a copy of the 1766 edition of the Travels. These corrections, which are all in Smollett's own and unmistakably neat handwriting, may be divided into four categories. In the first place come a number of verbal emendations. Phrases are turned, inverted and improved by the skilful "twist of the pen" which becomes a second nature to the trained corrector of proofs; there are moreover a few topographical corrigenda, suggested by an improved knowledge of the localities, mostly in the neighbourhood of Pisa and Leghorn, where there is no doubt that these corrections were made upon the occasion of Smollett's second visit to Italy in 1770. [Some not unimportant errata were overlooked. Thus Smollett's representation of the droit d'aubaine as a monstrous and intolerable grievance is of course an exaggeration. (See Sentimental Journey; J. Hill Burton, The Scot Abroad, 1881, p. 135; and Luchaire, Instit. de France.) On his homeward journey he indicates that he travelled from Beaune to Chalons and so by way of Auxerre to Dijon. The right order is Chalons, Beaune, Dijon, Auxerre. As further examples of the zeal with which Smollett regarded exactitude in the record of facts we have his diurnal register of weather during his stay at Nice and the picture of him scrupulously measuring the ruins at Cimiez with packthread.] In the second place come a number of English renderings of the citations from Latin, French, and Italian authors. Most of these from the Latin are examples of Smollett's own skill in English verse making. Thirdly come one or two significant admissions of overboldness in matters of criticism, as where he retracts his censure of Raphael's Parnassus in Letter XXXIII. Fourthly, and these are of the greatest importance, come some very interesting additional notes upon the buildings of Pisa, upon Sir John Hawkwood's tomb at Florence, and upon the congenial though recondite subject of antique Roman hygiene. [Cf. the Dinner in the manner of the Ancients in Peregrine Pickle, (xliv.) and Letters IX. to XL in Humphry Clinker.] After Smollett's death his books were for the most part sold for the benefit of his widow. No use was made of his corrigenda. For twenty years or so the Travels were esteemed and referred to, but as time went on, owing to the sneers of the fine gentlemen of letters, such as Walpole and Sterne, they were by degrees disparaged and fell more or less into neglect. They were reprinted, it is true, either in collective editions of Smollett or in various collections of travels; [For instance in Baldwin's edition of 1778; in the 17th vol. of Mayor's Collection of Voyages and Travels, published by Richard Phillips in twenty-eight vols., 1809; and in an abbreviated form in John Hamilton Moore's New and Complete Collection of Voyages and Travels (folio, Vol. 11. 938-970).] but they were not edited with any care, and as is inevitable in such cases errors crept in, blunders were repeated, and the text slightly but gradually deteriorated. In the last century Smollett's own copy of the Travels bearing the manuscript corrections that he had made in 1770, was discovered in the possession of the Telfer family and eventually came into the British Museum. The second volume, which affords admirable specimens of Smollett's neatly written marginalia, has been exhibited in a show-case in the King's Library. The corrections that Smollett purposed to make in the Travels are now for the second time embodied in a printed edition of the text. At the same time the text has been collated with the original edition of 1766, and the whole has been carefully revised. The old spelling has been, as far as possible, restored. Smollett was punctilious in such matters, and what with his histories, his translations, his periodicals, and his other compilations, he probably revised more proof-matter for press than any other writer of his time. His practice as regards orthography is, therefore, of some interest as representing what was in all probability deemed to be the most enlightened convention of the day. To return now to the Doctor's immediate contemplation of Boulogne, a city described in the Itineraries as containing rien de remarquable. The story of the Capuchin [On page 21. A Capuchin of the same stripe is in Pickle, ch. Ill. sq.] is very racy of Smollett, while the vignette of the shepherd at the beginning of Letter V. affords a first-rate illustration of his terseness. Appreciate the keen and minute observation concentrated into the pages that follow, [Especially on p. 34 to p. 40.] commencing with the shrewd and economic remarks upon smuggling, and ending with the lively description of a Boulonnais banquet, very amusing, very French, very life-like, and very Smollettian. In Letter V. the Doctor again is very much himself. A little provocation and he bristles and stabs all round. He mounts the hygienic horse and proceeds from the lack of implements of cleanliness to the lack of common decency, and "high flavoured instances, at which even a native of Edinburgh would stop his nose." [This recalls Johnson's first walk up the High Street, Edinburgh, on Bozzy's arm. "It was a dusky night: I could not prevent his being assailed by the evening effluvia of Edinburgh. . . . As we marched along he grumbled in my ear, 'I smell you in the dark!'"] And then lest the southrons should escape we have a reference to the "beastly habit of drinking from a tankard in which perhaps a dozen filthy mouths have slabbered as is the custom in England." With all his coarsenesses this blunt Scot was a pioneer and fugleman of the niceties. Between times most nations are gibbetted in this slashing epistle. The ingenious boasting of the French is well hit off in the observation of the chevalier that the English doubtless drank every day to the health of the Marquise de Pompadour. The implication reminded Smollett of a narrow escape from a duello (an institution he reprobates with the utmost trenchancy in this book) at Ghent in 1749 with a Frenchman who affirmed that Marlborough's battles were purposely lost by the French generals in order to mortify Mme. de Maintenon. Two incidents of some importance to Smollett occurred during the three months' sojourn at Boulogne. Through the intervention of the English Ambassador at Paris (the Earl of Hertford) he got back his books, which had been impounded by the Customs as likely to contain matter prejudicial to the state or religion of France, and had them sent south by shipboard to Bordeaux. Secondly, he encountered General Paterson, a friendly Scot in the Sardinian service, who confirmed what an English physician had told Smollett to the effect that the climate of Nice was infinitely preferable to that of Montpellier "with respect to disorders of the breast." Smollett now hires a berline and four horses for fourteen louis, and sets out with rather a heavy heart for Paris. It is problematic, he assures his good friend Dr. Moore, whether he will ever return. "My health is very precarious." IV The rapid journey to Paris by way of Montreuil, Amiens, and Clermont, about one hundred and fifty-six miles from Boulogne, the last thirty-six over a paved road, was favourable to superficial observation and the normal corollary of epigram. Smollett was much impressed by the mortifying indifference of the French innkeepers to their clients. "It is a very odd contrast between France and England. In the former all the people are complaisant but the publicans; in the latter there is hardly any complaisance but among the publicans." [In regard to two exceptional instances of politeness on the part of innkeepers, Smollett attributes one case to dementia, the other, at Lerici, to mental shock, caused by a recent earthquake.] Idleness and dissipation confront the traveller, not such a good judge, perhaps, as was Arthur Young four-and-twenty years later. "Every object seems to have shrunk in its dimensions since I was last in Paris." Smollett was an older man by fifteen years since he visited the French capital in the first flush of his success as an author. The dirt and gloom of French apartments, even at Versailles, offend his English standard of comfort. "After all, it is in England only where we must look for cheerful apartments, gay furniture, neatness, and convenience. There is a strange incongruity in the French genius. With all their volatility, prattle, and fondness for bons mots they delight in a species of drawling, melancholy, church music. Their most favourite dramatic pieces are almost without incident, and the dialogue of their comedies consists of moral insipid apophthegms, entirely destitute of wit or repartee." While amusing himself with the sights of Paris, Smollett drew up that caustic delineation of the French character which as a study in calculated depreciation has rarely been surpassed. He conceives the Frenchman entirely as a petit-maitre, and his view, though far removed from Chesterfield's, is not incompatible with that of many of his cleverest contemporaries, including Sterne. He conceives of the typical Frenchman as regulating his life in accordance with the claims of impertinent curiosity and foppery, gallantry and gluttony. Thus: "If a Frenchman is capable of real friendship, it must certainly be the most disagreeable present he can possibly make to a man of a true English character. You know, madam, we are naturally taciturn, soon tired of impertinence, and much subject to fits of disgust. Your French friend intrudes upon you at all hours; he stuns you with his loquacity; he teases you with impertinent questions about your domestic and private affairs; he attempts to meddle in all your concerns, and forces his advice upon you with the most unwearied importunity; he asks the price of everything you wear, and, so sure as you tell him, undervalues it without hesitation; he affirms it is in a bad taste, ill contrived, ill made; that you have been imposed upon both with respect to the fashion and the price; that the marquis of this, or the countess of that, has one that is perfectly elegant, quite in the bon ton, and yet it cost her little more than you gave for a thing that nobody would wear. "If a Frenchman is admitted into your family, and distinguished by repeated marks of your friendship and regard, the first return he makes for your civilities is to make love to your wife, if she is handsome; if not, to your sister, or daughter, or niece. If he suffers a repulse from your wife, or attempts in vain to debauch your sister, or your daughter, or your niece, he will, rather than not play the traitor with his gallantry, make his addresses to your grandmother; and ten to one but in one shape or another he will find means to ruin the peace of a family in which he has been so kindly entertained. What he cannot accomplish by dint of compliment and personal attendance, he will endeavour to effect by reinforcing these with billets-doux, songs, and verses, of which he always makes a provision for such purposes. If he is detected in these efforts of treachery, and reproached with his ingratitude, he impudently declares that what he had done was no more than simple gallantry, considered in France as an indispensable duty on every man who pretended to good breeding. Nay, he will even affirm that his endeavours to corrupt your wife, or deflower your daughter, were the most genuine proofs he could give of his particular regard for your family. "If there were five hundred dishes at table, a Frenchman will eat of all of them, and then complain he has no appetite--this I have several times remarked. A friend of mine gained a considerable wager upon an experiment of this kind; the petit-maitre ate of fourteen different plates, besides the dessert, then disparaged the cook, declaring he was no better than a marmiton, or turnspit." The gross unfairness, no less than the consummate cleverness, of this caricature compels us to remember that this was written in the most insular period of our manners, and during a brief lull in a century of almost incessant mutual hostility between the two nations. Aristocrats like Walpole, Gibbon, and Chesterfield could regard France from a cosmopolitan point of view, as leading the comite of nations. But to sturdy and true-born patriots, such as Hogarth and Smollett, reciprocal politeness appeared as grotesque as an exchange of amenities would be between a cormorant and an ape. Consequently, it was no doubt with a sense of positive relief to his feelings that Smollett could bring himself to sum up the whole matter thus. "A Frenchman lays out his whole revenue upon taudry suits of cloaths, or in furnishing a magnificent repas of fifty or a hundred dishes, one-half of which are not eatable or intended to be eaten. His wardrobe goes to the fripier, his dishes to the dogs, and himself to the devil." These trenchant passages were written partly, it may be imagined, to suit the English taste of the day. In that object they must have succeeded, for they were frequently transcribed into contemporary periodicals. In extenuation of Smollett's honesty of purpose, however, it may be urged that he was always a thoroughgoing patriot, [Witness his violently anti-French play, the Reprisal of 1757.] and that, coming from a Calvinistic country where a measure of Tartufism was a necessary condition of respectability, he reproduces the common English error of ignoring how apt a Frenchman is to conceal a number of his best qualities. Two other considerations deserve attention. The race-portrait was in Smollett's day at the very height of its disreputable reign. Secondly, we must remember how very profoundly French character has been modified since 1763, and more especially in consequence of the cataclysms of 1789 and 1870. Smollett's vis comica is conspicuous in the account of the coiffure of the period and of the superstitious reverence which a Frenchman of that day paid to his hair. In tracing the origin of this superstition he exhibits casually his historical learning. The crine profuso and barba demissa of the reges crinitos, as the Merovingians were called, are often referred to by ancient chroniclers. Long hair was identified with right of succession, as a mark of royal race, and the maintenance of ancient tradition. A tondu signified a slave, and even under the Carolingians to shave a prince meant to affirm his exclusion from the succession. V A general improvement in English roads, roadside inns, and methods of conveyance commenced about 1715. The continental roads lagged behind, until when Arthur Young wrote in 1788-89 they had got badly into arrears. The pace of locomotion between Rome and England changed very little in effect from the days of Julius Caesar to those of George III. It has been said with point that Trajan and Sir Robert Peel, travelling both at their utmost speed achieved the distance between Rome and London in an almost precisely similar space of time. Smollett decided to travel post between Paris and Lyons, and he found that the journey lasted full five days and cost upwards of thirty guineas. [One of the earliest printed road books in existence gives the posts between Paris and Lyons. This tiny duodecimo, dated 1500, and more than worth its weight in gold has just been acquired by the British Museum. On the old Roman routes, see Arnold's Lectures on Modern History, 1842.] Of roads there was a choice between two. The shorter route by Nevers and Moulins amounted to just about three hundred English miles. The longer route by Auxerre and Dijon, which Smollett preferred extended to three hundred and thirty miles. The two roads diverged after passing Fontainebleau, the shorter by Nemours and the longer by Moret. The first road was the smoother, but apart from the chance of seeing the Vendange the route de Burgoyne was far the more picturesque. Smollett's portraiture of the peasantry in the less cultivated regions prepares the mind for Young's famous description of those "gaunt emblems of famine." In Burgundy the Doctor says, "I saw a peasant ploughing the ground with a jackass, a lean cow, and a he-goat yoked together." His vignette of the fantastic petit-maitre at Sens, and his own abominable rudeness, is worthy of the master hand that drew the poor debtor Jackson in the Marshalsea in Roderick Random. His frank avowal of ill temper at the time deprives our entertainment of the unamiable tinge of which it would otherwise have partaken. "The truth is, I was that day more than usually peevish, from the bad weather as well as from the dread of a fit of asthma, with which I was threatened. And I daresay my appearance seemed as uncouth to him as his travelling dress appeared to me. I had a grey, mourning frock under a wide greatcoat, a bob-wig without powder, a very large laced hat, and a meagre, wrinkled, discontented countenance." From Lyons the traveller secured a return berline going back to Avignon with three mules and a voiturier named Joseph. Joseph, though he turned out to be an ex-criminal, proved himself the one Frenchman upon whose fidelity and good service Smollett could look back with unfeigned satisfaction. The sight of a skeleton dangling from a gibbet near Valence surprised from this droll knave an ejaculation and a story, from which it appeared only too evident that he had been first the comrade and then the executioner of one of the most notorious brigands of the century. The story as told by Smollett does not wholly agree with the best authenticated particulars. The Dick Turpin of eighteenth century France, Mandrin has engendered almost as many fables as his English congener. [See Maignien's Bibliographie des Ecrits relatifs a Mandrin.] As far as I have been able to discover, the great freebooter was born at St. Etienne in May 1724. His father having been killed in a coining affair, Mandrin swore to revenge him. He deserted from the army accordingly, and got together a gang of contrebandiers, at the head of which his career in Savoy and Dauphine almost resembles that of one of the famous guerilla chieftains described in Hardman's Peninsular Scenes and Sketches. Captured eventually, owing to the treachery of a comrade, he was put to death on the wheel at Valence on 26th May 1755. Five comrades were thrown into jail with him; and one of these obtained his pardon on condition of acting as Mandrin's executioner. Alas, poor Joseph! Three experiences Smollett had at this season which may well fall to the lot of road-farers in France right down to the present day. He was poisoned with garlic, surfeited with demi-roasted small birds, and astonished at the solid fare of the poorest looking travellers. The summer weather, romantic scenery, and occasional picnics, which Smollett would have liked to repeat every summer under the arches of the Pont du Gard--the monument of antiquity which of all, excepting only the Maison Carree at Nimes, most excited his enthusiastic admiration, all contributed to put him into an abnormally cheerful and convalescent humour. . . . Smollett now bent his steps southwards to Montpellier. His baggage had gone in advance. He was uncertain as yet whether to make Montpellier or Nice his headquarters in the South. Like Toulouse and Tours, and Turin, Montpellier was for a period a Mecca to English health and pleasure seekers abroad. A city of no great antiquity, but celebrated from the twelfth century for its schools of Law and Physic, it had been incorporated definitely with France since 1382, and its name recurs in French history both as the home of famous men in great number and as, before and after the brief pre-eminence of La Rochelle, the rival of Nimes as capital of Protestantism in the South. Evelyn, Burnet, the two Youngs, Edward and Arthur, and Sterne have all left us an impression of the city. Prevented by snow from crossing the Mont Cenis, John Locke spent two winters there in the days of Charles II. (1675-77), and may have pondered a good many of the problems of Toleration on a soil under which the heated lava of religious strife was still unmistakeable. And Smollett must almost have jostled en route against the celebrated author of The Wealth of Nations, who set out with his pupil for Toulouse in February 1764. A letter to Hume speaks of the number of English in the neighbourhood just a month later. Lomenie de Brienne was then in residence as archbishop. In the following November, Adam Smith and his charge paid a visit to Montpellier to witness a pageant and memorial, as it was supposed, of a freedom that was gone for ever, the opening of the States of Languedoc. Antiquaries and philosophers went to moralise on the spectacle in the spirit in which Freeman went to Andorra, Byron to the site of Troy, or De Tocqueville to America. It was there that the great economist met Horne Tooke. Smollett's more practical and immediate object in making this pilgrimage was to interview the great lung specialist, known locally to his admiring compatriots as the Boerhaave of Montpellier, Dr. Fizes. The medical school of Montpellier was much in evidence during the third quarter of the eighteenth century, and for the history of its various branches there are extant numerous Memoires pour Servir, by Prunelle, Astruc, and others. Smollett was only just in time to consult the reigning oracle, for the "illustrious" Dr. Fizes died in the following year. He gives us a very unfavourable picture of this "great lanthorn of medicine," who, notwithstanding his prodigious age, his stoop, and his wealth, could still scramble up two pairs for a fee of six livres. More than is the case with most medical patients, however, should we suspect Smollett of being unduly captious. The point as to how far his sketch of the French doctor and his diagnosis was a true one, and how far a mere caricature, due to ill health and prejudice, has always piqued my curiosity. But how to resolve a question involving so many problems not of ordinary therapeutic but of historical medicine! In this difficulty I bethought me most fortunately of consulting an authority probably without a rival in this special branch of medical history, Dr. Norman Moore, who with his accustomed generosity has given me the following most instructive diagnosis of the whole situation. "I have read Smollett's account of his illness as it appears in several passages in his travels and in the statement which he drew up for Professor 'F.' at Montpellier. "Smollett speaks of his pulmonic disorder, his 'asthmatical disorder,' and uses other expressions which show that his lungs were affected. In his statement he mentions that he has cough, shortness of breath, wasting, a purulent expectoration, loss of appetite at times, loss of strength, fever, a rapid pulse, intervals of slight improvement and subsequent exacerbations. "This shortness of breath, he says, has steadily increased. This group of symptoms makes it certain that he had tuberculosis of the lungs, in other words, was slowly progressing in consumption. "His darting pains in his side were due to the pleurisy which always occurs in such an illness. "His account shows also the absence of hopelessness which is a characteristic state of mind in patients with pulmonary tuberculosis. "I do not think that the opinion of the Montpellier professor deserves Smollett's condemnation. It seems to me both careful and sensible and contains all the knowledge of its time. Smollett, with an inconsistency not uncommon in patients who feel that they have a serious disease, would not go in person to the Professor, for he felt that from his appearance the Professor would be sure to tell him he had consumption. He half hoped for some other view of the written case in spite of its explicit statements, and when Professor F-- wrote that the patient had tubercles in his lungs, this was displeasing to poor Smollett, who had hoped against hope to receive--some other opinion than the only possible one, viz., that he undoubtedly had a consumption certain to prove fatal." The cruel truth was not to be evaded. Smollett had tuberculosis, though not probably of the most virulent kind, as he managed to survive another seven years, and those for the most part years of unremitting labour. He probably gained much by substituting Nice for Montpellier as a place to winter in, for although the climate of Montpellier is clear and bright in the highest degree, the cold is both piercing and treacherous. Days are frequent during the winter in which one may stand warmly wrapped in the brilliant sun and feel the protection of a greatcoat no more than that of a piece of gauze against the icy and penetrating blast that comes from "the roof of France." Unable to take the direct route by Arles as at present, the eastward-bound traveller from Montpellier in 1764 had to make a northerly detour. The first stone bridge up the Rhone was at Avignon, but there was a bridge of boats connecting Beaucaire with Tarascon. Thence, in no very placable mood, Smollett set out in mid-November by way of Orgon [Aix], Brignolles and le Muy, striking the Mediterranean at Frejus. En route he was inveigled into a controversy of unwonted bitterness with an innkeeper at le Muy. The scene is conjured up for us with an almost disconcerting actuality; no single detail of the author's discomfiture is omitted. The episode is post-Flaubertian in its impersonal detachment, or, as Coleridge first said, "aloofness." On crossing the Var, the sunny climate, the romantic outline of the Esterelles, the charms of the "neat village" of Cannes, and the first prospect of Nice began gradually and happily to effect a slight mitigation in our patient's humour. Smollett was indubitably one of the pioneers of the Promenade des Anglais. Long before the days of "Dr. Antonio" or Lord Brougham, he described for his countrymen the almost incredible dolcezza of the sunlit coast from Antibes to Lerici. But how much better than the barren triumph of being the unconscious fugleman of so glittering a popularity must have been the sense of being one of the first that ever burst from our rude island upon that secluded little Piedmontese town, as it then was, of not above twelve thousand souls, with its wonderful situation, noble perspective and unparalleled climate. Well might our travel-tost doctor exclaim, "When I stand on the rampart and look around I can scarce help thinking myself enchanted." It was truly a garden of Armida for a native of one of the dampest corners of North Britain. "Forty or fifty years ago, before the great transformation took place on the French Riviera, when Nizza, Villafranca, and Mentone were antique Italian towns, and when it was one of the eccentricities of Lord Brougham, to like Cannes, all that sea-board was a delightful land. Only a hundred years ago Arthur Young had trouble to get an old woman and a donkey to carry his portmanteau from Cannes to Antibes. I can myself remember Cannes in 1853, a small fishing village with a quiet beach, and Mentone, a walled town with mediaeval gates and a castle, a few humble villas and the old Posta to give supper to any passing traveller. It was one of the loveliest bits of Italy, and the road from Nizza to Genoa was one long procession for four days of glorious scenery, historic remnants, Italian colour, and picturesque ports. From the Esterelles to San Remo this has all been ruined by the horde of northern barbarians who have made a sort of Trouville, Brighton, or Biarritz, with American hotels and Parisian boulevards on every headland and bay. First came the half underground railway, a long tunnel with lucid intervals, which destroyed the road by blocking up its finest views and making it practically useless. Then miles of unsightly caravanserais high walls, pompous villas, and Parisian grandes rues crushed out every trace of Italy, of history, and pictorial charm." So writes Mr. Frederic Harrison of this delectable coast, [In the Daily Chronicle, 15th March 1898.] as it was, at a period within his own recollection--a period at which it is hardly fanciful to suppose men living who might just have remembered Smollett, as he was in his last days, when he returned to die on the Riviera di Levante in the autumn of 1771. Travel had then still some of the elements of romance. Rapidity has changed all that. The trouble is that although we can transport our bodies so much more rapidly than Smollett could, our understanding travels at the same old pace as before. And in the meantime railway and tourist agencies have made of modern travel a kind of mental postcard album, with grand hotels on one side, hotel menus on the other, and a faint aroma of continental trains haunting, between the leaves as it were. Our real knowledge is still limited to the country we have walked over, and we must not approach the country we would appreciate faster than a man may drive a horse or propel a bicycle; or we shall lose the all-important sense of artistic approach. Even to cross the channel by time-table is fatal to that romantic spirit (indispensable to the true magic of travel) which a slow adjustment of the mind to a new social atmosphere and a new historical environment alone can induce. Ruskin, the last exponent of the Grand Tour, said truly that the benefit of travel varies inversely in proportion to its speed. The cheap rapidity which has made our villes de plaisir and cotes d'azur what they are, has made unwieldy boroughs of suburban villages, and what the rail has done for a radius of a dozen miles, the motor is rapidly doing for one of a score. So are we sped! But we are to discuss not the psychology of travel, but the immediate causes and circumstances of Smollett's arrival upon the territory of Nice. VI Smollett did not interpret the ground-plan of the history of Nice particularly well. Its colonisation from Massilia, its long connection with Provence, its occupation by Saracens, its stormy connection with the house of Anjou, and its close fidelity to the house of Savoy made no appeal to his admiration. The most important event in its recent history, no doubt, was the capture of the city by the French under Catinat in 1706 (Louis XIV. being especially exasperated against what he regarded as the treachery of Victor Amadeus), and the razing to the ground of its famous citadel. The city henceforth lost a good deal of its civic dignity, and its morale was conspicuously impaired. In the war of the Austrian succession an English fleet under Admiral Matthews was told off to defend the territory of the Nicois against the attentions of Toulon. This was the first close contact experienced between England and Nice, but the impressions formed were mutually favourable. The inhabitants were enthusiastic about the unaccustomed English plan of paying in full for all supplies demanded. The British officers were no less delighted with the climate of Nice, the fame of which they carried to their northern homes. It was both directly and indirectly through one of these officers that the claims of Nice as a sanatorium came to be put so plainly before Smollett. [Losing its prestige as a ville forte, Nice was henceforth rapidly to gain the new character of a ville de plaisir. In 1763, says one of the city's historians, Smollett, the famous historian and novelist, visited Nice. "Arriving here shattered in health and depressed in spirits, under the genial influence of the climate he soon found himself a new man. His notes on the country, its gardens, its orange groves, its climate without a winter, are pleasant and just and would seem to have been written yesterday instead of more than a hundred years ago. . . . His memory is preserved in the street nomenclature of the place; one of the thoroughfares still bears the appellation of Rue Smollett." (James Nash, The Guide to Nice, 1884, p. 110.)] Among other celebrated residents at Nice during the period of Smollett's visit were Edward Augustus, Duke of York, the brother of George III., who died at Monaco a few years later, and Andre Massena, a native of the city, then a lad of six. Before he left Montpellier Smollett indulged in two more seemingly irresistible tirades against French folly: one against their persistent hero-worship of such a stuffed doll as Louis le Grand, and the second in ridicule of the immemorial French panacea, a bouillon. Now he gets to Nice he feels a return of the craving to take a hand's turn at depreciatory satire upon the nation of which a contemporary hand was just tracing the deservedly better-known delineation, commencing Gay sprightly land of mirth and social ease, Pleas'd with thyself, whom all the world can please. . . . Such inveteracy (like Dr. Johnson's against Swift) was not unnaturally suspected by friends in England of having some personal motive. In his fifteenth letter home, therefore, Smollett is assiduous in disclaiming anything of the kind. He begins by attempting an amende honorable, but before he has got well away from his exordium he insensibly and most characteristically diverges into the more congenial path of censure, and expands indeed into one of his most eloquent passages--a disquisition upon the French punctilio (conceived upon lines somewhat similar to Mercutio's address to Benvolio), to which is appended a satire on the duello as practised in France, which glows and burns with a radiation of good sense, racy of Smollett at his best. To eighteenth century lovers the discussion on duelling will recall similar talks between Boswell and Johnson, or that between the lieutenant and Tom in the Seventh Book of Tom Jones, but, more particularly, the sermon delivered by Johnson on this subject a propos of General Oglethorpe's story of how he avoided a duel with Prince Eugene in 1716. "We were sitting in company at table, whence the Prince took up a glass of wine and by a fillip made some of it fly in Oglethorpe's face. Here was a nice dilemma. To have challenged him instantly might have fixed a quarrelsome character upon the young soldier: to have taken no notice of it might have been counted as cowardice. Oglethorpe, therefore, keeping his eye on the Prince, and smiling all the time, as if he took what His Highness had done in jest, said, "Mon Prince" (I forget the French words he used), "that's a good joke; but we do it much better in England," and threw a whole glass of wine in the Prince's face. An old general who sat by said, "Il a bien fait, mon Prince, vous l'avez commence," and thus all ended in good humour." In Letter XIII. Smollett settles down to give his correspondents a detailed description of the territory and people of Nice. At one time it was his intention to essay yet another branch of authorship and to produce a monograph on the natural history, antiquities, and topography of the town as the capital of this still unfamiliar littoral; with the late-born modesty of experience, however, he recoils from a task to which he does not feel his opportunities altogether adequate. [See p. 152.] A quarter of Smollett's original material would embarrass a "Guide"-builder of more recent pattern. Whenever he got near a coast line Smollett could not refrain from expressing decided views. If he had lived at the present day he would infallibly have been a naval expert, better informed than most and more trenchant than all; but recognizably one of the species, artist in words and amateur of ocean-strategy. [Smollett had, of course, been surgeon's mate on H.M.S. Cumberland, 1740-41.] His first curiosity at Nice was raised concerning the port, the harbour, the galleys moored within the mole, and the naval policy of his Sardinian Majesty. His advice to Victor Amadeus was no doubt as excellent and as unregarded as the advice of naval experts generally is. Of more interest to us is his account of the slave-galleys. Among the miserable slaves whom "a British subject cannot behold without horror and compassion," he observes a Piedmontese count in Turkish attire, reminding the reader of one of Dumas' stories of a count among the forcats. To learn that there were always volunteer oarsmen among these poor outcasts is to reflect bitterly upon the average happiness of mankind. As to whether they wore much worse off than common seamen in the British navy of the period (who were only in name volunteers and had often no hope of discharge until they were worn out) under such commanders as Oakum or Whiffle [In Roderick Random.] is another question. For confirmation of Smollett's account in matters of detail the reader may turn to Aleman's Guzman d'Afarache, which contains a first-hand description of the life on board a Mediterranean slave galley, to Archenholtz's Tableau d'Italie of 1788, to Stirling Maxwell's Don John of Austria (1883, i. 95), and more pertinently to passages in the Life of a Galley Slave by Jean Marteilhe (edited by Miss Betham-Edwards in 1895). After serving in the docks at Dunkirk, Marteilhe, as a confirmed protestant, makes the journey in the chain-gang to Marseilles, and is only released after many delays in consequence of the personal interest and intervention of Queen Anne. If at the peace of Utrecht in 1713 we had only been as tender about the case of our poor Catalan allies! Nice at that juncture had just been returned by France to the safe-keeping of Savoy, so that in order to escape from French territory, Marteilhe sailed for Nice in a tartane, and not feeling too safe even there, hurried thence by Smollett's subsequent route across the Col di Tende. Many Europeans were serving at this time in the Turkish or Algerine galleys. But the most pitiable of all the galley slaves were those of the knights of St. John of Malta. "Figure to yourself," wrote Jacob Houblon [The Houblon Family, 1907 ii. 78. The accounts in Evelyn and Goldsmith are probably familiar to the reader.] about this year, "six or seven hundred dirty half-naked Turks in a small vessel chained to the oars, from which they are not allowed to stir, fed upon nothing but bad biscuit and water, and beat about on the most trifling occasion by their most inhuman masters, who are certainly more Turks than their slaves." After several digressions, one touching the ancient Cemenelion, a subject upon which the Jonathan Oldbucks of Provence without exception are unconscionably tedious, Smollett settles down to a capable historical summary preparatory to setting his palette for a picture of the Nissards "as they are." He was, as we are aware, no court painter, and the cheerful colours certainly do not predominate. The noblesse for all their exclusiveness cannot escape his censure. He can see that they are poor (they are unable to boast more than two coaches among their whole number), and he feels sure that they are depraved. He attributes both vices unhesitatingly to their idleness and to their religion. In their singularly unemotional and coolly comparative outlook upon religion, how infinitely nearer were Fielding and Smollett than their greatest successors, Dickens and Thackeray, to the modern critic who observes that there is "at present not a single credible established religion in existence." To Smollett Catholicism conjures up nothing so vividly as the mask of comedy, while his native Calvinism stands for the corresponding mask of tragedy. [Walpole's dictum that Life was a comedy to those who think, a tragedy for those who feel, was of later date than this excellent mot of Smollett's.] Religion in the sunny spaces of the South is a "never-failing fund of pastime." The mass (of which he tells a story that reminds us of Lever's Micky Free) is just a mechanism invented by clever rogues for an elaborate system of petty larceny. And what a ferocious vein of cynicism underlies his strictures upon the perverted gallantry of the Mariolaters at Florence, or those on the two old Catholics rubbing their ancient gums against St. Peter's toe for toothache at Rome. The recurring emblems of crosses and gibbets simply shock him as mementoes of the Bagne. At Rome he compares a presentment of St. Laurence to "a barbecued pig." "What a pity it is," he complains, "that the labours of painting should have been employed on such shocking objects of the martyrology," floggings, nailings, and unnailings... "Peter writhing on the cross, Stephen battered with stones, Sebastian stuck full of arrows, Bartholomew flayed alive," and so on. His remarks upon the famous Pieta of Michael Angelo are frank to the point of brutality. The right of sanctuary and its "infamous prerogative," unheard of in England since the days of Henry VII., were still capable of affording a lesson to the Scot abroad. "I saw a fellow who had three days before murdered his wife in the last month of pregnancy, taking the air with great composure and serenity, on the steps of a church in Florence." Smollett, it is clear, for all his philosophy, was no degenerate representative of the blind, unreasoning seventeenth-century detestation of "Popery and wooden shoes." Smollett is one of the first to describe a "conversazione," and in illustration of the decadence of Italian manners, it is natural that he should have a good deal to tell us about the Cicisbeatura. His account of the cicisbeo and his duties, whether in Nice, Florence, or Rome, is certainly one of the most interesting that we have. Before Smollett and his almost contemporary travel correspondent, Samuel Sharp, it would probably be hard to find any mention of the cicisbeo in England, though the word was consecrated by Sheridan a few years later. Most of the "classic" accounts of the usage such as those by Mme. de Stael, Stendhal, Parini, Byron and his biographers date from very much later, when the institution was long past its prime if not actually moribund. Now Smollett saw it at the very height of its perfection and at a time when our decorous protestant curiosity on such themes was as lively as Lady Mary Montagu had found it in the case of fair Circassians and Turkish harems just thirty years previously. [A cicisbeo was a dangler. Hence the word came to be applied punningly to the bow depending from a clouded cane or ornamental crook. In sixteenth-century Spain, home of the sedan and the caballero galante, the original term was bracciere. In Venice the form was cavaliere servente. For a good note on the subject, see Sismondi's Italian Republics, ed. William Boulting, 1907, p. 793.] Like so much in the shapes and customs of Italy the cicisbeatura was in its origin partly Gothic and partly Oriental. It combined the chivalry of northern friendship with the refined passion of the South for the seclusion of women. As an experiment in protest against the insipidity which is too often an accompaniment of conjugal intercourse the institution might well seem to deserve a more tolerant and impartial investigation than it has yet received at the hands of our sociologists. A survival so picturesque could hardly be expected to outlive the bracing air of the nineteenth century. The north wind blew and by 1840 the cicisbeatura was a thing of the past. Freed from the necessity of a systematic delineation Smollett rambles about Nice, its length and breadth, with a stone in his pouch, and wherever a cockshy is available he takes full advantage of it. He describes the ghetto (p. 171), the police arrangements of the place which he finds in the main highly efficient, and the cruel punishment of the strappado. The garrucha or strappado and the garrotes, combined with the water-torture and the rack, represented the survival of the fittest in the natural selection of torments concerning which the Holy Office in Italy and Spain had such a vast experience. The strappado as described by Smollett, however, is a more severe form of torture even than that practised by the Inquisition, and we can only hope that his description of its brutality is highly coloured. [See the extremely learned disquisition on the whole subject in Dr. H. C. Lea's History of the Inquisition in Spain, 1907, vol. iii. book vi chap. vii.] Smollett must have enjoyed himself vastly in the market at Nice. He gives an elaborate and epicurean account of his commissariat during the successive seasons of his sojourn in the neighbourhood. He was not one of these who live solely "below the diaphragm"; but he understood food well and writes about it with a catholic gusto and relish (156-165). He laments the rarity of small birds on the Riviera, and gives a highly comic account of the chasse of this species of gibier. He has a good deal to say about the sardine and tunny fishery, about the fruit and scent traffic, and about the wine industry; and he gives us a graphic sketch of the silkworm culture, which it is interesting to compare with that given by Locke in 1677. He has something to say upon the general agriculture, and more especially upon the olive and oil industry. Some remarks upon the numerous "mummeries" and festas of the inhabitants lead him into a long digression upon the feriae of the Romans. It is evident from this that the box of books which he shipped by way of Bordeaux must have been plentifully supplied with classical literature, for, as he remarks with unaffected horror, such a thing as a bookseller had not been so much as heard of in Nice. Well may he have expatiated upon the total lack of taste among the inhabitants! In dealing with the trade, revenue, and other administrative details Smollett shows himself the expert compiler and statistician a London journalist in large practice credits himself with becoming by the mere exercise of his vocation. In dealing with the patois of the country he reveals the curiosity of the trained scholar and linguist. Climate had always been one of his hobbies, and on learning that none of the local practitioners was in a position to exact a larger fee than sixpence from his patients (quantum mutatus the Nice physician of 1907!) he felt that he owed it to himself to make this the subject of an independent investigation. He kept a register of the weather during the whole of his stay, and his remarks upon the subject are still of historical interest, although with Teysseire's minutely exact Monograph on the Climatology of Nice (1881) at his disposal and innumerable commentaries thereon by specialists, the inquirer of to-day would hardly go to Smollett for his data. Then, as now, it is curious to find the rumour current that the climate of Nice was sadly deteriorating. "Nothing to what it was before the war!" as the grumbler from the South was once betrayed into saying of the August moon. Smollett's esprit chagrin was nonplussed at first to find material for complaint against a climate in which he admits that there was less rain and less wind than in any other part of the world that he knew. In these unwonted circumstances he is constrained to fall back on the hard water and the plague of cousins or gnats as affording him the legitimate grievance, in whose absence the warrior soul of the author of the Ode to Independence could never be content. VII For his autumn holiday in 1764 Smollett decided on a jaunt to Florence and Rome, returning to Nice for the winter; and he decided to travel as far as Leghorn by sea. There was choice between several kinds of small craft which plied along the coast, and their names recur with cheerful frequency in the pages of Marryat and other depictors of the Mediterranean. There was the felucca, an open boat with a tilt over the stern large enough to freight a post-chaise, and propelled by ten to twelve stout mariners. To commission such a boat to Genoa, a distance of a hundred miles, cost four louis. As alternative, there was the tartane, a sailing vessel with a lateen sail. Addison sailed from Marseilles to Genoa in a tartane in December 1699: a storm arose, and the patron alarmed the passengers by confessing his sins (and such sins!) loudly to a Capuchin friar who happened to be aboard. Smollett finally decided on a gondola, with four rowers and a steersman, for which he had to pay nine sequins (4 1/2 louis). After adventures off Monaco, San Remo, Noli, and elsewhere, the party are glad to make the famous phones on the Torre della Lanterna, of which banker Rogers sings in his mediocre verse: Thy pharos Genoa first displayed itself Burning in stillness on its rocky seat; That guiding star so oft the only one, When those now glowing in the azure vault Are dark and silent Smollett's description of Genoa is decidedly more interesting. He arrived at a moment specially propitious to so sardonic an observer, for the Republic had fallen on evil times, having escaped from the clutches of Austria in 1746 by means of a popular riot, during which the aristocracy considerately looked the other way, only to fall into an even more embarrassed and unheroic position vis-a-vis of so diminutive an opponent as Corsica. The whole story is a curious prototype of the nineteenth century imbroglio between Spain and Cuba. Of commonplaces about the palaces fruitful of verbiage in Addison and Gray, who says with perfect truth, "I should make you sick of marble were I to tell you how it is lavished here," Smollett is sparing enough, though he evidently regards the inherited inclination of Genoese noblemen to build beyond their means as an amiable weakness. His description of the proud old Genoese nobleman, who lives in marble and feeds on scraps, is not unsympathetic, and suggests that the "deceipt of the Ligurians," which Virgil censures in the line Haud Ligurum extremus, dum fallere fata sinebant may possibly have been of this Balderstonian variety. But Smollett had little room in his economy for such vapouring speculations. He was as unsentimental a critic as Sydney Smith or Sir Leslie Stephen. He wants to know the assets of a place more than its associations. Facts, figures, trade and revenue returns are the data his shrewd mind requires to feed on. He has a keen eye for harbours suitable for an English frigate to lie up in, and can hardly rest until his sagacity has collected material for a political horoscope. Smollett's remarks upon the mysterious dispensations of Providence in regard to Genoa and the retreat of the Austrians are charged to the full with his saturnine spirit. His suspicions were probably well founded. Ever since 1685 Genoa had been the more or less humiliated satellite of France, and her once famous Bank had been bled pretty extensively by both belligerents. The Senate was helpless before the Austrian engineers in 1745, and the emancipation of the city was due wholly to a popular emeute. She had relapsed again into a completely enervated condition. Smollett thought she would have been happier under British protection. But it is a vicious alternative for a nation to choose a big protector. It was characteristic of the Republic that from 1790 to 1798 its "policy" was to remain neutral. The crisis in regard to Corsica came immediately after Smollett's visit, when in 1765, under their 154th doge Francesco Maria Rovere, the Genoese offered to abandon the island to the patriots under Paoli, reserving only the possession of the two loyal coast-towns of Bonifazio and Calvi. [See Boswell's Corsica, 1766-8.] At Paoli's instance these conciliatory terms were refused. Genoa, in desperation and next door to bankruptcy, resolved to sell her rights as suzerain to France, and the compact was concluded by a treaty signed at Versailles in 1768. Paoli was finally defeated at Ponte Novo on 9th May 1769, and fled to England. On 15th August the edict of "Reunion" between France and Corsica was promulgated. On the same day Napoleon Buonaparte was born at Ajaccio. After a week at Genoa Smollett proceeded along the coast to Lerici. There, being tired of the sea, the party disembarked, and proceeded by chaise from Sarzano to Cercio in Modenese territory, and so into Tuscany, then under the suzerainty of Austria. His description of Pisa is of an almost sunny gaiety and good humour. Italy, through this portal, was capable of casting a spell even upon a traveller so case-hardened as Smollett. The very churches at Pisa are "tolerably ornamented." The Campo Santo and Tower fall in no way short of their reputation, while the brass gates so far excel theirs that Smollett could have stood a whole day to examine and admire them. These agremens may be attributable in some measure to "a very good inn." In stating that galleys were built in the town, Smollett seems to have fallen a victim, for once, to guide-book information. Evelyn mentions that galleys were built there in his time, but that was more than a hundred years before. The slips and dock had long been abandoned, as Smollett is careful to point out in his manuscript notes, now in the British Museum. He also explains with superfluous caution that the Duomo of Pisa is not entirely Gothic. Once arrived in the capital of Tuscany, after admitting that Florence is a noble city, our traveller is anxious to avoid the hackneyed ecstasies and threadbare commonplaces, derived in those days from Vasari through Keysler and other German commentators, whose genius Smollett is inclined to discover rather "in the back than in the brain." The two pass-words for a would-be connoisseur, according to Goldsmith, were to praise Perugino, and to say that such and such a work would have been much better had the painter devoted more time and study to it. With these alternatives at hand one might pass with credit through any famous continental collection. Smollett aspired to more independence of thought and opinion, though we perceive at every turn how completely the Protestant prejudice of his "moment" and "milieu" had obtained dominion over him. To his perception monks do not chant or intone, they bawl and bellow their litanies. Flagellants are hired peasants who pad themselves to repletion with women's bodices. The image of the Virgin Mary is bejewelled, hooped, painted, patched, curled, and frizzled in the very extremity of the fashion. No particular attention is paid by the mob to the Crucified One, but as soon as his lady-mother appeared on the shoulders of four lusty friars the whole populace fall upon their knees in the dirt. We have some characteristic criticism and observation of the Florentine nobles, the opera, the improvisatori, [For details as to the eighteenth-century improvisatore and commedia delle arte the reader is referred to Symonds's Carlo Gozzi. See also the Travel Papers of Mrs. Piozzi; Walpole's Letters to Sir Horace Mann, and Doran's Mann and Manners at the Court of Florence. (Vide Appendix A, p. 345)] the buildings, and the cicisbei. Smollett nearly always gives substantial value to his notes, however casual, for he has an historian's eye, and knows the symptoms for which the inquirer who comes after is likely to make inquisition. Smollett's observations upon the state of Florence in Letters XXVII and XXVIII are by no means devoid of value. The direct rule of the Medici had come to an end in 1737, and Tuscany (which with the exception of the interlude of 1798-1814 remained in Austrian hands down to 1860) was in 1764 governed by the Prince de Craon, viceroy of the Empress Maria Theresa. Florence was, indeed, on the threshold of the sweeping administrative reforms instituted by Peter Leopold, the archduke for whom Smollett relates that they were preparing the Pitti Palace at the time of his stay. This Prince governed the country as Grand Duke from 1765 to 1790, when he succeeded his brother as Emperor, and left a name in history as the ill-fated Leopold. Few more active exponents of paternal reform are known to history. But the Grand Duke had to deal with a people such as Smollett describes. Conservative to the core, subservient to their religious directors, the "stupid party" in Florence proved themselves clever enough to retard the process of enlightenment by methods at which even Smollett himself might have stood amazed. The traveller touches an interesting source of biography when he refers to the Englishman called Acton, formerly an East India Company captain, now commander of the Emperor's Tuscan Navy, consisting of "a few frigates." This worthy was the old commodore whom Gibbon visited in retirement at Leghorn. The commodore was brother of Gibbon's friend, Dr. Acton, who was settled at Besancon, where his noted son, afterwards Sir John Acton, was born in 1736. Following in the footsteps of his uncle the commodore, who became a Catholic, Smollett tells us, and was promoted Admiral of Tuscany, John Acton entered the Tuscan Marine in 1775. [Sir John Acton's subsequent career belongs to history. His origin made him an expert on naval affairs, and in 1776 he obtained some credit for an expedition which he commanded against the Barbary pirates. In 1778 Maria Carolina of Naples visited her brother Leopold at Florence, and was impressed by Acton's ugliness and reputation for exceptional efficiency. Her favourite minister, Prince Caramanico, persuaded the Grand Duke, Leopold, to permit Acton to exchange into the Neapolitan service, and reorganize the navy of the southern kingdom. This actually came to pass, and, moreover, Acton played his cards so well that he soon engrossed the ministries of War and Finance, and after the death of Caracciolo, the elder, also that of Foreign Affairs. Sir William Hamilton had a high opinion of the" General," soon to become Field-Marshal. He took a strong part in resistance to revolutionary propaganda, caused to be built the ships which assisted Nelson in 1795, and proved himself one of the most capable bureaucrats of the time. But the French proved too strong, and Napoleon was the cause of his disgrace in 1804. In that year, by special dispensation from the Pope, he married his niece, and retired to Palermo, where he died on 12th August 1811.] Let loose in the Uffizi Gallery Smollett shocked his sensitive contemporaries by his freedom from those sham ecstasies which have too often dogged the footsteps of the virtuosi. Like Scott or Mark Twain at a later date Smollett was perfectly ready to admire anything he could understand; but he expressly disclaims pretensions to the nice discernment and delicate sensibility of the connoisseur. He would never have asked to be left alone with the Venus de Medicis as a modern art-critic is related to have asked to be left alone with the Venus of Rokeby. He would have been at a loss to understand the state of mind of the eminent actor who thought the situation demanded that he should be positively bereft of breath at first sight of the Apollo Belvedere, and panting to regain it, convulsively clutched at the arm of his companion, with difficulty articulating, "I breathe." Smollett refused to be hypnotized by the famous Venus discovered at Hadrian's villa, brought from Tivoli in 1680, and then in the height of its renown; the form he admired, but condemned the face and the posture. Personally I disagree with Smollett, though the balance of cultivated opinion has since come round to his side. The guilt of Smollett lay in criticizing what was above criticism, as the contents of the Tribuna were then held to be. And in defence of this point of view it may at least be said that the Uffizi was then, with the exception of the Vatican, the only gallery of first-rate importance open to the travelling public on the Grand Tour. Founded by Cosimo I, built originally by George Vasari, and greatly enlarged by Francis I, who succeeded to the Grand Duchy in 1574, the gallery owed most perhaps to the Cardinal, afterwards Ferdinand I, who constructed the Tribuna, and to Cardinal Leopold, an omnivorous collector, who died in 1675. But all the Medici princes added to the rarities in the various cabinets, drawing largely upon the Villa Medici at Rome for this purpose, and the last of them, John Gaston (1723-1737), was one of the most liberal as regards the freedom of access which he allowed to his accumulated treasures. Among the distinguished antiquaries who acted as curators and cicerones were Sebastiano Bianchi, Antonio Cocchi, Raymond Cocchi, Joseph Bianchi, J. B. Pelli, the Abbe Lanzi, and Zacchiroli. The last three all wrote elaborate descriptions of the Gallery during the last decades of the eighteenth century. There was unhappily an epidemic of dishonesty among the custodians of gems at this period, and, like the notorious Raspe, who fled from Cassel in 1775, and turned some of his old employers to ridicule in his Baron Munchausen, Joseph Bianchi was convicted first of robbing his cabinet and then attempting to set it on fire, for which exploit the "learned and judicious Bianchi," as Smollett called him in his first edition, was sent to prison for life. The Arrotino which Smollett so greatly admired, and which the delusive Bianchi declared to be a representation of the Augur Attus Naevius, is now described as "A Scythian whetting his knife to flay Marsyas." Kinglake has an amusingly cynical passage on the impossibility of approaching the sacred shrines of the Holy Land in a fittingly reverential mood. Exactly the same difficulty is experienced in approaching the sacred shrines of art. Enthusiasm about great artistic productions, though we may readily understand it to be justifiable, is by no means so easily communicable. How many people possessing a real claim to culture have felt themselves puzzled by their insensibility before some great masterpiece! Conditions may be easily imagined in which the inducement to affect an ecstasy becomes so strong as to prove overpowering. Many years ago at Florence the loiterers in the Tribuna were startled by the sudden rush into the place of a little man whose literary fame gave him high claims to intuitive taste. He placed himself with high clasped hand before the chief attraction in that room of treasures. "There," he murmured, "is the Venus de Medicis, and here I must stay--for ever and for ever." He had scarcely uttered these words, each more deeply and solemnly than the preceding, when an acquaintance entered, and the enthusiast, making a hasty inquiry if Lady So-and-So had arrived, left the room not to return again that morning. Before the same statue another distinguished countryman used to pass an hour daily. His acquaintance respected his raptures and kept aloof; but a young lady, whose attention was attracted by sounds that did not seem expressive of admiration, ventured to approach, and found the poet sunk in profound, but not silent, slumber. From such absurdities as these, or of the enthusiast who went into raptures about the head of the Elgin Ilissos (which is unfortunately a headless trunk), we are happily spared in the pages of Smollett. In him complete absence of gush is accompanied by an independent judgement, for which it may quite safely be claimed that good taste is in the ascendant in the majority of cases. From Florence Smollett set out in October 1764 for Siena, a distance of forty-two miles, in a good travelling coach; he slept there, and next day, seven and a half miles farther on, at Boon Convento, hard by Montepulciano, now justly celebrated for its wine, he had the amusing adventure with the hostler which gave occasion for his vivid portrait of an Italian uffiziale, and also to that irresistible impulse to cane the insolent hostler, from the ill consequences of which he was only saved by the underling's precipitate flight. The night was spent at Radicofani, five and twenty miles farther on. A clever postilion diversified the route to Viterbo, another forty-three miles. The party was now within sixteen leagues, or ten hours, of Rome. The road from Radicofani was notoriously bad all the way, but Smollett was too excited or too impatient to pay much attention to it. "You may guess what I felt at first sight of the city of Rome." "When you arrive at Rome," he says later, in somewhat more accustomed vein, "you receive cards from all your country folk in that city. They expect to have the visit returned next day, when they give orders not to be at home, and you never speak to one another in the sequel. This is a refinement in hospitality and politeness which the English have invented by the strength of their own genius without any assistance either from France, Italy, or Lapland." It is needless to recapitulate Smollett's views of Rome. Every one has his own, and a passing traveller's annotations are just about as nourishing to the imagination as a bibliographer's note on the Bible. Smollett speaks in the main judiciously of the Castle of St. Angelo, the Piazza and the interior of St. Peter's, the Pincian, the Forum, the Coliseum, the Baths of Caracalla, and the other famous sights of successive ages. On Roman habits and pastimes and the gullibility of the English cognoscente he speaks with more spice of authority. Upon the whole he is decidedly modest about his virtuoso vein, and when we reflect upon the way in which standards change and idols are shifted from one pedestal to another, it seems a pity that such modesty has not more votaries. In Smollett's time we must remember that Hellenic and primitive art, whether antique or medieval, were unknown or unappreciated. The reigning models of taste in ancient sculpture were copies of fourth-century originals, Hellenistic or later productions. Hence Smollett's ecstasies over the Laocoon, the Niobe, and the Dying Gladiator. Greek art of the best period was hardly known in authentic examples; antiques so fine as the Torso of Hercules were rare. But while his failures show the danger of dogmatism in art criticism, Smollett is careful to disclaim all pretensions to the nice discernment of the real connoisseur. In cases where good sense and sincere utterance are all that is necessary he is seldom far wrong. Take the following description for example:-- "You need not doubt but that I went to the church of St. Peter in Montorio, to view the celebrated Transfiguration by Raphael, which, if it was mine, I would cut in two parts. The three figures in the air attract the eye so strongly that little or no attention is paid to those below on the mountain. I apprehend that the nature of the subject does not admit of that keeping and dependence which ought to be maintained in the disposition of the lights and shadows in a picture. The groups seem to be entirely independent of each other. The extraordinary merit of this piece, I imagine, consists not only in the expression of divinity on the face of Christ, but also in the surprising lightness of the figure that hovers like a beautiful exhalation in the air." Smollett's remarks about the "Last Judgement" of Michael Angelo, (that it confuses the eye as a number of people speaking at once confounds the ear; and that while single figures are splendid, the whole together resembles a mere mob, without subordination, keeping, or repose) will probably be re-echoed by a large proportion of the sightseers who gaze upon it yearly. But his description of the "Transfiguration" displays an amount of taste and judgement which is far from being so widely distributed. For purposes of reproduction at the present day, I may remind the reader that the picture is ordinarily "cut in two." and the nether portion is commonly attributed to Raphael's pupils, while the "beautiful exhalation," as Smollett so felicitously terms it, is attributed exclusively to the master when at the zenith of his powers. His general verdict upon Michael Angelo and Raphael has much in it that appeals to a modern taste. Of Raphael, as a whole, he concludes that the master possesses the serenity of Virgil, but lacks the fire of Homer; and before leaving this same Letter XXXIII, in which Smollett ventures so many independent critical judgements, I am tempted to cite yet another example of his capacity for acute yet sympathetic appreciation. "In the Palazzo Altieri I admired a picture, by Carlo Maratti, representing a saint calling down lightning from heaven to destroy blasphemers. It was the figure of the saint I admired, merely as a portrait. The execution of the other parts was tame enough; perhaps they were purposely kept down in order to preserve the importance of the principal figure. I imagine Salvator Rosa would have made a different disposition on the same subject--that amidst the darkness of a tempest he would have illuminated the blasphemer with the flash of lightning by which he was destroyed. This would have thrown a dismal gleam upon his countenance, distorted by the horror of his situation as well as by the effects of the fire, and rendered the whole scene dreadfully picturesque." Smollett confuses historical and aesthetic grandeur. What appeals to him most is a monument of a whole past civilization, such as the Pont du Gard. His views of art, too, as well as his views of life, are profoundly influenced by his early training as a surgeon. He is not inclined by temperament to be sanguine. His gaze is often fixed, like that of a doctor, upon the end of life; and of art, as of nature, he takes a decidedly pathological view. Yet, upon the whole, far from deriding his artistic impressions, I think we shall be inclined rather to applaud them, as well for their sanity as for their undoubted sincerity. For the return journey to Florence Smollett selected the alternative route by Narni, Terni, Spoleto, Foligno, Perugia, and Arezzo, and, by his own account, no traveller ever suffered quite so much as he did from "dirt," "vermin," "poison," and imposture. At Foligno, where Goethe also, in his travels a score of years or so later, had an amusing adventure, Smollett was put into a room recently occupied by a wild beast (bestia), but the bestia turned out on investigation to be no more or no less than an "English heretic." The food was so filthy that it might have turned the stomach of a muleteer; their coach was nearly shattered to pieces; frozen with cold and nearly devoured by rats. Mrs. Smollett wept in silence with horror and fatigue; and the bugs gave the Doctor a whooping-cough. If Smollett anticipated a violent death from exhaustion and chagrin in consequence of these tortures he was completely disappointed. His health was never better,--so much so that he felt constrained in fairness to drink to the health of the Roman banker who had recommended this nefarious route. [See the Doctor's remarks at the end of Letter XXXV.] By Florence and Lerici he retraced his steps to Nice early in 1765, and then after a brief jaunt to Turin (where he met Sterne) and back by the Col di Tende, he turned his face definitely homewards. The journey home confirmed his liking for Pisa, and gives an opening for an amusing description of the Britisher abroad (Letter XXXV). We can almost overhear Thackeray, or the author of Eothen, touching this same topic in Letter XLI. "When two natives of any other country chance to meet abroad, they run into each other's embrace like old friends, even though they have never heard of one another till that moment; whereas two Englishmen in the same situation maintain a mutual reserve and diffidence, and keep without the sphere of each other's attraction, like two bodies endowed with a repulsive power." Letter XXXVI gives opportunity for some discerning remarks on French taxation. Having given the French king a bit of excellent advice (that he should abolish the fermiers generaux), Smollett proceeds, in 1765, to a forecast of probabilities which is deeply significant and amazingly shrewd. The fragment known as Smollett's Dying Prophecy of 1771 has often been discredited. Yet the substance of it is fairly adumbrated here in the passage beginning, "There are undoubtedly many marks of relaxation in the reins of French government," written fully six years previously. After a pleasing description of Grasse, "famous for its pomatum, gloves, wash-balls, perfumes, and toilette boxes lined with bergamot," the homeward traveller crossed the French frontier at Antibes, and in Letter XXXIX at Marseille, he compares the galley slaves of France with those of Savoy. At Bath where he had gone to set up a practice, Smollett once astonished the faculty by "proving" in a pamphlet that the therapeutic properties of the waters had been prodigiously exaggerated. So, now, in the south of France he did not hesitate to pronounce solemnly that "all fermented liquors are pernicious to the human constitution." Elsewhere he comments upon the immeasurable appetite of the French for bread. The Frenchman will recall the story of the peasant-persecuting baron whom Louis XII. provided with a luxurious feast, which the lack of bread made uneatable; he may not have heard a story told me in Liege at the Hotel Charlemagne of the Belgian who sought to conciliate his French neighbour by remarking, "Je vois que vous etes Français, monsieur, parceque vous mangez beaucoup de pain," and the Frenchman's retort, "Je vois que vous etes lye monsieur, parceque vous mangez beaucoup de tout!" From Frejus Smollett proceeds to Toulon, repeating the old epigram that "the king of France is greater at Toulon than at Versailles." The weather is so pleasant that the travellers enjoy a continual concert of "nightingales" from Vienne to Fontainebleau. The "douche" of Aix-les-Bains having been explained, Smollett and his party proceeded agreeably to Avignon, where by one of the strange coincidences of travel he met his old voiturier Joseph "so embrowned by the sun that he might have passed for an Iroquois." In spite of Joseph's testimonial the "plagues of posting" are still in the ascendant, and Smollett is once more generous of good advice. Above all, he adjures us when travelling never to omit to carry a hammer and nails, a crowbar, an iron pin or two, a large knife, and a bladder of grease. Why not a lynch pin, which we were so carefully instructed how to inquire about in Murray's Conversation for Travellers? But-the history of his troublous travels is drawing to an end. From Lyons the route is plain through Macon, Chalons, Dijon, Auxerre, Sells, and Fontainebleau--the whole itinerary almost exactly anticipates that of Talfourd's Vacation Tour one hundred and ten years later, except that on the outward journey Talfourd sailed down the Rhone. Smollett's old mental grievances and sores have been shifted and to some extent, let us hope, dissipated by his strenuous journeyings, and in June 1765, after an absence of two years, he is once more enabled to write, "You cannot imagine what pleasure I feel while I survey the white cliffs of Dover at this distance [from Boulogne]. Not that I am at all affected by the nescio qua dulcedine natalis soli of Horace. "That seems to be a kind of fanaticism, founded on the prejudices of education, which induces a Laplander to place the terrestrial paradise among the snows of Norway, and a Swiss to prefer the barren mountains of Soleure to the fruitful plains of Lombardy. I am attached to my country, because it is the land of liberty, cleanliness, and convenience; but I love it still more tenderly, as the scene of all my interesting connections, as the habitation of my friends, for whose conversation, correspondence, and esteem I wish alone to live." For the time being it cannot be doubted that the hardships Smollett had to undergo on his Italian journey, by sea and land, and the violent passions by which he was agitated owing to the conduct of refractory postilions and extortionate innkeepers, contributed positively to brace up and invigorate his constitution. He spoke of himself indeed as "mended by ill-treatment" not unlike Tavernier, the famous traveller,--said to have been radically cured of the gout by a Turkish aga in Egypt, who gave him the bastinado because he would not look at the head of the bashaw of Cairo. But Fizes was right after all in his swan-prescription, for poor Smollett's cure was anything but a radical one. His health soon collapsed under the dreary round of incessant labour at Chelsea. His literary faculty was still maturing and developing. His genius was mellowing, and a later work might have eclipsed Clinker. But it was not to be. He had a severe relapse in the winter. In 1770 he had once more to take refuge from overwork on the sunny coast he had done so much to popularize among his countrymen, and it was near Leghorn that he died on 17th September 1771. ANNO AETATIS 51. EHEV! QVAM PROCVL A PATRIA! PROPE LIBVRNI PORTVM, IN ITALIA JACET SEPVLTVS. THOMAS SECCOMBE. ACTON, May 1907. LETTER I BOULOGNE SUR MER, June 23, 1763. DEAR SIR,--You laid your commands upon me at parting, to communicate from time to time the observations I should make in the course of my travels and it was an injunction I received with pleasure. In gratifying your curiosity, I shall find some amusement to beguile the tedious hours, which, without some such employment, would be rendered insupportable by distemper and disquiet. You knew, and pitied my situation, traduced by malice, persecuted by faction, abandoned by false patrons, and overwhelmed by the sense of a domestic calamity, which it was not in the power of fortune to repair. You know with what eagerness I fled from my country as a scene of illiberal dispute, and incredible infatuation, where a few worthless incendiaries had, by dint of perfidious calumnies and atrocious abuse, kindled up a flame which threatened all the horrors of civil dissension. I packed up my little family in a hired coach, and attended by my trusty servant, who had lived with me a dozen of years, and now refused to leave me, took the road to Dover, in my way to the South of France, where I hoped the mildness of the climate would prove favourable to the weak state of my lungs. You advised me to have recourse again to the Bath waters, from the use of which I had received great benefit the preceding winter: but I had many inducements to leave England. My wife earnestly begged I would convey her from a country where every object served to nourish her grief: I was in hopes that a succession of new scenes would engage her attention, and gradually call off her mind from a series of painful reflections; and I imagined the change of air, and a journey of near a thousand miles, would have a happy effect upon my own constitution. But, as the summer was already advanced, and the heat too excessive for travelling in warm climates, I proposed staying at Boulogne till the beginning of autumn, and in the mean time to bathe in the sea, with a view to strengthen and prepare my body for the fatigues of such a long journey. A man who travels with a family of five persons, must lay his account with a number of mortifications; and some of these I have already happily overcome. Though I was well acquainted with the road to Dover, and made allowances accordingly, I could not help being chagrined at the bad accommodation and impudent imposition to which I was exposed. These I found the more disagreeable, as we were detained a day extraordinary on the road, in consequence of my wife's being indisposed. I need not tell you this is the worst road in England with respect to the conveniences of travelling, and must certainly impress foreigners with an unfavourable opinion of the nation in general. The chambers are in general cold and comfortless, the beds paultry, the cookery execrable, the wine poison, the attendance bad, the publicans insolent, and the bills extortion; there is not a drop of tolerable malt liquor to be had from London to Dover. Every landlord and every waiter harangued upon the knavery of a publican in Canterbury, who had charged the French ambassador forty pounds for a supper that was not worth forty shillings. They talked much of honesty and conscience; but when they produced their own bills, they appeared to be all of the same family and complexion. If it was a reproach upon the English nation, that an innkeeper should pillage strangers at that rate; it is a greater scandal, that the same fellow should be able to keep his house still open. I own, I think it would be for the honour of the kingdom to reform the abuses of this road; and in particular to improve the avenue to London by the way of Kent-Street, which is a most disgraceful entrance to such an opulent city. A foreigner, in passing through this beggarly and ruinous suburb, conceives such an idea of misery and meanness, as all the wealth and magnificence of London and Westminster are afterwards unable to destroy. A friend of mine, who brought a Parisian from Dover in his own post-chaise, contrived to enter Southwark after it was dark, that his friend might not perceive the nakedness of this quarter. The stranger was much pleased with the great number of shops full of merchandize, lighted up to the best advantage. He was astonished at the display of riches in Lombard-Street and Cheapside. The badness of the pavement made him find the streets twice as long as they were. They alighted in Upper Brook-Street by Grosvenor-Square; and when his conductor told him they were then about the middle of London, the Frenchman declared, with marks of infinite surprize, that London was very near as long as Paris. On my arrival at Dover I payed off my coachman, who went away with a heavy heart. He wanted much to cross the sea, and endeavoured to persuade me to carry the coach and horses to the other side. If I had been resolved to set out immediately for the South, perhaps I should have taken his advice. If I had retained him at the rate of twenty guineas per month, which was the price he demanded, and begun my journey without hesitation, I should travel more agreeably than I can expect to do in the carriages of this country; and the difference of the expence would be a mere trifle. I would advise every man who travels through France to bring his own vehicle along with him, or at least to purchase one at Calais or Boulogne, where second-hand berlins and chaises may be generally had at reasonable rates. I have been offered a very good berlin for thirty guineas: but before I make the purchase, I must be better informed touching the different methods of travelling in this country. Dover is commonly termed a den of thieves; and I am afraid it is not altogether without reason, it has acquired this appellation. The people are said to live by piracy in time of war; and by smuggling and fleecing strangers in time of peace: but I will do them the justice to say, they make no distinction between foreigners and natives. Without all doubt a man cannot be much worse lodged and worse treated in any part of Europe; nor will he in any other place meet with more flagrant instances of fraud, imposition, and brutality. One would imagine they had formed a general conspiracy against all those who either go to, or return from the continent. About five years ago, in my passage from Flushing to Dover, the master of the packet-boat brought-to all of a sudden off the South Foreland, although the wind was as favourable as it could blow. He was immediately boarded by a customhouse boat, the officer of which appeared to be his friend. He then gave the passengers to understand, that as it was low water, the ship could not go into the harbour; but that the boat would carry them ashore with their baggage. The custom-house officer demanded a guinea for this service, and the bargain was made. Before we quitted the ship, we were obliged to gratify the cabin-boy for his attendance, and to give drink-money to the sailors. The boat was run aground on the open beach; but we could not get ashore without the assistance of three or four fellows, who insisted upon being paid for their trouble. Every parcel and bundle, as it was landed, was snatched up by a separate porter: one ran away with a hat-box, another with a wig-box, a third with a couple of shirts tied up in a handkerchief, and two were employed in carrying a small portmanteau that did not weigh forty pounds. All our things were hurried to the custom-house to be searched, and the searcher was paid for disordering our cloaths: from thence they were removed to the inn, where the porters demanded half-a-crown each for their labour. It was in vain to expostulate; they surrounded the house like a pack of hungry bounds, and raised such a clamour, that we were fain to comply. After we had undergone all this imposition, we were visited by the master of the packet, who, having taken our fares, and wished us joy of our happy arrival in England, expressed his hope that we would remember the poor master, whose wages were very small, and who chiefly depended upon the generosity of the passengers. I own I was shocked at his meanness, and could not help telling him so. I told him, I could not conceive what title he had to any such gratification: he had sixteen passengers, who paid a guinea each, on the supposition that every person should have a bed; but there were no more than eight beds in the cabin, and each of these was occupied before I came on board; so that if we had been detained at sea a whole week by contrary winds and bad weather, one half of the passengers must have slept upon the boards, howsoever their health might have suffered from this want of accommodation. Notwithstanding this check, he was so very abject and importunate, that we gave him a crown a-piece, and he retired. The first thing I did when I arrived at Dover this last time, was to send for the master of a packet-boat, and agree with him to carry us to Boulogne at once, by which means I saved the expence of travelling by land from Calais to this last place, a journey of four-and-twenty miles. The hire of a vessel from Dover to Boulogne is precisely the same as from Dover to Calais, five guineas; but this skipper demanded eight, and, as I did not know the fare, I agreed to give him six. We embarked between six and seven in the evening, and found ourselves in a most wretched hovel, on board what is called a Folkstone cutter. The cabin was so small that a dog could hardly turn in it, and the beds put me in mind of the holes described in some catacombs, in which the bodies of the dead were deposited, being thrust in with the feet foremost; there was no getting into them but end-ways, and indeed they seemed so dirty, that nothing but extreme necessity could have obliged me to use them. We sat up all night in a most uncomfortable situation, tossed about by the sea, cold, arid cramped and weary, and languishing for want of sleep. At three in the morning the master came down, and told us we were just off the harbour of Boulogne; but the wind blowing off shore, he could not possibly enter, and therefore advised us to go ashore in the boat. I went upon deck to view the coast, when he pointed to the place where he said Boulogne stood, declaring at the same time we were within a short mile of the harbour's mouth. The morning was cold and raw, and I knew myself extremely subject to catch cold; nevertheless we were all so impatient to be ashore, that I resolved to take his advice. The boat was already hoisted out, and we went on board of it, after I had paid the captain and gratified his crew. We had scarce parted from the ship, when we perceived a boat coming towards us from the shore; and the master gave us to understand, it was coming to carry us into the harbour. When I objected to the trouble of shifting from one boat to another in the open sea, which (by the bye) was a little rough; he said it was a privilege which the watermen of Boulogne had, to carry all passengers ashore, and that this privilege he durst not venture to infringe. This was no time nor place to remonstrate. The French boat came alongside half filled with water, and we were handed from the one to the other. We were then obliged to lie upon our oars, till the captain's boat went on board and returned from the ship with a packet of letters. We were afterwards rowed a long league, in a rough sea, against wind and tide, before we reached the harbour, where we landed, benumbed with cold, and the women excessively sick: from our landing-place we were obliged to walk very near a mile to the inn where we purposed to lodge, attended by six or seven men and women, bare-legged, carrying our baggage. This boat cost me a guinea, besides paying exorbitantly the people who carried our things; so that the inhabitants of Dover and of Boulogne seem to be of the same kidney, and indeed they understand one another perfectly well. It was our honest captain who made the signal for the shore-boat before I went upon deck; by which means he not only gratified his friends, the watermen of Boulogne, but also saved about fifteen shillings portage, which he must have paid had he gone into the harbour; and thus he found himself at liberty to return to Dover, which he reached in four hours. I mention these circumstances as a warning to other passengers. When a man hires a packet-boat from Dover to Calais or Boulogne, let him remember that the stated price is five guineas; and let him insist upon being carried into the harbour in the ship, without paying the least regard to the representations of the master, who is generally a little dirty knave. When he tells you it is low water, or the wind is in your teeth, you may say you will stay on board till it is high water, or till the wind comes favourable. If he sees you are resolute, he will find means to bring his ship into the harbour, or at least to convince you, without a possibility of your being deceived, that it is not in his power. After all, the fellow himself was a loser by his finesse; if he had gone into the harbour, he would have had another fare immediately back to Dover, for there was a Scotch gentleman at the inn waiting for such an opportunity. Knowing my own weak constitution, I took it for granted this morning's adventure would cost me a fit of illness; and what added to my chagrin, when we arrived at the inn, all the beds were occupied; so that we were obliged to sit in a cold kitchen above two hours, until some of the lodgers should get up. This was such a bad specimen of French accommodation, that my wife could not help regretting even the inns of Rochester, Sittingbourn, and Canterbury: bad as they are, they certainly have the advantage, when compared with the execrable auberges of this country, where one finds nothing but dirt and imposition. One would imagine the French were still at war with the English, for they pillage them without mercy. Among the strangers at this inn where we lodged, there was a gentleman of the faculty, just returned from Italy. Understanding that I intended to winter in the South of France, on account of a pulmonic disorder, he strongly recommended the climate of Nice in Provence, which, indeed, I had often heard extolled; and I am almost resolved to go thither, not only for the sake of the air, but also for its situation on the Mediterranean, where I can have the benefit of bathing; and from whence there is a short cut by sea to Italy, should I find it necessary to try the air of Naples. After having been ill accommodated three days at our inn, we have at last found commodious lodgings, by means of Mrs. B-, a very agreeable French lady, to whom we were recommended by her husband, who is my countryman, and at present resident in London. For three guineas a month we have the greatest part of a house tolerably furnished; four bed-chambers on the first floor, a large parlour below, a kitchen, and the use of a cellar. These, I own, are frivolous incidents, scarce worth committing to paper; but they may serve to introduce observations of more consequence; and in the mean time I know nothing will be indifferent to you, that concerns--Your humble servant. LETTER II BOULOGNE SUR MER, July 15, 1763. DEAR SIR,--The custom-house officers at Boulogne, though as alert, are rather more civil than those on your side of the water. I brought no plate along with me, but a dozen and a half of spoons, and a dozen teaspoons: the first being found in one of our portmanteaus, when they were examined at the bureau, cost me seventeen livres entree; the others being luckily in my servant's pocket, escaped duty free. All wrought silver imported into France, pays at the rate of so much per mark: therefore those who have any quantity of plate, will do well to leave it behind them, unless they can confide in the dexterity of the shipmasters; some of whom will undertake to land it without the ceremony of examination. The ordonnances of France are so unfavourable to strangers, that they oblige them to pay at the rate of five per cent. for all the bed and table linen which they bring into the kingdom, even though it has been used. When my trunks arrived in a ship from the river Thames, I underwent this ordeal: but what gives me more vexation, my books have been stopped at the bureau; and will be sent to Amiens at my expence, to be examined by the chambre syndicale; lest they should contain something prejudicial to the state, or to the religion of the country. This is a species of oppression which one would not expect to meet with in France, which piques itself on its politeness and hospitality: but the truth is, I know no country in which strangers are worse treated with respect to their essential concerns. If a foreigner dies in France, the king seizes all his effects, even though his heir should be upon the spot; and this tyranny is called the droit d'aubaine founded at first upon the supposition, that all the estate of foreigners residing in France was acquired in that kingdom, and that, therefore, it would be unjust to convey it to another country. If an English protestant goes to France for the benefit of his health, attended by his wife or his son, or both, and dies with effects in the house to the amount of a thousand guineas, the king seizes the whole, the family is left destitute, and the body of the deceased is denied christian burial. The Swiss, by capitulation, are exempted from this despotism, and so are the Scots, in consequence of an ancient alliance between the two nations. The same droit d'aubaine is exacted by some of the princes in Germany: but it is a great discouragement to commerce, and prejudices every country where it is exercised, to ten times the value of what it brings into the coffers of the sovereign. I am exceedingly mortified at the detention of my books, which not only deprives me of an amusement which I can very ill dispense with; but, in all probability, will expose me to sundry other inconveniencies. I must be at the expence of sending them sixty miles to be examined, and run the risque of their being condemned; and, in the mean time, I may lose the opportunity of sending them with my heavy baggage by sea to Bourdeaux, to be sent up the Garonne to Tholouse, and from thence transmitted through the canal of Languedoc to Cette, which is a sea-port on the Mediterranean, about three or four leagues from Montpelier. For the recovery of my books, I had recourse to the advice of my landlord, Mons. B--. He is a handsome young fellow, about twenty-five years of age, and keeps house with two maiden sisters, who are professed devotees. The brother is a little libertine, good natured and obliging; but a true Frenchman in vanity, which is undoubtedly the ruling passion of this volatile people. He has an inconsiderable place under the government, in consequence of which he is permitted to wear a sword, a privilege which he does not fail to use. He is likewise receiver of the tythes of the clergy in this district, an office that gives him a command of money, and he, moreover, deals in the wine trade. When I came to his house, he made a parade of all these advantages: he displayed his bags of money, and some old gold which his father had left him. He described his chateau in the country; dropped hints of the fortunes that were settled upon mademoiselles his sisters; boasted of his connexions at court; and assured me it was not for my money that he let his lodgings, but altogether with a view to enjoy the pleasure of my company. The truth, when stript of all embellishments, is this: the sieur B-- is the son of an honest bourgeois lately dead, who left him the house, with some stock in trade, a little money, and a paltry farm: his sisters have about three thousand livres (not quite 140 L) apiece; the brother's places are worth about fifty pounds a year, and his connexions at court are confined to a commis or clerk in the secretary's office, with whom he corresponds by virtue of his employment. My landlord piques himself upon his gallantry and success with the fair-sex: he keeps a fille de joye, and makes no secret of his amours. He told miss C-- the other day, in broken English, that, in the course of the last year, he had made six bastards. He owned, at the same time, he had sent them all to the hospital; but, now his father is dead, he would himself take care of his future productions. This, however, was no better than a gasconade. Yesterday the house was in a hot alarm, on account of a new windfall of this kind: the sisters were in tears; the brother was visited by the cure of the parish; the lady in the straw (a sempstress) sent him the bantling in a basket, and he transmitted it by the carriers to the Enfans trouves at Paris. But to return from this digression: Mr. B-- advised me to send a requete or petition to the chancellor of France, that I might obtain an order to have my books examined on the spot, by the president of Boulogne, or the procureur du roy, or the sub-delegate of the intendance. He recommended an advocat of his acquaintance to draw up the memoire, and introduced him accordingly; telling me at the same time, in private, that if he was not a drunkard, he would be at the head of his profession. He had indeed all the outward signs of a sot; a sleepy eye, a rubicund face, and carbuncled nose. He seemed to be a little out at elbows, had marvellous foul linen, and his breeches were not very sound: but he assumed an air of importance, was very courteous, and very solemn. I asked him if he did not sometimes divert himself with the muse: he smiled, and promised, in a whisper, to shew me some chansonettes de sa facon. Meanwhile he composed the requete in my name, which was very pompous, very tedious, and very abject. Such a stile might perhaps be necessary in a native of France; but I did not think it was at all suitable to a subject of Great-Britain. I thanked him for the trouble he had taken, as he would receive no other gratification; but when my landlord proposed to send the memoire to his correspondent at Paris, to be delivered to the chancellor, I told him I had changed my mind, and would apply to the English ambassador. I have accordingly taken the liberty to address myself to the earl of H--; and at the same time I have presumed to write to the duchess of D--, who is now at Paris, to entreat her grace's advice and interposition. What effect these applications may have, I know not: but the sieur B-- shakes his head, and has told my servant, in confidence, that I am mistaken if I think the English ambassador is as great a man at Paris as the chancellor of France. I ought to make an apology for troubling you with such an unentertaining detail, and consider that the detention of my books must be a matter of very little consequence to any body, but to--Your affectionate humble servant. LETTER III BOULOGNE, August 15, 1763. SIR--I am much obliged to you for your kind enquiries after my health, which has been lately in a very declining condition. In consequence of a cold, caught a few days after my arrival in France, I was seized with a violent cough, attended with a fever, and stitches in my breast, which tormented me all night long without ceasing. At the same time I had a great discharge by expectoration, and such a dejection of spirits as I never felt before. In this situation I took a step which may appear to have been desperate. I knew there was no imposthume in my lungs, and I supposed the stitches were spasmodical. I was sensible that all my complaints were originally derived from relaxation. I therefore hired a chaise, and going to the beach, about a league from the town, plunged into the sea without hesitation. By this desperate remedy, I got a fresh cold in my head: but my stitches and fever vanished the very first day; and by a daily repetition of the bath, I have diminished my cough, strengthened my body, and recovered my spirits. I believe I should have tried the same experiment, even if there had been an abscess in my lungs, though such practice would have been contrary to all the rules of medicine: but I am not one of those who implicitly believe in all the dogmata of physic. I saw one of the guides at Bath, the stoutest fellow among them, who recovered from the last stage of a consumption, by going into the king's bath, contrary to the express injunction of his doctor. He said, if he must die, the sooner the better, as he had nothing left for his subsistence. Instead of immediate death, he found instant case, and continued mending every day, till his health was entirely re-established. I myself drank the waters of Bath, and bathed, in diametrical opposition to the opinion of some physicians there settled, and found myself better every day, notwithstanding their unfavourable prognostic. If I had been of the rigid fibre, full of blood, subject to inflammation, I should have followed a different course. Our acquaintance, doctor C--, while he actually spit up matter, and rode out every day for his life, led his horse to water, at the pond in Hyde-Park, one cold frosty morning, and the beast, which happened to be of a hot constitution, plunged himself and his master over head and ears in the water. The poor doctor hastened home, half dead with fear, and was put to bed in the apprehension of a new imposthume; instead of which, he found himself exceedingly recruited in his spirits, and his appetite much mended. I advised him to take the hint, and go into the cold bath every morning; but he did not chuse to run any risque. How cold water comes to be such a bugbear, I know not: if I am not mistaken, Hippocrates recommends immersion in cold water for the gout; and Celsus expressly says, in omni tussi utilis est natatio: in every cough swimming is of service. I have conversed with a physician of this place, a sensible man, who assured me he was reduced to meer skin and bone by a cough and hectic fever, when he ordered a bath to be made in his own house, and dipped himself in cold water every morning. He at the same time left off drinking and swallowing any liquid that was warm. He is now strong and lusty, and even in winter has no other cover than a single sheet. His notions about the warm drink were a little whimsical: he imagined it relaxed the tone of the stomach; and this would undoubtedly be the case if it was drank in large quantities, warmer than the natural temperature of the blood. He alledged the example of the inhabitants of the Ladrone islands, who never taste any thing that is not cold, and are remarkably healthy. But to balance this argument I mentioned the Chinese, who scarce drink any thing but warm tea; and the Laplanders, who drink nothing but warm water; yet the people of both these nations are remarkably strong, healthy, and long-lived. You desire to know the fate of my books. My lord H--d is not yet come to France; but my letter was transmitted to him from Paris; and his lordship, with that generous humanity which is peculiar to his character, has done me the honour to assure me, under his own hand, that he has directed Mr. N--lle, our resident at Paris, to apply for an order that my books may be restored. I have met with another piece of good fortune, in being introduced to general Paterson and his lady, in their way to England from Nice, where the general has been many years commandant for the king of Sardinia. You must have heard of this gentleman, who has not only eminently distinguished himself, by his courage and conduct as an officer; but also by his probity and humanity in the exercise, of his office, and by his remarkable hospitality to all strangers, especially the subjects of Great-Britain, whose occasions called them to the place where he commanded. Being pretty far advanced in years, he begged leave to resign, that he might spend the evening of his days in his own country; and his Sardinian majesty granted his request with regret, after having honoured him with very particular marks of approbation and esteem. The general talks so favourably of the climate of Nice, with respect to disorders of the breast, that I am now determined to go thither. It would have been happy for me had he continued in his government. I think myself still very fortunate, in having obtained of him a letter of recommendation to the English consul at Nice, together with directions how to travel through the South of France. I propose to begin my journey some time next month, when the weather will be temperate to the southward; and in the wine countries I shall have the pleasure of seeing the vintage, which is always a season of festivity among all ranks of people. You have been very much mis-informed, by the person who compared Boulogne to Wapping: he did a manifest injustice to this place which is a large agreeable town, with broad open streets, excellently paved; and the houses are of stone, well built and commodious. The number of inhabitants may amount to sixteen thousand. You know this was generally supposed to be the portus Itius, and Gessoriacum of the antients: though it is now believed that the portus Itius, from whence Caesar sailed to Britain, is a place called Whitsand, about half way between this place and Calais. Boulogne is the capital of the Boulonnois, a district extending about twelve leagues, ruled by a governor independent of the governor of Picardy; of which province, however, this country forms a part. The present governor is the duc d'Aumout. The town of Boulogne is the see of a bishop suffragan of Rheims, whose revenue amounts to about four-and-twenty thousand livres, or one thousand pounds sterling. It is also the seat of a seneschal's court, from whence an appeal lies to the parliament of Paris; and thither all condemned criminals are sent, to have their sentence confirmed or reversed. Here is likewise a bailiwick, and a court of admiralty. The military jurisdiction of the city belongs to a commandant appointed by the king, a sort of sinecure bestowed upon some old officer. His appointments are very inconsiderable: he resides in the Upper Town, and his garrison at present consists of a few hundreds of invalids. Boulogne is divided into the Upper and Lower Towns. The former is a kind of citadel, about a short mile in circumference, situated on a rising ground, surrounded by a high wall and rampart, planted with rows of trees, which form a delightful walk. It commands a fine view of the country and Lower Town; and in clear weather the coast of England, from Dover to Folkstone, appears so plain, that one would imagine it was within four or five leagues of the French shore. The Upper Town was formerly fortified with outworks, which are now in ruins. Here is a square, a town-house, the cathedral, and two or three convents of nuns; in one of which there are several English girls, sent hither for their education. The smallness of the expence encourages parents to send their children abroad to these seminaries, where they learn scarce any thing that is useful but the French language; but they never fail to imbibe prejudices against the protestant religion, and generally return enthusiastic converts to the religion of Rome. This conversion always generates a contempt for, and often an aversion to, their own country. Indeed it cannot reasonably be expected that people of weak minds, addicted to superstition, should either love or esteem those whom they are taught to consider as reprobated heretics. Ten pounds a year is the usual pension in these convents; but I have been informed by a French lady who had her education in one of them, that nothing can be more wretched than their entertainment. The civil magistracy of Boulogne consists of a mayor and echevins; and this is the case in almost all the towns of France. The Lower Town is continued from the gate of the Upper Town, down the slope of a hill, as far as the harbour, stretching on both sides to a large extent, and is much more considerable than the Upper, with respect to the beauty of the streets, the convenience of the houses, and the number and wealth of the inhabitants. These, however, are all merchants, or bourgeoise, for the noblesse or gentry live all together in the Upper Town, and never mix with the others. The harbour of Boulogne is at the mouth of the small river, or rather rivulet Liane, which is so shallow, that the children wade through it at low water. As the tide makes, the sea flows in, and forms a pretty extensive harbour, which, however, admits nothing but small vessels. It is contracted at the mouth by two stone jetties or piers, which seem to have been constructed by some engineer, very little acquainted with this branch of his profession; for they are carried out in such a manner, as to collect a bank of sand just at the entrance of the harbour. The road is very open and unsafe, and the surf very high when the wind blows from the sea. There is no fortification near the harbour, except a paltry fort mounting about twenty guns, built in the last war by the prince de Cruy, upon a rock about a league to the eastward of Boulogne. It appears to be situated in such a manner, that it can neither offend, nor be offended. If the depth of water would admit a forty or fifty gun ship to lie within cannon-shot of it, I apprehend it might be silenced in half an hour; but, in all probability, there will be no vestiges of it at the next rupture between the two crowns. It is surrounded every day by the sea, at high water; and when it blows a fresh gale towards the shore, the waves break over the top of it, to the terror and astonishment of the garrison, who have been often heard crying piteously for assistance. I am persuaded, that it will one day disappear in the twinkling of an eye. The neighbourhood of this fort, which is a smooth sandy beach, I have chosen for my bathing place. The road to it is agreeable and romantic, lying through pleasant cornfields, skirted by open downs, where there is a rabbit warren, and great plenty of the birds so much admired at Tunbridge under the name of wheat-ears. By the bye, this is a pleasant corruption of white-a-se, the translation of their French name cul-blanc, taken from their colour for they are actually white towards the tail. Upon the top of a high rock, which overlooks the harbour, are the remains of an old fortification, which is indiscriminately called, Tour d'ordre, and Julius Caesar's fort. The original tower was a light-house built by Claudius Caesar, denominated Turris ardens, from the fire burned in it; and this the French have corrupted into Tour d'ordre; but no vestiges of this Roman work remain; what we now see, are the ruins of a castle built by Charlemagne. I know of no other antiquity at Boulogne, except an old vault in the Upper Town, now used as a magazine, which is said to be part of an antient temple dedicated to Isis. On the other side of the harbour, opposite to the Lower Town, there is a house built, at a considerable expence, by a general officer, who lost his life in the late war. Never was situation more inconvenient, unpleasant, and unhealthy. It stands on the edge of an ugly morass formed by the stagnant water left by the tide in its retreat: the very walks of the garden are so moist, that, in the driest weather, no person can make a tour of it, without danger of the rheumatism. Besides, the house is altogether inaccessible, except at low water, and even then the carriage must cross the harbour, the wheels up to the axle-tree in mud: nay, the tide rushes in so fast, that unless you seize the time to a minute, you will be in danger of perishing. The apartments of this house are elegantly fitted up, but very small; and the garden, notwithstanding its unfavourable situation, affords a great quantity of good fruit. The ooze, impregnated with sea salt, produces, on this side of the harbour, an incredible quantity of the finest samphire I ever saw. The French call it passe-pierre; and I suspect its English name is a corruption of sang-pierre. It is generally found on the faces of bare rocks that overhang the sea, by the spray of which it is nourished. As it grew upon a naked rock, without any appearance of soil, it might be naturally enough called sang du pierre, or sangpierre, blood of the rock; and hence the name samphire. On the same side of the harbour there is another new house, neatly built, belonging to a gentleman who has obtained a grant from the king of some ground which was always overflowed at high water. He has raised dykes at a considerable expence, to exclude the tide, and if he can bring his project to bear, he will not only gain a good estate for himself, but also improve the harbour, by increasing the depth at high-water. In the Lower Town of Boulogne there are several religious houses, particularly a seminary, a convent of Cordeliers, and another of Capuchins. This last, having fallen to decay, was some years ago repaired, chiefly by the charity of British travellers, collected by father Graeme, a native of North-Britain, who had been an officer in the army of king James II. and is said to have turned monk of this mendicant order, by way of voluntary penance, for having killed his friend in a duel. Be that as it may, he was a well-bred, sensible man, of a very exemplary life and conversation; and his memory is much revered in this place. Being superior of the convent, he caused the British arms to be put up in the church, as a mark of gratitude for the benefactions received from our nation. I often walk in the garden of the convent, the walls of which are washed by the sea at high-water. At the bottom of the garden is a little private grove, separated from it by a high wall, with a door of communication; and hither the Capuchins retire, when they are disposed for contemplation. About two years ago, this place was said to be converted to a very different use. There was among the monks one pere Charles, a lusty friar, of whom the people tell strange stories. Some young women of the town were seen mounting over the wall, by a ladder of ropes, in the dusk of the evening; and there was an unusual crop of bastards that season. In short, pere Charles and his companions gave such scandal, that the whole fraternity was changed; and now the nest is occupied by another flight of these birds of passage. If one of our privateers had kidnapped a Capuchin during the war, and exhibited him, in his habit, as a shew in London, he would have proved a good prize to the captors; for I know not a more uncouth and grotesque animal, than an old Capuchin in the habit of his order. A friend of mine (a Swiss officer) told me, that a peasant in his country used to weep bitterly, whenever a certain Capuchin mounted the pulpit to hold forth to the people. The good father took notice of this man, and believed he was touched by the finger of the Lord. He exhorted him to encourage these accessions of grace, and at the same time to be of good comfort, as having received such marks of the divine favour. The man still continued to weep, as before, every time the monk preached; and at last the Capuchin insisted upon knowing what it was, in his discourse or appearance, that made such an impression upon his heart "Ah, father! (cried the peasant) I never see you but I think of a venerable goat, which I lost at Easter. We were bred up together in the same family. He was the very picture of your reverence--one would swear you were brothers. Poor Baudouin! he died of a fall--rest his soul! I would willingly pay for a couple of masses to pray him out of purgatory." Among other public edifices at Boulogne, there is an hospital, or workhouse, which seems to be established upon a very good foundation. It maintains several hundreds of poor people, who are kept constantly at work, according to their age and abilities, in making thread, all sorts of lace, a kind of catgut, and in knitting stockings. It is under the direction of the bishop; and the see is at present filled by a prelate of great piety and benevolence, though a little inclining to bigotry and fanaticism. The churches in this town are but indifferently built, and poorly ornamented. There is not one picture in the place worth looking at, nor indeed does there seem to be the least taste for the liberal arts. In my next, I shall endeavour to satisfy you in the other articles you desire to know. Mean-while, I am ever--Yours. LETTER IV BOULOGNE, September 1, 1763. SIR,--I am infinitely obliged to D. H-- for the favourable manner in which he has mentioned me to the earl of H-- I have at last recovered my books, by virtue of a particular order to the director of the douane, procured by the application of the English resident to the French ministry. I am now preparing for my long journey; but, before I leave this place, I shall send you the packet I mentioned, by Meriton. Mean-while I must fulfil my promise in communicating the observations I have had occasion to make upon this town and country. The air of Boulogne is cold and moist, and, I believe, of consequence unhealthy. Last winter the frost, which continued six weeks in London, lasted here eight weeks without intermission; and the cold was so intense, that, in the garden of the Capuchins, it split the bark of several elms from top to bottom. On our arrival here we found all kinds of fruit more backward than in England. The frost, in its progress to Britain, is much weakened in crossing the sea. The atmosphere, impregnated with saline particles, resists the operation of freezing. Hence, in severe winters, all places near the sea-side are less cold than more inland districts. This is the reason why the winter is often more mild at Edinburgh than at London. A very great degree of cold is required to freeze salt water. Indeed it will not freeze at all, until it has deposited all its salt. It is now generally allowed among philosophers, that water is no more than ice thawed by heat, either solar, or subterranean, or both; and that this heat being expelled, it would return to its natural consistence. This being the case, nothing else is required for the freezing of water, than a certain degree of cold, which may be generated by the help of salt, or spirit of nitre, even under the line. I would propose, therefore, that an apparatus of this sort should be provided in every ship that goes to sea; and in case there should be a deficiency of fresh water on board, the seawater may be rendered potable, by being first converted into ice. The air of Boulogne is not only loaded with a great evaporation from the sea, increased by strong gales of wind from the West and South-West, which blow almost continually during the greatest part of the year; but it is also subject to putrid vapours, arising from the low marshy ground in the neighbourhood of the harbour, which is every tide overflowed with seawater. This may be one cause of the scrofula and rickets, which are two prevailing disorders among the children in Boulogne. But I believe the former is more owing to the water used in the Lower Town, which is very hard and unwholsome. It curdles with soap, gives a red colour to the meat that is boiled in it, and, when drank by strangers, never fails to occasion pains in the stomach and bowels; nay, sometimes produces dysenteries. In all appearance it is impregnated with nitre, if not with something more mischievous: we know that mundic, or pyrites, very often contains a proportion of arsenic, mixed with sulphur, vitriol, and mercury. Perhaps it partakes of the acid of some coal mine; for there are coal works in this district. There is a well of purging water within a quarter of a mile of the Upper Town, to which the inhabitants resort in the morning, as the people of London go to the Dog-and-duck, in St. George's fields. There is likewise a fountain of excellent water, hard by the cathedral, in the Upper Town, from whence I am daily supplied at a small expence. Some modern chemists affirm, that no saline chalybeate waters can exist, except in the neighbourhood of coal damps; and that nothing can be more mild, and gentle, and friendly to the constitution, than the said damps: but I know that the place where I was bred stands upon a zonic of coal; that the water which the inhabitants generally use is hard and brackish; and that the people are remarkably subject to the king's evil and consumption. These I would impute to the bad water, impregnated with the vitriol and brine of coal, as there is nothing in the constitution of the air that should render such distempers endemial. That the air of Boulogne encourages putrefaction, appears from the effect it has upon butcher's meat, which, though the season is remarkably cold, we can hardly keep four-and-twenty hours in the coolest part of the house. Living here is pretty reasonable; and the markets are tolerably supplied. The beef is neither fat nor firm; but very good for soup, which is the only use the French make of it. The veal is not so white, nor so well fed, as the English veal; but it is more juicy, and better tasted. The mutton and pork are very good. We buy our poultry alive, and fatten them at home. Here are excellent turkies, and no want of game: the hares, in particular, are very large, juicy, and high-flavoured. The best part of the fish caught on this coast is sent post to Paris, in chasse-marines, by a company of contractors, like those of Hastings in Sussex. Nevertheless, we have excellent soles, skaite, flounders and whitings, and sometimes mackarel. The oysters are very large, coarse, and rank. There is very little fish caught on the French coast, because the shallows run a great way from the shore; and the fish live chiefly in deep water: for this reason the fishermen go a great way out to sea, sometimes even as far as the coast of England. Notwithstanding all the haste the contractors can make, their fish in the summer is very often spoiled before it arrives at Paris; and this is not to be wondered at, considering the length of the way, which is near one hundred and fifty miles. At best it must be in such a mortified condition, that no other people, except the negroes on the coast of Guinea, would feed upon it. The wine commonly drank at Boulogne comes from Auxerre, is very small and meagre, and may be had from five to eight sols a bottle; that is, from two-pence halfpenny to fourpence. The French inhabitants drink no good wine; nor is there any to be had, unless you have recourse to the British wine-merchants here established, who deal in Bourdeaux wines, brought hither by sea for the London market. I have very good claret from a friend, at the rate of fifteen-pence sterling a bottle; and excellent small beer as reasonable as in England. I don't believe there is a drop of generous Burgundy in the place; and the aubergistes impose upon us shamefully, when they charge it at two livres a bottle. There is a small white wine, called preniac, which is very agreeable and very cheap. All the brandy which I have seen in Boulogne is new, fiery, and still-burnt. This is the trash which the smugglers import into England: they have it for about ten-pence a gallon. Butcher's meat is sold for five sols, or two-pence halfpenny a pound, and the pound here consists of eighteen ounces. I have a young turkey for thirty sols; a hare for four-and-twenty; a couple of chickens for twenty sols, and a couple of good soles for the same price. Before we left England, we were told that there was no fruit in Boulogne; but we have found ourselves agreeably disappointed in this particular. The place is well supplied with strawberries, cherries, gooseberries, corinths, peaches, apricots, and excellent pears. I have eaten more fruit this season, than I have done for several years. There are many well-cultivated gardens in the skirts of the town; particularly one belonging to our friend Mrs. B--, where we often drink tea in a charming summer-house built on a rising ground, which commands a delightful prospect of the sea. We have many obligations to this good lady, who is a kind neighbour, an obliging friend, and a most agreeable companion: she speaks English prettily, and is greatly attached to the people and the customs of our nation. They use wood for their common fewel, though, if I were to live at Boulogne, I would mix it with coal, which this country affords. Both the wood and the coal are reasonable enough. I am certain that a man may keep house in Boulogne for about one half of what it will cost him in London; and this is said to be one of the dearest places in France. The adjacent country is very agreeable, diversified with hill and dale, corn-fields, woods, and meadows. There is a forest of a considerable extent, that begins about a short league from the Upper Town: it belongs to the king, and the wood is farmed to different individuals. In point of agriculture, the people in this neighbourhood seem to have profited by the example of the English. Since I was last in France, fifteen years ago, a good number of inclosures and plantations have been made in the English fashion. There is a good many tolerable country-houses, within a few miles of Boulogne; but mostly empty. I was offered a compleat house, with a garden of four acres well laid out, and two fields for grass or hay, about a mile from the town, for four hundred livres, about seventeen pounds a year: it is partly furnished, stands in an agreeable situation, with a fine prospect of the sea, and was lately occupied by a Scotch nobleman, who is in the service of France. To judge from appearance, the people of Boulogne are descended from the Flemings, who formerly possessed this country; for, a great many of the present inhabitants have fine skins, fair hair, and florid complexions; very different from the natives of France in general, who are distinguished by black hair, brown skins, and swarthy faces. The people of the Boulonnois enjoy some extraordinary privileges, and, in particular, are exempted from the gabelle or duties upon salt: how they deserved this mark of favour, I do not know; but they seem to have a spirit of independence among them, are very ferocious, and much addicted to revenge. Many barbarous murders are committed, both in the town and country; and the peasants, from motives of envy and resentment, frequently set their neighbours' houses on fire. Several instances of this kind have happened in the course of the last year. The interruption which is given, in arbitrary governments, to the administration of justice, by the interposition of the great, has always a bad effect upon the morals of the common people. The peasants too are often rendered desperate and savage, by the misery they suffer from the oppression and tyranny of their landlords. In this neighbourhood the labouring people are ill lodged and wretchedly fed; and they have no idea of cleanliness. There is a substantial burgher in the High Town, who was some years ago convicted of a most barbarous murder. He received sentence to be broke alive upon the wheel; but was pardoned by the interposition of the governor of the county, and carries on his business as usual in the face of the whole community. A furious abbe, being refused orders by the bishop, on account of his irregular life, took an opportunity to stab the prelate with a knife, one Sunday, as he walked out of the cathedral. The good bishop desired he might be permitted to escape; but it was thought proper to punish, with the utmost severity, such an atrocious attempt. He was accordingly apprehended, and, though the wound was not mortal, condemned to be broke. When this dreadful sentence was executed, he cried out, that it was hard he should undergo such torments, for having wounded a worthless priest, by whom he had been injured, while such-a-one (naming the burgher mentioned above) lived in ease and security, after having brutally murdered a poor man, and a helpless woman big with child, who had not given him the least provocation. The inhabitants of Boulogne may be divided into three classes; the noblesse or gentry, the burghers, and the canaille. I don't mention the clergy, and the people belonging to the law, because I shall occasionally trouble you with my thoughts upon the religion and ecclesiastics of this country; and as for the lawyers, exclusive of their profession, they may be considered as belonging to one or other of these divisions. The noblesse are vain, proud, poor, and slothful. Very few of them have above six thousand livres a year, which may amount to about two hundred and fifty pounds sterling; and many of them have not half this revenue. I think there is one heiress, said to be worth one hundred thousand livres, about four thousand two hundred pounds; but then her jewels, her cloaths, and even her linen, are reckoned part of this fortune. The noblesse have not the common sense to reside at their houses in the country, where, by farming their own grounds, they might live at a small expence, and improve their estates at the same time. They allow their country houses to go to decay, and their gardens and fields to waste; and reside in dark holes in the Upper Town of Boulogne without light, air, or convenience. There they starve within doors, that they may have wherewithal to purchase fine cloaths, and appear dressed once a day in the church, or on the rampart. They have no education, no taste for reading, no housewifery, nor indeed any earthly occupation, but that of dressing their hair, and adorning their bodies. They hate walking, and would never go abroad, if they were not stimulated by the vanity of being seen. I ought to except indeed those who turn devotees, and spend the greatest part of their time with the priest, either at church or in their own houses. Other amusements they have none in this place, except private parties of card-playing, which are far from being expensive. Nothing can be more parsimonious than the oeconomy of these people: they live upon soupe and bouille, fish and sallad: they never think of giving dinners, or entertaining their friends; they even save the expence of coffee and tea, though both are very cheap at Boulogne. They presume that every person drinks coffee at home, immediately after dinner, which is always over by one o'clock; and, in lieu of tea in the afternoon, they treat with a glass of sherbet, or capillaire. In a word, I know not a more insignificant set of mortals than the noblesse of Boulogne; helpless in themselves, and useless to the community; without dignity, sense, or sentiment; contemptible from pride. and ridiculous from vanity. They pretend to be jealous of their rank, and will entertain no correspondence with the merchants, whom they term plebeians. They likewise keep at a great distance from strangers, on pretence of a delicacy in the article of punctilio: but, as I am informed, this stateliness is in a great measure affected, in order to conceal their poverty, which would appear to greater disadvantage, if they admitted of a more familiar communication. Considering the vivacity of the French people, one would imagine they could not possibly lead such an insipid life, altogether unanimated by society, or diversion. True it is, the only profane diversions of this place are a puppet-show and a mountebank; but then their religion affords a perpetual comedy. Their high masses, their feasts, their processions, their pilgrimages, confessions, images, tapers, robes, incense, benedictions, spectacles, representations, and innumerable ceremonies, which revolve almost incessantly, furnish a variety of entertainment from one end of the year to the other. If superstition implies fear, never was a word more misapplied than it is to the mummery of the religion of Rome. The people are so far from being impressed with awe and religious terror by this sort of machinery, that it amuses their imaginations in the most agreeable manner, and keeps them always in good humour. A Roman catholic longs as impatiently for the festival of St. Suaire, or St. Croix, or St. Veronique, as a schoolboy in England for the representation of punch and the devil; and there is generally as much laughing at one farce as at the other. Even when the descent from the cross is acted, in the holy week, with all the circumstances that ought naturally to inspire the gravest sentiments, if you cast your eyes among the multitude that croud the place, you will not discover one melancholy face: all is prattling, tittering, or laughing; and ten to one but you perceive a number of them employed in hissing the female who personates the Virgin Mary. And here it may not be amiss to observe, that the Roman catholics, not content with the infinite number of saints who really existed, have not only personified the cross, but made two female saints out of a piece of linen. Veronique, or Veronica, is no other than a corruption of vera icon, or vera effigies, said to be the exact representation of our Saviour's face, impressed upon a piece of linen, with which he wiped the sweat from his forehead in his way to the place of crucifixion. The same is worshipped under the name of St. Suaire, from the Latin word sudarium. This same handkerchief is said to have had three folds, on every one of which was the impression: one of these remains at Jerusalem, a second was brought to Rome, and a third was conveyed to Spain. Baronius says, there is a very antient history of the sancta facies in the Vatican. Tillemont, however, looks upon the whole as a fable. Some suppose Veronica to be the same with St. Haemorrhoissa, the patroness of those who are afflicted with the piles, who make their joint invocations to her and St. Fiacre, the son of a Scotch king, who lived and died a hermit in France. The troops of Henry V. of England are said to have pillaged the chapel of this Highland saint; who, in revenge, assisted his countrymen, in the French service, to defeat the English at Bauge, and afterwards afflicted Henry with the piles, of which he died. This prince complained, that he was not only plagued by the living Scots, but even persecuted by those who were dead. I know not whether I may be allowed to compare the Romish religion to comedy, and Calvinism to tragedy. The first amuses the senses, and excites ideas of mirth and good-humour; the other, like tragedy, deals in the passions of terror and pity. Step into a conventicle of dissenters, you will, ten to one, hear the minister holding forth upon the sufferings of Christ, or the torments of hell, and see many marks of religious horror in the faces of the hearers. This is perhaps one reason why the reformation did not succeed in France, among a volatile, giddy, unthinking people, shocked at the mortified appearances of the Calvinists; and accounts for its rapid progress among nations of a more melancholy turn of character and complexion: for, in the conversion of the multitude, reason is generally out of the question. Even the penance imposed upon the catholics is little more than mock mortification: a murderer is often quit with his confessor for saying three prayers extraordinary; and these easy terms, on which absolution is obtained, certainly encourage the repetition of the most enormous crimes. The pomp and ceremonies of this religion, together with the great number of holidays they observe, howsoever they may keep up the spirits of the commonalty, and help to diminish the sense of their own misery, must certainly, at the same time, produce a frivolous taste for frippery and shew, and encourage a habit of idleness, to which I, in a great measure, ascribe the extreme poverty of the lower people. Very near half of their time, which might he profitably employed in the exercise of industry, is lost to themselves and the community, in attendance upon the different exhibitions of religious mummery. But as this letter has already run to an unconscionable length, I shall defer, till another occasion, what I have further to say on the people of this place, and in the mean time assure you, that I am always--Yours affectionately. LETTER V BOULOGNE, September 12, 1763. DEAR SIR,--My stay in this place now draws towards a period. 'Till within these few days I have continued bathing, with some advantage to my health, though the season has been cold and wet, and disagreeable. There was a fine prospect of a plentiful harvest in this neighbourhood. I used to have great pleasure in driving between the fields of wheat, oats, and barley; but the crop has been entirely ruined by the rain, and nothing is now to be seen on the ground but the tarnished straw, and the rotten spoils of the husbandman's labour. The ground scarce affords subsistence to a few flocks of meagre sheep, that crop the stubble, and the intervening grass; each flock under the protection of its shepherd, with his crook and dogs, who lies every night in the midst of the fold, in a little thatched travelling lodge, mounted on a wheel-carriage. Here he passes the night, in order to defend his flock from the wolves, which are sometimes, especially in winter, very bold and desperate. Two days ago we made an excursion with Mrs. B-- and Capt. L-- to the village of Samers, on the Paris road, about three leagues from Boulogne. Here is a venerable abbey of Benedictines, well endowed, with large agreeable gardens prettily laid out. The monks are well lodged, and well entertained. Tho' restricted from flesh meals by the rules of their order, they are allowed to eat wild duck and teal, as a species of fish; and when they long for a good bouillon, or a partridge, or pullet, they have nothing to do but to say they are out of order. In that case the appetite of the patient is indulged in his own apartment. Their church is elegantly contrived, but kept in a very dirty condition. The greatest curiosity I saw in this place was an English boy, about eight or nine years old, whom his father had sent hither to learn the French language. In less than eight weeks, he was become captain of the boys of the place, spoke French perfectly well, and had almost forgot his mother tongue. But to return to the people of Boulogne. The burghers here, as in other places, consist of merchants, shop-keepers, and artisans. Some of the merchants have got fortunes, by fitting out privateers during the war. A great many single ships were taken from the English, notwithstanding the good look-out of our cruisers, who were so alert, that the privateers from this coast were often taken in four hours after they sailed from the French harbour; and there is hardly a captain of an armateur in Boulogne, who has not been prisoner in England five or six times in the course of the war. They were fitted out at a very small expence, and used to run over in the night to the coast of England, where they hovered as English fishing smacks, until they kidnapped some coaster, with which they made the best of their way across the Channel. If they fell in with a British cruiser, they surrendered without resistance: the captain was soon exchanged, and the loss of the proprietor was not great: if they brought their prize safe into harbour, the advantage was considerable. In time of peace the merchants of Boulogne deal in wine brandies, and oil, imported from the South, and export fish, with the manufactures of France, to Portugal, and other countries; but the trade is not great. Here are two or three considerable houses of wine merchants from Britain, who deal in Bourdeaux wine, with which they supply London and other parts of England, Scotland, and Ireland. The fishery of mackarel and herring is so considerable on this coast, that it is said to yield annually eight or nine hundred thousand livres, about thirty-five thousand pounds sterling. The shop-keepers here drive a considerable traffic with the English smugglers, whose cutters are almost the only vessels one sees in the harbour of Boulogne, if we except about a dozen of those flat-bottomed boats, which raised such alarms in England, in the course of the war. Indeed they seem to be good for nothing else, and perhaps they were built for this purpose only. The smugglers from the coast of Kent and Sussex pay English gold for great quantities of French brandy, tea, coffee, and small wine, which they run from this country. They likewise buy glass trinkets, toys, and coloured prints, which sell in England, for no other reason, but that they come from France, as they may be had as cheap, and much better finished, of our own manufacture. They likewise take off ribbons, laces, linen, and cambrics; though this branch of trade is chiefly in the hands of traders that come from London and make their purchases at Dunkirk, where they pay no duties. It is certainly worth while for any traveller to lay in a stock of linen either at Dunkirk or Boulogne; the difference of the price at these two places is not great. Even here I have made a provision of shirts for one half of the money they would have cost in London. Undoubtedly the practice of smuggling is very detrimental to the fair trader, and carries considerable sums of money out of the kingdom, to enrich our rivals and enemies. The custom-house officers are very watchful, and make a great number of seizures: nevertheless, the smugglers find their account in continuing this contraband commerce; and are said to indemnify themselves, if they save one cargo out of three. After all, the best way to prevent smuggling, is to lower the duties upon the commodities which are thus introduced. I have been told, that the revenue upon tea has encreased ever since the duty upon it was diminished. By the bye, the tea smuggled on the coast of Sussex is most execrable stuff. While I stayed at Hastings, for the conveniency of bathing, I must have changed my breakfast, if I had not luckily brought tea with me from London: yet we have as good tea at Boulogne for nine livres a pound, as that which sells at fourteen shillings at London. The bourgeois of this place seem to live at their ease, probably in consequence of their trade with the English. Their houses consist of the ground-floor, one story above, and garrets. In those which are well furnished, you see pier-glasses and marble slabs; but the chairs are either paultry things, made with straw bottoms, which cost about a shilling a-piece, or old-fashioned, high-backed seats of needle-work, stuffed, very clumsy and incommodious. The tables are square fir boards, that stand on edge in a corner, except when they are used, and then they are set upon cross legs that open and shut occasionally. The king of France dines off a board of this kind. Here is plenty of table-linen however. The poorest tradesman in Boulogne has a napkin on every cover, and silver forks with four prongs, which are used with the right hand, there being very little occasion for knives; for the meat is boiled or roasted to rags. The French beds are so high, that sometimes one is obliged to mount them by the help of steps; and this is also the case in Flanders. They very seldom use feather-beds; but they lie upon a paillasse, or bag of straw, over which are laid two, and sometimes three mattrasses. Their testers are high and old-fashioned, and their curtains generally of thin bays, red, or green, laced with taudry yellow, in imitation of gold. In some houses, however, one meets with furniture of stamped linen; but there is no such thing as a carpet to be seen, and the floors are in a very dirty condition. They have not even the implements of cleanliness in this country. Every chamber is furnished with an armoire, or clothes-press, and a chest of drawers, of very clumsy workmanship. Every thing shews a deficiency in the mechanic arts. There is not a door, nor a window, that shuts close. The hinges, locks, and latches, are of iron, coarsely made, and ill contrived. The very chimnies are built so open, that they admit both rain and sun, and all of them smoke intolerably. If there is no cleanliness among these people, much less shall we find delicacy, which is the cleanliness of the mind. Indeed they are utter strangers to what we call common decency; and I could give you some high-flavoured instances, at which even a native of Edinburgh would stop his nose. There are certain mortifying views of human nature, which undoubtedly ought to be concealed as much as possible, in order to prevent giving offence: and nothing can be more absurd, than to plead the difference of custom in different countries, in defence of these usages which cannot fail giving disgust to the organs and senses of all mankind. Will custom exempt from the imputation of gross indecency a French lady, who shifts her frowsy smock in presence of a male visitant, and talks to him of her lavement, her medecine, and her bidet! An Italian signora makes no scruple of telling you, she is such a day to begin a course of physic for the pox. The celebrated reformer of the Italian comedy introduces a child befouling itself, on the stage, OE, NO TI SENTI? BISOGNA DESFASSARLO, (fa cenno che sentesi mal odore). I have known a lady handed to the house of office by her admirer, who stood at the door, and entertained her with bons mots all the time she was within. But I should be glad to know, whether it is possible for a fine lady to speak and act in this manner, without exciting ideas to her own disadvantage in the mind of every man who has any imagination left, and enjoys the entire use of his senses, howsoever she may be authorised by the customs of her country? There is nothing so vile or repugnant to nature, but you may plead prescription for it, in the customs of some nation or other. A Parisian likes mortified flesh: a native of Legiboli will not taste his fish till it is quite putrefied: the civilized inhabitants of Kamschatka get drunk with the urine of their guests, whom they have already intoxicated: the Nova Zemblans make merry on train-oil: the Groenlanders eat in the same dish with their dogs: the Caffres, at the Cape of Good Hope, piss upon those whom they delight to honour, and feast upon a sheep's intestines with their contents, as the greatest dainty that can be presented. A true-bred Frenchman dips his fingers, imbrowned with snuff, into his plate filled with ragout: between every three mouthfuls, he produces his snuff-box, and takes a fresh pinch, with the most graceful gesticulations; then he displays his handkerchief, which may be termed the flag of abomination, and, in the use of both, scatters his favours among those who have the happiness to sit near him. It must be owned, however, that a Frenchman will not drink out of a tankard, in which, perhaps, a dozen of filthy mouths have flabbered, as is the custom in England. Here every individual has his own gobelet, which stands before him, and he helps himself occasionally with wine or water, or both, which likewise stand upon the table. But I know no custom more beastly than that of using water-glasses, in which polite company spirt, and squirt, and spue the filthy scourings of their gums, under the eyes of each other. I knew a lover cured of his passion, by seeing this nasty cascade discharged from the mouth of his mistress. I don't doubt but I shall live to see the day, when the hospitable custom of the antient Aegyptians will be revived; then a conveniency will be placed behind every chair in company, with a proper provision of waste paper, that individuals may make themselves easy without parting company. I insist upon it, that this practice would not be more indelicate than that which is now in use. What then, you will say, must a man sit with his chops and fingers up to the ears and knuckles in grease? No; let those who cannot eat without defiling themselves, step into another room, provided with basons and towels: but I think it would be better to institute schools, where youth may learn to eat their victuals, without daubing themselves, or giving offence to the eyes of one another. The bourgeois of Boulogne have commonly soup and bouilli at noon, and a roast, with a sallad, for supper; and at all their meals there is a dessert of fruit. This indeed is the practice all over France. On meagre days they eat fish, omelettes, fried beans, fricassees of eggs and onions, and burnt cream. The tea which they drink in the afternoon is rather boiled than infused; it is sweetened all together with coarse sugar, and drank with an equal quantity of boiled milk. We had the honour to be entertained the other day by our landlord, Mr. B--, who spared no cost on this banquet, exhibited for the glory of France. He had invited a newmarried couple, together with the husband's mother and the lady's father, who was one of the noblesse of Montreuil, his name Mons. L--y. There were likewise some merchants of the town, and Mons. B--'s uncle, a facetious little man, who had served in the English navy, and was as big and as round as a hogshead; we were likewise favoured with the company of father K--, a native of Ireland, who is vicaire or curate of the parish; and among the guests was Mons. L--y's son, a pretty boy, about thirteen or fourteen years of age. The repas served up in three services, or courses, with entrees and hors d'oeuvres, exclusive of the fruit, consisted of about twenty dishes, extremely well dressed by the rotisseur, who is the best cook I ever knew, in France, or elsewhere; but the plates were not presented with much order. Our young ladies did not seem to be much used to do the honours of the table. The most extraordinary circumstance that I observed on this occasion--as, that all the French who were present ate of every dish that appeared; and I am told, that if there had been an hundred articles more, they would have had a trial of each. This is what they call doing justice to the founder. Mons. L--y was placed at the head of the table and indeed he was the oracle and orator of the company; tall, thin, and weather-beaten, not unlike the picture of Don Quixote after he had lost his teeth. He had been garde du corps, or life-guardman at Versailles; and by virtue of this office he was perfectly well acquainted with the persons of the king and the dauphin, with the characters of the ministers and grandees, and, in a word, with all the secrets of state, on which he held forth with equal solemnity and elocution. He exclaimed against the jesuits, and the farmers of the revenue, who, he said, had ruined France. Then, addressing himself to me, asked, if the English did not every day drink to the health of madame la marquise? I did not at first comprehend his meaning; but answered in general, that the English were not deficient in complaisance for the ladies. "Ah! (cried he) she is the best friend they have in the world. If it had not been for her, they would not have such reason to boast of the advantages of the war." I told him the only conquest which the French had made in the war, was atchieved by one of her generals: I meant the taking of Mahon. But I did not choose to prosecute the discourse, remembering that in the year 1749, I had like to have had an affair with a Frenchman at Ghent, who affirmed, that all the battles gained by the great duke of Marlborough were purposely lost by the French generals, in order to bring the schemes of madame de Maintenon into disgrace. This is no bad resource for the national vanity of these people: though, in general, they are really persuaded, that theirs is the richest, the bravest, the happiest, and the most powerful nation under the sun; and therefore, without some such cause, they must be invincible. By the bye, the common people here still frighten their wayward children with the name of Marlborough. Mr. B--'s son, who was nursed at a peasant's house, happening one day, after he was brought home, to be in disgrace with his father, who threatened to correct him, the child ran for protection to his mother, crying, "Faites sortir ce vilaine Malbroug," "Turn out that rogue Marlborough." It is amazing to hear a sensible Frenchman assert, that the revenues of France amount to four hundred millions of livres, about twenty millions sterling, clear of all incumbrances, when in fact their clear revenue is not much above ten. Without all doubt they have reason to inveigh against the fermiers generaux, who oppress the people in raising the taxes, not above two-thirds of which are brought into the king's coffers: the rest enriches themselves, and enables them to bribe high for the protection of the great, which is the only support they have against the remonstrances of the states and parliaments, and the suggestions of common sense; which will ever demonstrate this to be, of all others, the most pernicious method of supplying the necessities of government. Mons. L--y seasoned the severity of his political apothegms with intermediate sallies of mirth and gallantry. He ogled the venerable gentlewoman his commere, who sat by him. He looked, sighed, and languished, sung tender songs, and kissed the old lady's hand with all the ardour of a youthful admirer. I unfortunately congratulated him on having such a pretty young gentleman to his son. He answered, sighing, that the boy had talents, but did not put them to a proper use--"Long before I attained his age (said he) I had finished my rhetoric." Captain B--, who had eaten himself black in the face, and, with the napkin under his chin, was no bad representation of Sancho Panza in the suds, with the dishclout about his neck, when the duke's scullions insisted upon shaving him; this sea-wit, turning to the boy, with a waggish leer, "I suppose (said he) you don't understand the figure of amplification so well as Monsieur your father." At that instant, one of the nieces, who knew her uncle to be very ticklish, touched him under the short ribs, on which the little man attempted to spring up, but lost the centre of gravity. He overturned his own plate in the lap of the person that sat next to him, and falling obliquely upon his own chair, both tumbled down upon the floor together, to the great discomposure of the whole company; for the poor man would have been actually strangled, had not his nephew loosed his stock with great expedition. Matters being once more adjusted, and the captain condoled on his disaster, Mons. L--y took it in his head to read his son a lecture upon filial obedience. This was mingled with some sharp reproof, which the boy took so ill that he retired. The old lady observed that he had been too severe: her daughter-in-law, who was very pretty, said her brother had given him too much reason; hinting, at the same time, that he was addicted to some terrible vices; upon which several individuals repeated the interjection, ah! ah! "Yes (said Mons. L--y, with a rueful aspect) the boy has a pernicious turn for gaming: in one afternoon he lost, at billiards, such a sum as gives me horror to think of it." "Fifty sols in one afternoon," (cried the sister). "Fifty sols! (exclaimed the mother-in-law, with marks of astonishment) that's too much--that's too much!--he's to blame-- he's to blame! but youth, you know, Mons. L--y--ah! vive la jeunesse!"--"et l'amour!" cried the father, wiping his eyes, squeezing her hand, and looking tenderly upon her. Mr. B-- took this opportunity to bring in the young gentleman, who was admitted into favour, and received a second exhortation. Thus harmony was restored, and the entertainment concluded with fruit, coffee, and liqueurs. When a bourgeois of Boulogne takes the air, he goes in a one-horse chaise, which is here called cabriolet, and hires it for half-a-crown a day. There are also travelling chaises, which hold four persons, two seated with their faces to the horses, and two behind their backs; but those vehicles are all very ill made, and extremely inconvenient. The way of riding most used in this place is on assback. You will see every day, in the skirts of the town, a great number of females thus mounted, with the feet on either side occasionally, according as the wind blows, so that sometimes the right and sometimes the left hand guides the beast: but in other parts of France, as well as in Italy, the ladies sit on horseback with their legs astride, and are provided with drawers for that purpose. When I said the French people were kept in good humour by the fopperies of their religion, I did not mean that there were no gloomy spirits among them. There will be fanatics in religion, while there are people of a saturnine disposition, and melancholy turn of mind. The character of a devotee, which is hardly known in England, is very common here. You see them walking to and from church at all hours, in their hoods and long camblet cloaks, with a slow pace, demure aspect, and downcast eye. Those who are poor become very troublesome to the monks, with their scruples and cases of conscience: you may see them on their knees, at the confessional, every hour in the day. The rich devotee has her favourite confessor, whom she consults and regales in private, at her own house; and this spiritual director generally governs the whole family. For my part I never knew a fanatic that was not an hypocrite at bottom. Their pretensions to superior sanctity, and an absolute conquest over all the passions, which human reason was never yet able to subdue, introduce a habit of dissimulation, which, like all other habits, is confirmed by use, till at length they become adepts in the art and science of hypocrisy. Enthusiasm and hypocrisy are by no means incompatible. The wildest fanatics I ever knew, were real sensualists in their way of living, and cunning cheats in their dealings with mankind. Among the lower class of people at Boulogne, those who take the lead, are the sea-faring men, who live in one quarter, divided into classes, and registered for the service of the king. They are hardy and raw-boned, exercise the trade of fishermen and boatmen, and propagate like rabbits. They have put themselves under the protection of a miraculous image of the Virgin Mary, which is kept in one of their churches, and every year carried in procession. According to the legend, this image was carried off, with other pillage, by the English, when they took Boulogne, in the reign of Henry VIII. The lady, rather than reside in England, where she found a great many heretics, trusted herself alone in an open boat, and crossed the sea to the road of Boulogne, where she was seen waiting for a pilot. Accordingly a boat put off to her assistance, and brought her safe into the harbour: since which time she has continued to patronize the watermen of Boulogne. At present she is very black and very ugly, besides being cruelly mutilated in different parts of her body, which I suppose have been amputated, and converted into tobacco-stoppers; but once a year she is dressed in very rich attire, and carried in procession, with a silver boat, provided at the expence of the sailors. That vanity which characterises the French extends even to the canaille. The lowest creature among them is sure to have her ear-rings and golden cross hanging about her neck. Indeed this last is an implement of superstition as well as of dress, without which no female appears. The common people here, as in all countries where they live poorly and dirtily, are hard-featured, and of very brown, or rather tawny complexions. As they seldom eat meat, their juices are destitute of that animal oil which gives a plumpness and smoothness to the skin, and defends those fine capillaries from the injuries of the weather, which would otherwise coalesce, or be shrunk up, so as to impede the circulation on the external surface of the body. As for the dirt, it undoubtedly blocks up the pores of the skin, and disorders the perspiration; consequently must contribute to the scurvy, itch, and other cutaneous distempers. In the quarter of the matelots at Boulogne, there is a number of poor Canadians, who were removed from the island of St. John, in the gulph of St. Laurence, when it was reduced by the English. These people are maintained at the expence of the king, who allows them soldier's pay, that is five sols, or two-pence halfpenny a day; or rather three sols and ammunition bread. How the soldiers contrive to subsist upon this wretched allowance, I cannot comprehend: but, it must be owned, that those invalids who do duty at Boulogne betray no marks of want. They are hale and stout, neatly and decently cloathed, and on the whole look better than the pensioners of Chelsea. About three weeks ago I was favoured with a visit by one Mr. M--, an English gentleman, who seems far gone in a consumption. He passed the last winter at Nismes in Languedoc, and found himself much better in the beginning of summer, when he embarked at Cette, and returned by sea to England. He soon relapsed, however, and (as he imagines) in consequence of a cold caught at sea. He told me, his intention was to try the South again, and even to go as far as Italy. I advised him to make trial of the air of Nice, where I myself proposed to reside. He seemed to relish my advice, and proceeded towards Paris in his own carriage. I shall to-morrow ship my great chests on board of a ship bound to Bourdeaux; they are directed, and recommended to the care of a merchant of that place, who will forward them by Thoulouse, and the canal of Languedoc, to his correspondent at Cette, which is the sea-port of Montpellier. The charge of their conveyance to Bourdeaux does not exceed one guinea. They consist of two very large chests and a trunk, about a thousand pounds weight; and the expence of transporting them from Bourdeaux to Cette, will not exceed thirty livres. They are already sealed with lead at the customhouse, that they may be exempted from further visitation. This is a precaution which every traveller takes, both by sea and land: he must likewise provide himself with a passe-avant at the bureau, otherwise he may be stopped, and rummaged at every town through which he passes. I have hired a berline and four horses to Paris, for fourteen loui'dores; two of which the voiturier is obliged to pay for a permission from the farmers of the poste; for every thing is farmed in this country; and if you hire a carriage, as I have done, you must pay twelve livres, or half-a-guinea, for every person that travels in it. The common coach between Calais and Paris, is such a vehicle as no man would use, who has any regard to his own case and convenience and it travels at the pace of an English waggon. In ten days I shall set out on my journey; and I shall leave Boulogne with regret. I have been happy in the acquaintance of Mrs. B--, and a few British families in the place; and it was my good fortune to meet here with two honest gentlemen, whom I had formerly known in Paris, as well as with some of my countrymen, officers in the service of France. My next will be from Paris. Remember me to our friends at A--'s. I am a little heavy-hearted at the prospect of removing to such a distance from you. It is a moot point whether I shall ever return. My health is very precarious. Adieu. LETTER VI PARIS, October 12, 1763. DEAR SIR,--Of our journey from Boulogne I have little to say. The weather was favourable, and the roads were in tolerable order. We found good accommodation at Montreuil and Amiens; but in every other place where we stopped, we met with abundance of dirt, and the most flagrant imposition. I shall not pretend to describe the cities of Abbeville and Amiens, which we saw only en passant; nor take up your time with an account of the stables and palace of Chantilly, belonging to the prince of Conde, which we visited the last day of our journey; nor shall I detain you with a detail of the Trefors de St. Denis, which, together with the tombs in the abbey church, afforded us some amusement while our dinner was getting ready. All these particulars are mentioned in twenty different books of tours, travels, and directions, which you have often perused. I shall only observe, that the abbey church is the lightest piece of Gothic architecture I have seen, and the air within seems perfectly free from that damp and moisture, so perceivable in all our old cathedrals. This must be owing to the nature of its situation. There are some fine marble statues that adorn the tombs of certain individuals here interred; but they are mostly in the French taste, which is quite contrary to the simplicity of the antients. Their attitudes are affected, unnatural, and desultory; and their draperies fantastic; or, as one of our English artists expressed himself, they are all of a flutter. As for the treasures, which are shewn on certain days to the populace gratis, they are contained in a number of presses, or armoires, and, if the stones are genuine, they must be inestimable: but this I cannot believe. Indeed I have been told, that what they shew as diamonds are no more than composition: nevertheless, exclusive of these, there are some rough stones of great value, and many curiosities worth seeing. The monk that shewed them was the very image of our friend Hamilton, both in his looks and manner. I have one thing very extraordinary to observe of the French auberges, which seems to be a remarkable deviation from the general character of the nation. The landlords, hostesses, and servants of the inns upon the road, have not the least dash of complaisance in their behaviour to strangers. Instead of coming to the door, to receive you as in England, they take no manner of notice of you; but leave you to find or enquire your way into the kitchen, and there you must ask several times for a chamber, before they seem willing to conduct you up stairs. In general, you are served with the appearance of the most mortifying indifference, at the very time they are laying schemes for fleecing you of your money. It is a very odd contrast between France and England; in the former all the people are complaisant but the publicans; in the latter there is hardly any complaisance but among the publicans. When I said all the people in France, I ought also to except those vermin who examine the baggage of travellers in different parts of the kingdom. Although our portmanteaus were sealed with lead, and we were provided with a passe-avant from the douane, our coach was searched at the gate of Paris by which we entered; and the women were obliged to get out, and stand in the open street, till this operation was performed. I had desired a friend to provide lodgings for me at Paris, in the Fauxbourg St. Germain; and accordingly we found ourselves accommodated at the Hotel de Montmorency, with a first floor, which costs me ten livres a day. I should have put up with it had it been less polite; but as I have only a few days to stay in this place, and some visits to receive, I am not sorry that my friend has exceeded his commission. I have been guilty of another piece of extravagance in hiring a carosse de remise, for which I pay twelve livres a day. Besides the article of visiting, I could not leave Paris, without carrying my wife and the girls to see the most remarkable places in and about this capital, such as the Luxemburg, the Palais-Royal, the Thuilleries, the Louvre, the Invalids, the Gobelins, &c. together with Versailles, Trianon, Marli, Meudon, and Choissi; and therefore, I thought the difference in point of expence would not be great, between a carosse de remise and a hackney coach. The first are extremely elegant, if not too much ornamented, the last are very shabby and disagreeable. Nothing gives me such chagrin, as the necessity I am under to hire a valet de place, as my own servant does not speak the language. You cannot conceive with what eagerness and dexterity those rascally valets exert themselves in pillaging strangers. There is always one ready in waiting on your arrival, who begins by assisting your own servant to unload your baggage, and interests himself in your affairs with such artful officiousness, that you will find it difficult to shake him off, even though you are determined beforehand against hiring any such domestic. He produces recommendations from his former masters, and the people of the house vouch for his honesty. The truth is, those fellows are very handy, useful, and obliging; and so far honest, that they will not steal in the usual way. You may safely trust one of them to bring you a hundred loui'dores from your banker; but they fleece you without mercy in every other article of expence. They lay all your tradesmen under contribution; your taylor, barber, mantua-maker, milliner, perfumer, shoe-maker, mercer, jeweller, hatter, traiteur, and wine-merchant: even the bourgeois who owns your coach pays him twenty sols per day. His wages amount to twice as much, so that I imagine the fellow that serves me, makes above ten shillings a day, besides his victuals, which, by the bye, he has no right to demand. Living at Paris, to the best of my recollection, is very near twice as dear as it was fifteen years ago; and, indeed, this is the case in London; a circumstance that must be undoubtedly owing to an increase of taxes; for I don't find that in the articles of eating and drinking, the French people are more luxurious than they were heretofore. I am told the entrees, or duties, payed upon provision imported into Paris, are very heavy. All manner of butcher's meat and poultry are extremely good in this place. The beef is excellent. The wine, which is generally drank, is a very thin kind of Burgundy. I can by no means relish their cookery; but one breakfasts deliciously upon their petit pains and their pales of butter, which last is exquisite. The common people, and even the bourgeois of Paris live, at this season, chiefly on bread and grapes, which is undoubtedly very wholsome fare. If the same simplicity of diet prevailed in England, we should certainly undersell the French at all foreign markets for they are very slothful with all their vivacity and the great number of their holidays not only encourages this lazy disposition, but actually robs them of one half of what their labour would otherwise produce; so that, if our common people were not so expensive in their living, that is, in their eating and drinking, labour might be afforded cheaper in England than in France. There are three young lusty hussies, nieces or daughters of a blacksmith, that lives just opposite to my windows, who do nothing from morning till night. They eat grapes and bread from seven till nine, from nine till twelve they dress their hair, and are all the afternoon gaping at the window to view passengers. I don't perceive that they give themselves the trouble either to make their beds, or clean their apartment. The same spirit of idleness and dissipation I have observed in every part of France, and among every class of people. Every object seems to have shrunk in its dimensions since I was last in Paris. The Louvre, the Palais-Royal, the bridges, and the river Seine, by no means answer the ideas I had formed of them from my former observation. When the memory is not very correct, the imagination always betrays her into such extravagances. When I first revisited my own country, after an absence of fifteen years, I found every thing diminished in the same manner, and I could scarce believe my own eyes. Notwithstanding the gay disposition of the French, their houses are all gloomy. In spite of all the ornaments that have been lavished on Versailles, it is a dismal habitation. The apartments are dark, ill-furnished, dirty, and unprincely. Take the castle, chapel, and garden all together, they make a most fantastic composition of magnificence and littleness, taste, and foppery. After all, it is in England only, where we must look for cheerful apartments, gay furniture, neatness, and convenience. There is a strange incongruity in the French genius. With all their volatility, prattle, and fondness for bons mots, they delight in a species of drawling, melancholy, church music. Their most favourite dramatic pieces are almost without incident; and the dialogue of their comedies consists of moral, insipid apophthegms, intirely destitute of wit or repartee. I know what I hazard by this opinion among the implicit admirers of Lully, Racine, and Moliere. I don't talk of the busts, the statues, and pictures which abound at Versailles, and other places in and about Paris, particularly the great collection of capital pieces in the Palais-royal, belonging to the duke of Orleans. I have neither capacity, nor inclination, to give a critique on these chef d'oeuvres, which indeed would take up a whole volume. I have seen this great magazine of painting three times, with astonishment; but I should have been better pleased, if there had not been half the number: one is bewildered in such a profusion, as not to know where to begin, and hurried away before there is time to consider one piece with any sort of deliberation. Besides, the rooms are all dark, and a great many of the pictures hang in a bad light. As for Trianon, Marli, and Choissi, they are no more than pigeon-houses, in respect to palaces; and, notwithstanding the extravagant eulogiums which you have heard of the French king's houses, I will venture to affirm that the king of England is better, I mean more comfortably, lodged. I ought, however, to except Fontainebleau, which I have not seen. The city of Paris is said to be five leagues, or fifteen miles, in circumference; and if it is really so, it must be much more populous than London; for the streets are very narrow, and the houses very high, with a different family on every floor. But I have measured the best plans of these two royal cities, and am certain that Paris does not take up near so much ground as London and Westminster occupy; and I suspect the number of its inhabitants is also exaggerated by those who say it amounts to eight hundred thousand, that is two hundred thousand more than are contained in the bills of mortality. The hotels of the French noblesse, at Paris, take up a great deal of room, with their courtyards and gardens; and so do their convents and churches. It must be owned, indeed, that their streets are wonderfully crouded with people and carriages. The French begin to imitate the English, but only in such particulars as render them worthy of imitation. When I was last at Paris, no person of any condition, male or female, appeared, but in full dress, even when obliged to come out early in the morning, and there was not such a thing to be seen as a perruque ronde; but at present I see a number of frocks and scratches in a morning, in the streets of this metropolis. They have set up a petite poste, on the plan of our penny-post, with some improvements; and I am told there is a scheme on foot for supplying every house with water, by leaden pipes, from the river Seine. They have even adopted our practice of the cold bath, which is taken very conveniently, in wooden houses, erected on the side of the river, the water of which is let in and out occasionally, by cocks fixed in the sides of the bath. There are different rooms for the different sexes: the accommodations are good, and the expence is a trifle. The tapestry of the Gobelins is brought to an amazing degree of perfection; and I am surprised that this furniture is not more in fashion among the great, who alone are able to purchase it. It would be a most elegant and magnificent ornament, which would always nobly distinguish their apartments from those, of an inferior rank; and in this they would run no risk of being rivalled by the bourgeois. At the village of Chaillot, in the neighbourhood of Paris, they make beautiful carpets and screen-work; and this is the more extraordinary, as there are hardly any carpets used in this kingdom. In almost all the lodging-houses, the floors are of brick, and have no other kind of cleaning, than that of being sprinkled with water, and swept once a day. These brick floors, the stone stairs, the want of wainscotting in the rooms, and the thick party-walls of stone, are, however, good preservatives against fire, which seldom does any damage in this city. Instead of wainscotting, the walls are covered with tapestry or damask. The beds in general are very good, and well ornamented, with testers and curtains. Twenty years ago the river Seine, within a mile of Paris, was as solitary as if it had run through a desert. At present the banks of it are adorned with a number of elegant houses and plantations, as far as Marli. I need not mention the machine at this place for raising water, because I know you are well acquainted with its construction; nor shall I say any thing more of the city of Paris, but that there is a new square, built upon an elegant plan, at the end of the garden of the Thuilleries: it is called Place de Louis XV. and, in the middle of it, there is a good equestrian statue of the reigning king. You have often heard that Louis XIV. frequently regretted, that his country did not afford gravel for the walks of his gardens, which are covered with a white, loose sand, very disagreeable both to the eyes and feet of those who walk upon it; but this is a vulgar mistake. There is plenty of gravel on the road between Paris and Versailles, as well as in many other parts of this kingdom; but the French, who are all for glare and glitter, think the other is more gay and agreeable: one would imagine they did not feel the burning reflexion from the white sand, which in summer is almost intolerable. In the character of the French, considered as a people, there are undoubtedly many circumstances truly ridiculous. You know the fashionable people, who go a hunting, are equipped with their jack boots, bag wigs, swords and pistols: but I saw the other day a scene still more grotesque. On the road to Choissi, a fiacre, or hackney-coach, stopped, and out came five or six men, armed with musquets, who took post, each behind a separate tree. I asked our servant who they were imagining they might be archers, or footpads of justice, in pursuit of some malefactor. But guess my surprise, when the fellow told me, they were gentlemen a la chasse. They were in fact come out from Paris, in this equipage, to take the diversion of hare-hunting; that is, of shooting from behind a tree at the hares that chanced to pass. Indeed, if they had nothing more in view, but to destroy the game, this was a very effectual method; for the hares are in such plenty in this neighbourhood, that I have seen a dozen together, in the same field. I think this way of hunting, in a coach or chariot, might be properly adopted at London, in favour of those aldermen of the city, who are too unwieldy to follow the hounds a horseback. The French, however, with all their absurdities, preserve a certain ascendancy over us, which is very disgraceful to our nation; and this appears in nothing more than in the article of dress. We are contented to be thought their apes in fashion; but, in fact, we are slaves to their taylors, mantua-makers, barbers, and other tradesmen. One would be apt to imagine that our own tradesmen had joined them in a combination against us. When the natives of France come to London, they appear in all public places, with cloaths made according to the fashion of their own country, and this fashion is generally admired by the English. Why, therefore, don't we follow it implicitly? No, we pique ourselves upon a most ridiculous deviation from the very modes we admire, and please ourselves with thinking this deviation is a mark of our spirit and liberty. But, we have not spirit enough to persist in this deviation, when we visit their country: otherwise, perhaps, they would come to admire and follow our example: for, certainly, in point of true taste, the fashions of both countries are equally absurd. At present, the skirts of the English descend from the fifth rib to the calf of the leg, and give the coat the form of a Jewish gaberdine; and our hats seem to be modelled after that which Pistol wears upon the stage. In France, the haunch buttons and pocketholes are within half a foot of the coat's extremity: their hats look as if they had been pared round the brims, and the crown is covered with a kind of cordage, which, in my opinion, produces a very beggarly effect. In every other circumstance of dress, male and female, the contrast between the two nations, appears equally glaring. What is the consequence? when an Englishman comes to Paris, he cannot appear until he has undergone a total metamorphosis. At his first arrival he finds it necessary to send for the taylor, perruquier, hatter, shoemaker, and every other tradesman concerned in the equipment of the human body. He must even change his buckles, and the form of his ruffles; and, though at the risque of his life, suit his cloaths to the mode of the season. For example, though the weather should be never so cold, he must wear his habit d'ete, or demi-saison. Without presuming to put on a warm dress before the day which fashion has fixed for that purpose; and neither old age nor infirmity will excuse a man for wearing his hat upon his head, either at home or abroad. Females are (if possible) still more subject to the caprices of fashion; and as the articles of their dress are more manifold, it is enough to make a man's heart ake to see his wife surrounded by a multitude of cotturieres, milliners, and tire-women. All her sacks and negligees must be altered and new trimmed. She must have new caps, new laces, new shoes, and her hair new cut. She must have her taffaties for the summer, her flowered silks for the spring and autumn, her sattins and damasks for winter. The good man, who used to wear the beau drop d'Angleterre, quite plain all the year round, with a long bob, or tye perriwig, must here provide himself with a camblet suit trimmed with silver for spring and autumn, with silk cloaths for summer, and cloth laced with gold, or velvet for winter; and he must wear his bag-wig a la pigeon. This variety of dress is absolutely indispensible for all those who pretend to any rank above the meer bourgeois. On his return to his own country, all this frippery is useless. He cannot appear in London until he has undergone another thorough metamorphosis; so that he will have some reason to think, that the tradesmen of Paris and London have combined to lay him under contribution: and they, no doubt, are the directors who regulate the fashions in both capitals; the English, however, in a subordinate capacity: for the puppets of their making will not pass at Paris, nor indeed in any other part of Europe; whereas a French petit maitre is reckoned a complete figure every where, London not excepted. Since it is so much the humour of the English at present to run abroad, I wish they had anti-gallican spirit enough to produce themselves in their own genuine English dress, and treat the French modes with the same philosophical contempt, which was shewn by an honest gentleman, distinguished by the name of Wig-Middleton. That unshaken patriot still appears in the same kind of scratch perriwig, skimming-dish hat, and slit sleeve, which were worn five-and-twenty years ago, and has invariably persisted in this garb, in defiance of all the revolutions of the mode. I remember a student in the temple, who, after a long and learned investigation of the to kalon, or beautiful, had resolution enough to let his beard grow, and wore it in all public places, until his heir at law applied for a commission of lunacy against him; then he submitted to the razor, rather than run any risque of being found non compos. Before I conclude, I must tell you, that the most reputable shop-keepers and tradesmen of Paris think it no disgrace to practise the most shameful imposition. I myself know an instance of one of the most creditable marchands in this capital, who demanded six francs an ell for some lutestring, laying his hand upon his breast at the same time, and declaring en conscience, that it had cost him within three sols of the money. Yet in less than three minutes, he sold it for four and a half, and when the buyer upbraided him with his former declaration, he shrugged up his shoulders, saying, il faut marchander. I don't mention this as a particular instance. The same mean disingenuity is universal all over France, as I have been informed by several persons of veracity. The next letter you have from me will probably be dated at Nismes, or Montpellier. Mean-while, I am ever--Yours. LETTER VII To MRS. M--. PARIS, October, 12, 1763. MADAM,--I shall be much pleased if the remarks I have made on the characters of the French people, can afford you the satisfaction you require. With respect to the ladies I can only judge from their exteriors: but, indeed, these are so characteristic, that one can hardly judge amiss; unless we suppose that a woman of taste and sentiment may be so overruled by the absurdity of what is called fashion, as to reject reason, and disguise nature, in order to become ridiculous or frightful. That this may be the case with some individuals, is very possible. I have known it happen in our own country, where the follies of the French are adopted and exhibited in the most aukward imitation: but the general prevalence of those preposterous modes, is a plain proof that there is a general want of taste, and a general depravity of nature. I shall not pretend to describe the particulars of a French lady's dress. These you are much better acquainted with than I can pretend to be: but this I will be bold to affirm, that France is the general reservoir from which all the absurdities of false taste, luxury, and extravagance have overflowed the different kingdoms and states of Europe. The springs that fill this reservoir, are no other than vanity and ignorance. It would be superfluous to attempt proving from the nature of things, from the first principles and use of dress, as well as from the consideration of natural beauty, and the practice of the ancients, who certainly understood it as well as the connoisseurs of these days, that nothing can be more monstrous, inconvenient, and contemptible, than the fashion of modern drapery. You yourself are well aware of all its defects, and have often ridiculed them in my hearing. I shall only mention one particular of dress essential to the fashion in this country, which seems to me to carry human affectation to the very farthest verge of folly and extravagance; that is, the manner in which the faces of the ladies are primed and painted. When the Indian chiefs were in England every body ridiculed their preposterous method of painting their cheeks and eye-lids; but this ridicule was wrong placed. Those critics ought to have considered, that the Indians do not use paint to make themselves agreeable; but in order to be the more terrible to their enemies. It is generally supposed, I think, that your sex make use of fard and vermillion for very different purposes; namely, to help a bad or faded complexion, to heighten the graces, or conceal the defects of nature, as well as the ravages of time. I shall not enquire at present, whether it is just and honest to impose in this manner on mankind: if it is not honest, it may be allowed to be artful and politic, and shews, at least, a desire of being agreeable. But to lay it on as the fashion in France prescribes to all the ladies of condition, who indeed cannot appear without this badge of distinction, is to disguise themselves in such a manner, as to render them odious and detestable to every spectator, who has the least relish left for nature and propriety. As for the fard or white, with which their necks and shoulders are plaistered, it may be in some measure excusable, as their skins are naturally brown, or sallow; but the rouge, which is daubed on their faces, from the chin up to the eyes, without the least art or dexterity, not only destroys all distinction of features, but renders the aspect really frightful, or at best conveys nothing but ideas of disgust and aversion. You know, that without this horrible masque no married lady is admitted at court, or in any polite assembly; and that it is a mark of distinction which no bourgeoise dare assume. Ladies of fashion only have the privilege of exposing themselves in these ungracious colours. As their faces are concealed under a false complexion, so their heads are covered with a vast load of false hair, which is frizzled on the forehead, so as exactly to resemble the wooly heads of the Guinea negroes. As to the natural hue of it, this is a matter of no consequence, for powder makes every head of hair of the same colour; and no woman appears in this country, from the moment she rises till night, without being compleatly whitened. Powder or meal was first used in Europe by the Poles, to conceal their scald heads; but the present fashion of using it, as well as the modish method of dressing the hair, must have been borrowed from the Hottentots, who grease their wooly heads with mutton suet and then paste it over with the powder called buchu. In like manner, the hair of our fine ladies is frizzled into the appearance of negroes wool, and stiffened with an abominable paste of hog's grease, tallow, and white powder. The present fashion, therefore, of painting the face, and adorning the head, adopted by the beau monde in France, is taken from those two polite nations the Chickesaws of America and the Hottentots of Africa. On the whole, when I see one of those fine creatures sailing along, in her taudry robes of silk and gauze, frilled, and flounced, and furbelowed, with her false locks, her false jewels, her paint, her patches, and perfumes; I cannot help looking upon her as the vilest piece of sophistication that art ever produced. This hideous masque of painting, though destructive of all beauty, is, however, favourable to natural homeliness and deformity. It accustoms the eyes of the other sex, and in time reconciles them to frightfull objects; it disables them from perceiving any distinction of features between woman and woman; and, by reducing all faces to a level, gives every female an equal chance for an admirer; being in this particular analogous to the practice of the antient Lacedemonians, who were obliged to chuse their helpmates in the dark. In what manner the insides of their heads are furnished, I would not presume to judge from the conversation of a very few to whom I have had access: but from the nature of their education, which I have heard described, and the natural vivacity of their tempers, I should expect neither sense, sentiment, nor discretion. From the nursery they are allowed, and even encouraged, to say every thing that comes uppermost; by which means they acquire a volubility of tongue, and a set of phrases, which constitutes what is called polite conversation. At the same time they obtain an absolute conquest over all sense of shame, or rather, they avoid acquiring this troublesome sensation; for it is certainly no innate idea. Those who have not governesses at home, are sent, for a few years, to a convent, where they lay in a fund of superstition that serves them for life: but I never heard they had the least opportunity of cultivating the mind, of exercising the powers of reason, or of imbibing a taste for letters, or any rational or useful accomplishment. After being taught to prattle, to dance and play at cards, they are deemed sufficiently qualified to appear in the grand monde, and to perform all the duties of that high rank and station in life. In mentioning cards, I ought to observe, that they learn to play not barely for amusement, but also with a view to advantage; and, indeed, you seldom meet with a native of France, whether male or female, who is not a compleat gamester, well versed in all the subtleties and finesses of the art. This is likewise the case all over Italy. A lady of a great house in Piedmont, having four sons, makes no scruple to declare, that the first shall represent the family, the second enter into the army, the third into the church, and that she will breed the fourth a gamester. These noble adventurers devote themselves in a particular manner to the entertainment of travellers from our country, because the English are supposed to be full of money, rash, incautious, and utterly ignorant of play. But such a sharper is most dangerous, when he hunts in couple with a female. I have known a French count and his wife, who found means to lay the most wary under contribution. He was smooth, supple, officious, and attentive: she was young, handsome, unprincipled, and artful. If the Englishman marked for prey was found upon his guard against the designs of the husband, then madam plied him on the side of gallantry. She displayed all the attractions of her person. She sung, danced, ogled, sighed, complimented, and complained. If he was insensible to all her charms, she flattered his vanity, and piqued his pride, by extolling the wealth and generosity of the English; and if he proved deaf to all these insinuations she, as her last stake, endeavoured to interest his humanity and compassion. She expatiated, with tears in her eyes, on the cruelty and indifference of her great relations; represented that her husband was no more than the cadet of a noble family--, that his provision was by no means suitable. either to the dignity of his rank, or the generosity of his disposition: that he had a law-suit of great consequence depending, which had drained all his finances; and, finally, that they should be both ruined, if they could not find some generous friend, who would accommodate them with a sum of money to bring the cause to a determination. Those who are not actuated by such scandalous motives, become gamesters from meer habit, and, having nothing more solid to engage their thoughts, or employ their time, consume the best part of their lives, in this worst of all dissipation. I am not ignorant that there are exceptions from this general rule: I know that France has produced a Maintenon, a Sevigine, a Scuderi, a Dacier, and a Chatelet; but I would no more deduce the general character of the French ladies from these examples, than I would call a field of hemp a flower-garden. because there might be in it a few lillies or renunculas planted by the hand of accident. Woman has been defined a weaker man; but in this country the men are, in my opinion, more ridiculous and insignificant than the women. They certainly are more disagreeable to a rational enquirer, because they are more troublesome. Of all the coxcombs on the face of the earth, a French petit maitre is the most impertinent: and they are all petit maitres from the marquis who glitters in lace and embroidery, to the garcon barbier covered with meal, who struts with his hair in a long queue, and his hat under his arm. I have already observed, that vanity is the great and universal mover among all ranks and degrees of people in this nation; and as they take no pains to conceal or controul it, they are hurried by it into the most ridiculous and indeed intolerable extravagance. When I talk of the French nation, I must again except a great number of individuals, from the general censure. Though I have a hearty contempt for the ignorance, folly, and presumption which characterise the generality, I cannot but respect the talents of many great men, who have eminently distinguished themselves in every art and science: these I shall always revere and esteem as creatures of a superior species, produced, for the wise purposes of providence, among the refuse of mankind. It would be absurd to conclude that the Welch or Highlanders are a gigantic people, because those mountains may have produced a few individuals near seven feet high. It would be equally absurd to suppose the French are a nation of philosophers, because France has given birth to a Des Cartes, a Maupertuis, a Reaumur, and a Buffon. I shall not even deny, that the French are by no means deficient in natural capacity; but they are at the same time remarkable for a natural levity, which hinders their youth from cultivating that capacity. This is reinforced by the most preposterous education, and the example of a giddy people, engaged in the most frivolous pursuits. A Frenchman is by some Jesuit, or other monk, taught to read his mother tongue, and to say his prayers in a language he does not understand. He learns to dance and to fence, by the masters of those noble sciences. He becomes a compleat connoisseur in dressing hair, and in adorning his own person, under the hands and instructions of his barber and valet de chambre. If he learns to play upon the flute or the fiddle, he is altogether irresistible. But he piques himself upon being polished above the natives of any other country by his conversation with the fair sex. In the course of this communication, with which he is indulged from his tender years, he learns like a parrot, by rote, the whole circle of French compliments, which you know are a set of phrases ridiculous even to a proverb; and these he throws out indiscriminately to all women, without distinction in the exercise of that kind of address, which is here distinguished by the name of gallantry: it is no more than his making love to every woman who will give him the hearing. It is an exercise, by the repetition of which he becomes very pert, very familiar, and very impertinent. Modesty, or diffidence, I have already said, is utterly unknown among them, and therefore I wonder there should be a term to express it in their language. If I was obliged to define politeness, I should call it, the art of making one's self agreeable. I think it an art that necessarily implies a sense of decorum, and a delicacy of sentiment. These are qualities, of which (as far as I have been able to observe) a Frenchman has no idea; therefore he never can be deemed polite, except by those persons among whom they are as little understood. His first aim is to adorn his own person with what he calls fine cloaths, that is the frippery of the fashion. It is no wonder that the heart of a female, unimproved by reason, and untinctured with natural good sense, should flutter at the sight of such a gaudy thing, among the number of her admirers: this impression is enforced by fustian compliments, which her own vanity interprets in a literal sense, and still more confirmed by the assiduous attention of the gallant, who, indeed, has nothing else to mind. A Frenchman in consequence of his mingling with the females from his infancy, not only becomes acquainted with all their customs and humours; but grows wonderfully alert in performing a thousand little offices, which are overlooked by other men, whose time hath been spent in making more valuable acquisitions. He enters, without ceremony, a lady's bed-chamber, while she is in bed, reaches her whatever she wants, airs her shift, and helps to put it on. He attends at her toilette, regulates the distribution of her patches, and advises where to lay on the paint. If he visits her when she is dressed, and perceives the least impropriety in her coeffure, he insists upon adjusting it with his own hands: if he sees a curl, or even a single hair amiss, he produces his comb, his scissars, and pomatum, and sets it to rights with the dexterity of a professed friseur. He 'squires her to every place she visits, either on business, or pleasure; and, by dedicating his whole time to her, renders himself necessary to her occasions. This I take to be the most agreeable side of his character: let us view him on the quarter of impertinence. A Frenchman pries into all your secrets with the most impudent and importunate curiosity, and then discloses them without remorse. If you are indisposed, he questions you about the symptoms of your disorder, with more freedom than your physician would presume to use; very often in the grossest terms. He then proposes his remedy (for they are all quacks), he prepares it without your knowledge, and worries you with solicitation to take it, without paying the least regard to the opinion of those whom you have chosen to take care of your health. Let you be ever so ill, or averse to company, he forces himself at all times into your bed-chamber, and if it is necessary to give him a peremptory refusal, he is affronted. I have known one of those petit maitres insist upon paying regular visits twice a day to a poor gentleman who was delirious; and he conversed with him on different subjects, till he was in his last agonies. This attendance is not the effect of attachment, or regard, but of sheer vanity, that he may afterwards boast of his charity and humane disposition: though, of all the people I have ever known, I think the French are the least capable of feeling for the distresses of their fellow creatures. Their hearts are not susceptible of deep impressions; and, such is their levity, that the imagination has not time to brood long over any disagreeable idea, or sensation. As a Frenchman piques himself on his gallantry, he no sooner makes a conquest of a female's heart, than he exposes her character, for the gratification of his vanity. Nay, if he should miscarry in his schemes, he will forge letters and stories, to the ruin of the lady's reputation. This is a species of perfidy which one would think should render them odious and detestable to the whole sex; but the case is otherwise. I beg your pardon, Madam; but women are never better pleased, than when they see one another exposed; and every individual has such confidence in her own superior charms and discretion, that she thinks she can fix the most volatile, and reform the most treacherous lover. If a Frenchman is admitted into your family, and distinguished by repeated marks of your friendship and regard, the first return he makes for your civilities is to make love to your wife, if she is handsome; if not, to your sister, or daughter, or niece. If he suffers a repulse from your wife, or attempts in vain to debauch your sister, or your daughter, or your niece, he will, rather than not play the traitor with his gallantry, make his addresses to your grandmother; and ten to one, but in one shape or another, he will find means to ruin the peace of a family, in which he has been so kindly entertained. What he cannot accomplish by dint of compliment, and personal attendance, he will endeavour to effect, by reinforcing these with billets-doux, songs, and verses, of which he always makes a provision for such purposes. If he is detected in these efforts of treachery, and reproached with his ingratitude, he impudently declares, that what he had done was no more than simple gallantry, considered in France as an indispensible duty on every man who pretended to good breeding. Nay, he will even affirm, that his endeavours to corrupt your wife, or your daughter, were the most genuine proofs he could give of his particular regard for your family. If a Frenchman is capable of real friendship, it must certainly be the most disagreeable present he can possibly make to a man of a true English character, You know, Madam, we are naturally taciturn, soon tired of impertinence, and much subject to fits of disgust. Your French friend intrudes upon you at all hours: he stuns you with his loquacity: he teases you with impertinent questions about your domestic and private affairs: he attempts to meddle in all your concerns; and forces his advice upon you with the most unwearied importunity: he asks the price of every thing you wear, and, so sure as you tell him undervalues it, without hesitation: he affirms it is in a bad taste, ill-contrived, ill-made; that you have been imposed upon both with respect to the fashion and the price; that the marquise of this, or the countess of that, has one that is perfectly elegant, quite in the bon ton, and yet it cost her little more than you gave for a thing that nobody would wear. If there were five hundred dishes at table, a Frenchman will eat of all of them, and then complain he has no appetite. This I have several times remarked. A friend of mine gained a considerable wager upon an experiment of this kind: the petit maitre ate of fourteen different plats, besides the dessert; then disparaged the cook, declaring he was no better than a marmiton, or turnspit. The French have the most ridiculous fondness for their hair, and this I believe they inherit from their remote ancestors. The first race of French kings were distinguished by their long hair, and certainly the people of this country consider it as an indispensible ornament. A Frenchman will sooner part with his religion than with his hair, which, indeed, no consideration will induce him to forego. I know a gentleman afflicted with a continual head-ach, and a defluxion on his eyes, who was told by his physician that the best chance he had for being cured, would be to have his head close shaved, and bathed every day in cold water. "How (cried he) cut my hair? Mr. Doctor, your most humble servant!" He dismissed his physician, lost his eye-sight, and almost his senses, and is now led about with his hair in a bag, and a piece of green silk hanging like a screen before his face. Count Saxe, and other military writers have demonstrated the absurdity of a soldier's wearing a long head of hair; nevertheless, every soldier in this country wears a long queue, which makes a delicate mark on his white cloathing; and this ridiculous foppery has descended even to the lowest class of people. The decrotteur, who cleans your shoes at the corner of the Pont Neuf, has a tail of this kind hanging down to his rump, and even the peasant who drives an ass loaded with dung, wears his hair en queue, though, perhaps, he has neither shirt nor breeches. This is the ornament upon which he bestows much time and pains, and in the exhibition of which he finds full gratification for his vanity. Considering the harsh features of the common people in this country, their diminutive stature, their grimaces, and that long appendage, they have no small resemblance to large baboons walking upright; and perhaps this similitude has helped to entail upon them the ridicule of their neighbours. A French friend tires out your patience with long visits; and, far from taking the most palpable hints to withdraw, when he perceives you uneasy he observes you are low-spirited, and therefore he will keep you company. This perseverance shews that he must either be void of penetration, or that his disposition must be truly diabolical. Rather than be tormented with such a fiend, a man had better turn him out of doors, even though at the hazard of being run thro' the body. The French are generally counted insincere, and taxed with want of generosity. But I think these reproaches are not well founded. High-flown professions of friendship and attachment constitute the language of common compliment in this country, and are never supposed to be understood in the literal acceptation of the words; and, if their acts of generosity are but very rare, we ought to ascribe that rarity, not so much to a deficiency of generous sentiments, as to their vanity and ostentation, which engrossing all their funds, utterly disable them from exerting the virtues of beneficence. Vanity, indeed, predominates among all ranks, to such a degree, that they are the greatest egotists in the world; and the most insignificant individual talks in company with the same conceit and arrogance, as a person of the greatest importance. Neither conscious poverty nor disgrace will restrain him in the least either from assuming his full share of the conversation, or making big addresses to the finest lady, whom he has the smallest opportunity to approach: nor is he restrained by any other consideration whatsoever. It is all one to him whether he himself has a wife of his own, or the lady a husband; whether she is designed for the cloister, or pre-ingaged to his best friend and benefactor. He takes it for granted that his addresses cannot but be acceptable; and, if he meets with a repulse, he condemns her taste; but never doubts his own qualifications. I have a great many things to say of their military character, and their punctilios of honour, which last are equally absurd and pernicious; but as this letter has run to an unconscionable length, I shall defer them till another opportunity. Mean-while, I have the honour to be, with very particular esteem--Madam, Your most obedient servant. LETTER VIII To MR. M-- LYONS, October 19, 1763. DEAR SIR,--I was favoured with yours at Paris, and look upon your reproaches as the proof of your friendship. The truth is, I considered all the letters I have hitherto written on the subject of my travels, as written to your society in general, though they have been addressed to one individual of it; and if they contain any thing that can either amuse or inform, I desire that henceforth all I send may be freely perused by all the members. With respect to my health, about which you so kindly enquire, I have nothing new to communicate. I had reason to think that my bathing in the sea at Boulogne produced a good effect, in strengthening my relaxed fibres. You know how subject I was to colds in England; that I could not stir abroad after sun-set, nor expose myself to the smallest damp, nor walk till the least moisture appeared on my skin, without being laid up for ten days or a fortnight. At Paris, however, I went out every day, with my hat under my arm, though the weather was wet and cold: I walked in the garden at Versailles even after it was dark, with my head uncovered, on a cold evening, when the ground was far from being dry: nay, at Marli, I sauntered above a mile through damp alleys, and wet grass: and from none of these risques did I feel the least inconvenience. In one of our excursions we visited the manufacture for porcelain, which the king of France has established at the village of St. Cloud, on the road to Versailles, and which is, indeed, a noble monument of his munificence. It is a very large building, both commodious and magnificent, where a great number of artists are employed, and where this elegant superfluity is carried to as great perfection as it ever was at Dresden. Yet, after all, I know not whether the porcelain made at Chelsea may not vie with the productions either of Dresden, or St. Cloud. If it falls short of either, it is not in the design, painting, enamel, or other ornaments, but only in the composition of the metal, and the method of managing it in the furnace. Our porcelain seems to be a partial vitrification of levigated flint and fine pipe clay, mixed together in a certain proportion; and if the pieces are not removed from the fire in the very critical moment, they will be either too little, or too much vitrified. In the first case, I apprehend they will not acquire a proper degree of cohesion; they will be apt to be corroded, discoloured, and to crumble, like the first essays that were made at Chelsea; in the second case, they will be little better than imperfect glass. There are three methods of travelling from Paris to Lyons, which, by the shortest road is a journey of about three hundred and sixty miles. One is by the diligence, or stagecoach, which performs it in five days; and every passenger pays one hundred livres, in consideration of which, he not only has a seat in the carriage, but is maintained on the road. The inconveniences attending this way of travelling are these. You are crouded into the carriage, to the number of eight persons, so as to sit very uneasy, and sometimes run the risque of being stifled among very indifferent company. You are hurried out of bed, at four, three, nay often at two o'clock in the morning. You are obliged to eat in the French way, which is very disagreeable to an English palate; and, at Chalons, you must embark upon the Saone in a boat, which conveys you to Lyons, so that the two last days of your journey are by water. All these were insurmountable objections to me, who am in such a bad state of health, troubled with an asthmatic cough, spitting, slow fever, and restlessness, which demands a continual change of place, as well as free air, and room for motion. I was this day visited by two young gentlemen, sons of Mr. Guastaldi, late minister from Genoa at London. I had seen them at Paris, at the house of the dutchess of Douglas. They came hither, with their conductor, in the diligence, and assured me, that nothing could be more disagreeable than their situation in that carriage. Another way of travelling in this country is to hire a coach and four horses; and this method I was inclined to take: but when I went to the bureau, where alone these voitures are to be had, I was given to understand, that it would cost me six-and-twenty guineas, and travel so slow that I should be ten days upon the road. These carriages are let by the same persons who farm the diligence; and for this they have an exclusive privilege, which makes them very saucy and insolent. When I mentioned my servant, they gave me to understand, that I must pay two loui'dores more for his seat upon the coach box. As I could not relish these terms, nor brook the thoughts of being so long upon the road, I had recourse to the third method, which is going post. In England you know I should have had nothing to do, but to hire a couple of post-chaises from stage to stage, with two horses in each; but here the case is quite otherwise. The post is farmed from the king, who lays travellers under contribution for his own benefit, and has published a set of oppressive ordonnances, which no stranger nor native dares transgress. The postmaster finds nothing but horses and guides: the carriage you yourself must provide. If there are four persons within the carriage, you are obliged to have six horses, and two postillions; and if your servant sits on the outside, either before or behind, you must pay for a seventh. You pay double for the first stage from Paris, and twice double for passing through Fontainbleau when the court is there, as well as at coming to Lyons, and at leaving this city. These are called royal posts, and are undoubtedly a scandalous imposition. There are two post roads from Paris to Lyons, one of sixty-five posts, by the way of Moulins; the other of fifty-nine, by the way of Dijon in Burgundy. This last I chose, partly to save sixty livres, and partly to see the wine harvest of Burgundy, which, I was told, was a season of mirth and jollity among all ranks of people. I hired a very good coach for ten loui'dores to Lyons, and set out from Paris on the thirteenth instant, with six horses, two postillions, and my own servant on horseback. We made no stop at Fontainbleau, though the court was there; but lay at Moret, which is one stage further, a very paltry little town where, however, we found good accommodation. I shall not pretend to describe the castle or palace of Fontainbleau, of which I had only a glimpse in passing; but the forest, in the middle of which it stands, is a noble chace of great extent, beautifully wild and romantic, well stored with game of all sorts, and abounding with excellent timber. It put me in mind of the New Forest in Hampshire; but the hills, rocks, and mountains, with which it is diversified, render it more agreeable. The people of this country dine at noon, and travellers always find an ordinary prepared at every auberge, or public-house, on the road. Here they sit down promiscuously, and dine at so much a head. The usual price is thirty sols for dinner, and forty for supper, including lodging; for this moderate expence they have two courses and a dessert. If you eat in your own apartment, you pay, instead of forty sols, three, and in some places, four livres ahead. I and my family could not well dispense with our tea and toast in the morning, and had no stomach to eat at noon. For my own part, I hate French cookery, and abominate garlick, with which all their ragouts, in this part of the country, are highly seasoned: we therefore formed a different plan of living upon the road. Before we left Paris, we laid in a stock of tea, chocolate, cured neats' tongues, and saucissons, or Bologna sausages, both of which we found in great perfection in that capital, where, indeed, there are excellent provisions of all sorts. About ten in the morning we stopped to breakfast at some auberge, where we always found bread, butter, and milk. In the mean time, we ordered a poulard or two to be roasted, and these, wrapped in a napkin, were put into the boot of the coach, together with bread, wine, and water. About two or three in the afternoon, while the horses were changing, we laid a cloth upon our knees, and producing our store, with a few earthen plates, discussed our short meal without further ceremony. This was followed by a dessert of grapes and other fruit, which we had also provided. I must own I found these transient refreshments much more agreeable than any regular meal I ate upon the road. The wine commonly used in Burgundy is so weak and thin, that you would not drink it in England. The very best which they sell at Dijon, the capital of the province, for three livres a bottle, is in strength, and even in flavour, greatly inferior to what I have drank in London. I believe all the first growth is either consumed in the houses of the noblesse, or sent abroad to foreign markets. I have drank excellent Burgundy at Brussels for a florin a bottle; that is, little more than twenty pence sterling. The country from the forest of Fontainbleau to the Lyonnois, through which we passed, is rather agreeable than fertile, being part of Champagne and the dutchy of Burgundy, watered by three pleasant pastoral rivers, the Seine, the Yonne, and the Saone. The flat country is laid out chiefly for corn; but produces more rye than wheat. Almost all the ground seems to be ploughed up, so that there is little or nothing lying fallow. There are very few inclosures, scarce any meadow ground, and, so far as I could observe, a great scarcity of cattle. We sometimes found it very difficult to procure half a pint of milk for our tea. In Burgundy I saw a peasant ploughing the ground with a jack-ass, a lean cow, and a he-goat, yoked together. It is generally observed, that a great number of black cattle are bred and fed on the mountains of Burgundy, which are the highest lands in France; but I saw very few. The peasants in France are so wretchedly poor, and so much oppressed by their landlords, that they cannot afford to inclose their grounds, or give a proper respite to their lands; or to stock their farms with a sufficient number of black cattle to produce the necessary manure, without which agriculture can never be carried to any degree of perfection. Indeed, whatever efforts a few individuals may make for the benefit of their own estates, husbandry in France will never be generally improved, until the farmer is free and independent. From the frequency of towns and villages, I should imagine this country is very populous; yet it must be owned, that the towns are in general thinly inhabited. I saw a good number of country seats and plantations near the banks of the rivers, on each side; and a great many convents, sweetly situated, on rising grounds, where the air is most pure, and the prospect most agreeable. It is surprising to see how happy the founders of those religious houses have been in their choice of situations, all the world over. In passing through this country, I was very much struck with the sight of large ripe clusters of grapes, entwined with the briars and thorns of common hedges on the wayside. The mountains of Burgundy are covered with vines from the bottom to the top, and seem to be raised by nature on purpose to extend the surface, and to expose it the more advantageously to the rays of the sun. The vandange was but just begun, and the people were employed in gathering the grapes; but I saw no signs of festivity among them. Perhaps their joy was a little damped by the bad prospect of their harvest; for they complained that the weather had been so unfavourable as to hinder the grapes from ripening. I thought, indeed, there was something uncomfortable in seeing the vintage thus retarded till the beginning of winter: for, in some parts, I found the weather extremely cold; particularly at a place called Maison-neuve, where we lay, there was a hard frost, and in the morning the pools were covered with a thick crust of ice. My personal adventures on the road were such as will not bear a recital. They consisted of petty disputes with landladies, post-masters, and postillions. The highways seem to be perfectly safe. We did not find that any robberies were ever committed, although we did not see one of the marechaussee from Paris to Lyons. You know the marechaussee are a body of troopers well mounted, maintained in France as safe-guards to the public roads. It is a reproach upon England that some such patrol is not appointed for the protection of travellers. At Sens in Champagne, my servant, who had rode on before to bespeak fresh horses, told me, that the domestic of another company had been provided before him, altho' it was not his turn, as he had arrived later at the post. Provoked at this partiality, I resolved to chide the post-master, and accordingly addressed myself to a person who stood at the door of the auberge. He was a jolly figure, fat and fair, dressed in an odd kind of garb, with a gold laced cap on his head, and a cambric handkerchief pinned to his middle. The sight of such a fantastic petit maitre, in the character of a post-master, increased my spleen. I called to him with an air of authority, mixed with indignation, and when he came up to the coach, asked in a peremptory tone, if he did not understand the king's ordonnance concerning the regulation of the posts? He laid his hand upon his breast; but before he could make any answer, I pulled out the post-book, and began to read, with great vociferation, the article which orders, that the traveller who comes first shall be first served. By this time the fresh horses being put to the carriage, and the postillions mounted, the coach set off all of a sudden, with uncommon speed. I imagined the post-master had given the fellows a signal to be gone, and, in this persuasion, thrusting my head out at the window, I bestowed some epithets upon him, which must have sounded very harsh in the ears of a Frenchman. We stopped for a refreshment at a little town called Joigne-ville, where (by the bye) I was scandalously imposed upon, and even abused by a virago of a landlady; then proceeding to the next stage, I was given to understand we could not be supplied with fresh horses. Here I perceived at the door of the inn, the same person whom I had reproached at Sens. He came up to the coach, and told me, that notwithstanding what the guides had said, I should have fresh horses in a few minutes. I imagined he was master both of this house and the auberge at Sens, between which he passed and repassed occasionally; and that he was now desirous of making me amends for the affront he had put upon me at the other place. Observing that one of the trunks behind was a little displaced, he assisted my servant in adjusting it: then he entered into conversation with me, and gave me to understand, that in a post-chaise, which we had passed, was an English gentleman on his return from Italy. I wanted to know who he was, and when he said he could not tell, I asked him, in a very abrupt manner, why he had not enquired of his servant. He shrugged up his shoulders, and retired to the inn door. Having waited about half an hour, I beckoned to him, and when he approached, upbraided him with having told me that I should be supplied with fresh horses in a few minutes: he seemed shocked, and answered, that he thought he had reason for what he said, observing, that it was as disagreeable to him as to me to wait for a relay. As it began to rain, I pulled up the glass in his face, and he withdrew again to the door, seemingly ruffled at my deportment. In a little time the horses arrived, and three of them were immediately put to a very handsome post-chaise, into which he stepped, and set out, accompanied by a man in a rich livery on horseback. Astonished at this circumstance, I asked the hostler who he was, and he replied, that he was a man of fashion (un seigneur) who lived in the neighbourhood of Auxerre. I was much mortified to find that I had treated a nobleman so scurvily, and scolded my own people for not having more penetration than myself. I dare say he did not fail to descant upon the brutal behaviour of the Englishman; and that my mistake served with him to confirm the national reproach of bluntness, and ill breeding, under which we lie in this country. The truth is, I was that day more than usually peevish, from the bad weather, as well as from the dread of a fit of the asthma, with which I was threatened: and I dare say my appearance seemed as uncouth to him, as his travelling dress appeared to me. I had a grey mourning frock under a wide great coat, a bob wig without powder, a very large laced hat, and a meagre, wrinkled, discontented countenance. The fourth night of our journey we lay at Macon, and the next day passed through the Lyonnois, which is a fine country, full of towns, villages, and gentlemen's houses. In passing through the Maconnois, we saw a great many fields of Indian corn, which grows to the height of six or seven feet: it is made into flour for the use of the common people, and goes by the name of Turkey wheat. Here likewise, as well as in Dauphine, they raise a vast quantity of very large pompions, with the contents of which they thicken their soup and ragouts. As we travelled only while the sun was up, on account of my ill health, and the post horses in France are in bad order, we seldom exceeded twenty leagues a day. I was directed to a lodging-house at Lyons, which being full they shewed us to a tavern, where I was led up three pair of stairs, to an apartment consisting of three paltry chambers, for which the people demanded twelve livres a day: for dinner and supper they asked thirty-two, besides three livres for my servant; so that my daily expence would have amounted to about forty-seven livres, exclusive of breakfast and coffee in the afternoon. I was so provoked at this extortion, that, without answering one word, I drove to another auberge, where I now am, and pay at the rate of two-and-thirty livres a day, for which I am very badly lodged, and but very indifferently entertained. I mention these circumstances to give you an idea of the imposition to which strangers are subject in this country. It must be owned, however, that in the article of eating, I might save half the money by going to the public ordinary; but this is a scheme of oeconomy, which (exclusive of other disagreeable circumstances) neither my own health, nor that of my wife permits me to embrace. My journey from Paris to Lyons, including the hire of the coach, and all expences on the road, has cost me, within a few shillings, forty loui'dores. From Paris our baggage (though not plombe) was not once examined till we arrived in this city, at the gate of which we were questioned by one of the searchers, who, being tipt with half a crown, allowed us to proceed without further enquiry. I purposed to stay in Lyons until I should receive some letters I expected from London, to be forwarded by my banker at Paris: but the enormous expence of living in this manner has determined me to set out in a day or two for Montpellier, although that place is a good way out of the road to Nice. My reasons for taking that route I shall communicate in my next. Mean-while, I am ever,-- Dear Sir, Your affectionate and obliged humble servant. LETTER IX MONTPELLIER, November 5, 1763. DEAR SIR,--The city of Lyons has been so often and so circumstantially described, that I cannot pretend to say any thing new on the subject. Indeed, I know very little of it, but what I have read in books; as I had but one day to make a tour of the streets, squares, and other remarkable places. The bridge over the Rhone seems to be so slightly built, that I should imagine it would be one day carried away by that rapid river; especially as the arches are so small, that, after great rains they are sometimes bouchees, or stopped up; that is, they do not admit a sufficient passage for the encreased body of the water. In order to remedy this dangerous defect, in some measure, they found an artist some years ago, who has removed a middle pier, and thrown two arches into one. This alteration they looked upon as a masterpiece in architecture, though there is many a common mason in England, who would have undertaken and performed the work, without valuing himself much upon the enterprize. This bridge, as well as that of St. Esprit, is built, not in a strait line across the river, but with a curve, which forms a convexity to oppose the current. Such a bend is certainly calculated for the better resisting the general impetuosity of the stream, and has no bad effect to the eye. Lyons is a great, populous, and flourishing city but I am surprised to find it is counted a healthy place, and that the air of it is esteemed favourable to pulmonic disorders. It is situated on the confluence of two large rivers, from which there must be a great evaporation, as well as from the low marshy grounds, which these rivers often overflow. This must render the air moist, frouzy, and even putrid, if it was not well ventilated by winds from the mountains of Swisserland; and in the latter end of autumn, it must be subject to fogs. The morning we set out from thence, the whole city and adjacent plains were covered with so thick a fog, that we could not distinguish from the coach the head of the foremost mule that drew it. Lyons is said to be very hot in summer, and very cold in winter; therefore I imagine must abound with inflammatory and intermittent disorders in the spring and fall of the year. My reasons for going to Montpellier, which is out of the strait road to Nice, were these. Having no acquaintance nor correspondents in the South of France, I had desired my credit might be sent to the same house to which my heavy baggage was consigned. I expected to find my baggage at Cette, which is the sea-port of Montpellier; and there I also hoped to find a vessel, in which I might be transported by sea to Nice, without further trouble. I longed to try what effect the boasted air of Montpellier would have upon my constitution; and I had a great desire to see the famous monuments of antiquity in and about the ancient city of Nismes, which is about eight leagues short of Montpellier. At the inn where we lodged, I found a return berline, belonging to Avignon, with three mules, which are the animals commonly used for carriages in this country. This I hired for five loui'dores. The coach was large, commodious, and well-fitted; the mules were strong and in good order; and the driver, whose name was Joseph, appeared to be a sober, sagacious, intelligent fellow, perfectly well acquainted with every place in the South of France. He told me he was owner of the coach, but I afterwards learned, he was no other than a hired servant. I likewise detected him in some knavery, in the course of our journey; and plainly perceived he had a fellow-feeling with the inn-keepers on the road; but, in other respects, he was very obliging, serviceable, and even entertaining. There are some knavish practices of this kind, at which a traveller will do well to shut his eyes, for his own ease and convenience. He will be lucky if he has to do with a sensible knave, like Joseph, who understood his interest too well to be guilty of very flagrant pieces of imposition. A man, impatient to be at his journey's end, will find this a most disagreeable way of travelling. In summer it must be quite intolerable. The mules are very sure, but very slow. The journey seldom exceeds eight leagues, about four and twenty miles a day: and as those people have certain fixed stages, you are sometimes obliged to rise in a morning before day; a circumstance very grievous to persons in ill health. These inconveniences, however, were over-balanced by other agreemens. We no, sooner quitted Lyons, than we got into summer weather, and travelling through a most romantic country, along the banks of the Rhone, had opportunities (from the slowness of our pace) to contemplate its beauties at leisure. The rapidity of the Rhone is, in a great measure, owing to its being confined within steep banks on each side. These are formed almost through its whole course, by a double chain of mountains, which rise with all abrupt ascent from both banks of the river. The mountains are covered with vineyards, interspersed with small summer-houses, and in many places they are crowned with churches, chapels, and convents, which add greatly to the romantic beauty of the prospect. The highroad, as far as Avignon, lies along the side of the river, which runs almost in a straight line, and affords great convenience for inland commerce. Travellers, bound to the southern parts of France, generally embark in the diligence at Lyons, and glide down this river with great velocity, passing a great number of towns and villages on each side, where they find ordinaries every day at dinner and supper. In good weather, there is no danger in this method of travelling, 'till you come to the Pont St. Esprit, where the stream runs through the arches with such rapidity, that the boat is sometimes overset. But those passengers who are under any apprehension are landed above-bridge, and taken in again, after the boat has passed, just in the same manner as at London Bridge. The boats that go up the river are drawn against the stream by oxen, which swim through one of the arches of this bridge, the driver sitting between the horns of the foremost beast. We set out from Lyons early on Monday morning, and as a robbery had been a few days before committed in that neighbourhood, I ordered my servant to load my musquetoon with a charge of eight balls. By the bye, this piece did not fail to attract the curiosity and admiration of the people in every place through which we passed. The carriage no sooner halted, than a crowd immediately surrounded the man to view the blunderbuss, which they dignified with the title of petit canon. At Nuys in Burgundy, he fired it in the air, and the whole mob dispersed, and scampered off like a flock of sheep. In our journey hither, we generally set out in a morning at eight o'clock, and travelled 'till noon, when the mules were put up and rested a couple of hours. During this halt, Joseph went to dinner, and we went to breakfast, after which we ordered provision for our refreshment in the coach, which we took about three or four in the afternoon, halting for that purpose, by the side of some transparent brook, which afforded excellent water to mix with our wine. In this country I was almost poisoned with garlic, which they mix in their ragouts, and all their sauces; nay, the smell of it perfumes the very chambers, as well as every person you approach. I was also very sick of been ficas, grives, or thrushes, and other little birds, which are served up twice a day at all ordinaries on the road. They make their appearance in vine-leaves, and are always half raw, in which condition the French choose to eat them, rather than run the risque of losing the juice by over-roasting. The peasants on the South of France are poorly clad, and look as if they were half-starved, diminutive, swarthy, and meagre; and yet the common people who travel, live luxuriously on the road. Every carrier and mule-driver has two meals a day, consisting each of a couple of courses and a dessert, with tolerable small wine. That which is called hermitage, and grows in this province of Dauphine, is sold on the spot for three livres a bottle. The common draught, which you have at meals in this country, is remarkably strong, though in flavour much inferior to that of Burgundy. The accommodation is tolerable, though they demand (even in this cheap country) the exorbitant price of four livres a head for every meal, of those who choose to eat in their own apartments. I insisted, however, upon paying them with three, which they received, though not without murmuring and seeming discontented. In this journey, we found plenty of good mutton, pork, poultry, and game, including the red partridge, which is near twice as big as the partridge of England. Their hares are likewise surprisingly large and juicy. We saw great flocks of black turkeys feeding in the fields, but no black cattle; and milk was so scarce, that sometimes we were obliged to drink our tea without it. One day perceiving a meadow on the side of the road, full of a flower which I took to be the crocus, I desired my servant to alight and pull some of them. He delivered the musquetoon to Joseph, who began to tamper with it, and off it went with a prodigious report, augmented by an eccho from the mountains that skirted the road. The mules were so frightened, that they went off at the gallop; and Joseph, for some minutes, could neither manage the reins, nor open his mouth. At length he recollected himself, and the cattle were stopt, by the assistance of the servant, to whom he delivered the musquetoon, with a significant shake of the head. Then alighting from the box, he examined the heads of his three mules, and kissed each of them in his turn. Finding they had received no damage, he came up to the coach, with a pale visage and staring eyes, and said it was God's mercy he had not killed his beasts. I answered, that it was a greater mercy he had not killed his passengers; for the muzzle of the piece might have been directed our way as well as any other, and in that case Joseph might have been hanged for murder. "I had as good be hanged (said he) for murder, as be ruined by the loss of my cattle." This adventure made such an impression upon him, that he recounted it to every person we met; nor would he ever touch the blunderbuss from that day. I was often diverted with the conversation of this fellow, who was very arch and very communicative. Every afternoon, he used to stand upon the foot-board, at the side of the coach, and discourse with us an hour together. Passing by the gibbet of Valencia, which stands very near the high-road, we saw one body hanging quite naked, and another lying broken on the wheel. I recollected, that Mandrin had suffered in this place, and calling to Joseph to mount the foot-board, asked if he had ever seen that famous adventurer. At mention of the name of Mandrin, the tear started in Joseph's eye, he discharged a deep sigh, or rather groan, and told me he was his dear friend. I was a little startled at this declaration; however, I concealed my thoughts, and began to ask questions about the character and exploits of a man who had made such noise in the world. He told me, Mandrin was a native of Valencia, of mean extraction: that he had served as a soldier in the army, and afterwards acted as maltotier, or tax-gatherer: that at length he turned contrebandier, or smuggler, and by his superior qualities, raised himself to the command of a formidable gang, consisting of five hundred persons well armed with carbines and pistols. He had fifty horses for his troopers, and three hundred mules for the carriage of his merchandize. His head-quarters were in Savoy: but he made incursions into Dauphine, and set the marechaussee at defiance. He maintained several bloody skirmishes with these troopers, as well as with other regular detachments, and in all those actions signalized himself by his courage and conduct. Coming up at one time with fifty of the marechaussee who were in quest of him, he told them very calmly, he had occasion for their horses and acoutrements, and desired them to dismount. At that instant his gang appeared, and the troopers complied with his request, without making the least opposition. Joseph said he was as generous as he was brave, and never molested travellers, nor did the least injury to the poor; but, on the contrary, relieved them very often. He used to oblige the gentlemen in the country to take his merchandize, his tobacco, brandy, and muslins, at his own price; and, in the same manner, he laid the open towns under contribution. When he had no merchandize, he borrowed money off them upon the credit of what he should bring when he was better provided. He was at last betrayed, by his wench, to the colonel of a French regiment, who went with a detachment in the night to the place where he lay in Savoy, and surprized him in a wood-house, while his people were absent in different parts of the country. For this intrusion, the court of France made an apology to the king of Sardinia, in whose territories he was taken. Mandrin being conveyed to Valencia, his native place, was for some time permitted to go abroad, under a strong guard, with chains upon his legs; and here he conversed freely with all sorts of people, flattering himself with the hopes of a pardon, in which, however, he was disappointed. An order came from court to bring him to his trial, when he was found guilty, and condemned to be broke on the wheel. Joseph said he drank a bottle of wine with him the night before his execution. He bore his fate with great resolution, observing that if the letter which he had written to the King had been delivered, he certainly should have obtained his Majesty's pardon. His executioner was one of his own gang, who was pardoned on condition of performing this office. You know, that criminals broke upon the wheel are first strangled, unless the sentence imports, that they shall be broke alive. As Mandrin had not been guilty of cruelty in the course of his delinquency, he was indulged with this favour. Speaking to the executioner, whom he had formerly commanded, "Joseph (dit il), je ne veux pas que tu me touche, jusqu'a ce que je sois roid mort," "Joseph," said he, "thou shalt not touch me till I am quite dead."--Our driver had no sooner pronounced these words, than I was struck with a suspicion, that he himself was the executioner of his friend Mandrin. On that suspicion, I exclaimed, "Ah! ah! Joseph!" The fellow blushed up to the eyes, and said, Oui, son nom etoit Joseph aussi bien que le mien, "Yes, he was called Joseph, as I am." I did not think proper to prosecute the inquiry; but did not much relish the nature of Joseph's connexions. The truth is, he had very much the looks of a ruffian; though, I must own, his behaviour was very obliging and submissive. On the fifth day of our journey, in the morning, we passed the famous bridge at St. Esprit, which to be sure is a great curiosity, from its length, and the number of its arches: but these arches are too small: the passage above is too narrow; and the whole appears to be too slight, considering the force and impetuosity of the river. It is not comparable to the bridge at Westminster, either for beauty or solidity. Here we entered Languedoc, and were stopped to have our baggage examined; but the searcher, being tipped with a three-livre piece, allowed it to pass. Before we leave Dauphine, I must observe, that I was not a little surprized to see figs and chestnuts growing in the open fields, at the discretion of every passenger. It was this day I saw the famous Pont du Garde; but as I cannot possibly include, in this letter, a description of that beautiful bridge, and of the other antiquities belonging to Nismes, I will defer it till the next opportunity, being, in the mean time, with equal truth and affection,--Dear Sir, Your obliged humble Servant. LETTER X MONTPELLIER, November 10, 1763. DEAR SIR,--By the Pont St. Esprit we entered the province of Languedoc, and breakfasted at Bagniole, which is a little paltry town; from whence, however, there is an excellent road through a mountain, made at a great expence, and extending about four leagues. About five in the afternoon, I had the first glimpse of the famous Pont du Garde, which stands on the right hand, about the distance of a league from the post-road to Nismes, and about three leagues from that city. I would not willingly pass for a false enthusiast in taste; but I cannot help observing, that from the first distant view of this noble monument, till we came near enough to see it perfectly, I felt the strongest emotions of impatience that I had ever known; and obliged our driver to put his mules to the full gallop, in the apprehension that it would be dark before we reached the place. I expected to find the building, in some measure, ruinous; but was agreeably disappointed, to see it look as fresh as the bridge at Westminster. The climate is either so pure and dry, or the free-stone, with which it is built, so hard, that the very angles of them remain as acute as if they had been cut last year. Indeed, some large stones have dropped out of the arches; but the whole is admirably preserved, and presents the eye with a piece of architecture, so unaffectedly elegant, so simple, and majestic, that I will defy the most phlegmatic and stupid spectator to behold it without admiration. It was raised in the Augustan age, by the Roman colony of Nismes, to convey a stream of water between two mountains, for the use of that city. It stands over the river Gardon, which is a beautiful pastoral stream, brawling among rocks, which form a number of pretty natural cascades, and overshadowed on each side with trees and shrubs, which greatly add to the rural beauties of the scene. It rises in the Cevennes, and the sand of it produces gold, as we learn from Mr. Reaumur, in his essay on this subject, inserted in the French Memoirs, for the year 1718. If I lived at Nismes, or Avignon (which last city is within four short leagues of it) I should take pleasure in forming parties to come hither, in summer, to dine under one of the arches of the Pont du Garde, on a cold collation. This work consists of three bridges, or tire of arches, one above another; the first of six, the second of eleven, and the third of thirty-six. The height, comprehending the aqueduct on the top, amounts to 174 feet three inches: the length between the two mountains, which it unites, extends to 723. The order of architecture is the Tuscan, but the symmetry of it is inconceivable. By scooping the bases of the pilasters, of the second tire of arches, they had made a passage for foot-travellers: but though the antients far excelled us in beauty, they certainly fell short of the moderns in point of conveniency. The citizens of Avignon have, in this particular, improved the Roman work with a new bridge, by apposition, constructed on the same plan with that of the lower tire of arches, of which indeed it seems to be a part, affording a broad and commodious passage over the river, to horses and carriages of all kinds. The aqueduct, for the continuance of which this superb work was raised, conveyed a stream of sweet water from the fountain of Eure, near the city of Uzes, and extended near six leagues in length. In approaching Nismes, you see the ruins of a Roman tower, built on the summit of a hill, which over-looks the city. It seems to have been intended, at first, as a watch, or signal-tower, though, in the sequel, it was used as a fortress: what remains of it, is about ninety feet high; the architecture of the Doric order. I no sooner alighted at the inn, than I was presented with a pamphlet, containing an account of Nismes and its antiquities, which every stranger buys. There are persons too who attend in order to shew the town, and you will always be accosted by some shabby antiquarian, who presents you with medals for sale, assuring you they are genuine antiques, and were dug out of the ruins of the Roman temple and baths. All those fellows are cheats; and they have often laid under contribution raw English travellers, who had more money than discretion. To such they sell the vilest and most common trash: but when they meet with a connoisseur, they produce some medals which are really valuable and curious. Nismes, antiently called Nemausis, was originally a colony of Romans, settled by Augustus Caesar, after the battle of Actium. It is still of considerable extent, and said to contain twelve thousand families; but the number seems, by this account, to be greatly exaggerated. Certain it is, the city must have been formerly very extensive, as appears from the circuit of the antient walls, the remains of which are still to be seen. Its present size is not one third of its former extent. Its temples, baths, statues, towers, basilica, and amphitheatre, prove it to have been a city of great opulence and magnificence. At present, the remains of these antiquities are all that make it respectable or remarkable; though here are manufactures of silk and wool, carried on with good success. The water necessary for these works is supplied by a source at the foot of the rock, upon which the tower is placed; and here were discovered the ruins of Roman baths, which had been formed and adorned with equal taste and magnificence. Among the rubbish they found a vast profusion of columns, vases, capitals, cornices, inscriptions, medals, statues, and among other things, the finger of a colossal statue in bronze, which, according to the rules of proportion, must have been fifteen feet high. From these particulars, it appears that the edifices must have been spacious and magnificent. Part of a tesselated pavement still remains. The antient pavement of the bath is still intire; all the rubbish has been cleared away; and the baths, in a great measure, restored on the old plan, though they are not at present used for any thing but ornament. The water is collected into two vast reservoirs, and a canal built and lined with hewn stone. There are three handsome bridges thrown over this vast canal. It contains a great body of excellent water, which by pipes and other small branching canals, traverses the town, and is converted to many different purposes of oeconomy and manufacture. Between the Roman bath and these great canals, the ground is agreeably laid out in pleasure-walks. for the recreation of the inhabitants. Here are likewise ornaments of architecture, which savour much more of French foppery, than of the simplicity and greatness of the antients. It is very surprizing, that this fountain should produce such a great body of water, as fills the basin of the source, the Roman basin, two large deep canals three hundred feet in length, two vast basins that make part of the great canal, which is eighteen hundred feet long, eighteen feet deep, and forty-eight feet broad. When I saw it, there was in it about eight or nine feet of water, transparent as crystal. It must be observed, however, for the honour of French cleanliness, that in the Roman basin, through which this noble stream of water passes, I perceived two washerwomen at work upon children's clouts and dirty linnen. Surprized, and much disgusted at this filthy phaenomenon, I asked by what means, and by whose permission, those dirty hags had got down into the basin, in order to contaminate the water at its fountain-head; and understood they belonged to the commandant of the place, who had keys of the subterranean passage. Fronting the Roman baths are the ruins of an antient temple, which, according to tradition, was dedicated to Diana: but it has been observed by connoisseurs, that all the antient temples of this goddess were of the Ionic order; whereas, this is partly Corinthian, and partly composite. It is about seventy foot long, and six and thirty in breadth, arched above, and built of large blocks of stone, exactly joined together without any cement. The walls are still standing, with three great tabernacles at the further end, fronting the entrance. On each side, there are niches in the intercolumniation of the walls, together with pedestals and shafts of pillars, cornices, and an entablature, which indicate the former magnificence of the building. It was destroyed during the civil war that raged in the reign of Henry III. of France. It is amazing, that the successive irruptions of barbarous nations, of Goths, Vandals, and Moors; of fanatic croisards, still more sanguinary and illiberal than those Barbarians, should have spared this temple, as well as two other still more noble monuments of architecture, that to this day adorn the city of Nismes: I mean the amphitheatre and the edifice, called Maison Carree--The former of these is counted the finest monument of the kind, now extant; and was built in the reign of Antoninus Pius, who contributed a large sum of money towards its erection. It is of an oval figure, one thousand and eighty feet in circumference, capacious enough to hold twenty thousand spectators. The architecture is of the Tuscan order, sixty feet high, composed of two open galleries, built one over another, consisting each of threescore arcades. The entrance into the arena was by four great gates, with porticos; and the seats, of which there were thirty, rising one above another, consisted of great blocks of stone, many of which still remain. Over the north gate, appear two bulls, in alto-relievo, extremely well executed, emblems which, according to the custom of the Romans, signified that the amphitheatre was erected at the expence of the people. There are in other parts of it some work in bas-relief, and heads or busts but indifferently carved. It stands in the lower part of the town, and strikes the spectator with awe and veneration. The external architecture is almost intire in its whole circuit; but the arena is filled up with houses--This amphitheatre was fortified as a citadel by the Visigoths, in the beginning of the sixth century. They raised within it a castle, two towers of which are still extant; and they surrounded it with a broad and deep fossee, which was filled up in the thirteenth century. In all the subsequent wars to which this city was exposed, it served as the last resort of the citizens, and sustained a great number of successive attacks; so that its preservation is almost miraculous. It is likely, however, to suffer much more from the Gothic avarice of its own citizens, some of whom are mutilating it every day, for the sake of the stones, which they employ in their own private buildings. It is surprizing, that the King's authority has not been exerted to put an end to such sacrilegious violation. If the amphitheatre strikes you with an idea of greatness, the Maison Carree enchants you with the most exquisite beauties of architecture and sculpture. This is an edifice, supposed formerly to have been erected by Adrian, who actually built a basilica in this city, though no vestiges of it remain: but the following inscription, which was discovered on the front of it, plainly proves, that it was built by the inhabitants of Nismes, in honour of Caius and Lucius Caesar, the grandchildren of Augustus by his daughter Julia, the wife of Agrippa. C. CAESARI. AVGVSTI. F. COS. L CAESARI. AVGMI. F. COS. DESIGNATO. PRINCIPIBVS IVVENTUTIS. To Caius and Lucius Caesar, sons of Augustus, consuls elect, Princes of the Roman youth. This beautiful edifice, which stands upon a pediment six feet high, is eighty-two feet long, thirty-five broad, and thirty-seven high, without reckoning the pediment. The body of it is adorned with twenty columns engaged in the wall, and the peristyle, which is open, with ten detached pillars that support the entablature. They are all of the Corinthian order, fluted and embellished with capitals of the most exquisite sculpture, the frize and cornice are much admired, and the foliage is esteemed inimitable. The proportions of the building are so happily united, as to give it an air of majesty and grandeur, which the most indifferent spectator cannot behold without emotion. A man needs not be a connoisseur in architecture, to enjoy these beauties. They are indeed so exquisite that you may return to them every day with a fresh appetite for seven years together. What renders them the more curious, they are still entire, and very little affected, either by the ravages of time, or the havoc of war. Cardinal Alberoni declared, that it was a jewel that deserved a cover of gold to preserve it from external injuries. An Italian painter, perceiving a small part of the roof repaired by modern French masonry, tore his hair, and exclaimed in a rage, "Zounds! what do I see? harlequin's hat on the head of Augustus!" Without all doubt it is ravishingly beautiful. The whole world cannot parallel it; and I am astonished to see it standing entire, like the effects of inchantment, after such a succession of ages, every one more barbarous than another. The history of the antiquities of Nismes takes notice of a grotesque statue, representing two female bodies and legs, united under the head of an old man; but, as it does not inform us where it is kept, I did not see it. The whole country of Languedoc is shaded with olive trees, the fruit of which begins to ripen, and appears as black as sloes; those they pickle are pulled green, and steeped for some time in a lye made of quick lime or wood ashes, which extracts the bitter taste, and makes the fruit tender. Without this preparation it is not eatable. Under the olive and fig trees, they plant corn and vines, so that there is not an inch of ground unlaboured: but here are no open fields, meadows, or cattle to be seen. The ground is overloaded; and the produce of it crowded to such a degree, as to have a bad effect upon the eye, impressing the traveller with the ideas of indigence and rapacity. The heat in summer is so excessive, that cattle would find no green forage, every blade of grass being parched up and destroyed. The weather was extremely hot when we entered Montpellier, and put up at the Cheval Blanc, counted the best auberge in the place, tho' in fact it is a most wretched hovel, the habitation of darkness, dirt, and imposition. Here I was obliged to pay four livres a meal for every person in my family, and two livres at night for every bed, though all in the same room: one would imagine that the further we advance to the southward the living is the dearer, though in fact every article of housekeeping is cheaper in Languedoc than many other provinces of France. This imposition is owing to the concourse of English who come hither, and, like simple birds of passage, allow themselves to be plucked by the people of the country, who know their weak side, and make their attacks accordingly. They affect to believe, that all the travellers of our country are grand seigneurs, immensely rich and incredibly generous; and we are silly enough to encourage this opinion, by submitting quietly to the most ridiculous extortion, as well as by committing acts of the most absurd extravagance. This folly of the English, together with a concourse of people from different quarters, who come hither for the re-establishment of their health, has rendered Montpellier one of the dearest places in the South of France. The city, which is but small, stands upon a rising ground fronting the Mediterranean, which is about three leagues to the southward: on the other side is an agreeable plain, extending about the same distance towards the mountains of the Cevennes. The town is reckoned well built, and what the French call bien percee; yet the streets are in general narrow, and the houses dark. The air is counted salutary in catarrhous consumptions, from its dryness and elasticity: but too sharp in cases of pulmonary imposthumes. It was at Montpellier that we saw for the first time any signs of that gaiety and mirth for which the people of this country are celebrated. In all other places through which we passed since our departure from Lyons, we saw nothing but marks of poverty and chagrin. We entered Montpellier on a Sunday, when the people were all dressed in their best apparel. The streets were crowded; and a great number of the better sort of both sexes sat upon stone seats at their doors, conversing with great mirth and familiarity. These conversations lasted the greatest part of the night; and many of them were improved with musick both vocal and instrumental: next day we were visited by the English residing in the place, who always pay this mark of respect to new comers. They consist of four or five families, among whom I could pass the winter very agreeably, if the state of my health and other reasons did not call me away. Mr. L-- had arrived two days before me, troubled with the same asthmatic disorder, under which I have laboured so long. He told me he had been in quest of me ever since he left England. Upon comparing notes, I found he had stopped at the door of a country inn in Picardy, and drank a glass of wine and water, while I was at dinner up stairs; nay, he had even spoke to my servant, and asked who was his master, and the man, not knowing him, replied, he was a gentleman from Chelsea. He had walked by the door of the house where I lodged at Paris, twenty times, while I was in that city; and the very day before he arrived at Montpellier, he had passed our coach on the road. The garrison of this city consists of two battalions, one of which is the Irish regiment of Berwick, commanded by lieutenant colonel Tents, a gentleman with whom we contracted an acquaintance at Boulogne. He treats us with great politeness, and indeed does every thing in his power to make the place agreeable to us. The duke of Fitz-James, the governor, is expected here in a little time. We have already a tolerable concert twice a week; there will be a comedy in the winter; and the states of Provence assemble in January, so that Montpellier will be extremely gay and brilliant. These very circumstances would determine me to leave it. I have not health to enjoy these pleasures: I cannot bear a croud of company such as pours in upon us unexpectedly at all hours; and I foresee, that in staying at Montpellier, I should be led into an expence, which I can ill afford. I have therefore forwarded the letter I received from general P--n, to Mr. B--d, our consul at Nice, signifying my intention of going thither, and explaining the kind of accommodation I would choose to have at that place. The day after our arrival, I procured tolerable lodgings in the High Street, for which I pay fifty sols, something more than two shillings per day; and I am furnished with two meals a day by a traiteur for ten livres: but he finds neither the wine nor the dessert; and indeed we are but indifferently served. Those families who reside here find their account in keeping house. Every traveller who comes to this, or any other, town in France with a design to stay longer than a day or two, ought to write beforehand to his correspondent to procure furnished lodgings, to which he may be driven immediately, without being under the necessity of lying in an execrable inn; for all the inns of this country are execrable. My baggage is not yet arrived by the canal of Languedoc; but that gives me no disturbance, as it is consigned to the care of Mr. Ray, an English merchant and banker of this place; a gentleman of great probity and worth, from whom I have received repeated marks of uncommon friendship and hospitality. The next time you hear of me will be from Nice: mean-while, I remain always,--Dear Sir, Your affectionate humble servant. LETTER XI MONTPELLIER, November 12. DEAR DOCTOR--I flattered myself with the hope of much amusement during my short stay at Montpellier.--The University, the Botanical Garden, the State of Physic in this part of the world, and the information I received of a curious collection of manuscripts, among which I hoped to find something for our friend Dr. H--r; all these particulars promised a rich fund of entertainment, which, however, I cannot enjoy. A few days after my arrival, it began to rain with a southerly wind, and continued without ceasing the best part of a week, leaving the air so loaded with vapours, that there was no walking after sun-set; without being wetted by the dew almost to the skin. I have always found a cold and damp atmosphere the most unfavourable of any to my constitution. My asthmatical disorder. which had not given me much disturbance since I left Boulogne, became now very troublesome, attended with fever, cough spitting, and lowness of spirits; and I wasted visibly every day. I was favoured with the advice of Dr. Fitzmaurice, a very worthy sensible physician settled in this place: but I had the curiosity to know the opinion of the celebrated professor F--, who is the Boerhaave of Montpellier. The account I had of his private character and personal deportment, from some English people to whom he was well known, left me no desire to converse with him: but I resolved to consult with him on paper. This great lanthorn of medicine is become very rich and very insolent; and in proportion as his wealth increases, he is said to grow the more rapacious. He piques himself upon being very slovenly, very blunt, and very unmannerly; and perhaps to these qualifications be owes his reputation rather than to any superior skill in medicine. I have known them succeed in our own country; and seen a doctor's parts estimated by his brutality and presumption. F-- is in his person and address not unlike our old acquaintance Dr. Sm--ie; he stoops much, dodges along, and affects to speak the Patois, which is a corruption of the old Provencial tongue, spoken by the vulgar in Languedoc and Provence. Notwithstanding his great age and great wealth, he will still scramble up two pair of stairs for a fee of six livres; and without a fee he will give his advice to no person whatsoever. He is said to have great practice in the venereal branch and to be frequented by persons of both sexes infected with this distemper, not only from every part of France, but also from Spain, Italy, Germany, and England. I need say nothing of the Montpellier method of cure, which is well known at London; but I have some reason to think the great professor F--, has, like the famous Mrs. Mapp, the bone-setter, cured many patients that were never diseased. Be that as it may, I sent my valet de place, who was his townsman and acquaintance, to his house, with the following case, and a loui'dore. Annum aetatis, post quadragesimum, tertium, Temperamentum humidum, crassum, pituitarepletum, catarrhis saepissime profligatum. Catarrhus, febre, anxietate et dyspnoea, nunquam non comitatus. Irritatio membranae piuitariae trachaealis, tussim initio aridam, siliquosam, deinde vero excreationem copiosam excitat: sputum albumini ovi simillimum. Accedente febre, urina pallida, limpida: ad akmen flagrante, colorem rubrum, subflavum induit: coctione peracta, sedimentum lateritium deponit. Appetitus raro deest: digestio segnior sed secura, non autem sine ructu perfecta. Alvus plerumque stipata: excretio intestinalis minima, ratione ingestorum habita. Pulsus frequens, vacillans, exilis, quandoquidem etiam intermittens. Febre una extincta, non deficit altera. Aliaque et eadem statim nascitur. Aer paulo frigidior, vel humidior, vestimentum inusitatum indutum; exercitatio paulullum nimia; ambulatio, equitatio, in quovis vehiculo jactatio; haec omnia novos motus suscitant. Systema nervosum maxime irritabile, organos patitur. Ostiola in cute hiantia, materiei perspirabili, exitum praebentia, clauduntur. Materies obstructa cumulatur; sanguine aliisque humoribus circumagitur: fit plethora. Natura opprimi nolens, excessus huius expulsionem conatur. Febris nova accenditur. Pars oneris, in membranam trachaealem laxatam ac debilitatam transfertur. Glandulae pituitariae turgentes bronchia comprimunt. Liber aeri transitus negatur: hinc respiratio difficilis. Hac vero translatione febris minuitur: interdiu remittitur. Dyspnoea autem aliaque symptomata vere hypochondriaca, recedere nolunt. Vespere febris exacerbatur. Calor, inquietudo, anxietas et asthma, per noctem grassantur. Ita quotidie res agitur, donec. Vis vitae paulatim crisim efficit. Seminis joctura, sive in somniis effusi, seu in gremio veneris ejaculati, inter causas horum malorum nec non numeretur. Quibusdam abhinc annis, exercitationibus juvenilibus subito remissis, in vitam sedentariam lapsum. Animo in studia severiora converso, fibre gradatim laxabantur. Inter legendum, et scribendum inclinato corpore in pectus malum, ruebat. Morbo ingruenti affectio scorbutica auxilium tulit. Invasio prima nimium aspernata. Venientibus hostibus non occursum. Cunctando res non restituta. Remedia convenientia stomachus perhorrescebat. Gravescente dyspnoea phlebotomia frustra tentata. Sanguinis missione vis vitae diminuta: fiebat pulsitis debilior, respiratio difficilior. In pejus ruunt omnia. Febris anomala in febriculam continuam mutata. Dyspnoea confirmata. Fibrarum compages soluta. Valetudo penitus eversa. His agitatus furiis, aeger ad mare provolat: in fluctus se precipitem, dat: periculum factum spem non fefellit: decies iteratum, felix faustumque evasit. Elater novus fibris conciliatur. Febricula fugatur. Acris dyspnoea solvitur. Beneficium dextra ripa partum, sinistra perditum. Superficie corporis, aquae marine frigore et pondere, compressa et contracta, interstitia fibrarum occluduntur: particulis incrementi novis partes abrasas reficientibus, locus non datur. Nutritio corporis, via pristina clausa, qua data porta ruit: in membranam pulmonum, minus firmatam facile fertur, et glandulis per sputum rejicitur. Hieme pluviosa, regnante dolores renovantur; tametsi tempore sereno equitatio profuit. Aestate morbus vix ullum progrediebatur. Autumno, valetudine plus declinata, thermis Bathoniensibus solatium haud frustra quaesitum. Aqua ista mire medicata, externe aeque ac interne adhibita, malis levamen attulit. Hiems altera, frigida, horrida, diuturna, innocua tamen successit. Vere novo casus atrox diras procellas animo immisit: toto corpore, tota mente tumultuatur. Patria relicta, tristitia, sollecitudo, indignatio, et saevissima recordatio sequuntur. Inimici priores furore inveterato revertuntur. Rediit febris hectica: rediit asthma cum anxietate, tusse et dolore lateris lancinanti. Desperatis denique rebus, iterum ad mare, veluti ad anceps remedium recurritur. Balneum hoc semper benignum. Dolor statim avolat. Tertio die febris, retrocessit. Immersio quotidiana antemeridiana, ad vices quinquaginta repetita, symptomata graviora subjugavit.-- Manet vero tabes pituitaria: manet temperamentum in catarrhos proclive. Corpus macrescit. Vires delabuntur. The professor's eyes sparkled at sight of the fee; and he desired the servant to call next morning for his opinion of the case, which accordingly I received in these words: "On voit par cette relation que monsieur le consultant dont on n'a pas juge a propos de dire l'age, mais qui nous paroit etre adulte et d'un age passablement avance, a ete sujet cy devant a des rhumes frequens accompagnes de fievre; on ne detaille point (aucune epoque), on parle dans la relation d'asthme auquel il a ete sujet, de scorbut ou affection scorbutique dont on ne dit pas les symptomes. On nous fait scavoir qu'il s'est bien trouve de l'immersion dans l'eau de la mer, et des eaux de Bath. "On dit a present qu'il a une fievre pituitaire sans dire depuis combien de temps. Qu'il lui reste toujours son temperament enclin aux catharres. Que le corps maigrit, et que les forces se perdent. On ne dit point s'il y a des exacerbations dans cette fievre ou non, si le malade a appetit ou non, s'il tousse ou non, s'il crache ou non, en un mot on n'entre dans aucun detail sur ces objets, sur quoi le conseil soussigne estime que monsieur le consultant est en fievre lente, et que vraisemblable le poumon souffre de quelque tubercules qui peut-etre sont en fonte, ce que nous aurions determine si dans la relation on avoit marque les qualites de crachats. "La cause fonchere de cette maladie doit etre imputee a une lymphe epaisse et acrimonieuse, qui donne occasion a des tubercules au pomon, qui etant mis on fonte fournissent au sang des particules acres et le rendent tout acrimonieux. "Les vues que l'on doit avoir dans ce cas sent de procurer des bonnes digestions (quoique dans la relation ou ne dit pas un mot sur les digestions) de jetter un douce detrempe dans la masse du sang, d'en ebasser l'acrimonie et de l'adoucir, de diviser fort doucement a lymphe, et de deterger le poumon, lui procurant meme du calme suppose que la toux l'inquiete, quoique cependant on ne dit pas un mot sur la toux dans la relation. C'est pourquoi on le purgera avec 3 onces de manne, dissoutes dans un verre de decoction de 3 dragmes de polypode de chesne, on passera ensuite a des bouillons qui seront faits avec un petit poulet, la chair, le sang, le coeur et le foye d'une tortue de grandeur mediocre c'est a dire du poid de 8 a 12 onces avec sa coquille, une poignee de chicoree amere de jardin, et une pincee de feuilles de lierre terrestre vertes on seches. Ayant pris ces bouillons 15 matins on se purgera comme auparavant, pour en venir a des bouillons qui seront faits avec la moitie d'un mou de veau, une poignee de pimprenelle de jardin, et une dragme de racine d'angelique concassee. Ayant pris ces bouillons 15 matins, on se purgera somme auparavant pour en venir an lait d'anesse que l'on prendra le matin a jeun, a la dose de 12 a 16 onces y ajoutant un cuilleree de sucre rape, on prendra ce lait le matin a jeun observant de prendre pendant son usage de deux jours l'un un moment avant le lait un bolus fait avec 15 grains de craye de Braincon en poudre fine, 20 grains de corail prepare, 8 grains d'antihectique de poterius, et ce qu'il faut de syrop de lierre terrestre, mais les jour on ou ne prendra pas le bolus on prendra un moment avant le lait 3 on 4 gouttes de bon baume de Canada detrempees dans un demi cuilleree de syrop de lierre terrestre. Si le corps maigrit de plus en plus, je suis d'avis que pendant l'usage du lait d'anesse on soupe tous les soirs avec une soupe au lait de vache. "On continuera l'usage du lait d'anesse tant, que le malade pourra le supporter, ne le purgeant que par necessite et toujours avec la medecine ordonnee. "Au reste, si monsieur le consultant ne passe les nuits bien calmes, il prendra chaque soir a l'heure de sommeil six grains des pilules de cynoglosse, dent il augmentera la dose d'un grain de plus toutes les fois que la dose du jour precedent, n'aura pas ete suffisante pour lui faire passer la nuit bien calme. "Si les malade tousse il usera soit de jour soit de nuit par petites cuillerees a casse d'un looch, qui sera fait avec un once de syrop de violat et un dragme de blanc de baleine. "Si les crachats sent epais et qu'il crache difficilement, en ce cas il prendra une ou deux fois le jour, demi dragme de blanc de baleine reduit on poudre avec un pen de sucre candit qu'il avalera avec une cuilleree d'eau. "Enfin il doit observer un bon regime de vivre, c'est pourquoi il fera toujours gras et seulement en soupes, bouilli et roti, il ne mangera pas les herbes des soupes, et on salera peu son pot, il se privera du beuf, cochon, chair noir, oiseaux d'eau, ragouts, fritures, patisseries, alimens sales, epices, vinaigres, salades, fruits, cruds, et autres crudites, alimens grossiers, ou de difficille digestion, la boisson sera de l'eau tant soit peu rougee de bon vin au diner seulement, et il ne prendra a souper qu'une soupe. Delibere a MONTPELLIER le 11 Novembre. F--. Professeur en l'universite honoraire. Receu vingt et quatre livres. I thought it was a little extraordinary that a learned professor should reply in his mother tongue, to a case put in Latin: but I was much more surprised, as you will also be, at reading his answer, from which I was obliged to conclude, either that he did not understand Latin; or that he had not taken the trouble to read my memoire. I shall not make any remarks upon the stile of his prescription, replete as it is with a disgusting repetition of low expressions: but I could not but, in justice to myself, point out to him the passages in my case which he had overlooked. Accordingly, having marked them with letters, I sent it back, with the following billet. "Apparement Mons. F-- n'a pas donne beaucoup d'attention au memoire de ma sante que j'ai on l'honneur de lui presenter-- 'Monsieur le consultant (dit il) dont on n'a pas juge it propos de dire l'age.'--Mais on voit dans le memoire a No. 1. 'Annum aetatis post quadragesimum tertium.' "Mr. F-- dit que 'je n'ai pas marque aucune epoque. Mais a No. 2 du memoire il trouvera ces mots. 'Quibusdam abbinc annis.' J'ai meme detaille le progres de la maladie pour trois ans consecutifs. "Mons. F-- observe, 'On no dit point s'il y a des exacerbations dans cette fievre ou non.' Qu'il. Regarde la lettre B, il verra, Vespere febris exacerbatur. Calor, inquietudo, anxietas et asthma per noctem grassantur.' "Mons. F-- remarque, 'On ne dit point si le malade a appetit ou non, s'il tousse ou non, s'il crache ou non, en un mot on n'entre dans aucun detail sur ces objets.' Mais on voit toutes ces circonstances detaillees dans la memoire a lettre A, 'Irritatio membranae trachaealis tussim, initio aridam, siliquosam, deinde vero excreationem copiosam excitat. Sputum albumini ovi simillimum. Appetitus raro deest. Digestio segnior sed secura.' "Mons. F-- observe encore, 'qu'on ne dit pas un mot sur la toux dans la relation.' Mais j'ai dit encore a No. 3 de memoire, 'rediit febris hectica; rediit asthma cum anxietate, tusse et dolore lateris lancinante.' "Au reste, je ne puis pas me persuader qu'il y ait des tubercules au poumon, parce que j'ai ne jamais crache de pus, ni autre chose que de la pituite qui a beaucoup de ressemblance au blanc des oeufs. Sputum albumini ovi simillimum. Il me paroit done que ma maladie doit son origine a la suspension de l'exercice du corps, au grand attachement d'esprit, et a une vie sedentaire qui a relache le sisteme fibreux; et qu'a present on pent l'appeller tubes pituitaria, non tubes purulenta. J'espere que Mons. Faura la bonte de faire revision du memoire, et de m'en dire encore son sentiment." Considering the nature of the case, you see I could not treat him more civilly. I desired the servant to ask when he should return for an answer, and whether he expected another fee. He desired him to come next morning, and, as the fellow assured me, gave him to understand, that whatever monsieur might solicit, should be for his (the servant's) advantage. In all probability he did not expect another gratification, to which, indeed, he had no title. Mons. F-- was undoubtedly much mortified to find himself detected in such flagrant instances of unjustifiable negligence, arid like all other persons in the same ungracious dilemma, instead of justifying himself by reason or argument, had recourse to recrimination. In the paper which he sent me next day, he insisted in general that he had carefully perused the case (which you will perceive was a self-evident untruth); he said the theory it contained was idle; that he was sure it could not be written by a physician; that, with respect to the disorder, he was still of the same opinion; and adhered to his former prescription; but if I had any doubts I might come to his house, and he would resolve them. I wrapt up twelve livres in the following note, and sent it to his house. "C'est ne pas sans raison que monsieur F-- jouit d'une si grande reputation. Je n'ai plus de doutes, graces a Dieu et a monsieur F--e. " "It is not without reason that monsieur Fizes enjoys such a large share of reputation. I have no doubts remaining; thank Heaven and monsieur Fizes." To this I received for answer. "Monsieur n'a plus de doutes: j'en suis charme. Receu douze livres. F--, &c." "Sir, you have no doubts remaining; I am very glad of it. Received twelve livres. Fizes, &c." Instead of keeping his promise to the valet, he put the money in his pocket; and the fellow returned in a rage, exclaiming that he was un gros cheval de carosse, a great coach-horse. I shall make no other comment upon the medicines, and the regimen which this great Doctor prescribed; but that he certainly mistook the case: that upon the supposition I actually laboured under a purulent discharge from the lungs, his remedies savour strongly of the old woman; and that there is a total blank with respect to the article of exercise, which you know is so essential in all pulmonary disorders. But after having perused my remarks upon his first prescription, he could not possibly suppose that I had tubercules, and was spitting up pus; therefore his persisting in recommending the same medicines he had prescribed on that supposition, was a flagrant absurdity.--If, for example, there was no vomica in the lungs; and the business was to attenuate the lymph, what could be more preposterous than to advise the chalk of Briancon, coral, antihecticum poterii, and the balm of Canada? As for the turtle-soupe, it is a good restorative and balsamic; but, I apprehend, will tend to thicken rather than attenuate the phlegm. He mentions not a syllable of the air, though it is universally allowed, that the climate of Montpellier is pernicious to ulcerated lungs; and here I cannot help recounting a small adventure which our doctor had with a son of Mr. O--d, merchant in the city of London. I had it from Mrs. St--e who was on the spot. The young gentleman, being consumptive, consulted Mr. F--, who continued visiting and prescribing for him a whole month. At length, perceiving that he grew daily worse, "Doctor (said he) I take your prescriptions punctually; but, instead of being the better for them, I have now not an hour's remission from the fever in the four-and-twenty.--I cannot conceive the meaning of it." F--, who perceived he had not long to live, told him the reason was very plain: the air of Montpellier was too sharp for his lungs, which required a softer climate. "Then you're a sordid villain (cried the young man) for allowing me to stay here till my constitution is irretrievable." He set out immediately for Tholouse, and in a few weeks died in the neighbourhood of that city. I observe that the physicians in this country pay no regard to the state of the solids in chronical disorders, that exercise and the cold bath are never prescribed, that they seem to think the scurvy is entirely an English disease; and that, in all appearance, they often confound the symptoms of it, with those of the venereal distemper. Perhaps I may be more particular on this subject in a subsequent letter. In the mean time, I am ever,-- Dear Sir, Yours sincerely. LETTER XII NICE, December 6, 1763. DEAR SIR,--The inhabitants of Montpellier are sociable, gay, and good-tempered. They have a spirit of commerce, and have erected several considerable manufactures, in the neighbourhood of the city. People assemble every day to take the air on the esplanade, where there is a very good walk, just without the gate of the citadel: but, on the other side of the town, there is another still more agreeable, called the peirou, from whence there is a prospect of the Mediterranean on one side, and of the Cevennes on the other. Here is a good equestrian statue of Louis XIV, fronting one gate of the city, which is built in form of a triumphal arch, in honour of the same monarch. Immediately under the pierou is the physic garden, and near it an arcade just finished for an aqueduct, to convey a stream of water to the upper parts of the city. Perhaps I should have thought this a neat piece of work, if I had not seen the Pont du Garde: but, after having viewed the Roman arches, I could not look upon this but with pity and contempt. It is a wonder how the architect could be so fantastically modern, having such a noble model, as it were, before his eyes. There are many protestants at this place, as well as at Nismes, and they are no longer molested on the score of religion. They have their conventicles in the country, where they assemble privately for worship. These are well known; and detachments are sent out every Sunday to intercept them; but the officer has always private directions to take another route. Whether this indulgence comes from the wisdom and lenity of the government, or is purchased with money of the commanding officer, I cannot determine: but certain it is, the laws of France punish capitally every protestant minister convicted of having performed the functions of his ministry in this kingdom; and one was hanged about two years ago, in the neighbourhood of Montauban. The markets in Montpellier are well supplied with fish, poultry, butcher's meat, and game, at reasonable rates. The wine of the country is strong and harsh, and never drank, but when mixed with water. Burgundy is dear, and so is the sweet wine of Frontignan, though made in the neighbourhood of Cette. You know it is famous all over Europe, and so are the liqueurs, or drams of various sorts, compounded and distilled at Montpellier. Cette is the sea-port, about four leagues from that city: but the canal of Languedoc comes up within a mile of it; and is indeed a great curiosity: a work in all respects worthy of a Colbert, under whose auspices it was finished. When I find such a general tribute of respect and veneration paid to the memory of that great man, I am astonished to see so few monuments of public utility left by other ministers. One would imagine, that even the desire of praise would prompt a much greater number to exert themselves for the glory and advantage of their country; yet in my opinion, the French have been ungrateful to Colbert, in the same proportion as they have over-rated the character of his master. Through all France one meets with statues and triumphal arches erected to Louis XIV, in consequence of his victories; by which, likewise, he acquired the title of Louis le Grand. But how were those victories obtained? Not by any personal merit of Louis. It was Colbert who improved his finances, and enabled him to pay his army. It was Louvois that provided all the necessaries of war. It was a Conde, a Turenne, a Luxemburg, a Vendome, who fought his battles; and his first conquests, for which he was deified by the pen of adulation, were obtained almost without bloodshed, over weak, dispirited, divided, and defenceless nations. It was Colbert that improved the marine, instituted manufactures, encouraged commerce, undertook works of public utility, and patronized the arts and sciences. But Louis (you will say) had the merit of choosing and supporting those ministers, and those generals. I answer, no. He found Colbert and Louvois already chosen: he found Conde and Turenne in the very zenith of military reputation. Luxemburg was Conde's pupil; and Vendome, a prince of the blood, who at first obtained the command of armies in consequence of his high birth, and happened to turn out a man of genius. The same Louis had the sagacity to revoke the edict of Nantz; to entrust his armies to a Tallard, a Villeroy, and a Marsin. He had the humanity to ravage the country, burn the towns, and massacre the people of the Palatinate. He had the patriotism to impoverish and depopulate his own kingdom, in order to prosecute schemes of the most lawless ambition. He had the Consolation to beg a peace from those he had provoked to war by the most outrageous insolence; and he had the glory to espouse Mrs. Maintenon in her old age, the widow of the buffoon Scarron. Without all doubt, it was from irony he acquired the title le Grand. Having received a favourable answer from Mr. B--, the English consul at Nice, and recommended the care of my heavy baggage to Mr. Ray, who undertook to send it by sea from Cette to Villefranche, I hired a coach and mules for seven loui'dores, and set out from Montpellier on the 13th of November, the weather being agreeable, though the air was cold and frosty. In other respects there were no signs of winter: the olives were now ripe, and appeared on each side of the road as black as sloes; and the corn was already half a foot high. On the second day of our journey, we passed the Rhone on a bridge of boats at Buccaire, and lay on the other side at Tarrascone. Next day we put up at a wretched place called Orgon, where, however, we were regaled with an excellent supper; and among other delicacies, with a dish of green pease. Provence is a pleasant country, well cultivated; but the inns are not so good here as in Languedoc, and few of them are provided with a certain convenience which an English traveller can very ill dispense with. Those you find are generally on the tops of houses, exceedingly nasty; and so much exposed to the weather, that a valetudinarian cannot use them without hazard of his life. At Nismes in Languedoc, where we found the Temple of Cloacina in a most shocking condition, the servant-maid told me her mistress had caused it to be made on purpose for the English travellers; but now she was very sorry for what she had done, as all the French who frequented her house, instead of using the seat, left their offerings on the floor, which she was obliged to have cleaned three or four times a day. This is a degree of beastliness, which would appear detestable even in the capital of North-Britain. On the fourth day of our pilgrimage, we lay in the suburbs of Aix, but did not enter the city, which I had a great curiosity to see. The villainous asthma baulked me of that satisfaction. I was pinched with the cold, and impatient to reach a warmer climate. Our next stage was at a paltry village, where we were poorly entertained. I looked so ill in the morning, that the good woman of the house, who was big with child, took me by the hand at parting, and even shed tears, praying fervently that God would restore me to my health. This was the only instance of sympathy, compassion, or goodness of heart, that I had met with among the publicans of France. Indeed at Valencia, our landlady, understanding I was travelling to Montpellier for my health would have dissuaded me from going thither; and exhorted me, in particular, to beware of the physicians, who were all a pack of assassins. She advised me to eat fricassees of chickens, and white meat, and to take a good bouillon every morning. A bouillon is an universal remedy among the good people of France; insomuch, that they have no idea of any person's dying, after having swallowed un bon bouillon. One of the English gentlemen, who were robbed and murdered about thirty years ago between Calais and Boulogne, being brought to the post-house of Boulogne with some signs of life, this remedy was immediately administered. "What surprises me greatly, (said the post-master, speaking of this melancholy story to a friend of mine, two years after it happened) I made an excellent bouillon, and poured it down his throat with my own hands, and yet he did not recover." Now, in all probability, this bouillon it was that stopped his breath. When I was a very young man, I remember to have seen a person suffocated by such impertinent officiousness. A young man of uncommon parts and erudition, very well esteemed at the university of G--ow was found early one morning in a subterranean vault among the ruins of an old archiepiscopal palace, with his throat cut from ear to ear. Being conveyed to a public-house in the neighbourhood, he made signs for pen, ink, and paper, and in all probability would have explained the cause of this terrible catastrophe, when an old woman, seeing the windpipe, which was cut, sticking out of the wound, and mistaking it for the gullet, by way of giving him a cordial to support his spirits, poured into it, through a small funnel, a glass of burnt brandy, which strangled him in the tenth part of a minute. The gash was so hideous, and formed by so many repeated strokes of a razor, that the surgeons believed he could not possibly be the perpetrator himself; nevertheless this was certainly the case. At Brignolles, where we dined, I was obliged to quarrel with the landlady, and threaten to leave her house, before she would indulge us with any sort of flesh-meat. It was meagre day, and she had made her provision accordingly. She even hinted some dissatisfaction at having heretics in her house: but, as I was not disposed to eat stinking fish, with ragouts of eggs and onions, I insisted upon a leg of mutton, and a brace of fine partridges, which I found in the larder. Next day, when we set out in the morning from Luc, it blew a north-westerly wind so extremely cold and biting, that even a flannel wrapper could not keep me tolerably warm in the coach. Whether the cold had put our coachman in a bad humour, or he had some other cause of resentment against himself, I know not; but we had not gone above a quarter of a mile, when he drove the carriage full against the corner of a garden wall, and broke the axle-tree, so that we were obliged to return to the inn on foot, and wait a whole day, until a new piece could be made and adjusted. The wind that blew, is called Maestral, in the Provencial dialect, and indeed is the severest that ever I felt. At this inn, we met with a young French officer who had been a prisoner in England, and spoke our language pretty well. He told me, that such a wind did not blow above twice or three times in a winter, and was never of long continuance, that in general, the weather was very mild and agreeable during the winter months; that living was very cheap in this part of Provence, which afforded great plenty of game. Here, too, I found a young Irish recollet, in his way from Rome to his own country. He complained, that he was almost starved by the inhospitable disposition of the French people; and that the regular clergy, in particular, had treated him with the most cruel disdain. I relieved his necessities, and gave him a letter to a gentleman of his own country at Montpellier. When I rose in the morning, and opened a window that looked into the garden, I thought myself either in a dream, or bewitched. All the trees were cloathed with snow, and all the country covered at least a foot thick. "This cannot be the south of France, (said I to myself) it must be the Highlands of Scotland!" At a wretched town called Muy, where we dined, I had a warm dispute with our landlord, which, however, did not terminate to my satisfaction. I sent on the mules before, to the next stage, resolving to take post-horses, and bespoke them accordingly of the aubergiste, who was, at the same time, inn-keeper and post-master. We were ushered into the common eating-room, and had a very indifferent dinner; after which, I sent a loui'dore to be changed, in order to pay the reckoning. The landlord, instead of giving the full change, deducted three livres a head for dinner, and sent in the rest of the money by my servant. Provoked more at his ill manners, than at his extortion, I ferreted him out of a bed-chamber, where he had concealed himself, and obliged him to restore the full change, from which I paid him at the rate of two livres a head. He refused to take the money, which I threw down on the table; and the horses being ready, stepped into the coach, ordering the postillions to drive on. Here I had certainly reckoned without my host. The fellows declared they would not budge, until I should pay their master; and as I threatened them with manual chastisement, they alighted, and disappeared in a twinkling. I was now so incensed, that though I could hardly breathe; though the afternoon was far advanced, and the street covered with wet snow, I walked to the consul of the town, and made my complaint in form. This magistrate, who seemed to be a taylor, accompanied me to the inn, where by this time the whole town was assembled, and endeavoured to persuade me to compromise the affair. I said, as he was the magistrate, I would stand to his award. He answered, "that he would not presume to determine what I was to pay." I have already paid him a reasonable price for his dinner, (said I) and now I demand post-horses according to the king's ordonnance. The aubergiste said the horses were ready, but the guides were run away; and he could not find others to go in their place. I argued with great vehemence, offering to leave a loui'dore for the poor of the parish, provided the consul would oblige the rascal to do his duty. The consul shrugged up his shoulders, and declared it was not in his power. This was a lie, but I perceived he had no mind to disoblige the publican. If the mules had not been sent away, I should certainly have not only payed what I thought proper, but corrected the landlord into the bargain, for his insolence and extortion; but now I was entirely at his mercy, and as the consul continued to exhort me in very humble terms, to comply with his demands, I thought proper to acquiesce. Then the postillions immediately appeared: the crowd seemed to exult in the triumph of the aubergiste; and I was obliged to travel in the night, in very severe weather, after all the fatigue and mortification I had undergone. We lay at Frejus, which was the Forum Julianum of the antients, and still boasts of some remains of antiquity; particularly the ruins of an amphitheatre, and an aqueduct. The first we passed in the dark, and next morning the weather was so cold that I could not walk abroad to see it. The town is at present very inconsiderable, and indeed in a ruinous condition. Nevertheless, we were very well lodged at the post-house, and treated with more politeness than we had met with in any other part of France. As we had a very high mountain to ascend in the morning, I ordered the mules on before to the next post, and hired six horses for the coach. At the east end of Frejus, we saw close to the road on our left-hand, the arcades of the antient aqueduct, and the ruins of some Roman edifices, which seemed to have been temples. There was nothing striking in the architecture of the aqueduct. The arches are small and low, without either grace or ornament, and seem to have been calculated for mere utility. The mountain of Esterelles, which is eight miles over, was formerly frequented by a gang of desperate banditti, who are now happily exterminated: the road is very good, but in some places very steep and bordered by precipices. The mountain is covered with pines, and the laurus cerasus, the fruit of which being now ripe, made a most romantic appearance through the snow that lay upon the branches. The cherries were so large that I at first mistook them for dwarf oranges. I think they are counted poisonous in England, but here the people eat them without hesitation. In the middle of the mountain is the post-house, where we dined in a room so cold, that the bare remembrance of it makes my teeth chatter. After dinner I chanced to look into another chamber that fronted the south, where the sun shone; and opening a window perceived, within a yard of my hand, a large tree loaded with oranges, many of which were ripe. You may judge what my astonishment was to find Winter in all his rigour reigning on one side of the house, and Summer in all her glory on the other. Certain it is, the middle of this mountain seemed to be the boundary of the cold weather. As we proceeded slowly in the afternoon we were quite enchanted. This side of the hill is a natural plantation of the most agreeable ever-greens, pines, firs, laurel, cypress, sweet myrtle, tamarisc, box, and juniper, interspersed with sweet marjoram, lavender, thyme, wild thyme, and sage. On the right-hand the ground shoots up into agreeable cones, between which you have delightful vistas of the Mediterranean, which washes the foot of the rock; and between two divisions of the mountains, there is a bottom watered by a charming stream, which greatly adds to the rural beauties of the scene. This night we passed at Cannes, a little fishing town, agreeably situated on the beach of the sea, and in the same place lodged Monsieur Nadeau d'Etrueil, the unfortunate French governor of Guadeloupe, condemned to be imprisoned for life in one of the isles Marguerite, which lie within a mile of this coast. Next day we journeyed by the way of Antibes, a small maritime town, tolerably well fortified; and passing the little river Loup, over a stone-bridge, arrived about noon at the village of St. Laurent, the extremity of France, where we passed the Var, after our baggage had undergone examination. From Cannes to this village the road lies along the sea-side; and sure nothing can be more delightful. Though in the morning there was a frost upon the ground, the sun was as warm as it is in May in England. The sea was quite smooth, and the beach formed of white polished pebbles; on the left-hand the country was covered with green olives, and the side of the road planted with large trees of sweet myrtle growing wild like the hawthorns in England. From Antibes we had the first view of Nice, lying on the opposite side of the bay, and making a very agreeable appearance. The author of the Grand Tour says, that from Antibes to Nice the roads are very bad, through rugged mountains bordered with precipices On the left, and by the sea to the right; whereas, in fact, there is neither precipice nor mountain near it. The Var, which divides the county of Nice from Provence, is no other than a torrent fed chiefly by the snow that melts on the maritime Alps, from which it takes its origin. In the summer it is swelled to a dangerous height, and this is also the case after heavy rains: but at present the middle of it is quite dry, and the water divided into two or three narrow streams, which, however, are both deep and rapid. This river has been absurdly enough by some supposed the Rubicon, in all probability from the description of that river in the Pharsalia of Lucan, who makes it the boundary betwixt Gaul and Italy-- --et Gallica certus Limes ab Ausoniis disterminat arva colonis. A sure Frontier that parts the Gallic plains From the rich meadows of th' Ansonian swains. whereas, in fact, the Rubicon, now called Pisatello, runs between Ravenna and Rimini.--But to return to the Var. At the village of St. Laurent, famous for its Muscadine wines, there is a set of guides always in attendance to conduct you in your passage over the river. Six of those fellows, tucked up above the middle, with long poles in their hands, took charge of our coach, and by many windings guided it safe to the opposite shore. Indeed there was no occasion for any; but it is a sort of a perquisite, and I did not choose to run any risque, how small soever it might be, for the sake of saving half a crown, with which they were satisfied. If you do not gratify the searchers at St. Laurent with the same sum, they will rummage your trunks, and turn all your cloaths topsy turvy. And here, once for all, I would advise every traveller who consults his own case and convenience, to be liberal of his money to all that sort of people; and even to wink at the imposition of aubergistes on the road, unless it be very flagrant. So sure as you enter into disputes with them, you will be put to a great deal of trouble, and fret yourself to no manner of purpose. I have travelled with oeconomists in England, who declared they would rather give away a crown than allow themselves to be cheated of a farthing. This is a good maxim, but requires a great share of resolution and self-denial to put it in practice. In one excursion of about two hundred miles my fellow-traveller was in a passion, and of consequence very bad company from one end of the journey to the other. He was incessantly scolding either at landlords, landladies, waiters, hostlers, or postilions. We had bad horses, and bad chaises; set out from every stage with the curses of the people; and at this expence I saved about ten shillings in the whole journey. For such a paltry consideration, he was contented to be miserable himself, and to make every other person unhappy with whom he had any concern. When I came last from Bath it rained so hard, that the postilion who drove the chaise was wet to the skin before we had gone a couple of miles. When we arrived at the Devises, I gave him two shillings instead of one, out of pure compassion. The consequence of this liberality was, that in the next stage we seemed rather to fly than to travel upon solid ground. I continued my bounty to the second driver, and indeed through the whole journey, and found myself accommodated in a very different manner from what I had experienced before. I had elegant chaises, with excellent horses; and the postilions of their own accord used such diligence, that although the roads were broken by the rain, I travelled at the rate of twelve miles an hour; and my extraordinary expence from Bath to London, amounted precisely to six shillings. The river Var falls into the Mediterranean a little below St. Laurent, about four miles to the westward of Nice. Within the memory of persons now living, there have been three wooden bridges thrown over it, and as often destroyed in consequence of the jealousy subsisting between the kings of France and Sardinia; this river being the boundary of their dominions on the side of Provence. However, this is a consideration that ought not to interfere with the other advantages that would accrue to both kingdoms from such a convenience. If there was a bridge over the Var, and a post-road made from Nice to Genoa, I am very confident that all those strangers who now pass the Alps in their way to and from Italy, would choose this road as infinitely more safe, commodious, and agreeable. This would also be the case with all those who hire felucas from Marseilles or Antibes, and expose themselves to the dangers and inconveniences of travelling by sea in an open boat. In the afternoon we arrived at Nice, where we found Mr. M--e, the English gentleman whom I had seen at Boulogne, and advised to come hither. He had followed my advice, and reached Nice about a month before my arrival, with his lady, child, and an old gouvernante. He had travelled with his own post-chaise and horses, and is now lodged just without one of the gates of the city, in the house of the count de V--n, for which he pays five loui'dores a month. I could hire one much better in the neighbourhood of London, for the same money. Unless you will submit to this extortion, and hire a whole house for a length of time, you will find no ready-furnished lodgings at Nice. After having stewed a week in a paltry inn, I have taken a ground floor for ten months at the rate of four hundred livres a year, that is twenty pounds sterling, for the Piedmontese livre is about an English shilling. The apartments are large, lofty, and commodious enough, with two small gardens, in which there is plenty of sallad, and a great number of oranges and lemons: but as it required some time to provide furniture, our consul Mr. B--d, one of the best natured and most friendly men in the world, has lent me his lodgings, which are charmingly situated by the sea-side, and open upon a terrace, that runs parallel to the beach, forming part of the town wall. Mr. B--d himself lives at Villa Franca, which is divided from Nice by a single mountain, on the top of which there is a small fort, called the castle of Montalban. Immediately after our arrival we were visited by one Mr. de Martines, a most agreeable young fellow, a lieutenant in the Swiss regiment, which is here in garrison. He is a Protestant, extremely fond of our nation, and understands our language tolerably well. He was particularly recommended to our acquaintance by general P-- and his lady; we are happy in his conversation; find him wonderfully obliging, and extremely serviceable on many occasions. We have likewise made acquaintance with some other individuals, particularly with Mr. St. Pierre, junior, who is a considerable merchant, and consul for Naples. He is a well-bred, sensible young man, speaks English, is an excellent performer on the lute and mandolin, and has a pretty collection of books. In a word, I hope we shall pass the winter agreeably enough, especially if Mr. M--e should hold out; but I am afraid he is too far gone in a consumption to recover. He spent the last winter at Nismes, and consulted F-- at Montpellier. I was impatient to see the prescription, and found it almost verbatim the same he had sent to me; although I am persuaded there is a very essential difference between our disorders. Mr. M--e has been long afflicted with violent spasms, colliquative sweats, prostration of appetite, and a disorder in his bowels. He is likewise jaundiced all over, and I am confident his liver is unsound. He tried the tortoise soup, which he said in a fortnight stuffed him up with phlegm. This gentleman has got a smattering of physic, and I am afraid tampers with his own constitution, by means of Brookes's Practice of Physic, and some dispensatories, which he is continually poring over. I beg pardon for this tedious epistle, and am--Very sincerely, dear Sir, Your affectionate, humble servant. LETTER XIII NICE, January 15, 1764. DEAR SIR,--I am at last settled at Nice, and have leisure to give you some account of this very remarkable place. The county of Nice extends about fourscore miles in length, and in some places it is thirty miles broad. It contains several small towns, and a great number of villages; all of which, this capital excepted, are situated among mountains, the most extensive plain of the whole country being this where I now am, in the neighbourhood of Nice. The length of it does not exceed two miles, nor is the breadth of it, in any part, above one. It is bounded by the Mediterranean on the south. From the sea-shore, the maritime Alps begin with hills of a gentle ascent, rising into mountains that form a sweep or amphitheatre ending at Montalban, which overhangs the town of Villa Franca. On the west side of this mountain, and in the eastern extremity of the amphitheatre, stands the city of Nice, wedged in between a steep rock and the little river Paglion, which descends from the mountains, and washing the town-walls on the west side, falls into the sea, after having filled some canals for the use of the inhabitants. There is a stone-bridge of three arches over it, by which those who come from Provence enter the city. The channel of it is very broad, but generally dry in many places; the water (as in the Var) dividing itself into several small streams. The Paglion being fed by melted snow and rain in the mountains, is quite dry in summer; but it is sometimes swelled by sudden rains to a very formidable torrent. This was the case in the year 1744, when the French and Spanish armies attacked eighteen Piedmontese battalions, which were posted on the side of Montalban. The assailants were repulsed with the loss of four thousand men, some hundreds of whom perished in repassing the Paglion, which had swelled to a surprising degree during the battle, in consequence of a heavy continued rain. This rain was of great service to the Piedmontese, as it prevented one half of the enemy from passing the river to sustain the other. Five hundred were taken prisoners: but the Piedmontese, foreseeing they should be surrounded next day by the French, who had penetrated behind them, by a pass in the mountains, retired in the night. Being received on board the English Fleet, which lay at Villa Franca, they were conveyed to Oneglia. In examining the bodies of those that were killed in the battle, the inhabitants of Nice perceived, that a great number of the Spanish soldiers were circumcised; a circumstance, from which they concluded, that a great many Jews engage in the service of his Catholic majesty. I am of a different opinion. The Jews are the least of any people that I know, addicted to a military life. I rather imagine they were of the Moorish race, who have subsisted in Spain, since the expulsion of their brethren; and though they conform externally to the rites of the Catholic religion, still retain in private their attachment to the law of Mahomet. The city of Nice is built in form of an irregular isosceles triangle, the base of which fronts the sea. On the west side it is surrounded by a wall and rampart; on the east, it is over-hung by a rock, on which we see the ruins of an old castle, which, before the invention of artillery, was counted impregnable. It was taken and dismantled by marechal Catinat, in the time of Victor Amadaeus, the father of his Sardinian majesty. It was afterwards finally demolished by the duke of Berwick towards the latter end of queen Anne's war. To repair it would be a very unnecessary expence, as it is commanded by Montalban, and several other eminences. The town of Nice is altogether indefensible, and therefore without fortifications. There are only two iron guns upon a bastion that fronts the beach; and here the French had formed a considerable battery against the English cruisers, in the war of 1744, when the Mareschal Duke de Belleisle had his headquarters at Nice. This little town, situated in the bay of Antibes, is almost equidistant from Marseilles, Turin, and Genoa, the first and last being about thirty leagues from hence by sea; and the capital of Piedmont at the same distance to the northward, over the mountains. It lies exactly opposite to Capo di Ferro, on the coast of Barbary; and, the islands of Sardinia and Corsica are laid down about two degrees to the eastward, almost exactly in a line with Genoa. This little town, hardly a mile in circumference, is said to contain twelve thousand inhabitants. The streets are narrow; the houses are built of stone, and the windows in general are fitted with paper instead of glass. This expedient would not answer in a country subject to rain and storms; but here, where there is very little of either, the paper lozenges answer tolerably well. The bourgeois, however, begin to have their houses sashed with glass. Between the town-wall and the sea, the fishermen haul up their boats upon the open beach; but on the other side of the rock, where the castle stood, is the port or harbour of Nice, upon which some money has been expended. It is a small basin, defended to seaward by a mole of free-stone, which is much better contrived than executed: for the sea has already made three breaches in it; and in all probability, in another winter, the extremity of it will be carried quite away. It would require the talents of a very skilful architect to lay the foundation of a good mole, on an open beach like this; exposed to the swell of the whole Mediterranean, without any island or rock in the offing, to break the force of the waves. Besides, the shore is bold, and the bottom foul. There are seventeen feet of water in the basin, sufficient to float vessels of one hundred and fifty ton; and this is chiefly supplied by a small stream of very fine water; another great convenience for shipping. On the side of the mole, there is a constant guard of soldiers, and a battery of seven cannon, pointing to the sea. On the other side, there is a curious manufacture for twisting or reeling silk; a tavern, a coffee-house, and several other buildings, for the convenience of the sea-faring people. Without the harbour, is a lazarette, where persons coming from infected places, are obliged to perform quarantine. The harbour has been declared a free-port, and it is generally full of tartans, polacres, and other small vessels, that come from Sardinia, Ivica, Italy, and Spain, loaded with salt, wine, and other commodities; but here is no trade of any great consequence. The city of Nice is provided with a senate, which administers justice under the auspices of an avocat-general, sent hither by the king. The internal oeconomy of the town is managed by four consuls; one for the noblesse, another for the merchants, a third for the bourgeois, and a fourth for the peasants. These are chosen annually from the town-council. They keep the streets and markets in order, and superintend the public works. There is also an intendant, who takes care of his majesty's revenue: but there is a discretionary power lodged in the person of the commandant, who is always an officer of rank in the service, and has under his immediate command the regiment which is here in garrison. That which is here now is a Swiss battalion, of which the king has five or six in his service. There is likewise a regiment of militia, which is exercised once a year. But of all these particulars, I shall speak more fully on another occasion. When I stand upon the rampart, and look round me, I can scarce help thinking myself inchanted. The small extent of country which I see, is all cultivated like a garden. Indeed, the plain presents nothing but gardens, full of green trees, loaded with oranges, lemons, citrons, and bergamots, which make a delightful appearance. If you examine them more nearly, you will find plantations of green pease ready to gather; all sorts of sallading, and pot-herbs, in perfection; and plats of roses, carnations, ranunculas, anemonies, and daffodils, blowing in full glory, with such beauty, vigour, and perfume, as no flower in England ever exhibited. I must tell you, that presents of carnations are sent from hence, in the winter, to Turin and Paris; nay, sometimes as far as London, by the post. They are packed up in a wooden box, without any sort of preparation, one pressed upon another: the person who receives them, cuts off a little bit of the stalk, and steeps them for two hours in vinegar and water, when they recover their full bloom and beauty. Then he places them in water-bottles, in an apartment where they are screened from the severities of the weather; and they will continue fresh and unfaded the best part of a month. Amidst the plantations in the neighbourhood of Nice, appear a vast number of white bastides, or country-houses, which make a dazzling shew. Some few of these are good villas, belonging to the noblesse of this county; and even some of the bourgeois are provided with pretty lodgeable cassines; but in general, they are the habitations of the peasants, and contain nothing but misery and vermin. They are all built square; and, being whitened with lime or plaister, contribute greatly to the richness of the view. The hills are shaded to the tops with olive-trees, which are always green; and those hills are over-topped by more distant mountains, covered with snow. When I turn myself towards the sea, the view is bounded by the horizon; yet in a clear morning, one can perceive the high lands of Corsica. On the right hand, it is terminated by Antibes, and the mountain of Esterelles, which I described in my last. As for the weather, you will conclude, from what I have said of the oranges, flowers, etc. that it must be wonderfully mild and serene: but of the climate, I shall speak hereafter. Let me only observe, en passant, that the houses in general have no chimnies, but in their kitchens; and that many people, even of condition, at Nice, have no fire in their chambers, during the whole winter. When the weather happens to be a little more sharp than usual, they warm their apartments with a brasiere or pan of charcoal. Though Nice itself retains few marks of antient splendor, there are considerable monuments of antiquity in its neighbourhood. About two short miles from the town, upon the summit of a pretty high hill, we find the ruins of the antient city Cemenelion, now called Cimia, which was once the metropolis of the Maritime Alps, and the scat of a Roman president. With respect to situation, nothing could be more agreeable or salubrious. It stood upon the gentle ascent and summit of a hill, fronting the Mediterranean; from the shore of which, it is distant about half a league; and, on the other side, it overlooked a bottom, or narrow vale, through which the Paglion (antiently called Paulo) runs towards the walls of Nice. It was inhabited by a people, whom Ptolomy and Pliny call the Vedantij: but these were undoubtedly mixed with a Roman colony, as appears by the monuments which still remain; I mean the ruins of an amphitheatre, a temple of Apollo, baths, aqueducts, sepulchral, and other stones, with inscriptions, and a great number of medals which the peasants have found by accident, in digging and labouring the vineyards and cornfields, which now cover the ground where the city stood. Touching this city, very little is to be learned from the antient historians: but that it was the seat of a Roman praeses, is proved by the two following inscriptions, which are still extant. P. AELIO. SEVERINO. V. E. P. PRAESIDI. OPTIMO. ORDO. CEMEN. PATRONO. By the Senate of Cemenelion, Dedicated to His Excellency P. Aelius Severinus, the best of Governors and Patrons. This is now in the possession of the count de Gubernatis, who has a country-house upon the spot. The other, found near the same place, is in praise of the praeses Marcus Aurelius Masculus. M. AVRELIO. MASCVLO. V. E. OB. EXIMIAM. PRAESIDATVS EIVS. INTEGRITATEM. ET EGREGIAM. AD OMNES HOMINES MANSVETVDINEM. ET. VRGENTIS ANNONAE. SINCERAM. PRAEBITIONEM. AC. MVNIFICENTIAM. ET. QVOD. AQVAE VSVM. VETVSTATE. LAPSVM. REQVI- SITVM. AC. REPERTVM. SAECVLI FELICITATE. CVRSVI. PRISTINO REDDIDERIT. COLLEG. III. QVIB. EX. SCC. P. EST PATRONO. DIGNISS. Inscribed by the three corporations under the authority of the Senate, to their most worthy Patron, His Excellency M. Aurelius Masculus, in testimony of their gratitude for the blessings of his incorruptible administration, his wonderful affability to all without Distinction, his generous Distribution of Corn in time of Dearth, his munificence in repairing the ruinous aqueduct, in searching for, discovering and restoring the water to its former course for the Benefit of the Community. This president well deserved such a mark of respect from a people whom he had assisted in two such essential articles, as their corn and their water. You know the praeses of a Roman province had the jus sigendi clavi, the right to drive a nail in the Kalendar, the privilege of wearing the latus clavus, or broad studs on his garment, the gladius, infula, praetexta, purpura & annulus aureus, the Sword, Diadem, purple Robe, and gold Ring, he had his vasa, vehicula, apparitores, Scipio eburneus, & sella curulis, Kettledrums, [I know the kettledrum is a modern invention; but the vasa militari modo conclamata was something analogous.] Chariots, Pursuivants, ivory staff, and chair of state. I shall give you one more sepulchral inscription on a marble, which is now placed over the gate of the church belonging to the convent of St. Pont, a venerable building, which stands at the bottom of the hill, fronting the north side of the town of Nice. This St. Pont, or Pontius, was a Roman convert to Christianity, who suffered martyrdom at Cemenelion in the year 261, during the reigns of the emperors Valerian and Gallienus. The legends recount some ridiculous miracles wrought in favour of this saint, both before and after his death. Charles V. emperor of Germany and king of Spain, caused this monastery to be built on the spot where Pontius suffered decapitation. But to return to the inscription: it appears in these words. M. M. A. FLAVIAE. BASILLAE. CONIVG. CARISSIM. DOM. ROMA. MIRAE. ERGA. MARITUM. AMORIS. ADQ. CASTITAT. FAEMINAE. QVAE. VIXIT ANN. XXXV. M. III. DIEB. XII. AVRELIVS RHODISMANVS. AVG. LIB. COMMEM. ALP. MART. ET. AVRELIA, ROMVLA. FILII. IMPATIENTISSIM. DOLOR. EIVS. ADFLICTI ADQ. DESOLATI. CARISSIM. AC MERENT. FERET. FEC. ET. DED, Freely consecrated by Aurelius Rhodismanus, the Emperor's Freedman, to the much honoured memory of his dear Consort Flavia Aurelia of Rome, a woman equally distinguished by her unblemished Virtue and conjugal affection. His children Martial and Aurelia Romula deeply affected and distressed by the Violence of his Grief, erected and dedicated a monument to their dear deserving Parent. [I don't pretend to translate these inscriptions literally, because I am doubtful about the meaning of some abbreviations.] The amphitheatre of Cemenelion is but very small, compared to that of Nismes. The arena is ploughed up, and bears corn: some of the seats remain, and part of two opposite porticos; but all the columns, and the external facade of the building, are taken away so that it is impossible to judge of the architecture, all we can perceive is, that it was built in an oval form. About one hundred paces from the amphitheatre stood an antient temple, supposed to have been dedicated to Apollo. The original roof is demolished, as well as the portico; the vestiges of which may still be traced. The part called the Basilica, and about one half of the Cella Sanctior, remain, and are converted into the dwelling-house and stable of the peasant who takes care of the count de Gubernatis's garden, in which this monument stands. In the Cella Sanctior, I found a lean cow, a he-goat, and a jack-ass; the very same conjunction of animals which I had seen drawing a plough in Burgundy. Several mutilated statues have been dug up from the ruins of this temple; and a great number of medals have been found in the different vineyards which now occupy the space upon which stood the antient city of Cemenelion. These were of gold, silver, and brass. Many of them were presented to Charles Emanuel I. duke of Savoy. The prince of Monaco has a good number of them in his collection; and the rest are in private hands. The peasants, in digging, have likewise found many urns, lachrymatories, and sepulchral stones, with epitaphs, which are now dispersed among different convents and private houses. All this ground is a rich mine of antiquities, which, if properly worked, would produce a great number of valuable curiosities. Just by the temple of Apollo were the ruins of a bath, composed of great blocks of marble, which have been taken away for the purposes of modern building. In all probability, many other noble monuments of this city have been dilapidated by the same barbarous oeconomy. There are some subterranean vaults, through which the water was conducted to this bath, still extant in the garden of the count de Gubernatis. Of the aqueduct that conveyed water to the town, I can say very little, but that it was scooped through a mountain: that this subterranean passage was discovered some years ago, by removing the rubbish which choaked it up: that the people penetrating a considerable way, by the help of lighted torches, found a very plentiful stream of water flowing in an aqueduct, as high as an ordinary man, arched over head, and lined with a sort of cement. They could not, however, trace this stream to its source; and it is again stopped up with earth and rubbish. There is not a soul in this country, who has either spirit or understanding to conduct an inquiry of this kind. Hard by the amphitheatre is a convent of Recollets, built in a very romantic situation, on the brink of a precipice. On one side of their garden, they ascend to a kind of esplanade, which they say was part of the citadel of Cemenelion. They have planted it with cypress-trees, and flowering-shrubs. One of the monks told me, that it is vaulted below, as they can plainly perceive by the sound of their instruments used in houghing the ground. A very small expence would bring the secrets of this cavern to light. They have nothing to do, but to make a breach in the wall, which appears uncovered towards the garden. The city of Cemenelion was first sacked by the Longobards, who made an irruption into Provence, under their king Alboinus, about the middle of the sixth century. It was afterwards totally destroyed by the Saracens, who, at different times, ravaged this whole coast. The remains of the people are supposed to have changed their habitation, and formed a coalition with the inhabitants of Nice. What further I have to say of Nice, you shall know in good time; at present, I have nothing to add, but what you very well know, that I am always your affectionate humble servant. LETTER, XIV NICE, January 20, 1764. DEAR SIR,--Last Sunday I crossed Montalban on horseback, with some Swiss officers, on a visit to our consul, Mr. B--d, who lives at Ville Franche, about half a league from Nice. It is a small town, built upon the side of a rock, at the bottom of the harbour, which is a fine basin, surrounded with hills on every side, except to the south, where it lies open to the sea. If there was a small island in the mouth of it, to break off the force of the waves, when the wind is southerly, it would be one of the finest harbours in the world; for the ground is exceeding good for anchorage: there is a sufficient depth of water, and room enough for the whole navy of England. On the right hand, as you enter the port, there is an elegant fanal, or lighthouse, kept in good repair: but in all the charts of this coast which I have seen, this lanthorn is laid down to the westward of the harbour; an error equally absurd and dangerous, as it may mislead the navigator, and induce him to run his ship among the rocks, to the eastward of the lighthouse, where it would undoubtedly perish. Opposite to the mouth of the harbour is the fort, which can be of no service, but in defending the shipping and the town by sea; for, by land, it is commanded by Montalban, and all the hills in the neighbourhood. In the war of 1744, it was taken and retaken. At present, it is in tolerable good repair. On the left of the fort, is the basin for the gallies, with a kind of dock, in which they are built, and occasionally laid up to be refitted. This basin is formed by a pretty stone mole; and here his Sardinian majesty's two gallies lie perfectly secure, moored with their sterns close to the jette. I went on board one of these vessels, and saw about two hundred miserable wretches, chained to the banks on which they sit and row, when the galley is at sea. This is a sight which a British subject, sensible of the blessing he enjoys, cannot behold without horror and compassion. Not but that if we consider the nature of the case, with coolness and deliberation, we must acknowledge the justice, and even sagacity, of employing for the service of the public, those malefactors who have forfeited their title to the privileges of the community. Among the slaves at Ville Franche is a Piedmontese count, condemned to the gallies for life, in consequence of having been convicted of forgery. He is permitted to live on shore; and gets money by employing the other slaves to knit stockings for sale. He appears always in the Turkish habit, and is in a fair way of raising a better fortune than that which he has forfeited. It is a great pity, however, and a manifest outrage against the law of nations, as well as of humanity, to mix with those banditti, the Moorish and Turkish prisoners who are taken in the prosecution of open war. It is certainly no justification of this barbarous practice, that the Christian prisoners are treated as cruelly at Tunis and Algiers. It would be for the honour of Christendom, to set an example of generosity to the Turks; and, if they would not follow it, to join their naval forces, and extirpate at once those nests of pirates, who have so long infested the Mediterranean. Certainly, nothing can be more shameful, than the treaties which France and the Maritime Powers have concluded with those barbarians. They supply them with artillery, arms, and ammunition, to disturb their neighbours. They even pay them a sort of tribute, under the denomination of presents; and often put up with insults tamely, for the sordid consideration of a little gain in the way of commerce. They know that Spain, Sardinia, and almost all the Catholic powers in the Mediterranean, Adriatic, and Levant, are at perpetual war with those Mahometans; that while Algiers, Tunis, and Sallee, maintain armed cruisers at sea, those Christian powers will not run the risque of trading in their own bottoms, but rather employ as carriers the maritime nations, who are at peace with the infidels. It is for our share of this advantage, that we cultivate the piratical States of Barbary, and meanly purchase passports of them, thus acknowledging them masters of the Mediterranean. The Sardinian gallies are mounted each with five-and-twenty oars, and six guns, six-pounders, of a side, and a large piece of artillery amidships, pointing ahead, which (so far as I am able to judge) can never be used point-blank, without demolishing the head or prow of the galley. The accommodation on board for the officers is wretched. There is a paltry cabin in the poop for the commander; but all the other officers lie below the slaves, in a dungeon, where they have neither light, air, nor any degree of quiet; half suffocated by the heat of the place; tormented by fleas, bugs, and lice; and disturbed by the incessant noise over head. The slaves lie upon the naked banks, without any other covering than a tilt. This, however, is no great hardship, in a climate where there is scarce any winter. They are fed with a very scanty allowance of bread, and about fourteen beans a day and twice a week they have a little rice, or cheese, but most of them, while they are in harbour knit stockings, or do some other kind of work, which enables them to make some addition to this wretched allowance. When they happen to be at sea in bad weather, their situation is truly deplorable. Every wave breaks over the vessel, and not only keeps them continually wet, but comes with such force, that they are dashed against the banks with surprising violence: sometimes their limbs are broke, and sometimes their brains dashed out. It is impossible (they say) to keep such a number of desperate people under any regular command, without exercising such severities as must shock humanity. It is almost equally impossible to maintain any tolerable degree of cleanliness, where such a number of wretches are crouded together without conveniences, or even the necessaries of life. They are ordered twice a week to strip, clean, and bathe themselves in the sea: but, notwithstanding all the precautions of discipline, they swarm with vermin, and the vessel smells like an hospital, or crouded jail. They seem, nevertheless, quite insensible of their misery, like so many convicts in Newgate: they laugh and sing, and swear, and get drunk when they can. When you enter by the stern, you are welcomed by a band of music selected from the slaves; and these expect a gratification. If you walk forwards, you must take care of your pockets. You will be accosted by one or other of the slaves, with a brush and blacking-ball for cleaning your shoes; and if you undergo this operation, it is ten to one but your pocket is picked. If you decline his service, and keep aloof, you will find it almost impossible to avoid a colony of vermin, which these fellows have a very dexterous method of conveying to strangers. Some of the Turkish prisoners, whose ransom or exchange is expected, are allowed to go ashore, under proper inspection; and those forcats, who have served the best part of the time for which they were condemned, are employed in public works, under a guard of soldiers. At the harbour of Nice, they are hired by ship-masters to bring ballast, and have a small proportion of what they earn, for their own use: the rest belongs to the king. They are distinguished by an iron shackle about one of their legs. The road from Nice to Ville Franche is scarce passable on horseback: a circumstance the more extraordinary, as those slaves, in the space of two or three months, might even make it fit for a carriage, and the king would not be one farthing out of pocket, for they are quite idle the greatest part of the year. The gallies go to sea only in the summer. In tempestuous weather, they could not live out of port. Indeed, they are good for nothing but in smooth water during a calm; when, by dint of rowing, they make good way. The king of Sardinia is so sensible of their inutility, that he intends to let his gallies rot; and, in lieu of them, has purchased two large frigates in England, one of fifty, and another of thirty guns, which are now in the harbour of Ville Franche. He has also procured an English officer, one Mr. A--, who is second in command on board of one of them, and has the title of captain consulteur, that is, instructor to the first captain, the marquis de M--i, who knows as little of seamanship as I do of Arabic. The king, it is said, intends to have two or three more frigates, and then he will be more than a match for the Barbary corsairs, provided care be taken to man his fleet in a proper manner: but this will never be done, unless he invites foreigners into his service, officers as well as seamen; for his own dominions produce neither at present. If he is really determined to make the most of the maritime situation of his dominions, as well as of his alliance with Great-Britain, he ought to supply his ships with English mariners, and put a British commander at the head of his fleet. He ought to erect magazines and docks at Villa Franca; or if there is not conveniency for building, he may at least have pits and wharfs for heaving down and careening; and these ought to be under the direction of Englishmen, who best understand all the particulars of marine oeconomy. Without all doubt, he will not be able to engage foreigners, without giving them liberal appointments; and their being engaged in his service will give umbrage to his own subjects: but, when the business is to establish a maritime power, these considerations ought to be sacrificed to reasons of public utility. Nothing can be more absurd and unreasonable, than the murmurs of the Piedmontese officers at the preferment of foreigners, who execute those things for the advantage of their country, of which they know themselves incapable. When Mr. P--n was first promoted in the service of his Sardinian majesty, he met with great opposition, and numberless mortifications, from the jealousy of the Piedmontese officers, and was obliged to hazard his life in many rencounters with them, before they would be quiet. Being a man of uncommon spirit, he never suffered the least insult or affront to pass unchastised. He had repeated opportunities of signalizing his valour against the Turks; and by dint of extraordinary merit, and long services not only attained the chief command of the gallies, with the rank of lieutenant-general, but also acquired a very considerable share of the king's favour, and was appointed commandant of Nice. His Sardinian majesty found his account more ways than one, in thus promoting Mr. P--n. He made the acquisition of an excellent officer, of tried courage and fidelity, by whose advice he conducted his marine affairs. This gentleman was perfectly well esteemed at the court of London. In the war of 1744, he lived in the utmost harmony with the British admirals who commanded our fleet in the Mediterranean. In consequence of this good understanding, a thousand occasional services were performed by the English ships, for the benefit of his master, which otherwise could not have been done, without a formal application to our ministry; in which case, the opportunities would have been lost. I know our admirals had general orders and instructions, to cooperate in all things with his Sardinian majesty; but I know, also, by experience, how little these general instructions avail, when the admiral is not cordially interested in the service. Were the king of Sardinia at present engaged with England in a new war against France, and a British squadron stationed upon this coast, as formerly, he would find a great difference in this particular. He should therefore carefully avoid having at Nice a Savoyard commandant, utterly ignorant of sea affairs; unacquainted with the true interest of his master; proud, and arbitrary; reserved to strangers, from a prejudice of national jealousy; and particularly averse to the English. With respect to the antient name of Villa Franca, there is a dispute among antiquarians. It is not at all mentioned in the Itinerarium of Antoninus, unless it is meant as the port of Nice. But it is more surprising, that the accurate Strabo, in describing this coast, mentions no such harbour. Some people imagine it is the Portus Herculis Monaeci. But this is undoubtedly what is now called Monaco; the harbour of which exactly tallies with what Strabo says of the Portus Monaeci-- neque magnas, neque multas capit naves, It holds but a few vessels and those of small burthen. Ptolomy, indeed, seems to mention it under the name of Herculis Portus, different from the Portus Monaeci. His words are these: post vari ostium ad Ligustrium mare, massiliensium, sunt Nicaea, Herculis Portus, Trophaea Augusti, Monaeci Portus, Beyond the mouth of the Var upon the Ligurian Coast, the Marsilian Colonies are Nice, Port Hercules, Trophaea and Monaco. In that case, Hercules was worshipped both here and at Monaco, and gave his name to both places. But on this subject, I shall perhaps speak more fully in another letter, after I have seen the Trophaea Augusti, now called Tourbia, and the town of Monaco, which last is about three leagues from Nice. Here I cannot help taking notice of the following elegant description from the Pharsalia, which seems to have been intended for this very harbour. Finis et Hesperiae promoto milite varus, Quaque sub Herculeo sacratus numine Portus Urget rupe cava Pelagus, non Corus in illum Jus habet, aut Zephirus, solus sua littora turbat Circius, et tuta prohibet statione Monaeci. The Troops advanc'd as far As flows th' Hesperian Boundary, the Var; And where the mountain scoop'd by nature's hands, The spacious Port of Hercules, expands; Here the tall ships at anchor safe remain Tho' Zephyr blows, or Caurus sweeps the Plain; The Southern Blast alone disturbs the Bay; And to Monaco's safer Port obstructs the way. The present town of Villa Franca was built and settled in the thirteenth century, by order of Charles II. king of the Sicilies, and count of Provence, in order to defend the harbour from the descents of the Saracens, who at that time infested the coast. The inhabitants were removed hither from another town, situated on the top of a mountain in the neighbourhood, which those pirates had destroyed. Some ruins of the old town are still extant. In order to secure the harbour still more effectually, Emanuel Philibert, duke of Savoy, built the fort in the beginning of the last century, together with the mole where the gallies are moored. As I said before, Ville Franche is built on the face of a barren rock, washed by the sea; and there is not an acre of plain ground within a mile of it. In summer, the reflexion of the sun from the rocks must make it intolerably hot; for even at this time of the year, I walked myself into a profuse sweat, by going about a quarter of a mile to see the gallies. Pray remember me to our friends at A--'s, and believe me to be ever yours. LETTER XV NICE, January 3, 1764. MADAM,--In your favour which I received by Mr. M--l, you remind me of my promise, to communicate the remarks I have still to make on the French nation; and at the same time you signify your opinion, that I am too severe in my former observations. You even hint a suspicion, that this severity is owing to some personal cause of resentment; but, I protest, I have no particular cause of animosity against any individual of that country. I have neither obligation to, nor quarrel with, any subject of France; and when I meet with a Frenchman worthy of my esteem, I can receive him into my friendship with as much cordiality, as I could feel for any fellow-citizen of the same merit. I even respect the nation, for the number of great men it has produced in all arts and sciences. I respect the French officers, in particular, for their gallantry and valour; and especially for that generous humanity which they exercise towards their enemies, even amidst the horrors of war. This liberal spirit is the only circumstance of antient chivalry, which I think was worth preserving. It had formerly flourished in England, but was almost extinguished in a succession of civil wars, which are always productive of cruelty and rancour. It was Henry IV. of France, (a real knight errant) who revived it in Europe. He possessed that greatness of mind, which can forgive injuries of the deepest dye: and as he had also the faculty of distinguishing characters, he found his account, in favouring with his friendship and confidence, some of those who had opposed him in the field with the most inveterate perseverance. I know not whether he did more service to mankind in general, by reviving the practice of treating his prisoners with generosity, than he prejudiced his own country by patronizing the absurd and pernicious custom of duelling, and establishing a punto, founded in diametrical opposition to common sense and humanity. I have often heard it observed, that a French officer is generally an agreeable companion when he is turned of fifty. Without all doubt, by that time, the fire of his vivacity, which makes him so troublesome in his youth, will be considerably abated, and in other respects, he must be improved by his experience. But there is a fundamental error in the first principles of his education, which time rather confirms than removes. Early prejudices are for the most part converted into habits of thinking; and accordingly you will find the old officers in the French service more bigotted than their juniors, to the punctilios of false honour. A lad of a good family no sooner enters into the service, than he thinks it incumbent upon him to shew his courage in a rencontre. His natural vivacity prompts him to hazard in company every thing that comes uppermost, without any respect to his seniors or betters; and ten to one but he says something, which he finds it necessary to maintain with his sword. The old officer, instead of checking his petulance, either by rebuke or silent disapprobation, seems to be pleased with his impertinence, and encourages every sally of his presumption. Should a quarrel ensue, and the parties go out, he makes no efforts to compromise the dispute; but sits with a pleasing expectation to learn the issue of the rencontre. If the young man is wounded, he kisses him with transport, extols his bravery, puts him into the hands of the surgeon, and visits him with great tenderness every day, until he is cured. If he is killed on the spot, he shrugs up his shoulders--says, quelle dommage! c'etoit un amiable enfant! ah, patience! What pity! he was a fine Boy! It can't be helpt! and in three hours the defunct is forgotten. You know, in France, duels are forbid, on pain of death: but this law is easily evaded. The person insulted walks out; the antagonist understands the hint, and follows him into the street, where they justle as if by accident, draw their swords, and one of them is either killed or disabled, before any effectual means can be used to part them. Whatever may be the issue of the combat, the magistrate takes no cognizance of it; at least, it is interpreted into an accidental rencounter, and no penalty is incurred on either side. Thus the purpose of the law is entirely defeated, by a most ridiculous and cruel connivance. The meerest trifles in conversation, a rash word, a distant hint, even a look or smile of contempt, is sufficient to produce one of these combats; but injuries of a deeper dye, such as terms of reproach, the lie direct, a blow, or even the menace of a blow, must be discussed with more formality. In any of these cases, the parties agree to meet in the dominions of another prince, where they can murder each other, without fear of punishment. An officer who is struck, or even threatened with a blow must not be quiet, until he either kills his antagonist, or loses his own life. A friend of mine, (a Nissard) who was in the service of France, told me, that some years ago, one of their captains, in the heat of passion, struck his lieutenant. They fought immediately: the lieutenant was wounded and disarmed. As it was an affront that could not be made up, he no sooner recovered of his wounds, than he called out the captain a second time. In a word, they fought five times before the combat proved decisive at last, the lieutenant was left dead on the spot. This was an event which sufficiently proved the absurdity of the punctilio that gave rise to it. The poor gentleman who was insulted, and outraged by the brutality of the aggressor, found himself under the necessity of giving him a further occasion to take away his life. Another adventure of the same kind happened a few years ago in this place. A French officer having threatened to strike another, a formal challenge ensued; and it being agreed that they should fight until one of them dropped, each provided himself with a couple of pioneers to dig his grave on the spot. They engaged just without one of the gates of Nice, in presence of a great number of spectators, and fought with surprising fury, until the ground was drenched with their blood. At length one of them stumbled, and fell; upon which the other, who found himself mortally wounded, advancing, and dropping his point, said, "Je te donne ce que tu m'as ote." "I'll give thee that which thou hast taken from me." So saying, he dropped dead upon the field. The other, who had been the person insulted, was so dangerously wounded that he could not rise. Some of the spectators carried him forthwith to the beach, and putting him into a boat, conveyed him by sea to Antibes. The body of his antagonist was denied Christian burial, as he died without absolution, and every body allowed that his soul went to hell: but the gentlemen of the army declared, that he died like a man of honour. Should a man be never so well inclined to make atonement in a peaceable manner, for an insult given in the heat of passion, or in the fury of intoxication, it cannot be received. Even an involuntary trespass from ignorance, or absence of mind, must be cleansed with blood. A certain noble lord, of our country, when he was yet a commoner, on his travels, involved himself in a dilemma of this sort, at the court of Lorrain. He had been riding out, and strolling along a public walk, in a brown study, with his horse-whip in his hand, perceived a caterpillar crawling on the back of a marquis, who chanced to be before him. He never thought of the petit maitre; but lifting up his whip, in order to kill the insect, laid it across his shoulders with a crack, that alarmed all the company in the walk. The marquis's sword was produced in a moment, and the aggressor in great hazard of his life, as he had no weapon of defence. He was no sooner waked from his reverie, than he begged pardon, and offered to make all proper concessions for what he had done through mere inadvertency. The marquis would have admitted his excuses, had there been any precedent of such an affront being washed away without blood. A conclave of honour was immediately assembled; and after long disputes, they agreed, that an involuntary offence, especially from such a kind of man, d'un tel homme, might be attoned by concessions. That you may have some idea of the small beginning, from which many gigantic quarrels arise, I shall recount one that lately happened at Lyons, as I had it from the mouth of a person who was an ear and eye witness of the transaction. Two Frenchmen, at a public ordinary, stunned the rest of the company with their loquacity. At length, one of them, with a supercilious air, asked the other's name. "I never tell my name, (said he) but in a whisper." "You may have very good reasons for keeping it secret," replied the first. "I will tell you," (resumed the other): with these words he rose; and going round to him, pronounced, loud enough to be heard by the whole company, "Je m'appelle Pierre Paysan; et vous etes un impertinent." "My name is Peter Peasant, and you are an impertinent fellow." So saying, he walked out: the interrogator followed him into the street, where they justled, drew their swords, and engaged. He who asked the question was run through the body; but his relations were so powerful, that the victor was obliged to fly his country, was tried and condemned in his absence; his goods were confiscated; his wife broke her heart; his children were reduced to beggary; and he himself is now starving in exile. In England we have not yet adopted all the implacability of the punctilio. A gentleman may be insulted even with a blow, and survive, after having once hazarded his life against the aggressor. The laws of honour in our country do not oblige him either to slay the person from whom he received the injury, or even to fight to the last drop of his own blood. One finds no examples of duels among the Romans, who were certainly as brave and as delicate in their notions of honour as the French. Cornelius Nepos tells us, that a famous Athenian general, having a dispute with his colleague, who was of Sparta, a man of a fiery disposition, this last lifted up his cane to strike him. Had this happened to a French petit maitre, death must have ensued: but mark what followed--The Athenian, far from resenting the outrage, in what is now called a gentlemanlike manner, said, "Do, strike if you please; but hear me." He never dreamed of cutting the Lacedemonian's throat; but bore with his passionate temper, as the infirmity of a friend who had a thousand good qualities to overbalance that defect. I need not expatiate upon the folly and the mischief which are countenanced and promoted by the modern practice of duelling. I need not give examples of friends who have murdered each other, in obedience to this savage custom, even while their hearts were melting with mutual tenderness; nor will I particularize the instances which I myself know, of whole families ruined, of women and children made widows and orphans, of parents deprived of only sons, and of valuable lives lost to the community, by duels, which had been produced by one unguarded expression, uttered without intention of offence, in the heat of dispute and altercation. I shall not insist upon the hardship of a worthy man's being obliged to devote himself to death, because it is his misfortune to be insulted by a brute, a bully, a drunkard, or a madman: neither will I enlarge upon this side of the absurdity, which indeed amounts to a contradiction in terms; I mean the dilemma to which a gentleman in the army is reduced, when he receives an affront: if he does not challenge and fight his antagonist, he is broke with infamy by a court-martial; if he fights and kills him, he is tried by the civil power, convicted of murder, and, if the royal mercy does not interpose, he is infallibly hanged: all this, exclusive of the risque of his own life in the duel, and his conscience being burthened with the blood of a man, whom perhaps he has sacrificed to a false punctilio, even contrary to his own judgment. These are reflections which I know your own good sense will suggest, but I will make bold to propose a remedy for this gigantic evil, which seems to gain ground everyday: let a court be instituted for taking cognizance of all breaches of honour, with power to punish by fine, pillory, sentence of infamy, outlawry, and exile, by virtue of an act of parliament made for this purpose; and all persons insulted, shall have recourse to this tribunal: let every man who seeks personal reparation with sword, pistol, or other instrument of death, be declared infamous, and banished the kingdom: let every man, convicted of having used a sword or pistol, or other mortal weapon, against another, either in duel or rencountre, occasioned by any previous quarrel, be subject to the same penalties: if any man is killed in a duel, let his body be hanged upon a public gibbet, for a certain time, and then given to the surgeons: let his antagonist be hanged as a murderer, and dissected also; and some mark of infamy be set on the memory of both. I apprehend such regulations would put an effectual stop to the practice of duelling, which nothing but the fear of infamy can support; for I am persuaded, that no being, capable of reflection, would prosecute the trade of assassination at the risque of his own life, if this hazard was at the same time reinforced by the certain prospect of infamy and ruin. Every person of sentiment would in that case allow, that an officer, who in a duel robs a deserving woman of her husband, a number of children of their father, a family of its support, and the community of a fellow-citizen, has as little merit to plead from exposing his own person, as a highwayman, or housebreaker, who every day risques his life to rob or plunder that which is not of half the importance to society. I think it was from the Buccaneers of America, that the English have learned to abolish one solecism in the practice of duelling: those adventurers decided their personal quarrels with pistols; and this improvement has been adopted in Great Britain with good success; though in France, and other parts of the continent, it is looked upon as a proof of their barbarity. It is, however, the only circumstance of duelling, which savours of common sense, as it puts all mankind upon a level, the old with the young, the weak with the strong, the unwieldy with the nimble, and the man who knows not how to hold a sword with the spadassin, who has practised fencing from the cradle. What glory is there in a man's vanquishing an adversary over whom he has a manifest advantage? To abide the issue of a combat in this case, does not even require that moderate share of resolution which nature has indulged to her common children. Accordingly, we have seen many instances of a coward's provoking a man of honour to battle. In the reign of our second Charles, when duels flourished in all their absurdity, and the seconds fought while their principals were engaged, Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, not content with having debauched the countess of Shrewsbury and publishing her shame, took all opportunities of provoking the earl to single combat, hoping he should have an easy conquest, his lordship being a puny little creature, quiet, inoffensive, and every way unfit for such personal contests. He ridiculed him on all occasions; and at last declared in public company, that there was no glory in cuckolding Shrewsbury, who had not spirit to resent the injury. This was an insult which could not be overlooked. The earl sent him a challenge; and they agreed to fight, at Barns-Elms, in presence of two gentlemen, whom they chose for their seconds. All the four engaged at the same time; the first thrust was fatal to the earl of Shrewsbury; and his friend killed the duke's second at the same instant. Buckingham, elated with his exploit, set out immediately for the earl's seat at Cliefden, where he lay with his wife, after having boasted of the murder of her husband, whose blood he shewed her upon his sword, as a trophy of his prowess. But this very duke of Buckingham was little better than a poltroon at bottom. When the gallant earl of Ossory challenged him to fight in Chelsea fields, he crossed the water to Battersea, where he pretended to wait for his lordship; and then complained to the house of lords, that Ossory had given him the rendezvous, and did not keep his appointment. He knew the house would interpose in the quarrel, and he was not disappointed. Their lordships obliged them both to give their word of honour, that their quarrel should have no other consequences. I ought to make an apology for having troubled a lady with so many observations on a subject so unsuitable to the softness of the fair sex; but I know you cannot be indifferent to any thing that so nearly affects the interests of humanity, which I can safely aver have alone suggested every thing which has been said by, Madam, Your very humble servant. LETTER XVI NICE, May 2, 1764. DEAR DOCTOR,--A few days ago, I rode out with two gentlemen of this country, to see a stream of water which was formerly conveyed in an aqueduct to the antient city of Cemenelion, from whence this place is distant about a mile, though separated by abrupt rocks and deep hollows, which last are here honoured with the name of vallies. The water, which is exquisitely cool, and light and pure, gushes from the middle of a rock by a hole which leads to a subterranean aqueduct carried through the middle of the mountain. This is a Roman work, and the more I considered it, appeared the more stupendous. A peasant who lives upon the spot told us, he had entered by this hole at eight in the morning, and advanced so far, that it was four in the afternoon before he came out. He said he walked in the water, through a regular canal formed of a hard stone, lined with a kind of cement, and vaulted overhead; but so high in most parts he could stand upright, yet in others, the bed of the canal was so filled with earth and stones, that he was obliged to stoop in passing. He said that there were air-holes at certain distances (and indeed I saw one of these not far from the present issue) that there were some openings and stone seats on the sides, and here and there figures of men formed of stone, with hammers and working tools in their hands. I am apt to believe the fellow romanced a little, in order to render his adventure the more marvellous: but I am certainly informed, that several persons have entered this passage, and proceeded a considerable way by the light of torches, without arriving at the source, which (if we may believe the tradition of the country) is at the distance of eight leagues from this opening; but this is altogether incredible. The stream is now called la fontaine de muraille, and is carefully conducted by different branches into the adjacent vineyards and gardens, for watering the ground. On the side of the same mountain, more southerly, at the distance of half a mile, there is another still more copious discharge of the same kind of water, called la source du temple. It was conveyed through the same kind of passage, and put to the same use as the other; and I should imagine they are both from the same source, which, though hitherto undiscovered, must be at a considerable distance, as the mountain is continued for several leagues to the westward, without exhibiting the least signs of water in any other part. But, exclusive of the subterranean conduits, both these streams must have been conveyed through aqueducts extending from hence to Cemenelion over steep rocks and deep ravines, at a prodigious expence. The water from this source du temple, issues from a stone building which covers the passage in the rock. It serves to turn several olive, corn, and paper mills, being conveyed through a modern aqueduct raised upon paultry arcades at the expence of the public, and afterwards is branched off in very small streams, for the benefit of this parched and barren country. The Romans were so used to bathing, that they could not exist without a great quantity of water; and this, I imagine, is one reason that induced them to spare no labour and expence in bringing it from a distance, when they had not plenty of it at home. But, besides this motive, they had another: they were so nice and delicate in their taste of water, that they took great pains to supply themselves with the purest and lightest from afar, for drinking and culinary uses, even while they had plenty of an inferior sort for their bath, and other domestic purposes. There are springs of good water on the spot where Cemenelion stood: but there is a hardness in all well-water, which quality is deposited in running a long course, especially, if exposed to the influence of the sun and air. The Romans, therefore, had good reason to soften and meliorate this element, by conveying it a good length of way in open aqueducts. What was used in the baths of Cemenelion, they probably brought in leaden pipes, some of which have been dug up very lately by accident. You must know, I made a second excursion to these antient ruins, and measured the arena of the amphitheatre with packthread. It is an oval figure; the longest diameter extending to about one hundred and thirteen feet, and the shortest to eighty-eight; but I will not answer for the exactness of the measurement. In the center of it, there was a square stone, with an iron ring, to which I suppose the wild beasts were tied, to prevent their springing upon the spectators. Some of the seats remain, the two opposite entrances, consisting each of one large gate, and two lateral smaller doors, arched: there is also a considerable portion of the external wall; but no columns, or other ornaments of architecture. Hard by, in the garden of the count de Gubernatis, I saw the remains of a bath, fronting the portal of the temple, which I have described in a former letter; and here were some shafts of marble pillars, particularly a capital of the Corinthian order beautifully cut, of white alabaster. Here the count found a large quantity of fine marble, which he has converted to various uses; and some mutilated statues, bronze as well as marble. The peasant shewed me some brass and silver medals, which he has picked up at different times in labouring the ground; together with several oblong beads of coloured glass, which were used as ear-rings by the Roman ladies; and a small seal of agate, very much defaced. Two of the medals were of Maximian and Gallienus; the rest were so consumed, that I could not read the legend. You know, that on public occasions, such as games, and certain sacrifices, handfuls of medals were thrown among the people; a practice, which accounts for the great number which have been already found in this district. I saw some subterranean passages, which seemed to have been common sewers; and a great number of old walls still standing along the brink of a precipice, which overhangs the Paglion. The peasants tell me, that they never dig above a yard in depth, without finding vaults or cavities. All the vineyards and garden-grounds, for a considerable extent, are vaulted underneath; and all the ground that produces their grapes, fruit, and garden-stuff, is no more than the crumpled lime and rubbish of old Roman buildings, mixed with manure brought from Nice. This antient town commanded a most noble prospect of the sea; but is altogether inaccessible by any kind of wheel carriage. If you make shift to climb to it on horseback, you cannot descend to the plain again, without running the risk of breaking your neck. About seven or eight miles on the other side of Nice, are the remains of another Roman monument which has greatly suffered from the barbarity of successive ages. It was a trophy erected by the senate of Rome, in honour of Augustus Caesar, when he had totally subdued all the ferocious nations of these Maritime Alps; such as the Trumpilini Camuni, Vennontes, Isnarci, Breuni, etc. It stands upon the top of a mountain which overlooks the town of Monaco, and now exhibits the appearance of an old ruined tower. There is a description of what it was, in an Italian manuscript, by which it appears to have been a beautiful edifice of two stories, adorned with columns and trophies in alto-relievo, with a statue of Augustus Caesar on the top. On one of the sides was an inscription, some words of which are still legible, upon the fragment of a marble found close to the old building: but the whole is preserved in Pliny, who gives it, in these words, lib. iii. cap. 20. IMPERATORI CAESARI DIVI. F. AVG. PONT. MAX. IMP. XIV. TRIBVNIC. POTEST. XVIII. S. P. Q. R. QVODEIVSDVCTV, AVSPICIISQ. GENIES ALPINAE OMNES, QVAE A MARI SVPERO AD INFERVM PERTINEBANT, SVB IMPERIVM PO. RO. SUNT REDAC. GENTES ALPINAE DEVICTAE. TRVMPILINI CAMVNI, VENNONETES, ISNARCI, BREVNI, NAVNES, FOCVNATES, VINDELICORVM GENTES QVATVOR, CONSVANETES, VIRVCINATES, LICATES, CATENATES, ABI- SONTES, RVGVSCI, SVANETES, CALVCONES, BRIXENTES, LEPONTII, VIBERI, NANTVATES, SEDVNI, VERAGRI, SALASSI, ACITAVONES MEDVLLI, VCINI, CATVRIGES, BRIGIANI, SOGIVNTII, NEMALONES, EDENETES, ESVBIANI, VEAMINI, GALLITAE, TRIVLLATI, ECTINI, VERGVNNI, EGVITVRI. NEMENTVRI, ORATELLI, NERVSCI, VELAVNI, SVETRI. This Trophy is erected by the Senate and People of Rome to the Emperor Caesar Augustus, son of the divine Julius, in the fourteenth year of his imperial Dignity, and in the eighteenth of his Tribunician Power, because under his command and auspices all the nations of the Alps from the Adriatic to the Tuscanian Sea, were reduced under the Dominion of Rome. The Alpine nations subdued were the Trumpelini, etc. Pliny, however, is mistaken in placing this inscription on a trophy near the Augusta praetoria, now called Aosta, in Piedmont: where, indeed, there is a triumphal arch, but no inscription. This noble monument of antiquity was first of all destroyed by fire; and afterwards, in Gothic times, converted into a kind of fortification. The marbles belonging to it were either employed in adorning the church of the adjoining village, which is still called Turbia, a corruption of Trophaea; [This was formerly a considerable town called Villa Martis, and pretends to the honour of having given birth to Aulus Helvius, who succeeded Commodus as emperor of Rome, by the name of Pertinax which he acquired from his obstinate refusal of that dignity, when it was forced upon him by the senate. You know this man, though of very low birth, possessed many excellent qualities, and was basely murdered by the praetorian guards, at the instigation of Didius Tulianus. For my part, I could never read without emotion, that celebrated eulogium of the senate who exclaimed after his death, Pertinace, imperante, securi viximus neminem timuimus, patre pio, patre senatus, patre omnium, honorum, We lived secure and were afraid of nothing under the Government of Pertinax, our affectionate Father, Father of the Senate, Father to all the children of Virtue.] or converted into tomb-stones, or carried off to be preserved in one or two churches of Nice. At present, the work has the appearance of a ruinous watch-tower, with Gothic battlements; and as such stands undistinguished by those who travel by sea from hence to Genoa, and other ports of Italy. I think I have now described all the antiquities in the neighbourhood of Nice, except some catacombs or caverns, dug in a rock at St. Hospice, which Busching, in his geography, has described as a strong town and seaport, though in fact, there is not the least vestige either of town or village. It is a point of land almost opposite to the tower of Turbia, with the mountains of which it forms a bay, where there is a great and curious fishery of the tunny fish, farmed of the king of Sardinia. Upon this point there is a watch-tower still kept in repair, to give notice to the people in the neighbourhood, in case any Barbary corsairs should appear on the coast. The catacombs were in all probability dug, in former times, as places of retreat for the inhabitants upon sudden descents of the Saracens, who greatly infested these seas for several successive centuries. Many curious persons have entered them and proceeded a considerable way by torch-light, without arriving at the further extremity; and the tradition of the country is, that they reach as far as the ancient city of Cemenelion; but this is an idle supposition, almost as ridiculous as that which ascribes them to the labour and ingenuity of the fairies: they consist of narrow subterranean passages, vaulted with stone and lined with cement. Here and there one finds detached apartments like small chambers, where I suppose the people remained concealed till the danger was over. Diodorus Siculus tells us, that the antient inhabitants of this country usually lived under ground. "Ligures in terra cubant ut plurimum; plures ad cava, saxa speluncasque ab natura factas ubi tegantur corpora divertunt," "The Ligurians mostly lie on the bare ground; many of them lodge in bare Caves and Caverns where they are sheltered from the inclemency of the weather." This was likewise the custom of the Troglodytae, a people bordering upon Aethiopia who, according to Aelian, lived in subterranean caverns; from whence, indeed they took their name trogli, signifying a cavern; and Virgil, in his Georgics, thus describes the Sarmatae, Ipsi in defossis specubus, secura sub alta Ocia agunt terra.-- In Subterranean Caves secure they lie Nor heed the transient seasons as they fly. These are dry subjects; but such as the country affords. If we have not white paper, we must snow with brown. Even that which I am now scrawling may be useful, if, not entertaining: it is therefore the more confidently offered by--Dear Sir, Yours affectionately. LETTER XVII NICE, July 2, 1764. DEAR SIR,--Nice was originally a colony from Marseilles. You know the Phocians (if we may believe Justin and Polybius) settled in Gaul, and built Marseilles, during the reign of Tarquinius Priscus at Rome. This city flourished to such a degree, that long before the Romans were in a condition to extend their dominion, it sent forth colonies, and established them along the coast of Liguria. Of these, Nice, or Nicaea, was one of the most remarkable; so called, in all probability, from the Greek word Nike, signifying Victoria, in consequence of some important victory obtained over the Salii and Ligures, who were the antient inhabitants of this country. Nice, with its mother city, being in the sequel subdued by the Romans, fell afterwards successively under the dominion of the Goths, Burgundians, and Franks, the kings of Arles, and the kings of Naples, as counts of Provence. In the year one thousand three hundred and eighty-eight, the city and county of Nice being but ill protected by the family of Durazzo, voluntarily surrendered themselves to Amadaeus, surnamed the Red, duke of Savoy; and since that period, they have continued as part of that potentate's dominions, except at such times as they have been over-run and possessed by the power of France, which hath always been a troublesome neighbour to this country. The castle was begun by the Arragonian counts of Provence, and afterwards enlarged by several successive dukes of Savoy, so as to be deemed impregnable, until the modern method of besieging began to take place. A fruitless attempt was made upon it in the year one thousand five hundred and forty-three, by the French and Turks in conjunction: but it was reduced several times after that period, and is now in ruins. The celebrated engineer Vauban, being commanded by Louis XIV to give in a plan for fortifying Nice, proposed, that the river Paglion should be turned into a new channel, so as to surround the town to the north, and fall into the harbour; that where the Paglion now runs to the westward of the city walls, there should be a deep ditch to be filled with sea-water; and that a fortress should be built to the westward of this fosse. These particulars might be executed at no very great expence; but, I apprehend, they would be ineffectual, as the town is commanded by every hill in the neighbourhood; and the exhalations from stagnating sea-water would infallibly render the air unwholesome. Notwithstanding the undoubted antiquity of Nice, very few monuments of that antiquity now remain. The inhabitants say, they were either destroyed by the Saracens in their successive descents upon the coast, by the barbarous nations in their repeated incursions, or used in fortifying the castle, as well as in building other edifices. The city of Cemenelion, however, was subject to the same disasters, and even entirely ruined, nevertheless, we still find remains of its antient splendor. There have been likewise a few stones found at Nice, with antient inscriptions; but there is nothing of this kind standing, unless we give the name of antiquity to a marble cross on the road to Provence, about half a mile from the city. It stands upon a pretty high pedestal with steps, under a pretty stone cupola or dome, supported by four Ionic pillars, on the spot where Charles V. emperor of Germany, Francis I. of France, and pope Paul II. agreed to have a conference, in order to determine all their disputes. The emperor came hither by sea, with a powerful fleet, and the French king by land, at the head of a numerous army. All the endeavours of his holiness, however, could not effect a peace; but they agreed to a truce of ten years. Mezerai affirms, that these two great princes never saw one another on this occasion; and that this shyness was owing to the management of the pope, whose private designs might have been frustrated, had they come to a personal interview. In the front of the colonade, there is a small stone, with an inscription in Latin, which is so high, and so much defaced, that I cannot read it. In the sixteenth century there was a college erected at Nice, by Emanuel Philibert, duke of Savoy, for granting degrees to students of law; and in the year one thousand six hundred and fourteen, Charles Emanuel I. instituted the senate of Nice; consisting of a president, and a certain number of senators, who are distinguished by their purple robes, and other ensigns of authority. They administer justice, having the power of life and death, not only through the whole county of Nice, but causes are evoked from Oneglia, and some other places, to their tribunal, which is the dernier ressort, from whence there is no appeal. The commandant, however, by virtue of his military power and unrestricted authority, takes upon him to punish individuals by imprisonment, corporal pains, and banishment, without consulting the senate, or indeed, observing any form of trial. The only redress against any unjust exercise of this absolute power, is by complaint to the king; and you know, what chance a poor man has for being redressed in this manner. With respect to religion, I may safely say, that here superstition reigns under the darkest shades of ignorance and prejudice. I think there are ten convents and three nunneries within and without the walls of Nice; and among them all, I never could hear of one man who had made any tolerable advances in any kind of human learning. All ecclesiastics are exempted from any exertion of civil power, being under the immediate protection and authority of the bishop, or his vicar. The bishop of Nice is suffragan of the archbishop of Ambrun in France; and the revenues of the see amount to between five and six hundred pounds sterling. We have likewise an office of the inquisition, though I do not hear that it presumes to execute any acts of jurisdiction, without the king's special permission. All the churches are sanctuaries for all kinds of criminals, except those guilty of high treason; and the priests are extremely jealous of their privileges in this particular. They receive, with open arms, murderers, robbers, smugglers, fraudulent bankrupts, and felons of every denomination; and never give them up, until after having stipulated for their lives and liberty. I need not enlarge upon the pernicious consequences of this infamous prerogative, calculated to raise and extend the power and influence of the Roman church, on the ruins of morality and good order. I saw a fellow, who had three days before murdered his wife in the last month of pregnancy, taking the air with great composure and serenity, on the steps of a church in Florence; and nothing is more common, than to see the most execrable villains diverting themselves in the cloysters of some convents at Rome. Nice abounds with noblesse, marquisses, counts, and barons. Of these, three or four families are really respectable: the rest are novi homines, sprung from Bourgeois, who have saved a little money by their different occupations, and raised themselves to the rank of noblesse by purchase. One is descended from an avocat; another from an apothecary; a third from a retailer of wine, a fourth from a dealer in anchovies; and I am told, there is actually a count at Villefranche, whose father sold macaroni in the streets. A man in this country may buy a marquisate, or a county, for the value of three or four hundred pounds sterling, and the title follows the fief; but he may purchase lettres de noblesse for about thirty or forty guineas. In Savoy, there are six hundred families of noblesse; the greater part of which have not above one hundred crowns a year to maintain their dignity. In the mountains of Piedmont, and even in this country of Nice, there are some representatives of very antient and noble families, reduced to the condition of common peasants; but they still retain the antient pride of their houses, and boast of the noble blood that runs in their veins. A gentleman told me, that in travelling through the mountains, he was obliged to pass a night in the cottage of one of these rusticated nobles, who called to his son in the evening, "Chevalier, as-tu donne a manger aux cochons?" "Have you fed the Hogs, Sir Knight?" This, however, is not the case with the noblesse of Nice. Two or three of them have about four or five hundred a year: the rest, in general, may have about one hundred pistoles, arising from the silk, oil, wine, and oranges, produced in their small plantations, where they have also country houses. Some few of these are well built, commodious, and situated; but, for the most part, they are miserable enough. Our noblesse, notwithstanding their origin, and the cheap rate at which their titles have been obtained, are nevertheless extremely tenacious of their privileges, very delicate in maintaining the etiquette, and keep at a very stately distance from the Bourgeoisie. How they live in their families, I do not choose to enquire; but, in public, Madame appears in her robe of gold, or silver stuff, with her powder and frisure, her perfumes, her paint and her patches; while Monsieur Le Comte struts about in his lace and embroidery. Rouge and fard are more peculiarly necessary in this country, where the complexion and skin are naturally swarthy and yellow. I have likewise observed, that most of the females are pot-bellied; a circumstance owing, I believe, to the great quantity of vegetable trash which they eat. All the horses, mules, asses, and cattle, which feed upon grass, have the same distension. This kind of food produces such acid juices in the stomach, as excite a perpetual sense of hunger. I have been often amazed at the voracious appetites of these people. You must not expect that I should describe the tables and the hospitality of our Nissard gentry. Our consul, who is a very honest man, told me, he had lived four and thirty years in the country, without having once eat or drank in any of their houses. The noblesse of Nice cannot leave the country without express leave from the king; and this leave, when obtained, is for a limited time, which they dare not exceed, on pain of incurring his majesty's displeasure. They must, therefore, endeavour to find amusements at home; and this, I apprehend, would be no easy task for people of an active spirit or restless disposition. True it is, the religion of the country supplies a never-failing fund of pastime to those who have any relish for devotion; and this is here a prevailing taste. We have had transient visits of a puppet-shew, strolling musicians, and rope-dancers; but they did not like their quarters, and decamped without beat of drum. In the summer, about eight or nine at night, part of the noblesse may be seen assembled in a place called the Pare; which is, indeed, a sort of a street formed by a row of very paltry houses on one side, and on the other, by part of the town-wall, which screens it from a prospect of the sea, the only object that could render it agreeable. Here you may perceive the noblesse stretched in pairs upon logs of wood, like so many seals upon the rocks by moon-light, each dame with her cicisbeo: for, you must understand, this Italian fashion prevails at Nice among all ranks of people; and there is not such a passion as jealousy known. The husband and the cicisbeo live together as sworn brothers; and the wife and the mistress embrace each other with marks of the warmest affection. I do not choose to enter into particulars. I cannot open the scandalous chronicle of Nice, without hazard of contamination. With respect to delicacy and decorum, you may peruse dean Swift's description of the Yahoos, and then you will have some idea of the porcheria, that distinguishes the gallantry of Nice. But the Pare is not the only place of public resort for our noblesse in a summer's evening. Just without one of our gates, you will find them seated in ditches on the highway side, serenaded with the croaking of frogs, and the bells and braying of mules and asses continually passing in a perpetual cloud of dust. Besides these amusements, there is a public conversazione every evening at the commandant's house called the Government, where those noble personages play at cards for farthings. In carnival time, there is also, at this same government, a ball twice or thrice a week, carried on by subscription. At this assembly every person, without distinction, is permitted to dance in masquerade: but, after dancing, they are obliged to unmask, and if Bourgeois, to retire. No individual can give a ball, without obtaining a permission and guard of the commandant; and then his house is open to all masques, without distinction, who are provided with tickets, which tickets are sold by the commandant's secretary, at five sols a-piece, and delivered to the guard at the door. If I have a mind to entertain my particular friends, I cannot have more than a couple of violins; and, in that case, it is called a conversazione. Though the king of Sardinia takes all opportunities to distinguish the subjects of Great-Britain with particular marks of respect, I have seen enough to be convinced, that our nation is looked upon with an evil eye by the people of Nice; and this arises partly from religious prejudices, and partly from envy, occasioned by a ridiculous notion of our superior wealth. For my own part, I owe them nothing on the score of civilities; and therefore, I shall say nothing more on the subject, lest I should be tempted to deviate from that temperance and impartiality which I would fain hope have hitherto characterised the remarks of,-- Dear Sir, your faithful, humble servant. LETTER XVIII NICE, September 2, 1764. DEAR DOCTOR,--I wrote in May to Mr. B-- at Geneva, and gave him what information he desired to have, touching the conveniences of Nice. I shall now enter into the same detail, for the benefit of such of your friends or patients, as may have occasion to try this climate. The journey from Calais to Nice, of four persons in a coach, or two post-chaises, with a servant on horseback, travelling post, may be performed with ease, for about one hundred and twenty pounds, including every expence. Either at Calais or at Paris, you will always find a travelling coach or berline, which you may buy for thirty or forty guineas, and this will serve very well to reconvey you to your own country. In the town of Nice, you will find no ready-furnished lodgings for a whole family. Just without one of the gates, there are two houses to be let, ready-furnished, for about five loui'dores per month. As for the country houses in this neighbourhood, they are damp in winter, and generally without chimnies; and in summer they are rendered uninhabitable by the heat and the vermin. If you hire a tenement in Nice, you must take it for a year certain; and this will cost you about twenty pounds sterling. For this price, I have a ground floor paved with brick, consisting of a kitchen, two large halls, a couple of good rooms with chimnies, three large closets that serve for bed-chambers, and dressing-rooms, a butler's room, and three apartments for servants, lumber or stores, to which we ascend by narrow wooden stairs. I have likewise two small gardens, well stocked with oranges, lemons, peaches, figs, grapes, corinths, sallad, and pot-herbs. It is supplied with a draw-well of good water, and there is another in the vestibule of the house, which is cool, large, and magnificent. You may hire furniture for such a tenement for about two guineas a month: but I chose rather to buy what was necessary; and this cost me about sixty pounds. I suppose it will fetch me about half the money when I leave the place. It is very difficult to find a tolerable cook at Nice. A common maid, who serves the people of the country, for three or four livres a month, will not live with an English family under eight or ten. They are all slovenly, slothful, and unconscionable cheats. The markets at Nice are tolerably well supplied. Their beef, which comes from Piedmont, is pretty good, and we have it all the year. In the winter we have likewise excellent pork, and delicate lamb; but the mutton is indifferent. Piedmont, also, affords us delicious capons, fed with maize; and this country produces excellent turkeys, but very few geese. Chickens and pullets are extremely meagre. I have tried to fatten them, without success. In summer they are subject to the pip, and die in great numbers. Autumn and winter are the seasons for game; hares, partridges, quails, wild-pigeons, woodcocks, snipes, thrushes, beccaficas, and ortolans. Wild-boar is sometimes found in the mountains: it has a delicious taste, not unlike that of the wild hog in Jamaica; and would make an excellent barbecue, about the beginning of winter, when it is in good case: but, when meagre, the head only is presented at tables. Pheasants are very scarce. As for the heath-game, I never saw but one cock, which my servant bought in the market, and brought home; but the commandant's cook came into my kitchen, and carried it of, after it was half plucked, saying, his master had company to dinner. The hares are large, plump, and juicy. The partridges are generally of the red sort; large as pullets, and of a good flavour: there are also some grey partridges in the mountains; and another sort of a white colour, that weigh four or five pounds each. Beccaficas are smaller than sparrows, but very fat, and they are generally eaten half raw. The best way of dressing them is to stuff them into a roll, scooped of it's crum; to baste them well with butter, and roast them, until they are brown and crisp. The ortolans are kept in cages, and crammed, until they die of fat, then eaten as dainties. The thrush is presented with the trail, because the bird feeds on olives. They may as well eat the trail of a sheep, because it feeds on the aromatic herbs of the mountain. In the summer, we have beef, veal, and mutton, chicken, and ducks; which last are very fat, and very flabby. All the meat is tough in this season, because the excessive heat, and great number of flies, will not admit of its being kept any time after it is killed. Butter and milk, though not very delicate, we have all the year. Our tea and fine sugar come from Marseilles, at a very reasonable price. Nice is not without variety of fish; though they are not counted so good in their kinds as those of the ocean. Soals, and flat-fish in general, are scarce. Here are some mullets, both grey and red. We sometimes see the dory, which is called St Pierre; with rock-fish, bonita, and mackarel. The gurnard appears pretty often; and there is plenty of a kind of large whiting, which eats pretty well; but has not the delicacy of that which is caught on our coast. One of the best fish of this country, is called Le Loup, about two or three pounds in weight; white, firm, and well-flavoured. Another, no-way inferior to it, is the Moustel, about the same size; of a dark-grey colour, and short, blunt snout; growing thinner and flatter from the shoulders downwards, so as to resemble a soal at the tail. This cannot be the mustela of the antients, which is supposed to be the sea lamprey. Here too are found the vyvre, or, as we call it, weaver; remarkable for its long, sharp spines, so dangerous to the fingers of the fishermen. We have abundance of the saepia, or cuttle-fish, of which the people in this country make a delicate ragout; as also of the polype de mer, which is an ugly animal, with long feelers, like tails, which they often wind about the legs of the fishermen. They are stewed with onions, and eat something like cow-heel. The market sometimes affords the ecrivisse de mer, which is a lobster without claws, of a sweetish taste; and there are a few rock oysters, very small and very rank. Sometimes the fishermen find under water, pieces of a very hard cement, like plaister of Paris, which contain a kind of muscle, called la datte, from its resemblance to a date. These petrifactions are commonly of a triangular form and may weigh about twelve or fifteen pounds each and one of them may contain a dozen of these muscles which have nothing extraordinary in the taste or flavour, though extremely curious, as found alive and juicy, in the heart of a rock, almost as hard as marble, without any visible communication with the air or water. I take it for granted, however, that the inclosing cement is porous, and admits the finer parts of the surrounding fluid. In order to reach the muscles, this cement must be broke with large hammers; and it may be truly said, the kernal is not worth the trouble of cracking the shell. [These are found in great plenty at Ancona and other parts of the Adriatic, where they go by the name of Bollani, as we are informed by Keysler.] Among the fish of this country, there is a very ugly animal of the eel species, which might pass for a serpent: it is of a dusky, black colour, marked with spots of yellow, about eighteen inches, or two feet long. The Italians call it murena; but whether it is the fish which had the same name among the antient Romans, I cannot pretend to determine. The antient murena was counted a great delicacy, and was kept in ponds for extraordinary occasions. Julius Caesar borrowed six thousand for one entertainment: but I imagined this was the river lamprey. The murena of this country is in no esteem, and only eaten by the poor people. Craw-fish and trout are rarely found in the rivers among the mountains. The sword-fish is much esteemed in Nice, and called l'empereur, about six or seven feet long: but I have never seen it. [Since I wrote the above letter, I have eaten several times of this fish, which is as white as the finest veal, and extremely delicate. The emperor associates with the tunny fish, and is always taken in their company.] They are very scarce; and when taken, are generally concealed, because the head belongs to the commandant, who has likewise the privilege of buying the best fish at a very low price. For which reason, the choice pieces are concealed by the fishermen, and sent privately to Piedmont or Genoa. But, the chief fisheries on this coast are of the sardines, anchovies, and tunny. These are taken in small quantities all the year; but spring and summer is the season when they mostly abound. In June and July, a fleet of about fifty fishing-boats puts to sea every evening about eight o'clock, and catches anchovies in immense quantities. One small boat sometimes takes in one night twenty-five rup, amounting to six hundred weight; but it must be observed, that the pound here, as well as in other parts of Italy, consists but of twelve ounces. Anchovies, besides their making a considerable article in the commerce of Nice, are a great resource in all families. The noblesse and burgeois sup on sallad and anchovies, which are eaten on all their meagre days. The fishermen and mariners all along this coast have scarce any other food but dry bread, with a few pickled anchovies; and when the fish is eaten, they rub their crusts with the brine. Nothing can be more delicious than fresh anchovies fried in oil: I prefer them to the smelts of the Thames. I need not mention, that the sardines and anchovies are caught in nets; salted, barrelled, and exported into all the different kingdoms and states of Europe. The sardines, however, are largest and fattest in the month of September. A company of adventurers have farmed the tunny-fishery of the king, for six years; a monopoly, for which they pay about three thousand pounds sterling. They are at a very considerable expence for nets, boats, and attendance. Their nets are disposed in a very curious manner across the small bay of St. Hospice, in this neighbourhood, where the fish chiefly resort. They are never removed, except in the winter, and when they want repair: but there are avenues for the fish to enter, and pass, from one inclosure to another. There is a man in a boat, who constantly keeps watch. When he perceives they are fairly entered, he has a method for shutting all the passes, and confining the fish to one apartment of the net, which is lifted up into the boat, until the prisoners are taken and secured. The tunny-fish generally runs from fifty to one hundred weight; but some of them are much larger. They are immediately gutted, boiled, and cut in slices. The guts and head afford oil: the slices are partly dried, to be eaten occasionally with oil and vinegar, or barrelled up in oil, to be exported. It is counted a delicacy in Italy and Piedmont, and tastes not unlike sturgeon. The famous pickle of the ancients, called garum, was made of the gills and blood of the tunny, or thynnus. There is a much more considerable fishery of it in Sardinia, where it is said to employ four hundred persons; but this belongs to the duc de St. Pierre. In the neighbourhood of Villa Franca, there are people always employed in fishing for coral and sponge, which grow adhering to the rocks under water. Their methods do not favour much of ingenuity. For the coral, they lower down a swab, composed of what is called spunyarn on board our ships of war, hanging in distinct threads, and sunk by means of a great weight, which, striking against the coral in its descent, disengages it from the rocks; and some of the pieces being intangled among the threads of the swab, are brought up with it above water. The sponge is got by means of a cross-stick, fitted with hooks, which being lowered down, fastens upon it, and tears it from the rocks. In some parts of the Adriatic and Archipelago, these substances are gathered by divers, who can remain five minutes below water. But I will not detain you one minute longer; though I must observe, that there is plenty of fine samphire growing along all these rocks, neglected and unknown.--Adieu. LETTER XIX NICE, October 10, 1764. DEAR SIR,--Before I tell you the price of provisions at Nice, it will be necessary to say something of the money. The gold coin of Sardinia consists of the doppia di savoia, value twenty-four livres Piedmontese, about the size of a loui'dore; and the mezzo doppia, or piece of twelve livres. In silver, there is the scudo of six livres, the mezzo scudo of three; and the quarto, or pezza di trenta soldi: but all these are very scarce. We seldom see any gold and silver coin, but the loui'dore, and the six, and three-livre Pieces of France; a sure sign that the French suffer by their contraband commerce with the Nissards. The coin chiefly used at market is a piece of copper silvered, that passes for seven sols and a half; another of the same sort, valued two sols and a half. They have on one side the impression of the king's head; and on the other, the arms of Savoy, with a ducal crown, inscribed with his name and titles. There are of genuine copper, pieces of one sol, stamped on one side with a cross fleuree; and on the reverse, with the king's cypher and crown, inscribed as the others: finally, there is another small copper piece, called piccalon, the sixth part of a sol, with a plain cross, and on the reverse, a slip-knot surmounted with a crown; the legend as above. The impression and legend on the gold and silver coins, are the same as those on the pieces of seven sols and a half. The livre of Piedmont consists of twenty sols, and is very near of the same value as an English shilling: ten sols, therefore, are equal to six-pence sterling. Butcher's meat in general sells at Nice for three sols a pound; and veal is something dearer: but then there are but twelve ounces in the pound, which being allowed for, sixteen ounces, come for something less than twopence halfpenny English. Fish commonly sells for four sols the twelve ounces, or five for the English pound; and these five are equivalent to three-pence of our money: but sometimes we are obliged to pay five, and even six sols for the Piedmontese pound of fish. A turkey that would sell for five or six shillings at the London market, costs me but three at Nice. I can buy a good capon for thirty sols, or eighteen-pence; and the same price I pay for a brace of partridges, or a good hare. I can have a woodcock for twenty-four sols; but the pigeons are dearer than in London. Rabbits are very rare; and there is scarce a goose to be seen in the whole county of Nice. Wild-ducks and teal are sometimes to be had in the winter; and now I am speaking of sea-fowl, it may not be amiss to tell you what I know of the halcyon, or king's-fisher. It is a bird, though very rare in this country about the size of a pigeon; the body brown, and the belly white: by a wonderful instinct it makes its nest upon the surface of the sea, and lays its eggs in the month of November, when the Mediterranean is always calm and smooth as a mill-pond. The people about here call them martinets, because they begin to hatch about Martinmass. Their nests are sometimes seen floating near the shore, and generally become the prize of the boys, who are very alert in catching them. You know all sea-birds are allowed by the church of Rome to be eaten on meagre days, as a kind of fish; and the monks especially do not fail to make use of this permission. Sea turtle, or tortoises, are often found at sea by the mariners, in these latitudes: but they are not the green sort, so much in request among the aldermen of London. All the Mediterranean turtle are of the kind called loggerhead, which in the West-Indies are eaten by none but hungry seamen, negroes, and the lowest class of people. One of these, weighing about two hundred pounds, was lately brought on shore by the fishermen of Nice, who found it floating asleep on the surface of the sea. The whole town was alarmed at sight of such a monster, the nature of which they could not comprehend. However, the monks, called minims, of St. Francesco di Paolo, guided by a sure instinct, marked it as their prey, and surrounded it accordingly. The friars of other convents, not quite so hungry, crowding down to the beach, declared it should not be eaten; dropped some hints about the possibility of its being something praeternatural and diabolical, and even proposed exorcisms and aspersions with holy water. The populace were divided according to their attachment to this, or that convent: a mighty clamour arose; and the police, in order to remove the cause of their contention, ordered the tortoise to be recommitted to the waves; a sentence which the Franciscans saw executed, not without sighs and lamentation. The land-turtle, or terrapin, is much better known at Nice, as being a native of this country; yet the best are brought from the island of Sardinia. The soup or bouillon of this animal is always prescribed here as a great restorative to consumptive patients. The bread of Nice is very indifferent, and I am persuaded very unwholesome. The flour is generally musty, and not quite free of sand. This is either owing to the particles of the mill-stone rubbed off in grinding, or to what adheres to the corn itself, in being threshed upon the common ground; for there are no threshing-floors in this country. I shall now take notice of the vegetables of Nice. In the winter, we have green pease, asparagus, artichoaks, cauliflower, beans, French beans, celery, and endive; cabbage, coleworts, radishes, turnips, carrots, betteraves, sorrel lettuce, onions, garlic, and chalot. We have potatoes from the mountains, mushrooms, champignons, and truffles. Piedmont affords white truffles, counted the most delicious in the world: they sell for about three livres the pound. The fruits of this season are pickled olives, oranges, lemons, citrons, citronelles, dried figs, grapes, apples, pears, almonds, chestnuts, walnuts, filberts, medlars, pomegranates, and a fruit called azerolles, [The Italians call them Lazerruoli.] about the size of a nutmeg, of an oblong shape, red colour, and agreeable acid taste. I might likewise add the cherry of the Laurus cerasus, which is sold in the market; very beautiful to the eye, but insipid to the palate. In summer we have all those vegetables in perfection. There is also a kind of small courge, or gourd, of which the people of the country make a very savoury ragout, with the help of eggs, cheese, and fresh anchovies. Another is made of the badenjean, which the Spaniards call berengena: [This fruit is called Melanzana in Italy and is much esteemed by the Jews in Leghorn. Perhaps Melanzana is a corruption of Malamsana.] it is much eaten in Spain and the Levant, as well as by the Moors in Barbary. It is about the size and shape of a hen's egg, inclosed in a cup like an acorn; when ripe, of a faint purple colour. It grows on a stalk about a foot high, with long spines or prickles. The people here have different ways of slicing and dressing it, by broiling, boiling, and stewing, with other ingredients: but it is at best an insipid dish. There are some caperbushes in this neighbourhood, which grow wild in holes of garden walls, and require no sort of cultivation: in one or two gardens, there are palm-trees; but the dates never ripen. In my register of the weather, I have marked the seasons of the principal fruits in this country. In May we have strawberries, which continue in season two or three months. These are of the wood kind; very grateful, and of a good flavour; but the scarlets and hautboys are not known at Nice. In the beginning of June, and even sooner, the cherries begin to be ripe. They are a kind of bleeding hearts; large, fleshy, and high flavoured, though rather too luscious. I have likewise seen a few of those we call Kentish cherries which are much more cool, acid, and agreeable, especially in this hot climate. The cherries are succeeded by the apricots and peaches, which are all standards, and of consequence better flavoured than what we call wall-fruit. The trees, as well as almonds, grow and bear without care and cultivation, and may be seen in the open fields about Nice, but without proper culture, the fruit degenerates. The best peaches I have seen at Nice are the amberges, of a yellow hue, and oblong shape, about the size of a small lemon. Their consistence is much more solid than that of our English peaches, and their taste more delicious. Several trees of this kind I have in my own garden. Here is likewise plenty of other sorts; but no nectarines. We have little choice of plumbs. Neither do I admire the pears or apples of this country: but the most agreeable apples I ever tasted, come from Final, and are called pomi carli. The greatest fault I find with most fruits in this climate, is, that they are too sweet and luscious, and want that agreeable acid which is so cooling and so grateful in a hot country. This, too, is the case with our grapes, of which there is great plenty and variety, plump and juicy, and large as plumbs. Nature, however, has not neglected to provide other agreeable vegetable juices to cool the human body. During the whole summer, we have plenty of musk melons. I can buy one as large as my head for the value of an English penny: but one of the best and largest, weighing ten or twelve pounds, I can have for twelve sols, or about eight-pence sterling. From Antibes and Sardinia, we have another fruit called a watermelon, which is well known in Jamaica, and some of our other colonies. Those from Antibes are about the size of an ordinary bomb-shell: but the Sardinian and Jamaica watermelons are four times as large. The skin is green, smooth, and thin. The inside is a purple pulp, studded with broad, flat, black seeds, and impregnated with a juice the most cool, delicate, and refreshing, that can well be conceived. One would imagine the pulp itself dissolved in the stomach; for you may eat of it until you are filled up to the tongue, without feeling the least inconvenience. It is so friendly to the constitution, that in ardent inflammatory fevers, it is drank as the best emulsion. At Genoa, Florence, and Rome, it is sold in the streets, ready cut in slices; and the porters, sweating under their burthens, buy, and eat them as they pass. A porter of London quenches his thirst with a draught of strong beer: a porter of Rome, or Naples, refreshes himself with a slice of water-melon, or a glass of iced-water. The one costs three half-pence; the last, half a farthing--which of them is most effectual? I am sure the men are equally pleased. It is commonly remarked, that beer strengthens as well as refreshes. But the porters of Constantinople, who never drink any thing stronger than water, and eat very little animal food, will lift and carry heavier burthens than any other porters in the known world. If we may believe the most respectable travellers, a Turk will carry a load of seven hundred weight, which is more (I believe) than any English porter ever attempted to carry any length of way. Among the refreshments of these warm countries, I ought not to forget mentioning the sorbettes, which are sold in coffee-houses, and places of public resort. They are iced froth, made with juice of oranges, apricots, or peaches; very agreeable to the palate, and so extremely cold, that I was afraid to swallow them in this hot country, until I found from information and experience, that they may be taken in moderation, without any bad consequence. Another considerable article in house-keeping is wine, which we have here good and reasonable. The wine of Tavelle in Languedoc is very near as good as Burgundy, and may be had at Nice, at the rate of six-pence a bottle. The sweet wine of St. Laurent, counted equal to that of Frontignan, costs about eight or nine-pence a quart: pretty good Malaga may be had for half the money. Those who make their own wine choose the grapes from different vineyards, and have them picked, pressed, and fermented at home. That which is made by the peasants, both red and white, is generally genuine: but the wine-merchants of Nice brew and balderdash, and even mix it with pigeons dung and quick-lime. It cannot be supposed, that a stranger and sojourner should buy his own grapes, and make his own provision of wine: but he may buy it by recommendation from the peasants, for about eighteen or twenty livres the charge, consisting of eleven rup five pounds; in other words, of two hundred and eighty pounds of this country, so as to bring it for something less than three-pence a quart. The Nice wine, when mixed with water, makes an agreeable beverage. There is an inferior sort for servants drank by the common people, which in the cabaret does not cost above a penny a bottle. The people here are not so nice as the English, in the management of their wine. It is kept in flacons, or large flasks, without corks, having a little oil at top. It is not deemed the worse for having been opened a day or two before; and they expose it to the hot sun, and all kinds of weather, without hesitation. Certain it is, this treatment has little or no effect upon its taste, flavour, and transparency. The brandy of Nice is very indifferent: and the liqueurs are so sweetened with coarse sugar, that they scarce retain the taste or flavour of any other ingredient. The last article of domestic oeconomy which I shall mention is fuel, or wood for firing, which I buy for eleven sols (a little more than six-pence halfpenny) a quintal, consisting of one hundred and fifty pound Nice weight. The best, which is of oak, comes from Sardinia. The common sort is olive, which being cut with the sap in it, ought to be laid in during the summer; otherwise, it will make a very uncomfortable fire. In my kitchen and two chambers, I burned fifteen thousand weight of wood in four weeks, exclusive of charcoal for the kitchen stoves, and of pine-tops for lighting the fires. These last are as large as pineapples, which they greatly resemble in shape, and to which, indeed, they give their name; and being full of turpentine, make a wonderful blaze. For the same purpose, the people of these countries use the sarments, or cuttings of the vines, which they sell made up in small fascines. This great consumption of wood is owing to the large fires used in roasting pieces of beef, and joints, in the English manner. The roasts of this country seldom exceed two or three pounds of meat; and their other plats are made over stove holes. But it is now high time to conduct you from the kitchen, where you have been too long detained by--Your humble servant. P.S.--I have mentioned the prices of almost all the articles in house-keeping, as they are paid by the English: but exclusive of butcher's meat, I am certain the natives do not pay so much by thirty per cent. Their imposition on us, is not only a proof of their own villany and hatred, but a scandal on their government; which ought to interfere in favour of the subjects of a nation, to which they are so much bound in point of policy, as well as gratitude. LETTER XX NICE, October 22, 1764. SIR,--As I have nothing else to do, but to satisfy my own curiosity, and that of my friends, I obey your injunctions with pleasure; though not without some apprehension that my inquiries will afford you very little entertainment. The place where I am is of very little importance or consequence as a state or community; neither is there any thing curious or interesting in the character or oeconomy of its inhabitants. There are some few merchants in Nice, said to be in good circumstances. I know one of them, who deals to a considerable extent, and goes twice a year to London to attend the sales of the East-India company. He buys up a very large quantity of muslins, and other Indian goods, and freights a ship in the river to transport them to Villa Franca. Some of these are sent to Swisserland; but, I believe, the greater part is smuggled into France, by virtue of counterfeit stamps, which are here used without any ceremony. Indeed, the chief commerce of this place is a contraband traffick carried on to the disadvantage of France; and I am told, that the farmers of the Levant company in that kingdom find their account in conniving at it. Certain it is, a great quantity of merchandize is brought hither every week by mules from Turin and other parts in Piedmont, and afterwards conveyed to the other side of the Var, either by land or water. The mules of Piedmont are exceeding strong and hardy. One of them will carry a burthen of near six hundred weight. They are easily nourished, and require no other respite from their labour, but the night's repose. They are the only carriage that can be used in crossing the mountains, being very sure-footed: and it is observed that in choosing their steps, they always march upon the brink of the precipice. You must let them take their own way, otherwise you will be in danger of losing your life; for they are obstinate, even to desperation. It is very dangerous for a person on horseback to meet those animals: they have such an aversion to horses, that they will attack them with incredible fury, so as even to tear them and their riders in pieces; and the best method for avoiding this fate, is to clap spurs to your beast, and seek your safety in flight. I have been more than once obliged to fly before them. They always give you warning, by raising a hideous braying as soon as they perceive the horse at a distance. The mules of Provence are not so mischievous, because they are more used to the sight and society of horses: but those of Piedmont are by far the largest and the strongest I have seen. Some very feasible schemes for improving the commerce of Nice have been presented to the ministry of Turin; but hitherto without success. The English import annually between two and three thousand bales of raw silk, the growth of Piedmont; and this declaration would be held legal evidence. In some parts of France, the cure of the parish, on All Souls' day, which is called le jour des morts, says a libera domine for two sols, at every grave in the burying-ground, for the release of the soul whose body is there interred. The artisans of Nice are very lazy, very needy, very aukward, and void of all ingenuity. The price of their labour is very near as high as at London or Paris. Rather than work for moderate profit, arising from constant employment, which would comfortably maintain them and their families, they choose to starve at home, to lounge about the ramparts, bask themselves in the sun, or play at bowls in the streets from morning 'till night. The lowest class of people consists of fishermen, day labourers, porters, and peasants: these last are distributed chiefly in the small cassines in the neighbourhood of the city, and are said to amount to twelve thousand. They are employed in labouring the ground, and have all the outward signs of extreme misery. They are all diminutive, meagre, withered, dirty, and half naked; in their complexions, not barely swarthy, but as black as Moors; and I believe many of them are descendants of that people. They are very hard favoured; and their women in general have the coarsest features I have ever seen: it must be owned, however, they have the finest teeth in the world. The nourishment of those poor creatures consists of the refuse of the garden, very coarse bread, a kind of meal called polenta, made of Indian corn, which is very nourishing and agreeable, and a little oil; but even in these particulars, they seem to be stinted to very scanty meals. I have known a peasant feed his family with the skins of boiled beans. Their hogs are much better fed than their children. 'Tis pity they have no cows, which would yield milk, butter, and cheese, for the sustenance of their families. With all this wretchedness, one of these peasants will not work in your garden for less than eighteen sols, about eleven pence sterling, per diem; and then he does not half the work of an English labourer. If there is fruit in it, or any thing he can convey, he will infallibly steal it, if you do not keep a very watchful eye over him. All the common people are thieves and beggars; and I believe this is always the case with people who are extremely indigent and miserable. In other respects, they are seldom guilty of excesses. They are remarkably respectful and submissive to their superiors. The populace of Nice are very quiet and orderly. They are little addicted to drunkenness. I have never heard of one riot since I lived among them; and murder and robbery are altogether unknown. A man may walk alone over the county of Nice, at midnight, without danger of insult. The police is very well regulated. No man is permitted to wear a pistol or dagger' on pain of being sent to the gallies. I am informed, that both murder and robbery are very frequent in some parts of Piedmont. Even here, when the peasants quarrel in their cups, (which very seldom happens) they draw their knives, and the one infallibly stabs the other. To such extremities, however, they never proceed, except when there is a woman in the case; and mutual jealousy co-operates with the liquor they have drank, to inflame their passions. In Nice, the common people retire to their lodgings at eight o'clock in winter, and nine in summer. Every person found in the streets after these hours, is apprehended by the patrole; and, if he cannot give a good account of himself, sent to prison. At nine in winter, and ten in summer, there is a curfew-bell rung, warning the people to put out their lights, and go to bed. This is a very necessary precaution in towns subject to conflagrations; but of small use in Nice, where there is very little combustible in the houses. The punishments inflicted upon malefactors and delinquents at Nice are hanging for capital crimes; slavery on board the gallies for a limited term, or for life, according to the nature of the transgression; flagellation, and the strappado. This last is performed, by hoisting up the criminal by his hands tied behind his back, on a pulley about two stories high; from whence, the rope being suddenly slackened, he falls to within a yard or two of the ground, where he is stopped with a violent shock arising from the weight of his body, and the velocity of his descent, which generally dislocates his shoulders, with incredible pain. This dreadful execution is sometimes repeated in a few minutes on the same delinquent; so that the very ligaments are tore from his joints, and his arms are rendered useless for life. The poverty of the people in this country, as well as in the South of France, may be conjectured from the appearance of their domestic animals. The draughthorses, mules, and asses, of the peasants, are so meagre, as to excite compassion. There is not a dog to be seen in tolerable case; and the cats are so many emblems of famine, frightfully thin, and dangerously rapacious. I wonder the dogs and they do not devour young children. Another proof of that indigence which reigns among the common people, is this: you may pass through the whole South of France, as well as the county of Nice, where there is no want of groves, woods, and plantations, without hearing the song of blackbird, thrush, linnet, gold-finch, or any other bird whatsoever. All is silent and solitary. The poor birds are destroyed, or driven for refuge, into other countries, by the savage persecution of the people, who spare no pains to kill, and catch them for their own subsistence. Scarce a sparrow, red-breast, tomtit, or wren, can 'scape the guns and snares of those indefatigable fowlers. Even the noblesse make parties to go a la chasse, a-hunting; that is, to kill those little birds, which they eat as gibier, or game. The great poverty of the people here, is owing to their religion. Half of their time is lost in observing the great number of festivals; and half of their substance is given to mendicant friars and parish priests. But if the church occasions their indigence, it likewise, in some measure, alleviates the horrors of it, by amusing them with shows, processions, and even those very feasts, which afford a recess from labour, in a country where the climate disposes them to idleness. If the peasants in the neighbourhood of any chapel dedicated to a saint, whose day is to be celebrated, have a mind to make a festin, in other words, a fair, they apply to the commandant of Nice for a license, which costs them about a French crown. This being obtained, they assemble after service, men and women, in their best apparel, and dance to the musick of fiddles, and pipe and tabor, or rather pipe and drum. There are hucksters' stands, with pedlary ware and knick-knacks for presents; cakes and bread, liqueurs and wine; and thither generally resort all the company of Nice. I have seen our whole noblesse at one of these festins, kept on the highway in summer, mingled with an immense crowd of peasants, mules, and asses, covered with dust, and sweating at every pore with the excessive heat of the weather. I should be much puzzled to tell whence their enjoyment arises on such occasions; or to explain their motives for going thither, unless they are prescribed it for pennance, as a fore-taste of purgatory. Now I am speaking of religious institutions, I cannot help observing, that the antient Romans were still more superstitious than the modern Italians; and that the number of their religious feasts, sacrifices, fasts, and holidays, was even greater than those of the Christian church of Rome. They had their festi and profesti, their feriae stativae, and conceptivae, their fixed and moveable feasts; their esuriales, or fasting days, and their precidaneae, or vigils. The agonales were celebrated in January; the carmentales, in January and February; the lupercales and matronales, in March; the megalesia in April; the floralia, in May; and the matralia in June. They had their saturnalia, robigalia, venalia, vertumnalia, fornacalia, palilia, and laralia, their latinae, their paganales, their sementinae, their compitales, and their imperativae; such as the novemdalia, instituted by the senate, on account of a supposed shower of stones. Besides, every private family had a number of feriae, kept either by way of rejoicing for some benefit, or mourning for some calamity. Every time it thundered, the day was kept holy. Every ninth day was a holiday, thence called nundinae quasi novendinae. There was the dies denominalis, which was the fourth of the kalends; nones and ides of every month, over and above the anniversary of every great defeat which the republic had sustained, particularly the dies alliensis, or fifteenth of the kalends of December, on which the Romans were totally defeated by the Gauls and Veientes; as Lucan says--et damnata diu Romanis allia fastis, and Allia in Rome's Calendar condemn'd. The vast variety of their deities, said to amount to thirty thousand, with their respective rites of adoration, could not fail to introduce such a number of ceremonies, shews, sacrifices, lustrations, and public processions, as must have employed the people almost constantly from one end of the year to the other. This continual dissipation must have been a great enemy to industry; and the people must have been idle and effeminate. I think it would be no difficult matter to prove, that there is very little difference, in point of character, between the antient and modern inhabitants of Rome; and that the great figure which this empire made of old, was not so much owing to the intrinsic virtue of its citizens, as to the barbarism, ignorance, and imbecility of the nations they subdued. Instances of public and private virtue I find as frequent and as striking in the history of other nations, as in the annals of antient Rome; and now that the kingdoms and states of Europe are pretty equally enlightened, and ballanced in the scale of political power, I am of opinion, that if the most fortunate generals of the Roman commonwealth were again placed at the head of the very armies they once commanded, instead of extending their conquests over all Europe and Asia, they would hardly be able to subdue, and retain under their dominion, all the petty republics that subsist in Italy. But I am tired with writing; and I believe you will be tired with reading this long letter notwithstanding all your prepossession in favour of--Your very humble servant. LETTER XXI NICE, November 10, 1764. DEAR DOCTOR,--In my enquiries about the revenues of Nice, I am obliged to trust to the information of the inhabitants, who are much given to exaggerate. They tell me, the revenues of this town amount to one hundred thousand livres, or five thousand pounds sterling; of which I would strike off at least one fourth, as an addition of their own vanity: perhaps, if we deduct a third, it will be nearer the truth. For, I cannot find out any other funds they have, but the butchery and the bakery, which they farm at so much a year to the best bidder; and the droits d'entree, or duties upon provision brought into the city; but these are very small. The king is said to draw from Nice one hundred thousand livres annually, arising from a free-gift, amounting to seven hundred pounds sterling, in lieu of the taille, from which this town and county are exempted; an inconsiderable duty upon wine sold in public-houses; and the droits du port. These last consist of anchorage, paid by all vessels in proportion to their tonnage, when they enter the harbours of Nice and Villa Franca. Besides, all foreign vessels, under a certain stipulated burthen, that pass between the island of Sardinia and this coast, are obliged, in going to the eastward, to enter; and pay a certain regulated imposition, on pain of being taken and made prize. The prince of Monaco exacts a talliage of the same kind; and both he and the king of Sardinia maintain armed cruisers to assert this prerogative; from which, however, the English and French are exempted by treaty, in consequence of having paid a sum of money at once. In all probability, it was originally given as a consideration for maintaining lights on the shore, for the benefit of navigators, like the toll paid for passing the Sound in the Baltic. [Upon further inquiry I find it was given in consideration of being protected from the Corsairs by the naval force of the Duke of Savoy and Prince of Monaco.] The fanal, or lanthorn, to the eastward of Villa Franca, is kept in good repair, and still lighted in the winter. The toll, however, is a very troublesome tax upon feluccas, and other small craft, which are greatly retarded in their voyages, and often lose the benefit of a fair wind, by being obliged to run inshore, and enter those harbours. The tobacco the king manufactures at his own expence, and sells for his own profit, at a very high price; and every person convicted of selling this commodity in secret, is sent to the gallies for life. The salt comes chiefly from Sardinia, and is stored up in the king's magazine from whence it is exported to Piedmont, and other parts of his inland dominions. And here it may not be amiss to observe, that Sardinia produces very good horses, well-shaped, though small; strong, hardy, full of mettle, and easily fed. The whole county of Nice is said to yield the king half a million of livres, about twenty-five thousand pounds sterling, arising from a small donative made by every town and village: for the lands pay no tax, or imposition, but the tithes to the church. His revenue then flows from the gabelle on salt and wine, and these free-gifts; so that we may strike off one fifth of the sum at which the whole is estimated; and conclude, that the king draws from the county at Nice, about four hundred thousand livres, or twenty thousand pounds sterling. That his revenues from Nice are not great, appears from the smallness of the appointments allowed to his officers. The president has about three hundred pounds per annum; and the intendant about two. The pay of the commandant does not exceed three hundred and fifty pounds: but he has certain privileges called the tour du baton, some of which a man of spirit would not insist upon. He who commands at present, having no estate of his own, enjoys a small commandery, which being added to his appointments at Nice, make the whole amount to about five hundred pounds sterling. If we may believe the politicians of Nice, the king of Sardinia's whole revenue does not fall short of twenty millions of Piedmontese livres, being above one million of our money. It must be owned, that there is no country in Christendom less taxed than that of Nice; and as the soil produces the necessaries of life, the inhabitants, with a little industry, might renew the golden age in this happy climate, among their groves, woods, and mountains, beautified with fountains, brooks, rivers, torrents, and cascades. In the midst of these pastoral advantages, the peasants are poor and miserable. They have no stock to begin the world with. They have no leases of the lands they cultivate; but entirely depend, from year to year, on the pleasure of the arbitrary landholder, who may turn them out at a minute's warning; and they are oppressed by the mendicant friars and parish priests, who rob them of the best fruits of their labour: after all, the ground is too scanty for the number of families which are crouded on it. You desire to know the state of the arts and sciences at Nice; which, indeed, is almost a total blank. I know not what men of talents this place may have formerly produced; but at present, it seems to be consecrated to the reign of dulness and superstition. It is very surprising, to see a people established between two enlightened nations, so devoid of taste and literature. Here are no tolerable pictures, busts, statues, nor edifices: the very ornaments of the churches are wretchedly conceived, and worse executed. They have no public, nor private libraries that afford any thing worth perusing. There is not even a bookseller in Nice. Though they value themselves upon their being natives of Italy, they are unacquainted with music. The few that play upon instruments, attend only to the execution. They have no genius nor taste, nor any knowledge of harmony and composition. Among the French, a Nissard piques himself on being Provencal; but in Florence, Milan, or Rome, he claims the honour of being born a native of Italy. The people of condition here speak both languages equally well; or, rather, equally ill; for they use a low, uncouth phraseology; and their pronunciation is extremely vitious. Their vernacular tongue is what they call Patois; though in so calling it, they do it injustice.--Patois, from the Latin word patavinitas, means no more than a provincial accent, or dialect. It takes its name from Patavium, or Padua, which was the birthplace of Livy, who, with all his merit as a writer, has admitted into his history, some provincial expressions of his own country. The Patois, or native tongue of Nice, is no other than the ancient Provencal, from which the Italian, Spanish and French languages, have been formed. This is the language that rose upon the ruins of the Latin tongue, after the irruptions of the Goths, Vandals, Huns, and Burgundians, by whom the Roman empire was destroyed. It was spoke all over Italy, Spain, and the southern parts of France, until the thirteenth century, when the Italians began to polish it into the language which they now call their own: The Spaniards and French, likewise, improved it into their respective tongues. From its great affinity to the Latin, it was called Romance, a name which the Spaniards still give to their own language. As the first legends of knight-errantry were written in Provencal, all subsequent performances of the same kind, have derived from it the name of romance; and as those annals of chivalry contained extravagant adventures of knights, giants, and necromancers, every improbable story or fiction is to this day called a romance. Mr. Walpole, in his Catalogue of royal and noble Authors, has produced two sonnets in the antient Provencal, written by our king Richard I. surnamed Coeur de Lion; and Voltaire, in his Historical Tracts, has favoured the world with some specimens of the same language. The Patois of Nice, must, without doubt, have undergone changes and corruptions in the course of so many ages, especially as no pains have been taken to preserve its original purity, either in orthography or pronunciation. It is neglected, as the language of the vulgar: and scarce any-body here knows either its origin or constitution. I have in vain endeavoured to procure some pieces in the antient Provencal, that I might compare them with the modern Patois: but I can find no person to give me the least information on the subject. The shades of ignorance, sloth, and stupidity, are impenetrable. Almost every word of the Patois may still be found in the Italian, Spanish, and French languages, with a small change in the pronunciation. Cavallo, signifying a horse in Italian and Spanish is called cavao; maison, the French word for a house, is changed into maion; aqua, which means water in Spanish, the Nissards call daigua. To express, what a slop is here! they say acco fa lac aqui, which is a sentence composed of two Italian words, one French, and one Spanish. This is nearly the proportion in which these three languages will be found mingled in the Patois of Nice; which, with some variation, extends over all Provence, Languedoc, and Gascony. I will now treat you with two or three stanzas of a canzon, or hymn, in this language, to the Virgin Mary, which was lately printed at Nice. 1 Vierge, maire de Dieu, Nuostro buono avocado, Embel car uvostre sieu, En Fenestro adourado, Jeu vous saludi, E demandi en socours; E sense autre preludi, Canti lous uvostre honours. Virgin, mother of God, our good advocate, With your dear son, In Fenestro adored, I salute you, And ask his assistance; And without further prelude, I sing your honours. [Fenestro is the name of a place in this neighbourhood, where there is a supposed miraculous sanctuary, or chapel, of the Virgin Mary.] 2. Qu'ario de Paradis! Que maesta divine! Salamon es d'advis, Giugiar de uvostro mino; Vous dis plus bello: E lou dis ben soven De toutoi lei femello, E non s'engano ren. What air of Paradise! What majesty divine! Solomon is of opinion, To judge of your appearance; Says you are the fairest And it is often said Of all females, And we are not all deceived. 3. Qu'ario de Paradis! Que maesta divine! La bellezzo eblovis; La bonta l'ueigl raffino. Sias couronado; Tenes lou monde en man Sus del trono assettado, Riges lou avostre enfan. What air of Paradise! What majesty divine! The beauty dazzles; The goodness purifies the eye: You are crowned: You hold the world in your hand: Seated on the throne, You support your child. You see I have not chosen this canzon for the beauty and elegance of thought and expression; but give it you as the only printed specimen I could find of the modern Provencal. If you have any curiosity to be further acquainted with the Patois, I will endeavour to procure you satisfaction. Meanwhile, I am, in plain English,--Dear Sir, Ever yours. LETTER XXII NICE, November 10, 1764. DEAR SIR,--I had once thoughts of writing a complete natural history of this town and county: but I found myself altogether unequal to the task. I have neither health, strength, nor opportunity to make proper collections of the mineral, vegetable, and animal productions. I am not much conversant with these branches of natural philosophy. I have no books to direct my inquiries. I can find no person capable of giving me the least information or assistance; and I am strangely puzzled by the barbarous names they give to many different species, the descriptions of which I have read under other appelations; and which, as I have never seen them before, I cannot pretend to distinguish by the eye. You must therefore be contented with such imperfect intelligence as my opportunities can afford. The useful arts practised at Nice, are these, gardening and agriculture, with their consequences, the making of wine, oil, and cordage; the rearing of silk-worms, with the subsequent management and manufacture of that production; and the fishing, which I have already described. Nothing can be more unpromising than the natural soil of this territory, except in a very few narrow bottoms, where there is a stiff clay, which when carefully watered, yields tolerable pasturage. In every other part, the soil consists of a light sand mingled with pebbles, which serves well enough for the culture of vines and olives: but the ground laid out for kitchen herbs, as well as for other fruit must be manured with great care and attention. They have no black cattle to afford such compost as our farmers use in England. The dung of mules and asses, which are their only beasts of burthen, is of very little value for this purpose; and the natural sterility of their ground requires something highly impregnated with nitre and volatile salts. They have recourse therefore to pigeons' dung and ordure, which fully answer their expectations. Every peasant opens, at one corner of his wall, a public house of office for the reception of passengers; and in the town of Nice, every tenement is provided with one of these receptacles, the contents of which are carefully preserved for sale. The peasant comes with his asses and casks to carry it off before day, and pays for it according to its quality, which he examines and investigates, by the taste and flavour. The jakes of a protestant family, who eat gras every day, bears a much higher price than the privy of a good catholic who lives maigre one half of the year. The vaults belonging to the convent of Minims are not worth emptying. The ground here is not delved with spades as in England, but laboured with a broad, sharp hough, having a short horizontal handle; and the climate is so hot and dry in the summer, that the plants must be watered every morning and evening, especially where it is not shaded by trees. It is surprising to see how the productions of the earth are crouded together. One would imagine they would rob one another of nourishment; and moreover be stifled for want of air; and doubtless this is in some measure the case. Olive and other fruit trees are planted in rows very close to each other. These are connected by vines, and the interstices, between the rows, are filled with corn. The gardens that supply the town with sallad and pot-herbs, lye all on the side of Provence, by the highway. They are surrounded with high stone-walls, or ditches, planted with a kind of cane or large reed, which answers many purposes in this country. The leaves of it afford sustenance to the asses, and the canes not only serve as fences to the inclosures; but are used to prop the vines and pease, and to build habitations for the silkworms: they are formed into arbours, and wore as walking-staves. All these gardens are watered by little rills that come from the mountains, particularly, by the small branches of the two sources which I have described in a former letter, as issuing from the two sides of a mountain, under the names of Fontaine de Muraille, and Fontaine du Temple. In the neighbourhood of Nice, they raise a considerable quantity of hemp, the largest and strongest I ever saw. Part of this, when dressed, is exported to other countries; and part is manufactured into cordage. However profitable it may be to the grower, it is certainly a great nuisance in the summer. When taken out of the pits, where it has been put to rot, the stench it raises is quite insupportable; and must undoubtedly be unwholesome. There is such a want of land in this neighbourhood, that terraces are built over one another with loose stones, on the faces of bare rocks, and these being covered with earth and manured, are planted with olives, vines, and corn. The same shift was practised all over Palestine, which was rocky and barren, and much more populous than the county of Nice. Notwithstanding the small extent of this territory, there are some pleasant meadows in the skirts of Nice, that produce excellent clover; and the corn which is sown in open fields, where it has the full benefit of the soil, sun, and air, grows to a surprizing height. I have seen rye seven or eight feet high. All vegetables have a wonderful growth in this climate. Besides wheat, rye, barley, and oats, this country produces a good deal of Meliga, or Turkish wheat, which is what we call Indian corn. I have, in a former letter, observed that the meal of this grain goes by the name polenta, and makes excellent hasty-pudding, being very nourishing, and counted an admirable pectoral. The pods and stalks are used for fuel: and the leaves are much preferable to common straw, for making paillasses. The pease and beans in the garden appear in the winter like beautiful plantations of young trees in blossom; and perfume the air. Myrtle, sweet-briar, sweet-marjoram, sage, thyme, lavender, rosemary, with many other aromatic herbs and flowers, which with us require the most careful cultivation, are here found wild in the mountains. It is not many years since the Nissards learned the culture of silk-worms, of their neighbours the Piedmontese; and hitherto the progress they have made is not very considerable: the whole county of Nice produces about one hundred and thirty-three bales of three hundred pounds each, amounting in value to four hundred thousand livres. In the beginning of April, when the mulberry-leaves, begin to put forth, the eggs or grains that produce the silk-worm, are hatched. The grains are washed in wine, and those that swim on the top, are thrown away as good for nothing. The rest being deposited in small bags of linen, are worn by women in their bosoms, until the worms begin to appear: then they are placed in shallow wooden boxes, covered with a piece of white paper, cut into little holes, through which the worms ascend as they are hatched, to feed on the young mulberry-leaves, of which there is a layer above the paper. These boxes are kept for warmth between two mattrasses, and visited every day. Fresh leaves are laid in, and the worms that feed are removed successively to the other place prepared for their reception. This is an habitation, consisting of two or three stories, about twenty inches from each other, raised upon four wooden posts. The floors are made of canes, and strewed with fresh mulberry-leaves: the corner posts, and other occasional props, for sustaining the different floors, are covered with a coat of loose heath, which is twisted round the wood. The worms when hatched are laid upon the floors; and here you may see them in all the different stages (if moulting or casting the slough, a change which they undergo three times successively before they begin to work. The silk-worm is an animal of such acute and delicate sensations, that too much care cannot be taken to keep its habitation clean, and to refresh it from time to time with pure air. I have seen them languish and die in scores, in consequence of an accidental bad smell. The soiled leaves, and the filth which they necessarily produce, should be carefully shifted every day; and it would not be amiss to purify the air sometimes with fumes of vinegar, rose, or orange-flower water. These niceties, however, are but little observed. They commonly lie in heaps as thick as shrimps in a plate, some feeding on the leaves, some new hatched, some intranced in the agonies of casting their skin, sonic languishing, and some actually dead, with a litter of half-eaten faded leaves about them, in a close room, crouded with women and children, not at all remarkable for their cleanliness. I am assured by some persons of credit, that if they are touched, or even approached, by a woman in her catamenia, they infallibly expire. This, however, must be understood of those females whose skins have naturally a very rank flavour, which is generally heightened at such periods. The mulberry-leaves used in this country are of the tree which bears a small white fruit not larger than a damascene. They are planted on purpose, and the leaves are sold at so much a pound. By the middle of June all the mulberry-trees are stripped; but new leaves succeed, and in a few weeks, they are cloathed again with fresh verdure. In about ten days after the last moulting, the silk-worm climbs upon the props of his house, and choosing a situation among the heath, begins to spin in a most curious manner, until he is quite inclosed, and the cocon or pod of silk, about the size of a pigeon's egg, which he has produced remains suspended by several filaments. It is no unusual to see double cocons, spun by two worms included under a common cover. There must be an infinite number of worms to yield any considerable quantity of silk. One ounce of eggs or grains produces, four rup, or one hundred Nice pounds of cocons; and one rup, or twenty-five pounds of cocons, if they are rich, gives three pounds of raw silk; that is, twelve pounds of silk are got from one ounce of grains, which ounce of grains its produced by as many worms as are inclosed in one pound, or twelve ounces of cocons. In preserving the cocons for breed, you must choose an equal number of males and females; and these are very easily distinguished by the shape of the cocons; that which contains the male is sharp, and the other obtuse, at the two ends. In ten or twelve days after the cocon is finished, the worm makes its way through it, in the form of a very ugly, unwieldy, aukward butterfly, and as the different sexes are placed by one another on paper or linen, they immediately engender. The female lays her eggs, which are carefully preserved; but neither she nor her mate takes any nourishment, and in eight or ten days after they quit the cocons, they generally die. The silk of these cocons cannot be wound, because the animals in piercing through them, have destroyed the continuity of the filaments. It is therefore, first boiled, and then picked and carded like wool, and being afterwards spun, is used in the coarser stuffs of the silk manufacture. The other cocons, which yield the best silk, are managed in a different manner. Before the inclosed worm has time to penetrate, the silk is reeled off with equal care and ingenuity. A handful of the cocons are thrown away into a kettle of boiling water, which not only kills the animal, but dissolves the glutinous substance by which the fine filaments of the silk cohere or stick together, so that they are easily wound off, without breaking. Six or seven of these small filaments being joined together are passed over a kind of twisting iron, and fixed to the wheel, which one girl turns, while another, with her hands in the boiling water, disentangles the threads, joins them when they chance to break, and supplies fresh cocons with admirable dexterity and dispatch. There is a manufacture of this kind just without one of the gates of Nice, where forty or fifty of these wheels are worked together, and give employment for some weeks to double the number of young women. Those who manage the pods that float in the boiling water must be very alert, otherwise they will scald their fingers. The smell that comes from the boiling cocons is extremely offensive. Hard by the harbour, there is a very curious mill for twisting the silk, which goes by water. There is in the town of Nice, a well regulated hospital for poor orphans of both sexes, where above one hundred of them are employed in dressing, dyeing, spinning, and weaving the silk. In the villages of Provence, you see the poor women in the streets spinning raw silk upon distaves: but here the same instrument is only used for spinning hemp and flax; which last, however, is not of the growth of Nice--But lest I should spin this letter to a tedious length, I will now wind up my bottom, and bid you heartily farewell. LETTER XXIII NICE, December 19, 1764. SIR,--In my last, I gave you a succinct account of the silkworm, and the management of that curious insect in this country. I shall now proceed to describe the methods of making wine and oil. The vintage begins in September. The grapes being chosen and carefully picked, are put into a large vat, where they are pressed by a man's naked feet, and the juices drawn off by a cock below. When no more is procured by this operation, the bruised grapes are put into the press, and yield still more liquor. The juice obtained by this double pressure, being put in casks, with their bungs open, begins to ferment and discharge its impurities at the openings. The waste occasioned by this discharge, is constantly supplied with fresh wine, so that the casks are always full. The fermentation continues for twelve, fifteen, or twenty days, according to the strength and vigour of the grape. In about a month, the wine is fit for drinking. When the grapes are of a bad, meagre kind, the wine dealers mix the juice with pigeons'-dung or quick-lime, in order to give it a spirit which nature has denied: but this is a very mischievous adulteration. The process for oil-making is equally simple. The best olives are those that grow wild; but the quantity of them is very inconsiderable. Olives begin to ripen and drop in the beginning of November: but some remain on the trees till February, and even till April, and these are counted the most valuable. When the olives are gathered, they must be manufactured immediately, before they fade and grow wrinkled, otherwise they will produce bad oil. They are first of all ground into a paste by a mill-stone set edge-ways in a circular stone-trough, the wheel being turned by water. This paste is put into trails or circular cases made of grass woven, having a round hole at top and bottom; when filled they resemble in shape our Cheshire cheeses. A number of these placed one upon another, are put in a press, and being squeezed, the oil with all its impurities, runs into a receptacle below fixed in the ground. From hence it is laded into a wooden vat, half filled with water. The sordes or dirt falls to the bottom; the oil swims a-top; and being skimmed off, is barrelled up in small oblong casks. What remains in the vat, is thrown into a large stone cistern with water, and after being often stirred, and standing twelve or fourteen days, yields a coarser oil used for lamps and manufactures. After these processes, they extract an oil still more coarse and fetid from the refuse of the whole. Sometimes, in order to make the olives grind the more easily into a paste, and part with more oil, they are mixed with a little hot water: but the oil thus procured is apt to grow rancid. The very finest, called virgin oil, is made chiefly of green olives, and sold at a very high price, because a great quantity is required to produce a very little oil. Even the stuff that is left after all these operations, consisting of the dried pulp, is sold for fuel, and used in brasieres for warming apartments which have no chimney. I have now specified all the manufactures of Nice which are worth mentioning. True it is, there is some coarse paper made in this neighbourhood; there are also people here who dress skins and make leather for the use of the inhabitants: but this business is very ill performed: the gloves and shoes are generally rotten as they come from the hands of the maker. Carpenter's, joiner's, and blacksmith's work is very coarsely and clumsily done. There are no chairs to be had at Nice, but crazy things made of a few sticks, with rush bottoms, which are sold for twelve livres a dozen. Nothing can be more contemptible than the hard-ware made in this place, such as knives, scissors, and candle-snuffers. All utensils in brass and copper are very ill made and finished. The silver-smiths make nothing but spoons, forks, paultry rings, and crosses for the necks of the women. The houses are built of a ragged stone dug from the mountains, and the interstices are filled with rubble; so that the walls would appear very ugly, if they were not covered with plaister, which has a good effect. They generally consist of three stories, and are covered with tiles. The apartments of the better sort are large and lofty, the floors paved with brick, the roofs covered with a thick coat of stucco, and the walls whitewashed. People of distinction hang their chambers with damask, striped silk, painted cloths, tapestry, or printed linnen. All the doors, as well as the windows, consist of folding leaves. As there is no wainscot in the rooms, which are divided by stone partitions and the floors and cieling are covered with brick and stucco, fires are of much less dreadful consequence here than in our country. Wainscot would afford harbour for bugs: besides, white walls have a better effect in this hot climate. The beds commonly used in this place, and all over Italy, consist of a paillasse, with one or two mattrasses, laid upon planks, supported by two wooden benches. Instead of curtains there is a couziniere or mosquito net, made of a kind of gauze, that opens and contracts occasionally, and incloses the place where you lie: persons of condition, however, have also bedsteads and curtains; but these last are never used in the summer. In these countries, people of all ranks dine exactly at noon; and this is the time I seize in winter, for making my daily tour of the streets and ramparts, which at all other hours of the day are crowded with men, women, children and beasts of burthen. The rampart is the common road for carriages of all kinds. I think there are two private coaches in Nice, besides that of the commandant: but there are sedan chairs, which may be had at a reasonable rate. When I bathed in the summer, I paid thirty sols, equal to eighteen-pence, for being carried to and from the bathing place, which was a mile from my own house. Now I am speaking of bathing, it may not be amiss to inform you that though there is a fine open beach, extending several miles to the westward of Nice, those who cannot swim ought to bathe with great precaution, as the sea is very deep, and the descent very abrupt from within a yard or two of the water's edge. The people here were much surprised when I began to bathe in the beginning of May. They thought it very strange, that a man seemingly consumptive should plunge into the sea, especially when the weather was so cold; and some of the doctors prognosticated immediate death. But, when it was perceived that I grew better in consequence of the bath, some of the Swiss officers tried the same experiment, and in a few days, our example was followed by several inhabitants of Nice. There is, however, no convenience for this operation, from the benefit of which the fair sex must be intirely excluded, unless they lay aside all regard to decorum; for the shore is always lined with fishing-boats, and crouded with people. If a lady should be at the expence of having a tent pitched on the beach where she might put on and of her bathing-dress, she could not pretend to go into the sea without proper attendants; nor could she possibly plunge headlong into the water, which is the most effectual, and least dangerous way of bathing. All that she can do is to have the sea-water brought into her house, and make use of a bathing-tub, which may be made according to her own, or physician's direction. What further I have to say of this climate and country, you shall have in my next; and then you will be released from a subject, which I am afraid has been but too circumstantially handled by-- Sir, Your very humble servant. LETTER XXIV NICE, January 4, 1765. DEAR SIR.,--The constitution of this climate may be pretty well ascertained, from the inclosed register of the weather, which I kept with all possible care and attention. From a perusal of it, you will see that there is less rain and wind at Nice, than in any other part of the world that I know; and such is the serenity of the air, that you see nothing above your head for several months together, but a charming blue expanse, without cloud or speck. Whatever clouds may be formed by evaporation of the sea, they seldom or never hover over this small territory; but, in all probability, are attracted by the mountains that surround it, and there fall in rain or snow: as for those that gather from other quarters, I suppose their progress hitherward is obstructed by those very Alps, which rise one over another, to an extent of many leagues. This air being dry, pure, heavy, and elastic, must be agreeable to the constitution of those who labour under disorders arising from weak nerves, obstructed perspiration, relaxed fibres, a viscidity of lymph, and a languid circulation. In other respects, it encourages the scurvy, the atmosphere being undoubtedly impregnated with sea-salt. Ever since my arrival at Nice, I have had a scorbutical eruption on my right hand, which diminishes and increases according to the state of my health. One day last summer, when there was a strong breeze from the sea, the surface of our bodies was covered with a salt brine, very perceptible to the taste; my gums, as well as those of another person in my family, began to swell, and grow painful, though this had never happened before; and I was seized with violent pains in the joints of my knees. I was then at a country-house fronting the sea, and particularly exposed to the marine air. The swelling of our gums subsided as the wind fell: but what was very remarkable, the scurvy-spot on my hand disappeared, and did not return for a whole month. It is affirmed that sea-salt will dissolve, and render the blood so fluid, that it will exude through the coats of the vessels. Perhaps the sea-scurvy is a partial dissolution of it, by that mineral absorbed from the air by the lymphatics on the surface of the body, and by those of the lungs in respiration. Certain it is, in the last stages of the sea-scurvy, the blood often bursts from the pores; and this phaenomenon is imputed to a high degree of putrefaction: sure enough it is attended with putrefaction. We know that a certain quantity of salt is required to preserve the animal juices from going putrid: but, how a greater quantity should produce putrefaction, I leave to wiser heads to explain. Many people here have scorbutical complaints, though their teeth are not affected. They are subject to eruptions on the skin, putrid gums, pains in the bones, lassitude, indigestion, and low spirits; but the reigning distemper is a marasmus, or consumption, which proceeds gradually, without any pulmonary complaint, the complexion growing more and more florid, 'till the very last scene of the tragedy. This I would impute to the effects of a very dry, saline atmosphere, upon a thin habit, in which there is an extraordinary waste by perspiration. The air is remarkably salt in this district, because the mountains that hem it in, prevent its communication with the circumambient atmosphere, in which the saline particles would otherwise be diffused; and there is no rain, nor dew, to precipitate or dissolve them. Such an air as I have described, should have no bad effect upon a moist, phlegmatic constitution, such as mine; and yet it must be owned, I have been visibly wasting since I came hither, though this decay I considered as the progress of the tabes which began in England. But the air of Nice has had a still more sensible effect upon Mr. Sch--z, who laboured under nervous complaints to such a degree, that life was a burthen to him. He had also a fixed pain in his breast, for which complaint he had formerly tried the air of Naples, where he resided some considerable time, and in a great measure recovered: but, this returning with weakness, faintness, low spirits, and entire loss of appetite, he was advised to come hither; and the success of his journey has greatly exceeded his expectation. Though the weather has been remarkably bad for this climate, he has enjoyed perfect health. Since he arrived at Nice, the pain in his breast has vanished; he eats heartily, sleeps well, is in high spirits, and so strong, that he is never off his legs in the day-time. He can walk to the Var and back again, before dinner; and he has climbed to the tops of all the mountains in this neighbourhood. I never saw before such sudden and happy effects from the change of air. I must also acknowledge, that ever since my arrival at Nice, I have breathed more freely than I had done for some years, and my spirits have been more alert. The father of my housekeeper, who was a dancing-master, had been so afflicted with an asthmatic disorder, that he could not live in France, Spain, or Italy; but found the air of Nice so agreeable to his lungs, that he was enabled to exercise his profession for above twenty years, and died last spring turned of seventy. Another advantage I have reaped from this climate is my being, in a great measure, delivered from a slow fever which used to hang about me, and render life a burthen. Neither am I so apt to catch cold as I used to be in England and France; and the colds I do catch are not of the same continuance and consequence, as those to which I was formerly subject. The air of Nice is so dry, that in summer, and even in winter, (except ill wet weather) you may pass the evening, and indeed the whole night, sub Dio, without feeling the least dew or moisture; and as for fogs, they are never seen in this district. In summer, the air is cooled by a regular sea-breeze blowing from the cast, like that of the West-Indies. It begins in the forenoon, and increases with the heat of the day. It dies away about six or seven; and immediately after sun-set is succeeded by an agreeable land-breeze from the mountains. The sea-breeze from the eastward, however, is not so constant here, as in the West-Indies between the tropicks, because the sun, which produces it, is not so powerful. This country lies nearer the region of variable winds, and is surrounded by mountains, capes, and straights, which often influence the constitution and current of the air. About the winter solstice, the people of Nice expect wind and rain, which generally lasts, with intervals, 'till the beginning of February: but even during this, their worst weather, the sun breaks out occasionally, and you may take the air either a-foot or on horseback every day; for the moisture is immediately absorbed by the earth, which is naturally dry. They likewise lay their account with being visited by showers of rain and gusts of wind in April. A week's rain in the middle of August makes them happy. It not only refreshes the parched ground, and plumps up the grapes and other fruit, but it cools the air and assuages the beets, which then begin to grow very troublesome; but the rainy season is about the autumnal equinox, or rather something later. It continues about twelve days or a fortnight, and is extremely welcome to the natives of this country. This rainy season is often delayed 'till the latter end of November, and sometimes 'till the month of December; in which case, the rest of the winter is generally dry. The heavy rains in this country generally come with a south-west wind, which was the creberque procellis Africus, the stormy southwest, of the antients. It is here called Lebeche, a corruption of Lybicus: it generally blows high for a day or two, and rolls the Mediterranean before it in huge waves, that often enter the town of Nice. It likewise drives before it all the clouds which had been formed above the surface of the Mediterranean. These being expended in rain, fair weather naturally ensues. For this reason, the Nissards observe le lebeche racommode le tems, the Lebeche settles the weather. During the rains of this season, however, the winds have been variable. From the sixteenth of November, 'till the fourth of January, we have had two and twenty days of heavy rain: a very extraordinary visitation in this country: but the seasons seem to be more irregular than formerly, all over Europe. In the month of July, the mercury in Fahrenheit's thermometer, rose to eighty-four at Rome, the highest degree at which it was ever known in that country; and the very next day, the Sabine mountains were covered with snow. The same phaemomenon happened on the eleventh of August, and the thirtieth of September. The consequence of these sudden variations of weather, was this: putrid fevers were less frequent than usual; but the sudden cheek of perspiration from the cold, produced colds, inflammatory sore throats, and the rheumatism. I know instances of some English valetudinarians, who have passed the winter at Aix, on the supposition that there was little or no difference between that air and the climate of Nice: but this is a very great mistake, which may be attended with fatal consequences. Aix is altogether exposed to the north and north-west winds, which blow as cold in Provence, as ever I felt them on the mountains of Scotland: whereas Nice is entirely screened from these winds by the Maritime Alps, which form an amphitheatre, to the land-side, around this little territory: but another incontestible proof of the mildness of this climate, is deduced from the oranges, lemons, citrons, roses, narcissus's, july-flowers, and jonquils, which ripen and blow in the middle of winter. I have described the agreeable side of this climate; and now I will point out its inconveniences. In the winter, but especially in the spring, the sun is so hot, that one can hardly take exercise of any sort abroad, without being thrown into a breathing sweat; and the wind at this season is so cold and piercing, that it often produces a mischievous effect on the pores thus opened. If the heat rarifies the blood and juices, while the cold air constringes the fibres, and obstructs the perspiration, inflammatory disorders must ensue. Accordingly, the people are then subject to colds, pleurisies, peripneumonies, and ardent fevers. An old count advised me to stay within doors in March, car alors les humeurs commencent a se remuer, for then the humours begin to be in motion. During the heats of summer, some few persons of gross habits have, in consequence of violent exercise and excess, been seized with putrid fevers, attended with exanthemata, erisipelatous, and miliary eruptions, which commonly prove fatal: but the people in general are healthy, even those that take very little exercise: a strong presumption in favour of the climate! As to medicine, I know nothing of the practice of the Nice physicians. Here are eleven in all; but four or five make shift to live by the profession. They receive, by way of fee, ten sols (an English six-pence) a visit, and this is but ill paid: so you may guess whether they are in a condition to support the dignity of physic; and whether any man, of a liberal education, would bury himself at Nice on such terms. I am acquainted with an Italian physician settled at Villa Franca, a very good sort of a man, who practises for a certain salary, raised by annual contribution among the better sort of people; and an allowance from the king, for visiting the sick belonging to the garrison and the gallies. The whole may amount to near thirty pounds. Among the inconveniences of this climate, the vermin form no inconsiderable article. Vipers and snakes are found in the mountains. Our gardens swarm with lizzards; and there are some few scorpions; but as yet I have seen but one of this species. In summer, notwithstanding all the care and precautions we can take, we are pestered with incredible swarms of flies, fleas, and bugs; but the gnats, or couzins, are more intolerable than all the rest. In the day-time, it is impossible to keep the flies out of your mouth, nostrils, eyes, and ears. They croud into your milk, tea, chocolate, soup, wine, and water: they soil your sugar, contaminate your victuals, and devour your fruit; they cover and defile your furniture, floors, cielings, and indeed your whole body. As soon as candles are lighted, the couzins begin to buz about your ears in myriads, and torment you with their stings, so that you have no rest nor respite 'till you get into bed, where you are secured by your mosquito-net. This inclosure is very disagreeable in hot weather; and very inconvenient to those, who, like me, are subject to a cough and spitting. It is moreover ineffectual; for some of those cursed insects insinuate themselves within it, almost every night; and half a dozen of them are sufficient to disturb you 'till morning. This is a plague that continues all the year; but in summer it is intolerable. During this season, likewise, the moths are so mischievous, that it requires the utmost care to preserve woollen cloths from being destroyed. From the month of May, 'till the beginning of October, the heat is so violent, that you cannot stir abroad after six in the morning 'till eight at night, so that you are entirely deprived of the benefit of exercise: There is no shaded walk in, or near the town; and there is neither coach nor chaise to hire, unless you travel post. Indeed, there is no road fit for any wheel carriage, but the common highway to the Var, in which you are scorched by the reflexion of the sun from the sand and stones, and at the same time half stifled with dust. If you ride out in the cool of the evening, you will have the disadvantage of returning in the dark. Among the demerits of Nice, I must also mention the water which is used in the city. It is drawn from wells; and for the most part so hard, that it curdles with soap. There are many fountains and streams in the neighbourhood, that afford excellent water, which, at no great charge, might be conveyed into the town, so as to form conduits in all the public streets: but the inhabitants are either destitute of public spirit, or cannot afford the expense. [General Paterson delivered a Plan to the King of Sardinia for supplying Nice with excellent water for so small an expence as one livre a house per annum; but the inhabitants remonstrated against it as an intolerable Imposition.] I have a draw-well in my porch, and another in my garden, which supply tolerable water for culinary uses; but what we drink, is fetched from a well belonging to a convent of Dominicans in this neighbourhood. Our linnen is washed in the river Paglion; and when that is dry, in the brook called Limpia, which runs into the harbour. In mentioning the water of this neighbourhood, I ought not to omit the baths of Rocabiliare, a small town among the mountains, about five and twenty miles from Nice. There are three sources, each warmer than the other; the warmest being nearly equal to the heat of the king's bath at Bath in Somersetshire, as far as I can judge from information. I have perused a Latin manuscript, which treats of these baths at Rocabiliare, written by the duke of Savoy's first physician about sixty years ago. He talks much of the sulphur and the nitre which they contain; but I apprehend their efficacy is owing to the same volatile vitriolic principle, which characterises the waters at Bath. They are attenuating and deobstruent, consequently of service in disorders arising from a languid circulation, a viscidity of the juices, a lax fibre, and obstructed viscera. The road from hence to Rocabiliare is in some parts very dangerous, lying along the brink of precipices, impassable to any other carriage but a mule. The town itself affords bad lodging and accommodation, and little or no society. The waters are at the distance of a mile and a half from the town: there are no baths nor shelter, nor any sort of convenience for those that drink them; and the best part of their efficacy is lost, unless they are drank at the fountain-head. If these objections were in some measure removed, I would advise valetudinarians, who come hither for the benefit of this climate, to pass the heats of summer at Rocabiliare, which being situated among mountains, enjoys a cool temperate air all the summer. This would be a salutary respite from the salt air of Nice, to those who labour under scorbutical complaints; and they would return with fresh vigour and spirits, to pass the winter in this place, where no severity of weather is known. Last June, when I found myself so ill at my cassine, I had determined to go to Rocabiliare, and even to erect a hut at the spring, for my own convenience. A gentleman of Nice undertook to procure me a tolerable lodging in the house of the cure, who was his relation. He assured me, there was no want of fresh butter, good poultry, excellent veal, and delicate trout; and that the articles of living might be had at Rocabiliare for half the price we paid at Nice: but finding myself grow better immediately on my return from the cassine to my own house, I would not put myself to the trouble and expence of a further removal. I think I have now communicated all the particulars relating to Nice, that are worth knowing; and perhaps many more than you desired to know: but, in such cases, I would rather be thought prolix and unentertaining, than deficient in that regard and attention with which I am very sincerely,--Your friend and servant. LETTER XXV NICE, January 1, 1765. DEAR SIR,--It was in deference to your opinion, reinforced by my own inclination, and the repeated advice of other friends, that I resolved upon my late excursion to Italy. I could plainly perceive from the anxious solicitude, and pressing exhortations contained in all the letters I had lately received from my correspondents in Britain, that you had all despaired of my recovery. You advised me to make a pilgrimage among the Alps, and the advice was good. In scrambling among those mountains, I should have benefited by the exercise, and at the same time have breathed a cool, pure, salubrious air, which, in all probability, would have expelled the slow fever arising in a great measure from the heat of this climate. But, I wanted a companion and fellow traveller, whose conversation and society could alleviate the horrors of solitude. Besides, I was not strong enough to encounter the want of conveniences, and even of necessaries to which I must have been exposed in the course of such an expedition. My worthy friend Dr. A-- earnestly intreated me to try the effect of a sea-voyage, which you know has been found of wonderful efficacy in consumptive cases. After some deliberation, I resolved upon the scheme, which I have now happily executed. I had a most eager curiosity to see the antiquities of Florence and Rome: I longed impatiently to view those wonderful edifices, statues, and pictures, which I had so often admired in prints and descriptions. I felt an enthusiastic ardor to tread that very classical ground which had been the scene of so many great atchievements; and I could not bear the thought of returning to England from the very skirts of Italy, without having penetrated to the capital of that renowned country. With regard to my health, I knew I could manage matters so as to enjoy all the benefits that could be expected from the united energy of a voyage by sea, a journey by land, and a change of climate. Rome is betwixt four and five hundred miles distant from Nice, and one half of the way I was resolved to travel by water. Indeed there is no other way of going from hence to Genoa, unless you take a mule, and clamber along the mountains at the rate of two miles an hour, and at the risque of breaking your neck every minute. The Apennine mountains, which are no other than a continuation of the maritime Alps, form an almost continued precipice from Villefranche to Lerici, which is almost forty-five miles on the other side of Genoa; and as they are generally washed by the sea, there is no beach or shore, consequently the road is carried along the face of the rocks, except at certain small intervals, which are occupied by towns and villages. But, as there is a road for mules and foot passengers, it might certainly be enlarged and improved so as to render it practicable by chaises and other wheel-carriages, and a toll might be exacted, which in a little time would defray the expence: for certainly no person who travels to Italy, from England, Holland, France, or Spain, would make a troublesome circuit to pass the Alps by the way of Savoy and Piedmont, if he could have the convenience of going post by the way of Aix, Antibes, and Nice, along the side of the Mediterranean, and through the Riviera of Genoa, which from the sea affords the most agreeable and amazing prospect I ever beheld. What pity it is, they cannot restore the celebrated Via Aurelia, mentioned in the Itinerarium of Antoninus, which extended from Rome by the way of Genoa, and through this country as far as Arles upon the Rhone. It was said to have been made by the emperor Marcus Aurelius; and some of the vestiges of it are still to be seen in Provence. The truth is, the nobility of Genoa, who are all merchants, from a low, selfish, and absurd policy, take all methods to keep their subjects of the Riviera in poverty and dependence. With this view, they carefully avoid all steps towards rendering that country accessible by land; and at the same time discourage their trade by sea, lest it should interfere with the commerce of their capital, in which they themselves are personally concerned. Those who either will not or cannot bear the sea, and are equally averse to riding, may be carried in a common chair, provided with a foot-board, on men's shoulders: this is the way of travelling practised by the ladies of Nice, in crossing the mountains to Turin; but it is very tedious and expensive, as the men must be often relieved. The most agreeable carriage from here to Genoa, is a feluca, or open boat, rowed by ten or twelve stout mariners. Though none of these boats belong to Nice, they are to be found every day in our harbour, waiting for a fare to Genoa; and they are seen passing and repassing continually, with merchandize or passengers, between Marseilles, Antibes, and the Genoese territories. A feluca is large enough to take in a post-chaise; and there is a tilt over the stern sheets, where the passengers sit, to protect them from the rain: between the seats one person may lie commodiously upon a mattress, which is commonly supplied by the patron. A man in good health may put up with any thing; but I would advise every valetudinarian who travels this way, to provide his own chaise, mattrass, and bedlinnen, otherwise he will pass his time very uncomfortably. If you go as a simple passenger in a feluca, you pay about a loui'dore for your place, and you must be intirely under the direction of the patron, who, while he can bear the sea, will prosecute his voyage by night as well as by day, and expose you to many other inconveniencies: but for eight zequines, or four loui'dores, you can have a whole feluca to yourself, from Nice to Genoa, and the master shall be obliged to put a-shore every evening. If you would have it still more at your command, you may hire it at so much per day, and in that case, go on shore as often, and stay as long as you please. This is the method I should take, were I to make the voyage again; for I am persuaded I should find it very near as cheap, and much more agreeable than any other. The distance between this place and Genoa, when measured on the carte, does not exceed ninety miles: but the people of the felucas insist upon its being one hundred and twenty. If they creep along shore round the bottoms of all the bays, this computation may be true: but, except when the sea is rough, they stretch directly from one head-land to another, and even when the wind is contrary, provided the gale is not fresh, they perform the voyage in two days and a half, by dint of rowing: when the wind is favourable, they will sail it easily in fourteen hours. A man who has nothing but expedition in view, may go with the courier, who has always a light boat well manned, and will be glad to accommodate a traveller for a reasonable gratification. I know an English gentleman who always travels with the courier in Italy, both by sea and land. In posting by land, he is always sure of having part of a good calash, and the best horses that can be found; and as the expence of both is defrayed by the public, it costs him nothing but a present to his companion, which does not amount to one fourth part of the expence he would incur by travelling alone. These opportunities may be had every week in all the towns of Italy. For my own part, I hired a gondola from hence to Genoa. This is a boat smaller than a feluca, rowed by four men, and steered by the patron; but the price was nine zequines, rather more than I should have payed for a feluca of ten oars. I was assured that being very light, it would make great way; and the master was particularly recommended to me, as an honest man and an able mariner. I was accompanied in this voyage by my wife and Miss C--, together with one Mr. R--, a native of Nice, whom I treated with the jaunt, in hopes that as he was acquainted with the customs of the country, and the different ways of travelling in it, he would save us much trouble, and some expence: but I was much disappointed. Some persons at Nice offered to lay wagers that he would return by himself from Italy; but they were also disappointed. We embarked in the beginning of September, attended by one servant. The heats, which render travelling dangerous in Italy, begin to abate at this season. The weather was extremely agreeable; and if I had postponed my voyage a little longer, I foresaw that I should not be able to return before winter: in which case I might have found the sea too rough, and the weather too cold for a voyage of one hundred and thirty-five miles in an open boat. Having therefore provided myself with a proper pass, signed and sealed by our consul, as well as with letters of recommendation from him to the English consuls at Genoa and Leghorn, a precaution which I would advise all travellers to take, in case of meeting with accidents on the road, we went on board about ten in the morning, stopped about half an hour at a friend's country-house in the bay of St. Hospice, and about noon entered the harbour of Monaco, where the patron was obliged to pay toll, according to the regulation which I have explained in a former letter. This small town, containing about eight or nine hundred souls, besides the garrison, is built on a rock which projects into the sea, and makes a very romantic appearance. The prince's palace stands in the most conspicuous part, with a walk of trees before it. The apartments are elegantly furnished, and adorned with some good pictures. The fortifications are in good repair, and the place is garrisoned by two French battalions. The present prince of Monaco is a Frenchman, son of the duke Matignon who married the heiress of Monaco, whose name was Grimaldi. The harbour is well sheltered from the wind; but has not water sufficient to admit vessels of any great burthen. Towards the north, the king of Sardinia's territories extend to within a mile of the gate; but the prince of Monaco can go upon his own ground along shore about five or six miles to the eastward, as far as Menton, another small town, which also belongs to him, and is situated on the seaside. His revenues are computed at a million of French livres, amounting to something more than forty thousand pounds sterling: but, the principality of Monaco, consisting of three small towns, and an inconsiderable tract of barren rock, is not worth above seven thousand a year; the rest arises from his French estate. This consists partly of the dutchy of Matignon, and partly of the dutchy of Valentinois, which last was given to the ancestors of this prince of Monaco, in the year 1640, by the French king, to make up the loss of some lands in the kingdom of Naples, which were confiscated when he expelled the Spanish garrison from Monaco, and threw himself into the arms of France: so that he is duke of Valentinois as well as of Matignon, in that kingdom. He lives almost constantly in France; and has taken the name and arms of Grimaldi. The Genoese territories begin at Ventimiglia, another town lying on the coast, at the distance of twenty miles from Nice, a circumstance from which it borrows the name. Having passed the towns of Monaco, Menton, Ventimiglia, and several other places of less consequence that lie along this coast, we turned the point of St. Martin with a favourable breeze, and might have proceeded twenty miles further before night: but the women began to be sick, as well as afraid at the roughness of the water; Mr. R-- was so discomposed, that he privately desired the patron to put ashore at St. Remo, on pretence that we should not find a tolerable auberge in any other place between this and Noli, which was at the distance of forty miles. We accordingly landed, and were conducted to the poste, which our gondeliere assured us was the best auberge in the whole Riviera of Genoa. We ascended by a dark, narrow, steep stair, into a kind of public room, with a long table and benches, so dirty and miserable, that it would disgrace the worst hedge ale-house in England. Not a soul appeared to receive us. This is a ceremony one must not expect to meet with in France; far less in Italy. Our patron going into the kitchen, asked a servant if the company could have lodging in the house; and was answered, "he could not tell: the patron was not at home." When he desired to know where the patron was, the other answered, "he was gone to take the air." E andato a passeggiare. In the mean time, we were obliged to sit in the common room among watermen and muleteers. At length the landlord arrived, and gave us to understand, that he could accommodate us with chambers. In that where I lay, there was just room for two beds, without curtains or bedstead, an old rotten table covered with dried figs, and a couple of crazy chairs. The walls had been once white-washed: but were now hung with cobwebs, and speckled with dirt of all sorts; and I believe the brick-floor had not been swept for half a century. We supped in an outward room suitable in all respects to the chamber, and fared villainously. The provision was very ill-dressed, and served up in the most slovenly manner. You must not expect cleanliness or conveniency of any kind in this country. For this accommodation I payed as much as if I had been elegantly entertained in the best auberge of France or Italy. Next day, the wind was so high that we could not prosecute our voyage, so that we were obliged to pass other four and twenty hours in this comfortable situation. Luckily Mr. R-- found two acquaintances in the place; one a Franciscan monk, a jolly fellow; and the other a maestro di capella, who sent a spinnet to the inn, and entertained us agreeably with his voice and performance, in both of which accomplishments he excelled. The padre was very good humoured, and favoured us with a letter of recommendation to a friend of his, a professor in the university of Pisa. You would laugh to see the hyperbolical terms in which he mentioned your humble servant; but Italy is the native country of hyperbole. St. Remo is a pretty considerable town, well-built upon the declivity of a gently rising hill, and has a harbour capable of receiving small vessels, a good number of which are built upon the beach: but ships of any burden are obliged to anchor in the bay, which is far from being secure. The people of St. Remo form a small republic, which is subject to Genoa. They enjoyed particular privileges, till the year 1753, when in consequence of a new gabelle upon salt, they revolted: but this effort in behalf of liberty did not succeed. They were soon reduced by the Genoese, who deprived them of all their privileges, and built a fort by the sea-side, which serves the double purpose of defending the harbour and over-awing the town. The garrison at present does not exceed two hundred men. The inhabitants are said to have lately sent a deputation to Ratisbon, to crave the protection of the diet of the empire. There is very little plain ground in this neighbourhood; but the hills are covered with oranges, lemons, pomegranates, and olives, which produce a considerable traffic in fine fruit and excellent oil. The women of St. Remo are much more handsome and better tempered than those of Provence. They have in general good eyes, with open ingenuous countenances. Their dress, though remarkable, I cannot describe: but upon the whole, they put me in mind of some portraits I have seen, representing the females of Georgia and Mingrelia. On the third day, the wind being abated, though still unfavourable, we reimbarked and rowed along shore, passing by Porto-mauricio, and Oneglia; then turning the promontory called Capo di Melle, we proceeded by Albenga, Finale, and many other places of inferior note. Portomauricio is seated on a rock washed by the sea, but indifferently fortified, with an inconsiderable harbour, which none but very small vessels can enter. About two miles to the eastward is Oneglia, a small town with fortifications, lying along the open beach, and belonging to the king of Sardinia. This small territory abounds with olive-trees, which produce a considerable quantity of oil, counted the best of the whole Riviera. Albenga is a small town, the see of a bishop, suffragan to the archbishop of Genoa. It lies upon the sea, and the country produces a great quantity of hemp. Finale is the capital of a marquisate belonging to the Genoese, which has been the source of much trouble to the republic; and indeed was the sole cause of their rupture with the king of Sardinia and the house of Austria in the year 1745. The town is pretty well built; but the harbour is shallow, open, and unsafe; nevertheless, they built a good number of tartans and other vessels on the beach and the neighbouring country abounds with oil and fruit, particularly with those excellent apples called pomi carli, which I have mentioned in a former letter. In the evening we reached the Capo di Noli, counted very dangerous in blowing weather. It is a very high perpendicular rock or mountain washed by the sea, which has eaten into it in divers places, so as to form a great number of caverns. It extends about a couple of miles, and in some parts is indented into little creeks or bays, where there is a narrow margin of sandy beach between it and the water. When the wind is high, no feluca will attempt to pass it; even in a moderate breeze, the waves dashing against the rocks and caverns, which echo with the sound, make such an awful noise, and at the same time occasion such a rough sea, as one cannot hear, and see, and feel, without a secret horror. On this side of the Cape, there is a beautiful strand cultivated like a garden; the plantations extend to the very tops of the hills, interspersed with villages, castles, churches, and villas. Indeed the whole Riviera is ornamented in the same manner, except in such places as admit of no building nor cultivation. Having passed the Cape, we followed the winding of the coast, into a small bay, and arrived at the town of Noli, where we proposed to pass the night. You will be surprised that we did not go ashore sooner, in order to take some refreshment; but the truth is, we had a provision of ham, tongues, roasted pullets, cheese, bread, wine, and fruit, in the feluca, where we every day enjoyed a slight repast about one or two o'clock in the afternoon. This I mention as a necessary piece of information to those who may be inclined to follow the same route. We likewise found it convenient to lay in store of l'eau de vie, or brandy, for the use of the rowers, who always expect to share your comforts. On a meagre day, however, those ragamuffins will rather die of hunger than suffer the least morsel of flesh-meat to enter their mouths. I have frequently tried the experiment, by pressing them to eat something gras, on a Friday or Saturday: but they always declined it with marks of abhorrence, crying, Dio me ne libere! God deliver me from it! or some other words to that effect. I moreover observed, that not one of those fellows ever swore an oath, or spoke an indecent word. They would by no means put to sea, of a morning, before they had heard mass; and when the wind was unfavourable, they always set out with a hymn to the Blessed Virgin, or St. Elmo, keeping time with their oars as they sung. I have indeed remarked all over this country, that a man who transgresses the institutions of the church in these small matters, is much more infamous than one who has committed the most flagrant crimes against nature and morality. A murderer, adulterer, or s--m--te, will obtain easy absolution from the church, and even find favour with society; but a man who eats a pidgeon on a Saturday, without express licence, is avoided and abhorred, as a monster of reprobation. I have conversed with several intelligent persons on the subject; and have reason to believe, that a delinquent of this sort is considered as a luke-warm catholic, little better than a heretic; and of all crimes they look upon heresy as the most damnable. Noli is a small republic of fishermen subject to Genoa; but very tenacious of their privileges. The town stands on the beach, tolerably well built, defended by a castle situated on a rock above it; and the harbour is of little consequence. The auberge was such as made us regret even the inn we had left at St. Remo. After a very odd kind of supper, which I cannot pretend to describe, we retired to our repose: but I had not been in bed five minutes, when I felt something crawling on different parts of my body, and taking a light to examine, perceived above a dozen large bugs. You must know I have the same kind of antipathy to these vermin, that some persons have to a cat or breast of veal. I started up immediately, and wrapping myself in a great coat, sick as I was, laid down in the outer room upon a chest, where I continued till morning. One would imagine that in a mountainous country like this, there should be plenty of goats; and indeed, we saw many flocks of them feeding among the rocks, yet we could not procure half a pint of milk for our tea, if we had given the weight of it in gold. The people here have no idea of using milk, and when you ask them for it, they stand gaping with a foolish face of surprise, which is exceedingly provoking. It is amazing that instinct does not teach the peasants to feed their children with goat's milk, so much more nourishing and agreeable than the wretched sustenance on which they live. Next day we rowed by Vado and Savona, which last is a large town, with a strong citadel, and a harbour, which was formerly capable of receiving large ships: but it fell a sacrifice to the jealousy of the Genoese, who have partly choaked it up, on pretence that it should not afford shelter to the ships of war belonging to those states which might be at enmity with the republic. Then we passed Albifola, Sestri di Ponente, Novi, Voltri, and a great number of villages, villas, and magnificent palaces belonging to the Genoese nobility, which form almost a continued chain of buildings along the strand for thirty miles. About five in the afternoon, we skirted the fine suburbs of St. Pietro d' Arena, and arrived at Genoa, which makes a dazzling appearance when viewed from the sea, rising like an amphitheatre in a circular form from the water's edge, a considerable way up the mountains, and surrounded on the land side by a double wall, the most exterior of which is said to extend fifteen miles in circuit. The first object that strikes your eye at a distance, is a very elegant pharos, or lighthouse, built on the projection of a rock on the west side of the harbour, so very high, that, in a clear day, you may see it at the distance of thirty miles. Turning the light-house point, you find yourself close to the mole, which forms the harbour of Genoa. It is built at a great expence from each side of the bay, so as to form in the sea two long magnificent jettes. At the extremity of each is another smaller lanthorn. These moles are both provided with brass-cannon, and between them is the entrance into the harbour. But this is still so wide as to admit a great sea, which, when the wind blows hard from south and south-west, is very troublesome to the shipping. Within the mole there is a smaller harbour or wet dock, called Darsena, for the gallies of the republic. We passed through a considerable number of ships and vessels lying at anchor, and landing at the water-gate, repaired to an inn called La Croix de Malthe in the neighbourhood of the harbour. Here we met with such good entertainment as prepossessed us in favour of the interior parts of Italy, and contributed with other motives to detain us some days in this city. But I have detained you so long, that I believe you wish I may proceed no farther; and therefore I take my leave for the present, being very sincerely-- Yours. LETTER XXVI NICE, January 15, 1765. DEAR SIR,--It is not without reason that Genoa is called La superba. The city itself is very stately; and the nobles are very proud. Some few of them may be proud of their wealth: but, in general, their fortunes are very small. My friend Mr. R-- assured me that many Genoese noblemen had fortunes of half a million of livres per annum: but the truth is, the whole revenue of the state does not exceed this sum; and the livre of Genoa is but about nine pence sterling. There are about half a dozen of their nobles who have ten thousand a year: but the majority have not above a twentieth part of that sum. They live with great parsimony in their families; and wear nothing but black in public; so that their expences are but small. If a Genoese nobleman gives an entertainment once a quarter, he is said to live upon the fragments all the rest of the year. I was told that one of them lately treated his friends, and left the entertainment to the care of his son, who ordered a dish of fish that cost a zechine, which is equal to about ten shillings sterling. The old gentleman no sooner saw it appear on the table, than unable to suppress his concern, he burst into tears, and exclaimed, Ah Figliuolo indegno! Siamo in Rovina! Siamo in precipizio! Ah, Prodigal! ruined! undone! I think the pride or ostentation of the Italians in general takes a more laudable turn than that of other nations. A Frenchman lays out his whole revenue upon tawdry suits of cloaths, or in furnishing a magnificent repas of fifty or a hundred dishes, one half of which are not eatable nor intended to be eaten. His wardrobe goes to the fripier; his dishes to the dogs, and himself to the devil, and after his decease no vestige of him remains. A Genoese, on the other hand, keeps himself and his family at short allowance, that he may save money to build palaces and churches, which remain to after-ages so many monuments of his taste, piety, and munificence; and in the mean time give employment and bread to the poor and industrious. There are some Genoese nobles who have each five or six elegant palaces magnificently furnished, either in the city, or in different parts of the Riviera. The two streets called Strada Balbi and Strada Nuova, are continued double ranges of palaces adorned with gardens and fountains: but their being painted on the outside has, in my opinion, a poor effect. The commerce of this city is, at present, not very considerable; yet it has the face of business. The streets are crowded with people; the shops are well furnished; and the markets abound with all sorts of excellent provision. The wine made in this neighbourhood is, however, very indifferent; and all that is consumed must be bought at the public cantine, where it is sold for the benefit of the state. Their bread is the whitest and the best I have tasted any where; and the beef, which they have from Piedmont, is juicy and delicious. The expence of eating in Italy is nearly the same as in France, about three shillings a head for every meal. The state of Genoa is very poor, and their bank of St. George has received such rude shocks, first from the revolt of the Corsicans, and afterwards from the misfortunes of the city, when it was taken by the Austrians in the war of 1745, that it still continues to languish without any near prospect of its credit being restored. Nothing shews the weakness of their state, more than their having recourse to the assistance of France to put a stop to the progress of Paoli in Corsica; for after all that has been said of the gallantry and courage of Paoli and his islanders, I am very credibly informed that they might be very easily suppressed, if the Genoese had either vigour in the council or resolution in the field. True it is, they made a noble effort in expelling the Austrians who had taken possession of their city; but this effort was the effect of oppression and despair, and if I may believe the insinuations of some politicians in this part of the world, the Genoese would not have succeeded in that attempt, if they had not previously purchased with a large sum of money the connivance of the only person who could defeat the enterprize. For my own part, I can scarce entertain thoughts so prejudicial to the character of human nature, as to suppose a man capable of sacrificing to such a consideration, the duty he owed his prince, as well as all regard to the lives of his soldiers, even those who lay sick in hospitals, and who, being dragged forth, were miserably butchered by the furious populace. There is one more presumption of his innocence, he still retains the favour of his sovereign, who could not well be supposed to share in the booty. "There are mysteries in politics which were never dreamed of in our philosophy, Horatio!" The possession of Genoa might have proved a troublesome bone of contention, which it might be convenient to lose by accident. Certain it is, when the Austrians returned after their expulsion, in order to retake the city, the engineer, being questioned by the general, declared he would take the place in fifteen days, on pain of losing his head; and in four days after this declaration the Austrians retired. This anecdote I learned from a worthy gentleman of this country, who had it from the engineer's own mouth. Perhaps it was the will of heaven. You see how favourably, providence has interposed in behalf of the reigning empress of Russia, first in removing her husband: secondly in ordaining the assassination of prince Ivan, for which the perpetrators have been so liberally rewarded; it even seems determined to shorten the life of her own son, the only surviving rival from whom she had any thing to fear. The Genoese have now thrown themselves into the arms of France for protection: I know not whether it would not have been a greater mark of sagacity to cultivate the friendship of England, with which they carry on an advantageous commerce. While the English are masters of the Mediterranean, they will always have it in their power to do incredible damage all along the Riviera, to ruin the Genoese trade by sea, and even to annoy the capital; for notwithstanding all the pains they have taken to fortify the mole and the city, I am greatly deceived if it is not still exposed to the danger, not only of a bombardment, but even of a cannonade. I am even sanguine enough to think a resolute commander might, with a strong squadron, sail directly into the harbour, without sustaining much damage, notwithstanding all the cannon of the place, which are said to amount to near five hundred. I have seen a cannonade of above four hundred pieces of artillery, besides bombs and cohorns, maintained for many hours, without doing much mischief. During the last siege of Genoa, the French auxiliaries were obliged to wait at Monaco, until a gale of wind had driven the English squadron off the coast, and then they went along shore in small vessels at the imminent risque of being taken by the British cruisers. By land I apprehend their march would be altogether impracticable, if the king of Sardinia had any interest to oppose it. He might either guard the passes, or break up the road in twenty different places, so as to render it altogether impassable. Here it may not be amiss to observe, that when Don Philip advanced from Nice with his army to Genoa, he was obliged to march so close to the shore, that in above fifty different places, the English ships might have rendered the road altogether impassable. The path, which runs generally along the face of a precipice washed by the sea, is so narrow that two men on horseback can hardly pass each other; and the road itself so rugged, slippery, and dangerous, that the troopers were obliged to dismount, and lead their horses one by one. On the other hand, baron de Leutrum, who was at the head of a large body of Piedmontese troops, had it in his power to block up the passes of the mountains, and even to destroy this road in such a manner, that the enemy could not possibly advance. Why these precautions were not taken, I do not pretend to explain: neither can I tell you wherefore the prince of Monaco, who is a subject and partizan of France, was indulged with a neutrality for his town, which served as a refreshing-place, a safe port, and an intermediate post for the French succours sent from Marseilles to Genoa. This I will only venture to affirm, that the success and advantage of great alliances are often sacrificed to low, partial, selfish, and sordid considerations. The town of Monaco is commanded by every heighth in its neighbourhood; and might be laid in ashes by a bomb-ketch in four hours by sea. I was fortunate enough to be recommended to a lady in Genoa, who treated us with great politeness and hospitality. She introduced me to an abbate, a man of letters, whose conversation was extremely agreeable. He already knew me by reputation, and offered to make me known to some of the first persons in the republic, with whom he lived in intimacy. The lady is one of the most intelligent and best-bred persons I have known in any country. We assisted at her conversazione, which was numerous. She pressed us to pass the winter at Genoa; and indeed I was almost persuaded: but I had attachments at Nice, from which I could not easily disengage myself. The few days we staved at Genoa were employed in visiting the most remarkable churches and palaces. In some of the churches, particularly that of the Annunciata, I found a profusion of ornaments, which had more magnificence than taste. There is a great number of pictures; but very few of them are capital pieces. I had heard much of the ponte Carignano, which did not at all answer my expectation. It is a bridge that unites two eminences which form the higher part of the city, and the houses in the bottom below do not rise so high as the springing of its arches. There is nothing at all curious in its construction, nor any way remarkable, except the heighth of the piers from which the arches are sprung. Hard by the bridge there is an elegant church, from the top of which you have a very rich and extensive prospect of the city, the sea and the adjacent country, which looks like a continent of groves and villas. The only remarkable circumstance about the cathedral, which is Gothic and gloomy, is the chapel where the pretended bones of John the Baptist are deposited, and in which thirty silver lamps are continually burning. I had a curiosity to see the palaces of Durazzo and Doria, but it required more trouble to procure admission than I was willing to give myself: as for the arsenal, and the rostrum of an ancient galley which was found by accident in dragging the harbour, I postponed seeing them till my return. Having here provided myself with letters of credit for Florence and Rome, I hired the same boat which had brought us hither, to carry us forward to Lerici, which is a small town about half way between Genoa and Leghorn, where travellers, who are tired of the sea, take post-chaises to continue their route by land to Pisa and Florence. I payed three loui'dores for this voyage of about fifty miles; though I might have had a feluca for less money. When you land on the wharf at Genoa, you are plied by the feluca men just as you are plied by the watermen at Hungerford-stairs in London. They are always ready to set off at a minute's warning for Lerici, Leghorn, Nice, Antibes, Marseilles, and every part of the Riviera. The wind being still unfavourable, though the weather was delightful, we rowed along shore, passing by several pretty towns, villages, and a vast number of cassines, or little white houses, scattered among woods of olive-trees, that cover the hills; and these are the habitations of the velvet and damask weavers. Turning Capo Fino we entered a bay, where stand the towns of Porto Fino, Lavagna, and Sestri di Levante, at which last we took up our night's lodging. The house was tolerable, and we had no great reason to complain of the beds: but, the weather being hot, there was a very offensive smell, which proceeded from some skins of beasts new killed, that were spread to dry on an outhouse in the yard. Our landlord was a butcher, and had very much the looks of an assassin. His wife was a great masculine virago, who had all the air of having frequented the slaughter-house. Instead of being welcomed with looks of complaisance, we were admitted with a sort of gloomy condescension, which seemed to say, "We don't much like your company; but, however, you shall have a night's lodging in favour of the patron of the gondola, who is our acquaintance." In short, we had a very bad supper, miserably dressed, passed a very disagreeable night, and payed a very extravagant bill in the morning, without being thanked for our custom. I was very glad to get out of the house with my throat uncut. Sestri di Levante is a little town pleasantly situated on the seaside; but has not the conveniency of a harbour. The fish taken here is mostly carried to Genoa. This is likewise the market for their oil, and the paste called macaroni, of which they make a good quantity. Next day, we skirted a very barren coast, consisting of almost perpendicular rocks, on the faces of which, however, we saw many peasants' houses and hanging terraces for vines, made by dint of incredible labour. In the afternoon, we entered by the Porti di Venere into the bay, or gulf of Spetia or Spezza, which was the Portus Lunae of the ancients. This bay, at the mouth of which lies the island Palmaria, forms a most noble and secure harbour, capacious enough to contain all the navies in Christendom. The entrance on one side is defended by a small fort built above the town of Porto Venere, which is a very poor place. Farther in there is a battery of about twenty guns; and on the right hand, opposite to Porto Venere, is a block-house, founded on a rock in the sea. At the bottom of the bay is the town of Spetia on the left, and on the right that of Lerici, defended by a castle of very little strength or consequence. The whole bay is surrounded with plantations of olives and oranges, and makes a very delightful appearance. In case of a war, this would be an admirable station for a British squadron, as it lies so near Genoa and Leghorn; and has a double entrance, by means of which the cruisers could sail in and out continually, which way soever the wind might chance to sit. I am sure the fortifications would give very little disturbance. At the post-house in Lerici, the accommodation is intolerable. We were almost poisoned at supper. I found the place where I was to lie so close and confined, that I could not breathe in it, and therefore lay all night in an outward room upon four chairs, with a leather portmanteau for my pillow. For this entertainment I payed very near a loui'dore. Such bad accommodation is the less excusable, as the fellow has a great deal of business, this being a great thoroughfare for travellers going into Italy, or returning from thence. I might have saved some money by prosecuting my voyage directly by sea to Leghorn: but, by this time, we were all heartily tired of the water, the business then was to travel by land to Florence, by the way of Pisa, which is seven posts distant from Lerici. Those who have not their own carriage must either hire chaises to perform the whole journey, or travel by way of cambiatura, which is that of changing the chaises every post, as the custom is in England. In this case the great inconvenience arises from your being obliged to shift your baggage every post. The chaise or calesse of this country, is a wretched machine with two wheels, as uneasy as a common cart, being indeed no other than what we should call in England a very ill-contrived one-horse chair, narrow, naked, shattered and shabby. For this vehicle and two horses you pay at the rate of eight paoli a stage, or four shillings sterling; and the postilion expects two paoli for his gratification: so that every eight miles cost about five shillings, and four only, if you travel in your own carriage, as in that case you pay no more than at the rate of three paoli a horse. About three miles from Lerici, we crossed the Magra, which appeared as a rivulet almost dry, and in half a mile farther arrived at Sarzana, a small town at the extremity of the Genoese territories, where we changed horses. Then entering the principalities of Massa and Carrara, belonging to the duke of Modena, we passed Lavenza, which seems to be a decayed fort with a small garrison, and dined at Massa, which is an agreeable little town, where the old dutchess of Modena resides. Notwithstanding all the expedition we could make, it was dark before we passed the Cerchio, which is an inconsiderable stream in the neighbourhood of Pisa, where we arrived about eight in the evening. The country from Sarzana to the frontiers of Tuscany is a narrow plain, bounded on the right by the sea, and on the left by the Apennine mountains. It is well cultivated and inclosed, consisting of meadow-ground, corn fields, plantations of olives; and the trees that form the hedge-rows serve as so many props to the vines, which are twisted round them, and continued from one to another. After entering the dominions of Tuscany, we travelled through a noble forest of oak-trees of a considerable extent, which would have appeared much more agreeable, had we not been benighted and apprehensive of robbers. The last post but one in this days journey, is at the little town of Viareggio, a kind of sea-port on the Mediterranean, belonging to Lucia. The roads are indifferent, and the accommodation is execrable. I was glad to find myself housed in a very good inn at Pisa, where I promised myself a good night's rest, and was not disappointed. I heartily wish you the same pleasure, and am very sincerely--Yours. LETTER XXVII NICE, January 28, 1765. DEAR SIR,--Pisa is a fine old city that strikes you with the same veneration you would feel at sight of an antient temple which bears the marks of decay, without being absolutely dilapidated. The houses are well built, the streets open, straight, and well paved; the shops well furnished; and the markets well supplied: there are some elegant palaces, designed by great masters. The churches are built with taste, and tolerably ornamented. There is a beautiful wharf of freestone on each side of the river Arno, which runs through the city, and three bridges thrown over it, of which that in the middle is of marble, a pretty piece of architecture: but the number of inhabitants is very inconsiderable; and this very circumstance gives it an air of majestic solitude, which is far from being unpleasant to a man of a contemplative turn of mind. For my part, I cannot bear the tumult of a populous commercial city; and the solitude that reigns in Pisa would with me be a strong motive to choose it as a place of residence. Not that this would be the only inducement for living at Pisa. Here is some good company, and even a few men of taste and learning. The people in general are counted sociable and polite; and there is great plenty of provisions, at a very reasonable rate. At some distance from the more frequented parts of the city, a man may hire a large house for thirty crowns a year: but near the center, you cannot have good lodgings, ready furnished, for less than a scudo (about five shillings) a day. The air in summer is reckoned unwholesome by the exhalations arising from stagnant water in the neighbourhood of the city, which stands in the midst of a fertile plain, low and marshy: yet these marshes have been considerably drained, and the air is much meliorated. As for the Arno, it is no longer navigated by vessels of any burthen. The university of Pisa is very much decayed; and except the little business occasioned by the emperor's gallies, which are built in this town, [This is a mistake. No gallies have been built here for a great many years, and the dock is now converted into stables for the Grand Duke's Horse Guards.] I know of no commerce it carried on: perhaps the inhabitants live on the produce of the country, which consists of corn, wine, and cattle. They are supplied with excellent water for drinking, by an aqueduct consisting of above five thousand arches, begun by Cosmo, and finished by Ferdinand I. Grand-dukes of Tuscany; it conveys the water from the mountains at the distance of five miles. This noble city, formerly the capital of a flourishing and powerful republic, which contained above one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, within its walls, is now so desolate that grass grows in the open streets; and the number of its people do not exceed sixteen thousand. You need not doubt but I visited the Campanile, or hanging-tower, which is a beautiful cylinder of eight stories, each adorned with a round of columns, rising one above another. It stands by the cathedral, and inclines so far on one side from the perpendicular, that in dropping a plummet from the top, which is one hundred and eighty-eight feet high, it falls sixteen feet from the base. For my part, I should never have dreamed that this inclination proceeded from any other cause, than an accidental subsidence of the foundation on this side, if some connoisseurs had not taken great pains to prove it was done on purpose by the architect. Any person who has eyes may see that the pillars on that side are considerably sunk; and this is the case with the very threshold of the door by which you enter. I think it would have been a very preposterous ambition in the architects, to show how far they could deviate from the perpendicular in this construction; because in that particular any common mason could have rivalled them; [All the world knows that a Building with such Inclination may be carried up till a line drawn from the Centre of Gravity falls without the Circumference of the Base.] and if they really intended it as a specimen of their art, they should have shortened the pilasters on that side, so as to exhibit them intire, without the appearance of sinking. These leaning towers are not unfrequent in Italy; there is one at Bologna, another at Venice, a third betwixt Venice and Ferrara, and a fourth at Ravenna; and the inclination in all of them has been supposed owing to the foundations giving way on one side only. In the cathedral, which is a large Gothic pile, [This Edifice is not absolutely Gothic. It was built in the Twelfth Century after the Design of a Greek Architect from Constantinople, where by that time the art was much degenerated. The Pillars of Granite are mostly from the Islands of Ebba and Giglia on the coast of Tuscany, where those quarries were worked by the antient Romans. The Giullo, and the verde antico are very beautiful species of marble, yellow and green; the first, antiently called marmor numidicum, came from Africa; the other was found (according to Strabo) on the mons Taygetus in Lacedemonia: but, at present, neither the one nor the other is to be had except among the ruins of antiquity.] there is a great number of massy pillars of porphyry, granite, jasper, giullo, and verde antico, together with some good pictures and statues: but the greatest curiosity is that of the brass-gates, designed and executed by John of Bologna, representing, embossed in different compartments, the history of the Old and New Testament. I was so charmed with this work, that I could have stood a whole day to examine and admire it. In the Baptisterium, which stands opposite to this front, there are some beautiful marbles, particularly the font, and a pulpit, supported by the statues of different animals. Between the cathedral and this building, about one hundred paces on one side, is the famous burying-ground, called Campo Santo, from its being covered with earth brought from Jerusalem. It is an oblong square, surrounded by a very high wall, and always kept shut. Within-side there is a spacious corridore round the whole space, which is a noble walk for a contemplative philosopher. It is paved chiefly with flat grave-stones: the walls are painted in fresco by Ghiotto, Giottino, Stefano, Bennoti, Bufalmaco, and some others of his cotemporaries and disciples, who flourished immediately after the restoration of painting. The subjects are taken from the Bible. Though the manner is dry, the drawing incorrect, the design generally lame, and the colouring unnatural; yet there is merit in the expression: and the whole remains as a curious monument of the efforts made by this noble art immediately after her revival. [The History of Job by Giotto is much admired.] Here are some deceptions in perspective equally ingenious and pleasing; particularly the figures of certain animals, which exhibit exactly the same appearance, from whatever different points of view they are seen. One division of the burying-ground consists of a particular compost, which in nine days consumes the dead bodies to the bones: in all probability, it is no other than common earth mixed with quick-lime. At one corner of the corridore, there are the pictures of three bodies represented in the three different stages of putrefaction which they undergo when laid in this composition. At the end of the three first days, the body is bloated and swelled, and the features are enlarged and distorted to such a degree, as fills the spectator with horror. At the sixth day, the swelling is subsided, and all the muscular flesh hangs loosened from the bones: at the ninth, nothing but the skeleton remains. There is a small neat chapel at one end of the Campo Santo, with some tombs, on one of which is a beautiful bust by Buona Roti. [Here is a sumptuous cenotaph erected by Pope Gregory XIII. to the memory of his brother Giovanni Buoncampagni. It is called the Monumentum Gregorianum, of a violet-coloured marble from Scravezza in this neighbourhood, adorned with a couple of columns of Touchstone, and two beautiful spherical plates of Alabaster.] At the other end of the corridore, there is a range of antient sepulchral stones ornamented with basso-relievo brought hither from different parts by the Pisan Fleets in the course of their expeditions. I was struck with the figure of a woman lying dead on a tomb-stone, covered with a piece of thin drapery, so delicately cut as to shew all the flexures of the attitude, and even all the swellings and sinuosities of the muscles. Instead of stone, it looks like a sheet of wet linen. [One of these antiquities representing the Hunting of Meleager was converted into a coffin for the Countess Beatrice, mother of the famous Countess Mathilda; it is now fixed to the outside of the church wall just by one of the doors, and is a very elegant piece of sculpture. Near the same place is a fine pillar of Porphyry supporting the figure of a Lion, and a kind of urn which seems to be a Sarcophagus, though an inscription round the Base declares it is a Talentum in which the antient Pisans measured the Census or Tax which they payed to Augustus: but in what metal or specie this Census was payed we are left to divine. There are likewise in the Campo Santo two antique Latin edicts of the Pisan Senate injoining the citizens to go into mourning for the Death of Caius and Lucius Caesar the Sons of Agrippa, and heirs declared of the Emperor. Fronting this Cemetery, on the other side of the Piazza of the Dome, is a large, elegant Hospital in which the sick are conveniently and comfortably lodged, entertained, and attended.] For four zechines I hired a return-coach and four from Pisa to Florence. This road, which lies along the Arno, is very good; and the country is delightful, variegated with hill and vale, wood and water, meadows and corn-fields, planted and inclosed like the counties of Middlesex and Hampshire; with this difference, however, that all the trees in this tract were covered with vines, and the ripe clusters black and white, hung down from every bough in a most luxuriant and romantic abundance. The vines in this country are not planted in rows, and propped with sticks, as in France and the county of Nice, but twine around the hedge-row trees, which they almost quite cover with their foliage and fruit. The branches of the vine are extended from tree to tree, exhibiting beautiful festoons of real leaves, tendrils, and swelling clusters a foot long. By this oeconomy the ground of the inclosure is spared for corn, grass, or any other production. The trees commonly planted for the purpose of sustaining the vines, are maple, elm, and aller, with which last the banks of the Arno abound. [It would have been still more for the advantage of the Country and the Prospect, if instead of these they had planted fruit trees for the purpose.] This river, which is very inconsiderable with respect to the quantity of water, would be a charming pastoral stream, if it was transparent; but it is always muddy and discoloured. About ten or a dozen miles below Florence, there are some marble quarries on the side of it, from whence the blocks are conveyed in boats, when there is water enough in the river to float them, that is after heavy rains, or the melting of the snow upon the mountains of Umbria, being part of the Apennines, from whence it takes its rise. Florence is a noble city, that still retains all the marks of a majestic capital, such as piazzas, palaces, fountains, bridges, statues, and arcades. I need not tell you that the churches here are magnificent, and adorned not only with pillars of oriental granite, porphyry, Jasper, verde antico, and other precious stones; but also with capital pieces of painting by the most eminent masters. Several of these churches, however, stand without fronts, for want of money to complete the plans. It may also appear superfluous to mention my having viewed the famous gallery of antiquities, the chapel of St. Lorenzo, the palace of Pitti, the cathedral, the baptisterium, Ponte de Trinita, with its statues, the triumphal arch, and every thing which is commonly visited in this metropolis. But all these objects having been circumstantially described by twenty different authors of travels, I shall not trouble you with a repetition of trite observations. That part of the city which stands on each side of the river, makes a very elegant appearance, to which the four bridges and the stone-quay between them, contribute in a great measure. I lodged at the widow Vanini's, an English house delightfully situated in this quarter. The landlady, who is herself a native of England, we found very obliging. The lodging-rooms are comfortable; and the entertainment is good and reasonable. There is a considerable number of fashionable people at Florence, and many of them in good circumstances. They affect a gaiety in their dress, equipage, and conversation; but stand very much on their punctilio with strangers; and will not, without great reluctance, admit into their assemblies any lady of another country, whose noblesse is not ascertained by a title. This reserve is in some measure excusable among a people who are extremely ignorant of foreign customs, and who know that in their own country, every person, even the most insignificant, who has any pretensions to family, either inherits, or assumes the title of principe, conte, or marchese. With all their pride, however, the nobles of Florence are humble enough to enter into partnership with shop-keepers, and even to sell wine by retail. It is an undoubted fact, that in every palace or great house in this city, there is a little window fronting the street, provided with an iron-knocker, and over it hangs an empty flask, by way of sign-post. Thither you send your servant to buy a bottle of wine. He knocks at the little wicket, which is opened immediately by a domestic, who supplies him with what he wants, and receives the money like the waiter of any other cabaret. It is pretty extraordinary, that it should not be deemed a disparagement in a nobleman to sell half a pound of figs, or a palm of ribbon or tape, or to take money for a flask of sour wine; and yet be counted infamous to match his daughter in the family of a person who has distinguished himself in any one of the learned professions. Though Florence be tolerably populous, there seems to be very little trade of any kind in it: but the inhabitants flatter themselves with the prospect of reaping great advantage from the residence of one of the arch-dukes, for whose reception they are now repairing the palace of Pitti. I know not what the revenues of Tuscany may amount to, since the succession of the princes of Lorraine; but, under the last dukes of the Medici family, they were said to produce two millions of crowns, equal to five hundred thousand pounds sterling. These arose from a very heavy tax upon land and houses, the portions of maidens, and suits at law, besides the duties upon traffick, a severe gabelle upon the necessaries of life, and a toll upon every eatable entered into this capital. If we may believe Leti, the grand duke was then able to raise and maintain an army of forty thousand infantry, and three thousand horse; with twelve gallies, two galeasses, and twenty ships of war. I question if Tuscany can maintain at present above one half of such an armament. He that now commands the emperor's navy, consisting of a few frigates, is an Englishman, called Acton, who was heretofore captain of a ship in our East India company's service. He has lately embraced the catholic religion, and been created admiral of Tuscany. There is a tolerable opera in Florence for the entertainment of the best company, though they do not seem very attentive to the musick. Italy is certainly the native country of this art; and yet, I do not find the people in general either more musically inclined, or better provided with ears than their neighbours. Here is also a wretched troop of comedians for the burgeois, and lower class of people: but what seems most to suit the taste of all ranks, is the exhibition of church pageantry. I had occasion to see a procession, where all the noblesse of the city attended in their coaches, which filled the whole length of the great street called the Corso. It was the anniversary of a charitable institution in favour of poor maidens, a certain number of whom are portioned every year. About two hundred of these virgins walked in procession, two and two together, cloathed in violet-coloured wide gowns, with white veils on their heads, and made a very classical appearance. They were preceded and followed by an irregular mob of penitents in sack-cloth, with lighted tapers, and monks carrying crucifixes, bawling and bellowing the litanies: but the great object was a figure of the Virgin Mary, as big as the life, standing within a gilt frame, dressed in a gold stuff, with a large hoop, a great quantity of false jewels, her face painted and patched, and her hair frizzled and curled in the very extremity of the fashion. Very little regard had been paid to the image of our Saviour on the cross; but when his lady-mother appeared on the shoulders of three or four lusty friars, the whole populace fell upon their knees in the dirt. This extraordinary veneration paid to the Virgin, must have been derived originally from the French, who pique themselves on their gallantry to the fair sex. Amidst all the scenery of the Roman catholic religion, I have never yet seen any of the spectators affected at heart, or discover the least signs of fanaticism. The very disciplinants, who scourge themselves in the Holy-week, are generally peasants or parties hired for the purpose. Those of the confrairies, who have an ambition to distinguish themselves on such occasions, take care to secure their backs from the smart, by means of secret armour, either women's boddice, or quilted jackets. The confrairies are fraternities of devotees, who inlist themselves under the banners of particular saints. On days of procession they appear in a body dressed as penitents and masked, and distinguished by crosses on their habits. There is scarce an individual, whether noble or plebeian, who does not belong to one of these associations, which may be compared to the FreeMasons, Gregoreans, and Antigallicans of England. Just without one of the gates of Florence, there is a triumphal arch erected on occasion of the late emperor's making his public entry, when he succeeded to the dukedom of Tuscany: and herein the summer evenings, the quality resort to take the air in their coaches. Every carriage stops, and forms a little separate conversazione. The ladies sit within, and the cicisbei stand on the foot-boards, on each side of the coach, entertaining them with their discourse. It would be no unpleasant inquiry to trace this sort of gallantry to its original, and investigate all its progress. The Italians, having been accused of jealousy, were resolved to wipe off the reproach, and, seeking to avoid it for the future, have run into the other extreme. I know it is generally supposed that the custom of choosing cicisbei, was calculated to prevent the extinction of families, which would otherwise often happen in consequence of marriages founded upon interest, without any mutual affection in the contracting parties. How far this political consideration may have weighed against the jealous and vindictive temper of the Italians, I will not pretend to judge: but, certain it is, every married lady in this country has her cicisbeo, or servente, who attends her every where, and on all occasions; and upon whose privileges the husband dares not encroach, without incurring the censure and ridicule of the whole community. For my part, I would rather be condemned for life to the gallies, than exercise the office of a cicisbeo, exposed to the intolerable caprices and dangerous resentment of an Italian virago. I pretend not to judge of the national character, from my own observation: but, if the portraits drawn by Goldoni in his Comedies are taken from nature, I would not hesitate to pronounce the Italian women the most haughty, insolent, capricious, and revengeful females on the face of the earth. Indeed their resentments are so cruelly implacable, and contain such a mixture of perfidy, that, in my opinion, they are very unfit subjects for comedy, whose province it is, rather to ridicule folly than to stigmatize such atrocious vice. You have often heard it said, that the purity of the Italian is to be found in the lingua Toscana, and bocca Romana. Certain it is, the pronunciation of the Tuscans is disagreeably guttural: the letters C and G they pronounce with an aspiration, which hurts the ear of an Englishman; and is I think rather rougher than that of the X, in Spanish. It sounds as if the speaker had lost his palate. I really imagined the first man I heard speak in Pisa, had met with that misfortune in the course of his amours. One of the greatest curiosities you meet with in Italy, is the Improvisatore; such is the name given to certain individuals, who have the surprising talent of reciting verses extempore, on any subject you propose. Mr. Corvesi, my landlord, has a son, a Franciscan friar, who is a great genius in this way. When the subject is given, his brother tunes his violin to accompany him, and he begins to rehearse in recitative, with wonderful fluency and precision. Thus he will, at a minute's warning, recite two or three hundred verses, well turned, and well adapted, and generally mingled with an elegant compliment to the company. The Italians are so fond of poetry, that many of them, have the best part of Ariosto, Tasso, and Petrarch, by heart; and these are the great sources from which the Improvisatori draw their rhimes, cadence, and turns of expression. But, lest you should think there is neither rhime nor reason in protracting this tedious epistle, I shall conclude it with the old burden of my song, that I am always--Your affectionate humble servant. LETTER XXVIII NICE, February 5, 1765. DEAR SIR,--Your entertaining letter of the fifth of last month, was a very charitable and a very agreeable donation: but your suspicion is groundless. I assure you, upon my honour, I have no share whatever in any of the disputes which agitate the public: nor do I know any thing of your political transactions, except what I casually see in one of your newspapers, with the perusal of which I am sometimes favoured by our consul at Villefranche. You insist upon my being more particular in my remarks on what I saw at Florence, and I shall obey the injunction. The famous gallery which contains the antiquities, is the third story of a noble stone-edifice, built in the form of the Greek Pi, the upper part fronting the river Arno, and one of the legs adjoining to the ducal-palace, where the courts of justice are held. As the house of Medici had for some centuries resided in the palace of Pitti, situated on the other side of the river, a full mile from these tribunals, the architect Vasari, who planned the new edifice, at the same time contrived a corridore, or covered passage, extending from the palace of Pitti along one of the bridges, to the gallery of curiosities, through which the grand-duke passed unseen, when he was disposed either to amuse himself with his antiquities, or to assist at his courts of judicature: but there is nothing very extraordinary either in the contrivance or execution of this corridore. If I resided in Florence I would give something extraordinary for permission to walk every day in the gallery, which I should much prefer to the Lycaeum, the groves of Academus, or any porch or philosophical alley in Athens or in Rome. Here by viewing the statues and busts ranged on each side, I should become acquainted with the faces of all the remarkable personages, male and female, of antiquity, and even be able to trace their different characters from the expression of their features. This collection is a most excellent commentary upon the Roman historians, particularly Suetonius and Dion Cassius. There was one circumstance that struck me in viewing the busts of Caracalla, both here and in the Capitol at Rome; there was a certain ferocity in the eyes, which seemed to contradict the sweetness of the other features, and remarkably justified the epithet Caracuyl, by which he was distinguished by the antient inhabitants of North-Britain. In the language of the Highlanders caracuyl signifies cruel eye, as we are given to understand by the ingenious editor of Fingal, who seems to think that Caracalla is no other than the Celtic word, adapted to the pronunciation of the Romans: but the truth is, Caracalla was the name of a Gaulish vestment, which this prince affected to wear; and hence he derived that surname. The Caracuyl of the Britons, is the same as the upodra idon of the Greeks, which Homer has so often applied to his Scolding Heroes. I like the Bacchanalian, chiefly for the fine drapery. The wind, occasioned by her motion, seems to have swelled and raised it from the parts of the body which it covers. There is another gay Bacchanalian, in the attitude of dancing, crowned with ivy, holding in her right hand a bunch of grapes, and in her left the thyrsus. The head of the celebrated Flora is very beautiful: the groupe of Cupid and Psyche, however, did not give me all the pleasure I expected from it. Of all the marbles that appear in the open gallery, the following are those I most admire. Leda with the Swan; as for Jupiter, in this transformation, he has much the appearance of a goose. I have not seen any thing tamer; but the sculptor has admirably shewn his art in representing Leda's hand partly hid among the feathers, which are so lightly touched off, that the very shape of the fingers are seen underneath. The statue of a youth, supposed to be Ganymede, is compared by the connoisseurs to the celebrated Venus, and as far as I can judge, not without reason: it is however, rather agreeable than striking, and will please a connoisseur much more than a common spectator. I know not whether it is my regard to the faculty that inhances the value of the noted Esculapius, who appears with a venerable beard of delicate workmanship. He is larger than the life, cloathed in a magnificent pallium, his left arm resting on a knotted staff, round which the snake is twined according to Ovid. Hunc modo serpentem baculum qui nexibus ambit Perspice-- Behold the snake his mystic Rod intwine. He has in his hand the fascia herbarum, and the crepidae on his feet. There is a wild-boar represented lying on one side, which I admire as a master-piece. The savageness of his appearance is finely contrasted with the case and indolence of the attitude. Were I to meet with a living boar lying with the same expression, I should be tempted to stroke his bristles. Here is an elegant bust of Antinous, the favourite of Adrian; and a beautiful head of Alexander the Great, turned on one side, with an expression of languishment and anxiety in his countenance. The virtuosi are not agreed about the circumstance in which he is represented; whether fainting with the loss of blood which he suffered in his adventure at Oxydrace; or languishing with the fever contracted by bathing in the Cydnus; or finally complaining to his father Jove, that there were no other worlds for him to conquer. The kneeling Narcissus is a striking figure, and the expression admirable. The two Bacchi are perfectly well executed; but (to my shame be it spoken) I prefer to the antique that which is the work of Michael Angelo Buonaroti, concerning which the story is told which you well know. The artist having been blamed by some pretended connoisseurs, for not imitating the manner of the ancients, is said to have privately finished this Bacchus, and buried it, after having broke off an arm, which he kept as a voucher. The statue, being dug up by accident, was allowed by the best judges, to be a perfect antique; upon which Buonaroti produced the arm, and claimed his own work. Bianchi looks upon this as a fable; but owns that Vasari tells such another of a child cut in marble by the same artist, which being carried to Rome, and kept for some time under ground, was dug up as an antique, and sold for a great deal of money. I was likewise attracted by the Morpheus in touchstone, which is described by Addison, who, by the bye, notwithstanding all his taste, has been convicted by Bianchi of several gross blunders in his account of this gallery. With respect to the famous Venus Pontia, commonly called de Medicis, which was found at Tivoli, and is kept in a separate apartment called the Tribuna, I believe I ought to be intirely silent, or at least conceal my real sentiments, which will otherwise appear equally absurd and presumptuous. It must be want of taste that prevents my feeling that enthusiastic admiration with which others are inspired at sight of this statue: a statue which in reputation equals that of Cupid by Praxiteles, which brought such a concourse of strangers of old to the little town of Thespiae. I cannot help thinking that there is no beauty in the features of Venus; and that the attitude is aukward and out of character. It is a bad plea to urge that the antients and we differ in the ideas of beauty. We know the contrary, from their medals, busts, and historians. Without all doubt, the limbs and proportions of this statue are elegantly formed, and accurately designed, according to the nicest rules of symmetry and proportion; and the back parts especially are executed so happily, as to excite the admiration of the most indifferent spectator. One cannot help thinking it is the very Venus of Cnidos by Praxiteles, which Lucian describes. "Hercle quanta dorsi concinnitas! ut exuberantes lumbi amplexantes manus implent! quam scite circumductae clunium pulpae in se rotundantur, neque tenues nimis ipsis ossibus adstrictae, neque in immensam effusae Pinguedinem!" That the statue thus described was not the Venus de Medicis, would appear from the Greek inscription on the base, KLEOMENIS APPOLLODOROI ATHINAIOS EPOESEI. Cleomenes filius Apollodori fecit; did we not know that this inscription is counted spurious, and that instead of EPOESEI, it should be EPOIESE. This, however, is but a frivolous objection, as we have seen many inscriptions undoubtedly antique, in which the orthography is false, either from the ignorance or carelessness of the sculptor. Others suppose, not without reason, that this statue is a representation of the famous Phryne, the courtesan of Athens, who at the celebration of the Eleusinian games, exhibited herself coming out of the bath, naked, to the eyes of the whole Athenian people. I was much pleased with the dancing faun; and still better with the Lotti, or wrestlers, the attitudes of which are beautifully contrived to shew the different turns of the limbs, and the swelling of the muscles: but, what pleased me best of all the statues in the Tribuna was the Arrotino, commonly called the Whetter, and generally supposed to represent a slave, who in the act of whetting a knife, overhears the conspiracy of Catiline. You know he is represented on one knee; and certain it is, I never saw such an expression of anxious attention, as appears in his countenance. But it is not mingled with any marks of surprise, such as could not fail to lay hold on a man who overhears by accident a conspiracy against the state. The marquis de Maffei has justly observed that Sallust, in his very circumstantial detail of that conspiracy, makes no mention of any such discovery. Neither does it appear that the figure is in the act of whetting, the stone which he holds in one hand being rough and unequal no ways resembling a whetstone. Others alledge it represents Milico, the freedman of Scaevinus, who conspired against the life of Nero, and gave his poignard to be whetted to Milico, who presented it to the emperor, with an account of the conspiracy: but the attitude and expression will by no means admit of this interpretation. Bianchi, [This antiquarian is now imprisoned for Life, for having robbed the Gallery and then set it on fire.] who shows the gallery, thinks the statue represents the augur Attius Navius, who cut a stone with a knife, at the command of Tarquinius Priscus. This conjecture seems to be confirmed by a medallion of Antoninus Pius, inserted by Vaillant among his Numismata Prestantiora, on which is delineated nearly such a figure as this in question, with the following legend. "Attius Navius genuflexus ante Tarquinium Priscum cotem cultro discidit." He owns indeed that in the statue, the augur is not distinguished either by his habit or emblems; and he might have added, neither is the stone a cotes. For my own part, I think neither of these three opinions is satisfactory, though the last is very ingenious. Perhaps the figure allude to a private incident, which never was recorded in any history. Among the great number of pictures in this Tribuna, I was most charmed with the Venus by Titian, which has a sweetness of expression and tenderness of colouring, not to be described. In this apartment, they reckon three hundred pieces, the greatest part by the best masters, particularly by Raphael, in the three manners by which he distinguished himself at different periods of his life. As for the celebrated statue of the hermaphrodite, which we find in another room, I give the sculptor credit for his ingenuity in mingling the sexes in the composition; but it is, at best, no other than a monster in nature, which I never had any pleasure in viewing: nor, indeed, do I think there was much talent required in representing a figure with the head and breasts of a woman, and all the other parts of the body masculine. There is such a profusion of curiosities in this celebrated musaeum; statues, busts, pictures, medals, tables inlaid in the way of marquetry, cabinets adorned with precious stones, jewels of all sorts, mathematical instruments, antient arms and military machines, that the imagination is bewildered, and a stranger of a visionary turn, would be apt to fancy himself in a palace of the fairies, raised and adorned by the power of inchantment. In one of the detached apartments, I saw the antependium of the altar, designed for the famous chapel of St. Lorenzo. It is a curious piece of architecture, inlaid with coloured marble and precious stones, so as to represent an infinite variety of natural objects. It is adorned with some crystal pillars, with capitals of beaten gold. The second story of the building is occupied by a great number of artists employed in this very curious work of marquetry, representing figures with gems and different kinds of coloured marble, for the use of the emperor. The Italians call it pietre commesse, a sort of inlaying with stones, analogous to the fineering of cabinets in wood. It is peculiar to Florence, and seems to be still more curious than the Mosaic work, which the Romans have brought to great perfection. The cathedral of Florence is a great Gothic building, encrusted on the outside with marble; it is remarkable for nothing but its cupola, which is said to have been copied by the architect of St. Peter's at Rome, and for its size, which is much greater than that of any other church in Christendom. [In this cathedral is the Tomb of Johannes Acutus Anglus, which a man would naturally interpret as John Sharp; but his name was really Hawkwood, which the Italians have corrupted into Acut. He was a celebrated General or Condottiere who arrived in Italy at the head of four thousand soldiers of fortune, mostly Englishmen who had served with him in the army of King Edward III., and were dismissed at the Peace of Bontigny. Hawkwood greatly distinguished himself in Italy by his valour and conduct, and died a very old man in the Florentine service. He was the son of a Tanner in Essex, and had been put apprentice to a Taylor.] The baptistery, which stands by it, was an antient temple, said to be dedicated to Mars. There are some good statues of marble within; and one or two of bronze on the outside of the doors; but it is chiefly celebrated for the embossed work of its brass gates, by Lorenzo Ghiberti, which Buonaroti used to say, deserved to be made the gates of Paradise. I viewed them with pleasure: but still I retained a greater veneration for those of Pisa, which I had first admired: a preference which either arises from want of taste, or from the charm of novelty, by which the former were recommended to my attention. Those who would have a particular detail of every thing worth seeing at Florence, comprehending churches, libraries, palaces, tombs, statues, pictures, fountains, bridge, etc. may consult Keysler, who is so laboriously circumstantial in his descriptions, that I never could peruse them, without suffering the headache, and recollecting the old observation, that the German genius lies more in the back than in the brain. I was much disappointed in the chapel of St. Lorenzo. Notwithstanding the great profusion of granite, porphyry, jasper, verde antico, lapis-lazuli, and other precious stones, representing figures in the way of marquetry, I think the whole has a gloomy effect. These pietre commesse are better calculated for cabinets, than for ornaments to great buildings, which ought to be large masses proportioned to the greatness of the edifice. The compartments are so small, that they produce no effect in giving the first impression when one enters the place; except to give an air of littleness to the whole, just as if a grand saloon was covered with pictures painted in miniature. If they have as little regard to proportion and perspective, when they paint the dome, which is not yet finished, this chapel will, in my opinion, remain a monument of ill taste and extravagance. The court of the palace of Pitti is formed by three sides of an elegant square, with arcades all round, like the palace of Holyrood house at Edinburgh; and the rustic work, which constitutes the lower part of the building, gives it an air of strength and magnificence. In this court, there is a fine fountain, in which the water trickles down from above; and here is also an admirable antique statue of Hercules, inscribed LUSIPPOI ERGON, the work of Lysippus. The apartments of this palace are generally small, and many of them dark. Among the paintings the most remarkable is the Madonna de la Seggiola, by Raphael, counted one of the best coloured pieces of that great master. If I was allowed to find fault with the performance, I should pronounce it defective in dignity and sentiment. It is the expression of a peasant rather than of the mother of God. She exhibits the fondness and joy of a young woman towards her firstborn son, without that rapture of admiration which we expect to find in the Virgin Mary, while she contemplates, in the fruit of her own womb, the Saviour of mankind. In other respects, it is a fine figure, gay, agreeable, and very expressive of maternal tenderness; and the bambino is extremely beautiful. There was an English painter employed in copying this picture, and what he had done was executed with great success. I am one of those who think it very possible to imitate the best pieces in such a manner, that even the connoisseurs shall not be able to distinguish the original from the copy. After all, I do not set up for a judge in these matters, and very likely I may incur the ridicule of the virtuosi for the remarks I have made: but I am used to speak my mind freely on all subjects that fall under the cognizance of my senses; though I must as freely own, there is something more than common sense required to discover and distinguish the more delicate beauties of painting. I can safely say, however, that without any daubing at all, I am, very sincerely--Your affectionate humble servant. LETTER XXIX NICE, February 20, 1765. DEAR SIR,--Having seen all the curiosities of Florence, and hired a good travelling coach for seven weeks, at the price of seven zequines, something less than three guineas and a half, we set out post for Rome, by the way of Sienna, where we lay the first night. The country through which we passed is mountainous but agreeable. Of Sienna I can say nothing from my own observation, but that we were indifferently lodged in a house that stunk like a privy, and fared wretchedly at supper. The city is large and well built: the inhabitants pique themselves upon their politeness, and the purity of their dialect. Certain it is, some strangers reside in this place on purpose to learn the best pronunciation of the Italian tongue. The Mosaic pavement of their duomo, or cathedral, has been much admired; as well as the history of Aeneas Sylvius, afterwards pope Pius II., painted on the walls of the library, partly by Pietro Perugino, and partly by his pupil Raphael D'Urbino. Next day, at Buon Convento, where the emperor Henry VII. was poisoned by a friar with the sacramental wafer, I refused to give money to the hostler, who in revenge put two young unbroke stone-horses in the traces next to the coach, which became so unruly, that before we had gone a quarter of a mile, they and the postilion were rolling in the dust. In this situation they made such efforts to disengage themselves, and kicked with such violence, that I imagined the carriage and all our trunks would have been beaten in pieces. We leaped out of the coach, however, without sustaining any personal damage, except the fright; nor was any hurt done to the vehicle. But the horses were terribly bruised, and almost strangled, before they could be disengaged. Exasperated at the villany of the hostler, I resolved to make a complaint to the uffiziale or magistrate of the place. I found him wrapped in an old, greasy, ragged, great-coat, sitting in a wretched apartment, without either glass, paper, or boards in the windows; and there was no sort of furniture but a couple of broken chairs and a miserable truckle-bed. He looked pale, and meagre, and had more the air of a half-starved prisoner than of a magistrate. Having heard my complaint, he came forth into a kind of outward room or bellfrey, and rung a great bell with his own hand. In consequence of this signal, the postmaster came up stairs, and I suppose he was the first man in the place, for the uffiziale stood before him cap-in-hand, and with great marks of humble respect repeated the complaint I had made. This man assured me, with an air of conscious importance, that he himself had ordered the hostler to supply me with those very horses, which were the best in his stable; and that the misfortune which happened was owing to the misconduct of the fore-postilion, who did not keep the fore-horses to a proper speed proportioned to the mettle of the other two. As he took the affair upon himself, and I perceived had an ascendancy over the magistrate, I contented myself with saying, I was certain the two horses had been put to the coach on purpose, either to hurt or frighten us; and that since I could not have justice here I would make a formal complaint to the British minister at Florence. In passing through the street to the coach, which was by this time furnished with fresh horses, I met the hostler, and would have caned him heartily; but perceiving my intention, he took to his heels and vanished. Of all the people I have ever seen, the hostlers, postilions, and other fellows hanging about the post-houses in Italy, are the most greedy, impertinent, and provoking. Happy are those travellers who have phlegm enough to disregard their insolence and importunity: for this is not so disagreeable as their revenge is dangerous. An English gentleman at Florence told me, that one of those fellows, whom he had struck for his impertinence, flew at him with a long knife, and he could hardly keep him at sword's point. All of them wear such knives, and are very apt to use them on the slightest provocation. But their open attacks are not so formidable as their premeditated schemes of revenge; in the prosecution of which the Italians are equally treacherous and cruel. This night we passed at a place called Radicofani, a village and fort, situated on the top of a very high mountain. The inn stands still lower than the town. It was built at the expence of the last grand-duke of Tuscany; is very large, very cold, and uncomfortable. One would imagine it was contrived for coolness, though situated so high, that even in the midst of summer, a traveller would be glad to have a fire in his chamber. But few, or none of them have fireplaces, and there is not a bed with curtains or tester in the house. All the adjacent country is naked and barren. On the third day we entered the pope's territories, some parts of which are delightful. Having passed Aqua-Pendente, a beggarly town, situated on the top of a rock, from whence there is a romantic cascade of water, which gives it the name, we travelled along the side of the lake Bolsena, a beautiful piece of water about thirty miles in circuit, with two islands in the middle, the banks covered with noble plantations of oak and cypress. The town of Bolsena standing near the ruins of the antient Volsinium, which was the birth-place of Sejanus, is a paultry village; and Montefiascone, famous for its wine, is a poor, decayed town in this neighbourhood, situated on the side of a hill, which, according to the author of the Grand Tour, the only directory I had along with me, is supposed to be the Soracte of the ancients. If we may believe Horace, Soracte was visible from Rome: for, in his ninth ode, addressed to Thaliarchus, he says, Vides, ut alta stet nive candidum Soracte-- You see how deeply wreathed with snow Soracte lifts his hoary head, but, in order to see Montefiascone, his eyesight must have penetrated through the Mons Cyminus, at the foot of which now stands the city of Viterbo. Pliny tells us, that Soracte was not far from Rome, haud procul ab urbe Roma; but Montefiascone is fifty miles from this city. And Desprez, in his notes upon Horace, says it is now called Monte S. Oreste. Addison tells us he passed by it in the Campania. I could not without indignation reflect upon the bigotry of Mathilda, who gave this fine country to the see of Rome, under the dominion of which no country was ever known to prosper. About half way between Montefiascone and Viterbo, one of our fore-wheels flew off, together with a large splinter of the axle-tree; and if one of the postilions had not by great accident been a remarkably ingenious fellow, we should have been put to the greatest inconvenience, as there was no town, or even house, within several miles. I mention this circumstance, by way of warning to other travellers, that they may provide themselves with a hammer and nails, a spare iron-pin or two, a large knife, and bladder of grease, to be used occasionally in case of such misfortune. The mountain of Viterbo is covered with beautiful plantations and villas belonging to the Roman nobility, who come hither to make the villegiatura in summer. Of the city of Viterbo I shall say nothing, but that it is the capital of that country which Mathilda gave to the Roman see. The place is well built, adorned with public fountains, and a great number of churches and convents; yet far from being populous, the whole number of inhabitants, not exceeding fifteen thousand. The post-house is one of the worst inns I ever entered. After having passed this mountain, the Cyminus of the antients, we skirted part of the lake, which is now called de Vico, and whose banks afford the most agreeable rural prospects of hill and vale, wood, glade and water, shade and sun-shine. A few other very inconsiderable places we passed, and descended into the Campania of Rome, which is almost a desert. The view of this country in its present situation, cannot but produce emotions of pity and indignation in the mind of every person who retains any idea of its antient cultivation and fertility. It is nothing but a naked withered down, desolate and dreary, almost without inclosure, corn-field, hedge, tree, shrub, house, hut, or habitation; exhibiting here and there the ruins of an antient castellum, tomb, or temple, and in some places the remains of a Roman via. I had heard much of these antient pavements, and was greatly disappointed when I saw them. The Via Cassia or Cymina is paved with broad, solid, flint-stones, which must have greatly incommoded the feet of horses that travelled upon it as well as endangered the lives of the riders from the slipperiness of the pavement: besides, it is so narrow that two modern carriages could not pass one another upon it, without the most imminent hazard of being overturned. I am still of opinion that we excel the ancient Romans in understanding the conveniences of life. The Grand Tour says, that within four miles of Rome you see a tomb on the roadside, said to be that of Nero, with sculpture in basso-relievo at both ends. I did see such a thing more like a common grave-stone, than the tomb of an emperor. But we are informed by Suetonius, that the dead body of Nero, who slew himself at the villa of his freedman, was by the care of his two nurses and his concubine Atta, removed to the sepulchre of the Gens Domitia, immediately within the Porta del Popolo, on your left hand as you enter Rome, precisely on the spot where now stands the church of S. Maria del Popolo. His tomb was even distinguished by an epitaph, which has been preserved by Gruterus. Giacomo Alberici tells us very gravely in his History of the Church, that a great number of devils, who guarded the bones of this wicked emperor, took possession, in the shape of black ravens, of a walnut-tree, which grew upon the spot; from whence they insulted every passenger, until pope Paschal II., in consequence of a solemn fast and a revelation, went thither in procession with his court and cardinals, cut down the tree, and burned it to ashes, which, with the bones of Nero, were thrown into the Tyber: then he consecrated an altar on the place, where afterwards the church was built. You may guess what I felt at first sight of the city of Rome, which, notwithstanding all the calamities it has undergone, still maintains an august and imperial appearance. It stands on the farther side of the Tyber, which we crossed at the Ponte Molle, formerly called Pons Milvius, about two miles from the gate by which we entered. This bridge was built by Aemilius Censor, whose name it originally bore. It was the road by which so many heroes returned with conquest to their country; by which so many kings were led captive to Rome; and by which the ambassadors of so many kingdoms and states approached the seat of empire, to deprecate the wrath, to sollicit the friendship, or sue for the protection of the Roman people. It is likewise famous for the defeat and death of Maxentius, who was here overcome by Constantine the Great. The space between the bridge and Porta del Popolo, on the right-hand, which is now taken up with gardens and villas, was part of the antient Campus Martius, where the comitiae were held; and where the Roman people inured themselves to all manner of exercises: it was adorned with porticos, temples, theatres, baths, circi, basilicae, obelisks, columns, statues, and groves. Authors differ in their opinions about the extent of it; but as they all agree that it contained the Pantheon, the Circus Agonis, now the Piazza Navona, the Bustum and Mausoleum Augusti, great part of the modern city must be built upon the ancient Campus Martius. The highway that leads from the bridge to the city, is part of the Via Flaminia, which extended as far as Rimini; and is well paved, like a modern street. Nothing of the antient bridge remains but the piles; nor is there any thing in the structure of this, or of the other five Roman bridges over the Tyber, that deserves attention. I have not seen any bridge in France or Italy, comparable to that of Westminster either in beauty, magnificence, or solidity; and when the bridge at Black-Friars is finished, it will be such a monument of architecture as all the world cannot parallel. As for the Tyber, it is, in comparison with the Thames, no more than an inconsiderable stream, foul, deep, and rapid. It is navigable by small boats, barks, and lighters; and, for the conveniency of loading and unloading them, there is a handsome quay by the new custom-house, at the Porto di Ripetta, provided with stairs of each side, and adorned with an elegant fountain, that yields abundance of excellent water. We are told that the bed of this river has been considerably raised by the rubbish of old Rome, and this is the reason usually given for its being so apt to overflow its banks. A citizen of Rome told me, that a friend of his lately digging to lay the foundation of a new house in the lower part of the city, near the bank of the river, discovered the pavement of an antient street, at the depth of thirty-nine feet from the present surface of the earth. He therefore concluded that modern Rome is near forty feet higher in this place, than the site of the antient city, and that the bed of the river is raised in proportion; but this is altogether incredible. Had the bed of the Tyber been antiently forty feet lower at Rome, than it is at present, there must have been a fall or cataract in it immediately above this tract, as it is not pretended that the bed of it is raised in any part above the city; otherwise such an elevation would have obstructed its course, and then it would have overflowed the whole Campania. There is nothing extraordinary in its present overflowings: they frequently happened of old, and did great mischief to the antient city. Appian, Dio, and other historians, describe an inundation of the Tiber immediately after the death of Julius Caesar, which inundation was occasioned by the sudden melting of a great quantity of snow upon the Apennines. This calamity is recorded by Horace in his ode to Augustus. Vidimus flavum Tiberim retortis Littore Etrusco violenter undis, Ire dejectum monumenta regis, Templaque Vestae: Iliae dum se nimium querenti, Jactat ultorem; vagus et sinistra Labitur ripa, Jove non probante Uxorius Amnis. Livy expressly says, "Ita abundavit Tiberis, ut Ludi Apollinares, circo inundato, extra portam Collinam ad aedem Erycinae Veneris parati sint," "There was such an inundation of the Tiber that, the Circus being overflowed, the Ludi Appollinares were exhibited without the gate Collina, hard by the temple of Venus Erycina." To this custom of transferring the Ludi Appollinares to another place where the Tyber had overflowed the Circus Maximus, Ovid alludes in his Fasti. Altera gramineo spectabis equiriacampo Quem Tiberis curvis in latus urget aquis, Qui tamen ejecta si forte tenebitur unda, Coelius accipiet pulverulentus equos. Another race thy view shall entertain Where bending Tiber skirts the grassy plain; Or should his vagrant stream that plain o'erflow, The Caelian hill the dusty course will show. The Porta del Popolo (formerly, Flaminia,) by which we entered Rome, is an elegant piece of architecture, adorned with marble columns and statues, executed after the design of Buonaroti. Within-side you find yourself in a noble piazza, from whence three of the principal streets of Rome are detached. It is adorned with the famous Aegyptian obelisk, brought hither from the Circus Maximus, and set up by the architect Dominico Fontana in the pontificate of Sixtus V. Here is likewise a beautiful fountain designed by the same artist; and at the beginning of the two principal streets, are two very elegant churches fronting each other. Such an august entrance cannot fail to impress a stranger with a sublime idea of this venerable city. Having given our names at the gate, we repaired to the dogana, or custom-house, where our trunks and carriage were searched; and here we were surrounded by a number of servitori de piazza, offering their services with the most disagreeable importunity. Though I told them several times I had no occasion for any, three of them took possession of the coach, one mounting before and two of them behind; and thus we proceeded to the Piazza d'Espagna, where the person lived to whose house I was directed. Strangers that come to Rome seldom put up at public inns, but go directly to lodging houses, of which there is great plenty in this quarter. The Piazza d'Espagna is open, airy, and pleasantly situated in a high part of the city immediately under the Colla Pinciana, and adorned with two fine fountains. Here most of the English reside: the apartments are generally commodious and well furnished; and the lodgers are well supplied with provisions and all necessaries of life. But, if I studied oeconomy, I would choose another part of the town than the Piazza d'Espagna, which is, besides, at a great distance from the antiquities. For a decent first floor and two bed-chambers on the second, I payed no more than a scudo (five shillings) per day. Our table was plentifully furnished by the landlord for two and thirty pauls, being equal to sixteen shillings. I hired a town-coach at the rate of fourteen pauls, or seven shillings a day; and a servitore di piazza for three pauls, or eighteen-pence. The coachman has also an allowance of two pauls a day. The provisions at Rome are reasonable and good, the vitella mongana, however, which is the most delicate veal I ever tasted, is very dear, being sold for two pauls, or a shilling, the pound. Here are the rich wines of Montepulciano, Montefiascone, and Monte di Dragone; but what we commonly drink at meals is that of Orvieto, a small white wine, of an agreeable flavour. Strangers are generally advised to employ an antiquarian to instruct them in all the curiosities of Rome; and this is a necessary expence, when a person wants to become a connoisseur in painting, statuary, and architecture. For my own part I had no such ambition. I longed to view the remains of antiquity by which this metropolis is distinguished; and to contemplate the originals of many pictures and statues, which I had admired in prints and descriptions. I therefore chose a servant, who was recommended to me as a sober, intelligent fellow, acquainted with these matters: at the same time I furnished myself with maps and plans of antient and modern Rome, together with the little manual, called, Itinerario istruttivo per ritrovare con facilita tutte le magnificenze di Roma e di alcune citta', e castelli suburbani. But I found still more satisfaction in perusing the book in three volumes, intitled, Roma antica, e moderna, which contains a description of everything remarkable in and about the city, illustrated with a great number of copper-plates, and many curious historical annotations. This directory cost me a zequine; but a hundred zequines will not purchase all the books and prints which have been published at Rome on these subjects. Of these the most celebrated are the plates of Piranesi, who is not only an ingenious architect and engraver, but also a learned antiquarian; though he is apt to run riot in his conjectures; and with regard to the arts of antient Rome, has broached some doctrines, which he will find it very difficult to maintain. Our young gentlemen who go to Rome will do well to be upon their guard against a set of sharpers, (some of them of our own country,) who deal in pictures and antiques, and very often impose upon the uninformed stranger, by selling him trash, as the productions of the most celebrated artists. The English are more than any other foreigners exposed to this imposition. They are supposed to have more money to throw away; and therefore a greater number of snares are laid for them. This opinion of their superior wealth they take a pride in confirming, by launching out into all manner of unnecessary expence: but, what is still more dangerous, the moment they set foot in Italy, they are seized with the ambition of becoming connoisseurs in painting, musick, statuary, and architecture; and the adventurers of this country do not fail to flatter this weakness for their own advantage. I have seen in different parts of Italy, a number of raw boys, whom Britain seemed to have poured forth on purpose to bring her national character into contempt, ignorant, petulant, rash, and profligate, without any knowledge or experience of their own, without any director to improve their understanding, or superintend their conduct. One engages in play with an infamous gamester, and is stripped perhaps in the very first partie: another is pillaged by an antiquated cantatrice; a third is bubbled by a knavish antiquarian; and a fourth is laid under contribution by a dealer in pictures. Some turn fiddlers, and pretend to compose: but all of them talk familiarly of the arts, and return finished connoisseurs and coxcombs, to their own country. The most remarkable phaenomenon of this kind, which I have seen, is a boy of seventy-two, now actually travelling through Italy, for improvement, under the auspices of another boy of twenty-two. When you arrive at Rome, you receive cards from all your country-folks in that city: they expect to have the visit returned next day, when they give orders not to be at home; and you never speak to one another in the sequel. This is a refinement in hospitality and politeness, which the English have invented by the strength of their own genius, without any assistance either from France, Italy, or Lapland. No Englishman above the degree of a painter or cicerone frequents any coffee-house at Rome; and as there are no public diversions, except in carnival-time, the only chance you have of seeing your compatriots is either in visiting the curiosities, or at a conversazione. The Italians are very scrupulous in admitting foreigners, except those who are introduced as people of quality: but if there happens to be any English lady of fashion at Rome, she generally keeps an assembly, to which the British subjects resort. In my next, I shall communicate, without ceremony or affectation, what further remarks I have made at Rome, without any pretence, however, to the character of a connoisseur, which, without all doubt, would fit very aukwardly upon,--Dear Sir, Your Friend and Servant. LETTER XXX NICE, February 28, 1765. DEAR SIR,--Nothing can be more agreeable to the eyes of a stranger, especially in the heats of summer, than the great number of public fountains that appear in every part of Rome, embellished with all the ornaments of sculpture, and pouring forth prodigious quantities of cool, delicious water, brought in aqueducts from different lakes, rivers, and sources, at a considerable distance from the city. These works are the remains of the munificence and industry of the antient Romans, who were extremely delicate in the article of water: but, however, great applause is also due to those beneficent popes who have been at the expence of restoring and repairing those noble channels of health, pleasure, and convenience. This great plenty of water, nevertheless, has not induced the Romans to be cleanly. Their streets, and even their palaces, are disgraced with filth. The noble Piazza Navona, is adorned with three or four fountains, one of which is perhaps the most magnificent in Europe, and all of them discharge vast streams of water: but, notwithstanding this provision, the piazza is almost as dirty, as West Smithfield, where the cattle are sold in London. The corridores, arcades, and even staircases of their most elegant palaces, are depositories of nastiness, and indeed in summer smell as strong as spirit of hartshorn. I have a great notion that their ancestors were not much more cleanly. If we consider that the city and suburbs of Rome, in the reign of Claudius, contained about seven millions of inhabitants, a number equal at least to the sum total of all the souls in England; that great part of antient Rome was allotted to temples, porticos, basilicae, theatres, thermae, circi, public and private walks and gardens, where very few, if any, of this great number lodged; that by far the greater part of those inhabitants were slaves and poor people, who did not enjoy the conveniencies of life; and that the use of linen was scarce known; we must naturally conclude they were strangely crouded together, and that in general they were a very frowzy generation. That they were crouded together appears from the height of their houses, which the poet Rutilius compared to towers made for scaling heaven. In order to remedy this inconvenience, Augustus Caesar published a decree, that for the future no houses should be built above seventy feet high, which, at a moderate computation, might make six stories. But what seems to prove, beyond all dispute, that the antient Romans were dirty creatures, are these two particulars. Vespasian laid a tax upon urine and ordure, on pretence of being at a great expence in clearing the streets from such nuisances; an imposition which amounted to about fourteen pence a year for every individual; and when Heliogabalus ordered all the cobwebs of the city and suburbs to be collected, they were found to weigh ten thousand pounds. This was intended as a demonstration of the great number of inhabitants; but it was a proof of their dirt, rather than of their populosity. I might likewise add, the delicate custom of taking vomits at each other's houses, when they were invited to dinner, or supper, that they might prepare their stomachs for gormandizing; a beastly proof of their nastiness as well as gluttony. Horace, in his description of the banquet of Nasiedenus, says, when the canopy, under which they sat, fell down, it brought along with it as much dirt as is raised by a hard gale of wind in dry weather. --trahentia pulveris atri, Quantum non aquilo Campanis excitat agris. Such clouds of dust revolving in its train As Boreas whirls along the level plain. I might observe, that the streets were often encumbered with the putrefying carcasses of criminals, who had been dragged through them by the heels, and precipitated from the Scalae Gemoniae, or Tarpeian rock, before they were thrown into the Tyber, which was the general receptacle of the cloaca maxima and all the filth of Rome: besides, the bodies of all those who made away with themselves, without sufficient cause; of such as were condemned for sacrilege, or killed by thunder, were left unburned and unburied, to rot above ground. I believe the moderns retain more of the customs of antient Romans, than is generally imagined. When I first saw the infants at the enfans trouves in Paris, so swathed with bandages, that the very sight of them made my eyes water, I little dreamed, that the prescription of the antients could be pleaded for this custom, equally shocking and absurd: but in the Capitol at Rome, I met with the antique statue of a child swaddled exactly in the same manner; rolled up like an Aegyptian mummy from the feet. The circulation of the blood, in such a case, must be obstructed on the whole surface of the body; and nothing be at liberty but the head, which is the only part of the child that ought to be confined. Is it not surprising that common sense should not point out, even to the most ignorant, that those accursed bandages must heat the tender infant into a fever; must hinder the action of the muscles, and the play of the joints, so necessary to health and nutrition; and that while the refluent blood is obstructed in the veins, which run on the surface of the body, the arteries, which lie deep, without the reach of compression, are continually pouring their contents into the head, where the blood meets with no resistance? The vessels of the brain are naturally lax, and the very sutures of the skull are yet unclosed. What are the consequences of this cruel swaddling? the limbs are wasted; the joints grow rickety; the brain is compressed, and a hydrocephalus, with a great head and sore eyes, ensues. I take this abominable practice to be one great cause of the bandy legs, diminutive bodies, and large heads, so frequent in the south of France, and in Italy. I was no less surprised to find the modern fashion of curling the hair, borrowed in a great measure from the coxcombs and coquettes of antiquity. I saw a bust of Nero in the gallery at Florence, the hair represented in rows of buckles, like that of a French petit-maitre, conformable to the picture drawn of him by Suetonius. Circa cultum adeo pudendum, ut coman semper in gradus formatam peregrinatione achaica, etiam pene verticem sumpserit, So very finical in his dress, that he wore his hair in the Greek fashion, curled in rows almost to the crown of his head. I was very sorry however to find that this foppery came from Greece. As for Otho, he wore a galericulum, or tour, on account of thin hair, propter raritatem capillorum. He had no right to imitate the example of Julius Caesar, who concealed his bald head with a wreath of laurel. But there is a bust in the Capitol of Julia Pia, the second wife of Septimius Severus, with a moveable peruke, dressed exactly in the fashionable mode, with this difference, that there is no part of it frizzled; nor is there any appearance of pomatum and powder. These improvements the beau-monde have borrowed from the natives of the Cape of Good Hope. Modern Rome does not cover more than one-third of the space within the walls; and those parts that were most frequented of old are now intirely abandoned. From the Capitol to the Coliseo, including the Forum Romanum and Boarium, there is nothing intire but one or two churches, built with the fragments of ancient edifices. You descend from the Capitol between the remaining pillars of two temples, the pedestals and part of the shafts sunk in the rubbish: then passing through the triumphal arch of Septimius Severus, you proceed along the foot of Mons Palatinus, which stands on your right hand, quite covered with the ruins of the antient palace belonging to the Roman emperors, and at the foot of it, there are some beautiful detached pillars still standing. On the left you see the remains of the Templum Pacis, which seems to have been the largest and most magnificent of all the temples in Rome. It was built and dedicated by the emperor Vespasian, who brought into it all the treasure and precious vessels which he found in the temple of Jerusalem. The columns of the portico he removed from Nero's golden house, which he levelled with the ground. This temple was likewise famous for its library, mentioned by Aulus Gellius, Further on, is the arch of Constantine on the right, a most noble piece of architecture, almost entire; with the remains of the Meta Sudans before it; and fronting you, the noble ruins of that vast amphitheatre, called the Colossaeum, now Coliseo, which has been dismantled and dilapidated by the Gothic popes and princes of modern Rome, to build and adorn their paultry palaces. Behind the amphitheatre were the thermae of the same emperor Titus Vespasian. In the same quarter was the Circus Maximus; and the whole space from hence on both sides, to the walls of Rome, comprehending above twice as much ground as the modern city, is almost covered with the monuments of antiquity. I suppose there is more concealed below ground than appears above. The miserable houses, and even garden-walls of the peasants in this district, are built with these precious materials. I mean shafts and capitals of marble columns, heads, arms, legs, and mutilated trunks of statues. What pity it is that among all the remains of antiquity, at Rome, there is not one lodging-house remaining. I should be glad to know how the senators of Rome were lodged. I want to be better informed touching the cava aedium, the focus, the ara deorum penatum, the conclavia, triclinia, and caenationes; the atria where the women resided, and employed themselves in the woolen manufacture; the praetoria, which were so spacious as to become a nuisance in the reign of Augustus; and the Xysta, which were shady walks between two porticos, where the men exercised themselves in the winter. I am disgusted by the modern taste of architecture, though I am no judge of the art. The churches and palaces of these days are crowded with pretty ornaments, which distract the eye, and by breaking the design into a variety of little parts, destroy the effect of the whole. Every door and window has its separate ornaments, its moulding, frize, cornice, and tympanum; then there is such an assemblage of useless festoons, pillars, pilasters, with their architraves, entablatures, and I know not what, that nothing great or uniform remains to fill the view; and we in vain look for that simplicity of grandeur, those large masses of light and shadow, and the inexpressible EUSUINOPTON, which characterise the edifices of the antients. A great edifice, to have its full effect, ought to be isole, or detached from all others, with a large space around it: but the palaces of Rome, and indeed of all the other cities of Italy, which I have seen, are so engaged among other mean houses, that their beauty and magnificence are in a great measure concealed. Even those which face open streets and piazzas are only clear in front. The other apartments are darkened by the vicinity of ordinary houses; and their views are confined by dirty and disagreeable objects. Within the court there is generally a noble colonnade all round, and an open corridore above, but the stairs are usually narrow, steep, and high, the want of sash-windows, the dullness of their small glass lozenges, the dusty brick floors, and the crimson hangings laced with gold, contribute to give a gloomy air to their apartments; I might add to these causes, a number of Pictures executed on melancholy subjects, antique mutilated statues, busts, basso relieves, urns, and sepulchral stones, with which their rooms are adorned. It must be owned, however, there are some exceptions to this general rule. The villa of cardinal Alexander Albani is light, gay, and airy; yet the rooms are too small, and too much decorated with carving and gilding, which is a kind of gingerbread work. The apartments of one of the princes Borghese are furnished in the English taste; and in the palazzo di colonna connestabile, there is a saloon, or gallery, which, for the proportions, lights, furniture, and ornaments, is the most noble, elegant, and agreeable apartment I ever saw. It is diverting to hear all Italian expatiate upon the greatness of modern Rome. He will tell you there are above three hundred palaces in the city; that there is scarce a Roman prince, whose revenue does not exceed two hundred thousand crowns; and that Rome produces not only the most learned men, but also the most refined politicians in the universe. To one of them talking in this strain, I replied, that instead of three hundred palaces, the number did not exceed fourscore; that I had been informed, on good authority, there were not six individuals in Rome who had so much as forty thousand crowns a year, about ten thousand pounds sterling; and that to say their princes were so rich, and their politicians so refined, was, in effect, a severe satire upon them, for not employing their wealth and their talents for the advantage of their country. I asked why their cardinals and princes did not invite and encourage industrious people to settle and cultivate the Campania of Rome, which is a desert? why they did not raise a subscription to drain the marshes in the neighbourhood of the city, and thus meliorate the air, which is rendered extremely unwholsome in the summer, by putrid exhalations from those morasses? I demanded of him, why they did not contribute their wealth, and exert their political refinements, in augmenting their forces by sea and land, for the defence of their country, introducing commerce and manufactures, and in giving some consequence to their state, which was no more than a mite in the political scale of Europe? I expressed a desire to know what became of all those sums of money, inasmuch as there was hardly any circulation of gold and silver in Rome, and the very bankers, on whom strangers have their credit, make interest to pay their tradesmen's bills with paper notes of the bank of Spirito Santo? And now I am upon this subject, it may not be amiss to observe that I was strangely misled by all the books consulted about the current coin of Italy. In Tuscany, and the Ecclesiastical State, one sees nothing but zequines in gold, and pieces of two paoli, one paolo, and half a paolo, in silver. Besides these, there is a copper coin at Rome, called bajocco and mezzo bajocco. Ten bajocchi make a paolo: ten paoli make a scudo, which is an imaginary piece: two scudi make a zequine; and a French loui'dore is worth two zequines and two paoli. Rome has nothing to fear from the catholic powers, who respect it with a superstitious veneration as the metropolitan seat of their religion: but the popes will do well to avoid misunderstandings with the maritime protestant states, especially the English, who being masters of the Mediterranean, and in possession of Minorca, have it in their power at all times, to land a body of troops within four leagues of Rome, and to take the city, without opposition. Rome is surrounded with an old wall, but altogether incapable of defence. Or if it was, the circuit of the walls is so extensive, that it would require a garrison of twenty thousand men. The only appearance of a fortification in this city, is the castle of St. Angelo, situated on the further bank of the Tyber, to which there is access by a handsome bridge: but this castle, which was formerly the moles Adriani, could not hold out half a day against a battery of ten pieces of cannon properly directed. It was an expedient left to the invention of the modern Romans, to convert an ancient tomb into a citadel. It could only serve as a temporary retreat for the pope in times of popular commotion, and on other sudden emergencies; as it happened in the case of pope Clement VII. when the troops of the emperor took the city by assault; and this only, while he resided at the Vatican, from whence there is a covered gallery continued to the castle: it can never serve this purpose again, while the pontiff lives on Monte Cavallo, which is at the other end of the city. The castle of St. Angelo, howsoever ridiculous as a fortress, appears respectable as a noble monument of antiquity, and though standing in a low situation, is one of the first objects that strike the eye of a stranger approaching Rome. On the opposite side of the river, are the wretched remains of the Mausoleum Augusti, which was still more magnificent. Part of the walls is standing, and the terraces are converted into garden-ground. In viewing these ruins, I remembered Virgil's pathetic description of Marcellus, who was here intombed. Quantos ille virum, magnum mavortis ad urbem. Campus aget gemitus, vel que Tyberine, videbis Funera, cum tumulum, preter labere recentem. Along his Banks what Groans shall Tyber hear, When the fresh tomb and funeral pomp appear! The beautiful poem of Ovid de Consolatione ad Liviam, written after the ashes of Augustus and his nephew Marcellus, of Germanicus, Agrippa, and Drusus, were deposited in this mausoleum, concludes with these lines, which are extremely tender: Claudite jam Parcae nimium reserata sepulchra; Claudite, plus justo, jam domus ista patet! Ah! shut these yawning Tombs, ye sister Fates! Too long unclos'd have stood those dreary Gates! What the author said of the monument, you will be tempted to say of this letter, which I shall therefore close in the old stile, assuring you that I ever am,--Yours most affectionately. LETTER XXXI NICE, March 5, 1765 DEAR SIR,--In my last I gave you my opinion freely of the modern palaces of Italy. I shall now hazard my thoughts upon the gardens of this country, which the inhabitants extol with all the hyperboles of admiration and applause. I must acknowledge however, I have not seen the famous villas at Frascati and Tivoli, which are celebrated for their gardens and waterworks. I intended to visit these places; but was prevented by an unexpected change of weather, which deterred me from going to the country. On the last day of September the mountains of Palestrina were covered with snow; and the air became so cold at Rome, that I was forced to put on my winter cloaths. This objection continued, till I found it necessary to set out on my return to Florence. But I have seen the gardens of the Poggio Imperiale, and the Palazzo de Pitti at Florence, and those of the Vatican, of the pope's palace on Monte Cavallo, of the Villa Ludovisia, Medicea, and Pinciana, at Rome; so that I think I have some right to judge of the Italian taste in gardening. Among those I have mentioned, that of the Villa Pinciana, is the most remarkable, and the most extensive, including a space of three miles in circuit, hard by the walls of Rome, containing a variety of situations high and low, which favour all the natural embellishments one would expect to meet with in a garden, and exhibit a diversity of noble views of the city and adjacent country. In a fine extensive garden or park, an Englishman expects to see a number of groves and glades, intermixed with an agreeable negligence, which seems to be the effect of nature and accident. He looks for shady walks encrusted with gravel; for open lawns covered with verdure as smooth as velvet, but much more lively and agreeable; for ponds, canals, basins, cascades, and running streams of water; for clumps of trees, woods, and wildernesses, cut into delightful alleys, perfumed with honeysuckle and sweet-briar, and resounding with the mingled melody of all the singing birds of heaven: he looks for plats of flowers in different parts to refresh the sense, and please the fancy; for arbours, grottos, hermitages, temples, and alcoves, to shelter him from the sun, and afford him means of contemplation and repose; and he expects to find the hedges, groves, and walks, and lawns kept with the utmost order and propriety. He who loves the beauties of simple nature, and the charms of neatness will seek for them in vain amidst the groves of Italy. In the garden of the Villa Pinciana, there is a plantation of four hundred pines, which the Italians view with rapture and admiration: there is likewise a long walk, of trees extending from the garden-gate to the palace; and plenty of shade, with alleys and hedges in different parts of the ground: but the groves are neglected; the walks are laid with nothing but common mould or sand, black and dusty; the hedges are tall, thin and shabby; the trees stunted; the open ground, brown and parched, has scarce any appearance of verdure. The flat, regular alleys of evergreens are cut into fantastic figures; the flower gardens embellished with thin cyphers and flourished figures in box, while the flowers grow in rows of earthen-pots, and the ground appears as dusky as if it was covered with the cinders of a blacksmith's forge. The water, of which there is great plenty, instead of being collected in large pieces, or conveyed in little rivulets and streams to refresh the thirsty soil, or managed so as to form agreeable cascades, is squirted from fountains in different parts of the garden, through tubes little bigger than common glyster-pipes. It must be owned indeed that the fountains have their merit in the way of sculpture and architecture; and that here is a great number of statues which merit attention: but they serve only to encumber the ground, and destroy that effect of rural simplicity, which our gardens are designed to produce. In a word, here we see a variety of walks and groves and fountains, a wood of four hundred pines, a paddock with a few meagre deer, a flower-garden, an aviary, a grotto, and a fish-pond; and in spite of all these particulars, it is, in my opinion, a very contemptible garden, when compared to that of Stowe in Buckinghamshire, or even to those of Kensington and Richmond. The Italians understand, because they study, the excellencies of art; but they have no idea of the beauties of nature. This Villa Pinciana, which belongs to the Borghese family, would make a complete academy for painting and sculpture, especially for the study of antient marbles; for, exclusive of the statues and busts in the garden, and the vast collection in the different apartments, almost the whole outside of the house is covered with curious pieces in basso and alto relievo. The most masterly is that of Curtius on horseback, leaping into the gulph or opening of the earth, which is said to have closed on receiving this sacrifice. Among the exhibitions of art within the house, I was much struck with a Bacchus, and the death of Meleager, represented on an antient sepulchre. There is also an admirable statue of Silenus, with the infant Bacchus in his arms; a most beautiful gladiator; a curious Moor of black marble, with a shirt of white alabaster; a finely proportioned bull of black marble also, standing upon a table of alabaster; a black gipsey with a head, hands, and feet of brass; and the famous hermaphrodite, which vies with that of Florence: though the most curious circumstance of this article, is the mattrass executed and placed by Bernini, with such art and dexterity, that to the view, it rivals the softness of wool, and seems to retain the marks of pressure, according to the figure of the superincumbent statue. Let us likewise own, for the honour of the moderns, that the same artist has produced two fine statues, which we find among the ornaments of this villa, namely, a David with his sling in the attitude of throwing the stone at the giant Goliah; and a Daphne changing into laurel at the approach of Apollo. On the base of this figure, are the two following elegant lines, written by pope Urban VIII. in his younger years. Quisquis amans sequitur fugitivae gaudia formae, Fronde manus implet, baccas vel carpit amaras. Who pants for fleeting Beauty, vain pursuit! Shall barren Leaves obtain, or bitter fruit. I ought not to forget two exquisite antique statues of Venus, the weeping slave, and the youth pulling a thorn out of his foot. I do not pretend to give a methodical detail of the curiosities of Rome: they have been already described by different authors, who were much better qualified than I am for the talk: but you shall have what observations I made on the most remarkable objects, without method, just as they occur to my remembrance; and I protest the remarks are all my own: so that if they deserve any commendation, I claim all the merit; and if they are impertinent, I must be contented to bear all the blame. The piazza of St. Peter's church is altogether sublime. The double colonnade on each side extending in a semi-circular sweep, the stupendous Aegyptian obelisk, the two fountains, the portico, and the admirable facade of the church, form such an assemblage of magnificent objects, as cannot fail to impress the mind with awe and admiration: but the church would have produced a still greater effect, had it been detached entirely from the buildings of the Vatican, It would then have been a master-piece of architecture, complete in all its parts, intire and perfect: whereas, at present, it is no more than a beautiful member attached to a vast undigested and irregular pile of building. As to the architecture of this famous temple, I shall say nothing; neither do I pretend to describe the internal ornaments. The great picture of Mosaic work, and that of St. Peter's bark tossed by the tempest, which appear over the gate of the church, though rude in comparison with modern pieces, are nevertheless great curiosities, when considered as the work of Giotto, who flourished in the beginning of the fourteenth century. His master was Cimabue, who learned painting and architecture of the Grecian artists, who came from Constantinople, and first revived these arts in Italy. But, to return to St. Peter's, I was not at all pleased with the famous statue of the dead Christ in his mother's lap, by Michael Angelo. The figure of Christ is as much emaciated, as if he had died of a consumption: besides, there is something indelicate, not to say indecent, in the attitude and design of a man's body, stark naked, lying upon the knees of a woman. Here are some good pictures, I should rather say copies of good pictures, done in Mosaic to great perfection; particularly a St. Sebastian by Domenichino, and Michael the Archangel, from a painting of Guido Rheni. I am extremely fond of all this artist's pieces. There is a tenderness and delicacy in his manner; and his figures are all exquisitely beautiful, though his expression is often erroneous, and his attitudes are always affected and unnatural. In this very piece the archangel has all the air of a French dancing-master; and I have seen a Madonna by the same hand, I think it is in the Palazzo di Barberini, in which, though the figures are enchanting, the Virgin is represented holding up the drapery of the infant, with the ridiculous affectation of a singer on the stage of our Italian opera. The Mosaic work, though brought to a wonderful degree of improvement, and admirably calculated for churches, the dampness of which is pernicious to the colours of the pallet, I will not yet compare to the productions of the pencil. The glassyness (if I may be allowed the expression) of the surface, throws, in my opinion, a false light on some parts of the picture; and when you approach it, the joinings of the pieces look like so many cracks on painted canvas. Besides, this method is extremely tedious and expensive. I went to see the artists at work, in a house that stands near the church, where I was much pleased with the ingenuity of the process; and not a little surprized at the great number of different colours and tints, which are kept in separate drawers, marked with numbers as far as seventeen thousand. For a single head done in Mosaic, they asked me fifty zequines. But to return to the church. The altar of St. Peter's choir, notwithstanding all the ornaments which have been lavished upon it, is no more than a heap of puerile finery, better adapted to an Indian pagod, than to a temple built upon the principles of the Greek architecture. The four colossal figures that support the chair, are both clumsy and disproportioned. The drapery of statues, whether in brass or stone, when thrown into large masses, appears hard and unpleasant to the eye and for that reason the antients always imitated wet linen, which exhibiting the shape of the limbs underneath, and hanging in a multiplicity of wet folds, gives an air of lightness, softness, and ductility to the whole. These two statues weigh 116,257 pounds, and as they sustain nothing but a chair, are out of all proportion, inasmuch as the supporters ought to be suitable to the things supported. Here are four giants holding up the old wooden chair of the apostle Peter, if we may believe the book De Identitate Cathedrae Romanae, Of the Identity of the Roman Chair. The implements of popish superstition; such as relicks of pretended saints, ill-proportioned spires and bellfreys, and the nauseous repetition of the figure of the cross, which is in itself a very mean and disagreeable object, only fit for the prisons of condemned criminals, have contributed to introduce a vitious taste into the external architecture, as well as in the internal ornaments of our temples. All churches are built in the figure of a cross, which effectually prevents the eye from taking in the scope of the building, either without side or within; consequently robs the edifice of its proper effect. The palace of the Escurial in Spain is laid out in the shape of a gridiron, because the convent was built in consequence of a vow to St. Laurence, who was broiled like a barbecued pig. What pity it is, that the labours of painting should have been so much employed on the shocking subjects of the martyrology. Besides numberless pictures of the flagellation, crucifixion, and descent from the cross, we have Judith with the head of Holofernes, Herodias with the head of John the Baptist, Jael assassinating Sisera in his sleep, Peter writhing on the cross, Stephen battered with stones, Sebastian stuck full of arrows, Laurence frying upon the coals, Bartholomew flaed alive, and a hundred other pictures equally frightful, which can only serve to fill the mind with gloomy ideas, and encourage a spirit of religious fanaticism, which has always been attended with mischievous consequences to the community where it reigned. The tribune of the great altar, consisting of four wreathed brass pillars, gilt, supporting a canopy, is doubtless very magnificent, if not over-charged with sculpture, fluting, foliage, festoons, and figures of boys and angels, which, with the hundred and twenty-two lamps of silver, continually burning below, serve rather to dazzle the eyes, and kindle the devotion of the ignorant vulgar, than to excite the admiration of a judicious observer. There is nothing, I believe, in this famous structure, so worthy of applause, as the admirable symmetry and proportion of its parts. Notwithstanding all the carving, gilding, basso relievos, medallions, urns, statues, columns, and pictures with which it abounds, it does not, on the whole, appear over-crouded with ornaments. When you first enter, your eye is filled so equally and regularly, that nothing appears stupendous; and the church seems considerably smaller than it really is. The statues of children, that support the founts of holy water when observed from the door, seem to be of the natural size; but as you draw near, you perceive they are gigantic. In the same manner, the figures of the doves, with olive branches in their beaks, which are represented on the wall, appear to be within your reach; but as you approach them, they recede to a considerable height, as if they had flown upwards to avoid being taken. I was much disappointed at sight of the Pantheon, which, after all that has been said of it, looks like a huge cockpit, open at top. The portico which Agrippa added to the building, is undoubtedly very noble, though, in my opinion, it corresponds but ill with the simplicity of the edifice. With all my veneration for the antients, I cannot see in what the beauty of the rotunda consists. It is no more than a plain unpierced cylinder, or circular wall, with two fillets and a cornice, having a vaulted roof or cupola, open in the centre. I mean the original building, without considering the vestibule of Agrippa. Within side it has much the air of a mausoleum. It was this appearance which, in all probability, suggested the thought to Boniface IV. to transport hither eight and twenty cart-loads of old rotten bones, dug from different burying-places, and then dedicate it as a church to the blessed Virgin and all the holy martyrs. I am not one of those who think it is well lighted by the hole at the top, which is about nine and twenty feet in diameter, although the author of the Grand Tour calls it but nine. The same author says, there is a descent of eleven steps to go into it; that it is a hundred and forty-four feet in heighth, and as many in breadth; that it was covered with copper, which, with the brass nails of the portico, pope Urban VIII. took away, and converted into the four wreathed pillars that support the canopy of the high altar in the church of St. Peter, &c. The truth is, before the time of pope Alexander VII. the earth was so raised as to cover part of the temple, and there was a descent of some steps into the porch: but that pontiff ordered the ground to be pared away to the very pedestal or base of the portico, which is now even with the street, so that there is no descent whatsoever. The height is two hundred palmi, and the breadth two hundred and eighteen; which, reckoning fife palmi at nine inches, will bring the height to one hundred and fifty, and the breadth to one hundred and sixty-three feet six inches. It was not any covering of copper which pope Urban VIII. removed, but large brass beams, which supported the roof of the portico. They weighed 186,392 pounds; and afforded metal enough not only for the pillars in St. Peter's church, but also for several pieces of artillery that are now in the castle of St. Angelo. What is more extraordinary, the gilding of those columns is said to have cost forty thousand golden crowns: sure money was never worse laid out. Urban VIII. likewise added two bellfrey towers to the rotunda; and I wonder he did not cover the central hole with glass, as it must be very inconvenient and disagreeable to those who go to church below, to be exposed to the rain in wet weather, which must also render it very damp and unwholesome. I visited it several times, and each time it looked more and more gloomy and sepulchral. The magnificence of the Romans was not so conspicuous in their temples, as in their theatres, amphitheatres, circusses, naumachia, aqueducts, triumphal arches, porticoes, basilicae, but especially their thermae, or bathing-places. A great number of their temples were small and inconsiderable; not one of them was comparable either for size or magnificence, to the modern church of St. Peter of the Vatican. The famous temple of Jupiter Capitolinus was neither half so long, nor half so broad: it was but two hundred feet in length, and one hundred and eighty-five in breadth; whereas the length of St. Peter's extends to six hundred and thirty-eight feet, and the breadth to above five hundred. It is very near twice as large as the temple of Jupiter Olympius in Greece, which was counted one of the seven wonders of the world. But I shall take another opportunity to explain myself further on the antiquities of this city; a subject, upon which I am disposed to be (perhaps impertinently) circumstantial. When I begin to run riot, you should cheek me with the freedom of a friend. The most distant hint will be sufficient to,--Dear Sir, Yours assuredly. LETTER XXXII NICE, March 10, 1765. DEAR SIR,--The Colossaeum or amphitheatre built by Flavius Vespasian, is the most stupendous work of the kind which antiquity can produce. Near one half of the external circuit still remains, consisting of four tire of arcades, adorned with columns of four orders, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite. The height and extent of it may be guessed from the number of spectators it contained, amounting to one hundred thousand; and yet, according to Fontana's mensuration, it could not contain above thirty-four thousand persons sitting, allowing a foot and an half for each person: for the circuit of the whole building did not exceed one thousand five hundred and sixty feet. The amphitheatre at Verona is one thousand two hundred and ninety feet in circumference; and that of Nismes, one thousand and eighty. The Colossaeum was built by Vespasian, who employed thirty thousand Jewish slaves in the work; but finished and dedicated by his son Titus, who, on the first day of its being opened, produced fifty thousand wild beasts, which were all killed in the arena. The Romans were undoubtedly a barbarous people, who delighted in horrible spectacles. They viewed with pleasure the dead bodies of criminals dragged through the streets, or thrown down the Scalae Gemoniae and Tarpeian rock, for their contemplation. Their rostra were generally adorned with the heads of some remarkable citizens, like Temple-Bar, at London. They even bore the sight of Tully's head fixed upon that very rostrum where he had so often ravished their ears with all the charms of eloquence, in pleading the cause of innocence and public virtue. They took delight in seeing their fellow-creatures torn in pieces by wild beasts, in the amphitheatre. They shouted with applause when they saw a poor dwarf or slave killed by his adversary; but their transports were altogether extravagant, when the devoted captives were obliged to fight in troops, till one side was entirely butchered by the other. Nero produced four hundred senators, and six hundred of the equestrian order, as gladiators in the public arena: even the women fought with wild beasts, as well as with each other, and drenched the amphitheatres with their blood. Tacitus says, "Sed faeminarum illustrium, senatorumque filiorum plures per arenam faedati sunt," "But many sons of Senators, and even Matrons of the first Rank, exposed themselves in this vile exercise." The execrable custom of sacrificing captives or slaves at the tombs of their masters and great men, which is still preserved among the negroes of Africa, obtained also among the antients, Greeks as well as Romans. I could never, without horror and indignation, read that passage in the twenty-third book of the Iliad, which describes twelve valiant Trojan captives sacrificed by the inhuman Achilles at the tomb of his friend Patroclus. Dodeka men Troon megathumon uias eathlous Tous ama pantas pur eathiei. Twelve generous Trojans slaughtered in their Bloom, With thy lov'd Corse the Fire shall now consume. Even Virgil makes his pious Hero sacrifice eight Italian youths to the manes of Pallas. It is not at all clear to me, that a people is the more brave, the more they are accustomed to bloodshed in their public entertainments. True bravery is not savage but humane. Some of this sanguinary spirit is inherited by the inhabitants of a certain island that shall be nameless--but, mum for that. You will naturally suppose that the Coliseo was ruined by the barbarians who sacked the city of Rome: in effect, they robbed it of its ornaments and valuable materials; but it was reserved for the Goths and Vandals of modern Rome, to dismantle the edifice, and reduce it to its present ruinous condition. One part of it was demolished by pope Paul II. that he might employ the stones of it in building the palace of St. Mark. It was afterwards dilapidated for the same purposes, by the cardinals Riarius and Farnese, which last assumed the tiara under the name of Paul III. Notwithstanding these injuries, there is enough standing to convey a very sublime idea of ancient magnificence. The Circi and Naumachia, if considered as buildings and artificial basins, are admirable; but if examined as areae intended for horse and chariot races, and artificial seas for exhibiting naval engagements, they seem to prove that the antient Romans were but indifferently skilled and exercised either in horsemanship or naval armaments. The inclosure of the emperor Caracalla's circus is still standing, and scarce affords breathing room for an English hunter. The Circus Maximus, by far the largest in Rome, was not so long as the Mall; and I will venture to affirm, that St. James's Park would make a much more ample and convenient scene for those diversions. I imagine an old Roman would be very much surprised to see an English race on the course at New-Market. The Circus Maximus was but three hundred yards in breadth. A good part of this was taken up by the spina, or middle space, adorned with temples, statues, and two great obelisks; as well as by the euripus, or canal, made by order of Julius Caesar, to contain crocodiles, and other aquatic animals, which were killed occasionally. This was so large, that Heliogabalus, having filled it with excellent wine, exhibited naval engagements in it, for the amusement of the people. It surrounded three sides of the square, so that the whole extent of the race did not much exceed an English mile; and when Probus was at the expence of filling the plain of it with fir-trees to form a wood for the chace of wild beasts, I question much if this forest was more extensive than the plantation in St. James's Park, on the south side of the canal: now I leave you to judge what ridicule a king of England would incur by converting this part of the park into a chace for any species of animals which are counted game in our country. The Roman emperors seemed more disposed to elevate and surprize, than to conduct the public diversions according to the rules of reason and propriety. One would imagine, it was with this view they instituted their naumachia, or naval engagements, performed by half a dozen small gallies of a side in an artificial basin of fresh water. These gallies I suppose were not so large as common fishing-smacks, for they were moved by two, three, and four oars of a side according to their different rates, biremes, triremes, and quadriremes. I know this is a knotty point not yet determined; and that some antiquarians believe the Roman gallies had different tires or decks of oars; but this is a notion very ill supported, and quite contrary to all the figures of them that are preserved on antient coins and medals. Suetonius in the reign of Domitian, speaking of these naumachia, says, "Edidit navales pugnas, pene justarum classium, effosso, et circumducto juxta Tyberim lacu, atque inter maximas imbres prospectavit," "He exhibited naval engagements of almost intire fleets, in an artificial Lake formed for the purpose hard by the Tyber, and viewed them in the midst of excessive Rains." This artificial lake was not larger than the piece of water in Hyde-Park; and yet the historian says, it was almost large enough for real or intire fleets. How would a British sailor relish an advertisement that a mock engagement between two squadrons of men of war would be exhibited on such a day in the Serpentine river? or that the ships of the line taken from the enemy would be carried in procession from Hyde-Park-Corner to Tower-wharf? Certain it is, Lucullus, in one of his triumphs, had one hundred and ten ships of war (naves longas) carried through the streets of Rome. Nothing can give a more contemptible idea of their naval power, than this testimony of their historians, who declare that their seamen or mariners were formed by exercising small row-boats in an inclosed pool of fresh water. Had they not the sea within a few miles of them, and the river Tyber running through their capital! even this would have been much more proper for exercising their watermen, than a pond of still-water, not much larger than a cold-bath. I do believe in my conscience that half a dozen English frigates would have been able to defeat both the contending fleets at the famous battle of Actium, which has been so much celebrated in the annals of antiquity, as an event that decided the fate of empire. It would employ me a whole month to describe the thermae or baths, the vast ruins of which are still to be seen within the walls of Rome, like the remains of so many separate citadels. The thermae Dioclesianae might be termed an august academy for the use and instruction of the Roman people. The pinacotheca of this building was a complete musaeum of all the curiosities of art and nature; and there were public schools for all the sciences. If I may judge by my eye, however, the thermae Antonianae built by Caracalla, were still more extensive and magnificent; they contained cells sufficient for two thousand three hundred persons to bathe at one time, without being seen by one another. They were adorned with all the charms of painting, architecture, and sculpture. The pipes for convoying the water were of silver. Many of the lavacra were of precious marble, illuminated by lamps of chrystal. Among the statues, were found the famous Toro, and Hercole Farnese. Bathing was certainly necessary to health and cleanliness in a hot country like Italy, especially before the use of linen was known: but these purposes would have been much better answered by plunging into the Tyber, than by using the warm bath in the thermae, which became altogether a point of luxury borrowed from the effeminate Asiatics, and tended to debilitate the fibres already too much relaxed by the heat of the climate. True it is, they had baths of cool water for the summer: but in general they used it milk-warm, and often perfumed: they likewise indulged in vapour-baths, in order to enjoy a pleasing relaxation, which they likewise improved with odoriferous ointments. The thermae consisted of a great variety of parts and conveniences; the natationes, or swimming places; the portici, where people amused themselves in walking, conversing, and disputing together, as Cicero says, In porticibus deambulantes disputabant; the basilicae, where the bathers assembled, before they entered, and after they came out of the bath; the atria, or ample courts, adorned with noble colonnades of Numidian marble and oriental granite; the ephibia, where the young men inured themselves to wrestling and other exercises; the frigidaria, or places kept cool by a constant draught of air, promoted by the disposition and number of the windows; the calidaria, where the water was warmed for the baths; the platanones, or delightful groves of sycamore; the stadia, for the performances of the athletae; the exedrae, or resting-places, provided with seats for those that were weary; the palestrae, where every one chose that exercise which pleased him best; the gymnasia, where poets, orators, and philosophers recited their works, and harangued for diversion; the eleotesia, where the fragrant oils and ointments were kept for the use of the bathers; and the conisteria, where the wrestlers were smeared with sand before they engaged. Of the thermae in Rome, some were mercenary, and some opened gratis. Marcus Agrippa, when he was edile, opened one hundred and seventy private baths, for the use of the people. In the public baths, where money was taken, each person paid a quadrans, about the value of our halfpenny, as Juvenal observes, Caedere Sylvano porcum, quadrante lavari. The victim Pig to God Sylvanus slay, And for the public Bath a farthing pay. But after the hour of bathing was past, it sometimes cost a great deal more, according to Martial, Balnea post decimam, lasso centumque petuntur Quadrantes-- The bathing hour is past, the waiter tir'd; An hundred Farthings now will be requir'd. Though there was no distinction in the places between the first patrician and the lowest plebeian, yet the nobility used their own silver and gold plate, for washing, eating, and drinking in the bath, together with towels of the finest linen. They likewise made use of the instrument called strigil, which was a kind of flesh-brush; a custom to which Persius alludes in this line, I puer, et strigiles Crispini ad balnea defer. Here, Boy, this Brush to Crispin's Bagnio bear. The common people contented themselves with sponges. The bathing time was from noon till the evening, when the Romans ate their principal meal. Notice was given by a bell, or some such instrument, when the baths were opened, as we learn from Juvenal, Redde Pilam, sonat Aes thermarum, ludere pergis? Virgine vis sola lotus abdire domum. Leave off; the Bath Bell rings--what, still play on? Perhaps the maid in private rubs you down. There were separate places for the two sexes; and indeed there were baths opened for the use of women only, at the expence of Agrippina, the mother of Nero, and some other matrons of the first quality. The use of bathing was become so habitual to the constitutions of the Romans, that Galen, in his book De Sanitate tuenda, mentions a certain philosopher, who, if he intermitted but one day in his bathing, was certainly attacked with a fever. In order to preserve decorum in the baths, a set of laws and regulations were published, and the thermae were put under the inspection of a censor, who was generally one of the first senators in Rome. Agrippa left his gardens and baths, which stood near the pantheon, to the Roman people: among the statues that adorned them was that of a youth naked, as going into the bath, so elegantly formed by the hand of Lysippus, that Tiberius, being struck with the beauty of it, ordered it to be transferred into his own palace: but the populace raised such a clamour against him, that he was fain to have it reconveyed to its former place. These noble baths were restored by Adrian, as we read in Spartian; but at present no part of them remains. With respect to the present state of the old aqueducts, I can give you very little satisfaction. I only saw the ruins of that which conveyed the aqua Claudia, near the Porta Maggiore, and the Piazza of the Lateran. You know there were fourteen of those antient aqueducts, some of which brought water to Rome from the distance of forty miles. The channels of them were large enough to admit a man armed on horseback; and therefore when Rome was besieged by the Goths, who had cut off the water, Belisarius fortified them with works to prevent the enemy from entering the city by those conveyances. After that period, I suppose the antient aqueducts continued dry, and were suffered to run to ruins. Without all doubt, the Romans were greatly obliged to those benefactors, who raised such stupendous works for the benefit, as well as the embellishment of their city: but it might have been supplied with the same water through pipes at one hundredth part of the expence; and in that case the enemy would not have found it such an easy matter to cut it off. Those popes who have provided the modern city so plentifully with excellent water, are much to be commended for the care and expence, they have bestowed in restoring the streams called acqua Virgine, acqua Felice, and acqua Paolina, which afford such abundance of water as would plentifully supply a much larger city than modern Rome. It is no wonder that M. Agrippa, the son-in-law, friend, and favourite of Augustus, should at the same time have been the idol of the people, considering how surprisingly he exerted himself for the emolument, convenience, and pleasure of his fellow-citizens. It was he who first conducted this acqua Virgine to Rome: he formed seven hundred reservoirs in the city; erected one hundred and five fountains; one hundred and thirty castella, or conduits, which works he adorned with three hundred statues, and four hundred pillars of marble, in the space of one year. He also brought into Rome, the aqua Julia, and restored the aqueduct of the aqua Marzia, which had fallen to decay. I have already observed the great number of baths which he opened for the people, and the magnificent thermae, with spacious gardens, which he bequeathed to them as a legacy. But these benefactions, great and munificent as they seem to be, were not the most important services he performed for the city of Rome. The common-sewers were first made by order of Tarquinius Priscus, not so much with a view to cleanliness, as by way of subterranean drains to the Velabrum, and in order to carry off the stagnant water, which remained in the lower parts, after heavy rains. The different branches of these channels united at the Forum, from whence by the cloaca Maxima, their contents were conveyed into the Tyber. This great cloaca was the work of Tarquinius Superbus. Other sewers were added by Marcus Cato, and Valerius Flaccus, the censors. All these drains having been choaked up and ruinous, were cleared and restored by Marcus Agrippa, who likewise undermined the whole city with canals of the same kind, for carrying of the filth; he strengthened and enlarged the cloaca maxima, so as to make it capable of receiving a large cart loaded with hay; and directed seven streams of water into these subterranean passages, in order to keep them always clean and open. If, notwithstanding all these conveniences, Vespasian was put to great expence in removing the ordure from the public streets, we have certainly a right to conclude that the antient Romans were not more cleanly than the modern Italians. After the mausolea of Augustus, and Adrian, which I have already mentioned, the most remarkable antient sepulchres at Rome, are those of Caius Cestius, and Cecilia Metella. The first, which stands by the Porta di S. Paolo, is a beautiful pyramid, one hundred and twenty feet high, still preserved intire, having a vaulted chamber within-side, adorned with some ancient painting, which is now almost effaced. The building is of brick, but eased with marble. This Caius Cestius had been consul, was very rich, and acted as one of the seven Epulones, who superintended the feasts of the gods, called Lectisternia, and Pervigilia. He bequeathed his whole fortune to his friend M. Agrippa, who was so generous as to give it up to the relations of the testator. The monument of Cecilia Metella, commonly called Capo di Bove, is without the walls on the Via Appia. This lady was daughter of Metellus Creticus, and wife to Crassus, who erected this noble monument to her memory. It consisted of two orders, or stories, the first of which was a square of hewn stone: the second was a circular tower, having a cornice, adorned with ox heads in basso relievo, a circumstance from which it takes the name of Capo di Bove. The ox was supposed to be a most grateful sacrifice to the gods. Pliny, speaking of bulls and oxen, says, Hinc victimae optimae et laudatissima deorum placatio. They were accounted the best Victims and most agreeable to appease the anger of the Gods. This tower was surmounted by a noble cupola or dome, enriched with all the ornaments of architecture. The door of the building was of brass; and within-side the ashes of Cecilia were deposited in a fluted marble urn, of curious workmanship, which is still kept in the Palazzo Farnese. At present the surface of the ground is raised so much as to cover the first order of the edifice: what we see is no more than the round tower, without the dome and its ornaments; and the following inscription still remains near the top, facing the Via Appia. CAECILLAE Q. CRETICI F. METELLAE CRASSI. To Caecilia Metella, Daughter of Q. Criticus: wife of Crassus. Now we are talking of sepulchral inscriptions, I shall conclude this letter with the copy of a very singular will, made by Favonius Jocundus, who died in Portugal, by which will the precise situation of the famous temple of Sylvanus is ascertained. "Jocundi. Ego gallus Favonius Jocundus P. Favoni F. qui bello contra Viriatum Succubui, Jocundum et Prudentem filios, e me et Quintia Fabia conjuge mea ortos, et Bonorum Jocundi Patris mei, et eorum, quae mihi ipsi acquisivi haeredes relinquo; hac tamen conditione, ut ab urbe Romana huc veniant, et ossa hic mea, intra quinquennium exportent, et via latina condant in sepulchro, jussu meo condito, et mea voluntate; in quo velim neminem mecum, neque servum, neque libertum inseri; et velim ossa quorumcunque sepulchro statim meo eruantur, et jura Romanorum serventur, in sepulchris ritu majorum retinendis, juxta volantatem testatoris; et si secus fecerint, nisi legittimae oriantur causae, velim ea omnia, quae filijs meis relinquo, pro reparando templo dei Sylvani, quod sub viminali monte est, attribui; manesque mei a Pont. max; a flaminibus dialibus, qui in capitolio sunt, opem implorent, ad liberorum meorum impietatem ulciscendam; teneanturque sacerdotes dei Silvani, me in urbem referre, et sepulchro me meo condere. Volo quoque vernas qui domi meae sunt, omnes a praetore urbano liberos, cum matribus dimitti, singulisque libram argenti puri, et vestem unam dori. In Lusitania. In agro VIII. Cal Quintilis, bello viriatino." I, Gallus Favonius Jocundus, son of P. Favonius, dying in the war against Viriatus, declare my sons Jocundus and Prudens, by my wife Quintia Fabia, joint Heirs of my Estate, real and personal; on condition, however, that they come hither within a time of five years from this my last will, and transport my remains to Rome to be deposited in my Sepulchre built in the via latina by my own order and Direction: and it is my will that neither slave nor freedman shall be interred with me in the said tomb; that if any such there be, they shall be removed, and the Roman law obeyed, in preserving in the antient Form the sepulchre according to the will of the Testator. If they act otherwise without just cause, it is my will that the whole estate, which I now bequeathe to my children, shall be applied to the Reparation of the Temple of the God Sylvanus, at the foot of Mount Viminalis; and that my Manes [The Manes were an order of Gods supposed to take cognisance of such injuries.] I shall implore the assistance of the Pontifex maximus, and the Flaminisdiales in the Capitol, to avenge the Impiety of my children; and the priests of Sylvanus shall engage to bring my remains to Rome and see them decently deposited in my own Sepulchre. It is also my will that all my domestic slaves shall be declared free by the city Praetor, and dismissed with their mothers, after having received each, a suit of cloaths, and a pound weight of pure silver from my heirs and Executors.--At my farm in Lusitania, July 25. During the Viriatin war. My paper scarce affords room to assure you that I am ever,--Dear Sir, Your faithful, etc. LETTER XXXIII NICE, March 30, 1765. DEAR SIR,--YOU must not imagine I saw one half of the valuable pictures and statues of Rome; there is such a vast number of both in this capital, that I might have spent a whole year in taking even a transient view of them; and, after all, some of them would have been overlooked. The most celebrated pieces, however, I have seen; and therefore my curiosity is satisfied. Perhaps, if I had the nice discernment and delicate sensibility of a true connoisseur, this superficial glimpse would have served only to whet my appetite, and to detain me the whole winter at Rome. In my progress through the Vatican, I was much pleased with the School of Athens, by Raphael, a piece which hath suffered from the dampness of the air. The four boys attending to the demonstration of the mathematician are admirably varied in the expression. Mr. Webb's criticism on this artist is certainly just. He was perhaps the best ethic painter that ever the world produced. No man ever expressed the sentiments so happily, in visage, attitude, and gesture: but he seems to have had too much phlegm to strike off the grand passions, or reach the sublime parts of painting. He has the serenity of Virgil, but wants the fire of Homer. There is nothing in his Parnassus which struck me, but the ludicrous impropriety of Apollo's playing upon a fiddle, for the entertainment of the nine muses. [Upon better information I must retract this censure; in as much, as I find there was really a Musical Instrument among the antients of this Figure, as appears by a small statue in Bronze, to be still seen in the Florentine Collection.] The Last Judgment, by Buonaroti, in the chapel of Sixtus IV. produced to my eye the same sort of confusion, that perplexes my ear at a grand concert, consisting of a great variety of instruments: or rather, when a number of people are talking all at once. I was pleased with the strength of expression, exhibited in single figures, and separate groupes: but, the whole together is a mere mob, without subordination, keeping, or repose. A painter ought to avoid all subjects that require a multiplicity of groupes and figures; because it is not in the power of that art to unite a great number in one point of view, so as to maintain that dependence which they ought to have upon one another. Michael Angelo, with all his skill in anatomy, his correctness of design, his grand composition, his fire, and force of expression, seems to have had very little idea of grace. One would imagine he had chosen his kings, heroes, cardinals, and prelates, from among the facchini of Rome: that he really drew his Jesus on the Cross, from the agonies of some vulgar assassin expiring on the wheel; and that the originals of his Bambini, with their mothers, were literally found in a stable. In the Sala Regia, from whence the Sistian chapel is detached, we see, among other exploits of catholic heroes, a representation of the massacre of the protestants in Paris, Tholouse, and other parts of France, on the eve of St. Bartholomew, thus described in the Descrizione di Roma, "Nella prima pittura, esprime Georgio Vasari l'istoria del Coligni, grand' amiraglio, di Francia, che come capo de ribelli, e degl'ugonotti, fu ucciso; e nell'altra vicina, la strage fatta in Parigi, e nel regno, de rebelli, e degl'Ugonotti." "In the first picture, George Vasari represents the history of Coligni, high admiral of France, who was slain as head of the rebels and huegonots; and in another near it, the slaughter that was made of the rebels and huegonots in Paris and other parts of the kingdom." Thus the court of Rome hath employed their artists to celebrate and perpetuate, as a meritorious action, the most perfidious, cruel, and infamous massacre, that ever disgraced the annals of any nation. I need not mention the two equestrian statues of Constantine the Great, and Charlemagne, which stand at opposite ends of the great portico of St. Peter's church; because there is nothing in them which particularly engaged my attention. The sleeping Cleopatra, as you enter the court of the Belvedere, in the Vatican, is much admired; but I was better pleased with the Apollo, which I take to be the most beautiful statue that ever was formed. The Nile, which lies in the open court, surmounted with the little children, has infinite merit; but is much damaged, and altogether neglected. Whether it is the same described in Pliny, as having been placed by Vespasian in the Temple of Peace, I do not know. The sixteen children playing about it, denoted the swelling of the Nile, which never rose above sixteen cubits. As for the famous groupe of Laocoon, it surpassed my expectation. It was not without reason that Buonaroti called it a portentous work; and Pliny has done it no more than justice in saying it is the most excellent piece that ever was cut in marble; and yet the famous Fulvius Ursini is of opinion that this is not the same statue which Pliny described. His reasons, mentioned by Montfaucon, are these. The statues described by Pliny were of one stone; but these are not. Antonioli, the antiquary, has in his Possession, pieces of Laocoon's snakes, which were found in the ground, where the baths of Titus actually stood, agreeable to Pliny, who says these statues were placed in the buildings of Titus. Be that as it may, the work which we now see does honour to antiquity. As you have seen innumerable copies and casts of it, in marble, plaister, copper, lead, drawings, and prints, and read the description of it in Keysler, and twenty other books of travels, I shall say nothing more on the subject; but that neither they nor I, nor any other person, could say too much in its praise. It is not of one piece indeed. In that particular Pliny himself might be mistaken. "Opus omnibus et picturae, et statuariae artis praeponendum. Ex uno lapide eum et Liberos draconumque mirabiles nexus de consilii sententia fecere succubi artifices." "A work preferable to all the other Efforts of Painting and Statuary. The most excellent artists joined their Talents in making the Father and his Sons, together with the admirable Twinings of the Serpents, of one Block." Buonaroti discovered the joinings, though they were so artfully concealed as to be before invisible. This amazing groupe is the work of three Rhodian sculptors, called Agesander, Polydore, and Athenodorus, and was found in the thermae of Titus Vespasian, still supposing it to be the true antique. As for the torso, or mutilated trunk of a statue, which is called the school of Michael Angelo, I had not time to consider it attentively; nor taste enough to perceive its beauties at first sight. The famous horses on Monte Cavallo, before the pope's palace, which are said to have been made in emulation, by Phidias and Praxiteles, I have seen, and likewise those in the front of the Capitol, with the statues of Castor and Pollux; but what pleased me infinitely more than all of them together, is the equestrian statue of Corinthian brass, standing in the middle of this Piazza (I mean at the Capitol) said to represent the emperor Marcus Aurelius. Others suppose it was intended for Lucius Verus; a third set of antiquaries contend for Lucius Septimius Severus; and a fourth, for Constantine, because it stood in the Piazza of the Lateran palace, built by that emperor, from whence pope Paul III. caused it to be removed to the Capitol. I considered the trophy of Marius as a very curious piece of sculpture, and admired the two sphinxes at the bottom of the stairs leading to this Piazza, as the only good specimens of design I have ever seen from Aegypt: for the two idols of that country, which stand in the ground floor of the Musaeum of the Capitol, and indeed all the Aegyptian statues in the Camera Aegyptiaca of this very building, are such monstrous misrepresentations of nature, that they never could have obtained a place among the statues of Rome, except as curiosities of foreign superstition, or on account of the materials, as they are generally of basaltes, porphyry, or oriental granite. At the farther end of the court of this Musaeum, fronting the entrance, is a handsome fountain, with the statue of a river-god reclining on his urn; this is no other than the famous Marforio, so called from its having been found in Martis Fore. It is remarkable only as being the conveyance of the answers to the satires which are found pasted upon Pasquin, another mutilated statue, standing at the corner of a street. The marble coffin, supposed to have contained the ashes of Alexander Severus, which we find in one of these apartments, is a curious antique, valuable for its sculpture in basso relievo, especially for the figures on the cover, representilig that emperor and his mother Julia Mammea. I was sorry I had not time to consider the antient plan of Rome, disposed in six classes, on the stair-case of this Musaeum, which was brought hither from a temple that stood in the Forum Boarium, now called Campo vaccine. It would be ridiculous in me to enter into a detail of the vast collection of marbles, basso relievos, inscriptions, urns, busts, and statues, which are placed in the upper apartments of this edifice. I saw them but once, and then I was struck with the following particulars. A bacchanalian drunk; a Jupiter and Leda, at least equal to that in the gallery at Florence; an old praesica, or hired mourner, very much resembling those wrinkled hags still employed in Ireland, and in the Highlands of Scotland, to sing the coronach at funerals, in praise of the deceased; the famous Antinous, an elegant figure, which Pousin studied as canon or rule of symmetry; the two fauns; and above all the mirmillone, or dying gladiator; the attitude of the body, the expression of the countenance, the elegance of the limbs, and the swelling of the muscles, in this statue, are universally admired; but the execution of the back is incredibly delicate. The course of the muscles called longissimi dorsi, are so naturally marked and tenderly executed, that the marble actually emulates the softness of the flesh; and you may count all the spines of the vertebrae, raising up the skin as in the living body; yet this statue, with all its merit, seems inferior to the celebrated dying gladiator of Ctesilas, as described by Pliny, who says the expression of it was such, as appears altogether incredible. In the court, on the opposite side of the Capitol, there is an admirable statue of a lion devouring an horse, which was found by the gate of Ostia, near the pyramid of Caius Cestius; and here on the left hand, under a colonade, is what they call the Columna Rostrata, erected in honour of Caius Duilius, who first triumphed over the Carthaginians by sea. But this is a modern pillar, with the old inscription, which is so defaced as not to be legible. Among the pictures in the gallery and saloon above, what pleased me most was the Bacchus and Ariadne of Guido Rheni; and the wolf suckling Romulus and Remus, by Rubens. The court of the Palazzo Farnese is surrounded with antique statues, among which the most celebrated are, the Flora, with a most delicate drapery; the gladiator, with a dead boy over his shoulder; the Hercules, with the spoils of the Nemean lion, but that which the connoisseurs justly esteem above all the rest is Hercules, by Glycon, which you know as well as I do, by the great reputation it has acquired. This admirable statue having been found without the legs, these were supplied by Gulielmo de la Porta so happily, that when afterwards the original limbs were discovered, Michael Angelo preferred those of the modern artist, both in grace and proportion; and they have been retained accordingly. In a little house, or shed, behind the court, is preserved the wonderful group of Dirce, commonly called the Toro Farnese, which was brought hither from the thermae Caracallae. There is such spirit, ferocity, and indignant resistance expressed in the bull, to whose horns Dirce is tied by the hair, that I have never seen anything like it, either upon canvass, or in stone. The statues of the two brothers endeavouring to throw him into the sea are beautiful figures, finely contrasted; and the rope, which one of them holds in a sort of loose coil, is so surprisingly chizzelled, that one can hardly believe it is of stone. As for Dirce herself, she seems to be but a subaltern character; there is a dog upon his hind legs barking at the bull, which is much admired. This amazing groupe was cut out of one stone, by Appollonius and Tauriscus, two sculptors of Rhodes; and is mentioned by Pliny in the thirty-sixth book of his Natural History. All the precious monuments of art, which have come down to us from antiquity, are the productions of Greek artists. The Romans had taste enough to admire the arts of Greece, as plainly appears by the great collections they made of their statues and pictures, as well as by adopting their architecture and musick: but I do not remember to have read of any Roman who made a great figure either as a painter or a statuary. It is not enough to say those professions were not honourable in Rome, because painting, sculpture, and musick, even rhetoric, physic, and philosophy were practised and taught by slaves. The arts were always honoured and revered at Rome, even when the professors of them happened to be slaves by the accidents and iniquity of fortune. The business of painting and statuary was so profitable, that in a free republic, like that of Rome, they must have been greedily embraced by a great number of individuals: but, in all probability, the Roman soil produced no extraordinary genius for those arts. Like the English of this day, they made a figure in poetry, history, and ethics; but the excellence of painting, sculpture, architecture, and music, they never could attain. In the Palazzo Picchini I saw three beautiful figures, the celebrated statues of Meleager, the boar, and dog; together with a wolf, of excellent workmanship. The celebrated statue of Moses, by Michael Angelo, in the church of St. Peter in Vincula, I beheld with pleasure; as well as that of Christ, by the same hand, in the Church of S. Maria sopra Minerva. The right foot, covered with bronze, gilt, is much kissed by the devotees. I suppose it is looked upon as a specific for the toothache; for, I saw a cavalier, in years, and an old woman successively rub their gums upon it, with the appearance of the most painful perseverance. You need not doubt but that I went to the church of St. Peter in Montorio, to view the celebrated Transfiguration, by Raphael, which, if it was mine, I would cut in two parts. The three figures in the air attract the eye so strongly, that little or no attention is payed to those below on the mountain. I apprehend that the nature of the subject does not admit of that keeping and dependence, which ought to be maintained in the disposition of the lights and shadows in a picture. The groupes seem to be intirely independent of each other. The extraordinary merit of this piece, I imagine, consists, not only in the expression of divinity on the face of Christ; but also in the surprising lightness of the figure, that hovers like a beautiful exhalation in the air. In the church of St. Luke, I was not at all struck by the picture of that saint, drawing the portrait of the Virgin Mary, although it is admired as one of the best pieces of Raphael. Indeed it made so little impression upon me, that I do not even remember the disposition of the figures. The altar-piece, by Andrea Sacchi, in the church of St. Romauldus, would have more merit, if the figure of the saint himself had more consequence, and was represented in a stronger light. In the Palazzo Borghese, I chiefly admired the following pieces: a Venus with two nymphs; and another with Cupid, both by Titian: an excellent Roman Piety, by Leonardo da Vinci; and the celebrated Muse, by Dominechino, which is a fine, jolly, buxom figure. At the palace of Colorina Connestabile, I was charmed with the Herodias, by Guido Rheni; a young Christ; and a Madonna, by Raphael; and four landscapes, two by Claude Lorraine, and the other two, by Salvator Rosa. In the palazetto, or summerhouse belonging to the Palazzo Rospigliosi, I had the satisfaction of contemplating the Aurora of Guido, the colours of which still remain in high perfection, notwithstanding the common report that the piece is spoiled by the dampness of the apartment. The print of this picture, by Freij, with all its merit, conveys but an imperfect idea of the beauty of the original. In the Palazzo Barberini, there is a great collection of marbles and pictures: among the first, I was attracted by a beautiful statue of Venus; a sleeping faun, of curious workmanship; a charming Bacchus, lying on an antient sculpture, and the famous Narcissus. Of the pictures, what gave me most pleasure was the Magdalen of Guido, infinitely superior to that by Le Brun in the church of the Carmelites at Paris; the Virgin, by Titian; a Madonna, by Raphael, but not comparable to that which is in the Palazzo de Pitti, at Florence; and the death of Germanicus, by Poussin, which I take to be one of the best pieces in this great collection. In the Palazzo Falconeri there is a beautiful St. Cecilia, by Guercino; a holy family, by Raphael; and a fine expressive figure of St. Peter weeping, by Dominechino. In the Palazzo Altieri, I admired a picture, by Carlo Maratti, representing a saint calling down lightning from heaven to destroy blasphemers. It was the figure of the saint I admired, merely as a portrait. The execution of the other parts was tame enough: perhaps they were purposely kept down, in order to preserve the importance of the principal figure. I imagine Salvator Rosa would have made a different disposition on the same subject: that amidst the darkness of a tempest, he would have illuminated the blasphemer with the flash of lightning by which he was destroyed: this would have thrown a dismal gleam upon his countenance, distorted by the horror of his situation as well as by the effects of the fire; and rendered the whole scene dreadfully picturesque. In the same palace, I saw the famous holy family, by Corregio, which he left unfinished, and no other artist would undertake to supply; for what reason I know not. Here too is a judgment of Paris, by Titian, which is reckoned a very valuable piece. In the Palazzo Odescalchi, there is a holy family, by Buonaroti, and another by Raphael, both counted excellent, though in very different stiles, extremely characteristic of those two great rival artists. If I was silly enough to make a parade, I might mention some hundreds more of marbles and pictures, which I really saw at Rome; and even eke out that number with a huge list of those I did not see: but whatever vanity I may have, it has not taken this turn; and I assure you, upon my word and honour, I have described nothing but what actually fell under my own observation. As for my critical remarks, I am afraid you will think them too superficial and capricious to belong to any other person but--Your humble servant. LETTER XXXIV NICE, April 2, 1765. DEAR SIR,--I have nothing to communicate touching the library of the Vatican, which, with respect to the apartments and their ornaments, is undoubtedly magnificent. The number of books it contains does not exceed forty thousand volumes, which are all concealed from the view, and locked up in presses: as for the manuscripts, I saw none but such as are commonly presented to strangers of our nation; some very old copies of Virgil and Terence; two or three Missals, curiously illuminated; the book De Septem Sacramentis, written in Latin by Henry VIII. against Luther; and some of that prince's love letters to Anne Boleyn. I likewise visited the Libreria Casanatense, belonging to the convent of the church called S. Maria Sopra Minerva. I had a recommendation to the principal librarian, a Dominican friar, who received me very politely, and regaled me with a sight of several curious MSS. of the classics. Having satisfied my curiosity at Rome, I prepared for my departure, and as the road between Radicofani and Montefiascone is very stony and disagreeable, I asked the banker Barazzi, if there was not a better way of returning to Florence, expressing a desire at the same time to see the cascade of Terni. He assured me that the road by Terni was forty miles shorter than the other, much more safe and easy, and accommodated with exceeding good auberges. Had I taken the trouble to cast my eyes upon the map, I must have seen, that the road by Terni, instead of being forty miles shorter, was much longer than the other: but this was not the only mistake of Signiore Barazzi. Great part of this way lies over steep mountains, or along the side of precipices, which render travelling in a carriage exceeding tedious, dreadful, and dangerous; and as for the public houses, they are in all respects the most execrable that ever I entered. I will venture to say that a common prisoner in the Marshalsea or King's-Bench is more cleanly and commodiously lodged than we were in many places on this road. The houses are abominably nasty, and generally destitute of provision: when eatables were found, we were almost poisoned by their cookery: their beds were without curtains or bedstead, and their windows without glass; and for this sort of entertainment we payed as much as if we had been genteelly lodged, and sumptuously treated. I repeat it again; of all the people I ever knew, the Italians are the most villainously rapacious. The first day, having passed Civita Castellana, a small town standing on the top of a hill, we put up at what was called an excellent inn, where cardinals, prelates, and princes, often lodged. Being meagre day, there was nothing but bread, eggs, and anchovies, in the house. I went to bed without supper, and lay in a pallet, where I was half devoured by vermin. Next day, our road, in some places, lay along precipices, which over-hang the Nera or Nar, celebrated in antiquity for its white foam, and the sulphureous quality of its waters. Sulfurea nar albus aqua, fontesque velini. Sulphureous nar, and the Velinian streams. It is a small, but rapid stream, which runs not far from hence, into the Tyber. Passing Utricoli, near the ruins of the ancient Ocriculum, and the romantic town of Narni, situated on the top of a mountain, in the neighbourhood of which is still seen standing one arch of the stupendous bridge built by Augustus Caesar, we arrived at Terni, and hiring a couple of chaises before dinner, went to see the famous Cascata delle Marmore, which is at the distance of three miles. We ascended a steep mountain by a narrow road formed for a considerable way along the brink of a precipice, at the bottom of which brawls the furious river Nera, after having received the Velino. This last is the stream which, running from the Lago delle Marmore, forms the cascade by falling over a precipice about one hundred and sixty feet high. Such a body of water rushing down the mountain; the smoak, vapour, and thick white mist which it raises; the double rainbow which these particles continually exhibit while the sun shines; the deafening sound of the cataract; the vicinity of a great number of other stupendous rocks and precipices, with the dashing, boiling, and foaming of the two rivers below, produce altogether an object of tremendous sublimity: yet great part of its effect is lost, for want of a proper point of view, from which it might be contemplated. The cascade would appear much more astonishing, were it not in some measure eclipsed by the superior height of the neighbouring mountains. You have not a front perspective; but are obliged to view it obliquely on one side, standing upon the brink of a precipice, which cannot be approached without horror. This station might be rendered much more accessible, and altogether secure, for the expence of four or five zequines; and a small tax might be levied for the purpose from travellers by the aubergiste at Terni, who lets his calasses for half a zequine a piece to those that are curious to see this phaenomenon. Besides the two postilions whom I payed for this excursion, at the rate of one stage in posting, there was a fellow who posted himself behind one of the chaises, by way of going to point out the different views of the cascade; and his demand amounted to four or five pauls. To give you an idea of the extortion of those villainous publicans, I must tell you that for a dinner and supper, which even hunger could not tempt us to eat, and a night's lodging in three truckle beds, I paid eighty pauls, amounting to forty shillings sterling. You ask me why I submitted to such imposition? I will tell you--I have more than once in my travels made a formal complaint of the exorbitancy of a publican, to the magistrate of the place; but I never received any satisfaction, and have lost abundance of time. Had I proceeded to manual correction, I should have alarmed and terrified the women: had I peremptorily refused to pay the sum total, the landlord, who was the post-master, would not have supplied me with horses to proceed on my journey. I tried the experiment at Muy in France, where I put myself into a violent passion, had abundance of trouble, was detained till it was almost night, and after all found myself obliged to submit, furnishing at the same time matter of infinite triumph to the mob, which had surrounded the coach, and interested themselves warmly in favour of their townsman. If some young patriot, in good health and spirits, would take the trouble as often as he is imposed upon by the road in travelling, to have recourse to the fountain-head, and prefer a regular complaint to the comptroller of the posts, either in France or Italy, he would have ample satisfaction, and do great service to the community. Terni is an agreeable town, pretty well built, and situated in a pleasant valley, between two branches of the river Nera, whence it was called by the antients, Interamna. Here is an agreeable piazza, where stands a church that was of old a heathen temple. There are some valuable paintings in the church. The people are said to be very civil, and provisions to be extremely cheap. It was the birthplace of the emperor Tacitus, as well as of the historian of the same name. In our journey from hence to Spoleto, we passed over a high mountain, (called, from its height, Somma) where it was necessary to have two additional horses to the carriage, and the road winds along a precipice. which is equally dangerous and dreadful. We passed through part of Spoleto, the capital of Umbria, which is a pretty large city. Of this, however, I give no other account from my own observation, but that I saw at a distance the famous Gothic aqueduct of brick: this is mentioned by Addison as a structure, which, for the height of its arches, is not equalled by any thing in Europe. The road from hence to Foligno, where we lay, is kept in good order, and lies through a delightful plain, laid out into beautiful inclosures, abounding with wine, oil, corn, and cattle, and watered by the pastoral streams of the famous river Clitumnus, which takes its rise in three or four separate rivulets issuing from a rock near the highway. On the right-hand, we saw several towns situated on rising grounds, and among the rest, that of Assissio, famous for the birth of St. Francis, whose body, being here deposited, occasions a concourse of pilgrims. We met a Roman princess going thither with a grand retinue, in consequence of a vow she had made for the re-establishment of her health. Foligno, the Fulginium of the antients, is a small town, not unpleasant, lying in the midst of mulberry plantations, vineyards, and corn-fields, and built on both sides of the little river Topino. In choosing our beds at the inn, I perceived one chamber locked, and desired it might be opened; upon which the cameriere declared with some reluctance, "Besogna dire a su' eccellenza; poco fa, che una bestia e morta in questa camera, e non e ancora lustrata," "Your Excellency must know that a filthy Beast died lately in that Chamber, and it is not yet purified and put in order." When I enquired what beast it was, he replied, "Un'eretico Inglese," "An English heretic." I suppose he would not have made so free with our country and religion, if he had not taken us for German catholics, as we afterwards learned from Mr. R--i. Next day, we crossed the Tyber, over a handsome bridge, and in mounting the steep hill upon which the city of Perugia stands, our horses being exhausted, were dragged backwards by the weight of the carriage to the very edge of a precipice, where, happily for us, a man passing that way, placed a large stone behind one of the wheels, which stopped their motion, otherwise we should have been all dashed in pieces. We had another ugly hill to ascend within the city, which was more difficult and dangerous than the other: but the postilions, and the other beasts made such efforts, that we mounted without the least stop, to the summit, where we found ourselves in a large piazza, where the horses are always changed. There being no relays at the post, we were obliged to stay the whole day and night at Perugia, which is a considerable city, built upon the acclivity of a hill, adorned with some elegant fountains, and several handsome churches, containing some valuable pictures by Guido, Raphael, and his master Pietro Perugino, who was a native of this place. The next stage is on the banks of the lake, which was the Thrasimene of the antients, a beautiful piece of water, above thirty miles in circumference, having three islands, abounding with excellent fish: upon a peninsula of it, there is a town and castle. It was in this neighbourhood where the consul Flaminius was totally defeated with great slaughter by Hannibal. From Perugia to Florence, the posts are all double, and the road is so bad that we never could travel above eight and twenty miles a day. We were often obliged to quit the carriage, and walk up steep mountains; and the way in general was so unequal and stony, that we were jolted even to the danger of our lives. I never felt any sort of exercise or fatigue so intolerable; and I did not fail to bestow an hundred benedictions per diem upon the banker Barazzi, by whose advice we had taken this road; yet there was no remedy but patience. If the coach had not been incredibly strong, it must have been shattered to pieces. The fifth night we passed at a place called Camoccia, a miserable cabaret, where we were fain to cook our own supper, and lay in a musty chamber, which had never known a fire, and indeed had no fire-place, and where we ran the risque of being devoured by rats. Next day one of the irons of the coach gave way at Arezzo, where we were detained two hours before it could be accommodated. I might have taken this opportunity to view the remains of the antient Etruscan amphitheatre, and the temple of Hercules, described by the cavalier Lorenzo Guazzesi, as standing in the neighbourhood of this place: but the blacksmith assured me his work would be finished in a few minutes; and as I had nothing so much at heart as the speedy accomplishment of this disagreeable journey, I chose to suppress my curiosity, rather than be the occasion of a moment's delay. But all the nights we had hitherto passed were comfortable in comparison to this, which we suffered at a small village, the name of which I do not remember. The house was dismal and dirty beyond all description; the bed-cloaths filthy enough to turn the stomach of a muleteer; and the victuals cooked in such a manner, that even a Hottentot could not have beheld them without loathing. We had sheets of our own, which were spread upon a mattrass, and here I took my repose wrapped in a greatcoat, if that could be called repose which was interrupted by the innumerable stings of vermin. In the morning, I was seized with a dangerous fit of hooping-cough, which terrified my wife, alarmed my people, and brought the whole community into the house. I had undergone just such another at Paris, about a year before. This forenoon, one of our coach wheels flew off in the neighbourhood of Ancisa, a small town, where we were detained above two hours by this accident; a delay which was productive of much disappointment, danger, vexation, and fatigue. There being no horses at the last post, we were obliged to wait until those which brought us thither were sufficiently refreshed to proceed. Understanding that all the gates of Florence are shut at six, except two that are kept open for the accommodation of travellers; and that to reach the nearest of these gates, it was necessary to pass the river Arno in a ferry-boat, which could not transport the carriage; I determined to send my servant before with a light chaise to enter the nearest gate before it was shut, and provide a coach to come and take us up at the side of the river, where we should be obliged to pass in the boat: for I could not bear the thoughts of lying another night in a common cabaret. Here, however, another difficulty occurred. There was but one chaise, and a dragoon officer, in the imperial troops, insisted upon his having bespoke it for himself and his servant. A long dispute ensued, which had like to have produced a quarrel: but at length I accommodated matters, by telling the officer that he should have a place in it gratis, and his servant might ride a-horse-back. He accepted the offer without hesitation; but, in the mean time, we set out in the coach before them, and having proceeded about a couple of miles, the road was so deep from a heavy rain, and the beasts were so fatigued, that they could not proceed. The postilions scourging the poor animals with great barbarity, they made an effort, and pulled the coach to the brink of a precipice, or rather a kind of hollow-way, which might be about seven or eight feet lower than the road. Here my wife and I leaped out, and stood under the rain up to the ancles in mud; while the postilions still exercising their whips, one of the fore-horses fairly tumbled down the descent, arid hung by the neck, so that he was almost strangled before he could be disengaged from the traces, by the assistance of some foot travellers that happened to pass. While we remained in this dilemma, the chaise, with the officer and my servant, coming up, we exchanged places; my wife and I proceeded in the chaise, and left them with Miss C-- and Mr. R--, to follow in the coach. The road from hence to Florence is nothing but a succession of steep mountains, paved and conducted in such a manner, that one would imagine the design had been to render it impracticable by any sort of wheel-carriage. Notwithstanding all our endeavours, I found it would be impossible to enter Florence before the gates were shut. I flattered and threatened the driver by turns: but the fellow, who had been remarkably civil at first, grew sullen and impertinent. He told me I must not think of reaching Florence: that the boat would not take the carriage on board; and that from the other side, I must walk five miles before I should reach the gate that was open: but he would carry me to an excellent osteria, where I should be entertained and lodged like a prince. I was now convinced that he had lingered on purpose to serve this inn-keeper; and I took it for granted that what he told me of the distance between the ferry and the gate was a lie. It was eight o'clock when we arrived at his inn. I alighted with my wife to view the chambers, desiring he would not put up his horses. Finding it was a villainous house, we came forth, and, by this time, the horses were put up. I asked the fellow how he durst presume to contradict my orders, and commanded him to put them to the chaise. He asked in his turn if I was mad? If I thought I and the lady had strength and courage enough to walk five miles in the dark, through a road which we did not know, and which was broke up by a continued rain of two days? I told him he was an impertinent rascal, and as he still hesitated, I collared him with one hand, and shook my cane over his head with the other. It was the only weapon I had, either offensive or defensive; for I had left my sword, and musquetoon in the coach. At length the fellow obeyed, though with great reluctance, cracking many severe jokes upon us in the mean time, and being joined in his raillery by the inn-keeper, who had all the external marks of a ruffian. The house stood in a solitary situation, and not a soul appeared but these two miscreants, so that they might have murdered us without fear of detection. "You do not like the apartments? (said one) to be sure they were not fitted up for persons of your rank and quality!" "You will be glad of a worse chamber, (continued the other) before you get to bed." "If you walk to Florence tonight, you will sleep so sound, that the fleas will not disturb you." "Take care you do not take up your night's lodging in the middle of the road, or in the ditch of the city-wall." I fired inwardly at these sarcasms, to which, however, I made no reply; and my wife was almost dead with fear. In the road from hence to the boat, we met with an ill-looking fellow, who offered his service to conduct us into the city, and such was our situation, that I was fain to accept his proposal, especially as we had two small boxes in the chaise by accident, containing some caps and laces belonging to my wife, I still hoped the postilion had exaggerated in the distance between the boat and the city gate, and was confirmed in this opinion by the ferryman, who said we had not above half a league to walk. Behold us then in this expedition; myself wrapped up in a very heavy greatcoat, and my cane in my hand. I did not imagine I could have walked a couple of miles in this equipage, had my life been depending; my wife a delicate creature, who had scarce ever walked a mile in her life; and the ragamuffin before us with our boxes under his arm. The night was dark and wet; the road slippery and dirty; not a soul was seen, nor a sound was heard: all was silent, dreary, and horrible. I laid my account with a violent fit of illness from the cold I should infallibly catch, if I escaped assassination, the fears of which were the more troublesome as I had no weapon to defend our lives. While I laboured under the weight of my greatcoat which made the streams of sweat flow down my face and shoulders, I was plunging in the mud, up to the mid-leg at every step; and at the same time obliged to support my wife, who wept in silence, half dead with terror and fatigue. To crown our vexation, our conductor walked so fast, that he was often out of sight, and I imagined he had run away with the boxes. All I could do on these occasions, was to hollow as loud as I could, and swear horribly that I would blow his brains out. I did not know but these oaths and menaces might keep other rogues in awe. In this manner did we travel three long miles, making almost an intire circuit of the city-wall, without seeing the face of a human creature, and at length reached the gate, where we were examined by the guard, and allowed to pass, after they had told us it was a long mile from thence to the house of Vanini, where we proposed to lodge. No matter, being now fairly within the city, I plucked up my spirits, and performed the rest of the journey with such ease, that I am persuaded, I could have walked at the same pace all night long, without being very much fatigued. It was near ten at night, when we entered the auberge in such a draggled and miserable condition, that Mrs. Vanini almost fainted at sight of us, on the supposition that we had met with some terrible disaster, and that the rest of the company were killed. My wife and I were immediately accommodated with dry stockings and shoes, a warm apartment, and a good supper, which I ate with great satisfaction, arising not only from our having happily survived the adventure, but also from a conviction that my strength and constitution were wonderfully repaired: not but that I still expected a severe cold, attended with a terrible fit of the asthma: but in this I was luckily disappointed. I now for the first time drank to the health of my physician Barazzi, fully persuaded that the hardships and violent exercise I underwent by following his advice, had greatly contributed to the re-establishment of my health. In this particular, I imitate the gratitude of Tavernier, who was radically cured of the gout by a Turkish aga in Aegypt, who gave him the bastinado, because he would not look at the head of the bashaw of Cairo, which the aga had in a bag, to be presented to the grand signior at Constantinople. I did not expect to see the rest of our company that night, as I never doubted but they would stay with the coach at the inn on the other side of the Arno: but at mid-night we were joined by Miss C-- and Mr. R--, who had left the carriage at the inn, under the auspices of the captain and my servant, and followed our foot-steps by walking from the ferry-boat to Florence, conducted by one of the boatmen. Mr. R-- seemed to be much ruffled and chagrined; but, as he did not think proper to explain the cause, he had no right to expect that I should give him satisfaction for some insult he had received from my servant. They had been exposed to a variety of disagreeable adventures from the impracticability of the road. The coach had been several times in the most imminent hazard of being lost with all our baggage; and at one place, it was necessary to hire a dozen of oxen, and as many men, to disengage it from the holes into which it had run. It was in the confusion of these adventures, that the captain and his valet, Mr. R-- and my servant, had like to have gone all by the ears together. The peace was with difficulty preserved by the interposition of Miss C--, who suffered incredibly from cold and wet, terror, vexation, and fatigue: yet happily no bad consequence ensued. The coach and baggage were brought safely into Florence next morning, when all of us found ourselves well refreshed, and in good spirits. I am afraid this is not the case with you, who must by this time be quite jaded with this long epistle, which shall therefore be closed without further ceremony by,--Yours always. LETTER XXXV NICE, March 20, 1765. DEAR SIR,--The season being far advanced, and the weather growing boisterous, I made but a short stay at Florence, and set out for Pisa, with full resolution to take the nearest road to Lerici, where we proposed to hire a felucca for Genoa. I had a great desire to see Leghorn and Lucca; but the dread of a winter's voyage by sea in an open boat effectually restrained my curiosity. To avoid the trouble of having our baggage shifted every post, I hired two chaises to Pisa for a couple of zequines, and there we arrived in safety about seven in the evening, though not without fear of the consequence, as the calesses were quite open, and it rained all the way. I must own I was so sick of the wretched accommodation one meets with in every part of Italy, except the great cities, so averse to the sea at this season, and so fond of the city of Pisa, that I should certainly have stayed here the winter, had not I been separated from my books and papers, as well as from other conveniencies and connexions which I had at Nice; and foreseen that the thoughts of performing the same disagreeable voyage in the spring would imbitter my whole winter's enjoyment. I again hired two calesses for Lerici, proposing to lie at Sarzana, three miles short of that place, where we were told we should find comfortable lodging, and to embark next day without halting. When we departed in the morning, it rained very hard, and the Cerchio, which the chaises had formerly passed, almost without wetting the wheels, was now swelled to a mighty river, broad and deep and rapid. It was with great difficulty I could persuade my wife to enter the boat; for it blew a storm, and she had seen it in coming over from the other side hurried down a considerable way by the rapidity of the current, notwithstanding all the efforts of the watermen. Near two hours were spent in transporting us with our chaises. The road between this and Pietra Santa was rendered almost impassable. When we arrived at Massa, it began to grow dark, and the post-master assured us that the road to Sarzana was overflowed in such a manner as not to be passed even in the day-time, without imminent danger. We therefore took up our lodging for the night at this house, which was in all respects one of the worst we had yet entered. Next day, we found the Magra as large and violent as the Cerchio: however, we passed it without any accident, and in the afternoon arrived at Lerici. There we were immediately besieged by a number of patrons of feluccas, from among whom I chose a Spaniard, partly because he looked like an honest man, and produced an ample certificate, signed by an English gentleman; and partly, because he was not an Italian; for, by this time, I had imbibed a strong prejudice against the common people of that country. We embarked in the morning before day, with a gale that made us run the lee-gunwale in the water; but, when we pretended to turn the point of Porto Venere, we found the wind full in our teeth, and were obliged to return to our quarters, where we had been shamefully fleeced by the landlord, who, nevertheless, was not such an exorbitant knave as the post-master, whose house I would advise all travellers to avoid. Here, indeed, I had occasion to see an instance of prudence and oeconomy, which I should certainly imitate, if ever I had occasion to travel this way by myself. An Englishman, who had hired a felucca from Antibes to Leghorn, was put in here by stress of weather; but being aware of the extortion of innkeepers, and the bad accommodation in their houses, he slept on board on his own mattrasses; and there likewise he had all his conveniencies for eating. He sent his servant on shore occasionally to buy provision, and see it cooked according to his direction in some public house; and had his meals regularly in the felucca. This evening he came ashore to stretch his legs, and took a solitary walk on the beach, avoiding us with great care, although he knew we were English; his valet who was abundantly communicative, told my servant, that in coming through France, his master had travelled three days in company with two other English gentlemen, whom he met upon the road, and in all that time he never spoke a word to either, yet in other respects, he was a good man, mild, charitable, and humane. This is a character truly British. At five o'clock in the morning we put to sea again, and though the wind was contrary, made shift to reach the town of Sestri di Levante, where we were most graciously received by the publican butcher and his family. The house was in much better order than before; the people were much more obliging; we passed a very tolerable night, and had a very reasonable bill to pay in the morning. I cannot account for this favourable change any other way, than by ascribing it to the effects of a terrible storm, which had two days before torn up a great number of their olive-trees by the roots, and done such damage as terrified them into humility and submission. Next day, the water being delightful, we arrived by one o'clock in the afternoon at Genoa. Here I made another bargain with our patron Antonio, to carry us to Nice. He had been hitherto remarkably obliging, and seemingly modest. He spoke Latin fluently, and was tinctured with the sciences. I began to imagine he was a person of a good family, who had met with misfortunes in life, and respected him accordingly: but I afterwards found him mercenary, mean, and rapacious. The wind being still contrary, when we departed from Genoa, we could get no further than Finale, where we lodged in a very dismal habitation, which was recommended to us as the best auberge in the place. What rendered it the more uncomfortable, the night was cold, and there was not a fire-place in the house, except in the kitchen. The beds (if they deserved that name) were so shockingly nasty, that we could not have used them, had not a friend of Mr. R-- supplied us with mattrasses, sheets, and coverlets; for our own sheets were on board the felucca, which was anchored at a distance from the shore. Our fare was equally wretched: the master of the house was a surly assassin, and his cameriere or waiter, stark-staring mad. Our situation was at the same time shocking and ridiculous. Mr. R-- quarrelled over night with the master, who swore in broken French to my man, that he had a good mind to poniard that impertinent Piedmontese. In the morning, before day, Mr. R--, coming into my chamber, gave me to understand that he had been insulted by the landlord, who demanded six and thirty livres for our supper and lodging. Incensed at the rascal's presumption, I assured him I would make him take half the money, and a good beating into the bargain. He replied, that he would have saved me the trouble of beating him, had not the cameriere, who was a very sensible fellow, assured him the padrone was out of his senses, and if roughly handled, might commit some extravagance. Though I was exceedingly ruffled, I could not help laughing at the mad cameriere's palming himself upon R--y, as a sensible fellow, and transferring the charge of madness upon his master, who seemed to be much more knave than fool. While Mr. R-- went to mass, I desired the cameriere to bid his master bring the bill, and to tell him that if it was not reasonable, I would carry him before the commandant. In the mean time I armed myself with my sword in one hand and my cane in the other. The inn-keeper immediately entered, pale and staring, and when I demanded his bill, he told me, with a profound reverence that he should be satisfied with whatever I myself thought proper to give. Surprised at this moderation, I asked if he should be content with twelve livres, and he answered, "Contentissimo," with another prostration. Then he made an apology for the bad accommodation of his house, and complained, that the reproaches of the other gentleman, whom he was pleased to call my majorduomo, had almost turned his brain. When he quitted the room, his cameriere, laying hold of his master's last words, pointed to his own forehead, and said, he had informed the gentleman over night that his patron was mad. This day we were by a high wind in the afternoon, driven for shelter into Porto Mauritio, where we found the post-house even worse than that of Finale; and what rendered it more shocking was a girl quite covered with the confluent smallpox, who lay in a room through which it was necessary to pass to the other chambers, and who smelled so strong as to perfume the whole house. We were but fifteen miles from St. Remo, where I knew the auberge was tolerable, and thither I resolved to travel by land. I accordingly ordered five mules to travel post, and a very ridiculous cavalcade we formed, the women being obliged to use common saddles; for in this country even the ladies sit astride. The road lay along one continued precipice, and was so difficult, that the beasts never could exceed a walking pace. In some places we were obliged to alight. Seven hours were spent in travelling fifteen short miles: at length we arrived at our old lodgings in St. Remo, which we found white-washed, and in great order. We supped pretty comfortably; slept well; and had no reason to complain of imposition in paying the bill. This was not the case in the article of the mules, for which I was obliged to pay fifty livres, according to the regulation of the posts. The postmaster, who came along with us, had the effrontery to tell me, that if I had hired the mules to carry me and my company to St. Remo, in the way of common travelling, they would have cost me but fifteen livres; but as I demanded post-horses, I must submit to the regulations. This is a distinction the more absurd, as the road is of such a nature as renders it impossible to travel faster in one way than in another; nor indeed is there the least difference either in the carriage or convenience, between travelling post and journey riding. A publican might with the same reason charge me three livres a pound for whiting, and if questioned about the imposition, reply, that if I had asked for fish I should have had the same whiting for the fifth part of the money: but that he made a wide difference between selling it as fish, and selling it as whiting. Our felucca came round from Porto Mauritio in the night, and embarking next morning, we arrived at Nice about four in the afternoon. Thus have I given you a circumstantial detail of my Italian expedition, during which I was exposed to a great number of hardships, which I thought my weakened constitution could not have bore; as well as to violent fits of passion, chequered, however, with transports of a more agreeable nature; insomuch that I may say I was for two months continually agitated either in mind or body, and very often in both at the same time. As my disorder at first arose from a sedentary life, producing a relaxation of the fibres, which naturally brought on a listlessness, indolence, and dejection of the spirits, I am convinced that this hard exercise of mind and body, co-operated with the change of air and objects, to brace up the relaxed constitution, and promote a more vigorous circulation of the juices, which had long languished even almost to stagnation. For some years, I had been as subject to colds as a delicate woman new delivered. If I ventured to go abroad when there was the least moisture either in the air, or upon the ground, I was sure to be laid up a fortnight with a cough and asthma. But, in this journey, I suffered cold and rain, and stood, and walked in the wet, heated myself with exercise, and sweated violently, without feeling the least disorder; but, on the contrary, felt myself growing stronger every day in the midst of these excesses. Since my return to Nice, it has rained the best part of two months, to the astonishment of all the people in the country; yet during all that time I have enjoyed good health and spirits. On Christmas-Eve, I went to the cathedral at midnight, to hear high mass celebrated by the new bishop of Nice, in pontificalibus, and stood near two hours uncovered in a cold gallery, without having any cause in the sequel to repent of my curiosity. In a word, I am now so well that I no longer despair of seeing you and the rest of my friends in England; a pleasure which is eagerly desired by,--Dear Sir, Your affectionate humble Servant. LETTER XXXVI NICE, March 23, 1766. DEAR SIR,--You ask whether I think the French people are more taxed than the English; but I apprehend, the question would be more apropos if you asked whether the French taxes are more insupportable than the English; for, in comparing burthens, we ought always to consider the strength of the shoulders that bear them. I know no better way of estimating the strength, than by examining the face of the country, and observing the appearance of the common people, who constitute the bulk of every nation. When I, therefore, see the country of England smiling with cultivation; the grounds exhibiting all the perfection of agriculture, parcelled out into beautiful inclosures, cornfields, hay and pasture, woodland and common, when I see her meadows well stocked with black cattle, her downs covered with sheep; when I view her teams of horses and oxen, large and strong, fat and sleek; when I see her farm-houses the habitations of plenty, cleanliness, and convenience; and her peasants well fed, well lodged, well cloathed, tall and stout, and hale and jolly; I cannot help concluding that the people are well able to bear those impositions which the public necessities have rendered necessary. On the other hand, when I perceive such signs of poverty, misery and dirt, among the commonalty of France, their unfenced fields dug up in despair, without the intervention of meadow or fallow ground, without cattle to furnish manure, without horses to execute the plans of agriculture; their farm-houses mean, their furniture wretched, their apparel beggarly; themselves and their beasts the images of famine; I cannot help thinking they groan under oppression, either from their landlords, or their government; probably from both. The principal impositions of the French government are these: first, the taille, payed by all the commons, except those that are privileged: secondly, the capitation, from which no persons (not even the nobles) are excepted: thirdly, the tenths and twentieths, called Dixiemes and Vingtiemes, which every body pays. This tax was originally levied as an occasional aid in times of war, and other emergencies; but by degrees is become a standing revenue even in time of peace. All the money arising from these impositions goes directly to the king's treasury; and must undoubtedly amount to a very great sum. Besides these, he has the revenue of the farms, consisting of the droits d'aydes, or excise on wine, brandy, &c. of the custom-house duties; of the gabelle, comprehending that most oppressive obligation on individuals to take a certain quantity of salt at the price which the farmers shall please to fix; of the exclusive privilege to sell tobacco; of the droits de controlle, insinuation, centieme denier, franchiefs, aubeine, echange et contre-echange arising from the acts of voluntary jurisdiction, as well as certain law-suits. These farms are said to bring into the king's coffers above one hundred and twenty millions of livres yearly, amounting to near five millions sterling: but the poor people are said to pay about a third more than this sum, which the farmers retain to enrich themselves, and bribe the great for their protection; which protection of the great is the true reason why this most iniquitous, oppressive, and absurd method of levying money is not laid aside. Over and above those articles I have mentioned, the French king draws considerable sums from his clergy, under the denomination of dons gratuits, or free-gifts; as well as from the subsidies given by the pays d'etats such as Provence, Languedoc, and Bretagne, which are exempted from the taille. The whole revenue of the French king amounts to between twelve and thirteen millions sterling. These are great resources for the king: but they will always keep the people miserable, and effectually prevent them from making such improvements as might turn their lands to the best advantage. But besides being eased in the article of taxes, there is something else required to make them exert themselves for the benefit of their country. They must be free in their persons, secure in their property, indulged with reasonable leases, and effectually protected by law from the insolence and oppression of their superiors. Great as the French king's resources may appear, they are hardly sufficient to defray the enormous expence of his government. About two millions sterling per annum of his revenue are said to be anticipated for paying the interest of the public debts; and the rest is found inadequate to the charge of a prodigious standing army, a double frontier of fortified towns and the extravagant appointments of ambassadors, generals, governors, intendants, commandants, and other officers of the crown, all of whom affect a pomp, which is equally ridiculous and prodigal. A French general in the field is always attended by thirty or forty cooks; and thinks it is incumbent upon him, for the glory of France, to give a hundred dishes every day at his table. When don Philip, and the marechal duke de Belleisle, had their quarters at Nice, there were fifty scullions constantly employed in the great square in plucking poultry. This absurd luxury infects their whole army. Even the commissaries keep open table; and nothing is seen but prodigality and profusion. The king of Sardinia proceeds upon another plan. His troops are better cloathed, better payed, and better fed than those of France. The commandant of Nice has about four hundred a year of appointments, which enable him to live decently, and even to entertain strangers. On the other hand, the commandant of Antibes, which is in all respects more inconsiderable than Nice, has from the French king above five times the sum to support the glory of his monarch, which all the sensible part of mankind treat with ridicule and contempt. But the finances of France are so ill managed, that many of their commandants, and other officers, have not been able to draw their appointments these two years. In vain they complain and remonstrate. When they grow troublesome they are removed. How then must they support the glory of France? How, but by oppressing the poor people. The treasurer makes use of their money for his own benefit. The king knows it; he knows his officers, thus defrauded, fleece and oppress his people: but he thinks proper to wink at these abuses. That government may be said to be weak and tottering which finds itself obliged to connive at such proceedings. The king of France, in order to give strength and stability to his administration, ought to have sense to adopt a sage plan of oeconomy, and vigour of mind sufficient to execute it in all its parts, with the most rigorous exactness. He ought to have courage enough to find fault, and even to punish the delinquents, of what quality soever they may be: and the first act of reformation ought to be a total abolition of all the farms. There are, undoubtedly, many marks of relaxation in the reins of the French government, and, in all probability, the subjects of France will be the first to take advantage of it. There is at present a violent fermentation of different principles among them, which under the reign of a very weak prince, or during a long minority, may produce a great change in the constitution. In proportion to the progress of reason and philosophy, which have made great advances in this kingdom, superstition loses ground; antient prejudices give way; a spirit of freedom takes the ascendant. All the learned laity of France detest the hierarchy as a plan of despotism, founded on imposture and usurpation. The protestants, who are very numerous in southern parts, abhor it with all the rancour of religious fanaticism. Many of the commons, enriched by commerce and manufacture, grow impatient of those odious distinctions, which exclude them from the honours and privileges due to their importance in the commonwealth; and all the parliaments, or tribunals of justice in the kingdom, seem bent upon asserting their rights and independence in the face of the king's prerogative, and even at the expence of his power and authority. Should any prince therefore be seduced by evil counsellors, or misled by his own bigotry, to take some arbitrary step, that may be extremely disagreeable to all those communities, without having spirit to exert the violence of his power for the support of his measures, he will become equally detested and despised; and the influence of the commons will insensibly encroach upon the pretensions of the crown. But if in the time of a minority, the power of the government should be divided among different competitors for the regency, the parliaments and people will find it still more easy to acquire and ascertain the liberty at which they aspire, because they will have the balance of power in their hands, and be able to make either scale preponderate. I could say a great deal more upon this subject; and I have some remarks to make relating to the methods which might be taken in the case of a fresh rupture with France, for making a vigorous impression on that kingdom. But these I in list defer till another occasion, having neither room nor leisure at present to add any thing, but that I am, with great truth,--Dear Sir, Your very humble Servant. LETTER XXXVII NICE, April 2, 1765. DEAR DOCTOR,--As I have now passed a second winter at Nice I think myself qualified to make some further remarks on this climate. During the heats of last summer, I flattered myself with the prospect of the fine weather I should enjoy in the winter; but neither I, nor any person in this country, could foresee the rainy weather that prevailed from the middle of November, till the twentieth of March. In this short period of four months, we have had fifty-six days of rain, which I take to be a greater quantity than generally falls during the six worst months of the year in the county of Middlesex, especially as it was, for the most part, a heavy, continued rain. The south winds generally predominate in the wet season at Nice: but this winter the rain was accompanied with every wind that blows, except the south; though the most frequent were those that came from the east and north quarters. Notwithstanding these great rains, such as were never known before at Nice in the memory of man, the intermediate days of fair weather were delightful, and the ground seemed perfectly dry. The air itself was perfectly free from moisture. Though I live upon a ground floor, surrounded on three sides by a garden, I could not perceive the least damp, either on the floors, or the furniture; neither was I much incommoded by the asthma, which used always to harass me most in wet weather. In a word, I passed the winter here much more comfortably than I expected. About the vernal equinox, however, I caught a violent cold, which was attended with a difficulty of breathing, and as the sun advances towards the tropic, I find myself still more subject to rheums. As the heat increases, the humours of the body are rarefied, and, of consequence, the pores of the skin are opened; while the east wind sweeping over the Alps and Apennines, covered with snow, continues surprisingly sharp and penetrating. Even the people of the country, who enjoy good health, are afraid of exposing themselves to the air at this season, the intemperature of which may last till the middle of May, when all the snow on the mountains will probably be melted: then the air will become mild and balmy, till, in the progress of summer, it grows disagreeably hot, and the strong evaporation from the sea makes it so saline, as to be unhealthy for those who have a scorbutical habit. When the sea-breeze is high, this evaporation is so great as to cover the surface of the body with a kind of volatile brine, as I plainly perceived last summer. I am more and more convinced that this climate is unfavourable for the scurvy. Were I obliged to pass my life in it, I would endeavour to find a country retreat among the mountains, at some distance from the sea, where I might enjoy a cool air, free from this impregnation, unmolested by those flies, gnats, and other vermin which render the lower parts almost uninhabitable. To this place I would retire in the month of June, and there continue till the beginning of October, when I would return to my habitation in Nice, where the winter is remarkably mild and agreeable. In March and April however, I would not advise a valetudinarian to go forth, without taking precaution against the cold. An agreeable summer retreat may be found on the other side of the Var, at, or near the town of Grasse, which is pleasantly situated on the ascent of a hill in Provence, about seven English miles from Nice. This place is famous for its pomatum, gloves, wash-balls, perfumes, and toilette-boxes, lined with bergamot. I am told it affords good lodging, and is well supplied with provisions. We are now preparing for our journey to England, from the exercise of which I promise myself much benefit: a journey extremely agreeable, not only on that account, but also because it will restore me to the company of my friends, and remove me from a place where I leave nothing but the air which I can possibly regret. The only friendships I have contracted at Nice are with strangers, who, like myself, only sojourn here for a season. I now find by experience, it is great folly to buy furniture, unless one is resolved to settle here for some years. The Nissards assured me, with great confidence, that I should always be able to sell it for a very little loss; whereas I find myself obliged to part with it for about one-third of what it cost. I have sent for a coach to Aix, and as soon as it arrives, shall take my departure; so that the next letter you receive from me will be dated at some place on the road. I purpose to take Antibes, Toulon, Marseilles, Aix, Avignon, and Orange, in my way: places which I have not yet seen; and where, perhaps, I shall find something for your amusement, which will always be a consideration of some weight with,--Dear Sir, Yours. LETTER XXXVIII To DR. S-- AT NICE TURIN, March 18, 1765. DEAR SIR,--Turin is about thirty leagues from Nice, the greater part of the way lying over frightful mountains covered with snow. The difficulty of the road, however, reaches no farther than Coni, from whence there is an open highway through a fine plain country, as far as the capital of Piedmont, and the traveller is accommodated with chaise and horses to proceed either post, or by cambiatura, as in other parts of Italy. There are only two ways of performing the journey over the mountains from Nice; one is to ride a mule-back, and the other to be carried in a chair. The former I chose, and set out with my servant on the seventh day of February at two in the afternoon. I was hardly clear of Nice, when it began to rain so hard that in less than an hour the mud was half a foot deep in many parts of the road. This was the only inconvenience we suffered, the way being in other respects practicable enough; for there is but one small hill to cross on this side of the village of L'Escarene, where we arrived about six in the evening. The ground in this neighbourhood is tolerably cultivated, and the mountains are planted to the tops with olive trees. The accommodation here is so very bad, that I had no inclination to be a-bed longer than was absolutely necessary for refreshment; and therefore I proceeded on my journey at two in the morning, conducted by a guide, whom I hired for this purpose at the rate of three livres a day. Having ascended one side, and descended the other, of the mountain called Braus, which took up four hours, though the road is not bad, we at six reached the village of Sospello, which is agreeably situated in a small valley, surrounded by prodigious high and barren mountains. This little plain is pretty fertile, and being watered by a pleasant stream, forms a delightful contrast with the hideous rocks that surround it. Having reposed myself and my mules two hours at this place, we continued our journey over the second mountain, called Brovis, which is rather more considerable than the first, and in four hours arrived at La Giandola, a tolerable inn situated betwixt the high road and a small river, about a gunshot from the town of Brieglie, which we leave on the right. As we jogged along in the grey of the morning, I was a little startled at two figures which I saw before me, and began to put my pistols in order. It must be observed that these mountains are infested with contrabandiers, a set of smuggling peasants, very bold and desperate, who make a traffic of selling tobacco, salt, and other merchandize, which have not payed duty, and sometimes lay travellers under contribution. I did not doubt but there was a gang of these free-booters at hand; but as no more than two persons appeared, I resolved to let them know we were prepared for defence, and fired one of my pistols, in hope that the report of it, echoed from the surrounding rocks, would produce a proper effect: but, the mountains and roads being entirely covered with snow to a considerable depth, there was little or no reverberation, and the sound was not louder than that of a pop-gun, although the piece contained a good charge of powder. Nevertheless, it did not fail to engage the attention of the strangers, one of whom immediately wheeled to the left about, and being by this time very near me, gave me an opportunity of contemplating his whole person. He was very tall, meagre, and yellow, with a long hooked nose, and small twinkling eyes. His head was eased in a woollen night-cap, over which he wore a flapped hat; he had a silk handkerchief about his neck, and his mouth was furnished with a short wooden pipe, from which he discharged wreathing clouds of tobacco-smoke. He was wrapped in a kind of capot of green bays, lined with wolf-skin, had a pair of monstrous boots, quilted on the inside with cotton, was almost covered with dirt, and rode a mule so low that his long legs hung dangling within six inches of the ground. This grotesque figure was so much more ludicrous than terrible, that I could not help laughing; when, taking his pipe out of his mouth, he very politely accosted me by name. You may easily guess I was exceedingly surprised at such an address on the top of the mountain Brovis: but he forthwith put an end to it too, by discovering himself to be the marquis M--, whom I had the honour to be acquainted with at Nice. After having rallied him upon his equipage, he gave me to understand he had set out from Nice the morning of the same day that I departed; that he was going to Turin, and that he had sent one of his servants before him to Coni with his baggage. Knowing him to be an agreeable companion, I was glad of this encounter, and we resolved to travel the rest of the way together. We dined at La Giandola, and in the afternoon rode along the little river Roida, which runs in a bottom between frightful precipices, and in several places forms natural cascades, the noise of which had well-nigh deprived us of the sense of hearing; after a winding course among these mountains, it discharges itself into the Mediterranean at Vintimiglia, in the territory of Genoa. As the snow did not lie on these mountains, when we cracked our whips, there was such a repercussion of the sound as is altogether inconceivable. We passed by the village of Saorgio, situated on an eminence, where there is a small fortress which commands the whole pass, and in five hours arrived at our inn, on this side the Col de Tende, where we took up our quarters, but had very little reason to boast of our entertainment. Our greatest difficulty, however, consisted in pulling off the marquis's boots, which were of the kind called Seafarot, by this time so loaded with dirt on the outside, and so swelled with the rain within, that he could neither drag them after him as he walked, nor disencumber his legs of them, without such violence as seemed almost sufficient to tear him limb from limb. In a word, we were obliged to tie a rope about his heel, and all the people in the house assisting to pull, the poor marquis was drawn from one end of the apartment to the other before the boot would give way: at last his legs were happily disengaged, and the machines carefully dried and stuffed for next day's journey. We took our departure from hence at three in the morning, and at four, began to mount the Col de Tende, which is by far the highest mountain in the whole journey: it was now quite covered with snow, which at the top of it was near twenty feet thick. Half way up, there are quarters for a detachment of soldiers, posted here to prevent smuggling, and an inn called La Ca, which in the language of the country signifies the house. At this place, we hired six men to assist us in ascending the mountain, each of them provided with a kind of hough to break the ice, and make a sort of steps for the mules. When we were near the top, however, we were obliged to alight, and climb the mountain supported each by two of those men, called Coulants who walk upon the snow with great firmness and security. We were followed by the mules, and though they are very sure-footed animals, and were frost-shod for the occasion, they stumbled and fell very often; the ice being so hard that the sharp-headed nails in their shoes could not penetrate. Having reached the top of this mountain, from whence there is no prospect but of other rocks and mountains, we prepared for descending on the other side by the Leze, which is an occasional sledge made of two pieces of wood, carried up by the Coulants for this purpose. I did not much relish this kind of carriage, especially as the mountain was very steep, and covered with such a thick fog that we could hardly see two or three yards before us. Nevertheless, our guides were so confident, and my companion, who had passed the same way on other occasions, was so secure, that I ventured to place myself on this machine, one of the coulants standing behind me, and the other sitting before, as the conductor, with his feet paddling among the snow, in order to moderate the velocity of its descent. Thus accommodated, we descended the mountain with such rapidity, that in an hour we reached Limon, which is the native place of almost all the muleteers who transport merchandize from Nice to Coni and Turin. Here we waited full two hours for the mules, which travelled with the servants by the common road. To each of the coulants we paid forty sols, which are nearly equal to two shillings sterling. Leaving Limon, we were in two hours quite disengaged from the gorges of the mountains, which are partly covered with wood and pasturage, though altogether inaccessible, except in summer; but from the foot of the Col de Tende, the road lies through a plain all the way to Turin. We took six hours to travel from the inn where we had lodged over the mountain to Limon, and five hours from thence to Coni. Here we found our baggage, which we had sent off by the carriers one day before we departed from Nice; and here we dismissed our guides, together with the mules. In winter, you have a mule for this whole journey at the rate of twenty livres; and the guides are payed at the rate of two livres a day, reckoning six days, three for the journey to Coni, and three for their return to Nice. We set out so early in the morning in order to avoid the inconveniencies and dangers that attend the passage of this mountain. The first of these arises from your meeting with long strings of loaded mules in a slippery road, the breadth of which does not exceed a foot and an half. As it is altogether impossible for two mules to pass each other in such a narrow path, the muleteers have made doublings or elbows in different parts, and when the troops of mules meet, the least numerous is obliged to turn off into one of these doublings, and there halt until the others are past. Travellers, in order to avoid this disagreeable delay, which is the more vexatious, considering the excessive cold, begin the ascent of the mountain early in the morning before the mules quit their inns. But the great danger of travelling here when the sun is up, proceeds from what they call the Valanches. These are balls of snow detached from the mountains which over-top the road, either by the heat of the sun, or the humidity of the weather. A piece of snow thus loosened from the rock, though perhaps not above three or four feet in diameter, increases sometimes in its descent to such a degree, as to become two hundred paces in length, and rolls down with such rapidity, that the traveller is crushed to death before he can make three steps on the road. These dreadful heaps drag every thing along with them in their descent. They tear up huge trees by the roots, and if they chance to fall upon a house, demolish it to the foundation. Accidents of this nature seldom happen in the winter while the weather is dry; and yet scarce a year passes in which some mules and their drivers do not perish by the valanches. At Coni we found the countess C-- from Nice, who had made the same journey in a chair, carried by porters. This is no other than a common elbow-chair of wood, with a straw bottom, covered above with waxed cloth, to protect the traveller from the rain or snow, and provided with a foot-board upon which the feet rest. It is carried like a sedan-chair; and for this purpose six or eight porters are employed at the rate of three or four livres a head per day, according to the season, allowing three days for their return. Of these six men, two are between the poles carrying like common chairmen, and each of these is supported by the other two, one at each hand: but as those in the middle sustain the greatest burthen, they are relieved by the others in a regular rotation. In descending the mountain, they carry the poles on their shoulders, and in that case, four men are employed, one at each end. At Coni, you may have a chaise to go with the same horses to Turin, for which you pay fifteen livres, and are a day and a half on the way. You may post it, however, in one day, and then the price is seven livres ten sols per post, and ten sols to the postilion. The method we took was that of cambiatura. This is a chaise with horses shifted at the same stages that are used in posting: but as it is supposed to move slower, we pay but five livres per post, and ten sols to the postilion. In order to quicken its pace, we gave ten sols extraordinary to each postilion, and for this gratification, he drove us even faster than the post. The chaises are like those of Italy, and will take on near two hundred weight of baggage. Coni is situated between two small streams, and though neither very large nor populous, is considerable for the strength of its fortifications. It is honoured with the title of the Maiden-Fortress, because though several times besieged, it was never taken. The prince of Conti invested it in the war of 1744; but he was obliged to raise the siege, after having given battle to the king of Sardinia. The place was gallantly defended by the baron Leutrum, a German protestant, the best general in the Sardinian service: but what contributed most to the miscarriage of the enemy, was a long tract of heavy rains, which destroyed all their works, and rendered their advances impracticable. I need not tell you that Piedmont is one of the most fertile and agreeable countries in Europe, and this the most agreeable part of all Piedmont, though it now appeared to disadvantage from the rigorous season of the year: I shall only observe that we passed through Sabellian, which is a considerable town, and arrived in the evening at Turin. We entered this fine city by the gate of Nice, and passing through the elegant Piazza di San Carlo, took up our quarters at the Bona Fama, which stands at one corner of the great square, called La Piazza Castel. Were I even disposed to give a description of Turin, I should be obliged to postpone it till another opportunity, having no room at present to say any thing more, but that I am always--Yours. LETTER XXXIX AIX EN PROVENCE, May 10, 1765. DEAR SIR,--I am thus far on my way to England. I had resolved to leave Nice, without having the least dispute with any one native of the place; but I found it impossible to keep this resolution. My landlord, Mr. C--, a man of fashion, with whose family we had always lived in friendship, was so reasonable as to expect I should give him up the house and garden, though they were to be paid for till Michaelmas, and peremptorily declared I should not be permitted to sub-let them to any other person. He had of his own accord assured me more than once that he would take my furniture off my hands, and trusting to this assurance, I had lost the opportunity, of disposing it to advantage: but, when the time of my departure drew near, he refused to take it, at the same time insisting upon having the key of the house and garden, as well as on being paid the whole rent directly, though it would not be due till the middle of September. I was so exasperated at this treatment from a man whom I had cultivated with particular respect, that I determined to contest it at law: but the affair was accommodated by the mediation of a father of the Minims, a friend to both, and a merchant of Nice, who charged himself with the care of the house and furniture. A stranger must conduct himself with the utmost circumspection to be able to live among these people without being the dupe of imposition. I had sent to Aix for a coach and four horses, which I hired at the rate of eighteen French livres a day, being equal to fifteen shillings and nine-pence sterling. The river Var was so swelled by the melting of the snow on the mountains, as to be impassable by any wheel-carriage; and, therefore, the coach remained at Antibes, to which we went by water, the distance being about nine or ten miles. This is the Antipolis of the antients, said to have been built like Nice, by a colony from Marseilles. In all probability, however, it was later than the foundation of Nice, and took its name from its being situated directly opposite to that city. Pliny says it was famous for its tunny-fishery; and to this circumstance Martial alludes in the following lines Antipolitani, fateor, sum filia thynni. Essem si Scombri non tibi missa forem. I'm spawned from Tunny of Antibes, 'tis true. Right Scomber had I been, I ne'er had come to you. The famous pickle Garum was made from the Thynnus or Tunny as well as from the Scomber, but that from the Scomber was counted the most delicate. Commentators, however, are not agreed about the Scomber or Scombrus. Some suppose it was the Herring or Sprat; others believe it was the mackarel; after all, perhaps it was the Anchovy, which I do not find distinguished by any other Latin name: for the Encrasicolus is a Greek appellation altogether generical. Those who would be further informed about the Garum and the Scomber may consult Caelius Apicius de recogninaria, cum notis, variorum. At present, Antibes is the frontier of France towards Italy, pretty strongly fortified, and garrisoned by a battalion of soldiers. The town is small and inconsiderable: but the basin of the harbour is surrounded to seaward by a curious bulwark founded upon piles driven in the water, consisting of a wall, ramparts, casemates, and quay. Vessels lie very safe in this harbour; but there is not water at the entrance of it to admit of ships of any burthen. The shallows run so far off from the coast, that a ship of force cannot lie near enough to batter the town; but it was bombarded in the late war. Its chief strength by land consists in a small quadrangular fort detached from the body of the place, which, in a particular manner, commands the entrance of the harbour. The wall of the town built in the sea has embrasures and salient angles, on which a great number of cannon may be mounted. I think the adjacent country is much more pleasant than that on the side of Nice; and there is certainly no essential difference in the climate. The ground here is not so encumbered; it is laid out in agreeable inclosures, with intervals of open fields, and the mountains rise with an easy ascent at a much greater distance from the sea, than on the other side of the bay. Besides, here are charming rides along the beach, which is smooth and firm. When we passed in the last week of April, the corn was in the ear; the cherries were almost ripe; and the figs had begun to blacken. I had embarked my heavy baggage on board a London ship, which happened to be at Nice, ready to sail: as for our small trunks or portmanteaus, which we carried along with us, they were examined at Antibes; but the ceremony was performed very superficially, in consequence of tipping the searcher with half-a-crown, which is a wonderful conciliator at all the bureaus in this country. We lay at Cannes, a neat village, charmingly situated on the beach of the Mediterranean, exactly opposite to the isles Marguerites, where state-prisoners are confined. As there are some good houses in this place, I would rather live here for the sake of the mild climate, than either at Antibes or Nice. Here you are not cooped up within walls, nor crowded with soldiers and people: but are already in the country, enjoy a fine air, and are well supplied with all sorts of fish. The mountains of Esterelles, which in one of my former letters I described as a most romantic and noble plantation of ever-greens, trees, shrubs, and aromatic plants, is at present quite desolate. Last summer, some execrable villains set fire to the pines, when the wind was high. It continued burning for several months, and the conflagration extended above ten leagues, consuming an incredible quantity of timber. The ground is now naked on each side of the road, or occupied by the black trunks of the trees, which have been scorched without falling. They stand as so many monuments of the judgment of heaven, filling the mind with horror and compassion. I could hardly refrain from shedding tears at this dismal spectacle, when I recalled the idea of what it was about eighteen months ago. As we stayed all night at Frejus, I had an opportunity of viewing the amphitheatre at leisure. As near as I can judge by the eye, it is of the same dimensions with that of Nismes; but shockingly dilapidated. The stone seats rising from the arena are still extant, and the cells under them, where the wild beasts were kept. There are likewise the remains of two galleries one over another; and two vomitoria or great gateways at opposite sides of the arena, which is now a fine green, with a road through the middle of it: but all the external architecture and the ornaments are demolished. The most intire part of the wall now constitutes part of a monastery, the monks of which, I am told, have helped to destroy the amphitheatre, by removing the stones for their own purposes of building. In the neighbourhood of this amphitheatre, which stands without the walls, are the vestiges of an old edifice, said to have been the palace where the imperator or president resided: for it was a Roman colony, much favoured by Julius Caesar, who gave it the name of Forum Julii, and Civitas Forojuliensis. In all probability, it was he who built the amphitheatre, and brought hither the water ten leagues from the river of Ciagne, by means of an aqueduct, some arcades of which are still standing on the other side of the town. A great number of statues were found in this place, together with antient inscriptions, which have been published by different authors. I need not tell you that Julius Agricola, the father-in-law of Tacitus, the historian, was a native of Frejus, which is now a very poor inconsiderable place. From hence the country opens to the left, forming an extensive plain between the sea and the mountains, which are a continuation of the Alps, that stretches through Provence and Dauphine. This plain watered with pleasant streams, and varied with vineyards, corn-fields, and meadow-ground, afforded a most agreeable prospect to our eyes, which were accustomed to the sight of scorching sands, rugged rocks, and abrupt mountains in the neighbourhood of Nice. Although this has much the appearance of a corn-country, I am told it does not produce enough for the consumption of its inhabitants, who are obliged to have annual supplies from abroad, imported at Marseilles. A Frenchman, at an average, eats three times the quantity of bread that satisfies a native of England, and indeed it is undoubtedly the staff of his life. I am therefore surprised that the Provencaux do not convert part of their vineyards into corn-fields: for they may boast of their wine as they please; but that which is drank by the common people, not only here, but also in all the wine countries of France, is neither so strong, nourishing, nor (in my opinion) so pleasant to the taste as the small-beer of England. It must be owned that all the peasants who have wine for their ordinary drink are of a diminutive size, in comparison of those who use milk, beer, or even water; and it is a constant observation, that when there is a scarcity of wine, the common people are always more healthy, than in those seasons when it abounds. The longer I live, the more I am convinced that wine, and all fermented liquors, are pernicious to the human constitution; and that for the preservation of health, and exhilaration of the spirits, there is no beverage comparable to simple water. Between Luc and Toulon, the country is delightfully parcelled out into inclosures. Here is plenty of rich pasturage for black cattle, and a greater number of pure streams and rivulets than I have observed in any other parts of France. Toulon is a considerable place, even exclusive of the basin, docks, and arsenal, which indeed are such as justify the remark made by a stranger when he viewed them. "The king of France (said he) is greater at Toulon than at Versailles." The quay, the jetties, the docks, and magazines, are contrived and executed with precision, order, solidity, and magnificence. I counted fourteen ships of the line lying unrigged in the basin, besides the Tonant of eighty guns, which was in dock repairing, and a new frigate on the stocks. I was credibly informed that in the last war, the king of France was so ill-served with cannon for his navy, that in every action there was scarce a ship which had not several pieces burst. These accidents did great damage, and discouraged the French mariners to such a degree, that they became more afraid of their own guns than of those of the English. There are now at Toulon above two thousand pieces of iron cannon unfit for service. This is an undeniable proof of the weakness and neglect of the French administration: but a more suprizing proof of their imbecility, is the state of the fortifications that defend the entrance of this very harbour. I have some reason to think that they trusted for its security entirely to our opinion that it must be inaccessible. Capt. E--, of one of our frigates, lately entered the harbour with a contrary wind, which by obliging him to tack, afforded an opportunity of sounding the whole breadth and length of the passage. He came in without a pilot, and made a pretence of buying cordage, or some other stores; but the French officers were much chagrined at the boldness of his enterprize. They alleged that he came for no other reason but to sound the channel; and that he had an engineer aboard, who made drawings of the land and the forts, their bearings and distances. In all probability, these suspicions were communicated to the ministry; for an order immediately arrived, that no stranger should be admitted into the docks and arsenal. Part of the road from hence to Marseilles lies through a vast mountain, which resembles that of Estrelles; but is not so well covered with wood, though it has the advantage of an agreeable stream running through the bottom. I was much pleased with Marseilles, which is indeed a noble city, large, populous, and flourishing. The streets of what is called the new Town are open, airy and spacious; the houses well built, and even magnificent. The harbour is an oval basin, surrounded on every side either by the buildings or the land, so that the shipping lies perfectly secure; and here is generally an incredible number of vessels. On the city side, there is a semi-circular quay of free-stone, which extends thirteen hundred paces; and the space between this and the houses that front it, is continually filled with a surprising crowd of people. The gallies, to the number of eight or nine, are moored with their sterns to one part of the wharf, and the slaves are permitted to work for their own benefit at their respective occupations, in little shops or booths, which they rent for a trifle. There you see tradesmen of all kinds sitting at work, chained by one foot, shoe-makers, taylors, silversmiths, watch and clock-makers, barbers, stocking-weavers, jewellers, pattern-drawers, scriveners, booksellers, cutlers, and all manner of shop-keepers. They pay about two sols a day to the king for this indulgence; live well and look jolly; and can afford to sell their goods and labour much cheaper than other dealers and tradesmen. At night, however, they are obliged to lie aboard. Notwithstanding the great face of business at Marseilles, their trade is greatly on the decline; and their merchants are failing every day. This decay of commerce is in a great measure owing to the English, who, at the peace, poured in such a quantity of European merchandize into Martinique and Guadalupe, that when the merchants of Marseilles sent over their cargoes, they found the markets overstocked, and were obliged to sell for a considerable loss. Besides, the French colonists had such a stock of sugars, coffee, and other commodities lying by them during the war, that upon the first notice of peace, they shipped them off in great quantities for Marseilles. I am told that the produce of the islands is at present cheaper here than where it grows; and on the other hand the merchandize of this country sells for less money at Martinique than in Provence. A single person, who travels in this country, may live at a reasonable rate in these towns, by eating at the public ordinaries: but I would advise all families that come hither to make any stay, to take furnished lodgings as soon as they can: for the expence of living at an hotel is enormous. I was obliged to pay at Marseilles four livres a head for every meal, and half that price for my servant, and was charged six livres a day besides for the apartment, so that our daily expence, including breakfast and a valet de place, amounted to two loui'dores. The same imposition prevails all over the south of France, though it is generally supposed to be the cheapest and most plentiful part of the kingdom. Without all doubt, it must be owing to the folly and extravagance of English travellers, who have allowed themselves to be fleeced without wincing, until this extortion is become authorized by custom. It is very disagreeable riding in the avenues of Marseilles, because you are confined in a dusty high road, crouded with carriages and beasts of burden, between two white walls, the reflection from which, while the sun shines, is intolerable. But in this neighbourhood there is a vast number of pleasant country-houses, called Bastides, said to amount to twelve thousand, some of which may be rented ready furnished at a very reasonable price. Marseilles is a gay city, and the inhabitants indulge themselves in a variety of amusements. They have assemblies, a concert spirituel, and a comedy. Here is also a spacious cours, or walk shaded with trees, to which in the evening there is a great resort of well-dressed people. Marseilles being a free port, there is a bureau about half a league from the city on the road to Aix, where all carriages undergo examination; and if any thing contraband is found, the vehicle, baggage, and even the horses are confiscated. We escaped this disagreeable ceremony by the sagacity of our driver. Of his own accord, he declared at the bureau, that we had bought a pound of coffee and some sugar at Marseilles, and were ready to pay the duty, which amounted to about ten sols. They took the money, gave him a receipt, and let the carriage pass, without further question. I proposed to stay one night only at Aix: but Mr. A--r, who is here, had found such benefit from drinking the waters, that I was persuaded to make trial of them for eight or ten days. I have accordingly taken private lodgings, and drank them at the fountain-head, not without finding considerable benefit. In my next I shall say something further of these waters, though I am afraid they will not prove a source of much entertainment. It will be sufficient for me to find them contribute in any degree to the health of--Dear Sir, Yours assuredly. LETTER XL BOULOGNE, May 23, 1765. DEAR DOCTOR,--I found three English families at Aix, with whom I could have passed my time very agreeably but the society is now dissolved. Mr. S--re and his lady left the place in a few days after we arrived. Mr. A--r and lady Betty are gone to Geneva; and Mr. G--r with his family remains at Aix. This gentleman, who laboured under a most dreadful nervous asthma, has obtained such relief from this climate, that he intends to stay another year in the place: and Mr. A--r found surprizing benefit from drinking the waters, for a scorbutical complaint. As I was incommoded by both these disorders, I could not but in justice to myself, try the united efforts of the air and the waters; especially as this consideration was re-inforced by the kind and pressing exhortations of Mr. A--r and lady Betty, which I could not in gratitude resist. Aix, the capital of Provence, is a large city, watered by the small river Are. It was a Roman colony, said to be founded by Caius Sextus Calvinus, above a century before the birth of Christ. From the source of mineral water here found, added to the consul's name, it was called Aquae Sextiae. It was here that Marius, the conqueror of the Teutones, fixed his headquarters, and embellished the place with temples, aqueducts, and thermae, of which, however, nothing now remains. The city, as it now stands, is well built, though the streets in general are narrow, and kept in a very dirty condition. But it has a noble cours planted with double rows of tall trees, and adorned with three or four fine fountains, the middlemost of which discharges hot water supplied from the source of the baths. On each side there is a row of elegant houses, inhabited chiefly by the noblesse, of which there is here a considerable number. The parliament, which is held at Aix, brings hither a great resort of people; and as many of the inhabitants are persons of fashion, they are well bred, gay, and sociable. The duc de Villars, who is governor of the province, resides on the spot, and keeps an open assembly, where strangers are admitted without reserve, and made very welcome, if they will engage in play, which is the sole occupation of the whole company. Some of our English people complain, that when they were presented to him, they met with a very cold reception. The French, as well as other foreigners, have no idea of a man of family and fashion, without the title of duke, count, marquis, or lord, and where an English gentleman is introduced by the simple expression of monsieur tel, Mr. Suchathing, they think he is some plebeian, unworthy of any particular attention. Aix is situated in a bottom, almost surrounded by hills, which, however, do not screen it from the Bize, or north wind, that blows extremely sharp in the winter and spring, rendering the air almost insupportably cold, and very dangerous to those who have some kinds of pulmonary complaints, such as tubercules, abscesses, or spitting of blood. Lord H--, who passed part of last winter in this place, afflicted with some of these symptoms, grew worse every day while he continued at Aix: but, he no sooner removed to Marseilles, than all his complaints abated; such a difference there is in the air of these two places, though the distance between them does not exceed ten or twelve miles. But the air of Marseilles, though much more mild than that of Aix in the winter is not near so warm as the climate of Nice, where we find in plenty such flowers, fruit, and vegetables, even in the severest season, as will not grow and ripen, either at Marseilles or Toulon. If the air of Aix is disagreeably cold in the winter, it is rendered quite insufferable in the summer, from excessive heat, occasioned by the reflexion from the rocks and mountains, which at the same time obstruct the circulation of air: for it must be observed, that the same mountains which serve as funnels and canals, to collect and discharge the keen blasts of winter, will provide screens to intercept intirely the faint breezes of summer. Aix, though pretty well provided with butcher's meat, is very ill supplied with potherbs; and they have no poultry but what comes at a vast distance from the Lionnois. They say their want of roots, cabbage, cauliflower, etc. is owing to a scarcity of water: but the truth is, they are very bad gardeners. Their oil is good and cheap: their wine is indifferent: but their chief care seems employed on the culture of silk, the staple of Provence, which is every where shaded with plantations of mulberry trees, for the nourishment of the worms. Notwithstanding the boasted cheapness of every article of housekeeping, in the south of France, I am persuaded a family may live for less money at York, Durham, Hereford, and in many other cities of England than at Aix in Provence; keep a more plentiful table; and be much more comfortably situated in all respects. I found lodging and provision at Aix fifty per cent dearer than at Montpellier, which is counted the dearest place in Languedoc. The baths of Aix, so famous in antiquity, were quite demolished by the irruptions of the barbarians. The very source of the water was lost, till the beginning of the present century (I think the year 1704), when it was discovered by accident, in digging for the foundation of a house, at the foot of a hill, just without the city wall. Near the same place was found a small stone altar, with the figure of a Priapus, and some letters in capitals, which the antiquarians have differently interpreted. From this figure, it was supposed that the waters were efficacious in cases of barrenness. It was a long time, however, before any person would venture to use them internally, as it did not appear that they had ever been drank by the antients. On their re-appearance, they were chiefly used for baths to horses, and other beasts which had the mange, and other cutaneous eruptions. At length poor people began to bathe in them for the same disorders, and received such benefit from them, as attracted the attention of more curious inquirers. A very superficial and imperfect analysis was made and published, with a few remarkable histories of the cures they had performed, by three different physicians of those days; and those little treatises, I suppose, encouraged valetudinarians to drink them without ceremony. They were found serviceable in the gout, the gravel, scurvy, dropsy, palsy, indigestion, asthma, and consumption; and their fame soon extended itself all over Languedoc, Gascony, Dauphine, and Provence. The magistrates, with a view to render them more useful and commodious, have raised a plain building, in which there are a couple of private baths, with a bedchamber adjoining to each, where individuals may use them both internally and externally, for a moderate expence. These baths are paved with marble, and supplied with water each by a large brass cock, which you can turn at pleasure. At one end of this edifice, there is an octagon, open at top, having a bason, with a stone pillar in the middle, which discharges water from the same source, all round, by eight small brass cocks; and hither people of all ranks come of a morning, with their glasses, to drink the water, or wash their sores, or subject their contracted limbs to the stream. This last operation, called the douche, however, is more effectually undergone in the private bath, where the stream is much more powerful. The natural warmth of this water, as nearly as I can judge from recollection, is about the same degree of temperature with that in the Queen's Bath, at Bath in Somersetshire. It is perfectly transparent, sparkling in the glass, light and agreeable to the taste, and may be drank without any preparation, to the quantity of three or four pints at a time. There are many people at Aix who swallow fourteen half pint glasses every morning, during the season, which is in the month of May, though it may be taken with equal benefit all the year round. It has no sensible operation but by urine, an effect which pure water would produce, if drank in the same quantity. If we may believe those who have published their experiments, this water produces neither agitation, cloud, or change of colour, when mixed with acids, alkalies, tincture of galls, syrup of violets, or solution of silver. The residue, after boiling, evaporation, and filtration, affords a very small proportion of purging salt, and calcarious earth, which last ferments with strong acids. As I had neither hydrometer nor thermometer to ascertain the weight and warmth of this water; nor time to procure the proper utensils, to make the preparations, and repeat the experiments necessary to exhibit a complete analysis, I did not pretend to enter upon this process; but contented myself with drinking, bathing, and using the douche, which perfectly answered my expectation, having, in eight days, almost cured an ugly scorbutic tetter, which had for some time deprived me of the use of my right hand. I observed that the water, when used externally, left always a kind of oily appearance on the skin: that when, we boiled it at home, in an earthen pot, the steams smelled like those of sulphur, and even affected my lungs in the same manner: but the bath itself smelled strong of a lime-kiln. The water, after standing all night in a bottle, yielded a remarkably vinous taste and odour, something analogous to that of dulcified spirit of nitre. Whether the active particles consist of a volatile vitriol, or a very fine petroleum, or a mixture of both, I shall not pretend to determine: but the best way I know of discovering whether it is really impregnated with a vitriolic principle, too subtil and fugitive for the usual operations of chymistry, is to place bottles, filled with wine, in the bath, or adjacent room, which wine, if there is really a volatile acid, in any considerable quantity, will be pricked in eight and forty hours. Having ordered our coach to be refitted, and provided with fresh horses, as well as with another postilion, in consequence of which improvements, I payed at the rate of a loui'dore per diem to Lyons and back again, we departed from Aix, and the second day of our journey passing the Durance in a boat, lay at Avignon. This river, the Druentia of the antients, is a considerable stream, extremely rapid, which descends from the mountains, and discharges itself in the Rhone. After violent rains it extends its channel, so as to be impassable, and often overflows the country to a great extent. In the middle of a plain, betwixt Orgon and this river, we met the coach in which we had travelled eighteen months before, from Lyons to Montpellier, conducted by our old driver Joseph, who no sooner recognized my servant at a distance, by his musquetoon, than he came running towards our carriage, and seizing my hand, even shed tears of joy. Joseph had been travelling through Spain, and was so imbrowned by the sun, that he might have passed for an Iroquois. I was much pleased with the marks of gratitude which the poor fellow expressed towards his benefactors. He had some private conversation with our voiturier, whose name was Claude, to whom he gave such a favourable character of us, as in all probability induced him to be wonderfully obliging during the whole journey. You know Avignon is a large city belonging to the pope. It was the Avenio Cavarum of the antients, and changed masters several times, belonging successively to the Romans, Burgundians, Franks, the kingdom of Arles, the counts of Provence, and the sovereigns of Naples. It was sold in the fourteenth century, by queen Jane I. of Naples, to Pope Clement VI. for the sum of eighty thousand florins, and since that period has continued under the dominion of the see of Rome. Not but that when the duc de Crequi, the French ambassador, was insulted at Rome in the year 1662, the parliament of Provence passed an arret, declaring the city of Avignon, and the county Venaiss in part of the ancient domain of Provence; and therefore reunited it to the crown of France, which accordingly took possession; though it was afterwards restored to the Roman see at the peace of Pisa. The pope, however, holds it by a precarious title, at the mercy of the French king, who may one day be induced to resume it, upon payment of the original purchase-money. As a succession of popes resided here for the space of seventy years, the city could not fail to be adorned with a great number of magnificent churches and convents, which are richly embellished with painting, sculpture, shrines, reliques, and tombs. Among the last, is that of the celebrated Laura, whom Petrarch has immortalized by his poetry, and for whom Francis I. of France took the trouble to write an epitaph. Avignon is governed by a vice-legate from the pope, and the police of the city is regulated by the consuls. It is a large place, situated in a fruitful plain, surrounded by high walls built of hewn stone, which on the west side are washed by the Rhone. Here was a noble bridge over the river, but it is now in ruins. On the other side, a branch of the Sorgue runs through part of the city. This is the river anciently called Sulga, formed by the famous fountain of Vaucluse in this neighbourhood, where the poet Petrarch resided. It is a charming transparent stream, abounding with excellent trout and craw-fish. We passed over it on a stone bridge, in our way to Orange, the Arausio Cavarum of the Romans, still distinguished by some noble monuments of antiquity. These consist of a circus, an aqueduct, a temple, and a triumphal arch, which last was erected in honour of Caius Marius, and Luctatius Catulus, after the great victory they obtained in this country over the Cimbri and Teutones. It is a very magnificent edifice, adorned on all sides with trophies and battles in basso relievo. The ornaments of the architecture, and the sculpture, are wonderfully elegant for the time in which it was erected; and the whole is surprisingly well preserved, considering its great antiquity. It seems to me to be as entire and perfect as the arch of Septimius Severus at Rome. Next day we passed two very impetuous streams, the Drome and the Isere. The first, which very much resembles the Var, we forded: but the Isere we crossed in a boat, which as well as that upon the Durance, is managed by the traille, a moveable or running pulley, on a rope stretched between two wooden machines erected on the opposite sides of the river. The contrivance is simple and effectual, and the passage equally safe and expeditious. The boatman has nothing to do, but by means of a long massy rudder, to keep the head obliquely to the stream, the force of which pushes the boat along, the block to which it is fixed sliding upon the rope from one side to the other. All these rivers take their rise from the mountains, which are continued through Provence and Dauphine, and fall into the Rhone: and all of them, when swelled by sudden rains, overflow the flat country. Although Dauphine affords little or no oil, it produces excellent wines, particularly those of Hermitage and Cote-roti. The first of these is sold on the spot for three livres the bottle, and the other for two. The country likewise yields a considerable quantity of corn, and a good deal of grass. It is well watered with streams, and agreeably shaded with wood. The weather was pleasant, and we had a continued song of nightingales from Aix to Fontainebleau. I cannot pretend to specify the antiquities of Vienne, antiently called Vienna Allobrogum. It was a Roman colony, and a considerable city, which the antients spared no pains and expence to embellish. It is still a large town, standing among several hills on the banks of the Rhone, though all its former splendor is eclipsed, its commerce decayed, and most of its antiquities are buried in ruins. The church of Notre Dame de la Vie was undoubtedly a temple. On the left of the road, as you enter it, by the gate of Avignon, there is a handsome obelisk, or rather pyramid, about thirty feet high, raised upon a vault supported by four pillars of the Tuscan order. It is certainly a Roman work, and Montfaucon supposes it to be a tomb, as he perceived an oblong stone jetting out from the middle of the vault, in which the ashes of the defunct were probably contained. The story of Pontius Pilate, who is said to have ended his days in this place, is a fable. On the seventh day of our journey from Aix, we arrived at Lyons, where I shall take my leave of you for the present, being with great truth--Yours, etc. LETTER XLI BOULOGNE, June 13, 1765. DEAR SIR,--I am at last in a situation to indulge my view with a sight of Britain, after an absence of two years; and indeed you cannot imagine what pleasure I feel while I survey the white cliffs of Dover, at this distance. Not that I am at all affected by the nescia qua dulcedine natalis soli, of Horace. That seems to be a kind of fanaticism founded on the prejudices of education, which induces a Laplander to place the terrestrial paradise among the snows of Norway, and a Swiss to prefer the barren mountains of Solleure to the fruitful plains of Lombardy. I am attached to my country, because it is the land of liberty, cleanliness, and convenience: but I love it still more tenderly, as the scene of all my interesting connexions; as the habitation of my friends, for whose conversation, correspondence, and esteem, I wish alone to live. Our journey hither from Lyons produced neither accident nor adventure worth notice; but abundance of little vexations, which may be termed the Plagues of Posting. At Lyons, where we stayed only a few days, I found a return-coach, which I hired to Paris for six loui'dores. It was a fine roomy carriage, elegantly furnished, and made for travelling; so strong and solid in all its parts, that there was no danger of its being shaken to pieces by the roughness of the road: but its weight and solidity occasioned so much friction between the wheels and the axle-tree, that we ran the risque of being set on fire three or four times a day. Upon a just comparison of all circumstances posting is much more easy, convenient, and reasonable in England than in France. The English carriages, horses, harness, and roads are much better; and the postilions more obliging and alert. The reason is plain and obvious. If I am ill-used at the post-house in England, I can be accommodated elsewhere. The publicans on the road are sensible of this, and therefore they vie with each other in giving satisfaction to travellers. But in France, where the post is monopolized, the post-masters and postilions, knowing that the traveller depends intirely upon them, are the more negligent and remiss in their duty, as well as the more encouraged to insolence and imposition. Indeed the stranger seems to be left intirely at the mercy of those fellows, except in large towns, where he may have recourse to the magistrate or commanding officer. The post stands very often by itself in a lone country situation, or in a paultry village, where the post-master is the principal inhabitant; and in such a case, if you should be ill-treated, by being supplied with bad horses; if you should be delayed on frivolous pretences, in order to extort money; if the postilions should drive at a waggon pace, with a view to provoke your impatience; or should you in any shape be insulted by them or their masters; and I know not any redress you can have, except by a formal complaint to the comptroller of the posts, who is generally one of the ministers of state, and pays little or no regard to any such representations. I know an English gentleman, the brother of an earl, who wrote a letter of complaint to the Duc de Villars, governor of Provence, against the post-master of Antibes, who had insulted and imposed upon him. The duke answered his letter, promising to take order that the grievance should be redressed; and never thought of it after. Another great inconvenience which attends posting in France, is that if you are retarded by any accident, you cannot in many parts of the kingdom find a lodging, without perhaps travelling two or three posts farther than you would choose to go, to the prejudice of your health, and even the hazard of your life; whereas on any part of the post-road in England, you will meet with tolerable accommodation at every stage. Through the whole south of France, except in large cities, the inns are cold, damp, dark, dismal, and dirty; the landlords equally disobliging and rapacious; the servants aukward, sluttish, and slothful; and the postilions lazy, lounging, greedy, and impertinent. If you chide them for lingering, they will continue to delay you the longer: if you chastise them with sword, cane, cudgel, or horse-whip, they will either disappear entirely, and leave you without resource; or they will find means to take vengeance by overturning your carriage. The best method I know of travelling with any degree of comfort, is to allow yourself to become the dupe of imposition, and stimulate their endeavours by extraordinary gratifications. I laid down a resolution (and kept it) to give no more than four and twenty sols per post between the two postilions; but I am now persuaded that for three-pence a post more, I should have been much better served, and should have performed the journey with much greater pleasure. We met with no adventures upon the road worth reciting. The first day we were retarded about two hours by the dutchess D--lle, and her son the duc de R--f--t, who by virtue of an order from the minister, had anticipated all the horses at the post. They accosted my servant, and asked if his master was a lord? He thought proper to answer in the affirmative, upon which the duke declared that he must certainly be of French extraction, inasmuch as he observed the lilies of France in his arms on the coach. This young nobleman spoke a little English. He asked whence we had come; and understanding we had been in Italy, desired to know whether the man liked France or Italy best? Upon his giving France the preference, he clapped him on the shoulder, and said he was a lad of good taste. The dutchess asked if her son spoke English well, and seemed mightily pleased when my man assured her he did. They were much more free and condescending with my servant than with myself; for, though we saluted them in passing, and were even supposed to be persons of quality, they did not open their lips, while we stood close by them at the inn-door, till their horses were changed. They were going to Geneva; and their equipage consisted of three coaches and six, with five domestics a-horseback. The dutchess was a tall, thin, raw-boned woman, with her head close shaved. This delay obliged us to lie two posts short of Macon, at a solitary auberge called Maison Blanche, which had nothing white about it, but the name. The Lionnois is one of the most agreeable and best-cultivated countries I ever beheld, diversified with hill, dale, wood, and water, laid out in extensive corn-fields and rich meadows, well stocked with black cattle, and adorned with a surprising number of towns, villages, villas, and convents, generally situated on the brows of gently swelling hills, so that they appear to the greatest advantage. What contributes in a great measure to the beauty of this, and the Maconnois, is the charming pastoral Soame, which from the city of Chalons winds its silent course so smooth and gentle, that one can scarce discern which way its current flows. It is this placid appearance that tempts so many people to bathe in it at Lions, where a good number of individuals are drowned every summer: whereas there is no instance of any persons thus perishing in the Rhone, the rapidity of it deterring every body from bathing in its stream. Next night we passed at Beaune where we found nothing good but the wine, for which we paid forty sols the bottle. At Chalons our axle-tree took fire; an accident which detained us so long, that it was ten before we arrived at Auxerre, where we lay. In all probability we must have lodged in the coach, had not we been content to take four horses, and pay for six, two posts successively. The alternative was, either to proceed with four on those terms, or stay till the other horses should come in and be refreshed. In such an emergency, I would advise the traveller to put up with the four, and he will find the postilions so much upon their mettle, that those stages will be performed sooner than the others in which you have the full complement. There was an English gentleman laid up at Auxerre with a broken arm, to whom I sent my compliments, with offers of service; but his servant told my man that he did not choose to see any company, and had no occasion for my service. This sort of reserve seems peculiar to the English disposition. When two natives of any other country chance to meet abroad, they run into each other's embrace like old friends, even though they have never heard of one another till that moment; whereas two Englishmen in the same situation maintain a mutual reserve and diffidence, and keep without the sphere of each other's attraction, like two bodies endowed with a repulsive power. We only stopped to change horses at Dijon, the capital of Burgundy, which is a venerable old city; but we passed part of a day at Sens, and visited a manufacture of that stuff we call Manchester velvet, which is here made and dyed to great perfection, under the direction of English workmen, who have been seduced from their own country. At Fontainebleau, we went to see the palace, or as it is called, the castle, which though an irregular pile of building, affords a great deal of lodging, and contains some very noble apartments, particularly the hall of audience, with the king's and queen's chambers, upon which the ornaments of carving and gilding are lavished with profusion rather than propriety. Here are some rich parterres of flower-garden, and a noble orangerie, which, however, we did not greatly admire, after having lived among the natural orange groves of Italy. Hitherto we had enjoyed fine summer weather, and I found myself so well, that I imagined my health was intirely restored: but betwixt Fontainebleau and Paris, we were overtaken by a black storm of rain, sleet, and hail, which seemed to reinstate winter in all its rigour; for the cold weather continues to this day. There was no resisting this attack. I caught cold immediately; and this was reinforced at Paris, where I stayed but three days. The same man, (Pascal Sellier, rue Guenegaud, fauxbourg St. Germain) who owned the coach that brought us from Lyons, supplied me with a returned berline to Boulogne, for six loui'dores, and we came hither by easy journeys. The first night we lodged at Breteuil, where we found an elegant inn, and very good accommodation. But the next we were forced to take up our quarters, at the house where we had formerly passed a very disagreeable night at Abbeville. I am now in tolerable lodging, where I shall remain a few weeks, merely for the sake of a little repose; then I shall gladly tempt that invidious straight which still divides you from--Yours, &c. APPENDIX A A Short List of Works, mainly on Travel in France and Italy during the Eighteenth Century, referred to in connection with the Introduction. ADDISON, JOSEPH. Remarks on Several Parts of Italy. London, 1705. ANCONE, ALESSANDRO D'. Saggio di una bibliografia ragionata dei Viaggi in Italia. 1895. ANDREWS, Dr. JOHN. Letters to a Young Gentleman in setting out for France. London, 1784. ARCHENHOLTZ, J. W. VON. Tableau de l'Angleterre et de l'Italie. 3 vols. Gotha, 1788. ARDOUIN-DUMAZET Voyage en France. Treizieme serie. La Provence Maritime. Paris, 1898. ASTRUC, JEAN. Memoires pour servir a l'histoire de la Faculte de Medicine de Montpellier, 1767. BABEAU, ANTOINE. Voyageurs en France. Paris, 1885. BALLY, L. E. Souvenirs de Nice. 1860. BARETTI, G. M. Account of the Manners and Customs of Italy. 2 vols. London, 1770. BASTIDE, CHARLES. John Locke. Ses theories politiques en Angleterre. Paris, 1907. BECKFORD, WILLIAM. Italy, Spain, and Portugal. By the author of "Vathek." London, 1834; new ed. 1840. BERCHTOLD, LEOPOLD. An Essay to direct the Inquiries of Patriotic Travellers. 2 vols. London, 1789. BOULOGNE-SUR-MER et la region Boulonnaise. Ouvrage offert par la ville aux membres de l'Association Francaise. 2 vols. 1899. BRETON DE LA MARTINIERE, J. Voyage en Piemont. Paris, 1803. BROSSES, CHARLES DE. Lettres familieres ecrites d'Italie. 1740. BURTON, JOHN HILL. The Scot Abroad. 2 vols. Edinburgh. 1864. CASANOVA DE SEINGALT, JACQUES. Memoires ecrits par lui-meme. 6 vols. Bruxelles, 1879. CLEMENT, PIERRE. L'Italie en 1671. Paris, 1867. 12mo. COOTE'S NEW GEOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY. 2 vols., folio, 1739. CRAIG, G. DUNCAN. Mie jour; or Provencal Legend, Life, Language, and Literature. London, 1877. DAVIS, Dr. I. B. Ancient and Modern History of Nice. London, 1807. DEJOB, C. Madame de Stael et l'Italie. Paris, 1890. DEMPSTER, C. L. H. The Maritime Alps and their Sea-Board. London, 1885. DORAN, DR. JOHN. Mann and Manners at the Court of Florence. London, 1876. DRAMARD, E. Bibliographie du Boulonnais, Calaisis, etc. Paris, 1869. DUTENS, L. Itineraire des Routes. First edition, 1775. EVELYN, JOHN. Diary, edited by H. B. Wheatley. 4 vols. London, 1879. FERBER, G. G. Travels through Italy, translated by R. E. Raspe. London, 1776. FODERE, FRANCOIS EMILE. Voyage aux Alpes Maritimes. 2 vols. Paris, 1821. FORSYTH, JOSEPH. Remarks on Antiquities, Arts, and Letters, during an Excursion in Italy in the year 1802 and 1803. London, 1812; 4th Edition, 1835. GARDNER, EDMUND G. The Story of Florence. London, 1900. GERMAIN, M. A. Histoire de la Commune de Montpellier. 3 vols. Montpellier, 1853. GIOFFREDO, PIETRO. Storia delle Alpi Marittime . . . libri xxvi. Ed. Gazzera. 1836. GOETHE. Autobiography, Tour in Italy, Miscellaneous Travels, and Wilhelm Meister's Travels (Bohn). GROSLEY, PIERRE JEAN. Nouveaux Memoires sur l'Italie. London, 1764. New Observations on Italy. Translated by Thomas Nugent. 1769. HARE, AUGUSTUS J. C. The Rivieras. 1897. HILLARD, G. S. Six Months in Italy. Boston, 1853; 7th edition, 1863. JEFFERYS, THOMAS. Description of the Maritime Parts of France. With Maps. 1761. JOANNE, ADOLPHE. Provence, Alpes Maritimes. Paris, 1881 (Bibliog., p. xxvii). JONES (of Nayland), WILLIAM. Observations in a Journey to Paris. London, 1777. KOTZEBUE, A. F. F. VON. Travels through Italy in 1804 and 1805. 4 vols. London, 1807. LALANDE, J. J. DE. Voyage en Italie. 6 vols. 12mo. 1768. LEE, EDWIN. Nice et son climat. Paris, 1863. LENOTRE, G. Paris revolutionnaire. Paris, 1895. LENTHERIC, CHARLES. La Provence Maritime, ancienne et moderne. Paris, 1880. Les voies antiques de la Region du Rhone. Avignon, 1882. LUCHAIRE, A. Hist. des Instit. Monarchiques de la France. 2 vols. 1891. MAUGHAM, H. N. The Book of Italian Travel. London, 1903. MERCIER, M. New Pictures of Paris. London, 1800. METRIVIER, H. Monaco et ses Princes. 2 vols. 1862. MILLINGEN, J. G. Sketches of Ancient and Modern Boulogne. London, 1826. MONTAIGNE, MICHEL DE. Journal du Voyage en Italie (Querlon). Rome, 1774. MONTESQUIEU, CHARLES DE SECONDAT, BARON DE. Voyages. Bordeaux, 1894. MONTFAUCON. Travels of the Learned Dr. Montfaucon from Paris through Italy. London, 1712. MOORE, DR. JOHN. A View of Society and Manners in France (2 vols., 1779), and in Italy (2 vols., 1781) NASH, JAMES. Guide to Nice, 1884. NORTHALL, JOHN. Travels through Italy. London, 1766. NUGENT, THOMAS. The Grand Tour. 3rd edition. 4 vols. 1778. PALLIARI, LEA. Notices historiques sur le comte et la ville de Nice. Nice, 1875. PETHERICK, E, A. Catalogue of the York Gate Library. An Index to the Literature of Geography. London, 1881. PIOZZI, HESTER LYNCH. 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TWINING FAMILY PAPERS. London, 1887. VIOLLET, PAUL. Hist. des Instit. polit. et administratifs de la France. 2 vols. Paris, 1890-98. WHATLEY, STEPHEN. The Travels and Adventures of J. Massey. Translated from the French. 1743. WILLIAMS, C. THEODORE. The Climate of the South of France. 1869. WINCKELMANN, J. J. Lettres familieres. Amsterdam, 1781. Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks. Translated by H. Fuseli. London, 1765. Voyage en Italie de J. J. Barthelemy . . . avec des morceaux inedits de Winckelmann. 1801. YOUNG, ARTHUR. Travels in France during 1787, 1788, 1789, edited by M. Betham-Edwards. 1889. YOUNG, EDWARD. Sa vie et ses oeuvres, par W. Thomas. Paris, 1901. APPENDIX B Short Notes on one or two unfamiliar Words which Smollett helped to domesticate in England. Berline. Swift and Chesterfield both use this for a heavy coach. The most famous berline was that used in the flight to Varennes. The name came from Brandenburg in the time of Frederick William. Bize. Smollett's spelling of bise--the cutting N.N.E. wind which makes Geneva so beautiful, but intolerable in the winter. Brasiere=brasero. A tray for hot charcoal used for warming rooms at Nice. Smollett practically introduced this word. Dried olives were often used as fuel. Calesse, calash, caleche. A low two-wheeled carriage of light construction, with a movable folding hood; hence applied to a hood bonnet as in Mrs. Gaskell's Cranford. Cassine. Latin casa, cassa, cassina; the Italian cassina, A small detached house in the fields, often whitewashed and of mean appearance. Smollett uses the word as an equivalent for summer cottage. Cf. bastide as used by Dumas. Cabane has practically replaced cassine in modern French. See Letter XXIV. Cambiatura. The system of changing chaises every post, common in England, but unusual abroad except in Tuscany. Cicisbeo. The word is used by Lady Mary Montagu in her Letters (1718) as cecisbeo. Smollett's best account is in Letter XVII. See Introduction, p. xliii. Conversazione. Gray uses the word for assembly in 1710, but Smollett, I believe, is about the first Englishman to define it properly. Corinth. This was still used as a variant of currant, though adherence to it was probably rather pedantic on Smollett's part (cf. his use of "hough" for hoe). Boswell uses the modern form. Corridore. This word was used by Evelyn, and the correct modern spelling given by Johnson in 1753; but Smollett as often adheres to the old form. Douche. Italian doccia. Smollett is perhaps the first writer to explain the word and assign to it the now familiar French form (Letter XL). Feluca. An Arab word to denote a coasting boat, oar or sail propelled. Nelson and Marryat write felucca. It was large enough to accommodate a post-chaise (Letter XXV). Gabelle. Supposed to be derived from the Arabic kabala, the irksome tax on salt, from which few provinces in France were altogether free, swept away in 1790. Smollett describes the exaction in San Remo. Garum. Used by Smollett for the rich fish sauce of the ancients, equivalent to a saumure, perhaps, in modern French cookery. In the Middle Ages the word is used both for a condiment and a beverage. Improvisatore. A performer in the Commedia delle Arte, of which Smollett gives a brief admiring account in his description of Florence (Letter XXVII). For details of the various elements, the doti, generici, lazzi, etc., see Carlo Gozzi. Liqueur. First used by Pope. "An affected, contemptible expression" (Johnson). Macaroni. "The paste called macaroni" (Letter XXVI) was seen by Smollett in the neighbourhood of its origin near Genoa, which city formed the chief market. Maestral. An old form of mistral, the very dry wind from the N.N.W., described by Smollett as the coldest he ever experienced. Patois. See Letter XXII. ad fin. Pietre commesse. A sort of inlaying with stones, analogous to the fineering of cabinets in wood (Letter XXVIII). Used by Evelyn in 1644. Polenta. A meal ground from maize, which makes a good "pectoral" (Letter XXII). Pomi carli. The most agreeable apples Smollett tasted, stated to come from the marquisate of Final, sold by the Emperor Charles VI. to the Genoese. Preniac. A small white wine, mentioned in Letter IV., from Boulogne, as agreeable and very cheap. Seafarot boots. Jack-boots or wading boots, worn by a Marquis of Savoy, and removed by means of a tug-of-war team and a rope coiled round the heel (see Letter XXVIII). Sporcherie. With respect to delicacy and decorum you may peruse Dean Swift's description of the Yahoos, and then you will have some idea of the sporcherie that distinguishes the gallantry of Nice (Letter XVII). Ital. sporcheria, sporcizia. Strappado or corda. Performed by hoisting the criminal by his hands tied behind his back and dropping him suddenly "with incredible pain" (Letter XX). See Introduction, p. xliv, and Christie, Etienne Dolet, 1899, P. 231. Tartane. From Italian tartana, Arabic taridha; a similar word being used in Valencia and Grand Canary for a two-wheeled open cart. One of the commonest craft on the Mediterranean (cf. the topo of the Adriatic). For different types see Larousse's Nouveau Dictionnaire. Tip. To "tip the wink" is found in Addison's Tatler (No. 86), but "to tip" in the sense of to gratify is not common before Smollett, who uses it more than once or twice in this sense (cf. Roderick Random, chap. xiv. ad fin.) Valanches. For avalanches (dangers from to travellers, see Letter XXXVIII). Villeggiatura. An early adaptation by Smollett of the Italian word for country retirement (Letter XXIX). APPENDIX C Currency of Savoy in the time of Smollett. Ten bajocci=one paolo (6d.). Ten paoli=one scudo (six livres or about 5s.). Two scudi=one zequin. Two zequin=one louid'or. Afterword.--I should be ungrateful were I not to create an epilogue for the express purpose of thanking M. Morel, H. S Spencer Scott, Dr. Norman Moore, W. P. Courtney, G. Whale, D. S. MacColl, Walter Sichel (there may be others), who have supplied hints for my annotations, and I should like further, if one might inscribe such a trifle, to inscribe this to that difficult critic, Mr. Arthur Vincent, who, when I told him I was about it, gave expression to the cordial regret that so well hidden a treasure of our literature (as he regarded the Travels) was to be "vulgarised." 
27881	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 27881-h.htm or 27881-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/7/8/8/27881/27881-h/27881-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/7/8/8/27881/27881-h.zip) IN CHÂTEAU LAND * * * * * _By Anne Hollingsworth Wharton_ AN ENGLISH HONEYMOON. Decorated title and 17 illustrations. Cloth, extra, $1.50 _net_. ITALIAN DAYS AND WAYS. Decorated title and 8 illustrations. 12 mo. Cloth, extra, $1.50 _net_. SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC. Profusely illustrated. 8vo. Buckram, gilt top, uncut edges. $3.00 _net_; half levant, $6.00 _net_. SALONS, COLONIAL AND REPUBLICAN. Profusely illustrated. 8vo. Buckram, $3.00; three-quarters levant, $6.00. HEIRLOOMS IN MINIATURES. Profusely illustrated. 8vo. Buckram, $3.00; three-quarters levant, $6.00. THROUGH COLONIAL DOORWAYS. Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $1.25. COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES. Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $1.25. A LAST CENTURY MAID. Illustrated. 8vo. Cloth, $1.25. * * * * * [Illustration: Neurdein Freres, Photo. LOCHES WITH GATE OF CORDELIERS] IN CHÂTEAU LAND by ANNE HOLLINGSWORTH WHARTON With 25 Illustrations [Illustration] Philadelphia and London J. B. Lippincott Company MCMXI Copyright, 1911, by J. B. Lippincott Company Published November, 1911 Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company at the Washington Square Press Philadelphia, U.S.A. CONTENTS I PAGE AN EMBARRASSMENT OF CHÂTEAUX 9 II AN ISLAND CHÂTEAU 30 III AN AFTERNOON AT COPPET 45 IV EN ROUTE FOR TOURAINE 64 V IN AND AROUND TOURS 80 VI LANGEAIS AND AZAY-LE-RIDEAU 96 VII TWO QUEENS AT AMBOISE 117 VIII A BATTLE ROYAL OF DAMES 146 IX A FAIR PRISON 174 X COMPENSATIONS 202 XI THE ROMANCE OF BLOIS 226 XII THREE CHÂTEAUX 258 XIII CHINON AND FONTEVRAULT 295 XIV ANGERS 319 XV ORLEANS AND ITS MAID 349 XVI A CHÂTEAU FÊTE 369 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS LOCHES, WITH GATE OF CORDELIERS _Frontispiece_ ISOLA BELLA, LAKE MAGGIORE 36 STAIRCASE AND CLOÎTRE DE LA PSALLETTE, ST. GATIEN 82 MEDIÆVAL STAIRWAY, CHÂTEAU OF LUYNES 96 ENTRANCE TO LANGEAIS, WITH DRAWBRIDGE 98 CAFÉ RABELAIS OPPOSITE CHÂTEAU OF LANGEAIS 108 CHÂTEAU OF AZAY-LE-RIDEAU, EAST FAÇADE 112 CHÂTEAU OF LANGEAIS, FROM THE LOIRE 120 CHÂTEAU OF AMBOISE, FROM OPPOSITE BANK OF THE LOIRE 130 CHENONCEAUX, MARQUES TOWER AND GALLERY ACROSS THE CHER 154 HOUSE OF TRISTAN L'HERMITE 178 AGNES SOREL 188 ENTRANCE TO CHÂTEAU OF BLOIS, WITH STATUE OF LOUIS XII 214 COURT OF BLOIS, WITH STAIRCASE OF FRANCIS I 228 LOUISE DE LA VALLIÈRE 238 CHÂTEAU OF CHAUMONT, THE LOIRE ON THE LEFT 264 SMITHY NEAR GATE OF CHEVERNY 278 FROM PHOTOGRAPH BY MRS OTIS SKINNER ANNE DE THOU, DAME DE CHEVERNY 282 CHÂTEAU OF CHAMBORD 286 RUINS OF CHÂTEAU OF COUDRAY AT CHINON 296 FRENCH CAVE DWELLINGS NEAR SAUMUR 316 FORGE NEAR STONE STAIRWAY AT LUYNES 354 FROM PHOTOGRAPH BY MRS OTIS SKINNER HÔTEL CABU 364 HOUSE OF JOAN OF ARC 364 SALLE DES MARRIAGES, ORLEANS 366 IN CHÂTEAU LAND I AN EMBARRASSMENT OF CHÂTEAUX HOTEL FLORENCE, BELLAGIO, August 10th. YOU will be surprised, dear Margaret, to have a letter from me here instead of from Touraine. We fully intended to go directly from the Dolomites and Venice to Milan and on to Tours, stopping a day or two in Paris en route, but Miss Cassandra begged for a few days on Lake Como, as in all her travels by sea and shore she has never seen the Italian lakes. We changed our itinerary simply to be obliging, but Walter and I have had no reason to regret the change for one minute. Beautiful as you and I found this region in June, I must admit that its August charms are more entrancing and pervasive. Instead of the clear blues, greens and purples of June, the light haze that veils the mountain tops brings out the same indescribable opalescent shades of heliotrope, azure and rose that we thought belonged exclusively to the Dolomites. However, these mountains are first cousins, once or twice removed, to the Eastern Italian and Austrian Alps and have a good right to a family likeness. There is something almost intoxicating in the ethereal beauty of this lake, something that goes to one's head like wine. I don't wonder that poets and artists rave about its charms, of which not the least is its infinite variety. The scene changes so quickly. The glow of color fades, a cloud obscures the sun, the blue and purple turn to gray in an instant, and we descend from a hillside garden, where gay flowers gain added brilliancy from the sun, to a cypress-bordered path where the grateful shade is so dense that we walk in twilight and listen to the liquid note of the nightingale, or the blackcap, whose song is sometimes mistaken for that of his more distinguished neighbor. This morning when we were resting in a hillside pavilion, near the Villa Giulia, gazing upon the sapphire lake and the line of purple Alps beyond, we concluded that nothing was needed to complete the beauty of the scene but a snow mountain in the distance, when lo! as if in obedience to our call, a cloud that shrouded some far-off peaks slowly lifted, revealing to us the shining crest of Monte Rosa. It really seemed as if Monte Rosa had amiably thrown up that dazzling white shoulder for our especial delectation. This evening at sunset it will be touched with delicate pink. I am writing this afternoon on one of the long tables so conveniently placed on the upper deck of the little steamers upon which we made so many excursions when you and I were here in June. The colors of sky, mountain and lake are particularly lovely at this time of the day. Miss Cassandra and Lydia have taken out their water colors, and are trying to put upon paper the exquisite translucent shades of the mountains that surround the lake. Lydia says that the wash of water colors reproduces these atmospheric effects much more faithfully than the solid oils, and she and our Quaker lady are washing away at their improvised easels, having sent the children off for fresh glasses of water. While I write to you, Walter lights his cigar and gives himself up to day dreams, and I shall soon say _au revoir_ and devote myself to the same delightful, if unprofitable, occupation, as this fairy lake is the place of all others in which to dream and lead the _dolce far niente_ life of Italy. And so we float about in boats, as at Venice, and think not of the morrow. By we, I mean Walter, Lydia and myself, as the children and Miss Cassandra are fatiguingly energetic. She has just reminded me that there is something to do here beside gazing at these picturesque shores from a boat, as there are numerous villas to be visited, to most of which are attached gardens of marvellous beauty. We are passing one just now which has a water gate, over which climbing geraniums have thrown a veil of bloom. The villa itself is of a delicate salmon color, and the garden close to the lake is gay with many flowers, petunias and pink and white oleanders being most in evidence. The roses are nearly over, but other flowers have taken their places, and the gardens all along the shore make brilliant patches of color. It is not strange that Bulwer chose this lake as the site of Melnotte's _château en Espagne_, for surely there could not be found a more fitting spot for a romance than this deep vale, "Shut out by Alpine hills from the rude world, Near a clear lake, margined by fruits of gold, And whispering myrtles, glassing softest skies." We were wondering what "golden fruits" were to be found on these shores at this time, oranges and nespoli being out of season, when some boatmen in a small fishing smack began to sing the "Santa Lucia" beloved by the Neapolitans. A handsome, middle-aged woman seated near us, touched to tears by the penetrating sweetness of the song, as it reached us across the waters, and with the _camaraderie_ induced by the common hap of travel, has just whispered in my ear that her husband proposed to her at Bellagio. I fancied the happy pair floating about in a boat with a beautiful brown and yellow sail, but the lady has destroyed my picture by telling me that she was over in New York at the time. It appears that a timid and somewhat uncertain admirer, the kind that we read about in old-fashioned novels, as he strolled by the shores of the lake at twilight, heard a boatman singing her favorite song and the melody of "Santa Lucia" floating forth upon the still air, coupled with the beauty of the scene, so wrought upon his feelings that he forthwith wrote her a love letter by the flickering light of a _bougie_. This little incident dates back to the more romantic if less comfortable days before electricity came to light our way, even in remote places. August 11th. There are so many châteaux to be visited, and so many excursions on the lake to be made that we could stay here a month and have a charming plan for each day. This morning, we climbed a winding mountain path to the Villa Serbelloni and wandered through the hillside garden, with its grottoes and tunnels, to a natural balcony overhanging a precipice of sheer rock that rises above the lake. From this height there is a view of the whole northern part of Lake Como, with the Alps beyond, and here one realizes the beauty of Bellagio which along the water front is but a long line of shops. Situated on the extreme end of the point of land that separates Lake Como from its southern arm, the Lago di Lecco, the little town rises upon its terraces, and with its steep, narrow streets and winding paths, is as picturesque as only an Italian hillside _villagio_ can be. On this Punta di Bellagio is situated one of the numerous villas of the younger Pliny; another villa we saw, near the curious intermittent spring, which he described in his letters. This Larian Lake, as the ancients called it, is full of classic associations, and of those of a later time connected with Italy's heroic struggle for independence, for the Villa Pliniana was once the home of the heroic and beautiful Princess Christina Belgiojoso, the friend of Cavour and Garibaldi, who equipped a troop of Lombardy volunteers which she herself commanded, until she was banished from Italy by order of the Austrian general. Gazing upon the blue lake, on whose shining bosom the rocky shores were so charmingly mirrored, to-day, it was difficult to believe that great storms ever sweep over its still waters, yet habitués of this region tell us that this Punta di Bellagio is the centre of furious storms, the most violent coming from behind Monte Crocione, back of Cadenabbia, and sweeping with great fury across the lake. Such a storm as this was the memorable one of 1493, upon whose violence chroniclers of the time delighted to descant. This particular tempest, which was probably no more severe than many others, found a place in history and romance because its unmannerly waters tossed about the richly decorated barge of Bianca Sforza, whose marriage to Maximilian, King of the Romans, had been solemnized with great magnificence, at the cathedral in Milan, three days before. The bridal party set forth from Como in brilliant sunshine, the shores crowded with men and women in holiday attire, and the air filled with joyous music. Bianca's barge was rowed by forty sailors, says Nicolo da Correggio, while her suite followed in thirty boats, painted and decked out with laurel boughs and tapestries. This gay _cortège_ reached Bellagio in safety, and after a night spent at a castle on the promontory the bride and her attendants set sail toward the upper end of the lake. Hardly had they left the shore when the weather changed, and a violent storm scattered the fleet in all directions. Bianca's richly decorated barge, with her fine hundred-thousand-ducat trousseau aboard, was tossed about as mercilessly as if it had been a fisherman's smack. The poor young Queen and her ladies wept and cried aloud to God for mercy. Giasone del Maino, says the chronicler, alone preserved his composure, and calmly smiled at the terror of the courtiers, while he besought the frightened boatmen to keep their heads. Happily, the tempest subsided toward nightfall, and the Queen's barge, with part of her fleet, succeeded in putting back into the harbor of Bellagio. The following day a more prosperous start was made, and poor Bianca was saved from the terrors of the deep to make another perilous journey, this time across the Alps on muleback, by that fearful and cruel mountain of Nombray, as a Venetian chronicler described the Stelvio Pass. She finally reached Innsbruck, where she was joined, some months later, by her tardy and cold-hearted bridegroom. We had seen Bianca's handsome bronze effigy in the Franciscan church at Innsbruck, and so felt a personal interest in the fair young bride who had been launched forth upon this matrimonial venture with so much pomp and ceremony, her head crowned with diamonds and pearls, and her long train and huge sleeves supported by great nobles of Milan. Foolish and light-headed the young Queen doubtless was, and with some childish habits which must have been annoying to her grave consort, many years her senior,--Erasmo Brasca, the Milanese envoy, says that he was obliged to remonstrate with her for the silly trick of eating her meals on the floor instead of at table,--and yet she was a warm-hearted, affectionate girl, and like many another princess of that time, she deserved a happier fate than the loveless marriage that had been arranged for her. Our memories are quite fresh about Bianca and her sorrows, because an accommodating tourist, who had Mrs. Ady's "Beatrice d'Este" with her, has loaned it to us for reading in the evenings--at least for as much time as we can afford to spend in-doors when the out-door world is so beguiling. August 12th. The man of the party and the children set forth early this morning for a day's fishing on the lake, Walter having learned from a loquacious boatman that trout of large size, frequently weighing fifteen pounds, are to be caught here. We women, lacking the credulity of the true brother of the angle, declined Walter's invitation, preferring a morning at the Villa Carlotta to "the calm, quiet, innocent recreation of angling," although we did encourage the fisher-folk by telling them that we should return from sightseeing with keen appetites for their trout. The villa, or château, which we visited to-day, situated on a hillside directly opposite Bellagio, is not that in which Maximilian and Carlotta passed some happy years before the misfortunes of their life overtook them. That villa, as you may remember, is on the southern shore of Lake Como, at Cernobbio. The fact of there being two Villas Carlotta on the same lake is somewhat confusing, as will appear later. This one, whose beautiful hillside gardens reach from Cadenabbia to Tremezzo, our informing little local guidebook tells us, was long known as the Villa Clerici, later as the Villa Sommariva, and finally, failing of heirs in the Sommariva line, it was bought by the Princess Albert of Prussia, who named the villa after her own daughter Charlotte. We crossed from Bellagio to Cadenabbia in one of the little boats with brown awnings and gay cushions, that add so much to the picturesqueness of this fairy lake, and made our way to the Villa Carlotta, passing through the richly wrought iron gates and up many steps to the terraced garden where a fountain throws its feathery spray into the air. We were all three in such high spirits as befit a party of pleasure seekers, journeying through a land of enchantment on a brilliantly beautiful day, for it must be admitted that in a downpour of rain Lake Como and its shores are like any other places in the rain. Miss Cassandra, who is gay even under dull skies and overhanging clouds, is gayer than usual to-day, having donned a hat in which she takes great pride, a hat of her own confection, which she is pleased to call a "Merry Widow," and an indecorously merry widow it is, so riotous is it in its garnishings of chiffon, tulle and feathers! Thus far Lydia has prevented her aunt from appearing, in public, in her cherished hat; but here, in the lake region, where the sun is scorching at midday, she rebels against Lydia's authority, says she has no idea of having her brains broiled out for the sake of keeping up a dignified and conventional appearance, and that this hat is just the thing for water-parties, and is not at all extreme compared with the peach-basket, the immense picture hat with its gigantic willow plumes, the grenadier, and other fashionable monstrosities in the way of headgear. Our jaunt to Cadenabbia appeared to be the psychological moment for the inauguration of the merry widow, and so I may say, truly and literally, that our Quaker lady is in fine feather to-day, her head crowned with nodding plumes, and not a qualm of conscience anent the far-away meeting and its overseers to cloud her pleasure. Whether in consequence of the charms of the merry widow, or because of a certain distinctive individuality that belongs to her, Miss Cassandra attracted even more attention than usual this morning. While we were admiring the noble Thorwaldsen reliefs, that form the frieze of the entrance hall, and the exquisite marble of Cupid and Psyche by Canova, that is one of the glories of the Villa Carlotta, she, as is her sociable wont, fell into conversation with two English-speaking women of distinguished appearance. Before we left the château Miss Cassandra and one of her new friends, a stately, beautiful woman, were exchanging confidences and experiences with the freedom and intimacy of two schoolgirls. These ladies, whom Miss Cassandra is pleased to call the American countesses,--it having transpired in the course of conversation that they were of American birth, Pennsylvanians in fact, who had married titled Italians,--were courteous to us all, but they simply fell in love with our Quaker lady, whose "thee's" and "thou's" seemed to possess a magic charm for them. Later on we were in some way separated from our new acquaintances amid the intricacies of these winding hillside paths, where one may walk miles, especially if the guide is clever and entertaining, and has an eye to future _lira_ bestowed in some proportion to the time spent in exploring the beauties of the garden, and to the fatigue attending the tour. Italian dames of high degree, even if so fortunate as to have been born in America, are not usually as good walkers as our untitled countrywomen. These ladies, being no exception to the rule, had probably yielded to the seductions of one of the rustic seats, placed so alluringly under the shade of fine trees, while we wandered on from path to path, stopping to admire an avenue of palms, a bamboo plantation, a blue Norway spruce, a huge India-rubber tree, a bed of homelike American ferns, or a clump of gorgeous rhododendrons, for the trees and flowers of all climes thrive in this favored spot. A party of four or five men and women had joined us, who talked to each other in German, occasionally bowing to us and smiling, after the polite fashion of foreigners, when the guide drew our attention to some rare flower or plant, or to a charming vista of lake and mountain, seen through a frame of interlacing branches and vines. An immense bed of cactus, on a sunny slope, attracted the regard and admiration of our companions. Miss Cassandra, who had seen the cactus in its glory on its native heath, recognized the strangers' admiration even in an unknown language, and by way of protest expatiated in her enthusiastic fashion upon the splendor of the cactus of Mexico, the plumes of her hat waving in unison with her eloquent words and gestures, while Lydia and I exchanged amused glances; but our merriment was destined to be but short lived. The strangers, who were standing near us, could not, of course, get the drift of what Miss Cassandra was saying, but one of the party, a man of strongly marked personality, evidently caught the word "Mexico," and pricked up his ears when she repeated it. In an instant, a heavy hand was laid upon her shoulder, while an angry voice hissed close to her ear: "Mexican, Mexican! Pourquoi avez-vous tué l'Empereur Maximilian?" Not comprehending this sudden arraignment, although she felt the heavy hand upon her shoulder, heard the angry voice at her side, and saw the unfriendly faces that surrounded her, our dear Miss Cassandra, by way of making matters worse, repeated the only word that she had caught: "Mexican! Yes, the Mexican cactus is much finer than this!" This innocent remark seemed to irritate the Austrian beyond all bounds. He repeated his question in French, still keeping his hand on the poor lady's shoulder and gazing into her frightened face. "Why did you kill the Emperor Maximilian?" gesticulating with his free hand and drawing it across his throat. "Pourquoi lui avez-vous coupé la gorge?" Lydia and I were too shocked and dismayed to speak, and in that instant of terror every sad and gruesome disaster, that had befallen unprotected travellers in a strange land, passed in rapid review before our minds. We turned to the guide for help, but he who had been so voluble and instructive in botanical lore, in several languages, now held his tongue in them all, appearing quite dull and uninterested, as if having no understanding or part in the affair! Suddenly my voice came to me, and I cried out in the best French that I could command: "The Emperor Maximilian did not have his throat cut! He died like a soldier! He was shot!" "Well, then," exclaimed the Austrian, still gesticulating violently with one hand and shaking Miss Cassandra's shoulder with the other, "Why did you shoot him!" Not having improved the situation by my remark, I turned again to the guide, when, to our immense relief, the American countesses, most opportunely, emerged from a shaded path. Miss Cassandra's pale, frightened face, the despair written upon Lydia's and mine, the stranger's excited tone and gestures, told half the story, while I eagerly explained: "These people are Austrians. They think that Miss Cassandra is a Mexican, and they hate her on account of the assassination of the Emperor Maximilian. She is frightened to death, but she does not understand a word of what it is all about. Do explain!" The stately lady, Countess Z---- by name, drew near, threw her arm protectingly around Miss Cassandra, and turning to the Austrian, with an air of command, ordered him to take his hand off her shoulder, explaining in German (German had never sounded so sweet to my ears) that this lady was an American citizen who had simply travelled in Mexico. The man listened and withdrew his hand, looking decidedly crestfallen when she added: "The American nation had nothing to do with the most unfortunate sacrifice of your young prince; in fact, the government at Washington made an effort to avert the disaster. His death was deplored in America, and you must remember that the whole affair was in a large measure instigated by the ambitious designs of Napoleon III, who broke faith with Maximilian, failed to send him the troops he had promised him, and cruelly abandoned him to his fate." The Austrian bowed low and humbly apologized, adding something in an undertone about "Here in the grounds of the château where Maximilian and Carlotta had once lived, seemed no place to talk about Mexico." "You are quite mistaken!" exclaimed the Countess. "This is not the Villa Carlotta that once belonged to Maximilian. That is quite at the other end of the lake. This château, long the property of the Sommariva family, passed in 1843 into the hands of the Princess Charlotte of Prussia, who named it after her daughter, another Carlotta, and I hope a happier one than the poor Empress Carlotta." Again the Austrian bowed and apologized, this time to Miss Cassandra, who, from his softened voice and deferential manner, realized that whatever deadly peril had menaced her was happily averted, and throwing her arms around the Countess Z----'s neck, she exclaimed, "My dear countrywoman! Thee has the face of an angel and, like an angel, thee has brought peace to our troubled minds. But for the life of me I cannot tell what I have done to make that German so angry!" When Miss Cassandra had learned what was the head and front of her offending, she begged the Countess to explain that she was a woman of peace, that war was abhorrent to her and all of her persuasion, and finally she quite won the Austrian's heart by telling him that she had no admiration for that upstart Bonaparte family (Miss Cassandra is nothing if not aristocratic); that for her part she liked old-established dynasties, like the Hapsburgs, and had always considered the marriage of the daughter of a long line of kings with the self-made Emperor a great come down for Maria Louisa. Please remember that these are Miss Cassandra's sentiments, not mine, and how the dear Italian-American lady managed to translate them into good German and keep her face straight at the same time, I know not; but the Austrian evidently understood, as he became more profusely apologetic every moment, and well he might be for, as Miss Cassandra says, "No amount of bowing and scraping and apologizing could make up for the fright he had given us." But she is the most forgiving of mortals, as you know, and an _entente cordiale_ having been established, through the mediation of our two American-Italian _diplomatistes_, the two recent foes were soon exchanging courtesies and scaling mountain paths together, hand in hand, smiling, gesticulating, quite _en rapport_, without a syllable of language between them, Miss Cassandra's nodding plumes seeming to accentuate her expressions of peace and good will. While our Quaker lady was stepping off gaily, her late tormentor now her willing captive, Lydia, usually so quiet and self-contained, suddenly collapsed upon the nearest seat and went off in a violent attack of hysterics. One of the Austrian women rushed off for a glass of water, while the countesses ministered to her, in true story-book fashion, having with them a bottle of sal volatile which seems to be an important part of the equipment of every well-appointed foreign lady. And what do you think that heartless Lydia said between her laughter and her sobs? "If only one of us had had a kodak with us, to take a snapshot of Aunt Cassie with the angry Austrian berating her! Nobody will ever believe the story when we get back to America, and then it would lose half its point without the merry widow!" Of course we had tales of adventure to relate when reunited with our family this evening. Walter warmly, and I believe with sincerity, expressed his regret that he had not been with us, which regret was probably all the more heartfelt because he had failed to catch the fifteen pound trout or, indeed, I may add in all truthfulness, trout of any size and weight. II AN ISLAND CHÂTEAU PENSION BEAU-SÉJOUR, STRESA, Wednesday, August 17th. WE REACHED this enchanting spot by a most circuitous and varied route, which I outline for you, as you may be coming this way some time. From Bellagio we crossed over to Menaggio, on Monday after _déjeuner_, where we took an electric tram which brought us to Porlezza in less than an hour. Here we found a boat awaiting us in which we enjoyed a two hours' sail on beautiful Lake Lugano. At Lugano, which we reached before six o 'clock, we were in Switzerland, as we learned when the customs officers visited our luggage, with no benefit to themselves and little disturbance to us, and again when we found our beds at the hotel supplied with feather counterpanes--and I may venture to say it with all my love for Italy--by a scrupulous and shining cleanliness that belongs more to the thrifty Swiss than to the amiable and less energetic Italians. Lugano is full of quaint corners, interesting narrow streets, market wagons, drawn by oxen, and stalls and carts on all sides, filled with curios and native wares that would tempt the most blasé shopper. Yesterday, being a market day when the peasants come in from the surrounding country in their ox carts, and with their great panniers, or _hottes_, on their backs, we found many delightful bits for our kodaks. The children were especially interested in a woman who carried a pretty, little young kid in her pannier, instead of the fruits and vegetables that are usually to be seen in these great baskets, and a heavy load it must have been! But these Swiss and Italian women are burden-bearers from early childhood. We needed a week instead of a day and night at Lugano, and let me advise you and Allan not to travel on schedule time when you make your tour through these lakes, as there are so many delightful side trips to be made. Some pleasant Americans, whom we met at the hotel in Lugano, told us that a day or two spent on the summit of Monte Generoso is well worth while, as the view is one of the finest in Europe, embracing as it does the chain of the Alps, the Italian lakes and the vast plains of Lombardy as far as the Apennines. In addition to all this there are fine woods and pasture lands upon this mountain top, and a hotel in which one may sojourn in comfort, if comfort is to be considered when such heavenly views are to be feasted upon. We quitted Lugano after luncheon yesterday, having had time for only a hurried visit to the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli and the famous Luini frescoes. Another charming trip on the lovely Lago di Lugano brought us to Ponte Tresa, from whence we journeyed by a steam tram through an enchanting wild wood country, full of little hills and rushing streamlets, to Luino. Do you wonder that Lisa calls this a fairy journey? The change from car to boat and boat to car takes away all the weariness of travel, and the varied beauties of lake and shore make this an ideal trip, especially as we found ourselves transferred to another boat at Luino which brought us straight to fairyland, here at Stresa. The lights upon the many boats on the lake and in the hotels and villas along the shore gave the little town a gala appearance, as if it were celebrating our arrival, as Miss Cassandra suggested. Later on it became humiliatingly evident that we had not been expected, our boat was late, the cabs had all gone away, and it was with difficulty that we secured enough conveyances for our party. We drove many miles, so it seemed to us, by winding roads up a steep hillside to this pension, where we finally found light, warmth, welcome and good beds, of which last we were sorely in need. By morning light the pension proves itself to be well named Beau-Séjour, as it is delightfully situated on a hill above the lake, with a garden, which slopes down to the town, full of oleanders and orange and lemon trees. When I opened the _jalousies_ at my window, what should I see but dear, snow-crested Monte Rosa and the rest of the Alpine chain, seeming quite near in this crystal atmosphere, a perfect background for the picturesque Borromean Islands, fairy islets in a silver lake! "I really think that Maggiore is more beautiful than Como," I said, reluctantly, for I have heretofore contended that Lake Como at Bellagio is the most beautiful place on the face of the earth. "Take what goods the gods provide you, Zelphine, and don't use up the gray matter of your brain trying to find out which of these lakes you like best," said Walter in his most judicial tone. "Yes, but one really cannot help comparing these two lakes, and if we give the preference to Maggiore we have Mr. Ruskin on our side, who considers the scenery of Lake Maggiore to be the most beautiful and enchanting of all lake scenery, so we read in a pleasant little book of Richard Bagot's which we found on the drawing-room table, yet the author says that for himself he has no hesitation in giving his vote in favor of the Larian Lake for beauty of scenery and richness of historic interest." Despite his philosophy I truly think that the man of the party has left his heart at Bellagio, as I heard him telling a brother angler, whom he met at the boat landing, how fine he found the fishing there and that he doubted the sport being as good at Stresa--at least for amateur fishermen. The associations here are less inspiring than those of Como, the presiding genius of Stresa being San Carlo Borromeo, whose thirst for the blood of heretics gained for him the title of Saint. A great bronze statue at Arona now proclaims his zeal for the Church. Miss Cassandra, who has an optimistic faith in a spark of the divine in the most world-hardened saint or sinner, reminds me of Carlo Borromeo's heroic devotion to the sufferers from famine and the plague at Milan in 1570 and 1576. So, with a somewhat gentler feeling in our hearts toward "the Saint," we turned our faces toward Isola Bella and its great château, built by a later and more worldly-minded member of the Borromean family, Count Vitaliano Borromeo. This château, which from the lake side appears like a stronghold of ancient times, is fitly named the Castello, and after admiring its substantial stone terrace and great iron gates we were prepared for something more imposing than what we found within. The large rooms, with their modern furniture and paintings, some of them poor copies from the old masters, were strangely out of harmony with the ancient exterior of the Castello; but they were shown to us with great pride by the custodian, who must have found us singularly unappreciative and lacking in enthusiasm, even when he displayed a room in which the great Napoleon had once slept. When Napoleon was here, and why, and whether he was here at all, does not concern any of us especially, except Lydia, who having a turn for history is always determined to find out how, why, when, and where. I am glad that she does care, as her example is edifying to us all, especially so to Christine and Lisa, who follow her about and ask questions to their hearts' content, which she is never tired of answering. The garden, we revelled in, and found it hard to believe that the terrace, which rises to a height of one hundred feet, was once a barren rock until Count Borromeo covered it with a luxuriant growth of orange, olive, and lemon trees, cedars, oleanders, roses, camellias, and every tree and plant that you can think of. It is really a bewilderingly lovely garden, and we wandered through its paths joyously until we came suddenly upon some artificial grottos at one end overlooking the lake. These remarkable creations are so utterly tasteless, with masses of bristling shellwork and crude, ungainly statues, that we wondered how anything so inartistic could find a home upon Italian soil. The children, however, found delight in the hideous grottos, were sure that they had been robbers' dens, and fancied they heard the groans of prisoners issuing from their cavernous openings. They were so fascinated, as children always are by the mysterious and unknown, that nothing but the pangs of hunger and promises of luncheon on a terrace garden overlooking the lake reconciled them to leaving the garden and the grottos. [Illustration: A. Gebr. Wehrli, Photo. ISOLA BELLA, LAKE MAGGIORE] We tried to forget the monstrosities of the château garden and to remember only the beauty and the rich luxuriance of its trees and the many flowering vines that clambered all over the shellwork terraces, as if striving to conceal their rococo ugliness. Nor is it difficult to forget unsightly objects here, when we have only to raise our eyes to behold a scene of surpassing beauty,--Isola Madre and Isola dei Pescatori look but a stone's throw from us across the shining water, and beyond a girdle of snow mountains seems to encircle the lake, our beloved Monte Rosa, white as a swan's breast, dominating them all. Despite the distracting beauty of the outlook from our café, on the terrace of a very indifferent looking hostel, we enjoyed our luncheon of Italian dishes, crowned by an _omelette aux confitures_ of such superlative excellence that even my inveterate American was ready to acknowledge that it was the best omelet he had ever eaten anywhere. We shall need a whole morning for Isola Madre, whose gardens are said to be even more beautiful than those of Isola Bella. The sporting tastes of the man of the party naturally draw him toward the allurements of Isola dei Pescatori, but thither we shall decline to accompany him, for picturesque as it appears from the shore, it is, on a more intimate acquaintance, said to rival in unsavoriness the far-famed odors of the city of Cologne. ORTA, August 19th. From Stresa we made a short _détour_, in order to have a day and night here on the Lago d'Orta, which although comparatively near Lake Maggiore is not often included in the itinerary of the fast traveling tourist, who usually hurries to Arona, Stresa, and Pallanza, which, beautiful as they are, lack something of the restful charm of this miniature lake set in the midst of a circle of well-wooded hills. After Como and Maggiore, which are like inland seas, the Lago d'Orta with its pretty island of San Giulio, all so small that one may see the whole picture at a glance, is indescribably lovely. The waters here are said to be of a deeper blue than anywhere else in Italy, probably because the lake is fed from springs which issue from its rocky bed. The whole town of Orta, as well as the lake, is a blaze of color with the gay awnings of its many loggie, its masses of scarlet and pink geraniums, cactus and oleanders, its fruit stalls laden with melons, peaches and tomatoes, or poma d'oro, and its blue sky over all. We cannot imagine Orta under any but a clear sky, as our day here has been one of dazzling brilliancy. But it was not solely for its beauty that the man of the party brought us to Orta, as I discovered when I looked over a little local guidebook last night, and learned that the Lago d'Orta is famous for its fish, and abounds in trout of large size, pike, perch, and the agoni, a delicate little fish for which Lake Como is also noted. After glancing over this illuminating guidebook, and recalling the fact that the catch at Stresa had been poor the day before, we were not surprised to hear arrangements being made for an early start this morning. After reading aloud some extracts from the guidebook, Miss Cassandra said, quite seriously: "For ways that are dark and tricks that are vain commend me to a fisherman or hunter. With all that Izaak Walton was pleased to say about fishing being 'a calm, quiet, innocent recreation,' I have known the best of men, even as good men as Walter, descend to duplicity and even to prevarication when it came to a question of fish or game. Not that I regret for a moment Walter's bringing us here. Orta is so beautiful that the end justifies the means; but he might have told us why we were coming." Despite the innate and total depravity of fisher folk, I yielded to Walter's and the children's persuasions and joined the fishing party this morning, and a delightful day I had, seated in the stern of the boat under one of the little canopies that you see in all the pictures of this region. Here, well screened from the sun, with books and work, and the lovely lake and shore to gaze upon, the hours passed so quickly that I was surprised when we were told that it was time to land on the Island of San Giulio for our noon déjeuner. I was in the midst of relating the interesting experiences of the missionary priest Julius, who is said to have founded a church here as early as 390, when we were nearing the lovely little island named for him. The children were naturally delighted with the priest's fertility of resource, which, like that of the mother in their favorite "Swiss Family Robinson," was equal to every occasion. Having resolved to found a sanctuary upon the island whose solitary beauty, as it rested upon the shining bosom of the lake, appealed to him as it does to us to-day, and finding no boatmen upon the shore willing to convey him thither, on account of the hideous monsters, dragons, and serpents of huge size then inhabiting the place, good Julius, nothing daunted by so trifling an inconvenience as the lack of a boat, used his long cloak as a sail, and his staff as a rudder, and thus equipped allowed himself to be blown across to the island. "Of course, we know that there is nothing new under the sun, but who would have thought of finding traces of the first aeroplane here, in this quiet spot, far from the haunts of men?" This from the man of the party, while Lisa exclaimed impatiently: "Now, don't stop the story! What did the good priest do when he landed on the island? Did he kill the beasts with his big stick?" "We never heard of the 'big stick' flourishing among these lakes," said Walter, as he wound up his line, and I explained to the children that the hideous monsters fled before the beautiful face of the messenger of peace and swam across the water to the mainland. A delightful confirmation of the story, the children found in the church, where they were shown a huge bone that belonged to one of these self-same monsters. "Very like a whale," said Walter, while we were further edified by a sight of the silver and crystal shrine under which repose the bones of St. Julius removed from the little old church to this one of the seventh century, which is a perfect miniature basilica. This was explained to us by a priest, in Italianized French of the most mongrel description, translated by me and listened to by Christine and Lisa with eager faces and wide-open eyes. When we related our experiences to Miss Cassandra, who had in our absence visited the twenty chapels on the mainland erected in honor of St. Francis of Assisi, she shook her head, knowingly, and said, "Lydia and I have heard a great many wonderful tales, too, but it is worth everything to be a child and ready to swallow anything from a gumdrop to a whale." The little girls take so much more interest in churches and shrines than we had expected that we are half regretting our plan to leave them in a French school in Lausanne while we make our tour among the Châteaux of the Loire. I can hear you say, "Why not take them to Tours, for the French there?" We know that the French of Tours is exquisite, but they have had quite as much travel as is good for them, and then they have little friends at the school in Lausanne whom they wish to join. "And after all," as Miss Cassandra says, "American French can always be spotted, no matter how good it may be." We were very much amused over the criticism of a little American boy who had been educated in Italy. He said of an English lady's correct and even idiomatic Italian, "Yes, it's all right; but she doesn't speak in the right tune." We have so many tunes in our own language that we are less particular than the French and Italians, who treat theirs with the greatest respect. To-morrow we leave this charming spot with great reluctance. We shall doubtless find architectural beauty in Touraine, but we shall miss the glorious mountain and lake views and these indescribable atmospheric effects that we delight in. But, as the man of the party says, with masculine directness, "Having started out to see the Châteaux of the Loire, had we not better push on to Touraine?" You cannot appreciate the full magnanimity of this advice without realizing that Orta is a place above all others to please a man's fancy, and that the fishing is exceptionally good. Miss Cassandra has taken back her caustic expressions with regard to the devious ways of fisher folk, or at least of this especial fisherman, and so, in good humor with one another and with the world in general, we set forth for Lausanne, by Domodossola and the Simplon. We shall have a Sunday in Lausanne to drink in Calvinism near its source; Monday we arrange about the children's school, and set forth for Touraine on Tuesday, stopping in Geneva for a day and night. III AN AFTERNOON AT COPPET GENEVA, August 24th. LIKE Hawthorne, our first feeling upon returning to Switzerland, after our sojourn in Italy, was of a certain chill and austerity in the atmosphere, a lack of heartiness, in sharp contrast to the rich feast of beauty, the warm color and compelling charm of Italian towns. This impression was accentuated by the fact that it rained yesterday at Lausanne and that we reached Geneva in the rain. We had one clear day, however, at Lausanne, upon which we made a pilgrimage to Chillon, to the great delight of the _Kinder_. Miss Cassandra insisted that we should take the children to see this most romantic and beautiful spot, because, she says, it is out of fashion nowadays, like Niagara Falls at home, and that it is a part of a liberal education to see the Castle of Chillon and read Byron's poem on the spot, all of which we did. It is needless to tell you that Christine and Lisa considered this day on the lake and in and about Chillon the most interesting educational experience of their lives. We were glad to leave them at the pension in Lausanne with a memory so pleasant as this, and for ourselves we carry away with us a picture of the grim castle reaching out into the blue lake and beyond that almost unrivalled line of Alpine peaks, white and shining in the sun. After this there came a day of rain, in which we set forth for Geneva. "We have not seen him for three days until to-day," said the _garçon_ who waited on us at the terrace café of the hotel this morning, with a fond glance toward the snowy crest of Mont Blanc rising above enveloping clouds. It would not have occurred to us to call this exquisite pearl and rose peak _him_, as did the _garçon_, who was proud of his English, and much surer of his genders than we ever hope to be in his language, or any other save our own; but we were ready to echo his lament after a day of clouds and rain. To be in these picturesque old towns upon the shores of the Lake of Geneva, and not to see Mont Blanc by sunlight, moonlight, and starlight is a grievance not lightly to be borne; but when a glory of sunshine dispelled the clouds and Mont Blanc threw its misty veil to the winds and stood forth beautiful as a bride, in shining white touched with palest pink, we could only, like the woman of the Scriptures, forget our sorrows for joy that such a day was born to the world. Days like this are rare in the Swiss autumn, and with jealous care we planned its hours, carefully balancing the claims of Vevey, Yvoire, picturesque as an Italian hillside town, Ferney, and Coppet. This last drew us irresistibly by its associations with Madame de Staël and her brilliant entourage, and we decided that this day of days should be dedicated to a tour along the Côte Suisse of the lake, stopping at Nyon for a glance at its sixteenth century château and returning in time to spend a long afternoon at Coppet. The only drawback to this delightful plan was that this is Wednesday, and according to the friendly little guidebook that informs sojourners in Geneva how to make the best of their days, Thursday is the day that the Château de Staël is open to visitors. Learning, however, that the d'Haussonvilles were not at present in residence, we concluded to take our courage, and some silver, in our hands, trusting to its seductive influence upon the caretaker. After a short stroll through the quaint old town of Coppet we ascended the steep hill that leads to the Château de Staël. As we drew near the entrance gate, Walter, manlike, retired to the rear of the procession, saying that he would leave all preliminaries to the womenfolk, as they always knew what to say and generally managed to get what they wanted. Fortune favored us. We noticed several persons were grouped together in the courtyard, and pushing open the gate, which was not locked, Lydia, who if gentle of mien is bold of heart, inquired in her most charmingly hesitating manner and in her Sunday best French whether we should be permitted to enter. Upon this a man separated himself from the group and approaching us asked if we very much wished to see the château, for if we did he was about to conduct some friends through the premises and would be pleased to include us in the party. "When the French wish to be polite how gracefully they accord a favor!" exclaimed Lydia, turning to Walter, the joy of conquest shining in her blue eyes. "Yes, and I kept out of it for fear of spoiling sport. Any caretaker who could withstand the combined charms of you three must be valiant indeed! I noticed that Zelphine put Miss Cassandra in the forefront of the battle; she is always a winner even if she isn't up to the language, and you did the talking. Zelphine certainly knows how to marshal her forces!" We all laughed heartily over Walter's effort to make a virtue of his own masterly inactivity, and Miss Cassandra asked him if he had ever applied for a diplomatic mission, as we gaily entered the spacious courtyard. We noticed, as we passed on toward the château, the old tower of the archives, which doubtless contains human documents as interesting as those published by Count Othenin d'Haussonville about his pretty great-grandmother when she was _jeune fille très coquette_, with numerous lovers at her feet. Behind the close-barred door of the tower the love letters of Edward Gibbon to the village belle were preserved, among them that cold and cruel epistle in which for prudential reasons he renounced the love of Mademoiselle Curchod, whom he would "always remember as the most worthy, the most charming of her sex." Count d'Haussonville, who now owns Coppet, our guide informed us, is not the grandson of Madame de Staël, as Lydia and I had thought, but her great-grandson. Albertine de Staël married Victor, Duc de Broglie, and their daughter became the wife of Count Othenin d'Haussonville, to whom we are indebted for the story of the early love affair of his ancestress with the historian of the Roman Empire. The sympathies of the reader of this touching pastoral are naturally with the pretty Swiss girl, who seems to have been sincerely attached to her recreant lover, although she had sufficient pride to conceal her emotions. If Edward Gibbon found excuse for himself in the reported tranquillity and gayety of Mademoiselle Curchod, we, for our part, are glad that she did not wear her heart upon her sleeve, there being other worlds to conquer. Indeed, even then, several suitors were at Mademoiselle Curchod's feet, among them a young parson,--her father being a pastor, young parsons were her legitimate prey,--and still greater triumphs were reserved for her in the gay world of Paris which she was soon to enter. As _dame de compagnie_, Mademoiselle Curchod journeyed with Madame Vermenoux to the French capital, and carried off one of her lovers, M. Necker, under her very eyes. The popular tradition is that Madame Vermenoux was well tired of M. Necker and of Mademoiselle Curchod also, and so cheerfully gave them both her blessing, remarking with malice as well as wit: "They will bore each other so much that they will be provided with an occupation." It soon transpired that M. and Mme. Necker, far from boring each other, were quite unfashionably happy in their married life, some part of which was passed at Coppet, which M. Necker bought at the time of his dismissal from office. An hour of triumph came to Madame Necker later when Edward Gibbon visited her in her husband's home in Paris. After being hospitably invited to supper by M. Necker, the historian related that the husband composedly went off to bed, leaving him _tête-à-tête_ with his wife, adding, "That is to treat an old lover as a person of little consequence." The love affairs of the Swiss pastor's daughter, her disappointments, her triumphs, and her facility for turning from lost Edens to pastures new, would be of little interest to-day did they not reveal certain common characteristics possessed by the lively blue-stocking, Susanne Curchod, and her passionate, intense daughter, Anne Germaine de Staël. The well-conducted Madame Necker, whose fair name was touched by no breath of scandal, possessed all her life a craving for love, devotion, and admiration, which were accorded to her in full measure. With the mother, passion was restrained by fine delicacy and reserve, and her heart was satisfied by a congenial marriage, while the impetuous and ill-regulated nature of Germaine was thrown back upon itself by an early and singularly ill-assorted union. With many thoughts of the two interesting women who once lived in the château we passed through the doorway into the hall, on whose right-hand side is a colossal statue of Louis Seize, while on the left are portraits of several generations of d'Haussonvilles. On the stairway are numerous genealogical charts and family trees of the Neckers, doubtless reaching back to Attila, if not to Adam, for strange as it may seem the great Swiss financier was as much addicted to vain genealogies and heraldic quarterings as a twentieth century American. It was in the long library, with its many windows opening out upon a sunny terrace, that we came upon traces of the presiding genius of the château. Here are Madame de Staël's own books, the cases unchanged, we were assured, except by the addition of new publications from time to time. On a table, among the most treasured possessions of the devoted daughter, is the strong box of M. Necker in which he kept his accounts with the French Government when he sought to stem the tide of financial disaster that was bearing the monarchy to its doom. From this room instinct with the atmosphere of culture, a fit setting for the profoundly intellectual woman who inhabited it, we stepped through one of the long windows to the terrace which commands a glorious view. In the distance, yet not seeming very far away in this clear air, is that well-known group of which Mont Blanc is the central peak, with the Dent du Géant and the Aiguilles du Glacier and D'Argentière standing guard over its crystalline purity. We had seen Mont Blanc and its attendant mountains from the heights of Mont Revard, and knew its majestic beauty as seen from Chamounix; but we all agreed that nothing could be lovelier than these white peaks rising above the sapphire lake, with the blue cloud-flecked sky over all. Yet, with this perfect picture spread before her, Madame de Staël longed for the very gutters of Paris, its sights and sounds, which were inseparably associated in her mind with the joyous chatter of the salon to which she had been introduced at an age when most children are in the nursery. Seated upon a high chair in her mother's salon, little Anne Germaine Necker listened eagerly to the discourses of the great men of her day. Listening was not destined to be her _rôle_ in later years; but to pace up and down the long drawing room at Coppet, with the invariable green branch in her beautiful hands, uttering words that charmed such guests as Schlegel, Sismondi, Bonstetten of Geneva and Chateaubriand. It was Chateaubriand who said that the two magical charms of Coppet were the conversation of Madame de Staël and the beauty of Madame Récamier. Madame de Staël's library opens into her bedroom, and beyond this is the charming little apartment dedicated to Madame Récamier. This small, dainty room, with hand-made paper upon its walls of delicate green decorated with flowers and birds, seemed a fit setting for the flower-like beauty who occupied it, a lily that preserved its purity amid the almost incredible corruption of the social life of the period. Madame de Staël's own bedroom is filled with pictures, and souvenirs of the _vie intime_ of one who with all her faults was dowered with a limitless affection for her family and friends. Here is a marble bust of the beautiful daughter Albertine in her girlhood, and on the right of Madame de Staël's bed is a portrait of her mother, in water color painted during her last illness, the fine, delicate old face framed in by a lace cap. On the margin of this picture is written, "Elle m'aimera toujours." Under this lovely water color is the same picture reproduced in black and white, beneath which some crude hand has written in English the trite phrase, "Not lost, but gone before." In a glass case are Madame de Staël's India shawls, which, like Josephine de Beauharnais and other women of the period, she seems to have possessed the art of wearing with grace and distinction. One of these shawls appears in the familiar portrait by David, which is in a small library or living room _au premier_; this we reached by climbing many stairs. It is quite evident that David was not in sympathy with his sitter, as in this painting he has softened no line of the heavy featured face, and illumined with no light of intellect a countenance that in conversation was so transformed that Madame de Staël's listeners forgot for the moment that she was not beautiful. Quite near the portrait of the exile of Coppet, as she was pleased to call herself, is one of Baron de Staël Holstein, in court costume, finished, elegant, handsome perhaps, but quite insignificant. It is surely one of the ironies of fate that the Baron de Staël is only remembered to-day as the husband of a woman whom he seems to have looked upon as his social inferior. In this living room is a large portrait of M. Necker, indeed, no room is without a portrait or bust of the idolized father, and here, looking strangely modern among faces of the First Empire, is a charming group of the four daughters of the Count d'Haussonville, the present owner of Coppet. Several portraits and busts there are, in the drawing room, of beautiful Albertine de Staël, wife of Victor, Duc de Broglie, whom Madame de Staël says that she loved for his tenderness and sympathy. In this spacious, homelike drawing room, furnished in the style of the First Empire, and yet not too fine for daily use, we could imagine Madame de Staël surrounded by her brilliant circle of friends, many of whom had been, like herself, banished from the Paris that they loved. She is described by Madame Vigée Lebrun, and other guests, as walking up and down the long salon, conversing incessantly, or sitting at one of the tables writing notes and interjecting profound or brilliant thoughts into the conversation. "Her words," added Madame Lebrun, "have an ardor quite peculiar to her. It is impossible to interrupt her. At these times she produces on one the effect of an improvisatrice." Ohlenschlager described the _châtelaine_ of Coppet as "living in an enchanted castle, a queen or a fairy," albeit of rather substantial proportions, it must be admitted, "her wand being the little green branch that her servant placed each day by her plate at table." The time of the Danish poet's visit was that golden period in the life of the château when it was the _rendezvous_ of many of the savants of Germany and Geneva. Into the charmed circle, at this time, entered Madame Krüdener, that strangely puzzling combination of priestess and coquette, whose Greuze face and mystic revelations touched the heart of an Emperor. Standing in the long salon, which contains many portraits and souvenirs of the habitués of Coppet, we realized something of the life of those brilliant days, when the walls echoed to what Bonstettin called "prodigious outbursts of wit and learning," and upon whose boards classic dramas and original plays were acted, often very badly, by the learned guests. Rosalie de Constant wrote that she trembled for her cousin Benjamin's success in _Mahomet_, which _rôle_ he accepted with confidence, while beneath the play at life and love the great tragedy of a passionate human soul is played on to the end, for this is the period of storm and stress, of alternate reproaches and caresses, from which Benjamin Constant escaped finally to the side of his less exacting Charlotte. After spending some weeks in the company of a hostess who could converse half the day and most of the night with no sign of fatigue, it is not strange that Benjamin Constant sometimes found himself wearied by the mental activity of Coppet, where "more intellect was dispensed in one day than in one year in many lands," or that Bonstettin said that after a visit to the château, "One appreciated the conversation of insipid people who made no demand upon one's intellect." And brilliant as was that of the hostess, her guests doubtless hailed as a relief from mental strain occasional days when she became so much absorbed in her writing that she ceased for a while to converse, and they were free to wander at will through the beautiful park, or to gather around the Récamier sofa, still to be seen in one corner of the salon, where the lovely Juliette held her court. Madame Récamier, like Benjamin Constant, Sismondi, and many other distinguished persons who had incurred the displeasure of Napoleon, found what seems to us a gilded exile at Coppet in the home of the Emperor's arch-enemy. The close friendship of Germaine de Staël and Juliette Récamier, even cemented as it was by the common bond of misfortune, is difficult to understand. That Madame de Staël kept by her side for years a woman whose remarkable beauty and sympathetic charm brought out in strong contrast her own personal defects, presupposes a generosity of spirit for which few persons give this supremely egotistical woman credit. She always spoke of Madame Récamier in rapturous terms, and her "belle Juliette" and her "dear angel" seems to have been free under the eyes of her hostess to capture such noble and learned lovers as Mathieu de Montmorency, Prince Augustus of Prussia, Ampère, and Chateaubriand. It was only when that ill-named Benjamin Constant allowed his unstable affections to wander from the dahlia to the lily that Germaine de Staël's anger was aroused against her friend. For a short period Madame Récamier ceased to be the "belle Juliette" and the "dear angel" of the mistress of Coppet until, with a truly angelic sweetness of temper and infinite tact, she made Germaine understand that she had no desire to carry off her recreant lover and so the friendship continued to the end. If it is difficult to understand the long friendship of Madame de Staël and Juliette Récamier, it is quite impossible to follow with any comprehension or sympathy the various loves of Germaine. One can perhaps understand that after Benjamin Constant had escaped from her stormy endearments she could turn for solace to young Albert Rocca, and yet why did she still cling to Benjamin's outworn affection, and then, with naïve inconsistency, declare that he had not been the supreme object of her devotion, but that Narbonne, Talleyrand and Mathieu de Montmorency were the three men whom she had most deeply loved? Lydia said something of this, as we passed through the gate of the château, upon which an elderly woman, who had been one of the guide's party, turned to us and said abruptly, "Artistic temperament! Men have been allowed a monopoly of all the advantages belonging to the artistic temperament for so many years that it seems only fair to cover over the delinquencies of women of such unquestioned genius as Germaine de Staël and George Sand with the same mantle of charity." These words of truth and soberness were spoken in a tone of authority, almost of finality, and yet in the stranger's eyes there shone so kindly and genial a light that far from being repelled by them, we found ourselves discussing with her the loves of poets and philosophers as we descended the steep hill that leads from the château to the garden café at its foot. Here, led on by the pleasant comradeship induced by travel, we continued our discussion over cups of tea and buns, while Mont Blanc glowed to rose in the sunset light, and we wondered again how Madame de Staël could ever have looked upon the shores of this beautiful lake as a "terrible country," even if it was for her a "land of exile." You will think that we have had enough pleasure and interest for one afternoon, but you must remember that this is our one day in Geneva, and although we have all been here before, we have never seen Ferney. Walter discovered, in looking over the local guidebook, that this is the day for Ferney, and that it is open until six o'clock. He found that we had an hour after reaching the boat landing. Walter secured an automobile and we set forth for the home of Voltaire, which is really very near Geneva. It was interesting to see the old philosopher's rooms and the gardens, from which there is an extended view of the lake and mountains; but most impressive after all is the little church which he built in his old age, with the inscription on one end: DEO EREXIT VOLTAIRE MDCCLXI Walter has suddenly conceived the idea that there are some valuable coins well worth a visit in the Ariana Museum which we passed on the way to Ferney, so we have decided to gain a half day here by taking an afternoon train to Dijon and stopping there over night. When you next hear from me it will be from Mary Stuart's pleasant land of France and probably from the Paris beloved of Germaine de Staël. Until then, _au revoir, ma belle_. IV EN ROUTE FOR TOURAINE HÔTEL DE LA CLÔCHE, DIJON, August 26th. WE STOPPED at this interesting old town last night in order to break the long journey from Geneva to Paris. Dijon, which has only been to us a station to stop in long enough to change trains and to look upon longingly from the car windows, proves upon closer acquaintance to be a town of great interest. After a morning spent among its churches and ancient houses and in its museum, we were quite ready to echo the sentiments of an English lady whom we met at the _table d'hôte_, who spends weeks here instead of days, and wonders why travellers pass Dijon by when it is so much more worth while than many of the places they are going to. So much is left of the ancient churches and buildings to remind one of the romantic and heroic history of Dijon, that it seems eminently fitting that we should make this stop-over, a visit to the capital city of Burgundy being a suitable prelude to a sojourn among the châteaux of the French kings, who had their own troubles with these powerful lords of the soil. The present Hôtel de Ville was once the palace of the Dukes of Burgundy. Little is now left of the original building with the exception of the ancient kitchens, and these, with their half-dozen great ventilating shafts, give one the impression that those doughty old warriors had sensitive olfactories. In the Cathedral of Saint Bénigne, who seems to be the patron saint of Dijon, are the remains of the great Dukes of Burgundy, although their magnificent tombs are in the museum. The Cathedral of Saint Bénigne has a lovely apse and other architectural charms; but Notre Dame captivated us utterly, so wonderful are its gargoyles representing man and beast with equal impartiality, their heads and shoulders emerging from a rich luxuriance of sculptured foliage, the whole indescribably beautiful and grotesque at the same time. It is not strange that the carved figure of a plump and well-fed Holy Father, with his book in one hand and food in the other, sitting beside an empty-handed and mild-faced sheep, should have called forth such lines as the following from some local poet, evidently intended for the remarks of the sheep: "LES ESPRITS-FORTS. Volontiers les humains s'apellent fortes-têtes Qui la plupart du temps ne sont que bonnes bêtes Et qui juste en raison de leurs étroits esprits De leurs maigres pensers sont beaucoup trop épris." Other decorators and sculptors of these ancient buildings have, like Fra Lippo Lippi, worked their own quaint conceits and humorous fancies into their canvases and marbles, and we to-day are filled with wonder at their cleverness, as well as over the excellence of their art, so exquisite is the carving of leaf and branch and vine. One would need to come often to the Galerie des Tours of Notre Dame to fully enjoy it, and other beauties of this church, whose tower is crowned by a curious clock with moving figures, called Jacquemart, after the Flemish mechanician Jacques Marc who designed it. The Jacquemart, with his pipe in his mouth, stolidly strikes the hours, undisturbed by the cold of winter or the heat of summer, as some Burgundian poet of the sixteenth century has set forth in a quaint rhyme. Near the cathedral is a charmingly picturesque building called La Tour de Bar, where René d'Anjou, Duke of Bar and Lorraine, was imprisoned with his children. In the museum, which possesses many treasures in painting and sculpture, we saw the magnificently carved tombs of Philippe le Hardi and Jean Sans-Peur. Here, with angels at their heads and lions couchant at their feet, the effigies of these Dukes of Valois rest, surrounded by a wealth of sculpture and decoration almost unequalled. It would be well worth stopping over night at Dijon if only to see the magnificent tombs of these bold and unscrupulous old warriors and politicians. Jean Sans-Peur planned and accomplished the assassination of Louis d'Orléans and was himself overtaken by the assassin a few years later. The tomb of the boldest and bravest of them all, Charles le Téméraire, you may remember, we saw at Bruges. The lion at the feet of the last Duke of Burgundy, with head upraised, seems to be guarding the repose of his royal master, who in his life found that neither statecraft nor armies could avail against the machinations of his arch-enemy, Louis XI. Beautiful and impressive as are these tombs, the true glory of Dijon is that the great Bossuet was born here and St. Bernard so near, at Fontaine, that Dijon may claim him for her own; and Rameau, the celebrated composer; Rude, whose sculptures adorn the Arc de l'Etoile in Paris; Jouffroy, and a host of other celebrities, as we read in the names of the streets, parks, and boulevards, for Dijon, like so many French cities and towns, writes her history, art, literature, and science on her street corners and public squares, thus keeping the names of her great people before her children. When we were studying routes in Geneva yesterday it seemed quite possible to go to Tours by Bourges and Saincaize, and thus secure a day in Bourges for the cathedral of Saint Etienne, which is said to be one of the most glorious in France, and not less interesting to see the house of the famous merchant-prince who supplied the depleted coffers of Charles VII, Jacques Coeur, the valiant heart to whom nothing was impossible, as his motto sets forth. At the tourist office we were told that such a crosscut to Tours was quite out of the question, impossible, and that the only route to the château country was via Paris. It seemed to us a quite useless waste of time and strength to go northward to Paris and then down again to Tours, which is south and a little west, but having no knowledge on the subject and no Bradshaw with us to prove our point, we accepted the ultimatum, although Miss Cassandra relieved her feelings by saying that she did not believe a word of it, and that tourist's agents were a stiff-necked and untoward generation, and that she for her part felt sure that we could cut across the country to Saincaize and Bourges. However, when we hear the questions that are asked these long-suffering agents at the tourist offices by people who do not seem to understand explanations in any language, even their own, we wonder that they have any good nature left, whatever their birthright of amiability may have been. Here, in Dijon, we find that we could have carried out our charming little plan, and Walter, realizing my disappointment, suggests that we take an automobile from here to Saincaize and then go by a train to Bourges and Tours. This sounds quite delightful, but our Quaker lady, having turned her face toward the gay capital, demurs, saying that "We have started to Paris, and to Paris we had better go, especially as our trunks have been sent on in advance, and it really is not safe to have one's luggage long out of one's sight in a strange country." This last argument proved conclusive, and we yielded, as we usually do, to Miss Cassandra's arguments, although we generally make a pretence of discussing the pros and cons. PARIS, August 29th. When we reached Paris on Saturday we soon found out why we had come here, to use the rather obscure phrasing of the man of the party, for it speedily transpired that Miss Cassandra had brought us here with deliberate intent to lead us from the straight and narrow path of sightseeing into the devious and beguiling ways of the _modiste_. She has for some reason set her heart upon having two Paris gowns, one for the house and one for the street, and Lydia and I, being too humane to leave her unprotected in the hands of a dressmaker who speaks no English, spent one whole afternoon amid the intricacies of broadcloth, messaline, and chiffon. Of course we ordered some gowns for ourselves as a time-saving measure, although I really do not think it is usually worth while to waste one's precious hours over clothes when there is so much to be done that is better worth while. However, the shades of mauve, and all the variants of purple, which are set forth so alluringly in the windows are enough to tempt an anchorite, and no more decided color attracts us, as blues and greens seem crude and startling beside these soft shades, which came in with the half-mourning for King Edward and are still affected by Parisians of good taste. Our Quaker lady has become so gay and worldly-minded, since her signal triumph with the American countesses in her merry widow, that we are continually reminded of the "Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary," and Lydia and I have to be on the alert to draw her away from the attractions of windows where millinery is displayed, lest she insist on investing in a grenadier, or in that later and even more grotesque device of the _modiste_, the "Chantecler." To compensate for the time lost at the dressmakers, we had two long beautiful mornings at the Louvre and a Sunday afternoon at the Luxembourg, followed by a cup of tea and a pleasant, sociable half-hour at the Students' Hostel, on the Boulevard Saint-Michel, a delightful, homelike inn where many young women who are studying in Paris find a home amid congenial surroundings. A little oasis in the desert of a lonesome student life, this friendly hostel seemed to us. Several women whom we knew at home were pouring tea, and we met some nice English and American girls who are studying art and music, and the tea and buns brought to us by friendly hands made the simple afternoon tea take upon it something of the nature of a lovefeast, so warm and kindly was the welcome accorded us. PENSION B----, TOURS, August 30th. We left Paris yesterday from the Station Quai d'Orsay for our journey of three and a half hours to Tours. So near to Paris is this château land of Touraine that we wonder why we have not all been journeying this way full many a year, instead of waiting to be caught up and borne hither by the tide of fashion, especially as our route lay through a land filled with historic and romantic associations. It is impossible to pass through this flat but picturesque country, with its winding rivers and white roads shaded by tall poplars, and by such old gray towns as Étampes, Orléans, Blois, and Amboise, without recalling the delight with which we have wandered here in such goodly company as that of Brantôme, Balzac, Dumas, and Madame de Sévigné. It was upon this same Loire, which winds around many a château before it throws itself into the sea, that Madame de Sévigné described herself as setting forth from Tours at 5 o'clock on a May morning, in a boat, and in the most beautiful weather in the world. These boats on the Loire, as described by Madame de Sévigné, were evidently somewhat like gondolas. "I have the body of my _grande carosse_ so arranged," she wrote, "that the sun could not trouble us; we lowered the glasses; the opening in front made a marvellous picture, all the points of view that you can imagine. Only the Abbé and I were in this little compartment on good cushions and in fine air, much at our ease, altogether like _cochons sur la paille_. We had _potage et du boulli_, quite warm, as there is a little furnace here; one eats on a ship's plank like the king and queen; from which you see how everything is _raffiné_ upon our Loire!" Down this same river M. Fouquet, the great financier, fled from the wrath of his royal master and the bitter hatred of his rival Colbert. On the swift current the lighter sped, carried along by it and the eight rowers toward Nantes and Fouquet's own fortress of Belle Isle, only to be overtaken by Colbert's boat with its twelve sturdy oarsmen. Whatever may have been the sins of Fouquet, he had so many charming traits and was so beloved by the great writers of France--Molière, La Fontaine, Madame de Sévigné, Pelisson, and all the rest whom he gathered around him at his château--that our sympathies are with him rather than with the cold and calculating Colbert. Putting their hands into the public coffers was so much the habit of the financiers and royal almoners of that period that we quite resent Fouquet's being singled out for the horrible punishment inflicted upon him, and after all he may not have been guilty, as justice often went far astray in those days, as in later times. Whether or not M. Fouquet was the "Man with the Iron Mask," as some authorities relate, we shall probably never know. Walter, who is not a fanciful person, as you are aware, is inclined to believe that he was, although his beloved Dumas has invented a highly dramatic tale which makes a twin brother of Louis XIV, the mysterious "Man with the Iron Mask." In the goodly company of Madame de Sévigné, her _fablier_, as she dubbed La Fontaine, M. Fouquet, and our old friends the three Guardsmen, you may believe that the journey from Paris to Tours did not seem long to us. I must tell you of one contretemps, however, in case you, like us, take the express train from the Quai d'Orsay. Instead of being carried to our destination, which is a railroad courtesy that one naturally expects, we were dumped out at a place about twenty miles from Tours. We had our books and papers all around us, and were enjoying sole possession of the compartment, when we were suddenly told to put away our playthings and change cars. We asked "Why?" as we had understood that this was a through train, but the only response that we could get from the guard was, "St. Pierre le Corps, change cars for Tours!" So bag and baggage, with not a porter in sight to help us, and Walter loaded like a dromedary with dress-suit cases and parcels, we were hurried across a dozen railroad tracks to a train which was apparently waiting for us. "What does it all mean?" exclaimed Miss Cassandra. "What have we to do with St. Peter and his body? St. Martin and his cloak are what we naturally expect here." "To be sure," we all exclaimed in a breath, but we had actually forgotten that St. Martin was the patron saint of Tours. Miss Cassandra is worth a dozen guidebooks, as she always gives us her information when we want it, and we want it at every step in this old Touraine, which is filled with history and romance. She also reminds us that between Tours and Poitiers was fought the great battle between the Saracen invaders and the French, under Charles Martel, which turned back the tide of Mohammedism and secured for France and Europe the blessings of Christianity, and that in the Château of Plessis-les-Tours the famous treaty was made between Henry III and his kinsman, Henry of Navarre, which brought together under one flag the League, the Reformers, and the Royalists of France. As we drove from the station to the hotel, the coachman pointed out to us the new church of St. Martin, which occupies a portion of the site of the vast basilica of which two picturesque towers alone remain. We hope for a nearer view of it to-morrow, and of St. Gatien, whose double towers we can see from our windows at the Pension B----. We had expected to stop at the Hôtel de l'Univers, which Mr. Henry James and all the other great folk honor with their regard; but finding no accommodations there we are temporarily lodged at this excellent pension. Although called a hotel by courtesy, this house possesses all the characteristics of a pension in good standing. There is no office, nothing to suggest the passing of the coin of the realm between ourselves and the proprietors. We are treated like honored guests by the ancient porter and the other domestics; but of Madame, our hostess, we have only fleeting visions in the hall and on the stairway, usually in a pink _matinée_. Monsieur materializes on occasions when we need postage stamps and change, and is most accommodating in looking up train times for us. Above all, and most characteristic of all, there is in the _salle à manger_ a long table surrounded by a dozen or more of our countrywomen, _en voyage_ like ourselves. Walter was at first somewhat disconcerted by this formidable array of womankind without a man in sight, and at the dinner table confided to me his sentiments regarding pensions in rather strong language, insisting that it was like being in a convent, or a young ladies' seminary, except that he had noticed that most of the ladies were not painfully young, all this in an undertone, of course, when lo! as if in answer to his lament, a man appeared and seated himself modestly, as befitted his minority sex, at a side table by his wife. Walter now having some one to keep him in countenance, we shall probably remain where we are and indeed a harder heart than his, even a heart of stone, could not fail to be touched by Miss Cassandra's delight at being surrounded by her compatriots, and able to speak her own language once more with freedom. The joyous manner in which she expands socially, and scintillates conversationally, proves how keen her sufferings must have been in the uncomprehending and unrequiting circles in which we have been living. It goes without saying that she soon became the centre of attraction at table, and so thrilled her audience by a spirited recital of her adventures at the Villa Carlotta that the other man cried, "Bravo!" from his side table, without waiting for the formality of an introduction. "Quite different," as Walter says, "from the punctilious gentlemen in the 'Bab Ballads' who couldn't eat the oysters on the desert island without being duly presented." Our new acquaintances are already planning tours for us to the different châteaux of the Loire, while Walter and his companion, who proves to be a United States Army man and quite a delightful person, are smoking in the garden. This garden upon which our long windows open, with its many flowers and shrubs and the largest gingko tree I have ever seen, would hold us fast by its charms were the Pension B---- less comfortable than it is. V IN AND AROUND TOURS PENSION B----, TOURS, August 31st. WE SET forth this morning on a voyage of discovery, and on foot, which is the only satisfactory way to explore this old town, with its winding streets and quaint byways and corners. Our first visit was to the church of St. Martin of Tours, in the Rue des Halles, which brought with it some disappointment, as instead of a building so old that no one can give its date, we found a fine new church, in whose crypt are the remains of St. Martin. The most ancient basilica of St. Martin was erected soon after the death of the benevolent saint, whose remains were carried by faithful members of his diocese from Candes, where he died in the beginning of the fifth century. This basilica was burned down in the tenth century, and another erected on its site some years later. This last basilica, built in the twelfth or thirteenth century, of vast size and beauty, was certainly old enough to have been treated with respect, and its destruction a few years ago to make way for a new street was, as Walter says, an act of vandalism worthy of the councilmen of an American city. Of the old church only two towers remain, the Tour de Charlemagne and the Tour de l'Horloge, and the gallery of one of the cloisters. Over this imperfect arcade, with its exquisite carvings of arabesques, flowers, fruits, cherubs, and griffins, Mr. Henry James waxed eloquent, and Mrs. Mark Pattison said of it: "Of these beautiful galleries the eastern side alone has survived, and being little known it has fortunately not been restored, and left to go quietly to ruin. Yet even in its present condition the sculptures with which it is enriched, the bas reliefs, arabesques, and medallions which fill the delicate lines of the pilasters and arcades testify to the brilliant and decided character which the Renaissance early assumed in Touraine." If the present church of St. Martin was disappointingly new, we found the Cathedral of St. Gatien sufficiently ancient, with its choir dating back to the thirteenth century and its transept to the fourteenth, while the newels of the two towers belong to a very much earlier church dedicated to the first Bishop of Tours, and partly destroyed by fire in 1166. [Illustration: Neurdein Freres, Photo. STAIRCASE AND CLOÎTRE DE LA PSALLETTE, ST. GATIEN] Who St. Gatien was, and why he had a cathedral built in his honor, even Miss Cassandra and Lydia do not know, and we have no good histories or Lives of the Saints to refer to; verily one would need a traveller's library of many volumes in order to answer the many questions that occur to us in this city, which is so full of old French history, and English history, too. Indeed it is quite impossible to separate them at this period, when England owned so much of France and, as Miss Cassandra says, her kings were always looking out of the windows of their French castles upon some Naboth's vineyard that they were planning to seize from their neighbors. "Jolly old robbers they were," says Walter, "and always on top when there was any fighting to be done. I must say, quite aside from the question of right or wrong, that I have much more sympathy with them than with the Johnny Crapauds. Here, in this foreign land of France, the Plantagenet kings seem quite our own, and only a few removes in consanguinity from our early Presidents." We were glad to lay claim to the Cathedral of St. Gatien, which in a way belongs to us, as the choir was begun by Henry II of England, although it is to be regretted that a quarrel between this Plantagenet king and Louis VII resulted in a fire which destroyed much of the good work. We lingered long in the cloisters, and climbed up the royal staircase, with its beautiful openwork vaulting to the north tower, from whose top we may see as far as Azay-le-Rideau on a clear day. This was, of course, not a clear day, as we are having hazy August weather, so we did not see Azay, but from the tower we gained quite a good idea of the general plan of Tours, and stopped long enough in the cloisters to learn that the picturesque little gallery, called the Cloître de la Psallette, was the place where the choir boys were once trained. The façade of this cathedral seemed to us a beautiful example of Renaissance style, although said to offend many of the canons of architecture. We are thankful that we do not know enough about the principles of architecture to be offended by so beautiful a creation, and inside the church we were so charmed by the exquisite old glass, staining the marble pillars with red, blue and violet, that we failed to notice that the aisles are too narrow for perfect harmony. The jewel-like glass of the Lady Chapel was brought here from the old church of St. Julian in the Rue Nationale, once the Rue Royale, and is especially lovely. In a chapel in the right-hand transept we saw the tomb of the little children of Charles VIII and Anne of Brittany, by whose early death the throne of France passed to the Valois branch of the Orleans family. Looking at the faces of these two children sleeping here side by side, the little one with his hands under the ermine marble, the elder with his small hands folded piously together, a wave of sympathy passed over us for the unhappy mother who was in a few months deprived of both her precious babies. As we stood by the tomb with its two quaint little figures, guarded by kneeling angels at their heads and feet, beautiful, appropriate, reverent, we wondered why modern sculptors fall so far behind the ancient in work of this sort. The moderns may know their anatomy better, but in sweetness and tender poetic expression the work of the old artists is infinitely superior. This charming little group was probably made by Michael Colombe, although it has been attributed to several other sculptors of the time. After a visit to the archbishop's palace, and a short stop at the museum, which attracted us less than the outdoor world on this pleasant day, we stopped at the Quai du Pont Neuf to look at the statues of Descartes and Rabelais, so picturesquely placed on each side of the Pont de Pierre. Retracing our steps by the Rue Nationale we strolled into the interesting old church of St. Julian, where we admired the vast nave of noble proportions and the beautiful stained glass. After wandering at will through several streets with no especial object in view, we found ourselves in a charming little park where we were interested in a monument to three good physicians of Tours, a recognition of valiant service to humanity that might well be followed by our American cities. Just here my inveterate American reminded me of the monument in Boston to the discoverer of ether, and that to Dr. Hahnemann in Washington. "Both of them monstrosities of bad taste!" exclaimed Miss Cassandra, as we turned into the Rue Emile Zola, and along the Rue Nationale to the Palais de Justice, in one of whose gardens is a fine statue of the great novelist who was born in the Maison de Balzac, near by on the Rue Nationale. Through the streets George Sand and Victor Hugo, we found our way to the theatre and then back to the Boulevard Béranger, upon which our pension is situated. "It is," as Miss Cassandra says, "a liberal education to walk through the streets of these old French towns, and whatever may be the shortcomings of the French, as a nation, they cannot be accused of forgetting their great people." As we stroll through these thoroughfares and parks we are constantly reminded by a name on a street corner or a statue that this Touraine is the land of Balzac, Rabelais, Descartes, and in a way of Ronsard and George Sand, as the châteaux of La Poissonnière and Nohant are not far away. Here they, and many another French writer, walked and dreamed, creating characters so lifelike that they also walk with us through these quaint streets and byways or look out from picturesque doorways. We can fancy the Curé de Tours emerging from the lovely Cloître de la Psallette of St. Gatien or the still lovelier cloister of old St. Martin's; or we can see poor Félex de Vandenesse making his way across the park, Emile Zola, with his meagre lunch basket on his arm. We have not yet tasted the _rillons_ and _rillettes_ so prized by the school children of Tours, and so longed for by Félex when he beheld them in the baskets of his more fortunate companions. Lydia reminds us that Balzac was at some pains to explain that this savory preparation of pork is seldom seen upon the aristocratic tables of Tours, and as our pension is strictly aristocratic and exclusive, it is doubtful if we ever see _rillons_ and _rillettes_ upon Madame B----'s table. September 1st. We crossed over the bridge this afternoon in a tram to Saint Symphorien, on whose hillside the original city of Tours was built. Here we saw an interesting Renaissance church, and passing through the streets of Vieux Calvaire l'Ermitage, Jeanne d'Arc and St. Gatien, gained the entrance to the Abbey of Marmoutier, where Saint Gatien dug out his cave in the rocky hillside. We also saw the ruins of a fine thirteenth century basilica once the glory of Touraine, and by a spiral staircase ascended to the _Chapelle des Sept Dormants_, really a cavern cut in the side of the hill in the shape of a cross, where rest the seven disciples of St. Martin, who all died on the same day as he had predicted. Their bodies remained intact for days and many miracles were worked, which you may believe, or not, just as you choose. When the name of the chapel was revealed to Miss Cassandra she exclaimed: "I have heard of the Seven Sleepers all my life and have been likened unto them in my youth; but never did I expect to lay eyes upon their resting place, and very uncomfortable beds they must have been!" "So it was St. Gatien who first brought Christianity to France. Some one of us should surely have known that," said Lydia, looking up from the pages of a small local guidebook, with a face so dejected over her own ignorance, and that of her companions, that Miss Cassandra said in her most soothing tones: "Never mind, dear, you will probably find when we reach the next cathedral town that some other worthy and adored saint did this good work for France." And sure enough, this very night we have been learning, from a short history that we picked up on a book stall, that, although St. Gatien came here on a mission from Rome in the third century, to St. Martin is due the spread of Christianity not only through Touraine but all over France. Having done our duty in the line of sightseeing and historic associations, we rested from our labors for a brief season and stopped to call on the Grants from New York, who are staying in a pleasant pension at St. Symphorien. Here we had an hour with them in the garden where many flowers are abloom, and exchanged travel experiences and home gossip over _brioches_, the famous white wine of Vouvray and glasses of orange-flower water. Orange-flower water is the proper thing to drink here as it is made in large quantities in the neighborhood of Tours. As a refreshing and unintoxicating beverage it was highly recommended to our Quaker lady, who does not take kindly to the wine of the country, which is really guiltless of alcohol to any extent; but over this rather insipid drink she was not particularly enthusiastic. Like the English woman when she made her first acquaintance with terrapin, the most that Miss Cassandra could be induced to say was that the _eau des fleurs d'oranges sucrée_ was not so very bad. The English dame, of course, said "it is not so very nasty"; but we have not become sufficiently Anglicized to say "nasty" in company. There is no knowing what we may come to when Angela joins us, as she has been visiting and motoring with Dr. McIvor's English and Scotch relations for the last six weeks and will have become quite a Britisher by the time we see her again. She is to meet us in Paris later in September, when her M.D. will join us for his vacation. We returned home by the suspension bridge, built upon the site of an early bridge of boats. A later stone bridge was erected by Odo, Count of Blois and Touraine, "in order," as he recorded, "to make himself agreeable to God, useful to posterity and upon the solicitations of his wife." These were very good reasons, it must be admitted, for building a bridge. The substructure of this old stone bridge, the first of its kind in France, may be seen below the surface of the water a little farther up the stream. Royalty seems to have had the good taste to spend much time in Touraine during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, and small wonder we thought, for this fertile well-watered plain combines the advantages of north and south, and is hospitable to the fruits and flowers of many climates. Louis XI, in his declining years, sought refuge here from the chill winds of Paris, which are tempered in Touraine by the softer breezes of the Midi, and this ancient city of the Turones he wished to make the capital of the France that he had strengthened and unified. However we may abhor the despicable characteristics of this wily old politician and despot, we cannot afford to underestimate his constructive ability and his zeal for the glory of France. September 2nd. We drove out this morning through the little village of St. Anne to the old château of Plessis-les-Tours, which Louis built and fortified to suit his fancy and his fears, for great and powerful as he was he seems to have been a most timid mortal. Of the "hidden pitfalls, snares and gins" with which the old King surrounded his castle we could not expect to find a trace, but we were disappointed to see nothing left of the three external battlemented walls or the three gates and dungeon-keep, which Sir Walter Scott described, the latter rising "like a black Ethiopian giant high into the air." With our Quentin Durward in our hands, we read of Plessis-les-Tours as the novelist pictured it for us in the light of romance. Of course Sir Walter never saw this château, but like many other places that he was not able to visit, it was described to him by his friend and neighbor, Mr. James Skene, Laird of Rubislaw, who while travelling in France kept an accurate diary, enlivened by a number of clever drawings, all of which he placed at the novelist's disposal. From this journal, says Lockhart, Sir Walter took the substance of the original introduction to Quentin Durward. As Mr. James Skene is said to have given his friend most accurate descriptions of the buildings and grounds, it is safe to conclude that the château has been entirely remodelled since the days when the young Scottish archer listened to the voice of the Countess Isabelle, as she sang to the accompaniment of her lute while he acted as sentinel in the "spacious latticed gallery" of the château. It is needless to say that we failed to discover the spacious gallery or the maze of stairs, vaults, and galleries above and under ground which are described as leading to it. Nor did we see any traces of the fleur-de-lis, ermines, and porcupines which are said to have adorned the walls at a later date. Indeed the empty, unfurnished rooms and halls, guiltless of paintings or tapestries, were so dismal that we hurried through them. As if to add an additional note of discord to the inharmonious interior, a "vaccination museum" has been established in one of the ancient rooms. We stopped a moment to look at the numerous caricatures of the new method of preventing the ravages of smallpox; one, that especially entertained Walter, represented the medical faculty as a donkey in glasses charged upon by vaccine in the form of a furious cow. We hoped to find in the grounds some compensation for the cheerlessness of the interior of the castle; but here again we were doomed to disappointment. The vast lawn and extensive parterres, which caused the park of Plessis-les-Tours to be spoken of as the Garden of France, have long since disappeared, and all that we could find was a grass-grown yard with some neglected flower beds, surrounded by a hedge of fusane, a kind of laurel with a small white flower that grows here in great profusion. We made an effort to see, or to fancy that we saw, an underground passage that was pointed out to us as that which once led to the dungeon upon whose stone foundation was placed the iron cage in which Cardinal la Balue was confined. Of the series of fosses which once enclosed the château we found some remains, but of the solid ramparts flanked by towers, where a band of archers were once posted by night and day, and of the bristling _chevaux-de-frise_ nothing was to be seen. Walter wishes you to tell Allen that the greatest disappointment of all is that there is no oak forest anywhere near Plessis from whose boughs the victims of Louis were wont to hang "like so many acorns," one of Scott's bits of realism that appealed to his boyish imagination. We were glad to turn our backs upon the modern brick building which occupies the site of the ancient stronghold of Plessis and to drive home by a farm called La Rabatière, whose fifteenth century building is said to have been the manor house of Olivier le Daim, familiarly called Olivier le Diable, the barber-minister of Louis. Our driver, who is somewhat of an historian, and like a loyal Tournageau is proud of the associations of his town, good and bad alike, was delighted to show us this old home of Olivier who was, he informed us, the executioner of his master's enemies of high degree, while Tristan l'Hermite attended to those of less distinction, having, as Louis warned Quentin, "For him whose tongue wagged too freely an amulet for the throat which never failed to work a certain cure." The house of Tristan, our _cocher_ told us, we should find in one of the narrow streets of the old part of Tours, which we have not yet explored. VI LANGEAIS AND AZAY-LE-RIDEAU PENSION B----, TOURS, September 3rd. WHEN we started toward Langeais this afternoon we were pleased to think that our way was much the same as that which Félix took in search of his "Lily of the Valley." The Loire lay before us just as he described it,--"a long watery ribbon which glistens in the sun between two green banks, the rows of poplars which deck this vale of love with moving tracery, the oak woods reaching forward between the vineyards on the hillsides which are rounded by the river into constant variety, the soft outlines crossing each other and fading to the horizon." [Illustration: MEDIÆVAL STAIRWAY, CHÂTEAU OF LUYNES] We passed by Luynes, whose steep hillside steps we shall mount some day to see the fine view of the river and valley from the outer walls and terrace of the château, as its doors are said to be inhospitable to those who wish to inspect the interior. This afternoon Langeais and Azay-le-Rideau are beckoning us, although we were tempted to stop for a nearer view of the strange Pile de Cinq Mars, which is, we are told, an unsolved architectural puzzle. The most probable explanation is that this lofty tower was once part of a signalling system, by beacon fires, which flamed messages along the valley, past Luynes to the Lantern of Rochecorbon and as far eastward as Amboise. Although there are the ruins of a castle of the same name quite near the Pile de Cinq Mars, the home of Henry d'Effiat, Marquis de Cinq Mars, seems to have been at Chaumont, where Alfred de Vigny placed the opening scenes of his novel. To compensate for our disappointing morning at Plessis-les-Tours, we had an entirely satisfactory afternoon at Langeais, where we beheld a veritable fortress of ancient times. At a first glance we were as much interested in the little gray town of Langeais, which is charmingly situated on the right bank of the Loire, as in the château itself, whose façade is gloomy and austere, a true mediæval fortress, "with moat, drawbridge, and portcullis still in working order," as Walter expresses it. As we stood on the stone steps at the entrance between the great frowning towers waiting for the portcullis to be raised, we felt as if we might be in a Scott or Dumas novel, especially as our Quaker lady repeated in her own dramatic fashion: ". . . . And darest thou then To beard the lion in his den, The Douglas in his hall? And hopest thou hence unscathed to go? No, by Saint Bride of Bothwell, no! Up drawbridge, grooms--what, warder, ho! Let the portcullis fall." Lord Marmion turn'd,--well was his need,-- And dashed the rowels in his steed, Like arrow through the archway sprung, The ponderous gate behind him rung; To pass there was such scanty room, The bars, descending, razed his plume. [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO LANGEAIS, WITH DRAWBRIDGE] Fortunately for us the portcullis rose instead of falling, and so, with plumes unscathed, we passed through the doorway, and as if to add to the _vraisemblance_ of the situation and make us feel quite mediæval, soldiers stood on each side of the entrance, apparently on guard, and it was not until after we had entered the château that we discovered them to be visitors like ourselves. If the façade of Langeais, with its severe simplicity and solidity, its great stone towers, massive walls, _chemin de ronde_ and machiolated cornices, gave us an impression of power and majesty, we found that it also had a smiling face turned toward the hill and the lovely gardens. Here the windows open upon a lawn with turf as green and velvety as that of England, and parterres of flowers laid out in all manner of geometrical figures. From a court basking in sunshine, two beautiful Renaissance doors lead into the castle. Through one of them we passed into a small room in which the inevitable postcards and souvenirs were sold by a pretty little dark-eyed French woman, who acted as our guide through the castle. We begged her to stand near the vine-decked doorway to have her photograph taken, which she did with cheerful alacrity. Some soldiers, who were buying souvenirs, stepped through the doorway just in time to come into the picture, their red uniforms adding a delightful touch of color as they stood out against the gray walls of the château. It was a charming scene which we hoped to be able to send you, but alas! a cloud passed over the sun, and this, with the dark stone background, made too dull a setting, and by the time the sun was out again our guide was in request to take a party of tourists through the château, ourselves among them. Langeais is so popular during this busy touring season that hours and turns are strictly observed. One of the soldiers is evidently the _cher ami_ of our pretty Eloisa, who waved her little hand to him as she sent a coquettish glance from her fine eyes in his direction, and threw him a kiss, after which she applied herself to her task as cicerone, conducting us from room to room, enlarging upon the history and associations of the château, and explaining to us that of the original castle, built by Foulques Nerra, or "Fulk the Black," in 990, only the ruinous donjon keep is to be seen beyond the gardens. The present château is of much later date, and was built by Jean Bourré, comptroller of the finances for Normandy under Louis XI, who was granted letters patent of nobility and the captaincy of Langeais about 1465. After listening to thrilling tales of the barbarous cruelty of Fulk the Black, Count of Anjou, who had his first wife burned at the stake and made himself very disagreeable in other ways, as our guide naïvely remarked in French of the purest Touraine brand, Lydia exclaimed, "The more perfect the French, the easier it is to understand!" "It is all the same to me, good or bad," groaned Walter in reply to Lydia's Ollendorf phrase, uttering quite audible animadversions against foreign languages in general and the French in particular, which our guide fortunately did not comprehend, especially as he concluded with a crushing comparison, "Why are not all the guides like that wonderful little woman at the Castle of Chillon, who told her story in English, French, and German with equal fluency and facility?" "Why, indeed!" echoed Miss Cassandra, who being a fellow sufferer is most sympathetic. It certainly is exasperating to a degree to have the interesting history and traditions given forth in a language that one does not understand, and with such rapidity that if those who are able to grasp the meaning attempt to translate they quite lose the thread of the discourse and are left far behind in the story. As we passed through the great halls and spacious rooms with timbered ceilings, tapestried walls, and beautifully tiled floors, we were impressed with the combination of mediæval strength and homelike comfort, especially in the living rooms and bedrooms. The graceful mural decorations of flowers and cherries in the Salon des Fleurs are in strong contrast with the massive woodwork and the heavy carved furniture, and yet the ensemble is quite harmonious. In the guard room we noticed a fine frieze in which the arms of Anne of Brittany are interwoven with her motto, "_Potius Mori quam Foedari!_" From this and much more in the line of careful restoration and rich decoration and furnishing, you may believe that the interior of Langeais has undergone a transformation, at the hands of several owners of the château, since the days when Mr. Henry James spoke of its apartments as "not of first-class interest." M. Christophe Baron and Monsieur and Madame Jacques Siegfried have, while preserving the distinctive characteristics of an ancient fortress, made of Langeais an entirely livable château. Just here we are reminded by our historians that we Anglo-Saxons have a link far back in our own history with Langeais and the cruel Fulk, Duke of Anjou, as one of his descendants married Matilda, daughter of Henry I, of England, and their grandson was Richard Coeur de Lion, who was Count of Touraine and Lord of Langeais as well as King of England. In the beautiful long salon, with its wonderful sixteenth century tapestries and handsomely carved Spanish choir stalls, our guide became especially eloquent, telling us that this was the room in which Charles VIII and Anne de Bretagne were married, the inlaid table in the centre being that upon which the marriage contract was signed. "What is the little black-eyed woman talking about?" asked Miss Cassandra, in a most pathetic tone. Fortunately, our cicerone gave us more time in this room than in the others, and as we stood by the windows which look out upon the court and gardens, a blaze of color in the September sunshine, Lydia and I tried to explain about the very remarkable marriage solemnized in this château between the heiress of Brittany and the young King of France. Odd as royal marriages usually are, this was especially melodramatic, as the royal lover seems to have set forth to meet the lady of his choice with a sword in one hand and a wedding ring in the other. The hand of the young Duchess of Brittany was naturally sought after by many princes, who looked with longing eyes upon her rich inheritance, in addition to which, as Brantôme says, she was renowned for her beauty and grace, which latter was not impaired by the fact that one leg was shorter than the other. She was also learned, according to the learning of her day, and clever, which circumstances probably weighed lighter than vanity when put in the scale against the wealth of the Duchy of Brittany. Among the various pretendants to the hand of the Duchess was Louis, Duke of Orleans, who as next in succession to his cousin Charles was a suitor quite worthy of the hand of this high-born lady. Feats of valor had been performed by Louis in Brittany earlier in his career, which of course reached the ears of Anne, who like every woman of spirit admired a hero, when lo! misfortune of misfortunes, he was taken prisoner at the battle of St. Aubin, where he fought bravely at the head of his infantry. This capture must have been a sad blow to the hopes of the young Duke of Orleans, as Maximilian, Duke of Austria, promptly stepped in and claimed the hand of the Breton heiress; but even this wooing was not destined to prosper, as Charles VIII, who had just succeeded to the throne of France, suddenly announced that he was the proper person to wed the Duchess Anne and her possessions, and promptly breaking his engagement with Margaret of Austria, set forth upon his war-like wooing. She, poor girl, would probably have preferred any one of her suitors to the boy of nineteen or twenty, misshapen and ignorant, says a chronicler of the time, and so feeble in body that his father, despairing of his holding the throne, had arranged a marriage between the next heir, this same Duke of Orleans, and his daughter, Jeanne of France. The young Duchess, an heiress in her own right, and possessed of a decided will of her own, as appeared later, was singularly hampered in the choice of a consort, several eligible suitors being separated from her by the armies of Charles, who, closely besieging the town of Rennes, demanded her hand at the point of the sword. Thus wooed, Anne reluctantly consented to become Queen of France, and was secretly betrothed to Charles at Rennes. If the betrothal of Charles and Anne was accomplished with scant ceremony, their marriage at Langeais was celebrated in due form. The bride, accompanied by a distinguished suite, is described, as she arrived at the château upon her palfrey, wearing a rich travelling costume of cloth and velvet, trimmed with one hundred and thirty-nine sable skins. Her wedding dress of cloth of gold was even more sumptuous, as it was adorned with one hundred and sixty sable skins. Fortunately for the comfort of the wearer, the wedding was in December, and in these stone buildings, destitute of adequate heating arrangements, fur garments must have been particularly comfortable. The nuptial benediction was pronounced by the Bishop of Angers, probably in a chapel which was formerly in the southwest wing of the château, and in the presence of the Prince of Orange, the Duke of Bourbon, the Chancellor of France and other nobles of high degree, among them the Duke of Orleans, afterwards Louis XII, who was destined to become the second husband of Anne. One of the articles of the marriage contract signed in this room at Langeais was that if Charles should die without issue Anne should marry the next heir to the crown, thus uniting Brittany indissolubly with France. Brantôme described the fourteen-year-old bride as pretty, with black eyes, well-marked eyebrows, black hair, fresh complexion and a dimpled chin, but as Lydia says, one cannot always trust Brantôme, as he painted Catherine de Médici whom he beheld with his mortal eyes in all the glory of the lily and rose, and later, when he saw Queen Elizabeth in London, he wrote of her as beautiful and of lofty bearing. It is quite evident that Brantôme's eyes were bedazzled by the glitter of royalty, or was it the glitter of royal gold? "Well, whether or not Anne was beautiful, it is a comfort to have her safely married in the midst of so much confusion and warfare," said Miss Cassandra, with the satisfied air of a mother who has just made an eligible marriage for her daughter. "But we have not done with her yet," exclaimed Lydia. "We shall meet her and her ermine tails and tasseled ropes in every château of the Loire, and at Amboise we shall go a step further in her history, and only reach the last chapter at Blois." [Illustration: CAFÉ RABELAIS OPPOSITE CHÂTEAU OF LANGEAIS] From the mediæval fortress, with its wealth of French and English history that Lydia and our guide poured into our willing ears, we crossed the Rue Gambetta to the little Café Rabelais, opposite the entrance to the château, where we spent a cheerful _quart d'heure_ over cups of tea, and classic buns that are temptingly displayed in the window. Although this genial reformed monk, as Walter is pleased to call Rabelais, was born at Chinon, he seems to have lived at Langeais at two different periods of his wandering and eventful life, Guillaume, Sieur de Langeais, having given him a cottage near the château. Having come to Langeais by train we engaged a hack to convey us to Azay-le-Rideau, a drive of about six miles. As we drove over a long bridge that crosses the Loire, we had another view of the château, with its three massive towers, many chimneys, and of the wide shining river that flows beside it, bordered by tall poplars and dotted with green islets. Our drive was through a level farming land, where men and women were at work cutting grass and turning over the long rows of yellow flax which were drying in the sun. Here again we saw many women with the large baskets or _hottes_ on their backs, as if to remind us that the burden-bearers are not all of Italy, for the women of France work quite as hard as the men, more constantly it would seem, if we may judge by the number of men who are to be seen loafing about the little inns and _cabarets_. Across the wide, low-lying fields and pasture lands, we could see the long line of foliage that marks the forest of Chambord. All these great country palaces of the kings and nobles of France were comparatively near each other, "quite within visiting distance," as Miss Cassandra says. As we walked along the avenue of horse-chestnut trees, and over the little bridge that spans the Indre, we felt that no site could have been better chosen for the building of a palace of pleasure than this. With a background of forest trees, a river flowing around it, the stone walls and bridges draped with a brilliant crimson curtain of American ivy, the Château of Azay-le-Rideau justifies Balzac's enthusiastic description: "A diamond with a thousand facets, with the Indre for a setting and perched on piles buried in flowers." Yet this gay palace, like most of the châteaux of the Loire, has arisen upon the foundations of a fortress, and its odd name was given it in honor of a certain Hughes Ridel or Rideau, who in the thirteenth century built a castle on an island to defend the passage of the Indre, the position being an important one strategically. When our old Dijon friend, Jean Sans-Peur, came this way in 1417, he took care to place a garrison of several hundred men at Azay. These Burgundian soldiers, having a high opinion of the strength of the castle and of their own prowess, undertook to jeer at the Dauphin, afterwards Charles VII, as he passed by on his way from Chinon to Tours, upon which he laid siege to Azay and captured and meted out summary vengeance upon those who had mocked at and insulted him. The story told to us sounds, as Miss Cassandra says, like a chapter from the Chronicles or the Book of Kings, for although a great bear did not come out of the woods and devour those wicked mockers, they were hanged, every one, their captain was beheaded and the castle razed to the ground. Upon the piles of the old fortress the Château of Azay arose to please the fancy of a certain Grilles Berthold, a relative of the Bohier who built the Château of Chenonceaux, and like him a minister of Finance. Built upon an island, the slow flowing Indre forms a natural moat around the castle, or as Balzac expresses it more picturesquely, "This most charming and elaborate of the châteaux of beautiful Touraine ever bathes itself in the Indre, like a princely galley adorned with lace-like pavilions and windows, and with pretty soldiers on its weathercocks, turning, like all soldiers, whichever way the wind blows." The lace-like effect that Balzac speaks of evidently refers to the exquisite carving on the walls and around the windows, and upon the graceful corner towers of the château. Here, over the driveway and in other places, are the salamander of Francis I and the ermine of his wife, Claude of Brittany, who died before the château was completed. Francis lived to use and enjoy Azay in the hunting season, as did other sovereigns. The architect, whose name seems to have been lost sight of amid much discussion and some chicanery with regard to the possession of the château, was a wise man in his day and instead of attempting to unite the feudal fortress and the hunting seat, as Le Nepveu was doing at Chambord, he was content to make of Azay-le-Rideau a palace of pleasure. Indeed, he seems to have allowed his fancy free play in the construction of this château, with the result that he has made of it a dwelling place of great beauty, richly decorated but never overloaded with ornament. Even the chimney tops are broidered over with graceful designs and covered with a fine basket work in metal. [Illustration: CHÂTEAU OF AZAY-LE-RIDEAU, EAST FAÇADE] A true gem of the French Renaissance is Azay-le-Rideau, so the learned in architecture tell us, and yet enough of the old fortress construction has been preserved to add strength and compactness to the fairy-like beauty of this château. Through the handsome double doorway above which the salamander of Francis breathes forth its device, "_Nutrisco et extingo_," we passed into the beautiful hall and up the grand staircase, with its sculptured vaults of stone, rich beyond compare, adorned with medallions of royal faces and decorations of fruits, flowers, and heraldic emblems. Miss Cassandra, being somewhat fatigued after our ramble through Langeais, sat down upon the steps to enjoy at leisure the delicate beauty of the ornamentation of the stairway, declaring that she was quite ready to take up her abode here, as this château fulfilled all the requirements of a pleasant country home, and after reading Madame Waddington's book she had always wished to try château life in France. Lydia and I objected, for after the complete and harmonious furnishing of Langeais the interior of Azay-le-Rideau seems a trifle bare, as only two or three of the rooms are thoroughly furnished. As the property now belongs to the State and is in the care of L'Ecole des Beaux Arts, which is gradually collecting rare and beautiful articles of furniture, this compact little château will soon be completely equipped as a Renaissance museum. The room of Francis I is shown, with handsome carved bed and rich hangings of turquoise blue damask, adjoining it the room in which Louis XIV slept, which is hung in crimson damask. These rooms, with some fine tapestries, scattered articles of furniture and a number of portraits, complete the present equipment of Azay-le-Rideau. Among the portraits that interested us was one of Catherine de Médicis by Clouet, and another by the same artist of Francis I, as he so often appears in his portraits, "with the insufferable smile upon his lips that curl upward satyr-like towards the narrow eyes, the crisp close-cut brownish beard and the pink silken sleeves and doublet." Near by, in strong contrast to the sensual face of Francis, hangs the clear-cut face of Calvin. Here also are the portraits of Henry of Navarre and the wife for whom he cared so little, the beautiful Marguerite of Valois, less beautiful in her portrait than one would expect, and of the woman whom he loved so deeply, Gabrielle d'Estrées, Duchess of Beaufort. A charm of romance ever surrounds the graceful figure of Gabrielle d'Estrées, whom the usually inconstant Henry seems to have loved tenderly and faithfully to the end of her days. Many persons have excused this connection of the King with _la belle Gabrielle_ because of his loveless and enforced marriage with his cousin Marguerite, who was faithful to her royal husband only when his life or his throne were in danger. At such times she would fly to his aid like a good comrade. The handsomest and the most brilliant and daring of the unfortunate and ill-fated brood of the dreadful Catherine, Marguerite seems to have been particularly happy when she was able to thwart the malicious designs of her mother, from whose plots the King of Navarre so often escaped that he was said to have borne a charmed life. As we quitted the château to wander through its lovely gardens, gay with many flowers, and over the lawn with its fine copper beeches, exquisite mimosa trees, hemlocks, and delicate larches, we thought of the many great lords and noble ladies who had walked over this fair demesne and, like us, had stopped to enjoy the soft breezes by the side of the little river where the birches spread their long branches over the gently flowing stream. So near the great world and yet so retired from it, it is not strange that Francis, and the kings who followed him, should have often turned from the turmoil and unrest of the court to enjoy this happy valley. We were tempted to linger so long in the grounds that we had only a short time to spend in the interesting eleventh century church which adjoins the park and, like the château, belongs to the State. The façade of the church is richly decorated with quaint statuettes and carvings, and here also is a seigniorial chapel with inscriptions of the Biencourt family who owned the château of Azay-le-Rideau before it passed into the hands of the government. Our appetite for châteaux has so increased with the seeing of them that we regretted not having time to go to Ussé this same afternoon, but we shall have to make a separate trip to this palace, which is said to be a superb example of Gothic architecture. Although the château is often inhospitably closed to visitors, its exterior, with innumerable towers and tourelles, and the terraces, gardens, and vast park, nearly seven miles in circumference, are well worth a visit. As usual, the afternoon was not long enough, and the shortening September light warned us that we must take a train from the station at Azay-le-Rideau about six in order to reach Tours in time for dinner. VII TWO QUEENS AT AMBOISE PENSION B----, TOURS, September 5th. THIS morning we spent at the Château of Amboise, which we reached by crossing two bridges over the Loire, as the wide river is divided at this point by the Isle St. Jean. None of all these beautiful royal castles owes more to the Loire than Amboise, whose magnificent round machiolated tower commands the approaches to the bridge, while the fine pointed windows and arched balcony give a fairyland lightness and grace to the adjoining façade which crowns a bluff high above the river. We reached the château by many hillside steps, and through a garden which stands so high upon its terrace above the street that it seems, like the famous gardens of Babylon, to hang in the air. Upon a nearer view we found that the garden rests upon a solid foundation of rock and earth, and is surrounded by strong walls and parapets of masonry. From these walls the light buttresses of the little Chapel of St. Hubert spring. This lovely chapel, which with its fine delicate spire and chiselled pinnacles, standing out against the blue sky, gives an effect of indescribable beauty, was built by Charles VIII after his return from Italy. The wonderful carvings above the doorway, representing St. Hubert's miraculous encounter with a stag, were doubtless executed by Italian workmen whom he brought with him, as only skilled hands could have produced a result so rich and decorative and yet so exquisitely fine and delicate. Other beautiful carvings ornament the façade and the interior of the chapel, which in form is a miniature Sainte Chapel, less brilliant in color and richer in carving than the ancient Chapel of St. Louis, in Paris. A cheerful château, perched upon a rock and bathed in sunshine, Amboise appeared to us to-day, whether we looked at it from the bridge or from the garden, with nothing to remind us of the sad and tragic events in its history. This we are told reaches back to the time of Julius Cæsar, who, recognizing the strategic value of this high bluff above the Loire, built a strong tower here. Upon the well-wooded Isle St. Jean, directly opposite the château, Clovis and Alaric are said to have held an important conference, and our own good King Arthur is credited with owning the Castle of Amboise at one time, and of graciously returning it to the Franks before he sailed away to conquer Mordred and to meet his own death upon the Isle of Avalon. All of these tales we may believe or not as we please, for Touraine is full of ancient legends, more or less credible, and especially rich in those pertaining to Cæsar and his conquests, and of the beloved St. Martin's miraculous success in destroying the conqueror's towns, landmarks, and images of the gods. While Lydia was gloating over the very ancient history of Amboise, Walter and I were glad to connect it with a later time when Louis VII met Thomas à Becket here with a view to bringing about a reconciliation between the proud prelate and his lord and master, Henry II of England. This meeting seemed comparatively recent, after the shadowy traditions of Cæsar and St. Martin that were poured into our ears, and we began to feel quite at home in the castle when we learned that our old friend of Langeais, Charles VIII, was born at Amboise and spent his childhood here under the care of his good and clever mother, Charlotte of Savoy. She taught him all that he was permitted to learn, his father, the crafty Louis XI, for some reason only known to himself, desiring his son and heir to grow up in ignorance of books as well as of the world of men. [Illustration: CHÂTEAU OF LANGEAIS, FROM THE LOIRE] After her marriage at Langeais, Anne de Bretagne made a right royal progress to St. Denis, where she was anointed and crowned with great state and ceremony, the crown, which was far too heavy for the head of the little Queen of fourteen, being held over her by the Duke of Orleans. The new Queen, after making a solemn entrance into Paris and receiving the homage of all the civil and military officers of the Châtelet, the Provost of Paris, and of many other dignitaries, returned with her husband to Amboise, where most of their married life was spent. Additions were made to the château at this time and its interior was fitted up with great splendor; thousands of yards of cloth of gold, silk, tapestries from Flanders, and other precious stuffs were used as hangings, to the amount of ten thousand pounds, says one chronicler. "Past and contemporary events were portrayed on the tapestries. André Denisot and Guillaume Ménagier, workers of Tours, had charge of the furnishing; one room by Ménagier was hung with silk tapestry on which the history of Moses was represented, and the floor was covered with a large, fine silk Moorish carpet." All this, and much more in the way of rich furnishings and handsome silver, was brought to the old castle to do honor to the Bretonne bride, who was destined to know little happiness in her new home. Her eldest son, the Dauphin Charles, who was described by Philippe de Commines as "a fine child, bold in speech, and fearing not the things other children are frightened at," a child whose birth was hailed with rejoicing as an heir to the Duchy of Brittany and the Kingdom of France, fell ill and died at Amboise while his mother was near the frontier of Italy celebrating the King's recent victories. A curious story is told by Brantôme about the mourning of the King and Queen for this beloved son. "After the death of the Dauphin," says this chronicler, "King Charles and his Queen were full of such desolate grief that the doctors, fearing the weakness and feeble constitution of the King, were of opinion that excess of sorrow might be prejudicial to his health; they therefore advised as many distractions as possible, and suggested that the princes at court should invent new pastimes, dances, and mummeries to give pleasure to the King and Queen, which being done, the Monseigneur d'Orléans devised a masquerade with dances, in which he danced with such gaiety and so played the fool that the Queen thought he was making merry because he was nearer the throne of France, seeing that the Dauphin was dead. She was extremely displeased, and looked on him with such aversion that he was obliged to leave Amboise, where the court then was, and go to his Castle of Blois." This was, as Walter remarks, rather shabby treatment of a royal prince and a former suitor; but the little Queen was hot tempered, strong in her likes and aversions, and never unmindful of the fact that she was Duchess of Brittany in her own right, as well as Queen of France by her marriage. Lydia reminds us that the unappreciated Duke of Orleans had his innings later when he became King, after the death of Charles, and the second husband of Anne. You may notice that we are quite up on the history of Anne of Brittany, as we came across a charming biography of her at Brentano's in Paris, _A Twice Crowned Queen_, by the Countess de la Warr, in addition to which we have been looking over an old copy of Brantôme that we found at a book store here. In the three years following the death of the Dauphin two sons and a daughter were born to Charles and Anne. These children all died in infancy. "In vain," says the Countess de la Warr, "did Anne take every precaution to save the lives of these little creatures whom death snatched from her so ruthlessly. She summoned nurses from Brittany, and the superstitious beliefs of her own country came back to her mind. She presented them with amulets, a Guienne crown piece wrapped up in paper, a piece of black wax in a bag of cloth of gold, six serpents' tongues,--a large one, two of medium size, and three little ones,--and rosaries of chalcedony and jasper; she not only sent votive offerings to the venerated shrines of the saints in Brittany, and presented rich gifts every year to the Holy Virgin of Auray, but she went herself on a pilgrimage. Alas! it was all to no purpose; a relentless fate followed the poor Queen." A still heavier blow was destined to fall upon Anne, a few years later, in the death of her husband, to whom she seems to have been devotedly attached. In the midst of his work of beautifying Amboise with the spoils of his Italian wars, Charles was suddenly struck down with apoplexy, induced it is thought by a blow. He hit his head, never a very strong one, according to all accounts, against the stone arch of a little doorway and died a few hours after. We were shown the entrance to the Galerie Hacquelebac where the King met with his fatal accident as he was on his way to the tennis court with the Queen and his confessor, the Bishop of Angers. The door, which was very low at that time, was later raised and decorated with the porcupine of Louis XII. The little widow, not yet twenty-one, was so overcome with grief at the death of her husband that she spent her days and nights in tears and lamentations. The only comfort that she found was in ordering a magnificent funeral for Charles, to every detail of which Louis d'Orléans, the new King, attended with scrupulous care, defraying himself the whole cost, not only of the ceremony itself, but of that incurred in conveying the body from Amboise to St. Denis. Even this devotion on the part of her husband's successor did not satisfy the Queen, as she redoubled her lamentations upon seeing him, and although he did everything in his power to comfort her in the most winning way, she still refused to eat or sleep and insisted between her sobs: "_Je dois suivre le chemin de mon mari!_" which for some reason sounds infinitely more pathetic than the plain English, "I must follow the way of my husband." The way of the beloved Charles Anne was not destined to follow, as we find her, in less than a year, following in the way of his successor, Louis XII. The enforced and altogether unhappy marriage between Louis and his cousin, Jeanne of France, having been annulled by Alexander VI, in return for certain honors conferred upon his son, Cæsar Borgia, and the decree of separation having been pronounced by him at Chinon, Louis d'Orléans was free to offer his heart and his hand to the lady of his choice. This he did with all despatch, and was as promptly accepted by the widowed Queen. The marriage of Louis XII and Anne was solemnized in her own castle, at Nantes, January 8, 1499, less than nine months after the death of her husband. The Queen bestowed rich gifts upon the churches of Brittany, the King having already conferred upon the Pope's representative, Cæsar Borgia, a pension of twenty thousand gold crowns, besides which he created him Duke of Valentinois. "All this goes to prove," as Miss Cassandra says, "that bribery and corruption in high places are not strictly modern methods, since this good King Louis, called the Father of his people, resorted to them." With this exception, Louis seems to have been quite a respectable person for a royal prince of that time, as he did everything in his power to make up to the discarded Jeanne for her disappointment at not being invited to share the throne of France with him. He conferred upon her the Duchy of Berry and other domains, and with them a handsome income which enabled the pious princess to do many good works and to found the religious order of the Annonciade, of which she became Superior. Although Louis and Anne established their residence at the King's birthplace, the Château of Blois, the Queen was at Amboise during the spring after her marriage, where her return was celebrated with rejoicings and festivities which were as original as they were picturesque, and well calculated to please a wine-drinking populace. Anne's biographer says: "The boulevard between the River Loire and the castle was transformed into a huge pavilion, in the middle of which were erected two columns bearing the devices of Louis and Anne,--a porcupine and an ermine,--and from the mouth of each, wine poured. A dais of red damask had been prepared for the King and one of white for the Queen; but Anne alone took part in this ceremony, either because Louis was prevented from being present or because he did not wish by his presence to recall sad memories." Despite her wilfulness and obstinacy, Louis was very fond of _ma Bretonne_, as he playfully called his wife, and yielded to her in many instances. It is recorded, however, that when Anne wished to marry their daughter Claude to the Archduke Charles of Austria, the King stood out stoutly against the persuasions of his spouse and insisted upon her betrothal to his cousin and heir, Francis d'Angoulême, telling his wife, after his own humorous, homely fashion, that he had resolved "to marry his mice to none but the rats of his own barn." Even with occasional differences of opinion, which the King seems to have met with charming good humor, the union of Anne and Louis was far happier than most royal marriages. The little Bretonne, who had begun by disliking Louis d'Orléans, ended by loving him even more devotedly than her first husband, which does not seem strange to us, as he was a brave and accomplished gentleman, altogether a far more lovable character than Charles. With all her devotion to her husband, the Duchess Queen was a thrifty lady, with an eye to the main chance, and when poor Louis was ill and thought to be dying at Blois, she attempted to provide against the chances and changes of sudden widowhood by sending down the river to Nantes several boats loaded with handsome furniture, jewels, silver, and the like. These boats were stopped between Saumur and Nantes by the Maréchal de Gié, his excuse being that as the King was still alive Anne had no right to remove her possessions from the castle. Although Maréchal de Gié was a favorite minister of Louis, Anne had him arrested and treated with great indignity. Not only was the unfortunate Maréchal punished for his recent sins, but by means of researches into his past life it was found that he had committed various offences against the State. Indignities and miseries were heaped upon him, and so hot was the wrath of the royal lady that when it was proposed that the Maréchal de Gié should be sentenced to death, she promptly replied that death was far too good for him, as that ended the sorrows of life, and that for one of high estate to sink to a low estate and to be overwhelmed with misfortunes was to die daily, which was quite good enough for him. All of which shows that even if Anne was something of a philosopher she was also possessed of a most vindictive spirit, and quite lacking in the sweetness and charity with which her partial biographer has endowed her. Fortunately the King, recovering, "through the good prayers of his people," intervened on behalf of his late favorite and mitigated the rigor of his sentence, which was even then more severe than was warranted by his offence. [Illustration: CHÂTEAU OF AMBOISE, FROM OPPOSITE BANK OF THE LOIRE] I tell you this little tale because it is characteristic of the time, as well as of the imperious little Duchess Queen, and makes us realize that Louis was well named the good, and had need of all the generosity and amiability that has been attributed to him as an offset to the fiery temper of his Breton wife. Among the many interesting additions that Charles VIII made to Amboise was the great double Tours des Minimes, adjoining the royal apartments. This tower was used as an approach to the château by means of inclined planes of brick work, which wound around a central newel, graded so gently that horses and light vehicles could ascend without difficulty. These curious ascents were doubtless suggested to the King by the low broad steps in the Vatican over which the old Popes were wont to ride on their white mules. Lydia reminds us that it was upon this dim corkscrew of a road winding upward that Brown performed his remarkable feat in _The Lightning Conductor_. Brown might have made this dizzy ascent and perilous descent in his Napier; but it could be done by no other chauffeur, "live or dead or fashioned by my fancy," although kings and princes once rode their horses up these inclines, which answered the purpose of _porte cochère_ and stairway. By this way Francis I and his guest Charles V rode up to the royal apartments when the Emperor made his visit here in 1539, amid general rejoicings and such a blaze of flambeaux that, as the ancient chronicler tells us, even in this dim passage one might see as clearly as at midday. In the terraced garden of Amboise, near a quincunx of lime trees, is a bust of Leonardo da Vinci. We wondered why it was placed here until we learned from our invaluable _Joanne_ that the Italian artist had lived and died at Amboise, inhabiting a little manor house near the château. It was Francis I, the beauty loving as well as the pleasure seeking King, who brought Leonardo to France and to Amboise, the home of his childhood. The Italian artist was over sixty when he came to France and only lived about three years here, dying, it is said, in the arms of Francis. Among his last requests were minute directions for his burial in the royal church of St. Florentin, which once stood in the grounds of the castle. When this church was destroyed, in the last century, a skull and some bones were found among the ruins which were supposed to be those of Leonardo. A bust was erected on the spot where the remains were found. Whether or not the bones are those of Leonardo, a fitting memorial to the great artist is this bust near the lovely quincunx, whose overshadowing branches form a roof of delicate green above it like the pergolas of his native Italy. We afterwards visited the little Château de Cloux, where Leonardo had once lived. A long stretch of years and several reigns lie between Anne of Brittany and Mary of Scotland, yet it is of these two twice-crowned queens that we think as we wander through the gardens and halls of the Château of Amboise. Both of these royal ladies came here as brides and both were received with joyful acclamations at Amboise. Mary's first visit to the château was in the heyday of her beauty and happiness, when as _la reine-dauphine_ she won all hearts. Do you remember a charming full-length portrait, that we once saw, of Mary and Francis standing in the embrasure of a window of one of the royal palaces? Although a year younger than Mary, Francis had been devoted to her little serene highness of Scotland ever since her early childhood, and she seems to have been equally attached to her boyish lover, as chroniclers of the time tell us that they delighted to retire from the gayety and confusion of the court to whisper their little secrets to each other, with no one to hear, and that they were well content when according to the etiquette of the period they established their separate court and _ménage_ at Villers Cotterets as _roi et reine-dauphine_. As the province of Touraine was one of the dower possessions of the young Queen, she entered into her own when she visited these royal castles. We think of her at Amboise, riding up the broad inclines to the royal apartments, her husband by her side, followed by a gay cavalcade, and what would we not give for a momentary glimpse of Mary Stuart in the bright beauty of her youth, before sorrow and crime had cast a shadow over her girlish loveliness! No portrait seems to give any adequate representation of Mary, probably because her grace and animation added so much to the beauty of her auburn tinted hair, the dazzling whiteness of her complexion and the bright, quick glance of her brown eyes. "Others there were," says one of Mary's biographers, "in that gay, licentious court, with faces as fair and forms more perfect; what raised Mary of Scotland above all others was her animation. When she spoke her whole being seemed to become inspired. A ready wit called to its aid a well-stored mind." In fact, Mary was witty enough to afford to be plain, and beautiful enough to afford to be dull; and early and late she captured hearts, from the days when the poets, Ronsard, De Maison Fleur, and the hapless Chastelard, celebrated her charms in verse to a later and sadder time when, during her captivity in England her young page, Anthony Babington, was so fascinated by her wit and grace that he made a valiant and desperate effort to save her to his own undoing. The sorrows and final tragedy of Mary Stuart's life have so overshadowed the events of her early years that we are wont to forget the power and influence that were hers in the eighteen months of her reign as Queen of France. Adored by her young husband, who evidently admired her for her learning as well as for her beauty and charm, she seems to have passed through her years at court with no breath of suspicion attached to her fair name, and this in an atmosphere of unbridled license and debauchery of which Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre, wrote to her son, "No one here but is tainted by it. If you were here yourself you would only escape by some remarkable mercy of God." In addition to her ascendency over the mind of her husband the young Queen had always at her side her astute kinsmen, the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine, who were as clever as they were unscrupulous. With these powerful uncles near her, Mary was in a position to outwit the wily Catherine, between whom and the Guise faction little love was lost. Only when some scheme of deviltry joined them together in common interests, as the massacre of the Huguenots at Amboise, were Catherine and the Guise brothers at one, and this triumvirate even Queen Mary was powerless to withstand. We had wandered far afield with Mary Stuart in the joyous days of her youth when we were suddenly brought back by the guide to her last sad visit to Amboise. He pointed out to us the Isle St. Jean opposite the balcony where we were standing, saying that the _conjuré_ had met over there. Whether or not any of the conspirators met on this island in the Loire, the Conspiracy of 1560, which the Guise brothers were pleased to call the tumult of Amboise, was formed at Nantes. Although the Huguenots have had all the credit of this formidable uprising, a number of Catholics had joined them with the object of breaking down the great and growing powers of the Guise family. As one of the alleged plans of the conspirators was to seize Francis and Mary and remove them from the influence of the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine, the young King and Queen were hurried from Blois to the stronghold of Amboise. If this plot had succeeded, as would probably have been the case had it not been for the treachery of a lawyer, named Des Avenelles, in whose house one of the leaders lodged, what would it not have meant to the Huguenots and to France? With the Guise brothers in their power and the King and Queen no longer under their dominion, the Huguenots might have made terms with the royal party, backed as they were at this time by some Catholics of influence. The ever vigilant Duke of Guise, having discovered the plot, met it with the promptness, resolution, and relentless cruelty that belonged to his character and his time, and in this case an element of revenge was added to his wrath against the offenders, as his own capture and that of his brother, the Cardinal of Lorraine, was one of the chief objects of the conspirators. The life and liberty of the King and Queen were in no way included in this plot, as appeared later; but it suited the purpose of the Duke of Guise to shelter himself behind the young sovereigns and to represent the conspiracy as an act of high treason against the throne of France. Francis and Mary, only half believing the story told them, but not strong enough to resist the power of the Duke, the Cardinal and the Queen-mother, allowed themselves to be brought to Amboise. We have been reading again Dumas's thrilling description of the "tumult of Amboise," and his pathetic picture of the young King and Queen, who shrank from witnessing the tortures and death to which their Huguenot subjects were condemned. Catherine insisted that they should take their places on the balcony overlooking the court of execution, chid her son as a weakling because he shrank from the sight of blood, while the Cardinal reminded poor, trembling, tender-hearted Francis that his "grandsire of glorious memory, Francis I, had always assisted at the burning of heretics." "Other kings do as they please and so will I," Francis had the courage to say but not to do, as he and Mary, "poor crowned slaves," as the novelist calls them, were forced to appear upon the iron balcony and witness the execution of some of the noblest of their subjects. Standing on the Tour des Minimes on this fair September day, looking down upon the balconies, terraces, and gardens of the château basking in warm sunshine, it was difficult to realize the scenes of horror and bloodshed that were enacted here on that sad day in March, 1560. The Duke had his troops ambushed in the forest of Château Regnault, in readiness to attack the conspirators as they approached in small detachments, and over the peaceful plain spread before us, through which the Loire winds its way, an army of Frenchmen was lured on to its destruction by false promises of safety, and in yonder forest of Château Regnault one of the prime movers in the uprising, the Seigneur de la Renaudie, a gentleman of Perigord, was overtaken and slain. Such other brave men and noble gentlemen as the Baron de Castelnau Chalosse and the Baron de Raunay were spared for a sadder fate, while for the Prince of Condé there was reserved the crowning horror of seeing his followers beheaded one by one. It is said that as they were led into the courtyard they turned to salute their "_chef muet_," a salute which he was brave enough to return, while they went to the block singing Clement Marot's adaptation of the Sixty-seventh Psalm: Dieu nous soit doux et favorable Nous bénissant par sa bonté Et de son visage adorable Nous fasse luire la clarté. It is not strange that, in the face of such sublime faith and dauntless courage, the young Queen should have pleaded for the life of these noblemen, or that the Duke de Nemours, who had pledged his faith as a prince, "on his honor and on the damnation of his soul," that the Huguenot deputies should be fairly dealt with, should have added his entreaties to those of Mary. The Duke of Nemours appealed to Catherine, who answered with feigned indifference that she could do nothing, then to the King who, pale and ill at the sight before him, would have stopped the massacre long before. The Queen, on bended knee, begged her husband for the life of the last victim, the Baron de Castelnau. The King made a sign that he should be spared; but the Cardinal of Lorraine chose to misunderstand, gave the fatal signal, and Castelnau's head fell with the rest. In view of this wholesale slaughter, for it is said that over twelve hundred perished in and around Amboise, we do not wonder that the Prince de Condé exclaimed: "Ah, what an easy task for foreigners to seize on France after the death of so many honorable men!" a speech for which the Guises never quite forgave him. Nor did we wonder, as we made our way to the garden through the bare unfurnished rooms of the château, that it ceased to be a royal residence after this carnival of blood, and later became a State prison, and place of exile for persons of high degree. The Cardinal de Bourbon was confined here, and it is said that Amboise opened its doors to the Superintendent Fouquet after his capture by D'Artagnan, for you must know that there was a real D'Artagnan from whom Dumas constructed his somewhat glorified hero. We wondered why so many feeble, old people were sitting about in the house and grounds, until the _gardienne_ told us, that, the château having been restored to the Orleans family in 1872, they had established here a retreat and home for their old retainers. "Well, I am thankful that some good deeds are done here to help to wash away the dark stains from the history of the château!" exclaimed Miss Cassandra. "But how do they manage to sleep with the ghosts of all these good men who have been murdered here haunting the place at night?" Walter reminded her that the just were supposed to rest quietly in their graves, and that it was those of uneasy conscience who walked o' nights. "Then Catherine must be walking most of the time. We certainly should see her if we could wait here until after dark." When I translated our Quaker lady's remarks to the guide she laughed and rejoined, with a merry twinkle in her eye, that if "Her Majesty had to walk in all the palaces that had known her evil deeds she would be kept busy and would only have a night now and again for Amboise; beside which this château was blessed, having been dedicated to good works, and after all were not the Guises more involved in the massacre of the Huguenots here than Catherine?" Miss Cassandra reluctantly acknowledged that perhaps they were, but for her part she makes no excuses for Catherine, and refuses to believe that she was ever an innocent baby. She declares that this insatiable daughter of the Médici, like Minerva, sprang full grown into being, equipped for wickedness as the goddess was with knowledge. With a clink of silver and a cheerful "_Au revoir, Mesdames et Monsieur_," we parted from our pleasant little guide. As we turned to look back at Amboise from the bridge, some heavy clouds hung over the castle, making it look grim and gray, more like the fortress-prison that it had proved to so many hundreds of brave, unfortunate Frenchmen than the cheerful château, basking in the sunshine, that we had seen this morning. We motored home, in a fine drizzle of rain, through a gray landscape; and surely no landscape can be more perfectly gray than that of France when it is pleased to put on sombre tints, and no other could have been as well suited to the shade of our thoughts. Lydia, by way of reviving our drooping spirits, I fancy, as she is not usually given to conundrums or puzzles, suddenly propounded a series of brain-racking questions. "Who first said, 'Let us fly and save our bacon;' and 'He would make three bites of a cherry;' and 'Appetite comes with eating;' and 'It is meat, drink, and cloth to us;' and----" "Stop!" cried Miss Cassandra, "and give us time to think, but I am quite sure that it was Beau Brummel who made three bites of a cherry, or a strawberry, or some other small fruit." Walter and I were inclined to give Shakespeare and Pope the credit of these familiar sayings; but we were all wrong, as Lydia, after puzzling us for some time, exclaimed triumphantly: "No, further back than either Shakespeare or Pope; these wise sayings, and many more like them, were written by a Tourangeau, one Monsieur Rabelais." "And where did you come across them?" we asked, quite put out with Lydia for knowing so much more than the rest of us. Then Lydia, who appears upon the surface to be a guileless and undesigning young person, confessed that she had extracted this information from a Frenchman with whom we all had some pleasant conversation on the way to Langeais, and she has been treasuring it up ever since to spring it upon us in an unguarded moment when we were far from the haunts of Rabelais. This gentleman, whose name is one of the things we shall probably never know, with the cheerfully appropriating spirit of the French, was ready to claim most of Shakespeare's aphorisms for Rabelais. We are willing to forgive him, however, because he introduced us to a phrase coined by the creator of Pantagruel, in slow-going sixteenth century days, which so exactly fits the situation to-day that it seems to have been made for such travellers as ourselves: "Nothing is so dear and precious as time," wrote M. Rabelais, long before tourists from all over the world were trying to live here on twenty-four hours a day and yet see all the châteaux and castles upon their lists. My brother Archie has been talking of coming over to join us either here or in Paris. As he is a rather sudden person in his movements, it would not surprise me to have him appear any day. I only hope that he may come while we are in Touraine. He is so fond of everything in the agricultural line that he would delight in this fertile, well-cultivated country. VIII A BATTLE ROYAL OF DAMES PENSION B----, TOURS, September 6th. THIS being a beautiful day, and the sunshine more brilliant than is usual on a September morning in this region, we unanimously agreed to dedicate its hours to one of the most interesting of the neighboring châteaux. The really most important question upon which we were not unanimous was whether Chenonceaux or Chinon should be the goal of our pilgrimage. Miss Cassandra unhesitatingly voted for Chenonceaux, which she emphatically announced to be the château of all others that she had crossed the ocean to see. "It was not a ruin like Chinon," she urged, "the buildings were in perfect condition and the park and gardens of surpassing loveliness." "Of course we expect to go to Chinon, dear Miss Cassandra," said I; "it is only a question of which we are to see to-day." "Yes, my dear, but I have great faith in the bird in the hand, or as the Portuguese gentleman expressed it, 'One I have is worth two I shall haves.' The finger of fate seems to point to Chenonceaux to-day, for I dreamed about it last night and Diana (Miss Cassandra always gives the name of the fair huntress its most uncompromising English pronunciation) was standing on the bridge looking just like a portrait that we saw the other day, and in a gorgeous dress of black and silver. Now don't think, my dears, that I approve of Diana; she was decidedly light, and Lydia knows very well that the overseers of the meeting would have had to deal with her more than once; but when it comes to a choice between Diana and Catherine, I would always choose Diana, whatever her faults may have been." "Diane," corrected a shrill voice above our heads. We happened to be standing on the little portico by the garden, and I looked around to see who was listening to our conversation, when again "Diane" rang forth, followed by "_Bon jour, Madame_," all in the exquisite accent of Touraine. "It is Polly, who is correcting my pronunciation," exclaimed Miss Cassandra, "and I really don't blame her." Looking up at the cage, with a nod and a smile, she cried, "_Bon jour, joli Marie!_" "Good-by, Madame," rejoined the parrot, proudly cocking her head on one side and winking at Miss Cassandra in the most knowing fashion, as if to say, "Two can play at that game." Polly has learned some English phrases from the numerous guests of the house, and cordially greets us with "Good-by" when we enter and "How do you do?" when we are leaving, which, you may remember, was just what Mr. Monard, who had the little French church in Philadelphia, used to do until some person without any sense of humor undertook to set him straight. We trust that no misguided person may ever undertake to correct Polly's English or Miss Cassandra's French, for as Walter says, "To hear those two exchanging linguistic courtesies is one of the experiences that make life and travel worth while, and the most amusing part of it is that the Quaker lady is as unconscious of the humor of the situation as the parrot." "And, after all," said Miss Cassandra, returning to her argument after Polly's interruption, "when a woman is so beautiful at fifty that a young king is at her feet, giving her jewels from morning until night, it is not strange that her head should be turned. And you must remember, Zelphine," added Miss Cassandra in her most engaging manner, "that your favorite Henry James said that he would rather have missed Chinon than Chenonceaux, and that he counted as exceedingly fortunate the few hours that he passed at this exquisite residence." After this Parthian shaft Miss Cassandra left us to put on her hat for Chenonceaux, for to Chenonceaux we decided to go, of course. Miss Cassandra's arguments were irresistible, as usual, and as Walter added philosophically, "Her choice is generally a wise one, and where everything is so well worth seeing one cannot go far astray." We took a train that leaves, what our local guidebook is pleased to call the monumental railway station of Tours, between ten and eleven o'clock and reached the town of Chenonceaux in less than an hour. All of these jaunts by rail are short and so conveniently arranged that one always seems to have ample time for the inspection of whatever château and grounds one happens to be visiting. At the station we found an omnibus which conveyed us to the Hôtel du Bon Laboureur, the Mecca of all hungry pilgrims, where a substantial luncheon was soon spread before us, enlivened, as Walter puts it, by a generous supply of the light wine of the country. Looking over my shoulder, as I write, he declares that I am gilding that luncheon at the Bon Laboureur with all the romance and glamour of Chenonceaux, and that it was not substantial at all; but on the contrary pitifully light. Perhaps I am idealizing the luncheon, as Walter says, but as part and parcel of a day of unallayed happiness it stands out in my mind as a feast of the gods, despite all adverse criticism. Being a mere man, as Lydia expresses it, Walter feels the discomforts of travel more than we women folk. He says that he is heartily tired of luncheons made up of flimflams, omelettes, entrées, and the like, and when the inevitable salad and fowl appeared he quite shocked us by saying that he would like to see some real chicken, the sort that we have at home broiled by Mandy, who knows how to cook chicken far and away better than these Johnny Crapauds with all their boasted culinary skill. Lydia and I were congratulating ourselves that no one could understand this rude diatribe when we noticed, at the next table, our acquaintance of Langeais, Lydia's aphoristic Frenchman, if I may coin a word. This did not seem a good time to renew civilities, especially as he was evidently laughing behind his napkin. I motioned to Walter to keep quiet and gave him a look that was intended to be very severe, and then Miss Cassandra, with her usual friendly desire to pour oil upon the troubled waters, stirred them up more effectually by adding: "Yes, Walter, but in travelling one must take the bad with the good; we have no buildings like these at home and I for one am quite willing to give up American social pleasures and luxuries for the sake of all that we see here and all that we learn." Can you imagine anything more bewildering to a Frenchman than Miss Cassandra's philosophy, especially her allusion to American social pleasures and luxuries, which to the average and untravelled French mind would be represented, I fancy, by a native Indian picnic with a menu of wild turkey and quail? It was a very good luncheon, I insisted, even if not quite according to American ideas, and variety is one of the pleasures of foreign travel,--this last in my most instructive manner and to Lydia's great amusement. She alone grasped the situation, as Walter and Miss Cassandra were seated with their backs to the stranger. In order to prevent further criticisms upon French living I changed the subject by asking Walter for our Joanne guidebook, and succeeded in silencing the party, after Artemus Ward's plan with his daughter's suitors, by reading aloud to them, during which the stranger finished his luncheon and after the manner of the suitors quietly took his departure. "We shall never see him again," I exclaimed, "and he will always remember us as those rude and unappreciative Americans!" "And what have we done to deserve such an opinion?" asked Walter. "Attacked them on their most sensitive point. A Frenchman prides himself, above everything else, upon the _cuisine_ of his country, and considers American living altogether crude and uncivilized." "And is _that_ all, Zelphine, and don't you think it about time that they should learn better; and who is the _he_ in question, anyhow?" When I explained about the Frenchman, who was seated behind him and understood every invidious word, Walter, instead of being contrite, said airily that he regretted that he had not spoken French as that would probably have been beyond Mr. Crapaud's comprehension. A number of coaches were standing in front of the little inn, one of which Miss Cassandra and Lydia engaged in order to save their strength for the many steps to be taken in and around the château; but they did not save much, after all, as the coaches all stop at the end of the first avenue of plane trees at a railroad crossing and after this another long avenue leads to the grounds. Walter and I thought that we decidedly had the best of it, as we strolled through the picturesque little village, and having our kodaks with us we were able to get some pretty bits by the way, among other things a photograph of a sixteenth century house in which the pages of Francis I are said to have been lodged. [Illustration: CHENONCEAUX, MARQUES TOWER AND GALLERY ACROSS THE CHER] Passing up the long avenue we made a _détour_ to the left, attracted by some rich carvings at the end of the tennis court,--and what a tennis court it is!--smooth, green, beautifully made, with a background of forest trees skirting it on two sides. The approach to the château is in keeping with its stately beauty. After traversing the second avenue of plane trees, we passed between two great sphinxes which guard the entrance to the court, with the ancient dungeon-keep on the right and on the left the Domes buildings, which seem to include the servants' quarters and stables. Beyond this is the drawbridge which spans the wide moat and gives access to a spacious rectangular court. This moat of clear, running water, its solid stone walls draped with vines and topped with blooming plants, defines the ancient limits of the domain of the Marques family who owned this estate as far back in history as the thirteenth century. Where the beautiful château now stands there was once a fortified mill. The property passed into the hands of Thomas Bohier, in the fifteenth century, who conceived the bold idea of turning the old mill into a château, its solid foundations, sunk into the Cher, affording a substantial support for the noble superstructure; or, as Balzac says, "Messire de Bohier, the Minister of Finances, as a novelty placed his house astride the River Cher." A château built over a river! Can you imagine anything more picturesque, or, as Miss Cassandra says, anything more unhealthy? The sun shone gaily to-day, and the rooms felt fairly dry, but during the long weeks of rain that come to France in the spring and late autumn these spacious _salles_ must be as damp as a cellar. Miss Cassandra says that the bare thought of sleeping in them gives her rheumatic twinges. There are handsome, richly decorated mantels and chimney-places in all of the great rooms, but they look as if they had not often known the delights of a cheerful fire of blazing logs. The old building is in the form of a vast square pavilion, flanked on each corner by a bracketed turret upon which there is a wealth of Renaissance ornamentation. On the east side are the chapel and a small outbuilding, which form a double projection and enclose a little terrace on the ground floor. Over the great entrance door are carvings and heraldic devices, and over the whole façade of the château there is a rich luxuriance of ornamentation which, with the wide moat surrounding it, and the blooming parterres spread before it, give the entire castle the air of being _en fête_, not relegated to the past like Langeais, Amboise, and some of the other châteaux that we have seen. However Diane de Poitiers and Catherine de Médici may have beautified this lovely palace on the Cher, its inception seems to have been due to Bohier, the Norman _géneral des finances_ of Charles VIII, or perhaps to his wife Katherine Briçonnet, a true lover of art, who like her husband spent vast sums upon Chenonceaux. The fact that Bohier died before the château was anywhere near completion makes the old French inscription on the tower, and elsewhere on the walls, especially pathetic, "_S'il vient a point, m'en souviendra_" (If completed, remember me). Even unfinished as the Norman financier left Chenonceaux, one cannot fail to remember him and his dreams of beauty which others were destined to carry out. Unique in situation and design is the great gallery, sixty metres in height, which Philibert de l'Orme, at Queen Catherine's command, caused to rise like a fairy palace from the waters of the Cher. This gallery of two stories, decorated in the interior with elaborate designs in stucco, and busts of royal and distinguished persons, is classic in style and sufficiently substantial in structure, as it rests upon five arches separated by abutments, on each of which is a semicircular turret rising to the level of the first floor. Designed for a _salle des fêtes_, this part of the castle was never quite finished in consequence of the death of Catherine, who intended that an elaborate pavilion, to match Bohier's château on the opposite bank of the river, should mark the terminus of the gallery. The new building was far enough advanced, however, to be used for the elaborate festivities that had been planned for Francis II and Queen Mary when they fled from the horrors of Amboise to the lovely groves and forests of Chenonceaux. Standing in the long gallery, which literally bridges the Cher, we wondered whether the masques and revels held here in honor of the Scotch Queen were able to dispel sad thoughts of that day at Amboise, of whose miseries we heard so much yesterday. Mary Stuart, more than half French, was gay, light-hearted and perhaps in those early days with a short memory for the sorrows of life; but it seems as if the recollection of that day of slaughter and misery could never have been quite effaced from her mind. To Catherine, who revelled in blood and murder, the day was one of triumph, but its horrors evidently left their impress upon the delicate physique as well as upon the sensitive mind of the frail, gentle Francis. Since we have heard so much of the evil deeds of Catherine it has become almost unsafe to take Miss Cassandra into any of the palaces where the Medicean Queen is honored by statue or portrait. When we passed from the spacious _salle des gardes_, later used as the dining hall of the Briçonnet family, into the room of Diane de Poitiers, it seemed the very irony of fate that a large portrait of the arch enemy of the beautiful Diane should adorn the richly carved chimney-place. I should not say _adorn_, for Catherine's unattractive face could adorn nothing, and this severe portrait in widow's weeds, with none of the pomp and circumstance of royalty to light up the sombre garb, is singularly undecorative. Although she had already announced that she had no great affection for Diane, Catherine's portrait in this particular room excited Miss Cassandra's wrath to such a degree that her words and gestures attracted the attention of the guide. At first he looked perplexed and then indignantly turned to us for an explanation: "What ailed the lady, and why was she displeased? He was doing his best to show us the château." We reassured him, smoothed down his ruffled feathers, and finally explained to him that Miss Cassandra had a deep-rooted aversion to Queen Catherine and especially resented having her honored by portrait or bust in these beautiful French castles, above all in this room of her hated rival. "Diane was none too good herself," he replied with a grim smile; "but she was beautiful and had wit enough to hold the hearts of two kings." Then, entering into the spirit of the occasion, he turned to Miss Cassandra and by dint of shrugs, and no end of indescribable and most expressive French gestures, he made her understand that he had no love for Catherine himself, and that if it lay within his _pouvoir_ he would throw the unlovely portrait out of the window; no one cared for her,--her own husband least of all. This last remark was accompanied with what was intended for a wicked wink, exclusively for Walter's benefit, but its wickedness was quite overcome by the irresistible and contagious good humor and _bonhomie_ of the man. Finding that his audience was _en rapport_ with him, he drew our attention to the wall decoration, which consists of a series of monograms, and asked us how we read the design. "D and H intertwined" we answered in chorus. At this the guide laughed merrily and explained that there were different opinions about the monogram; some persons said that King Henry had boldly undertaken to interlace the initial letters of Catherine and Diane with his own, but he for his part believed that the letters were two Cs with an H between them and, whether by accident or design, the letter on the left, which looked more like a D than a C, gave the key to the monogram, "and this," he added with the air of a philosopher, "made it true to history; the beautiful favorite on the left hand was always more powerful than the Queen on the right, not that the ways of King Henry II were to be commended; but," with a frank smile, "one is always pleased to think of that wicked woman getting what was owing her." "Rousseau thought that both the initials were those of Diane; he says in his _Confessions_: 'In 1747 we went to pass the autumn in Touraine, at the castle of Chenonceaux, a royal mansion upon the Cher, built by Henry II for Diane de Poitiers, of whom the ciphers are still seen.'" We turned, at the sound of a strange voice, to find the Frenchman of the Bon Laboureur standing quite near us. "These guides have a large supply of more or less correct history at hand, and this one, being a philosopher, adds his own theories to further obscure the truth." This in the most perfect English, accompanied by a shrug of the shoulders entirely French. "Chenonceaux being Diane's château and this her own room, what more natural than that her cipher should be here, as Rousseau says? And yet, as Honoré de Balzac points out, this same cipher is to be found in the palace of the Louvre; upon the columns of _la Halle au Blé_, built by Catherine herself; and above her own tomb at Saint Denis which she had constructed during her lifetime. All the same, it must have pleased Henry immensely to have the royal cipher look much more like D H than like C H, and there is still room for conjecture which, after all, is one of the charms of history, so, Monsieur et Mesdames, it is quite _à votre choix_," with a graceful bow in our direction. Evidently Monsieur Crapaud does not consider us savages, despite Walter's unsavory remarks about the _cuisine_ of his country, and noticing our interest he added with French exactness: "Of course, the château was not built for Diane, although much enlarged and beautified by her, and when Catherine came into possession she had the good sense to carry out some of Diane's plans. Francis I came here to hunt sometimes, and it was upon one of these parties of pleasure, when his son Henry and Diane de Poitiers were with him, that she fell in love with this castle on the Cher, and longed to make it her own. Having a lively sense of the instability of all things mortal, kings in particular, she took good care to make friends with the rising star, and when Francis was gathered to his fathers and his uncles and his cousins,--you may remember that his predecessor was an uncle or a cousin,--Henry promptly turned over Chenonceaux to Diane." "There is a curious old story," said Monsieur Crapaud, "about Chenonceaux having been given to Diane to soothe her vanity, which had been wounded by the publication of some scurrilous verses, said to have been instigated by her enemy, Madame d'Etampes. Naturally, the petted beauty, whose charms were already on the wane, resented satirical allusion to her painted face, false teeth and hair, especially as she was warned, in very plain language, that a painted bait would not long attract her prey. These verses were attributed to one of the Bohiers, a nephew or a son of the old councillor who had built the château, and, to save his neck, he offered Chenonceaux to Henry, who begged Diane to accept it and forget her woes." "Which she did, of course," said Walter, "as she always seemed to have had an eye to the main chance." "I cannot vouch for the truth of the story; I give it to you as it came to me. There is no doubt, however, that certain satirical verses were written about the Duchesse de Valentinois, in which she and the King also are spoken of with a freedom not to be expected under the old régime. Perhaps you are not familiar with the quatrain: "'Sire, si vous laissez, comme Charles désire, Comme Diane veut, par trop vous gouverner, Foudre, pétrir, mollir, refondre, retourner, Sire vous n'êtes plus, vous n'êtes plus que cire.'" "Rather bold language to use in speaking of a king, to be told that he is but wax in the hands of Diane and the Cardinal of Lorraine," said Lydia; "that was at the time of the disaster of St. Quentin, was it not?" "Yes, Mademoiselle; you seem to be quite up on our history, which was really deeply involved in cabals at this juncture. I shall be afraid of you in future, as you probably know more about it all than I do." The French gentleman's natural use of Americanisms in speech was as surprising to us as was Lydia's knowledge of French history to him, and the ice being now fairly broken, we chatted away gaily as we passed through the handsome dining room, the ancient _salle des gardes_ of Queen Catherine, where our new _cicerone_ pointed out to us in the painted ceiling her own personal cipher interwoven with an arabesque. From the great dining room a door, on which are carved the arms of the Bohiers, leads directly, one might say abruptly, into a chapel, "as if," said Monsieur Crapaud, "to remind those who sit at meat here that the things of the spirit are near at hand." The chapel is a little gem, with rich glass dating back to 1521. Another door in the dining room leads to Queen Catherine's superbly decorated salon, and still another to the apartments of Louise de Vaudemont. In these rooms, which she had hung in black, the saintly widow of Henry III spent many years mourning for a husband who had shown himself quite unworthy of her devotion. The more that we saw of this lovely palace, the better we understood Catherine's wrath when she saw the coveted possession thrown into the lap of her rival. She had come here with her father-in-law, Francis, as a bride, and naturally looked upon the château as her own. "But Diane held on to it," said Walter. "We have just been reading that remarkable scene when, after Henry had been mortally wounded in the tournament with Montgomery, Catherine sent messages to her, demanding possession of the castle. You remember that her only reply was, 'Is the King yet dead?' and hearing that he still lived, Diane stoutly refused to surrender her château while breath was in his body. We have our Dumas with us, you see." "Yes, and here, I believe, he was true to history. That was a battle royal of dames, and I, for my part, have always regretted that Diane had to give up her palace. Have you seen Chaumont, which she so unwillingly received in exchange? No! Then you will see something fine in its way, but far less beautiful than Chenonceaux, which for charm of situation stands alone." And after all, Diane still possesses her château; for it is of her that we think as we wander from room to room. In the apartment of Francis I her portrait by Primaticcio looks down from the wall. As in life, Diane's beauty and wit triumphed over her rivals; over the withering hand of age and the schemes of the unscrupulous and astute daughter of the Médici, so in death she still dominates the castle that she loved. Pray do not think that I am in love with Diane; she was doubtless wicked and vindictive, even if not as black as Dumas paints her; but bad as she may have been, it is a satisfaction to think of her having for years outwitted Catherine, or as Miss Cassandra said, in language more expressive if less elegant than that of Monsieur Crapaud, "It is worth much to know that that terrible woman for once _did_ get her _come uppings_." If it was of Diane de Poitiers we thought within the walls of the château, it was to Mary Stuart that our thoughts turned as we wandered through the lovely forest glades of the park, under the overarching trees through whose branches the sun flashed upon the green turf and varied growth of shrubbery. We could readily fancy the young Queen and her brilliant train riding gaily through these shaded paths, their hawks upon their wrists, these, according to all writers of the time, being the conventional accompaniments of royalty at play. Ronsard was doubtless with the court at Chenonceaux, as he was often in the train of the young Queen, whom he had instructed in the art of verse making. Like all the other French poets of his time, he laid some of his most charming verses at the feet of Mary Stuart, whose short stay in France he likened to the life of the flowers. "Les roses et les lis ne règnent qu'un printemps, Ansi vostre beauté seulment apparrue Quinze ou seize ans en France est soudain disparue." I think Ronsard, as well as Chastelard, accompanied Mary upon her sad return to Scotland after the death of Francis, and how cold and barren that north country must have seemed after the rich fertility and beauty of Touraine! Do you remember our own impressions of Holyrood on a rainy August morning, and the chill gloom of poor Mary's bedroom, and the adjoining dismal little boudoir where she supped with Rizzio,--the room in which he was murdered as he clung to her garments for protection? I thought of it to-day as we stood in the warm sunshine of the court, with the blooming parterres spread before us, realizing, as never before, the sharp contrast between such palaces of pleasure as this and Mary's rude northern castles. An appropriate setting was this château for the gay, spirited young creature, who seems to have been a queen every inch from her childhood, with a full appreciation of her own importance. It seems that she mortally offended Catherine, when a mere child, by saying that the Queen belonged to a family of merchants while she herself was the daughter of a long line of kings. In some way, Mary's words were repeated to Catherine, who never forgave the bitter speech, all the more bitter for its truth. Finding that we had not yet seen the Galerie Louis XIV, which, for some reason, is not generally shown to visitors, our friendly _cicerone_ who, as he expressed it, knows Chenonceaux as he knows the palm of his hand, conducted us again to the château. For him all doors were opened, as by magic, and we afterwards learned that he had some acquaintance with Monsieur Terry, the present owner of this fair domain. Although the Galerie Louis XIV, on the upper floor of the long gallery, is not particularly beautiful or well decorated, it is interesting because here were first presented some of the plays of Jean Jacques Rousseau, _L'Engagement Téméraire_ and _Le Devin du Village_. Such later associations as this under the _régime_ of the _Fermier Général_ and Madame Dupin are those of an altogether peaceful and homelike abode. In his _Confessions_ Rousseau says: "We amused ourselves greatly in this fine spot. We made a great deal of music and acted comedies. I wrote a comedy, in fifteen days, entitled _L'Engagement Téméraire_, which will be found amongst my papers; it has not other merit than that of being lively. I composed several other little things: amongst others a poem entitled, _L'Allée de Sylvie_, from the name of an alley in the park upon the banks of the Cher; and this without discontinuing my chemical studies or interrupting what I had to do for Madame D----n." Rousseau was at this time acting as secretary to Madame Dupin and her son-in-law, Monsieur Francueil. Elsewhere he complains that these two _dilettanti_ were so occupied with their own productions that they were disposed to belittle the genius of their brilliant secretary, which, after all, was not unnatural, as the "New Eloisa" and his other famous works had not then been given to the world. Monsieur Crapaud explained to us that Madame Dupin was not only a beauty and a _précieuse_, but an excellent business woman, so clever, indeed, that she managed to prove, by hook or by crook, that Chenonceaux had never been absolutely crown property and so did not fall under the _coup de décret_. She retained this beautiful château during the Revolution, and lived here in heroic possession, during all the upheavals and changes of that tumultuous period. Thanks to Monsieur Crapaud, we missed no part of the château, even to the kitchens, which are spacious and fitted out with an abundant supply of the shining, well-polished coffee pots, pans, and _casseroles_ that always make French cookery appear so dainty and appetizing. He accompanied us, with charming amiability, through this most important department of the château, and never once, amid the evidences of luxurious living, did he even look supercilious or, as Lydia expressed it afterwards, "As if he were saying to himself, 'I wonder what these benighted Americans think of French cookery now!'" Not even when Miss Cassandra asked her favorite question in royal palaces, "How many in family?" was there a ghost of a smile upon his face, and yet he must have understood her, as he turned to a guide and asked how many persons constituted the family of Monsieur Terry. This Cuban gentleman who now owns the château is certainly to be congratulated upon his excellent taste; the restoration of the building and the laying out of the grounds are all so well done, the whole is so harmonious, instinct with the spirit of the past, and yet so livable that the impression left upon us was that of a happy home. In the past, Chenonceaux witnessed no such horrors as are associated with Amboise and so many of the beautiful castles of Touraine. Small wonder that Henry II wrote of this fair palace, as we read in a little book lying on one of the tables: "Le Châsteau de Chenonceau est assis en un des meillures, et plus beaulx pays de nostre royaume." "I must confess that I feel sorry for poor Diana," said Miss Cassandra, as we lingered among the flowers and shrubbery of the lovely gardens. "What became of her after Catherine turned her out of her château?" "You remember, Madame, that Chaumont was given her in exchange, although Catherine gave her to understand that she considered the smaller château of Anet a more suitable place for her to retire to, her sun having set. For this reason, or because she preferred Anet, Madame Diane retired to this château, which she had beautified in her early years, and in whose grounds Jean Goujon had placed a charming figure of herself as Diane Chaseresse. This marble, destroyed during the Revolution, has been carefully restored, and so Diane now reigns in beauty at the Louvre, where this statue has found a place." Monsieur Crapaud, whose name, it transpires, is La Tour, an appropriate one and one easily remembered in this part of the world, returned to Tours in the same train with us, and to our surprise we found that he also was stopping at the Pension B----. The manner in which he said "My family always stop at the Pension B----" seemed to confer an enviable distinction upon the little hostel, and in a way to dim the ancient glories of the Hôtel de l'Univers. IX A FAIR PRISON PENSION B----, TOURS, Wednesday, September 7th. WALTER has been triumphing over me because, even after his unseemly behavior yesterday, M. La Tour has formed a sudden attachment for him which is so strong that he insisted upon staying over to go with us to Loches this afternoon. He says that we may miss some of the most interesting points there if left to the tender mercies of the guides, who often dwell upon the least important things. Our new acquaintance proved to be so altogether delightful as a _cicerone_, when he conducted us through the old streets of Tours this morning, that we are looking forward with pleasure to an afternoon in his good company. The old part of the town, M. La Tour tells us, was once a quite distinct ecclesiastical foundation, called Châteauneuf, of which every building, in a way, depended upon the Basilica of St. Martin. When the dreadful Fulk, the Black, set fire to it, in the tenth century, twenty-two churches and chapels are said to have been destroyed. Among those that have been restored are Notre Dame la Riche, once Notre Dame la Pauvre, and St. Saturnin, which formerly contained, among other handsome tombs, that of Thomas Bohier and his wife Katherine Briçonnet, the couple who did so much for Chenonceaux. This ancient Châteauneuf, like the court end of so many old cities, has narrow, winding streets overtopped by high buildings. These twisting streets are so infinitely picturesque with their sudden turns and elbows that we are quite ready to overlook their inconvenience for the uses of our day, and trust that no modern vandalism, under the name of progress, may change and despoil these byways of their ancient charm. Wandering through the narrow, quaint streets of the old city, with their steep gabled and timbered houses, through whose grilled or half-opened gates we catch glimpses of tiled courtyards and irregular bits of stone carving, over which flowers throw a veil of rich bloom, we feel that we are living in an old world. Yet M. La Tour reminds us that beneath our feet lies a still older world, for as we follow what is evidently a wall of defence we come upon the remains of an ancient gateway and suddenly realize that beneath this Martinopolis, Châteauneuf and Tours of the fifth century, lie the temples, amphitheatres, and baths of the more ancient Urbs Turonum of the Romans. In the midst of our excursion into the past, Miss Cassandra suddenly brought us back to the present by exclaiming that she would like to go to some place where the Romans had never been. She has had quite enough of them in their own city and country, and now being in Touraine she says that she prefers to live among the French. M. La Tour laughed heartily, as he does at everything our Quaker lady says, and answered, with French literalness, that it would be hard to find any land in the known world that the Romans had not occupied, "Except your own America, Madame." Then, as if to humor her fancy, he conducted us by way of little streets with charming names of flowers, angels, and the like, to the Place du Grand Marché, where he showed Miss Cassandra something quite French, the beautiful Renaissance fountain presented to Tours by the unfortunate Jacques de Beaune, Baron de Semblançay. This fountain was made from the designs of Michel Colombe by his nephew, Bastian François. It was broken in pieces and thrown aside when the Rue Royale was created, but was later put together by one of the good mayors of Tours and now stands on the Place du Grand Marché, a lasting monument to the Baron de Semblançay, treasurer under Francis I, who was accused of malversation, hanged at Montfaucon and his estates, Azay-le-Rideau with the rest, confiscated by the crown. M. La Tour considers the treatment of the Baron de Semblançay quite unjust, and says that he was only found to have been guilty of corruption when he failed to supply the enormous sums of money required by Francis I and his mother, who, like the proverbial horseleach's daughters, cried ever "Give! give!" It seems one of the reprisals of time that the name of the donor should still be preserved upon this beautiful Fountain de Beaune of Tours, as well as upon the old treasurer's house in the Rue St. François, a fine Renaissance building. [Illustration: Neurdein Freres, Photo. HOUSE OF TRISTAN L'HERMITE] From the Rue du Grand Marché we turned into the Rue du Commerce, where on the Place de Beaune is the Hôtel de la Crouzille, once the Hôtel de la Vallière, with its double gables and the graceful, shell-like ornamentation which the restaurateur who occupies the house has wisely allowed to remain above his commonplace sign of to-day. In the same street is the famous Hôtel Gouin, now a bank. This house, which dates back to the fifteenth century, has been carefully restored, and its whole stone façade, covered with charming arabesques, is a fine example of early French Renaissance style. In the ancient Rue Briçonnet, quite near,--indeed nothing is very far away in this old town,--is the house attributed to Tristan l'Hermite, who held the unenviable position of hangman-in-chief to His Majesty, King Louis. There is no foundation for this tradition, which probably owes its origin to a knotted rope and some hooks on the wall, which are sufficiently suggestive of hanging. This sculptured cord, or rope, not unlike the emblem of Anne of Brittany, may have been placed here in her honor, or in that of one of her ladies in waiting, as she frequently urged her attendants to adopt her device of the knotted rope, whose derivation has never been quite understood. "However," as Miss Cassandra says, "we are not here in search of associations of the head executioner of Louis or of those of his royal master," and so we were free to enjoy the beauty of this fourteenth century house, which is quite picturesque enough to do without associations of any kind, with its substantial walls in which brick and stone are so happily combined, its graceful arcades, lovely spiral pilasters and richly carved Renaissance doorways. We noticed the words _Priez Dieu Pur_ carved over a window in the courtyard which, M. La Tour says, is thought to be an anagram upon the name of Pierre de Puy, who owned the house in 1495. In the wide paved courtyard is an ancient stone well, near which is a spiral stairway leading to a loggia, from which we had a fine view of the picturesque gables and roofs of the old town, and beyond of the broad river shimmering in the sun, and still farther away of a line of low hills crowned with white villas. Noticing the Tour de Guise as it stood out against the blue sky, M. La Tour told us an interesting tale about this tower, which is about all that is left of the royal palace built here or added to by Henry II, who was also hereditary Count of Anjou, and did much building and road making in the Touraine of his day. The young Prince de Joinville, son of the Duke de Guise, who for some reason was imprisoned here after the murder of his father at Blois, was permitted to attend mass on Assumption Day, 1591. Tasting the sweets of freedom in this brief hour of respite, the Prince took his courage in his two hands and suddenly decided to make a bold dash for liberty. Laying a wager with his guards that he could run upstairs again faster than they, he reached his room first, bolted the door and seizing a cord, or rope, which had been brought to him by his laundress, he made it fast to the window, slipped out and dropped fifteen feet. With shots whistling all about him he flew around the tower to the Faubourg de la Riche, where he leaped upon the back of the first horse that he saw; the saddle turned and threw him and a soldier came up suddenly and accosted him. Fortunately, the soldier proved, by some happy chance, to be a Leaguer, who gave him a fresh mount, and soon the Prince had put many miles between himself and his pursuers. Ever since, the tower has borne the name of the young De Guise who so cleverly escaped from it. Wednesday evening. We experienced what our Puritan ancestors would have called a "fearful joy" during our afternoon at Loches, for anything more horrible than the dungeons above ground and under it would be difficult to imagine. I shall spare you a full description of them, as I refused to descend into the darkest depths to see the worst of them, and Walter is probably writing Allen a full-length account of them,--iron cages, hooks, rings, and all the other contrivances of cruelty. Loches, however, is not all cells and dungeons, as the château is beautifully situated upon a headland above the Indre, and the gray castle rising above the terraces, with its many towers, tourelles, and charming pointed windows, presents a picturesque as well as a formidable appearance. Our way lay by winding roads and between high walls. We thought ourselves fortunate to make this steep circuitous ascent in a coach; but once within the _enceinte_ of the castle we were on a level and felt as if we were walking through the streets of a little village. Many small white houses, with pretty gardens of blooming plants, lie below the fortress on one side, in sharp contrast to the frowning dungeons of Fulk Nerra and Louis XI which overshadow them. The great square mass of Fulk Nerra's keep stood out dark against the blue of the sky to-day; this with the Tour Neuf and the Tour Ronde are said to be the "most beautiful of all the dungeons of France," as if a dungeon could ever be beautiful! And it was Louis XI, that expert and past master in cruelty, who is said to have "perfected these prisons," which only needed the iron cage, designed to suit the King's good pleasure, to complete their horror. The invention of the iron cage has been accredited to Jean la Balue, Bishop of Angers, and also to the Bishop of Verdun. Perhaps both of these devout churchmen had a hand in the work, as fate, with a dash of irony, and the fine impartiality of the mother who whipped both of her boys because she could not find out which one had eaten the plums, clapped them both into iron cages. Louis XI was in these instances the willing agent of avenging fate. Cardinal la Balue survived the sorrows of his iron cage for eleven years, "much longer than might have been expected," as Mr. Henry James says, "from this extraordinary mixture of seclusion and exposure." The historian, Philip de Commines, described these cages as "Rigorous prisons plated with iron both within and without with horrible iron works, eight foote square and one foote more than a man's height. He that first devised them was the Bishop of Verdun, who forthwith was himself put into the first that was made, where he remained fourteen years." Louis was so enchanted with this fiendish device that he longed to put all his state prisoners into iron cages. We are glad to know that when he recommended this treatment to the Admiral of France for one of his captives of high degree, the jailer replied, with a spirit and independence to which the tyrant was little wont, "That if that was the King's idea of how a prisoner should be kept he might take charge of this one himself." "De Commines knew all about the horrors of the iron cage," said M. La Tour, "for he was himself imprisoned in one of them by the Lady of Beaujeu, who was Regent of France after the death of her father, Louis XI. De Commines joined the Duke of Orleans in a conspiracy against the government of the Regent, which was discovered. He was seized and also the Duke, afterwards Louis XII. Louis himself was imprisoned by his cousin of Beaujeu and was set free by her brother Charles." The guide pointed out the iron cage in which Philip de Commines was confined, which was horrible enough to answer to his description. Some of the lines inscribed on the walls of the round tower were doubtless composed by De Commines, among these a wise saying in Latin which Walter deciphered with difficulty and thus freely translated: "I have regretted that I have spoken; but never that I remained silent." A most ironical invitation, we read in the corridor leading to the tower: "Entrés, Messieurs, ches le Roy Nostre Mestre." One poor captive, who showed a cheerful desire to make the best of his lot, inscribed upon the wall of his cell these lines, which Lydia copied for you: Malgré les ennuis d'une longue souffrance, Et le cruel destin dont je subis la loy, Il est encor des biens pour moy, Le tendre amour et la douce espérance. In the Martelet where we went down many steps, we saw the room in which Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, was imprisoned by Louis XII for eight years, and the little sundial that he made on the only spot on the wall that the sun could strike. He also whiled away the weary hours of captivity by painting frescoes on the walls, which are still to be seen. By such devices Ludovico probably saved his reason, but his health broke down and when relief came he seems to have died of joy, or from the sudden shock of coming out into the world again. A sad end was this to a life that had begun in happiness and prosperity and that was crowned by a felicitous marriage with beautiful Beatrice d'Este. "And why did Louis, the Father of his people, the good King Louis, imprison Ludovico all those years?" asked Miss Cassandra. "King Louis, although the best and wisest King that France had known for many a day, was but mortal," said M. La Tour, twisting his moustache as if somewhat puzzled by our Quaker lady's direct question, "and having a sound claim to the Duchy of Milan, through his grandmother Valentine Visconti, he proceeded to make it good." "By ousting Ludovico, and his lovely wife, Beatrice, who was really far too good for him; but then most of the women were too good for their husbands in those days," said Miss Cassandra. "Fortunately," said M. La Tour, "the Duchess of Milan had died two years before Ludovico's capture and so was spared the misery of knowing that her husband was a prisoner in France." We were glad to emerge from the dismal dungeons into the light and air by stepping out upon a terrace, from which we had a fine view of the château and the Collegiate Church of St. Ours adjoining it. The Château of Loches, once a fortress guarding the Roman highway, later belonged to the house of Anjou and was for some years handed about by French and English owners. As might have been expected, this fortress was given away by John Lackland (whose name sounds very odd, done into French, as Jean-Sans-Terre), but was regained by his brother, Richard Coeur de Lion. It was finally sold to St. Louis, and the château, begun by Charles VII, was completed by Louis XII. The tower of Agnes Sorel, with its garden terrace, is the most charming part of the château, crowning, as it does, a great rock on the south side which overlooks the town. Charles seems to have met the enchanting Agnes while at Loches, whither she had come in the train of the Countess of Anjou, whose mission to France was to gain the liberty of her husband, King René, who had been taken prisoner in battle, and was confined in the Tour de Bar, which we saw at Dijon. From all accounts Agnes appears to have been a creature of ravishing beauty and great charm, as the ancient chroniclers describe her with a complexion of lilies and roses, a mouth formed by the graces, brilliant eyes, whose vivacity was tempered by an expression of winning sweetness, and a tall and graceful form. In addition to her personal attraction, this "Dame de Beaulté" seems to have had a sweet temper, a ready wit, and judgment far beyond that of her royal lover. According to many historians, Agnes was the good angel of the King's life, as Joan, the inspired Maid, had been in a still darker period of his reign. Brantôme relates a story of the favorite's clever and ingenious method of rousing Charles from his apathy and selfish pursuit of pleasure while the English, under the Duke of Bedford, were ravaging his kingdom. "It had been foretold in her childhood, by an astrologer," said Agnes, "that she should be beloved by one of the bravest and most valiant kings in Christendom," adding, with fine sarcasm, "that when Charles had paid her the compliment of loving her she believed him to be, in truth, this valorous king of whom she had heard, but now seeing him so indifferent to his duty in resisting King Henry, who was capturing so many towns under his very nose, she realized that she was deceived and that this valorous king must be the English sovereign, whom she had better seek, as he evidently was the one meant by the astrologer." [Illustration: AGNES SOREL] "Brantôme was a bit out here," said M. La Tour, "as Henry V. had died some years before and his son Henry VI was only six or seven years of age at this time, and it was the Duke of Bedford who was ravaging the fair fields of France and taking the King's towns _a sa barbe_. However, that is only a detail as you Americans say, and there must be some foundation for Brantôme's story of Agnes having aroused the King to activity by her cleverness and spirit, for more than one historian gives her the credit of this good work for Charles and for France. You remember that Brantôme says that these words of the _belle des belles_ so touched the heart of the King that he wept, took courage, quitted the chase, and was so valiant and so fortunate that he was able to drive the English from his kingdom." "It is a charming little tale," said Lydia, "and I, for one, do not propose to question it. Brantôme may have allowed his imagination to run away with him; but the good influence of Agnes must have been acknowledged in her own time and later, or Francis I would not have written of her: "'Plus de louange son amour s'y mérite Étant cause de France recouvrer!'" "And I, for my part, don't believe a word of it!" said Miss Cassandra emphatically. "No ordinary girl, no matter how handsome she might be, would sit up and talk like that to a great King. I call it downright impertinent; she wasn't even a titled lady, much less a princess." For a Quaker, Miss Cassandra certainly has a great respect for worldly honors and titles, and Lydia took pleasure in reminding her that Joan of Arc was only a peasant girl of Domremy, and yet she dared to speak boldly to Charles, her King. "That was quite different, my dear," said Miss Cassandra. "Joan was an _honest_ maid to begin with, and then she was raised quite above her station by her spiritual manifestations, and she had what the Friends call a concern." Then noticing the puzzled expression on M. La Tour's face, she explained: "I mean something on her mind and conscience with regard to the King and the redemption of France, what you would call a mission." "Yes," Lydia added, "_une mission_ is the best translation of the word that I can think of; but it does not give the full meaning of the expression 'to have a concern,'" and as he still looked puzzled, she added, comfortingly: "You need not wonder, Monsieur, that you do not quite understand what my aunt means, for born and bred in Quakerdom as I have been, I never feel that I grasp the full spiritual significance of the expression as the older Friends use it." For some years Charles seems to have been under the spell of the beauty and charm of Agnes Sorel, upon whom he bestowed honors, titles, and lands, the Château of Loches among other estates. From her false dream of happiness the royal favorite was rudely awakened by the Dauphin, afterwards Louis XI, who entered the room where the Queen's ladies in waiting were seated, and marching up to Agnes in a violent rage, spoke to her in the most contemptuous language, struck her on the cheek, it is said, and gave her to understand that she had no right to be at the court. "Which," as Miss Cassandra remarks, "was only too true, although the Dauphin, even at this early age, had enough sins of his own to look after, without undertaking to set his father's house in order." Agnes took to heart the Dauphin's cruel words, and resisting all the solicitations of the King, parted from him and retired to a small house in the town of Loches, where she lived for five years, devoting herself to penitence and good works. "It seems," said Miss Cassandra, "that repentance and sorrow for sin was the particular business of the women in those days; when the men were in trouble they generally went a hunting." M. La Tour, being a Frenchman, evidently considers this a quite proper arrangement, although he reminded Miss Cassandra that the wicked Fulk Nerra, "your Angevin ancestor," as he calls him, "expiated for his sins with great rigor in the Holy Land, as he dragged himself, half naked, through the streets of Jerusalem, while a servant walked on each side scourging him." After living quietly at Loches for five years Agnes one day received a message that greatly disturbed her and caused her to set forth with all haste for Paris. Arrived there, and learning that the King was at Jumiéges for a few days' rest after the pacification of Normandy, she repaired thither and had a long interview with him. As Agnes left the King she said to one of her friends that she "had come to save the King from a great danger." Four hours later she was suddenly seized with excruciating pain and died soon after. It was thought by many persons that the former royal favorite was poisoned by the Dauphin; but this has never been proved. The body of Agnes Sorel was, according to her own request, transported to Loches and buried in the choir of the Collegiate Church of St. Ours, where it rested for many years. The beautiful tomb was first placed in the church, but was later removed to the tower where it stands to-day and where Agnes still reigns in beauty. Upon a sarcophagus of black marble is a reclining figure, modest and seemly, the hands folded upon the breast, two lambs guarding the feet, while two angels support the cushion upon which rests the lovely head of _la belle des belles_, whose face in life is said to have had the bloom of flowers in the springtime. The inscription upon the tomb is: "Here lies the noble Damoyselle Agnes Seurelle, in her life time Lady of Beaulté, of Roquesserie, of Issouldun, of Vernon-sur-Seine. Kind and pitiful to all men, she gave liberally of her goods to the Church and to the poor. She died the ninth day of February of the Year of Grace 1449. Pray for her soul. Amen." You may remember that at the Abbey of Jumiéges we saw a richly carved sarcophagus which contains the heart of Agnes Sorel. M. La Tour says that she left a legacy to Jumiéges, with the request that her heart should be buried in the abbey. At one time a beautiful kneeling figure of Agnes, offering her heart to the Virgin in supplication, surmounted the black marble sarcophagus; but this was destroyed, when and how it is not known. In one of the oldest parts of the château are the bedroom and oratory of Anne of Brittany. From these rooms there is a lovely view of the Indre and of the old town with its steep gables, crenelated roofs, and picturesque chimneys. The walls of the little oratory are richly decorated with exquisite carvings of the Queen's devices, the tasseled cord and the ermine, which even a coat of whitewash has not deprived of their beauty. M. La Tour, whom Lydia has dubbed "our H.B.R." handy-book of reference, tells us that the origin of Queen Anne's favorite device is so far back in history that it is somewhat mythical. The ermine of which she was so proud is said to have come from her ancestress, Madame Inoge, wife of Brutus and daughter of Pindarus the Trojan. It appears that during a hunting expedition an ermine was pursued by the dogs of King Brutus. The poor little creature took refuge in the lap of Inoge, who saved it from death, fed it for a long time and adopted an ermine as her badge. We had spent so much time in the Château Royale and in the various dungeons that there was little space left for a visit to the very remarkable Church of St. Ours adjoining the château, which, as Viollet le Duc says, has a remarkable and savage beauty of its own. After seeing what is left of the girdle of the Virgin, which the verger thought it very important that we should see, we spent what time we had left in gazing up at the interesting corbeling of the nave and the two hollow, stone pyramids that form its roof. Miss Cassandra and I flatly refused to descend into the depths below, although the verger with a lighted candle stood ready to conduct us into a subterranean chapel, which was, at one time, connected with the château. We had seen quite enough of underground places for one day, and were glad to pass on into the more livable portion of the castle, which is now inhabited by the sous-prefect of the district, and from thence into the open, where we stopped to rest under the wide-spreading chestnut tree planted here by Francis I so many years since. M. La Tour reminds us, among other associations of Loches, that the Seigneur de Saint Vallier, the father of Diane de Poitiers, whose footsteps we followed at Chenonceaux, was once imprisoned here. Even the powerful influence of Diane scarcely gained her father's pardon from Francis I. His sentence had been pronounced and he was mounting the steps of the scaffold when the reprieve came. With our minds filled with the varied and vivid associations of Loches, we left the castle enclosure and from without the walls we had a fine view of the massive dungeons, the Château Royal, with the beautiful tower of Agnes Sorel, and the charming terrace beside it. Through many crooked, winding lanes and postern doors M. La Tour conducted us by the gate of the Cordeliers, with its odd fifteenth century turrets, to a neat little garden café. Here we refreshed ourselves with tea and some very dainty little cakes that are a _spécialité de la maison_, while Walter gracefully mounted his hobby, which, as you have doubtless gathered ere this, is the faithfulness of Alexander Dumas to history. "What need had Dumas to call upon his imagination when the court life of France, under the Valois and Bourbons, furnished all the wonders of the Thousand and One Nights?" Walter really becomes eloquent when launched upon his favorite subject, and indeed we all are, more or less, under the spell of Dumas and Balzac. With the heroes and heroines of Alexandre Dumas, we have spent so many delightful hours that Touraine seems, in a way, to belong to them. It would not surprise us very much to have Porthos, Athos, and Aramis gallop up behind our carriage and demand our passports, or best of all to see that good soldier and perfect gentleman, D'Artagnan, standing before us with sword unsheathed ready to cut and come again; but always it must be remembered quite as reckless of his own precious skin as of that of his enemies. "I wonder if we shall ever again see their like upon the pages of romance," said Walter turning to M. La Tour. "Good soldiers and brave gentlemen, better and braver than the royal masters whom they served so faithfully!" said M. La Tour, raising his hand in the delightfully dramatic fashion of the French as if proposing a toast: "May their memories long linger in Touraine and the Blésois, which they have glorified by their deeds of valor!" What do you think we have been doing this evening? Still under the spell of Loches and its weird associations, we have been trying to turn the French verse, which Lydia copied for you, into metrical English. It seemed so strange that we four twentieth century Americans and one Franco-American should be translating the pathetic little verse of the poor prisoner who, "_Malgré les ennuis d'une longue souffrance,_" kept up a brave heart and counted his blessings. We all tried our hand at it, Miss Cassandra, M. La Tour and all. I send you the verse that seemed to our umpire the best. One of the charming Connecticut ladies, whom we met at Amboise, called upon us this evening and was kind enough to act as umpire in our little war of wits. She was so polite as to say that all of the translations were so good that it was difficult to choose between them, but this is the one that she thought most in the spirit of the original lines: Despite the weary hours of pain A cruel fate ordains for me, Some dear possessions yet there be; Sweet hope and tender love remain. It is for you to guess who wrote this verse. One thing I tell you to help you out or to puzzle you still more with your guessing, M. La Tour wrote one of the verses; his knowledge of English construction is remarkable.[A] This young Frenchman, who is usually politely reticent about his own affairs, although so generously expansive in communicating his historic and legendary lore, confided to Walter, this evening, in the intimacy of smoking together, that his mother is an American. This accounts for his perfect and idiomatic English and for his knowledge of our cities. He talks about Washington, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston as if he had seen them and yet he has never crossed the water, being like most Frenchmen entirely satisfied with what his own country affords him. Since Walter has learned that M. La Tour is half American, he begs to be allowed to call him Mr. La Tour. Foreign handles and titles, as he expresses it, do not sit easily upon his tongue. The Frenchman laughed good naturedly at this and said, "Yes, yes, M. Leonard, call me what you will. Philippe is my name; why not Philippe?" Walter says this would be quite as bad as Monsieur, unless he could change it to plain Philip, which would seem quite too simple and unadorned a name for so elegant and decorative a being as M. Philippe Edouard La Tour, who shines forth radiantly in the rather sombre surroundings of the Pension B---- like the gilded youth that he is. What havoc he would make among the hearts of the _pensionnaires_ if this were indeed the young ladies' seminary that Walter calls it! M. La Tour is particularly resplendent in evening costume, and when he appears equipped for dining Madame B----calls him "_beau garçon_." He possesses, as Miss Cassandra says, that most illusive and indescribable quality which we call distinction for lack of a better word. While admiring him immensely, she solemnly warns Lydia against the wiles of foreigners. And I think myself that Archie had better turn his steps this way if he expects to find Lydia heart whole, as M. La Tour loses no opportunity of paying her charming little attentions in the way of choice offerings, from the flower market on the Boulevard Béranger near by. This evening he produced some delicious bonbons which he must have imported from Paris for her delectation, although I must admit that they were properly and decorously presented to Madame Leonard, your old, and, to-night, your very sleepy friend, ZELPHINE. FOOTNOTE: [A] Mrs. Leonard added a postscript to her letter in which she gave Mrs. Ramsey two other translations, asking her which she thought M. La Tour had written: Despite these dragging hours wherein I prove The painful weight of destiny's decree, Yet fare I well, for none can take from me The gifts of gentle hope and tender love. Despite the dreariness of durance long and sore, Where fate's relentless hand still holds me fast, My dungeon I have made my treasure-house; its store Is love, and hope for freedom at the last. X COMPENSATIONS TOURS, THURSDAY, September 8th. WE HAVE been having what they call "golden weather" here; but to-day the skies are overcast, which does not please us, although this cloudy weather may still be golden to the wise Tourangeau, who, as George Sand said, "knows the exact value of sun or rain at the right moment." This most unpromising day is our one opportunity to see Chinon, and as luck will have it Miss Cassandra is laid up in lavender, with a crick in her back, the result, she says, of her imprisonment at Loches yesterday, and what would have become of her, she adds, if she had sojourned there eight or nine long years like poor Ludovico? The threatening skies and Miss Cassandra's indisposition would be quite enough to keep us at home, or to tempt us to make some short excursion in the neighborhood of Tours, were we not lured on by that _ignis fatuus_ of the traveler, the unexplored worlds which lie beyond. There will be so much to be seen in and near Blois, and in order to have time for the château, and to make the excursions to Chambord and the other castles, we must be at Blois to-morrow evening. So this is the only day for Chinon, which Walter wishes so much to see while M. La Tour is with us. Although, like Mr. Henry James, I may be obliged to write you that I have not seen Chinon at all, I decided to stay at home to-day with Miss Cassandra and sent the men off to Chinon, Lydia with them. Miss Cassandra expostulated and so did Walter and Lydia; but I held my position with great firmness, and I observed that the trio set forth without me in gay good spirits. Of course my good man will miss me, especially when he comes across the interesting Joan of Arc landmarks; but he is in excellent company with M. La Tour, and I have gained a day of repose which one needs when the associations are as interesting and thrilling as they are here in Touraine. Miss Cassandra slept so sweetly all morning that I had another long ramble in and out of the quaint streets of the ancient Châteauneuf, which is what you and I love best to do in old cities whose very stones, like those of Venice, are written over with legend and story. The sun came out at noon, and I was fortunate in getting enough light on the house of Tristan l'Hermite to take a photograph from the court, which will give you some idea of this interesting old building. So you see my day at home has had its compensations, a crowning one being a letter from Archie, who is in Paris, saying that he would join us at Blois to-morrow. This news proved so stimulating to Miss Cassandra that she was able to get up and come downstairs in time to greet the travelers on their return from Chinon. They were most enthusiastic over their morning among the ruins, and full of the lore of the old stronghold where the Maid of Orleans first met the King, Lydia quoting: "Petite ville grand renom Assise sur pierre ancienne Au haut le bois, au pied la Vienne," until I stopped their rhapsodies over the ancient by giving them my bit of up-to-date information that Archie was _en route_ for Blois. Walter uttered such a shout of joy as this old hostel has not heard since the victories of the first Napoleon were celebrated here. I tried to see Lydia's face, but she turned away at the critical moment to speak to Miss Cassandra, and so I lost my chance of seeing whether she was surprised and excited over my news. When she turned to me later and said, "How glad I am for you, Zelphine, and what a pleasant addition Dr. Vernon will make to the party," her face wore its wonted expression of sweet composure. Walter says, "You really must see Chinon, Zelphine; we can make a separate trip there with Archie. It is much farther from Blois than from Tours, but by taking a motor car we can go to Angers at the same time." Mr. La Tour (you notice that I take Walter's privilege in writing of him) says that we really should pay our respects to Angers, the cradle of our Angevin kings. He quite resents Mr. Henry James having written down this old town in his notebook as a "sell," and says that although Angers has become a flourishing, modern city, there is much of the old town left and the château is well worth seeing. Like John Evelyn, we have found the sojournment so agreeable here that we could stay on and on for weeks, spending our days in visiting one interesting château after another. We want so much to see Villandry and Ussé, and we would love to have a day at Mme. de Sévigné's, Les Rochers, or better still at Chantilly, where poor Vatel, the cook, through the letters of _la belle Marquise_ and the failure of the fish supply, took his place one summer day among the immortals. Lydia reminds me that the Château of Chantilly is too far north to be easily reached from here, but La Châtre is not far away, and a day and night among the haunts of George Sand would be a rare pleasure, especially if we could drive to Nohant along the road once travelled by such guests of the novelist as Théophile Gautier, Dumas, Alfred de Musset, and Balzac. The latter found her living, as he says, after his own plan "turned topsy-turvy; that is to say, she goes to bed at six in the morning and rises at midday, whilst I retire at six in the evening and rise at midnight." Miss Cassandra, who in whatever portion of the globe she may be travelling is sure to meet people with whom she has a link of acquaintance or association, has discovered in the course of a long talk with M. La Tour, this evening, that she knows some of his American relatives. Indeed his Browns (how much more distinguished Le Brun would sound!) are connected in some way with her family, and she and M. La Tour are delighted to claim cousinship through these New York Browns. I am sure that to establish the exact degree of relationship would defy the skill of the most expert genealogist; but they are quite satisfied with even a remote degree of kinship, especially as this discovery brings Lydia, in a way, into the La Tour connection. M. La Tour, who talks of visiting his American relatives next winter, is evidently preparing himself in more ways than one for his projected trip. Although his English is faultless, he seems to think it important to be familiar with a certain amount of American slang. Yesterday he turned to me, with a quite helpless expression upon his handsome face, exclaiming, "This word 'crazy' that the Americans use so much--I am crazy about this and crazy about that,--now what does that mean, Madame?--_fou de ceci, fou de cela? Vraiment il me semble qu'ils sont tous un peu fou!_" It is needless to say that I quite agreed with M. La Tour, and after I had given him the best explanation in my power, he laughed and said: "It appears that what you call Quakers do not use this extreme language so much. Miss Mott, for example, never uses such expressions." Yesterday, when a party of our compatriots were drinking tea at a table near us, he was again much puzzled. "These young people all say that they are 'passing away' on account of the heat of the sun, from fatigue, for various reasons. Now what is it to pass away, is it not to die, to vanish from the earth?" The seriousness of his manner, as he gave us this literal and somewhat poetical translation of the popular slang of the day, so amused Walter that I had to send him off to make some inquiries about the route in order to prevent an outburst of laughter which our French friend, who is endowed with little sense of humor, could never have understood. Dear Miss Cassandra, who enjoyed the humor of the situation quite as much as any of us, but possesses the rare gift of laughing inwardly (the Friends do so many things inwardly while presenting a serene face to the world), exclaimed: "One of the foolish exaggerations of our modern speech! You will probably notice that the young people who are always passing away are usually uncommonly healthy and strong and blessed with vigorous appetites. For my part, I consider it tempting Providence to be always talking about passing away; but of course," her pride coming to the fore, "the best people among us do not use such expressions." HÔTEL DE FRANCE, BLOIS, September 9th. As Blois is only about an hour from Tours, we reached here some time before Archie appeared, and thus had time to feel quite at home in this pleasant little hotel, and to kill the fatted calf in honor of his arrival. This latter ceremony was exceedingly simple, consisting, as it did, in supplementing the fairly good _table d'hôte_ luncheon with a basket of the most beautiful and delicious fruit. Such blushing velvet skinned peaches as these of the Blésois we have not seen, even in Tours, and the green plums of Queen Claude are equally delectable if not as decorative as the peaches. These, with great clusters of grapes, and a bottle of the white wine of Voudray, which Walter added to the mênu, made a feast for the gods to which Archie did ample justice. He looks handsomer than ever, and as brown as a Spaniard after the sea voyage. I am glad that we are by ourselves, agreeable as M. La Tour is, for as you know, Archie does not care much for strangers and our little family party is so pleasant. Archie's idea of enjoying a holiday is to motor from morning until night. We humored his fancy this afternoon and had a long motor tour, going through Montbazon and Couzieres, which we had not yet seen, although we were quite near both places at Loches. Our chauffeur, knowing by instinct that Lydia and I were of inquiring minds, told us that Queen Marie de Médicis came from Montbazon to Couzieres after her escape from Blois, and that here she and her son Louis were reconciled in the presence of a number of courtiers. This royal peacemaking we have always thought one of the most amusing of Rubens's great canvases at the Louvre, as he very cleverly gives the impression that neither the Queen nor her son is taking the matter seriously. You will scarcely believe me, I fear, when I tell you that we only stopped at one château this afternoon. This was Archie's afternoon, you know, but the Château of Beauregard is so near that we simply could not pass it by, and the drive through the forest of Russy in which it stands was delightful. The château was closed to visitors, for which Archie said he was thankful, which rather shocked Lydia, who is as conscientious in her sightseeing as about everything else that she does. It was a disappointment to her and to me, as there is a wonderful collection of pictures there, an unbroken series, they tell us, including the great folk of fifteen reigns. Suddenly realizing our disappointment, Archie became quite contrite and did everything in his power to gain a sight of the treasures for us, but to no purpose, as the concierge was absolutely firm, even with the lure of silver before his eyes, and when he told us that the family was in residence we knew that it was quite hopeless to expect to enter. The Duchesse de Dino, whose interesting memoirs have been published lately, was the châtelaine of Beauregard in the early years of the last century. We had a delightful afternoon, despite our disappointment about the château, and in the course of this ride Archie, who can understand almost no French, extracted more information from the chauffeur with regard to the soil, products, crops, and characteristics of Touraine than the rest of the party have learned in the ten days that we have spent here. These investigations were, of course, conducted by the aid of such willing interpreters as Lydia and myself. "M. La Tour could tell you all about these things," said Lydia. "And pray who is this M. La Tour that you are all quoting? Some Johnny Crapaud whom Zelphine has picked up, I suppose. She always had a fancy for foreigners." "He is a very delightful person, and if you wait long enough you will see him," said Miss Cassandra, "as he has taken a great fancy to Walter." "To Walter!" exclaimed Archie, and seeing the amused twinkle in Miss Cassandra's eyes he suddenly became quite silent and took no further interest in the scenery or in the products of Touraine, until Lydia directed his attention to the curious caves in the low hills that look like chalk cliffs. This white, chalky soil, M. La Tour had explained to us, is hard, much like the tufa used so much for building in Italy. We thought that these caves were only used for storing wine, but our chauffeur told us that most of those which are provided with a door and a window are used as dwelling houses, and they were, he assured us, quite comfortable. These underground dwellings, burrowed out like rabbits' warrens, with earth floors, no ventilation except a chimney cut in the tufa roof to let the smoke out, and only the one window and door in the front to admit light and air, seem utterly cheerless and uncomfortable, despite our chauffeur's assurances that they have many advantages. From the eloquence with which he expatiated upon the even temperature of these caves, which he told us were warm in winter and cool in summer, we conclude that he has lived in one of them, and are thankful that he could not understand our invidious remarks about them, for as Archie remarks, even a troglodyte may have some pride about his home. [Illustration: Neurdein Freres, Photo. ENTRANCE TO CHÂTEAU OF BLOIS WITH STATUE OF LOUIS XII] HÔTEL DE FRANCE, September 10th. It is so delightful to be lodged so near the beautiful Château of Blois that we can see the façade of Francis I by sunlight, twilight, and moonlight. Built upon massive supporting walls, it dominates a natural terrace, which rises above the valley of the Loire and the ravine of the Arroux. No more fitting site could be found for the château than the quadrilateral formed by these two streams. The wing of Francis I, with its noble columns, Italian loggie, balustrades, attics, picturesque chimneys, grotesque gargoyles and other rich and varied decorations, displays all the architectural luxury of the Renaissance of which it was in a sense the final expression. It was while gazing upon this marvelous façade that Mr. Henry James longed for such brilliant pictures as the figures of Francis I, Diane de Poitiers, or even of Henry III, to fill the empty frames made by the deep recesses of the beautifully proportioned windows. We would cheerfully omit the weak and effeminate Henry from the novelist's group, but we would be tempted to add thereto such interesting contemporary figures as the King of Navarre and his heroic mother, Jeanne d'Albret, or his beautiful, faithless wife, La Reine Margot, the Pasithée of Ronsard's verse, who, with her brilliant eyes and flashing wit, is said to have surpassed in charm all the members of her mother's famous "_escadron volant_." And, as Miss Cassandra suggests, it would be amusing to see the portly widow of Henry IV descending from one of the windows, as she is said to have done, by a rope ladder and all the paraphernalia of a romantic elopement, although, as it happened, she was only escaping from a prison that her son had thought quite secure. The poor Queen had great difficulty in getting through the window, but finally succeeded and reached the ditch of the castle; friends were waiting near by to receive her with a coach which bore her away to freedom at Loches or Amboise, I forget which. This window from which Marie de Médicis is said to have escaped is in one of the apartments of Catherine. The guide, a very talkative little woman, told us that there is good reason to believe that the stout Queen never performed this feat of high and lofty tumbling; but that she made her escape from a window in the south side, and with comparative ease, as in her day there were no high parapets such as those that now surround the château on three sides. Our cicerone seemed, however, to have no doubts about the unpleasing associations with Catherine de Médicis, and took great pleasure in showing us her _cabinet de travail_, with the small secret closets in the carved panels of the wall in which she is said to have kept her poisons. These rooms are richly decorated, the gilt insignia upon a ground of brown and green being a part of the original frescoes. The oratory, of which Catherine certainly stood in need, is especially handsome and elaborate. Even more thrilling than the poison closets are the secret staircase and the _oubliette_ near by, into which last were thrown, as our guide naïvely explained, "_tous ceux qui la gênait_." Cardinal Lorraine is said to have gone by this grewsome, subterranean passage. Not having had enough of horrors in the rooms of the dreadful Catherine, we were ushered, by our voluble guide, into those of her son, Henry III. In order to make the terrible story of the murder of the Duke of Guise quite realistic, we were first taken to the great council chamber, before one of whose beautiful chimney places Le Balfré stood warming himself, for the night was cold, eating plums and jesting with his courtiers, when he was summoned to attend the King. Henry, with his cut-throats at hand, was awaiting his cousin in his _cabinet de travail_, at the end of his apartments. As the Duke entered the King's chamber he was struck down by one and then by another of the concealed assassins. Henry, miserable creature that he was, came out into his bedroom where the Duke lay, and spurning with his foot the dead or dying man, exclaimed over his great size, as if he had been some huge animal lying prone before him. "It seems as if the victims of Amboise were in a measure avenged; the Dukes of Guise, father and son, met with the same sad fate, and at the time of the assassination of Le Balfré Queen Catherine lay dying in the room below." This from Lydia, in a voice so impressive and tragic that Archie turned suddenly, and looking first at her and then at me, said: "Well, you women are quite beyond me! You are both overflowing with the milk of human kindness, you would walk a mile any day of the year to help some poor creature out of a hole, and yet you stand here and gloat over a murder as horrible as that of the Duke of Guise." "We are not gloating over it," said Lydia, "and if you had been at Amboise and had seen, as we did, the place where the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal, his brother, had hundreds of Huguenots deliberately murdered, you would have small pity for any of his name, except for the Duchess of Guise, who protested against the slaughter of the Huguenots and said that misfortune would surely follow those who had planned it, which prediction you see was fulfilled by the assassination of her husband and her son." "That may be all quite true, as you say, dear Miss Mott; but I didn't come here to be feasted on horrors. I can get quite enough of them in the newspapers at home, and it isn't good for you and Zelphine either. You both look quite pale; let us leave these rooms that reek with blood and crime and find something more cheerful to occupy us." The first more cheerful object which we were called upon to admire was the handsome _salle d'honneur_, with its rich wall decorations copied after old tapestries; but just a trifle too bright in color to harmonize with the rest of the old castle. In this room is an elaborately decorated mantel, called _la cheminée aux anges_, which bears the initials L and A on each side of the _porc-épic_, bristling emblem of the twelfth Louis, who was himself less bristling and more humane than most of his royal brothers. Above the mantel shelf two lovely angels bear aloft the crown of France, which surmounts the shield emblazoned with the _fleur-de-lis_ of Louis and the ermine tails of Anne, the whole mantel commemorative of that most important alliance between France and Bretagne, of which we have heard so much. The guide repeated the story of the marriage, Lydia translating her rapid French for Archie's benefit. Observing our apparent interest in Queen Anne, our guide led us out into the grounds and showed us her pavilion and the little terrace called _La Perche aux Bretons_, where the Queen's Breton guards stood while she was at mass. She is said to have always noticed them on her return from the chapel, when she was wont to say, "See my Bretons, there on the terrace, who are waiting for me." Always more Breton at heart than French, Anne loved everything connected with her native land. This trait the guide, being a French woman, evidently resented and said she had little love for Anne. When we translated her remarks to Miss Cassandra she stoutly defended the Queen, saying that it was natural to love your own country best, adding that for her part she was "glad that Anne had a will of her own, so few women had in those days; and notwithstanding the meek expression of her little dough face in her portraits, she seemed to have been a match for lovers and husbands, and this at a time when lovers were quite as difficult to deal with as husbands." Walter, who says that he has heard more than enough of Anne and her virtues, insists that she set a very bad example to French wives of that time, as she gave no end of trouble to her husband, the good King Louis. "Good King Louis, indeed!" exclaimed Miss Cassandra. "He may have remitted the taxes, as Mr. La Tour says; but he did a very wicked thing when he imprisoned the Duke of Milan at Loches. He and Anne were both spending Christmas there at the time, and we are not even told that the King sent his royal prisoner a plum pudding for his Christmas dinner." "It would probably have killed him if he had," said Archie; "plum pudding without exercise is a rather dangerous experiment. Don't you think so yourself, Miss Cassandra?" "He might have liked the attention, anyhow," persisted the valiant lady, "but Louis seems to have had an inveterate dislike for the Duke of Milan, and Mr. La Tour says that one of his small revenges was to call the unfortunate Duke 'Monsieur Ludovico,' which was certainly not a handsome way to treat a royal prisoner." "No, certainly not," Walter admitted, adding, "but from what we have seen of the prisons of France, handsome treatment does not seem to have been a marked feature of prison life at that time; and Anne herself was not particularly gentle in her dealings with her captives." Probably with a view to putting an end to this discussion, which was unprofitable to her, as she could not understand a word of it, the guide led us back to the château and showed us the room in which Queen Anne died. Whatever may have been her faults and irregularities of temper, Anne seems to have had a strong sense of duty and was the first Queen of France who invited to her court a group of young girls of noble family, whom she educated and treated like her own daughters. She even arranged the marriages of these girls entirely to suit herself, of course, and without the slightest regard to their individual preferences, which was more than she was able to do in the case of the young princesses, her children. She lived and died adored by her husband, who gave her a funeral of unprecedented magnificence, and although Louis soon married again, for reasons of state, he never ceased to mourn his _Bretonne_ whom he had loved, honored, and in many instances obeyed. Anne's insignia of the twisted rope and the ermine tails are to be found in nearly every room in the château, and here also is the emblem of her daughter, a cygnet pierced by an arrow, which seems symbolic of the life of the gentle Claude of France, whose heart must often have been wounded by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, as she was made to feel keenly, from her wedding day, that the King, her husband, had no love for her. Matrimonial infelicities are so thickly dotted over the pages of French history that it is impossible to pause in our excursions through these palaces to weep over the sorrows of noble ladies. Indeed, for a French king to have had any affection for his lawful wife seems to have been so exceptional that it was much more commented upon than the unhappiness of royal marriages. These reflections are Miss Cassandra's, not mine; and she added, "I am sorry, though, that Anne's daughter was not happy in her marriage," in very much the same tone that she would have commented upon the marriage of a neighbor's daughter. "I hope the beautiful garden that we have been hearing about was a comfort to her, and there must be some satisfaction, after all, in being a queen and living in a palace as handsome as this." With this extremely worldly remark on the part of our Quaker lady, we passed into the picture gallery of the château, where we saw a number of interesting portraits, among them those of Louis XIII and of his son Louis XIV, in their childhood, quaint little figures with rich gowns reaching to their feet, and with sweet, baby faces of indescribable charm. Here also is a superb portrait of Gaston, the brother of Louis XIII, and a portrait bust of Madame de Sévigné, whose charming face seems to belong to Blois, although she has said little about this château in her letters. Here also are portraits of Madame de Pompadour, Vigée Lebrun, as beautiful as any of the court beauties whom she painted, and a charming head of Mademoiselle de Blois, the daughter of Louise de La Vallière, whom Madame de Sévigné called "the good little princess who is so tender and so pretty that one could eat her." This was at the time of her marriage, which Louis XIV arranged with the Prince de Conti, having always some conscience with regard to his numerous and somewhat heterogeneous progeny. And in this far off gallery of France our patriotism was suddenly aroused to Fourth of July temperature by seeing a portrait of Washington. This portrait, by Peale or Trumbull, was doubtless presented to one of the French officers who were with Washington in many of his campaigns, and the strong calm face seemed, in a way, to dominate these gay and gorgeously appareled French people, as in life he dominated every circle that he entered. We were especially interested in a bust of Ronsard with his emblem of three fishes, which delighted Walter and Archie, who now propose a fishing trip to his Château of La Poissonnière. We love Ronsard for many of his verses, above all for the lines in which he reveals his feeling for the beauties of nature, which was rare in those artificial days. Do you remember what he said about having a tree planted over his grave? "Give me no marble cold When I am dead, But o'er my lowly bed May a tree its green leaves unfold." XI THE ROMANCE OF BLOIS HÔTEL DE FRANCE, Saturday afternoon. WALTER and Archie have elected to spend a part of this afternoon in the Daniel Dupuis Museum, over whose treasures, in the form of engraved medals, they are quite enthusiastic. We women folk, left to our own devices, wandered at will through the first floor rooms and halls of the Château of Blois. The great Salle des Etats, with its blue ceiling dotted over with fleur-de-lis, is said to be the most ancient of them all. Beautiful as many of the rooms are, despite their somewhat too pronounced and vividly colored decorations, and interesting as we found the remains of the Tour de Foix upon which tradition placed the observatory dedicated by Catherine and her pet demon, Ruggieri, to Uranus, the crowning glory of the Château of Blois is the great Court of Honor. We never pass through this impressive portal, surmounted by the gilded equestrian figure of Louis XII, without a feeling of joy in the spaciousness and beauty of this wide sunny court. At a first glance we were bewildered by its varied and somewhat incongruous architecture, the wing of Louis XII, with its fine, open gallery; that of Charles d'Orléans, with its richly decorative sculpture; the Chapel of St. Calais, and the modern and less beautiful wing of Gaston, the work of Francis Mansard, but after all, and above all, what one carries away from the court of Blois is that one perfect jewel of Renaissance skill and taste, the great staircase of Francis I. An open octagonal tower is this staircase, with great rampant bays, delicately carved galleries and exquisite sculptured decorations. Indeed, no words can fully describe the richness and dignity of this unique structure, for which Francis I has the credit, although much of its beauty is said to have been inspired by Queen Claude. We all agreed that this staircase alone would be worth while coming to Blois to see, with its balustrades and lovely pilasters surmounted by Jean Goujon's adorable figures representing Faith, Hope, Abundance, and other blessings of heaven and earth. The charming faces of these statues are said to have been modeled after Diane de Poitiers and other famous beauties of the time. While wandering through the court, we came suddenly upon traces of Charles of Orleans, who was taken prisoner at the battle of Agincourt, and was a captive for twenty-five years in English prisons. A gallery running at right angles to the wing of Louis XII is named after the Duke of Orleans, probably by his son Louis. This gallery, much simpler than the buildings surrounding it, is also rich in sculpture and still richer in associations with the poet-prince, who is said to have solaced the weary hours of his imprisonment by writing verses, chansons, rondeaux, and ballades, some of which were doubtless composed in this gallery after his return from exile. The lines of that exquisite poem, "The fairest thing in mortal eyes," occurred to Lydia's mind and mine at the same moment. We were standing near the ruins of an old fountain, looking up at the gallery of Charles of Orleans and repeating the verses in concert like two school girls, when Miss Cassandra, who had been lingering by the staircase, joined us, evidently not without some anxiety lest we had suddenly taken leave of our senses. Finding that we were only reciting poetry, she expressed great satisfaction that we did not have it in the original, as she is so tired of trying to guess at what people are talking about. [Illustration: COURT OF BLOIS WITH STAIRCASE OF FRANCIS I] Indeed, Henry Cary's translation is so beautiful that we scarcely miss the charm of the old French. We wondered, as we lingered over the lines, which one of the several wives of the Duke of Orleans was "the fairest thing in mortal eyes,"--his first wife, Isabelle of France, or Bonne d'Armagnac, his second spouse? His third wife, Marie de Cleves, probably survived him, and so it could not have been for her that there was spread a tomb "Of gold and sapphires blue: The gold doth show her blessedness, The sapphires mark her true; For blessedness and truth in her Were livelily portrayed, When gracious God with both his hands Her goodly substance made. He framed her in such wondrous wise, She was, to speak without disguise, The fairest thing in mortal eyes." It was pleasant to think of the poet-prince spending the last days of his life in this beautiful château with his wife, Marie de Cleves, and to know that he had the pleasure of holding in his arms his little son and heir, Louis of Orleans, afterwards the good King Louis, our old friend, and the bone of Walter's contention with Miss Cassandra. By the way, I do not at all agree with that usually wise and just lady in her estimate of Louis XII. As M. La Tour says, he was far in advance of his age in his breadth of mind and his sense of the duty owed by a king to his people. Perhaps something of his father's poet vision entered into the more practical nature of Louis, and in nothing did he show more plainly the generosity and breadth of his character than in his forgiveness of those who had slighted and injured him,--when he said, upon ascending the throne, "The King of France does not avenge the wrongs of the Duke of Orleans," Louis placed himself many centuries in advance of the revengeful and rapacious age in which he lived. Another poet whose name is associated with Blois is François Villon. A loafer and a vagabond he was, and a thief he may have been, yet by reason of his genius and for the beauty of his song this troubadour was welcomed to the literary court of Charles d'Orléans. That Villon received substantial assistance and protection from his royal brother poet appears from his poems. Among them we find one upon the birth of the Duke's daughter Mary: _Le Dit de la Naissance Marie_, which, like his patron's verses, is part in French and part in Latin. In this château, which is so filled with history and romance, our thoughts turned from the times of Charles of Orleans to a later period when Catherine sought to dazzle the eyes of Jeanne d'Albret by a series of fêtes and pageants at Blois that would have been quite impossible in her simpler court of Navarre. The Huguenot Queen, as it happened, was not at all bedazzled by the splendors of the French court, but with the keen vision that belonged to her saw, through the powder, paint, tinsel, and false flattery, the depravity and corruption of the life that surrounded her. To her son she wrote that his fiancée was beautiful, witty, and graceful, with a fine figure which was much too tightly laced and a good complexion which was in danger of being ruined by the paint and powder spread over it. With regard to the marriage contract which she had come to sign, the Queen said that she was shamefully used and that her patience was taxed beyond that of Griselda. After many delays the marriage contract was finally signed, and a few days later the good Queen of Navarre was dead, whether from natural causes or from some of the products of Queen Catherine's secret cupboards the world will never know, as Ruggieri and Le Maître were both at hand to do the will of their royal mistress with consummate skill, and to cover over their tracks with equal adroitness. It was to a still later and less tragic period in the history of the château that our thoughts turned most persistently, when Gaston, Duke of Orleans and his wife, Marguerite of Lorraine, held their court here and a bevy of young girls brought charm and grace to these great bare rooms. Gaston's eldest daughter, the Grande Mademoiselle, was often here in those days, acting in amateur theatricals with her stepsisters, one of whom, the little Princess Marguerite d'Orléans, cherished vain hopes of becoming Queen of France by marrying her own cousin, Louis XIV. There is an amusing passage in the diary of Mademoiselle de Montpensier, in which she describes the visit of the King at Blois. "My sister," she said, "came to the foot of the stairs to receive his Majesty," this was of course the beautiful stairway of Francis I, which bears the lovely sculptured figures of Diane de Poitiers and other beauties of the time; but alas, the little Princess Marguerite had been stung by certain flies called gnats which quite spoiled her beautiful complexion, and, adds the frank sister, "made her look quite an object." This circumstance added greatly to Marguerite's chagrin when she learned that Louis was on his way to wed the Spanish Infanta, she herself having been flattered with the hope of marrying her cousin, having been frequently addressed as the "little queen." Louis, never insensible to his own charms, confided to Mademoiselle on his way to Blois that he had not changed his coat or dressed his love-locks; in fact had made himself "_le plus vilain possible_," in order to spare the regrets of his cousin Marguerite and her parents that he had slipped through their fingers. Other young girls in the family group were Mademoiselle de Saint-Remi, whose father, Jacques de Courtarval, Marquis of Saint-Remi, was first steward to Gaston, Duke of Orleans, and Mademoiselle Montelais, whose name occurs in one of the court rhymes of the day in company with that of another young girl, whose history is closely associated with the château, "Guiche of love the ally The maids of honor did supply, He has caged a pretty pair, Montelais and La Vallière." This other girl, who was destined to be a companion to Mademoiselle Montelais at court, was Louise de La Vallière, the stepdaughter of Saint-Remi and the daughter of the Marquis de la Baume-Le Blanc, Sieur de la Gasserie, who took the title of La Vallière after the death of an elder brother. These high-sounding titles of the La Vallières did not stand for much in gold or gear at this time, although there are still ruins to be seen in Bourbonnais of a very ancient castle of the La Baumes. An heroic record was theirs, however, as one of the name, Pierre le Blanc, served under Joan of Arc, and the father of Louise successfully bore the brunt of the enemies' attack at the passage of Brai, in 1634, and secured the retreat of the Spanish. We had seen the house at Tours where Louise was born, but it was at Amboise that the La Vallières lived during her childhood, and here she may have seen the fourteen-year-old Louis, who came with the Queen Mother and Mazarin to this town, which was so gallantly held for him, its rightful lord, against Gaston and his bellicose daughter, by the honest soldier, Laurent de La Vallière. Whether or not little Louise de La Vallière saw the young King at Amboise during the war of the Fronde she certainly saw him when he stopped at Blois, some years later, on his way to Saint-Jean de Luz and the Spanish marriage. Louis and his court were the guests of Gaston in 1660, although they had been openly arrayed against each other at Amboise in 1651. Mademoiselle de Montpensier, in her frank and amusing chronicles, tells us that the King evidently found her father's château a dull place to stop in over night. The customs and costumes of the household failed to please the fastidious young monarch; the meal was served in "old-fashioned style, and the ladies were dressed like the dishes--all out of fashion." Dumas makes Louis remark facetiously to Madame Gaston, that his teacher in geography had not told him that Blois was so far from Paris that the fashions could not reach the provincial town for several years. Only one figure in the group, which had gathered in the vast _salle_ to do honor to the monarch, appeared to him worthy of royal regard. This was a slight, girlish form, in white muslin, a costume so simple that it could never be quite out of date. Standing this afternoon in the Salle de Reception, we pictured to ourselves the first meeting of the King and Louise de La Vallière on the night of the arrival of the court at Blois. The fast-fading light lent a semblance of reality to the scene, as the torches and candles used in those early days could not have brilliantly lighted the vast hall. We fancied the chairs placed in half circle for the accommodation of the royal guests, the King's not a half-inch higher than that of Mazarin or of the Queen, Anne of Austria. The astute Italian Prime Minister is seated, his body is bent, his face pallid, the hand of Death is already laid upon him, but his mind is as keen and alert as in youth, his eyes as penetrating. The courtiers are grouped around Mazarin, the real king; Gaston, the indolent father of the energetic and courageous Mademoiselle de Montpensier, is talking to Mazarin, and chronicles of the day tell us that the Duke was an admirable _raconteur_. The Grande Mademoiselle, now over thirty, and in the full flower of a beauty which, according to Petitot's miniature and her own rose-colored description, was not inconsiderable, is in another group at one side of the hall, with her half-sisters and the other young girls of the house. Called forth from her modest station behind the princesses of the House of Orleans by the command of her hostess, Louise de La Vallière stepped forward, confused and blushing, to make her deep courtesy before the King, while the Duchess presented her in due form as Mademoiselle de la Baume-Le Blanc, daughter of the Marquis de La Vallière and stepdaughter of the Marquis de Saint-Remi. As Madame de Motteville described her at seventeen, we see the slight girlish form of La Vallière making her reverence before royalty, owing her charm, as the court lady relates, more to a certain grace, modesty and tenderness in bearing and expression than to the dazzling whiteness and rosiness of her skin, the exquisite blueness of her eyes and the brilliancy of her blonde hair of the shade which the French call _cheveux argentés_. [Illustration: LOUISE DE LA VALLIÈRE] Although Madame de la Motte's description of Louise de La Vallière is charming and sympathetic, we long for the graceful and vivifying pen of Madame de Sévigné to picture for us the young girl as she appeared at her home in Blois, before the equally baneful breath of court favor or court scandal had brushed the bloom from her innocent loveliness. Dear Madame de Sévigné, with her graceful fancy, her _joie de vivre_, and her inimitable skill in presenting a situation and making her characters live before us, should have been immortal as well as universal. We wish for a letter from her in every château of the Loire, most of all here at Blois, of which she has written so little. When Madame de Sévigné saw Louise de La Vallière some months later at court, she likened her to a modest violet, hiding beneath its leaves; but not so completely as to evade the eyes of royalty. And if Louise was lovely in her gown of virginal white, the King was a no less pleasing object to gaze upon. At all times courteous and graceful, at twenty-three Louis is described as handsome, well-formed, with deep blue eyes, and a profusion of curling hair which fell over his shoulders. Although somewhat under the middle height, he bore himself with an air of majesty and dignity, inherited from his royal mother, and would have been "every inch a King," said Saint-Simon, "even if he had been born under the roof of a beggar." It was this grace and personal charm, which Louis possessed in no small degree, that appealed to the girl's imagination, rather than the grandeur of his station. If Louise had not seen him again the image of this young prince from fairyland might in time have faded from her mind, especially as an incipient love affair with a neighbor's son already existed. Some notes and occasional shy glances had been exchanged between Mademoiselle de La Vallière and young Bragelongne, who lived next door to the Saint-Remis at Blois, and had she not been suddenly carried off to court this nebulous romance might have materialized into a happy marriage, and a career more honorable, if less brilliant and exciting, than that which lay before her. It was this early affair with a neighbor's son which gave Dumas some historic foundation for his captivating and pathetic story of the Vicomte de Bragelonne. Whether or not the young lover wore his heart upon his sleeve to the end of his days, it is quite evident that M. de Bragelongne was speedily forgotten by Louise amid the pleasures and distractions of the gayest court in Europe. As maid of honor to the English princess, Henriette, Louise was plunged into all the festivities of Fontainebleau, Versailles, and the Palais Royal, of which the King was always the soul and centre. You will think that my pen has run away with me in following the fortunes of Louise de La Vallière from Blois to Paris and from Paris to Versailles; but Lydia and I have been reading a book about Blois which M. La Tour had sent to us from Paris. This book, which dwells particularly upon the story of Louise de La Vallière and her association with the Château of Blois, has brought the life of that time before us so vividly that we feel as if we had some part and lot in the pathetic tale. The festivities and intrigues of Fontainebleau and Versailles may seem a far cry from the old Château of Blois, and yet the court life of that older time, dramatic and picturesque as it was, was curiously limited. The characters were always the same, the pageant alone shifted from palace to château, and from one château of the Loire to another. Now the court is at Amboise, again at Chenonceaux, and again at the stately palace of Chambord. The King is always surrounded by the same courtiers and the same favorites, whether he is riding through the forest of Fontainebleau or hunting at Chambord, in which princely domain Louis boasted that he had shot fourteen of his Uncle Gaston's cherished pheasants in one afternoon. The distances are short, and even in the days of slow-going coaches the court could breakfast at Chambord and sup at Blois. Through the influence of a distant relative Louise de La Vallière was given a place at court in the service of the English princess, the beautiful, captivating and capricious Henriette, daughter of Charles I and wife of the King's young brother, Philippe d'Orléans. Chroniclers of the time all agree in attributing to her rare charm of manner, a lively wit and a keen intellect. A patron of the great writers of the day, she encouraged Corneille and the older poets and emboldened the younger by her appreciation. Henriette wept over the _Andromaque_ when Racine read it to her, until the happy youth's head was well-nigh turned by what he considered the most fortunate beginning of its destiny. This combination of beauty, charm, and intellect, found more frequently, perhaps, in France than in any other country, rendered Madame the most irresistible of women, and as Saint-Beuve says, the most touching of princesses. The King, who at sixteen had refused to dance with the thin and not especially attractive child of eleven, because, as he explained to his mamma, he did not care for little girls, took himself to task later for not realizing before she became his brother's fiancée that Henriette was the most beautiful woman in the world. At the time that Louise de La Vallière entered her household Madame Henriette was enjoying her hour of triumph. The King, who had been slow in discovering her charms, was at her feet. The death of Mazarin, the miserly, had given Louis a freedom in his own kingdom that he had never before known. Entertainment followed entertainment, all given in honor of the English bride, his own Spanish bride having been relegated to the background of this gay court, from which she was never destined to emerge. "It seemed," wrote Madame de Lafayette, "as if the King had no interest in these _fêtes_ except through the gratifications they gave to Madame." It was in the summer time, and the royalties were at Fontainebleau, which delightful palace of pleasure, with its extensive grounds, made a charming background for the succession of _fêtes_ and dances that Louis planned for his sister-in-law. There were expeditions on land by day, water parties on the lake by the light of the moon, and promenades in the woods by night. Madame delighted to bathe in the Seine; accordingly parties were arranged for her pleasure, the ladies driving to the river and returning on horseback, in elaborate costumes with wonderful plumes in their hats, to an _al fresco_ breakfast in the park. A theatre was erected in the grounds and Lulli was installed as superintendent of the royal music. Among other entertainments a Ballet des Saisons was given, in which the King, in a gorgeous costume representing Spring, danced with his usual grace and skill, while Madame, in a gown of shining tissue, delicate as a butterfly's wing, led her troupe of Bacchantes, Louise de La Vallière among them. It was after one of these entertainments, which were sometimes followed by rambles in the park lasting until two or three o'clock in the morning, that the scene under the Royal Oak took place which Dumas has so ingeniously woven into his romance of La Vallière. You remember that the three maids of honor of Madame,--Montelais, Athenais, and Louise,--were grouped together under the famous oak in the forest of Fontainebleau, which had witnessed the sighs for love or glory of the great Henry and many another monarch. The conversation of the three girls on life and love sounds trite and commonplace as we read the story, and yet in the light of the events that followed in quick succession the sentimental platitudes of the innocent child, La Vallière, and the worldly aphorisms of the ambitious Athenais, afterwards Madame de Montespan, gain both dignity and pathos. That Louise, the timid and gentle, should express herself so warmly upon her admiration for the King reveals the fact that the handsome young sovereign had already made an impression upon her sensitive heart. For her it seemed that there had been no one worthy of notice at the dance except the King, the living embodiment of the springtime he personified. When she exclaimed with fervor, "Have you ever seen any one to be compared with the King?" even the bold Athenais was surprised at the frankness of the little Blésoise. A still greater surprise was in store for the Three Graces under the Royal Oak when a rustling was heard in the undergrowth of the adjoining quincunx, and with cries of "A wolf! or a wild boar!" they all scampered away as fast as their feet could carry them to the safe and sure shelter of Madame's apartments, to learn later to their dismay that the rustling in the bushes had been caused, not by a wolf or a wild boar, but by the King himself, who was sauntering through the park with M. de Saint-Aignan. Whether or not Louise ever thus openly expressed her admiration for the King, one may readily believe that even a slight impression made upon the girl's imagination would be inevitably deepened and strengthened in these days when the court life at Fontainebleau is described as a delirium of ambition, pleasure and love. The merry-making and feasting continued, the _fêtes_ still being given in Madame's honor, and "the modest violet" might have remained hidden beneath its leaves had not Madame Henriette's schemes involved Louise. It appears that the Queen Mother, having in common with others observed the King's growing admiration for his beautiful sister-in-law, expostulated with him, entreating him, in the name of dignity and decorum, to discontinue his attentions to her. The King, angry and disconcerted that his actions should be criticised, formed with the aid of the quick-witted Madame, who cared little for Louis but greatly enjoyed her position as queen of the hour, a plot which involved several of the maids of honor. So infamous was this plot of Madame's that one wonders that a woman, to whom kindness of heart has been attributed, could have countenanced a scheme so cruel. "In order to hide their own game," said Saint-Beuve, "the King was to pay make-believe attention to several of Madame's maids of honor." The three selected were Mademoiselle de Pons, Mademoiselle de Chimerault, and Mademoiselle de La Vallière. It soon appeared that the latter was the one whom the King preferred to seem to be in love with. The plot soon thickened quite beyond Madame's anticipations, the make-believe attentions became real, the other maids of honor were quite neglected, Madame herself was forgotten, and while trying to dazzle the eyes of the public Louis himself was bewildered, and soon found himself seriously in love with La Vallière, at least as seriously in love as it was in his nature to be. And Louise was then and ever after deeply, hopelessly in love with the King. Is it strange that this innocent girl, little more than a child in years and experience, with many to flatter and criticise, but none to counsel or protect, should have fallen into the trap that was laid for her unwary feet? From her quiet village home she was suddenly, as Madame's dame d'honneur, introduced to a new world, in which the King, young, handsome, and possessed of all the graces and accomplishments of his age, was the central figure. Before she had time to become accustomed to the life around her, the greatest temptation that could be offered to a Frenchwoman of that day was presented to her. This monarch, the Roi Soleil to his adoring satellites, was at her feet, telling her that he loved her, and her only, little Louise de La Vallière, whom the haughty court dames had looked down upon as insignificant, lacking in grace and even beauty. It was only a few short days since water parties, ballets, and _fêtes_ had been given in Madame's honor; the gayety continued, but Henriette was no longer the inspiration of these festivities, which were planned for other _beaux yeux_, whose she does not know. Louise was so modest and retiring, so anxious to spare the Queen sorrow and pain, that it was some time before it transpired that the little Blésoise, whom Madame would not have condescended to look upon as a possible rival, was the reigning favorite. In the midst of the scheming, love making, jealousy, and carousing, the King's second child--the little Princess Anne Elizabeth--opened her eyes to the light of the world, only to close them again before the rejoicings at her birth were well over, even before the foreign ambassadors who came to welcome her had reached Paris. The Queen was deeply grieved at the loss of her child, Louis wept copiously over the family affliction, but being in greater need of distraction than before we find him a few weeks later dancing gayly in a Ballet des Arts in company with Mademoiselle de Mortmart, _la belle Athenais_, Mademoiselle de Sévigné, whom her fond mother called the "prettiest girl in France," and Mademoiselle de La Vallière, who, despite her slight lameness, danced to perfection, her slim figure, of the lissome slenderness that belongs to early youth, showing to great advantage in the figures of the cotillon. You know the sad story far better than I do. The few short years of enchantment when Louise lived in the delirium of love's young dream, yet was never really happy, never enjoying her honors as Duchesse de La Vallière, the royal favorite, because her conscience was ever awake and her tender heart filled with remorse for the sorrow she had caused the Queen. The brief years of enchantment were soon over, to be followed by disillusionment, when it was revealed to Louise that the fickle heart of Louis had succumbed to other charms; the final flight from court and the long years of repentance at the Carmelites. Twice before Louise had taken refuge in a convent. The first time she sought to fly from her passion and herself, to be brought back to court by the adoring King, the second flight was when Louis had begun to transfer his attentions to Madame de Montespan, and finally, at thirty, Louise de La Vallière retired to Chaillot to expiate whatever sins she had committed by thirty-six long years of prayer and penitence. Having entered the Carmelites in the bright bloom of her beauty, her lovely blonde hair severed from her graceful head, La Vallière was known ever after as Sister Louise de la Miséricorde, and as if anything more were needed to complete the tragedy, the King whom she had loved so deeply, to whom she had sacrificed her life, although at the time much engrossed with Madame de Montespan, was incapable of forgiving Louise for quitting the court, and never made the slightest effort to see her again. "He has forgotten her," wrote the vivacious and outspoken Madame, mother of the Regent, "as much as if he had never known her." In her repentance, which was evidently deep and sincere, La Vallière likened herself to three great sinners, the Canaanitish woman, the woman of Samaria, and the Magdalen, and asked only that her sins be forgiven. Bossuet, who received her confession, compared her to a dove taking its flight heavenward, while Madame de Sévigné, who visited her at the Carmelites about the time of the marriage of La Vallière's daughter to the Prince de Conti, wrote to Madame de Grignan: "But what an angel she appeared to me! To my eyes she possessed all the charms of early days, the same eyes and the same expression: the austere life, meagre fare and little sleep _ni les lui ont ni creusés ni battus_. The severe costume has despoiled her of no grace or dignity; indeed, this dress and this retreat add greatly to her dignity." Just as we were leaving the château a pleasant diversion came in the form of a call from M. La Tour, who had motored over from his father's country seat to dine with us to-night. I was glad to see him, as I wished to thank him for a book which we found at the hotel, when we reached here yesterday, which has added so much to our interest in the château. I tell M. La Tour that if we dream to-night of court pageants at Blois, midnight strolls in the forest, and girlish confidences under the Royal Oak, at Fontainebleau, it will be quite his fault for making the story so real to us. Then, as if to deepen the impression already made, he proceeded to draw us a picture of the _cortège_ attending Louis XIV on his arrival at Blois,--the great state carriages of wood and leather, with their Genoa velvet cushions and wide wheels, surrounded by outriders advancing in perfect order, at a foot's pace, the musketeers in their brilliant uniform, the horns of varying sorts exciting the dogs and horses,--movement, noise, color, a mirage of light announced the King's approach to the château, of which nothing can now convey any adequate idea unless it be the picturesque splendor and false majesty of a theatrical spectacle. As M. La Tour described this brilliant scene, another arose before me unbidden, this last in the dim religious light of the convent, where a woman still young, in the full maturity of her beauty, is taking the veil, which is held for the former royal favorite by the neglected Queen of Louis, Maria Teresa. Although some chroniclers tell us that the King's eyes were red with weeping all the day before, he probably went hunting that day after pheasants, or whatever game was in season, amid the flatteries and acclamations of his courtiers. So short was the memory of a King! So long and deep was the repentance of a woman more sinned against than sinning! The floral offerings, this evening, were handsomer than usual, having come from M. La Tour's paternal gardens. Miss Cassandra and I have bouquets of sweet peas of exquisite shades of mauve, purple and white, quite suitable for chaperones, while for Lydia was reserved a choice posy of the blue forget-me-nots, that the French adore, surrounded by mignonette. Lydia is wearing a soft grey voile gown to-night, cut low enough to reveal the roundness and whiteness of her throat, and the blue flowers against her grey corsage made a perfect finish to the simple, dainty costume, beside which they are exactly the color of her eyes. Upon this fact M. La Tour is probably expatiating this minute, as they are talking together in the embrasure of a window in this odd little room which answers the purpose of salon and writing room, in which I scribble off these lines to you. We are all enjoying the young Frenchman's visit, with one exception perhaps, Archie, who is smoking on the terrace alone. I can see his face from where I am sitting, and it wears a rather careworn expression,--much as he used to look when he was interne at the P----Hospital and had a particularly bad case under his care. Walter, who is writing at a table near me, is laughing over my description, and says that this is a bad case for Archie and M. La Tour, whatever it may be for Lydia, who Quaker-like is so self-contained and serene of countenance that she does not betray her feelings by so much as the lifting of an eyelash. She treats both of her admirers with charming impartiality. "How is Archie ever going to find out whether Lydia cares for him, Zelphine?" This from Walter's writing table, in a stage whisper. "Even you, inveterate matchmaker that you are, have met your Waterloo for once. Angela, with all her roguish ways, wasn't a patch to this demure Lydia. You certainly are having experiences, Zelphine, and are keeping your hand in for Christine and Lisa when they come along. I feel sorry for poor old Archie; but we all have to have our troubles in this line sooner or later." "Then why have you added to Archie's troubles by urging M. La Tour to go with us to-morrow?" "How could I help asking him," this in Walter's most persuasive tone, "when he has taken the trouble to come over here to dine with us? In common decency I could do nothing else." "Of course nothing will ever come of this, as M. La Tour's parents have no doubt arranged an advantageous marriage for him, but----" "Do you want anything to come of it, Zelphine?" "How you tease! You know very well that I do not; but poor Archie's holiday is being spoiled, all the same." "Well, he can't go with us anyhow, Zelphine dear, for to-morrow is his mother's birthday, and he will have to leave here betimes, in order to be at home to lunch with Madame La Tour. I must go out on the terrace now and comfort Archie." "Don't be _too_ comforting, Walter, and why didn't you tell me before that M. La Tour could not go with us to-morrow?" "I did not quite realize how important his movements were, and after all he holds out a hope of rejoining us at Chinon, on Monday." This conversation with my good man, dear Margaret, will give you a fairly satisfactory idea of a very unsatisfactory state of affairs except that I am not quite sure about Chinon. Walter looked so mischievous, when he added that bit of information, that I am inclined to think he made it up, on the spur of the moment, just to give me something to think about. By the way, I am leaving the most important item for the end of this long letter. M. La Tour brought a charming note from his mother, inviting us to lunch with her any day that suits us. The Château La Tour is somewhere between Blois and Paris, not much out of our way; but we really have not time to stop over even for a few hours, as Angela writes from Paris that the Dudleys leave her on Tuesday to sail from Cherbourg. The child cannot stay at a hotel alone, and she says that she is so busy over her trousseau that she has not time to join us here even for a few days. So you see we have only Monday for Chinon, a night at Angers and a full day on Tuesday, as we return to Paris, via Orleans, where we wish to have several hours _en route_ for the Joan of Arc associations. It would be a delightful experience to lunch at the Château La Tour, but under the circumstances, a trifle embarrassing. Archie would flatly refuse to go, I am sure, and Walter would think it a perfect bore, so it is just as well that we have a good, ready-made excuse. I don't know what Miss Cassandra thinks about the situation of affairs, as for once in her life she is as discreet and non-committal as Lydia; but she is evidently much disappointed about the luncheon at the Château La Tour. She is always ready for a new experience, and is eager to meet Madame La Tour, who claims cousinship with her. However, this last pleasure may be only deferred, as Madame hopes to call upon us in Paris later in the month. XII THREE CHÂTEAUX HÔTEL DE FRANCE, Blois, September 11th. THIS has been a golden day of pure delight, with a brilliant sunshine from early morn to dewy eve, and a cool, refreshing air, an altogether ideal day for our prolonged visitations among the châteaux around Blois! Lydia and I went to the little Protestant church with Miss Cassandra this morning, as a salve to our consciences, Archie says, in view of the giddy round of pleasure that we had planned for the afternoon. He and Walter tried to beguile Lydia from our side, to spend the morning in roaming about Blois with them; but she is a loyal little soul and resisted all their blandishments with sweet steadfastness, saying that after following the Huguenots through all the miseries that were heaped upon them, the least that we can do is to honor their memories in their chapel here at Blois. Archie says that we are quite right and that this sentiment is praiseworthy; but that as he and Walter were unable to honor these heroic souls in their own language, to attend such a service would be a mockery. "Yes," Walter added, "it would seem like a bit of play-acting to sit there in church, like two whited sepulchres, trying to look as if we understood when we should not know six words of what was being said." Miss Cassandra, being accustomed to religious service where not a word is spoken in any language, naturally does not think much of these arguments; but having a strong liking for my two men she is quite willing to excuse them from accompanying us to the chapel. Nor do I wonder that they are glad to have a fine morning in which to roam about this interesting old town together, and to give zest and point to their rambles, M. La Tour has told them of an ancient coin associated with the history of Blois. This coin is said to be the oldest document in existence on, or in, which the name of Blois is inscribed, it also bears the name of the officer of the mint at Blois at the time of its issue, far back in history. Of course Walter and Archie are very anxious to see this ancient coin, and M. La Tour has given them a letter of introduction to the man who has charge of it, which he assured them would admit them to a view of it Sundays or holidays, or any time in the day or night. We enjoyed the service in the little church, where we heard a really eloquent discourse from an old _pasteur_ with the most beautiful, benevolent face that you can imagine. We are quite sure that this handsome, venerable clergyman comes from a long line of heroic Huguenot ancestors, and Miss Cassandra says that she did not mind so much not understanding what he said, as she was quite sure that it was all to edification, which she evidently does not always feel with regard to the long tales that the guides spin off for us, and in truth Lydia and I have tripped them up more than twice in their history. We returned to the hotel quite enthusiastic about the chapel and its pastor, and Miss Cassandra is already planning some benevolent scheme to help the evidently struggling congregation. If her means were equal to her charitable intent, what would she not do for the benefit of mankind in all quarters of the globe? Walter and Archie were so impressed by her description of "the venerable descendant of a long line of massacred Huguenots" that they have made substantial acknowledgments to be sent by Lydia and myself to the patrons of the little chapel. The idea of visiting three châteaux in one afternoon was rather appalling at first; but the afternoon was long, beginning soon after our twelve o'clock _déjeuner_, and the roads are fine for motoring in this level country. Our way lay for some miles by Loire, first on one bank and then on the other. This flat country, with its wide reaches of meadow land and distant horizon lines, has a charm of its own, its restfulness suits the drowsy autumn days, and no trees could be better fitted to border these roadsides and river banks than the tall slim Lombardy poplars, with their odd bunches of foliage atop like the plumes and pompons on soldiers' caps. Down by some of the streams large white poplars have spread out their branches, making coverts from the sunshine for man and beast. On these poplars we noticed what looked like huge green nests. "Are they crows' nests?" we asked, as there seem to be no end of crows all about here. "No, not for the _corbeaux_," said the chauffeur, shaking his head and looking fairly puzzled, as he explained with some elaboration that this was a parasitic plant which drew its nourishment from various trees, and that later in the season white, waxlike berries would appear upon it. "It is the mistletoe!" exclaimed Lydia, joyously, as if meeting an old friend in a strange land, and as she was, as usual, conducting the general information course, she asked the chauffeur if it was not used for decoration at Christmas and the New Year, being hung where lovers were likely to pass, a custom derived from the rites of the ancient Druids. The chauffeur was evidently unacquainted with the ways of the Druids, his studies in folk lore not having been extensive; but the bit about the lovers he understood, and in that curious way, that has so often surprised us, perhaps by a certain mental telepathy, he suddenly understood, slapped his hand upon his knee, and exclaimed, "Yes, yes, Mademoiselle, it is the same thing, le mis-le-toe, _le gui_." So it is _le gui_, that we see on so many trees, and this man, evidently of the soil, as he knows all about the products here, tells us that it grows upon pear, apple and other trees and is cut off and sent in great quantities to the large towns for holiday celebrations. From the level landscape with low-lying meadows and fields of turnips in which men and women were at work, we suddenly saw the great round towers of Chaumont rising from among the trees of a well-wooded ridge. Like Langeais, Chaumont is a strong fortress of the middle ages, dark and lowering at a first view, but with much beauty in its hillside park and gardens. We crossed a creaking, swaying suspension bridge, one is always crossing bridges here, as the Loire winds itself around these châteaux as if it delighted to encircle them in its shining arms. The best view of the château is from this bridge, which connects the villages of Chaumont and Onzain. From this coign of vantage it rises before us, crowning the hill-crest with its many towers and dominating the little village at its feet and the broad river. The Loire is twice as wide here as at Blois, its surface broken up by many sand bars and stretches of pebbly beach, such brilliantly colored pebbles as we used to see in Northern Italy, when the rivers were low as these are here to-day. Much the same view is this as John Evelyn's first sight of Chaumont, on a May day long ago: "We took boate," wrote Evelyn, "passing by Chaumont, a proud castle on the left hand; before it a small island deliciously shaded with tall trees." As we motored through the village street, whose houses run parallel with the river, we noticed that the town seemed to be _en fête_. The outside of the little church was decorated with banners, lanterns and flowers, while within it was so filled to overflowing with villagers, and small maidens in white frocks and pink and blue sashes, that we could scarcely get our noses within the doorway. The village was celebrating some church festival, the chauffeur told us; but we stupidly forget which saint was being honored, perhaps because the remainder of the afternoon was spent among those who had small claim to saint-hood, and then as Miss Cassandra says, "There are so many of these saints, how can we ever keep track of them all?" [Illustration: CHÂTEAU OF CHAUMONT: THE LOIRE ON THE LEFT] "And it is so much easier to remember the sinners," Walter adds, "because there is always something doing among them." Leaving the auto in the village, we climbed up to the castle by a steep and narrow path and entered the great doorway where the moat and drawbridge between the huge round towers again reminded us of Langeais. Over this entrance are the graven initials of Louis and Anne of Brittany, the arms of George of Amboise with his cardinal's hat, and the double C's of Charles of Chaumont and his wife, Catherine of Chauvigny. Here also are some scattered D's which stand for Diane of Poitiers, who consented to accept this château when Catherine offered her a Hobson's choice of Chaumont or nothing. We were especially interested in a rich frieze in which were intertwined the double C's and the odd device of the burning mountain, "Chaud-mont," from which, it is said, the name of the château was derived. As Chaumont is still inhabited, we were not shown the whole of the castle, but fortunately for us the suite of historic rooms was on view. Here again we came upon associations with the dreadful Catherine, whose bedroom and furniture are shown to visitors. Whether or not these articles are genuine, and grave doubts are thrown upon their authenticity, they are very handsome and of the proper period. The tapestries in these rooms are all old and charming in color, of old rose and pink. A description which I came across in a delightful book by Mr. Theodore A. Cook, which M. La Tour brought us from his mother's library, gives a better idea of this tapestry than any words of mine: "Beside the door a blinded Love with rose-red wings and quiver walks on the flushing paths, surrounded by strange scrolls and mutilated fragments of old verses; upon the wall in front are ladies with their squires attending, clad all in pink and playing mandolins, while by the stream that courses through the flowery meadows small rosy children feed the water birds, that seem to blush with pleasure beneath the willow boughs of faded red." Next to the so-called room of Catherine de Médicis is the chamber attributed to Ruggieri, the chosen aide and abettor of her schemes, which apartment very properly communicates with a private stairway leading to the platform of the tower which is said to have been used by him as an observatory. Whether or not Catherine ever inhabited these rooms, and we know that she never lived for any length of time at Chaumont, I must confess that seeing them thus conveniently placed for plotting and adventure, they impressed us even more than her secret stairways and poison cupboards at Blois. This may have been because these rooms are small and dark and dreary, Ruggieri's being in one of the corner towers, with small windows cut in the wall, which is over two metres in thickness. From whatever reason, these apartments are the most weird and ghostly that we have seen, fitted up as they are with many memorials of Catherine, and two portraits of her, one in a rich costume, an extinguisher gown with pink underskirt and wide full sleeves bordered with a band of fur, each one as large as an ordinary muff. There is also a portrait of Ruggieri here, whose dark, sinister face adds much to the grewsomeness of the room, and standing here we could readily imagine the scene, described by a chronicler of the time, when the Queen sought Ruggieri here among his philters, minerals, foreign instruments, parchments and maps of the heavens, to consult him about the future of her offspring. This was soon after the death of Henry II, when the young King's health had begun to break down. When the Queen desired to be shown the horoscopes of her children, by some skillful arrangement of mirrors the astrologer made her four sons to pass before her, each in turn wearing crowns for a brief period; but all dying young and without heirs, each figure was to turn around as many times as the number of years he was to live. Poor Francis appeared, wan and sickly, and before he had made an entire circle he passed out of sight, from which the Queen knew that the young King would die before the year was out, which, as we know, came true, as did some of the other prognostications. What must have filled to the brim the cup of misery which this ambitious, disappointed woman had held to her lips, was to see the rival of her sons, the bitterly hated Henry of Navarre, following their shadows upon the mirror and making over twenty turns, which meant that he would reign in France for twenty years, or more. By whatever means the astrologer accomplished these predictions, the remarkable thing about them is that the account of this interview at Chaumont was written during the reign of Henry III, before some of them had been fulfilled. Catherine, firmly believing in Ruggieri's prognostications, left the château a sadder if not a wiser woman. The rooms of Catherine communicate directly with the chapel, where there is a most realistic picture of The Last Judgment, and her book of the hours lies open on her _prie dieu_ as if she had just finished her devotions. For good and sufficient reasons, we do not think of this Queen at prayer as readily as we figure her taking part in affairs of state, plotting for the destruction of her enemies and trying to hoodwink the Huguenots and Leaguers in turn. "And yet," as Walter reminds us, "Catherine was extremely devout, with all her deviltry." You may remember a portrait of her in fine enamel at the Louvre, which represents Catherine kneeling before an altar, her hands devoutly clasped, and as if to give point to the time-honored adage "handsome is that handsome does," the Queen's face, in this enamel, possesses some claim to good looks. M. La Tour has been telling us of some old papers, recently brought to light, which prove that Catherine, during the babyhood of her children, was an anxious and watchful mother. She seems to have written careful and minute directions regarding the food and clothing of her little ones, in one instance directing that her son Henry should not be encouraged to eat largely, adding, like any wise mother of to-day, "I am of opinion that my children are rather ill from being too fat than too thin." The evidence of this opinion is borne out by Clouet's drawings of the chubby face of Henry and the fat, heavy cheeks of Francis II, both in their babyhood. It was little Francis, an unassertive prince in after years, who at the age of two insisted upon discarding his petticoats, upon which the King, when consulted upon this important question, wrote to the governor of the royal nursery, "It is right indeed that my son should wear breeches if he asks for them; for I do not doubt that he knows perfectly well what is needful." These intimate details of the youth of the royal children, trifling as they are, add a human interest to the figures of Henry II and Catherine, whom we only think of as sweeping through these châteaux in form and state, and raise a question as to whether, after all, this cruel Queen had not a heart somewhere tucked away under her jewelled bodice. Chaumont has many associations earlier than the days of Catherine, reaching back to Charles of Amboise, who built much of the château, and to his father Georges, one of the chief ministers of Louis XII. It is said that Georges of Amboise used his tact and influence to gain the papal bull necessary for the King's divorce from Jeanne of France, which was brought to Chinon by Cæsar Borgia, with great state and ceremony. It was this same papal envoy who brought Georges d'Amboise his cardinal's hat. Unscrupulous as he may have been in some instances, Cardinal d'Amboise seems to have been, in the main, a wise and judicious minister and helped Louis to institute many important reforms. The romance of Chaumont is its association with the knightly figure of Henri Coiffier de Ruzé, Marquis de Cinq Mars. The opening scene of De Vigny's novel rises before us, as we pass through the rooms of Chaumont. The young Marquis was about to set forth upon his ill-fated journey into the great world, and the members of his family were gathered together for a solemn, farewell meal. De Vigny represents the poor youth neglecting his dinner, and even indifferent to his mother's sorrow over his departure in his desire to meet the beautiful eyes of Marie de Gonzague, who was seated at the other end of the table, from whom he was soon to part forever. It was by a lattice window in the rez-de-chaussée of the western tower that Cinq-Mars found Marie waiting for him, when he retraced his steps and came back at midnight for a last word with her. We looked in vain for the window by which the lovers swore eternal fidelity to their love and to each other; but the château has doubtless undergone some changes since those early days, although it looks so ancient. Lydia and I were wishing for a copy of Cinq-Mars in order to follow the young Marquis through his sad and singular experience at Loudun, his meeting with his old friend De Thou, his brilliant exploit at Perpignan, his rapid preferment at court, and--just here Walter called us from our rapid review of the career of Cinq-Mars to show us a head of Benjamin Franklin in terra cotta. This excellent low relief of Franklin is in a case with a number of other medallions, made by an Italian, Nini, whom the owner of Chaumont brought here in the hope of turning to account some clay found on the estate. This admirable medallion excited the two antiquarians of the party more than anything we have seen here, even more than the weird sky parlor of Ruggieri. Walter is wondering whether this is not the medallion about which Dr. Franklin wrote to his daughter soon after his arrival at Passy, as the first of its kind made in France. This idea seems more probable, in view of the fact that the same M. Le Ray, who owned Chaumont at that time, was Franklin's host at Passy for nine years. All of which, as Walter says, makes it more than likely that the old philosopher came to Chaumont to have his portrait modelled by Nini, especially as his relations with the master of Chaumont were of the most friendly nature. The old potteries in which the Italian artist worked have long since been turned into stables and a riding school. Another familiar and even more recent figure associated with Chaumont is Madame de Staël, who took refuge here, while reading the proofs of her work upon Germany, Chaumont being the requisite forty leagues from Paris. M. Le Ray and his family, with whom Madame de Staël was upon the most intimate terms, were in America at this time. Here in the old château the De Staëls lived for some time, the authoress working in peace and quietness upon her great work. When M. Le Ray and his family returned to Chaumont, although hospitably invited to remain at the château, Madame de Staël insisted upon removing with her family to a villa in the neighborhood, which was placed at her disposal by M. de Salaberry. At this place, called Fossé, Madame de Staël welcomed Madame Récamier and other friends, and with the charming French trait of making the most of the joys of the hour, she wrote with enthusiasm of the happy days that she passed near her friends at Chaumont. Even if the old Vendean soldier, the châtelain of Fossé, took little care of his estate, she said that his constant kindness made everything easy and his original turn of mind made everything amusing. "No sooner had we arrived," wrote Madame de Staël, "than an Italian musician whom I had with me, to give lessons to my daughter, began to play the guitar. My daughter accompanied on the harp the sweet voice of my fair friend, Madame Récamier; the peasants assembled below the windows astonished to find this colony of troubadours who came to enliven the solitude of their master. It was there that I passed my last days in France, with a few friends whose memories are cherished in my heart. Surely this reunion so intimate, this solitary sojourn, this delightful dalliance with the fine arts could hurt no one." Charming, innocent, pastoral seems this life, as Madame de Staël described it, and yet even such simple pleasures as these she was not allowed to enjoy, for during a brief visit to the home of M. de Montmorency, an attempt was made to seize her manuscripts, which her children had fortunately put in a place of safety; her book was suppressed and she was ordered to leave France within three days. When Madame de Staël asked why she was treated with such harshness by the government and why her book was censured, the answer given under the signature of the ministry plainly stated that the head and front of her offending consisted in her not having mentioned the Emperor in her last work. It is difficult to believe that a man who could do such great things as Napoleon could be so small as to follow this brilliant woman with bitter, relentless hatred, because she failed to burn incense at his shrine. Although we were not given the freedom of the grounds, we were shown the beautiful court of honor with its one fine tree, a cedar of Lebanon which spreads its branches quite close to the chapel walls. There is an old Italian well in this court, with low reliefs carved upon its sides, and graceful ornaments of wrought iron above the sweep. We pictured to ourselves the Marquis de Cinq Mars and Marie de Gonzague meeting in this court, under the friendly branches of the great cedar, and so with a tender thought for these hapless old-time lovers, we turned away from Chaumont. Still musing and dreaming over its numerous and varied associations, we motored along toward Cheverny. This was an afternoon in which to dream,--the air was full of a delicious drowsy autumnal warmth, and a soft haze hung over the Loire and its tributaries. Involuntarily our thoughts turn back to the time when the kings and nobles of France made their stately progress along these same roads, many of them Roman roads, for the great road-builders were all over this country as in England. Upon these highways over which we speed along in an auto, great lumbering stage coaches once made their way, and in the fields, as to-day, were the toilers, the husband and wife, as in the Angelus of Millet. For an instant they would look up from their work to see what all the racket was about, and take a momentary interest in the gilded coaches, the gay outriders, the richly caparisoned horses, and all the pomp and circumstance of royalty. If near the highway, they would catch a fleeting glimpse of the beautiful face of some royal or noble dame, and seeing only the rich brocade of her gown, the jewels upon her breast and the gay feathers and flowers in her hat, they would turn back to their toil with a half-formulated wonder why life was a holiday to these favored ones and only bitter toil and hardship to _nous autres_. Thomas Jefferson's proposition, that all men are created free and equal, would have shocked these simple souls as it would their lords and masters, and yet a seed of thought was slumbering in their slow minds, germinating for a future awakening, a small seed that was destined to become a thousand in the sad and terrible reprisals of the French Revolution. To these starved peasants luxury stood for happiness, never themselves knowing the satisfaction of a full comfortable meal, it would have been impossible to make them believe that this outward show and splendor did not mean that these men and women, who rolled along in coaches and fed sumptuously every day, were the supremely blessed of the earth. And yet along these roads passed the coaches of the heavy hearted as well as of the gay. By much the same way that we are going journeyed the unhappy Princess Joanne when her husband, Louis XII, was minded to put her away to give place to a more ambitious marriage. Another royal lady to whom a crown brought naught but sorrow and disappointment was the gentle Louise de Vandemont-Lorraine, wife of Henry III, who fared this way to the home of her widowhood at Chenonceaux, and by much the same route passed Marie de Médicis when she fled from Blois and found refuge and aid at Loches. [Illustration: SMITHY NEAR GATE OF CHEVERNY] As Cheverny and Chaumont are not far apart, we were aroused from our reflections by a sudden stop at a little smithy near the gates of the park. A most charming little smithy is this, with a niched saint on the outside, vines clambering all over the wall, and a picturesque outside staircase with a little balcony above. The blacksmith, himself, as he stood framed in by the doorway, made a picture that we thought well worth taking. Unfortunately the saint in the niche could not come in, as it was some distance from the door, but just at the right moment Lydia, quite unconsciously, stepped before the lens, and near the stone stairway which she had been examining. "Far better than a saint!" said Archie under his breath, and then aloud, "Keep still, Miss Mott, the blacksmith will stay, I am sure, as he looks as if he had been built into that door." I think we shall be able to send you a photograph of our little smithy, and perhaps one of the church across the road, which is quaint and interesting, with its timbered verandas (one cannot, by any stretch of courtesy, call them cloisters) and something like a lych-gate at the entrance. Within are some marbles and memorial tablets of the Hurault family. It seems that the Huraults owned the Seignory of Cheverny as long ago as the fourteenth century, "before we Americans were discovered," as Miss Cassandra says. Early in the sixteenth century, one Raoul Hurault built a château here, of which little or nothing is left. The present château was built by a later Hurault, in 1634, and, after passing through several hands, it was bought, in 1825, by the Marchioness Hurault de Vibraye, and being thus returned to the family of the original owners, is still in their possession. A wonderful tale was this for American ears! Cheverny, with its well wooded park, and its avenue six kilometres in length, is a noble domain; but the outside of the château, although its architecture has been highly praised, did not impress us particularly. This may be because the mansion is situated on a level sweep of lawn, laid out after the English style, instead of crowning a great bluff like Blois, Amboise and Chaumont. The interior of Cheverny leaves nothing to be desired. It is elegant, aristocratic, and yet most delightfully homelike, with its spacious hall, richly decorated royal bedroom, and salon as livable as an English drawing room, with books, magazines and writing materials scattered over the centre table. On the panelled walls are gathered together a goodly and graceful company of noble lords and beautiful ladies, among them a fine full-length portrait of Philippe Hurault, Count de Cheverny, Chancellor of Finance under Henry IV, and opposite him his beautiful and stately wife, Anne de Thou, Dame de Cheverny, in a gown of black velvet garnished with rich lace. This noble lady was related, in some way, to the gallant young De Thou who perished on the scaffold with his friend Cinq Mars. Over the chimney-place is a charming portrait by Mignard of the daughter, or daughter-in-law, of Anne de Thou, Marie Johanne de Saumery, Marquise de Montglat, Countess de Cheverny. The subject of this lovely portrait bears with distinction her long array of cumbersome titles, while the airy grace of the figure and the innocent sweetness of the rounded girlish face are irresistibly attractive. Above the chimney-place, in which this portrait is set in the white wainscot, is the monogram (HV) which one finds all over the château, a proof that this ancient family is _légitimiste_ to the core, and devoutly loyal to whatever is left of the ancient line of the Bourbons. In the _salle à manger_, the monogram of the last Henry of this royal house is especially conspicuous. We were puzzling over the name of the pretender of to-day when the guide informed our ignorance, with a most superior manner of knowing it all and wondering that we did not know it also. From what he gave forth in rapid French with many gestures, we gathered that on the death of the Comte de Paris his eldest son, Philippe Robert, Duc d'Orléans, became heir to the house of Bourbon, founded in 886 by Robert le Fort, with the title Philippe VII. The Duc de Bourdeaux, always known as the Comte de Chambord after he became owner of the château of the same name, was heir to the throne, through the elder branch of the house, that is, as the grandson and eldest descendant of Charles X, the last of the elder branch that reigned in France. Some little time before his death, the Comte de Chambord was reconciled to the younger or Orleans branch, which had usurped the throne after the expulsion of Charles X. By this act the Comte de Paris was recognized as the legitimate successor to the throne. The present Duke of Orleans, should the monarchy be restored, would rule as Philippe VII. The Comte de Chambord took the title Henri V, as the next Henri after the king of Navarre, Henri IV. The Comte de Chambord bequeathed the Château of Chambord, which was his personal property, to his kinsman, the Duke de Parme, who was a Bourbon of the Spanish line, being the descendant of the grandson of Louis XIV, who was elected to the Spanish throne in 1700. From the pride with which this information was communicated we realized that this very superior _gardien_ was, like the noble master and mistress of Cheverny, legitimist to the ends of his fingers. [Illustration: Neurdein Freres, Photo. ANNE DE THOU, DAME DE CHEVERNY] While listening to this genealogical disquisition our eyes turned to a most attractive looking tea table which was set forth with superb silver, and thin slices of bread and butter and cake. With appetites sharpened by our long ride through the fresh air, I fear that we all gazed longingly at that tempting regale, and for Miss Cassandra, Lydia and I positively trembled. With her strong feeling that the world was made for herself and those whom she loves, it would not have surprised us to see the good lady sit down at this hospitable looking table and invite the rest of the party to join her. Lydia adroitly led the conversation toward Chambord and the afternoon tea which our chauffeur had promised us there, adding, gracefully, "It is very kind of the Marquise to allow us to go through her beautiful château while the family is in residence." "Yes," assented Miss Cassandra, "but how much more hospitable if she would invite us to drink tea with her!" After admiring the beautifully decorated ceiling and the handsome leather hangings, we left the dining room and its temptations for what was a much greater attraction to the men of the party, the fine suits of armor in the Salle des Gardes. Although Cheverny cherishes its Bourbon traditions, like the proverbially happy nation and happy woman it has no history to speak of, having even escaped the rigors of the French Revolution. In the past, as to-day, this château seems to have been a homelike and peaceful abode, its long façade and pavilions having looked down through many centuries upon a smiling garden and a vast lawn, which shut it in from the world beyond even more effectually than its great gates. From Cheverny our way lay across a stretch of open, level country and then through the forest of Chambord, which includes 11,000 acres of woodland. By the time we reached the château, we were, as Miss Cassandra expresses it in classic phrase, "faint yet pursuing" for lack of the refreshment to which we were not made welcome at Cheverny. Our chauffeur, being accustomed to famished pilgrims, conducted us at once to a garden café quite near the château, from whence we could study its long façade while enjoying our tea and _pâtisserie_. And what a huge monument is this château of Chambord to the effete monarchy of France, built up from the life-blood and toil of thousands! It impressed us as more brutally rich and splendid than any of the palaces that we had seen, rising as it does in its great bulk so unexpectedly from the dead level of the sandy plain, with no especial reason for its existence except the will of a powerful sovereign. It is not strange that the salamander of Francis I appears upon so many of the châteaux of France, for to this art-loving, luxurious, and _débonnaire_ King she owes Chambord, Fontainebleau, St. Germain and the smaller châteaux of Azay-le-Rideau, Anet and Villers-Cotterets. Although Francis I brought from Italy, to beautify his palaces, Leonardo Da Vinci, Primaticcio, Benvenuto Cellini, Florentin Rosso and other foreign artists, it has been decided by those who know more about the matter than we do, that Chambord owes more to its first architect, Maître Pierre le Nepvue, dit Trinqueau, than to anyone else. It seemed to us that this master hand was happier in the construction of Chenonceaux, Blois and some of the other châteaux of France, than here at Chambord, but this is a matter of individual taste. Vast, palatial, magnificent Chambord certainly is, and much more attractive on the north façade, where the château is reflected in the waters of the Cosson, than from the café where we were seated. The long line of buildings in the south front is somewhat monotonous, even broken as it is by the several towers, and the great central lantern, which appears to the best advantage from this side. Rich as is all the ornamentation of Chambord, it is skyward that it breaks forth into the greatest exuberance of Renaissance decoration. We reached the central lantern, with the single fleur-de-lis atop, by one of the remarkable staircases for which the palaces of Francis I are so famous. This staircase, which is formed by two spirals starting from different points, and winding about the same hollow shaft in the centre, is so constructed that persons can go up and down without meeting. Mr. Henry James considered this double staircase "a truly majestic joke," but in days when courts lived and moved and had their being in intrigues, schemes and plots, it doubtless had its uses. [Illustration: Neurdein Freres, Photo. CHÂTEAU OF CHAMBORD] Mademoiselle de Montpensier gives in her diary an amusing account of her first acquaintance with this double stairway. She came, when a child, to Chambord to visit her father, Gaston, Duke of Orleans, who stood at the top of the stairs to receive her, and called to her to come to him. As she flew up one flight her agile parent ran down the other; upon which the little girl gave chase, only to find that when she had gained the bottom he was at the top. "Monsieur," she said, "laughed heartily to see me run so fast in the hope of catching him, and I was glad to see Monsieur so well amused." Having reached the central lantern we found ourselves upon a flat roof, surrounded by a perfectly bewildering maze of peaks, pinnacles, lanterns, chimneys and spires, which constitute what our guide is pleased to call the _ensemble de la toiture_. This vast terrace, which covers the main building of the palace, is one of the architectural marvels of France. Here it seems as if the architect had allowed himself unlimited freedom in decoration, in which he was aided by such artists as Jean Goujon and Cousin, who zealously worked upon the ornamentation of these bell turrets, balconies and towers, as if to prove the sincerity and beauty of French art. This luxuriant flowing forth, in stone carving, of foliage, flower, boss and emblem, has resulted in an ensemble of indescribable charm, the dazzling light stone of Bourré, of which the château is built, lending itself harmoniously to the elaborate Renaissance decoration. It was of Jean Goujon, whose exquisite work we see now and again in these châteaux, that some writer has said, that the muse of Ronsard whispered in the ear of the French sculptor, and thus Goujon's masterpieces were poems of Ronsard translated in marble. It is a rather pretty fancy, but Lydia and I cannot remember its author. Walter says that he can understand why the Counts of Blois built their castle here, as this place seems to have formed part of a system of fortresses which guarded the Loire, making it possible, in the time of Charles VII, for Joan of Arc to move her army up the river to Orleans; but why Francis should have transformed this old castle into a palace is not so easy to understand. When so many more attractive sites were to be found, it seems strange that he should have chosen this sandy flat upon the border of what was then the sad and barren Solange. One reason given is that the country about Chambord was rich in game, and we know that Francis was an inveterate hunter; another theory is that a charming woman, the Comtesse de Thoury, one of the early loves of the King, had a manor in the neighborhood. "Both excellent reasons!" exclaimed Archie, "Dame Quickly is evidently an apt student of human nature." These various surmises and bits of information were poured into our ears by the guide, a plump and merry soul, whom Archie at once dubbed Dame Quickly. As she conducted us from room to room, she turned to me and, with a flash of her black eyes, exclaimed, "If these walls could speak, what tales they could tell!" adding that, for her part, she believed that the King came here for the hunting, the Comtesse de Thoury having been a love of his youth, and, with a knowing shake of her head, "You know, Mesdames, how short is the memory of man for an early love, especially a king's memory, when another is always to be found to take the vacant place." When we explained this philosophic reflection upon their sex to the men of the party, they declared that an unfair advantage was being taken by this facetious dame, simply because they were not able to answer back and vindicate the eternal fidelity of man. Then, as if divining what was being said, through her quick woman's instinct, she drew us toward a window in the study of Francis I and showed us these lines scratched upon one of the panes: Souvent femme varie; Mal habile qui s'y fie. Some discredit is thrown upon the authenticity of these lines, and if Francis wrote them in his old age, his point of view must have greatly changed since his earlier days, when he so gaily and gallantly said that a court without ladies was a year without spring and a spring without roses. Francis spent much of his time in his later years at Chambord, his chief solace being the companionship of his lovely sister, Marguerite, Queen of Navarre, the author of the Heptameron, whose beauty and intellect were the inspiration of many French poets. One of the pleasing sides of the character of the King was his devoted affection for this sister, with whom he had spent a happy youth at Amboise, and she, loving him beyond any other being, wrote verses to express her grief when they were separated. A varied, many-sided, personality was Francis I, and with all his faults possessed of a charm of his own, and a taste in the fine arts that added much to the beauty of his kingdom. Something of this we said to Dame Quickly, who replied, with another wise shake of her head, "The history of Francis is a wonderful history, Mesdames, made up of many things. There is always state policy, and religion, _et un peu les femmes_," the knowing look and shrug with which this bit of wisdom was communicated is simply untranslatable. Only a few of the 365 rooms of Chambord are furnished; we were shown the bedroom of the late Comte de Chambord, a ghostly apartment, it seemed to us in the fading daylight, the bed hung with elaborate tapestries, the work of the loyal hands of the ladies of Poitou. Miss Cassandra asked the guide if she would not be afraid to sleep in this dismal chamber. "No," she answered, "there are no _revenants_ here, the great people who lived here do not walk, they had such an active life with their hunting and fêtes that they are content to rest quietly in their beds." We passed through the council chamber of the château, where there are more tapestries, these presented by the loyal inhabitants of Blois and the Limousin districts, and here also is a quite useless throne donated by some devoted legitimists. In the chapel, we were shown some tapestry worked by Madame Royale, during her imprisonment in the Temple, that daughter of Marie Antoinette who alone survived her unfortunate family and as Duchesse d'Angoulême lived to quite an advanced age. The fast-fading daylight made it impossible to see many of the portraits in the great reception room; among them we noticed two portraits of Anne of Austria, and a Van Loo of the beautiful unloved Queen of Louis XV, Marie Leczinska. In this picture she appears so graceful and charming that one wonders how the King could have been insensible to her attractions; but one need never be surprised at the vagaries of royalty, and it is not to be expected that diplomatic alliances should be happy. What interested the men of the party especially, was the little light wagon in which, we were told, the owner of Chambord, the Duc de Parme, went a hunting with that good legitimist, the Master of Cheverny. "I am glad," said Walter, "that the noble Duke has a neighbor of the same stripe to go a hunting with him, the grandeur of this great palace without a friendly neighbor to come in and take a hand at cards or crack a joke with him, would be simply appalling." "The idea of jokes in this vast mausoleum of departed grandeur!" exclaimed Miss Cassandra. "It would be like dancing in a cemetery. Do ask that lively black-eyed dame how many there are in family when the owners are at home." "Monsieur le Duc has twenty-two children," was the reply. "He lives in Italy, but comes here sometimes for the hunting."[B] "And does he bring his family with him?" "_Pas tout le monde_ at the same time, Madame, although we have enough rooms for them all." Laughing over this ready rejoinder, we parted from our merry cicerone with exchanges of compliments and a clink of silver. I am quite sure that Walter and Archie gave her the fee twice over because of her _beaux yeux_ and her merry wit. It is late, and I am tired after the _grande tournée_, as they call our afternoon trip here, and Walter reminds me "That the best of all ways To lengthen our days Is _not_ to steal a few hours from the night, my dear." FOOTNOTE: [B] Since Mrs. Leonard wrote of this conversation at Chambord, the château has passed into the possession of Prince Sixtus de Bourbon, son and heir of the late Duke of Parma. The present owner of Chambord in making good his title to the château testified that not a penny of its revenue has ever been applied to any other purposes than the restoration and upkeep of the domain. XIII CHINON AND FONTEVRAULT LE CHEVAL BLANC, ANGERS, September 12th. FATE certainly seemed to be against my seeing Chinon to-day, as we awoke this morning to hear the rain pattering against our windows. A rather disconsolate party, we gathered around the table for the breakfast, which we had ordered an hour earlier, in order to make the day as long as possible. Miss Cassandra, who was the only really cheerful member of the party, reminded us of the many days of sunshine that we have had in Touraine, adding with her usual practical optimism, "And thee must remember, my dear, that constant sunshine makes the desert," this to Lydia, but we all took the wise saying to heart and were quite cheerful by the time we had finished our breakfast, perhaps also for the more material reason that Walter, through various gratuities and persuasions, had succeeded in making it of better cheer than the ordinary light _déjeuner_. Another pleasing circumstance was the assurance of the chauffeur, who arrived while we were still in the breakfast room, that the clouds were breaking away and that we should have sunshine by noon. By the time we had reached Villandry the sun was struggling through the clouds, and as we approached Chinon, its long line of ancient ruins and the little town clustered beneath were bathed in sunshine. [Illustration: Neurdein Freres, Photo. RUINS OF CHÂTEAU OF COUDRAY AT CHINON] Although from several points the old château on the crest of the hill, dominated by the lofty Tour de l'Horloge, is beautiful and impressive, the best general view of it is from the middle of the lower bridge, from which we could see the three distinct foundations, the Château of St. George at the upper or right side, the bridge which connects it with the Tour de l'Horloge, the Château du Milieu, and finally the Château de Coudray at the extreme lower or left end of the plateau. The whole is far more ruinous than the other famous castles of Touraine and requires as much imagination to make it whole and habitable as some of the ruins along the Rhine. Of the Château of St. George, built by the Plantagenet Kings to protect the one vulnerable point in a position almost impregnable in its day, nothing is left but parts of the lower wall. So ruinous, indeed, is this château, that one is almost ready to accept Pantagruel's derivation of the name of Chinon, or Caino, from Cain, the son of Adam its founder. We climbed up the hill and rang the bell at the Tour de l'Horloge, which is the only part of the buildings still boasting a roof, and here the concierge and his family tuck themselves away somewhere within its high, narrow walls. The bell that we rang is on the outer side of the tower, and in the course of time a girl, about as big as the old key she carried, unlocked a door in the archway through which we entered. The level spaces inside between the different buildings have been laid out as a sort of promenade which is open to the public on Sundays and holidays. The view up and down the slow, shallow river with its yellow sand-flats, little green islands, and the softly wooded country beyond seemed to us one of the most charming in Touraine. The concierge, who was attempting to act as guide to two separate parties at once, hurried us around in such a bewildering fashion that it would be almost impossible for me to give the exact locations of the different buildings. What we all remember distinctly is the bare, roofless hall, of which only a western gable and a vast chimney-piece remain, in which Joan had her audience with the King. This hall was the throne room, in 1429, when the fearless Maid appeared at Chinon, having journeyed one hundred and fifty leagues through a country occupied, in many places, by English and Burgundian troops, in order to deliver her message to the King. Although the meeting between Charles VII and Joan was by candlelight, even in the garish light of day it seemed strangely real here in this great ruinous hall. Nearly three hundred knights were present, and the King is said to have stood a little apart amidst a group of warriors and courtiers, many of them more richly dressed than himself, with the idea, perhaps, of testing Joan. There are various accounts of this audience, but the one that we like best because it seems the most probable is that Joan knew the King at once, although she had never seen him, and going straight to him, accosted him humbly and reverently like the poor, little shepherdess that she was. "Gentle Dauphin," she said to the King (for she did not think it right to call him King so long as he was not crowned), "My name is Joan the maid; the King of Heaven sendeth you word by me that you shall be anointed and crowned in the city of Rheims, and shall be lieutenant of the King of Heaven who is King of France. It is God's pleasure that our enemies, the English, should depart to their own country; if they depart not evil will come to them, and the kingdom is sure to continue yours." Even after these earnest words from Joan, the King, although impressed, was not convinced, and with some reluctance allowed her to remain at Chinon. We were afterwards shown the lodgings, which this inhospitable royal host gave to the persistent visitor, in a very thick-walled little tower, and according to our guide, Joan could get in or out of her room, on an upper floor, only when her guards put a ladder up to her small window, permanent stairways being considered unsafe for such guests. The King saw Joan again several times. She did not delude herself as to the doubts he still entertained. "Gentle Dauphin," she said to him one day, "Why do you not believe me? I say unto you that God hath compassion on you, on your kingdom and your people; St. Louis and Charlemagne are kneeling before Him, making prayer for you, and I will say unto you, so please you, a thing which will give you to understand that you ought to believe me." Charles gave her audience on this occasion, in the presence, according to some accounts, of four witnesses, the most trusted of his intimates, who swore to reveal nothing, and, according to others, completely alone. "What she said to him there is none who knows," wrote Alan Chartier a short time after [in July, 1429], "but it is quite certain that he was all radiant with joy thereat, as at a revelation from the Holy Spirit." Archie, who read the most recent life of Joan of Arc, on the steamer, as a preparation for Chinon, reminds us that after much sifting of history and tradition, it has been decided by learned authorities that the revelation of the Maid, which filled the King with joy, was a positive assurance that he was the rightful heir to the throne of France and the true son of his father, Charles VI. It is not strange that Charles VII should have doubted his own paternity with a mother as unnatural and depraved as Isabel of Bavaria, and that with a kingdom chiefly in the hands of the English he should have seriously questioned his right and title to the throne, being himself of a weak and doubting nature. It is said, that in an hour of great despondency, Charles prayed to God from the depths of his heart that if he were the true heir of the house of France, and the kingdom justly his, God would be pleased to help him and defend it for him. This prayer, which he thought known to God alone, the Maid recalled to the mind of the King, thus giving the sign and seal of her mission, and by this revelation she not only caused the King to believe in her, but strengthened his confidence in himself and in his right and title. True to herself and "the voices," for she never spoke as of her own motion, it was always a superior power speaking through her, as the mouthpiece. She said: "I tell thee on behalf of my Lord that thou art the true heir of France and son of the King." After some weeks of discussion and delay, Joan's plan for the relief of Orleans was adopted, troops were gathered together, of which she was given the command, or as she naïvely expressed it, she was made the "war-chief." Yolande, Queen of Sicily, the young Queen's mother and the Duc d'Alençon, were her zealous advocates. Yolande gave of her treasures for the relief of Orleans, and soon at the head of her army, her banner flying, upon which was inscribed the name of the Prince of Peace, surrounded by the lilies of France and with her troops singing _Veni Creator_, the dauntless Maid passed through these gates and Chinon knew her no more. We know that Joan accomplished in less than a year all that she had promised. The city of Orleans was relieved, she had led Charles to Rheims to be crowned and had done much toward delivering France from the English. Then came the sad part of the story, which you know so well. While we were following the fortunes of the Maid, and here where she had so courageously taken up what she deemed her heaven-appointed task, feeling more than ever before the cruelty and rank injustice of her treatment, Lydia exclaimed: "Nothing could prove more forcibly the old saying about the ingratitude of princes than the King's treatment of Joan!" A voice behind us echoed, "Nothing," and we turned to see M. La Tour, who had followed us and entered the hall so quietly that we had not known that he was anywhere within miles of us. "No," he said, when the first greetings were over, "I am not here to defend my country for her treatment of the noble and fearless Maid. She did much to regain the territory of France from the English and to establish the King upon his throne; she came to him in the darkest hour and inspired him with hope and courage, and yet in the time of her trial he basely deserted her. No, there is no excuse except that at the King's side there were many men jealous of the success and military glory of Jeanne, to whisper tales in his ear. He was a weak and vacillating creature, at the best, ready to follow the last person who talked to him, and he probably believed some of the stories told him about the good Maid." "And then," as Archie reminded him, "Joan was given papers to sign which she was not able to read and thus set her mark to her own death warrant." "A sad and shameful tale!" exclaimed the young Frenchman, as we passed by the donjon where Joan had been lodged and by the scanty ruins of the little chapel where she stopped to pray, and wept because the angels left her. Just then, as we were passing on to find some traces of the several Angevin kings, who lived and died at Chinon, something happened which I cannot quite explain. In some way Lydia was separated from us, as we were passing from one ruinous castle to another. She has not told me, and indeed there has been little time to have a word with her, but I shall always think that she was so impressed by the wonderful story, which seems so real here, where Joan saw the angels and revealed her mission, that Lydia was in a way overwhelmed by the mysterious, spiritual power of it all, and lingered behind us for the peace and rest of being alone, and away from all the talk and from that small child, with the big key, who recited her monotonous tale like a parrot. Then later, in trying to find us, Lydia must have gone off quite a distance in the wrong direction, and so became confused and lost her way among the ruins. This is only my explanation. Lydia is writing to you and may give you another. All that I know is that we heard a sharp, sudden cry and turning we saw the poor dear perched up quite high on the ruins of a wall, with a steep, precipitous descent between her and ourselves. Miss Cassandra was scared out of her wits, M. La Tour begged Lydia to be calm, in French and English, with the most dramatic gestures, while Archie, without a word, sprang up the steep ascent, agile and surefooted like the good mountain climber that he is, and without more ado picked Lydia up in his strong arms and bore her down the precipice as if she had been a baby, and she is no light weight, as you know. All that Lydia said, when she found herself in Miss Cassandra's embrace, was "I am so ashamed of myself for losing my head. I think I was just a little dizzy, and I was so afraid of falling from that wall." "Don't think about it, dear," said Miss Cassandra, "now that you are safe and sound, thanks to Dr. Vernon." The good lady was so overjoyed at having her treasure beside her again that she would have been quite ready to include her deliverer in the warm embrace with which she welcomed Lydia, nor do I think that Archie would have objected. The situation was somewhat strained, for the moment, as he had been living at rather high pressure with the Joan of Arc associations when Lydia's escapade came to cap the climax. Miss Cassandra's eyes were brimming over with tears, and I was more ready to weep than to laugh, when Walter, as usual, came to the rescue with his sound common sense, saying to Lydia, whose modesty and reserve were distinctly shocked by the idea of having made a scene. "You would never have lost your head up there, Miss Mott, if you had had your luncheon before you ascended to the heights above," this in Walter's most comforting manner. "We have gone through a lot of history and emotion on a breakfast that is a good many hours away. Let us go down to the town and see what they can do for us in the way of luncheon or afternoon tea." M. La Tour, who had been rather left in the background during the last excitement, now came forward and offered to conduct us to a nice little hotel for luncheon,--insisting, however, that we should first go with him to see the part of the castle in which Henry II of England died, in the midst of the dissensions of his rebellious sons. "The most pitiful, disgraceful death-bed scene in all history!" exclaimed Miss Cassandra. "I don't see why we need trouble ourselves about it. Henry was lying half dead, here or somewhere else near Chinon, when his son Richard, who had joined the French King against him, approached his father to receive from him the kiss of peace, and such a kiss of peace as it was!--the dying King muttering under his breath as he gave it, 'May God keep me alive till I have given you the punishment you deserve!'" "That was at Colombiers, near Villandry," said M. La Tour, laughing over the Quaker lady's picture, gruesome as it was. "Henry was too ill to return to Chinon, and so passed the night at Azay-le-Rideau, or at the Commanderie of the Templars at Ballan. It was there or at Chinon that his clerk, at his request, read to him the list of the rebellious barons. 'Sire,' said the man, 'may Jesus Christ help me! The first name that is written here is the name of Count John, your son.' Then Henry turned his face to the wall, caring no more for himself or the world, and lay there muttering, 'Shame upon a conquered King!'" It really seemed to us as if M. La Tour took a certain ghastly satisfaction in telling us of the unseemly behavior of these English kings and princes who had appropriated, justly or unjustly, so much of his country's territory. The only human incident in the last hours of the great King was the devotion of his son Geoffrey, who sat through the hours of the long summer day fanning away the insects from his father's face, the dying man's head resting upon his shoulder while a knight supported his feet. The King opening his eyes, recognized his son, blessed him, and said that he of all his children was the only one that showed any affection for him, and that if his life was spared he would make him the most powerful prince of them all. This, like many another death-bed resolution, was not carried out, as Henry died the next day, before the high altar of the church of St. Melaine, which was within the château, at Chinon. We did not feel at all sure that we had seen the spot where the King breathed his last; but it really does not much matter, as Miss Cassandra says, and it is not easy to locate the scene of remote events among these ruinous buildings. The trial of the Grand Master of the Knights Templars was held here in one of the halls of Chinon in 1309, and swift retribution was meted out to the members of the order, more for the love of gold than for the love of justice, as the Templars had become the bankers of Christendom and were possessed of vast treasures, which were seized upon forthwith. A carving in the donjon of Coudray of three kneeling knights, each one bearing a sword and a shield, is thought to have been carved by the Templars on their prison wall. As we made our way down the hillside to the town, M. La Tour reminded us of a more cheerful association connected with Chinon than those upon which we had been dwelling, for here it was that the historian Philippe de Commines was betrothed. He had been created Prince of Talmont by Louis XI, who arranged a marriage for him with Hélène de Chambès, daughter of the Lord and Lady of Montsoreau. This betrothal was attended by the whole court, and Louis heaped honors and rewards upon his favorite who was made Governor of Chinon. A few years later, after the death of the King, Commines entered into the involved politics of France, and incurred the displeasure of Anne de Beaujeu who imprisoned him at Loches; or, as he expressed it in Scripture phrase, "I ventured on the great ocean, and the waves devoured me." He, however, escaped from this sea of troubles and gave to the world his valuable history, composed, it is said, in the hours of his enforced retirement. "Which is," as Walter says, "a delicate and extremely polite manner of referring to his imprisonment in one of those infernal iron cages at Loches." (Pray notice that the language is Walter's, not mine.) On our way to the café we passed by the statue of Rabelais, and although this was not a market day, to M. La Tour's infinite regret, there were some booths in the busy little square and a number of traffickers. The face of the humorist who loved his kind, even if he often made game of them, looked down upon the gay, chattering, bargain-making crowd in the square beneath him, with an expression half satirical, half laughing and wholly benevolent. There is some uncertainty as to the date of the birth of Maître François at Chinon, and he may or may not have lived in either of the old houses pointed out as his, but he certainly belonged to this part of the country, and we are grateful to his fellow-townsmen for honoring him so fittingly. In the centre of the little square a fountain, surrounded by acacia trees, was playing, and beyond was the welcome Hôtel de France opening its doors to us. After we had ordered our luncheon, Walter suddenly remembered the chauffeur, and started to hunt him up and tell him where to meet us with the automobile, and I joined him for the pleasure of another stroll through the town. M. La Tour, who accompanied us, again regretted that this was not a market day, when the peasants come in from the surrounding country, and we could then see just such a noisy merry crowd as Rabelais described when Couillatris goes to Chinon, which he calls "that noble, antique city, the first in the world," to buy oxen, cows and sheep, pigs, geese and capons, dead and alive, and all manner of country produce. An antique city Chinon appeared to us, above all that we had seen; and to add to this impression we met a number of peasant women and black-eyed girls with the picturesque lace caps of this province, veiling but not concealing their fine dark hair. After a luncheon that more than answered our expectations, we strolled about the old town, through its narrow winding streets and by the Place Jeanne d'Arc, with its remarkable statue which represents the Maid riding roughshod over the prostrate bodies of her foes; her horse has all four feet off the ground, his means of support, a bronze rod as a sort of fifth or middle leg, being more practical than artistic. "The rider's position in the saddle," as Archie says, "would turn any circus performer green with envy." An altogether atrocious piece of sculpture is this, with an element of grotesqueness in its conception quite unworthy of one of the most serious characters in all history, the Maid to whom, as Carlyle says, "all maidens upon earth should bend." Finally, and I must say with some reluctance, we turned our backs upon Chinon and our faces toward Fontevrault, journeying by much the same route that Henry II was carried on his last journey, over the bridge that he had built and by the river and the village of Montsoreau. By the way, M. La Tour showed an amiable desire to accompany us to Angers, and as our touring car is of hospitable proportions we were glad to have his good company. At Fontevrault, which has been turned from an abbey into a reformatory for criminals, we were fortunate to have some one with us to speak to the sentinel, as this seemed to be a day when visitors were not welcomed here. After some parleying with the officials, M. La Tour gained permission to have us enter and see all that is left of the fine old church, whose buttresses and roofs we had admired from a distance. In the little chapel we saw the four Plantagenet statues that still remain, after the vandals of the French Revolution had broken open the tombs and destroyed all that they could lay their hands upon. These four statues have been restored and the faces repainted. Here lies Henry II, robed and sceptred as he was when borne forth from Chinon for burial at Fontevrault, and Richard Coeur de Lion, both in the middle of the group. To the left is Eleanor of Guienne, the wife of Henry II. Three of these recumbent figures are of colossal size, hewn out of the tufa rock and painted. The other statue of smaller size, carved in wood and colored, represents the English queen, Isabel of Angoulême, one of the most beautiful as well as the most depraved queens of history; only excelled in wickedness by her French sister of a later time, Isabel of Bavaria. This earlier Isabel, daughter of Aymar, Count of Angoulême, upon the day of her betrothal to Hugues de Lusignan, was carried off by John of England, who put away his wife, Avice, to marry this beautiful, wicked enchantress. After the death of John, Isabel came back to France to marry her old lover. As we left Fontevrault and motored down the hill towards the Loire, M. La Tour recalled to us the ancient glory of this abbey, whose walls now echo to the clank of arms instead of to the _Ave Marias_ of the gentle sisters. Fontevrault was founded in the eleventh century by Robert d'Abrissel, a monk, as a place of refuge for a vast and ill-assorted company of men and women who gathered around him when he was preaching a crusade to Palestine. From this strange beginning the abbey became one of the most famous in Christendom, as it was richly endowed by kings and princes, especially by the early English kings who loved this beautiful valley of the Loire. Many noble and royal ladies presided over Fontevrault, among them, Renée de Bourbon, sister of Francis I who, while she was Abbess, rebuilt the beautiful cloister which we saw to-day. Another and later Lady Abbess was Marie Madelaine Gabrielle de Rochechouart, who found time in the midst of her religious duties to make translations of some of Plato's works. New ideas, you see, were finding their way into the convent, it being the fashion about that time for women to be learned, Mary Stuart having led the way by delivering a Latin oration at the Louvre to the edification of all who heard her. And here came Mary Stuart herself, while Louise de Bourbon was Lady Abbess, brought hither by her aunt, the Duchess of Guise, to charm and delight the nuns by her beauty and ready wit. As a religious establishment for men and women, ruled over solely by a woman, the Abbey of Fontevrault was unique in Christendom. [Illustration: FRENCH CAVE DWELLINGS NEAR SAUMUR] As we motored along the river bank beyond its low-lying sand marshes and line of small hills, we noticed tiny black wind-mills spreading out their arms to the breeze, and wreaths of smoke curling up from the cliffs. Here and there the lowering sun would light up a window pane in the cliff, as if to remind us that these hillsides are burrowed out by the workers in the vineyards who make their homes here as in Touraine and in the valley of Vendomois. "It seems that we are again in the land of the troglodytes," said Walter. "Alfred de Vigny says these peasants 'in their love for so fair a home have not been willing to lose the least scrap of its soil, or the least grain of its sand.' I think myself that it is for more practical and economic reasons that they live underground." These cliff dwellings continue for nearly eight miles around Saumur, and M. La Tour tells us that many of them go back to the days of the Roman occupation when they served the conquered tribes as a last retreat from the invader. Some one has said that every step to the southward takes us further back in the history of France. Chinon and Fontevrault are not far south of Tours and Blois, and yet we are far back in history to-day, living with the Angevin kings and with the cave-dwellers of Gaul. Even the _coiffes_ of the women are different here from those worn in other places on the Loire, and in a very distinct way we realize that we have left Touraine and are in Anjou. In the fields the peasants were gathering in their stores for the winter; the women pass along the road constantly with their odd panniers upon their backs, full of treasures. Sometimes they are filled with fruit and vegetables and again it is only grass for the cattle or faggots for the fire. As we drew near Saumur, grapes filled the _hottes_ to overflowing, for this is the land of the vine, one of the great grape-growing regions of France. We are spinning along all too rapidly over these perfect roads, as we long to stop at so many places, especially at that tiny Venice on the Loire, a republic of fishermen and laborers established by King René when he was still in power. From its sole palace, the Château de l'Ile d'Or, René's daughter went forth to be the unhappy Margaret of Anjou, the Red Rose of the House of Lancaster, during the war of the succession which raged in England for so many years. M. La Tour tells us there is much to see at Saumur, a very old Hôtel de Ville, a twelfth century church, and other ancient buildings. This city, once a favorite residence of Angevin princes and English kings, was in the reign of Henry IV, the headquarters of Protestantism, with DuPlessis-Mornay, the Pope of the Huguenots, as its governor. All that we had time to see, this afternoon, was the fortress château, which stands high up on the Quay de Limoges, overlooking the junction of the Loire and the Thouet. We were warned that if we stopped again we should not reach Angers until after dark, and so we sped along past many an historic landmark of interest. XIV ANGERS LE CHEVAL BLANC, ANGERS, September 13th. WE were glad to have our first view of Angers by daylight, as the dark slate roofs and the great black château in the old part of the town, made us understand what Shakespeare meant when he wrote of "black Angiers." The towns, old and new, had their full share of sunshine to-day and of a warmth that would have been oppressive had it not been tempered by a fresh breeze from the River Maine that flows by the château, for here we quitted our Loire, for a while, a river with a distinct individuality which we have come to love like the face of a friend. A little below Angers, the Loire and the Maine unite, and in the land lying between these rivers is the richest agricultural region in all France, its nurseries and kitchen gardens having made a fortune for this little corner of the world. The town of Angers, which is a place of some consequence, being the capital of the Département de Maine et Loire, is situated upon a height crowned by the slim spires of the Cathedral of St. Maurice. On a first view, we must admit that Angers is disappointingly modern, with its straight, wide boulevards and regular rows of trees; but to-day we have spent most of our time in the old town which has not been despoiled of its ancient charm. And here in this inn, the Cheval Blanc, which has opened its hospitable doors since 1514, we live in an atmosphere of antiquity surrounded by modern comforts. The Rue St. Aubin, upon which our hostel is situated, is so narrow that Lydia says she is tempted to shake hands with the little dressmaker who is sewing away busily at a window across the street, and she doubtless hears everything that we say, and looks politely interested in our remarks although she probably cannot understand a word of English. As we see her there, looking up from her sewing, from time to time, neat and dainty, her black hair dressed to perfection, a pathetic expression in the dark eyes with which she regards us from time to time, we think of Marie Claire, and wonder if this little seamstress has not a story of her own to tell, and one which like the story of that other sewing girl, would touch the heart because of its perfect simplicity. This hotel is so unpretentious, in its style and furnishings, that we are more than surprised at its comfort. Miss Cassandra says that she has never in her life seen floors scrubbed to such immaculate whiteness, and we know that Quakers know all about cleanliness. The service which the men chambermaids give us is exceptionally good and quite discouraging to Miss Cassandra and myself who have always persistently upheld the superiority of our sex. It is like my uncle's bachelor housekeeping, a little too good to be gratifying to our woman's pride. Everything runs so smoothly here, like magic, under these ministering angels of the male sex, in their white shirts, red waistcoats and green aprons. We really don't know what to call them, although the one who attends to my room informed me quite frankly that he was the _femme de chambre_. This was, I think, in order to avoid confusion with regard to fees; the double service of waiter and _valet de chambre_ entitling him to a particularly generous douceur. One expects good meals in all of these French inns, and at the Cheval Blanc they are as good as the best and served in a cool, quiet dining-room, between the front courtyard with its palms and pleasant lounging places and the rear court, around which are the kitchens, the garage and the offices generally. Good as we find the cuisine, what most delights us is the fruit. We have been in great fruit-growing countries before, as at Canterbury, where we had no evidence of the excellence and profusion of the fruit on the table d'hôte; but here each meal is crowned with a great dish of plums, peaches, grapes and pears. Beautiful and delicious as they all are, the pears are supreme, as the Italians say, in size and flavor. We are feasting upon fat things in this land of plenty, as we have seen nothing to compare with the fruit of Angiers in Touraine or elsewhere. M. La Tour made no mistake when he conducted us to the _Cheval Blanc_, where he himself was received with warm friendliness as well as with great respect by the proprietor. Shining in his reflected light, we are treated as if we belonged to the royal family, or to the President's family, which is the popular thing in the France of to-day. In view of our French friend's many kind attentions and charming good nature, Archie has overcome his racial prejudices sufficiently to say: "Zelphine, that French friend of yours is really no end of a good fellow." "Why _my_ friend?" I ask. "M. La Tour is the friend of us all. Walter is devoted to him, and he is Lydia's 'Handy Book of Reference,' as you know." This last was distinctly cruel; but Archie, instead of retaliating, answered quite amiably: "Yes, he is a good fellow, with no superior foreign airs about him." Walter says that it is only fair that Archie should admit this much of his rival, after carrying Lydia off under his very eyes at Chinon, which, he says, is prophetic of coming events. I must confess that I do not feel as sure of the outcome as Walter. Lydia is the most self-contained young person that I have ever encountered. By the way, we decided, after our arrival yesterday, that we could not possibly do justice to Angers in the short half day that we had allowed ourselves. We telegraphed to Angela that we really could not meet her in Paris until Wednesday night. Even if the Dudleys leave to-day, she will have only one night by herself, and with her usual good luck she will probably meet some friends in the hotel. Again we echo the sentiments of Maître François, and saying "There is nothing so dear and precious as time," rejoice in this one long, golden day in Angers. I am writing after our second _déjeuner_. We have all spent the morning in the most strenuous sightseeing, going to the cathedral first, which is quite near, its apse blocking the street on which the Cheval Blanc stands. From the west front of the cathedral, which is very narrow in proportion to its height, the ground suddenly descends to the river, a long, broad flight of steps taking the place of a street. There are, on the façade, some fine carvings of armed warriors; but the side walls are flat and plain, solid masonry replacing the flying buttresses which lighten most of the French churches. This last feature we find to be characteristic of Angevin churches, as are two other characteristics which impressed us as we entered the cathedral. One of these is the absence of aisles in the nave, and a consequent sense of light and spaciousness; the other, the small dome-like roof into which the vaulting of each section of the nave rises. There are some curious old tapestries hung on the walls of the nave, a handsome carved pulpit and some fine glass of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In the chapel to the left is a Calvary by David d'Angers, a sculptor not without honor in his native town. The chief object of interest in the cathedral is the tomb of King René and his wife, which was discovered beneath the choir only about fifteen years ago. On our way to the château, on a broad open space at the intersection of two boulevards and in the midst of a treeless expanse, stands a statue of the mild, poetic sovereign of Anjou by David d'Angers. This bronze statue is on a high, light-colored stone foundation, and shows him no more kingly and rather less amiable than history, which has always surrounded René d'Anjou with the sympathetic charm that belongs to a king in exile. Around the base of the monument are smaller statues representing such founders and leaders of his house as Dumnacus, defender of the Angevins, Foulques Nera, Robert the Strong and Henry Plantagenet. Here also are statues of René's two wives, Isabelle de Lorraine and Jeanne de Laval, and of his daughter Margaret, Queen of England. This monument naturally carried our thoughts back to the days when the valor of Anjou's counts, and their connection with the thrones of England and Sicily, gave this land an importance far beyond its natural value. King René himself, with his three titles, Count of Anjou, King of Sicily and Duke of Provence, seems to have been born to misfortune as the sparks fly upward. Had he been endowed with the spirit and courage of his daughter Margaret, René might have been able to cope with his enemies; but being of a gentle and reflective nature, he yielded to what he deemed his fate. One possession after another was wrested from him, and he finally retired to Aix in Provence, where he devoted himself to literature and the fine arts, or, as Miss Cassandra expresses it, "He amused himself by writing verses and pottering about his garden. And a very much more respectable way of spending his time, it was, than quarreling with his neighbors, which was the chief occupation of Louis XI and most of the other kings of that period!" We afterwards saw the noble statue of Margaret of Anjou, a regal figure, wearing the crown and bearing the sceptre of which she was so soon deprived by Edward IV. When she went to England, as the bride of Henry VI, she was received with rejoicings and the London streets were decorated with the Marguerite flower in her honor. No man, it was said, surpassed Margaret in courage, and no woman in beauty, and it might well be added that none of the princesses who had left France to share the British throne had to endure such misfortunes. Her son was captured and slaughtered under her eyes; then and then only, the strong purpose and high courage, that had supported her during years of adversity, deserted her. She lost heart. After being dragged from prison to prison, Margaret was restored to her country and her family, upon which King René, being more of a poet than a king, wrote a madrigal to celebrate his daughter's sad homecoming. The castle, which is across the way from René's statue, dates back to the twelfth century, when English and French were disputing over the ownership of Anjou. Standing on a hillside above the Maine, this château, with its massive stone walls and heavy drawbridge, suggests brute force more completely than any of the other castles that we have seen. As we passed through the dungeons at Loches, we shuddered at the cruelty which they represent; as we looked at the bare black walls of this castle, we were even more appalled by the dread relentless strength against which enemy after enemy battered himself in vain. The castle was built on the hill, as it sloped up from the Maine, and originally stood at the lower corner of the city ramparts. Broad quays have taken the place of the outer fortifications on the river bank, and most of the moat has been filled in to make boulevards, but between the quay and the river front of the castle a crumbling mass of crazy old houses still cluster around the castle, as if to remind us of the days when the thick walls behind them meant safety. The seventeen round towers and the battlements have all been torn down, leaving only the slate-built walls, striped near the top with horizontal panels of a lighter stone, and still so high that they look like precipices. We entered by a heavy drawbridge and under a massive arch, and were duly shown around by the guide, a man this time, whom we found far less interesting than the women who have conducted us through most of the other châteaux. He did, however, give us some interesting associations with the Château of Angers, as he reminded us that Henry IV was here in 1598 with _la belle Gabrielle_, and their little son, "_Cæsar Monsieur_." Henry seems to have come to Angers to reduce Brittany to subjection, and to punish the rebellious Duke de Mercoeur. The latter, however, by a fine stroke of policy, sent his wife and her mother to Angers to make his submission to the King and to propose an alliance between his daughter, who was his sole heiress, and the little Cæsar. An interview with Henry took place here, in the château, we were told. With two noble dames in tears, on their knees before him, and his own fair duchess quite on their side, the King could refuse nothing, and accordingly his son, aged four, was betrothed to Françoise de Lorraine, who was in her sixth year and with no less magnificence than if the little Cæsar had been the legitimate heir to the throne of France. Dancing and rejoicing took the place of the fighting and bloodshed to which the old castle had been much more accustomed. We are glad to turn from the stormy revengeful counts of Anjou and kings of England to the reign of Henry of Navarre, that heroic figure whom we still love whatever his shortcomings may have been. His faults and failings were those of his time; his virtues, his sense of justice, his large benevolence and desire to give every man a chance, and his broad constructive policy, were far in advance of his age. He doubtless inherited his noble traits from his mother, Jeanne D'Albert, while from the less distinguished paternal side may have come the traits that marred the character of the great Huguenot leader. Miss Cassandra can never quite forgive Henry for his abjuration, and says that to have renounced the religion for which they had both sacrificed so much was unworthy the son of so great a mother. Member of the Peace Society as she is, our Quaker lady will make no excuses for Henry, although M. La Tour insists it was a wise and humane act on the part of the King, as it put an end to the long war that was devastating France, or, to use Henry's own forcible phrasing, "By my faith, I have no wish to reign over a kingdom of dead men." The favorite expletive of the Béarnois, "Ventre Saint Gris," seems to have gone out of favor after he became a Catholic, having fallen into bad repute, as it was considered a Protestant oath. There is little doubt that the traditions of his early years had great influence over him, and that Henry of Navarre was always at heart a Protestant. Gabrielle d'Estrées, to whom Henry IV was far more devoted and more faithful than to any other woman, had almost unbounded influence over him, which she generally used with wisdom and moderation. Affectionate, intelligent, and good tempered, she seemed an ideal companion for the generous, impetuous and often ill-governed monarch. Henry was himself wont to say that he loved her far more for her noble qualities of mind and heart than for her dazzling beauty. That the King consulted Gabrielle upon more than one occasion is evident, and equally so that she did not hesitate to express her opinion frankly. After the King's famous speech at the Abbey of St. Ouen, when he besought his noble subjects to counsel him and generously invited them to share with him whatever glory should fall to his share, Gabrielle, then Marquise de Monceaux, was present, secluded from the general gaze by a screen or curtain. Later, when questioned by Henry as to how she liked his speech, she replied that she had rarely heard him speak better; but that she was indeed surprised at his asking for counsel and offering to place himself _en tutelle_ in the hands of the assembly. "Ventre Saint Gris!" exclaimed the Béarnois, "That is true; but as I understand it, in tutelage, with my sword by my side." Gabrielle's womanly pride was doubtless satisfied with this quick-witted rejoinder of her royal lover, who never seemed to be at a loss for an argument or a _bon mot_. As Dumas says of his beloved hero, "In default of money, something to which the Béarnois was accustomed all his life, he was in the habit of paying his debts with that which he never stood in need of borrowing, a ready wit." The only influence that the great minister Sully feared was that of Gabrielle, whom the King had promised to marry when the tie that bound him to his beautiful, wilful, dissolute cousin, Marguerite of Valois, should be annulled by the Pope. Sully, however, had other ambitions for Henry and for France, as he was already entering into negotiations with the Médici with a view to a marriage with a daughter of their house, which would swell the depleted coffers of France and bring some coveted territory to the kingdom. Here in the old château at Angers, the scene of Gabrielle's most signal triumph over the favorite minister, during whose absence her son was created Duke of Vendôme and affianced to the little heiress of the Duke of Mercoeur, we could not help wondering whether Henry of Navarre's life would not have been very different had he been allowed to marry the woman of his choice. As the daughter of the Baron d'Estrées, and connected with royalty through the Courtenays, it seemed to us that Gabrielle was quite as suitable a consort for the French King as one of the daughters of the Médici who had never brought good fortune to France. Sully, who evidently thought more of the coffers of the kingdom than of the happiness of the King, was the persistent enemy of Gabrielle from the early days when Henry incurred untold dangers in passing the enemy's lines in order to secure a brief half hour with her, to a later time when as Duchesse de Beaufort she seemed to be perilously near the throne. The tragedy of her sudden death, which has been attributed to poison at the instance of Sully, and the King's agony of grief have added a pathetic interest to the history of Gabrielle d'Estrées, Duchesse de Beaufort. It should be said, in justice to Sully, that there is no proof that he had anything whatever to do with the death of the Duchesse de Beaufort; but there is little doubt that the tidings of her death brought relief to his mind, after the first shock was over. The Château of Angers is bare and unadorned, with nothing to remind us of the ceremonies and festivities that so annoyed Sully in the far away time when Henry of Navarre and the charming Gabrielle held high festival here. After its days of fighting and feasting were well over, the castle was used as a prison. Now, with the thrift for which the French are proverbial, this substantial building is used as a depot for military stores. The only things suggestive of the gentler side of life are the little chapel, and the castle within the castle, a small Renaissance house in which the family of the prince lived in times of siege. The walk around the top of the walls is well worth taking, not only because it intensifies the impression of size and strength, but also because it gives a charming view of the country round about. In front the Maine flows calmly by to its junction with the Loire three or four miles to the left; across the river there is an old suburb of the town with a few good churches and old houses, and farther upstream near the river's edge, stands what Walter calls "a business-like looking old tower" which he thinks must have guarded a bridge connected with the ramparts. To the right the cathedral looms up, its clumsy base hidden by other buildings and its slender spires dominating the town. Beyond the town stretch rich, green fields, with an occasional old windmill flapping its arms and a slow boat drifting lazily down the river. Even if Angers has never been one of the most important cities of France, it seems always to have been a place of moderate consequence, as it still is. There are a few good private houses dating several centuries back, the most pretentious of these being the Hôtel de Pincé, a charming Renaissance building, standing in the heart of the town and now used as a museum of antiquities and _objets d'art_. There was no guide to tell us the history of this house and the books are equally reticent about its traditions. The Hôtel de Pincé looks like a charming miniature château, suggesting Azay-le-Rideau or some of the Renaissance houses in Tours, in its general style, and like them it makes one feel that the builders of those days understood elegance and beauty better than they did comfort and ease. Whatever king or noble or knight-at-arms lived in this house, his women-folk had to drag their brocaded trains up and down steep twisting stone staircases, and also to be content with very little light and air in many of their elegant rooms. The rich Angevin _bourgeoisie_ built these half-timbered houses, which are somewhat like those that one sees so often in Normandy. One of the most elaborate of these is the so-called Maison d'Adam, just behind the cathedral, which, although it does not date back to our first ancestor, is sufficiently ancient in appearance to satisfy our antiquarian tastes. Much of the carving on the uprights is elaborate and effective, even if bearing evidences of frequent restorations. The most noticeable thing about this building is its height, as houses of six stories were not usual in the days of the Renaissance in France. So little is done for Angers by local guide books that the joy of discovery adds a zest to our pleasure in this old town, and, although Archie is usually the least enthusiastic of sightseers, he has never been bored once to-day. Perhaps Lydia's presence and delight in it all has something to do with his contented frame of mind. However that may be, he has listened with polite attention to M. La Tour's long disquisitions, architectural as well as historical, and in return has asked him many questions about the products and industries of this prosperous town. It seems that the extensive slate quarries have not only roofed and housed a great part of Angers, but have added considerably to its revenue. Archie is in a merry mood to-day and after M. La Tour's disquisition upon these extensive slate quarries, he asked Lydia if she did not think that King René must have missed his slate when he was scribbling verses in the south. We all laughed heartily over this very slight _bon mot_; but our Frenchman looked dreadfully puzzled and asked to have it explained to him. He proved even more difficult than Sydney Smith's Scotchman; or, as Walter expresses it, "It had to be driven in with a sledge hammer," and he warns Archie solemnly to attempt no more pleasantries in the presence of our Gallo-American, guide, philosopher and friend. On our way back to the Cheval Blanc, we stopped at the Préfecture whose superbly carved arches and columns are said to date back to the Roman occupation. While we were enjoying these noble arches and rich carvings, M. La Tour told us that Julius Cæsar and one hundred thousand of his troops were encamped upon the triangle upon a part of which Angers is now situated. Here they lived for months on the resources of this somewhat restricted area, which does not seem at all wonderful if the soil was cultivated in those days as it is now; and how those soldiers must have enjoyed the rich vintage of Anjou!--to say nothing of the choux-fleurs, artichokes, peas, and the various fruits which are now shipped in carloads to Paris every night. The idea of a Roman camp in the neighborhood of Angers appealed strongly to our antiquarians, and while we were at luncheon Archie, after politely inquiring what we proposed to do with our long afternoon, and finding that we had no plans except to visit some place of interest in the motor car, presented a well arranged programme. What Archie suggested, evidently after collusion with Walter and the chauffeur, was to motor to Nantes, stopping _en route_ at the Roman camp, if indeed its site can be found. Lydia and I would have shouted for joy had there not been other guests in the _salle à manger_. As it was we contented ourselves with congratulating Archie upon his fertility of resource, adding that we had been longing to see Nantes, with its fortress-château and the tomb of François, the father of our old friend, Anne de Bretagne. Upon this Miss Cassandra waked up from a little nap she had been taking between courses, and expressed her delight at the thought of seeing Nantes in whose ancient château her favorite Anne was married to Louis XII. "Not," she added, "that I approve of that marriage, it is the one sad blot upon Anne's otherwise fine character that she was willing to marry Louis after he had divorced poor Jeanne." "I must warn you, before we set forth," said Archie, raising his finger admonishingly, "that this is to be an afternoon in the open; the chauffeur tells me that we shall have barely time to see the surroundings of Nantes, to get a general view of the town, and return to Angers in time for a late dinner." "Of course we shall stop at the Roman camp," said Lydia, tactfully, looking at Archie as she spoke. "It would never do to miss that, and I plead for twenty minutes or a half hour at the cathedral to see the tomb of François, and the gold box in which the heart of the Duchess Anne was sent back to Brittany." "You shall have your half hour at the cathedral, Miss Mott," said Archie gallantly, "even if we don't get home 'till morning." "'Till daylight doth appear," sang Walter as he went out to tell the chauffeur to be ready for an early start. M. La Tour looked his surprise, he had never seen us in quite so merry a mood. There is something exhilarating in the air here, which is crisp and fresh, almost like that of October at home, and we were further stimulated by the thought of doing something as unexpected as it was delightful. We set forth promptly, a gay party, the three women folk upon the back seat, M. La Tour and Archie vis à vis, and Walter with the chauffeur in front. A nice intelligent young fellow is this chauffeur, with whom Walter has become so intimate that he seems to be able to converse with him without any apparent language. His name is François and Walter has, in some way, fathomed the secrets of his soul and tells us that he is the _fiancé_ of the pretty black eyed Eloisa who showed us around the château of Langeais. The confidence came about in this wise, François asked us if we had seen Langeais, a very noble château, and did the little _gardienne_, the pretty, dark-eyed one, take us about? Yes! that is the one he knows, they both belong to the country around Tours, than which there is nothing finer in the known world. Although living at Blois, for financial reasons, he hopes to go back to that garden spot of France and there to end his days. After which Walter, by means of gestures and signs, extracted the story of his love. We did not feel it incumbent upon us to reveal to François the sad fact that Eloisa was flirting quite openly with one of the red-legged upholders of the military glory of France, when we saw her at Langeais. "That was doubtless an innocent diversion to which she resorted, in order to pass away the time during her lover's absence," Archie remarked, with a fine touch of sarcasm in his tone, for at this moment Lydia, who is wearing some forget-me-nots that were beside her plate this morning, is having a very animated conversation with M. La Tour. Lydia is very charming in a blue linen suit, the tang of salt in the air, which is quite evident here, has given her a brilliant color, and every stray lock of her golden brown hair has curled up into bewildering little ringlets. I don't wonder that Archie resents the forget-me-nots. "Where the deuce does the fellow get them?" he asked me this morning. "François and I have been looking all about the town before breakfast and we can't even find a bunch of pansies." Pansies would be a good offset to forget-me-nots; but as only sweet peas and roses were to be found, Archie scorned to bestow these which grow in such abundance, and so contented himself with a beautiful basket of fruit which we all enjoyed. I need not tell you, after our experience with Roman camps, that there was little to be seen upon the site of this one of Angers; but we were interested in the glimpse that we had, in passing through Ancenis, of its ancient château with its tower-flanked doorway, the work of an Angevin architect. Within this château, M. La Tour tells us, an important treaty was signed by François II of Brittany and Louis XI. As we drew near Nantes the strong salt air blowing in our faces made us realize that we were near the sea. Nantes and St. Nazaire, which is a little north and west of Nantes, are among the great sea ports of the world. And here we find ourselves again in the Dumas country, for it was along the part of the Loire that we have seen to-day that Fouquet fled pursued relentlessly by Colbert. If only Fouquet could have reached Nantes and his own Belle Ile, out beyond St. Nazaire, a different fate might have been his. We follow again in imagination, with almost breathless interest, that close pursuit, of one boat by the other, until we suddenly find ourselves winding through the streets of a town and know that we are in Queen Anne's city of Nantes, that also of the monk Abelard and of the famous warrior surnamed "Bras de Fer." Gazing upon the redoubtable Château of Nantes with its six towers, its bastions and its wide and deep moat, into which the sea poured its rising tide twice each day, we could understand Henri Quatre saying, as he stood before it, "Ventre Saint Gris! the Dukes of Brittany were not men to be trifled with!" It was into the dungeon of this château that Fouquet was first thrown, and here Mazarin had Henri de Gondi imprisoned, and from whence, as M. La Tour tells us, he escaped over the side of the Bastion de Mercoeur, by means of a rope smuggled into the prison by his friends. There are no end of interesting associations connected with Nantes, of which not the least important is that Henry of Navarre here signed the Edict of Nantes, the Huguenot charter of liberties. We needed a full day here, but remembering our promise, we did not even ask whether the château was open to visitors, which was really very good behavior on our part. We turned our faces toward the Cathedral of St. Pierre, and spent there our half hour, no more, no less. Here over the sculptured figure of its patron saint are some lines, in old French, which tell us that this building dates back to the year 1434. The chief treasure of the cathedral is the beautiful tomb of François II, and his wife Marguerite de Foix, the father and mother of the little Duchess Anne, on which the ermine tails are in full feather, if we may so express it, and also the hound and the lion which are symbols of this ancient house. The tomb, which is one of the masterpieces of that good artist, Michel Colombe, was brought here from the old Église des Carmes which was pillaged and burned during the Revolution. Although we reached Angers only in time for a very late dinner, we were inclined to wander again to-night. I don't know just how it came about; Archie was out on the terrace smoking, and when Lydia appeared at the door he threw away his cigar and joined her. As they walked off together, Lydia turned back and said, in her sweet, demure way: "Dr. Vernon is taking me to see the ruins of the Abbey of Toussaint by moonlight. Why don't you and Mr. Leonard come too?" "Oh! no, we don't spoil sport; do we, Zelphine?" said Walter, "and it seems to me, dear, if my memory does not fail me, that moonlight upon ruins has brought good luck to your matchmaking schemes before this. Do you remember how Angela and the Doctor trotted off to see the ruins at Exeter by moonlight?" "Yes, of course, how could I forget that evening? Poor dear Angela will be thinking of us and missing us to-night." "Well, she will only have this one night to miss us and this day in Angers has been worth so much to us." "We have had many delightful days on this trip; but this has been one of the most perfect. Why do many of the people, who do the châteaux so conscientiously, skip Angers?" "I hope that many may continue to skip it," said Walter, "tourists and trippers would ruin this lovely old place and turn this comfortable, homelike Cheval Blanc into a great noisy caravansary. And now that the lov--I mean, now that your brother and Lydia have had a good start of us, let us go to see the ruins of the old Abbey, Zelphine," and then with a mischievous twinkle in his eye: "Don't you think that Miss Cassandra and M. La Tour could be persuaded to pair off and go with us?" Miss Cassandra was just then sleeping sweetly in her chair; she does not confess to any fatigue after our long motor trip, but she must be very tired, and M. La Tour is engaged with some friends from Paris. Much as we like him, and indeed no one could help liking him,--for this one evening we are content to dispense with his kind attentions. The ruins of the Abbey of Toussaint must be interesting at any time, reminding us of those of Nettley and Jumiéges, with their exquisite carved arches and windows all overgrown and draped with vines and shrubbery, but by moonlight, like fair Melrose, they take upon them an added charm. We lingered long before the lovely carved window, through which the moonlight streamed in silvery radiance; but we saw nothing of Archie and Lydia. They had probably gone to take a last look at the Castle of Angers by the light of the moon, and when they returned to the Cheval Blanc Miss Cassandra and I had gone upstairs, feeling that we had indeed had a full day, and that the wanderers would probably be quite as happy without us. XV ORLEANS AND ITS MAID ORLEANS, September 14th. WE set forth early this morning, as we had a long day before us, and as Walter warned us, little time to loiter by the way, great as the temptation might be to stop _en route_. I don't know that anything has happened, but the atmosphere seems somewhat electric, and if anything has occurred I am quite sure that it is of a cheerful nature, as there is a telltale light in Archie's eyes that seems to say when they meet mine: "I have been sworn to secrecy, find out if you can!" Lydia's face is inscrutable; but her color is a little brighter than usual and she seems to avoid meeting my gaze, and drops her eyelids in a way that she has when the sun is bright. Then, she is beside me and consequently I cannot see her face as I can Archie's. Our places have been changed in the auto; Lydia and Archie are vis à vis this morning and M. La Tour is opposite to me, but this may be quite accidental. After Walter's solemn warning about the shortness of time, I was afraid to suggest stopping anywhere; but Lydia had told me that she intended, if possible, to see the Château de Morains, near Saumur, where Margaret of Anjou died. She made her request with some hesitation. "Of course we can stop," said Walter, "it won't take long, if François knows the way." François did not know the way to the historic shrine, which is evidently neglected by English and American pilgrims; but by making inquiries he found it without much trouble. We saw the outside of the little château and what interested us especially, the inscription over the gateway which relates that this Manoir of Vignole-Souzay, formerly Dampierre, was the refuge of the heroine of the War of the Roses, Marguerite of Anjou and Lancaster, Queen of England, the most unfortunate of queens, wives and mothers, who died here the 25th of April, 1482, aged fifty-three years. This little French tablet in memory of the English Queen, who was received with such rejoicings in England upon her marriage with Henry VI, seemed to us most pathetic. As a return for this stop at Morains, which Walter considered a particular concession to the women of the party, he suggested that we take time to stop at Villandry to see a Druid stone which M. La Tour has been telling him about. You may remember that he and Archie are somewhat insane upon the subject of Druidical remains, but I notice that Archie is not as keenly interested in the Druids, this morning, as usual. He and Lydia are talking over some places that they mean to see in or near Paris. Archie has been reading a description of Fouquet's Château of Vaux-le-Vicomte, which is only an hour's ride from Paris, near Melun. Wise in his day and generation is this brother of mine, for nothing could so appeal to Lydia's historic soul as just such an expedition as this! This was the château at which the great financier entertained the King with such magnificence that he aroused the jealousy of his royal master. You remember Dumas's description of it, and La Fontaine's _Songe de Vaux_, in which he says that everything conspired for the pleasure of the King, music, fountains, Molière's plays, in which he was praised,--even the moon and the stars seemed to shine for him, on those nights at Vaux. "And the fruits of the earth, and of the greenhouses yielded up their treasures for him," said M. La Tour. "In his old age Louis was wont to say that no peaches were equal to those of Vaux-le-Vicomte in flavor and quality." "I am quite sure that he had never tasted those of Anjou!" exclaimed Walter, and at this most opportune moment François produced a basket of these same Anjou peaches, and some pears also, all surrounded by green leaves, as only the French know how to set them forth. We feasted on the fat things of the earth, as we made our way to Villandry, where we saw the ancient monument of the Druids, which was not much to see after all. Walter, however, takes a solid satisfaction in visiting the things that he feels it is his duty to see. The same sort of a rainbow illuminates his horizon after a duty of this sort is performed, that irradiates our path when you and I have accomplished a series of perfunctory visits, and yet he tells Lydia and me that we take our sightseeing quite too seriously. M. La Tour has been telling us about the elaborate New Year's ceremonies once held at Chartres, by the Druids. The mistletoe was cut by the eubage, with a golden _faucelle_, or sickle, belonging to one of the Druidesses and then distributed to the people. The eubage was, it appears, a combination of priest and bard whose pleasing task it was to cut the throats of the human victims offered upon the Druidical altar of sacrifice. This distribution of the mistletoe at the beginning of the year may have led to our later use of the mistletoe in the Christmas holiday festivals. Walter says that he does not know about this, nor does M. La Tour; but they intend to look it up and communicate the result one to the other. From this conversation you will naturally infer that we are again in the land of the mistletoe. In the meadows we noticed a delicate little mauve-colored flower, something like an orchid, which François told me was a crocus, blooming for the second time this season, and in the gardens of the little gray houses, with their red-tiled roofs, and by the roadside were gorgeous asters of all shades of purple. In the less cultivated places, heather blooms luxuriantly and yellow gorse which attracted Miss Cassandra's trained botanist's eye, and she suddenly quoted the old Scotch saw, with about the same appropriateness as some of the remarks of "Mr. F's Aunt" in Bleak House: "'When gorse is out of season, kissing is out of fashion,'" and looking straight at Archie, she added encouragingly "you see it is still blooming." [Illustration: FORGE NEAR STONE STAIRWAY AT LUYNES] It would be impossible to accuse Miss Cassandra of flirtatious intent, and yet at her glance and words Archie blushed a beautiful scarlet. I tried not to look at him, as I knew that he was inwardly swearing at the thinness of his skin, or whatever it is that makes people blush. I couldn't see Lydia without turning around and staring at her; but Walter, who enjoyed the whole scene from his coign of vantage beside François, told me afterwards that "Lydia never turned a hair, and so you see, Zelphine," he said, laughing gaily, "it all rests between Miss Cassandra and Archie." Seeing in the distance the curious, enigmatical Pile de Cinq Mars, we suddenly realized that we were quite near Luynes, and Walter told François to stop there as he knew that Archie would be charmed with the beauty of the situation of this château which hangs high, like an eagle's nest, upon a bluff above the lowlands and the river. While we were walking around and about the château, we suddenly came upon Mr. and Mrs. Otis Skinner standing at the entrance to a little smithy, quite near the rock-hewn steps that lead up to the château. We have seen so few Americans, and no friends or acquaintances since we left Tours, and now, as we are again approaching the old town, to meet these good friends was a great pleasure. Mr. Skinner took us into the smithy, which is so charmingly situated, and we wondered again, as at Cheverny, why even a blacksmith's workshop is so much more picturesque here than in England or America. While Mr. Skinner was standing talking to the blacksmith, Lydia and Archie and Mrs. Skinner managed to get snapshots of the forge. If it is satisfactory, I will send you a photograph, as we intend to exchange pictures and you shall have the very best. After this encounter, we sped along on our way toward Tours, wondering whether Mr. Skinner was collecting material, atmosphere, etc., for a French play. We are glad that our way lay through Tours and that Archie could have even a fleeting glimpse of the old capital. To motor across the great bridge and along the wide Rue Nationale, and to have another look at St. Gatien, with its two beautiful towers, and at those other towers of Charlemagne and de l'Horloge was a joy, even if there was not time to stop over at Tours for an hour. At Blois we gathered up our luggage, left the automobile and took the train for Orleans. We parted from our François with much regret, as we have come to like his honest, frank face and his pleasant French ways. Walter and Archie, I am quite sure, gave him a generous remembrance, Archie especially being quite in sympathy with his dreams of love in a Touraine cottage. We all wished him happiness, not without some misgivings on my part, I must admit, lest his Eloisa of the bright eyes should play him false for the charms of some one of those red-legged soldiers, who seem to possess an irresistible charm for French women, who are always ready to sing "J'aime le militaire." From Blois to Orleans is a railroad journey of a little over an hour, through a fertile, but a rather monotonous country abounding in fields of turnips. From the quantities of this vegetable raised here, we naturally conclude that the peasants of this part of France subsist chiefly upon turnips, as the Irish do upon potatoes. We passed through many gray villages, which tone in with the shades of the silver poplars, and this with certain gray atmospheric effects in the landscape makes us realize how true to life are the delicate gray-green canvases of many of the French artists. The Orleans station, like that of Tours, is a delusion and a snare, as we were suddenly landed at Les Aubrais, one of the outskirts of the old city and from thence had to make our way to Orleans as best we could. We had fortunately been able to send our small luggage directly through to Paris by putting it in the _consigne_, and paying ten centimes on each article. This convenient and economical device, which with all our travel we had never discovered, was revealed to us by the two charming Connecticut ladies whom we met at Amboise. Walter calls down blessings upon the pretty heads of these two wise New England women whenever we make a stop over between trains; and Miss Cassandra ejaculates: "It takes a Yankee, my dears, to find out the best way to do everything on the top of the earth!" Having only ourselves to dispose of, we soon found an omnibus which conveyed us to the Place du Martroi, the soul and centre of the ancient city of Orleans, where is fitly placed an equestrian statue of Jeanne d'Arc, by Foyatier. This statue does not, however, happily suggest the Maid, as the peasant girl of Domremy is here represented with a fine Greek profile, and, as Archie noticed, with his keen horseman's eye, the charger upon which she is mounted is a race-horse and not a war-horse. It is, however, a noble and dignified memorial, on the whole, in which it differs from the grotesque affair at Chinon, and Dubray's low reliefs on the sides of the pedestal, representing important scenes in the life of the Maid, are beautiful and impressive. Here in Orleans, the scene of Joan's first and most remarkable success, we live more completely in the life and spirit of that wonderful period than at Chinon. The marvel of it all impressed us more forcibly than ever before. That this peasant girl, young and ignorant of the art of war, by the power of her sublime faith in her heaven-sent mission and in herself as the divinely appointed one, should have wrested this city from the English, seems nothing short of the miracle that she and her soldiers believed it to be. Even that hard-headed and cold-hearted sovereign, Louis XI, was so overawed by the story of Joan's victories that he marked with tablets the little room at Domremy where she was born, and also the convent of Sainte Catherine de Fierbois, where she was received and where she found her sword with the five crosses. We knew that the Place du Martroi was not the scene of Joan's martyrdom, and yet this wide, noble square, with her monument in the centre, from which diverge so many streets associated with her history, stood for infinitely more to us than anything we had seen at Rouen, the actual place of her martyrdom. From the square, M. La Tour conducted us to the cathedral, which has been criticized by Victor Hugo and many others, and which we, perhaps from pure perversity, found much more harmonious than we had expected. The façade, which the local guidebook pronounces majestic, even if _bâtarde_ in style, is rich in decoration, and the little columns on the towers I thought graceful and beautiful, however _bâtarde_ they may be. Two cathedrals have stood upon the site of the present Sainte Croix, the last having been destroyed by the Huguenots, to whom are attributed the same sort of destruction that marked the course of Oliver Cromwell's army in England. It is said that the great Protestant leader, Théodore de Bèze, himself blew up the four noble pillars that once supported the belfry. However this may be, and Miss Cassandra says that we are all free to believe such tales or not, as we choose, very little is left of the old edifice except the eleven chapels and the side walls. Even if Théodore de Bèze destroyed the old cathedral, the building as it now stands was the work of his former chief, for it was Henry of Navarre who laid the corner stone of the new edifice, in 1601, to fulfill a vow made to Pope Clement VIII who had absolved him from the ban of excommunication. In the side windows, in richly colored glass, is the story of the Maid of Orleans, from the day when she heard the voices and a vision appeared to her while she kept her father's sheep in the fields near Domremy, to the hour when she and her troops gave thanks for the victory of Orleans in this cathedral. On through the eventful months of her life to the sad and shameful scenes at Rouen, where the innocent and devoted Maid was burned at the stake, while France which she had delivered, and Charles whom she had crowned, made no sign, the story is told in a series of pictures. Even if of modern glass and workmanship, these windows seemed to us most beautiful, especially those on the right-hand side through which the light streamed red, yellow and blue from the jewelled panes. The window representing the crowning of Charles VII at Rheims is especially rich in color. Joan, with a rapt ecstatic expression on her face, is here to see her King crowned and with her is the banner that she loved even more than her mystic sword. Below are inscribed her own simple words, "It has been with him in the suffering, it is right that it should be with him in the glory." Ever self-effacing, it was of her beloved banner that Joan was thinking, never of herself. The whole wonderful story is written upon these windows so plainly that any child may read it. We have been thinking of Christine and Lisa, and wishing that they were here to read it with us. They will learn of Joan of Arc in their histories, but it will never be so real to them as it is here where her great work was done, and where she is so honored. Some day we promise ourselves the pleasure of bringing the children here and going with them through all the Joan of Arc country. M. La Tour, who has made the journey, says that, as the Joan of Arc cult is increasing all the time, every spot associated with her is marked and everything most carefully preserved. "Most interesting of all," he says, "is the little church where Jeanne worshipped. Although badly restored by Louis XVIII, the nave remains intact, and the pavement is just as it was when the bare feet of Jeanne trod its stones, in ecstatic humility, during the long trance of devotion when she felt that supernatural beings were about her and unmistakable voices were bidding her to do what maid had never dreamed of doing before. In a little chapel, beside the main edifice, is the stone fount where the infant Jeanne was baptized. Fastened to the wall there hangs a remnant of the iron balustrade, that Jeanne's hands must have rested on during the hours that she passed in rhapsody, seeing what never was seen on land or sea. A few steps from the church stands the cot where the maid was born, almost as humbly as the Christ Child. Entering through the small doorway, you see the room in which Jeanne first opened her eyes to the light. On one side stands the 'dresser,' or wardrobe, built half way into the wall, where the housewife stored the family belongings. Beside this is the iron arm which held the lamp, used during midnight watches. Beyond this general room is the alcove that served Jeanne as a sleeping-room. In this narrow chamber, more like a cell than a sleeping-room, Jeanne heard 'voices,' and dreamed her dreams." M. La Tour's description is so interesting that we all long to follow in his footsteps and in those of the Maid, from the clump of oak trees--of which one still stands--and the "Fountain of the Voices" to the ruins of the Château of Vaucouleurs, where the chivalrous Robert de Baudricourt, impressed by the girl's serene confidence, gave her a letter for the King, who was at Chinon, as we know. [Illustration: HÔTEL CABU HOUSE OF JOAN OF ARC ORLEANS] The Porte de France is still standing, M. La Tour tells us, through which the shepherd maid, with her four men-at-arms and her brother Jean, embarked on her perilous journey of eleven days across a country filled with roaming bands of British and Burgundian soldiers. The places are all marked, Saint-Urbain, Auxerre, Gien, Sainte Catherine de Fierbois, where Jeanne was received in the "aumonerie" of the convent, now transformed into a Mayor's office. When we come to Orleans with the children, we must try to be here on the 8th of May, when the whole city is _en fête_ celebrating the glorious victory of the Maid. Still talking over the projected Joan of Arc pilgrimage, M. La Tour led us by the Rue Jeanne d'Arc which faces the cathedral and to the Maison de l'Annonciade where Jacques Boucher, treasurer of the Duke of Orleans, received the Maid. In the court of this building, now used as a Dominican convent, is a small statue of Joan, above the well. This house is also called the Maison de Jeanne d'Arc, and in a charming Renaissance building, near by, is a collection of relics of the Maid. For some unknown reason this house is sometimes spoken of as the house of Agnes Sorel; and with about the same authority another house at the corner of the streets, Charles-Sanglier and Des Albanais, is called the _Maison de Diane de Poitiers_. This latter mansion, with its small towers and richly ornamented façade, is now an historical museum and is better known as the Hôtel Cabu. By the Rue Royale, which suddenly changes its name and becomes the Rue de la Republique after it crosses the Place du Martroi, we made our way to the Hôtel du Ville, a handsome sixteenth century building of brick and stone. On a tablet upon the façade is a long inscription telling how many kings, queens and notable personages have stopped here; but what interested us much more is a statuette in bronze of Joan, the work of the Princess Marie d'Orléans, daughter of Louis Philippe. The modest, devout little maid, represented by this statue, is more like the real Joan, to our thinking, than most of the more pretentious monuments. [Illustration: Neurdein Freres, Photo. SALLE DES MARRIAGES, ORLEANS] In the Salle des Marriages of the Hôtel du Ville, we came suddenly upon souvenirs of a much later period than that of Joan, for here, in this room, Francis II died. He and Mary came here from Chenonceaux, and becoming violently ill from a malady in his ear which had tortured him for some time, the poor young king took to his bed never to rise again. His mother followed him here, and at Mary's instance the great surgeon Ambrose Paré was summoned. He wished to operate; the young Queen had full confidence in his judgment and skill, but Catherine resolutely opposed the use of the surgeon's knife, and poor Francis lingered a few days in great pain, and finally died in the arms of his wife. There is a painting in the Salle des Marriages of this sad scene; Mary is kneeling by the bedside of her husband and Catherine is seated nearby, her face cold and expressionless. It has been intimated that Catherine opposed Ambrose Paré because she wished to have poor Francis removed to make way for a son whom she could control and bend to her will; but with all her wickedness, it is impossible to believe in such a motive. One may, however, understand her ignorant horror of the use of the knife, and the superstitious terror that haunted her in view of the recent revelations of Ruggieri at Chaumont. "I think it is quite evident what was amiss with King Francis!" exclaimed Miss Cassandra. "He was suffering from mastoiditis, of course, and Ambrose Paré was clever enough to find it out, and might have saved his life if he had been allowed to have his way. I have no patience with Catherine, and she knew what she was about when she set up her opinion against that of a great surgeon." Archie says that to diagnose a case at a distance of several hundred miles requires considerable skill; but still greater is the insight into obscure maladies of our Quaker lady, who bridges over the centuries and tells us just what disease afflicted Francis II in the year of grace 1560; and he added quite seriously: "You may be quite correct in your surmise, Miss West. Your niece and I will hunt up Ambrose Paré's diary when we get to Paris, and see what he says about the case. If you are right, I'll take you into my office as a partner." After a somewhat strenuous morning of sightseeing and a sumptuous regale at the Hôtel St. Aignan, whose name pleased us on account of its Dumas flavor, we climbed up to a lovely terrace garden from which we could overlook the town and the cathedral, to which distance certainly lends enchantment. In this pleasant resting place I am writing to you, dear Margaret, while we wait for a late train to Paris. M. La Tour expects his auto to meet us and convey us to the station and then to take him to his home. We shall miss him, as his kind attentions and vast fund of information have added much to the pleasure of our sojourn in Château Land. To-day he has managed our time so judiciously that we have seen everything of importance in Orleans without being hurried, and we now have this quiet hour on the hillside garden before setting forth upon our journey. He evidently has no idea of what is happening in our midst, and is as attentive as ever to Lydia, talking to her and walking with her, whenever Archie gives him a chance; and who can blame him? I have never seen Lydia more charming than she is to-day; but the soft light that shines in her eyes is not for the young Frenchman, I am sure. Walter says: "If La Tour had his wits about him he would see what is going on under his nose; it takes a sledge hammer to drive in some other things beside a joke." Here comes the auto, and in five minutes we shall be _en route_ for Paris. XVI A CHÂTEAU FÊTE PARIS, September 16th. WE found Angela eagerly awaiting us when we reached our destination, and I must admit still more eagerly awaiting another arrival, as Mr. McIvor was expected by a train due here later than ours. Since she had been with his Scotch and English relatives, Angela insists upon having her fiancé called Mr. McIvor, as that is the custom in his own country. She, however, much prefers our calling him by his own delightful Scotch name, Ian, and we like him well enough to fall in with her desires. Ian arrived in due time, and our party is now complete. "How fortunate it is that the hour was in our favor instead of the Doctor's," exclaimed Walter; for according to French etiquette to have left Angela here unchaperoned with her lover in the same city, even if not in the same hotel, would have shocked all ideas of propriety. "I fancy that M. La Tour, good fellow as he is, couldn't understand our leaving Angela here by herself even for a single night." "No," I said, "and I didn't think it necessary to tell him." "Queer notions these people have! As if Angela didn't know how to take care of herself!" No one knows better, and I told Walter how Angela managed in London. She reached there in the afternoon, instead of in the morning as she had expected. Something about the automobile had given out and they had finally to take a train from York. When she reached the hotel where she was to meet the Dudleys, she found a note telling her to follow them to Southampton as they were obliged to take the night boat. Angela immediately looked up trains and finding that the next train would be one hour too late for the boat, what do you think she did? She telegraphed to the Captain to wait for her! Did you ever hear of anything so delicious? Walter calls it a piece of American effrontery, but I call it quickwitted, don't you? Of course the Captain could not keep his boat waiting for any person of less distinction than the Queen; but by good luck (Angela is always lucky) the vessel was late in sailing that evening. The Dudleys, who were anxiously waiting for her on deck, saw her coming, just as the sailors were about to take up the gang-plank, and begged the Captain for a moment's delay. Of course Angela looked charmingly pretty as she tripped up the incline; and she never realized that her little telegram could be taken otherwise than seriously until she heard the Captain say to the first officer, as she stepped on deck: "She was worth waiting for, after all." At this the child was so overcome with confusion that she did not know which way to look, and evidently did not recover her self-possession during the crossing. Walter insists that she is still blushing over her own daring. If she is, it is vastly becoming to her, as I have never seen Angela look more brilliantly beautiful. We are living in an atmosphere so charged with romance, that it would be positively dangerous for two unmated beings to join our party at this time. Miss Cassandra pays Archie and myself the compliment of appearing to be radiantly happy over Lydia's engagement, although I know that she drops a tear in secret over M. La Tour and his château. I tell her that this is not an entirely safe environment for her, especially as one of her old time suitors is in Paris; he met us at Morgan's this morning and has been dancing attendance on Miss Cassandra this evening, which last, Walter says, is a very disrespectful way to speak of the decorous call of a dignified Quaker gentleman. However that may be, Miss Cassandra laughed gaily at my serious warning, and with a flash of her bright blue eyes dismissed her quondam suitor and my solicitude in one brief sentence: "Thee is very flattering, my dear, and I admit that Jonah is an excellent person; but he is quite too slow for me!" "That may be; very few people are quick enough for you, dear Miss Cassandra; but you must acknowledge that Mr. Passmore was not at all slow about calling upon you to-night." It is really too bad to tease our Quaker lady; but she takes it all so literally and is so charmingly good-humored withal that it is a temptation not easy to resist. We are making the most of our few days in Paris, as we leave here early next week. Lydia announced at breakfast that she felt it _her_ duty, and she hoped that we should feel it to be ours to make a pilgrimage to St. Denis this afternoon. "After enjoying ourselves in the châteaux of the Kings and Queens of France, it is," she says, "the very least that we can do to go to St. Denis and see them decently and honorably buried." Miss Cassandra quite agreed with Lydia, and Archie, although he says that it is a ghoulish sort of expedition, would go anywhere with her, of course. It is rather odd that none of us have ever been to St. Denis, not even Ian McIvor who lived in Paris for months while he was studying medicine. We set forth this afternoon in truly democratic fashion on top of a tram, on one of the double-deckers that they have over here, to Angela's great delight. A rather lively party we were, I must admit, despite the sobriety of our errand. There was nothing that especially interested us in the prosperous manufacturing town of St. Denis, and we went directly to the basilica, which with the mingling of the Romanesque and Gothic in its architecture is much more beautiful than we had expected. It is sufficiently ancient to satisfy our antiquarian taste, as the site of the original abbey dates back to 275, having been erected over the remains of St. Dionysius or St. Denis. The present edifice owes its existence to the Abbé Suger who reigned here in the days of Saint Louis. There have been many restorations, of course, and some very bad ones as late as the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte. In this basilica the Emperor Napoleon was married to the Archduchess Marie Louise and, what is more interesting to us, here Joan of Arc hung up her arms, in 1429. It is wonderful to see the monuments to royalties as far back in French history as Queen Frédégonde and King Dagobert, who founded an abbey here as early as 638. The tomb of Dagobert is a most remarkable and realistic representation of the King's soul leaving his body and its reception in heaven; the means of transportation is a boat with oarsmen, both going and coming, if I may so express it, that is the soul of Dagobert goes forth upon the unknown sea in a boat, and in another carving on the tomb he is welcomed to the shores of heaven, still in a boat. It is very interesting, as there is a poetic as well as a realistic side to the strange conception. Near Dagobert's monument some one had left a visiting card, after the curious French fashion. "It seemed so very late in the day to be calling upon King Dagobert," as Walter remarked. After this ancient mausoleum, that of Louis and Anne de Bretagne seemed quite modern, and very handsome, much in the style of the Visconti monument at the Certosa near Pavia. Not far from this tomb we came upon that of Henry II and Catherine de Médicis, in which they are represented in that gruesome fashion so frequent in English cathedral tombs,--the nude figures below, while above in a beautiful chapel, with marble columns and pillars, there are handsome bronze figures of the King and Queen devoutly kneeling. Very inappropriately at the four corners are placed bronze figures of Faith, Hope, Charity and Good Works. Catherine is said to have planned this mausoleum herself, and, strange to relate, in the choir we found another monument to the same King and Queen. "Just like the grasping creature to want two tombs!" exclaimed Miss Cassandra. "Most people are satisfied with one." It appears that in her old age Catherine disapproved of the nude figures on the first monument, and had this one made with two decently robed effigies, in marble, resting upon a bronze couch. We went down into the crypt, all of us except Angela, who still has an aversion to underground resorts. Ian went with us; but after a hurried glance at the most important tombs he made his way back to the sunshine and to Angela. The rest of the party went through everything quite resolutely, although we found this ancient crypt of the good Abbé Suger even more gruesome than most crypts. The guide directed us to a tiny window, through which we could see the place where poor Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI were finally buried, at least all that could be found of their remains. Here a light was burning, which they told us was never allowed to go out. In strange contrast to this solemn little chapel, there is a kneeling figure of the Queen on one side of the crypt in a ball dress with jewels around her neck. This statue, by Petitot, although strangely inappropriate in costume, is beautiful in expression, and in the modelling of the face, arms, and hands, the latter being very lovely. Here also is a "Caveau Impérial," constructed by the order of Napoleon III, as the burial place of his dynasty. This tomb is quite untenanted, of course, as no Bonapartes lie at St. Denis; although the bones of the Valois, Orleans and Bourbon families, who have come and gone in France, probably forever, are royally entombed here, from their early sovereigns down to Louis XVIII. I tell you all this because I think you have not been to St. Denis, and we found it so much more interesting than we had expected. Walter and Archie made their acknowledgments to Lydia, in due form, and indeed we should never have made this pilgrimage had she not been enterprising enough to lead us forth toward St. Denis and its royal tombs. September 17th. Madame La Tour and her son made a formal call upon us yesterday. M. La Tour had already dropped in, in his friendly way, to inquire after our comfort and to offer his services, as a guide to anything that we might wish to see. As Madame had announced her coming we were at home to receive her. She is pretty and graceful, a charming combination of the American and French woman. We all fell in love with her. M. La Tour is frankly proud of his mother and was anxious that we should meet her. He has evidently not yet grasped the situation of affairs, although during the visit, which was brief if somewhat embarrassing, I could see nothing but the sapphire that sparkled upon Lydia's finger. Madame La Tour very cordially invited Lydia to go to the opera with her, and M. La Tour was evidently much disappointed when she declined in consequence of another engagement. "Lydia never said a truer word in her life!" exclaimed Walter, after the visitors had departed; "but La Tour is very stupid not to know what sort of an engagement it is that she has on her hands." Upon which I suggested that Walter should mention the engagement to M. La Tour, quite casually, in the course of conversation. "Why not tell him yourself, Zelphine? You are so much more adroit at that sort of thing." "It is really becoming embarrassing. Some flowers came last night, forget-me-nots again, to Archie's amusement. Now if Lydia had been anything but just ordinarily nice and pleasant to him, as she is to everyone, it would be different." "Well, and even if she had been more than ordinarily nice to La Tour why do you trouble yourself about it, Zelphine? It is something that only concerns Lydia and La Tour, and Archie perhaps in a way, but we really have nothing to do with it." Thus, manlike, does Walter push aside all part and lot in the _affaires du coeur_ of his fellow-travellers; but I have just had a brilliant and beautiful idea, which I intend to communicate to Archie at once. We were all talking _en route_ of the Château of Vaux-le-Vicomte. As this is a land where people make a fête upon every occasion, Archie shall give a breakfast at Melun or some place near the château, and invite us all, and the La Tours also, an engagement party. I have no doubt the French have some charming name for this sort of an entertainment, which we can find out. I shall write you later of the success of my plan. September 18th. Of course Archie was delighted with my suggestion, as he and Lydia have been promising themselves the pleasure of an excursion to Vaux-le-Vicomte which seems to go by the name of Vaux-Praslin at the present time. Archie and Walter did the very kindest and most friendly thing, which in the end proved to be the most advantageous to themselves. They took M. La Tour into their confidence and consulted with him as to how the little excursion should be made and where the breakfast should be given. Naturally the poor boy was very much surprised, and quite downhearted when he found out what event was to be celebrated, and we did not see him for two whole days, not until this evening, when he called and offered his congratulations to Lydia in pretty French phrases. Angela is charmed with M. La Tour and his manners, and says that she does not see how Lydia could possibly resist his fascinations; this with a mischievous glance at Archie, who, serene and confident in his own happiness, replies that Lydia is probably making the mistake of her life in turning away from the young Frenchman and his château. But Lydia knows that she is making no mistake and takes all this jesting in good part; but she insists that the little celebration shall be called a château fête, as Vaux-le-Vicomte is our objective point. This is in much better taste, and, after all, we don't know the French name for an engagement fête. "We certainly don't want to ask La Tour to inform our ignorance," as Walter says. "It would be like requiring the man who is down on his luck to name the happy day. It is quite better taste, and, after all, we don't know the occasion." Miss Cassandra and Walter and I went to the American church this morning because we like the simple service there, and the rest of the party went to the Russian Church to hear the music, which was very good to-day. The afternoon we all spent at Versailles, where we were so fortunate as to see the fountains play. Nothing, not even the châteaux of the Loire, gives us so realizing a sense of the gayety and splendor of the life of the French court, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as this vast palace of pleasure when the gardens bask in sunshine and the fountains are playing. We recalled Madame de Sévigné's spirited description of the court and royal family setting forth upon some pleasure party, herself among them, tucked in snugly in the same _carosse_ with her favorite, Duchesse de La Vallière, or Madame de Montespan of the many ringlets, for whom she cares nothing,--these two ladies in close quarters although cordially hating each other. The Queen is in another _carosse_ with her children, and the King, being a free lance, drives in the coach with the royal favorites or rides beside it as his fancy dictates. Our fête is to be on Tuesday, and M. La Tour came to the hotel this evening with a well arranged plan. He really is a dear, and having plenty of spirit and a certain kind of pride that seems to belong to well-bred French people, he has no idea of wearing his heart upon his sleeve, even for the love of Lydia. His suggestions are most practical and sensible, and his advice to Archie is to go to Fontainebleu first and have a walk through the forest, breakfast at one of the hotels there, and motor to Vaux-le-Vicomte, by way of Melun, in the afternoon. It all sounds perfectly delightful, and I have secured a copy of the Vicomte de Bragelonne, at Brentano's, in order to read over again his account of Fouquet's reception of the King at Vaux. We shall be glad to see Fontainebleau again. Since we have seen the châteaux of the Loire, all of these palaces near Paris are most interesting to us, as they make us realize, as we have never done before, what a great pleasure park much of France was under the Valois and the Bourbons. If the forest of Chambord was vast with its many acres, so also was that of Fontainebleau with its 42,500 acres. Palaces of pleasure, all of these châteaux were intended to be, as were Chenonceaux, Azay le Rideau, Blois and Chambord, although many of them are stained by dark and bloody crimes. Passing through the gardens and park of Versailles to-day we forgot the terrible scenes that were enacted there in 1793, until the guide pointed out to us the Queen's apartments, and showed us the little room from which Marie Antoinette fled for safety to the King's rooms, on that October night of horror, when the Parisian mob swept down upon the palace. September 20th. Our day in the open was a brilliant success. Archie had a large automobile, or perhaps I should say a touring car, large enough to hold us all. Madame La Tour declined, and so we have our château party, with the pleasant addition of Angela and Ian, who naturally entered with great spirit into the celebration. We had all the time we needed at Fontainebleau, entering by the old Cour du Cheval Blanc, but avoiding the interior of the palace, as we had all been here before, some of us several times, and spending all our time in the gardens and forest which are ever new and always beautiful. We looked for the quincunx near which Louise de La Vallière and her companions were hiding when the king and St. Aignan overheard their girlish confidences, but not finding anything answering to Dumas's description we had to content ourselves with a labyrinth which M. La Tour thinks should answer quite as well. At the end of it is the huge grape-vine, called the King's Vine, which reminded us of the vine at Hampton Court, and like it is said to produce an enormous crop of grapes. Archie's breakfast was delightful, an _al fresco_ entertainment under a spreading horse-chestnut tree in the garden of a hotel at Fontainebleau. The table was beautifully decorated with flowers and fruit, and the menu, which was suggested by M. La Tour, was the sort to tempt one's appetite on a warm day like this, for it is summer here and much like our September weather at home. Walter complimented M. La Tour so heartily upon his good taste that he laughingly reminded Walter of our first acquaintance at the _Bon Laboreur_, and asked him if he still had a poor opinion of the French _cuisine_. "Not when you have anything to do with the ordering, my dear fellow!" was the response. "Perhaps my taste needed to be cultivated, for I have come to like some of your French dishes very much, and as for your wines, my taste did not need to be cultivated to like them; I took to them quite naturally." There were toasts, speeches and good wishes, Angela and Ian coming in for their full share. Altogether something to be remembered was that luncheon under the chestnut tree, and near the great forest of Fontainebleau, one of the many pleasant things to be stored up in our memories in connection with our days in Château Land. This motor trip, to Vaux-le-Vicomte, which seemed so short to us, was evidently quite an affair to Louis XIV and his court, as, according to Dumas, there was some talk of stopping at Melun over night. As we know, large bodies move slowly, and the royal party must have been sufficiently cumbersome, with the heavy coaches of the King, of the two Queens, Anne of Austria and Maria Teresa, and the several coaches of their maids of honor, to say nothing of the outriders, the Swiss Guards and the Musketeers with our friend D'Artagnan at their head. A small army was this, that passed over the road that we travel to-day, lighting up the gray-green landscape with all colors of the rainbow. At the Château of Vaux-le-Vicomte, of which we had only expected to see the outside, M. La Tour had a surprise for us, as he had managed, in some way, to secure tickets of admission. We mounted the great steps, entered the vast vestibule and passed through the salons in which are beautiful paintings by Mignard and the two Le Bruns. As we wandered through these rooms, richly furnished and hung with old tapestries, and into the rotunda, capped by its great dome, we wondered in which of these rooms Molière's play had been given. The performance of _Les Fâcheux_, written especially for the occasion, was the crowning glory of the King's visit to Vaux. We learned that it was not given in any of these rooms, but in the garden, in the starlight. When the guests were seated, Molière appeared, and with well counterfeited surprise at seeing the King, apologized for having no players with him and no play to give. At this juncture, there arose from the waters of a fountain nearby, a nymph in a shell, who gracefully explained that she had come from her home beneath the water to behold the greatest monarch that the world had ever seen. We can well believe that a play, set in this flattering key, was calculated to please the King, who was praised all through at the expense of his courtiers, who were _les fâcheux_, the bores. After this rare bit of adulation Molière's fortune was made. For the host, Fouquet, who had gathered so much here to give the King pleasure, a far different fate was reserved. The sumptuous entertainment, the show of wealth on all sides, aroused bitter jealousy in the King's heart, and when some designing person (Colbert, it is said) whispered in his ear that Fouquet, not content with outshining his sovereign in the magnificence of his château, had raised his eyes to the royal favorite, Louise de La Vallière, the King's wrath knew no bounds. He was eager to have Fouquet arrested, while he was still accepting his hospitality. One of the finest passages in Dumas's description of the fête at Vaux-le-Vicomte is that in which Colbert tries to inflame his royal master's jealousy, while the usually timid and gentle Louise de La Vallière urges the King to control his wrath, reminding him that he is the guest of M. Fouquet and would dishonor himself by arresting him under such circumstances. "He is my King and my master," said La Vallière, turning to Fouquet; "I am the humblest of his servants. But he who touches his honor touches my life. Now, I repeat that they dishonor the King who advise him to arrest M. Fouquet under his own roof.... Were M. Fouquet the vilest of men, I should say aloud, 'M. Fouquet's person is sacred to the King because he is the King's host. Were his house a den of thieves, were Vaux a cave of coiners or robbers, his home is sacred, his palace inviolable, since his wife is living in it; and it is an asylum which even executioners would not dare to violate.'" These words, from the woman whom he loved, influenced Louis, and for the time he relinquished his design; but eighteen days after the great festival at Vaux, M. Fouquet was arrested, near Nantes as we know, and ended his days in prison. This magnificent château, which the architect Le Vau, the artist Le Brun, and the landscape gardener Le Nôtre had conspired to make so beautiful, is still, in a way, a monument to the great financier, although it has passed from his family into the hands of the Duke de Praslin. Unlike many of the châteaux, Vaux-le-Vicomte is still the home of people who love its beautiful lawns and parterres and keep them green and blooming. Armies of gardeners trim the hedges, plant the borders, and remove every stray leaf from the gravel paths. Here we saw the perfection of French gardening. As we motored home by the light of the stars, we felt that this, our last day in Château Land, was one of the happiest that we had known. We would like to stay longer in Paris and visit the many châteaux within motoring distance of the capital; but our holiday time is nearly over. Walter starts for Lausanne to-night, to gather up the children and bring them to London, whither we all go to-morrow. We shall have a few days there, and as many more in Oxford, where Walter has some engagements with old friends, and then to Southampton and home. We all sail October first, all except Ian McIvor, who comes over in December for a very important event. You and Allen must come some time, and visit with us the châteaux that we have seen, and see the others that we have not yet visited. For to-night, au revoir. Life has many joys, and not the least among them is to see the beautiful places of the earth, in congenial company, such as yours, dear Margaret. Yours always devoted, ZELPHINE. * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Photographs were moved so that they did not interrupt paragraphs. Page 32, "apearance" changed to "appearance" (gala appearance, as if) Page 35, "apears" changed to "appears" (lake side appears like) Page 38, "apears" changed to "appears" (as it appears from the) Page 61, "näive" changed to "naïve" (with naïve inconsistency) Page 77, "Hotel" changed to "Hôtel" (at the Hôtel de) Page 83, "Clôitre" changed to "Cloître" (the Cloître de la Psallette) Page 87, "Clôitre de la Psalette" changed to "Cloître de la Psallette" (lovely Cloître de la Psallette) Page 99, "impresion" changed to "impression" (an impression of power) Page 101, "näively" changed to "naïvely" (guide naïvely remarked) Page 107, "Medici" changed to "Médici" (de Médici whom he beheld) Page 142, "Medici" changed to "Médici" (Médici, like Minerva) 
29820	----	_The Cathedral Series_ _The following, each 1 vol., library 12mo, cloth, gilt top profusely illustrated. $2.50_ _The Cathedrals of Northern France BY FRANCIS MILTOUN_ _The Cathedrals of Southern France BY FRANCIS MILTOUN_ _The Cathedrals of England BY MARY J. TABER_ _The following, each 1 vol., library 12mo, cloth, gilt top, profusely illustrated. Net, $2.00_ _The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine BY FRANCIS MILTOUN_ _The Cathedrals of Northern Spain BY CHARLES RUDY_ _L. C. PAGE & COMPANY New England Building, Boston, Mass._ [Illustration: NOTRE DAME ... _de NOYON_] THE CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN FRANCE By FRANCIS MILTOUN WITH EIGHTY ILLUSTRATIONS, PLANS, AND DIAGRAMS, By BLANCHE McMANUS [Illustration] BOSTON L. C. Page and Company MDCCCCIIII _Copyright, 1903_ BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY (INCORPORATED) _All rights reserved_ Published October, 1903 Colonial Press Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. Boston, Mass., U. S. A. _THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR AND ARTIST TO THE GENIUS OF RACE WHICH MADE POSSIBLE THE EXISTENCE OF THESE ARCHITECTURAL "GLORIES OF FRANCE"_ APOLOGIA _"There are two ways of writing a book of travel: to recount the journey itself or the results of it." This is also the case with regard to any work which attempts to purvey topographical or historical information of a nature which is only to be gathered upon the spot; and, when an additional side-light is shown by reason of the inclusion, as in the present instance, of the artistic and religious element, it becomes more and more a question of judicious selection and arrangement of fact, rather than a mere hazarding of opinions, which, in many cases, can be naught but conjecture, and may, in spite of any good claim to authoritativeness, be misunderstood or perverted to an inutile end, or, what is worse, swallowed in that oblivion where lies so much excellent thought, which, lacking either balance or timeliness, has become stranded, wrecked, and practically lost to view because of its unappropriate and unattractive presentation._ _To-day, the purely technical writer may have little hope of immortality unless he is broad-minded enough to take a cultivated interest in many matters outside the ken of his own particular sphere. The best-equipped person living could not produce a new "Dictionary of Architecture," and expect it to fill any niche that may be waiting for such a work, unless he brought to bear, in addition to his own special knowledge, something of the statistician, something of the professed compiler, and, if possible, a little of the not unimportant knowledge possessed by the maker and seller of books, meaning--the publisher. Given these qualifications, it is likely that he will then produce an ensemble as far in advance of what otherwise might have been as is the modern printing machine, as a factor in the dissemination of literature, as compared with the ancient scribes working to the same end._ _The sentimentalist and rhapsodist in words and ideas is a dwindling factor at the present day, and a new presentation of fact is occasionally to be met with in the printed page. The best "book of travel" within the knowledge of the writer, and perhaps one of the slightest in bulk ever written in the English language, is Stevenson's "Inland Voyage"--here were imagination, appreciation, and a new way of seeing things, and, above all, enthusiasm; and this is the formula upon which doubtless many a future writer will build his reputation, though he may never reach the significant heights expressed by Stevenson in the picturesque wording of his wish to be made Bishop of Noyon._ _This apparent digression into a critical estimate of the making of books is but another expression of the justification of the writer in the attempt herein made to set forth in attractive and enduring form certain facts and realities with regard to the grand and glorious group of cathedrals of Northern France._ _They have appeared as demanding something more than the conventional guide-book, or even technical estimates as to their perfections, and the belief is that the gathering together, after this fashion, of the contemporary information not always to the hand of the general reader presents an attraction as appealing and deserving of a place on the book-shelf as would be an avowed reference work, or a volume made to sell on the strength of its bulk or ornateness, or, lacking these questionable attributes, presented in the guise of a whilom text-book, the sole province of which is to impart "knowledge" after a certain well recognized and set pattern._ _It is believed that, regardless of much that has been said and written anent the subject, the fact remains that some considerable numbers of persons may be supposed to exist who would be glad of a further suggestion which would make possible an acquaintance with the cathedrals of France as a part of their own personal experience. To all such, then, it is to be hoped this book will appeal._ F. M. CONTENTS PAGE Introduction 11 PART I. TRANSITION EXAMPLES I. Introductory 41 II. Notre Dame de Laon 43 III. Notre Dame de Noyon 49 IV. Notre Dame de Soissons 54 PART II. THE GRAND GROUP I. Introductory 61 II. Notre Dame d'Amiens 64 III. St. Pierre de Beauvais 70 IV. Notre Dame de Rouen 79 V. Basilique de St. Denis 93 VI. Notre Dame de Paris 101 VII. St. Julien; Le Mans 113 VIII. Notre Dame de Chartres 123 IX. Notre Dame de Reims 132 PART III. THE CATHEDRALS OF THE LOIRE I. Introductory 147 II. St. Croix d'Orleans 150 III. St. Louis de Blois 156 IV. St Gatien de Tours 163 V. St. Maurice d'Angers 173 VI. St. Pierre de Nantes 183 PART IV. CENTRAL FRANCE I. St. Etienne d'Auxerre 191 II. St. Etienne de Bourges 199 III. St. Cyr and St. Juliette de Nevers 209 IV. St. Mammes de Langres 218 V. Notre Dame d'Auxonne 220 PART V. EAST OF PARIS I. Introductory 223 II. Notre Dame de Boulogne-sur-Mer 231 III. Notre Dame de Cambrai 234 IV. Notre Dame de St. Omer 237 V. St. Vaast d'Arras 242 VI. St. Etienne de Toul 247 VII. St. Etienne, Chalons-sur-Marne 251 VIII. St. Dié 254 IX. St. Lazare d'Autun 257 X. St. Bénigne de Dijon 262 XI. Notre Dame de Senlis 266 XII. St. Etienne de Meaux 270 XIII. St. Pierre de Troyes 274 XIV. St. Etienne de Sens 279 PART VI. WESTERN NORMANDY AND BRITTANY I. Introductory 285 II. Notre Dame d'Evreux 288 III. Notre Dame d'Alençon 296 IV. St. Pierre de Lisieux 301 V. Notre Dame de Séez 305 VI. Notre Dame de Bayeux 310 VII. Notre Dame de St. Lo 315 VIII. Notre Dame de Coutances 321 IX. St. Pierre d'Avranches 326 X. St. Sol, Dol-de-Bretagne 329 XI. St. Malo and St. Servan 335 XII. Tréguier 339 XIII. St. Brieuc 342 XIV. St. Pol de Leon 345 XV. St. Corentin de Quimper 348 XVI. Vannes 351 APPENDICES I. The Architectural Divisions of France 353 II. A List of the Departments of France 356 III. The Church in France 359 IV. A List of the Larger French Churches Which Were at One Time Cathedrals 362 V. Chronology of the Chief Styles and Examples of Church Building 365 VI. Dimensions and Chronology 366 VII. The French Kings from Charlemagne Onward 383 VIII. Measurements of the Cathedrals at Amiens and Salisbury 384 IX. French Metres Reduced to English Feet 385 X. A Brief Glossary of Architectural Terms 386 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Notre Dame de Noyon _Frontispiece_ Notre Dame de Laon 43 Notre Dame de Noyon 47 Notre Dame d'Amiens 64 St. Pierre de Beauvais 70 Notre Dame de Rouen 77 Basilique de St. Denis 91 Oriflamme of St. Denis 100 Notre Dame de Paris 101 Notre Dame de Paris from the River 107 St. Julien; Le Mans 111 Notre Dame de Chartres 123 Notre Dame de Reims 132 St. Croix d'Orleans 150 St. Louis de Blois 156 St. Gatien de Tours 161 Flying Buttress, St. Gatien de Tours 170 St. Maurice d'Angers 171 St. Pierre de Nantes 183 St. Etienne d'Auxerre 191 St. Etienne de Bourges 197 St. Cyr and St. Juliette de Nevers 209 St. Mammes de Langres 218 Nancy 227 Boulogne, St. Omer, Arras 229 Notre Dame de Cambrai 236 St. Etienne de Toul 247 St. Etienne, Chalons-sur-Marne 251 St. Dié 254 St. Lazare d'Autun 257 St. Bénigne de Dijon 262 Notre Dame de Senlis 266 St. Etienne de Meaux 270 St. Pierre de Troyes 274 St. Etienne de Sens 279 Notre Dame d'Evreux 289 Window Framing--Evreux 295 Notre Dame d'Alençon 296 St. Pierre de Lisieux 299 Notre Dame de Séez 305 Notre Dame de Bayeux 310 Notre Dame de St. Lo 315 Notre Dame de Coutances 319 St. Pierre d'Avranches 326 Column of St. Pierre d'Avranches 328 St. Samson, Dol-de-Bretagne 329 St. Malo and St. Servan.--Tréguier 333 St. Brieuc 342 St. Corentin de Quimper 348 Notre Dame d'Amiens (diagram) 366 Map of Angers 367 St. Etienne de Bourges (diagram) 370 Notre Dame de Laon (diagram) 372 St. Julien, le Mans (diagram) 373 Map of Nantes 374 Notre Dame de Noyon (diagram) 375 Notre Dame de Paris (diagram) 376 Notre Dame de Reims (diagram) 377 Flying Buttresses, Reims 377 Notre Dame de Rouen (diagram) 378 Basilique de St. Denis (diagrams) 380 Map of Tours 381 Charles VII. 383 Ground Plan 386 Cross Section 387 Interior 388 Cross Section 389 _The Cathedrals of Northern France_ INTRODUCTION An attempt to enumerate the architectural monuments of France is not possible without due consideration being given to the topographical divisions of the country, which, so far as the early population and the expression of their arts and customs is concerned, naturally divides itself into two grand divisions of influences, widely dissimilar. Historians, generally, agree that the country which embraces the Frankish influences in the north, as distinct from that where are spoken the romance languages, finds its partition somewhere about a line drawn from the mouth of the Loire to the Swiss lakes. Territorially, this approaches an equal division, with the characteristics of architectural forms well nigh as equally divided. Indeed, Fergusson, who in his general estimates and valuations is seldom at fault, thus divides it:--"on a line which follows the valley of the Loire to a point between Tours and Orleans, then southwesterly to Lyons, and thence along the valley of the Rhône to Geneva." With such a justification, then, it is natural that some arbitrary division should be made in arranging the subject matter of a volume which treats, in part only, of a country or its memorials; even though the influences of one section may not only have lapped over into the other, but, as in certain instances, extended far beyond. As the peoples were divided in speech, so were they in their manner of building, and the most thoroughly consistent and individual types were in the main confined to the environment of their birth. A notable exception is found in Brittany, where is apparent a generous admixture of style which does not occur in the churches of the first rank; referring to the imposing structures of the Isle de France and its immediate vicinity. The "Grand Cathedrals" of this region are, perhaps, most strongly impressed upon the mind of whoever takes something more than a superficial interest in the subject as the type which embodies the loftiest principles of Gothic forms, and, as such, they are perhaps best remembered by that very considerable body of persons known as intelligent observers. The strongest influences at work in the north from the twelfth century onward have been in favour of the Gothic or pointed styles, whilst, in the south, civic and ecclesiastical architecture alike were of a manifest Byzantine or Romanesque tendency. No better illustration of this is possible than to recall the fact that, when the builders of the fifteenth century undertook to complete that astoundingly impressive choir at Beauvais, they sought to rival in size and magnificence its namesake at Rome, which, under the care of the Pontiff himself, was then being projected. Thus it was that this thoroughly Gothic structure of the north was to stand forth as the indicator of local influences, as contrasted with the Italian design and plans of the St. Peter's of the south. A discussion of the merits of any territorial claims as to the inception of what is commonly known as Gothic architecture, under which name, for the want of a more familiar term, it shall be referred to herein, is quite apart from the purport of this volume, and, as such, it were best ignored. The statement, however, may be made that it would seem clearly to be the development of a northern influence which first took shape after a definite form in a region safely comprehended as lying within the confines of northeastern France, the Netherlands, and the northern Rhine Provinces. Much has been written on this debatable subject and doubtless will continue to be, either as an arrow shot into the air by some wary pedant, or an equally unconvincing statement, without proof, of some mere follower in the footsteps of an illustrious, but behind the times, expert. It matters not, as a mere detail, whether it was brought from the East in imperfect form by the Crusaders, and only received its development at the hands of some ingenious northerner, or not. Its development was certainly rapid and sure in the great group which we know to-day in northern France, and, if proof were wanted, the existing records in stone ought to be sufficiently convincing to point out the fact that here Mediæval Gothic architecture received its first and most perfect development. The _Primaire_: the development of the style finding its best example at Paris. The _Secondaire_: the Perfectionnement at Reims, and its Apogee at Amiens. The _Tertiaire_: practically the beginning of the decadence, in St. Ouen at Rouen, only a shade removed from the debasement which soon followed. As to the merits or demerits of the contemporary structures of other nations, that also would be obviously of comparative unimportance herein except so far as a comparison might once and again be made to accentuate values. The earliest art triumphs of the French may well be said to have been in the development and _perfectionnement_ of Mediæval (Gothic) architecture. Its builders planned amply, wisely, and well, and in spite of the interruptions of wars, of invasions, and of revolutions, there is nowhere to be found upon the earth's surface so many characteristic attributes of Mediæval Gothic architecture as is to be observed in this land, extending from the Romanesque types of Fréjus, Périgueux and Angoulême to that classical degeneration commonly called the Renaissance, a more offensive example of which could hardly be found than in the conglomerate structure of St. Etienne du Mont at Paris, or the more modern and, if possible, even more ugly Cathedral Churches at Arras, Cambrai, or Rennes in the north. There may be attractive Italian types in existence out of Italy; but the fact is that, unless they are undoubted copies of a thoroughly consistent style to the very end, they impress one as being out of place in a land where the heights of its own native style are so exalted. Gothic, regardless of the fact as to whether it be the severe and unornamental varieties of the Low Countries or the exaggerations of the most ornately flamboyant style, appears not only to please the casual and average observer, but the thorough student of ecclesiastical architecture as well. It has come to be the accepted form throughout the world of what is best representative of the thought and purpose for which a great church should stand. With the Renaissance we have not a little to do, when considering the cathedrals of France. Seldom, if ever, in the sixteenth century did the builder or even the restorer add aught but Italian accessories where any considerable work was to be accomplished. Why, or how, the Renaissance ever came into being it is quite impossible for any one to say, _sans doubt_, as is the first rudimentary invention of Gothic itself. Perhaps it was but the outcome of a desire for something different, if not new; but in the process the taste of the people fell to a low degree. Architecture may be said to have been all but divorced from life, and, while the fabric is a dead thing of itself, it is a very living and human expression of the tendencies of an era. The Renaissance sought to revive painting and sculpture and to incorporate them into architectural forms. Whether after a satisfactory manner or not appears to have been no concern with the revivers of a style which was entirely unsuited in its original form to a northern latitude. That which answered for the needs and desires of a southern race could not be boldly transplanted into another environment and live without undergoing an evolution which takes time, a fact not disproven by later events. The Italians themselves were the undoubted cause of the debasement of the classical style, evidences having crept into that country nearly a hundred years before the least vestiges were known in either France or Germany, the Netherlands, or England, and which, though traceable, had left but slight impress in Spain. It is doubtless not far wrong to attribute its introduction into France as the outcome of the wanderings in Italy of Charles VIII., in the latter years of the XV. century. As a result of this it is popularly supposed that it was introduced into the domestic architecture of the nobles who had accompanied the king. Here it found perhaps its most satisfying expression; in those magnificent châteaux of the Loire, and the neighbourhood of Tours and Blois, ever a subject for sentimental praise. One would not seek to pass condemnation upon the application of revived classic features where they were but the expression of an individual taste, as in a chateau whose owner so chose to build and embellish it. Certainly no more splendid edifices of their kind are known than the magnificent establishments at Blois, Chenonceau, Chambord, or Chaumont. The style appears, however, out of place; an admixture meaningless in itself and in its application when, with a Gothic foundation bequeathed them, builders sought to incorporate into a cathedral such palpable inconsistencies as was frequently done. The building of the châteaux was perhaps the first anti-Gothic step in France and proved to be an influence which spread not slowly, as to decorative detail at least, and soon of itself established a decided non-Gothic type. It was but natural that the cathedral builders should have followed to some extent this new influence. The Church was ever seeking to strengthen its popularity, the bishops ensconced themselves in their cathedral cities as snugly as did a feudal lord in his castle, and their emulation of wealth outside of the Church was but an effort to keep their status on a plane with that of the other power which also demanded allegiance of the people. It is to be regretted that they did not pass this manifestation by, or at least not encumbered an otherwise consistent Gothic fabric with superimposed meaningless detail. Such decorative embellishments as are represented by the tomb of Louis XII. at St. Denis, and the tombs of the cardinals at Rouen, may be considered characteristic, though they bear earlier dates by some twenty years than the south portal of Beauvais, which is thoroughly the best of Gothic, or St. Maclou at Rouen, which, though highly florid, is without a trace of anti-Gothic. The extreme (though not a cathedral church) may be seen at St. Etienne du Mont, wherein the effort is made to incorporate large masses of pseudo-classical decoration with Gothic, and, alas, with sad effect. For the most part, the Gothic cathedrals of France, as such, while closely related to each other in their design and arrangements, have little to do with those which lie without the confines of the country, either in general features or in detail. The type is distinctively one which stands by its own perfections. In size, while in many instances not having the length of nave of several in England, they have nearly always an equal, if not a greater, width and an almost invariably greater height, though not equal in superficial area to St. Peter's in Italy, the Dom at Cologne, or even the cathedral at Seville in Spain. Such Romanesque types as are to be seen to the northward of the Loire are mostly found in the smaller churches of Brittany, while the early transition type, so familiar throughout the Netherlands, is, in France, usually seen in the neighbourhood of the frontiers of the Low Countries. "Les Grandes Cathédrales" of the north are distinctly those of Paris, Amiens, Reims, Rouen, Beauvais, and Chartres; and it is to them that reference must continually be made; while the severely plain transitory types of Noyon or Soissons, or the more effective development of Laon, and the flamboyant structures of Troyes and Nantes, at least lean toward the decadence. The difficulty of assigning ranks to these monumental cathedrals is made the greater by reason of the fact that to-day it is with but one people that we have to reckon, so far as their temperament and environment is concerned. Since feudal times the movement has ever been toward one nation, one people, and one view, different from that presented in the middle ages. For centuries after the break of Roman power it had been mostly one local influence against another which prevented perfect cohesion to any national spirit, and thus it was that the tendencies of the cathedral builders, though Roman as to their teaching and religion, and doubtless, in many instances, with regard to their birth as well, followed no special style until the era of Gothic development. Unconsciously, transitory types crept in, until suddenly throughout northern Europe there bloomed forth within less than a century of time the so-called Gothic in all its splendour, and with scarce a century between the commencement and the completion of some of the most notable of the group. The Romanesque types which still lingered in Brittany, though well worthy of special consideration to-day, are unimportant and in a way insignificant when compared with the grand group. To most of us it will be impossible to conjure up any more significant thought with regard to mediæval church architecture than that fostered by the memories of acquaintanceship with these examples of north France; an opinion which is further strengthened when it is also recalled that they are representative of the first really national artistic expression. For this reason alone, if for no other, the hasty critics who have so handily claimed precedence elsewhere, might profitably review the facts of the circumstance which led to so universal an adoption of the full-blown style in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Romanesque peoples were confined southwards of mid-France at the time of the withdrawal of the Roman legions, while, in the north, the conquering Franks sought to wipe out every vestige of their past influence; hence it may be considered that the new manner of building had everything in favour of its speedy growth. It was thus definitely assured of a warm welcome, and, following in the footsteps of Clovis himself, the rulers were more than willing to aid what they believed might be a strengthening influence, politically, as well as morally. The style may be justly said to be a natural and growthful expression of a race, and more significant than all else is the fact that nowhere, not even on the Rhine, which with northern France claims the origin of the style, is to be found any single example equalling in any like measure the perfections of "Les Grandes Cathédrales Françaises," though it be recalled that in many instances the German buildings were planned and often erected by French architects and artisans. Among the two thousand or more "Monuments Historiques" paternally cared for by the French government and under the direct control of the Ministry of Public Instruction and the Beaux Arts, none are of the relative importance, historically or artistically, of the Grand Cathedrals. Certain objects, classed as megalithic and antique remains, may be the connecting links between the past and the present by which the antiquarian weaves the threads of his historical lore; but neither these nor the _reliques_ which have been dug from the ground or untombed from later constructive elements, all of which are generously included in the general scheme by the Department of Beaux Arts, which has provided a fund for their preservation and care, have one tithe of the appealing interest which these great churches bespeak on behalf of the contemporary life of the times in which they were built, reflecting as they do many correlated events, and forming, in the interweaving of the history of their inception and construction, an epitome of well-nigh all the contemporary events of their environment, as well as the greater parts which they may have played in general affairs of state. The best example of a part so played is that of the cathedral at Reims, which saw the crowning within its walls of nearly every monarch of France from the time of Philippe Augustus (1173) to that of Charles X. (1823). The monarchs of France, a long and picturesque line, have ever sought to ally the Church on their side, and right well they have been served, not ignoring, of course, certain notable lapses. In the main, however, the rulers and the people alike, whatever may have been the periodical dissensions, combined the forces which made possible the projection and erection of these noble examples of an art which, in the Gothic forms at least, here came to its greatest and most interesting phase. Invasion, revolution, and the stress of weather and time, all played their part in the general desecrations which sooner or later followed; far the most serious of these visible damages reflected upon us to-day being the malpractices occurring at the Revolution, whether at the hands of a _sans culotte_ or of the most respectable of bourgeois, led away by the excitement of revolt. The depredations were irreparable; they razed, burned, or ruthlessly shattered shrines, statues, or even reliquaries, as at Reims, where the Sainted Ampulla, which contained the miraculous oil brought by a dove from heaven, now preserved in reconstructed fragments in the sacristy, was dashed to pieces in a fury of uncontrollable wrath. The paucity of sculptured decoration in certain places only too plainly designed for it is, too, frequently painfully apparent. Such sculptured decoration and glass as were easily to hand met with perhaps the most ready spoliation, while here and there, from some miraculous reason, a gem was left entire, though likely enough in a bruised and shattered setting. This is what befell most of the great churches, and, for this reason, any work treating of these architectural glories of France must make due allowance in hazarding opinions as to the merit or lack of merit of any particular example as it now exists, as compared with what it may have been as it once was, or had it been completed in accordance with the original design. In local and cathedral archives much valuable and interesting information exists, treating in this very manner such embellishments as may to-day be lacking; but unfortunately such facts are often buried in a mass of other irrelevant material which would make its discovery unusually difficult to any but a very learned local antiquarian. In this same connection, also, there is a dearth of illustrative material which can be depended upon as to minutiæ or accuracy of detail. Hence it is possible to deal only with such general facts as may be supported by the best contemporary information based upon the researches of others. It may be well to note here, however, a fact which is often overlooked, namely, that the written records of France are not only very complete and exhaustive, but, with respect to Paris itself, to cite an example, the documentary history, consecutive and exact, from the time of the decline of Roman power is preserved intact,--a record which is perhaps not so true of any other large city in Europe. In dealing with the cathedrals of the north, territorially, we have to consider those examples which are generally accepted as being all that a cathedral church should be. Of the first rank are those gathered not far from the confines of the mediæval Isle of France. They too, are best representative of the true Gothic spirit, while the southernmost examples, those of Dijon and Besançon, are of manifest Romanesque or Byzantine conception. Each, too, is somewhat reminiscent of the early German manner of building, the latter in respect to the double apse, which is often found across the Rhine, but seldom seen in France. The most northerly of all is at St. Omer, where are the somewhat battered remains of a satisfactory Gothic cathedral, although Amiens, not far to the south, is perhaps the ideal cathedral when considered from a general point merely. For the western representative, a line running due west from Paris almost into the Atlantic finds at Quimper, a small port fifteen miles from the sea, the Cathedral of St. Corentin, which, though not as lofty, is more of the manner of building of the Isle of France than one might suppose would be the case here in this outpost of Brittany, where are found so many evidences of Romanesque influences, retained long after they had been given over elsewhere. Such, then, are the extremes of latitude and of architectural style which combine to give variety to the interest which is always aroused by the contemplation of the masterworks of any of the arts, where outside and contiguous influences have something in common therewith. As a type to admire, there is no doubt but that the cathedral that possesses an apsidal termination of the easterly or choir end, as is nearly the universal custom in France, has charms and beauties which may be latent, but which are simply winning, when it comes to picturing the same structure with the squared-off ends so common in England. It was Stevenson, was it not, who wrote of the satisfaction with which one always looks upon the east end of a French cathedral, "flanging out as it often does in sweeping terraces, and settling down broadly upon the earth as though it were meant to stay." Certainly nothing of the sort is to be more admired than the rare view of the choir buttresses of Notre Dame at Paris, likened unto "kneeling angels with half-spread wings;" the delicate and symmetrical choir buttresses of Amiens; the sheer fall of Beauvais; or the triply effective termination of the one-time cathedral of Noyon, which falls away in three gracefully gentle slopes to the ground. Again Stevenson's power as a descriptive writer lingers in our memory. He says, of no cathedral in particular, "where else is to be found so many elegant proportions growing one out of the other, and all together in one?... Though I have heard a considerable variety of sermons, I have never yet heard one that was so expressive as a cathedral. 'Tis the best preacher itself, preaches day and night, not only telling you of man's art and aspirations in the past, but convicting your own soul of ardent sympathies; or rather, like all good preachers, it sets you preaching to yourself,--and every man is his own doctor of divinity in the last resort." To best estimate the charms and values of these architectural monuments one should consider; first, the history and topography of their environment,--_i. e._ as to why and when they may have been planned and built; secondly, their personality, as it were,--who were their founders, their patrons, their bishops; thirdly, the functions in which they may have partaken, any significant events which may have passed within their walls or centred within their sees; and fourthly, the artistic beauties of their fabric and its embellishments. In most cases all of these values are so interwoven and indissolubly linked with the growth of the structure itself from its very earliest foundations that it is hardly possible to detail this information in true chronological order. The picturesque and romantic elements, of which there is not a little; the sordid and baneful, of which we may wish there were less; and the splendid ceremonials of Church and State; all go to make up a chronicle which no account, of even a special nature, could afford to neglect. The picturesque elements of the conversion and baptism of Clovis by St. Remi at Reims in 496, where, on the site of the present cathedral, he was adjured to "revere that which thou didst burn and burn that which thou didst revere," and the crowning on the same spot of Charles VII. in 1429 through the efforts of the Maid, well represent these phases. The meanness and the unjustness of her later trial and condemnation in the Abbey Church of St. Ouen at Rouen is another. The affairs of state consist chiefly of the coronation ceremonies which mostly took place at Reims, and present a splendid record. Of the monarchs from 1173 onwards who were not here crowned, Henry IV. was crowned at Chartres; Napoleon I., at Paris; Louis Philippe, Louis XVIII., and Napoleon III. were not crowned at all. Throughout this continuity of state events these great churches were performing their natural functions of the dissemination of the Word. Jealousies and bickerings took place, to be sure, but in the main there was harmony, if rivalry did exist; else it were not possible that so many of these splendid monuments would have endured to remind us of their past as well as present existence. Certain of the sees were merged into greater ones, and others were abandoned altogether. In this connection there is a curious circumstance with regard to the one-time Bishop of Bethléem, who, driven from the Holy Land, was given a see at Clamecy, which see comprehended only the village in which he resided. What remains of the former cathedral is now an adjunct to a hotel. The rearrangement of political divisions of France after the Revolution was the further excuse for establishing but one diocese to a department, until to-day there are but eighty-four sees, administered by sixty-seven bishops and seventeen archbishops. The itinerary of the conventional tour of the Continent usually keeps well to the beaten track, and so does the conventional traveller. He does not always get over to Reims, and often does not stop _en route_ at Amiens; seldom visits Beauvais, and, unless he specially sets out to "tour" Brittany, a popular enough amusement of the lean of purse in these days, knows little of the unique charms of Tréguier, Quimper, or even of Le Mans, with its sublime choir, or of Evreux. As for even a nodding acquaintance with Noyon or Soissons, two of the most convincingly beautiful and impressive transitory types, they might as well be in the wilds of Kamchatka, though they are both situated in a region well travelled on all sides; while Laon, not far distant, is hardly known at all, except as a way station _en route_ to Switzerland. The cathedrals of mid-France are, it is to be feared, even less known than would on first thoughts seem probable. A certain amount of sentimentality attaches itself to the châteaux of the Loire, and some acquaintance with their undeniable pleasing attributes is the portion of most travellers; but, again, such cathedral cities as Besançon, Nantes, and Langres are off the well-worn road, and their cathedrals might be myths so far as a general acquaintance with them is concerned; while the splendid churches of Bourges, Nevers, and Autun are likewise practically unknown to the casual traveller. Tours, Orleans, and Chartres alone appear to be the only recognized representatives of this section of France which have hitherto attracted due attention. With the southland this volume does not deal; that is a subject to be considered quite by itself,--and significantly, more real interest has been shown with respect to the architectural monuments of Avignon, Arles, Nîmes, Le Puy, Périgueux, Carcassonne, and Poitiers than to those of the Midi. Is it that the days of cheap travel and specially conducted tours, when ten or fifteen guineas will take one to the Swiss or Italian lakes, or e'en to Rome and Florence, has caused this apparent neglect of the country lying between? Certainly our forefathers travelled more wisely, but then prices and means of locomotion were on quite a different scale in those days, and not infrequently they were obliged to confine their travels and observations to more restricted areas. Perhaps the most lucid arrangement of architectural species is that given by De Caumont's "Abécêdaire d'Architecture," which divides the country ethnologically into Brittany; Normandy; Flanders, including Artois and Picardy; Central France (the Isle of France, Champagne, Orleanois, Main, Anjou, Touraine, and Berri); and Burgundy, comprehending the former divisions of Franche Comté, Lorraine, Alsace (now Belfort), Nivernois, Bourbonnois, and Lyonnois. Of the above divisions, only that of the Isle of France with La Brie was originally held by the Crown. The political divisions throughout France now number eighty-seven departments, taking their names from the principal topographical features, and replacing in 1790 the thirty-two mediæval provinces, each of which had their own characteristics of social and political life, and of which each in turn progressed, stagnated, or fell backward according to local or periodical conditions. Both the arts of peace and of war have left an ineradicable impress. In the thirteenth century the various provinces became welded together into one perfect whole under Philippe Augustus and the sainted Louis, but retained to no small extent, even as they do unto to-day, their distinctive local characteristics. Because of its cathedrals alone, the Isle of France stands preëminent among the provinces for each of the thirteen provincial styles of architecture which are allocated by the Société des Monuments Historiques. A comparatively small and unified province, it comprehends within and contiguous to its borders more of the attributes and principles of a consistent Mediæval architectural style than is elsewhere to be observed. From Rouen on the west to Reims on the east, northward to Amiens and southwesterly to Chartres, are grouped the show pieces of the world's Gothic architecture. Not alone with the respect to the Grand Cathedrals is this region so richly endowed, but also because of the smaller and less important, but no less attractive or interesting examples of Noyon, Senlis, Laon, Soissons, with their one-time cathedral churches and other varied ecclesiastical and secular edifices. Beauvais, Gisors, Gourney, Cires-les-Mello, Creil, Royamont, Nogent-les-Vierges, Villers-St.-Pol, indeed nearly every village and town within the royal domain, present values and comparisons which place nearly all of its contemporary structures, be they large or small, at a grand height above those of other less prolific sections. Lest it be thought that this statement is drawn largely, and that fineness and balance of estimate are lacking, it suffices to state that it is not alone from study and research, but from frequent personal intimacies that the region has ever proved an inexhaustible store of architectural values, and one which most well-known authorities, with one accord, place in the very first rank. Arthur Young, than whom no more perspicuous observer has ever chronicled his impressions, wrote (1704) that to see the best of France, the part most varied in topography, and resourceful and attractive in its monuments, one should land at Havre and follow the sinuosity of the Seine to Paris, thence the highroad to Moulins and on to the Rhône at Valence, an outline which somewhat approaches the limitations of territory of which this book treats. To be sure, he wrote of economic and agricultural conditions, and he mostly made his pertinent observations on land holdings, stock keeping, and hedgerows, or rather that lack of them which is so apparent throughout France; but these details of themselves only suggest more complete evidences of the existing forces which indicate the growth of the wealth and power which has made this region so rich in its architectural memorials of the past, and which ought to more than compensate for any lack of scenic grandeur. It is to be regretted, of course, that none of these larger cathedrals are to be seen to-day in their completely perfected forms. To what extent would not the glories of Reims, of Amiens, of Beauvais, or of Rouen, be enhanced, were it possible for us to even imagine their splendour, were they possessed of the symmetry and well-favoured situation of the Dom at Cologne? And so it is that we can but feel regret when we mentally note the lack of nave at Beauvais, of spires at Bourges, and, yet again, regret even with more pain the monstrousness of the cast-iron _flêche_ which has been added to the central tower at Rouen. But these are after all minor imperfections--seldom, if ever, in aught but pleasurable anticipation, do we see in the masterpieces of art or nature a perfect unity; so why seek to negative their virtues by futile criticism? It would seem to be all-sufficient that such details, sins of omission or commission, should be noted merely, that we may pass on to other charms which must compel our allegiance. When we visit the cathedrals of the Isle of France, we are at once in the midst of the best examples of French Gothic architecture, or of French Mediæval architecture, if the phrase is to be preferred. _PART I_ _Transition Examples_ I INTRODUCTORY Soissons, with Noyon and Laon, all within perhaps thirty miles of one another, may be said to best represent the nurturing and development of the early Gothic of France. These simple and somewhat plain types exemplify the style which was in vogue at the same time in the Low Countries. It is good Gothic, to be sure,--at least, good as to its planning,--but without that ornateness or lightness known to-day as characteristic of the distinctive French type, which so early developed boldly and beautifully. One observes the resemblances in style between the notable cathedral at Tournai, in Belgium, the neighbouring types of French Flanders, and the cathedrals of this trinity of French towns lying contiguous thereto, Noyon itself being for long interdependent with the see of Tournai. Nevertheless, it is a beautiful type which was cradled here in the country called, by Cæsar, Suessiones; and difficult it would be to attempt to assign preëminence to any one edifice. Noyon, without a doubt, has the greatest charm of environment, and is of itself in every way a pleasing and satisfying example of what should most truly inspire and impress us in a cathedral. Stevenson describes it as being "the happiest inspiration of mankind, a thing as specious as a statue at the first glance, yet, on examination, as lively and interesting as a forest in detail. The height of its spires cannot be taken by trigonometry: they measure absurdly short, but how tall they are to the admiring eye.... I sat outside of my hotel and the sweet groaning thunder of the organ floated out of the church like a summons";--and much more of the same sort, all of which tells us that, once we find ourselves on a plane of intimacy with a great church, we continually receive new impressions and inspirations, and it is in this vein that one who has known this group of simple but fascinating churches on their own ground, so to put it, can but seek to convey the idea that it is good that we have such contrasting types as a relief and an antidote to an appetite which otherwise might become sated. [Illustration: _CATHEDRAL of NOTRE DAME LAON_] II NOTRE DAME DE LAON For over twelve hundred years, until the see was abolished at the Revolution, Laon was the seat of a bishop who in point of rank was second only to the primate at Reims. Crowning the apex of a long isolated hill, upon which the entire town, now a fortress of the third class, is situated, the cathedral of Notre Dame de Laon, still so called locally, has endured since the beginning of the twelfth century, and may be considered a thoroughly representative transition example. The present structure is on the site of one burned in 1112, and during comparatively recent years has been entirely restored. Its crowning glory is in the disposition and number of its fine group of towers: two flank the western façade, and are rectangular at the base, dwindling to a smaller polygon, which is flanked with corner belfries and pierced by a tall lancet in the central structure, showing a wonderful lightness and open effect. A curious and unique feature of these towers is the addition of four oxen in carven stone perched high aloft in the belfries. These sculptured animals may be merely another expression of symbols of superstition, and if so are far more pleasing than some of the hideous and monstrous gargoyles ofttimes seen. Two other towers, each 190 feet in height, adjoin the transepts, to each of which is attached a double-storied, apsidal, ancient chapel. Two similarly projected towers are lacking. The lantern is square, with a shallow, conical, modern roof. In the transition type Romanesque influences were evidently dying hard. The Gothic was seldom full blown, and at Laon shows but the merest trace of pointedness to the arches of the western façade, either in the portals or in the higher openings. The lack of a circular termination to the choir is but another indication of a link with a transitory past; an undeniably false note and one very unusual in France, the choir being of the squared-off variety so common in England. This may be coincident with the English custom of the time, or it may be directly due to a local English influence;--most probably the latter, inasmuch as an English prelate held the see for a time, and the city, in the early fifteenth century, was for a number of years in English hands. It is significant that in some of the smaller churches of the diocese is to be noted the same treatment. The rose windows of both the eastern and western façades are Gothic in inception and treatment, and are unusually acceptable specimens of these supreme efforts of the French mediæval builders, the glass therein being distinctly good, though perhaps not remarkable. The transepts are rectangular and, with the ensemble of the entire structure, were their towers completed, there would be produced, not only a unique example, but a towering effect only a degree less interesting than the perfectly proportioned pyramidal form so much admired in the perfectly developed Gothic. The interior is equally attractive with the exterior, and, though the church is not by any means of remarkable dimensions, it presents in its appropriate disposition of detail a far more roomy and pleasing arrangement than many a larger example. The transepts are divided into a nave and side aisles, the columns which partition them, like those of the nave proper, being cylindrical and of massive proportions, which, however, lighten as they rise to the vaulting. They are unusually symmetrical when viewed together, the capitals of the lower series being ornately carved, each of a varying design. Above the aisles are lofty galleries. The nave chapels were added in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The stained glass, like that of the rose windows, is in the nave distinctly good, particularly that of the lower range on the southerly side. The pulpit, of carved wood of the Renaissance period, is not of the importance and quality of this class of work to be seen across the Rhine border. The former Bishop's palace, adjoining the left of the choir, is now the Palais de Justice. A few remains of a former Gothic cloister are to be remarked, surrounded by the later construction. [Illustration: _Notre Dame de Noyon_] III NOTRE DAME DE NOYON In Notre Dame at Noyon, Notre Dame at Laon, and the cathedral at Tournai, is to be noted the very unusual division of the interior elevation into four ranges of openings, this effect being only seen at Paris and Rouen among the large cathedrals. Noyon and Laon borrowed, perhaps, from Tournai, where building was commenced at least a century before either of the French examples first took form. It is perhaps not essential that such an arrangement be made in order to give an effect of loftiness, which might not otherwise exist; indeed, it is a question if the reverse is not actually the case, though the effect is undeniably one of grandeur. Soissons, too, may rightly enough be included in the group, though the points of resemblance in this case are confined to the rising steps to either transept, coupled with the joint possession of circumambient aisles, and at least the suggested intent of circular apsidal terminations to the transepts; though it appears that here this plan was ultimately changed and one transept finished off with the usual rectangular ending. In this Noyon plainly excels, and there is found nowhere else in France the perfect trefoil effect produced by the apsidal terminations of both transepts and choir. So far as the transepts are concerned, they are of the manner affected by the builders on the Rhine, notably in the Minster at Bonn, at Cologne, and again at Neuss in the neighbourhood of Cologne. With Noyon apparently nothing is lacking either in the perfections of its former cathedral or in its immediate environment. The country round about is thoroughly agricultural, and free from the soot and grime of a manufacturing community. Amid a setting at once historic and romantic, it has for neighbours the châteaux of Coucy and Perrifonds, with Compiègne and Chantilly not far distant. The town is unprogressive enough, and the vast barge traffic of the Oise sidles by, not a mile away, as if it were all unconscious of the existence of any signs of modern civilization. As a matter of fact, it hardly is modern. The accommodation for the weary traveller is of a satisfying and gratifying quality, as the comparatively few visitors to the place well know. The city is an ancient foundation, having been known as the Noviodunum of the Romans. Here Charlemagne was crowned King of the Franks in 768, and Hugh Capet elected king in 987; and here, in an important stronghold of Catholicism, as it had long been, Calvin was born in 1509. Altogether there is much to be found here to charm and stimulate our imagination. As a type the cathedral stands preëminent. As to detail and state of preservation, they, too, leave little to be desired, though the appreciative author of a charming and valuable work treating of a good half hundred or more of the "architectural glories of France" bemoans the lack of a satisfying daily "Office." This may be a fault, possibly, if such be really the case. The fabric of the church has stood the wear and tear of time and stress exceeding well. Built in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, it is a thoroughly harmonious and pleasing whole, and we can well believe all that may have been said of it by the few able critics who have passed judgment upon its style, as well as the sentiment conveyed by the phrase that it is "one of the most graceful and lovable of all the cathedrals of France." The bishopric was suppressed after the Revolution, and the church is now a dependency of the Bishop of Beauvais. The elongated belfry towers are perhaps the first and most noticeable feature; secondly, the overhanging porch with its supporting frontal buttresses; thirdly, the before-mentioned tri-apsidal effect of the easterly end; and, last but not least, the general grouping of the whole structure in combination with the buildings which are gathered about its haunches, though with no suspicion of a detracting element as in some sordid and crowded cities, where, in spite of undeniable picturesqueness, is presented a squalor and poverty not creditable either to the city of its habitation or to the cathedral authorities themselves. From every point of vantage the steeples of Notre Dame de Noyon add the one ingredient which makes a unity of the entire ensemble,--a true old-world atmosphere, a town seen in not too apparent a state of unrepair and certainly not a degenerate. The interior presents no less striking or noble features. It is not stupendous or remarkably awesome; but it is grand, with a subtleness which is inexpressible. Round and pointed arches are intermixed, and there is a notable display of the round variety in the upper ranges of the quadrupled elevation of the nave, the lightness, which might otherwise have been marred, being preserved through the employment of a series of simple lancets in the clerestory of the choir. Rearward of the south transept are the chapter-house and the scanty remains of a Gothic cloister, where a somewhat careworn combination of the forces of nature and art have culminated in giving an unusually old-world charm to this apparently neglected gem, as well representative of early French Gothic as any in existence to-day. IV NOTRE DAME DE SOISSONS Soissons, the other primitive example, is at once a surprise and a disappointment. From the railway, on entering the town, one is highly impressed with the grouping of a sky-piercing, twin-spired structure of ample and symmetrical proportions; and at some distance therefrom is seen another building, possibly enough of less importance. Curiously, it is the cathedral which is the less imposing, and, until one is well up with the beautifully formed spires, he hardly realizes that they represent all that is left of the majestic Abbey of _St. Jean des Vignes_, where Becket spent nine long years. It is a mere bit of stage scenery, with height and breadth, but no thickness. It is a pity that such a charming structure as this noble building must once have been is now left to crumble. The magnificent rose window, or rather the circular opening which it once occupied, is now but a mere orifice, of great proportions, but destitute of glazing. The entire confines of the building, which crowns a slight eminence at the entrance of the town, are now given over to the use of the military authorities. A little to the right lies the one-time cathedral of Notre Dame, Soissons being another of the ci-devant bishoprics suppressed after the Revolution by the redistribution which gave but one diocese to a Department. Though not unpleasing, its façade is marred by its lack of symmetry, while the tower, which rises on the right 215 feet, is not sufficiently striking to redeem what otherwise is an ordinary enough ensemble. The tower to the left was never raised above where it now ends, and the façade, lacking the charm which the edifice might otherwise have had, were the towers as complete and well proportioned as are those of a later date which grace the remains of the old abbey, will be for ever wanting until this completion be carried out. Romanesque is plainly noticeable in mixture with the early Gothic. The three portals are not remarkable, or uniform, and are severely plain, and, though of a noticeable receding depth, are bare and unpeopled. A well-proportioned rose window, though not so large as many in the greater cathedrals, has graceful radiating spokes and good glass. This is flanked by two unpierced lancet-pointed window-frames which but accentuate the plainness of the entire façade. Above is an arcaded gallery which was intended to cross the entire front, but which now stops where the gable joins the northerly tower. Restoration has been carried on, not sparingly, but in good taste, with the result that, in spite of its newness at the present writing, it appears as a consistent and thoroughly conscientious piece of work, and not the mere patchwork that such repairs usually suggest. The guide-books tell one that Soissons is famous for its trade in haricot beans, and incidentally for the beans themselves, and for the great number of sieges which it has undergone, the last being that conducted by the Germans, who took possession in October, 1870, after a bombardment of three days. Fergusson makes the statement, which is well taken, that the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Soissons, while not in any sense meriting the term magnificent, presents, in its interior arrangements, at least, a most symmetrical and harmonious ensemble. A curious though not unpleasing effect is produced by the blackened pointing of the interior masonry, of piers, walls, and vaulting alike. An unusual feature is the circumambient aisles to the transepts and the suggestion that a trefoil apsidal termination was originally thought of, when the rebuilding was taken in hand in the twelfth century. The transept is so completed on the south side, which possesses also an ancient portal, and, with the two at Noyon so done, presents a feature which is as much a relief from the usual rectangle as are the rounded choirs of Continental churches a beauty in advance of the accepted English manner of treatment of this detail. The choir rises loftily above the transepts and nave, and, while the general proportions are not such as to suggest undue narrowness, the effect is of much greater height than really exists. This, too, is apparent when viewing the abside itself. The Chapel of the Rosary in the north transept is overtopped by an effective arrangement of perpendicular window-framing, supporting a beautiful rose window of the spoke variety. It is safe to say that, had the entire space provided been glazed, the effect of lighting would have been unique among the cathedrals of the world. The only other decorative embellishments are some tapestries, a few well-preserved tombs, and an "Adoration" supposed to be by Rubens, which is perhaps more likely to be genuine, because of the situation of the church near unto Flanders, than many other examples whose claims have even less to support them. _PART II_ _The Grand Group_ I INTRODUCTORY Expert opinion, so called, may possibly differ as to just what, or what not, cathedrals of France should be included in this term. The French proverb known of all guide-book makers should give a clue as to those which at least may not be left out. "Clocher de Chartres, Nef d'Amiens Choeur de Beauvais et Portale de Reims." Rouen, Paris, and Le Mans should be included, as well possibly as the smaller but no less convincing examples at Séez, Sens, Laon, and Troyes, as being of an analogous manner of building, and, by all that goes to make up the components of a really great church, Bourges might well be considered in the same group. For practical and divisional purposes it is perhaps well to compose an octette of the churches of the Isle of France and those lying contiguous thereto, Paris, Beauvais, St. Denis, Amiens, Reims, Rouen, Chartres, and Le Mans, which may be taken together as representative of the greatest art expression of the Gothic builders, as well as being those around which centred the most significant events of Church and State. To attempt to catalogue even briefly the charms and notable attributes of even the first four, would require more than the compass of several volumes the size of the present, whereas the attempt made herein is merely to lead with as little digression as possible up to the chief glories for which they are revered, and to suggest some of the many important and epoch-making events intimately associated therewith. More would be impossible, manifestly, unless the present work were to transcend the limitations which were originally planned for it, hence it is with no halting assertion that we enter boldly upon that chronology or résumé which, in a way, presents a marshalled array of correlated facts which the reader may care to follow in further detail in the list of bibliographical references included at the end of the volume. Certain facts relating to the history and the architectural features generally of these great cathedrals are known to all, and are chronicled with more or less completeness in many valuable and authoritative works, ranging from the humble though necessary guide-book to the extensive if not exhaustive architectural work of reference. The facts given herein are such, then, as are often overlooked in the before-mentioned classes of works, and as such are presented, not so much with the avowed object of imparting information, as to remind the reader of the wealth of interest that exists with relation to these shrines of religious art. This seems to be the only preamble possible to the chapters which attempt to even classify these magnificent buildings, wherein much is attempted and so little accomplished in recounting their varied attractions. Let this explanation stand, therefore, for any seeming paucity of description which may exist. [Illustration: _Le Bon Dieu d'Amiens_] II NOTRE DAME D'AMIENS The ever impressive Cathedral of Notre Dame d'Amiens is in most English minds the _beau ideal_ of a French cathedral. It is contemporary with Salisbury in period, at least, but it has little to remind one of the actual features of this edifice. Often associated therewith, as a similar type, it has little in reality in common, except that each is representative of a supreme style. Beyond this it is hard to see how any expert, archæologist, antiquary, or what not, would seek to discover relationship between two such distinct types. Salisbury is the ideal English cathedral as to situation, surroundings, and general charm and grace. This no one would attempt to deny; but, in another environment, how different might it not appear,--as for instance placed beside Amiens, where in one particular alone, the mere height of nave and choir, it immediately dwindles into insignificance. Under such conditions its graceful spire becomes dwarfed and attenuated. Need more be said?--The writer thinks not, since the present work does not deal with the comparative merits of any two cathedrals or of national types; but the suggestion should serve to demonstrate how impossible it is for any writer, however erudite he may be, to attempt to assign precedence, or even rank, among the really great architectural works of an era. This observation is true of many other examples of art expression. [Illustration: NOTRE DAME _d'AMIENS_ ...] The cathedral at Amiens is dedicated to the Virgin, and is built in the general form of a Latin cross. Over the principal doorway of the south portal, on one of the upper plinths, may be seen the inscription which places the date of the present edifice. [+] En l'an`[=q]ue l'Incarnati[=o] valait mcc et xx. Ro....rs, ifu: rimisit: le première piere: iasis,... le cors.... Robert... The work was undertaken by one Robert de Luzarche, in the episcopate of Evrard de Fouilloy, the forty-fifth Bishop of Amiens, whose tomb may be seen just within the western doorway, and occupies the site of other structures which had been variously devastated by fire or invasion in 850, 1019, 1137, and 1218. For fifty years the work went on expeditiously under various bishops and their architects. "Saint" Louis, Blanche of Castille, Philippe the Hardy, and the city fathers all aided the work substantially, and the fabric speedily took on its finished form. Through the later centuries it still preserved its entity, and even during the Revolution its walls escaped destruction and defilement through the devotion of its adherents. In later days important work and restoration has been carried out under the paternal care and at the expense of the state; and the city itself only recently contributed 45,000 francs for the clearing away of obstructing buildings. A French writer has said, "It is only with the aid of a Bible and a history of theology that it is possible to elucidate the vast iconographic display of the marvellous west front of the cathedral at Amiens." Like Reims, its three portals of great size are peopled with a throng of statues. The central portal, known as the Porche du Souvenir, contains the statue of the Good God of Amiens; that on the right is called after the Mère de Dieu, and that on the left for St. Fermin the Martyr. Above the gables is the "Gallery of Kings," just below the enormous rose windows. Above rise the two towers of unequal loftiness, and lacking, be it said, thickness in its due proportion. The carven figures in general are not considered the equal in workmanship of those at Reims, though the effect and arrangement is similar. For a complete list of them, numbering some hundreds on this façade alone, the reader must refer to some local guide-book, of which several are issued in the city. The south portal, the _Portal de la Vierge dorée_ or _Portal de Saint Honoré_, shares company with the west façade in its richness of sculpture and its rose window and its gable. Here also are to be seen the supporting buttresses which spring laterally from the wall of the transept and cross with those which come from the choir. The north portal, on the side of the Bishop's Palace, does not show the same richness as the others, though perhaps more than ordinarily ornate. The spire above the transept crossing is a work of the sixteenth century, and is perhaps more remarkable than its rather diminutive appearance, in contrast with the huge bulk of the edifice, would indicate. The extreme height of nave and choir (147 feet), adds immeasurably to the grand effect produced by the interior, a height in proportion to breadth nearly double that usual in the English cathedrals. The vaulting is borne aloft by over one hundred columns. The natural attribute of such great dimension is a superb series of windows, a promise more than fulfilled by the three great rose windows and the lofty clerestory of nave and choir. The sixteenth century glass is exceedingly profuse and brilliant. The lateral chapels of the nave were added subsequent to the work of the early builders, all being of the sixteenth century, while the eleven choir chapels are of the thirteenth century, all with very ornate iron grilles, which are a feature only second to a remarkable series of "choir stalls," numbering over one hundred, showing a wonderful variety of delicate carved figures of the sixteenth century, the work of one Jean Turpin, the subjects being mainly Biblical. A stone screen with elaborate sculptures in high relief surrounds the choir, that on the south representing the legend of St. Firmin, the patron of Picardy, and that on the north, scenes connected with the life of John the Baptist. In a side chapel dedicated to St. John reposes the alleged head of John the Baptist. Others have appeared elsewhere from time to time, but as they are not now recognized as being genuine, and the said apostle not being hydra-headed, it is possible that there will be those who will choose to throw the weight of their opinions in favour of the claim of Amiens. The flying buttresses at Amiens are not of the singular lightness associated with this notably French characteristic; they are in the main, however, none the less effective for that, and assuredly, so far as the work which they have to perform is concerned, it was doubtless necessary that they should be of more than ordinary strength. The view of the ensemble from the river shows the massiveness and general proportions in a unique and superb manner. Amiens is not otherwise an attractive city, a bustle of grand and cheap hotels, decidedly a place to be taken _en route_, not like Beauvais, where one may well remain as long as fancy wills and not feel the too strong hand of progress intruding upon his ruminations. III ST. PIERRE DE BEAUVAIS Beauvais is by no means an inaccessible place, though how often have we known one who could not tell in what part of France it was situated. Of course, being "off the line" is sufficient excuse for the majority of hurried travellers to pass it by, but, leaving this debatable point out of the question, let us admit, for the nonce, that it is admirably located if one only chooses to spend a half-day or more in visiting the charmingly interesting city and its cathedral, or what there is of it, for it exists only as a luminous height _sans_ nave, _sans_ tower, and _sans_ nearly everything, except a choir of such immensity that to see it is to marvel if not to admire. It is indeed as Hope has said, "a miracle of loftiness and lightness; appearing as if about to soar into the air." [Illustration: ST. PIERRE ... _de BEAUVAIS_] How many readers, who recognize the charms for which the cathedral is most revered, know that it was intended to rank as the St. Peter's of the north, and like its Roman prototype, was to surpass all other contemporary structures in size and magnificence. This was marked out for it when, in the middle sixteenth century, the builders of its central spire, which fell shortly after, sought to rival the Italian church in a vast Gothic fabric which should be the dominant northern type in contra-distinction to that of the south. This of itself, were there no other contributory interests, which there are to a very great degree, should be all-sufficient to awaken the desire on the part of every one who journeys Parisward to obtain a more intimate acquaintance with this great work. Here was an instance of ambition overleaping itself,--exceeding by far the needs and conditions of its environment and like many another ill-planned venture, it fell to ruin through a lack of logic and mental balance. To-day we see a restored fabric, lacking all the attributes of a great church except that which is encompassed by that portion lying eastward of the nave proper, its frail buttresses knitted together by iron rods, its piers latterly doubled in number, and many more visible signs of an attempt to hold its walls and roofs up to the work they have to perform. The present structure, in so far as certain of its components go, was commenced within five years of Amiens (1225), which calls to mind the guide-book comparison, which seems so appropriate that it must really have previously originated from some other source,--Amiens, "a giant in repose;" Beauvais, "a Colossus on tiptoe." Its designer built not wisely, nor in this case too well, for before the end of the century the roof had fallen, and this after repeated miscalculations and failures. At this time the intermediate piers of the choir were built and a general modified plan adopted. Ruskin's favourite simile, with respect to St. Pierre de Beauvais, was that no Alpine precipice had the sheer fall of the walls of this choir,--or words to that effect, which is about as far-fetched as many other of his dictums, which have since been exploded by writers of every degree of optimism and pessimism. Certainly it is a great height to which this choir rises, one hundred and fifty-three feet it has been called, which probably exceeds that of Amiens by a dozen or more feet, though authorities (_sic_) vary with regard to these dimensions, as might be supposed; but it is no more like unto a wall of rock than it is to a lighthouse. With the crumbling of the sixteenth-century spire on Ascension Day, 1573, restoration of the transepts was undertaken and work on the nave resumed, which only proceeded, however, to the extent of erecting one bay to the westward, which stands to this day, the open end filled in with scantling, weather proofing, and what not,--a bare, gaunt, ugly patch. Had it been possible to complete the work on its original magnificent lines, it would have been the most stupendous Gothic fabric the world has ever known. Not entirely without beauty, in spite of its great proportions, it is more with wonder than admiration that one views both its details and proportions. Though it is perhaps unfair to condemn its style as unworthy of the Augustan age of French architecture, surely the ambition with which the work was undertaken was a laudable one enough, and it is only from the fact that it spells failure in the eyes of many who lack initiative in their own make-up, that it only qualifiedly may be called a great work. The choir, which now dates from 1322, perforce looks unduly short, by reason of the absence of a nave to add to the effect of horizontal stability; and the great height of the adjoining transept; but the chevet and buttresses are certainly a marvel of grace and towering forms. The portals of the transept are of the period of Francis I., with flowing lines and ornate decorations--"having passed the severity and ethical standards of maturity, and progressed well along the path to senility," as a vigorous Frenchman has put it. True enough in its application is this livid sentiment,--perhaps,--but its jewel-like south portal, like the "_gemmed_" west front of Tours, forms an attractive enough presentment to please most observers who do not delve too deeply into cause and effect. The north portal is less ornate, but its beautifully carved doors are by the same hand as that which worked the opposite portal. The ornamental stonework here is unusual, suggesting an arrangement which may or may not have been intended as a representation of the "Tree of Jesse." In any case it is a remarkable work of flowing Gothic "branches," which, though mainly lacking its intended interspersed figures, is not only unique among exterior decorations, but appears as a singularly appropriate treatment of a grand doorway. Adjoining the choir on the right is a sacristy occupying a small structure, and to the westward is a fragmentary edifice known as the _Basse OEuvre_,--one of the oldest existing buildings in France; a Romano-Byzantine work, variously stated as of the sixth to eighth century and forming a portion of the original church which occupied the site of the present Cathedral. The general impressiveness of this great church--the memory which most of us will carry away--is caused by its immensity, its loftiness, and the general effect of lightness. These form an irresistible galaxy of features which can hardly fail to produce a new and startling sensation upon any observer. As to decorative embellishments, the church is by no means lacking. The coloured glass, typical of the best period of the art, is luxurious and extensive; that contained in the north and south transept rose windows being the exceedingly beautiful work of Le Prince, a celebrated sixteenth-century artist. Numerous side chapels surround the ambulatory of the choir, and on the west wall of the transept are hung the eight tapestries after the sixteenth-century Raphael cartoons now at South Kensington. These tapestries are, it is to be presumed, late copies, since, of the two early sets woven at Arras, one is preserved in the Vatican and the other at the Museum at Berlin. A modern fresco of Jeanne Hachette, a local Amazon, adorns one of the choir chapels. A modern astronomical clock, with numerous dials, striking figures, and crowing cocks, is placed near the north transept. It might naturally be supposed that in our day the canons of good taste would plead against such a mere "curio" being housed in a noble church. The former Bishop's Palace, dating from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, is now the Palace of Justice. The present episcopal residence is immediately to the north of the Cathedral and is modern. As a tapestry-making centre Beauvais ranks with the famous Gobelin Manufactory at Paris. [Illustration: _Notre Dame de Rouen_] IV NOTRE DAME DE ROUEN Rouen, of all the mediæval cities of France, is ever to the fore in the memories of the mere traveller for pleasure. In no sense are its charms of a negative quality, or few in number. Quite the reverse is the case; but the city's apparent attraction is its extreme accessibility, and the glamours that a metropolis of rank throws over itself; for it must not be denied that a countrified environment has not, for all, the appealing interest of a great city. It is to this, then, that Rouen must accredit the throngs of strangers which continually flock to its doors from the Easter time to late autumn. In addition there are its three great churches, so conveniently and accessibly placed that the veriest tyro in travel can but come upon them whichever way he strolls. Other monuments of equal rank there are, too, and altogether, whether it be the mere hurried pecking of a bird of passage, or the more leisurely attack of the studiously inclined, Rouen offers perhaps much greater attractions than are possessed by any other French city of equal rank. So closely, too, have certain events of English history been interwoven with scenes and incidents which have taken place here, that the wonder is that it is not known even more intimately by that huge number of persons who annually rush across France to Switzerland or Italy. Chroniclers of the city's history, its churches, and its institutions have not been wanting, in either French or English; and even the guide-books enlarge (not unduly) upon its varied charms. Once possessing thirty-two churches, sixteen yet remain; quite one-half of which may be numbered to-day as of appealing interest. _En passant_, it may be stated that here at Rouen, in both Notre Dame and the Abbey Church of St. Ouen, is found that gorgeous functionary, commonly called "the Suisse," who seeks your gold or a portion thereof, in return for which he will favour you by opening an iron wicket into the choir, an incumbrance unnoticed elsewhere, except at Paris and St. Denis. The late Gothic church of St. Ouen, where the Maid of Orleans received her fatal sentence, shows a wonderful unity of design even as to its modern western towers; a consistency not equally the possession of the neighbouring cathedral, or even of most great churches. Altogether, this grand building is regarded as an unparallelled example of the realization of much that is best of Gothic architecture at its greatest height. In its central tower alone--which may or may not be suggestive of a market-basket, accordingly as you will take Ruskin's opinion, or form one of your own--is the least evidence of the developed flamboyant found. Its interior is clean-cut and free of obstruction; the extreme length of its straight lines, both horizontal and perpendicular, entirely freed from chapel or choir screen, embrace and uphold its "walls of glass" in an unequalled manner. In strong contrast to this expressively graceful style is the ultraflorid type of St. Maclou, the other of that trinity of architectural splendours, which, with the Cathedral of Notre Dame, form the chief ecclesiastical monuments of the city. St. Maclou, which dates from the early fifteenth century, though not of the grand proportions of either of the other great churches, being rather of the type of the large parish church as it is known in England, holds one spellbound by the very daring of its ornaments and tracery, but contains no trace of non-Gothic. The French passion for the curved line is nowhere more manifest than here (and in the west front of Notre Dame), where flowing tracery of window, doorway, portal, and, in general, all exterior ornament, is startling in its audacity. To view these two contrasting types before making acquaintance with the Cathedral of Notre Dame itself, is to prepare oneself for a consideration in some measure of a combination of the charms of both, woven into one fabric. Nowhere, at least in no provincial town of France, are to be found such a categorical display of ecclesiastical architectural details as here. Rouen has from the second century been an important seat of Christianity. St. Nicaise, not to be confounded with him of the same name of Reims, first held a conversion here and was shortly followed by St. Mellor, who founded the city's first church, on the site of the present cathedral. In succeeding centuries this foundation gradually took shape and form until, with the occupation by the Norsemen under Rollo, was founded a dynasty which fostered the development of theology and the arts in a manner previously unknown. The cathedral was enlarged at this time, and upon his death in 930 Rollo was interred therein, as was also his son in 943. Richard the Fearless followed with further additions and enlargements, his son Richard being made its forty-third archbishop. From this time on, the great church-building era, Christian activities were notably at work, here as elsewhere, and during the prolific eleventh century great undertakings were in progress; so much so that what was practically a new church received its consecration, and dedication to Our Lady, in 1063, in the presence of him who later was to be known as the Conqueror. To-day it stands summed up thus--a grand building, rich, confused, and unequal in design and workmanship. The lower portion of the northwest tower, called the _Tour St. Romain_, is all that is left of the eleventh-century building, the remainder of which was destroyed by fire in 1200. Rebuilding followed in succeeding years and shows work of many styles. Additions, repairs, and interpolations were incorporated with the fragment of the tower, so that the structure as we now know it stood complete with the early thirteenth century. Viollet-le-Duc is the authority for the statement that the apse and transept, chapels, choir, and two doorways of the west façade were quite complete before the influence of the perfected Gothic of the Isle of France was even felt. One Enguerrand was the chief designer of the new church, assisted by Jean d'Andeli as master mason. The early century saw the nave chapels built, having been preceded by the _Portail aux Libraires_, a sort of cloistered north entrance, still so referred to, one of the most charming and quiet old-world retreats to be found to-day even within the hallowed precincts of a cathedral. The _Portail de la Calende_ did not follow until a century later, when the _Tour St. Romain_ was completed to its roof; at which time was also added the screen or arcade which separates the _Portail aux Libraires_ from the street. This century, too, saw the beginning of the famous _Tour de Beurre_, built mostly by the contributions of those who paid for the indulgence of being allowed to eat butter during Lent. Its foundation was laid in 1487 under Archbishop Robert de Croixmore, and it was completed under Cardinal d'Amboise in 1507. A chapel at the base of the tower is dedicated to St. Stephen. The ornate decorations of the west front, added by Georges d'Amboise, are mainly of the sixteenth century and form no part of the original plan or design. It borders upon the style we have since learned to decry, but it is, at least, marvellous as to the skill with which its foliaged and crocketed pinnacles and elaborate traceries are worked. Ruskin was probably right in this estimate at least,--"The central gable is the most exquisite piece of pure flamboyant style extant." At the present day this west front is undergoing such restoration and general repair that the entire gable, rose window, and part of the flanking towers are completely covered with a most hideous array of scaffolding. The central spire as it exists to-day, in reality an abomination of abominations, is naturally enough admired by all when first viewed from afar. It certainly looks not dwarfed, or even fragile, but simply delicate, and withal graceful, an opinion which ultimate association therewith speedily dispels. It must be one of the very first examples of modern iron or steel erection in the world, dating from 1827, following three former spires, each of which was burned. The architect responsible for this monstrosity sought to combine two fabrics in incoherent proportions. More than one authority decries the use of iron as a constructive element, and Chaucer's description of the Temple of Mars in the Knight's Tale reads significantly: "Wrought all of burned steel... Was long and straight and ghastly for to see." The great part of the exterior of this remarkable church is closely hidden by a rather squalid collection of buildings. Here and there they have been cleared away, but, like much of the process of restoration, where new fabric is let into the old, the incongruity is quite as objectionably apparent as the crumbling stones of another age. _Notre Dame de Rouen_ is singularly confined, but there seems no help for it, and it is but another characteristic of the age in which it was built,--that the people either sought the shelter of churchly environment, or that the church was only too willing to stretch forth its sheltering arms to all and sundry who would lie in its shadow. In an assignment of ranking beauty to its external features, the decorative west front must manifestly come first; next the _Portail aux Libraires_, with its arcaded gateway and the remains of the booksellers' stalls which still surround its miniature courtyard; then, perhaps, should follow the _Tour St. Romain_ and the _Portail de la Calende_, with its charmingly recessed doorway and flanking lancet arches. The sculptured decorations of all are for the most part intact and undisfigured. The gable of the southern doorway rises pointedly until its apex centres with the radiated circular window above, which, by the way, is not of the exceeding great beauty of the other two rose windows, which rank with those at Reims and Chartres as the _beaux ideals_ of these distinctly French achievements. The interior, viewed down the nave, and showing its great length and that of the choir, impresses one with a graver sense of unity in the manner of building than is possible to conceive with regard to the exterior. The height and length both approximate that of St. Ouen, and, though the nave rises only to ninety-eight feet, an effect of greater loftiness is produced by the unusual quadripartite range of openings from pavement to vaulting: two rows of arches opening into the aisles before the triforium itself is reached. The lantern at the crossing supports the ironwork spire, and admits light to the centre of the church, only to a small degree, however. The south transept, like that of the north, with its ample double aisles, is of great width, and, were the framing of the great rose window of less angularity, it would indeed produce a remarkable effect of grandeur. The other windows, and the arcading of the triforium, are singularly graceful; not lacking either strength or firmness, though having no glass of great rarity or excellence. In this transept is the altar of St. Romain, a seventeenth-century work of little pretensions. The north transept contains two features which give it immediate precedence over any other, when viewed from within: its gracefully traceried rose window and fine glass, and the delightful stone staircase leading to the chapter library. Mere description cannot do this stairway justice. Renaissance it certainly is, and where we might wish to find nothing but Gothic ornament, it may prove somewhat of a disappointment; but it is magnificent. Its white marble balustrading gleams in the strong light thrown from the western transept window and gives an unmistakable note of richness and sonority. It was built late in the fifteenth century under orders of Cardinal d'Estonteville. The upper doorway leads to the treasury, and that of the first landing to the chamber in which were formerly kept the bibliographical treasures, now housed in the special building which forms the western wall of the outside court. The north and south aisles of the nave are broken into by a series of chapels, the chief of which are the Chapel to St. Stephen in the base of the _Tour de Beurre_ and _du Petit St. Romain_, where an abbé or curé speaking the English tongue is often to be found. On the south side is a chapel containing the tomb of William Longsword, second Duke of Normandy, and son of Rollo. The great attraction of the choir, far more than its beauties of architectural forms, shown in its graceful columns and deep graven capitals, will be, for most visitors, its array of elaborate monuments, including those of Pierre and Louis de Breze, of whom the former, the Grand Seneschal of Normandy under Charles VII., fell at Monthery, and was buried here in 1465. More pretentious is the tomb of Louis, his grandson, erected by his wife Diane de Poitiers, with a significant inscription which the curious may be pleased to figure out for themselves. This noble monument is one of those examples hesitatingly attributed to Jean Goujon. The _pièce de résistance_ is the Renaissance tomb of the Cardinals d'Amboise. Georges I. was memorialized in 1556 by his nephew Georges II., who in turn came to share the same tomb. Both their kneeling figures are beautifully chiselled, and the whole erection is gorgeously representative of the late sixteenth-century monumental work, little in keeping with the Gothic fabric which houses it, but characteristic of the changing thought and influence of its time. Six symbolical figures of the virtues form a lower course, while the canopy is surmounted by nineteen figures of apostles, saints, etc. In 1793 the ashes of these great prelates were scattered to the winds, but the effigies and their setting fortunately remained uninjured. Other archbishops of the cathedral are buried in the choir, and the heart of Richard Coeur de Lion once rested here, as did also the bodies of his brother Henry, and John, Duke of Bedford. The choir stalls, mostly the work of Flemish wood-carvers, are notable examples. [Illustration] [Illustration: _Basilique de St. Denis_] V BASILIQUE DE ST. DENIS The Basilica of St. Denis, so-called to-day, built over the remains of the martyred St. Denis, is in a way the counterpart of the Cathedral of Reims, in that it also is intimately associated with the Kings of France. In the former they were, almost without exception, crowned; and here, at St. Denis, are the memorials of their greatness, and in many cases their actual tombs. Thus far and no farther may the similarity be said to exist. The old Abbey of St. Denis has little in common, architecturally, with the grand Cathedral of Notre Dame de Reims. Of the two, St. Denis is much the older foundation, and from the point of view of romance and sentiment holds perhaps the premier place, as well. The history of the city is one of the most interesting and diversified of all in the domain of the Kings of France. A Benedictine abbey was founded here in the reign of Dagobert I., and, under the Carlovingian dynasty, immediately took on political as well as devout significance. The Abbot of St. Denis journeyed to Rome in 751 A. D. and secured for Pepin the papal confirmation of his kingship. Pope Stephen took refuge here from the Lombards in 754 A. D., during which time he anointed the king's sons, Charles and Charlemagne; upon the consecration of which act Pepin handed over to his sons the right and title to his dominions. Upon the advice of the Abbot Suger, Louis VI. adopted the _Oriflamme_, or standard of St. Denis, as the banner of the Kings of France, and, for long after, its red and gold colourings hung above the altar,--only to be removed when the king should take the field in person. Abélard, of famed romance, was a monk of the abbey in the twelfth century; and, in the absence of the sovereign (Louis VII.) in the Holy Land during the mid-century, the Abbé Suger administered full well the affairs of the kingdom. This renowned abbot and true lover of art died in 1151 at St. Denis. In 1429 "the Maid of Orleans" here delivered up her arms; and a century and a half later that sturdy Protestant, Henry, abjured the faith to which he had hitherto so tenaciously clung. In this church, too, the great Napoleon married Marie Louise in 1810; and his later namesake, some fifty years after, erected a mausoleum in the crypt, known as the _Caveau Imperial_, the burial vault of his dynasty, which, however, has never been so used. Such in brief is the record of some of the more important affairs of church and state, which are identified with this fine old cathedral. The usual books of reference give lengthy lists of the various tombs and monuments which exist. It is a pity, however, that, in spite of the laudable ambition of preserving here, in a sort of kingly Valhalla, the memory of the rulers of a past age, it has degenerated, in turn, to a mere show-place, with little enough of the real sentiment remaining to satisfy the seriously inclined, who perforce would wish to be reminded in some more subtle way than by a mere "rush around the exhibits," which is about all the half-hourly, personally conducted excursions, with appropriate fees to be delivered up here and there, amounts to. But for this, there would still be some of the charm and reverence which such a noble memorial should inspire, in spite of the fact that revolution and desecration have played more than a usual share in the general derangement of the original plans. Up to the time of Henry IV., the monarchs were mostly interred in separate tombs, but, following him, his immediate successors were buried in a common vault. During the Revolution, the Convention decreed that the royal tombs should be destroyed, and so they mostly were,--the bodies dug up and interred, if so the process can be called, in a common grave. In 1817 Louis XVIII. caused the remains of his ancestors, as well as Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, to be transferred here from the Madeleine, and in turn he himself was buried here, as well as the Duc de Berry and several of his children. The preservation of such of the tombs as survived the many vicissitudes to which they were put, is due to the fact that many of them were at one time removed to the Musée des Petits-Augustines, now the Palace des Beaux Arts, at Paris; but in 1817 Louis XVIII. ordered them to be replaced in the crypt of St. Denis; not, however, on the sites which they formerly occupied, but in an arbitrary manner which only the great abilities of M. Viollet-le-Duc, who undertook their rearrangement and restoration, were able to present in some coherent manner for the marvel of future generations. There are now therein over fifty monuments and tombs, besides various statues, medallions, and other memorials. From an architectural point of view, we have to consider the _Basilique de St. Denis_ no longer a cathedral, as one of the earliest Gothic examples in France, though at first glance little enough of the true Gothic feeling is apparent. About the year 275 a chapel was built here above the grave of St. Dionysius, the first Bishop of Paris. This was followed by a large _basilica_, ultimately given over to the uses of monks of the Benedictine order. Evidences of this former construction are supposed by archæologists to still remain, but little, earlier than the structure of the Abbé Suger, meets the eye to-day. Strong is the trace of the development from the Romanesque façade, completed in 1140, to pure Gothic construction of a century later. In this church is commonly supposed to be exhibited for the first time, bearing in mind that the date of its consecration was 1144, a complete system of buttresses accompanying the pointed arch of the vaulting, though in conjunction with semicircular vaulting in the choir aisles. The west façade is the most notable part of Suger's building. It contains three deeply recessed round arched portals, decorated with sculpture, but so disfigured, or at least modified from their original forms in an attempt to replace the ravages of time and spoliation, that one can not well judge of their original merit. The south portal shows symbolical figures of the months and of "St. Dionysius in Prison;" the central doorway a "Last Judgment," and the "Wise and Foolish Virgins;" while the north portal depicts "St. Dionysius on His Way to Martyrdom," and "The Signs of the Zodiac." A curious and unusual effect of the upper portion of this grim façade, like a similar work at Dol-de-Bretagne, is a range of battlements which were erected for defensive purposes in the fourteenth century. The nave rises high above this, surmounted by a statue of St. Denis. Above the lateral portals of the façade are two towers, that on the right rising two stages above the embattled crest, while that on the left stops at that level. The spire with which it was formerly surmounted was ruined by lightning early in the nineteenth century. The choir, with its radiating chapels, is of a Romanesque order, with the Gothic attribute of the flying buttress in a high degree of development. A general restoration was carried out in the thirteenth century by the successors of Suger, the Abbés Eudes Clement and Matthieu de Vendôme, in the best Gothic of the time; and it is to their excellently planned work that the general fine effect of the present interior arrangements may properly enough be accredited, though for a fact it seldom is so. A later restoration, the removing of the ruin wrought by the Revolution, did not succeed so well. It was not until the really great work of Viollet-le-Duc, under Napoleon III., that this grand building finally took on again an acceptable form. The general interior arrangements, though to-day apparently subservient to the common attributes of a show-house with its innumerable guides, functionaries, and fees, are simple and impressive so far as structural elements are concerned. As for decorations, they are mostly to be found in that gorgeous array of monuments and tombs before mentioned. The entrance proper, or vestibule, is of Suger's era and is gloomy and dull, in strong contrast with the noble and impressive nave, which contains thirty-seven enormously high windows and a handsome triforium gallery. This portion dates from the thirteenth century, or immediately following Suger's régime. The excellent stained glass is modern. The transepts are mere rudimentary elements, suggested only by the interior arrangement of the piers, and are simple and impressive. [Illustration: _Oriflamme of St. Denis_] [Illustration: NOTRE DAME _de PARIS_...] VI NOTRE DAME DE PARIS Of all the cathedrals of France, Notre Dame de Paris is most firmly impressed on the minds of English speaking people. At least, it is more familiarly known by all who visit that delectable land, and perhaps rightly so. Poets have sung its praises, and writers of all ranks have used it in well-nigh every possible fashion as an accessory; indeed, books almost without number have been written about it, and around it. This is as it should be, for perhaps no great church is more worthy, or more prolific in material. For those who would probe deeply into its story, there is but one way to acquire an intimate knowledge thereof,--to undertake a course of reading and study in some such way as a lawyer sets about reading up on a great case. By no other method could be acquired a tithe of the commonly known facts regarding its past history; hence the impossibility of attempting to deal fully in a few pages with this great church, even in a perfunctory manner. The most that can be safely ventured upon, is to recount some of the facts. How many have really noticed that none of the diagrams, which show the ground-plan of this cathedral, indicate the existence of any transepts? Take, for instance, that which accompanies this volume, which, it may be said, is drawn correctly,--beyond the omission of a couple of pillars on either side of the nave, there is nothing to break into the long parallelogram-like structure, with an apsidal termination. As a matter of fact, there are a pair of very beautiful transepts, as most photographs of the exterior, and drawings of the interior, show. They are, too, in no way attenuated, and are only lost in the ground-plan by reason of the fact that they follow the very unusual arrangement of not extending laterally beyond the ample width of the nave and its chapelled aisles. The south transept façade, with the portal dedicated to St. Stephen, and two magnificent rose windows, is unquestionably more pleasing than the west façade itself as to design and arrangement. Begun in 1163 and consecrated in 1182, the church has undergone many vicissitudes, changes, and restorations. It has fared ill on many occasions; perhaps the greatest defilement being that which befell it during the Revolution, when it was not only foully desecrated, its statues and other imagery despoiled, but the edifice was actually doomed to destruction. This fortunately was spared to it, but in the same year (1793) it became a "Temple of Reason," one of those fanatical exploits of a set of madmen who are periodically let loose upon the world. Mysticism, palaverings, and orgies unspeakable took place between its walls, and it only became sanctified again when Napoleon caused it to be reopened as a place of divine worship. Again, three-quarters of a century later, it fell into evil times--when it was turned into a military rendezvous by the Communards of '71. In turn, they too retreated, leaving the church, as they supposed, to the mercy of the flames which they had kindled. Fortunately these were extinguished and the building again rescued from an untoward fate. The thirteenth-century façade is usually accredited the finest part of the church. It comes upon one as rather plain and bare after the luxuriance of Amiens, Reims, or Rouen. As a model and design, however, it has served its purpose well, if other examples, variously distributed throughout England and France, are considered. Its lines, in fact, are superb and vary little in proportion or extent from what must perforce be accepted as ideal. Its portals are of good design, and so also is such sculpture as survived the ravages of the past, though the outlines of the doorways are severely plain. A series of modern sculptured effigies of the kings, replacing those destroyed at the Revolution, forms a plain horizontal band across the entire front; a none too graceful or pleasing arrangement of itself. A rose window forty-two feet in width occupies the centre of the next stage, flanked by two blunt-pointed windows rather bare of glass. Above is an arcaded gallery of small pointed arches in pairs, also extending across the entire front. The balustrade, above, holds a number of grotesque creatures carved in stone. They may be gargoyles, but are not, however, in this case, of the spout variety, being some of those erections of a superstitious age which were so frequently added to a mediæval building; though whether as a mere decoration, or with greater significance, authorities do not seem to agree. The two uncompleted square towers overtop all, pierced by the two great lancets, which, with respect to mere proportions, are unusual if not unique. The spire above the crossing is a wooden structure covered with lead, and dates only from the middle of the nineteenth century. Both the north and south transepts contain magnificent rose windows of even larger dimensions than that of the west façade. The doorway of the south transept is ornamented with effective ironwork, but otherwise the exterior presents no remarkable features. To the artist's eye the gem of the building is undoubtedly the fine grouping and ensemble of the flying buttresses at the rear of the choir. Most persons, so gifted, have tried their prentice, or their master, hands at depicting this grand marshalled array of "folded wings," and, but for the gruesome morgue at its foot, which ever intrudes into the view, one might almost say it is the most idyllic and most specious view of a great cathedral that it were possible to have. Were it not for this charming view of these buttressed walls, with the river flowing at their feet, the Isle de la Cité would be indeed a gloomy spot, with its lurid historical past, and its present gruesome association with the "house of the dead." Indeed, it has been questioned as to whether the choir and chevet of Notre Dame de Paris is not the most beautiful extant. The Isle de la Cité was the ancient island village of the Parisii. A sixteenth-century Dutch writer (De Sauteuil) has delivered himself of these few lines concerning the Seine at this point: "When first it enters the metropolis it ambitiously stays its rapid course, and, being truly enamoured with the place, forgets its way, is uncertain whither to flow, and winds in sweet meanders through the town; thence filling the pipes with its waters. That which was once a river, joys to become a fountain." To carry the suggestion of contrast still farther one should read Hugo's "Notre Dame" on the spot. It will give a wonderful and whimsical conception of those weird gargoyles and devils, which have only to be seen to awaken a new interest in what this great writer has put forth. For another sensation, pleasant or otherwise, one might look up a copy of Méyron's wonderful etching of the same subject, or refer to a most excellent monograph, written not many years since, entitled "The Devils of Notre Dame." The interior shows the earliest example wherein the double aisles of the nave are continued around the choir, and the first introduction of the quadruple range of openings from the pavement to the vaulting. The aisles and nave are of almost equal height. The choir, besides being merely apsided, is, in fact, a true semicircle, a sufficiently unusual arrangement in an early Gothic church to be remarked; and, in addition, is exceedingly narrow and lofty. The glass of the rose windows is of old and gorgeous quality, it having escaped destruction in Revolutionary times, whereas that of the lower range of windows was mostly destroyed. The choir stalls are of excellent wooden carving, but the high altar is modern, dating only from 1874. The choir screen, of the fourteenth century, shows twenty-three reliefs in stone, once richly gilded, but now tarnished and dull. [Illustration: _Notre Dame de Paris from the River_] ST. LOUIS DE VERSAILLES Allied with the see whose jurisdiction includes the Diocese of the Department of the Seine, should be considered that of Seine and Oise, which has its bishop's throne esconced in the Cathedral of St. Louis at Versailles. To all intents and purposes the town is one of those conglomerate units which go to make up the "traveller's Paris." More can hardly be said with due regard to the magnificent edifices with which this cathedral must naturally be classed. The other attractions of this "court suburb" are so appealing to the sentimentally inclined that it is to be feared that such will have little eye for the very minor attractions of the cathedral. The Trianons, the "Grandes Eaux" and the "Petites Eaux" are all in all to the visitor to Versailles. As a matter of fact and record, the Cathedral of St. Louis must be mentioned, if only to be dismissed in a word. Bourasée refers to it as "a thing cold, unfeeling, and without life." Truthfully, it is a remarkably ugly building of the middle eighteenth century, with no details of note and no memorials worthy of even a passing regard, except a monument to the Duc de Berry, who died in 1820. What embellishment is given to the interior, is accounted for by the exceeding ruddy glow shed by the contemporary coloured glass of the none too numerous windows. [Illustration: _St. Julien; Le Mans_] VII ST. JULIEN; LE MANS Le Mans, like Chartres, sprang from an ancient Celtic hill fort, and, through successive stages, has since grown to a Roman, a mediæval, and finally a modern city. It crowns the top of a very considerable eminence, the like of which, says Professor Freeman, does not exist in England. Like Chartres, too, it has always retained the balance of power which has made it the local civil and ecclesiastical capital of its province. It is, too, more closely associated in English minds than is Chartres, forming as it did a part of the dominion of a common sovereign; also by reason of being the birthplace of Henry II., and the burial-place of Queen Berengaria, the wife of Richard Coeur-de-Lion. Le Mans stands, without doubt, in advance of Chartres in the importance and number of its secondary churches, as well as its ecclesiastical, civil, and military establishments in general. In spite of all this, the city has never ranked as of supreme importance as a European city; nor did it ever attain the rank in Gallic times, that the events which have been woven around it would seem to augur. To-day it is a truly characteristic, large, provincial town of little or no importance to the outside world. Self-sufficient as to its own importance, and the events around which its local life circles, it gives little indication of ever becoming more of a metropolis than it now is; indeed the census figures would indicate that the department, of which it is the capital, has remained stationary as to the numbers of its population, since the Revolution. Writers have endeavoured to carry the similarity to English interests and conditions still farther than the events of history really go to prove, and have declared that Maine and England should have united in repelling their common invader. Endeavour has also been made to trace similarity between the communistic principles of days gone by, which took form here and at Exeter across the Channel, and have even remarked the similarity of the topographical features of the surrounding landscape, wherein the country round about differs so from other parts of France, being here rolling, hilly, and wooded, as in certain parts of England; and even stretching a point to include the hedgerows, which, it must be admitted, are more in evidence in Maine than elsewhere in France. But these observations apparently prove nothing except that the majority of persons probably know very little of the real conditions which exist in the provinces of France, preferring rather that their journeyings afield should follow more the well-worn road of their compatriots. The Cathedral of St. Julien well represents the two distinct epochs in which church architecture, as it remains to us to-day, was practised here, and shows, to well-nigh the fullest expression possible, the two principal transformations of Christian architecture. As the Angevin style partakes so closely of northern and southern types intermixed, so the distinctive architectures of Maine, if such there be, may be said to favour the styles of both Normandy and Anjou; at least so far as the cathedral at Le Mans shows a combination of Angevin and Norman detail. The really distinctive southern influence is to be noted in the Romano-Byzantine nave, the exterior of which, so far as the western front is concerned, is far more notable in the rigidness and austerity of its lines, than by any richness of ornamentation or decoration. Nothing could be more simply plain than this portal, and the wall and gable which surmount it. A large bare window, of the variety of that at Angers, stands above the doorway, which, itself, lacks all attempt at embellishment. What decoration the façade bears is after the true Byzantine manner, of the nature of brickwork displayed and set into the wall in geometrically angular fashion. What sculpture there is, two grotesque animals on either of the buttresses which flank the façade, is of minor account. This, then, is the extent of the detail of this severe western façade, the grand portal of the usually accepted great church being entirely lacking and evidently not thought of as a desirable detail when this portion of the structure was erected. It has nothing of the prodigious art expression of the frontispieces of the grand Gothic churches of the north, or of the less poverty-stricken Byzantine decoration of its own Meridional portal, which, in so far as the style can be said to take on richness of form, shows the transition tendencies of the early twelfth century. This doorway is surmounted by a tympanum, ornamented by a figure of the Saviour surrounded by the four Evangelists, a subject which has always proved itself a highly successful and popular ecclesiastical symbol, and one which in this case, as in most others, is well made use of. All the figures have suffered considerably from the ravages of time, but retain much of their interest and charm in spite of such mutilation. A tower of Romanesque foundation, but of fifteenth and sixteenth century completion, flanks this south transept. The ranking portion of this interesting church is its choir, larger in superficial area than the entire cathedrals of Noyon or Soissons. Both from inside and out, it is all that one's imagination could possibly invent. Its great proportions are as harmonious and graceful as the lines of a willow-tree; in fact, as to general effect, it may be set down as a thing of extraordinary grandeur, worthy to rank with Beauvais or Amiens, and yet different from either, of a quality its very own. At the commencement of the thirteenth century the canons obtained, from Philip Augustus, permission to extend their church beyond the city walls in an easterly direction, and then it was that this wonderful choir took shape. The work was undertaken in 1217 and was completed soon after the middle of the same century, and the body of St. Julien, the first apostle to Le Mans, for whom the church was named, was placed therein by Geoffroy de Loudon, then bishop, who decorated the windows of the choir with the magnificent glass with which they are still set. From a certain distance to the eastward the cathedral at Le Mans presents a view of the choir, unique in all the world. Other greater ones there are, if mere height be concerned, and others with more perfect appendages; but none give the far-spreading effect of encircling chapels, or are possessed of high springing buttresses of more grace or beauty than are seen here. He was a rash man who ranked the flying buttresses as a sign of defective construction, indicating structural weakness, meaningless and undecorative ornament, and what not. Few have agreed with this dictum, and few ever will after they have seen Paris, Beauvais, and Le Mans. The interior is one of great interest; the nave, even in its early forms, is none the less attractive because of its austerity. It is, as a matter of fact, far more interesting here than in its exterior, the swarthy circular pillars holding aloft arches with just a suspicion of the ogival style, with narrow, low, and disproportionately small windows in the aisles, where are also a series of strengthening pillars of black and white stone, presenting again a reminiscence of the southern manner, or at least recalling the slate and stone of Angers. In the choir, with its girdling chapels and double ambulatory, we come upon the most impressive portion of all. Slightly orientated from the east and west, it presents by itself, like Beauvais, nearly all of the attributes of a great church. The columns, arcades, and windows throughout are all of an unusual elegance and grace, the vaulting rising with much daring to a remarkable height, which must approach one hundred and ten or more feet, and the equal of certain other "popularly notable" buildings. The rose window of the south of the transept is a remarkable example of these masterpieces of the French builder. The framing and the glass with which it is set is of the richest quality, though it dates only from the fifteenth century. The organ case is here found in the south transept, an unusual arrangement in a French church, where it is usually placed over the western doorway. The vaulting, too, is much loftier here than in the nave. The aisles of this remarkable choir have the further unusual attribute of three ranges of openings, while the clerestory, only, rises above, but with great and imposing beauty. There are a few funeral monuments of more than ordinary interest, including that of Queen Berengaria, wife of Richard, the Lion-Hearted, brought from the Abbey de l'Epau in 1821; a sarcophagus and statue in white marble of Charles of Anjou, Count of Maine, King of Jerusalem and Sicily (d. 1472), and the mausoleum of Langey du Bellay. In the north aisle are a number of fifteenth or sixteenth century tapestries. The former bishop's palace was burned by the Germans in 1871. [Illustration: _Notre Dame de Chartres._] VIII NOTRE DAME DE CHARTRES Aside from their wonderful, though non-similar, cathedrals, Chartres and Le Mans, its neighbour, have much in common. Both have been possessed of a brilliant array of counts and prelates, both grew from a Celtic village to their present grand proportions through a series of vicissitudes, wars, and conquests, until to-day each is preëminent within its own sphere, and has become not only a centre of ecclesiastical affairs, but of civil life as well. The Counts of Chartres and of Blois, in the middle ages, were a powerful race of men, and should ever be associated with profound respect in English minds by the fact that here was the birthplace of Adela, the mother of King Stephen of Blois, and of Henry, Bishop of Winchester. As for local conditions to-day, Chartres, while having grown to the state which it now occupies through events which have made it a city of mark, remains a somnolescent, sparsely built town, with little suggestion of the progress of modernity. More frequently mentioned in the note-books of the traveller than Le Mans, it offers perhaps no greater charms. To be sure, its cathedral, by reason of its open situation and the charming quality and effect produced by its spires and its one hundred and thirty windows of coloured glass, at once places it at the very head amongst the great "show pieces" of France; but it is in connection with Le Mans, scarcely eighty miles away and so little known, that it ought really to be studied and considered; which as a matter of fact it seldom is. The city is hardly in keeping with what we are wont to associate with the environment of a great cathedral, though this of itself in no way detracts from its charms. The weekly cattle-market takes place almost before its very doors, and the battery of hotels which flank the open square present the air of catering more to the need of the husbandman than to the tourist;--not a wholly objectionable feature, either. Beyond such evidences as an occasional sign-board announcing the fact that the hostelry possesses a _garage_, _fosse_, or what not for the necessitous requirements of the automobilist, the inns remain much as they always were, mere _bourgeoise_ caravansaries. The Cathedral of Notre Dame de Chartres jumps full into view immediately on leaving the railway station, though here it is to be noted that no delineation has ever been made by modern hand which shows its façade in its entirety. The roofs of the houses and shops around its base indicate no special squalor or poverty, as is the case with regard to some Continental churches, and there is a picturesque grouping of firs and poplars to the left which adds considerably to an already pleasing prospect. The whole grouping is, perhaps, none the less attractive than if the façade, with those extraordinarily beautiful non-contemporary spires, stood quite unobstructed. In fact, it is doubtful if many a monumental shrine might not lose considerably, were it taken from its environment and placed in another which might not suit its graces so well. These really fascinating spires, famed of all writers, archæologists, and painters alike, are the _clef_ by which the whole harmony is sounded. One cannot but echo, and reëcho, all that has been said of them, though in a quandary as to which of the two is the more beautiful: the plain, simple, symmetrical, older spire, or that wonderful work of Texier's, replacing another burned in 1506, which rises in gently sculptured and tapered ranges to a height which exceeds its companion by some twenty-five feet. No more appropriate or convincing wording could be given of it than by quoting Fergusson's estimate, which sums it up as being "the most beautifully designed spire in Europe, surpassing even Strasburg and Antwerp." It is rather a pity that from no suitably near-by point can one obtain a full view of the effect of the western façade. One poor little house seems ever to thrust itself into the ensemble, though it is to-day apparent that certain others, which must have cut into the front still more, have been cleared away. Clearly, with all its charm and beauty of detail, it is for its great and general excellencies that the cathedral at Chartres most impresses itself upon the memory. Visitors to-day will have no easy task in locating Lowell's "little pea-green inn," in which he indited the lines, "A Day in Chartres;" as appreciative and graceful an estimate of an inanimate thing as ever was made in verse: "The Grecian gluts me with its perfectness Unanswerable as Euclid, self-contained, The one thing finished in this hasty world. But ah! this other, this that never ends, Still climbing, luring fancy still to climb, As full of morals, half divined, as life, Graceful, grotesque, with ever new surprise Of hazardous caprices, sure to please, Heavy as nightmare, airy light as fern, Imagination's very self in stone." Among the other attractions of the west façade is the Porte Royale, so called, the central doorway which was only opened for the entrance of the sovereign. It is decorated with the "signs of the zodiac" and "symbols of the months." Next in point of richness are the grandly effective north and south porches, with their triple doorways or portals, setting back some twenty feet from their jambs, which, as at Noyon, and in the smaller church at Louviers, are pierced with a transverse passage. The north porch, with its range of three open-sided and deeply recessed doorways, has unmistakably debased tendencies, but is filled with sculptured statuary of more than ordinarily effective disposition, more remarkable for magnitude and ornateness than for finesse of skill and workmanship, or even as a detail of good taste. The life-size statues of all three recesses are held aloft by pedestals, on pillars of twisted and of spiralled trunks, a formation reviled by Ruskin, but producing an effect much more pleasing than some galleries of effigies we have seen, where the figures appear as if hung up by the hair of their heads, or are clinging to the walls by invisible spurs at their heels, or, as is not infrequently the case, are standing or hung on nothing, as though they were graven of some bewitched magnetic stone. Here for the first time is seen, in the sculptured figures of the three great portals, the plastic forms which were to add so greatly to the Gothic architecture: male and female saints, Evangelists, and Apostles in great array, all somewhat more than life-size. Only one adverse impression is cast: that of petrifaction. The figures, almost without exception, appear as integral parts of the architectural fabric, rather than as added ornament. They are most ungainly, tall, stiff, and column-like, much more so than similar works at Reims, or at Amiens, where the sculpture has something of the vigour and warmth of life. The south porch, erected in the reign of Henry I. by Jean Cormier, partly from donations of Matilda, queen of the Norman Conqueror, contains a series of _basso relievos_,--seen also in the arches of the choir,--manifestly not of good Gothic principle, and one which is the very antithesis of the northern spirit, as the name itself implies. The earliest portion of the existing church, the crypt, is that of a timber-roofed structure burned in 1020. It was erected early in the eleventh century by Fulbert, the famous Bishop of Chartres, also remembered--possibly revered--as being the prolific letter-writer of his time. John of Salisbury was bishop in the next century, and under him were built the lower stages of the western façade and towers. In this church Edward III. called for the help of Heaven to aid his plans, and here Henry of Navarre was crowned King of France, a change of venue from Reims, where so many previous and subsequent coronations were held. The interior gives a deal of the thrill for which one should always be prepared. The gloom, so apparent at first, slowly brightens as the eye becomes accustomed to the finely filtered light, which penetrates through the gorgeous coloured glass, a feature which ranks with the spires as a vivid impression to be carried away. Nearly all of this glass is of equal worth and attractiveness, being, with the exception of three windows of a late date, and a few uncoloured ones, all of the gorgeous thirteenth-century variety. The whole mass of the clerestory throughout gives the effect of windows heavily hung with tapestries through which the outside light pierces in minute rays. This comparison is made advisedly, inasmuch as, regardless of the quality and value of the glass, it is composed mainly of those minute and fragmentary particles often more rich in colour than design. There is little doubt but that the result of the deep rich blue, claret, and orange gives a first effect of insufficient lighting which would try an artist or photographer sorely, though not a detracting element in churches which would often appear cold and unconvincing were such an attribute lacking. There are also three magnificent rose windows of great size (thirty to forty feet), containing equally good glass. A double ambulatory surrounds the seven-chapeled choir, which is further enclosed by a magnificent sculptured stone screen begun in the sixteenth century by Texier, who designed the marvellous north spire. The _Vierge du Pilier_ of the north choir aisle, a fifteenth-century shrine, is the subject of great local veneration. The treasury contains a _relique_ in the form of the veil of the Virgin, supposed to have been presented by Charlemagne to Princess Irene. Other interior details of note are an eleventh-century font; the large crypt beneath the choir; the unequal level of the pavement of nave and choir; and the maze, which still exists in the nave. This last feature is a winding circular path some forty odd feet in diameter, and, in all, perhaps a thousand feet long. As a penance in place of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, "the journey of the maze" was performed by the penitent on his knees--taking perhaps an hour or more, according to the size and length of the path, which varied with different churches where they formerly existed. The other most notable example in France is at St. Quentin, northeast of Paris. IX NOTRE DAME DE REIMS The very ancient city of Reims, now the capital of the Department of the Marne, was a large centre of population when it first fell under the sway of the Romans. During Cæsar's occupation it was known as Duroctorum, in the Præfecture of the Gauls. A powerful metropolis and a faithful adherent of the Romans, the city early attained prominence as a centre of Christianity. St. Sixte preached the word here shortly after the first bishopric was founded, after capture by the Vandals in 406 A. D. The city was practically razed by Attila, who afterward met defeat at Chalons. During the Roman Empire it was the most important town of the Province of Belgica Secunda, later becoming known as the capital of the Remi, the name given to the people inhabiting the country round about. [Illustration: NOTRE DAME _de REIMS_ ...] In 508 A. D. the Franks under Childeric captured the city, and in 720 A. D. Charles Martel captured it from Bishop Rigobert. Here, too, Pope Stephen had his famous interview with Pepin, and attended the crowning of Louis le Débonnaire in 816 A. D. In 744 it was made an archbishop's see, with suffragans at Amiens, Beauvais, Chalons, and Soissons. It is to-day the ecclesiastical capital of France--the Archbishop of Reims being the metropolitan prelate. Clovis, son of Childeric, King of the Ripuarian Franks, in 496 A. D. conquered the last Roman stronghold at Soissons, and, having married a Burgundian princess, Clotilda, was induced to accept Christianity. He was accordingly baptized here by St. Remi on Christmas Day, 496 A. D. Leo III. met Charlemagne here; a council was held in 1119 A. D. by Calixtus II. in an attempt to reconcile Henry I. and Louis le Gros; and, later, another, to excommunicate another Henry. Succeeding years saw a continuity of archbishops, who achieved by their religious works a world-wide fame and glory. In these early days they held the temporal as well as spiritual power of the cities, and in some instances even coined their own specie. In spite of the changes of the times and conditions of life, the ancient capital of Belgica Secunda still remains the chief city of the Departments of the Marne, Ardennes, and Aisne. Its ecclesiastical and secular monuments, headed by the grand Cathedral of Notre Dame, form an array which is well worthy of such extended consideration as the traveller or student can give. The Benedictine Abbey, the Church of St. Remi, is likewise notable in all of its dimensions and details. Its construction dates from 1162-1506, though the remains of a former tenth-century structure are made use of therein. Its chief treasure is the tomb of St. Remi, a wonderful Renaissance funeral monument of imposing proportions. Another monumental feature of more than unusual note, is the magnificent Roman arch of the former fortress of Porte Mars. This truly majestic specimen of the work of the Roman builder is supposed to have been erected by Agrippa in 25 B. C., in honour of Augustus, although another authority puts it as late as the period of Julian, 361 A. D. At any rate, it has stood the rigours of a northern clime as well as any Roman memorial extant; indeed, has seen fall all its contemporaries of the city, for at one time Reims was possessed of no less than three other gateways, bearing the pagan nomenclature of Ceres, Mars, and Venus. The various other memorials of the city are on a no less grand scale, but the average person will hardly have eyes and ears for more than a contemplation of the wealth of splendour to be seen in its overpowering cathedral. Of the glorious group of monumental churches of northern France, the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Reims, if not admittedly the most beautiful and memorable Gothic edifice in all France, needs but little qualifying comment. It has a preëminence which has been generally conceded, and even elaborately endorsed, by most observers qualified to pass opinion hereon. Contemplation of the wealth of detail, and of the disposition of its wonderful west front, no less than of its general excellencies, can but compel the decision that in its exterior, at least, the Cathedral of Reims is the peer of any existing Gothic fabric. Though less huge than Strasburg or Cologne, and lacking the doubled tier of flying buttresses of the latter, it is altogether the most splendid and well-proportioned Gothic mass extant. The diminishing or pyramidal effect of the towers and gable of this west façade is an exemplification of the true symmetry of Gothic form. Lofty, and not closely hemmed in by surrounding structures, it looms, from any adjacent view-point, fully two-thirds of its decorated splendour above the general skyline round about. Aside from modern adulation we have the praise of an early historian, who delivers himself thus: _"Decor et majestes praeclarissime hugus structurae omnem scribendi peritiam longe superat, ob elegantum omnibus est admirationi, at que sibi similem non habet in tota Gallia."--Met. Rememsis Hist. Dom. Guliol. Marlot S. Nicasii Rem. Prioris, Tom ii. p. 470._ Following the preaching of St. Remi, and the murder of St. Nicaise, who founded a church on this site in 400 A. D., Ebo, bishop in 818 A. D., laid the foundations of a new church, Louis I. granting that such material as might be needed be taken from the city wall. To assist, the sovereign also sent his architect, Rumaldi. In 847 A. D. Archbishop Nicman secured a renewal of the privileges, and in the presence of the king the building was consecrated in 862 A. D. The western entrance was ornamented with graven statues of Louis I., the patron, Pope Stephen, and the archbishop himself. This entire fabric succumbed to fire on the 6th of May, 1210, and the present structure rests merely on the remains of the ancient crypt, which in a measure survived. Few visible remains of this ancient foundation are to-day visible. The new church reared itself rapidly under the immediate supervision of the Archbishop Alberic de Humbert. The choir, begun within two years of the fire, made such progress as to allow of the high altar being ceremoniously dedicated within three years; and, before the middle of the century, the records tell us that the main body of the church was entirely completed. The right tower was uncompleted at this time, but was finished by Cardinal Philastre in 1430, up to which time intermittent labour had evolved a superlative combination of constructive and decorative excellencies. The extreme lightness of the west front is brought more and more to impress itself upon one by reason of the consistent disposition of the excellency and delicacy of its sculptured ornament. This western front, from the grand portals upward, is the _apogee_ of French Gothic ornament,--at once the admiration and boast of all France. Here is no mixture or confusion of style, in design or decoration. The pointed arches of window and doorway are of the accepted "best manner," the heavy detail is placed low and rises gracefully to the "Gallery of Kings," a grand succession of stone effigies of royalties from Clovis to Charles VII., a decorative arrangement not made use of elsewhere to anything like a similar extent, a fact which of itself stamps the cathedral as the royal church of France. Conceived by one Gaucher, the portals are not only superior to all others in richness, depth, and quality of the sculpture shown in the hundreds of figures with which they are peopled, but are of exceedingly true and appropriate dimensions, taken in relation with the other parts of their setting. Immediately above the gable of the central portal is a wonderful rose window, of the spoke variety, containing thirty-four sections,--of immense size and nearly forty feet across. This "most perfect rose," designed by Bernard de Soissons, may well be credited as one of the masterworks of architectural decoration in all the world. Flanking this great window on either side are two open lancet arches, while above is the "Gallery of Kings" before mentioned. The twin mullioned towers on either side rise for two hundred and sixty-seven feet. Light and airy, they depend for their effect of grace and symmetry entirely upon structural design, lacking sculptured ornament of any kind. Formerly they possessed spires of a great height, which, however, were destroyed by fire in the fifteenth century. "Were all its original attributes complete," says Fergusson, "we should have the _beau ideal_, externally, of a cathedral." This is probably an adaptation of Viollet-le-Duc's estimate, which he expresses thus: "This west façade is the most splendid conception of the thirteenth century,--Paris, like Laon, being really a transition example, Amiens representative of different epochs, Chartres a mere reunion of fragments, and Bourges and Rouen a _mélange_ of three centuries." The south transept portal, which is of great breadth, contains statues of the Archbishops of Reims, and one of Clovis. A similar doorway on the north side, though now walled up, contains, in the tympanum, a fine sculptured "Last Judgment," while the transept itself houses one of those great clocks so frequently met with in Continental churches,--in this instance said to be the oldest running time-piece in existence. Seven flying buttresses, between the transept and the west front, flank the nave, each holding aloft an elegantly canopied niche containing a full-length winged figure, a further unique arrangement being a similar figure which caps or pinnacles the outer piers, from which the buttresses spring. Above the point of contact of the buttresses with the main body, runs an effective balustrade of small pointed arches, while the abside shows, again, a wonderful combination of the buttress as a decorative and utile feature, combined. The exterior may be summed up briefly as being the most gorgeously peopled and decorated structure of its age--as though it were expressly designed to show off this great throng of statues to the best possible advantage. Taken collectively, the series forms, says one writer, "the most complete and magnificent collection of mediæval iconography extant." The figures were originally perhaps as many as five thousand, representing nearly all the families of mankind. In size the Cathedral of Reims ranks third among the four largest in France, being exceeded only by Amiens and Chartres, while Paris is slightly smaller. The interior presents by no means the awe-inspiring grandeur of the exterior mass, and is possibly inferior to both Amiens and Chartres, and though well disposed, lacks the lightness of Cologne or Beauvais. A first impression rather indicates large proportions of length, breadth, and height in the nave, though these dimensions are not actually of the greatest. The transepts, including their aisles, are, however, of an extreme width, but very short; and the absence of side chapels, either here or in the nave, produces a regularity of outline unusually convincing. The nave piers, of which there are ten on either side, with two window piercings, are of a manifestly heavy order, the capitals unusually so, being very deep and weighty with carving in high relief. The triforium is severely plain, being a mere shallow gallery of small pointed arches. The nave itself is, moreover, somewhat gloomy, when contrasted with the brilliant lighting of the aisles, caused by the peculiar arrangement of plain and coloured glass, the former filling the windows of the clerestory and the latter those of the aisles, the reverse being the case with the opposite ranges. The aisles have no chapels between the rather low windows, but groups of clustered columns against the walls. The vaulting is deep, with simple ribs, coloured with a blue ground spangled with stars and _fleurs-de-lys_. The choir is surrounded by seven chapels. There are ten columns in the choir, all with beautifully wrought capitals. The pavement here is composed of marble taken from Libergier's abbey church of St. Nicaise, from which edifice, since destroyed, was transferred the tomb of Jovinus, the Roman prefect of Reims, who became converted in 366 A. D. The sarcophagus consists of a huge block of marble, nine feet by four, with a figure of Jovinus, "lion hunting on horseback," carved in high relief. The roof of the choir is curiously constructed of wood, of chestnut, say the authorities, as no spiders are found. The high altar, as reconstructed by Poncelet Paroissien in 1550, was a very beautiful affair if old prints, usually none too reliable as to detail, are regarded. It was, however, destroyed during the middle of the eighteenth century. The glass of the rose window dates in part from the period of the greatest richness (thirteenth century). The sepulchral monuments, aside from the sarcophagus of Jovinus, are to-day practically _nil_, having been swept away during the terrors of the Revolution. Two interesting effigies still remain, however, near the western doorway, a figure of a mailed knight and an abbess. Among the real riches of the Cathedral are the remarkable and unique tapestries; well preserved, and of the finest quality of design and texture. Fourteen, by Lenoncourt, date from 1530-70; those in the south aisle, the Pepersacks, the gift of Abbé Lorraine, from 1640; and the modern Gobelins of the nineteenth century, the gift of the government. The "Tresor," which includes the church plate, most of which appears to have endured the ravages of invasion and wars, is truly magnificent and intrinsically of great value. The chief of these are: the chalice of St. Remi, of the eleventh century; a reliquary containing a thorn from the Holy Crown; the marble font in which Clovis was baptized in 496 A. D.; the chasuble of Louis XIII., and the _Sainte Ampoule_, which contained the holy oil brought by a dove from heaven for use at the conversion of Clovis, now a mere fragment enclosed in a modern setting, after having been ruthlessly shattered by a _sans-culotte_ in 1793. Adjoining the Cathedral, on the right, is the Episcopal Palace, which, with its dependencies, occupies a hectare or more of ground. In the first courtyard is the modern library building, which houses the cathedral's rich bibliographical treasures. Further, through a gateway, is a structure, in itself a grand building, of the time of Louis XIV. The right wing was constructed by Le Tellier in 1690. This portion is now occupied as a dwelling by the archbishop. At the end of the furthest courtyard is "The House of the Kings," a truly grand establishment, so called in the official documents because it was the _logement_ of the monarchs who visited the city on affairs of state. This recalls to mind not the least notable of the functions performed by the great cathedral itself. With four exceptions all the Kings of France, from Clovis to Charles X., here first entered into their kingly state. The monarchs of France were a long and picturesque line, and the ceremonies attendant upon their coronations were accordingly imposing and magnificent. The culmination, for theatrical splendour and effect, was doubtless that of Charles VII., who, through the efforts of the "Maid," here came into his own. It was a splendid, if gaudy, pageant, and the most memorable event among that long series which only ended with the coronation of Charles X. in 1823. _PART III_ _The Cathedrals of the Loire_ I INTRODUCTORY The Loire Valley for its whole length may, in every sense, be well considered the dividing-line between northern and southern influences. The romance and sentiment which cradled itself here could only have emanated from the more languid south, and from vastly differing conditions to those of the colder north. The admiration usually bestowed upon the attractions of its domestic architectural forms is, no doubt, fully merited; albeit that the cathedrals of these wealthy and powerful communities are, no one can possibly deny, if not of a mongrel type, at least of a degenerate one. It is perhaps hardly fair to note such an expression without qualification where it is applied to St. Gatien at Tours, which is really a delightfully picturesque structure; or to St. Maurice, at Angers, which is unique as to its charm of situation, and one of the most interesting churches anywhere to be found. But the fact is that the general plan and design is not only open here to much just criticism, but is not of the order of consistency which alone entitles an architectural monument to rank as truly great. In no instance, from Orleans to Nantes, are the cathedrals of these cities possessed of the consistent array of charms which would entitle them to a proportionate share of the admiration which is usually accorded to the great domestic establishments, the Chateaux of Blois, Chenonceau, Chambord, Langeais, or Loches. The climatic conditions of this region hardly more than intimate the suggestion of the southland, but there is to be seen in the vineyards, and indeed in things that grow, generally, a notable tendency toward a luxuriance that is not found northward of this valley. Productive, prosperous, influential, and possessed of historical and sentimental associations as a touring ground far beyond any other section of France, the Valley of the Loire at once takes rank as the land _par excellence_ where the traveller can be sure of a maximum of pleasure and profit; and one worthy in every way of as prolonged study and sojourn as one's possibilities and circumstances will allow. The towns group themselves naturally _en suite_ in the following order: Orleans, Blois, Tours, Angers, and Nantes, and are so considered in the pages that follow. [Illustration: _CATHEDRAL of Ste CROIX ORLEANS_] II ST. CROIX D'ORLEANS The association of Orleans, in English minds, mostly rests upon the events connected with the siege. Its history in the past has been mainly that of bloody warfare and massacre. As the Genabum of Gallia, it was burned by Cæsar in 52 B. C. in revenge for a previous massacre of the Romans. By Aurelian it was rebuilt and named Aurelianum, the progenitor of its present nomenclature. St. Aignan in 451 secured the safety of the city to the cause of Christianity by warding off Attila's attack. Clovis captured it in 498, but at his death it became the capital of an independent kingdom which was afterward, in 613, united with that of Paris. Activities no less extensive or vivid followed, till the English besieged the city in 1429, only retiring before the conquering hosts led by the Maid of Orleans on the 7th of May; the Huguenots held it as a stronghold under Coligny; and latterly the Germans occupied it, were driven out, and again reoccupied it as a base in 1870-71. Such, in brief, is a partial record of its troubles and trials, with scarce a reference to a Christian or religious motive, if we except Attila's unsuccessful attack and Coligny's Protestant fervour. The almost legendary part played by Jeanne d'Arc should suffice to impress indelibly upon the mind the chief event in connection with any city with which her name and fame were associated. In the third century seven bishops were sent out from Rome, to extend the influence of the Church, to Tours, Orleans, Toulouse, Narbonne, Paris, Limoges, and Auvergne; though, in spite of the success with which they met, and the zeal with which they worked, their meetings were chiefly held in the houses of their more opulent converts, and church building at the time appears not to have been so much desired as the dissemination of the Word itself. Since its occupation by the Germans in "'71," great contrasting elements have sprung up. Nowhere, not even in the "up-to-date" Rhine cities of Germany, is better exemplified the trend of the age in which we live. There are notable indications of its modernity in the architecture of public and private buildings, many streets and boulevards of the city being laid out anew and bisecting the older portions. The Cathedral of St. Croix, of widely contrasting styles and eras, forms a pleasing enough key-note to it all, in spite of its garish crudities. At its best, when viewed from the bridge which spans the well-nigh dry bed of the Loire, it composes well with what is at all times a pleasing prospect, and is set off to great advantage by the fringe of green boulevard along the river bank,--a fine enough setting for an architectural monument of whatever rank, be it new or old, consistent or conglomerate. As for the classification of the architectural style of the cathedral itself, it is an unprincipled mixture of components, but little related to each other. The southern influence is apparent, alike in the scanty remains of the Romanesque, and the restored Renaissance portions, while Gothic peeps out here and there, in no mean proportions, as though it were misplaced and out of its true environment. The cathedral, which was destroyed in 1567 by the Huguenots, in spite of the admonitions of the Condés, is still visible in the fragments of the choir aisles, the fourteenth-century chapels appearing to have been uninjured. This much remains of the Gothic of Henry IV.'s time. The late seventeenth-century work is a manifest expression of the debasement of Gothic, and such other additions as were made in the reigns of the Louis carry the vulgarities still further, the acme being reached in the pseudo-classical north and south porches, which are sepulchral-looking of themselves, and not even of the most admired variety of the species. The most that can be remarked, considering all the distinctive features, is the fact that this cathedral is the only Gothic church, so ranking, that is not of Mediæval growth, a fact which may well account for its unsatisfactory style. The façade follows the usual enough arrangement of three portals, though very ugly ones, flanked by rising towers on either side. In this case these doorways are of the nondescript variety commonly accepted as base Gothic, but hardly warranting even such a term of endearment. They are in fact flamboyant as to their lines, though of a remarkable poverty as to further embellishment, if we bar a series of misplaced armorial blazonings. Topping the gables of the portals are a series of circular apertures, with framing of a sort, but without glass,--a poor imitation of what a rose window might be at its worst. Above is an arcaded gallery of nine graceful arches, the first really attractive ornament of this debased façade. The towers, finished so late as 1789 by M. Paris, the king's architect, rise loftily some two hundred and eighty feet, with ranges of slight columns and perpendicular lines, which give the grand and imposing effect of height of which the cathedral is undeniably possessed, and which, when viewed from down the Rue Jeanne d'Arc, is without doubt impressive,--far more so than greater intimacy will sustain. The nave, of a height of one hundred feet, is flanked by double aisles, and in appearance is every way superior to the exterior. No remarkable art treasures are to be seen, if we except a series of sculptured Stations of the Cross beneath the windows, and the Gothic altars of the transepts. [Illustration: _CATHEDRAL of S. LOUIS BLOIS_] III ST. LOUIS DE BLOIS Regardless of the sentiment which attaches itself to Blois by reason of its magnificent chateau, and in spite of its undeniably picturesque and interesting environment, it hardly takes sufficient rank as a cathedral city to warrant more than a passing consideration. As it is, one cannot get from under the shadow of its overpowering attraction, and, in spite of the poverty and depressing qualities of the Cathedral of St. Louis, perhaps no place in the Loire valley has more claim upon the attention of the enthusiastic tourist. The wonderful chateau is all that has been said of it, and more. The picturesqueness of the city's streets of stairs, and its general up and down hill situation, offering charming vistas, unique in a city of the north, are, except for its size, really more suggestive of Genoa or Naples. In the general ensemble of the city, the Loire is an attraction of itself, when viewed from across that wonderful stone bridge, the first public work endowed by Louis XV. But even then, the awkward and uninteresting cathedral does not enter into the view with that liveliness and impressiveness which we are wont to associate with such an environment. In short, it must be set down that in the lack of pleasing qualities in its cathedral, is found Blois' greatest disappointment. The tourist _pur sang_ will care little about this. He usually rushes in and out during the daylight, and recalls but little except the fascinating staircase of the chateau attributed, as to its spiral formation, to Da Vinci; the ornamental chimney-pieces; and the fact that historical events of the past have intermingled inextricably the gruesome stories of the royal houses which bore respectively the arms of hedgehog and salamander. This only, with perhaps the memory that at one time or another a certain event took place involving the use of some forty odd daggers. Perhaps, after all, it would be an embarrassment of riches did the town possess a cathedral, or even other monuments, to vie with this spectacular attraction which, from every view-point realizes the ideal of our imagination, as to just what a chateau and its history might be. From near or far the cathedral shows no charm of outline. Its ridgepole is marred by three unusually obtrusive "lightning conductors," which could hardly have been more offensive had they been turned into those lath-like crosses which are seen elsewhere. Its tower is a monstrosity, with an egg-shaped protuberance which is neither shapely nor impressive, while the southern range of the nave and aisle, when viewed laterally, shows a bareness and poverty of design unusual and painful. The ensemble, from this point, is one of a certain impressiveness. It could hardly be otherwise, with the situation which it commands, even were it the grossest thing that ever took shape in architecture. Its irregularities and inconsistencies, and the great variety of outline shown by the roof-tops of the town, perhaps, make up in a measure for the lack of individual beauties in the church itself. There is this much to be said, however, for the functions which this church performs. If all were as much made use of by the market-day peasants, streaming in from the surrounding country, who, with their jugs, market-baskets, and what not, in their hands, enter the building, say a short prayer or two, and toddle out again, there would doubtless be fewer churches with a poverty-stricken air and more of a better and more prosperous class. The greater part of the cathedral which originally stood on this site was destroyed during the Revolution, and that which was afterward reared here was merely a restoration by Mansard, who, it is to be presumed, made such use as was possible of what remained. The interior, most will agree, is no more remarkable than the exterior adornments; in fact the same paucity of plan and of detail appears from one end to the other, inside and out. The aisles are astonishingly low; the choir and nave, each unusually short. There are no transepts, and there is no triforium whatever, no chapels of any remarkable beauty, and little glass that is even passable. On the walls of the nave, beneath the low clerestory windows, are a series of four carven Renaissance marble panels, with other blanks suggesting the ultimate addition of similar sepulchral-looking ornaments. Such, in brief, is a résumé of the attractions, or rather the lack of them, as it will strike the average person. It is perhaps no small wonder that the traveller who desires to study architectural forms, or to sketch them, should prefer the less holy precincts of the chateau, where every facility is offered for the pursuance thereof, to that more "blessed ground," covered by the cathedral, which offers little enough in itself, and that little under a surveillance which makes one regret that the feudal times are not still with us,--when we might vent our spleen and anger upon any who offend us. [Illustration: _St. Gatien de Tours_] IV ST. GATIEN DE TOURS The _soi-disant_ provincial metropolis of Mr. James' appreciative favour, the capital of old Touraine, is possessed of great and many charms for the seeker after new things. He may be passionately fond of churches; if so, the trinity here to be seen, and the history of their founders and prelates, and the important part which they played in church affairs, will edify him greatly. If romance fills his or her mind, there is no more convenient centre than Tours from which to "_do_" the châteaux of the Loire. If it be French history, or the study of modern economic or commercial conditions, the past activities and present prosperity of the city will give much food for thought. If to literature one's mind turns, there is the association with Balzac's birth in the Rue Royale, and his delightful picturings of the city's environment in the "Curé de Tours," "Le Lys dans la Vallée," and "La Grenadière." Says Balzac of the habitant: "...He is a listless and unobliging individual." But the sojourner for a day will probably not notice this, and, if he should, must simply make allowance, and think with Henry James of the other memories of "this land of Rabelais, Descartes, and Balzac; of good dinners, good company, and good houses." To link the city still closer with letters, the first printing-press in Touraine was set up here in 1496. Nicolas Jensen, famed as the foremost Venetian printer of his time, was born in the neighbourhood and was at one time "Master of the Mint" at Tours. Christopher Plantin, the head of the famous Antwerp family of printers, likewise was born in the near-by suburb of St. Avertin près Tours. Climatically, Touraine appears to linger between the rigours of the north and the mildness of the southland; at least we are conscious of another atmosphere, made apparent by such evidences as palms and prunes growing in the open. Tours, says her historian, has ever employed the pure French in her spoken and written word; "patois and provincialisms have no place here." St. Martin of Tours erected a church here, in honour of St. Peter and Paul, as a sort of antidote to the many pagan temples which he had caused to be destroyed. His successors built several others round about the city, but they appear to have been all of small size until, in the fifth century, Perpetus, Bishop of Tours in the reign of Childeric, caused to be built a more splendid church to replace that which Briceius had erected over the tomb of St. Martin. This, in turn, was rebuilt by the celebrated Gregory of Tours, or so ordered by him; until finally in the seventh century the abbey church of St. Martin of Tours became a place of pilgrimage for all the Turones. To-day, nought remains of this great church but the two towers, which have been bisected by the running of a street throughout the old nave of the church; and thus they stand as silent sentinels of the means through which Tours arose to its ecclesiastical dignity. The Tour St. Martin or "de l'Horloge" is of the twelfth century, and the other, called the Tour de Charlemagne, being the burial-place of his wife Luitgarde, is, in its lower portions, of the eleventh century. The Cathedral of St. Gatien, which should be greatly endeared to the English people, was commenced by Henry II. in 1170, the choir being the earliest portion. The transepts followed in the next century, and the façade as late as the fifteenth, or the beginning of the sixteenth, century. Of manifestly Renaissance tendency, this façade for sheer charm and picturesqueness must rank with the best, with the qualifying statement added that it offends against many consistent artistic and architectural principles. It is certainly an effective type, although perhaps not warranting the statement of a certain monarch, whose art training may to some degree have been wanting, that it was a "jewel in a gemmed setting." An exceedingly picturesque and attractive pair of towers rise, through no less than three different styles, to the inverted egg-cups, which in a purer example might perhaps prove less pleasing, but which in the present case seem at least to be imbued with something of the Oriental or Mediterranean influence, not yet fallen before the actual decadence. Another peculiarity of this charmingly toned west front is that the rose window is of a peculiar lozenge shape, "neither square nor round," as one authority puts it. This, of itself, is decidedly not a graceful arrangement; but the proportions are ample and the glass is good, so its deficiencies may in a measure be said to be overbalanced by its merits; and, for that matter, as it is only seen in its minutia of detail from the inside, where the excellent coloured glass is seen at its best, it hardly detracts from the general fine effect of the exterior façade. The western doorways are thoroughly Renaissance, both inside and out, while the portals themselves offer a livid suggestion as to what they might have been, were all the bare niches and blocks filled and mounted with worthy statues. The effect would have been an undeniable approach to the best matured Gothic, and would have enhanced greatly this already highly interesting façade. The buttresses of the choir follow the accepted forms of grace and effectiveness, and, while not numerous or remarkable as to size, each springs to a supporting pier gracefully pinnacled and gargoyled. One instance of the functions of this valuable adjunct to the towering forms taken by most Gothic structures, is a buttress which springs, unsymmetrically enough, from the north transept. This rather ungainly limb flies out like the tentacles of an octopus, grasps a small building on the opposite side of a narrow roadway, and forms a support to the irregular construction of the north transept. This was perhaps necessary as a means of bracing the transept wall, which it might not have been possible to accomplish otherwise. The interior presents the unusual feature of the omission of the organ case from over the western doorway, the organ being in this instance in the south transept, as at Le Mans. The wall space centered upon the nave proper is entirely given over to the lozenge-shaped "rose," which, in spite of its rather heavy framing and kaleidoscopic and patchworky glass, is withal effective beyond many more gracefully formed openings, where the glass is either too severely plain, or worked into a supposed design, which, by reason of its minute particles, is undecipherable. The design and arrangement of a series of lancets supporting the lozenge would be remarkable, were it in company with the best glass of the middle ages. It depicts an "Adoration" in which kings, saints, and bishops are modelled brilliantly, and with evidence of much good drawing, a detail often wanting in old, or, for that matter, modern glass. The glass of the choir, on the other hand, is far better in arrangement, and shows deep, rich particles which are only at their best in the work of the early period here shown. In this glass are depicted the arms of St. Louis, Blanche of Castile, and of the City of Tours. The choir itself widens out from the crossing of the transept, causing that deviation between the piers of nave and choir which made necessary the ungainly flying buttress of the north wall. The aisles of the nave are of no great width and are fringed with a series of chapels of which only one, that of the Sacred Heart, is in any way remarkable. The radiating chapels of the choir are more interesting, notably the lady-chapel, which contains old glass removed thither from the church of St. Julien, the subject of one of Turner's rhapsodies in his "Seine and Loire." The clerestory of the nave consists of plain glass only; and on the triforium alone, of exceedingly graceful arcaded columns, depends the beauty of the upper ranges. The chief treasure of artistic value and moment is unquestionably the tomb of the children of Charles VIII. and Anne of Brittany, by whose early deaths the throne passed to the Valois branch of the Orleans family. This remarkable monument is of the early sixteenth century and, according to the report of the _Commission des Monuments Historiques_, is the work of Guillaume Regnault, a statement which is much more likely to be correct than the usual guide-book information, which in some instances credits it to Goujon, and in others to a local apprentice of his, named Juste. On a Renaissance sarcophagus lie the two tiny effigies, in white marble, surrounded by guardian angels and other symbolical figures. The base bears escutcheons of the Dauphins of France, the arms and two inscriptions referring to the princes and their birth. [Illustration: _Flying Buttress, St. Gatien de Tours_] [Illustration: _St. Maurice d'Angers_] V ST. MAURICE D'ANGERS Historically and romantically, Angers, the former capital of Anjou, is possessed of a past (which may be said to have actively commenced in 989) that cannot fail to arrest and hold one's attention. Capital of the Dukes of Anjou, and the home of Margaret of Anjou, daughter of René, who married Henry VI. of England; likewise the cradle of the first Plantagenets; and immortalized by Shakespeare's King John, who soliloquizes anent "The flinty ribs of this contemptuous town." With all this, Angers has perhaps a supreme claim for English consideration. In spite of all this, and the added attraction of a "real castle," such as is seldom found outside the children's fairy-tale books, not to mention the Cathedral of St. Maurice,--of which more anon,--Angers leaves one with the impression that very much is wanting in order to merit preëminence in the classification of those memories which a traveller is wont to store up as a result of his travels and observations. Perhaps it is the city's pitiful attempt to be gay, to be modern, to undertake pretentious improvements,--all of which appear to fail utterly in their purpose. These things cannot be unless they are of a spontaneous growth, which here they apparently are not. Not that the city still merits the opprobrious (_sic_) term of "Black Angers" with which most writers and all makers of guide-books are pleased to refer to it,--it hardly does. In fact it is doubtful as to just what the term originally meant. Perhaps it was merely a reference to the gloom caused by the extensive use in the construction of its buildings of the black slate in which the neighbourhood abounds;--at any rate the expression is one of undoubted antiquity. The two chief attractions are the cathedral and the castle, both "historical monuments." The latter, as before noted, is the ideal military stronghold of our early imagination; and if age, magnitude, and the general air of good preservation, count for anything, it must be one of the most impressive monuments of its class still to be seen. Originally its wall, now minus battlements, fronted close upon the river. It is surrounded by a dry yawning _fosse_, formerly a moat, and possesses no less than seventeen enormous and perfectly formed towers, each perhaps eighty feet in height, banded near the top in white and black stripes. Hardly more than a circling wall to-day, it has stood well the test of time since it was erected by Philip Augustus and completed under St. Louis in 1180. Little remains of the Renaissance portion originally occupied by the Counts of Anjou. Its charm lies rather in its exterior, the interior confines resembling more a lumber-yard than anything else,--not worth spending one's time upon, under the present facilities which are offered for its inspection. One small structure within the walls is notable as being that in which King René was born. It is recorded that Wellington received a part of his military education in Angers. If so, it is probable that he studied this military defence with some care and minuteness. To us, at least, who have not been educated with respect to military fortification, it seems to fill all demands that are likely to be made upon a building of its class. Doubtless it could have been besieged successfully, and even battered through to the extent of allowing the outside foe to enter, but it would probably have been at a fearful cost, and it is possible that the attempt would be given up before any surrender took place. Such would appear to an outsider to be the lines on which these magnificent works of feudal times were built. One should not speak slightingly of the Cathedral of St. Maurice, though it comes upon one who journeys from the north, as a thing apart from anything he has met before; so much so that he is hardly likely to be able to judge it dispassionately until he has turned his impressions of it many times over in his mind. The Angevine style, seen here, is representative of but a very restricted area. The _Société des Monuments Historiques_ defined it as "a small district on both sides of the Loire between Normandy and Acquitaine." It is suggestive of the Roman manner, far more than the Gothic; though the primitiveness shown in the long, upright lines of the west front of this cathedral marks it at once as something different from either Romanesque or Transition,--though Transition it must be, unless we delimit the confines of that useful term. In any case, it points unto heaven in a truly devout manner, is not debased in any particular, and, if not a consistent style, has many of the good qualities of both. The Cathedral of St. Maurice is best seen from a point of view which will exaggerate its height, its slimness, and its straight and upright lines; but even this does not appear to work out to its disadvantage, in spite of the new note it strikes. It is an interesting work when viewed from any distance sufficient to throw its outline well into the air. From across the Maine, it is charming; from the foot of the stairwayed street which runs downwards from its western portal, it is picturesque and irresistible, while from any other view-point in the town, it is grand. The easterly end is dwarfed by close-lying houses, picturesque enough in themselves; but the gracefulness of the buttress is wanting. The south side is, here and there, broken into by additions and interpolations, none apparently of a contemporary era. It offers a grand effect for an artist who would study gray walls and crumbling roofs, but the lack of uniformity will offend most people. The façade of the west is the most effective feature, so far as genuineness is concerned. It towers to the sky, its needle-pointed spires overtopping a crooked street which rises sharply from the river. There is but one portal, and that is centred with a curious Romanesque arch half-way across its height, above which is a bas-relief of great size. The sculpture of this portal, while not as excellent as that seen in the Isle of France, is of an unusual richness and execution. The next range is unique among west fronts, being a large central window, but slightly pointed and little removed from the Romanesque. It is bare of coloured glass, and is decidedly not an attractive feature. On each side of this great window are a series of blunt pointed lancets, which form a sort of arcade which otherwise relieves the bareness which would exist. Immediately above is a row of niches which hold eight armour-clad knights of the fifteenth century, inferior perhaps, in execution, to the sculpture of the portal, but producing an effect, when viewed from the ground, undeniably fine. It is a detail as interesting, in its way, as the long "Gallery of the Kings" at Reims. Above rise the slim spires, with an octagonal cupola superimposed over a central structure, which looks to this day as though it were originally intended as one of a battery of three uniform spires. The general plan of this façade is the masterpiece of design of the building, and, except for the ludicrously diminutive clock-face, could withstand nobly the cavil of the most exacting pedant who ever read or studied architectural forms, solely out of books. In the immediate foreground falls the before mentioned street of steps. Many old tumble-down houses have recently been cleared away, and, at the present writing, the view from this point is one which has apparently not previously existed, and one which it is to be hoped will not be marred by the erection of any so-called modern improvements. The interior fills no accepted formula of architectural expression, save that it is of the manner common to Anjou, the borderland between the Gothic aisled and the great and aisle-less southern naves, but it holds one's interest none the less. Perhaps, after all, it is the quality to interest, quite as much as that to please, which is the standard by which one makes estimates and forms opinions. There is a not very long nor very wide nave and choir, neither with aisles, and both with a vaulting which gives the appearance of being much lower than it really is, quite the contrary impression to that received from contemplation of the exterior. The bishop's throne sets midway on the right of the nave. Each bay of the side walls of the nave is composed of a wide pointed arch resting immediately upon the ground and filled with stone instead of glass; reminiscent of a similar effect in the Church of Notre Dame de la Cloture at Le Mans. The true windows of the nave rise in pairs above this arch, and contain rich, though somewhat fragmentary, glass of the thirteenth century. As characteristic of the Angevine style, there is no triforium or clerestory, and hence, it is claimed, no necessity for flying buttresses, the support being accomplished by less graceful, if as effective, heavy square piers built into the outer wall. The transepts are not pronounced as to length or breadth, their chief beauty being their rose windows. The choir, of the twelfth century, shows an interpolated and elaborately flamboyant doorway of a much later period. An ornate oaken pulpit of none too good Renaissance carving is in the nave, and the organ case over the western doorway is supported on the shoulders of a series of huge, grotesque, but monstrously human, wooden caryatides. This, with the gigantic, high canopied carven wood pulpit, one of the most extraordinary in the country, forms a relief to coldly chiselled stone, certainly;--but few will consider their charms such as would warrant counting them amongst ecclesiastical treasures. The fourteenth-century tapestries from Arras (or Paris) were made for King René and by him given to the cathedral. They represent scenes from the Apocalypse, and, though having suffered somewhat from the depredations of the Revolution, still exhibit evidences of rare qualities of workmanship in their design and colouring. The _bénitier_ of _verd-antico_ marble supported by figures of lions is a Byzantine work of the eastern empire, given to the cathedral by King René. The Dukes of Anjou and Margaret of Anjou were buried here, but the tomb of the latter was desecrated and destroyed during the Revolution. Aside from these, no other monuments of note are to be seen. The Bishop's Palace, of the twelfth century, standing high beside the cathedral, was restored by Viollet-le-Duc and reflects a mediæval splendour unseen elsewhere in the city, with respect to any great or small domestic establishment. The Maison Barrault in the Logis Barrault, built by a former mayor of the city, one time Chancellor of Brittany, was the scene of the magnificent entertainment offered Cæsar Borgia in 1497. Afterwards it became the residence of Marie de Medicis; later, a monastic establishment, then a seminary, and lately simply an ordinary private school. Says one writer, "No wonder its remains should be so scanty and ill preserved." [Illustration: _CATHEDRAL of St. PIERRE NANTES_] VI ST. PIERRE DE NANTES As a city of commercial and strategic importance, no one will deny that Nantes is supreme in the Loire valley; that its relations with the affairs of Church and State are equally important, is a debatable point. True, the edict in favour of Protestant worship, fathered by Henry IV., was a momentous and significant event; but the revocation, and the subsequent massacres of the rascally Carrier, well-nigh wiped that out. The history of the city is one long record of warfare and bloodshed. Though holding the command of the Loire, the city has ever been more closely identified with Brittany. Here, in its frowning tenth-century castle, which fronts upon the river immediately in the foreground of the Cathedral of St. Pierre, with which it forms an unusual grouping of ecclesiastical and military architecture (M. H.), lived at one time or another, most of the Kings of France, from Charles VIII. downward. Here, too, Anne of Brittany was born, and here she married Charles VIII., thus uniting the Duchy of Brittany with the crown of France. Her subsequent marriage, in the chapel of the castle, with Louis XII., made for ever impossible the future independence of the city. Following the edict came the Revolution; and, as if the preliminary horrors of massacres and atrocities, which spread to Orange in Vaucluse and to Arras in Picardy, were not of sufficient stringency, the "Noyades," or drownings, carried off the poor unfortunates, a boatload at a time, until it is estimated that perhaps nine thousand were thus cruelly murdered,--women, children, royalty, and the clergy alike. The wrath which spent itself seemed to know no rank. The guillotine, disease, and famine finished the work, so that the population of the city was, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, immeasurably inferior in numbers to what it had been a decade before. The details of these significant events are recounted quite fully enough by historians generally; but, in reality, it has little to do with the aspect of the city as it exists to-day, which, if not one of great splendour, partakes in no small measure of the attributes of a large metropolis, amply planned, beautifully laid out, and possessing, in addition to the characteristics of Brittany with which it has been so long identified, not a little of the influences and attributes of the south. Immediately to the rear of the chateau is the Cathedral of St. Pierre, ancient as to its foundation, and grand as to its general effect, both inside and out, though its exterior is marred by its uncompleted towers. Lofty, but of heavy proportions, St. Pierre de Nantes would, at first sight, appear to offer much that goes to make a satisfying ecclesiastical building. As a matter of fact, it fails in many particulars to realize any ideal which we have come to admire. The western façade is more indebted to the rich and reasonably ornate portals for its undeniable impressiveness, than to the gable of towers, which have crumbled exceedingly from the effects of wind and weather, rather than of great age, since they date only from the fifteenth century. The choir rests on the remains of an older church, hardly to be seen to-day in any appreciable evidence, in that restoration and rebuilding have been so extensively carried on. The windows throughout are but weak decorative elements, and lack tracery and glass of a decorative quality, an obvious detraction in any great architectural work. The south transept shows indications of four successive periods of construction, and contains the best glass in the church; otherwise it is severely plain. The interior is by no means as incoherent as the exterior, the height of the nave, one hundred and thirty feet, giving an otherwise unapproachable grandeur; though this admirable dimension is qualified to no small degree by a triforium of a luxurious florid growth, little in keeping with the other attributes of firmness and strength. The chapels throughout are bare and uninteresting so far as their altars or decorative embellishments are concerned,--what they may be at some future time, if the _Art Nouveau_ gets a foothold in church decoration, is fearful to contemplate. Paintings, none too common in French churches, are here somewhat in excess of customary numbers, though, as to quality or interest, in no church in France can they vie with those of the great churches of Italy or Flanders. Like the neighbouring city of Tours, Nantes has in its cathedral, for its _pièce de résistance_, a magnificent sepulchral monument, the tomb of François II., the last Duc de Bretagne, and Marguerite de Foix, his second wife, erected to their memory by their daughter Anne. This remarkable mausoleum was executed in 1502-07, after designs of Jehan Perréal, by Michel Colomb and his pupils, Regnault and Jean de Chartres, with the assistance of Jérôme de Fiesole, who contributed the ornamental portion. It fortunately escaped demolition at the Revolution, and was brought hither and placed in the south transept from the Eglise des Carmes in 1817. It is a wonderful exemplification of the very best quality of Renaissance. The main portion of the tomb is of marble, with black mouldings somewhat shattered in places, but not so much so as to affect the contour or design. The effigies lie recumbent upon a slab, their feet resting on a lion and a greyhound, upheld by a series of miniature figures of the twelve apostles in niches of red marble. At the corners are four nearly life-size figures, depicting Justice, with sword and scales, said to be a portrait of the Duchess Anne; Power, strangling the dragon of Heresy; Prudence, a double face, showing also Wisdom, with mirror and compass; and Temperance, bearing a curb-bit and a lantern. A tablet at the head bears the figures of St. Louis and Charlemagne, and one at the foot, those of St. Francis of Assisi and Ste. Marguerite, the patrons of the duke and duchess. _PART IV Central France_ [Illustration: ST. ETIENNE _d'AUXERRE_] I ST. ETIENNE D'AUXERRE The entrance to the Burgundian city of Auxerre is more or less confused if one would, at the first glance, attempt to recognize its cathedral from among the three fine churches which in true mediæval fashion loom up over the river Yonne; not that the entrance is not pleasing: the reverse is actually the case, though one's way into the town lies through newly made roads. However, upon contemplation of the pleasant prospect of town and river, he would be an uninspired person indeed who would not be able to pick out the Cathedral of St. Etienne, with its singular reddish brown roof, from among its less imposing neighbours. It is the central building of the three, and it rises majestically above all, enhanced by the fine grouping of its one lone tower. As a type to admire, the cathedral, be it said, is not of a superlative quality; but as a thing of beauty in many of its details and because of its aforesaid commanding situation, it is one not to be ignored when the really fine gems of mediæval treasures are catalogued. It is another of those types, so far as its choir is concerned, which rise to a loftiness of soaring height, which, in later days, degenerated, or were lost altogether in the fabric of the transepts and nave. The height of the choir is perhaps not so great as it really appears, when gauged by its sheer rise from the river level; but such is the suggestion, at least, which, after all, is what the eye and certain other of our senses admire, quite as much as a professed expert classification. The western front is of unusual appearance in that the southern tower glances off into the angle of the gable in most curious fashion; not beautiful, nor as originally intended to remain, but so it is, and offers at least a comparison of how a lofty gable looks when it lacks towers of an appropriate height. At the right of this low tower of the façade, hidden behind a wall, is a thoroughly Pagan doorway, which might well pass unobserved, did one not actually stumble upon it unawares. It is a curious reminder of other days and other ways, and how it became an adjunct of this mediæval church the local records fail to state. The three main portals of the façade, as that of the transept, are somewhat bare of ornament, though the main tympanum and the spring of the arch are fairly filled. These portals are of the late thirteenth century, and exhibit no traces of the debasement which subsequently entered into the upper ranges of the tower and lateral portals. Both the transepts and the west front contain rose windows of good, though not remarkable design, and each is exceedingly generous in size. The interior, generally, does not give the effect of the great height suggested from the rear view of the choir overhanging the river front; but both nave and choir are of unusual width, and so also is the clerestory, which is lofty, and set with rare old glass of the most splendid and valuable quality, in the main the gift of Bishop de Villeneuve in 1220. The choir terminates with the usual apse, which is further elongated by the far-reaching lady-chapel, which adjoins the main fabric in a graceful and unusual manner. The north tower was completed as late as the sixteenth century, and that of the south was left unfinished,--as it is to-day. The gable and its portals are highly decorated with statues, niches, and crockets. Around the aisles of nave and choir is a curiously suggested arcade with an overhanging balustrade ornamented with a series of indifferently sculptured heads. The bosses of many of the intersecting groins of the vaults are coloured with questionable effect. There are also many visible evidences of coloured wall decorations, which might perhaps as well have been left covered, inasmuch as they have suffered exceedingly in the attempted restoration; so much so, that it is impossible to say whether they ever approached acceptable perfection; possibly not, as they are supposed to date only from the period when much of this class of work was of none too good a quality. The triforium of the nave is gracefully balustraded, and the choir stands apart from the nave, separated by an elaborate eighteenth century iron _grille_. The ambulatory of the choir sets three steps lower than the nave, though the platform is on the same level. The crypt beneath the choir, so often the only existing remains of an earlier church, is here grandly in evidence, and dates from the eleventh century at least. There are a few interesting tombs of former Bishops of Auxerre and others of local celebrity. On the whole the charm of Auxerre and its cathedral must be admitted to lie in its general surroundings and immediate environment, quite as much as because of any remarkably distinctive features of a superlative quality in the cathedral itself, though an undeniable wealth of picturesque detail exists. The conventional guides speak of it as "highly interesting," and so it is, with its Romanesque remains, its ungainly façade, its three fine but weather-worn doorways, and its charming river view. Beside the cathedral stands the old-time Episcopal Palace with its fine arcaded Romanesque gallery overlooking the river, where the prelates took their "constitutionals," safely guarded from wind and weather. To-day this grand building represents the officialdom of the local Préfecture. Two other noble ecclesiastical monuments are to be seen here, the Church of St. Germain, or rather, the fragment which was spared by the Huguenots, now being used as an adjunct to a hospital; and the Church of St. Pierre. The latter is the most appalling example of a Renaissance building which one is likely to meet with, and shows in its remarkable façade, in sheer perversion of misdirected labour, the grossness of pseudo-classicism, which quite entitles it to rank with that other equally abominable example in Paris, St. Eustache. The _portail_ of this remarkable church, locally so called, though in reality it is only a detached gateway, far from the church building itself, is a wonderful Italian suggestion, now mellowed and weathered and undeniably charming in colour in spite of its being so manifestly out of its environment. [Illustration: _St. Etienne de Bourges_] II ST. ETIENNE DE BOURGES The Cathedral of St. Etienne de Bourges partakes of the same honours which are accorded to the premier quartette of the Isle of France. Nearly contemporary with Paris and Laon, this cathedral steps into its rank with a grandeur and firmness that in a less stolid or more ornate edifice is often wanting. It retains certain of its Romanesque features, perhaps unduly pronounced; likewise it has certain attributes of Burgundian luxuriance; but withal it presents the highly developed Gothic tendency to a far greater degree than either. Although not far to the south of Paris, Bourges is thoroughly of another climatic environment, which not only shows itself in the changed conditions of life, but in the manner of building as well. The great transeptless church of St. Etienne is another of those soaring monuments which rise skyward and hold the eye whenever one is in its vicinity. Standing on an eminence of not very great height, it dominates, from every point of view, the plain which surrounds the city and reminds one of Noyon or Laon in its comparative isolation. Not because its domicile is not a place of some magnitude, but rather because the neighbouring houses lie so huddled in a valley or plain, does the city give the impression of being of less size than it really is. The view from the railway on entering the town is, as it has been called by some imaginative Frenchman, "but the _hors d'oeuvre_ of the architectural feast to follow," and on drawing still closer, it composes grandly with the swift-flowing little river lined with the tall slim trees which are so distinguished a feature of a French landscape. Like Beauvais, Amiens, and, in only a slightly lesser degree, Le Mans, the sheer fall of the nave and choir from ridge to ground startles one by its exaggeration of perpendicular lines. Though by no means of the great height of these other examples, its great size first impresses one as its distinguishing feature. It sits, too, on the edge of a beautiful wooded park which, in conjunction with the modern Episcopal Palace, forms an ensemble of stone and verdure not often to be seen as the environment of a French cathedral. The gardens are quite open to the public and are set forth with clipped hedges, trees, and monumental stone work of no mean order. Bourges is another of those ancient foundations of mid-France where Romish influences died hard, and Gothic, as a perfected type, never, as it were, attained its majority. Here, the mixture of style is notable; pointed and rounded arches intermingled, apparently indiscriminately, with thoroughly Gothic supports, mullions, and piers. These, with the characteristically Renaissance north and south porches, with their carven doorways, all go to complete a series of typically fashioned details, each true to its own age. Such a combination of varying virtues should give the student, or the seeker after new sensations, something more to think about than a mere catalogue of consistent charms; for it cannot be denied that this church, standing aloof from any other single type, is a marvel of grandeur and impressiveness, whatever may be its failings when dessicated by the theorist or the archæologist. It is unlikely that Saracen or even Moorish influences were ever at work so far north as this; but there is an unquestionable tendency in much of the debased decoration of this church to more than suggest a similarity to both. It is, of course, not Gothic, as we know it, nor Byzantine, _pur sang_, and it is certainly not Italian, but something quite different. It is, perhaps, worthy of record that the inverted horseshoe arch more nearly approximates what is commonly considered the Moorish form; or, to give it a wider _locale_, Mediterranean, at least. The polygonal turrets which flank the towers and the chapels of the abside look, too, not unlike a sub-tropical feature, possibly Saracen. Such details are markedly noticeable here, and it is because of features such as these that one is minded to consider the church as something quite different from anything seen elsewhere. To carry the argument still farther, if these details are to be considered in any sense Gothic, or any outgrowth thereof, it certainly augurs much for the possibility of this style having come originally from the East, or at least the Mediterranean countries. It has been claimed before now by English and French writers alike, that it may have developed from the arts of the Moors of Spain, or that it may have grown up from a primitive style in vogue in the Far East. The comment is given without further elaboration; but here, at least, we see some basis for the claim that Gothic is but a transplanted flower after all, and that it developed so boldly only from the seed's having been blown hither from some other land, and finding a favourable soil in which to take root and flourish. Without transepts, the long flank of the nave and choir is singularly beautiful, broken into at regular intervals by buttresses which, if not remarkable examples, are at least graceful, though so light that they have been visibly stayed by iron rods, as is frequently the case elsewhere, at Beauvais particularly, where the whole fabric appears to be hung together by wires. The actual inception of the cathedral is attributed to Rudolphe de Turenne, forty-sixth Archbishop of Bourges. Of his known work only the round-arched crypt remains, upon which foundation the present grand pile was reared. The west front possesses a quintette of portals, deeply recessed, but of a decidedly mixed Gothic and Renaissance treatment as to decoration. Such a range of elaborated doorways is hardly to be found in such luxuriance elsewhere, though the fact that there are five in all, standing grandly in a row, is perhaps not unique of itself. They are profusely decorated with sculptured forms of angels, saints, and kings. The tympanum of the central portal contains a "Last Judgment," remarkable alike for its magnitude and workmanship. Throughout, these portals vary in date of their construction, their treatment, and their excellencies, but in general they are homogeneous and convincing. In the gables of three are circular piercings which open into a sort of vestibule or porch; but these are entirely without glass. Another unique feature of this western front is a curious lofty double-storied structure, a chapel-like building, of whose functions most will remain in ignorance. It is connected with the main body of the church by a long tentacle-like ligature through which, says Henry James, "the groaning of the organ or the pealing of bells must be transmitted with distressing clearness." The hybrid tower on the extreme left, with many round-arched windows and much florid ornament, is familiarly called the "Tour de Beurre," and, as its compeer at Rouen, was built from the contributions of those who were willing to forego themselves the luxury of butter. To the right is a much less imposing tower, but one that is much more true as to its style. It rises scarcely above the central gable, and helps to exaggerate the lack of uniformity of the façade, a condition much deplored by the true Gothic builder, though whether such varying detail does not after all make a more interesting, and perhaps as edifying a work for pleasurable contemplation, is an open question. There is, in any event, a marvellous power in this massive west front to confirm one's opinion that it is a comprehensive and yet varied thing. Another curious feature of this front is a pair of overlying buttresses of no apparent purpose as to staying power, since the wall space which they flank is of no inordinate height. The window space, though, is ample; and, though mostly in blank to-day, at a future time those blanks might be broken out; hence the necessity for these extra props. The interior gives, likewise, a grand impression, one of vaster magnitude than in reality exists. The length is probably exaggerated by reason of the lack of transepts; but its breadth, including nave and aisle, is unusually great, and the height is further magnified by the fact that the aisles themselves have three ranges of openings, above which, in the nave, rise the triforium and clerestory,--surely alone a sufficiently unusual arrangement to account the church as of remarkable planning. Its great beauty may be said to be the magnificent proportions throughout, rather than the preëminent intrinsic value of any specific detail. The rose window of the west end, though of grand proportions, appears to fail utterly as a supreme effort because of the flatness and depression given to its circumferential outline. Like that of St. Gatien at Tours it is of an uncertain lozenge shape, while the effect is further lessened by the mediocrity of its glass and framing. The general appearance of the interior is one of symmetrical grandeur, wherein the effect of each dimension is probably enlarged, but with a fine and consistent proportion. Its conventional embellishments are not unduly ornate; though, for that matter, they do not give the impression of being wanting to any great degree either in quality or quantity. In no particular, however, is the sculptured form of figure or foliage of that excellence and magnitude of that of the cathedral at Reims or at Amiens. The magnificent proportions of the choir well merit the term of "Burgundian opulence." Its termination opens with an amplitude often wanting in even a larger building, the piers being wide apart, without screening, which heightens still more its generous proportions. The two picturesque cardinal's hats, with cord and tassels, have long been pendant from the vault of the choir, and are now dimmed in colour and thick deep with dust, seemingly destined to fall of sheer old age and decrepitude. Further particulars concerning this picturesque detail are wanting only from the lack of any one in attendance from whom one might get this information,--perhaps some reader of these lines may be more fortunate. On the pavement of the nave is a brass rule, inlaid diagonally from the north to the south wall. Its original use appears to be clothed in some obscurity, one informative person stating that it is the line of departmental division, and another that it marks the meridian of Paris, which is shown on all French navigation charts. Its real purpose is evidently topographical rather than of religious or symbolical significance. An ardent French writer deplores the fact that there is no monument here to show respect for Louis XI., who was born at Bourges and baptized in the cathedral; a pity, perhaps, and certainly a subject worthy of the consideration of "the powers that be." [Illustration: _CATHEDRAL of S. CYR & Ste. JULIETTE NEVERS_] III ST. CYR AND ST. JULIETTE DE NEVERS A unique experience is one's first contemplation of the "gay little city of Nevers" from the Pont du Loire, with the none too large Cathedral of St. Cyr and St. Juliette crowning, as it were, the apex of a series of steep rises from the Loire, which, even at this distance from the sea, still retains its ample breadth. Said Arthur Young in his plain and bald phraseology, "Nevers makes a fine appearance." Here, on the very threshold of the southland, it is something of a shock to be brought at once into intimate association with Italian influences and types of architecture; for, be it recalled, Nevers has been truly "an Italian stronghold in the midst of France," with little to remind one, but its speech, that it is merely a provincial French market-town. Nevers was the seat of the Italian Dukes and Counts of Nièvre, who built the ducal palace, the _ci-devant_ chateau, now the Palace of Justice. Here, later, dwelt the nephew of the great Mazarin, who said his king "had a heart more French than his speech." Through his efforts the Nivernais was incorporated with the French crown in 1669. This fine turreted, towered, and decorated building, with its sculpture attributed to Goujon, is to-day, in appearance at least, what it was in the past,--the typical urban domestic establishment of grand proportions and splendid appointments; though it may hardly be said to vie with such masterpieces as Chambord, Chenonceau, or Blois. Nor, for that matter, is the town itself entitled to rank, as to its events of historical importance or the fame or personality of its bishops or counts, with either Chartres or Le Mans, both of which it somewhat approaches in point of size. Aside from its many and varied charms, which have been duly set forth by most writers on the French provinces who have had anything whatever to say about it, Nevers should be doubly endeared to all makers of guide-books and students of ecclesiastical architecture, from the fact that the Abbé Bourassé, Honorary Canon of Nevers, here wrote and dedicated to his bishop, Mgr. Dufêtre, a work treating of the French cathedrals which will ever rank as one of the most delightfully written and useful books of its class. This fact perhaps is hardly to be reckoned as of historical moment, but pertinent to the plan of the present work nevertheless. Nowhere, not even in Provence or Acquitaine, are to be noted more significant tendencies toward a southern influence in the matter of civil and ecclesiastical building. True, many of the minor structures have to-day descended unto base uses, and many of their perfections and beauties are therefore sunk below the surface. For instance, where a palace has become a warehouse, or a church been turned into a stable, or been given over to the uses of a wine factor. Before even considering the cathedral itself,--dedicated to the hero of the legendary tale concerning St. Cyrus, who, depicted as a naked child riding astride a wild boar, was able to turn the infuriated beast from a certain King Charles (further designation not given) and preserve him from danger,--it is well to know that most authorities agree in giving habitation here to one of the most perfect Romanesque churches in all northern Europe, that of St. Etienne, built in 1063-96, and consecrated in the latter year by Ivor, Bishop of Chartres. Of the century contemporary with this fine work, as yet hardly spoiled by any offensive restorations, are two columns, in the easterly portion of the Cathedral of St. Cyr, which bear the date of 1024. From this foundation the lover of churches will rear for himself an exceedingly interesting and uncommon type. Not of the first rank, St. Cyr has the power to hold one's attention far more closely and interestingly than many of greater worth and magnitude; and its environment, from every point of view, composes itself into a picture which it would be hard to duplicate. The grouping of the chevet of the choir with the low roofs of the town lying at its base, and the gardens of the ducal chateau in the immediate foreground, forms an unusually varied combination of the picturesque. The wealth of Nevers in architectural monuments would be notable in a town many times its size. The Port de Paris, a not especially attractive Renaissance gateway, guards the northerly, and the Port du Croux the westerly, end of the town. This latter groups nobly with the west end and tower of the cathedral, and is of itself a monument of the first rank, being so designated by the _Commission des Monumentes Historiques_. A feudal defence, square, broad-based, turreted, flanked with circular watch-towers, and still further strengthened by a barbican which once held a portcullis, this wonderfully effective barrier more than suggests the mediæval stronghold. Two other towers of the ancient _enceinte_ still remain, the Tour Gougin, and the Tour St. Eloi. Intimate acquaintance with the cathedral shows a blending, not offensive, but in no slight manner, of the Romanesque, early and late Gothic, and finally Renaissance styles. Nevertheless there is an apparent cohesiveness often lacking in a larger work, or in one built within a shorter period of time. One distinctly northern feature there is; namely, the singular effect given by the double apse of the nave and choir, reminiscent mainly of the Rhine builders, that of the eastern end being much the older. The half-obliterated frescoes of the domed vaulting of the western apse indicate that it was completed after the pure Italian manner at a considerably later time than the opposite end. It is hardly a beautiful or even a necessary feature to either the exterior or interior of a great church, and, fortunately, is unusual in France, though common enough in Germany, notably at Mainz, Worms, and Treves. The most remarkable interior effect, aside from this western apse, is that of the lofty Gothic arches, springing high above the Romanesque arches of the nave, and naturally of a much later date. Certainly this must be, so far as the respective proportions of each are concerned, an entirely unique feature. Notable evidences are to be seen of frescoes, probably the work of some Italian hand, both on the screen and in the domed apse. They have apparently been whitewashed over many times, but remorse, if tardily, has evidently come lately, and such restoration or renovation as has been possible, has been undertaken. A dainty and diminutive spiral stairway, suggestive of having been modelled on the lines of the grand spirals at Chambord or Blois, and half enclosed in the surrounding wall, leads to the Chapter Room above. The eastern apse, and the crypt beneath, are the earliest parts readily to be observed and are probably the remains of the Romanesque structure built by Hugh II. early in the eleventh century, after the common type of the Auvergnat and Angevine churches. Perhaps the best workmanship to be noted is that of the thirteenth-century chapels surrounding the choir. Reclus, a French authority, has declared that the ornamental foliage here is not only really admirable as to itself, but is the "perfection of imitation," and extends this commendation also to the work on the pillars and capitals of the north doorway by which the church is usually entered. The interior generally is brilliant and pleasing, though good glass is mostly wanting, and the uninterrupted flood of light detracts measurably from the warmth and geniality suggested by the memory of Bourges, Chartres, or Auxerre. The rose window over the western apse is pitifully weak and quite lacking in effectiveness. A canopied _baldacchino_ rises above the altar and, being of stone treated in a graceful Gothic manner, is an ornament much more in good taste than the hideous mahogany or oaken serpentine atrocities which are often erected. It is impossible to come into close contact with the exterior of this cathedral except by approaching it from the eastern end. West front there is none. As one has said, "It possesses merely a western end." The western tower, of two non-contemporary orders of Gothic (fourteenth and fifteenth centuries), whether viewed from near or far, is far more pleasing than any other general exterior feature. The chevet of the choir extends, as it were, well into the nave, there being no transepts. This is evidently a local custom, recalling the neighbouring cathedrals at Bourges and Auxerre. The sculptured decoration of the later portion is exceedingly well disposed, and of such magnitude and numbers as to lack that poverty in the ensemble often apparent in a more pretentious work. The Church of St. Etienne in Nevers, so thoroughly Roman in inception of design and execution of detail, indicates more vividly than any other example that might possibly be taken, the shortness of time in which the Gothic development actually took place. With Notre Dame at Paris full in mind, it is well to recall that these accepted perfect examples of two contrasting types are scarce a hundred and fifty miles apart, and, in point of time, but sixty years. What an exemplification this surely is of the transition which came to the art of church building in the twelfth century; what extraordinary rapidity of conception and development, and how narrow were the confines of the true Gothic spirit, indigenous only to the royal domain, which alone produced the churches which fully merit the concisely expressed definition of Gothic: "A manner of building maintained (sustained) by a system of thrust and counter thrust." [Illustration: _CATHEDRAL of S. MAMMÈS LANGRES_] IV ST. MAMMES DE LANGRES Langres is reminiscent of but one other cathedral city in the north of France; like Laon, it occupies and fortifies the crest of a long drawn out hill, or, to give it dignity, it had perhaps best be called in the language of the native "de la montagne de Langres," since from its apex, it is truly dominant of a wide expanse of horizon. Of the Burgundian transition type, the Cathedral at Langres, dedicated to St. Jean the Evangel and St. Mammes, is in many ways a remarkable architectural work, but contaminated beyond cure by two overbearing Greco-Roman towers and a portal of the mid-eighteenth century. As a relief, there adjoins the main body of the church, on the southeast, one of those masterworks of the supreme Gothic era,--a canon's cloister of an exceeding thirteenth-century beauty. In other respects, the exterior is of little note except as to its wonderful degree of prominence in the general grouping of the roofs of the town, when the city is viewed from below. The interior spreads itself out in severe and imposing lines with hardly a remarkable feature in either transepts or nave. The organ-loft, a Calvary, and a marble statue of the Virgin, by Lescornel, a sculptor of Langres, and a few modern sculptured monuments, are the only decorative attributes to be seen, if we except the Renaissance Chapelle des Fonts Baptismaux with its sculptured vaulting on the left. The symmetrical choir is in itself the true charm of St. Mammes. It has a fine ambulatory, and a range of eight monolithic columns, removed, says tradition, from an ancient Pagan temple. Their capitals are ornamented with carven foliage, grimacing heads, and fantastic animals. A sixteenth-century screen surrounds the choir, but is more like unto a triumphal arch than a churchly accessory. The high altar is a comparatively modern work, as may be supposed, and dates only from 1810. On the right of the choir is an elaborate Roman doorway, and preserved in the Chapter Room are five paintings depicting the "Chaste Susanne." A remarkable collection of reliques is shown by the sacristan, in the Chapelle des Reliques. V NOTRE DAME D'AUXONNE The small town of Auxonne, lying between Dijon and Besançon, is seldom thought of in connection with a cathedral church. There is little there to compel one's attention beyond the fact that the Church of Notre Dame, of the fourteenth-sixteenth century, is an interesting enough example of a minor edifice which at one time was classed as a cathedral. The church is mainly Gothic and has the unusual arrangement of a Romanesque tower rising above the transept. _PART V East of Paris_ I INTRODUCTORY No arbitrary territorial arrangement can be made to include with exactness each and every ecclesiastical division, but, since the Royal Domain and the immediately adjacent territory includes the major portion of what are commonly accepted as the Grand Cathedrals, it has been thought permissible, in the present case, to make a further subdivision which shall include Boulogne and St. Omer, north of Paris; eastward to the Rhine and southward to include Dijon and Besançon. A topographer might not make such a division or arrangement of territory; but no other seems possible which shall include the region lying between the extremes of Besançon and Boulogne. The local characteristics or architectural types differ widely within these limits, both as to style and excellence. In one way, only, have they advanced under conditions of unity, that of the establishment of a Christian church, but, otherwise, now favouring the northern influence and now the southern. The frontier provinces have, as a natural course, been subject to many retarding influences which have been wanting elsewhere; for invasion from without may be depended upon to be as baneful for the preservation of a nation's art treasures as a revolution from within. The Christian element early forced its way among the Franks, and Clovis, at the solicitation of his Christian queen and her bishop, was not averse to adopting what he might otherwise have regarded as a superstition. His conversion at Reims not only fostered and propagated Christianity, but gave an impetus to the foundation and building of churches in a most generous fashion. The region to the eastward of Paris, which has played no unimportant part in the history of France, while prolific as to varied types of church building, possesses but one example of the very first rank,--and that, as a style which typifies Gothic art, may be said to rank supreme over all others,--Notre Dame de Reims. As the seat of the Metropolitain, and the City of Coronations, it was allied closely with early affairs of Church and State. The principles and manner adopted by Guillaume of Sens in his great works early affected the style here, as seen by the many transition examples, just as the influence of the Monk of St. Bénigne of Dijon caused the round-arched species of the west of France. At all events the primitive Gothic influences were early at work and in a measure absorbed the Romanesque tendencies which had flourished previously. The most notable exception, an example of the distinctly southern type, is at Besançon, which has a remarkable array of contrasting style, with the Romanesque, though not of the best, predominating. With the cathedrals in the extreme northerly section we have little to do,--in fact there is little that can be said. St. Omer is possessed of a wonderful old church which at one time ranked as a cathedral, and which has glimpses here and there of very good Gothic. There are also, in this otherwise not very interesting city, two other church buildings worthy of more than an ordinary amount of attention, the ruins of the Abbey of St. Bertin and the Church of St. Denis. Boulogne-sur-Mer has a modern pseudo-classical structure built well into the nineteenth century. It is more notable as a monument to the industry of the man who brought about its erection, taking the place of a former structure burnt during the Revolution, than as a satisfactory example of a great church. The same may be said with equal truth of the atrocious Renaissance and Pagan structures to be seen at Cambrai and Arras, though the conditions under which they were built differ. At Cambrai, however, the present building replaces a former structure levelled by fire. Chalons-sur-Marne,--dear to every French patriot as being renowned for the manufacture of flags, a suffragan of Reims, has a remarkable cathedral of Romanesque foundation of the fifth to the seventh centuries. Its warlike record, from 273 A. D., when Aurelian vanquished Tetricus, to the occupation by the Germans in 1871, is one long succession of military affairs. To-day the city is the domicile of the most important army corps of France. These towns, with Nancy, Toul, and St. Dié in the valley of the Moselle, complete the list of those cities which by any stretch of territorial boundaries could be classed under the head of "East of Paris." It may be a debatable point as to whether Strasbourg and Metz might not have been included; the writer is inclined to think that they might have been, though their interests and influences have always been more Teutonic than Gallic,--still, they are thoroughly Germanized to-day, and, as we cannot interrupt the march of time, and the present volume will otherwise approach the limits originally set out for it, they must perforce be omitted. [Illustration: _CATHEDRAL NANCY_] [Illustration: _BOULOGNE_] [Illustration: _St. OMER_] [Illustration: _ARRAS_] II NOTRE DAME DE BOULOGNE-SUR-MER Boulogne-sur-Mer is one of those neglected tourist points through which the much travelled person usually rushes en route to some other place. It perhaps hardly warrants further consideration except for the history of its past, and its intimate association with certain events which might seriously have affected the history of England. It is, however, an interesting enough place to-day, if one cares for the bustle and rush of a seaport and fishing town,--not very cleanly, and overrun with tea-shops and various establishments which cater only to the cockney abroad, who gathers here in shoals during the summer months. There is, too, a large colony of resident English, probably attracted by its nearness to London, and possibly for purposes of retrenchment, for there is no question but that the franc, of twenty per cent. less value than the shilling, accomplishes quite as much as a purchasing power. This must be quite a consideration with _pater-familias_ with a limited income derived from Consols or some other traditionally "excellent investment." Most travellers are familiar with what attractions Boulogne really does offer, but few if any would consider its very modern and ugly cathedral one of them. Perched in the centre of the _Haute-Ville_, overlooking the city and port, the Cathedral of Notre Dame exists to-day more as a monument to the energy and devotion of its founder than as a notable architectural work. It follows no particular style, except that it is Italian of the most debased general type, though no doubt parts of it meet the dimensions and formulas laid down by accepted good examples in its native land. There is no doubt but that its domed cupola is manifestly out of place, though this detail is the only feature which gives the cathedral any distinction. A Gothic church stood here up to the Revolution, and the building of the present structure was devotedly undertaken to replace its loss by a doubtless earnest man, who, in his zeal, sought to build after what he considered a newer if not a better style. Parts of the crypt are of the ancient twelfth century church; but the structure above dates from 1827-66. Its façade, of a poor classical order, is flanked by two slight cupola towers equally meaningless and insignificant. Surmounting the central dome is a colossal statue of the Virgin. The interior is in no way remarkable or interesting. There are a few monuments and a gorgeous high altar of precious marbles, mosaic, and bronze, the gift of Prince Alex Torlonia. The lady-chapel is still resorted to as a place of pilgrimage by the seafaring and fisher folk of the neighbourhood. A modern reproduction of a sarcophagus from the catacombs at Rome forms the tomb of Mgr. Haffreingue (1871). III NOTRE DAME DE CAMBRAI Cambrai is one of that quartette of cathedral cities of northern France which in no sense take rank as ecclesiastical shrines of even ordinarily interesting, much less beautiful, attributes. Of the other three, Arras, St. Omer, and Boulogne, St. Omer alone is possessed to-day of anything approaching the great Gothic churches which were spread broadcast throughout France during the five centuries of church building in the middle ages. In manners and customs, and indeed in speech to some extent, these cities all partake somewhat of the _locale_ of those of the Low Countries. These attributes, which have retained their original identities across the borders, were for many centuries, and even so late as the seventeenth century, existent in French Flanders. Curiously enough, in none of these cities are any of the primitive Gothic types to be noted in the cathedral churches, though many possess their olden-time belfries and watch towers, preserved to-day with something of the local pride which evinces itself elsewhere with respect to cathedrals. It is possible that this is due to the fact that this great industrial centre of northern France is more given to the arts of manufacture than to the devotion of church-going or even of church building. Another notable and almost universal feature of these cities are the Renaissance or Romanesque gateways,--silent reminders to-day of the mediæval communities which they once protected, and of the warlike invasions of the past. The Cathedral of Notre Dame de Cambrai is on the site of an older abbey church, which was of the same ugly style as the present edifice itself, but which dated, however, only from the early eighteenth century. The present building is said to furnish a replica, of the vintage of 1859, of the tasteless and crude style of the earlier building. There are statues therein of Fenelon, Bishop Belmas, by David d'Angers, and of Cardinal Regnier; and a series of grisaille windows, after originals by Rubens, by Geeraerts of Anvers. The chimes of Cambrai rank among the most noted in Europe. They are composed of thirty-nine bells and produce a carillon, "very agreeable," says a French authority. They certainly do,--the author can endorse this from a personal knowledge,--and they have not as yet descended to such banalities as popular military marches. The largest bell, given by Fenelon in 1786, weighs 7,500 kilos. [Illustration: Notre Dame de Cambrai] IV NOTRE DAME DE ST. OMER Under Baldwin of Hainault, Artois, including St. Omer, was ceded to the kingdom of France as late as the mid-seventeenth century. Few minor churches are possessed of the galaxy of charms and attractions of the _ci-devant_ Cathedral of Notre Dame at St. Omer. Hardly in the accepted forms of good taste are the Byzantine slabs of marble stuck upon the walls here and there, as in a museum; the Renaissance screens; the overpowering organ case; the votive offerings and tablets without number; and the alleged wonderful astronomical clock, with its colossal wooden figures of the sixteenth century,--all of which go to compose a heterogeneous mass more interesting as to occasional detail than as a thorough expression of saintly temperament. The decorative scheme is carried still further by the large number of paintings with which the church is hung; a tribute none too common in France, and more usually associated with the Flemish churches of nearly every rank. A reflection of their preëminence in this respect is naturally enough visible in French Flanders. "The Descent from the Cross," attributed to Rubens, appears likely enough to be a genuine master, but it has been so roughly restored by overpainting, that it is to-day of impaired value. St. Omer, among all the group of northeast France, presents a true Gothic example in its great Basilique de Notre Dame, and it is a pity that its further development was along lines which indicate a trend, at least, toward debasement. This is plainly to be noted in the tracery of the lower and clerestory windows of nave and aisles. Its enormous tower covers nearly the entire western end of nave and aisles, in much the same way as those of some of the fortified churches of the south. Its Gothic is of the true perpendicular style, however, and, with the general grand proportions of the building, gives that immensity and massiveness which is associated only with a church of the first rank. The _arcs-boutant_ of the nave are hardly deserving of mention as such, though they are manifestly sturdy props which perform their functions in perhaps as efficacious a manner as many more graceful and delicate specimens elsewhere. There is just a suggestion of a central tower, which, as is often the case in France, has dwindled to a mere cupola, if it had ever previously grown to a greater height. The transepts are of imposing dimensions, that on the south having an enormous rose of perhaps thirty-five feet in diameter, with an elaborately carved portal below, which contains a "Last Judgment" in the tympanum. The choir, chevet, and chapels, while existent to a visible and very beautiful degree, are somewhat overshadowed by the great size of the transepts. There is this to be said, however: that the choir, a restoration of our own day, presents, as to style, the type of Gothic purity at its height. It has five radiating chapels, not including that of Notre Dame des Miracles, which adjoins the south transept and contains innumerable votive tablets. For the rest, except for the fact that the interior partakes of a mere collection of curios and relics, it is in general no less imposing in its proportions than the exterior. The clerestory windows, however, are of ill proportions for so grand a structure, being short and squat; and here, as elsewhere throughout the building, is to be found only modern glass. The great bell of the western tower weighs 8,500 kilos. Chief among the notable accessories and reliques is the monolithic tomb of St. Erkembode, bishop of the one-time see of Thérouanne, period 725-37. The sarcophagus itself, dating from the same century, was brought here from the original site. The tomb of St. Omer was restored in the thirteenth century and shows a remarkable sculptured group of Christ, the Virgin, and St. John, called the "Great God of Thérouanne." It was saved from the ruin of the church at Thérouanne, which was destroyed with the greater part of the town in 1533 by Charles V., in revenge for the "loss of three bishoprics," as history states. At this time the sees of St. Omer and Boulogne were founded. The near-by Palace of Justice, built by Mansart in 1680 and enlarged for its present use in 1840, was the former Episcopal Palace. St. Omer has also two other grand churches, St. Sepulchre, of the fourteenth century, and the ruins of St. Bertin (1326-1520), which, before the Revolution, with St. Ouen at Rouen, and the collegiate church at San Quentin, was reckoned as one of the most beautiful Gothic abbeys in France. To-day it is a magnificent ruin, its huge tower (built in 1431) and portions of the nave and crossing being all that remain. It was considered the finest church in the Low Countries, and for size, purity, and uniformity of style it ranked with the best of its contemporaries. V ST. VAAST D'ARRAS The capital of ancient Flanders was removed from Arras to Ghent when Artois was ceded to France, and thus it was that the city became French, as it were, but slowly, its Low Country traditions and customs clinging closely to it until a late day. The former Cathedral of Notre Dame ranked as a grand example of the ogival style of the fourteenth century, in which it was built, and gave to the city of the "tapestry makers" the distinction of possessing a church composed of much that was best of the architecture of a fast growing art. Such was the mediæval rank to which the cathedral at Arras had attained. The new Cathedral of St. Vaast, dating from 1755 to 1833, is of the Grecian style of temple building, little suited to the needs of a Christian church. The crucial plan consecrated by catholic usages of centuries is not however wholly abandoned. There is something of a suggestion of the Latin cross in its design, but its abside faces toward the southeast rather than due south, with its principal entrance to the northwest, a sufficiently unusual arrangement, where most French churches are duly orientated, to be remarked, particularly as there is little that can be said in praise of the structure. The interior follows the general plan of the Corinthian order; the windows, neither numerous nor of sufficiently ample dimensions to well serve their purpose, number nine only in the choir, and five on each side of the nave. There are, to the abside, seven collateral chapels, some of which contain passable sculptured monuments, removed from the old abbey of St. Vaast, a foundation erected in the sixth century and reconstructed by Cardinal de Rohan in 1754. The remains of the old abbey buildings have been built around and incorporated in the present Episcopal Palace, the extensive Musée, and Bibliotheque; and are situated immediately to the right of the façade of the cathedral. The grisaille glass seen in the interior is unusual, but mediocre in the extreme. There are, however, some good statues in white marble in the Chapelle de St. Vaast, while in another chapel, given by Cardinal de la Tour d'Auvergne, is one equally good of Charles Borromée. There are four great statues at the extremities of the transepts, representing the four evangelists; and three others in the choir, of Faith, Hope, and Charity. In the north transept, also, are two triptychs of the Flemish school, by Bellegambe, a native of Douai (1528). The Abbé Bourassé, in his charming work on the cathedrals of France, says, plainly, and without fear or favour: "We have tried to speak impartially of all species of architecture--but why do we not admire the Cathedral of Arras? It is against all traditions of '_notre art catholique_.' We contend that this is not good. What, say you, can we praise? It is a great work--of the stone-mason; you should study it from some distance. It is without life, without movement, without dignity." Whatever may be the faults of its cathedral, Arras is, nevertheless, an interesting city,--modernized, to be sure, by boulevards laid out along the old fortifications. The Citadel of Vauban (1670), called ironically "_la belle inutile_," may be classed as a worthless, if not wholly unpicturesque, ruin, though ranking, when built, as among the most wonderful fortifications of the times. The wave of Renaissance which swept northward has left its ineradicable marks here. The Hôtel de Ville is a remarkable specimen of that art of overloading ornament upon a square hulk, and making it look like a wedding-cake; though, truth to tell, coming upon it after the chilliness of the cathedral itself, it is a cheerful antidote. Dating from 1510, at which time was built the curious Gothic façade of seven arches, each different as to size and spring. The added wings in elaborate Renaissance are of the late sixteenth century and rank among the most effective examples of the style in France. A belfry surmounts all, 240 feet in height, the "_joyeuse_" of which weighs nearly nine tons. Arras may perhaps be most revered for its tapestries, its workers taking rank with those of the famous manufactories at Paris and Beauvais. Indeed, it would appear as though experts knew not to which of these three centres to assign precedence, both Arras and Paris claiming the honour of having set up the first looms. It is an ancient art, as the work of craftsmen goes, and more than one writer who has studied deeply the fascinating intricacies of _haute_ and _basse lisse_, of colour, texture, design, and what not, has not hesitated to proclaim the city as having been the grandest centre of tapestry-making which the world has ever known; and regret can but be universal that it came to an end when its citizens were put to the sword by Louis XI. [Illustration: _TOUL_] VI ST. ETIENNE DE TOUL Annexed to France, in company with Metz and Verdun, in 1556, Toul, situated on the left bank of the Moselle, is to-day ranked as a fortress of the first order. "Can be seen in two hours"--such is the description usually given by the guide-books to the city which contains, in its one-time Cathedral St. Etienne, an example which, with respect to the decorative tracery of its façade savants have declared the equal even of Reims. One of the three former bishoprics of Lorraine, Toul is none too ample to merit the cognomen of a large town. It once held within its walls, beside the Cathedral, the Church of St. Gengoult, and several parish churches and monasteries. Shorn to-day of some of these dignities, with its bishopric removed to Nancy, it ranks as a military and strategic stronghold rather than a centre of churchly domination. Since Metz and Strasbourg were given over to the Germans, Toul's former fortress has been greatly strengthened. The cathedral itself may truly be said to bear the characteristics of both the German and French manner of building, the western or later end being a superb front, after the French manner, and the easterly or earlier end having a simple apse and long narrow windows, in the German fashion. A comparison has been made by Professor Freeman between the western façade of this church and Notre Dame de Reims. He says, "We are daring enough to think that, simply as a design, the west front of Toul outdoes that of Reims; though it will be hardly needful to prove that, as a whole, Reims far outdoes that of Toul." Quite non-committal, to be sure, as was this charming writer's way; but, of itself, a sort of preparation to the observer for the beauties which he is to behold. Here is the case of a superb richness having been added to a plainer body, and by no means inharmoniously done. The gable is nearly perfect as to its juxtaposition. The towers are higher in proportion than at Reims, giving the effect of being the finished thing as they stand, though lacking spires or pinnacles. The walls are of those just proportions in relation to the window piercings which is again French, as contrasted with a neighbouring example at Metz, where the reverse is the case. The city was the seat of a bishop as early as the sixth century, and its government was under his control until 1261, when it became a free commune. Finally it was conquered by Henry II., and its future assured to France by the Treaty of Westphalia. The cathedral dates in part from Romanesque remains of the tenth century, but its entire interior arrangements were much battered during the Revolution. The choir and transept are of the best of thirteenth-century building, while the nave and side aisles are of the century following. Two towers, which flank the magnificent façade, rise for nearly two hundred and fifty feet, and are the work of Jacquemin de Commercy in the fifteenth century. Adjoining the right aisles are the very beautiful Gothic cloisters of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. They form a rectangular enclosure, 225 feet by 165 feet, and are made up of twenty-four sections of four arches, each with clustered columns. A fine sculptured altarpiece, "The Adoration of the Shepherds," is in the Chapelle de la Creche, entered from the cloister. The present Hôtel-de-Ville was formerly the bishop's palace. [Illustration: _North Portal Cathedral Chalons-sur-Marne_] VII ST. ETIENNE, CHÂLONS-SUR-MARNE Chalons is perhaps first of all famed as the scene of Attila's great defeat in the fifth century, one of the world's fifteen decisive battles. The Cathedral of St. Etienne is not usually considered to be a remarkable structure; but it is thoroughly typical and characteristic of a _locale_, which stamps it at once with a mark of genuineness and sincerity. Of early primitive Gothic in the main, it shares interest to-day with the four other churches of the city, not overlooking Notre Dame de l'Epine, some five miles distant to the northward, one of the most perfectly designed and appointed late Gothic churches which the world has ever known. It has been called a "miniature cathedral," using the term, it may be supposed, in the sense of referring only to a magnificently ornate church. It is indeed worth a pilgrimage thither to see this true gem of architecture in a wholly undefiled countrified setting. The Cathedral at Chalons-sur-Marne follows somewhat the traditions of the German manner of building, at least so far as a certain plainness and lack of ornate decoration in the main body of the church is concerned; likewise in the arrangement of its towers, which lie to the eastward of the transepts; and further with respect to its decidedly Teutonic arrangement of the rounded columns, or, more properly, pillars, of its nave. In general this thirteenth-century church is in the best style of its era; but the west front presents an incongruous seventeenth-century addition in the whilom classical style of that day, bad as to its art, and apparently badly welded into conjunction with the older portion. The aisles and clerestory windows are of the later decorated period of Gothic, and present, whether viewed from without or from within, an exceedingly fine appearance. Probably the finest and most pleasing impression of the whole structure is that obtained of the interior, with its pillars of nave and choir, of the massive order made familiar in the Rhine churches. A reasonable share of twelfth to sixteenth century glass is still left as its portion, and the general arrangement of the choir, prolonged, as it is, well into the nave, gives a certain majesty to this portion of the church which is perhaps not warranted when we take into consideration that it must perforce dwarf the nave itself. The arrangement, though not common, is by no means an unusual one, and it is recalled also, that it is so employed at Reims. Situated near the frontier, Chalons-sur-Marne has ever been subject to that inquietude which usually befalls a border city. German influences have ever been noticeable, and, even to-day, the significant fact is to be noted that a curé will hear confessions in German, and that services are held in that tongue on "Saturdays in St. Joseph's Chapel." The Episcopal Palace, behind the cathedral, contains a collection of some sixty paintings, the gift, in 1864, of the Abbé Joannes. [Illustration: _S. DIÉ_] VIII ST. DIÉ St. Dié gets its name, by the corruption of Dieudonné, from St. Deodatus, who founded a monastery here in the seventh century. It was built, as was many another great cathedral, in accordance with the custom of erecting a church over the body or relic of a saint whom it was especially desired to honour; usually one of local importance, a patron or a devotee. The town is perhaps the most inaccessible and "out-of-the-way" place which harbours a cathedral in all northern France. We might perhaps except St. Pol-de-Leon and Tréguier in Brittany, neither of which is on a railway, whereas St. Dié is, but at the very end. When you get there and want to go on, not back, you simply journey on foot, or awheel if you can find a conveyance, and take up with another "loose end" of railway some fifteen miles away, which will take you southward, should you be going that way. If not, there appears to be nothing for it, but to retrace your steps whence you came. The cathedral (locally "La Grande Eglise," it only having been made a cathedral so recently as 1777) has a fine Romanesque nave of the eleventh century, with choir and aisles of good Gothic, after the accepted Rhine manner of building. The portal, of red sandstone, is of inferior thirteenth-century workmanship, with statues of Faith and Charity on either side. The façade is flanked by two square towers. The interior is curiously arranged with a cordon of sculpture, high in the vaulting. The capitals of the pillars are likewise ornamented with highly interesting and ornately sculptured capitals. The choir, as is most usual, is the masterpiece of the collection, the windows, in particular, being of the purest ogival style. In the first chapel, on the right, is a painting, "The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian," and behind the choir is an ancient work commemorative of "_Le Peste de St. Dié_." [Illustration: ST. LAZARE _d'AUTUN_] IX ST. LAZARE D'AUTUN This ancient episcopal city has ever been devoted to the cause of Christianity. "Nowhere," says a French historian, "has the Church enjoyed more repute than here." The Dukes of Burgundy, its bishops and people alike, joined in a fervour of labour and zeal to assure its permanence and progress. In addition, the Gallo-Roman remains point to a former city of proud attainments. The fine Roman walls, beautifully jointed, _sans_ cement, are distinctly traceable for a circuit of perhaps three miles around the city. Other interesting remains are two fine gateways, commonly referred to as triumphal arches, which they probably were not, the Porte d'Arroux and the Porte St. Andre; the ruins of an amphitheatre; and a tower assigned to a former temple of Minerva. All these, and more, are found inside the old walls; while, without, are remains of an aqueduct, of a tower dedicated to Janus, and a Roman bridge crossing the river Torenai. It may be interesting for an Englishman to recall that the Bishop of Autun, who often presided over the National Assembly, pleaded in vain with George III. for the adoption, in England, of the French metric system. During the destruction of a former building, St. Nazaire, which at one time performed the functions of a cathedral, the bishops held their offices in the chapel of the chateau of the Dukes of Burgundy; but, upon the removal of the residence of the house of Burgundy to Dijon, transferred their services to the present edifice, which had by that time been completed. The Cathedral of St. Lazare is a charmingly graceful, though not great, structure, mainly of the style "_ogivale premier_," its early Lombard work of the nave and west front being of the foundation of Robert I., Duke of Burgundy. This vast western portal is encased in a great projective porch, a feature indigenous apparently to Burgundy, and commonly referred to as the "Burgundian narthex." Following come the chapels and spires, of exceeding grace and beauty, of the third _ogivale_ style. The interior enrichments, like the western doorway, with its Romanesque sculptures, take rank with the best in Burgundy. The delicately carved rood-loft, or jube, the small sculptures of the choir and nave, and the flamboyant chapels of the fifteenth to seventeenth century, challenge minute attention from those who would study decorative detail _in extenso_. The capitals of certain columns in the nave have fluted pilasters in imitation of the antique, but are most curiously ornamented with grotesque and fantastic human figures on a background of foliage. The choir, of early pointed style, in its actual disposition and arrangement, may be included in that classification which comprehends some of its more important northern compeers, though, as a matter of fact, it lacks their magnitude. Indeed, the building is one of the smallest cathedrals in all France. The exterior offers an imposing and picturesque ensemble, with its crocketed spire rising some two hundred and fifty or more feet above the roof-tops of the ancient city. Nearer inspection shows a certain incoherence of construction, particularly in reference to the evidences of garish crudities in the work done under Robert I. in 1031-76, in contrast to the later pointed work. The doorway of the lateral southern wing is ornamented with a series of grossly exaggerated columns, in imitation of the antique, with the addition of an apse, which contrastingly shows work of a late flamboyant order. The spire itself is the masterwork of the entire structure, and, unlike those which surmount many another church, appears not to have suffered the dangers of fire. As a fifteenth-century work, it merits special mention. Rising abruptly from a heavy square base, the pyramid is very acute, and is ornamented at the angles with foliaged crockets, basely called stone cauliflowers by unimaginative persons. One might say, with the gentle Abbé Bourassé, that the "ornamentation breaks into sky and cloud with an exceedingly agreeable effect, far beyond that of a straight line." The inconsistency lies only in the juxtaposition of the two western transition towers, which have hardly enough of the Gothic in them to merit the name. The lower windows of the nave are of good flamboyant style, with a sort of Romanesque triforium, and a simple round-headed window in each bay of the clerestory, which is the more poor in treatment and effect in that it holds no notable glass. There are none of those distinctly northern accessories, the great rose windows, and the whole reeks of distinctly a milder atmosphere. There is a luxuriance of decoration in the many chapels of different epochs. The exterior, in general, is of excessive simplicity; but, if it is not to be placed among those cathedrals and churches accredited the most notable and most beautiful, it will, at least, take rank as one of the most ancient to be seen to-day, and has the further benefit of a glorious environment and association with the past. [Illustration: _CATHEDRAL of S. BÉNIGNE DIJON_] X ST. BÉNIGNE DE DIJON The power and wealth of the Dukes of Burgundy, whose influence extended northward to the Netherlands, where they often held court at Ghent and Bruges, were, in a way, responsible for the opulence and splendour of the life of the day. So, too, Burgundian architecture became a term synonymous for the amplitude and grandeur with which many of its institutions were endowed. The reign of Philippe le Bon, with that of Charles the Bold, the most ambitious prince who ever graced his line, was the Augustan age of Burgundian art. It was the dream of the latter to reincarnate the old Burgundian kingdom by annexing Lorraine and subduing the advancing Swiss Confederacy, an ambition which failed, like many others as, or more, worthy. The conquered duke was killed at Nancy, and was finally buried in Notre Dame at Bruges. The Cathedral of St. Bénigne is an outgrowth from the old abbey church, from which the Italian monk, Guillaume, set forth to found that remarkable series of monasteries in Normandy and Brittany. It is said, too, that he crossed the Channel, and had a large share in the works which were erected at that period in the south of England. The bishop's throne has been established in this church only since the Revolution, caused by the destruction of his former cathedral. The early foundations of the old abbey date far back into antiquity, but the present cathedral dates only from the thirteenth century. Commonly considered as of Gothic style, it is in every way more suggestive of the late Romano-Byzantine type, or at least of the early transition. There is, to be sure, no poverty of style; but there is an air of stability and firmness of purpose on the part of its builders, rather than any attempt to either launch off into something new or untried, or even to consistently remain in an old groove. As a fact, it is not a very grand building. Its choir is small, and its transepts short. In its plan, at least, it resembles the Byzantine form much more than the elongated Gothic, where every proportion seems to reach out to its utmost extent. The west façade is truly fine in the disposition of its parts and arrangements. It suggests, more than anything, a traditional local style, favouring nothing else to any remarkable degree except the German solidity so often to be noted in eastern France. The towers are firmly set with unfrequent pointed openings. The central portal and vestibule are deep, and rich with a sculptured "Martyrdom of St. Peter" and a delightfully graceful arcade just above the portal arch, and another crossing the gable and joining the towers in a singularly effective manner. A somewhat heavy but rich pointed window of three lights, surmounted by a quatrefoil rose, with a slight needle-like spire which rises just above the gable, completes the ensemble. The earlier work, seen at its best in the interior, is that of the choir and transepts, where again the distinguishing features are local. In the transepts the arches open directly on the side chapels, the southern arm being gorgeous with brilliant glass. The windows of choir and transepts throughout are richly traceried and set. The choir itself is destitute of either ambulatory or chapels. A lantern is placed at the crossing, supported by gracefully foliaged shafts. The nave is of a much later period, and is not of the richness of the portion lying to the eastward. The windows of the clerestory, in particular, will not be considered of the excellence of those of either transept or choir. The south tower encloses the tombs of Jean sans Peur and Philippe le Hardi. The crypt contains the tomb of St. Bénignus. [Illustration: _CATHEDRAL of NOTRE DAME SENLIS_] XI NOTRE DAME DE SENLIS "Truly rural" is a term which may well be applied to the situation of Senlis, the ancient Civitas Sylvanectensium of the Romans. Quaint and attractive to the eye is the entrance to the town from the railway, with its low-lying roofs, over which tower the spires of the ancient Cathedral of Notre Dame and the Church of St. Pierre. It forms a heterogeneous mass of stone, to be sure, and one which looks little enough, at first glance, like the delicate and graceful cathedral which makes up the mass in part. It is, in reality, a confused jumble of towers and turrets which meets the eye, and it takes some little acquaintance with the details thereof to separate the cathedral from the adjacent church. The proximity of the sees of Beauvais, Amiens, and Paris perhaps accounts for the lack of importance attached to this cathedral. As for the structure itself, among the minor cathedrals of France, Senlis, with Séez and Coutances, must ever rank as the peers of that order, with respect to the grace and beauty of their spires. It may be doubted if even the spires of Chartres are to be considered as more beautiful than the diminutive single example to be seen here, particularly when grouped with its surrounding environment. Individually, as well, its grace and beauty might even take that rank. The demarcation between the base of the tower and the gently dwindling spire is almost entirely eliminated, without the slightest tendency toward debasement in the steeple, which too often is merely a series of superimposed, meaningless, and unbeautiful details. Latter-day builders, who want a model for the spire of a moderate-sized Gothic church, could, it would seem, hardly do better than to make a replica of this graceful example. In its façade, the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Senlis partakes largely of the characteristics of the primitive lowland types, reminiscent, at least, of Noyon or Soissons, and, as such, it may properly be considered and compared with them. The transepts of the north and south are not grand members, but they are compact and graceful, and the façade of the southern arm is of a highly ornate character, bespeaking a wealth of ambition, if not of ability, on the part of the architect. The interior, in spite of the lack of sculptured ornament, shows no paucity of style, and, except that it is of the bijou variety, might take rank at once as representative of Gothic style at its best. Under these conditions, the nave is naturally confined, and lacks a certain grandeur both as to width and height. The choir is of true, though not lofty, proportions, the aisles appearing perhaps too low, if anything, for the height of the nave, which otherwise appears exceedingly generous with respect to the extent of its triforium and clerestory. The transepts, though shallow, are possessed of unusually amplified aisles, there being, as a matter of fact, two in that portion which adjoins the nave on the west, a sufficiently unusual arrangement to warrant comment. The rose windows of the transepts have graceful design and good framing, though the glass is not of the splendour which we associate with the most pleasing examples seen elsewhere. XII ST. ETIENNE DE MEAUX To the eastward of Paris, one first finds the true country atmosphere at Meaux, famous for its bishops, its grist-mills, and its generally charming environment. The picturesque little city is situated on the Marne, some thirty miles from Paris, amid a verdure which, if not luxuriant, is, at least, a "fringe of green" that is appealing alike to local pride, and to the artist or stranger within the gates. It is an ancient bishopric (now suffragan of Paris), founded in 375 A. D. [Illustration: ST. ETIENNE _de MEAUX_] The Cathedral of Saint Etienne de Meaux is called by the French the "Child of Amiens," and it would have all the dignity of its mother had but the nave received the same development as the choir. Its general dimensions are restrained, and it shows in no way any remarkable architectural ensemble; but, for all that, its power to please is none the less great. Lacking a certain symmetry, in itself no great fault, the exterior gives the impression of being to-day much less grand and imposing than was really planned. Battled by wind and weather, its outer walls have that scarred and aged look which is a beauty in itself. There are two towers, one of which is unfinished and capped with an ugly and angular slate roof, so low that it hardly exists at all, so far as forming a distinct feature of the façade is concerned. Its companion, however, rises boldly and in graceful lines to a generous height above the gable. The interior plan is regular and simple, with a nave of five bays, the first two from the west being divided into the infrequent quadruple range of openings, while the remainder consist of the usual triforium and clerestory only. The double aisles of the nave are of unusual height, in order to admit of this double range of openings. The transepts, if transepts they can be considered, are very shallow, being merely the depth of the double aisles of the nave and choir, and are bare and unadorned so far as any notable sculpture or glass is concerned, though the arched windows which hold the plain glass are of grand proportions and excellent design as to their framing. The triforium, throughout, is an arcaded cloister-like effect of slight arches, supported by slender columns, with a series of glazed windows behind. It would be a notable and wholly charming arrangement were the glass of these windows rich in colour, or even old in design. There is an air of singular lightness, if not actually of grace, throughout the entire nave and choir, superinduced, perhaps, by the recent whitening and pointing of the masonry; but the not infrequent bulging piers, particularly those nearest to the transept crossing, give a suggestion of ungainliness if not of actual insecurity. The columns of the choir, supporting a series of firm and gracefully poised arches, are of unusual height, something over forty feet, it would appear,--producing a harmony of form and elegance which again reminds one of Amiens. There are here copies of the nine Raphael tapestry cartoons, the originals of which are preserved at South Kensington, also of frescoes by Guido Reni and Domenichino. The chief artistic, if not architectural, charm to be seen within the purlieus of the cathedral is that of the ancient chapter-house, across a narrow way, to the right of the church itself. This gem of mediæval building is perhaps not remarkable as to any of the principles which it sets forth in its manner of construction, but it takes one back some hundreds of years, a sheer plunge far beyond the age of the most prominent features of the main church, and gives a thrill somewhat akin to the emotion which one feels when he comes across a single leaf torn from an old illuminated manuscript. This charming ruin, for it is hardly more than that, being a mere lumber-room, shows in the weathered look of its covered stairway nearly all of the qualities which the painter loves to depict,--colour, texture, and, above all, that indescribable charm which artistic folk, and others who can see as they do, call life. Clearly, the Cathedral of St. Etienne de Meaux, as an interesting shrine, may be classed well at the head of the secondary cathedrals of the third Gothic period. [Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF SAINT PIERRE TROYES] XIII ST. PIERRE DE TROYES To the thorough student of English history, Troyes is perhaps first recalled as being the birthplace of the treaty "_decreeing for ever a common sovereign for England and France_," a treaty which, it is minded, "stood no while." Again, some dubious antiquary has put it forward as the home of that variety of weights "which are not avoirdupois." The Counts of Champagne had, in the once well-walled city, both a castle and a palace. Olden-time houses, good Gothic woodwork and Renaissance stonework, are here in abundance; also, according to the authority of Fergusson, a well-nigh perfect Gothic church in St. Urbain; likewise a great cathedral,--rather ugly as to its general outline. All these are possessed by Troyes, and to-day the reminders and remains of each and all are exceedingly vivid and substantial. Certain cathedrals of France show plainly the different phases and developments of the art of building through which they have passed; others indicate little, if any, deviation from a certain accepted style. St. Pierre de Troyes is of the first category. Here is Gothic in all its variations. Its environment, too, is characteristic of the many varying moods through which its constituency has passed. A truly mediæval city in the picturesqueness of its older portions, Troyes is famed alike in affairs of Church and State. The dimensions of the Cathedral at Troyes, which approach those of the grand group, and the general majesty of its interior only further this opinion. The main body covers the none too frequent arrangement of five aisles, which, following through the transept, continue, with the double pair on each side, to likewise girdle the choir. The splendour of immensity is further enhanced by its large windows, including two rose openings set with old glass, and the general richness of its sculptured decorations. The abside of the choir is ranked among the best Gothic works of the time. The choir, begun in 1206, is composed of thirteen arcades, symbolical of Christ and the twelve apostles, from the chief of whom the cathedral takes its name. The windows of the triforium are large and divided into four compartments. The general disposition of the choir, with its radiating chapels, is superb; and it is exactly this satisfying, though perhaps undefinable, quality that is ofttimes lacking in an originally well-planned work which fails to inspire one. The choir contains an iron _grille_ of the thirteenth century, of very beautiful workmanship, and is surrounded by five hexagonally sided chapels. The principal portion of the nave, erected in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, interrupted now and again by war and civil distractions, bears indelible impress of its continued centuries of growth. The principal façade of the fifteenth century--accredited to one Martin Chambige and erected just after the nave took form--is of the richness of Gothic only just previous to its decline. There are three portals, which are bare of sculptured figures, as indeed is the whole west front. In arrangement, it resembles the frontispieces of certain of the grand cathedrals, and, though lacking their sculptured ornateness, is thoroughly satisfying as a decorative frontage. Had it been executed fifty years later, it would be hard to imagine to what depths its lines might not have fallen. As it is, the upper ranges of the tower suggest the thought. The windows of the aisle and of the clerestory of the nave, when viewed from the exterior, are grandly traceried and gracefully coupled by a series of light, firm buttresses, which rise, only from the gables of the lower set, over the low-lying roof to the spring of the arch of the upper range. St. Pierre de Troyes suggests, in a mild way, the "sheer glass walls" so frequently referred to by adulous French critics when chanting the praises of the highly developed lightness of their indigenous style. This is further accentuated when one notes the glazed triforium, a decorative feature reminiscent of that at Séez, Nevers, Tours, and St. Ouen at Rouen. Troyes is one of those prominent cathedral cities of Catholic France whereof the churchman deplores the fact that its men are not of the church-going class, and that its congregations are mostly of the fair sex. Be this as it may, except in Brittany, where the whole population appears unusually devout, the stricture is probably true in a great measure of all of the north of France; and, be it here said, recent political edicts will doubtless not tend to increase the propaganda of piety. The north gable, with its portal and rose window, is of the fifteenth century, and, with the "lustrous rose" of the south transept, forms a pair of brilliant jewels which are hardly excelled elsewhere, not even by the encircled splendour of the forty-foot openings at Reims and Amiens, the equally extensive one of the north transept at Rouen, or, most splendid of all, the galaxy at Chartres. These marvels of French ingenuity and invention are nowhere more splendidly proportioned or embellished than at Troyes, and are equally attractive viewed from either within or without. The chief "_tresor_" consists of a series of wonderful mediæval enamels. [Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF SAINT ETIENNE SENS] XIV ST. ETIENNE DE SENS Says the Abbé Bourassé, "One of the most beautiful titles to glory in a church is the antiquity of its foundation," hence, most French antiquaries who have written upon the subject of the celebrated Cathedral of St. Etienne of Sens have enlarged upon its "glorious antiquity." To prove or verify the fact as to whether St. Savinien or St. Potentien was the first to preach Christian religion here would be a laborious undertaking. Evidences and knowledge of Roman works are not wanting, and early Christian edifices of the Romanesque order must naturally have followed. One learns that an early church on this site was entirely destroyed by fire in 970, and that a new edifice had progressed so far that it was dedicated in 997. This, in turn, was mostly rebuilt, and, two hundred years later (1168), took the form of the present cathedral. It was completed, in a rather plain and heavy ogival style, under the capable direction of the William who came to Canterbury, in response to a call, to rebuild the choir of that English church in 1174. It is this link, and possibly a sight of the vestments of À Becket, now preserved among the "_tresor_" of Sens, that binds its memory with English contemporary life. Whatever may be the contentions waged as to the claims of English Gothic, it is universally and unimpeachably admitted that Guillaume de Sens rebuilt that famous choir of Canterbury, and built it well, and of a newer order of design than any previous work in England. So let it stand. Taken by itself, the Cathedral at Sens is a high example of Christian art. When, however, it is compared with the grand group, it is relegated immediately to the second rank. The interior, far more than the exterior, shows a visible disparity of unified style. Romano-Byzantine, transition, and ogival are all found in the nave and choir, with the flamboyant, of the fifteenth century, in the ornamental tracery of the windows of the transepts. Some visible remains of the earlier structure are shown, built into the eleventh century walls. Of the same period are other evidences of a former erection, to be noted in the aisles. The transept and the greater part of the nave are of the century following, and of the early thirteenth, and finally the three arcades, by which the nave is entered, are something very akin to the full-blown Renaissance of the fifteenth century. The general plan is symmetrical, and severe, only the twenty chapels being ungracefully disposed. Ten of these are in the choir and ten in the nave. For the antiquary, versed in religious archæology, the Cathedral of Sens would appear, from the very inconsistencies and exuberance of its style, to be of great interest. The fragments that remain of its former magnificent glass, the sculptured monuments, and the tombs and curiosities of the "_tresor_," which escaped Revolutionary spoliation, all combine in a glorious attraction for one who has the time and inclination to delve into the reminiscence of history and association of a past age. The glass of the choir, and of the chapel of St. Savinien, is of the thirteenth century. The colour is exceedingly brilliant, lively, and harmonious, with the iridescence of a mosaic of precious stones. The sixteenth-century glass, none the less than the framing itself, of the grand rose windows of the north and south transepts, is equally remarkable as to design and colour. The former represents the "Glorification of Jesus Christ," and the latter "Events in the Life of St. Etienne." The "_tresor_" of the cathedral is very numerous and is considered the richest in all France. The most notable are a reliquary of gold, set with sapphires and pearls, containing a fragment of the True Cross, given by Charlemagne in the year 800; four magnificent tapestries of the time of Charles V., representing the "Adoration of the Magi;" and the pontifical robes of St. Thomas (à Becket), chasuble, aube, stole, manipule, cordon, two mitres, and two collars. This courageous archbishop, persecuted by Henry II., took refuge in Sens in 1162. An elaborate tomb (of the eighteenth century), by Constant, is the mausoleum of the Dauphin, father of Louis XVI. _PART VI_ _Western Normandy and Brittany_ I INTRODUCTORY Most people who have read Ruskin, and most people have done so--in the past, will undoubtedly concur with his dictum that Rouen's "associated Norman cities," Bayeux, Caen, Coutances, St. Lo, Lisieux, and Dieppe, run the entire gamut of mediæval architectural notes; or, as Ruskin himself has put it, "from the Romanesque to the flamboyant." He might well have added, the Renaissance and the pseudo-classicism of a later day. Beauties there are in this region, galore; and the examples which no longer exist, but of which the records tell, point to a still larger aggregate. Who thinks to-day of Coutances as of being a "cathedral town?" And yet, there is within it, as to the general effect of situation and the magnitude of its towering pinnacles, an edifice which perhaps outranks all but the very greatest. Most likely no thought is given it at all, except that Coutances is somewhere on the railway line between Cherbourg and Paris, or that it is near unto Bayeux; also possessed of a magnificent cathedral, but whose greatest fame lies in a certain false sentiment associated with its famous tapestry. Not that this great work is to be decried,--far from it, but the spirit with which it is so often viewed should be a matter of scorn for every broad-minded traveller. Lisieux, too, has a wealth of attraction for those who fondly admire reeking picturesqueness and old timbered houses, though its cathedral will not please. Pugin could not resist depicting many of these delightful old houses of Lisieux in his book on Normandy, though, unlike Ruskin, he had no eye for its cathedral; most of us will not have. So much, then, as a plea for a more sincere and thorough appreciation of the charms of western Normandy. It is cheap; accessible, and has a practically inexhaustible store of treasure for the traveller or student of limited time or money, but who will not make of it the usual mere "bank-holiday" scamper. The same applies also to Brittany, which is treated elsewhere, with this proviso, that the tourist afoot or awheel is far better equipped than he who has to depend upon steam and the rail, two at least of Brittany's cathedrals being "off the line." II NOTRE DAME D'EVREUX The Cathedral at Evreux is another of those edifices which gives one its best impression when first seen upon entering the city. Charmingly, possibly romantically, situated, it lies in a shallow valley with all the picturesqueness of its varied style limned against the sky in truly impressionistic fashion. This impression, when viewed from the slight eminence by which the railway enters the town, is a vista of rambling roofs and a long, sloping street running gently down to the very foot of the structure, which, set about and interspersed with verdure, as it is in the spring and summer months, warrants one in counting his introduction to this charmingly attractive, though non-consistent, type of church, as one of the events which will live in memory for years. [Illustration: _Notre Dame d'Evreux_] If towering spires and pinnacles were a _sine qua non_ for a great and imposing architectural style, this church would at once rank as one of the most delightful examples extant; for these very features, albeit they are mostly of what we have come to accept as a debased form of art, are nevertheless possessed of a grandeur and magnificence which in many worthy examples are entirely lacking. The pair of western towers, of Romanesque foundation, were developed, not in what one knows as Gothic, but of the manifest and offensive pseudo-classic order. They are capped, however, with something more akin to Moorish or an Eastern termination than Italian. The spire which surmounts the central crossing is, without question, a reminiscence of much that has been accepted as good Gothic form in the great central-towered English churches. Up to a certain point this can hardly be denied; but this rather weak, effeminate spire, which forms such an unusual attribute of a French cathedral, more than qualifies its right to a place in the first rank of spires. As for the rest of the exterior, it is a _mélange_ of nearly every known architectural style. Undeniably fine in parts, like "the curate's egg," if a time-worn simile may be permitted, it forms an ensemble which would preclude its ever being accorded unqualified praise from even the most liberal-minded and optimistic enthusiast. By far the most coherent view to be had near by is that from the gardens of the Archbishop's Palace immediately to the rearward of the choir. Here the clipped trees, the warm coloured wall, along which the vines are trained, and what was once a canal, or moat, in the foreground, combine to present a singularly artistic and pleasing composition. The north transept, of Bishop le Veneur, is of the superlative degree of its era (early sixteenth century), bordering upon the profusion of splayed ornament which so soon after turned to dross, but standing, as it does, of itself, clearly defined. The gulf was finally crossed when, less than a half-century later, the incongruous west front with its ill-mannered towers was built,--in itself a subject worth a deal of study from the artist who would picture graven stone, but contrasting unfavourably enough with the heights to which French ecclesiastical architecture had just previously soared. Here is offered the one unified Renaissance façade of a French cathedral, welded, as it were, in unworthy fashion, to a fabric with which it has nothing in common. The stone-mason here superseded the craftsman; and, with the termination of the reign of François I., and following with that of Henry II., came the flowering rankness of a degenerate weed, leaving, as evidence of its contaminating influence in this one example alone, traces of nearly every classical order, from the simple Doric column to a hybrid which shall be unnamed. The interior presents a general array of incongruities quite as remarkable as those of the exterior. The nave is very narrow; but the choir widens out perhaps a dozen feet on either side, adding immeasurably to an effect which is far more impressive than might otherwise be supposed. The nave itself shows many varieties of building, ranging from the Gothic of the early twelfth to the late fifteenth centuries; the lower part and the easterly bays are Romanesque, or what perhaps has been popularly accepted as Norman, and date from 1125; the remainder and the triforium are of a century later. The choir is of the decorated species of the early fourteenth century, with its arcaded triforium glazed, whereas in the nave it is without glass. The lady-chapel, of the time of Louis XI., shows that inevitable mark of degeneracy, the "_fleur-de-lys_," in the elaborated tracery of the window framing. The glass here is, however, excellent, in effect at any rate, with its gorgeous figures of knights, angels, and peers of France, drawn with a masterly skill which is often lacking in even more precious glass. The chapel screens, some twenty in all, are wondrously turned and carved of wood. This leads one to venture the thought that the similar decorative embellishments of the Renaissance châteaux of the Loire country were slowly creeping northward, and leaving their impress upon the work of the ecclesiastical builder and decorator. Certainly, the numerous fine examples of the art of the wood-carver, to be seen in this cathedral, bespeak much for the decorative quality of wood, when used considerately in conjunction with stone. There are two rose windows, of the petal species, unquestionably fine as to framing, but leaving little space for the effect of the glass, which they hold only in small proportion. The "treasury," alone, is enclosed with iron bars, and a _grille_ of graceful late flowing ironwork forms the screen of the choir. Altogether the Cathedral at Evreux will be remembered quite as much for its wonderful array of wooden and iron _grilles_ as for any other of the specific details among its mass of general attributes. [Illustration: _Window Framing--Evreux_] [Illustration: _Notre Dame d'Alençon_] III NOTRE DAME D'ALENÇON This former capital of the duchy of the same name is a sleepy, countrified French town, with little but its reputedly valuable and beautiful lace to commend it to the average observer. As a cathedral town, of even secondary rank, it will fall far short of any preconceived ideas which one may be possessed of concerning it, though its Cathedral of Notre Dame is in many ways one of those irresistible shrines, which at least promise, and often fulfil, a great deal more than their lack of magnitude indicates. Its façade, lacking the conventional towers, advances well into the roadway, as a sort of forward porch; as at Louviers near by. This porch is very ornate, with decorations of the late Gothic period of flowing tracery. After all, it is an incongruous sort of a building, in that only this porch and its squat central tower, which is nought but a mere cupola, are in the least decorative. The nave, the choir and chevet, and chapels, are all of a bareness which only exaggerates the floridness of these other appendages. The nave itself is but one hundred and ten feet long, and perhaps a scant thirty wide, and dates from the fourteenth century. It contains good glass of the same period, which luckily escaped the spoliation of the Revolution. The choir is more modern, and much plainer in treatment, and is but fifty-five feet in length and of the same width as the nave. There are no transepts; in short, the chief and most interesting features of the church are the before mentioned details, which, unquestionably bordering upon the debasement of Gothic art, are in every way attractive, with lightness and colour, if such an expression may be applied to gray stone. Certainly the play of sunlight on gracefully carven stone is indicative of a brilliancy which might be termed an effect of colour; and it is with respect to that quality that the west façade of Notre Dame d'Alençon appeals; more than as an otherwise grand or even highly interesting structure. [Illustration: _St. Pierre de Lisieux_] IV ST. PIERRE DE LISIEUX Lisieux, the city of the Lexavii, taken by Cæsar and besieged by Geoffrey Plantagenet; its old houses; its crooked streets and picturesque decay; with its former Cathedral of St. Pierre (M. H.), memorable as the marriage place of Henry III. and Eleanor of Guienne; all go to make up the formula of one of the stock sights of Normandy. It is scarcely an attractive town, in spite of its picturesque sordidness, made the more so by the smoke arising from many belching factory chimneys. In fact, one has difficulty in thinking of it as a cathedral town at all; and, as such, it hardly claims more than a brief résumé of its important features. A much more interesting, impressive, and commanding church is that of St. Jacques, which at least has the stamp of a personality, which in the cathedral itself is entirely wanting, so far as one's latent sympathies are concerned. In spite of the purity of that which is Gothic in its fabric, it has little of that quality which arouses admiration, and which, regardless of the edict of a certain seer and prophet, is mostly that for which we revere a great monument,--its power to sway us impressively. Mr. Ruskin has taken great pains to commend the southern portal as being "one of the most quaint and pleasing doors in all Normandy,"--a non-committal enough statement, most will admit, and one with which we are not obliged to agree. A broader-minded observer would have said that the main body of the church presents a unity of design, very unusual in a mediæval work,--excelled by no other example in France. The greater part of the nave, choir, and transepts is the work of one epoch only; and, as some writers have it, of one man, Bishop Odericus Vitalis, who died shortly after its completion, in the latter part of the eleventh century. As a style, it may be said to be either the last of the transition or of the very earliest Gothic. Certainly this is something in its favour; but the general charm of its immediate surroundings is lacking, and the effect of its interior, with the diminutive windows of the nave and clerestory, does not tend to satisfy, or even gratify, one with the sense of pleasure which perhaps its more creditable features deserve. These are not wholly wanting; for, of course, one must not forget that doorway of Ruskin's nor the quite idyllic proportions of the nave with its uniform massive pillars. The lady-chapel was founded in the fifteenth century by the rascally Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, who, with his brother, prelate of Winchester, so gleefully burned Joan of Arc. This much he did in expiation of "_his false judgment_," though, except as a memorial of his significant remorse, the chapel itself would hardly be remarkable. The clerestory of nave and choir is considerably later. The transepts vary as to their windows, and the triforium arches are here at a different level from those in the nave. The general exterior view of the cathedral is hardly satisfactory from any point. On three sides it is almost entirely hemmed in by surrounding structures, and the frontage, on the great open Place Thiers, is the first and the last opportunity of an unobstructed view. As the Abbé Bourassé wrote of the Cathedral at Arras, it is best seen from a distance, about that, we should say, from which the accompanying drawing was made. The gardens of the Sous-Prefecture, formerly the Bishop's Palace, should form in a way a cool green setting for the church; but, as a matter of fact, they do nothing of the sort, since the enormous mass of a none too good Renaissance façade extends along quite two-thirds of the length of the cathedral on the north, and blankets it thoroughly, scarcely more than the rather stubby tower of the west front being visible above the roof of the other structure. Lisieux apparently never ranked as an important see, but depended for the prominence which it attained previous to the Revolution, when the see was abolished, on its association with Rouen, to which it was attached. The neighbouring Cathedrals of Séez, Bayeux, and Coutances far outrank St. Pierre de Lisieux in size, beauty, and importance. [Illustration: NOTRE DAME _de SÉEZ_ ...] V NOTRE DAME DE SÉEZ The ancient Civitas Sagiorum of the Romans is now a bishopric, suffragan of Rouen. This ancient Gallic stronghold, which fared hardly in the Anglo-Norman wars, presents to-day the impression of being a town somewhat smaller than the usual small town of France. It also has this advantage,--it is comparatively unknown to tourists, and likewise to some map-makers; all of which is decidedly in its favour. Seldom is Séez included in the itinerary of the tourist, even though it is situated in the heart of the "popular province." Except for the fact that its charming cathedral is not of the generous proportions first impressed upon one, it is difficult to realize that such a noble architectural memorial should so often be overlooked and apparently neglected by those who might find a great deal of pleasure, and incidental profit, from a contemplation thereof. As a town of celebrated history, Séez is of far more relative rank than its cathedral, which, in spite of its many beauties and charm of detail, has suffered perhaps more than any other in France, and yet kept a fairly pure early Gothic style; referring to the many additions and repairs made necessary by crumbling walls and sinking foundations. The worst that has arisen from this unhappy state of affairs is, not that there has been any serious admixture of style, but rather that one gross interpolation has been foisted upon an otherwise symmetrical whole,--the enormous advancing buttresses which flank the portal of the western façade; an addition of the fourteenth century, neither graceful nor decorative, and only made necessary by a tottering wall. A pity it is that some other equally effective method was not adopted. The cathedral is, in a way, a satisfying representation of the cathedral of our imagination. From a distance, at least, and in comparison with the low-lying structures round about, it certainly appears as of great proportions, uniform and complete in itself. Immediate contact with it somewhat dispels these charms. All things considered, one finds here, in this idyllic, countrified setting, a very attractive and fairly consistent Mediæval Gothic church of the epoch contemporary with that of the best work of the northern builders, showing unmistakable evidence of having been laid down on good lines, and after a good design, in spite of the structural defects of its foundations. From any direction it may be viewed across a quarter of a mile of ploughed fields. The great national highroad, from the Channel to Bordeaux, passes straight as a die through the town, and the cross-country line of the _Chemin de-Fer de Ouest_ ambles slowly northward or southward; with little occurring to break the quietude of local ease. The native is for the most part engaged in garnering from his truck farm, or in carrying its product to the railway, to be transported to market, and pays little attention to the stray traveller who occasionally wanders in to study the architectural offering of the town. A completed church was here in 1050, having been erected by a monk, Azon by name. This was burned to the ground in an attempt to drive out a robber band which had taken shelter therein. Leo IX. engaged Yves, Count of Bellêne and the Bishop of Alençon, to rebuild it, and restore its former splendour. This was in the twelfth century, but, later, owing to the insecure foundations, it was pulled down and rebuilt again. Now nothing remains of the former twelfth and thirteenth century work but the lady-chapel of the choir. The interior of the nave is, at present, entirely filled with scaffolding, which looks as though it might not be removed for years. As a restorative policy this is commendable and was necessary, but it detracts from one's intimate acquaintance with details. About the only lasting impression of the nave that can now be obtained is that its proportions are superb, and that its cylindrical pillars, with their foliaged capitals, would be notable anywhere. In general effect the choir is charming, having gone through the restorative process and apparently suffered little thereby. It presents the unusual basilica form of setting the altar forward on a platform raised a few steps. The transepts are of quite idyllic proportions, each possessing an ample rose window which makes up in design and framing what it may lack in the quality of glass with which it is set. These transepts, too, have undergone the usual restoration, and have come safely through with little sad effect. It is to be hoped that these continued restorations will be carried out with the same good taste, and in a like consistent manner. If so, there will be presented for the delectation of generations of the near future one of the most pleasing of the smaller cathedrals in all France. The triforium of the choir, and of the nave so far as it can be observed through the obstructing scaffolding, is singularly light and graceful, and the window framing throughout, though entirely lacking notable glass, is of manifest good design. In fine, then, the general effect of the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Séez is one of lightness and grace, and it may be considered as an extraordinarily fine architectural monument, in spite of the anomalies of its west front. The twin spires rise gracefully for perhaps two hundred and fifty feet, and are after the best manner of the great Gothic builders; of true proportions, and of the dwindling pyramidal form so much approved. The façade, between the towers and the extraordinary buttresses, is completely filled with an ample Gothic portal, which, though entirely destitute of sculpture, or indeed carving of any sort, offers a significant opportunity for some future efforts in this direction. [Illustration: _CATHEDRAL of NOTRE DAME BAYEUX_] VI NOTRE DAME DE BAYEUX The magnificently impressive Cathedral of Notre Dame is perhaps less intimately associated with Bayeux in the average mind than is the wonderful story-telling tapestry which is domiciled in the same city. As for this treasure of the past, it is a subject so vast, and of such great significance, in both history and art, that it has many times been made the subject of weighty consideration. A well-known English amateur, the Honourable E. J. Lowell, has stated that popular tradition has credited it as the handiwork of Matilda, Queen of William the Conqueror, who worked it to commemorate his glorious achievements. If this be really so, the queen was probably assisted largely by the ladies of her court, as the extensive work, measuring some hundred and sixty odd feet, could hardly have been accomplished single-handed. Professor Freeman assigns it to a similar period, but worked, as he thinks, by English workmen, for Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, the Conqueror's half-brother. A previous acquaintance with the great cathedrals of the Isle of France will tend somewhat to nullify the effect which is produced by Notre Dame de Bayeux, although, in point of size and general arrangements, at least, it fulfils its functions perhaps more acceptably than many a more renowned edifice. Its situation, on the side of a steep slope, produces a curious effect, first, with respect to the choir chevet, which is thus shown as rather gaunt and bare in its lower elongated stages, though undeniably a fine work in itself; secondly, in the general interior view where, from the western entrance, one comes upon the nave pavement a dozen or more steps below the portal, and again meets with the same effect further on at the transept crossing. There would appear to have been no other way but this of placing above ground what might otherwise have been the crypt; adding immeasurably to the fine appearance of the interior, the nave and choir appearing to lengthen out interminably by reason of the western elevation from which they are viewed. A portion of the western towers, and the crypt which is beneath the choir, are thought to date from as early as the eleventh century, having been built by Odo, the half-brother of William the Norman. The splendidly proportioned Norman nave, with its decorated spandrels and archivolts, a worthy decorative embellishment developed before the days of coloured glass, possesses that bright and fresh appearance which is usually associated with a recent work, whereas, as a matter of fact, it can hardly be, in its five circular arches at least, later than the late eleventh or early twelfth century. If it were true that modern restorative processes commonly disfigured no more than this, it is a pity that the dust and cobwebs, and a little of the grime of ages, were not more often removed. Here is the very excess of dog-tooth, arabesque, and grotesque carving, never found in connection with a building which is constructively decorative. Here also is an ornate frieze of no great depth and possessing none of the beauties of the two other distinct elements. As there is no triforium in the nave proper, this decoration is, of course, intended merely as a relief to a bareness which, on account of the generous height, would otherwise exist. In the choir, the triforium, which is omitted in the nave, springs into being in beautiful and ornate form. The lower arches, with the supports, the attributed work of an English architect, are of the usual Gothic form, in contra-distinction to the rounded heads of those of the nave. The clerestory, though delicate and graceful, is somewhat curtailed from the dimensions of that of the west end of the church. The transepts are unusually bright and cheerful, with a series of windows more beautifully designed than those of either the choir or nave. The choir stalls are of oak, carved in the best manner of the Renaissance. The charming tower group of this cathedral is as effective, perhaps, as any among all the northern churches. The central belfry, albeit of a base, though pretentious, rococo design, follows no accepted style, but adds imposingly to the general outline. (Its height is over three hundred feet.) In this tower, as in the window tracery, the _fleur-de-lys_, always a sign of the decadent in Gothic style, is to be seen. The western towers, with their spires, follow the truest pyramidal form, and, though carrying both pointed and round-arched openings, are in every way representative of the best work of their period. The northwesterly tower has an elongated turret, extending from the lower ranges, which, when seen from a distance over the roof of the nave, appears as a protuberance not unlike a dove-cote. This contains the spiral staircase up which visitors are earnestly implored, by the caretaker, to wend their way and participate in the view from the heights above. This view, though undeniably wider in range than are most elevated view-points, is hardly of interest to one who seeks the beauties of the structure itself. There are three porches on the west façade, all fairly well filled with foliaged ornament and bas-reliefs. They are of the thirteenth century, and of a thoroughly florid order. Included in the "_tresor_" are two gifts from St. Louis, the chasuble of St. Regnobert, and an ivory and enamel casket. [Illustration: _CATHEDRAL of NOTRE DAME SAINT LO_] VII NOTRE DAME DE ST. LO This picturesquely situated city of the Cotentin, St. Lo, is so named from the Bishop St. Laud, who lived in the neighbourhood in the sixth century. Later, it became a Huguenot stronghold, and was ably, though unsuccessfully, defended by Colombiers. It forms, with its former Cathedral of Notre Dame crowning its height, another of those ensembles which will always linger in the memory of the traveller who first comes upon it clad in spring and summer verdure. The rippling Vire at its very feet gives at once the note; it not only binds and enwraps it like the setting of a precious stone, but adds that one feature which, lacking, would be a chord misplaced. Perhaps no other cathedral in all France, with regard to its bijou setting, certainly no other so accessible to the English tourist, has more dainty charm than this not very grand, but graceful, church at St. Lo. Its towers, though not uniform as to size, are of apparently the same gradual proportions, and, if not the most impressive, are at least the most beautiful in Normandy. They rise high above the wooded crest which encircles their base in true picture-book fashion. The attraction of the river, here, is unusual, in that it presents no accustomed "slummy" picturesqueness, but winds slowly, amid its green, to the very base of the cliff which upholds the chief portion of the town and its cathedral. The façade presents a _mélange_ of the work of at least three epochs, a not unusual feature in some of the smaller cathedrals. It has a mean little house built into its northwest corner, a crude and ugly clock-face stuck unmeaningly on its façade, and a general air of dilapidation, with respect to the statues originally contained in its archivolts and niches, which, to say the least, is not creditable to those who have been responsible for its care. It would seem that so lively and important a centre of local activity might have devoted a little more thought and care to the maintenance of this charming building. Built up from a foundation of which but little, if any portion, visibly remains, Notre Dame shows a debasement of design and decoration of its façade which is not only not admirable, but is, in addition, sadly disfigured. The one detail, for the most part good in style, is a not unduly florid arcade, which plainly indicates its superiority over the rest of the building. On the north side is an open-air pulpit of stone overhung with a canopy, a highly interesting detail, though, of course, not a unique one. Unable to command admiration as an absolute novelty, it is assuredly a charming feature, and is delicately and profusely sculptured. It suggests much in conjunction with the busy life of the rather squalid neighbouring market-place, whose only picturesque attribute is when it is crowded with the gaiety of a market or a fête day. By far the most compelling interest in the building, after an inspection of its interior, is the view to be had from a distance. The nave is late Gothic, and widens out in curious fashion toward the east; otherwise the interior arrangements are not remarkable. One bulbous chapel on the south side supplants the usual transept. There is no triforium either in choir or nave, the lighting principally being effected by the large windows of the aisles. It is pertinent to recall here that one of Charlemagne's own foundations of the ninth century, destroyed by the barbarians, was situated near by, the famous Abbey of St. Croix. [Illustration: _Notre Dame de Coutances_] VIII NOTRE DAME DE COUTANCES Like many another town of western Normandy, like Falise, Domfront, St. Lo, Granville, Avranches, and Mont St. Michel itself, Coutances rises high above the surrounding plain and stands dominant in the landscape for miles on either hand. Of perhaps more magnitude, as to area, than any of the other examples, the city has the added attribute of three towered ecclesiastical edifices, which rise nobly in varying stages far over the neighbouring roof-tops of the town itself and the tree-clad slopes which embank it. The oldest of the Norman Gothic cathedrals, and that which partakes the most of local character, is Notre Dame de Coutances. Certain French archæologists have said that the main body of the church is actually that of the eleventh century. It is more likely, however, that none of the building at present in view is earlier than the thirteenth century, the epoch during which contemporaneous Gothic first grew to its maturity. In any event, such building and construction was going on from 1208 to 1233 as would indicate that it was the entire present edifice which was being planned at that time. In this case it is quite possible that the rebuilding was going on slowly, foot by foot, in a manner which not only encompassed and absorbed the older building, but in reality eradicated every vestige of it. Says a French writer of enthusiasm, "The Cathedral of Coutances, as it now stands, is one of the most noble and grand religious edifices in France, with all the qualities of a monument of the first order, of perfect dimension, beauty of plan, unity of workmanship, and distinction of form." Any one of these attributes, were it literally so, might well turn a commonplace structure into an unapproachable masterpiece. In a measure, all of his eulogy is quite true, and the pity is that more do not know of its fascination and charm. The façade of the Cathedral of Notre Dame is of the indigenous Norman-Gothic type. The fine towers, in addition to combining the symmetrical elements of Gothic, have, each, as well, a flanking towerlet, attached to their outer sides, enclosing a spiral stairway. These extend to quite the full height of the tower proper; and, though by no means a wholly attractive feature, are not as offensive as might at first be supposed. It is doubtful, in fact, if the general strength and impressiveness of the entire structure would not be impaired were the arrangements otherwise. The present ogival structure is built on the remains of a Romanesque church erected by a famous Bishop of Coutances, Geoffroy de Montbray, with funds supplied by Guillaume Bras-de-Fer, Odon, Roger, Onfroy, and Robert, sons of Tancrede-de-Hauteville, the Norman conquerors of Sicily and Calabria, whose names have been given fabled prominence in more than one epic poem. The early structure was consecrated in 1056, in the presence of William, then Duke of Normandy, a few years before he became the Conqueror. Supposedly none of this former church remains; in fact, what fragments, if any, exist, are doubtless covered in the present foundations. Mainly, the present structure is thirteenth-century work, with a lady-chapel of the fourteenth century. An unusual, and exceedingly beautiful, effect is given by the Gothic window mullions, between the chapels, in reality a series of geometrical window-frames, without glass. No florid ornament either inside or out is to be found to offend against accepted ideals. In short, "the whole is of a piece complete." The parapets of triforium and clerestory, with foliaged carvings, are about the only ornate decorations to be seen. The central tower, of great proportions, but incomplete as to the addition of a spire, is a marvel of strength and power. Its interior, elaborately decorated, forms a lantern at the crossing. Here, as at Bayeux, the choir is raised a few steps above its aisles, giving a certain impressiveness beyond what might otherwise exist. The interior, generally, is admirable. Clustered columns, as they are commonly called,--in reality they are clustered pillars, if word derivations are to be considered,--separate both nave and choir from the aisles; and, in case of the choir, a series of elongated circular pillars are coupled, one behind the other, an unquestionably unique arrangement. The transepts are practically non-existent, as the widening does not extend beyond the extent of the nave chapels. This leaves the ground-plan, at least, a mere parallelogram with a rounded eastern end. Notre Dame de Coutances is one of the few really great Gothic churches not possessing an example of those French masterworks, the rose window. Again referring to the fine tower group, it is probably true that, were the huge central tower properly spired, the ensemble would rival Laon in regard to its impressive situation and elaborate pinnacles. St. Pierre, of the fifteenth century, and St. Nicolas, of the fourteenth, complete the trinity of fine churches which Coutances possesses. The latter contains the unusual arrangement in a Continental church of pews in place of chairs, although formerly, it is said, this feature was not uncommon in Normandy. The somewhat considerable remains of a Roman acqueduct, near by, are sufficiently remarkable to warrant passing consideration, even by the "mere lover of churches." [Illustration] IX ST. PIERRE D'AVRANCHES There is little to recount concerning the See of Avranches. Its bishopric and its cathedral were alike destroyed during the parlous times of the bickerings and ravages of Royalists and Republicans of the Revolutionary period. All that remains to-day is a trifling heap of stones which would hardly fill a row-boat,--a fragment of a shaft on which is a tablet reading: "ON THIS STONE, HERE AT THE DOOR OF THE CATHEDRAL OF AVRANCHES, AFTER THE MURDER OF THOMAS À BECKET, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, HENRY II., KING OF ENGLAND AND DUKE OF NORMANDY, RECEIVED ON HIS KNEES, FROM THE LEGATES OF THE POPE, THE APOSTOLIC ABSOLUTION, ON SUNDAY, 22D MAY 1172." At its feet is another slab, the aforementioned door-step, on which, before the papal legate, the remorseful monarch did penance before his later expiation at Canterbury. A little farther on is a small heap consisting of shafts and capitals of columns, a stone sarcophagus and a brass plate stating that they are the "Derniers restes de la cathédrale d'Avranches; commencée vers 1090 et consacrée par l'eveque Turgis en 1121." The nave having fallen in, the rest of the edifice had to be taken down in 1799. Because of its picturesque environment and situation, Avranches is perhaps a more than ordinarily attractive setting for a shrine, and it is well worthy of the attention of the passing traveller, in spite of its ancient cathedral being now but a heap of stones. Apart from this it is of little interest, and hence, to most, it will probably remain, in the words of a French traveller, a mere "silhouette in the distance." [Illustration] [Illustration: _CATHEDRAL of S. SAMSON DOL_] X ST. SAMSON, DOL-DE-BRETAGNE The one-time Cathedral of St. Samson, at Dol, is, says an unusually expressive Frenchman, "a grand, noble, and severe church, now widowed of its bishops. Its aspect is desolate and abandoned, as if it were but a ruin _en face sur la grande place_, of itself, but a mere desert of scrub." This is certainly a vivid and forceful description of even a wholly unprepossessing shrine. This St. Samson is not, and due allowance should be made for verbal modelling which, in many cases, is but the mere expression of a mood _pro tempo_. There is, however, somewhat of truth in the description. About the granite walls there is a grimness and gauntness of decay; of changed plans and projects; of devastation; of restoration; and, finally, of what is, apparently, submission to the inevitableness of time. The enormous northwesterly tower is stopped suddenly, with the daylight creeping through its very framework. Its façade is certainly bare of ornament, and gives a thorough illustration of paucity of design as well as of detail. There is, indeed, nothing in the west façade to compel admiration, and yet there is a fascination about it that to some will be irresistible. A sixteenth-century porch, of suggested Burgundian style, forms the main entrance to the church, and is situated midway along the south side. Almost directly opposite, on the north, is the curiously contrasting feature of a crenelated battlement, a reminder of the time when the church was doubtless a temporal as well as a spiritual stronghold. The interior, as the exterior, is gloomy and melancholy. One has only to contemplate the collection of ludicrously slender clustered columns of the nave, bound together with markedly visible iron strands, to realize the real weakness of the means by which the fabric has been kept alive. The nave itself is of true proportions, and, regardless of the severity of its lines, and the ludicrous pillars, is undeniably fine in effect. A curiously squared choir-end, but with the small apsed lady-chapel extending beyond, is another of those curious details which stand out in a way to be remarked in a French church. In this squared end, and above the arch made by the pillars of the choir aisle, is a large pointed window filled with ancient glass which must have been inserted soon after the church was reconstructed after the fire in the twelfth century. The general effect of the nave and aisles is one of extreme narrowness, which perhaps is not so much really the case when actual measurements are taken. In general, the church is supposed by many to resemble the distinct type of Gothic as it is known across the Channel; and, admitting for the nonce that possibly many of the Brittany structures were the work of English builders, this church, in the absence of any records as to who were its architects, may well be counted as of that number. The stalls of the choir are of delicately carved wood, before which is placed a monumental bishop's throne, with elaborate armorial embellishments. A Renaissance tomb of the sixteenth century, by a pupil of Michel Colomb, now much injured in its sculptured details of angels and allegorical figures, is locally considered the "show-piece" of the church. [Illustration: _S. MALO & S. SERVAN_] [Illustration: _TRÉGUIER_] XI ST. MALO AND ST. SERVAN Welshmen throughout the world rejoice that it was one of their countrymen, a monk of the sixth century, who gave his name as founder to the "walled city of St. Malo by the sea." With its outlying and contiguous towns of St. Servan, Dinan, and Paramé, St. Malo is a paradise for the mere lover of pleasure resorts. Further, with respect to the first three places mentioned, there is present not a little of the romance and history of the past, reflected as it were in a modern mirror. Not but that the old town of St. Malo, within the walls, is ancient and picturesque enough, and dirty, too, if one be speciously critical; but the fact is that the modern Pont Roulant, and the omnific toot of the steam-tram, ever present in one's sight and hearing, are forcible reminders of the march of time. St. Servan, so far as its cathedral is concerned, may be dismissed in a word. The ancient see of St. Pierre d'Aleth had, at one time, its dignity vested in a bishop who enthroned himself in a cathedral, the remains of which exist to-day only as a fragment built into the fortifications. The bishopric was removed in 1142 to St. Malo. With St. Malo a difference exists. Its cathedral, now degenerated to a parish church, is a Gothic work mainly of the fifteenth century, and, regardless of its unimposing qualities, is one of those fascinating old buildings which, in its environment and surroundings, appeals perhaps more largely to us as a component of a whole than as a feature to be admired by itself. The church, safely sheltered from the ravage of gale and storm, sits amid narrow winding streets, whose buildings are so compressed as to rise to heights unusual in the smaller Continental towns. The edifice is mainly of the fifteenth century, but has been variously renovated and restored. Gothic, Renaissance, and the transition between the two are plainly discernible throughout. Perhaps the best art to be noted is that found in the interior of the choir, with its fine triforium and clerestory windows above. Here, again, is to be observed the squared east end of the English contemporary church, a further reminder, if it be needed, of the influences which were bound to be more or less exchanged with regard to the arts and customs of the time, on both shores of _La Manche_. A few features of passing interest are here, an ivory crucifix, a few tombs, and some indifferent paintings. The spire is modern, but gives a suggestion, at least, in viewing the city from a distance, of something of what a mediæval walled seaport, with its population huddled close beneath the shadow of the church, and within the city walls, must have been like. The best example of this which ever existed in mediæval France, and which exists to-day in a more than ordinary remarkable state of preservation, is the famous Mount St. Michel, a few miles only to the eastward, and famed of all, historian, ecclesiast, artist, and mere pleasure-seeker, alike. Most writers are pleased to refer to the confiding attitude of mine host, who conducts the principal hostelry on the Mount, and who guilelessly asks the wary traveller (ofttimes they _are_ wary) what he has partaken of during his stay, and makes up the account accordingly. This is, perhaps, not the least of attributive charms, though it should be a minor one where this wonderful and real Mount, which takes its name from legendary St. Michel, is concerned. Indeed, leaving the cathedrals at Rouen, Chartres, and Le Mans out of the question, it is doubtful if the Abbey of Mont St. Michel is not the chief remaining architectural glory of the middle ages, west of Paris. It is but a short distance from St. Malo to St. Servan, but what a difference! It is called by the French themselves the daughter of St. Malo,--the "faubourg grown into a city." Rabida's "Bretagne" states that there are "nombreux des Anglais à St. Servan, des jeunes gens vivant dans les pensions brittaniques--des familles venant l'été faire en Bretagne une cure d'economies pour l'hiver." Continuing, this discerning author says: "Bathers, bicyclists, golfists, promenaders, and excursionists abound." Better then let them hold forth here to their hearts' content; there is little that the lover of churches will gain from what remains to-day of the town's former Cathedral of St. Pierre. XII TRÉGUIER This old cathedral city, at the junction of two small streamlets, a short distance from the sea, lies perhaps a dozen miles away from the nearest railway. With St. Pol de Leon and St. Brieuc it is, in local characteristics and customs alike, a something apart from any other community in northern France. The Bretons are commonly accredited as being a most devout race, and certainly devotion could take no more marked turn than the many evidences here to be seen in this "land of Calvaries." St. Brieuc is a bishopric, suffragan of Rennes, whose cathedral is a hideous modern structure of the early nineteenth century quite unworthy as a shrine; but Tréguier's power waned with the Revolution. Its fourteenth-century church, however, is sufficiently remarkable by reason of its situation and surroundings, none the less than in its fabric, to warrant a deviation from well-worn roads in order to visit it. Chiefly of a late period, it possesses in the Tour de Hasting, named after the Danish pirate (though why seems obscure), which enfolds the north transept, a work of the best eleventh-century class. This should place the church, at once, within the scope of the designation of a "transition" type. In this tower the windows and pilasters are of the characteristic round variety of the period. The south porch is the most highly developed feature as to Mediæval style, but the attraction lies mainly in its ensembled massiveness, with its two sturdy towers and a ridiculously spired south _clocher_. Beyond a certain grimness of fabric the church fails, not a little, to impress one with even simple grandeur, even when one takes into consideration the charms of its florid but firmly designed cloister, which, with the church itself, is classed by the _Département des Beaux Arts_ as one of the twenty-three hundred "_Monumentes Historiques_." Nevertheless, the building proves more than ordinarily gratifying, though by no stretch of the imagination could it be classed as grand. Loftiness and grandeur are equally lacking in the interior, and there is great variation of style with respect to the pillars of nave and choir. This is also the case with the windows, which play the gamut from the severe round-headed Romanesque to the latest flamboyant development, a feature which not only disregards most conventions, but, as every one will admit, most flagrantly offends, with sad results, against the general constructive elements. A plain triforium, in the nave, blossoms out, in the south transept and choir, in no hesitating manner, into exceeding richness. The choir has an apsidal termination and contains carved wooden stalls which are classed as work of the mid-seventeenth century, though appearing much more time-worn. The really popular attribute of the church lies in the reconstructed monument to St. Yves, the patron saint of advocates, and commonly considered the most popular in all the Brittany calendar. Born near Tréguier in 1253, St. Yves' "unheard-of probity and consideration for the sick and the poor" gained such general respect that, with his death on the nineteenth of May, 1303, there was inaugurated a great feast which to-day is yearly celebrated, and all grieving against a real or fancied wrong have recourse promptly to the supposedly just favour of this universal patron of the law. [Illustration: S. BRIEUC] XIII ST. BRIEUC Unlike many of the smaller towns which contain cathedral churches, St. Brieuc is a present day bishopric; hence the Cathedral takes on, perhaps, more significance than it would, were it but an example of a Mediæval church. In reality it is not a very wonderful structure, and the guide-books will tell one practically nothing about it. The town itself is a dull place, a tidal port, at some little distance from the sea, which flushes in upon it twice during the round of the clock. A monastery was founded here in the fifth century by St. Brieuc, from whom the town itself and the present cathedral take their name. He was a Celtic monk from Wales, who, upon being expelled from his native land, located his establishment here, on the site of a former Gallo-Roman town. The patronal feast of St. Brieuc is held each year on the first of May and is a curious survival of a mediæval custom. Some remains of an early church are built into the choir walls, but in the main this not very grand edifice is of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The tower, with its loopholes, would supposedly indicate that the church was likewise intended as somewhat of a fortification. The apse is rounded in the usual form, and on either side extend transepts to the width of two bays. Within, the Cathedral is more attractive than without. The elements of construction and embellishment, while perhaps not ranking with those of the really great churches, are sufficiently vivid and lively to indicate that the work was consciously and enthusiastically undertaken. The lady-chapel is of the thirteenth century, and the transept rose is of the fifteenth, as is also the Chapel of St. Guillaume, named for the monk of Dijon who built so many of the monasteries throughout Brittany and who, it is to be presumed, planned or built the original structure, the remains of which are found in the present choir. The windows throughout are either of not very good modern glass, or of plain leaded lights, which, in the majority of cases, may be considered as no less an attraction. An elaborate rose is in the western gable. There are, in the church, various monuments and tombs to former bishops. XIV ST. POL DE LEON In the midst of that land which furnishes the south of England with most of its cauliflowers, artichokes, onions, and asparagus, truly off the beaten track, in that it is actually off the line of railway, is the strange and melancholy city of St. Pol de Leon, its _clochers_ dominating, by day at least, both land and sea. It contains the famous "Kreisker," a name which sounds as though it were Dutch or North German, which it probably is along with other place names on the near-by coast, such as Grouin, St. Vaast, Roscoff, and La Hougue. The tower and spire of this wonderful "Kreisker" rise boldly, from the transept crossing, in remarkable fashion, and as a marvel of construction may be said to far outrank the cathedral structure itself. "Curious and clever" well describes it. As for the former cathedral over which the Kreisker throws its shadow, it is one of those majestic twin-towered structures not usually associated with what, when compared with the larger French towns, must perforce rank as a mere village. There is much to be said in favour of these little-known near-by places, namely, that the charm of their attractions amply repays one for any special labour involved in getting to them, with the additional advantage, regardless of the fact that a stranger appears somewhat to the native as a curiosity, that they are "good value for the money paid." Perhaps the cheapest Continental tour, of say three weeks, that could be taken, amid a constantly changing environment, if one so choose, would comprehend this land of Calvaries. The two cathedral towers of early Gothic flank a generous porch. There is good glass throughout the church, the circular "rose" of the transept being a magnificent composition in a granite framing. The nave is of thirteenth-century Gothic, from the south aisle of which projects a large chapel dedicated to St. Michael. The double-aisled choir is garnished with sculptured stalls of the fifteenth century, and, separated from its aisles by a stone screen, is of much larger proportions than the nave, and likewise of a later epoch of building. The apse is flamboyant, as are also the windows of the south transept. In the chapels are various vaults and tombs, remarkably well preserved, but of no special moment. In one of these chapels, however, is a curious painting in the vaulting, representing a "Trinity" possessing three faces, disposed in the form of a trefoil with three eyes only. A ribbon or "_banderalle_" bears an inscription in Gothic characters; in the Breton tongue, "_Ma Donez_" (Mon Dieu). XV ST. CORENTIN DE QUIMPER "C'est Quimper, ce mélange du passé et du présent." A true enough description of most mediæval cities when viewed to-day; but with no centre of habitation is it more true than of this city by the sea,--though in reality it is not by the sea, but rather of it, with a port always calm and tranquil. It takes rank with Brest as the western outpost of modern France. For centuries unconquered, and possessing an individuality of its very own, this now important prefecture has much to remind us of its past. History, archæology, and "mere antiquarian lore" abound, and, in its grandiose Cathedral of St. Corentin, one finds a large subject for his appreciative consideration. [Illustration: ST. CORENTIN _de QUIMPER_ ...] It is of the robust and matured type that familiarity has come to regard as representative of a bishopric; nothing is impoverished or curtailed. Its fine towers with modern spires, erected from the proceeds of a "butter tax," are broad of base and delicately and truly proportioned. Its ground-plan is equally worthy, though the choir is not truly orientated. Its general detail and ensemble, one part with another, is all that fancy has told us a great church should contain, and one can but be prepared to appreciate it when it is endorsed, and commented on, by such ardent admirers as De Caumont, Viollet-le-Duc, Corroyer, and Gonsé, those four accomplished Frenchmen, who probably knew more concerning Mediæval (Gothic) architecture than all the rest of the world put together. From the thirteenth to the fifteenth century there grew up here a work embracing the ogival and the flamboyant, neither in an undue proportion, but as well as in any other single structure known. This well shows the rise, development, and apogee of the style which we commonly call Gothic, but which the French prefer to call "ogival," and which should really, if one is to fairly apportion credit where it is due, be best known as French Mediæval architecture. Its west façade, with its generous lines, is strongly original. The two towers, pierced with enormously heightened lancets, are indubitably graceful and impressive, while a flanking pair of flying buttresses, with their intermediate piers, form an unusual arrangement in the west front of a French cathedral. Above the western gable is a curiously graven effigy of King Grollo in stone. Considered as a whole, the exterior is representative of the best contemporary features of the time, but contains few if any which are so distinctly born of its environment as to be otherwise notable. The interior vies with the outer portion of the fabric in the general effect of majesty and good design. The triforium is remarkably beautiful and is overtopped by a range of clerestory windows which to an appreciable extent contain good early glass. The easterly end is the usual semicircular apse. Among the relics of the Cathedral is a crucifix which is supposed to emit drops of blood when one perjures himself before it. It is, perhaps, significant that the people of Finistère, the department which claims Quimper as its capital, have the repute of being honest folk. The Bishops of Quimper were, by virtue of the gift of _le roi Grodlon le Grave_, the only seigneurs of the city during the middle ages. XVI VANNES Vannes was the ancient capital of the Celtic tribe of the Veneti, its inhabitants being put to rout by Cæsar in 57 B. C. Afterward it became the Roman town of Duriorigum, and later reverted back to a corruption of its former name. Christianity having made some progress, a council was held, and a bishop appointed to the city, and from that time onward its position in the Christian world appears to have been assured. For centuries afterward, however, it was the centre of a maelstrom of internal strife, in which Armoricans, Britons, Franks, and Romans appear to have been inextricably involved. Then came the Northmen, who burned the former Cathedral of St. Peter. This was rebuilt in the eleventh century, and in no small measure forms the foundation of the present structure, which to-day is the seat of a bishop, suffragan of Rennes. From this early architectural foundation, to the most florid and flamboyant of late Gothic, is pretty much the whole range of Mediæval architectural style. By no means has a grand or even fine structure resulted. The old choir, suffering from the stress of time, was pulled down and rebuilt as late as 1770. Thus, this usually excellently appointed and constructed detail is here of no worthy rank whatever. The nave and transepts were completed within the hundred years following 1452, and show the last flights of Gothic toward the heights from which it afterward fell. Transformation and restoration have frequently been undertaken, with the result that nowhere is to be seen perhaps greater inconsistencies. The latest of these examples of a perverted industry is seen in the nineteenth-century additions to the tower and the west façade. The result is not, be it said, to the credit of its projectors. THE END. _Appendices_ I _The Architectural Divisions of France_ It is quite possible to construct an ethnographic map of a country from its architectural remains,--but there must always be diverse and varying opinions as to the delimitation of one school, as compared with another lying contiguous thereto. One may wander from province to province, and continually find reminders, of another manner of building, from that which is recognized as the characteristic local species. This could hardly be otherwise. In the past, as in the present, imitators were not few, and if the adoption of new, or foreign, ideas was then less rapid, it was no less sure. Still, in the main, there is a cohesiveness and limitation of architectural style in France; which, as is but natural to suppose, is in no way more clearly defined than by the churches which were built during the middle ages, the earliest types retaining the influence of massive forms, and the later again debasing itself to a heavy classical order, neither a copy of anything of a pre-Gothic era, or a happy development therefrom. Between the two, in a period of scarcely more than three hundred years, there grew up and developed the ingenious and graceful pointed style, in all its fearlessness and unconvention. Political causes had, perhaps, somewhat to do with the confining of a particular style well within the land of its birth, but on the other hand, warfare carried with it invasion and conquest of new sections, and its followers, in a measure, may be said to have carried with them certain of their former arts, accomplishments, and desires; and so grew up the composite and mixed types which are frequently met with. There are a dozen or more architectural styles in what is known as the France of to-day. The Provençal (more properly, says Fergusson, it should be called "Gallia Narbonese,") one of the most beautiful and clearly defined of all; the Burgundian, with its suggestion of luxuriance and, if not massiveness, at least grandeur; the Auvergnian, lying contiguous to both the above, with a style peculiarly its own, though of an uncompromising southern aspect; Acquitanian, defining the style which lies between Provence, the Auvergnat and the Pyrénées, and a type quite different from either. The Angevinian, which extends northward from Limoges to Normandy and Brittany, and northeasterly nearly to Orleans, is a species difficult to place--it partakes largely of southern influence, but is usually thought to merit a nomenclature of its own, as distinct from the type found at Anjou. Turning now to the northern or Frankish influence, as distinct from the Romance countries; Brittany joins to no slight degree influences of each region; Normandy partakes largely of the characteristics of the type of Central France, which is thoroughly dominated by that indigenous to the Isle of France, which species properly might include the Bourbonnais and Nivernoise variants, as being something of a distinct type, though resembling, in occasional details, southern features. This list, with the addition of French Flanders, with its Lowland types, completes the arrangement, if we except Alsace and Lorraine, which favour the German manner of building rather more than any of the native French types. II _A List of the Departments of France, and of the Ancient Provinces from which they have been evolved._ _Provinces and date of _Départements_ _Chefs-Lieux_ union with France_ Ile de France, with La Seine Paris Brie, etc. Always held Seine-et-Oise Versailles by the Crown Seine-et-Marne Melun Oise Beauvais Aisne Laon Picardie. Louis XIV, 1667 Somme Amiens Artois and Boulonnais. Pas-de-Calais Arras 1640 Flandre and Hainault Nord Lille Français. Louis XIV. 1667-1669 Normandie. Philippe Seine-Inférieure Rouen Auguste, 1204 Eure Evreux Calvados Caen Orne Alençon Manche Saint-Lo Bretagne. François I. Ille-et-Vilaine Rennes 1532 Côtes-du-Nord Saint-Brieux Finisterre Quimper Morbihan Vannes Loire-Inférieure Nantes Orléanais. Louis XII. Loiret Orleans 1498 Loir-et-Cher Blois Beauce and Pays Chartrain Eure-et-Loire Chartres Maine. Louis XI. 1481 Sarthe Le Mans Mayenne Laval Anjou. Louis XI. 1481 Maine-et-Loire Angers Touraine. Henri III. 1584 Indre-et-Loire Tours Poitou. Charles VI. 1416 Vendée Bourbon-Vendée Deux-Sèvres Niort Vienne Poitiers Berri. Philippe I. 1100 Indre Châteauroux Cher Bourges Marche. François I. 1531 Creuse Guéret Limousin. Charles V. Haute-Vienne Limoges 1370 Corrèze Tulle Angoumois. Charles V. Charente Angoulême 1370 Saintonge and Aunis. Charente-Inférieure La Rochelle 1370 Guienne and Gascogne. Dordogne Périgueux Charles VII. 1451 Gironde Bordeaux Lot-et-Garonne Agen Lot Cahors Tarn-et-Garonne Montauban Aveyron Rodez Gers Auch Hautes-Pyrénées Tarbes Landes Mont-de-Marsan Béarn and French Navarre. Basses-Pyrénées Pau Louis XIII. Comté de Foix. Louis XIII. Ariège Foix Roussillon. 1659 Pyrénées-Orientales Perpignan Languedoc. John, 1361 Haute-Garonne Toulouse Tarn Albi Aude Carcassonne Hérault Montpellier Gard Nîmes Vivarais Ardèche Privas Gévaudan Lozère Mende Velay Haute-Loire Le Puy Comtat Venaissin, Orange, Vaucluse Avignon etc. Louis XIV. 1713 Provence. Louis XI. 1481 Bouches-du-Rhône Marseille Var Draguignan Basses-Alpes Digne Dauphiné. Philippe de Isère Grenoble Valois, 1343 Drôme Valence Hautes-Alpes Gap Lyonnais and Beaujolais Rhône Lyon Forez Loire St. Etienne Auvergne. Philippe Auguste, Puy-de-Dôme Clermont 1210 Cantal Aurillac Bourbonnais. Louis XII. Allier Moulins 1505 Nivernais. Charles VII. Nièvre Nevers 1457 Bresse, Bugey, etc. Ain Bourg Bourgogne (duché). Louis Saône-et-Loire Mâcon XI. 1477 Côte-d'Or Dijon Yonne Auxerre Comté de Bourgogne, or Doubs Besançon Franche-Comté. Peace Jura Lons-le-Saulnier of Nimeguen, 1678 Haute-Saône Vesoul Champagne. Philippe le Aube Troyes. Bel, 1284 Marne Chalons-sur-Marne Haute-Marne Chaumont Ardennes Mézières Lorraine.[*] On the death Meurthe and Moselle Nancy of Stanislas Leczinsky, Meuse Bar-le-Duc 1766 Vosges Epinal Alsace.[*] Louis XIV. 1648 Territory of Belfort Belfort Haut-Rhin Colmar Corsica. 1794. Corse Ajaccio Comté de Nice. 1861 Alpes Maritimes Nice Savoy Savoie Chambéry Haute-Savoie Annecy [*] The greater part of these provinces as they formerly stood were ceded to Germany, May 10, 1871. III _The Church in France_ _La France Catholique_ is to-day divided into eighty-four dioceses, administered, as to spiritual affairs, by seventeen archbishops and sixty-seven bishops. To each diocese is attached a seminary for the instruction of those who aspire to the priesthood. Each chief town of a canton has its _curé_, each parish its _desservant_. _Archbishops and Bishops_ _Dioceses_ PARIS Seine Chartres Eure-et-Loire Meaux Seine-et-Marne Orleans Loiret Blois Loir-et-Cher Versailles Seine-et-Oise CAMBRAI Nord Arras Pas-de-Calais LYON-ET-VIENNE Rhône, Loire Autun Saône-et-Loire Langres Haute-Marne Dijon Côte-d'Or Sainte Claude Jura Grenoble Isère BOURGES Cher-et-Indre Clermont Puy-de-Dôme Limoges Haute-Vienne et Creuse Le Puy Haute-Loire Tulle Corrèze Saint Flour Cantal ALBI Tarn Rodez Aveyron Cahors Lot Meude Lozère Perpignan Pyrénées-Orientales BORDEAUX[*] Gironde Agen Lot-et-Garonne Angoulême Charente Poitiers Vienne-et-Deux Sèvres Périgueux Dordogne La Rochelle Charente-Inférieure Luçon Vendée AUCH Gers Aire Landes Tarbes Hautes-Pyrénées Bayonne Basses-Pyrénées TOULOUSE-NARBONNE Haute-Garonne Montauban Tarnè-et-Garonne Pamiers Ariège Carcassonne Aude ROUEN Seine-Inférieure Bayeux Calvados Evreux Eure Séez Orne Coutances Manche SENS ET AUXERRE Yonne Troyes Aube Nevers Nièvre Moulins Allier REIMS Arr. de Reims-et-Ardennes Soissons Aisne Chalons-sur-Marne Marne except Arrond. de Reims Beauvais Oise Amiens Somme TOURS Indre-et-Loire Le Mans Sarthe Angers Maine-et-Loire Nantes Loire-Inférieure Laval Mayenne AIX, ARLES, AND EMBRUN Bouches-du-Rhône except Marseilles Marseilles Arr. de Marseilles Fréjus and Toulon Var Digne Basses-Alpes Gap Hautes-Alpes Nice Alpes-Maritimes Ajaccio Corse BESANÇON Doubs et Haute-Saône Verdun Meuse Belley Ain St. Dié Vosges Nancy Meurthe AVIGNON Vaucluse Nîmes Gard Valence Drôme Viviers Ardèche Montpellier Hérault RENNES Ille-et-Vilaine Quimper Finisterre Vannes Morbihan St. Brieuc Côtes-du-Nord CHAMBÉRY Annecy Haute-Savoie Tarentaise Val-de-Tarentaise (Savoie) Maurienne Val-de-Maurienne (Savoie) [*] The Archbishop of Bordeaux has three suffragans outside France: St. Denis and La Reunion, St. Pierre and Fort de France (Martinique), Basseterre (Guadaloupe). IV _A List of the Larger French Churches which were at one time Cathedrals and usually referred to as such._ NOTE.--Those marked H. M. are classed as Les Monuments Historiques by La Commission de la Conservation des Monuments Historiques. Agde _Hérault_ H. M. Alais _Garde_ Alençon _Orne_ Notre Dame H. M. Alet _Aude_ Notre Dame H. M. Apt _Vaucluse_ H. M. Arles _Bouches-du-Rhône_ St. Trophimus H. M. Arras St. Vaast Auxerre _Yonne_ St. Etienne H. M. Auxonne _Côte-d'Or_ Notre Dame Avranches _Manche_ (remains only) H. M. Bazas _Gironde_ St. Jean H. M. Bethléem (There was once a Bishop of Bethléem whose see was the village of Clamecy only, but no cathedral.) Béziers _Hérault_ St. Nazaire H. M. Boulogne _Pas-de-Calais_ Notre Dame Bourg _Ain_ Notre Dame Brioud _Haute-Loire_ H. M. Cambrai Notre Dame Carcassonne _Aude_ St. Nazaire H. M. Carpentras _Vaucluse_ St. Siffrein H. M. Castres _Tarn_ St. Benonit Cavaillon _Vaucluse_ St. Véran H. M. Condom _Gers_ H. M. Conserons _Ariège_ (See St. Lizier) Die _Drôme_ H. M. Dinan _Côtes-du-Nord_ St. Saveur H. M. Dol _Ille-et-Vilaine_ St. Samson H. M. Elne _Pyrénées-Orientales_ H. M. Embrun _Hautes-Alpes_ H. M. Glandèves _Basses-Alpes_ (Bishopric transferred to Entrevaux) Grasse _Alpes-Maritimes_ (Bishopric in XIVth century) Laon _Aisne_ Notre Dame H. M. Lavaur _Tarn_ (Bishopric in XIVth century) Lectours _Gers_ (Bishopric in Xth century) Lescar _Basses-Pyrénées_ H. M. Lisieux _Calvados_ St. Pierre Lodeve _Hérault_ St. Fulcran H. M. Lombez _Gers_ H. M. Mâcon _Saône-et-Loire_ St. Vincent H. M. Mallezais _Vendée_ Mirepoix _Ariège_ (Bishopric in XIVth century) Noyon _Oise_ Notre Dame H. M. Oloron _Basses-Pyrénées_ H. M. Orange _Vaucluse_ Notre Dame Périgueux _Dordogne_ St. Etienne St. Bertrand _Haute-Garonne_ H. M. de Comminges St. Dié _Vosges_ St. Lizier _Ariège_ H. M. St. Lo _Manche_ Notre Dame H. M. St. Malo _Ille-et-Vilaine_ Ste. Marie _Basses-Pyrénées_ St. Omer _Pas-de-Calais_ Notre Dame H. M. St. Papoul _Aude_ H. M. St. Paul Trois _Drôme_ H. M. Chateaux St. Pol de Leon _Finisterre_ H. M. St. Servan _Ille-et-Vilaine_ St. Pierre d'Aleth Sarlat _Dordogne_ H. M. Séez _Orne_ Notre Dame H. M. Senez _Basses-Alpes_ H. M. Senlis _Oise_ Notre Dame H. M. Sisteron _Basses-Alpes_ Soissons _Aisne_ Notre Dame H. M. St. Gervais St. Protais Tarbes _Hautes-Pyrénées_ Eglise de la Séde H. M. Toul _Meurthe_ St. Etienne H. M. Toulon _Var_ Ste. Marie-Majeur Tréguier _Côtes-du-Nord_ H. M. Uzès _Gard_ St. Thierry Vabres _Aveyron_ Vaiso _Vaucluse_ H. M. Versailles _Seine-et-Oise_ St. Louis Vence _Alpes-Maritimes_ H. M. Vienne _Isère_ St. Maurice H. M. V _Chronology of the chief styles and examples of church building in the north of France from the Romano-Byzantine period to that of the Renaissance_ 1050-1075 Nevers St. Etienne Distinct round-arch 1075-1100 Bayeux Notre Dame style Caen St. Etienne 1125-1150 Autun St. Lazare Pointed arch in St. Denis (choir) vaulting and 1150-1175 Angers St. Maurice larger works, with Paris Notre Dame the retaining of Sens St. Etienne the round in the smaller 1200-1225 Reims Notre Dame General adoption Auxerre St. Etienne of the ogival Troyes Sts. Peter and Paul style 1225-1250 Amiens Notre Dame The completed Dijon St. Bénigne ogival style Bourges St. Etienne 1250-1275 Noyon Notre Dame (cloisters) 1300-1325 Rouen Notre Dame (lady-chapel) 1350-1375 Chartres Notre Dame 1425-1450 Auxerre St. Etienne (N. transept) Introduction of Renaissance detail 1450-1475 Evreux Notre Dame (transepts in Italy and and tower) elaboration of Gothic in France 1475-1500 Rouen Notre Dame (S. W. Renaissance firmly tower) grafted in Italy Nevers St. Etienne (S. porch) and gradually 1500-1525 Beauvais St. Pierre (S. transept) appearing in the Chartres Notre Dame (N. W. Gothic of France spire) 1525-1550 Beauvais St. Pierre (N. transept) Amiens Notre Dame (flêche) 1550-1575 Beauvais St. Pierre (central tower Renaissance firmly since destroyed) established 1600-1625 Orleans Ste. Croix VI _Dimensions and Chronology_ NOTRE DAME D'AMIENS [Illustration: _Notre Dame d'Amiens_] _Dimensions_ Length of nave and choir, 469 feet Width including transepts, 214 feet Width of nave, 59 feet Width of aisles, 33-1/2 feet Height of nave, 141 or 147 feet, estimated variously Height of aisles, 65 feet Length of choir, 135 feet Width of nave including aisles, 150 feet Length of transepts, 194 feet Width of transepts, 36 feet, 6 inches Height of spire, 422 feet Superficial area, 70,000 square feet (approx.) _Chronology_ Nave and choir, 1220-1288 Choir stalls, 1520 Western towers completed, 1533 Lateral chapels of nave, XVIth century Choir chapels, XIIIth century ST. MAURICE D'ANGERS [Illustration] _Dimensions_ Length of nave and choir, 300 feet Width of transepts, 40 feet Height of transepts, 80 feet Height of nave, 110 feet Width of nave, 53 feet Height of spires, 225 feet _Chronology_ Lower walls, Romano-Byzantine Main body completed, 1240 Choir, XIIth century Bishop's Palace, XIIth century Arras tapestries, XIVth century Choir doorway, XIIIth century (Recently restored by Viollet-le-Duc) ST. VAAST D'ARRAS _Dimensions_ Length of nave and choir, 302 feet Height of nave, 66-1/2 feet Width of nave, 49 feet Height of tower, 154 feet _Chronology_ Former Cathedral of Notre Dame begun, end of XIIth century Former Cathedral of Notre Dame completed, 1499 Present Cathedral of St. Vaast, 1755-1833 Triptych of Bellegambe in present Cathedral, 1528 Former Abbey of St. Vaast, now Episcopal Palace since 1754 ST. LAZARE D'AUTUN _Dimensions_ Height of spire, 325 feet _Chronology_ Transition portion constructed by Robert I., Duke of Burgundy, 1031-1076 Spire, XVth century Sculpture of choir, XVIth century Flamboyant chapels, XVIth century AUXERRE _Chronology_ Crypt (remains of early work), XIth century Choir and glass, 1215-1234 Western portals, XIIIth century Nave, 1334-1373 North transept, 1415-1513 N. W. tower, 1525-1530 Iron _grille_ of choir, XVIIIth century NOTRE DAME DE BAYEUX _Dimensions_ Central belfry, 300 feet Length interior, 335 feet Height interior, 74 feet, 9 inches Height of western towers, 252 feet _Chronology_ Odo's crypt, XIth century Circular arches of nave, late XIth or early XIIth century Portals of west façade, XIIIth century Chasuble of St. Regnobert, gift of St. Louis, 1226 Date of tapestry (in inventory of church property), 1476 ST. PIERRE DE BEAUVAIS _Dimensions_ Height of nave, 150 feet Height of original spire, which fell in 1573, 486 feet Area of choir, about 28,000 square feet _Chronology_ The Basse OEuvre, VIth to VIIIth centuries Present building begun, 1225 Dedicated, 1272 Roof fell, 1284 South transept begun, 1500 North transept begun, 1530 North transept finished, 1537 Central spire fell, 1573 Ancient Bishop's Palace, now Palais de Justice, XIVth to XVIth centuries ST. ETIENNE DE BOURGES [Illustration: _St. Etienne de Bourges_] _Dimensions_ Length, 405 feet Width, 135-1/2 feet Height of nave, 124-1/2 feet Height of inner aisle, 66 feet Height of outer aisle, 28 feet Height north tower, 217-1/2 feet Height south tower, 176 feet Superficial area, 73,170 square feet (approx.) _Chronology_ Dedicated, 1324 Sepulchre, 1336 Crypts, XIIth century North tower, 1508-1538 Tower St. Etienne completed, 1490 Tower St. Etienne fell, 1506 Choir stalls, 1760 ST. ETIENNE DE CHÂLONS-SUR-MARNE _Chronology_ Tower next north door, Romano-Byzantine Part of nave and choir, Ogival primaire Aisle and chapels of apse, XIVth century Apse restored, after fire, in 1672 NOTRE DAME DE CHARTRES _Dimensions_ Length nave and choir, 430 feet Width, 110 feet Length nave only, 121 feet Width nave, 46 feet Width nave aisles, 19 feet Height nave, 106 feet Length transepts, 202 feet Width transepts, 70 feet Height of north spire, 403 feet Height of south spire, 365 feet Rose window, diameter, 40 to 43 feet Area, 65,000 square feet (approx.) _Chronology_ Wooden church burned, 1020 Crypt under chevet of choir, 1029 (only remains of original church) Work of rebuilding stopped, 1048 South portal erected, 1060 Work aided by Matilda, queen of William I., 1083 Lower portion of main body built, 1100-1150 Western towers, 1145 Fire damaged greater part, 1194 Vaulting completed, 1220 Porches of transepts added, 1250 Building consecrated, October 17, 1260 Sacristy and screen in crypt, XIIIth century North spire burned, 1506 Texier's spire erected, 1507-1515 Texier's spire repaired, 1629 South spire repaired, 1754 Belfry and roof burned (vaulting unharmed), 1836 NOTRE DAME D'EVREUX _Dimensions_ Length, 368 feet, 6 inches Transept, length, 112 feet Transept, width, 23 feet _Chronology_ Church consecrated, 1076 Church burnt, 1119 Northwest tower foundations laid, 1352 Northwest tower completed, 1417 North transept, XVIth century Nave, early XIIth to late XVth century Choir, XIVth century Lady-chapel, XIIIth century NOTRE DAME DE LAON [Illustration: _Laon_] _Dimensions_ Length of nave and choir, 351 feet Height of nave, 80 feet Width of nave, 67 feet, 7 inches Length of transepts, 174 feet Width of transepts, 35 feet, 9 inches Height of western towers, 173 feet Height of southwest tower and spire (formerly), 328 feet Western circular window, 26 feet Superficial area, 44,000 square feet (approx.) _Chronology_ Original church burned, 1112 New edifice begun, 1114 Entirely rebuilt, 1190 General restoration, 1851 ST. JULIEN, LE MANS [Illustration: _LE MANS_] _Dimensions_ Length of nave and choir, 369 feet Width of nave and aisles, 78 feet Width of choir, 123 feet Height of choir, 108 feet Area of choir, 30,000 square feet (approx.) Length of transept, 178 feet Width of transept, 32 feet _Chronology_ West façade, XIth century Transition, south portal, XIIth century Nave and transepts reconstructed, XIIth century Church extended beyond city walls, XIIIth century Choir rebuilt, 1200 Choir restored, 1858 Coloured glass, XIIIth, XIVth, XVth centuries Rose window, south transept, XVth century Former Bishop's Palace destroyed by Germans, 1871 ST. ETIENNE DE MEAUX _Dimensions_ Height of nave, 109 feet Length of nave, 275 feet Length of transepts, 120 feet _Chronology_ Bishopric founded, 375 A.D. Choir in part, XIIth century Restored, 1852 ST. PIERRE DE NANTES [Illustration] _Dimensions_ Height of western towers, 270 feet Height of nave, 130 feet _Chronology_ Remains of choir contains, XIIth century Romanesque church rebuilt, XVth century West front, 1434-1500 North transept and choir only completed in XIXth century Tomb of François II. and Marguerite de Foix, 1507 Later restoration, 1852 NOTRE DAME DE NOYON [Illustration: _Noyon_] _Dimensions_ Length, 338 feet Width of nave and aisles, 64 feet, 10 inches Height of nave, 74 feet, 6 inches Height of aisles, 28 feet, 9 inches Height of choir, 26 feet, 3 inches Height of towers, 200 feet Superficial area, 30,000 square feet (approx.) _Chronology_ First constructed, 989 Burnt, 1131 Rebuilding undertaken, 1137-1150 Choir, transepts, and nave completed, 1167-1200 Timber work burnt, 1293 Chapter-house built, XIIIth century Five bays of cloister built, XIVth century Restored under governmental supervision, 1840 ST. CROIX D'ORLEANS _Dimensions_ Height of towers, 280 feet Height of nave, 100 feet _Chronology_ First bishops sent from Rome, IIIrd century Cathedral destroyed by Huguenots, 1567 Chapels of nave which still remain, XIVth century Late Gothic mainly of XVIIth century Western towers completed, 1789 NOTRE DAME DE PARIS [Illustration: _Paris_] _Dimensions_ Length, 390 feet Width, 144 feet Height of nave, 102 feet Diameter of rose windows in transept, 36 feet Superficial area, 64,100 square feet _Chronology_ Founded by Bishop de Sully, 1160-1170 High altar dedicated, 1182 Interior completed (approx.), 1208 West front, 1223-1230 Western towers, 1235 Transept portals, 1257 NOTRE DAME DE REIMS [Illustration: _Reims_] [Illustration: _Flying Buttresses, Reims_] _Dimensions_ Western towers, 267 feet Area, 65,000 feet (approx.) _Chronology_ First stone laid, 1212 First portion dedicated, 1215 Chapter takes possession of choir, 1244 Nave commenced, 1250 Transept and abside ornamented, 1295 South tower begun and completed, 1380-1391 Coronation of Charles VII., 1427 Southwest tower completed by Philastre, 1430 Tapestries added to choir, 1444 Belfry of the Angel built, 1497 Gable of the Assumption and Zodiac, 1408 Reëstablishment of grand altar, 1547 Repairs to portals and vaulting, 1610 Cathedral becomes national property, 1790 Exterior repairs and restoration, 1811 General restorations, 1840 2,083,411 francs voted by Chamber for restorations, 1875 Gifts of Gobelin tapestries, 1848 NOTRE DAME DE ROUEN [Illustration: _Notre Dame Rouen_] _Dimensions_ Length of nave and choir, 450 feet Width, including transepts, 177 feet Width of nave and aisles, 105 feet Length of choir only, 118 feet Height of nave, 92 feet Height of central spire, 480 feet Height of Tour de Beurre, 252 feet Height of Tour St. Romain, 246 feet Area (originally), 53,000 square feet _Chronology_ First church founded on site of cathedral by St. Mellar, VIIth century Cathedral enlarged under Rollo, who was buried therein in 930 Consecrated and dedicated, 1063 Tour St. Romain, remains of, XIth century Destroyed by fire, 1200 New building completed, XIIIth century Portail de la Calende, XIVth century Tour de Beurre laid, 1487 Tour de Beurre completed, 1507 Flamboyant west front, XVIth century Altar of St. Romain, XVIIth century Tomb of the Cardinals, 1556 Central spire, 1823 Restoration of west front, 1897 ST. ETIENNE DE SENS _Dimensions_ Length, 384 feet Width, 124 feet Height, 98 feet Area, 44,000 square feet _Chronology_ Relique of True Cross given by Charlemagne, 800 A. D. Early church destroyed by fire, 970 New church dedicated, 997 Present building completed, 1168 Choir rebuilt, 1174 Present transept and nave, XIIth and XIIIth centuries Glass in chapel of St. Savinien, XIIIth century Glass of rose windows, XVIth century Mausoleum of the Dauphin, XVIIIth century BASILIQUE DE ST. DENIS _Dimensions_ Length of nave and choir, 354 feet Width, 133 feet Clerestory windows (height), 33 feet _Chronology_ Chapel first built above grave of St. Dionysius the martyr, 275 A. D. Benedictine abbey first founded here in reign of Dagobert, 628 Pope Stephen took refuge here, 754 Romanesque façade, 1140 Consecration of the building, 1144 Nave, XIIIth century Abbot Suger died, 1151 General restoration by Suger's successors, XIIIth century Crenelated battlement added to façade, XIVth century Spire burned by lightning, XIXth century General restoration by Viollet-le-Duc, 1860 Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette reinterred here (removed from the Madeleine), 1817 [Illustration: CRYPT S. DENIS] [Illustration: S DENIS] NOTRE DAME DE ST. OMER _Dimensions_ The great bell of tower weighs 8,500 kilos. _Chronology_ Bishopric founded, 1533 Astronomical clock, XVIth century Tomb of St. Erkembode, VIIIth century Tomb of St. Omer restored, XIIIth century Former Episcopal Palace, now Palais de Justice, 1680 ST. GATIEN DE TOURS [Illustration] _Dimensions_ Length of nave and choir, 256 feet Width, 95 feet _Chronology_ Choir begun, 1170 Tour Charlemagne, XIth century Tour St. Martin, XIIth century Transepts, 1316 West façade, 1430-1500 Southwest tower, 1507 Tomb of children of Charles VIII., 1483 ST. PIERRE DE TROYES _Dimensions_ Length, 394 feet Width, 168 feet Height, 96 feet Height northwest tower, 202 feet _Chronology_ Apse and chapels, 1206-1223 Choir and transepts, 1314-1315 Iron _grille_ of choir, XIIIth century Church consecrated, 1430 West façade, XVth century Nave constructed during XIVth, XVth, XVIth centuries North gable, XVth century Tower St. Pierre, 1559-1568 Northwest tower demolished by lightning, 1700 Vaulting of transepts fell, 1840 Restoration of choir and transepts, 1840 VII _The French Kings from Charlemagne Onward_ A. D. Charlemagne 768 Louis le Débonnaire 814 Charles le Chauve 840 Louis II., le Bègue 877 Louis III. 879 Carloman 879 Charles le Gros 884 Eudes 887 Charles III., the Simple 893 Robert I. 922 Rodolf of Burgundy 923 Louis IV., the Stranger 936 Lothaire 954 Louis V., le Fainéant 986 Hugh Capet 987 Robert II., the Wise 996 Henry I. 1031 Philip I., l'Amoureux 1060 Louis VI., le Gros 1108 Louis VII., le Jeune 1137 Philip Augustus 1180 Louis VIII., the Lion 1223 Louis IX., the Saint 1226 Philip III., the Hardy 1270 Philip IV., the Fair 1285 Louis X., Hutin 1314 John I. 1316 Philip V. 1316 Charles IV., le Bel 1322 Philip VI., de Valois 1328 John II., the Good 1350 Charles V., le Sage 1364 Charles VI., the Beloved 1380 Charles VII., the Victorious 1422 Louis XI. 1461 Charles VIII. 1483 Louis XII., of Orleans 1498 Francis I. 1515 Henry II. 1547 Francis II. 1559 Charles IX. 1560 Henry III. 1574 Henry IV., the Great 1589 Louis XIII., the Just 1610 Louis XIV., le Grand 1643 Louis XV. 1715 Louis XVI. 1774 Revolutionary Tribunal 1793 Directory 1795 Napoleon, Consul 1799 Napoleon I., Emperor 1804 Louis XVIII. 1814 Charles X. 1824 Louis Philippe 1830 Republic 1848 Napoleon III., Emperor 1852 Republic 1870 [Illustration: CHARLES VII] VIII _Measurements of the Cathedrals at Amiens and Salisbury_ (_Whittington_) _Amiens_ _Salisbury_ _French feet_ _English feet_ Length east to west 415 452 Length west door to choir 220 246 Length behind choir, including lady-chapel 63 65 Length transepts north to south 182 210 Width nave 42.9 34.5 Width transept 42.9 Width side aisles 18 17.5 Width windows 41 48 Width nave and side aisles 78.9 102 Width west front 150 115 Height vault, nave 132 84 Height vault, choir 129 Height west towers 210 Height chapels 60 Height side aisles, nave 60.8 Height side aisles, choir 57.8 38 Distance between pillars 16 Height grand arches 78 78 Number of pillars 46 Number of chapels 25 Length of choir 130 140 (The old French foot is the equal of 1.06576 English feet.) The above comparative measurements are given as being of the contemporary types of English and French cathedrals, being nearly approximate to each other as to the date of their erection and measurements. The figures themselves are transcribed from a little-known but thoroughly conscientious work by G. D. Whittington, entitled "Contributions to an Ecclesiastical Survey of France." IX _French Metres Reduced to English Feet_ Metres English feet and Metres English feet and Metres English feet and decimal parts decimal parts decimal parts 1 3.281 20 65.618 300 984.270 2 6.562 30 98.427 400 1312.360 3 9.843 40 131.236 500 1640.450 4 13.123 50 164.045 600 1968.539 5 16.404 60 196.854 700 2296.629 6 19.685 70 229.663 800 2624.719 7 22.966 80 262.472 900 2952.809 8 26.247 90 295.281 1000 3280.899 9 29.528 100 328.090 10 32.809 200 656.180 X _A Brief Glossary of architectural terms, with popular definitions, as applied to the components which compose the principal features of a cathedral church_ [Illustration: NO. 1. GROUND PLAN] A Lady-chapel The principal chapel, usually behind the high altar, at the extremity or eastern end of choir, dedicated to Our Lady (Notre Dame) B Transept The middle portion of a church, which projects at right angles with the main body of nave and choir C Porch Usually the vestibule or receding doorway D Lantern or crossing Where the transept crosses and joins choir and nave, usually with windows, if a lantern proper E Choir That portion of the edifice in which are stalls for the choristers, and chapter, also containing the _Maître d'Autel_ F Ambulatory The aisles or colonnade which surround the choir G Chapels Literally a small place of worship containing an altar. In a great church, which may contain several, they are usually dedicated to male and female saints H Nave The main body of a church, extending from the choir to the principal façade; _i. e._ that part between the outer aisles I Aisles The lateral passage on either side of the nave and separated therefrom by piers or pillars J Portal Literally, the framework of a doorway K Abside The domed easterly end of a church L Sacristy The apartment in which is kept the church plate and vestments [Illustration: NO. 2. CROSS SECTION] A Nave aisle vaulting The arched roof of stone B Nave vaulting The arched roof of stone C Flying buttress A supporting outside prop of the thrust variety. Notably a distinguishing feature of mediæval Gothic architecture D Side aisle The passage which flanks the nave E Buttress pier The outer support of a flying buttress F Pinnacle On towers, buttress piers, gables, etc. G Gargoyle A projecting water-spout carved grotesquely H Niche A recess in a wall, or surmounting a pier; primarily to hold a statue [Illustration: NO. 3. INTERIOR] A Clerestory The upper range of windows of the nave; rising above the adjoining portions B Triforium Literally, a blind window--a range of openings, or possibly an arcade-effect only, coming below the clerestory and above the lower arches of the nave C Arch (between nave and ai Joining the piers or pillars which separate nave from aisles D Pillars (of nave) Commonly called pillars, columns, and piers, but more often are literally pillars, being made up of blocks of stone one upon another E Vaulting The stone arched roof F West wall Here, in the true Gothic church, is usually found a rose window, though often obscured by the organ case G Arcaded gallery A feature frequently seen in the interior of great churches, as distinct from the triforium. Either decorative or of practical value H Pavement The floor, always of stone, and often of marble or mosaic [Illustration: NO. 4. CROSS SECTION] A Flying buttresses A thrust support, or prop, extending from the main fabric to an outer pier B Timber roof The timber or scantling above the nave, which supports the outer tiled or leaden roofing C Nave The main body of a church D Aisle The passage which flanks the nave E Outer aisle A second or outer passage flanking the nave F Stairway to roof of aisle Stairways from the interior pavement, leading to triforium, belfry, or roof G Crypt In reality a lower or subterranean church or chapel; from _crypta_, to hide H Buttress pier The outer support of a flying buttress, or one lying directly against the wall which it strengthens INDEX Abélard, 94. Acquitaine, 176, 211. Adela, mother of King Stephen of Blois, 121. Agrippa, 134. Aisne, Department of the, 134. Alençon, Bishop of, 307. Alençon, Notre Dame d', 296-298. Amboise, Cardinal d', 84, 90. Amboise, Georges d', 85, 90. Amiens, 32, 35, 37, 61, 62, 117, 129, 133, 200, 267, 272, 278. Amiens, Bishop of, 65. Amiens, Cathedral at, 140, 141, 384. Amiens, Flying buttresses at, 67. Amiens, Notre Dame d', 64, 69, 72, 366, 367. "Ampoule, Sainte," The, 25, 143. Angers, 119, 149. Angers, Bishop's Palace at, 181. Angers, Castle at, 175. Angers, David d', 235. Angers, St. Maurice d', 147, 173-182, 367, 368. Angevine Churches, The, 215. Angevine details at Le Mans, 115. Angevine style of architecture, The, 176, 180. Angoulême, 15. Anjou, 115. Anjou, Counts of, 175. Anjou, Dukes of, 173, 181. Anjou, Margaret of, 173. Anne of Brittany, 169, 184. Anne, Duchess (_see also_ Anne of Brittany), 188. Antwerp, 126. Architectural divisions of France, 34. Ardennes, Department of the, 134. Arles, 33. Arras, 15, 184, 226. Arras, Belfry at, 245; Citadel of, 244; Hôtel de Ville, 245. Arras, St. Vaast d', 242-246, 368. Artois, 237, 242. Assisi, St. Francis of, 188. Attila, 132. Attila, Attack on Aurelianum, 150. Attila, Defeat at Chalons, 251. Augustus, 134. Aurelian, 150, 226. Autun, 33, 257, 258. Autun, St. Lazare d', 257-261, 368. Auvergne, 151. Auvergnat Churches, The, 215. Auxerre, 215. Auxerre, Bishops of, 194. Auxerre, Episcopal Palace at, 195. Auxerre, St. Etienne d', 191-196, 369. Auxonne, Notre Dame d', 220. Avignon, 33. Avranches, 321. Avranches, Notre Dame de, 326-328. Azon, 307. Baldwin of Hainault, 237. Balzac, 164. Bayeux, 285. Bayeux, Odo, Bishop of, 311, 312. Bayeux, Notre Dame de, 310-314, 369. Bayeux, Tapestry of, 310, 311. Beauvais, 13, 19, 20, 32, 35, 37, 61, 69, 117-119, 133, 200, 267. Beauvais, Bishop of, 52, 303. Beauvais, Romano-Byzantine work at, 75. Beauvais, Cathedral of St. Pierre, 28, 70-76, 140, 369. Beaux Arts, Département de, 23, 340. Beaux Arts, Palais des, 96. Becket, St. Thomas à, 54, 280, 282, 327. Bedford, Duke of, 90. Belgica, Secunda, 132. Bellegambe, 244. Bellêne, Count of, 307. Belmas, Bishop, 235. Benedictine Abbey at St. Denis, 93. Berengaria, Queen, 113, 120. Bernard de Soissons, 138. Berry, Duc de, 96, 108. Besançon, 27, 32, 223, 225. Bethléem, Bishop of, 31. Bishop's Palace, The (Amiens), 67. Bishop's Palace, The, at Beauvais, 76. "Black Angers," 174 (_see_ Shakespeare on Angers). Blanche of Castile, 66, 169. Blois, 18, 149, 210, 215. Blois, Chateau of, 157. Blois, Counts of, 121. Blois, King Stephen of, 121. Blois, St. Louis de, 156. Bonn, Minster at, 50. Borgia, Cæsar, 182. Borromée, 244. Boulogne-sur-Mer, 223, 225. Boulogne-sur-Mer, Notre Dame de, 231-233. Bourassé, Abbé, 108, 211, 260, 279, 303. Bourges, 33, 37, 61, 215. Bourges, St. Etienne de, 139, 199-208, 370. Brest, 348. Bretagne, Duc de, 187. Briceius, 165. Brittany, 12, 20, 27, 32. Brittany, Chancellor of, 182. Brittany, Duchy of, 184. Bruges, 262. Burgundy, 258, 259, 262. Byzantine influences at Bourges, 202. Byzantine tendencies, 13; conception, 27. Caen, 285. Cæsar, burned Orleans, 150. Calixtus II., 133. Calvin (John), 51. Cambrai, 15, 226. Cambrai, Notre Dame de, 234-236. Capet, Hugh, 51. Carcassonne, 33. Carlovingian Dynasty, The, 94. Carrier, 183. Cathedrals, The Grand, 23. Cathedrals of the North, 26. "Caveau Imperial," The, at St. Denis, 95. Chalons (sur Marne), 132, 133, 226. Chalons-sur-Marne, St. Etienne de, 251-253, 371. Chambidge, Martin, 276. Chambord, 18, 210, 214. Champagne, Counts of, 274. Chancellor of Brittany, 182. Chantilly, Chateau of, 50. Charlemagne, 51, 133, 282. Charlemagne, Tour de, 165. Charles of Anjou, 120. Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, 262-263. Charles (King), 212. Charles V., 240, 282. Charles VII., 30, 138, 144. Charles VIII., 17, 169, 184. Charles X., 24, 144. Chartres, 20, 30, 33, 35, 61, 62, 113, 210, 215, 278, 338. Chartres, Celtic foundation of, 124. Chartres, Counts of, 121. Chartres, Details at, 87. Chartres, Jean de, 187. Chartres, Notre Dame de, 121, 139, 140, 141, 371. Chartres, Spires of Cathedral at, 125, 267. Chaste Susanne, Painting of, 220. Chateau of the Italian Dukes (at Nevers), 210. Chateaux of the Loire, 18, 32, 148. Chaucer's "Temple of Mars," 86. Chaumont, 18. Chenonceau, 18, 210. Childeric, 132, 133. Cires-les-Mello, 35. Clamecy, 31. Clement, Eudes, 99. Clotilda, wife of Clovis, 133. Clovis, 22, 30, 138, 139, 143, 144, 224. Clovis, Baptism of, 133. Coligny, 151. Cologne, Apse-sided transepts at, 50. Cologne, Cathedral at, 20, 37, 135, 141. Colomb, Michel, 187, 332. Colombiers, 315. Commercy, Jacquemin de, 250. Commission des Monuments Historiques, 35, 170, 176, 213. Compiègne, Chateau of, 50. Condés, The, 153. Constant, 282. Cormier, Jean, 129. Corroyer, 349. Coucy, Chateau of, 50. Coutances, 267, 285, 286, 321. Coutances, Notre Dame de, 321-325. Creil, 35. Croixmore, Abp. Robert de, 84. Crusaders, The, 14. Dagobert I., 93. D'Arc, Jeanne, 151, 303. Dauphins of France, The, 170. Da Vinci, 157. De Breze, Louis, 89. De Breze, Pierre, 89. De Caumont, "Abécêdaire'd Architecture," 33, 349. De Sauteuil, 106. Descartes, 164. Descent from the Cross, The (by Rubens), 239. Devils of Notre Dame, The, 106. Dieppe, 285. Dijon, 27, 223, 258. Dijon, St. Bénigne of, 225, 262-265. Dinan, 335. Dol-de-Bretagne, Façade at, 98. Dol-de-Bretagne, St. Samson de, 329-332. Domenichino, 272. Domfront, 321. Douai, 244. Du Bellay Langey, 120. Dufêtre, Mgr., 211. Duroctorum, 132. East of Paris, 221. Eastern influences at Bourges, 202. Ebo, Bishop of Reims, 136. Edict of Nantes, The, 183. Edward III., 129. English characteristics of Gothic, 45, 68. Estonteville, Cardinal d', 88. Evreux, 32. Evreux, Notre Dame d', 288-295, 372. Exeter, 114. Falise, 321. Fenelon, 235, 236. Fergusson, quoted, 12, 56, 126, 139. Fiesole, Jérôme de, 187. Flemish school of painting, 244. Flemish wood-carving, 90. Florence, 33. Flying buttresses, Notre Dame de Paris, 28; Notre Dame d'Amiens, 28; Tours, 167. Foix, Marguerite de, 187. Fouilloy, Evrard de, 65. France, Architectural divisions of, 34. France, Ecclesiastical capital of, 133. France, Kings of, 24, 93, 383. Francis I., 74. Francis II., Tomb of, 187. Franks, The, 22. Franks, The Ripuarian, 133. Franks, Invasion of, 132, 133, 224. Frankish influence, 11. Freeman, Prof. Aug., 113, 248, 311. Fréjus, 15. French Flanders, 41. French Gothic Architecture, 38. French Mediæval Architecture, 38. French Revolution, The, 31, 43, 44, 52, 55, 96, 99, 103, 142, 184, 226. Fulbert, Bishop of Chartres, 129. "Gallery of Kings," at Amiens, 67. Gallery of Kings, The (at Reims), 138, 178. Gaucher, 138. Geeraerts (of Antwerp), 235. Genabum (of Gallia), 150. Genoa, 157. German manner of building, 27. Ghent, 242, 262. Gisors, 35. Gobelin Tapestries, 76, 143. Gonsé, 349. Good God of Amiens, The, 66. Gothic, Development of, 14, 24; Rudimentary, 16; Anti, 18; Non, 18. Goujon, Jean, 89, 170. Gourney, 35. Grand Cathedrals, The, 12, 20, 35, 61-63. Granville, 321. Grouin, 345. Guillaume of Sens, 225. Guillaume Bras-de-Fer, 323. Hachette, Jeanne, 76. Haffreingue, Mgr., 233. Henry I., 129, 133. Henry II. (of France), 113, 166, 249. Henry II. (of England), 282, 301, 325. Henry IV., 30, 96, 133, 153, 183. Henry of Navarre, 129. House of the Kings, The, 144. Hugh II., 215. Hugo's "Notre Dame," 106. Huguenots, The, 153, 195. Humbert, Alberic de, 137. Irene, Princess, 130. Isle de la Cité, 105, 106. Isle of France, 12, 27, 61. Italian influences, 17. Ivor (Bishop of Chartres), 212. James (Henry), 163, 204. Jean sans Peur, 265. Jensen, Nicolas, 164. Joannes, Abbé, 253. John, Duke of Bedford, 90. John the Baptist, 69. Jovinus, Tomb of, 142. Juste, 170. "Kreisker," The (at St. Pol de Leon), 345. La Hougue, 345. Langres, 32. Langres, La Montagne de, 218. Langres, St. Mammes de, 218-220. Laon, 20, 32, 41, 61, 325. Laon, Notre Dame de, 43-46, 49, 139, 372-373. Laon, Palais de Justice, 46. Last Judgment, The (at Bourges), 204. Le Mans, 32, 61, 62, 120, 121, 124, 168, 200, 210, 338. Le Mans, German invasion of, 120. Le Mans, Notre Dame de la Cloture, 180. Le Mans, St. Julien, 113-120, 373, 374. Leo III., 133. Leo IX., 307. Le Puy, 33. Lescornel, 219. Le Tellier, 144. Le Veneur, Bishop, 292. Libergier, 142. Limoges, 151. Lisieux, 285, 286, 301. Lisieux, St. Pierre de, 301-304. Loire, Cathedrals of the, 145. Loire, Valley of the, 147, 148. Loire, Chateaux of, 18, 32, 147. Longsword, William, 89. Lorraine, Abbé, 143. Loudon, Geoffroy de, 118. Louis le Débonnaire, 133. Louis le Gros, 133. Louis I., 136. Louis VI., 94. Louis XI., 208, 246. Louis XII., 184. Louis XII., Tomb of, at St. Denis, 19. Louis XIV., 144. Louis XVI., 96, 282. Louis XVIII., 31, 96, 143. Louis Philippe, 31. Louviers, 127, 297. Low Countries, The, 16, 20. Lowell (James Russell), "A Day in Chartres," 126. Lowell, Hon. E. J., 310. Luitgarde, 165. Luzarche, Robert de, 65. Madeleine, The, 96. Maid of Orleans, The, 81, 94, 144, 151. Maine, 114. Maine, Count of, 120. Mainz, 214. Mansard, 159, 240. Margaret of Anjou, 173, 181. Marie Antoinette, 96. Marie de Medicis, 182. Marie Louise, 95. Marne, Department of, 132, 134. Marne, River, 270. Martel, Charles, 133. Matilda, queen of William the Conqueror, 129, 310, 311. Mazarin (Cardinal), 210. Meaux, 270. Meaux, St. Etienne de, 270-273, 374. Medicis, Marie de, 182. Mère de Dieu, 66. Metz, 227, 248, 249. Méyron, Etchings of, 106. Montbray, Geoffroy de, 323. Monthery, 89. Mont St. Michel, 321, 337, 338; Abbey of, 338. Monuments, Historical, 23, 340. Moorish type of architecture at Bourges, 201. Moors of Spain, The, 202. Moselle, Valley of the, 226. Moulins, 36. Musée des Petits Augustines, 96. Nancy, 226. Nancy, Cathedral at, 227. Nantes, 20, 32, 148, 149. Nantes, Edict of, 183. Nantes, St. Pierre de, 183, 374, 375. Naples, 157. Napoleon I., 31, 103; Marriage of, 95. Napoleon III., 31, 99. Narbonne, 151. "Narthex, Burgundian," 258. Netherlands, The, 14. Neuss, Apse-sided transepts at, 50. Nevers, 33, 277. Nevers, St. Cyr and St. Juliette de, 209. Nevers, St. Etienne de, 212, 216. Nevers, The Pont du Loire, 209. Nevers, Tour Gougin, 213; Tour St. Eloi, 213. Nicman, Archbishop, 136. Nièvre, Counts of, 210. Nîmes, 33. Nivernais, The, 210. Nogent-les-Vierges, 35. Normandy, 115, 176. Normandy, Duke of, 89. Norsemen, The, 82. Notre Dame d'Alençon, 296-298. Notre Dame d'Amiens, 64-69, 72, 366, 367. Notre Dame d'Auxonne, 220. Notre Dame de Bayeux, 310-314, 369. Notre Dame de Boulogne-sur-Mer, 231-233. Notre Dame de Cambrai, 234-236. Notre Dame de Chartres, 121, 139-141, 371. Notre Dame de Coutances, 321-325. Notre Dame d'Evreux, 288-295, 372. Notre Dame de la Cloture (Le Mans), 180. Notre Dame de Laon, 43-46, 372. Notre Dame de l'Epine, 251. Notre Dame de Noyon, 29, 49-53, 199, 375, 376. Notre Dame de Paris, 28, 49, 101-107, 139, 140, 199, 376, 377. Notre Dame de Reims, 132-144, 248, 249. Notre Dame de Rouen, 37, 49, 79-90, 139, 338, 378, 379. Notre Dame de St. Lo, 315-318. Notre Dame de St. Omer, 237-241, 380. Notre Dame de Senlis, 266-269. Noviodunum, 51. Noyades, The, 184. Noyon, 20, 32, 41, 117, 127, 268. Noyon, Notre Dame de, 29, 49-53, 199, 375, 376. Odericus Vitalis, Bishop, 302. Odon, 323. Oise, The River, 50. Onfroy, 323. Orange, 184. Oriflamme, The, 94. Orleans, 33, 148, 149. Orleans, Captured by Clovis, 151, 152. Orleans Family, The, 169. Orleans, German occupation of, 151. Orleans, St. Croix d', 150-155, 376. Orleans, The Maid of, 81, 94, 144, 151. Palais de Justice, Beauvais, 76. Paramé, 335. Paris, 20, 61, 267. Paris, Documentary history of, 26. Paris, East of, 221. Paris, Notre Dame de, 28, 49, 101-107, 139, 140, 199, 217, 376, 377. Paroissien, Poncelet, 142. Pepersack Tapestries at Reims, The, 143. Pepin, 94, 133. Périgueux, 15, 33. Perpetus, Bishop of Tours, 165. Perréal, Jehan, 187. Perrifonds, Chateau of, 50. Philastre, Cardinal, 137. Philippe Augustus, 24, 34, 117. Philippe le Bon, 262. Philippe le Hardi, 66, 265. Picardy, 184. Picardy, Patron Saint of, 69. Plantagenets, Cradle of the, 173. Poitiers, 33. Poitiers, Diane de, 89. Pont du Loire, Nevers, 209. Pope Stephen, 94. Portal de St. Honoré (Amiens), 67. Portal de la Vierge Dorée (Amiens), 67. Porte d'Arroux, Autun, 257. Porte St. Andre, Autun, 257. Provence, 211. Quimper, 27, 32, 348. Quimper, St. Corentin de, 348-350. Rabelais, 164. Rabida, "Bretagne" of, 338. Raphael, Tapestry cartoons at S. Kensington, 76. Reclus, 215. Regnault, 187. Regnier, Cardinal, 235. Reims, 32, 35, 37, 128, 129, 224, 226, 278. Reims, Baptism of Clovis at, 30. Reims, Capture of, by Vandals, 132. Reims, Cathedral at, 24. Reims, Details at, 87. Reims, Devastation at, 25. Reims, Notre Dame de, 93, 132-144, 248, 249. Reims, Portals of Cathedral, 66. Reims, Roman remains at, 134. Reims, St. Nicaise of, 82. Remi, Capital of the, 132. Renaissance, The, 16. Renaissance Architecture at Bourges, 201. Renaissance façade at Tours, 166, 167. Renaissance wood-carving, 46. René, King, 173, 175, 181. Reni, Guido, 272. Rennes, 15. Revolution, The French, 31, 43, 44, 52, 55, 96, 99, 103, 142, 184, 226. Rhine, The, 23, 27, 223. Rhine Provinces, The, 14. Rhône, The, 36. Richard Coeur-de-Lion, 90, 113, 120. Richard the Fearless, 83. Rigobert, Bishop, 133. Robert I., Duke of Burgundy, 258, 260. Robert, son of Tancrede-de-Hauteville, 323. Roger, son of Tancrede-de-Hauteville, 323. Rohan, Cardinal de, 243. Rollo, 82, 89. Romanesque tendencies, 13, 27, 44; types, 20, 21. Roman power, Decline of, 26. Roman remains at Reims, 134. Romans, The, at Genabum (Orleans), 150. Romano-Byzantine work at Beauvais, 75. Romano-Byzantine nave at Le Mans, 115. Rome, 33. Rosary, Chapel of the (Soissons), 57. Roscoff, 345. Rouen, 19, 35, 37, 61, 62. Rouen, Cathedral at, 37, 49, 79-90, 139, 338, 378, 379. Rouen, Notre Dame de, 37, 49, 79-90, 139, 338, 378, 379. Rouen, Tour de Beurre, 204. Royal Domain, The, 223. Royale, Rue (Tours), 163. Royamont, 35. Rubens, 235, 238. Rubens, "Adoration" by (Soissons), 58. Rumaldi, 136. Ruskin on Rouen Cathedral, 85. Ruskin, quoted, 72, 81, 128, 285, 302. St. Aignan, 150. St. Bénigne (Monk of Dijon), 225. St. Bénigne (Cathedral), 262-265. St. Bertin, Abbey of (St. Omer), 225, 240. St. Brieuc, 339, 342. St. Brieuc, Cathedral of, 342-344. St. Corentin, Cathedral of, 27. St. Corentin de Quimper, 348-350. St. Croix, Abbey of, 318. St. Croix d'Orleans, 150-155, 376. St. Cyr and St. Juliette de Nevers, 209. St. Denis, 19, 61. St. Denis, Abbey of, 93. St. Denis, Abbot of, 94. St. Denis, Basilique de, 93-100, 379. St. Denis, Church of (at St. Omer), 225. St. Denis, Crypt of, 96. St. Deodatus, 254. St. Dié, 226, 254-256. St. Dié (Cathedral), 255, 256. St. Dionysius, 97, 98. St. Etienne d'Auxerre, 191-196, 369. St. Etienne de Bourges, 199-208, 370. St. Etienne (Chalons-sur-Marne), 251-253, 371. St. Etienne de Meaux, 270-273, 374. St. Etienne du Mont (Paris), 15, 19. St. Etienne de Nevers, 212, 216. St. Etienne de Sens, 279-282, 379. St. Etienne de Toul, 247-250. St. Eustache, Church of, Paris, 196. St. Fermin the Martyr, 67, 68. St. Francis of Assisi, 188. St. Gatien de Tours, 147, 163, 206, 381. St. Gengoult, Church of (Toul), 248. St. Germain, Church of (at Auxerre), 195. St. Jean the Evangel, 218. St. Jean des Vignes, Abbey of, 54. St. John, 69. St. Julien, Church of (at Tours), 169. St. Julien, Le Mans, 113-120, 373, 374. St. Laud, Bishop, 315. St. Lazare d'Autun, 257-261, 368. St. Lo, 285, 321. St. Lo, Notre Dame de, 315-318. St. Louis, 34, 66, 188, 314. St. Louis, Arms of, 169. St. Louis de Blois, 156. St. Louis de Versailles, Cathedral of, 108. St. Maclou, Church of (Rouen), 19, 81. St. Malo, 335, 338. St. Malo, Cathedral of, 336-338. St. Mammes de Langres, 218-220. Ste. Marguerite, 188. St. Martin (of Tours), 165. St. Martin, Tour de (at Tours), 165. St. Maurice d'Angers, 147, 173-182, 367, 368. St. Nazaire (Autun), 258. St. Nicaise, 82, 136, 142. St. Nicolas de Coutances, 325. St. Mellor, 82. St. Omer, 27, 223, 225. St. Omer, Notre Dame de, 237 241, 380. St. Ouen, Church of (Rouen), 15, 30, 80, 87, 241, 277. St. Peter's, at Rome, 20. "St. Peter's of the North," 71. "St. Peter's of the South," 13. St. Peter and Paul, Church of (at Tours), 165. St. Pierre d'Aleth, 336. St. Pierre de Beauvais, 28, 70-76, 140, 369. St. Pierre de Coutances, 325. St. Pierre de Lisieux, 301-304. St. Pierre de Nantes, 183, 374, 375. St. Pierre de Troyes, 274-278, 381, 382. St. Pol de Leon, 255, 339, 345. St. Pol de Leon, Cathedral of, 345-347. St. Potentien, 279. St. Quentin, Maze at, 131. St. Remi, 31, 133, 134, 136. St. Samson, 329-332. St. Savinien, 279, 282. St. Sepulchre, Church of (at St. Omer), 240. St. Servan, 335, 338. St. Sixte, 132. St. Urbain, 275. St. Vaast d'Arras, 242-246, 345, 368. St. Yves, 341. "Sainte Ampoule," The, 25, 143. Salisbury, Cathedral at, 64, 384. Salisbury, John of, 129. Saracen type of architecture at Bourges, 201. Séez, 61, 267, 277, 305. Séez, Notre Dame de, 305-309. Seine, The, 36, 106. Seine and Loire (by J. M. W. Turner), 169. Seine, Department of, 108. Senlis, 266. Senlis, Notre Dame de, 266-269. Sens, 61, 279. Sens, Guillaume of, 225, 280. Sens, St. Etienne de, 279-282, 379. Seville, Cathedral at, 20. Shakespeare on Angers (in "King John"), 173. Societé des Monuments Historiques, 35, 170, 176. Soissons, 20, 32, 41, 117, 133, 268. Soissons, Bombardment of, by the Germans, 56. Soissons, Notre Dame de, 54-58. South Kensington, 272. Stephen, Pope, 136. Stevenson (Robert Louis), 28, 42. Strasbourg, 248. Strasburg, Cathedral at, 126, 135, 227. Suger, Abbot, The, 94, 97. "Suisse, The," 80. Tancrede-de-Hauteville, 323. Tapestries at Angers, 181. Tapestries at Bayeux, 310-311. Tapestries at Le Mans, 120. Tapestries at Reims, 142, 143. Tapestries at Soissons, 58. Tapestries from Raphael's cartoons (at Beauvais), 76. Tapestry-making at Beauvais, 76; at Paris; at Arras, 76, 242, 245, 246. Tetricus, 226. Texier, 126, 131. "Thérouanne, The Great God of," 240. Torenai River, 258. Torlonia, Prince Alex, 233. Toul, 226, 247-250. Toul, St. Etienne de, 247-250. Toulouse, 151. Tour d'Auvergne, Cardinal de la, 244. Tour de Beurre (Rouen), 84, 89. Tour de Charlemagne (at Tours), 165. Tour de Hasting (at Tréguier), 340. Tour Gougin (at Nevers), 213. Tour de l'Horloge (at Tours), 165. Tour St. Eloi (at Nevers), 213. Tour de St. Martin (at Tours), 165. Touraine, Old, 163. Tournai, 41. Tours, 18, 33, 277. Tours, Church of St. Peter and Paul, 165. Tours, St. Gatien de, 147, 163, 206, 381. Tours (St. Martin of), 165. Tours, West front of St. Gatien, 74. Transition examples, 39. Transition Style of Architecture, The, 176. Tréguier, 32, 255, 339. Tréguier, Cathedral of, 339-341. "Tresor," The, at Reims, 143. "Tresor," The, at Troyes, 278. "Tresor," The, at Sens, 282. "Tresor," The, at Bayeux, 314. Treves, 214. Trianons, The, 108. Troyes, 20, 61, 274, 275. Troyes, St. Pierre de, 274-278, 381, 382. Turner (J. M. W.), "Seine and Loire," 169. Valence, 36. Valois Branch of the Orleans Family, 169. Vannes, 351. Vannes, Cathedral of, 351, 352. Vauban, 244. Vaucluse, 184. Vendôme, Matthieu de, 99. Versailles, Fountains at, 108. Versailles, St. Louis de, 108. Villeneuve, Bishop de, 193. Villers-St.-Pol, 35. Viollet-le-Duc, 83, 96, 99, 139, 181, 349. Vire, River, 315. Wellington, Duke of, 175. Westphalia, Treaty of, 249. William, Duke of Normandy, 323. Winchester, Henry, Bishop of, 121. Winchester, Prelate of, 303. Wood-carving (at Amiens), 68. Worms, 214. Yonne, The River, 191. Young, Arthur, 36, 209. 
28004	----	A LITTLE TOUR IN FRANCE [Illustration] Novels by HENRY JAMES _Six Shillings each_ THE AWKWARD AGE THE TWO MAGICS WHAT MAISIE KNEW THE OTHER HOUSE THE SPOILS OF POYNTON EMBARRASSMENTS TERMINATIONS LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN 21 Bedford Street, W.C. [Illustration] A LITTLE TOUR IN FRANCE By HENRY JAMES [Illustration] WITH NINETY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOSEPH PENNELL LONDON WILLIAM HEINEMANN 1900 [Illustration] Preface _The notes presented in this volume were gathered, as will easily be perceived, a number of years ago and on an expectation not at that time answered by the event, and were then published in the United States. The expectation had been that they should accompany a series of drawings, and they themselves were altogether governed by the pictorial spirit. They made, and they make in appearing now, after a considerable interval and for the first time, in England, no pretension to any other; they are impressions, immediate, easy, and consciously limited; if the written word may ever play the part of brush or pencil, they are sketches on "drawing-paper" and nothing more. From the moment the principle of selection and expression, with a tourist, is not the delight of the eyes and the play of fancy, it should be an energy in every way much larger; there is no happy mean, in other words, I hold, between the sense and the quest of the picture, and the surrender to it, and the sense and the quest of the constitution, the inner springs of the subject--springs and connections social, economic, historic._ _One must really choose, in other words, between the benefits of the perception of surface--a perception, when fine, perhaps none of the most frequent--and those of the perception of very complex underlying matters. If these latter had had, for me, to be taken into account, my pages would not have been collected. At the time of their original appearance the series of illustrations to which it had been their policy to cling for countenance and company failed them, after all, at the last moment, through a circumstance not now on record; and they had suddenly to begin to live their little life without assistance. That they have seemed able in any degree still to prolong even so modest a career might perhaps have served as a reason for leaving them undisturbed. In fact, however, I have too much appreciated--for any renewal of inconsistency--the opportunity of granting them at last, in an association with Mr. Pennell's admirable drawings, the benefit they have always lacked. The little book thus goes forth finally as the picture-book it was designed to be. Text and illustrations are, altogether and alike, things of the play of eye and hand and fancy--views, head-pieces, tail-pieces; through the artist's work, doubtless, in a much higher degree than the author's._ _But these are words enough on a minor point. Many things come back to me on reading my pages over--such a world of reflection and emotion as I can neither leave unmentioned nor yet, in this place, weigh them down with the full expression of. Difficult indeed would be any full expression for one who, deeply devoted always to the revelations of France, finds himself, late in life, making of the sentiment no more substantial, no more direct record than this mere revival of an accident. Not one of these small chapters but suggests to me a regret that I might not, first or last, have gone farther, penetrated deeper, spoken oftener--closed, in short, more intimately with the great general subject; and I mean, of course, not in such a form as the present, but in many another, possible and impossible. It all comes back, doubtless, this vision of missed occasions and delays overdone, to the general truth that the observer, the enjoyer, may, before he knows it, be practically too far_ in _for all that free testimony and pleasant, easy talk that are incidental to the earlier or more detached stages of a relation. There are relations that soon get beyond all merely showy appearances of value for us. Their value becomes thus private and practical, and is represented by the process--the quieter, mostly, the better--of absorption and assimilation of what the relation has done for us. For persons thus indebted to the genius of France--however, in its innumerable ways, manifested--the profit to be gained, the lesson to be learnt, is almost of itself occupation enough. They feel that they bear witness by the intelligent use and application of their advantage, and the consciousness of the artist is therefore readily a consciousness of pious service. He may repeatedly have dreamt of some such happy combination of mood and moment as shall launch him in a profession of faith, a_ demonstration _of the interesting business; he may have had inner glimpses of an explicit statement, and vaguely have sketched it to himself as one of the most candid and charming ever drawn up; but time, meanwhile, has passed, interruptions have done their dismal work, the indirect tribute, too, has perhaps, behind the altar, grown and grown; and the reflection has at all events established itself that honour is more rendered by seeing and doing one's work in the light than by brandishing the torch on the house-tops. Curiosity and admiration have operated continually, but with as little waste as they could. The drawback is only that in this case, to be handsomely consequent, one would perhaps rather not have appeared to celebrate_ any _rites. The moral of all of which is that those here embodied must pass, at the best, but for what they are worth._ _H. J._ _August 9, 1900._ [Illustration] Contents CHAPTER PAGE Introductory 1 I. Tours 3 II. Tours: the Cathedral 12 III. Tours: Saint Martin 17 " Saint Julian 20 " Plessis-les-Tours 22 " Marmoutier 23 IV. Blois 26 V. Chambord 36 VI. Amboise 47 Chaumont 51 VII. Chenonceaux 54 VIII. Azay-le-Rideau 64 IX. Langeais 68 X. Loches 72 XI. Bourges 77 " The Cathedral 80 XII. Bourges: Jacques Coeur 86 XIII. Le Mans 94 XIV. Angers 101 XV. Nantes 107 XVI. La Rochelle 115 XVII. Poitiers 122 XVIII. Angoulême 130 Bordeaux 132 XIX. Toulouse 136 XX. Toulouse: the Capitol 141 XXI. Toulouse: Saint-Sernin 145 XXII. Carcassonne 150 XXIII. Carcassonne 157 XXIV. Narbonne 163 XXV. Montpellier 170 XXVI. The Pont du Gard 178 XXVII. Aigues-Mortes 183 XXVIII. Nîmes 188 XXIX. Tarascon 195 XXX. Arles 202 " The Theatre 205 XXXI. Arles: the Museum 209 XXXII. Les Baux 213 XXXIII. Avignon 223 " The Palace of the Popes 226 XXXIV. Villeneuve-lès-Avignon 230 XXXV. Vaucluse 235 XXXVI. Orange 243 XXXVII. Macon 249 XXXVIII. Bourg-en-Bresse 254 The Church at Brou 255 XXXIX. Beaune 262 XL. Dijon 267 [Illustration] [Illustration] List of Illustrations Nîmes: the Garden (_Photogravure_) _Frontispiece_ Tours: the House of Balzac _To face page_ 8 Tours: the Cathedral (_Photogravure_) " 14 Tours: the Towers of St. Martin " 18 Blois (_Photogravure_) " 26 Blois: the Château " 28 Chambord " 38 Amboise: the Château " 48 Chenonceaux (_Photogravure_) " 56 Azay-le-Rideau " 64 Loches " 72 Loches: the Church " 74 Bourges: the House of Jacques Coeur (_Photogravure_) " 86 Bourges: Doorway, House of Jacques Coeur " 90 Bourges: the Cathedral (West Front) " 92 Le Mans: the Cathedral " 98 Angers: Old Timbered Houses " 104 La Rochelle " 118 La Rochelle: the Hôtel de Ville (_Photogravure_) " 120 Poitiers: Church of St. Radegonde (_Photogravure_) " 126 Bordeaux: the Quay (_Photogravure_) _To face page_ 134 Toulouse: St. Sernin (the Transept) " 146 Toulouse: the Garonne (_Photogravure_) " 148 Carcassonne " 158 Carcassonne (another View) " 160 Narbonne: the Washing Place " 166 Narbonne: the Cathedral and Hôtel de Ville (_Photogravure_) " 168 The Pont du Gard " 180 Aigues-Mortes " 186 Nîmes: the Cathedral " 190 Nîmes: the Amphitheatre " 192 Tarascon: the Castle " 198 Arles: St. Trophimus " 204 Arles: Ruins of the Roman Theatre " 206 Arles: Door of St. Trophimus " 210 Arles: the Cloisters (_Photogravure_) " 212 Avignon: the Church " 226 Vaucluse: Ruins of Castle " 240 Orange: the Theatre " 246 Lyons " 250 Brou: the Church (_Photogravure_) " 256 Beaune: the Hospital " 264 Dijon " 266 Dijon: the Park " 268 Courtyard, House of Jacques Coeur _Half-title_ Angers from the Bridge _Title-page_ Aigues-Mortes v Isle-sur-Sorgues viii Saint-Bénazet: the Broken Bridge ix Villeneuve-lès-Avignon xi Narbonne: the Fish Market xii Avignon from Villeneuve xiii Toulouse: Hôtel d'Assézat xvi Nantes 1 Tours from the River 3 Langeais 3 Chaumont from the River 17 Blois 26 Chambord 36 Chaumont from the Bridge 47 Chenonceaux 54 Azay-le-Rideau 64 Langeais from the Loire 68 Loches 72 Bourges 77 Bourges: the Hôtel Lallemont 86 Le Mans 94 Angers: the Castle 101 Nantes: the Quay 107 La Rochelle: Tour de la Lanterne 115 Poitiers: the Cathedral 122 Bordeaux 130 Toulouse: the Cathedral 136 Toulouse: the Place de Capitol 141 Toulouse: Saint-Sernin 145 Carcassonne from the River 150 Carcassonne 157 Arles, Landscape near 163 Montpellier: the Aqueduct 170 The Pont du Gard 178 Aigues-Mortes 183 Nîmes: the Maison Carrée 188 Tarascon and Beaucaire 195 Provençal Landscape 202 Montmajeur 209 Les Baux 213 Villeneuve-lès-Avignon 218 Avignon 223 Vaucluse, Approach to 235 Orange: the Gateway 243 Valence 249 Macon 254 Macon: the Bridge 262 Beaune: the Hospital 267 [Illustration] Introductory Though the good city of Paris appears to be less in fashion than in other days with those representatives of our race--not always, perhaps, acknowledged as the soundest and stiffest--curious of foreign opportunity and addicted to foreign sojourns, it probably none the less remains true that such frequentations of France as may be said still to flourish among us have as much as ever the wondrous capital, and the wondrous capital alone, for their object. The taste for Paris, at all events, is--or perhaps I should say was, alluding as I do, I fear, to a vanished order--a taste by itself; singularly little bound up, of necessity, with such an interest in the country at large as would be implied by an equal devotion, in other countries, to other capitals. Putting aside the economic inducement, which may always operate, and limiting the matter to the question of free choice, it is sufficiently striking that the free chooser would have to be very fond of England to quarter himself in London, very fond of Germany to quarter himself in Berlin, very fond of America to quarter himself in New York. It had, on the other hand, been a common reflection for the author of these light pages that the fondness for France (throughout the company of strangers more or less qualified) was oddly apt to feed only on such grounds for it as made shift to spread their surface between the Arc de Triomphe and the Gymnase Theatre: as if there were no good things in the _doux pays_ that could not be harvested in that field. It matters little how the assumption began to strike him as stupid, especially since he himself had doubtless equally shared in the guilt of it. The light pages in question are but the simple record of a small personal effort to shake it off. He took, it must be confessed, no extraordinary measures; he merely started, one rainy morning in mid-September, for the charming little city of Tours, where he felt that he might as immediately as anywhere else see it demonstrated that, though France might be Paris, Paris was by no means France. The beauty of the demonstration--quite as prompt as he could have desired--drew him considerably farther, and his modest but eminently successful adventure begot, as aids to amused remembrance, a few informal notes. [Illustration] Chapter i [Tours] I am ashamed to begin with saying that Touraine is the garden of France; that remark has long ago lost its bloom. The town of Tours, however, has something sweet and bright, which suggests that it is surrounded by a land of fruits. It is a very agreeable little city; few towns of its size are more ripe, more complete, or, I should suppose, in better humour with themselves and less disposed to envy the responsibilities of bigger places. It is truly the capital of its smiling province; a region of easy abundance, of good living, of genial, comfortable, optimistic, rather indolent opinions. Balzac says in one of his tales that the real Tourangeau will not make an effort, or displace himself even, to go in search of a pleasure; and it is not difficult to understand the sources of this amiable cynicism. He must have a vague conviction that he can only lose by almost any change. Fortune has been kind to him: he lives in a temperate, reasonable, sociable climate, on the banks of a river which, it is true, sometimes floods the country around it, but of which the ravages appear to be so easily repaired that its aggressions may perhaps be regarded (in a region where so many good things are certain) merely as an occasion for healthy suspense. He is surrounded by fine old traditions, religious, social, architectural, culinary; and he may have the satisfaction of feeling that he is French to the core. No part of his admirable country is more characteristically national. Normandy is Normandy, Burgundy is Burgundy, Provence is Provence; but Touraine is essentially France. It is the land of Rabelais, of Descartes, of Balzac, of good books and good company, as well as good dinners and good houses. George Sand has somewhere a charming passage about the mildness, the convenient quality, of the physical conditions of central France--"son climat souple et chaud, ses pluies abondantes et courtes." In the autumn of 1882 the rains perhaps were less short than abundant; but when the days were fine it was impossible that anything in the way of weather could be more charming. The vineyards and orchards looked rich in the fresh, gay light; cultivation was everywhere, but everywhere it seemed to be easy. There was no visible poverty; thrift and success presented themselves as matters of good taste. The white caps of the women glittered in the sunshine, and their well-made sabots clicked cheerfully on the hard, clean roads. Touraine is a land of old châteaux,--a gallery of architectural specimens and of large hereditary properties. The peasantry have less of the luxury of ownership than in most other parts of France; though they have enough of it to give them quite their share of that shrewdly conservative look which, in the little chaffering _place_ of the market-town, the stranger observes so often in the wrinkled brown masks that surmount the agricultural blouse. This is, moreover, the heart of the old French monarchy; and as that monarchy was splendid and picturesque, a reflection of the splendour still glitters in the current of the Loire. Some of the most striking events of French history have occurred on the banks of that river, and the soil it waters bloomed for a while with the flowering of the Renaissance. The Loire gives a great "style" to a landscape of which the features are not, as the phrase is, prominent, and carries the eye to distances even more poetic than the green horizons of Touraine. It is a very fitful stream, and is sometimes observed to run thin and expose all the crudities of its channel--a great defect certainly in a river which is so much depended upon to give an air to the places it waters. But I speak of it as I saw it last; full, tranquil, powerful, bending in large slow curves and sending back half the light of the sky. Nothing can be finer than the view of its course which you get from the battlements and terraces of Amboise. As I looked down on it from that elevation one lovely Sunday morning, through a mild glitter of autumn sunshine, it seemed the very model of a generous, beneficent stream. The most charming part of Tours is naturally the shaded quay that overlooks it, and looks across too at the friendly faubourg of Saint Symphorien and at the terraced heights which rise above this. Indeed, throughout Touraine it is half the charm of the Loire that you can travel beside it. The great dyke which protects it, or protects the country from it, from Blois to Angers, is an admirable road; and on the other side as well the highway constantly keeps it company. A wide river, as you follow a wide road, is excellent company; it brightens and shortens the way. The inns at Tours are in another quarter, and one of them, which is midway between the town and the station, is very good. It is worth mentioning for the fact that every one belonging to it is extraordinarily polite--so unnaturally polite as at first to excite your suspicion that the hotel has some hidden vice, so that the waiters and chambermaids are trying to pacify you in advance. There was one waiter in especial who was the most accomplished social being I have ever encountered; from morning till night he kept up an inarticulate murmur of urbanity, like the hum of a spinning-top. I may add that I discovered no dark secrets at the Hôtel de l'Univers; for it is not a secret to any traveller to-day that the obligation to partake of a lukewarm dinner in an overheated room is as imperative as it is detestable. For the rest, at Tours there is a certain Rue Royale which has pretensions to the monumental; it was constructed a hundred years ago, and the houses, all alike, have on a moderate scale a pompous eighteenth-century look. It connects the Palais de Justice, the most important secular building in the town, with the long bridge which spans the Loire--the spacious, solid bridge pronounced by Balzac, in "Le Curé de Tours," "one of the finest monuments of French architecture." The Palais de Justice was the seat of the Government of Léon Gambetta in the autumn of 1870, after the dictator had been obliged to retire in his balloon from Paris and before the Assembly was constituted at Bordeaux. The Germans occupied Tours during that terrible winter: it is astonishing, the number of places the Germans occupied. It is hardly too much to say that, wherever one goes in certain parts of France, one encounters two great historic facts: one is the Revolution; the other is the German invasion. The traces of the Revolution remain in a hundred scars and bruises and mutilations, but the visible marks of the war of 1870 have passed away. The country is so rich, so living, that she has been able to dress her wounds, to hold up her head, to smile again, so that the shadow of that darkness has ceased to rest upon her. But what you do not see you still may hear; and one remembers with a certain shudder that only a few short years ago this province, so intimately French, was under the heel of a foreign foe. To be intimately French was apparently not a safeguard; for so successful an invader it could only be a challenge. Peace and plenty, however, have succeeded that episode; and among the gardens and vineyards of Touraine it seems only a legend the more in a country of legends. It was not, all the same, for the sake of this chequered story that I mentioned the Palais de Justice and the Rue Royale. The most interesting fact, to my mind, about the high-street of Tours was that as you walk toward the bridge on the right hand _trottoir_ you can look up at the house, on the other side of the way, in which Honoré de Balzac first saw the light. That violent and complicated genius was a child of the good-humoured and succulent Touraine. There is something anomalous in this fact, though, if one thinks about it a little, one may discover certain correspondences between his character and that of his native province. Strenuous, laborious, constantly infelicitous in spite of his great successes, he suggests at times a very different set of influences. But he had his jovial, full-feeding side--the side that comes out in the "Contes Drolatiques," which are the romantic and epicurean chronicle of the old manors and abbeys of this region. And he was, moreover, the product of a soil into which a great deal of history had been trodden. Balzac was genuinely as well as affectedly monarchical, and he was saturated with a sense of the past. Number 39 Rue Royale--of which the basement, like all the basements in the Rue Royale, is occupied by a shop--is not shown to the public; and I know not whether tradition designates the chamber in which the author of "Le Lys dans la Vallée" opened his eyes into a world in which he was to see and to imagine such extraordinary things. If this were the case I would willingly have crossed its threshold; not for the sake of any relic of the great novelist which it may possibly contain, nor even for that of any mystic virtue which may be supposed to reside within its walls, but simply because to look at those four modest walls can hardly fail to give one a strong impression of the force of human endeavour. Balzac, in the maturity of his vision, took in more of human life than any one, since Shakspeare, who has attempted to tell us stories about it; and the very small scene on which his consciousness dawned is one end of the immense scale that he traversed. I confess it shocked me a little to find that he was born in a house "in a row"--a house, moreover, which at the date of his birth must have been only about twenty years old. All that is contradictory. If the tenement selected for this honour could not be ancient and embrowned, it should at least have been detached. There is a charming description in his little tale of "La Grenadière" of the view of the opposite side of [Illustration: TOURS--THE HOUSE OF BALZAC] the Loire as you have it from the square at the end of the Rue Royale--a square that has some pretensions to grandeur, overlooked as it is by the Hôtel de Ville and the Musée, a pair of edifices which directly contemplate the river, and ornamented with marble images of François Rabelais and René Descartes. The former, erected a few years since, is a very honourable production; the pedestal of the latter could, as a matter of course, only be inscribed with the _Cogito ergo Sum_. The two statues mark the two opposite poles to which the wondrous French mind has travelled; and if there were an effigy of Balzac at Tours it ought to stand midway between them. Not that he by any means always struck the happy mean between the sensible and the metaphysical; but one may say of him that half of his genius looks in one direction and half in the other. The side that turns toward François Rabelais would be, on the whole, the side that takes the sun. But there is no statue of Balzac at Tours; there is only in one of the chambers of the melancholy museum a rather clever, coarse bust. The description in "La Grenadière" of which I just spoke is too long to quote; neither have I space for anyone of the brilliant attempts at landscape-painting which are woven into the shimmering texture of "Le Lys dans la Vallée." The little manor of Clochegourde, the residence of Madame de Mortsauf, the heroine of that extraordinary work, was within a moderate walk of Tours, and the picture in the novel is presumably a copy from an original which it would be possible to-day to discover. I did not, however, even make the attempt. There are so many châteaux in Touraine commemorated in history that it would take one too far to look up those which have been commemorated in fiction. The most I did was to endeavour to identify the former residence of Mademoiselle Gamard, the sinister old maid of "Le Curé de Tours." This terrible woman occupied a small house in the rear of the cathedral, where I spent a whole morning in wondering rather stupidly which house it could be. To reach the cathedral from the little _place_ where we stopped just now to look across at the Grenadière, without, it must be confessed, very vividly seeing it, you follow the quay to the right and pass out of sight of the charming _côteau_ which, from beyond the river, faces the town--a soft agglomeration of gardens, vineyards, scattered villas, gables and turrets of slate-roofed châteaux, terraces with grey balustrades, moss-grown walls draped in scarlet Virginia-creeper. You turn into the town again beside a great military barrack which is ornamented with a rugged mediæval tower, a relic of the ancient fortifications, known to the Tourangeaux of to-day as the Tour de Guise. The young Prince of Joinville, son of that Duke of Guise who was murdered by the order of Henry II. at Blois, was, after the death of his father, confined here for more than two years, but made his escape one summer evening in 1591, under the nose of his keepers, with a gallant audacity which has attached the memory of the exploit to his sullen-looking prison. Tours has a garrison of five regiments, and the little red-legged soldiers light up the town. You see them stroll upon the clean, uncommercial quay, where there are no signs of navigation, not even by oar, no barrels nor bales, no loading nor unloading, no masts against the sky nor booming of steam in the air. The most active business that goes on there is that patient and fruitless angling in which the French, as the votaries of art for art, excel all other people. The little soldiers, weighed down by the contents of their enormous pockets, pass with respect from one of these masters of the rod to the other, as he sits soaking an indefinite bait in the large, indifferent stream. After you turn your back to the quay you have only to go a little way before you reach the cathedral. [Illustration] Chapter ii [Tours: the Cathedral] It is a very beautiful church of the second order of importance, with a charming mouse-coloured complexion and a pair of fantastic towers. There is a commodious little square in front of it, from which you may look up at its very ornamental face; but for purposes of frank admiration the sides and the rear are perhaps not sufficiently detached. The cathedral of Tours, which is dedicated to Saint Gatianus, took a long time to build. Begun in 1170, it was finished only in the first half of the sixteenth century; but the ages and the weather have interfused so well the tone of the different parts that it presents, at first at least, no striking incongruities, and looks even exceptionally harmonious and complete. There are many grander cathedrals, but there are probably few more pleasing; and this effect of delicacy and grace is at its best towards the close of a quiet afternoon, when the densely decorated towers, rising above the little Place de l'Archevêché, lift their curious lanterns into the slanting light and offer a multitudinous perch to troops of circling pigeons. The whole front, at such a time, has an appearance of great richness, although the niches which surround the three high doors (with recesses deep enough for several circles of sculpture) and indent the four great buttresses that ascend beside the huge rose-window, carry no figures beneath their little chiselled canopies. The blast of the great Revolution blew down most of the statues in France, and the wind has never set very strongly towards putting them up again. The embossed and crocketed cupolas which crown the towers of Saint Gatien are not very pure in taste; but, like a good many impurities, they have a certain character. The interior has a stately slimness with which no fault is to be found and which in the choir, rich in early glass and surrounded by a broad passage, becomes very bold and noble. Its principal treasure perhaps is the charming little tomb of the two children (who died young) of Charles VIII. and Anne of Brittany, in white marble embossed with symbolic dolphins and exquisite arabesques. The little boy and girl lie side by side on a slab of black marble, and a pair of small kneeling angels, both at their head and at their feet, watch over them. Nothing could be more elegant than this monument, which is the work of Michel Colomb, one of the earlier glories of the French Renaissance; it is really a lesson in good taste. Originally placed in the great abbey-church of Saint Martin, which was for so many ages the holy place of Tours, it happily survived the devastation to which that edifice, already sadly shattered by the wars of religion and successive profanations, finally succumbed in 1797. In 1815 the tomb found an asylum in a quiet corner of the cathedral. I ought perhaps to be ashamed to acknowledge that I found the profane name of Balzac capable of adding an interest even to this venerable sanctuary. Those who have read the terrible little story of "Le Curé de Tours" will perhaps remember that, as I have already mentioned, the simple and childlike old Abbé Birotteau, victim of the infernal machinations of the Abbé Troubert and Mademoiselle Gamard, had his quarters in the house of that lady (she had a specialty of letting lodgings to priests), which stood on the north side of the cathedral, so close under its walls that the supporting pillar of one of the great flying buttresses was planted in the spinster's garden. If you wander round behind the church in search of this more than historic habitation you will have occasion to see that the side and rear of Saint Gatien make a delectable and curious figure. A narrow lane passes beside the high wall which conceals from sight the palace of the archbishop and beneath the flying buttresses, the far-projecting gargoyles, and the fine south porch of the church. It terminates in a little dead grass-grown square entitled the Place Grégoire de Tours. All this part of the exterior of the cathedral is very brown, ancient, Gothic, grotesque; Balzac calls the whole place "a desert of stone." A battered and gabled wing or out-house (as it appears to be) of the hidden palace, with a queer old stone pulpit jutting out from it, looks down on this melancholy spot, on the other side of which is a seminary for young priests, one of whom issues from a door in a quiet corner, and, holding it open a moment behind him, shows a glimpse of a sunny garden, where you may fancy other black young figures strolling up and down. Mademoiselle Gamard's house, where she took her two abbés to board, and basely conspired with one against the other, is still farther round the cathedral. You cannot quite put your hand upon it to-day, for the dwelling of which you say to yourself that it must have been Mademoiselle Gamard's does not fulfil all the conditions mentioned in Balzac's description. The edifice in question, however, fulfils conditions enough; in particular, its little court offers hospitality to the big buttress of the church. Another buttress, corresponding with this (the two, between them, sustain the gable of the north transept), is planted in the small cloister, of which the door on the farther side of the little soundless Rue de la Psalette, where nothing seems ever to pass, opens opposite to that of Mademoiselle Gamard. There is a very genial old sacristan, who introduced me to this cloister from the church. It is very small and solitary, and much mutilated; but it nestles with a kind of wasted friendliness beneath the big walls of the cathedral. Its lower arcades have been closed, and it has a small plot of garden in the middle, with fruit-trees which I should imagine to be too much overshadowed. In one corner is a remarkably picturesque turret, the cage of a winding staircase which ascends (no great distance) to an upper gallery, where an old priest, the _chanoine-gardien_ of the church, was walking to and fro with his breviary. The turret, the gallery, and even the chanoine-gardien, belonged, that sweet September morning, to the class of objects that are dear to painters in water-colours. [Illustration] Chapter iii [Tours: Saint Martin] I have mentioned the church of Saint Martin, which was for many years the sacred spot, the shrine of pilgrimage, of Tours. Originally the simple burial-place of the great apostle who in the fourth century Christianised Gaul and who, in his day a brilliant missionary and worker of miracles, is chiefly known to modern fame as the worthy that cut his cloak in two at the gate of Amiens to share it with a beggar (tradition fails to say, I believe, what he did with the other half), the abbey of Saint Martin, through the Middle Ages, waxed rich and powerful, till it was known at last as one of the most luxurious religious houses in Christendom, with kings for its titular abbots (who, like Francis I., sometimes turned and despoiled it) and a great treasure of precious things. It passed, however, through many vicissitudes. Pillaged by the Normans in the ninth century and by the Huguenots in the sixteenth, it received its death-blow from the Revolution, which must have brought to bear upon it an energy of destruction proportionate to its mighty bulk. At the end of the last century a huge group of ruins alone remained, and what we see to-day may be called the ruin of a ruin. It is difficult to understand how so vast an edifice can have been so completely obliterated. Its site is given up to several ugly streets, and a pair of tall towers, separated by a space which speaks volumes as to the size of the church and looking across the close-pressed roofs to the happier spires of the cathedral, preserve for the modern world the memory of a great fortune, a great abuse, perhaps, and at all events a great penalty. One may believe that to this day a considerable part of the foundations of the great abbey is buried in the soil of Tours. The two surviving towers, which are dissimilar in shape, are enormous; with those of the cathedral they form the great landmarks of the town. One of them bears the name of the Tour de l'Horloge; the other, the so-called Tour Charlemagne, was erected (two centuries after her death) over the tomb of Luitgarde, wife of the great Emperor, who died at Tours in 800. I do not pretend to understand in what relation these very mighty and effectually detached masses of masonry stood to each other, but in their grey elevation and loneliness they are striking and suggestive to-day; holding their hoary heads far above the modern life of the town and looking sad and conscious, as they had outlived all uses. I know not what is supposed to have become of the bones [Illustration: TOURS--THE TOWERS OF ST. MARTIN] of the blessed saint during the various scenes of confusion in which they may have got mislaid; but a mystic connection with his wonder-working relics may be perceived in a strange little sanctuary on the left of the street, which opens in front of the Tour Charlemagne--whose immemorial base, by the way, inhabited like a cavern, with a diminutive doorway where, as I passed, an old woman stood cleaning a pot, and a little dark window decorated with homely flowers, would be appreciated by a painter in search of "bits." The present shrine of Saint Martin is enclosed (provisionally, I suppose) in a very modern structure of timber, where in a dusky cellar, to which you descend by a wooden staircase adorned with votive tablets and paper roses, is placed a tabernacle surrounded by twinkling tapers and prostrate worshippers. Even this crepuscular vault, however, fails, I think, to attain solemnity; for the whole place is strangely vulgar and garish. The Catholic Church, as churches go to-day, is certainly the most spectacular; but it must feel that it has a great fund of impressiveness to draw upon when it opens such sordid little shops of sanctity as this. It is impossible not to be struck with the grotesqueness of such an establishment as the last link in the chain of a great ecclesiastical tradition. In the same street, on the other side, a little below, is something better worth your visit than the shrine of Saint Martin. Knock at a high door in a white wall (there is a cross above it), and a fresh-faced sister of the convent of the Petit Saint Martin will let you into the charming little cloister, or rather fragment of cloister. Only one side of this surpassing structure remains, but the whole place is effective. In front of the beautiful arcade, which is terribly bruised and obliterated, is one of those walks of interlaced _tilleuls_ which are so frequent in Touraine, and into which the green light filters so softly through a lattice of clipped twigs. Beyond this is a garden, and beyond the garden are the other buildings of the convent, where the placid sisters keep a school--a test, doubtless, of placidity. The imperfect arcade, which dates from the beginning of the sixteenth century (I know nothing of it but what is related in Mrs. Pattison's "Renaissance in France"), is a truly enchanting piece of work; the cornice and the angles of the arches being covered with the daintiest sculpture of arabesques, flowers, fruit, medallions, cherubs, griffins, all in the finest and most attenuated relief. It is like the chasing of a bracelet in stone. The taste, the fancy, the elegance, the refinement, are of the order that straightens up again our drooping standard of distinction. Such a piece of work is the purest flower of the French Renaissance; there is nothing more delicate in all Touraine. [Tours: Saint Julian] There is another fine thing at Tours which is not particularly delicate, but which makes a great impression--the very interesting old church of Saint Julian, lurking in a crooked corner at the right of the Rue Royale, near the point at which this indifferent thoroughfare emerges, with its little cry of admiration, on the bank of the Loire. Saint Julian stands to-day in a kind of neglected hollow, where it is much shut in by houses; but in the year 1225, when the edifice was begun, the site was doubtless, as the architects say, more eligible. At present indeed, when once you have caught a glimpse of the stout, serious Romanesque tower--which is not high, but strong--you feel that the building has something to say and that you must stop to listen to it. Within, it has a vast and splendid nave, of immense height, the nave of a cathedral, with a shallow choir and transepts and some admirable old glass. I spent half an hour there one morning, listening to what the church had to say, in perfect solitude. Not a worshipper entered, not even an old man with a broom. I have always thought there be a sex in fine buildings; and Saint Julian, with its noble nave, is of the gender of the name of its patron. It was that same morning, I think, that I went in search of the old houses of Tours; for the town contains several goodly specimens of the domestic architecture of the past. The dwelling to which the average Anglo-Saxon will most promptly direct his steps, and the only one I have space to mention, is the so-called Maison de Tristan l'Hermite--a gentleman whom the readers of "Quentin Durward" will not have forgotten--the hangman-in-ordinary to that great and prompt chastener Louis XI. Unfortunately the house of Tristan is not the house of Tristan at all; this illusion has been cruelly dispelled. There are no illusions left at all, in the good city of Tours, with regard to Louis XI. His terrible castle of Plessis, the picture of which sends a shiver through the youthful reader of Scott, has been reduced to suburban insignificance; and the residence of his _triste compère_, on the front of which a festooned rope figures as a motive for decoration, is observed to have been erected in the succeeding century. The Maison de Tristan may be visited for itself, however, if not for Sir Walter; it is an exceedingly picturesque old façade, to which you pick your way through a narrow and tortuous street--a street terminating, a little beyond it, in the walk beside the river. An elegant Gothic doorway is let into the rusty-red brickwork, and strange little beasts crouch at the angles of the windows, which are surmounted by a tall graduated gable, pierced with a small orifice, where the large surface of brick, lifted out of the shadow of the street, looks yellow and faded. The whole thing is disfigured and decayed; but it is a capital subject for a sketch in colours. Only I must wish the sketcher better luck--or a better temper--than my own. If he ring the bell to be admitted to see the court, which I believe is more sketchable still, let him have patience to wait till the bell is answered. He can do the outside while they are coming. [Tours: Plessis-les-Tours] The Maison de Tristan, I say, may be visited for itself; but I hardly know for what the remnants of Plessis-les-Tours may be investigated. To reach them you wander through crooked suburban lanes, down the course of the Loire, to a rough, undesirable, incongruous spot, where a small, crude building of red brick is pointed out to you by your cabman (if you happen to drive) as the legendary frame of the grim portrait, and where a strong odour of pigsties and other unclean things so prostrates you for the moment that you have no energy to protest against this obvious fiction. You enter a yard encumbered with rubbish and a defiant dog, and an old woman emerges from a shabby lodge and assures you that you stand deep in historic dust. The red brick building, which looks like a small factory, rises on the ruins of the favourite residence of the dreadful Louis. It is now occupied by a company of night-scavengers, whose huge carts are drawn up in a row before it. I know not whether this be what is called the irony of fate; in any case, the effect of it is to accentuate strongly the fact (and through the most susceptible of our senses) that there is no honour for the authors of great wrongs. The dreadful Louis is reduced simply to an offence to the nostrils. The old woman shows you a few fragments--several dark, damp, much-encumbered vaults, denominated dungeons, and an old tower staircase in good condition. There are the outlines of the old moat; there is also the outline of the old guard-room, which is now a stable; and there are other silhouettes of the undistinguishable, which I have forgotten. You need all your imagination, and even then you cannot make out that Plessis was a castle of large extent, though the old woman, as your eye wanders over the neighbouring _potagers_, discourses much of the gardens and the park. The place looks mean and flat; and as you drive away you scarcely know whether to be glad or sorry that all those bristling horrors have been reduced to the commonplace. [Tours: Marmoutier] A certain flatness of impression awaits you also, I think, at Marmoutier, which is the other indispensable excursion in the near neighbourhood of Tours. The remains of this famous abbey lie on the other bank of the stream, about a mile and a half from the town. You follow the edge of the big brown river; of a fine afternoon you will be glad to go farther still. The abbey has gone the way of most abbeys; but the place is a restoration as well as a ruin, inasmuch as the Sisters of the Sacred Heart have erected a terribly modern convent here. A large Gothic doorway, in a high fragment of ancient wall, admits you to a garden-like enclosure, of great extent, from which you are further introduced into an extraordinarily tidy little parlour, where two good nuns sit at work. One of these came out with me and showed me over the place--a very definite little woman, with pointed features, an intensely distinct enunciation, and those pretty manners which (for whatever other teachings it may be responsible) the Catholic Church so often instils into its functionaries. I have never seen a woman who had got her lesson better than this little trotting, murmuring, edifying nun. The interest of Marmoutier to-day is not so much an interest of vision, so to speak, as an interest of reflection--that is, if you choose to reflect (for instance) upon the wondrous legend of the seven sleepers (you may see where they lie in a row), who lived together--they were brothers and cousins--in primitive piety, in the sanctuary constructed by the blessed Saint Martin (emulous of his precursor, Saint Gatianus), in the face of the hillside that overhung the Loire, and who, twenty-five years after his death, yielded up their seven souls at the same moment and enjoyed the rare convenience of retaining in their faces, in spite of mortality, every aspect of health. The abbey of Marmoutier, which sprang from the grottos in the cliff to which Saint Gatianus and Saint Martin retired to pray, was therefore the creation of the latter worthy, as the other great abbey, in the town proper, was the monument of his repose. The cliff is still there; and a winding staircase, in the latest taste, enables you conveniently to explore its recesses. These sacred niches are scooped out of the rock, and will give you an impression if you cannot do without one. You will feel them to be sufficiently venerable when you learn that the particular pigeon-hole of Saint Gatianus, the first Christian missionary to Gaul, dates from the third century. They have been dealt with as the Catholic Church deals with most of such places to-day; polished and furbished up, labelled and ticketed--_edited_, with notes, in short, like an old book. The process is a mistake--the early editions had more sanctity. The modern buildings (of the Sacred Heart), on which you look down from these points of vantage, are in the vulgar taste which sets its so mechanical stamp on all new Catholic work; but there was nevertheless a great sweetness in the scene. The afternoon was lovely, and it was flushing to a close. The large garden stretched beneath us, blooming with fruit and and wine and succulent promise, and beyond it flowed the shining river. The air was still, the shadows were long, and the place, after all, was full of memories, most of which might pass for virtuous. It certainly was better than Plessis-les-Tours. [Illustration] Chapter iv [Blois] Your business at Tours is to make excursions; and if you make them all you will be always under arms. The land is a rich reliquary, and an hour's drive from the town in almost any direction will bring you to the knowledge of some curious fragment of domestic or ecclesiastical architecture, some turreted manor, some lonely tower, some gabled village, some scene of something. Yet even if you do everything--which was not my case--you cannot hope to tell everything, and, fortunately for you, the excursions divide themselves into the greater and the less. You may achieve most of the greater in a week or two; but a summer in Touraine (which, by the way, must be a [Illustration: BLOIS] delectable thing) would hold none too many days for the others. If you come down to Tours from Paris your best economy is to spend a few days at Blois, where a clumsy but rather attractive little inn on the edge of the river will offer you a certain amount of that familiar and intermittent hospitality which a few weeks spent in the French provinces teaches you to regard as the highest attainable form of accommodation. Such an economy I was unable to practise. I could only go to Blois (from Tours) to spend the day; but this feat I accomplished twice over. It is a very sympathetic little town, as we say nowadays, and a week there would be sociable even without company. Seated on the north bank of the Loire, it presents a bright, clean face to the sun and has that aspect of cheerful leisure which belongs to all white towns that reflect themselves in shining waters. It is the water-front only of Blois, however, that exhibits this fresh complexion; the interior is of a proper brownness, as old sallow books are bound in vellum. The only disappointment is perforce the discovery that the castle, which is the special object of one's pilgrimage, does not overhang the river, as I had always allowed myself to understand. It overhangs the town, but is scarcely visible from the stream. That peculiar good fortune is reserved for Amboise and Chaumont. The Château de Blois is one of the most beautiful and elaborate of all the old royal residences of this part of France, and I suppose it should have all the honours of my description. As you cross its threshold you step straight into the sunshine and storm of the French Renaissance. But it is too rich to describe--I can only pick out the high lights. It must be premised that in speaking of it as we see it to-day we speak of a monument unsparingly restored. The work of restoration has been as ingenious as it is profuse, but it rather chills the imagination. This is perhaps almost the first thing you feel as you approach the castle from the streets of the town. These little streets, as they leave the river, have pretensions to romantic steepness; one of them, indeed, which resolves itself into a high staircase with divergent wings (the _escalier monumental_), achieved this result so successfully as to remind me vaguely--I hardly know why--of the great slope of the Capitol, beside the Ara Coeli, at Rome. The view of that part of the castle which figures to-day as the back (it is the only aspect I had seen reproduced) exhibits the marks of restoration with the greatest assurance. The long façade, consisting only of balconied windows deeply recessed, erects itself on the summit of a considerable hill, which gives a fine, plunging movement to its foundations. The deep niches of the windows are all aglow with colour. They have been repainted with red and blue, relieved with gold figures; and each of them looks more like the royal box at a theatre than like the aperture of a palace dark with memories. For all this, however, and in spite of the fact that, as in some others of the châteaux of Touraine (always excepting the colossal Chambord, which is not in Touraine), there is less vastness than one had expected, the least hospitable aspect of Blois is abundantly impressive. Here, as elsewhere, lightness and grace are the keynote; and the recesses of the windows, with their happy proportions, their sculpture and their colour, are the hollow sockets of the human ornament. They need the figure of a Francis I. to complete them, or of a Diane de Poitiers, or even of a Henry III. The stand of this empty gilt cage emerges from a bed of light verdure which has been allowed to mass itself there and which contributes [Illustration: BLOIS--THE CHÂTEAU] to the springing look of the walls; while on the right it joins the most modern portion of the castle, the building erected, on foundations of enormous height and solidity, in 1635, by Gaston d'Orléans. This fine frigid mansion--the proper view of it is from the court within--is one of the masterpieces of François Mansard, whom a kind providence did not allow to make over the whole palace in the superior manner of his superior age. That had been a part of Gaston's plan--he was a blunderer born, and this precious project was worthy of him. This execution of it would surely have been one of the great misdeeds of history. Partially performed, the misdeed is not altogether to be regretted; for as one stands in the court of the castle and lets one's eye wander from the splendid wing of Francis I.--which is the last word of free and joyous invention--to the ruled lines and blank spaces of the ponderous pavilion of Mansard, one makes one's reflections upon the advantage, in even the least personal of the arts, of having something to say, and upon the stupidity of a taste which had ended by becoming an aggregation of negatives. Gaston's wing, taken by itself, has much of the _bel air_ which was to belong to the architecture of Louis XIV.; but, taken in contrast to its flowering, laughing, living neighbour, it marks the difference between inspiration and calculation. We scarcely grudge it its place, however, for it adds a price to the rest of the pile. We have entered the court, by the way, by jumping over the walls. The more orthodox method is to follow a modern terrace which leads to the left, from the side of the edifice that I began by speaking of, and passes round, ascending, to a little square on a considerably higher level, a square not, like the rather prosaic space on which the back (as I have called it) looks out, a thoroughfare. This small empty _place_, oblong in form, at once bright and quiet, and which ought to be grass-grown, offers an excellent setting to the entrance-front of the palace--the wing of Louis XII. The restoration here has been lavish; but it was perhaps but an inevitable reaction against the injuries, still more lavish, by which the unfortunate building had long been overwhelmed. It had fallen into a state of ruinous neglect, relieved only by the misuse proceeding from successive generations of soldiers, for whom its charming chambers served as barrack-room. Whitewashed, mutilated, dishonoured, the castle of Blois may be said to have escaped simply with its life. This is the history of Amboise as well, and is to a certain extent the history of Chambord. Delightful, at any rate, was the refreshed façade of Louis XII. as I stood and looked at it one bright September morning. In that soft, clear, merry light of Touraine, everything shows, everything speaks. Charming are the taste, the happy proportions, the colour of this beautiful front, to which the new feeling for a purely domestic architecture--an architecture of security and tranquillity, in which art could indulge itself--gave an air of youth and gladness. It is true that for a long time to come the castle of Blois was neither very safe nor very quiet; but its dangers came from within, from the evil passions of its inhabitants, and not from siege or invasion. The front of Louis XII. is of red brick, crossed here and there with purple; and the purple slate of the high roof, relieved with chimneys beautifully treated and with the embroidered caps of pinnacles and arches, with the porcupine of Louis, the ermine and the festooned rope which formed the devices of Anne of Brittany--the tone of this decorative roof carries out the mild glow of the wall. The wide, fair windows open as if they had expanded to let in the rosy dawn of the Renaissance. Charming, for that matter, are the windows of all the châteaux of Touraine, with their squareness corrected (as it is not in the Tudor architecture) by the curve of the upper corners, which gives this line the look, above the expressive aperture, of a pencilled eyebrow. The low door of this front is crowned by a high, deep niche, in which, under a splendid canopy, stiffly astride of a stiffly-draped charger, sits in profile an image of the good King Louis. Good as he had been--the father of his people, as he was called (I believe he remitted various taxes)--he was not good enough to pass muster at the Revolution; and the effigy I have just described is no more than a reproduction of the primitive statue demolished at that period. Pass beneath it into the court, and the sixteenth century closes round you. It is a pardonable flight of fancy to say that the expressive faces of an age in which human passions lay very near the surface seem to peep out at you from the windows, from the balconies, from the thick foliage of the sculpture. The portion of the wing of Louis XII. that fronts toward the court is supported on a deep arcade. On your right is the wing erected by Francis I., the reverse of the mass of building which you see on approaching the castle. This exquisite, this extravagant, this transcendent piece of architecture is the most joyous utterance of the French Renaissance. It is covered with an embroidery of sculpture in which every detail is worthy of the hand of a goldsmith. In the middle of it, or rather a little to the left, rises the famous winding staircase (plausibly, but I believe not religiously, restored), which even the ages which most misused it must vaguely have admired. It forms a kind of chiselled cylinder, with wide interstices, so that the stairs are open to the air. Every inch of this structure, of its balconies, its pillars, its great central columns, is wrought over with lovely images, strange and ingenious devices, prime among which is the great heraldic salamander of Francis I. The salamander is everywhere at Blois--over the chimneys, over the doors, on the walls. This whole quarter of the castle bears the stamp of that eminently pictorial prince. The running cornice along the top of the front is like an unfolded, an elongated bracelet. The windows of the attic are like shrines for saints. The gargoyles, the medallions, the statuettes, the festoons are like the elaboration of some precious cabinet rather than the details of a building exposed to the weather and to the ages. In the interior there is a profusion of restoration, and it is all restoration in colour. This has been, evidently, a work of great energy and cost, but it will easily strike you as overdone. The universal freshness is a discord, a false note; it seems to light up the dusky past with an unnatural glare. Begun in the reign of Louis Philippe, this terrible process--the more terrible always the better case you conceive made out for it--has been carried so far that there is now scarcely a square inch of the interior that preserves the colour of the past. It is true that the place had been so coated over with modern abuse that something was needed to keep it alive; it is only perhaps a pity the clever doctors, not content with saving its life, should have undertaken to restore its bloom. The love of consistency, in such a business, is a dangerous lure. All the old apartments have been rechristened, as it were; the geography of the castle has been re-established. The guard-rooms, the bedrooms, the closets, the oratories have recovered their identity. Every spot connected with the murder of the Duke of Guise is pointed out by a small, shrill boy, who takes you from room to room and who has learned his lesson in perfection. The place is full of Catherine de'Medici, of Henry III., of memories, of ghosts, of echoes, of possible evocations and revivals. It is covered with crimson and gold. The fireplaces and the ceilings are magnificent; they look like expensive "sets" at the grand opera. I should have mentioned that below, in the court, the front of the wing of Gaston d'Orléans faces you as you enter, so that the place is a course of French history. Inferior in beauty and grace to the other portions of the castle, the wing is yet a nobler monument than the memory of Gaston deserves. The second of the sons of Henry IV.--who was no more fortunate as a father than as a husband--younger brother of Louis XIII. and father of the great Mademoiselle, the most celebrated, most ambitious, most self-complacent and most unsuccessful _fille à marier_ in French history, passed in enforced retirement at the castle of Blois the close of a life of clumsy intrigues against Cardinal Richelieu, in which his rashness was only equalled by his pusillanimity and his ill-luck by his inaccessibility to correction, and which, after so many follies and shames, was properly summed up in the project--begun, but not completed--of demolishing the beautiful habitation of his exile in order to erect a better one. With Gaston d'Orléans, however, who lived there without dignity, the history of the Château de Blois declines. Its interesting period is that of the wars of religion. It was the chief residence of Henry III., and the scene of the principal events of his depraved and dramatic rule. It has been restored more than enough, as I have said, by architects and decorators; the visitor, as he moves through its empty rooms, which are at once brilliant and ill-lighted (they have not been refurnished), undertakes a little restoration of his own. His imagination helps itself from the things that remain; he tries to see the life of the sixteenth century in its form and dress--its turbulence, its passions, its loves and hates, its treacheries, falsities, sincerities, faith, its latitude of personal development, its presentation of the whole nature, its nobleness of costume, charm of speech, splendour of taste, unequalled picturesqueness. The picture is full of movement, of contrasted light and darkness, full altogether of abominations. Mixed up with them all is the great theological motive, so that the drama wants little to make it complete. What episode was ever more perfect--looked at as a dramatic occurrence--than the murder of the Duke of Guise? The insolent prosperity of the victim; the weakness, the vices, the terrors, of the author of the deed; the perfect execution of the plot; the accumulation of horror in what followed it--render it, as a crime, one of the classic things. But we must not take the Château de Blois too hard: I went there, after all, by way of entertainment. If among these sinister memories your visit should threaten to prove a tragedy, there is an excellent way of removing the impression. You may treat yourself at Blois to a very cheerful afterpiece. There is a charming industry practised there, and practised in charming conditions. Follow the bright little quay down the river till you get quite out of the town and reach the point where the road beside the Loire becomes sinuous and attractive, turns the corner of diminutive headlands and makes you wonder what is beyond. Let not your curiosity induce you, however, to pass by a modest white villa which overlooks the stream, enclosed in a fresh little court; for here dwells an artist--an artist in faience. There is no sort of sign, and the place looks peculiarly private. But if you ring at the gate you will not be turned away. You will, on the contrary, be ushered upstairs into a parlour--there is nothing resembling a shop--encumbered with specimens of remarkably handsome pottery. The ware is of the best, a careful reproduction of old forms, colours, devices; and the master of the establishment is one of those completely artistic types that are often found in France. His reception is as friendly as his work is ingenious; and I think it is not too much to say that you like the work better because he has produced it. His vases, cups and jars, lamps, platters, _plaques_, with their brilliant glaze, their innumerable figures, their family likeness and wide variations, are scattered through his occupied rooms; they serve at once as his stock-in-trade and as household ornament. As we all know, this is an age of prose, of machinery, of wholesale production, of coarse and hasty processes. But one brings away from the establishment of the very intelligent M. Ulysse the sense of a less eager activity and a greater search for perfection. He has but a few workmen and he gives them plenty of time. The place makes a little vignette, leaves an impression--the quiet white house in its garden on the road by the wide, clear river, without the smoke, the bustle, the ugliness, of so much of our modern industry. It struck me as an effort Mr. Ruskin might have inspired and Mr. William Morris--though that be much to say--have forgiven. [Illustration] Chapter v [Chambord] The second time I went to Blois I took a carriage for Chambord, and came back by the Château de Cheverny and the forest of Russy--a charming little expedition, to which the beauty of the afternoon (the finest in a rainy season that was spotted with bright days) contributed not a little. To go to Chambord you cross the Loire, leave it on one side and strike away through a country in which salient features become less and less numerous and which at last has no other quality than a look of intense and peculiar rurality--the characteristic, even when it be not the charm, of so much of the landscape of France. This is not the appearance of wildness, for it goes with great cultivation; it is simply the presence of the delving, drudging, economising peasant. But it is a deep, unrelieved rusticity. It is a peasant's landscape; not, as in England, a landlord's. On the way to Chambord you enter the flat and sandy Sologne. The wide horizon opens out like a great _potager_, without interruptions, without an eminence, with here and there a long, low stretch of wood. There is an absence of hedges, fences, signs of property; everything is absorbed in the general flatness--the patches of vineyard, the scattered cottages, the villages, the children (planted and staring and almost always pretty), the women in the fields, the white caps, the faded blouses, the big sabots. At the end of an hour's drive (they assure you at Blois that even with two horses you will spend double that time), I passed through a sort of gap in a wall which does duty as the gateway of the domain of a proscribed pretender. I followed a straight avenue through a disfeatured park--the park of Chambord has twenty-one miles of circumference; a very sandy, scrubby, melancholy plantation, in which the timber must have been cut many times over and is to-day a mere tangle of brushwood. Here, as in so many spots in France, the traveller perceives that he is in a land of revolutions. Nevertheless its great extent and the long perspective of its avenues give this frugal shrubbery a certain state; just as its shabbiness places it in agreement with one of the strongest impressions awaiting you. You pursue one of these long perspectives a proportionate time, and at last you see the chimneys and pinnacles of Chambord rise apparently out of the ground. The filling-in of the wide moats that formerly surrounded it has, in vulgar parlance, let it down and given it a monstrous over-crowned air that is at the same time a magnificent Orientalism. The towers, the turrets, the cupolas, the gables, the lanterns, the chimneys look more like the spires of a city than the salient points of a single building. You emerge from the avenue and find yourself at the foot of an enormous fantastic mass. Chambord has a strange mixture of society and solitude. A little village clusters within view of its liberal windows, and a couple of inns near by offer entertainment to pilgrims. These things of course are incidents of the political proscription which hangs its thick veil over the place. Chambord is truly royal--royal in its great scale, its grand air, its indifference to common considerations. If a cat may look at a king, a tavern may look at a palace. I enjoyed my visit to this extraordinary structure as much as if I had been a legitimist; and indeed there is something interesting in any monument of a great system, any bold presentation of a tradition. You leave your vehicle at one of the inns, which are very decent and tidy and in which every one is very civil, as if in this latter respect the neighbourhood of a Court veritably set the fashion, and you proceed across the grass and the gravel to a small door, a door infinitely subordinate and conferring no title of any kind on those who enter it. Here you ring a bell, which a highly respectable person answers (a person perceptibly affiliated, again, to the old regime), after which she ushers you over a vestibule into an inner court. Perhaps the strongest impression I got at Chambord came to me as I stood in this court. The woman who admitted me did not come with me; I was to find my guide somewhere else. The specialty of Chambord is its prodigious round towers. There are, I believe, no less than eight of them, placed at each angle of the inner and outer square of buildings; for the castle is in the form of a larger structure which encloses a smaller one. One of these towers stood before me in the court; it seemed to fling its shadow [Illustration: CHAMBORD] over the place; while above, as I looked up, the pinnacles and gables, the enormous chimneys, soared into the bright blue air. The place was empty and silent; shadows of gargoyles, of extraordinary projections, were thrown across the clear grey surfaces. One felt that the whole thing was monstrous. A cicerone appeared, a languid young man in a rather shabby livery, and led me about with a mixture of the impatient and the desultory, of condescension and humility. I do not profess to understand the plan of Chambord, and I may add that I do not even desire to do so; for it is much more entertaining to think of it, as you can so easily, as an irresponsible, insoluble labyrinth. Within it is a wilderness of empty chambers, a royal and romantic barrack. The exiled prince to whom it gives its title has not the means to keep up four hundred rooms; he contents himself with preserving the huge outside. The repairs of the prodigious roof alone must absorb a large part of his revenue. The great feature of the interior is the celebrated double staircase, rising straight through the building, with two courses of steps, so that people may ascend and descend without meeting. This staircase is a truly majestic piece of humour; it gives you the note, as it were, of Chambord. It opens on each landing to a vast guard-room, in four arms, radiations of the winding shaft. My guide made me climb to the great open-work lantern which, springing from the roof at the termination of the rotund staircase (surmounted here by a smaller one), forms the pinnacle of the bristling crown of the pile. This lantern is tipped with a huge _fleur-de-lis_ in stone--the only one, I believe, that the Revolution did not succeed in pulling down. Here, from narrow windows, you look over the wide, flat country and the tangled, melancholy park, with the rotation of its straight avenues. Then you walk about the roof in a complication of galleries, terraces, balconies, through the multitude of chimneys and gables. This roof, which is in itself a sort of castle in the air, has an extravagant, fabulous quality, and with its profuse ornamentation--the salamander of Francis I. is a constant motive--its lonely pavements, its sunny niches, the balcony that looks down over the closed and grass-grown main entrance, a strange, half-sad, half-brilliant charm. The stonework is covered with fine mould. There are places that reminded me of some of those quiet mildewed corners of courts and terraces into which the traveller who wanders through the Vatican looks down from neglected windows. They show you two or three furnished rooms, with Bourbon portraits, hideous tapestries from the ladies of France, a collection of the toys of the _enfant du miracle_, all military and of the finest make. "Tout cela fonctionne," the guide said of these miniature weapons; and I wondered, if he should take it into his head to fire off his little cannon, how much harm the Comte de Chambord would do. From below the castle would look crushed by the redundancy of its upper protuberances if it were not for the enormous girth of its round towers, which appear to give it a robust lateral development. These towers, however, fine as they are in their way, struck me as a little stupid; they are the exaggeration of an exaggeration. In a building erected after the days of defence and proclaiming its peaceful character from its hundred embroideries and cupolas, they seem to indicate a want of invention. I shall risk the accusation of bad taste if I say that, impressive as it is, the Château de Chambord seemed to me to have altogether a touch of that quality of stupidity. The trouble is that it stands for nothing very momentous; it has not happened, in spite of sundry vicissitudes, to have a strongly-marked career. Compared with that of Blois and Amboise its past is rather vacant; and one feels to a certain extent the contrast between its pompous appearance and its spacious but somewhat colourless annals. It had indeed the good fortune to be erected by Francis I., whose name by itself expresses a good deal of history. Why he should have built a palace in those sandy plains will ever remain an unanswered question, for kings have never been obliged to give reasons. In addition to the fact that the country was rich in game and that Francis was a passionate hunter, it is suggested by M. de la Saussaye, the author of the very complete little account of the place which you may buy at the bookseller's at Blois, that he was governed in his choice of the site by the chance that a charming woman had previously lived there. The Comtesse de Thoury had a manor in the neighbourhood, and the Comtesse de Thoury had been the object of a youthful passion on the part of the most susceptible of princes before his accession to the throne. This great pile was reared, therefore, according to M. de la Saussaye, as a _souvenir de premières amours_! It is certainly a very massive memento; and if these tender passages were proportionate to the building that commemorates them, the flame blazed indeed. There has been much discussion as to the architect employed by Francis I., and the honour of having designed this splendid residence has been claimed for several of the Italian artists who early in the sixteenth century came to seek patronage in France. It seems well established to-day, however, that Chambord was the work neither of Primaticcio, of Vignola, nor of Il Rosso, all of whom have left some trace of their sojourn in France; but of an obscure yet very complete genius, Pierre Nepveu, known as Pierre Trinqueau, who is designated in the papers which preserve in some degree the history of the origin of the edifice, as the _maistre de l'oeuvre de maçonnerie_. Behind this modest title, apparently, we must recognise one of the most original talents of the French Renaissance; and it is a proof of the vigour of the artistic life of that period that, brilliant production being everywhere abundant, an artist of so high a value should not have been treated by his contemporaries as a celebrity. We make our celebrities to-day at smaller cost. The immediate successors of Francis I. continued to visit Chambord; but it was neglected by Henry IV. and was never afterwards a favourite residence of any French king. Louis XIV. appeared there on several occasions, and the apparition was characteristically brilliant; but Chambord could not long detain a monarch who had gone to the expense of creating a Versailles ten miles from Paris. With Versailles, Fontainebleau, Saint-Germain and Saint-Cloud within easy reach of their capital, the later French sovereigns had little reason to take the air in the dreariest province of their kingdom. Chambord therefore suffered from royal indifference, though in the last century a use was found for its deserted halls. In 1725 it was occupied by the luckless Stanislaus Leczynski, who spent the greater part of his life in being elected King of Poland and being ousted from his throne, and who, at this time a refugee in France, had found a compensation for some of his misfortunes in marrying his daughter to Louis XV. He lived eight years at Chambord and filled up the moats of the castle. In 1748 it found an illustrious tenant in the person of Maurice de Saxe, the victor of Fontenoy, who, however, two years after he had taken possession of it, terminated a life which would have been longer had he been less determined to make it agreeable. The Revolution, of course, was not kind to Chambord. It despoiled it in so far as possible of every vestige of its royal origin, and swept like a whirlwind through apartments to which upwards of two centuries had contributed a treasure of decoration and furniture. In that wild blast these precious things were destroyed or for ever scattered. In 1791 an odd proposal was made to the French Government by a company of English Quakers, who had conceived the bold idea of establishing in the palace a manufacture of some peaceful commodity not to-day recorded. Napoleon allotted Chambord, as a "dotation," to one of his marshals, Berthier, for whose benefit it was converted, in Napoleonic fashion, into the so-called principality of Wagram. By the Princess of Wagram, the marshal's widow, it was, after the Restoration, sold to the trustees of a national subscription which had been established for the purpose of presenting it to the infant Duke of Bordeaux, then prospective King of France. The presentation was duly made; but the Comte de Chambord, who had changed his title in recognition of the gift, was despoiled of his property by the government of Louis Philippe. He appealed for redress to the tribunals of his country; and the consequence of his appeal was an interminable litigation, by which, however, finally, after the lapse of twenty-five years, he was established in his rights. In 1871 he paid his first visit to the domain which had been offered him half a century before, a term of which he had spent forty years in exile. It was from Chambord that he dated his famous letter of the 5th of July of that year--the letter, directed to his so-called subjects, in which he waves aloft the white flag of the Bourbons. This rare miscalculation--virtually an invitation to the French people to repudiate, as their national ensign, that immortal tricolour, the flag of the Revolution and the Empire, under which they have won the glory which of all glories has hitherto been dearest to them and which is associated with the most romantic, the most heroic, the epic, the consolatory, period of their history--this luckless manifesto, I say, appears to give the measure of the political wisdom of the excellent Henry V. The proposal should have had less simplicity or the people less irony. On the whole Chambord makes a great impression; and the hour I was there, while the yellow afternoon light slanted upon the September woods, there was a dignity in its desolation. It spoke, with a muffled but audible voice, of the vanished monarchy, which had been so strong, so splendid, but to-day had become a vision almost as fantastic as the cupolas and chimneys that rose before me. I thought, while I lingered there, of all the fine things it takes to make up such a monarchy; and how one of them is a superfluity of mouldering, empty palaces. Chambord is touching--that is the best word for it; and if the hopes of another restoration are in the follies of the Republic, a little reflection on that eloquence of ruin ought to put the Republic on its guard. A sentimental tourist may venture to remark that in presence of all the haunted houses that appeal in this mystical manner to the retrospective imagination it cannot afford to be foolish. I thought of all this as I drove back to Blois by the way of the Château de Cheverny. The road took us out of the park of Chambord, but through a region of flat woodland, where the trees were not mighty, and again into the prosy plain of the Sologne--a thankless soil to sow, I believe, but lately much amended by the magic of cheerful French industry and thrift. The light had already begun to fade, and my drive reminded me of a passage in some rural novel of Madame Sand. I passed a couple of timber and plaster churches, which looked very old, black and crooked, and had lumpish wooden porches and galleries encircling the base. By the time I reached Cheverny the clear twilight had approached. It was late to ask to be allowed to visit an inhabited house; but it was the hour at which I like best to visit almost anything. My coachman drew up before a gateway, in a high wall, which opened upon a short avenue, along which I took my way on foot; the coachmen in those parts being, for reasons best known to themselves, mortally averse to driving up to a house. I answered the challenge of a very tidy little portress who sat, in company with a couple of children, enjoying the evening air in front of her lodge, and who told me to walk a little farther and turn to the right. I obeyed her to the letter, and my turn brought me into sight of a house as charming as an old manor in a fairy tale. I had but a rapid and partial view of Cheverny; but that view was a glimpse of perfection. A light, sweet mansion stood looking over a wide green lawn, over banks of flowers and groups of trees. It had a striking character of elegance, produced partly by a series of Renaissance busts let into circular niches in the façade. The place looked so private, so reserved, that it seemed an act of violence to ring, a stranger and foreigner, at the graceful door. But if I had not rung I should be unable to express--as it is such a pleasure to do--my sense of the exceeding courtesy with which this admirable house is shown. It was near the dinner-hour--the most sacred hour of the day; but I was freely conducted into the inhabited apartments. They are extremely beautiful. What I chiefly remember is the charming staircase of white embroidered stone, and the great _salle des gardes_ and _chambre à coucher du roi_ on the second floor. Cheverny, built in 1634, is of a much later date than the other royal residences of this part of France; it belongs to the end of the Renaissance and has a touch of the rococo. The guard-room is a superb apartment; and as it contains little save its magnificent ceiling and fireplace and certain dim tapestries on its walls, you the more easily take the measure of its noble proportions. The servant opened the shutters of a single window, and the last rays of the twilight slanted into the rich brown gloom. It was in the same picturesque fashion that I saw the bedroom (adjoining) of Henry IV., where a legendary-looking bed, draped in folds long unaltered, defined itself in the haunted dusk. Cheverny remains to me a very charming, a partly mysterious vision. I drove back to Blois in the dark, some nine miles, through the forest of Russy, which belongs to the State and which, though consisting apparently of small timber, looked under the stars sufficiently vast and primeval. There was a damp autumnal smell and the occasional sound of a stirring thing; and as I moved through the evening air I thought of Francis I. and Henry IV. [Illustration] Chapter vi [Amboise] You may go to Amboise either from Blois or from Tours; it is about half-way between these towns. The great point is to go, especially if you have put it off repeatedly; and to go, if possible, on a day when the great view of the Loire, which you enjoy from the battlements and terraces, presents itself under a friendly sky. Three persons, of whom the author of these lines was one, spent the greater part of a perfect Sunday morning in looking at it. It was astonishing, in the course of the rainiest season in the memory of the oldest Tourangeau, how many perfect days we found to our hand. The town of Amboise lies, like Tours, on the left bank of the river--a little white-faced town staring across an admirable bridge and leaning, behind, as it were, against the pedestal of rock on which the dark castle masses itself. The town is so small, the pedestal so big and the castle so high and striking, that the clustered houses at the base of the rock are like the crumbs that have fallen from a well-laden table. You pass among them, however, to ascend by a circuit to the château, which you attack, obliquely, from behind. It is the property of the Comte de Paris, another pretender to the French throne; having come to him remotely, by inheritance, from his ancestor, the Duc de Penthièvre, who toward the close of the last century bought it from the Crown, which had recovered it after a lapse. Like the castle of Blois, it has been injured and defaced by base uses, but, unlike the castle of Blois, it has not been completely restored. "It is very, very dirty, but very curious"--it is in these terms that I heard it described by an English lady who was generally to be found engaged upon a tattered Tauchnitz in the little _salon de lecture_ of the hotel at Tours. The description is not inaccurate; but it should be said that if part of the dirtiness of Amboise is the result of its having served for years as a barrack and as a prison, part of it comes from the presence of restoring stonemasons, who have woven over a considerable portion of it a mask of scaffolding. There is a good deal of neatness as well, and the restoration of some of the parts seems finished. This process, at Amboise, consists for the most part simply of removing the vulgar excrescences of the last two centuries. The interior is virtually a blank, the old apartments having been chopped up into small modern rooms; it will have to be completely reconstructed. A worthy woman with a military profile and that sharp, positive manner which the goodwives who show you through the châteaux of Touraine are rather apt to have, and in whose high respectability, to say nothing of the frill of [Illustration: AMBOISE--THE CHÂTEAU] her cap and the cut of her thick brown dress, my companions and I thought we discovered the particular note, or _nuance_, of Orleanism--a competent, appreciative, peremptory person, I say--attended us through the particularly delightful hour we spent upon the ramparts of Amboise. Denuded and disfeatured within and bristling without with bricklayers' ladders, the place was yet extraordinarily impressive and interesting. I should mention that we spent a great deal of time in looking at the view. Sweet was the view, and magnificent; we preferred it so much to certain portions of the interior, and to occasional effusions of historical information, that the old lady with the profile sometimes lost patience with us. We laid ourselves open to the charge of preferring it even to the little chapel of Saint Hubert, which stands on the edge of the great terrace and has, over the portal, a wonderful sculpture of the miraculous hunt of that holy man. In the way of plastic art this elaborate scene is the gem of Amboise. It seemed to us that we had never been in a place where there are so many points of vantage to look down from. In the matter of position Amboise is certainly supreme in the list of perched places; and I say this with a proper recollection of the claims of Chaumont and of Loches--which latter, by the way (the afterthought is due), is not on the Loire. The platforms, the bastions, the terraces, the high-niched windows and balconies, the hanging gardens and dizzy crenellations, of this complicated structure, keep you in perpetual intercourse with an immense horizon. The great feature of the place is the obligatory round tower which occupies the northern end of it, and which has now been completely restored. It is of astounding size, a fortress in itself, and contains, instead of a staircase, a wonderful inclined plane, so wide and gradual that a coach and four may be driven to the top. This colossal cylinder has to-day no visible use; but it corresponds, happily enough, with the great circle of the prospect. The gardens of Amboise, lifted high aloft, covering the irregular remnants of the platform on which the castle stands and making up in picturesqueness what they lack in extent, constitute of course but a scanty domain. But bathed, as we found them, in the autumn sunshine and doubly private from their aerial site, they offered irresistible opportunities for a stroll interrupted, as one leaned against their low parapets, by long contemplative pauses. I remember in particular a certain terrace planted with clipped limes upon which we looked down from the summit of the big tower. It seemed from that point to be absolutely necessary to one's happiness to go down and spend the rest of the morning there; it was an ideal place to walk to and fro and talk. Our venerable conductress, to whom our relation had gradually become more filial, permitted us to gratify this innocent wish--to the extent, that is, of taking a turn or two under the mossy _tilleuls_. At the end of this terrace is the low door, in a wall, against the top of which, in 1498, Charles VIII., according to an accepted tradition, knocked his head to such good purpose that he died. It was within the walls of Amboise that his widow, Anne of Brittany, already in mourning for three children, two of whom we have seen commemorated in sepulchral marble at Tours, spent the first violence of that grief which was presently dispelled by a union with her husband's cousin and successor, Louis XII. Amboise was a frequent resort of the French Court during the sixteenth century; it was here that the young Mary Stuart spent sundry hours of her first marriage. The wars of religion have left here the ineffaceable stain which they left wherever they passed. An imaginative visitor at Amboise to-day may fancy that the traces of blood are mixed with the red rust on the crossed iron bars of the grim-looking balcony to which the heads of the Huguenots executed on the discovery of the conspiracy of La Renaudie are rumoured to have been suspended. There was room on the stout balustrade--an admirable piece of work--for a ghastly array. The same rumour represents Catherine de'Medici and the young queen as watching from this balcony the _noyades_ of the captured Huguenots in the Loire. The facts of history are bad enough; the fictions are, if possible, worse; but there is little doubt that the future Queen of Scots learnt the first lessons of life at a horrible school. If in subsequent years she was a prodigy of innocence and virtue, it was not the fault of her whilom mother-in-law, of her uncles of the house of Guise, or of the examples presented to her either at the windows of the castle of Amboise or in its more private recesses. It was difficult to believe in these dark deeds, however, as we looked through the golden morning at the placidity of the far-shining Loire. The ultimate consequence of this spectacle was a desire to follow the river as far as the castle of Chaumont. It is true that the cruelties practised of old at Amboise might have seemed less phantasmal to persons destined to suffer from a modern form of inhumanity. The mistress of the little inn at the base of the castle-rock--it stands very pleasantly beside the river, and we had breakfasted there--declared to us that the Château de Chaumont, which is often during the autumn closed to visitors, was at that particular moment standing so wide open to receive us that it was our duty to hire one of her carriages and drive thither with speed. This assurance was so satisfactory that we presently found ourselves seated in this wily woman's most commodious vehicle and rolling, neither too fast nor too slow, along the margin of the Loire. The drive of about an hour, beneath constant clumps of chestnuts, was charming enough to have been taken for itself; and indeed when we reached Chaumont we saw that our reward was to be simply the usual reward of virtue, the consciousness of having attempted the right. The Château de Chaumont was inexorably closed; so we learned from a talkative lodge-keeper, who gave what grace she could to her refusal. This good woman's dilemma was almost touching; she wished to reconcile two impossibles. The castle was not to be visited, for the family of its master was staying there; and yet she was loath to turn away a party of which she was good enough to say that it had a _grand genre_; for, as she also remarked, she had her living to earn. She tried to arrange a compromise, one of the elements of which was that we should descend from our carriage and trudge up a hill which would bring us to a designated point where, over the paling of the garden, we might obtain an oblique and surreptitious view of a small portion of the castle walls. This suggestion led us to inquire (of each other) to what degree of baseness it is lawful for an enlightened lover of the picturesque to resort in order not to have a blank page in his collection. One of our trio decided characteristically against any form of derogation; so she sat in the carriage and sketched some object that was public property while her two companions, who were not so proud, trudged up a muddy ascent which formed a kind of back-stairs. It is perhaps no more than they deserved that they were disappointed. Chaumont is feudal, if you please; but the modern spirit is in possession. It forms a vast clean-scraped mass, with big round towers, ungarnished with a leaf of ivy or a patch of moss, surrounded by gardens of moderate extent (save where the muddy lane of which I speak passes near it), and looking rather like an enormously magnified villa. The great merit of Chaumont is its position, which almost exactly resembles that of Amboise; it sweeps the river up and down and seems to look over half the province. This, however, was better appreciated as, after coming down the hill and re-entering the carriage, we drove across the long suspension-bridge which crosses the Loire just beyond the village and over which we made our way to the small station of Onzain, at the farther end, to take the train back to Tours. Look back from the middle of this bridge; the whole picture composes, as the painters say. The towers, the pinnacles, the fair front of the château, perched above its fringe of garden and the rusty roofs of the village and facing the afternoon sky, which is reflected also in the great stream that sweeps below, all this makes a contribution to your happiest memories of Touraine. [Illustration] Chapter vii [Chenonceaux] We never went to Chinon; it was a fatality. We planned it a dozen times; but the weather interfered, or the trains didn't suit, or one of the party was fatigued with the adventures of the day before. This excursion was so much postponed that it was finally postponed to everything. Besides, we had to go to Chenonceaux, to Azay-le-Rideau, to Langeais, to Loches. So I have not the memory of Chinon; I have only the regret. But regret, as well as memory, has its visions; especially when, like memory, it is assisted by photographs. The castle of Chinon in this form appears to me as an enormous ruin, a mediæval fortress of the extent almost of a city. It covers a hill above the Vienne, and after being impregnable in its time is indestructible to-day. (I risk this phrase in the face of the prosaic truth. Chinon, in the days when it was a prize, more than once suffered capture, and at present it is crumbling inch by inch. It is apparent, however, I believe, that these inches encroach little upon acres of masonry.) It was in the castle that Jeanne Dare had her first interview with Charles VII., and it is in the town that François Rabelais is supposed to have been born. To the castle, moreover, the lover of the picturesque is earnestly recommended to direct his steps. But one always misses something, and I would rather have missed Chinon than Chenonceaux. Fortunate exceedingly were the few hours we passed on the spot on which we missed nothing. "In 1747," says Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his "Confessions," "we went to spend the autumn in Touraine, at the Château of Chenonceaux, a royal residence upon the Cher, built by Henry II. for Diana of Poitiers, whose initials are still to be seen there, and now in possession of M. Dupin, the farmer-general. We amused ourselves greatly at this fine place; the living was of the best, and I became as fat as a monk. We made a great deal of music and acted comedies." This is the only description that Rousseau gives of one of the most romantic houses in France and of an episode that must have counted as one of the most agreeable in his uncomfortable career. The eighteenth century contented itself with general epithets; and when Jean-Jacques has said that Chenonceaux was a "beau lieu," he thinks himself absolved from further characterisation. We later sons of time have, both for our pleasure and our pain, invented the fashion of special terms, and I am afraid that even common decency obliges me to pay some larger tribute than this to the architectural gem of Touraine. Fortunately I can discharge my debt with gratitude. In going from Tours you leave the valley of the Loire and enter that of the Cher, and at the end of about an hour you see the turrets of the castle on your right, among the trees, down in the meadows, beside the quiet little river. The station and the village are about ten minutes' walk from the château, and the village contains a very tidy inn, where, if you are not in too great a hurry to commune with the shades of the royal favourite and the jealous queen, you will perhaps stop and order a dinner to be ready for you in the evening. A straight, tall avenue leads to the grounds of the castle; what I owe to exactitude compels me to add that it is crossed by the railway-line. The place is so arranged, however, that the château need know nothing of passing trains--which pass, indeed, though the grounds are not large, at a very sufficient distance. I may add that the trains throughout this part of France have a noiseless, desultory, dawdling, almost stationary quality, which makes them less of an offence than usual. It was a Sunday afternoon and the light was yellow save under the trees of the avenue, where, in spite of the waning of September, it was duskily green. Three or four peasants, in festal attire, were strolling about. On a bench at the beginning of the avenue sat a man with two women. As I advanced with my companions he rose, after a sudden stare, and approached me with a smile in which (to be Johnsonian for a moment) certitude was mitigated by modesty and eagerness was embellished with respect. He came toward me with a salutation that I had seen before, and I am happy to say that after an instant I ceased to be guilty of the brutality of not knowing where. There was only one place in the world where people smile like that, only one place where the art of salutation has that perfect grace. This excellent creature used to crook his arm, [Illustration: CHENONCEAUX] in Venice, when I stepped into my gondola; and I now laid my hand on that member with the familiarity of glad recognition; for it was only surprise that had kept me even for a moment from accepting the genial Francesco as an ornament of the landscape of Touraine. What on earth--the phrase is the right one--was a Venetian gondolier doing at Chenonceaux? He had been brought from Venice, gondola and all, by the mistress of the charming house, to paddle about on the Cher. Our meeting was affectionate, though there was a kind of violence in seeing him so far from home. He was too well dressed, too well fed; he had grown stout, and his nose had the tinge of good claret. He remarked that the life of the household to which he had the honour to belong was that of a _casa regia_; which must have been a great change for poor Checco, whose habits in Venice were not regal. However, he was the sympathetic Checco still; and for five minutes after I left him I thought less about the little pleasure-house by the Cher than about the palaces of the Adriatic. But attention was not long in coming round to the charming structure that presently rose before us. The pale yellow front of the château, the small scale of which is at first a surprise, rises beyond a considerable court, at the entrance of which a massive and detached round tower, with a turret on its brow (a relic of the building that preceded the actual villa), appears to keep guard. This court is not enclosed--or is enclosed at least only by the gardens, portions of which are at present in process of radical readjustment. Therefore, though Chenonceaux has no great height, its delicate façade stands up boldly enough. This façade, one of the most finished things in Touraine, consists of two storeys, surmounted by an attic which, as so often in the buildings of the French Renaissance, is the richest part of the house. The high-pitched roof contains three windows of beautiful design, covered with embroidered caps and flowering into crocketed spires. The window above the door is deeply niched; it opens upon a balcony made in the form of a double pulpit--one of the most charming features of the front. Chenonceaux is not large, as I say, but into its delicate compass is packed a great deal of history--history which differs from that of Amboise and Blois in being of the private and sentimental kind. The echoes of the place, faint and far as they are to-day, are not political, but personal. Chenonceaux dates, as a residence, from the year 1515, when the shrewd Thomas Bohier, a public functionary who had grown rich in handling the finances of Normandy and had acquired the estate from a family which, after giving it many feudal lords, had fallen into poverty, erected the present structure on the foundations of an old mill. The design is attributed, with I know not what justice, to Pierre Nepveu, _alias_ Trinqueau, the audacious architect of Chambord. On the death of Bohier the house passed to his son, who, however, was forced, under cruel pressure, to surrender it to the Crown in compensation for a so-called deficit in the official accounts of this rash parent and predecessor. Francis I. held the place till his death; but Henry II., on ascending the throne, presented it out of hand to that mature charmer, the admired of two generations, Diana of Poitiers. Diana enjoyed it till the death of her protector; but when this event occurred the widow of the monarch, who had been obliged to submit in silence, for years, to the ascendency of a rival, took the most pardonable of all the revenges with which the name of Catherine de'Medici is associated and turned her out of doors. Diana was not in want of refuges, Catherine went through the form of giving her Chaumont in exchange; but there was only one Chenonceaux. Catherine devoted herself to making the place more completely unique. The feature that renders it sole of its kind is not appreciated till you wander round to either side of the house. If a certain springing lightness is the characteristic of Chenonceaux, if it bears in every line the aspect of a place of recreation--a place intended for delicate, chosen pleasures--nothing can confirm this expression better than the strange, unexpected movement with which, from behind, it carries itself across the river. The earlier building stands in the water; it had inherited the foundations of the mill destroyed by Thomas Bohier. The first step therefore had been taken upon solid piles of masonry; and the ingenious Catherine--she was a _raffinée_--simply proceeded to take the others. She continued the piles to the opposite bank of the Cher, and over them she threw a long, straight gallery of two tiers. This part of the château, which mainly resembles a house built upon a bridge and occupying its entire length, is of course the great curiosity of Chenonceaux. It forms on each floor a charming corridor, which, within, is illuminated from either side by the flickering river-light. The architecture of these galleries, seen from without, is less elegant than that of the main building, but the aspect of the whole thing is delightful. I have spoken of Chenonceaux as a "villa," using the word advisedly, for the place is neither a castle nor a palace. It is a very exceptional villa, but it has the villa-quality--the look of being intended for life in common. This look is not at all contradicted by the wing across the Cher, which only suggests indoor perspectives and intimate pleasures--walks in pairs on rainy days; games and dances on autumn nights; together with as much as may be of moonlighted dialogue (or silence) in the course of evenings more genial still, in the well-marked recesses of windows. It is safe to say that such things took place there in the last century, during the kindly reign of Monsieur and Madame Dupin. This period presents itself as the happiest in the annals of Chenonceaux. I know not what festive train the great Diana may have led, and my imagination, I am afraid, is only feebly kindled by the records of the luxurious pastimes organised on the banks of the Cher by that terrible daughter of the Medici whose appreciation of the good things of life was perfectly consistent with a failure to perceive why others should live to enjoy them. The best society that ever assembled there was collected at Chenonceaux during the middle of the eighteenth century. This was surely, in France at least, the age of good society, the period when the "right people" made every haste to be born in time. Such people must of course have belonged to the fortunate few--not to the miserable many; for if a society be large enough to be good, it must also be small enough. The sixty years that preceded the Revolution were the golden age of fireside talk and of those amenities that proceed from the presence of women in whom the social art is both instinctive and acquired. The women of that period were, above all, good company; the fact is attested in a thousand documents. Chenonceaux offered a perfect setting to free conversation; and infinite joyous discourse must have mingled with the liquid murmur of the Cher. Claude Dupin was not only a great man of business, but a man of honour and a patron of knowledge; and his wife was gracious, clever, and wise. They had acquired this famous property by purchase (from one of the Bourbons, as Chenonceaux, for two centuries after the death of Catherine de'Medici, remained constantly in princely hands), and it was transmitted to their son, Dupin de Francueil, grandfather of Madame George Sand. This lady, in her Correspondence, lately published, describes a visit that she paid more than thirty years ago to those members of her family who were still in possession. The owner of Chenonceaux to-day[a] is the daughter of an Englishman naturalised in France. But I have wandered far from my story, which is simply a sketch of the surface of the place. Seen obliquely, from either side, in combination with its bridge and gallery, the structure is singular and fantastic, a striking example of a wilful and capricious conception. Unfortunately all caprices are not so graceful and successful, and I grudge the honour of this one to the false and blood-polluted Catherine. (To be exact, I believe the arches of the bridge were laid by the elderly Diana. It was Catherine, however, who completed the monument.) Within, the house has been, as usual, restored. The staircases and ceilings, in all the old royal residences of this part of France, are the parts that have suffered least; many of them have still much of the life of the old time about them. Some of the chambers of Chenonceaux, however, encumbered as they are with modern detail, derive a sufficiently haunted and suggestive look from the deep setting of their beautiful windows, which thickens the shadows and makes dark corners. There is a charming little Gothic chapel, with its apse hanging over the water, fastened to the left flank of the house. Some of the upper balconies, which look along the outer face of the gallery and either up or down the river, are delightful protected nooks. We walked through the lower gallery to the other bank of the Cher; this fine apartment appeared to be for the moment a purgatory of ancient furniture. It terminates rather abruptly; it simply stops, with a blank wall. There ought, of course, to have been a pavilion here, though I prefer very much the old defect to any modern remedy. The wall is not so blank, however, but that it contains a door which opens on a rusty drawbridge. This drawbridge traverses the small gap which divides the end of the gallery from the bank of the stream. The house, therefore, does not literally rest on opposite edges of the Cher, but rests on one and just fails to rest on the other. The pavilion would have made that up; but after a moment we ceased to miss this imaginary feature. We passed the little drawbridge, and wandered awhile beside the river. From this opposite bank the mass of the château looked more charming than ever; and the little peaceful, lazy Cher, where two or three men were fishing in the eventide, flowed under the clear arches and between the solid pedestals of the part that spanned it, with the softest, vaguest light on its bosom. This was the right perspective; we were looking across the river of time. The whole scene was deliciously mild. The moon came up; we passed back through the gallery and strolled about a little longer in the gardens. It was very still. I met my old gondolier in the twilight. He showed me his gondola, but I hated, somehow, to see it there. I don't like, as the French say, to _mêler les genres_. A gondola in a little flat French river? The image was not less irritating, if less injurious, than the spectacle of a steamer in the Grand Canal, which had driven me away from Venice a year and a half before. We took our way back to the Bon Laboureur, and waited in the little inn-parlour for a late train to Tours. We were not impatient, for we had an excellent dinner to occupy us; and even after we had dined we were still content to sit awhile and exchange remarks upon the superior civilisation of France. Where else, at a village inn, should we have fared so well? Where else should we have sat down to our refreshment without condescension? There were a couple of countries in which it would not have been happy for us to arrive hungry, on a Sunday evening, at so modest an hostelry. At the little inn at Chenonceaux the _cuisine_ was not only excellent, but the service was graceful. We were waited on by mademoiselle and her mamma; it was so that mademoiselle alluded to the elder lady as she uncorked for us a bottle of Vouvray mousseux. We were very comfortable, very genial; we even went so far as to say to each other that Vouvray mousseux was a delightful wine. From this opinion indeed one of our trio differed; but this member of the party had already exposed herself to the charge of being too fastidious by declining to descend from the carriage at Chaumont and take that back-stairs view of the castle. [a] 1884. [Illustration] Chapter viii [Azay-le-Rideau] Without fastidiousness it was fair to declare on the other hand that the little inn at Azay-le-Rideau was very bad. It was terribly dirty and it was in charge of a fat _mégère_ whom the appearance of four trustful travellers--we were four, with an illustrious fourth, on that occasion--roused apparently to fury. I attached great importance to this incongruous hostess, for she uttered the only uncivil words I heard spoken (in connection with any business of my own) during a tour of some six weeks in France. Breakfast not at Azay-le-Rideau therefore, too trustful traveller; or if you do so, be either very meek or very bold. Breakfast not, save under stress of circumstance; but let no circumstance whatever prevent your going to see the great house of the place, which is a fair rival to Chenonceaux. The village lies close to the gates, though after you pass these gates you leave it well behind. A little avenue, as at Chenonceaux, leads to the castle, [Illustration: AZAY-LE-RIDEAU] making a pretty vista as you approach the sculptured doorway. Azay is a most perfect and beautiful thing; I should place it third in any list of the great houses of this part of France in which these houses should be ranked according to charm. For beauty of detail it comes after Blois and Chenonceaux, but it comes before Amboise and Chambord. On the other hand, of course it is inferior in majesty to either of these vast structures. Like Chenonceaux, it is a watery place, though it is more meagrely moated than the small château on the Cher. It consists of a large square _corps de logis_, with a round tower at each angle, rising out of a somewhat too slumberous pond. The water--the water of the Indre--surrounds it, but it is only on one side that it bathes its feet in the moat. On one of the others stretches a little terrace, treated as a garden, and in front prevails a wide court formed by a wing which, on the right, comes forward. This front, covered with sculptures, is of the richest, stateliest effect. The court is approached by a bridge over the pond, and the house would reflect itself in this wealth of water if the water were a trifle less opaque. But there is a certain stagnation--it affects more, senses than one--about the picturesque pools of Azay. On the hither side of the bridge is a garden overshadowed by fine old sycamores--a garden shut in by greenhouses and by a fine last-century gateway flanked with twin lodges. Beyond the château and the standing waters behind it is a so-called _parc_, which, however, it must be confessed, has little of park-like beauty. The old houses--a large number--remain in France; but the old timber does not remain, and the denuded aspect of the few acres that surround the châteaux of Touraine is pitiful to the traveller who has learned to take the measure of such things from the country of "stately homes." The garden-ground of the lordly Chaumont is that of an English suburban villa; and in that and in other places there is little suggestion, in the untended aspect of walk and lawns, of the gardener the British Islands know. The manor as we see it dates from the early part of the sixteenth century; and the industrious Abbé Chevalier, in his very entertaining though slightly rose-coloured book on Touraine,[b] speaks of it as "perhaps the purest expression of the _belle Renaissance françoise_." "Its height," he goes on "is divided between two storeys, terminating under the roof in a projecting entablature which imitates a row of machicolations. Carven chimneys and tall dormer windows, covered with imagery, rise from the roofs; turrets on brackets, of elegant shape, hang with the greatest lightness from the angles of the building. The soberness of the main lines, the harmony of the empty spaces and those that are filled out, the prominence of the crowning parts, the delicacy of all the details, constitute an enchanting whole." And then the Abbé speaks of the admirable staircase which adorns the north front and which, with its extension inside, constitutes the principal treasure of Azay. The staircase passes beneath one of the richest of porticos--a portico over which a monumental salamander indulges in the most decorative contortions. The sculptured vaults of stone which cover the windings of the staircase within, the fruits, flowers, ciphers, heraldic signs, are of the noblest effect. The interior of the château is rich, comfortable, extremely modern; but it makes no picture that compares with its external face, about which, with its charming proportions, its profuse yet not extravagant sculpture, there is something very tranquil and pure. [b] "Promenades pittoresques en Touraine." Tours: 1869. I took a particular fancy to the roof, high, steep, old, with its slope of bluish slate, and the way the weather-worn chimneys seemed to grow out of it--living things in a deep soil. The single defect of the house is the blankness and bareness of its walls, which have none of that delicate parasitic deposit that agrees so well--to the eye--with the surface of old dwellings. It is true that this bareness results in a kind of silvery whiteness of complexion which carries out the tone of the quiet pools and even that of the scanty and shadeless park. [Illustration] Chapter ix [Langeais] I hardly know what to say about the tone of Langeais, which, though I have left it to the end of my sketch, formed the objective point of the first excursion I made from Tours. Langeais is rather dark and grey; it is perhaps the simplest and most severe of all the castles of the Loire. I don't know why I should have gone to see it before any other, unless it be because I remembered that Duchesse de Langeais who figures in several of Balzac's novels, and found this association very potent. The Duchesse de Langeais is a somewhat transparent fiction; but the castle from which Balzac borrowed the title of his heroine is an extremely solid fact. My doubt just above as to whether I should pronounce it exceptionally grey came from my having seen it under a sky which made most things look dark. I have, however, a very kindly memory of that moist and melancholy afternoon, which was much more autumnal than many of the days that followed it. Langeais lies down the Loire, near the river, on the opposite side from Tours, and to go to it you will spend half an hour in the train. You pass on the way the Château de Luynes, which, with its round towers catching the afternoon light, looks uncommonly well on a hill at a distance; you pass also the ruins of the castle of Cinq-Mars, the ancestral dwelling of the young favourite of Louis XIII., the victim of Richelieu, the hero of Alfred de Vigny's novel, which is usually recommended to young ladies engaged in the study of French. Langeais is very imposing and decidedly sombre; it marks the transition from the architecture of defence to that of elegance. It rises, massive and perpendicular, out of the centre of the village to which it gives its name and which it entirely dominates; so that as you stand before it in the crooked and empty street there is no resource for you but to stare up at its heavy overhanging cornice and at the huge towers surmounted with extinguishers of slate. If you follow this street to the end, however, you encounter in abundance the usual embellishments of a French village: little ponds or tanks, with women on their knees on the brink, pounding and thumping a lump of saturated linen; brown old crones, the tone of whose facial hide makes their nightcaps (worn by day) look dazzling; little alleys perforating the thickness of a row of cottages and showing you behind, as a glimpse, the vividness of a green garden. In the rear of the castle rises a hill which must formerly have been occupied by some of its appurtenances and which indeed is still partly enclosed within its court. You may walk round this eminence, which, with the small houses of the village at its base, shuts in the castle from behind. The enclosure is not defiantly guarded, however; for a small, rough path, which you presently reach, leads up to an open gate. This gate admits you to a vague and rather limited _parc_, which covers the crest of the hill and through which you may walk into the gardens of the castle. These gardens, of small extent, confront the dark walls with their brilliant parterres and, covering the gradual slope of the hill, form, as it were, the fourth side of the court. This is the stateliest view of the structure, which looks to you sufficiently grim and grey as, after asking leave of a neat young woman who sallies out to learn your errand, you sit there on a garden bench and take the measure of the three tall towers attached to this inner front and forming severally the cage of a staircase. The huge bracketed cornice (one of the features of Langeais), which is merely ornamental, as it is not machicolated, though it looks so, is continued on the inner face as well. The whole thing has a fine feudal air, though it was erected on the ruins of feudalism. The main event in the history of the castle is the marriage of Anne of Brittany to her first husband, Charles VIII., which took place in its great hall in 1491. Into this great hall we were introduced by the neat young woman--into this great hall and into sundry other halls, winding staircases, galleries, chambers. The cicerone of Langeais is in too great a hurry; the fact is pointed out in the excellent Guide-Joanne. This ill-dissimulated vice, however, is to be observed, in the country of the Loire, in every one who carries a key. It is true that at Langeais there is no great occasion to indulge in the tourist's weakness of dawdling; for the apartments, though they contain many curious odds and ends of antiquity, are not of first-rate interest. They are cold and musty indeed, with that touching smell of old furniture, as all apartments should be through which the insatiate American wanders in the rear of a bored domestic, pausing to stare at a faded tapestry or to read the name on the frame of some simpering portrait. To return to Tours my companion and I had counted on a train which (as is not uncommon in France) existed only in the "Indicateur des Chemins de Fer;" and instead of waiting for another we engaged a vehicle to take us home. A sorry _carriole_ or _patache_ it proved to be, with the accessories of a lumbering white mare and a little wizened, ancient peasant, who had put on, in honour of the occasion, a new blouse of extraordinary stiffness and blueness. We hired the trap of an energetic woman, who put it "to" with her own hands; women in Touraine and the Blésois appearing to have the best of it in the business of letting vehicles, as well as in many other industries. There is, in fact, no branch of human activity in which one is not liable, in France, to find a woman engaged. Women, indeed, are not priests; but priests are, more or less, women. They are not in the army, it may be said but then they _are_ the army. They are very formidable. In France one must count with the women. The drive back from Langeais to Tours was long, slow, cold; we had an occasional spatter of rain. But the road passes most of the way close to the Loire, and there was something in our jog-trot through the darkening land, beside the flowing river, which it was very possible to enjoy. [Illustration] Chapter x [Loches] The consequence of my leaving to the last my little mention of Loches is that space and opportunity fail me; and yet a brief and hurried account of that extraordinary spot would after all be in best agreement with my visit. We snatched a fearful joy, my companion and I, the afternoon we took the train for Loches. The weather this time had been terribly against us: again and again a day that promised fair became hopelessly foul after lunch. At last we determined that if we could not make this excursion in the sunshine we would make it with the aid of our umbrellas. We grasped them firmly and started for the station, where we were detained an unconscionable time by the evolutions, outside, of certain trains laden with liberated (and exhilarated) conscripts, who, their term of service ended, were about to be restored to civil life. The trains in Touraine are provoking; they [Illustration: LOCHES] serve as little as possible for excursions. If they convey you one way at the right hour, it is on the condition of bringing you back at the wrong; they either allow you far too little time to examine the castle or the ruin, or they leave you planted in front of it for periods that outlast curiosity. They are perverse, capricious, exasperating. It was a question of our having but an hour or two at Loches, and we could ill afford to sacrifice to accidents. One of the accidents, however, was that the rain stopped before we got there, leaving behind it a moist mildness of temperature and a cool and lowering sky which were in perfect agreement with the grey old city. Loches is certainly one of the greatest impressions of the traveller in central France--the largest cluster of curious things that presents itself to his sight. It rises above the valley of the Indre, the charming stream set in meadows and sedges, which wanders through the province of Berry and through many of the novels of Madame George Sand; lifting from the summit of a hill, which it covers to the base, a confusion of terraces, ramparts, towers, and spires. Having but little time, as I say, we scaled the hill amain and wandered briskly through this labyrinth of antiquities. The rain had decidedly stopped and, save that we had our train on our minds, we saw Loches to the best advantage. We enjoyed that sensation with which the conscientious tourist is--or ought to be--well acquainted and for which, at any rate, he has a formula in his rough-and-ready language. We "experienced," as they say (most irregular of verbs), an "agreeable disappointment." We were surprised and delighted; we had for some reason suspected that Loches was scarce good. I hardly know what is best there: the strange and impressive little collegial church, with its romanesque atrium or narthex, its doorways covered with primitive sculpture of the richest kind, its treasure of a so-called pagan altar embossed with fighting warriors, its three pyramidal domes, so unexpected, so sinister, which I have not met elsewhere in church architecture; or the huge square keep of the eleventh century--the most cliff-like tower I remember, whose immeasurable thickness I did not penetrate; or the subterranean mysteries of two other less striking but not less historic dungeons, into which a terribly imperative little cicerone introduced us, with the aid of downward ladders, ropes, torches, warnings, extended hands, and many fearful anecdotes--all in impervious darkness. These horrible prisons of Loches, at an incredible distance below daylight, enlivened the consciousness of Louis XI. and were for the most part, I believe, constructed by him. One of the towers of the castle is garnished with the hooks or supports of the celebrated iron cage in which he confined the Cardinal La Balue, who survived so much longer than might have been expected this extraordinary mixture of seclusion and exposure. All these things form part of the castle of Loches, whose enormous _enceinte_ covers the whole of the top of the hill and abounds in dismantled gateways, in crooked passages, in winding lanes that lead to postern doors, in long façades that look upon terraces interdicted to the visitor, who perceives with irritation that they command magnificent views. These views are the property of the sub-prefect of the department, who resides at the Château de Loches and who has also the enjoyment of a garden--a garden compressed and curtailed, as those of old castles that perch on hill-tops are apt to be--containing a horse-chestnut tree of fabulous size, [Illustration: LOCHES--THE CHURCH] a tree of a circumference so vast and so perfect that the whole population of Loches might sit in concentric rows beneath its boughs. The gem of the place, however, is neither the big _marronier_, nor the collegial church, nor the mighty dungeon, nor the hideous prisons of Louis XI.; it is simply the tomb of Agnes Sorel, _la belle des belles_, so many years the mistress of Charles VII. She was buried in 1450, in the collegial church, whence, in the beginning of the present century, her remains, with the monument that marks them, were transferred to one of the towers of the castle. She has always, I know not with what justice, enjoyed a fairer fame than most ladies who have occupied her position, and this fairness is expressed in the delicate statue that surmounts her tomb. It represents her lying there in lovely demureness, her hands folded with the best modesty, a little kneeling angel at either side of her head, and her feet, hidden in the folds of her decent robe, resting upon a pair of couchant lambs, innocent reminders of her name. Agnes, however, was not lamb-like, inasmuch as, according to popular tradition at least, she exerted herself sharply in favour of the expulsion of the English from France. It is one of the suggestions of Loches that the young Charles VII., hard put to it as he was for a treasury and a capital--"le roi de Bourges," he was called at Paris--was yet a rather privileged mortal, to stand up as he does before posterity between the noble Joan and the _gentille Agnes_; deriving, however, much more honour from one of these companions than from the other. Almost as delicate a relic of antiquity as this fascinating tomb is the exquisite oratory of Anne of Brittany, among the apartments of the castle the only chamber worthy of note. This small room, hardly larger than a closet, and forming part of the addition made to the edifice by Charles VIII., is embroidered over with the curious and remarkably decorative device of the ermine and festooned cord. The objects in themselves are not especially graceful, but the constant repetition of the figure on the walls and ceiling produces an effect of richness in spite of the modern whitewash with which, if I remember rightly, they have been endued. The little streets of Loches wander crookedly down the hill and are full of charming pictorial "bits:" an old town-gate, passing under a medieval tower, which is ornamented by Gothic windows and the empty niches of statues; a meagre but delicate _hotel de ville_ of the Renaissance nestling close beside it; a curious _chancellerie_ of the middle of the sixteenth century, with mythological figures and a Latin inscription on the front--both of these latter buildings being rather unexpected features of the huddled and precipitous little town. Loches has a suburb on the other side of the Indre, which we had contented ourselves with looking down at from the heights while we wondered whether, even if it had not been getting late and our train were more accommodating, we should care to take our way across the bridge and look up that bust in terra-cotta of Francis I. which is the principal ornament of the Château de Sansac and the faubourg of Beaulieu. I think we decided that we should not, that we had already often measured the longest nose in history. [Illustration] Chapter xi [Bourges] I know not whether the exact limits of an excursion as distinguished from a journey have ever been fixed; at any rate, it seemed none of my business at Tours to settle the question. Therefore, though the making of excursions had been the purpose of my stay, I thought it vain, while I started for Bourges, to determine to which category that little expedition might belong. It was not till the third day that I returned to Tours; and the distance, traversed for the most part after dark, was even greater than I had supposed. That, however, was partly the fault of a tiresome wait at Vierzon, where I had more than enough time to dine, very badly, at the _buffet_ and to observe the proceedings of a family who had entered my railway carriage at Tours and had conversed unreservedly, for my benefit, all the way from that station--a family whom it entertained me to assign to the class of _petite noblesse de province_. Their noble origin was confirmed by the way they all "made _maigre_" in the refreshment-room (it happened to be a Friday), as if it had been possible to do anything else. They ate two or three omelets apiece and ever so many little cakes, while the positive, talkative mother watched her children as the waiter handed about the roast fowl. I was destined to share the secrets of this family to the end; for while I took my place in the empty train that was in waiting to convey us to Bourges the same vigilant woman pushed them all on top of me into my compartment, though the carriages on either side contained no travellers at all. It was better, I found, to have dined (even on omelets and little cakes) at the station at Vierzon than at the hotel at Bourges, which, when I reached it at nine o'clock at night, did not strike me as the prince of hotels. The inns in the smaller provincial towns in France are all, as the term is, commercial, and the _commis-voyageur_ is in triumphant possession. I saw a great deal of him for several weeks after this; for he was apparently the only traveller in the southern provinces, and it was my daily fate to sit opposite to him at tables d'hôte and in railway trains. He may be known by two infallible signs--his hands are fat and he tucks his napkin into his shirt-collar. In spite of these idiosyncrasies, he seemed to me a reserved and inoffensive person, with singularly little of the demonstrative good-humour that he has been described as possessing. I saw no one who reminded me of Balzac's "illustre Gaudissart;" and indeed in the course of a month's journey through a large part of France I heard so little desultory conversation that I wondered whether a change had not come over the spirit of the people. They seemed to me as silent as Americans when Americans have not been "introduced," and infinitely less addicted to exchanging remarks in railway trains and at tables d'hôte than the colloquial and cursory English; a fact perhaps not worth mentioning were it not at variance with that reputation which the French have long enjoyed of being a pre-eminently sociable nation. The common report of the character of a people is, however, an indefinable product, and is apt to strike the traveller who observes for himself as very wide of the mark. The English, who have for ages been described (mainly by the French) as the dumb stiff, unapproachable race, present to-day a remarkable appearance of good-humour and garrulity and are distinguished by their facility of intercourse. On the other hand, any one who has seen half-a-dozen Frenchmen pass a whole day together in a railway-carriage without breaking silence is forced to believe that the traditional reputation of these gentlemen is simply the survival of some primitive formula. It was true, doubtless, before the Revolution; but there have been great changes since then. The question of which is the better taste, to talk to strangers or to hold your tongue, is a matter apart; I incline to believe that the French reserve is the result of a more definite conception of social behaviour. I allude to it only because it is at variance with the national fame and at the same time compatible with a very easy view of life in certain other directions. On some of these latter points the Boule d'Or at Bourges was full of instruction; boasting as it did of a hall of reception in which, amid old boots that had been brought to be cleaned, old linen that was being sorted for the wash, and lamps of evil odour that were awaiting replenishment, a strange, familiar, promiscuous household life went forward. Small scullions in white caps and aprons slept upon greasy benches; the Boots sat staring at you while you fumbled, helpless, in a row of pigeon-holes, for your candlestick or your key; and, amid the coming and going of the _commis-voyageurs_, a little sempstress bent over the under-garments of the hostess--the latter being a heavy, stern, silent woman, who looked at people very hard. [Bourges: the Cathedral] It was not to be looked at in that manner that one had come all the way from Tours; so that within ten minutes after my arrival I sallied out into the darkness to form somehow and somewhere a happier relation. However late in the evening I may arrive at a place, I never go to bed without my impression. The natural place at Bourges to look for it seemed to be the cathedral; which, moreover, was the only thing that could account for my presence _dans cette galère_. I turned out of a small square in front of the hotel and walked up a narrow, sloping street paved with big, rough stones and guiltless of a footway. It was a splendid starlight night; the stillness of a sleeping _ville de province_ was over everything; I had the whole place to myself. I turned to my right, at the top of the street, where presently a short, vague lane brought me into sight of the cathedral. I approached it obliquely, from behind; it loomed up in the darkness above me enormous and sublime. It stands on the top of the large but not lofty eminence over which Bourges is scattered--a very good position as French cathedrals go, for they are not all so nobly situated as Chartres and Laon. On the side on which I approached it (the south) it is tolerably well exposed, though the precinct is shabby; in front, it is rather too much shut in. These defects, however, it makes up for on the north side and behind, where it presents itself in the most admirable manner to the garden of the Archevêché, which has been arranged as a public walk, with the usual formal alleys of the _jardin français_. I must add that I appreciated these points only on the following day. As I stood there in the light of the stars, many of which had an autumnal sharpness, while others were shooting over the heavens, the huge, rugged vessel of the church overhung me in very much the same way as the black hull of a ship at sea would overhang a solitary swimmer. It seemed colossal, stupendous, a dark leviathan. The next morning, which was lovely, I lost no time in going back to it, and found with satisfaction that the daylight did it no injury. The cathedral of Bourges is indeed magnificently huge, and if it is a good deal wanting in lightness and grace, it is perhaps only the more imposing. I read in the excellent handbook of M. Joanne that it was projected "_dès_ 1172," but commenced only in the first years of the thirteenth century. "The nave," the writer adds, "was finished _tant bien que mal, faute de ressources_; the façade is of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in its lower part, and of the fourteenth in its upper." The allusion to the nave means the omission of the transepts. The west front consists of two vast but imperfect towers; one of which (the south) is immensely buttressed, so that its outline slopes forward like that of a pyramid. This is the taller of the two. If they had spires these towers would be prodigious; as it is, given the rest of the church, they are wanting in elevation. There are five deeply recessed portals, all in a row, each surmounted with a gable, the gable over the central door being exceptionally high. Above the porches, which give the measure of its width, the front rears itself, piles itself, on a great scale, carried up by galleries, arches, windows, sculptures, and supported by the extraordinarily thick buttresses of which I have spoken and which, though they embellish it with deep shadows thrown sidewise, do not improve its style. The portals, especially the middle one, are extremely interesting; they are covered with curious early sculptures. The middle one, however, I must describe alone. It has no less than six rows of figures--the others have four--some of which, notably the upper one, are still in their places. The arch at the top has three tiers of elaborate imagery. The upper of these is divided by the figure of Christ in judgment, of great size, stiff and terrible, with outstretched arms. On either side of him are ranged three or four angels, with the instruments of the Passion. Beneath him in the second frieze stands the angel of justice with the scales; and on either side of him is the vision of the last judgment. The good prepare, with infinite titillation and complacency, to ascend to the skies; while the bad are dragged, pushed, hurled, stuffed, crammed, into pits and caldrons of fire. There is a charming detail in this section. Beside the angel, on the right, where the wicked are the prey of demons, stands a little female figure, that of a child, who, with hands meekly folded and head gently raised, waits for the stern angel to decide upon her fate. In this fate, however, a dreadful big devil also takes a keen interest: he seems on the point of appropriating the tender creature; he has a face like a goat and an enormous hooked nose. But the angel gently lays a hand upon the shoulder of the little girl--the movement is full of dignity--as if to say: "No; she belongs to the other side." The frieze below represents the general resurrection, with the good and the wicked emerging from their sepulchres. Nothing can be more quaint and charming than the difference shown in their way of responding to the final trump. The good get out of their tombs with a certain modest gaiety, an alacrity tempered by respect; one of them kneels to pray as soon as he has disinterred himself. You may know the wicked, on the other hand, by their extreme shyness; they crawl out slowly and fearfully; they hang back, and seem to say "Oh, dear!" These elaborate sculptures, full of ingenuous intention and of the reality of early faith, are in a remarkable state of preservation; they bear no superficial signs of restoration and appear scarcely to have suffered from the centuries. They are delightfully expressive; the artist had the advantage of knowing exactly the effect be wished to produce. The interior of the cathedral has a great simplicity and majesty and, above all, a tremendous height. The nave is extraordinary in this respect; it dwarfs everything else I know. I should add, however, that I am in architecture always of the opinion of the last speaker. Any great building seems to me while I look at it the ultimate expression. At any rate, during the hour that I sat gazing along the high vista of Bourges the interior of the great vessel corresponded to my vision of the evening before. There is a tranquil largeness, a kind of infinitude, about such an edifice; it soothes and purifies the spirit, it illuminates the mind. There are two aisles, on either side, in addition to the nave--five in all--and, as I have said, there are no transepts; an omission which lengthens the vista, so that from my place near the door the central jewelled window in the depths of the perpendicular choir seemed a mile or two away. The second or outward of each pair of aisles is too low and the first too high; without this inequality the nave would appear to take an even more prodigious flight. The double aisles pass all the way round the choir, the windows of which are inordinately rich in magnificent old glass. I have seen glass as fine in other churches, but I think I have never seen so much of it at once. Beside the cathedral, on the north, is a curious structure of the fourteenth or fifteenth century, which looks like an enormous flying buttress, with its support, sustaining the north tower. It makes a massive arch, high in the air, and produces a romantic effect as people pass under it to the open gardens of the Archevêché, which extend to a considerable distance in the rear of the church. The structure supporting the arch has the girth of a largeish house, and contains chambers with whose uses I am unacquainted, but to which the deep pulsations of the cathedral, the vibration of its mighty bells and the roll of its organ-tones must be transmitted even through the great arm of stone. The archiepiscopal palace, not walled in as at Tours, is visible as a stately habitation of the last century, at the time of my visit under repair after a fire. From this side and from the gardens of the palace the nave of the cathedral is visible in all its great length and height, with its extraordinary multitude of supports. The gardens aforesaid, accessible through tall iron gates, are the promenade--the Tuileries--of the town, and, very pretty in themselves, are immensely set off by the overhanging church. It was warm and sunny; the benches were empty; I sat there a long time in that pleasant state of mind which visits the traveller in foreign towns, when he is not too hurried, while he wonders where he had better go next. The straight, unbroken line of the roof of the cathedral was very noble; but I could see from this point how much finer the effect would have been if the towers, which had dropped almost out of sight, might have been carried still higher. The archiepiscopal gardens look down at one end over a sort of esplanade or suburban avenue lying on a lower level on which they open, and where several detachments of soldiers (Bourges is full of soldiers) had just been drawn up. The civil population was also collecting, and I saw that something was going to happen. I learned that a private of the Chasseurs was to be "broken" for stealing, and every one was eager to behold the ceremony. Sundry other detachments arrived on the ground, besides many of the military who had come as a matter of taste. One of them described to me the process of degradation from the ranks, and I felt for a moment a hideous curiosity to see it, under the influence of which I lingered a little. But only a little; the hateful nature of the spectacle hurried me away at the same that others were hurrying forward. As I turned my back upon it I reflected that human beings are cruel brutes, though I could not flatter myself that the ferocity of the thing was exclusively French. In another country the concourse would have been equally great, and the moral of it all seemed to be that military penalties are as terrible as military honours are gratifying. [Illustration] Chapter xii [Bourges: Jacques Coeur] The cathedral is not the only lion of Bourges; the house of Jacques Coeur awaits you in posture scarcely less leonine. This remarkable man had a very strange history, and he too was "broken" like the wretched soldier whom I did not stay to see. He has been rehabilitated, however, by an age which does not fear the imputation of paradox, and a marble statue of him ornaments the street in front of his house. To interpret him according to this image--a womanish figure in a long robe and a turban, with big bare arms and a dramatic pose--would be to think of him as a kind of truculent sultana. He wore the dress of his period, but his spirit was very modern; he was a Vanderbilt or a Rothschild of the fifteenth century. He supplied the ungrateful Charles VII. with money to pay the troops who, under the heroic Maid, [Illustration: Bourges--THE HOUSE OF JACQUES COEUR] drove the English from French soil. His house, which to-day is used as a Palais de Justice, appears to have been regarded at the time it was built very much as the residence of Mr. Vanderbilt is regarded in New York to-day. It stands on the edge of the hill on which most of the town is planted, so that, behind, it plunges down to a lower level, and, if you approach it on that side, as I did, to come round to the front of it you have to ascend a longish flight of steps. The back, of old, must have formed a portion of the city wall; at any rate it offers to view two big towers which Joanne says were formerly part of the defence of Bourges. From the lower level of which I speak--the square in front of the post-office--the palace of Jacques Coeur looks very big and strong and feudal; from the upper street, in front of it, it looks very handsome and delicate. To this street it presents two tiers and a considerable length of façade; and it has both within and without a great deal of curious and beautiful detail. Above the portal, in the stonework, are two false windows, in which two figures, a man and a woman, apparently household servants, are represented, in sculpture, as looking down into the street. The effect is homely, yet grotesque, and the figures are sufficiently living to make one commiserate them for having been condemned, in so dull a town, to spend several centuries at the window. They appear to be watching for the return of their master, who left his beautiful house one morning and never came back. The history of Jacques Coeur, which has been written by M. Pierre Clément in a volume crowned by the French Academy, is very wonderful and interesting, but I have no space to go into it here. There is no more curious example, and few more tragical, of a great fortune crumbling from one day to the other, or of the antique superstition that the gods grow jealous of human success. Merchant, millionaire, banker, ship-owner, royal favourite and minister of finance, explorer of the East and monopolist of the glittering trade between that quarter of the globe and his own, great capitalist who had anticipated the brilliant operations of the present time, he expiated his prosperity by poverty, imprisonment, and torture. The obscure points in his career have been elucidated by M. Clément, who has drawn, moreover, a very vivid picture of the corrupt and exhausted state of France during the middle of the fifteenth century. He has shown that the spoliation of the great merchant was a deliberately calculated act, and that the king sacrificed him without scruple or shame to the avidity of a singularly villanous set of courtiers. The whole story is an extraordinary picture of high-handed rapacity--the crudest possible assertion of the right of the stronger. The victim was stripped of his property, but escaped with his life, made his way out of France and, betaking himself to Italy, offered his services to the Pope. It is proof of the consideration that he enjoyed in Europe, and of the variety of his accomplishments, that Calixtus III. should have appointed him to take command of a fleet which his Holiness was fitting out against the Turks. Jacques Coeur, however, was not destined to lead it to victory. He died shortly after the expedition had started, in the island of Chios, in 1456. The house at Bourges, his native place, testifies in some degree to his wealth and splendour, though it has in parts that want of space which is striking in many of the buildings of the Middle Ages. The court indeed is on a large scale, ornamented with turrets and arcades, with several beautiful windows and with sculptures inserted in the walls, representing the various sources of the great fortune of the owner. M. Pierre Clément describes this part of the house as having been of an "incomparable richesse"--an estimate of its charms which seems slightly exaggerated to-day. There is, however, something delicate and familiar in the bas-reliefs of which I have spoken, little scenes of agriculture and industry which show that the proprietor was not ashamed of calling attention to his harvests and enterprises. To-day we should question the taste of such allusions, even in plastic form, in the house of a "merchant prince" however self-made. Why should it be, accordingly, that these quaint little panels at Bourges do not displease us? It is perhaps because things very ancient never, for some mysterious reason, appear vulgar. This fifteenth-century millionaire, with his palace, his "swagger" sculptures, may have produced that impression on some critical spirits of his own day. The portress who showed me into the building was a dear little old woman, with the gentlest, sweetest, saddest face--a little white, aged face, with dark, pretty eyes--and the most considerate manner. She took me up into an upper hall, where there were a couple of curious chimney-pieces and a fine old oaken roof, the latter representing the hollow of a long boat. There is a certain oddity in a native of Bourges--an inland town if ever there was one, without even a river (to call a river) to encourage nautical ambitions--having found his end as admiral of a fleet; but this boat-shaped roof, which is extremely graceful and is repeated in another apartment, would suggest that the imagination of Jacques Coeur was fond of riding the waves. Indeed, as he trafficked in Oriental products and owned many galleons, it is probable that he was personally as much at home in certain Mediterranean ports as in the capital of the pastoral Berry. If, when he looked at the ceilings of his mansion, he saw his boats upside down, this was only a suggestion of the shortest way of emptying them of their treasures. He is presented in person above one of the great stone chimney-pieces, in company with his wife, Macée de Léodepart--I like to write such an extraordinary name. Carved in white stone, the two sit playing at chess at an open window, through which they appear to give their attention much more to the passers-by than to the game. They are also exhibited in other attitudes; though I do not recognise them in the composition on top of one of the fireplaces which represents the battlements of a castle, with the defenders (little figures between the crenellations) hurling down missiles with a great deal of fury and expression. It would have been hard to believe that the man who surrounded himself with these friendly and humorous devices had been guilty of such wrong-doing as to call down the heavy hand of justice. It is a curious fact, however, that Bourges contains legal associations of a purer kind than the prosecution of Jacques Coeur, which, in spite of the rehabilitations of history, can hardly be said yet to have terminated, inasmuch as the law-courts of the city are installed in his quondam residence. At a short distance from it stands the Hôtel Cujas, one of the curiosities of Bourges and the habitation for many years of the great jurisconsult who revived in the sixteenth century the study of the Roman law and professed it during the close of his life in the university of the capital of Berry. The learned Cujas had, in spite of his sedentary pursuits, led a very wandering life; he died at Bourges in the year 1590. Sedentary pursuits are perhaps not exactly [Illustration: BOURGES--THE HOUSE OF JACQUES COEUR] what I should call them, having read in the "Biographie Universelle" (sole source of my knowledge of the renowned Cujacius) that his usual manner of study was to spread himself on his belly on the floor. He did not sit down, he lay down; and the "Biographie Universelle" has (for so grave a work) an amusing picture of the short, fat, untidy scholar dragging himself _à plat ventre_, across his room, from one pile of books to the other. The house in which these singular gymnastics took place, and which is now the headquarters of the gendarmerie, is one of the most picturesque at Bourges. Dilapidated and discoloured, it has a charming Renaissance front. A high wall separates it from the street, and on this wall, which is divided by a large open gateway, are perched two overhanging turrets. The open gateway admits you to the court, beyond which the melancholy mansion erects itself, decorated also with turrets, with fine old windows and with a beautiful tone of faded red brick and rusty stone. It is a charming encounter for a provincial by-street; one of those accidents in the hope of which the traveller with a propensity for sketching (whether on a little paper block or on the tablets of his brain) decides to turn a corner at a venture. A brawny gendarme in his shirtsleeves was polishing his boots in the court; an ancient, knotted vine, forlorn of its clusters, hung itself over a doorway and dropped its shadow on the rough grain of the wall. The place was very sketchable. I am sorry to say, however, that it was almost the only "bit." Various other curious old houses are supposed to exist at Bourges, and I wandered vaguely about in search of them. But I had little success, and I ended by becoming sceptical. Bourges is a _ville de province_ in the full force of the term, especially as applied invidiously. The streets, narrow, tortuous, and dirty, have very wide cobble-stones; the houses for the most part are shabby, without local colour. The look of things is neither modern nor antique--a kind of mediocrity of middle age. There is an enormous number of blank walls--walls of gardens, of courts, of private houses--that avert themselves from the street as if in natural chagrin at there being so little to see. Round about is a dull, flat, featureless country, on which the magnificent cathedral looks down. There is a peculiar dulness and ugliness in a French town of this type, which, I must immediately add, is not the most frequent one. In Italy everything has a charm, a colour, a grace; even desolation and ennui. In England a cathedral city may be sleepy, but it is pretty sure to be mellow. In the course of six weeks spent _en province_, however, I saw few places that had not more expression than Bourges. I went back to the cathedral; that, after all, was a feature. Then I returned to my hotel, where it was time to dine, and sat down, as usual, with the _commis-voyageurs_, who cut their bread on their thumb and partook of every course; and after this repast I repaired for a while to the café, which occupied a part of the basement of the inn and opened into its court. This café was a friendly, homely, sociable spot, where it seemed the habit of the master of the establishment to _tutoyer_ his customers and the practice of the customers to _tutoyer_ the waiter. Under these circumstances the waiter of course felt justified in sitting down at the same table with a gentleman who had come in and asked him for writing materials. He served this gentleman with a horrible little portfolio covered with shiny black cloth and accompanied with two sheets of [Illustration: BOURGES: THE CATHEDRAL (WEST FRONT)] thin paper, three wafers, and one of those instruments of torture which pass in France for pens--these being the utensils invariably evoked by such a request; and then, finding himself at leisure, he placed himself opposite and began to write a letter of his own. This trifling incident reminded me afresh that France is a democratic country. I think I received an admonition to the same effect from the free, familiar way in which the game of whist was going on just behind me. It was attended with a great deal of noisy pleasantry, flavoured every now and then with a dash of irritation. There was a young man of whom I made a note; he was such a beautiful specimen of his class. Sometimes he was very facetious, chattering, joking, punning, showing off; then, as the game went on and he lost and had to pay the _consommation_, he dropped his amiability, slanged his partner, declared he wouldn't play any more, and went away in a fury. Nothing could be more perfect or more amusing than the contrast. The manner of the whole affair was such as, I apprehend, one would not have seen among our English-speaking people; both the jauntiness of the first phase and the petulance of the second. To hold the balance straight, however, I may remark that if the men were all fearful "cads," they were, with their cigarettes and their inconsistency, less heavy, less brutal, than our dear English-speaking cad; just as the bright little café where a robust materfamilias, doling out sugar and darning a stocking, sat in her place under the mirror behind the _comptoir_, was a much more civilised spot than a British public-house or a "commercial room," with pipes and whisky, or even than an American saloon. [Illustration] Chapter xiii [Le Mans] It is very certain that when I left Tours for Le Mans it was a journey and not an excursion; for I had no intention of coming back. The question indeed was to get away, no easy matter in France in the early days of October, when the whole _jeunesse_ of the country is returning to school. It is accompanied, apparently, with parents and grandparents, and it fills the trains with little pale-faced _lycéens_, who gaze out of the windows with a longing, lingering air not unnatural on the part of small members of a race in which life is intense, who are about to be restored to those big educative barracks that do such violence to our American appreciation of the opportunities of boyhood. The train stopped every five minutes; but fortunately the country was charming--hilly and bosky, eminently good-humoured, and dotted here and there with a smart little château. The old capital of the province of the Maine, which has given its name to a great American State, is a fairly interesting town, but I confess that I found in it less than I expected to admire. My expectations had doubtless been my own fault; there is no particular reason why Le Mans should fascinate. It stands upon a hill, indeed--a much better hill than the gentle swell of Bourges. This hill, however, is not steep in all directions; from the railway, as I arrived, it was not even perceptible. Since I am making comparisons, I may remark that, on the other hand, the Boule d'Or at Le Mans is an appreciably better inn than the Boule d'Or at Bourges. It looks out upon a small market-place which has a certain amount of character and seems to be slipping down the slope on which it lies, though it has in the middle an ugly _halle_, or circular market-house, to keep it in position. At Le Mans, as at Bourges, my first business was with the cathedral, to which I lost no time in directing my steps. It suffered by juxtaposition to the great church I had seen a few days before; yet it has some noble features. It stands on the edge of the eminence of the town, which falls straight away on two sides of it, and makes a striking mass, bristling behind, as you see it from below, with rather small but singularly numerous flying buttresses. On my way to it I happened to walk through the one street which contains a few ancient and curious houses, a very crooked and untidy lane, of really mediæval aspect, honoured with the denomination of the Grand Rue. Here is the house of Queen Berengaria--an absurd name, as the building is of a date some three hundred years later than the wife of Richard Coeur de Lion, who has a sepulchral monument in the south aisle of the cathedral. The structure in question--very sketchable, if the sketcher could get far enough away from it--is an elaborate little dusky façade, overhanging the street, ornamented with panels of stone, which are covered with delicate Renaissance sculpture. A fat old woman standing in the door of a small grocer's shop next to it--a most gracious old woman, with a bristling moustache and a charming manner--told me what the house was, and also indicated to me a rotten-looking brown wooden mansion in the same street, nearer the cathedral, as the Maison Scarron. The author of the "Roman Comique" and of a thousand facetious verses enjoyed for some years, in the early part of his life, a benefice in the cathedral of Le Mans, which gave him a right to reside in one of the canonical houses. He was rather an odd canon, but his history is a combination of oddities. He wooed the comic muse from the arm-chair of a cripple, and in the same position--he was unable even to go down on his knees--prosecuted that other suit which made him the first husband of a lady of whom Louis XIV. was to be the second. There was little of comedy in the future Madame de Maintenon; though, after all, there was doubtless as much as there need have been in the wife of a poor man who was moved to compose for his tomb such an epitaph as this, which I quote from the "Biographie Universelle": "Celui qui cy maintenant dort, Fit plus de pitié que d'envie, Et souffrit mille fois la mort, Avant que de perdre la vie. Passant, ne fais icy de bruit, Et garde bien qu'il ne s'éveille. Car voicy la première nuit, Que le pauvre Scarron sommeille." There is rather a quiet, satisfactory _place_ in front of the cathedral, with some good "bits" in it; notably a turret at the angle of one of the towers and a very fine steep-roofed dwelling, behind low walls, which it overlooks, with a tall iron gate. This house has two or three little pointed towers, a big black, precipitous roof, and a general air of having had a history. There are houses which are scenes, and there are houses which are only houses. The trouble with the domestic architecture of the United States is that it is not scenic, thank goodness, and the characteristic of an old structure like the turreted mansion on the hillside of Le Mans is that it is not simply a house. It is a person, as it were, as well. It would be well, indeed, if it might have communicated a little of its personality to the front of the cathedral, which has none of its own. Shabby, rusty, unfinished, this front has a romanesque portal, but nothing in the way of a tower. One sees from without, at a glance, the peculiarity of the church--the disparity between the romanesque nave, which is small and of the twelfth century, and the immense and splendid transepts and choir, of a period a hundred years later. Outside, this end of the church rises far above the nave, which looks merely like a long porch leading to it, with a small and curious romanesque porch in its own south flank. The transepts, shallow but very lofty, display to the spectators in the _place_ the reach of their two clere-storey windows, which occupy, above, the whole expanse of the wall. The south transept terminates in a sort of tower, which is the only one of which the cathedral can boast. Within, the effect of the choir is superb; it is a church in itself, with the nave simply for a point of view. As I stood there I read in my Murray that it has the stamp of the date of the perfection of pointed Gothic, and I found nothing to object to the remark. It suffers little by confrontation with Bourges and, taken in itself, seems to me quite as fine. A passage of double aisles surrounds it, with the arches that divide them supported on very thick round columns, not clustered. There are twelve chapels in this passage, and a charming little lady-chapel filled with gorgeous old glass. The sustained height of this almost detached choir is very noble; its lightness and grace, its soaring symmetry, carry the eye up to places in the air from which it is slow to descend. Like Tours, like Chartres, like Bourges (apparently like all the French cathedrals, and unlike several English ones), Le Mans is rich in splendid glass. The beautiful upper windows of the choir make, far aloft, a brave gallery of pictures, blooming with vivid colour. It is the south transept that contains the formless image--a clumsy stone woman lying on her back--which purports to represent Queen Berengaria aforesaid. The view of the cathedral from the rear is, as usual, very fine. A small garden behind it masks its base; but you descend the hill to a large _place de foire_, adjacent to a fine old public promenade which is known as Les Jacobins, a sort of miniature Tuileries, where I strolled for a while in rectangular alleys destitute of herbage and received a deeper impression of vanished things. The cathedral, on the pedestal of its hill, looks considerably farther than the fair-ground and the Jacobins, between the rather bare poles of whose straightly planted trees you may admire it at a convenient distance. I admired it till I thought I should remember it (better than the event has proved), and then I wandered away and looked at another curious old church, Notre-Dame-de-la-Couture. This sacred edifice made a picture for ten minutes, but the picture has faded now. I reconstruct a yellowish-brown façade and a portal fretted with early sculptures; but the [Illustration: LE MANS--THE CATHEDRAL] details have gone the way of all incomplete sensations. After you have stood awhile, in the choir of the cathedral there is no sensation at Le Mans that goes very far. For some reason not now to be traced I had looked for more than this. I think the reason was to some extent simply in the name of the place; for names, on the whole, whether they be good reasons or not, are very active ones. Le Mans, if I am not mistaken, has a sturdy, feudal sound; suggests something dark and square, a vision of old ramparts and gates. Perhaps I had been unduly impressed by the fact, accidentally revealed to me, that Henry II., first of the English Plantagenets, was born there. Of course it is easy to assure one's self in advance, but does it not often happen that one had rather not be assured? There is a pleasure sometimes in running the risk of disappointment. I took mine, such as it was, quietly enough, while I sat before dinner at the door of one of the cafés in the market-place with a _bitter-et-curaçao_ (invaluable pretext at such an hour!) to keep me company. I remember that in this situation there came over me an impression which both included and excluded all possible disappointments. The afternoon was warm and still; the air was admirably soft. The good Manceaux, in little groups and pairs, were seated near me; my ear was soothed by the fine shades of French enunciation, by the detached syllables of that perfect tongue. There was nothing in particular in the prospect to charm; it was an average French view. Yet I felt a charm, a kind of sympathy, a sense of the completeness of French life and of the lightness and brightness of the social air, together with a desire to arrive at friendly judgments, to express a positive interest. I know not why this transcendental mood should have descended upon me then and there; but that idle half-hour in front of the café, in the mild October afternoon suffused with human sounds, is perhaps the most abiding thing I brought away from Le Mans. [Illustration] Chapter xiv [Angers] I am shocked at finding, just after this noble declaration of principles, that in a little note-book which at that time I carried about with me the celebrated city of Angers is denominated a "sell." I reproduce this vulgar word with the greatest hesitation, and only because it brings me more quickly to my point. This point is that Angers belongs to the disagreeable class of old towns that have been, as the English say, "done up." Not the oldness, but the newness, of the place is what strikes the sentimental tourist to-day, as he wanders with irritation along second-rate boulevards, looking vaguely about him for absent gables. "Black Angers," in short, is a victim of modern improvements and quite unworthy of its admirable name--a name which, like that of Le Mans, had always had, to my eyes, a highly picturesque value. It looks particularly well on the Shakespearean page (in "King John"), where we imagine it uttered (though such would not have been the utterance of the period) with a fine grinding insular accent. Angers figures with importance in early English history: it was the capital city of the Plantagenet race, home of that Geoffrey of Anjou who married, as second husband, the Empress Maud, daughter of Henry I. and competitor of Stephen, and became father of Henry II., first of the Plantagenet kings, born, as we have seen, at Le Mans. These facts create a natural presumption that Angers will look historic; I turned them over in my mind as I travelled in the train from Le Mans, through a country that was really pretty and looked more like the usual English than like the usual French scenery, with its fields cut up by hedges and a considerable rotundity in its trees. On my way from the station to the hotel, however, it became plain that I should lack a good pretext for passing that night at the Cheval Blanc; I foresaw that I should have contented myself before the end of the day. I remained at the White Horse only long enough to discover that it was an exceptionally good provincial inn, one of the best that I encountered during six weeks spent in these establishments. "Stupidly and vulgarly modernised"--that is another flower from my note-book, and note-books are not obliged to be reasonable. "There are some narrow and tortuous streets, with a few curious old houses," I continue to quote; "there is a castle, of which the exterior is most extraordinary, and there is a cathedral of moderate interest." It is fair to say that the Château d'Angers is by itself worth a pilgrimage; the only drawback is that you have seen it in a quarter of an hour. You cannot do more than look at it, and one good look does your business. It has no beauty, no grace, no detail, nothing that charms or detains you; it is simply very old and very big--so big and so old that this simple impression is enough, and it takes its place in your recollections as a perfect specimen of a superannuated stronghold. It stands at one end of the town, surrounded by a huge, deep moat, which originally contained the waters of the Maine, now divided from it by a quay. The water-front of Angers is poor--wanting in colour and in movement; and there is always an effect of perversity in a town lying near a great river and yet not upon it. The Loire is a few miles off; but Angers contents itself with a meagre affluent of that stream. The effect was naturally much better when the vast dark bulk of the castle, with its seventeen prodigious towers, rose out of the protecting flood. These towers are of tremendous girth and solidity; they are encircled with great bands, or hoops, of white stone, and are much enlarged at the base. Between them hang high curtains of infinitely old-looking masonry, apparently a dense conglomeration of slate, the material of which the town was originally built (thanks to rich quarries in the neighbourhood), and to which it owed its appellation of the Black. There are no windows, no apertures, and to-day no battlements nor roofs. These accessories were removed by Henry III., so that, in spite of its grimness and blackness, the place has not even the interest of looking like a prison; it being, as I suppose, the essence of a prison not to be open to the sky. The only features of the enormous structure are the blank, sombre stretches and protrusions of wall, the effect of which, on so large a scale, is strange and striking. Begun by Philip Augustus and terminated by St. Louis, the Château d'Angers has of course a great deal of history. The luckless Fouquet, the extravagant minister of finance of Louis XIV., whose fall from the heights of grandeur was so sudden and complete, was confined here in 1661, just after his arrest, which had taken place at Nantes. Here also Huguenots and Vendeans suffered effective captivity. I walked round the parapet which protects the outer edge of the moat (it is all up-hill, and the moat deepens and deepens), till I came to the entrance which faces the town, and which is as bare and strong as the rest. The concierge took me into the court; but there was nothing to see. The place is used as a magazine of ammunition, and the yard contains a multitude of ugly buildings. The only thing to do is to walk round the bastions for the view; but at the moment of my visit the weather was thick, and the bastions began and ended with themselves. So I came out and took another look at the big, black exterior, buttressed with white-ribbed towers, and perceived that a desperate sketcher might extract a picture from it, especially if he were to bring in, as they say, the little black bronze statue of the good King René (a weak production of [Illustration: ANGERS--OLD TIMBERED HOUSES] David d'Angers), which, standing within sight, ornaments the melancholy faubourg. He would do much better, however, with the very striking old timbered house (I suppose of the fifteenth century) which is called the Maison d'Adam and is easily the first specimen at Angers of the domestic architecture of the past. This admirable house, in the centre of the town, gabled, elaborately timbered, and much restored, is a really imposing monument. The basement is occupied by a linen-draper, who flourishes under the auspicious sign of the Mère de Famille; and above his shop the tall front rises in five overhanging storeys. As the house occupies the angle of a little _place_, this front is double, and the black beams and wooden supports, displayed over a large surface and carved and interlaced, have a high picturesqueness. The Maison d'Adam is quite in the grand style, and I am sorry to say I failed to learn what history attaches to its name. If I spoke just above of the cathedral as "moderate," I suppose I should beg its pardon; for this serious charge was probably prompted by the fact that it consists only of a nave, without side aisles. A little reflection now convinces me that such a form is a distinction; and indeed I find it mentioned, rather inconsistently, in my note-book, a little further on, as "extremely simple and grand." The nave is spoken of in the same volume as "big, serious, and Gothic," though the choir and transepts are noted as very shallow. But it is not denied that the air of the whole thing is original and striking; and it would therefore appear, after all, that the cathedral of Angers, built during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, is a sufficiently honourable church; the more that its high west front, adorned with a very primitive Gothic portal, supports two elegant tapering spires, between which, unfortunately, an ugly modern pavilion has been inserted. I remember nothing else at Angers but the curious old Café Serin, where, after I had had my dinner at the inn, I went and waited for the train which, at nine o'clock in the evening, was to convey me, in a couple of hours, to Nantes--an establishment remarkable for its great size and its air of tarnished splendour, its brown gilding and smoky frescoes, as also for the fact that it was hidden away on the second floor of an unassuming house in an unilluminated street. It hardly seemed a place where you would drop in; but when once you had found it, it presented itself, with the cathedral, the castle, and the Maison d'Adam, as one of the historical monuments of Angers. [Illustration] Chapter xv [Nantes] If I spent two nights at Nantes, it was for reasons of convenience rather than of sentiment; though indeed I spent them in a big circular room which had a stately, lofty, last-century look--a look that consoled me a little for the whole place being dirty. The high, old-fashioned inn (it had a huge windy _porte-cochère_, and you climbed a vast black stone staircase to get to your room) looked out on a dull square, surrounded with other tall houses and occupied on one side by the theatre, a pompous building decorated with columns and statues of the muses. Nantes belongs to the class of towns which are always spoken of as "fine," and its position near the mouth of the Loire gives it, I believe, much commercial movement. It is a spacious, rather regular city, looking, in the parts that I traversed, neither very fresh nor very venerable. It derives its principal character from the handsome quays on the Loire, which are overhung with tall eighteenth-century houses (very numerous too in the other streets)--houses with big _entresols_ marked by arched windows, classic pediments, balcony-rails of fine old iron-work. These features exist in still better form at Bordeaux; but, putting Bordeaux aside, Nantes is quite architectural. The view up and down the quays has the cool, neutral tone of colour that one finds so often in French water-side places--the bright greyness which is the tone of French landscape art. The whole city has rather a grand, or at least an eminently well-established, air. During a day passed in it of course I had time to go to the Musée; the more so that I have a weakness for provincial museums--a sentiment that depends but little on the quality of the collection. The pictures may be bad, but the place is often curious; and indeed from bad pictures, in certain moods of the mind, there is a degree of entertainment to be derived. If they are tolerably old they are often touching; but they must have a relative antiquity, for I confess I can do nothing with works of art of which the badness is of recent origin. The cool, still, empty chambers in which indifferent collections are apt to be preserved, the red brick tiles, the diffused light, the musty odour, the mementos around you of dead fashions, the snuffy custodian in a black skull-cap, who pulls aside a faded curtain to show you the lustreless gem of the museum--these things have a mild historical quality, and the sallow canvases after all illustrate something. Many of those in the museum of Nantes illustrate the taste of a successful warrior, having been bequeathed to the city by Napoleon's marshal Clarke (created Duc de Feltre). In addition to these there is the usual number of specimens of the contemporary French school, culled from the annual Salons and presented to the museum by the State. Wherever the traveller goes, in France, he is reminded of this very honourable practice--the purchase by the Government of a certain number of "pictures of the year," which are presently distributed in the provinces. Governments succeed each other and bid for success by different devices; but the "patronage of art" is a plank, as we should say here, in every platform. The works of art are often ill-selected--there is an official taste which you immediately recognise--but the custom is essentially liberal, and a Government which should neglect it would be felt to be painfully common. The only thing in this particular Musée that I remember is a fine portrait of a woman by Ingres--very flat and Chinese, but with an interest of line and a great deal of style. There is a castle at Nantes which resembles in some degree that of Angers, but has, without, much less of the impressiveness of great size, and, within, much more interest of detail. The court contains the remains of a very fine piece of late Gothic--a tall elegant building of the sixteenth century. The château is naturally not wanting in history. It was the residence of the old Dukes of Brittany, and was brought, with the rest of the province, by the Duchess Anne, the last representative of that race, as her dowry, to Charles VIII. I read in the excellent handbook of M. Joanne that it has been visited by almost every one of the kings of France, from Louis XI. downward; and also that it has served as a place of sojourn less voluntary on the part of various other distinguished persons, from the horrible Maréchal de Retz, who in the fifteenth century was executed at Nantes for the murder of a couple of hundred young children, sacrificed in abominable rites, to the ardent Duchess of Berry, mother of the Count of Chambord, who was confined there for a few hours in 1832, just after her arrest in a neighbouring house. I looked at the house in question--you may see it from the platform in front of the château--and tried to figure to myself that embarrassing scene. The Duchess, after having unsuccessfully raised the standard of revolt (for the exiled Bourbons) in the legitimist Bretagne, and being "wanted," as the phrase is, by the police of Louis Philippe, had hidden herself in a small but loyal house at Nantes, where, at the end of five months of seclusion, she was betrayed, for gold, to the austere M. Guizot by one of her servants, an Alsatian Jew named Deutz. For many hours before her capture she had been compressed into an interstice behind a fireplace, and by the time she was drawn forth into the light she had been ominously scorched. The man who showed me the castle indicated also another historic spot, a house with little _tourelles_ on the Quai de la Fosse, in which Henry IV. is said to have signed the Edict revoked by Louis XIV. I am, however, not in a position to answer for this pedigree. There is another point in the history of the fine old houses which command the Loire, of which, I suppose, one may be tolerably sure; that is their having, placid as they stand there to-day, looked down on the horrors of the Terror of 1793, the bloody reign of the monster Carrier and his infamous _noyades_. The most hideous episode of the Revolution was enacted at Nantes, where hundreds of men and women, tied together in couples, were set afloat upon rafts and sunk to the bottom of the Loire. The tall eighteenth-century house, full of the _air noble_, in France always reminds me of those dreadful years--of the street-scenes of the Revolution. Superficially, the association is incongruous, for nothing could be more formal and decorous than the patent expression of these eligible residences. But whenever I have a vision of prisoners bound on tumbrels that jolt slowly to the scaffold, of heads carried on pikes, of groups of heated _citoyennes_ shaking their fists at closed coach-windows, I see in the background the well-ordered features of the architecture of the period--the clear grey stone, the high pilasters, the arching lines of the _entresol_, the classic pediment, the slate-covered attic. There is not much architecture at Nantes except the domestic. The cathedral, with a rough west front and stunted towers, makes no impression as you approach it. It is true that it does its best to recover its reputation as soon as you have passed the threshold. Begun in 1434 and finished about the end of the fifteenth century, as I discover in Murray, it has a magnificent nave, not of great length, but of extraordinary height and lightness. On the other hand, it has no choir whatever. There is much entertainment in France in seeing what a cathedral will take upon itself to possess or to lack; for it is only the smaller number that have the full complement of features. Some have a very fine nave and no choir; others a very fine choir and no nave. Some have a rich outside and nothing within; others a very blank face and a very glowing heart. There are a hundred possibilities of poverty and wealth, and they make the most unexpected combinations. The great treasure of Nantes is the two noble sepulchral monuments which occupy either transept, and one of which has (in its nobleness) the rare distinction of being a production of our own time. On the south side stands the tomb of Francis II., the last of the Dukes of Brittany, and of his second wife, Margaret of Foix, erected in 1507 by their daughter Anne, whom we have encountered already at the Château de Nantes, where she was born; at Langeais, where she married her first husband; at Amboise, where she lost him; at Blois, where she married her second, the "good" Louis XII., who divorced an impeccable spouse to make room for her, and where she herself died. Transferred to the cathedral from a demolished convent, this monument, the masterpiece of Michel Colomb, author of the charming tomb of the children of Charles VIII. and the aforesaid Anne, which we admired at Saint Gatien of Tours, is one of the most brilliant works of the French Renaissance. It has a splendid effect and is in perfect preservation. A great table of black marble supports the reclining figures of the duke and duchess, who lie there peacefully and majestically, in their robes and crowns, with their heads each on a cushion, the pair of which are supported from behind by three charming little kneeling angels; at the foot of the quiet couple are a lion and a greyhound, with heraldic devices. At each of the angles of the table is a large figure in white marble of a woman elaborately dressed, with a symbolic meaning, and these figures, with their contemporary faces and clothes, which give them the air of realistic portraits, are truthful and living, if not remarkably beautiful. Round the sides of the tomb are small images of the apostles. There is a kind of masculine completeness in the work, and a certain robustness of taste. In nothing were the sculptors of the Renaissance more fortunate than in being in advance of us with their tombs: they have left us nothing to say in regard to the great final contrast--the contrast between the immobility of death and the trappings and honours that survive. They expressed in every way in which it was possible to express it the solemnity of their conviction that the marble image was a part of the personal greatness of the defunct, and the protection, the redemption, of his memory. A modern tomb, in comparison, is a sceptical affair; it insists too little on the honours. I say this in the face of the fact that one has only to step across the cathedral of Nantes to stand in the presence of one of the purest and most touching of modern tombs. Catholic Brittany has erected in the opposite transept a monument to one of the most devoted of her sons, General de Lamoricière, the defender of the Pope, the vanquished of Castelfidardo. This noble work, from the hand of Paul Dubois, one of the most interesting of that new generation of sculptors who have revived in France an art of which our over-dressed century had begun to despair, has every merit but the absence of a certain prime feeling. It is the echo of an earlier tune--an echo with a beautiful cadence. Under a Renaissance canopy of white marble elaborately worked with arabesques and cherubs, in a relief so low that it gives the work a certain look of being softened and worn by time, lies the body of the Breton soldier with a crucifix clasped to his breast and a shroud thrown over his body. At each of the angles sits a figure in bronze, the two best of which, representing Charity and Military Courage, had given me extraordinary pleasure when they were exhibited (in the clay) in the Salon of 1876. They are admirably cast and not less admirably conceived: the one a serene, robust young mother, beautiful in line and attitude; the other a lean and vigilant young man, in a helmet that overshadows his serious eyes, resting an outstretched arm, an admirable military member, upon the hilt of a sword. These figures contain abundant assurance that M. Paul Dubois has been attentive to Michael Angelo, whom we have all heard called a splendid example and a bad model. The visor-shadowed face of his warrior is more or less a reminiscence of the figure on the tomb of Lorenzo de'Medici at Florence; but it is doubtless none the worse for that. The interest of the work of Paul Dubois is its peculiar seriousness, a kind of moral good faith which is not the commonest feature of French art, and which, united as it is in this case with exceeding knowledge and a remarkable sense of form, produces an impression of deep refinement. The whole monument is a proof of exquisitely careful study; but I am not sure that this impression on the part of the spectator is the happiest possible. It explains much of the great beauty, and it also explains perhaps a little of the slight pedantry. That word, however, is scarcely in place; I only mean that M. Dubois has made a visible effort, which has visibly triumphed. Simplicity is not always strength, and our complicated modern genius contains treasures of intention. This fathomless modern element is an immense charm on the part of M. Paul Dubois. I am lost in admiration of the deep æsthetic experience, the enlightenment of taste, revealed by such work. After that I only hope that, Giuseppe Garibaldi may have somewhere or other some commemoration as distinguished. [Illustration] Chapter xvi [La Rochelle] To go from Nantes to La Rochelle you travel straight southward across the historic _bocage_ of La Vendée, the home of royalist bush-fighting. The country, which is exceedingly pretty, bristles with copses, orchards, hedges, and with trees more spreading and sturdy than the traveller is apt to find the feathery foliage of France. It is true that as I proceeded it flattened out a good deal, so that for an hour there was a vast featureless plain, which offered me little entertainment beyond the general impression that I was approaching the Bay of Biscay (from which, in reality, I was yet far distant). As we drew near La Rochelle, however, the prospect brightened considerably, and the railway kept its course beside a charming little canal, or canalised river, bordered with trees and with small, neat, bright-coloured and yet old-fashioned cottages and villas, which stood back, on the farther side, behind small gardens, hedges, painted palings, patches of turf. The whole effect was Dutch and delightful; and in being delightful, though not in being Dutch, it prepared me for the charms of La Rochelle, which from the moment I entered it I perceived to be a fascinating little town, a quite original mixture of brightness and dulness. Part of its brightness comes from its being extraordinarily clean--in which, after all, it _is_ Dutch; a virtue not particularly noticeable at Bourges, Le Mans, and Angers. Whenever I go southward, if it be only twenty miles, I begin to look out for the south, prepared as I am to find the careless grace of those latitudes even in things of which it may be said that they may be south of something, but are not southern. To go from Boston to New York (in this state of mind) is almost as soft a sensation as descending the Italian side of the Alps; and to go from New York to Philadelphia is to enter a zone of tropical luxuriance and warmth. Given this absurd disposition, I could not fail to flatter myself, on reaching La Rochelle, that I was already in the Midi, and to perceive in everything, in the language of the country, the _caractère méridional_. Really a great many things had a hint of it. For that matter it seems to me that to arrive in the south at a bound--to wake up there, as it were--would be a very imperfect pleasure. The full pleasure is to approach by stages and gradations; to observe the successive shades of difference by which it ceases to be the north. These shades are exceedingly fine, but your true south-lover has an eye for them all. If he perceives them at New York and Philadelphia--we imagine him boldly as liberated from Boston--how could he fail to perceive them at La Rochelle? The streets of this dear little city are lined with arcades--good, big, straddling arcades of stone, such as befit a land of hot summers and which recalled to me, not to go further, the dusky porticos of Bayonne. It contains, moreover, a great wide _place d'armes_ which looked for all the world like the piazza of some dead Italian town, empty, sunny, grass-grown, with a row of yellow houses overhanging it, an unfrequented café with a striped awning, a tall, cold, florid, uninteresting cathedral of the eighteenth century on one side, and on the other a shady walk which forms part of an old rampart. I followed this walk for some time, under the stunted trees, beside the grass-covered bastions; it is very charming, winding and wandering, always with trees. Beneath the rampart is a tidal river, and on the other side, for a long distance, the mossy walls of the immense garden of a seminary. Three hundred years ago La Rochelle was the great French stronghold of Protestantism, but to-day it appears to be a nursery of Papists. The walk upon the rampart led me round to one of the gates of the town, where I found some small modern fortifications and sundry red-legged soldiers, and, beyond the fortifications, another shady walk--a _mail_, as the French say, as well as a _champ de manoeuvre_--on which latter expanse the poor little red-legs were doing their exercise. It was all very quiet and very picturesque, rather in miniature; and at once very tidy and a little out of repair. This, however, was but a meagre back-view of La Rochelle, or poor side-view at best. There are other gates than the small fortified aperture just mentioned; one of them, an old grey arch beneath a fine clock-tower, I had passed through on my way from the station. This substantial Tour de l'Horloge separates the town proper from the port; for beyond the old grey arch the place presents its bright, expressive little face to the sea. I had a charming walk about the harbour and along the stone piers and sea-walls that shut it in. This indeed, to take things in their order, was after I had had my breakfast (which I took on arriving) and after I had been to the _hôtel de ville_. The inn had a long narrow garden behind it, with some very tall trees; and passing through this garden to a dim and secluded _salle à manger_, buried in the heavy shade, I had, while I sat at my repast, a feeling of seclusion which amounted almost to a sense of incarceration. I lost this sense, however, after I had paid my bill, and went out to look for traces of the famous siege, which is the principal title of La Rochelle to renown. I had come thither partly because I thought it would be interesting to stand for a few moments in so gallant a spot, and partly because, I confess, I had a curiosity to see what had been the starting-point of the Huguenot emigrants who founded the town of New Rochelle in the State of New York, a place in which I had passed sundry memorable hours. It was strange to think, as I strolled through the peaceful little port, that these quiet waters, during the wars of religion, had swelled with a formidable naval power. The Rochelais had fleets and admirals, and their stout little Protestant bottoms carried defiance up and down. To say that I found any traces of the siege would be to misrepresent the taste for vivid whitewash by which La Rochelle is distinguished to-day. The only trace is the dent in the marble top of the table on which, in the _hôtel de ville_, Jean Guiton, the mayor of the city, brought down his dagger with an oath when in 1628 the vessels and regiments of Richelieu closed about it on sea and land. This terrible functionary was the soul of the resistance; he held out from February [Illustration: LA ROCHELLE] to October in the midst of pestilence and famine. The whole episode has a brilliant place among the sieges of history; it has been related a hundred times, and I may only glance at it and pass. I limit my ambition in these light pages to speaking of those things of which I have personally received an impression, and I have no such impression of the defence of La Rochelle. The _hôtel de ville_ is a pretty little building, in the style of the Renaissance of Francis I.; but it has left much of its interest in the hands of the restorers. It has been "done up" without mercy; its natural place would be at Rochelle the New. A sort of battlemented curtain, flanked with turrets, divides it from the street and contains a low door (a low door in a high wall is always felicitous), which admits you to an inner court, where you discover the face of the building. It has statues set into it and is raised upon a very low and very deep arcade. The principal function of the deferential old portress who conducts you over the place is to call your attention to the indented table of Jean Guiton; but she shows you other objects of interest besides. The interior is absolutely new and extremely sumptuous, abounding in tapestries, upholstery, morocco, velvet, satin. This is especially the case with a really beautiful _grande salle_, where, surrounded with the most expensive upholstery, the mayor holds his official receptions. (So at least said my worthy portress.) The mayors of La Rochelle appear to have changed a good deal since the days of the grim Guiton; but these evidences of municipal splendour are interesting for the light they throw on French manners. Imagine the mayor of an English or an American town of twenty thousand inhabitants holding magisterial soirées in the town hall! The said _grande salle_, which is unchanged in form and in its larger features, is, I believe, the room in which the Rochelais debated as to whether they should shut themselves up, and decided in the affirmative. The table and chair of Jean Guiton have been restored, like everything else, and are very elegant and coquettish pieces of furniture--incongruous relics of a season of starvation and blood. I believe that Protestantism is somewhat shrunken to-day at La Rochelle, and has taken refuge mainly in the _haute société_ and in a single place of worship. There was nothing particular to remind me of its supposed austerity as, after leaving the _hôtel de ville_, I walked along the empty porticos and out of the Tour de l'Horloge, which I have already mentioned. If I stopped and looked up at this venerable monument, it was not to ascertain the hour, for I foresaw that I should have more time at La Rochelle than I knew what to do with; but because its high, grey, weather-beaten face was an obvious subject for a sketch. The little port, which has two basins and is accessible only to vessels of light tonnage, had a certain gaiety and as much local colour as you please. Fisher-folk of picturesque type were strolling about, most of them Bretons; several of the men with handsome, simple faces, not at all brutal, and with a splendid brownness--the golden-brown colour on cheek and beard that you see on an old Venetian sail. It was a squally, showery day, with sudden drizzles of sunshine; rows of rich-toned fishing-smacks were drawn up along the quays. The harbour is effective to the eye by reason of three battered old towers which at different points overhang it and look infinitely weather-washed and sea-silvered. The most striking of these, the Tour de la Lanterne, is a big grey mass [Illustration] of the fifteenth century, flanked with turrets and crowned with a Gothic steeple. I found it was called by the people of the place the Tour des Quatre Sergents, though I know not what connection it has with the touching history of the four young sergeants of the garrison of La Rochelle who were arrested in 1821 as conspirators against the Government of the Bourbons, and executed, amid general indignation, in Paris in the following year. The quaint little walk, with its label of Rue sur les Murs, to which one ascends from beside the Grosse Horloge, leads to this curious Tour de la Lanterne and passes under it. This walk has the top of the old town-wall, towards the sea, for a parapet on one side, and is bordered on the other with decent but irregular little tenements of fishermen, where brown old women, whose caps are as white as if they were painted, seem chiefly in possession. In this direction there is a very pretty stretch of shore, out of the town, through the fortifications (which are Vauban's, by the way); through, also, a diminutive public garden or straggling shrubbery which edges the water and carries its stunted verdure as far as a big Établissement des Bains. It was too late in the year to bathe, and the Établissement had the bankrupt aspect which belongs to such places out of the season; so I turned my back upon it and gained, by a circuit in the course of which there were sundry water-side items to observe, the other side of the cheery little port, where there is a long breakwater and a still longer sea-wall, on which I walked a while, to inhale the strong, salt breath of the Bay of Biscay. La Rochelle serves, in the months of July and August, as a _station de bains_ for a modest provincial society; and, putting aside the question of inns, it must be charming on summer afternoons. [Illustration] Chapter xvii [Poitiers] It is an injustice to Poitiers to approach her by night, as I did some three hours after leaving La Rochelle; for what Poitiers has of best, as they would say at Poitiers, is the appearance she presents to the arriving stranger who puts his head out of the window of the train. I gazed into the gloom from such an aperture before we got into the station, for I remembered the impression received on another occasion; but I saw nothing save the universal night, spotted here and there with an ugly railway lamp. It was only as I departed, the following day, that I assured myself that Poitiers still makes something of the figure she ought on the summit of her considerable hill. I have a kindness for any little group of towers, any cluster of roofs and chimneys, that lift themselves from an eminence over which a long road ascends in zigzags; such a picture creates for the moment a presumption that you are in Italy, and even leads you to believe that if you mount the winding road you will come to an old town-wall, an expanse of creviced brownness, and pass under a gateway surmounted by the arms of a mediæval despot. Why I should find it a pleasure in France to imagine myself in Italy, is more than I can say; the illusion has never lasted long enough to be analysed. From the bottom of its perch Poitiers looks large and high; and indeed, the evening I reached it, the interminable climb of the omnibus of the hotel I had selected, which I found at the station, gave me the measure of its commanding position. This hotel, "magnifique construction ornée de statues," as the Guide-Joanne, usually so reticent, takes the trouble to announce, has an omnibus, and, I suppose, has statues, though I didn't perceive them; but it has very little else save immemorial accumulations of dirt. It is magnificent, if you will, but it is not even relatively proper; and a dirty inn has always seemed to me the dirtiest of human things--it has so many opportunities to betray itself. Poitiers covers a large space, and is as crooked and straggling as you please; but these advantages are not accompanied with any very salient features or any great wealth of architecture. Although there are few picturesque houses, however, there are two or three curious old churches. Notre Dame la Grande, in the market-place, a small romanesque structure of the twelfth century, has a most interesting and venerable exterior. Composed, like all the churches of Poitiers, of a light brown stone with a yellowish tinge, it is covered with primitive but ingenious sculptures, and is really an impressive monument. Within, it has lately been daubed over with the most hideous decorative painting that was ever inflicted upon passive pillars and indifferent vaults. This battered yet coherent little edifice has the touching look that resides in everything supremely old; it has arrived at the age at which such things cease to feel the years; the waves of time have worn its edges to a kind of patient dulness; there is something mild and smooth, like the stillness, the deafness, of an octogenarian, even in its rudeness of ornament, and it has become insensible to differences of a century or two. The cathedral interested me much less than Our Lady the Great, and I have not the spirit to go into statistics about it. It is not statistical to say that the cathedral stands half-way down the hill of Poitiers, in a quiet and grass-grown _place_, with an approach of crooked lanes and blank garden-walls, and that its most striking dimension is the width of its façade. This width is extraordinary, but it fails, somehow, to give nobleness to the edifice, which looks within (Murray makes the remark) like a large public hall. There are a nave and two aisles, the latter about as high as the nave; and there are some very fearful modern pictures, which you may see much better than you usually see those specimens of the old masters that lurk in glowing side-chapels, there being no fine old glass to diffuse a kindly gloom. The sacristan of the cathedral showed me something much better than all this bright bareness; he led me a short distance out of it to the small Temple de Saint-Jean, which is the most curious object at Poitiers. It is an early Christian chapel, one of the earliest in France; originally, it would seem--that is, in the sixth or seventh century--a baptistery, but converted into a church while the Christian era was still comparatively young. The Temple de Saint-Jean is therefore a monument even more venerable than Notre Dame la Grande, and that numbness of age which I imputed to Notre Dame ought to reside in still larger measure in its crude and colourless little walls. I call them crude, in spite of their having been baked through by the centuries, only because, although certain rude arches and carvings are let into them and they are surmounted at either end with a small gable, they have (so far as I can remember) little fascination of surface. Notre Dame is still expressive, still pretends to be alive; but the temple has delivered its message and is completely at rest. It retains a kind of atrium, on the level of the street, from which you descend to the original floor, now uncovered, but buried for years under a false bottom. A semicircular apse was, apparently at the time of its conversion into a church, thrown out from the east wall. In the middle is the cavity of the old baptismal font. The walls and vaults are covered with traces of extremely archaic frescoes, attributed, I believe, to the twelfth century. These vague, gaunt, staring fragments of figures are, to a certain extent, a reminder of some of the early Christian churches in Rome; they even faintly recalled to me the great mosaics of Ravenna. The Temple de Saint-Jean has neither the antiquity nor the completeness of those extraordinary monuments, nearly the most impressive in Europe; but, as one may say, it is very well for Poitiers. Not far from it, in a lonely corner which was animated for the moment by the vociferations of several old women who were selling tapers, presumably for the occasion of a particular devotion, is the graceful romanesque church erected in the twelfth century to Saint Radegonde--a lady who found means to be a saint even in the capacity of a Merovingian queen. It bears a general resemblance to Notre Dame la Grande, and, as I remember it, is corrugated in somewhat the same manner with porous-looking carvings; but I confess that what I chiefly recollect is the row of old women sitting in front of it, each with a tray of waxen tapers in her lap, and upbraiding me for my neglect of the opportunity to offer such a tribute to the saint. I know not whether this privilege is occasional or constant; within the church there was no appearance of a festival, and I see that the name-day of Saint Radegonde occurs in August, so that the importunate old women sit there always perhaps and deprive of its propriety the epithet I just applied to this provincial corner. In spite of the old women, however, I suspect that the place is lonely; and indeed it is perhaps the old women who have made the desolation. The lion of Poitiers in the eyes of the natives is doubtless the Palais de Justice, in the shadow of which the statue-guarded hotel, just mentioned, erects itself; and the gem of the court-house, which has a prosy modern front, with pillars and a high flight of steps, is the curious _salle des pas perdus_, or central hall, out of which the different tribunals open. This is a feature of every French court-house, and seems the result of a conviction that a palace of justice--the French deal in much finer names than we--should be in some degree palatial. The great hall at Poitiers has a long pedigree, as its walls date back to the twelfth century and its open wooden roof, as well as the remarkable trio of chimney-pieces at the right end of the room as you enter, to the fifteenth. The three tall fireplaces, side by side, with a delicate gallery running along the top of them, constitute the originality of this ancient chamber, and make one think of the groups that must formerly have gathered there--of all the wet boot-soles, the trickling doublets, the stiffened fingers, the rheumatic shanks, that must have been presented to such an incomparable focus of heat. To-day, I am afraid, these mighty hearths are for ever cold; justice is probably administered with the aid of a modern _calorifère_, and the walls of the palace are perforated with regurgitating tubes. Behind and above the gallery that surmounts the three fireplaces are high Gothic windows, the tracery of which masks, in some sort, the chimneys; and in each angle of this and of the room to the right and left of the trio of chimneys is an open-work spiral staircase, ascending to--I forget where; perhaps to the roof of the edifice. The whole side of the _salle_ is very lordly, and seems to express an unstinted hospitality, to extend the friendliest of all invitations, to bid the whole world come and get warm. It was the invention of John, Duke of Berry and Count of Poitou, about 1395. I give this information on the authority of the Guide-Joanne, from which source I gather much other curious learning; as, for instance, that it was in this building, when it had surely a very different front, that Charles VII. was proclaimed king in 1422; and that here Jeanne Darc was subjected, in 1429, to the inquisition of sundry doctors and matrons. The most charming thing at Poitiers is simply the Promenade de Blossac--a small public garden at one end of the flat top of the hill. It has a happy look of the last century (having been arranged at that period), and a beautiful sweep of view over the surrounding country, and especially of the course of the little river Clain, which winds about a part of the base of the big mound of Poitiers. The limit of this dear little garden is formed, on the side that turns away from the town, by the rampart erected in the fourteenth century and by its big semicircular bastions. This rampart, of great length, has a low parapet; you look over it at the charming little vegetable-gardens with which the base of the hill appears exclusively to be garnished. The whole prospect is delightful, especially the details of the part just under the walls, at the end of the walk. Here the river makes a shining twist which a painter might have invented, and the side of the hill is terraced into several hedges--a sort of tangle of small blooming patches and little pavilions with peaked roofs and green shutters. It is idle to attempt to reproduce all this in words; it should be reproduced only in water-colours. The reader, however, will already have remarked that disparity in these ineffectual pages, which are pervaded by the attempt to sketch without a palette or brushes. He will doubtless also be struck with the grovelling vision which, on such a spot as the ramparts of Poitiers, peoples itself with carrots and cabbages rather than with images of the Black Prince and the captive king. I am not sure that in looking out from the Promenade de Blossac you command the old battle-field; it is enough that it was not far off, and that the great rout of Frenchmen poured into the walls of Poitiers, leaving on the ground a number of the fallen equal to the little army (eight thousand) of the invader. I did think of the battle. I wondered, rather helplessly, where it had taken place; and I came away (as the reader will see from the preceding sentence) without finding out. This indifference, however, was a result rather of a general dread of military topography than of a want of admiration of this particular victory, which I have always supposed to be one of the most brilliant on record. Indeed, I should be almost ashamed, and very much at a loss, to say what light it was that this glorious day seemed to me to have left for ever on the horizon, and why the very name of the place had always caused my blood gently to tingle. It is carrying the feeling of race to quite inscrutable lengths when a vague American permits himself an emotion because more than five centuries ago, on French soil, one rapacious Frenchman got the better of another. Edward was a Frenchman as well as John, and French were the cries that urged each of the hosts to the fight. French is the beautiful motto graven round the image of the Black Prince as he lies for ever at rest in the choir of Canterbury: _à la mort ne pensai-je mye_. Nevertheless, the victory of Poitiers declines to lose itself in these considerations; the sense of it is a part of our heritage, the joy of it a part of our imagination, and it filters down through centuries and migrations till it titillates a New Yorker who forgets in his elation that he happens at that moment to be enjoying the hospitality of France. It was something done, I know not how justly, for England; and what was done in the fourteenth century for England was done also for New York. [Illustration] Chapter xviii [Angoulême] If it was really for the sake of the Black Prince that I had stopped at Poitiers (for my prevision of Notre Dame la Grande and of the little temple of St. John was of the dimmest), I ought to have stopped at Angoulême for the sake of David and Eve Séchard, of Lucien de Rubempré and of Madame de Bargeton, who when she wore a _toilette étudiée_ sported a Jewish turban ornamented with an Eastern brooch, a scarf of gauze, a necklace of cameos, and a robe of "painted muslin," whatever that may be; treating herself to these luxuries out of an income of twelve thousand francs. The persons I have mentioned have not that vagueness of identity which is the misfortune of historical characters; they are real, supremely real, thanks to their affiliation to the great Balzac, who had invented an artificial reality which was as much better than the vulgar article as mock-turtle soup is than the liquid it emulates. The first time I read "Les Illusions Perdues" I should have refused to believe that I was capable of passing the old capital of Anjou without alighting to visit the Houmeau. But we never know what we are capable of till we are tested, as I reflected when I found myself looking back at Angoulême from the window of the train just after we had emerged from the long tunnel that passes under the town. This tunnel perforates the hill on which, like Poitiers, Angoulême rears itself, and which gives it an elevation still greater than that of Poitiers. You may have a tolerable look at the cathedral without leaving the railway carriage, for it stands just above the tunnel and is exposed, much foreshortened, to the spectator below. There is evidently a charming walk round the plateau of the town commanding those pretty views of which Balzac gives an account. But the train whirled me away, and these are my only impressions. The truth is that I had no need, just at that moment, of putting myself into communication with Balzac, for opposite to me in the compartment were a couple of figures almost as vivid as the actors in the "Comédie Humaine." One of these was a very genial and dirty old priest, and the other was a reserved and concentrated young monk--the latter (by which I mean a monk of any kind) being a rare sight to-day in France. This young man indeed was mitigatedly monastic. He had a big brown frock and cowl, but he had also a shirt and a pair of shoes; he had, instead of a hempen scourge round his waist, a stout leather thong, and he carried with him a very profane little valise. He also read, from beginning to end, the _Figaro_ which the old priest, who had done the same, presented to him; and he looked altogether as if, had he not been a monk, he would have made a distinguished officer of engineers. When he was not reading the _Figaro_ he was conning his breviary or answering, with rapid precision and with a deferential but discouraging dryness, the frequent questions of his companion, who was of quite another type. This worthy had a bored, good-natured, unbuttoned, expansive look; was talkative, restless, almost disreputably human. He was surrounded by a great deal of small luggage, and had scattered over the carriage his books, his papers, and fragments of his lunch, and the contents of an extraordinary bag which he kept beside him--a kind of secular reliquary--and which appeared to contain the odds and ends of a lifetime, as he took from it successively a pair of slippers, an old padlock (which evidently did not belong to it), an opera-glass, a collection of almanacs, and a large sea-shell, which he very carefully examined. I think that if he had not been afraid of the young monk, who was so much more serious than he, he would have held the shell to his ear like a child. Indeed, he was a very childish and delightful old priest, and his companion evidently thought him quite frivolous. But I liked him the better of the two. He was not a country curé, but an ecclesiastic of some rank, who had seen a good deal both of the church and of the world; and if I too had not been afraid of his colleague, who read the _Figaro_ as seriously as if it had been an encyclical, I should have entered into conversation with him. All this while I was getting on to Bordeaux, where I permitted myself to spend three days. I am afraid I have next to nothing to show for them, and that there would be little profit in lingering on this episode, which is the less to be justified as I had in former years examined Bordeaux attentively enough. It contains a very good hotel--an hotel not good enough, however, to keep you there for its own sake. For the rest, Bordeaux is a big, rich, handsome, imposing commercial town, with long rows of fine old eighteenth-century houses which overlook the yellow Garonne. I have spoken of the quays of Nantes as fine, but those of Bordeaux have a wider sweep and a still more architectural air. The appearance of such a port as this makes the Anglo-Saxon tourist blush for the sordid water-fronts of Liverpool and New York, which, with their larger activity, have so much more reason to be stately. Bordeaux gives a great impression of prosperous industries, and suggests delightful ideas, images of prune-boxes and bottled claret. As the focus of distribution of the best wine in the world, it is indeed a sacred city--dedicated to the worship of Bacchus in the most discreet form. The country all about it is covered with precious vineyards, sources of fortune to their owners and of satisfaction to distant consumers: and as you look over to the hills beyond the Garonne you see them, in the autumn sunshine, fretted with the rusty richness of this or that immortal _clos_. But the principal picture, within the town, is that of the vast curving quays, bordered with houses that look like the _hôtels_ of farmers-general of the last century, and of the wide, tawny river, crowded with shipping and spanned by the largest of bridges. Some of the types on the water-side are of the sort that arrest a sketcher--figures of stalwart, brown-faced Basques, such as I had seen of old in great numbers at Biarritz, with their loose circular caps, their white sandals, their air of walking for a wager. Never was a tougher, a harder race. They are not mariners nor watermen, but, putting questions of temper aside, they are the best possible dock-porters. "Il s'y fait un commerce terrible," a _douanier_ said to me, as he looked up and down the interminable docks; and such a place has indeed much to say of the wealth, the capacity for production, of France--the bright, cheerful, smokeless industry of the wonderful country which produces, above all, the agreeable things of life, and turns even its defeats and revolutions into gold. The whole town has an air of almost depressing opulence, an appearance which culminates in the great _place_ which surrounds the Grand-Théatre--an establishment of the highest style, encircled with columns, arcades, lamps, gilded cafés. One feels it to be a monument to the virtue of the well-selected bottle. If I had not forbidden myself to linger, I should venture to insist on this and, at the risk of being called fantastic, trace an analogy between good claret and the best qualities of the French mind; pretend that there is a taste of sound Bordeaux in all the happiest manifestations of that fine organ, and that, correspondingly, there is a touch of French reason, French completeness, in a glass of Pontet-Canet. The danger of such an excursion would lie mainly in its being so open to the reader to take the ground from under my feet by saying that good claret doesn't exist. To this I should have no reply whatever. I should be unable to tell him where to find it. I certainly didn't find it at Bordeaux, where I drank a most vulgar fluid; and it is of course notorious that a large part of mankind is occupied in vainly looking for it. There was a great pretence of putting it forward at the Exhibition which was going on at Bordeaux at the time of my visit, an "exposition philomathique," lodged in a collection of big temporary buildings in the Allées d'Orléans, and regarded by the Bordelais for the moment as the most brilliant feature of their city. Here were pyramids of bottles, mountains [Illustration: BORDEAUX--THE QUAY] of bottles, to say nothing of cases and cabinets of bottles. The contemplation of these glittering tiers was of course not very convincing; and indeed the whole arrangement struck me as a high impertinence. Good wine is not an optical pleasure, it is an inward emotion; and if there was a chamber of degustation on the premises, I failed to discover it. It was not in the search for it, indeed, that I spent half an hour in this bewildering bazaar. Like all "expositions," it seemed to me to be full of ugly things, and gave one a portentous idea of the quantity of rubbish that man carries with him on his course through the ages. Such an amount of luggage for a journey after all so short! There were no individual objects; there was nothing but dozens and hundreds, all machine-made and expressionless, in spite of the repeated grimace, the conscious smartness, of "the last new thing," that was stamped on all of them. The fatal facility of the French _article_ becomes at last as irritating as the refrain of a popular song. The poor "Indiens Galibis" struck me as really more interesting--a group of stunted savages who formed one of the attractions of the place and were confined in a pen in the open air, with a rabble of people pushing and squeezing, hanging over the barrier, to look at them. They had no grimace, no pretension to be new, no desire to catch your eye. They looked at their visitors no more than they looked at each other, and seemed ancient, indifferent, terribly bored. [Illustration] Chapter xix [Toulouse] There is much entertainment in the journey through the wide, smiling garden of Gascony; I speak of it as I took it in going from Bordeaux to Toulouse. It is the south, quite the south, and had for the present narrator its full measure of the charm he is always determined to find in countries that may even by courtesy be said to appertain to the sun. It was, moreover, the happy and genial view of these mild latitudes, which, goodness knows, often have a dreariness of their own; a land teeming with corn and wine and speaking everywhere (that is everywhere the phylloxera had not laid it waste) of wealth and plenty. The road runs constantly near the Garonne, touching now and then its slow, brown, rather sullen stream, a sullenness that encloses great dangers and disasters. The traces of the horrible floods of 1875 have disappeared, and the land smiles placidly enough while it waits for another immersion. Toulouse, at the period I speak of, was up to its middle (and in places above it) in water, and looks still as if it had been thoroughly soaked--as if it had faded and shrivelled with a long steeping. The fields and copses, of course, are more forgiving. The railway line follows as well the charming Canal du Midi, which is as pretty as a river, barring the straightness, and here and there occupies the foreground, beneath a screen of dense, tall trees, while the Garonne takes a larger and more irregular course a little way beyond it. People who are fond of canals--and, speaking from the pictorial standpoint, I hold the taste to be most legitimate--will delight in this admirable specimen of the class, which has a very interesting history, not to be narrated here. On the other side of the road (the left), all the way, runs a long, low line of hills, or rather one continuous hill, or perpetual cliff, with a straight top, in the shape of a ledge of rock, which might pass for a ruined wall. I am afraid the reader will lose patience with my habit of constantly referring to the landscape of Italy as if that were the measure of the beauty of every other. Yet I am still more afraid that I cannot apologise for it, and must leave it in its culpable nakedness. It is an idle habit; but the reader will long since have discovered that this was an idle journey and that I give my impressions as they came to me. It came to me, then, that in all this view there was something transalpine, with a greater smartness and freshness and much less elegance and languor. This impression was occasionally deepened by the appearance, on the long eminence of which I speak, of a village, a church, a château, that seemed to look down at the plain from over the ruined wall. The perpetual vines, the bright-faced flat-roofed houses, covered with tiles, the softness and sweetness of the light and air, recalled the prosier portions of the Lombard plain. Toulouse itself has a little of this Italian expression, but not enough to give a colour to its dark, dirty, crooked streets, which are irregular without being eccentric, and which, if it were not for the superb church of Saint-Sernin, would be quite destitute of monuments. I have already alluded to the way in which the names of certain places impose themselves on the mind, and I must add that of Toulouse to the list of expressive appellations. It certainly evokes a vision--suggests something highly _méridional_. But the city, it must be confessed, is less pictorial than the word, in spite of the Place du Capitole, in spite of the quay of the Garonne, in spite of the curious cloister of the old museum. What justifies the images that are latent in the word is not the aspect, but the history, of the town. The hotel to which the well-advised traveller will repair stands in a corner of the Place du Capitole, which is the heart and centre of Toulouse, and which bears a vague and inexpensive resemblance to Piazza Castello at Turin. The Capitol, with a wide modern face, occupies one side, and, like the palace at Turin, looks across at a high arcade, under which the hotels, the principal shops, and the lounging citizens are gathered. The shops, are probably better than the Turinese, but the people are not so good. Stunted, shabby, rather vitiated looking, they have none of the personal richness of the sturdy Piedmontese; and I will take this occasion to remark that in the course of a journey of several weeks in the French provinces I rarely encountered a well-dressed male. Can it be possible that republics are unfavourable to a certain attention to one's boots and one's beard? I risk this somewhat futile inquiry because the proportion of neat coats and trousers seemed to be about the same in France and in my native land. It was notably lower than in England and in Italy, and even warranted the supposition that most good provincials have their chin shaven and their boots blacked but once a week. I hasten to add, lest my observation should appear to be of a sadly superficial character, that the manners and conversation of these gentlemen bore (whenever I had occasion to appreciate them) no relation to the state of their chin and their boots. They were almost always marked by an extreme amenity. At Toulouse there was the strongest temptation to speak to people simply for the entertainment of hearing them reply with that curious, that fascinating accent of the Languedoc, which appears to abound in final consonants and leads the Toulousians to say _bien-g_ and _maison-g_ like Englishmen learning French. It is as if they talked with their teeth rather than with their tongue. I find in my note-book a phrase in regard to Toulouse which is perhaps a little ill-natured, but which I will transcribe as it stands: "The oddity is that the place should be both animated and dull. A big, brown-skinned population, clattering about in a flat, tortuous town, which produces nothing whatever that I can discover. Except the church of Saint-Sernin and the fine old court of the Hôtel d'Assézat, Toulouse has no architecture; the houses are for the most part of brick, of a greyish-red colour, and have no particular style. The brickwork of the place is in fact very poor--inferior to that of the North Italian towns and quite wanting in the wealth of tone which this homely material takes on in general in the climates of dampness and greenness." And then my note-book goes on to narrate a little visit to the Capitol, which was soon made, as the building was in course of repair and half the rooms were closed. [Illustration] Chapter xx [Toulouse: the Capitol] The history of Toulouse is detestable, saturated with blood and perfidy; and the ancient custom of the Floral Games, grafted upon all sorts of internecine traditions, seems, with its false pastoralism, its mock chivalry, its display of fine feelings, to set off rather than to mitigate these horrors. The society was founded in the fourteenth century, and it has held annual meetings ever since--meetings at which poems in the fine old _langue d'oc_ are declaimed and a blushing laureate is chosen. This business takes place in the Capitol, before the chief magistrate of the town, who is known as the _capitoul_, and of all the pretty women as well--a class very numerous at Toulouse. It is unusual to present a finer person than that of the portress who pretended to show me the apartments in which the Floral Games are held; a big, brown, expansive woman, still in the prime of life, with a speaking eye, an extraordinary assurance, and a pair of magenta stockings, which were inserted into the neatest and most polished little black sabots, and which, as she clattered up the stairs before me, lavishly displaying them, made her look like the heroine of an _opéra-bouffe_. Her talk was all in _n_'s, _g_'s and _d_'s, and in mute _e_'s strongly accented, as _autré_, _théâtré_, _splendidé_--the last being an epithet she applied to everything the Capitol contained, and especially to a horrible picture representing the famous Clémence Isaure, the reputed foundress of the poetical contest, presiding on one of these occasions. I wondered whether Clémence Isaure had been anything like this terrible Toulousaine of to-day, who would have been a capital figure-head for a floral game. The lady in whose honour the picture I have just mentioned was painted is a somewhat mythical personage, and she is not to be found in the "Biographie Universelle." She is, however, a very graceful myth; and if she never existed, her statue at least does--a shapeless effigy transferred to the Capitol from the so-called tomb of Clémence in the old church of La Daurade. The great hall in which the Floral Games are held was encumbered with scaffoldings, and I was unable to admire the long series of busts of the bards who have won prizes and the portraits of all the capitouls of Toulouse. As a compensation I was introduced to a big bookcase filled with the poems that have been crowned since the days of the troubadours (a portentous collection), and the big butcher's knife with which, according to the legend, Henry, Duke of Montmorency, who had conspired against the great cardinal with Gaston of Orleans and Mary de'Medici, was, in 1632, beheaded on this spot by the order of Richelieu. With these objects the interest of the Capitol was exhausted. The building indeed has not the grandeur of its name, which is a sort of promise that the visitor will find some sensible embodiment of the old Roman tradition that once nourished in this part of France. It is inferior in impressiveness to the other three famous Capitols of the modern world--that of Rome (if I may call the present structure modern) and those of Washington and Albany! The only Roman remains at Toulouse are to be found in the museum--a very interesting establishment, which I was condemned to see as imperfectly as I had seen the Capitol. It was being rearranged; and the gallery of paintings, which is the least interesting feature, was the only part that was not upside-down. The pictures are mainly of the modern French school, and I remember nothing but a powerful though disagreeable specimen of Henner, who paints the human body, and paints it so well, with a brush dipped in blackness; and, placed among the paintings, a bronze replica of the charming young David of Mercié. These things have been set out in the church of an old monastery, long since suppressed, and the rest of the collection occupies the cloisters. These are two in number--a small one, which you enter first from the street, and a very vast and elegant one beyond it, which, with its light gothic arches and slim columns (of the fourteenth century), its broad walk, its little garden with old tombs and statues in the centre, is by far the most picturesque, the most sketchable, spot in Toulouse. It must be doubly so when the Roman busts, inscriptions, slabs, and sarcophagi are ranged along the walls; it must indeed (to compare small things with great, and as the judicious Murray remarks) bear a certain resemblance to the Campo Santo at Pisa. But these things are absent now; the cloister is a litter of confusion, and its treasures have been stowed away confusedly in sundry inaccessible rooms. The custodian attempted to console me by telling me that when they are exhibited again it will be on a scientific basis and with an order and regularity of which they were formerly innocent. But I was not consoled. I wanted simply the spectacle, the picture, and I didn't care in the least for the classification. Old Roman fragments exposed to light in the open air, under a southern sky, in a quadrangle round a garden, have an immortal charm simply in their general effect; and the charm is all the greater when the soil of the very place has yielded them up. [Illustration] Chapter xxi [Toulouse: Saint-Sernin] My real consolation was an hour I spent in Saint-Sernin, one of the noblest churches in southern France, and easily the first among those of Toulouse. This great structure, a masterpiece of twelfth-century romanesque and dedicated to Saint Saturninus--the Toulousains have abbreviated--is, I think, alone worth a journey to Toulouse. What makes it so is the extraordinary seriousness of its interior; no other term occurs to me as expressing so well the character of its clear grey nave. As a general thing, I favour little the fashion of attributing moral qualities to buildings; I shrink from talking about tender cornices and sincere campanili; but one feels that one can scarce get on without imputing some sort of morality to Saint-Sernin. As it stands to-day, the church has been completely restored by Viollet-le-Duc. The exterior is of brick, and has little charm save that of a tower of four rows of arches, narrowing together as they ascend. The nave is of great length and height, the barrel-roof of stone, the effect of the round arches and pillars in the triforium especially fine. There are two low aisles on either side. The choir is very deep and narrow; it seems to close together, and looks as if it were meant for intensely earnest rites. The transepts are most noble, especially the arches of the second tier. The whole church is narrow for its length and is singularly complete and homogeneous. As I say all this I feel that I quite fail to give an impression of its manly gravity, its strong proportions, or of the lonesome look of its renovated stones as I sat there while the October twilight gathered. It is a real work of art, a high conception. The crypt, into which I was eventually led captive by an importunate sacristan, is quite another affair, though indeed I suppose it may also be spoken of as a work of art. It is a rich museum of relics, and contains the head of Saint Thomas Aquinas wrapped up in a napkin and exhibited in a glass case. The sacristan took a lamp and guided me about, presenting me to one saintly remnant after another. The impression was grotesque, but some of the objects were contained in curious old cases of beaten silver and brass: these things at least, which looked as if they had been transmitted from the early church, were venerable. There was, however, a kind of wholesale sanctity about the place which overshot the mark; it pretends to be one of the holiest spots in the world. The effect is spoiled by the way [Illustration: TOULOUSE SAINT-SERNIN (THE TRANSEPT)] the sacristans hang about and offer to take you into it for ten sous--I was accosted by two and escaped from another--and by the familiar manner in which you pop in and out. This episode rather broke the charm of Saint-Sernin, so that I took my departure and went in search of the cathedral. It was scarcely worth finding, and struck me as an odd, dislocated fragment. The front consists only of a portal beside which a tall brick tower of a later period has been erected. The nave was wrapped in dimness, with a few scattered lamps. I could only distinguish an immense vault, like a high cavern, without aisles. Here and there in the gloom was a kneeling figure; the whole place was mysterious and lopsided. The choir was curtained off; it appeared not to correspond with the nave--that is, not to have the same axis. The only other ecclesiastical impression I gathered at Toulouse came to me in the church of La Daurade, of which the front, on the quay by the Garonne, was closed with scaffoldings; so that one entered it from behind, where it is completely masked by houses, through a door which has at first no traceable connection with it. It is a vast, high, modernised, heavily decorated church, dimly lighted at all times, I should suppose, and enriched by the shades of evening at the time I looked into it. I perceived that it consisted mainly of a large square, beneath a dome, in the centre of which a single person--a lady--was praying with the utmost absorption. The manner of access to the church interposed such an obstacle to the outer profanities that I had a sense of intruding and presently withdrew, carrying with me a picture of the vast, still interior, the gilded roof gleaming in the twilight, and the solitary worshipper. What was she praying for, and was she not almost afraid to remain there alone? For the rest, the picturesque at Toulouse consists principally of the walk beside the Garonne, which is spanned, to the faubourg of Saint-Cyprien, by a stout brick bridge. This hapless suburb, the baseness of whose site is noticeable, lay for days under the water at the time of the last inundations. The Garonne had almost mounted to the roofs of the houses, and the place continues to present a blighted, frightened look. Two or three persons with whom I had some conversation spoke of that time as a memory of horror. I have not done with my Italian comparisons; I shall never have done with them. I am therefore free to say that in the way in which Toulouse looks out on the Garonne there was something that reminded me vaguely of the way in which Pisa looks out on the Arno. The red-faced houses--all of brick--along the quay have a mixture of brightness and shabbiness, as well as the fashion of the open _loggia_ in the top-storey. The river, with another bridge or two, might be the Arno, and the buildings on the other side of it--a hospital, a suppressed convent--dip their feet into it with real southern cynicism. I have spoken of the old Hôtel d'Assézat as the best house at Toulouse; with the exception of the cloister of the museum, it is the only "bit" I remember. It has fallen from the state of a noble residence of the sixteenth century to that of a warehouse and a set of offices; but a certain dignity lingers in its melancholy court, which is divided from the street by a gateway that is still imposing and in which a clambering vine and a red Virginia-creeper were suspended to the rusty walls of brick and stone. The most interesting house at Toulouse is far from being the most striking. At the door of No. 50 Rue des Filatiers, a featureless, solid structure, was found [Illustration: TOULOUSE--THE GARONNE] hanging, one autumn evening, the body of the young Marc-Antoine Calas, whose ill-inspired suicide was to be the first act of a tragedy so horrible. The fanaticism aroused in the townsfolk by this incident; the execution by torture of Jean Calas, accused as a Protestant of having hanged his son, who had gone over to the Church of Rome; the ruin of the family; the claustration of the daughters; the flight of the widow to Switzerland; her introduction to Voltaire; the excited zeal of that incomparable partisan and the passionate persistence with which, from year to year, he pursued a reversal of judgment till at last he obtained it and devoted the tribunal of Toulouse to execration and the name of the victims to lasting wonder and pity--these things form part of one of the most interesting and touching episodes of the social history of the eighteenth century. The story has the fatal progression, the dark rigour, of one of the tragic dramas of the Greeks. Jean Calas, advanced in life, blameless, bewildered, protesting his innocence, had been broken on the wheel; and the sight of his decent dwelling, which brought home to me all that had been suffered there, spoiled for me, for half an hour, the impression of Toulouse. [Illustration] Chapter xxii [Carcassonne] I spent but a few hours at Carcassonne; but those hours had a rounded felicity, and I cannot do better than transcribe from my note-book the little record made at the moment. Vitiated as it may be by crudity and incoherency, it has at any rate the freshness of a great emotion. This is the best quality that a reader may hope to extract from a narrative in which "useful information" and technical lore even of the most general sort are completely absent. For Carcassonne is moving, beyond a doubt; and the traveller who in the course of a little tour in France may have felt himself urged, in melancholy moments, to say that on the whole the disappointments are as numerous as the satisfactions, must admit that there can be nothing better than this. The country after you leave Toulouse continues to be charming; the more so that it merges its flatness in the distant Cévennes on one side, and on the other, far away on your right, in the richer range of the Pyrenees. Olives and cypresses, pergolas and vines, terraces on the roofs of houses, soft, iridescent mountains, a warm yellow light--what more could the difficult tourist want? He left his luggage at the station, warily determined to look at the inn before committing himself to it. It was so evident (even to a cursory glance) that it might easily have been much better, that he simply took his way to the town, with the whole of a superb afternoon before him. When I say the town, I mean the towns; there being two at Carcassonne, perfectly distinct, and each with excellent claims to the title. They have settled the matter between them, however, and the elder, the shrine of pilgrimage, to which the other is but a stepping-stone, or even, as I may say, a humble door-mat, takes the name of the Cité. You see nothing of the Cité from the station; it is masked by the agglomeration of the _ville-basse_, which is relatively (but only relatively) new. A wonderful avenue of acacias leads to it from the station--leads past it, rather, and conducts you to a little high-backed bridge over the Aude, beyond which, detached and erect, a distinct mediæval silhouette, the Cité presents itself. Like a rival shop on the invidious side of a street, it has "no connection" with the establishment across the way, although the two places are united (if old Carcassonne may be said to be united to anything) by a vague little rustic faubourg. Perched on its solid pedestal, the perfect detachment of the Cité is what first strikes you. To take leave, without delay, of the _ville-basse_, I may say that the splendid acacias I have mentioned flung a summerish dusk over the place, in which a few scattered remains of stout walls and big bastions looked venerable and picturesque. A little boulevard winds round the town, planted with trees and garnished with more benches than I ever saw provided by a soft-hearted municipality. This precinct had a warm, lazy, dusty, southern look, as if the people sat out-of-doors a great deal and wandered about in the stillness of summer nights. The figure of the elder town at these hours must be ghostly enough on its neighbouring hill. Even by day it has the air of a vignette of Gustave Doré, a couplet of Victor Hugo. It is almost too perfect--as if it were an enormous model placed on a big green table at a museum. A steep, paved way, grass-grown like all roads where vehicles never pass, stretches up to it in the sun. It has a double enceinte, complete outer walls and complete inner (these, elaborately fortified, are the more curious); and this congregation of ramparts, towers, bastions, battlements, barbicans, is as fantastic and romantic as you please. The approach I mention here leads to the gate that looks toward Toulouse--the Porte de l'Aude. There is a second, on the other side, called, I believe, the Porte Narbonnaise, a magnificent gate, flanked with towers thick and tall, defended by elaborate outworks; and these two apertures alone admit you to the place--putting aside a small sally-port, protected by a great bastion, on the quarter that looks toward the Pyrenees. As a votary, always, in the first instance, of a general impression, I walked all round the outer enceinte--a process on the very face of it entertaining. I took to the right of the Porte de l'Aude, without entering it, where the old moat has been filled in. The filling-in of the moat has created a grassy level at the foot of the big grey towers, which, rising at frequent intervals, stretch their stiff curtain of stone from point to point: the curtain drops without a fold upon the quiet grass, which was dotted here and there with a humble native dozing away the golden afternoon. The natives of the elder Carcassonne are all humble; for the core of the Cité has shrunken and decayed, and there is little life among the ruins. A few tenacious labourers who work in the neighbouring fields or in the _ville-basse_, and sundry octogenarians of both sexes, who are dying where they have lived and contribute much to the pictorial effect--these are the principal inhabitants. The process of converting the place from an irresponsible old town into a conscious "specimen" has of course been attended with eliminations; the population has, as a general thing, been restored away. I should lose no time in saying that restoration is the great mark of the Cité. M. Viollet-le-Duc has worked his will upon it, put it into perfect order, revived the fortifications in every detail. I do not pretend to judge the performance, carried out on a scale and in a spirit which really impose themselves on the imagination. Few architects have had such a chance, and M. Viollet-le-Duc must have been the envy of the whole restoring fraternity. The image of a more crumbling Carcassonne rises in the mind, and there is no doubt that forty years ago the place was more affecting. On the other hand, as we see it to-day it is a wonderful evocation; and if there is a great deal of new in the old, there is plenty of old in the new. The repaired crenellations, the inserted patches of the walls of the outer circle, sufficiently express this commixture. My walk brought me into full view of the Pyrenees, which, now that the sun had begun to sink and the shadows to grow long, had a wonderful violet glow. The platform at the base of the walls has a greater width on this side, and it made the scene more complete. Two or three old crones had crawled out of the Porte Narbonnaise to examine the advancing visitor; and a very ancient peasant, lying there with his back against a tower, was tending half a dozen lean sheep. A poor man in a very old blouse, crippled and with crutches lying beside him, had been brought out and placed on a stool, where he enjoyed the afternoon as best he might. He looked so ill and so patient that I spoke to him; found that his legs were paralysed and he was quite helpless. He had formerly been seven years in the army, and had made the campaign of Mexico with Bazaine. Born in the old Cité, he had come back there to end his days. It seemed strange, as he sat there with those romantic walls behind him and the great picture of the Pyrenees in front, to think that he had been across the seas to the far-away new world, had made part of a famous expedition, and was now a cripple at the gate of the mediæval city where he had played as a child. All this struck me as a great deal of history for so modest a figure--a poor little figure that could only just unclose its palm for a small silver coin. He was not the only acquaintance I made at Carcassonne. I had not pursued my circuit of the walls much farther when I encountered a person of quite another type, of whom I asked some question which had just then presented itself, and who proved to be the very genius of the spot. He was a sociable son of the _ville-basse_, a gentleman, and, as I afterwards learned, an employé at the prefecture--a person, in short, much esteemed at Carcassonne. (I may say all this, as he will never read these pages.) He had been ill for a month, and in the company of his little dog was taking his first airing; in his own phrase, he was _amoureux-fou de la Cité_--he could lose no time in coming back to it. He talked of it indeed as a lover, and, giving me for half an hour the advantage of his company, showed me all the points of the place. (I speak here always of the outer enceinte; you penetrate to the inner--which is the specialty of Carcassonne and the great curiosity--only by application at the lodge of the regular custodian, a remarkable functionary, who, half an hour later, when I had been introduced to him by my friend the amateur, marched me over the fortifications with a tremendous accompaniment of dates and technical terms.) My companion pointed out to me in particular the traces of different periods in the structure of the walls. There is a portentous amount of history embedded in them, beginning with Romans and Visigoths; here and there are marks of old breaches hastily repaired. We passed into the town--into that part of it not included in the citadel. It is the queerest and most fragmentary little place in the world, as everything save the fortifications is being suffered to crumble away in order that the spirit of M. Viollet-le-Duc alone may pervade it and it may subsist simply as a magnificent shell. As the leases of the wretched little houses fall in, the ground is cleared of them; and a mumbling old woman approached me in the course of my circuit, inviting me to condole with her on the disappearance of so many of the hovels which in the last few hundred years (since the collapse of Carcassonne as a stronghold) had attached themselves to the base of the walls, in the space between the two circles. These habitations, constructed of materials taken from the ruins, nestled there snugly enough. This intermediate space had therefore become a kind of street, which has crumbled in turn, as the fortress has grown up again. There are other streets beside, very diminutive and vague, where you pick your way over heaps of rubbish and become conscious of unexpected faces looking at you out of windows as detached as the cherubic heads. The most definite thing in the place was the little café, where the waiters, I think, must be the ghosts of the old Visigoths; the most definite, that is, after the little château and the little cathedral. Everything in the Cité is little; you can walk round the walls in twenty minutes. On the drawbridge of the château, which, with a picturesque old face, flanking towers, and a dry moat, is to-day simply a bare _caserne_, lounged half a dozen soldiers, unusually small. Nothing could be more odd than to see these objects enclosed in a receptacle which has much of the appearance of an enormous toy. The Cité and its population vaguely reminded me of an immense Noah's ark. [Illustration] Chapter xxiii [Carcassonne] Carcassone dates from the Roman occupation of Gaul. The place commanded one of the great roads into Spain, and in the fourth century Romans and Franks ousted each other from such a point of vantage. In the year 436 Theodoric King of the Visigoths superseded both these parties; and it was during his occupation that the inner enceinte was raised upon the ruins of the Roman fortifications. Most of the Visigoth towers that are still erect are seated upon Roman substructions which appear to have been formed hastily, probably at the moment of the Frankish invasion. The authors of these solid defences, though occasionally disturbed, held Carcassonne and the neighbouring country, in which they had established their kingdom of Septimania, till the year 713, when they were expelled by the Moors of Spain, who ushered in an unillumined period of four centuries, of which no traces remain. These facts I derive from a source no more recondite than a pamphlet by M. Viollet-le-Duc--a very luminous description of the fortifications, which you may buy from the accomplished custodian. The writer makes a jump to the year 1209, when Carcassonne, then forming part of the realm of the viscounts of Béziers and infected by the Albigensian heresy, was besieged, in the name of the Pope, by the terrible Simon de Montfort and his army of crusaders. Simon was accustomed to success, and the town succumbed in the course of a fortnight. Thirty-one years later, having passed into the hands of the King of France, it was again besieged by the young Raymond de Trincavel, the last of the viscounts of Béziers; and of this siege M. Viollet-le-Duc gives a long and minute account, which the visitor who has a head for such things may follow, with the brochure in hand, on the fortifications themselves. The young Raymond de Trincavel, baffled and repulsed, retired at the end of twenty-four days. Saint Louis and Philip the Bold, in the thirteenth century, multiplied the defences of Carcassonne, which was one of the bulwarks of their kingdom on the Spanish quarter; and from this time forth, being regarded as impregnable, the place had nothing to fear. It was not even attacked; and when in 1355 Edward the Black Prince marched into it, the inhabitants had opened the gates to the conqueror before whom all Languedoc was prostrate. I am not one of those who, as I said just now, have a head for such things, and having extracted these few facts, had made all the use of M. Viollet-le-Duc's pamphlet of which I was capable. I have mentioned that my obliging friend the _amoureux-fou_ handed me over to the doorkeeper of the citadel. I should add that I was at first committed [Illustration: CARCASSONNE.] to the wife of this functionary, a stout peasant-woman, who took a key down from a nail, conducted me to a postern door, and ushered me into the presence of her husband. Having just begun his rounds with a party of four persons, he was not many steps in advance. I added myself perforce to this party, which was not brilliantly composed, except that two of its members were gendarmes in full toggery, who announced in the course of our tour that they had been stationed for a year at Carcassonne and had never before had the curiosity to come up to the Cité. There was something brilliant certainly in that. The _gardien_ was an extraordinarily typical little Frenchman, who struck me even more forcibly than the wonders of the inner enceinte; and as I am bound to assume, at whatever cost to my literary vanity, that there is not the slightest danger of his reading these remarks, I may treat him as public property. With his diminutive stature and his perpendicular spirit, his flushed face, expressive protuberant eyes, high peremptory voice, extreme volubility, lucidity and neatness of utterance, he reminded me of the gentry who figure in the revolutions of his native land. If he was not a fierce little Jacobin, he ought to have been, for I am sure there were many men of his pattern on the Committee of Public Safety. He knew absolutely what he was about, understood the place thoroughly, and constantly reminded his audience of what he himself had done in the way of excavations and reparations. He described himself as the brother of the architect of the work actually going forward (that which has been done since the death of M. Viollet-le-Duc, I suppose he meant), and this fact was more illustrative than all the others. It reminded me, as one is reminded at every turn, of the democratic conditions of French life: a man of the people, with a wife _en bonnet_, extremely intelligent, full of special knowledge, and yet remaining essentially of the people and showing his intelligence with a kind of ferocity, of defiance. Such a personage helps one to understand the red radicalism of France, the revolutions, the barricades, the sinister passion for theories. (I do not, of course, take upon myself to say that the individual I describe--who can know nothing of the liberties I am taking with him--is actually devoted to these ideals; I only mean that many such devotees must have his qualities.) In just the _nuance_ that I have tried to indicate here it is a terrible pattern of man. Permeated in a high degree by civilisation, it is yet untouched by the desire which one finds in the Englishman, in proportion as he rises in the world, to approximate to the figure of the gentleman. On the other hand, a _netteté_, a faculty of exposition, such as the English gentleman is rarely either blessed or cursed with. This brilliant, this suggestive warden of Carcassonne marched us about for an hour, haranguing, explaining, illustrating as he went; it was a complete little lecture, such as might have been delivered at the Lowell Institute, on the manner in which a first-rate _place forte_ used to be attacked and defended. Our peregrinations made it very clear that Carcassonne was impregnable; it is impossible to imagine without having seen them such refinements of immurement, such ingenuities of resistance. We passed along the battlements and _chemins de ronde_, ascended and descended towers, crawled under arches, peered out of loopholes, lowered ourselves into dungeons, halted in all sorts of tight places while the purpose of something or other was [Illustration: CARCASSONNE] described to us. It was very curious, very interesting; above all it was very pictorial, and involved perpetual peeps into the little crooked, crumbling, sunny, grassy, empty Cité. In places, as you stand upon it, the great towered and embattled enceinte produces an illusion; it looks as if it were still equipped and defended. One vivid challenge, at any rate, it flings down before you; it calls upon you to make up your mind on the matter of restoration. For myself I have no hesitation; I prefer in every case the ruined, however ruined, to the reconstructed, however splendid. What is left is more precious than what is added; the one is history, the other is fiction; and I like the former the better of the two--it is so much more romantic. One is positive, so far as it goes; the other fills up the void with things more dead than the void itself, inasmuch as they have never had life. After that I am free to say that the restoration of Carcassonne is a splendid achievement. The little custodian dismissed us at last, after having, as usual, inducted us into the inevitable repository of photographs. These photographs are a great nuisance all over the Midi. They are exceedingly bad for the most part; and the worst--those in the form of the hideous little _album-panorama_--are thrust upon you at every turn. They are a kind of tax that you must pay; the best way is to pay to be let off. It was not to be denied that there was a relief in separating from our accomplished guide, whose manner of imparting information reminded me of the energetic process by which I had seen mineral waters bottled. All this while the afternoon had grown more lovely; the sunset had deepened, the horizon of hills grown purple; the mass of the Canigou became more delicate, yet more distinct. The day had so far faded that the interior of the little cathedral was wrapped in twilight, into which the glowing windows projected something of their colour. This church has high beauty and value, but I will spare the reader a presentation of details which I myself had no opportunity to master. It consists of a romanesque nave, of the end of the eleventh century, and a Gothic choir and transepts of the beginning of the fourteenth; and, shut up in its citadel like a precious casket in a cabinet, it seems--or seemed at that hour--to have a sort of double sanctity. After leaving it and passing out of the two circles of walls, I treated myself, in the most infatuated manner, to another walk round the Cité. It is certainly this general impression that is most striking--the impression from outside, where the whole place detaches itself at once from the landscape. In the warm southern dusk it looked more than ever like a city in a fairy tale. To make the thing perfect, a white young moon, in its first quarter, came out and hung just over the dark silhouette. It was hard to come away--to incommode one's self for anything so vulgar as a railway train; I would gladly have spent the evening in revolving round the walls of Carcassonne. But I had in a measure engaged to proceed to Narbonne, and there was a certain magic in that name which gave me strength--Narbonne, the richest city in Roman Gaul. [Illustration] Chapter xxiv [Narbonne] At Narbonne I took up my abode at the house of a _serrurier mécanicien_, and was very thankful for the accommodation. It was my misfortune to arrive at this ancient city late at night, on the eve of market-day; and market-day at Narbonne is a very serious affair. The inns, on this occasion, are stuffed with wine-dealers; for the country round about, dedicated almost exclusively to Bacchus, has hitherto escaped the phylloxera. This deadly enemy of the grape is encamped over the Midi in a hundred places; blighted vineyards and ruined proprietors being quite the order of the day. The signs of distress are more frequent as you advance into Provence, many of the vines being laid under water in the hope of washing the plague away. There are healthy regions still, however, and the vintners find plenty to do at Narbonne. The traffic in wine appeared to be the sole thought of the Narbonnais; every one I spoke to had something to say about the harvest of gold that bloomed under its influence. "C'est inoui, monsieur, l'argent qu'il y a dans ce pays. Des gens à qui la vente de leur vin rapporte jusqu'à 500,000 francs par an." That little speech addressed to me by a gentleman at the inn gives the note of these revelations. It must be said that there was little in the appearance either of the town or of its population to suggest the possession of such treasures. Narbonne is a _sale petite ville_ in all the force of the term, and my first impression on arriving there was an extreme regret that I had not remained for the night at the lovely Carcassonne. My journey from that delectable spot lasted a couple of hours and was performed in darkness--a darkness not so dense, however, but that I was able to make out, as we passed it, the great figure of Béziers, whose ancient roofs and towers, clustered on a goodly hill-top, looked as fantastic as you please. I know not what appearance Béziers may present by day, but by night it has quite the grand air. On issuing from the station at Narbonne I found that the only vehicle in waiting was a kind of bastard tramcar, a thing shaped as if it had been meant to go upon rails; that is, equipped with small wheels, placed beneath it, and with a platform at either end, but destined to rattle over the stones like the most vulgar of omnibuses. To complete the oddity of this conveyance, it was under the supervision, not of a conductor, but of a conductress. A fair young woman with a pouch suspended from her girdle had command of the platform; and as soon as the car was full she jolted us into the town through clouds of the thickest dust I ever have swallowed. I have had occasion to speak of the activity of women in France--of the way they are always in the ascendant; and here was a signal example of their general utility. The young lady I have mentioned conveyed her whole company to the wretched little Hôtel de France, where it is to be hoped that some of them found a lodging. For myself, I was informed that the place was crowded from cellar to attic, and that its inmates were sleeping three or four in a room. At Carcassonne I should have had a bad bed, but at Narbonne, apparently, I was to have no bed at all. I passed an hour or two of flat suspense while fate settled the question of whether I should go on to Perpignan, return to Béziers, or still discover a modest couch at Narbonne. I shall not have suffered in vain, however, if my example serves to deter other travellers from alighting unannounced at that city on a Wednesday evening. The retreat to Béziers, not attempted in time, proved impossible, and I was assured that at Perpignan, which I should not reach till midnight, the affluence of wine-dealers was not less than at Narbonne. I interviewed every hostess in the town, and got no satisfaction but distracted shrugs. Finally, at an advanced hour, one of the servants of the Hôtel de France, where I had attempted to dine, came to me in triumph to proclaim that he had secured for me a charming apartment in a _maison bourgeoise_. I took possession of it gratefully, in spite of its having an entrance like a stable and being pervaded by an odour compared with which that of a stable would have been delicious. As I have mentioned, my landlord was a locksmith, and he had strange machines which rumbled and whirred in the rooms below my own. Nevertheless I slept, and I dreamed of Carcassonne. It was better to do that than to dream of the Hôtel de France. I was obliged to cultivate relations with the cuisine of this establishment. Nothing could have been more _méridional_; indeed, both the dirty little inn and Narbonne at large seemed to me to have the infirmities of the south without its usual graces. Narrow, noisy, shabby, belittered and encumbered, filled with clatter and chatter, the Hôtel de France would have been described in perfection by Alphonse Daudet. For what struck me above all in it was the note of the Midi as he has represented it--the sound of universal talk. The landlord sat at supper with sundry friends in a kind of glass cage, with a genial indifference to arriving guests; the waiters tumbled over the loose luggage in the hall; the travellers who had been turned away leaned gloomily against door-posts; and the landlady, surrounded by confusion, unconscious of responsibility, and animated only by the spirit of conversation, bandied high-voiced compliments with the _voyageurs de commerce_. At ten o'clock in the morning there was a table d'hôte for breakfast--a wonderful repast, which overflowed into every room and pervaded the whole establishment. I sat down with a hundred hungry marketers, fat, brown, greasy men, with a good deal of the rich soil of Languedoc adhering to their hands and their boots. I mention the latter articles because they almost put them on the table. It was very hot, and there were swarms of flies; the viands had the strongest odour; there was in particular a horrible mixture known as _gras-double_, a light grey, glutinous, nauseating mess, which my companions devoured in large quantities. A man opposite to me had the dirtiest fingers I ever saw; a collection of fingers which in England would have excluded him from a farmers' ordinary. The conversation was mainly bucolic; though a part of it, I [Illustration: NARBONNE--THE WASHING PLACE] remember, at the table at which I sat, consisted of a discussion as to whether or no the maid-servant were _sage_--a discussion which went on under the nose of this young lady, as she carried about the dreadful _gras-double_, and to which she contributed the most convincing blushes. It was thoroughly _méridional_. In going to Narbonne I had of course counted upon Roman remains; but when I went forth in search of them I perceived that I had hoped too fondly. There is really nothing in the place to speak of; that is, on the day of my visit there was nothing but the market, which was in complete possession. "This intricate, curious, but lifeless town," Murray calls it; yet to me it appeared overflowing with life. Its streets are mere crooked, dirty lanes, bordered with perfectly insignificant houses; but they were filled with the same clatter and chatter that I had found at the hotel. The market was held partly in the little square of the hôtel de ville, a structure which a flattering woodcut in the Guide-Joanne had given me a desire to behold. The reality was not impressive, the old colour of the front having been completely restored away. Such interest as it superficially possesses it derives from a fine mediæval tower which rises beside it with turrets at the angles--always a picturesque thing. The rest of the market was held in another _place_, still shabbier than the first, which lies beyond the canal. The Canal du Midi flows through the town, and, spanned at this point by a small suspension-bridge, presented a certain sketchability. On the farther side were the vendors and chafferers--old women under awnings and big umbrellas, rickety tables piled high with fruit, white caps and brown faces, blouses, sabots, donkeys. Beneath this picture was another--a long row of washerwomen, on their knees on the edge of the canal, pounding and wringing the dirty linen of Narbonne--no great quantity, to judge by the costume of the people. Innumerable rusty men, scattered all over the place, were buying and selling wine, straddling about in pairs, in groups, with their hands in their pockets, and packed together at the doors of the cafés. They were mostly fat and brown and unshaven; they ground their teeth as they talked; they were very _méridionaux_. The only two lions at Narbonne are the cathedral and the museum, the latter of which is quartered in the hôtel de ville. The cathedral, closely shut in by houses and with the west front undergoing repairs, is singular in two respects. It consists exclusively of a choir, which is of the end of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the next, and of great magnificence. There is absolutely nothing else. This choir, of extraordinary elevation, forms the whole church. I sat there a good while; there was no other visitor. I had taken a great dislike to poor little Narbonne, which struck me as sordid and overheated, and this place seemed to extend to me, as in the Middle Ages, the privilege of sanctuary. It is a very solemn corner. The other peculiarity of the cathedral is that, externally, it bristles with battlements, having anciently formed part of the defences of the _archevêché_, which is beside it and which connects it with the hôtel de ville. This combination of the church and the fortress is very curious, and during the Middle Ages was not without its value. The palace of the former archbishops of Narbonne (the hôtel de ville of to-day forms part of it) was both an asylum and an arsenal during the hideous wars by which all Languedoc was ravaged in the thirteenth century. The whole mass of buildings [Illustration: NARBONNE--THE CATHEDRAL AND HÔTEL DE VILLE.] is jammed together in a manner that from certain points of view makes it far from apparent which feature is which. The museum occupies several chambers at the top of the hôtel de ville, and is not an imposing collection. It was closed, but I induced the portress to let me in--a silent, cadaverous person, in a black coif, like a _béguine_, who sat knitting in one of the windows while I went the rounds. The number of Roman fragments is small, and their quality is not the finest; I must add that this impression was hastily gathered. There is, indeed, a work of art in one of the rooms which creates a presumption in favour of the place--the portrait (rather a good one) of a citizen of Narbonne, whose name I forget, who is described as having devoted all his time and his intelligence to collecting the objects by which the visitor is surrounded. This excellent man was a connoisseur, and the visitor is doubtless often an ignoramus. [Illustration] Chapter xxv "Cette, with its glistening houses white, Curves with the curving beach away To where the lighthouse beacons bright, Far in the bay." [Montpellier] That stanza of Matthew Arnold's, which I happened to remember, gave a certain importance to the half-hour I spent in the buffet of the station at Cette while I waited for the train to Montpellier. I had left Narbonne in the afternoon, and by the time I reached Cette the darkness had descended. I therefore missed the sight of the glistening houses, and had to console myself with that of the beacon in the bay, as well as with a _bouillon_ of which I partook at the buffet aforesaid; for, since the morning, I had not ventured to return to the table d'hôte at Narbonne. The Hôtel Nevet at Montpellier, which I reached an hour later, has an ancient renown all over the south of France--advertises itself, I believe, as _le plus vastedu midi_. It seemed to me the model of a good provincial inn; a big rambling, creaking establishment, with brown, labyrinthine corridors, a queer old open-air vestibule, into which the diligence, in the _bon temps_, used to penetrate, and an hospitality more expressive than that of the new caravansaries. It dates from the days when Montpellier was still accounted a fine winter residence for people with weak lungs; and this rather melancholy tradition, together with the former celebrity of the school of medicine still existing there, but from which the glory has departed, helps to account for its combination of high antiquity and vast proportions. The old hotels were usually more concentrated; but the school of medicine passed for one of the attractions of Montpellier. Long before Mentone was discovered or Colorado invented, British invalids travelled down through France in the post-chaise or the public coach, to spend their winters in the wonderful place which boasted both a climate and a faculty. The air is mild, no doubt, but there are refinements of mildness which were not then suspected, and which in a more analytic age have carried the annual wave far beyond Montpellier. The place is charming, all the same; and it served the purpose of John Locke, who made a long stay there, between 1675 and 1679, and became acquainted with a noble fellow-visitor, Lord Pembroke, to whom he dedicated the famous Essay. There are places that please without your being able to say wherefore, and Montpellier is one of the number. It has some charming views, from the great promenade of the Peyrou; but its position is not strikingly fine. Beyond this it contains a good museum and the long façades of its school, but these are its only definite treasures. Its cathedral struck me as quite the weakest I had seen, and I remember no other monument that made up for it. The place has neither the gaiety of a modern nor the solemnity of an ancient town, and it is agreeable as certain women are agreeable who are neither beautiful nor clever. An Italian would remark that it is sympathetic; a German would admit that it is _gemüthlich_. I spent two days there, mostly in the rain, and even under these circumstances I carried away a kindly impression. I think the Hôtel Nevet had something to do with it, and the sentiment of relief with which, in a quiet, even a luxurious, room that looked out on a garden, I reflected that I had washed my hands of Narbonne. The phylloxera has destroyed the vines in the country that surrounds Montpellier, and at that moment I was capable of rejoicing in the thought that I should not breakfast with vintners. The gem of the place is the Musée Fabre, one of the best collections of paintings in a provincial city. François Fabre, a native of Montpellier, died there in 1837, after having spent a considerable part of his life in Italy, where he had collected a good many valuable pictures and some very poor ones, the latter class including several from his own hand. He was the hero of a remarkable episode, having succeeded no less a person than Vittorio Alfieri in the affections of no less a person than Louise de Stolberg, Countess of Albany, widow of no less a person than Charles Edward Stuart, the second pretender to the British crown. Surely no woman ever was associated sentimentally with three figures more diverse--a disqualified sovereign, an Italian dramatist, and a bad French painter. The productions of M. Fabre, who followed in the steps of David, bear the stamp of a cold mediocrity; there is not much to be said even for the portrait of the genial countess (her life has been written by M. Saint-Réné-Taillandier, who depicts her as delightful), which hangs in Florence, in the gallery of the Uffizzi, and makes a pendant to a likeness of Alfieri by the same author. Stendhal, in his "Mémoires d'un Touriste," says that this work of art represents her as a cook who has pretty hands. I am delighted to having an opportunity of quoting Stendhal, whose two volumes of the "Mémoires d'un Touriste" every traveller in France should carry in his portmanteau. I have had this opportunity more than once, for I have met him at Tours, at Nantes, at Bourges; and everywhere he is suggestive. But he has the defect that he is never pictorial, that he never by any chance makes an image, and that his style is perversely colourless for a man so fond of contemplation. His taste is often singularly false; it is the taste of the early years of the present century, the period that produced clocks surmounted with sentimental "subjects." Stendhal does not admire these clocks, but he almost does. He admires Domenichino and Guercino, he prizes the Bolognese school of painters because they "spoke to the soul." He is a votary of the new classic, is fond of tall, square, regular buildings, and thinks Nantes, for instance, full of the "air noble." It was a pleasure to me to reflect that five-and-forty years ago he had alighted in that city, at the very inn in which I spent a night and which looks down on the Place Graslin and the theatre. The hotel that was the best in 1837 appears to be the best to-day. On the subject of Touraine Stendhal is extremely refreshing; he finds the scenery meagre and much overrated, and proclaims his opinion with perfect frankness. He does, however, scant justice to the banks of the Loire; his want of appreciation of the picturesque--want of the sketcher's sense--causes him to miss half the charm of a landscape which is nothing if not "quiet," as a painter would say, and of which the felicities reveal themselves only to waiting eyes. He even despises the Indre, the river of Madame Sand. The "Mémoires d'un Touriste" are written in the character of a commercial traveller, and the author has nothing to say about Chenonceaux or Chambord, or indeed about any of the châteaux of that part of France; his system being to talk only of the large towns, where he may be supposed to find a market for his goods. It was his ambition to pass for an ironmonger. But in the large towns he is usually excellent company, though as discursive as Sterne and strangely indifferent, for a man of imagination, to those superficial aspects of things which the poor pages now before the reader are mainly an attempt to render. It is his conviction that Alfieri, at Florence, bored the Countess of Albany terribly; and he adds that the famous Gallophobe died of jealousy of the little painter from Montpellier. The Countess of Albany left her property to Fabre; and I suppose some of the pieces in the museum of his native town used to hang in the sunny saloons of that fine old palace on the Arno which is still pointed out to the stranger in Florence as the residence of Alfieri. The institution has had other benefactors, notably a certain M. Bruyas, who has enriched it with an extraordinary number of portraits of himself. As these, however, are by different hands, some of them distinguished, we may suppose that it was less the model than the artists to whom M. Bruyas wished to give publicity. Easily first are two large specimens of David Teniers, which are incomparable for brilliancy and a glowing perfection of execution. I have a weakness for this singular genius, who combined the delicate with the grovelling, and I have rarely seen richer examples. Scarcely less valuable is a Gerard Dow which hangs near them, though it must rank lower, as having kept less of its freshness. This Gerard Dow did me good, for a master is a master, whatever he may paint. It represents a woman paring carrots, while a boy before her exhibits a mouse-trap in which he has caught a frightened victim. The goodwife has spread a cloth on the top of a big barrel which serves her as a table, and on this brown, greasy napkin, of which the texture is wonderfully rendered, lie the raw vegetables she is preparing for domestic consumption. Beside the barrel is a large caldron lined with copper, with a rim of brass. The way these things are painted brings tears to the eyes; but they give the measure, of the Musée Fabre, where two specimens of Teniers and a Gerard Dow are the jewels. The Italian pictures are of small value; but there is a work by Sir Joshua Reynolds, said to be the only one in France--an infant Samuel in prayer, apparently a repetition of the picture in England which inspired the little plaster image, disseminated in Protestant lands, that we used to admire in our childhood. Sir Joshua, somehow, was an eminently Protestant painter; no one can forget that, who in the National Gallery in London has looked at the picture in which he represents several young ladies as nymphs, voluminously draped, hanging garlands over a statue--a picture suffused indefinably with the Anglican spirit and exasperating to a member of one of the Latin races. It is an odd chance therefore that has led him into that part of France where Protestants have been least _bien vus_. This is the country of the dragonnades of Louis XIV. and of the pastors of the desert. From the garden of the Peyrou, at Montpellier, you may see the hills of the Cévennes, to which they of the religion fled for safety and out of which they were hunted and harried. I have only to add, in regard to the Musée Fabre, that it contains the portrait of its founder--a little, pursy, fat-faced, elderly man, whose countenance contains few indications of the power that makes distinguished victims. He is, however, just such a personage as the mind's eye sees walking on the terrace of the Peyrou of an October afternoon in the early years of the century; a plump figure in a chocolate-coloured coat and a _culotte_ that exhibits a good leg--a culotte provided with a watch-fob from which a heavy seal is suspended. This Peyrou (to come to it at last) is a wonderful place, especially to be found in a little provincial city. France is certainly the country of towns that aim at completeness; more than in other lands they contain stately features as a matter of course. We should never have ceased to hear about the Peyrou if fortune had placed it at a Shrewsbury or a Buffalo. It is true that the place enjoys a certain celebrity at home, which it amply deserves, moreover; for nothing could be more impressive and monumental. It consists of an "elevated platform," as Murray says--an immense terrace laid out, in the highest part of the town, as a garden, and commanding in all directions a view which in clear weather must be of the finest. I strolled there in the intervals of showers, and saw only the nearer beauties--a great pompous arch of triumph in honour of Louis XIV. (which is not, properly speaking, in the garden, but faces it, straddling across the _place_ by which you approach it from the town), an equestrian statue of that monarch set aloft in the middle of the terrace, and a very exalted and complicated fountain, which forms a background to the picture. This fountain gushes from a kind of hydraulic temple, or _château d'eau_, to which you ascend by broad flights of steps, and which is fed by a splendid aqueduct, stretched in the most ornamental and unexpected manner across the neighbouring valley. All this work dates from the middle of the last century. The combination of features--the triumphal arch, or gate; the wide fair terrace, with its beautiful view; the statue of the grand monarch; the big architectural fountain, which would not surprise one at Rome, but does surprise one at Montpellier; and to complete the effect, the extraordinary aqueduct, charmingly fore-shortened--all this is worthy of a capital, of a little court-city. The whole place, with its repeated steps, its balustrades, its massive and plentiful stonework, is full of the air of the last century--_sent bien son dix-huitième siècle_; none the less so, I am afraid, that, as I read in my faithful Murray, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes the block, the stake, the wheel had been erected here for the benefit of the desperate Camisards. [Illustration] Chapter xxvi [The Pont du Gard] It was a pleasure to feel one's self in Provence again--the land where the silver-grey earth is impregnated with the light of the sky. To celebrate the event, as soon as I arrived at Nîmes I engaged a calèche to convey me to the Pont du Gard. The day was yet young and was exceptionally fair; it appeared well, for a longish drive, to take advantage, without delay, of such security. After I had left the town I became more intimate with that Provençal charm which I had already enjoyed from the window of the train, and which glowed in the sweet sunshine and the white rocks and lurked in the smoke puffs of the little olives. The olive-trees in Provence are half the landscape. They are neither so tall, so stout, nor so richly contorted as you have seen them beyond the Alps; but this mild colourless bloom seems the very texture of the country. The road from Nîmes, for a distance of fifteen miles, is superb; broad enough for an army and as white and firm as a dinner-table. It stretches away over undulations which have a kind of rhythmic value, and in the curves it makes through the wide, free country, where there is never a hedge or a wall and the detail is always exquisite, there is something majestic, almost processional. Some twenty minutes before I reached the little inn that marks the termination of the drive my vehicle met with an accident which just missed being serious, and which engaged the attention of a gentleman who, followed by his groom and mounted on a strikingly handsome horse, happened to ride up at the moment. This young man, who, with his good looks and charming manner, might have stepped out of a novel of Octave Feuillet, gave me some very intelligent advice in reference to one of my horses that had been injured, and was so good as to accompany me to the inn, with the resources of which he was acquainted, to see that his recommendations were carried out. The result of our interview was that he invited me to come and look at a small but ancient château in the neighbourhood, which he had the happiness--not the greatest in the world, he intimated--to inhabit, and at which I engaged to present myself after I should have spent an hour at the Pont du Gard. For the moment, when we separated, I gave all my attention to that great structure. You are very near it before you see it; the ravine it spans suddenly opens and exhibits the picture. The scene at this point grows extremely beautiful. The ravine is the valley of the Garden, which the road from Nîmes has followed some time without taking account of it, but which, exactly at the right distance from the aqueduct, deepens and expands and puts on those characteristics which are best suited to give it effect. The gorge becomes romantic, still and solitary, and, with its white rocks and wild shrubbery, hangs over the clear-coloured river, in whose slow course there is, here and there, a deeper pool. Over the valley, from side to side and ever so high in the air, stretch the three tiers of the tremendous bridge. They are unspeakably imposing, and nothing could well be more Roman. The hugeness, the solidity, the unexpectedness, the monumental rectitude of the whole thing leave you nothing to say--at the time--and make you stand gazing. You simply feel that it is noble and perfect, that it has the quality of greatness. A road, branching from the highway, descends to the level of the river and passes under one of the arches. This road has a wide margin of grass and loose stones, which slopes upward into the bank of the ravine. You may sit here as long as you please, staring up at the light, strong piers; the spot is sufficiently "wild," though two or three stone benches have been erected on it. I remained there an hour and got a complete impression; the place was perfectly soundless and, for the time at least, lonely; the splendid afternoon had begun to fade, and there was a fascination in the object I had come to see. It came to pass that at the same time I discovered in it a certain stupidity, a vague brutality. That element is rarely absent from great Roman work, which is wanting in the nice adaptation of the means to the end. The means are always exaggerated; the end is so much more than attained. The Roman rigour was apt to overshoot the mark, and I suppose a race which could do nothing small is as defective as a race that can do nothing great. Of this Roman rigour the Pont du Gard is an admirable example. It would be a great injustice, however, not to insist upon its [Illustration: THE PONT DU GARD.] beauty--a kind of manly beauty, that of an object constructed not to please but to serve, and impressive simply from the scale on which it carries out this intention. The number of arches in each tier is different; they are smaller and more numerous as they ascend. The preservation of the thing is extraordinary; nothing has crumbled or collapsed; every feature remains, and the huge blocks of stone, of a brownish-yellow (as if they had been baked by the Provençal sun for eighteen centuries), pile themselves, without mortar or cement, as evenly as the day they were laid together. All this to carry the water of a couple of springs to a little provincial city! The conduit on the top has retained its shape and traces of the cement with which it was lined. When the vague twilight began to gather, the lonely valley seemed to fill itself with the shadow of the Roman name, as if the mighty empire were still as erect as the supports of the aqueduct; and it was open to a solitary tourist, sitting there sentimental, to believe that no people has ever been, or will ever be, as great as that, measured, as we measure the greatness of an individual, by the push they gave to what they undertook. The Pont du Gard is one of the three or four deepest impressions they have left; it speaks of them in a manner with which they might have been satisfied. I feel as if it were scarcely discreet to indicate the whereabouts of the château of the obliging young man I had met on the way from Nîmes; I must content myself with saying that it nestled in an enchanting valley--_dans le fond_, as they say in France--and that I took my course thither on foot after leaving the Pont du Gard. I find it noted in my journal as "an adorable little corner." The principal feature of the place is a couple of very ancient towers, brownish-yellow in hue, and mantled in scarlet Virginia-creeper. One of these towers, reputed to be of Saracenic origin, is isolated, and is only the more effective; the other is incorporated in the house, which is delightfully fragmentary and irregular. It had got to be late by this time, and the lonely _castel_ looked crepuscular and mysterious. An old housekeeper was sent for, who showed me the rambling interior; and then the young man took me into a dim old drawing-room, which had no less than four chimney-pieces, all unlighted, and gave me a refection of fruit and sweet wine. When I praised the wine and asked him what it was, he said simply "C'est du vin de ma mère!" Throughout my little journey I had never yet felt myself so far from Paris; and this was a sensation I enjoyed more than my host, who was an involuntary exile, consoling himself with laying out a _manège_ which he showed me as I walked away. His civility was great, and I was greatly touched by it. On my way back to the little inn where I had left my vehicle I passed the Pont du Gard and took another look at it. Its great arches made windows for the evening sky, and the rocky ravine, with its dusky cedars and shining river, was lonelier than before. At the inn I swallowed, or tried to swallow, a glass of horrible wine with my coachman; after which, with my reconstructed team, I drove back to Nîmes in the moonlight. It only added a more solitary whiteness to the constant sheen of the Provençal landscape. [Illustration] Chapter xxvii [Aigues-Mortes] The weather the next day was equally fair, so that it seemed an imprudence not to make sure of Aigues-Mortes. Nîmes itself could wait; at a pinch I could attend to Nîmes in the rain. It was my belief that Aigues-Mortes was a little gem, and it is natural to desire that gems should have an opportunity to sparkle. This is an excursion of but a few hours, and there is a little friendly, familiar, dawdling train that will convey you, in time for a noonday breakfast, to the small dead town where the blessed Saint Louis twice embarked for the Crusades. You may get back to Nîmes for dinner; the run--or rather the walk, for the train doesn't run--is of about an hour. I found the little journey charming and looked out of the carriage window, on my right, at the distant Cévennes, covered with tones of amber and blue, and, all around, at vineyards red with the touch of October. The grapes were gone, but the plants had a colour of their own. Within a certain distance of Aigues-Mortes they give place to wide salt-marshes, traversed by two canals; and over this expanse the train rumbles slowly upon a narrow causeway, failing for some time, though you know you are near the object of your curiosity, to bring you to sight of anything but the horizon. Suddenly it appears, the towered and embattled mass, lying so low that the crest of its defences seems to rise straight out of the ground; and it is not till the train stops close before them that you are able to take the full measure of its walls. Aigues-Mortes stands on the edge of a wide _étang_, or shallow inlet of the sea, the farther side of which is divided by a narrow band of coast from the Gulf of Lyons. Next after Carcassonne, to which it forms an admirable _pendant_, it is the most perfect thing of the kind in France. It has a rival in the person of Avignon, but the ramparts of Avignon are much less effective. Like Carcassonne, it is completely surrounded with its old fortifications; and if they are far simpler in character (there is but one circle), they are quite as well preserved. The moat has been filled up, and the site of the town might be figured by a billiard-table without pockets. On this absolute level, covered with coarse grass, Aigues-Mortes presents quite the appearance of the walled town that a school-boy draws upon his slate or that we see in the background of early Flemish pictures--a simple parallelogram, of a contour almost absurdly bare, broken at intervals by angular towers and square holes. Such, literally speaking, is this delightful little city, which needs to be seen to tell its full story. It is extraordinarily pictorial, and if it is a very small sister of Carcassonne, it has at least the essential features of the family. Indeed, it is even more like an image and less like a reality than Carcassonne; for by position and prospect it seems even more detached from the life of the present day. It is true that Aigues-Mortes does a little business; it sees certain bags of salt piled into barges which stand in a canal beside it, and which carry their cargo into actual places. But nothing could well be more drowsy and desultory than this industry as I saw it practised, with the aid of two or three brown peasants and under the eye of a solitary douanier, who strolled on the little quay beneath the western wall. "C'est bien plaisant, c'est bien paisible," said this worthy man, with whom I had some conversation; and pleasant and peaceful is the place indeed, though the former of these epithets may suggest an element of gaiety in which Aigues-Mortes is deficient. The sand, the salt, the dull sea-view, surround it with a bright, quiet melancholy. There are fifteen towers and nine gates, five of which are on the southern side, overlooking the water. I walked all round the place three times (it doesn't take long), but lingered most under the southern wall, where the afternoon light slept in the dreamiest, sweetest way. I sat down on an old stone and looked away to the desolate salt-marshes and the still, shining surface of the _étang_; and, as I did so, reflected that this was a queer little out-of-the-world corner to have been chosen, in the great dominions of either monarch, for that pompous interview which took place, in 1538, between Francis I. and Charles V. It was also not easy to perceive how Louis IX., when in 1248 and 1270 he started for the Holy Land, set his army afloat in such very undeveloped channels. An hour later I purchased in the town a little pamphlet by M. Marius Topin, who undertakes to explain this latter anomaly and to show that there is water enough in the port, as we may call it by courtesy, to have sustained a fleet of crusaders. I was unable to trace the channel that he points out, but was glad to believe that, as he contends, the sea has not retreated from the town since the thirteenth century. It was comfortable to think that things are not so changed as that. M. Topin indicates that the other French ports of the Mediterranean were not then _disponibles_, and that Aigues-Mortes was the most eligible spot for an embarkation. Behind the straight walls and the quiet gates the little town has not crumbled like the Cité of Carcassonne. It can hardly be said to be alive; but if it is dead it has been very neatly embalmed. The hand of the restorer rests on it constantly; but this artist has not, as at Carcassonne, had miracles to accomplish. The interior is very still and empty, with small stony, whitewashed streets tenanted by a stray dog, a stray cat, a stray old woman. In the middle is a little _place_, with two or three cafés decorated by wide awnings--a little _place_ of which the principal feature is a very bad bronze statue of Saint Louis by Pradier. It is almost as bad as the breakfast I had at the inn that bears the name of that pious monarch. You may walk round the enceinte of Aigues-Mortes both outside and in; but you may not, as at Carcassonne, make a portion of this circuit on the _chemin de ronde_, the little projecting footway attached to the inner face of the battlements. This footway, wide enough only for a single pedestrian, is in the best order, and near each of the gates a flight of steps leads up to it; but a locked gate at the top of the steps makes access impossible, or at least unlawful. Aigues-Mortes, however, has its citadel, an immense tower, larger than any of the others, a little detached [Illustration: AIGUES-MORTES] and standing at the north-west angle of the town. I called upon the _casernier_--the custodian of the walls--and in his absence I was conducted through this big Tour de Constance by his wife, a very mild, meek woman, yellow with the traces of fever and ague--a scourge which, as might be expected in a town whose name denotes "dead waters," enters freely at the nine gates. The Tour de Constance is of extraordinary girth and solidity, divided into three superposed circular chambers, with very fine vaults, which are lighted by embrasures of prodigious depth, converging to windows little larger than loopholes. The place served for years as a prison to many of the Protestants of the south whom the revocation of the Edict of Nantes had exposed to atrocious penalties, and the annals of these dreadful chambers in the first half of the last century were written in tears and blood. Some of the recorded cases of long confinement there make one marvel afresh at what man has inflicted and endured. In a country in which a policy of extermination was to be put into practice this horrible tower was an obvious resource. From the battlements at the top, which is surmounted by an old disused lighthouse, you see the little compact rectangular town, which looks hardly bigger than a garden-patch, mapped out beneath you, and follow the plain configuration of its defences. You take possession of it, and you feel that you will remember it always. [Illustration] Chapter xxviii [Nîmes] After this I was free to look about me at Nîmes, and I did so with such attention as the place appeared to require. At the risk of seeming too easily and too frequently disappointed, I will say that it required rather less than I had been prepared to give. It is a town of three or four fine features rather than a town with, as I may say, a general figure. In general Nîmes is poor; its only treasures are its Roman remains, which are of the first order. The new French fashions prevail in many of its streets; the old houses are paltry, and the good houses are new; while beside my hotel rose a big spick-and-span church, which had the oddest air of having been intended for Brooklyn or Cleveland. It is true that this church looked out on a square completely French--a square of a fine modern disposition, flanked on one side by a classical _palais de justice_ embellished with trees and parapets and occupied in the centre with a group of allegorical statues such as one encounters only in the cities of France, the chief of these being a colossal figure by Pradier representing Nîmes. An English, an American town which should have such a monument, such a square as this would be a place of great pretensions; but, like so many little _villes de province_ in the country of which I write, Nîmes is easily ornamental. What nobler element can there be than the Roman baths at the foot of Mont Cavalier and the delightful old garden that surrounds them? All that quarter of Nîmes has every reason to be proud of itself; it has been revealed to the world at large by copious photography. A clear, abundant stream gushes from the foot of a high hill (covered with trees and laid out in paths), and is distributed into basins which sufficiently refer themselves to the period that gave them birth--the period that has left its stamp on that pompous Peyrou which we admired at Montpellier. Here are the same terraces and steps and balustrades, and a system of waterworks less impressive perhaps, but very ingenious and charming. The whole place is a mixture of old Rome and of the French eighteenth century; for the remains of the antique baths are in a measure incorporated in the modern fountains. In a corner of this umbrageous precinct stands a small Roman ruin, which is known as a temple of Diana, but was more apparently a _nymphæum_, and appears to have had a graceful connection with the adjacent baths. I learn from Murray that this little temple, of the period of Augustus, "was reduced to its present state of ruin in 1577;" the moment at which the townspeople, threatened with a siege by the troops of the Crown, partly demolished it lest it should serve as a cover to the enemy. The remains are very fragmentary, but they serve to show that the place was lovely. I spent half an hour in it on a perfect Sunday morning (it is enclosed by a high _grille_, carefully tended, and has a warden of its own), and with the help of my imagination tried to reconstruct a little the aspect of things in the Gallo-Roman days. I do wrong perhaps to say that I _tried_; from a flight so deliberate I should have shrunk. But there was a certain contagion of antiquity in the air; and among the ruins of baths and temples, in the very spot where the aqueduct that crosses the Gardon in the wondrous manner I had seen discharged itself, the picture of a splendid paganism seemed vaguely to glow. Roman baths--Roman baths; those words alone were a scene. Everything was changed: I was strolling in a _jardin français_; the bosky slope of the Mont Cavalier (a very modest mountain), hanging over the place, is crowned with a shapeless tower, which is as likely to be of mediæval as of antique origin; and yet, as I leaned on the parapet of one of the fountains, where a flight of curved steps (a hemicycle, as the French say) descended into a basin full of dark, cool recesses, where the slabs of the Roman foundations gleam through the clear green water--as in this attitude I surrendered myself to contemplation and reverie, it seemed to me that I touched for a moment the ancient world. Such moments are illuminating, and the light of this one mingles, in my memory, with the dusky greenness of the Jardin de la Fontaine. The fountain proper--the source of all these distributed waters--is the prettiest thing in the world, a reduced copy of Vaucluse. It gushes up at the foot of the Mont Cavalier, at a point where that eminence rises with a certain cliff-like effect, and, like other springs in the same circumstances, appears to issue [Illustration: NÎMES--THE CATHEDRAL] from the rock with a sort of quivering stillness. I trudged up the Mont Cavalier--it is a matter of five minutes--and having committed this cockneyism, enhanced it presently by another. I ascended the stupid Tour Magne, the mysterious structure I mentioned a moment ago. The only feature of this dateless tube, except the inevitable collection of photographs to which you are introduced by the doorkeeper, is the view you enjoy from its summit. This view is of course remarkably fine, but I am ashamed to say I have not the smallest recollection of it; for while I looked into the brilliant spaces of the air I seemed still to see only what I saw in the depths of the Roman baths--the image, disastrously confused and vague, of a vanished world. This world, however, has left at Nîmes a far more considerable memento than a few old stones covered with water-moss. The Roman arena is the rival of those of Verona and of Arles; at a respectful distance it emulates the Colosseum. It is a small Colosseum, if I may be allowed the expression, and is in much better preservation than the great circus at Rome. This is especially true of the external walls, with their arches, pillars, cornices. I must add that one should not speak of preservation, in regard to the arena at Nîmes, without speaking also of repair. After the great ruin ceased to be despoiled it began to be protected, and most of its wounds have been dressed with new material. These matters concern the archæologist; and I felt here, as I felt afterwards at Arles, that one of the profane, in the presence of such a monument, can only admire and hold his tongue. The great impression, on the whole, is an impression of wonder that so much should have survived. What remains at Nîmes, after all dilapidation is estimated, is astounding. I spent an hour in the Arènes on that same sweet Sunday morning, as I came back from the Roman baths, and saw that the corridors, the vaults, the staircases, the external casing, are still virtually there. Many of these parts are wanting in the Colosseum, whose sublimity of size, however, can afford to dispense with detail. The seats at Nîmes, like those at Verona, have been largely renewed; not that this mattered much, as I lounged on the cool surface of one of them and admired the mighty concavity of the place and the elliptical sky-line, broken by uneven blocks and forming the rim of the monstrous cup--a cup that had been filled with horrors. And yet I made my reflections: I said to myself that though a Roman arena is one of the most impressive of the works of man, it has a touch of that same stupidity which I ventured to discover in the Pont du Gard. It is brutal; it is monotonous; it is not at all exquisite. The Arènes at Nîmes were arranged for a bull-fight--a form of recreation that, as I was informed, is much _dans les habitudes Nîmoises_, and very common throughout Provence, where (still according to my information) it is the usual pastime of a Sunday afternoon. At Arles and Nîmes it has a characteristic setting, but in the villages the patrons of the game make a circle of carts and barrels, on which the spectators perch themselves. I was surprised at the prevalence in mild Provence of the Iberian vice, and hardly know whether it makes the custom more respectable that at Nîmes and Arles the thing is shabbily and imperfectly done. The bulls are rarely killed, and indeed often are bulls only in the Irish sense of the term--being domestic and motherly cows. Such an entertainment of course does not supply to the arena that element of the exquisite which I [Illustration: NÎMES--THE AMPHITHEATRE] spoke of as wanting. The exquisite at Nîmes is mainly represented by the famous Maison Carrée. The first impression you receive from this delicate little building, as you stand before it, is that you have already seen it many times. Photographs, engravings, models, medals, have placed it definitely in your eye, so that from the sentiment with which you regard it curiosity and surprise are almost completely, and perhaps deplorably, absent. Admiration remains, however--admiration of a familiar and even slightly patronising kind. The Maison Carrée does not overwhelm you; you can conceive it. It is not one of the great sensations of antique art; but it is perfectly felicitous, and, in spite of having been put to all sorts of incongruous uses, marvellously preserved. Its slender columns, its delicate proportions, its charming compactness, seem to bring one nearer to the century that built it than the great superpositions of arenas and bridges, and give it the interest that vibrates from one age to another when the note of taste is struck. If anything were needed to make this little toy-temple a happy production, the service would be rendered by the second-rate boulevard that conducts to it, adorned with inferior cafés and tobacco-shops. Here, in a respectable recess, surrounded by vulgar habitations and with the theatre, of a classic pretension, opposite, stands the small "square house," so called because it is much longer than it is broad. I saw it first in the evening, in the vague moonlight, which made it look as if it were cast in bronze. Stendhal says, justly, that it has the shape of a playing-card, and he expresses his admiration for it by the singular wish that an "exact copy" of it should be erected in Paris. He even goes so far as to say that in the year 1880 this tribute will have been rendered to its charms; nothing would be more simple, to his mind, than to "have" in that city "le Panthéon de Rome, quelques temples de Grèce." Stendhal found it amusing to write in the character of a _commis-voyageur_, and sometimes it occurs to his reader that he really was one. [Illustration] Chapter xxix [Tarascon] On my way from Nîmes to Arles I spent three hours at Tarascon; chiefly for the love of Alphonse Daudet, who has written nothing more genial than "Les Aventures Prodigieuses de Tartarin," and the story of the "siege" of the bright, dead little town (a mythic siege by the Prussians) in the "Contes du Lundi." In the introduction which, for the new edition of his works, he has lately supplied to "Tartarin," the author of this extravagant but kindly satire gives some account of the displeasure with which he has been visited by the ticklish Tarasconnais. Daudet relates that in his attempt to shed a humorous light upon some of the more vivid phases of the Provençal character he selected Tarascon at a venture; not because the temperament of its natives is more vainglorious than that of their neighbours, or their rebellion against the "despotism of fact" more marked, but simply because he had to name a particular Provençal city. Tartarin is a hunter of lions and charmer of women, a true "_produit du midi_," as Daudet says, a character of the most extravagant, genial comedy. He is a minimised Don Quixote, with much less dignity but with equal good faith; and the story of his exploits is a little masterpiece of the free fantastic. The Tarasconnais, however, declined to take the joke, and opened the vials of their wrath upon the mocking child of Nîmes, who would have been better employed, they doubtless thought, in showing up the infirmities of his own family. I am bound to add that when I passed through Tarascon they did not appear to be in the least out of humour. Nothing could have been brighter, easier, more suggestive of amiable indifference, than the picture it presented to my mind. It lies quietly beside the Rhone, looking across at Beaucaire, which seems very distant and independent, and tacitly consenting to let the castle of the good King René of Anjou, which projects very boldly into the river, pass for its most interesting feature. The other features are, primarily, a sort of vivid sleepiness in the aspect of the place, as if the September noon (it had lingered on into October) lasted longer there than elsewhere; certain low arcades which make the streets look grey and exhibit empty vistas; and a very curious and beautiful walk beside the Rhone, denominated the Chaussée--a long and narrow causeway, densely shaded by two rows of magnificent old trees planted in its embankment and rendered doubly effective at the moment I passed over it by a little train of collegians who had been taken out for mild exercise by a pair of young priests. Lastly one may say that a striking element of Tarascon, as of any town that lies on the Rhone, is simply the Rhone itself; the big brown flood, of uncertain temper, which has never taken time to forget that it is a child of the mountain and the glacier, and that such an origin carries with it great privileges. Later, at Avignon, I observed it in the exercise of these privileges, chief among which was that of frightening the good people of the old papal city half out of their wits. The château of King René serves to-day as the prison of a district, and the traveller who wishes to look into it must obtain his permission at the Mairie of Tarascon. If he have had a certain experience of French manners, his application will be accompanied with the forms of a considerable obsequiosity, and in this case his request will be granted as civilly as it has been made. The castle has more of the air of a severely feudal fortress than I should suppose the period of its construction (the first half of the fifteenth century) would have warranted; being tremendously bare and perpendicular, and constructed for comfort only in the sense that it was arranged for defence. It is a square and simple mass, composed of small yellow stones and perched on a pedestal of rock which easily commands the river. The building has the usual circular towers at the corners and a heavy cornice at the top, and immense stretches of sun-scorched wall relieved at wide intervals by small windows, heavily cross-barred. It has, above all, an extreme steepness of aspect; I cannot express it otherwise. The walls are as sheer and inhospitable as precipices. The castle has kept its large moat, which is now a hollow filled with wild plants. To this tall fortress the good René retired in the middle of the fifteenth century, finding it apparently the most substantial thing left him in a dominion which had included Naples and Sicily, Lorraine and Anjou. He had been a much-tried monarch and the sport of a various fortune, fighting half his life for thrones he didn't care for, and exalted only to be quickly cast down. Provence was the country of his affection, and the memory of his troubles did not prevent him from holding a joyous court at Tarascon and at Aix. He finished the castle at Tarascon, which had been begun earlier in the century--finished it, I suppose, for consistency's sake, in the manner in which it had originally been designed rather than in accordance with the artistic tastes that formed the consolation of his old age. He was a painter, a writer, a dramatist, a modern dilettante, addicted to private theatricals. There is something very attractive in the image that he has imprinted on the page of history. He was both clever and kind, and many reverses and much suffering had not embittered him nor quenched his faculty of enjoyment. He was fond of his sweet Provence, and his sweet Provence has been grateful; it has woven a light tissue of legend around the memory of the good King René. I strolled over his dusky habitation--it must have taken all his good humour to light it up--at the heels of the custodian, who showed me the usual number of castle-properties: a deep, well-like court; a collection of winding staircases and vaulted chambers, the embrasures of whose windows and the recesses of whose doorways reveal a tremendous thickness of wall. These things constitute the general identity of old castles; and when one has wandered through a good many, with due discretion of step and protrusion of head, one ceases very much to distinguish and remember, and contents one's self with consigning them to the honourable limbo of the romantic. I must add that this reflection did not in the least deter me from crossing the bridge which connects Tarascon with Beaucaire, in [Illustration: TARASCON--THE CASTLE] order to examine the old fortress whose ruins adorn the latter city. It stands on a foundation of rock much higher than that of Tarascon, and looks over with a melancholy expression at its better-conditioned brother. Its position is magnificent and its outline very gallant. I was well rewarded for my pilgrimage; for if the castle of Beaucaire is only a fragment, the whole place, with its position and its views, is an ineffaceable picture. It was the stronghold of the Montmorencys, and its last tenant was that rash Duke François whom Richelieu, seizing every occasion to trample on a great noble, caused to be beheaded at Toulouse, where we saw, in the Capitol, the butcher's knife with which the cardinal pruned the crown of France of its thorns. The castle, after the death of this victim, was virtually demolished. Its site, which nature to-day has taken again to herself, has an extraordinary charm. The mass of rock that it formerly covered rises high above the town and is as precipitous as the side of the Rhone. A tall, rusty iron gate admits you from a quiet corner of Beaucaire to a wild tangled garden covering the side of the hill--for the whole place forms the public promenade of the townsfolk--a garden without flowers, with little steep, rough paths that wind under a plantation of small, scrubby stone-pines. Above this is the grassy platform of the castle, enclosed on one side only (toward the river) by a large fragment of wall and a very massive dungeon. There are benches placed in the lee of the wall, and others on the edge of the platform, where one may enjoy a view, beyond the river, of certain peeled and scorched undulations. A sweet desolation, an everlasting peace, seemed to hang in the air. A very old man (a fragment, like the castle itself) emerged from some crumbling corner to do me the honours--a very gentle, obsequious, tottering, toothless, grateful old man. He beguiled me into an ascent of the solitary tower, from which you may look down on the big sallow river and glance at diminished Tarascon and the barefaced, bald-headed hills behind it. It may appear that I insist too much upon the nudity of the Provençal horizon--too much considering that I have spoken of the prospect from the heights of Beaucaire as lovely. But it is an exquisite bareness; it seems to exist for the purpose of allowing one to follow the delicate lines of the hills and touch with the eyes, as it were, the smallest inflections of the landscape. It makes the whole thing wonderfully bright and pure. Beaucaire used to be the scene of a famous fair, the great fair of the south of France. It has gone the way of most fairs, even in France, where these delightful exhibitions hold their own much better than might be supposed. It is still held in the month of July; but the bourgeoises of Tarascon send to the Magasin du Louvre for their smart dresses, and the principal glory of the scene is its long tradition. Even now, however, it ought to be the prettiest of all fairs, for it takes place in, a charming wood which lies just beneath the castle, beside the Rhone. The booths, the barracks, the platforms of the mountebanks, the bright-coloured crowd, diffused through this midsummer shade and spotted here and there with the rich Provençal sunshine, must be of the most pictorial effect. It is highly probable too that it offers a large collection of pretty faces; for even in the few hours that I spent at Tarascon I discovered symptoms of the purity of feature for which the women of the _pays d'Arles_ are renowned. The Arlesian head-dress was visible in the streets; and this delightful coiffure is so associated with a charming facial oval, a dark mild eye, a straight Greek nose, and a mouth worthy of all the rest, that it conveys a presumption of beauty which gives the wearer time either to escape or to please you. I have read somewhere, however, that Tarascon is supposed to produce handsome men, as Arles is known to deal in handsome women. It may be that I should have found the Tarasconnais very fine fellows if I had encountered enough specimens to justify an induction. But there are very few males in the streets, and the place presented no appearance of activity. Here and there the black coif of an old woman or of a young girl was framed by a low doorway; but for the rest, as I have said, Tarascon was mostly involved in a siesta. There was not a creature in the little church of Saint Martha, which I made a point of visiting before I returned to the station, and which, with its fine romanesque side-portal and its pointed and crocketed gothic spire, is as curious as it need be in view of its tradition. It stands in a quiet corner where the grass grows between the small cobble-stones, and you pass beneath a deep archway to reach it. The tradition relates that Saint Martha tamed with her own hands and attached to her girdle a dreadful dragon who was known as the Tarasque and is reported to have given his name to the city on whose site (amid the rocks which form the base of the château) he had his cavern. The dragon perhaps is the symbol of a ravening paganism dispelled by the eloquence of a sweet evangelist. The bones of the interesting saint, at all events, were found, in the eleventh century, in a cave beneath the spot on which her altar now stands. I know not what had become of the bones of the dragon. [Illustration] Chapter xxx [Arles] There are two shabby old inns at Arles which compete closely for your custom. I mean by this that if you elect to go to the Hôtel du Forum, the Hôtel du Nord, which is placed exactly beside it (at a right angle), watches your arrival with ill-concealed disapproval; and if you take the chances of its neighbour, the Hôtel du Forum seems to glare at you invidiously from all its windows and doors. I forget which of these establishments I selected; whichever it was, I wished very much that it had been the other. The two stand together on the Place des Hommes, a little public square of Arles which somehow quite misses its effect. As a city, indeed, Arles quite misses its effect in every way; and if it is a charming place, as I think it is, I can hardly tell the reason why. The straight-nosed Arlésiennes account for it in some degree; and the remainder may be charged to the ruins of the arena and the theatre. Beyond this, I remember with affection the ill-proportioned little Place des Hommes; not at all monumental, and given over to puddles and to shabby cafés. I recall with tenderness the tortuous and featureless streets, which looked liked the streets of a village and were paved with villainous little sharp stones, making all exercise penitential. Consecrated by association is even a tiresome walk that I took the evening I arrived, with the purpose of obtaining a view of the Rhone. I had been to Arles before, years ago, and it seemed to me that I remembered finding on the banks of the stream some sort of picture. I think that on the evening on which I speak there was a watery moon, which it seemed to me would light up the past as well as the present. But I found no picture, and I scarcely found the Rhone at all. I lost my way, and there was not a creature in the streets to whom I could appeal. Nothing could be more provincial than the situation of Arles at ten o'clock at night. At last I arrived at a kind of embankment where I could see the great mud-coloured stream slipping along in the soundless darkness. It had come on to rain, I know not what had happened to the moon, and the whole place was anything but gay. It was not what I had looked for; what I had looked for was in the irrecoverable past. I groped my way back to the inn over the infernal _cailloux_, feeling like a discomfited Dogberry. I remember now that this hotel was the one (whichever that may be) which has the fragment of a Gallo-Roman portico inserted into one of its angles. I had chosen it for the sake of this exceptional ornament. It was damp and dark, and the floors felt gritty to the feet; it was an establishment at which the dreadful _gras-double_ might have appeared at the table d'hôte, as it had done at Narbonne. Nevertheless I was glad to get back to it; and nevertheless too--and this is the moral of my simple anecdote--my pointless little walk (I don't speak of the pavement) suffuses itself, as I look back upon it, with a romantic tone. And in relation to the inn I suppose I had better mention that I am well aware of the inconsistency of a person who dislikes the modern caravansary and yet grumbles when he finds a hotel of the superannuated sort. One ought to choose, it would seem, and make the best of either alternative. The two old taverns at Arles are quite unimproved; such as they must have been in the infancy of the modern world, when Stendhal passed that way and the lumbering diligence deposited him in the Place des Hommes, such in every detail they are to-day. _Vieilles auberges de France_, one ought to enjoy their gritty floors and greasy window-panes. Let it be put on record therefore that I have been, I won't say less comfortable, but at least less happy, at better inns. To be really historic, I should have mentioned that before going to look for the Rhone I had spent part of the evening on the opposite side of the little place, and that I indulged in this recreation for two definite reasons. One of these was that I had an opportunity of gossiping at a café with a conversable young Englishman whom I had met in the afternoon at Tarascon and more remotely, in other years, in London; the other was that there sat enthroned behind the counter a splendid mature Arlésienne, whom my companion and I agreed that it was a rare privilege to contemplate. There is no rule of good manners or morals which makes it improper, at a café, to fix one's eyes upon the _dame de comptoir_; the lady is, in the nature of things, a part of your _consummation_. We were therefore free to [Illustration: ARLES--ST. TROPHIMUS] admire without restriction the handsomest person I had ever seen give change for a five-franc piece. She was a large quiet woman, who would never see forty again; of an intensely feminine type, yet wonderfully rich and robust, and full of a certain physical nobleness. Though she was not really old, she was antique; and she was very grave, even a little sad. She had the dignity of a Roman empress, and she handled coppers as if they had been stamped with the head of Cæsar. I have seen washerwomen in the Trastevere who were perhaps as handsome as she; but even the head-dress of the Roman contadina contributes less to the dignity of the person born to wear it than the sweet and stately Arlesian cap, which sits at once aloft and on the back of the head; which is accompanied with a wide black bow covering a considerable part of the crown; and which, finally, accommodates itself indescribably well to the manner in which the tresses of the front are pushed behind the ears. This admirable dispenser of lumps of sugar has distracted me a little, for I am still not sufficiently historical. Before going to the café I had dined, and before dining I had found time to go and look at the arena. Then it was that I discovered that Arles has no general physiognomy and, except the delightful little church of Saint Trophimus, no architecture, and that the rugosities of its dirty lanes affect the feet like knife-blades. It was not then, on the other hand, that I saw the arena best. The second day of my stay at Arles I devoted to a pilgrimage to the strange old hill town of Les Baux, the mediæval Pompeii, of which I shall give myself the pleasure of speaking. The evening of that day, however (my friend and I returned in time for a late dinner), I wandered among the Roman remains of the place by the light of a magnificent moon and gathered an impression which has lost little of its silvery glow. The moon of the evening before had been aqueous and erratic; but if on the present occasion it was guilty of any irregularity, the worst it did was only to linger beyond its time in the heavens in order to let us look at things comfortably. The effect was admirable; it brought back the impression of the way, in Rome itself, on evenings like that, the moonshine rests upon broken shafts and slabs of antique pavement. As we sat in the theatre looking at the two lone columns that survive--part of the decoration of the back of the stage--and at the fragments of ruin around them, we might have been in the Roman Forum. The arena at Arles, with its great magnitude, is less complete than that of Nîmes; it has suffered even more the assaults of time and the children of time, and it has been less repaired. The seats are almost wholly wanting; but the external walls, minus the topmost tier of arches, are massively, ruggedly complete; and the vaulted corridors seem as solid as the day they were built. The whole thing is superbly vast and as monumental, for a place of light amusement--what is called in America a "variety-show"--as it entered only into the Roman mind to make such establishments. The _podium_ is much higher than at Nîmes, and many of the great white slabs that faced it have been recovered and put into their places. The proconsular box has been more or less reconstructed, and the great converging passages of approach to it are still majestically distinct; so that, as I sat there in the moon-charmed stillness, leaning my elbows on the battered parapet of the ring, it was not impossible to listen to the murmurs and shudders, the thick voice of the circus, that died away fifteen hundred years ago. [Illustration: ARLES--RUINS OF THE ROMAN THEATRE] The theatre has a voice as well, but it lingers on the ear of time with a different music. The Roman theatre at Arles seemed to me one of the most charming and touching ruins I had ever beheld; I took a particular fancy to it. It is less than a skeleton--the arena may be called a skeleton--for it consists only of half a dozen bones. The traces of the row of columns which formed the scene--the permanent back-scene--remain; two marble pillars--I just mentioned them--are upright, with a fragment of their entablature. Before them is the vacant space which was filled by the stage, with the line of the proscenium distinct, marked by a deep groove impressed upon slabs of stone, which looks as if the bottom of a high screen had been intended to fit into it. The semicircle formed by the seats--half a cup--rises opposite; some of the rows are distinctly marked. The floor, from the bottom of the stage, in the shape of an arc of which the chord is formed by the line of the orchestra, is covered by slabs of coloured marble--red, yellow and green--which, though terribly battered and cracked to-day, give one an idea of the elegance of the interior. Everything shows that it was on a great scale: the large sweep of its enclosing walls, the massive corridors that passed behind the auditorium and of which we can still perfectly take the measure. The way in which every seat commanded the stage is a lesson to the architects of our epochs, as also the immense size of the place is a proof of extraordinary power of voice on the part of the Roman actors. It was after we had spent half an hour in the moonshine at the arena that we came on to this more ghostly and more exquisite ruin. The principal entrance was locked, but we effected an easy _escalade_, scaled a low parapet, and descended into the place behind the scenes. It was as light as day, and the solitude was complete. The two slim columns, as we sat on the broken benches, stood there like a pair of silent actors. What I called touching just now was the thought that here the human voice, the utterance of a great language, had been supreme. The air was full of intonations and cadences; not of the echo of smashing blows, of riven armour, of howling victims and roaring beasts. The spot is, in short, one of the sweetest legacies of the ancient world; and there seems no profanation in the fact that by day it is open to the good people of Arles, who use it to pass, by no means in great numbers, from one part of the town to the other; treading the old marble floor and brushing, if need be, the empty benches. This familiarity does not kill the place again; it makes it, on the contrary, live a little--makes the present and the past touch each other. [Illustration] Chapter xxxi [Arles: the Museum] The third lion of Arles has nothing to do with the ancient world, but only with the old one. The church of Saint Trophimus, whose wonderful romanesque porch is the principal ornament of the principal _place_--a _place_ otherwise distinguished by the presence of a slim and tapering obelisk in the middle, as well as by that of the hôtel de ville and the museum--the interesting church of Saint Trophimus swears a little, as the French say, with the peculiar character of Arles. It is very remarkable, but I would rather it were in another place. Arles is delightfully pagan, and Saint Trophimus, with its apostolic sculptures, is rather a false note. These sculptures are equally remarkable for their primitive vigour and for the perfect preservation in which they have come down to us. The deep recess of a round-arched porch of the twelfth century is covered with quaint figures which have not lost a nose or a finger. An angular Byzantine-looking Christ sits in a diamond-shaped frame at the summit of the arch, surrounded by little angels, by great apostles, by winged beasts, by a hundred sacred symbols and grotesque ornaments. It is a dense embroidery of sculpture, black with time, but as uninjured as if it had been kept under glass. One good mark for the French Revolution! Of the interior of the church, which has a nave of the twelfth century and a choir three hundred years more recent, I chiefly remember the odd feature that the romanesque aisles are so narrow that you literally--or almost--squeeze through them. You do so with some eagerness, for your natural purpose is to pass out to the cloister. This cloister, as distinguished and as perfect as the porch, has a great deal of charm. Its four sides, which are not of the same period (the earliest and best are of the twelfth century), have an elaborate arcade, supported on delicate pairs of columns, the capitals of which show an extraordinary variety of device and ornament. At the corners of the quadrangle these columns take the form of curious human figures. The whole thing is a gem of lightness and preservation and is often cited for its beauty; but--if it doesn't sound too profane--I prefer, especially at Arles, the ruins of the Roman theatre. The antique element is too precious to be mingled with anything less rare. This truth was very present to my mind during a ramble of a couple of hours that I took just before leaving the place; and the glowing beauty of the morning gave the last touch to the impression. I spent half an hour at the Museum; then I took another look at the Roman [Illustration: ARLES--DOOR OF ST. TROPHIMUS.] theatre; after which I walked a little out of the town to the Aliscamps, the old Elysian Fields, the meagre remnant of the old pagan place of sepulture, which was afterwards used by the Christians, but has been for ages deserted and now consists only of a melancholy avenue of cypresses lined with a succession of ancient sarcophagi, empty, mossy and mutilated. An iron-foundry, or some horrible establishment which is conditioned upon tall chimneys and a noise of hammering and banging, has been established near at hand; but the cypresses shut it out well enough, and this small patch of Elysium is a very romantic corner. The door of the Museum stands ajar, and a vigilant custodian, with the usual batch of photographs on his mind, peeps out at you disapprovingly while you linger opposite, before the charming portal of Saint Trophimus, which you may look at for nothing. When you succumb to the silent influence of his eye and go over to visit his collection, you find yourself in a desecrated church, in which a variety of ancient objects disinterred in Arlesian soil have been arranged without any pomp. The best of these, I believe, were found in the ruins of the theatre. Some of the most curious of them are early Christian sarcophagi, exactly on the pagan model, but covered with rude yet vigorously wrought images of the apostles and with illustrations of scriptural history. Beauty of the highest kind, either of conception or of execution, is absent from most of the Roman fragments, which belong to the taste of a late period and a provincial civilisation. But a gulf divides them from the bristling little imagery of the Christian sarcophagi, in which, at the same time, one detects a vague emulation of the rich examples by which their authors were surrounded. There is a certain element of style in all the pagan things; there is not a hint of it in the early Christian relics, among which, according to M. Joanne, of the Guide, are to be found more fine sarcophagi than in any collection but that of St. John Lateran. In two or three of the Roman fragments there is a noticeable distinction; principally in a charming bust of a boy, quite perfect, with those salient eyes that one sees in antique portraits, and to which the absence of vision in the marble mask gives a look, often very touching, as of a baffled effort to see; also in the head of a woman, found in the ruins of the theatre, who, alas! has lost her nose and whose noble, simple contour, barring this deficiency, recalls the great manner of the Venus of Milo. There are various rich architectural fragments which indicate that that edifice was a very splendid affair. This little Museum at Arles, in short, is the most Roman thing I know of out of Rome. [Illustration: ARLES--THE CLOISTERS] [Illustration] Chapter xxxii [Les Baux] I find that I declared one evening, in a little journal I was keeping at that time, that I was weary of writing (I was probably very sleepy), but that it was essential I should make some note of my visit to Les Baux. I must have gone to sleep as soon as I had recorded this necessity, for I search my small diary in vain for any account of that enchanting spot. I have nothing but my memory to consult--a memory which is fairly good in regard to a general impression, but is terribly infirm in the matter of details and items. We knew in advance, my companion and I, that Les Baux was a pearl of picturesqueness; for had we not read as much in the handbook of Murray, who has the testimony of an English nobleman as to its attractions? We also knew that it lay some miles from Arles, on the crest of the Alpilles, the craggy little mountains which, as I stood on the breezy platform of Beaucaire, formed to my eye a charming, if somewhat remote, background to Tarascon; this assurance having been given us by the landlady of the inn at Arles, of whom we hired a rather lumbering conveyance. The weather was not promising, but it proved a good day for the mediæval Pompeii; a grey, melancholy, moist, but rainless, or almost rainless day, with nothing in the sky to flout, as the poet says, the dejected and pulverised past. The drive itself was charming, for there is an inexhaustible sweetness in the grey-green landscape of Provence. It is never absolutely flat and yet is never really ambitious, and is full both of entertainment and repose. It is in constant undulation, and the bareness of the soil lends itself easily to outline and profile. When I say the bareness I mean the absence of woods and hedges. It blooms with heath and scented shrubs and stunted olive, and the white rock shining through the scattered herbage has a brightness which answers to the brightness of the sky. Of course it needs the sunshine, for all southern countries look a little false under the ground-glass of incipient bad weather. This was the case on the day of my pilgrimage to Les Baux. Nevertheless I was glad to keep going, as I was to arrive; and as I went it seemed to me that true happiness would consist in wandering through such a land on foot, on September afternoons, when one might stretch one's self on the warm ground in some shady hollow and listen to the hum of bees and the whistle of melancholy shepherds; for in Provence the shepherds whistle to their flocks. I saw two or three of them, in the course of this drive to Les Baux, meandering about, looking behind and calling upon the sheep in this way to follow, which the sheep always did, very promptly, with ovine unanimity. Nothing is more picturesque than to see a slow shepherd threading his way down one of the winding paths on a hillside, with his flock close behind him, necessarily expanded, yet keeping just at his heels, bending and twisting as it goes and looking rather like the tail of a dingy comet. About four miles from Arles, as you drive northward towards the Alpilles, of which Alphonse Daudet has spoken so often and, as he might say, so intimately, stand on a hill that overlooks the road the very considerable ruins of the abbey of Montmajour, one of the innumerable remnants of a feudal and ecclesiastical (as well as an architectural) past that one encounters in the south of France; remnants which, it must be confessed, tend to introduce a certain confusion and satiety into the passive mind of the tourist. Montmajour, however, is very impressive and interesting; the only trouble with it is that, unless you have stopped and returned to Arles, you see it in memory over the head of Les Baux, which is a much more absorbing picture. A part of the mass of buildings (the monastery) dates only from the last century; and the stiff architecture of that period does not lend itself very gracefully to desolation: it looks too much as if it had been burnt down the year before. The monastery was demolished during the Revolution, and it injures a little the effect of the very much more ancient fragments that are connected with it. The whole place is on a great scale; it was a rich and splendid abbey. The church, a vast basilica of the eleventh century and of the noblest proportions, is virtually intact; I mean as regards its essentials, for the details have completely vanished. The huge solid shell is full of expression; it looks as if it had been hollowed out by the sincerity of early faith, and it opens into a cloister as impressive as itself. Wherever one goes, in France, one meets, looking backward a little, the spectre of the great Revolution; and one meets it always in the shape of the destruction of something beautiful and precious. To make us forgive it at all, how much it must also have destroyed that was more hateful than itself! Beneath the church of Montmajour is a most extraordinary crypt, almost as big as the edifice above it and making a complete subterranean temple, surrounded with a circular gallery, or deambulatory, which expands at intervals into five square chapels. There are other things, of which I have but a confused memory: a great fortified keep; a queer little primitive chapel hollowed out of the rock beneath these later structures and recommended to the visitor's attention as the confessional of Saint Trophimus, who shares with so many worthies the glory of being the first apostle of the Gauls. Then there is a strange, small church, of the dimmest antiquity, standing at a distance from the other buildings. I remember that after we had let ourselves down a good many steepish places to visit crypts and confessionals, we walked across a field to this archaic cruciform edifice and went thence to a point farther down the road, where our carriage was awaiting us. The chapel of the Holy Cross, as it is called, is classed among the historic monuments of France; and I read in a queer, rambling, ill-written book which I picked at Avignon, and in which the author, M. Louis de Laincel, has buried a great deal of curious information on the subject of Provence under a style inspiring little confidence, that the "délicieuse chapelle de Sainte-Croix" is a "véritable bijou artistique." He speaks of "a piece of lace in stone" which runs from one end of the building to the other, but of which I am obliged to confess that I have no recollection. I retain, however, a sufficiently clear impression of the little superannuated temple, with its four apses and its perceptible odour of antiquity--the odour of the eleventh century. The ruins of Les Baux remain quite indistinguishable even when you are directly beneath them, at the foot of the charming little Alpilles, which mass themselves with a kind of delicate ruggedness. Rock and ruin have been so welded together by the confusions of time that as you approach it from behind--that is, from the direction of Arles--the place presents simply a general air of cragginess. Nothing can be prettier than the crags of Provence; they are beautifully modelled, as painters say, and they have a delightful silvery colour. The road winds round the foot of the hills on the top of which Les Baux is planted, and passes into another valley, from which the approach to the town is many degrees less precipitous and may be comfortably made in a carriage. Of course the deeply inquiring traveller will alight as promptly as possible, for the pleasure of climbing into this queerest of cities on foot is not the least part of the entertainment of going there. Then you appreciate its extraordinary position, its picturesqueness, its steepness, its desolation and decay. It hangs--that is, what remains of it--to the slanting summit of the mountain. Nothing would be more natural than for the whole place to roll down into the valley. A part of it has done so--for it is not unjust to suppose that in the process of decay the crumbled particles have sought the lower level, while the remainder still clings to its magnificent perch. If I called Les Baux a city, just above, it was not that I was stretching a point in favour of the small spot which to-day contains but a few dozen inhabitants. The history of the place is as extraordinary as its situation. It was not only a city, but a state; not only a state, but an empire; and on the crest of its little mountain called itself sovereign of a territory, or at least of scattered towns and counties, with which its present aspect is grotesquely out of relation. The lords of Les Baux, in a word, were great feudal proprietors; and there was a time during which the island of Sardinia, to say nothing of places nearer home, such as Arles and Marseilles, paid them homage. The chronicle of this old Provençal house has been written, in a style somewhat unctuous and flowery, by M. Jules Canonge. I purchased the little book--a modest pamphlet--at the establishment of the good sisters, just beside the church, in one of the highest parts of Les Baux. The sisters have a school for the hardy little Baussenques, whom I heard piping their lessons while I waited in the cold _parloir_ for one of the ladies to come and speak to me. Nothing could have been more perfect than the manner of this excellent woman when she arrived; yet her small religious house seemed a very out-of-the-way corner of the world. It was spotlessly neat, and the rooms looked as if they had lately been papered and painted: in this respect, at the mediæval Pompeii, they were rather a discord. They were, at any rate, the newest, freshest thing at Les Baux. I remember going round to the church after I had left the good sisters, and to a little quiet terrace which stands in front of it, ornamented with a few small trees and bordered with a wall, breast-high, over which you look down steep hillsides, off into the air and all about the neighbouring country. I remember saying to myself that this little terrace was one of those felicitous nooks which the tourist of taste keeps in his mind as a picture. The church was small and brown and dark, with a certain rustic richness. All this, however, is no general description of Les Baux. I am unable to give any coherent account of the place, for the simple reason that it is a mere confusion of ruin. It has not been preserved in lava like Pompeii, and its streets and houses, its ramparts and castle, have become fragmentary not through the sudden destruction, but through the gradual withdrawal, of a population. It is not an extinguished, but a deserted city; more deserted far than even Carcassonne and Aigues-Mortes, where I found so much entertainment in the grass-grown element. It is of very small extent, and even in the days of its greatness, when its lords entitled themselves counts of Cephalonia and Neophantis, kings of Arles and Vienne, princes of Achaia and emperors of Constantinople--even at this flourishing period, when, as M. Jules Canonge remarks, "they were able to depress the balance in which the fate of peoples and kings is weighed," the plucky little city contained at the most no more than thirty-six hundred souls. Yet its lords (who, however, as I have said, were able to present a long list of subject towns, most of them, though a few are renowned, unknown to fame) were seneschals and captains-general of Piedmont and Lombardy, grand admirals of the kingdom of Naples, and its ladies were sought in marriage by half the first princes in Europe. A considerable part of the little narrative of M. Canonge is taken up with the great alliances of the House of Baux, whose fortunes, matrimonial and other, he traces from the eleventh century down to the sixteenth. The empty shells of a considerable number of old houses, many of which must have been superb, the lines of certain steep little streets, the foundations of a castle, and ever so many splendid views, are all that remains to-day of these great titles. To such a list I may add a dozen very polite and sympathetic people who emerged from the interstices of the desultory little town to gaze at the two foreigners who had driven over from Arles and whose horses were being baited at the modest inn. The resources of this establishment we did not venture otherwise to test, in spite of the seductive fact that the sign over the door was in the Provençal tongue. This little group included the baker, a rather melancholy young man, in high boots and a cloak, with whom and his companions we had a good deal of conversation. The Baussenques of to-day struck me as a very mild and agreeable race, with a good deal of the natural amenity which, on occasions like this one, the traveller who is waiting for his horses to be put in or his dinner to be prepared observes in the charming people who lend themselves to conversation in the hill-towns of Tuscany. The spot where our entertainers at Les Baux congregated was naturally the most inhabited portion of the town; as I say, there were at least a dozen human figures within sight. Presently we wandered away from them, scaled the higher places, seated ourselves among the ruins of the castle, and looked down from the cliff overhanging that portion of the road which I have mentioned as approaching Les Baux from behind. I was unable to trace the configuration of the castle as plainly as the writers who have described it in the guide-books, and I am ashamed to say that I did not even perceive the three great figures of stone (the three Marys, as they are called; the two Marys of Scripture, with Martha) which constitute one of the curiosities of the place and of which M. Jules Canonge speaks with almost hyperbolical admiration. A brisk shower, lasting some ten minutes, led us to take refuge in a cavity of mysterious origin, where the melancholy baker presently discovered us, having had the _bonne pensée_ of coming up for us with an umbrella which certainly belonged, in former ages, to one of the Stéphanettes or Berangères commemorated by M. Canonge. His oven, I am afraid, was cold so long as our visit lasted. When the rain was over we wandered down to the little disencumbered space before the inn, through a small labyrinth of obliterated things. They took the form of narrow, precipitous streets bordered by empty houses with gaping windows and absent doors, through which we had glimpses of sculptured chimney-pieces and fragments of stately arch and vault. Some of the houses are still inhabited, but most of them are open to the air and weather. Some of them have completely collapsed; others present to the street a front which enables one to judge of the physiognomy of Les Baux in the days of its importance. This importance had pretty well passed away in the early part of the sixteenth century, when the place ceased to be an independent principality. It became--by bequest of one of its lords, Bernardin des Baux, a great captain of his time--part of the appanage of the kings of France, by whom it was placed under the protection of Arles, which had formerly occupied with regard to it a different position. I know not whether the Arlesians neglected their trust, but the extinction of the sturdy little stronghold is too complete not to have begun long ago. Its memories are buried under its ponderous stones. As we drove away from it in the gloaming my friend and I agreed that the two or three hours we had spent there were among the happiest impressions of a pair of tourists very curious of the picturesque. We almost forgot that we were bound to regret that the shortened day left us no time to drive five miles farther, above a pass in the little mountains--it had beckoned to us in the morning, when we came in sight of it, almost irresistibly--to see the Roman arch and mausoleum of Saint Remy. To compass this larger excursion (including the visit to Les Baux) you must start from Arles very early in the morning; but I can imagine no more delightful day. [Illustration] Chapter xxxiii [Avignon] I had been twice at Avignon before, and yet I was not satisfied. I probably am satisfied now; nevertheless I enjoyed my third visit. I shall not soon forget the first, on which a particular emotion set an indelible stamp. I was creeping northward, in 1870, after four months spent, for the first time, in Italy. It was the middle of January, and I had found myself unexpectedly forced to return to England for the rest of the winter. It was an insufferable disappointment; I was wretched and broken-hearted. Italy appeared to me at that time so much better than anything else in the world, that to rise from table in the middle of the feast was a prospect of being hungry for the rest of my days. I had heard a great deal of praise of the south of France; but the south of France was a poor consolation. In this state of mind I arrived at Avignon, which under a bright, hard winter sun was tingling--fairly spinning--with the _mistral_. I find in my journal of the other day a reference to the acuteness of my reluctance in January 1870. France, after Italy, appeared in the language of the latter country _poco simpatica_; and I thought it necessary, for reasons now inconceivable, to read the _Figaro_, which was filled with descriptions of the horrible Troppmann, the murderer of the _famille_ Kink. Troppmann, Kink, _le crime de Pantin_--the very names that figured in this episode seemed to wave me back. Had I abandoned the sonorous south to associate with vocables so base? It was very cold the other day at Avignon, for though there was no mistral, it was raining as it rains in Provence, and the dampness had a terrible chill in it. As I sat by my fire late at night--for in genial Avignon, in October, I had to have a fire--it came back to me that eleven years before I had at that same hour sat by a fire in that same room and, writing to a friend to whom I was not afraid to appear extravagant, had made a vow that at some happier period of the future I would avenge myself on the _ci-devant_ city of the Popes by taking it in a contrary sense. I suppose that I redeemed my vow on the occasion of my second visit better than on my third; for then I was on my way to Italy, and that vengeance, of course, was complete. The only drawback was that I was in such a hurry to get to Ventimiglia (where the Italian custom-house was to be the sign of my triumph), that I scarcely took time to make it clear to myself at Avignon that this was better than reading the _Figaro_. I hurried on almost too fast to enjoy the consciousness of moving southward. On this last occasion I was unfortunately destitute of that happy faith. Avignon was my southernmost limit, after which I was to turn round and proceed back to England. But in the interval I had been a great deal in Italy, and that made all the difference. I had plenty of time to think of this, for the rain kept me practically housed for the first twenty-four hours. It had been raining in these regions for a month, and people had begun to look askance at the Rhone, though as yet the volume of the river was not exorbitant. The only excursion possible, while the torrent descended, was a kind of horizontal dive, accompanied with infinite splashing, to the little _musée_ of the town, which is within a moderate walk of the hotel. I had a memory of it from my first visit; it had appeared to me more pictorial than its pictures. I found that recollection had flattered it a little, and that it is neither better nor worse than most provincial museums. It has the usual musty chill in the air, the usual grass-grown forecourt, in which a few lumpish Roman fragments are disposed, the usual red tiles on the floor and the usual specimens of the more livid schools on the walls. I rang up the _gardien_, who arrived with a bunch of keys, wiping his mouth; he unlocked doors for me, opened shutters, and while (to my distress, as if the things had been worth lingering over) he shuffled about after me, he announced the names of the pictures before which I stopped in a voice that reverberated through the melancholy halls and seemed to make the authorship shameful when it was obscure and grotesque when it pretended to be great. Then there were intervals of silence, while I stared absent-mindedly, at haphazard, at some indistinguishable canvas and the only sound was the downpour of the rain on the skylights. The museum of Avignon derives a certain dignity from its Roman fragments. The town has no Roman monuments to show; in this respect, beside its brilliant neighbours, Arles and Nîmes, it is a blank. But a great many small objects have been found in its soil--pottery, glass, bronzes, lamps, vessels and ornaments of gold and silver. The glass is especially charming--small vessels of the most delicate shape and substance, many of them perfectly preserved. These diminutive, intimate things bring one near to the old Roman life; they seems like pearls strung upon the slender thread that swings across the gulf of time. A little glass cup that Roman lips have touched says more to us than the great vessel of an arena. There are two small silver _casseroles_, with chiselled handles, in the museum of Avignon, that struck me as among the most charming survivals of antiquity. [Avignon the Palace of the Popes] I did wrong, just above, to speak of my attack on this establishment as the only recreation I took that first wet day; for I remember a terribly moist visit to the former palace of the Popes, which could have taken place only in the same tempestuous hours. It is true that I scarcely know why I should have gone out to see the Papal palace in the rain, for I had been over it twice before, and even then had not found the interest of the place so complete as it ought to be; the fact nevertheless remains that this last occasion is much associated with an umbrella, which was not superfluous even in some of the chambers and corridors of the gigantic pile. It had already seemed to me the dreariest of all historical buildings, and my final visit confirmed the impression. The place is as intricate as it is vast, and as desolate as it is dirty. The imagination has, for some reason or other, to make more than the effort usual in such cases to restore and repeople it. The fact indeed is simply that the palace has been so incalculably abused and altered. The alterations have been so numerous that, though I have duly conned the enumerations, supplied in guide-books, of the principal [Illustration: AVIGNON--THE CHURCH] perversions, I do not pretend to carry any of them in my head. The huge bare mass, without ornament, without grace, despoiled of its battlements and defaced with sordid modern windows, covering the Rocher des Doms and looking down over the Rhone and the broken bridge of Saint-Bénazet (which stops in such a sketchable manner in mid-stream), and across at the lonely tower of Philippe le Bel and the ruined wall of Villeneuve, makes at a distance, in spite of its poverty, a great figure, the effect of which is carried out by the tower of the church beside it (crowned though the latter be, in a top-heavy fashion, with an immense modern image of the Virgin) and by the thick, dark foliage of the garden laid out on a still higher portion of the eminence. This garden recalls faintly and a trifle perversely the grounds of the Pincian at Rome. I know not whether it is the shadow of the Papal name, present in both places, combined with a vague analogy between the churches--which, approached in each case by a flight of steps, seemed to defend the precinct--but each time I have seen the Promenade des Doms it has carried my thoughts to the wider and loftier terrace from which you look away at the Tiber and Saint Peter's. As you stand before the Papal palace, and especially as you enter it, you are struck with its being a very dull monument. History enough was enacted here: the great schism lasted from 1305 to 1370, during which seven Popes, all Frenchmen, carried on the court of Avignon on principles that have not commended themselves to the esteem of posterity. But history has been whitewashed away, and the scandals of that period have mingled with the dust of dilapidations and repairs. The building has for many years been occupied as a barrack for regiments of the line, and the main characteristics of a barrack--an extreme nudity and a very queer smell--prevail throughout its endless compartments. Nothing could have been more cruelly dismal than the appearance it presented at the time of this third visit of mine. A regiment, changing quarters, had departed the day before, and another was expected to arrive (from Algeria) on the morrow. The place had been left in the befouled and belittered condition which marks the passage of the military after they have broken camp, and it would offer but a melancholy welcome to the regiment that was about to take possession. Enormous windows had been left carelessly open all over the building, and the rain and wind were beating into empty rooms and passages, making draughts which purified, perhaps, but which scarcely cheered. For an arrival it was horrible. A handful of soldiers had remained behind. In one of the big vaulted rooms several of them were lying on their wretched beds, in the dim light, in the cold, in the damp, with the bleak bare walls before them and their overcoats, spread over them, pulled up to their noses. I pitied them immensely, though they may have felt less wretched than they looked. I thought not of the old profligacies and crimes, not of the funnel-shaped torture-chamber (which, after exciting the shudder of generations, has been ascertained now, I believe, to have been a mediæval bakehouse), not of the tower of the _glacière_ and the horrors perpetrated here in the Revolution, but of the military burden of young France. One wonders how young France endures it, and one is forced to believe that the French conscript has, in addition to his notorious good-humour, greater toughness than is commonly supposed by those who consider only the more relaxing influences of French civilisation. I hope he finds occasional compensation for such moments as I saw those damp young peasants passing on the mattresses of their hideous barrack, without anything around to remind them that they were in the most civilised of countries. The only traces of former splendour now visible in the Papal pile are the walls and vaults of two small chapels, painted in fresco, so battered and effaced as to be scarcely distinguishable, by Simone Memmi. It offers of course a peculiarly good field for restoration, and I believe the Government intend to take it in hand. I mention this fact without a sigh, for they cannot well make it less interesting than it is at present. [Illustration] Chapter xxxiv [Villeneuve-lès-Avignon] Fortunately it did not rain every day (though I believe it was raining everywhere else in the department); otherwise I should not have been able to go to Villeneuve and to Vaucluse. The afternoon indeed was lovely when I walked over the interminable bridge that spans the two arms of the Rhone, divided here by a considerable island, and directed my course, like a solitary horseman--on foot, to the lonely tower which forms one of the outworks of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon. The picturesque, half-deserted little town lies a couple of miles farther up the river. The immense round towers of its old citadel and the long stretches of ruined wall covering the slope on which it lies are the most striking features of the nearer view, as you look from Avignon across the Rhone. I spent a couple of hours in visiting these objects, and there was a kind of pictorial sweetness in the episode; but I have not many details to relate. The isolated tower I just mentioned has much in common with the detached donjon of Montmajour, which I had looked at in going to Les Baux and to which I paid my respects in speaking of that excursion. Also the work of Philippe le Bel (built in 1307), it is amazingly big and stubborn, and formed the opposite limit of the broken bridge whose first arches (on the side of Avignon) alone remain to give a measure of the occasional volume of the Rhone. Half an hour's walk brought me to Villeneuve, which lies away from the river, looking like a big village half depopulated and occupied for the most part by dogs and cats, old women and small children; these last, in general, remarkably pretty, in the manner of the children of Provence. You pass through the place, which seems in a singular degree vague and unconscious, and come to the rounded hill on which the ruined abbey lifts its yellow walls--the Benedictine abbey of Saint-André, at once a church, a monastery, and a fortress. A large part of the crumbling enceinte disposes itself over the hill; but for the rest, all that has preserved any traceable cohesion is a considerable portion of the citadel. The defence of the place appears to have been entrusted largely to the huge round towers that flank the old gate; one of which, the more complete, the ancient warden (having first inducted me into his own dusky little apartment and presented me with a great bunch of lavender) enabled me to examine in detail. I would almost have dispensed with the privilege, for I think I have already mentioned that an acquaintance with many feudal interiors has wrought a sad confusion in my mind. The image of the outside always remains distinct; I keep it apart from other images of the same sort; it makes, a picture sufficiently ineffaceable. But the guard-rooms, winding staircases, loopholes, prisons, repeat themselves and intermingle; they have a wearisome family likeness. There are always black passages and corners, and walls twenty feet thick; and there is always some high place to climb up to for the sake of a "magnificent" view. The views, too, are apt to run together. These dense gate-towers of Philippe le Bel struck me, however, as peculiarly wicked and grim. Their capacity is of the largest, and they contain ever so many devilish little dungeons, lighted by the narrowest slit in the prodigious wall, where it comes over one with a good deal of vividness and still more horror that wretched human beings once lay there rotting in the dark. The dungeons of Villeneuve made a particular impression on me--greater than any except those of Loches, which must surely be the most gruesome in Europe. I hasten to add that every dark hole at Villeneuve is called a dungeon; and I believe it is well established that in this manner, in almost all old castles and towers, the sensibilities of the modern tourist are unscrupulously played upon. There were plenty of black holes in the Middle Ages that were not dungeons, but household receptacles of various kinds; and many a tear dropped in pity for the groaning captive has really been addressed to the spirits of the larder and the faggot-nook. For all this, there are some very bad corners in the towers of Villeneuve, so that I was not wide of the mark when I began to think again, as I had often thought before, of the stoutness of the human composition in the Middle Ages and the tranquillity of nerve of people to whom the groaning captive and the blackness of a "living tomb" were familiar ideas which did not at all interfere with their happiness or their sanity. Our modern nerves, our irritable sympathies, our easy discomforts and fears, make one think (in some relations) less respectfully of human nature. Unless indeed it be true, as I have heard it maintained, that in the Middle Ages every one did go mad--every one _was_ mad. The theory that this was a period of general dementia is not altogether untenable. Within the old walls of its immense abbey the town of Villeneuve has built itself a rough faubourg; the fragments with which the soil was covered having been, i suppose, a quarry of material. There are no streets; the small, shabby houses, almost hovels, straggle at random over the uneven ground. The only important feature is a convent of cloistered nuns, who have a large garden (always within the walls) behind their house, and whose doleful establishment you look down into, or down at simply, from the battlements of the citadel. One or two of the nuns were passing in and out of the house; they wore grey robes with a bright red cape. I thought their situation most provincial. I came away and wandered a little over the base of the hill, outside the walls. Small white stones cropped through the grass, over which low olive-trees were scattered. The afternoon had a yellow brightness. I sat down under one of the little trees, on the grass--the delicate grey branches were not much above my head--and rested and looked at Avignon across the Rhone. It was very soft, very still and pleasant, though I am not sure it was all I once should have expected of that combination of elements: an old city wall for a background, a canopy of olives, and for a couch the soil of Provence. When I came back to Avignon the twilight was already thick, but I walked up to the Rocher des Doms. Here I again had the benefit of that amiable moon which had already lighted up for me so many romantic scenes. She was full, and she rose over the Rhone and made it look in the distance like a silver serpent. I remember saying to myself at this moment that it would be a beautiful evening to walk round the walls of Avignon--the remarkable walls which challenge comparison with those of Carcassonne and Aigues-Mortes, and which it was my duty, as an observer of the picturesque, to examine with some attention. Presenting themselves to that silver sheen, they could not fail to be impressive. So, at least, I said to myself; but unfortunately I did not believe what I said. It is a melancholy fact that the walls of Avignon had never impressed me at all, and I had never taken the trouble to make the circuit. They are continuous and complete, but for some mysterious reason they fail of their effect. This is partly because they are very low, in some places almost absurdly so, being buried in new accumulations of soil and by the filling in of the moat up to their middle. Then they have been too well tended; they not only look at present very new, but look as if they had never been old. The fact that their extent is very much greater makes them more of a curiosity than those of Carcassonne; but this is exactly, at the same time, what is fatal to their pictorial unity. With their thirty-seven towers and seven gates, they lose themselves too much to make a picture that will compare with the admirable little vignette of Carcassonne. I may mention, now that I am speaking of the general mass of Avignon, that nothing is more curious than the way in which, viewed from a distance, it is all reduced to naught by the vast bulk of the palace of the Popes. From across the Rhone, or from the train as you leave the place, this great grey block is all Avignon; it seems to occupy the whole city, extensive, with its shrunken population, as the city is. [Illustration] Chapter xxxv [Vaucluse] It was the morning after this, I think (a certain Saturday), that when I came out of the Hôtel de l'Europe, which lies in shallow concavity just within the city gate that opens on the Rhone--came out to look at the sky from the little _place_ before the inn and see how the weather promised for the obligatory excursion to Vaucluse--I found the whole town in a terrible taking. I say the whole town advisedly, for every inhabitant appeared to have taken up a position on the bank of the river, or on the uppermost parts of the promenade of the Doms, where a view of its course was to be obtained. It had risen surprisingly in the night, and the good people of Avignon had reason to know what a rise of the Rhone might signify. The town, in its lower portions, is quite at the mercy of the swollen waters; and it was mentioned to me that in 1856 the Hôtel de l'Europe, in its convenient hollow, was flooded up to within a few feet of the ceiling of the dining-room, where the long board which had served for so many a table d'hôte floated disreputably, with its legs in the air. On the present occasion the mountains of the Ardêche, where it had been raining for a month, had sent down torrents which, all that fine Friday night, by the light of the innocent-looking moon, poured themselves into the Rhone and its tributary the Durance. The river was enormous and continued to rise, and the sight was beautiful and horrible. The water in many places was already at the base of the city walls, the quay, with its parapet just emerging, being already covered. The country, seen from the Plateau des Doms, resembled a vast lake, with protrusions of trees, houses, bridges, gates. The people looked at it in silence, as I had seen people before--on the occasion of a rise of the Arno, at Pisa--appear to consider the prospect of an inundation. "Il monte; il monte toujours"--there was not much said but that. It was a general holiday, and there was an air of wishing to profit, for sociability's sake, by any interruption of the commonplace (the popular mind likes "a change," and the element of change mitigates the sense of disaster); but the affair was not otherwise a holiday. Suspense and anxiety were in the air, and it never is pleasant to be reminded of the helplessness of man. In the presence of a loosened river, with its ravaging, unconquerable volume, this impression is as strong as possible; and as I looked at the deluge which threatened to make an island of the Papal palace I perceived that the scourge of water is greater than the scourge of fire. A blaze may be quenched, but where could the flame be kindled that would arrest the quadrupled Rhone? For the population of Avignon a good deal was at stake, and I am almost ashamed to confess that in the midst of the public alarm I considered the situation from the point of view of the little projects of a sentimental tourist. Would the prospective inundation interfere with my visit to Vaucluse, or make it imprudent to linger twenty-four hours longer at Avignon? I must add that the tourist was not perhaps, after all, so sentimental. I have spoken of the pilgrimage to the shrine of Petrarch as obligatory, and that was, in fact, the light in which it presented itself to me; all the more that I had been twice at Avignon without undertaking it. This is why I was vexed at the Rhone.--if vexed I was--for representing as impracticable an excursion which I cared nothing about. How little I cared was manifest from my inaction on former occasions. I had a prejudice against Vaucluse, against Petrarch, even against the incomparable Laura. I was sure that the place was cockneyfied and threadbare, and I had never been able to take an interest in the poet and the lady. I was sure that I had known many women as charming and as handsome as she, about whom much less noise had been made; and I was convinced that her singer was factitious and literary, and that there are half a dozen stanzas in Wordsworth that speak more to the soul than the whole collection of his _fioriture_. This was the crude state of mind in which I determined to go, at any risk, to Vaucluse. Now that I think it over, I seem to remember that I had hoped, after all, that the submersion of the roads would forbid it. Since morning the clouds had gathered again, and by noon they were so heavy that there was every prospect of a torrent. It appeared absurd to choose such a time as this to visit a fountain--a fountain which would be indistinguishable in the general cataract. Nevertheless I took a vow, that if at noon the rain should not have begun to descend upon Avignon I would repair to the head-spring of the Sorgues. When the critical moment arrived the clouds were hanging over Avignon like distended water-bags, which only needed a prick to empty themselves. The prick was not given, however; all nature was too much occupied in following the aberrations of the Rhone to think of playing tricks elsewhere. Accordingly I started for the station in a spirit which, for a tourist who sometimes had prided himself on his unfailing supply of sentiment, was shockingly perfunctory. "For tasks in hours of insight willed May be in hours of gloom fulfilled." I remembered these lines of Matthew Arnold (written, apparently, in an hour of gloom), and carried out the idea, as I went, by hoping that with the return of insight I should be glad to have seen Vaucluse. Light has descended upon me since then, and I declare that the excursion is in every way to be recommended. The place makes a great impression, quite apart from Petrarch and Laura. There was no rain; there was only, all the afternoon, a mild, moist wind and a sky magnificently black; which made a _repoussoir_ for the paler cliffs of the fountain. The road, by train, crosses a flat, expressionless country, towards the range of arid hills which lie to the east of Avignon, and which spring (says Murray) from the mass of the Mont-Ventoux. At Isle-sur-Sorgues, at the end of about an hour, the foreground becomes much more animated and the distance much more (or perhaps I should say much less) actual. I descended from the train and ascended to the top of an omnibus which was to convey me into the recesses of the hills. It had not been among my previsions that I should be indebted to a vehicle of that kind for an opportunity to commune with the spirit of Petrarch; and I had to borrow what consolation I could from the fact that at least I had the omnibus to myself. I was the only passenger; every one else was at Avignon watching the Rhone. I lost no time in perceiving that I could not have come to Vaucluse at a better moment. The Sorgues was almost as full as the Rhone, and of a colour much more romantic. Rushing along its narrowed channel under an avenue of fine _platanes_ (it is confined between solid little embankments of stone), with the good wives of the village, on the brink, washing their linen in its contemptuous flood, it gave promise of high entertainment farther on. The drive to Vaucluse is of about three-quarters of an hour; and though the river, as I say, was promising, the big pale hills, as the road winds into them, did not look as if their slopes of stone and shrub were a nestling-place for superior scenery. It is a part of the merit of Vaucluse indeed that it is as much as possible a surprise. The place has a right to its name, for the valley appears impenetrable until you get fairly into it. One perverse twist follows another until the omnibus suddenly deposits you in front of the "cabinet" of Petrarch. After that you have only to walk along the left bank of the river. The cabinet of Petrarch is to-day a hideous little _café_, bedizened, like a signboard, with extracts from the ingenious "Rime." The poet and his lady are of course the stock-in-trade of the little village, which has had for several generations the privilege of attracting young couples engaged in their wedding-tour and other votaries of the tender passion. The place has long been familiar, on festal Sundays, to the swains of Avignon and their attendant nymphs. The little fish of the Sorgues are much esteemed, and, eaten on the spot, they constitute, for the children of the once Papal city, the classic suburban dinner. Vaucluse has been turned to account, however, not only by sentiment, but by industry; the banks of the stream being disfigured by a pair of hideous mills for the manufacture of paper and of wool. In an enterprising and economical age the water-power of the Sorgues was too obvious a motive; and I must say that, as the torrent rushed past them, the wheels of the dirty little factories appeared to turn merrily enough. The footpath on the left bank, of which I just spoke, carries one fortunately quite out of sight of them, and out of sound as well, inasmuch as on the day of my visit the stream itself, which was in tremendous force, tended more and more, as one approached the fountain, to fill the valley with its own echoes. Its colour was magnificent, and the whole spectacle more like a corner of Switzerland than a nook in Provence. The protrusions of the mountain shut it in, and you penetrate to the bottom of the recess which they form. The Sorgues rushes and rushes; it is almost like Niagara after the jump of the cataract. There are dreadful little booths beside the path, for the sale of photographs and _immortelles_--I don't know what one is to do with the immortelles--where you are offered a brush dipped in tar to write your name withal on the rocks. Thousands of vulgar persons, of both sexes, and exclusively, it appeared, of the French nationality, had availed themselves of this implement, for every square inch of accessible stone was scored over with some human appellation. It is not only we in America, therefore, who besmirch our scenery; the practice [Illustration: VAUCLUSE--RUINS OF CASTLE] exists, in a more organised form (like everything else in France), in the country of good taste. You leave the little booths and stalls behind; but the bescribbled crag, bristling with human vanity, keeps you company even when you stand face to face with the fountain. This happens when you find yourself at the foot of the enormous straight cliff out of which the river gushes. It rears itself to an extraordinary height--a huge forehead of bare stone--looking as if it were the half of a tremendous mound split open by volcanic action. The little valley, seeing it there, at a bend, stops suddenly and receives in its arms the magical spring. I call it magical on account of the mysterious manner in which it comes into the world, with the huge shoulder of the mountain rising over it as if to protect the secret. From under the mountain it silently rises, without visible movement, filling a small natural basin with the stillest blue water. The contrast between the stillness of this basin and the agitation of the water directly after it has overflowed, constitutes half the charm of Vaucluse. The violence of the stream when once it has been set loose on the rocks is as fascinating and indescribable as that of other cataracts; and the rocks in the bed of the Sorgues have been arranged by a master-hand. The setting of the phenomenon struck me as so simple and so fine--the vast sad cliff, covered with the afternoon light, still and solid for ever, while the liquid element rages and roars at its base--that I had no difficulty in understanding the celebrity of Vaucluse. I understood it, but I will not say that I understood Petrarch. He must have been very self-supporting, and Madonna Laura must indeed have been much to him. The aridity of the hills that shut in the valley is complete, and the whole impression is best conveyed by that very expressive French epithet _morne_. There are the very fragmentary ruins of a castle (of one of the bishops of Cavaillon) on a high spur of the mountain, above the river; and there is another remnant of a feudal habitation on one of the more accessible ledges. Having half an hour to spare before my omnibus was to leave (I must beg the reader's pardon for this atrociously false note; call the vehicle a _diligence_, and for some undiscoverable reason the offence is minimised), I clambered up to this latter spot and sat among the rocks in the company of a few stunted olives. The Sorgues, beneath me, reaching the plain, flung itself crookedly across the meadows like an unrolled blue ribbon. I tried to think of the _amant de Laure_, for literature's sake; but I had no great success, and the most I could do was to say to myself that I must try again. Several months have elapsed since then, and I am ashamed to confess that the trial has not yet come off. The only very definite conviction I arrived at was that Vaucluse is indeed cockneyfied, but that I should have been a fool, all the same, not to come. [Illustration] Chapter xxxvi [Orange] Mounted into my diligence at the door of the Hôtel de Pétrarque et de Laure, and we made our way back to Isle-sur-Sorgues in the fading light. This village, where at six o'clock every one appeared to have gone to bed, was fairly darkened by its high, dense plane-trees, under which the rushing river, on a level with its parapets, looked unnaturally, almost wickedly, blue. It was a glimpse which has left a picture in my mind: the little closed houses, the place empty and soundless in the autumn dusk but for the noise of waters, and in the middle, amid the blackness of the shade, the gleam of the swift, strange tide. At the station every one was talking of the inundation being in many places an accomplished fact, and, in particular, of the condition of the Durance at some point that I have forgotten. At Avignon, an hour later, I found the water in some of the streets. The sky cleared in the evening, the moon lighted up the submerged suburbs, and the population again collected in the high places to enjoy the spectacle. It exhibited a certain sameness, however, and by nine o'clock there was considerable animation in the Place Crillon, where there is nothing to be seen but the front of the theatre and of several cafés--in addition indeed to a statue of this celebrated brave, whose valour redeemed some of the numerous military disasters of the reign of Louis XV. The next morning the lower quarters of the town were in a pitiful state: the situation seemed to me odious. To express my disapproval of it I lost no time in taking the train to Orange, which, with its other attractions, had the merit of not being seated on the Rhone. It was destiny to move northward; but even if I had been at liberty to follow a less unnatural course I should not then have undertaken it, inasmuch as the railway between Avignon and Marseilles was credibly reported to be (in places) under water. This was the case with almost everything but the line itself on the way to Orange. The day proved splendid, and its brilliancy only lighted up the desolation. Farmhouses and cottages were up to their middle in the yellow liquidity; haystacks looked like dull little islands; windows and doors gaped open, without faces; and interruption and flight were represented in the scene. It was brought home to me that the _populations rurales_ have many different ways of suffering, and my heart glowed with a grateful sense of cockneyism. It was under the influence of this emotion that I alighted at Orange to visit a collection of eminently civil monuments. The collection consists of but two objects, but these objects are so fine that I will let the word pass. One of them is a triumphal arch, supposedly of the period of Marcus Aurelius; the other is a fragment, magnificent in its ruin, of a Roman theatre. But for these fine Roman remains and for its name, Orange is a perfectly featureless little town, without the Rhone--which, as I have mentioned, is several miles distant--to help it to a physiognomy. It seems one of the oddest things that this obscure French borough--obscure, I mean, in our modern era, for the Gallo-Roman Arausio must have been, judging it by its arches and theatre, a place of some importance--should have given its name to the heirs-apparent of the throne of Holland and been borne by a king of England who had sovereign rights over it. During the Middle Ages it formed part of an independent principality; but in 1531 it fell, by the marriage of one of its princesses, who had inherited it, into the family of Nassau. I read in my indispensable Murray that it was made over to France by the treaty of Utrecht. The arch of triumph, which stands a little way out of the town, is rather a pretty than an imposing vestige of the Romans. If it had greater purity of style one might say of it that it belonged to the same family of monuments as the Maison Carrée at Nîmes. It has three passages--the middle much higher than the others--and a very elevated attic. The vaults of the passages are richly sculptured, and the whole structure is covered with friezes and military trophies. This sculpture is rather mixed; much of it is broken and defaced, and the rest seemed to me ugly, though its workmanship is praised. The arch is at once well preserved and much injured. Its general mass is there, and as Roman monuments go it is remarkably perfect; but it has suffered, in patches, from the extremity of restoration. It is not, on the whole, of absorbing interest. It has a charm, nevertheless, which comes partly from its soft, bright yellow colour, partly from a certain elegance of shape, of expression; and on that well-washed Sunday morning, with its brilliant tone, surrounded by its circle of thin poplars, with the green country lying beyond it and a low blue horizon showing through its empty portals, it made, very sufficiently, a picture that hangs itself to one of the lateral hooks of the memory. I can take down the modest composition and place it before me as I write. I see the shallow, shining puddles in the hard, fair French road; the pale blue sky, diluted by days of rain; the disgarnished autumnal fields; the mild sparkle of the low horizon; the solitary figure in sabots, with a bundle under its arm, advancing along the _chaussée_; and in the middle I see the little ochre-coloured trio of apertures, which, in spite of its antiquity, looks bright and gay, as everything must look in France of a fresh Sunday morning. It is true that this was not exactly the appearance of the Roman theatre, which lies on the other side of the town; a fact that did not prevent me from making my way to it in less than five minutes, through a succession of little streets concerning which I have no observations to record. None of the Roman remains in the south of France are more impressive than this stupendous fragment. An enormous mound rises above the place, which was formerly occupied--I quote from Murray--first by a citadel of the Romans, then by a castle of the princes of Nassau, razed by Louis XIV. Facing this hill a mighty wall erects itself, thirty-six metres high and composed of massive blocks of dark brown stone simply laid one on the other; the whole naked, rugged [Illustration: ORANGE--THE THEATRE.] surface of which suggests a natural cliff (say of the Vaucluse order) rather than an effort of human or even of Roman labour. It is the biggest thing at Orange--it is bigger than all Orange put together--and its permanent massiveness makes light of the shrunken city. The face it presents to the town--the top of it garnished with two rows of brackets perforated with holes to receive the staves of the _velarium_--bears the traces of more than one tier of ornamental arches; though how these flat arches were applied, or incrusted, upon the wall, I do not profess to explain. You pass through a diminutive postern--which seems in proportion about as high as the entrance of a rabbit-hutch--into the lodge of the custodian, who introduces you to the interior of the theatre. Here the mass of the hill affronts you, which the ingenious Romans treated simply as the material of their auditorium. They inserted their stone seats, in a semicircle, in the slope of the hill, and planted their colossal wall opposite to it. This wall, from the inside, is, if possible, even more imposing. It formed the back of the stage, the permanent scene, and its enormous face was coated with marble. It contains three doors, the middle one being the highest and having above it, far aloft, a deep niche apparently intended for an imperial statue. A few of the benches remain on the hillside, which, however, is mainly a confusion of fragments. There is part of a corridor built into the hill, high up, and on the crest are the remnants of the demolished castle. The whole place is a kind of wilderness of ruin; there are scarcely any details; the great feature is the overtopping wall. This wall being the back of the scene, the space left between it and the chord of the semicircle (of the auditorium) which formed the proscenium is rather less than one would have supposed. In other words, the stage was very shallow, and appears to have been arranged for a number of performers placed in a line like a company of soldiers. There stands the silent skeleton, however, as impressive by what it leaves you to guess and wonder about as by what it tells you. It has not the sweetness, the softness of melancholy, of the theatre at Aries; but it is more extraordinary, and one can imagine only tremendous tragedies being enacted there-- "Presenting Thebes' or Pelops' line." At either end of the stage, coming forward, is an immense wing--immense in height, I mean, as it reaches to the top of the scenic wall; the other dimensions are not remarkable. The division to the right, _as you_ face the stage, is pointed out as the green-room; its portentous altitude and the open arches at the top give it the air of a well. The compartment on the left is exactly similar, save that it opens into the traces of other chambers, said to be those of a hippodrome adjacent to the theatre. Various fragments are visible which refer themselves plausibly to such an establishment; the greater axis of the hippodrome would appear to have been on a line with the triumphal arch. This is all I saw, and all there was to see, of Orange, which had a very rustic, bucolic aspect, and where I was not even called upon to demand breakfast at the hotel. The entrance of this resort might have been that of a stable of the Roman days. [Illustration] Chapter xxxvii [Macon] I have been trying to remember whether I fasted all the way to Macon, which I reached at an advanced hour of the evening, and think I must have done so except for the purchase of a box of nougat at Montélimart (the place is famous for the manufacture of this confection, which, at the station, is hawked at the windows of the train) and for a bouillon, very much later, at Lyons. The journey beside the Rhone--past Valence, past Tournon, past Vienne--would have been charming, on that luminous Sunday, but for two disagreeable accidents. The express from Marseilles, which I took at Orange, was full to overflowing; and the only refuge I could find was an inside angle in a carriage laden with Germans who had command of the windows, which they occupied as strongly as they have been known to occupy other strategical positions. I scarcely know, however, why I linger on this particular discomfort, for it was but a single item in a considerable list of grievances--grievances dispersed through six weeks of constant railway-travel in France. I have not touched upon them at an earlier stage of this chronicle, but my reserve is not owing to any sweetness of association. This form of locomotion, in the country of the amenities, is attended with a dozen discomforts; almost all the conditions of the business are detestable. They force the sentimental tourist again and again to ask himself whether, in consideration of such mortal annoyances, the game is worth the candle. Fortunately a railway journey is a good deal like a sea-voyage; its miseries fade from the mind as soon as you arrive. That is why I completed, to my great satisfaction, my little tour in France. Let this small effusion of ill-nature be my first and last tribute to the whole despotic _gare_: the deadly _salle d'attente_, the insufferable delays over one's luggage, the porterless platform, the overcrowded and illiberal train. How many a time did I permit myself the secret reflection that it is in perfidious Albion that they order this matter best! How many a time did the eager British mercenary, clad in velveteen and clinging to the door of the carriage as it glides into the station, revisit my invidious dreams! The paternal porter and the responsive hansom are among the best gifts of the English genius to the world. I hasten to add, faithful to my habit (so insufferable to some of my friends) of ever and again readjusting the balance after I have given it an honest tip, that the bouillon at Lyons, which I spoke of above, was, though by no means an idea bouillon, much better than any I could have obtained at an English railway-station. After I had imbibed it I sat in the train (which waited a long time at Lyons) and, by the light of one of the big lamps on the platform, read all sorts of disagreeable things in certain [Illustration: LYONS.] radical newspapers which I had bought at the bookstall. I gathered from these sheets that Lyons was in extreme commotion. The Rhone and the Saone, which form a girdle for the splendid town, were almost in the streets, as I could easily believe from what I had seen of the country after leaving Orange. The Rhone, all the way to Lyons, had been in all sorts of places where it had no business to be, and matters were naturally not improved by its confluence with the charming and copious stream which, at Macon, is said once to have given such a happy opportunity to the egotism of the capital. A visitor from Paris (the anecdote is very old), being asked on the quay of that city whether he didn't admire the Saone, replied good-naturedly that it was very pretty, but that in Paris they spelled it with the _ei_. This moment of general alarm at Lyons had been chosen by certain ingenious persons (I credit them perhaps with too sure a prevision of the rise of the rivers) for practising further upon the apprehensions of the public. A bombshell filled with dynamite had been thrown into a café, and various votaries of the comparatively innocuous _petit verre_ had been wounded (I am not sure whether any one had been killed) by the irruption. Of course there had been arrests and incarcerations, and the _Intransigeant_ and the _Rappel_ were filled with the echoes of the explosion. The tone of these organs is rarely edifying, and it had never been less so than on this occasion. I wondered as I looked through them whether I was losing all my radicalism; and then I wondered whether, after all, I had any to lose. Even in so long a wait as that tiresome delay at Lyons I failed to settle the question, any more than I made up my mind as to the probable future of the militant democracy, or the ultimate form of a civilisation which should have blown up everything else. A few days later the water went down at Lyons; but the democracy has not gone down. I remember vividly the remainder of that evening which I spent at Macon--remember it with a chattering of the teeth. I know not what had got into the place; the temperature, for the last day of October, was eccentric and incredible. These epithets may also be applied to the hotel itself--an extraordinary structure, all façade, which exposes an uncovered rear to the gaze of nature. There is a demonstrative, voluble landlady, who is of course part of the façade; but everything behind her is a trap for the winds, with chambers, corridors, staircases all exhibited to the sky as if the outer wall of the house had been lifted off. It would have been delightful for Florida, but it didn't do for Burgundy even on the eve of November 1, so that I suffered absurdly from the rigour of a season that had not yet begun. There was something in the air; I felt it the next day, even on the sunny quay of the Saone, where in spite of a fine southerly exposure I extracted little warmth from the reflection that Alphonse de Lamartine had often trodden the flags. Macon struck me, somehow, as suffering from a chronic numbness, and there was nothing exceptionally cheerful in the remarkable extension of the river. It was no longer a river--it had become a lake; and from my window, in the painted face of the inn, I saw that the opposite bank had been moved back, as it were, indefinitely. Unfortunately the various objects with which it was furnished had not been moved as well, the consequence of which was an extraordinary confusion in the relations of things. There were always poplars to be seen, but the poplar had become an aquatic plant. Such phenomena, however, at Macon attract but little attention, as the Saone, at certain seasons of the year, is nothing if not expansive. The people are as used to it as they appeared to be to the bronze statue of Lamartine, which is the principal monument of the _place_, and which, representing the poet in a frogged overcoat and top-boots, improvising in a high wind, struck me as even less casual in its attitude than monumental sculpture usually succeeds in being. It is true that in its present position I thought better of this work of art, which is from the hand of M. Falguière, than when I had seen it through the factitious medium of the Salon of 1876. I walked up the hill where the older part of Macon lies, in search of the natal house of the _amant d'Elvire_, the Petrarch whose Vaucluse was the bosom of the public. The Guide-Joanne quotes from "Les Confidences" a description of the birthplace of the poet, whose treatment of the locality is indeed poetical. It tallies strangely little with the reality, either as regards position or other features; and it may be said to be not an aid, but a direct obstacle, to a discovery of the house. A very humble edifice, in a small back street, is designated by a municipal tablet, set into its face, as the scene of Lamartine's advent into the world. He himself speaks of a vast and lofty structure, at the angle of a _place_, adorned with iron clamps, with a _porte haute et large_ and many other peculiarities. The house with the tablet has two meagre storeys above the basement, and (at present, at least) an air of extreme shabbiness; the _place_, moreover, never can have been vast. Lamartine was accused of writing history incorrectly, and apparently he started wrong at first; it had never become clear to him where he was born. Or is the tablet wrong? If the house is small, the tablet is very big. [Illustration] Chapter xxxviii [Bourg-en-Bresse] The foregoing reflections occur, in a cruder form, as it were, in my note-book, where I find this remark appended to them: "Don't take leave of Lamartine on that contemptuous note; it will be easy to think of something more sympathetic!" Those friends of mine, mentioned a little while since, who accuse me of always tipping back the balance, could not desire a paragraph more characteristic; but I wish to give no further evidence of such infirmities, and will therefore hurry away from the subject--hurry away in the train which, very early on a crisp, bright morning, conveyed me, by way of an excursion, to the ancient city of Bourg-en-Bresse. Shining in early light, the Saone was spread, like a smooth white tablecloth, over a considerable part of the flat country that I traversed. There is no provision made in this image for the long, transparent screens of thin-twigged trees which rose at intervals out of the watery plain; but as, in all the conditions, there seemed to be no provision for them in fact, I will let my metaphor go for what it is worth. My journey was (as I remember it) of about an hour and a half; but I passed no object of interest, as the phrase is, whatever. The phrase hardly applies even to Bourg itself, which is simply a town _quelconque_, as M. Zola would say. Small, peaceful, rustic, it stands in the midst of the great dairy-feeding plains of Bresse, of which fat county, sometime property of the house of Savoy, it was the modest capital. The blue masses of the Jura give it a creditable horizon, but the only nearer feature it can point to is its famous sepulchral church. This edifice lies at a fortunate distance from the town, which, though inoffensive, is of too common a stamp to consort with such a treasure. All I ever knew of the church of Brou I had gathered, years ago, from Matthew Arnold's beautiful poem which bears its name. I remember thinking, in those years, that it was impossible verses could be more touching than these; and as I stood before the object of my pilgrimage, in the gay French light (though the place was so dull), I recalled the spot where I had first read them and where I had read them again and yet again, wondering whether it would ever be my fortune to visit the church of Brou. The spot in question was an armchair in a window which looked out on some cows in a field; and whenever I glanced at the cows it came over me--I scarcely know why--that I should probably never behold the structure reared by the Duchess Margaret. Some of our visions never come to pass; but we must be just--others do. "So sleep, for ever sleep, O princely pair!" I remembered that line of Matthew Arnold's, and the stanza about the Duchess Margaret coming to watch the builders on her palfrey white. Then there came to me something in regard to the moon shining on winter nights through the cold clere-storey. The tone of the place at that hour was not at all lunar; it was cold and bright, but with the chill of an autumn morning; yet this, even with the fact of the unexpected remoteness of the church from the Jura added to it, did not prevent me from feeling that I looked at a monument in the production of which--or at least in the effect of which on the tourist-mind of to-day--Matthew Arnold had been much concerned. By a pardonable licence he has placed it a few miles nearer to the forests of the Jura than it stands at present. It is very true that, though the mountains in the sixteenth century can hardly have been in a different position, the plain which separates the church from them may have been bedecked with woods. The visitor to-day cannot help wondering why the beautiful building, with its splendid works of art, is dropped down in that particular spot, which looks so accidental and arbitrary. But there are reasons for most things, and there were reasons why the church of Brou should be at Brou, which is a vague little suburb of a vague little town. [The Church of Brou] The responsibility rests, at any rate, upon the Duchess Margaret--Margaret of Austria, daughter of the Emperor Maximilian and his wife Mary of Burgundy, daughter of Charles the Bold. This lady has a high name in history, having been regent of the Netherlands in behalf of her nephew, the Emperor Charles V., of whose early education she had had the care. She married in 1501 Philibert the Handsome, Duke of Savoy, to whom the province of Bresse belonged, and who died two years later. She had been betrothed, as a child, to Charles VIII. of France, and was kept for some time at the French court--that of [Illustration: BROU--THE CHURCH.] her prospective father-in-law, Louis XI.; but she was eventually repudiated, in order that her _fiancé_ might marry Anne of Brittany--an alliance so magnificently political that we almost condone the offence to a sensitive princess. Margaret did not want for husbands, however, inasmuch as before her marriage to Philibert she had been united to John of Castile, son of Ferdinand V., King of Aragon--an episode terminated by the death of the Spanish prince within a year. She was twenty-two years regent of the Netherlands and died, at fifty-one, in 1530. She might have been, had she chosen, the wife of Henry VII. of England. She was one of the signers of the League of Cambray against the Venetian Republic, and was a most politic, accomplished, and judicious princess. She undertook to build the church of Brou as a mausoleum for her second husband and herself, in fulfilment of a vow made by Margaret of Bourbon, mother of Philibert, who died before she could redeem her pledge and who bequeathed the duty to her son. He died shortly afterwards, and his widow assumed the pious task. According to Murray, she entrusted the erection of the church to "Maistre Loys von Berghem," and the sculpture to "Maistre Conrad." The author of a superstitious but carefully prepared little Notice which I bought at Bourg calls the architect and sculptor (at once) Jehan de Paris, author (_sic_) of the tomb of Francis II. of Brittany, to which we gave some attention at Nantes, and which the writer of my pamphlet ascribes only subordinately to Michel Colomb. The church, which is not of great size, is in the last and most flamboyant phase of gothic and in admirable preservation; the west front, before which a quaint old sun-dial is laid out on the ground--a circle of numbers marked in stone, like those on a clock-face, let into the earth--is covered with delicate ornament. The great feature, however (the nave is perfectly bare and wonderfully new-looking, though the warden, a stolid yet sharp old peasant in a blouse, who looked more as if his line were chaffering over turnips than showing off works of art, told me that it has never been touched and that its freshness is simply the quality of the stone)--the great feature is the admirable choir, in the midst of which the three monuments have bloomed under the chisel like exotic plants in a conservatory. I saw the place to small advantage, for the stained glass of the windows, which are fine, was under repair, and much of it was masked with planks. In the centre lies Philibert-le-Bel, a figure of white marble on a great slab of black, in his robes and his armour, with two boy-angels holding a tablet at his head, and two more at his feet. On either side of him is another cherub; one guarding his helmet, the other his stiff gauntlets. The attitudes of these charming children, whose faces are all bent upon him in pity, have the prettiest tenderness and respect. The table on which he lies is supported by elaborate columns adorned with niches containing little images and with every other imaginable elegance; and beneath it he is represented in that other form so common in the tombs of the Renaissance--a man naked and dying, with none of the state and splendour of the image above. One of these figures embodies the duke, the other simply the mortal; and there is something very strange and striking in the effect of the latter, seen dimly and with difficulty through the intervals of the rich supports of the upper slab. The monument of Margaret herself is on the left, all in white marble tormented into a multitude of exquisite patterns, the last extravagance of a gothic which had gone so far that nothing was left it but to return upon itself. Unlike her husband, who has only the high roof of the church above him, she lies under a canopy supported and covered by a wilderness of embroidery--flowers, devices, initials, arabesques, statuettes. Watched over by cherubs, she is also in her robes and ermine, with a greyhound sleeping at her feet (her husband, at his, has a waking lion); and the artist has not, it is to be presumed, represented her as more beautiful than she was. She looks indeed like the regent of a turbulent realm. Beneath her couch is stretched another figure--a less brilliant Margaret, wrapped in her shroud, with her long hair over her shoulders. Round the tomb is the battered iron railing placed there originally, with the mysterious motto of the duchess worked into the top--_fortune infortune fort une_. The other two monuments are protected by barriers of the same pattern. That of Margaret of Bourbon, Philibert's mother, stands on the right of the choir; and I suppose its greatest distinction is that it should have been erected to a mother-in-law. It is but little less florid and sumptuous than the others; it has, however, no second recumbent figure. On the other hand, the statuettes that surround the base of the tomb are of even more exquisite workmanship: they represent weeping women, in long mantles and hoods, which latter hang forward over the small face of the figure, giving the artist a chance to carve the features within this hollow of drapery--an extraordinary play of skill. There is a high, white marble shrine of the Virgin, as extraordinary as all the rest (a series of compartments representing the various scenes of her life, with the Assumption in the middle); and there is a magnificent series of stalls, which are simply the intricate embroidery of the tombs translated into polished oak. All these things are splendid, ingenious, elaborate, precious; it is goldsmith's work on a monumental scale, and the general effect is none the less beautiful and solemn because it is so rich. But the monuments of the church of Brou are not the noblest that one may see; the great tombs of Verona are finer, and various other early Italian work. These things are not insincere, as Ruskin would say; but they are pretentious, and they are not positively _naïfs_. I should mention that the walls of the choir are embroidered in places with Margaret's tantalising device, which--partly perhaps because it is tantalising--is so very decorative, as they say in London. I know not whether she was acquainted with this epithet, but she had anticipated one of the fashions most characteristic of our age. One asks one's self how all this decoration, this luxury of fair and chiselled marble, survived the French Revolution. An hour of liberty in the choir of Brou would have been a carnival for the image-breakers. The well-fed Bressois are surely a good-natured people. I call them well-fed both on general and on particular grounds. Their province has the most savoury aroma, and I found an opportunity to test its reputation. I walked back into the town from the church (there was really nothing to be seen by the way), and as the hour of the midday breakfast had struck, directed my steps to the inn. The table d'hôte was going on, and a gracious, bustling, talkative landlady welcomed me. I had an excellent repast--the best repast possible--which consisted simply of boiled eggs and bread and butter. It was the quality of these simple ingredients that made the occasion memorable. The eggs were so good that I am ashamed to say how many of them I consumed. "La plus belle fille du monde," as the French proverb says, "ne peut donner que ce qu'elle a;" and it might seem that an egg which has succeeded in being fresh has done all that can reasonably be expected of it. But there was a bloom of punctuality, so to speak, about these eggs of Bourg, as if it had been the intention of the very hens themselves that they should be promptly served. "Nous sommes en Bresse, et le beurre n'est pas mauvais," the landlady said with a sort of dry coquetry, as she placed this article before me. It was the poetry of butter, and I ate a pound or two of it; after which I came away with a strange mixture of impressions of late gothic sculpture and thick _tartines_. I came away through the town, where, on a little green promenade, facing the hotel, is a bronze statue of Bichat the physiologist, who was a Bressois. I mention it not on account of its merit (though, as statues go, I don't remember that it is bad), but because I learned from it--my ignorance, doubtless, did me little honour--that Bichat had died at thirty years of age, and this revelation was almost agitating. To have done so much in so short a life was to be truly great. This reflection, which looks deplorably trite as I write it here, had the effect of eloquence as I uttered it for my own benefit on the bare little mall at Bourg. [Illustration] Chapter xxxix [Beaune] On my return to Macon I found myself fairly face to face with the fact that my tour was near its end. Dijon had been marked by fate as its farthest limit, and Dijon was close at hand. After that I was to drop the tourist and re-enter Paris as much as possible like a Parisian. Out of Paris the Parisian never loiters, and therefore it would be impossible for me to stop between Dijon and the capital. But I might be a tourist a few hours longer by stopping somewhere between Macon and Dijon. The question was where I should spend these hours. Where better, I asked myself (for reasons not now entirely clear to me), than at Beaune? On my way to this town I passed the stretch of the Côte d'Or, which, covered with a mellow autumn haze, with the sunshine shimmering through, looked indeed like a golden slope. One regards with a kind of awe the region in which the famous _crûs_ of Burgundy (Vougeot, Chambertin, Nuits, Beaune) are, I was going to say, manufactured. Adieu, paniers; vendanges sont faites! The vintage was over; the shrunken russet fibres alone clung to their ugly stick. The horizon on the left of the road had a charm, however; there is something picturesque in the big, comfortable shoulders of the Côte. That delicate critic M. Emile Montégut, in a charming record of travel through this region published some years ago, praises Shakespeare for having talked (in "Lear") of "waterish Burgundy." Vinous Burgundy would surely be more to the point. I stopped at Beaune in pursuit of the picturesque, but I might almost have seen the little I discovered without stopping. It is a drowsy Burgundian town, very old and ripe, with crooked streets, vistas always oblique, and steep, moss covered roofs. The principal lion is the Hôpital-Saint-Esprit, or the Hôtel-Dieu simply, as they call it there, founded in 1443 by Nicholas Rollin, Chancellor of Burgundy. It is administered by the sisterhood of the Holy Ghost, and is one of the most venerable and stately of hospitals. The face it presents to the street is simple, but striking--a plain, windowless wall, surmounted by a vast slate roof, of almost mountainous steepness. Astride this roof sits a tall, slate-covered spire, from which, as I arrived, the prettiest chimes I ever heard (worse luck to them, as I will presently explain) were ringing. Over the door is a high, quaint canopy, without supports, with its vault painted blue and covered with gilded stars. (This, and indeed the whole building, have lately been restored, and its antiquity is quite of the spick-and-span order. But it is very delightful.) The treasure of the place is a precious picture--a Last Judgment, attributed equally to John van Eyck and Roger van der Weyden--given to the hospital in the fifteenth century by Nicholas Rollin aforesaid. I learned, however, to my dismay, from a sympathising but inexorable concierge, that what remained to me of the time I had to spend at Beaune, between trains--I had rashly wasted half an hour of it in breakfasting at the station--was the one hour of the day (that of the dinner of the nuns; the picture is in their refectory) during which the treasure could not be shown. The purpose of the musical chimes to which I had so artlessly listened was to usher in this fruitless interval. The regulation was absolute, and my disappointment relative, as I have been happy to reflect since I "looked up" the picture. Crowe and Cavalcaselle assign it without hesitation to Roger van der Weyden, and give a weak little drawing of it in their "Flemish Painters." I learn from them also--what I was ignorant of--that Nicholas Rollin, Chancellor of Burgundy and founder of the establishment at Beaune, was the original of the worthy kneeling before the Virgin in the magnificent John van Eyck of the Salon Carré. All I could see was the court of the hospital and two or three rooms. The court, with its tall roofs, its pointed gables and spires, its wooden galleries, its ancient well, with an elaborate superstructure of wrought iron, is one of those places into which a sketcher ought to be let loose. It looked Flemish or English rather than French, and a splendid tidiness pervaded it. The porter took me into two [Illustration: BEAUNE--THE HOSPITAL.] rooms on the ground-floor, into which the sketcher should also be allowed to penetrate, for they made irresistible pictures. One of them, of great proportions, painted in elaborate "subjects" like a ball-room of the seventeenth century, was filled with the beds of patients, all draped in curtains of dark red cloth, the traditional uniform of these eleemosynary couches. Among them the sisters moved about in their robes of white flannel with big white linen hoods. The other room was a strange, immense apartment, lately restored with much splendour. It was of great length and height, had a painted and gilded barrel-roof, and one end of it--the one I was introduced to--appeared to serve as a chapel, as two white-robed sisters were on their knees before an altar. This was divided by red curtains from the larger part; but the porter lifted one of the curtains and showed me that the rest of it, a long, imposing vista, served as a ward lined with little red-draped beds. "C'est l'heure de la lecture," remarked my guide; and a group of convalescents--all the patients I saw were women--were gathered in the centre around a nun, the points of whose white hood nodded a little above them and whose gentle voice came to us faintly, with a little echo, down the high perspective. I know not what the good sister was reading--a dull book, I am afraid--but there was so much colour and such a fine, rich air of tradition about the whole place that it seemed to me I would have risked listening to her. I turned away, however, with that sense of defeat which is always irritating to the appreciative tourist, and pottered about Beaune rather vaguely for the rest of my hour: looked at the statue of Gaspard Monge, the mathematician, in the little _place_ (there is no _place_ in France too little to contain an effigy to a glorious son); at the fine old porch--completely despoiled at the Revolution--of the principal church; and even at the meagre treasures of a courageous but melancholy little museum, which has been arranged--part of it being the gift of a local collector--in a small hôtel de ville. I carried away from Beaune the impression of something mildly autumnal--something rusty yet kindly, like the taste of a sweet russet pear. [Illustration: DIJON.] [Illustration] Chapter xl [Dijon] It was very well that my little tour was to terminate at Dijon, for I found, rather to my chagrin, that there was not a great deal, from the pictorial point of view, to be done with Dijon. It was no great matter, for I held my proposition to have been by this time abundantly demonstrated--the proposition with which I started: that if Paris is France, France is by no means Paris. If Dijon was a good deal of a disappointment, I felt therefore that I could afford it. It was time for me to reflect, also, that for my disappointments, as a general thing, I had only myself to thank. They had too often been the consequence of arbitrary preconceptions produced by influences of which I had lost the trace. At any rate, I will say plumply that the ancient capital of Burgundy is wanting in character; it is not up to the mark. It is old and narrow and crooked, and it has been left pretty well to itself: but it is not high and overhanging; it is not, to the eye, what the Burgundian capital should be. It has some tortuous vistas, some mossy roofs, some bulging fronts, some grey-faced hotels, which look as if in former centuries--in the last, for instance, during the time of that delightful Président de Brosses whose Letters from Italy throw an interesting sidelight on Dijon--they had witnessed a considerable amount of good living. But there is nothing else. I speak as a man who, for some reason which he doesn't remember now, did not pay a visit to the celebrated Puits de Moïse, an ancient cistern embellished with a sculptured figure of the Hebrew lawgiver. The ancient palace of the dukes of Burgundy, long since converted into an hôtel de ville, presents to a wide, clean court, paved with washed-looking stones, and to a small semicircular _place_, opposite, which looks as if it had tried to be symmetrical and had failed, a façade and two wings characterised by the stiffness, but not by the grand air, of the early part of the eighteenth century. It contains, however, a large and rich museum--a museum really worthy of a capital. The gem of this collection is the great banqueting hall of the old palace, one of the few features of the place that has not been essentially altered. Of great height, roofed with the old beams and cornices, it exhibits, [Illustration: DIJON--THE PARK.] filling one end, a colossal gothic chimney-piece with a fireplace large enough to roast, not an ox, but a herd of oxen. In the middle of this striking hall, the walls of which are covered with objects more or less precious, have been placed the tombs of Philippe-le-Hardi and Jean-sans-Peur. These monuments, very splendid in their general effect, have a limited interest. The limitation comes from the fact that we see them to-day in a transplanted and mutilated condition. Placed originally in a church which has disappeared from the face of the earth, demolished and dispersed at the Revolution, they have been reconstructed and restored out of fragments recovered and pieced together. The piecing has been beautifully done; it is covered with gilt and with brilliant paint; the whole result is most artistic. But the spell of the old mortuary figures is broken, and it will never work again. Meanwhile the monuments are immensely decorative. I think the thing that pleased me best at Dijon was the little old Parc, a charming public garden, about a mile from the town, to which I walked by a long, straight autumnal avenue. It is a _jardin français_ of the last century--a dear old place, with little blue-green perspectives and alleys and _rond-points_, in which everything balances. I went there late in the afternoon, without meeting a creature, though I had hoped I should meet the Président de Brosses. At the end of it was a little river that looked like a canal, and on the farther bank was an old-fashioned villa, close to the water, with a little French garden of its own. On the hither side was a bench, on which I seated myself, lingering a good while; for this was just the sort of place I like. It was the farthermost point of my little tour. I thought that over, as I sat there, on the eve of taking the express to Paris; and as the light faded in the Parc the vision of some of the things I had enjoyed became more distinct. Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. London & Edinburgh 
35125	----	generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) Dumas' Paris _UNIFORM VOLUMES_ Dickens' London BY FRANCIS MILTOUN Library 12mo, cloth, gilt top $2.00 The Same, 3/4 levant morocco 5.00 Milton's England BY LUCIA AMES MEAD Library 12mo, cloth, gilt top 2.00 The Same, 3/4 levant morocco 5.00 Dumas' Paris BY FRANCIS MILTOUN Library 12mo, cloth, gilt top _net_ 1.60 _postpaid_ 1.75 The Same, 3/4 levant morocco _net_ 4.00 _postpaid_ 4.15 L. C. PAGE & COMPANY New England Building Boston, Mass. [Illustration: _Alexandre Dumas_] Dumas' Paris By Francis Miltoun Author of "Dickens' London," "Cathedrals of Southern France," "Cathedrals of Northern France," etc. With two Maps and many Illustrations Boston L. C. Page & Company MDCCCCV _Copyright, 1904_ BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY (INCORPORATED) _All rights reserved_ Published November, 1904 _COLONIAL PRESS Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. Boston, Mass., U.S.A._ Contents CHAPTER PAGE I. A GENERAL INTRODUCTION 1 II. DUMAS' EARLY LIFE IN PARIS 14 III. DUMAS' LITERARY CAREER 33 IV. DUMAS' CONTEMPORARIES 68 V. THE PARIS OF DUMAS 83 VI. OLD PARIS 126 VII. WAYS AND MEANS OF COMMUNICATION 147 VIII. THE BANKS OF THE SEINE 165 IX. THE SECOND EMPIRE AND AFTER 178 X. LA VILLE 195 XI. LA CITÉ 235 XII. L'UNIVERSITÉ QUARTIER 244 XIII. THE LOUVRE 257 XIV. THE PALAIS ROYAL 266 XV. THE BASTILLE 278 XVI. THE ROYAL PARKS AND PALACES 297 XVII. THE FRENCH PROVINCES 321 XVIII. LES PAYS ÉTRANGERS 359 APPENDICES 373 INDEX 377 List of Illustrations PAGE ALEXANDRE DUMAS _Frontispiece_ DUMAS' HOUSE AT VILLERS-COTTERETS 7 STATUE OF DUMAS AT VILLERS-COTTERETS 14 FACSIMILE OF DUMAS' OWN STATEMENT OF HIS BIRTH 26 FACSIMILE OF A MANUSCRIPT PAGE FROM ONE OF DUMAS' PLAYS 37 D'ARTAGNAN 48 ALEXANDRE DUMAS, _Fils_ 64 TWO FAMOUS CARICATURES OF ALEXANDRE DUMAS 68 TOMB OF ABELARD AND HÉLOÏSE 82 GENERAL FOY'S RESIDENCE 84 D'ARTAGNAN, FROM THE DUMAS STATUE BY GUSTAVE DORÉ 123 PONT NEUF--PONT AU CHANGE 135 PORTRAIT OF HENRY IV. 143 GRAND BUREAU DE LA POSTE 154 THE ODÉON IN 1818 167 PALAIS ROYAL, STREET FRONT 183 77 RUE D'AMSTERDAM--RUE DE ST. DENIS 188 PLACE DE LA GRÈVE 197 TOUR DE ST. JACQUES LA BOUCHERIE (MÉRYON'S ETCHING, "LE STRYGE") 198 HÔTEL DES MOUSQUETAIRES, RUE D'ARBRE SEC 207 D'ARTAGNAN'S LODGINGS, RUE TIQUETONNE 214 109 RUE DU FAUBOURG ST. DENIS (DÉSCAMPS' STUDIO) 221 NÔTRE DAME DE PARIS 235 PLAN OF LA CITÉ 236 CARMELITE FRIARY, RUE VAUGIRARD 246 PLAN OF THE LOUVRE 257 THE GARDENS OF THE TUILERIES 265 THE ORLEANS BUREAU, PALAIS ROYAL 268 THE FALL OF THE BASTILLE 284 INN OF THE PONT DE SÈVRES 302 BOIS DE BOULOGNE--BOIS DE VINCENNES--FORÊT DE VILLERS-COTTERETS 315 CHÂTEAU OF THE DUCS DE VALOIS, CRÉPY 318 CASTLE OF PIERREFONDS 324 NÔTRE DAME DE CHARTRES 329 CASTLE OF ANGERS--CHÂTEAU OF BLOIS 333 Dumas' Paris CHAPTER I. A GENERAL INTRODUCTION There have been many erudite works, in French and other languages, describing the antiquities and historical annals of Paris from the earliest times; and in English the mid-Victorian era turned out--there are no other words for it--innumerable "books of travel" which recounted alleged adventures, strewn here and there with bits of historical lore and anecdotes, none too relevant, and in most cases not of undoubted authenticity. Of the actual life of the people in the city of light and learning, from the times of Napoleon onward, one has to go to the fountainhead of written records, the acknowledged masterworks in the language of the country itself, the reports and _annuaires_ of various _sociétês_, _commissions_, and what not, and collect therefrom such information as he finds may suit his purpose. In this manner may be built up a fabric which shall be authentic and proper, varied and, most likely, quite different in its plan, outline, and scope from other works of a similar purport, which may be recalled in connection therewith. Paris has been rich in topographical historians, and, indeed, in her chroniclers in all departments, and there is no end of relative matter which may be evolved from an intimacy with these sources of supply. In a way, however, this information ought to be supplemented by a personal knowledge on the part of the compiler, which should make localities, distances, and environments--to say nothing of the actual facts and dates of history--appear as something more than a shrine to be worshipped from afar. Given, then, these ingredients, with a love of the subject,--no less than of the city of its domicile,--it has formed a pleasant itinerary in the experiences of the writer of this book to have followed in the footsteps of Dumas _père_, through the streets that he knew and loved, taking note meanwhile of such contemporary shadows as were thrown across his path, and such events of importance or significance as blended in with the scheme of the literary life of the times in which he lived, none the less than of those of the characters in his books. Nearly all the great artists have adored Paris--poets, painters, actors, and, above all, novelists. From which it follows that Paris is the ideal city for the novelist, who, whether he finds his special subjects in her streets or not, must be inspired by this unique fulness and variety of human life. Nearly all the great French novelists have adored Paris. Dumas loved it; Victor Hugo spent years of his time in riding about her streets on omnibuses; Daudet said splendid things of it, and nearly, if not quite, all the great names of the artistic world of France are indissolubly linked with it. Paris to-day means not "La Ville," "La Cité," or "L'Université," but the whole triumvirate. Victor Hugo very happily compared the three cities to a little old woman between two handsome, strapping daughters. It was Beranger who announced his predilection for Paris as a birthplace. Dumas must have felt something of the same emotion, for he early gravitated to the "City of Liberty and Equality," in which--even before the great Revolution--misfortune was at all times alleviated by sympathy. * * * * * From the stones of Paris have been built up many a lordly volume--and many a slight one, for that matter--which might naturally be presumed to have recounted the last word which may justifiably have been said concerning the various aspects of the life and historic events which have encircled around the city since the beginning of the _moyen age_. This is true or not, according as one embraces a wide or a contracted horizon in one's view. For most books there is, or was at the time of their writing, a reason for being, and so with familiar spots, as with well-worn roads, there is always a new panorama projecting itself before one. The phenomenal, perennial, and still growing interest in the romances of Dumas the elder is the excuse for the present work, which it is to be hoped is admittedly a good one, however far short of exhaustiveness--a much overworked word, by the way--the volume may fall. It were not possible to produce a complete or "exhaustive" work on any subject of a historical, topographical or æsthetic nature: so why claim it? The last word has not yet been said on Dumas himself, and surely not on Paris--no more has it on Pompeii, where they are still finding evidences of a long lost civilization as great as any previously unearthed. It was only yesterday, too (this is written in the month of March, 1904), that a party of frock-coated and silk-hatted benevolent-looking gentlemen were seen issuing from a manhole in the _Université quartier_ of Paris. They had been inspecting a newly discovered _thermale établissement_ of Roman times, which led off one of the newly opened subterranean arteries which abound beneath Paris. It is said to be a rival of the Roman bath which is enclosed within the walls of the present Musée Cluny, and perhaps the equal in size and splendour of any similar remains extant. This, then, suggests that in every land new ground, new view-points, and new conditions of life are making possible a record which, to have its utmost value, should be a progressively chronological one. And after this manner the present volume has been written. There is a fund of material to draw upon, historic fact, pertinent and contemporary side-lights, and, above all, the environment which haloed itself around the personality of Dumas, which lies buried in many a _cache_ which, if not actually inaccessible, is at least not to be found in the usual books of reference. Perhaps some day even more will have been collected, and a truly satisfying biographical work compiled. If so, it will be the work of some ardent Frenchman of a generation following that in which Alexandre Dumas lived, and not by one of the contemporaries of even his later years. Albert Vandam, perhaps, might have done it as it should have been done; but he did not do so, and so an intimate personal record has been lost. Paris has ever been written down in the book of man as the city of light, of gaiety, and of a trembling vivacity which has been in turn profligate, riotous, and finally criminal. All this is perhaps true enough, but no more in degree than in most capitals which have endured so long, and have risen to such greatness. With Paris it is quantity, with no sacrifice of quality, that has placed it in so preëminent a position among great cities, and the life of Paris--using the phrase in its most commonly recognized aspect--is accordingly more brilliant or the reverse, as one views it from the _boulevards_ or from the _villettes_. [Illustration: DUMAS' HOUSE AT VILLERS-COTTERETS] French writers, the novelists in particular, have well known and made use of this; painters and poets, too, have perpetuated it in a manner which has not been applied to any other city in the world. To realize the conditions of the life of Paris to the full one has to go back to Rousseau--perhaps even farther. His observation that "_Les maisons font la ville, mais le citoyens font la cité_," was true when written, and it is true to-day, with this modification, that the delimitation of the confines of _la ville_ should be extended so far as to include all workaday Paris--the shuffling, bustling world of energy and spirit which has ever insinuated itself into the daily life of the people. The love and knowledge of Alexandre Dumas _père_ for Paris was great, and the accessory and detail of his novels, so far as he drew upon the capital, was more correct and apropos. It was something more than a mere dash of local colour scattered upon the canvas from a haphazard palette. In _minutiæ_ it was not drawn as fine as the later Zola was wont to accomplish, but it showed no less detail did one but comprehend its full meaning. Though born in the provincial town Villers-Cotterets,--seventy-eight kilomètres from Paris on the road to Soissons,--Dumas came early in touch with the metropolis, having in a sort of runaway journey broken loose from his old associations and finally becoming settled in the capital as a clerk in the Bureau d'Orleans, at the immature age of twenty. Thus it was that his impressions and knowledge of Paris were founded upon an experience which was prolonged and intimate, extending, with brief intervals of travel, for over fifty years. He had journeyed meantime to Switzerland, England, Corsica, Naples, the Rhine, Belgium,--with a brief residence in Italy in 1840-42,--then visiting Spain, Russia, the Caucasus, and Germany. This covered a period from 1822, when he first came to Paris, until his death at Puys, near Dieppe, in 1870; nearly a full half-century amid activities in matters literary, artistic, and social, which were scarce equalled in brilliancy elsewhere--before or since. In spite of his intimate association with the affairs of the capital,--he became, it is recalled, a candidate for the Chamber of Deputies at the time of the Second Republic,--Dumas himself has recorded, in a preface contributed to a "Histoire de l'Eure," by M. Charpillon (1879), that if he were ever to compile a history of France he should first search for _les pierres angulaires_ of his edifice in the provinces. This bespeaks a catholicity which, perhaps, after all, is, or should be, the birthright of every historical novelist. He said further, in this really valuable and interesting contribution, which seems to have been entirely overlooked by the bibliographers, that "to write the history of France would take a hundred volumes"--and no doubt he was right, though it has been attempted in less. And again that "the aggrandizement of Paris has only been accomplished by a weakening process having been undergone by the provinces." The egg from which Paris grew was deposited in the nest of _la cité_, the same as are the eggs laid _par un cygne_. He says further that in writing the history of Paris he would have founded on "Lutetia (or Louchetia) the _Villa de Jules_, and would erect in the Place de Notre Dame a temple or altar to Ceres; at which epoch would have been erected another to Mercury, on the Mount of Ste. Geneviève; to Apollo in the Rue de la Barillerie, where to-day is erected that part of Tuileries built by Louis XIV., and which is called _Le Pavillon de Flore_. "Then one would naturally follow with _Les Thermes de Julien_, which grew up from the _Villa de Jules_; the reunion under Charlemagne which accomplished the Sorbonne (_Sora bona_), which in turn became the favourite place of residence of Hugues Capet, the stronghold of Philippe-Auguste, the _bibliothèque_ of Charles V., the monumental capital of Henri VI. d'Angleterre; and so on through the founding of the first printing establishment in France by Louis XI.; the new school of painting by François I.; of the Académie by Richelieu; ... to the final curtailment of monarchial power with the horrors of the Revolution and the significant events which centred around the Bastille, Versailles, and the Tuileries." Leaving the events of the latter years of the eighteenth century, and coming to the day in which Dumas wrote (1867), Paris was truly--and in every sense-- "The capital of France, and its history became not only the history of France but the history of the world.... The city will yet become the capital of humanity, and, since Napoleon repudiated his provincial residences and made Paris _sa résidence impériale_, the man of destiny who reigns in Paris in reality reigns throughout the universe." There may be those who will take exception to these brilliant words of Dumas. The Frenchman has always been an ardent and _soi-disant_ bundle of enthusiasm, but those who love him must pardon his pride, which is harmless to himself and others alike, and is a far more admirable quality than the indifference and apathy born of other lands. His closing words are not without a cynical truth, and withal a pride in Paris: "It is true that if we can say with pride, we Parisians, 'It was Paris which overthrew the Bastille,' you of the provinces can say with equal pride, 'It was we who made the Revolution.'" As if to ease the hurt, he wrote further these two lines only: "At this epoch the sister nations should erect a gigantic statue of Peace. This statue will be Paris, and its pedestal will represent _La Province_." His wish--it was not prophecy--did not, however, come true, as the world in general and France and poor rent Alsace et Lorraine in particular know to their sorrow; and all through a whim of a self-appointed, though weakling, monarch. The era of the true peace of the world and the monument to its glory came when the French nation presented to the New World that grand work of Bartholdi, "Liberty Enlightening the World," which stands in New York harbour, and whose smaller replica now terminates the Allée des Cygnes. The grasp that Dumas had of the events of romance and history served his purpose well, and in the life of the fifties in Paris his was a name and personality that was on everybody's lips. How he found time to live the full life that he did is a marvel; it certainly does not bear out the theory of heredity when one considers the race of his birth and the "dark-skinned" languor which was supposedly his heritage. One edition of his work comprises two hundred and seventy-seven volumes, and within the year a London publisher has announced some sixty volumes "never before translated." Dumas himself has said that he was the author of over seven hundred works. In point of time his romances go back to the days of the house of Valois and the Anglo-French wars (1328), and to recount their contents is to abstract many splendid chapters from out the pages of French history. It would seem as though nearly every personage of royalty and celebrity (if these democratic times will allow the yoking together of the two; real genuine _red_ republicans would probably link royalty and notoriety) stalked majestically through his pages, and the record runs from the fourteenth nearly to the end of the nineteenth century, with the exception of the reign of Louis XI. An ardent admirer of Sir Walter Scott has commented upon this lapse as being accounted for by the apparent futility of attempting to improve upon "Quentin Durward." This is interesting, significant, and characteristic, but it is not charitable, generous, or broad-minded. CHAPTER II. DUMAS' EARLY LIFE IN PARIS At fifteen (1817), Dumas entered the law-office of one Mennesson at Villers-Cotterets as a _saute-ruisseau_ (gutter-snipe), as he himself called it, and from this time on he was forced to forego what had been his passion heretofore: bird-catching, shooting, and all manner of woodcraft. When still living at Villers-Cotterets Dumas had made acquaintance with the art of the dramatist, so far as it was embodied in the person of Adolphe de Leuven, with whom he collaborated in certain immature melodramas and vaudevilles, which De Leuven himself took to Paris for disposal. "No doubt managers would welcome them with enthusiasm," said Dumas, "and likely enough we shall divert a branch of that Pactolus River which is irrigating the domains of M. Scribe" (1822). Later on in his "Mémoires" he says: "Complete humiliation; we were refused everywhere." [Illustration: STATUE OF DUMAS AT VILLERS-COTTERETS] From Villers-Cotterets the scene of Dumas' labours was transferred to Crépy, three and a half leagues distant, a small town to which he made his way on foot, his belongings in a little bundle "_not more bulky than that of a Savoyard when he leaves his native mountains_." In his new duties, still as a lawyer's clerk, Dumas found life very wearisome, and, though the ancient capital of the Valois must have made an impress upon him,--as one learns from the Valois romances,--he pined for the somewhat more free life which he had previously lived; or, taking the bull by the horns, deliberated as to how he might get into the very vortex of things by pushing on to the capital. As he tritely says, "To arrive it was necessary to make a start," and the problem was how to arrive in Paris from Crépy in the existing condition of his finances. By dint of ingenuity and considerable activity Dumas left Crépy in company with a friend on a sort of a runaway holiday, and made his third entrance into Paris. It would appear that Dumas' culinary and gastronomic capabilities early came into play, as we learn from the "Mémoires" that, when he was not yet out of his teens, and serving in the notary's office at Crépy, he proposed to his colleague that they take this three days' holiday in Paris. They could muster but thirty-five francs between them, so Dumas proposed that they should shoot game _en route_. Said Dumas, "We can kill, shall I say, one hare, two partridges, and a quail.... We reach Dammartin, get the hinder part of our hare roasted and the front part jugged, then we eat and drink." "And what then?" said his friend. "What then? Bless you, why we pay for our wine, bread, and seasoning with the two partridges, and we tip the waiter with the quail." The journey was accomplished in due order, and he and his friend put up at the Hôtel du Vieux-Augustins, reaching there at ten at night. In the morning he set out to find his collaborateur De Leuven, but the fascination of Paris was such that it nearly made him forswear regard for the flight of time. He says of the Palais Royale: "I found myself within its courtyard, and stopped before the Theatre Français, and on the bill I saw: "'Demain, Lundi Sylla Tragédie dans cinq Actes Par M. de Jouy' "I solemnly swore that by some means or other ... I would see Sylla, and all the more so because, in large letters, under the above notice, were the words, 'The character of Sylla will be taken by M. Talma.'" In his "Mémoires" Dumas states that it was at this time he had the temerity to call on the great Talma. "Talma was short-sighted," said he, "and was at his toilet; his hair was close cut, and his aspect under these conditions was remarkably un-poetic.... Talma was for me a god--a god unknown, it is true, as was Jupiter to Semele." And here comes a most delicious bit of Dumas himself, Dumas the egotist: "Ah, Talma! were you but twenty years younger or I twenty years older! I know the past, you cannot foretell the future.... Had you known, Talma, that the hand you had just touched would ultimately write sixty or eighty dramas ... in each of which you would have found the material for a marvellous creation...." Dumas may be said to have at once entered the world of art and letters in this, his third visit to Paris, which took place so early in life, but in the years so ripe with ambition. Having seen the great Talma in Sylla, in his dressing-room at the Theatre Français, he met Delavigne, who was then just completing his "Ecole des Viellards," Lucien Arnault, who had just brought out "Regulus;" Soumet, fresh from the double triumph of "Saul" and "Clymnestre;" here, too, were Lemercier, Delrien, Viennet, and Jouy himself; and he had met at the Café du Roi, Theadlon, Francis, Rochefort, and De Merle; indeed by his friend De Leuven he was introduced to the assemblage there as a "future Corneille," in spite of the fact that he was but a notary's clerk. Leaving what must have been to Dumas _the presence_, he shot a parting remark, "Ah, yes, I shall come to Paris for good, I warrant you that." In "The Taking of the Bastille" Dumas traces again, in the characters of Pitou and old Father Billot, much of the route which he himself took on his first visit to Paris. The journey, then, is recounted from first-hand information, and there will be no difficulty on the part of any one in tracing the similarity of the itinerary. Chapter I., of the work in question, brings us at once on familiar ground, and gives a description of Villers-Cotterets and its inhabitants in a manner which shows Dumas' hand so unmistakably as to remove any doubts as to the volume of assistance he may have received from others, on this particular book at least. "On the borders of Picardy and the province of Soissons, and on that part of the national territory which, under the name of the Isle of France, formed a portion of the ancient patrimony of our kings, and in the centre of an immense crescent, formed by a forest of fifty thousand acres, which stretches its horns to the north and south, rises, almost buried amid the shades of a vast park planted by François I. and Henri II., the small city of Villers-Cotterets. This place is celebrated from having given birth to Charles Albert Demoustier, who, at the period when our present history commences, was there writing his Letters to Emilie on Mythology, to the unbounded satisfaction of the pretty women of those days, who eagerly snatched his publications from each other as soon as printed. "Let us add, to complete the poetical reputation of this little city, whose detractors, notwithstanding its royal château and its two thousand four hundred inhabitants, obstinately persist in calling it a mere village--let us add, we say, to complete its poetical reputation, that it is situated at two leagues distance from Laferte-Milan, where Racine was born, and eight leagues from Château-Thierry, the birthplace of La Fontaine. "Let us also state that the mother of the author of 'Britannicus' and 'Athalie' was from Villers-Cotterets. "But now we must return to its royal château and its two thousand four hundred inhabitants. "This royal château, begun by François I., whose salamanders still decorate it, and finished by Henri II., whose cipher it bears entwined with that of Catherine de Medici and encircled by the three crescents of Diana of Poictiers, after having sheltered the loves of the knight king with Madame d'Etampes, and those of Louis Philippe of Orleans with the beautiful Madame de Montesson, had become almost uninhabited since the death of this last prince; his son, Philippe d'Orleans, afterward called Egalité, having made it descend from the rank of a royal residence to that of a mere hunting rendezvous. "It is well known that the château and forest of Villers-Cotterets formed part of the appanage settled by Louis XIV. on his brother Monsieur, when the second son of Anne of Austria married the sister of Charles II., the Princess Henrietta of England. "As to the two thousand four hundred inhabitants of whom we have promised our readers to say a word, they were, as in all localities where two thousand four hundred people are united, a heterogeneous assemblage. "Firstly: Of the few nobles, who spent their summers in the neighbouring châteaux and their winters in Paris, and who, mimicking the prince, had only a lodging-place in the city. "Secondly: Of a goodly number of citizens, who could be seen, let the weather be what it might, leaving their houses after dinner, umbrella in hand, to take their daily walk, a walk which was regularly bounded by a deep, invisible ditch which separated the park from the forest, situated about a quarter of a league from the town, and which was called, doubtless on account of the exclamation which the sight of it drew from the asthmatic lungs of the promenaders, satisfied at finding themselves not too much out of breath, the 'Ha, ha!' "Thirdly: Of a considerably greater number of artisans who worked the whole of the week and only allowed themselves to take a walk on the Sunday; whereas their fellow townsmen, more favoured by fortune, could enjoy it every day. "Fourthly and finally: Of some miserable proletarians, for whom the week had not even a Sabbath, and who, after having toiled six days in the pay of the nobles, the citizens, or even of the artisans, wandered on the seventh day through the forest to gather up dry wood or branches of the lofty trees, torn from them by the storm, that mower of the forest, to whom oak-trees are but ears of wheat, and which it scattered over the humid soil beneath the lofty trees, the magnificent appanage of a prince. "If Villers-Cotterets (Villerii ad Cotiam Retiæ) had been, unfortunately, a town of sufficient importance in history to induce archæologists to ascertain and follow up its successive changes from a village to a town and from a town to a city--the last, as we have said, being strongly contested, they would certainly have proved this fact, that the village had begun by being a row of houses on either side of the road from Paris to Soissons; then they would have added that its situation on the borders of a beautiful forest having, though by slow degrees, brought to it a great increase of inhabitants, other streets were added to the first, diverging like the rays of a star and leading toward other small villages with which it was important to keep up communication, and converging toward a point which naturally became the centre, that is to say, what in the provinces is called _Le Carrefour_,--and sometimes even the Square, whatever might be its shape,--and around which the handsomest buildings of the village, now become a burgh, were erected, and in the middle of which rises a fountain, now decorated with a quadruple dial; in short, they would have fixed the precise date when, near the modest village church, the first want of a people, arose the first turrets of the vast château, the last caprice of a king; a château which, after having been, as we have already said, by turns a royal and a princely residence, has in our days become a melancholy and hideous receptacle for mendicants under the direction of the Prefecture of the Seine, and to whom M. Marrast issues his mandates through delegates of whom he has not, nor probably will ever have, either the time or the care to ascertain the names." The last sentence seems rather superfluous,--if it was justifiable,--but, after all, no harm probably was done, and Dumas as a rule was never vituperative. Continuing, these first pages give us an account of the difficulties under which poor Louis Ange Pitou acquired his knowledge of Latin, which is remarkably like the account which Dumas gives in the "Mémoires" of his early acquaintance with the classics. When Pitou leaves Haramont, his native village, and takes to the road, and visits Billot at "Bruyere aux Loups," knowing well the road, as he did that to Damploux, Compiègne, and Vivières, he was but covering ground equally well known to Dumas' own youth. Finally, as he is joined by Billot _en route_ for Paris, and takes the highroad from Villers-Cotterets, near Gondeville, passing Nanteuil, Dammartin, and Ermenonville, arriving at Paris at La Villette, he follows almost the exact itinerary taken by the venturesome Dumas on his runaway journey from the notary's office at Crépy-en-Valois. Crépy-en-Valois was the near neighbour of Villers-Cotterets, which jealously attempted to rival it, and does even to-day. In "The Taking of the Bastille" Dumas only mentions it in connection with Mother Sabot's _âne_, "which was shod,"--the only ass which Pitou had ever known which wore shoes,--and performed the duty of carrying the mails between Crépy and Villers-Cotterets. At Villers-Cotterets one may come into close contact with the château which is referred to in the later pages of the "Vicomte de Bragelonne." "Situated in the middle of the forest, where we shall lead a most sentimental life, the very same where my grandfather," said Monseigneur the Prince, "Henri IV. did with 'La Belle Gabrielle.'" So far as lion-hunting goes, Dumas himself at an early age appears to have fallen into it. He recalls in "Mes Mémoires" the incident of Napoleon I. passing through Villers-Cotterets just previous to the battle of Waterloo. "Nearly every one made a rush for the emperor's carriage," said he; "naturally I was one of the first.... Napoleon's pale, sickly face seemed a block of ivory.... He raised his head and asked, 'Where are we?' 'At Villers-Cotterets, Sire,' said a voice. 'Go on.'" Again, a few days later, as we learn from the "Mémoires," "a horseman coated with mud rushes into the village; orders four horses for a carriage which is to follow, and departs.... A dull rumble draws near ... a carriage stops.... 'Is it he--the emperor?' Yes, it was the emperor, in the same position as I had seen him before, exactly the same, pale, sickly, impassive; only the head droops rather more.... 'Where are we?' he asked. 'At Villers-Cotterets, Sire.' 'Go on.'" That evening Napoleon slept at the Elysée. It was but three months since he had returned from Elba, but in that time he came to an abyss which had engulfed his fortune. That abyss was Waterloo; only saved to the allies--who at four in the afternoon were practically defeated--by the coming up of the Germans at six. Among the books of reference and contemporary works of a varying nature from which a writer in this generation must build up his facts anew, is found a wide difference in years as to the date of the birth of Dumas _père_. As might be expected, the weight of favour lies with the French authorities, though by no means do they, even, agree among themselves. His friends have said that no unbiassed, or even complete biography of the author exists, even in French; and possibly this is so. There is about most of them a certain indefiniteness and what Dumas himself called the "colour of sour grapes." The exact date of his birth, however, is unquestionably 1802, if a photographic reproduction of his natal certificate, published in Charles Glinel's "Alex. Dumas et Son Oeuvre," is what it seems to be. Dumas' aristocratic parentage--for such it truly was--has been the occasion of much scoffing and hard words. He pretended not to it himself, but it was founded on family history, as the records plainly tell, and whether Alexandre, the son of the brave General Dumas, the Marquis de la Pailleterie, was prone to acknowledge it or not does not matter in the least. The "feudal particle" existed plainly in his pedigree, and with no discredit to any concerned. [Illustration: FACSIMILE OF DUMAS' OWN STATEMENT OF HIS BIRTH] General Dumas, his wife, and his son are buried in the cemetery of Villers-Cotterets, where the exciting days of the childhood of Dumas, the romancer, were spent, in a plot of ground "conceded in perpetuity to the family." The plot forms a rectangle six metres by five, surrounded by towering pines. The three monuments contained therein are of the utmost simplicity, each consisting of an inclined slab of stone. The inscriptions are as follows: FAMILLE Thomas-Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie général dé division né à Jeremie Ile et Côte de Saint Dominique le 25 mars 1762, décédé à Villers-Cotterets le 27 février 1806 ALEXANDRE Marie-Louise-Elizabeth Labouret Épouse du général de division Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie née à Villers-Cotterets le 4 juillet 1769 décédée le 1er aout 1838 DUMAS Alexandre Dumas né à Villers-Cotterets le 24 juillet 1802 décédé le 5 décembre 1870 à Puys transféré à Villers-Cotterets le 15 avril 1872 There would seem to be no good reason why a book treating of Dumas' Paris might not be composed entirely of quotations from Dumas' own works. For a fact, such a work would be no less valuable as a record than were it evolved by any other process. It would indeed be the best record that could possibly be made, for Dumas' topography was generally truthful if not always precise. There are, however, various contemporary side-lights which are thrown upon any canvas, no matter how small its area, and in this instance they seem to engulf even the personality of Dumas himself, to say nothing of his observations. Dumas was such a part and parcel of the literary life of the times in which he lived that mention can scarce be made of any contemporary event that has not some bearing on his life or work, or he with it, from the time when he first came to the metropolis (in 1822) at the impressionable age of twenty, until the end. It will be difficult, even, to condense the relative incidents which entered into his life within the confines of a single volume, to say nothing of a single chapter. The most that can be done is to present an abridgment which shall follow along the lines of some preconceived chronological arrangement. This is best compiled from Dumas' own words, leaving it to the additional references of other chapters to throw a sort of reflected glory from a more distant view-point. The reputation of Dumas with the merely casual reader rests upon his best-known romances, "Monte Cristo," 1841; "Les Trois Mousquetaires," 1844; "Vingt Ans Après," 1845; "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne," 1847; "La Dame de Monsoreau," 1847; and his dramas of "Henri III. et Sa Cour," 1829, "Antony," 1831, and "Kean," 1836. His memoirs, "Mes Mémoires," are practically closed books to the mass of English readers--the word books is used advisedly, for this remarkable work is composed of twenty stout volumes, and they only cover ten years of the author's life. Therein is a mass of fact and fancy which may well be considered as fascinating as are the "romances" themselves, and, though autobiographic, one gets a far more satisfying judgment of the man than from the various warped and distorted accounts which have since been published, either in French or English. Beginning with "Memories of My Childhood" (1802-06), Dumas launches into a few lines anent his first visit to Paris, in company with his father, though the auspicious--perhaps significant--event took place at a very tender age. It seems remarkable that he should have recalled it at all, but he was a remarkable man, and it seems not possible to ignore his words. "We set out for Paris, ah, that journey! I recollect it perfectly.... It was August or September, 1805. We got down in the Rue Thiroux at the house of one Dollé.... I had been embraced by one of the most noble ladies who ever lived, Madame la Marquise de Montesson, widow of Louis-Philippe d'Orleans.... The next day, putting Brune's sword between my legs and Murat's hat upon my head, I galloped around the table; when my father said, '_Never forget this, my boy_.'... My father consulted Corvisart, and attempted to see the emperor, but Napoleon, the quondam general, had now become the emperor, and he refused to see my father.... To where did we return? I believe Villers-Cotterets." Again on the 26th of March, 1813, Dumas entered Paris in company with his mother, now widowed. He says of this visit: "I was delighted at the prospect of this my second visit.... I have but one recollection, full of light and poetry, when, with a flourish of trumpets, a waving of banners, and shouts of 'Long live the King of Rome,' was lifted up above the heads of fifty thousand of the National Guard the rosy face and the fair, curly head of a child of three years--the infant son of the great Napoleon.... Behind him was his mother,--that woman so fatal to France, as have been all the daughters of the Cæsars, Anne of Austria, Marie Antoinette, and Marie Louise,--an indistinct, insipid face.... The next day we started home again." * * * * * Through the influence of General Foy, an old friend of his father's, Dumas succeeded in obtaining employment in the Orleans Bureau at the Palais Royal. His occupation there appears not to have been unduly arduous. The offices were in the right-hand corner of the second courtyard of the Palais Royal. He remained here in this bureau for a matter of five years, and, as he said, "loved the hour when he came to the office," because his immediate superior, Lassagne,--a contributor to the _Drapeau Blanc_,--was the friend and intimate of Désaugiers, Théaulon, Armand Gouffé, Brozier, Rougemont, and all the vaudevillists of the time. Dumas' meeting with the Duc d'Orleans--afterward Louis-Philippe--is described in his own words thus: "In two words I was introduced. 'My lord, this is M. Dumas, whom I mentioned to you, General Foy's protégé.' 'You are the son of a brave man,' said the duc, 'whom Bonaparte, it seems, left to die of starvation.'... The duc gave Oudard a nod, which I took to mean, 'He will do, he's by no means bad for a provincial.'" And so it was that Dumas came immediately under the eye of the duc, engaged as he was at that time on some special clerical work in connection with the duc's provincial estates. The affability of Dumas, so far as he himself was concerned, was a foregone conclusion. In the great world in which he moved he knew all sorts and conditions of men. He had his enemies, it is true, and many of them, but he himself was the enemy of no man. To English-speaking folk he was exceedingly agreeable, because,--quoting his own words,--said he, "It was a part of the debt which I owed to Shakespeare and Scott." Something of the egoist here, no doubt, but gracefully done nevertheless. With his temperament it was perhaps but natural that Dumas should have become a romancer. This was of itself, maybe, a foreordained sequence of events, but no man thinks to-day that, leaving contributary conditions, events, and opportunities out of the question, he shapes his own fate; there are accumulated heritages of even distant ages to contend with. In Dumas' case there was his heritage of race and colour, refined, perhaps, by a long drawn out process, but, as he himself tells in "Mes Mémoires," his mother's fear was that her child would be born black, and he _was_, or, at least, purple, as he himself afterward put it. CHAPTER III. DUMAS' LITERARY CAREER Just how far Dumas' literary ability was an inheritance, or growth of his early environment, will ever be an open question. It is a manifest fact that he had breathed something of the spirit of romance before he came to Paris. Although it was not acknowledged until 1856, "The Wolf-Leader" was a development of a legend told to him in his childhood. Recalling then the incident of his boyhood days, and calling into recognition his gift of improvisation, he wove a tale which reflected not a little of the open-air life of the great forest of Villers-Cotterets, near the place of his birth. Here, then, though it was fifty years after his birth, and thirty after he had thrust himself on the great world of Paris, the scenes of his childhood were reproduced in a wonderfully romantic and weird tale--which, to the best of the writer's belief, has not yet appeared in English. To some extent it is possible that there is not a little of autobiography therein, not so much, perhaps, as Dickens put into "David Copperfield," but the suggestion is thrown out for what it may be worth. It is, furthermore, possible that the historic associations of the town of Villers-Cotterets--which was but a little village set in the midst of the surrounding forest--may have been the prime cause which influenced and inspired the mind of Dumas toward the romance of history. In point of chronology, among the earliest of the romances were those that dealt with the fortunes of the house of Valois (fourteenth century), and here, in the little forest town of Villers-Cotterets, was the magnificent manor-house which belonged to the Ducs de Valois; so it may be presumed that the sentiment of early associations had somewhat to do with these literary efforts. All his life Dumas devotedly admired the sentiment and fancies which foregathered in this forest, whose very trees and stones he knew so well. From his "Mémoires" we learn of his indignation at the destruction of its trees and much of its natural beauty. He says: "This park, planted by François I., was cut down by Louis-Philippe. Trees, under whose shade once reclined François I. and Madame d'Etampes, Henri II. and Diane de Poitiers, Henri IV. and Gabrielle d'Estrées--you would have believed that a Bourbon would have respected you. But over and above your inestimable value of poetry and memories, you had, unhappily, a material value. You beautiful beeches with your polished silvery cases! you beautiful oaks with your sombre wrinkled bark!--you were worth a hundred thousand crowns. The King of France, who, with his six millions of private revenue, was too poor to keep you--the King of France sold you. For my part, had you been my sole possession, I would have preserved you; for, poet as I am, one thing that I would set before all the gold of the earth: the murmur of the wind in your leaves; the shadow that you made to flicker beneath my feet; the visions, the phantoms, which, at eventide, betwixt the day and night, in the doubtful hour of twilight, would glide between your age-long trunks as glide the shadows of the ancient Abencerrages amid the thousand columns of Cordova's royal mosque." What wonder, with these lines before one, that the impressionable Dumas was so taken with the romance of life and so impracticable in other ways. * * * * * From the fact that no thorough biography of Dumas exists, it will be difficult to trace the fluctuations of his literary career with preciseness. It is not possible even with the twenty closely packed volumes of the "Mémoires"--themselves incomplete--before one. All that a biographer can get from this treasure-house are facts,--rather radiantly coloured in some respects, but facts nevertheless,--which are put together in a not very coherent or compact form. They do, to be sure, recount many of the incidents and circumstances attendant upon the writing and publication of many of his works, and because of this they immediately become the best of all sources of supply. It is to be regretted that these "Mémoires" have not been translated, though it is doubtful if any publisher of English works could get his money back from the transaction. Other clues as to his emotions, and with no uncertain references to incidents of Dumas' literary career, are found in "Mes Bêtes," "Ange Pitou," the "Causeries," and the "Travels." These comprise many volumes not yet translated. [Illustration: FACSIMILE OF A MANUSCRIPT PAGE FROM ONE OF DUMAS' PLAYS] Dumas was readily enough received into the folds of the great. Indeed, as we know, he made his _entrée_ under more than ordinary, if not exceptional, circumstances, and his connection with the great names of literature and statecraft extended from Hugo to Garibaldi. As for his own predilections in literature, Dumas' own voice is practically silent, though we know that he was a romanticist pure and simple, and drew no inspiration or encouragement from Voltairian sentiments. If not essentially religious, he at least believed in its principles, though, as a warm admirer has said, "He had no liking for the celibate and bookish life of the churchman." Dumas does not enter deeply into the subject of ecclesiasticism in France. His most elaborate references are to the Abbey of Ste. Genevieve--since disappeared in favour of the hideous pagan Panthéon--and its relics and associations, in "La Dame de Monsoreau." Other of the romances from time to time deal with the subject of religion more or less, as was bound to be, considering the times of which he wrote, of Mazarin, Richelieu, De Rohan, and many other churchmen. Throughout the thirties Dumas was mostly occupied with his plays, the predominant, if not the most sonorous note, being sounded by "Antony." As a novelist his star shone brightest in the decade following, commencing with "Monte Cristo," in 1841, and continuing through "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne" and "La Dame de Monsoreau," in 1847. During these strenuous years Dumas produced the flower of his romantic garland--omitting, of course, certain trivial and perhaps unworthy trifles, among which are usually considered, rightly enough, "Le Capitaine Paul" (Paul Jones) and "Jeanne d'Arc." At this period, however, he produced the charming and exotic "Black Tulip," which has since come to be a reality. The best of all, though, are admittedly the Mousquetaire cycle, the volumes dealing with the fortunes of the Valois line, and, again, "Monte Cristo." By 1830, Dumas, eager, as it were, to experience something of the valiant boisterous spirit of the characters of his romances, had thrown himself heartily into an alliance with the opponents of Louis-Philippe. Orleanist successes, however, left him to fall back upon his pen. In 1844, having finished "Monte Cristo," he followed it by "Les Trois Mousquetaires," and before the end of the same year had put out forty volumes, by what means, those who will read the scurrilous "Fabrique des Romans"--and properly discount it--may learn. The publication of "Monte Cristo" and "Les Trois Mousquetaires" as newspaper _feuilletons_, in 1844-45, met with amazing success, and were, indeed, written from day to day, to keep pace with the demands of the press. Here is, perhaps, an opportune moment to digress into the ethics of the profession of the "literary ghost," and but for the fact that the subject has been pretty well thrashed out before,--not only with respect to Dumas, but to others as well,--it might justifiably be included here at some length, but shall not be, however. The busy years from 1840-50 could indeed be "explained"--if one were sure of his facts; but beyond the circumstances, frequently availed of, it is admitted, of Dumas having made use of secretarial assistance in the productions which were ultimately to be fathered by himself, there is little but jealous and spiteful hearsay to lead one to suppose that he made any secret of the fact that he had some very considerable assistance in the production of the seven hundred volumes which, at a late period in his life, he claimed to have produced. The "_Maquet affaire_," of course, proclaims the whilom Augustus Mackeat as a _collaborateur_; still the ingenuity of Dumas shines forth through the warp and woof in an unmistakable manner, and he who would know more of the pros and cons is referred to the "_Maison Dumas et Cie_." Maquet was manifestly what we have come to know as a "hack," though the species is not so very new--nor so very rare. The great libraries are full of them the whole world over, and very useful, though irresponsible and ungrateful persons, many of them have proved to be. Maquet, at any rate, served some sort of a useful purpose, and he certainly was a confidant of the great romancer during these very years, but that his was the mind and hand that evolved or worked out the general plan and detail of the romances is well-nigh impossible to believe, when one has digested both sides of the question. An English critic of no inconsiderable knowledge has thrown in his lot recently with the claims of Maquet, and given the sole and entire production of "Les Trois Mousquetaires," "Monte Cristo," "La Dame de Monsoreau," and many other of Dumas' works of this period, to him, placing him, indeed, with Shakespeare, whose plays certain gullible persons believe to have been written by Bacon. The flaw in the theory is apparent when one realizes that the said Maquet was no myth--he was, in fact, a very real person, and a literary personage of a certain ability. It is strange, then, that if he were the producer of, say "Les Trois Mousquetaires," which was issued ostensibly as the work of Dumas, that he wrote nothing under his own name that was at all comparable therewith; and stranger still, that he was able to repeat this alleged success with "Monte Cristo," or the rest of the Mousquetaire series, and yet not be able to do the same sort of a feat when playing the game by himself. One instance would not prove this contention, but several are likely to not only give it additional strength, but to practically demonstrate the correct conclusion. The ethics of plagiarism are still greater and more involved than those which make justification for the employment of one who makes a profession of _library research_, but it is too involved and too vast to enter into here, with respect to accusations of its nature which were also made against Dumas. As that new star which has so recently risen out of the East--Mr. Kipling--has said, "They took things where they found them." This is perhaps truthful with regard to most literary folk, who are continually seeking a new line of thought. Scott did it, rather generously one might think; even Stevenson admitted that he was greatly indebted to Washington Irving and Poe for certain of the details of "Treasure Island"--though there is absolutely no question but that it was a sort of unconscious absorption, to put it rather unscientifically. The scientist himself calls it the workings of the subconscious self. As before said, the Maquet _affaire_ was a most complicated one, and it shall have no lengthy consideration here. Suffice to say that, when a case was made by Maquet in court, in 1856-58, Maquet lost. "It is not justice that has won," said Maquet, "but Dumas." Edmond About has said that Maquet lived to speak kindly of Dumas, "as did his legion of other _collaborateurs_; and the proudest of them congratulate themselves on having been trained in so good a school." This being so, it is hard to see anything very outrageous or preposterous in the procedure. Blaze de Bury has described Dumas' method thus: "The plot was worked over by Dumas and his colleague, when it was finally drafted by the other and afterward _rewritten_ by Dumas." M. About, too, corroborates Blaze de Bury's statement, so it thus appears legitimately explained. Dumas at least supplied the ideas and the _esprit_. In Dumas' later years there is perhaps more justification for the thought that as his indolence increased--though he was never actually inert, at least not until sickness drew him down--the authorship of the novels became more complex. Blaze de Bury put them down to the "Dumas-Legion," and perhaps with some truth. They certainly have not the vim and fire and temperament of individuality of those put forth from 1840 to 1850. Dumas wrote fire and impetuosity into the veins of his heroes, perhaps some of his very own vivacious spirit. It has been said that his moral code was that of the camp or the theatre; but that is an ambiguity, and it were better not dissected. Certainly he was no prude or Puritan, not more so, at any rate, than were Burns, Byron, or Poe, but the virtues of courage, devotion, faithfulness, loyalty, and friendship were his, to a degree hardly excelled by any of whom the written record of _cameraderie_ exists. Dumas has been jibed and jeered at by the supercilious critics ever since his first successes appeared, but it has not leavened his reputation as the first romancer of his time one single jot; and within the past few years we have had a revival of the character of true romance--perhaps the first _true_ revival since Dumas' time--in M. Rostand's "Cyrano de Bergerac." We have had, too, the works of Zola, who, indomitable, industrious, and sincere as he undoubtedly was, will have been long forgotten when the masterpieces of Dumas are being read and reread. The Mousquetaire cycle, the Valois romances, and "Monte Cristo" stand out by themselves above all others of his works, and have had the approbation of such discerning fellow craftsmen as George Sand, Thackeray, and Stevenson, all of whom may be presumed to have judged from entirely different points of view. Thackeray, indeed, plainly indicated his greatest admiration for "La Tulipe Noire," a work which in point of time came somewhat later. At this time Dumas had built his own Chalet de Monte Cristo near St. Germain, a sort of a Gallic rival to Abbotsford. It, and the "Théâtre Historique," founded by Dumas, came to their disastrous end in the years immediately following upon the Revolution of 1848, when Dumas fled to Brussels and began his "Mémoires." He also founded a newspaper called _Le Mousquetaire_, which failed, else he might have retrenched and satisfied his creditors--at least in part. He travelled in Russia, and upon his return wrote of his journey to the Caspian. In 1860 he obtained an archæological berth in Italy, and edited a Garibaldian newspaper. By 1864, the "Director of Excavations at Naples," which was Dumas' official title, fell out with the new government which had come in, and he left his partisan journal and the lava-beds of Pompeii for Paris and the literary arena again; but the virile power of his early years was gone, and Dumas never again wielded the same pen which had limned the features of Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and D'Artagnan. In 1844 Dumas participated in a sort of personally-conducted Bonapartist tour to the Mediterranean, in company with the son of Jerome Napoleon. On this journey Dumas first saw the island of Monte Cristo and the Château d'If, which lived so fervently in his memory that he decided that their personality should be incorporated in the famous tale which was already formulating itself in his brain. Again, this time in company with the Duc de Montpensier, he journeyed to the Mediterranean, "did" Spain, and crossed over to Algiers. When he returned he brought back the celebrated vulture, "Jugurtha," whose fame was afterward perpetuated in "Mes Bêtes." That there was a deal of reality in the characterization and the locale of Dumas' romances will not be denied by any who have acquaintance therewith. Dumas unquestionably took his material where he found it, and his wonderfully retentive memory, his vast capacity for work, and his wide experience and extensive acquaintance provided him material that many another would have lacked. M. de Chaffault tells of his having accompanied Dumas by road from Sens to Joigny, Dumas being about to appeal to the republican constituency of that place for their support of him as a candidate for the parliamentary elections. "In a short time we were on the road," said the narrator, "and the first stage of three hours seemed to me only as many minutes. Whenever we passed a country-seat, out came a lot of anecdotes and legends connected with its owners, interlarded with quaint fancies and epigrams." Aside from the descriptions of the country around about Crépy, Compiègne, and Villers-Cotterets which he wove into the Valois tales, "The Taking of the Bastille," and "The Wolf-Leader," there is a strong note of personality in "Georges;" some have called it autobiography. The tale opens in the far-distant Isle of France, called since the English occupation Mauritius, and in the narrative of the half-caste Georges Munier are supposed to be reflected many of the personal incidents of the life of the author. This story may or may not be a mere repetition of certain of the incidents of the struggle of the mulatto against the barrier of the white aristocracy, and may have been an echo in Dumas' own life. It is repeated it may have been this, or it may have been much more. Certain it is, there is an underlying motive which could only have been realized to the full extent expressed therein by one who knew and felt the pangs of the encounter with a world which only could come to one of genius who was by reason of race or creed outclassed by his contemporaries; and therein is given the most vivid expression of the rise of one who had everything against him at the start. This was not wholly true of Dumas himself, to be sure, as he was endowed with certain influential friends. Still it was mainly through his own efforts that he was able to prevail upon the old associates and friends of the dashing General Dumas, his father, to give him his first lift along the rough and stony literary pathway. In this book there is a curious interweaving of the life and colour which may have had not a little to do with the actual life which obtained with respect to his ancestors, and as such, and the various descriptions of negro and Creole life, the story becomes at once a document of prime interest and importance. Since Dumas himself has explained and justified the circumstance out of which grew the conception of the D'Artagnan romances, it is perhaps advisable that some account should be given of the original D'Artagnan. Primarily, the interest in Dumas' romance of "Les Trois Mousquetaires" is as great, if not greater, with respect to the characters as it is with the scenes in which they lived and acted their strenuous parts. In addition, there is the profound satisfaction of knowing that the rollicking and gallant swashbuckler has come down to us from the pages of real life, as Dumas himself recounts in the preface to the Colman Lévy edition of the book. The statement of Dumas is explicit enough; there is no mistaking his words which open the preface: "Dans laquelle Il est établi que, malgré leurs noms en _os_ et en _is_, Les héros de l'histoire Que nous allons avoir l'honneur de raconter à nos lecteurs N'ont rien de mythologique." The contemporary facts which connect the real Comte d'Artagnan with romances are as follows: Charles de Batz de Castlemore, Comte d'Artagnan, received his title from the little village of Artagnan, near the Gascon town of Orthez in the present department of the Hautes-Pyrénées. He was born in 1623. Dumas, with an author's license, made his chief figure a dozen years older, for the real D'Artagnan was but five years old at the time of the siege of La Rochelle of which Dumas makes mention. On the whole, the romance is near enough to reality to form an ample endorsement of the author's verity. [Illustration: D'ARTAGNAN] The real D'Artagnan made his way to Paris, as did he of the romance. Here he met his fellow Béarnais, one M. de Treville, captain of the king's musketeers, and the illustrious individuals, _Armand de Sillegue d'Athos_, a Béarnais nobleman who died in 1645, and whose direct descendant, Colonel de Sillegue, commanded, according to the French army lists of a recent date, a regiment of French cavalry; _Henry d'Aramitz_, lay abbé of Oloron; and _Jean de Portu_, all of them probably neighbours in D'Artagnan's old home. D'Artagnan could not then have been at the siege of La Rochelle, but from the "Mémoires de M. d'Artagnan," of which Dumas writes in his preface, we learn of his feats at arms at Arras, Valenciennes, Douai, and Lille, all places where once and again Dumas placed the action of the novels. The real D'Artagnan died, sword in hand, "in the imminent deadly breach" at Maestricht, in 1673. He served, too, under Prince Rupert in the Civil War, and frequently visited England, where he had an _affaire_ with a certain Milady, which is again reminiscent of the pages of Dumas. This D'Artagnan in the flesh married Charlotte Anne de Chanlecy, and the last of his direct descendants died in Paris in the latter years of the eighteenth century, but collateral branches of the family appear still to exist in Gascony, and there was a certain Baron de Batz, a Béarnais, who made a daring attempt to save Marie Antoinette in 1793. The inception of the whole work in Dumas' mind, as he says, came to him while he was making research in the "Bibliothèque Royale" for his history of Louis XIV. Thus from these beginnings grew up that series of romances which gave undying fame to Alexandre Dumas, and to the world of readers a series of characters and scenes associated with the mediæval history of France, which, before or since, have not been equalled. Alexandre Dumas has been described as something of the soldier, the cook, and the traveller, more of the journalist, diplomatist, and poet, and, more than all else, the dramatist, romancer, and _raconteur_. He himself has said that he was a "veritable Wandering Jew of literature." His versatility in no way comprised his abilities, and, while conceit and egoism played a not unimportant share in his make-up, his affability--when he so chose--caused him to be ranked highly in the estimation of his equals and contemporaries. By the cur-dogs, which always snap at the heels of a more splendid animal, he was not ranked so high. Certain of these were for ever twitting him publicly of his creed, race, and foibles. It is recorded by Theodore de Bauville, in his "Odes," that one Jacquot hailed Dumas in the open street with a ribald jeer, when, calmly turning to his detractor, Dumas said, simply: "Hast thou dined to-day, Jacquot?" Then it was that this said Jacquot published the slanderous brochure, "_La Maison Dumas et Cie_," which has gone down as something considerable of a sensation in the annals of literary history; so much so, indeed, that most writers who have had occasion to refer to Dumas' literary career have apparently half-believed its accusations, which, truth to tell, may have had some bearing on "things as they were," had they but been put forward as a bit of temperate criticism rather than as a sweeping condemnation. To give the reader an idea of the Dumas of 1840, one can scarcely do better than present his portrait as sketched by De Villemessant, the founder and brilliant editor of the _Figaro_, when Dumas was at the height of his glory, and a grasp of his hand was better than a touch of genius to those receiving it: "At no time and among no people had it till then been granted to a writer to achieve fame in every direction; in serious drama and in comedy, and novels of adventure and of domestic interest, in humourous stories and in pathetic tales, Alexandre Dumas had been alike successful. The frequenters of the Théâtre Français owed him evenings of delight, but so did the general public as well. Dumas alone had had the power to touch, interest, or amuse, not only Paris or France, but the whole world. If all other novelists had been swallowed up in an earthquake, this one would have been able to supply the leading libraries of Europe. If all other dramatists had died, Alexandre Dumas could have occupied every stage; his magic name on a playbill or affixed to a newspaper _feuilleton_ ensured the sale of that issue or a full house at the theatre. He was king of the stage, prince of _feuilletonists_, _the_ literary man _par excellence_, in that Paris then so full of intellect. When he opened his lips the most eloquent held their breath to listen; when he entered a room the wit of man, the beauty of woman, the pride of life, grew dim in the radiance of his glory; he reigned over Paris in right of his sovereign intellect, the only monarch who for an entire century had understood how to draw to himself the adoration of all classes of society, from the Faubourg St. Germain to the Batignolles. "Just as he united in himself capabilities of many kinds, so he displayed in his person the perfection of many races. From the negro he had derived the frizzled hair and those thick lips on which Europe had laid a delicate smile of ever-varying meaning; from the southern races he derived his vivacity of gesture and speech, from the northern his solid frame and broad shoulders and a figure which, while it showed no lack of French elegance, was powerful enough to have made green with envy the gentlemen of the Russian Life-Guards." Dumas' energy and output were tremendous, as all know. It is recorded that on one occasion,--in the later years of his life, when, as was but natural, he had tired somewhat,--after a day at _la chasse_, he withdrew to a cottage near by to rest until the others should rejoin him, after having finished their sport. This they did within a reasonably short time,--whether one hour or two is not stated with definiteness,--when they found him sitting before the fire "twirling his thumbs." On being interrogated, he replied that he had not been sitting there long; _in fact, he had just written the first act of a new play_. The French journal, _La Revue_, tells the following incident, which sounds new. Some years before his death, Dumas had written a somewhat quaint letter to Napoleon III., apropos of a play which had been condemned by the French censor. In this epistle he commenced: "SIRE:--In 1830, and, indeed, even to-day, there are three men at the head of French literature. These three men are Victor Hugo, Lamartine, and myself. Although I am the least of the three, the five continents have made me the most popular, probably because the one was a thinker, the other a dreamer, while I am merely a writer of commonplace tales." This letter goes on to plead the cause of his play, and from this circumstance the censorship was afterward removed. A story is told of an incident which occurred at a rehearsal of "Les Trois Mousquetaires" at the "Ambigu." This story is strangely reminiscent of another incident which happened at a rehearsal of Halévy's "Guido et Génevra," but it is still worth recounting here, if only to emphasize the indomitable energy and perspicacity of Dumas. It appears that a _pompier_--that gaudy, glistening fireman who is always present at functions of all sorts on the continent of Europe--who was watching the rehearsal, was observed by Dumas to suddenly leave his point of vantage and retire. Dumas followed him and inquired his reason for withdrawing. "What made you go away?" Dumas asked of him. "Because that last act did not interest me so much as the others," was the answer. Whereupon Dumas sent for the prompt-book and threw that portion relating to that particular tableau into the fire, and forthwith set about to rewrite it on the spot. "It does not amuse the _pompier_," said Dumas, "but I know what it wants." An hour and a half later, at the finish of the rehearsal, the actors were given their new words for the seventh tableau. In spite of the varied success with which his plays met, Dumas was, we may say, first of all a dramatist, if construction of plot and the moving about of dashing and splendid figures counts for anything; and it most assuredly does. This very same qualification is what makes the romances so vivid and thrilling; and they do not falter either in accessory or fact. The cloaks of his swashbucklering heroes are always the correct shade of scarlet; their rapiers, their swords, or their pistols are always rightly tuned, and their entrances and their exits correctly and most appropriately timed. When his characters represent the poverty of a tatterdemalion, they do it with a sincerity that is inimitable, and the lusty throatings of a D'Artagnan are never a hollow mockery of something they are not. Dumas drew his characters of the stage and his personages of the romances with the brilliance and assurance of a Velasquez, rather than with the finesse of a Praxiteles, and for that reason they live and introduce themselves as cosmopolitans, and are to be appreciated only as one studies or acquires something of the spirit from which they have been evolved. Of Dumas' own uproarious good nature many have written. Albert Vandam tells of a certain occasion when he went to call upon the novelist at St. Germain,--and he reckoned Dumas the most lovable and genial among all of his host of acquaintances in the great world of Paris,--that he overheard, as he was entering the study, "a loud burst of laughter." "I had sooner wait until monsieur's visitors are gone," said he. "Monsieur has no visitors," said the servant. "Monsieur often laughs like that at his work." Dumas as a man of affairs or as a politician was not the success that he was in the world of letters. His activities were great, and his enthusiasm for any turn of affairs with which he allied himself remarkable; but, whether he was _en voyage_ on a whilom political mission, at work as "Director of Excavations" at Pompeii, or founding or conducting a new journal or a new playhouse, his talents were manifestly at a discount. In other words, he was singularly unfit for public life; he was not an organizer, nor had he executive ability, though he had not a little of the skill of prophecy and foresight as to many turns of fortune's wheel with respect to world power and the comity of nations. Commenting upon the political state of Europe, he said: "Geographically, Prussia has the form of a serpent, and, like it, she appears to be asleep, in order to gain strength to swallow everything around her." All of his prophecy was not fulfilled, to be sure, but a huge slice was fed into her maw from out of the body of France, and, looking at things at a time fifty years ahead of that of which Dumas wrote,--that is, before the Franco-Prussian War,--it would seem as though the serpent's appetite was still unsatisfied. In 1847, when Dumas took upon himself to wish for a seat in the government, he besought the support of the constituency of the borough in which he had lived--St. Germain. But St. Germain denied it him--"on moral grounds." In the following year, when Louis-Philippe had abdicated, he made the attempt once again. The republican constituency of Joigny challenged him with respect to his title of Marquis de la Pailleterie, and his having been a secretary in the Orleans Bureau. The following is his reply--verbatim--as publicly delivered at a meeting of electors, and is given here as illustrating well the earnestness and devotion to a code which many Puritan and prudish moralists have themselves often ignored: "I was formerly called the Marquis de la Pailleterie, no doubt. It was my father's name, and one of which I was very proud, being then unable to claim a glorious one of my own make. But at present, when I am somebody, I call myself Alexandre Dumas, and nothing more; and every one knows me, yourselves among the rest--you, you absolute nobodies, who have come here merely to boast, to-morrow, after having given me insult to-night, that you have known the great Dumas. If such were your avowed ambition, you could have satisfied it without having failed in the common courtesies of gentlemen. There is no doubt, either, about my having been a secretary to the Duc d'Orleans, and that I have received many favours from his family. If you are ignorant of the meaning of the phrase, 'The memories of the heart,' allow me, at least, to proclaim loudly that I am not, and that I entertain toward this family of royal blood all the devotion of an honourable man." * * * * * That Dumas was ever accused of making use of the work of others, of borrowing ideas wherever he found them, and, indeed, of plagiarism itself,--which is the worst of all,--has been mentioned before, and the argument for or against is not intended to be continued here. Dumas himself has said much upon the subject in defence of his position, and the contemporary scribblers of the time have likewise had their say--and it was not brief; but of all that has been written and said, the following is pertinent and deliciously naïve, and, coming from Dumas himself, has value: "One morning I had only just opened my eyes when my servant entered my bedroom and brought me a letter upon which was written the word _urgent_. He drew back the curtains; the weather--doubtless by some mistake--was fine, and the brilliant sunshine entered the room like a conqueror. I rubbed my eyes and looked at the letter to see who had sent it, astonished at the same time that there should be only one. The handwriting was quite unknown to me. Having turned it over and over for a minute or two, trying to guess whose the writing was, I opened it and this is what I found: "'SIR:--I have read your "Three Musketeers," being well to do, and having plenty of spare time on my hands--' "('Lucky fellow!' said I; and I continued reading.) "'I admit that I found it fairly amusing; but, having plenty of time before me, I was curious enough to wish to know if you really did find them in the "Memoirs of M. de La Fère." As I was living in Carcassonne, I wrote to one of my friends in Paris to go to the Bibliothèque Royale, and ask for these memoirs, and to write and let me know if you had really and truly borrowed your facts from them. My friend, whom I can trust, replied that you had copied them word for word, and that it is what you authors always do. So I give you fair notice, sir, that I have told people all about it at Carcassonne, and, if it occurs again, we shall cease subscribing to the _Siècle_. "'Yours sincerely, "'----.' "I rang the bell. "'If any more letters come for me to-day,' said I to the servant, 'you will keep them back, and only give them to me sometime when I seem a bit too happy.' "'Manuscripts as well, sir?' "'Why do you ask that question?' "'Because some one has brought one this very moment.' "'Good! that is the last straw! Put it somewhere where it won't be lost, but don't tell me where.' "He put it on the mantelpiece, which proved that my servant was decidedly a man of intelligence. "It was half-past ten; I went to the window. As I have said, it was a beautiful day. It appeared as if the sun had won a permanent victory over the clouds. The passers-by all looked happy, or, at least, contented. "Like everybody else, I experienced a desire to take the air elsewhere than at my window, so I dressed, and went out. "As chance would have it--for when I go out for a walk I don't care whether it is in one street or another--as chance would have it, I say, I passed the Bibliothèque Royale. "I went in, and, as usual, found Pâris, who came up to me with a charming smile. "'Give me,' said I, 'the "Memoirs of La Fère."' "He looked at me for a moment as if he thought I was crazy; then, with the utmost gravity, he said, 'You know very well they don't exist, because you said yourself they did!' "His speech, though brief, was decidedly pithy. "By way of thanks I made Pâris a gift of the autograph I had received from Carcassonne. "When he had finished reading it, he said, 'If it is any consolation to you to know it, you are not the first who has come to ask for the "Memoirs of La Fère"; I have already seen at least thirty people who came solely for that purpose, and no doubt they hate you for sending them on a fool's errand.' "As I was in search of material for a novel, and as there are people who declare novels are to be found ready-made, I asked for the catalogue. "Of course, I did not discover anything." * * * * * Every one knows of Dumas' great fame as a gastronome and epicure; some recall, also, that he himself was a _cuisinier_ of no mean abilities. How far his capacities went in this direction, and how wide was his knowledge of the subject, can only be gleaned by a careful reading of his great "Dictionnaire de Cuisine." Still further into the subject he may be supposed to have gone from the fact that he also published an inquiry, or an open letter, addressed to the _gourmands_ of all countries, on the subject of mustard. It is an interesting subject, to be sure, but a trifling one for one of the world's greatest writers to spend his time upon; say you, dear reader? Well! perhaps! But it is a most fascinating contribution to the literature of epicurism, and quite worth looking up and into. The history of the subtle spice is traced down through Biblical and Roman times to our own day, chronologically, etymologically, botanically, and practically. It will be, and doubtless has been, useful to other compilers of essays on good cheer. Whatever may be the subtle abilities which make the true romancer, or rather those which make his romances things of life and blood, they were possessed by Alexandre Dumas. Perhaps it is the more easy to construct a romantic play than it is to erect, from matter-of-fact components, a really engrossing romantic novel. Dumas' abilities seem to fit in with both varieties alike, and if he did build to order, the result was in most cases no less successful than if evolved laboriously. It is a curious fact that many serial contributions--if we are to believe the literary gossip of the time--are only produced as the printer is waiting for copy. The formula is manifestly not a good one upon which to build, but it has been done, and successfully, by more writers than one, and with scarce a gap unbridged. Dickens did it,--if it is allowable to mention him here,--and Dumas himself did it,--many times,--and with a wonderful and, one may say, inspired facility, but then his facility, none the less than his vitality, made possible much that was not granted to the laborious Zola. Dumas was untiring to the very last. His was a case of being literally worked out--not worked to death, which is quite a different thing. It has been said by Dumas _fils_ that in the latter years of the elder's life he would sit for length upon length of time, pen in hand, and not a word would flow therefrom, ere the ink had dried. An interesting article on Dumas' last days appeared in _La Revue_ in 1903. It dealt with the sadness and disappointments of Dumas' later days, in spite of which the impression conveyed of the great novelist's personality is very vivid, and he emerges from it much as his books would lead one to expect--a hearty, vigorous creature, surcharged with vitality, with desire to live and let live, a man possessed of almost equally prominent faults and virtues, and generous to a fault. [Illustration: Alexandre Dumas, Fils] Money he had never been able to keep. He had said himself, at a time when he was earning a fortune, "I can keep everything but money. Money unfortunately always slips through my fingers." The close of his life was a horrible struggle to make ends meet. When matters came to a crisis Dumas would pawn some of the valuable _objets d'art_ he had collected in the opulent past, or ask his son for assistance. But, though the sum asked was always given, there were probably few things which the old man would not have preferred to this appeal to the younger author. As he grew old, Dumas _père_ became almost timid in his attitude toward the son, whose disapproval had frequently found expression in advice and warning. But Dumas could not settle down, and he could not become careful. Neither of these things was in his nature, and there was consequently always some little undercurrent of friction between them. To the end of his days his money was anybody's who liked to come and ask for it, and nothing but the final clouding of his intellectual capacity could reduce his optimism. Then, it is true, he fell into a state of sustained depression. The idea that his reputation would not last haunted him. In 1870, when Dumas was already very ill, his son, anxious that he should not be in Paris during its investment by the Germans, took him to a house he had at Puys, near Dieppe. Here the great man rapidly sank, and, except at meal-times, passed his time in a state of heavy sleep, until a sudden attack of apoplexy finally seized him. He never rallied after it, and died upon the day the Prussian soldiers took possession of Dieppe. Many stories are rife of Dumas the prodigal. Some doubtless are true, many are not. Those which he fathers himself, we might well accept as being true. Surely he himself should know. The following incident which happened in the last days of his life certainly has the ring of truth about it. When in his last illness he left Paris for his son's country house near Dieppe, he had but twenty francs, the total fortune of the man who had earned millions. On arriving at Puys, Dumas placed the coin on his bedroom chimneypiece, and there it remained all through his illness. One day he was seated in his chair near the window, chatting with his son, when his eye fell on the gold piece. A recollection of the past crossed his mind. "Fifty years ago, when I went to Paris," he said, "I had a louis. Why have people accused me of prodigality? I have always kept that louis. See--there it is." And he showed his son the coin, smiling feebly as he did so. CHAPTER IV. DUMAS' CONTEMPORARIES Among those of the world's great names in literature contemporary with Dumas, but who knew Paris ere he first descended upon it to try his fortune in its arena of letters, were Lamartine, who already, in 1820, had charmed his public with his "Meditations;" Hugo, who could claim but twenty years himself, but who had already sung his "Odes et Ballades," and Chateaubriand. Soulié and De Vigny won their fame with poems and plays in the early twenties, De Musset and Chénier followed before a decade had passed, and Gautier was still serving his apprenticeship. It was the proud Goethe who said of these young men of the twenties, "They all come from Chateaubriand." Béranger, too, "the little man," even though he was drawing on toward the prime of life, was also singing melodiously: it was his _chansons_, it is said, that upset the Bourbon throne and made way for the "citizen-king." Nodier, of fanciful and fantastic rhyme, was already at work, and Mérimée had not yet taken up the administrative duties of overseeing the preserving process which at his instigation was, at the hands of a paternal government, being applied to the historical architectural monuments throughout France; a glory which it is to be feared has never been wholly granted to Mérimée, as was his due. [Illustration: TWO FAMOUS CARICATURES OF ALEXANDRE DUMAS] Guizot, the _bête noire_ of the later Louis-Philippe, was actively writing from 1825 to 1830, and his antagonist, Thiers, was at the same period producing what Carlyle called the "voluminous and untrustworthy labours of a brisk little man in his way;" which recalls to mind the fact that Carlylean rant--like most of his prose--is a well-nigh insufferable thing. At this time Mignet, the historian, was hard at work, and St. Beauve had just deserted _materia medica_ for literature. Michelet's juvenile histories were a production of the time, while poor, unhonoured, and then unsung, Balzac was grinding out his pittance--in after years to grow into a monumental literary legacy--in a garret. Eugène Sue had not yet taken to literary pathways, and was scouring the seas as a naval surgeon. The drama was prolific in names which we have since known as masters, Scribe, Halévy, and others. George Sand, too, was just beginning that grand literary life which opened with "Indiana" in 1832, and lasted until 1876. She, like so many of the great, whose name and fame, like Dumas' own, has been perpetuated by a monument in stone, the statue which was unveiled in the little town of her birth on the Indre, La Châtre, in 1903. Like Dumas, too, hers was a cyclopean industry, and so it followed that in the present twentieth century (in the year 1904), another and a more glorious memorial to France's greatest woman writer was unveiled in the Garden of the Luxembourg. Among the women famous in the _monde_ of Paris at the time of Dumas' arrival were Mesdames Desbordes-Valmore, Amable Tastu, and Delphine Gay. "For more than half a century this brilliant group of men and women sustained the world of ideas and poetry," said Dumas, in his "Mémoires," "and I, too," he continued, "have reached the same plane ... unaided by intrigue or coterie, and using none other than my own work as the stepping-stone in my pathway." Dumas cannot be said to have been niggardly with his praise of the work of others. He said of a sonnet of Arnault's--"La Feuille"--that it was a masterpiece which an André Chénier, a Lamartine, or a Hugo might have envied, and that for himself, not knowing what his "literary brothers" might have done, he would have given for it "any one of his dramas." It was into the office of Arnault, who was chief of a department in the Université, that Béranger took up his labours as a copying-clerk,--as did Dumas in later years,--and it was while here that Béranger produced his first ballad, the "Roi d'Yvetot." In 1851 Millet was at his height, if one considers what he had already achieved by his "great agrarian poems," as they have been called. Gautier called them "Georgics in paint," and such they undoubtedly were. Millet would hardly be called a Parisian; he was not of the life of the city, but rather of that of the countryside, by his having settled down at Barbizon in 1849, and practically never left it except to go to Paris on business. His life has been referred to as one of "sublime monotony," but it was hardly that. It was a life devoted to the telling of a splendid story, that of the land as contrasted with that of the paved city streets. Corot was a real Parisian, and it was only in his early life in the provinces that he felt the bitterness of life and longed for the flagstones of the quais, for the Tuileries, the Seine, and his beloved Rue de Bac, where he was born on 10th Thermidor, Year IV. (July 28, 1796). Corot early took to painting the scenes of the metropolis, as we learn from his biography, notably at the point along the river bank where the London steamer moors to-day. But these have disappeared; few or none of his juvenile efforts have come down to us. Corot returned to Paris, after many years spent in Rome, during the reign of Louis-Philippe, when affairs were beginning to stir themselves in literature and art. In 1839 his "Site d'Italie" and a "Soir" were shown at the annual Salon,--though, of course, he had already been an exhibitor there,--and inspired a sonnet of Théophile Gautier, which concludes: "Corot, ton nom modest, écrit dans un coin noir." Corot's pictures _were_ unfortunately hung in the darkest corners--for fifteen years. As he himself has said, it was as if he were in the catacombs. In 1855 Corot figured as one of the thirty-four judges appointed by Napoleon III. to make the awards for paintings exhibited in the world's first Universal Exhibition. It is not remarked that Corot had any acquaintance or friendships with Dumas or with Victor Hugo, of whom he remarked, "This Victor Hugo seems to be pretty famous in literature." He knew little of his contemporaries, and the hurly-burly knew less of him. He was devoted, however, to the genius of his superiors--as he doubtless thought them. Of Delacroix he said one day, "He is an eagle, and I am only a lark singing little songs in gray clouds." A literary event of prime importance during the latter years of Dumas' life in Paris, when his own purse was growing thin, was the publication of the "Histoire de Jules César," written by Napoleon III. Nobody ever seems to have taken the second emperor seriously in any of his finer expressions of sentiment, and, as may be supposed, the publication of this immortal literary effort was the occasion of much sarcasm, banter, violent philippic, and sardonic criticism. Possibly the world was not waiting for this work, but royalty, no less than other great men, have their hobbies and their fads; Nero fiddled, and the first Napoleon read novels and threw them forthwith out of the carriage window, so it was quite permissible that Napoleon III. should have perpetuated this life history of an emperor whom he may justly and truly have admired--perhaps envied, in a sort of impossible way. Already Louis Napoleon's collection of writings was rather voluminous, so this came as no great surprise, and his literary reputation was really greater than that which had come to him since fate made him the master of one of the foremost nations of Europe. From his critics we learn that "he lacked the grace of a popular author; that he was quite incapable of interesting the reader by a charm of manner; and that his _style_ was meagre, harsh, and grating, but epigrammatic." No Frenchman could possibly be otherwise. Dumas relates, again, the story of Sir Walter Scott's visit to Paris, seeking documents which should bear upon the reign of Napoleon. Dining with friends one evening, he was invited the next day to dine with Barras. But Scott shook his head. "I cannot dine with that man," he replied. "I shall write evil of him, and people in Scotland would say that I have flung the dishes from his own table at his head." It is not recorded that Dumas' knowledge of swordsmanship was based on practical experience, but certainly no more scientific sword-play of _passe_ and _touche_ has been put into words than that wonderful attack and counter-attack in the opening pages of "Les Trois Mousquetaires." Of the _duel d'honneur_ there is less to be said, though Dumas more than once sought to reconcile estranged and impetuous spirits who would have run each other through, either by leaden bullet or the sword. A notable instance of this was in the memorable _affaire_ between Louis Blanc of _L'Homme-Libre_ and Dujarrier-Beauvallon of _La Presse_. The latter told Dumas that he had no alternative but to fight, though he went like a lamb to the slaughter, and had no knowledge of the _code_ nor any skill with weapons. Dumas _père_ was implored by the younger Dumas--both of whom took Dujarrier's interests much to heart--to go and see Grisier and claim his intervention. "I cannot do it," said the elder; "the first and foremost thing to do is to safeguard his reputation, which is the more precious because it is his first duel." The Grisier referred to was the great master of fence of the time who was immortalized by Dumas in his "Maître d'Armes." Dumas himself is acknowledged, however, on one occasion, at least, to have acted as second--co-jointly with General Fleury--in an _affaire_ which, happily, never came off. It was this Blanc-Dujarrier duel which brought into further prominent notice that most remarkable and quasi-wonderful woman, Lola Montez; that daughter of a Spaniard and a Creole, a native of Limerick, pupil of a boarding-school at Bath, and one-time resident of Seville; to which may be added, on the account of Lord Malmesbury, "The woman who in Munich set fire to the magazine of revolution which was ready to burst forth all over Europe." She herself said that she had also lived in Calcutta as the wife of an officer in the employ of the East India Company; had at one time been reduced to singing in the streets at Brussels; had danced at the Italian Opera in London,--"not much, but as well as half the ugly wooden women who were there,"--and had failed as a dancer in Warsaw. "This illiterate schemer," says Vandam, "who probably knew nothing of geography or history, had pretty well the Almanach de Gotha by heart." "Why did I not come earlier to Paris?" she once said. "What was the good? There was a king there bourgeois to his finger-nails, tight-fisted besides, and notoriously the most moral and the best father in all the world." This woman, it seems, was a beneficiary in the testament of Dujarrier, who died as a result of his duel, to the extent of eighteen shares in the Théâtre du Palais Royal, and in the trial which followed at Rouen, at which were present all shades and degrees of literary and professional people, Dumas, Gustave Flaubert, and others, she insisted upon appearing as a witness, for no reason whatever, apparently, than that of further notoriety. "Six months from this time," as one learns from Vandam, "her name was almost forgotten by all of us except Alexandre Dumas, who once and again alluded to her." "Though far from superstitious, Dumas, who had been as much smitten with her as most of her admirers, avowed that he was glad that she had disappeared. 'She has the evil eye,' said he, 'and is sure to bring bad luck to any one who closely links his destiny with hers.'" There is no question but that Dumas was right, for she afterward--to mention but two instances of her remarkably active career--brought disaster "most unkind" upon Louis I. of Bavaria; committed bigamy with an English officer who was drowned at Lisbon; and, whether in the guise of lovers or husbands, all, truly, who became connected with her met with almost immediate disaster. The mere mention of Lola Montez brings to mind another woman of the same category, though different in character, Alphonsine Plessis, more popularly known as La Dame aux Camélias. She died in 1847, and her name was not Marie or Marguérite Duplessis, but as above written. Dumas _fils_ in his play did not idealize Alphonsine Plessis' character; indeed, Dumas _père_ said that he did not even enlarge or exaggerate any incident--all of which was common property in the _demi-monde_--"save that he ascribed her death to any cause but the right one." "I know he made use of it," said the father, "but he showed the malady aggravated by Duval's desertion." We learn that the elder Dumas "wept like a baby" over the reading of his son's play. But his tears did not drown his critical faculty. "At the beginning of the third act," said Dumas _père_, "I was wondering how Alexandre would get his Marguérite back to town, ... but the way Alexandre got out of the difficulty proves that he is my son, every inch of him, and at the very outset of his career he is a better dramatist than I am ever likely to be." "Alphonsine Plessis was decidedly a real personage, but not an ordinary one in her walk of life," said Doctor Véron. "A woman of her refinement might not have been impossible in a former day, because the grisette--and subsequently the _femme entretenue_--was not then even surmised. She interests me much; she is the best dressed woman in Paris, she neither conceals nor hides her vices, and she does not continually hint about money; in short, she is wonderful." "La Dame aux Camélias" appeared within eighteen months of the actual death of the heroine, and went into every one's hands, interest being whetted meanwhile by the recent event, and yet more by much gossip--scandal if you will--which universally appeared in the Paris press. Her pedigree was evolved and diagnosed by Count G. de Contades in a French bibliographical journal, _Le Livre_, which showed that she was descended from a "_guénuchetonne_" (slattern) of Longé, in the canton of Brionze, near Alençon; a predilection which the elder Dumas himself had previously put forth when he stated that, "I am certain that one might find taint either on the father's side, or on the mother's, probably on the former's, but more probably still on both." The following eulogy, extracted from a letter written to Dumas _fils_ by Victor Hugo upon the occasion of the inhumation of the ashes of Alexandre Dumas at Villers-Cotterets, whither they were removed from Puits, shows plainly the esteem in which his literary abilities were held by the more sober-minded of his compeers: "MON CHER CONFRÈRE:--I learn from the papers of the funeral of Alexandre Dumas at Villers-Cotterets.... It is with regret that I am unable to attend.... But I am with you in my heart.... What I would say, let me write.... No popularity of the past century has equalled that of Alexandre Dumas. His successes were more than successes: they were triumphs.... The name of Alexandre Dumas is more than 'Français, il est Européen;' and it is more than European, it is universal. His theatre has been given publicity in all lands, and his romances have been translated into all tongues. Alexandre Dumas was one of those men we can call the sowers of civilization.... Alexandre Dumas is seducing, fascinating, interesting, amusing, and informing.... All the emotions, the most pathetic, all the irony, all the comedy, all the analysis of romance, and all the intuition of history are found in the supreme works constructed by this great and vigorous architect. "... His spirit was capable of all the miracles he performed; this he bequeathed and this survives.... Your renown but continues his glory. "... Your father and I were young together.... He was a grand and good friend.... I had not seen him since 1857.... As I entered Paris Alexandre Dumas was leaving. I did not have even a parting shake of the hand. "The visit which he made me in my exile I will some day return to his tomb. "_Cher confrère, fils de mon ami, je vous embrasse._ "VICTOR HUGO." Of Dumas, Charles Reade said: "He has never been properly appreciated; he is the prince of dramatists, the king of romancists, and the emperor of good fellows." Dumas _fils_ he thought a "vinegar-blooded iconoclast--shrewd, clever, audacious, introspective, and mathematically logical." * * * * * The Cimetière du Père La Chaise has a contemporary interest with the names of many who were contemporaries of Dumas in the life and letters of his day. Of course, sentimental interest first attaches itself to the Gothic canopy--built from the fragments of the convent of Paraclet--which enshrines the remains of Abelard and Heloïse (1142-64), and this perhaps is as it should be, but for those who are conversant with the life of Paris of Dumas' day, this most "famous resting-place" has far more interest because of its shelter given to so many of Dumas' contemporaries and friends. Scribe, who was buried here 1861; Michelet, d. 1874; Delphine Cambacérès, 1867; Lachambeaudie, 1872; Soulie, 1847; Balzac, 1850; Ch. Nodier, 1844; C. Delavigne, 1843; Delacroix, the painter, 1865; Talma, the tragedian, 1826; Boieldieu, the composer, 1834; Chopin, 1849; Herold, 1833; General Foy, 1825; David d'Angers, 1856; Hugo, 1828 (the father of Victor Hugo); David, the painter, 1825; Alfred de Musset, 1857; Rossini, 1868. [Illustration: TOMB OF ABELARD AND HÉLOÏSE] CHAPTER V. THE PARIS OF DUMAS Dumas' real descent upon the Paris of letters and art was in 1823, when he had given up his situation in the notary's office at Crépy, and after the eventful holiday journey of a few weeks before. His own account of this, his fourth entrance into the city, states that he was "landed from the coach at five A. M. in the Rue Bouloi, No. 9. It was Sunday morning, and Bourbon Paris was very gloomy on a Sunday." Within a short time of his arrival the young romancer was making calls, of a nature which he hoped would provide him some sort of employment until he should make his way in letters, upon many bearers of famous Bourbon names who lived in the Faubourgs St. Germain and St. Honoré--all friends and compatriots of his father. He had brought with him letters formerly written to his father, and hoped to use them as a means of introduction. He approached Marshal Jourdain, General Sebastiani, the Duc de Bellune, and others, but it was not until he presented himself to General Foy, at 64 Rue du Mont Blanc,--the deputy for his department,--that anything to his benefit resulted. Finally, through the kindly aid of General Foy, Dumas--son of a republican general though he was--found himself seated upon a clerk's stool, quill in hand, writing out dictation at the secretary's bureau of the Duc d'Orleans. "I then set about to look for lodgings," said Dumas, "and, after going up and down many staircases, I came to a halt in a little room on a fourth story, which belonged to that immense pile known as the 'Pâté des Italiens.' The room looked out on the courtyard, and I was to have it for one hundred and twenty francs per annum." From that time on Dumas may be said to have known Paris intimately--its life, its letters, its hotels and restaurants, its theatres, its salons, and its boulevards. So well did he know it that he became a part and parcel of it. His literary affairs and relations are dealt with elsewhere, but the various aspects of the social and economic life of Paris at the time Dumas knew its very pulse-beats must be gleaned from various contemporary sources. [Illustration: General Foy's Residence] The real Paris which Dumas knew--the Paris of the Second Empire--exists no more. The order of things changeth in all but the conduct of the stars, and Paris, more than any other centre of activity, scintillates and fluctuates like the changings of the money-markets. The life that Dumas lived, so far as it has no bearing on his literary labours or the evolving of his characters, is quite another affair from that of his yearly round of work. He knew intimately all the gay world of Paris, and fresh echoes of the part he played therein are being continually presented to us. He knew, also, quite as intimately, certain political and social movements which took place around about him, in which he himself had no part. It was in the fifties of the nineteenth century that Paris first became what one might call a coherent mass. This was before the days of the application of the adjective "Greater" to the areas of municipalities. Since then we have had, of course, a "Greater Paris" as we have a "Greater London" and a "Greater New York," but at the commencement of the Second Empire (1852) there sprang into being,--"jumped at one's eyes," as the French say,--when viewed from the heights of the towers of Notre Dame, an immense panorama, which showed the results of a prodigious development, radiating far into the distance, from the common centre of the _Ile de la Cité_ and the still more ancient _Lutèce_. Up to the construction of the present fortifications,--under Louis-Philippe,--Paris had been surrounded, at its outer confines, by a simple _octroi_ barrier of about twenty-five kilometres in circumference, and pierced by fifty-four entrances. Since 1860 this wall has been raised and the limits of what might be called Paris proper have been extended up to the fortified lines. This fortification wall was thirty-four kilometres in length; was strengthened by ninety-four bastions, and surrounded and supported by thirteen detached forts. Sixty-five openings gave access to the inner city, by which the roadways, waterways, and railways entered. These were further distinguished by classification as follows: _portes_--of which there were fifty; _poternes_--of which there were five; and _passages_--of which there were ten. Nine railways entered the city, and the "_Ceinture_" or girdle railway, which was to bind the various _gares_, was already conceived. At this time, too, the Quais received marked attention and development; trees were planted along the streets which bordered upon them, and a vast system of sewerage was planned which became--and endures until to-day--one of the sights of Paris, for those who take pleasure in such unsavoury amusements. Lighting by gas was greatly improved, and street-lamps were largely multiplied, with the result that Paris became known for the first time as "_La Ville Lumière_." A score or more of villages, or _bourgs_, before 1860, were between the limits of these two barriers, but were at that time united by the _loi d'annexion_, and so "Greater Paris" came into being. The principle _bourgs_ which lost their identity, which, at the same time is, in a way, yet preserved, were Auteuil, Passy, les Ternes, Batignolles, Montmartre, la Chapelle, la Villette, Belleville, Ménilmontant, Charenton, and Bercy; and thus the population of Paris grew, as in the twinkling of an eye, from twelve hundred thousand to sixteen hundred thousand; and its superficial area from thirty-four hundred _hectares_ to more than eight thousand--a _hectare_ being about the equivalent of two and a half acres. During the period of the "Restoration," which extended from the end of the reign of the great Napoleon to the coming of Louis-Philippe (1814-30), Paris may be said to have been in, or at least was at the beginning of, its golden age of prosperity. In a way the era was somewhat inglorious, but in spite of liberal and commonplace opinion, there was made an earnest effort to again secure the pride of place for French letters and arts; and it was then that the romantic school, with Dumas at its very head, attained its first importance. It was not, however, until Louis-Philippe came into power that civic improvements made any notable progress, though the Pont des Invalides had been built, and gas-lamps, omnibuses, and sidewalks, had been introduced just previously. Under Louis-Philippe were completed the Église de la Madeleine and the Arc de Triomphe d'Etoile. The Obelisk,--a gift from Mohammed Ali, Viceroy of Egypt, to Louis-Philippe,--the Colonne de Juillet, and the Ponts Louis-Philippe and du Carrousel were built, as well as the modern fortifications of Paris, with their detached forts of Mont Valerien, Ivry, Charenton, Nogent, etc. There existed also the encircling boulevards just within the fortifications, and yet another parallel series on the north, beginning at the Madeleine and extending to the Colonne de Juillet. It was not, however, until the Second Republic and the Second Empire of Napoleon III. that a hitherto unparallelled transformation was undertaken, and there sprung into existence still more broad boulevards and spacious squares, and many palatial civic and private establishments, the Bourse, the New Opera, and several theatres, the Ceinture Railway, and the Bois de Boulogne and the Bois de Vincennes. By this time Dumas' activities were so great, or at least the product thereof was so great, that even his intimate knowledge of French life of a more heroic day could not furnish him all the material which he desired. It was then that he produced those essentially modern stories of life in Paris of that day, which, slight though they are as compared with the longer romances, are best represented by the "Corsican Brothers," "Captain Pamphile," and "Gabriel Lambert." * * * * * Among the buildings at this time pulled down, on the Place du Carrousel, preparatory to the termination of the Louvre, was the Hôtel Longueville, the residence of the beautiful duchess of that name, celebrated for her support of the Fronde and her gallantries, as much as for her beauty. Dumas would have revelled in the following incident as the basis of a tale. In the arched roof of one of the cellars of the duchess' hôtel two skeletons of a very large size and in a perfect state of preservation were discovered, which have since been the object of many discussions on the part of the antiquarians, but _adhuc sub judice lis est_. Another discovery was made close by the skeletons, which is more interesting from a literary point of view; namely, that of a box, in carved steel, embellished with gilded brass knobs, and containing several papers. Among them was an amatory epistle in verse, from the Prince de Marsillac to the fair duchess. The other papers were letters relating to the state of affairs at that time; some from the hand of the celebrated Turenne, with memorandums, and of the Prince de Conti, "of great value to autograph collectors," said the newspaper accounts of the time, but assuredly of still more value to historians, or even novelists. At this time Paris was peopled with many hundreds--perhaps thousands--of _mauvais sujets_, and frequent robberies and nightly outrages were more numerous than ever. The government at last hit on the plan of sending to the _bagnes_ of Toulon and Brest for several of the turnkeys and gaolers of those great convict _dépôts_, to whom the features of all their former prisoners were perfectly known. These functionaries, accompanied by a policeman in plain clothes, perambulated every part of Paris by day, and by night frequented all the theatres, from the Grand Opéra downward, the low _cafés_ and wine-shops. It appears that more than four hundred of these desperadoes were recognized and retransferred to their old quarters at Toulon. Some of these worthies had been carrying on schemes of swindling on a colossal scale, and more than one is described as having entered into large speculations on the Bourse. Perhaps it was from some such circumstance as this that Dumas evolved that wonderful narrative of the life of a forger, "Gabriel Lambert." One of the most noted in the craft was known by the _soubriquet_ of Pierre Mandrin, the name of that _célébré_ being conferred on account of his superiority and skill in assuming disguises. When arrested he was figuring as a Polish count, and covered with expensive rings and jewelry. The career of this ruffian is interesting. In 1839, while undergoing an imprisonment of two years for robbery, he attempted to make his escape by murdering the gaoler, but failed, however, and was sent to the galleys at Toulon for twenty years. In 1848 he did escape from Brest, and, notwithstanding the greatest exertions on the part of the police, he succeeded in crossing the whole of France and gaining Belgium, where he remained for some time. Owing to the persecutions of the Belgian police, he subsequently returned to France. He was so unfortunate as to be captured in the very act of breaking into a house at Besançon, but his prodigious activity enabled him once again to escape while on his way to prison, and he came to Paris. Being possessed of some money, he resolved to abandon his evil courses, and set up a greengrocer's shop in the Rue Rambuteau, which went on thrivingly for some time. But such an inactive life was insupportable to him, and he soon resumed his former exciting pursuits. Several robberies committed with consummate skill soon informed the police of the presence in Paris of some great master of the art of Mercury. The most experienced officers were accordingly sent out, but they made no capture until one of the Toulon gaolers fancied he recollected the convict under the features of an elegantly attired _lion_ on the Boulevard des Italiens. A few hours afterward the luckless _échappé_ was safely lodged at the Conciergerie. At his lodgings, besides the usual housebreaking implements, a complete assortment of costumes of every kind was discovered--from that of the dandy of the first water to the blouse of the artisan. There is something more than a morbid interest which attaches itself to the former homes and haunts of a great author or artist. The emotion is something akin to sentiment, to be sure, but it is pardonable; far more so than the contemplation of many more popular and notorious places. He who would follow the footsteps of Alexandre Dumas about Paris must either be fleet of foot, or one who can sustain a long march. At any rate, the progress will take a considerable time. It is impossible to say in how many places he lived, though one gathers from the "Mémoires," and from contemporary information, that they numbered many score, and the uncharitable have further said that he found it more economical to move than to pay his rents. Reprehensible as this practice may be, Dumas was no single exponent of it--among artists and authors; and above all in his case, as we know, it resulted from imprudence and ofttimes misplaced confidence and generosity. One of Dumas' early homes in Paris, jocularly called by him "La Pâté d'Italie," was situated in that famous centre of unconventionality, the Boulevard des Italiens, a typical tree-shaded and café-lined boulevard. Its name was obviously acquired from its resemblance to, or suggestion of being constructed of, that mastic which is known in Germany as noodles, in Italy as macaroni, and in English-speaking countries as dough. To-day the structure, as it then was, exists no more, though the present edifice at the corner of the Rue Louis le Grand, opposite the vaudeville theatre, has been assuredly stated as in no wise differing in general appearance from its prototype, and, as it is after the same ginger-cake style of architecture, it will serve its purpose. Albert Vandam, in "An Englishman in Paris," that remarkable book of reminiscence whose authorship was so much in doubt when the work was first published, devoted a whole chapter to the intimacies of Dumas _père_; indeed, nearly every feature and character of prominence in the great world of Paris--at the time of which he writes--strides through the pages of this remarkably illuminating book, in a manner which is unequalled by any conventional volume of "Reminiscence," "Observations," or "Memoirs" yet written in the English language, dealing with the life of Paris--or, for that matter, of any other capital. His account, also, of a "literary café" of the Paris of the forties could only have been written by one who knew the life intimately, and, so far as Dumas' acquaintances and contemporaries are concerned, Vandam's book throws many additional side-lights on an aspect which of itself lies in no perceptible shadow. Even in those days the "boulevards"--the popular resort of the men of letters, artists, and musical folk--meant, as it does to-day, a somewhat restricted area in the immediate neighbourhood of the present Opera. At the corner of the Rue Lafitte was a tobacconist's shop, whose genius was a "splendid creature," of whom Alfred de Musset became so enamoured that his friends feared for an "imprudence on his part." The various elements of society and cliques had their favourite resorts and rendezvous; the actors under the trees in the courtyard of the Palais Royal; the _ouvrier_ and his family meandered in the Champs Elysées or journeyed countryward to Grenelle; while the soldiery mostly repaired to La Plaine de St. Denis. A sister to Thiers kept a small dining establishment in the Rue Drouet, and many journalistic and political gatherings were held at her _tables d'hôte_. When asked whether her delicious pheasants were of her illustrious brother's shooting, she shook her head, and replied: "No, M. the President of the Council has not the honour to supply my establishment." Bohemia, as Paris best knew it in the fifties, was not that pleasant land which lies between the Moravian and the Giant Mountains; neither were the Bohemians of Paris a Slavonic or Teutonic people of a strange, nomad race. But the history of the Bohemia of arts and letters--which rose to its greatest and most prophetic heights in the Paris of the nineteenth century--would no doubt prove to be as extensive a work as Buckle's "History of Civilization," though the recitation of tenets and principles of one would be the inevitable reverse of the other. The intellectual Bohemian--the artist, or the man of letters--has something in his make-up of the gipsy's love of the open road; the vagabond who instinctively rebels against the established rules of society, more because they are established than for any other reason. Henri Mürger is commonly supposed to have popularized the "Bohemia" of arts and letters, and it is to him we owe perhaps the most graphic pictures of the life which held forth in the _Quartier Latin_, notorious for centuries for its lack of discipline and its defiance of the laws of Church, state, and society. It was the very nursery of open thought and liberty against absolutism and the conventional proprieties. Gustave Nadaud described this "unknown land" in subtle verse, which loses not a little in attempted paraphrase: "There stands behind Ste. Geneviève, A city where no fancy paves With gold the narrow streets, But jovial youth, the landlady On gloomy stairs, in attic high, Gay hope, her tenant, meets. * * * * * 'Twas there that the Pays Latin stood, 'Twas there the world was _really_ good, 'Twas there that she was gay." Of the freedom and the unconventionally of the life of the Bohemian world of Paris, where the lives of literature and art blended in an almost imperceptible manner, and the gay indifference of its inhabitants, one has but to recall the incident where George Sand went to the studio of the painter Delacroix to tell him that she had sad news for him; that she could never love him; and more of the same sort. "Indeed," said Delacroix, who kept on painting.--"You are angry with me, are you not? You will never forgive me?"--"Certainly I will," said the painter, who was still at his work, "but I've got a bit of sky here that has caused me a deal of trouble and is just coming right. Go away, or sit down, and I will be through in ten minutes." She went, and of course did not return, and so the _affaire_ closed. Dumas was hardly of the Pays Latin. He had little in common with the Bohemianism of the _poseur_, and the Bohemia of letters and art has been largely made up of that sort of thing. More particularly Dumas' life was that of the boulevards, of the journalist, of tremendous energy and output rather than that of the _dilettante_, and so he has but little interest in the south bank of the Seine. * * * * * Michelet, while proclaiming loudly for French literature and life in _Le Peuple_, published in 1846, desponds somewhat of his country from the fact that the overwhelming genius of the popular novelists of that day--and who shall not say since then, as well--have sought their models, too often, in dingy cabarets, vile dens of iniquity, or even in the prisons themselves. He said: "This mania of slandering oneself, of exhibiting one's sores, and going, as it were, to look for shame, will be mortal in the course of time." This may, to a great extent, have been true then--and is true to-day--manifestly, but no lover of the beautiful ought to condemn a noisome flower if but its buds were beautiful, and Paris--the Paris of the Restoration, the Empire, or the Republic--is none the worse in the eyes of the world because of the iniquities which exist in every large centre of population, where creeds and intellects of all shades and capacities are herded together. The French novelist, it is true, can be very sordid and banal, but he can be as childlike and bland as an unsophisticated young girl--when he has a mind to. Dumas' novels were not lacking in vigour, valour, or action, and he wrote mostly of romantic times; so Michelet could not have referred to him. Perhaps he had the "Mysteries of Paris" or "The Wandering Jew" in mind, whose author certainly did give full measure of sordid detail; but then, Sue has been accused before now as not presenting a strictly truthful picture. So much for the presentation of the _tableaux_. But what about the actual condition of the people at the time? Michelet's interest in Europe was centred on France and confined to _le peuple_; a term in which he ofttimes included the _bourgeois_, as well he might, though he more often regarded those who worked with their hands. He repeatedly says: "I myself have been one of those workmen, and, although I have risen to a different class, I retain the sympathies of my early conditions." Michelet's judgment was quite independent and original when he compared the different classes; and he had a decided preference for that section which cultivates the soil, though by no means did he neglect those engaged in trade and manufacture. The _ouvrier industriel_ was as much entitled to respect as the labourer in the fields, or even the small tenant-farmer. He regretted, of course, the competition which turned _industrialisme_ into a cut-throat policy. He furthermore had this to say concerning foreign trade: "Alsace and Lyons have conquered art and science to achieve beauty for others.... The 'fairy of Paris' (the _modiste_) meets, from minute to minute, the most unexpected flights of fancy--and she _or he_ does to-day, be it recalled. _Les étrangers_ come in spite of themselves, and they buy of her (France); _ils achètent_--but what?--patterns, and then go basely home and copy them, to the loss, _but to the glory_, of France. "The Englishman or the German buys a few pieces of goods at Paris or Lyons; just as in letters France writes and Belgium sells." On the whole, Michelet thought that the population was more successful in tilling the soil than in the marts of the world; and there is this to be said, there is no question but what France is a self-contained country, though its arts have gone forth into the world and influenced all nations. Paris is, ever has been, and proudly--perhaps rightly--thinks that it ever will be, the artistic capital of the world. Georges Avenel has recently delivered himself of a screed on the "Mechanism of Modern Life," wherein are many pertinent, if sometimes trite, observations on the more or less automatic processes by which we are lodged, fed, and clothed to-day. He gives rather a quaint, but unquestionably true, reason for the alleged falling-off in the cookery of French--of course he means Parisian--restaurants. It is, he says, that modern patrons will no longer pay the prices, or, rather, will not spend the money that they once did. In the first half of the last century--the time of Dumas' activities and achievements--he tells us that many Parisian lovers of good fare were accustomed to "eat a napoleon" daily for their dinner. Nowadays, the same persons dine sufficiently at their club for eight and a half francs. Perhaps the abatement of modern appetites has something to say to this, as many folk seldom take more than thirty-five or forty minutes over their evening meal. How would this compare with the Gargantuan feasts described by Brillat-Savarin and others, or the gastronomic exploits of those who ate two turkeys at a sitting? Clearly, for comfort, and perhaps luxury, the Parisian hotels and restaurants of a former day compare agreeably with those of our own time; not so much, perhaps, with regard to time and labour-saving machinery, which is the equipment of the modern _batterie de cuisine_, but with the results achieved by more simple, if more laborious, means, and the appointments and surroundings amid which they were put upon the board. "The proof of the pudding is in the eating" is still applicable, whether its components be beaten or kneaded by clockwork or the cook's boy. With the hotels himself, Avenel is less concerned, though he reminds us again that Madame de Sevigné had often to lie upon straw in the inns she met with in travelling, and looked upon a bed in a hotel, which would allow one to undress, as a luxury. We also learn that the travellers of those days had to carry their own knives, the innkeeper thinking that he did enough in providing spoons and forks. Nor were hotels particularly cheap, a small suite of rooms in a hotel of the Rue Richelieu costing 480 francs a week. It was Napoleon III. who, by his creation of the Hôtel de Louvre,--not the present establishment of the same name, but a much larger structure,--first set the fashion of monster hostelries. But what was this compared with the Elysées Palace, which M. d'Avenel chooses as his type of modern luxury, with its forty-three cooks, divided into seven brigades, each commanded by an officer drawing 3,750 francs a year, and its thirty-five hundred pairs of sheets and fifty thousand towels, valued together at little short of 250,000 francs? Yet, as we well know, even these totals pale before some of the hotels of America, in which M. d'Avenel sees the _ne plus ultra_ of organization and saving of labour by the ingenious use of machinery, and incidentally a great deal of the sentiment of good cheer, which was as much an ingredient of former hospitality as was the salt and pepper of a repast. It is pleasant to read of Alexandre Dumas' culinary skill, though the repetition of the fact has appeared in the works of well-nigh every writer who has written of the Paris of the fifties and sixties. The dinners at his apartments in the Boulevard Malesherbes were worthy of Soyer or even of Brillat-Savarin himself in his best days. In his last "Causeries Culinaires," the author of "Monte Cristo" tells us that the Bourbon kings were specially fond of soup. "The family," he writes, "from Louis XIV. to the last of their race who reigned in France, have been great eaters. The Grand Monarque commenced his dinner by two and sometimes three different kinds of soup; Louis-Philippe by four plates of various species of this comestible; in the fifth plate his Majesty usually mixed portions of the four varieties he had eaten, and appeared to enjoy this singular culinary combination." Dumas' reputation as an epicure must have been formed early; he describes in his "Mémoires" how, on a certain occasion, when he had first become installed in Paris, he met a gentleman, Charles Nodier, in the stalls of the Porte St. Martin, who was reading a well-worn Elzevir entitled "La Pastissier Française." He says, "I address him.... 'Pardon my impertinence, but are you very fond of eggs?' 'Why so?' 'That book you are reading, does it not give recipes for cooking eggs in sixty different ways?' 'It does.' 'If I could but procure a copy.' 'But this is an Elzevir,' says my neighbour." The Parisian is without a rival as an epicure and a _gastronome_, and he associates no stigma with the epithet. In Anglo-Saxon lands the reverse is the case, though why it is hard to see. "Frog-legs" came to be a tidbit in the _tables d'hôte_ of New York and London many years ago, but sympathy has been withheld from the luscious _escargot_. There be those fearless individuals who by reason of the _entente cordiale_ have tasted of him and found him good, but learning that in the cookshops of Paris they have at last learned to fabricate them to equal the native grown article of Bourgogne, have tabooed them once for all, and threaten to withdraw their liking for that other succulent dainty, the frog. At any rate, the schoolboy idea that the Parisian's staple fare is snails and frogs is quite exploded, and small wonder it is that Anglo-Saxon palates never became wholly inured to them. But what about England's peculiar dishes? Marrow-bones and stewed eels, for instance? * * * * * Dumas' familiarity with the good things of the table is nowhere more strongly advanced than in the opening chapter of "The Queen's Necklace," wherein the author recounts the incident of "the nobleman and his _maître d'hôtel_." The scene was laid in 1784, and runs as follows: "The marshal turned toward his _maître d'hôtel_, and said, 'Sir, I suppose you have prepared me a good dinner?' "'Certainly, your Grace.' "'You have the list of my guests?' "'I remember them perfectly.' "'There are two sorts of dinners, sir,' said the marshal. "'True, your Grace, but--' "'In the first place, at what time do we dine?' "'Your Grace, the citizens dine at two, the bar at three, the nobility at four--' "'And I, sir?' "'Your Grace will dine to-day at five.' "'Oh, at five!' "'Yes, your Grace, like the king--' "'And why like the king?' "'Because, on the list of your guests is the name of a king.' "'Not so, sir, you mistake; all my guests to-day are simple noblemen.' "'Your Grace is surely jesting; the Count Haga, who is among the guests--' "'Well, sir!' "'The Count Haga is a king.' (The Count Haga was the well-known name of the King of Sweden, assumed by him when travelling in France.) "'In any event, your Grace _cannot_ dine before five o'clock.' "'In heaven's name, do not be obstinate, but let us have dinner at four.' "'But at four o'clock, your Grace, what I am expecting will not have arrived. Your Grace, I wait for a bottle of wine.' "'A bottle of wine! Explain yourself, sir; the thing begins to interest me.' "'Listen, then, your Grace; his Majesty, the King of Sweden--I beg pardon, the Count Haga, I should have said--drinks nothing but Tokay.' "'Well, am I so poor as to have no Tokay in my cellar? If so, I must dismiss my butler.' "'Not so, your Grace; on the contrary, you have about sixty bottles.' "'Well, do you think Count Haga will drink sixty bottles with his dinner?' "'No, your Grace; but when Count Haga first visited France when he was only prince royal, he dined with the late king, who had received twelve bottles of Tokay from the Emperor of Austria. You are aware that the Tokay of the finest vintages is reserved exclusively for the cellar of the emperor, and that kings themselves can only drink it when he pleases to send it to them.' "'I know it.' "'Then, your Grace, of these twelve bottles of which the prince royal drank, only two remain. One is in the cellar of his Majesty Louis XVI.--' "'And the other?' "'Ah, your Grace!' said the _maître d'hôtel_, with a triumphant smile, for he felt that, after the long battle he had been fighting, the moment of victory was at hand, 'the other one was stolen.' "'By whom, then?' "'By one of my friends, the late king's butler, who was under great obligations to me.' "'Oh! and so he gave it to you.' "'Certainly, your Grace,' said the _maître d'hôtel_, with pride. "'And what did you do with it?' "'I placed it carefully in my master's cellar.' "'Your master? And who was your master at that time?' "'His Eminence the Cardinal de Rohan.' "'Ah, _mon Dieu!_ at Strasbourg?' "'At Saverne.' "'And you have sent to seek this bottle for me!' cried the old marshal. "'For you, your Grace,' replied the _maître d'hôtel_, in a tone which plainly said, 'ungrateful as you are.' "The Duke de Richelieu seized the hand of the old servant, and cried, 'I beg pardon; you are the king of _maîtres d'hôtel_.'" The French noblesse of the eighteenth century may have had retainers of the perspicacity and freedom of manners of this servant of the Maréchal de Richelieu, but it is hard to picture them in real life to-day. At any rate, it bespeaks Dumas' fondness of good eating and good drinking that he makes so frequent use of references thereto, not only in this novel of a later day, but throughout the mediæval romances as well. Dumas' knowledge of gastronomy again finds its vent in "The Count of Monte Cristo," when the unscrupulous Danglars is held in a dungeon pending his giving up the five millions of francs which he had fraudulently obtained. It is not a very high-class repast that is discussed, but it shows at least Dumas' familiarity with the food of man. "At twelve the guard before Danglars' cell was replaced by another functionary, and, wishing to catch sight of his new guardian, Danglars approached the door again. He was an athletic, gigantic bandit, with large eyes, thick lips, and a flat nose; his red hair fell in dishevelled masses like snakes around his shoulders. 'Ah! ah!' cried Danglars, 'this fellow is more like an ogre than anything else; however, I am rather too old and tough to be very good eating!' We see that Danglars was quite collected enough to jest; at the same time, as though to disprove the ogreish propensities, the man took some black bread, cheese, and onions from his wallet, which he began devouring voraciously. 'May I be hanged,' said Danglars, glancing at the bandit's dinner through the crevices of the door, 'may I be hanged if I can understand how people can eat such filth!' and he withdrew to seat himself upon his goatskin, which recalled to him the smell of the brandy.... "Four hours passed by, the giant was replaced by another bandit. Danglars, who really began to experience sundry gnawings at the stomach, rose softly, again applied his eye to the crack of the door, and recognized the intelligent countenance of his guide. It was, indeed, Peppino, who was preparing to mount guard as comfortably as possible by seating himself opposite to the door, and placing between his legs an earthen pan, containing chick-pease stewed with bacon. Near the pan he also placed a pretty little basket of grapes and a bottle of Vin d'Orvieto. Peppino was decidedly an epicure. While witnessing these preparations, Danglars' mouth watered.... 'I can almost imagine,' said he, 'that I were at the Café de Paris.'" Dumas, like every strong personality, had his friends and his enemies. It is doubtful which class was in the ascendency as to numbers. When asked, on one occasion, when he had been dining at the Café de Paris, if he were an archæologist,--he had been admiring a cameo portrait of Julius Cæsar,--he replied, "No, I am absolutely nothing." His partisans were many, and they were as devoted as his enemies were jealous and uncharitable. Continuing, he said, "I admire this portrait in the capacity of Cæsar's historian." "Indeed," said his interlocutor, "it has never been mentioned in the world of savants." "Well," said Dumas, "the world of savants never mentions me." This may be conceit or modesty, accordingly as one takes one view or another. Dumas, like most people, was not averse to admiration. Far from it. He thrived exceedingly on it. But he was, as he said, very much alone, and quite felt a nobody at times. Of his gastronomic and epicurean abilities he was vainly proud. The story is told of the sole possession by Dumas of a certain recipe for stewed carp. Véron, the director of the opera, had instructed his own cook to serve the celebrated dish; she, unable to concoct it satisfactorily, announced her intention of going direct to the novelist to get it from his own lips. Sophie must have been a most ingenious and well-informed person, for she approached Dumas in all hostility and candour. She plunged direct into the subject, presuming that he had acquired the knowledge of this special tidbit from some outside source. Dumas was evidently greatly flattered, and gave her every possible information, but the experiment was not a success, and the fair _cordon-bleu_ began to throw out the suspicion that Dumas had acquired his culinary accomplishments from some other source than that he had generally admitted. It was at this time that Dumas was at the crux of his affairs with his collaborators. Accordingly Sophie made her pronouncement that it was with Dumas' cooking as it was with his romances, and that he was "_un grand diable de vaniteux_." At his home in the Rue Chaussée d'Antin Dumas served many an epicurean feast to his intimates; preparing, it is said, everything with his own hands, even to the stripping of the cabbage-leaves for the _soupe aux choux_, "sleeves rolled up, and a large apron around his waist." A favourite menu was _soupe aux choux_, the now famous carp, a _ragoût de mouton, à l'Hongroise_; _roti de faisans_, and a _salade Japonaise_--whatever that may have been; the ices and _gateaux_ being sent in from a _pâtissier's_. * * * * * The customs of the theatre in Paris are, and always have been, peculiar. Dumas himself tells how, upon one occasion, just after he had come permanently to live there, he had placed himself beside an immense _queue_ of people awaiting admission to the Porte St. Martin. He was not aware of the procedure of lining up before the entrance-doors, and when one well up in the line offered to sell him his place for _twenty sous_--held since midday--Dumas willingly paid it, and, not knowing that it did not include admission to the performance, was exceedingly distraught when the time came to actually pay for places. This may seem a simple matter in a later day, and to us who have become familiar with similar conditions in Paris and elsewhere; but it serves to show the guilelessness of Dumas, and his little regard for business procedure of any sort. The incident is continued in his own words, to the effect that he "finally purchased a bit of pasteboard that once had been white, which I presented to the check-taker and received in return another of red.... My appearance in the amphitheatre of the house must have been astonishing. I was the very latest Villers-Cotterets fashion, but a revolution had taken place in Paris which had not yet reached my native place. My hair was long, and, being frizzled, it formed a gigantic aureole around my head. I was received with roars of laughter.... I dealt the foremost scoffer a vigorous slap in the face, and said, at the same time, 'My name is Alexandre Dumas. For to-morrow, I am staying at the Hôtel des Vieux-Augustins, and after that at No. 1 Place des Italiens.'" By some incomprehensible means Dumas was hustled out of the theatre and on to the sidewalk--for disturbing the performance, though the performance had not yet begun. He tried his luck again, however, and this time bought a place at two francs fifty centimes. Every visitor to Paris has recognized the preëminence of the "Opera" as a social institution. The National Opera, or the Théâtre Impérial de l'Opéra, as it was originally known, in the Rue Lepelletier, just off the Boulevard des Italiens, was the progenitor of the splendid establishment which now terminates the westerly end of the Avenue de l'Opera. The more ancient "Grand Opera" was uncontestably the most splendid, the most pompous, and the most influential of its contemporary institutions throughout Europe. The origin of the "Grand Opera" was as remote as the times of Anne of Austria, who, it will be recalled, had a most passionate regard for _musique_ and spectacle, and Mazarin caused to be brought from Italy musicians who represented before the queen "musical pieces" which proved highly successful. Later, in 1672, Louis XIV. accorded the privilege of the Opera to Lulli, a distinguished musician of Florence, and the theatre of the Palais Royal was ceded to the uses of Académie de Musique. After the fire of 1763, the Opera was transferred to the Tuileries, but removed again, because of another fire, to the Porte St. Martin, where it remained until 1794, when it was transferred to a new house which had been constructed for it in the Rue Richelieu. Again in 1820 it was removed to a new establishment, which had been erected on the site of the former Hôtel de Choiseul. This house had accommodations for but two thousand spectators, and, in spite of its sumptuousness and rank, was distinctly inferior in point of size to many opera-houses and theatres elsewhere. Up to this time the management had been governed after the manner of the old régime, "by three gentlemen of the king's own establishment, in concurrence with the services of a working director," and the royal privy purse was virtually responsible for the expenses. Louis-Philippe astutely shifted the responsibility to the public exchequer. In 1831, Dr. Louis Véron, the founder of the _Revue de Paris_,--since supplanted by the _Revue des Deux Mondes_,--became the manager and director. Doctor Véron has been called as much the quintessence of the life of Paris of the first half of the nineteenth century as was Napoleon I. of the history of France. Albert Vandam, the author of "An Englishman in Paris," significantly enough links Véron's name in his recollections with that of Dumas, except that he places Dumas first. "Robert le Diable" and Taglioni made Véron's success and his fortune, though he himself was a master of publicity. From 1831 onward, during Véron's incumbency, the newspapers contained column after column of the "puff personal," not only with respect to Véron himself, but down through the galaxy of singers and dancers to the veriest stage-carpenter, scenic artist, and call-boy. The modern managers have advanced somewhat upon these premature efforts; but then the art was in its infancy, and, as Véron himself was a journalist and newspaper proprietor, he probably well understood the gentle art of exchanging favouring puffs of one commodity for those of another. These were the days of the first successes of Meyerbeer, Halévy, Auber, and Duprez; of Taglioni, who danced herself into a nebula of glory, and later into a shadow which inspired the spiteful critics into condemnation of her waning power. It has been said that Marie Taglioni was by no means a good-looking woman. Indeed, she must have been decidedly plain. Her manners, too, were apparently not affable, and "her reception of Frenchmen was freezing to a degree--when she thawed it was to Russians, Englishmen, or Viennese." "One of her shoulders was higher than the other, she limped slightly, and, moreover, waddled like a duck." Clearly a stage setting was necessary to show off her charms. She was what the French call "_une pimbêche_." The architectural effect produced by the exterior of this forerunner of the present opera was by no means one of monumental splendour. Its architect, Debret, was scathingly criticized for its anomalies. A newspaper anecdote of the time recounts the circumstance of a provincial who, upon asking his way thither, was met with the direction, "That way--the first large gateway on your right." Near by was the establishment of the famous Italian _restaurateur_, Paolo Broggi, the resort of many singers, and the Estaminet du Divan, a sort of humble counterpart of the Café Riche or the Café des Anglais, but which proclaimed a much more literary atmosphere than many of the bigger establishments on the boulevards. Vandam relates of this house of call that "it is a positive fact that the _garçon_ would ask, 'Does monsieur desire Sue's or Dumas' _feuilleton_ with his _café_?'" Of the Opera which was burned in 1781, Dumas, in "The Queen's Necklace," has a chapter devoted to "Some Words about the Opera." It is an interesting, albeit a rather superfluous, interpolation in a romance of intrigue and adventure: "The Opera, that temple of pleasure at Paris, was burned in the month of June, 1781. Twenty persons had perished in the ruins; and, as it was the second time within eighteen years that this had happened, it created a prejudice against the place where it then stood, in the Palais Royal, and the king had ordered its removal to a less central spot. The place chosen was La Porte St. Martin. "The king, vexed to see Paris deprived for so long of its Opera, became as sorrowful as if the arrivals of grain had ceased, or bread had risen to more than seven sous the quartern loaf. It was melancholy to see the nobility, the army, and the citizens without their after-dinner amusement; and to see the promenades thronged with the unemployed divinities, from the chorus-singers to the prima donnas. "An architect was then introduced to the king, full of new plans, who promised so perfect a ventilation, that even in case of fire no one could be smothered. He would make eight doors for exit, besides five large windows placed so low that any one could jump out of them. In the place of the beautiful hall of Moreau he was to erect a building with ninety-six feet of frontage toward the boulevard, ornamented with eight caryatides on pillars forming three entrance-doors, a bas-relief above the capitals, and a gallery with three windows. The stage was to be thirty-six feet wide, the theatre seventy-two feet deep and eighty across, from one wall to the other. He asked only seventy-five days and nights before he opened it to the public. "This appeared to all a mere gasconade, and was much laughed at. The king, however, concluded the agreement with him. Lenoir set to work, and kept his word. But the public feared that a building so quickly erected could not be safe, and when it opened no one would go. "Even the few courageous ones who did go to the first representation of 'Adele de Ponthieu' made their wills first. The architect was in despair. He came to the king to consult him as to what was to be done. "It was just after the birth of the dauphin; all Paris was full of joy. The king advised him to announce a gratuitous performance in honour of the event, and give a ball after. Doubtless plenty would come, and if the theatre stood, its safety was established. "'Thanks, Sire,' said the architect. "'But reflect, first,' said the king, 'if there be a crowd, are you sure of your building?' "'Sire, I am sure, and shall go there myself.' "'I will go to the second representation,' said the king. "The architect followed this advice. They played 'Adele de Ponthieu' to three thousand spectators, who afterward danced. After this there could be no more fear." It was three years after that Madame and the cardinal went to the celebrated ball, the account of which follows in the subsequent chapter of the romance. Dumas as a dramatist was not so very different from Dumas the novelist. When he first came to Paris the French stage was by no means at a low and stagnant ebb--at least, it was not the thin, watery concoction that many English writers would have us believe; and, furthermore, the world's great dramatist--Shakespeare--had been and was still influencing and inspiring the French playwright and actor alike. It was the "Hamlet" of Ducis--a very French Hamlet, but still Hamlet--and the memory of an early interview with Talma that first set fire to the fuel of the stage-fever which afterward produced Dumas the dramatist. Dumas was not always truthful, or, at least, correct, in his facts, but he did not offend exceedingly, and he was plausible; as much so, at any rate, as Scott, who had erred to the extent of fifteen years in his account of the death of Amy Robsart. In 1824 was born Alexandre Dumas _fils_, and at this time the parent was collaborating with Soulié in an attempted, but unfinished, dramatization of Scott's "Old Mortality." By 1830, after he had left official work, Dumas had produced that drama of the Valois, "Henri III.," at the Théâtre Français, where more than a century before Voltaire had produced his first play, "Oedipe," and where the "Hernani" of Victor Hugo had just been produced. It was a splendid and gorgeous event, and the adventures of the Duchesse de Guise, St. Mégrin, Henri III. and his satellites proved to the large and distinguished audience present no inconspicuous element in the success of the future king of romance. It was a veritable triumph, and for the time the author was more talked of and better known than was Hugo, who had already entered the arena, but whose assured fame scarcely dates from before "Hernani," whose first presentation--though it was afterward performed over three hundred times in the same theatre--was in February of the same year. Voltaire had been dead scarce a half-century, but already the dust lay thick on his dramatic works, and the world of Paris was looking eagerly forward to the achievements of the new school. One cannot perhaps claim for Dumas that he was in direct lineage of Shakespeare,--as was claimed for Hugo, and with some merit,--but he was undoubtedly one of the first of the race of the popular French playwrights whose fame is perpetuated to-day by Sardou. At any rate, it was a classic struggle which was inaugurated in France--by literature and the drama--in the early half of the nineteenth century, and one which was a frank rebellion against the rigid rules by which their arts had been restrained--especially dramatic art. [Illustration: D'ARTAGNAN From the Dumas Statue by Gustave Doré] With all due credit, then, to Hugo, it was Dumas who led the romanticists through the breach that was slowly opening; though at the same time one may properly enough recall the names of Alfred de Musset, Theophile Gautier, and Gerard de Nerval. Dumas' next play was in "classical form"--"Christine." Mere chance brought Dumas into an acquaintance with the history of Christine of Sweden, and, though the play was written and accepted before "Henri III. et Sa Cour," it was not until some time later that it was produced at the Odéon; the recollection of which also brings up the name of Mlle. Mars. * * * * * The statue in Paris in the Place Malesherbes, erected to the memory of Dumas, has been highly commended in conception and execution. It was the work of Gustave Doré, and, truth to tell, it has some wonderfully effective sculptures in bronze. A group of three symbolical figures _en face_, and a lifelike and life-sized representation of the courageous D'Artagnan _d'arrière_. These details are charming when reproduced on paper by process of photography or the hand of an artist. Indeed, they are of much the same quality when viewed as details, but in the ensemble, combined with a cold, inartistic base or pedestal, which is crowned by a seated effigy of Dumas--also life-size--clad in the unlovely raiment of the latter nineteenth century, there is much to be desired. Statues, be they bronze or marble, are often artistically successful when their figures are covered with picturesque mediæval garments, but they are invariably a failure, in an artistic sense, when clothed in latter-day garb. Doublet and hose, and sword and cloak lend themselves unmistakably to artistic expression. Trousers and top-hats do not. Just back of the Place Malesherbes is the Avenue de Villiers--a street of fine houses, many of them studio apartments, of Paris's most famous artists. Here at No. 94 lived Alexandre Dumas during the later years of his life; so it is fitting that his monument should be placed in this vicinity. The house was afterward occupied by Dumas _fils_, and more lately by his widow, but now it has passed into other hands. Of interest to Americans is the fact which has been recorded by some one who was _au courant_ with Parisian affairs of the day, "that the United States Minister to France, Mr. John Bigelow, breakfasted with Dumas at St. Gratien, near Paris," when it came out that he (Dumas) had a notion to go out to America as a war correspondent for the French papers; the Civil War was not then over. Unhappily for all of us, he did not go, and so a truly great book was lost to the world. In this same connection it has been said that Dumas' "quadroon autographs" were sold in the United States, to provide additional funds for the widows and orphans of slain abolitionists. As it is apocryphally said that they sold for a matter of a hundred and twenty dollars each, the sum must have reached considerable proportions, if their number was great. CHAPTER VI. OLD PARIS The Paris of Dumas was Méryon's--though it is well on toward a half-century since either of them saw it. Hence it is no longer theirs; but the master romancer and the master etcher had much in common. They both drew with a fine, free hand, the one in words that burn themselves in the memory, and the other in lines which, once bitten on the copper plate, are come down to us in indelible fashion. The mention of Méryon and his art is no mere rambling of the pen. Like that of Dumas, his art depicted those bold, broad impressions which rebuilt "old Paris" in a manner which is only comparable to the background which Dumas gave to "Les Trois Mousquetaires." The iconoclastic Haussman caused much to disappear, and it is hard to trace the footsteps of many a character of history and romance, whose incomings and outgoings are otherwise very familiar to us. There are many distinct cities which go to make up Paris itself, each differing from the other, but Dumas and Méryon drew them each and all with unerring fidelity: Dumas the University Quarter and the faubourgs in "Les Trois Mousquetaires," and Méryon the Cité in "The Stryge." The sheer beauty and charm of old-world Paris was never more strongly suggested than in the work of these two masters, who have given a permanence to the abodes of history and romance which would otherwise have been wanting. It is a pleasurable occupation to hunt up the dwellings of those personages who may, or may not, have lived in the real flesh and blood. The mere fact that they lived in the pages of a Dumas--or for that matter of a Balzac or a Hugo--is excuse enough for most of us to seek to follow in their footsteps. In spite of the splendour of the present and the past, Paris is by no means too great to prevent one's tracing its old outlines, streets, and landmarks, even though they have disappeared to-day, and the site of the famous Hôtel Chevreuse or the Carmelite establishment in the Rue Vaugirard--against whose wall D'Artagnan and his fellows put up that gallant fight against the cardinal's guard--are in the same geographical positions that they always were, if their immediate surroundings have changed, as they assuredly have. Indeed, the sturdy wall which kept the Carmelite friars from contact with the outer world has become a mere hoarding for gaudily coloured posters, and the magnificent Hôtel Chevreuse on the Boulevard St. Germain has been incorporated into a modern apartment-house, and its garden cut through by the Boulevard Raspail. The destruction of "Old Paris"--the gabled, half-timbered, mediæval city--is not only an artistic regret, but a personal one to all who know intimately the city's history and romance. It was inevitable, of course, but it is deplorable. Méryon, too, like Dumas, etched details with a certain regard for effect rather than a colder preciseness, which could hardly mean so much as an impression of a mood. They both sought the picturesque element, and naturally imparted to everything modern with which they came into contact the same charm of reality which characterized the tangible results of their labours. Nothing was left to chance, though much may--we have reason to think--have been spontaneous. The witchery of a picturesque impression is ever great, but the frequency of its occurrence is growing less and less. To-day we have few romancers, few painters or etchers of fleeting moods or impressions, and are fast becoming schooled in the tenets of Zola and Baudry, to the glorification of realism, but to the death and deep burial of the far more healthy romanticism of the masters of a few generations since. * * * * * To the Roman occupation of Paris succeeded that of the Franks, and Clovis, son of Childérie and grandson of Merovée, after his conversion to Christianity at Reims, established the seat of his empire at Paris. Childebert, the descendant of Clovis,--who had taken unto himself the title King of Paris,--in 524 laid the foundation of the first Église de Notre Dame. The kings of the second race lived in Paris but little, and under the feeble successors of Charlemagne the city became the particular domain of the hereditary counts. In the year 845 the Normans came up the river by boat and razed all of that part known even to-day as La Cité, hence the extreme improbability of there being existing remains of an earlier date than this, which are to-day recognizable. After successive disasters and invasions, it became necessary that new _quartiers_ and new streets should be formed and populated, and under the reign of Louis VII. the walls were extended to include, on the right bank, Le Bourg l'Abbé, Le Bourg Thibourg, Le Beau-Bourg, Le Bourg St. Martin,--regions which have since been occupied by the Rues St. Martin, Beaubourg, Bourtebourg, and Bourg l'Abbé,--and, on the right bank, St. Germain des Prés, St. Victor, and St. Michel. Since this time Paris has been divided into three distinct parts: La Ville, to the north of the Seine, La Cité, in the centre, and L'Université, in the south. The second _enceinte_ did not long suffice to enclose the habitations of the people, and in the year 1190 Philippe-Auguste constructed the third wall, which was strengthened by five hundred towers and surrounded by a deep _fosse_, perpetuated to-day as the Rempart des Fosses. At this time the first attempts were made at paving the city streets, principally at the instigation of the wealthy Gérard de Poissy, whose name has since been given to an imposing street on the south bank. Again, in 1356, the famous Etienne Marcel commenced the work of the fourth _enceinte_. On the south, the walls were not greatly extended, but on the north they underwent a considerable aggrandizement. Fortified gateways were erected at the extremity of the Rue de St. Antoine, and others were known variously as the Porte du Temple and Porte St. Denis. Other chief features of the time--landmarks one may call them--were the Porte St. Honoré, which was connected with the river-bank by a prolonged wall, the Tour du Bois, and a new fortification--as a guardian against internal warfare, it would seem--at the upper end of the Ile de la Cité. Toward the end of the reign of Louis XI. the city had become repeopled, after many preceding years of flood, ravage, and famine, and contained, it is said, nearly three hundred thousand souls. From this reign, too, dates the establishment of the first printing-shop in Paris, the letter-post, and the _poste-chaise_. Charles VII., the son of Louis XI., united with the Bibliothèque Royal those of the Kings of Naples. Louis XII., who followed, did little to beautify the city, but his parental care for the inhabitants reduced the income of the tax-gatherer and endeared his name to all as the _Père du Peuple_. François I.--whose glorious name as the instigator of much that has since become national in French art--considerably enlarged the fortifications on the west, and executed the most momentous embellishments which had yet taken place in the city. In public edifices he employed, or caused his architects to employ, the Greek orders, and the paintings by Italian hands and the sculptures of Goujon were the highest expressions of the art of the Renaissance, which had grown so abundantly from the seed sown by Charles VIII. upon his return from his wanderings in Italy. It may be questioned if the art of the Renaissance is really beautiful; it is, however, undeniably effective in its luxuriant, if often ill-assorted, details; so why revile it here? It was the prime cause, more than all others put together, of the real adornment of Paris; and, in truth, was far more successful in the application of its principles here than elsewhere. During the reign of François I. were built, or rebuilt, the great Églises de St. Gervais, St. Germain l'Auxerrois, and St. Merry, as well as the Hôtel de Ville. The Louvre was reconstructed on a new plan, and the Faubourg St. Germain was laid out anew. Under Henri II. the work on the Louvre was completed, and the Hôpital des Petites Maisons constructed. It was Henri II., too, who first ordained that the effigies of the kings should be placed upon all coins. The principal edifices built under Charles IX. were the Palais des Tuileries, Hôtel de Soissons, the Jesuit College, and the Hôpital du St. Jacques du Haut Pas. Henri III. erected the church of the Jesuits in the Rue St. Antoine, the Église de St. Paul et St. Louis, the Monastère des Feuillants, the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and the Théâtre Italien. Under Henri IV. was achieved the Pont Neuf, whose centre piers just impinge upon the lower end of the Ile de la Cité; the Quais de l'Arsenal, de l'Horloge, des Orphelins, de l'Ecole, de la Mégisserie, de Conti, and des Augustins; la Place Dauphine, and the Rue Dauphine. The Place Royale came to replace--in the _Quartier du Marais_--the old Palais des Tournelles, the pleasure of so many kings, François I. in particular. Louis XIII., the feeble king who reigned without governing, saw many improvements, which, however, grew up in spite of the monarch rather than because of him. There was a general furbishing up of the streets and quais. Marie de Medicis built the Palais du Luxembourg and planted the Cours la Reine; many new bridges were constructed and new monuments set up, among others the Palais Royal, at this time called the Palais Cardinal; the Église St. Roch; the Oratoire; le Val-de-Grace; les Madelonnettes; la Salpêtrièré; the Sorbonne, and the Jardin des Plantes. Many public places were also decorated with statues: the effigy of Henri IV. was placed on the Pont Neuf, and of Louis XII. in the Place Royale. By this time the population had overflowed the walls of Philippe-Auguste, already enlarged by François I., and Louis XIV. overturned their towers and ramparts, and filled their _fosses_, believing that a strong community needed no such protections. These ancient fortifications were replaced by the boulevards which exist even unto to-day--not only in Paris, but in most French towns and cities--unequalled elsewhere in all the world. Up to the reign of Louis XIV. the population of Paris had, for the most part, been lodged in narrow, muddy streets, which had subjected them to many indescribable discomforts. Meanwhile, during the glorious reign of Louis XIV., Paris achieved great extension of area and splendour; many new streets were opened in the different _quartiers_, others were laid out anew or abolished altogether, more than thirty churches were built,--"all highly beautiful," say the guide-books. But they are not: Paris churches taken together are a decidedly mixed lot, some good in parts and yet execrable in other parts, and many even do not express any intimation whatever of good architectural forms. [Illustration: PONT NEUF.--PONT AU CHANGE] The Pont au Change was rebuilt, and yet four other bridges were made necessary to permit of better circulation between the various _faubourgs_ and _quartiers_. To the credit of Louis XIV. must also be put down the Hôtel des Invalides, the Observatoire, the magnificent colonnade of the Louvre, the Pont Royal, the Collège des Quatre Nations, the Bibliothèque Royale, numerous fountains and statues, the royal glass, porcelain, and tapestry manufactories, the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, and the Boulevards St. Denis and St. Martin. Saint Foix (in his "Essais sur Paris") has said that it was Louis XIV. who first gave to the reign of a French monarch the _éclat_ of grandeur and magnificence, not only for his court, but for his capital and his people. Under the succeeding reign of Louis XV. the beautifying of Paris took another flight. On the place which first bore the name of the monarch himself, but which is to-day known as the Place de la Concorde, were erected a pair of richly decorated monuments which quite rivalled in achievement the superb colonnaded Louvre of the previous reign, the Champs Elysées were replanted, the École Militaire, the École de Droit, and the Hôtel de la Monnaie were erected, and still other additional boulevards and magnificent streets were planned out. A new church came into being with St. Genevieve, which afterward became the Panthéon. The reign following saw the final achievement of all these splendid undertakings; then came the Revolution, that political terror which would have upset all established institutions; and if Paris, the city of splendid houses, did not become merely a cemetery of tombs, it was not because maniacal fanaticism and fury were lacking. Religious, civic, and military establishments were razed, demolished, or burnt, regardless of their past associations or present artistic worth. In a way, however, these sacrilegious demolitions gave cause to much energetic rebuilding and laying out of the old city anew, in the years immediately succeeding the period of the Revolution, which as an historical event has no place in this book other than mere mention, as it may have been referred to by Dumas. It was Napoleon who undertook the rehabilitation of Paris, with an energy and foresight only equalled by his prowess as a master of men. He occupied himself above all with what the French themselves would call those _monuments et decorations utiles_, as might be expected of his abilities as an organizer. The canal from the river Ourcq through La Villette to the Seine was, at the Fosses de la Bastille, cleared and emptied of its long stagnant waters; _abattoirs_ were constructed in convenient places, in order to do away with the vast herds of cattle which for centuries had been paraded through the most luxurious of the city's streets; new markets were opened, and numerous fountains and watering-troughs were erected in various parts of the city; four new and ornate bridges were thrown across the Seine, the magnificent Rues Castiglione and de la Paix, extending from the Tuileries to the interior boulevards, were opened up; the Place Vendome was then endowed with its bronze column, which stands to-day; the splendid and utile Rue de Rivoli was made beside the garden of the Tuileries (it has since been prolonged to the Hôtel de Ville). Napoleon also founded the Palais de la Bourse (1808), and caused to be erected a superb iron _grille_ which should separate the Place du Carrousel from the Tuileries. Under the Restoration little happened with regard to the beautifying and aggrandizing of the city, though certain improvements of a purely economic and social nature made their own way. The literature and art of Dumas and his compeers were making such sturdy progress as to give Paris that preëminence in these finer elements of life, which, before or since, has not been equalled elsewhere. Since the Revolution of 1830 have been completed the Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile (commenced by Napoleon I.), the Église de la Madeleine, the fine hotel of the Quai d'Orsay, the Palais des Beaux Arts, the restoration of the Chambre des Députés (the old Palais Bourbon), and the statues set up in the Place de la Concorde; though it is only since the ill-starred Franco-Prussian _affaire_ of 1871 that Strasbourg's doleful figure has been buried in jet and alabaster sentiments, so dear to the Frenchman of all ranks, as an outward expression of grief. At the commencement of the Second Empire the fortifications, as they then existed, possessed a circumference of something above thirty-three kilometres--approximately nineteen miles. The walls are astonishingly thick, and their _fossés_ wide and deep. The surrounding exterior forts "_de distance en distance_" are a unique feature of the general scheme of defence, and played, as it will be recalled, no unimportant part in the investiture of the city by the Germans in the seventies. A French writer of the early days of the last Empire says: "These new fortifications are in their ensemble a gigantic work." They are, indeed--though, in spite of their immensity, they do not impress the lay observer even as to impregnability as do the wonderful walls and ramparts of Carcassonne, or dead Aigues-Mortes in the Midi of France; those wonderful somnolent old cities of a glorious past, long since departed. The fortifications of Paris, however, are a wonderfully utile thing, and must ever have an unfathomable interest for all who have followed their evolution from the restricted battlements of the early Roman city. The Parisian has, perhaps, cause to regret that these turf-covered battlements somewhat restrict his "_promenades environnantes_," but what would you? Once outside, through any of the gateways, the Avenue de la Grande Armée,--which is the most splendid,--or the Porte du Canal de l'Ourcq,--which is the least luxurious, though by no means is it unpicturesque; indeed, it has more of that variable quality, perhaps, than any other,--one comes into the charm of the French countryside; that is, if he knows in which direction to turn. At any rate, he comes immediately into contact with a life which is quite different from any phase which is to be seen within the barrier. From the Revolution of 1848 to the first years of the Second Empire, which ought properly to be treated by itself,--and so shall be,--there came into being many and vast demolitions and improvements. Paris was a vast atelier of construction, where agile minds conceived, and the artisan and craftsman executed, monumental glories and improvements which can only be likened to the focusing of the image upon the ground glass. The prolongation of the Rue de Rivoli was put through; the Boulevards Sebastopol, Malesherbes,--where in the Place Malesherbes is that appealing monument to Dumas by Gustave Doré,--du Prince Eugène, St. Germain, Magenta, the Rue des Écoles, and many others. All of which tended to change the very face and features of the Paris the world had known hitherto. The "Caserne Napoleon" had received its guests, and the Tour St. Jacques, from which point of vantage the "clerk of the weather" to-day prognosticates for Paris, had been restored. Magnificent establishments of all sorts and ranks had been built, the Palais de l'Industrie (since razed) had opened its doors to the work of all nations, in the exhibition of 1855. Of Paris, one may well concentrate one's estimate in five words: "Each epoch has been rich," also prolific, in benefits, intentions, and creations of all manner of estimable and admirable achievements. By favour of these efforts of all the reigns and governments which have gone before, the Paris of to-day in its architectural glories, its monuments in stone, and the very atmosphere of its streets, places, and boulevards, is assuredly the most marvellous of all the cities of Europe. * * * * * It may not be an exceedingly pleasant subject, but there is, and always has been, a certain fascination about a visit to a cemetery which ranks, in the minds of many well-informed and refined persons, far above even the contemplation of great churches themselves. It may be a morbid taste, or it may not. Certainly there seems to be no reason why a considerable amount of really valuable facts might not be impressed upon the retina of a traveller who should do the round of _Campos Santos_, _Cimetières_ and burial-grounds in various lands. In this respect, as in many others, Paris leads the way for sheer interest in its tombs and sepulchres, at Montmartre and Père la Chaise. In no other burial-ground in the world--unless it be Mount Auburn, near Boston, where, if the world-wide name and fame of those there buried are not so great as those at Paris, their names are at least as much household words to English-speaking folk, as are those of the old-world resting-place to the French themselves--are to be found so many celebrated names. There are a quartette of these famous resting-places at Paris which, since the coming of the nineteenth century, have had an absorbing interest for the curiously inclined. Père la Chaise, Montmartre, the royal sepulchres in the old abbey church of St. Denis, and the churchyard of St. Innocents. "Man," said Sir Thomas Brown, "is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave." Why this should be so, it is not the province of this book to explain, nor even to justify the gorgeous and ill-mannered monuments which are often erected over his bones. [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF HENRY IV.] The catacombs of Paris are purposely ignored here, as appealing to a special variety of morbidity which is as unpleasant to deal with and to contemplate as are snakes preserved in spirit, and as would be--were we allowed to see them--the sacred human _reliques_ which are preserved, even to-day, at various pilgrims' shrines throughout the Christian world. That vast royal sepulchre of the abbey church of St. Denis, which had been so outrageously despoiled by the decree of the Convention in 1793, was in a measure set to rights by Louis XVIII., when he caused to be returned from the Petits Augustins, now the Palais des Beaux Arts, and elsewhere, such of the monuments as had not been actually destroyed. The actual spoliation of these shrines belongs to an earlier day than that of which this book deals. The history of it forms as lurid a chapter as any known to the records of riot and sacrilege in France; and the more the pity that the motion of Barrere ("_La main puissante de la République doit effacer inpitoyablement ces epitaphes_") to destroy these royal tombs should have had official endorsement. The details of these barbarous exhumations were curious, but not edifying; the corpse of Turenne was exhibited around the city; Henri IV.--"his features still being perfect"--was kicked and bunted about like a football; Louis XIV. was found in a perfect preservation, but entirely black; Louis VIII. had been sewed up in a leather sack; and François I. and his family "had become much decayed;" so, too, with many of the later Bourbons. In general these bodies were deposited in a common pit, which had been dug near the north entrance to the abbey, and thus, for the first time in the many centuries covered by the period of their respected demises, their dust was to mingle in a common blend, and all factions were to become one. Viollet-le-Duc, at the instruction of Napoleon III., set up again, following somewhat an approximation of the original plan, the various monuments which had been so thoroughly scattered, and which, since their return to the old abbey, had been herded together without a pretence at order in the crypt. Paris had for centuries been wretchedly supplied with _cimetières_. For long one only had existed, that of the churchyard of St. Innocents', originally a piece of the royal domain lying without the walls, and given by one of the French kings as a burial-place for the citizens, when interments within the city were forbidden. It has been calculated that from the time of Philippe-Auguste over a million bodies had been interred in these _fosses communes_. In 1785 the Council of State decreed that the cemetery should be cleared of its dead and converted into a market-place. Cleared it was not, but it has since become a market-place, and the waters of the Fontaine des Innocents filter briskly through the dust of the dead of ages. Sometime in the early part of the nineteenth century the funeral undertakings of Paris were conducted on a sliding scale of prices, ranging from four thousand francs in the first class, to as low as sixteen francs for the very poor; six classes in all. This law-ordered _tarif_ would seem to have been a good thing for posterity to have perpetuated. The artisan or craftsman who fashions the funeral monuments of Paris has a peculiar flight of fancy all his own; though, be it said, throughout the known world, funeral urns and monuments have seldom or never been beautiful, graceful, or even austere or dignified: they have, in fact, mostly been shocking travesties of the ideals and thoughts they should have represented. It is remarkable that the French architect and builder, who knows so well how to design and construct the habitation of living man, should express himself so badly in his bizarre funeral monuments and the tawdry tinsel wreaths and flowers of their decorations. An English visitor to Paris in the thirties deplored the fact that her cemeteries should be made into mere show-places, and perhaps rightly enough. At that time they served as a fashionable and polite avenue for promenades, and there was (perhaps even is to-day) a guide-book published of them, and, since grief is paradoxically and proverbially dry, there was always a battery of taverns and drinking-places flanking their entrances. It was observed by a writer in a Parisian journal of that day that "in the Cimetière du Montmartre--which was the deposit for the gay part of the city--nine tombs out of ten were to the memory of persons cut off in their youth; but that in Père la Chaise--which served principally for the sober citizens of Paris--nine out of ten recorded the ages of persons who had attained a good old age." CHAPTER VII. WAYS AND MEANS OF COMMUNICATION The means of communication in and about Paris in former days was but a travesty on the methods of the "Metropolitain," which in our time literally whisks one like the wings of the morning, from the Arc de Triomphe to the Bois de Vincennes, and from the Place de la Nation to the Trocadero. In 1850 there were officially enumerated over twenty-eight hundred boulevards, avenues, _rues_, and passages, the most lively being St. Honoré, Richelieu, Vivienne, Castiglione, de l'Université,--Dumas lived here at No. 25, in a house formerly occupied by Chateaubriand, now the Magazin St. Thomas,--de la Chaussée d'Antin, de la Paix, de Grenelle, de Bac, St. Denis, St. Martin, St. Antoine, and, above all, the Rue de Rivoli,--with a length of nearly three miles, distinguished at its westerly end by its great covered gallery, where the dwellings above are carried on a series of 287 arcades, flanked by _boutiques_, not very sumptuous to-day, to be sure, but even now a promenade of great popularity. At No. 22 Rue de Rivoli, near the Rue St. Roch, Dumas himself lived from 1838 to 1843. There were in those days more than a score of passages, being for the most part a series of fine galleries, in some instances taking the form of a rotunda, glass-covered, and surrounded by shops with _appartements_ above. The most notable were those known as the Panoramas Jouffroy, Vivienne, Colbert, de l'Opera, Delorme, du Saumon, etc. There were more than a hundred squares, or _places_--most of which remain to-day. The most famous on the right bank of the Seine are de la Concorde, Vendome, du Carrousel, du Palais Royal, des Victoires, du Châtelet, de l'Hôtel de Ville, Royale, des Vosges, and de la Bastille; on the left bank, du Panthéon, de St. Sulpice, du Palais Bourbon. Most of these radiating centres of life are found in Dumas' pages, the most frequent mention being in the D'Artagnan and Valois romances. Among the most beautiful and the most frequented thoroughfares were--and are--the tree-bordered quais, and, of course, the boulevards. The interior boulevards were laid out at the end of the seventeenth century on the ancient ramparts of the city, and extended from the Madeleine to La Bastille, a distance of perhaps three miles. They are mostly of a width of thirty-two metres (105 feet). This was the boulevard of the time _par excellence_, and its tree-bordered _allées_--sidewalks and roadways--bore, throughout its comparatively short length, eleven different names, often changing meanwhile as it progressed its physiognomy as well. On the left bank, the interior boulevard was extended from the Jardin des Plantes to the Hôtel des Invalides; while the "_boulevards extérieurs_" formed a second belt of tree-shaded thoroughfares of great extent. Yet other boulevards of ranking greatness cut the _rues_ and avenues tangently, now from one bank and then from the other; the most splendid of all being the Avenue de l'Opéra, which, however, did not come into being until well after the middle of the century. Among these are best recalled Sébastopol, St. Germain, St. Martin, Magenta, Malesherbes, and others. The Place Malesherbes, which intersects the avenue, now contains the celebrated Dumas memorial by Doré, and the neighbouring thoroughfare was the residence of Dumas from 1866 to 1870. Yet another class of thoroughfares, while conceived previous to the chronological limits which the title puts upon this book, were the vast and splendid promenades and rendezvous, with their trees, flowers, and fountains; such as the gardens of the Tuileries and the Luxembourg, the Champs Elysées, the Esplanade des Invalides, and the Bois de Boulogne and de Vincennes. Dibdin tells of his _entrée_ into Paris in the early days of the nineteenth century, having journeyed by "_malle-poste_" from Havre, in the pages of his memorable bibliographical tour. His observations somewhat antedate the Paris of Dumas and his fellows, but changes came but slowly, and therein may be found a wealth of archæological and topographical information concerning the French metropolis; though he does compare, detrimentally, the panorama of Paris which unrolls from the heights of Passy, to that of London from Highgate Woods. On the contrary, his impressions change after passing the barriers. "Nothing in London," says he, "can enter into comparison with the imposing spectacle which is presented by the magnificent Champs Elysées, with the Château of the Tuileries _en face_, and to the right the superb dome of the Invalides glistening in the rays of the setting sun." Paris had at this time 2,948 "_voitures de louage_," which could be hired for any journey to be made within reasonable distance; and eighty-three which were run only on predetermined routes, as were the later omnibuses and tram-cars. These 2,948 carriages were further classified as follows; 900 _fiacres_; 765 _cabriolets_, circulating in the twelve interior _arrondissements_; 406 _cabriolets_ for the exterior; 489 _carrosses de remise_ (livery-coaches), and 388 _cabriolets de remise_. The _préfet de police_, Count Anglès, had received from one Godot, an _entrepreneur_,--a sort of early edition of what we know to-day as a company promoter,--a proposition to establish a line of omnibuses along the quais and boulevards. Authorization for the scheme was withheld for the somewhat doubtful reason that "the constant stoppage of the vehicles to set down and take up passengers would greatly embarrass other traffic;" and so a new idea was still-born into the world, to come to life only in 1828, when another received the much coveted authority to make the experiment. Already such had been established in Bordeaux and Nantes, by an individual by the name of Baudry, and he it was who obtained the first concession in Paris. The first line inaugurated was divided into two sections: Rue de Lancry--Madeleine, and Rue de Lancry--Bastille. It is recorded that the young--but famous--Duchesse de Berry was the first to take passage in these "intramural _diligences_," which she called "_le carrosse des malheureux_;" perhaps with some truth, if something of snobbishness. There seems to have been a considerable difficulty in attracting a _clientèle_ to this new means of communication. The public hesitated, though the prices of the places were decided in their favour, so much so that the enterprise came to an untimely end, or, at least, its founder did; for he committed suicide because of the non-instantaneous success of the scheme. The concession thereupon passed into other hands, and there was created a new type of vehicle of sixteen places, drawn by two horses, and priced at six sous the place. The new service met with immediate, if but partial, success, and with the establishment of new routes, each served by carriages of a distinctive colour, its permanence was assured. Then came the "_Dames Blanches_,"--the name being inspired by Boieldieu's opera,--which made the journey between the Porte St. Martin and the Madeleine in a quarter of an hour. They were painted a cream white, and drawn by a pair of white horses, coiffed with white plumes. After the establishment of the omnibus came other series of vehicles for public service: the "_Ecossaises_," with their gaudily variegated colours, the "_Carolines_," the "_Bearnaises_," and the "_Tricycles_," which ran on three wheels in order to escape the wheel-tax which obtained at the time. In spite of the rapid multiplication of omnibus lines under Louis-Philippe, their veritable success came only with the ingenious system of transfers, or "_la correspondance_;" a system and a convenience whereby one can travel throughout Paris for the price of one fare. From this reason alone, perhaps, the omnibus and tram system of Paris is unexcelled in all the world. This innovation dates, moreover, from 1836, and, accordingly, is no new thing, as many may suppose. Finally, more recently,--though it was during the Second Empire,--the different lines were fused under the title of the "Compagnie Générale des Omnibus." "_La malle-poste_" was an institution of the greatest importance to Paris, though of course no more identified with it than with the other cities of France between which it ran. It dated actually from the period of the Revolution, and grew, and was modified, under the Restoration. It is said that its final development came during the reign of Louis XVIII., and grew out of his admiration for the "_élégance et la rapidité des malles anglaises_," which had been duly impressed upon him during his sojourn in England. This may be so, and doubtless with some justification. _En passant_ it is curious to know, and, one may say, incredible to realize, that from the G. P. O. in London, in this year of enlightenment, there leaves each night various mail-coaches--for Dover, for Windsor, and perhaps elsewhere. They do not carry passengers, but they do give a very bad service in the delivery of certain classes of mail matter. The marvel is that such things are acknowledged as being fitting and proper to-day. In 1836 the "_malle-poste_" was reckoned, in Paris, as being _élégante et rapide_, having a speed of not less than sixteen kilometres an hour over give-and-take roads. Each evening, from the courtyard of the Hôtel des Postes, the coaches left, with galloping horses and heavy loads, for the most extreme points of the frontier; eighty-six hours to Bordeaux at first, and finally only forty-four (in 1837); one hundred hours to Marseilles, later but sixty-eight. [Illustration: GRAND BUREAU DE LA POSTE] Stendhal tells of his journey by "_malle-poste_" from Paris to Marseilles in three days, and Victor Hugo has said that two nights on the road gave one a high idea of the _solidité_ of the human machine; and further says, of a journey down the Loire, that he recalled only a great tower at Orleans, a candlelit _salle_ of an _auberge en route_, and, at Blois, a bridge with a cross upon it. "In reality, during the journey, animation was suspended." What we knew, or our forefathers knew, as the "_poste-chaise_," properly "_chaise de poste_," came in under the Restoration. All the world knows, or should know, Edouard Thierry's picturesque description of it. "_Le rêve de nos vingt ans, la voiture où l'on n'est que deux ... devant vous le chemin libre, la plaine, la pente rapide, le pont._" "You traverse cities and hamlets without number, by the _grands rues_, the _grande place_, etc." In April, 1837, Stendhal quitted Paris under exactly these conditions for his tour of France. He bought "_une bonne calèche_," and left _via_ Fontainebleau, Montargis, and Cosne. Two months after, however, he returned to the metropolis _via_ Bourges, having refused to continue his journey _en calèche_, preferring the "_malle-poste_" and the _diligence_ of his youth. Public _diligences_, however, had but limited accommodation on grand occasions; Victor Hugo, who had been invited to the consecration of Charles X. at Reims, and his friend, Charles Nodier, the bibliophile,--also a friend of Dumas, it is recalled,--in company with two others, made the attempt amid much discomfort in a private carriage,--of a sort,--and Nodier wittily tells of how he and Hugo walked on foot up all the hills, each carrying his gripsack as well. More than all others the "Coches d'Eau" are especially characteristic of Paris; those fly-boats, whose successors ply up and down the Seine, to the joy of Americans, the convenience of the Parisian public, and--it is surely allowable to say it--the disgust of Londoners, now that their aged and decrepit "Thames steamboats" are no more. These early Parisian "Coches d'Eau" carried passengers up and down river for surprisingly low fares, and left the city at seven in the morning in summer, and eight in winter. The following is a list of the most important routes: Paris--Nogent-sur-Seine 2 days en route Paris--Briare 3 " " " Paris--Montereau 1 " " " Paris--Sens 2 " " " Paris--Auxerre 4 " " " All of these services catered for passengers and goods, and were, if not rapid, certainly a popular and comfortable means of communication. An even more popular journey, and one which partook more particularly of a pleasure-trip, was that of the _galiote_, which left each day from below the Pont-Royal for St. Cloud, giving a day's outing by river which to-day, even, is the most fascinating of the many _petits voyages_ to be undertaken around Paris. The other recognized public means of communication between the metropolis and the provincial towns and cities were the "Messageries Royales," and two other similar companies, "La Compagne Lafitte et Caillard" and "Les Françaises." These companies put also before the Parisian public two other classes of vehicular accommodation, the "_pataches suspendues_," small carriages with but one horse, which ran between Paris and Strasburg, Metz, Nancy, and Lyons at the price of ten sous per hour. Again there was another means of travel which originated in Paris; it was known as the "Messageries à Cheval." Travellers rode _on_ horses, which were furnished by the company, their _bagages_ being transported in advance by a "_chariot_." In fine weather this must certainly have been an agreeable and romantic mode of travel in those days; what would be thought of it to-day, when one, if he does not fly over the kilometres in a Sud--or Orient--Express, is as likely as not covering the _Route Nationale_ at sixty or more kilometres the hour in an automobile, it is doubtful to say. Finally came the famous _diligence_, which to-day, outside the "Rollo" books and the reprints of old-time travel literature, is seldom met with in print. "These immense structures," says an observant French writer, "which lost sometimes their centre of gravity, in spite of all precaution and care on the part of the driver and the guard, were, by an _Ordonnance Royale_ of the 16th of July, 1828, limited as to their dimensions, weight, and design." Each _diligence_ carried as many spare parts as does a modern automobile, and workshops and supply-depots were situated at equal distances along the routes. Hugo said that the complexity of it all represented to him "the perfect image of a nation; its constitution and its government. In the _diligence_ was to be found, as in the state, the aristocracy in the coupé, the _bourgeoisie_ in the interior, the people in _la rotonde_, and, finally, 'the artists, the thinkers, and the unclassed' in the utmost height, the _impériale_, beside the _conducteur_, who represented the law of the state. "This great _diligence_, with its body painted in staring yellow, and its five horses, carries one in a diminutive space through all the sleeping villages and hamlets of the countryside." From Paris, in 1830, the journey by _diligence_ to Toulouse--182 French leagues--took eight days; to Rouen, thirteen hours; to Lyons, _par_ Auxerre, four days, and to Calais, two and a half days. The _diligence_ was certainly an energetic mode of travel, but not without its discomforts, particularly in bad weather. Prosper Merimée gave up his winter journey overland to Madrid in 1859, and took ship at Bordeaux for Alicante in Spain, because, as he says, "all the inside places had been taken for a month ahead." The coming of the _chemin de fer_ can hardly be dealt with here. Its advent is comparatively modern history, and is familiar to all. Paris, as might naturally be supposed, was the hub from which radiated the great spokes of iron which bound the uttermost frontiers intimately with the capital. There were three short lines of rail laid down in the provinces before Paris itself took up with the innovation: at Roanne, St. Etienne-Andrézieux, Epinac, and Alais. By _la loi du 9 Juillet_, 1835, a line was built from Paris to St. Germain, seventeen kilometres, and its official opening for traffic, which took place two years later, was celebrated by a _déjeuner de circonstance_ at the Restaurant du Pavillon Henri Quatre at St. Germain. Then came "Le Nord" to Lille, Boulogne, and Calais; "L'Ouest" to Havre, Rouen, Cherbourg, and Brest; "L'Est" to Toul and Nancy; "L'Orleans" to Orleans and the Loire Valley; and, finally, the "P. L. M." (Paris-Lyon et Méditerranée) to the south of France. "Then it was that Paris really became the rich neighbour of all the provincial towns and cities. Before, she had been a sort of pompous and distant relative"--as a whimsical Frenchman has put it. The mutability of time and the advent of mechanical traction is fast changing all things--in France and elsewhere. The Chevaux Blancs, Deux Pigeons, Cloches d'Or, and the Hôtels de la Poste, de la Croix, and du Grand Cerf are fast disappearing from the large towns, and the way of iron is, or will be, a source of inspiration to the poets of the future, as has the _postillon_, the _diligence_, and the _chaise de poste_ in the past. Here is a quatrain written by a despairing _aubergiste_ of the little town of Salons, which indicates how the innovation was received by the provincials--in spite of its undeniable serviceability: "En l'an neuf cent, machine lourde A tretous farfit damne et mal, Gens moult rioient d'icelle bourde, Au campas renovoient cheval." The railways which centre upon Paris are indeed the ties that bind Paris to the rest of France, and vice versa. Their termini--the great _gares_--are at all times the very concentrated epitome of the life of the day. The new _gares_ of the P. L. M. and the Orleans railways are truly splendid and palatial establishments, with--at first glance--little of the odour of the railway about them, and much of the ceremonial appointments of a great civic institution; with gorgeous _salles à manger_, waiting-rooms, and--bearing the P. L. M. in mind in particular--not a little of the aspect of an art-gallery. The other _embarcadères_ are less up-to-date--that vague term which we twentieth-century folk are wont to make use of in describing the latest innovations. The Gare St. Lazare is an enormous establishment, with a hotel appendage, which of itself is of great size; the Gare du Nord is equally imposing, but architecturally unbeautiful; while the Gare de l'Est still holds in its tympanum the melancholy symbolical figure of the late lamented Ville de Strasbourg, the companion in tears, one may say, of that other funereally decorated statue on the Place de la Concorde. Paris, too, is well served by her tramways propelled by horses,--which have not yet wholly disappeared,--and by steam and electricity, applied in a most ingenious manner. By this means Paris has indeed been transformed from its interior thoroughfares to its uttermost _banlieu_. The last two words on the subject have reference to the advent and development of the bicycle and the automobile, as swift, safe, and economical means of transport. The reign of the bicycle as a pure fad was comparatively short, whatever may have been its charm of infatuation. As a utile thing it is perhaps more worthy of consideration, for it cannot be denied that its development--and of its later gigantic offspring, the automobile--has had a great deal to do with the better construction and up-keep of modern roadways, whether urban or suburban. "_La petite reine bicyclette_" has been fêted in light verse many times, but no one seems to have hit off its salient features as did Charles Monselet. Others have referred to riders of the "new means of locomotion" as "cads on casters," and a writer in _Le Gaulois_ stigmatized them as "_imbéciles à roulettes_," which is much the same; while no less a personage than Francisque Sarcey demanded, in the journal _La France_, that the police should suppress forthwith this _eccentricité_. Charles Monselet's eight short lines are more appreciative: "Instrument raide En fer battu Qui dépossède Le char torlu; Vélocipède Rail impromptu, Fils d'Archimède, D'où nous viens-tu?" Though it is apart from the era of Dumas, this discursion into a phase of present-day Paris is, perhaps, allowable in drawing a comparison between the city of to-day and that even of the Second Empire, which was, at its height, contemporary with Dumas' prime. If Paris was blooming suddenly forth into beauty and grace in the period which extended from the Revolution to the Franco-Prussian War, she has certainly, since that time, not ceased to shed her radiance; indeed, she flowers more abundantly than ever, though, truth to tell, it is all due to the patronage which the state has ever given, in France, to the fostering of the arts as well as industries. And so Paris has grown,--beautiful and great,--and the stranger within her gates, whether he come by road or rail, by automobile or railway-coach, is sure to be duly impressed with the fact that Paris is for one and all alike a city founded of and for the people. CHAPTER VIII. THE BANKS OF THE SEINE The city of the ancient Parisii is the one particular spot throughout the length of the sea-green Seine--that "winding river" whose name, says Thierry, in his "Histoire des Gaulois," is derived from a Celtic word having this signification--where is resuscitated the historical being of the entire French nation. Here it circles around the Ile St. Louis, cutting it apart from the Ile de la Cité, and rushing up against the northern bank, periodically throws up a mass of gravelly sand, just in the precise spot where, in mediæval times, was an open market-place. Here the inhabitants of the city met the country dealers, who landed produce from their boats, traded, purchased, and sold, and departed whence they came, into the regions of the upper Seine or the Marne, or downward to the lower river cities of Meulan, Mantes, and Vernon. At this time Paris began rapidly to grow on each side of the stream, and became the great market or trading-place where the swains who lived up-river mingled with the hewers of wood from the forests of La Brie and the reapers of corn from the sunny plains of La Beauce. These country folk, it would appear, preferred the northern part of Paris to the southern--it was less ceremonious, less ecclesiastical. If they approached the city from rearward of the Université, by the Orleans highroad, they paid exorbitant toll to the Abbot of St. Germain des Prés. Here they paid considerably less to the Prévôt of Paris. And thus from very early times the distinction was made, and grew with advancing years, between the town, or La Ville, which distinguished it from the Cité and the Université. This sandy river-bank gradually evolved itself into the Quai and Place de la Grève,--its etymology will not be difficult to trace,--and endured in the full liberty of its olden functions as late as the day of Louis XV. Here might have been seen great stacks of firewood, charcoal, corn, wine, hay, and straw. [Illustration: THE ODÉON IN 1818] Aside from its artistic and economic value, the Seine plays no great part in the story of Paris. It does not divide what is glorious from what is sordid, as does "London's river." When one crosses any one of its numerous bridges, one does not exchange thriftiness and sublimity for the commonplace. Les Invalides, L'Institut, the Luxembourg, the Panthéon, the Odéon, the Université,--whose buildings cluster around the ancient Sorbonne,--the Hôtel de Cluny, and the churches of St. Sulpice, St. Etienne du Mont, and St. Severin, and, last but not least, the Chamber of Deputies, all are on the south side of Paris, and do not shrink greatly in artistic or historical importance from Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Tour St. Jacques, the Place de la Bastille, the Palais Royal, or the Théâtre-Français. The greatest function of the Seine, when one tries to focus the memory on its past, is to recall to us that old Paris was a trinity. Born of the river itself rose the Cité, the home of the Church and state, scarce finding room for her palaces and churches, while close to her side, on the south bank, the Université spread herself out, and on the right bank the Ville hummed with trade and became the home of the great municipal institutions. Dumas shifts the scenes of his Parisian romances first from one side to the other, but always his mediæval Paris is the same grand, luxurious, and lively stage setting. Certainly no historian could hope to have done better. Intrigue, riot, and bloodshed of course there were; and perhaps it may be thought in undue proportions. But did not the history of Paris itself furnish the romancer with these very essential details? At all events, there is no great sordidness or squalor perpetuated in Dumas' pages. Perhaps it is for this reason that they prove so readable, and their wearing qualities so great. There is in the reminiscence of history and the present aspect of the Seine, throughout its length, the material for the constructing a volume of bulk which should not lack either variety, picturesqueness, or interest. It furthermore is a subject which seems to have been shamefully neglected by writers of all ranks. Turner, of the brilliant palette, pictured many of its scenes, and his touring-companion wrote a more or less imaginative and wofully incorrect running commentary on the itinerary of the journey, as he did also of their descent of the Loire. Philip Gilbert Hamerton, accompanied by a series of charming pictures by Joseph Pennell (the first really artistic topographical illustrations ever put into the pages of a book), did the same for the Saône; and, of course, the Thames has been "done" by many writers of all shades of ability, but manifestly the Seine, along whose banks lie the scenes of some of the most historic and momentous events of mediæval times, has been sadly neglected. Paris is divided into practically two equal parts by the swift-flowing current of the Seine, which winds its way in sundry convolutions from its source beyond Chatillon-sur-Seine to the sea at Honfleur. The praises of the winding river which connects Havre, Rouen, Vernon, Mantes, and Paris has often been sung, but the brief, virile description of it in the eighty-seventh chapter of Dumas' "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne" has scarcely been equalled. Apropos of the journey of Madame and Buckingham Paris-ward, after having taken leave of the English fleet at Havre, Dumas says of this greatest of French waterways: "The weather was fine. Spring cast its flowers and its perfumed foliage upon the path. Normandy, with its vast variety of vegetation, its blue sky, and silver rivers, displayed itself in all its loveliness." * * * * * Through Paris its direction is from the southeast to the northwest, a distance, within the fortifications, of perhaps twelve kilometres. Two islands of size cut its currents: the Ile St. Louis and the Ile de la Cité. A description of its banks, taken from a French work of the time, better defines its aspect immediately after the Revolution of 1848 than any amount of conjecture or present-day observation, so it is here given: "In its course through the metropolis, the Seine is bordered by a series of magnificent quais, which in turn are bordered by rows of sturdy trees. "The most attractive of these quais are those which flank the Louvre, the Tuileries, D'Orsay, Voltaire, and Conti. "Below the quais are deposed nine ports, or _gares_, each devoted to a special class of merchandise, as coal, wine, produce, timber, etc. "The north and south portions of the city are connected by twenty-six _ponts_ (this was in 1852; others have since been erected, which are mentioned elsewhere in the book). "Coming from the upper river, they were known as follows: the Ponts Napoléon, de Bercy, d'Austerlitz, the Passerelle de l'Estacade; then, on the right branch of the river, around the islands, the Ponts Maril, Louis-Philippe, d'Arcole, Notre Dame, and the Pont au Change; on the left branch, the Passerelle St. Louis or Constantine, the Ponts Tournelle, de la Cité, de l'Archevêche, le Pont aux Doubles, le Petit Pont, and the Pont St. Michel; here the two branches join again: le Pont Neuf, des Arts, du Carrousel, Royal, Solferino, de la Concorde, des Invalides, de l'Alma, de Jena, and Grenelle. "Near the Pont d'Austerlitz the Seine receives the waters of the petite Rivière de Bièvre, or des Gobelins, which traverses the faubourgs." Of the bridges of Paris, Dumas in his romances has not a little to say. It were not possible for a romanticist--or a realist, for that matter--to write of Paris and not be continually confronting his characters with one or another of the many splendid bridges which cross the Seine between Conflans-Charenton and Asnières. In the "Mousquetaires" series, in the Valois romances, and in his later works of lesser import, mention of these fine old bridges continually recurs; more than all others the Pont Neuf, perhaps, or the Pont au Change. In "Pauline" there is a charming touch which we may take to smack somewhat of the author's own predilections and experiences. He says, concerning his embarkation upon a craft which he had hired at a little Norman fishing-village, as one jobs a carriage in Paris: "I set up to be a sailor, and served apprenticeship on a craft between the Pont des Tuileries and the Pont de la Concorde." Of the Seine bridges none is more historic than the Pont Neuf, usually reckoned as one of the finest in Europe; which recalls the fact that the French--ecclesiastic and laymen architects alike--were master bridge-builders. For proof of this one has only to recall the wonderful bridge of St. Bénezet d'Avignon, the fortified bridges of Orthos and Cahors, the bridge at Lyons, built by the Primate of Gaul himself, and many others throughout the length and breadth of France. The Pont Neuf was commenced in the reign of Henri III. (1578), and finished in the reign of Henri IV. (1604), and is composed of two unequal parts, which come to their juncture at the extremity of the Ile de la Cité. In the early years a great bronze horse, known familiarly as the "Cheval de Bronze," but without a rider, was placed upon this bridge. During the Revolution, when cannon and ammunition were made out of any metal which could be obtained, this curious statue disappeared, though later its pedestal was replaced--under the Bourbons--by an equestrian statue of the Huguenot king. The Pont des Arts, while not usually accredited as a beautiful structure,--and certainly not comparable with many other of its fellows,--is interesting by reason of the fact that its nine iron arches, which led from the Quai du Louvre to the Quai de la Monnai, formed the first example of an iron bridge ever constructed in France. Its nomenclature is derived from the Louvre, which was then called--before the title was applied to the Collège des Quatre Nations--the Palais des Arts. In Restoration times it was one of the fashionable promenades of Paris. The Pont au Change took its name from the _changeurs_, or money-brokers, who lived upon it during the reign of Louis le Jeune in 1141. It bridged the widest part of the Seine, and, after being destroyed by flood and fire in 1408, 1616, and 1621, was rebuilt in 1647. The houses which originally covered it were removed in 1788 by the order of Louis XVI. In "The Conspirators," Dumas places the opening scene at that end of the Pont Neuf which abuts on the Quai de l'École, and is precise enough, but in "Marguerite de Valois" he evidently confounds the Pont Neuf with the Pont au Change, when he puts into the mouth of Coconnas, the Piedmontese: "They who rob on the Pont Neuf are, then, like you, in the service of the king. _Mordi!_ I have been very unjust, sir; for until now I had taken them for thieves." The Pont Louis XV. was built in 1787 out of part of the material which was taken from the ruins of the Bastille. Latterly there has sprung up the new Pont Alexandre, commemorative of the Czar's visit to Paris, which for magnificent proportions, beauty of design and arrangement, quite overtops any other of its kind, in Paris or elsewhere. The quais which line the Seine as it runs through Paris are like no other quais in the known world. They are the very essence and epitome of certain phases of life which find no counterpart elsewhere. The following description of a bibliomaniac from Dumas' "Mémoires" is unique and apropos: "Bibliomaniac, evolved from _book_ and _mania_, is a variety of the species man--_species bipes et genus homo_. "This animal has two feet and is without features, and usually wanders about the quais and boulevards, stopping in front of every stall and fingering all the books. He is generally dressed in a coat which is too long and trousers which are too short, his shoes are always down at heel, and on his head is an ill-shapen hat. One of the signs by which he may be recognized is shown by the fact that he never washes his hands." The booksellers' stalls of the quais of Paris are famous, though it is doubtful if genuine bargains exist there in great numbers. It is significant, however, that more volumes of Dumas' romances are offered for sale--so it seems to the passer-by--than of any other author. The Seine opposite the Louvre, and, indeed, throughout the length of its flow through Paris, enters largely into the scheme of the romances, where scenes are laid in the metropolis. Like the throng which stormed the walls of the Louvre on the night of the 18th of August, 1527, during that splendid royal fête, the account of which opens the pages of "Marguerite de Valois," the Seine itself resembles Dumas' description of the midnight crowd, which he likens to "a dark and rolling sea, each swell of which increases to a foaming wave; this sea, extending all along the quai, spent its waves at the base of the Louvre, on the one hand, and against the Hôtel de Bourbon, which was opposite, on the other." In the chapter entitled "What Happened on the Night of the Twelfth of July," in "The Taking of the Bastille," Dumas writes of the banks of the Seine in this wise: "Once upon the quai, the two countrymen saw glittering on the bridge near the Tuileries the arms of another body of men, which, in all probability, was not a body of friends; they silently glided to the end of the quai, and descended the bank which leads along the Seine. The clock of the Tuileries was just then striking eleven. "When they had got beneath the trees which line the banks of the river, fine aspen-trees and poplars, which bathe their feet in its current, when they were lost to the sight of their pursuers, hid by their friendly foliage, the farmers and Pitou threw themselves on the grass and opened a council of war." Just previously the mob had battered down the gate of the Tuileries, as a means of escape from the pen in which the dragoons had crowded the populace. "'Tell me now, Father Billot,' inquired Pitou, after having carried the timber some thirty yards, 'are we going far in this way?' "'We are going as far as the gate of the Tuileries.' "'Ho, ho!' cried the crowd, who at once divined his intention. "And it made way for them more eagerly even than before. "Pitou looked about him, and saw that the gate was not more than thirty paces distant from them. "'I can reach it,' said he, with the brevity of a Pythagorean. "The labour was so much the easier to Pitou from five or six of the strongest of the crowd taking their share of the burden. "The result of this was a very notable acceleration in their progress. "In five minutes they had reached the iron gates. "'Come, now,' cried Billot, 'clap your shoulders to it, and all push together.' "'Good!' said Pitou. 'I understand now. We have just made a warlike engine; the Romans used to call it a ram.' "'Now, my boys,' cried Billot, 'once, twice, thrice,' and the joist, directed with a furious impetus, struck the lock of the gate with resounding violence. "The soldiers who were on guard in the interior of the garden hastened to resist this invasion. But at the third stroke the gate gave way, turning violently on its hinges, and through that gaping and gloomy mouth the crowd rushed impetuously. "From the movement that was then made, the Prince de Lambesq perceived at once that an opening had been effected which allowed the escape of those whom he had considered his prisoners. He was furious with disappointment." CHAPTER IX. THE SECOND EMPIRE AND AFTER The Revolution of 1848 narrowed itself down to the issue of Bourbonism or Bonapartism. Nobody had a good word to say for the constitution, and all parties took liberties with it. It was inaugurated as the most democratic of all possible charters. It gave a vote to everybody, women and children excepted. It affirmed liberty with so wide a latitude of interpretation as to leave nothing to be desired by the reddest Republican that ever wore pistols in his belt at the heels of the redoubtable M. Marc Caussidière, or expressed faith in the social Utopia of the enthusiastic M. Proudhon. Freedom to speak, to write, to assemble, and to vote,--all were secured to all Frenchmen by this marvellous charter. When it became the law of the land, everybody began to nibble at and destroy it. The right of speaking was speedily reduced to the narrowest limits, and the liberty of the press was pared down to the merest shred. The right of meeting was placed at the tender mercies of the prefect of police, and the right of voting was attacked with even more zeal and fervour. The Revolution proved more voracious than Saturn himself, in devouring its children, and it made short work of men and reputations. It reduced MM. de Lamartine, Armand Marrast, and General Cavaignac into nothingness; sent MM. Louis Blanc, Ledru Rollin, and Caussidière into the dreary exile of London, and consigned the fiery Barbés, the vindictive Blanqui, the impatient Raspail, and a host of other regenerators of the human race, to the fastnesses of Vincennes. Having done this, the Revolution left scarcely a vestige of the constitution,--nothing but a few crumbs, and those were not crumbs of comfort, which remained merely to prove to the incredulous that such a thing as the constitution once existed. The former king and queen took hidden refuge in a small cottage at Honfleur, whence they were to depart a few days later for England--ever a refuge for exiled monarchists. Escape became very urgent, and the king, with an English passport in the name of William Smith, and the queen as Madame Lebrun, crossed over to Le Havre and ultimately to England. Lamartine evidently mistakes even the time and place of this incident, but newspaper accounts of the time, both French and English, are very full as to the details. On landing at the quai at Le Havre, the ex-royal party was conducted to the "Express" steam-packet, which had been placed at their disposal for the cross-channel journey. Dumas takes the very incident as a detail for his story of "Pauline," and his treatment thereof does not differ greatly from the facts as above set forth. Two years later (August 26, 1850), at Claremont, in Surrey, in the presence of the queen and several members of his family, Louis-Philippe died. He was the last of the Bourbons, with whom Dumas proudly claimed acquaintanceship, and as such, only a short time before, was one of the mightiest of the world's monarchs, standing on one of the loftiest pinnacles of an ambition which, in the mind of a stronger or more wilful personality, might have accomplished with success much that with him resulted in defeat. After the maelstrom of discontent--the Revolution of 1848--had settled down, there came a series of events well-nigh as disturbing. Events in Paris were rapidly ripening for a change. The known determination of Louis Napoleon to prolong his power, either as president for another term of four years, or for life, or as consul or emperor of the French, and the support which his pretensions received from large masses of the people and from the rank and file of the army, had brought him into collision with a rival--General Changarnier--almost as powerful as himself, and with an ambition quite as daring as his own. What Louis Napoleon wanted was evident. There was no secret about his designs. The partisans of Henri V. looked to Changarnier for the restoration of peace and legitimacy, and the Orleanists considered that he was the most likely man in France to bring back the house of Orleans, and the comfortable days of bribery, corruption, and a thriving trade; while the fat _bourgeoisie_ venerated him as the unflinching foe of the disturbers of order, and the great bulwark against Communism and the Red Republic. Still, this was manifestly not to be, though no one seemed to care a straw about Louis Napoleon's republic, or whether or no he dared to declare himself king or emperor, or whether they should be ruled by Bonapartist, Bourbon, or Orleanist. These were truly perilous times for France; and, though they did not culminate in disaster until twenty years after, Louis Napoleon availed himself of every opportunity to efface from the Second Republic, of which he was at this time the head, every vestige of the democratic features which it ought to have borne. At the same time he surrounded himself with imposing state and pomp, so regal in character that it was evidently intended to accustom the public to see in him the object of that homage which is usually reserved for crowned heads alone, and thus gradually and imperceptibly to prepare the nation to witness, without surprise, his assuming, when the favourable occasion offered, the purple and diadem of the empire. For instance, he took up his residence in the ancient palace of the sovereigns of France, the Tuileries, and gave banquets and balls of regal magnificence; he ordered his effigy to be struck upon the coinage of the nation, surrounded by the words "Louis Napoleon Bonaparte," without any title, whether as president or otherwise, being affixed. He restored the imperial eagles to the standards of the army; the official organ, the _Moniteur_, recommended the restoration of the titles and orders of hereditary nobility; the trees of liberty were uprooted everywhere; the Republican motto, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," was erased from the public edifices; the colossal statue of Liberty, surmounted by a Phrygian cap, which stood in the centre of the Place de Bourgogne, behind the Legislative Assembly, was demolished; and the old anti-Republican names of the streets were restored, so that the Palais National again became the Palais Royal; the Théâtre de la Nation, the Théâtre Français; the Rue de la Concorde, the Rue Royal, etc.; and, in short, to all appearances, Louis Napoleon began early in his tenure of office to assiduously pave the way to the throne of the empire as Napoleon III. [Illustration: PALAIS ROYAL, STREET FRONT] The _London Times_ correspondent of that day related a characteristic exercise of this sweeping instruction of the Minister of the Interior to erase the words "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité" from all public buildings. (The three revolutionary watchwords had, in fact, been erased the previous year from the principal entrance to the Elysée, and the words "République Française," in large letters, were substituted.) "There is, I believe, only one public monument in Paris--the Ecole de Droit--where the workmen employed in effacing that inscription will have a double duty. They will have to interfere with the 'Liberalism' of two generations. Immediately under the coat of yellow paint which covered the façade of the building, and on which time and the inclemency of the seasons have done their work, may still be traced, above the modern device, the following words, inscribed by order of the Commune of Paris during the Reign of Terror: 'Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, Unité, Indivisibilité de la République Française!' As the effacing of the inscription of 1848 is not now by means of whitewash or paint, but by erasure, both the inscriptions will disappear at the same moment." Among the most important demolitions and renovations of the sixties was the work undertaken on the Louvre at the orders of the ambitious emperor, Napoleon III. The structure was cloven to the foundations, through the slated roof, the gilded and painted ceiling, the parqueted floors; and, where one formerly enjoyed an artistic feast that had taken four centuries to provide, one gazed upon, from the pavement to the roof, a tarpaulin that closed a vista which might otherwise have been a quarter of a mile in length. Builders toiled day and night to connect the Louvre with the main body of the Palace of the Tuileries, which itself was to disappear within so short a time. Meanwhile so great a displacement of the art treasures was undergone, that _habitués_ knew not which way to turn for favourite pictures, with which the last fifty years had made them so familiar. To those of our elders who knew the Paris of the early fifties, the present-day aspect--in spite of all its glorious wealth of boulevards and architectural splendour--will suggest the mutability of all things. It serves our purpose, however, to realize that much of the character has gone from the Quartier Latin; that the Tuileries disappeared with the Commune, and that the old distinctions between Old Paris, the faubourgs, and the Communal Annexes, have become practically non-existent with the opening up of the Haussman boulevards, at the instigation of the wary Napoleon III. Paris is still, however, an "_ancienne ville et une ville neuve_," and the paradox is inexplicable. The differences between the past and the present are indeed great, but nowhere--not even in the Tower of London, which is usually given as an example of the contrast and progress of the ages--is a more tangible and specific opposition shown, than in what remains to-day of mediæval Paris, in juxtaposition with the later architectural embellishments. In many instances is seen the newest of the "_art nouveau_"--as it is popularly known--cheek by jowl with some mediæval shrine. It is difficult at this time to say what effect these swirls and blobs, which are daily thrusting themselves into every form of architectural display throughout Continental Europe, would have had on these masters who built the Gothic splendours of France, or even the hybrid _rococo_ style, which, be it not denied, is in many instances beautiful in spite of its idiosyncrasies. * * * * * To those who are familiar with the "sights" of Paris, there is nothing left but to study the aspects of the life of the streets, the boulevards, the quais, the gardens, the restaurants, and the cafés. Here at least is to be found daily, and hourly, new sensations and old ones, but at all events it is an ever-shifting scene, such as no other city in the world knows. The life of the _faubourgs_ and of the _quartiers_ has ever been made the special province of artists and authors, and to wander through them, to sit beneath the trees of the squares and gardens, or even outside a café, is to contemplate, in no small degree, much of the incident and temperament of life which others have already perpetuated and made famous. There is little new or original effort which can be made, though once and again a new performer comes upon the stage,--a poet who sings songs of vagabondage, a painter who catches a fleeting impression, which at least, if not new, seems new. But in the main one has to hark back to former generations, if one would feel the real spirit of romance and tradition. There are few who, like Monet, can stop before a shrine and see in it forty-three varying moods--or some other incredible number, as did that artist when he limned his impressions of the façade of the Cathedral of Nôtre Dame de Rouen. Such landmarks as the Place de la Bastille, the Pantheon,--anciently the site of the Abbey de Ste. Geneviève,--the Chambre des Députés,--the former Palais Bourbon,--the Tour St. Jacques, the Fountain des Innocents, St. Germain l'Auxerrois, the Palais du Luxembourg, the Louvre, and quite all the historic and notable buildings one sees, are all pictured with fidelity, and more or less minuteness, in the pages of Dumas' romances. Again, in such other localities as the Boulevard des Italiens, the Café de Paris, the Théâtre Français, the Odêon, the Palais Royal,--where, in the "Orleans Bureau," Dumas found his first occupation in Paris,--took place many incidents of Dumas' life, which are of personal import. For recollections and reminders of the author's contemporaries, there are countless other localities too numerous to mention. In the Rue Pigalle, at No. 12, died Eugene Scribe; in the Rue de Douai lived Edmond About, while in the Rue d'Amsterdam, at No. 77, lived Dumas himself, and in the Rue St. Lazare, Madame George Sand. Montmartre is sacred to the name of Zola in the minds of most readers of latter-day French fiction, while many more famous names of all ranks, of litterateurs, of actors, of artists and statesmen,--all contemporaries and many of them friends of Dumas,--will be found on the tombstones of Père la Chaise. The motive, then, to be deduced from these pages is that they are a record of many things associated with Alexandre Dumas, his life, and his work. Equally so is a fleeting itinerary of strolls around and about the Paris of Dumas' romances, with occasional journeys into the provinces. [Illustration: 77 Rue d'Amsterdam] [Illustration: Rue de St. Denis] Thus the centuries have done their work of extending and mingling,--"_le jeu est fait_," so to speak,--but Paris, by the necessities of her growth and by her rather general devotion to one stately, towering form of domestic architecture, has often made the separation of old from new peculiarly difficult to a casual eye. It is indeed her way to be new and splendid, to be always the bride of cities, espousing human destiny. And, truly, it is in this character that we do her homage with our visits, our money, and our admiration. Out of gray, unwieldy, distributed London one flies from a vast and romantic camp to a city exact and beautiful. So exact, so beautiful, so consistent in her vivacity, so neat in her industry, so splendid in her display, that one comes to think that the ultimate way to enjoy Paris is to pass unquestioning and unsolicitous into her life, exclaiming not "Look here," and "Look there" in a fever of sightseeing, but rather baring one's breast, like Daudet's _ouvrier_, to her assaults of glistening life. * * * * * The Paris of to-day is a reconstructed Paris; its old splendours not wholly eradicated, but changed in all but their associations. The life of Paris, too, has undergone a similar evolution, from what it was even in Dumas' time. The celebrities of the Café de Paris have mostly, if not quite all, passed away. No more does the eccentric Prince Demidoff promulgate his eccentricities into the very faces of the onlookers; no more does the great Dumas make omelettes in golden sugar-bowls; and no more does he pass his criticisms--or was it encomiums?--on the _veau sauté_. The student revels of the _quartier_ have become more sedate, if not more fastidious, and there is no such Mardi Gras and Mi-Carême festivities as used to hold forth on the boulevards in the forties. And on the Buttes Chaumont and Montmartre are found batteries of questionable amusements,--especially got up for the delectation of _les Anglais_, provincials, and soldiers off duty,--in place of the _cabarets_, which, if of doubtful morality, were at least a certain social factor. New bridges span the Seine, and new thoroughfares, from humble alleys to lordly and magnificent boulevards, have clarified many a slum, and brightened and sweetened the atmosphere; so there is some considerable gain there. The Parisian cabby is, as he always was, a devil-may-care sort of a fellow, who would as soon run you down with his sorry old outfit as not; but perhaps even his characteristics will change sooner or later, now that the automobile is upon us in all its proclaimed perfection. The "New Opera," that sumptuous structure which bears the inscription "Académie Nationale de Musique," begun by Garnier in 1861, and completed a dozen years later, is, in its commanding situation and splendid appointments, the peer of any other in the world. In spite of this, its fame will hardly rival that of the Comédie Française, or even the Opéra Comique of former days, and the names of latter-day stars will have difficulty in competing with those of Rachel, Talma, and their fellow actors on the stage of other days. Whom, if you please, have we to-day whose name and fame is as wide as those just mentioned? None, save Madame Bernhardt, who suggests to the well-informed person--who is a very considerable body--the preëminent influences which formerly emanated from Paris in the fifties. But this of itself is a subject too vast for inclusion here, and it were better passed by. So, too, with the Parisian artists who made the art of the world in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Decamps, Delacroix, Corot, and Vernet are names with which to conjure up reminiscences as great as those of Rubens, Titian, and Van Dyke. This may be disputed, but, if one were given the same familiarity therewith, it is possible that one's contrary opinion would be greatly modified. To-day, in addition to the glorious art collection of former times, there are the splendid, though ever shifting, collections of the Musée du Luxembourg, the mural paintings of the Hôtel de Ville, which are a gallery in themselves, and the two spring Salon exhibitions, to say nothing of the newly attempted Salon d'Automne. Curiously enough, some of us find great pleasure in the contemplation of the decorations in the interiors of the great _gares_ of the Lyons or the Orleans railways. Certainly these last examples of applied art are of a lavishness--and even excellence--which a former generation would not have thought of. The Arc de Triomphe d'Étoile, of course, remains as it always has since its erection at the instigation of Napoleon I.; while the Bois de Boulogne came into existence as a municipal pleasure-ground only in the early fifties, and has since endured as the great open-air attraction of Paris for those who did not wish to go farther afield. The churches have not changed greatly in all this time, except that they had some narrow escapes during the Franco-Prussian War, and still narrower ones during the Commune. It may be remarked here _en passant_ that, for the first time in seventy years, so say the records, there has just been taken down the scaffolding which, in one part or another, has surrounded the church of St. Eustache. Here, then, is something tangible which has not changed until recently (March, 1904), since the days when Dumas first came to Paris. The Paris of the nineteenth century is, as might naturally be inferred, that of which the most is known; the eighteenth and seventeenth are indeed difficult to follow with accuracy as to the exact locale of their events; but the sixteenth looms up--curiously enough--more plainly than either of the two centuries which followed. The histories, and even the guide-books, will explain why this is so, so it shall have no place here. Order, of a sort, immediately came forth from out the chaos of the Revolution. The great Napoleon began the process, and, in a way, it was continued by the plebeian Louis-Philippe, elaborated in the Second Empire, and perfected--if a great capital such as Paris ever really is perfected--under the Third Republic. Improvement and demolition--which is not always improvement--still go on, and such of Old Paris as is not preserved by special effort is fast falling before the stride of progress. A body was organized in 1897, under the name of the "_Commission du Vieux Paris_," which is expected to do much good work in the preservation of the chronicles in stone of days long past. The very streets are noisy with the echo of an unpeaceful past; and their frequent and unexpected turnings, even in these modern days, are suggestive of their history in a most graphic manner. The square in front of the Fontaine des Innocents is but an ancient burial-ground; before the Hôtel de Ville came Etienne Marcel; and Charlemagne to the cathedral; the Place de la Concorde was the death-bed of the Girondins, and the Place de la Madeleine the tomb of the Capetians; and thus it is that Paris--as does no other city--mingles its centuries of strife amid a life which is known as the most vigorous and varied of its age. To enter here into a detailed comparison between the charm of Paris of to-day and yesterday would indeed be a work of supererogation; and only in so far as it bears directly upon the scenes and incidents amid which Dumas lived is it so made. CHAPTER X. LA VILLE It would be impossible to form a precise topographical itinerary of the scenes of Dumas' romances and the wanderings of his characters, even in Paris itself. The area is so very wide, and the number of localities, which have more than an incidental interest, so very great, that the futility of such a task will at once be apparent. Probably the most prominent of all the romances, so far as identifying the scenes of their action goes, are the Valois series. As we know, Dumas was very fond of the romantic house of Valois, and, whether in town or country, he seemed to take an especial pride in presenting details of portraiture and place in a surprisingly complete, though not superfluous, manner. The Louvre has the most intimate connection with both the Valois and the D'Artagnan romances, and is treated elsewhere as a chapter by itself. Dumas' most marked reference to the Hôtel de Ville is found in the taking of the Bastille, and, though it is not so very great, he gives prominence to the incident of the deputation of the people who waited upon De Flesselles, the prévôt, just before the march upon the Bastille. In history we know the same individual as "Messire Jacques de Flesselles, Chevalier, Conseiller de la Grande Chambre, Maître Honoraire des Requêtes, Conseiller d'Etat." The anecdote is recorded in history, too, that Louis XVI., when he visited the Hôtel de Ville in 1789, was presented with a cockade of blue and red, the colours of the ville--the white was not added till some days later. _"Votre Majesté," dit le maire, "veut-elle accepte le signe distinctif des Français?"_ For reply the king took the cockade and put it on his chapeau, entered the _grande salle_, and took his place on the throne. All the broils and turmoils which have taken place since the great Revolution, have likewise had the Hôtel de Ville for the theatre where their first scenes were represented. It was invaded by the people during the Revolutions of 1830 and 1848, as well as in the Commune in 1871, when, in addition to the human fury, it was attacked by the flames, which finally brought about its destruction. Thus perished that noble structure, which owed its inception to that art-loving monarch, François I. [Illustration: PLACE DE LA GRÈVE] The present-day Quai de l'Hôtel de Ville is the successor of the Quai des Ormes, which dates from the fourteenth century, and the Quai de la Grève, which existed as early as 1254, and which descended by an easy slope to the strand from which it took its name. Adjoining the quai was the Place de la Grève, which approximates the present Place de l'Hôtel de Ville. A near neighbour of the Hôtel de Ville is the Tour de St. Jacques la Boucherie, where sits to-day Paris's clerk of the weather. It was here that Marguerite de Valois, in company with the Duchesse de Nevers, repaired from their pilgrimage to the Cimetière des Innocents, to view the results of the Huguenot massacre of the preceding night. "'And where are you two going?' inquired Catherine, the queen's mother. 'To see some rare and curious Greek books found at an old Protestant pastor's, and which have been taken to the Tour de St. Jacques la Boucherie,' replied the inquisitive and erudite Marguerite. For, be it recalled, her knowledge and liking of classical literature was most profound." This fine Gothic tower, which is still a notable landmark, is the only _relique_ of the Church of St. Jacques. A bull of Pope Calixtus II., dated 1119, first makes mention of it, and François I. made it a royal parish church. The tower itself was not built until 1508, having alone cost 1,350 livres. It has often been pictured and painted, and to-day it is a willing or unwilling sitter to most snap-shot camerists who come within focus of it, but no one has perceived the spirit of its genuine old-time flavour as did Méryon, in his wonderful etching--so sought for by collectors--called "Le Stryge." The artist's view-point, taken from the gallery of Nôtre Dame,--though in the early nineteenth century,--with the grotesque head and shoulders of one of those monstrous figures, half-man, half-beast, with which the galleries of Nôtre Dame are peopled, preserves, with its very simplicity and directness, an impression of _Vieux Paris_ which is impossible to duplicate to-day. The Place de la Grève was for a time, at least, the most famous or infamous of all the places of execution in Paris. One reads of it largely in "Marguerite de Valois" in this connection, and in "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne" it again crops up, but in a much more pleasant manner. [Illustration: TOUR DE ST. JACQUES LA BOUCHERIE (Méryon's Etching, "Le Stryge")] Dumas, ever praiseful of good wine and good food, describes Vatel, the _maître d'hôtel_ of Fouquet, as crossing the square with a hamper filled with bottles, which he had just purchased at the _cabaret_ of the sign of "L'Image de Nôtre Dame;" a queer name for a wine-shop, no doubt, and, though it does not exist to-day, and so cannot be authenticated, it may likely enough have had an existence outside the novelist's page. At all events, it is placed definitely enough, as one learns from the chapter of "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne," entitled "The Wine of M. de la Fontaine." "'What the devil are you doing here, Vatel?' said Fouquet. 'Are you buying wine at a _cabaret_ in the Place de Grève?'... 'I have found here, monsieur, a "_vin de Joigny_" which your friends like. This I know, as they come once a week to drink it at the "Image de Nôtre Dame."'" In the following chapter Dumas reverts to the inglorious aspect of the Place and the Quai de la Grève as follows: "At two o'clock the next day, fifty thousand spectators had taken their position upon the place, around two gibbets which had been elevated between the Quai de la Grève and Quai Pelletier; one close to the other, with their backs to the parapet of the river. In the morning, also, all the sworn criers of the good city of Paris had traversed the quarters of the city, particularly the Halles and the faubourgs, announcing with their hoarse and indefatigable voices the great justice done by the king upon two peculators; two thieves, devourers of the people. And these people, whose interests were so warmly looked after, in order not to fail in respect for their king, quitted shops, stalls, and ateliers, to go and evince a little gratitude to Louis XIV., absolutely like invited guests, who feared to commit an impoliteness in not repairing to the house of him who invited them. According to the tenor of the sentence, which the criers read loudly and badly, two farmers of the revenues, monopolists of money, dilapidators of the royal provisions, extortioners and forgers, were about to undergo capital punishment on the Place de Grève, with their names affixed over their heads, according to their sentence. As to those names, the sentence made no mention of them. The curiosity of the Parisians was at its height, and, as we have said, an immense crowd waited with feverish impatience the hour fixed for the execution." D'Artagnan, who, in the pages of "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne," was no more a young man, owned this very _cabaret_, the "Image de Nôtre Dame." "'I will go, then,' says he, 'to the "Image de Nôtre Dame," and drink a glass of Spanish wine with my tenant, which he cannot fail to offer me.'" _En route_ to the _cabaret_, D'Artagnan asked of his companion, "Is there a procession to-day?" "It is a hanging, monsieur." "What! a hanging on the Grève? The devil take the rogue who gets himself hung the day I go to take my rent," said D'Artagnan. The old _mousquetaire_ did not get his rent, there was riot and bloodshed galore, "L'Image de Nôtre Dame" was set on fire, and D'Artagnan had one more opportunity to cry out "_A moi, Mousquetaires_," and enter into a first-class fight; all, of course, on behalf of right and justice, for he saved two men, destined to be gibbeted, from the more frightful death of torture by fire, to which the fanatical crowd had condemned them. The most extensive reference to the Place de la Grève is undoubtedly in the "Forty-Five Guardsmen," where is described the execution of Salcède, the coiner of false money and the co-conspirator with the Guises. "M. Friard was right when he talked of one hundred thousand persons as the number of spectators who would meet on the Place de la Grève and its environs, to witness the execution of Salcède. All Paris appeared to have a rendezvous at the Hôtel de Ville; and Paris is very exact, and never misses a fête; and the death of a man is a fête, especially when he has raised so many passions that some curse and others bless him. "The spectators who succeeded in reaching the place saw the archers and a large number of Swiss and light horse surrounding a little scaffold raised about four feet from the ground. It was so low as to be visible only to those immediately surrounding it, or to those who had windows overlooking the place. Four vigorous white horses beat the ground impatiently with their hoofs, to the great terror of the women, who had either chosen this place willingly, or had been forcibly pushed there. "These horses were unused, and had never done more work than to support, by some chance, on their broad backs, the chubby children of the peasants. After the scaffold and the horses, what next attracted all looks was the principal window of the Hôtel de Ville, which was hung with red velvet and gold, and ornamented with the royal arms. This was for the king. Half-past one had just struck when this window was filled. First came Henri III., pale, almost bald, although he was at that time only thirty-five, and with a sombre expression, always a mystery to his subjects, who, when they saw him appear, never knew whether to say '_Vive le roi!_' or to pray for his soul. He was dressed in black, without jewels or orders, and a single diamond shone in his cap, serving as a fastening to three short plumes. He carried in his hand a little black dog that his sister-in-law, Marie Stuart, had sent him from her prison, and on which his fingers looked as white as alabaster. "Behind the king came Catherine de Medici, almost bowed by age, for she might be sixty-six or sixty-seven, but still carrying her head firm and erect, and darting bitter glances from under her thick eyebrows. At her side appeared the melancholy but sweet face of the queen, Louise de Touraine. Catherine came as a triumph, she as a punishment. Behind them came two handsome young men, brothers, the eldest of whom smiled with wonderful beauty, and the younger with great melancholy. The one was Anne, Duc de Joyeuse, and the other Henri de Joyeuse, Comte de Bouchage. The people had for these favourites of the king none of the hatred which they had felt toward Maugiron, Quelus, and Schomberg. "Henri saluted the people gravely; then, turning to the young men, he said, 'Anne, lean against the tapestry; it may last a long time.'... "Henri, in anger, gave the sign. It was repeated, the cords were refastened, four men jumped on the horses, which, urged by violent blows, started off in opposite directions. A horrible cracking and a terrible cry was heard. The blood was seen to spout from the limbs of the unhappy man, whose face was no longer that of a man, but of a demon. "'Ah, heaven!' he cried; 'I will speak, I will tell all. Ah! cursed duch--' "The voice had been heard above everything, but suddenly it ceased. "'Stop, stop,' cried Catherine, 'let him speak.' "But it was too late; the head of Salcède fell helplessly on one side, he glanced once more to where he had seen the page, and then expired." * * * * * Near the Hôtel de Ville is "Le Châtelet," a name familiar enough to travellers about Paris. It is an omnibus centre, a station on the new "Metropolitan," and its name has been given to one of the most modern theatres of Paris. Dumas, in "Le Collier de la Reine," makes but little use of the old Prison du Grand Châtelet, but he does not ignore it altogether, which seems to point to the fact that he has neglected very few historic buildings, or, for that matter, incidents of Paris in mediæval times, in compiling the famous D'Artagnan and Valois romances. The Place du Châtelet is one of the most celebrated and historic open spots of Paris. The old prison was on the site of an old Cæsarian forum. The prison was destroyed in 1806, but its history for seven centuries was one of the most dramatic. One may search for Planchet's shop, the "Pilon d'Or," of which Dumas writes in "The Vicomte de Bragelonne," in the Rue des Lombards of to-day, but he will not find it, though there are a dozen _boutiques_ in the little street which joins the present Rue St. Denis with the present Boulevard Sebastopol, which to all intents and purposes might as well have been the abode of D'Artagnan's old servitor. The Rue des Lombards, like Lombard Street in London, took its names from the original money-changers, who gathered here in great numbers in the twelfth century. Planchet's little shop was devoted to the sale of green groceries, with, presumably, a sprinkling of other attendant garnishings for the table. To-day, the most notable of the shops here, of a similar character, is the famous _magasin de confiserie_, "Au Fidèle Berger," for which Guilbert, the author of "Jeune Malade," made the original verses for the wrappers which covered the products of the house. A contemporary of the poet has said that the "_enveloppe était moins bonne que la marchandaise_." The reader may judge for himself. This is one of the verses: "Le soleil peut s'eteindre et le ciel s'obscurcir, J'ai vu ma Marita, je n'ai plus qu'à mourir." Every lover of Dumas' romances, and all who feel as though at one time or another they had been blessed with an intimate acquaintance with that "King of Cavaliers,"--D'Artagnan,--will have a fondness for the old narrow ways in the Rue d'Arbre Sec, which remains to-day much as it always was. It runs from the Quai de l'Hôtel de Ville,--once the unsavoury Quai de la Grève,--toward Les Halles; and throughout its length, which is not very great, it has that crazy, tumble-down appearance which comes, sooner or later, to most narrow thoroughfares of mediæval times. It is not so very picturesque nor so very tumble-down, it is simply wobbly. It is not, nor ever was, a pretentious thoroughfare, and, in short, is distinctly commonplace; but there is a little house, on the right-hand side, near the river, which will be famous as long as it stands, as the intimate scene of much of the minor action of "Marguerite de Valois," "Chicot the Jester," and others of the series. [Illustration: HÔTEL DES MOUSQUETAIRES, RUE D'ARBRE SEC] This _maison_ is rather better off than most of its neighbours, with its white-fronted lower stories, its little balcony over the Crémerie, which now occupies the ground-floor, and its escutcheon--a blazing sun--midway in its façade. Moreover it is still a lodging-house,--an humble hotel if you like,--at any rate something more than a mere house which offers "_logement à pied_." Indeed its enterprising proprietor has erected a staring blue and white enamel sign which advertises his house: HÔTEL DES MOUSQUETAIRES There is, perhaps, no harm in all this, as it would seem beyond all question to have some justification for its name, and it is above all something more tangible than the sites of many homes and haunts which may to-day be occupied with a modern _magasin_, _à tous génres_, or a great tourist caravanserai. This house bears the name of "Hôtel des Mousquetaires," as if it were really a lineal descendant of the "Hôtel de la Belle Etoile," of which Dumas writes. Probably it is not the same, and if it is, there is, likely enough, no significance between its present name and its former glory save that of perspicacity on the part of the present patron. From the romance one learns how Catherine de Medici sought to obtain that compromising note which was in possession of Orthon, the page. Dumas says of this horror-chamber of the Louvre: "Catherine now reached a second door, which, revolving on its hinges, admitted to the depths of the _oubliette_, where--crushed, bleeding, and mutilated, by a fall of more than one hundred feet--lay the still palpitating form of poor Orthon; while, on the other side of the wall forming the barrier of this dreadful spot, the waters of the Seine were heard to ripple by, brought by a species of subterraneous filtration to the foot of the staircase. "Having reached the damp and unwholesome abyss, which, during her reign, had witnessed numerous similar scenes to that now enacted, Catherine proceeded to search the corpse, eagerly drew forth the desired billet, ascertained by the lantern that it was the one she sought, then, pushing the mangled body from her, she pressed a spring, the bottom of the _oubliette_ sank down, and the corpse, borne by its own weight, disappeared toward the river. "Closing the door after her, she reascended; and, returning to her closet, read the paper poor Orthon had so valiantly defended. It was conceived in these words: "'This evening at ten o'clock, Rue de l'Arbre-Sec, Hôtel de la Belle Etoile. Should you come, no reply is requisite; if otherwise, send word back, _No_, by the bearer. "'DE MOUY DE SAINT-PHALE.' "At eight o'clock Henri of Navarre took two of his gentlemen, went out by the Porte St. Honoré, entered again by the Tour de Bois, crossed the Seine at the ferry of the Nesle, mounted the Rue St. Jacques, and there dismissed them, as if he were going to an amorous rendezvous. At the corner of the Rue des Mathurins he found a man on horseback, wrapped in a large cloak; he approached him. "'Mantes!' said the man. "'Pau!' replied the king. "The horseman instantly dismounted. Henri wrapped himself in his splashed mantle, sprang on his steed, rode down the Rue de la Harpe, crossed the Pont St. Michel, passed the Rue Barthelemy, crossed the river again on the Pont au Meunier, descended the quais, reached the Rue de l'Arbre-Sec, and knocked at Maître la Hurière's." The route is easily traced to-day, and at the end of it is the Hôtel des Mousquetaires, so it will not take much imagination to revivify the incident which Dumas conceived, though one may not get there that "good wine of Artois" which the innkeeper, La Hurière, served to Henri. The circumstance is recounted in "Marguerite de Valois," as follows: "'La Hurière, here is a gentleman wants you.' "La Hurière advanced, and looked at Henri; and, as his large cloak did not inspire him with very great veneration: "'Who are you?' asked he. "'Eh, _sang Dieu_!' returned Henri, pointing to La Mole. 'I am, as the gentleman told you, a Gascon gentleman come to court.' "'What do you want?' "'A room and supper.' "'I do not let a room to any one, unless he has a lackey.' "'Oh, but I will pay you a rose noble for your room and supper.' "'You are very generous, worthy sir,' said La Hurière, with some distrust. "'No; but expecting to sup here, I invited a friend of mine to meet me. Have you any good wine of Artois?' "'I have as good as the King of Navarre drinks.' "'Ah, good!'" The Rue de l'Arbre-Sec is of itself historic, though it was baptized as l'Arbre-Sel. Two legends of more than ordinary interest are connected with this once important though unimposing street. The first applies to its early nomenclature, and is to the effect that in the thirteenth century it contained an oak-tree, which, in the snows of winter, always remained free of the white blanket which otherwise covered everything around about. For this reason the tree was said to be so full of salt that the snow that fell upon it melted immediately, and the name was created for the thoroughfare, which then first rose to the dignity of a recognized _rue_. The second legend in a similar way accounts for the change of name to _arbre-sec_. At a certain rainy period, when the pavements and the walls of the houses were "_ruisselants d'eau_," the same tree remained absolutely dry. It is curious, too, to note that the Rue de l'Arbre-Sec is identified with a certain personage who lived in Mazarin's time, by the name of Mathieu Mollé, whose fame as the first president of the _Parlement_ is preserved in the neighbouring Rue Mathieu Mollé. It was in the hotel of "La Belle Etoile" that Dumas ensconced his character De la Mole--showing once again that Dumas dealt with very real characters. Opposite the colonnade of the Louvre is the Église St. Germain l'Auxerrois. From this church--founded by Childebert in 606--rang out the tocsin which was the signal for that infamous massacre of the Protestants in the time of Charles IX. In "Marguerite de Valois" Dumas has vividly described the event; not, perhaps, without certain embroidered embellishment, but, nevertheless, with a graphicness which the dry-as-dust historian of fact could hardly hope to equal. This cruel inspiration of Catherine de Medici's is recorded by Dumas thus: "'Hush!' said La Hurière. "'What is it?' inquired Coconnas and Maurevel together. "They heard the first stroke of the bell of St. Germain de l'Auxerrois vibrate. "'The signal!' exclaimed Maurevel. 'The time is put ahead, for it was agreed for midnight. So much the better. When it is the interest of God and the king, it is better that the clock should be put forward than backward.' And the sinister sound of the church-bell was distinctly heard. Then a shot was fired, and, in an instant, the light of several flambeaux blazed up like flashes of lightning in the Rue de l'Arbre-Sec." There is much more of moment that happened before and afterward "on this bloody ground;" all of which is fully recounted by the historians. * * * * * At No. 7 Rue du Helder, just off the Boulevard des Italiens, in a region so well known to Dumas and his associates, lived De Franchi, the hero of the "Corsican Brothers." The _locale_ and the action of that rapid review of emotions to which Dumas gave the name of the "Corsican Brothers" ("Les Frères du Corse"), was not of the mean or sordid order, but rather of the well-to-do, a sort of semi-luxuriousness of the middle-class life of the time. The scene of the novelette bears the date of 1841, and Paris, especially in many of what are known as the newer parts, has changed but little since. A new shop-front here and there, the addition of a huge gilt sign, of which the proprietors of Parisian establishments are so fond, somewhat changes the outside aspect of things, but, on the whole, the _locale_ often remains much as it was before, and, in this case, with but scarce three-quarters of a century past, the view down the Rue du Helder from its junction with Rue Taitbout differs little. "Hôtel Picardie," in the Rue Tiquetonne,--still to be seen,--may or may not be the "La Chevrette" of "Twenty Years After," to which D'Artagnan repaired in the later years of his life. D'Artagnan's residence in the Rue Tiquetonne has, in the minds of many, made the street famous. It was famous, though, even before it was popularized by Dumas, and now that we are not able even to place the inn where D'Artagnan lived after he had retired from active service--it is still famous. At No. 12 and 16 are two grand habitations of former times. The former served as a residence to Henri de Talleyrand, who died in 1626, and later to the Marquis de Mauge, then to Daubonne, a _tapissier_, much in the favour of Louis XIII. The other is known as the "Hôtel d'Artagnan," but it is difficult to trace its evolution from the comfortable inn of which Dumas wrote. [Illustration: D'ARTAGNAN'S LODGINGS, RUE TIQUETONNE] At No. 23 is about the only _relique_ left which bespeaks the gallant days of D'Artagnan and his fellows. It is a square tower of five _étages_, and, from the character of its architecture, we know it to be of the fourteenth or fifteenth century. It is known as the "Tour de Jean-sans-Peur." Jean-sans-Peur was the grandfather of Charles-le-Téméraire. Monstrelet has said that it was built to contain a strong chamber, in which its owner might sleep safely at night. It formed originally a part of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, but to-day, though but partially disengaged from the neighbouring houses, it is evidently the only member of the original establishment which remains. Not far from the precincts of the Louvre was the Rue de la Martellerie, where lived Marie Touchet. The portraiture of Dumas forms a wonderfully complete list of the royalties and nobilities of France. Both the D'Artagnan gallery and the Valois series literally reek with the names of celebrated personages, and this, too, in the mere romances, for it must be remembered that, in spite of his reputation as a romancist, Dumas' historical sketches and travels were both numerous and of great extent. One significant portrait, though it is not one of noble birth, is that of Marie Touchet, extracted from "Marguerite de Valois," and reprinted here. "When Charles IX. and Henri of Navarre visited the Rue de la Martellerie, it was to see the celebrated Marie, who, though 'only a poor, simple girl,' as she referred to herself, was the Eve of Charles' paradise. 'Your Eden, Sire,' said the gallant Henri. "'Dearest Marie,' said Charles, 'I have brought you another king happier than myself, for he has no crown; more unhappy than me, for he has no Marie Touchet.' "'Sire, it is, then, the King of Navarre?' "'It is, love.' "Henri went toward her, and Charles took his right hand. "'Look at this hand, Marie,' said he; 'it is the hand of a good brother and a loyal friend; and but for this hand--' "'Well, Sire!' "'But for this hand, this day, Marie, our boy had been fatherless.' "Marie uttered a cry, seized Henri's hand, and kissed it. "The king went to the bed where the child was still asleep. "'Eh!' said he, 'if this stout boy slept in the Louvre, instead of sleeping in this small house, he would change the aspect of things at present, and perhaps for the future.' "'Sire,' said Marie, 'without offence to your Majesty, I prefer his sleeping here; he sleeps better.'" This illustrates only one phase of Dumas' power of portraiture, based on historical fact, of course, and casting no new light on matters which are otherwise well known, but still a very fresh and vivifying method of projecting the features of those famous in the history of France, and a method, perhaps, which will serve to impress them upon the reader in a more nearly indelible fashion than any other. "It was this child of Marie Touchet and Charles IX. who afterward was the famous Duke d'Angoulême, who died in 1650; and, had he been legitimate, would have taken precedence of Henri III., Henri IV., Louis XIII., Louis XIV., etc., and altered the whole line of the royal succession of France." It was a pleasurable visit for all three, that of which Dumas writes. Charles, Henri, and Marie supped together, and the accomplished Prince of Béarn made the famous anagram from the letters of the lady's name, "_Je charme tout_," which Charles declared he would present to her worked in diamonds, and that it should be her motto. History does not state that he did so, but no doubt that was a detail which the chroniclers have overlooked, or, of course, it may have been an interpolation of Dumas'. * * * * * Dumas' pen-pictures of the great Napoleon--whom he referred to as "The Ogre of Corsica"--will hardly please the great Corsican's admirers, though it is in no manner contemptuous. The following is from "The Count of Monte Cristo": "'Monsieur,' said the baron to the count, 'all the servants of his Majesty must approve of the latest intelligence which we have from the island of Elba. Bonaparte--' M. Dandré looked at Louis XVIII., who, employed in writing a note, did not even raise his head. 'Bonaparte,' continued the baron, 'is mortally wearied, and passes whole days in watching his miners at work at Porto-Longone.' "'And scratches himself for amusement,' added the king. "'Scratches himself?' inquired the count. 'What does your Majesty mean?' "'Yes, indeed, my dear count. Did you forget that this great man, this hero, this demigod, is attacked with a malady of the skin which worries him to death, _prurigo_?' "'And, moreover, M. le Comte,' continued the minister of police, 'we are almost assured that, in a very short time, the usurper will be insane.' "'Insane?' "'Insane to a degree; his head becomes weaker. Sometimes he weeps bitterly, sometimes laughs boisterously; at other times he passes hours on the seashore, flinging stones in the water, and when the flint makes "ducks and drakes" five or six times, he appears as delighted as if he had gained another Marengo or Austerlitz. Now, you must agree these are indubitable symptoms of weakness?' "'Or of wisdom, M. le Baron--or of wisdom,' said Louis XVIII., laughing; 'the greatest captains of antiquity recreated themselves with casting pebbles into the ocean--see Plutarch's life of Scipio Africanus.'" Again, from the same work, the following estimate of Napoleon's position at Elba was, if not original, at least opinionated: "The emperor, now king of the petty isle of Elba, after having held sovereign sway over one-half of the world, counting us, his subjects, a small population of twenty millions,--after having been accustomed to hear the '_Vive Napoléons_' of at least six times that number of human beings, uttered in nearly every language of the globe,--was looked upon among the _haute société_ of Marseilles as a ruined man, separated for ever from any fresh connection with France or claim to her throne." * * * * * Firstly the Faubourg St. Denis is associated with Dumas' early life in Paris. He lived at No. 53 of the Rue du Faubourg St. Denis in 1824. When one walks past the Porte St. Denis and looks up at that seventeenth-century arch of triumph, built to commemorate the German victories of Louis Quatorze, one just misses the historical significance and architectural fitness of the arch. It is not merely an incident in the boulevard. It belongs not so much to the newer boulevard, as to the ancient Rue St. Denis, and it is only by proceeding some distance up this street, the ancient route of the pilgrims to the tomb of the saint, that the meaning of the Porte St. Denis can truly be appreciated. The arch may be heavy,--it has been described as hideous, and it truly is,--but seen in the Rue St. Denis, whose roadway passes under it, it forms a typical view even to-day of Old Paris, and of the Paris which entered so largely into Dumas' romances of the Louis. The more ancient Porte St. Denis, the gateway which lay between the faubourg, the plain, and the ville, performed a function quite different from that of the Renaissance gateway which exists to-day; in just what manner will be readily inferred when it is recalled that, with the Porte St. Antoine, the Porte St. Denis was the scene of much riot and bloodshed in the early history of Paris. [Illustration: 109 RUE DU FAUBOURG ST. DENIS (DÉSCAMPS' STUDIO)] There are no tram-cars or omnibuses passing through its arch, as through the Place du Carrousel, or the courtyards of the Louvre, to take away the sentiment of romance; though the traffic which swirls and eddies around its sturdy piers and walls is of a manifest up-to-date, twentieth-century variety. Through its great arch runs the Rue du Faubourg St. Denis, where, at No. 109, was the studio of Gabriel Déscamps, celebrated in "Capitaine Pamphile." * * * * * In "Marguerite de Valois" we have a graphic reference--though rather more sentimental than was the author's wont--to the Cimetière des Innocents: "On the day which succeeded that terrible massacre of St. Bartholomew's night, in 1572, a hawthorn-tree," said Dumas, and it is also recognized history, as well, "which had blossomed in the spring, and which, according to custom, had lost its odorous flower in the month of June, had strangely reblossomed during the night, and the Catholics, who saw in this even a miracle, and who by rendering this miracle popular made the Deity their accomplice, went in procession, cross and banner at their head, to the Cemetery of the Innocents, where this hawthorn was blooming." Amidst the cries of "_Vive le roi!_" "_Vive la messe!_" "_Mort aux Huguenots_," the accomplished Marguerite herself went to witness the phenomenon. "When they reached the top of the Rue des Prouvelles, they met some men who were dragging a carcass without any head. It was that of 'the admiral' (Coligny).... The men were going to hang it by the feet at Montfaucon...." "They entered the Cemetery of St. Innocents, and the clergy, forewarned of the visit of the king and the queen mother, awaited their Majesties to harangue them." The cemetery--or signs of it--have now disappeared, though the mortal victims of the massacre, and countless other souls besides, rest beneath the flagstones adjacent to Les Halles, the great market-house of Paris. The Fontaine des Innocents formerly marked the site, but now it is removed to the other side of Les Halles. This graceful Renaissance fountain was first erected in 1550, from designs of Pierre Lescot and Jean Goujon. It stood formerly before the Église des Innocents, which was demolished in 1783. The Fontaine des Innocents, in spite of its migrations, is a charming oasis of green trees and running water, in the midst of the rather encumbered market-square of Les Halles. Not that the region around about is at all unsavoury; far from it. There is débris of green vegetables and ripe fruits everywhere about, but it has not yet reached the unsavoury stage; before it does all will be swept away, and on the morrow the clamour and traffic will start fresh anew. The Place Royale, now called the Place des Vosges, is so largely identified with "La Comtesse de Charny" that no special mention can well be made of any action which here took place. At No. 21, now of course long since departed, lived "a gentleman entirely devoted to your Majesty," said Dumas, and the adventuress, Lady de Winter, whom D'Artagnan was wont to visit, was given domicile by Dumas at No. 6. Likely enough it was her true residence, though there is no opportunity of tracing it to-day, and one perforce must be satisfied with locating the houses of Madame de Sévigné and Victor Hugo, each of which bear tablets to that effect. The Place des Vosges is a charming square, reminiscent, in a way, of the courtyard of the Palais Royal, though lacking its splendour. The iron gateway to the central garden was a gift of Louis XIV., in 1685, when the square was known as the Place Royale. Richelieu caused to be set up here a magnificent equestrian statue of Louis XIII., which, however, was overturned in the Revolution, though it has since been replaced by another statue. The horse was the work of Ricciarelli de Volterre, a pupil of Michelangelo, and the figure was by Biard. The first great historical event held here was the _carrousel_ given in 1612, two years after the tragic death of Henri IV. at the hands of the assassin Ravaillac. It was a function of Marie de Medici's to celebrate the alliance of France and Spain. Under Richelieu, the place became a celebrated duelling-ground, the most famous duel being that between the Duc de Guise and Coligny _fils_, the son of the admiral. The Place Royale soon became the most fashionable _quartier_, the houses around about being greatly in demand of the _noblesse_. Among its illustrious inhabitants have been the Rohans, the D'Alégres, Corneille, Condé, St. Vincent de Paul, Molière, Turenne, Madame de Longueville, Cinq-Mars, and Richelieu. By _un arrêté_ of the 17th Ventose, year VII., it was declared that the name of the department which should pay the largest part of its contributions by the 20th Germinal would be given to that of the principal place or square of Paris. The Department of the Vosges was the first to pay up, and the Place Royale became the Place des Vosges. A great deal of the action of the D'Artagnan romances took place in the Place Royale, and in the neighbouring _quartiers_ of St. Antoine and La Bastille, the place being the scene of the notable reunion of the four gallants in "Vingt Ans Après." La Roquette, the prison, has disappeared, like the Bastille itself, but they are both perpetuated to-day, the former in the Rue Roquette, and the latter in the Place de la Bastille. Dumas does not project their horrors unduly, though the Bastille crops up in many of the chapters of the Valois romances, and one entire volume is devoted to "The Taking of the Bastille." D'Artagnan himself was doomed, by an order of arrest issued by Richelieu, to be incarcerated therein; but the gallant _mousquetaire_, by a subtle scheme, got hold of the warrant and made a present of it to the intriguing cardinal himself. The sombre and sinister guillotine, since become so famous, is made by Dumas subject of a weirdly fascinating chapter in "La Comtesse de Charny." Dumas' description is as follows: "When Guilbert got out of the carriage he saw that he was in the court of a prison, and at once recognized it as the Bicêtre. A fine misty rain fell diagonally and stained the gray walls. In the middle of the court five or six carpenters, under the direction of a master workman, and a little man clad in black, who seemed to direct everybody, put a machine of a hitherto strange and unknown form. Guilbert shuddered; he recognized Doctor Guillotin, and the machine itself was the one of which he had seen a model in the cellar of the editor of '_l'ami du peuple_.'... The very workmen were as yet ignorant of the secret of this novel machine. 'There,' said Doctor Guillotin, ... 'it is now only necessary to put the knife in the groove.'... This was the form of the machine: a platform fifteen feet square, reached by a simple staircase, on each side of this platform two grooved uprights, ten or twelve feet high. In the grooves slid a kind of crescent-shaped knife. A little opening was made between two beams, through which a man's head could be passed.... 'Gentlemen,' said Guillotin, 'all being here, we will begin.'" Then follows the same vivid record of executing and blood-spurting that has attracted many other writers perhaps as gifted as Dumas, but none have told it more graphically, simply, or truthfully. * * * * * Every one knows the Mount of Martyrs, its history, and its modern aspect, which has sadly degenerated of late. To-day it is simply a hilltop of cheap gaiety, whose patrons are catered for by the Moulin Rouge, the Moulin de la Galette, and a score of "eccentric cafés," though its past is burdened with Christian tragedy. Up its slope St. Denis is fabulously supposed to have carried his head after his martyrdom, and the quiet, almost forlorn Rue St. Eleuthère still perpetuates the name of his companion in misery. Long afterward, in the chapel erected on this spot, Ignatius Loyola and his companions solemnly vowed themselves to their great work. So here on sinful Montmartre, above Paris, was born the Society of Jesus. The Revolution saw another band of martyrs, when the nuns of the Abbaye de Montmartre, old and young, chanted their progress to the guillotine, and little more than thirty years ago the Commune precipitated its terrible struggle in Montmartre. It was in the Rue des Rosiers, on the 18th of March, 1871, that the blood of Generals Lecomte and Clément-Thomas was shed. Hard by, in the Parc Monceau, is the statue of Guy de Maupassant, and so the memory of the sinful mount is perpetuated to us. Dumas did not make the use of this banal attribute of Paris that many other realists and romancists alike have done, but he frequently refers to it in his "Mémoires." Madame de la Motte, the scheming adventuress of the "Collier de la Reine," lived at No. 57 Rue Charlot, in the Quartier des Infants-Rouges. It was here, at the Hôtel Boulainvilliers, where the Marquise de Boulainvilliers brought up the young girl of the blood royal of the Valois, who afterward became known as Madame de la Motte. Near by, in the same street, is the superb hôtel of Gabrielle d'Estrées, who herself was not altogether unknown to the court. The Rue de Valois, leading from the Rue St. Honoré to the Rue Beaujolais, beside the Palais Royal, as might be supposed, especially appealed to Dumas, and he laid one of the most cheerful scenes of the "Chevalier d'Harmental" in the hotel, No. 10, built by Richelieu for L'Abbé Metel de Bois-Robert, the founder of the Académie Française. Off the Rue Sourdière, was the Couloir St. Hyacinthe, where lived Jean Paul Marat--"the friend of the people," whose description by Dumas, in "La Comtesse de Charny," does not differ greatly from others of this notorious person. In the early pages of "The Count of Monte Cristo," one's attention is transferred from Marseilles to Paris, to No. 13 Rue Coq-Héron, where lived M. Noirtier, to whom the luckless Dantès was commissioned to deliver the fateful packet, which was left in his care by the dying Captain Leclerc. The incident of the handing over of this letter to the député procureur du roi is recounted thus by Dumas: "'Stop a moment,' said the deputy, as Dantès took his hat and gloves. 'To whom is it addressed?' "'To M. Noirtier, Rue Coq-Héron, Paris.' Had a thunderbolt fallen into the room, Villefort could not have been more stupefied. He sank into his seat, and, hastily turning over the packet, drew forth the fatal letter, at which he glanced with an expression of terror. "'M. Noirtier, Rue Coq-Héron, No. 13,' murmured he, growing still paler. "'Yes,' said Dantès; 'do you then know him?' "'No,' replied Villefort; 'a faithful servant of the king does not know conspirators.' "'It is a conspiracy, then?' asked Dantès, who, after believing himself free, now began to feel a tenfold alarm. 'I have already told you, however, sir, I was ignorant of the contents of the letter.' "'Yes, but you knew the name of the person to whom it was addressed,' said Villefort. "'I was forced to read the address to know to whom to give it.' "'Have you shown this letter to any one?' asked Villefort, becoming still more pale. "'To no one, on my honour.' "'Everybody is ignorant that you are the bearer of a letter from the isle of Elba, and addressed to M. Noirtier?' "'Everybody, except the person who gave it to me.'" * * * * * The Rue Coq-Héron is one of those whimsically named streets of Paris, which lend themselves to the art of the novelist. The origin of the name of this tiny street, which runs tangently off from the Rue du Louvre, is curious and naïve. A shopkeeper of the street, who raised fowls, saw, one day, coming out of its shell, a _petit coq_ with a neck and beak quite different, and much longer, than the others of the same brood. Everybody said it was a heron, and the neighbours crowded around to see the phenomenon; and so the street came to be baptized the Rue Coq-Héron. In the Rue Chaussée d'Antin, at No. 7, the wily Baron Danglars had ensconced himself after his descent on Paris. It was here that Dantès caused to be left his first "_carte de visite_" upon his subsequent arrival. Among the slighter works of Dumas, which are daily becoming more and more recognized--in English--as being masterpieces of their kind, is "Gabriel Lambert." It deals with the life of Paris of the thirties; much the same period as does "Captain Pamphile," "The Corsican Brothers," and "Pauline," and that in which Dumas himself was just entering into the literary life of Paris. Like "Pauline" and "Captain Pamphile," too, the narrative, simple though it is,--at least it is not involved,--shifts its scenes the length and breadth of the continent of Europe, and shows a versatility in the construction of a latter-day romance which is quite the equal of that of the unapproachable mediæval romances. It further resembles "The Corsican Brothers," in that it purveys a duel of the first quality--this time in the Allée de la Muette of the Bois de Boulogne, and that most of the Parisians in the story are domiciled in and about the Boulevard des Italiens, the Rue Taitbout, and the Rue du Helder; all of them localities very familiar to Dumas in real life. In spite of the similarity of the duel of Gabriel to that of De Franchi, there is no repetition of scene or incident detail. The story deals frankly with the brutal and vulgar malefactor, in this case a counterfeiter of bank notes, one Gabriel, the son of a poor peasant of Normandy, who, it would appear, was fascinated by the ominous words of the inscription which French bank notes formerly bore. LA LOI PUNIT DE MORT LE CONTREFACTEUR Dumas occasionally took up a theme which, unpromising in itself, was yet alluring through its very lack of sympathy. "Gabriel Lambert" is a story of vulgar rascality unredeemed by any spark of courage, wit, or humanity. There is much of truth in the characterization, and some sentiment, but little enough of romance of the gallant vagabond order. Dumas never attempted a more difficult feat than the composition of an appealing story from this material. Twenty years after the first appearance of "Gabriel Lambert," in 1844, M. Amédée de Jallais brought Dumas a "scenario" taken from the romance. Unsuitable and unsympathetic though the principal character was, Dumas found the "scenario" so deftly made that he resolved to turn the book into a drama. This was quickly done, and the rehearsals promised a success. On the evening of the first performance Dumas showed himself full of confidence in the play--confidence which amounted almost to certainty; for he said to a friend with whom he promenaded the corridors of the theatre while awaiting the rise of the curtain: "I am sure of my piece; to-night, I can defy the critics." Some of these gentlemen, unfortunately overhearing him, were provoked to hostility, and, finding unhappy phrases here and there in the piece, they laid hold of them without mercy. Only the comic part of the drama, a scene introduced by Dumas, in which a vagabond steals a clock in the presence of its owner with superb audacity, disarmed their opposition. But the verve of this comic part could not save the play, says Gabriel Ferry, in narrating this anecdote. The antipathy aroused by the principal character doomed it, and the career of the piece was short. It remains, however,--in the book, at any rate,--a wonderful characterization, with its pictures of the blue Mediterranean at Toulon, the gay life of the Parisian boulevards, its miniature portrait of the great Vidocq, and the sinister account of the prison of Bicêtre, which, since the abandonment of the Place de la Grève, had become the last resort of those condemned to death. The tale is a short one, but it vibrates between the _rues_ and the boulevards, from the Hôtel de Venise in the Rue des Vieux-Augustins (now the Rue Herold), where Gabriel, upon coming to Paris, first had his lodgings, to the purlieus of the fashionable world,--the old Italian Opera in the Rue Pelletier,--and No. 11 Rue Taitbout, where afterward Gabriel had ensconced himself in a luxurious apartment. [Illustration: NÔTRE DAME DE PARIS] CHAPTER XI. LA CITÉ It is difficult to write of La Cité; it is indeed, impossible to write of it with fulness, unless one were to devote a large volume--or many large volumes--to it alone. To the tourists it is mostly recalled as being the _berceau_ of Nôtre Dame or the morgue. The latter, fortunately, is an entirely modern institution, and, though it existed in Dumas' own time, did not when the scenes of the D'Artagnan or Valois romances were laid. Looking toward Nôtre Dame from the Pont du Carrousel, one feels a veritable thrill of emotion as one regards this city of kings and revolutions. The very buildings on the Ile de la Cité mingle in a symphony of ashen memories. The statue of the great Henri IV., bowered in trees; the two old houses at the apex of the Place Dauphine, in one of which Madame Roland was born; the massive Palais de Justice; the soaring Sainte Chapelle, which St. Louis built for the Crown of Thorns, and "to the glory of God and France," and the towers of the Conciergerie, whose floor is for ever stained with the tears of Marie Antoinette. Romance and history have both set their seal upon the locality, and no one better than Dumas has told its story in romance. * * * * * Henri of Navarre being Protestant, the Church would not open its doors to him, and thus his marriage to the talented but wicked Margot, sister of Charles IX., took place on a platform erected before its doors. In the opening chapter of "Marguerite de Valois," Dumas refers to it thus: "The court was celebrating the marriage of Madame Marguerite de Valois, daughter of Henri II. and sister of King Charles IX., with Henri de Bourbon, King of Navarre; and that same morning the Cardinal de Bourbon had united the young couple with the usual ceremonial observed at the marriages of the royal daughters of France, on a stage erected at the entrance to Nôtre Dame. This marriage had astonished everybody, and occasioned much surmise to certain persons who saw clearer than others. They could not comprehend the union of two parties who hated each other so thoroughly as did, at this moment, the Protestant party and the Catholic party; and they wondered how the young Prince de Condé could forgive the Duke d'Anjou, the king's father, for the death of his father, assassinated by Montesquieu at Jarnac. They asked how the young Duke de Guise could pardon Admiral de Coligny for the death of his father, assassinated at Orleans by Poltrot de Mère." [Illustration: _La Cité_] * * * * * The Tour de Nesle is one of those bygones of the history of Paris, which as a name is familiar to many, but which, after all, is a very vague memory. It perpetuates an event of bloodshed which is familiar enough, but there are no tangible remains to mark the former site of the tower, and only the name remains--now given to a short and unimportant _rue_. The use of the title "La Tour de Nesle," by Dumas, for a sort of second-hand article,--as he himself has said,--added little to his reputation as an author, or, rather, as a dramatist. In reality, he did no more than rebuild a romantic drama, such as he alone knows how to build, out of the framework which had been unsuccessfully put together by another--Gaillardet. However, it gives one other historical title to add to the already long list of his productions. * * * * * The history of the Conciergerie is most lurid, and, withal, most emphatic, with regard to the political history of France. For the most part, it is more associated with political prisoners than with mere sordid crime, as, indeed, to a great extent were many of the prisons of France. The summer tourist connects it with Marie Antoinette; visits the "Cachot de Marie Antoinette;" the great hall where the Girondists awaited their fate; and passes on to the Palais des Beaux Arts, with never a thought as to the great political part that the old prison played in the monarchial history of France. To know it more fully, one should read Nogaret's "Histoire des Prisons de Paris." There will be found anecdotes and memoirs, "_rares et precieux_" and above all truthful. It has been eulogized, or, rather, anathematized in verse by Voltaire,-- "Exterminez, grandes Dieux, de la terre ou nous sommes Quiconque avec plaisir repand le sang des hommes,"-- and historians and romancists have made profuse use of the recollections which hang about its grim walls. To-day it stands for much that it formerly represented, but without the terrible inquisitorial methods. In fact, in the Palais de Justice, which now entirely surrounds all but the turreted façade of tourelles, which fronts the Quai de l'Horloge, has so tempered its mercies that within the past year it has taken down that wonderful crucifix and triptych, so that those who may finally call upon the court of last appeal may not be unduly or superstitiously affected. The Place de la Grève opposite was famous for something more than its commercial reputation, as readers of the Valois romances of Dumas, and of Hugo's "Dernier Jour d'un Condamné" will recall. It was a veritable Gehenna, a sort of Tower Hill, where a series of events as dark and bloody as those of any spot in Europe held forth, from 1310, when a poor unfortunate, Marguerite Porette, was burned as a heretic, until 1830,--well within the scope of this book,--when the headsmen, stakesmen, and hangmen, who had plied their trade here for five centuries, were abolished in favour of a less public _barrière_ on the outskirts, or else the platform of the prison near the Cimetière du Père la Chaise. It was in 1830 that a low thief and murderer, Lacenaire, who was brought to the scaffold for his crimes, published in one of the Parisian papers some verses which were intended to extract sympathy for him as _un homme de lettres_. In reality they were the work of a barrister, Lemarquier by name, and failed utterly of their purpose, though their graphic lines might well have evoked sympathy, had the hoax carried: "Slow wanes the long night, when the criminal wakes; And he curses the morn that his slumber breaks; For he dream'd of other days. "His eyes he may close,--but the cold icy touch Of a frozen hand, and a corpse on his couch, Still comes to wither his soul. "And the headsman's voice, and hammer'd blows Of nails that the jointed gibbet close, And the solemn chant of the dead!" La Conciergerie was perhaps one of the greatest show-places of the city for the morbidly inclined, and permission _à visiter_ was at that time granted _avec toutes facilités_, being something more than is allowed to-day. The associations connected with this doleful building are great indeed, as all histories of France and the guide-books tell. It was in the chapel of this edifice that the victims of the Terror foregathered, to hear the names read out for execution, till all should have been made away. Müller's painting in the Louvre depicts, with singular graphicness, this dreadful place of detention, where princes and princesses, counts, marquises, bishops, and all ranks were herded amid an excruciating agony. In "The Queen's Necklace" we read of the Conciergerie--as we do of the Bastille. When that gang of conspirators, headed by Madame de la Motte,--Jeanne de St. Remy de Valois,--appeared for trial, they were brought from the Bastille to the Conciergerie. After the trial all the prisoners were locked for the night in the Conciergerie, sentence not being pronounced till the following day. The public whipping and branding of Madame de la Motte in the Cour du Justice,--still the _cour_ where throngs pass and repass to the various court-rooms of the Palais de Justice,--as given by Dumas, is most realistically told, if briefly. It runs thus: "'Who is this man?' cried Jeanne, in a fright. "'The executioner, M. de Paris,' replied the registrar. "The two men then took hold of her to lead her out. They took her thus into the court called Cour de Justice, where was a scaffold, and which was crowded with spectators. On a platform, raised about eight feet, was a post garnished with iron rings, and with a ladder to mount to it. This place was surrounded with soldiers.... "Numbers of the partisans of M. de Rohan had assembled to hoot her, and cries of '_A bas la Motte_, the forger!' were heard on every side, and those who tried to express pity for her were soon silenced. Then she cried in a loud voice, 'Do you know who I am? I am the blood of your kings. They strike in me, not a criminal, but a rival; not only a rival, but an accomplice. Yes,' repeated she, as the people kept silence to listen, 'an accomplice. They punish one who knows the secrets of--' "'Take care,' interrupted the executioner. "She turned and saw the executioner with the whip in his hand. At this sight she forgot her desire to captivate the multitude, and even her hatred, and, sinking on her knees, she said, 'Have pity!' and seized his hand; but he raised the other, and let the whip fall lightly on her shoulders. She jumped up, and was about to try and throw herself off the scaffold, when she saw the other man, who was drawing from a fire a hot iron. At this sight she uttered a perfect howl, which was echoed by the people. "'Help! help!' she cried, trying to shake off the cord with which they were tying her hands. The executioner at last forced her on her knees, and tore open her dress; but she cried, with a voice which was heard through all the tumult, 'Cowardly Frenchmen! you do not defend me, but let me be tortured; oh! it is my own fault. If I had said all I knew of the queen I should have been--' "She could say no more, for she was gagged by the attendants: then two men held her, while the executioner performed his office. At the touch of the iron she fainted, and was carried back insensible to the Conciergerie." CHAPTER XII. L'UNIVERSITÉ QUARTIER L'Université is the _quartier_ which foregathered its components, more or less unconsciously, around the Sorbonne. To-day the name still means what it always did; the Ecole de Médicine, the Ecole de Droit, the Beaux Arts, the Observatoire, and the student ateliers of the Latin Quarter, all go to make it something quite foreign to any other section of Paris. The present structure known as "The Sorbonne" was built by Richelieu in 1629, as a sort of glorified successor to the ancient foundation of Robert de Sorbonne, confessor to St. Louis in 1253. The present Université, as an institution, was founded, among many other good and valuable things, which he has not always been given credit for, by the astute Napoleon I. * * * * * With the work of the romancer, it is the unexpected that always happens. But this very unexpectedness is only another expression of naturalness; which raises the question: Is not the romancist more of a realist than is commonly supposed? Dumas often accomplished the unconventional, and often the miraculous, but the gallant attack of D'Artagnan and his three whilom adversaries against the Cardinal's Guard is by no means an impossible or unreasonable incident. Considering Dumas' ingenuity and freedom, it would be unreasonable to expect that things might not take the turn that they did. Of "Les Trois Mousquetaires" alone, the scheme of adventure and incident is as orderly and sagacious as though it had been laid down by the wily cardinal himself; and therein is Dumas' success as the romancist _par excellence_ of his time. A romancist who was at least enough of a realist to be natural, if unconventional. Dumas is supposed to have fallen from the heights scaled by means of "Les Trois Mousquetaires," when he wrote "Vingt Ans Après." As a piece of literary workmanship, this perhaps is so; as a chronicle of great interest to the reader, who would trace the movement of its plot by existing stones and shrines, it is hardly the case. One can get up a wonderful enthusiasm for the old Luxembourg quarter, which the Gascon Don Quixote entered by one of the southern gates, astride his Rosinante. The whole neighbourhood abounds with reminiscences of the characters of the tale: D'Artagnan, with the Rue des Fossoyeurs, now the Rue Servandoni; Athos with the Rue Ferou; Aramis, with the Rue de la Harpe, and so on. There is, however, a certain tangible sentimentality connected with the adventures of Athos, Aramis, D'Artagnan, and Porthos in "Twenty Years After," that is not equalled by the earlier book, the reputed scenes of which have, to some extent, to be taken on faith. In "Vingt Ans Après," the scene shifts rapidly and constantly: from the Rue Tiquetonne, in Paris, to the more luxurious precincts of the Palais Royal; countrywards to Compiègne, to Pierrefonds--which ultimately came into the possession of Porthos; to England, even; and southward as far as Blois in Touraine, near to which was the country estate of Athos. At the corner of the Rue Vaugirard, which passes the front of the Luxembourg Palace, and the Rue Cassette, is the wall of the Carmelite Friary, where D'Artagnan repaired to fulfil his duelling engagements with the three musketeers of the company of De Treville, after the incidents of the shoulder of Athos, the baldric of Porthos, and the handkerchief of Aramis. [Illustration: CARMELITE FRIARY, RUE VAUGIRARD] Both sides of the river, and, indeed, the Cité itself, are alive with the association of the King's Musketeers and the Cardinal's Guards; so much so that one, with even a most superficial knowledge of Paris and the D'Artagnan romances, cannot fail to follow the shifting of the scenes from the neighbourhood of the Palais du Luxembourg, in "Les Trois Mousquetaires," to the neighbourhood of the Palais Royal, in "Vingt Ans Après" and the "Vicomte de Bragelonne." In "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne," the fraternal _mousquetaires_ take somewhat varying paths from those which they pursued in the first two volumes of the series. Porthos and Athos had arrived at distinction and wealth, and surrounded themselves accordingly; though, when they came to Paris, they were doubtless frequenters--at times--of their old haunts, but they had perforce to live up to their exalted stations. With D'Artagnan and Aramis this was not so true. D'Artagnan, it would seem, could not leave his beloved Palais Royal quarter, though his lodgings in the hôtel in the Rue Tiquetonne could have been in no way luxurious, judging from present-day appearances. In the Université quarter, running squarely up from the Seine is a short, unpretentious, though not unlovely, street--the Rue Guenegard. It runs by the Hôtel de la Monnaie, and embouches on the Quai Conti, but if you ask for it from the average stroller on the quais, he will reply that he never heard of it. It was here, however, at "Au Grand Roi Charlemagne," "a respectable inn," that Athos lived during his later years. In the course of three hundred years this inn has disappeared,--if it ever existed,--though there are two hôtels, now somewhat decrepit, on the short length of the street. Perhaps it was one of these,--the present Hôtel de France, for instance,--but there are no existing records to tell us beyond doubt that this is so. There is another inn which Dumas mentions in "The Forty-Five Guardsmen," not so famous, and not traceable to-day, but his description of it is highly interesting and amusing. "Near the Porte Buci," says Chapter VII. of the book before mentioned, "where we must now transport our readers, to follow some of their acquaintances, and to make new ones, a hum, like that in a beehive at sunset, was heard proceeding from a house tinted rose colour, and ornamented with blue and white pointings, which was known by the sign of 'The Sword of the Brave Chevalier,' and which was an immense inn, recently built in this new quarter. This house was decorated to suit all tastes. On the entablature was painted a representation of a combat between an archangel and a dragon breathing flame and smoke, and in which the artist, animated by sentiments at once heroic and pious, had depicted in the hands of 'the brave chevalier,' not a sword, but an immense cross, with which he hacked in pieces the unlucky dragon, of which the bleeding pieces were seen lying on the ground. At the bottom of the picture crowds of spectators were represented raising their arms to heaven, while from above angels were extending over the chevalier laurels and palms. Then, as if to prove that he could paint in every style, the artist had grouped around gourds, grapes, a snail on a rose, and two rabbits, one white and the other gray. "Assuredly the proprietor must have been difficult to please, if he were not satisfied, for the artist had filled every inch of space--there was scarcely room to have added a caterpillar. In spite, however, of this attractive exterior, the hôtel did not prosper--it was never more than half full, though it was large and comfortable. Unfortunately, from its proximity to the Pré-aux-Clercs, it was frequented by so many persons either going or ready to fight, that those more peaceably disposed avoided it. Indeed, the cupids with which the interior was decorated had been ornamented with moustaches in charcoal by the _habitués_; and Dame Fournichon, the landlady, always affirmed that the sign had brought them ill-luck, and that, had her wishes been attended to, and the painting represented more pleasing things, such as the rose-tree of love surrounded by flaming hearts, all tender couples would have flocked to them. "M. Fournichon, however, stuck to his sign, and replied that he preferred fighting men, and that one of them drank as much as six lovers." Dumas' reference to this curiously disposed "happy family" calls to mind the anecdote which he recounts in "The Taking of the Bastille," concerning salamanders: "The famous trunk, which had now been dignified with the name of desk, had become, thanks to its vastness, and the numerous compartments with which Pitou had decorated its interior, a sort of Noah's ark, containing a couple of every species of climbing, crawling, or flying reptiles. There were lizards, adders, ant-eaters, beetles, and frogs, which reptiles became so much dearer to Pitou from their being the cause of his being subjected to punishment more or less severe. "It was in his walks during the week that Pitou made collections for his menagerie. He had wished for salamanders, which were very popular at Villers-Cotterêts, being the crest of François I., and who had them sculptured on every chimneypiece in the château. He had succeeded in obtaining them; only one thing had strongly preoccupied his mind, and he ended by placing this thing among the number of those which were beyond his intelligence; it was, that he had constantly found in the water these reptiles which poets have pretended exist only in fire. This circumstance had given to Pitou, who was a lad of precise mind, a profound contempt for poets." * * * * * Here, at "The Sword of the Brave Chevalier," first met the "Forty-Five Guardsmen." In the same street is, or was until recently, a modernized and vulgarized inn of similar name, which was more likely to have been an adaption from the pages of Dumas than a direct descendant of the original, if it ever existed. It is the Hôtel la Trémouille, near the Luxembourg, that figures in the pages of "Les Trois Mousquetaires," but the hôtel of the Duc de Treville, in the Rue du Vieux-Colombier, has disappeared in a rebuilding or widening of this street, which runs from the Place de St. Sulpice to the Place de la Croix-Rouge. All these places centre around that famous _affaire_ which took place before the Carmelite establishment on the Rue Vaugirard: that gallant sword-play of Athos, Porthos, and Aramis,--helped by the not unwilling D'Artagnan,--against Richelieu's minions, headed by Jussac. Within the immediate neighbourhood, too, is much of the _locale_ of "Les Trois Mousquetaires." Here the four friends themselves lodged, "just around the corner, within two steps of the Luxembourg," though Porthos more specifically claimed his residence as in the Rue de Vieux-Colombier. "That is my abode," said he, as he proudly pointed to its gorgeous doorway. The Hôtel de Chevreuse of "_la Frondeuse duchesse_," famed alike in history and the pages of Dumas, is yet to be seen in somewhat changed form at No. 201 Boulevard St. Germain; its garden cut away by the Boulevard Raspail. At No. 12 or 14 Rue des Fossoyeurs, beside the Panthéon,--still much as it was of yore,--was D'Artagnan's own "sort of a garret." One may not be able to exactly place it, but any of the decrepitly picturesque houses will answer the description. * * * * * It is a wonderfully varied and interesting collection of buildings which is found on the height of Ste. Geneviève, overlooking the Jardin and Palais du Luxembourg: the hybrid St. Etienne du Mont, the pagan Panthéon, the tower of the ancient Abbaye de Ste. Geneviève, and the Bibliothèque, which also bears the name of Paris's patron saint. The old abbey must have had many and varied functions, if history and romance are to be believed, and to-day its tower and a few short lengths of wall, built into the Lycée Henri Quatre, are all that remain, unless it be that the crypt and dungeons, of which one reads in "Chicot the Jester," are still existent. Probably they are, but, if so, they have most likely degenerated into mere lumber-rooms. The incident as given by Dumas relates briefly to the plot of the Guises to induce Charles IX., on the plea of some religious ceremony, to enter one of the monkish _caches_, and there compel him to sign his abdication. The plot, according to the novelist, was frustrated by the ingenious Chicot. At all events, the ensemble to-day is one most unusual, and the whole locality literally reeks with the associations of tradition. Architecturally it is a jumble, good in parts, but again shocking in other parts. The Église St. Etienne du Mont is a weird contrast of architectural style, but its interior is truly beautiful, and on the wall near the south transept are two tablets, on which one may read the facts concerning Ste. Geneviève, which likely enough have for the moment been forgotten by most of us. The old abbey must have been a delightful place, in spite of the lurid picture which Dumas draws of it. * * * * * Probably in none of Dumas' romances is there more lively action than in "The Queen's Necklace." The characters are in a continual migration between one and another of the faubourgs. Here, again, Dumas does not forget or ignore the Luxembourg and its environment. He seems, indeed, to have a special fondness for its neighbourhood. It was useful to him in most of the Valois series, and doubly so in the D'Artagnan romances. Beausire, one of the thieves who sought to steal the famous necklace, "took refuge in a small _cabaret_ in the Luxembourg quarter." The particular _cabaret_ is likely enough in existence to-day, as the event took place but a hundred years ago, and Dumas is known to have "drawn from life" even his pen-portraits of the _locale_ of his stories. At any rate, there is many a _cabaret_ near the Luxembourg which might fill the bill. The gardens of the Luxembourg were another favourite haunt of the characters of Dumas' romances, and in "The Queen's Necklace" they are made use of again, this time, as usual, as a suitable place for a promenade or a rendezvous of the fair Oliva, who so much resembled Marie Antoinette. * * * * * Like the Rue du Helder, celebrated in "The Corsican Brothers," the Rue de Lille, where lived, at No. 29, De Franchi's friend, Adrien de Boissy, is possessed of an air of semi-luxuriousness, or, at any rate, of a certain middle-class comfort. It lies on the opposite side of the Seine from the river side of the Louvre, and runs just back of the site formerly occupied by the Duc de Montmorenci, where was held the gorgeous ceremony of the marriage of the Marquis St. Luc, of which one reads in "Chicot the Jester." There is not much of splendour or romance about the present-day Rue de Lille; indeed, it is rather commonplace, but as Dumas places the particular house in which De Boissy lived with definiteness, and, moreover, in that it exists to-day practically unaltered, there seems every good reason why it should be catalogued here. [Illustration: THE BUILDERS OF THE LOUVRE (1) François I., _1546_; (2) Catherine de Medici, _1566-1578_; (3) Catherine de Medici, _1564_ (destroyed at the Commune); (4) Louis XIII., _1524_; (5) Louis XIV., _1660-1670_; (6) Napoleon I., _1806_; (7) Louis XVIII., _1816_; (8) Napoleon III., _1852-1857_; (9) Napoleon III., _1863-1868_.] CHAPTER XIII. THE LOUVRE "_Paris renferme beaucoup de palais; mais le vrai palais de Paris, le vrai palais de la France, tout le monde l'a nommé,--c'est le Louvre._" Upon the first appearance of "Marguerite de Valois," a critic writing in _Blackwood's Magazine_, has chosen to commend Dumas' directness of plot and purpose in a manner which every lover of Dumas and student of history will not fail to appreciate. He says: "Dumas, according to his custom, introduces a vast array of characters, for the most part historical, all spiritedly drawn and well sustained. In various respects the author may be held up as an example to our own history-spoilers, and self-styled writers of historical romance. One does not find him profaning public edifices by causing all sorts of absurdities to pass, and of twaddle to be spoken, within their precincts; neither does he make his king and beggar, high-born dame and private soldier use the very same language, all equally tame, colourless, and devoid of character. The spirited and varied dialogue, in which his romances abound, illustrates and brings out the qualities and characteristics of his actors, and is not used for the sole purpose of making a chapter out of what would be better told in a page. In many instances, indeed, it would be difficult for him to tell his story, by the barest narrative, in fewer words than he does by pithy and pointed dialogue." No edifice in Paris itself, nor, indeed, in all France, is more closely identified with the characters and plots of Dumas' romances than the Louvre. In the Valois cycle alone, the personages are continually flocking and stalking thither; some mere puppets,--walking gentlemen and ladies,--but many more, even, who are personages so very real that even in the pages of Dumas one forgets that it is romance pure and simple, and is almost ready to accept his word as history. This it is not, as is well recognized, but still it is a pleasant manner of bringing before the omnivorous reader many facts which otherwise he might ignore or perhaps overlook. It really is not possible to particularize all the action of Dumas' romances which centred around the Louvre. To do so would be to write the mediæval history of the famous building, or to produce an analytical index to the works of Dumas which would somewhat approach in bulk the celebrated Chinese encyclopædia. We learn from "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne" of D'Artagnan's great familiarity with the life which went on in the old château of the Louvre. "I will tell you where M. d'Artagnan is," said Raoul; "he is now in Paris; when on duty, he is to be met at the Louvre; when not so, in the Rue des Lombards." This describes the situation exactly: when the characters of the D'Artagnan and the Valois romances are not actually within the precincts of the Louvre, they have either just left it or are about to return thither, or some momentous event is being enacted there which bears upon the plot. Perhaps the most dramatic incident in connection with the Louvre mentioned by Dumas, was that of the massacre of St. Bartholomew's night, "that bloody deed which culminated from the great struggle which devastated France in the latter part of the sixteenth century." Dumas throws in his lot with such historians as Ranke and Soldain, who prefer to think that the massacre which took place on the fête-day of St. Bartholomew was not the result of a long premeditated plot, but was rather the fruit of a momentary fanatical terror aroused by the unsuccessful attempt on the life of Coligny. This aspect is apart from the question. The principal fact with which the novelist and ourselves are concerned is that the event took place much as stated: that it was from the Louvre that the plot--if plot it were--emanated, and that the sounding bell of St. Germain l'Auxerrois did, on that fateful night, indicate to those present in the Louvre the fact that the bloody massacre had begun. The fabric itself--the work of many hands, at the instigation of so many minds--is an enduring monument to the fame of those who projected it, or who were memorialized thereby: Philippe-Auguste, Marie de Medici, François I., Charles IX., Henri IV., Louis XIV., Napoleon I.,--who did but little, it is true,--and Napoleon III.--who did much, and did it badly. Besides history, bloody deeds, and intrigue, there is also much of sentiment to be gathered from an observation of its walls; as witness the sculptures and decorations of Goujon and Lescot, the interlaced monogram G. H., of Henri and Gabrielle d'Estrées, and the superimposed crescents of the fair Diane de Poitiers. But such romances as these are best read in the pages of Dumas. "To the French the Louvre is more than a palace; it is a sanctuary," said an enthusiastic Frenchman. As such it is a shrine to be worshipped by itself, though it is pardonable to wish to know to-day just where and when the historic events of its career took place. One can trace the outline, in white marble, of the ancient Château du Louvre, in the easterly courtyard of the present establishment; can admire the justly celebrated eastern colonnade, though so defective was the architect in his original plans that it overlaps the side walls of the connecting buildings some dozen or more feet; can follow clearly all the various erections of monarchs and eras, and finally contemplate the tiny columns set about in the garden of the Tuileries, which mark all that is left of that ambitious edifice. The best description of the Tuileries by Dumas comes into the scene in "The Count of Monte Cristo," when Villefort,--who shares with Danglars and Fernand the distinction of being the villain of the piece,--after travelling with all speed from Marseilles to Paris, "penetrates the two or three apartments which precede it, and enters the small cabinet of the Tuileries with the arched window, so well known as having been the favourite cabinet of Napoleon and Louis XVIII., as also that of Louis-Philippe. "There, in this closet, seated before a walnut-tree table he had brought with him from Hartwell, and to which, from one of those fancies not uncommon to great people, he was particularly attached, the king, Louis XVIII., was carelessly listening to a man of fifty or fifty-two years of age, with gray hair, aristocratic bearing, and exceedingly gentlemanly attire, whilst he was making a note in a volume of Horace, Gryphius's edition, which was much indebted to the sagacious observations of the philosophical monarch." Of course, an author of to-day would have expressed it somewhat differently, but at the time in which Dumas wrote, the little cabinet did exist, and up to the time of the destruction of the palace, at the Commune, was doubtless as much of a showplace in its way as is the window of the Louvre from which Charles IX. was supposed to have fired upon the fleeing Huguenots--with this difference: that the cabinet had a real identity, while the window in question has been more recently ascertained as not having been built at the time of the event. * * * * * Some one has mentioned Paris, the forgetter, as if modern Paris and its gay life--for assuredly it is gay, regardless of what the _blasé_ folk may say or think--had entirely blotted out from its memory the horrors of St. Bartholomew's night, the tragedies of La Roquette, the Conciergerie, or the Bastille. This is so in a measure, however, though one has only to cross the square which lies before Les Halles, La Tour St. Jacques, or Notre Dame, to recall most vividly the tragedies which have before been enacted there. The Louvre literally reeks with the intrigue and bloodshed of political and religious warfare; and Dumas' picture of the murder of the admiral, and his version of the somewhat apocryphal incident of Charles IX. potting at the Protestant victims, with a specially made and garnished firearm, is sufficiently convincing, when once read, to suggest the recollections, at least, of the heartless act. From the Louvre it is but a step--since the Tuileries has been destroyed--to the Place de la Concorde. When this great square, now given over to bird-fanciers, automobilists, and photograph-sellers, was first cleared, it was known as the Place de la Révolution. In the later volumes of the Valois romances one reads of a great calendar of scenes and incidents which were consummated here. It is too large a list to even catalogue, but one will recollect that here, in this statue surrounded place, with playing fountains glittering in the sunlight, is buried under a brilliance--very foreign to its former aspect--many a grim tragedy of profound political purport. It was here that Louis XVI. said, "I die innocent; I forgive my enemies, and pray God to avert his vengeance for my blood, and to bless my people." To-day one sees only the ornate space, the _voitures_ and automobiles, the tricolour floating high on the Louvre, and this forgetful Paris, brilliant with sunlight, green with trees, beautified by good government, which offers in its _kiosks_, cafés, and theatres the fulness of the moment at every turn. Paris itself truly forgets, if one does not. * * * * * The Louvre as it is known to-day is a highly intricate composition. Its various parts have grown, not under one hand, but from a common root, until it blossomed forth in its full glory when the western front of Catherine de Medici took form. Unfortunately, with its disappearance at the Commune the completeness of this elaborate edifice went for ever. One is apt to overlook the fact that the old Louvre, the _ancienne Palais du Louvre_, was a mediæval battlemented and turreted structure, which bore little resemblance to the Louvre of to-day, or even that of Charles, Henri, Catherine, or Marguerite, of whom Dumas wrote in the Valois romances. [Illustration: THE GARDENS OF THE TUILERIES] The general ground-plan of the two distinct portions is the same, except for some minor additions of Napoleon I. and the connecting links built by Napoleon III., and many of the apartments are of course much the same, but there has been a general laying out of the courts anew, and tree-planting and grading of the streets and quais in the immediate neighbourhood; so much so that almost the entire aspect is changed. In spite of its compositeness, there is a certain aspect of uniformity of outline, though not of excellence of design. The only relics of the Palace of the Tuileries are the colonnettes set about in the garden and surmounted by gilded balls. CHAPTER XIV. THE PALAIS ROYAL It seems hardly necessary to more than mention the name of the Palais Royal, in connection with either the life or the writings of Alexandre Dumas, to induce a line of thought which is practically limitless. It was identified with Dumas' first employment in the capital, and it has been the scene of much of the action of both the D'Artagnan and the Valois romances. More than all else, however, though one is apt to overlook it somewhat, it is so closely identified with Richelieu that it is difficult to separate it from any event of French political history of the period. It was built by Richelieu in 1629, on the site occupied by the Hôtels de Mercoeur and Rambouillet, and was originally intended to have borne the name of Hôtel Richelieu. Toward 1634 it was enlarged, and was known as the Palais Cardinal. Finally it was presented, in 1642, to Louis XIII., and at his death came to Anne of Austria, when the royal family removed thither and it became known as the Palais Royal. The incident of the flight of the royal family and Mazarin to St. Germain is one of the historic and dramatic incidents which Dumas used as one of the events in which D'Artagnan participated. The court never returned to make use of the Palais Royal as a royal residence, and it became the refuge of Henriette de France, Queen of England and widow of Charles I. Thirty years later Louis XIV., who had fled from its walls when a child, gave it to his nephew Philippe d'Orleans, Duc de Chartres. It was during the _Régence_ that the famous _fêtes_ of the Palais Royal were organized,--they even extended to what the unsympathetic have called orgies,--but it is certain that no town residences of kings were ever as celebrated for their splendid functions as was the Palais Royal in the seventeenth century. In 1763 a fire brought about certain reconstructions at the expense of the city of Paris. In 1781, it became again the prey of fire; and Philippe-Égalité, who was then Duc de Chartres, constructed the three vast galleries which surround the Palais of to-day. The _boutiques_ of the galleries were let to merchants of all manner of foibles, and it became the most lively quarter of Paris. The public adopted the galleries as fashionable promenades, which became, for the time, "_un bazar européen et un rendez-vous d'affaires et de galanterie_." It was in 1783 that the Duc d'Orleans constructed "_une salle de spectacle_," which to-day is the Théâtre du Palais Royal, and in the middle of the garden a _cirque_ which ultimately came to be transformed into a restaurant. The purely theatrical event of the history of the Palais Royal came on the 13th of July, 1789, when at midday--as the _coup_ of a _petit canon_ rang out--a young unknown _avocat_, Camille Desmoulins, mounted a chair and addressed the throng of promenaders in a thrilling and vibrant voice: "_Citoyens, j'arrive de Versailles!_--Necker is fled and the Baron Breteuil is in his place. Breteuil is one of those who have demanded the head of Mirabeau ... there remains but one resource, and that 'to arms' and to wear the cockade that we may be known. _Quelle couleur voulez-vous?_" With almost a common accord the tricolour was adopted--and the next day the Bastille fell. [Illustration: The Orleans Bureau, Palais Royal] Dumas' account of the incident, taken from "The Taking of the Bastille," is as follows: "During this time the procession kept on advancing; it had moved obliquely to the left, and had gone down the Rue Montmartre to the Place des Victoires. When it reached the Palais Royal some great impediment prevented its passing on. A troop of men with green leaves in their hats were shouting 'To arms!' "It was necessary to reconnoitre. Were these men who blocked up the Rue Vivienne friends or enemies? Green was the colour of the Count d'Artois. Why then these green cockades? "After a minute's conference all was explained. "On learning the dismissal of Necker, a young man had issued from the Café Foy, had jumped upon a table in the garden of the Palais Royal, and, taking a pistol from his breast, had cried 'To arms!' "On hearing this cry, all the persons who were walking there had assembled around him, and had shouted 'To arms!' "We have already said that all the foreign regiments had been collected around Paris. One might have imagined that it was an invasion by the Austrians. The names of these regiments alarmed the ears of all Frenchmen; they were Reynac, Salis Samade, Diesbach, Esterhazy, Roemer; the very naming of them was sufficient to make the crowd understand that they were the names of enemies. The young man named them; he announced that the Swiss were encamped in the Champs Elysées, with four pieces of artillery, and that they were to enter Paris the same night, preceded by the dragoons, commanded by Prince Lambesq. He proposed a new cockade which was not theirs, snatched a leaf from a chestnut-tree and placed it in the band of his hat. Upon the instant every one present followed his example. Three thousand persons had in ten minutes unleaved the trees of the Palais Royal. "That morning no one knew the name of that young man; in the evening it was in every mouth. "That young man's name was Camille Desmoulins." * * * * * After 1793 the Palais Royal was converted, by decree, into the Palais et Jardin de la Révolution; and reunited to the domains of the state. Napoleon I. granted its use to the Tribunal for its seances, and Lucien Bonaparte inhabited it for the "Hundred Days." In 1830 Louis-Philippe, Duc d'Orleans, gave there a fête in honour of the King of Naples, who had come to pay his respects to the King of France. Charles X. assisted as an invited guest at the function, but one month after he had inhabited it as king. Under Napoleon III. the Palais Royal was the residence of Prince Jerome, the uncle of the emperor, afterward that of his son the Prince Napoleon, when the _fleur-de-lis_ sculptured on the façade gave way before escutcheons bearing the imperial eagles, which in turn have since given way to the Republican device of "'48"--"Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité." * * * * * It is with a remarkable profusion of detail--for Dumas, at any rate--that the fourteenth chapter of "The Conspirators" opens. It is a veritable guide-book phraseology and conciseness, which describes the streets of the Palais Royal quarter: "The evening of the same day, which was Sunday, toward eight o'clock, at the moment when a considerable group of men and women, assembled around a street singer, who was playing at the same time the cymbals with his knees and the tambourine with his hands, obstructed the entrance to the Rue de Valois, a musketeer and two of the light horse descended a back staircase of the Palais Royal, and advanced toward the Passage du Lycée, which, as every one knows, opened on to that street; but seeing the crowd which barred the way, the three soldiers stopped and appeared to take counsel. The result of their deliberation was doubtless that they must take another route, for the musketeer, setting the example of a new manoeuvre, threaded the Cour des Fontaines, turned the corner of the Rue des Bons Enfants, and, walking rapidly,--though he was extremely corpulent,--arrived at No. 22, which opened as by enchantment at his approach, and closed again on him and his two companions. "... The crowd dispersed. A great many men left the circle, singly, or two and two, turning toward each other with an imperceptible gesture of the hand, some by the Rue de Valois, some by the Cour des Fontaines, some by the Palais Royal itself, thus surrounding the Rue des Bons Enfants, which seemed to be the centre of the rendezvous." The locality has not changed greatly since the times of which Dumas wrote, and if one would see for himself this Rue de Bons Enfants, Numéro 22, and try to find out how the Regent of France was able to climb over the roof-tops to the Palais Royal, for a wager, he may still do so, for apparently the roof-tops have changed but little. The especial connection of the Rue des Bons Enfants with literature is perhaps Sylvestre's establishment, which will, for a price, sell you almost any French celebrity's autograph, be he king, prince, painter, or litterateur. In the "Vicomte de Bragelonne" there is a wonderfully interesting chapter, which describes Mazarin's gaming-party at the Palais Royal. In that it enters somewhat more into detail than is usual with Dumas, it appears worth quoting here, if only for its description of the furnishing of the _salle_ in which the event took place, and its most graphic and truthful picture of the great cardinal himself: "In a large chamber of the Palais Royal, covered with a dark-coloured velvet, which threw into strong relief the gilded frames of a great number of magnificent pictures, on the evening of the arrival of the two Frenchmen, the whole court was assembled before the alcove of M. le Cardinal de Mazarin, who gave a party, for the purposes of play, to the king and queen. A small screen separated three prepared tables. At one of these tables the king and the two queens were seated. Louis XIV., placed opposite to the young queen, his wife, smiled upon her with an expression of real happiness. Anne of Austria held the cards against the cardinal, and her daughter-in-law assisted her in her game, when she was not engaged in smiling at her husband. As for the cardinal, who was reclining on his bed, his cards were held by the Comtesse de Soissons, and he watched them with an incessant look of interest and cupidity. "The cardinal had been painted by Bernouin; but the rouge, which glowed only on his cheeks, threw into stronger contrast the sickly pallor of the rest of his countenance and the shining yellow of his brow. His eyes alone acquired a more lively expression from this auxiliary, and upon those sick man's eyes were, from time to time, turned the uneasy looks of the king, the queen, and the courtiers. The fact is, that the two eyes of Mazarin were the stars more or less brilliant in which the France of the seventeenth century read its destiny every evening and every morning. Monseigneur neither won nor lost; he was, therefore, neither gay nor sad. It was a stagnation in which, full of pity for him, Anne of Austria would not have willingly left him; but in order to attract the attention of the sick man by some brilliant stroke, she must have either won or lost. To win would have been dangerous, because Mazarin would have changed his indifference for an ugly grimace; to lose would likewise have been dangerous, because she must have cheated, and the Infanta, who watched her game, would, doubtless, have exclaimed against her partiality for Mazarin. Profiting by this calm, the courtiers were chatting. When not in a bad humour, M. de Mazarin was a very debonnaire prince, and he, who prevented nobody from singing, provided they paid, was not tyrant enough to prevent people from talking, provided they made up their minds to lose. They were chatting, then. At the first table, the king's younger brother, Philip, Duc d'Anjou, was admiring his handsome face in the glass of a box. His favourite, the Chevalier de Lorraine, leaning over the _fauteuil_ of the prince, was listening, with secret envy, to the Comte de Guiche, another of Philip's favourites, who was relating in choice terms the various vicissitudes of fortune of the royal adventurer, Charles II. He told, as so many fabulous events, all the history of his peregrinations in Scotland, and his terrors when the enemy's party was so closely on his track; of nights passed in trees, and days passed in hunger and combats. By degrees, the fate of the unfortunate king interested his auditors so greatly, that the play languished even at the royal table, and the young king, with a pensive look and downcast eye, followed, without appearing to give any attention to it, the smallest details of this Odyssey, very picturesquely related by the Comte de Guiche." * * * * * Again mention of the Palais Royal enters into the action of "The Queen's Necklace." When Madame de la Motte and her companion were _en route_ to Versailles by cabriolet, "they met a delay at the gates of the Palais Royal, where, in a courtyard, which had been thrown open, were a host of beggars crowding around fires which had been lighted there, and receiving soup, which the servants of M. le Duc d'Orleans were distributing to them in earthen basins; and as in Paris a crowd collects to see everything, the number of the spectators of this scene far exceeded that of the actors. "Here, then, they were again obliged to stop, and, to their dismay, began to hear distinctly from behind loud cries of 'Down with the cabriolet! down with those that crush the poor!' "'Can it be that those cries are addressed to us?' said the elder lady to her companion. "'Indeed, madame, I fear so,' she replied. "'Have we, do you think, run over any one?' "'I am sure you have not.' "'To the magistrate! to the magistrate!' cried several voices. "'What in heaven's name does it all mean?' said the lady. "'The crowd reproaches you, madame, with having braved the police order which appeared this morning, prohibiting all cabriolets from driving through the streets until the spring.'" This must have been something considerable of an embargo on pleasure, and one which would hardly obtain to-day, though asphalted pavements covered with a film of frost must offer untold dangers, as compared with the streets of Paris as they were then--in the latter years of the eighteenth century. CHAPTER XV. THE BASTILLE The worshipper at the shrines made famous by Dumas--no less than history--will look in vain for the prison of La Roquette, the Bastille, the hôtel of the Duc de Guise, at No. 12 Rue du Chaume, that of Coligny in the Rue de Bethusy, or of the Montmorencies, "near the Louvre." They existed, of course, in reality, as they did in the Valois romances, but to-day they have disappeared, and not even the "_Commission des Monuments Historiques_" has preserved a pictorial representation of the three latter. One of Dumas' most absorbing romances deals with the fateful events which culminated at the Bastille on the 14th Thermidor, 1789. "This monument, this seal of feudality, imprinted on the forehead of Paris," said Dumas, "was the Bastille," and those who know French history know that he wrote truly. The action of "The Taking of the Bastille," so far as it deals with the actual assault upon it, is brief. So was the event itself. Dumas romances but little in this instance; he went direct to fact for his details. He says: "When once a man became acquainted with the Bastille, by order of the king, that man was forgotten, sequestrated, interred, annihilated.... "Moreover, in France there was not only one Bastille; there were twenty other Bastilles, which were called Fort l'Evêque, St. Lazare, the Châtelet, the Conciergerie, Vincennes, the Castle of La Roche, the Castle of If, the Isles of St. Marguerite, Pignerolles, etc. "Only the fortress at the Gate St. Antoine was called _the Bastille_, as _Rome_ was called _the_ city.... "During nearly a whole century the governorship of the Bastille had continued in one and the same family. "The grandfather of this elect race was M. de Chateauneuf; his son Lavrillière succeeded him, who, in turn, was succeeded by his grandson, St. Florentin. The dynasty became extinct in 1777.... "Among the prisoners, it will be recollected, the following were of the greatest note: "The Iron Mask, Lauzun, Latude. "The Jesuits were connoisseurs; for greater security they confessed the prisoners. "For greater security still, the prisoners were buried under supposititious names. "The Iron Mask, it will be remembered, was buried under the name of Marchiali. He had remained forty-five years in prison. "Lauzun remained there fourteen years. "Latude, thirty years.... "But, at all events, the Iron Mask and Lauzun had committed heinous crimes. "The Iron Mask, whether brother or not of Louis XIV., it is asserted, resembled King Louis XIV. so strongly, that it was almost impossible to distinguish the one from the other. "It is exceedingly imprudent to dare to resemble a king. "Lauzun had been very near marrying, or did actually marry, the Grande Mademoiselle. "It is exceedingly imprudent to dare to marry the niece of King Louis XIII., the granddaughter of Henri IV. "But Latude, poor devil, what had he done? "He had dared to fall in love with Mlle. Poisson, Dame de Pompadour, the king's mistress. "He had written a note to her. "This note, which a respectable woman would have sent back to the man who wrote it, was handed by Madame de Pompadour to M. de Sartines, the lieutenant-general of police." "To the Bastille!" was the cry upon which Dumas built up his story. "'To the Bastille!' "Only that it was a senseless idea, as the soldiers had remarked, that the Bastille could be taken. "The Bastille had provisions, a garrison, artillery. "The Bastille had walls, which were fifteen feet thick at their summit, and forty at their base. "The Bastille had a governor, whose name was De Launay, who had stored thirty thousand pounds of gunpowder in his cellars, and who had sworn, in case of being surprised by a _coup de main_, to blow up the Bastille, and with it half the Faubourg St. Antoine." Dumas was never more chary of tiresome description than in the opening chapters of this book. Chapter XVI. opens as follows: "We will not describe the Bastille--it would be useless. "It lives as an eternal image, both in the memory of the old and in the imagination of the young. "We shall content ourselves with merely stating, that, seen from the boulevard, it presented, in front of the square then called Place de la Bastille, two twin towers, while its two fronts ran parallel with the banks of the canal which now exists. "The entrance to the Bastille was defended, in the first place, by a guard-house, then by two lines of sentinels, and besides these by two drawbridges. "After having passed through these several obstacles, you came to the courtyard of the government-house--that is to say, the residence of the governor. "From this courtyard a gallery led to the ditches of the Bastille. "At this other entrance, which opened upon the ditches, was a drawbridge, a guard-house, and an iron gate." Then follow some pages of incident and action, which may be fact or may be fiction. The detail which comes after is picturesque and necessary to the plot: "The interior court, in which the governor was waiting for Billot, was the courtyard which served as a promenade to the prisoners. It was guarded by eight towers--that is to say, by eight giants. No window opened into it. Never did the sun shine on its pavement, which was damp and almost muddy. It might have been thought the bottom of an immense well. "In this courtyard was a clock, supported by figures representing enchained captives, which measured the hours, from which fell the regular and slow sounds of the minutes as they passed by, as in a dungeon the droppings from the ceiling eat into the pavement slabs on which they fall. "At the bottom of this well, the prisoner, lost amid the abyss of stone, for a moment contemplated its cold nakedness, and soon asked to be allowed to return to his room.... "At the Bastille, all the places were sold to the highest bidder, from that of the governor himself, down to that of the scullion. The governor of the Bastille was a gaoler on a grand scale, an eating-house keeper wearing epaulets, who added to his salary of sixty thousand livres sixty thousand more, which he extorted and plundered.... "M. de Launay, in point of avarice, far surpassed his predecessors. This might, perhaps, have arisen from his having paid more for the place, and having foreseen that he would not remain in it so long as they did. "He fed his whole house at the expense of his prisoners. He had reduced the quantity of firing, and doubled the hire of furniture in each room. "He had the right of bringing yearly into Paris a hundred pipes of wine, free of duty. He sold his right to a tavern-keeper, who brought in wines of excellent quality. Then, with a tenth part of this duty, he purchased the vinegar with which he supplied his prisoners." The rest of Dumas' treatment of the fall of the Bastille is of the historical kind. He does not blame De Launay for the fall, but by no means does he make a hero of him. "A flash of fire, lost in a cloud of smoke, crowned the summit of a tower; a detonation resounded; cries of pain were heard issuing from the closely pressed crowd; the first cannon-shot had been fired from the Bastille; the first blood had been spilled. The battle had commenced.... "On hearing the detonation we have spoken of, the two soldiers who were still watching M. de Launay threw themselves upon him; a third snatched up the match, and then extinguished it by placing his heel upon it. "De Launay drew the sword which was concealed in his cane, and would have turned it against his own breast, but the soldiers seized it and snapped it in two. "He then felt that all he could do was to resign himself to the result; he therefore tranquilly awaited it. [Illustration: THE FALL OF THE BASTILLE] "The people rush forward; the garrison open their arms to them; and the Bastille is taken by assault--by main force, without a capitulation. "The reason for this was that, for more than a hundred years, the royal fortress had not merely imprisoned inert matter within its walls--it had imprisoned thought also. Thought had thrown down the walls of the Bastille, and the people entered by the breach." The life-history of the Bastille was more extended than was commonly recalled. Still the great incident in its life covered but fifteen short days,--from the 30th June to the 14th July, 1789,--when it fell before the attack of the Revolutionists. There is rather vague markings in the pavement on the Boulevard Henri Quatre and the Rue St. Antoine, which suggest the former limits of this gruesome building. It were not possible to catalogue all the scenes of action celebrated or perpetuated by Alexandre Dumas. In his "Crimes Célèbres" he--with great definiteness--pictures dark scenes which are known to all readers of history; from that terrible affair of the Cenci, which took place on the terrace of the Château de Rocca Petrella, in 1598, to the assassination of Kotzebue by Karl Ludwig Sand in 1819. Not all of these crimes deal with Paris, nor with France. The most notable was the poisoning affair of the Marquise de Brinvilliers (1676), who was forced to make the "_amende honorable_" after the usual manner, on the Parvis du Nôtre Dame, that little tree-covered place just before the west façade of the cathedral. The Chevalier Gaudin de Ste. Croix, captain of the Regiment de Tracy, had been arrested in the name of the king, by process of the "_lettre de cachet_" and forthwith incarcerated in the Bastille, which is once more made use of by Dumas, though in this case, as in many others, it is historic fact as well. The story, which is more or less one of conjugal and filial immorality, as well as political intrigue, shifts its scene once and again to the Cul-de-sac des Marchands des Chevaux, in the Place Maubert, to the Forêt de l'Aigue--within four leagues of Compiègne, the Place du Châtelet, the Conciergerie, and the Bastille. Here, too, Dumas' account of the "question by water," or, rather, the notes on the subject, which accompanied the first (1839) edition of "Les Crimes Célèbres," form interesting, if rather horrible, reading. Not alone in the Bastille was this horrible torture practised, but in most of the prisons of the time. "_Pour la 'question ordinaire,' quatre coquemars pleins d'eau, et contenant chacun deux pintes et demi, et pour 'la question extraordinaire' huit de même grandeur._" This was poured into the victim through a funnel, which entered the mouth, and sooner or later drowned or stifled him or her, or induced confession. The final act and end of the unnatural Marquise de Brinvilliers took place at the Place de la Grève, which before and since was the truly celebrated place of many noted crimes, though in this case it was justice that was meted out. As a sort of sequel to "The Conspirators," Dumas adds "A Postscriptum," wherein is recounted the arrest of Richelieu, as foreordained by Mlle. de Valois. He was incarcerated in the Bastille; but his captivity was but a new triumph for the crafty churchman. "It was reported that the handsome prisoner had obtained permission to walk on the terrace of the Bastille. The Rue St. Antoine was filled with most elegant carriages, and became, in twenty-four hours, the fashionable promenade. The regent--who declared that he had proofs of the treason of M. de Richelieu, sufficient to lose him four heads if he had them--would not, however, risk his popularity with the fair sex by keeping him long in prison. Richelieu, again at liberty, after a captivity of three months, was more brilliant and more sought after than ever; but the closet had been walled up, and Mlle. de Valois became Duchesse de Modena." Not only in the "Vicomte de Bragelonne" and "The Taking of the Bastille" does Dumas make mention of "The Man in the Iron Mask," but, to still greater length, in the supplementary volume, called in the English translations "The Man in the Iron Mask," though why it is difficult to see, since it is but the second volume of "The Vicomte de Bragelonne." This historical mystery has provided penmen of all calibres with an everlasting motive for argumentative conjecture, but Dumas without hesitancy comes out strongly for "a prince of the royal blood," probably the brother of Louis XIV. It has been said that Voltaire invented "the Man in the Iron Mask." There was nothing singular--for the France of that day--in the man himself, his offence, or his punishment; but the mask and the mystery--chiefly of Voltaire's creation--fascinated the public, as the veil of Mokanna fascinated his worshippers. Here are some of the Voltairean myths about this mysterious prisoner: One day he wrote something with his knife on a silver plate and threw it down to a fisherman, who took it to the governor of the prison. "Have you read it?" asked the governor, sternly. "I cannot read," replied the fisherman. "That has saved your life," rejoined the governor. Another day a young lad found beneath the prison tower a shirt written closely all over. He took it to the governor, who asked, anxiously. "Have you read it?" The boy again and again assured him that he had not. Nevertheless, two days later the boy was found dead in his bed. When the Iron Mask went to mass he was forbidden to speak or unmask himself on pain of being then and there shot down by the invalids, who stood by with loaded carbines to carry out the threat. Here are some of the personages the Iron Mask was supposed to be: An illegitimate son of Anne of Austria; a twin brother of Louis XIV., put out of the way by Cardinal Richelieu to avoid the risk of a disputed succession; the Count of Vermandois, an illegitimate son of Louis XIV.; Fouquet, Louis' minister; the Duke of Beaufort, a hero of the Fronde; the Duke of Monmouth, the English pretender; Avedick, the Armenian patriarch; and of late it has almost come to be accepted that he was Mattioli, a Piedmontese political prisoner, who died in 1703. Dumas, at any rate, took the plausible and acceptable popular solution; and it certainly furnished him with a highly fascinating theme for a romance, which, however, never apparently achieved any great popularity. "The clock was striking seven as Aramis passed before the Rue du Petit Muse and stopped at the Rue Tourelles, at the gateway of the Bastille.... "Of the governor of the prison Aramis--now Bishop of Vannes--asked, 'How many prisoners have you? Sixty?'... "'For a prince of the blood I have fifty francs a day, ... thirty-six for a marechal de France, lieutenant-generals and brigadiers pay twenty-six francs, and councillors of parliament fifteen, but for an ordinary judge, or an ecclesiastic, I receive only ten francs.'" Here Dumas' knowledge and love of good eating again crops out. Continuing the dialogue between the bishop and the governor, he says: "'A tolerably sized fowl costs a franc and a half, and a good-sized fish four or five francs. Three meals a day are served, and, as the prisoners have nothing to do, they are always eating. A prisoner from whom I get ten francs costs me seven francs and a half.' "'Have you no prisoners, then, at less than ten francs?' queried Aramis. "'Oh, yes,' said the governor, 'citizens and lawyers.' "'But do they not eat, too?... Do not the prisoners leave some scraps?' continued Aramis. "'Yes, and I delight the heart of some poor little tradesman or clerk by sending him a wing of a red partridge, a slice of venison, or a slice of a truffled pasty, dishes which he never tasted except in his dreams (these are the leavings of the twenty-four-franc prisoners); and he eats and drinks, and at dessert cries, "Long live the king!" and blesses the Bastille. With a couple of bottles of champagne, which cost me five sous, I make him tipsy every Sunday. That class of people call down blessings upon me, and are sorry to leave the prison. Do you know that I have remarked, and it does me infinite honour, that certain prisoners, who have been set at liberty, have almost immediately afterward got imprisoned again? Why should this be the case, unless it be to enjoy the pleasures of my kitchen? It is really the fact.' Aramis smiled with an expression of incredulity." A visit to the prisoners themselves follows, but the reader of these lines is referred to "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne" for further details. The following few lines must suffice here: "The number of bolts, gratings, and locks for the courtyard would have sufficed for the safety of an entire city. Aramis was neither an imaginative nor a sensitive man; he had been somewhat of a poet in his youth, but his heart was hard and indifferent, as the heart of every man of fifty-five years of age is, who has been frequently and passionately attached to women in his lifetime, or rather who has been passionately loved by them. But when he placed his foot upon the worn stone steps, along which so many unhappy wretches had passed, when he felt himself impregnated, as it were, with the atmosphere of those gloomy dungeons, moistened with tears, there could be but little doubt he was overcome by his feelings, for his head was bowed and his eyes became dim, as he followed Baisemeaux, the governor, without uttering a syllable." Dumas gives a further description, of similar import, in "The Regent's Daughter:" "And now, with the reader's permission, we will enter the Bastille--that formidable building at which even the passing traveller trembled, and which, to the whole neighbourhood, was an annoyance and cause of alarm; for often at night the cries of the unfortunate prisoners who were under torture might be heard piercing the thick walls, so much so, that the Duchesse de Lesdequieres once wrote to the governor, that, if he did not prevent his patients from making such a noise, she should complain to the king. "At this time, however, under the reign of Philippe d'Orleans, there were no cries to be heard; the society was select, and too well bred to disturb the repose of a lady. "In a room in the Du Coin tower, on the first floor, was a prisoner alone.... He had, however, been but one day in the Bastille, and yet already he paced his vast chamber, examining the iron-barred doors, looking through the grated windows, listening, sighing, waiting.... "A noise of bolts and creaking hinges drew the prisoner from this sad occupation, and he saw the man enter before whom he had been taken the day before. This man, about thirty years of age, with an agreeable appearance and polite bearing, was the governor, M. De Launay, father of that De Launay who died at his post in '89.... "'M. de Chanlay,' said the governor, bowing, 'I come to know if you have passed a good night, and are satisfied with the fare of the house and the conduct of the employés'--thus M. De Launay, in his politeness, called the turnkeys and jailors. "'Yes, monsieur; and these attentions paid to a prisoner have surprised me, I own.' "'The bed is hard and old, but yet it is one of the best; luxury being forbidden by our rules. Your room, monsieur, is the best in the Bastille; it has been occupied by the Duc d'Angoulême, by the Marquis de Bassompierre, and by the Marshals de Luxembourg and Biron; it is here that I lodge the princes when his Majesty does me the honour to send them to me.' "'It is an excellent lodging,' said Gaston, smiling, 'though ill furnished; can I have some books, some paper, and pens?' "'Books, monsieur, are strictly forbidden; but if you very much wish to read, as many things are allowed to a prisoner who is _ennuyé_, come and see me, then you can put in your pocket one of those volumes which my wife or I leave about; you will hide it from all eyes; on a second visit you will take the second volume, and to this abstraction we will close our eyes.' "'And paper, pens, ink?' said Gaston. 'I wish most particularly to write.' "'No one writes here, monsieur; or, at least, only to the king, the regent, the minister, or to me; but they draw, and I can let you have drawing-paper and pencils.'" All of the above is the authenticated fact of history, as written records prove, but it is much better told by Dumas, the novelist, than by most historians. Still other evidence of the good things set before the guests at the "Hôtel de la Bastille" is shown by the following. If Dumas drew the facts from historical records, all well and good; if they were menus composed by himself,--though unconventional ones, as all _bon vivants_ will know,--why, still all is well. "'A fifteen-franc boarder does not suffer, my lord,' said De Baisemeaux.--'He suffers imprisonment, at all events.'--'No doubt, but his suffering is sweetened for him. You must admit this young fellow was not born to eat such things as he now has before him. A pasty; crayfish from the river Marne--almost as big as lobsters; and a bottle of Volnay.'" The potency of the Bastille as a preventative, or, rather, a fit punishment for crime, has been nowhere more effectually set forth than by the letter which Cagliostro wrote from London (in the "Queen's Necklace"). In this letter, after attacking king, queen, cardinal, and even M. de Breteuil, Cagliostro said: "Yes, I repeat, now free after my imprisonment, there is no crime that would not be expiated by six months in the Bastille. They ask me if I shall ever return to France. Yes, I reply, when the Bastille becomes a public promenade. You have all that is necessary to happiness, you Frenchmen; a fertile soil and genial climate, good hearts, gay tempers, genius, and grace. You only want, my friends, one little thing--to feel sure of sleeping quietly in your beds when you are innocent." To-day "The Bastille," as it is commonly known and referred to, meaning the Place de la Bastille, has become a public promenade, and its bygone terrors are but a memory. CHAPTER XVI. THE ROYAL PARKS AND PALACES Since the romances of Dumas deal so largely with Paris, it is but natural that much of their action should take place at the near-by country residences of the royalty and nobility who form the casts of these great series of historical tales. To-day Fontainebleau, St. Germain, Versailles, and even Chantilly, Compiègne, and Rambouillet are but mere attractions for the tourist of the butterfly order. The real Parisian never visits them or their precincts, save as he rushes through their tree-lined avenues in an automobile; and thus they have all come to be regarded merely as monuments of splendid scenes, which have been played, and on which the curtain has been rung down. This is by no means the real case, and one has only to read Dumas, and do the round of the parks and châteaux which environ Paris, to revivify many of the scenes of which he writes. Versailles is the most popular, Fontainebleau the most grand, St. Germain the most theatrical, Rambouillet the most rural-like, and Compiègne and Chantilly the most delicate and dainty. Still nearer to Paris, and more under the influence of town life, were the châteaux of Madrid in the Bois de Boulogne, and of Vincennes, at the other extremity of the city. All these are quite in a class by themselves; though, of course, in a way, they performed the same functions when royalty was in residence, as the urban palaces. Dumas' final appreciation of the charms of Fontainebleau does not come till one reaches the last pages of "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne." True, it was not until the period of which this romance deals with Fontainebleau, its château, its _forêt_, and its fêtes, actually came to that prominence which to this day has never left them. When the king required to give his fête at Fontainebleau, as we learn from Dumas, and history, too, he required of Fouquet four millions of francs, "in order to keep an open house for fifteen days," said he. How he got them, and with what result, is best read in the pages of the romance. "Life at the Palais Royal having become somewhat tame, the king had directed that Fontainebleau should be prepared for the reception of the court." Here, then, took place the fêtes which were predicted, and Dumas, with his usual directness and brilliance, has given us a marvellous description of the gaiety of court life, surrounded by the noble forest, over which artists and sentimentalists have ever rhapsodized. Continuing, from the pages of Dumas which immediately follow, one reads: "For four days, every kind of enchantment brought together in the magnificent gardens of Fontainebleau, had converted this spot into a place of the most perfect enjoyment. M. Colbert seemed gifted with ubiquity. In the morning, there were the accounts of the previous night's expenses to settle; during the day, programmes, essays, enlistments, payments. M. Colbert had amassed four millions of francs, and dispersed them with a prudent economy. He was horrified at the expenses which mythology involved; every wood-nymph, every dryad, did not cost less than a hundred francs a day. The dresses alone amounted to three hundred francs. The expense of powder and sulphur for fireworks amounted, every night, to a hundred thousand francs. In addition to these, the illuminations on the borders of the sheet of water cost thirty thousand francs every evening. The fêtes had been magnificent; and Colbert could not restrain his delight. From time to time he noticed Madame and the king setting forth on hunting expeditions, or preparing for the reception of different fantastic personages, solemn ceremonials, which had been extemporized a fortnight before, and in which Madame's sparkling wit and the king's magnificence were equally displayed." The "Inn of the Beautiful Peacock," celebrated by Dumas in "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne," is not directly traceable to-day in the many neighbouring hostelries of Fontainebleau. Just what Dumas had in mind is vague, though his description might apply to any house for travellers, wherever it may have been situated in this beautiful wildwood. It was to this inn of the "Beau Paon" that Aramis repaired, after he had left Fouquet and had donned the costume of the cavalier once more. "Where," said Dumas, "he (Aramis) had, by letters previously sent, directed an apartment or a room to be retained for him. He chose the room, which was on the first floor, whereas the apartment was on the second." The description of the establishment given by Dumas is as follows: "In the first place, let us supply our readers with a few details about the inn called the Beau Paon. It owed its name to its sign, which represented a peacock spreading out its tail. But, in imitation of some painters who had bestowed the face of a handsome young man upon the serpent which tempted Eve, the painter of this sign had conferred upon the peacock the features of a woman. This inn, a living epigram against that half of the human race which renders existence delightful, was situated at Fontainebleau, in the first turning on the left-hand side, which divides on the road from Paris, that large artery which constitutes in itself along the entire town of Fontainebleau. The side street in question was then known as the Rue de Lyon, doubtless because geographically it advanced in the direction of the second capital of the kingdom." Lyons itself is treated by Dumas at some length in "Chicot the Jester," particularly with reference to Chicot's interception of the Pope's messenger, who brought the documents which were to establish the Duc de Guise's priority as to rights to the throne of France. "The inn of the Beau Paon had its principal front toward the main street; but upon the Rue de Lyon there were two ranges of buildings, divided by courtyards, which comprised sets of apartments for the reception of all classes of travellers, whether on foot or on horseback, or even with their own carriages, and in which could be supplied, not only board and lodging, but also accommodation for exercise or opportunities of solitude for even the wealthiest courtiers, whenever, after having received some check at the court, they wished to shut themselves up with their own society, either to devour an affront or to brood over their revenge. From the windows of this part of the building the travellers could perceive, in the first place, the street with the grass growing between the stones, which were being gradually loosened by it; next, the beautiful hedges of elder and thorn, which embraced, as though within two green and flowering arms, the houses of which we have spoken; and then, in the spaces between those houses, forming the groundwork of the picture, and appearing like an almost impassable barrier, a line of thick trees, the advanced sentinels of the vast forest, which extends itself in front of Fontainebleau." On the road to Versailles, where the Seine is crossed by the not beautiful Pont de Sèvres, is the little inn of the Bridge of Sèvres, in which the story of "La Comtesse de Charny" opens, and, indeed, in which all its early action takes place. The inn, or even its direct descendant, is not discernible to-day. The Pont de Sèvres is there, linking one of those thumblike peninsulas made by the windings of the Seine with the Bois de Meudon, and the traffic inward and outward from Paris is as great and varied as it always was, probably greater, but there is no inn to suggest that which Dumas had in mind. The rural aspect is somewhat changed, the towering stacks of the china-factory chimneys, the still more towering--though distant--Tour Eiffel, which fortunately is soon to be razed, and the iron rails of the "Ceinture" and the "Quest," all tend to estrange one's sentiments from true romance. [Illustration: INN OF THE PONT DE SÈVRES] Farther on to the westward lies Versailles, with its theatrical, though splendid, _palais_ and _parc_, the Trianons and Les Grandes Eaux, beloved by the tourist and the Parisian alike. Still farther to the northward by the same road is the pretty town of St. Germain-en-Laye, with the remains of its Château Neuf, once the most splendid and gorgeous country residence of Henri II. and Henri IV., continuing, also, in the favour of the court until the birth here of Louis XIV. James II. of England made his residence here after his exile. Dumas' references to St. Germain are largely found in "Vingt Ans Après." It was near St. Germain, too, that Dumas set about erecting his famous "Châtelet du Monte Cristo." In fact, he did erect it, on his usual extravagant ideas, but his tenure there was short-lived, and, altogether, it was not a creditable undertaking, as after-events proved. The gaiety of the life at St. Germain departed suddenly, but it is said of Dumas' life there, that he surrounded himself with a coterie which bespoke somewhat its former abandon and luxuriance. It was somewhat of a Bohemian life that he lived there, no doubt, but it was not of the sordid or humble kind; it was most gorgeous and extravagant. Of all the royal parks and palaces in the neighbourhood of Paris, Versailles has the most popularly sentimental interest. A whim of Louis XIV., it was called by Voltaire "an abyss of expense," and so it truly was, as all familiar with its history know. In the later volumes of Dumas' "La Comtesse de Charnay," "The Queen's Necklace," and "The Taking of the Bastille," frequent mention is made but he does not write of it with the same affection that he does of Fontainebleau or St. Germain. The details which Dumas presents in "The Taking of the Bastille" shows this full well. "At half-past ten, in ordinary times, every one in Versailles would have been in bed and wrapped in the profoundest slumber; but that night no eye was closed at Versailles. They had felt the counter-shock of the terrible concussion with which Paris was still trembling. "The French Guards, the body-guards, the Swiss drawn up in platoons, and grouped near the openings of all the principal streets, were conversing among themselves, or with those of the citizens whose fidelity to the monarchy inspired them with confidence. "For Versailles has, at all times, been a royalist city. Religious respect for the monarchy, if not for the monarch, is engrafted in the hearts of its inhabitants, as if it were a quality of its soil. Having always lived near kings, and fostered by their bounty, beneath the shade of their wonders--having always inhaled the intoxicating perfume of the _fleurs-de-lis_, and seen the brilliant gold of their garments, and the smiles upon their august lips, the inhabitants of Versailles, for whom kings have built a city of marble and porphyry, feel almost kings themselves; and even at the present day, even now, when moss is growing around the marble, and grass is springing up between the slabs of the pavement, now that gold has almost disappeared from the wainscoting, and that the shady walks of the parks are more solitary than a graveyard, Versailles must either belie its origin, or must consider itself as a fragment of the fallen monarchy, and no longer feeling the pride of power and wealth, must at least retain the poetical associations of regret, and the sovereign charms of melancholy. Thus, as we have already stated, all Versailles, in the night between the 14th and 15th July, 1789, was confusedly agitated, anxious to ascertain how the King of France would reply to the insult offered to the throne, and the deadly wound inflicted on his power." Versailles was one of the latest of the royal palaces, and since its birth, or at least since the days of "personally" and "non-conducted" tourists, has claimed, perhaps, even more than its share of popular favour. Certainly it is a rare attraction, and its past has been in turn sad, gay, brilliant, and gloomy. Event after event, some significant, others unimportant, but none mean or sordid, have taken place within its walls or amid its environment. Dumas evidently did not rank its beauties very high,--and perhaps rightly,--for while it is a gorgeous fabric and its surroundings and appointments are likewise gorgeous, it palls unmistakably by reason of its sheer artificiality. Dumas said much the same thing when he described it as "that world of automata, of statues, and boxwood forests, called Versailles." Much of the action of "The Queen's Necklace" takes place at Versailles, and every line relating thereto is redolent of a first-hand observation on the part of the author. There is no scamping detail here, nor is there any excess of it. With the fourth chapter of the romance, when Madame de la Motte drove to Versailles in her cabriolet, "built lightly, open, and fashionable, with high wheels, and a place behind for a servant to stand," begins the record of the various incidents of the story, which either took place at Versailles or centred around it. "'Where are we to go?' said Weber, who had charge of madame's cabriolet.--'To Versailles.'--'By the boulevards?'--'No.'... 'We are at Versailles,' said the driver. 'Where must I stop, ladies?'--'At the Place d'Armes.'" "At this moment," says Dumas, in the romance, "our heroines heard the clock strike from the church of St. Louis." Dumas' descriptions of Versailles are singularly complete, and without verboseness. At least, he suggests more of the splendours of that gay residence of the court than he actually defines, and puts into the mouths of his characters much that others would waste on mere descriptive matter. In the chapter headed Vincennes, in "Marguerite de Valois," Dumas gives a most graphic description of its one-time château-prison: "According to the order given by Charles IX., Henri was the same evening conducted to Vincennes, that famous castle of which only a fragment now remains, but colossal enough to give an idea of its past grandeur. "At the postern of the prison they stopped. M. de Nancey alighted from his horse, opened the gate closed with a padlock, and respectfully invited the king to follow him. Henri obeyed without a word of reply. Every abode seemed to him more safe than the Louvre, and ten doors, closing on him at the same time, were between him and Catherine de Medici. "The royal prisoner crossed the drawbridge between two soldiers, passed the three doors on the ground floor and the three doors at the foot of the staircase, and then, still preceded by M. de Nancey, went up one flight of stairs. Arrived there, Captain de Nancey requested the king to follow him through a kind of corridor, at the extremity of which was a very large and gloomy chamber. "Henri looked around him with considerable disquietude. "'Where are we?' he inquired. "'In the chamber of torture, monseigneur.' "'Ah, ah!' replied the king, looking at it attentively. "There was something of everything in this apartment: pitchers and trestles for the torture by water; wedges and mallets for the question of the boot; moreover, there were stone benches for the unhappy wretches who awaited the question, nearly all around the chamber; and above these seats, and to the seats themselves, and at the foot of these seats, were iron rings, mortised into the walls with no symmetry but that of the torturing art. "'Ah, ah!' said Henri, 'is this the way to my apartment?' "'Yes, monseigneur, and here it is,' said a figure in the dark, who approached and then became distinguishable. "Henri thought he recognized the voice, and, advancing toward the individual, said, 'Ah, is it you, Beaulieu? And what the devil do you do here?' "'Sire, I have been nominated governor of the fortress of Vincennes.' "'Well, my dear sir, your début does you honour; a king for a prisoner is no bad commencement.' "'Pardon me, Sire, but before I received you I had already received two gentlemen.' "'Who may they be? Ah! your pardon; perhaps I commit an indiscretion.' "'Monseigneur, I have not been bound to secrecy. They are M. de la Mole and M. de Coconnas.' "'Poor gentlemen! And where are they?' "'High up, in the fourth floor.' "Henri gave a sigh. It was there he wished to be. "'Now, then, M. de Beaulieu,' said Henri, 'have the kindness to show me my chamber. I am desirous of reaching it, as I am very much fatigued with my day's toil.' "'Here, monseigneur,' said Beaulieu, showing Henri an open door. "'No. 2!' said Henri. 'And why not No. 1?' "'Because it is reserved, monseigneur.' "'Ah! that is another thing,' said Henri, and he became even more pensive. "He wondered who was to occupy No. 1. "The governor, with a thousand apologies, installed Henri in his apartment, made many excuses for his deficiencies, and, placing two soldiers at the door, retired. "'Now,' said the governor, addressing the turnkey, 'let us visit the others.'" * * * * * The present aspect of St. Germain-en-Laye is hardly what it was in the days of which Dumas wrote in "Marguerite de Valois" or in "Vingt Ans Après." Le Bois or Le Forêt looks to-day in parts, at least--much as it did in the days when royalty hunted its domain, and the glorious façade château has endured well. Beyond this, the romance and history have well-nigh evaporated into air. The whole neighbourhood is quite given over to a holiday, pleasure-making crowd, which, though it is typically French, and therefore interesting, is little in keeping with the splendid scenes of its past. To-day peasants from Brittany, heavily booted cavalry and artillery, _ouvriers_, children and nursemaids, and _touristes_ of all nationalities throng the _allées_ of the forest and the corridors of the château, where once royalty and its retainers held forth. Vesinet, on the road from Paris to St. Germain,--just before one reaches Pecq, and the twentieth-century _chemin-de-fer_ begins to climb that long, inclined viaduct, which crosses the Seine and rises ultimately to the platform on which sits the Vieux Château,--was a favourite hawking-ground of Charles IX. Indeed, it was here that that monarch was warned of "a fresh calumny against his poor Harry" (Henri de Navarre), as one reads in the pages of "Marguerite de Valois." A further description follows of Charles' celebrated falcon, Bec de Fer, which is assuredly one of the most extraordinary descriptions of a hunting-scene extant in the written page of romance. Much hunting took place in all of Dumas' romances, and the near-by forests of France, _i. e._, near either to Paris or to the royal residences elsewhere, were the scenes of many gay meetings, where the stag, the boar, the _cerf_, and all manner of footed beasts and winged fowl were hunted in pure sport; though, after all, it is not recorded that it was as brutal a variety as the _battues_ of the present day. St. Germain, its château and its _forêt_, enters once and again, and again, into both the Valois series and the Mousquetaire romances. Of all the royal, suburban palaces, none have been more admired and loved for its splendid appointments and the splendid functions which have taken place there, than St. Germain. It had early come into favour as the residence of the French kings, the existing chapel being the foundation of St. Louis, while the Château Neuf was built mainly by Henri II. To-day but a solitary _pavillon_--that known as Henri IV.--remains, while the Vieux Château, as it was formerly known, is to-day acknowledged as _the_ Château. The most significant incident laid here by Dumas, is that of the flight of Anne of Austria, Louis XIV., and the court, from Paris to the Château of St. Germain. This plan was amplified, according to Dumas, and furthered by D'Artagnan and Athos; and since it is an acknowledged fact of history, this points once again to the worth of the historical romance from an exceedingly edifying view-point. At the time of the flight Louis was but a mere boy, and it may be recalled here that he was born at St. Germain in 1638. The architectural glories of St. Germain are hardly so great as to warrant comparison with Versailles, to which Louis subsequently removed his court; indeed, the Château Neuf, with the exception of the _pavillon_ before mentioned, is not even a dignified ruin, being but scattered piles of débris, which, since 1776, when the structure was razed, have been left lying about in most desultory fashion. The Vieux Château was made use of by the great Napoleon as a sort of a barracks, and again as a prison, but has since been restored according to the original plans of the architect Ducercen, who, under François I., was to have carried it to completion. Once St. Germain was the home of royalty and all the gaiety of the court life of the Louis, and once again it was on the eve of becoming the fashionable Paris suburb, but now it is the resort of "trippers," and its château, or what was left of it after the vandalism of the eighteenth century, is a sad ruin, though the view from its heights is as lovely as ever--that portion which remains being but an aggravation, when one recalls the glories that once were. Save the Vieux Château, all that is left is the lovely view. Paris-wards one sees a panorama--a veritable _vol-d'oiseaux_--of the slender, silvery loops of the Seine as it bends around Port Marly, Argenteuil, Courbevoie, St. Denis, and St. Cloud; while in the dimmest of the dim distance the Eiffel Tower looms all its ugliness up into the sky, and the domed heights of Montmartre and the Buttes Chaumont look really beautiful--which they do not on closer view. The height of St. Germain itself--the _ville_ and the château--is not so very great, and it certainly is not giddy, which most of its frequenters, for one reason or another, are; but its miserable _pavé_ is the curse of all automobilists, and the sinuous road which ascends from the Pont du Pecq is now "rushed," up and down, by motor-cars, to the joy of the native, when one gets stalled, as they frequently do, and to the danger to life and limb of all other road-users and passers-by. * * * * * In all of the Valois cycle, "_la chasse_" plays an important part in the pleasure of the court and the noblesse. The forests in the neighbourhood of Paris are numerous and noted. [Illustration: FORÊT DE VILLERS-COTTERETS] [Illustration: BOIS DE VINCENNES] [Illustration: BOIS DE BOULOGNE] At Villers-Cotterets, Dumas' birthplace, is the Forêt de Villers-Cotterets, a dependence of the Valois establishment at Crépy. Bondy, Fontainebleau, St. Germain, Vincennes, and Rambouillet are all mentioned, and are too familiar to even casual travellers to warrant the inclusion of detailed description here. Next to Fontainebleau, whose present-day fame rests with the artists of the Barbizon school, who have perpetuated its rocks and trees, and St. Germain, which is mostly revered for the past splendour of its château, Rambouillet most frequently comes to mind. Even Republican France has its national hunt yearly, at Rambouillet, and visiting monarchs are invariably expected to partake in the shooting. Rambouillet, the _hameau_ and the _forêt_, was anciently under the feudal authority of the Comtes de Montford, afterward (1300) under Regnault d'Augennes, Capitaine du Louvre under Charles VI., and still later under Jacques d'Augennes, Capitaine du Château de Rambouillet in 1547. Louis XVI. purchased the château for one of his residences, and Napoleon III., as well as his more illustrious namesake, was specially fond of hunting in its forests. Since 1870 the château and the forest have been under the domination of the state. There is a chapter in Dumas' "The Regent's Daughter," entitled "A Room in the Hotel at Rambouillet," which gives some little detail respecting the town and the forest. There is no hotel in Rambouillet to-day known as the "Royal Tiger," though there is a "Golden Lion." "Ten minutes later the carriage stopped at the Tigre-Royal. A woman, who was waiting, came out hastily, and respectfully assisted the ladies to alight, and then guided them through the passages of the hotel, preceded by a valet carrying lights. "A door opened, Madame Desroches drew back to allow Hélène and Sister Thêrèse to pass and they soon found themselves on a soft and easy sofa, in front of a bright fire. "The room was large and well furnished, but the taste was severe, for the style called rococo was not yet introduced. There were four doors; the first was that by which they had entered--the second led to the dining-room, which was already lighted and warmed--the third led into a richly appointed bedroom--the fourth did not open.... "While the things which we have related were passing in the parlour of the Hôtel Tigre-Royal, in another apartment of the same hotel, seated near a large fire, was a man shaking the snow from his boots, and untying the strings of a large portfolio. This man was dressed in the hunting livery of the house of Orleans; the coat red and silver, large boots, and a three-cornered hat, trimmed with silver. He had a quick eye, a long, pointed nose, a round and open forehead, which was contradicted by thin and compressed lips." * * * * * Compiègne, like Crépy-en-Valois, Dammartin, Villers-Cotterets, and other of the towns and villages of the district, which in the fourteenth century belonged to the younger branch of the royal house, enter largely into the romances of Dumas, as was but natural, seeing that this region was the land of his birth. The most elaborate and purely descriptive parts are found in "The Wolf Leader," wherein are presented so many pictures of the forest life of the region, and in "The Taking of the Bastille," in that part which describes the journey of Ange Pitou to Paris. Crépy, Compiègne, Senlis, Pierrefonds, are still more celebrated in Dumas' writings for glorious and splendid achievements--as they are with respect to the actual fact of history, and the imposing architectural monuments which still remain to illustrate the conditions under which life endured in mediæval times. At Crépy, now a sleepy old-world village, is still seen the establishment of the Valois of which Dumas wrote; and another _grande maison_ of the Valois was at Villers-Cotterets--a still more somnolent reminder of the past. At Compiègne, only, with its magnificent Hôtel de Ville, does one find the activities of a modern-day life and energy. Here in strange juxtaposition with a remarkably interesting and picturesque church, and the dainty Renaissance Hôtel de Ville, with its _jacquemart_, its belfry, its pointed gable, and its ornate façade, is found a blend of past and present, which combines to produce one of those transformations or stage-settings which throughout France are so often met with and admired. No more charming _petite ville_ exists in all France than Compiègne, one of the most favoured of all the country residences of the Kings of France. The château seen to-day was an erection of Louis XV. Le Forêt de Compiègne is as beautiful and unspoiled as any, and is, moreover, not overrun with tourists and trippers, as is Fontainebleau. [Illustration: CHÂTEAU OF THE DUCS DE VALOIS, CRÉPY] Its area approximates 60,000 acres, and its circumference sixty miles. In short, the whole domain forms a charming and delightful place of retreat, which must have been duly appreciated during the troublous times of Louis' reign. It was here, in the Forêt de Compiègne, that the great hunting was held, which is treated in "Chicot the Jester." The Bois de Vincennes was a famous duelling-ground--and is to-day, _sub rosa_. It was here that Louis de Franchi, in the "Corsican Brothers," who forewarned of his fate, died in the duel with René de Chateaurien, just as he had predicted; at exactly "_neuf heures dix_." This park is by no means the rival of the Bois de Boulogne in the affections of the Parisian public, but it is a wide expanse of tree-covered park land, and possesses all the characteristics of the other suburban _forêts_ which surround Paris on all sides. It has, moreover, a château, a former retreat or country residence of the Kings of France, though to-day it has been made over to the ministry of war, whereas the Château de Madrid, the former possession of the Bois de Boulogne, has disappeared. The Château de Vincennes is not one of the sights of Paris. For a fact, it is quite inaccessible, being surrounded by the ramparts of the Fort de Vincennes, and therefore forbidden to the inquisitive. It was here in the Château de Vincennes that Charles IX. died a lingering death, "by the poison prepared for another," as Dumas has it in "Marguerite de Valois." Among the many illustrious prisoners of the Château de Vincennes have been the King of Navarre (1574), Condé (1650), Cardinal de Retz (1652), Fouquet (1661), Mirabeau (1777), the Duc d'Enghien (1804), and many others, most of whom have lived and breathed in Dumas' pages, in the same parts which they played in real life. CHAPTER XVII. THE FRENCH PROVINCES Dumas' acquaintance with the French provinces was very comprehensive, though it is of the region northeast of Paris that he was most fond; of the beloved forest region around Crépy and Villers-Cotterets; the road to Calais, and Picardie and Flanders. Dumas was ever fond of, and familiar with, the road from Paris to Calais. The National Route ran through Crépy, and the byroad through his native Villers-Cotterets. In the "Vicomte de Bragelonne," he calls the region "The Land of God," a sentiment which mostly has not been endorsed by other writers; still, it is a beautiful country, and with its thickly wooded plantations, its industrious though conglomerate population, it is to-day--save for the Cantal and the Auvergne--that part of France of which English-speaking folk know the least. And this, too, on the direct road between London and Paris! Dumas, in the above-mentioned book, describes the journey through this region which was made by Buckingham and De Wardes. "Arriving at Calais, at the end of the sixth day, they chartered a boat for the purpose of joining the yacht that was to convey them to England, and which was then tacking about in full view." The old port of Calais must have been made use of by the personages of whom Dumas wrote, who trafficked forth between England and France. Calais has ever been the most important terminus of cross-channel traffic, and there be those who know, who say that the boat service is not improved in comfort in all these ages, and certainly Calais, which most English travellers know only by fleeting glimpses, might with profit be visited more frequently, if only to follow in the wake of Sterne's sentimental footsteps. The old port, of course, exists no more; new dykes, breakwaters, and the _gare maritime_ have taken the place of the ancient landing-places, where royalties and others used to embark in frail sailing-vessels for the English ports across the channel. The old belfry still exists, and forms a beacon by day, at least, much as it did of yore. By night the new electric-light flashes its beams twenty odd miles across the channel on Dover Cliff, in a way which would have astonished our forefathers in the days gone by. It was at Calais, too, that was enacted the final scene in the life of Mary Stuart in France. The misfortunes of Mary Stuart formed the subject of one of the series of "Les Crimes Célèbres." In the opening words of this chapter, Dumas has said, "Of all the names predestined to misfortune in France, it is the name of Henri. Henri I. was poisoned, Henri II. was killed (maliciously, so some one has said) in a tournament, Henri III. and Henri IV. were assassinated." In Scotland it is the name of Stuart. The chronicle concerns France only with respect to the farewell of Mary, after having lost her mother and her spouse in the same year (1561). She journeyed to Scotland by Calais, accompanied by the Cardinals de Guise and de Lorraine, her uncles, by the Duc and Duchesse de Guise, the Duc d'Aumale, and M. de Nemours. Here took place that heartrending farewell, which poets and painters, as well as historians and novelists, have done so much to perpetuate. "Adieu, France!" she sobbed. "Adieu, France!" And for five hours she continued to weep and sob, "Adieu, France! Adieu, France!" For the rest, the well-known historical figures are made use of by Dumas,--Darnley, Rizzio, Huntley, and Hamilton,--but the action does not, of course, return to France. Not far south of Calais is Arras, whence came the Robespierre who was to set France aflame. "The ancestors of the Robespierres," says Dumas, "formed a part of those Irish colonists who came to France to inhabit our seminaries and monasteries. There they received from the Jesuits the good educations they were accustomed to give to their pupils. From father to son they were notaries; one branch of the family, that from which this great man descends, established himself at Arras, a great centre, as you know, of noblesse and the church. "There were in this town two _seigneurs_, or, rather, two kings; one was the Abbé of St. Waast, the other was the Bishop of Arras, whose palace threw one-half the town into shade." The former palace of the Bishop of Arras is to-day the local _musée_. It is an extensive establishment, and it flanks an atrocious Renaissance cathedral of no appealing charm whatever, and, indeed, the one-time bishop's palace does not look as though it was ever a very splendid establishment. Still farther to the southward of Calais is the feudal Castle of Pierrefonds, so beloved of Porthos in "Vingt Ans Après." It is, and has ever been since its erection in 1390 by Louis d'Orleans, the brother of Charles VI., one of the most highly impregnable and luxurious châteaux of all France. [Illustration: CASTLE OF PIERREFONDS] Four times it was unsuccessfully besieged, and came finally, in 1617, to be dismantled. The great Napoleon purchased it after the Revolution, and finally, through the liberality of Napoleon III.,--one of the few acts which redound to his credit,--it was restored, by Viollet-le-Duc, at a cost of over five million francs. In "Pauline," that fragment which Dumas extracted from one of his "Impressions du Voyage," the author comes down to modern times, and gives us, as he does in his journals of travel, his "Mémoires," and others of his lighter pieces of fiction, many charming pen-portraits of localities familiar not only to his pen, but to his personal experiences. He draws in "Pauline" a delightful picture of the old fishing-village of Trouville--before it became a resort of fashion. In his own words he describes it as follows: "I took the steamer from Havre, and two hours later was at Honfleur; the next morning I was at Trouville." To-day the fly-by-day tourist does the whole journey in a couple of hours--if he does not linger over the attractions of "Les Petits Chevaux" or "Trente et Quarante," at Honfleur's pretty Casino. "You know the little town with its population of fisher-folk. It is one of the most picturesque in Normandy. I stayed there a few days, exploring the neighbourhood, and in the evening I used to sit in the chimney-corner with my worthy hostess, Madame Oseraie. There I heard strange tales of adventures which had been enacted in Calvados, Loiret, and La Manche." Continuing, the author, evidently having become imbued with the local colour of the vicinity, describes, more or less superficially, perhaps, but still with vividness, if not minuteness, those treasure-chests of history, the towns and villages of Normandy:--Caen, Lisieux, Falaise, the cradle of the Conqueror William, "the fertile plains" around Pont Audemer, Havre, and Alençon. Normandy, too, was the _locale_ of the early life of Gabriel Lambert, the unappealing leading-man of that dramatic story of a counterfeiter's life, which bears the same title. Dumas' first acquaintance with the character in real life,--if he had any real personality, as one is inclined to think he had,--was at Toulon, where the unfortunate man was imprisoned and made to work in the galleys. In the course of the narrative the scene shifts from prisons, galleys, and chain-gangs, backward and forward, until we get the whole gamut of the criminal's life. Gabriel, in the days of his early life at Trouville, had acquired the art of skilled penmanship, and used it wherever he could for his own advantage, by fabricating the handwriting of others--and some honest work of a similar nature. Finally the call of Paris came strong upon him, and he set forth by Pont l'Evêque and Rouen to the metropolis, where his downfall was speedily consummated, to the sorrow and resentment of his old friends of the little Norman fishing-village, and more particularly to Marie Granger, his country sweetheart, who longed to follow him to Paris, not suspecting the actual turn affairs had taken. In "The Count of Monte Cristo," Dumas again evinces his fondness for, and acquaintance with, the coast of Normandy. It is a brief reference, to be sure, but it shows that Dumas had some considerable liking for the sea, and a more or less minute knowledge of the coast of France. This is further evinced by the details into which he launches once and again, with reference to the littoral of the Mediterranean, Belle Ile, and its surroundings, and the coasts of Normandy, Brittany, and the Pas de Calais. In "The Count of Monte Cristo," Dantès says to his companion, Bertuccio: "'I am desirous of having an estate by the seaside in Normandy--for instance, between Havre and Boulogne. You see, I give you a wide range. It will be absolutely necessary that the place you may select have a small harbour, creek, or bay, into which my vessel can enter and remain at anchor. She merely draws fifteen feet water. She must be kept in constant readiness to sail immediately I think proper to give the signal. Make the requisite inquiries for a place of this description, and when you have met with an eligible spot, visit it, and if it possess the advantages desired, purchase it at once in your own name. The corvette must now, I think, be on her way to Fécamp, must she not?'" With Brittany, Dumas is quite as familiar. In "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne," he gives minute, though not wearisome, details of Belle Ile and the Breton coast around about. Aramis, it seems, had acquired Belle Ile, and had risen to high ecclesiastical rank, making his home thereon. [Illustration: NÔTRE DAME DE CHARTRES] Dumas' love and knowledge of gastronomy comes to the fore again here. When D'Artagnan undertook his famous journey to Belle Ile, on the coast of Brittany, as messenger of Louis XIV., whom he called his sun, after he had bought that snuff-coloured _bidet_ which would have disgraced a corporal, and after he had shortened his name to Agnan,--to complete his disguise,--he put in one night at La Roche-Bernard, "a tolerably important city at the mouth of the Vilaine, and prepared to sup at a hotel." And he did sup; "off a teal and a _torteau_, and in order to wash down these two distinctive Breton dishes, ordered some cider, which, the moment it touched his lips, he perceived to be more Breton still." On the route from Paris to the mouth of the Loire, where D'Artagnan departed for Belle Ile, is Chartres. Its Cathedral de Nôtre Dame has not often appeared in fiction. In history and books of travel, and of artistic and archæological interest, its past has been vigorously played. Dumas, in "La Dame de Monsoreau," has revived the miraculous legend which tradition has preserved. It recounts a ceremony which many will consider ludicrous, and yet others sacrilegious. Dumas describes it thus: "The month of April had arrived. The great cathedral of Chartres was hung with white, and the king was standing barefooted in the nave. The religious ceremonies, which were for the purpose of praying for an heir to the throne of France, were just finishing, when Henri, in the midst of the general silence, heard what seemed to him a stifled laugh. He turned around to see if Chicot were there, for he thought no one else would have dared to laugh at such a time. It was not, however, Chicot who had laughed at the sight of the two chemises of the Holy Virgin, which were said to have such a prolific power, and which were just being drawn from their golden box; but it was a cavalier who had just stopped at the door of the church, and who was making his way with his muddy boots through the crowd of courtiers in their penitents' robes and sacks. Seeing the king turn, he stopped for a moment, and Henri, irritated at seeing him arrive thus, threw an angry glance at him. The newcomer, however, continued to advance until he reached the velvet chair of M. le Duc d'Anjou, by which he knelt down." * * * * * But a step from Chartres, on the Loire,--though Orleans, the "City of the Maid," comes between,--is Blois. In "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne," the last of the D'Artagnan series, the action comes down to later times, to that of the young king Louis XIV. In its opening lines its scene is laid in that wonderfully ornate and impressive Château of Blois, which so many have used as a background for all manner of writing. Dumas, with his usual directness, wasting no words on mere description, and only considering it as an accessory to his romance, refers briefly to this magnificent building--the combined product of the houses whose arms bore the hedgehog and the salamander. "Toward the middle of the month of May, 1660, when the sun was fast absorbing the dew from the _ravenelles_ of the Château of Blois, a little cavalcade entered the city by the bridge, without producing any effect upon the passengers of the quai-side, except a movement of the tongue to express, in the purest French then spoken in France (Touraine has ever spoken the purest tongue, as all know), 'There is Monsieur returning from the hunt.'... It should have been a trifling source of pride to the city of Blois that Gaston of Orleans had chosen it as his residence, and held his court in the ancient château of its states." It was in the Castle of the States of Blois that Louis XIV. received that unexpected visit from "His Majesty Charles II., King of England, Scotland, and Ireland," of which Dumas writes in the second of the D'Artagnan series. "'How strange it is you are here,' said Louis. 'I only knew of your embarkation at Brighthelmstone, and your landing in Normandy.'... "Blois was peaceful that morning of the royal arrival, at which announcement it was suddenly filled with all the tumult and the buzzing of a swarm of bees. In the lower city, scarce a hundred paces from the castle, is a sufficiently handsome street called the Rue Vieille, and an old and venerable edifice which, tradition says, was habited by a councillor of state, to whom Queen Catherine came, some say to visit and others to strangle." Not alone is Blois reminiscent of "Les Mousquetaires," but the numberless references in the series to Langeais, Chambord,--the châteaux and their domains,--bring to mind more forcibly than by innuendo merely that Dumas himself must have had some great fondness for what has come to be the touring-ground of France _par excellence_. From "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne," one quotes these few lines which, significantly, suggest much: "Do you not remember, Montalais, the woods of Chaverney, and of Chambord, and the numberless poplars of Blois?" This describes the country concisely, but explicitly. Beyond Blois, beyond even Tours, which is Blois' next neighbour, passing down the Loire, is Angers. [Illustration: CASTLE OF ANGERS--CHÂTEAU OF BLOIS] In "La Dame de Monsoreau," more commonly known in English translations as "Chicot the Jester," much of the scene is laid in Anjou. To Angers, with its wonderful fairylike castle, with its seventeen black-banded towers (recalling, also, that this is the "Black Angers" of Shakespeare's "King John"), repaired the Duc d'Anjou, the brother of Charles IX. and Henri III., who then reigned at Paris. To this "secret residence" the duc came. Dumas puts it thus: "'Gentlemen!' cried the duke, 'I have come to throw myself into my good city of Angers. At Paris the most terrible dangers have menaced my life.'... The people then cried out, 'Long live our seigneur!'" Bussy, who had made the way clear for the duc, lived, says Dumas, "in a tumble-down old house near the ramparts." The ducal palace was actually outside the castle walls, but the frowning battlement was relied upon to shelter royalty when occasion required, the suite quartering themselves in the Gothic château, which is still to be seen in the débris-cluttered lumber-yard, to which the interior of the fortress has to-day descended. In other respects than the shocking care, or, rather, the lack of care, which is given to its interior, the Castle of Angers, with its battalion of _tours_, now without their turrets, its deep, machicolated walls, and its now dry _fosse_, presents in every way an awe-inspiring stronghold. Beyond Angers, toward the sea, is Nantes, famous for the Edict, and, in "The Regent's Daughter" of Dumas, the massacre of the four Breton conspirators. Gaston, the hero of the tale, had ridden posthaste from Paris to save his fellows. He was preceded, by two hours, by the order for their execution, and the reprieve which he held would be valueless did he arrive too late. "On reaching the gates of Nantes his horse stumbled, but Gaston did not lose his stirrups, pulled him up sharply, and, driving the spurs into his sides, he made him recover himself. "The night was dark, no one appeared upon the ramparts, the very sentinels were hidden in the gloom; it seemed like a deserted city. "But as he passed the gate a sentinel said something which Gaston did not even hear. "He held on his way. "At the Rue du Château his horse stumbled and fell, this time to rise no more. "What mattered it to Gaston now?--he had arrived.... "He passed right through the castle, when he perceived the esplanade, a scaffold, and a crowd. He tried to cry, but no one heard him; to wave his handkerchief, but no one saw him.... Another mounts the scaffold, and, uttering a cry, Gaston threw himself down below.... Four men died who might have been saved had Gaston but arrived five minutes before, and, by a remarkable contretemps, Gaston himself shared the same fate." In "The Regent's Daughter," Dumas describes the journey to Nantes with great preciseness, though with no excess of detail. The third chapter opens thus: "Three nights after that on which we have seen the regent, first at Chelles, and then at Meudon, a scene passed in the environs of Nantes which cannot be omitted in this history; we will therefore exercise our privilege of transporting the reader to that place. "On the road to Clisson, two or three miles from Nantes,--near the convent known as the residence of Abelard,--was a large dark house, surrounded by thick, stunted trees; hedges everywhere surrounded the enclosure outside the walls, hedges impervious to the sight, and only interrupted by a wicket gate. "This gate led into a garden, at the end of which was a wall, having a small, massive, and closed door. From a distance this grave and dismal residence appeared like a prison; it was, however, a convent, full of young Augustines, subject to a rule lenient as compared with provincial customs, but rigid as compared with those of Paris. "The house was inaccessible on three sides, but the fourth, which did not face the road, abutted on a large sheet of water; and ten feet above its surface were the windows of the refectory. "This little lake was carefully guarded, and was surrounded by high wooden palisades. A single iron gate opened into it, and at the same time gave a passage to the waters of a small rivulet which fed the lake, and the water had egress at the opposite end." From this point on, the action of "The Regent's Daughter" runs riotously rapid, until it finally culminates, so far as Nantes is concerned, in the quintuple execution before the château, brought about by the five minutes' delay of Gaston with the reprieve. * * * * * Dumas' knowledge of and love of the Mediterranean was great, and he knew its western shores intimately. In 1830 he resolved to visit all the shores of the Mediterranean in a yacht, which he had had specially built for the purpose, called the _Emma_. He arrived in Sicily, however, at the moment of the Garibaldian struggle against the King of Italy, with the result that the heroic elements of that event so appealed to him, that he forewent the other more tranquil pleasure of continuing his voyage, and went over to the mainland. In "The Count of Monte Cristo" is given one of Dumas' best bits of descriptive writing. At any rate, it describes one of the aspects of the brilliantly blue Mediterranean, which is only comparable to one's personal contemplation of its charms. It is apropos of the voyage to the island of Monte Cristo--which lies between Elba and Corsica, and has become fabled in the minds of present-day readers solely by Dumas' efforts--that he wrote the following: "It was about six o'clock in the evening; an opal-coloured light, through which an autumnal sun shed its golden rays, descended on the blue sea. The heat of the day had gradually decreased, and a light breeze arose, seeming like the respiration of nature on awakening from the burning siesta of the south; a delicious zephyr played along the coasts of the Mediterranean, and wafted from shore to shore the sweet perfume of plants, mingled with the fresh smell of the sea. "A light yacht, chaste and elegant in its form, was gliding amidst the first dews of night over the immense lake, extending from Gibraltar to the Dardanelles, and from Tunis to Venice. The motion resembled that of a swan with its wings opened toward the wind, gliding on the water. It advanced, at the same time, swiftly and gracefully, leaving behind it a glittering track. By degrees the sun disappeared behind the western horizon; but, as though to prove the truth of the fanciful ideas in heathen mythology, its indiscreet rays reappeared on the summit of each wave, seeming to reveal that the god of fire had just enfolded himself in the bosom of Amphitrite, who in vain endeavoured to hide her lover beneath her azure mantle." Of the island of Monte Cristo itself, Dumas' description is equally gratifying. In the earlier chapters he gives it thus: "The isle of Monte Cristo loomed large in the horizon.... They were just abreast of Mareciana, and beyond the flat but verdant isle of La Pianosa. The peak of Monte Cristo, reddened by the burning sun, was seen against the azure sky.... About five o'clock in the evening the island was quite distinct, and everything on it was plainly perceptible, owing to that clearness of the atmosphere which is peculiar to the light which the rays of the sun cast at its setting. "Edmond gazed most earnestly at the mass of rocks which gave out all the variety of twilight colours, from the brightest pink to the deepest blue; and from time to time his cheeks flushed, his brow became purple, and a mist passed over his eyes.... In spite of his usual command over himself, Dantès could not restrain his impetuosity. He was the first who jumped on shore; and had he dared, he would, like Lucius Brutus, have 'kissed his mother earth.' It was dark, but at eleven o'clock the moon rose in the midst of the ocean, whose every wave she silvered, and then, 'ascending high,' played in floods of pale light on the rocky hills of this second Pelion. "The island was familiar to the crew of _La Jeune Amélie_--it was one of her halting-places. As to Dantès, he had passed it on his voyages to and from the Levant, but never touched at it." It is unquestionable that "The Count of Monte Cristo" is the most popular and the best known of all Dumas' works. There is a deal of action, of personality and characterization, and, above all, an ever-shifting panorama, which extends from the boulevards of Marseilles to the faubourgs of Paris, and from the island Château d'If to the equally melancholy _allées_ of Père la Chaise, which M. de Villefort, a true Parisian, considered alone worthy of receiving the remains of a Parisian family, as it was there only that they would be surrounded by worthy associates. All travellers for the East, _via_ the Mediterranean, know well the ancient Phoenician port of Marseilles. One does not need even the words of Dumas to recall its picturesqueness and importance--to-day as in ages past. Still, the opening lines of "The Count of Monte Cristo" do form a word-picture which few have equalled in the pages of romance; and there is not a word too much; nothing superfluous or extraneous. "On the 28th of February, 1815, the watchtower of Notre Dame de la Garde signalled the three-master, the _Pharaon_, from Smyrna, Trieste, and Naples. "As usual, a pilot put off immediately, and, rounding the Château d'If, got on board the vessel between Cape Morgion and the isle of Rion. "Immediately, and according to custom, the platform of Fort Saint-Jean was covered with lookers-on; it is always an event at Marseilles for a ship to come into port, especially when this ship, like the _Pharaon_, had been built, rigged, and laden on the stocks of the old Phocée, and belonged to an owner of the city. "The ship drew on: it had safely passed the strait, which some volcanic shock has made between the isle of Calasareigne and the isle of Jaros; had doubled Pomègue, and approached the harbour under topsails, jib, and foresail, but so slowly and sedately that the idlers, with that instinct which misfortune sends before it, asked one another what misfortune could have happened on board. However, those experienced in navigation saw plainly that, if any accident had occurred, it was not to the vessel herself, for she bore down with all the evidence of being skilfully handled, the anchor ready to be dropped, the bowsprit-shrouds loose, and, beside the pilot, who was steering the _Pharaon_ by the narrow entrance of the port Marseilles, was a young man, who, with activity and vigilant eye, watched every motion of the ship, and repeated each direction of the pilot. "The vague disquietude which prevailed amongst the spectators had so much affected one of the crowd that he did not await the arrival of the vessel in harbour, but, jumping into a small skiff, desired to be pulled alongside the _Pharaon_, which he reached as she rounded the creek of La Réserve." The process of coming into harbour at Marseilles does not differ greatly to-day from the description given by Dumas. New harbour works have been constructed, and sailing-ships have mostly given way to great steamers, but the channel winds and twists as of old under the lofty brow, capped by the sailors' church of Notre Dame de la Garde, which is to-day a tawdry, bizarre shrine, as compared with the motive which inspired the devout to ascend its heights to pray for those who go down to the sea in ships. Marseilles, of all cities of France, more even than Bordeaux or Lyons, is possessed of that individuality which stands out strong on the background of France--the land and the nation. In the commercial world its importance gives it a high rank, and its _affaires_ are regulated by no clues sent each morning by post or by telegraph from the world's other marts of trade. It has, moreover, in the Canebière, one of the truly great streets of the world. Dumas remarked it, and so, too, have many others, who know its gay cosmopolitan aspect at all the hours of day and night. From "The Count of Monte Cristo," the following lines describe it justly and truly, and in a way that fits it admirably, in spite of the fact that Dumas wrote of it as it was a hundred years ago: "The young sailor jumped into the skiff, and sat down in the stern, desiring to be put ashore at the Canebière. The two rowers bent to their work, and the little boat glided away as rapidly as possible in the midst of the thousand vessels which choke up the narrow way which leads between the two rows of ships from the mouth of the harbour to the Quai d'Orléans. "The ship-owner, smiling, followed him with his eyes until he saw him spring out on the quai and disappear in the midst of the throng, which, from five o'clock in the morning until nine o'clock at night, choke up this famous street of La Canebière, of which the modern Phocéens are so proud, and say, with all the gravity in the world, and with that accent which gives so much character to what is said, 'If Paris had La Canebière, Paris would be a second Marseilles.'" The Château d'If, far more than the island of Monte Cristo itself, is the _locale_ which is mostly recalled with regard to the romance of "Monte Cristo." Dumas has, of course, made melodramatic use of it; in fact, it seems almost as if he had built the romance around its own restricted _pied à terre_, but, nevertheless, it is the one element which we are pleased to call up as representative of the story when mention is made thereof. Not a line, not a word, is misplaced in the chapters in which Dumas treats of Dantès' incarceration in his island prison. Description does not crowd upon action or characterization, nor the reverse. "Through the grating of the window of the carriage, Dantès saw they were passing through the Rue Caisserie, and by the Quai St. Laurent and the Rue Taramis, to the port. They advanced toward a boat which a custom-house officer held by a chain near the quai. A shove sent the boat adrift, and the oarsman plied it rapidly toward the Pilon. At a shout the chain that closes the port was lowered, and in a second they were outside the harbour.... They had passed the Tête de More, and were now in front of the lighthouse and about to double the battery.... They had left the isle Ratonneau, where the lighthouse stood, on the right, and were now opposite the Point des Catalans. "'Tell me where you are conducting me?' asked Dantès of his guard. "'You are a native of Marseilles, and a sailor, and yet you do not know where you are going?' "'On my honour, I have no idea.' "'That is impossible.' "'I swear to you it is true. Tell me, I entreat.' "'But my orders.' "'Your orders do not forbid your telling me what I must know in ten minutes, in half an hour, or an hour. You see, I cannot escape, even if I intended.' "'Unless you are blind, or have never been outside the harbour, you must know.' "'I do not.' "'Look around you, then.' Dantès rose and looked forward, when he saw rise within a hundred yards of him the black and frowning rock on which stands the Château d'If. This gloomy fortress, which has for more than three hundred years furnished food for so many wild legends, seemed to Dantès like a scaffold to a malefactor. "'The Château d'If?' cried he. 'What are we going there for?' The gendarme smiled. "'I am not going there to be imprisoned,' said Dantès; 'it is only used for political prisoners. I have committed no crime. Are there any magistrates or judges at the Château d'If?' "'There are only,' said the gendarme, 'a governor, a garrison, turnkeys, and good thick walls. Come, come, do not look so astonished, or you will make me think you are laughing at me in return for my good nature.' Dantès pressed the gendarme's hand as though he would crush it. "'You think, then,' said he, 'that I am conducted to the château to be imprisoned there?' "'It is probable.'" The details of Dantès' horrible confinement, at first in an upper cell, and later in a lower dungeon, where, as "No. 34," he became the neighbour of the old Abbé Faria, "No. 27," are well known of all lovers of Dumas. The author does not weary one, and there are no lengthy descriptions dragged in to merely fill space. When Dantès finally escapes from the château, after he had been imprisoned for fourteen years, Dumas again launches into that concise, direct word-painting which proclaims him the master. "It was necessary for Dantès to strike out to sea. Ratonneau and Pomègue are the nearest isles of all those that surround the Château d'If; but Ratonneau and Pomègue are inhabited, together with the islet of Daume; Tiboulen or Lemaire were the most secure. The isles of Tiboulen and Lemaire are a league from the Château d'If.... "Before him rose a mass of strangely formed rocks, that resembled nothing so much as a vast fire petrified at the moment of its most fervent combustion. It was the isle of Tiboulen.... "As he rose, a flash of lightning, that seemed as if the whole of the heavens were opened, illumined the darkness. By its light, he saw the isle of Lemaire and Cape Croiselle, a quarter of a league distant." In "The Count of Monte Cristo," Dumas makes a little journey up the valley of the Rhône into Provence. In the chapter entitled "The Auberge of the Pont du Gard," he writes, in manner unmistakably familiar, of this land of the troubadours, the roses, and the beautiful women; for the women of Arles--those world-famous Arlesiennes--are the peers, in looks, of all the women of France. Dumas writes of Beaucaire, of Bellegarde, of Arles, and of Aigues-Mortes, but not very affectionately; indeed, he seems to think all Provence "an arid, sterile lake," but he comes out strong on the beauty of the women of Arles, and marvels how they can live in the vicinity of the devastating fevers of the Camargue. The auberge of the Pont du Garde itself--the establishment kept by the old tailor, Caderousse, whom Dantès sought out after his escape from the Château d'If--the author describes thus: "Such of my readers as have made a pedestrian excursion to the south of France may perchance have noticed, midway between the town of Beaucaire and the village of Bellegarde, a small roadside inn, from the front of which hung, creaking and flapping in the wind, a sheet of tin covered with a caricature resemblance of the Pont du Gard. This modern place of entertainment stood on the left-hand side of the grand route, turning its back upon the Rhône. It also boasted of what in Languedoc is styled a garden, consisting of a small plot of ground, a full view of which might be obtained from a door immediately opposite the grand portal by which travellers were ushered in to partake of the hospitality of mine host of the Pont du Gard. This plaisance or garden, scorched up beneath the ardent sun of a latitude of thirty degrees, permitted nothing to thrive or scarcely live in its arid soil. A few dingy olives and stunted fig-trees struggled hard for existence, but their withered, dusty foliage abundantly proved how unequal was the conflict. Between these sickly shrubs grew a scanty supply of garlic, tomatoes, and eschalots; while, lone and solitary, like a forgotten sentinel, a tall pine raised its melancholy head in one of the corners of this unattractive spot, and displayed its flexible stem and fan-shaped summit dried and cracked by the withering influence of the mistral, that scourge of Provence." The great fair of Beaucaire was, and is,--though Beaucaire has become a decrepit, tumble-down river town on the Rhône, with a ruined castle as its chief attraction,--renowned throughout France. It was here that the head of the house of Morrel, fearing lest the report of his financial distress should get bruited abroad at Marseilles, came to sell his wife's and daughter's jewels, and a portion of his plate. This fair of Beaucaire attracted a great number of merchants of all branches of trade, who arrived by water and by road, lining the banks of the Rhône from Arles to Beaucaire, and its transpontine neighbour, Tarascon, which Daudet has made famous. Caderousse, the innkeeper, visited this fair, as we learn, "in company with a man who was evidently a stranger to the south of France; one of those merchants who come to sell jewelry at the fair of Beaucaire, and who, during the month the fair lasts, and during which there is so great an influx of merchants and customers from all parts of Europe, often have dealings to the amount of one hundred thousand to one hundred and fifty thousand francs (£4,000 to £6,000)." * * * * * That Dumas was a great traveller is well known and substantiated by the records he has left. When living at Toulon in the spring of 1835, as he himself tells us, he first came into possession of the facts which led to the construction of "Gabriel Lambert." There was doubtless much of truth in the tale, which appears not to be generally known to English readers, and it is more than probable that much of the incident was originally related to Dumas by the "governor of the port." Dumas was living at the time in a "small suburban house," within a stone's throw of Fort Lamalge, the prison, hard at work on his play of "Captain Paul"--though, as he says, he was greatly abstracted from work by the "contemplation of the blue Mediterranean spangled with gold, the mountains that blind in their awful nakedness, and of the sky impressive in its depth and clearness." The result of it all was that, instead of working at "Captain Paul" (Paul Jones), he left off working at all, in the daytime,--no infrequent occurrence among authors,--and, through his acquaintance with the governor, evolved the story of the life-history of "Gabriel Lambert." * * * * * "Murat" was the single-worded title given by Dumas to what is perhaps the most subtle of the "Crimes Célèbres." He drew his figures, of course, from history, and from a comparatively near view-point, considering that but twenty-five years had elapsed since the death of his subject. Marseilles, Provence, Hyères, Toulon, and others of those charming towns and cities of the Mediterranean shore, including also Corsica, form the rapid itinerary of the first pages. For the action itself, it resembles nothing which has gone before, or which is so very horrible. It simply recounts the adventures and incidents in the life of the Marshal of France which befel his later years, and which culminated in his decapitated head being brought before the King of Naples as the only assurance which would satisfy him that Murat was not an adventurer and intriguer. There is a pleasant little town in the Midi of France by the name of Cahors. It is a historic town as well; in fact, it was part of the dowry which Henri de Navarre was to receive when he married Marguerite. The circumstance is recounted by Dumas in "The Forty-Five Guardsmen," and extends to some length in the most marvellously descriptive dialogue. "The poor Henri de Navarre," as Dumas called him, "was to receive as his wife's dowry three hundred thousand golden crowns and some towns, among them Cahors. "'A pretty town, _mordieu_!' "'I have claimed not the money, but Cahors.' "'You would much like to hold Cahors, Sire?' "'Doubtless; for, after all, what is my principality of Béarn? A poor little place, clipped by the avarice of my mother-in-law and brother-in-law.' "'While Cahors--' "'Cahors would be my rampart, the safeguard of my religion.' "'Well, Sire, go into mourning for Cahors; for, whether you break with Madame Marguerite or not, the King of France will never give it to you, and unless you take it--' "'Oh, I would soon take it, if it was not so strong, and, above all, if I did not hate war.' "'Cahors is impregnable, Sire.' "'Oh! impregnable! But if I had an army, which I have not--' "'Listen, Sire. We are not here to flatter each other. To take Cahors, which is held by M. de Vezin, one must be a Hannibal or a Cæsar; and your Majesty--' "'Well?' said Henri, with a smile. "'Has just said you do not like war.'... "'Cahors is so well guarded, because it is the key of the south.'" Chapter fifty-three of the above book recounts the siege itself,--as we know it in history,--but with all that added picturesqueness which Dumas commanded. "'Henri will not pay me his sister's dowry, and Margot cries out for her dear Cahors. One must do what one's wife wants, for peace's sake; therefore I am going to try to take Cahors.'... "Henri set off at full gallop, and Chicot followed him. On arriving in front of his little army, Henri raised his visor, and cried: "'Out with the banner! out with the new banner!' "They drew forth the banner, which had the double scutcheon of Navarre and Bourbon; it was white, and had chains of gold on one side, and _fleurs-de-lis_ on the other. "Again the cannon from Cahors were fired, and the balls tore through a file of infantry near the king.... "'Oh!' cried M. de Turenne, 'the siege of the city is over, Vezin.' And as he spoke he fired at him and wounded him in the arm.... "'You are wrong, Turenne,' cried M. de Vezin; 'there are twenty sieges in Cahors; so, if one is over, there are nineteen to come.' "M. de Vezin defended himself during five days and nights from street to street and from house to house. Luckily for the rising fortunes of Henri of Navarre, he had counted too much on the walls and garrison of Cahors, and had neglected to send to M. de Biron.... "During these five days and nights, Henri commanded like a captain and fought like a soldier, slept with his head on a stone, and awoke sword in hand. Each day they conquered a street or a square, which each night the garrison tried to retake. On the fourth night the enemy seemed willing to give some rest to the Protestant army. Then it was Henri who attacked in his turn. He forced an intrenched position, but it cost him seven hundred men. M. de Turenne and nearly all the officers were wounded, but the king remained untouched." * * * * * The Pyrenean city of Pau is more than once referred to by Dumas in the Valois romances, as was but natural, considering that its ancient château was the _berceau_ of that Prince of Béarn who later married the intriguing Marguerite, and became ultimately Henri IV. This fine old structure--almost the only really splendid historical monument of the city--had for long been the residence of the Kings of Navarre; was rebuilt in the fourteenth century by the brilliant Gaston Phoebus; and enlarged and luxuriously embellished by the beautiful Marguerite herself in the sixteenth century, after she had become _la femme de Henri d'Albert_, as her spouse was then known. As might be expected, Dumas was exceedingly familiar with the suburban topography of Paris, and made frequent use of it in his novels. It is in "The Count of Monte Cristo," however, that this intimacy is best shown; possibly for the reason that therein he dealt with times less remote than those of the court romances of the "Valois" and the "Capets." When Dantès comes to Paris,--as the newly made count,--he forthwith desires to be ensconced in an establishment of his own. Dumas recounts the incident thus: "'And the cards I ordered to be engraved as soon as you knew the number of the house?' "'M. le Comte, it is done already. I have been myself to the best engraver of the Palais Royal, who did the plate in my presence. The first card struck off was taken, according to your orders, to M. le Baron Danglars, Rue de la Chaussée d'Antin, No. 7.'... "As the steward had said, the notary awaited him in the small salon. He was a simple-looking lawyer's clerk, elevated to the extraordinary dignity of a provincial scrivener. "'You are the notary empowered to sell the country-house that I wish to purchase, monsieur?' asked Monte Cristo. "'Yes, M. le Comte,' returned the notary. "'Is the deed of sale ready?' "'Yes, M. le Comte.' "'Have you brought it?' "'Here it is.' "'Very well; and where is this house that I purchase?' asked the count, carelessly, addressing himself half to Bertuccio, half to the notary. The steward made a gesture that signified, 'I do not know.' The notary looked at the count with astonishment. "'What!' said he, 'does not M. le Comte know where the house he purchases is situated?' "'No,' returned the count. "'M. le Comte does not know it?' "'How should I know it? I have arrived from Cadiz this morning. I have never before been at Paris: and it is the first time I have ever even set my foot in France!' "'Ah, that is different; the house you purchase is situated at Auteuil, in the Rue de la Fontaine, No. 28.' At these words Bertuccio turned pale. "'And where is Auteuil?' asked the count. "'Close here, monsieur,' replied the notary; 'a little beyond Passy; a charming situation, in the heart of the Bois de Boulogne.' "'So near as that?' said the count. 'But that is not in the country. What made you choose a house at the gates of Paris, M. Bertuccio?' "'I?' cried the steward, with a strange expression. 'M. le Comte did not charge me to purchase this house. If M. le Comte will recollect--if he will think--' "'Ah, true,' observed Monte Cristo; 'I recollect now. I read the advertisement in one of the papers, and was tempted by the false title, "a country-house."' "'It is not yet too late,' cried Bertuccio, eagerly; 'and if your Excellency will entrust me with the commission, I will find you a better at Enghien, at Fontenay-aux-Roses, or at Bellevue.' "'Oh, no,' returned Monte Cristo, negligently; 'since I have this, I will keep it.' "'And you are quite right,' said the notary, who feared to lose his fee. 'It is a charming place, well supplied with spring-water and fine trees; a comfortable habitation, although abandoned for a long time; without reckoning the furniture, which, although old, is yet valuable, now that old things are so much sought after. I suppose M. le Comte has the tastes of the day?'" Whatever may have been Dumas' prodigality with regard to money matters in his personal affairs, he was evidently a good traveller, in the sense that he knew how to plan a journey with the greatest economy. One sees evidences of this in the "Count of Monte Cristo," where he describes the journey of Madame de Morcerf from Paris to Marseilles. "'I have made inquiries,' said Albert, 'respecting the diligences and steamboats, and my calculations are made. You will take your place in the coupé to Châlons. You see, mother, I treat you handsomely for thirty-five francs.' "Albert then took a pen, and wrote: _Frs._ Coupé to Châlons, thirty-five francs 35 From Châlons to Lyons you will go on by the steamboat--six francs 6 From Lyons to Avignon (still by steamboat), sixteen francs 16 From Avignon to Marseilles, seven francs 7 Expenses on the road, about fifty francs 50 ---- Total 114 "'Let us put down 120,' added Albert, smiling. 'You see I am generous; am I not, mother?' "'But you, my poor child?' "'I! do you not see I reserve eighty francs for myself? A young man does not require luxuries; besides, I know what travelling is.' "'With a post-chaise and _valet de chambre_?'" The route is practicable even to-day, though probably not at the prices given, and one does not go by steamboat from Châlons to Lyons, though he may from Lyons to Avignon. CHAPTER XVIII. LES PAYS ÉTRANGERS Dumas frequently wandered afield for his _mise-en-scène_, and with varying success; from the "Corsican Brothers," which was remarkably true to its _locale_, and "La Tulipe Noire," which was equally so, if we allow for a certain perspective of time, to "Le Capitaine Pamphile," which in parts, at least, is gross exaggeration or burlesque. Once only, to any great extent, did he go to Germany for his inspirations, and then only to German legend,--where so many others had been before,--and have since. In "Otho the Archer" is found a repetition of the Knight and Swan legend so familiar to all. It has been before--and since--a prolific source of supply to authors of all ranks and nationalities: Goethe, Schiller, Hoffman, Brentano, Fouqué, Scott, and others. The book first appeared in 1840, before even "Monte Cristo" and "Les Trois Mousquetaires" were published as _feuilletons_, and hence, whatever its merits may be, it is to be classed as one of his immature efforts, rather than as a piece of profound romancing. The story of adventure, of battle, and of love-making is all there, but his picture of the scenery and life of the middle ages on the Rhine are, of course, as purely imaginary as is the romantic background of myth and legend. Of all the works dealing with foreign lands,--or, at least, foreign to his pen,--Dumas' "Black Tulip" will ever take a preëminent rank. Therein are pictures of Holland life and of the Hollandaise which, like the pen-drawings of Stevenson in "Catriona," will live far more vividly in the minds of most readers than volumes of mere dissertation written by others. The story opens with a recounting of the tragedy of the brothers Cornelius and Jacobus de Windt, which, though not differing greatly from historical fact, is as vivid and terrible an account of the persecutions of mortal man as any similar incident in romance itself, of whatever age and by whomever written. Dumas was in Amsterdam, in 1849, at the coronation of William III., where it has been said--by Flotow, the composer--that the king remarked to Dumas that none of the scenes of his romances had as yet been laid in the Netherlands, and thereupon told him what was substantially the story of "La Tulipe Noire." This first appeared as the product of Dumas' hand and brain in 1850. This is perhaps more or less a legendary account of its inception; like many another of the reasons for being of Dumas' romances, but it is sufficiently plausible and well authenticated to warrant acceptance, though it has been said, too, that it was to Paul Lacroix--"Bibliophile Jacob"--that Dumas owed the idea of the tale. At all events, it is a charming pen-picture of Holland; shows a wonderful love and knowledge of the national flower, the tulip, and is one of the most popular of all Dumas' tales, if we except the three cycles of romances, whose scenes and incidents are based on the history of French court life. Not for many years did the translators leave "La Tulipe Noire" unnoticed, and for over a half-century it has enjoyed a vogue which is at least comprehensible. Its plot and characters are most ingeniously and dextrously handled, but its greatest charm is incident to the process of evolving the famous black tulip from among the indigenous varieties which, at the time of the scene of the novel, had not got beyond the brilliantly variegated yellows and reds. From the various stages of mauve, purple, brown, and, finally, something very nearly akin to black, the flowering bulb finally took form, as first presented to a wide-spread public by Dumas. The celebrated Alphonse Karr, a devoted lover of flowers, took the trouble to make a "romancers' garden," composed of trees and flowers which contemporary novelists, finding the laws of nature too narrow for them, had described in their books. This imaginary garden owed to George Sand a blue chrysanthemum, to Victor Hugo a Bengal rose without thorns, to Balzac a climbing azalea, to Jules Janin a blue pink, to Madame de Genlis a green rose, to Eugene Sue a variety of cactus growing in Paris in the open air, to Paul Féval a variety of larch which retained its leaves during winter, to Forgues a pretty little pink clematis which flourished around the windows in the Latin quarter, to Rolle a scented camellia, and to Dumas the black tulip and a white lotus. The black tulip, it may be remarked, though unknown in Dumas' day, has now become an accomplished fact. Dumas, though not a botanist, had charming, if not very precise, notions about flowers,--as about animals,--and to him they doubtless said: "Nous sommes les filles du feu secret, Du feu qui circule dans les veines de la terre; Nous sommes les filles de l'aurore et de la rosée, Nous sommes les filles de l'air, Nous sommes les filles de l'eau; Mais nous sommes avant tout les filles du ciel." Dumas wandered much farther afield than the land of his beloved Valois. To Italy, to Spain, to Algeria, to Corsica, to Germany, and even to Russia. Mostly he made use of his experiences in his books of travel, of which "Les Impressions du Voyage" is the chief. Who would read the narrative of the transactions which took place in Russia's capital in the early nineteenth century, should turn to "Les Mémoires d'un Maître d'Armes," or "Dix-huit Mois à St. Petersburgh." It presents a picture of the Russian life of the time, in which--the critics agree--there is but slight disguise. Its story--for it is confessedly fiction--turns upon the fortunes of a young subaltern, who played a considerable part in the conspiracy of 1825, and, it has been said by a contemporary writer of the time, hardly any circumstance but the real name of the young man is disguised. It is in the main, or, at least, it has for its principal incident, the story of a political exile, and it is handled with Dumas' vivid and consummate skill, which therein proves again that the mere romancist had a good deal of the historian about him. Besides the _locale_ of "La Tulipe Noire," Dumas takes the action of "The Forty-Five Guardsmen" into the Netherlands. François, the Duc d'Anjou, had entered Belgium and had been elected Duc de Brabant, Sovereign Prince of Flanders. At this time it was supposed that Elizabeth of England saw the opportunity of reuniting the Calvinists of Flanders and France with those of England, and so acquire a triple crown. Then follows an account of the attack on Antwerp, which resulted in final defeat of the French, and presents one of the most graphic descriptions of a battle to be found in the pages of Dumas. The historic incident of the interview in Duc François' tent, between that worthy and the French Admiral de Joyeuse, is made much of by Dumas, and presents a most picturesque account of this bloody battle. The topography of Antwerp and the country around about is as graphic as a would-be painting. "'But,' cried the prince, 'I must settle my position in the country. I am Duke of Brabant and Count of Flanders, in name, and I must be so in reality. This William, who is gone I know not where, spoke to me of a kingdom. Where is this kingdom?--in Antwerp. Where is he?--probably in Antwerp also; therefore we must take Antwerp, and we shall know how we stand.' "'Oh! monseigneur, you know it now, or you are, in truth, a worse politician than I thought you. Who counselled you to take Antwerp?--the Prince of Orange. Who disappeared at the moment of taking the field?--the Prince of Orange. Who, while he made your Highness Duke of Brabant, reserved for himself the lieutenant-generalship of the duchy?--the Prince of Orange. Whose interest is it to ruin the Spaniards by you, and you by the Spaniards?--the Prince of Orange. Who will replace you, who will succeed, if he does not do so already?--the Prince of Orange. Oh! monseigneur, in following his counsels you have but annoyed the Flemings. Let a reverse come, and all those who do not dare to look you now in the face, will run after you like those timid dogs who run after those who fly.' "'What! you imagine that I can be beaten by wool-merchants and beer-drinkers?' "'These wool-merchants and these beer-drinkers have given plenty to do to Philippe de Valois, the Emperor Charles V., and Philippe II., who were three princes placed sufficiently high, monseigneur, for the comparison not to be disagreeable to you.'" In "Pascal Bruno," Dumas launched into a story of Sicilian brigandage, which has scarce been equalled, unless it were in his two other tales of similar purport--"Cherubino et Celestine," and "Maître Adam le Calabrais." Originally it formed one of a series which were published in one volume--in 1838--under the title of "La Salle d'Armes, Pauline, et Pascal Bruno." According to the "Mémoires," a favourite rendezvous of Dumas in Paris, at this period, was Grisier's fencing-room. There it was that the _maître d'armes_ handed him the manuscript entitled "Eighteen Months at St. Petersburg,"--that remarkable account of a Russian exile,--and it is there that Dumas would have his readers to believe that he collected the materials for "Pauline" and "Murat." The great attraction of "The Corsican Brothers" lies not so much with Corsica, the home of the _vendetta_, the land of Napoleon, and latterly known politically as the 86me Departement de France, as with the events which so closely and strenuously encircled the lives of the brothers De Franchi in Paris itself. Corsican life and topography is limned, however, with a fidelity which has too often been lacking in Dumas' description of foreign parts. Perhaps, as has been said before, he extracted this information from others; but more likely--it seems to the writer--it came from his own intimate acquaintance with that island, as it is known that he was a visitor there in 1834. If this surmise be correct, the tale was a long time in taking shape,--an unusually long time for Dumas,--as the book did not appear until 1845, the same year as the appearance of "Monte Cristo" in book form. It was dedicated to Prosper Merimée, whose "Colomba" ranks as its equal as a thrilling tale of Corsican life. It has been remarked that, curiously enough, in spite of the fact that the story has been so often dramatized and adapted for the stage,--and acted by persons of all shades and grades of ability,--Dumas never thought well enough of it to have given it that turn himself. Dumas' acquaintance with Naples never produced any more lucid paragraphs descriptive of character, and the local colour and scenic effect besides, than in the few short pages of "Les Pêcheurs du Filet." It comes, of course, as a result of Dumas' rather extended sojourn in Italy. When Dumas actually did write scenic descriptions, they were exceedingly graphic,--though not verbose,--and exceedingly picturesque,--though not sentimental,--as witness the following lines which open the tale--though he does make use a little farther on of the now trite tag, "See Naples and die." "Every morning on awakening I was in the habit of resting my elbows on the window-sill and gazing far out over the limpid and sparkling mirror of the Tyrrhenian Sea.... At night the bay is so intensely blue that, under more favourable conditions, it resembles those leaden-hued lakes, such as Avernus, the Fucine Lake, or Lake Agnano,--all in the neighbourhood of Naples, which cover the craters of extinct volcanoes." The story gives further a wonderful pen-portrait of Ladislas I. of Hungary, of Jerusalem, and of Sicily, and of the barbaric torture of "The Question," which was performed upon the aspiring lover of Joanna of Naples. Rome figures chiefly in "The Count of Monte Cristo," wherein half a dozen chapters are devoted to the "Eternal City." Here it is that Monte Cristo first meets Albert de Morcerf, son of one of that trio of enemies on whom the count has sworn revenge. De Morcerf, enjoying the pleasures of the Roman carnival, is captured by bandits, from whom he is rescued by the count, who, in saving the son, makes the first move of vengeance against the father. Various interesting parts of Rome are described and touched upon,--the Teatro Argentino, the Colosseum, the Plaza del Popolo--scene of the public executions of that time,--the catacombs of San Sebastian, and many others. The characteristic and picturesque manners and customs of the Romans, from _noblesse_ to peasants, are set down here in vivid and graphic style; and it is clearly plain that when Dumas sojourned in Rome he "did as the Romans do." Dumas' familiarity with Switzerland was no greater or no less than his knowledge of Spain, of Italy, of Russia, or of Corsica. In his volumes of travel, "Impressions du Voyage," are many charming bits of narrative which might well be extracted and elaborated into what is otherwise known as fiction. With regard to "Pauline," this is exactly what did happen, or, rather, the relationship between the Pauline of the novelette and the Pauline of "La Voyage en Suisse" is one based upon a common parentage. Switzerland early attracted Dumas' attention. He took his first tour in the cantons in 1832, partly as a means of convalescing from a severe illness, and partly because he was in danger of arrest for the too active part taken by him in the public funeral of General Lamarque and the riots that followed. No sooner was Dumas _en route_ than the leaves of his note-book were torn asunder and despatched forthwith to the then newly founded _Revue des Deux Mondes_. At Flüelen, that high Alpine pass, the mysterious veiled Pauline de Meulien and her cavalier, Alfred de N----, make their first appearance. One feels intuitively that here are the elements of a drama, of which the author will avail himself before long. The voyages continue, however, and the veiled lady fails to reappear until the end of the journey, when another transitory glimpse of her is had at Pfeffers. This Pauline's adventures evidently demanded more space than the travels could afford, and became ultimately a novelette. "Pauline" is one of Dumas' early attempts at fiction, and is told with originality, and a very considerable skill. Nearly twenty years after "Pauline" was written, Dumas told us that he met the counterpart of the villain of the story, Horace de Beuzeval, who consigned the beautiful Pauline to a living burial in the old abbey vault on the coast of Normandy, near Trouville. Dumas' pictures of Switzerland are more or less conventional; with him the story was the thing, and the minutiæ of stage setting but a side issue. * * * * * In "Les Crimes Célèbres," Dumas goes back to history, though he sticks to France, with the exception of those dealing with the Borgias and Mary Stuart. The crimes of the Borgias--and they were many--end the series, though they cover but the period 1492-1507. The most unnatural and quite the most despicable being the throwing into the Tiber by Cæsar Borgia the cadaver of his brother. Rome, the Popes, and Italy in general form much of the venue, but the political history of France, Spain, and Austria enter largely into the movement of the chronicle, and such widely separated towns of France as Perpignan, in the Comté de Roussillon in the south, and Hesdin, Etaples, and Bethune in the north, all play their parts in the political treaties of the time. THE END. Appendix I. DUMAS' ROMANCES AND HISTORICAL STUDIES CLASSED IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER B.C. 100 César. B.C. 64 Gaule et France. A.D. 57 Acté. 740-1425 Les Hommes de Fer. 740 Pépin. 748 Charlemagne. 1076 Guelfes et Gibelins. 1099 Praxède. 1157 Ivanhoe. 1162 Le Prince de Voleurs. 1162 Robin Hood. 1248 Dom Martins de Freytas. 1291-1737 Les Médicis. 1324-1672 Italiens et Flamands. 1324 Ange Gaddi. 1338 La Comtesse de Salisbury. 1356 Pierre le Cruel. 1385 Monseigneur Gaston Phoebus. 1388 Le Batard de Mauléon. 1389 Isabel de Bavière. 1402 Masaccio. 1412 Frère Philippe Lippi. 1414 La Pêche aux Filets. 1425 Le Sire de Giac. 1429 Jehanne la Pucelle. 1433 Charles le Téméraire. 1437 Alexandre Botticelli. 1437-1587 Les Stuarts. 1446 Le Pérugin. 1452 Jean Bellin. 1470 Quintin Metzys. 1474-1576 Trois Maîtres. 1474-1564 Michel-Ange. 1477-1576 Titien. 1483-1520 Raphaël. 1484 André de Mantegna. 1486 Léonard da Vinci. 1490 Fra Bartolomméo. 1490 Sogliana. 1492 Le Pincturiccio. 1496 Luca de Cranach. 1503 Baldassare Peruzzi. 1504 Giorgione. 1512 Baccio Bandinelli. 1512 André del Sarto. 1519 Le Salteador. 1523 Jacques de Pontormo. 1530 Jean Holbein. 1531 Razzi. 1537 Une Nuit à Florence. 1540 Jules Romain. 1540 Ascanio. 1542 Albert Durer. 1531 Les Deux Dianes. 1553 Henri IV. 1555 Le Page du Duc de Savoie. 1559 L'Horoscope. 1572 La Reine Margot. 1578 La Dame de Monsoreau. 1585 Les Quarante-Cinq. 1585 Louis XIII. et Richelieu. 1619-1825 Les Drames de la Mer. 1619 Boutikoé. 1621 Un Courtesan. 1625 Les Trois Mousquetaires. 1637 La Colombe. 1638-1715 Louis XIV. et Son Siècle. 1639 La Princesse de Monaco. 1640 Guérard Berck-Heyden. 1645 Vingt Ans Après. 1650 La Guerre des Femmes. 1660 Le Vicomte de Bragelonne. 1672 François Miéris. 1672 La Tulipe Noire. 1683 La Dame de Volupté. 1697 Mémoires d'une Aveugle. 1697 Les Confessions de la Marquise. 1703 Les Deux Reines. 1710-1774 Louis XV. et Sa Cour. 1715-1723 La Régence. 1718 Le Chevalier d'Harmental. 1719 Une Fille du Régent. 1729 Olympe de Clèves. 1739 La Maison de Glace. 1754-1789 Louis XVI. et la Révolution. 1762-1833 Mes Mémoires. 1769-1821 Napoléon. 1770 Joseph Balsamo. 1772 Le Capitaine Marion. 1779 Le Capitaine Paul. 1784 Le Collier de la Reine. 1785 Le Docteur Mystérieux. 1788 Ingènue. 1789 Ange Pitou. 1789 Le Chateau d'Eppstein. 1790 La Comtesse de Charny. 1791 La Route de Varennes. 1792 Cécile. 1793 Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge. 1793 La Fille du Marquis. 1793 Blanche de Beaulieu. 1793 Le Drame de '93. 1794 Les Blancs et les Bleus. 1795 La Junon. 1798 La San Félice. 1799 Emma Lyonna. 1799 Les Compagnons de Jéhu. 1800 Souvenirs d'une Favorite. 1807 Mémoires de Garibaldi. 1812 Le Capitaine Richard. 1815 Murat. 1824 Le Maitre d'Armes. 1825 Le Kent. 1831 Les Louves de Machecoul. 1838-1858 Les Morts Vont Vite. 1838 Hégésippe Moreau. 1842 Le Duc d'Orléans. 1848 Chateaubriand. 1849 La Dernière Année de Marie Dorval. 1857 Béranger. 1857 Eugène Sue. 1857 Alfred de Musset. 1857 Achille Devéria. 1857 Lefèvre-Deumier. 1858 La Duchesse d'Orléans. 1860 Les Garibaldiens. 1866 La Terreur Prussienne. Appendix II. DUMAS' ROMANCES, SKETCHES, AND "NOUVELLES INTIMES" CLASSED IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER 1469 Isaac Laquedem. 1708 Sylvandire. 1754 Le Pasteur d'Ashbourn. 1774 Le Testament de M. de Chauvelin. 1780 Le Meneur de Loups. 1793 La Femme au Collier de Velours. 1797 Jacques Ortis. 1799 Souvenirs d'Antony. 1805 Un Cadet de Famille. 1806 Aventures de John Davys. 1810 Les Mariages du Père Olifus. 1810 Le Trou de l'Enfer. 1812 Jane. 1814 Le Comte de Monte-Cristo. 1815 Conscience l'Innocent. 1817 Le Père La Ruine. 1824 Georges. 1827 Les Mohicans de Paris. 1827 Salvator. 1828 Sultanetta. 1828 Jacquot sans Oreilles. 1829 Catherine Blum. 1829 La Princesse Flora. 1830 Dieu Dispose. 1830 La Boule de Neige. 1831 Le Capitaine Pamphile. 1831 Les Drames Galants. 1831 Le Fils du Forçat. 1831 Les Mille et un Fantômes. 1832 Une Vie d'Artiste. 1834 Pauline. 1835 Fernande. 1835 Gabriel Lambert. 1838 Amaury. 1841 Les Frères Corses. 1841 Le Chasseur de Sauvagini. 1842 Black. 1846 Parisiens et Provinciaux. 1847 L'Ile de Feu. 1856 Madame de Chamblay. 1856 Une Aventure d'Amour. Appendix III. DUMAS' TRAVELS CLASSED IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER 1830 Quinze Jours au Sinai. 1832 Suisse. 1834 Le Midi de la France. 1835 Une Année à Florence. 1835 La Ville Palmieri. 1835 Le Speronare. (Sicile.) 1835 Le Capitaine Arena. (Sicile.) 1835 Le Corricolo. (Naples.) 1838 Excursions sur les Bords du Rhin. 1839 La Vie au Désert. (Afrique méridionale.) 1843 L'Arabie Heureuse. 1846 De Paris à Cadix. 1846 Le Véloce (Tanger, Alger, Tunis.) 1850 Un Gil Blas en Californie. 1853 Un Pays Inconnu. (Havane, Brésil.) 1858 En Russie. 1858 Le Caucase. 1858 Les Baleiniers. Index Abbaye de Montmartre, 227. Abbey of St. Denis, 142, 143. Abbey of St. Genevieve, 37, 136, 187, 253. Abelard and Heloïse, 82. About, Edmond, 42, 188. Académie Française, 228. Aigues-Mortes, 139, 347. Alais, 160. Alégres, D', 224. Alençon, 79, 326. Algiers, 45. Alicante, 159. Allée de la Muette, 231. Allée des Cygnes, 11. Alsace and Lorraine, 11. "Ambigu," The, 54. Amsterdam, 361. "An Englishman in Paris" (Vandam), 94, 116. "Ange Pitou," see Works of Dumas. Angers, 332-334. Angers, Castle of, 333. Angers, David d', 82. Anglès, Count, 151. Anjou, 333. Anjou, Duc d', 365. Anne of Austria, 115, 266, 289, 312. "Anthony," see Works of Dumas. Antwerp, 365. Aramis, 45, 49, 246, 247, 252, 300, 329. Aramitz, Henry d', see Aramis. Arc de Triomphe, 147. Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, 135. Arc de Triomphe d'Etoile, 88, 138, 192. Argenteuil, 314. Arles, 347, 349. Arnault, Lucien, 18, 71. Arras, 49, 324. Artagnan, 49. Artagnan, see D'Artagnan. Asnières, 171. Athos, 45, 49, 246-248, 252, 313. Auber, 117. "Au Fidèle Berger," 205. Augennes, Jacques d', 315. Augennes, Regnault d', 315. "Au Grand Roi Charlemagne," 248. Aumale, D', 323. Auteuil, 87. Auvergne, 321. Auxerre, 159. Avedick, 289. Avenel, Georges, 101-103. Avenue de la Grande Armée, 139. Avenue de l'Opéra, 114, 149. Avenue de Villiers, 124. Avignon, 359. Balzac, 69, 82, 127, 363. Barbés, 179. Barbizon, 71. Barras, 74. Barrere, 143. Bartholdi's "Liberty," 11. Bastille, The, 149, 152, 173, 196, 225, 241, 263, 268, 278, 284-287, 292, 295, 296. Bath, 76. Batignolles, 87. Batz, Baron de, 50. Batz de Castlemore, Charles de, see D'Artagnan. Baudry, 129, 151. Bauville, Theodore de, 51. Bavaria, 77. Beaucaire, 347-349. Beaufort, Duke of, 289. Beausire, 254. Belgium, 8, 92, 365. Bellegarde, 347. Belle Ile, 327-329. Belleville, 87. Bellune, Duc de, 84. Béranger, 3, 68, 71. Bercy, 87. Bernhardt, Sara, 191. Berry, Duchesse de, 152. Bertuccio, 328. Besançon, 92. Bethune, 372. Beuzeval, Horace de, 371. Biard, 224. "Bibliothèque Royale," 50, 131, 135, 253. Bicêtre, 234. Bigelow, John, 125. Billot, Father, 18, 23, 24. "Black Tulip," see Works of Dumas. _Blackwood's Magazine_, 257. Blanc, Louis, 75, 179. Blanqui, 179. Blois, 155, 246, 330-332. Blois, Château de, 330, 331. Bohemia, 95, 96. Boieldieu, 82, 153. Bois de Boulogne, 89, 150, 192, 231, 298, 319. Bois de Meudon, 303. Bois de Vincennes, 89, 147, 150, 319. Boissy, Adrien de, 255, 256. Bondy, 315. Bordeaux, 151, 154, 159, 342. Borgias, The, 372. Boulevard des Italiens, 92, 93, 114, 187, 213, 231. Boulevard du Prince Eugène, 140. Boulevard Henri Quatre, 285. Boulevard Magenta, 140, 149. Boulevard Malesherbes, 103, 140, 149. Boulevard Raspail, 252. Boulevard Sebastopol, 140, 149. Boulevard St. Denis, 135, 147. Boulevard St. Germain, 128, 140, 149, 252. Boulevard St. Martin, 135, 147, 149. Boulogne, 160. Bourges, 155. Bourg, L'Abbé, 130. Bourgogne, 105. Bourse, The, 89, 91. Brabant, Duc de, 365. Brentano, 360. Brest, 90, 91, 160. Breteuil, De, 296. Bridges: Cahors, 172. Lyons, 172. Orthos, 172. St. Bénezet d'Avignon, 172. See under Pont also. Brillat-Savarin, 102, 103. Brinvilliers, Marquise de, 286, 287. Brionze, 79. Brittany, 327, 328. Broggi, Paolo, 118. Brown, Sir Thomas, 142. Brozier, 31. Brussels, 44, 76. "Bruyere aux Loups," 23. Buckingham, 322. Buckle, 96. Bureau d'Orleans, 8, 31, 58, 84, 187. Burns, 43. Bussy, 333. Buttes Chaumont, 190, 314. Byron, 43. "Cachot de Marie Antoinette," 238. Caderousse, 347, 349. Caen, 326. Café de Paris, 111, 187, 189. Café des Anglais, 118. Café du Roi, 18. Café Riche, 118. Cagliostro, 295, 296. Cahors, 351. Cahors, Bridge of, 172. Calais, 159, 160, 321-324, 327. Calcutta, 76. Calixtus II., 198. Cambacérès, Delphine, 82. Canebière, The, 342. Cantal, 321. Capetians, The, 194. "Capitaine Pamphile," see Works of Dumas. "Capitaine Paul" (Paul Jones), see Works of Dumas. Carcassonne, 139. Carlyle, 69. Carmelite Friary, 246, 252. "Caserne Napoleon," 140. Caspian Sea, The, 44. Castle of Angers, 333. Castle of Pierrefonds, 324. Cathedral de Nôtre Dame (Chartres), 329. Cathedral of Nôtre Dame de Rouen, 187. "Catriona" (Stephenson), 361. Caucasus, 8. "Causeries," see Works of Dumas. Caussidière, Marc, 178, 179. Cavaignac, General, 179. Ceinture Railway, 89, 303. Cenci, The, 285. Chaffault, De, 46. Châlet de Monte Cristo, see Residences of Dumas. Châlons, 359. Chambord, 332. Chambre des Députés, 8, 138, 167, 187. Champs Elysées, 95, 136, 150. Changarnier, General, 181. Chanlecy, Charlotte Anne de, 50. Chantilly, 297, 298. Charenton, 87. Charlemagne, 129, 193. Charles I., 267. Charles VI., 315, 325. Charles VII., 131. Charles VIII., 132. Charles IX., 133, 212, 217, 236, 253, 263, 311, 320, 333. Charles X., 156, 270. Charles-le-Téméraire, 215. Charpillon, M., 8. Chartres, 329, 330. Chartres, Cathedral de Nôtre Dame, 329. Chartres, Duc de (Philippe d'Orleans), 267. Chateaubriand, 68, 147. Château de Blois, 330, 331. Château d'If, 45, 339, 340, 343, 347. Château de Rambouillet, 315. Château de Rocca Petrella, 285. Château de Vincennes, 319, 320. Château of Madrid, 298, 319. Château Neuf, 303, 312, 313. Chateaurien, René de, 319. Châtelet du Monte Cristo, 303. Chatillon-sur-Seine, 169. Chénier, André, 68, 71. Cherbourg, 160. "Cherubino et Celestine," see Works of Dumas. "Cheval de Bronze," 172. "Chevalier d'Harmental," see Works of Dumas. "Chicot the Jester" ("La Dame de Monsoreau"), see Works of Dumas. Childebert, 129, 212. Childérie, 129. Chopin, 82. Christine of Sweden, 123. Churches, see under Église. Cimetière des Innocents, 197, 221. Cimetière Père la Chaise, see Père la Chaise. Cinq-Mars, 224. Civil War, The, 50. Claremont, 180. Clément-Thomas, Gen., 227. Clovis, 129. "Clymnestre," 19. "Coches d'Eau," 156. Coconnas, 173. Coligny, 260. Coligny, _fils_, 224. Collège des Quatre Nations, 135, 173. "Colomba," 368. Colonne de Juillet, 88. Comédie Française, 190. "_Commission des Monuments Historiques_," 278. "_Commission du Vieux Paris_," 193. Commune, The, 185, 192, 196, 227, 263, 264. "Compagnie Générale des Omnibus," 153. Compiègne, 24, 46, 246, 286, 297, 298, 317-319. "Comtesse de Charny," see Works of Dumas. Conciergerie, 92, 236, 238, 240, 241, 263, 286. Condé, 224, 320. Conflans-Charenton, 171. Contades, Count G. de, 79. Conti, Prince de, 90. Corneille, 224. Corot, 72, 73, 191. Corsica, 8, 337, 351, 367. "Corsican Brothers," see Works of Dumas. Cosne, 155. Couloir St. Hyacinthe, 228. Courbevoie, 314. Cour du Justice, 241. "Count of Monte Cristo," see Works of Dumas. Cours la Reine, 133. Crépy-en-Valois, 15, 16, 24, 46, 83, 315, 317, 318, 321. "Crimes Célèbres" ("Celebrated Crimes"), see Works of Dumas. Cul-de-sac des Marchands des Chevaux, 286. "Cyrano de Bergerac," 43. Dammartin, 16, 24, 317. Damploux, 24. Danglars, Baron, 109, 231, 261. Dantès, 229, 231, 328, 344, 346, 347, 355. Darnley, 324. Daubonne, 214. Daudet, 3, 349. David, 82. "David Copperfield," 34. D'Alégres, The, 224. D'Angers, David, 82. D'Anjou, Duc, 365. D'Aramitz, Henry, see Aramis. D'Artagnan, 45, 48-50, 56, 127, 200, 201, 206, 214, 223, 225, 245-247, 252, 267, 313, 328, 329. D'Artagnan Romances, 148, 171, 195, 205, 215, 225, 235, 247, 254, 266, 312, 330, 331. D'Augennes, Jacques, 315. D'Augennes, Regnault, 315. D'Aumale, 323. De Batz, Baron, 50. De Batz de Castlemore, Charles, see D'Artagnan. De Bauville, Theodore, 51. De Bellune, Duc, 84. De Berry, Duchesse, 152. De Beuzeval, Horace, 371. De Boissy, Adrien, 255, 256. De Brabant, Duc, 365. De Breteuil, 296. De Brinvilliers, Marquise, 286, 287. De Chaffault, 46. De Chanlecy, Charlotte Anne, 50. De Chartres, Duc (Philippe d'Orleans), 267. De Chateaurien, René, 319. De Contades, Count G., 79. De Conti, Prince, 90. D'Enghien, Duc, 320. D'Estrées, Gabrielle, 228, 260. De Flesselles, 196. De France, Henriette, 267. De Franchi, 213, 232, 255, 367. De Franchi, Louis, 319. De Genlis, Madame, 363. De Guise, Cardinal, 323. De Guise, Duc, 224, 253, 278, 301, 323. De Guise, Duchesse, 122, 323. De Jallais, Amédée, 232. De Joyeuse, Admiral, 365. De la Mole, 212. De la Motte, Madame, 228, 241, 307. De Launay, 284. De Leuven, Adolphe, 14, 16, 18. De Lesdequieres, Duchesse, 293. De Longueville, Madame, 224. De Marsillac, Prince, 90. De Mauge, Marquis, 214. De Maupassant, Guy, 228. De Medici, Marie, 133, 224, 260. De Medici, Catherine, 208, 212, 264. De Merle, 18. De Meulien, Pauline, 371. De Montford, Comtes, 315. De Montmorenci, Duc, 255. De Montpensier, Duc, 45. De Morcerf, Albert, 369. De Morcerf, Madame, 358. De Musset, Alfred, 68, 82, 95, 123. De Nemours, M., 323. De Nerval, Gerard, 123. De Nevers, Duchesse, 197. D'Orleans, Louis, 324. De Poissy, Gérard, 130. De Poitiers, Diane, 260. De Portu, Jean, see Porthos. De Retz, Cardinal, 320. De Richelieu, see Richelieu. De Rohan, 37, 224. De Sévigné, Madame, 102, 223. De Sillegue, Colonel, 49. De Sillegue d'Athos, Armand, see Athos. De Sorbonne, Robert, 244. De Ste. Croix, Gaudin, 286. De Talleyrand, Henri, 214. De Treville, 49, 246, 251. De Valois, see under Valois. De Vigny, 68. De Villefort, 261, 340. De Villemessant, 52. De Volterre, Ricciarelli, 224. De Wardes, 322. De Windt, Cornelius, 361. De Windt, Jacobus, 361. De Winter, Lady, 223. Debret, 117. Decamps, 191. Delacroix, 73, 82, 97, 191. Delavigne, 18, 82. Delrien, 18. Demidoff, Prince, 189. "Dernier Jour d'un Condamné," 239. Désaugiers, 31. Desbordes-Valmore, Madame, 70. Déscamps, Gabriel, 221. Desmoulins, Camille, 268. Dibdin, 150. Dickens, Charles, 34. "Dictionnaire de Cuisine," see Works of Dumas. Dieppe, 8, 66. "Director of Evacuations at Naples," 45, 57. "Dix-huit Mois à St. Petersburgh," see Works of Dumas. Don Quixote, 245. Doré, Gustave, 123, 140, 149. Douai, 49. Dover, 154, 322. _Drapeau Blanc_, 31. Ducercen, 313. Ducis, 121. Dujarrier-Beauvallon, 75-77. Dumas: Monuments to, see under Monuments. Residences of, see under Residences. Title of, see under Title. Travels of, see under Travels. Works of, see under Works. Dumas, General, Marquis de la Pailleterie, 26, 27, 47. Dumas, _fils_, 64, 66, 67, 75, 78, 79, 81, 121, 124. Duprez, 117. École des Beaux Arts, 244. École de Droit, 136, 183, 244. École de Médicine, 244. "École des Viellards," 18. École Militaire, 136. Edict of Nantes, 334. Église de la Madeleine, 88, 138, 149, 153. Église de Notre Dame, 86, 129, 167, 198, 235, 263, 286. Église de St. Gervais, 132. Église de St. Merry, 132. Église de St. Paul et St. Louis, 133. Église St. Etienne du Mont, 167, 253, 254. Église St. Eustache, 192. Église St. Germain l'Auxerrois, 132, 212, 260. Église St. Innocents, 142, 144, 223. Église St. Jacques, 198. Église St. Roch, 134. Église St. Severin, 167. Église St. Sulpice, 167. "Eighteen Months at St. Petersburg," 367. Elba, 25, 219, 337. Elizabeth, 365. Elysée, The, 25, 103. Enghien, Duc d', 320. England, 8, 50. Epinac, 160. Ermenonville, 24. Esplanade des Invalides, 150. Estaminet du Divan, 118. Estrées, Gabrielle d', 228, 260. Etaples, 372. "Fabrique des Romans," 38. Falaise, 326. Faubourg St. Denis, 220. Faubourg St. Germain, 83, 132. Faubourg St. Honoré, 83. Fernand, 261. Ferry, Gabriel, 233. Féval, Paul, 363. _Figaro, The_, 52. Flanders, 321. Flaubert, Gustave, 77. Flesselles, De, 196. Fleury, General, 76. Florence, 115. Fontainebleau, 155, 297, 298, 300, 302, 303, 315. Fontaine des Innocents, 145, 187, 193, 222. Forêt de Compiègne, 318, 319. Forêt de l'Aigue, 286. Forgues, 363. Fort de Vincennes, 320. Fort Lamalge, 350. "Forty-Five Guardsmen," see Works of Dumas. Fosses de la Bastille, 137. Fouqué, 360. Fouquet, 199, 289, 298, 300, 320. Foy, General, 31, 82, 84. France, Henriette de, 267. Franchi, De, 213, 232, 255, 367. Franchi, Louis de, 319. Francis, 18. François I., 131-134, 144, 197, 198, 260, 313. Franco-Prussian War, 57, 164, 192. Fronde, 89. "Gabriel Lambert," see Works of Dumas. Gaillardet, 238. Gare de l'Est, 162. Gare du Nord, 162. Gare St. Lazare, 161. Garibaldi, 37. Garnier, 190. Gascony, 50. Gaston of Orleans, 331. Gautier, 68, 71, 72, 123. Gay, Mme. Delphine, 70. Genlis, Madame de, 363. "Georges," see Works of Dumas. Germany, 8, 360. Girondins, The, 194. Glinel, Charles, 26. Godot, 151. Goethe, 68, 360. "Golden Lion," 316. Gondeville, 24. Gouffé, Armand, 31. Goujon, Jean, 132, 223, 260. Granger, Marie, 327. Grenelle, 95. Grisier, 75, 367. "Guido et Génevra" (Halévy), 54. Guilbert, 205. Guise, Cardinal de, 323. Guise, Duc de, 224, 253, 278, 301, 323. Guise, Duchesse de, 122, 323. Guizot, 69. Halévy, 54, 70, 117. Hamerton, Philip Gilbert, 168. Hamilton, 324. "Hamlet," 121. Haramont, 23. Hautes-Pyrénées, 49. Havre, 150, 160, 169, 179, 180, 326. Henri I., 323. Henri II., 132, 172, 303, 312, 323. Henri III., 122, 133, 172, 323, 333. Henri IV., 133, 134, 143, 217, 224, 235, 236, 260, 303, 312, 320, 323, 351, 354. Henri V., 181. "Henri III. et Sa Cour," see Works of Dumas. "Hernani," 122. Herold, 82. Hesdin, 372. "Histoire de Jules César" (Napoleon III.), 73. "Histoire des Prisons de Paris," 238. "History of Civilization" (Buckle), 96. Hoffman, 360. Honfleur, 169, 179. Hôpital des Petites Maisons, 132. Hôpital du St. Jacques du Haut Pas, 133. Hôtel Boulainvilliers, 228. Hôtel Chevreuse, 127, 128, 252. Hôtel D'Artagnan, 214. Hôtel de Bourgogne, 133, 215. Hôtel de Choiseul, 115. Hôtel de Cluny, 167. Hôtel de Coligny, 278. Hôtel de Duc de Guise, 278. Hôtel de France, 248. Hôtel des Invalides, 135, 149, 167. "Hôtel de la Belle Etoile," 208, 212. Hôtel de la Monnaie, 136, 248. Hôtel de Louvre, 102. Hôtel de Mercoeur, 266. Hôtel des Montmorencies, 278. Hôtel des Mousquetaires, 207, 210. Hôtel des Postes, 154. Hôtel de Soissons, 133. Hôtel de Venise, 234. Hôtel de Ville, 132, 137, 191, 196, 197, 204, 318. Hôtel du Vieux-Augustins, 16. Hôtel la Trémouille, 251. Hôtel Longueville, 89. "Hôtel Picardie," 214. Hôtel Rambouillet, 266. Hôtel Richelieu, 266. Hugo, Victor, 3, 37, 68, 71, 73, 79, 82, 122, 127, 155, 156, 158, 223, 239, 363. Hugo, Père, 82. Huntley, 324. Hyères, 351. Ile de la Cité, 86, 131, 133, 165, 169, 172, 235. Ile St. Louis, 165, 169. "Impressions du Voyage," see Works of Dumas. "Inn of the Beautiful Peacock," 300. Irving, Washington, 41. Island of Monte Cristo, 338. Isle of France (Mauritius), 46. Italy, 8, 44. Ivry, 88. Jacquot, 51. Jallais, Amédée de, 233. James II., 303. Janin, Jules, 363. Jardin des Plantes, 134, 149. "Jeanne d'Arc," see Works of Dumas. Jean-sans-Peur, 215. Jerome, Prince, 271. Jerusalem, 369. Jesuit College, 132. "Jeune Malade," 205. Joanna of Naples, 369. Joigny, 46, 58. Jourdain, Marshal, 84. Jouy, 18. Joyeuse, Admiral de, 365. "Jugurtha," 45. Jussac, 252. Karr, Alphonse, 363. "Kean," see Works of Dumas. Kipling, 41. Kotzebue, 285. L'Abbé Metel de Bois-Robert, 228. La Beauce, 166. La Brie, 166. Lachambeaudie, 82. Lacenaire, 240. La Chapelle, 87. La Châtre, 70. "La Chevrette," 214. La Cité, 129, 130, 166, 167, 235, 247. "La Compagne Lafitte et Caillard," 157. Lacroix, Paul, 362. "La Dame aux Camélias," 79. La Dame aux Camélias, see Plessis, Alphonsine, 78. "La Dame de Monsoreau" ("Chicot the Jester"), see Works of Dumas. Ladislas I. of Hungary, 369. "La Feuille" (Arnault), 71. _La France_, 163. Lamartine, 68, 71, 179. Lambert, Gabriel, 326, 327. Langeais, 332. "La Pastissier Française," 104. "La Pâté d'Italie," 93. _La Presse_, 75. _La Revue_, 54, 64. La Rochelle, 49. La Roquette, 263, 278. Lassagne, 31. Latin Quarter, see Quartier Latin. "La Tour de Nesle," see Works of Dumas. Launay, De, 284. La Ville, 130, 166, 167. La Villette, 24, 87, 137. Lebrun, Madame, 179. "Le Châtelet," 204. Leclerc, Captain, 229. "Le Collier de la Reine" (The Queen's Necklace), see Works of Dumas. Lecomte, General, 227. _Le Gaulois_, 163. Legislative Assembly, 183. _Le Livre_, 79. Lemarquier, 239. Lemercier, 19. _Le Mousquetaire_, 44. "Le Nord" Railway, 160. _Le Peuple_, 98. Lescot, Pierre, 222, 260. Lesdequieres, Duchesse de, 293. "Les Françaises," 157. Les Grandes Eaux, 303. Les Halles, 206, 222, 263. "Les Pêcheurs du Filet," see Works of Dumas, 368. "L'Est" Railway, 160. Les Ternes, 87. "Les Trois Mousquetaires," see Works of Dumas. "Le Stryge," 198. Leuven, Adolphe de, 14, 16, 18. _L'Homme-Libre_, 75. Lille, 49, 160. "L'Image de Nôtre Dame," 199, 201. Limerick, 76. L'Institut, 167. Lisbon, 77. Lisieux, 326. Loire, The, 155, 160, 168, 329-331. London, 76, 105, 150, 154, 179, 189, 321. London Tower, 185. Longé, 79. Longueville, Madame de, 224. "L'Orleans" Railway, 160, 161, 192. "L'Ouest" Railway, 160. Louis I., 77. Louis IV., 220. Louis VII., 130, 173. Louis VIII., 144. Louis XI., 12, 131. Louis XII., 131, 134. Louis XIII., 133, 214, 224, 266. Louis XIV., 50, 104, 115, 134, 135, 143, 224, 260, 267, 288, 289, 303, 304, 312, 328, 330, 331. Louis XV., 135, 166, 318. Louis XVI., 196, 264, 315. Louis XVIII., 143, 154, 262. Louis-Philippe, 31, 38, 58, 69, 72, 86, 88, 104, 116, 153, 180, 193, 268, 270. Louvre, The, 89, 132, 135, 136, 167, 173, 175, 184, 187, 195, 208, 212, 215, 221, 241, 255, 258-264, 315. Loyola, Ignatius, 227. Lulli, 115. L'Université, 127, 130, 166, 167, 244, 248. _Lutèce_, 86. Luxembourg, The, 133, 167, 187, 191, 245-247, 251, 253-255. Luxembourg, Gardens of the, 70, 150, 253. Lycée Henri Quatre, 253. Lyons, 157, 159, 172, 301, 342, 359. Mackeat (Maquet), Augustus, 39-42. Madeleine, The (Church), 88, 138, 149, 153. Madelonnettes, The, 134. Madrid, 159. Madrid, Château of, 298, 319. Maestricht, 50. Magazin St. Thomas, 147. "_Maison Dumas et Cie_," 40, 51. "Maître Adam le Calabrais," see Works of Dumas. Malmesbury, Lord, 76. Mandrin, Pierre, 91. "Man in the Iron Mask, The," 288, 289. Mantes, 165, 169. Marat, Jean Paul, 229. Marcel, Etienne, 130, 193. Margot, 236. "Marguerite de Valois," see Works of Dumas. Marie Antoinette, 50, 236, 238. Marne, 165. Marrast, Armand, 179. Mars, Mlle., 123. Marseilles, 155, 219, 229, 261, 339-342, 349, 351, 358. Marsillac, Prince de, 90. Mattioli, 290. Mauge, Marquise de, 214. Maupassant, Guy de, 228. Mauritius (Isle of France), 46. Mazarin, 37, 115, 211, 267, 273, 275. "Mechanism of Modern Life," 101. Medici, Marie de, 133, 224, 260. Medici, Catherine de, 208, 212, 264. "Meditations" (Lamartine), 68. Mediterranean, The, 45, 327, 336, 340. "Mémoires," see Works of Dumas. "Mémoires de M. d'Artagnan," 49. "Mémoires d'un Maître d'Armes," see Works of Dumas. Ménilmontant, 87. Mennesson, 14. Mérimée, 69, 159, 368. Merle, De, 18. Merovée, 129. Méryon, 126-128, 198. "Mes Bêtes," see Works of Dumas. "Messageries à Cheval," 157. "Messageries Royale," 157. "Metropolitain," 204. Metz, 157. Meulan, 165. Meulien, Pauline de, 371. Meyerbeer, 117. Michelangelo, 224. Michelet, 69, 82, 98-100. Mignet, 69. Millet, 71. Minister of the Interior, 183. Mirabeau, 320. Mohammed Ali, 88. Mole, De la, 212. Molière, 224. Mollé, Mathieu, 211. Monastère des Feuillants, 133. Monet, 187. Monmouth, Duke of, 289. Monselet, Charles, 163. Monstrelet, 215. Montargis, 155. "Monte Cristo," see Works of Dumas. Monte Cristo, Island of, 45, 338. Montez, Lola, 76, 78. Montford, Comtes de, 315. Montmartre, 87, 142, 146, 188, 190, 227, 314. Montmartre, Abbaye of, 227. Montmorenci, Duc de, 255. Montpensier, Duc de, 45. Mont Valerien, 88. Monuments to Dumas, 140, 149. Morcerf, Mme. de, 358. Morcerf, Albert de, 369. Morrel, House of, 349. Motte, Mme. de la, 228, 241, 307. Moulin Rouge, 227. Moulin de la Galette, 227. Mount of Martyrs, 227. Müller, 241. Munier, Georges, 46. Murat, 351. "Murat," see Works of Dumas. Mürger, Henri, 96. Musée, Cluny, 5. Musset, Alfred de, 68, 82, 95, 123. "Mysteries of Paris," 99. Nadaud, Gustave, 96. Nancy, 157, 160. Nantes, 151, 334-336. Nantes, Edict of, 334. Nanteuil, 24. Naples, 8, 368. Napoleon I., 1, 25, 74, 88, 116, 137, 138, 192, 193, 218, 219, 244, 260, 265, 270, 313, 325, 367. Napoleon III., 54, 73, 74, 89, 102, 144, 180, 181, 183-185, 260, 265, 271, 315, 325. Napoleon, Jerome, 45. Nemours, De, 323. Nerval, Gerard de, 123. Netherlands, The, 365. Nevers, Duchesse de, 197. New York, 11, 105. Nodier, Charles, 69, 82, 104, 156. Nogaret, 238. Nogent, 88. Noirtier, M., 229. Normandy, 326, 327. Notre Dame, see under Église. Notre Dame de la Garde (Marseilles), 342. Obelisk, The, 88. Observatoire, The, 135, 244. Odéon, The, 123, 167, 187. "Odes et Ballades" (Hugo), 68. "Oedipus," 122. "Old Mortality," 121. Oliva, 255. Oloron, 49. Omnibus, Companies: "Compagnie Générale des Omnibus," 153. "La Compagne Lafitte et Caillard," 157. "Les Françaises," 157. "Messageries Royales," 157. "Messageries à Cheval," 157. "Opéra," The, 89, 91, 95, 114, 115, 118, 190. Opéra Comique, 190. Oratoire, The, 134. Orleans, 155, 160, 237, 330. Orleans, House of, 181, 324. Orthez, 49. Orthon, 208. Orthos, 172. Orthos, Bridge of, 172. "Otho the Archer," 360. Ourcq (river), 137. Pailleterie, Marquis de la, see Dumas, General. Palais Bourbon, 187. Palais Cardinal, 134, 266. Palais de Justice, 236, 239, 241. Palais de la Bourse, 137. Palais de l'Industrie, 141. Palais de la Révolution, 270. Palais des Arts, 173. Palais des Beaux Arts, 138, 143, 238. Palais des Tournelles, 133. Palais National, 183. Palais Royale, 16, 31, 95, 115, 134, 167, 183, 187, 224, 228, 246, 247, 266-273, 275. Panorama Colbert, 148. Panorama Delorme, 148. Panorama de l'Opéra, 148. Panorama du Saumon, 148. Panorama Jouffroy, 148. Panorama Vivienne, 148. Panthéon, The, 37, 136, 167, 187, 252, 253. Paraclet, 81. Parc Monceau, 228. "Paris-Lyon et Méditerranée" (P. L. M.) Ry., 160, 161, 192. "Pascal Bruno," see Works of Dumas. Passerelle, Constantine, 170. Passerelle de l'Estacade, 170. Passerelle St. Louis, 170. Passy, 87, 150. Pau, 354. "Pauline," see Works of Dumas. "Paul Jones" ("Capitaine Paul"), see Works of Dumas. Pennell, Joseph, 168. Père la Chaise, 81, 142, 146, 188, 239, 340. Perpignan, 372. Petit Pont, 170. Petits Augustins, 143. Pfeffers, 371. Philippe-Auguste, 130, 134, 144, 260. Phoebus, Gaston, 354. Pierrefonds, 246, 317. Pierrefonds, Castle of, 324. Picardie, 321. "Pilon d'Or," 205. Pitou, Louis Ange, 18, 23, 24, 317. Place Dauphine, 133, 235. Place de Bourgogne, 182. Place de la Bastille, 148, 167, 187, 225, 296. Place de la Concorde, 136, 138, 148, 162, 193, 263. Place de la Croix-Rouge, 252. Place de la Grève, 166, 197-199, 201, 234, 239, 287. Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, 148, 197. Place de la Madeleine, 194. Place de la Nation, 147. Place de la Révolution, 263. Place de St. Sulpice, 148, 252. Place des Victoires, 148. Place des Vosges, 148, 223, 225. Place du Carrousel, 89, 138, 148, 221. Place du Châtelet, 148, 205, 286. Place du Palais Bourbon, 148. Place du Palais Royal, 148. Place du Panthéon, 148. Place Malesherbes, 123, 124, 140, 149. Place Maubert, 286. Place Royale, 133, 134, 148, 223-225. Place St. Antoine, 225. Place Vendome, 137, 148. Plaine de St. Denis, 95. Plessis, Alphonsine, (La Dame aux Camélias), 78. Poe, E. A., 41, 43. Poissy, Gérard de, 130. Poitiers, Diane de, 260. Pompeii, 5, 45, 57. Pont Alexandre, 173. Pont au Change, 135, 170, 171, 173. Pont Audemer, 326. Pont aux Doubles, 170. Pont de l'Archevêche, 170. Pont d'Arcole, 170. Pont d'Austerlitz, 170. Pont de Bercy, 170. Pont de la Cité, 170. Pont des Arts, 170, 172. Pont de Sèvres, 302. Pont des Invalides, 88. Pont du Carrousel, 88, 171, 235. Pont du Garde, 347. Pont du Pecq, 311, 314. Pont l'Evêque, 327. Pont, le Petit, 168. Pont Louis XV., 173. Pont Louis-Philippe, 88, 170. Pont Maril, 170. Pont Napoléon, 170. Pont Neuf, 133, 134, 170, 171, 173. Pont Notre Dame, 170. Pont Royal, 135, 157. Pont St. Michel, 170. Pont Tournelle, 170. Porette, Marguerite, 239. Porte du Canal de l'Ourcq, 139. Porte du Temple, 131. Porte Marly, 314. Porte St. Antoine, 221. Porte St. Denis, 131, 220, 221. Porte St. Honoré, 131. Porte St. Martin, 104, 113, 115, 153. Porthos, 45, 49, 246, 247, 252, 324. Portu, Jean de, see Porthos. Prison du Grand Châtelet, 204. Proudhon, M., 178. Provence, 347, 351. Puits, 80. Puys, 8, 66. Quai de Conti, 133, 170, 248. Quai de la Grève, 166, 197, 199, 206. Quai de la Megisserie, 133. Quai de la Monnai, 172. Quai de l'Arsenal, 133. Quai de l'École, 133, 173. Quai de l'Horloge, 133, 236. Quai de l'Hôtel de Ville, 197, 206. Quai des Augustins, 133. Quai des Ormes, 197. Quai des Orphelins, 133. Quai d'Orleans, 343. Quai d'Orsay, 138, 170. Quai du Louvre, 170, 172. Quai Voltaire, 170. Quartier des Infants-Rouges, 228. Quartier du Marais, 133. Quartier Latin, 96, 185, 244. "Quentin Durward," 13. Rachel, 191. Railways: "Ceinture," 89, 303. "L'Est," 160. "Le Nord," 160. "L'Orleans," 160, 161, 192. "L'Ouest," 160, 303. "P. L. M." (Paris-Lyon et Méditerranée), 160, 161, 192. Rambouillet, 297, 298, 315, 316. Ranke, 259. Raspail, 179. Ravaillac, 224. Reade, Charles, 81. "Regulus," 18. Reims, 129, 156. Rempart des Fosses, 130. Renaissance, 132. Residences of Dumas, 44, 93, 103, 112, 124, 147, 148, 150, 188, 220, 303. Restaurant du Pavillon Henri Quatre, 160. "Restoration," The, 87, 138, 154, 155. Retz, Cardinal de, 520. Revolutions, The, 4, 44, 136, 138, 140, 154, 164, 172, 178-180, 193, 196, 224, 227, 325. _Revue des Deux Mondes_, 371. Rhine, The, 8. Rhône, 347, 349. Richelieu, 37, 224, 225, 228, 244, 252, 266, 289. Richelieu, Maréchal, 109. Rizzio, 324. Roanne, 160. "Robert le Diable," 116. Robespierre, 324. Robsart, Amy, 121. Roche-Bernard, 329. Rochefort, 18. Rohan, De, 37, 224. "Roi d'Yvetot" (Béranger), 71. Roland, Madame, 235. Rolle, 363. Rollin, Ledru, 179. Rossini, 82. Rostand, 43. Rouen, 77, 159, 160, 169, 327. Rougemont, 31. Rousseau, 7. "Royal Tiger," 316. Rubens, 191. Rue Beaubourg (Le Beau-Bourg), 130. Rue Beaujolais, 228. Rue Bourtebourg (Le Bourg Thibourg), 130. Rue Cassette, 246. Rue Castiglione, 137, 147. Rue Charlot, 228. Rue Coq-Héron, 229-231. Rue d'Amsterdam, 188. Rue Dauphine, 133. Rue de Bac, 72, 147. Rue de Bethusy, 278. Rue de Bons Enfants, 272. Rue de Douai, 187. Rue de Faubourg St. Denis, 220, 221. Rue de Grenelle, 147. Rue de l'Arbre-Sec, 206, 211. Rue de la Chaussée d'Antin, 147, 231. Rue de la Concorde, 183. Rue de la Harpe, 246. Rue de Lancry, 152. Rue de la Martellerie, 215. Rue de Lille, 255. Rue de la Paix, 137, 147. Rue de l'Université, 147. Rue de Rivoli, 140, 147, 148. Rue des Écoles, 140. Rue des Fossoyeurs, 246, 252. Rue des Lombards, 205. Rue des Rosiers, 227. Rue des Vieux-Augustins, 234. Rue de Tivoli, 137. Rue de Valois, 228. Rue du Chaume, 278. Rue du Helder, 213, 232, 255. Rue du Louvre, 230. Rue du Monte Blanc, 84. Rue du Vieux-Colombier, 251, 252. Rue Drouet, 95. Rue Ferou, 246. Rue Guenegard, 248. Rue Herold, 234. Rue Lafitte, 95. Rue Lepelletier, 114. Rue Louis le Grand, 94. Rue Mathieu Mollé, 212. Rue Pelletier, 234. Rue Pigalle, 187. Rue Rambuteau, 92. Rue Richelieu, 102, 112, 115, 147. Rue Roquette, 225. Rue Royal, 183. Rue Servandoni, 246. Rue Sourdière, 228. Rue St. Antoine, 131, 133, 147, 285. Rue St. Denis, 220. Rue St. Eleuthère, 227. Rue St. Honoré, 147, 228. Rue St. Lazare, 188. Rue St. Martin (Le Bourg St. Martin), 130. Rue St. Roch, 148. Rue Taitbout, 214, 231. Rue Tiquetonne, 214, 246, 247. Rue Vaugirard, 127, 246, 252. Rue Vivienne, 147. Rupert, Prince, 50. Russia, 8, 44. Sabot, Mother, 24. Sainte Chapelle, 236. Saint Foix, 135. Salcède, 201. Salon d'Automne, 191. Salons, 161. Salpêtrière, The, 134. Sand, George, 44, 70, 97, 188, 363. Sand, Karl Ludwig, 285. Saône, 168. Sarcey, Francisque, 163. Sardou, 122. "Saul," 18. Schiller, 360. Scotland, 323. Scott, Sir Walter, 13, 41, 74, 121, 360. Scribe, Eugene, 70, 82, 187. Sebastiani, General, 84. Second Empire, 89, 138, 140, 153, 163, 193. Second Republic, 89, 181. Seine, The, 72, 98, 130, 137, 148, 156, 165-171, 173-175, 190, 248, 255, 302, 303, 311, 314. Senlis, 317. Sens, 46. Sévigné, Madame de, 102, 223. Seville, 76. Shakespeare, 121, 122. Sicily, 337, 369. Sillegue, Colonel de, 49. "Site d'Italie" (Corot), 72. Smith, William, 179. "Soir" (Corot), 72. Soissons, 7. Soldain, 259. Sorbonne, 134, 167, 245. Sorbonne, Robert de, 244. Soulié, 68, 82, 121. Soumet, 18. Soyer, 103. Spain, 8, 45, 160. St. Bartholomew's Night, 259, 263. St. Beauvet, 69. St. Bénezet d'Avignon, 172. St. Cloud, 157, 314. Ste. Croix, Gaudin de, 286. St. Denis, 227, 314. St. Denis, Abbey of, 142, 143. St. Etienne-Andrézieux, 160. Ste. Geneviève, 253, 254. Ste. Genevieve, Abbey of 37, 136, 187, 253. St. Germain, 44, 56, 58, 160, 267, 297, 298. St. Germain, Abbot of, 166. St. Germain des Prés, 130. St. Germain-en-Laye, 303, 304, 310-315. St. Germain l'Auxerrois, 187. St. Gratien, 125. St. Luc, Marquis, 255. St. Mégrin, 122. St. Michel, 130. St. Vincent de Paul, 224. St. Victor, 130. St. Waast, Abbey of, 324. Stendhal, 155. Sterne, 322. Stevenson, R. L., 41, 44. Strasbourg (monument), 138, 162. Strasbourg, 157. "Stryge, The," 127. Stuart, Mary, 323. Sue, Eugène, 69, 99, 363. Switzerland, 8, 370. "Sword of the Brave Chevalier," 251. Sylla, 17. Sylvestre's, 272. Taglioni, Marie, 116, 117. Talleyrand, Henri de, 214. Talma, 17, 82, 121, 191. Tarascon, 349. Tastu, Mme. Amable, 70. Thackeray, 44. Thames, 168. Théâtre de la Nation, 183. Théâtre du Palais Royal, 77, 268. Théâtre Française, 16, 17, 121, 167, 183, 187. "Théâtre Historique," 44. Théâtre Italien, 133. Theadlon, 18. Théaulon, 31. "The Conspirators," see Works of Dumas. "The Queen's Necklace," (Le Collier de la Reine), see Works of Dumas. "The Regent's Daughter," see Works of Dumas. "The Sorbonne," 244. "The Taking of the Bastille," see Works of Dumas. "The Wandering Jew," 99. "The Wolf-Leader," see Works of Dumas. Thierry, Edouard, 155, 165. Thiers, 69, 95. "Third Republic," 193. Titian, 191. Title of Dumas, 45, 57, 58. Touchet, Marie, 215, 217. Toul, 160. Toulon, 90, 91, 233, 326, 349, 351. Toulouse, 159. "Tour de Jean-sans-Peur," 214. Tour de Nesle, 237. Tour de St. Jacques la Boucherie, 197. Tour du Bois, 131. Tour Eiffel, 303, 314. Tours, 332. Tour St. Jacques, 140, 167, 187, 263. Tower of London, 185. "Travels," see Works of Dumas. Travels of Dumas, 8, 44-46, 336, 337, 361, 364, 370, 371. "Treasure Island," 42. Treville, De, 49, 246, 251. Trianon, The, 303. Trocadero, 147. Trouville, 325, 327, 371. Tuileries, The, 72, 133, 137, 138, 150, 170, 176, 182, 184, 185, 261, 265. Turenne, 90, 143, 224. Université, The, 167, 244. Val-de-Grace, The, 134. Valenciennes, 49. Valois, House of, 12, 34, 38, 195, 318. Valois, Marguerite de, 197, 287, 351, 354. Valois Romances, 15, 44, 46, 148, 171, 195, 205, 215, 225, 235, 239, 254, 258, 259, 263, 266, 278, 312, 314, 354, 355. Vandam, Albert, 6, 56, 76, 77, 94, 95, 116, 118. Van Dyke, 191. Vatel, 199. Vermandois, Count of, 289. Vernet, 191. Vernon, 165, 169. Véron, Doctor, 79, 111, 116, 117. Versailles, 297, 298, 302-306. Vesinet, 311. "Vicomte de Bragelonne," see Works of Dumas. Vidocq, 234. Viennet, 18. Vieux Château, 311, 312, 313, 314. Vigny, De, 68. Villefort, De, 261, 340. Villemessant, De, 52. Villers-Cotterets, 7, 14, 15, 18, 24, 25, 27, 33, 34, 46, 80, 315, 317, 318, 321. Vincennes, 179, 315. Vincennes, Château of, 298, 320. Vincennes, Fort of, 320. "Vingt Ans Après" ("Twenty Years After"), see Works of Dumas. Viollet-le-Duc, 144, 325. Vivières, 24. Voltaire, 121, 122, 238, 288, 303. Volterre, Ricciarelli de, 224. Wardes, De, 322. Warsaw, 76. Waterloo, 25. William III., 361. William the Conqueror, 326. Windt, Cornelius de, 361. Windt, Jacobus de, 361. Windsor, 154. Winter, Lady de, 223. Works of Dumas: "Ange Pitou," 36. "Antony," 29, 37. "Black Tulip" ("La Tulipe Noire"), 38, 44, 360-362, 365. "Capitaine Pamphile," 89, 221, 231, 360. "Capitaine Paul" ("Paul Jones"), 38, 350. "Causeries," 36, 103. "Cherubino et Celestine," 367. "Chevalier d'Harmental," 228. "Chicot the Jester" ("La Dame de Monsoreau"), 29, 37, 38, 40, 207, 253, 255, 301, 319, 329, 332, 333. "Comtesse de Charny," 223, 226, 229, 302, 303. "Corsican Brothers," 89, 213, 231, 319, 360. "Count of Monte Cristo," 29, 38-41, 44, 109, 218, 229, 261, 327, 328, 339, 340, 342, 343, 347, 355, 358, 361, 368, 369. "Crimes Célèbres" ("Celebrated Crimes"), 285, 286, 323, 350, 372. "Dictionnaire de Cuisine," 63. "Dix-huit Mois à St. Petersburgh," 364. "Forty-Five Guardsmen," 201, 248, 351, 365. "Gabriel Lambert," 89, 91, 231, 232, 350. "Georges," 46. "Henri III. et Sa Cour," 29, 121, 123. "Impressions du Voyage," 36, 325, 364, 370. "Jeanne d'Arc," 38. "Kean," 29. "La Tour de Nesle," 237. "Les Pêcheurs du Filet," 368. "Les Trois Mousquetaires" ("The Three Musketeers"), 29, 38-41, 44, 48, 54, 75, 126, 127, 245, 247, 251, 252, 332, 361. "Maître Adam le Calabrais," 367. "Marguerite de Valois," 173, 175, 198, 210, 212, 215, 221, 236, 257, 307, 310, 311, 320. "Mémoires," 14, 15, 17, 23, 25, 29, 32, 34, 36, 44, 70, 93, 104, 174, 228, 325, 367. "Mémoires d'un Maître d'Armes," 75, 364. "Mes Bêtes," 36, 45. "Murat," 367. "Pascal Bruno," 367. "Pauline," 171, 180, 231, 325, 367, 370, 371. "The Conspirators," 173, 271, 287. "The Queen's Necklace," ("Le Collier de la Reine"), 105, 118, 204, 228, 241, 254, 255, 275, 295, 303, 306. "The Regent's Daughter," 292, 316, 334-336. "The Taking of the Bastille," 18, 24, 46, 175, 225, 250, 279, 288, 303, 317. "The Wolf-Leader," 33, 46. "Vicomte de Bragelonne," 24, 29, 38, 169, 199, 200, 205, 247, 259, 273, 288, 292, 298, 300, 321, 328, 330, 332. "Vingt Ans Après" ("Twenty Years After"), 29, 214, 225, 245-247, 303, 310, 324. Zola, 7, 44, 64, 129, 188. Transcriber's Notes: Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_. Punctuation has been corrected without note. The following misprints have been corrected: "Sordonne" corrected to "Sorbonne" (page 10) "be" corrected to "he" (page 330) Other than the corrections listed above, inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original. Errors in quotations, place names, and French passages have been retained from the original. 
35678	----	Transcriber's note: Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. [Illustration: THE WESTERN FAÇADE OF AMIENS CATHEDRAL.] FRANCE BY GORDON HOME WITH 32 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR LONDON ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK 1914 CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY 1 CHAPTER II THE GENESIS AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FRENCH 6 CHAPTER III FAMILY LIFE--MARRIAGE AND THE BIRTH-RATE 23 CHAPTER IV HOW THE FRENCH GOVERN THEMSELVES 49 CHAPTER V ON EDUCATION AND RELIGION 67 CHAPTER VI SOME ASPECTS OF PARIS AND OF TOWN LIFE IN GENERAL 86 CHAPTER VII OF RURAL LIFE IN FRANCE 114 CHAPTER VIII THE RIVERS OF FRANCE 143 CHAPTER IX OF THE WATERING-PLACES 169 CHAPTER X ARCHITECTURE--ROMAN, ROMANESQUE, AND GOTHIC--IN FRANCE 193 CHAPTER XI THE NATIONAL DEFENCES 205 INDEX 213 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1. THE WESTERN FAÇADE OF AMIENS CATHEDRAL _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE 2. COMBOURG, A TYPICAL _CHÂTEAU_ OF THE MEDIAEVAL TYPE 8 3. IN THE CAFÉ ARMENONVILLE IN THE BOIS DE BOULOGNE, PARIS 17 4. IN THE PLACE DU THÉÂTRE FRANÇAIS, PARIS 24 5. EVENING IN THE PLACE D'IÉNA, PARIS 31 6. IN THE CENTRE OF PARIS 40 7. THE MARKET-PLACE AND CATHEDRAL AT ABBEVILLE 48 8. FIVE-O'CLOCK TEA IN PARIS 64 9. CHILDREN OF PARIS IN THE LUXEMBOURG GARDENS 71 10. LE PUY-EN-VELAY IN THE AUVERGNE COUNTRY 75 11. LA ROCHE, A VILLAGE OF HAUTE SAVOIE 78 12. A TYPICAL _COCHER_ OF PARIS 90 13. AUTUMN IN THE CHAMPS ELYSÉES, PARIS 95 14. A BRETON _CALVAIRE_: THE ORATORY OF JACQUES CARTIER 122 15. A PEASANT CHILD OF NORMANDY 126 16. THE CATHEDRAL AND PART OF THE OLD CITY OF CHARTRES 136 17. THE CHÂTEAU OF AMBOISE ON THE LOIRE 144 18. CHÂTEAU GAILLARD AND A LOOP OF THE SEINE 150 19. MONT BLANC REFLECTING THE SUNSET GLOW 155 20. EVIAN LES BAINS ON LAKE GENEVA 158 21. THE CHAPEL ON THE BRIDGE OF ST. BÉNÉZET, AVIGNON 162 22. CAP MARTIN NEAR MENTONE 164 23. THE CHÂTEAU OF CHENONCEAUX 168 24. ST. MALO FROM ST. SERVAN 171 25. MONTE CARLO AND MONACO FROM THE EAST 174 26. MONT ST. MICHEL AT HIGH TIDE 177 27. THE VEGETABLE MARKET, NICE 187 28. THE PYRENEES FROM NEAR PAMIERS 190 29. THE GALERIE DES GLACES AT VERSAILLES 192 30. THE ROMAN TRIUMPHAL ARCH AT ORANGE 194 31. FRENCH DESTROYERS 200 32. SOLDIERS OF FRANCE IN PARIS 208 _SKETCH MAP OF FRANCE ON PAGE 212._ FRANCE CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY The more one knows of France and the French at first hand, and the more one reads the ideas and opinions of other people concerning this great people, so does one feel less and less able to write down any definite statements about the country or its inhabitants. Whatever conviction one possesses on any aspect of their characteristics is sure to be shaken by the latest writer, be he a native or a foreigner. Every fresh sojourn in the country upsets all one's previous ideas in the most baffling fashion. One used to think the Parisian _cocher_ a bad driver, and then discovers a writer who eulogises his skill. When he knocks over pedestrians, says this writer, he does so because his whole life is given up to a perpetual state of warfare with the public, from whom he gains his livelihood. This point of view being new to one, it takes a little time before it can be safely rejected or accepted, and before this process is completed a man of most decided views, and possessed of a wide knowledge of France and the French, comes along with the statement that no Frenchman can drive. He supports it with a dozen good reasons, and leaves one with a bias towards earlier convictions. It used to be axiomatic, platitudinous, that Frenchwomen dressed better than Englishwomen. People whose knowledge of France is, say, ten, perhaps fewer, years out of date would accept this without a thought, and yet one is inclined to think that the Frenchwoman's pre-eminence has gone. No doubt all that is truly _chic_, all that is essentially dainty in feminine attire, emanates from the brain of the Parisian, but the women of the French capital no longer have any monopoly in the wearing of clothes that give charm to the wearer. Then as to French cooking. The day has not long passed when to breathe a syllable against the cooking of the French would be to proclaim oneself a savage, but what does one hear to-day? Openly in London drawing-rooms people are heard expressing their preference for the food supplied in English homes and hotels. They dare to state that many of the courses provided in French hotels and restaurants are highly flavoured, but uneatable; that the meat provided is nearly always unaccountably tough and full of strange sinews and muscles that give one's teeth much inconvenience; that the clear soup is commonly little more than greasy hot water containing floating scraps of bread and vegetables; that the sweet course is incomparably inferior to that of the English table. The difficulties confronting those who attempt to describe the Gallic people are only realised when one grasps the fact that almost anything one writes is true or untrue of a fragment of the nation. Who could suppose that the inhabitants of soil facing the North Sea would have similar virtues and faults to those who dwell on the shores of the Mediterranean? They seem of a different race, and yet a curious unity pervades the Norman, the Breton, and the Burgundian, the Provençal, the dwellers on the great wheat plain, and the Iberians of Basses Pyrenees. One is tempted to deal with each portion of the country separately, but to do so would make it necessary to produce a library of books, and in trying to pick out qualities common to the whole nation one is checked at every turn by the contradictions that present themselves continually. With the mind resting for a time on one part of France, it would be easy to describe the people as very clean, but mental visions of other parts arrest the pen, and a qualified statement is alone possible. Then the mind hungers for an opportunity of preparing a series of maps, showing by various colours where the people live who possess this or that salient quality. If such maps were presented to the reader, and supposing that districts in which the inhabitants were inclined towards thriftiness were shown red, the whole country would be of the same glowing colour, and therefore this map need not be drawn, but the same does not apply to wages and prosperity, nor to religious fervour, nor to the social manners of the people, and on these and a very large number of subjects the variations are so great that what the writer has ventured to condense in the chapters which follow may be open to much limitation, and even to contradiction. He has always felt a very deep appreciation of the country and the people, and the joy of arriving in France is one of the pleasantest things in his experience. The curious smells that are wafted to the deck of the steamer as it is tied up by the quayside bring to him in one breath the essence, as it were, of the life of France, which has for him so great an attractive force. In that first breath of France, the faint suggestion of coffee brings to mind the pleasant associations of meals in picturesque inns or in the cafés of Paris in sight of the amazing movement of the city; the suspicion of vegetables recalls the colour and human interest of countless market-places and chequered patches of cultivation on wide hedgeless landscapes; and that indefinable suggestion of incense and a dozen other impalpable things brings with it the whole pageant of French life, its colour and gaiety, its movement, its pathos, and its grand moments, all of which act as a magnet and irresistibly attract him to the southern shores of the Channel. CHAPTER II THE GENESIS AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FRENCH In fairly clear weather the strip of salt water cleaving England from France seems so narrow, that to a Brazilian familiar with the Amazon it might be taken for nothing more than a great river. To a geologist the English Channel is a recent feature in the formation of Europe of to-day, while the modern aeronaut regards it as a blue mark on the landscape as he wings his way from London to Paris. Turbine steamers plough from shore to shore in less than an hour, so that on a windless day the crossing is a mere incident in the journey between the capitals; yet the race which dwells on the chalk uplands terminating precipitously at Cape Gris Nez is so entirely different from the people who have for the last thousand years made their homes on the Kentish Downs, that the twenty miles of sea seem scarcely adequate to explain the complete severance. The intercourse between the inhabitants of Gaul and Britain must have been both considerable and constant for some time before the domination of Rome had swept up to the Channel, for it is known from Caesar's records that the Armoricans, who extended from Cape Finisterre to the Straits of Dover, were able to send 220 large oak built vessels against his galleys. From the same source one is aware of the large trade carried on across the narrow sea, and there were Celtic tribes in the south of England colonised from the Belgae of the Continent. Further than this, the megalithic remains of Wiltshire and Brittany suggest a very real and remarkable link between the peoples of Britain and Gaul. Caesar and Strabo are both very definite in their statements that the people of Kent were similar to the Gaulish tribes, not only in the way they built their houses, but also in their appearance and their manners. The coming of Roman civilisation tended to restrict racial intermingling, and from the beginning of the Christian era the Channel became more and more a real frontier. When Norsemen had settled both in England and in the north of France, this frontier again weakened and vanished with the Norman Conquest of England, but racially there was practically no sympathy across the water beyond what might have been felt for the Welsh and the Britons in Cornwall. Thus, from the Romanising of Britain onwards, the similarity between the peoples who faced one another across the Channel waned. It is quite probable that in neither country was there any appreciable infusion of Italian-Roman blood among the Celtic populations, for the conquering legions were composed of troops raised from all parts of the Empire, but in Britain the Romanised population was swept westwards by new invaders from northern Europe, while the Romanised Gauls were never ousted from the territory they had held east of the Rhone and the Rhine. The Latin tongue had probably made very little headway in Britain, while in Gaul the Romans had thrust their language upon the Gallic tribes. It was not, however, the classical Latin of Livy and Virgil, but most probably the colloquial Latin of the common soldier and camp-follower. This debased Latin formed the solid foundation of the literary language of France of to-day. [Illustration: COMBOURG. A TYPICAL CHÂTEAU OF THE MEDIAEVAL TYPE.] The English Channel is therefore a very effective dividing line between two peoples completely different in every characteristic. But who were these people whom the Romans called Galli? Their coming was possibly not earlier than 600 or 700 B.C., and by 300 B.C. they occupied that part of Europe now covered by France, Belgium, Holland, Rhenish Germany to the Rhine, with Switzerland and northern Italy. No doubt they had moved westward from southern Russia in that Aryan stream of which they had formed a part. In the south they intermingled with the ancient Iberian population; they appear to have remained fairly pure in the centre, while in the north they became more or less mixed with Teutonic elements pressing forward across the Rhine. Besides occupying what is now known as France, these Celts settled or squatted all over northern Italy, and drove a very considerable wedge into central Spain, where they formed the fierce warrior people called Celtiberians, who served in masses in the Carthaginian and Greek armies, and held out against the Romans until about 100 B.C. Further than this a wing of these Gaulish Celts made their way along the Danube, wasted Greece in about 270 B.C., and formed an important settlement in Asia Minor which was called Galatia up to about A.D. 500. The Celts in Italy were the first to come under the heel of Rome between 300 and 190 B.C. Gaul itself followed, and a Roman province, named Narbonensis after its chief city Narbo Martius (now Narbonne), was formed along the Mediterranean coast. All the rest of Gaul was added between 58 and 50 B.C. by Gaius Julius Caesar, and from that time until the disruption of the Roman Empire was one of its greatest and richest provinces. With the weakening of Roman domination in the 4th century A.D. a fierce German race or confederacy, calling themselves "Franks" (_i.e._ Freemen), flooded into northern Gaul. They gave their name to the country they had subjected, and for some five centuries their Merovingian and Carolingian kings ruled without interruption. The Franks were numerically a small proportion of the population of France during this period, and they and other tribes which had irrupted into Gaul during the same period gradually became completely absorbed by the stubborn Celto-Roman people, and their language was to a great extent lost owing, perhaps, to the fascination the splendour of Latin would exert upon the users of an uncouth tongue. The Franks had disappeared as a race by the year 1000, but their name had become permanently attached to the land and the people in whose midst they had settled--a phenomenon repeated in the case of Bulgaria. Towards the north and east of France there is a very considerable Germanic strain, although entirely French in language, customs, and sympathy. In the south-east the people have much Italic blood in their veins, while in the extreme south-west the Gascons and the Landais (the people of Les Landes near Bordeaux) are probably of Iberian stock, nearly related to the Basques who belong to the pre-Celtic inhabitants of France, and are therefore more or less distinct from the main mass of the population who remained Gallic with a Romanised language. Although it is true that, with one exception, all the different elements have been quite assimilated, the _patois_ spoken in some districts is barely comprehensible to the ordinary Parisian. The exception is Brittany, where the people are an admixture of the primitive inhabitants with Gauls and Celts from Britain who migrated to the peninsula during the 4th and 5th centuries, their language being pure Celtic to this day, and so similar to Welsh that a Breton onion-seller in Wales can make himself understood without much difficulty. The seamen Brittany provides for the French navy are undoubtedly the finest sailors the country possesses, and they have for some time past formed a very real portion of French sea power. The people of Normandy have a strong infusion of Scandinavian blood and certain peculiarities of speech, but they are scarcely greater than the difference between that of the Londoner and the Yorkshireman. Whatever has been the stock from which the inhabitants of modern France has sprung, their extraordinary capacity of assimilation seems to have endowed them generally with those national characteristics popularly labelled the genius of the French. This process, discernible all through the pages of history, seems as vital to-day as ever. To any one familiar with the French people, it is a matter for astonishment that the average Briton fails in the most profound fashion to realise the most obvious of the national characteristics of his neighbours across the Channel. The popular notion is that the French are a frivolous people, devoted to pleasure; they are supposed to be veritable Miss Mowchers for volatility; to speak with extreme rapidity; to have a taste for queer dishes which the same Briton regards with abhorrence; and are, generally speaking, a people with the lowest of morals. All these ideas are more or less erroneous, and only as the average Englishman comes to learn the truth can the French character be better understood. In the first place, the French, far from being a mass of frivolity, are one of the most serious peoples in the world. They have to such an extent woven a care for the future into the fabric of the nation, that the humblest _bonne-à-tout-faire_, the underfed _midinette_, and simplest son of the soil, aim at and generally succeed in becoming modest holders of State _rentes_. Instead of the happy-go-lucky methods of the middle and lower class Anglo-Saxon, who will turn a family of sons and daughters loose upon the world with very little thought as to their future beyond the bare necessities of food, clothing, and shelter, the French parent regards it as his duty to see that each daughter is provided with a _dot_ suitable to her position, and the Civil Code requires a parent to leave a proportion of his property to each member of his family. French men and women work out their incomes with such exactness that they know to a _sou_ what they have to spare for pleasure, and with a very large mass of the people in town and country that margin is so microscopically small, that pleasure in the sense of a commodity that is bought is often only obtainable at long intervals. In Paris, where the inaccurate ideas of French life are generally gathered, it is the almost universal custom for a family to dine at a restaurant on Sundays, in order that the _bonne-à-tout-faire_, who cooks the meals and waits at table in the average flat, may have most of the day off. Thus the week-end visitor to the capital sees in every café and restaurant families dining in public, and gathers the impression that all these people are spending their money on an evening's amusement. Probably, if the flats to which these people return a little later were examined, it would be found that there was practically nothing in the tiny larders, for it is the French custom to buy daily at the markets in small quantities at the lowest prices, and the meals taken at a restaurant on Sunday do not entail any loss through deterioration of food at home. It is wrong, too, to suppose that the average French people speak more rapidly than the Anglo-Saxon. They are more vivacious, and they often put more emphasis and gesticulation into their conversation than their island neighbours; but there are Englishmen who have a right to speak, who will affirm with the greatest assurance that the French are the slower and more deliberate speakers of the two! No doubt it will take a long time to entirely eradicate from among ill-informed Anglo-Saxons the notion that a French menu is largely composed of strange creatures not usually regarded as edible, but the excellence of French food and cooking is getting so widely known and appreciated that this ancient misconception is being steadily dissipated. Perhaps it is because no sooner does the visitor land at Calais or Boulogne, or step out of the railway terminus in Paris, than he sees a kiosk where comic papers full of improper drawings are boldly exhibited, that he comes to the conclusion that the French are an entirely immoral people. But painful as it is to witness this flaunting of vulgar suggestion before the casual passer-by, it is not quite a fair gauge by which to take the standard of morals in France. There was no wave of Puritanism in France as in England, and the standard of public decency is therefore lower, but French home life is probably nearly as moral as in England, and it is a well-known fact that girls belonging to the middle classes live irreproachable lives in the almost unnatural seclusion maintained by their parents. The attitude of the young man towards the other sex before he marries is certainly lamentably inferior to that of the Anglo-Saxon who may fall from the ideal to which he has been trained, but nevertheless regards his failure as a disaster, while the French youth looks upon such matters as a recognised feature of his adolescence. Justification for the idea prevalent in Anglo-Saxon countries that the French are exceptionally lax in their morals, can be found in the fact that in all ranks of French society there is no secrecy maintained when irregular relations have been established, and also in the fact that the illegitimate births are considerably more than twice as numerous as those of Great Britain and Ireland. It should be remembered, however, that Germany stands only a trifle better than France in this matter, while six other European countries are infinitely worse. [Illustration: IN THE CAFÉ ARMENONVILLE IN THE BOIS DE BOULOGNE, PARIS.] What are to the man in the street the characteristics of the French race are, therefore, so wide of the truth, that until simple and accurate books on this great and talented people are used in all British schools it will take a considerable time to put matters straight. In the meantime an opportunity occurs here to do something in this direction. More than any other nation on the whole face of the earth the French are a people of great ideas. They frequently leave their neighbours to carry out the conceptions with which they enrich the world, but they think on a great scale, and produce men and women whose agility of mind is often hugely in advance of the age in which they live. It was a Frenchman who first thought it feasible to sever Africa from Asia, and made the first attempt to cut the cord that unites North and South America; it was the French who led the way in applying the internal combustion engine to locomotion, and they have dazzled the world with the brilliant performances of their flying men. A Frenchman was the pioneer in tunnel boring, and his son Isambard Brunel devised a railway on such a magnificent scale that it still remains an ideal which engineers regard with admiration. Another Frenchman, Charles Bourseul, invented the telephone, and yet another led the way in the science of bacteriology. As conscious empire-builders on a world-wide scale the French were also putting their ideas into practice when England was still thinking commercially in such matters. England as a whole always does think in pounds, shillings, and pence, and in empire-building possessions have mainly been added to the British Empire with the idea of increasing its trade. In naval developments France recently led the way with the submarine and submersible, setting an example to the rest of the world which has been followed so thoroughly that the lead in this arm of sea-power is no longer with the pioneer country. Innumerable instances could be given of the initiative in big ideas being taken by Frenchmen, and of other nations taking them up and developing, perfecting, and sometimes consummating for the first time projects devised in France. Mr. C. F. G. Masterman has laid stress on the patience of the British working man, but that willingness to endure hard circumstance is not so pronounced in England as in France. There endurance continues too long, so that when harsh treatment becomes absolutely intolerable there is not a fraction of patience left, with the inevitable result that explosions of varying degrees of violence take place. British workers bestir themselves and demand redress of grievances before they are at the end of their patience, and can therefore wait while the country becomes familiar with their new needs. England has thus known no "Reign of Terror," nor does the Government of the day suddenly collapse before some public outburst of passionate feeling. The people who can endure the inconvenience of a Government monopoly in matches, which makes that commodity vile in quality while costing a penny a box, must indeed be patient. The average Frenchman desires to live a quiet and peaceful life without hurry or bustle. He is content with long hours of work if he can carry on that occupation at an easy pace, for he is steadily industrious, and his easy-going nature lets him disregard misgovernment too long for safety, for when at last he is roused out of the ambling pace of his normal life, underground elements of cruelty and bloodthirstiness may come to the surface with sudden and terrible swiftness. If fair and honest government and tolerable conditions of labour could be perpetually guaranteed to France, there is scarcely a people in the world who would live more peaceable and uneventful lives, for the British relish for adventure and the enthusiasm for hustle to be found in the United States finds no echo in the average French mind. Alongside this disinclination to go helter-skelter through life is the fact that in certain ways the French people are all artists, and that they have the critical faculty developed to a most remarkable degree; their capacity for discrimination and criticism might indeed be singled out as the most salient characteristic of the whole people. Even the humblest citizen is seldom prepared to express unqualified admiration for any piece of handicraft or painting, but will look with thoughtful care on the object of consideration, and probably supply an intelligent reason for only giving it partial approval. On the other hand there is a great tendency to over fondness for generalising without sufficient data; there is a delight in reasoning and logic which often leads to false conclusions owing to a want of real knowledge. This love of reasoning and the capacity for criticism seem to have given the nation a regard for consequences and a care to avoid the more or less inevitable economic day of adverse reckoning which comes to those who are careless and indefinite in their arrangements. It is the general thriftiness found all through the peasant and bourgeois class of France that has, to such a great extent, saved the various grades in the social scale from emulating the ways of those above them. The disgrace of insolvency is so terrifying to a French household that a thousand economies are practised to keep such a contingency afar off, and in following this rule of life much social intercourse, and nearly all effort to seem more opulent than the family purse will permit, go overboard. Thus it has become a characteristic of a most definite order that a Frenchman's home is his castle in a fashion far more real to the stranger than is the case in Anglo-Saxon countries. Briefly it may be stated that the French are a serious, cautious, patient, and exceedingly industrious and home-loving race, enjoying their hardly earned hours of pleasure in a more demonstrative fashion than do the nations whose climates are less sunny. They are critical and fond of generalisation, are capable of large and splendid moments of inspiration, and have on the whole feminine rather than masculine characteristics. CHAPTER III FAMILY LIFE--MARRIAGE AND THE BIRTH-RATE For an English resident in France to become an intimate in the home of a French family is a rare enough occurrence, and for a visitor to attempt to discover anything as to French family life first hand is generally a quest doomed to failure. In the vast mass of the middle classes the habit of mind is to remain as far as possible on the estate of one's ancestors or in the place in which one is known. There is no wish to live in foreign lands; those who are obliged to do so are pitied, and foreigners who come to take up permanent residence in France are in most instances regarded as people who, for some regrettable reason, are obliged to live outside their native land. This idea prevents the foreigner from receiving a cordial welcome, and he generally labels the people of his adopted land as inhospitable. On the other hand, it must be remembered that Belgians and Italians belonging to a common stock are assimilated with extreme rapidity into the great body of the nation. The hospitality of the average French household of the middle classes is, owing to the need for great thrift, narrowed down to the necessarily limited circle of the family. No sooner is the aforetime stranger joined to a family by the tie of marriage than the doors of the homes of all the relations are thrown wide open to receive him. It is this custom which makes it so essential for the prospective parents-in-law to ascertain the antecedents, the status, and financial prospects of a proposed husband for their daughter. Should some disaster, monetary or otherwise, fall upon this new addition of the family, the blow is inflicted upon all the members and all the branches of that circle. Similar enquiries are put on foot by the parents of a son who is intending to ally himself to another family. [Illustration: IN THE PLACE DU THÉÂTRE FRANÇAIS, PARIS.] Wherever the family tie is given undue importance there is inevitably less willingness to entertain the stranger and to take the risks this wider sociality involves. So English people, with Paris (which they do not really know) as the basis of their observations, are too ready to state with confidence that there is no real home life in France. It may be that there is less in the capital than in the rest of the country, but Paris is the least French portion of France. The English, or more accurately the British, quarter of Paris remains outside the closely guarded circles of Parisian family life, and large sections of the city live in water-tight compartments even as they do in London. What does the average middle-class family know of the French residents in London? Probably the number of those of the upper classes who are closely in touch with French residents of their own social rank is very small, and the humble French population of Soho and Pimlico live their hard-working lives almost as detached from the rest of the city as though they were on the other side of the Channel. One of the most marked differences between the Anglo-Saxon and the French home is the fact that in the latter the place of the housemaid is to a very great extent taken by men. The sterner sex dust and sweep and polish as a matter of course. There is little restriction on the amount of noise made by the servants, male and female, while they are about their work. It is quite usual to hear them laughing, talking, singing, and even shouting to one another, where in an English household there would scarcely be a sound above the quietest conversation drowned by the noise of the broom. The ordinary house of the middle classes does not enjoy that periodical refurbishing and redecorating accepted as necessary north of the Channel. With a wife as keen as himself on living well within their joint income the French head of the family is not urged to put aside a certain annual sum for new curtains, carpets, chair and sofa covers, and such expensive items. The initial outlay on the home is generally considered to be almost sufficient for a lifetime if care is used in maintaining what has been purchased. It is not necessary to have entered many French homes to become familiar with the typical bedroom which is reflected faithfully enough in the average hotel. One essential feature of a bedroom as the Anglo-Saxon knows it is alone allowed to form a feature of the furnishing of the apartment. It is the bed, draped as a rule with elaborate curtains and coverings and surmounted by some form of canopy. A massive feather-bed-like eiderdown, covering about one-half of the necessary area of the bed, reposes at the foot and leaves those unfamiliar with these nightmare pillows wondering if the people who use them are a practical race. The dressing-table and washstand are generally hard to find. If there is a _cabinet de toilette_, these essentials of a bedroom will be stowed away in what is often a roomy cupboard, and where the feature does not exist, both pieces of furniture will be so modest in dimensions and sufficiently well disguised to be almost unrecognisable at a casual glance. Conspicuously placed, however, will be an ample sofa and a writing-table not necessarily provided with adequate writing materials. Every effort is made to give the sleeping apartment as much the atmosphere of a reception-room as sofas and chairs and an absence of toilet appliances will allow, for when, right away in the fifteenth century, it became the custom for the sovereign to hold audiences in the bed-chamber the rest of French society imitated the royal example, until it became an established usage in _bourgeois_ circles as much as in those of the class which enjoyed the direct influence of court fashions. Democratic and Republican France has swept away the whole edifice of the monarchy, but unconsciously perpetuates in a most remarkable fashion the weakness of a sovereign to carry on the business of the day from his bed! The average husband regards the _cabinet de toilette_ as the peculiar possession of his wife, and would hesitate to enter that annexe to his bedroom unbidden. Possibly to those who have been brought up with this idea the English custom of providing a small dressing-room for the husband and allowing _madame_ paramount rights over the whole bedroom may seem unaccountably odd. Formality is generally the prevailing note of the reception-rooms. Comfortable chairs have only lately begun to make their appearance at all, and as a rule the middle-class household maintains a traditional severity in the arrangements of its drawing-room. Straight uninviting chairs and an absence of any indications of books, magazines or papers, or anything in the way of a needlework bag or a writing-table that is in regular use, deprive the room of any home-like individuality. The extreme economy exercised in the use of fuel makes the unnecessary lighting of a fire a wanton extravagance. Commodities in Paris cost double or even more than double what they do in the British Isles, and in the country generally one-third more; the salaries of the civil and military officials, who form such a big section of the middle-class population, are considerably less than those enjoyed in England, and the incomes of the professional classes are as a rule smaller than those of the Englishman. Add to this the abnormally high rents of Paris and it will be understood that in the capital there is always need for the most rigid economy. _Madame_ must keep a watchful eye on the household store of coal, not only to see that it is not wasted in her own fires, but to make sure that pilfering is not carried on by her servants. Where in England a fire is kept quietly smouldering, it will be raked out in France and relighted when required a few hours later. In this way a good deal of hardihood in the endurance of cold is developed, and contrivances in the way of stoves that burn fuel with extreme economy are much in use. This restraint in coal consumption reduces the quantity of carbon particles discharged into the atmosphere of French cities, and accounts to a great extent for the clearer air the inhabitants enjoy, at the same time keeping the annual bill for coal and wood down to very modest proportions. Economy must also be rigidly maintained in the purchase of food, and this is generally accomplished by discreet buying in the markets. A servant or a member of the household makes daily purchases in this manner, and the middleman's profits on the chief part of the food required are successfully avoided. In Paris the maid-of-all-work, who is generally the only servant employed in a modest flat, makes these daily purchases, out of which she obtains from those with whom she deals a commission of a _sou_ in every _franc_ expended. This is a universally recognised custom, but in addition there is a prevalent but altogether reprehensible practice, known as _faire danser l'anse du panier_. It is pure dishonesty, for the _bonne_ puts down in the books a small overcharge on each item, and this with the market-man's _sou du franc_ amounts to a considerable sum in the course of a year, often nearly equal to her wage. It is an interesting fact that Breton servants are generally quite guiltless of the overcharge system, for the people of Brittany are of much the same stock as the Welsh, concerning whom there is a proverb for which the writer fails to find justification. _Déjeuner_ at 11.30 or 12 and dinner at 6.30 or 7 are the two essential meals of the day. Breakfast, served in the bedroom, consists of coffee or chocolate and small crisply baked rolls with butter and perhaps honey, while the Anglo-Saxon meal called tea is only an established feature among the upper classes, where English customs are extremely fashionable. The two chief meals both consist of at least four courses, with a cup of coffee added to give a finish to the whole. It might be thought absurd for those who are poor or living with great economy to begin their meals with an _hors-d'oeuvre_, but Miss Betham-Edwards, whose knowledge of the French is sufficiently wide to be an authority, asserts that a careful housekeeper will give this preliminary course as an economy, for being great bread-eaters a little scrap of ham or sausage or herring eaten with several mouthfuls of bread will take the edge off the appetite and enable her to be less lavish with the other courses. Soup is very frequently made out of the water in which vegetables have been stewed with a suspicion of flavouring added, and the meat courses are provided not from large joints, but from little scraps of meat which the French butcher produces in astonishing quantities from the same animal as his English neighbour handles in an entirely different and very much less economical fashion. These methods of cutting with a view to quantity rather than quality give much of the meat an unhappy toughness as though it were cut across or against the grain. Even the _bonne-à-tout-faire_ will prefer to make a sacrifice in the quantity of food in each course of a meal if by so doing she can be quite sure of finishing with a cup of coffee. The contrast of the mid-day meal, consisting of a chop and bread and cheese, supplied by the small provincial hotel to the commercial traveller in England, with that provided or obtainable in France, is astonishing. It is true that the knife and fork given for the first course must be retained for those that follow, but this little labour-saving custom can be overlooked in the presence of the savoury dishes that follow. Still more pronounced is the contrast when dinner-time arrives, for a very large majority of country hostelries in England will offer nothing more varied than a large plate of ham and eggs or cold meat, followed by bread and cheese and perhaps apple or plum tart. It is the universal demand for appetising and well-cooked meals throughout France that ensures for the wayfarer wherever he goes an excellent dinner of several courses. It would, however, be unfair not to mention that a very great improvement has been taking place in the hotels of England in the last few years owing to the demand for well-cooked meals caused by motorists. The pre-eminence of France in this matter will cease to be remarkable before long if the present rapid progress is maintained. If one enquires still further into the reasons for French folk being dainty in the way their food is prepared, the explanation given by Mr. T. Rice Holmes that Celtic peoples as a rule have weak stomachs may perhaps be the correct answer. [Illustration: EVENING IN THE PLACE D'IÉNA, PARIS.] If wall-papers are not often renewed in French houses, there is a delight in clean raiment which is most commendable. Clothes which are not washable are frequently sent to the cleaner, and as the most poorly paid _midinette_ generally buys good materials for her clothes they last some time, and will stand cleaning and refurbishing better than the average clothes worn by her equals in England. This is typical of the inborn thrift of the whole nation. Personal ablutions are, on the other hand, not so frequent or so thorough as among Anglo-Saxons, the supply of water for this purpose being generally very meagre and the basin for washing the face and hands awkwardly small. The itinerant bath is still to be found in country towns. It is brought to the house of those who desire to indulge in this luxury, and the water at the required temperature is provided also. The rinsing out of a bath with a little clean water after it has been used is not considered a sufficiently thorough method of satisfying individual fastidiousness, and a cotton covering large enough to entirely line the bath is therefore usually provided for each person. If one adds to this the difficulties confronting those for whom it is considered scarcely within the limits of propriety that they should be entirely unhampered by garments while in the bath, this simple operation of the toilet becomes a somewhat laborious undertaking! It has been already stated how great is the reverence of the French for the family. It is certainly fostered by that wonderful institution the Family Council, a form of highly developed autonomy dating from the far-away days when France was a Romanised province. The council is formed to look after the welfare of orphans and weak-minded and ne'er-do-weel minors. It consists of six members--three from among the relatives of each parent--and is presided over by a local _juge de paix_, who is attended by his clerk. For those sons of wealthy parents who are developing into incorrigible idlers and a source of perpetual anxiety to their parents, owing too often to the excess of ill-judged kindness lavished on only sons by widowed mothers, there has been instituted in France what is known as _la maison paternelle_. If sent to this establishment the boy generally threatens to commit suicide or some other desperate act. He is at first placed in a solitary cell, where he is under the constant supervision and the special care of a "professor," who is appointed to deal with the particular case. By salutary talk, the most inflexible discipline, and regular studies, accompanied by a judicial kindliness, the refractory youths are almost invariably brought to their senses after a few months, and retain the warmest affection for the professors in after years. As a rule the French child of almost every class except the very lowest comes into the world with the prospect of some future inheritance of land or capital. The first infant in a very large proportion of families is both alpha and omega, and it is very exceptional for parents not to restrict their offspring to two or perhaps three, which is almost counted as a large family. For some time past census figures reveal the very remarkable fact that considerably over 1¾ millions of married couples are childless. Rather more than a quarter of the marriages result in one child; another quarter has two children, and 17 per cent are childless. Thus the duty of making up the deficiency of one large section and the total failure of another falls upon one-third of the married couples, and the latest returns show that this task is only just accomplished, the average number of births for each family hovering about the bed-rock figure 2. The year 1907 was altogether alarming, for the figures showed 19,890 more deaths than births for the twelve months, and it has been with considerable relief that the civilised world has seen the surplus turned over to the more healthy direction in subsequent years. With a population that does not increase there is less and less danger of overcrowding or of extreme poverty, and therefore France houses her citizens better than Germany, England, or the United States. The individual child arrives in the world with his or her place more or less made in advance, and as the years pass by the son or daughter steps into the vacancy caused by the departure to "the land o' the leal" of a parent or relation. Such an even balance of vacancies and new arrivals tends to make livelihoods more stable in France than in the countries where the number of persons to the square mile is steadily increasing; it robs the whole nation of any desire to find homes outside the limits of the fatherland, and makes it practically impossible to make any real use of colonial possessions. Until civilised countries come to settle their differences without the senseless and futile appeals to brute force, by which they have unsuccessfully striven to do so in the past, this static condition of the population of France can only be looked upon as a calamity, but the growing strength of commercial ties is weakening bellicist prejudices and national antipathies every day, and the fact that the nations are now asking themselves whether any advantage is gained by fighting a civilised people shows that the world is on the threshold of emancipation from what is most truly a great illusion. Being so often the only child or one of two, the infant enters on life as the ruler of the household. The devoted parents, instead of following the golden maxim, which says "Apply the rod early enough and there will be no need to use it at all," give way to every passing mood or whim of their offspring, and insist that the nurse shall follow the same foolish course. If the infant cries it obviously needs something, and this must be supplied regardless of character-building. No wonder that _la maison paternelle_ has been found a needful institution in the land! Maternal duties are not as a rule undertaken by the mother, and in a very large number of instances this is necessitated or at least encouraged by the large share in the maintenance of the household taken by the wife. In Parisian flats the _concierge_, owing to the smallness of his wage, is generally obliged to go out to work and depute his wife to undertake his duties during his absence. A mewling and puking infant under these conditions is a nuisance and must be brought up elsewhere. In the average middle-class home the children are not given their meals in the nursery, but at a very early age eat at the same table as their parents, and enjoy a varied menu including wine when English children are still having little besides milk puddings and mince. Much more is concentrated into the earlier years of life in France than across the Channel. This is particularly so in regard to the _jeune fille_, who ceases to come under that title as soon as she has reached the age of twenty-five. The business of getting married must be achieved by that time, or else there is nothing for it but acquiescence in the popular judgment that the young girl has become an old girl--is on the shelf--and to preserve her self-respect must retire either to a convent or a conventual boarding-house. This custom is, like many others, as undesirably mediaeval, gradually breaking down owing to the strongly intellectual training now given to the _jeune fille_ at state _lycées_. No religious instruction is given in these schools, and the girls are therefore developing a new independence. A change, too, is taking place in the extremely secluded life that girls of the middle and upper classes have hitherto led. They are not invariably taken to school and fetched by a maid, and it is quite possible that this emancipation from continual supervision may lead to a considerable modification in the present method of arranging marriages. The existing system of the choice of a husband for their daughter being made by the devoted parents has a striking similarity to the customs of the Far East. The young men the _jeune fille_ is allowed to see are only those who are eminently eligible, that is, whose financial position is sound and whose family connections are not likely to cause anxiety when brought into the family circle by the union of the two young people. [Illustration: THE CENTRE OF PARIS.] To the French mind the idea of the betrothal of a man and a girl without the necessary means for immediately entering the state of matrimony is looked at with the most extreme disfavour. "Falling in love" might lead to most undesirable family ties, for each of the two parties concerned marries a family as well as a husband and wife respectively. No, the _mariage d'inclination_ is a danger, and the young people must learn to fall in love during the honeymoon, a task the French girl seems to find less impossible than it sounds. The Anglo-Saxon method of a growing and entirely non-committal intimacy followed by a period of betrothal scarcely exists in France. Having little knowledge or experience of men, the girl accepts the suitor proposed by her parents because, as a rule, she has not much choice and the time is short before she has reached the old-maidish age of twenty-five. Then beyond this there is all the thrill and romance of some new and strange life in which she may succeed in falling desperately in love with her husband. If not, the situation has occurred before, and the average married woman seems to find some solace in other interests; there will perhaps be a son or a daughter, or possibly both, and on them it will be easy for her to expend her pent-up feelings of love, and later on there will perchance come what is an ideal with the average Frenchwoman--the satisfaction of being a grandmother. During the short time between the formal acceptance of her proposed husband and the wedding ceremony the affianced pair are not as a rule allowed to be together alone. No doubt in many instances this harsh ruling of long-established custom is broken through, but it would be done surreptitiously unless the parties concerned were exceptionally emancipated from the great body of French tradition. It is also quite unusual for the mother to speak of love when discussing with her daughter a man who has offered himself as a husband; it is merely understood that he is pleased with the girl's general appearance and not dissatisfied with her _dot_. Strict Roman Catholics do not recognise the civil contract beyond going through the required legal ceremony. The banns, stating several personal particulars regarding the parents as well as the contracting parties, are put up at the _mairie_ ten days before the marriage can be performed. If the betrothed pair have not reached the age of thirty, they must have the consent of their parents, but over twenty-one they are able to obtain that consent through a legal process at the office of a certified notary. Even extreme action of this character does not entail total loss of a certain portion of the parental inheritance, for the Civil Code does not permit parents to leave more than a proportion to strangers. One-half must fall to the children's share. Quite recently an example of the small satisfaction this may cause to the recipients came to light. An aged grandparent's estate produced a sum of 100 francs, to be divided equally between four legatees. The legal expenses entailed in certifying the status of each party and other matters ran up to such a large sum that the surplus divisible was barely 20 francs. On the appointed day the wedding party assembles at the _mairie_, where the mayor, after reading to the couple that portion of the Civil Code relating to the duties of the married state, hears their declaration and the permission of the parents, after which both parties exchange wedding rings and are pronounced man and wife. The register having been signed, first by the wife and then by the husband, the civil ceremony is complete, and in Republican society the wedded pair as a rule trouble themselves not at all about the attitude of the Church to the contract they have made. Many, however, as already stated, do not regard this as the real wedding, and the bride and bridegroom remain apart until the next day, or perhaps two or three days later, when the religious ceremony is performed in a church. There the wedding rings are blessed before being put on, and the completion of the religious ceremony is marked by the presentation of a tray for offerings. One cannot be very long in a French church without this opportunity presenting itself. The writer has vivid recollections of his almost precipitate retreat from the Madeleine after he had been present for a short time at a service in that classic church on the occasion of his first visit to Paris. His memory recalls how cheerfully he paid for his seat for the first time, how he produced another coin when, with a charming smile, a young woman applied for a second alms, and how, when a third bag was placed before him with the words _pour les pauvres_, he found a sou, and in a few moments had, with a sigh of relief, exchanged the Gregorian solemnities of the great church for the rattle and stir of the _Boulevard des Capucines_. But to return to the wedding ceremony. The young couple having been now made man and wife in the sight of Church as well as the State, they start on their voyage together into the unknown, to discover one another and, if possible, after what answers to a time of courting, to fall in love with each other. Should this time of exploration into each other's characters and temperaments, likes and dislikes, prove entirely unsatisfactory, it becomes a matter of acute interest to enquire how the knot may be loosened or untied. Until 1883 divorce was not legal, but since that year of emancipation the Civil Code permits it for several reasons. These are divided under three headings: first, unfaithfulness or desertion on either side; second, acts of violence and _injures graves_, which covers the great area of incompatibility of temperament; and third, penal sentences passed on the man or woman. It is fairly obvious that this wide doorway will permit the entrance of a great majority of those who wish for freedom from an ill-chosen partner, and the result has been a steady increase in the number of divorces in recent years. The figures were 10,573 in 1906 and 13,049 in 1910. Even the Church of Rome will allow the marriage tie to be severed under certain conditions not perhaps open to a poor couple. There can be little doubt that divorce in France is facilitated by the fact that the wife has in most cases an independent source of income, and is therefore economically on her feet in the event of a termination of her wedded state. She is, generally speaking, looked upon with less favour as a divorced woman than is a man. No doubt this is due to slow-dying prejudice in favour of the man in these circumstances. Changes are, however, coming with such accelerating speed in these matters that anything written to-day is more or less out of date by the time it is printed. To come back to the normal condition of married persons in France, there is no doubt that, surprising as it may seem, the _jeune fille_ does in a very large majority of cases settle down contentedly with the husband chosen by her parents. She blossoms with the speed of an Indian juggler's magic plant into a woman of affairs, and in a very short time is taken into the fullest confidence in monetary matters by her husband. Many develop such a capacity for business that they rapidly out-distance their men folk in such matters, and if, as is very often the case in middle-class life, they are obliged to contribute towards the family budget, their earnings will frequently exceed those of the easy-going husband. Any one at all intimate with France knows the keenness and capacity of the woman in business, whether as a shopkeeper, a manageress, or a hotel proprietor. They can drive a hard bargain and are less easy to deal with than men, although the writer is inclined to think that he has met quite as many men as women who are difficult or unpleasant in a financial matter. In spite of this frequently existing superior ability in dealing with money matters, a wife must obtain her husband's written consent before she touches her capital! And further than this, the Civil Code requires that the husband must make good any deficiency from his wife's original _dot_ should he wish to obtain a divorce, notwithstanding the fact that the diminution had taken place with her consent; and it is a curious and interesting fact that in the case of disagreement the husband finds the Code ignores the perchance superior wisdom of the wife. As a rule it is _madame_ who rules the household, while "_mon mari_" is a worshipper who obeys willingly, both being the slaves of their child or children, to whom within the strict boundaries of _comme il faut_ nothing must be denied. How, with such spoiling as children, the French man and woman grow up to do their share in the world's work it is hard to understand. Possibly the dislike evinced by the race as a whole to undertake an adventurous career entailing risk, the lack of some of the luxuries which have been long enjoyed, and an element of uncertainty may be in part ascribed to the lack of discipline in the nursery. An explanation for this characteristic might be given by merely pointing to the figures of population, which, as just mentioned, remain almost stationary, and do not provide that driving force which sends other peoples out into new lands in great numbers; but this condition of a static population has been brought about voluntarily by the people themselves, through their desire to be sure of a safe and prearranged career for their offspring. And so it is the family life of the French, the predominance of the weaker partner, and the craving after those conditions of existence generally regarded as feminine, which result in a weakening of France as a colonising nation, and often cause misgivings in the minds of those who are her well-wishers. [Illustration: THE MARKET PLACE AND CATHEDRAL AT ABBEVILLE.] CHAPTER IV HOW THE FRENCH GOVERN THEMSELVES It may be broadly stated that the French people are content to be governed and to feel a controlling authority in operation in all departments of their lives. This results in a silent acquiescence under long-endured grievances which could easily be redressed by a little ventilation of public opinion. Where the Anglo-Saxon uses his newspapers to make known his attitude towards various matters requiring new legislation, where he takes advantage of an election, parliamentary or municipal, to obtain undertakings from candidates, the average Frenchman will neither write nor speak, so that editors and deputies, and the great public as well, remain generally ignorant of a widespread area of smouldering resentment. Like the burning coal-beds not unfrequently discovered in Central Europe, the underground combustion, which has perhaps been continuing for many years, is only brought to light by accident. When legislation takes place on some important economic issue it will be framed, as a rule, on abstract lines disregarding the past, and in many ways ignoring general convenience. There is in this way little evolution in the growth of the French constitution, and an old law may exist unmodified so long that when change comes it is so out of date that it must be swept away. The Revolution cut down to the roots the rotten tree of unregenerate feudalism, and planted in its place a sapling which has to conform to the essential requirements of progress; it must be trimmed and lopped, and must put forth new growth in order that it too, in the effluxion of time, may not become as unsuited to modern needs as its predecessor. In August 1789 the first Republican Parliament wrote down certain cardinal matters relating to the welfare and freedom of the individual and called it the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Thirteen years before this the United States of North America had drawn up their Declaration of Independence, and no doubt this inspired those who framed the more compactly worded document. In their seventeen brief articles French Republicans, in an age when ideas of freedom had fertilised both sides of the Atlantic, boldly and simply stated their new-born beliefs, commencing with the assertion that "All men are born and remain free and have equal rights." In _Article 2_ they stated that "the object of all political groupings is the preservation of the natural, inalienable, and sacred rights of man," those rights being "liberty, property, security, and the right to resist oppression." Although possessing the last-mentioned power, it has already been pointed out that the people are slow to make use of it. The nation likewise fails to carry out the spirit of _Article 9_, which says, "As a man is deemed innocent until he shall have been declared guilty should it be necessary to arrest him no rigour that is not essential for the securing of his person shall be tolerated by the law." In the final--the 17th--Article there is food for thought for the Socialist, for it is there stated that property is "an inviolable and sacred right," followed by the qualifying sentence, "No man may be deprived of it, unless public interest demand it evidently and according to the Law, provided, moreover, that a fair indemnity be first paid to him." Even the most civilised of peoples are still a good deal short of that high degree of wisdom and goodness which will make every man competent and willing to be his brother's keeper, and it is therefore probable that for some time to come _Article 17_ will stand as a living part of the French Constitution. It is interesting to remember that in the Declaration of 1789 the right of Habeas Corpus was first established in France, while it had been on the statute book of England for over a century, and would have been there some time before but for repeated rejections by the House of Lords. Upon the splendid substructure of the Declaration of the Rights of Man the first French Constitution was reared. It was framed with care, took two years in the making, and was finally accepted by Louis in 1791. Since then there have been many constitutions, but, omitting the Napoleonic interlude, the principles of the Declaration show themselves with triumphant ascendency as the foundation of each reconstruction. Like all written constitutions, modifications are frequently found necessary. There is none of the elasticity of the unwritten constitution which exists only in the land of the people who are said to have a genius for governing themselves, and perhaps it is that endowment with the capacity for self-government which makes the nebulous character of the British Constitution so valuable. It is true that a very great majority of well-educated British people could not give any clear idea of the nature of the constitution of their country, and when any constitutional point arises only a handful of experts can state how far the precedents of the past, by which the constitution is modified, affect the immediate issue; and yet there would be a considerable feeling of alarm if it were seriously proposed to make the whole situation plain by producing a modern written constitution, however much based on all that has gone before. Britons, as a rule, do not even trouble to acquaint themselves with the survival of many ancient royal prerogatives. Walter Bagehot[1] puts into one pregnant paragraph what Queen Victoria could do without consulting Parliament. "Not to mention other things," he writes, "she could disband the army (by law she cannot engage more than a certain number of men, but she is not obliged to engage any men); she could dismiss all the officers, from the General Commanding-in-Chief downwards; she could dismiss all the sailors too; she could sell off all our ships of war and all our naval stores; she could make a peace by the sacrifice of Cornwall, and begin a war for the conquest of Brittany. She could make every citizen in the United Kingdom, male or female, a peer; she could make every parish in the United Kingdom a 'university'; she could dismiss most of the civil servants; she could pardon all offenders." The present sovereign could do the same, but safeguards in the form of impeachment of Ministers and change of a Ministry preserve the country from proceedings of this nature; but in a country with a written constitution such legacies from the days when the head of the State was a military dictator exist no longer. [1] _The English Constitution_, Introduction to 1872 Edition. While the British law-makers and administrators bear on their backs the whole weight of centuries of laborious constitution-building, the French work with the light equipment of a constitution framed in 1875, everything prior to that date being null and void.[2] No French politician is therefore required at any time to be aware of a usage of the reign of Louis XI., or any curtailment of the royal authority which may have taken place when Philippe Auguste occupied the throne. The throne itself has ceased to exist since the fall of Napoleon III. in 1870, and France since that year has remained under its third Republic. [2] The Constitution was slightly revised in 1879 and 1884. The laws passed in 1875 provide that the legislative power shall be in the hands of two assemblies--the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate--and the executive in those of an elected President and the Ministry. The Upper House or Senate is composed of 300 members, now entirely elected by the Departments or Senate. They must be over forty years of age. In England, if the Prime Minister is a commoner he can only go into the Upper House as a listener, and all the Cabinet are under the same restriction, but in France Ministers can sit in both Chambers and can speak in either place as occasion requires or the spirit moves. Voting, however, is restricted to the Chamber to which the Minister belongs. One is inclined to wonder whether eloquence that stirs the hearts and sways the voting in the British House of Commons would be as productive if addressed to the hereditary body. There is no separate Minister for the Post Office, that office being included in the Ministry of Commerce, and there are only twelve Ministers against the twenty or twenty-one of the British Cabinet. The Ministry of Labour and Public Thrift appears almost quaint to the much less thrifty people of England. The Lower Chamber consists of 584 deputies, and is elected every four years by universal suffrage. On coming of age, every citizen not in military service and having a residential qualification of six months may exercise the franchise. Women have not yet achieved the right to vote. Perhaps the majority of French married women exercise already as much power as they care to possess, for even peasant women are quite familiar with the method of voting through their docile husbands. Only in 1897 were women entitled by law to act as witnesses in civil transactions; prior to that date a woman came under the same category as a minor or the insane! That the Frenchwoman is beginning to wake up to the possibilities of her twentieth-century emancipation is shown in a hundred directions. In January 1913 a woman came forward as a candidate for the French presidential chair, the first in the history of the Republic. When questioned as to the seriousness of her purpose she asked, "And why not a woman head of the State? People may regard it as a joke; but what about Catherine the Great and Queen Victoria?" When one remembers, too, the astonishing business capacity of the average Frenchwoman, one is inclined to echo the question, "Why not?" There are already more than a dozen women barristers in Paris, besides seventy doctors, eighteen dentists, ten oculists, and six chemists! Women, too, have for many years occupied on the railways of France positions which are exclusively in the hands of the stronger sex in England. Who is not familiar with the hard-faced woman who with a horn at her lips controls the level crossings? The only restriction among French citizens to becoming President is that which rules out any member of a royal family which has reigned in France. He is elected for seven years and the salary is £48,000 a year, one half of which is received as salary, the other being for travelling and official expenses connected with office. This sum appears generous when contrasted with the £5000 paid to the British First Lord of the Treasury and his unpaid services as Prime Minister of the Crown. The President appoints all the Ministers and heads of the civil and military departments. He declares war with the consent of both Houses, and a Minister counter-signs every act. The national desire for security prompts the men folk of a large proportion of the upper middle classes to aim towards the pleasantly safe pigeon-holes in the State dovecot. In order to attain these places of refuge from commercial or professional struggle, every public official who has reached the desired haven of his ambition, or at least one of the assured steps that will surely lead him thither, is the subject of endless demands for aid in the same direction from his remotest relatives and acquaintances. Upon this system of _pistonnage_ the aspirant to an official position must lean, for if he does not the crowd ready to fill each vacancy will all have superior chances on account of the word here and there spoken on their behalf in the right quarter. _Pistonnage_ does not, however, apply to those who aspire to a seat in either the Senate or the Chamber of Deputies, where a salary of 15,000 fr. a year and free travelling relieves the representative of financial anxiety, so long as he is devoting his time to his country's service. By direct and semi-direct taxation about £25,000,000 was produced in 1912. These taxes include a levy on windows and doors, varying according to the density of the population, the more closely inhabited areas paying more than the less populous. There is a tax on land not built upon, assessed in accordance with its net yearly revenue based on the register of property drawn up in the earlier half of last century and kept up to date. The Building tax is 3.2 per cent on the rental value, and is paid by the owner. The Personal tax places a fixed capitation on every citizen, varying from 1s. 3d. to 3s. 9d. according to the department. The Habitation tax is paid by every one occupying a house or apartments in proportion to the rent. The Trade License tax embraces all trades, and consists of a fixed duty levied on the extent of business as revealed by the number of employés, and population, and the locality, and so on, and also an assessment on the letting value of the premises. By indirect taxation a little over £100,000,000 was raised in 1912. The sum was realised by stamps of all sorts (excluding postage), by registration duties on the transfer of property in business ways and general changes of ownership, and by customs, including a tax on Stock Exchange transactions, a tax of 4 per cent on dividends from stocks and shares, taxes on alcohol, wine, beer, cider, and alcoholic liquors generally, on home-produced salt and sugar, and on railway passenger and goods traffic. The State monopolies of tobacco, matches, and gunpowder produced the large sum of £38,000,000, but even this did not meet the charges for interest on the National Debt, which were about 51½ millions, the accumulated sum for which this is required being (1912) £1,301,718,302. This is almost double as great as the British national indebtedness. Over each of the 86 Departments is a prefect chosen by the Minister of the Interior, and through him the minor officials are kept in touch with the Government. The arrondissement and the canton are administrative divisions into which each Department is divided, each canton including about a dozen communes. The commune is controlled by the mayor, who is chief magistrate and, as in England, is the head of the municipal body. According to the size of the commune deputy mayors are elected. The great city of Lyons requires 17 of these officials, and when one remembers that the presence of the mayor or a deputy mayor is required at every marriage in order that it may become legal, the number does not seem excessive. Every canton has its _juge de paix_, who is in a general sense a police court judge. He tries small cases, but his responsibilities are carefully limited, and he may not inflict a fine exceeding 200 francs. Any offence requiring a heavier hand must go up to the _Tribunal correctionnel de l'arrondissement_ or the court of _Première Instance_. The _juge de paix_ wears a tall hat encircled with a broad silver band, and although, as a rule, a man who has received a fairly good education, his salary averages between £120 and £160 per annum. On such an income there is no opportunity for pretentious living! The wife of a _juge de paix_ cannot, as a rule, afford to keep a nursemaid, and one maid-of-all-work is as much as the _ménage_ can afford to maintain. Nevertheless the position is an honourable one, there is a pension at sixty years, and the hours of labour are, to the man with a sense of humour, often brightened by the absurdity of the cases that are brought into court. There is generally much fun for the court in the frequent cases of _diffamation_, in which citizens drag one another into the presence of the _juge de paix_ for calling each other names. The court allows noisy altercation in a fashion unknown in England, and the task of the magistrate is, to the Anglo-Saxon mind, almost beyond belief. The breezy outpourings of plaintiff and defendant are ended with the _juge de paix's_ words, "You can retire," and, as a rule, some sound and friendly advice has been offered to the unneighbourly neighbours. A very considerable amount of litigation arises through the possession of land or houses, for the thriftiness of the French has always inclined the people towards the ownership of their farms or the land they till. In the old days before the Revolution, all such disputes came before courts in which the unprivileged and poor might be fairly sure of losing the day. The scandal of those venal courts was so great that nothing short of a clean sweep could effectually rid the land of the curse they inflicted, and the overthrow of the monarchy was followed by the establishment of administrators of justice who were servants of the State and none other. The correctional courts mentioned deal with the graver offences which are outside the ambit of the _juge de paix_. As a rule there are three judges and no jury. These courts are empowered to inflict punishment up to imprisonment for five years. The Courts of Assize are held every three months in each Department. They are presided over by a councillor of the Court of Appeal with two assistants and a jury of twelve, but a unanimous verdict is not required, the fate of the accused hanging on a majority only. Another feature of these courts is the _juge d'instruction's_ secret preliminary investigation into each case. Superior to the Courts of Assize are those of Appeal and the _Cour de Cassation_, which became so well known to the English public during the famous trial of Dreyfus. This court, as its name implies, can abrogate the ruling of any other tribunal, with the exception of the administrative courts. This high authority decides on matters of legal principle or whether the court from which appeal has been made was competent to make the decision in question. It does not concern itself primarily with the facts of the case, and if it should annul any finding the case is sent to a fresh hearing of a court of the same authority. The administrative police, or _gardiens de la paix_, are approximately equivalent to British police constables, and must not be confused with the _gendarmerie_, which is a military body carrying out civil duties in times of peace. The _gendarmerie_ are recruited from the army, there being one legion in each army corps district. Their strength is roughly 22,000 men, equally divided between cavalry and infantry. In Paris there is a separate force known as the _Garde républicaine_, which carries out police duties very much the same as the _gendarmerie_ in the Departments. They number about 3000, of whom 800 are mounted. The French prison system was in a very antiquated state in 1874, when a commission on prison discipline issued its report in favour of cellular confinements. Prisons were therefore reconstructed, and after many years had elapsed some of the older ones were demolished, the prisoners thereafter being removed from the disadvantages they encountered in association. The system of isolation required the construction of a huge new prison at Fresnes-les-Rungis. It contains 1500 cells, and when it was completed in 1898 the historic Paris prisons of Grande-Roquette, St. Pélagie, and Mazas were swept away. [Illustration: FIVE O'CLOCK TEA IN PARIS.] Taken as a whole, one can scarcely endorse Taine's utterance that modern France is the work of Napoleon. The present organisation of the nation is undoubtedly due to the masterly brain and tireless energy of Napoleon, but the national characteristics of the French people have shown little change. The existence of a constitution, the even-handed administration of justice, and the opening of the highest offices in the State to the citizen of the humblest origin, do not yet seem to have affected the nature of the people. Laughter, tears, and anger are still near the surface; love of adventure in thought, word, and deed does not yet lead the French into the acquisition of the solid advantages their enterprise would bring did they only persevere on the lines of their initial enterprise. In spite of the almost frantic desire for liberty there is no doubt that the French tamely submit to a régime which Englishmen would find in some matters quite intolerable. If suspicion of smuggling falls upon a house the police can make domiciliary visits of a quite arbitrary character. The Civil Code, too, must be regarded as oppressive so long as it retains its attitude of looking upon the untried person as guilty until such time as his trial establishes his innocence, and the Anglo-Saxon mind is revolted at the practice of endeavouring to extort a confession from a prisoner. The Napoleonic mould did not alter these qualities, and even in the matter of religious tolerance the French have still much to learn. CHAPTER V ON EDUCATION AND RELIGION The annual sum of 4250 francs (£170) was considered by Napoleon--in so far as he had opportunity for considering the subject--a sufficient amount of money to devote directly to the education of the people! But the rulers of States a brief century ago were, as a whole, inclined to leave educational matters in clerical hands, and the nineteenth century will stand out in the world's history as the dawn of State responsibility in regard to the education of the people. At the Restoration in 1814 more than twelve times as great a sum as that expended by Napoleon was being devoted to education, and the amount rose to 3,000,000 francs in 1830, to 12,000,000 during the Second Empire, and to 160,000,000 under the Third Republic. To the last sum must be added another 100,000,000 francs (excluding the money devoted to the erection of schools) spent by the municipalities and communes, making a total of about £11,400,000. In 1912 the State alone was spending about £12,000,000 on national education. At the head of this great spending department of the State is the Minister of Public Instruction. He controls not only the whole of the primary schools, but to some extent the entire educational machinery of the country, private schools being subjected to State inspection and supervision. Between 1901 and 1907 some 3000 public clerical schools, and more than 13,000 private clerical schools, were suppressed by law. The law passed in 1904 required that all schools controlled by religious bodies should be closed within the next ten years, which period is just about to elapse. Since the State awoke to its responsibilities in educational matters, it has taken roughly a century finally to extinguish clerical control. The schools are divided into the three grades of Primary, Secondary, and Higher, and the State admits into any of these pupils of any grade of society. In the rooms of _lycée_ or college the classes meet in a truly democratic fashion. The college, which is controlled by the commune under the State, is considered inferior to the _lycée_, which is entirely in the hands of the central authority. While the primary schools are compulsory and gratuitous between the ages of six and thirteen, the secondary schools charge small fees ranging from £2 a year up to £16. But parents with bright children can often avoid this expenditure through the lavish system of scholarships offered by the State. _Lycées_ were first established for girls in 1880, and there are now several in existence, one of them having 700 students. The hours of the classes are from 8.30 to 11.30, and from 1.30 to 3.30, and the aim has been to run them on the same lines as those of the boys. Since clericalism was removed from the education of girls, there has no doubt been a very considerable change in the scholastic environment of the _jeune fille_, but until a long period has elapsed it will be difficult for any but those in the closest touch with educational life in France to point out how far the advantages outweigh the disadvantages or _vice versa_. The lay schoolmistress may be in essentials as religiously-minded as any convent-trained type of woman. Her influence on her pupils may produce as moral and as religious types of women in the coming generation as those of the immediate past, but in such a change in the training of the girls of a race not fond of moral discipline who can foresee the results? The general tendency of the training given in the _lycée_ has been towards the suppression of originality. There seems to have grown up in the mind of the authorities an impression that the only means of keeping the youth of France under proper control is by holding them down with an iron grip, not merely during the hours of work but during recreation also. This may have been necessitated by a certain lack of discipline in the earliest years of life, young children being allowed to have their own way to an altogether undesirable extent. As soon as they are old enough the boys, having, as a rule, begun to be a source of much trouble in the home, are sent to school. If their parents are able to afford the fees, the gates of the _lycée_ soon close upon their days of wilfulness and disobedience. In place of the home life and the feminine influence with which they have been familiar, they are confronted with a discipline of semi-military severity. Games are not allowed, and in the hours of recreation in walled playgrounds of a generally forbidding order, walking and talking alone are permitted. Here, as in the class-room, the boys are perpetually under the eyes of the _pion_, whose duties are restricted entirely to the maintenance of order. Owing to suppression in natural directions, it is not surprising if the minds of the boys should turn into the unhealthy directions of intrigue and pernicious literature. M. Demolins, who a few years ago tried the experiment of running his school on English lines, has found the results excellent. So greatly appreciated are his efforts to abolish the bad features of the _lycée_ that he is unable to meet the demand on the capacity of his buildings. He is of opinion that the Anglo-Saxon is superior to the French because of the better training given at school, discouragement of initiative and suppression of independence being the chief features of the schools of his own country, while the Anglo-Saxon allows boys a freedom which develops self-reliance and individuality. "Every one knows our dreadful college," writes M. Demolins, "with its much too long classes and studies, its recreations far too short and without exercise, its prison walks a monotonous going and coming between high heart-breaking walls, and then every Sunday and Thursday the military promenade in rank, the exercise of old men, not of youth." The boarder at the _lycée_, of course, feels the harshness of the régime to a degree that the day-boy never experiences, home hours mitigating the severity of the long working day. As a whole, it may be said that the ideal of the educational system has been intellectuality rather than that of character building, and in the former France is superior to England, the system producing a higher average of intellectual capacity. If both countries could take to themselves the strong features that each possesses it would be very materially to their advantage. Changes in the right direction are already taking place in France. It is quite probable that the _pion_ will be suppressed before long, and cricket, football, and other manly and health-giving games are beginning to take the place of the old man's stroll under supervision. The fact that the Boy Scout is appearing all over France seems to herald the dawn of a growing sturdiness and manliness in the youth of the nation. At the present day the average boy has an undoubtedly girlish softness in his dress and general appearance. He wears sailor suits at an age which would produce laughter amongst Anglo-Saxon boys. He appears in white socks for several years longer than the English boy would tolerate, and his thinly-soled boots suggest the promenade rather than any form of strenuous game. His clothes do not appear to have been made for any hard wear, and as a rule the knickerbockers of soft thin grey material so generally to be seen are unfit for any rough use whatever. Even the large black leather portfolios in which books and papers are carried to and from school seem to receive as careful handling as though they belonged to a Government official rather than that most destructive of creatures--the schoolboy. In England one is familiar with the sight of four or five books dangling at the end of the strap which secures them, enabling the owner to convert his home-work into a handy weapon of offence, but the soft leather case of French boys and girls, which must be carefully carried under one arm, offers no such fascinating by-purpose. [Illustration: CHILDREN OF PARIS IN THE LUXEMBOURG GARDENS.] If parents keep their boys in socks for a longer period than seems rational to the Anglo-Saxon, they frequently go farther with their girls, who often enough may be seen with bare legs until they are nearly as tall as their mothers. Very much stress is laid on the examinations, which commence at the age of fifteen or sixteen, when the _lycée_ and college training terminates. The system since 1902 has consisted of a period of seven years divided into two parts. At the expiry of the first, which consists of four years, the pupil can choose one of four courses. The first is Latin and Greek, the second Latin and sciences, the third Latin and modern languages, and the fourth sciences and modern languages. Having passed three years on one of these courses, he should be ready for the two examinations by which he can obtain the degree known as the _Baccalauréat de l'enseignement_. This is the outer gateway to be passed through before the scholar can enter the citadels of any of the great professions, such as law, letters, medicine, or Protestant theology. The State provides the higher education in its universities and in its specialised higher schools, and since 1875 private individuals and bodies, so long as they are not clerical, have been permitted to take part in the advanced educational work of the country, but the State faculties alone have the power to confer degrees. The five classes of faculties associated with the various universities confer degrees in law, science, medicine, letters, and Protestant theology. [Illustration: LE PUY-EN-VELAY IN THE AUVERGNE COUNTRY.] The keystone of the arch of learning in France is the _Institut de France_. It embodies the five great academies of science and literature, but omits that of medicine, which stands apart. In England some social importance attaches to a man on account of his having been educated at Eton or Harrow and having afterwards taken a degree at one of the two mother universities, irrespective of his having shown himself an indifferent scholar, but south of the Channel the scene of a man's education counts for naught in later life. The moral and social sides of the English system would seem to have crowded out to a great extent the intellectual side, which, with the essentially practical people of France, forms the whole structure. From the teacher in the primary school to the heads of the universities no effort is made to influence character: "As soon as the student leaves the lecture hall he is free to return to the niche he has constituted for himself, to its probable triviality and its possible grossness, or to the vulgar pleasures of the town.... We lose the advantage of that peculiar monastic, thoughtful life which is offered to the young Englishman."[3] [3] W. L. George. An almost childlike simplicity seems to be the keynote of the religion of that portion of the French people which still adheres to the observances of the Roman Church. The nation, until recent years, professed the Catholic faith and worshipped the Virgin as the mother of the Saviour of the world. In her honour, and to keep her presence ever in mind, to envisage her to mortal eyes, they erected statues and placed little figures at street-corners, by the road-side, and upon the altars of churches, and these are still objects of veneration among the people. One of the largest and most imposing representations of the Virgin is Notre Dame de France, a colossal figure cast from guns captured in the Crimean War, which is erected on the summit of the basaltic cliff which towers above the ancient town of Le Puy-en-Velay (Haute Loire). The figure is so gigantic--it stands forth gilded by the rising or the setting sun high above one's head, even when standing on the top of the rock upon which it has been erected--that one can scarce forbear to look upon it without some admiration, irrespective of its merits as a work of art. The features are of a sweet and simple beauty, although of a stereotyped order, and even to those whose religious ideas do not lean in the direction of the veneration of representations of deities it is easy to see how a simple peasant, trained in the religious system which erects such images, can fall into the attitude of prayer by merely looking on such an achievement.... Gazing at the figure standing high in the midst of an amphitheatre of picturesque mountains, one feels some explanation for the attitude of the religious towards the immense figure; ... and then one turns away to descend from the rock, and passing behind the pedestal of the effigy one observes a door, and above it a notice to the effect that on payment of ten centimes one may ascend within the _Vierge_, and when the maximum fee has been paid one may actually place oneself within the head and gaze out upon an immense panorama from a position of wonderful novelty.... Where is the vision, where the sense of fitness, where any atmosphere of sanctity? Does the incongruity of such an arrangement strike no one among the religiously-minded people who visit Le Puy? It would appear that the French prefer to have all that is outward in their religion as much a part of their daily lives as any other objects of common use. Thus the coverings of the inner doors of a French church are almost invariably worn into holes or discoloured with the frequent handling of those who every day spend a few minutes in the incense-laden atmosphere of their parish church. The floors are dirty with the constant coming and going from the streets, and the need for doormats does not appear to be observed. On week-days, apart from the clergy, it is exceptional to see a man in a church unless he is there in some official capacity. One will find men carrying out repairs, and it does not seem to occur to them to remove their hats; one will see them as tourists with guide-books in their hands, or, as at St. Denis in the suburbs of Paris, a man in uniform will conduct visitors through the choir and crypt, and he too finds it unnecessary to uncover his head; but one goes far to find any other than women and children kneeling in prayer before the altars or stations of the cross on any other day than Sunday. It is the women whose religious needs bring them into places of worship in the midst of the working hours of the weekday, men rarely coming unless their steps are directed thither for a wedding or a funeral. And on Sundays few churches would be required if the women ceased to attend. [Illustration: LA ROCHE, A VILLAGE OF HAUTE SAVOIE.] Funerals have not yet lost their impressive trappings as is the case in England, where even the poor are beginning to find it less a necessity to have the hearse drawn by horses adorned with immense black plumes and long black cloths coming down almost to the ground. In France these things are still much in evidence, and imposing black and purple hangings studded with immense silver tear-drops are put up in the church if the estate or the relatives of the deceased can afford such melancholy splendour. Before leaving the church after the funeral service, friends and relatives pass one by one to the bier, and there each takes a crucifix and makes the sign of the cross. The interior of a French church is, as a rule, so dark and shadowy that the clusters of candles burning before the shrines sparkle brilliantly in the cavernous gloom of its apsidal chapels, casting an uncertain and mystic light on pictures and effigies of saints and apostles, on shining objects of silver and gold, and on gaudy ornament and tinsel. Looming out of the obscurity, the ghostly representation of the crucified Christ is faintly illuminated; a few inky figures are grouped before the altars, their blackness relieved only by the white caps of the peasants--for it is the custom for women to wear black when they go to church; the air is heavy with incense, and one feels that superficial glamour which makes its strong appeal to those who find satisfaction in the mainly sensuous emotions caused by these surroundings. When an organ pours forth its sonorous and mellow notes and men's voices chant Gregorian music before the brilliantly lighted altar sparkling with golden ornament, when the solemn Latin liturgy is recited and the consecrated elements are raised by the priest, the average religious requirements of the French would seem to be satisfied. Those who do not find any satisfaction in watching and listening to these offices of the Roman Church as a rule drop into a state of agnosticism, if not of complete irreligion. To be logical one must do so, and a growing majority of Frenchmen seem to find no other course unless they belong to the comparatively small body of Protestants or the Jewish communities.[4] There can be no doubt at all that the Roman Church has lost its hold on a vast proportion of its adherents, and those who are still numbered among the "faithful" are every year shrinking in numbers. [4] The Protestants number about 600,000, the Jews 70,000, and the nominal Catholics 39,000,000. "French Protestants," writes Mr. W. L. George,[5] "and French Jews are as devout, as clean-living, as spiritually minded as our most enlightened Churchmen and Nonconformists; a visit to any Parisian synagogue or to the Oratory will demonstrate in a moment that the French have not forgotten how to pray. The congregations are as large as ever they were, and they contain as great a proportion of men as in England." And he adds: "This distinction of sex must everywhere be made, and particularly in France, where Roman Catholicism flaunts a sumptuous aestheticism, voluptuous and worldly, capable of appealing both to the refined and to the sensuous." Mr. George believes that French Catholics have not turned against Christ, but against the ministers of the Christian religion in his land because they have been discovered to be unfaithful servants. It is his belief that the Church is dying--"dying hard but surely"; and who can quarrel with his statement that the people have turned their backs on its ministers, that they are on the threshold of agnosticism, and that the Church is putting forth no hand to stay them? The next two or three generations can scarcely fail to witness the death by atrophy of the Roman faith in France; but the French are not an irreligious people, and perhaps a wider faith may spring up from the ashes of the creed which is so fast growing cold. [5] _France in the Twentieth Century_--an admirable work. One might compare religious systems to the unresponsive edifices in which public worship is conducted, for they seem equally incapable of spontaneous adaptability to the needs of the people, and only the stress and labour of the laity ever produces any adaptation to the changing needs of those for whom the structure exists. Because the accumulated resentment of the French people as a whole against the shortcomings of their national Church has resulted in a complete divorce from the State, and because the clergy have rebelled against the laws which have recently been passed, and have therefore become in a certain sense outlaws--servants, as it were, of a discredited section of the community--it has been easy for superficial observers to come to the conclusion that the French nation has virtually assumed the garb of atheism. This is always the arrow which strikes the legislative body determined to dissociate itself with any form of religion, but as in England, where devoted Churchmen are ranged on the side of disestablishment, so in France the national voice that spoke for a severance between Church and State was not that of a people without religion, but rather that of a people unwilling to maintain a system which had fallen away from its duty and its ideals. Atheism and agnosticism would appear to be phases in the religious development of the human race, the positions into which various types of mind are driven when dissatisfied with the explanation of the purpose, duty, and future of the individual as set forth by a particular Church. That some new development of the truth will supersede that which has been cast aside seems inevitable. In this period of upheaval what is the attitude of the people, of the peasant, to _M. le Curé_? Social intimacy between priest and parishioners is very great, and the _curé_ is often a very good fellow whose practical religion is much broader than the ecclesiasticism he represents. He is, roughly speaking, of the peasant class and is regarded as socially inferior by the equivalent to the "county" circle of his neighbourhood. Unlike the English clergy, who are often distinguishable from the laity by little besides a distinctive collar and hat, he is always to be seen in his _soutane_ and with white-bordered black lappets beneath his chin. He is, as a rule, anti-Republican, and is therefore out of sympathy with the people and the whole apparatus of the government of to-day. To a huge mass of the people he is nicknamed the _calotin_. Paul Sabatier explains how the association of the Church with politics affects the relations of priest and parishioner:-- At election times, especially, how great an impression is made on the mind of the simple by the defeat of one who has been put forward as the candidate of _le bon Dieu_, and the triumph of the candidate of "the satanic sect"! When such coincidences recur over forty years with increasing frequency, the most pious countryman begins to ask if Satan be not stronger than the Almighty. The artisan, meeting his parish priest, speaks in a tone at once commiserating and mocking of God's business, which is not going well. Blasphemy! thinks our good priest. But no; they have only blasphemed who taught him to identify a political party with religion. His rudeness is not very different from that of Elijah, chiding on Carmel's summit the priests of Baal.... But this rudeness, like that of the prophet, disguises an outburst of religious feeling, still awkward in its manifestation, and even, perhaps, expressing itself by deplorable means----....[6] [6] _France To-day: its Religious Orientation._ M. Sabatier proclaims himself a Protestant who has sought to love both Catholicism and Free Thought. Since 1882, when the undenominational schools were established, there has been a fierce battle between Church and State, which has scarcely come to a close at the present hour; but emerging from the din and dust of the prolonged warfare there is one salient fact, namely, a growing desire among the great mass of teachers for increasing the undenominational moral teaching in the schools. A compelling force is obliging the school to build up a strong moral training for the young, entirely independent of clerical influence. CHAPTER VI SOME ASPECTS OF PARIS AND OF TOWN LIFE IN GENERAL The reckless driving and the wonderful lack of regulation in the streets of the capital and the majority of the cities of France do not prevent the streets from possessing a character encouraging sociality and relaxation. This is due to a great extent to the ever-inviting café, which contrives to keep clean table-cloths and the opportunity of a comfortable meal in the open air within six feet of a rushing and tempestuous stream of wheeled traffic. In addition there is much marketing in France, which adds colour and human interest to what might otherwise be a featureless street or square. In walking as a mere visitor through the streets of a French town, one seems to witness more of the intimate life of the place in a few hours than one would do in England in a week. From the baking of bread to haircutting and shaving and the eating of food, there is much more of work and play visible from the curb-stone. In England the staff of life seems to reach the dining-room table by invisible means, so seldom does one see bread carried through the streets, but among the French--a nation of bread-eaters--long loaves as well as circular ones are to be seen tucked under the arm of almost every tenth person one meets. The working classes seem to be continually buying bread freshly baked, and one loaf at a time! And those who may be seen carrying bread or vegetables, or whatever they have just purchased at the market, are more at home in the street than are Anglo-Saxons, who are apt to regard the common highways of their towns as channels for coming and going to and from business or pleasure whereon lingering or conversation is undesirable, indiscreet, and not without danger, for it is generally recognised that those who pass hours of rest or idleness in the streets are persons without homes or of undesirable reputation. But in a French city one is invited at every turn to buy a newspaper or periodical at a kiosk and to take a seat at a table close by, where, having ordered a bock or a cup of coffee, one is free to read undisturbed for hours. In Paris the gossip of the _boulevards_ is part of the life of a big section of the people, and yet to the casual and superficial observer it might be thought that there was less opportunity for chatting in the streets than is offered in London. The French _boulevard_ is in reality no more free from danger than the English street, but the people have accustomed themselves to the conditions. Among Latin peoples there is a time-honoured weakness for throwing out of the window all sorts and conditions of rubbish, and those who are chatting in a patch of shade in some quiet corner of a street may be rudely disturbed by the fall of a basinful of old cabbage leaves or other kitchen ejecta. Worse than this are the strange and often offensive odours that assail one in the streets. Imperfect sanitation is commonly the cause of the noxious atmosphere of so many streets in French towns. The artist sometimes pays a heavy price for the picture he obtains of some picturesque quarter on account of the contaminated air he is obliged to breathe. In Caen, where splendid Norman and Gothic churches thrill those who appreciate mediaeval architecture, the malodorous streets often frighten one away. Sanitation has improved enormously in recent years, and is still making great strides forward, but the people have a great deal to learn in the use of the new appliances that are provided. This leeway is less easy to make up than that of mechanical contrivance, and much time will no doubt elapse before every one is educated up to the proper appreciation and use of sanitary arrangements. Municipal authorities have also much to learn. There should not exist the smallest loophole for an architect to erect a modern building without providing a direct outlet to the open air to all the sanitary quarters, and yet in a recently erected hotel in the Étoile district of Paris, such a cardinal requirement of health is ignored, the only ventilation being a window that lights a cupboard for hot-water cans, and that in turn is the sole ventilation of a bathroom, outside air reaching neither the first nor the last! London, which before the Great Fire was a city whose smells had become proverbial, is now the cleanest and healthiest city in the world, its sanitary by-laws leaving no loopholes for slipshod work; but Paris, the world centre for the choicest and most exquisite of perfumery, has still much progress to make before complete enjoyment of its cheerful, busy, richly coloured street life can be experienced. Every one knows the difficulties of looking at and observing with seeing eyes the everyday objects with which one is surrounded. A little girl paying a visit to London from the country once pointed out to the writer what a number of blind horses there were to be seen in the streets, and he was obliged to confess that he had never noticed any. Such limitations seem to debar one from making comparisons between one's own form of urban civilisation and another, but allowing for a certain lack of observation in the land of one's upbringing, there are some features of French town life to which one may draw attention. [Illustration: A TYPICAL COCHER OF PARIS.] Very early in his first experiences of Paris the visitor discovers that the rule of the road is to keep to the right, and that there is little certainty of what may happen where the great streams of traffic meet. The policeman of Paris may hold up his baton, but it is not in the least likely that a complete check to the traffic behind him will result. After an exhaustive study of London methods the Parisian authorities have come to the conclusion that it is the French character which prevents their officers from carrying out the same methods in Paris. Notwithstanding the quiet way in which the French submit to certain laws which would not be tolerated in England, they appear to resent control in this department of life. The police of Britain are a bigger, more solid and imperturbable type than those of their neighbours across the Channel, but an east-ender might make impertinent comments if the policeman who held up his donkey-cart had patent leather toe-caps to his boots--a by-no-means unusual sight in Paris! The quaint, noisy omnibuses pulled by three horses abreast have been replaced by heavy motor-propelled vehicles which still, however, preserve the old features of first-and second-class sections, and the standing accommodation for eight or ten persons. One mounts and alights from the middle of the rear of the vehicle, the opening being guarded by a chain controlled by the conductor--a method offering less opportunity for dropping off before the 'bus has come to a standstill. Although the motor-cab is present in considerable numbers, the horse-drawn taxi still holds its own. It is cheap, and although, through the close coupling of the front pair of wheels, it can be overturned quite easily, it is a decidedly pleasant means of conveyance, with less anxiety for the fare than the auto-taxi, but the drivers seem to desire to out-do the chauffeurs in giving as much thrill and sensation as skilful and often reckless driving will provide. His hatred of the _bourgeois_--the "man in the street"--in spite of, and indeed because of, his being a potential client, is expressed at every yard. He constantly tries to run them down, which makes strangers to Paris accuse the Paris cabman of driving badly, while in point of fact he is not driving at all, but playing with miraculous skill a game of his own.... The cabman's wild career through the streets, the constant waving and slashing of his pitiless whip, his madcap _hurtlements_ and collisions, the frenzied gesticulations which he exchanges with his "fare," the panic-stricken flight of the agonized women whose lives he has endangered; the ugly rushes which the public occasionally make at him with a view to lynching him, the sprawlings and fallings of his maddened, hysterical, starving horse, contribute as much as anything to the spasmodic intensity, the electric blue-fire diablerie, which are characteristic of the general movement of Paris.[7] [7] Rowland Strong, _The Sensations of Paris_. No doubt the hansom-cab--the gondola of London as some one termed it--would have survived if it had accepted the limitations of the taximeter, but refusing to adjust itself to circumstance its numbers steadily diminished. Among the omnibuses and taxis of both types and the numerous private motor-cars there passes at all times of the day a wonderful stream of country vehicles. Vegetables are conspicuous, but these might be overlooked, whereas the hay and straw carts assail the eye by their immense proportions. They might almost be dubbed lazy men's loads, for they have the appearance of moving hay-stacks and require the most skilful manoeuvring in the midst of so much impetuously driven traffic. These country carts almost give the streets of Paris a provincial flavour, their horses and drivers being more essentially rural than anything one sees in London, even in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden. Riding quietly through the wheeled traffic the sight of half a dozen members of the semi-military _Garde républicaine_ is a very familiar one. Their uniforms are so military in character that visitors to Paris generally mistake them for soldiers. On the pavements of the streets a striking feature is the number of women who go about their business without wearing hats. In the dinner hour of the _midinette_, between twelve and one (from which she derives her name), this is particularly noticeable, the streets and public gardens overflowing with this hard-worked and underpaid class of _Parisienne_. These girls and women are the "labour" of the dressmaking establishments wherein is produced all that is most admired by the well-dressed women of the world. The majority are very underpaid, the young and inexperienced earning about 1 fr. 50 a day, the _petites couturières_, as a rule, having a wage between 1 and 3 francs a day, which does not go far in Paris, where the cost of living is roughly double that of London. In the leading establishments the _midinette_ may earn from £35 to over £50 a year, but these are the highly skilled _ouvrières_ and do not represent a very large proportion of the whole, whose incomes have been roughly estimated in three divisions, each representing one-third of the whole number. The most poorly paid third receives less than 5 francs a day, the intermediate section attains the 5-franc level, and the most prosperous third exceeds it to the amount already mentioned. A small number of women become what is known as _premières_ in famous houses in the Rue de la Paix, the classic street from which the fashions in woman's attire for the whole of the civilised world are believed to emanate. These clever French women are endowed with a very high degree of taste and skill, and their gifts reach a comparatively high market value, bringing in an annual income of about £150. [Illustration: AUTUMN IN THE CHAMPS ELYSÉES, PARIS.] The work-girls who take sewing to their homes can earn from 75 centimes to 2 francs a day. In her interesting book on Paris life Mlle. de Pratz gives the following two budgets of _midinettes_ receiving £34 and £48 per annum:-- 850 fr. per annum 1200 fr. per annum (£34). (£48). Lodging 100 £4 150 £6 Food 550 £22 750 £30 Clothes 100 £4 150 £6 Heat, light, washing, and 100 £4 150 £6 recreation ____ ____ 850 1200 The struggle to make ends meet on the smaller incomes is no doubt great, for Paris, it must always be remembered, does not provide cheap living for any one, not even in its poorest quarters. As a whole the _midinette_ class is badly fed and therefore delicate and too often a prey to consumption. It does not produce a high average of good-looking girls, for, being fond of amusement, late hours are indulged in very generally, with the result that when the hour for work arrives insufficient rest has been obtained. No doubt in so large a class--they are computed to number about 110,000--there is a wide range of character and morals, but there seems little doubt that, as a class, the chastity of the most poorly paid does not rank high. In a moral atmosphere such as that breathed by Parisians as a whole, it would be almost impossible for girls subjected to so much temptation on account of poverty to resist. And there is commonly no loss of self-respect when the downward step has been taken, for even when a girl convicted of such moral laxity is blamed, she merely replies with calmness that it is quite natural. The Apache class lives in its own particular quarter of the city, and its members are not easily recognisable by the general public. The fraternity tattoo a certain arrangement of dots on the forearm by which recognition is instantly obtained. These dots indicate the motto of the Apache, _Mort aux vaches!_ by which is intended their perpetual warfare with the police. This strange class of anti-social beings is recruited from many grades of Parisian life, all suffering from some abnormal mental condition unless drawn into the grip of the strange brotherhood by mischance when very young, as will sometimes happen with girls at an immature age. In spite of the national training in arms of the young men of France, this incredible class continues to exist and to perpetrate outrage, murder, and robbery. How many of these outlaws of society have experienced military service, and to what extent it has modified or accentuated their abnormality, are questions to which one would like to have answers. Probably the average Parisian of the middle classes is more aware of the enormities of the _concierge_ than of the Apache. The one is an ever-present annoyance, and the other a thing read about in the evening newspapers, but not encountered personally. Not so _La Concierge_. This individual is employed by a landlord to act as his watchdog in a block of flats. His duties are connected with showing the flats to prospective tenants, collecting rent, keeping the staircases clean, and delivering letters, the last being required because the Paris postman does not climb the stairs in flat buildings--all the letters for the building being delivered into the hands of the _concierge_. It is this matter of one's letters which gives the caretaker his power. He uses it to extort liberal gratuities for every small service, as well as a handsome _étrenne_ on New Year's Day. It is the landlord who is at the fountain-head of the trouble. How seldom is it otherwise! He pays the _concierge_ an entirely inadequate sum for his services, and as he has to supplement his income in some other way he, as a rule, leaves his wife in charge for a large part of the day and earns a supplemental sum elsewhere. The Frenchwoman is too often inclined to avarice, and it seems to be the exception to find in Paris a _concierge's_ wife who will not levy a form of blackmail on the tenants whose letters come into her hands. She will make herself familiar with the character of the correspondence that each tenant receives, and if insufficiently tipped will not hesitate to hold up any letters that she believes are of importance. The opening of letters with steam is not beneath the moral plane of _Madame la Concierge_, and by various means she obtains such an intimate knowledge of the concerns of each tenant that peace and freedom from endless petty annoyances can only be bought at the price which she deems satisfactory. Mlle. de Pratz gives a vigorous picture of this bugbear of flat life in Paris, telling of the scandals that are circulated concerning entirely innocent people who have failed in the liberality of their _étrennes_, and how the residents of ill-reputation buy immunity from these baneful attentions by their liberal tips. How long, it may reasonably be asked, will Paris consent to this iniquity, which could be remedied by the delivery of letters direct to the door of each flat? It is often a matter of discussion how far the proverbial politeness of the French goes beneath the surface. Generalising on such a topic is hedged about with pitfalls, and the wary are disinclined to enter such debatable ground. Compared to the British, whose self-consciousness or shyness too often leads to awkwardness in those moments of social intercourse when dexterity is needful, the French are undoubtedly ages ahead. The right phrase exactly fitting the requirements of the moment comes easily to their lips, and with it, as a rule, the right expression and attitude; and yet one must travel often in the underground railways of Paris to see a man give up his seat to a woman who is standing. It is understood that a young man cannot offer his place to a young woman, because it would suggest _arrière-pensées_; but if this regrettable state of affairs does exist, the restriction to such action does not apply when an old woman carrying a bundle is standing beside a youth, who could not be accused of anything but courtesy if he rose to save her the discomfort of standing. But no one seems to think such action a requirement of common politeness. While one finds great charm and civility among the assistants in shops, which often add very much to the pleasure of shopping, a disagreement on a business matter may be handled with much less courtesy than in a British shop. A hard, almost angry expression will come upon _madame_ or _mademoiselle's_ face, where over the Channel one would meet a look of mere anxiety. But Paris shopkeepers no doubt have a very cosmopolitan world to attend to, and they perhaps encounter many rogues. There is unevenness in manners everywhere, and while one class of workers may be soured by adverse conditions and lose their natural charm in the economic struggle, another will expand in the sun of easy and pleasant conditions. The Parisian horse taxi-cab driver with his picturesque shiny tall hat and crimson waistcoat is not conspicuous for his politeness unless his _pour-boire_ is very liberal, and the railway porter can easily be insulting if he is dissatisfied with a tip. In London there is much unmannerly pushing on to trams and omnibuses during the morning and evening hours, restricted here and there by the method of the queue, but in Paris all the chief stopping-places of the omnibuses are provided with publicly exposed bunches of numbered tickets. On a wet day a little girl or a cripple has merely to tear off one of these slips of paper, and when the 'bus arrives the conductor takes up his passengers in the numerical order of their tickets--all unfair hustling being thus eliminated. The Parisian _bonne à tout faire_ has been diminishing in numbers for many years. In the thirty years between 1866 and 1896 the total was nearly halved, leaving about 700,000 of this overworked and underpaid class. The day of frilled caps has gone, and even a bib to the apron is considered an out-of-date demand. It is no doubt the need for stringent economy in the flats constituting the greatest part of home life in Paris, which is responsible for the dislike to domestic service on the part of the young women of the capital. An undesirable arrangement in flat buildings is the housing of all the maids of the building in very small bedrooms on the top floor. In the hours in which the girls are free from duty they are able to do more or less as they please on their floor, and the result is that the natural protection of the home is missing in the hours of rest and leisure, when their need is most pressing. The average _bonne à tout faire_ is not disinclined to hard work, and she is clever and willing to put herself to any trouble in an emergency or when there are guests to be entertained. Boredom however, seems to settle upon her during the normal routine of life, and her buoyant nature makes her inclined to sing and talk loudly about her work. She is in a great proportion of cases more intimate with the family than the servants in London flats, and on this account her manner assumes a familiarity that in the circumstances is fairly inevitable. A man visitor will commonly raise his hat to the maid and call her "Mademoiselle." Probably the Paris maid-of-all-work is not worked any harder than the single servant in London--the only real difference being the morning marketing, which she regularly undertakes. There is attractiveness in the life she sees in the streets and markets, and in addition there is the tradesman's _sou_ which finds its way into her pocket for every _franc's_ worth of goods purchased. If honest the girl's commission begins and ends with the _sou du franc_, but if she is otherwise she will make little alterations to the amounts in the household books, and thus add by these petty but perpetual thefts a considerable sum to her annual wages. How far such dishonesty is practised it is impossible to say, and in the absence of any figures one may hope that a few cases are the cause of much talk. Rents in Paris are high, and the tendency is to mount still higher. Blocks of flats that have been let at a quite reasonable rent are frequently "modernised" with a few superficial improvements and renovations and relet at vastly increased prices. This is much the case with those formerly let at from £60 to £100 a year, and the restriction in the number of cheaper homes available for the poor has been going on so steadily that the problem has become one which it will be necessary for the State to tackle. The increase in rents has, in some instances, been only 10 per cent, but in many instances it is more than that, and here and there the upward bound has reached three or four times that amount. One is sometimes puzzled to know how the Parisian struggles along, for besides his ascending rent he has to pay much more for all household stuff, whether it is curtains for his windows (which are taxed), a cake of soap, or an enamelled iron can. No wonder that the best sitting-room is kept shut up on certain days of the week, and that polished wooden floors are so frequently seen in place of carpeted ones. Tenants having large families are in a most awkward predicament, for landlords on all hands discourage them, and if the Government wish to go to one of the root causes of the diminishing birth-rate, they must see to it that the housing of the middle and lower middle classes is a less difficult and precarious feature of their struggle for existence. Perhaps, now that the United States has set the example of lowering and in some instances sweeping away the protective tariffs on certain articles, France may follow suit. If the heavy duties on cotton goods were removed there is no doubt whatever that the burden of housekeeping in France would be instantly relieved. But the relief in this respect would be trifling compared to that which would be felt in the food bill. Tea costs from 4s. to 6s. per pound. Sugar averages 5d., rice 6d., and jam 10d. per pound. A remarkable instance of the working of the tariff is given by Mlle. de Pratz in her interesting work already quoted. "In a small village I know near Paris," she writes, "thousands of pounds worth of fresh fruit and beet-sugar are exported each year to England. But this village uses English-made jam made from their own fruit and sugar, which, after being exported and reimported, costs half the price of home-made French jam." As recently as March 1910 the protective system of 1892 was strengthened, duties being raised all round. In support of the changes it was argued that foreign countries were adopting similar measures, and that fiscal and social legislation were laying new burdens upon home industries. With Great Britain still maintaining its system of free imports and the United States moving in the direction of Free Trade, the first argument begins to lose its force. These questions of rent and the cost of food do not, of course, press upon the very considerable numbers of wealthy residents in Paris, but they are not on this account less vital to the well-being of the mighty cosmopolitan city. And if these features of urban existence were overlooked in any book, however slight, which aims at putting before the reader some salient aspects of French life, the blank would leave much unexplained. Bearing in mind the expense of living in the large towns a thousand little things are at once interpreted. It has been said of Paris that the population belongs less to France than that of any other city in the country, for the proportion of residents of other nationalities has gone up prodigiously in the last half century. There is a glamour about the city which seems to act as a magnet among all the civilised nations of the world. "The aristocratic class," says Mr. E. H. Barker,[8] "nominally so much associated with Paris life, is becoming less and less French. The old Legitimist families, so intimately connected with the Faubourg St. Germain under the Second Empire and a good while afterwards, who at one time held so aloof even from the Bonapartist nobility, have greatly changed their habits and views of social intercourse. The two nobilities now intermarry without apparent hindrance on the score of prejudices, and mingle without any suspicion of class divisions. But all this society helps to form what is called _Le Tout Paris_, which is almost as cosmopolitan as French." [8] _France of the French._ When one stands before the great Byzantine Church of the _Sacré Coeur_, that holds aloft its white domes against the sky up above Paris on the hill of Montmartre, and looks down on the multiplicity of roofs, there is always a film of smoke obscuring detail and softening the outlines of some portions of the city. Yet when one walks through the streets the clean creamy whiteness of the buildings would almost give the stranger the impression that he had reached a city that had no use for coal. Even in the older streets where renovation and repairs are very infrequent there is never a suspicion of that uniform greyness that the big cities of Britain produce. In all the great boulevards in the whole of the Étoile district and wherever the houses are well built and of modern construction, the bright clean stone-work is so free from the effects of smoke that a Dutch housewife would fail to see the need for external cleaning. The façades of nearly all the houses in the newly reconstructed streets have a certain monotony about them which has been inherited from the days of Hausmann's great rebuilding. There is seldom any colour except in the windows of shops, for the universal shutters, which in Italy are brilliantly painted bright green, brown, blue, or even pink, are here uniformly white or the palest of greys. So many of the new streets are, however, planted with trees that the colour scheme resolves itself into green and pale cream, except in winter, when the blackish stems of the trees add nothing to the gaiety of the streets. Contrasting the streets in the neighbourhood of the Parc Monceaux with those of Mayfair, London has the advantage for variety of architectural styles and for complete changes of atmosphere; but for spacious splendour, for what can properly be termed elegance, Paris stands on a vastly higher plane. The dreary stucco pomposity of Kensington and Belgravia fortunately cannot be discovered in Paris, and it is well for the world that few cities indulged in this architectural make-believe. While Belgravia can only keep her self-respect by continually covering herself with fresh coats of paint, the honest stone-work of Paris lets the years pass without showing any appreciable signs of deterioration. Unlike London, where there are seemingly endless streets of two and three storeys, Paris has developed the tall building of five or six floors. The girdle of fortification has no doubt directed this tendency. Where the streets are not wide the lofty houses increase the effect of narrowness, and many of the side streets in the St. Antoine district have, with their innumerable shutters, a very close resemblance to some Italian cities. It is a mistake to suppose that the whole of Paris has been rebuilt; for, apart from Notre Dame and such well-known Romanesque and Gothic churches as St. Étienne-du-Mont, St. Germain, the tower of St. Jacques, and the Sainte Chapelle, there are gabled houses of considerable age in many of the by-ways. These are almost invariably covered with a mask of stucco that does its best to hide up their seventeenth-century or earlier characteristics. The beautiful and dignified quadrangular building that is now called the Musée Carnavalet, was the residence of the Marquise de Sévigné and was built in the sixteenth century, although altered and added to in 1660. Earlier than this is the fascinating Hôtel Cluny, a late Gothic house built as the town residence of the abbots of Cluny. This building even links up modern Paris with the Roman _Lutetia Parisiorum_. Another interesting architectural survival is the Hôtel de Lauzan, a typical residence of a great aristocrat of the days of _Le Roi soleil_. The Palais du Louvre, dating in part from the days of François I., the Tuileries, begun in 1564 and finished by Louis XIV., and the Conciergerie wherein Marie Antoinette and Robespierre were confined, are buildings of such world-renown that it is scarcely necessary to mention them. In many ways Paris is similar in arrangement to London. It is divided in two by its river, which cuts it from east to west, and the more important half is on the northern bank. The wealthy quarters are on the west and the poorer to the east. The great park, the Bois de Boulogne, is also on the west side of the city. In Paris, the ancient nucleus of the city was an island in the river, but London, although it originated on a patch of land raised high above the surrounding marshes, was never truly insulated. The Bastille, which may be compared with the Tower of London, occupied a very similar position not far from the north bank of the river and at the eastern side of the mediaeval city. All the chief theatres and places of amusement are on the north side of the river, and, as in London, so are all the Royal Palaces; but here the parallels between the cities appear to end, and one observes endless notable differences. The Seine divides the city much more fairly than does the Thames. London has no opulent quarter south of its river, but Paris has the Faubourg St. Germain, where her oldest and most distinguished residents have their residences--houses possessing solemnly majestic courtyards guarded by stupendous gateways. In the same quarter are some of the more important foreign embassies. And the river of Paris being scarcely half the width of that of London has made bridging comparatively cheap and resulted in more than double the number of such links. There is no marine flavour in Paris. No vessels of any size reach it, and its banks are not therefore made ugly by tall and hideous wharf buildings. It is a walled city, being encompassed by a circle of very formidable fortifications, still capable of resisting attack by modern military methods. Its broad avenues and boulevards, tree-planted and perfectly straight, give the whole city an atmosphere of spaciousness and of dignity that is lacking in London, if one excepts the vicinity of Regent Street and Piccadilly, and a few other west-end thoroughfares. Wherever one goes in France among the cities and larger towns the ideas of big and eye-filling perspectives are aimed at by the municipal authorities and architects. Lyons, Nice, Orleans, Tours, Havre, Montpellier, Nîmes, Marseilles, to mention places that come readily into the mind, have all achieved something of the Parisian ideal, and even the more mediaeval towns, whenever an opportunity presents itself, expand into tree-shaded boulevards of widths that would make an English municipal councillor rub his eyes and gasp. It is curious to witness how, in many of the older towns, the narrow and cramped quarters, necessitated in the days when city walls existed, are continuing their existence in wonderful contrast to spacious suburbs. The glamour of these narrow ways is so entrancing to the visitor and the lover of history that he trembles to think that a day may come when all these romantic nuclei of French cities have been rebuilt on the ideals of Hausmann. Wherever one wanders in France, even in mere villages, one can scarcely find a place that has not at least one café with inviting little tables on the pavement, giving that subtle Latin atmosphere so refreshing to the Anglo-Saxon (who, however, would never dream of wishing to imitate the custom in his own country), and so full of that curiously fascinating Bohemianism which Mr. Locke has caught in the pages of _The Beloved Vagabond_. Could Britain exchange the public-house for the café half the temperance reformer's task would be done, but one can scarcely contemplate without a shiver the prospect of eating and drinking in the open air anywhere north of the Thames for more than a few weeks of summer. CHAPTER VII OF RURAL LIFE IN FRANCE Peasant ownership of land does not always imply prosperity, and because such a vast majority of French peasants possess their own few acres, one must not jump to the conclusion that all these little farmers live comfortable and prosperous lives. In very large tracts of what has so often been called "the most fertile country in Europe,"[9] the peasant is only able to tear from the soil he owns the barest existence. By unremitting toil he makes his land produce enough to give him and his family a diet mainly composed of bread and vegetables. Meat, coffee, and wine come under the heading of luxuries, and so much that is nutritious is missing from the normal dietary that it would seem as though the minimum requirements of health were not met. Long hours of steady toil, and food which the Parisian would consider insufficient to make life tolerable, is the lot of the peasant proprietors of France wherever the soil is ungenerous or distance from railways and markets keeps prices low. [9] The same claim is frequently made for England. In the unprofitable soils of the Cevennes, and in certain parts of the province of Corrèze, the peasants can cultivate little besides buckwheat and potatoes. The latter, with chestnuts which are also produced in these mountainous districts, form the staple food of the agricultural population, and their drink is water, which they sometimes enliven with the berries of the juniper. This is the simple and hard-working life of those whose lot is cast in what may be called the stony places. Quite different are the conditions of life in Normandy or the wonderfully fertile plain of La Beauce, where is grown the greatest part of the wheat produced in France. Here the generous return for the labour expended on the soil brings such prosperity to the peasant owner that he often turns his eyes to higher rungs in the social ladder than that of husbandry, offering his land for sale, and so giving opportunities for the capitalist to invest in a profitable industry. Success may be said to bring with it dangers to which the peasant of the poorer soils is not subjected. Writing of the farmers of La Beauce and of parts of Normandy, Mr. Barker says: "Too often are they found to be high feeders, copious drinkers, keenly, if not sordidly, acquisitive, unimaginative, and coarse in their ideas and tastes. Material prosperity, when its effects are not corrected by mental, and especially by moral, culture, has an almost fatal tendency to develop habits that are degrading and qualities that repel.... It is to be noted as a social symptom that among the class of prosperous agriculturalists in France, the birth-rate is exceptionally low." Of the 17,000,000 of the population who are more or less dependent upon agriculture for their livelihood, only about 6,500,000 actually work on the soil. Those who own holdings of less than twenty-five acres number nearly 3,000,000, and the total area of land held in this way is something between 15 and 20 per cent of the whole cultivated area. About three-quarters of a million persons possess the balance. The sizes of the holdings, of course, vary enormously. Besides those who own their land, there is the large class of _métayers_, who are part of a complicated system which persists in spite of its theoretical impossibility of smooth working. Where a landowner is a _gentilhomme campagnard_, he will in most cases have a few farms attached to his residence, which is always _le château_ to the peasant, however difficult to discover its old-time manorial splendours may have become. The farmers who work for the landowner are not rent-payers: they merely share with him in the results of their labour, a system of co-operation which results in very close relations between landlord and farmer. No hard and fast rules are followed as to the proportion of the crops which falls to the landlord, or what share he has of the cattle. It is common for him to furnish draught animals as well as seed and implements. This system is limited very much to those districts where agriculture has stood still for a very long period, such as the Limousin, and the total of the land worked on the _métayage_ system is only 7 per cent of the whole of the cultivated land. To this day the methods of husbandry maintained in the less accessible departments are scarcely ahead of the Romans, and on the slopes of the Pyrenees one may still see the flail in use for threshing purposes, while the plough with a wooden share, which seems likely to hold its own for a long time to come in certain of the mountainous districts, is the same as those depicted by prehistoric sculptors high on the rock-faces of Monte Bego on the Franco-Italian frontier. In the greatest part of France oxen are used for draught purposes, and these picturesque, cream-coloured beasts, yoked to curious big-wheeled country carts, are always an added charm to the country road. Whether they are seen patiently plodding along a white and dusty perspective of tree-bordered road, or are standing quietly in a farmyard with lowered heads while the queer tumbril behind them is being loaded, they have picture-making qualities which the horse lacks. The carts are wonderfully primitive, two wheels being favoured for purposes which in England are always considered to require four. In fact the four-wheeled cart is difficult to discover anywhere in rural France. Even the giant tuns containing the cider they brew in Normandy, or those that are filled with wine in the Midi and other grape-producing districts of the land, are borne on two great wheels, and a pair of clumsy poles that, when horses are used, are tapered down to form shafts. Farms differ in character and attractiveness according to local conditions in every country, but France shows an astonishing range of styles. In the north one finds the timber-framed barn and outhouse delightfully prevalent, and in Normandy the farm often possesses the character of those to be seen in Kent and Sussex, although south of the Channel the compact, rectangular arrangement of barns is perhaps more noticeable than to the north. Between the Seine and the Loire, the timber-framed structures are very extensively replaced by those of stone; but although lacking in the interest of detail, their colour is exceedingly rich, for the thatched roofs are very frequently thick with velvety moss, and the cream-coloured walls are adorned by patches of orange and silvery-grey lichen. Wooden windmills are conspicuous on the shallow undulations of the plain of La Beauce. Where roofs are tiled, they too have become green with moss, giving a wonderful mellowness to the groups of buildings. Farther south the farms are still of stone, and some of them have an atmosphere of romance about them in their circular towers with high conical roofs, and with even the added picturesqueness of a turret or two. South of Poitiers the roofs of nearly all the houses take on the low pitch and the curved tile which belong to the whole of the southern zone of the country, and prevent one from noticing any marked architectural change in crossing the frontiers into Spain or Italy. Taken as a whole, the villages are without any of the tidy charm to be found in nearly every part of England. A hamlet gives the road that passes through it the appearance of a farmyard. Hay, straw, and manure are allowed to accumulate to such an extent that in the twilight a stranger might think he had inadvertently left the road and strayed into a farm. And whereas in England the rural hamlet does not usually crowd up to the thoroughfare, it is often very much the reverse in France. The writer has traversed thousands of miles of French roads, has wandered with a bicycle in the byways, but has not yet seen a village green with a pond and ducks, or even a churchyard with a suspicion of that garden-like finish which makes England unique. The velvety turf that grows on Britain's sheep-cropped commons does not exist outside that land, and one never even expects to find the French wayside relieved by such features. Economy in using every inch of soil, in avoiding the waste of sunshine on arable lands, and in preventing the waste of timber caused by letting trees grow untrimmed, has given the French landscape its most characteristic features. Hedges which the Englishman has learnt to love from his childhood, first because of the wild life they shelter and the blackberries and nuts they provide, and later on account of the beauty they add to every cultivated landscape, are an exceptional feature in France. In immense areas such a dividing line is never to be seen, and saving perhaps for a small tree that is scarcely more than an overgrown bush, there is little to break the horizon line except the tall poplars, birches, and other trees that line the main roads. These are not allowed to live idle, ornamental lives: they, like the toiling peasant, must work for their living by providing as many branches as possible for the periodical lopping. In this way wood for the oven and for the kitchen fire is supplied in nearly every department of the country. In the fat and prosperous districts of Normandy, where rich grazing lands produce the butter for which the province is famed, hedges are as common as in England, and where mop-headed trees are not in sight, it is not easy to notice any marked difference between the two countries. Brittany is the province where the wayside cross is most in evidence, but in every part of the country these symbols of the Christian faith are to be found. Outside Brittany it is rare to-day to see any one taking any notice of them, and no doubt the spread of education and the consequent shrinking of the superstitions of the peasantry, make the crucifix less and less a need on dark and misty nights. Offerings of wild flowers are still tied to the shaft of the wayside cross, where they rapidly turn brown, and resemble a handful of hay. The well-head is a feature of the farm and cottage which varies in every part of the land. It is frequently a picturesque object, having in many localities a wrought-iron framework for supporting the pulley-wheel. [Illustration: A BRETON CALVAIRE. THE ORATORY OF JACQUES CARTIER.] Horses and mules are seldom to be seen without some touch of colour or curious detail in their harness. It may be a piece of sheep-skin dyed blue and fixed to the top of the collar, or that part of the harness will be of wood, quaintly devised, and studded with brass nails and other ornament. Red woollen tassels are much in favour in some districts. The breeding of horses in great numbers takes place in the north coast regions of Brittany, Normandy, and between the mouth of the Seine and the Belgian frontier. Using cattle for draught purposes so very extensively no doubt keeps down the number of the horses in the country, but in 1905 the total had risen to considerably over three millions. Tarbes, a town near the Pyrenees, gives its name to the Tarbais breed of light cavalry and saddle-horses, and the chief northern classes are the Percheron, the Boulonnais for heavy draught work, and the Anglo-Norman for heavy cavalry and light draught purposes. Cattle, pigs, and asses have been increasing in numbers in recent years, but sheep and lambs have shown a very decided falling off, 22½ millions in 1885 having dropped to 17¾ in 1905. Sheep are raised on all the poorer grazing lands of the Alps, the Jura, the Vosges, the Cevennes, and the Pyrenees, and also on the sandy district of Les Landes on the Bay of Biscay. South-western France in general, and the plain of Toulouse in particular, produce a fine class of draught oxen. In the northern districts they are stall-fed on the waste material of the beet-sugar and oil-works, and of the distilleries. It is a popular error to imagine that the State owns all the forests of France and even the wayside trees. This is due no doubt to the fact that certain governmental restrictions do apply to the owners of growing timber. The total of forest land amounts to only 36,700 square miles, or about 18 per cent of the whole country, and of this about a third belongs to the State or the communes. Fontainebleau has 66 square miles of forest, but although the best known, it is not by any means the largest, the Forêt d'Orleans having an area of 145 square miles. Much planting of pines has taken place in Les Landes, and that marshy district, famed for its shepherds who use stilts for crossing the wet places and water-courses, has by this means altered its character very considerably. Reafforestation is taking place on the slopes of the Pyrenees and the Alps which have been laid bare by the woodman's axe. Standing quite apart from the rest of the agriculture of the country is the wine-grower. His industry requires very specialised knowledge, and his dangers and difficulties are in some ways greater than those of the farmer. It may be the terrible insect called the phylloxera that destroys the growth of the vine, it may be mildew, or it may be over-production, but any of these troubles bear hardly upon the vine-grower, who is, broadly speaking, a humble type of peasant with very little capital. Before the war with Germany these people were a fairly prosperous and contented class, but since that time formidable troubles have smitten them very heavily. The awful visitation of the phylloxera is said to have cost as much as the war indemnity paid to Germany, _i.e._ £200,000,000, and when it was discovered that certain American vines were not subjected to the ravages of the pest, and feverish planting had established the new varieties in the land, a new trouble, in the form of over-production, presented itself to the unfortunate growers. More land had been converted into vineyards than had ever produced such crops in the past, and a large production of wine in Algeria so lowered prices that in 1907 affairs in the Midi reached a critical state. Riots occurred at Béziers and Narbonne, incendiarism and pillage took place at Épernay and Ay, and for a time the Government found itself confronted with an infuriated mass of peasants, who blamed it for the disastrously low prices then prevailing. They also attributed the stagnation in the trade to the fraudulent methods of sale that had become common. They were not very far from the truth in stating that they did not reap so much advantage as those who grew cereals and beetroot, while paying for the protective policy in the high prices of food and all other commodities. The peasant might almost be said to wear a uniform, so universal in France is the soft black felt hat and the dark-blue cotton smock in which he appears in the market-place. In this garb one sees a wide variety of national types, from the English-looking men of Normandy to the dark-complexioned, black-haired, and lithe race of the south. Often the latter have an almost wild appearance, terrifying to the British or American girl who strays any distance from the modern types of palatial hotel which can now be found in regions of medicinal springs in the Pyrenees. He is, however, a much less formidable person when he enters into conversation, and, taken as a whole, the agriculturalist is a very pleasant-mannered, hospitable, and dignified person. He possesses in a marked degree the domestic virtues, the level-headed shrewdness, the patience, thrift, and foresight which give steadiness to his nation. In small towns in the south he can be a person of immense sociality. The _place_ during the warmer months of the year, after the work of the day is done, buzzes with conversation, the steady hum of which would puzzle a stranger until he saw its cause. In the strange little walled town of Aigues-Mortes, the entire male population seems to congregate in the central square, and there passes the evening at the tables of the three or four cafés. So much conversation as that indulged in by these peasants of the Rhone delta would seem sufficient to produce solutions for all the problems of the wine industry, as well as those of rural populations in general. [Illustration: A PEASANT CHILD OF NORMANDY.] Care for the future makes the peasant toil and save for his children. Husband and wife will keep their children's future in view in a most self-effacing fashion, and if their shrewdness in business may go rather beyond the mark, it is in the interests of their family that they are working. The reward is too often that which comes to the old--the sense of being a burden to their offspring when rheumatism and kindred ills have robbed them of further capability for toil. In the country districts that are out of touch with modern influence, the peasant keeps his womenkind in a state of subservience that is almost mediaeval, and the custom of keeping the wife and daughters standing while the father and sons are at meals is still said to be maintained in some parts of the country.[10] The peasant is often a tyrant in his family. In some districts he is in the habit of calling his sons and daughters "my sons and the creatures." He is sometimes quite without any interest in politics. The various types are, however, so marked that the impossibility of labelling the peasantry of such a large slice of Europe with any one set of characteristics is obvious. By reading Zola or George Sand, one gets an insight into the peasant life which little else can give. [10] Hannah Lynch, _French Life in Town and Country_. One of George Sand's descriptions of the peasantry of the Cevennes is vigorous and vivid. She writes of it as a race "meagre, gloomy, rough, and angular in its forms and in its instincts. At the tavern every one has his knife in his belt, and he drives the point into the lower face of the table, between his legs; after that they talk, they drink, they contradict one another, they become excited, and they fight. The houses are of an incredible dirtiness. The ceiling, made up of a number of strips of wood, serves as a receptacle for all their food and for all their rags. Alongside with their faults I cannot but recognise some great qualities. They are honest and proud. There is nothing servile in the manner in which they receive you, with an air of frankness and genuine hospitality. In their innermost soul they partake of the beauties and the asperities of their climate and their soil. The women have all an air of cordiality and daring. I hold them to be good at heart, but violent in character. They do not lack beauty so much as charm. Their heads, capped with a little hat of black felt, decked out with jet and feathers, give to them, when young, a certain fascination, and in old age a look of dignified austerity. But it is all too masculine, and the lack of cleanliness makes their toilette disagreeable. It is an exhibition of discoloured rags above legs long and stained with mud, that makes one totally disregard their jewellery of gold, and even the rock crystals about their necks." This description is growing out of date in regard to the hats and knives, but the picturesque white cap, with its broad band of brightly coloured ribbon, worn by nearly all the women over a certain age, which George Sand does not mention, seems likely to persist. The peasant women of France are too often extremely plain and built on clumsy lines. Exceptional districts, such as Arles and other parts of Provence, may produce beautiful types, but the average is not pleasing. This, at least, is the consensus of opinion of those who profess to know France well. The writer would not venture on such a statement on his own authority, although his knowledge of a very considerable number of the departments entirely endorses their opinion. But the more one knows of provincial France the more prepared does one become for surprises, and the less ready to generalise. Between the educated and uneducated there is less of a gulf than in other countries, on account of the very high average of good manners to be found throughout the whole country, and because of the quick intelligence that is common to the whole people. The almost pathetic awkwardness of the old-fashioned English hodge scarcely exists in France. Superstitions among the peasantry are steadily dying out, even in Brittany. The rising tide of knowledge is finding its way into every creek and inlet, and is steadily submerging beliefs in supernatural influences. At one time the rustics lived in the greatest fear of a rain-producing demon who was called the _Aversier_, but the science of meteorology has reduced his personality to a condition as nebulous as the clouds that heralded his approach. Until quite recent times a very large proportion of the medical work in rural districts was carried out by the nuns of the numerous convents, and the preference for the free services of the kindly Sisters, however limited their knowledge, to those of the fully qualified doctor of the locality is easily explained. The rural practitioner's usual fee has only lately been raised from two francs to three, but on driving any distance an additional charge of one franc for every _kilomètre_ is made. The fee of the town doctor, if he is a general practitioner with a good practice, is from five to ten francs a visit. If he belongs to the type of second-class specialist not common in England but numerous in the cities of France, his fee is from ten to twenty francs a visit. The first-class specialist charges fifty francs, and sometimes seventy-five francs, for a visit. In the country the medical man is often content with a bicycle as the means of reaching his patients, for his income is not very often above £500 a year. No doubt the suppression of the monastic orders in France has improved the position of the doctors, who found few patients in certain parts of the country, especially the north-west, where the fervour of religious belief inclined the rustic to put the most complete faith in the prescriptions of the nuns. No doubt their ample experience in the treatment of small ailments (which the average practitioner so often finds tiresome) gave the Sisters considerable success in their medical work. Women doctors in every country could enormously supplement the work of the men, and perhaps the day will come when the general practitioner has a lady assistant to look after the minor ailments which so often become serious through lack of sufficient attention. How relieved would numbers of men doctors be if they could turn over to a lady assistant the visiting of all cases of chronic colds, dyspepsia, and the like! Whole books have been devoted to the _château_ life of France, and it would be easy to overstep the limits of this chapter in writing on this interesting subject. The wayfarer in France who knows nothing, or next to nothing, of the interiors of the large houses he sees scattered over the country would probably say that they all looked as though shut up and for sale. He sees in his mind the weed-grown main avenue and the ill-kept pathways. Visions come to him of lawns that have grown into hay-fields, of formal gardens converted into vegetable gardens, of terrace balustrades falling into decay, of walls whose plaster has fallen away in patches like those of a Venetian _palazzo_, of closed shutters, and a look of splendours that have passed. Those who have seen a little more than the mere outsides of the great houses will tell of occupants whose incomes have shrunk to such small sums that they are reduced to living in a few rooms of their ancestral homes, with insufficient servants to do more than keep the place habitable, and to maintain the output of the kitchen garden and a few flowers for the house. That there are many such _châteaux_ is perfectly true. The occupants are mainly anti-Republican in their views. They belong to other days, and are too proud to enter any profession which would bring them into jarring contact with the big majority who are without Royalist leanings. This obliges them to live in threadbare simplicity on the small income their shrunken fortunes provide. Two or three old servants, a few dogs, a horse or two, and a few other luxuries surround them. Formal visits at long intervals are paid to neighbours, who often live at some distance. The _curé_ and perchance the doctor are intimate visitors; there may be a few relations who come for visits, but this is often the whole of the social intercourse of M. and Mme. X., who reside in a portion of a _château_ of the time of Louis XV. which stands surrounded by a large tract of woodland. But ample incomes, and here and there great wealth, maintain many of the great houses of the countryside with modern luxury in every department. Changes have come in the _châteaux_ in recent years which have made breaches in the wall of old-fashioned formality that was so universal until quite lately. Instead of sweet wine and little hard sponge fingers, tea and _brioches_ appear at _le five o'clock_, as it is often called. Where the old-fashioned ideas of faithful servants will allow it, and the masters and mistresses have felt the influences that flow from Paris, changes in furnishing appear in the abandonment of the bareness and austerity of the reception-rooms. Where such influences have not penetrated, one may be quite sure to find all the furniture in the rooms ranged against the walls, and a complete absence of flowers, books, or the smaller odds and ends of convenience or ornament common to most Anglo-Saxon homes. There may be fine tapestries, numerous family portraits and other pictures, elaborate pieces of Boule and ormolu furniture, ornate clocks, and many other beautiful objects, but restraint and constraint are the prevalent notes. Bare polished floors and staircases with only small mats or rugs here and there remain characteristic of the _château_ interior. Too often there is no more individuality in a house than would exist were it thrown open to the public as a show-place or museum. In many of the _châteaux_ of the wealthy the charm of what is essentially French is linked with modifications in the directions of Anglo-Saxon convenience and comfort, producing much the same result as is found in those English homes wherein an affection for a Louis XV. atmosphere has introduced the tall silken or tapestried panels and the stilted and elaborate furniture of the eighteenth century. Surrounded by extensive forests containing wonderful green perspectives, the _château_ is often quite cut off from the sights and sounds of the outer world. When the time of the _chasse_ comes round, the woods may perhaps be enlivened by visions of the _chasseurs_ in pink or green coats, three-cornered hats, and tall boots, and the sound of their big circular horns may be heard. The silence is more effectually broken when shooting parties meet and the _battue_ takes place. [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL AND PART OF THE OLD CITY OF CHARTRES.] Motor-cars have made neighbours more accessible, and changes are taking place on this account. In pre-motor days the mistress of a _château_ was often quite unprepared for visitors. Madame Waddington, the American wife of a senator, who has put some of her experiences of social intercourse in the country into a charming volume,[11] describes a visit paid to a _château_ that was half manor, half farm. [11] _Château and Country Life in France_, Mary K. Waddington, 1908. We drove into a large courtyard, or rather farmyard, quite deserted; no one visible anywhere; the door of the house was open, but there was no bell nor apparently any means of communicating with any one. Hubert cracked his whip noisily several times without any result, and we were just wondering what we should do (perhaps put our cards under a stone on the steps) when a man appeared, said Mme. B. was at home, but she was in the stable looking after a sick cow--he would go and tell her we were there. In a few minutes she appeared, attired in a short, rusty-black skirt, sabots on her feet, and a black woollen shawl over her head and shoulders. She seemed quite pleased to see us, was not at all put out at being caught in such very simple attire, begged us to come in, and ushered us through a long, narrow hall and several cold, comfortless rooms, the shutters not open, and no fires anywhere, into her bedroom. All the furniture--chairs, tables, and bed--was covered with linen. She explained that it was her _lessive_ (general wash) she had just made, that all the linen was _dry_, but she had not had time to put it away, and she called a maid, and they cleared off two chairs--she sat on the bed. It was frightfully cold. We were thankful we had kept our wraps on. She said she supposed we would like a fire after our long cold drive, and rang for a man to bring some wood. He (in his shirt-sleeves) appeared with two or three logs of wood, and was preparing to make a fire with them _all_, but she stopped him, said one log was enough, the ladies were not going to stay long; so, naturally, we had no fire and clouds of smoke. She was very talkative, never stopped, told us all about her servants, her husband's political campaigns.... She asked a great many questions, answering them all herself; then said, 'I don't offer you any tea, as I know you always go back to have your tea at home, and I am quite sure you don't want any wine.' Washing days only occur in large French households once a quarter, or at the most monthly, so when the moment arrives the whole establishment is in a ferment. An orgy of soap-suds takes place, and coaling ship in the Navy is scarcely more disturbing to the even flow of daily affairs. Conversation, where people seldom paid a visit to Paris, ran always in a groove in the _châteaux_ and lesser houses described by the young American. The subjects were the woods, the hunting, the schoolmaster, the _curé_, local gossip, and much about the iniquities of the Republic. _Château_ life is too frequently dull. It as often as not is as out of touch with the realities of modern life as many English country houses where there are no young folk, and where there is no active connection with London and the busy world. The hunting season and shooting parties bring life and activity for a time, but "twice-told tales of foxes killed" do not carry any fertilising intellectual ideas into the byways of upper-class life. An excess of formality pervades every portion of the day, from the conversation on a new novel to the afternoon drive or the solemn game of _bézique_ after dinner. There is a tendency for politics to bulk largely in conversation, even among women, while among men heat is easily generated on this topic, the French being naturally bellicose. Subjects outside France, and matters that do not directly concern the French, rarely come up for discussion, unless the occupants of the _château_ are _intellectuels_. It is mainly due to political controversy that duels arise, nearly all the recent encounters having been between journalists and politicians. At the present day, honour is commonly satisfied when the first blood has been drawn, and when pistols are used, hits are infrequent. To show how lightly he took the matter, Ste. Beuve fought under an umbrella. Thiers fought a duel, and so also did the elder Dumas, Lamartine, Veuillot, Rochefort, and Boulanger. Even to-day (1913) septuagenarian generals are not too old to challenge one another, General Bosc (seventy-two) having sent his second to demand satisfaction of General Florentin (seventy-seven) for an unfounded charge of encouraging the use of illegal badges in societies formed for the training of boys in military duties! It is astonishing that the French should maintain duelling when it is well known how opposed was Napoleon to the absurd practice. "Bon duelliste mauvais soldat," he used to say, and when challenged by the King of Sweden, his reply was that he would order a fencing-master to attend him as plenipotentiary. But the French have a keen sense of personal honour, and one remembers that Montaigne said, "Put three Frenchmen together on the plains of Libya, and they will not be a month in company without scratching each other's eyes out." A poor man can hardly afford the luxury of a duel, for in Paris it costs about 300 francs, and if one has no friend who is a doctor willing to attend without a fee, the disbursements will even exceed this amount! The first expenses are the taxis for your seconds when they go to meet the other fellow's supporters. These meetings take place at cafés, and their bills have to be met by the duellists. Pistols, if they are used, are hired from Gastine Renette, who inflicts a scorching charge of about 100 francs for the loan. If swords are used they are bought, and the outlay is less, but not every one who is challenged is sufficiently expert to run the chances of using white weapons. Further expenses are incurred in the hiring of a vehicle in which to drive to the spot selected for the honourable encounter. The drive is punctuated by halts for refreshment for the doctor and the seconds, as well as the coachman. When the conflict has taken place there is often much more than "coffee for one" to be paid for by the duellist. Not only does custom require him to invite doctor and seconds to lunch at an expensive restaurant, but if the duel has re-established amicable relations, there is a double party to be entertained. To find a quiet and suitable spot for the meeting is often exceedingly difficult, the _gendarmerie_ in such convenient places as the Meudon Woods being perpetually on the alert, and having offered rewards to any who warned them of the arrival of "a double set of four serious-looking gentlemen in black frock-coats arriving in landaus, with one gentleman in each set with his _gueule de travers_." Mr. Robert Sherard has described the preliminaries to a duel forced upon him a few years ago. "... My fencing had grown very rusty," he wrote, "so ... I went to a fencing school to be coached. The master ... had the reputation of being able to teach a man in two lessons how not to get killed in a sword duel. I was not anxious to get killed, so I availed myself of his instructions. These mainly consisted in showing one how to hold one's point always towards one's adversary with extended arm. When a man so holds his weapon it is, it appears, impossible for the other man to wound him. At the same time it is said to be advisable to develop great suppleness of leg and ankle so as to be able to leap back, still holding one's point extended, in the event of the other man's rushing forward with such impetuosity as possibly to break down one's guard. It was further explained to me, that if whilst leaping back I could also dig forward with my sword, most satisfactory results might be hoped for (for me, _not_ for the other man)." It was disappointing to Mr. Sherard, after gaining much proficiency in leaping backwards while digging forward with his point, to find that his antagonist would only fight with pistols. CHAPTER VIII THE RIVERS OF FRANCE Broadly speaking, one half of France is mountainous, and the other flat or undulating. All the mountains are on the eastern half, the high grounds of Normandy and Brittany being scarcely more than hills. The whole country might, for some purposes, be considered as an inclined plane, for in travelling from the Alps on the eastern frontiers to the Atlantic coast the altitudes (omitting the valley of the Rhone) are constantly decreasing. Thus, with the exception of the Rhone, which carries the snow-waters of the Bernese and Pennine Alps, the Vosges and the Jura chains, into the Mediterranean, the waters of nearly the whole of the more habitable three-quarters of the country drain westwards to the Bay of Biscay and the English Channel. Most of this immense reticulation of river and stream is included in the three great systems of the Seine, the Loire, and the Garonne. The Adour drains the triangle between the Pyrenees and the Garonne; the Charente waters the Plain of Poitou between the Garonne and the Loire, but both are of small account in comparison to the vast areas included in the basins of the great rivers. Both the Rhone and the Garonne are of foreign birth, the first beginning life at the foot of the great Rhone Glacier in Switzerland, feeding on her snows and glaciers all the year round, and the second rising in a Spanish valley of the Pyrenees. [Illustration: THE CHÂTEAU OF AMBOISE ON THE LOIRE.] The Loire, the longest of her rivers, is, however, entirely a possession of France. It is, like the Seine, a cause of very much anxiety on account of its inconstancy. At one season of the year it inundates large areas with its superabundance, and at another it is capable of running so low that only mere streams flow between the sand-banks. So unfortunately situated is the city of Tours in times of flood that it has found it necessary to surround itself with a protective dyke. The chief cause of sudden inundations is when the flood-waters of two or three tributaries conspire to pour in their contributions to the main channel simultaneously, and only when these headstrong young things are held in check will there be any hope of a fairly regular level of water in the main course. Two centuries ago (1711) the need for curbing the flood-waters was recognised so clearly that a dam was constructed at Pinay, a village 18 miles above Roanne. It held up 350 to 450 million cubic feet of water, and has been very successful in maintaining the supply of water in the river-bed during seasons of drought, as well as checking the violence of the floods. In recent times three other dams have been built, two of them near the busy industrial centre of St. Étienne, but until several others have been constructed the flood-waters cannot be held in check. Its immense length of 625 miles takes the Loire through ten departments, but the changes of scenery are not so remarkable as those of the Rhone. The source is in the Cevennes, about 4500 feet above sea-level, on the east side of the Gerbier de Jonc, and almost in sight of the Rhone. Through Haute Loire in the marvellously picturesque region of dead volcanoes near Le Puy-en-Velay it takes its course northwards, flowing at the foot of basaltic cliffs and chestnut-clad slopes. On commanding spurs ruined castles are perched in most romantic fashion, and if it were not for their painful inaccessibility, the demand among the wealthy for these little strongholds of the Middle Ages would run up their value to astonishing figures. The action of water in the past has been vastly more energetic in the Auvergnes and the Cevennes in the ages since their masses of plutonic rock were produced than at the present day, for the scoria and the general debris of seismic disturbance has been so much eroded that the throats of volcanoes filled with the last product of the immense heat below here and there stand out stripped of their cones. One of the most remarkable of these phenomena is to be seen at Le Puy. This strange _aiguille_ has been crowned with a beautiful Romanesque chapel for some nine centuries, and it is just possible that a Roman temple stood there at an earlier date. In the neighbourhood of St. Étienne the Loire is considered to be navigable. It traverses the alluvial plain of Forez, the mountains of that name to the west separating it from the basin of its great tributary the Allier, which takes a roughly parallel course and joins it just below Nevers. If rivers could express their feeling by other means than overproduction and strikes, the Allier would no doubt say something forcible as to the ascendency of its neighbour, whose claims to be the parent stream are open to question. Nearly all the way through this plain of Forez the Loire, in fine weather, resembles a ribbon of fairest blue threaded through lace of exquisite delicacy, for it is bordered by trees growing close to the water-side, and only now and then does the band of blue show an uninterrupted surface. Lower down bare red hills are encountered, through which the river has forced its way to the plain in which stands the town of Roanne, after which its course is less picturesque for a time. This is perhaps a scarcely accurate statement, for picture-making qualities with trees, cattle, and distant hills are scarcely ever absent, but there is a certain monotony in the scenery such as one can hardly find on the Thames or the Wye. From Nevers to Orleans there are no towns on the river, which gradually turns its course to the west, flowing exactly in that direction at Orleans, where its ample width adds much interest and charm to a very much modernised city. Its habit of flooding, and so causing immense damage over large areas, has made it necessary to construct very formidable dykes, which now protect the country it traverses between La Martinière and Nantes. Between Orleans and Tours, where embankments do not exist, the writer has seen the cream-coloured flood-waters foaming and swirling past trees, fences, and hay-stacks over large areas of the Sologne. Here and there it has been almost impossible to see any indications of the usual river-bed, and so level is the country to the south in the neighbourhood of Beaugency that there seems nothing to check the floods for several kilomètres from the river. On these occasions one trembles on account of the danger to which the thirteenth-century bridge at Beaugency, patched, and in part rebuilt, is hourly exposed. It is the oldest bridge on the Loire. Below Blois embankments contain the river, and the roadway on that which defends the north side provides the charming riverside drive to Amboise and Tours familiar to all who have visited the romantic _châteaux_ of Touraine. The average rise of the river in flood is 14 feet, and these dykes are quite equal to this task, but when, as in 1846 and 1856, the Loire raised its surface to over 22 feet, even these banks were useless. With dredging, embanking, and dam construction the river is being gradually harnessed, but there is still much to be done before riverside towns can contemplate the rapid melting of snow in the mountains without the gravest anxiety. An upper course in a country of impervious rock means that the volume of water is not reduced by absorption, and the difficulties of the river are increased when it encounters the tertiary beds of the formation to which Paris gives its name. In this soft soil the Loire gathers up great quantities of detritus, which it deposits farther down, producing the sand-banks which cost the communities large sums to remove. If the middle part of its course is not very interesting, the Loire removes that reproach between Orleans and its mouth. Its waters, and those of some of its shorter tributaries, reflect the towers and crenellated walls of some of the most remarkable and interesting of all the _châteaux_ of France. Blois, the scene of the murders of the Duc de Guise (who had instigated the Massacre of St. Bartholomew) and of his brother the Cardinal of Lorraine; Amboise, with its great tower, containing a spiral roadway for carriages and the courtyard in which Mary Stuart had, in 1560, been the swooning witness of a most appalling massacre of 1200 Huguenot prisoners, the Duc de Guise refusing to listen to her entreaties that they should be spared; Chenonceaux, the scene of many a royal hunting party, and the possession for a time of Diane de Poitiers, and Chaumont, which Catherine de Medici obliged Diane to take in exchange; Langeais, where rich furnishings of the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance bring one into the very atmosphere of the poignard and of deadly intrigue; and Angers, with its seventeen round towers, begun by Philippe Auguste, are all eloquent of the romantic age of French history, of human passion, of love, hate, and despair. [Illustration: CHÂTEAU GAILLARD AND A LOOP OF THE SEINE.] It would not be easy to think offhand of any river of similar length and importance whose course shows such amazing dilatoriness as that of the Seine. The statue of a nymph placed at its source by the city of Paris is only 250 miles from the sea in a direct line, but the river seems to have an unconquerable desire to postpone the hour when it is swallowed up by the English Channel, and by turning out of its normal direction, northwards or southwards, every few miles it has dug for itself a channel 482 miles in length. Such sinuosities on the course of a great river might be called undignified, if one could not point to that part of the course of the Moselle that lies between Trèves and Coblentz, and to the Ebro in the middle part of its journey between Saragossa and the sea. The increased friction at the numerous sharp curves prevents the flood-waters from getting away with the rapidity the Parisians sometimes desire, and this is partly responsible for the serious damage done in the capital when circumstances combine to send down an abnormal quantity of water from the higher tributaries. In January 1910 the height of the river above the normal was 24 feet, and the racing waters swirled against the keystones of the bridges. But if the Seine misbehaves itself at intervals,[12] its average flow is so steady that its navigability is greater than the other important rivers. This excellent quality is due to the fact that about three-quarters of the basin (an area of some 30,000 square miles) is formed of permeable deposits, and consequently a vast absorption is constantly taking place. The waters subtracted in this way are given back by the perennial springs supplied by the saturation of different strata. In rainless summer weather the first two or three dozen miles of the river frequently dry up, and only from Châtillon is it a permanent river. Tributaries of importance then begin to flow in. The Aube and the Yonne are followed by the Loing and the Essonne, and just before Paris the confluence with the Marne takes place. At the door of the last-mentioned river, longer than the Seine by 31 miles, is laid much of the blame for the volume of the floods. Its source is in the Plateau de Langres not many miles to the north-east of the Seine. Rich pasture-lands broken with long lines of tall-stemmed trees and brown-roofed villages are typical of the scenery of the main river and its tributaries above Paris. The painter who loves to be in the midst of opulent nature is happy here. Quaint groups of tall trees, whose foliage in the fall of the year turns to those delicate yellow greens and subtle browns that are a never-failing joy to those with seeing eyes, are everywhere arranged in some delightful scheme in which reflections in smooth oily waters add a double charm to the scene. [12] Great risings of the Seine occurred in 1658, 1740, 1799, 1802, 1876, and 1883. It is not until Paris has been left behind that the river begins to wash the bold white ramparts of the cretaceous beds. In and out of the deeply indented front the meandering river takes its way, on the right bank a wall of gleaming white cliffs and on the left green savannahs stretching to a far and level horizon. In many places the escarpments of chalk have the characteristics of ruined drum towers, of barbicans, and of broken curtains, so that when Richard Coeur-de-Lion's "_fillette d'un an_," the Château Gaillard which he caused to be built with such incredible speed, comes into view, it is at first difficult to believe that it is anything more than a still more realistic natural effect. From the high ground that commands the _château_ one looks over one of the giant loops of the river, hemmed in by green-topped cliffs of the same marine deposits that form Gris Nez and the curious caves of Étretat, as well as the white cliffs of Albion. At one's feet are the still very perfect ruins of a castle that stood on the frontier of England's possessions in France seven centuries ago, and lower still is the little town of Le Petit Andely huddled for protection at the base of the castle cliff. Farther west, where the cliffs fall away, stands that historic city of France--Rouen, the ancient capital of Normandy. It is a port, for the Seine at this point becomes navigable for fair-sized sea-going steamers, and one may watch the unloading of china clay from Cornwall among the various imports carried directly to the quays. Possibly the waterway to the sea was looked upon with little joy by the inhabitants of the city during the ninth and tenth centuries, when at any time, and without much warning, the shallow-draught vessels of the Vikings might appear on the river. How these bloodthirsty pirates came and came again in spite of strenuous resistance, heavy losses, and much Dane-geld, is a terrible chapter in the story of the Seine. How the night sky became copper-coloured under the furnace glow of burning houses, churches, and monasteries, is a picture which no historian of the river can fail to put into vivid words. Long ago, however, Rouen recovered from the disasters inflicted by the Northmen, and those who wander through her picturesque streets can find traces of buildings that came into existence not very long after this period. [Illustration: MONT BLANC REFLECTING THE SUNSET GLOW.] A rare type of steel bridge spans the Seine at Rouen. It consists of a travelling platform, large enough to take horses and carts, and all the usual load of a ferry-boat, which is slung from a light framework connecting two tall lattice steel towers. This curious achievement of modern engineering and the very tall iron flèche of the cathedral form the salient features of all distant views of the city. Some of the peninsulas carved by the vagaries of the river are entirely given up to forest, and for many miles dark masses of trees extend to the southern horizon. Dykes hold the river to its course below Rouen. Before they were built it was impossible for vessels of 20-feet draught to navigate the river except under exceptional conditions. A notable feature of the lower reaches is the bore which occurs at every tide and reaches its maximum height of about 8 feet in the neighbourhood of Caudebec, where enterprising watermen entice the visitor into their boats to enjoy a natural water-show that quite eclipses the artificial thrills of the "Earl's Court" order. Beautiful and historic buildings are thickly strewn along the lowest reaches of the Seine. The ruined abbey of Jumièges, where Edward the Confessor was educated, raises its lofty Norman towers high above the trees at the southern end of a big loop; the monastery of St. Wandrille, which is now converted into a private house and became the home of Maeterlinck a few years ago, is in a pretty valley leading from the river; Caudebec, with its glorious Gothic church and romantic old streets, stands on the right bank and has a sunny quay, and an open view across the sparkling waters, the opulent level pastures, and the belts of forest beyond; Lillebonne is the _Julia Bona_ of Roman times, and has important remains of a Roman theatre, besides the castle, in whose great hall--alas! no longer existing--William the Norman announced to a great gathering of leading men his project of invading England; Tancarville Castle, with its prominent circular tower, is reflected in the broadening waters nearer the estuary, where Harfleur looks across to Honfleur, and both seem to dream of the days when their great neighbour Le Havre was not. Being an entirely French river, the Loire has been described first in this chapter; the Seine followed, being a smaller river, although of more commercial importance. Its basin, it should be mentioned, is not entirely French, some of its water being taken from Belgium. Of the two great rivers of foreign birth the Rhone is of the greater importance. It has a drainage area of close upon 38,000 square miles, and is the greatest river of all those that pour their waters directly into the Mediterranean. Besides this the Rhone is numbered in that distinguished group composed of the greatest of the rivers of Europe. More than any of the rivers of France it stands out as a big factor in history. One thinks of Hannibal with his host and his elephants faced by the swiftness and breadth of its flow; of the terrible struggle of the Romans with the Cimbri and Teutones on its banks; of St. Bénézet in the twelfth century copying the methods of the Roman architect of the Pont du Gard, and accomplishing what had never been done before, _i.e._ the construction of a stone bridge that could resist the onslaught of the flood-waters for centuries. Four of the big elliptical arches still stand, seemingly as strong as the day they were erected, and above one of the piers rises the little Romanesque bridge chapel where the body of the good builder was buried. The source of the Rhone is fitting for such a mighty waterway. It begins life as a torrent that pours from the foot of the great Rhone Glacier, 5909 feet above sea-level. It is now ascertained that it is the glacier itself from under which it emerges which gives birth to the river, and not the warm springs which issue from the ground at the point formerly reached by the glacier. Very early on its course another glacier-fed torrent adds its waters to the Rhone, which foams and rages through a gorge of typical Alpine grandeur. The exuberance of its youth is maintained by the torrents that feed its adolescent stages. It falls more than 3600 feet in less than thirty miles from its source, joined at frequent intervals by companions born of ice and snow, such as the Eginen, the Binna, and the Massa, a child of the Aletsch Glaciers. Below Brieg comes the Saltine, and then follows a quiet stretch, when the growing river passes through a stretch of alluvium--a dull period, a first governess, as it were, to a high-spirited youth--where floods are frequent. Below the old town of St. Maurice the river is confined within the narrow gorge that forms the western entrance of the Vallais, and it emerges from this gateway to Switzerland to flow across the marshy plain that was formerly the south-eastern end of the Lake of Geneva. Year by year the debris of the Bernese and the Pennine Alps is washed down by the tireless waters, and the date is approximately ascertainable when the lake will have ceased to exist. That will be a sad day for the Rhone, for it is through the filter-like action of the lake that the river flows forth freed from its burden of detritus, and Byron's "blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone" will describe a river whose character has changed for ever, unless the hand of man erects barriers in its course, and so introduces periods of artificial repose. But France to-day does not receive from Switzerland the gift of a river in its unsullied youth, for not long after it has passed from the lake it is contaminated by an untutored glacier-bred youth fresh from the Mont Blanc range, whence it has carried down much solid matter. For a certain distance the two rivers do not recognise one another, the waters refusing to mix, but propinquity brings its familiar result and justifies the copy-book maxim concerning evil companionship. [Illustration: EVIAN LES BAINS. ON LAKE GENEVA.] All through the long journey to Lyons the Rhone preserves the character of an uncivilised mountain-bred river, of small service to commerce or communication, although it is termed "navigable" from a point between Le Parc and Pyrimont. It must be said in defence of the river that the circumstances of its path in life do not tend towards the restful stability beloved of commerce. No sooner does it enter France than it is obliged to fight its way through a constricted channel between the Crédo and the Vuache, and gorge succeeds gorge for the greatest part of the distance between Geneva and Lyons. And who is there possessing any love for untrammelled nature who does not love the river's wild moods, its impetuosity, its generosity, and its reckless enthusiasm. By the time it has reached the great city of Lyons it has, however, subdued its wild ways, for having come within sight of the beautiful Saône it passes through the city on a sedately parallel course, and very soon they are wedded. For the rest of its life--a distance of 230 miles--the Rhone is a hard-working member of society, carrying day by day the manufactures of Central France down to the ancient "middle sea." It was the little time of engagement, the brief interval before the marriage with the Saône was consummated, that produced the peninsula whereon the second city of France was founded, and gave it a situation of the greatest security in unsettled times. No doubt the Segusiani, who are generally mentioned as the earliest people to occupy the tongue of land, had had predecessors on the same spot, but the fogs of prehistoric times prevent one from knowing much of the settlement before the Roman had reached the confluence of the rivers. Then the mists roll away, and one has a vision of Agrippa making it the centre of four great roads; Augustus is seen giving the city a senate and making it the place of annual assembly of representatives from the sixty cities of Gallia Comata. Besides conferring these distinctions, the reign of Augustus saw the building of temples, aqueducts, and a theatre. In A.D. 59, during the reign of the half-demented Nero, the city was burnt and afterwards rebuilt on grander lines. Great buildings succeeded one another until the two rivers must have reflected as fine a city as could be found within the Roman Empire. But the unsettled centuries of the Dark Age of Europe brought successive waves of destructive invasion to _Lugdunum_, and for evidences of the Roman period of the city it is necessary to go to the museum, where, however, the Gallo-Roman objects are numerous and of the greatest importance. [Illustration: THE CHAPEL ON THE BRIDGE OF ST. BÉNÉZET, AVIGNON.] Farther down its course the great river's swift-flowing flood has on its banks the towns of Vienne, Valence, Avignon, Tarascon, and Arles, all by a curious chance on the left bank, although at Avignon and Tarascon there are sister towns on the opposite side, and Arles has a suburb across the water. Vienne and Arles still boast notable Roman structures, and Orange and Nîmes, as well as the Gard, the last tributary the river receives before entering the period of its dotage in the Carmargue, preserve vast Roman buildings at no great distance from the Rhone. It is just possible that the great part this river has played in the making of France might have received a far less adequate recognition had these visual tokens of the days of imperial Rome vanished as did so many others. In its journey southwards from Lyons the character of the country traversed by the Rhone undergoes remarkable changes, and after Valence there is a decidedly southern aspect in the landscapes. The olive begins to appear, the vine is cultivated on all sides, and dark lines of cypresses become conspicuous. From Avignon the dusty limestone country extends across Provence to the sea, and the arid sun-baked hills terraced here and there for vineyards, the lines of sentinel cypresses, and the constant presence of the olive are the chief features of scenery that might be in Turkey, in Asia, or the Holy Land. And yet this river began life in an Alpine glacier and passed its middle age in the fertile lands of west-central France. The delta of the Rhone is a huge triangular area enclosed between the Grand Rhone and the smaller branch it throws off near Arles. It is called the Carmargue, and is a flat waste only cultivated at the river sides, and in certain patches helped by irrigation. Almost treeless in great portions, and exposed to the fierce mistral that blows its cold Alpine breath upon the delta whenever the mood arises, it is surprising to find any towns or villages in the whole district. Yet Aigues Mortes and St. Gilles, and a few villages, keep alive under the most adverse conditions. Below Arles, to the east of the river, and extending to the Étang de Berre, is the stony plain of La Crau, and there too, in spite of the climatic discomforts and lack of soil, two or three villages have come into existence along the main road between Arles and Aix-en-Provence. The Crau is probably more the work of the Durance than of the Rhone, which has deposited its burden of ice-carried boulders in the Lake of Geneva for ages, while the Durance in its comparatively short course from the Maritime Alps has no filtering vat, and in its periods of flood has forced millions of large stones down to the Rhone delta, gradually building up a barrier between itself and the sea, and necessitating a junction with the Rhone just below Avignon. When the sun beats down on the level waste of stones, whose depth averages from 30 to 45 feet, such heat is produced that a mirage is a not uncommon result. Any explanation for such a remarkable number of stones accumulated in one place was so hard to be found in early days that it was necessary to resort to the supernatural, and Strabo records the legend that it was Zeus who bombarded with these projectiles the Ligurian tribesmen who attacked the early Phoenician traders and colonisers of the mouth of the Rhone. [Illustration: CAP MARTIN, NEAR MENTONE.] The Garonne, the last of the four great rivers of France, is the least interesting. As already mentioned it is of foreign birth, its head-waters being in the Maladetta chain of peaks in a Spanish portion of the Pyrenees, and the river has traversed about 30 miles before it enters France through the _cluse_ of the Pont du Roi. One of the two torrents in which the river begins its life plunges into a cavity in the rock, known as the Trou du Taureau, and does not appear again for two and a half miles. The Rhone also had formerly a small subterranean experience in its upper course, but the roof of rock has been destroyed. The course of the river is roughly north-westward until it reaches the formidable plateau of Lannemezan, where it is turned sharply to the east, carrying with it the waters of the Neste, a considerable stream fed by the snows of Mont Perdu and its big neighbours. In this part of its course the scenery is exceedingly fine. Before the snows have melted off the mountains there are always the pale blue-grey peaks flecked with sunny patches, and slopes forming a magnificent background to dark wooded hills full of purples and ambers, and in spring the more subtle browns turning to yellow and the palest suspicion of green. Immense views are obtained from the Lannemezan plateau, the frontier mountain-range stretching away east and west in a most imposing perspective of white peaks. On its eastward course the Garonne passes the little town of St. Gaudens, whose name is derived from a Christian boy who was martyred in 475 by Euric, king of the Visigoths. St. Martory, the next town, spans the river with a bridge guarded by a formidable eighteenth-century gateway which Arthur Young thought could have been built for no other purpose than to please the eye of travellers. After this the westward tilt of France begins to assert itself, and the river works northwards to the city of Toulouse, where it gradually turns towards the west. Toulouse, while owing much to its river, does not forget the ill-turns it has received from its mountain-born waterway, which carried away the suspension bridge of St. Pierre in 1855, and twenty years later, in a disastrous flood, demolished the bridge of St. Michel and 7000 houses in the Faubourg St. Cyprien, while about 300 people were drowned. This suburb is on the left bank, and its situation on the inner side of the curve made by the river as it passes through the city makes it peculiarly liable to suffer from floods. The Pont Neuf, occupying a central position, was built about the middle of the sixteenth century by the sculptor Nicholas Bachelier, whose arches have proved capable of resisting the angry moods of the Garonne until the present day. He adorned with his work many of the churches and mansions of Toulouse. For the remainder of its course the river keeps to a north-westerly direction, and passing along the northern edge of the plateau which diverted its course, it absorbs all the rivers that flow from it. There is no other town of any consequence until the great port of Bordeaux is reached. This is not many miles from the mouth of the Garonne, for when the Dordogne adds its flood to the longer river the wide tidal estuary called the Gironde has been entered. It is scarcely fair on the Dordogne to call it a tributary of the Garonne when it does not join that river until it has entered the broad waterway common to both, but it is undoubtedly a part of the Garonne system. With the exception of the town of Bergerac--a place of no importance and of less interest--the Dordogne has only one other town on its banks, the little port of Libourne at its mouth where the wines of the locality are shipped. The Adour and its important tributary the Gave de Pau figured conspicuously in Wellington's successful operations against Marshal Soult in the concluding period of the Peninsular War, and it was during the siege of Bayonne by Sir John Hope, while the Duke was following Soult towards Orthez, that the famous bridge of boats was built across the river below the town. The construction of this bridge entailed enormous risks in getting the boats across the bar at the river's mouth, and its successful accomplishment was considered one of the greatest engineering feats achieved by the British army during this period. [Illustration: THE CHÂTEAU OF CHENONCEAUX. _From a watercolour by Mr. A. H. Hallam Murray._] CHAPTER IX OF THE WATERING-PLACES French sea-coast watering-places fall easily into two groups--those of the English Channel and those of the Mediterranean. The first may be subdivided into the fashionable places between Deauville and the Belgian frontier and the go-as-you-please resorts of Brittany. There are long intervals between the different resorts, and few would dream of wandering along the coast from one to another; but on the Mediterranean the Riviera is almost one continuous chain of watering-places from St. Raphaël to Mentone. In the early days, when English doctors were beginning to recommend their more wealthy patients to winter on the French Riviera, there was little beyond the sunshine, the equable climate, the colour and the loveliness of the scenery to attract the visitor, and what more, one asks, could any rational being who has gone away with congenial companions require? A visit to the Riviera amply answers such a frivolous question. In the early days, visitors and tired politicians, perhaps of the type of Lord Brougham, or less strenuous people to whom the fogs of the northern winter were a periodic menace, found no hotels much above the average of the country inn, and villas were not. Obviously these things had to be provided, and now from Cannes to Garavan, which is within a shout of the Italian frontier, there is a very nearly continuous chain of villas and hotels. And where villas are too close together to permit the erection of a newly projected _Hôtel Splendide_, a terrace is constructed a little higher up the face of the sea-front, and the new building offers to its guests finer views and less noise than those who stay lower down. Villas are pleasant enough, but they can become dull to those with a passion for amusement, a desire to escape from themselves or whatever one cares to call the disease, and a hotel to such offers very little more. Besides, one is practically driven to bed at a quarter to ten, so a casino is a sheer necessity. Then no one who wishes to be healthy can be so for long without exercise, and a golf-course must be provided. This is a difficulty on the French Riviera only overcome at Cannes, where the alluvial Plaine de Laval near La Napoule offers suitable ground. Everywhere else the mountainous nature of the coast vetoes the game. Lawn-tennis, however, is quite possible even where steep slopes reach down to the sea. The race-course, too, has been found a necessity for existence, and it has been provided. The casino offers gambling and music and theatrical performances. But this is not enough, there must be a theatre too. A Battle of Flowers is a relief to the monotony of the days, and at Nice such an extravagance is indulged during the Carnival, the climax of the season's manufactured gaiety. Besides all this there are regattas, motor weeks, pigeon-shootings, exhibitions of hydroplaning.... The list of distractions is now so enormous that the visitor almost needs a visit to one of the quiet spots beyond Genoa to rest before returning to the gaieties of the season in Paris or London. [Illustration: ST. MALO FROM ST. SERVAN.] The English were the discoverers of the French Riviera from the health-resort standpoint. They wrote books describing fine air and the attractions of this wonderful coast, and the social distinction of some of the writers assured an attentive audience. Lady Blessington penned an account of her journey along the Riviera in 1823, which reveals a condition of things as far removed from the luxury of to-day as are the shores of Patagonia. To journey from Nice to Florence was then more or less an adventure. "The usual route by land," she writes, "is over the Col di Tenda, and via Turin, but this being impracticable owing to the snow, and as we had a strong objection to a voyage in a _felucca_, we determined to proceed to Genoa by the route of the Cornice, which admits of but two modes of conveyance, a _chaise à porteurs_, or on horseback, or rather on muleback." The Lady Blessingtons of to-day travel on an excellently engineered and, for the most part, a dust-free road, in the luxurious ease provided by the builders of the modern motor-car _de luxe_. The six-cylindered engine purrs so softly that the sound of the waves on the rocks beneath the road is not lost, and even the faint smell of petrol is overcome by the exquisite productions of Roget et Cie. Hyères stands quite apart from the long chain of fashionable resorts. It is a picturesque old town separated from the sea by two or three miles of salt marshes, and only ranks as a watering-place on account of the proximity of Costebelle, where modern hotels perched picturesquely on the wooded hills known as the Montagnes des Oiseaux look across the Iles d'Or to the beautiful Maure Mountains. The villages perched on the face of the cliffs, and those standing on the intervals of alluvial shore along the coast of Les Maures, are typical of the whole Riviera before the leisured and wealthy classes of the western nations began to make their annual incursions. East of the valley at whose mouth stands Fréjus, dozing in the midst of its eye-filling evidences of importance in Roman times, is St. Raphaël, with its hotel quarter known as Valescure, high among the pines on the first slopes of the densely wooded Estérel Mountains. Healthfulness is still the main attraction here; but those who do not thirst for distracting gaiety love the sweet-smelling solitudes and the bays where the porphyry rocks, purple-red as the name implies, are overhung by masses of dark pines, and bathed by waters that reflect sky, trees, and rocks in a wonderful confusion of strong colour, reminiscent of bays on the south Cornish coast. Hotels have appeared near the larger villages on the littoral of the Estérels, but Nature is still free down to the splashing waves, and it is only when Cannes is reached that one is in the real Riviera atmosphere. The first view of the sweeping coast-line between Cannes and the confines of Italy that suddenly unfolds itself as one goes eastwards on the coast road is one of surpassing loveliness, provided that the weather lives up to its honestly-earned reputation. A great sweep of sea of an exquisite, a tender, a most lovely blue fills half the scene. It is perhaps shaded here and there by clouds, and their shadows turn the blue to amethyst. There is a fringe of white along the low sandy shores of the Gulf of La Napoule. Farther off the coast becomes steep and clothed with a mantle of dark green foliage, speckled along its lower margin with creamy-white villas, while higher, the horizon is serrated with snow-capped peaks. As the coast recedes it becomes more lofty, the mountains coming to bathe their feet in the blue sea. There are islands and promontories faintly visible in the soft opalescent haze. Such is the first impression one obtains of a fairyland coast-line, which owing to various circumstances had to be discovered to the French people by foreigners. With their inherited instinct towards roving the British have not even been able to keep to their own land when merely taking a little seaside holiday. [Illustration: MONTE CARLO AND MONACO FROM THE EAST.] It might be said of the French that, apart from their dozen or more seaports, they were until recently in a state of comparative ignorance as to the nature of the wonderful coast-line of their country. It was only recently that any considerable proportion of the great French middle-class population acquired the habit of taking an annual holiday by the sea. The expense of such a migration is a big item in a small budget, and when undertaken it is the need for economy which makes the housekeeper prefer to take a house wherein she can provide for her own _ménage_, and avoid giving a landlady a living at her expense. At first the seaside visits were of a very adventurous character, and little wooden châlets of a very temporary character were run up. They were placed in a most haphazard fashion where land was available. Gardens were not cultivated; and even when quite a number of these meretricious little seaside homes had gathered together at one spot, there was no attempt to produce the features regarded by the English as essentials. Instead of the pier with its concert-room raised above the waves on barnacle-swollen iron pillars, the French build a casino. In it all forms of evening amusement are concentrated, and all the holiday life is to be found there after sunset. The esplanade, that most tiresome feature of all English seaside resorts, is only built when the place has become so matured that it begins to yearn for smartness. Possibly foreigners are the main cause of the promenade. On the Riviera, where it has been the aim of the municipalities and the hotel proprietors to study the habits of _les Anglais_, the esplanade is to be found at every resort, and it is probably only the overwhelming expense due to the precipitous nature of a very considerable proportion of the coast that has saved the Riviera from becoming one continuous promenade from Cannes to Mentone. Even if this were ever accomplished the irregularities of the coast are so pronounced that there would be few opportunities for those who abominate the sea-front of the Brighton type to complain. At Cannes the isolated mass of rock crowned by the picturesque "old town" effectually cuts the frontage to the sea in two, and at Nice the tabular rock in whose shadow ancient Nice grew, forms an abrupt termination to the eastward end of the parade, the central portion of which is called the Promenade des Anglais, and there is situated a jetty to satisfy the tastes of the same patrons of "Paris by the Sea." Villefranche does not give any opportunity for producing sterile perspectives on account of the deep and narrow bay formed by the Cap du Mont Boron and the St. Jean peninsula. Beaulieu is little more than a fortuitous concourse of villas and hotels, and the only level ground is that occupied by the Corniche road. [Illustration: MONT ST. MICHEL AT HIGH TIDE.] The promontory of Monaco is entirely precipitous, but gardens on its outward side give shady walks and charming peeps of the distant coast. One side of the bay of Monaco is formed by the curving northern face of the tabular projection, and facing it are the creamy-white terraces of Monte Carlo, rising up to the blocks of equally brilliant red-roofed buildings terminating in the world-famed Casino, which stands at the apex of a small projection of the rocky shelf. The architecture of the Casino is of the commonplace "exhibition" type, and the gardens surrounding it support the parallel. Only the determination of man could have made the precipitous slopes of the mountainous sea-front produce lawns and flowers and shady trees, for the heat of summer would destroy all but the hardiest forms of vegetation, unless artificial aids were employed. The colour of Monte Carlo is intensely brilliant on account of the immense reflecting surface of pinkish limestone rock that towers up some 1300 feet from the sea, and makes the place quite unique among watering-places. Strictly speaking one hardly has any right to include it in a description of French watering-places, for Monaco is an independent principality, and its area includes Monte Carlo and the intervening township of Condamine, which is packed in between the gaming metropolis and the _col_ that separates Monaco's peninsula from the mainland. Until 1856 the principality had no gambling halls, and it was not until 1858 that the Prince of Monaco laid the foundation stone of the existing Casino, the gaming-tables having been first set up within the walls of the old town. In a few years the annual income from the Casino ran up to £1,000,000, a sum of £50,000 being the Prince's share. So by playing down to the widespread instinct for gambling, one of the most unprofitable patches of coast has become in proportion to its area the most revenue-producing in the whole world. It is a melancholy reflection that one of the most perfect spots on the Mediterranean for enjoying all the warmth of the winter sun should be so fatally contaminated by a cosmopolitan crowd of ne'er-do-weels of every grade of society. One sees all the world at Monte Carlo, for no one who passes along the Riviera can quite resist the desire to have a peep at a place of such notoriety. And so many come to Monte Carlo for this selfsame purpose that the real habitués, the professionals and the "last-hopers," are rather lost sight of in the crowd of quite irreproachable people who half fill the concert-hall, and drift through the gaming-rooms throwing a few five-franc pieces on to the roulette tables "just to see what happens," or to experience the very edge of the strange fascination which leads men and women to fling away a competency in a fevered desire for wealth. The two superimposed roads between Nice and Mentone known as the Upper and the Lower Corniche, are both laboriously engineered highways, possessing almost unrivalled charms. On the lower road there used to be a most serious disadvantage to the enjoyment of the scenery in the choking clouds of dust raised by every passing vehicle. Motor-cars used to throw up such a smother of dust that it did not settle for some minutes, and in the interval fresh clouds would be produced. Tar has at last been brought to rescue the charms of the Lower Corniche from being completely destroyed. Trams grind and scream as they follow the constant curves of the road, and their presence robs it of any sense of repose. It is therefore more possible to enjoy the changing panorama of bay, cliff, and promontory, of brilliantly coloured waves in shadow and in sunshine from a seat in a car than on foot. An automobile, unless driven very slowly, is tiresome and tantalizing in such scenery. One can only compare the sensation of being flung through beautiful surroundings of this character at 30 miles an hour to being obliged to go through the galleries of the Louvre at a trot. On the Upper Corniche the traffic is light, there are no trams, and dust is scarcely noticeable. The scenery is altogether on a greater scale. At certain spots one commands nearly the whole of the French Riviera at once. The sea is far below, and its nearer shores are almost invariably hidden. Whoever passes one on this lofty highway is fairly sure to have come there for pleasure, business taking few along the high "cornice." Energetic folk from all the resorts within reach are to be found climbing up the steep zig-zag pathways to this splendid vantage-ground. Frenchmen in clothes suited for _le sport_ or perhaps wearing the dark city type of jacket suit which so many adhere to even when holiday-making, Germans thoughtfully carrying their red Baedekers with them, and Englishmen of the retired military officer or I.S.O. type are all to be found enjoying or "doing" the Upper Corniche in the various manners of their widely differing temperaments. At La Turbie, where the remains of the huge monument to Caesar Augustus, the conquering emperor, still bulk prominently in the midst of the village, there is a funicular railway connecting the upper and lower roads, bringing the splendid air and scenery of the heights within reach of the infirm or the merely slack types of visitors. The long winding descent from La Turbie to Mentone brings the two roads together opposite Cap Martin, a promontory densely grown with old and gnarled olives and masses of dark pines that come down to the water's edge. From beneath their shade one can look across the blue waves breaking into white along the curving shore to Mentone's villas and hotels overtopped by its old town on a spur of the mountain slopes that rise sharply just behind. Although built at the mouth of two torrents, Mentone is sheltered by an imposing amphitheatre of lofty mountains, which very effectually screen it from the treacherous mistral, and it is this fact which has made it the most popular place for invalids on the whole of _la Côte d'Azur_. It is fortunate in having been spared the inflictions of overpowering perspectives of the Nice or Brighton order, and one can sit close to the shore under the shade of great eucalyptus trees free from the glare and the traffic of a big sea-front roadway of the stereotyped British pattern. The eastern extension of Mentone, known as Garavan, is within a few minutes' walk of the Italian frontier, where the sea-coast resorts become more brightly coloured and have more architectural interest in their old quarters, the Ligurian type of compactly built walled town being scarcely recognisable in what remains of old Mentone. Not only is the Riviera a land of winter sunshine, it is also one of the most sweetly-scented coasts in the world. The delicious fragrance of the lemon and the orange, when those trees are in blossom, is often Nature's final lavish filling up of the cup of enjoyment to overflowing. And in the spring, when the northern sea-coast resorts are shivering before the icy winds that sweep down the Channel, this favoured coast has nasturtiums and other flowers that England does not see until late in summer, in their fullest blossom. France is indeed fortunate in its Mediterranean shore, of which Plato must have been thinking when he wrote: There the whole earth is made up of colours brighter far and clearer than ours; there is a purple of wonderful lustre, also the radiance of gold, and the white which is in the earth is whiter than any chalk or snow. Among the watering-places on the Channel the twin towns of Deauville and Trouville, separated only by the river Toques, are pre-eminent among the wealthiest and most fashionable of Parisians. Trouville has a longer season, but it is altogether outshone by its neighbour during the fortnight of the races in August, and during the quieter weeks of its season Deauville probably boasts more leaders of fashionable French society than any other coast resort. It is popularly believed that during the season one cannot smell the salt air off the sea at either of these places on account of the scent used by its expensive visitors. This is more or less true of Étretat also, and possibly of Biarritz too, and no one who dreams of careless attire should come near these places during the season. Both places possess splendid stretches of sand, and therefore bathing is safe, and one of the greatest attractions to visitors. The casinos are well adapted to the demands made upon them, and the villas include, among the various more temporary old-fashioned types, many that are quite charming. Westward from Deauville is pretty little Cabourg, just beyond the mouth of the River Dive, where William the Norman assembled his army for the invasion of England. Here also the beach is of excellent sand, extending for four miles. The casino is, of course, a prominent feature, and there is a broad terrace, not far short of a mile in length, raised above the beach. Between Cabourg and the mouth of the Orne one finds one of those embryo seaside places that are typical of the haphazard fashion in which French watering-places grow. It bears the curious name of Le Home-sur-Mer, and in its present stage of development is little more than a railway-station and a collection of widely scattered and hurriedly-built villas, dumped anywhere along a sandy ridge. After Deauville the seaside resort most patronised by the opulent is Étretat. It has none of the advantages of a sandy shore, and bathing from the steep shingly beach is often so dangerous that the authorities insist on securing intrepid bathers by rope around the waist. Good swimmers enjoy the depth of water to be found close to the shore, and have no fear of a buffeting by big rollers; but to the weak or timid the conditions are often forbidding, and on such days there are more early arrivals than usual at the first tee on the golf-course. From the point of view of scenery Étretat holds a high position, its bold chalk cliffs adding enormously to the picturesqueness of the coast. Erosion produces very curious effects in the chalk, boring vast cavities with wonderfully domed roofs, and leaving natural arches and projecting ribs that sometimes suggest the colossal legs of a white elephant. The arch springing from the central projection of the cliffs, known as the Porte d'Aval, is approachable from the east at low tide, and a nearer view can be obtained of an isolated pillar called the Aiguille d'Étretat. There are lofty cliffs at Fécamp and a curving bay, with a casino in the centre and the mouth of the Fécamp River to the east; but it cannot claim to be so much the resort of fashion as its western neighbour. The town has a busy port and all the picturesqueness contributed by the fishing-boats that go to the cod or herring fisheries. There is, as well, the abbey church and the Benedictine distillery with its interesting museum, but such features do not attract many holiday-makers, who are looking for amusement of the entirely social order. St. Valery-en-Caux has a beach made up of both sand and shingle, the upper portion of the bathing-ground being exceedingly stony. On the lower level children bathe in safety, and the joy of shrimping is indulged in by visitors of all ages. A little to the east is Veules, where the cliffs are low and of rather loose earth, and the beach is not ideal for bathing. It is popular with the people of Rouen, being conveniently placed and inexpensive. The shrimp here too offers a fund of excitement to the families who are usually content with the most simple of amusements, provided they can drop into the casino after dinner. [Illustration: THE VEGETABLE MARKET, NICE.] Dieppe, owing to its connection with England by the Newhaven steamers, is popular among English visitors, who can run over for a day or two with the minimum of trouble and expense. The broad sunny Plage, the casino to which one is free all day on payment of three francs, and the Établissement des Bains keep the place very full of life and gaiety throughout the season; but one does not expect to find there the people who may be seen at Étretat or Deauville. Possessing a busy and not unpicturesque port, an historic fifteenth-century _château_, and a beautiful Gothic church, it is surprising to find the sea-front so entirely suggestive of one of the newly developed resorts. To the north-east is Tréport, an interesting and picturesque little coast town, with the usual requirements for bathing and summer visitors. Along the top of the great bank of shingle are the dressing-sheds, with wooden steps at intervals leading down to the beach. Those who have any interest in history find the proximity of the famous old town of Eu a great attraction, but golf acts with such magnetic force over the average Anglo-Saxon that such considerations do not often weigh in the choice of a holiday resort. The French have only lately begun to know the joys and the profound dejections of golf; it is not yet a necessary adjunct to a seaside resort. Where there are golf-courses it is mainly British capital that brings them on to the sand-dunes. Le Touquet is very cosmopolitan, but it could hardly exist a month without its English patrons. It is one of those places which come into existence with the wave of the capitalist's wand. He says, in effect, "Let us make on this waste an ideal health resort, let us erect hotels, casinos, theatres, and to these add golf-courses, croquet lawns, lawn-tennis courts, and polo grounds; we will have rides through the forest and bathing facilities on this shore, and we will advertise until the whole world knows that we have made this place." And, having spoken, everything desired straightway comes to pass, so that one reads on a leaflet concerning this newly arrived resort such items as these:-- 10 hotels. 2 golf-courses. 2 casinos. 3 croquet lawns. 2 theatres. 17 lawn-tennis courts. 10 miles of forest rides. 3 miles of sandy beach. A polo ground. Drag-hounds. Paris Plage is the newly-built town, brought into existence through the needs and attractions of Le Touquet, Étaples being a little too far away to answer this purpose. Farther north is Boulogne, with its own casino and promenade and its village resorts, such as Hardelot, close at hand. So numerous, indeed, are the bathing-places of this type that it would be tiresome to even attempt a list of them all, but they all have their own devotees--French, English, and American--and any little villa along the coast of Normandy or Picardy may during the hot months be the temporary home of men and women whose names are household words on either side of the Channel. Brittany is farther away from Paris and from England, and its charms are only beginning to be appreciated. With the exception of Dinard, there is no place that is expensive or smart in any sense. Some of the villages on the long and deeply indented coast-line have at least one good hotel, and if one is content with what the sea will provide in the way of amusement, the happiest of holidays may be spent there. Bathing, sailing, fishing, sketching, walking, exploring quaint villages, and seeing the curious social customs that still live in this very Celtic corner of France, fill up endless days, and only those to whom none of these things appeal can be dull, provided the weather is tolerably fine. Biarritz, down at the southern extremity of the French Atlantic coast, in the innermost corner of the Bay of Biscay, with its neighbour St. Jean de Luz, are far away from the two great groups of coast resorts. The first was popularised among both French and English on account of the frequent visits paid to it by King Edward VII. It was understood when _Le Roi Edouard_ came to Biarritz that no one was to take any notice whatsoever of his presence. Cameras were promptly confiscated if any one attempted to snapshot the King or any of his friends, and it was in this way possible for the sovereign who loved to step down into the crowd, to forget the tedious functions of his office. After Sunday morning service he would stroll along the promenade with one or two friends in the most informal fashion, so that a chance British visitor who did not dream that he might at any moment rub shoulders with his sovereign would almost gasp with astonishment when he suddenly discovered that he had actually done so! [Illustration: THE PYRENEES FROM NEAR PAMIERS.] Only at intervals does the sea give up its onslaught upon the rocks that form the coast at Biarritz, and one of the charms of the place is to be found in the magnificent displays given by the Atlantic. Thundering waves rear themselves in great walls of green, marble-veined with foam, which fling themselves in a chaos of white upon the smooth, sandy shore of the Plage or the deeply indented promontory which contains the fishing port. The town is very modern, but is well built and extremely clean and pleasant in every way, the new streets being full of good houses in gardens that are something more than a patch of unmown grass. Besides bathing, for which there are three _établissements_, there is golf and lawn-tennis, while the proximity of the Pyrenees gives opportunity for motor drives in the midst of deep valleys, whose vast slopes clothed with pine or box fall precipitously to torrential rivers. The whole country, too, is rich in memories of Wellington's successful completion of the Peninsular War. St. Jean de Luz was for a time his headquarters, the house he occupied being still in existence. Nearly all who stay at Biarritz go on to Pau, the inland winter resort close to, but not within the actual embrace of the Pyrenees. English people visit both places mainly in the winter and spring. They make the season at those times, while French and Spanish visitors flood thither in the summer, putting up prices at that period of the year to a height not reached during the zenith of the English season. Almost every form of sport and open-air exercise can be enjoyed at Pau, and foxhounds meet regularly throughout the winter. The town is magnificently placed on the north side of the Gave de Pau, and the view it commands of the snowy range of peaks, with the deep and picturesque valleys leading up to them, is one of the finest possessions of this character to be found in any town of France. [Illustration: THE GALERIE DES GLACES AT VERSAILLES.] CHAPTER X ROMAN, ROMANESQUE, AND GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE In the wide range of its ancient and mediaeval architecture France stands next to Italy. Its Roman buildings are almost as fine as anything to be found in that country, its Gothic structures include some of the world's masterpieces, while in examples of the Renaissance only the country where the re-birth took place can rival her. England, which competes closely in the Romanesque and Gothic periods, is out of the running in the earlier epoch, and takes a very much lower position in the works that succeeded the death of the pointed style. Italy, the most formidable rival, is superior in its Roman remains, but inferior in its Gothic work. In the Renaissance, Italy, its home, stands easily first, and in works of the Byzantine period its possessions at Venice and Ravenna leave the western nations far behind. Prehistoric architecture is well represented in Brittany, where the vast scale of the Carnac lines--the Avenues of Kermario--dwarfs the British survivals on Salisbury Plain and Dartmoor. There are numerous dolmens and tumuli, containing chambers roughly constructed out of unhewn stones of the New Grange (Ireland) type, but there is nothing comparable to Stonehenge. When one comes to the Roman period the remains are so splendid that many are satisfied with what they have seen in Provence, and do not feel impelled to see Rome before they die. Nîmes stands first among the towns of Provence for the splendour of the Roman structures it has preserved. Not only has it an amphitheatre which is more perfect than any other in existence, but its temple, dedicated to Caius and Lucius Caesar, adopted sons of the Emperor Augustus, between the first and the fourteenth year of the Christian era, is also the best preserved in the world. Having been used successively as a church, a municipal hall, and a stable, it is now a museum of Roman objects, and seems capable of standing for an unlimited time. Besides these most famous structures there are two gateways, one of them bearing an inscription stating that it was built in the year 16 B.C. To the north of the town are Roman baths of wonderful completeness, and in their restored condition of very considerable beauty. Over them on the hill-top rises the Tour Magne, a Roman watch-tower which formed part of the defences of the city. Stretching across the deep and rocky bed of the river Gard, about 14 miles to the north, is the vast aqueduct which carried the water-supply of Nîmes across the obstruction caused by the river. The three superimposed tiers of arches filling the wide space make one of the most imposing of all the Roman works that have come down to the present time. [Illustration: THE ROMAN TRIUMPHAL ARCH AT ORANGE.] Arles is a serious rival to Nîmes. It has preserved its amphitheatre, built about the first century A.D. and large enough to hold an audience of 25,000 persons. The remains of its theatre, with two marble columns of its proscenium, which were utilised as a gallows in the Middle Ages, standing out among the fallen and dislodged stones, has preserved just enough of its form to be exceedingly impressive. In the disused church of St. Anne have been gathered a most remarkable collection of Roman sarcophagi, altars, and many other objects of richly sculptured stone, while in the Avenue des Alyscamps one may see the cemetery of Roman Arles just outside the city walls, dating from the reign of the Emperor Constantine. On the two sides of the avenue there are many stone sarcophagi, the larger ones, of which there are two or three dozen, having retained their lids. There are remains of the forum and a tower of Constantine's palace, built early in the fourth century. Orange has a theatre which, now that the upper tiers of seats have been restored, has very much its original appearance. The immense stone wall, forming the back of the semicircular stage, is 118 feet in height and 13 feet thick. Stone was close at hand, making its construction easy, and the auditorium was hewn out of the limestone hill against which the theatre was built. There appears to have been a permanent roof of timber--a unique feature--for there are structural indications leading to such a conclusion, as well as signs of fire, which no doubt was the cause of its disappearance. In about A.D. 21 a very fine triumphal arch was erected at Orange, then known as _Arausio_, and this still stands complete, save for the detrition on its surface caused by the weather and perhaps some rough handling in the Dark Ages. Very judicious restoration has given one a convincing idea of what is missing where the structure has not been overlaid with new work. St. Rémy has contrived to preserve a considerable portion of its triumphal arch, and close to it a remarkably perfect mausoleum, 50 feet in height. It is adorned with much sculpture like the archway, and both stand upon an exposed rocky plateau. There are, indeed, so many survivals of this period which one would like to mention that there would be no space to deal with any later age. Vienne, on the extreme confines of Roman Provincia, has its temple, rebuilt in the second century, converted into a Christian church in the fifth, and made more famous during the Revolution by the celebrating within its walls of the Festival of Reason. Remains of the city walls, of a theatre, of the balustrade of a fine staircase, of a pantheon, an amphitheatre, and a citadel are still to be seen. The Roman aqueduct, which supplied the city, restored in 1822, is still to some extent in use! Périgueux is full of indications of its Roman buildings. The Tour de Vésone is in part a Gallo-Roman temple, dedicated to Vesuna; the remains of the amphitheatre include much of the outer wall, in which are staircases, vomitoria, and the lower vaulting now partially exposed. At Lillebonne, mentioned in another chapter, are the carefully excavated remains of a theatre; at Carcassonne, at Narbonne, at Lyons, in Paris, and in other cities and towns, Roman foundations and many sculptured stones are full of significance, and of absorbing interest to the historian, the architect, and the archaeologist. Following the age of Roman domination came those strangely fascinating centuries of disruption and destruction in which the outward influences of Rome slowly gave way before the westward march of the lower but healthier civilisation of the tribes of central and eastern Europe. When these new peoples had settled down among the older occupants of the country, they began to build permanent structures for themselves, and although there may have been some craftsmanship among them, they were unable to do more than make indifferent attempts to copy the architecture of the Roman era. The dark shadow that the irruptions caused to fall upon the face of Europe leaves the world in ignorance as to the fate of the architects, and stone masons who reared the noble works of Rome's supremacy in western Europe. It would appear that in the two or three centuries of uncertainty, if not of perpetual warfare and social chaos, no one had time or opportunity to do more than erect hurried fortifications of the crude type one sees in the Visigothic portions of town walls, such as those of Carcassonne. No architect could flourish under such conditions, and unless he migrated to the seat of the Eastern Empire opportunities for applying his knowledge were no doubt impossible to find. And at Constantinople a new development of architecture was taking place, in which the exterior was disregarded to a very considerable extent while internal decoration became extravagant, Byzantine art being dissatisfied unless every portion of walls and roof was richly ornamented and brilliant in colour. The profession of the architect being useless, the dependent handicraftsmen would inevitably die out, and thus from the sixth century, which is about the earliest date of any Romanesque building in France, one sees the crude efforts of the ill-trained sculptors to copy the ornament of the buildings that lay around them ruined or gutted. In many of the capitals that were carved in these early centuries of Christian times, the volutes are half-hearted attempts to reproduce the Ionic order, with a tendency to stray into Corinthian foliation. From such very early buildings as the church of St. Pierre at Vienne, onwards to St. Trophîme at Arles, the crypts of Notre Dame du Port at Clermont-Ferrand and of St. Denis, Paris, until one reaches the great churches of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, such as the cathedral of Angoulême and the church of Notre Dame la Grande at Poitiers, one can see the steady development of a curious mixture of bastard Roman with the Byzantine style, upon which was growing a new individuality which burst into flower with the introduction of the pointed arch. In France this abandonment of the Roman semicircular arch came very gradually. Belonging to the transition stage are many fine buildings, in which group are the fine church at Poitiers just mentioned and the cathedral at Le Puy-en-Velay. The sculpture of this period reveals the very strong Byzantine influence prevailing, and if no other evidence existed this alone would demonstrate the debt western Europe owes to the rearguard of its civilisation. [Illustration: FRENCH DESTROYERS.] The architecture of Normandy had its own peculiarities during the Romanesque period, but while these differences have entitled it to a separate name and classification, it is Romanesque influenced by the Northmen, and all through England the strong Byzantine influence was felt until the great expansion of new ideas began to outgrow the forms and ornament of the preceding centuries. Two of the finest Norman Romanesque buildings are the great abbey churches built at Caen by William the Conqueror and his queen Matilda. The Abbaye aux Hommes, William's work, is not quite as it was when consecrated, but it is almost entirely a work of the Norman period. That there was a simplicity in the style at this period almost amounting to plainness is shown in the west front of William's church; while the Abbaye aux Dames, built about a quarter of a century later, shows a very great advance in the distribution and application of ornament both within and without. Another abbey church, that of St. Georges de Boscherville, built in the eleventh century by Raoul de Tancarville, is a more perfect and complete work of that period than any other in Normandy. With the exception of the upper portions of the western turrets and the broach spire, the whole church stands to-day as it was originally erected. In these large and not always very beautiful buildings, it is their association with a romantic period and the evidences they show of architectural evolution that provides the chief satisfaction to the informed visitor and the student. A considerable portion of the abbey buildings that engirdle the summit of the rocky islet of Mont St. Michel belong to the Norman period, although much of the work is Gothic. At St. Denis, outside Paris, one sees the beginnings of French Gothic. Clearly the builders regarded the new style as empirical, for there was obvious hesitation to plunge too far into a field of such considerable possibilities when the west front was designed. A little later than St. Denis is the cathedral of Noyon, another extremely interesting example of this period. Almost simultaneously came Chartres, but a disastrous fire in 1194 left little besides the towers and the west front. The rebuilding, however, which proceeded almost at once, was to a considerable extent completed by 1210, and this later work shows the Gothic style grown to all the splendour which has perpetually satisfied and enthralled the minds of succeeding generations. At this time building was proceeding all over Europe with wonderful vigour. The new style gripped the imaginations of all the western nations, and wherever sufficient funds were obtainable the monkish architects were enthusiastically producing designs which were steadily carried out in stone. In Paris Notre Dame was building all through the closing years of the twelfth century and the opening of the next; at Rouen, the cathedral having been burnt in 1200, half a century of building followed; the glories of Rheims and Amiens were materialising during the same period, and almost coeval is the vast cathedral of Beauvais, which was planned to eclipse that of Amiens in every respect. The ambitious intent of the designers of Beauvais was never consummated, and in the unfinished pile standing to-day one sees the failure to build a Titan among cathedrals. All through the period known in England as Early English there is much similarity in design, as well as in ornament, on both sides of the Channel, but signs of divergence begin to appear with the development of decorative skill during the English Decorated Period, and when the French architect had reached his highest achievement in the subtly beautiful lines of the Flamboyant style, the English craftsmen, after a few brief moments in the same direction, turned about and produced their unique development in the style known as Perpendicular. Here and there in France there are suggestions of the restraint of the last phase of English Gothic, but they are almost as rare as the Flamboyant style in England. At Evreux and at Gisors one sees remarkable examples of the work of the Renaissance in the reconstruction of the west ends of these Gothic churches. The contrast of styles is, however, too marked to allow even the hand of Time to remove the challenge which the two styles fling at one another. CHAPTER XI THE NATIONAL DEFENCES About the year 1909 the administration of the French navy had fallen into a scandalous state of chaos. Battleships were so long in building that the type was beginning to be superseded before the vessels were commissioned. There was a story circulated not long ago to the effect that some one who enquired of the widow of a workman at Cherbourg what her son was going to do for a livelihood received the reply that he would work on the _Henri IV._ as his father had done. The story may not be quite true, but it indicates what people were thinking at the time. British ships are not infrequently completed within a year of their launch, but the _Dupetit Thouars_ which took the water in 1901 was only completed in 1905. It was during the period of office of M. Pelletan that the various departments of the navy lost cohesion and their productive capacity was greatly diminished. This minister was responsible for a species of socialistic propaganda which brought about the most deplorable results in so far as the efficiency of the navy was concerned. _Le Journal_, in its summary of the conclusions of the commission of enquiry into the state of naval administration, admitted that money had been wasted in petty errors and foolish blunders, in orders and counter-orders, on untried guns, on worthless boilers, on white powder which turned green, on shells which destroyed the gunners, on 16-centimetre turrets in which 19-centimetre guns had been placed. "The money," said this newspaper, "has passed through ignorant hands, and slipped through fools' fingers." Drastic changes were necessary to stop the alarming deterioration that was taking place, for the nation had not, for fully ten years, been getting anything near the full measure of sea-power to which it was entitled by the annual sums voted. Between 1900 and 1909 France expended 129 millions sterling on her navy, and in the same period Germany devoted 121 millions to that branch of national defence, and at the end of the decade it was found that the country spending the larger sum had dropped down to a fifth place in the scale of world sea-power, while with her smaller outlay Germany had risen to the second place. In other words, the French had paid for the second place and only realised the fifth! In this crisis Admiral Boué de Lapeyrère was appointed Minister of Marine, and was provided with a civilian Under-Secretary of State to act as assistant and be responsible with him for civil administration. Since this appointment much leeway has been made up, although the nation has had to mourn the loss of the _Liberté_, which blew up in the crowded naval harbour of Toulon, and has been alarmed more than once on account of the unstable quality of the powder with which the ships have been supplied. At last this danger appears to have been rectified. The French naval officer receives his training at the naval schools at Brest and Toulon and is generally very keen and capable. He does not enjoy hard conditions from the sporting instinct after the fashion so usual in the British navy, but his devotion to his work produces very efficient gunnery and admirable handling of submarine craft. For the lower deck the supply of the suitable class of bluejacket might be sadly deficient were it not for the seafaring populations of Brittany and Normandy. At Bologne there was living recently a wrinkled old grandmother who had forty grandchildren, of whom all the males were sailors or fishermen, while several of the girls had become fishwives or had married fishermen or sailors. France owes much to her little weather-beaten grandmothers of this type. The manning of the fleet is partially carried out by voluntary enlistment, but the main supply is gained by means of the _inscription maritime_, a system established in the latter part of the seventeenth century by Colbert. This method requires all sailors between eighteen and fifty to be enrolled in "the Army of the Sea." They begin their term of seven years of obligatory service at about twenty, two years of the period being furlough. Any man earning his livelihood on inland waters, provided they are tidal or capable of carrying sea-going vessels, is included in the term "sailor." A further supply of men is obtained by transferring a certain number of the year's army recruits to the sea service. [Illustration: SOLDIERS OF FRANCE IN PARIS.] Cherbourg, Brest, and Toulon are the chief naval ports, Lorient and Rochefort being of lesser importance. Shipbuilding, however, takes place at each of the five. The frequent changes make it impossible to discuss the strength of the fleets in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, or those stationed in colonial waters, but collectively the fighting force of the navy has for the last few years numbered roughly 25 battleships, 15 large armoured cruisers, 16 protected cruisers, 80 or 90 destroyers, 180 torpedo-boats, and about 90 submarines and submersibles. Under the new administration larger ships are being built, and the destroyer is taking the place of the torpedo-boat. On account of its superiority as a fighting machine the army of France ranks above the navy, and it should have been placed before the navy in the short notes which constitute this chapter. The author has felt, however, that the subject is too complex to deal with in such a book as this. He confesses to blank ignorance as to the efficiency of the French artillery material, although from English sources he gathers that it is superior to that possessed by almost any other nation. It would be extremely interesting if one could state how far the army is prepared for "the real thing," how much it has learned in recent years, to what extent its very efficient army of the air is a source of strength, and whether the rifle at present in use is as perfect a weapon as those of other countries. These are subjects much discussed by the inexpert, and the author does not feel competent to deal with them. In the present year (1913) the period of service for the conscripts who form the army was raised from two to three years, and by this means the numbers of the peace strength were enormously increased from the former establishment of a little over half a million men. The new law did not add, as might perhaps be imagined, another quarter of a million to the total. France has not a sufficiently large population to provide such a number of men of the required age and physical fitness. The numbers are, however, considered sufficient to meet the imaginary dangers which threaten her national existence, and the country has now to divert much of its energy to meeting the cost of this regrettable lengthening and thickening of her big stick. Incidentally the world's prosperity must suffer, and social reforms generations overdue must be postponed! With Ebenezer Elliott one asks again: When wilt Thou save the people? O God of mercy, when? [Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF FRANCE] INDEX Ablutions, personal, 34 Academies, the, 75 Adour, the, 144, 168 Agnosticism, 80, 83 Agriculture, 116 Agrippa, 161 Aigues-Mortes, 127, 163 Aix-en-Provence, 164 Algerian wine, 125 Allier, the, 147 Alms-giving in churches, 44 Alps, 123, 124 Amboise, 150 Amiens, 203 Andely, Le Petit, 154 Angers, Château d', 150 Anglo-Norman horses, 123 Angoulême, 200 Apache, the, 96, 97 Arles, 130, 162, 164, 195, 196, 200 Armoricans, the, 7 Army, the, 209 _Arrondissement_, the, 60 Asses, 123 Assize, Courts of, 63 Aube, the, 152 Augustus Caesar, 161, 181 Auvergnes, the, 146 _Aversier_, the, 131 Avignon, 162, 164 Ay, 126 _Baccalauréat de l'enseignement_, 74 Bachelier, Nicholas, 167 Bacteriology, science of, 18 Bagehot, Walter, 53 Banns, announcement of, 42 Barker, Mr. E. H., 106, 116 Bastille, the, 111 Bath, the itinerant, 34 Battle of Flowers at Nice, 171 Bayonne, 168 Beauce, La, plain of, 115, 116, 119 Beaugency, 148 Beauvais, 203 Bedroom, the typical, 26, 28 Bergerac, 167 Bernese Alps, 143, 159 Betham-Edwards, Miss, 31 Béziers, 126 Biarritz, 184, 190, 191 Birth-rate, the, 36 Blessington, Lady, 172 Blois, 148 Blois, Château de, 149 _Bonne-à-tout-faire_, the, 13, 14, 101, 102 commissions of the, 30 Bordeaux, 167 Bore on the Seine, 155 Boué de Lapeyrère, Admiral, 207 Boulanger, 139 Boulevards, the, 88 Boulogne, 189, 208 Boulogne, Bois de, Paris, 110 Bourseul, Charles, 18 Boy Scouts in France, 72 Bread, French, 87 Brest, 207, 209 Brieg, 158 Brittany, 11, 12, 122, 123, 131, 189, 208 megalithic remains, 7 Brougham and Vaux, Lord Chancellor, 170 Brunel, Isambard, 18 Buckwheat, 115 Butcher, the French, 32 Byron, Lord, 159 Byzantine architecture, 193, 199, 200, 201 Cabourg, 184 Caen, 88, 201 Caesar, Gaius Julius, 10 Cafés, the, 86, 87, 88, 113 Calvaries, roadside, 122 Cannes, 170, 174 _Canton_, the, 60 Carcassonne, 198 Carmargue, the, 163 Carnac, prehistoric remains at, 194 Carnavalet, Musée, Paris, 109 Carts, country, 118 Casino, the, 171, 176, 178 _Cassation, Cour de_, 63 Catherine de Medici, 150 Cattle, 123 Caudebec, 155, 156 Cevennes, the, 115, 123, 145, 146 peasants of, 128-130 Charente, the, 144 Chartres, 202 Château Gaillard, 153 _Château_ life, 133-137 Châtillon, 152 Chaumont, Château de, 150 Chenonceaux, Château de, 150 Cherbourg, 205, 209 Chestnuts, 115 Children, training of, 38, 39 Churches, 78 attendance at, 78 decorations in, 79, 80 irreverent behaviour in, 78 Church-going, women and, 79 Cimbri, 157 Civil Code, the, 14, 42, 47, 66 Cleanliness, 33 Clermont-Ferrand, 200 Cluny, Hôtel, Paris, 110 Coal consumption, 29 _Concierge_, the, 38, 97, 98, 99 _Conciergerie_, the, Paris, 110 Conscription, 210 Constantine, Emperor, 196 Constitution, the French, 50, 51, 52, 53 Conversation in the _château_, 139 Cooking, French, 2, 3 Corniche Roads, the, 179, 180, 181 Corrèze, 115 Costebelle, 173 Crau, La, 163, 164 Critical faculty of the French, 20 Curé, the, 83, 84, 85 Deauville, 183 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, the, 50, 51, 52 Demolins, M., 71 Deputies, Chamber of, 55 salaries of, 59 Diane de Poitiers, 150 Dieppe, 187 Dinard, 189 Discipline, lack of, 47 Dive, the, 184 Divorce laws, 44, 45 Doctors, fees of, 131, 132 d'Or, Iles, 173 Dordogne, the, 167 _Dot_, the, 47 Dreyfus, Captain A., 63 Duelling, 139-142 Dumas, the elder, 139 Durance, the, 164 Ebro, the, 151 Economies of the French, 21 Education, expenditure on, 67, 68 Education and social status, 75 Educational system, 72 Edward the Confessor, 156 Edward VII., King, 190 English Channel, the, 6 Épernay, 126 Esplanade, on the Riviera, the, 176, 177 Essonne, the, 152 Estérel Mountains, 173, 174 Étaples, 189 Étoile district of Paris, 89 Étretat, 153, 184, 185 Eu, 187 Euric, king of the Visigoths, 166 Evreux, 204 Faculties, the State, 75 Family Council, the, 34, 35 Farms, 119, 120 Fécamp, 186 _Five o'clock, le_, 135 Flail, use of, 118 Flamboyant style, 204 Fontainebleau, forest of, 124 Food, high cost of, 105 Forests of France, 124 Forez, plain of, 146 France as a colonising nation, 48 Franchise, the, 56 Franks, the, 10 Fréjus, 173 French enterprise, 65 French people, origin of, 11, 12, 32 Frenchwomen, dress of, 2 Funerals, 79 Furnishing of the _château_, 135, 136 Furniture, household, 28 Galatia, 10 Gallia Comata, 161 Games at _Lycées_, 72 Garavan, 170, 182 Gard, the, 162, 195 _Garde républicaine_, the, 64, 93 Garonne, the, 144, 164-167 Gascons, the, 11 Gaul, early tribes of, 7, 8 Gauls, the, 9 _Gendarmerie_, the, 64 Geneva, Lake of, 159, 164 George, Mr. W. L., 81 Gironde, the, 167 Gisors, 204 Golf-courses, 171, 188 Grievances, endurance of, 49, 50 redress of, 19 Gris Nez, Cape, 6, 153 Guise, Duc de, 150 Habeas Corpus, the right of, 52 Hannibal, 157 Hardelot, 189 Harfleur, 156 Hausmann, the architect, 113 Havre, Le, 156 Hedges, lack of, 121 Holdings, average size of, 116 Holmes, Mr. T. Rice, 33 Home life, 25 Home-sur-Mer, Le, 184 Honfleur, 156 Hope, Sir John, 168 Horses, breeding of, 122, 123 Hotels, 3 Hotels, French and English, contrasted, 32, 33 Household furnishing, 26 repairs, 26 Housemaid's work done by men, 25 Housing, 37 in Paris, 104 Huguenots, 150 Hunting parties, 136 Husbandry, primitive, 117 Hyères, 172 Ideas, the great, of the French, 17, 18 _Inscription maritime_, 208 _Institut de France_, 75 Irreligion, 82, 83 _Jeune fille_, the, 39, 40, 46, 69 Jewish communities, 81 _Juge d'instruction_, 63 _Juge de paix_, 35, 61, 62, 63 Jumièges, Abbey of, 156 Jura, the, 123, 143 Lamartine, 139 Landais, the, 11 Landes, Les, 123, 124 Langeais, Château de, 150 Language, the French, 8, 11 Langres, Plateau de, 152 Lannemezan, plateau of, 165 Lauzan, Hôtel de, Paris, 110 Le Parc, 160 Le Puy-en-Velay, 76, 146, 200 _Liberté_, destruction of the, 207 Libourne, 167 Lillebonne, 156, 198 Locke, Mr. J. W., 113 Loing, the, 152 Loire, the, 144-150, 156 Lorient, 209 Louis XIV., 110 Louvre, Palais du, Paris, 110 Lugdunum, 161 Lutetia Parisiorum, 110 _Lycées_, the, 39, 68, 69, 70, 72, 74 _Lycées_ for girls, 69 Lyons, 61, 160, 161, 162, 198 Madeleine, the, 44 Maeterlinck, 156 _Mairie_, the, 43 _Maison paternelle_, la, 35, 38 Maladetta Chain, 165 _Mariage d'inclination_, the, 40 Marie Antoinette, 110 Maritime Alps, 164 Marketing, 30, 103 Marne, the, 152 Marriage, enquiries before, 24 parental control of, 40, 41, 42 Martin, Cap, 181 Martinière, La, 148 Mary Stuart, 150 Maure Mountains, 173 Meals, 31 Meat, the cutting of, 32 Medical services in the country, 31 Megalithic remains of Brittany, 7 Mentone, 181, 182 Merovingian architecture, 198, 199, 200 _Métayage_ system, the, 117 _Métayers_, 117 Meudon Woods, 141 Midi, the, 118 _Midinette_, the, 13, 33, 94, 95, 96 Ministry, the, 56 Misconceptions concerning France, 13 Mistral, the, 163 Monaco, 177 Prince of, 178 Monopolies, State, 60 Montaigne, 140 Monte Bego, 118 Monte Carlo, 177, 178, 179 Montmartre, 107 Mont St. Michel, 202 Morals of the French, 16, 17 Moselle, the, 151 Mules, 122 Nantes, 148 Napoleon, 67, 140 modern France the work of, 65 Napoleon III., 55 Napoule, La, 171, 174 Narbonne, 10, 126, 198 National debt, 60 Navy, the, 205-209 Neste, the, 165 Nevers, 147 Nice, 171, 176, 177 Nîmes, 162, 194 Normandy, 115, 116, 118, 119, 122, 123, 126, 208 architecture of, 201 people of, 12 Notre Dame, Paris, 203 Noyon, 202 Nuns as medical practitioners, 132 Odours of France, 5 Oiseaux, Montagnes des, 173 Olive, the, 162 Omnibuses of Paris, 91, 101 Orange, 162, 196 Orleans, Forêt d', 124 Orne, the, 184 Orthez, 168 Oxen, draught, 118, 124 Parc Monceaux, Paris, 108 Paris, cab-drivers of, 1, 2 compared with London, 110, 111, 112 Étoile district, 107 fortifications of, 112 high prices in, 29 high rents of, 29 home life in, 25 Plage, 189 prisons, 65 Roman, 110 St. Antoine District, 109 Sainte Chapelle, 109 St. Étienne-du-Mont, 109 St. Germain, 109 St. Jacques, 109 smoke of, 107 streets of, 86, 87, 107, 108, 109 Pau, 191, 192 Pau, Gave de, 168, 192 Peasant, costume of, 126 life, 114-131 ownership of land, 114, 115 women, 130 Pelletan, M., 206 Pennine Alps, 143, 159 Percheron horses, 123 Perdu, Mont, 165 Périgueux, 197, 198 Philippe Auguste, 150 Phoenician traders, 164 Phylloxera, the, 125 Pigs, 123 Pinay, 145 _Pistonnage_, 58 Plato, 183 Poitiers, 200 Poitou, plain of, 144 Police, 64 Policemen of Paris, 90, 91 Politeness of the French, 99 Pont du Gard, 157, 195 Pont du Roi, 165 Pratz, Mdlle. de, 95, 105 _Première Instance_, Court of, 61 President, the, 57, 58 Prison system, 64 Protective tariffs, 104 Protestants in France, 81 Provence, scenery of, 163 Public Instruction, Minister of, 68 Pyrenees, the, 123, 124, 165, 191, 192 Pyrimont, 160 Rapidity of speech, 15 Reason, Festival of, 197 Religion of the French, 76, 77 Rents in Paris, 103, 104 Revolution, the, 50, 62, 197 Rheims, 203 Rhone, the, 127, 143, 157, 160, 161-165 Rhone Glacier, 144, 158 Richard Coeur-de-Lion, 153 Riviera, the, 169-183 Road, rule of the, 90 Roanne, 145, 147 Robespierre, 110 Rochefort, 139, 209 Roman architecture in France, 193-199 Roman Catholicism, 81 Rouen, 154, 155, 203 Sabatier, Paul, 84 St. Bartholomew, Massacre of, 150 St. Bénézet, 157 Ste. Beuve, 139 St. Denis, Paris, 78, 200, 202 St. Étienne, 145, 146 St. Gaudens, 166 St. Georges de Boscherville, 201 St. Germain, Faubourg, Paris, 106, 111 St. Gilles, 163 St. Jean de Luz, 190, 191 St. Martory, 166 St. Maurice, 158 St. Michel, Mont, 202 St. Raphaël, 173 St. Rémy, 197 St. Valery-en-Caux, 186 St. Wandrille, 156 Sand, George, 128-130 Sanitation, imperfection of, 88, 89 Saône, the, 160, 161 Scholarships, State, 69 School-boy, the, 73 Schoolmistress, the lay, 69, 70 Schools, 85 Segusiani, the, 161 Seine, the, 11, 150-157 Senate, the, 55 Servants, female, 26 Sévigné, Marquise de, 110 Sheep, 123 Sherard, Mr. Robert, 141 Shooting parties, 136 Shop assistants, 100 Sologne, the, 148 Soult, Marshal, 168 Strabo, 164 Strong, Rowland, 92 Submarine, France and the, 18 Superstitions among the peasantry, 131 Tancarville Castle, 156 Tancarville, Raoul de, 201 Taine, H. A., 65 Tarascon, 162 Tarbais horses, 123 Tarbes, 123 Taxation, 59 indirect, 60 Taxis, horse-drawn, in Paris, 92 Telephone, inventor of, 18 Tenda, Col di, 172 Teutones, 157 Thiers, 139 Thrift, the need for, 24 Thriftiness of the French, 14, 21 Toques, the, 183 Toulon, 207, 209 Toulouse, 166 plain of, 124 Touquet, Le, 188 Tours, 144 Town planning in France, 112 Traffic of Paris, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94 Trees, roadside, 121 Tréport, 187 _Tribunal correctionnel de l'arrondissement_, 61 Trou du Taureau, 165 Trouville, 183 Tuileries, the, Paris, 110 Turbie, La, 181 Universities, the, 74 Valence, 162 Valescure, 173 Vallais, the, 159 Veuillot, 139 Veules, 186 Vienne, 162, 197, 200 Vikings, the, 154 Villages, 120 Villefranche, 177 Vine, the, 163 Vines, American, 125 Virgin, representations of the, 76 Visigothic architecture, 199 Vosges, the, 123, 143 Vulgarity in illustrated papers, 15, 16 Waddington, Mary K., 136 Washing days, 138 Wedding ceremonies, 43, 44 Wellington, Duke of, 168, 191 William the Conqueror, 156, 184, 201 Wine-grower, the, 125 Woman in business, the, 46 Women, position of, among the peasants, 128 Yonne, the, 152 Young, Arthur, 166 Zola, Émile, 128 THE END _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_. 
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See http://www.archive.org/details/carthatwentabroa00painuoft THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD * * * * * BOOKS BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE _For Grown-ups_ THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD THE LURE OF THE MEDITERRANEAN DWELLERS IN ARCADY FROM VAN-DWELLER TO COMMUTER MOMENTS WITH MARK TWAIN MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS MARK TWAIN: A BIOGRAPHY PEANUT: THE STORY OF A BOY SHORT LIFE OF MARK TWAIN LIFE OF THOMAS NAST THE TENT-DWELLERS _For Young Readers_ THE BOYS' LIFE OF MARK TWAIN HOLLOW TREE NIGHTS AND DAYS THE HOLLOW TREE AND DEEP-WOODS BOOK THE HOLLOW TREE SNOWED-IN BOOK _Small books of several stories each, selected from the above Hollow Tree books:_ HOW MR. DOG GOT EVEN HOW MR. RABBIT LOST HIS TAIL MR. RABBIT'S BIG DINNER MAKING UP WITH MR. DOG MR. 'POSSUM'S GREAT BALLOON TRIP MR RABBIT'S WEDDING MR. CROW AND THE WHITEWASH MR. TURTLE'S FLYING ADVENTURE WHEN JACK RABBIT WAS A LITTLE BOY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK ESTABLISHED 1817 * * * * * [Illustration: "THE NORMANDY ROAD TO CHERBOURG IS AS WONDERFUL AS ANY IN FRANCE"--See p. 226] THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD Motoring Through the Golden Age by ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE Author of "Dwellers in Arcady," "The Ship Dwellers," etc. Illustrated from drawings by Walter Hale [Illustration] Harper & Brothers Publishers New York and London Copyright, 1921, by Harper & Brothers CONTENTS Part I THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD CHAPTER PAGE I. DON'T HURRY THROUGH MARSEILLES 3 II. MOTORING BY TRAM 9 III. ACROSS THE CRAU 19 IV. MISTRAL 27 V. THE ROME OF FRANCE 30 VI. THE WAY THROUGH EDEN 40 VII. TO TARASCON AND BEAUCAIRE 43 VIII. GLIMPSES OF THE PAST 48 IX. IN THE CITADEL OF FAITH 52 X. AN OLD TRADITION AND A NEW EXPERIENCE 58 XI. WAYSIDE ADVENTURES 65 XII. THE LOST NAPOLEON 72 XIII. THE HOUSE OF HEADS 79 XIV. INTO THE HILLS 85 XV. UP THE ISÈRE 89 XVI. INTO THE HAUTE-SAVOIE 94 XVII. SOME SWISS IMPRESSIONS 101 XVIII. THE LITTLE TOWN OF VEVEY 113 XIX. MASHING A MUD GUARD 123 XX. JUST FRENCH--THAT'S ALL 127 XXI. WE LUGE 131 Part II MOTORING THROUGH THE GOLDEN AGE I. THE NEW PLAN 143 II. THE NEW START 146 III. INTO THE JURAS 151 IV. A POEM IN ARCHITECTURE 160 V. VIENNE IN THE RAIN 164 VI. THE CHÂTEAU I DID NOT RENT 168 VII. AN HOUR AT ORANGE 172 VIII. THE ROAD TO PONT DU GARD 178 IX. THE LUXURY OF NÎMES 182 X. THROUGH THE CÉVENNES 186 XI. INTO THE AUVERGNE 193 XII. LE PUY 196 XIII. THE CENTER OF FRANCE 200 XIV. BETWEEN BILLY AND BESSEY 205 XV. THE HAUTE-LOIRE 209 XVI. NEARING PARIS 213 XVII. SUMMING UP THE COST 219 XVIII. THE ROAD TO CHERBOURG 223 XIX. BAYEUX, CAEN, AND ROUEN 228 XX. WE COME TO GRIEF 234 XXI. THE DAMAGE REPAIRED--BEAUVAIS AND COMPIÈGNE 238 XXII. FROM PARIS TO CHARTRES AND CHÂTEAUDUN 244 XXIII. WE REACH TOURS 250 XXIV. CHINON, WHERE JOAN MET THE KING, AND AZAY 255 XXV. TOURS 260 XXVI. CHENONCEAUX AND AMBOISE 264 XXVII. CHAMBORD AND CLÉRY 271 XXVIII. ORLÉANS 278 XXIX. FONTAINEBLEAU 283 XXX. RHEIMS 288 XXXI. ALONG THE MARNE 295 XXXII. DOMREMY 299 XXXIII. STRASSBURG AND THE BLACK FOREST 306 XXXIV. A LAND WHERE STORKS LIVE 313 XXXV. BACK TO VEVEY 316 XXXVI. THE GREAT UPHEAVAL 320 XXXVII. THE LONG TRAIL ENDS 336 ILLUSTRATIONS "THE NORMANDY ROAD TO CHERBOURG IS AS WONDERFUL AS ANY IN FRANCE" _Frontispiece_ "WHERE ROADS BRANCH OR CROSS THERE ARE SIGNBOARDS.... YOU CAN'T ASK A MAN 'QUEL EST LE CHEMIN' FOR ANYWHERE WHEN YOU ARE IN FRONT OF A SIGNBOARD WHICH IS SHOUTING THE INFORMATION" _Facing p._ 46 MARK TWAIN'S "LOST NAPOLEON"--"THE COLOSSAL SLEEPING FIGURE IN ITS SUPREME REPOSE" 80 MARCHÉ VEVEY--"IN EACH TOWN THERE IS AN OPEN SQUARE, WHICH TWICE A WEEK IS PICTURESQUELY CROWDED" 108 "YOU CAN SEE SON LOUP FROM THE HOTEL STEPS IN VEVEY, BUT IT TAKES HOURS TO GET TO IT" 134 DESCENDING THE JURAS 162 THE TOMB OF MARGARET OF AUSTRIA, CHURCH OF BROU 162 "THROUGH HILLSIDE VILLAGES WHERE NEVER A STONE HAD BEEN MOVED, I THINK, IN CENTURIES" 214 BIRTHPLACE OF JOAN OF ARC 308 STRASSBURG, SHOWING THE CATHEDRAL 308 PREFACE FELLOW-WANDERER: The curtain that so long darkened many of the world's happy places is lifted at last. Quaint villages, old cities, rolling hills, and velvet valleys once more beckon to the traveler. The chapters that follow tell the story of a small family who went gypsying through that golden age before the war when the tree-lined highways of France, the cherry-blossom roads of the Black Forest, and the high trails of Switzerland offered welcome to the motor nomad. The impressions set down, while the colors were fresh and warm with life, are offered now to those who will give a thought to that time and perhaps go happily wandering through the new age whose dawn is here. A. B. P. _June, 1921._ Part I THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD Chapter I DON'T HURRY THROUGH MARSEILLES Originally I began this story with a number of instructive chapters on shipping an automobile, and I followed with certain others full of pertinent comment on ocean travel in a day when all the seas were as a great pleasure pond. They were very good chapters, and I hated to part with them, but my publisher had quite positive views on the matter. He said those chapters were about as valuable now as June leaves are in November, so I swept them aside in the same sad way that one disposes of the autumn drift and said I would start with Marseilles, where, after fourteen days of quiet sailing, we landed with our car one late August afternoon. Most travelers pass through Marseilles hastily--too hastily, it may be, for their profit. It has taken some thousands of years to build the "Pearl of the Mediterranean," and to walk up and down the rue Cannebière and drink coffee and fancy-colored liquids at little tables on the sidewalk, interesting and delightful as that may be, is not to become acquainted with the "pearl"--not in any large sense. We had a very good and practical reason for not hurrying through Marseilles. It would require a week or more to get our car through the customs and obtain the necessary licenses and memberships for inland travel. Meantime we would do some sight-seeing. We would begin immediately. Besides facing the Old Port (the ancient harbor) our hotel looked on the end of the Cannebière, which starts at the Quai and extends, as the phrase goes, "as far as India," meaning that the nations of the East as well as those of the West mingle there. We understood the saying as soon as we got into the kaleidoscope. We were rather sober-hued bits ourselves, but there were plenty of the other sort. It was the end of August, and Marseilles is a semi-tropic port. There were plenty of white costumes, of both men and women, and sprinkled among them the red fezzes and embroidered coats and sashes of Algiers, Morocco, and the Farther East. And there were ladies in filmy things, with bright hats and parasols; and soldiers in uniforms of red and blue, while the wide pavements of that dazzling street were literally covered with little tables, almost to the edges. And all those gay people who were not walking up and down, chatting and laughing, were seated at the little tables with red and green and yellow drinks before them and pitchers of ice or tiny cups of coffee, and all the seated people were laughing and chattering, too, or reading papers and smoking, and nobody seemed to have a sorrow or a care in the world. It was really an inspiring sight, after the long, quiet days on the ship, and we loitered to enjoy it. It was very busy around us. Tramcars jangled, motors honked, truckmen and cabmen cracked their whips incessantly. Newswomen, their aprons full of long pockets stuffed with papers, offered us journals in phrases that I did not recognize as being in my French phonograph; cabmen hailed us in more or less English and wanted to drive us somewhere; flower sellers' booths lined both sides of a short street, and pretty girls held up nosegays for us to see. Now and then a beggar put out a hand. The pretty drinks and certain ices we saw made us covetous for them, but we had not yet the courage to mingle with those gay people and try our new machine-made French right there before everybody. So we slipped into a dainty place--a _pâtisserie boulangerie_--and ordered coffee and chocolate ice cream, and after long explanations on both sides got iced coffee and hot chocolate, which was doing rather well, we thought, for the first time, and, anyhow, it was quite delicious and served by a pretty girl whose French was so limpid that one could make himself believe he understood it, because it was pure music, which is not a matter of arbitrary syllables at all. We came out and blended with the panaroma once more. It was all so entirely French, I said; no suggestion of America anywhere. But Narcissa, aged fifteen, just then pointed to a flaming handbill over the entrance of a cinematograph show. The poster was foreign, too, in its phrasing, but the title, "_L'aventures d'Arizona Bill_" certainly had a flavor of home. The Joy, who was ten, was for going in and putting other things by, but we overruled her. Other signs attracted us--the window cards and announcements were easy lessons in French and always interesting. By and by bouquets of lights breaking out along the streets reminded us that it was evening and that we were hungry. There were plenty of hotels, including our own, but the dining rooms looked big and warm and expensive and we were dusty and economical and already warm enough. We would stop at some open-air place, we said, and have something dainty and modest and not heating to the blood. We thought it would be easy to find such a place, for there were perfect seas of sidewalk tables, thronged with people, who at first glance seemed to be dining. But we discovered that they were only drinking, as before, and perhaps nibbling at little cakes or rolls. When we made timid and rudimentary inquiries of the busy waiters, they pointed toward the hotels or explained things in words so glued together we could not sort them out. How different it all was from New York, we said. Narcissa openly sighed to be back on "old rue de Broadway," where there were restaurants big and little every twenty steps. We wandered into side streets and by and by found an open place with a tiny green inclosure, where a few people certainly seemed to be eating. We were not entirely satisfied with the look of the patrons, but they were orderly, and some of them of good appearance. The little tables had neat white cloths on them, and the glassware shone brightly in the electric glow. So we took a corner position and studied the rather elaborate and obscure bill of fare. It was written, and the few things we could decipher did not seem cheap. We had heard about food being reasonable in France, but single portions of fish or cutlets at ".45" and broiled chicken at "1.20" could hardly be called cheap in this retired and unpretentious corner. One might as well be in a better place--in New York. We wondered how these unfashionable people about us could look so contented and afford to order such liberal supplies. Then suddenly a great light came. The price amounts were not in dollars and cents, but in francs and centimes. The decimals were the same, only you divided by five to get American values. There is ever so much difference.[1] The bill of fare suddenly took on a halo. It became almost unbelievable. We were tempted to go--it was too cheap to be decent. But we were weary and hungry, and we stayed. Later we were glad. We had those things which the French make so well, no matter how humble the place--"_pot au feu, bouillabaisse_" (the fish soup which is the pride of Marseilles--our first introduction to it), lamb chops, a crisp salad, Gruyère cheese, with a pint of red wine; and we paid--I try to blush when I tell it--a total for our four of less than five francs--that is to say, something under a dollar, including the tip, which was certainly large enough, if one could judge from the lavish acknowledgment of the busy person who served us. We lingered while I smoked, observing some curious things. The place filled up with a democratic crowd, including, as it did, what were evidently well-to-do tradesmen and their families, clerks with their young wives or sweethearts, single derelicts of both sexes, soldiers, even workmen in blouses. Many of them seemed to be regular customers, for they greeted the waiters and chatted with them during the serving. Then we discovered a peculiar proof that these were in fact steady patrons. In the inner restaurant were rows of hooks along the walls, and at the corners some racks with other hooks. Upon these were hanging, not hats or garments, but dozens of knotted white cloths which we discovered presently to be table napkins, large white serviettes like our own. While we were trying to make out why they should be variously knotted and hung about in that way a man and woman went in and, after a brief survey of the hooks, took down two of the napkins and carried them to a table. We understood then. The bill of fare stated that napkins were charged for at the rate of five centimes (one cent) each. These were individual leaseholdings, as it were, of those who came regularly--a fine example of French economy. We did not hang up our napkins when we went away. We might not come back, and, besides, there were no empty hooks. FOOTNOTES: [1] The old rates of exchange are used in this book. Chapter II MOTORING BY TRAM A little book says: "Thanks to a unique system of tramways, Marseilles may be visited rapidly and without fatigue." They do not know the word "trolley" in Europe, and "tramway" is not a French word, but the French have adopted it, even with its "w," a letter not in their alphabet. The Marseilles trams did seem to run everywhere, and they were cheap. Ten centimes (two cents) was the fare for each "zone" or division, and a division long enough for the average passenger. Being sight-seers, we generally paid more than once, but even so the aggregate was modest enough. The circular trip around the Corniche, or shore, road has four of these divisions, with a special rate for the trip, which is very long and very beautiful. We took the Corniche trip toward evening for the sake of the sunset. The tram starts at the rue de Rome and winds through the city first, across shaded courts, along streets of varying widths (some of them so old and ever so foreign, but always clean), past beautiful public buildings always with deep open spaces or broad streets in front of them, for the French do not hide their fine public architectures and monuments, but plant them as a landscape gardener plants his trellises and trees. Then all at once we were at the shore--the Mediterranean no longer blue, but crimson and gold with evening, the sun still drifting, as it seemed, among the harbor islands--the towers of Château d'If outlined on the sky. On one side the sea, breaking against the rocks and beaches, washing into little sheltered bays--on the other the abrupt or terraced cliff, with fair villas set in gardens of palm and mimosa and the rose trees of the south. Here and there among the villas were palace-like hotels, with wide balconies that overlooked the sea, and down along the shore were tea houses and restaurants where one could sit at little tables on pretty terraces just above the water's edge. So we left the tram at the end of a zone and made our way down to one of those places, and sat in a little garden and had fish, freshly caught, and a cutlet, and some ripe grapes, and such things; and we watched the sun set, and stayed until the dark came and the Corniche shore turned into a necklace of twinkling lights. Then the tram carried us still farther, and back into the city at last, by way of the Prado, a broad residential avenue, with trees rising dark on either side. At the end of a week in Marseilles we had learned a number of things--made some observations--drawn some conclusions. It is a very old city--old when the Greeks settled there twenty-five hundred years ago--but it has been ravaged and rebuilt too often through the ages for any of its original antiquity to remain. Some of the buildings have stood five or six hundred years, perhaps, and are quaint and interesting, with their queer roofs and moldering walls which have known siege and battle and have seen men in gaudy trappings and armor go clanking by, stopping to let their horses drink at the scarred fountains where to-day women wash their vegetables and their clothing. We were glad to have looked on those ancient relics, for they, too, would soon be gone. The spirit of great building and progress is abroad in Marseilles--the old clusters of houses will come down--the hoary fountains worn smooth by the hands of women and the noses of thirsty beasts will be replaced by new ones--fine and beautiful, for the French build always for art, let the race for commercial supremacy be ever so swift. Fifty or one hundred years from now it will be as hard to find one of these landmarks as it is to-day relics of the Greek and Roman times, and of the latter we found none at all. Tradition has it that Lazarus and his family came to Marseilles after his resuscitation, but the house he occupied is not shown. Indeed, there is probably not a thing above ground that Lucian the Greek saw when he lived here in the second century. The harbor he sailed into remains. Its borders have changed, but it is the same inclosed port that sheltered those early galleys and triremes of commerce and of war. We looked down upon it from our balcony, and sometimes in the dim morning, or in the first dusk of evening when its sails were idle and its docks deserted, it seemed still to have something of the past about it, something that was not quite reality. Certain of its craft were old in fashion and quaint in form, and if even one trireme had lain at anchor there, or had come drifting in, we might easily have fancied this to be the port that somewhere is said to harbor the missing ships. It is a busy place by day. Its quays are full of trucks and trams and teams, and a great traffic going on. Lucian would hardly recognize any of it at all. The noise would appall him, the smoking steamers would terrify him, the _transbordeur_--an aërial bridge suspended between two Eiffel towers, with a hanging car that travels back and forth like a cash railway--would set him praying to the gods. Possibly the fishwives, sorting out sea food and bait under little awnings, might strike him as more or less familiar. At least he would recognize their occupation. They were strung along the east quay, and I had never dreamed that the sea contained so many strange things to eat as they carried in stock. They had oysters and clams, and several varieties of mussels, and some things that looked like tide-worn lumps of terra cotta, and other things that resembled nothing else under heaven, so that words have not been invented to describe them. Then they had _oursins_. I don't know whether an _oursin_ is a bivalve or not. It does not look like one. The word "_oursin_" means hedgehog, but this _oursin_ looked a great deal more like an old, black, sea-soaked chestnut bur--that is, before they opened it. When the _oursin_ is split open-- But I cannot describe an opened _oursin_ and preserve the proprieties. It is too--physiological. And the Marseillais eat those things--eat them raw! Narcissa and I, who had rather more limb and wind than the others, wandered along the quay a good deal, and often stood spellbound watching this performance. Once we saw two women having some of them for early breakfast with a bottle of wine--fancy! By the way, we finally discovered the restaurants in Marseilles. At first we thought that the Marseillais never ate in public, but only drank. This was premature. There are restaurant districts. The rue Colbert is one of them. The quay is another, and of the restaurants in that precinct there is one that no traveler should miss. It is Pascal's, established a hundred years ago, and descended from father to son to the present moment. Pascal's is famous for its fish, and especially for its _bouillabaisse_. If I were to be in Marseilles only a brief time, I might be willing to miss the Palais Longchamps or a cathedral or two, but not Pascal's and _bouillabaisse_. It is a glorified fish chowder. I will say no more than that, for I should only dull its bloom. I started to write a poem on it. It began: Oh, bouillabaisse, I sing thy praise. But Narcissa said that the rhyme was bad, and I gave it up. Besides, I remembered that Thackeray had written a poem on the same subject. One must go early to get a seat at Pascal's. There are rooms and rooms, and waiters hurrying about, and you must give your order, or point at the bill of fare, without much delay. Sea food is the thing, and it comes hot and delicious, and at the end you can have melon--from paradise, I suppose, for it is pure nectar--a kind of liquid cantaloupe such as I have seen nowhere else in this world.[2] You have wine if you want it, at a franc a bottle, and when you are through you have spent about half a dollar for everything and feel that life is a song and the future made of peace. There came moments after we found Pascal's when, like the lotus eaters, we felt moved to say: "We will roam no more. This at last is the port where dreams come true." Our motor clearance required a full ten days, but we did not regret the time. We made some further trips by tram, and one by water--to Château d'If, on the little ferry that runs every hour or so to that historic island fortress. To many persons Château d'If is a semi-mythical island prison from which, in Dumas' novel, Edmond Dantes escapes to become the Count of Monte Cristo, with fabulous wealth and an avenging sword. But it is real enough; a prison fortress which crowns a barren rock, twenty minutes from the harbor entrance, in plain view from the Corniche road. François I laid its corner stone in 1524 and construction continued during the next seventy years. It is a place of grim, stubby towers, with an inner court opening to the cells--two ranges of them, one above the other. The furniture of the court is a stone stairway and a well. Château d'If is about as solid and enduring as the rock it stands on, and it is not the kind of place one would expect to go away from alive, if he were invited there for permanent residence. There appears to be no record of any escapes except that of Edmond Dantes, which is in a novel. When prisoners left that island it was by consent of the authorities. I am not saying that Dumas invented his story. In fact, I insist on believing it. I am only saying that it was a remarkable exception to the general habit of the guests in Château d'If. Of course it happened, for we saw cell B where Dantes was confined, a rayless place; also cell A adjoining, where the Abbé Faria was, and even the hole between, through which the Abbé counseled Dantes and confided the secret of the treasure that would make Dantes the master of the world. All of the cells have tablets at their entrances bearing the names of their most notable occupants, and that of Edmond Dantes is prominently displayed. It was good enough evidence for us. Those cells are on the lower level, and are merely black, damp holes, without windows, and with no floors except the unleveled surface of the rock. Prisoners were expected to die there and they generally did it with little delay. One Bernadot, a rich Marseilles merchant, starved himself, and so found release at the end of the twelfth day; but another, a sailor named Jean Paul, survived in that horrible darkness for thirty-one years. His crime was striking his commander. Many of the offenses were even more trifling; the mere utterance of a word offensive to some one in power was enough to secure lodging in Château d'If. It was even dangerous to have a pretty daughter or wife that a person of influence coveted. Château d'If had an open door for husbands and fathers not inclined to be reasonable in such matters. The second-story prisons are larger and lighter, but hardly less interesting. In No. 5 Count Mirabeau lodged for nearly a year, by suggestion of his father, who did not approve of his son's wild ways and thought Château d'If would tame him. But Mirabeau put in his time writing an essay on despotism and planning revolution. Later, one of the neighboring apartments, No. 7, a large one, became the seat of the _tribunal révolutionnaire_ which condemned there sixty-six to the guillotine. Many notables were sent to Château d'If on the charge of disloyalty to the sovereign. In one of the larger cells two brothers were imprisoned for having shared the exile of one Chevalier Glendèves who was obliged to flee from France because he refused to go down on his knees to Louis XIV. Royalty itself has enjoyed the hospitality of Château d'If. Louis Philippe of Orléans occupied the same large apartment later, which is really quite a grand one for a prison, with a fireplace and space to move about. Another commodious room on this floor was for a time the home of the mysterious Man of the Iron Mask. These are but a few--one can only touch on the more interesting names. "Dead after ten years of captivity"; "Dead after sixteen years of captivity"; such memoranda close many of the records. Some of the prisoners were released at last, racked with disease and enfeebled in mind. Some went forth to the block, perhaps willingly enough. It is not a place in which one wishes to linger. You walk a little way into the blackest of the dungeons, stumbling over the rocks of the damp, unleveled floor, and hurry out. You hesitate a moment in the larger, lighter cells and try to picture a king there, and the Iron Mask; you try to imagine the weird figure of Mirabeau raging and writing, and then, a step away, the grim tribunal sorting from the nobility of France material for the guillotine. It is the kind of thing you cannot make seem real. You can see a picture, but it is always away somewhere--never quite there, in the very place. Outside it was sunny, the sea blue, the cliffs high and sharp, with water always breaking and foaming at their feet. The Joy insisted on being shown the exact place where Dantes was flung over, but I was afraid to try to find it. I was afraid that there would be no place where he could be flung into the water without hitting the sharp rocks below, and that would end the story before he got the treasure. I said it was probably on the other side of the island, and besides it was getting late. We sailed home in the evening light, this time into the ancient harbor, and landed about where Lucian used to land, I should think, such a long time ago. It was our last night in Marseilles. We had been there a full ten days, altogether, and time had not hung upon our hands. We would still have lingered, but there was no longer an excuse. Even the car could not furnish one. Released from its prison, refreshed with a few liters of gasoline--_essence_, they call it--and awakened with a gentle hitch or two of the crank, it began its sweet old murmur, just as if it had not been across some thousands of miles of tossing water. Then, the clutch released, it slipped noiselessly out of the docks, through the narrow streets, to a garage, where it acquired its new numbers and a bath, and maybe a French lesson or two, so that to-morrow it might carry us farther into France. FOOTNOTES: [2] Our honey-dew melon is a mild approach to it. Chapter III ACROSS THE CRAU There are at least two ways to leave Marseilles for the open plain of the Provence, and we had hardly started before I wished I had chosen the other one. We were climbing the rue de la République, or one of its connections, when we met, coming down on the wrong side of the tram line, one of the heaviest vehicles in France, loaded with iron castings. It was a fairly crowded street, too, and I hesitated a moment too long in deciding to switch to the wrong side, myself, and so sneak around the obstruction. In that moment the monstrous thing decided to cross to its own side of the road, which seemed to solve the problem. I brought the car to a standstill to wait. But that was another mistake; I should have backed. The obstruction refused to cross the tram track. Evidently the rails were slippery and when the enormous wheels met the iron they slipped--slipped toward us--ponderously, slowly, as inevitable as doomsday. I was willing to back then, but when I shifted the lever I forgot something else and our engine stopped. There was not enough gravity to carry us back without it; neither was there room, or time, to crank.[3] So there we were, with that mountain closing in upon us like a wall of Poe's collapsing room. It was fascinating. I don't think one of us thought of jumping out and leaving the car to its fate. The truck driver was frantically urging his team forward, hoping the wheels would catch, but only making them slide a little quicker in our direction. They were six inches away, now--five inches--three inches--one inch--the end of the hub was touching our mud guard. What we _might_ have done then--what _might_ have happened remains guesswork. What did happen was that the huge steel tire reached a joint in the tram rail and unhurriedly lifted itself over, just as if that was what it had been intending to do all the time. I had strength enough left to get out and crank up, then, but none to spare. A little more paint off the front end of the mud guard, but that was nothing. I had whetted those guards on a variety of things, including a cow, in my time. At home I had a real passion for scraping them against the door casing of the garage, backing out. Still, we were pretty thoughtful for several miles and missed a road that turns off to Arles, and were on the way to Aix, which we had already visited by tram. Never mind; Aix was on the way to Arles, too, and when all the roads are good roads a few miles of motor travel more or less do not count. Only it is such a dusty way to Aix, and we were anxious to get into the cleaner and more inviting byways. We were at the outskirts, presently, and when we saw a military-looking gentleman standing before a little house marked "_L'Octroi_" we stopped. I had learned enough French to know that _l'octroi_ means a local custom house, and it is not considered good form to pass one of them unnoticed. It hurts the _l'octroi_ man's feelings and he is backed by the _gendarmerie_ of France. He will let you pass, and then in his sorrow he will telephone to the police station, just ahead. There you will be stopped with a bayonet, or a club, or something, and brought back to the _l'octroi_, where you will pay an _amend_ of six francs; also costs; also for the revenue stamp attached to your bill of particulars; also for any little thing which you may happen to have upon which duty may be levied; also for other things; and you will stand facing a half-open cell at the end of the corridor while your account is being made up--all of which things happened to a friend of mine who thought that because an _octroi_ man looked sleepy he was partly dead. Being warned in this way, we said we would stop for an _octroi_ man even if he were entirely dead; so we pulled up and nodded politely, and smiled, and said, "Bon joor, messoor," and waited his pleasure. You never saw a politer man. He made a sweeping salute and said--well, it doesn't matter just what he said--I took it to be complimentary and Narcissa thought it was something about vegetables. Whatever it was, we all smiled again, while he merely glanced in the car fore and aft, gave another fine salute and said, "_Allay_" whereupon we understood, and _allayed_, with counter-salutes and further smiles--all of which seemed pleasanter than to be brought back by a _gendarme_ and stood up in front of a cell during the reckoning process. Inquiring in Aix for the road to Arles we made a discovery, to wit: they do not always pronounce it "Arl" in the French way, but "Arlah," which is Provençal, I suppose, the remains of the old name "Arlate." One young man did not seem even to recognize the name Arles, though curiously it happened that he spoke English--enough, at least, to direct us when he found that it was his Provençal "Arlah" that we wanted. So we left Aix behind us, and with it the dust, the trams, and about the last traces of those modern innovations which make life so comfortable when you need them and so unpeaceful when you prefer something else. The one great modern innovation which bore us silently along those level roads fell into the cosmic rhythm without a jar--becoming, as it seemed, a sort of superhuman activity, such as we shall know, perhaps, when we get our lost wings again. I don't know whether Provence roads are modern or not. I suspect they were begun by the Roman armies a good while ago; but in any case they are not neglected now. They are boulevards--no, not exactly that, for the word "boulevard" suggests great width. They are avenues, then, ample as to width, and smooth and hard, and planted on both sides with exactly spaced and carefully kept trees. Leaving Aix, we entered one of these highways running straight into the open country. Naturally we did not expect it to continue far, not in that perfectly ordered fashion, but when with mile after mile it varied only to become more beautiful, we were filled with wonder. The country was not thickly settled; the road was sparsely traveled. Now and then we passed a heavy team drawing a load of hay or grain or wine barrels, and occasionally, very occasionally, we saw an automobile. It was a fair, fertile land at first. There were rich, sloping fields, vineyards, olive gardens, and plumy poplars; also, an occasional stone farmhouse that looked ancient and mossy and picturesque, and made us wish we could know something of the life inside its heavy walls. We said that sometime we would stop at such a place and ask them to take us in for the night. Now and then we passed through a village, where the streets became narrow and winding, and were not specially clean. They were interesting places enough, for they were old and queer, but they did not invite us to linger. They were neither older nor more queer than corners of Marseilles we had seen. Once we saw a kind of fair going on and the people in holiday dress. At Salon, a still larger and cleaner place, we stopped to buy something for our wayside luncheon. Near the corner of a little shaded square a man was selling those delectable melons such as we had eaten in Marseilles; at a shop across the way was a window full of attractions--little cheeses, preserved meats, and the like. I gathered up an assortment, then went into a _boulangerie_ for bread. There was another customer ahead of me, and I learned something, watching his transaction. Bread, it seemed, was not sold by the loaf there, but by exact weight. The man said some words and the woman who waited on him laid two loaves, each about a yard long, on the scales. Evidently they exceeded his order, for she cut off a foot or so from one loaf. Still the weight was too much, and she cut off a slice. He took what was left, laid down his money, and walked out. I had a feeling that the end and slice would lie around and get shopworn if I did not take them. I pointed at them, and she put them on the scales. Then I laid down a franc, and she gave me half a gill of copper change. It made the family envious when they saw how exactly I had transacted my purchase. There is nothing like knowing the language. We pushed on into the country again, stopped in a shady, green place, and picnicked on those good things for which we had spent nearly four francs. There were some things left over, too; we could have done without the extra slice of bread. There were always mountains in view, but where we were the land had become a level plain, once, ages ago, washed by the sea. We realized this when the fertile expanse became, little by little, a barren--a mere waste, at length, of flat smooth stones like cobble, a floor left by the departing tides. "La Crau" it is called, and here there were no homes. No harvest could grow in that land--nothing but a little tough grass, and the artificially set trees on either side of the perfectly smooth, perfectly straight road that kept on and on, mile after mile, until it seemed that it must be a band around the world. How can they afford to maintain such a road through that sterile land? The sun was dropping to the western horizon, but we did not hurry. I set the throttle to a point where the speedometer registered fifteen miles an hour. So level was the road that the figures on the dial seemed fixed there. There was nothing to see but the unbroken barren, the perfectly regular rows of sycamore or cypress, and the evening sky; yet I have seldom known a drive more inspiring. Steadily, unvaryingly, and silently heading straight into the sunset, we seemed somehow a part of the planetary system, little brother to the stars. It was dusk when we reached the outskirts of Arles and stopped to light the lamps. The wide street led us into the business region, and we hoped it might carry us to the hotels. But this was too much to expect in an old French, Provençal, Roman city. Pausing, we pronounced the word "hotel," and were directed toward narrower and darker ways. We had entered one of these when a man stepped out of the shadow and took charge of us. I concluded that we were arrested then, and probably would not need a hotel. But he also said "hotel," and, stepping on the running-board, pointed, while I steered, under his direction. I have no idea as to the way we went, but we came out into a semi-lighted square directly in front of a most friendly-looking hostelry. Then I went in and aired some of my phonograph French, inquiring about rooms on the different _étages_ and the cost of _dîners_ and _déjeuners_, and the landlady spoke so slowly and distinctly that it made one vain of his understanding. So we unloaded, and our guide, who seemed to be an _attaché_ of the place, directed me to the garage. I gathered from some of the sounds he made that the main garage was _complet_--that is to say, full--and we were going to an annex. It was an interesting excursion, but I should have preferred to make it on foot and by daylight. We crossed the square and entered a cobbled street--no, a passage--between ancient walls, lost in the blackness above, and so close together below that I hesitated. It was a place for armored men on horseback, not for automobiles. We crept slowly through and then we came to an uphill corner that I was sure no car without a hinge in the middle could turn. But my guard--guide, I mean, signified that it could be done, and inch by inch we crawled through. The annex--it was really a stable of the Middle Ages--was at the end of the tunnel, and when we came away and left the car there I was persuaded that I should never see it again. Back at the hotel, however, it was cheerful enough. It seemed an ancient place of stone stairways and thick walls. Here and there in niches were Roman vases and fragments found during the excavations. Somewhere underneath us were said to be catacombs. Attractive things, all of them, but the dinner we had--hot, fine and French, with _vin compris_ two colors--was even more attractive to travelers who had been drinking in oxygen under the wide sky all those steady miles across the Crau. FOOTNOTES: [3] The reader is reminded that this was in a day when few cars cranked otherwise than by hand. Chapter IV MISTRAL (From my notes, September 10, 1913) Adjoining our hotel--almost a part of it, in fact, is a remnant of the ancient Roman forum of Arles. Some columns, a piece of the heavy wall, sections of lintel, pediment, and cornice still stand. It is a portion of the Corinthian entrance to what was the superb assembly place of Roman Arles. The square is called Place du Forum, and sometimes now Place Mistral--the latter name because a bronze statue of the "Homer of the Provence" has been erected there, just across from the forum entrance. Frédéric Mistral, still alive at eighty-three, is the light of the modern Provence.[4] We had begun to realize something of this when we saw his photographs and various editions of his poems in the windows of Marseilles and Aix, and handbills announcing the celebration at St. Remy of the fiftieth anniversary of Gounod's score of Mistral's great poem, "Mireille." But we did not at all realize the fullness of the Provençal reverence for "the Master," as they call him, until we reached Arles. To the Provence Mistral is a god--an Apollo--the "central sun from which other Provençal singers are as diverging rays." Whatever Mistral touches is glorified. Provençal women talk with a new grace because Mistral has sung of them. Green slopes and mossy ruins are viewed through the light of Mistral's song. A Mistral anniversary is celebrated like a Declaration of Independence or a Louisiana Purchase. They have even named a wind after him. Or perhaps he was named after the wind. Whichever way it was, the wind has taken second place and the people smile tenderly now, remembering the Master, when its name is mentioned. I believe Mistral does not sing in these later days. He does not need to. The songs he sang in youth go on singing for him, and are always young. Outside of France they are not widely known; their bloom and fragrance shrink under translation. George Meredith, writing to Janet Ross in 1861, said: "Mistral I have read. He is really a fine poet." But to Meredith the euphonies of France were not strange. And Mistral has loved the Provence. Not only has he sung of it, but he has given his labor and substance to preserve its memories. When the Academy voted him an award of three thousand francs he devoted it to the needs of his fellow poets;[5] when he was awarded the Nobel prize he forgot that he might spend it on himself, and bought and restored an old palace, and converted it into a museum for Arles. Then he devoted his time and energies to collecting Provençal relics, and to-day, with its treasures and associations, the place has become a shrine. Everything relating to the life and traditions of the Provence is there--Roman sculpture, sarcophagi, ceramics, frescoes, furnishings, implements--the place is crowded with precious things. Lately a room of honor has been devoted to the poet himself. In it are cases filled with his personal treasures; the walls are hung with illustrations used in his books. On the mantel is a fine bust of the poet, and in a handsome reliquary one finds a lock of hair, a little dress, and the cradle of the infant Mistral. In the cradle lies the manuscript of Mistral's first and greatest work, the "Mireille." The Provence has produced other noted men--among them Alphonse Daudet, who was born just over at Nîmes, and celebrated the town of Tarascon with his Tartarin. But Daudet went to Paris, which is, perhaps, a sin. The Provence is proud of Daudet, and he, too, has a statue, at Nîmes; but the Provence worships Mistral. FOOTNOTES: [4] Written in 1913. Mistral died March 24th of the following year. [5] Daudet in his _Lettres de Mon Moulin_ says: "_II y à quatre ans, lorsque l'Académie donna à l'auteur de 'Mireille' le prix de trois mille francs. Mme. Mistral [sa mère] eut une idée._ "'_Si nous faisons tapisser et plafonner ta chambre?' dit elle à son fils._ "'_Non! non!' répondit Mistral. 'Ca c'est l'argent des poëtes, on n'y touche pas._'" Chapter V THE ROME OF FRANCE There is no record of a time when there was not a city at Arles. The Rhone divides to form its delta there--loses its swiftness and becomes a smooth highway to the sea. "As at Arles, where the Rhone stagnates," wrote Dante, who probably visited the place on a journey he made to Paris. There the flat barrenness of the Crau becomes fertile slopes and watered fields. It is a place for men to congregate and it was already important when Julius Cæsar established a Roman colony and built a fleet there, after which it became still more important--finally, with its one hundred thousand inhabitants, rivaling even Marseilles. It was during those earlier years--along through the first and second centuries--that most of the great building was done, remnants of which survive to this day. Prosperity continued even into the fourth century, when the Christian Emperor Constantine established a noble palace there and contemplated making it the capital of his kingdom. But then the decline set in. In the next century or two clouds of so-called barbarians swept down from the north and east, conquering, plundering, and establishing new kingdoms. Gauls, Goths, Saracens, and Francs each had their turn at it. Following came the parlous years of the middle period. For a brief time it was an independent republic; then a monarchy. By the end of the fifteenth century it was ready to be annexed to France. Always a battle ground, raided and sacked so often that the count is lost, the wonder is that any of its ancient glories survive at all. But the Romans built well; their massive construction has withstood the wild ravage of succeeding wars, the sun and storm of millennial years. We knew little of Arles except that it was the place where there was the ruin of a Roman arena, and we expected not much from that. The Romans had occupied France and had doubtless built amusement places, but if we gave the matter any further thought it was to conclude that such provincial circus rings would be small affairs of which only a few vestiges, like those of the ruined Forum, would remain. We would visit the fragments, of course, and meantime we drifted along one side of the Place du Forum in the morning sunlight, looking in show windows to find something in picture postals to send home. What we saw at first puzzled, then astonished us. Besides the pictures of Mistral the cards were mostly of ruins--which we expected, perhaps, but not of such ruins. Why, these were not mere vestiges. Ephesus, Baalbec, Rome itself, could hardly show more impressive remains. The arena on these cards seemed hardly a ruin at all, and here were other cards which showed it occupied, filled with a vast modern audience who were watching something--clearly a bull fight, a legitimate descendant of Nero's Rome. I could not at first believe that these structures could be of Arles, but the inscriptions were not to be disputed. Then I could not wait to get to them. We did not drive. It was only a little way to the arena, they told us, and the narrow streets looked crooked and congested. It was a hot September morning, but I think we hurried. I suppose I was afraid the arena would not wait. Then all at once we were right upon it, had entered a lofty arch, climbed some stairs, and were gazing down on one of the surviving glories of a dead empire. What a structure it is! An oval 448 by 352 feet--more than half as big again as a city block; the inner oval, the arena itself,[6] 226 by 129 feet, the tiers of stone seats rising terrace above terrace to a high circle of arches which once formed the support for an enormous canvas dome. All along the terraces arches and stairways lead down to spacious recesses and the great entrance corridor. The twenty thousand spectators which this arena once held were not obliged to crowd through any one or two entrances, but could enter almost anywhere and ascend to their seats from any point of the compass. They held tickets--pieces of parchment, I suppose--and these were numbered like the seats, just as tickets are numbered to-day. Down near the ringside was the pit, or _podium_, and that was the choice place. Some of the seats there were owned, and bore the owners' names. The upper seats are wide stone steps, but comfortable enough, and solid enough to stand till judgment day. They have ranged wooden benches along some of them now, I do not see why, for they are very ugly and certainly not luxurious. They are for the entertainments--mainly bull fights--of the present; for strange, almost unbelievable as it seems, the old arena has become no mere landmark, a tradition, a monument of barbaric tastes and morals, but continues in active service to-day, its purpose the same, its morals not largely improved. It was built about the end of the first century, and in the beginning stags and wild boars were chased and put to death there. But then Roman taste improved. These were tame affairs, after all. So the arena became a prize ring in which the combatants handled one another without gloves--that is to say, with short swords--and were hacked into a mince instead of mauled into a pulp in our more refined modern way. To vary the games lions and tigers were imported and matched against the gladiators, with pleasing effect. Public taste went on improving and demanding fresh novelties. Rome was engaged just then in exterminating Christians, and the happy thought occurred to make spectacles of them by having them fight the gladiators and the wild beasts, thus combining business and pleasure in a manner which would seem to have been highly satisfactory to the public who thronged the seats and applauded and laughed, and had refreshments served, and said what a great thing Christianity was and how they hoped its converts would increase. Sometimes, when the captures were numerous and the managers could afford it, Christians on crosses were planted around the entire arena, covered with straw and pitch and converted into torches. These were night exhibitions, when the torches would be more showy; and the canvas dome was taken away so that the smoke and shrieks could go climbing to the stars. Attractions like that would always jam an amphitheater. This one at Arles has held twenty-five thousand on one of those special occasions. Centuries later, when the Christians themselves came into power, they showed a spirit of liberality which shines by contrast. They burned their heretics in the public squares, free. Only bulls and worn-out, cheap horses are tortured here to-day. It seems a pretty tame sport after those great circuses of the past. But art is long and taste is fleeting. Art will keep up with taste, and all that we know of the latter is that it will change. Because to-day we are satisfied with prize fights and bull fights is no sign that those who follow us will not demand sword fights and wild beasts and living torches. These old benches will last through the ages. They have always been familiar with the sport of torture of one sort or another. They await quite serenely for what the centuries may bring. It was hard to leave the arena. One would like to remain and review its long story. What did the barbarians do there--those hordes that swarmed in and trampled Rome? The Saracens in the eighth century used it for a fortress and added four watch towers, but their masonry is not of the everlasting Roman kind, and one of their towers has tumbled down. It would be no harm if the others would tumble, too. They lend to the place that romance which always goes with the name "Saracen," but they add no beauty. We paid a franc admission when we came into the amphitheater, our tickets being coupon affairs, admitting us to a variety of other historic places. The proceeds from the ruins are devoted to their care and preservation, but they cannot go far. Very likely the bull-fight money is also used. That would be consistent. We were directed to the Roman Theater, near at hand, where the ruin is ruin indeed. A flight of rising stone seats, two graceful Corinthian columns still standing, the rest fragments. More graceful in its architecture than the arena, the theater yielded more readily to the vandalisms of the conquerors and the corrosions of time. As early as the third century it was partially pulled down. Later it was restored, but not for long. The building bishops came and wanted its materials and ornaments for their churches. Not much was left after that, but to-day the fragments remaining have been unearthed and set up and give at least a hint of its former glory. One wonders if those audiences who watched Christian slaughter at the arena came also to this chaste spot. Plays are sometimes given here to-day, I am told, classic reproductions, but it is hard to believe that they would blend with this desolated setting. The bull fight in the arena is even better. We went over to the church of St. Trophime, which is not a ruin, though very old. St. Trophime, a companion of St. Paul, was the founder of the church of Arles. He is said to have set up a memorial to St. Étienne, the first martyr, and on this consecrated spot three churches have been built, one in the fourth century, another in the seventh, and this one, dedicated to St. Trophime, in the twelfth, or earlier. It is of supreme historical importance. By the faithful it is believed to contain the remains of St. Trophime himself. Barbarossa and other great kings were crowned here; every important ceremony of mediæval Arles has been held here. It is one of the oldest-looking places I ever saw--so moldy, so crumbly, and so dim. Though a thousand years older, the arena looks fresh as compared with it, because even sun and storm do not gnaw and corrode like gloom and dampness. But perhaps this is a softer stone. The cloister gallery, which was not built until the twelfth century, is so permeated with decay that one almost fears to touch its delicately carved ornamentations lest they crumble in his hands. Mistral has celebrated the cloister portal in a poem, and that alone would make it sacred to the Provence. The beautiful gallery is built around a court and it is lined with sculpture and bas-relief, rich beyond words. Saints and bible scenes are the subjects, and how old, how time-eaten and sorrowful they look. One gets the idea that the saints and martyrs and prophets have all contracted some wasting malady which they cannot long survive now. But one must not be flippant. It is a place where the feet of faith went softly down the centuries; and, taken as a whole, St. Trophime, with its graceful architecture--Gothic and Byzantine, combined with the Roman fragments brought long ago from the despoiled theater--is beautiful and delicate and tender, and there hangs about it the atmosphere that comes of long centuries of quiet and sacred things. Mistral's museum is just across from the church, but I have already spoken of that--briefly, when it is worth a volume. One should be in a patient mood for museums--either to see or to write of them--a mood that somehow does not go with automobile wandering, however deliberate. But I must give a word at least to two other such institutions of Arles, the Musée Lapidaire, a magnificent collection of pagan and early Christian sarcophagi and marble, mostly from the ancient burial field, the Aliscamp--and the Musée Réattu. Réattu was an Arlesian painter of note who produced many pictures and collected many beautiful things. His collections have been acquired by the city of Arles, and installed in one of its most picturesque old buildings--the ancient Grand Priory of the Knights of Malta. The stairway is hung with tapestries and priceless arras; the rooms are filled with paintings, bas-reliefs, medallions, marbles, armor,--a wealth of art objects. One finds it hard to believe that such museums can be owned and supported by this little city--ancient, half forgotten, stranded here on the banks of the Rhone. Its population is given as thirty thousand, and it makes sausages--very good ones--and there are some railway shops that employ as many as fifteen hundred men. Some boat building may still be done here, too. But this is about all Arles can claim in the way of industries. It has not the look of what we call to-day a thriving city. It seems, rather, a mediæval setting for the more ancient memories. Yet it has these three splendid museums, and it has preserved and restored its ruins, just as if it had a J. Pierpont Morgan behind it, instead of an old poet with a Nobel prize, and a determined little community, too proud of its traditions and its taste to let them die. Danbury, Connecticut, has as many inhabitants as Arles, and it makes about all the hats that are worn in America. It is a busy, rich place, where nearly everybody owns an automobile, if one may judge by the street exhibit any pleasant afternoon. It is an old place, too, for America, with plenty of landmarks and traditions. But I somehow can't imagine Danbury spending the money and the time to establish such superb institutions as these, or to preserve its prerevolutionary houses. But, after all, Danbury is young. It will preserve something two thousand years hence--probably those latest Greco-Roman façades which it is building now. Near to the Réattu Museum is the palace of the Christian Emperor Constantine. Constantine came here after his father died, and fell in love with the beauty and retirement of the place. Here, on the banks of the Rhone, he built a palace, and dreamed of passing his days in it--of making Arles the capital of his empire. His mother, St. Helene, whose dreams at Jerusalem located the Holy Sepulcher, the True Cross, and other needed relics, came to visit her son, and while here witnessed the treason and suicide of one Maximus Hercules, persecutor of the Christians. That was early in the fourth century. The daughter of Maximus seems to have been converted, for she came to stay at the palace and in due time bore Constantine a son. Descendants of Constantine occupied the palace for a period, then it passed to the Gauls, to the Goths, and so down the invading and conquering line. Once a king, Euric III, was assassinated here. Other kings followed and several varieties of counts. Their reigns were usually short and likely to end with a good deal of suddenness. It was always a good place for royalty to live and die. Until the beginning of the nineteenth century it was known as the "House of the King," but it was a ruin by that time. Only portions of it remain now, chiefly a sort of rotunda of the grand hall of state. Very little is left to show the ancient richness of its walls, but one may invite himself to imagine something--its marbles and its hangings--also that it was just here that M. Hercules and King Euric and their kind went the violent way; it would be the dramatic place for those occasions. One may not know to-day just what space the palace originally covered, but it was very large. Portions of its walls appear in adjoining buildings. Excavations have brought to light marbles, baths, rich ornamentations, all attesting its former grandeur. Arles preserves it for its memories, and in pride of the time when she came so near to being the capital of the world. FOOTNOTES: [6] The word arena derives its name from the sand, strewn to absorb the blood. Chapter VI THE WAY THROUGH EDEN There is so much to see at Arles. One would like to linger a week, then a month, then very likely he would not care to go at all. The past would get hold of him by that time--the glamour that hangs about the dead centuries. There had been rain in the night when we left Arles, much needed, for it was the season of drought. It was mid-morning and the roads were hard and perfect, and led us along sparkling waysides and between refreshed vineyards, and gardens, and olive groves. It seemed a good deal like traveling through Eden, and I don't suppose heaven--the automobilist's heaven (assuming that there is one)--is much better. I wish I could do justice to the Midi, but even Mistral could not do that. It is the most fruitful, luscious land one can imagine. Everything there seems good to eat, to smell of--to devour in some way. The vines were loaded with purple and topaz grapes, and I was dying to steal some, though for a few francs we had bought a basket of clusters, with other luncheon supplies, in Arles. It finally became necessary to stop and eat these things--those grape fields were too tempting. It is my opinion that nothing in the world is more enjoyable than an automobile roadside luncheon. One does not need to lug a heavy basket mile after mile until a suitable place is found, and compromise at last because the flesh rebels. With a car, a mile, two miles, five miles, are matters of a few minutes. You run along leisurely until you reach the brook, the shade, the seclusion that invites you. Then you are fresh and cool and deliberate. No need to hurry because of the long tug home again. You enjoy the things you have brought, unfretted by fatigue, undismayed by the prospect ahead. You are in no hurry to go. You linger and smoke and laze a little and discuss the environment--the fields, the growing things, the people through whose lands and lives you are cutting a cross-section, as it seems. You wonder about their customs, their diversions, what they do in winter, how it is in their homes. You speculate on their history, on what the land was like in its primeval period before there were any fields and homes--civilized homes--there at all. Perhaps--though this is unlikely--you _know_ a little about these things. It is no advantage; your speculations are just as valuable and more picturesque. There are many pleasant things about motor gypsying, but our party, at least, agreed that the wayside luncheon is the pleasantest of all. Furthermore, it is economical. Unless one wants hot dishes, you can get more things, and more delicious things, in the village shops or along the way than you can find at the wayside hotel or restaurant, and for half the amount. Our luncheon that day--we ate it between Arles and Tarascon--consisted of tinned chicken, fresh bread with sweet butter, Roquefort cheese, ripe grapes, and some French cakes--plenty, and all of the best, at a cost of about sixty cents for our party of four. And when we were finally ready to go, and had cleaned up and secreted every particle of paper or other refuse (for the true motorist never leaves a place unsightly) we felt quite as pleased with ourselves and the world, and the things of the infinite, as if we had paid two or three times as much for a meal within four walls. Chapter VII TO TARASCON AND BEAUCAIRE It is no great distance from Arles to Tarascon, and, leisurely as we travel, we had reached the home of Tartarin in a little while. We were tempted to stop over at Tarascon, for the name had that inviting sound which always belongs to the localities of pure romance--that is to say, fiction--and it has come about that Tarascon belongs more to Daudet than to history, while right across the river is Beaucaire, whose name, at least, Booth Tarkington has pre-empted for one of his earliest heroes. After all, it takes an author to make a town really celebrated. Thousands of Americans who have scarcely heard the name of Arles are intimately familiar with that of Tarascon. Of course the town has to contribute something. It must either be a place where something has happened, or _could_ happen, or it must have a name with a fine sound, and it should be located in about the right quarter of the globe. When such a place catches the fancy of an author who has the gift of making the ideal seem reality, he has but to say the magic words and the fame of that place is sure. Not that Tarascon has not had real history and romance; it has had plenty of both. Five hundred years ago the "Good King René" of Anjou, who was a painter and a writer, as well as a king, came to Tarascon to spend his last days in the stern, perpendicular castle which had been built for him on the banks of the Rhone. It is used as a jail now, but King René held a joyous court there and a web of romance clings to his memory. King René's castle does not look like a place for romance. It looks like an artificial precipice. We were told we could visit it by making a sufficiently polite application to the _Mairie_, but it did not seem worth while. In the first place, I did not know how to make a polite application to visit a jail--not in French--and then it was better to imagine King René's festivities than to look upon a reality of misfortune. The very name of Tarascon has to do with story. Far back, in the dim traditionary days, one St. Martha delivered the place from a very evil dragon, the Tarasque, for whom they showed their respect by giving his name to their town. Beaucaire, across the river, is lighted by old tradition, too. It was the home of Aucassin and Nicollette, for one thing, and anyone who has read that poem, either in the original or in Andrew Lang's exquisite translation, will have lived, for a moment at least, in the tender light of legendary tale. We drove over to Beaucaire, and Narcissa and I scaled a garden terrace to some ruined towers and battlements, all that is left of the ancient seat of the Montmorencys. It is a romantic ruin from a romantic day. It was built back in the twelve hundreds--when there were still knights and troubadours, and the former jousted at a great fair which was held there, and the latter reclined on the palace steps, surrounded by ladies and gallants in silken array, and sang songs of Palestine and the Crusades. As time went on a light tissue of legend was woven around the castle itself--half-mythical tales of its earlier centuries. Figures like Aucassin and Nicollette emerged and were made so real by those who chanted or recited the marvel of their adventures, that they still live and breathe with youth when their gallant castle itself is no more than vacant towers and fragmentary walls. The castle of Beaucaire looks across to the defiant walls of King René's castle in Tarascon and I believe there used to be some sturdy wars between them. If not, I shall construct one some day, when I am less busy, and feeling in the romantic form. It will be as good history as most castle history, and I think I shall make Beaucaire win. King René was a good soul, but I am doubtful about those who followed him, and his castle, so suitable to-day for a jail, does not invite sympathy. The Montmorency castle was dismantled in 1632, according to the guidebook, by Richelieu, who beheaded its last tenant--some say with a cleaver, a serviceable utensil for such work. Beaucaire itself is not a pretty town--not a clean town. I believe Nicollette was shut up for a time in one of its houses--we did not inquire which one--any of them would be bad enough to-day. [Illustration: "WHERE ROADS BRANCH OR CROSS THERE ARE SIGNBOARDS.... YOU CAN'T ASK A MAN 'QUEL EST LE CHEMIN' FOR ANYWHERE WHEN YOU ARE IN FRONT OF A SIGNBOARD WHICH IS SHOUTING THE INFORMATION"] It is altogether easy to keep to the road in France. You do not wind in and out with unmarked routes crossing and branching at every turn. You travel a hard, level way, often as straight as a ruling stick and pointed in the right direction. Where roads branch, or cross, there are signboards. All the national roads are numbered, and your red-book map shows these numbers--the chances of mistake being thus further lessened. We had practiced a good deal at asking in the politest possible French the way to any elusive destination. The book said that in France one generally takes off his hat in making such an inquiry, so I practiced that until I got it to seem almost inoffensive, not to say jaunty, and the formula "_Je vous demande pardon, but--quel est le chemin pour--_" whatever the place was. Sometimes I could even do it without putting in the "but," and was proud, and anxious to show it off at any opportunity. But it got dusty with disuse. You can't ask a man "_quel est le chemin_" for anywhere when you are on the straight road going there, or in front of a signboard which is shouting the information. I only got to unload that sentence twice between Arles and Avignon, and once I forgot to take off my hat; when I did, the man didn't understand me. With the blue mountains traveling always at our right, with level garden and vineland about us, we drifted up the valley of the Rhone and found ourselves, in mid-afternoon, at the gates of Avignon. That is not merely a poetic figure. Avignon has veritable gates--and towering crenelated walls with ramparts, all about as perfect as when they were built, nearly six hundred years ago. We had heard Avignon called the finest existing specimen of a mediæval walled city, but somehow one does not realize such things from hearing the mere words. We stopped the car to stare up at this overtopping masonry, trying to believe that it had been standing there already three hundred years, looking just about as it looks to-day, when Shakespeare was writing plays in London. Those are the things we never really believe. We only acknowledge them and pass on. Very little of Avignon has overflowed its massive boundaries; the fields were at our backs as we halted in the great portals. We halted because we noticed the word "_L'Octroi_" on one of the towers. But, as before, the _l'octroi_ man merely glanced into our vehicle and waved us away. We were looking down a wide shaded avenue of rather modern, even if foreign, aspect, and full of life. We drove slowly, hunting, as we passed along, for one of the hotels set down in the red-book as "comfortable, with modern improvements," including "gar. _grat._"--that is to say, garage gratis, such being the custom of this land. Narcissa, who has an eye for hotels, spied one presently, a rather imposing-looking place with a long, imposing name. But the management was quite modest as to terms when I displayed our T. C. de France membership card, and the "gar. _grat._"--this time in the inner court of the hotel itself--was a neat place with running water and a concrete floor. Not very ancient for mediæval Avignon, but one can worry along without antiquities in a hotel. Chapter VIII GLIMPSES OF THE PAST Avignon, like Arles, was colonized by the Romans, but the only remains of that time are now in its museum. At Arles the Romans did great things; its heyday was the period of their occupation. Conditions were different at Avignon. Avenio, as they called it, seems to have been a kind of outpost, walled and fortified, but not especially glorified. Very little was going on at Avenio. Christians were seldom burned there. In time a Roman emperor came to Arles, and its people boasted that it was to become the Roman capital. Nothing like that came to Avenio; it would require another thousand years and another Roman occupation to mature its grand destiny. I do not know just how it worried along during those stormy centuries of waiting, but with plenty of variety, no doubt. I suppose barbarians came like summer leafage, conquered and colonized, mixing the blood of a new race. It became a republic about twelve hundred and something--small, but tough and warlike--commanding the respect of seigneurs and counts, even of kings. Christianity, meantime, had prospered. Avignon had contributed to the Crusades and built churches. Also, a cathedral, though little dreaming that in its sacristy would one day lie the body of a pope. Avignon's day, however, was even then at hand. Sedition was rife in Italy and the popes, driven from Rome, sought refuge in France. Near Avignon was a small papal dominion of which Carpentras was the capital, and the pope, then Clement V, came often to Avignon. This was honor, but when one day the Bishop of Avignon was made Pope John XXII, and established his seat in his own home, the little city became suddenly what Arles had only hoped to be--the capital of the world. If one were permitted American parlance at this point, he would say that a boom now set in in Avignon.[7] Everybody was gay, everybody busy, everybody prosperous. The new pope straightway began to enlarge and embellish his palace, and the community generally followed suit. During the next sixty or seventy years about everything that is to-day of importance was built or rebuilt. New churches were erected, old ones restored. The ancient Roman wall was replaced by the splendid new one. The papal palace was enlarged and strengthened until it became a mighty fortress--one of the grandest structures in Europe. The popes went back to Rome, then, but their legates remained and from their strong citadel administered the affairs of that district for four turbulent centuries. In 1791, Avignon united her fortunes to those of France, and through revolution and bloodshed has come again to freedom and prosperity and peace. I do not know what the population of Avignon was in the day of her greater glory. To-day it is about fifty thousand, and, as it is full to the edges, it was probably not more populous then. We did not hurry in Avignon. We only loitered about the streets a little the first afternoon, practicing our French on the sellers of postal cards. It was a good place for such practice. If there was a soul in Avignon besides ourselves with a knowledge of English he failed to make himself known. Not even in our hotel was there a manager, porter, or waiter who could muster an English word. Narcissa and I explored more than the others and discovered the City Hall and a theater and a little open square with a big monument. We also got a distant glimpse of some great towering walls which we knew to be the Palace of the Popes. Now and again we were assailed by beggars--soiled and persistent small boys who annoyed us a good deal until we concocted an impromptu cure. It was a poem, in French--and effective: _Allez! Allez!_ _Je n'ai pas de monnaie!_ _Allez! Allez!_ _Je n'ai pas de l'argent!_ A Frenchman might not have had the courage to mortify his language like that, but we had, and when we marched to that defiant refrain the attacking party fell back. We left the thoroughfare and wandered down into narrow side streets, cobble-paved and winding, between high, age-stained walls--streets and walls that have surely not been renewed since the great period when the coming of the popes rebuilt Avignon. So many of the houses are apparently of one age and antiquity they might all have sprung up on the same day. What a bustle and building there must have been in those first years after the popes came! Nothing could be too new and fine for the chosen city. Now they are old again, but not always shabby. Many of them, indeed, are of impressive grandeur, with carved casings and ponderous doors. No sign of life about these--no glimpse of luxury, faded or fresh--within. Whatever the life they hold--whatever its past glories or present decline, it is shut away. Only the shabbier homes were open--women at their evening duties, children playing about the stoop. _They_ had nothing to conceal. Tradition, lineage, pride, poverty--they had inherited their share of these things, but they did not seem to be worrying about it. Their affairs were open to inspection; and their habits of dress and occupation caused us to linger, until the narrow streets grew dim and more full of evening echoes, while light began to twinkle in the little basement shops where the ancestors of these people had bought and sold for such a long, long time. FOOTNOTES: [7] Alphonse Daudet's "La Mule de Pape," in his _Lettres de Mon Moulin_, gives a delightful picture of Avignon at this period. Chapter IX IN THE CITADEL OF FAITH We were not very thorough sight-seers. We did not take a guidebook in one hand and a pencil in the other and check the items, thus cleaning up in the fashion of the neat, businesslike tourist. We seldom even had a program. We just wandered out in some general direction, and made a discovery or two, looked it over, surmised about it and passed judgment on its artistic and historical importance, just as if we knew something of those things; then when we got to a quiet place we took out the book and looked up what we had seen, and quite often, with the book's assistance, reversed our judgments and went back and got an altogether new set of impressions, and kept whichever we liked best. It was a loose system, to be recommended only for its variety. At the church of St. Agricole, for instance, which we happened upon when we started out one morning, we had a most interesting half hour discussing the age and beauty of its crumbling exterior and wandering about in its dimness, speculating concerning its frescoes and stained marbles and ancient tombs. When, later, we sat on the steps outside and looked it up and found it had been established away back in 680, and twice since restored; that the fifteenth-century holy-water basin was an especially fine one; that the tombs and altar piece, the sculpture and frescoes were regarded as "remarkable examples," we were deeply impressed and went back to verify these things. Then we could see that it was all just as the book said. But the procedure was somewhat different at the Palace of the Popes. We knew where we were going then, for we saw its towers looming against the sky, and no one could mistake that pile in Avignon. Furthermore, we paid a small fee at its massive arched entrance, and there was a guardian, or guide, to show us through. It is true he spoke only French--Provençal French--but two gracious Italian ladies happened to be going through at the same time and, like all cultured continentals, they spoke a variety of tongues, including American. The touch of travel makes the whole world kin, and they threw out a line when they saw us floundering, and towed us through. It was a gentle courtesy which we accepted with thankful hearts. We were in the central court first, the dull, sinister walls towering on every side. The guide said that executions had taken place there, and once, in later times--the period of the Revolution--a massacre in which seventy perished. He also mentioned a bishop of the earlier period who, having fallen into disfavor, was skinned alive and burned just outside the palace entrance. Think of doing that to a bishop! Our conductor showed us something which we were among the first to see. Excavation was going on, and near the entrance some workmen were uncovering a large square basin--a swimming pool, he said--probably of Roman times. Whatever had stood there had doubtless fallen into obliterated ruin by the time the papal palace was begun. A survey of the court interior showed that a vast scheme of restoration was going on. The old fortress had suffered from siege more than once, and time had not spared it; but with that fine pride which the French have in their monuments, and with a munificence which would seem to be limitless, they were reconstructing perfectly every ruined part, and would spend at least two million dollars, we were told, to make the labor complete. Battered corners of towers had been carefully rebuilt, tumbled parapets replaced. We stood facing an exquisite mullioned window whose carved stone outlines were entirely new, yet delicately and finely cut, certainly at a cost of many thousand francs. The French do not seem to consider expense in a work of that sort. Concrete imitations will not do. Whatever is replaced must be as it was in the beginning. Inside we found ourselves in the stately audience room, measuring some fifty by one hundred and eighty feet, its lofty ceiling supported by massive Gothic arches, all as complete as when constructed. Each missing piece or portion has been replaced. It was scarcely more perfect when the first papal audience was held there and when Queen Jeanne of Naples came to plead for absolution, nearly six centuries ago. It was of overpowering size and interest, and in one of the upper corners was a picture I shall not soon forget. It was not a painting or tapestry, but it might have been either of these things and less beautiful. It was a living human being, a stone carver on a swinging high seat, dressed in his faded blue cap and blouse and chopping away at a lintel. But he had the face and beard and, somehow, the figure of a saint. He turned to regard us with a mild, meditative interest, the dust on his beard and dress completing the harmony with the gray wall behind him, the embodied spirit of restoration. We ascended to the pontifical chapel, similar in size and appearance to the room below. We passed to other gigantic apartments, some of them rudely and elaborately decorated by the military that in later years made this a garrison. We were taken to the vast refectory, where once there was a great central table, the proportions of which were plainly marked by an outline on the stone floor, worn by the feet of feasting churchmen. Then we went to the kitchen, still more impressive in its suggestion of the stouter needs of piety. Its chimney is simply a gigantic central funnel that, rising directly from the four walls, goes towering and tapering toward the stars. I judge the cooks built their fires in the center of this room, hanging their pots on cranes, swinging their meats barbecue fashion, opening the windows for air and draught. Those old popes and legates were no weaklings, to have a kitchen like that. Their appetites and digestions, like their faith, were of a robust and militant sort. I dare say it would require a week to go through all this palace, so the visitor is shown only samples of it. We ascended to one of the towers and looked down, far down, on the roofs of Avignon--an expanse of brown tiling, toned by the ages, but otherwise not greatly different from what the popes saw when this tower and these housetops were new. Beyond are the blue hills which have not changed. Somewhere out there Petrarch's Laura was buried, but the grave has vanished utterly, the church is a mere remnant. As we stood in the window a cold breath of wind suddenly blew in--almost piercing for the season. "The mistral," our conductor said, and, though he did not cross himself, we knew by his exalted smile that he felt in it the presence of the poet of the south. Then he told us that Mistral had appointed him as one of those who were commissioned to preserve in its purity the Provençal tongue. That he was very proud of it was certain, and willing to let that wind blow on him as a sort of benediction. It is said, however, that the mistral wind is not always agreeable in Avignon. It blows away disease, but it is likely to overdo its work. "Windy Avignon, liable to the plague when it has not the wind, and plagued by the wind when it has it," is a saying at least as old as this palace. We got a generous example of it when we at last descended to the street. There it swirled and raced and grabbed at us until we had to button everything tightly and hold fast to our hats. We took refuge in the old cathedral of Notre Dame des Dômes, where John XXII, who brought this glory to Avignon, lies in his Gothic tomb. All the popes of Avignon were crowned here; it was the foremost church of Christendom for the better part of a century. We could see but little of the interior, for, with the now clouded sky, the place was too dark. In the small chapel where the tomb stands it was dim and still. It is the holy place of Avignon. A park adjoins the church and we went into it, but the mistral wind was tearing through the trees and we crossed and descended by a long flight to the narrow streets. Everywhere about us the lower foundations of the papal palace joined the living rock, its towers seeming to climb upward to the sky. It was as if it had grown out of the rock, indestructible, eternal, itself a rock of ages. We are always saying how small the world is, and we had it suddenly brought home to us as we stood there under the shadow of those overtopping heights. We had turned to thank our newly made friends and to say good-by. One of them said, "You are from America; perhaps you might happen to know a friend of ours there," and she named one whom we did know very well indeed--one, in fact, whose house we had visited only a few months before. How strange it seemed to hear that name from two women of Florence there in the ancient city, under those everlasting walls. Chapter X AN OLD TRADITION AND A NEW EXPERIENCE Among the things I did on the ship was to read the _Automobile Instruction Book_. I had never done it before. I had left all technical matters to a man hired and trained for the business. Now I was going to a strange land with a resolve to do all the things myself. So I read the book. It was as fascinating as a novel, and more impressive. There never was a novel like it for action and psychology. When I came to the chapter "Thirty-seven reasons why the motor may not start," and feverishly read what one had better try in the circumstances, I could see that as a subject for strong emotional treatment a human being is nothing to an automobile. Then there was the oiling diagram. A physiological chart would be nowhere beside it. It was a perfect maze of hair lines and arrow points, and looked as if it needed to be combed. There were places to be oiled daily, others to be oiled weekly, some to be oiled monthly, some every thousand miles. There were also places to be greased at all these periods, and some when you happened to think of it. You had to put on your glasses and follow one of the fine lines to the lubricating point, then try to keep the point in your head until you could get under the car, or over the car, or into the car, and trace it home. I could see that this was going to be interesting when the time came. I did not consider that it had come when we landed at Marseilles. I said to the garage man there, in my terse French idiom, "Make it the oil and grease," and walked away. Now, at Avignon, the new regime must begin. In the bright little, light little hotel garage we would set our car in order. I say "we" because Narcissa, aged fifteen, being of a practical turn, said she would help me. I would "make it the oil and grease," and Narcissa would wash and polish. So we began. The Joy, aged ten, was audience. Narcissa enjoyed her job. There was a hose in it, and a sponge and nice rubbing rags and polish, and she went at it in her strenuous way, and hosed me up one side and down the other at times when I was tracing some blind lead and she wasn't noticing carefully. I said I would make a thorough job of it. I would oil and grease all the daily, weekly, and monthly, and even the once-in-a-while places. We would start fair from Avignon. I am a resolute person. I followed those tangled lines and labyrinthian ways into the vital places of our faithful vehicle. Some led to caps, big and little, which I filled with grease. Most of them were full already, but I gave them another dab for luck. Some of the lines led to tiny caps and holes into which I squirted oil. Some led to a dim uncertainty, into which I squirted or dabbed something in a general way. Some led to mere blanks, and I greased those. It sounds rather easy, but that is due to my fluent style. It was not easy; it was a hot, messy, scratchy, grunting job. Those lines were mostly blind leads, and full of smudgy, even painful surprises. Some people would have been profane, but I am not like that--not with Narcissa observing me. One hour, two, went by, and I was still consulting the chart and dabbing with the oil can and grease stick. The chart began to show wear; _it_ would not need greasing again for years. Meantime Narcissa had finished her washing and polishing, and was putting dainty touches on the glass and metal features to kill time. I said at last that possibly I had missed some places, but I didn't think they could be important ones. Narcissa looked at me, then, and said that maybe I had missed places on the car but that I hadn't missed any on myself. She said I was a sight and probably never could be washed clean again. It is true that my hands were quite solidly black, and, while I did not recall wiping them on my face, I must have done so. When Narcissa asked how soon I was going to grease the car again, I said possibly in about a thousand years. But that was petulance; I knew it would be sooner. Underneath all I really had a triumphant feeling, and Narcissa was justly proud of her work, too. We agreed that our car had never looked handsomer and shinier since our first day of ownership. I said I was certain it had never been so thoroughly greased. We would leave Avignon in style. We decided to cross the Rhone at Avignon. We wanted at least a passing glance at Villeneuve, and a general view of Avignon itself, which was said to be finest from across the river. We would then continue up the west bank--there being a special reason for this--a reason with a village in it--one Beauchastel--not set down on any of our maps, but intimately concerned with our travel program, as will appear later. We did not leave Avignon by the St. Bénézet bridge. We should have liked that, for it is one of those bridges built by a miracle, away back in the twelfth century when they used miracles a good deal for such work. Sometimes Satan was induced to build them overnight, but I believe that was still earlier. Satan seems to have retired from active bridge-building by the twelfth century. It was a busy period for him at home. So the Bénézet bridge was built by a boy of that name--a little shepherd of twelve, who received a command in a dream to go to Avignon and build a bridge across the Rhone. He said: "I cannot leave my sheep, and I have but three farthings in the world." "Your flocks will not stray," said the voice, "and an angel will lead thee." Bénézet awoke and found beside him a pilgrim whom he somehow knew to be an angel. So they journeyed together and after many adventures reached Avignon. Here the pilgrim disappeared and Bénézet went alone to where a bishop was preaching to the people. There, in the presence of the assembly, Bénézet stated clearly that Heaven had sent him to build a bridge across the Rhone. Angry at the interruption, the bishop ordered the ragged boy to be taken in charge by the guard and punished for insolence and untruth. That was an ominous order. Men had been skinned alive on those instructions. But Bénézet repeated his words to the officer, a rough man, who said: "Can a beggar boy like you do what neither the saints nor Emperor Charlemagne has been able to accomplish? Pick up this stone as a beginning, and carry it to the river. If you can do that I may believe in you." It was a sizable stone, being thirteen feet long by seven broad--thickness not given, though probably three feet, for it was a fragment of a Roman wall. It did not trouble Bénézet, however. He said his prayers, and lightly lifted it to his shoulder and carried it across the town! Some say he whistled softly as he passed along. I wish I had lived then. I would almost be willing to trade centuries to see Bénézet surprise those people, carrying in that easy way a stone that reached up to the second-story windows. Bénézet carried the stone to the bank of the river and set it down where the first arch of the bridge would stand. There was no trouble after that. Everybody wanted to stand well with Bénézet. Labor and contributions came unasked. In eleven years the great work was finished, but Bénézet did not live to see it. He died four years before the final stones were laid, was buried in a chapel on the bridge itself and canonized as a saint. There is another story about him, but I like this one best. Bénézet's bridge was a gay place during the days of the popes at Avignon. Music and dancing were continuously going on there. It is ready for another miracle now. Only four arches of its original eighteen are standing. Storm and flood did not destroy it, but war. Besiegers and besieged broke down the arches, and at last, more than two hundred years ago, repairs were given up. It is a fine, firm-looking fragment that remains. One wishes, for the sake of the little shepherd boy, that it might be restored once more and kept solid through time. Passing along under the ramparts of Avignon, we crossed the newer, cheaper bridge, and took the first turn to the right. It was a leafy way, and here and there between the trees we had splendid glimpses of the bastioned walls and castle-crowned heights of Avignon. Certainly there is no more impressive mediæval picture in all Europe. But on one account we were not entirely satisfied. It was not the view that disturbed us; it was ourselves--our car. We were smoking--smoking badly, disgracefully; one could not deny it. In New York City we would have been taken in charge at once. At first I said it was only a little of the fresh oil burning off the engine, and that it would stop presently. But that excuse wore out. It would have taken quarts to make a smudge like that. When the wind was with us we traveled in a cloud, like prophets and deities of old, and the passengers grumbled. The Joy suggested that we would probably blow up soon. Then we began to make another discovery; when now and then the smoke cleared away a little, we found we were not in Villeneuve at all. We had not entirely crossed the river, but only halfway; we were on an island. I began to feel that our handsome start had not turned out well. We backed around and drove slowly to the bridge again, our distinction getting more massive and solid every minute. Disaster seemed imminent. The passengers were inclined to get out and walk. I said, at last, that we would go back to a garage I had noticed outside the walls. I put it on the grounds that we needed gasoline. It was not far, and the doors stood open. The men inside saw us coming with our gorgeous white tail filling the landscape behind us, and got out of the way. Then they gathered cautiously to examine us. "Too much oil," they said. In my enthusiasm I had overdone the thing. I had poured quarts into the crank case when there was probably enough there already. I had not been altogether to blame. Two little telltale cocks that were designed to drip when there was sufficient oil had failed to drip because they were stopped with dust. Being new and green, I had not thought of that possibility. A workman poked a wire into those little cocks and drew off the fuel we had been burning in that lavish way. So I had learned something, but it seemed a lot of smoke for such a small spark of experience. Still, it was a relief to know that it was nothing worse, and while the oil was dripping to its proper level we went back into the gates of Avignon, where, lunching in a pretty garden under some trees, we made light of our troubles, as is our way. Chapter XI WAYSIDE ADVENTURES So we took a new start and made certain that we entirely crossed the river this time. We were in Villeneuve-les-Avignon--that is, the "new town"--but it did not get that name recently, if one may judge from its looks. Villeneuve, in fact, is fourteen hundred years old, and shows its age. It was in its glory six centuries ago, when King Philippe le Bel built his tower at the end of Bénézet's bridge, and Jean le Bon built one of the sternest-looking fortresses in France--Fort St. André. Time has made the improvements since then. It has stained the walls and dulled the sharp masonry of these monuments; it has crushed and crumbled the feebler structures and filled the streets with emptiness and silence. Villeneuve was a thronging, fighting, praying place once, but the throng has been reduced and the fighting and praying have become matters of individual enterprise. I wish now we had lingered at Villeneuve-les-Avignon. I have rarely seen a place that seemed so to invite one to forget the activities of life and go groping about among the fragments of history. But we were under the influence of our bad start, and impelled to move on. Also, Villeneuve was overshadowed by the magnificence of the Palace of the Popes, which, from its eternal seat on le Rocher des Doms, still claimed us. We briefly visited St. André, the tower of Philippe le Bel, and loitered a little in a Chartreuse monastery--a perfect wilderness of ruin; then slipped away, following the hard, smooth road through a garden and wonderland, the valley of the Rhone. I believe there are no better vineyards in France than those between Avignon and Bagnols. The quality of the grapes is another matter; they are probably sour. All the way along those luscious topaz and amethyst clusters had been disturbing, but my conscience had held firm and I had passed them by. Sometimes I said: "There are tons of those grapes; a few bunches would never be missed." But Narcissa and the others said it would be stealing; besides, there were houses in plain view. But there is a limit to all things. In a level, sheltered place below Bagnols we passed a vineyard shut in by trees, with no house in sight. And what a vineyard! Ripening in the afternoon sun, clustered such gold and purple bunches as were once warmed by the light of Eden. I looked casually in different directions and slowed down. Not a sign of life anywhere. I brought the car to a stop. I said, "This thing has gone far enough." Conscience dozed. The protests of the others fell on heedless ears. I firmly crossed the irrigating ditch which runs along all those French roads, stepped among the laden vines, picked one of those lucent, yellow bunches and was about to pick another when I noticed something with a human look stir to life a little way down the row. Conscience awoke with something like a spasm. I saw at once that taking those grapes was wrong; I almost dropped the bunch I had. Narcissa says I ran, but that is a mistake. There was not room. I made about two steps and plunged into the irrigating canal, which I disremembered for the moment, my eyes being fixed on the car. Narcissa says she made a grab at my grapes as they sailed by. I seemed to be a good while getting out of the irrigating ditch, but Narcissa thinks I was reasonably prompt. I had left the engine running, and some seconds later, when we were putting temptation behind us on third speed, I noticed that the passengers seemed to be laughing. When I inquired as to what amused them they finally gasped out that the thing which had moved among the grapevines was a goat, as if that made any difference to a person with a sensitive conscience. It is not likely that any reader of these chapters will stop overnight at Bagnols. We should hardly have rested there, but evening was coming on and the sky had a stormy look. Later we were glad, for we found ourselves in an inn where d'Artagnan, or his kind, lodged, in the days when knights went riding. Travelers did not arrive in automobiles when that hostelry was built, and not frequently in carriages. They came on horseback and clattered up to the open door and ordered tankards of good red wine, and drank while their horses stretched their necks to survey the interior scenery. The old worn cobbles are still at the door, and not much has changed within. A niche holds a row of candles, and the traveler takes one of them and lights himself to bed. His room is an expanse and his bed stands in a curtained alcove--the bedstead an antique, the bed billowy, clean, and comfortable, as all beds are in France. Nothing has been changed there for a long time. The latest conveniences are of a date not more recent than the reign of Marie Antoinette, for they are exactly the kind she used, still to be seen at Versailles. And the dinner was good, with red and white flagons strewn all down the table--such a dinner as d'Artagnan and his wild comrades had, no doubt, and if prices have not changed they paid five francs fifty, or one dollar and ten cents each, for dinner, lodging, and _petit déjeuner_ (coffee, rolls, and jam)--garage free. Bagnols is unimportant to the tourist, but it is old and quaint, and it has what may be found in many unimportant places in France, at least one beautiful work of art--a soldier's monument, in this instance; _not_ a stiff effigy of an infantryman with a musket, cut by some gifted tombstone sculptor, but a female figure of Victory, full of vibrant life and inspiration--a true work of art. France is full of such things as that--one finds them in most unexpected places. The valley of the Rhone grew more picturesque as we ascended. Now and again, at our left, rocky bluffs rose abruptly, some of them crowned with ruined towers and equally ruined villages, remnants of feudalism, of the lord and his vassals who had fought and flourished there in that time when France was making the romantic material which writers ever since have been so busily remaking and adorning that those old originals would stare and gasp if they could examine some of it now. How fine and grand it seems to picture the lord and his men, all bright and shining, riding out under the portcullis on glossy prancing and armored horses to meet some aggressive and equally shining detachment of feudalism from the next hilltop. In the valley they meet, with ringing cries and the clash of steel. Foeman matches foeman--it is a series of splendid duels, combats to be recounted by the fireside for generations. Then, at the end, the knightly surrender of the conquered, the bended knee and acknowledgment of fealty, gracious speeches from the victor as to the bravery and prowess of the defeated, after which, the welcome of fair ladies and high wassail for all concerned. Everybody happy, everybody satisfied: wounds apparently do not count or interfere with festivities. The dead disappear in some magic way. I do not recall that they are ever buried. Just above Rochemaure was one of the most imposing of these ruins. The castle that crowned the hilltop had been a fine structure in its day. The surrounding outer wall which inclosed its village extended downward to the foot of the hill to the road--and still inclosed a village, though the more ancient houses seemed tenantless. It was built for offense and defense, that was certain, and doubtless had been used for both. We did not stop to dig up that romance. Not far away, by the roadside, stood what was apparently a Roman column. It had been already old and battered--a mere fragment of a ruin--when the hilltop castle and its village were brave and new. It was above Rochemaure--I did not identify the exact point--that an opportunity came which very likely I shall never have again. On a bluff high above an ancient village, so old and curious that it did not belong to reality at all, there was a great château, not a ruin--at least, not a tumbled ruin, though time-beaten and gray--but a good complete château, and across its mossy lintel a stained and battered wooden sign with the legend, "_A Louer_"--that is, "To Let." I stopped the car. This, I said, was our opportunity. Nothing could be better than that ancient and lofty perch overlooking the valley of the Rhone. The "To Let" sign had been there certainly a hundred years, so the price would be reasonable. We could get it for a song; we would inherit its traditions, its secret passages, its donjons, its ghosts, its-- I paused a moment, expecting enthusiasm, even eagerness, on the part of the family. Strange as it may seem, there wasn't a particle of either. I went over those things again, and added new and fascinating attractions. I said we would adopt the coat of arms of that old family, hyphenate its name with ours, and so in that cheap and easy fashion achieve a nobility which the original owner had probably shed blood to attain. It was no use. The family looked up the hill with an interest that was almost clammy. Narcissa asked, "How would you get the car up there?" The Joy said, "It would be a good place for bad dreams." The head of the expedition remarked, as if dismissing the most trivial item of the journey, that we'd better be going on or we should be late getting into Valence. So, after dreaming all my life of living in a castle, I had to give it up in that brief, incidental way. Chapter XII THE LOST NAPOLEON Now, it is just here that we reach the special reason which had kept us where we had a clear view of the eastward mountains, and particularly to the westward bank of the Rhone, where there was supposed to be a certain tiny village, one Beauchastel--a village set down on none of our maps, yet which was to serve as an important identifying mark. The reason had its beginning exactly twenty-two years before; that is to say, in September, 1891. Mark Twain was in Europe that year, seeking health and literary material, and toward the end of the summer--he was then at Ouchy, Switzerland--he decided to make a floating trip down the river Rhone. He found he could start from Lake Bourget in France, and, by paddling through a canal, reach the strong Rhone current, which would carry him seaward. Joseph Very, his favorite guide (mentioned in _A Tramp Abroad_), went over to Lake Bourget and bought a safe, flat-bottomed boat, retaining its former owner as pilot, and with these accessories Mark Twain made one of the most peaceful and delightful excursions of his life. Indeed, he enjoyed it so much and so lazily that after the first few days he gave up making extended notes and surrendered himself entirely to the languorous fascination of drifting idly through the dreamland of southern France. On the whole, it was an eventless excursion, with one exception--a startling exception, as he believed. One afternoon, when they had been drifting several days, he sighted a little village not far ahead, on the west bank, an ancient "jumble of houses," with a castle, one of the many along that shore. It looked interesting and he suggested that they rest there for the night. Then, chancing to glance over his shoulder toward the eastward mountains, he received a sudden surprise--a "soul-stirring shock," as he termed it later. The big blue eastward mountain was no longer a mere mountain, but a gigantic portrait in stone of one of his heroes. Eagerly turning to Joseph Very and pointing to the huge effigy, he asked him to name it. The courier said, "Napoleon." The boatman also said, "Napoleon." It seemed to them, indeed, almost uncanny, this lifelike, reclining figure of the conqueror, resting after battle, or, as Mark Twain put it, "dreaming of universal empire." They discussed it in awed voices, as one of the natural wonders of the world, which perhaps they had been the first to discover. They landed at the village, Beauchastel, and next morning Mark Twain, up early, watched the sun rise from behind the great stone face of his discovery. He made a pencil sketch in his notebook, and recorded the fact that the figure was to be seen from Beauchastel. That morning, drifting farther down the Rhone, they watched it until the human outlines changed. Mark Twain's Rhone trip was continued as far as Arles, where the current slackened. He said that some one would have to row if they went on, which would mean work, and that he was averse to work, even in another person. He gave the boat to its former owner, took Joseph, and rejoined the family in Switzerland. Events thronged into Mark Twain's life: gay winters, summers of travel, heavy literary work, business cares and failures, a trip around the world, bereavement. Amid such a tumult the brief and quiet Rhone trip was seldom even remembered. But ten or eleven years later, when he had returned to America and was surrounded by quieter things, he happened to remember the majestic figure of the first Napoleon discovered that September day while drifting down the Rhone. He recalled no more than that. His memory was always capricious--he had even forgotten that he made a sketch of the figure, with notes identifying the locality. He could picture clearly enough the incident, the phenomenon, the surroundings, but the name of the village had escaped him, and he located it too far down, between Arles and Avignon. All his old enthusiasm returned now. He declared if the presence of this great natural wonder was made known to the world, tourists would flock to the spot, hotels would spring up there--all other natural curiosities would fall below it in rank. His listeners caught his enthusiasm. Theodore Stanton, the journalist, declared he would seek and find the "Lost Napoleon," as Mark Twain now called it, because he was unable to identify the exact spot. He assured Stanton that it would be perfectly easy to find, as he could take a steamer from Arles to Avignon, and by keeping watch he could not miss it. Stanton returned to Europe and began the search. I am not sure that he undertook the trip himself, but he made diligent inquiries of Rhone travelers and steamer captains, and a lengthy correspondence passed between him and Mark Twain on the subject. No one had seen the "Lost Napoleon." Travelers passing between Avignon and Arles kept steady watch on the east range, but the apparition did not appear. Mark Twain eventually wrote an article, intending to publish it, in the hope that some one would report the mislaid emperor. However, he did not print the sketch, which was fortunate enough, for with its misleading directions it would have made him unpopular with disappointed travelers. The locality of his great discovery was still a mystery when Mark Twain died. So it came about that our special reason for following the west bank of the Rhone--the Beauchastel side, in plain view of the eastward mountains--was to find the "Lost Napoleon." An easy matter, it seemed in prospect, for we had what the others had lacked--that is to say, exact information as to its locality--the notes, made twenty-two years before by Mark Twain himself[8]--the pencil sketch, and memoranda stating that the vision was to be seen opposite the village of Beauchastel. But now there developed what seemed to be another mystery. Not only our maps and our red-book, but patient inquiry as well, failed to reveal any village or castle by the name of Beauchastel. It was a fine, romantic title, and we began to wonder if it might not be a combination of half-caught syllables, remembered at the moment of making the notes, and converted by Mark Twain's imagination into this happy sequence of sounds. So we must hunt and keep the inquiries going. We had begun the hunt as soon as we left Avignon, and the inquiries when there was opportunity. Then presently the plot thickened. The line of those eastward mountains began to assume many curious shapes. Something in their formation was unlike other mountains, and soon it became not difficult to imagine a face almost anywhere. Then at one point appeared a real face, no question this time as to the features, only it was not enough like the face of the sketch to make identification sure. We discussed it anxiously and with some energy, and watched it a long time, thinking possibly it would gradually melt into the right shape, and that Beauchastel or some similarly sounding village would develop along the river bank. But the likeness did not improve, and, while there were plenty of villages, there was none with a name the sound of which even suggested Beauchastel. Altogether we discovered as many as five faces that day, and became rather hysterical at last, and called them our collection of lost Napoleons, though among them was not one of which we could say with conviction, "Behold, the Lost Napoleon!" This brought us to Bagnols, and we had a fear now that we were past the viewpoint--that somehow our search, or our imagination, had been in vain. But then came the great day. Up and up the Rhone, interested in so many things that at times we half forgot to watch the eastward hills, passing village after village, castle after castle, but never the "jumble of houses" and the castle that commanded the vision of the great chief lying asleep along the eastern horizon. I have not mentioned, I think, that at the beginning of most French villages there is a signboard, the advertisement of a firm of auto-stockists, with the name of the place, and the polite request to "_Ralentir_"--that is, to "go slow." At the other end of the village is another such a sign, and on the reverse you read, as you pass out, "_Merci_"--which is to say, "Thanks," for going slowly; so whichever way you come you get information, advice, and politeness from these boards, a feature truly French. Well, it was a little way above the château which I did not rent, and we were driving along slowly, thinking of nothing at all, entering an unimportant-looking place, when Narcissa, who always sees everything, suddenly uttered the magical word "Beauchastel!" [Illustration: MARK TWAIN'S "LOST NAPOLEON" "THE COLOSSAL SLEEPING FIGURE IN ITS SUPREME REPOSE"] It was like an electric shock--the soul-stirring shock which Mark Twain had received at the instant of his great discovery. Beauchastel! Not a figment, then, but a reality--the veritable jumble of houses we had been seeking, and had well-nigh given up as a myth. Just there the houses interfered with our view, but a hundred yards farther along a vista opened to the horizon, and there at last, in all its mightiness and dignity and grandeur, lay the Lost Napoleon! It is not likely that any other natural figure in stone ever gave two such sudden and splendid thrills of triumph, first, to its discoverer, and, twenty-two years later, almost to the day, to those who had discovered it again. There was no question this time. The colossal sleeping figure in its supreme repose confuted every doubt, resting where it had rested for a million years, and would still rest for a million more. At first we spoke our joy eagerly, then fell into silence, looking and looking, loath to go, for fear it would change. At every opening we halted to look again, and always with gratification, for it did not change, or so gradually that for miles it traveled with us, and still at evening, when we were nearing Valence, there remained a great stone face on the horizon. FOOTNOTES: [8] At Mark Twain's death his various literary effects passed into the hands of his biographer, the present writer. Chapter XIII THE HOUSE OF HEADS I ought to say, I suppose, that we were no longer in Provence. Even at Avignon we were in Venaissin, according to present geography, and when we crossed the Rhone we passed into Languedoc. Now, at Valence, we were in Dauphiné, of which Valence is the "chief-lieu," meaning, I take it, the official headquarters. I do not think these are the old divisions at all, and in any case it all has been "the Midi," which to us is the Provence, the vineland, songland, and storyland of a nation where vine and song and story flourish everywhere so lavishly that strangers come, never to bring, but only to carry away. At Valence, however, romance hesitates on the outskirts. The light of other days grows dim in its newer electric glow. Old castles surmount the hilltops, but one needs a field glass to see them. The city itself is modern and busy, prosperous in its manufacture of iron, silk, macaroni, and certain very good liquors. I believe the chief attraction of Valence is the "House of the Heads." Our guidebook has a picture which shows Napoleon Bonaparte standing at the entrance, making his adieus to Montalivet, who, in a later day, was to become his minister. Napoleon had completed his military education in the artillery school of Valence, and at the moment was setting out to fulfill his dream of conquest. It is rather curious, when you think of it, that the great natural stone portrait already described should be such a little distance away. To go back to the House of the Heads: Our book made only the briefest mention of its construction, and told nothing at all of its traditions. We stood in front of it, gazing in the dim evening light at the crumbling carved faces of its façade, peering through into its ancient court where there are now apartments to let, wondering as to its history. One goes raking about in the dusty places of his memory at such moments; returning suddenly from an excursion of that sort, I said I recalled the story of a house of carved heads--something I had heard, or read, long ago--and that this must be the identical house concerning which the story had been told. It was like this: There was a wealthy old bachelor of ancient days who had spent his life in collecting rare treasures of art; pictures, tapestries, choice metal-work, arms--everything that was beautiful and rare; his home was a storehouse of priceless things. He lived among them, attended only by a single servant--the old woman who had been his nurse--a plain, masculine creature, large of frame, still strong and brawny, stout of heart and of steadfast loyalty. When the master was away gathering new treasures she slept in the room where the arms were kept, with a short, sharp, two-edged museum piece by her couch, and without fear. One morning he told her of a journey he was about to take, and said: "I hesitate to leave you here alone. You are no longer young." But she answered: "Only by the count of years, not by the measure of strength or vigilance. I am not afraid." So he left her, to return on the third day. But on the evening of the second day, when the old servant went down to the lower basement for fuel--silently, in her softly slippered feet--she heard low voices at a small window that opened to the court. She crept over to it and found that a portion of the sash had been removed; listening, she learned that a group of men outside in the dusk were planning to enter and rob the house. They were to wait until she was asleep, then creep in through the window, make their way upstairs, kill her, and carry off the treasures. It seemed a good plan, but as the old servant listened she formed a better one. She crept back upstairs, not to lock herself in and stand a siege, but to get her weapon, the short, heavy sword with its two razor edges. Then she came back and sat down to wait. While she was waiting she entertained herself by listening to their plans and taking a little quiet muscle exercise. By and by she heard them say that the old hag would surely be asleep by this time. The "old hag" smiled grimly and got ready. A man put his head in. It was pitch dark inside, but just enough light came in from the stars for her to see where to strike. When half his body was through she made a clean slicing swing of the heavy sword and the robber's head dropped on a little feather bed which she had thoughtfully provided. The old woman seized the shoulders and firmly drew the rest of the man inside. Another head came in, slowly, the shoulders following. With another swing of the sword they had parted company, and the grim avenging hands were silently dragging in the remnant. Another head and shoulders followed, another, and another, until six heads and bodies were stacked about the executioner and there was blood enough to swim in. The seventh robber did not appear immediately; something about the silence within made him reluctant. He was suspicious, he did not know of what. He put his head to the opening and whispered, asking if everything was all right. The old woman was no longer calm. The violent exercise and intense interest in her occupation had unnerved her. She was afraid she could not control her voice to answer, and that he would get away. She made a supreme effort and whispered, "Yes, all right." So he put in his head--very slowly--hesitated, and started to withdraw. The old woman, however, did not hesitate. She seized him by the hair, brought the sword down with a fierce one-hand swing, and the treasures of this world troubled him no more. Then the old servant went crazy. Returning next morning, her master found her covered with blood, brandishing her sword, and repeating over and over, "Seven heads, and all mine," and at sight of him lost consciousness. She recovered far enough to tell her story, then, presently, died. But in her honor the master rebuilt the front of his dwelling and had carved upon it the heads of the men she had so promptly and justly punished. Now, I said, this must be the very house, and we regarded it with awe and tried to locate the little cellar window where the execution had taken place. It was well enough in the evening dimness, but in the morning when we went around there again I privately began to have doubts as to the legend's authenticity, at least so far as this particular house was concerned. The heads, by daylight, did not look like the heads of house breakers--not any house breakers of my acquaintance--and I later consulted a guidebook which attached to them the names of Homer, Hippocrates, Aristotle, Pythagoras, etc., and I don't think those were the names of the parties concerned in this particular affair. It's very hard to give up a good and otherwise perfectly fitting legend, but one must either do that or change the guidebook. Ah, well, it isn't the first sacrifice I've had to make for the sake of history. Valence has been always a place of culture and educational activity. It was capital of Segalauni before the Romans came, and there was a celebrated school there, even then. This information also came from the guidebook, and it surprised me. It was the first time I had heard that the Segalaunians had a school prior to the Roman conquest. It was also the first time I had heard of the Segalaunians. I thought they were all Gauls and Goths and Vandals up that way, and that their education consisted in learning how to throw a spear convincingly, or to divert one with a rawhide buckler. Now I discovered they had a college before the Romans conquered them. One can hardly blame them for descending upon those Romans later, with fire and sword. Valence shared the usual fate. It was ravished by the so-called barbarians, and later hacked to pieces by Christian kings. To-day again it is a fair city, with parks, wide boulevards, and imposing monuments. Chapter XIV INTO THE HILLS Turning eastward from Valence, we headed directly for the mountains and entered a land with all the wealth of increase we had found in Provence, and with even more of picturesqueness. The road was still perfect--hard and straight, with an upward incline, but with a grade so gradual and perfect as to be barely noticeable. Indeed, there were times when we seemed actually to be descending, even when the evidence of gravity told us that we were climbing; that is to say, we met water coming toward us--water flowing by the roadside--and more than once Narcissa and I agreed that the said water was running uphill, which was not likely--not in France. Of course, in England, where they turn to the left, it might be expected. The village did not seem quite like those along the Rhone. The streets were as narrow, the people as mildly interested in us, but, on the whole, we thought the general aspect was less ancient, possibly less clean. But they were interesting. Once we saw a man beating a drum, stopping on every corner to collect a little crowd and read some sort of proclamation, and once by the roadside we met a little negro child in a straw hat and a bright dress, a very bit of the American South. Everywhere were pretty gardens, along the walls gay flowers, and always the valleys were rich in orchard and vineyard, plumed with tall poplars, divided by bright rivers, and glorified with hazy September sunlight. We grew friendly with the mountains in the course of the afternoon, then intimate. They sprang up before us and behind us; just across the valleys they towered into the sky. Indeed, we suddenly had a most dramatic proof that we were climbing one. We had been shut in by wooded roads and sheltered farmsteads for an hour or two when we came out again into the open valley, with the river flowing through. But we were no longer _in_ the valley! Surprise of surprises! we were on a narrow, lofty road hundreds of feet above it, skirting the mountainside! It seemed incredible that our gradual, almost imperceptible, ascent had brought us to that high perch, overlooking this marvelous Vale of Cashmere. Everyone has two countries, it is said; his own and France. One could understand that saying here, and why the French are not an emigrating race. We stopped to gaze our fill, and as we went along, the scenery attracted my attention so much that more than once I nearly drove off into it. We were so engrossed by the picture that we took the wrong road and went at least ten miles out of our way to get to Grenoble. But it did not matter; we saw startlingly steep mountainsides that otherwise we might not have seen, and dashing streams, and at the end we had a wild and glorious coast of five or six miles from our mountain fastness down into the valley of the Isère, a regular toboggan streak, both horns going, nerves taut, teeth set, probable disaster waiting at every turn. We had never done such a thing before, and promised ourselves not to do it again. One such thrill was worth while, perhaps, but the ordinary lifetime might not outlast another. Down in that evening valley we were in a wonderland. Granite walls rose perpendicularly on our left; cottages nestled in gardens at our right--bloom, foliage, fragrance, the flowing Isère. Surely this was the happy valley, the land of peace and plenty, shut in by these lofty heights from all the troubling of the world. Even the towers and spires of a city that presently began to rise ahead of us did not disturb us. In the evening light they were not real, and when we had entered the gates of ancient Gratianopolis, and crossed the Isère by one of its several bridges, it seemed that this modern Grenoble was not quite a city of the eager world. The hotel we selected from the red-book was on the outskirts, and we had to draw pretty heavily on our French to find it; but it was worth while, for it was set in a wide garden, and from every window commanded the Alps. We realized now that they _were_ the Alps, the Alps of the Savoy, their high green slopes so near that we could hear the tinkle of the goat bells. We did not take the long drive through the "impossibly beautiful" valleys of Grenoble which we had planned for next morning. When we arose the air was no longer full of stillness and sunlight. In fact, it was beginning to rain. So we stayed in, and by and by for luncheon had all the good French things, ending with fresh strawberries, great bowls of them--in September--and apparently no novelty in this happy valley of the Isère. All the afternoon, too, it rained, and some noisy French youngsters raced up and down the lower rooms and halls, producing a homelike atmosphere, while we gathered about the tables to study the French papers and magazines. It was among the advertisements that I made some discoveries about French automobiles. They are more expensive than ours, in proportion to the horsepower, the latter being usually low. About twelve to fifteen horsepower seems to be the strength of the ordinary five-passenger machine. Our own thirty-horsepower engine, which we thought rather light at home, is a giant by comparison. Heavy engines are not needed in France. The smooth roads and perfectly graded hills require not half the power that we must expend on some of our rough, tough, rocky, and steep highways. Again, these lighter engines and cars take less gasoline, certainly, and that is a big item, where gasoline costs at least 100 per cent more than in America. I suppose the lightest weight car consistent with strength and comfort would be the thing to take to Europe. There would be a saving in the gasoline bill; and then the customs deposit, which is figured on the weight, would not be so likely to cripple the owner's bank account. Chapter XV UP THE ISÈRE Sometime in the night the rain ceased, and by morning Nature had prepared a surprise for us. The air was crystal clear, and towering into the sky were peaks no longer blue or green or gray, but white with drifted snow! We were in warm, mellow September down in our valley, but just up there--such a little way it seemed--were the drifts of winter. With our glass we could bring them almost within snowballing distance. Feathery clouds drifted among the peaks, the sun shooting through. It was all new to us, and startling. These really were the Alps; there was no further question. "Few French cities have a finer location than Grenoble," says the guidebook, and if I also have not conveyed this impression I have meant to do so. Not many cities in the world, I imagine, are more picturesquely located. It is also a large city, with a population of more than seventy-five thousand--a city of culture, and it has been important since the beginning of recorded history. Gratian was its patron Roman emperor, and the name Gratianopolis, assumed in his honor, has become the Grenoble of to-day. Gratian lived back in the fourth century and was a capable sort of an emperor, but he had one weak point. He liked to array himself in outlandish garb and show off. It is a weakness common to many persons, and seems harmless enough, but it was not a healthy thing for Gratian, who did it once too often. He came out one day habited like a Scythian warrior and capered up and down in front of his army. He expected admiration, and probably the title of Scythianus, or something. But the unexpected happened. The army jeered at his antics, and eventually assassinated him. Scythian costumes for emperors are still out of style. We may pass over the riot and ruin of the Middle Ages. All these towns were alike in that respect. The story of one, with slight alterations, fits them all. Grenoble was the first town to open its gates to Napoleon, on his return from Elba, in 1815, which gives it a kind of distinction in more recent times. Another individual feature is its floods. The Isère occasionally fills its beautiful valley, and fifteen times during the past three centuries Grenoble has been almost swept away. There has been no flood for a long period now, and another is about due. Prudent citizens of Grenoble keep a boat tied in the back yard instead of a dog. We did not linger in Grenoble. The tomb of Bayard--_sans peur, sans reproche_--is there, in the church of St. André; but we did not learn of this until later. The great sight at Grenoble is its environment--the superlative beauty of its approaches, and its setting--all of which we had seen in the glory of a September afternoon. There were two roads to Chambéry, one by the Isère, and another through the mountains by way of Chartreuse which had its attractions. I always wanted to get some of the ancient nectar at its fountainhead, and the road was put down as "picturesque." But the rains had made the hills slippery; a skidding automobile and old Chartreuse in two colors did not seem a safe combination for a family car. So we took the river route, and I am glad now, for it began raining soon after we started, and we might not have found any comfortable ruined castle to shelter us if we had taken to the woods and hills. As it was, we drove into a great arched entrance, where we were safe and dry, and quite indifferent as to what happened next. We explored the place, and were rather puzzled. It was unlike other castles we have seen. Perhaps it had not been a castle at all, but an immense granary, or brewery, or an ancient fortress. In any case, it was old and massive, and its high main arch afforded us a fine protection. The shower passed, the sun came out, and sent us on our way. The road was wet, but hard, and not steep. It was a neighborly road, curiously intimate with the wayside life, its domestic geography and economies; there were places where we seemed to be actually in front dooryards. The weather was not settled; now and then there came a sprinkle, but with our top up we did not mind. It being rather wet for picnicking, we decided that we would lunch at some wayside inn. None appeared, however, and when we came to think about it, we could not remember having anywhere passed such an inn. There were plenty of cafés where one could obtain wines and other beverages, but no food. In England and New England there are plenty of hostelries along the main roads, but evidently not in France. One must depend on the towns. So we stopped at Challes-les-Eaux, a little way out of Chambéry, a pretty place, where we might have stayed longer if the September days had not been getting few. Later, at Chambéry, we visited the thirteenth-century château of the Duc de Savoy, which has been rebuilt, and climbed the great square tower which is about all that is left of the original structure, a grand place in its time. We also went into the gothic chapel to see some handsomely carved wainscoting, with a ceiling to match. We were admiring it when the woman who was conducting us explained by signs and a combination of languages that, while the wainscoting was carved, the ceiling was only painted, in imitation. It was certainly marvelous if true, and she looked like an honest woman. But I don't know-- I wanted to get up there and feel it. She was, at any rate, a considerate woman. When I told her in the beginning that we had come to see the Duke of Savoy's old hat, meaning his old castle, she hardly smiled, though Narcissa went into hysterics. It was nothing--even a Frenchman might say "_chapeau_" when he meant "_château_" and, furthermore--but let it go--it isn't important enough to dwell upon. Anything will divert the young. Speaking of hats, I have not mentioned, I believe, the extra one that we carried in the car. It belonged to the head of the family and when we loaded it (the hat) at Marseilles it was a fresh and rather fluffy bit of finery. There did not seem to be any good place for it in the heavy baggage, shipped by freight to Switzerland, and decidedly none in the service bags strapped to the running-board. Besides, its owner said she might want to wear it on the way. There was plenty of space for an extra hat in our roomy car, we said, and there did seem to be when we loaded it in, all neatly done up in a trim package. But it is curious how things jostle about and lose their identity. I never seemed to be able to remember what was in that particular package, and was always mistaking it for other things. When luncheon time came I invariably seized it, expecting some pleasant surprise, only to untie an appetizing, but indigestible, hat. The wrapping began to have a travel-worn look, the package seemed to lose bulk. When we lost the string, at last, we found that we could tie it with a much shorter one; when we lost that, we gave the paper a twist at the ends, which was seldom permanent, especially when violently disturbed. Not a soul in the car that did not at one time or another, feeling something bunchy, give it a kick, only to expose our surplus hat, which always had a helpless, unhappy look that invited pity. No concealment insured safety. Once the Joy was found to have her feet on it. At another time the owner herself was sitting on it. We seldom took it in at night, but once when we did we forgot it, and drove back seven miles to recover. I don't know what finally became of it. Chapter XVI INTO THE HAUTE-SAVOIE It is a rare and beautiful drive to Aix-les-Bains, and it takes one by Lake Bourget, the shimmering bit of blue water from which Mark Twain set out on his Rhone trip. We got into a street market the moment of our arrival in Aix, a solid swarm of dickering people. In my excitement I let the engine stall, and it seemed we would never get through. Aix did not much interest us, and we pushed on to Annecy with no unnecessary delay, and from Annecy to Thones, a comfortable day's run, including, as it did, a drive about beautiful ancient Annecy, chief city of the Haute-Savoie. We might have stayed longer at Annecy, but the weather had an unsettled look, and there came the feeling that storms and winter were gathering in the mountains and we would better be getting along somewhere else. Also a woman backed her donkey cart into us at Annecy and put another dent in our mudguard, which was somehow discouraging. As it was, we saw the lake, said to be the most beautiful in France, though no more beautiful, I think, than Bourget; an ancient château, now transformed into barracks; the old prison built out in the river; the narrow, ancient streets; and a house with a tablet that states that Jean-Jacques Rousseau lived there in 1729, and there developed his taste for music. The Haute-Savoie is that billowy corner of far-eastern France below Lake Geneva--a kind of neutral, no man's territory hemmed by the huge heights of Switzerland and Italy. Leaving Annecy, we followed a picturesque road through a wild, weird land, along gorges and awesome brinks, under a somber sky. At times we seemed to be on the back of the world; at others diving to its recesses. It was the kind of way that one might take to supernatural regions, and it was the kind of evening to start. Here and there on the slopes were flocks and herds, attended by grave-faced women, who were knitting as they slowly walked. They barely noticed us or their charges. They never sat down, but followed along, knitting, knitting, as though they were patterning the fates of men. Sometimes we met or passed a woman on the road, always knitting, like the others. It was uncanny. Probably for every human being there is somewhere among those dark mountains a weird woman, knitting the pattern of his life. That night at Thones, a forgotten hamlet, lost there in the Haute-Savoie, a storm broke, the wind tore about our little inn, the rain dashed fearsomely, all of which was the work of those knitting women, beyond doubt. But the sun came up fresh and bright, and we took the road for Geneva. For a time it would be our last day in France. All the forenoon we were among the mountain peaks, skirting precipices that one did not care to look over without holding firmly to something. But there were no steep grades and the brinks were protected by solid little walls. At the bottom of a long slope a soldier stepped out of a box of a house and presented arms. I dodged, but his intent was not sanguinary. He wanted to see our papers--we were at the frontier--so I produced our customs receipts, called _triptyques_, our T. C. de F. membership card, our car license, our driving license, and was feeling in my pocket for yet other things when he protested, "_Pas nécessaire, pas nécessaire_" and handed all back but the French _triptyque_, which he took to his _bureau_, where, with two other military _attachés_, he examined, discussed, finally signed and witnessed it, and waved us on our way. So we were not passing the Swiss customs yet, but only leaving the French outpost. The ordeal of the Swiss _douane_ was still somewhere ahead; we had entered the neutral strip. We wished we might reach the Swiss post pretty soon and have the matter over with. We had visions of a fierce person looking us through, while he fired a volley of French questions, pulled our baggage to pieces, and weighed the car, only to find that the result did not tally with the figures on our triple-folded sheet. I had supplied most of those figures from memory, and I doubted their accuracy. I had heard that of all countries except Russia, Switzerland was about the most particular. So we went on and on through that lofty scenery, expecting almost anything at every turn. But nothing happened--nothing except that at one place the engine seemed to be running rather poorly. I thought at first that there was some obstruction in the gasoline tube, and my impulse was to light a match and look into the tank to see what it might be. On second thought I concluded to omit the match. I remembered reading of a man who had done that, and almost immediately his heirs had been obliged to get a new car. We passed villages, but no _douane_. Then all at once we were in the outskirts of a city. Why, this was surely Geneva, and as we were driving leisurely along a fat little man in uniform came out and lifted his hand. We stopped. Here it was, then, at last. For a moment I felt a slight attack of weakness, not in the heart, but about the knees. However, the little man seemed friendly. He held out his hand and I shook it cordially. But it was the papers he was after, our Swiss _triptyque_. I said to myself, "A minute more and we probably shall be on the scales, and the next in trouble." But he only said, "_Numero de moteur._" I jerked open the hood, scrubbed off the grease, and showed it to him. He compared it, smiled, and handed back our paper. Then he waved me to a _bureau_ across the street. Now it was coming; he had doubtless discovered something wrong at a glance. There was an efficient-looking, sinister-looking person in the office who took the _triptyque_, glanced at it, and threw something down before me. I thought it was a warrant, but it proved to be a copy of the Swiss law and driving regulations, with a fine road map of Switzerland, and all information needed by motorists; "Price, 2 Frs." stamped on the cover. I judged that I was required to buy this, but I should have done it, anyway. It was worth the money, and I wished to oblige that man. He accepted my two francs, and I began to feel better. Then he made a few entries in something, handed me my _triptyque_, said "_Bonjour, et bon voyage_," and I was done. I could hardly believe it. I saw then what a nice face he had, while the little fat man across the street was manifestly a lovely soul. He had demanded not a thing but the number of the motor. Not even the number of the car had interested him. As for the weight, the bore of the cylinders, the number of the chassis, and all those other statistics said to be required, they were as nonexistent to him as to me. Why, he had not even asked us to unstrap our baggage. It was with feelings akin to tenderness that we waved him good-by and glided across the imaginary line of his frontier into Switzerland. We glided very leisurely, however. "Everybody gets arrested in Switzerland"--every stranger, that is--for breaking the speed laws. This, at least, was our New York information. So we crept along, and I kept my eye on the speedometer all the way through Geneva, for we were not going to stop there at present, and when we had crossed our old friend, the Rhone, variously bridged here, skirted the gay water-front and were on the shore road of that loveliest of all lakes--Lake Léman, with its blue water, its snow-capped mountains, its terraced vineyards, we still loafed and watched the _gendarmes_ to see if they were timing us, and came almost to a stop whenever an official of any kind hove in sight. Also we used the mellow horn, for our book said that horns of the Klaxon type are not allowed in Switzerland. We were on soft pedal, you see, and some of the cars we met were equally subdued. But we observed others that were not--cars that were just bowling along in the old-fashioned way, and when these passed us, we were surprised to find that they were not ignorant, strange cars, but Swiss cars, or at least cars with Swiss number-plates and familiar with the dangers. As for the whistles, they were honking and snorting and screeching just as if they were in Connecticut, where there is no known law that forbids anything except fishing on Sunday. Indeed, one of the most sudden and violent horns I have ever heard overtook us just then, and I nearly jumped over the windshield when it abruptly opened on me from behind. "Good G--, that is, goodness!" I said, "this is just like France!" and I let out a few knots and tooted the Klaxonette, and was doing finely when suddenly a mounted policeman appeared on the curve ahead. I could feel myself scrouging as we passed, going with great deliberation. He did not offer to molest me, but we did not hurry again--not right away. Not that we cared to hurry; the picture landscape we were in was worth all the time one could give it. Still, we were anxious to get to Lausanne before dusk, and little by little we saw and heard things which convinced us that "Everybody gets arrested in Switzerland" is a superstition, the explosion of which was about due. Fully half the people we met, _all_ that passed us, could properly have been arrested anywhere. By the time we reached Lausanne we should have been arrested ourselves. Chapter XVII SOME SWISS IMPRESSIONS Now, when one has reached Switzerland, his inclination is not to go on traveling, for a time at least, but to linger and enjoy certain advantages. First, of course, there is the scenery; the lakes, the terraced hills, and the snow-capped mountains; the châteaux, chalets, and mossy villages; the old inns and brand-new, heaven-climbing hotels. And then Switzerland is the land of the three F's--French, Food, and Freedom, all attractive things. For Switzerland is the model republic, without graft and without greed; its schools, whether public or private, enjoy the patronage of all civilized lands, and as to the matter of food, Switzerland is the _table d'hôte_ of the world. Swiss landlords are combined into a sort of trust, not, as would be the case elsewhere, to keep prices up, but to keep prices down! It is the result of wisdom, a far-seeing prudence which says: "Our scenery, our climate, our pure water--these are our stock in trade. Our profit from them is through the visitor. Wherefore we will encourage visitors with good food, attractive accommodations, courtesy; and we will be content with small profit from each, thus inviting a general, even if modest, prosperity; also, incidentally, the cheerfulness and good will of our patrons." It is a policy which calls for careful management, one that has made hotel-keeping in Switzerland an exact science--a gift, in fact, transmitted down the generations, a sort of magic; for nothing short of magic could supply a spotless room, steam heated, with windows opening upon the lake, and three meals--the evening meal a seven-course dinner of the first order--all for six francs fifty (one dollar and thirty cents) a day.[9] It is a policy which prevails in other directions. Not all things are cheap in Switzerland, but most things are--the things which one buys oftenest--woolen clothing and food. Cotton goods are not cheap, for Switzerland does not grow cotton, and there are a few other such items. Shoes are cheap enough, if one will wear the Swiss make, but few visitors like to view them on their own feet. They enjoy them most when they hear them clattering along on the feet of Swiss children, the wooden soles beating out a rhythmic measure that sounds like a coopers' chorus. Not all Swiss shoes have wooden soles, but the others do not gain grace by their absence. Swiss cigars are also cheap. I am not a purist in cigars, but at home I have smoked a good many and seldom with safety one that cost less than ten cents, straight. One pays ten centimes, or two cents, in Switzerland, and gets a mild, evenly burning article. I judge it is made of tobacco, though the head of the family suggested other things that she thought it smelled like. If she had smoked one of them, she would not have noticed this peculiarity any more. Wine is cheap, of course, for the hillsides are covered with vines; also, whisk--but I am wandering into economic statistics without really meaning to do so. They were the first things that impressed me. The next, I believe, was the lack of Swiss politics. Switzerland is a republic that runs with the exactness of a Swiss watch, its machinery as hermetically concealed. I had heard that the Swiss Republic sets the pattern of government for the world, and I was anxious to know something of its methods and personnel. I was sorry that I was so ignorant. I didn't even know the name of the Swiss President, and for a week was ashamed to confess it. I was hoping I might see it in one of the French papers I puzzled over every evening. But at the end of the week I timidly and apologetically inquired of our friendly landlord as to the name of the Swiss Chief Executive. But then came a shock. Our landlord grew confused, blushed, and confessed that he didn't know it, either! He had known it, he said, of course, but it had slipped his mind. Slipped his mind! Think of the name of Roosevelt, or Wilson, or Taft slipping the mind of anybody in America--and a landlord! I asked the man who sold me cigars. He had forgotten, too. I asked the apothecary, but got no information. I was not so timid after that. I asked a fellow passenger--guest, I mean, an American, but of long Swiss residence--and got this story. I believe most of it. He said: "When I came to Switzerland and found out what a wonderful little country it was, its government so economical, so free from party corruption and spoils, from graft and politics, so different from the home life of our own dear Columbia, I thought, 'The man at the head of this thing must be a master hand; I'll find out his name.' So I picked out a bright-looking subject, and said: "'What is the name of the Swiss President?' "He tried to pretend he didn't understand my French, but he did, for I can tear the language off all right--learned it studying art in Paris. When I pinned him down, he said he knew the name well enough, _parfaitement_, but couldn't think of it at that moment. "That was a surprise, but I asked the next man. He couldn't think of it, either. Then I asked a police officer. Of course he knew it, all right; '_oh oui, certainement, mais_'--then he scratched his head and scowled, but he couldn't dig up that name. He was just a plain prevaricator--_toute simplement_--like the others. I asked every man I met, and every one of them knew it, had it right on the end of his tongue; but somehow it seemed to stick there. Not a man in Vevey or Montreux could tell me the name of the Swiss President. It was the same in Fribourg, the same even in Berne, the capital. I had about given it up when one evening, there in Berne, I noticed a sturdy man with an honest face, approaching. He looked intelligent, too, and as a last resort I said: "'Could you, by any chance, tell me the name of the Swiss President?' "The effect was startling. He seized me by the arm and, after looking up and down the street, leaned forward and whispered in my ear: "_'Mon Dieu! c'est moi!_ _I_ am the Swiss President; but--ah _non_, don't tell anyone! I am the only man in Switzerland who knows it!' "You see," my friend continued, "he is elected privately, no torchlight campaigns, no scandal, and only for a year. He is only a sort of chairman, though of course his work is important, and the present able incumbent has been elected a number of times. His name is--is--is--ah yes, that's my tram. So sorry to have to hurry away. See you to-night at dinner." One sees a good many nationalities in Switzerland, and some of them I soon learned to distinguish. When I saw a man with a dinky Panama hat pulled down about his face, and wearing a big black mustache or beard, I knew he was a Frenchman. When I met a stout, red-faced man, with a pack on his back and with hobnailed shoes, short trousers, and a little felt hat with a feather stuck in it, I knew him for a German. When I noticed a very carefully dressed person, with correct costume and gaiters--also monocle, if perfect--saying, "Aw--Swiss people--so queah, don't you know," I was pretty sure he was an Englishman. When I remarked a tall, limber person, carrying a copy of the Paris _Herald_ and asking every other person he met, "Hey, there! Vooly voo mir please sagen--" all the rest incomprehensible, I knew him for an American of the deepest dye. The Swiss themselves have no such distinguishing mark. They are just sturdy, plainly dressed, unpretentious people, polite and friendly, with a look of capability, cleanliness, and honesty which invites confidence. An Englishwoman said to me: "I have heard that the Swiss are the best governed and the least intelligent people in the world." I reflected on this. It had a snappy sound, but it somehow did not seem to be firm at the joints. "The best governed and the least intelligent"--there was something drunken about it. I said: "It doesn't quite seem to fit. And how about the magnificent Swiss public-school system, and the manufacturing, and the national railway, with all the splendid engineering that goes with the building of the funiculars and tunnels? And the Swiss prosperity, and the medical practice, and the sciences? I always imagined those things were in some way connected with intelligence." "Oh, well," she said, "I suppose they do go with intelligence of a kind; but then, of course, you know what I mean." But I was somehow too dull for her epigram. It didn't seem to have any sense in it. She was a grass widow and I think she made it herself. Later she asked me whereabouts in America I came from. When I said Connecticut, she asked if Connecticut was as big as Lausanne. A woman like that ought to go out of the epigram business.[10] As a matter of fact, a good many foreigners are inclined to say rather peevish things about sturdy little, thriving little, happy little Switzerland. I rather suspect they are a bit jealous of the pocket-de-luxe nation that shelters them, and feeds them, and entertains them, and cures them, cheaper and better and kindlier than their home countries. They are willing to enjoy these advantages, but they acknowledge rather grudgingly that Switzerland, without a great standing army, a horde of grafters, or a regiment of tariff millionaires to support, can give lessons in national housekeeping to their own larger, more pretentious lands. I would not leave the impression, by the way, that the Swiss are invariably prosperous. Indeed, some of them along the lake must have been very poor just then, for the grape crop had failed two years in succession, and with many of them their vineyard is their all. But there was no outward destitution, no rags, no dirt, no begging. Whatever his privation, the Swiss does not wear his poverty on his sleeve. Switzerland has two other official languages besides French--German and Italian. Government documents, even the postal cards, are printed in these three languages. It would seem a small country for three well-developed tongues, besides all the canton dialects, some of which go back to the old Romanic, and are quite distinct from anything modern. The French, German, and Italian divisions are geographical, the lines of separation pretty distinct. There is rivalry among the cantons, a healthy rivalry, in matters of progress and education. The cantons are sufficiently a unit on all national questions, and together they form about as compact and sturdy a little nation as the world has yet seen--a nation the size and shape of an English walnut, and a hard nut for any would-be aggressor to crack. There are not many entrances into Switzerland, and they would be very well defended. The standing army is small, but every Swiss is subject to a call to arms, and is trained by enforced, though brief, service to their use. He seems by nature to be handy with a rifle, and never allows himself to be out of practice. There are regular practice meets every Sunday, and I am told the government supplies the cartridges. Boys organize little companies and regiments and this the government also encourages. It is said that Switzerland could put half a million soldiers in the field, and that every one would be a crack shot.[11] The German Kaiser, once reviewing the Swiss troops, remarked, casually, to a sub-officer, "You say you could muster half a million soldiers?" "Yes, Your Majesty." "And suppose I should send a million of my soldiers against you. What would you do then?" "We should fire two shots apiece, Your Majesty." [Illustration: MARCHÉ VEVEY "IN EACH TOWN THERE IS AN OPEN SQUARE, WHICH TWICE A WEEK IS PICTURESQUELY CROWDED"] In every Swiss town there are regular market days, important events where one may profitably observe the people. The sale of vegetables and flowers must support many families. In each town there is an open square, which twice a week is picturesquely crowded, and there one may buy everything to eat and many things to wear; also, the wherewith to improve the home, the garden, and even the mind; for besides the garden things there are stalls of second-hand books, hardware, furniture, and general knick-knacks. Flanking the streets are displays of ribbons, laces, hats, knitted things, and general dry-goods miscellany; also antiques, the scrapings of many a Swiss cupboard and corner. But it is in the open square itself that the greater market blooms--really blooms, for, in season, the vegetables are truly floral in their rich vigor, and among them are pots and bouquets of the posies that the Swiss, like all Europeans, so dearly love. Most of the flower and vegetable displays are down on the ground, arranged in baskets or on bits of paper, and form a succession of gay little gardens, ranged in long narrow avenues of color and movement, a picture of which we do not grow weary. Nor of the setting--the quaint tile-roofed buildings; the blue lake, with its sails and swans and throng of wheeling gulls; the green hills; the lofty snow-capped mountains that look down from every side. How many sights those ancient peaks have seen on this same square!--markets and military, battles and buffoonery. There are no battles to-day, but the Swiss cadets use it for a drill ground, and every little while lightsome shows and merry-go-rounds establish themselves in one end of it, and the little people skip about, and go riding around and around to the latest ragtime, while the mountains look down with their large complaisance, just as they watched the capering ancestors of these small people, ages and ages ago; just as they will watch their light-footed descendants for a million years, maybe. The market is not confined entirely to the square. On its greater days, when many loads of wood and hay crowd one side of it, it overflows into the streets. Around a floral fountain may be found butter, eggs, and cheese--oh, especially cheese, the cheese of Gruyère, with every size and pattern of holes, in any quantity, cut and weighed by a handsome apple-faced woman who seems the living embodiment of the cheese industry. I have heard it said--this was in America--that the one thing not to be obtained in Switzerland is Swiss cheese. The person who conceived that smartness belongs with the one who invented the "intelligence" epigram. On the market days before Christmas our square had a different look. The little displays were full of greenery, and in the center of the market place there had sprung up a forest of Christmas trees. They were not in heaps, lying flat; but each, mounted on a neat tripod stand, stood upright, as if planted there. They made a veritable Santa Claus forest, and the gayly dressed young people walking among them, looking and selecting, added to this pretty sight. The Swiss make much of Christmas. Their shop windows are overflowing with decorations and attractive things. Vevey is "Chocolate Town." Most of the great chocolate factories of Europe are there, and at all holiday seasons the grocery and confectionary windows bear special evidence of this industry. Chocolate Santa Clauses--very large--chickens, rabbits, and the like--life size; also trees, groups, set pieces, ornaments--the windows are wildernesses of the rich brown confection, all so skillfully modeled and arranged. The toy windows, too, are fascinating. You would know at once that you were looking into a Swiss toy window, from the variety of carved bears; also, from the toy châteaux--very fine and large, with walled courts, portcullises, and battlements--with which the little Swiss lad plays war. The dolls are different, too, and the toy books--all in French. But none of these things were as interesting as the children standing outside, pointing at them and discussing them--so easily, so glibly--in French. How little they guessed my envy of them--how gladly I would buy out that toy window for, say, seven dollars, and trade it to them for their glib unconsciousness of gender and number and case. On the afternoon before Christmas the bells began. From the high mountainsides, out of deep ravines that led back into the hinterland, came the ringing. The hills seemed full of bells--a sound that must go echoing from range to range, to the north and to the south, traveling across Europe with the afternoon. Then, on Christmas Day, the trees. In every home and school and hotel they sparkled. We attended four in the course of the day, one, a very gorgeous one in the lofty festooned hall of a truly grand hotel, with tea served and soft music stealing from some concealed place--a slow strain of the "Tannenbaum," which is like our "Maryland," only more beautiful--and seemed to come from a source celestial. And when one remembered that in every corner of Europe something of the kind was going on, and that it was all done in memory and in honor of One who, along dusty roadsides and in waste places, taught the doctrine of humility, one wondered if the world might not be worth saving, after all. FOOTNOTES: [9] In 1913-14. The rate to-day is somewhat higher. [10] I have thought since that she may have meant that the Swiss do not lead the world in the art and literary industries. She may have connected those things with intelligence--you never can tell. [11] When the call to arms came, August 1, 1914, Switzerland put 250,000 men on her frontier in twenty-four hours. Chapter XVIII THE LITTLE TOWN OF VEVEY It would seem to be the French cantons along the Lake of Geneva (or Léman) that most attract the deliberate traveler. The north shore of this lake is called the Swiss Riviera, for it has a short, mild winter, with quick access to the mountaintops. But perhaps it is the schools, the _pensionnats_, that hold the greater number. The whole shore of the Lake of Geneva is lined with them, and they are filled with young persons of all ages and nations, who are there mainly to learn French, though incidentally, through that lingual medium, other knowledge is acquired. Some, indeed, attend the fine public schools, where the drill is very thorough, even severe. Parents, as well as children, generally attend school in Switzerland--visiting parents, I mean. They undertake French, which is the thing to do, like mountain climbing and winter sports. Some buy books and seclude their struggles; others have private lessons; still others openly attend one of the grown-up language schools, or try to find board at French-speaking _pensions_. Their progress and efforts form the main topic of conversation. In a way it makes for a renewal of youth. We had rested at Vevey, that quiet, clean little picture-city, not so busy and big as Lausanne, or so grand and stylish as Montreux, but more peaceful than either, and, being more level, better adapted for motor headquarters. Off the main street at Montreux, the back or the front part of a car is always up in the air, and it has to be chained to the garage. We found a level garage in Vevey, and picked out _pensionnats_ for Narcissa and the Joy, and satisfactory quarters for ourselves. Though still warm and summer-like, it was already late autumn by the calendar, and not a time for long motor adventures. We would see what a Swiss winter was like. We would wrestle with the French idiom. We would spend the months face to face with the lake, the high-perched hotels and villages, the snow-capped, cloud-capped hills. Probably everybody has heard of Vevey, but perhaps there are still some who do not know it by heart, and will be glad of a word or two of details. Vevey has been a place of habitation for a long time. A wandering Asian tribe once came down that way, rested a hundred years or so along the Léman shore, then went drifting up the Rhone and across the Simplon to make trouble for Rome. But perhaps there was no Rome then; it was a long time ago, and it did not leave any dates, only a few bronze implements and trifles to show the track of the storm. The Helvetians came then, sturdy and warlike, and then the Romans, who may have preserved traditions of the pleasant land from that first wandering tribe. Cæsar came marching down the Rhone and along this waterside, and his followers camped in the Vevey neighborhood a good while--about four centuries, some say. Certain rich Romans built their summer villas in Switzerland, and the lake shore must have had its share. But if there were any at Vevey, there is no very positive trace of them now. In the depths of the Castle of Chillon, they show you Roman construction in the foundations, but that may have been a fortress. I am forgetting, however. One day, when we had been there a month or two, and were clawing up the steep hill--Mount Pelerin--that rises back of the hotel to yet other hotels, and to compact little villages, we strayed into a tiny lane just below Chardonne, and came to a stone watering trough, or fountain, under an enormous tree. Such troughs, with their clear, flowing water, are plentiful enough, but this one had a feature all its own. The stone upright which held the flowing spout had not been designed for that special purpose. It was, in fact, the upper part of a small column, capital and all, very old and mended, and _distinctly of Roman design_. I do not know where it came from, and I do not care to inquire too deeply, for I like to think it is a fragment of one of those villas that overlooked the Lake of Geneva long ago. There are villas enough about the lake to-day, and châteaux by the dozen, most of the latter begun in the truculent Middle Ages and continued through the centuries down to within a hundred years or so ago. You cannot walk or drive in any direction without coming to them, some in ruins, but most of them well preserved or carefully restored, and habitable; some, like beautiful Blonay, holding descendants of their ancient owners. From the top of our hotel, with a glass, one could pick out as many as half a dozen, possibly twice that number. They were just towers of defense originally, the wings and other architectural excursions being added as peace and prosperity and family life increased. One very old and handsome one, la Tour de Peilz, now gives its name to a part of Vevey, though in the old days it is said that venomous little wars used to rage between Vevey proper and the village which clustered about the château de Peilz. Readers of _Little Women_ will remember la Tour de Peilz, for it was along its lake wall that Laurie proposed to Amy. But a little way down the lake there is a more celebrated château than la Tour de Peilz; the château of Chillon, which Byron's poem of the prisoner Bonivard has made familiar for a hundred years.[12] Chillon, which stands not exactly on the lake, but on a rock _in_ the lake, has not preserved the beginning of its history. Those men of the bronze age camped there, and, if the evidences shown are genuine, the Romans built a part of the foundation. Also, in one of its lower recesses there are the remains of a rude altar of sacrifice. It is a fascinating place. You cross a little drawbridge, and through a heavy gateway enter a guardroom and pass to a pretty open court, where to-day there are vines and blooming flowers. Then you descend to the big barrack room, a hall of ponderous masonry, pass through a small room, with its perfectly black cell below for the condemned, through another, where a high gibbet-beam still remains, and into a spacious corridor of pillars called now the "Prison of Bonivard." There are seven pillars of gothic mold In Chillon's dungeons deep and old;... Dim with a dull imprisoned ray, A sunbeam which has lost its way ... And in each pillar there is a ring And in each ring there is a chain. That iron is a cankering thing, For in these limbs its teeth remain.... Bonivard's ring is still there, and the rings of his two brothers who were chained, one on each side of him; chained, as he tells us, so rigidly that We could not move a single pace; We could not see each other's face. We happened to be there, once, when a sunbeam that "had lost its way" came straying in, a larger sunbeam now, for the narrow slits that serve for windows were even narrower in Bonivard's time, and the place, light enough to-day in pleasant weather, was then somber, damp, and probably unclean. Bonivard was a Geneva patriot, a political prisoner of the Duke of Savoy, who used Chillon as his château. Bonivard lived six years in Chillon, most of the time chained to a column, barely able to move, having for recreation shrieks from the torture chamber above, or the bustle of execution from the small adjoining cell. How he lived, how his reason survived, are things not to be understood. Both his brothers died, and at last Bonivard was allowed more liberty. The poem tells us that he made a footing in the wall, and climbed up to look out on the mountains and blue water, and a little island of three trees, and the "white-walled distant town"--Bouveret, across the lake. He was delivered by the Bernese in 1536, regaining his freedom with a sigh, according to the poem. Yet he survived many years, dying in 1570, at the age of seventy-four. On the columns in Bonivard's dungeon many names are carved, some of them the greatest in modern literary history. Byron's is there, Victor Hugo's, Shelley's, and others of the sort. They are a tribute to the place and its history, of course, but even more to Bonivard--the Bonivard of Byron. Prisoners of many kinds have lived and died in the dungeons of Chillon--heretics, witches, traitors, poor relations--persons inconvenient for one reason or another--it was a vanishing point for the duke's undesirables, who, after the execution, were weighted and dropped out a little door that opens directly to an almost measureless depth of blue uncomplaining water. Right overhead is the torture chamber, with something ghastly in its very shape and color, the central post still bearing marks of burning-irons and clawing steel. Next to this chamber is the hall of justice, and then the splendid banquet hall; everything handy, you see, so that when the duke had friends, and the wine had been good, and he was feeling particularly well, he could say, "Let's go in and torture a witch"; or, if the hour was late and time limited, "Now we'll just step down and hang a heretic to go to bed on." The duke's bedroom, by the way, was right over the torture chamber. I would give something for that man's conscience. One might go on for pages about Chillon, but it has been told in detail so many times. It is the pride to-day of this shore--pictures of it are in every window--postal cards of it abound. Yet, somehow one never grows tired of it, and stops to look at every new one. For a thousand years, at least, Chillon was the scene of all the phases of feudalism and chivalry; its history is that of the typical castle; architecturally it is probably as good an example as there is in Switzerland. It has been celebrated by other authors besides Byron. Jean Jacques Rousseau has it in his _Nouvelle Héloïse_, Hugo in _Le Rhin_, and it has been pictured more or less by most of the writing people who have found their way to Léman's pleasant shore. These have been legion. The Vevey and Montreux neighborhood has been always a place for poor but honest authors. Rousseau was at Vevey in 1732, and lodged at the Hotel of the Key, and wrote of it in his _Confessions_, though he would seem to have behaved very well there. The building still stands, and bears a tablet with a medallion portrait of Rousseau and an extract in which he says that Vevey has won his heart. In his _Confessions_ he advises all persons of taste to go to Vevey, and speaks of the beauty and majesty of the spectacle from its shore. When Lord Byron visited Lake Léman he lodged in Clarens, between Vevey and Montreux, and a tablet now identifies the house. Voltaire also visited here, lodging unknown. Dumas the elder was in Vevey in the thirties of the last century, and wrote a book about Switzerland--a book of extraordinary interest, full of duels, earthquakes, and other startling things, worthy of the author of _Monte Cristo_ and _The Three Musketeers_. Switzerland was not so closely reported in those days; an imagination like Dumas' had more range. Thackeray wrote a portion of the _Newcomes_ at the hotel Trois Couronnes in Vevey, and it was on the wide terrace of the same gay hostelry that Henry James's _Daisy Miller_ had her parasol scene. We have already mentioned Laurie and Amy on the wall of Tour de Peilz, and one might go on citing literary associations of this neighborhood. Perhaps it would be easier to say that about every author who has visited the continent has paused for a little time at Vevey, a statement which would apply to travelers in general. Vevey is not a great city; it is only a picturesque city, with curious, winding streets of constantly varying widths, and irregular little open spaces, all very clean, also very misleading when one wishes to go anywhere with direction and dispatch. You give that up, presently. You do not try to save time by cutting through. When you do, you arrive in some new little rectangle or confluence, with a floral fountain in the middle, and neat little streets winding away to nowhere in particular; then all at once you are back where you started. In this, as in some other points of resemblance, Vevey might be called the Boston of Switzerland. Not that I pretend to a familiarity with Boston--nobody has that--but I have an aunt who lives there, and every time I go to see her I am obliged to start in a different direction for her house, though she claims to have been living in the same place for thirty years. Some people think Boston is built on a turn-table. I don't know; it sounds reasonable. To come back to Vevey--it is growing--not in the wild, woolly, New York, Chicago, and Western way, but in a very definite and substantial way. They are building new houses for business and residence, solid structures of stone and cement, built, like the old ones, to withstand time. They do not build flimsy fire-traps in Switzerland. Whatever the class of the building, the roofs are tile, the staircases are stone. We always seem to court destruction in our American residential architecture. We cover our roofs with inflammable shingles to invite every spark, and build our stairways of nice dry pine, so that in the event of fire they will be the first thing to go. This encourages practice in jumping out of top-story windows. By day Vevey is a busy, prosperous-looking, though unhurried, place, its water-front gay with visitors; evening comes and glorifies the lake into wine, turns to rose the snow on _Grammont_, the _Dents de Midi_, and the _Dents de Morcles_. As to the sunset itself, not many try to paint it any more. Once, from our little balcony we saw a monoplane pass up the lake and float into the crimson west, like a great moth or bird. Night in Vevey is full of light and movement, but not of noise. There is no wild clatter of voices and outbursts of nothing in particular, such as characterize the towns of Italy and southern France. On the hilltops back of Vevey the big hotels are lighted, and sometimes, following the dimmer streets, we looked up to what is apparently a city in the sky, suggesting one's old idea of the New Jerusalem, a kind of vision of heaven, as it were--heaven at night, I mean. FOOTNOTES: [12] Written at the Anchor Inn, Ouchy, Lausanne, in 1817. Chapter XIX MASHING A MUD GUARD One does not motor a great deal in the immediate vicinity of Vevey; the hills are not far enough away for that. One may make short trips to Blonay, and even up Pelerin, if he is fond of stiff climbing, and there are wandering little roads that thread cozy orchard lands and lead to secluded villages tucked away in what seem forgotten corners of a bygone time. But the highway skirts the lake-front and leads straight away toward Geneva, or up the Rhone Valley past Martigny toward the Simplon Pass. It has always been a road, and in its time has been followed by some of the greatest armies the world has ever seen--the troops of Cæsar, of Charlemagne, of Napoleon. We were not to be without our own experience in motor mountain climbing. We did not want it or invite it; it was thrust upon us. We were returning from Martigny late one Sunday afternoon, expecting to reach Vevey for dinner. It was pleasant and we did not hurry. We could not, in fact, for below Villeneuve we fell in with the homing cows, and traveled with attending herds--beside us, before us, behind us--fat, sleek, handsome animals, an escort which did not permit of haste. Perhaps it was avoiding them that caused our mistake; at any rate, we began to realize presently that we were not on our old road. Still, we seemed headed in the right direction and we kept on. Then presently we were climbing a hill--climbing by a narrow road, one that did not permit of turning around. Very well, we said, it could not be very high or steep; we would go over the hill. But that was a wrong estimate. The hill was high and it was steep. Up and up and up on second speed, then back to first, until we were getting on a level with the clouds themselves. It was a good road of its kind, but it had no end. The water was boiling in the radiator--boiling over. We must stop to reduce temperature a little and to make inquiries. It was getting late--far too late to attempt an ascension of the Alps. We were on a sort of bend, and there was a peasant chalet a few rods ahead. I went up there, and from a little old woman in short skirts got a tub of cool water, also some information. The water cooled off our engine, and the information our enthusiasm for further travel in that direction. We were on the road to Château d'Oex, a hilltop resort for winter sports. We were not in a good place to turn around, there on the edge of a semi-precipice, but we managed to do it, and started back. It was a steep descent. I cut off the spark and put the engine on low speed, which made it serve as a brake, but it required the foot and emergency brake besides. It would have been a poor place to let the car get away. Then I began to worry for fear the hind wheels were sliding, which would quickly cut through the tires. I don't know why I thought I could see them, for mud guards make that quite impossible. Nevertheless I leaned out and looked back. It was a poor place to do that, too. We were hugging a wall as it was, and one does not steer well looking backward. In five seconds we gouged into the wall, and the front guard on that side crumpled up like a piece of tinfoil. I had to get out and pull and haul it before there was room for the wheel to turn. I never felt so in disgrace in my life. I couldn't look at anything but the disfigured guard all the way down the mountain. The passengers were sorry and tried to say comforting things, but that guard was fairly shrieking its reproach. What a thing to go home with! I felt that I could never live it down. Happily it was dark by the time we found the right road and were drawing into Montreux--dark and raining. I was glad it was dark, but the rain did not help, and I should have been happier if the streets had not been full of dodging pedestrians and vehicles and blinding lights. The streets of Montreux are narrow enough at best, and what with a busy tram and all the rest of the medley, driving, for a man already in disgrace, was not real recreation. A railway train passed us just below, and I envied the engineer his clear right of way and fenced track, and decided that his job was an easy one by comparison. One used to hear a good deal about the dangers of engine driving, and no doubt an engineer would be glad to turn to the right or left now and then when meeting a train head on--a thing, however, not likely to happen often, though I suppose once is about enough. All the same, a straight, fenced and more or less exclusive track has advantages, and I wished I had one, plunging, weaving, diving through the rain as we were, among pedestrians, cyclists, trams, carriages, other motors, and the like; misled by the cross lights from the shops, dazzled by oncoming headlights, blinded by rain splashing in one's face. It is no great distance from Montreux to Vevey, but in that night it seemed interminable. And what a relief at last were Vevey's quiet streets, what a path of peace the semi-private road to the hotel, what a haven of bliss the seclusion of the solid little garage! Next morning before anybody was astir I got the car with that maltreated mud guard to the shop. It was an awful-looking thing. It had a real expression. It looked as if it were going to cry. I told the repair man that the roads had been wet and the car had skidded into a wall. He did not care how it happened, of course, but I did; besides, it was easier to explain it that way in French. It took a week to repair the guard. I suppose they had to straighten it out with a steam roller. I don't know, but it looked new and fine when it came back, and I felt better. The bill was sixteen francs. I never got so much disgrace before at such a reasonable figure. Chapter XX JUST FRENCH--THAT'S ALL Perhaps one should report progress in learning French. Of course Narcissa and the Joy were chattering it in a little while. That is the way of childhood. It gives no serious consideration to a great matter like that, but just lightly accepts it like a new game or toy and plays with it about as readily. It is quite different with a thoughtful person of years and experience. In such case there is need of system and strategy. I selected different points of assault and began the attack from all of them at once--private lessons; public practice; daily grammar, writing and reading in seclusion; readings aloud by persons of patience and pronunciation. I hear of persons picking up a language--grown persons, I mean--but if there are such persons they are not of my species. The only sort of picking up I do is the kind that goes with a shovel. I am obliged to excavate a language--to loosen up its materials, then hoist them with a derrick. My progress is geological and unhurried. Still, I made progress, of a kind, and after putting in five hours a day for a period of months I began to have a sense of results. I began to realize that even in a rapid-fire conversation the sounds were not all exactly alike, and to distinguish scraps of meaning in conversations not aimed directly at me, with hard and painful distinctness. I began even to catch things from persons passing on the street--to distinguish French from patois--that is to say, I knew, when I understood any of it, that it was not patois. I began to be proud and to take on airs--always a dangerous thing. One day at the pharmacy I heard two well-dressed men speaking. I listened intently, but could not catch a word. When they went I said to the drug clerk--an Englishman who spoke French: "Strange that those well-dressed men should use patois." He said: "Ah, but that was not patois--that was very choice French--Parisian." I followed those men the rest of the afternoon, at a safe distance, but in earshot, and we thus visited in company most of the shops and sights of Vevey. If I could have followed them for a few months in that way it is possible--not likely, but possible--that their conversation might have meant something to me. Which, by the way, suggests the chief difference between an acquired and an inherited language. An acquired language, in time, comes to _mean_ something, whereas the inherited language _is_ something. It is bred into the fiber of its possessor. It is not a question of considering the meaning of words--what they convey; they do not come stumbling through any anteroom of thought, they are embodied facts, forms, sentiments, leaping from one inner consciousness to another, instantaneously and without friction. Probably every species of animation, from the atom to the elephant, has a language--perfectly understood and sufficient to its needs--some system of signs, or sniffs, or grunts, or barks, or vibrations to convey quite as adequately as human speech the necessary facts and conditions of life. Persons, wise and otherwise, will tell you that animals have no language; but when a dog can learn even many words of his master's tongue, it seems rather unkind to deny to him one of his own. Because the oyster does not go shouting around, or annoy us with his twaddle, does not mean that he is deprived of life's lingual interchanges. It is not well to deny speech to the mute, inglorious mollusk. Remember he is our ancestor. To go back to French: I have acquired, with time and heavy effort, a sort of next-room understanding of that graceful speech--that is to say, it is about like English spoken by some one beyond a partition--a fairly thick one. By listening closely I get the general drift of conversation--a confusing drift sometimes, mismeanings that generally go with eavesdropping. At times, however, the partition seems to be thinner, and there comes the feeling that if somebody would just come along and open a door between I should understand. It is truly a graceful speech--the French tongue. Plain, homely things of life--so bald, and bare, and disheartening in the Anglo-Saxon--are less unlovely in the French. Indeed, the French word for "rags" is so pretty that we have conferred "chiffon" on one of our daintiest fabrics. But in the grace of the language lies also its weakness. It does not rise to the supreme utterances. I have been reading the bible texts on the tombstones in the little cemetery of Chardonne. "_L'éternel est mon berger_" can hardly rank in loftiness with "The Lord is my shepherd," nor "_Que votre coeur ne se trouble point_" with "Let not your heart be troubled." Or, at any rate, I can never bring myself to think so. Any language is hard enough to learn--bristling with difficulties which seem needless, even offensively silly to the student. We complain of the genders and silent letters of the French, but when one's native tongue spells "cough" and calls it "cof," "rough" and calls it "ruff," "slough" and calls it "slu" or "sluff," by choice, and "plough" and is unable to indicate adequately without signs just how it should be pronounced, he is not in a position to make invidious comparisons. I wonder what a French student really thinks of those words. He has rules for his own sound variations, and carefully indicates them with little signs. We have sound signs, too, but an English page printed with all the necessary marks is a cause for anguish. I was once given a primary reader printed in that way, and at sight of it ran screaming to my mother. So we leave off all signs in English and trust in God for results. It is hard to be an American learning French, but I would rather be that than a Frenchman learning American. Chapter XXI WE LUGE When winter comes in America, with a proper and sufficient thickness of ice, a number of persons--mainly young people--go out skating, or coasting, or sleighing, and have a very good time. But this interest is incidental--it does not exclude all other interests--it does not even provide the main topic of conversation. It is not like that in Switzerland. Winter sport is a religion in Switzerland; the very words send a thrill through the dweller--native or foreign--among the Swiss hills. When the season of white drift and congealed lake takes possession of the land, other interests and industries are put aside for the diversions of winter. Everything is subserved to the winter sports. French, German, and English papers report each day the thickness of snow at the various resorts, the conditions of the various courses, the program of events. Bills at the railway stations announce the names of points where the sports are in progress, with a schedule of the fares. Hotels publish their winter attractions--their coasting (they call it "luging"--soft g), curling, skating, ski-ing accommodations, and incidentally mention their rooms. They also cover their hall carpetings with canvas to protect them from the lugers' ponderous hobnailed shoes. To be truly sporty one must wear those shoes; also certain other trimmings, such as leggings, breeches, properly cut coat, cap and scarf to match. One cannot really enjoy the winter sports without these decorations, or keep in good winter society. Then there are the skis. One must carry a pair of skis to be complete. They must be as tall as the owner can reach, and when he puts them on his legs will branch out and act independently, each on its own account, and he will become a house divided against itself, with the usual results. So it is better to carry them, and look handsome and graceful, and to confine one's real activities to the more familiar things. Our hotel was divided on winter sports. Not all went in for it, but those who did went in considerably. We had a Dutch family from Sumatra, where they had been tobacco planting for a number of years, and in that tropic land had missed the white robust joys of the long frost. They were a young, superb couple, but their children, who had never known the cold, were slender products of an enervating land. They had never seen snow and they shared their parents' enthusiasm in the winter prospect. The white drifts on the mountaintops made them marvel; the first light fall we had made them wild. That Dutch family went in for the winter sports. You never saw anything like it. Their plans and their outfit became the chief interest of the hotel. They engaged far in advance their rooms at Château d'Oex, one of the best known resorts, and they daily accumulated new and startling articles of costume to make their experience more perfect. One day they would all have new shoes of wonderful thickness and astonishing nails. Then it would be gorgeous new scarfs and caps, then sweaters, then skates, then snowshoes, then skis, and so on down the list. Sometimes they would organize a drill in full uniform. But the children were less enthusiastic then. Those slim-legged little folks could hardly walk, weighted with several pounds of heavy hobnailed shoes, and they complained bitterly at this requirement. Their parents did not miss the humor of the situation, and I think enjoyed these preparations and incidental discomforts for the sake of pleasure as much as they could have enjoyed the sports themselves, when the time came. We gave them a hearty send-off, when reports arrived that the snow conditions at Château d'Oex were good, and if they had as good a time as we wished them, and as they gave us in their preparations, they had nothing to regret. As the winter deepened the winter sport sentiment grew in our midst, until finally in January we got a taste of it ourselves. We found that we could take a little mountain road to a point in the hills called Les Avants, then a funicular to a still higher point, and thus be in the white whirl for better or worse, without being distinctly of it, so to speak. We could not be of it, of course, without the costumes, and we did not see how we could afford these and also certain new adjuncts which the car would need in the spring. So we went primarily as spectators--that is, the older half of the family. The children had their own winter sports at school. [Illustration: "YOU CAN SEE SON LOUP FROM THE HOTEL STEPS IN VEVEY, BUT IT TAKES HOURS TO GET TO IT"] We telephoned to the Son Loup hotel at the top of the last funicular, and got an early start. You can see Son Loup from the hotel steps in Vevey, but it takes hours to get to it. The train goes up, and up, along gorges and abysses, where one looks down on the tops of Christmas trees, gloriously mantled in snow. Then by and by you are at Les Avants and in the midst of everything, except the ski-ing, which is still higher up, at Son Loup. We got off at Les Avants and picked our way across the main street among flying sleds of every pattern, from the single, sturdy little bulldog _luge_ to the great polly-straddle bob, and from the safe vantage of a café window observed the slide. It was divided into three parts--one track for bobsledders--the wild riders--a track for the more daring single riders, and a track for fat folks, old folks, and children. Certainly they were having a good time. Their ages ranged from five to seventy-five, and they were all children together. Now and then there came gliding down among them a big native sled, loaded with hay or wood, from somewhere far up in the hills. It was a perfect day--no cold, no wind, no bright sun, for in reality we were up in the clouds--a soft white veil of vapor was everywhere. By and by we crossed the track, entered a wonderful snow garden belonging to a hotel, and came to a little pond where some old men and fat men were curling. Curling is a game where you try to drive a sort of stone decoy duck from one end of the pond to the other and make it stop somewhere and count something. Each man is armed with a big broom to keep the ice clean before and after his little duck. We watched them a good while and I cannot imagine anything more impressive than to see a fat old man with a broom padding and puffing along by the side of his little fat stone duck, feverishly sweeping the snow away in front of it, so that it will get somewhere and count. When I inadvertently laughed I could see that I was not popular. All were English there--all but a few Americans who pretended to be English. Beyond the curling pond was a skating pond, part of it given over to an international hockey match, but somehow these things did not excite us. We went back to our café corner to watch the luging and to have luncheon. Then the lugers came stamping in for refreshments, and their costumes interested us. Especially their shoes. Even the Dutch family had brought home no such wonders as some of these. They were of appalling size, and some of them had heavy iron claws or toes such as one might imagine would belong to some infernal race. These, of course, were to dig into the snow behind, to check or guide the flying sled. They were useful, no doubt, but when one saw them on the feet of a tall, slim girl the effect was peculiar. By the time we had finished luncheon we had grown brave. We said we would luge--modestly, but with proper spirit. There were sleds to let, by an old Frenchman, at a little booth across the way, and we looked over his assortment and picked a small bob with a steering attachment, because to guide that would be like driving a car. Then we hauled it up the fat folks' slide a little way and came down, hoo-hooing a warning to those ahead in the regulation way. We did this several times, liking it more and more. We got braver and tried the next slide, liking it still better. Then we got reckless and crossed into the bobsled scoot and tried that. Oh, fine! We did not go to the top--we did not know then how far the top was; but we went higher each time, liking it more and more, until we got up to a place where the sleds stood out at a perpendicular right angle as they swirled around a sudden circle against a constructed ice barrier. This looked dangerous, but getting more and more reckless, we decided to go even above that. We hauled our sled up and up, constantly meeting bobsleds coming down and hearing the warning hoo-hoo-hooing of still others descending from the opaque upper mist. Still we climbed, dragging our sled, meeting bob after bob, also loads of hay and wood, and finally some walking girls who told us that the top of the slide was at Son Loup--that is, at the top of the funicular, some miles away. We understood then; all those bobsledders took their sleds up by funicular and coasted down. We stopped there and got on our sled. The grade was very gradual at first, and we moved slowly--so slowly that a nice old lady who happened along gave us a push. We kept moving after that. We crossed a road, rounded a turn, leaped a railway track and struck into the straightway, going like a streak. We had thought it a good distance to the sharp turn, with its right-angle wall of ice, but we were there with unbelievable suddenness. Then in a second we were on the wall, standing straight out into space; then in another we had shot out of it; but our curve seemed to continue. There was a little barnyard just there and an empty hay sled--placed there on purpose, I think now. At any rate, the owner was there watching the performance. I think he had been expecting us. When all motion ceased he untelescoped us, and we limped about and discussed with him in native terms how much we ought to pay for the broken runner on his hay sled, and minor damages. It took five francs to cure the broken runner, which I believe had been broken all the time and was just set there handy to catch inadvertent persons like ourselves. We finished our slide then and handed in our sled, which the old Frenchman looked at fondly and said: "_Très bon--très vite._" He did not know how nearly its speed had come to landing us in the newspapers. We took the funicular to Son Loup, and at the top found ourselves in what seemed atmospheric milk. We stood at the hotel steps and watched the swift coasters pass. Every other moment they flashed by, from a white mystery above--a vision of faces, a call of voices--to the inclosing mystery again. It was like life; but not entirely, for they did not pass to silence. The long, winding hill far below was full of their calls'--muffled by the mist--their hoo-hoo-hoos of warning to those ahead and to those who followed. But it was suggestive, too. It was as if the lost were down there in that cold whiteness. The fog grew thicker, more opaque, as the day waned. It was an impalpable wall. We followed the road from the hotel, still higher into its dense obscurity. When a tree grew near enough to the road for us to see it, we beheld an astonishing sight. The mist had gathered about the evergreen branches until they were draped, festooned, fairly clotted with pendulous frost embroidery. We had been told that there was ski-ing up there and we were anxious to see it, but for a time we found only blankness and dead silence. Then at last--far and faint, but growing presently more distinct--we heard a light sound, a movement, a "swish-swish-swirl"--somewhere in the mist at our right, coming closer and closer, until it seemed right upon us, and strangely mysterious, there being no visible cause. We waited until a form appeared, no, grew, materialized from the intangible--so imperceptibly, so gradually, that at first we could not be sure of it. Then the outlines became definite, then distinct; an athletic fellow on skis maneuvered across the road, angled down the opposite slope, "swish-swish-swirl"--checking himself every other stroke, for the descent was steep--faded into unknown deeps below--the whiteness had shut him in. We listened while the swish-swish grew fainter, and in the gathering evening we felt that he had disappeared from the world into ravines of dark forests and cold enchantments from which there could be no escape. We climbed higher and met dashing sleds now and then, but saw no other ski-ers that evening. Next morning, however, we found them up there, gliding about in that region of vapors, appearing and dissolving like cinema figures, their voices coming to us muffled and unreal in tone. I left the road and followed down into a sort of basin which seemed to be a favorite place for ski practice. I felt exactly as if I were in a ghostly aquarium. I was not much taken with ski-ing, as a whole. I noticed that even the experts fell down a good many times and were not especially graceful getting up. But I approve of coasting under the new conditions--_i. e._ with funicular assistance. In my day coasting was work--you had to tug and sweat up a long slippery incline for a very brief pleasure. Keats (I think it was Keats, or was it Carolyn Wells?) in his, or her, well-known and justly celebrated poem wrote: It takes a long time to make the climb, And a minute or less to come down; But that poetry is out of date--in Switzerland. It no longer takes a long time to make the climb, and you do it in luxury. You sit in a comfortable seat and your sled is loaded on an especially built car. Switzerland is the most funiculated country in the world; its hills are full of these semi-perpendicular tracks. They make you shudder when you mount them for the first time, and I think I never should be able to discuss frivolous matters during an ascent, as I have seen some do. Still, one gets hardened, I suppose. They are cheap. You get commutation tickets for very little, and all day long coasters are loading their sleds on the little shelved flatcar, piling themselves into the coach, then at the top snatching off their sleds to go whooping away down the long track to the lower station. Coasters get killed now and then, and are always getting damaged in one way and another; for the track skirts deep declivities, and there are bound to be slips in steering, and collisions. We might have stayed longer and tried it again, but we were still limping from our first experiment. Besides, we were not dressed for the real thing. Dress may not make the man, but it makes the sportsman. Part II MOTORING THROUGH THE GOLDEN AGE Chapter I THE NEW PLAN But with the breaking out of the primroses and the hint of a pale-green beading along certain branches in the hotel garden, the desire to be going, and seeing, and doing; to hear the long drowse of the motor and look out over the revolving distances; to drop down magically, as it were, on this environment and that--began to trickle and prickle a little in the blood, to light pale memories and color new plans. We could not go for a good while yet. For spring is really spring in Switzerland--not advance installments of summer mixed with left-overs from winter, but a fairly steady condition of damp coolness--sunlight that is not hot, showers that are not cold--the snow on the mountainsides advancing and retreating--sometimes, in the night, getting as low down as Chardonne, which is less than half an hour's walk above the hotel. There is something curiously unreal about this Swiss springtime. We saw the trees break out into leaf, the fields grow vividly green and fresh, and then become gay with flowers, without at all feeling the reason for such a mood. In America such a change is wrought by hot days--cold ones, too, perhaps, but certainly hot ones; we have sweltered in April, though we have sometimes snowballed in May. The Swiss spring was different. Three months of gradual, almost unnoticeable, mellowing kept us from getting excited and gave us plenty of time to plan. That was good for us--the trip we had in mind now was no mere matter of a few days' journey, from a port to a destination; it was to be a wandering that would stretch over the hills and far away, through some thousands of kilometers and ten weeks of time. That was about all we had planned concerning it, except that we were going back into France, and at one point in those weeks we expected to touch Cherbourg and pick up a missing member of the family who would be dropped there by a passing ship. We studied the maps a good deal, and at odd times I tinkered with the car and wondered how many things would happen to it before we completed the long circle, and if I would return only partially crippled or a hopeless heap of damage and explanations. Never mind--the future holds sorrow enough for all of us. Let us anticipate only its favors. So we planned. We sent for a road map of France divided into four sections, showing also western Germany and Switzerland. We spread it out on the table and traced a variety of routes to Cherbourg; by Germany, by Paris direct, by a long loop down into southern France. We favored the last-named course. We had missed some things in the Midi--Nîmes, Pont du Gard, Orange--and then there was still a quality in the air which made us feel that the south would furnish better motor weather in May. Ah, me! There is no place quite like the Provence. It is rather dusty, and the people are drowsy and sometimes noisy, and there are mosquitoes there, and maybe other unpleasant things; but in the light chill of a Swiss spring day there comes a memory of rich mellowness and September roadsides, with gold and purple vintage ripening in the sun, that lights and warms the soul. We would start south, we said. We were not to reach Cherbourg until June. Plenty of time for the north, then, and later. We discussed matters of real importance--that is to say, expenses. We said we would give ourselves an object lesson, this time, in what could really be done in motor economies. On our former trip we had now and again lunched by the roadside, with pleasing results. This time we would always do it. Before, we had stopped a few times at small inns in villages instead of seeking out hotels in the larger towns. Those few experiments had been altogether satisfactory, both as to price and entertainment. Perhaps this had been merely our good fortune, but we were willing to take further chances. From the fifty francs a day required for our party of four we might subtract a franc or so and still be nourished, body and soul. Thus we planned. When it was pleasant we enjoyed shopping for our roadside outfit; a basket, square, and of no great size; some agate cups and saucers; some knives and forks; also an alcohol stove, the kind that compacts itself into very small compass, aluminum, and very light-- I hope they have them elsewhere than in Switzerland, for their usefulness is above price. Chapter II THE NEW START It was the first week in May when we started--the 5th, in fact. The car had been thoroughly overhauled, and I had spent a week personally on it, scraping and polishing, so that we might make a fine appearance as we stood in front of the hotel in the bright morning sunlight where our fellow guests would gather to see us glide away. I have had many such showy dreams as that, and they have turned out pretty much alike. We did not start in the bright morning. It was not bright. It was raining, and it continued to rain until after eleven o'clock. By that time our fellow guests were not on hand. They had got tired and gone to secluded corners, or to their rooms, or drabbling into the village. When the sun finally came out only a straggler or two appeared. It was too bad. We glided away, but not very far. I remembered, as we were passing through the town, that it might be well to take some funds along, so we drove around to the bank to see what we could raise in that line. We couldn't raise anything--not a centime. It was just past twelve o'clock and, according to Swiss custom, the bank was closed for two hours. Not a soul was there--the place was locked, curtained, barred. Only dynamite would have opened it. We consulted. We had some supplies in our basket to eat by the roadside as soon as we were well into the country. Very good; we would drive to some quiet back street in the suburbs and eat them now. We had two hours to wait--we need feel no sense of hurry. So we drove down into Vevey la Tour and, behind an old arch, where friends would not be likely to notice us, we sat in the car and ate our first luncheon, with a smocked boy for audience--a boy with a basket on his arm, probably delaying the machinery of his own household to study the working economies of ours. Afterward we drove back to the bank, got our finances arranged, slipped down a side street to the lake-front, and fled away toward Montreux without looking behind us. It was not at all the departure we had planned. It rained again at Montreux, but the sun was shining at Chillon, and the lake was blue. Through openings in the trees we could see the picture towns of Territet, Montreux, Clarens, and Vevey, skirting the shore--the white steamers plying up and down; the high-perched hotels, half lost in cloudland, and we thought that our travels could hardly provide a more charming vision than that. Then we were in Villeneuve, then in the open flat fields of the Rhone Valley, where, for Europe, the roads are poor; on through a jolty village to a bridge across the Rhone, and so along the south shore by Bouveret, to St. Gingolph, where we exhibited our papers at the Swiss _douane_, crossed a little brook, and were again in France. We were making the circuit of the lake, you see. All winter we had looked across to that shore, with its villages and snow-mantled hills. We would now see it at close range. We realized one thing immediately. Swiss roads are not bad roads, by any means, but French roads are better. In fact, I have made up my mind that there is nothing more perfect in this world than a French road. I have touched upon this subject before, and I am likely to dwell upon it unduly, for it always excites me. Those roads are a perfect network in France, and I can never cease marveling at the money and labor they must have cost. They are so hard and smooth, so carefully graded and curved, so beautifully shaded, so scrupulously repaired--it would seem that half the wealth and effort of France must be expended on her highways. The road from St. Gingolph was wider than the one we had left behind. It was also a better road and in better repair. It was a floor. Here and there we came to groups of men working at it, though it needed nothing, that we could see. It skirted the mountains and lake-front. We could look across to our own side now--to Vevey and those other towns, and the cloud-climbing hotels, all bright in the sunshine. We passed a nameless village or two and were at Evian, a watering-place which has grown in fame and wealth these later years--a resort of fine residences and handsome hotels--not our kind of hotels, but plenty good enough for persons whose tastes have not been refined down to our budget and daily program of economies. It was at Thonon--quaint old Thonon, once a residence of the Counts and Dukes of Savoy--that we found a hostelry of our kind. It had begun raining again, and, besides, it was well toward evening. We pulled up in front of the Hôtel d'Europe, one of the least extravagant of the red-book hostelries, and I went in. The "_Bureau_" as the French call the office, was not very inviting. It was rather dingy and somber, and nobody was there. I found a bell and rang it and a woman appeared--not a very attractive woman, but a kindly person who could understand my "_Vous avez des chambres?_" which went a good ways. She had "_des chambres_" and certainly no fault could be found with those. They were of immense size, the beds were soft, smooth, and spotlessly clean. Yes, there was a garage, free. I went back with my report. The dinner might be bad, we said, but it would only be for once--besides, it was raining harder. So we went in, and when the shower passed we took a walk along the lake-front, where there is an old château, once the home of royalty, now the storehouse of plaster or something, and we stopped to look at a public laundry--a square stone pool under a shed, where the women get down on their knees and place the garments on a board and scrub them with a brush, while the cold water from the mountains runs in and out and is never warmed at all. Returning by another way, we found about the smallest church in the world, built at one corner of the old domain. A woman came with a key and let us into it and we sat in the little chairs and inspected the tiny altar and all the sacred things with especial interest, for one of the purposes of our pilgrimages was to see churches--the great cathedrals of France. Across from the church stood a ruined tower, matted with vines, the remains of a tenth-century château--already old when the one on the lake-front was new. We speak lightly of a few centuries more or less, but, after all, there was a goodly period between the tenth and the fourteenth, a period long enough to cover American history from Montezuma to date. These old towers, once filled with life and voices and movement, are fascinating things. We stood looking at this one while the dusk gathered. Then it began sprinkling again and it was dinner time. So we returned to the hotel and I may as well say here, at once, that I do not believe there are any bad dinners in France. I have forgotten what we had, but I suppose it was fish and omelet, and meat and chicken, and salad and dessert, and I know it was all hot and delicious, and served daintily in courses, and we went to those soft beds happy and soothed, fell asleep to the sound of the rain pattering outside, and felt not a care in the world. Chapter III INTO THE JURAS It was still drizzling next morning, so we were in no hurry to leave. We plodded about the gray streets, picking up some things for the lunch basket, and Narcissa and the Joy got a chance to try their nice new French on real French people and were gratified to find that it worked just the same as it did on Swiss people. Then the sky cleared and I backed the car out of the big stable where it had spent the night, and we packed on our bags and paid our bill--twenty-seven francs for all, or about one dollar and thirty-five cents each for dinner, lodging, and breakfast--tips, one franc each to waitress, chambermaid, and garageman. If they were dissatisfied they did not look it, and presently we were once more on the road, all the cylinders working and bankruptcy not yet in sight. It was glorious and fresh along the lake-front--also appetizing. We stopped by and by for a little mid-morning luncheon, and a passing motorist, who probably could not believe we would stop merely to eat at that hour, drew up to ask if anything was wrong with our car and if he could help. They are kindly people, these French and Swiss. Stop your car by the roadside and begin to hammer something, or to take off a tire, and you will have offers of assistance from four out of every five cars that pass. There is another little patch of Switzerland again at the end of the lake, and presently you run into Geneva, and trouble. Geneva is certainly a curious place. The map of it looks as easy as nothing and you go gliding into it full of confidence, and presently find yourself in a perfect mess of streets that are not on the map at all, while all the streets that _are_ on the map certainly have changed their names, for you cannot find them where they should be, and no one has ever heard of them. Besides, the wind is generally blowing--the _bise_--which does not simplify matters. Narcissa inquired and I inquired, and then the Joy, who, privately, I think, speaks the best French of any of us, also inquired; but the combined result was just a big coalyard which a very good-looking street led us straight into, making it necessary to back out and apologize and feel ashamed. Then we heard somebody calling us, and, looking around, saw the man in gray who had last directed us, and who also felt ashamed, it seemed--of us, or himself, or something--and had run after us to get us out of the mess. So he directed us again and we started, but the labyrinth closed in once more--the dust and narrow streets and blind alleys--and once again we heard a voice, and there was the man in gray--he must have run a half a mile this time--waving and calling and pointing the path out of the maze. It seemed that they were fixing all the good streets and we must get through by circuitous bad ones to the side of the city toward France. I asked him why they didn't leave the good streets alone and fix the bad ones, but he only smiled and explained some more, and once more we went astray, and yet once more his voice came calling down the wind and he came up breathlessly, and this time followed with us, refusing even standing room on the running-board, until he got us out of the city proper and well headed for France. We had grown fond of that man and grieved to see him go. We had known him hardly ten minutes, I think, but friendships are not to be measured by time. On a pretty hill where a little stream of water trickled we ate our first real luncheon--that is to say, we used our new stove. We cooked eggs and made coffee, and when there came a sprinkle we stood under our umbrellas or sat in the car and felt that this was really a kind of gypsying, and worth while. There was a waving meadow just above the bank and I went up there to look about a little. No house was in sight, but this meadow was a part of some man's farm. It was familiar in every corner to him--he had known it always. Perhaps he had played in it as a child--his children had played in it after him--it was inseparable from the life and happiness of a home. Yet to us it was merely the field above our luncheon place--a locality hardly noticed or thought of--barely to be remembered at all. Crossing another lonely but fertile land, we entered the hills. We skirted mountainsides--sometimes in sun, sometimes in shower--descended a steep road, and passed under a great arched battlement that was part of a frowning fortress guarding the frontier of France. Not far beyond, at the foot of a long decline, lay a beautiful city, just where the mountains notched to form a passage for the Rhone. It was Bellegarde, and as we drew nearer some of the illusions of beauty disappeared. French cities generally show best from a distance. Their streets are not very clean and they are seldom in repair. The French have the best roads and the poorest streets in the world. We drew up in front of the custom house, and exhibited our French _triptyque_. It was all right, and after it was indorsed I thought we were through. This was not true. A long, excited individual appeared from somewhere and began nervously to inspect our baggage. Suddenly he came upon a small empty cigar box which I had put in, thinking it might be useful. Cigars are forbidden, and at sight of the empty box our wild-eyed attenuation had a fit. He turned the box upside down and shook it; he turned it sidewise and looked into it; shook it again and knocked on it as if bound to make the cigars appear. He seemed to decide that I had hidden the cigars, for he made a raid on things in general. He looked into the gasoline tank, he went through the pockets of the catch-all and scattered our guidebooks and maps; then he had up the cushion of the back seat and went into the compartment where this time was our assortment of hats. You never saw millinery fly as it did in that man's hands, with the head of the family and Narcissa and the Joy grabbing at their flowers and feathers, and saying things in English that would have hurt that man if he could have understood them. As for him, he was repeating, steadily, "_Pas dérange_"--"_Pas dérange_," when all the time he was deranging ruthlessly and even permanently. He got through at last, smiled, bowed, and retired--pleased, evidently, with the thoroughness of his investigation. But for some reason he entirely overlooked our bags strapped on the footboard. We did not remind him. The Pert of the Rhone is at Bellegarde. The pert is a place where in dry weather the Rhone disappears entirely from sight for the space of seventy yards, to come boiling up again from some unknown mystery. Articles have been thrown in on one side--even live animals, it is said--but they have never reappeared on the other. What becomes of them is a matter of speculation. Perhaps some fearful underground maelstrom holds them. There was no pert when we were there--there had been too much rain. The Rhone went tearing through a gorge where we judged the pert should be located in less watery seasons. During the rest of the afternoon we had rather a damp time--showery and sloppy, for many of the roads of these Jura foothills were in the process of repair, and the rain had stopped the repairs halfway. It was getting toward dusk when we came to Nantua--a lost and forgotten town among the Jura cliffs. We stopped in front of the showier hotel there, everything looked so rain-beaten and discouraging, but the woman who ran it was even showier than her hotel and insisted on our taking a parlor suite at some fabulous price. So we drove away and drew up rather sadly at the Hôtel du Lac, which on that dull evening was far from fascinating. Yet the rooms they showed us were good, and the dinner--a surprise of fresh trout just caught, served sizzling hot, fine baked potatoes and steak, with good red wine aplenty--was such as to make us forswear forevermore the showy hotels for the humbler inns of France. But I am moving too fast. Before dinner we walked for a little in the gray evening and came to an old church--one of the oldest in France, it is said, built in the ninth century and called St. Michels. It is over a thousand years old and looks it. It has not been much rebuilt, I think, for invasion and revolution appear seldom to have surmounted the natural ramparts of Nantua, and only the stormbeat and the corrosion of the centuries have written the story of decay. Very likely it is as little changed as any church of its time. The hand of restoration has troubled it little. We slipped in through the gathering dusk, and tiptoed about, for there were a few lights flickering near the altar and the outlines of bowed heads. Presently a priest was silhouetted against the altar lights as he crossed and passed out by a side door. He was one of a long line that stretched back through more than half of the Christian era and most of the history of France. When the first priest passed in front of that altar France was still under the Carlovingian dynasty--under Charles the Fat, perhaps; and William of Normandy would not conquer England for two hundred years. Then nearly four hundred years more would creep by--dim mediæval years--before Joan of Arc should unfurl her banner of victory and martyrdom. You see how far back into the mists we are stepping here. And all those evenings the altar lights have been lit and the ministration of priests has not failed. There is a fine picture by Eugene Delacroix in the old church, and we came back next morning to look at it. It is a St. Sebastian, and not the conventional, ridiculous St. Sebastian of some of the old masters--a mere human pincushion--but a beautiful youth, prostrate and dying, pierced by two arrows, one of which a pitying male figure is drawing from his shoulder. It must be a priceless picture. How can they afford to keep it here? The weather seemed to have cleared, and the roads, though wet, were neither soft nor slippery. French roads, in fact, are seldom either--and the fresh going along the lake-front was delightful enough. But we were in the real Juras now, and one does not go through that range on a water grade. We were presently among the hills, the road ahead of us rising to the sky. Then it began to rain again, but the road was a good firm one and the car never pulled better. It was magnificent climbing. On the steepest grades and elbow turns we dropped back to second, but never to low, and there was no lagging. On the high levels we stopped to let the engine cool and to add water from the wayside hollows. We were in the clouds soon, and sometimes it was raining, sometimes not. It seemed for the most part an uninhabited land--no houses and few fields--the ground covered with a short bushy growth, grass and flowers. A good deal of it was rocky and barren. On the very highest point of the Jura range, where we had stopped to cool the motor, a woman came along, leading three little children. She came up and said a few words in what sounded like an attempt at English. We tried our French on her, but it did not seem to get inside. I said she must speak some mountain patois, for we had used those same words lower down with good results. But then she began her English again--it was surely English this time, and, listening closely, we got the fringes and tag ends of a curious story. She was Italian, and had been in New York City. There, it seemed, she had married a Frenchman from the Juras, who, in time, when his homeland had called him, had brought her back to the hills. There he had died, leaving her with six children. She had a little hut up the side lane, where they were trying to scratch a living from the stony soil. Yes, she had chickens, and could let us have some eggs. She also brought a pail with water for the radiator. A little farther along we cooked the eggs and laid out all our nice lunch things on natural stone tables and looked far down the Jura slope on an ancient village and an old castle, the beginning of the world across the range. It was not raining now, and the air was soft and pleasant and the spot as clean and sweet as could be. Presently the water was boiling and the coffee made--instantaneous coffee, the George Washington kind. And nothing could be fresher than those eggs, nothing unless it was the butter--unsalted butter, which with jam and rolls is about the best thing in the world to finish on. [Illustration: DESCENDING THE JURAS] We descended the Jura grades on the engine brake--that is, I let in the clutch, cut off the gasoline supply and descended on first or second speed, according to the grade. That saves the wheel brake and does no damage to the motor. I suppose everybody knows the trick, but I did not learn it right away, and there may be others who know as little. It was a long way to the lower levels, and some of the grades were steep. Then they became gradual, and we coasted--then the way flattened and we were looking across a level valley, threaded by perfectly ordered roads to a distant town whose roofs and spires gleamed in the sunlight of the May afternoon. It was Bourg, and one of the spires belonged to the church of Brou. Chapter IV A POEM IN ARCHITECTURE The church of Brou is like no other church in the world. In the first place, instead of dragging through centuries of building and never quite reaching completion, it was begun and finished in the space of twenty-five years--from 1511 to 1536--and it was supervised and paid for by a single person, Margaret of Austria, who built it in fulfillment of a vow made by her mother-in-law, Margaret of Bourbon. The last Margaret died before she could undertake her project, and her son, Philibert II, Duke of Savoy, called "The Handsome," followed before he could carry out her wishes. So his duchess, the other Margaret, undertook the work, and here on this plain, between the Juras and the Saône, she wrought a marvel in exquisite church building which still remains a marvel, almost untouched by any blight, after four hundred turbulent years. Matthew Arnold wrote a poem on the church of Brou which may convey the wonder of its beauty. I shall read it some day, and if it is as beautiful as the church I shall commit it, and on days when things seem rather ugly and harsh and rasping I will find some quiet corner and shut my eyes and say the lines and picture a sunlit May afternoon and the church of Brou. Then, perhaps, I shall not remember any more the petty things of the moment but only the architectural shrine which one woman reared in honor of another, her mother-in-law. It is not a great cathedral, but it is by no means a little church. Its lofty nave is bare of furnishings, which perhaps lends to its impression of bigness. But then you pass through the carved doors of a magnificent _juba_ screen, and the bareness disappears. The oaken choir seats are carved with the richness of embroidery, and beyond them are the tombs--those of the two Margarets, and of Philibert--husband and son. I suppose the world can show no more exquisitely wrought tombs than these. Perhaps their very richness defeats their art value, but I would rather have them so, for it reveals, somehow, the thoroughness and sincerity of Margaret's intent--her determination to fulfill to the final letter every imagined possibility in that other's vow. The mother's tomb is a sort of bower--a marble alcove of great splendor, within and without. Philibert's tomb, which stands in the center of the church, between the other two, is a bier, supported by female figures and fluted columns and interwoven decorations, exquisitely chiseled. Six cupids and a crouching lion guard the royal figure above; and the whole, in spite of its richness, is of great dignity. The tomb of the Duchess Margaret herself is a lofty canopy of marble incrustations, the elaborateness of which no words can tell. It is the superlative of Gothic decoration at a period when Gothic extravagance was supreme. Like her husband Margaret sleeps in double effigy, the sovereign in state above, the figure of mortality, compassed by the marble supports, below. The mortality of the queen is draped, but in the case of Philibert, the naked figure, rather dim through the interspaces, has a curiously lifelike, even startling effect. [Illustration: THE TOMB OF MARGARET OF AUSTRIA, CHURCH OF BROU] If the Duchess Margaret made her own tomb more elaborate, it is at least not more beautiful than the others, while an altar to the Virgin is still more elaborate--more beautiful, its grouped marble figures in such high relief that angels and cherubs float in the air, apparently unsupported. Here, as elsewhere, is a wealth of ornamentation; and everywhere woven into its intricacies one may find the initials P and M--Philibert and Margaret--and the latter's motto, "_Fortune, infortune, fort une._" It has been called a mysterious motto, and different meanings have been twisted out of it. But my French is new and fresh and takes things quite obviously. "Fortune and misfortune strengthens or fortifies one" strikes me as a natural rendering. That last verb _fortifier_ may seem to be abbreviated without warrant, but Margaret was a queen and could have done that for the sake of euphony and word-play. The unscarred condition and the purity of these precious marbles is almost as astonishing as their beauty, when one considers the centuries of invasion and revolution, with a vandalism that respected nothing sacred, least of all symbols of royalty. By careful search we could discover a broken detail here and there, but the general effect was completeness, and the white marble--or was it ivory tinted?--seen under the light of the illumined stained windows seemed to present the shapes and shades of things that, as they had never been new, neither would they ever be old. Chapter V VIENNE IN THE RAIN It is about forty miles from Bourg to Lyons, a country of fair fields, often dyed deeply red at this season with crimson clover, a country rich and beautiful, the road a straight line, wide and smooth, the trees on either side vividly green with spring. But Lyons is not beautiful--it is just a jangling, jarring city of cobbled crowded streets and mainly uninteresting houses and thronging humanity, especially soldiers. It is a place to remain unloved, unhonored, and unremembered. The weather now put aside other things and really got down to the business of raining. It was fair enough when we left Lyons, but as we reached the top of a hill that overlooked the world I saw down the fields a spectral light and far deepening dusk which looked ominous. By the time we got our top up there was a steady downpour. We did not visit any wayside villages, though some of them looked interesting enough. French villages are none too clean at any time and rain does not seem to help them. Attractive old castles on neighboring hilltops received hardly a glance; even one overhanging our very road barely caused us to check up. How old it looked in its wet desolation, the storm eating into its crumbling walls! We pulled up at last at Vienne, at the end of the bridge facing the cathedral. History has been written about Vienne, and there are monuments of the past which it is not good form to overlook. The head of the family said she was not very particular about form and that she was particular about being wet and discomforted on a chill spring day. France was full of monuments of the past, she said, and she had not started out to make her collection complete. She would study the cathedral from the car, and would the rest of us please remember to bring some fresh rolls for luncheon. So the rest of us went to the church of St. Maurice, which begins to date with the twelfth century and looks even older. Surrounded by comparatively modern buildings and soaked with rain it appeared, one of the most venerable relics I had ever seen. I do not think we found the inside very interesting. It was dead and dusky, and the seventh-century sarcophagus of St. Leoninus was, in the French phrase, not gay. On the whole there seemed a good deal of mutilation and not much taste. We paddled through streets, asking directions to the Roman temple. Vienne was an important town under the Romans, the capital of one of the provinces of Gaul. Of course the Romans would leave landmarks--the kind that would last. When we found the temple of Augustus and Livia at last, it did not look so much older than the church, though it is more than as old again. It was so positively Roman and so out of place among its modern French surroundings that it looked exactly like something that had been brought there and set up for exhibition. It took a heavy strain of imagination to see it as an integral part of the vanished Roman capital. All about the temple lay fragments of that ancient city--exhibition pieces, like the temple. One felt that they should not be left out in the rain. We hunted farther and found an Arch of Triumph, which the Romans generally built in conquered territory. It was hard to tell where the arch began and where it ended, such a variety of other things had grown up around and against it. Still, there was at least a section standing, Roman, and of noble proportions. It will still be Roman, and an arch, when those later incrustations have crumbled away. Roman work is not trivial stuff. We might have lingered a little in the winding streets and made further discoveries, but the Joy had already sighted a place where the most attractive rolls and French cakes filled the window. The orders, she said, were very strict about the luncheon things. We must get them at once or we should not be able to locate the place again. Curious things can happen in a brief absence. We returned to the car to find one of the back tires perfectly flat, the head of the family sitting serenely unconscious of her misfortune. We had picked up one of those flat-headed boot nails that Europeans love so well, and the tire had slowly and softly settled. There are cleaner, pleasanter things than taking off a tire and putting it on again in the rain, but I utilized a deep doorway on the corner for the dry work, and Narcissa held the umbrella while I pulled and pushed and grunted and pumped, during the more strenuous moments. Down the river a way we drew up in a grassy place under some trees and sat in the car and ate the _gâteaux_ and other things, and under the green shelter I made coffee and eggs, the little cooker sitting cozily on the running-board. Then all the afternoon along the hard, wet, shining road that follows the Rhone to Valence, where we spent two days, watching the steady beat from the hotel windows, reading, resting, and eating a good deal of the time; doing not much sight-seeing, for we had touched Valence on our northward trip eight months before. Chapter VI THE CHÂTEAU I DID NOT RENT In a former chapter I have mentioned the mighty natural portrait in stone which Mark Twain found, and later named the Lost Napoleon, because he could not remember its location, and how we rediscovered it from Beauchastel on the Rhone, not far below Valence. We decided now that we would have at least another glimpse of the great stone face, it being so near. The skies had cleared this morning, though there was a good deal of wind and the sun was not especially warm. But we said we would go. We would be getting on toward the south, at any rate. We did not descend on the Beauchastel side, there being a bridge shown on the map, at La Voulte, where we would cross. The reader may also remember the mention of a château below Beauchastel, with a sign on it which said that the property was to let, and my failure to negotiate for it. Very well, here is the sequel: When we got to the end of the bridge opposite La Voulte, we looked across to one of the closely packed mediæval villages of France with a great castle rising from its central height. It was one of the most picturesque things we had seen and I stopped to photograph it, declaring we must certainly visit it. So we crossed the bridge and at the end turned away toward Beauchastel, deciding to visit La Voulte later. We were back almost immediately. The day was not as clear as it looked and the Lost Napoleon was veiled, behind a white horizon. Very likely it would be better by morning, we said, so we dropped our belongings at the tiny Beauchastel inn and made an afternoon excursion to the château. Imagine my feelings when, on looking up from the road, I suddenly discovered once more the big sign, "_Château A Louer._" It was our château--the one I had formerly been discouraged from taking. It was providence, I said, knocking a second time at our door. The others had another view. They said unless I would promise not to rent the premises I would not be permitted to examine them. I tried to make better terms, but finally submitted. We drove up into the narrow, ancient, cobbled streets a distance and left the car. Then we climbed. It was a steep and tortuous way, winding around scary edges and through doubtful-looking passages where, in weird holes and crannies, old and crooked people lived and were doing what they had always done since time began. I don't remember exactly how we finally made our way through crumble and decay--such surroundings as I have often known in dreams--to a grassy court where there was a semblance of genuine life. An old caretaker was there and he agreed to show us through. It was called _La Voulte sur Rhone_, he said, and gave its name to the village. No one knew just when it had been begun, but some of it had been there in the eleventh century, when it had belonged to Adon de Clerieu. It had passed through many hands and had been more than once reconstructed. At one time Guillaume de Fay held it; also Philippe IV and Louis de Bourbon Condé, and the great family of De Rohan. Kings had been entertained there, among them Louis XIII, an interesting fact, but I wished they had given better accommodations than the rambling, comfortless, and rather blind succession of boxes shown us as the royal suite. I also objected to the paper on the walls until our guide explained that it had been put there by an American tenant of the early Andrew Johnson period. He told us then that the château had been recently bought by a French author of two volumes of poetry, who was restoring portions of it and had reserved a row of rooms along the high terrace to let to other poets and kindred souls, so they might live side by side and look out over the fair land of France and interchange their fancies and dream long dreams. Standing on that lofty green vantage and looking out across the river and the valley of the Rhone, I was tempted to violate my treaty and live there forever after. The only portion really restored, so far, is a large assembly room, now used as a sort of museum. I hope the owner will reclaim, or at least clean, some of the other rooms, and that he will not carry the work to the point where atmosphere and romance seem to disappear. Also, I truly hope he won't give up the notion of that row of poets along the terrace, even if I can't be one of them; and I should like to slip up there sometime and hear them all striking their harps in unison and lifting a memnonic voice to the sunrise. Chapter VII AN HOUR AT ORANGE Our bill at Beauchastel for the usual accommodation--dinner, lodging, and breakfast--was seventeen francs-twenty, including the tips to two girls and the stableman. This was the cheapest to date; that is to say, our expense account was one dollar each, nothing for the car. The Beauchastel inn is not really a choice place, but it is by no means a poor place--not from the point of view of an American who has put up at his own little crossroad hotels. We had the dining room to ourselves, with a round table in the center, and the dinner was good and plentiful and well served. If the rooms were bare they were at least clean, and the landlady was not to blame that it turned cold in the night, which made getting up a matter to be considered. Still, we did get up pretty promptly, for we wanted to see if our natural wonder was on view. It was, and we took time and sketched it and tried to photograph it, though that was hopeless, for the distance was too great and the apparition too actinic--too blue. But it was quite clear, and the peaceful face impressed us, I think, more than ever. The best view is from the railway embankment. We got another reward for stopping at Beauchastel. We saw the old Rhone stagecoach come in, Daudet's coach, and saw descend from it Daudet's characters, _le Camarguais_, _le boulanger_, _le remouleur_, and the rest. At least they might have been those, for they belonged with the old diligence, and one could imagine the knife grinder saying to the hectoring baker, "_Tais-toi, je t'en prie" si navrant et si doux_.[13] But now we felt the breath of the south. It was no longer chilly. The sun began to glow warm, the wind died. Sometime in the afternoon we arrived at Orange. Orange is not on the Rhone and we had missed it in our northward journey in September. It was one of our special reasons for returning to the south of France. Not the town of Orange itself, which is of no particular importance, but for the remnants of the Roman occupation--a triumphal arch and the chief wall of a Roman theater, both of such fine construction and noble proportions that they are to be compared with nothing else of their kind in France. We came to the arch first--we had scarcely entered the town when we were directly facing it. It stands in a kind of circular grass plot a little below the present level, with short flights of steps leading down to it. At the moment of our arrival a boy of about fifteen was giving an exhibition by riding up and down these steps on a bicycle. I sincerely wished he would not do it. Whatever its relation to its surroundings nineteen centuries ago, the arch of Orange is magnificently out of place to-day. Time-beaten and weather-stained--a visible manifest of a race that built not for the generations or the centuries, but for "the long, long time the world shall last"--supreme in its grandeur and antiquity, it stands in an environment quite modern, quite new, and wholly trivial. The arch is really three arches--the highest in the center, and the attic, as they call the part above, is lofty, with rich decorations, still well preserved. There are restored patches here and there, but they do little injury. From whatever direction you look the arch is beautiful, imposing, and certainly it seems eternal. When the present Orange has crumbled and has been followed by successive cities, it will still be there, but I trust the boy with the bicycle will not survive. The theater is at the other end of town. It is not an amphitheater or an inclosure of any kind, but a huge flat wall, about as solid as the hills and one of the biggest things in France. Strictly speaking, it was never part of any building at all. It was simply a stage property, a sort of permanent back scene for what I judge to have been an open-air theater. There is no doubt about its permanency. It is as high as an ordinary ten-or twelve-story building, longer than the average city block, and it is fifteen feet thick. That is the Roman idea of scenery. They did not expect to shift it often. They set up some decorative masonry in front of it, with a few gods and heroes solidly placed, and let it go at that. Their stage would be just in front of this, rather narrow, and about on a ground level. The whole was built facing a steep rocky hillside, which was carved into a semi-circle of stone seats, in the old fashion which Rome borrowed from Greece. This natural stonework did not stand the wash of centuries, or it may have been quarried for the château which the princes of Orange built at the summit of the hill. The château is gone to-day, and the seats have been restored, I dare say, with some of the original material. Every August now a temporary stage is erected in the ancient theater, and the Comédie Française gives performances there. The upper works of the hill, where the château was, are rather confusing. There are cave-like places and sudden drops and rudimentary passages, all dimly suggesting dungeons, once black and horrible, now happily open to the sun. And, by the way, I suppose that I am about the only person in the world who needed to be told that a line of kings originated at Orange. I always supposed that William of Orange took his name from an Irish society whose colors, along with a shamrock, he wore in his hat. By some oversight the guidebook does not mention the jam that is sold at Orange. It is put up in tin pails, and has in it all the good things in the world--lumps of them--price, one franc per pail. We did not stop at Avignon, for we had been there before, but followed around outside the ancient wall and came at last to the Rhone bridge, and to the island of our smoke adventure in the days of our inexperience, eight months earlier. This time we camped on the island in a pretty green nook by the water's edge, left the car under a tree, and made tea and had some of that excellent jam and some fresh rolls and butter, and ate them looking across to ancient Villeneuve and the tower of Philip le Bel. Oh, the automobile is the true flying carpet--swift, willing, always ready, obeying at a touch. Only this morning we were at Beauchastel; a little while ago we were under the ancient arch at Orange and sat in the hoary theater. A twist of the crank, a little turning of the wheel, a brief flight across wood and meadow, and behold! the walls of Avignon and a pleasant island in the river, where we alight for a little to make our tea in the greenery, knowing that we need only to rub the magic lamp to sail lightly away, resting where we will. Our tea ended, the genii awoke and dropped us into Villeneuve, where, in an open market, we realized that it was cherry season. I thought I had seen cherries before, but never in this larger sense. Here there were basketfuls, boxfuls, bucketfuls, barrelfuls, wagonloads--the whole street was crowded with wagons, and every wagon heaped high with the crimson and yellow fruit. Officials seemed to be weighing them and collecting something, a tax, no doubt. But what would be done with them later? Could they ship all those cherries north and sell them? And remember this was only one evening and one town. The thought that every evening and every town in the Midi was like this in cherry time was stupefying. We had to work our way among cherry wagons to get to the open road again, and our "flying carpet" came near getting damaged by one of them, because of my being impatient and trying to push ahead when an approaching cherry wagon had the right of way. As it was, I got a vigorous admonishment in French profanity, which is feathery stuff, practically harmless. I deserved something much more solid. Consider for a moment this French profanity: About the most violent things a Frenchman can say are "_Sacre bleu_" and "_Nom d'un chien!_" One means "Sacred blue" and the other "Name of a dog." If he doubles the last and says "Name of a name of a dog," he has gone his limit. I fail to find anything personal or destructive or profane in these things. They don't seem to hit anything, not even the dog. And why a dog? Furthermore, concerning the color chosen for profane use--why blue? why not some shade of Nile green, or--or-- Oh, well, let it go, but I do wish I could have changed places with that man a few minutes! We considered returning to Avignon for the night, but we went to Tarascon instead, and arrived after dark at a bright little inn, where we were comfortably lodged, and a relative of Tartarin brought us a good supper and entertained us with his adventures while we ate. FOOTNOTES: [13] "_La Diligence de Baucoire_" in _Lettre de Mon Moulin_, Alphonse Daudet. Chapter VIII THE ROAD TO PONT DU GARD It is a wide, white road, bordered by the rich fields of May and the unbelievable poppies of France. Oh, especially the poppies! I have not spoken of them before, I think. They had begun to show about as soon as we started south--a few here and there at first, splashes of blood amid the green, and sometimes mingling a little with the deep tones of the crimson clover, with curious color effect. They became presently more plentiful. There were fields where the scarlet and the vivid green of May were fighting for the mastery, and then came fields where the scarlet conquered, was supreme, and stretched away, a glowing, radiant sheen of such splendid color as one can hardly believe, even for the moment that he turns away. It was scarlet silk unrolled in the sun. It was a tide of blood. It was as if all the world at war had made this their battlefield. And it did not grow old to us. When we had seen a hundred of those fields they still fascinated us; we still exclaimed over them and could not tear our eyes away. We passed wagonloads of cherries now. In fact, we did not pass loads of anything else. Cherry harvest was at its height. Everybody was carrying baskets, or picking, or hauling to market. We stopped and asked an old man drowsing on a load to sell us some. He gave us about a half a peck for eight cents and kept piling on until I had to stop him. Then he picked up a specially tied bunch of selected ones, very handsome, and laid them on top and pointed at Narcissa--"For the demoiselle." We thanked him and waved back to him, but he had settled down into his seat and was probably asleep again. All drivers sleep in the Provence. They are children of the south and the sun soothes them. They give their horses the rein and only waken to turn out when you blow or shout very loudly. You need an especially strong Klaxonette in the Provence. Baedeker says: "The Pont du Gard is one of the grandest Roman structures in existence." I am glad Baedeker said that, for with my limited knowledge I should have been afraid to do it, but I should always have thought so. A long time ago I visited the Natural Bridge of Virginia. I had been disappointed in natural wonders, and I expected no great things of the Natural Bridge. I scaled my imagination down by degrees as I followed a path to the viewpoint, until I was prepared to face a reality not so many times bigger than the picture which my school geography had made familiar. Then all at once I turned a corner and stood speechless and stupefied. Far up against the blue a majestic span of stone stretched between two mighty cliffs. I have seen the Grand Cañon since, and Niagara Falls, but nothing ever quite overwhelmed me as did that stupendous Virginia stone arch--nothing until we rounded a bend in the road and stopped facing the Pont du Gard. Those two are of the same class--bridges supreme--the one of nature, the other of art. Neither, I think, was intended as a bridge originally. The Romans intended these three colossal tiers of columns, one above the other, merely as supports for the aqueduct at the top, which conducted water to Nîmes. I do not know what the Almighty intended his for--possibly for decoration. To-day both are used as bridges--both are very beautiful, and about equally eternal, I should think, for the Roman builders came nearer to the enduring methods of the Original Builder than any other architects save, possibly, the Egyptians. They did not build walls of odds and ends of stone with mortar plastered between; they did not face their building stones to look pretty outside and fill in behind with chips and mortar, mostly mortar. They took the biggest blocks of stone they could find, squared them, faced them perfectly on all sides, and laid them one on top of the other in such height and in such thickness as they deemed necessary for a lasting job. Work like that does not take an account of time. The mortar did not crumble from between them with the centuries. There was none to crumble. The perfectly level, perfectly matched stones required no cementing or plaster patching. You cannot to-day insert a thin knife blade between these matched stones. The Pont du Gard is yellow in tone and the long span against the blue sky is startlingly effective. A fine clear stream flows under it, the banks are wild with rock and shrub, the lower arches frame landscape bits near or more distant. I don't know why I am trying to describe it-- I feel that I am dwarfing it, somehow--making it commonplace. It is so immense--so overwhelming to gaze upon. Henry James discovered in it a "certain stupidity, a vague brutality." I judge it seemed too positive, too absolute, too literal and everlasting for the author of the _Golden Bowl_. He adds, however, that "it would be a great injustice not to insist upon its beauty." One must be careful not to do injustice to the Pont du Gard. We made our luncheon camp a little way from the clear stream, and brought water from it and cooked eggs and made coffee (but we carry bottled water for that), and loafed in the May sun and shade, and looked at that unique world-wonder for an hour or more. The Joy discovered a fine school of fish in the stream--trout, maybe. A hundred years ago and more the lower arches of the Pont du Gard were widened to make a bridge, and when at last we were packed and loaded again we drove across this bridge for the nearer view. It was quite impossible to believe in the age of the structure--its preservation was so perfect. We drove to the other end and, turning, drove slowly back. Then lingeringly we left that supreme relic in the loneliness where, somehow, it seemed to belong, and followed the broad white road to Nîmes. There is a Roman arena at Nîmes, and a temple and baths--the Romans built many such things; but I think they could have built only one Pont du Gard. Chapter IX THE LUXURY OF NÎMES When the Romans captured a place and established themselves in it they generally built, first an Arch of Triumph in celebration of their victory; then an arena and a theater for pleasure; finally a temple for worship. Sometimes, when they really favored the place and made it a resort, they constructed baths. I do not find that they built an Arch of Triumph at Nîmes, but they built an arena, baths, and a temple, for they still stand. The temple is the smallest. It is called the "Maison Carrée," and it is much like the temple we saw at Vienne that day in the rain, but in a finer state of preservation. Indeed, it is said to be one of the best preserved Roman temples in existence. It is graceful and exquisite, and must have suited Henry James, who did not care for Roman arenas because they are not graceful and exquisite, as if anything built for arena purposes would be likely to be anything less than solid and everlasting. We did not go into the Maison Carrée. It is a museum now, and the fact that it has also been used as a warehouse and stable somehow discouraged us. It would be too much done over. But the outside was fascinating. We thought the garden of the Roman baths and fountain would be well to see in the evening. We drove along the quay by the side of the walled river which flows down the middle of the street, and came to the gates of the garden and, leaving the car, entered. At first it seemed quite impossible to believe that a modern city of no great size or importance should have anything so beautiful as this garden, or, having it, should preserve it in such serene beauty and harmony. But then one remembered that this was France, and of France it was the Provence and not really a part of the sordid, scrambling world at all. It is a garden of terraces and of waterways and of dim, lucent pools to which stairways descend, and of cypresses, graying statuary, and marble bridges and fluted balustrades; and the water is green and mysterious, and there is a background of dark, wooded hills, with deep recesses and lost paths. We climbed part way up the hillside and found a place where we could look out on the scene below. In the fading light it seemed a place of enchantment. It is not easy to tell what part of this garden the Romans built and what was added from time to time during the centuries. It seems to have been liberally reconstructed a hundred or so years ago, and the statuary is none of it of the Roman period. But if there was ever any incongruity the blurring hand of time has left it invisible to our unpracticed eyes. We lingered in this magic garden, and spoke softly of the generations that for nineteen centuries have found their recreation there, and we turned often for a last look, reluctant to leave something that seemed likely to vanish the moment one turned away. Our hotel was on the square in which stands the arena, so that it was but a step away at any time. We paid it one thorough visit, and sat in the seats, and scaled the upper heights, and looked down on the spot where tragedy and horror had been employed as means of pleasure for a good portion of the world's history. I am sorry the Provence is still rather cruel minded, though I believe they do not always kill the bull now in the Sunday-afternoon fights. It is only a few times in each season that they have a fight to the death. They had one the Sunday before our arrival, according to the bills still posted at the entrance. In the regular Sunday games anyone has the privilege of snatching a bow of red ribbon from the bull's forehead. I had a fever to try it, but, this being only Tuesday, it did not seem worth while to wait. On the whole I think we did not find the arena at Nîmes as interesting as the one at Arles, perhaps because we had seen Arles first. It is somewhat smaller than the Arles circus, and possibly not so well preserved, but it is of majestic proportions, and the huge layers of stone, laid without cement in the Roman fashion, have never moved except where Vandal and Saracen and the building bishops have laid despoiling hands. Not all the interest of Nîmes is ancient; Alphonse Daudet was born in Nîmes, and the city has set up a statue and named a street in his honor. Daudet's birthplace is not on the street that bears his name, but on the Boulevard Gambetta, one of the wide thoroughfares. Daudet's house is a part of the Bourse du Commerce now, and I do not think it was ever the "_habitation commode, tout ombragée de plantanes_" of which he writes so fondly in Le Petit Chose--the book which we have been told is, in part, at least, his own history. There is nothing now to indicate that it was ever the birthplace of anyone, except the plaque at the door, and as we sat reading this we realized that by a coincidence we had come at a fortunate time. The plaque said, "Born May 13, 1840." Now, seventy-four years later, the date was the same. It was the poet's birthday! Chapter X THROUGH THE CÉVENNES The drowsy Provence, with its vineyard slopes and poppied fields, warm lighted and still, is akin to Paradise. But the same Provence, on a windy day, with the chalk dust of its white roads enveloping one in opaque blinding clouds, suggests Sherman's definition of war. We got a taste of this aspect leaving Nîmes on our way north. The roads were about perfect, hard and smooth, but they were white with dust, and the wind did blow. I have forgotten whether it was the mistral or the tramontane, and I do not think it matters. It was just wind--such wind as I used to meet a long time ago in Kansas. Our first town was Alais, but when we inquired about Alai, according to the French rule of pronunciation, they corrected us and said Alais--sounding the s. That is Provençal, I take it, or an exception to the rule. Alais itself was of no importance, but along the way there were villages perched on hilltops, with castles crowning the high central points, all as picturesque and mediæval as anything well could be. We were always tempted to go up to them, but the climb was likely to be steep; then those villages seen from the inside might not be as poetry-picturelike as when viewed from below, looking up an orchard slope to their weathered balconies and vine-hung walls. We were in the Cévennes about as soon as we had passed Alais. The Cévennes are mountains--not mere hills, but towering heights, with roads that wind and writhe up them in a multiplicity of convolutions, though always on perfect grade, always beautiful, bringing to view deep vistas and wide expanses at every turn. There was little wind now--the hills took care of that--and we were warm and comfortable and happy in this fair, lonely land. There were few habitations of any kind; no automobiles; seldom even a cart. Water was scarce, too; it was hard to find a place to replenish our bottles. But we came at last to a cabin in the woods--a sort of wayside café it proved--where a woman sold us half a liter of red wine for about five cents, and supplied us with spring water free. A little farther along, where the road widened a bit, we halted for luncheon. On one side a steep ascent, wooded, on the other a rather abrupt slope, grass-covered and shady with interspaced trees. By and by we noticed that all the trees were of one variety--chestnut. It was, in fact, a chestnut orchard, and proclaimed the industry of this remote land. We saw many such during the afternoon; probably the district is populous enough during the chestnut harvest. Through the long afternoon we went winding upward among those unpeopled hills, meeting almost nothing in the way of human life, passing through but one village, Grenolhac, too small even to be set down in the road book. In fact, the first place mentioned beyond Alais was Villefort, with a small population and one inn, a hostelry indicated in the book merely by a little wineglass, and not by one of the tiny houses which, in their varied sizes, picture the recommended hotels and the relative importance thereof. There was no mention of rooms in connection with the Café Marius Balme; the outlook for accommodation overnight was not very cheerful. It was chilly, too, for evening was closing in and we were well up in the air. The prospect of camping by the roadside, or even of sitting up in a café until morning, did not attract a person of my years, though Narcissa and the Joy declared that to build a camp fire and roll up in the steamer rugs would be "lovely." As there were only three rugs, I could see that somebody was going to be overlooked in the arrangement; besides, a night in the mountains in May, let it begin ever so gayly, is pretty sure to develop doubtful features before morning. I have done some camping in my time, and I have never been able to get together enough steamer rugs to produce a really satisfactory warmth at, say, three or four o'clock in the morning, when the frost is embroidering the bushes and the stars have a glitter that drills into your very marrow. Langogne, the first town marked with a hotel, was at least thirty-five miles farther along, and I could tell by the crinkly look of the road as it appeared on our map that it was no night excursion. Presently we descended into a sort of gorge, and there was Villefort, an isolated, ancient little hamlet forgotten among the Cévennes hilltops. We came to an open space and there, sure enough, was the Café Balme, and by the side of it, happy vision, another little building with the sign "Hôtel Balme." It was balm indeed. To my faithful inquiry, "_Vous avez des chambres?_" Yes, they had chambers--they were across the open square, over the garage--that is to say, the stable--if the monsieur and his party would accept them. "_Oui, certainement!_" They were not luxurious--they were just bare boxes, but they were clean, with comfortable beds, and, dear me! how inviting on this particularly chilly evening, when one has put in most of the day climbing narrow, circuitous mountain roads--one-sided--that is to say, one side a wall, the other falling off into unknown space. They were very quiet rooms, for we had the place to ourselves. The car would sleep just under us, and we had a feeling of being nomads, the kind that put up in barns and empty buildings. A better place could hardly have made us happier, and a better dinner than we had could not be produced anywhere. There was soup--French soup; hot fried trout, taken that day from the mountain streams; then there was omelet of the freshest eggs, served so hot that one must wait for it to cool; also a dish of veal of the same temperature and of such tenderness that you could cut it with a fork; and there was steak which we scarcely touched, and a salad, and fruit and cakes and camembert cheese, with unlimited wine throughout. How could they give a dinner like that, and a good bed, and coffee and rolls with jam next morning, all for four francs--that is, eighty cents, each? I will tell you: they did their own cooking, and were lost so far in the mountains that they had not yet heard of the "high cost of living." And if I have not mentioned it before, I wish to say here that all the red road-book hotels are good, however small or humble they appear. Indeed, I am inclined to believe that _all French_ hotels are good--at least that they have good food and beds. With the French, to have good beds and good food is a religion. You notice I do not mention the coffee. That is because it is not real coffee. It is-- I don't quite know what it is. In the large hotels it merely looks like coffee. In these small inns it looks like a dark, ominous soup and tastes like that as much as anything. Also, it is not served in cups, but bowls, porridge bowls, with spoons to match, and the natives break chunks of bread in it and thus entirely carry out the soup idea. This is the French conception of coffee in the remoter districts, but the bread and jam or honey that go with it are generally good and plentiful, and I suppose the fearful drink itself must be wholesome. One hears a good deal in America of delicious French coffee, but the only place to get it is in America, in New Orleans, say, or New York. I have never found any really good coffee even in Paris. I think not many travelers visit the Cévennes. The road across the mountains from Nîmes toward Paris seemed totally untraversed, at least so far as tourists are concerned. No English is spoken anywhere--not a word. This was France--not the France that is Paris, which is not France at all any more than New York City is America, but the France which is a blending of race and environment--of soil and sky and human struggle into a unified whole that is not much concerned with the world at large, and from generation to generation does not greatly change. One may suppose, for instance, that the market at Villefort, which we saw next morning, was very much what it was a hundred years ago--that the same sturdy women in black dresses and curious hats had carried the same little bleating kids, one under each arm--that trout and strawberries and cheese and cherries and all the products of that mountain district were offered there, around the old stone fountain, in the same baskets under the shadow of the same walls, with so little difference in the general aspect that a photograph, if one could have been taken then, might be placed beside the ones we made and show no difference in the fashion of things at all. We bought some of the strawberries, great delicious dewy ones, and Narcissa and the Joy wanted to buy one or even a dozen of the poor little kids, offering to hold them in their laps constantly. But I knew that presently I should be holding one or more of those kids in my own lap and I was afraid I could not do that and drive with safety. I said that some day when we had time we would build a wooden cage on wheels to put behind the car and gradually collect a menagerie, but that I was afraid we didn't have time just now. We must be getting on. Our landlady was a good soul. She invited us into the kitchen, neat, trim, and shining, and showed us some trout caught that morning, and offered to give us a mess to take along. The entire force of the hotel assembled to see us go. It consisted of herself and her daughter, our waitress of the night before. Our bill was sixteen francs. The old life--the simple life--of France had not yet departed from Villefort. Chapter XI INTO THE AUVERGNE We had climbed two thousand feet from Nîmes to reach Villefort and thought we were about on the top of the ridge. But that was a mistake; we started up again almost as soon as we left, and climbed longer hills, higher and steeper hills, than ever. Not that they were bad roads, for the grades were perfect, but they did seem endless and they were still one-sided roads, with a drop into space just a few feet away, not always with protecting walls. Still there was little danger, if one did not get too much interested in the scenery, which was beyond anything for its limitless distances, its wide spaces and general grandeur. Whenever we got to a level spot I stopped the car to look at it while the engine cooled. It is a good plan to stop the car when one wishes really to admire nature. The middle of the road ahead is thought to be the best place for the driver to look while skirting a mountainside. To return to roads just for a moment, there were miles of that winding lofty way, apparently cut out of the solid face of the mountain, through a country almost entirely uninhabited--a rocky, barren land that could never be populous. How can the French afford those roads--how can they pay for them and keep them in condition? I was always expecting to meet a car on the short high turns, and kept the horn going, but never a car, never a carriage--only now and then a cart, usually the stone-cart of some one mending the roads. The building and engineering of those roads seems to me even a greater marvel than the architecture of cathedrals and châteaux. They are as curly and crooked as a vine, but they ascend and descend with a precision of scale that makes climbing them a real diversion. We ascended those hills on high speed--all of them. We were about at the snow line now. We could see it but a little way higher up, and if the weather had not been so bright and still we should have been cold. Once we saw what we took to be a snowbank just ahead by the roadside. But when we came nearer we saw it was narcissus, growing there wild; later we saw whole fields of it. It flourished up there as the poppies did lower down. The country was not all barren. There were stretches of fertile mountain-top, with pastures and meadows and occasional habitations. Now and then on some high point we saw a village clustering about an ancient tower. Once--it was at Prévenchères, a tiny village of the Auvergne--we stopped and bought eggs and bread. There were also a few picture postals to be had there, and they showed the Bourrée, which is a native dance of the Auvergne--a rather rough country café dance, I gathered, but picturesque, in the native costume. I wish we might have seen it. The mountains dwindled to hills, humanity became more plentiful. It was an open, wind-swept country now--rolling and fruitful enough, but barren of trees; also, as a rule, barren of houses. The people live in the villages and their industry would seem to be almost entirely pasturage--that is, cattle raising. I have never seen finer cattle than we saw in the Auvergne, and I have never seen more uninviting, dirtier villages. Barns and houses were one. There were no dooryards, and the cattle owned the streets. A village, in fact, was a mere cattle yard. I judge there are few more discouraging-looking communities, more sordid-looking people, than in just that section. But my guess is that they are a mighty prosperous lot and have money stuffed in the savings bank. It is a further guess that they are the people that Zola wrote of in _La Terre_. Of course there was nothing that looked like a hotel or an inn in any of those places. One could not imagine a French hotel in the midst of such a nightmare. Chapter XII LE PUY One of the finest things about a French city is the view of it from afar off. Le Puy is especially distinguished in this regard. You approach it from the altitudes and you see it lying in a basin formed by the hills, gleaming, picturesque, many spired--in fact, beautiful. The evening sun was upon it as we approached, which, I think, gave it an added charm. We were coasting slowly down into this sunset city when we noticed some old women in front of a cottage, making lace. We had reached the lacemaking district of the Auvergne. We stopped and examined their work and eventually bought some of it and photographed them and went on down into the city. Every little way other old women in front of humble cottages were weaving lace. How their fingers did make the little bobbins fly! I had never heard of a _puy_ (pronounced "pwee") before we went to the Auvergne and I should never have guessed what it was from its name. A _puy_ is a natural spire, or cone, of volcanic stone, shooting straight up into the air for several hundred or several thousand feet, often slim and with perpendicular sides. Perhaps we should call them "needles." I seem to remember that we have something of the kind in Arizona known by that name. The Auvergne has been a regular _puy_ factory in its time. It was in the Quaternary era, and they were volcanic chimneys in the day of their first usefulness. Later--a good deal later--probably several million years, when those flues from the lower regions had become filled up and solidified, pious persons began building churches on the tops of them, which would seem pretty hazardous, for if one of those chimneys ever took a notion to blow out, it would certainly lift the church sky high. Here at Le Puy the chimney that gives it its name is a slender cone two hundred and eighty feet high, with what is said to be a curious tenth-century church on the very tip of it. We were willing to take it for granted. There are about five hundred steps to climb, and there is a good deal of climbing in Le Puy besides that item. We looked up to it, and across to it, and later--when we were leaving--down to it from another higher point. I don't know why churches should be put in such inconvenient places--to test piety, maybe. I am naturally a pious person, but when I think of the piety that has labored up and down those steps through rain and shine and cold and heat for a thousand years I suffer. We did climb the stair of the cathedral of Notre Dame de Puy, which sweeps upward in broad majesty, like a ladder to heaven. There are over a hundred steps, and they were originally designed so the overflow congregation could occupy them and look into the church and see the officiating priest. An architectural change has made this impossible to-day, so perhaps the congregation no longer overflows. In fact, there was a time when great pilgrimages were made to Notre Dame du Puy, and it was then that the steps were filled. There are little shops on each rise of this great flight--ascending with it--shops where religious charms and the like are sold. At the earlier period the merchants displayed their wares on small tables, and the street is called _Rue des Tables_ to this day. The church is built of black and white stone, and has a curiously Turkish look. It all seems very foreign to France, and indeed the whole place was not unlike a mosque, though more somber, less inviting. It was built in the twelfth century, and under its porch are two of the original cedar doors, with Latin inscriptions. I am sure Le Puy is a religious place. On every high point there is a church or a saint, or something inspiring. A statue of Notre Dame de France is on the highest point of all, four hundred and thirty-five feet above the town. This statue was cast from the metal of two hundred Russian cannons taken at Sebastopol. You can ascend to it by some six or seven hundred steps cut in the solid rock. We did not go up there, either. Even the statement that we could ascend another flight of steps inside the statue and stand in its very head did not tempt us. Americans have been spoiled for these things. The lift has made loafers of us all. What I think we enjoyed most in Le Puy was its lacemakers. At every turn, in every little winding street, one saw them--singly and in groups; they were at the front of every door. They were of all ages, but mainly, I think, they were old women. Many of them wore the Auvergne costume--quaint hats or caps, and little shawls, and wooden shoes. Lacemaking is the industry of the Haute-Loire district, and is said to employ ninety thousand women. I think that is an underestimate. It seemed to me we saw as many as that ourselves in front of those mediæval doorways of Le Puy. Chapter XIII THE CENTER OF FRANCE It is grand driving from Le Puy northward toward Clermont-Ferrand and Vichy. It is about the geographical center of France, an unspoiled, prosperous-looking land. Many varieties of country are there--plain, fertile field, rich upland slopes. All the way it is picture country--such country as we have seen in the pictures and seldom believed in before. Cultivated areas in great squares and strips, fields of flowers--red, blue, white--the French colors; low solid-looking hills, with little cities halfway to the summit, and always, or nearly always, a castle or two in their midst; winding, shining rivers with gray-stone bridges over them, the bright water appearing and reappearing at every high turn. Our road made no special attempt to reach the towns. We viewed them from a distance, and there were narrower roads that turned in their direction, but our great national highway--it was No. 9 now--was not intended for their special accommodation. When it did reach a town it was likely to be a military center, with enormous barracks--new, many of them--like those at Issoire, a queer old place where we spent the night and where I had a real adventure. It was my custom to carry under the back seat a bottle of Scotch whisky in event of severe illness, or in case of acute motor trouble. For reasons I do not at the moment recall--perhaps the cork had leaked--our supply seemed low at Issoire, and I decided to see what I could find. I had little hope, for in France even the word "whisky" is seldom recognized. Still, I would make diligent inquiry, our case being pretty desperate. There was not enough in the bottle to last till morning-- I mean, of course, in case anything serious should happen. I had the usual experience at the cafés. The attendants repeated the word "whisky" vaguely, and in various ways, and offered me all sorts of gayly tinted liquids which I did not think would cure anything I was likely to have. I tried a drug store, where a gentle pharmacist listened awhile to my French, then dug out from the back of a lower drawer a circular on Esperanto. Imagine! I was about ready to give it up when I happened to notice a low, dim shop the shelves of which seemed filled with fancy bottles. The place had an ancient, mellow look, but I could see at a glance that its liquids were too richly colored for my taste--needs, I mean. I could try, however. The little gray man who waited on me pronounced the word in several ways and scratched his head. "_Wisky_," he said, "_visky-viskee!_" Then he seemed to explode. A second later he was digging a dusty book out of a dusty pile, and in a moment was running his fingers down a yellow page. I dare say it was an old stock list, for suddenly he started up, ran to a dark, remote shelf, pulled away some bottles, and from the deeper back recesses dragged a bottle and held it up in triumph. "_Voilà!_" he said, "_veeskee! Veeskee Eereesh!_" Shades of St. Patrick! It was old Irish whisky--old, how old--perhaps laid in by his grandfather, for a possible tourist, a hundred years before. I tried to seem calm--indifferent. "_Encore?_" I said. But no, there was no _encore_--just this one. The price, oh yes, it was four francs. Imagine! Issoire is a quaint place and interesting. I shall always remember it. To motorists Clermont-Ferrand is about the most important city in France. It is the home of tire manufacturers, and among them the great benevolent one that supplies the red road book, and any desired special information, free. We felt properly grateful to this factory and drove out to visit it. They were very good to us; they gave us a brand-new red-book and a green-book for Germany and Switzerland. The factory is a large one, and needs to be. About four-fifths of the cars of Europe go rolling along on its products, while their owners, without exception, use its wonderfully authentic guides. Each year the road books distributed free by this firm, piled one upon the other, would reach to a height of more than five miles. They cover about all the countries, and are simply priceless to the motorist. They are amusing, too. The funny fat motor man made of tires, shown in little marginal drawings and tailpieces in all the picturesque dilemmas of the road, becomes a wonderfully real personality on short acquaintance. We learned to love the merry Michelin man, and never grew tired of sharing his joys and misfortunes. Clermont-Ferrand is also the home of a man with two wooden legs that need oiling. I know, for he conducted us to the cathedral, and his joints squeaked dismally at every step. I said I would go back to the car and get the oil can, but he paid no attention to the suggestion. He also objected to the tip I gave him, though I could not see why an incomplete guide like that, especially one not in good repair, should expect double rates. Besides, his cathedral was not the best. It was not built of real stone, but of blocks of lava from the _puys_ of the neighborhood. We came near getting into trouble descending a hill to Vichy. The scene there was very beautiful. Vichy and the river and valley below present a wonderful picture. Absorbed in it, I was only dimly conscious of an old woman trudging along at our left, and did not at all notice a single chicken quite on the opposite side. In any case I could not well know that it was her chicken, or that it was so valuable that she would risk her life to save it. She was a very old person--in the neighborhood of several hundred, I should think, wearing an improperly short skirt, her legs the size and shape of a tightly folded umbrella, terminating below in the largest pair of wooden shoes in the world. Familiar with the habits of chickens, she probably thought her property would wait till we were opposite and then start to race across in front of the car. To prevent this she decided to do it herself! Yet I suppose if I had damaged that prehistoric old lady, instead of missing her by the breadth of half a hair, her relatives would have made us pay for her at fancy rates. We did not tarry at Vichy. It is a gay place--stylish and costly, and worth seeing a little, when one can drive leisurely through its clean, handsome streets. Perhaps if we could have invented any maladies that would have made a "cure" necessary we might have lingered with those other sallow, sad-eyed, stylish-looking people who collect in the pavilions where the warm healing waters come bubbling up and are dispensed free for the asking. But we are a healthy lot, and not stylish. We drove about for a pleasant hour, then followed along evening roads to St. Germain des Fosses, where the Hôtel du Porc was a wayside inn of our kind, with clean, quiet rooms, good food--and prices, oh, very moderate indeed! But I do wonder why garages are always put in such inconvenient places. I have driven in and backed out of a good many in my time, and I cannot now recall more than one or two that were not tucked away in an alley or around some impossible corner, making it necessary to scrape and writhe and cringe to get in and out without damaging something. I nearly knocked a corner from an out-house in St. Germain, backing out of its free and otherwise satisfactory garage. Chapter XIV BETWEEN BILLY AND BESSEY To those tourists who are looking for out-of-the-way corners of Europe I commend Billy. It is not pronounced in our frivolous way, but "Bee-yee," which you see gives it at once the French dignity. I call Billy "out-of-the-way" because we saw no tourists in the neighborhood, and we had never before heard of the place, which has a bare three-line mention in Baedeker. Billy is on the Allier, a beautiful river, and, seen from a distance, with its towering ruin, is truly picturesque. Of course the old castle is the chief feature of Billy--a ruin of great extent, and unrestored! The last item alone makes it worth seeing. A good many of the ruins of France have been restored under the direction of that great recreator of the architectural past, Viollet le Duc, who has done his work supremely well and thoroughly--oh, thoroughly, no name! I am glad he did it, for it means preservation for the ages, but I am so glad that there is now and then a ruin that Monsieur V. le Duc Happened to overlook. I even drift into bad poetry when I think of it. The Château de Billy seems to have been built about 1232 by one of the sires of Bourbon Robert of Clermont, son of St. Louis, to control the river traffic. It was a massive edifice of towers and bastions, and walls of enormous thickness. A good portion of the walls and some of the towers still stand. And there is a dungeon into which no light or air could come, once used to convince refractory opposition. They put a man in there for an hour. When they took him out he was either convinced or dead, and so, in either case, no longer troublesome. The guardian of Billy was a little old woman as picturesque as the ruins, and lived in a little house across the way, as picturesque as herself. When we had seen the castle she let us look into her house. It consisted of just one small room with a tiny stove in one corner and a bed in the other. But the stove, with its accessories of pans and other ware all so shining and neat, and her tiny, high-posted, canopied bed so spotless and pretty with its white counterpane and gay little curtains, set us to wondering why anybody in the world needed a home more ample or attractive than that. It seemed amusing to us that the name of the next place along that route should be Bessey. We lunched between Billy and Bessey, on a green level roadside, under some big trees, where there was a little stream which furnished our cooking water. It is not always easy to select the luncheon place. A dry spot with water and shade is not everywhere to be had, and then we do not always instantly agree on the conveniences of a place, and while we are discussing it we are going right along at a fifteen or twenty-mile rate and that place has drifted a mile or two behind before the conference ends. But there always _is_ a place somewhere that has most of the things we want, and it lies around the next turn or over the next hill, and it is always so new and strange and foreign, so away and away from the world we have known, so intimately a part of a land and of lives we have never seen before and shall never see again. A gypsy of very poor class came along while we were at luncheon. His little wagon-house was quite bare of furnishings. The man walked outside beside the meager donkey--a young woman with a baby sat on the floor in the wagon. Gypsies, by the way, are an institution in France. The French call them _nomades_, and provide them with special ordinances and road limitations. At first, when we saw signs "_Limites de Nomades_" in the outskirts of villages we wondered what was meant, and did not associate the notice with the comfortable and sometimes luxurious house-wagons that we met or overtook, or found solidly established by some pleasant waterside. Then it dawned upon us that these gypsy folk were the _nomades_ and that the signs were provided for their instruction. We met them, presently, everywhere. France, with its level roads and liberal laws, is gypsy heaven. A house on wheels, a regular little flat, with parlor, bedroom and kitchen, big enough to hold a family and its belongings, can be drawn by a single horse over the hard, perfectly graded highways. They work north in the summer, no doubt, and in the autumn the Midi calls them. Every little way we saw them camped, working at their basketry or some kindred industry. Not all the villages limit them, and often we found them located in the midst of a busy town. I do not think they do any harm, and I always envied them. Some of their little houses are so cozy and neat, with tiny lace curtains and flower pots, and pictures on the walls. When we first saw such wagons we thought they belonged to artists. Chapter XV THE HAUTE-LOIRE The particular day of which I am now writing was Sunday, and when we came to Moulin, the ancient capital of the Bourbonnais, there was a baptismal ceremony going on in the cathedral; the old sexton in the portico outside was pulling the rope that led up to the great booming bell. He could pull and talk too, and he told us that the bell was only rung for baptisms, at least that was what we thought he said as he flung himself aloft with the upward sweep, and alow with the downward sweep, until his chin nearly touched the stone floor. I got into the swing of it directly, and signified that I should like to ring the bell a little myself. I realize now that it was decidedly brazen to ask to assist at a sacred function like that, but he let me do it, and I took the rope and for a minute or two swayed up and down in a pride I can hardly express, ringing that five-hundred-year-old bell to notify the world of the latest baptism in France. We came upon an unexpected treat at Moulin--the Souvigny bible, an illuminated manuscript of 1115, with one hundred and twenty-two marvelously executed pictorial designs. The bible was in a museum across from the cathedral, a splendid museum indeed for little Moulin, being the reconstructed château of the Bourbons, filled with beautiful things of the Bourbon period. The bible is in a room by itself in a glass case, but the guardian opened it for us and turned the leaves. This bible, discovered at the old priory of the little town of Souvigny, is in perfect condition and presents a gorgeous piece of hand illumination. The drawing itself is naturally primitive, but the coloring is rich beyond telling, the lettering marvelously perfect. J. Pierpont Morgan is said to have offered a million francs for the Souvigny bible, a vast sum to little Moulin. I am glad they did not sell it. It seems better in the quiet, choice museum which was once the castle of the Bourbon dukes. It is curious how conventions establish themselves in the different districts and how absolutely they prevail in the limits of those districts. In certain sections, for instance, we found the furnishings in each hotel exactly alike. The same chairs, the same little table, the same bedsteads and wardrobes, the same tableware. We could tell by the change of furnishing when we had reached a new district. A good portion of the Auvergne remains to us the "Land of Squatty Pitchers," because in every bedroom the water pitcher was a very short, very corpulent and saucy-looking affair that amused us each evening with its absurd shape. Then there were the big coffee bowls and spoons. They got larger and larger from Nîmes northward until we reached Issoire. There the bowls were really immense and the spoons had grown from dessert spoons to table spoons, from table spoons to soup spoons until at Issoire they were like enormous vegetable spoons, such as cooks use to stir the pot with. From Moulin northward we entered the "Land of Little Ladders." All the houses outside the larger towns were story-and-a-half affairs, built facing the road, and the half-story was not reached by an inside stairway, but by a short outside ladder that led up to a central gable window, which was really a door. It was curious to see a string of these houses, all with the little ladders, and all just alike. Our first thought was that the ladders were used because they were cheaper to build than a stairway, and saved inside room. But, reflecting later, I thought it more likely that they originated in the old need of defense. I think there was a time when the family retired to the loft at night and drew the ladder up after them, to avoid a surprise. It had been raining softly when we left Moulin. Somehow we had strayed from the main road, and through the misty mid-region of the Haute-Loire followed ways uncharted, but always good--always interesting, and somewhere in that lost borderland we came to Dornes, and the daintiest inn, kept by the daintiest gray-haired woman, who showed us her kitchen and her flower garden and her tame pheasants, and made us love her dearly. Next day at St. Pierre le Moutier we got back on our route, and when Narcissa, out of the book she had been reading, reminded us that Joan of Arc had once fought a battle there the place became glorified. Joan must have been at Nevers, too, though we found no record of it. I think we should have stayed longer at Nevers. There was an ancient look about portions of it that in a brighter day would have invited us. Crossing the Loire and entering the city, with its ancient bastioned walls, carried one back a good way into the centuries. But it was still dull and drizzly, and we had a feeling for the open road and a cozier lodgment. The rain ceased, the sun tried to break through the mist. The glistening world became strangely luminous, a world not of hard realities at all. The shining river winding away into mystery; far valley reaches fading into haze; blurred lines of ancient spires and towers--these things belonged only to a land of romance. Long ago I saw a painting entitled a dream of Italy. I did not believe then that any real land could be as beautiful-- I thought it only an artist's vision. I was mistaken. No painting was ever so beautiful--so full of richness and light and color as this haze-haunted valley of the Loire. We rested at Neuvy, at the little red-book inn, Hôtel de la Paix, clean and inviting like the rest. It is the best compliment we can pay these little hotels that we always want to remain in them longer, and plan some day to come back to them. Chapter XVI NEARING PARIS There are more fine-looking fishing places in France than in any country I ever saw. There are also more fishermen. In every river town the water-fronts are lined with them. They are a patient lot. They have been sitting there for years, I suppose, and if they have ever caught anything the fact has been concealed. I have talked with numbers of them, but when I came to the question of their catch they became vague, not to say taciturn. "_Pas grande chose_" ("No great thing"), has been the reply, and there was no exhibit. I have never seen one of those fishermen get a nibble. But the water is certainly seductive. Following the upper Loire from Neuvy to Gien, I was convinced that with a good rod I could stop almost anywhere and fill the car. Such attractive eddies, such fascinating, foam-flecked pools! Probably it is just as well I did not have the rod. I like to persuade myself that the fish were there. Gien on the Loire is an old place, but not much that is old remains. Joan of Arc stopped there on her way to the king at Chinon, and it was from Gien, following the delivery of Orléans and the battle of Patay, that she set out with Charles VII for the coronation at Rheims. But there are no Joan relics in Gien to-day. There are, however, two interesting features here: the two-story wells and the hard-working dogs. The wells have a curb reaching to the second story, with an opening below for the downstairs tenants. It seems a good idea, and the result is picturesque. The dogs are hitched to little wagons and the Giennese--most of whom seem to be large and fat--first load those wagons and then get in themselves and ride. We saw one great hulk of a man approaching in what at first seemed to be some sort of a go-cart. It was not until he got close up that we discovered the dog--a little sweltering dog, his eyes popping out, his tongue nearly dragging the ground. I think the people of Gien are lazy and without shame. [Illustration: "THROUGH HILLSIDE VILLAGES WHERE NEVER A STONE HAD BEEN MOVED, I THINK, IN CENTURIES"] We missed the road leaving Gien and wandered off into narrow, solid little byways that led across fields and along hedges, through hillside villages where never a stone had been moved, I think, in centuries. Once we turned into what seemed a beautiful wood road, but it led to a grand new château and a private drive which had a top dressing of deep soft sand. Fortunately nobody was at home, for we stalled in the sand and the head of the family and Narcissa and the Joy were obliged to get out and push while I put on all backing power and made tracks in that new sand that would have horrified the owner. We are the right sort, however. We carefully repaired the scars, then made tracks of another kind, for remoter districts. Miles away from anywhere, by a pool at the edge of a field of bushes, we established a luncheon place, and in a seclusion of vines and shrubbery the Joy set up a kitchen and made coffee and boiled eggs and potatoes and "kept house" for an hour or so, to her heart's content. We did not know where we were, or particularly care. We knew that the road would lead somewhere, and that somewhere would be a wayside village with a little hotel that had been waiting for us ever so long, with inviting comforts and generous hospitality. Often we said as we drove along, "What little hotel do you suppose is waiting for us to-night?" But we did not worry, for we always knew we should find it. The "little hotel" this time proved to be at Souppes on the Loing, and if I had to award a premium to any of the little hotels that thus far had sheltered us, I think I should give it to the Hôtel du Mouton, Souppes. The name naturally amused us, and we tried to make jokes out of it, but the dainty rooms and the delicious dinner commanded only our approval. Also the price; nineteen francs and forty centimes, or less than four dollars, for our party of four, dinner, lodging, and breakfast, garage free. Souppes is a clean town, with a wide central street. Most of the towns up this way were cleaner than those of the farther south. Also, they had better buildings, as a rule. I mean the small towns. Villages not large enough even to be set down on the map have churches that would do credit in size and luxury to New York City. Take Bonny, for instance. We halted there briefly to watch some quaintly dressed people who were buying and selling at a little butter and egg market, and then we noticed a big, gray, ancient-looking church somewhat farther along. So we went over there and wandered about in its dim coolness, and looked at its beautiful treasures--among them the fine marble statue of Joan which one meets to-day in most of the churches in France. How could Bonny, a mere village, ever have built a church like that--a church that to-day would cost a million dollars? Another thing we noticed up this way was the "sign of the bush." Here and there along the road and in the villages there would be a house with an upward-slanting hole in the outside wall, about halfway to the eaves, and in the hole a branch of a tree, usually evergreen. When we had seen a few of these we began to wonder as to their meaning. Then we noticed that houses with those branches were all cafés, and some one suddenly remembered a proverb which says, "A good wine needs no bush," and how, in a former day, at least, the sign of the bush had indicated a wine shop. That it still does so in France became more and more evident as we went along. Every wine shop had its branch of green. I do not think there was one along that road that considered its wine superior to the traditional announcement. Just outside of Souppes there is a great flinty rock upon which some prehistoric race used to sharpen knives. I suppose it was back before Cæsar's time, but in that hard stone, so hard that my own knife would not scratch it, the sharpening grooves and surfaces are as fresh as if those old fellows had left there only yesterday. I wish I could know how they looked. We came to the woods of Fontainebleau and ate our luncheon in its deep lucent shade. There is romance in the very name of Fontainebleau, but we would return later to find it. We drove a little through the wide avenues of that splendid forest that for three centuries or more was a hunting ground and pleasure park for kings, then we headed away for Juvisy on the Seine, where we spent the night and ate on a terrace in the open air, in a company not altogether to our liking--it being rather noisy, rather flashy, rather unwholesome--in a word, Parisian. We had left the region of simple customs and unpretentious people. It was not a pleasant change. Also, we had left the region of good roads. All that I have said about the perfection of French roads I wish to retract, so far as those in the environs of Paris are concerned. Leaving Juvisy, we were soon on what is called the "pave," a road paved with granite blocks, poorly laid to begin with, and left unrepaired for years. It is full of holes and humps and wallows, and is not really a road at all, but a stone quarry on a jamboree. We jiggled and jumped and bumped, and only by going at the slowest permissible speed could stand it. Cars passed us going quite fast, but I could see that their occupants were not enjoying themselves. They were holding on to the backs of the seats, to the top supports, to one another. They were also tearing their cars to pieces, though the average Frenchman does not mind that. I love France, and every Frenchman is my friend, but I do not wish him to borrow my car. He drives helter-skelter, lickety-split, and never takes care of his car at all. When the average Frenchman has owned a car a year it is a rusty, smoking, clattering box of tinware, ready for the can-heap. Chapter XVII SUMMING UP THE COST The informed motorist does not arrive at the gates of Paris with a tankful of gasoline. We were not informed, and when the _octroi_ officials had measured our tank they charged us something like four dollars on its contents. The price of gasoline is higher inside, but not that much higher, I think. I did not inquire, for our tankful lasted us the week of our stay. To tell the truth, we did but little motoring in Paris. For one thing, the streets are just a continuation of the pave, and then the traffic regulations are defective. I mean there are no regulations. It's just a go-as-you-please, each one for himself. Push, crowd, get ahead of the fellow in front of you--that is the rule. Here and there a _gendarme_ stands waving his arms and shouting, "_Sacre bleu!_" but nobody pays the least attention to him. The well-trained American motorist finds his hair getting gray after an hour or two of that kind of thing. But we enjoyed Paris, though I am not going to tell about it. No one attempts to tell of Paris any more--it has all been told so often. But I may hint to the conservative motorist that below the Seine, in the neighborhood of the Luxembourg Gardens, about where the rue de Vaugirard crosses the Boulevard St. Michel, he will find choice little hotels, with rooms very moderate indeed. And perhaps here is a good place to speak of the cost of our travel. We had stinted ourselves in nothing except style. We had traveled leisurely, happily, enjoying everything to the full, and our average expense was a trifle less than forty francs a day--that is, eight dollars for four persons and the car. Our bill each day at the little hotels for dinner, lodging, and _petit déjeuner_ (rolls, coffee, and jam) averaged about twenty-two francs, garage free.[14] That, of course, is absurdly cheap. The matter of gasoline is different. "_Essence_" or benzine, as they call it, is high in Europe, and you would think it was some fine liqueur, the way they handle it. They put it up in sealed five-liter cans, and I have seen motorists, native motorists, buy one can--a trifle more than a gallon--probably fearing evaporation, or that somebody would rob the tank. One of those cans cost us about fifty cents, and, being of extra refined quality, it would carry us on French roads between eighteen and twenty miles. Sixty miles a day was about our average, which is aplenty for sight-seeing, even for an American. Our gasoline and oil expense came to about eight francs a day. The remainder of our eight dollars went for luncheon by the roadside and for tips. The picnic luncheon--bread and butter (delicious unsalted butter), jam, eggs, tinned meats, cheese, sausage, etc.--rarely cost to exceed four francs, and was usually cheaper. Our hotel tips were about 10 per cent of the bill, which is the correct amount, and was always satisfactory. When one gives more he gains nothing but servility, and makes it difficult for those who follow him. On the other hand an American cannot give less and keep his self-respect. There were usually but two servants at little inns, a waitress and a chambermaid. They were entitled to a franc each, and the boy at the garage to another. Two or three francs a day was quite enough for incidental tips at churches, ruined castles, and the like, unless there should be a fee, which would naturally be reckoned outside the regular budget. In any case, such fees were small and infrequent. I think I will add a brief summary of the foregoing figures which I seem to have strung along in a rather loose, confusing way. SUMMARY AVERAGE DAILY COST OF MOTORING TOR FOUR PERSONS, 1914 Average daily cost of dinner, lodging, and breakfast 22 francs ($4.40) Average daily cost of gasoline and oil 8 francs ( 1.60) Average daily cost of roadside luncheon 4 francs ( .80) Average daily cost of tips at hotel 3 francs ( .60) Average daily cost for sight-seeing 3 francs ( .60) ----------------- Total 40 francs ($8.00) That was reasonable motor travel, and our eight dollars bought as much daily happiness as any party of four is likely to find in this old world.[15] Another thing I wish to record in this chapter is the absolute squareness we found everywhere. At no hotel was there the slightest attempt to misrepresent, to ring in extras, to encourage side-adventures in the matter of wines or anything of the sort. We had been led to believe that the motorist was regarded as fair game for the continental innkeeper. Possibly there were localities where this was true, but I am doubtful. Neither did the attendants gather hungrily around at parting. More than once I was obliged to hunt up our waitress, or to leave her tip with the girl or man who brought the bags. The conclusion grew that if the motorist is robbed and crucified in Europe, as in the beginning a friend had prophesied we should be, it is mainly because he robs and crucifies himself. FOOTNOTES: [14] It was oftener from sixteen to eighteen francs, but the time when we stopped at larger towns, like Le Puy, Lyons, and Valence, brought up the average. These are antewar prices. I am told there is about a 50-per-cent increase (on the dollar basis) to-day. The value of the French franc is no longer a fixed quantity. [15] The reader must continue to bear in mind that this was in a golden age. The cost would probably be nearer 150 francs to-day (1921), or $12 American money. Even so, it would be cheaper than staying at home, in America. Chapter XVIII THE ROAD TO CHERBOURG It is easy enough to get into almost any town or city, but it is different when you start to leave it. All roads lead to Rome, but there is only here and there one that leads out of it. With the best map in the world you can go wrong. We worked our way out of Paris by the Bois de Boulogne, but we had to call on all sorts of persons for information before we were really in the open fields once more. A handsome young officer riding in the Bois gave us a good supply. He was one of the most polite persons I ever met; also, the most loquacious. The sum of what he told us was to take the first turn to the right, but he told it to us for fully five minutes, with all the variations and embroideries of a young and lively fancy that likes to hear itself in operation. He explained how the scenery would look when we had turned to the right; also how it would continue to look when there was no longer a necessity of turning in either direction and what the country would be in that open land beyond the Bois. On the slightest provocation I think he would have ridden with us, even into Cherbourg. He was a boon, nevertheless, and we were truly grateful. Beyond the Bois de Boulogne lay the _pave_, miles of it, all as bad as it could be. Sometimes we could not really tell when we were in the road. Once I found myself on a sort of private terrace without knowing how I got there or how to get down. We went through St. Germain, but we did not stop. We wished to get far from Paris--back to the simple life and good roads. It was along the Seine, at last, that we found them and the quiet villages. Imagine the luxury of following a silent, tranquil road by that placid stream, through the sweetness of a May afternoon. Imagine the peace of it after the jar and jolt and clatter and dazzle of detestable, adorable Paris. I am sorry not to be able to recommend the hotel at Rosny. For a time it looked as if it were going to be one of the best of our selections, but it did not turn out so. When we found a little toy garden at the back, our rooms a string of tiny one-story houses facing it, with roses blooming at every doorway, we were delighted. Each of us had a toy house to himself, and there was another for the car at the back. It was a real play place, and we said how nice it was and wished we might stay a good while. Then we went for a walk down to the river and in the sunset watched a curious ferryboat run back and forth on a wire, taking over homefaring teams, and some sheep and cattle, to the village on the farther bank of the little, but historic, river. In the early gloaming we walked back to our hotel. The dinner was very good--all dinners in France are that--but alas for our pretty playhouse rooms! When candles were brought in we saw what I had begun to suspect from the feeling, the walls were damp--worse, they were soaked--almost dripping. It seems they were built against a hill and the recent rains had soaked them through. We could not risk it--the landlady must give us something in the main house. She was a good soul--full of regrets, even grief. She had not known about those walls, she said, and, alas! she had no rooms in the main house. When we insisted that she _must_ find _something_, she admitted that there was, indeed, just one room, but so small, so humble--fine folk like us could never occupy it. She was right about its being small, but she was wrong in thinking we could not occupy it. She brought in cots and bedding, and when we were all in place at last we just about filled it from side to side. Still, it was dry and ventilated; those other places had been neither. But it seemed to us amusing that our fine pretension of a house apiece opening on a garden had suddenly dwindled to one inconsiderable room for the four of us. We were in Normandy, now, and enjoying it. Everything was quite different from the things of the south. The picturesque thatched-roof houses; the women in dainty caps, riding on donkeys, with great brass milk jugs fore and aft; the very ancient cross-timber architecture; those, to us, were new things in France. The architecture and some of the costumes were not new to one who had visited England. William the Norman must have carried his thatched-roof and cross-timber architecture across the Channel; also, certain dresses and smocks and the pattern of the men's whiskers. In some of these towns one might almost believe himself in rural England. Lisieux, especially, is of the type I mean. It has a street which might be in Shrewsbury, though I think the Shrewsbury houses would not be as old as those of Lisieux, one of which--"The House of the Salamander"--so called from the decoration on its carved façade--we were permitted to visit. Something about it gave me more the feeling of the ancient life than I have found in most of the castles. Perhaps because it is wood, and wood holds personality longer than stone. There is an old church at Lisieux, and it has a chapel built by Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, who hounded Joan of Arc to the stake. Cauchon earned the Beauvais appointment by convicting Joan, but later, especially after Joan had been rehabilitated, he became frightened of the entertainment which he suspected Satan was preparing for him and built this chapel in expiation, hoping to escape the fire. It is a beautiful chapel, but I think Cauchon wasted his money. If he didn't there is something wrong with justice. The Normandy road to Cherbourg is as wonderful as any in France. All the way it is lined with trees, and it goes straight on, mile after mile, up hill and down--long, long hills that on the approach look as if they reached to the sky, but that flatten out when you get to them, and offer a grade so gradual and a surface so smooth that you need never shift your speed levers. Workmen are always raking and touching up those roads. We had something more than two days of them, and if the weather had not been rather windy and chilly out on that long peninsula the memory of that run would be about perfect. Cherbourg is not the great city we had imagined it to be. It is simply a naval base, heavily fortified, and a steamer landing. Coming in on the Paris road you are in the center of activities almost as soon as you reach the suburbs and there is none of the crush of heavy traffic that one might expect. There is a pleasant beach, too, and if travelers were not always going somewhere else when they arrive at Cherbourg, the little city might become a real resort. We were there a week before our ship came in, then sailed out one quiet June evening on the harbor tender to meet the missing member and happily welcome her to France. Our hotel had a moving-picture show in the open air, and we could look down on it from our windows. The Joy especially liked this, and we might have stayed there permanently, but the long roads and still unvisited glories of France were calling. Chapter XIX BAYEUX, CAEN, AND ROUEN We had barely hesitated at Bayeux on the way to Cherbourg, but now we stopped there for the night. Bayeux, which is about sixty miles from Cherbourg, was intimately associated with the life of William the Conqueror, and is to-day the home of the famous Bayeux tapestry, a piece of linen two hundred and thirty feet long and eighteen inches wide, on which is embroidered in colored wools the story of William's conquest of England. William's queen, Matilda, is supposed to have designed this marvelous pictorial document, and even executed it, though probably with the assistance of her ladies. Completed in the eleventh century, it would seem to have been stored in the Bayeux cathedral, where it lay scarcely remembered for a period of more than six hundred years. Then attention was called to its artistic and historic value, and it became still more widely known when Napoleon brought it to Paris and exhibited it at the Louvre to stir the French to another conquest of England. Now it is back in Bayeux, and has a special room in the museum there, and a special glass case, so arranged that you can walk around it and see each of its fifty-eight tableaux. It was the closing hour when we got to the Bayeux museum, but the guardian gave us plenty of time to walk around and look at all the marvelous procession of horses and men whose outlines have remained firm and whose colors have stayed fresh for more than eight hundred years. Matilda was ahead of her time in art. She was a futurist--anybody can see that who has been to one of the later exhibitions. But she was exactly abreast in the matter of history. It is likely that she embroidered the events as they were reported to her, and her records are above price to-day. I suppose she sat in a beautiful room with her maids about her, all engaged at the great work, and I hope she looked as handsome as she looks in the fine painting of her which hangs above the case containing her masterpiece. There is something fine and stirring about Matilda's tapestry. No matter if Harold does seem to be having an attack of pleurisy when he is only putting on his armor, or if the horses appear to have detachable legs. Matilda's horses and men can get up plenty of swift action on occasion, and the events certainly do move. Tradition has it that the untimely death of the queen left the tapestry unfinished, for which reason William's coronation does not appear. I am glad we stopped at Bayeux. I would rather have seen Matilda's faithfully embroidered conquest than a whole gallery full of old masters. Next day at Caen we visited her grave. It stands in a church which she herself founded in expiation of some fancied sin connected with her marriage. Her remains have never been disturbed. We also visited the tomb of the Conqueror, on the other side of the city at the church of St. Étienne. But the Conqueror's bones are not there now; they were scattered by the Huguenots in 1562. We enjoyed Caen. We wandered about among its ancient churches and still more ancient streets. At one church a wedding was going on, and Narcissa and I lingered a little to assist. One does not get invited to a Normandy wedding every day, especially in the old town where William I organized his rabble to invade England. No doubt this bride and groom were descendants of some of William's wild rascals, but they looked very mild and handsome and modern to us. Narcissa and I attended quite a variety of ceremonials in the course of our travels: christenings, catechisms, song services, high mass, funerals--there was nearly always something going on in those big churches, and the chantings and intonings, and the candles, and the incense, and the processions and genuflections, and the robes of the priests and the costumes of the assemblages all interested us. Caen became an important city under William the Conqueror. Edward III of England captured and pillaged it about the middle of the fourteenth century, at which time it was larger than any city in England, except London. It was from Caen that Charlotte Corday set out to assassinate Marat. To-day Caen has less than fifty thousand inhabitants and is mainly interesting for its art treasures and its memories. We left the Paris-Cherbourg road at Caen. Our program included Rouen, Amiens, and Beauvais, cathedral cities lying more to the northward. That night we lay at the little Norman village of Bourg-Achard, in an inn of the choicest sort, and next morning looked out of our windows on a busy cattle market, where men in clean blue smocks and women in neat black dresses and becoming headgear were tugging their beasts about, exhibiting them and discussing them--eating, meantime, large pieces of gingerbread and other convenient food. A near-by orchard was filled with these busy traders. At one place our street was lined with agricultural implements which on closer inspection proved to be of American manufacture. From Bourg-Achard to Rouen the distance seemed all too short--the road was so beautiful. It was at Rouen that we started to trace backward the sacred footprints of Joan of Arc, saint and savior of France. For it is at Rouen that the pathway ends. When we had visited the great cathedral, whose fairy-like façade is one of the most beautiful in the world, we drove to a corner of the old Market Place, and stopped before a bronze tablet which tells that on this spot on a certain day in May, 1431 (it was the 29th), the only spotless soul in France, a young girl who had saved her country from an invading and conquering enemy, was burned at the stake. That was five hundred years ago, but time has not dulled the misery of the event, its memory of torture, its humiliation. All those centuries since, the nation that Joan saved has been trying to atone for her death. Streets have been named for her; statues have been set up for her in every church and in public squares, but as we read that sorrowful tablet I could not help thinking that all of those honors together are not worth a single instant of her fiendish torture when the flames had found her tender flesh. Cauchon, later Bishop of Beauvais, her persecutor, taunted his victim to the last. If the chapel of expiation he built later at Lisieux saved him, then chapels must indeed be held in high esteem by those who confer grace. Nothing is there to-day that was there then, but one may imagine an open market place thronged with people, and the horrid structure of death on which stood Joan while they preached to her of her sins. Her sins! when she was the only one among them that was not pitch black, steeped to the hair in villainy. Cauchon himself finished the sermon by excommunicating her, cutting off the church's promise of salvation. On her head she wore a cap on which was printed: HERETIC, RELAPSED, APOSTATE, IDOLATER. Cauchon had spared nothing to make her anguish complete. It is curious that he allowed her to pray, but he did, and when she prayed--not for herself, but for the king who had deserted her--for his glory and triumph, Cauchon himself summoned the executioners, and they bound her to the stake with chains and lighted the fire. There is little more to see of Joan in Rouen. The cathedral was there in her time, but she was never permitted to enter it. There is a wall which was a part of the chapel where she had her final hearing before her judges; there are some houses which she must have passed, and there is a tower which belonged to the castle in which she was confined, though it is not certain that it is Joan's tower. There is a small museum in it, and among its treasures we saw the manuscript article _St. Joan of Arc_, by Mark Twain, who, in his _Personal Recollections_, has left to the world the loveliest picture of that lovely life. Chapter XX WE COME TO GRIEF It was our purpose to leave Rouen by the Amiens road, but when we got to it and looked up a hill that about halfway to the zenith arrived at the sky, we decided to take a road that led off toward Beauvais. We could have climbed that hill well enough, and I wished later we had done so. As it was, we ran along quite pleasantly during the afternoon, and attended evening services in an old church at Grandvilliers, a place that we had never heard of before, but where we found an inn as good as any in Normandy. It is curious with what exactness Fate times its conclusions. If we had left Grandvilliers a few seconds earlier or later it would have made all the difference, or if I had not pulled up a moment to look at a lovely bit of brookside planted with poplars, or if I had driven the least bit slower or the least bit faster, during the first five miles, or-- Oh, never mind--what happened was this: We had just mounted a long steep hill on high speed and I had been bragging on the car, always a dangerous thing to do, when I saw ahead of us a big two-wheeled cart going in the same direction as ourselves, and beyond it a large car approaching. I could have speeded up and cut in ahead of the cart, but I was feeling well, and I thought I should do the courteous thing, the safe thing, so I fell in behind it. Not far enough behind him, however, for as the big car came opposite, the sleepy driver of the cart pulled up his horse short, and we were not far enough behind for me to get the brakes down hard and suddenly enough to stop before we touched him. It was not a smash. It was just a push, but it pushed a big hole in our radiator, mashed up one of our lamps, and crinkled up our left mudguard. The radiator was the worst. The water poured out; our car looked as if it had burst into tears. We were really stupefied at the extent of our disaster. The big car pulled up to investigate and console us. The occupants were Americans, too, from Washington--kindly people who wanted to shoulder some of the blame. Their chauffeur, a Frenchman, bargained with the cart driver who had wrecked us to tow us to the next town, where there were garages. Certainly pride goes before a fall. Five minutes before we were sailing along in glory, exulting over the prowess of our vehicle. Now all in the wink of an eye our precious conveyance, stricken and helpless, was being towed to the hospital, its owners trudging mournfully behind. The village was Poix, and if one had to be wrecked anywhere, I cannot think of a lovelier spot for disaster than Poix de la Somme. It is just across in Picardy, and the Somme there is a little brook that ripples and winds through poplar-shaded pastures, sweet meadows, and deep groves. In every direction were the loveliest walks, with landscape pictures at every turn. The village itself was drowsy, kindly, simple-hearted. The landlady at our inn was a motherly soul that during the week of our stay the Joy and I learned to love. For the others did not linger. Paris was not far away and had a good deal in the way of shopping to recommend it. The new radiator ordered from London might be delayed. So early next morning they were off for Paris by way of Amiens and Beauvais, and the Joy and I settled down to such employments and amusements as we could find, while waiting for repairs. We got acquainted with the garageman's family, for one thing. They lived in the same little court with the shop, and we exchanged Swiss French for their Picardese, and were bosom friends in no time. We spruced up the car, too, and every day took long walks, and every afternoon took some luncheon and our little stove and followed down the Somme to a tiny bridge, and there made our tea. Then sometimes we read, and once when I was reading aloud from Mark Twain's _Joan of Arc_, and had finished the great battle of Patay, we suddenly remembered that it had happened on the very day on which we were reading, the 18th of June. How little we guessed that in such a short time our peaceful little river would give its name to a battle a thousand times greater than any that Joan ever fought! Once when we were resting by the roadside a little old lady with a basket stopped and sat with us while she told us her history--how her husband had been a great physician and invented cures that to-day are used in all the hospitals of France. Now she was poor, she said, and lived alone in a little house, but if we would visit her she would give us some good Picardese cooking. I wish we might have gone. One day I hired a bicycle for the Joy and entertained the village by pushing her around the public square until she learned to ride alone. Then I hired one for myself and we went out on the road together. About the end of the third day we began to look for our radiator, and visited the express office with considerable regularity. Presently the village knew us, why we were there and what we were expecting. They became as anxious about it as ourselves. Chapter XXI THE DAMAGE REPAIRED--BEAUVAIS AND COMPIÈGNE One morning as we started toward the express office a man in a wagon passed and called out something. We did not catch it, but presently another met us and with a glad look told us that our goods had arrived and were now in the delivery wagon on the way to the garage. We did not recognize either of those good souls, but they were interested in our welfare. Our box was at the garage when we arrived there, and in a little more it was opened and the new radiator in place. The other repairs had been made, and once more we were complete. We decided to start next morning to join the others in Paris. Morning comes early on the longest days of the year, and we had eaten our breakfast, had our belongings put into the car, and were ready to be off by seven o'clock. What a delicious morning it was! Calm, glistening, the dew on everything. As long as I live I shall remember that golden morning when the Joy, aged eleven, and I went gypsying together, following the winding roads and byways that led us through pleasant woods, under sparkling banks, and along the poplar-planted streams of Picardy. We did not keep to highways at all. We were in no hurry and we took any lane that seemed to lead in the right direction, so that much of the time we appeared to be crossing fields--fields of flowers, many of them, scarlet poppies, often mingled with blue cornflowers and yellow mustard--fancy the vividness of that color. Traveling in that wandering fashion, it was noon before we got down to Beauvais, where we stopped for luncheon supplies and to see what is perhaps the most remarkable cathedral in the world. It is one of the most beautiful, and, though it consists only of choir and transepts, it is one of the largest. Its inner height, from floor to vaulting, is one hundred and fifty-eight feet. The average ten-story building could sit inside of it. There was once a steeple that towered to the giddy heights of five hundred feet, but in 1573, when it had been standing three hundred years, it fell down, from having insufficient support. The inner work is of white stone, marble, and the whole place seems filled with light. It was in this cool, heavenly sanctuary that Cauchon, who hounded Joan to the stake, officiated as bishop. I never saw a place so unsuited to a man. I should think that spire would have tumbled off then instead of waiting until he had been dead a hundred years. There is a clock in this church--a modern clock--that records everything, even the age of the world, which at the moment of our visit was 5,914 years. It is a very large affair, but we did not find it very exciting. In the public square of Beauvais there is a bronze statue of Jeanne Laine, called "Jeanne Hachette," because, armed with a hatchet, she led others of her sex against Charles the Bold in 1472 and captured a banner with her own hands. Beauvais has many interesting things, but the day had become very warm and we did not linger. We found some of the most satisfactory pastries I have ever seen in France, fresh and dripping with richness; also a few other delicacies, and, by and by, under a cool apple tree on the road to Compiègne, the Joy and I spread out our feast and ate it and listened to some little French birds singing, "_Vite! Vite! Vite!_" meaning that we must be "Quick! Quick! Quick!" so they could have the crumbs. It was at Compiègne that Joan of Arc was captured by her enemies, just a year before that last fearful day at Rouen. She had relieved Orléans, she had fought Patay, she had crowned the king at Rheims; she would have had her army safely in Paris if she had not been withheld by a weakling, influenced by his shuffling, time-serving counselors. She had delivered Compiègne the year before, but now again it was in trouble, besieged by the Duke of Burgundy. Joan had been kept in partial inactivity in the Loire district below Paris during the winter, but with the news from Compiègne she could no longer be restrained. "I will go to my good friends of Compiègne," she said, and, taking such force as she could muster, in number about six hundred cavalry, she went to their relief. From a green hill commanding the valley of the Oise we looked down upon the bright river and pretty city which Joan had seen on that long-ago afternoon of her final battle for France. Somewhere on that plain the battle had taken place, and Joan's little force for the first time had failed. There had been a panic; Joan, still fighting and trying to rally her men, had been surrounded, dragged from her horse, and made a prisoner. She had led her last charge. We crossed a bridge and entered the city and stopped in the big public square facing Leroux's beautiful statue of Joan, which the later "friends of Compiègne" have raised to her memory. It is Joan in semi-armor, holding aloft her banner, and on the base in old French is inscribed "_Je Yray voir mes bons amys de Compiègne_" ("I will go to see my good friends of Compiègne"). Many things in Compiègne are beautiful, but not many of them are very old. Joan's statue looks toward the handsome and richly ornamented Hôtel de Ville, but Joan could not have seen it in life, for it dates a hundred years after death. There are two handsome churches, in one or both of which she doubtless worshiped when she had first delivered the city; possibly a few houses of that ancient time still survive. We looked into the churches, but they seemed better on the outside. Then I discovered that one of our back tires was down, and we drew up in a secluded nook at the rear of St. Jacques for repairs. It was dusk by the time we had finished, the end of that long June day, and we had no time to hunt for a cozy inn. So we went to a hotel which stands opposite the great palace which the architect Gabriel built for Louis XV, and looked across to it while we ate our dinner, and talked of our day's wanderings, and of palaces in general and especially queens; also of Joan, and of the beautiful roads and fields of flowers, and of the little birds that tried to hurry us along, and so were very happy and very tired indeed. Next morning we visited the palace. It has been much occupied by royalty, for Compiègne was always a favorite residence of the rulers of France. Napoleon came there with the Empress Marie Louise, and Louis Philippe and Napoleon III both found retirement there. I think it could not have been a very inviting or restful home. There are long halls and picture galleries, all with shiny floors and stiffly placed properties, and the royal suites are just a series of square, prettily decorated and upholstered boxes, strung together, with doors between. One might as well set up a series of screens in a long hall. Even with the doors shut there could not have been much sense of privacy, certainly none of snugness. But then palaces were not meant to be cozy. We saw the bedrooms and dressing rooms and what not of the various queens, and we looked from an upper window down a long forest avenue that was finer than anything inside. Then we went back to the car and drove into the big forest for ten miles or more, to an old feudal castle--such a magnificent old castle, all towers and turrets and battlements--the château of Pierrefonds, one of the finest in France. It stands upon a rocky height overlooking a lake, and it does not seem so old, though it had been there forty years when Joan of Arc came, and it looks as if it might be there about as long as the hill it stands on. It was built by Louis of Orléans, brother of Charles VI, and the storm of battle has raged often about its base. Here and there it still shows the mark of bombardment, and two cannon balls stick fast in the wall of one of its solid towers. Pierrefonds was in bad repair, had become well-nigh a ruin, in fact, when Napoleon III, at his own expense, engaged Viollet le Duc to restore it, in order that France might have a perfect type of the feudal castle in its original form. It stands to-day as complete in its structure and decoration as it was when Louis of Orléans moved in, more than five hundred years ago, and it conveys exactly the solid home surroundings of the mediæval lord. It is just a show place now, and its vast court, its chapel and its halls of state are all splendid enough, though nothing inside can be quite so magnificent as its mighty assemblage of towers and turrets rising above the trees and reflecting in the blue waters of a placid lake. It began raining before we got to Paris, so we did not stop at Crépy-en-Valois, or Senlis, or Chantilly, or St. Denis, though all that land has been famous for kings and castles and bloodshed from a time farther back than the days of Cæsar. We were interested in all those things, but we agreed we could not see everything. Some things we saw as we went by; great gray walls and crumbling church towers, and then we were at the gates of Paris and presently threading our way through a tangle of streets, barred, many of them, because the top of the subway had been tumbling in a few days before and travel was dangerous. It was Sunday, too, and the streets were especially full of automobiles and pedestrians. It was almost impossible to keep from injuring something. I do not care for Paris, not from the driving seat of a car. Chapter XXII FROM PARIS TO CHARTRES AND CHÂTEAUDUN In fact, neither the Joy nor I hungered for any more Paris, while the others had seen their fill. So we were off, with only a day's delay, this time taking the road to Versailles. There we put in an hour or two wandering through the vast magnificence of the palace where the great Louis XIV lived, loved, and died, and would seem to have spent a good part of his time having himself painted in a variety of advantageous situations, such as riding at the head of victorious armies, or occupying a comfortable seat in Paradise, giving orders to the gods. They were weak kings who followed him. The great Louis reigned seventy-two years--prodigal years, but a period of military and artistic conquest--the golden age of French literature. His successor reigned long enough--fifty-nine years--but he achieved nothing worth while, and the next one lost his head. We saw the little balcony where the doomed Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette showed themselves to the mob--the "deluge" which the greater Louis had once predicted. The palace at Versailles is like other royal palaces of France--a fine show place, an excellent museum, but never in its day of purest domesticity could it have been called "a happy little home." Everything is on too extended a scale. Its garden was a tract of marshy land sixty miles in circumference until Louis XIV set thirty-six thousand men at it, turning it into fairyland. Laborers died by the score during the work, and each night the dead were carted away. When this was mentioned to the king he was troubled, fearing his supply of men might not last. However, the garden was somehow completed. Possibly Louis went out and dug in it a little himself. It is still a Garden of Eden, with leafy avenues, and lakes, and marvelous fountains, and labyrinths of flowers. Looking out over it from the palace windows we remembered how the king had given Madame Maintenon a summer sleigh-ride, causing long avenues to be spread with sugar and salt to gratify her idly-expressed whim. I am sorry, of course, that the later Louis had to lose his head, but on the whole I think it is very well that France discouraged that line of kings. Versailles is full of palaces. There is the Grand Trianon, which Louis XIV built for Madame Maintenon when she had grown weary of the great palace, and the Petit Trianon, which Louis XV gave to Du Barry and where Marie Antoinette built her Swiss village and played at farm life. There is no reason I should dwell on these places. Already volumes have been written of the tragic, gay, dissolute life they have seen, the gorgeous moving panoramas that might have been pictures passing in a looking-glass for all the substance they have left behind. Somewhere below Versailles, in the quietest spot we could find, by a still stream that ran between the meadow and the highroad, we made our luncheon and were glad we were not kings. Being royalty was a gaudy occupation, but too doubtful, too open to criticism. One of those Louis families, for instance, could never have stopped their motor by the roadside and prepared their luncheon in our modest, unostentatious way. They would have had all manner of attendants and guards watching them, and an audience would have collected, and some excited person might have thrown a brick and hit the jam. No, we would rather be just plain, unobtrusive people, without audience, and with no attendance but the car, waiting there in the shade to carry us deeper into this Land of Heart's Desire. It was at Rambouillet that we lodged, an ancient place with a château and a vast park; also an excellent inn--the Croix Blanche--one of those that you enter by driving through to an inner court. Before dinner we took a walk into the park, along the lakeside and past the château, which is a curious architectural mixture and not very sightly. But it is mingled with history. Francis I died there in 1547, and as late as 1830 the last Charles, the tenth of that name, signed his abdication there. It was too late for the place to be open, and in any case we did not care to go in. We had had enough of palaces for one day. We followed around the lake to an avenue of splendid Louisiana cypresses which some old king had planted. Beyond the avenue the way led into deeper wildernesses--a noble wood. We made a backward circuit at length, for it was evening and the light was fading. In the mysterious half-light there was something almost spectral in that sylvan place and we spoke in hushed voices. Presently we came to a sort of bower, and then to an artificial grotto--old trysting places. Ah, me! Monsieur and mademoiselle, or madame, are no longer there; the powdered hair, the ruffled waist-coat and looped gown, the silken hose and dainty footgear, the subdued laugh and whispered word, all have vanished. How vacant those old places seemed! We did not linger--it was a time for ghosts. We were off next morning, halting for a little at Maintenon on the road to Chartres. The château attracted us and the beautiful river Eure. The widow of the poet Scarron, who married Louis XIV and became Marquise de Maintenon, owned the château, and it belongs to the family to this day. An attendant permitted us to see the picture gallery and a portion of the grounds. All seemed as luxurious as Versailles. It is thirty-five miles from Maintenon to Versailles, but Louis started to build an aqueduct to carry the waters of the Eure to his gardens. He kept thirty thousand soldiers working on it for four years, but they died faster than he could replace them, which was such a bother that he abandoned the undertaking. Following the rich and lovely valley of the Eure, we came to Chartres, and made our way to the Cathedral square. We had seen the towers from a long distance, and remembered the saying that "The choir of Beauvais, the nave of Amiens, the portal of Rheims, and the towers of Chartres would together make the finest church in the world." To confess the truth, I did not think the towers of Chartres as handsome as those of either Rouen or Amiens. But then I am not a purist in cathedral architecture. Certainly the cathedral itself is glorious. I shall not attempt to describe it. Any number of men have written books, trying to do that, and most of them have failed. I only know that the wonder of its architecture--the marvel of its relief carving, "lace in stone," and the sublime glory of its windows--somehow possessed us, and we did not know when to go. I met a woman once who said she had spent a month at Chartres and had put in most of it sitting in the cathedral looking at those windows. When she told me of it I had been inclined to be scornful. I was not so any more. Those windows, made by some unknown artist, dead five hundred years, invite a lifetime of contemplation. It is about nine hundred years since the cathedral of Chartres was begun, and it has known many changes. Four hundred years ago one of its towers was rebuilt in an altogether different pattern from the other. I believe this variation is regarded as a special feature of their combined beauty. Chapels have been added, wings extended; changes inside and out were always going on during the first five hundred years or so, but if the builders made any mistakes we failed to notice them. It remains a unity, so far as we could see--a supreme expression of the old faith, whose material labor was more than half spiritual, and for whom no sacrifice of money or endeavor was too great. We left Chartres by one of the old city gates, and took the wrong road, and presently found ourselves in an open field, where our way dwindled out and stopped. Imagine a road good enough to be mistaken for a highway, leading only to a farmer's grainfield. So we went back and got set right, and through a heavenly June afternoon followed the straight level way to Châteaudun, an ancient town perched upon the high cliffs above the valley of the Loir, which is a different river from the Loire--much smaller and more picturesque. The château itself hangs on the very edge of the cliffs with startling effect and looks out over a picture valley as beautiful as any in France. This was the home of Dunois, Bastard of Orléans, who left it to fight under Joan of Arc. He was a great soldier, one of her most loved and trusted generals. We spent an hour or more wandering through Dunois's ancient seat, with an old guardian who clearly was in love with every stone of it, and who time and again reminded us that it was more interesting than many of the great châteaux of the Loire, Blois especially, in that it had been scarcely restored at all. About the latest addition to Châteaudun was a beautiful open stairway of the sixteenth century, in perfect condition to-day. On the other side is another fine façade and stairway, which Dunois himself added. In a niche there stands a fine statue of the famous soldier, probably made from life. If only some sculptor or painter might have preserved for us the features of Joan! Chapter XXIII WE REACH TOURS Through that golden land which lies between the Loir and the Loire we drifted through a long summer afternoon and came at evening to a noble bridge that crossed a wide, tranquil river, beyond which rose the towers of ancient Tours, capital of Touraine. One can hardly cross the river Loire for the first time without long reflections. Henry James calls the Touraine "a gallery of architectural specimens ... the heart of the old French monarchy," and adds, "as that monarchy was splendid and picturesque, a reflection of the splendor still glitters in the Loire. Some of the most striking events of French history have occurred on the banks of that river, and the soil it waters bloomed for a while with the flower of the Renaissance." Touraine was a favorite place for kings, and the early Henrys and Francises, especially, built their magnificent country palaces in all directions. There are more than fifty châteaux within easy driving distance of Tours, and most of the great ones have been owned or occupied by Francis I, or by Henry II, or by one of their particular favorites. We did not intend to visit all of the châteaux by any means, for château visiting, from a diversion may easily degenerate into labor. We intended especially to visit Chinon, where Joan of Arc went to meet the king to ask for soldiers, and a few others, but we had no wish to put in long summer days mousing about old dungeons and dim corridors, or being led through stiffly set royal suites, garishly furnished and restored. It was better to glide restfully along the poppied way and see the landscape presentment of those stately piles crowning the hilltops or reflected in the bright waters of the Loire. The outward semblance of the land of romance remains oftenest undisturbed; cross the threshold and the illusion is in danger. At the Central Hotel of Tours, an excellent place of modest charges, we made our headquarters, and next morning, with little delay, set out for Chinon and incidental châteaux. "Half the charm of the Loire," says James, "is that you can travel beside it." He was obliged to travel very leisurely beside it when that was written; the "flying carpet" had not then been invented, and James, with his deliberate locomotion, was sometimes unable to return to Tours for the night. I imagine he enjoyed it none the less for that, lazily watching the smooth water of the wide shallow stream, with never a craft heavier than a flat-bottomed hay boat; the wide white road, gay with scarlet poppies, and some tall purple flower, a kind of foxglove. I do not remember that James makes mention of the cliff-dwellers along the Loire. Most of them live in houses that are older, I suspect, than the oldest château of Touraine. In the beginning there must have been in these cliffs natural caves occupied by our earliest troglodyte ancestors. In time, as mentality developed and, with it, imagination, the original shelters were shaped and enlarged by excavation, also new ones built, until these perpendicular banks facing the Loire became the dwelling place for hundreds, even thousands. They are still numerously inhabited. The rooms or houses--some of them may be flats--range one above the other in stories, all up the face of the cliff, and there are smoke-places and little chimneys in the fields at the top. Such houses must have been here before the kings came to Touraine. Some of them look very ancient; some have crumbled in; some have been faced with stone or plaster. The cliff is honeycombed with them. Do their occupants have traditional rights from some vague time without date? Do they pay rent, and to whom? We might have found the answers to these questions had we cared to seek for them. It seemed better to content oneself with speculation. We did not visit the cliff-dwellers of the Loire. Neither did we visit the château of Luynes or of Langeais. Luynes is a fine old feudal pile on a hilltop just below Tours, splendid from the road, but it had no compelling history and we agreed that closer view could not improve it. Besides, it was hot, sizzling, for a climb; so hot that one of our aging tubes popped presently, and Narcissa and I had to make repairs in a place where there was a world of poppies, but no shade for a mile. That was one of the reasons we did not visit Langeais. Langeais was exactly on the road, but it had a hard, hot, forbidding look. Furthermore, our book said that it had been restored and converted into a museum, and added that its chief claim on history lay in the fact that Anne of Brittany was here married to Charles VIII in 1491. That fact was fine to realize from the outside, under the cool shadow of those gray walls. One could lose it among shiny restorations and stuffy museum tapestries. The others presently noticed a pastry shop opposite the château and spoke of getting something extra for luncheon. While they were gone I discovered a café below the château and, being pretty dry, I slipped down there for a little seltzer, or something. The door was open, but the place was empty. There was the usual display of bottles, but not a soul was in sight. I knocked, then called, but nobody came. I called and knocked louder, but nothing happened. Then I noticed some pennies lying by an empty glass on the bar. The amount was small and I left them there. A side door was open and I looked out into a narrow passage opening into a court at the back. I went out there, still signaling my distress. The sun was blazing and I was getting dryer every minute. Finally a stout, smiling woman appeared, wiping her hands--from the washtub, I judge. She went with me into the café, gathered up the loose change on the counter, and set out refreshments. Then she explained that I could have helped myself and left the money. Langeais is an honest community. Following down the Loire we came to a bridge, and, crossing to the other bank, presently found ourselves in a country where there were no visible houses at all. But there was shade, and we camped under it and I did some tire repairing while the others laid out the luncheon and set the little cooker going. Later we drowsed in the shade for an hour or more, with desultory talk of Joan, and of Anne of Brittany, and of the terrible Catherine de Medici, whose son the feeble Francis II had brought his young wife, Marie Stuart, the doomed Queen of Scots, to Chenonceaux for their honeymoon. It was strange to think that this was the environment of those half-romantic figures of history. Some of them, perhaps all, had passed this very spot. And so many others! the Henrys, the Charleses, the Louises--the sovereigns and soldiers and court favorites for four hundred years. What a procession--the pageant of the Renaissance! Chapter XXIV CHINON, WHERE JOAN MET THE KING, AND AZAY Chinon is not on the Loire, but on a tributary a little south of it, the Vienne, its ruined castle crowning the long hill or ridge above the town. Sometime during the afternoon we came to the outskirts of the ancient place and looked up to the wreck of battlements and towers where occurred that meeting which meant the liberation of France. We left the car below and started to climb, then found there was a road, a great blessing, for the heat was intense. There is a village just above the castle, and we stopped there. The château of Chinon to-day is the remains of what originally was three châteaux, built at different times, but so closely strung together that in ruin they are scarcely divided. The oldest, Coudray, was built in the tenth century and still shows three towers standing, in one of which Joan of Arc lived during her stay at Chinon. The middle château is not as old by a hundred years. It was built on the site of a Roman fort, and it was in one of its rooms, a fragment of which still remains, that Charles VII received the shepherd girl from Domremy. The château of St. George was built in the twelfth century by Henry II of England, who died there in 1189. Though built two hundred years after Coudray, nothing of it survives but some foundations. Chinon is a much more extensive ruin than we had expected. Even what remains to-day must be nearly a quarter of a mile in length, and its vast crumbling walls and towers make it strikingly picturesque. But its ruin is complete, none the less. Once through the entrance tower and you are under nothing but the sky, with your feet on the grass; there is no longer a shelter there, even for a fugitive king. You wander about, viewing it scarcely more than as a ruin, at first, a place for painting, for seclusion, for dreaming in the sun. Then all at once you are facing a wall in which, halfway up where once was the second story, there is a restored fireplace and a tablet which tells you that in this room Charles VII received Joan of Arc. It is not a room now; it is just a wall, a fragment, with vines matting its ruined edges. You cross a stone footbridge to the tower where Joan lived, and that, too, is open to the sky, and bare and desolate. Once, beyond it, there was a little chapel where she prayed. There are other fragments and other towers, but they merely serve as a setting for those which the intimate presence of Joan made sacred. The Maid did not go immediately to the castle on her arrival in Chinon. She put up at an inn down in the town and waited the king's pleasure. His paltering advisers kept him dallying, postponing his consent to see her, but through the favor of his mother-in-law, Yolande, Queen of Sicily, Joan and her suite were presently housed in the tower of Coudray. One wonders if the walls were as bare as now. It was old even then; it had been built five hundred years. But Queen Yolande would have seen to it that there were comforts, no doubt; some tapestries, perhaps, on the walls; a table, chairs, some covering for the stone floor. Perhaps it was even luxurious. The king was still unready to see Joan. She was only a stone's throw away, but the whisperings of his advisers kept her there, while a commission of priests went to Domremy to inquire as to her character. When there were no further excuses for delay they contrived a trick--a deception. They persuaded the king to put another on the throne, one like him and in his royal dress, so that Joan might pay homage to this make-believe king, thus proving that she had no divine power or protection which would assist her in identifying the real one. In the space where now is only green grass and sky and a broken wall Charles VII and his court gathered to receive the shepherd girl who had come to restore his kingdom. It was evening and the great hall was lighted, and at one end of it was the throne with its imitation king, and I suppose at the other the fireplace with a blazing fire. Down the center of the room were the courtiers, formed in two ranks, facing so that Joan might pass between them to the throne. The occasion was one of great ceremony--Joan and her suite were welcomed with fine honors. Banners waved, torches flared; trumpets blown at intervals marked the stages of her progress down the great hall; every show was made of paying her great honor--everything that would distract her and blind her to their trick. Charles VII, dressed as a simple courtier, stood a little distance from the throne. Joan, advancing to within a few steps of the pretended king, raised her eyes. Then for a moment she stood silent, puzzled. They expected her to kneel and make obeisance, but a moment later she turned and, hurrying to the rightful Charles, dropped on her knees and gave him heartfelt salutation. She had never seen him and was without knowledge of his features. Her protectors, or her gifts, had not failed. It was perhaps the greatest moment in French history. We drove down into Chinon, past the house where it is said that Rabelais was born, and saw his statue, and one of Joan which was not very pleasing. Then we threaded some of the older streets and saw houses which I think cannot have changed much since Joan was there. It was getting well toward evening now, and we set out for Tours, by way of Azay. The château of Azay-le-Rideau is all that Chinon is not. Perfect in condition, of rare beauty in design and ornamentation, fresh, almost new in appearance, Azay presents about the choicest flowering of the Renaissance. Joan of Arc had been dead a hundred years when Azay was built; France was no longer in dread of blighting invasion; a residence no longer needed to be a fortress. The royal châteaux of the Loire are the best remaining evidence of what Joan had done for the security of her kings. Whether they deserved it or not is another matter. Possibly Azay-le-Rideau might not have looked so fresh under the glare of noonday, but in the mellow light of evening it could have been the home of one of our modern millionaires (a millionaire of perfect taste, I hasten to add), and located, let us say, in the vicinity of Newport. It was difficult to believe that it had been standing for four centuries. Francis I did not build Azay-le-Rideau. But he liked it so much when he saw it (he was probably on a visit to its owner, the French treasurer, at the time) that he promptly confiscated it and added it to the collection of other châteaux he had built, or confiscated, or had in mind. Nothing very remarkable seems to have happened there--just the usual things--plots, and liaisons, and intrigues of a general sort, with now and then a chapter of real lovemaking, and certain marriages and deaths--the latter hurried a little sometimes to accommodate the impatient mourners. But how beautiful it is! Its towers, its stately façades, its rich ornamentation reflected in the water of the wide stream that sweeps about its base, a natural moat, its background of rich foliage--these, in the gathering twilight, completed a picture such as Hawthorne could have conceived, or Edgar Poe. I suppose it was too late to go inside, but we did not even apply. Like Langeais, it belongs to France now, and I believe is something of a museum, and rather modern. One could not risk carrying away anything less than a perfect memory of Azay. Chapter XXV TOURS In the quest for outlying châteaux one is likely to forget that Tours itself is very much worth while. Tours has been a city ever since France had a history, and it fought against Cæsar as far back as 52 B.C. It took its name from the Gallic tribe of that section, the Turoni, dwellers in those cliffs, I dare say, along the Loire. Following the invasion of the Franks there came a line of counts who ruled Touraine until the eleventh century. What the human aspect of this delectable land was under their dominion is not very clear. The oldest castle we have seen, Coudray, was not begun until the end of that period. There are a thousand years behind it which seem filled mainly with shields and battle axes, roving knights and fair ladies, industrious dragons and the other properties of poetry. Yet there may have been more prosaic things. Seedtime and harvest probably did not fail. Tours was beloved by French royalty. It was the capital of a province as rich as it was beautiful. Among French provinces Touraine was always the aristocrat. Its language has been kept pure. To this day the purest French in the world is spoken at Tours. The mechanic who made some repairs for me at the garage leaned on the mud guard, during a brief intermission of that hottest of days, and told me about the purity of the French at Tours; and if there was anything wrong with his own locution my ear was not fine enough to detect it. To me it seemed as limpid as something distilled. Imagine such a thing happening in--say New Haven. Tours is still proud, still the aristocrat, still royal. The Germans held Tours during the early months of 1871, but there is no trace of their occupation now. It was a bad dream which Tours does not care even to remember.[16] Tours contains a fine cathedral, also the remains of what must have been a still finer one--two noble towers, so widely separated by streets and buildings that it is hard to imagine them ever having belonged to one structure. They are a part of the business of Tours, now. Shops are under them, lodgings in them. If they should tumble down they would create havoc. I was so sure they would crumble that we did not go into them; besides, it was very warm. The great church which connected these towers was dedicated to St. Martin, the same who divided his cloak with a beggar at Amiens and became Bishop of Tours in the fourth century. It was destroyed once and magnificently rebuilt, but it will never be rebuilt now. One of these old relics is called the Clock tower, the other the tower of Charlemagne, because Luitgard, his third queen, was buried beneath it. The cathedral at the other end of town appears not to have suffered much from the ravages of time and battle, though one of the towers was undergoing some kind of repairs that required intricate and lofty scaffolding. Most of the cathedrals are undergoing repairs, which is not surprising when one remembers the dates of their beginnings. This one at Tours was commenced in 1170 and the building continued during about four hundred years. Joan of Arc worshiped in it when she was on her way to Chinon and again when she had set out to relieve Orléans. The face of the cathedral is indeed beautiful--"a jewel," said Henry IV, "of which only the casket is wanting." It does not seem to us as beautiful as Rouen, or Amiens, or Chartres, but its fluted truncated towers are peculiarly its own and hardly less impressive. The cathedral itself forms a casket for the real jewel--the tomb of the two children of Charles VIII and Anne of Brittany, a little boy and girl, exquisitely cut, resting side by side on a slab of black marble, guarded at their head and feet by kneeling angels. Except the slab, the tomb is in white marble carved with symbolic decorations. It is all so delicate and conveys such a feeling of purity and tenderness that even after four hundred years one cannot fail to feel something of the love and sorrow that placed it there. Tours is full of landmarks and localities, but the intense heat of the end of June is not a good time for city sight-seeing. We went about a little and glanced at this old street--such as Place Plumeran--and that old château, like the Tour de Guise, now a barrack, and passed the Théâtre Municipal, and the house where Balzac was born, and stood impressed and blinking before the great Palace of Justice, blazing in the sun and made more brilliant, more dazzling by the intensely red-legged soldiers that in couples and groups are always loitering before it. I am convinced that to touch those red-hot trousers would take the skin off one's fingers. We might have examined Tours more carefully if we had been driving instead of walking. I have spoken of the car being in the garage. We cracked the leaf of a spring that day at Chinon, and then our tires, old and worn after five thousand miles of loyal service, required reënforcement. They really required new ones, but our plan was to get home with these if we could. Besides, one cannot buy new tires in American sizes without sending a special order to the factory--a matter of delay. The little man at the hotel, who had more energy than anyone should display in such hot weather, pumped one of our back tires until the shoe burst at the rim. This was serious. I got a heavy canvas lining, and the garageman patched and vulcanized and sold me a variety of appliances. But I could foresee trouble if the heat continued. FOOTNOTES: [16] Tours during the World War became a great training camp, familiar to thousands of American soldiers. Chapter XXVI CHENONCEAUX AND AMBOISE (From my notebook) This morning we got away from Tours, but it was after a strenuous time. It was one of those sweltering mornings, and to forward matters at the garage I helped put on all those repaired tires and appliances, and by the time we were through I was a rag. Narcissa photographed me, because she said she had never seen me look so interesting before. She made me stand in the sun, bareheaded and holding a tube in my hand, as if I had not enough to bear already. Oh, but it was cool and delicious gliding along the smooth, shaded road toward Chenonceaux! One can almost afford to get as hot and sweltering and cross and gasping as I was for the sake of sitting back and looking across the wheel down a leafy avenue facing the breeze of your own making, a delicious nectar that bathes you through and cools and rests and soothes--an anodyne of peace. By and by, being really cool in mind and body, we drew up abreast of a meadow which lay a little below the road, a place with a brook and overspreading shade, and with some men and women harvesting not far away. We thought they would not mind if we lunched there, and I think they must have been as kind-hearted as they were picturesque, for they did not offer to disturb us. It was a lovely spot, and did not seem to belong to the present-day world at all. How could it, with the home of Diana of Poitiers just over there beyond the trees, with nesting places of Mary, Queen of Scots, all about, and with these haymakers, whose fashion in clothes has not much minded the centuries, to add the living human note of the past that makes imagination reality? Chenonceaux, the real heart of the royal district, like Chinon, is not on the Loire itself, but on a small tributary, the Cher. I do not remember that I noticed the river when we entered the grounds, but it is a very important part of the château, which indeed is really a bridge over it--a supremely beautiful bridge, to be sure, but a bridge none the less, entirely crossing the pretty river by means of a series of high foundation arches. Upon these arches rises the rare edifice which Thomas Bohier, a receiver-general of taxes, began back in 1515 and Catherine de' Medici finished after she had turned out Diana of Poitiers and massacred the Huguenots, and needed a quiet place for retirement and religious thought. Bohier did not extend Chenonceaux entirely across the river. The river to him merely served as a moat. The son who followed him did not have time to make additions. Francis I came along, noticed that it was different from the other châteaux he had confiscated, and added it to his collection. Our present-day collectors cut a poor figure by the side of Francis I. Think of getting together assortments of bugs and postage stamps and ginger jars when one could go out and pick up châteaux! It was Francis's son, Henry II, that gave it to Diana of Poitiers. Henry had his own kind of a collection and he used his papa's châteaux to keep it in. As he picked about the best one for Diana, we may believe that he regarded her as his choicest specimen. Unfortunately for Diana, Henry's queen, the terrible Catherine, outlived him; and when, after the funeral, Catherine drove around by Chenonceaux and suggested to Diana that perhaps she would like to exchange the place for a very excellent château farther up the road, Chaumont, we may assume that Diana moved with no unseemly delay. Diana tactfully said she liked Chaumont ever so much, for a change, that perhaps living on a hilltop was healthier than over the water, anyway. Still, it must have made her sigh, I think, to know that her successor was carrying out the plan which Diana herself had conceived of extending Chenonceaux across the Cher. We stopped a little to look at the beautiful façade of Chenonceaux, then crossed the drawbridge, or what is now the substitute for it, and were welcomed at the door by just the proper person--a fine, dignified woman of gentle voice and perfect knowledge. She showed us through the beautiful home, for it is still a home, the property to-day of M. Meunier of chocolate fame and fortune. I cannot say how glad I am that M. Meunier owns Chenonceaux. He has done nothing to the place to spoil it, and it is not a museum. The lower rooms which we saw have many of the original furnishings. The ornaments, the tapestries, the pictures are the same. I think Diana must have regretted leaving her fine private room, with its chimney piece, supported by caryatids, and its rare Flemish tapestry. We regretted leaving, too. We do not care for interiors that have been overhauled and refurbished and made into museums, but we were in no hurry to leave Chenonceaux. There is hardly any place, I think, where one may come so nearly stepping back through the centuries. We went out into the long wing that is built on the arches above the river, and looked down at the water flowing below. Our conductor told us that the supporting arches had been built on the foundations of an ancient mill. The beautiful gallery which the bridge supports must have known much gayety; much dancing and promenading up and down; much lovemaking and some heartache. Jean Jacques Rousseau seems to have been everywhere. We could not run amiss of him in eastern France and in Switzerland; now here again he turns up at Chenonceaux. Chenonceaux in the eighteenth century fell to M. Claude Dupin, farmer-general, who surrounded himself with the foremost artists and social leaders of his time. He engaged Rousseau to superintend the education of his son. "We amused ourselves greatly at this fine place," writes Rousseau; "the living was of the best, and I became as fat as a monk. We made a great deal of music and acted comedies." The period of M. Dupin's ownership, one of the most brilliant, and certainly the most moral in the earlier history of Chenonceaux, has left many memories. Of the brief, insipid honeymoon of the puny Francis II and Mary Stuart no breath remains. * * * * * Amboise is on the Loire, and there is a good inn on the quay. It was evening when we got there, and we did nothing after dinner but sit on the high masonry embankment that buttresses the river, and watch the men who fished, while the light faded from the water; though we occasionally turned to look at the imposing profile of the great château on the high cliff above the Loire. We drove up there next morning--that is, we drove as high as one may drive, and climbed stairs the remaining distance. Amboise is a splendid structure from without, but, unlike Chenonceaux, it is interesting within only for what it has been. It is occupied by the superannuated servants of the present owner, one of the Orléans family, which is fine for them, and proper enough, but bad for the atmosphere. There are a bareness and a whitewashed feeling about the place that are death to romance. Even the circular inclined plane by which one may ride or drive to the top of the great tower suggested some sort of temporary structure at an amusement park rather than a convenience for kings. I was more interested in a low doorway against the lintel of which Charles VIII knocked his head and died. But I wish I could have picked Charles VII for that accident, to punish him for having abandoned Joan of Arc. Though about a hundred years older, Amboise, like Chenonceaux, belongs mainly to the period of Francis I, and was inhabited by the same society. The Francises and the Henrys enjoyed its hospitality, and Catherine de' Medici, and Mary, Queen of Scots. Also some twelve or fifteen hundred Huguenots who were invited there, and, at Catherine's suggestion, butchered on the terrace just in front of the castle windows. There is a balcony overlooking the terrace, and it is said that Catherine and Mary, also Mary's husband and his two brothers, sat on the balcony better to observe the spectacle. Tradition does not say whether they had ices served or not. Some of the Huguenots did not wait, and the soldiers had to drown what they could catch of them in the Loire, likewise in view from the royal balcony. When the show was over there was suspended from the balcony a fringe of Huguenot heads. Those were frivolous times. There is a flower garden to-day on the terrace where the Huguenots were murdered, and one may imagine, if he chooses, the scarlet posies to be brighter for that history. But then there are few enough places in France where blossoms have not been richened by the human stain. Consider those vivid seas of poppies! Mary Stuart, by the way, seems entitled to all the pity that the centuries have accorded her. There were few influences in her early life that were not vile. On the ramparts at Amboise we were shown a chapel, with the grave of Leonardo Da Vinci, who was summoned to Amboise by Francis I, and died there in 1519. There is a question about da Vinci's ashes resting here, I believe, but it does not matter--it is his grave. If I were going back to Amboise I would view it only from the outside. With its immense tower and its beautiful Gothic and Renaissance façade surmounting the heights above the Loire, nothing--nothing in the world could be more beautiful. Chapter XXVII CHAMBORD AND CLÉRY Francis I had a fine taste for collecting châteaux picturesquely located, but when he built one for himself he located it in the most unbeautiful situation in France. It requires patience and talent to find monotony of prospect in France, but our hero succeeded, and discovered a dead flat tract of thirteen thousand acres with an approach through as dreary a level of unprosperous-looking farm district as may be found on the continent of Europe. It is not on the Loire, but on a little stream called the Cosson, and when we had left the Loire and found the country getting flatter and poorer and less promising with every mile, we could not believe that we were on the right road. But when we inquired, our informants still pointed ahead, and by and by, in the midst of nowhere and surrounded by nothing, we came to a great inclosure of undersized trees, with an entrance. Driving in, we looked down a long avenue to an expanse of architecture that seemed to be growing from a dead level of sandy park, and to have attained about two thirds its proper height. An old man was raking around the entrance and we asked him if one was allowed to lunch in the park. He said, "Oh yes, anywhere," and gave a general wave that comprehended the whole tract. So we turned into a side road and found a place that was shady enough, but not cool, for there seemed to be no large overspreading trees in this park, but only small, close, bushy ones. It is said that Francis built Chambord for two reasons, one of them being the memory of an old sweetheart who used to live in the neighborhood, the other on account of the abundant game to be found there. I am inclined to the latter idea. There is nothing in the location to suggest romance; there is everything to suggest game. The twenty square miles of thicket that go with Chambord could hardly be surpassed as a harbor for beast and bird. If Chambord was built, so to speak, as a sort of hunting lodge, it is the largest one on record. Francis kept eighteen hundred men busy at it for twelve years, and then did not get it done. He lived in it, more or less, for some seven years, however; then went to Rambouillet to die, and left his son, Henry II, to carry on the work. Henry did not care for Chambord--the marshy place gave him fever, but he kept the building going until he was killed in a tourney, when the construction stopped. His widow, the bloody Catherine de' Medici, retired to Chambord in her old age, and set the place in order. She was terribly superstitious and surrounded herself with astrologers and soothsayers. At night she used to go up to the great lantern tower to read her fortune in the stars. It is my opinion that she did not go up there alone, not with that record of hers. Mansard, who laid a blight on architecture that lasted for two hundred years, once got hold of Chambord and spoiled what he could, and had planned to do worse things, but something--death, perhaps--interfered. That was when Louis XIV brought Queen Maria Theresa to Chambord, and held high and splendid court there, surrounding himself with brilliant men and women, among them Molière and the widow of the poet Scarron, Françoise d'Aubigné, the same that later became queen, under the title of Madame de Maintenon. That was the heyday of Chambord's history. A large guardroom was gilded and converted into a theater. Molière gave first presentations there and received public compliment from the king. Diversion was the order of the day and night. "The court is very gay--the king hunts much," wrote Maintenon; "one eats always with him; there is one day a ball, and the next a comedy." Nothing very startling has happened at Chambord since Louis' time. Its tenants have been numerous enough, and royal, or distinguished, but they could not maintain the pace set by Louis XIV. Stanislas Leckzinski, the exiled Polish king, occupied it during the early years of the eighteenth century, and succeeded in marrying his daughter to the dissolute Louis XV. Seventy years later the revolution came along. An order was issued to sell the contents of Chambord, and a greedy rabble came and stripped it clean. There was a further decree to efface all signs of royalty, but when it was discovered that every bit of carving within and without the vast place expressed royalty in some manner, and that it would cost twenty thousand dollars to cut it away, this project was happily abandoned. Chambord was left empty but intact. Whatever has been done since has been in the way of restoration. There is not a particle of shade around Chambord. It stands as bare and exposed to the blazing sky to-day as it did when those eighteen hundred workmen laid down their tools four hundred years ago. There is hardly a shrub. Even the grass looks discouraged. A location, indeed, for a royal palace! We left the car under the shade of a wall and crossed a dazzling open space to the entrance of a court where we bought entrance tickets. Then we crossed the blinding court and were in a cool place at last, the wide castle entrance. We were surprised a little, though, to find a ticket box and a registering turnstile. Things are on a business basis at Chambord. I suppose the money collected is used for repairs. The best advertised feature of Chambord is the one you see first, the great spiral double stairway arranged one flight above the other, so that persons may be ascending without meeting others who are descending at the same moment. Many persons would not visit Chambord but for this special show feature. Our conductor made us ascend and descend to prove that this unrivaled attraction would really work as advertised. It is designed on the principle of the double stripes on a barber pole. But there are other worth-while features at Chambord. We wandered through the great cool rooms, not furnished, yet not empty, containing as they do some rare pictures, old statuary and historic furniture, despoiled by the revolutionists, now restored to their original setting. Chambord is not a museum. It belongs to a Duke of Parma, a direct descendant from Louis XIV. Under Louis XVIII the estate was sold, but in 1821 three hundred thousand dollars was raised by public subscription to purchase the place for the remaining heir of the Bourbon dynasty, the Duke of Bordeaux, who accepted with the gift the title of the Count of Chambord. But he was in exile and did not come to see his property for fifty years; even then only to write a letter renouncing his claim to the throne and to say once more good-by to France. He willed the property to the children of his sister, the Duchess of Parma, and it is to the next generation that it belongs to-day. Our conductor told us that the present Duke of Parma comes now and then for the shooting, which is still of the best. We ascended to the roof, which is Chambord's chief ornament. It is an architectural garden. Such elaboration of turrets with carved leafwork and symbolism, such richness of incrustation and detail, did, in fact, suggest some fantastic and fabulous culture. If it had not been all fairly leaping with heat I should have wished to stay longer. But I would not care to go to Chambord again. As we drove down the long drive, and turned a little for a last look at that enormous frontage, those immense low towers, that superb roof structure--all that magnificence dropped down there in a dreary level--I thought, "If ever a house was a white elephant that one is, and if one had to rename it it might well be called Francis's Folly." I suppose it was two hours later when we had been drifting drowsily up the valley of the Loire that we stopped in a village for water. There was an old church across the way, and as usual we stepped inside, as much for the cool refreshment as for anything, expecting nothing else worth while. How easily we might have missed the wealth we found there. We did not know the name of the village. We did not recognize Cléry, even when we heard it, and the guidebook gives it just four lines. But we had been inside only a moment when we realized that the Church of Our Lady of Cléry is an ancient and sacred shrine. A great tablet told us that since 1325 kings of France, sinners and saints have made pilgrimages there; Charles IV, Philippe VI, Charles VII, St. François Xavier, and so down the centuries to Marshal MacMahon of our own time. But to us greater than all the rest are the names of Dunois and Joan of Arc. Joan had passed this way with her army, of course; for the moment we had forgotten that we were following her footsteps to Orléans. The place was rich in relics. Among these the tomb of Louis XI and a column which inclosed the heart of Charles VIII. There could hardly have been a shrine in France more venerated in the past than this forgotten church by the roadside, in this forgotten village where, I suppose, tourists to-day never stop at all. It was hard to believe in the reality of our discovery, even when we stood there. But there were the tablets and inscriptions--they could not be denied. We wandered about, finding something new and precious at every turn, until the afternoon light faded. Then we crossed a long bridge over the Loire to the larger village of Meung, where there was the Hôtel St. Jacques, one of the kind we like best and one of the best of the kind. Chapter XXVIII ORLÉANS There is some sight-seeing to be done in Meung, but we were too anxious to get to Orléans to stop for it. Yet we did not hurry through our last summer morning along the Loire. I do not know what could be more lovely than our leisurely hour--the distance was fifteen miles--under cool, outspreading branches, with glimpses of the bright river and vistas of happy fields. We did not even try to imagine, as we approached the outskirts, that the Orléans of Joan's time presented anything of its appearance to-day. Orléans is a modern, or modernized, city, and, except the river, there could hardly be anything in the present prospect that Joan saw. That it is the scene of her first military conquest and added its name to the title by which she belongs to history is, however, enough to make it one of the holy places of France. It has been always a military city, a place of battles. Cæsar burned it, Attila attacked it, Clovis captured it--there was nearly always war of one sort or another going on there. The English and Burgundians would have had it in 1429 but for the arrival of Joan's army. Since then war has visited Orléans less frequently. Its latest experience was with the Germans who invested it in 1870-71. Joan was misled by her generals, whose faith in her was not complete. Orléans lies on the north bank of the Loire; they brought her down on the south bank, fearing the prowess of the enemy's forces. Discovering the deception, the Maid promptly sent the main body of her troops back some thirty-five miles to a safe crossing, and, taking a thousand men, passed over the Loire and entered the city by a gate still held by the French. That the city was not completely surrounded made it possible to attack the enemy simultaneously from within and without, while her presence among the Orléanese would inspire them with new hope and valor. Mark Twain in his _Recollections_ pictures the great moment of her entry. It was eight in the evening when she and her troops rode in at the Burgundy gate.... She was riding a white horse, and she carried in her hand the sacred sword of Fierbois. You should have seen Orléans then. What a picture it was! Such black seas of people, such a starry firmament of torches, such roaring whirlwinds of welcome, such booming of bells and thundering of cannon! It was as if the world was come to an end. Everywhere in the glare of the torches one saw rank upon rank of upturned white faces, the mouths wide open, shouting, and the unchecked tears running down; Joan forged her slow way through the solid masses, her mailed form projecting above the pavement of heads like a silver statue. The people about her struggled along, gazing up at her through their tears with the rapt look of men and women who believe they are seeing one who is divine; and always her feet were being kissed by grateful folk, and such as failed of that privilege touched her horse and then kissed their fingers. This was the 29th of April. Nine days later, May 8, 1429, after some fierce fighting during which Joan was severely wounded, the besiegers were scattered, Orléans was free. Mark Twain writes: No other girl in all history has ever reached such a summit of glory as Joan of Arc reached that day.... Orléans will never forget the 8th of May, nor ever fail to celebrate it. It is Joan of Arc's day--and holy. Two days, May 7th and 8th, are given each year to the celebration, and Orléans in other ways has honored the memory of her deliverer. A wide street bears her name, and there are noble statues, and a museum, and holy church offerings. The Boucher home which sheltered Joan during her sojourn in Orléans has been preserved; at least a house is still shown as the Boucher house, though how much of the original structure remains no one at this day seems willing to decide. We drove there first, for it is the only spot in Orléans that can claim even a possibility of having known Joan's actual impress. It is a house of the old cross-timber and brick architecture, and if these are not the veritable walls that Joan saw they must at least bear a close resemblance to those of the house of Jacques Boucher, treasurer of the Duke of Orléans, where Joan was made welcome. The interior is less convincing. It is ecclesiastical, and there is an air of general newness and reconstruction about it that suggests nothing of that long-ago occupancy. It was rather painful to linger, and we were inclined now to hesitate at the thought of visiting the ancient home of Agnes Sorel, where the Joan of Arc Museum is located. It would have been a mistake not to do so, however. It is only a few doors away on the same street, rue du Tabour, and it is a fine old mansion, genuinely old, and fairly overflowing with objects of every conceivable sort relating to Joan of Arc. Books, statuary, paintings, armor, banners, offerings, coins, medals, ornaments, engravings, letters--thousands upon thousands of articles gathered there in the Maid's memory. I think there is not one of them that her hand ever touched, or that she ever saw, but in their entirety they convey, as nothing else could, the reverence that Joan's memory has inspired during the centuries that have gone since her presence made this sacred ground. Until the revolution Orléans preserved Joan's banner, some of her clothing, and other genuine relics; but then the mob burned them, probably because Joan delivered France to royalty. One finds it rather easy to forgive the revolutionary mob almost anything--certainly anything more easily than such insane vandalism. We were shown an ancient copy of the banner, still borne, I believe, in the annual festivals. Baedeker speaks of arms and armor worn at the siege of Orléans, but the guardian of the place was not willing to guarantee their genuineness. I wish he had not thought it necessary to be so honest. He did show us a photograph of Joan's signature, the original of which belongs to one of her collateral descendants. She wrote it "Jehanne," and her pen must have been guided by her secretary, Louis de Conte, for Joan could neither read nor write. We drove to the Place Martroi to see the large equestrienne statue of Joan by Foyatier, with reliefs by Vital Dubray. It is very imposing, and the reliefs showing the great moments in Joan's career are really fine. We did not care to hunt for other memorials. It was enough to drive about the city trying to pick out a house here and there that looked as if it might have been standing five hundred years, but if there were any of that age--any that had looked upon the wild joy of Joan's entrance and upon her triumphal departure, they were very few indeed. Chapter XXIX FONTAINEBLEAU We turned north now, toward Fontainebleau, which we had touched a month earlier on the way to Paris. It is a grand straight road from Orléans to Fontainebleau, and it passes through Pithiviers, which did not look especially interesting, though we discovered when it was too late that it is noted for its almond cakes and lark pies. I wanted to go back then, but the majority was against it. Late in the afternoon we entered for the second time the majestic forest of Fontainebleau and by and by came to the palace and the little town, and to a pretty hotel on a side street that was really a village inn for comfort and welcome. There was still plenty of daylight, mellow, waning daylight, and the palace was not far away. We would not wait for it until morning. I think we most enjoy seeing palaces about the closing hours. There are seldom any other visitors then, and the waning afternoon sunlight in the vacant rooms mellows their garish emptiness, and seems somehow to bring nearer the rich pageant of life and love and death that flowed by there so long and then one day came to an end, and now it is not passing any more. It was really closing time when we arrived at the palace, but the custodian was lenient and for an hour we wandered through gorgeous galleries, and salons, and suites of private apartments where queens and kings lived gladly, loved madly, died sadly, for about four hundred years. Francis I built Fontainebleau, on the site of a mediæval castle. He was a hunter, and the forests of Fontainebleau, like those of Chambord, were always famous hunting grounds. Louis XIII, who was born in Fontainebleau, built the grand entrance staircase, from which two hundred years later Napoleon Bonaparte would bid good-by to his generals before starting for Elba. Other kings have added to the place and embellished it; the last being Napoleon III, who built for Eugénie the Bijou theater across the court. It may have been our mood, it may have been the tranquil evening light, it may have been reality that Fontainebleau was more friendly, more alive, more a place for living men and women to inhabit than any other palace we have seen. It was hard to imagine Versailles as having ever been a home for anybody. At Fontainebleau I felt that we were intruding--that Madame de Maintenon, Marie Antoinette, Marie Louise, or Eugénie might enter at any moment and find us there. Perhaps it was in the apartments of Marie Antoinette that one felt this most. There is a sort of personality in the gorgeousness of her bedchamber that has to do, likely enough, with the memory of her tragic end, but certainly it is there. The gilded ceiling sings of her; the satin hangings--a marriage gift from the city of Lyons--breathe of her; even the iron window-fastenings are not without personal utterance, for they were wrought by the skillful hands of the king himself, out of his love for her. The apartments of the first Napoleon and Marie Louise tell something, too, but the story seems less intimate. Yet the table is there on which Napoleon signed his abdication while an escort waited to take him to Elba. For size and magnificence the library is the most impressive room in Fontainebleau. It is lofty and splendid, and it is two hundred and sixty-four feet long. It is called the gallery of Diana, after Diana of Poitiers, who for a lady of tenuous moral fiber seems to have inspired some pretty substantial memories. The ballroom, the finest in Europe, also belongs to Diana, by special dedication of Henry II, who decorated it magnificently to suit Diana's charms. Napoleon III gave great hunting banquets there. Since then it has been always empty, except for visitors. The custodian took us through a suite of rooms called the "Apartments of the White Queens," because once they were restored for the widows of French kings, who usually dressed in white. Napoleon used the rooms for another purpose. He invited Pope Pius VII to Fontainebleau to sanction his divorce from Josephine, and when the pope declined, Napoleon prolonged the pope's visit for eighteen months, secluding him in this luxurious place, to give him a chance to modify his views. They visited together a good deal, and their interviews were not always calm. Napoleon also wanted the pope to sign away the states of the Church, and once when they were discussing the matter rather earnestly the emperor boxed the pope's ears. He had a convincing way in those days. I wonder if later, standing on the St. Helena headland, he ever recalled that incident. If he did, I dare say it made him smile. The light was getting dim by the time we reached the pretty theater which Louis Napoleon built for Eugénie. It is a very choice place, and we were allowed to go on the stage and behind the scenes and up in the galleries, and there was something in the dusky vacancy of that little playhouse, built to amuse the last empress of France, that affected us almost more than any of the rest of the palace, though it was built not so long ago and its owner is still alive.[17] It is not used, the custodian told us--has never been used since Eugénie went away. From a terrace back of the palace we looked out on a pretty lake where Eugénie's son used to sail a miniature full-rigged ship--large enough, if one could judge from a picture we saw, to have held the little prince himself. There was still sunlight on the treetops, and these and the prince's little pavilion reflecting in the tranquil water made the place beautiful. But the little vessel was not there. I wished, as we watched, that it might come sailing by. I wished that the prince had never been exiled and that he had not grown up and gone to his death in a South African jungle. I wished that he might be back to sail his ship again, and that Eugénie might have her theater once more, and that Louis Napoleon's hunting parties might still assemble in Diana's painted ballroom and fill the vacant palace with something besides mere curiosity and vain imaginings. FOOTNOTES: [17] She lived six years longer, dying in 1920. Chapter XXX RHEIMS We had meant to go to Barbizon, but we got lost in the forest next morning, and when we found ourselves we were a good way in the direction of Melun, so concluded to keep on, consoling ourselves with the thought that Barbizon is not Barbizon any more, and would probably be a disappointment, anyway. We kept on from Melun, also, after buying some luncheon things, and all day traversed that beautiful rolling district which lies east of Paris and below Rheims, arriving toward evening at Épernay, the Sparnacum of antiquity and the champagne center of to-day. Épernay was ancient once, but it is all new now, with wide streets and every indication of business progress. We had no need to linger there. We were anxious to get to Rheims. There had been heavy rains in the champagne district, and next morning the gray sky and close air gave promise of more. The roads were not the best, being rather slippery and uneven from the heavy traffic of the wine carts. But the vine-covered hills between Épernay and Rheims, with their dark-green matted leafage, seemed to us as richly productive as anything in France. We were still in the hills when we looked down on the valley of the Vesle and saw a city outspread there, and in its center the architectural and ecclesiastical pride of the world, the cathedral of Rheims. Large as the city was, that great central ornament dwarfed and dominated its surroundings. Thus Joan of Arc had seen it when at the head of her victorious army she conducted the king to Rheims for his coronation. She was nearing the fulfillment of her assignment, the completion of the great labor laid upon her by the voices of her saints. Mark Twain tells of Joan's approach to Rheims, of the tide of cheers that swept her ranks at the vision of the distant towers: And as for Joan of Arc, there where she sat her horse, gazing, clothed all in white armor, dreamy, beautiful, and in her face a deep, deep joy, a joy not of earth; oh, she was not flesh, she was spiritual! Her sublime mission was closing--closing in flawless triumph. To-morrow she could say, "It is finished--let me go free." It was the 16th of July that Joan looked down upon Rheims, and now, four hundred and eighty-five years later, it was again July, with the same summer glory on the woods, the same green and scarlet in the poppied fields, the same fair valley, the same stately towers rising to the sky. But no one can ever feel what Joan felt, can ever put into words, ever so faintly, what that moment and that vision meant to the Domremy shepherd girl. Descending the plain, we entered the city, crossed a bridge, and made our way to the cathedral square. Then presently we were at the doorway where Joan and her king had entered--the portal which has been called the most beautiful this side of Paradise. How little we dreamed that we were among the last to look upon it in its glory--that disfigurement and destruction lay only a few weeks ahead! It is not required any more that one should write descriptively of the church of Rheims. It has been done so thoroughly, and so often, by those so highly qualified for the undertaking, that such supplementary remarks as I might offer would hardly rise even to the dignity of an impertinence. Pergussen, who must have been an authority, for the guidebook quotes him, called it, "perhaps the most beautiful structure produced in the Middle Ages." Nothing [he says] can exceed the majesty of its deeply recessed portals, the beauty of the rose window that surmounts them, or the elegance of the gallery that completes the façade and serves as a basement to the light and graceful towers that crown the composition. The cathedral was already two hundred years old when Joan arrived in 1429. But it must have looked quite fresh and new then, for, nearly five centuries later, it seemed to have suffered little. Some of the five hundred and thirty statues of its entrance were weatherworn and scarred, but the general effect was not disturbed. Many kings had preceded Joan and her sovereign through the sacred entrance. Long before the cathedral was built French sovereigns had come to Rheims for their coronation, to be anointed with some drops of the inexhaustible oil which a white dove had miraculously brought from heaven for the baptism of Clovis. That had been nearly a thousand years before, but in Joan's day the sacred vessel and its holy contents were still preserved in the ancient abbey of St. Remi, and would be used for the anointing of her king. The Archbishop of Rheims and his canons, with a deputy of nobles, had been sent for the awesome relic, after the nobles had sworn upon their lives to restore it to St. Remi when the coronation was over. The abbot himself, attended by this splendid escort, brought the precious vessel, and the crowd fell prostrate and prayed while this holiest of objects, for it had been made in heaven, passed by. We are told that the abbot, attended by the archbishop and those others, entered the crowded church, followed by the five mounted knights, who rode down the great central aisle, clear to the choir, and then at a signal backed their prancing steeds all the distance to the great doors. It was a mighty assemblage that had gathered for the crowning of Joan's king. France, overrun by an invader, had known no real king for years--had, indeed, well-nigh surrendered her nationality. Now the saints themselves had taken up their cause, and in the person of a young girl from an obscure village had given victory to their arms and brought redemption to their throne. No wonder the vast church was packed and that crowds were massed outside. From all directions had come pilgrims to the great event--persons of every rank, among them two shepherds, Joan's aged father and uncle, who had walked from Domremy, one hundred and twenty miles, to verify with their own eyes what their ears could not credit. Very likely the cathedral at Rheims has never known such a throng since that day, nor heard such a mighty shout as went up when Joan and the king, side by side, and followed by a splendid train, appeared at the great side entrance and moved slowly to the altar. I think there must have fallen a deep hush then--a petrified stillness that lasted through the long ceremonial, while every eye feasted itself upon the young girl standing there at the king's side, holding her victorious standard above him--the banner that "had borne the burden and had earned the victory," as she would one day testify at her trial. I am sure that vast throng would keep silence, scarcely breathing, until the final word was spoken and the dauphin had accepted the crown and placed it upon his head. But then we may hear borne faintly down the centuries the roar of renewed shouting that told to those waiting without that the great ceremony was ended, that Charles VII of France had been anointed king. In the _Recollections_ Mark Twain makes the Sieur de Conte say: What a crash there was! All about us cries and cheers, and the chanting of the choir and the groaning of the organ; and outside the clamoring of the bells and the booming of the cannon. The fantastic dream, the incredible dream, the impossible dream of the peasant child stood fulfilled. It had become reality--perhaps in that old day it even _seemed_ reality--but now, after five hundred years, it has become once more a dream--to-day _our_ dream--and in the filmy picture we see the shepherd girl on her knees, saying to the crowned king: "My work which was given me to do is finished; give me your peace and let me go back to my mother, who is poor and old and has need of me." But the king raises her up and praises her and confers upon her nobility and titles, and asks her to name a reward for her service, and in the old dream we hear her ask favor for her village--that Domremy, "poor and hard pressed by reason of the war," may have its taxes remitted. Nothing for herself--no more than that, and in the presence of all the great assemblage Charles VII pronounces the decree that, by grace of Joan of Arc, Domremy shall be free from taxes forever. Here within these walls it was all reality five hundred years ago. We do not study this interior to discover special art values or to distinguish in what manner it differs from others we have seen. For us the light from its great rose window and upper arches is glorified because once it fell upon Joan of Arc in that supreme moment when she saw her labor finished and asked only that she might return to Domremy and her flocks. The statuary in the niches are holy because they looked upon that scene, the altar paving is sanctified because it felt the pressure of her feet. We wandered about the great place, but we came back again and again to the altar, and, looking through the railing, dreamed once more of that great moment when a frail shepherd girl began anew the history of France. Back of the altar was a statue of Joan unlike any we have seen elsewhere, and to us more beautiful. It was not Joan with her banner aloft, her eyes upward. It was Joan with her eyes lowered, looking at no outward thing, her face passive--the saddest face and the saddest eyes in the world. It was Joan the sacrifice--of her people and her king. Chapter XXXI ALONG THE MARNE It may have been two miles out of Rheims that we met the flood. There had been a heavy shower as we entered the city, but presently the sun broke out, bright and hot, too bright and too hot for permanence. Now suddenly all was black again, there was a roar of thunder, and then such an opening of the water gates of the sky as would have disturbed Noah. There was no thought of driving through such a torrent. I pulled over to the side of the road, but the tall high-trimmed trees afforded no protection. Our top was a shelter, but not a complete one--the wind drove the water in, and in a moment our umbrellas were sticking out in every direction, and we had huddled together like chickens. The water seemed to fall solidly. The world was blotted out. I had the feeling at moments that we were being swept down some great submarine current. I don't know how long the inundation lasted. It may have been five minutes--it may have been thirty. Then suddenly it stopped--it was over--the sun was out! There was then no mud in France--not in the high-roads--and a moment or two later we had revived, our engine was going, and we were gliding between fair fields--fresh shining fields where scarlet poppy patches were as pools of blood. There is no lovelier land than the Marne district, from Rheims to Chalons and to Vitry-le-François. It had often been a war district--a battle ground, fought over time and again since the ancient allies defeated Attila and his Huns there, checking the purpose of the "Scourge of God," as he styled himself, to found a new dynasty upon the wreck of Rome. It could never be a battle ground again, we thought--the great nations were too advanced for war. Ah me! Within two months from that day men were lying dead across that very road, shells were tearing at the lovely fields, and another stain had mingled with the trampled poppies. Chalons-sur-Marne, like Rheims and Épernay, is a champagne center and prosperous. There were some churches there, but they did not seem of great importance. We stopped for water at Vitry-le-François, a hot, uninteresting-looking place, though it had played a part in much history, and would presently play a part in much more. It was always an outpost against vandal incursions from the north, and Francis I rebuilt and strengthened it. At Vitry we left the Marne and kept the wide road eastward, for we were bound now for the Vosges, for Domremy on the Meuse, Joan's starting place. The sun burned again, the road got hot, and suddenly during the afternoon one of our tires went off like a gun. One of our old shoes had blown out at the rim, and there was a doubtful look about the others. Narcissa and I labored in the hot sun--for there was no shade from those slim roadside poplars--and with inside patches and outside patches managed to get in traveling order again, though personally we were pretty limp by the time we were ready to move, and a good deal disheartened. The prospect of reaching Vevey, our base of supplies, without laying up somewhere to order new tires was not bright, and it became even less so that evening, when in front of the hotel at St. Dizier another tire pushed out at the rim, and in the gathering dusk, surrounded by an audience, I had to make further repairs before I could get into the garage. Early next morning I gave those tires all a pretty general overhauling. I put in blow-out patches wherever there seemed to be a weak place and doubled them at the broken spots. By the time I got done we were carrying in our tires all the extra rubber and leather and general aid-to-the-injured stuff that had formerly been under the back seat, and I was obliged to make a trip around to the supply garages for more. Fortunately the weather had changed overnight, and it was cool. Old tires and even new ones hold better on cool roads. It turned still cooler as we proceeded--it became chilly--for the Fourth of July it was winterish. At Chalons we had expended three whole francs for a bottle of champagne for celebration purposes, and when we made our luncheon camp in a sheltered cover of a pretty meadow where there was a clear, racing brook, we were too cold to sit down, and drank standing a toast to our national independence, and would have liked more of that delicious liquid warmth, regardless of cost. There could hardly have been a more beautiful spot than that, but I do not remember any place where we were less inclined to linger. Yet how quickly weather can change. Within an hour it was warm again--not hot, but mildly pleasant, even delightful. Chapter XXXII DOMREMY We were well down in the Vosges now and beginning to inquire for Domremy. How strange it seemed to be actually making inquiries for a place that always before had been just a part of an old legend--a half-mythical story of a little girl who, tending her sheep, had heard the voices of angels. One had the feeling that there could never really be such a place at all, that, even had it once existed, it must have vanished long ago; that to ask the way to it now would be like those who in some old fairy tale come back after ages of enchantment and inquire for places and people long forgotten. Domremy! No, it was not possible. We should meet puzzled, blank looks, pitying smiles, in answer to our queries. We should never find one able to point a way and say, "That is the road to Domremy." One could as easily say "the road to Camelot." Yet there came a time when we must ask. We had been passing through miles of wonderful forest, with regularly cut roads leading away at intervals, suggesting a vast preserved estate, when we came out to an open hill land, evidently a grazing country, with dividing roads and no definite markings. So we stopped a humble-looking old man and hesitatingly, rather falteringly, asked him the road to Domremy. He regarded us a moment, then said very gently, pointing, "It is down there just a little way." So we were near--quite near--perhaps even now passing a spot where Joan had tended her sheep. Our informant turned to watch us pass. He knew why we were going to Domremy. He could have been a descendant of those who had played with Joan. Even now it was hard to believe that Domremy would be just an old village, such a village as Joan had known, where humble folk led humble lives tending their flocks and small acres. Very likely it had become a tourist resort--a mere locality, with a hotel. It was only when we were actually in the streets of a decaying, time-beaten little hamlet and were told that this was indeed Domremy, the home of Joan of Arc, that we awoke to the actuality of the place and to the realization that in character at least it had not greatly changed. We drove to the church--an ancient, weatherworn little edifice. The invaders destroyed it the same year that Joan set out on her march, but when Joan had given safety to France the fragments were gathered and rebuilt, so if it is not in its entirety the identical chapel where Joan worshiped, it contains, at least, portions of the original structure and stands upon the same ground. In front of the church is a bronze statue of the Maid, and above the entrance a painting of Joan listening to the voices. But these are modern. Inside are more precious things. It is a plain, humble interior, rather too fresh and new looking for its antiquity, perhaps because of the whitened walls. But near the altar there is an object that does not disappoint. It is an ancient baptismal font--the original font of the little ruined chapel--the vessel in which Joan of Arc was baptized. I think there can be no question of its authenticity. It would be a holy object to the people of Domremy; to them Joan was already a saint at the time of her death, and any object that had served her was sacred. The relic dug from the ruined chapel would be faithfully guarded, and there would be many still alive to identify it when the church's restoration was complete and the ancient vessel set in place. It seems a marvelous thing to be able to look upon an object that may be regarded as the ceremonial starting point of a grace that was to redeem a nation. Surely, if ever angels stood by to observe the rites of men they gathered with those humble shepherd folk about the little basin where a tiny soul was being consecrated to their special service. In the church also is the headstone from the grave of Joan's godmother, with an ancient inscription which one may study out, and travel back a long way. Near it is another object--one that ranks in honor with the baptismal font--the statuette of St. Marguerite, before which Joan prayed. Like the font this would be a holy thing, even in Joan's lifetime, and would be preserved and handed down. To me it seems almost too precious to remain in that ancient, perishing church. It is something that Joan of Arc not only saw and touched, but to which she gave spiritual adoration. To me it seems the most precious, the most sacred relic in France. The old church appears so poor a protection for it. Yet I should be sorry to see it taken elsewhere. [Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF JOAN OF ARC] Joan's house is only a step away--a remnant of a house, for, though it was not demolished like the church, it has suffered from alterations, and portions of it were destroyed. Whatever remained at the time of Louis XI would seem to have been preserved about as it was then, though of course restored; the royal arms of France, with those accorded by Charles VII to Joan and her family, were combined ornamentally above the door with the date, 1481, and the inscription, in old French, "_Vive labeur; vive le roy Loys._" The son of Joan's king must have felt that it was proper to preserve the birthplace of the girl who had saved his throne. Doubtless the main walls of the old house of Jacques d'Arc are the same that Joan knew. Joan's mother lived there until 1438, and it was less than fifty years later that Louis XI gave orders for the restoration. The old walls were solidly built. It is not likely that they could have fallen to complete ruin in that time. The rest is mainly new. What the inside of the old house was in Joan's time we can only imagine. The entrance room was the general room, I suppose, and it was here, we are told, that Joan was born. Mark Twain has imagined a scene in the house of Jacques d'Arc where a hungry straggler comes one night and knocks at the door and is admitted to the firelit room. He tells us how Joan gave the wanderer her porridge--against her father's argument, for those were times of sore stress--and how the stranger rewarded them all with the great Song of Roland. The general room would be the setting of that scene. Behind it is a little dungeon-like apartment which is shown as Joan's chamber. The walls and ceiling of this poor place are very old; possibly they are of Joan's time--no one can really say. In one wall there is a recess, now protected by a heavy wire screen, which means that Joan set up her shrine there, the St. Marguerite and her other holy things. She would pray to them night and morning, but oftener I think she would leave this dim prison for the consolation of the little church across the way. The whole house is a kind of museum now, and the upper floor is especially fitted with cases for books and souvenirs. In the grounds there is a fine statue by Mercié, and the whole place is leafy and beautiful. It is not easy, however, to imagine there the presence of Joan. That is easier in the crooked streets of the village, and still easier along the river and the fields. The Fairy Tree--_l'Arbre Fée de Bourlement_--where Joan and her comrades played, and where later she heard the voices, is long since gone, and the spot is marked by a church which we cared to view only from a distance. It seems too bad that any church should be there, and especially that one. The spot itself, marked by a mere tablet, or another tree, would be enough. It was in January, 1429, that Joan and her uncle Laxart left Domremy for Vaucouleurs to ask the governor to give her a military escort to the uncrowned king at Chinon. She never came back. Less than half a year later she had raised the siege at Orléans, fought Patay, and conducted the king to his coronation at Rheims. She would have returned then, but the king was afraid to let her go. Neither did he have the courage to follow or support her brilliant leadership. He was weak and paltry. When, as the result of his dalliance, she was captured at Compiègne, he allowed her to suffer a year of wretched imprisonment, making no attempt at rescue or ransom, and in the end to be burned at Rouen as a witch. I have read in an old French book an attempt to excuse the king, to show that he did not have armed force enough to go to Joan's rescue, but I failed to find there any evidence that he even contemplated such an attempt. I do find that when Joan had been dead thirteen years and France, strong and united, was safe for excursions, he made a trip to Lorraine, accompanied by Dunois, Robert de Baudricourt, and others of Joan's favorite generals. They visited Domremy, and Baudricourt pointed out to the king that there seemed to be a sadness in the landscape. It is said that this visit caused Charles to hasten the process of Joan's rehabilitation--to reverse the verdict of heresy and idolatry and witchcraft under which she had died. But as the new hearing did not begin until eleven years after the king's visit to Domremy, nearly twenty-five years after Joan's martyrdom, the word "hasten" does not seem to apply. If Charles VII finally bestirred himself in that process, it was rather to show before he died that he held his crown not by the favor of Satan but of saints. The memory of Joan of Arc's fate must always be a bitter one to France, and the generations have never ceased to make atonement. Her martyrdom has seemed so unnecessary--such a reproach upon the nation she saved. Yet perhaps it was necessary. Joan in half a year had accomplished what the French armies, without her, had been unable to do in three quarters of a century--she had crippled the English power in France. Her work was not finished--though defeated, the enemy still remained on French soil, and unless relentlessly assailed would recover. After the coronation at Rheims there would seem to have fallen, even upon Joan's loyal followers, a reaction, a period of indifference and indolence. Joan's fearful death at the stake awoke her people as nothing else could have done. By a lonely roadside far up in Normandy we passed, one day, a small stone column which recorded how upon this spot was delivered the battle of Formigny, April 15th, in the year 1450, under the reign of Charles VII, and how the French were victorious and the English armies forced to abandon Norman soil. Joan of Arc had been dead nineteen years when that final battle was fought, but it was her spirit that gave the victory. Chapter XXXIII STRASSBURG AND THE BLACK FOREST Our tires were distressingly bad now. I had to do some quick repairing at Domremy, also between Domremy and Vaucouleurs, where we spent the night. Then next morning at Vaucouleurs, in an unfrequented back street behind our ancient inn, I established a general overhauling plant, and patched and relined and trepanned during almost an entire forenoon, while the rest of the family scoured the town for the materials. We put in most of our time at Vaucouleurs in this way. However, there was really little to see in the old town. Our inn was as ancient as anything, and our landlord assured us that Joan's knights probably stopped there, and even Uncle Laxart, but he could not produce his register to prove it. There are the remains of the château where Joan is said to have met the governor, and a monument to the Maid's memory has been begun, but remains unfinished through lack of funds. The real interest in Vaucouleurs, to-day, is that it was the starting point of Joan's great march. One could reflect upon that and repair tires simultaneously. We got away in time to have luncheon in the beautiful country below Toul, and then kept on to Nancy. At both places there seemed to be nothing but soldiers and barracks, and one did not have to get out of the car to see those. Not that Nancy is not a fine big town, but its cathedral and its Arch of Triumph are both of the eighteenth century. Such things seemed rather raw and new, while museums did not interest us any more. Lorraine itself is beautiful. It seemed especially fair where we crossed the line into Germany, and we did not wonder that France could not forget her loss of that fertile land. There was no difficulty at the customs. We were politely O. K.'d by the French officials and courteously passed by the Germans, with no examination beyond our _triptyques_. Then another stretch of fine road and fair fields, and we were in a village of cobbled streets and soldiers--German soldiers--and were told that it was Dieuze; also that there was an inn--a very good inn--a little way down the street. So there was--an inn where they spoke French and German and even a variety of English, and had plenty of good food and good beds for a very modest sum indeed. Dieuze was soon to become a war town, but beyond a few soldiers--nothing unusual--we saw no signs of it that first week in July. [Illustration: STRASSBURG, SHOWING THE CATHEDRAL] Strassburg was our next stopping place. We put in a day there wandering about its fine streets, looking at its picturesque old houses, its royal palace, and its cathedral. I do not think we cared for the cathedral as we did for those of France. It is very old and very wonderful, and exhibits every form of architecture that has been employed in church building for nearly a thousand years; but in spite of its great size, its imposing height, its rich façade, there was something repellant about it all, and particularly in its great bare interior. It seemed to lack a certain light of romance, of poetry, of spiritual sympathy that belongs to every French church of whatever size. And we were disappointed in the wonderful clock. It was very wonderful, no doubt, but we had expected too much. We waited for an hour for the great midday exhibition, and collected with a jam of other visitors in the little clock chapel, expecting all the things to happen that we had dreamed of since childhood. They all did happen, too, but they came so deliberately and with so little liveliness of demonstration that one had to watch pretty closely sometimes to know that anything was happening at all. I think I, for one, had expected that the saints and apostles, and the months and seasons, would all come out and do a grand walk around to lively music. As for the rooster that crows, he does not crow as well as Narcissa, who has the gift of imitation and could have astonished that crowd if she had let me persuade her to try. There have been several of these Strassburg clocks. There was one of them in the cathedral as far back as 1352. It ran for about two centuries, when another, finished in 1574, took its place. The mechanism of the new clock was worn out in another two centuries, but its framework forms a portion of the great clock of to-day, which dates from 1840. It does a number of very wonderful things, but in this age of contrivance, when men have made mechanical marvels past all belief, the wonder of the Strassburg clock is largely traditional. The rooster that crows and flaps his wings is really the chief feature, for it is the rooster of the original clock, and thus has daily amused the generations for five hundred years. Gutenberg, the first printer, began his earliest experiments in a cloister outside the Strassburg gates, and there is a small public square named for him, and in the center of it a fine statue with relief groups of the great printers of all nations. Of course Franklin was there and some other Americans. It gave us a sort of proprietary interest in that neighborhood, and a kindly feeling for the city in general. It was afternoon when we left Strassburg, and by nightfall we were in the Black Forest--farther in than we had intended to be, by a good deal. With our tires in a steady decline we had no intention of wandering off into dark depths inhabited by fairies and woodcutters and full of weird enchantments, with all of which Grimm's tales had made us quite familiar. We had intended merely to go in a little way, by a main road that would presently take us to Freiburg, where there would be a new supply of patches and linings, and even a possibility of tires, in case our need became very sore. But the Black Forest made good its reputation for enchantments. When we came to the spot where, by our map, the road should lead to Freiburg, there were only a deserted mill, with a black depth of pine growing where the road should have been. Following along, we found ourselves getting deeper and deeper into the thick forest, while the lonely road became steeper and narrower and more and more awesome in the gathering evening. There were no villages, no more houses of any kind. There had been rain and the steep hills grew harder to climb. But perhaps a good fairy was helping us, too, a little, for our crippled tires held. Each time we mounted a perpendicular crest I listened for the back ones to go, but they remained firm. By and by we started down--down _where_ we had no notion--but certainly down. Being under a spell, I forgot to put on the engine brake, and by the time we were halfway down the hill the brake bands were hot and smoking. By the time we were down the greasy linings were afire. There was a brook there, and we stopped and poured water on our hot-boxes and waited for them to cool. A woodcutter--he must have been one, for only woodcutters and fairies live in the Black Forest--came along and told us we must go to Haslach--that there was no other road to Freiburg, unless we turned around and went back nearly to Strassburg. I would not have gone back up that hill and through those darkening woods for much money. So we went on and presently came out into a more open space, and some houses; then we came to Haslach. By our map we were in the depths of the Schwarzwald, and by observation we could see that we were in an old, beautiful village, of the right sort for that locality, and in front of a big inn, where frauleins came out to take our bags and show us up to big rooms--rooms that had great billowy beds, with other billowy beds for covering. After all, the enchantment was not so bad. And the supper that night of _Wiener schnitzel_ and _pfannekuchen_ was certainly good, and hot, and plentiful beyond belief. But there was more trouble next morning. One of those old back tires was in a desperate condition, and trying to improve it I seemed to make matters worse. I took it off and put in a row of blow-out patches all the way around, after which the inner tubes popped as fast as I could put them in and blow them up. Three times I yanked that tire off, and then it began to occur to me that all those inside patches took up too much room. It would have occurred to any other man sooner, but it takes a long and violent period of pumping exercise to get a brain like mine really loosened up once it is caked by a good night's sleep. So I yanked those patches out and put on our last hope--a spare tire in fairly decent condition, and patiently patched those bursted tubes--all of which work was done in a hot place under the eyes of a kindly but maddening audience. Three times in the lovely land between Haslach and Freiburg Narcissa and I had to take off a tire and change tubes, those new patches being not air-proof. Still, we got on, and the scenery made up for a good deal. Nothing could be more picturesque than the Black Forest houses, with their great overhanging thatched roofs--their rows and clusters of little windows, their galleries and ladders, and their clinging vines. And what kindly people they are. Many of the roads are lined with cherry trees and this was cherry season. The trees were full of gatherers, and we had only to stop and offer to buy to have them load us with the delicious black fruit, the sweetest, juiciest cherries in the world. They accepted money, but reluctantly; they seemed to prefer to give them to us, and more than once a boy or a man ran along by the car and threw in a great loaded branch, and laughed, and waved and wished us _gute reise_. But this had happened to us in France, too, in the Lorraine. Chapter XXXIV A LAND WHERE STORKS LIVE We were at Freiburg in the lower edge of the Black Forest some time during the afternoon, one of the cleanest cities I have ever seen, one of the richest in color scheme. Large towns are not likely to be picturesque, but Freiburg, in spite of its general freshness, has a look of solid antiquity--an antiquity that has not been allowed to go to seed. Many of the houses, including the cathedral, are built of a rich red stone, and some of them have outer decorations, and nearly all of them have beautiful flowers in the windows and along the balconies. I should think a dweller in Freiburg would love the place. Freiburg has been, and still is, celebrated for many things; its universities, its cathedral, its ancient buildings, in recent years for its discovery of "twilight sleep," the latest boon which science has offered to sorrow-laden humanity. It is a curious road from Freiburg to Basle. Sometimes it is a highway, sometimes it is merely a farm road across fields. More than once we felt sure we were lost and must presently bring up in a farmyard. Then suddenly we would be between fine hedges or trees, on a wide road entering a village. We had seen no storks when we left Freiburg. We had been told there were some in Strassburg, but no one had been able to point them out. We were disappointed, for we had pictured in our minds that, once really in the Black Forest, there would be, in almost any direction, a tall chimney surmounted by a big brushy nest, with a stork sitting in it, and standing by, supported on one very slim, very long, very perpendicular leg, another stork, keeping guard. This is the picture we had seen many times in the books, and we were grieved, even rather resentful, that it was not to be found in reality. We decided that it probably belonged only in the books, fairy books, and that while there might have been storks once, just as there had once been fairies, they had disappeared from mortal vision about the same time--that nobody in late years had really seen storks--that-- But just then we really saw some ourselves--sure-enough storks on an old steeple, two of them, exactly as they always are in the pictures, one nice mother stork sitting in a brushy nest and one nice father stork standing on his stiff, perpendicular leg. We stopped the car to gaze. The church was in an old lost-looking village, which this stork seemed to own, for there were no others, and the few people we saw did not appear to have anything like the stork's proprietary interest. We could hardly take our eyes from that old picture, suddenly made reality. We concluded, however, that it was probably the only stork family in Germany; but that, also, was a mistake. A little farther along, at another village, was another old stubby steeple, and another pair of storks, both standing this time, probably to see us go by. Every village had them now, but I think in only one village did we see more than a single pair. That little corner of the Schwarzwald will always remain to us a part separated from the rest of the world--a sort of back-water of fairyland. The German customs office is on one side of a road, the Swiss on the other, and we stopped in a shady place and interviewed both. We did not dread these encounters any more. We had long since learned that if there was one class of persons abroad likely to be more courteous than others to travelers, that class is the customs officials. This particular frontier was in the edge of Basle, and presently we had crossed a bridge and were in the city, a big, beautiful city, though not so handsome as Freiburg, not so rich in color, not quite so clean and floral. We did not stop in Basle. There are wonders to be seen, but, all things considered, we thought it better to go on. With good luck we might reach Vevey next day, our European headquarters and base of supplies. We had been more than two months on the road already; it was important that we get to headquarters--more important than we knew. Chapter XXXV BACK TO VEVEY So we went wandering through a rather unpopulous, semi-mountainous land--a prosperous land, from the look of it, with big isolated factory plants here and there by strongly flowing streams. They seemed to be making almost everything along those streams. The Swiss are an industrious people. Toward evening we came to a place we had never heard of before, a town of size and of lofty buildings--a place of much manufacturing, completely lost up in the hills, by name Moutier. It was better not to go farther that night, for I could see by our road map that there was going to be some steep climbing between Moutier and the Lake Geneva slope. There are at least two divides between Moutier and Geneva, and Swiss watersheds are something more than mere gentle slopes such as one might meet in Ohio, for instance, or Illinois. They are generally scrambles--they sometimes resemble ladders, though the road surface is usually pretty good, with a few notable exceptions. We met one of these exceptions next morning below Moutier. There had been rains, and the slippery roads between those perpendicular skyscraping bluffs had not dried at all. Our route followed a rushing stream a little way; then it turned into the hill, and at that point I saw ahead of me a road that was not a road at all, but a semi-perpendicular wallow of mud and stone that went writhing up and up until it was lost somewhere among the trees. I had expected a good deal, but nothing as bad as this. I gave one wild, hopeless thought to our poor crippled rear tires, threw the lever from third to second, from second back to first, and let in every ounce of gasoline the engine would take. It really never occurred to me that we were going to make it. I did not believe anything could hold in that mud, and I expected in another minute to be on the side of the road, with nothing to do but hunt up an ox-team. Whir! slop! slosh! slide!--grind!--on one side and on the other--into a hole and out of it, bump! thump! bang!--why, certainly we are climbing, but we would never make the top, never in the world--it was hardly to be expected of any car; and with those old tires! Never mind, we would go till we stalled, or skidded out of the road. We were at the turn! We had made the turn! We were going straight up the last rise! Only a little more, now--ten feet--five feet, _six inches_! _Hooray!_ we were on top of the hill, b'gosh! I got out and looked at the back tires. It was incredible, impossible, but they were as sound and solid as when we left Moutier. Practically our whole weight had been on those tires all the way up that fearful log-haul, for that is what it was, yet those old tubes and outer envelopes had not shown a sign. Explain it if you can. There was really no trouble after that. There were hills, but the roads were good. Our last day was a panorama of Swiss scenery in every form; deep gorges where we stopped on bridges to look down at rushing torrents far below; lofty mountains with narrow, skirting roads; beautiful water-fronts and lake towns along the lakes of Biel and Neufchâtel, a final luncheon under a great spreading shade--a birthday luncheon, as it happened--and then, toward the end of the lovely July afternoon, a sudden vision, from high harvest meadows, of the snow-clad mountaintops beyond Lake Geneva--the peaks of the true Alps. And presently one saw the lake itself, the water--hazy, dreamy, summery, with little steamers so gay and toylike, plying up and down--all far below us as yet, for we were still among the high hayfields, where harvesters were pitching and raking, while before and behind us our road was a procession of hay wagons. It was a continuous coast, now, down to Lausanne--the lake, as it seemed, rising up to meet us, its colors and outlines becoming more vivid, the lofty mountains beyond it approaching a little nearer, while almost underneath us a beautiful city was gleaming in the late afternoon sunshine. We were by this time among the vineyards that terrace those south-facing steeps to the water's edge. Then we were at the outskirts of the city itself, still descending, still coasting, for Lausanne is built mainly on a mountainside. When we came to a comparative level at last, we were crossing a great bridge--one of those that tie the several slopes of the city together; then presently we were at St. Frances's church, the chief center, and felt almost at home, for we had been here a good many times before. We did not stop. Vevey was twelve miles down the lake--we had a feverish desire to arrive there without having to pump those tires again, if possible. Leisurely, happily, we covered that final lap of our long tour. There is no more beautiful drive in Europe than that along Lake Geneva, from Lausanne to Vevey on a summer evening, and there never was a calmer, sweeter summer evening than that of our return. Oh, one must drive slowly on such an evening! We were anxious to arrive, but not to have the drive ended. Far down the lake the little towns we knew so well began to appear--Territet, Montreux, Clarens, Vevey la Tour--we could even make out the towers of Chillon. Then we passed below the ancient village hanging to the mountainside, and there was Vevey, and there at its outskirts our pretty hotel with its big gay garden, the blue lake just in front, the driveway open. A moment more and the best landlady in Europe was welcoming us in the most musical French and German in the world. Our long round was ended--three thousand miles of the happiest travel to be found this side of paradise. By and by I went out to look at our faithful car in the little hotel garage. It had stood up to the last moment on those old tires. I suppose then the tension was too much. The left rear was quite flat. Chapter XXXVI THE GREAT UPHEAVAL It was the 10th of July that we returned to Vevey, and it was just three weeks later that the world--a world of peace and the social interchange of nations--came to an end. We had heard at Tours of the assassination of the Austrian archduke and his duchess, but no thought of the long-threatened European war entered our minds. Neither did we discover later any indications of it. If there was any tension along the Franco-German border we failed to notice it. Arriving at Vevey, there seemed not a ripple on the drowsy summer days. Even when Austria finally sent her ultimatum to Serbia there was scarcely a suggestion of war talk. We had all the nations in our hotel, but they assembled harmoniously in the little reading room after dinner over the papers and innocuous games, and if the situation was discussed at all, the word "arbitration" was oftenest heard. Neither did the news come to us gradually or gently. It came like a bomb, exploded one evening by Billy Baker, an American boy of sixteen and a bulletin of sorts. Billy had been for his customary after-dinner walk uptown, and it was clear the instant he plunged in that he had gathered something unusual. "Say, folks," he burst out, "did you know that Austria has declared war against Serbia and is bombarding Belgrade, and now all the others are going to declare, and that us Americans have got to beat it for home?" There was a general stir. Billy's items were often delivered in this abrupt way, but his news facts were seldom questioned. He went on, adding a quick, crisp detail, while the varied nationalities assumed attitudes of attention. The little group around the green center table forgot what they were there for. I had just drawn a spade when I needed a heart, and did not mind the diversion. Billy concluded his dispatches: "We've all got to beat it, you know, _now_, before all the ships and trains and things are used for mobilization and before the fighting begins. If we don't we'll have to stay here all winter." Then, his mission finished, Billy in his prompt way pulled a chair to the table. "Let me in this, will you?" he said. "I feel awfully lucky to-night." Americans laugh at most things. We laughed now at Billy Baker--at the dramatic manner of his news, with its picturesque even if stupendous possibilities--at the vision in everyone's mind of a horde of American tourists "beating it" out of Europe at the first drum-roll of war. But not all in the room laughed. The "little countesses"--two Russian girls--and their white-haired companion, talked rapidly and earnestly together in low voices. The retired French admiral--old and invalided--rose, his long cape flung back across his shoulder, and walked feebly up and down, stopping at each turn to speak to his aged wife, who sat with their son, himself an officer on leave. An English judge, with a son at home, fraternized with the Americans and tried to be gay with them, but his mirth lacked freedom. A German family instinctively separated themselves from the others and presently were no longer in the room. Even one of the Americans--a Southern girl--laughed rather hysterically: "All my baggage but one suit case is stored in Frankfort," she said. "If Germany goes to war I'll have a gay time getting it." Morning brought confirmation of Billy Baker's news, at least so far as Austria's action was concerned, and the imminence of what promised to be a concerted movement of other great nations toward war. It was said that Russia was already mobilizing--that troops were in motion in Germany and in France. That night, or it may have been the next, a telegram came for the young French officer, summoning him to his regiment. His little son of nine or ten raced about excitedly. "_L'Allmagne a mobilisé--mon père va à la guerre!_" The old admiral, too feeble, almost, to be out of bed, seemed to take on a new bearing. "I thought I was done with war," he said. "I am an invalid, and they could not call on me. But if France is attacked I shall go and fight once more for my country." The German family--there were two grown sons in it--had already disappeared. It was about the third morning that I took a walk down to the American Consulate. I had been there before, but had not found it exciting. It had been a place of silence and inactivity. There were generally a few flies drifting about, and a bored-looking man who spent an hour or two there morning and afternoon, killing time and glad of any little diversion in the way of company. The Consulate was no longer a place of silence and buzzing flies. There was buzzing in plenty, but it was made by my fellow countrymen--country-women, most of them--who were indeed making things hum. I don't know whether the consul was bored or not. I know he was answering questions at the rate of one per second, and even so not keeping up with the demand for information. "Is there going to be a war?" "Is England going into it?" "Has Germany declared yet?" "Will we be safe in Switzerland?" "Will all Americans be ordered home?" "Are the trains going to be stopped?" "Will we have to have passports?" "I have got a sailing in September. Will the ships be running then?" "How can I send a letter to my husband in Germany?" "How about money? Are the Swiss banks going to stop payment on letters of credit?"--these, repeated in every varying form, and a hundred other inquiries that only a first-class registered clairvoyant could have answered with confidence. The consul was good-natured. He was also an optimist. His replies in general conveyed the suggestion to "keep cool," that everything was going to be all right. The Swiss banks, however, did stop payment on letters of credit and various forms of checks forthwith. I had a very pretty-looking check myself, and a day or two before I had been haggling with the bank man over the rate of exchange, which had been gently declining. I said I would hold it for better terms. But on the day that Germany declared war I decided to cash it, anyway, just to have a little extra money in case-- Oh, well, never mind the details. I didn't cash it. The bank man looked at it, smiled feebly, and pointed to a notice on the wall. It was in French, but it was an "easy lesson." It said: No more checks or letters of credit cashed until further notice. By order of the Association. I don't know yet what "Association" it was that was heartless enough to give an order like that, but I hoped it would live to repent it. The bank man said that in view of my position as a depositor he might be induced to advance me 10 per cent of the amount of the check. The next day he even refused to take it for collection. Switzerland is prudent; she had mobilized her army about the second day and sent it to the frontier. We had been down to the big market place to see it go. I never saw anything more quiet--more orderly. She had mobilized her cash in the same prompt, orderly fashion and sent it into safe retirement. It was a sorrowful time, and it was not merely American--it was international. Switzerland never saw such a "busted community" as her tourists presented during August, 1914. Every day was Black Friday. Almost nobody had any real money. A Russian nobleman in our hotel with a letter of credit and a roll of national currency could not pay for his afternoon tea. The little countesses had to stop buying chocolates. An American army officer, retired, was unable to meet his laundry bill. Even Swiss bank notes (there were none less than fifty francs in the beginning) were of small service, for there was no change. All the silver had disappeared as if it had suddenly dissolved. As for gold--lately so plentiful--one no longer even uttered the _word_ without emotion. Getting away, "beating it," as Billy had expressed it, was still a matter of prime importance, but it had taken second place. The immediate question was how and where to get money for the "beating" process. The whole talk was money. Any little group collected on the street might begin by discussing the war, but, in whatever language, the discussion drifted presently to finance. The optimistic consul was still reassuring. To some he advanced funds--he was more liberal than the Bank of Switzerland. There was a percentage, of course--a lucky few--who had money, and these were getting away. There were enough of them along the Simplon Railway to crowd the trains. Every train for Paris went through with the seats and aisles full. All schedules were disordered. There was no telling when a train would come, or when it would arrive in Paris. Billy Baker promptly mobilized his party and they left sometime in the night--or it may have been in the morning, after a night of waiting. It was the last regular train to go. We did not learn of its fortunes. No word came back from those who left us. They all went with promises to let us know, but a veil dropped behind them. They were as those who pass beyond the things of earth. We heard something of their belongings, however. Sometimes on clear days a new range of mountains seemed to be growing in the west. It was thought to be the American baggage heaped on the French frontier. Very likely our friends wrote to us, but there was no more mail. The last American, French, and English letters came August 3d. The last Paris _Herald_ hung on the hotel file and became dingy and tattered with rereading. No mails went out. One could amuse himself by writing letters and dropping them in the post office, but he would know, when he passed a week later, that they had remained there. You could still cable, if you wished to do so--in French--and there must have been a scramble in America for French dictionaries, and a brisk hunting for the English equivalents of whatever terse Berlitz idiom was used to convey: "Money in a hurry--dead broke." Various economies began to be planned or practiced. Guests began to do without afternoon tea, or to make it themselves in their rooms. Few were paying their hotel bills, yet some went to cheaper places, frightened at the reckoning that was piling up against settling day. Others, with a little store of money, took very modest apartments and did light housekeeping to stretch their dwindling substance. Some, even among those at the hotels, in view of the general uncertainty, began to lay in tinned meats and other durable food against a time of scarcity. It was said that Switzerland, surrounded by war, would presently be short of provisions. Indeed, grocers, by order of the authorities, had already cut down the sale of staples, and no more than a pound or two of any one article was sold to a single purchaser. Hotels were obliged to send their servants, one after another, and even their guests, to get enough sugar and coffee and salt to go around. Hotel bills of fare--always lavish in Switzerland--began to be cut down, by _request of the guests themselves_. It was a time to worry, or--to "beat it" for home. We fell into the habit of visiting the Consulate each morning. When we had looked over the little local French paper and found what new nations had declared war against Germany overnight, we strolled down to read the bulletins on the Consulate windows, which generally told us what steamer lines had been discontinued, and how we couldn't get money on our checks and letters of credit. Inside, an active commerce was in progress. No passport had been issued from that Consulate for years. Nobody in Europe needed one. You could pass about as freely from Switzerland to France or Germany as you could from Delaware to New Jersey. Things were different now. With all Europe going to war, passports properly viséd were as necessary as train tickets. The consul, swamped with applications, had called for volunteers, and at several little tables young men were saying that they did not know most of the things those anxious people--women, mainly--were asking about, but that everything would surely be all right, soon. Meantime, they were helping their questioners make out applications for passports. There were applications for special things--personal things. There was a woman who had a husband lost somewhere in Germany and was convinced he would be shot as a spy. There was a man who had been appointed to a post office in America and was fearful of losing it if he did not get home immediately. There were anxious-faced little school-teachers who had saved for years to pay for a few weeks abroad, and were now with only some useless travelers' checks and a return ticket on a steamer which they could not reach, and which might not sail even if they reached it. And what of their positions in America? Theirs were the sorrowful cases, and there were others. But the crowd was good-natured, as a whole--Americans are generally that. The stranded ones saw humor in their situation, and confessed to one another--friends and strangers alike--their poverty and their predicaments, laughing a good deal, as Americans will. But there were anxious faces, too, and everybody wanted to know a number of things, which he asked of everybody else, and of the consul--oh, especially of the consul--until that good-natured soul was obliged to take an annex office upstairs where he could attend to the manufacture of passports, while downstairs a Brooklyn judge was appointed to supervise matters and deal out official information in judicial form. The judge was qualified for his appointment. Every morning before ten o'clock--opening time--he got together all the matters--letters, telegrams, and the like--that would be apt to interest the crowd, and dealt this substance out in a speech, at the end of which he invited inquiries on any point he had failed to make clear. He got them, too--mainly questions that he had already answered, because there is a type of mind which does not consider information valid unless delivered to it individually and, in person. I remember, once, when among other wild rumors it had been reported that because of the food scarcity all foreigners would be ordered out of Switzerland in five days, a woman who had listened attentively to the judge's positive and thrice-repeated denial of this canard promptly asked him if she could stay in Switzerland if she wanted to. The judge's speech became the chief interest of the day. It was the regular American program to assemble in front of the Consulate, exchanging experiences and reading the bulletins until opening time. The place was in a quiet side street of the quaint old Swiss city, a step from the lake-front promenade, with a background of blue mountains and still bluer water. Across the street stood a sixteenth-century château with its gardens of greenery. At ten the Consulate doors opened and the little group pressed in for the speech. I am sure no one in our stranded assembly will easily forget those mornings. Promising news began to come. The judge announced one morning that five hundred thousand francs had been placed to the consular credit in Switzerland by America for the relief of her citizens. Great happiness for the moment! Hope lighted every face. Then some mathematician figured that five hundred thousand francs amounted to a hundred thousand dollars, and that there were ten thousand Americans in Switzerland--hence, ten dollars apiece. The light of hope grew dim. There was not a soul in that crowd who needed less than two hundred dollars to pay his board and get him home. Ten thousand times two hundred--it is a sizable sum. And what of the rest of Europe? The mathematician figured that there were a quarter of a million Americans in Europe, all willing to go home, and that it would take fifty million dollars and a fleet of five hundred fair-sized ships to deliver them in New York. Still, that five hundred thousand francs served a good purpose. An allotment of it found its way to our consul, to use at his discretion. It came to the right man. Here and there were those who had neither money nor credit. To such he had already advanced money from his own limited supply. His allowance, now, would provide for those needy ones until more came. It was not sufficient, however, to provide one woman with three hundred francs to buy a set of furs she had selected, though she raged up and down the office and threatened to report him to Washington, and eventually flung some papers in his face. It turned out later that she was not an American. I don't know what she was--mostly wildcat, I judge. Further news came--still better. The government would send a battleship--the _Tennessee_--with a large sum of gold. The deposit of this specie in the banks of Europe would make checks and letters of credit good again. Various monies from American banks, cabled for by individuals, would also arrive on this ship. Things generally looked brighter. With the British fleet protecting the seas, English, French, and Dutch liners were likely to keep their schedules; also, there were some Italian boats, though these were reported to be overrun by "swell" Americans who were paying as high as one thousand dollars for a single berth. Perhaps the report was true--I don't know. None of our crowd cared to investigate. There were better plans nearer home--plans for "beating it" out of Switzerland on a big scale. Special trains were to be provided--and ships. A commission was coming on the _Tennessee_ to arrange for these things. The vessel had already left New York. The crowd at the Consulate grew larger and more feverishly interested. Applications for passports multiplied. Over and over, and in great detail, the Brooklyn judge explained just what was necessary to insure free and safe departure from Europe when the time came to go. Over and over we questioned him concerning all those things, and concerning ever so many other things that had no particular bearing on the subject, and he bore it and beamed on us and was fully as patient as was Moses in that other wilderness we wot of. Trains began to run again through France; at least they started, and I suppose they arrived somewhere. Four days, six days, eight days was said to be the time to Paris, with only third-class coaches, day and night, all the aisles full--no food and no water except what was carried. It was not a pleasant prospect and few of our people risked it. The _Tennessee_ was reported to have reached England and the special American trains were promised soon. In fact, one was presently announced. It went from Lindau, through Germany, and was too far east for most of our crowd. Then there were trains from Lucerne and elsewhere; also, special English trains. Then, at last a Simplon train was scheduled: Territet, Montreux, Vevey, Lausanne, Geneva--all aboard for Paris! Great excitement at the Consulate. The _Tennessee_ money could arrive any day now; everybody could pay up and start. The Brooklyn judge rehearsed each morning all the old details and presented all the news and requirements. The train, he said, would go through a nation that was at war. It would be under military surveillance. Once on the train, one must stay on it until it arrived in Paris. In Paris passengers must go to the hotels selected, they must leave at the time arranged and by the train provided, and must accept without complaint the ship and berth assigned to each. It would be a big tourist party personally conducted by the United States for her exiled citizens. The United States was not ordering its citizens to leave Switzerland; it was merely providing a means for those who must go at once and had not provided for themselves. The coaches would be comfortable, the price as usual, red cards insuring each holder a seat would be issued at the Consulate. Tickets through to New York would be provided for those without funds. The government could do no more. Any questions, please? Then a sharp-faced, black-haired, tightly hooked woman got up and wanted to know just what style the coaches would be--whether they would have aisles down the side; whether there would be room to lie down at will; whether meals would be served on the train; whether there would be time at Dijon to get off and see some friends; whether she could take her dog; whether her ticket would be good on another train if she didn't like this one when she saw it. The judge will probably never go into the tourist-agency business, even if he retires from the law. Well, that particular train did not go, after all. Or, rather, it did go, but few of our people went on it. There was a misunderstanding somewhere. The Germans were getting down pretty close to Paris just then, and from the invisible "somewhere" an order came countermanding the train. The train didn't hear of it, however, and not all of the people. Those who took it must have had plenty of room, and they must have gone through safely. If the Germans got them we should have heard of it, I think. Those who failed to take it were not entirely sorry. The _Tennessee_ money had not been distributed yet, and it was badly needed. I don't know what delayed it. Somewhere--always in that invisible "somewhere"--there was a hitch about that, too. It still had not arrived when the _next_ train was scheduled--at least, not much of it. It had not come on the last afternoon of the last day, when the train was to go early in the morning. It was too bad. There was a borrowing and an arranging and a negotiating at the banks that had become somewhat less obdurate these last days, with the _Tennessee_ in the offing. But many went away pretty short, and, but for the consul, the shortness would have been shorter and more general. It was a fine, big, comfortable train that went next morning. A little group of us who were not yet ready to "beat it" went down to see our compatriots go. There seemed to be room enough, and at least some of the coaches had aisles down the sides. I do not know whether the sharp-faced, tightly hooked woman had her dog or not. There was a great waving, and calling back, and much laughter as the train rolled away. You could tell as easily as anything that the Americans were "beating it" for home. Heavy installments of the _Tennessee_ money began to arrive at the Consulate next day. I got some of it myself. A day or two later I dropped into the Consulate. It had become a quiet place again, as in the days that already seemed very long ago. It was hard to believe in the reality of the eager crowd that used to gather there every morning to tell their troubles and laugh over them, and to collect the morning news. Now, again, the place was quite empty, except for a few flies drowsing about and the rather tired, bored-looking man who came to spend an hour or two there every morning, killing time and glad of any little diversion in the way of company. Chapter XXXVII THE LONG TRAIL ENDS It was not until near the end of October that we decided to go. We had planned to remain for another winter, but the aspect of things did not improve as the weeks passed. With nine tenths of Europe at war and the other tenth drilling, there was a lack of repose beneath the outward calm, even of Vevey. In the midst of so many nervous nations, to linger until spring might be to remain permanently. Furthermore, our occupations were curtailed. Automobiles were restricted, the gasoline supply cut off. The streets had a funereal look. I was told that I could get a special permit to use the car, but as our gasoline supply consisted of just about enough to take us over the Simplon Pass into Italy, we decided to conserve it for that purpose. The pass closes with the first big snow, usually the 15th of October. The presence of many soldiers there would keep it open this year a little longer. It could not be risked, however, later than the end of the month. We debated the matter pretty constantly, for the days of opportunity were wasting. We wasted ten of them making a little rail and pedestrian trip around Switzerland, though in truth those ten glorious days of October tramping along the lakes and through the hills are not likely to be remembered as really wasted by any of us. When we returned I got a military pass to take the car out of Switzerland, but it was still another week before we packed our heavy baggage and shipped it to Genoa. We were a fair example of any number of families, no longer enthralled by Europe and not particularly needed at home. I think hesitation must have nearly killed some people. It was the 27th of October--a perfect morning--when for the last time I brought the car to the front of our hotel, and we strapped on our bags and with sad hearts bade good-by to the loveliest spot and the best people in Europe. Then presently we were working our way through the gay, crowded market place (though we did not feel gay) down through the narrow, familiar streets, with their pretty shops where we had bought things, and their little _pâtisseries_ where we had eaten things; down through La Tour, and along the lake to Clarens and Montreux, and past Chillon, and so up the valley of the Rhone to Brigue, the Swiss entrance to the Simplon Pass. We had new tires now, and were not troubled about our going; but the world had grown old and sad in three months, and the leaves were blowing off of the trees, and the glory had gone out of life, because men were marching and killing one another along those happy fields that such a little while before had known only the poppy stain and the marching of the harvesters--along those shady roads where good souls had run with the car to hand us cherries and wish us "_Gute reise._" We crossed the Simplon in the dullness of a gray mist, and at the top, six hundred feet in the peaks, met the long-delayed snowstorm, and knew that we were crossing just in time. Down on the Italian slope the snow turned to rain and the roads were not good. The Italians dump rock into their roads and let the traffic wear it down. We were delayed by a technicality on the Swiss border, and it was dark by the time we were in Italy--dark and rainy. Along the road are overhanging galleries--really tunnels, and unlighted. Our prestolite had given out and our oil lamps were too feeble. I have never known a more precarious drive than across that long stretch from Gondo to Domodossola, through the night and pouring rain. It seemed endless, and when the lights of the city first appeared I should have guessed the distance still to be traveled at forty miles. But we did arrive; and we laid up three days in a hotel where it was cold--oh, very cold--but where blessedly there was a small open fire in a little sitting room. Also, the food was good. It had not quit raining even then, but we started, anyway. One can get a good deal of Domodossola in three days, though it is a very good town, where few people stop, because they are always going somewhere else when they get there. Our landlady gave us a huge bunch of flowers at parting, too huge for our limited car space. A little way down the road I had to get out and fix something; an old woman came and held an umbrella over me, and, having no Italian change, I gave her the flowers, and a Swiss nickel, and a German five-pfennig piece, and she thanked me just as if I had contributed something valuable. The Italians are polite. We went to Stresa on Lake Maggiore, and stopped for the night, and visited Isola Bella, of course, and I bought a big red umbrella which the others were ashamed of, and fell away from me when I opened it as if I had something contagious. They would rather get soaking wet, they said, than be seen walking under that thing. Pride is an unfortunate asset. But I didn't have the nerve myself to carry that umbrella on the streets of Milan. Though Stresa is not far away, its umbrellas are unknown in Milan, and when I opened it my audience congested traffic. I didn't suppose anything could be too gay for an Italian. We left the car at Milan and made a rail trip to Venice. It was still raining every little while and many roads were under water, so that Venice really extended most of the way to Milan, and automobile travel was thought to be poor in that direction. All the old towns over there we visited, for we were going home, and no one could say when Europe might be comfortable for tourists again. A good deal of the time it rained, but a good deal of the time it didn't, and we slept in hotels that were once palaces, and saw much, including Juliet's tomb at Verona, and all the things at Padua, and we bought violets at Parma, and sausages at Bologna. Then we came back to Milan and drove to Genoa, stopping overnight at Tortona, because we thought we would be sure to find there the ices by that name. But they were out of them, I suppose, for we could not find any. Still we had no definite plans about America; but when at Genoa we found we could ship the car on a pretty little Italian vessel and join the same little ship ourselves at Naples, all for a very reasonable sum. I took the shipping man to the hotel garage, turned the car over to him, and the thing was done. So we traveled by rail to Pisa, to Florence, to Rome, to Naples and Pompeii, stopping as we chose; for, as I say, no one could tell when Europe would be a visiting place again, and we must see what we could. So we saw Italy, in spite of the rain that fell pretty regularly, and the rather sharp days between-time. We did not know that those rains were soaking down to the great central heat and would produce a terrible earthquake presently, or we might have been rather more anxious to go. As it was, we were glad to be there and really enjoyed all the things. Yet, there was a different feeling now. The old care-freedom was gone; the future had become obscure. The talk everywhere was of the war; in every city soldiers were marching, fine, beautiful regiments, commanded by officers that were splendidly handsome in their new uniforms. We were told that Italy would not go to war--at least not until spring, but it was in the air, it was an ominous cloud. Nowhere in Europe was anything the same. One day our little ship came down from Genoa, and we went aboard and were off next morning. We lay a day at Palermo, and then, after some days of calm sailing in the Mediterranean, launched out into the Atlantic gales and breasted the storms for nearly two weeks, pitching and rolling, but homeward bound. * * * * * A year and four months from a summer afternoon when we had stood on the upper deck of a little French steamer in Brooklyn and looked down into the hold at a great box that held our car, I went over to Hoboken and saw it taken from another box, and drove it to Connecticut alone, for the weather was cold, the roads icy. It was evening when I arrived, Christmas Eve, and when I pushed back the wide door, drove into the barn, cut off the engine, and in the dim winter light saw our capable conveyance standing in its accustomed place, I had the curious feeling of never having been away at all, but only for a winter's drive, dreaming under dull skies of summertime and France. And the old car--that to us had always seemed to have a personality and sentience--had it been dreaming, too? It was cold there, and growing dark. I came out and locked the door. We had made the circuit--our great adventure was over. Would I go again, under the same conditions? Ah me! that wakens still another dream--for days ahead. I suppose one should not expect more than one real glimpse of heaven in this world, but at least one need not give up hoping. 
33319	----	Transcriber's Note Illustration captions in braces {like this} are from the Table of Contents, and have been added to the main text by the Transcriber for the convenience of the reader. ZIGZAG JOURNEYS IN EUROPE. _VACATION RAMBLES IN HISTORIC LANDS._ BY HEZEKIAH BUTTERWORTH. BOSTON: ESTES AND LAURIAT. 1882. _Copyright_, BY ESTES & LAURIAT, 1879. [Decoration] [Illustration: "THE BOY-KING."] PREFACE. The aim of the publishers and writer, in preparing this volume for young people, is to give a view of the principal places in England and France where the most interesting events have occurred; and, by a free use of pictures and illustrative stories, to present historic views of the two countries in an entertaining and attractive manner. An American teacher takes a class of boys on a vacation tour to England and France, and interests them in those places that illustrate the different periods of English and French history. It is his purpose to give them in this manner a picturesque view of present scenes and past events, and to leave on their minds an outline of history for careful reading to fill. A few of the stories are legendary, as the "Jolly Harper Man" and the "Wise Men of Gotham;" but these illustrate the quaint manners and customs of the Middle Ages. Nearly all of the stories that relate to history are strictly true. The illustrations of history, both by pencil and pen, are given in the disconnected way that a traveller would find them in his journeys; but they may be easily combined by memory in their chronological order, and made to form a harmonious series of pictures. The writer has sought to amuse as well as to instruct, and for this purpose the personal experiences of the young travellers are in part given. Two of the boys, who have small means, make the trip in the cheapest possible manner. Tommy Toby meets the mishaps a thoughtless boy might experience. The other travellers have an eye for the literary and poetic scenes and incidents of the tour. * * * * * That the volume may amuse and entertain the young reader, and awaken in him a greater love of books of history, biography, and travel, is the hope of the publishers and the author. 28 Worcester St., Boston, Mass. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. THE JOURNEY PROPOSED 3 II. TOM TOBY'S SECRET SOCIETY 12 III. FIRST MEETING OF THE CLUB 22 IV. ON THE ATLANTIC 51 V. THE LAND OF SCOTT AND BURNS 71 VI. STORY TELLING IN EDINBURGH 84 VII. A RAINY EVENING STORY AT CARLISLE 104 VIII. A CLOUDLESS DAY 119 IX. A SERIES OF MEMORABLE VISITS 135 X. A VISIT TO OXFORD AND WOODSTOCK 153 XI. LETTERS AND EXCURSIONS 160 XII. LONDON 173 XIII. BELGIUM 205 XIV. UPPER NORMANDY 226 XV. PARIS 249 XVI. BRITTANY 283 XVII. HOMEWARD 304 THE ZIGZAG SERIES. BY HEZEKIAH BUTTERWORTH, OF THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE "YOUTH'S COMPANION," AND CONTRIBUTOR TO "ST. NICHOLAS" MAGAZINE. NOW PUBLISHED. _ZIGZAG JOURNEYS IN EUROPE._ _ZIGZAG JOURNEYS IN CLASSIC LANDS._ _ZIGZAG JOURNEYS IN THE ORIENT._ TO BE FOLLOWED BY _ZIGZAG JOURNEYS IN THE OCCIDENT._ ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE "The Boy-king" _Frontispiece._ Statue of William the Conqueror at Falaise _Half-title._ It is Vacation 3 Tommy and the Bear 9 Tommy's Adventure 10 Norman Fisher-Girl 13 King Charles's Hiding-place 14 White Horse Hill 15 Street Scene in Normandy 16 Colonnade of the Louvre 17 Harold's Oath 23 Finding the Body of Harold 26 The Death of the Red King 27 St. Stephen's Church at Caen 30 Robert Throwing Himself on his Knees before his Prostrate Father 31 William the Conqueror Reviewing his Army 35 Mont St. Michel 37 Amazement of Christopher Sly 46 Norman Peasant Girls 49 Pilot-Boat 53 Two of our Fellow-Travellers 55 A Steerage Passenger 56 Joan of Arc 59 Joan of Arc Recognizing the King 63 Joan of Arc Wounded 67 Signals 70 The Boys Consult the Barometer 72 Birthplace of Robert Burns 73 Edinburgh Castle 77 Holyrood Palace 79 Mary Stuart 80 Murder of Rizzio 81 Francis II. of France 86 Francis II. and Mary Stuart Love-making 89 The Death-bed of Francis II. 93 Mary Stuart Swearing she had never sought the Life of Elizabeth 97 The Black Douglas Surprising an Enemy 100 Cæsar's Legions Landing in Britain 104 Romans Invading Britain 105 Massacre of the Druids 106 Druid Sacrifice 107 The Hermit 111 Shamble Oak 121 Greendale Oak 122 Parliament Oak 123 Mortimer's Hole 124 Murder of Thomas À Becket 125 Richard's Farewell to the Holy Land 129 Limestone Dwellings 133 Peveril of the Peak 137 The Boy at the Wheel 138 Boscobel 139 The Tomb of Richard Penderell 139 King Charles's Hiding-place 140 Shakspeare 141 Anne Hathaway's Cottage 144 Ruins of Kenilworth Castle 145 Portrait of Elizabeth 149 Alfred and his Mother 153 Canute and his Courtiers 154 Flight of Empress Maud 155 Death of Latimer and Ridley 156 Rosamond's Bower 157 A Studious Monk 157 An Old Time Student 158 House of a Migrating Citizen 162 Fac-simile of the Bayeux Tapestry 163 St. Augustine's Appeal to Ethelbert 169 The Saxon Priest Striking the Images 171 Westminster Abbey 174 Trial of Charles I. 177 Burial of Richard 180 The Tower of London 181 Wolsey Served by Nobles 185 Whitehall 187 Wolsey's Palace 188 Death of Cardinal Wolsey 189 Children of Charles I. 190 Oliver Cromwell 191 Queen Henrietta Maria 193 Street Amusements 195 Street Amusements 196 "'Ave you got a Penny?" 197 Victoria at the Age of Eight 200 Anger of King John 203 A Dutch Windmill 206 Dog-Carts 207 Street Scenes in Brussels 208 Hotel de Ville, Brussels 209 Charlemagne in Council 210 Charlemagne at the Head of his Army 211 Hotel de Ville, Ghent 212 Van Artevelde at his Door 213 Charles the Rash Discovered 217 Capture of King John and his Son 227 Tower of Joan of Arc, Rouen 229 The Maid of Orleans 230 "It is Rather Hard Bread" 233 Death of St. Louis 235 Interior of St. Ouen 236 Palais de Justice, Rouen 237 Northmen on an Expedition 238 The Barques of the Northmen before Paris 239 Catharine de Medici 241 Coligny 243 Charles IX. and Catharine de Medici 247 The Goddess of Reason carried through the Streets of Paris 251 Garden of the Tuileries 255 Fountain in the Champs Elysées 257 Place de la Concorde 258 Entrance to the Louvre 259 Fountain, Place de la Concorde 261 Man of the Iron Mask 263 Versailles 267 Little Trianon 268 The Dauphin with the Royal Family in the Assembly 269 Forest of Fontainebleau 273 In the Wood at Fontainebleau 274 "Je ne comprends pas" 277 At Prayers 278 Clock Tower at Vire 283 Revoking the Edict of Nantes 291 Fénelon and the Duke of Burgundy 295 The Cathedral at Nantes 298 Louis XV. 299 Molière 306 The Reading of "Paul and Virginia" 307 Racine 309 Racine Reading to Louis XIV. 310 ZIGZAG JOURNEYS; OR, VACATIONS IN HISTORIC LANDS. [Illustration: {STATUE OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR AT FALAISE.}] [Illustration: IT IS VACATION.] CHAPTER I. THE JOURNEY PROPOSED. "The school--is--dismissed." The words fell hesitatingly, and it seemed to us regretfully, from the tutor's lips. The dismission was for the spring vacation. It was at the close of a mild March day; there was a peculiar warmth in the blue sky and cloudless sunset; the south winds lightly stirred the pines, and through the open window wandered into the school-room. "Dismissed!" Usually at this word, on the last day of the term, every boy leaped to his feet: there would be a brief bustle, then Master Lewis would be seen seated alone amid the silence of the school-room. But to-day there was something in the tone of the master's voice that checked the usual unseemly haste. Every boy remained in his seat, as though waiting for Master Lewis to say something more. The master saw it, and choked with feeling. It was a little thing, the seeming unwillingness to part; but it indicated to both teacher and school an increasing respect and affection. Master Lewis had learned to love his pupils: his hesitating words told _them_ that. Every boy in his school loved Master Lewis: their conduct in remaining in their seats told _him_ that. The master stepped from his desk, as was his custom when about to say any thing unusually social and confidential. "Boys," he said, "I wish to tell you frankly, and you deserve to know it, that I have become so attached to you during the winter term that I am sorry to part from you, even for a week's vacation." "I wish we might pass the vacation together," said Frank Gray,--meaning by "we" the teacher and the school. "I once read of a French teacher," said Ernest Wynn, "who used to travel with his scholars in the neighboring countries, during vacations." "Wouldn't it be just grand if we could travel with Master Lewis during our summer vacation!" said Tom Toby, who, although the dullest scholar in the school, always became unexpectedly bright over any plan that promised an easy time. "We might visit some country in Europe," said Ernest. "We should then be learning geography and history, and so our education would go on." "It would help us also in the study of modern languages," said Frank Gray. Tom Toby's sudden brightness of face seemed to be eclipsed by these last remarks. "I think we had better travel in places nearer home, then." "Why?" asked Frank. "I was seasick once: it was _orful_." "The sickness is a short and healthy one," said Frank. "You will find it a healthy one, if you ever are rolling on the Atlantic, with 'Twice a thousand miles behind you, and a thousand miles before.' I wouldn't be sick in that way again for any thing. I tell you 'twas _orful_!" Master Lewis laughed at Tom's pointed objection. "As to learning the languages," continued Tom, "I've noticed all the Frenchmen and Germans I have tried to talk with speak their own language very poorly." Tom's percentages in the modern languages were the lowest of his class, and Master Lewis could not restrain a smile. "I once tried to make a Frenchman understand that I thought Napoleon Bonaparte was the greatest man that ever lived. He kept saying, _Cela va sans dire, cela va sans dire!_ [That is a matter of course.] I never knew what he meant, to say: all I could make of it was, _That goes without saying any thing_." "The French teacher of whom I spoke," said Ernest Wynn, "used to allow his pupils to travel much on foot, and to visit such places as their love of history, geography, and natural science, made them most wish to see. So they journeyed in a zigzag way, and published a book called '_Voyages en zigzag_.'" "I would not object to learning history, geography, and natural science in that way," said Tom Toby. "I should rather walk after history than study it the way I do now. I should prefer _riding_ after it to walking, however. I wouldn't be cheated out of having a real good time during my summer vacation for any thing." A shadow fell on Master Lewis's face, as though his feelings were hurt by something implied in Tom's remarks. Tom saw it. "But--but I should have a real good time if I were with you, Master Lewis, even if it were on the Atlantic, or studying French in France." "I have often thought I would like to travel with my boys abroad. I could take my first class, if I could secure their parents' consent, the coming summer." "Good!" Every boy joined in the exclamation. Tom's voice, however, was a little behind the others,--"-o-d." "Let me suggest to the class," said Master Lewis, "that each member speak to his parents about this matter during the present vacation; and let each boy who can go send me in a letter during the week a map of the country and the places he would most like to visit. He can draw it in ink or pencil, and he need only put down upon it the places he would most like to see." "Good!" The exclamation was unanimous. The boys left their seats. Tom Toby's face had become very animated again. Presently the boys of the class were all gathered about him. "I have a plan," said Tom. "It is just grand. Let us form a secret society, and call ourselves the Zigzagers!" "Good!" unanimously. "But why a secret society?" asked Frank Gray. "There is something so mysterious about a secret society," said Tom. "Gives one such a good opinion of himself. Have a constitution, and by-laws, and wear a pin!" The first class in Master Lewis's school parted in high spirits, their faces bright with smiles as they went out into the light of the March sunset. Tom's last words on parting were: "Try to think up a secret for the society: it should be something surprising." The first class in Master Lewis's school numbered six boys:-- Frank Gray, Ernest Wynn, Wyllys Wynn, Thomas Toby, George Howe, and Leander Towle. Frank Gray was the oldest boy and finest scholar in the school. He was about fifteen years of age; was tall and manly, and was more intimate with Master Lewis than with any of his schoolmates. Thomas Toby, who disliked Frank's precise manners and rather unsocial ways, used to call him "Lord _I_." Frank, however, was not intentionally reserved: he was merely studious in his leisure, and best liked the society of those from whom he could learn the most. Ernest and Wyllys Wynn were brothers. Ernest had made himself popular at school by his generous, affectionate disposition, and his ready sympathy for any one in distress. He lived, as it were, a life outside of himself; and his interest in the best good of others made for himself unconsciously a pure and lovable character. He was fond of music, and an agreeable singer: he liked the old English and Scottish ballads, and so sung the songs of true feeling that every one is eager to hear. He often went to an almshouse near Master Lewis's to sing to the old people there. The paupers all loved him, and clustered eagerly around him when he appeared. His songs recalled their childhood scenes in other lands. On fine summer evenings he might often be seen on the lawn before the charitable institution, with a crowd of poor people around him, whom he delighted with "Robin Ruff and Gaffer Green," "The Mistletoe Bough," "Highland Mary," "The Vale of Avoca," "Robin Adair," or something aptly selected to awaken tender feelings and associations. Nearly all the children of the town seemed to know him, and regard him as a friend, and used often to run out to meet him when he appeared in the street. Master Lewis, in speaking of Ernest, once quoted Madame de Sévigné's remark, "The true mark of a good heart is its capacity for loving." It was meant to be a picture, and it was a true one. Wyllys Wynn was much like his brother, and a very close friendship existed between them. He was fond of history and poetry; he wrote finely, and usually took the first prize for composition. Tom Toby was quite a different character. He was just a _boy_, in the common sense of the word. In whatever he attempted to do, he was sure to blunder, and was as sure to turn the blunder to some comical account. He had a way of making fun of himself, and of inciting others to laugh at his own expense, which Master Lewis was disposed to censure as wanting in proper self-respect. Tom had no particular friend. He seemed to like all boys alike, except those whom he thought insincere and affected, and such were the butt of his sharp wit and ready ridicule. Tom was famous among the boys for telling stories, and these often related to his own mishaps. A knot of boys was often seen gathered around him to listen to his random talk, his wit, and his day dreams. Though a poor scholar, he was an apt talker, and almost any subject would furnish him a text. His father was a Maine lumber-dealer, and he had spent much time with his father in the logging camps and backwoods towns of the Pine Tree State. His adventures in these regions, told in his droll way, often excited the wonder of his companions. "Did you ever see a bear in the backwoods?" one of the boys asked him one day. "I never saw a live one but once." "What did you do?" "Do? I received a polite bow from him, and then I remembered that I was wanted at home, and went home immediately. "It was this way."--All of the boys of the class now gathered around Tommy, as was the custom when he seemed about to tell one of his odd stories. "I attempted one day to rob a pigeon-woodpecker's nest which I had found in one of the old logging roads that had not been used for several years. The nest was in a big hollow tree. The top of the tree had blown off, leaving a trunk some twelve or fifteen feet high. [Illustration: {TOMMY AND THE BEAR.}] "These woodpeckers make a hole for their nest so large that you can run the whole length of your arm into it. I had long wanted a few eggs from one of these birds' nests. I had heard the lumber-men tell how white and handsome the eggs are. "I was climbing up the tree very fast, my heart beating like a trip-hammer, when I heard a scratching sound inside the big trunk, and then a shaking at the top. I thought it very mysterious. I stopped, and looked up. I saw something black, like a fur cap. I opened my eyes and mouth so as to take a big look, and just then _out popped a bear's head_ from the top of the trunk, and looked over very inquiringly. I just looked once. He seemed to recognize me. He bowed. Then I remembered that father had said I must come home early. I dropped to the ground, and I never picked up my feet so lively before in my life. I _flew_. When I got safely out of the woods, I thought of the woodpecker. I never felt so glad for any bird in my life. What a narrow escape that bird had! _I had been there myself_, and knew. I wouldn't have robbed her nest for any thing after that. "'No, not I.'" [Illustration: {TOMMY'S ADVENTURE.}] When Tommy first came to the boarding-school, he greatly amused his companions one day by attempting to ride on the hose of a street-sprinkler's cart, when it was not in action. He had never seen such a carriage, and thought it offered a wonderfully convenient arrangement for riding behind. Presently the driver raised the lever, and the amazed lad found himself caught in the shower, and tumbled into the dirt. "Why didn't you tell me the thing was bewitched?" said he, as the boys gathered around him. But his indignation immediately subsided, and rubbing off the water and dirt, and discovering the use of the cart, he was soon found laughing as heartily as the others, and quite outdid them in relating to Master Lewis the odd adventure. George Howe and Leander Towle were cousins and very intimate friends. They were unlike Frank Gray and the Wynns. They cared little for poetry, art, or music. They stood well in their classes in mathematics and the exact sciences, were fond of boating and out-of-door sports, and both were warm friends of Tom Toby. The pleasant relations that existed between the teacher and the school also prevailed to a great degree among the lads themselves. Frank Gray and Tommy Toby, being quite unlike, sometimes had a tilt in words; but, as Frank was a gentleman by nature and training, and as Tommy had tender feelings, their differences were easily harmonized. The mild manners and good sense of Master Lewis seemed to impress themselves strongly on the characters of his pupils. Tommy Toby, who was often thoughtless in his conduct, was almost the only exception to the rule. CHAPTER II. TOM TOBY'S SECRET SOCIETY. Plans for the Journey.--The Boys' Letters to Master Lewis.--Tom Toby's Plans.--The New Society.--Master Lewis arranges a Cheap Tour for George and Leander.--What may be seen for $100. From Frank Gray, Master Lewis received the following letter early in vacation-week:-- Cambridge, Mass., March 20. My Dear Friend and Teacher: My good father has consented for me to go. He thinks that the tour, to be a really profitable one, should be short, and that it would be better to attempt to visit only a portion of a single country. I have decided what country I would most like to visit. It is "fair Normandy," the scene of the most romantic events of both English and French history. I would go from Boston to London; from London to Dieppe; and then I would make partly on foot a zigzag journey to the places indicated on the enclosed map of Normandy, and such others, including Paris, as you may suggest. The old towns on the coast of Normandy are especially beautiful in summer, with their cool harbors, fine landscapes, and historic ruins. I am told that they are favorite places of resort of both the English and French people, and that they give one delightful insights of the best social life. In this journey, we would have views of London and Paris, and would be able to study that part of France whose history is associated with old English wars, and that is most famous in romance and song. I make the suggestion at your own request. You are the better judge in the whole matter, and it will give my father pleasure to adopt any plan for me you may think advisable. I thank you again for the invitation, and father wishes me to express to you his sense of your kindness. I wish you a most pleasant vacation, and am Affectionately yours, Frank Gray. "Fan me with a feather!" Tom Toby used sometimes to say after reading one of Frank's letters; and we are not sure but this careful note would have tempted a light remark, had he ever seen it. [Illustration: NORMAN FISHER-GIRL.] Soon after Frank's note, came a note from the Wynns:-- Concord, Mass., March 22. Dear Teacher: Father thinks so favorably of your kind invitation that we venture to express our preference for a route of travel. It is a very simple one. We would go from Boston to Liverpool, and walk from Liverpool to London, _en zigzag_. This would take us through the heart of England, and enable us to visit such historic places as Boscobel, where Charles II. was concealed after the battle of Worcester, old Nottingham, Kenilworth, Oxford, and Godstowe Nunnery, Stratford-on-Avon, White Horse Hill, and a great number of old English villages and ruins. Or we would go to Glasgow, thence to Edinburgh, and then make short journeys towards London, visiting Abbotsford, Melrose, and the ruins on the Border. We are reading Walter Scott's "Kenilworth." The book, as you may have guessed, has caused us to set our affections strongly on the middle of England as the scene of our proposed tour. With kind remembrances of all your kindness to us. Ernest Wynn. Wyllys Wynn. [Illustration: KING CHARLES'S HIDING-PLACE.] Later came a characteristic note from two of the other boys. Dear Teacher,--Our parents are desirous for us to go, but can hardly afford the expense. We have permission to accept your invitation, if we will travel so cheaply that the cost to each will not be more than $100. Can this be done? We are willing to go and return in the steerage, travel third-class, and take shilling lodgings, and eat plain food. We would prefer a tour through the great manufacturing towns of Scotland and England. Respectfully, George Howe. Leander Towle. On Saturday of vacation-week, Master Lewis opened a much-blotted envelope, and read the following rather surprising communication:-- Master Lewis,--Father's answer to me is, "You may go anywhere that promises any improvement." I have been thinking of it. One should see their own country first. This journey would about suit me: they are very interesting places,--Newport, Old Orchard Beach, White Mountains, Franconia Mountains, Adirondacks, Saratoga, Niagara. Mother has been crying. She is afraid, if I go to Europe, I will never come back again. Father thinks that there is no danger of that. If I must go across the sea, I would prefer to go--anywhere _you_ like, only take the shortest route and fastest steamer over the water. Were you ever sick on the ocean? I am going to organize a society of travellers in the school,--a secret society that will pledge each other never-ending friendship and assistance. I may need assistance myself in my life. Father thinks I shall. I am trying to think of a secret for the society. I can think of hardly any thing that the rest of the world do not know. Hope you are well. Tommy. [Illustration: WHITE HORSE HILL.] The spring and summer term--the session lasted through April, May, and June--opened under unusually promising circumstances. The prospect of the journey of the first class seemed to stimulate the whole school: in fact, little else was talked of out of school-hours. Master Lewis's customary address at the close of the first day of the term was waited with impatient interest. When the time came for it, there was almost a painful silence in the school-room. [Illustration: STREET SCENE IN NORMANDY.] "I shall speak first," said Master Lewis, "on the subject about which your conduct tells me you are most eager to hear. I have decided to make the journey abroad with the first class _this_ year"-- There was suppressed applause by the class. "_Next_ year I hope to visit Switzerland and Italy, with all the members of the school who can go, if this proposed journey should prove a success. I say this, so that the second and third classes may feel that they, too, have an interest in this general plan." There was a burst of applause by the whole school. [Illustration: COLONNADE OF THE LOUVRE.] "I thank the boys of the first class for their letters and suggestions about the route to be decided upon. I think I have a plan that will be acceptable to you all. We will go first to Glasgow, will journey _en zigzag_ to London; will there take the steamer for Antwerp, and will make a zigzag tour from Ghent to St. Malo, taking a glance at Belgium, a view of the whole of Normandy and the picturesque part of Brittany, including a visit to Paris and a view of its beautiful palaces and parks. "As a preparation for this tour, I shall require the class to give special attention to the French language and to English and French history during the term." Every thing that Master Lewis said or did was popular with the boys, but no decision ever received more emphatic applause. Tom Toby was busy at once, forming his secret society. He called a meeting of the boys on the evening of the very first schoolday, in his room. The Wynns entered willingly into his plan, and George Howe and Leander Towle warmly supported it. Frank Gray, however, treated the matter rather indifferently, a circumstance that Tommy quickly observed. "The first question to be decided," said Tommy, when the boys had met in his room, "is, Shall we organize a secret society?" The Wynns asked Frank Gray his opinion. "I should prefer to hold my opinion in reserve, until I understand what the object of the society is to be." "It is to have a grip just like _that_," said Tommy, seizing Frank by the hand, "one that takes the conceit all out of you, and makes you remember who are your friends for ever." "Then I do not think I shall care to join," said Frank, rubbing his crushed hand on his knee. "I shall probably remember you as long as I shall care to, without making any such arrangement." "I think a school society is a good thing," said Ernest Wynn, mildly. "It promotes lasting friendships"-- "Good for you!" said Tommy. "That's just what I wanted to say. 'It promotes lasting friendship,' and, like a salve, it takes the conceit"-- "It stimulates one to do his best, and"-- "That's it exactly," said Tommy. "I hope you all hear." "Let's quit joking," said George Howe, in a matter-of-fact way. "A society for the purpose of reading and studying about the places we are to visit and for correspondence with each other, when a part of us are abroad, would be an excellent thing. I hope we may have such a society, and shall make our very best boy President of it." "Who may that be?" said Frank. "I," said Tommy, teasingly. "I thought you knew." "I believe it is decided to call the society the Zigzag Travellers," said George. "A promising name," said Frank, who was decidedly out of humor. "I would suggest the Zigzag Club." "I would nominate for President Wyllys Wynn." "I agree to the nomination," said Frank. "And so do I," said Tommy Toby: "at last, Frank and I are agreed." "Who will prepare the rules for the society?" asked Frank. "George Howe," said Ernest. To this all the boys agreed. "Who shall decide upon a secret?" asked Wyllys. "I would nominate Tommy Toby," said Frank. Tom was unanimously elected. The next evening a second meeting of the society was held, to which all the boys in the school were invited. It was decided to call the society "The Zigzag Club." Charles Wyman, one of the second-class boys, was appointed its Secretary, and general rules were adopted for the conduct of its meetings. All of the boys, sixteen in number, became members. It was decided that the first formal meeting of the club for literary exercises should be held in a fortnight, and that on that occasion each boy of the first class should relate some historic story associated with one of the places he expected to visit, and it was suggested that the stories of the first meeting be confined to _Normandy_. Wyllys Wynn was asked to sing some French or Norman song on the occasion, and the Secretary was instructed to invite Master Lewis to be present, and to deliver an address. Tommy Toby had been very reserved since the first meeting of the club. He had been quite ignored, and his feelings were hurt. "Are you sure you treated Tommy quite right at the first meeting?" asked Ernest Wynn of Frank Gray, quietly, as he observed Tom's injured look at the second meeting of the club. "I fear I was not quite gentlemanly," said Frank. "But I had no wish to join a society gotten up merely for fun." "Tommy's suggestion was the beginning of the club," said Ernest. "Let's give him a vote of thanks." "I will offer the resolution," said Frank. "Let us close this meeting," said Frank, "by recognizing the debt we owe to one of our members. Thomas Toby is the real founder of this club. I did not feel much interested in it at first. I do now. Let us give Thomas a vote of thanks." Every boy applauded the motion, which was passed enthusiastically. Tommy's face brightened, and his eyes filled with tears. "O Frank," he said, "how could you? Ernest Wynn was at the bottom of this, wasn't he?" "Yes," said Frank. "Well, Ernest _is_ a better fellow than I." "Or I." "We both are all right now!" "Yes." "Have you decided upon a secret?" continued Frank. "I have thought much about it," answered Tom. "And what is the result?" Tommy turned to the blackboard, and wrote,-- "ALL O!" The boys looked at the characters mysteriously. "Is that the secret?" asked Frank. "Yes, and I myself am going to keep it for the club." Master Lewis had a private talk with George Howe and Leander Towle immediately on their return. "I wish you to go," he said; "and I think a most profitable tour can be made in the way you propose for $100. You can at least visit Glasgow, Edinburgh, Birmingham, London, and Paris, and spend three days each in the three great capital cities. The information you would thus gain would be of great value to you. I thus estimate the probable expense to each:-- Steerage passage to go and return $50.00 Glasgow to Edinburgh, 2_s._ 6_d._, or 60 Edinburgh to London, and London to Paris by way of Dieppe, about £3, or 14.40 Shilling lodgings and meals for fourteen days 14.00 Miscellaneous expenses 11.00 ______ $90.00 "I will do my best to make your expenses as light as possible. I am told that one can live comfortably on four shillings a day in Scotland and England, and for five francs a day in Paris. You will not be able to enjoy our walks in historic places outside of the great cities, and you will probably be obliged to return before the rest of the party; but the very restraint you will have to use will be a good experience for you. As Franklin once said, 'A good kick out of doors is worth all the rich uncles in the world.' It is good for one to bear the yoke in his youth. You see what I mean,--self-reliance, independence! I am not altogether sorry that you will be compelled to make the journey in this way." The boys thanked their teacher. When they had left him, George Howe said decidedly,-- "I never respected any teacher as much as I do Master Lewis. How nobly he has treated us!" CHAPTER III. FIRST MEETING OF THE CLUB. Normandy.--Story of the New Forest and the Red King.--Story of Robert of Normandy.--Story of the White Ship.--Story of the Frolicsome Duke and the Tinker's Good Fortune.--Master Lewis commends the Club.--The Secret. When the boys were allowed to go to Boston,--once a week,--they had access to the fine Public Library of which that city is justly so proud. It was observed that the whole character of their reading changed from merely entertaining to the most instructive books, after the forming of the Club. Such picturesque historical works as Guizot's "France" and "England," Palgrave's "Norman Conquest," Froude's "England," Agnes Strickland's "Lives of the Queens," became especial favorites. Even Tommy Toby read through Dickens's Child's History of England, several of Abbott's short histories of the kings and queens, and a book of marvellous old English ballads. [Illustration: HAROLD'S OATH.] The Club met as appointed. Each of the six boys had made his best preparation for the exercises of the evening. All the boys were present; and Master Lewis and his little daughter Florence sat beside young President Wynn, on the platform. Wyllys Wynn was the first speaker. "Although President of the Club," he said, "I am expected to take part in these exercises, and have been asked to present my story first. Normandy is our subject to-night, and there is no name that is so famously associated with the old Norman cities we expect to visit--Caen, Falaise, Rouen, Fécamp, St. Valery--as that of William the Conqueror. I will tell you the story of his life, and call it THE NEW FOREST. "About eight hundred years ago, William, Duke of Normandy, aspired to become King of England, and to wear the crown whose rightful claimant was Edgar Atheling. He made Harold, another heir to the English crown, support his claim, and take an oath to be true to him. To make Harold feel how solemn was an oath, he obliged him to swear it over a chest full of dead men's bones. "But Harold disregarded the oath that he had taken over the chest of bones in Normandy; and, when old Edward, who was called The Confessor, died, he seized the crown and royal treasure for himself, being counselled to do so by an assembly of nobles called the Witenagemote. "Duke William was an ambitious and a fiery-minded man. He gathered an army of sixty thousand men, and a fleet of a thousand vessels and transports; and one September day he sailed from St. Valery with his army and fleet, the trumpets sounding and a thousand banners rising to the wind. His own ship had many-colored sails: from its mast floated the banner of the three Norman Lions; and a golden boy, pointing to England, glittered on the prow. "This fleet came into the harbor of Pevensey. He led his army to Hastings; and there, on a bright afternoon in October, he met the army of Harold. "Duke William reviewed his army, and caused his men to pray for victory ere they laid down beneath the moon and stars to rest. In the morning, they sung an ode, called the War Song of Roland: then a battle was fought, and the three Norman Lions at night waved triumphantly over the field. "Harold was slain, and the monks wandered over the battle-ground to find his body. It was discovered at last, a despoiled and discrowned figure, by Edith Swansneck, a beautiful girl who loved Harold and whom the dead king had loved. "Then William returned to Normandy. Fécamp blazed in his honor, and all the cities received him with loud acclaim. [Illustration: FINDING THE BODY OF HAROLD.] "A hard king was Duke William. With his great army of Normans, he marched over England, suppressing all who opposed him. The rivers were tinged with blood, the beautiful English towns were reduced to ash-heaps, the land was blackened with fire: he is said to have killed or maimed a hundred thousand people. [Illustration: THE DEATH OF THE RED KING.] "Having conquered England, he sought enjoyment, and turned his attention to field-sports and to hunting. He had sixty-eight royal forests, full of stags and deer; but he permitted no one but himself and the people of his court to hunt in them. "At Winchester, he thought it would be a fine thing to have a great hunting-park near his residence. There was a tract of country in the county of Hampshire, very picturesque and beautiful, that he determined to use for this purpose. But there were churches scattered among the hills; and thousands of peasants dwelt here, who had rude but happy homes. "William cared little for the churches and less for the homes of the peasants; so he sent soldiers to burn the former, and to drive the people away from the latter. "Nothing was done by the ruthless king to supply the wants of the people, or to relieve their misery. They left their native hills with wailing and weeping and wringing of hands, uttering imprecations on the head of the Conqueror and upon his race. "The stags multiplied, and the deer increased; and delightful to the Norman was the New Forest, on the golden autumn days. "One day, one of the king's sons, a fair-haired youth, named Richard, went to hunt in this New Forest. "He encountered a stag. The animal, maddened by the attack, rushed upon the prince, and killed him. "As the dead body was borne from the forest, broken and stained with blood, the people said that this was a beginning of the reckoning God would make with William, and that the New Forest would prove an unquiet place to the Conqueror and to those of his blood. "Foolish and superstitious stories began to be circulated. The people said that the New Forest was haunted; that spirits were seen, by moonlight, gliding among the dusky trees; that demons revelled there when the tempest arose, and the lightnings flashed, and the rain dashed on the great oaks. The old foresters did not wish to return to it now. They talked of it in low whispers, as of a place accursed. "At last William died. It was a bitter death. The Conqueror trembled before that CONQUEROR to whom the princes of the earth must yield. "It is said that, when he had reached the height of his fame, he declared that he would surrender his crowns and kingdom to know again 'peace of mind, the love of a true friend, or the innocent sleep of a child.' "When his last hour drew near, the nobles fled from his bedside. His servants pillaged the apartment where he died, and rolled the dead body from the bed, and left it lying on the floor. A good knight took it up, and carried it to St. Stephen's Church, at Caen. [Illustration: ST. STEPHEN'S CHURCH AT CAEN.] [Illustration: ROBERT THROWING HIMSELF ON HIS KNEES BEFORE HIS PROSTRATE FATHER.] "He left three sons, William Rufus, Robert, and Henry. To the first he bequeathed England, to the second Normandy, and to the last £5,000. "William Rufus now became king of England. He was called the Red King, because he had a red face and red hair; and a red king he proved to be, in another sense. "The Red King, like his father, quarrelled with everybody, and, like him, sought and found enjoyment by hunting in the New Forest. "One pleasant day in May, when the leaves were tender, and the ferny hills were sunny and sprinkled with flowers, another Richard, the son of Robert of Normandy, went to hunt in the New Forest. After a merry time, he was accidentally shot by an arrow. Again a mournful retinue came out of the forest, bearing the body of a prince, stained with blood. "August came, with its young deer and newly fledged birds. The Red King, with his brother Henry and a great court-party, went to the New Forest, to spend some days in hunting and feasting. The first day sped merrily, and was followed by a banquet. It was held at a place called Malwood-Keep, a famous lodge for royal hunting-parties. "The next night, a man with a coal-cart was riding in the New Forest, when he discovered a body lying by the way, pierced by an arrow in the breast. He laid it in his dirty cart, and jogged on. It was the Red King. "Many stories are told of the manner in which the king was killed. Some say that he was accidentally shot by Sir Walter Tyrrel, a famous hunter in those days. "It is said that the king and Sir Walter came upon a stag. The king drew his bow, and the string broke. "'Shoot, Walter!' said the king. "The arrow flew, struck a tree, glanced, and buried itself in the king's breast. He died where the poor peasants had foretold he would die, in the New Forest. "We hope to visit Caen, and its cathedral, an edifice that was founded by the Conqueror, and that has grown for nearly a thousand years. The Conqueror's tomb is before the altar, but his bones were scattered by the Huguenots in 1562." * * * * * Wyllys Wynn's story was applauded; and Master Lewis, amid the applause, said audibly,-- "Excellent!" Frank Gray followed:-- "Our President has told you the history of William the Conqueror and of one of his sons, in his story of the New Forest. I will try to tell you THE STORY OF ROBERT OF NORMANDY. "Robert of Normandy was the second son of the Conqueror, and succeeded his father in the dukedom. He was unlike the rest of the Conqueror's sons,--an easy, generous, pleasure-loving fellow; honest in heart, and believing with wonderful simplicity that the world was all sunshine, and that all the people in it were much like himself. "I am sorry to say, however, that he once rebelled against his father, whom he asked to give him the old Norman kingdom. 'I am not apt to undress before I go to bed,' said the Conqueror. "He began to rule independently, and William besieged him in the old fortress of Gerberoi. "In the midst of the battle, Robert unseated a tall knight, and was about to despatch him, when he found him to be his father. "He was greatly touched at the discovery, and kneeling down said, 'I pray you forgive me.' He then raised his father, and they were reconciled. [Illustration: WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR REVIEWING HIS ARMY.] "There is a castle in Normandy, which we hope to visit,--a mountain of towers rising out of the sea. Pagan priests possessed it, holy hermits succeeded them, and the Norman Dukes regarded it as their stronghold. I have brought with me a picture of it, that you may see. It is a fortress built upon a rock; and, when the great tide sweeps in, it stands in the sea, lofty and doubly guarded. [Illustration: {MONT ST. MICHEL.}] "The Red King and Robert once were engaged in a war with their brother Henry, who shut himself up in this fortress. At last, the water in the fortress failed. The Red King was happy, but Robert began to pity his famishing brother. So he sent him some bottles of wine. "'A fine way to wage war,' said the Red King. "'What,' said Robert, 'shall we let our brother die of thirst? Where shall we get another, when he is gone?' "We will see how Henry returned this love and brotherly kindness. "It was considered very pious, in those rude times, for a person to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, in order to visit the Holy Sepulchre. The Turks, who held the Holy City, abused the Christian pilgrims. An eloquent and a fiery-minded monk, called Peter the Hermit, believing it to be the duty of the Christian princes to wrest the Holy Sepulchre from the power of the Turks, began to urge his opinions throughout Europe. An intense excitement was created. "Among his most fervent disciples was Robert of Normandy. In his enthusiasm, the thoughtless, generous-hearted fellow sold his dominions for a certain period to the Red King, and with the money equipped a splendid retinue of knights and soldiers for service in the Holy Land. "He went to Jerusalem at the head of this glittering train, and, in union with other Christian princes and nobles, besieged the Holy City, subdued its defenders, and obtained possession of the Saviour's tomb. "Robert was one of the most conspicuous leaders in the first crusade; and, of all the princes who aided in the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre, he sacrificed the most. "When he returned from the East, he stopped in Italy. He was fond of minstrelsy, and of works of art; and he feasted his eyes on the fading grandeur of the old Italian cities. As he was the rightful claimant to the throne of England, after the death of the Red King, and as his exploits in the Holy Land had added to his fame, the Italians greatly admired him. "While stopping in Italy among the minstrels, the pictures, and the loveliness of that dreamy and enchanted land, he fell in love with a lady of marvellous beauty. "Her name was Sibylla. He married her, and in a little time returned to Normandy, to find that his younger brother, Henry, had assumed the throne of England, and was governing with a high hand. "It seems that the Red King had died while Robert was tarrying in Italy, enamoured of Sibylla; and Henry, without waiting to see him buried, had seized the royal treasure and the diadem, telling the nobles that Robert had become King of Jerusalem. "Having established his government, he was prepared to give Robert a hot reception, if he should make any trouble about the matter on his return. "Robert, of course, asserted his claim to the throne. Some of the nobles sustained Henry in his usurpation, others were for Robert. "Henry, however, by dint of much fawning and lying, persuaded Robert to relinquish his claim to England, and to be content with the little duchy of Normandy, and with a pension, which he promised to pay. "So the good-natured Robert governed in Normandy, and a good-natured government he had. He was so weak and good-natured that he used to allow his servants to steal his clothes, while he was lying in bed in the morning. "Henry, like the Red King before him, thought that Robert's government was rather loose, and that it would be a very benevolent thing to relieve the Normans of his misrule. For this reason, he went over to Normandy with an army, took possession of the country, and established his own hard rule, thus stealing from his brother the fair-skied duchy that the Conqueror had given him. Having accomplished this, he settled it that Robert was a very troublesome fellow, and that the proper place for him was a prison; and he accordingly put him in one. "He was not satisfied even then. "One day there appeared in the apartments of the castle where Robert was confined some stone-hearted men, by order from the king. They heated a piece of metal red-hot, and then deliberately burned out poor Robert's eyes. "Beautiful, loving eyes they were; and what sights they had seen,--the minarets of the East glimmering in the hot sun and shady moon, the cool palm-groves along the Jordan, the splendid streets of Antioch, the City of the Great King, the Holy Sepulchre with its golden lamps, Italy with its deep skies and empurpled hills! Twenty-eight years was poor Robert imprisoned, and then he died." * * * * * Frank's contribution was well received. "I would like to add something to the touching narrative we have just heard," said Master Lewis. "I would like to tell you about the great sorrow that came to King Henry, after he had so wronged his brother. Allow me to relate to you THE STORY OF THE WHITE SHIP. "Henry had a son--Prince Henry--whom he intensely loved. The prince was wild and dissipated, and as much a despot at heart as his father. He once boasted that, when he became king, he would yoke the English to the plough, like oxen. "The king's plottings, and much of his cruel treatment of his brother Robert, sprang from his strong desire that this son might succeed him on the throne. "Did Prince Henry succeed his father as king? "The people of Normandy and other French territories under the Norman crown rebelled against Henry. The king, by the aid of the Pope, pacified the discontented people by fair promises, and a peace was made, upon which the king and the prince and a great retinue of nobles went to Normandy, to arrange some very important matters of state. "During this state visit, the Norman nobles were induced to recognize, with great pomp, Prince Henry as the successor to the king; and a marriage was contracted for the prince. "In honor of these events, there were gala-days and festivals, and at every scene of rejoicing the prince was the glittering star. "The heart of the king swelled with pride. He had reason to hope that all his plottings, and pilferings of crowns and dominions, were about to end happily. The future seemed almost without a cloud. "One bright day in autumn, after these events, the prince and a gay party prepared to embark for England. "There came to the king a man by the name of Fitz-Stephen, who said that he was the son of the sea-captain who conveyed the Conqueror to England on the ship with many-colored sails. He said, also, that he had a beautiful ship, all white, and manned by fifty sea-browned sailors, and that he would deem it a great honor to take the royal party to England. "'I have ordered my ship,' said the king, after a little deliberation; 'but yours shall have the honor of conveying the prince and young nobles to England.' "So the prince, and one hundred and twenty-two nobles, and eighteen ladies of rank, all young, and full of merry life, went on board of the White Ship. "The king sailed away while it was yet day, leaving the prince and his company still in the harbor. "'Now,' said the prince, 'the king has gone, we will have a merry-making. The time is ours, and we can spend it right jovially on the deck of our beautiful ship.' "He then ordered Fitz-Stephen to provide three casks of wine for the fifty sailors. The harbor grew dusky, and the hunter's moon rose, shimmering the wide waters. The wine flowed freely, the nobles danced, and the beautiful ladies joined heartily in the revelries. "The great sea sobbed before and around them, but merry music filled their ears. "At length, they shot out of the moonlit harbor. The sailors were excited and half-drunk. The royal party urged them to row with speed, in order to overtake the vessels of the king. Fitz-Stephen was in the same condition as his crew, and steered recklessly. "Soon there came a terrific crash. The White Ship reeled and reeled, but went no farther. She had struck upon rocks, and the mirth was turned to wailing and woe. "As the ship was sinking, the prince leaped on board a boat. As he was rowed away, he heard his sister calling for help from the deck of the staggering vessel. Putting back, he reached the place just as the White Ship was making her last plunge. Great numbers of the terrified and desperate young men leaped on board of the boat. It overturned, and the prince went down in the deep waters. "Thus in a moment were baffled the purposes of King Henry for so many guilty years; and, of the three hundred souls that made merry in the moonlit harbor of Balfleur, but one survived to tell the dismal tale. "For some days no one dared to approach the king with the dreadful intelligence. At length, a little boy was sent to him to break the news, who, weeping, knelt at his feet, and told him that the White Ship was lost, and the prince had perished. The king fell to the floor as dead. The historians tell us that he never smiled again. "I do not greatly pity him; for he lied again, and he stole again, and he made the people suffer again, and I have little doubt that he smiled again, when some plot of his crafty old age had ended to his liking. "Mrs. Hemans, in a short historical poem, tenderly touches on the sorrow of King Henry for the lost prince; and, as I have not alluded to that sorrow in a very charitable spirit, I will quote the stanzas:-- HE NEVER SMILED AGAIN. "The bark that held a prince went down, The sweeping waves roll'd on; And what was England's glorious crown To him that wept a son? He lived,--for life may long be borne Ere sorrow break its chain; Why comes not death for those who mourn?-- He never smiled again! There stood proud forms around his throne, The stately and the brave; But which could fill the place of one, That one beneath the wave? Before him pass'd the young and fair, In pleasure's reckless train; But seas dash'd o'er his son's bright hair-- He never smiled again! He sat where festal bowls went round, He heard the minstrel sing, He saw the tourney's victor crown'd, Amidst the knightly ring: A murmur of the restless deep Was blent with every strain, A voice of winds that would not sleep-- He never smiled again. Hearts, in that time, closed o'er the trace Of vows once fondly pour'd, And strangers took the kinsman's place At many a joyous board; Graves, which true love had bathed with tears, Were left to heaven's bright rain, Fresh hopes were born for other years-- He never smiled again!" TOMMY TOBY'S STORY OF THE FROLICSOME DUKE. Tom Toby's turn came next, and at the announcement of his name there was a sudden lighting up of faces. Tom's face, which was usually rather comical, assumed a more mirth-loving expression than ever. "You said," he began, "that we were to visit Ghent and Bruges. I believe these towns were in old Flanders, and that Flanders was in Burgundy. One of the most clever rulers of whom I ever read was Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, though he had some faults when he used to be young like me. "The good Duke married Eleonora, sister to the King of Portugal. The wedding was celebrated in great pomp at Bruges, and the merry-makings lasted a week. "Christopher Sly was a tinker, and a tinker was a man who used to 'roam the countries around,' crying, 'Old brass to mend!' and who repaired the good people's broken pots and kettles. "Christopher heard of the great wedding in his travels, and came to Bruges to enjoy the merry-making with the rest. "He had only one pair of breeches, and they were made of leather. He deemed them suitable for all occasions. He had never arrived at the luxury of a coat, but in its place he wore a large leather apron, which covered his great shoulders, like the armor of a knight. "Christopher had one bad habit. He loved ale overmuch, and he used to drink so deeply on festive occasions as to affect the steadiness both of his mind and body. "Christopher enjoyed the gala-days. He mingled in the gay processions that followed the ducal pair to the tournament; he gazed with loyal pride on the horses with their trappings of crimson and gold; he followed the falconers to the hunting-parks, and listened to the music that led the dance at night in the torch-lit palace. "The ducal wedding took place in the deep of winter; and one night, soon after the joyful event, and while Bruges was yet given up to festivities, there fell a great snow-storm, blocking the streets and silencing the town. "Christopher's money was gone, and the falling weather chilled not only his blood, but his spirits. He wandered about in the storm, going from ale-house to ale-house, and receiving hospitality, until the town of Bruges seemed to revolve around him as its inhabitants around the Duke. Still he plodded away through the streets, longing to see the warm fires glow and the torches gleam in the ducal palace. When he had nearly reached the palace, the town began to spin and whirl around him at such a rate that presently he sank in the chilly snow and knew no more. "'I am tired of the palace,' said the Duke to some courtiers. 'Let us go into the streets this blustering night: it may be that we shall meet with an adventure.' "The Duke, with a few muffled followers, glided out of one of the palace gates, and the gleamings of their lanterns shot down the street. Presently the Duke stumbled over some object, lying half-buried in the snow. "'What's here?' "'A dead man,' answered a courtier. "'A drunken tinker,' answered an attendant, turning over the body of a man lying like a log in the snow. 'How he snores! Dead drunk, as I live!' "'He would perish here before morning,' said the Duke. "'What is to be done?' asked a courtier. "'Take him to the palace, and we will have some sport with him. I will cause him to be washed and dressed and perfumed, and to be laid in a chamber of state. He will awake sober in the morning, when we will persuade him that _he_ is the Duke, and that we are his attendants. To-morrow the whole Court of Burgundy shall serve a poor tinker!' "The attendants carried the unconscious tinker to the palace, where they washed him, and, putting upon him an elegant night-dress, laid him on a silk-curtained bed, in a very gorgeous chamber. "The poor tinker, on waking in the morning, looked about the room in wonder. He concluded that he must be dreaming, or that he had become touched in mind, or that he had died the night before and had been so happy as to get to heaven. "At last, the Duke entered the apartment in the habit of the ducal chamberlain. "'What will your Worship have this morning?' asked the Duke. "The tinker stared. "'Has your Worship no commands?' "'I am Christopher Sly,--Sly, the tinker. Call me not your Worship.' "'You have not fully recovered yet, I see. But you will be yourself again soon. What suit will your Worship wear to-day? Which doublet, and what stockings and shoes?' [Illustration: AMAZEMENT OF CHRISTOPHER SLY.] "'I have no more doublets than backs, no more stockings than legs, nor more shoes than feet; nay, sometime, more feet than shoes. I tell you I am Christopher Sly, and I am a tinker,' was the puzzled reply. "But the ducal chamberlain only bowed the more. "Sly continued to look about him in amazement. At last, he said, with much hesitation,-- "'You may bring me my best suit. The day is pleasant. I will dress becomingly.' "'Now you are yourself again. I must hasten to inform the Court of your recovery. I must fly to her Grace the Duchess, and say, "The Duke, the Duke is himself again!"' "'The Duke! I tell you I am Christopher Sly,--old Sly's son, of Burton Heath,--by birth a peddler and by trade a tinker. Duke Sly! No. Duke Christopher! or, better, Duke Christophero! Marry, friend! wouldn't that sound well? It may be I am a duke, for all. Go ask Marian Hacket, the buxom inn-keeper of Wincot, if she don't know Christopher Sly,--Duke Christophero; and if she say I do not owe her fourteen pence for small ale, then call me the biggest liar and knave in Christendom!' "The servants presently brought the poor tinker a silver basin, 'full of rose-water, and bestrewed with flowers.' Then they brought him a suit of crimson, trimmed with lace and starred. The bewildered fellow stared awhile in silence; then he slowly put on the gorgeous apparel. "The tinker next was conducted to a magnificent banqueting-hall, where was spread a rich feast. The tables smoked with venison and sparkled with wine. He was led to a high seat beneath a canopy of silk and gold, the Duchess following, and seating herself by his side. Knights and ladies filled the tables, and the tinker began to feast and to sip wine like a duke indeed. "'I wish'--said he, suddenly. "'What is your wish?' asked the Duchess. "'I wish that old Stephen Sly was here, and John Naps and Peter Turf, and my wife Joan, and Marian Hacket: wouldn't it be jolly?' "Christopher had never smacked his lips over such wine before, and he drank so deeply that his ideas became mixed again. The feast ended. The ladies sung and the musicians played, but Christopher continued drinking as long as he could hold a beaker. He began to be sleepy, and presently tumbled from his high seat beneath the silken canopy to the floor, 'Where he sleeping did snore, Being seven times drunker than ever before.' "And here the reign of Duke Christophero came to a sudden end. The real Duke ordered the attendants to take him away, and to put upon him his 'old leather garments again.' "'When the night is well advanced,' said the Duke, 'take him back to the place where we found him, and there watch his behavior when he awakes.' "Poor Christopher Sly woke in the morning to find his glory gone. The sun shone on the snow-covered gables of Bruges. He looked around him with woe in his face, as he saw the snow beneath him instead of a couch of down, and the sky above him, instead of a silken canopy, sprinkled with gold. He snuffed the frosty air, and, heaving a deep groan, he said, 'And I am old Stephen Sly's son, after all. I have seen a vision. I will go home, and take my scolding from Joan.'" "When we visit Bruges," added Tommy, "I hope we may all visit the resting-place of Duke Christopher Sly." * * * * * Tommy's story, although not of great value to the young travellers, was loudly applauded by the Club. "I have heard," said Wyllys, "that there is a spire in Bruges four hundred and fifty feet high, and a tower that contains forty-eight bells; but I never heard before of Duke Christopher." Ernest Wynn, who spoke French well and took a lively interest in French poetry, sang a Norman seaside song, which is a favorite in some of the coast towns, and is especially employed by the fishermen of Étretat, when a ship goes out to sea in a storm. It began-- Le matin, quand je me réveille, Je vois mon Jésus venir, Il est beau à merveille, C'est lui qui me réveille. C'est Jésus! C'est Jésus! Mon aimable Jésus! Je le vois, mon Jésus, je le vois Porter sa brillante croix, Là haut sur cette montagne: Sa mère l'accompagne. C'est Jésus, C'est Jésus, Mon aimable Jésus. In the morn, when I awake, My Jesus near I see. He is wonderfully beautiful-- It is He that wakens me. It is Jesus, It is Jesus, My lovable Jesus! I see, I see my Jesus Bear over the mountain high His cross of light, accompanied The Holy Mother by. It is Jesus, It is Jesus, My lovable Jesus! The selection was a rare one, and was mentioned by Master Lewis as being exceptionally creditable. George Howe and Leander Towle presented acceptable exercises on "Norman Industries" and "Peasant Customs." The last topic seemed to excite Tommy Toby to try to throw some farther light on this romantic and interesting country. "Would you like to know what lovely-looking creatures these Norman peasant girls are, and how they look?" said he. "Well, they look [going to the blackboard and drawing with a crayon a moment] just like those." [Illustration: {NORMAN PEASANT GIRLS.}] "I am very gratified," said Master Lewis, "at the amount of historic study our proposed tour has already stimulated. One must read and study _to see_. Dr. Johnson used the comparison that 'some people would see more in a single ride in a Hempstead stage-coach than others would in a tour round the world.' Thoreau said,-- 'If with fancy unfurled You leave your abode, You may go round the world By the old Marlboro' road.' "You might have added many charming stories to those already told. In Calais, the last town of the Gallic dominions of the Plantagenets, we shall visit the scene of the siege of Edward III. and of the immortal Five who offered their lives as a ransom for their city, and whom good Queen Philippa spared. At Falaise, we may see the ruin of the castle from whose window Duke Robert, the father of the Conqueror, first saw Arletta, the tanner's daughter, and was enchanted with her beauty. At Rouen, we shall stand in the square where the Maid of Orleans was burned, and, in all places, in contrast with the dark romances of the past, will appear sunny hills, bowery valleys, and picturesque streams. "I think it was Victor Hugo who said that 'Europe was the finest nation on the earth, France the finest country, and Normandy the finest part of France.' I do not ask you to accept his opinion, but Normandy is very beautiful." Meetings of the Club were held every two weeks. The boys tried to learn the secret which Tommy had been instructed to select. But he claimed that he had been instructed also to keep it. "It would not be creditable to the Club to tell it now," he said. CHAPTER IV. ON THE ATLANTIC. The Steerage.--Pilot Boats.--Tommy meets Rough Weather.--His Letter and Postscript.--Queer Passengers.--Games and Story-telling.--Story of Joan of Arc.--Signalling at Sea.--Land! An ocean steamer! Though a speck upon the waters, what a world it seems! What symmetry, what strength, what a triumph of human skill! What a cheerful sense of security one feels as one looks upon the oak and the iron, and hears the wind whistle through the motionless forest of cordage! There society in all its grades is seen, and human nature in all its phases. The cool upper deck of the steamer was more inviting to our tourists than the hot streets and hotels of New York, and early in the afternoon they met on the North River Pier, and went on board of their ocean home. First, they examined the elegant saloons, then their snug state-rooms, and at last the steerage apartment, where George and Leander were to have their quarters. The steerage was not a wholly uninviting apartment. It was a plain cabin, amidships, well lighted and ventilated, and very clean. A stanch-looking pair of stairs led down to it. On each side were bunks in little rooms; those on the right hand for women, and on the left for men. These were lighted and aired by port-holes. Each passenger provided his own bedding and eating utensils. "I like this," said Tommy Toby to the steward. "Are the passengers here more likely to be sick than in the first cabin?" "No," said the steward. "This is the steadiest part of the ship." "Then what is the difference between the cabin and the steerage?" "Well, the difference is in the folks, and the furniture, and the way you eat your victuals." The steerage passengers were allowed the freedom of the decks, but not of the grand saloons. Master Lewis and the boys seated themselves in a group on the upper deck, when they had well visited the different parts of the ship. Early in the evening, the immense ship moved slowly and steadily away from the sultry wharves into the calm sea and cool air. The great city with its gleaming spires seemed sinking in the sea, and the hills of Neversink to be burying themselves in the shadows. Pilot boats several times crossed the track of the steamer, with their numbers conspicuously painted on their sails. "Why does a captain, who navigates a ship across the ocean," asked Frank of Master Lewis, "need the assistance of pilots and pilot-boats when he is in sight of land?" "It is because the harbor is more dangerous than the open ocean, and pilots make these dangers the study of their lives. "See yonder pilot-boat skimming with the grace of a sea-bird along the sea. It has the stanchness of a ship built for the longest voyages. It is doubtless made of the best oak, is sheathed with the best copper, and may have cost twenty thousand dollars." "The life of a pilot must be an adventurous one," said Frank, "and there must be also much pleasure in it." "It requires special education and hard training to become a pilot. It is expected that the candidate for the position shall have been an apprentice four years, during which he shall have performed all the duties of a common sailor, even to the washing of the decks and the tarring of the rigging. This is his college life. If he is an apt student, he then obtains a certificate of qualification from a board of commissioners by whom he has been rigidly examined. "The pilot-boats themselves are exposed to great dangers in foggy weather. A calm comes on, and they cannot move. In this situation, they are liable to be struck by one of the great iron vessels or ocean steamers. During the last twenty-five years, some thirty pilot-boats have been lost on this coast." [Illustration: PILOT-BOAT.] The night was beautiful, calm, cool, starry. In the morning, the sun rose red from the sea. Land had disappeared. The boys all met on the deck, in fine health and spirits. Towards evening, the sea grew rough, and there were premonitions of sea-sickness among the passengers. Tommy Toby, in an amusing letter which he wrote to his parents, gave a stereoscopic pen-picture of the condition of our travellers at this period of the voyage. He afterwards added a characteristic postscript. We give Tommy's letter and postscript entire:-- My Dear Parents: If I can only get safely back to Boston, I will never start on a voyage again. I knew it would be so. I have been seasick. The first night and day we had very pleasant weather and a light sea. On the evening of the second day, I was on deck with the boys. All at once the boat gave a great lurch. Then another. Then another. "We are getting into rough water," said Master Lewis. Wyllys Wynn, who is a poet, was repeating some beautiful rhymes, when suddenly he grew white in the face, and said, "And so it goes on for several lines." He meant the poetry. Then he began to wander to and fro in search of the cabin and his state-room. Frank Gray began to tell a story, but stopped short, and said, "The rest of it is like unto _that_!" He meant the rest of the story. Then he went to the cabin, "making very crooked steerage," one of the deck-hands said. Ernest Wynn followed him, in the same strange gait. "The Zigzag Club," said the deck-hand. He was a very sarcastic man. The ship gave another dreadful lurch, and I began to feel very strange. I went to my state-room. I felt worse on the way. The ship seemed to have lost all her steadiness. I cannot describe the night that followed. The ship creaked, and seemed just about to roll over after every lurch. Sometimes she went up. I was so dizzy, it seemed to me that she went up almost to the moon. Then she came down. She always came down. It seemed to me she must be going down to the bottom of the sea. In the morning, the steward came. "It 'as been a 'eavy blow, ruther." "A heavy blow!" said I. "Did you ever know any thing like it in your life? Do you think we shall ever see land again?" "Nothin' alarmin'," said the steward. A dreadful day followed. I did not leave my room. I wished I had never left home. I felt like the Frenchman who said, "I would kees ze land, if I could only see any land to kees." The next day I was better, only there was a light feeling in my head. I went up on deck. The sun was shining. The wind blew, but the air was very refreshing. This is the fourth day out. I have been able to eat to-day. I am feeling very hungry. I find that all the boys have been obliged to keep their rooms, except George Howe, who is in the steerage. How fearful I am we shall have another night like _that_! How glad I shall be to see land again! The land is the place, after all. I wish I were sure we would have good weather, when we return. Your thoughtful son, Thomas Toby. P. S. Three days after. I am well now. I never felt so bright and happy in my life. The steward says that people are seldom sick twice during the same voyage. An ocean trip is just the thing, after all. There were a few rather odd characters among the passengers: among them a portly, self-satisfied Englishman, returning from a tour of the States, with an increased respect for fine old English society; a glib-tongued Frenchman, who was delighted with "Ze States,--deelightéd!" and whose talk was like a row of exclamation points; and a sentimental Italian fiddler, in very poor dress, going back to the beauties of Naples and the dreamy airs and skies of "Etalee." [Illustration: {TWO OF OUR FELLOW TRAVELLERS.}] Tommy Toby seemed to gravitate towards these people, when his sea-sickness was over. "I likes zis American poy," said the Frenchman. "Intelegent! Has ze activitee; agilitee; very great prom-ese!" "Our country must be very different from yours," said Tommy, one day. "Veery, veery different indeed! Wonderful countree,--delightful! What grand rivers! what waterfalls,--Niag-e-ra! what lakes! Room for all ze world! Hospitalitee for all ze nations!" "The Frenchman says our country is the most wonderful in all the world," said Tommy to the portly Englishman. The latter looked very solemn; seemed about to speak, then made a long pause as though the opinion he was about to utter was a very weighty one. "Poverty to riches, riches to poverty; now up, now down, but the animating principle always the same,--riches, riches. Wonderful people! progress! each one living to outdo the other. To-day an alderman, to-morrow in the penitentiary; to-day my Lady of Lynne, to-morrow John o' the Scales's wife!" Tommy had an idea of what his lugubrious acquaintance meant to say, though the latter's wisdom was rather above his intellectual stature. "We have no castles in America," said Tommy. "Castles! No; an American family could not keep a castle: it would be sold in five years for a mill." [Illustration: {A STEERAGE PASSENGER.}] Tommy's face was always very bright after talking with the Frenchman, but lengthened out during the interview with his English friend. He usually retired discomforted from the latter, to seek comfort in the steerage from the lively Italian's fiddle. * * * * * There was a bright girl on board, named Agnes,--the daughter of a Boston gentleman, who was going abroad for a year. She was a social miss; witty, yet polite; speaking to every one freely, without being intrusive. On the evening of the sixth day, nearly all the passengers were in the saloon. Agnes was asked to sing. She winningly said,-- "I will do my best, if agreeable to all." She asked to be excused a moment, and presently returned with a broad-rimmed hat and a basket, and wandering carelessly up and down the saloon sang "The Beggar Girl." "Over the mountain, and over the moor, Hungry and barefoot I wander forlorn. My father is dead and my mother is poor, And she grieves for the days that will never return. Pity, kind gentlefolk, Friends of humanity, Keen blows the blast and night's coming on; O give me some food For my mother, for charity; Give me food for my mother, and I will be gone." Agnes presented her basket to one and another of the passengers, as if to solicit contributions as the song went on. All were pleased with the diversion, and it was proposed to have some other amusements during the evening. Agnes arranged some impromptu charades: one on _Ingratiate_ (in grey she ate); another on _Cowhiding_ (cow hiding, in which she personated a milk-maid calling "Co boss, co boss!" and afterwards the same maid cowhiding a boy for hiding her cow). Agnes selected Tommy Toby to assist her in this last amusing tableau. Agnes next appeared as a mind-reader. Before this last rôle, however, she was observed having a confidential chat with Tommy Toby. "Now," said she, "if any of you are interested in clairvoyance, I shall be pleased to give an exhibition of the science. You may not know I am a mind-reader." "She probably has been reading Master Toby's mind already," said her father, smilingly looking over his paper. "Oh, father!" "If each of you will write a word on a slip of paper, I will have the slips collected and put on my forehead; and I will take them from my forehead one by one, but before I take each one down, I will tell what is written upon it." All wrote some word. "Will some one collect the slips?" she asked. "I will," said her father. "I think as Thomas Toby is _spry_, I shall have to ask him to do me the favor." "How I wish I were _spry_!" said her father. The slips were collected. Tommy put them all on her forehead. She put up her fingers and held them there, and Tommy took a seat with his friends. Agnes seemed in reverie. Then she said emphatically,-- "On the first slip is written 'Boston!' Who wrote that?" "I," said Tommy Toby. "Then it is correct?" "Yes." She took the slip from her forehead and laid it in her lap, saying as she did so,-- "It is not written very plainly, either." So one by one she read all the slips. Each passenger acknowledged the writing of each announced word, after it had been correctly given by Agnes. First, the correct readings awakened wonder, then positive excitement. The experiment was repeated at the request of all, with the same wonderful result. The diversion was reproduced on the following evening, and even Master Lewis failed to see how the girl read the slips. It was noticed, however, that Tommy Toby always collected the slips, and acknowledged writing the first word. Agnes also examined each slip closely as she took it down, as if to verify the results of her very penetrating mind. [Illustration: JOAN OF ARC.] The secret of the trick was that Tommy always placed what he had written at the bottom of the slips, or last; but he acknowledged to have written what was taken from the forehead first. This gave Agnes the opportunity of reading each slip as she laid it in her lap, and of announcing what she read as though it were written on the _next_ slip on her forehead. One evening, when Master Lewis and the boys were talking of the historical places they expected to visit, Agnes approached pleasantly and said, "I have a conundrum for you." "What is it?" asked Master Lewis. "What was Joan of Arc made of?" The boys were unable to guess. "Suppose you tell us the story of Joan of Arc, Master Lewis," said Wyllys. "Then, perhaps, we will be able to decide." "Yes, please," said Agnes. "I should be delighted to hear the story." "As we expect to visit Rouen, where the Maid of Orleans"-- "I think she was Maid of"--said Tommy Toby. "I will tell you after the story." Then Master Lewis related the story of the unfortunate shepherd girl. STORY OF JOAN OF ARC. "Jeanne d'Arc, known in history as the Maid of Orleans, was born in the pleasant village of Domremi, near the borders of Lorraine. Her parents were peasants, and Jeanne was their fifth child. Her education was very limited, and she spent her early years as a shepherdess. "Her soul was full of romance and poetic inspiration, and she led a dreamy life among the flocks. "The neighborhood of Domremi abounded in superstitions. Stories of fairies and demons, beautiful legends of the Virgin, and the mediæval traditions of the saints were the themes of fireside hours, and Jeanne drank deeply into the spirit of these wonderful myths. "At the age of thirteen, she began to see visions and to dream dreams. She fancied that angel voices whispered in her ear, and that celestial lights flashed before her eyes. "'At the age of thirteen,' she said, in her defence before the judge who condemned her to death, 'I heard a voice in my father's garden at Domremi, proceeding from the right on the side of the church, accompanied with a great light. At first I was afraid, but presently found that it was the voice of an angel, who has protected me ever since, who has taught me to conduct myself properly, and to frequent the church. It was Saint Michael.' "She continued to hear strange voices. Her father said,-- "'Heed them not, Jeanne, it is but a fancy.' "In this state of enthusiasm, she passed some five years among the vine-clad hills of Domremi, her heart estranged from worldly affections, and seeking for loving companionship from the beautiful beings that filled her dreams. "France, at this period, was rent asunder by civil dissension; the people of the interior acknowledging Henry VI. of England as their rightful sovereign, and those of the remoter provinces, Charles VII. of France. The people of Lorraine adhered to the cause of Charles, and Jeanne became a politician in girlhood, and aspired to chivalrous deeds. "When eighteen years of age, she fancied that celestial voices told her that she was called to deliver her country from English rule, and to place the young French king upon the throne of his fathers. "Her father said,-- "'I tell thee, Jeanne, it is a fancy.' "Leaving her rustic home, the unlettered girl sought an audience of Captain de Baudricourt, who commanded for Charles at Vaucoleurs. In this she was successful, and, although he at first treated her as an idle enthusiast, he was finally so impressed by the recital of her inspirations and visions, that he sent her to Chinon, where Charles held his court, to consult with the king. [Illustration: JOAN OF ARC RECOGNIZING THE KING.] "'None in the world,' she said to Baudricourt, 'can recover the kingdom of France, there is no hope but in me.' She added, 'I would far rather be spinning beside my poor mother; but I must do this work, because my Lord wills it.' "'Who is your lord?' asked the general. "'The Lord God!' "'By my faith,' said Baudricourt, 'I will take you to the king.' "She obtained an interview with Charles, whom she claimed to have recognized in a promiscuous company by a sudden inspiration, accompanied by celestial light. The story of her divine appointment deeply moved the king; and, his cause becoming desperate, he accepted the services of the fair prophetess, clad her in armor, and placed her at the head of an army of ten thousand men. "There was something in her very appearance that inspired awe. Her mien was noble and commanding; her form was tall and elegant. She controlled her charger with wonderful grace and skill. By her side was a consecrated sword, found buried in the old church of St. Catherine de Fierbois, the existence of which she claimed to have discovered by a special revelation from above; and in her hand she carried a banner emblazoned with angels and consecrated to God. "The English troops, with the French allies of Henry, were besieging Orleans, a famous old city, and one of the strongholds of Charles. Thither Jeanne led her army. She soon inspired her soldiers with the conviction that she held a commission from on high; and, when they arrived before Orleans, they were wrought up to the highest pitch of enthusiasm. "Jeanne attacked the English, and in several engagements displayed superior generalship and won brilliant victories. The confidence of the French troops in her now became implicit, and they received her commands as from a messenger of celestial truth. "The English soldiers, too, were infected by the superstition, and a panic ensued whenever she appeared. Jeanne was at last completely victorious, and, although once severely wounded, raised the siege of Orleans, and entered the city in triumph. "The French kings for a long period had received their crowns at Rheims. The city was a great distance from Orleans, and the approaches to it were held by the English. Thither mysterious voices directed Jeanne. Charles, yielding to her influence, set out on the long and perilous journey, to be crowned in the ancient fane where his ancestors of the house of Valois had received their diadems. "The English troops retired, and the cause of Charles received a new impetus wherever the young prophetess and her army appeared. The journey was a continued triumph for Charles, and when he reached Rheims, the fame of his success rekindled the fires of patriotism in every town and province of France. "'It was a joyous day in Rheims of old,' when the glittering retinue, led by the young king and the peasant child, marched to the thronged cathedral. The coronation services were wonderfully impressive and inconceivably splendid. The holy unction was performed with oil said to have been brought from heaven by a dove, to King Clovis. By the side of the young monarch stood Jeanne in full armor, holding in her hand her consecrated banner. Triumphant music pealed forth, and the plaudits of the people made the old cathedral tremble. When the ceremony was over, Jeanne threw herself at the feet of the king, embraced his knees and wept. "She felt now that her mission was accomplished. She resolved to return to her home, and to pass her days among the simple peasants of Domremi. "But fame was too dazzling, and ambition tempted her to new exploits. She was taken prisoner at last by her enemies, the Burgundians, was delivered over to the English, put upon trial as a sorceress, pronounced guilty, and condemned to death. "She wept over her hard fate. 'I would rather be beheaded than burned,' she said, when she reflected on the manner of her death, which was to be burned at the stake. 'Oh, that this body should be reduced to ashes!' [Illustration: JOAN OF ARC WOUNDED.] "She wept for her country. "'O Rouen, Rouen!' she said, 'is it here that I must die? Here shall be my last resting-place.' "A huge pile of fuel was made in the ancient market place in Rouen, and the Maid of Orleans was placed upon it; and in the presence of a vast concourse of citizens, soldiers and ecclesiastics, she was burned. Her last words were expressive of inward triumph. The lamentable event occurred on the last day of May, 1431. Her ashes were cast into the Seine, and carried to the sea. "Joan of Arc was no wilful impostor. She fully believed that she beheld faces of departed saints, and heard the voices of beings from the unseen world. The result of her wonderful career was that Charles ultimately won back to the royal house of Valois the whole kingdom of France. "An imposing mausoleum in the city of Orleans perpetuates her memory; but her name stands above mortality, independent of marble or bronze. Apart from her character as a visionary, Jeanne was a most noble girl. The French still cherish an enthusiastic attachment for her memory, and a yearly fête is given in honor of her deeds in the City of Orleans." * * * * * "I think," said Tommy Toby, "that I can answer Agnes's conundrum. Joan of Arc was Maid (made) of Orleans." "Right," said Agnes. "What an agreeable company the Zigzag Club is!" One afternoon the man on the lookout called the attention of those around him to a distant object: it seemed like a mere speck in the horizon. He presently said,-- "It is a ship." The news spread. Every one came upon deck. Even the cooks in the galley left their pots and kettles. As she drew near, the British ensign was seen fluttering at the stern. As she drew still nearer, she hoisted five small flags. Then one of the quartermasters on our own ship brought several small flags and a signal-book from the wheel-house. He opened the book to a page of colored pictures of small flags, five of which corresponded to those raised by the ship in view. Opposite each flag was a figure. The figures combined in order made the number 94,362. The quartermaster turned to another page, and opposite this number appeared the name and port of the ship. The ship hoisted another set of flags, which was answered by our own ship. "She asks to know our reckonings," said the quartermaster. "Can a ship meeting another ask other questions in this way?" inquired George Howe. "Oh, yes; two vessels miles apart can carry on a long conversation with each other. Ships have a regular alphabet of signal flags." "What are signals of distress?" asked George. "That flag," said the quartermaster, pointing to a picture in the book, "means a fire or a leak. (1) "This means a want of food. (2) "And that, aground. (3) "Here is one that signifies, 'Will you take a letter from me?'" (4) [Illustration: {SIGNALS.} _Fig. 1._ _Fig. 2._ _Fig. 3._ _Fig. 4._] This dialogue between the two ships was the most pleasing and exciting episode of the voyage, until land began to appear as a dim streak upon the horizon. CHAPTER V. THE LAND OF SCOTT AND BURNS. Glasgow.--Visit to Ayr.--Story of Highland Mary.--Glasgow to Edinburgh.--Scene in Edinburgh at Night.--The Castle.-- Melrose.--Long Summer Days. Old Glasgow, almost encircled by hills and uplands, presents a picturesque view, as the steamer moves slowly up the narrowing channel of the Clyde. But with its rapid commercial growth, its 2,000,000 spindles, its steam-power, and its busy marts of trade, it is a city of the present rather than the past, and beyond the Knox monument and the Cathedral presents few attractions to the history-loving stranger. Our tourists stopped at Glasgow to make a day's excursion to the home of Burns. They were taken from the boat to the Queen's Hotel in George's Square; but George Howe and Leander Towle after resting with the rest of the party, secured lodgings in a private house. The boys arose the next morning, with dreams of the Doon and Ayr. To their disappointment, a heavy mist hung over the city; and they found it a dreary and disappointing walk to the South Side Station, where they were to take the train for Ayr. The two hours' ride on the train was as colorless; they were whirled through a novel and beautiful summer landscape, but Nature had dropped her sea-curtain and sky-curtain of fog and mist over all. When the party arrived at Ayr, it was raining. The boys' faces, too, were cloudy, and each one pressed Master Lewis with the question, "What shall we do?" Tommy Toby at last answered the rather embarrassing question with, "Let us consult the barometer." [Illustration: {THE BOYS CONSULT THE BAROMETER.}] The barometer, too, wore a cloudy face, and frowned at them, as though it meant never to predict fine weather again. But, after waiting awhile at the station, there were signs of lifting clouds and clearing skies. A weather-wise old Scotchman promised the party a fair day, and bid them "God speed" for the home of "Robbie Burns." Presently, the sun began to shoot his lances through the mist, and the tourists set out for their first walk, which was to be a two-mile one, to Burns's cottage. [Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF ROBERT BURNS.] The cottage was indeed an humble one. It was built by the father of Burns, with his own hands, before his marriage, and originally contained two rooms. In the interior of the kitchen, a Scotchwoman showed to the party a recess where "The bard peasant first drew breath." The simplicity of the place and its ennobling associations seemed to touch all except Tommy, who remarked to Frank Gray,-- "I was born in a better room than that myself." "But I fear you never will be called to sing the songs of a nation." "I fear I never shall," said Tommy, meekly. From the cottage, the party went to the Burns monument. From the base of its columns, the beauties of Scottish scenery began to appear. "It is the way in which one ends life that honors the place of one's birth," said Frank to Tommy. "So I see," said Tommy, as the sun came out and covered the beautiful monument, and illuminated the record of the poet's fame. The tourists, under the direction of a Scottish farmer, whose acquaintance Master Lewis had made, next proceeded to an eminence commanding a view of the mansion house of Coilsfield, the romance-haunting Castle of Montgomery. "There," said the Scotchman, "lived Burns's first sweetheart." "Highland Mary?" asked several voices. "Yes." "They were separated by death," said Master Lewis. "Can you tell us the story?" "As Mary was expecting soon to be wedded to Burns, she went to visit her kin in Argyleshire. She met Burns for the last time on a Sunday in May. It was a lovely day, and standing one on the one side and one on the other of a small brook, and holding a Bible between them, they promised to be true to each other for ever. "On the journey, Mary fell sick and died. You have read Burns's lines 'To Mary in Heaven'?" That sacred hour can I forget? Can I forget the hallowed grove, Where by the winding Ayr we met, To live one day of parting love? Eternity will not efface Those records dear of transports past; Thy image at our last embrace! Ah! little thought we 'twas our last! "Do you ever sing the songs of Burns?" asked Master Lewis. "Would you like to hear me try 'Highland Mary'?" "Do!" said Ernest Wynn, who was always affected by ballad music. The Scotchman quoted a line or two of the poem, changing from the English to the Scottish accent. The boys were charmed with the words, and sat down on the grass to listen to HIGHLAND MARY. Ye banks and braes and streams around The castle o' Montgomery, Green be your woods, and fair your flowers, Your waters never drumlie! There simmer first unfauld her robes, And there the langest tarry; For there I took the last fareweel O' my sweet Highland Mary. How sweetly bloomed the gay green birk, How rich the hawthorn's blossom, As underneath their fragrant shade I clasped her to my bosom! The golden hours, on angel wings, Flew o'er me and my dearie; For dear to me as light and life Was my sweet Highland Mary. Wi' monie a vow, and locked embrace, Our parting was fu' tender; And, pledging aft to meet again, We tore oursels asunder: But, oh! fell death's untimely frost That nipt my flower sae early! Now green 's the sod, and cauld 's the clay, That wraps my Highland Mary! Oh, pale, pale now, those rosy lips, I aft hae kissed sae fondly! And closed for aye the sparkling glance That dwelt on me sae kindly! And mould'ring now in silent dust That heart that lo'ed me dearly! But still within my bosom's core Shall live my Highland Mary. The "banks and braes and streams around" gleamed like a vision of enchantment in the full noon sunlight. Never had the boys listened to a song amid such highly romantic associations. Bidding the entertaining Scotchman farewell, the party returned to Ayr, and thence to Glasgow, where it arrived in the lingering sunlight of the long afternoon. The next morning it left by rail for Edinburgh, that city of high houses and terraced hills; of grandly picturesque beauty; of the times of Bruce, and the bright and dark days of the Stuarts; where one is surrounded by the relics of a thousand years, and stands under the protecting shadow of a castle that seems lifted into the regions of air. The party took rooms on Prince's Street, a thoroughfare one hundred feet wide and a mile in length, graced with noble monuments of art and bowery pleasure-grounds. It is considered one of the most picturesque streets in the world. Around you are shops with splendid windows, statues, public gardens, birds, and flowers; above you are houses six or eight stories high; above these, on the rocky hillsides, are queer old buildings of other times; and high over all is the Castle, cold and grand on its rocky throne. "I shall rest to-morrow, boys," said Master Lewis, "and shall let you roam at will. Let us spend the evening in one of the public gardens." After supper, the party went to one of these fragrant street-gardens. The band of the Duchess of Sutherland's Own, as a certain Highland regiment is called, filled the quiet air with delicious music. The sun withdrew his light from the street, the gardens, and the tall houses on the hills, but the Castle stood long in the mellowed glory of the sunset. But the sun left even the Castle at last, and then began a spectacle that seemed like an illusion or fairy-land. [Illustration: EDINBURGH CASTLE.] Lights began to twinkle in the streets; then in the tall windows above them. Now and then a whole face of an antique pile was illuminated; now some little eyrie that seemed hanging in air burst into flame; now a line of terraces began to twinkle. The lights crept up the hillsides everywhere. "I never saw any thing so beautiful!" said Ernest Wynn. Every one talks of the Castle in Edinburgh, and the boys paid their first visit to it, and saw it in its morning glory. On the highest platform of the Castle, three hundred and eighty-three feet above the sea, stands the celebrated old cannon Mons Meg, made in Mons, in Brittany, in 1486. It had figured in so many wars and historic scenes, that the Scottish people came to regard it as a national relic. The site of the Castle is about seven hundred feet in circumference, and on three sides it seems just a bare rock, rising almost perpendicularly in air. [Illustration: HOLYROOD PALACE.] The boys next visited Arthur's Seat, a high rock on the top of a hill, in which there is a fancied resemblance to a chair. Queen Victoria climbed up to it on a recent visit. It commands a sweeping view of the sea, and the hills that encircle the city. They next went to the old Palace of Holyrood, and were shown the apartments of the unfortunate Queen of Scots. "There," said the tall Scotchman who attended them about the place, "is the room where Rizzio was murdered, in the presence of Mary." They were told that a certain stain in the floor was the blood of the hapless man. [Illustration: MARY STUART.] "We must ask Master Lewis to tell us the whole story," said Wyllys. They next visited St. Giles, the scene of the preaching of Knox, the Martyrs' Monument, and Knox's grave. "We must have an evening meeting of the Club in Edinburgh," said Wyllys Wynn, when the party with Master Lewis were at tea. "To-night?" asked Frank. "I would wait until after we have been to Abbotsford," said Master Lewis. "Then I would have a meeting in the parlor, and let each one tell some story associated with the most interesting object he has seen." [Illustration: MURDER OF RIZZIO.] The next day Master Lewis and the tourists, except George and Leander, who preferred remaining in the city, took the train for Melrose, stopped at Melrose Station, and rode to Abbotsford, the reputed haunt of Thomas the Rhymer, and the residence of Walter Scott. They were met at the entrance of the gray mansion by a tall Scotchman, and were taken from the magnificent entrance hall, about forty feet in length, to the dining-room, which has a wonderful black-oak roof, and is the place where Sir Walter died. Gazing from the window on the beautiful landscape for the last time, he said to Lockhart, "Bring me a book." "What book?" "There is but one book." They were next shown the library, a repository of some twenty thousand books and of presents from most eminent persons, among them a silver urn from Lord Byron and two arm-chairs from the Pope. Our tourists next visited the ruin of Melrose Abbey, and found it less interesting than its historic associations. Late evening found them again in Edinburgh. "What time of the evening do you think it is?" asked Master Lewis of the boys as they entered the hotel. "Seven o'clock," said Tommy Toby. "After nine o'clock," said Master Lewis. The Castle still stood in the damask light of the twilight, like a dark picture on an illuminated curtain. "The summer days in these Northern regions are as long as they are beautiful," said Master Lewis. CHAPTER VI. STORY TELLING IN EDINBURGH. Story of Queen Mary and Rizzio.--Story of the Black Douglas.--Story of a Glasgow Factory Boy.--The Castle by Moonlight. The following day was to be the last the party were to spend in the beautiful city of Edinburgh. In the evening the Class met as by appointment, and, at the suggestion of Wyllys Wynn, Master Lewis was asked to conduct the exercises of the section of the Club. "I thank you," he said, "for this kind confidence, and I think we may congratulate ourselves on the success of our journey thus far. I will begin our conversation by asking Wyllys Wynn what is the most interesting place he has seen in Scotland." "The place that has most excited my interest," said Wyllys, "is the room in the palace where Rizzio was killed. It is not the most interesting place I have seen, of course, but it has most awakened my curiosity. "Will you not tell us the history of Rizzio?" "To do so," said Master Lewis, "would require some account of the whole of Queen Mary's life. The romance of Queen Mary's story will have a freshness, after what you have now seen. I will do the best I can to relate those incidents which make up the STORY OF QUEEN MARY AND RIZZIO. "Mary, Queen of Scots, was perhaps the most beautiful in person and winning in manners and polite accomplishments of any modern queen. She was the daughter of James V. of Scotland and Mary of Lorraine. Her father heard of her birth on his death-bed. He had hoped his heir would prove a son. "'It came with a lass, and it will end with a lass,' said he. "The crown of Scotland came with the daughter of Bruce, and ended with unfortunate Mary. "Mary became queen before she was a week old. Little she knew, in her innocent cradle at Linlithgow, of the crown waiting her head or the kingdom that was ruled in her name. "Her childhood was like a fairy story. She had there Marys for playmates, as she herself was named Mary; and each Mary was the daughter of a noble family. "When six years of age she was given in marriage to Francis II., the son of the French King. The French fleet carried her away from the rugged shores of Scotland, and the Scottish Marys went with her. "Ten years were passed amid the gayeties and splendors of the French court, and then, at the age of sixteen, she was married, amid great pomp and rejoicings, to the Dauphin, whose courtly devotion and elegant society she had long enjoyed. The associations of the young pair before marriage had been very happy. They delighted to be with each other even in society, when they would often separate themselves from the gay throngs around them. "The next year found Francis on the throne, and Mary seemed to be the happiest queen in the world. "But the following year the young king died, childless, and Mary was compelled to return to Scotland. "She sailed from Calais in the late summer of another changeful year. She wept when the shores of France faded from her sight, and expressed her regret in a tender poem, which you may have read. [Illustration: {FRANCIS II. OF FRANCE.}] "Mary was a Catholic. Scotland had adopted the Reformed Faith, and the Scots received her with coldness and suspicion. "Mary's life from childhood to her imprisonment was a series of romances associated with marriage schemes. Francis had not been long dead before many of the courts of Europe were planning marriage alliances with the beautiful Queen. The kings of France, Sweden, Denmark, Don Carlos of Spain, the Archduke of Austria, and many others of lesser rank were named as suitable candidates for her hand. "Her own choice fell upon her handsome cousin, Lord Darnley, who was a Catholic, and among the nearest heirs to the English crown. He was a weak, corrupt, ambitious man. But he had a winning face, and the marriage was celebrated in Holyrood Palace, in the summer of 1565. "One day, long before this marriage, as Mary was coming down the stairs of the Palace, she saw the graceful form of a dark Italian musician reclining on a piece of carved furniture in the hall. It was her first view of David Rizzio, who had come to Scotland in the train of the embassador from Savoy. In a celebrated picture of Mary, she is represented as starting back in surprise and horror at the sight of this adventurer, as though the moment were one of fate and evil foreboding. "This fascinating Italian won the confidence of Mary by his arts, and used his influence to bring about the marriage with Darnley. He became a friend of Darnley: they occupied the same apartments and engaged in the same political intrigues. "But, after the marriage, Rizzio himself drew away the affections of the Queen from Darnley, who determined to assassinate Rizzio. Several Scottish lords united with Darnley to do the deed. "One day, when Mary had been supping with Rizzio, the white face of Lord Ruthven appeared at the door of the room. "'Let _him_ come out of the room,' he said to the Queen. "'He shall not leave the room,' said the Queen; 'I read his danger in your face.' "Then Ruthven and his followers rushed upon Rizzio, dragged him from the room, and stabbed him fifty-six times. You have seen the blood-stains in the Palace, where the wily Italian was killed. "It is said that his body was thrown upon the same chest, at the foot of the stairs, where Mary had seen him first. "Mary knew that Darnley had caused the murder. "'I will now have my revenge,' she said, in the presence of the conspirators. "She said to Darnley, 'I will cause you to have as sorrowful a heart as I have now.' "For political reasons she, however, became seemingly reconciled to him. Three months after the tragedy, James VI. of Scotland and I. of England was born. You have seen his birthplace to-day. "Twelve months passed. Earl Bothwell, a profligate noble, had won the Queen's confidence. There is little doubt that the two formed a plot to destroy Darnley's life. "The Queen went to visit Darnley at Glasgow, he having fallen ill. She pretended great affection for him, and brought him to Edinburgh, and secured lodgings for him in a private house. She left him late one Sunday evening, to attend a marriage feast. "She remarked to him, in one of their last interviews,-- "'It was about this time, a year ago, I believe, that David was murdered.' "After she had gone, there was a great explosion, and Darnley's dead body was found in a neighboring garden. "Mary had had her revenge. "Three months after the tragedy she married Bothwell, who had secured a divorce from his young wife to prepare the way for the event. [Illustration: FRANCIS II. AND MARY STUART LOVE-MAKING.] "Scotland rose against Mary. She fled to England, and threw herself on the protection of Elizabeth, abdicating the throne in favor of her son. She was secured as a prisoner, and confined at Carlisle. She was taken from Carlisle to Fotheringhay Castle. She was at last tried for conspiracy against the life of Elizabeth. Sentence of death was passed upon her. She protested her innocence. You know the rest,--the last tragedy of all, in the Castle of Fotheringhay. "Bothwell died an exile and a madman, some nine years after his marriage with Mary. "It is said that it was found, after her execution, that her real hair, under her wig, was as white as that of a woman of seventy. I cannot wonder. "She had one little friend who remained true to the last. It was her little dog. He followed her to the block, and cowered, frightened, under her dress, at the fatal moment, and lay down beside her headless body when the last tragedy was over. It could not be driven away from its mistress; and when the body was removed it began to droop, as though understanding its loss, and in two days it died." "I have spoken at school a poem by Bulwer Lytton, founded on the incident," said Wyllys. "Can you now repeat it?" asked Master Lewis. "I will try." THE DEAD QUEEN. The world is full of life and love; the world methinks might spare, From millions, one to watch above the dust of monarchs there. And not one human eye!--yet, lo! what stirs the funeral pall? What sound--it is not human woe wails moaning through the hall. Close by the form mankind desert one thing a vigil keeps; More near and near to that still heart it wistful, wondering, creeps. It gazes on those glazed eyes, it hearkens for a breath; It does not know that kindness dies, and love departs from death. It fawns as fondly as before upon that icy hand, And hears from lips that speak no more the voice that can command. To that poor fool, alone on earth, no matter what had been The pomp, the fall, the guilt, the worth, the dead was still a Queen. With eyes that horror could not scare, it watched the senseless clay, Crouched on the breast of death, and there moaned its fond life away. And when the bolts discordant clashed, and human steps drew nigh, The human pity shrank abashed before that faithful eye; It seemed to gaze with such rebuke on those who could forsake, Then turned to watch once more the look, and strive the sleep to wake. They raised the pall, they touched the dead: a cry, and both were stilled, Alike the soul that hate had sped, the life that love had killed. Semir'amis of England,[1] hail! thy crime secures thy sway; But when thine eyes shall scan the tale those hireling scribes convey, When thou shalt read, with late remorse, how one poor slave was found Beside thy butchered rival's corse, the headless and discrowned, Shall not thy soul foretell thine own unloved, expiring hour, When those who kneel around the throne shall fly the falling tower?-- When thy great heart shall silent break; when thy sad eyes shall strain Through vacant space, one thing to seek, one thing that loved--in vain? Though round thy parting pangs of pride shall priest and noble crowd, More worth the grief that mourned beside thy victim's gory shroud! [1] Elizabeth. Master Lewis continued the general subject of the meeting. "What, Frank, has been the most interesting object you have seen?" "The Cannongate. I read its history in the guide-book, and I spent an hour in the place. One could seem in fancy to live there hundreds of years." "King James rode through this street on his way to Flodden," said Master Lewis. "Montrose was dragged here upon a hurdle. It was in a church here that Jenny Geddes bespoke the sentiment of the people by hurling her stool at the head of the Dean, who attempted to enforce the Episcopal service. "'I will read the Collect,' said the Dean. "'Colic, said ye? The De'il colic the wame of ye!' "Here came John Knox, after his interview with Queen Mary, cold and grim, and unmoved by her tears. Here rode the Pretender. Here dwelt the great Dukes of Scotland and the Earls of Moray and Mar." [Illustration: THE DEATH-BED OF FRANCIS II.] "I wished I were a poet, a painter, or an historian, when I was there," said Frank. "It is said Sir Walter Scott used to ride there slowly, and that almost every gable recalled to him some scene of triumph or of bloodshed." "I cannot begin to tell you stories of Cannongate," said Master Lewis. "Such stories would fill volumes, and give a view of the whole of Scottish history. What, Ernest, has impressed you most?" "The view of Edinburgh at night is the most beautiful sight I have seen. But the charm that Scott's poetry has given to Melrose Abbey, haunts me still, notwithstanding my disappointment at the ruin. This was the tomb of the Douglases and of the heart of Bruce." "I will tell you a story of one of the Douglases, whose castle still stands, not far from Melrose," said Master Lewis; "a story which I think is one of the most pleasing of the Border Wars. I will call the story THE BLACK DOUGLAS. "King Edward I. of England nearly conquered Scotland. They did not have photographs in those days, but had expressive and descriptive names for people of rank, which answered just as well. So Edward was known as 'Longshanks.' It was from no lack of spirit or energy that he did not quite complete the stubborn work; but he died a little too soon. On his death-bed he called his pretty, spiritless son to him, and made him promise to carry on the war; he then ordered that his body should be boiled in a caldron, and that his bones should be wrapped up in a bull's hide, and carried at the head of the army in future campaigns against the Scots. After these and some other queer requests, death relieved him of the hard politics of this world, and so he went away. Then his son, Edward II., tucked away the belligerent old King's bones among the bones of other old kings in Westminster Abbey, and spent his time in dissipation among his favorites, and allowed the resolute Scots to recover Scotland. "Good James, Lord Douglas, was a very wise man in his day. He may not have had long shanks, but he had a very long head, as you shall presently see. He was one of the hardest foes with whom the two Edwards had to contend, and his long head proved quite too powerful for the second Edward, who, in his single campaign against the Scots, lost at Bannockburn nearly all that his father had gained. "The tall Scottish Castle of Roxburgh stood near the border, lifting its grim turrets above the Teviot and the Tweed. When the Black Douglas, as Lord James was called, had recovered castle after castle from the English, he desired to gain this stronghold, and determined to accomplish his wish. "But he knew it could be taken only by surprise, and a very wily ruse it must be. He had outwitted the English so many times that they were sharply on the lookout for him. "How could it be done? "Near the castle was a gloomy old forest, called Jedburgh. Here, just as the first days of spring began to kindle in the sunrise and sunsets, and warm the frosty hills, Black Douglas concealed sixty picked men. "It was Shrove-tide, and Fasten's Eve, immediately before the great Church festival of Lent, was to be celebrated with a great gush of music and blaze of light and free offerings of wine in the great hall of the castle. The garrison was to have leave for merry-making and indulging in drunken wassail. "The sun had gone down in the red sky, and the long, deep shadow began to fall on Jedburgh woods, the river, the hills, and valleys. "An officer's wife had retired from the great hall, where all was preparation for the merry-making, to the high battlements of the castle, in order to quiet her little child and put it to rest. The sentinel, from time to time, paced near her. She began to sing,-- "'Hush ye, Hush ye, Little pet ye! Hush ye, Hush ye, Do not fret ye; The Black Douglas Shall not get ye!' [Illustration: MARY STUART SWEARING SHE HAD NEVER SOUGHT THE LIFE OF ELIZABETH.] "She saw some strange objects moving across the level ground in the distance. They greatly puzzled her. They did not travel quite like animals, but they seemed to have four legs. "'What are those queer-looking things yonder?' she asked of the sentinel as he drew near. "'They are Farmer Asher's cattle,' said the soldier, straining his eyes to discern the outlines of the long figures in the shadows. 'The good man is making merry to-night, and has forgotten to bring in his oxen; lucky 't will be if they do not fall a prey to the Black Douglas.' "So sure was he that the objects were cattle that he ceased to watch them longer. "The woman's eye, however, followed the queer-looking cattle for some time, until they seemed to disappear under the outer works of the castle. Then, feeling quite at ease, she thought she would sing again. Spring was in the evening air; it may have made her feel like singing. "Now the name of the Black Douglas had become so terrible to the English that it proved a bugbear to the children, who, when they misbehaved, were told that the Black Douglas would get them. The little ditty I have quoted must have been very quieting to good children in those alarming times. "So the good woman sang cheerily,-- "'Hush ye, Hush ye, Little pet ye! Hush ye, Hush ye, Do not fret ye; The Black Douglas Shall not get ye!' "'DO NOT BE SO SURE OF THAT!' said a husky voice close beside her, and a mail-gloved hand fell solidly upon her shoulder. She was dreadfully frightened, for she knew from the appearance of the man he must be the Black Douglas. "The Scots came leaping over the walls. The garrison was merry-making below, and, almost before the disarmed revellers had any warning, the Black Douglas was in the midst of them. The old stronghold was taken, and many of the garrison were put to the sword; but the Black Douglas spared the woman and the child, who probably never afterward felt quite so sure about the little ditty,-- "'Hush ye, Hush ye, Do not fret ye; The Black Douglas Shall not get ye!' It is never well to be too sure, you know. [Illustration: THE BLACK DOUGLAS SURPRISING AN ENEMY.] "Douglas had caused his picked men to approach the castle by walking on their hands and knees, with long black cloaks thrown over their bodies, and their ladders and weapons concealed under their cloaks. The men thus presented very nearly the appearance of a herd of cattle in the deep shadows, and completely deceived the sentinel, who was probably thinking more of the music and dancing below than of the watchful enemy who had been haunting the gloomy woods of Jedburgh. "The Black Douglas, or 'Good James, Lord Douglas,' as he was called by the Scots, fought, as I have already said, with King Robert Bruce at Bannockburn. One lovely June day, in the far-gone year of 1329, King Robert lay dying. He called Douglas to his bedside, and told him that it had been one of the dearest wishes of his heart to go to the Holy Land and recover Jerusalem from the Infidels; but since he could not go, he wished him to embalm his heart after his death, and carry it to the Holy City and deposit it in the Holy Sepulchre. "Douglas had the heart of Bruce embalmed and inclosed in a silver case, and wore it on a silver chain about his neck. He set out for Jerusalem, but resolved first to visit Spain and engage in the war waged against the Moorish King of Grenada. He fell in Andalusia, in battle. Just before his death, he threw the silver casket into the thickest of the fight, exclaiming, 'Heart of Bruce! I follow thee or die!' "His dead body was found beside the casket, and the heart of Bruce was brought back to Scotland and deposited in the ivy-clad Abbey of Melrose. "Douglas was a real hero, and few things more engaging than his exploits were ever told under the holly and mistletoe, or in the warm Christmas light of the old Scottish Yule-logs. "What has interested you most in Scotland?" said Master Lewis to George Howe, continuing the subject. "I am hardly interested in antiquities at all," said George, frankly. "I try to be, but it is not in me. A living factory is more to my taste than a dead museum. The most interesting things I have seen are the great Glasgow factories. As for stories, I have been thinking of one that has more force for me than all the legends I ever read." "We shall be glad to hear you tell it," said Master Lewis. "My business is teaching, and it is my duty to stimulate a love of literature. But I have all respect for a boy with mechanical taste; no lives promise greater usefulness. We will listen to George's story." "It is not a romantic story," said George. "I will call it A GLASGOW FACTORY BOY. "Just above the wharves of Glasgow, on the banks of the Clyde, there once lived a factory boy, whom I will call Davie. At the age of ten he entered a cotton factory as 'piecer.' He was employed from six o'clock in the morning till eight at night. His parents were very poor, and he well knew that his must be a boyhood of very hard labor. But then and there, in that buzzing factory, he resolved that he would obtain an education, and would become an intelligent and a useful man. With his very first week's wages he purchased 'Ruddiman's Rudiments of Latin,' He then entered an evening school that met between the hours of eight and ten. He paid the expenses of his instruction out of his own hard earnings. At the age of sixteen he could read Virgil and Horace as readily as the pupils of the English grammar schools. "He next began a course of self-instruction. He had been advanced in the factory from a 'piecer' to the spinning-jenny. He brought his books to the factory, and placing one of them on the 'jenny,' with the lesson open before him, he divided his attention between the running of the spindles and rudiments of knowledge. He now began to aspire to become a preacher and a missionary, and to devote his life in some self-sacrificing way to the good of mankind. He entered Glasgow University. He knew that he must work his way, but he also knew the power of resolution, and he was willing to make almost any sacrifice to gain the end. He worked at cotton-spinning in the summer, lived frugally, and applied his savings to his college studies in the winter. He completed the allotted course, and at the close was able triumphantly to say, '_I never had a farthing that I did not earn_.' "That boy was Dr. David Livingstone." "An excellent story," said Master Lewis. "A sermon in a story, and a volume of philosophy in a life. Now, Tommy, what is the most attractive thing _you_ have seen?" "I see it now. Oh, look! look!" said Tommy, flying to the window. The full moon was hanging over the great castle, whitening its grim turrets. The boys all gazed upon the scene, which appeared almost too beautiful for reality. "It looks like a castle in the sky," said Wyllys. Story-telling was at an end. So the exercises ended with an exhibition of Edinburgh Castle by moonlight. [Illustration: {CÆSAR'S LEGIONS LANDING IN BRITAIN.}] CHAPTER VII. A RAINY EVENING STORY AT CARLISLE. The Druids and Romans.--The Story of the Jolly Harper Man.--"When first I came to Merry Carlisle." "Carlisle!" said Master Lewis, as the cars stopped at a busy looking city, the terminus of many lines of railway. "Carlisle?" asked Frank Gray, glancing at the evidences of business energy about the station. "Carlisle? I have heard that the city was a thousand years old." "An old city may grow," said Master Lewis, on the way to the hotel. "In 1800, Carlisle had but 4,000 inhabitants, now it has more than 30,000." Carlisle was the ancient seat of the kings of Cambria, and was a Roman station in the early days of the Christian era. It was destroyed in 900 by the Danes, was ravaged by the Picts and Scots, was doubtless visited by Agricola, Severus, and Hadrian, and it has a part in the history of all the Border wars. Here half-forgotten kings lived; here Roman generals made their airy camps, and near it the grotesque ships of Roman emperors dropped their sails in the Solway. Here Christianity made an early advent, and the hideous rites of the Druid priests disappeared. [Illustration: ROMANS INVADING BRITAIN.] The ancient Druids worshipped in sacred groves; the oaks were their fanes and chapels, but they erected immense stone temples open to the sky, the moon, and stars: these were their cathedrals. In them were great stones used as altars of sacrifice, and on their altars the dark and mysterious priests offered up human victims to their gods. The country around Carlisle abounds in Roman and Druidical relics, and in antiquities associated with the Border contests. At Penrith may be seen the ruins of a Druid temple, formed of sixty-seven immense stones, called "long Meg and her daughters." The Isle of Man, the ancient and poetic Mona, whose grand scenery was once the supposed abode of the gods of the Saxons, lies near the Solway, and to it excursion steamers go from the western coast towns of England carrying pleasure seekers all the long summer days. Here the Druids gathered after the defeat of the Saxons by the Romans, and thither the Romans followed them, and fell upon the long-bearded priests and the wild torch-bearing priestesses, and put them to the sword. The island of Mona may be called the Druid's sepulchre. The afternoon was rainy, and the boys, though impatient, were confined to the hotel. [Illustration: {MASSACRE OF THE DRUIDS.}] In the evening Master Lewis said,-- "One of the most quaint and curious of old English ballads is associated with Carlisle, and is founded upon a funny story which illustrates the rude simplicity of the early English court. The ballad may be found in the Percy Society's Collections, which you may some day examine in the Boston Public Library, or indeed in any great library at home or in England. It is entitled 'The Jolly Harper Man.' I will relate it to you in the rather decorated style that I once heard it told to a company of young people at a Christmas gathering in one of the London charity schools. I hope it will interest you as much now as it did the boys and girls who listened to it then. [Illustration: DRUID SACRIFICE.] THE STORY OF THE JOLLY HARPER MAN AND HIS GOOD FORTUNE. "Many, many years ago,--as long ago as the days of Fair Rosamond, when Henry Plantagenet and his unruly family governed England, and some think as long ago as old Henry I.,--there lived in Scotland a jolly harper man, who was accounted the most charming player in all the world. The children followed him in crowds through the streets, nor could they be stopped while he continued playing; even the animals in the woods sat on their haunches to listen when he wandered harping through the country; and the fair daughters of the nobles immediately fell in love as often as he approached their castles. "King Henry had a wonderful horse--a very wonderful horse--named _Brownie_. He did not quite equal in dexterity and intelligence the high-flying animal of whom you have read in the 'Arabian Nights,' but he knew a great deal, and was a sort of philosopher among horses,--just as Newton was a philosopher among men. King Henry said he would not part with him for a province,--he would rather lose his crown. In this he was wise, for a new crown could have been as easily made as a stew-pan; but all the world, it may be, could not produce such another intelligent horse. "King Henry had fine stables built for the animal,--a sort of horse palace. They were very strong, and were fastened by locks, and bars, and bolts, and were kept by gay grooms, and guarded day and night by soldiers, who never had been known to falter in their devotion to the interests of the king. "So strongly was the animal guarded, that it came to be a proverb among the English yeomanry, that a person could no more do this or that hard thing than 'they could steal Brownie from the stables of the king.' "The king liked the proverb; it was a compliment to his wisdom and sagacity. It made him feel good,--so good, in fact, that it led him one day quite to overshoot the mark in an effort that he made to increase the people's high opinion. "'If any one,' said he, after a good dinner,--'if any one were smart enough to get Brownie out of his stables without my knowledge, I would for his cleverness forgive him, and give him an estate to return the animal.' Then he looked very wise, and felt very comfortable and very secure. 'But,' he added, 'evil overtake the man who gets caught in an attempt to steal my horse. Lucky will it be for him if his eyes ever see the light of the English sun again.' "Then the report went abroad that the man who would be so shrewd as to get possession of the king's horse should have an estate, but that he who failed in the attempt should lose his head. "The English court, at this time, was at Carlisle, near the Scottish border. The jolly harper man lived in the old town of Striveling, since called Stirling, at some distance from the border. "The jolly harper man, like most people of genius, was very poor. He often played in the castles of the nobles, especially on festive occasions; and, as he contrasted the luxurious living of these fat lords with his own poverty, he became suddenly seized with a desire for wealth, and he remembered the proverb, which was old even then, that 'Where there is a will there is a way.' "One autumn day, as he was travelling along the borders of Loch Lomond, a famous lake in the middle of Scotland, he remembered that there was a cave overlooking the lake from a thickly wooded hill, in which dwelt a hermit, who often was consulted by people in perplexity, and who bore the name of the 'Man of Wisdom.' "He was not a wicked magician, nor did he pretend to have any dealings with the dead. He was gifted only with what was called clearness of vision; he could see into the secret of things, just as Zerah Colburn could see into difficult problems of mathematics, without study. Things that were darkness to others were as clear as sunlight to him. He lived on roots and herbs, and flourished so wonderfully on the diet, that what he didn't know was considered not worth knowing. [Illustration: THE HERMIT.] "It was near nightfall when the jolly harper man came to the famous hill. The sun was going down in splendor, and the moon was coming up, faint and shadowy, and turning into gold as the shadows deepened. Showers of silver began to fall on Loch Lomond, and to quiver over the valleys. It was an hour to fill a minstrel's heart with romantic feeling, and it lent its witchery to the heart of the jolly harper man. "He wandered up the hill overlooking the lake, where dwelt the Man of Wisdom to whose mind all things were clear. He sat down near the mouth of the cave, partook of his evening meal, then, seizing his harp, began to play. "He played a tune of wonderful sweetness and sadness, so soft and airy that the notes seemed to glide down the moonbeams, like the tinkling of fairy bells in the air. The wicked owl pricked up his ears to listen, and was so overcome that he wished he was a more respectable bird. The little animals came out of the bushes, and formed a circle around the jolly harper man, as though enchanted. "The old hermit heard the strain, and came out to listen; and, because he had clearness of vision, he knew that music of such wonderful tenderness could be produced only by one who had great gifts of nature, and who also had some secret longing in his heart. "So he came up to the jolly harper man, walking with his cane, his gray beard falling over his bosom, and his long white hair silvered in the moonlight. "The jolly harper man secretly expected him, or at least he hoped that he would come out. Like the Queen of Sheba, he wished to test the wisdom of this new Solomon, and to inquire of him if there were no way of turning his wonderful musical genius into bags of gold. "'Why do you wander here, my good harper?' asked the hermit, when the last strain melted away in low, airy echoes over the lake. 'There are neither lads to dance nor lassies to sing. This hill is my dominion, and the dominion of a hermit is solitude.' "'See you not Loch Lomond silvered in the moon?' said the jolly harper man. 'Nature inspired me to touch my harp, and I love to play when the inspiration of Nature comes upon me.' "The answer pleased the hermit as much as the music. "'But why is your music so sad, my good harper man; what is there that you would have that fortune denies?' "'Alas!' said the jolly harper man, 'I am very poor. My harpings all die in the air, and leave me but a scanty purse, poor clothing, and no roof over my head. You are a man of wisdom, to whom all things are clear. Point out to me the way to fortune, my wise hermit. I have a good liberal heart; you could not do a service to a more deserving man.' "The old hermit sat down on a stone in silence, resting his chin on his staff. He seemed lost in profound thought. At last he looked up, and said slowly, pausing between each sentence,-- "'Beyond the border there is a famous country; in that country there is a palace; near the palace there is a stable, and in that stable there is a stately horse. That horse is the pride of the kingdom; the man who would get possession of that horse, without the king's knowledge, might exchange him for a province.' "'Wonderful! wonderful! But--' "'Near Striveling town there is a hill; on the hillside is a lot; in the lot is a fine gray mare, and beside the gray mare is a foal.' "'Yes, yes! wonderful! but--' "'I must now reveal to you one of the secrets of Nature. Separate that mare from the foal, though it be for hundreds of miles, and, as soon as she is free, she will return to her foal again. Nature has taught her how, just as she teaches the birds of passage the way to sunny islands; or the dog to find the lost hunter; or--' "'Yes, yes; all very wonderful, but--' "'In your hand you carry a harp; in the harp lies the power to make merry; a merry king makes a festive board, and festivity produces deep sleep in the morning hours.' "The jolly harper man saw it all in a twinkling; the way to fortune lay before him clear as sunlight. Perhaps you, Tommy, do not get the idea so suddenly. If not, I fear you are not gifted like the good hermit with clearness of vision. "The jolly harper man returned to Striveling the next day, after spending the night with the hermit on the borders of Loch Lomond. "The following night he was summoned to play before two famous Scottish knights, Sir Charles and Sir Roger. They were very valiant, very rich, and, when put into good humor, were very liberal. "The jolly harper man played merrily. The great hall of the castle seemed full of larks, nightingales, elves, and fairies. "'Why, man,' said Sir Roger to Sir Charles, in a mellow mood, 'you and I could no more harp like that than we could gallop out of Carlisle on the horse of the king.' "'Let me make a prophecy,' said the jolly harper man at this. 'I will one day ride _into_ Carlisle on the horse of the king, and will exchange the horse for an estate.' "'And I will add to the estate five ploughs of land,' said Sir Roger; 'so that you never shall lack for a home in old Scotland.' "'And I will add to the five ploughs of land five thousand pounds,' said Sir Charles; 'so that you never shall lack for good cheer.' "The next morning the jolly harper man was seen riding out of Striveling town on a fine gray mare; but a little colt was heard whinnying alone in the high fenced lot on the side of the hill. "It had been a day of high festival at Carlisle; it was now the cool of the summer eve; the horn of the returning hunter was heard in the forest, and gaily plumed knights and courtiers were seen approaching the illuminated palace, urging their steeds along the banks of the river Eden, that wound through the moonlit landscape like a ribbon of silver. "The feast was at its height. The king's heart was merry. There only needed some novelty, now that the old diversions had come to an end, to complete the delights of the festive hours. "Suddenly sweet sounds, as of a tuning harp, were heard without the palace. Then music of marvellous sweetness seemed to fill the air. The windows and doors of the palace were thrown open. The king himself left the table, and stood listening on the balcony. "A merry tune followed the airy prelude; it made the nerves of the old nobles tingle as though they were young again; and, as for the king, his heart began to dance within him. "'Come in! come in, my harper man!' shouted the king, shaking his sides with laughter, and patting a fat noble on the shoulder with delight. 'Come in, and let us hear some more of your harping.' "The jolly harper man bowed very low. 'I shall be glad to serve your grace; but first, give me stabling for my good gray mare.' "'Take the animal to my best stables,' said the king. ''Tis there I keep my Brownie, the finest horse in all the land.' "The jolly harper man, accompanied by a gay groom, then took his horse to the stables; and, as soon as he came out of the stable-door, struck up his most lively and bewitching tune. "The grooms all followed him, and the guards followed the grooms. The servants all came flocking into the hall as the jolly harper man entered, and the king's heart grew so merry, that all who came were made welcome, and given good cheer. "The small hours of night came at last, and the grand people in the hall began to yawn, one after another. The jolly harper man now played a very soothing melody. The king began to yawn, opening his mouth each time a little wider than before, and finally he dozed off in his chair, his head tilted back, and his mouth stretched almost from ear to ear. The fat nobles, too, began to snore. First the king snored, and then the nobles, which was a very proper way of doing the thing,--the blissful sound passing from nose to nose, and making a circuit of the tables. "The guards, grooms, and servants began to feel very comfortable, indeed; and, though it was their business to keep awake, their eyelids grew very heavy, and they began to reason that it would be perfectly safe to doze while their masters were sleeping. Who ever knew any mischief to happen when everybody was asleep? "The jolly harper man now played his dreamiest music, and just as the cock crew for the first time in the morning, he had the satisfaction of seeing the last lackey fall asleep. He then blew out the lights, and crept nimbly forth to the stables. He found the stable door unlocked, and the gray mare kicking impatiently about, and whinnying for her foal. "Now, what do you suppose the jolly harper man did? Guess, if you have Clearness of Vision. He took from his pocket a stout string, and tied the halter of the king's horse, the finest in all the land, to the halter of his own animal, and patting the fine gray mare on her side said: 'And now go home to your foal.' "The next morning all was consternation in the palace. The king's horse was gone. The king sent for the jolly harper man, and said,-- "'My horse has escaped out of the stables, the finest animal in all the land!' "'And where is my fine gray mare?' asked the jolly harper man. "'Gone, too,' said the king. "'I will tell you what I think,' said the jolly harper man, with wonderful confidence. 'I think that there has been a rogue in the town.' "The king, with equal wisdom, favored the idea, and the jolly harper man made an early escape that morning from the palace. "Then the jolly harper man went as fast as he could to Striveling. Of course, he found his fine gray mare in the lot with her foal, and the king's horse tied to her halter; and, of course, he rode the noble animal into Carlisle; and presenting himself before the two knights, Sir Roger and Sir Charles, claimed his five ploughs of land and five thousand pounds. "'Go to! go to!' said Sir Roger, pointing at him in derision; and Sir Charles laughed a mighty laugh of scorn. 'The man does not live who could ride away the king's Brownie! Go to!' "'The king's Brownie stands in your own court!' cried the jolly harper man; and Sir Roger and Sir Charles paid their forfeits without another word. "Then the jolly harper man returned the king's horse to the royal owner: and who ever heard of such a thing as a king breaking his promise? Not the jolly harper man, you may be sure." "Is the story a true one?" asked Tommy Toby. "The story, as I heard it, was acknowledged to be considerably embellished; and I have tried to make it as attractive as possible. You should always remember this, that a good historic story gathers color by time. The stories of Faust, Macbeth, King Lear, William Tell, Robert the Devil, and many others I might name, have but meagre facts for a starting point." "I know a story of Nottingham, that I think as funny as that," said Tommy. "It is about the Wise Men of Gotham." "We will hear it when we go to Nottingham," said Master Lewis. "I think we will go there at once, after an excursion to the English Lakes." The next morning George Howe and Leander Towle left the party for Birmingham, London, and Paris, as their means would not admit of their making easy zigzag journeys through England, in the way that Master Lewis had planned for the other boys. They agreed to meet Master Lewis and their companions in London, on their return from Paris, at which time they would have completed their tour, and would be obliged to leave for home before the others made their journey through Normandy. Ernest Wynn, as we have said, was very fond of old English and Scottish ballads, and he never lost any good opportunity to hear a new song. While the party were talking over their plans for visiting English places, the sound of a piano in an adjoining room fell upon Ernest's ear. He left his companions, and, going into the open room from which the music came, listened attentively to the playing. "Do you sing?" asked Ernest of the player, who was a pleasant-faced little miss about ten or twelve years of age. "Sometimes." "I like music. Will you not sing for me?" "If I can. What would you have me sing?" "Oh, something about Carlisle: something that I would not hear at home." "Where is your home?" "In America." "In America! What, so far? Perhaps you would like to hear 'Mona's Waters?'" "Yes," said Ernest. The song was very winningly sung. "Now perhaps you would like to hear 'When first I came to merry Carlisle'?" Ernest smiled. "It doesn't mean you at all. It was a girl who lost her lover in one of the Border Wars. "'When first I came to merry Carlisle, Ne'er was a town sae sweetly seeming: The white rose flaunted o'er the wall, The thistled banners far were streaming. "'When next I came to merry Carlisle, Oh sad, sad, seemed the town, an' eerie! The auld, auld men came out and wept, O maiden! come ye to seek yere dearie?'" "Thank you for that song," said Ernest. "I have heard 'Highland Mary' sung at Ayr, and shall always remember it. And I shall also be pleased to recollect,-- "'When first I came to merry Carlisle.'" "And 'the girl I left behind me,'" said Tommy Toby to Ernest, softly. The Miss saw the point of the joke, and, as it was politely spoken, received the implied compliment with becoming modesty and good-humor, saying that she should also remember very pleasantly the visit of the Zigzag Club to her father's house. CHAPTER VIII. A CLOUDLESS DAY. Sherwood Forest.--Nottingham.--Story of the Wise Men of Gotham. "Have stood by the graves of Wordsworth and Coleridge. The trees were green and cool; the Rotha rippled beside the poets' resting-place, and Helvellyn and Catchedicam in the distance rose in the calm, bright air. Beautiful indeed are these mountains in midsummer. The whole Lake region is beautiful--beautiful!" Such was the brief entry Wyllys Wynn made in the journal in his guide-book, on returning from the English Lakes. "There is a touching story associated with Helvellyn," said Wyllys to Master Lewis, as the boys were returning from the Lakes, "that Scott has told in very musical verse. It is of a little dog that watched beside the dead body of his master for several months, and was found guarding the bones. Will you not relate it to us?" "Wordsworth and Scott, I think," said Master Lewis, "both tell the story in verse. "About the year 1805 there dwelt in the district a young man of elegant tastes, who loved to explore these mountain regions. He was well known for his literary attainments, and greatly beloved for his gentle and amiable manners. "He used to make frequent excursions among the wild mountains, and would spend whole days feasting his eye on the exhaustless beauties they afforded. He was always attended by a little terrier dog, to which he was greatly attached, and which was ever on the alert to do his master's bidding. Scott, in his ballad, calls the young man the Wanderer, and so I will call him now. "One spring day, when the streams were swollen, and the mountains were all alive with waterfalls, birds, and flowers, the Wanderer set out on an excursion that promised unusual attractions, attended by his little favorite. He penetrated too far, or remained too long; night probably overtook him, and he lost his way. He fell from a precipice, and was dashed in pieces. For several months the little dog watched by the remains of his beloved master, only leaving them, it is supposed, to obtain necessary food. The remains of the Wanderer were found during the following summer by a party of excursionists, and, when discovered, the terrier was guarding them with pitying care. "Sir Walter Scott, in company with Wordsworth, ascended Helvellyn during the following autumn, and visited the spot where the Wanderer died. The well-known ballad, one of the most pathetic of Scott's poetical compositions, was the result of this excursion. "'I climbed the dark brow of the mighty Helvellyn, Lakes and mountains beneath me gleamed misty and wide, All was still, save by fits, when the eagle was yelling, And starting around me the echoes replied. On the right Striden-edge round the Red-tarn was bending, And Catchedicam its left verge was defending, One huge, nameless rock in the front was ascending, When I marked the sad spot where the Wanderer had died.'" The Class stopped at Sheffield, and thence began their first experience of English stage-coaching to the old town of Mansfield. They entered the latter upon a market-day, and found the streets full of empty carts, cattle, and rustic people, presenting a scene of truly ancient simplicity. Mansfield is still a miller's town, and must present nearly the same appearance as in the days of Henry II., who, according to the old ballad, was lost in the forests near the place. The forests, however, have changed: little remains of them but a heath, traversed by wild and romantic roads. Here and there a great tree, like a forest lord, may be seen, to remind one of the kingly hunting days. Leaving Mansfield for Sherwood Forest, strange houses by the wayside, excavated in limestone and recalling the supposed age of the cave-dwellers, as in an unexpected picture, much excited the boys' curiosity. Sherwood Forest, or as much of it as remains, is twenty-five miles long and about eight broad. The new growth of trees is very fine; but it is the remains of the grand old oaks that attract the tourist and summer wanderer. The wood has a ground-work of exhaustless ferns, the delicate birches flutter in the warm winds, their peculiar shade contrasting with the greenery around them. Here and there oaks of different ages and altitudes rise gray, gnarled, and almost leafless,--oaks on which a thousand tempests have beaten, and around which ten thousand storms have blown. In Henry II.'s time not only Nottingham, but the whole of England, was covered with oaks. [Illustration: SHAMBLE OAK.] Tommy Toby was very urgent to visit some of the old historic oaks of Sherwood, especially such as are associated with quaint stories and tragic histories. Procuring a guide, the Class went first to see Shamble Oak. Think of it: in the main circuit it is thirty-four feet! It is called Shamble Oak because a butcher once used its hollow trunk to conceal stolen sheep. He was hung on an oak. The guide next took the boys to a dreamy old place called Welbeck Park, to see the Greendale Oak, supposed to be seven hundred years old, and which has a circumference of more than thirty-five feet! "It looks as though it had the rheumatism," said Tommy. "With all of its crutches and canes it will not live many years longer. Do you think it will?" "I think it likely to outlive all of us," said the guide. "More than one hundred and fifty years ago an arch was cut in this tree, and a lord rode through it on his wedding day. It was very, very old then; but the lord is gone, and the oak lives." [Illustration: GREENDALE OAK.] The guide procured for the party a vehicle, and drove to Parliament Oak, under which it is said that Edward I. held a Parliament in 1290. The tree still furnishes green boughs. Its girth is about twenty-nine feet. Newstead Abbey, the home of Lord Byron, forms a part of the old forest of Sherwood, and is but a short distance from Mansfield. It was founded by Henry II., and presents one of the picturesque and interesting ruins in this part of England. "You will not be allowed to visit the Abbey," said the guide. "The rooms of Lord Byron remain just as he left them; his bedstead, with gilded coronets, his pictures, portraits of friends, writing-table, and all; but it is private property, and visitors are not allowed." "The Abbey was built by Henry as one of the many peace offerings which he made for the murder of Thomas à Becket," said Master Lewis. "You remember the story?" [Illustration: PARLIAMENT OAK.] "Yes," said Wyllys Wynn. "Thomas à Becket claimed that the power of the clergy was superior to the power of the king, and Henry pronounced him a traitor. He was killed at the altar by a party of conspirators, whose deed had the supposed sanction of the king. Henry did penance at Thomas à Becket's tomb." "He stripped his back, and allowed the monks to whip him, did he not?" said Tommy. "I remember the picture of it in my history." Distant views of Newstead, so full of strange memories and fantastic histories, were all the Class could obtain. The ruin looked down upon the charming old Nottinghamshire woodlands like a picture of the past, and the spirit of romance and poetry seemed to linger around it still. [Illustration: MORTIMER'S HOLE.] Going next to the fine old town of Nottingham, almost the first thing which the boys desired to see was Mortimer's Hole. This is a passage through a sand-rock, more than three hundred feet in length. Through this passage young Edward entered Nottingham Castle by night, and thus surprised and captured Mortimer (Earl of March). The wicked Earl was conveyed by the same passage out of the castle so secretly that the guards were not aware that it had been entered. In the evening spent at Nottingham, Tommy Toby was asked about his story of which he had spoken in connection with the place. [Illustration: MURDER OF THOMAS À BECKET.] "It is not a story of Nottingham, but of Gotham, near Nottingham. It is about the Wise Men." "Who went to sea in a bowl?" asked Frank. "No, they were much wiser than that. I will try to tell it in the way Master Lewis tells his stories: in the rather _decorated_ style." "I hope you will always have as nice a sense of honor as you show now," said Master Lewis, "whenever you make the slightest change from plain truth to parable. You have a tact for story-telling, for one so young; and you studied up the story of 'The Frolicsome Duke,' which you told the Club, in a manner that quite surprised us. I hope this story will prove as entertaining." THE STORY OF THE WISE MEN OF GOTHAM. "More than six hundred and fifty years ago, there reigned in England a king, named John. They called him _Sansterre_ or Lackland, for, unlike his brothers, he had received from his father no fiefs. "He was the son of Henry Plantagenet, a good king, as kings went in those rude times, who governed England for thirty-four years. "His mother was Eleanora of Aquitaine, who was, in her day, the prettiest girl in France. But she was a wilful little woman and full of craft. She married the French king first, but, not liking him on account of his monkish ways, she procured a divorce, and told Henry Plantagenet, who was young and handsome and gay, that she would like to marry him. He accepted the proposal, because the union would add to his dominions several provinces. Henry loved Rosamond Clifford,--'Fair Rosamond,'--whom he had met in the valley of the Wye, and who was the prettiest girl in all the world. "The marriage proved an unhappy one. Henry soon discovered what a wily, wilful little woman she was; he tried to curb her, and a terrible time he had. "Richard succeeded his father. It was he who made the grandest crusade of the Middle Ages; who was married at Cyprus in flower-time; who fought with noble Saladin at Acre and Jaffa; who was obliged to sail away from the Holy Land; who looked back from his beautiful ship on the unconquered coast with regret; who was shipwrecked and cast upon a hostile coast; and who was discovered, when imprisoned in a gloomy old castle on the Danube, by the harp of Blondel the Troubadour. "Then came John, in whose veins flowed the worst blood of King Henry's family. Prince Arthur, Geoffrey's son, had the best claim to the crown, but somehow John got himself crowned, and he began to reign so terribly that the hearts of the barons quaked within them; and so, for a time, he silenced all opposition. He was as cunning as bad Queen Eleanora, and he loved to make mischief as well. He would order that a man should be killed, apparently with as little conscience as he would have ordered a butcher to slay a sheep. Most bad kings have been notable for some good qualities; King John, so far as I know, had none. "In Nottinghamshire there is an old town, removed from the great centres of life and activity, called Gotham. The inhabitants were of good Saxon stock, and they hated the whole race of Norman Plantagenets. These people had learned something of liberty from bold Robin Hood, 'all under the greenwood tree.' "One day there came a report to Old Gotham that King John was making a progress, and would pass through the town. Now it was an old custom in feudal times that the course that a king took, in passing for the first time through a district or a shire, should become ever after a public highway. The people of Gotham wanted no public highway to their town, no avenue that would open their retreat to the Normans, and put them more easily in the power of brutal kings. And they hated John. So they held a council, and resolved that the feet of John Lackland, the murderer, should never dishonor the town of Gotham. [Illustration: RICHARD'S FAREWELL TO THE HOLY LAND.] "But the people understood that it would be a foolhardy work to oppose the progress of the king openly. They must rely upon their wits. The men decided to go in a body and fell large trees across a certain upland, over which the royal party must pass to enter the town. This they did, making a barrier through which mounted horsemen would find it difficult to break, and which would compel a party like the king's to turn off by another way. "When King John came to the eminence, and found his progress arrested, he was very angry, and, finding a couple of rustics near the place, he demanded of them who had made the barrier. "'The people of Gotham,' answered one of the rustics. "'Go you to Gotham,' said the king, 'and tell the people from me, that as soon as I return to camp I will send a troop to cut off their noses.' "The two rustics ran off, terribly frightened, and reported the cheerful intelligence at Gotham. Oh, then there were stirring times in that old town! The people had no wish to receive a kingly decoration in that way. "What was to be done? "They met for consultation. "Now there were wise men in Gotham, and, when the convention met, these wise men expressed their opinions not only on the nose question, but on public affairs in general. After a long deliberation, one of these wise men, whom I will call Fitz Peter, said: 'Our wits have thus far prevented King John from setting foot in our town, and our wits are able to save our noses.' This opinion was received with great satisfaction. "But how should they accomplish the end? "Now chief among the wise men of Gotham was one whom I will call Leofric. He at last stood up with a very knowing look, and said: 'I have heard of many people who were punished for being wise, but I never heard of a person who was punished for being a fool. When the king's troops come, let us each imitate a safe example, and act like a fool.' "At this the people shouted. So they decided to rely on their wits for the safety of their noses, and to act like fools. "One morning, very early, as a party of horsemen were leaving the town for hunting, a troop appeared, with a fierce sheriff at their head. "The bowmen were terribly scared, and the question passed around as to what they should do. They hit upon a plan, and threw away their hunting-gear. When the sheriff came up, he found the old men rolling great stones up the hill, and the young men bending over and grunting as if they were in great distress. "'What are you doing?' demanded the sheriff of one of the old men who was tugging away at a stone. "'We are rolling stones up hill for day.' "'You old fool!' said the sheriff. 'Go home and go to bed, and day will come itself.' "'Why,' returned the man, as though greatly astonished, 'I never thought of that. How wise you be! You are the wisest man I ever did see!' "'And what are _you_ doing?' asked the sheriff, of one of the young men. "'We do the _grunting_,' was the prompt reply. "'The old men do the lifting, and the young men do the grunting!' exclaimed the sheriff. 'Well,' he added, in sudden good-humor, 'that is the way the world goes everywhere!' And he galloped away, leaving the men unharmed. "The sheriff next met four old women, with brooms on their shoulders. "'Whither away?' asked the sheriff. "'To the priest's, to be married,' said they all. "'To the priest's, to be married?' "'We go every morning to be married,' answered one of the old crones, 'and we have been for the last forty years!' "'Then why are you not married?' "'The priest says that we do not bring the right thing. We carry something new every morning.' "'But why do you not take a _man_?' "'A MAN!' exclaimed the old woman, leaping straight into the air. 'A MAN? I never thought of that! How wise you be! Why, you are the wisest man that I ever did see!' [Illustration: LIMESTONE DWELLINGS.] "The sheriff next met some men who had started on a journey, each of whom carried on his back a door. "'Why do you carry that door?' asked the sheriff of one of the travellers. "'Left my money at home.' "'Then why not leave the door at home too?' "'Afraid of thieves.' "'Afraid of thieves? Then leave your door at home to protect your money.' "'They can't break in, because, you see, I've got the door.' "'Leave your door at home, and take your money with you.' "'I never thought of that. How wise you be! You are the wisest man that I ever did see!' "The sheriff let the travellers pass on unmolested. "'The people are all fools here,' he said. "'It would be too bad to harm such simple people,' said his comrades. "'Fools all,' said the sheriff. "'Fools all,' said the horsemen. "'Let us go back,' said the sheriff, 'and report to the king that the people in Gotham are fools.' "'Right,' said the men. "So they returned to the king, and reported that Gotham was a place of fools. And from these circumstances, or incidents like these, if I may believe an old tale, the men of that place were called, in derision, 'The Wise Men of Gotham,' from that day." CHAPTER IX. A SERIES OF MEMORABLE VISITS. Tommy goes hunting.--"Peveril of the Peak."--The Boy at the Wheel.--Leamington.--Stratford-on-Avon.--Shakspeare's Birthplace, Garden, and Tomb.--Queer Relics.--Kenilworth.--Ernest's Album of Leaves and Flowers.--Warwick Castle.--The Mighty Guy.--The Antique Portress. Master Lewis gave the boys a couple of days in Nottingham to enjoy themselves as they liked. Tommy Toby went _hunting_. "I want to be able to tell people," he said, "that I have hunted in Sherwood Forest, the royal hunting-ground of English kings." "In midsummer?" asked Master Lewis. "I fancy if you were to use a gun in the Forest of Sherwood, you might make a longer vacation abroad than you intended." "I do not intend to use a gun. I have bought me a bow and some arrows." "Let me see them," said Master Lewis. "They look very harmless, certainly." Master Lewis seemed to hesitate about making further objections. Just what came of Tommy's hunting we cannot state at this stage of our narrative. He left the boys at the hotel, bow and arrows in hand, and saying as a word of parting,-- "'Let's go to the wood, said Richard to Robin.'" He evidently went outside of the city into the wooded district, that was a part of old Sherwood Forest. When Master Lewis found that he had really gone out of the place he looked troubled, and said:-- "I should have prevented it." Tommy returned late on the evening of the same day after a ten hours' absence. He certainly looked like a modern hunter, for he was empty handed, and his clothes were in a very disarranged condition. "Where are your bow and arrows?" asked Frank. "I shall tell you nothing at all about it, now," said Tommy. "It is my own secret." "Then you have two secrets," said Frank, referring to the fact that Tommy had been made custodian of the secret he was supposed to have selected for the Club. "Yes, but _that_ don't _amount to much_," said Tommy. "_Nothing, after all_," said Master Lewis, quietly, who had seen Tommy's conundrum on a card. "I did not suppose that you really intended to spend the day in the country alone with bow and arrow." "Just look at my legs," said Tommy, rolling up his pants, and showing bloody scars. "Where did you get _them_?" asked Master Lewis. "_Up a tree._ Please do not ask me now. If you will excuse me from telling you now, I will give you a full account some other time." "I will excuse you from giving an account of yourself, to-night; but please remember that you must not go hunting, or anywhere, alone again without my permission," said Master Lewis, noticing some singular rents in Tommy's clothes. Tommy went to his supper. "I've been chased by the _terriblest_ bull you ever saw," he whispered confidentially to Wyllys Wynn, as he passed him. "I'll tell you all about it some time." He added,-- "And that ain't all. I've been chased by _John_ Bull, too." [Illustration: PEVERIL OF THE PEAK.] Ernest Wynn went, under an arrangement made for him by Master Lewis, to the Peak near Castleton, wishing to view the scene of Sir Walter Scott's charming romance, "Peveril of the Peak." He found there only a pitiful ruin, and instead of knights with dancing plumes and silver shields, with which fancy pictures the eyry of the grand old Norman baron, he met some very strange-looking mining people, who are often to be seen in the rural districts in this part of England. One incident touched Frank's kind heart, and seemed more to impress him than the associations of manorial splendor he had made the journey to see. [Illustration: THE BOY AT THE WHEEL.] In the entrance of one of the caves of the Peak was a little rope-spinner, who was lame, and whose time was spent from sun to sun in turning the wheel,--always the same, faithfully turning the wheel. "I gave him a shilling," said Frank, "spoke kindly to him, and left him gazing after me with tears in his eyes, still turning his wheel, turning his wheel." From Nottingham Master Lewis and the boys went to Birmingham, and Frank Gray and Ernest Wynn made a détour to the little village of Madeley, and visited Boscobel, the place of refuge of King Charles II. after his defeat at the battle of Worcester. The king first arrived at White Ladies about three-quarters of a mile from Boscobel House: there he secreted himself in an oak, afterwards famous as the Royal Oak of Boscobel. The brothers Penderell, foresters and yeomen, concealed him in closets in their simple mansion, being true to their sovereign at the risk of their lives, when it might have raised them from poverty to riches to have uttered a treacherous word. [Illustration: BOSCOBEL.] The closets in which Charles was concealed are exhibited to visitors, and Frank and Ernest were allowed to pass up and down the passages that had afforded so secure a retreat to the fugitive. In the parlor they were shown a chimney-piece, and on one of the panels a picture of the king in the oak, and on another the king in disguise on horse-back, escorted by the Penderells. [Illustration: {THE TOMB OF RICHARD PENDERELL.}] It is said that the king's pursuers were thrown off the right track of discovery by an owl that flew out of the oak where he was concealed, leading the captain to say, "The owl loveth not company, and where he is no one else can be." It is also related that when Charles complained of the slowness of the horse on which he fled in disguise, one of the Penderells remarked that the animal never before had "the weight of three kingdoms on his back." These stories may not be quite true, but one is reminded of them by the figures on the chimney-piece. The Class next went to Leamington, a most convenient point from which to make short excursions to Stratford-on-Avon, Warwick Castle, and Kenilworth Castle. Leamington, although itself not historically interesting, is provided with excellent hotels, being an English watering-place. [Illustration: KING CHARLES'S HIDING PLACE.] The first excursion of the party from Leamington was to Stratford-on-Avon, to the house where Shakspeare was born, and the church in which he was buried. [Illustration: SHAKSPEARE.] The birthplace of Shakspeare is an antique-looking stone house two stones high, with picturesque gables fronting the street. In the room where he first saw the light of the world he was to enrich with his thought there is a cast of his face taken after his death, and a portrait painted in the prime of his life. The latter showed a truly noble brow; it was such a face as fancy itself might paint, so royally did it seem endowed with genius. In this room Sir Walter Scott had inscribed his name on a pane of glass, and Wordsworth once wrote a stanza which is still preserved under glass. It began with these lines:-- "The house of Shakspeare's birth we here may see; That of his death we find without a trace. Vain the inquiry, for immortal he"-- Here the poet seemed to pause as though the literary work was not satisfactory; he drew his pen across what he had written, and under it wrote the following stanza:-- "Of mighty Shakspeare's birth the room we see; That where he died, in vain to find we try. Useless the search, for, all immortal he: And those who are immortal never die." The effort furnishes a curious illustration of the methods of a poet's mind in careful composition. Back of the house is a garden, in which grew the old English flowers that are portrayed by the poet in his dramas. From the house the party went to the cottage of Anne Hathaway, Shakspeare's wife, whom he loved in youth when life's bright ways lay fair before him. It is a house which is mainly noticeable for its simplicity. "There is the place where he sat when he came to see his sweetheart," said the old lady who showed the house. Shakspeare and his wife sleep in the same beautiful church amid the bowery town of Stratford-on-Avon; and thither, rowing up the Avon almost to the churchyard, our tourists made their way. The party approached the church through an avenue of limes, and entered the richly-carved oak doors of the Gothic porch. The tomb of Shakspeare is in the chancel. The Avon runs but a short distance from the walls, and the cool boughs of the summer trees wave before the windows. A flat stone marks the place where the poet is buried, on which are inscribed the oft quoted lines said to be written by the poet himself:-- "Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear To dig the dust enclosed here! Blest be the spade that spares these stones, And curst be he that moves my bones." Over the grave, in a niche of the wall, is a bust of the poet. The inscription mentions his age as fifty-three years. [Illustration: ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE.] Returning to the birthplace, Frank Gray and Tommy Toby visited the Shakspeare Museum. The collection of curiosities was somewhat comical,--such for example as a phial containing _juice_ from mulberries gathered from Shakspeare's mulberry-tree; Shakspeare's jug, from which Garrick sipped wine at the Jubilee in 1769. Frank seemed to enjoy the specimens, his mind poetically associating them with bygone scenes. [Illustration: RUINS OF KENILWORTH CASTLE.] Tommy showed a great contempt for Frank's wonder-talk. "I've found something now," he said, "that outdoes all the rest. It is a letter written--" "By Shakspeare?" asked Frank, in an animated way. "No: _to_ Shakspeare." "By whom?" "Mr. Richard Quyney. You have often heard of him, I suppose?" "He was probably a literary man," said Frank. "Probably. He asked for a _loan_ of thirty pounds." The next day's trip was to Kenilworth Castle, an ivy-hung ruin associated with the whole of England's history, and traditionally with the romances of King Arthur. The walls are broken, the great banqueting hall has just fallen into decay, and where the coronals flashed and astrals blazed at night, now shine only the dim light of the moon and stars. Here Queen Elizabeth was entertained by her favorite, the Earl of Leicester. The splendor of that reception has rarely been equalled. The fête, which was one long banquet, broken by a most wonderful series of dramatic representations, lasted seventeen days. There were tilts and tournaments; the park was peopled with gods and goddesses to surprise the Queen wherever she went; nymphs and mermaids rose from the pools, and there was minstrelsy on every hand. Thirty-one barons were present. Ten oxen were slaughtered every morning, sixteen hogsheads of wine and forty hogsheads of beer were consumed daily. There were lodged in the castle four hundred servants, all of whom appeared in new liveries of velvet, and shared the unrestrained hospitality. "All the clocks in the castle were stopped during that long festival," said Master Lewis, "and the hands were all left pointing at the banquet hour." "But time went on," said Wyllys Wynn. "Yes, time went on, and the maiden Queen grew old as all mortals must, and there came a time when her vanity could no longer be deceived. She sought to keep from sight the white hairs and wrinkles of age by every art, but Nature did its work, as with Canute and the sea. When her form and features began to lose whatever of beauty they once possessed, she tried to banish from her mind the reality that she was past her prime by viewing herself in false and flattering mirrors. "But the wrinkles grew deeper, and the white hairs multiplied, and her limbs lost their power, and her strength at last was gone. Her flatterers still fed her fondness for admiration with their arts, and while life offered her any prospect she still smiled upon those whom she must have suspected were deceiving her. "'One day,' says her attendant, Lady Southwell, 'she desired to see a _true glass_, which in twenty years before she had not seen, but only such an one as on purpose was made to deceive her sight.' "They brought it to the poor withered Queen. She raised it to her face with her bony hands, and looked. For the first time for years she saw herself. "It was a revelation. Her old rage came back again. She pointed to her flatterers with scorn, and ordered them to quit her presence. "Then came the Archbishop of Canterbury, disgracing his sacred office by his words. 'Madam,' said he, 'your piety, your zeal, and the admirable work of the Reformation afford great grounds of confidence for you.' "But the wretchedly disenchanted woman could no longer be deceived. "'My lord,' she said, 'the crown that I have borne so long has given me enough of _vanity_ in my time. I beseech you not to augment it at this hour.' "She had seen herself, and the world also, in the true glass." Ernest Wynn was observed by Master Lewis making a collection of ivy leaves at Kenilworth. "Do you collect leaves at all the historic places you visit?" he asked. [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF ELIZABETH.] "I picked some heather at the birthplace of Burns, brought ivy from Melrose, and wild flowers from Newstead and from the Peak, and I purchased flowers from Shakspeare's garden." "What do you intend to do with them?" "I will tell you privately. George Howe is pleased with collections of interesting things,--shells, stamps, autographs. He has but little money, and I am making a scrap-book of pictures, leaves, and flowers collected at notable places, as a present for him." "It seems to me an admirable plan," said Master Lewis. "I should be pleased with such a book myself." The next day the party visited Warwick Castle, one of the finest and best preserved of all the ancient country seats of the English nobility. To one approaching it, its rich lawns, its towering trees (of which some are from Lebanon), its picturesque windows, and harmony of design make it an ideal of castellated beauty. The Class was ceremoniously admitted by men in livery, and was taken charge of by a portly and pompous Englishwoman, who wore a black silk that rustled as she swept along. She carried a bunch of keys at her side, and evidently entertained a high sense of the dignity of her position. "_This_," said the stately lady, pointing to an immense structure of armor, "this is the armor of the mighty Guy." "The mighty Guy!" said Tommy Toby, with large eyes, "will you please tell us who _he_ was?" The antique portress stared as though amazed at such a confession of ignorance. "We are from America," said Tommy. Master Lewis smiled at being included in the uninstructed "we." "Guy was a giant." Tommy's interest grew. "He was the great Earl of Warwick: a valiant soldier who slew so many people that he became melancholy, and retired to Guy's Cliff, as it is now called, and there lived alone in a cave for thirty years. He was _nine_ feet high." "And what is _that_?" said Tommy Toby, pointing to an immense pot. "That," said the antique lady, "was the mighty Guy's _porridge pot_." "How much does it hold?" "It holds one hundred and twenty gallons, and weighs eight hundred pounds." "Did the mighty Guy drink as much porridge as that at every meal?" asked Tommy, his curiosity taking a wider circle with each new statement. "I don't know; all of these things happened long, long before I was born. "_That_," said the lady, "is a rib of the Dun Cow." "What kind of a cow was that?" asked Tommy. "It was a cow which the mighty Guy killed on Dunsmore Heath. It weighs nine pounds and a half." "The cow?" "No, the rib." The lady led the party in a procession which she dramatically headed through the lower rooms of the principal building. She showed them the superb old baronial hall; the drawing-rooms, magnificent with tapestries and inlaid furniture; the pictures by Vandyke. Then in an awesome manner she suddenly stopped, and said in a low confidential voice,-- "The Countess herself is above stairs." "How many feet high is the Countess? I'd give a quarter--" Tommy's intended remark was checked by Master Lewis. The lady requested a fee on showing the party back to the lodge, and dismissed Master Lewis with a stiff bow that indicated a want of confidence in American respect for the great and mighty Guy and his successors. CHAPTER X. A VISIT TO OXFORD AND WOODSTOCK. A University a Thousand Years Old.--Woodstock.--Fair Rosamond.--Old Ballad.--The Head of Brass that Spoke. "Beautiful! beautiful!" exclaimed Wyllys Wynn, as the city of Oxford appeared in view. "It looks like a city of churches." "It is indeed a city of institutions," said Master Lewis. "It is a very old city, is it not?" asked Wyllys. "It is said to have been the residence of Alfred the Great, and of King Canute. The University of Oxford was, according to tradition, founded by Alfred the Great." "If it be so, what a monument the good king left behind him! It was this king, was it not, whose mother offered a beautiful manuscript to the one of her four sons who would first learn to repeat it from memory? Alfred, although he was a mere child and could not read, induced an instructor to teach him the manuscript, and so secured the prize." [Illustration: ALFRED AND HIS MOTHER.] "This was the king," said Tommy Toby, "who, when flying from the Danes in disguise, was left by a rustic's wife to watch some cakes that were baking by the fire." "And let them burn," said Wyllys. "The woman," said Tommy, "gave him a gentle hint, saying that if he was too lazy to watch them, he would be glad enough to eat them when they were cooked. I have heard my mother make very similar remarks." [Illustration: CANUTE AND HIS COURTIERS.] "Canute, of whom you spoke, was the king who ordered his throne to be placed on the margin of the sea," said Wyllys to Master Lewis, "and then commanded the sea to rise no farther." "But the sea rose," said Master Lewis, "and the king refused to wear again his golden crown for ever, resolving to serve only that King who rules the sea. "The history of Oxford covers a period of a thousand years," continued Master Lewis. "Here Queen Matilda, or the Empress Maud, as she was called, because she had been the wife of the German Emperor, was besieged by King Stephen, who had usurped the throne, and thence she fled from him one snowy day, herself and attendants dressed in white that they might not be discovered; here the people closed the gates against William the Conqueror; here Richard I. was born, and here Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer were burned. The early history of nearly all great English scholars for many centuries is associated with the colleges in this place." [Illustration: FLIGHT OF EMPRESS MAUD.] "How green are the English meadows with their hedgerows and trees!" said Wyllys. "And how bright are the streams that run among them! An English landscape is more rich and varied than an American." "I never would tell of it," said Tommy. "Grass is grass, and we have just as good grass at home as anywhere." "We have no buildings at home that are quite equal to Warwick Castle," said Frank. "It is better to admit excellences frankly wherever one is," said Master Lewis, "and never let any prejudice color an opinion. When one is travelling it is well never to make a comparison." Few scenes are more charming, especially on a long sunny summer afternoon, than the college buildings of Oxford, separated by gardens, meadows, and rows of venerable trees, the latter as old as the roofs and spires that rise above them. [Illustration: DEATH OF LATIMER AND RIDLEY.] While at Oxford the boys were taken to Woodstock, a distance of some eight miles. The old ballad of "Fair Rosamond" so haunted the mind of Ernest Wynn, at Oxford, that he induced Master Lewis to make an excursion to Woodstock, the scene of the fancied tragedy. "I have seen Kenilworth, the scene of one of Walter Scott's romances," said Ernest; "have been among the associations of 'Ivanhoe,' and 'Peveril of the Peak,' and I shall always be glad to have seen the place of the novelist's other English fiction." The town of Woodstock once constituted a part of the royal demesnes. Here Ethelred held a council, and Alfred the Great translated the "Consolations of Boethius." The history of the old palace of Woodstock is associated with dark romances, splendid cavalcades, and crumbled kings and queens. Not a vestige of the palace now remains; its site is merely marked by two sycamore trees. The famous Rosamond's Bower, Maze, or Labyrinth seems to have consisted of a succession of under-ground chambers, and is thought to have existed before the time of King Henry II., who is supposed to have used it to hide Fair Rosamond from his jealous queen. There was but one way into it, though there were many ways that would lead astray any one who should try to find the right passage. It may have been like the following diagram, which may puzzle the reader who attempts to find an open way to the centre. [Illustration: {ROSAMOND'S BOWER.}] Henry II. had married Eleanor of Aquitaine, a woman of bad reputation, full of craft and wickedness, whom the French king had put away. But he gave his affections to Rosamond Clifford, whose beauty had charmed him when he first met her in the valley of Wye. It is said that she supposed herself wedded to him; but however this may be, she and not Eleanor was the spouse of his heart. She pined away in the seclusion that the king provided for her, but he was true to her in her illness; he hovered around her sick bed, and at last, when she was laid away to rest in the chapel at Edstowe Nunnery, he kept her grave bright with lights and sweet with flowers. The story of her being poisoned by Queen Eleanor is a fiction, although it is said the Queen discovered her place of concealment, and administered to her a severe reproof. [Illustration: A STUDIOUS MONK.] The atmosphere of learning dispels superstition, but history clings fondly to the fine old legends of the past that gather around them unreal lights and shadows. It is not strange that Oxford, the quiet valley town, hidden even to the bases of its pinnacles, spires, and towers in ancient groves, through which glide the waters of the Thames, should still preserve traditions of the wonder-working gifts of its early philosophers, whom ignorance associated with the magical arts and regarded as more than men. It is related that two old Oxford monks made a head of brass that spoke. These wise monks discovered from their wonderful books (the like of which are not now to be found in any of the twenty colleges) that if they were able to make a head of brass that could speak, and if they could _hear_ it speak within a month, they would be given the power to surround England with a magic wall of brass. So they studied their folios, and found out the chemistry of making the wonderful head. [Illustration: AN OLD TIME STUDENT.] They listened to hear it three weeks, and then became irresistibly sleepy. So they intrusted a servant to listen, and to wake them if the statue should begin to speak. When they were well asleep, the head said,-- "Time is." Then it said,-- "Time was." The servant, not knowing the secret of the monks, failed to awake them as he had been ordered to do, and down came the figure with a fearful crash; and England has remained without any other wall of brass than enters into an Englishman's composition to this day. CHAPTER XI. LETTERS AND EXCURSIONS. An English Skylark.--Letter from George Howe.--Tommy's Account of his Nottingham Adventure.--Glastonbury Abbey.--The Beginning of the English Church.--St. Joseph of Arimathæa and the Glastonbury Thorn.--Story of St. Dunstan and the Devil. Master Lewis set apart a day at Oxford for leisure, writing, and rest. In the morning, after breakfast, the Class took a walk to the suburbs, and rested on some wayside seats overlooking the Thames. It was a beautiful morning, cool and still. The world of sunlight all seemed to be above the trees, an over-sea of gold, of which the long arcades of intermingling boughs afforded but glimpses. Near the wayside resting-place was a field bordered with trees. A speck of a bird rose from it out of the grass uttering a few notes that attracted the boys' attention. Up, up it went like a rocket, and as it rose higher and higher its song became sweeter and sweeter,--a happy, trilling melody, which made every boy leap to his feet, and try to find a place where he could see it through the openings in the trees. "The bird seems to have gone straight up to heaven," said Wyllys Wynn. "I can hardly see it; but I can hear its melody yet." "That is an English skylark," said Master Lewis, "so famous in pastoral poetry. You now understand Tennyson's meaning when he says,-- "'The lark becomes a sightless song.' I am glad you have seen it. I wish we might see more of common sights and scenes. "I have here a letter from George Howe and Leander Towle, which greatly pleases me. My object is to take you to historic scenes. George and Leander have different tastes from yours, and expect to follow different occupations. They are making their journey a study of common life and its pursuits, as I would have them do." "Will you not read their letter to us?" asked Ernest. "That was just what I was about to do," said Master Lewis. Caen, Normandy, July. Dear Teacher:-- I begin my letter here in this city, which I suppose has an atmosphere of old history, but which is interesting to me because it is the centre of the "food-producing land" of France, as Lower Normandy is well called. All of this part of the country through which I have passed is a scene of thrift, productiveness, and plenty. The people are all busy and happy. Occupied minds are always happy, I believe. How did we get here? We rode a part of the way to London on what is called, I think, Parliamentary trains. This is not a train of grand coaches for the use of members of Parliament, but a sort of slow-coach train which Parliament has enacted shall carry cattle, produce, and commercial necessities for a fixed rate a mile. Or this is the way in which the running of these cheap trains was explained to me. It would have been a hard ride, had not new scenes been continually coming into view, and the train have gone so slowly that we were enabled to enjoy them almost as well as though we had been riding on an English stage-coach. I was so interested in the new objects that presented themselves that I entirely forgot the manner of conveyance. I shall never forget that ride: it was like viewing a long panorama. It cost me only about £1 or $5.00, to travel from Scotland to London. We took a lodging room in London which cost us a shilling a night apiece. While in London I visited the Tower, Westminster Abbey, Windsor, and the principal Parks. The half day spent in Westminster Abbey was worth all the discomforts of the journey across the sea. We also made a journey to Sydenham Crystal Palace,--an immense museum of novelties, to which the admission is only one shilling. It is probably the first palace ever built for the people, and I like the idea of a people's palace better than a king's. It occupies with its grounds about three hundred acres, and cost nearly £2,000,000. Twenty-five acres of glass were used in its construction. The museum is full of the products of industry of all countries and times. Think of it--all for one shilling! It is a thing to make one always respect the English people. I need say very little of the tombs of the twenty or thirty kings and queens in Westminster Abbey. I was first impressed with the value of fame when I read inscriptions to persons once famous of whom I never heard,--Thomas Shadwell, Poet Laureate in the Court of William III.; Mrs. Oldfield, whom we are told was buried "in a fine Brussels lace head-dress,"--and I thought, Well, all men can do is to perform their duty, and time will one day make forgotten Thomas Shadwells and Mrs. Oldfields of them all. While in London I made also a pleasant excursion into Berkshire, and there I saw the famous White Horse Hill. It is said that the figure of the White Horse on the hill was first made by Alfred the Great a thousand years ago, to commemorate the defeat of the Danes,--the White Horse being the standard or national emblem of the Danish chief. Whatever may have been its origin, it is _now_ made by annually cutting about an acre of turf away from the chalk beneath it. This work is performed during a festival in its honor, and is called "Scouring the White Horse." [Illustration: {HOUSE OF A MIGRATING CITIZEN.}] While in Berkshire I saw an odd picture, not of a castle, but of an old English gentleman's residence, which was truly castle-like in appearance, and which furnishes a happy suggestion to people who do not like to live long in any one place. It was a tun on wheels, and it had been used by an overtaxed and indignant democrat for the purpose of having no fixed locality, and so to avoid assessment. In London I made a study of the cheapest way of getting to Paris, and of seeing the most on the journey. I found I could take a returning produce boat at Southampton for Lower Normandy at a trifling cost, and could go on a produce train from Caen to Paris as inexpensively. We took a third-class ticket to Southampton. What a delightful ride it was! Out of the smoke of London into the blossoming country, among landscapes of cottages and gardens,--thatched cottages, cottages covered with old red tiles, cottages whose gardens seemed to climb up embankments to the roofs; past wheat fields so full of poppies that they seemed like poppy-fields in full bloom! I saw one field completely covered with red, purple, yellow, and white poppies. It was an exquisitely beautiful sight,--nothing but bright color. The steamer we took was employed simply for the exportation of Normandy butter, potatoes, and other farm produce. It comes to England loaded, and goes back empty. I obtained passage for 10 francs, and what I saved by travel on the water I intended to make up by a longer trip by land. We were much tossed about by the tides of the English Channel, but arrived safely at Cherbourg, and went by rail immediately to Bayeux, a dreamy, ecclesiastical city that the battles of the past seem to have left in strange silence. I spoke at the beginning of my letter of the activity and thrift of Lower Normandy, but Bayeux is the stillest city I ever saw. [Illustration: FAC-SIMILE OF THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY.] Here, in the Public Library, we saw the famous Bayeux Tapestry, which is displayed under a glass case; is two hundred and fourteen feet long and contains over fifteen hundred figures. The canvas is embroidered in woollen thread of various colors, the work of Matilda and her maids. I make a copy from a sample picture of the exact size of the thread used. [Illustration: {EXAMPLE OF WOOLLEN THREAD.}] One may read on this fabric the history of the Norman Conquest of England. It is the most novel work of history I ever saw. The farming districts of Normandy seem indeed like Arcadia: farmers mean business here, and thrive by thrift. Their sons and daughters, I am told, do not run off to the city. I have never seen a people whose habits I like so well. Give our regards to all. George Howe. P. S. We are on our way to Paris, riding through a country of old churches, castles, and flowers, on a produce train. "I think," said Master Lewis, "that George and Leander are, after all, making a very delightful tour; they certainly are getting better views of common, practical life abroad than we are. I am glad that they had the independence to make the journey in this way." "How much do you think their whole tour will cost them?" asked Ernest. "It will cost each of them less than either you or I have paid for a single ocean passage," said Master Lewis. The boys spent the afternoon in letter-writing. Tommy Toby wrote a long letter to George Howe. "I have taken George into my confidence," said he, after tea, as Master Lewis and the boys were sitting by the open windows of the hotel, "and have given him an account of my hunting adventure in Nottingham." "Suppose you read the letter to us," said Master Lewis. Tommy, whose nature would not allow him to keep a secret long, however disparaging to himself, seemed pleased to accept Master Lewis's suggestion. Oxford, July. Dear George:-- We are all pleased with the trip you are making. We have been to lots of curious places,--dust heaps of old kings and queens and _we have heard a lark sing_. At Nottingham I bought a bow and arrows, and went hunting. Like you, I wanted to see the country. I saw it. They are very inquisitive people around Nottingham. They seem to want to know your business before you are introduced. A little way out of the city I came to a fine old tract of country. A gate opened into some large, hilly fields, and there was a path through the fields that seemed to lead to the wood. I opened the gate and was going towards the wood, when I heard a voice from the road,-- "Boy!" I looked around, and made no answer. "Where are yer going, _yer honor_?" "I am going hunting," said I; and I walked on very fast. I came to a wooded hill, and the scenery all around was delightful, just like a picture. Below the hill was a long pasture, and through it ran a stream of water overhung with old trees. Under the trees were some cattle. I was going down towards the pasture when I heard a very distressing noise,-- O-o-o-o-o! "This is an English landscape," said I to myself. "How much more lovely it is than castles, abbeys, and tombs!" and I was trying to think of some poetry, such as Frank would have quoted, when I heard that alarming sound again,-- O-o-o-o-o! I noticed that one of the fine animals had separated himself from the rest of the herd by the shady brook, and was coming out to meet me, looking very important. Presently he put down his head, gave the earth a scrape with his foot, and then came jumping towards me, bounding and plunging over the hillocks, like a ship on a heavy sea. I turned right around, just as I did when I saw the bear, and I remembered that Master Lewis might not like to have me venture too far in my first hunting expedition. I ran! didn't I run? I soon heard the same deep sound again, "nearer, clearer, deadlier than before," as the reading book says. I had almost regained the top of the hill, when the animal bellowed almost right behind me. There was a tree close by, and I went _up_. It was just as easy for me to climb it as though it had been a ladder. The animal bounded up the hill, and stood under the tree, pawing the earth and making the same hollow noise. I drew my bow, and let fly an arrow at him. "Boy, come down!" There was a thick, fat man, with a great stomach, coming up the hill. He appeared greatly excited, and quite out of breath. He presently arrived at the foot of the tree. "Boy, bring me that bow and arrow." I came down the tree more scared at the man than I was at the animal. I handed him the bow, and what do you think he did with it? He gave me a dreadful cut across my back, and said,-- "Where'd yer come from? Take _that_ and That, and THAT, and don't yer ever trespass on my grounds again." I promised him I never would. I walked just as fast as I could towards the gate, and when I came to the road I was so flustrated that I went the wrong way, and wandered about in the heat for hours before I could get rightly directed towards Nottingham. I wish you were with us at Oxford; it seems to me the most beautiful place in all the world. It was here we heard the skylark sing. Tommy. The next journey of the Club was indeed _en zigzag_. "I have allowed you to visit," said Master Lewis to the boys, "the places to which your reading has led your curiosity, most of which places I have visited before. I now wish to take you to a ruin that I have never seen, and of which you may have never heard. It is the place where, according to tradition, Christianity was first established in Great Britain; where St. Patrick is said to have preached, and where he was buried. It is the place which poetry associates with the mission and miracles of Joseph of Arimathæa; here his staff, in the shape of the white thorn, is said to blossom every Christmas." "Glastonbury Abbey," said Ernest Wynn. "Of course there can be no truth in the tradition of Joseph of Arimathæa and the White Thorn?" "The story of Joseph's mission to England, his burial here, and his blooming staff," said Master Lewis, "is undoubtedly a fiction, like the legend which claims that the stone in the old Scottish Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey is the one on which Jacob rested when he saw the vision of angels. But Glastonbury Abbey was possibly the first Church in England. Here were the monuments of King Arthur, King Edmund, and King Edgar; and even old King Coel, St. David, and St. Dunstan are said to have been buried here." "What! the St. Dunstan that the devil tried to tempt?" asked Tommy. "The St. Dunstan that the devil did tempt, I fear," said Master Lewis. "I would like to hear the story of his temptations," said Tommy, "as we are going to Glastonbury." THE STORY OF ST. DUNSTAN'S TEMPTATION. "St. Dunstan," said Master Lewis, "was Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, and was a very ambitious man. "He caused a cell to be made in which he could neither stand erect nor lie down with comfort. He retired to this cell and there spent his time in working as a smith, and--so the report went--in devotion. "Then the people said, 'How humble and penitent Dunstan is! He has the back-ache all day, and the legs-ache all night, and he suffers all for the cause of purity and truth.' "Then Dunstan told the people that the devil came to tempt him, which, with his aches for the good cause, made his situation very trying. "The devil, he said, wanted him to lead a life of selfish gratification, but he would not be tempted to do a thing like that; he never thought of himself. O no, good soul, not he! "The people said that Dunstan must have become a very holy man, or the devil would not appear to him _bodily_. "The devil came to him one day, he said, as he was at work at his forge, and, putting his nose through the window of his cell, tempted him to lead a life of pleasure. He quickly drew his pincers from the fire, and seized his tormentor by the nose, which put him in such pain that he bellowed so lustily as to shake the hills. "The boy-king Edred, who filled the throne at this time, was in poor health, and suffered from a lingering illness for years. He felt the need of the counsel of a good man, and he said to himself,-- "'There is Dunstan, a man who has given up all selfish feelings and aspirations, a man whom even the devil cannot corrupt. I will bring him to court, and will make him my adviser.' "Then pure-hearted Edred brought the foxy prelate to his court, and made him, of all things in the world, the royal treasurer; and he took such good care of the money entrusted to his keeping that he was speedily released from the responsibility. He seems to have been very easily tempted during his political career." The next day the party was borne away from shady Oxford, where one would indeed like to tarry long in the midsummer days, to the old city of Bristol, famous in the Roman conquest of Britain. In the journey the gay poppy-fields and the picturesque cottage scenes, which give a charm to the English landscape, often flitted into and out of view, reminding the boys of George Howe's letter. Glastonbury Abbey is indeed an interesting ruin. It stands apart from the popular lines of travel, and so it figures little in the narratives of those who make short tours abroad. Think of the ruins of a church at least fourteen hundred years old! A church that Joseph of Arimathæa, who provided the tomb for Jesus, is reputed in the old monkish legends to have founded, and where St. Patrick and St. Augustine probably did preach, and where in the Middle Ages the remains of good King Arthur were disenterred! [Illustration: ST. AUGUSTINE'S APPEAL TO ETHELBERT.] Of the great church and its five chapels there yet remain parts of the broken wall, and the three large crypts where the early kings of England and founders of the English Church were buried. A little westward from the ruin stands the beautiful Chapel of St. Joseph of Arimathæa. "I do not wonder," said Wyllys Wynn, "that the old English people liked to believe that their church sprang from the mission of so amiable a saint as St. Joseph." "Christianity," said Master Lewis, "was really first established in Great Britain in 596 by St. Augustine and forty missionaries who came with St. Augustine from Rome to preach to the Anglo-Saxons. These missionaries were kindly received by King Ethelbert, whose wife was already a Christian. It is related that one of the Saxon priests, to see if indeed his gods would be angry, went forth on horse-back, and smote the images the people had been worshipping. To the astonishment of the Saxons no judgment followed. The king was baptized, and the missionaries baptized ten thousand converts in a single day in the river Swale. The Christian religion had been preached in Britain before, but not generally accepted." [Illustration: THE SAXON PRIEST STRIKING THE IMAGES.] "I like the association of St. Joseph's name with this old ruin so well," said Wyllys, "that I wish to see the staff that you say is believed to bloom at Christmas." On the south side of Glastonbury is Weary-all Hill. It owes its name to a very poetic legend. It is said that St. Joseph and his companions, _all_ of them _weary_ in one of their missionary journeys, here sat down to rest, and the Saint planted his staff into the earth, and left it there. From it, we are told, springs the famous Glastonbury Thorn which blossoms every Christmas, and whose miraculous flowers were adored in the Middle Ages. Such a shrub still remains which blooms in midwinter, and perpetuates the memory of the pretty superstition. CHAPTER XII. LONDON. London.--Westminster Abbey.--Westminster Hall and Parliament Houses.--The Tower.--Sir Henry Wyat and His Cat.--Madame Tussaud's Wax Works.--Tommy Accosts a Stranger.--Hampton Court Palace.--Stories of Charles I. and Cromwell.--The Duchess's Wonderful Pie.--The Boys' Day.--Tommy goes Punch and Judy Hunting.--Street Amusements.--Tommy's Misadventure.--George Howe's Cheap Tour.--Windsor Castle.--Story of Prince Albert and his Queen.--Antwerp. The train, from its sinuous windings among old English landscapes and thickly populated towns, seemed at last to be gliding into a new world of vanishing houses and streets. It suddenly stopped under the glass roof of an immense station, where a regiment of porters in uniform were awaiting it, and where all outside seemed a world of cabmen. LONDON!--the world's great city, the nations' bazaar,--where humanity runs in no fixed channels, but ceaselessly ebbs and flows like the sea. Cabs, cabs! then a swift rattle through rattling vehicles, going in every direction, on, on, on! Names of places read in histories and story-books pass before the eye. The tides of travel everywhere seem to overflow; all is bewildering, confusing. What a map a man's mind must be to thread the innumerable streets of London! The Class stopped at a popular hotel in a fine part of the city, called the West End. It is pleasanter and more economical to take furnished lodgings in London, if one is to remain in the city for a week or more, but as Master Lewis was to allow the boys but a few days' visit, he took them to a hotel in a quarter where the best London life could be seen. The London cabs meet the impatient stranger's wants at once, and the boys were soon rattling in them about the city, out of the quarter of stately houses into the gay streets of trade, which seemed to them indeed like a great world's fair. [Illustration: WESTMINSTER ABBEY.] "This is Pall Mall [Pell Mell]," said Frank to Tommy, as their cab rounded a corner. "It seems to be all _pell mell_ here," said Tommy. "Had the poet been to London when he wrote,-- "'Oh, then and there was hurrying to and fro'? But this street has a more quiet look. What splendid houses!" "Those," said Frank, "are the houses of the famous London Clubs." The first visit that the boys made was to that time-honored pile of magnificence into which kings and queens for centuries have gone to be crowned and been carried to be buried,--Westminster Abbey. The party entered at the western entrance, which commands an awesome, almost oppressive, view of the interior. In the softened light of the stained windows rose a forest of columns, rich with art and grandly gloomy with the associations of antiquity. Far, far away it stretched to the chapel of Edward the Confessor, a name that led the mind through the faded pomps of the past almost a thousand years. Monuments of kings and queens, benefactors and poets, beginning with old Edward the Confessor and coming down to the Stuarts; of Eleanor, who sucked the poison from her husband's wounds, and Philippa, who saved the heroes of Calais. Here Bloody Mary, Queen Elizabeth, and Mary, Queen of Scots, sleep in peace in the same chapel; and here the merry monarch, Charles II., lies among the kingly tombs without a slab to mark the place. The new Houses of Parliament which stand between the Abbey and the Thames are the finest works of architecture that have been erected in England for centuries. They form a parallelogram nine hundred feet long and three hundred feet wide. The House of Lords and House of Commons occupy the centre of the building. Between these two halls of State rises a tower three hundred feet high. At each end of the building are lofty towers; the Victorian Tower, three hundred forty-six feet high, and a clock tower, in which the hours are struck on a bell called Big Ben, which weighs nine tons. The entrance to the Houses of Parliament is through old Westminster Hall, ninety feet high and two hundred and ninety long, whose gothic roof of wood is the finest specimen of its kind in English art, and is regarded as one of the wonders of human achievement. It was in this hall that Charles I. was tried for treason, and condemned; and it was here, at the trial, that the words of a mysterious lady smote Oliver Cromwell to the heart. "The Prisoner at the bar has been brought here in the name of the People of England," said the solicitor. "Not half the people!" exclaimed a mysterious voice in the gallery. "Oliver Cromwell is a _traitor_!" The assembly shuddered. "Fire upon her!" said an officer. They did not fire. It was Lady Fairfax. Westminster Bridge, one thousand one hundred and sixty feet long, is near the clock tower, and here the Class took its best view of the Parliament Houses. The next day the Class visited London Tower and the relics that recall the long list of tragedies of ambitious courts and kings. "This," said the guide, as the Class was taken into an apartment in the White Tower, an old prison whose walls are twelve feet thick, "is the beheading block that was used on Tower Hill. The Earl of Essex was beheaded on it: see the _dints_!" An axe stood beside the block, which is kept on exhibition in one of the rooms in which Sir Walter Raleigh was confined. "Where were the children of Edward murdered?" asked Frank Gray, after being shown the place of the execution of Anne Boleyn. "In the Bloody Tower," said the guide. "I am not hallowed to admit visitors into that." "We are a class in an American school. Could you not make some arrangement to admit us?" asked Wyllys. [Illustration: TRIAL OF CHARLES I.] The guide left the party a few minutes, and then returned with a bunch of keys. He led the way to a small room in which the little sons of Edward had been lodged, to be accessible to the murderers. Here the unhappy children were smothered in bed. The room, apart from its dreadful associations, was a pleasant one looking out on the Thames. The party was next shown the stairs at the foot of which the remains of the princes were discovered. "I can imagine," said Ernest Wynn, "the life of the boys in the Tower. How they went from window to window and looked out on the Thames, the sunlight, and the sky as we do now; how they saw the bright, happy faces pass, and children in the distance at play; how they watched, it may be, the lights in their dead father's palace at night, and how they wondered why the freedom of the gay world beyond the prison was denied them. It is said that an old man who loved them used to play on some instrument in the evening under the walls of the Tower, and thus express to them his sympathy which he could not do in words." "The burial of Richard III., who caused the death of the royal children," said Master Lewis, "was almost as pitiful as that of the princes themselves. After the fatal battle, his naked body was thrown upon a sorry steed and carried over the bridge to Leicester amid derision and scorn. For two hot summer days it was exposed to the jeers of the mob, and then was laid in a tomb costing £10 1_s._, to rest fifty years. The tomb was dashed in pieces during the Reformation, the bones thrown into the river and the stone coffin, according to tradition, used as a horse-trough." The collection of armor in an apartment of the Tower called the Horse Armory, a building over one hundred and fifty feet long, presented a spectacle that filled our visitors with wonder. It seemed like a sudden reproduction of the faded days of chivalry. On each side of the room was a row of knights in armor, in different attitudes, looking as though they were real knights under some spell of enchantment, waiting for the magic word to start them into life again. [Illustration: BURIAL OF RICHARD.] The Jewel Tower did not so much excite the boys' astonishment. It was like a costumer's shop; and even the royal crown of England wore an almost ridiculous look, civilization and republican progress have so far outgrown these theatrical playthings. The Queen's diadem, as it is called, was indeed a glitter of diamonds, and the royal sceptres of various devices carried one back to the days of Queen Esther. [Illustration: THE TOWER OF LONDON.] "Among the stories told of the prisoners in the Tower," said Master Lewis, "there is one that is pleasant to remember. Sir Henry Wyat was confined here in a dark low cell, where he suffered from cold and hunger. A cat came to visit him at times, and used to lie in his bosom and warm him. One day the cat caught a pigeon and brought it to him to eat. The keeper heard of pussy's devotion to the prisoner, and treated him more kindly. When Wyat was released, he became noted for his fondness for cats." Leaving the Tower, the boys stopped to look at the Traitor's Gate, which had clanged behind so many illustrious prisoners brought to the prison in the fatal barge; Cranmer, More, Anne Boleyn, bad men and good men, how it swung behind them all, and ended even hope! With sober faces the boys turned away. The Zoölogical Gardens in Regent's Park presented the boys, on the day after their visit to the Tower, a more cheerful scene. Who that has read of the London "Zoo" has not wished to visit it? Here specimens of the whole animal kingdom may be seen, and one wanders among the immense cages, artificial ponds, bear-pits, enclosures of tropical animals, reptile dens, feeling as free and secure as Adam appears in the picture of Naming the Creation. Here, unlike a menagerie, the animals all have room for the comforts of existence. The rhinoceroses have a pond in which to stand in the mud, and the hippopotami may sport as in their native rivers. The British Museum, with its Roman sculptures, Elgin marbles, and almost innumerable classic antiquities, and St. Paul's with its fifty monuments of England's heroes and benefactors, presented to the Class an extended view of the world's history. Sight-seeing became almost bewildering, and when it was asked what place they next should visit, Tommy Toby replied,-- "I feel as though I had seen almost enough." "Let us visit Madame Tussaud's wax works," said Master Lewis. "Are they like Mrs. Jarley's 'wax figgers?'" said Tommy; "if so I would like to go. Who was Madame Tussaud?" "She was a little French lady who took casts of faces of great men, sometimes after their death or execution, and who died herself some twenty or more years ago, at the age of ninety years." The price of the exhibition was a shilling, and-- "For the Chamber of Horrors a sixpence hextra," said the man admitting the party. Each one paid the "hextra" sixpence. There were three hundred figures in all, supposed to be exact representations of the persons when living. In a room called the Hall of Kings were fifty figures of kings and queens, reproducing to the life these generally condemned players on the stage of English history. A clever, winsome old man sat on one of the benches in the place, holding a programme in his hand, and now and then raising his head, as from studying the paper, to scrutinize one or another of the astonishing works of art. Tommy sat down beside the much interested, benevolent-looking old gentleman, and said,-- "It was not _George_ Wilkes Booth who killed President Lincoln, it was-- "Well, if this don't cap the whole! Why, _you_ are a 'figger,' too." And so the mild, attentive-looking old gentleman proved to be. The Chamber of Horrors revived the feeling the visitors had felt in the Tower. It was a collection of representations of criminals. Among the relics is the blade of the guillotine used during the Reign of Terror in France, which is said to have cut off two thousand heads. [Illustration: WOLSEY SERVED BY NOBLES.] Hampton Court Palace, the gift of Cardinal Wolsey to Henry VIII., and probably the most magnificent present that a prelate ever gave a king, next received our tourists' attention. The palace originally consisted of five courts, only a part of which now remain, but which assist the fancy in stereoscoping the old manorial splendor. Here Wolsey lived in vice-regal pomp, and had nearly one thousand persons to do his house-keeping, and noble lords, on state occasions, waited upon him upon bended knees. The establishment at this time contained fifteen hundred rooms. [Illustration: WHITEHALL.] Edward VI., the last of the boy-kings of England, a youth noted for his piety and love of learning, was born here, and here spent in scholarly occupations a part of his short life. Catharine Howard, who for a long time held the affections of Henry VIII., and who in his best years greatly influenced his conduct by her wisdom and accomplishments, was first acknowledged as queen here; and here also Henry married another Catharine,--Catharine Parr, his sixth and last wife. Bloody Mary kept Christmas here in 1557, when the great hall was lighted with one thousand lamps. Our visitors found Hampton Court open to the public,--a place of rare freedom where people go out from London and enjoy the grounds much as though it were their own. It is in fact a grand picture gallery and a public garden. [Illustration: WOLSEY'S PALACE.] "Wolsey gave this palace to the king," said Master Lewis; "and the king was sporting in the palace when he received the news of the death of the Cardinal, who was stricken with a mortal sickness near Leicester Abbey, soon after having been arrested for high treason. The sad event did not seem to give the king the slightest pain. Such is the value of the presents of a corrupt friendship. "Charles I. resided here at times. Here he brought his young bride when all London was reeking with the pestilence. "Charles had three beautiful children, and was fond of their company. Once, it is said, when he was with them at a window of Hampton Court Palace, a gypsy appeared before him and asked for charity. He and the children laughed at her grotesque appearance, which angered her, when she took from her basket a glass and held it up to the king. He looked into it and saw his head severed from his shoulders. "The king gave her money. "'A dog shall die in this room,' she said, 'and then the kingdom which you will lose shall be restored to your family.' [Illustration: DEATH OF CARDINAL WOLSEY.] "Many years passed; and Oliver Cromwell, attended by his faithful dog, came to Hampton Court Palace and slept in this room. When he awoke in the morning, the dog was dead. "'The kingdom has departed from me,' he said, recalling the gypsy's prophecy; and so it proved. "Of course the story of the gypsy's mirror is untrue, but the legend is a part of the old romance of the palace; and such poetic incidents, though false colored lights, serve to impress the facts of history more vividly on the mind. [Illustration: CHILDREN OF CHARLES I.] "This legend of Charles I.," continued Master Lewis, "reminds me of a more pleasant story, which I will tell you, now that you are at the palace where the king brought his bride when life looked so fair and promising. I will call the story-- THE DUCHESS'S WONDERFUL PIE. "There were gala days at Paris,--wedding days. Then the new Queen of England, Henrietta Maria, who had been married amid music and rejoicings and strewings of flowers, made a journey to the sea, that she might embark for England and see her new husband to whom she had been married by proxy. There were more rejoicings when she landed at Dover. [Illustration: OLIVER CROMWELL.] "It was the plague time in London, so the gala days were omitted there; but the new queen had some magnificent receptions at Burleigh-on-the-hill, the residence of the king's favorite, the Duke of Buckingham. [Illustration: QUEEN HENRIETTA MARIA.] "There was one reception which the duke gave to the royal bride and bridegroom that was a surprise and delight. It was a banquet; the tables were sumptuous and splendid, and on one of them was a very large pie,--as large as that is supposed to be in which the four-and-twenty blackbirds of nursery-rhyme fame are said to have been concealed. The pie excited wonder, but the guests all knew that it was some "'Dainty dish To set before the king.' "The banquet passed gayly, and the time came to serve the wonderful pie. The crust was being removed, when instead of four-and-twenty blackbirds flying out, up popped a little man. He was a chipper little fellow, yet very polite, and was armed _cap-à-pie_. "This was the first introduction of Jeffrey Hudson to the English king and queen. The pie had been purposely constructed to hold the little fellow, who, when the duchess made an incision in his castle of paste, shifted his situation until sufficient room was made for his appearance. "The queen expressing herself greatly pleased with his person and manners, the duchess presented him to her. "This dwarf became very famous in the court of the queen." * * * * * The third day in London was given to the boys as their own. They were allowed by Master Lewis to go to such places as best suited their tastes. The prudent teacher had adopted this plan before, believing that the boys needed it to teach them self-reliance. "Where will you go to-day?" asked Frank Gray of Tommy. "Punch-and-Judy hunting," said Tommy. "The streets of London are full of exhibitions; the queerest performances you ever saw. I have been wishing some time for a chance to see sights for myself. Will you go with me?" "Punch-and-Judy hunting?" said Frank, contemptuously. "No; I am going to make an excursion to Cambridge." "Remember," said Master Lewis, who had heard Tommy's remark, "that London is a wilderness of streets. You must not wander far from any principal street. Never lose sight of the cabs and omnibuses." "I feel perfectly sure that I shall need no other help than the cabman's in finding my way back. I have taken ten shillings in my purse in case of an emergency." "Keep your purse in your pocket wherever you find yourself," said Master Lewis. "Punch-and-Judy crowds have not the credit of being the most honest people." Tommy found the hunting for street performances indeed alluring. Every court and alley seemed alive with the most remarkable entertainments a boy could witness. [Illustration: STREET AMUSEMENTS.] He first met three grotesque musicians who had gathered around them an audience of admiring house-maids, dilatory market-people, and unkempt children. But the hat for contributions was passed so soon after he joined himself to the music-loving company that he at once left for another performance where the call for money might not be so pressing. A fiddler with three performing dogs, that were bedecked with hats and ruffles, quite exceeded in dramatic interest the former exhibition. But the fiddler, too, had immediate need of money, and Tommy remembered Master Lewis's caution about the purse, and passed on to a public place that seemed quite alive with groups of people gathered around curious sights and entertainments. The pastimes here took a scientific turn. Chief among these street showmen rose the tall head of a middle-aged gentleman--"the professor"--who administered the "galvanic grip." "Has fast has yer cured, gentlemen, pass right along, pass right along, and give others a chance. 'Ave you han hache or a pain? I say, 'ave you han hache or a pain? Cure ye right hup, right hup hin a minute. I'll tell you what, it is astonishing, gentlemen, what cures science will perform." [Illustration: STREET AMUSEMENTS.] At this point some one not schooled in the mysteries of science received a very liberal dose of the "magnetic grip," and doubled his body with an "O!" that seemed to be shot out of him, when the crowd laughed and moved on. You pay your five or ten pence and are presented with the handles forming the terminations of the electric wire: you grasp these as tight as you can, one in either hand, while the galvanist grinds away at the machine. When a hundred or more eyes are levelled upon you he suddenly increases the motion in a manner that leaves no doubt in your mind that that man has magnetism about him, whether he be a "professor" or not. Of course your rheumatism at once disappears: it would do the same had you fallen from the roof of a house. Tommy had a strong inclination to be "cured" by the "professor of galvanism," but he conscientiously recalled Master Lewis's advice about the purse. A man with a wonderfully bedecked performing monkey was leaving the square, and, as a sort of testimony to the attraction of his exhibition, a crowd of boys and girls were following him. Tommy wished to see a performance that had evidently excited so much interest, and he allowed himself to be borne along after the man in the juvenile tide. After passing through several streets, the performer stopped in an open court, but for some reason was ordered away. Tommy found himself left almost alone in an antique-looking place, where there were in sight neither omnibuses nor cabs. "Which is the way to Regent Street?" asked Tommy of a sad-looking little girl. "Dunno," said Sad Eyes; "'ave ye got a penny?" "What for?" "For tellin' ye." Tommy made other inquiries, but received about as definite information as at first, and each person followed the unsatisfactory answer with, "'Ave ye a penny?" as though it was worth that trifling amount to open one's mouth. An honest-looking house-wife, without bonnet or shawl, came marching along the street with an air of friendly interest. "Will you direct me to a street where I can find a hack?" asked Tommy. "A what?" "A cab." "I guess yer lost, ar'n't ye?" "If you will be so kind as to direct me to Regent Street or Oxford Street, or Pall Mall, I will pay you." [Illustration: "'AVE YOU GOT A PENNY?"] Tommy felt in his pocket for his purse. It was _not_ there. "Give me yer hand, little boy," said the benevolent-looking dame. The two walked on through several streets, when the woman said,-- "This street will take you to Oxford Street. 'Ave you got a penny?" "No," said Tommy; "I have lost it." "Oh, you blackguard--" Tommy did not stop to hear any figurative language, but found his way to Oxford Street as quickly as possible, and took with him to the hotel so deep a sense of humiliation that he did not relate the misadventure and loss to his companions. In the evening of the boys' "own" day, George Howe and Leander Towle arrived unexpectedly at the hotel. "We have come," said George, "to bid you good-by." "Why good-by?" asked Master Lewis. "We have been abroad a fortnight," said George; "have seen the capitals of Scotland, England, and France; have rode through the heart of England and the most interesting part of Normandy, and, as our money is more than half gone, we must return. The steamer leaves to-morrow." "How much will the whole trip cost you?" asked Wyllys. "It will cost us each $56.00 for the ocean passage both ways, and our travelling expenses and board for the two weeks have averaged to each $2.00 per day, or $28.00. The trip will cost me, well--when I have made some purchases--say $95.00, though I have not yet spent as much as this." "Have you obtained your return tickets?" asked Master Lewis. "No, not yet." "Let me advise you not to take steerage passage in returning. The steerage will be crowded, and you will in that case find it no holiday experience. Take a second-cabin ticket for $40.00." "My expenses then will not greatly exceed $100." "Another steamer sails in a few days," said Master Lewis; "accept my invitation to remain with us over to-morrow, and visit Windsor Castle with us. It shall add nothing to your expenses." The boys were delighted to accept Master Lewis's generous proposal. It was arranged that the next morning the whole party should go to Windsor. "Before we go to Windsor Castle," said Frank Gray to Master Lewis, "will you not tell us something about the place?" "Windsor Castle," said Master Lewis, "is the finest of English palaces, and is one of the residences of the royal family. In its park, Prince Albert lies buried in the mausoleum erected by the queen. Perhaps I cannot better instruct you for the visit than by telling you the story of PRINCE ALBERT AND HIS QUEEN. "For seventeen years Queen Victoria has mourned for one of the best husbands and one of the wisest advisers that ever a female sovereign had. "The marriage of Victoria and Albert was a love-match; not a very common thing in unions of princes and princesses. They were first cousins, Albert's father and Victoria's mother having been brother and sister, the children of the Duke of Coburg; but, when they became engaged, their situations were very different. Victoria was the young queen of one of the mightiest and proudest empires on earth; Albert was only the younger son of a poor and petty German prince, 'across whose dominion one might walk in half a day.' "But their relationship and the plans of their family served to bring them together at a very early age, and they were very young when their union was first thought of. Old King Leopold of Belgium was the uncle of both of them; and it was he who first conceived the idea of their marriage. But not a word was said to either of them about it until an affection had grown up between them, and it was time for the young queen to choose a partner for her heart and throne. [Illustration: VICTORIA AT THE AGE OF EIGHT.] "Albert and Victoria met for the first time when they were both seventeen years old. The young prince and his brother went to England to pay a visit to their aunt and cousin, and the young couple were brought together. Albert at that time was rather short and thick-set, but fine-looking, rosy-cheeked, natural and simple in his manners, and of a cheerful disposition. He took a great deal of interest in every thing about him, and while on his visit to England spent much time in playing on the piano with his cousin Victoria, who was then a slight, graceful, and interesting girl. "She fell in love with him at once; but he, though he liked her, was not so quickly impressed. He wrote to his Uncle Leopold that 'our cousin is very amiable,' but had no stronger praise for her. Albert then returned to the continent, and spent some years in travel and study, writing occasionally to Victoria and she to him. Meanwhile, King William IV. died, and Victoria, in her eighteenth year, ascended the British throne. "The young prince's next visit took place in the year after this event, and now his object was to plead for the hand and heart of the young queen. Victoria could scarcely believe her eyes when she saw him. The short, thick-set boy had grown into a tall, comely youth, with elegant manners and a strikingly handsome face. Soon after, she wrote to her Uncle Leopold, 'Albert's beauty is most striking, and he is most amiable and unaffected,--in short, very fascinating.' "A few days after his arrival, Victoria had made up her mind; and, sending for Lord Melbourne, the prime minister, told him that she was going to marry Prince Albert. The next day she sent for the prince; and 'in a genuine outburst of heartiness and love' she declared to him that he had gained her whole heart, and would make her very happy if he would share his life with her. He responded with warm affection, and thus they became betrothed. "The queen not only thus 'popped the question,' but insisted that the marriage should take place at an early day. This was in the summer of 1839; and, in the early winter of 1840, the young couple were married in the royal chapel of St. James, in the midst of general rejoicing, and with great pomp and ceremony. "Such was the beginning of a happy wedded life, which lasted for over twenty years, and during which the love of each for the other seemed to increase constantly. A little circle of children was soon formed around the royal hearthstone, and the domestic life of the palace was full of contentment and good order; and, as Victoria grew older, she learned more and more of the excellent character that Providence had given her for a husband. "While Prince Albert assumed the direction of the family, and was the unquestioned master of it in its private life, he was wise enough to be very careful how he interfered with the queen in the performance of her public duties. He knew that, as a foreigner, the English would be very jealous of him if he took part in politics, or tried to influence Victoria in her conduct as a ruler. "At the same time, the young queen, scarcely more than a girl, needed a guiding hand, and one that she could trust. No one could be so much trusted as her husband; and Albert gradually became her adviser on public affairs, as well as the head of her household. At first, there were many grumblings and complaints about this in England; but as the purity and good sense of the prince became better known, as it became evident that his ambition was to serve the queen and the country, these complaints for the most part ceased. "Prince Albert devoted himself, with all his heart and mind, to the duties which he found weighing upon him as a husband and father, and as the most intimate counsellor of the monarch of a great country. He denied himself many of the innocent pleasures which lay within his reach, went but little into society, and spent his days and evenings in serious occupations and in the midst of his happy family circle. "Among other things, he took a very deep interest in the progress of art, science, and education. 'His horses,' says a writer, 'might be seen waiting for him before the studios of artists, the museums of art and science, the institutions for benevolence or culture, but never before the doors of dissipation or mere fashion.' "It was Prince Albert who proposed and planned the great London Exhibition of 1851, the first of the series of 'World's Fairs,' which have since been so frequently held, the latest being our own Centennial; and when it had been resolved upon, it was Prince Albert's labor and energy, more than that of any other, which made it a success. "In his own family circle Prince Albert was always kind, gentle, and indulgent, but firm and resolute in his treatment of his children. He took a great interest in their studies, and directed their education, sometimes teaching them himself; and he bestowed an anxious and fatherly care upon the formation of their manners and habits, and a right training of their hearts and minds. "From first to last, he was as tenderly devoted to the queen as a lover. He went with her everywhere, and his tastes and hers were entirely congenial. Of a quiet and domestic disposition, he was amply content to find his pleasures in the family circle; and Victoria took a perpetual delight in his kind and cultivated companionship. "When Prince Albert died, in December, 1861, the queen was overwhelmed with grief; and it was many years before she so far recovered from it that she could bear to show herself in public, or to take part in any social gathering or State ceremony. "He was placed in a tomb in the beautiful park of Windsor, where she had so often roamed with him in their early wedded life; and every year, on the sad anniversary of his death, Victoria repairs to his grave, and prays, and scatters flowers on the tomb." Windsor Castle had its rise in early Saxon times, and was made a fortress by William the Conqueror. Froissart says that King Arthur instituted his Order of the Knights of the Round Table here. King John dwelt here during the conferences at Runnymede, when the barons drove him almost to madness by compelling him to sign away his royal claims by the acceptance of the Magna Charta. The situation of the castle is most beautiful; it overlooks the Thames, and from its tower twelve counties may be seen. The home park of the palace contains five hundred acres, and this is connected with Windsor Great Park, which has an area of one thousand eight hundred acres. [Illustration: ANGER OF KING JOHN.] The beauty of St. George's Chapel greatly excited the wonder of our tourists. Here are the tombs of Henry VIII., Charles I., Georges III. and IV., and William IV. "Here," said Wyllys Wynn, "is the finest monument I have yet seen in England. How beautifully the light is made to fall upon it!" The monument represented a dead princess, with a sheet thrown over the body and couch, as though she had just expired. Above it the spirit of the maiden is shown in the form of an angel ascending to heaven. "It is the tomb of the Princess Charlotte," said Master Lewis. "She was one of the most amiable princesses that ever won the affections of the English people. Her death came like a private sorrow to every family in the kingdom, and was the occasion of the most tender public expressions of grief. "I must tell you a story," continued Master Lewis, after standing at the tomb of George III., "that will soften your feelings, perhaps, towards one whom, for political reasons, our own history has taught us to regard as little worthy of respect; but who had great private virtues, whatever may have been his political mistakes." In the bright avenue of elms, called the Long Walk, which connects the home park with the Great Park of Windsor, Master Lewis told the boys the story of the lamented Princess Amelia and her unhappy father, who became insane from his loss, when she died. The pathetic story made a great impression on the minds of the party, and it was several hours before they resumed their accustomed air of gayety and enjoyment. They returned to London in the late evening twilight, and the next day the party separated. George Howe and Leander Towle remained in London until the sailing of the next steamer for America; and Master Lewis and the boys under his own care took a steamer for Antwerp. CHAPTER XIII. BELGIUM. Belgium.--Dog-carts.--Waterloo.--Aix-la-Chapelle and Charlemagne.--Story of Charlemagne.--Ghent and James van Artevelde.--Bruges.--Story of Charles the Rash.--Longfellow's "Belfry of Bruges."--French Diligences.--Normandy.--A Story-telling Driver.--Story of the Wild Girl Of Songi. "Anvers!" By this name is Antwerp known in Belgium, of which it is the chief commercial port. The Class stopped here only long enough to visit the Cathedral, where are to be seen two of Rubens' most celebrated pictures, the Elevation of and the Descent from the Cross. The boys climbed up to the belfry of the famous spire, whose bells make the air tremble for miles with the melody of their chimes. It was Master Lewis's plan to travel through the lower part of Belgium and through Normandy by short journeys near the coast, but he made a détour from Antwerp to Brussels that the boys might visit the battlefield of Waterloo. The landscape along the route to Brussels was dotted with quaint windmills, reminding one of the old pictorial histories, in which Holland is illustrated by cuts of these workshops of the air. The boys entered the city in the morning and passed in view of the great market square and its contiguous streets. "This city," said Frank Gray, "was the scene of the grand military ball before the Battle of Waterloo. "'There was a sound of revelry by night, And Belgium's capital had gathered then Her beauty and her chivalry, and--'" "And please don't quote the reading book," said Tommy Toby. "The city is full of _dog-carts_. Dog-carts heaped full of vegetables and women to lead about the dogs! What a comical sight!" [Illustration: {A DUTCH WINDMILL.}] "They are probably country people with produce to sell," said Wyllys. "What curious head-dresses! What odd jackets! The scene does not much remind one of Byron's poetry; but it is poetic, after all!" "I understood that we came here to study the associations of history," said Frank, "and not dog-carts." "I came to see what I could see," said Tommy, "and not to imagine battles in the air." [Illustration: DOG-CARTS.] The unexpected street scenes and the general interest of the Class in them so offended Frank that he turned his eyes with a far-away look towards the highest gables, and passed on the rest of the way to the Hotel de l'Europe in silence. The next morning the Class left the Place Royale, in a fine English stage-coach, in company with an agent of the English mail coaches, for Waterloo, which is about twelve miles from the city. It was a bright day, and the airy road led through the forest of Soignies,--the "Ardennes" of Byron's "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage." "And Ardennes waves about them her green leaves, Dewy with Nature's tear-drops, as they pass." The battlefield of Waterloo is an open plain, graced here and there with appropriate monuments, and dignified with an imposing earth mound with the Belgian Lion on its top. It did not seem that the plain could ever have been the scene of such a contest, so great was its beauty and so quiet its midsummer loveliness. [Illustration: STREET SCENES IN BRUSSELS.] "Here," said Frank, "the Old Guard of France, who could die but not surrender, gave their blood for the empire." "Here," said Wyllys, "England won her greatest battle on land--" "At the cost of twenty thousand men, as I have read," said Tommy. "Victor Hugo," said Master Lewis, "declares that Waterloo was not a battle: it was a change of front of the nations of the world." The Class stopped at Brussels on their return from the most peaceful plain to take a view of the Hotel de Ville, which is one of the finest town-halls in the country. Its tower is more than three hundred and sixty feet high, and is surmounted with a colossal statue of St. Michael, which looks very small indeed from the square, but which is really seventeen feet high. The figure turns in the wind, and is the weather vane of the city. [Illustration: HOTEL DE VILLE, BRUSSELS.] "I wish you to visit Aix-la-Chapelle," said Master Lewis. "The places you have seen in England and expect to see in Normandy will, I hope, leave in your mind a clear view of English history, when you shall associate them under my direction, as I purpose to have you do. To have a view of French history you will need to learn something of the old empire of Charlemagne, of which this city was the principal capital on this side of the Alps. Here the great king of the Franks, Roman Emperor, and virtual ruler of the world was born, had his favorite residence, and here he was buried. Here, in 1165, his tomb was opened, and his body was found seated upon a throne, crowned, the sceptre in his hand, the Gospel on his knee, and all of the insignia of imperial state about him." [Illustration: CHARLEMAGNE IN COUNCIL.] Through districts of pasture lands, by cliffs that looked like castles, over clear streams and past populous villages our tourists made their way to the old city of the emperor of the West. It is situated in a valley, surrounded by heights. Its town hall was built on the ruins of the palace of Charlemagne. The grand old cathedral has sixteen sides. In the middle of the interior, a stone with the inscription CAROLO MAGNO marks the grave of Charlemagne. [Illustration: CHARLEMAGNE AT THE HEAD OF HIS ARMY.] "Charlemagne, like Alfred of England," said Master Lewis, "was a patron of learning; and he instituted in his own palace a school for his sons and servants. But he was a war-making king. He conducted in all fifty-three expeditions in Germany, Gaul, Italy, and Greece, and made himself the ruler of the greater part of Northern and Eastern Europe. He went to Rome in 800 A.D. and received a most gracious reception from the Pope, as in all his contests he had been a faithful servant of the Church. "On Christmas day, 800 A.D. he went into St. Peter's to attend mass. He took his place before the altar, and, as he bowed his head to pray, the Pope placed the crown of the Roman Empire upon it, and all the people shouted, 'Long live Charles Augustus, crowned of God, the great Emperor of the Romans!' "And so the king of the Franks became the emperor of the world." The relics which the cathedral exhibits from time to time at great public festivals are remarkable as illustrations of the influence of superstition. Among the so-called _Grandes Reliques_ are the robe worn by the Virgin at the Nativity and the swaddling clothes in which the infant Saviour was wrapped. It would be almost irreverent to excite ridicule by giving a list of the articles associated with the crucifixion of Christ. Among the _Petites Reliques_ are pieces of Aaron's rod that budded. Upon these pretended relics the German emperors used to take the State oath at their coronations. [Illustration: HOTEL DE VILLE, GHENT.] The Class next visited the coronation room in the Hotel de Ville, a hall one hundred and sixty feet long, where a series of impressive frescoes presents a view of the life of Charlemagne. In this hall thirty-five German emperors and fourteen empresses had been crowned. [Illustration: VAN ARTEVELDE AT HIS DOOR.] The Class returned to Brussels, and thence made easy journeys through a fertile and thickly settled country, towards Normandy. Ghent, a grand old city of the commerce kings of Flanders, with its quaint town-hall and its two hundred and seventy bridges, next met the eager eyes of our tourists, who stopped here briefly on their way to Bruges. "I never hear the name of Ghent pronounced," said Master Lewis, "without recalling the scene which history pictures of James van Artevelde standing in the door of his house, when the burghers, tired of the rule of kings and nobles, came to him for counsel, and asked him to become their leader. It was really the burghers' declaration of independence, and the making one of their number,--for James van Artevelde was a brewer,--president of the rich old city. This was on the 26th of December, 1337. It was a bold stroke for liberty in the days of tyranny, and the memory of it will ever live." "I know but little of the history of Bruges," said Wyllys Wynn to Master Lewis, during the ride to that city. "I have heard, of course, of its belfry, and I also remember what Tommy said about it in his story of Philip the Good and the Tinker. What makes the city so famous?" "It was once," said Master Lewis, "the greatest commercial port in the world; a hundred and fifty foreign vessels would sometimes enter its basins in a single day. Its inhabitants became very rich, and its grandees lived like princes. A French queen who visited it in its high prosperity is said to have exclaimed, 'I thought myself the only queen here, but I see a thousand about me!' Twenty ministers from foreign courts had residences within its walls. It excelled all places in the manufacture of wool; and in recognition of this fact Philip the Good instituted there the Order of the Golden Fleece. "There is an historic character whose name is associated with Bruges in a very different way from Philip the Good,--a famous son of Philip, who was called CHARLES THE RASH. "His surname is a picture of his character, and it seems strange that so good a duke as Philip should have had so bad a son. To wage war, harry and burn, to be engaged always in some work of destruction, was the passion of his life. He devastated Normandy, destroying more than two hundred castles and towns. He filled the land with smoke, and colored the rivers with blood. "He succeeded to the ducal crown of Burgundy in 1467. Being the richest prince of the times, he immediately began to make preparations for war on a gigantic scale, which should add all the neighboring territories and provinces to Burgundy. He desired to extend his personal power at any expense of blood and treasure, and he mapped out plans of conquest and dreamed dazzling dreams. "While he was getting ready for war, Louis XI. of France invited him to a conference: he hesitated, and Louis, through his partisans, incited the citizens of Liége to revolt against him. Charles then consented to the conference, but as soon as Louis arrived, he treacherously seized him and made him his prisoner. He forced him to swear a treaty on a box which was believed to contain pieces of the true cross, and which had belonged to Charlemagne. He then compelled him to go with him to Liége, and apparently to sanction the punishment of the people for the very revolt he had incited them to make. "He conquered Lorraine, and planned to subdue Switzerland and add it to Burgundy. He entered Switzerland, captured Grandson, and hanged and drowned the garrison. The Swiss rose unitedly against such a merciless foe, and utterly defeated him. But he raised another army and again entered Switzerland, full of visions of conquest. He was again defeated. [Illustration: CHARLES THE RASH DISCOVERED.] "He came back to Burgundy, morose and gloomy. His nails and beard grew long; he looked like a wild man; the people recoiled from him, and his dark character seemed to throw a shadow around him wherever he appeared. "Lorraine, which he had conquered, rose against him. This roused him again to action: he hired soldiers, and led the way to war. He met the rebellious Lorrainers in the plain of Nancy. Here the rash duke made his last fight. It was a snowy day, and the battle was a short one,--the soldiers of Charles flying quickly before the enemy. "When the duke was preparing himself for the battle, the gilt lion which formed the crest of his helmet fell off. "'It is a sign from God,' said he, smitten in conscience. "When the battle was over his body was nowhere to be found. "They searched for it in the snow-covered fields. At last a Roman page said he had seen the duke fall. He led the people towards a frozen pond, where were some bodies lying, stripped. A washerwoman who had joined in the search, saw the glitter of a jewel on the hand of a corpse whose face was not visible. The head was frozen in the ice. The position of the body was changed. It was Charles the Rash. He was finally buried in the church of Notre Dame, whose spire you may already see shining in the sun." The story of Charles the Rash led the Class to visit the old church of Notre Dame soon after their arrival in the courtly old city. It had a greater charm for the boys than the ornate town-hall with its famous belfry and its many bells. In a side chapel was the tomb of the rash duke and that of his daughter, Mary of Burgundy. "I can only think of the snowy field, and the naked body frozen in the ice," said Ernest Wynn, as he left the solemn chapel. The belfry of Bruges, of which so much has been said and sung, is really only about three hundred feet high, but affords a grand view of the surrounding country. Its chimes play by machinery four times an hour, and are regarded the finest in Europe. We must let Longfellow tell the charming story of his visit to the old tower:-- In the market-place of Bruges stands the belfry old and brown; Thrice consumed and thrice rebuilded, still it watches o'er the town. As the summer morn was breaking, on that lofty tower I stood, And the world threw off the darkness, like the weeds of widowhood. Thick with towns and hamlets studded, and with streams and vapors gray, Like a shield embossed with silver, round and vast the landscape lay. At my feet the city slumbered. From its chimneys, here and there, Wreaths of snow-white smoke, ascending, vanished, ghost-like, into air. Not a sound rose from the city at that early morning hour, But I heard a heart of iron beating in the ancient tower. From their nests beneath the rafters sang the swallows wild and high; And the world, beneath me sleeping, seemed more distant than the sky. Then most musical and solemn, bringing back the olden times, With their strange, unearthly changes rang the melancholy chimes, Like the psalms from some old cloister, when the nuns sing in the choir; And the great bell tolled among them, like the chanting of a friar. Visions of the days departed, shadowy phantoms filled my brain; They who live in history only seemed to walk the earth again; All the Foresters of Flanders,--mighty Baldwin Bras de Fer, Lyderick du Bucq and Cressy Philip, Guy de Dampierre. I beheld the pageants splendid that adorned those days of old; Stately dames, like queens attended, knights who bore the Fleece of Gold. Lombard and Venetian merchants with deep-laden argosies; Ministers from twenty nations; more than royal pomp and ease. I beheld proud Maximilian, kneeling humbly on the ground; I beheld the gentle Mary, hunting with her hawk and hound; And her lighted bridal-chamber, where a duke slept with the queen, And the armed guard around them, and the sword unsheathed between. I beheld the Flemish weavers, with Namur and Juliers bold, Marching homeward from the bloody battle of the Spurs of Gold; Saw the fight at Minnewater, saw the White Hoods moving west, Saw great Artevelde victorious scale the Golden Dragon's nest. And again a whiskered Spaniard all the land with terror smote; And again the wild alarum from the tocsin's throat,-- Till the bell of Ghent responded o'er lagoon and dike of sand, "I am Roland! I am Roland! there is victory in the land!" Then the sound of drums aroused me. The awakened city's roar Chased the phantoms I had summoned back into their graves once more. Hours had passed away like minutes; and, before I was aware, Lo! the shadow of the belfry crossed the sun-illumined square. On entering Normandy, Master Lewis engaged passages on diligences, wherever a promise of a route amid pleasant scenery offered itself. It seemed to be the boys' greatest delight to ride on the top of a diligence. These French stage-coaches are lofty, lumbering vehicles, composed of three parts. The front division is called _coupé_, and is shaped somewhat like an old-time chariot. It holds three persons. Next is the _intérieur_ or inside, holding six persons, an apartment much shunned in pleasant weather in summer time. Behind is the _rotonde_ which collects "dust, dirt, and bad company." Over all is the _banquette_, a castle-like position on the top of the coupé, a seat protected by a hood, or head, and leather apron. To secure this seat beside the "driver" was Tommy Toby's highest ambition, when about to leave a newly visited place. In one of these rides, when Tommy and Wyllys Wynn occupied this high seat, Tommy said to the driver,-- "It seems strange to me to find such great forests in old countries like England, Belgium, and France. I fancied that great tracts of wood only existed in new lands like America, or half-civilized places. Are there wild animals in the woods here?" The driver was a French soldier, quite advanced in life. He spoke English well, and seemed to enjoy giving the largest possible information to his seat companions. "Yes, there are some wild animals left in the forest," he said,--"of the harmless kind. _Wild people_ have sometimes been found in the largest tracts of forest." "Wild people?" asked Tommy, his curiosity greatly excited. "Did you ever see a wild man?" "No, not myself. Did you ever hear of Peter the Wild Boy found in the woods in Hanover?" "Yes," said Tommy. "There was a wild girl found in the French woods, not far from Paris, about the same time." "Will you not tell us the story?" asked Tommy. The diligence lumbered along among the cool forest scenery, between the walls of green trees which now and then, like suddenly opened windows, afforded extended views; and the good-natured, well-informed driver told the two boys the story of THE WILD GIRL OF SONGI. "In the year 1731, as a nobleman was hunting at Songi, near the ancient and historic town of Chalons, on the river Champagne, in France, he discovered a couple of objects at a distance in the water, at which he fired, supposing them to be birds. "They immediately disappeared, but arose at a point near the shore, when they were found to be two children, evidently about a dozen years of age. "They carried to the shore some fish that they had caught, which they tore in pieces with their teeth and devoured raw, without chewing. "After their meal, one of them found a rosary, probably lost by some devotee, with which she seemed highly delighted. She endeavored to conceal it from her companion, but the latter made the discovery, and, filled with rage and jealousy, inflicted a severe blow on the hand containing the treasure. The other returned the blow, striking her companion on the head with a heavy missile, and bringing her to the ground with a cry of pain. "The sisters, for such they probably were, parted. The one most injured went towards the river and was never seen or heard of afterwards. The other hurried off towards the hamlet of Songi. "She was a strange and frightful-looking creature. Her color was black, and her only clothing consisted of loose rags and the skins of animals. The people of Songi fled to their houses and barred their doors at the sight of her. "She wandered about the place, greatly to the terror of the villagers, but at last some adventurers determined to set a dog on her. She awaited the attack coolly, but as soon as the monster came fairly within her reach, she dealt him such a blow on the head as laid him lifeless on the spot. "The astonished peasants kept at a safe retreating distance, not wishing a personal encounter with such a creature. She endeavored to gain admittance to some of the houses, but the quaking occupants, who seem to have fancied that the evil one himself had made his appearance, securely fastened their doors and windows. "She at length retired to the fields and climbed a tree, where she sat, appearing to the spectators like an omen of ill to Songi. "The Viscount d'Epinoy was stopping at Songi at this time, and, supposing the creature to be a wild girl, offered a reward for her capture. "The excitement in the hamlet cooling, a party was formed to secure the reward. The wild girl still remained in the tree, evidently taking repose. Thinking that she must be thirsty, a bucket of water was placed at the foot of the tree. She descended, looking cautiously around, and drank, but immediately ascended to the top of the tree, as though fearful of injury. "She was at length allured to descend by a woman, who held out to her fish and fruit. She was seized by stout men, and taken to the seat of the viscount. One of her first acts was to devour raw some wild fowl, which she found in the kitchen. "After public curiosity had been satisfied, the viscount sent her to a shepherd to be tamed. The latter found this no easy matter, and her wildness and animal nature were exhibited in so marked a manner that she became known as the shepherd's beast. "She sometimes escaped. Once she was missing over night, when there came a terrible snow-storm, and the poor shepherd wandered in search of her. He discovered her at last housed just as she had been in childhood, in the branches of a tree. The wind blew and the snow drifted around her, but she was loth to return. She had learned that trouble dwells in houses, and here in the tree-top, if she was cold, she was free. I wonder if she thought of her sister in whose arms she had doubtless slept in the trees, in her childhood. "Her agility was marvellous. She would outrun the swiftest animals, even the rabbits and hares. The Queen of Poland once took her on a hunting excursion, and much amusement she afforded to the royal party. She would discover game with the shrewdness of a bird of prey, and having outrun and captured a hare, she would bring it with great eagerness to the astonished and delighted queen. "She was once set at the table with some people of rank, at a banquet. She seemed delighted with the bright costumes, and the wit and gay spirits of the guests. Presently she was gone. She returned at last with something very choice in her apron, and with a face beaming with happiness, she approached a fine lady, and holding up a live frog by the leg said gleefully, 'Have some?' "She dropped the frog into the plate of the startled guest, and passing around the table, with a liberal supply of the reptiles, said, 'Have some? have some?' "The ladies started back from such a dessert, and the poor girl felt a pang of disappointment at the sudden rejection of the offering. "She had gathered the frogs from a pond near at hand. "It was a long time before she became accustomed to the habits of civilization. She died in a convent." "What a strange history!" said Wyllys Wynn. "She must have found her life in the convent very different from that of her childhood. What was her name?" "They called her Maria le Blanc." CHAPTER XIV. UPPER NORMANDY. Calais.--The Black Prince.--Étretat.--French Bathing.--Legend.-- Rouen.--Story of St. Louis.--Story of St. Bartholomew's Eve. The Class stopped briefly at Calais, and was disappointed to find a city so famous in history situated in a barren district, and surrounded with little that is picturesque. The old walls around the town are, however, pleasant promenades, and command a view of the white cliffs of England. It was here, after a siege of eleven months, that Eustace de St. Pierre and his five companions offered themselves to Edward III. as a ransom for the city, and were saved from death by the pleading of Queen Philippa. The town was a fortress then, and looked menacingly over to England. The English proudly held possession of it for more than two hundred years, or from 1347 to 1558, when it was captured in Bloody Mary's time by the French under the Duc de Guise. "When I am dead," said Mary in her last days, "and my body is opened, ye shall find _Calais_ written on my heart." Calais recalls the stories of valor of the chivalrous campaigns of Edward III. and his son, the Black Prince, in Normandy. At Crecy, the Black Prince, when only sixteen years of age, led the English army to victory, and slew the King of Bohemia with his own hand. King Edward watched this battle from a windmill on a hill. The French army was many times larger than the English. The Prince during the battle found himself hard pressed, and at one point the Earl of Warwick sent to the king for assistance. "Is my son killed?" "No, sire," said the messenger. "Is he wounded?" "No, sire." "Is he thrown to the ground?" "No, but he is hard-pressed." "Then," said the king, "I shall send no aid. I have set my heart upon his proving himself a brave knight, and I am resolved that the victory shall be due to his own valor." [Illustration: CAPTURE OF KING JOHN AND HIS SON.] In 1356, in another campaign in Normandy, the Black Prince won a most brilliant victory at Poitiers, and captured the French King John. The latter was a brave soldier, and fought with his battle-axe until all the nobles had forsaken him. The Black Prince made a supper for him in his tent in the evening, and waited upon him at the table with his own hands. The Black Prince and the captive king rode through London together, the former in great pomp, and the latter on a cream-colored pony by his side. All of these things read prettily in history, but one is glad that the time is past when war was the game of kings, and armies were used as their playthings. A series of easy rides near the cool sea brought the Class to the old fishing village of Étretat, now a fashionable summer resort for French artists, and a popular bathing-place for those desiring seclusion amid the coast scenery. It is situated amid rocks which the sea has excavated into arches, aiguilles, and other fantastic recesses and caverns. Its pretty châlets and villas on the hills, its gayly-dressed summer idlers, its groups of fishermen who are to be seen in all weathers, its handsome fisher girls bronzed by the sun who lead a free life by the sea, its bathers in brilliant dresses of blue serge and bright trimmings, its bracing air and usually fine weather, make it one of the quaintest and most restful nooks in France. There are the remains of a Norman church near the sea. It is said to occupy the spot where the people watched the great flotilla of William the Conqueror drift to St. Valery, there to take the Norman army to England. A French watering-place is quite different from an American seaside resort. You have your board and sleeping-room in one of the hotels, but your parlors, piazzas, and places of recreation are in an elegant pleasure house, called the _Casino_. For the privileges of the Casino you pay a small sum; at Étretat it amounts to about ten dollars a month. The billiard-rooms, ball-room, and the rooms for general conversation are in the Casino. Every one bathes in the sea at Étretat, women and children, whole families together, and most of the girls are expert swimmers. It is delightful to sit upon the _shingle_, as the pebbly beach is called, and watch the sport in the sun-bright mornings or golden and dreamy afternoons. The costumes of the bathers are so pretty that the scene seems like a ball in the sea. Bathing men are stationed here and there to render any needed assistance. The great caverns which the sea has worn in the rocks at Étretat remind one of the ruins of immense cathedrals, and are grand indeed in the light of the full summer moon. The place abounds with story-telling fishermen. The Class was told one story here which is worthy of a poem. "A beautiful stream once watered the valley. Its bed may still be seen, but it now runs under ground. On the stream an industrious miller built his mill and did a thriving business. One day a woman, sick and destitute, came to him for help. He turned heartlessly away from her with abuse. The poor creature raised her withered arm, and said,-- "'To-morrow thou shalt have thy reward.' "When the miller awoke the next morning he found his mill standing on dry ground. The river had gone down into the earth, where it still runs." [Illustration: TOWER OF JOAN OF ARC, ROUEN.] The fisher's hymn which Ernest Wynn gave the Club at its first meeting was asked for here by Master Lewis, and was procured. It is sung before the departure of ships and during great storms in the fishing season, being a part of the mass for seamen, or the _messe d'equipage_. The Class left Étretat for Rouen. * * * * * "O Rouen! Rouen! it is here I must die, and here shall be my last resting-place!" said Joan of Arc at the stake. Rouen was hardly the resting-place of the heroic peasant girl, for her ashes were thrown into the Seine. But the thought of the stranger on coming to Rouen is less associated with its history under the sea-kings of the North, the Norman dukes and the English invaders, than with the hard fate and the public memorials of the simple shepherdess, who seems to have been called from her flocks to change the destiny of France. [Illustration: THE MAID OF ORLEANS.] The Class entered Rouen after a series of short, zigzag journeys, partly in coaches and partly on foot, going leisurely from town to town through roads that presented to view continuous landscapes of shining orchards, ripening gardens, and resplendent poppy-fields; stopping at Amiens, the birthplace of Peter the Hermit, meeting here and there a ruin, and finding everywhere the connecting historical links between the present and the past. At Amiens the Class was brought into the presence of a relic which greatly excited the boys' wonder. "This church," said their guide, taking the Class to a side chapel of the cathedral, "contains a very rare relic,--a part of the head of John the Baptist!" Passing into the beautiful chapel the Class was shown the shrine containing the precious treasure, which consists of the supposed frontal bone, and the upper jaw of the saint. The _valet de place_ who accompanied the Class from the hotel seemed to have no doubt of the genuineness of the relic, or of the propriety of adoring it, if indeed it were real,--and he bowed reverently before the shrine. "A very rare relic," he said. "Wonderful!" said Frank. "I did not know that such sacred remains were anywhere to be found as are shown us in the churches of France." "_Quite_ a rare relic," said Master Lewis, coolly. "I believe that, previous to the French Revolution, several whole heads of John the Baptist were to be seen in France." "You do not think that a church like this would be guilty of imposture, do you?" asked Ernest Wynn. "Not wilfully. Most of these French relics were brought from Constantinople at the time of the Crusades. They may be genuine,--the people believe them so; but, in the absence of direct historic evidence, it is probable that the Crusaders were deceived in them by others, who in their turn may have been deceived. "You will be shown wonderful relics or shrines supposed to contain them, in nearly all the great churches of France. The French people were taught their reverence for relics by St. Louis, who sought to enrich the churches of his country with such treasures." "Who was St. Louis?" asked Ernest. "I am glad to have you ask the question," said Master Lewis. "His name meets you everywhere in France. STORY OF ST. LOUIS. "St. Louis was one of the best men that ever sat on a throne. But he was influenced by the superstitions of the times in which he lived. "His mother was a most noble and pious woman, and he was a dutiful and affectionate son. "It was regarded as very pious at this time for a prince to go on a crusade. St. Louis was taken sick, and he made a vow that, if he recovered, he would become a crusader. On his recovery, he appointed his mother regent, and sailed with forty thousand men for Cyprus, where he proceeded against Egypt, thinking by the conquest of that country to open a triumphant way to Palestine. He was defeated, and returned to France. "He was a model prince among his own people. He used to spend a portion of each day in charity, and to feed an hundred or more paupers every time he went to walk. He visited his own domestics when they were sick; he founded charities, which have multiplied, and to-day cause his name to be remembered with gratitude almost everywhere in France. He made it the aim of his life to relieve suffering wherever it might be found. "It is related of him, among a multitude of stories, that he was once accosted by a poor woman standing at the door of her cottage, who held in her hand a loaf, and said,-- "'Good king, it is of this bread that comes of thine alms that my poor, sick husband is sustained.' "The king took the loaf and examined it. "'It is rather hard bread,' said he; and he then visited the sick man himself and gave the case his personal sympathy. [Illustration: "IT IS RATHER HARD BREAD."] "Going out on a certain Good Friday barefoot to distribute alms, he saw a leper on the other side of a dirty pond. He waded through it to the wretched man, gave him alms, then, taking his hand in his own, kissed it. The act greatly astonished his attendants, but the disease was not communicated to him. [Illustration: DEATH OF ST. LOUIS.] "In 1270 he started on a new crusade, but died in Tunis of the pestilence. Visions of the conquest of the Holy City seemed to fill his mind to the last. He was heard to exclaim on his death-bed in his tent, 'Jerusalem! Jerusalem! We will go up to Jerusalem!'" * * * * * One of the first places which the Class sought out in Rouen was the statue of Joan of Arc. It is placed on a street fountain near the spot where the unfortunate maid was burned. It disappointed our tourists, and seemed an unworthy tribute to such an heroic character. The great tower, called the Tower of Joan of Arc, seemed a more fitting reminder of her achievements. The streets of Rouen are narrow, but are full of life. Rouen has been called a New Paris, and Napoleon said that Havre, Rouen, and Paris were one city of which the river Seine was the highway. The gable-faced, timber-fronted mansions are interspersed with evidences of modern thrift, and the Rouen of romance seems everywhere disappearing in the Rouen of trade. The Cathedral of Rouen is a confusing pile of art; it has beautiful rose windows, and its spire is four hundred and thirty-six feet high. The old church of St. Ouen, which is larger and more splendid than the cathedral, is regarded as one of the most perfect specimens of Gothic art in the world. It is 443 feet long. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF ST. OUEN.] The Palais de Justice, as the old province house or parliament house is called, is an odd but picturesque structure. It lines three sides of a public square. [Illustration: PALAIS DE JUSTICE, ROUEN.] "To-morrow," said Master Lewis, after a day of sight-seeing in Rouen, "we go to the most beautiful city in all the world." "I wish I knew more about the history of Paris," said Ernest Wynn, "now that it is so near to us. I think of it as a place of gayety and splendor, the scene of St. Bartholomew's Massacre, of the Revolution, and the Commune. It was the city that Napoleon seemed to love more than any thing else in the world. What is its early history?" "You will read in Julius Cæsar's Commentaries, in your course in Latin," said Master Lewis, "a brief account of Lutetia, the chief town of the Parisii, a Gallic tribe that the Romans conquered. This, I think, is the oldest historical allusion to Paris, as Lutetia came to be called. It was probably an old town at the time of the Roman invasion; it was chosen by Clovis as the seat of his empire in the sixth century; it began to grow when the Northmen came sailing up the Seine in their strange ships to its gates, and made it their prey. In the tenth century it became the residence of Hugh Capet, the founder of the Capetian line of kings, and soon after increased so rapidly that it doubled in size and population. Under Henri of Navarre, in 1589, the city began to be famous for its tendencies to gayety and splendor. Louis the Great lavished the wealth of France upon it, converting the old ramparts into picturesque public walks or boulevards, and enlarging and adorning its palaces so that they rivalled the royal structures of the East. Then Napoleon I. enriched it with the spoils of Europe, spending on it more than £4,000,000 in twelve years. Napoleon III. completed the work of his predecessors by introducing into the city all modern improvements, and making Paris in every respect the most magnificent capital in Europe. [Illustration: NORTHMEN ON AN EXPEDITION.] "I have given you in the story of Charlemagne and in the visit to Aix-la-Chapelle a view of the early French Empire; in the story of St. Louis you have had a glance at France at the time of the Crusades; I think I will here tell you a story which will present to you another period of the nation's history. [Illustration: THE BARQUES OF THE NORTHMEN BEFORE PARIS.] STORY OF CHARLES IX. AND ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S EVE. "Charles IX., the twelfth king of the family of Valois, came to the French throne when only ten years of age, under the regency of his mother, that terrible woman, Catharine de Medici. He was an impulsive youth, restless and vacillating, and was left wholly to the evil influences of his mother. The first years of his reign were disturbed by the struggles between the Protestant and Catholic parties in France. These difficulties were apparently settled in 1569. "The queen-mother, who was a Catholic, seemed to entertain kind feelings towards the Protestant leaders. The Protestant King of Navarre was promised the hand of the king's sister Marguerite, and marked courtesy and apparent kindness of feeling were shown by the royal household to many of the leading men of the great Protestant party. The latter were thus rendered unsuspicious of danger, and became almost wholly disarmed. [Illustration: CATHARINE DE MEDICI.] "But Catharine de Medici, full of craft and wickedness, had resolved to destroy the Protestant power. She was fully versed in crime, and the passion for dark deeds grew upon her with years. One day she went to the boy-king, Charles, and disclosed a plot for the massacre of the Protestants of France. He listened with a feeling of horror. He had learned to love the Protestant statesmen, and to call their great leader, Coligny, 'father.' His young heart recoiled from such a deed. But his mother gave him no rest. She confided her plot to the Catholic leaders, who joined hand in hand with her to accomplish the crime. Church and State united to persuade the young king that the stability of the throne, the glory of his family, and the advancement of religious truth demanded the slaughter of the Huguenots, as the Protestant party were called. Still he hesitated; but after a little while exhibited his characteristic weakness under the influence of persuasion, and the conspirators knew his final assent was certain. "St. Bartholomew's Day was at hand, the time appointed by the Catholic leaders, the Guises, for the work of death. Paris was full of Huguenots from the principal provincial cities, who had been drawn hither by the magnificent wedding of the Protestant King of Navarre. The preparations for the massacre were nearly complete, but the young king still hesitated to issue the fatal order. "His mother now used every art in her power to make him place himself boldly with the Guises. As he was king, she wished the sanction of a royal edict to do her bloody work. With this the preparations for the destruction of the Huguenots would be complete. Her appeals at length so wrought upon his mind that he excitedly exclaimed, 'Well, then, kill them! kill them all, that not a single Huguenot may live to reproach me!' This frantic remark was construed as an order. "The massacre was appointed to begin on St. Bartholomew's Eve, at the tolling of a bell. The young king was fearfully nervous and agitated during the preceding day. Just before the fatal hour, his conscience had so affected his better feelings, that he despatched orders to the Duc de Guise, countermanding the slaughter. The duke received the message as he was in the act of mounting his horse to lead the assassins. "'_Il est trop tard!_' 'It is too late!' said the duke to the bearer, and at once rode away. [Illustration: COLIGNY.] "It was a still night, August 24, 1572. The defenceless Huguenots were unsuspicious of danger, while armed assassins were lurking in every house. At last the heavy clang of a great bell fell on the breathless evening air, and the slaughter began. "All that summer night the streets ran with blood. The young and the old, the daughter, the mother, the nobleman and the beggar,--all who bore the name of Huguenot,--were cut off without mercy. None were spared. Even women murdered women, and children, it is said, impelled by the maddening example, applied the dagger to other children in their beds. The streets of Paris ran with blood. From thirty to seventy thousand persons were slain in the city and in the towns of France on this night and a few days following it. "The new Queen of Navarre, Marguerite de Valois, had gone to bed on the fatal eve, by the express order of Catharine. Just as she was going to sleep, she says, a man knocked with hands and feet at her door, shouting 'Navarre! Navarre!' The nurse, thinking it was the king, opened the door. A Protestant gentleman, bleeding, and pursued by four archers, threw himself on her bed for protection. The archers rushed after him, but were stayed by the appearance of the captain of the guard. The young queen hid the wounded Huguenot in one of her closets, and cared for him until he was able to escape. Such scenes took place in nearly all the houses of the nobility. "Coligny was rudely murdered, and his body thrown out of the window of his apartments into the courtyard, where it is said to have been kicked by the Duc de Guise. The young king was in a court of the palace of the Louvre, with his mother, when the great bell began to toll. At first he trembled with fear and horror. He recovered presently from his fear, and, running to the palace window, became so excited at the sight of blood that he fired upon the wretched fugitives who were attempting to escape by swimming across the Seine. "But the young king never knew a happy hour after that dreadful night. He grew pale and thin, and his tortured conscience and shattered brain called up in his solitary hours the images of the slain. "Two years after the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve the young king lay dying. His disease, it has been said, was caused by poison, which had been applied to the leaves of one of his favorite books for the purpose, by his unnatural mother. His sufferings were dreadful in the extreme. Historians tell us that he sweat drops of blood. His mental anguish was as fearful as his bodily distress. He would cry out to his nurse, '_Ah, nourrice, ma mie, ma bonne! que du sang, que d'assassinats! Oh quels mauvais conseils j'ai suivis! Oh Seigneur Dieu, pardonnez moi, et faites moi misericorde!_' 'Ah, nurse, my good nurse! What blood! What murders! Oh what bad counsels I followed! Lord God, pardon me! Have mercy on me!' "Historians cover the memory of Charles IX. with infamy, but his first impulses were usually kind, and his first intentions good. He does not seem to have inherited the disposition of that monster of wickedness, his mother. His most evil acts could hardly be called his own. Left to himself he would have been deemed a most polished and amiable prince, though wanting in decision. As a victim of bad counsellors, pity should mingle with the censure that follows his name." [Illustration: CHARLES IX. AND CATHARINE DE MEDICI.] CHAPTER XV. PARIS. Paris the Beautiful.--Notre Dame.--Tuileries and Louvre.--Garden of the Tuileries.--Bois de Boulogne.--Church of the Invalides.-- Napoleon's Tomb.--Place de la Concorde.--Story of the Man of the Iron Mask.--Versailles and the Trianons.--Story of the Dauphin.-- Fontainebleau.--The Seine.--Water-Omnibuses.--A Wonderful Boat.-- Tommy's French.--A Surprise.--St. Eustache.--Molière.--Young French Heroes.--Wyllys Wynn's Poem. Paris the beautiful! City of light hearts, smiling faces, charming courtesies, and gay scenes everywhere! City of dark tragedies of history that have hardly left behind a scar! The tropical forest gives no warning of poison lurking under the flowers; the bright Southern sky wears no trace of the tempest. Paris says to the stranger, "I am beautiful: I have ever been beautiful, and I wear loveliness like a crown." The streets are as gay as the summer sunshine in them; the boulevards, as the wide streets and avenues for pleasure walks are called, seem channels of happiness, through which the tides of life run as brightly as they glimmer along the Seine. "La belle Paris!" says the stranger as he comes, and "La belle Paris!" he utters respectfully as he goes. We do not wonder that the French love it; that Napoleon gloried in it, and that Mary Queen of Scots left it with a heavy heart. Here human nature has light, warmth, and glow; and love, sympathy, and patriotism are everywhere to be seen. "Where are the ruins caused by the siege and the Commune?" asked Frank Gray, after the Class had been driven through a number of streets. "I do not see the first sign of there having been a recent war and revolution." "In the fall of 1870," said Master Lewis, "shot and shell for a long period fell around the city and into it like rain. In the following spring the Commune was declared the government of Paris, and it seemed bent on destroying the city's beauty, and overturning its monuments of art. The Vendôme Column, which celebrated the victories of Napoleon the Great, was pulled down as a monument of tyranny; the Palace of the Tuileries and the Hotel de Ville were set on fire; and the wealthy citizens who had endured the siege by a foreign foe fled from their own countrymen. To-day most of the houses destroyed by the war and the Commune are rebuilt, and the streets are as splendid as in the gay days of the Empire." The Class took rooms in the _Grand Hotel_, one of the largest and finest houses for public entertainment in Europe. Its first visit was to the ancient Cathedral of Notre Dame, whose history is as old as Christianity in France, and which even before that period was a Pagan temple. Here _Te Deums_ for all of the nation's victories have been sung; funeral orations of kings have been pronounced, confessions of sin for a thousand years have been made, and masses innumerable celebrated. Here Napoleon the Great was crowned, and Napoleon III. was married. Here the Goddess of Reason, after being borne through the streets in state, was enthroned during the Revolution of 1793. It has thirty-seven chapels. In entering the cathedral the Class seemed to be in a new world. The rose-colored windows flooded the edifice with a soft light; and beyond it was a blaze of candles amid clouds of incense, for the priests in their gorgeous vestments were administering at the altar. [Illustration: THE GODDESS OF REASON CARRIED THROUGH THE STREETS OF PARIS.] The boys passed through the waves of light reverently, and stood near the altar. A choir of altar boys suddenly rose amid the smoke and lights and glitter of priestly robes, and sang most melodiously. It seemed very solemn and grand, but the thought of the associations of the place was even more awe-inspiring. The scene was one that had been enacted for more than a thousand years, under the groined roof of the same stately edifice, and the past seemed to hang, a weight of gloom, in the very air. On each one's paying half a franc, the Class was admitted into the sacristy, where the sacred relics, purchased in the East by St. Louis himself, are kept. Among them is a supposed piece of the true cross and a pretended part of the Crown of Thorns which was put upon the Saviour's head before the Crucifixion. The second day that the Class spent in Paris was the most delightful of the whole tour. "I shall go with you to-day," said Master Lewis, "to the most beautiful place in Europe, the most beautiful garden in Europe, and one of the most beautiful picture-galleries in the world." "The Tuileries?" asked Frank. "The Louvre?" asked Ernest. "Both," said Master Lewis. "The Tuileries and the Louvre are now one. Francis I. began the building of the Louvre in 1541; Catharine de Medici commenced the Tuileries in 1564; Napoleon III. united the two palaces in the four years following 1852. The two palaces have been growing about three hundred years. The Tuileries was partly burned by the Commune. The united palaces cover twenty-four acres. Think of it! Twenty-four acres of art, ornament, pictures, and splendor!" The garden of the Tuileries is the favorite promenade of wealthy and fashionable Parisians, and seemed to the boys too beautiful for reality. Graceful statues rise on every hand from flower-beds, bowers, by cool fountains, and in the shade of grand old trees,--statues in marble, stone, and bronze; Grecian, Roman, French. Airy terraces, basins bordered with rich foliage and gorgeous flowers carry the eye hither and thither, and call out some new expression of admiration at almost every step. "How happy the life of a French king must have been!" said Tommy Toby. "How unhappy the lives of French kings have been!" said Master Lewis. "If you would have a view of royalty that makes a peasant's life seem desirable, read the history of the old French kings." The beautiful forests of France extend to the very outskirts of the city. One of these, the Bois de Boulogne, is the favorite park of Paris. It contains more than two thousand acres. It has an immense aquarium, pavilions of birds, and a garden for ostriches and cassowaries, and its principal avenue is one hundred yards wide. The Class visited this park on a beautiful afternoon, passing through the Champs Elysées, a splendid avenue filled with equipages. In this walk the boys saw the famous _Arc de Triomphe_ and the _Palais de l'Industrie_, in which the World's Fair was held in 1855, when nearly two million strangers beheld Paris in her glory. The Arc de Triomphe was begun in 1806, the year of the battle of Austerlitz, and was finished by Louis Philippe. It commemorates the victories of Napoleon, and is the most magnificent imperial monument in the world. No scene in Paris seemed to inspire a part of the Class with so much awe as the tomb of Napoleon. At the entrance to the crypt of the dome of the church of the Invalides, containing the conqueror's remains, are these words: "I desire that my ashes may rest on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people whom I have loved so well." From a balustrade above the tomb under the beautiful dome the boys looked down in silence on the sarcophagus, or stone coffin, which is of Finland granite. The monolith on which it rests is porphyry, and weighs 130,000 pounds. The monument cost nine million francs. A beautifully tinted light fell upon the sarcophagus. "Look," said Tommy, "see--" An armed guard approached, with a solemn gesture of the hand. He simply said,-- "Be reverent." [Illustration: GARDEN OF THE TUILERIES.] The Hotel des Invalides, an asylum for disabled soldiers, of which the church and dome are a part, was founded by Louis XIV. The dome is gilded, and is three hundred and thirty feet high. [Illustration: FOUNTAIN IN THE CHAMPS ELYSÉES.] Ernest Wynn, who seemed to have a part of some old ballad always upon his lips, repeated some fine lines to Master Lewis as they went out of the church,--a quotation from an old song, entitled "Napoleon's Grave." (At St. Helena.) "Though nations may combat and war's thunders rattle, No more on thy steed wilt thou sweep o'er the plain; Thou sleep'st thy last sleep, thou hast fought thy last battle, No sound can awake thee to glory again." The delightful _Place de la Concorde_, which is between the Garden of the Tuileries and the Champs Elysées, and which has been called the most delightful spot in any European city, had been passed through by the Class in their walk to the park, and it was decided to give an afternoon to a visit to it. Here stands the obelisk of Luxor, brought from the ruins of Thebes. [Illustration: PLACE DE LA CONCORDE.] Here stood the guillotine, or rather the guillotines, on which Louis XIV. and Marie Antoinette and nearly three thousand persons perished. Here revolutionists cut off the heads of the royal family, and the people the heads of the revolutionists. [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE LOUVRE.] Two beautiful fountains were playing on the afternoon when the Class made their visit. The sky was all rose and gold; the Seine flowed calmly along; the aspect of every thing seemed as foreign to any past association of war, tragedy, and pangs of human suffering as the figures of the Tritons and Nereids that were spouting water from the fishes in their hands. [Illustration: FOUNTAIN, PLACE DE LA CONCORDE.] Leaving the Place de la Concorde, which Master Lewis said he believed was constructed in part of stones of the old Bastile, the Class went to the public square where the Bastile had stood. "The Place of the Bastile," said Master Lewis, "now adorned by the Column of Liberty, is the site of the old Castle of Paris, which was built as a defence against the English. The castle became a prison for people who offended the French kings. The Man of the Iron Mask was confined here. It was regarded as an obstacle to liberty, and it was stormed by the people during the Revolution, and destroyed." "Who was the Man of the Iron Mask?" asked Tommy Toby. "That is a question that used to be asked by all the statesmen of Europe, and that has been repeated and always will be by every reader of history. It has been answered in many different ways. Books, pamphlets, and essays have been written upon the subject. It is still a secret, and seems destined always to remain so. I will give you briefly the strange history of this State prisoner." THE MAN OF THE IRON MASK. "During the reign of that voluptuous old monarch, Louis XIV. of France, there appeared on one of the Marguerite Islands, in the Mediterranean, a prisoner of State closely guarded, and entrusted to the especial care of a French governmental officer, De Saint Mars. "Although confined in this obscure spot in the sea, where but little was seen or heard save a distant sail and the dashing of waters, he became a marked man among the few who chanced to meet him, and the circumstance of his concealment was in danger of being noised abroad. He was consequently removed to Paris, and immured in the cells of the Bastile. "From the time that he began to attract attention on the island in the Mediterranean to the close of his protracted life, no one but his appointed attendants is known to have seen his face. "His head was enveloped in a black-velvet mask, confined by springs of steel, and so arranged that he could not reveal his features without immediate detection. [Illustration: MAN OF THE IRON MASK.] "His guardian, De Saint Mars, had been instructed by a royal order, or by an order from certain of the king's favorites, to take his life immediately, should he attempt to reveal his identity. "During his confinement on the Marguerite island, De Saint Mars ate and slept in the same room with him, and was always provided with weapons with which to despatch him, should he attempt to discover the secret of his history. If report is true, De Saint Mars might well exercise caution, for it is asserted that he was to forfeit his own life if by any want of watchfulness he allowed the prisoner to reveal his identity. "The prisoner himself seemed anxious to make the forbidden discovery. He once wrote a word on some linen, and succeeded in communicating what he wished to an individual not in the secret of the mystery. But the _ruse_ was discovered, and the person that received the linen died suddenly, being taken off, it was supposed, by poison. He once engraved something, probably his name, on a piece of silver plate. The person to whom it was conveyed was detected in his knowledge of the secret, and soon after died, as suddenly and mysteriously as the one who had received the linen. "These incidents indicate that the prisoner was a man of shrewdness and learning. "He was attended, during his imprisonment in the Bastile, by the governor of the fortress, who alone administered to his wants; and when he attended mass he was always followed by a detachment of invalides (French soldiers), who were instructed to fire upon him in case he should speak or attempt to uncover his face. "These circumstances, and many others of like character, show that he was a person of very eminent rank, and that those who thus shut him out from mankind were conscious that they were committing a crime of no ordinary magnitude. "Who, then, was this person of mystery, familiarly known as the Man of the Iron Mask? "He is supposed by many to have been a son of Anne of Austria and the Duke of Buckingham, and consequently a half-brother of Louis XIV., and a co-heir to the throne of France. If so, it would appear, that, while Louis XIV. was luxuriating amid the splendors of the palace of Versailles, his brother was suffering the miseries of exile, or languishing in a dungeon, shut out not only from the outward world, but from all intercourse with mankind. But other writers think him to have been some less remarkable person. "The iron mask, of which frequent mention has been made in sensational books, was a very simple contrivance of velvet and springs of steel." * * * * * The Class made two excursions from Paris, one to Versailles and the other to Fontainebleau. Versailles, a town of 30,000 inhabitants, which has grown up around one of the finest palaces and parks of Europe, was originally the hunting-lodge of Louis XIII. Louis XIV. chose the place for a palace, and employed almost an army of men for eleven years upon the structure. He spent upon this palace nearly £40,000,000 sterling. Thither in 1680 he removed his gay court, and here he passed in gloomy grandeur his melancholy old age. It is a place of beautiful gardens, wonderful fountains, fine statues, and walks associated with the history of kings, queens, statesmen, and scholars. The palace to the visitor seems a vast picture gallery, wherein is shown the conquests of France. It is a long journey through the glittering rooms. Here you see the representation of a king in his moment of triumph, adored as a god, and there you see the same king overthrown or stretched upon his bed of death. The fountains murmur, the orange trees fill the air with perfume, and you turn from the exhibition of the glowing and faded pomps of history to the gardens, feeling that after all man's only nobility and kingship and hope of a crown lies in his soul, and it is virtue alone that makes one royal. Two small palaces or villas in the Park of Versailles, called Great Trianon and Little Trianon, recalled to Master Lewis the happy days of the life of Marie Antoinette, which she spent here while the unseen cloud of the Revolution was gathering, and the calm settled down on Paris before the storm. [Illustration: VERSAILLES.] "We have seen the places where Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette lived and were beheaded. What became of their children?" asked Frank Gray. "The oldest son of Louis XVI. died at the beginning of the Revolution. As it may give you a picture of the stormy times of the period, let me tell you THE STORY OF THE DAUPHIN. "He was born at Versailles in 1785. He was a most affectionate child, and was ardently attached to his mother. He used to sport about the gardens of the palace; the very place where we are now was his play-ground. "He would sometimes rise early in the morning to gather flowers from the gardens to lay on his mother's pillow. "'Ah!' he would say, when weary of play, 'I have not earned the first kiss from mother to-day.' [Illustration: LITTLE TRIANON.] [Illustration: THE DAUPHIN WITH THE ROYAL FAMILY IN THE ASSEMBLY.] "The Revolution came and cast a shadow over Versailles, with all its glory. The royal family was surrounded with enemies, and was in constant terror, and the little dauphin was made unhappy by the sight of his mother's tears. "One day a serving-woman told him that if he would procure some favor for her she would be happy as a queen. "'As happy as a queen!' he answered: 'I know of one queen who does nothing but weep.' "The Revolutionists overthrew the Bastile and the throne, and the members of the royal family were obliged to seek protection in the National Assembly. They were then confined in an old French prison, called the Temple. "The king was tried by the Assembly, was condemned and executed. He deeply loved the dauphin, and parted from him with bitter grief. "After the king's death the dauphin was the principal solace of the queen in her imprisonment. He was at last removed from the queen's apartment by an order of the Committee of Public Safety. It is related that when the guards came to take him away, his mother fought for him until her strength was exhausted, and she fell senseless upon the floor. "After the execution of his mother he was given over to the care of a brutal shoemaker, named Simon, who endeavored to cause his death without committing palpable murder. He was ill-fed, beaten and abused, and received the name of the 'She-wolf's Whelp,' referring to Marie Antoinette. "At this period the police were in the habit of distributing in the streets songs against 'Madame Veto,' as the queen had been called. One of the most infamous of these, as vulgar as it was brutal, had been preserved by Simon. "One day, for the want of a new torture for the child, Simon resolved to make him sing this obscene song against his mother. "'Come along, Capet,' said he, 'here is a new song which you must sing to me.' "He handed the song to the dauphin. The boy saw its meaning, and with all the instincts of a susceptible nature he recoiled from the thought of reviling his mother. He laid it down on the table without saying a word. "Simon arose in wrath. "'I thought I said you must sing.' "'I never will sing such a song.' "'I declare to you that I will kill you if you refuse to obey me.' "'Never!' "Simon caught up an andiron, and threw it at the child with a force that would have proved fatal had he not missed his aim. His passion then gradually subsided, but the boy refused to sing. "One day, after a system of abuses too shocking to relate, Simon seized the dauphin by the ear, and drawing him to the middle of the apartment, said,-- "'Capet, if the Vendéans were to set you at liberty, what would you do to me?' "'I would forgive you,' replied the noble boy. "His situation at last became wretched in the extreme. He was placed in a filthy cell where he could neither receive pure air nor have exercise; his food was scanty, his bed was not made for six months, and his clothes were not changed for a year. He became covered with vermin, and the mice used to nibble at his feet. He passed the days in utter silence, wishing only to die. Once, when he had attempted to pray kneeling, he had been discovered and terribly punished, and he felt that it was not safe for him to speak even to his God. "After the overthrow of the Revolutionary government under Robespierre, he was assigned to more merciful keepers. But his body and mind were in ruins, and all efforts to restore him proved in vain. "It was a lovely June day in the summer of 1795. He was dying; without, the air was full of sunshine, of birds and roses. "'Are you in pain?' asked his attendant. "'Yes,' he said; 'but not in so much as I was, the music is so sweet.' "He presently added; 'Do you not hear the music?' "'From whence does it come?' "'From above.' "His eyes became luminous; he seemed happy and peaceful, and he fancied that among the voices that seemed to be singing around him he could distinguish that of his mother. It may have been all but a dream or fancy, but it grew out of the filial devotion of his heart." [Illustration: FOREST OF FONTAINEBLEAU.] Fontainebleau is one of the most ancient palaces of France; it is a labyrinth of galleries, salons, amphitheatres, secret chambers, and fantastic balconies. To traverse the palace is a journey. Like all the old French palaces, it is surrounded with gardens, parks, and has its wood or forest. Indeed, the town of Fontainebleau is situated in a forest, which covers an extent of sixty-four miles. [Illustration: IN THE WOOD AT FONTAINEBLEAU.] "Artists, poets, romancers, and lovers," says a writer, "have from time immemorial made the forest of Fontainebleau the empire of their dreams. You ought to see it in the morning, when the bird sings, when the sun shines, ... when all these stones, heaped beneath those aged trees, take a thousand fantastic forms, and give to it the appearance of the plain on which the Titans fought against Heaven. Oh, what terrible and touching histories, stories of hunting and of love, of treason and vengeance, this forest has covered with its shadow!" St. Louis loved this forest, and Napoleon signed his abdication at Fontainebleau. Master Lewis had allowed the boys to have a day to themselves in each of the principal places where they had stopped. If one of them wished to make an excursion on that day to some neighboring place, the good teacher made some careful arrangement for that one to do so. He was very careful about all matters of this kind, without really seeming to distrust the boys' judgment in their efforts to look out for themselves. A coach-driver, a traveller, a valet-de-place, or some person was usually employed to have an eye on the member of the Class who was allowed to make a tour to a strange place alone. The boys, with the exception of Tommy Toby, were given a day to go where they liked in Paris. Master Lewis did not dare to allow Tommy this privilege, after his misadventure in England. The Wynns visited the Palace of the Institute; Frank Gray, the Grand Opera House. "I would like to go to the river this morning," said Tommy, "and sail on the ---- queer boats there." "The flies, or water-omnibuses?" said Master Lewis. "I will go with you." Tommy looked surprised and hardly seemed pleased, not that he did not generally like Master Lewis's company, but because it looked to him like a restraint upon his freedom. But the good teacher took his hat and cane, and Tommy did not express any displeasure in words. The two went to a splendid stone bridge called the Pont d'Jena, over the Seine. Compared with the Mississippi, the Ohio, or the St. Lawrence, the Seine is but a small stream. The river is lined with solid stone-work on each side, and its banks are shaded with trees. It is filled with queer crafts, and a multitude of families live on the barges that convey wood, coal, and certain kinds of merchandise from place to place. As Master Lewis and Tommy were standing on the bridge, watching the sloops as they lowered their masts to pass under, an astonishing sight met Tommy's eyes. It was a great boat, like a steamer, but without screw or paddles, swiftly passing up the river by means of a chain which rose out of the water at the bows, ran along the deck, turned around wheels which seemed to be worked by an engine, and then slipped overboard at the stern. "How far can that boat go on in that way?" asked Tommy. "The chain by which the boat is carried forward," said Master Lewis, "is _one hundred miles long_." Master Lewis and Tommy passed some hours among the queer crafts on the river, taking passages here and there on the flies or water-omnibuses. "Were you afraid to trust me alone this morning?" asked Tommy, on their return. "Well, yes." "Did you think I could not speak French well enough to go out alone?" "Your French might not be very well understood here." "I think I can talk simple French, such as servants could understand very well." In the afternoon, being somewhat alone, Tommy thought he would explore the hotel, which was something of a town in itself. He descended from his apartment on the third floor, with the intention of going to the courtyard. But he could not find the place which had so attracted him from his window. He tried to go back, but lost the way even to his apartment. He descended again, but failed to find any place he remembered to have seen before. It was all as grand as a palace, but as puzzling as a labyrinth he had seen in the grounds of Hampton Court Palace. He said to one after another of the very polite people he chanced to meet,-- "Please, sir [or madam], do you speak English?" He received only smiles of good-will, and courteous shakes of the head, in answer to all inquiries. Tommy remembered his French lessons. Happy thought! He accosted a servant, whose knowledge of the language he fancied might be as simple as his own:-- "_Pardon, Monsieur, voulez-vous avez la bonté de m'indiquer un valet-de-place?_" "_Je ne comprends pas_," said he. "_Je ne comprends pas_," said Tommy. "_Je ne puis pas trouver ma chambre_," pointing upward. "_Voulez-vous m'indiquer quelqu'un qui parle l'Anglais?_" "_Je ne comprends pas._" "_Ne comprenez-vous Français?_" said Tommy. The man's face wore a willing, but very puzzled expression. Just then a girl with a happy face came out of one of the rooms. "Do you speak"---- "Why, yes, of course I speak. I am very glad to meet you here. How pleasant!" [Illustration: "JE NE COMPRENDS PAS."] It was Agnes, the young lady who had made herself so agreeable on the steamer. The next morning, after a chat with Agnes, Master Lewis said to Tommy,-- "I think I will let you take a day to go where you like." "Will you not let me go with you?" asked Agnes. "It is a fête day, or some kind of Church festival, and I would like to go to that lovely church of St. Eustache, where they have the finest organ and sweetest chanting in the world. I know you will like it. It took a hundred years to build the church. It is all just like fairy-land." As Agnes had been reading the comedies of Molière, the French Shakspeare, she induced Tommy to attend her to the old Théâtre Français, which was under the direction of the great dramatist for many years, and where he was stricken down by death in the middle of a play. It was not open for an exhibition at the hour of the visit, but a courteous Frenchman took them through it, and related to Agnes some pleasing anecdotes of Molière. The Class took many delightful walks along the clean streets and charming boulevards, visiting churches, public buildings, statues, and paintings. In one of the visits to a church Tommy was much amused by a priest who, as the people were going out after some superb music, pretended to be praying, but who, amid the noise and confusion, was only making contortions of his face. Tommy went through the priest's performance in dumb show when he returned to the hotel, for the amusement of Agnes, but was checked by Master Lewis when he attempted a similar imitation in one of the public rooms, lest some one might mistake it for a want of reverence for sacred things. [Illustration: {AT PRAYERS.}] In one of these walks they were shown a place where a French boy did a noble act at the end of the last war. An order had been issued to shoot all persons found with arms in their hands in the streets. A captain with his company on duty came upon a French boy with a musket. "I must order your execution," he said. "Let me return a watch I have borrowed," said the boy. "When will you return?" "At once, upon my word." The boy went away, and the captain never expected to see him again. But he presently came back, and taking a heroic attitude said,-- "_I am ready. Fire!_" He was pardoned. "The young French people," said Master Lewis, "are very patriotic. History abounds with noble acts of French boys. I will relate an incident or two to the point:-- "Joseph Barra lived in the interior of France at the beginning of the French Revolution. He was a generous-hearted boy, who loved truth, his mother, and his country. He was a Republican at heart; a boy of his impulses could have been nothing else. "Wishing to serve his country in the great struggle for liberty, he entered the Republican army at the age of twelve, as a drummer boy. His whole soul entered into the cause; he was ready to endure any hardship and to make any sacrifice, that the country he loved might be free. He allowed himself no luxuries, but he sent the whole of his pay as a musician to his mother. "His regiment was ordered to La Vendée to encounter a body of Royalists. One day he found himself cut off from the troops, and surrounded by a party of Royalists. Twenty bayonets were pointed towards his breast. He stood, calm and unflinching, before the glittering steel. "'Shout,' cried the leader of the Royalists, 'shout, "Long live Louis XVII!" or die!' "The twenty bayonets were pushed forward within an inch of his body. "He bent upon his captors a steady eye, kindling with the lofty purpose of his soul. He took off his hat. He gazed for a moment on the blue sky and the green earth. Then, waving his hand aloft, he exclaimed, '_Vive la République!_' "The twenty bayonets did their cruel work, and the boy died, a martyr to his convictions of right and of liberty. "Joseph Agricole Vialla, a boy thirteen years of age, connected himself with a party of French Republican soldiers stationed on the Danube. One day an army of insurgent Royalists were discovered on the opposite side of the river, attempting to cross over on a pontoon. The only safety for the Republican soldiers was to cut the cables that held the bridge to the shore. Whoever should attempt to do this would fall within range of the Royalists' guns, and would be exposed to what seemed to be certain destruction. "Who would volunteer? "Every soldier hesitated. The boy Vialla seized an axe, and ran to the bank of the stream. He began to cut the cables amid frequent volleys of shot from the other side, when a ball entered his breast. He fell, but raising himself for a moment, exclaimed,-- "'I die, but I die for my fatherland!' "In the _Chant du Départ_--an old French revolutionary song, once almost as famous as the _Marseillaise_--the deeds of these boy-heroes are celebrated in the following strain:-- "'O Barra! Vialla! we envy your glory. Still victors, though breathless ye lie. A coward lives not, though with age he is hoary; Who fall for the people ne'er die. "'Brave boys, we would rival your deed-roll, 'Twill guard us 'gainst tyranny then; Republicans all swell the bead-roll, While slaves are but infants 'mong men. "'The Republic awakes in her splendor, She calls us to win, not to fly! A Frenchman should live to defend her, For her should he manfully die!'" Wyllys Wynn seemed much impressed by these incidents of youthful heroism. He sometimes wrote poems, and on his return to the hotel he related the incident of the boy and the watch in these lines, which he read in one of the parlors to Agnes. HONOR BRIGHT. The rush of men, the clash of arms, The morning stillness broke, And followed fast the fresh alarms, The clouds of battle-smoke. The Seine still bore a lurid light, As down its ripples run, Where late had shone the fires at night, The rosy rifts of sun. "Shoot every man," the captain cried, "That dares our way oppose!" Like water ran the crimson tide, Like clouds the smoke arose. They forward rushed, the streets they cleared,-- But ere the work was done, Before the troop a boy appeared, And bore the boy a gun. "Thou too shalt die," the captain said. The boy stopped calmly there, And sweet and low the music played Amid the silenced air. "Hold!" cried the boy; "a moment wait. For, ere I meet my end, I would return this watch, that late I borrowed of my friend." "Return a watch?" The captain frowned. "Your meaning I discern; Such honest lads are seldom found: And when would _you_ return?" "At once!" the hero makes reply; "As soon as e'er I can; I _will_ return, and I will die As nobly as a man!" "Well, go!" The lordly bugle blew, And said the man, with joy, "Right glad am I to lose him, too, I would not harm the boy." Some moments passed; the deadly rain Fell thickly through the air; The smoke arose, and, lo! again The boy stood calmly there. The muskets ceased, the smoke-wreath passed O'er sunlit dome and spire,-- "Here, captain, I have come at last, And I am ready. Fire!" As marble grew the captain's cheek, He could not speak the word. The shout of _Vive la République!_ Adown the ranks was heard. The bugle blew a note of joy, "Advance!" the captain cried,-- They marched, and left the happy boy The colonnade beside. We sing Vialla's sweet romance, Of Barra's death we read, But few among the boys of France E'er did a nobler deed. The palace burns, the columns fall, The works of art decay, But deeds like these the good recall When empires pass away. CHAPTER XVI. BRITTANY. Avranches.--Riding on Diligences.--Mont St. Michel.--Chateaubriand.-- Madame de Sévigné.--Brittany.--Breton Stories.--Story of the Old Woman's Cow.--Story of the Wonderful Sack.--Nantes.--Scenes of the Revolution at Nantes.--Fénelon and Louis XV. The Class went by rail from Paris to the bright Norman district of Calvados, visiting Caen and Bayeux, whose attractions have been briefly sketched in the letter of George Howe to Master Lewis. The next journey was to Avranches, or the "Village of the Cliff," by the way of Falaise, the residence of Duke Robert, father of William the Conqueror, and to the quaint town of Vire, famous for its cleanly, industrious inhabitants its grand old hills buried in woods, its great wayside trees, and its ancient clock-tower. [Illustration: CLOCK TOWER AT VIRE.] The Class met few people on this journey. The cantonniers were evidently busy with their own simple industries. Once or twice the boys saw gentlemen, whom Master Lewis said were curés, at work in cool, green gardens; and often they met the pretty sight of women and girls at work in the fields. The cottages were thatched, and some were moss-grown, and all the canton wore the appearance of simple contentment, virtue, and thrift. Avranches is a favorite summer resort for English tourists, owing to the beauty of its situation, its health-giving air, and the ease and cheapness with which one may live. The journey from Caen, along the bowery Norman highways, was made in diligences. The boys seemed to brim over with pleasure at the prospect of a ride in a diligence. "There is one place where contentment and happiness may surely be found," said Tommy Toby, one day. "Where?" asked Master Lewis. "On the top of a diligence." "Are you sure?" "Yes, sure." The next day the Class was overtaken, while travelling in the French coach, by a pouring rain. Tommy, as usual, was on the seat with the driver. He became very impatient, saying, every few minutes, "I wish it would stop raining, I wish--" this, that, and the other thing. "Tommy," said Master Lewis, from within the coach, "are you _sure_?" After a time the sunlight overspread the landscape, making the watery leaves shine like the multitudinous wavelets of the sea. Tommy's merry voice was heard again, talking bad French. "Contentment and happiness," said Master Lewis to Frank, "have evidently returned again." From Avranches the Class visited that wonderful castle, church, and village of the sea, Mont St. Michel. The journey from the mainland was by a tramway across the Grève, or sands, at low tide. At neap tides the Mount is not surrounded by water at any time, but at spring tides it is washed by the sea twice a day, and sometimes seems like a partly sunken hill in the sea. The fortress is girt about the base with feudal walls and towers colored by the sea; above these rises a little town, the houses being set on broken ledges of rock; above the town stand the fortifications, and a church and its tower crown all. It is one of the most curious places in the world. Pagan priests here worshipped the god of high places; monks succeeded them; Henry II held court here, then it became a place to which saints made yearly pilgrimages. The Revolution drove out the monks, and turned it into a prison. In an iron cage called the Cage of St. Michel, a torturous contrivance, state prisoners used to be confined. The Class next went to St. Malo, by the way of Dol; a breezy journey, with the sea in view. "St. Malo," said Master Lewis, "was the birthplace of Chateaubriand, who visited our country after the American Revolution, and in 1801 wrote an Indian romance, 'Atala,' a prose Hiawatha, if I may so call it, which charmed all Europe. He published a political work on America, which had great influence in France. He was in early life a sceptic, but the memory of a good mother made him a Christian, and he published a book on religion which arrested the infidel tendencies of the times. Louis XVIII. declared that one of his pamphlets was worth an army of one hundred thousand men. He was one of the most brilliant writers France ever produced. You should read on your return 'Atala' in French. You will find an edition, I think, illustrated by Doré, in which the pictures will compel you to read the story." "I have read 'Atala,'" said Frank. "Would you like to visit Chateaubriand's birthplace with me?" asked Master Lewis. Frank was very desirous to see the place at once, and Master Lewis and he went to the house, now a hotel, immediately on their arrival in the town. From the windows of the house could be seen the tomb of Chateaubriand, which is on a little island in the harbor. When Master Lewis returned to the hotel he was alone. "Where is Frank?" asked Tommy. "He is to spend the night in Chateaubriand's room," said Master Lewis. "Visitors at St. Malo are allowed to sleep there on paying a small sum." "Is Chateaubriand living yet?" asked Tommy. "I thought you said he came to our country after the Revolution." "No, he died many years ago. Frank and I have just been looking from the windows of his birthplace at his tomb on one of the little islands." "But Frank is not going to stay all night in the room of one that is dead! What good will that do?" "It is the respect that appreciation pays to genius," said Master Lewis. Ernest Wynn wished to spend the night with Frank, and received Master Lewis's permission. "Why, Ernest!" said Tommy, "I thought you had more sense. I am glad I am not literary. This is the strangest thing I have met with yet." Chateaubriand's birthplace is the Hotel de France. His room is among those offered to visitors, at a little extra cost. Master Lewis had stopped at the hotel during a previous tour. If Tommy was surprised at the "respect appreciation pays to genius," in the incident of sleeping in Chateaubriand's room, he was more so by a conversation which took place next day, when Master Lewis made his plans for the last zigzag journeys. "The last place we will visit," he said, "is Nantes. We will go by rail to Rennes, and by diligences the rest of the way, which will afford you a fine view of Brittany. At Rennes, we will make, if you like, a détour to Vitré." "What shall we see there?" asked Tommy. "The residence of Madame de Sévigné." "Is _she_ living?" asked Tommy. "Oh, no." "What did she do?" "She wrote letters to her daughter," said Frank. "Who was her daughter?" "The prettiest girl in France." "Is _she_ living?" "Oh, no," said Frank, impatiently. "Why, did you never hear of the Letters of Madame de Sévigné?" "I never did. Are her letters there?" "No." "What is?" "The room where she wrote them," said Master Lewis. "They must be very wonderful letters, I should think," said Tommy, "to make a traveller take all that trouble." "They are," said Master Lewis. "Lord Macaulay says, 'Among modern works I only know two perfect ones; they are Pascal's Provincial Letters, and the Letters of Madame de Sévigné.'" The Class was now in Brittany, a province old and poor, whose very charm is its simplicity and quaintness. Normandy smiles; Brittany wears a sombre aspect everywhere. Normandy is a bed of flowers; Brittany seems to be a bed of stone. Here and there may be seen a church buried in greenery, but the landscape is one of heath, fern, and broom. The people are as peculiar as the country. Their costumes are odd, some of them even wear goat-skins. Many of them lead a sea-faring life; it is the Bretons who chiefly man the French navy. They cling to old legends and superstitions with great fondness; the wild country abounds with wonder-stories. Nearly all of these stories are striking from their very improbability. They relate to an imaginary period when the Apostles travelled in Brittany, or to men and women who were transformed during some part of their lives into animals, especially into wolves. The story-telling beggars furnish much of the fiction to the unread people. Those legends which are the chief favorites are undoubtedly very old. The Class listened to several of them at their hotel at St. Malo. Some of them begin in a way that at once arrests attention; as the following story of the OLD WOMAN'S COW. When St. Peter and St. John were visiting the poor in Brittany they stopped one day to rest at a farm-house among the trees, where they met a little old woman who kindly brought them a pitcher of cool water. After the saints had drunk, the old woman told them the story of her hard life. She had seen better days, she said; her husband had once owned a cow, but he had lost it, and he now was only a laborer on the place. "Let me take the stick in your hand," said St. Peter. The saint struck the stick on the ground, and up came a fine cow with udders full of milk. "Holy Virgin!" said the woman. "What made that cow come up from the ground?" "The grace of God," said St. Peter. When the saints had gone, the old woman wondered whether, if she were to strike with the stick on the ground, another cow would appear. She struck the ground as she had seen St. Peter do, when up came an enormous wolf and killed the cow. The old woman ran after the saints and told her alarming story. "You should have been content," said St. Peter, "with the cow the Lord gave you. It shall be restored to you." She turned back, and found the cow at the door, lowing to be milked. Another story, which greatly pleased Tommy is THE WONDERFUL SACK. St. Christopher was a ferry-man. He dwelt in Brittany, at Dol. One day the Lord came to Dol, and wished to cross the river with the twelve Apostles. St. Christopher, instead of using a ferry-boat, carried the travellers who came to him across the river on his broad shoulders. When he had thus taken over the Lord and his Apostles, he claimed his reward. "What will you have?" asked the Lord. "Ask for Paradise," said St. Peter. "No," said St. Christopher; "I ask that whatsoever I may desire may at all times be put into my sack." "You shall have your wish; but never desire money." One day the Evil One came to St. Christopher, and tempted him to wish for money. They fell to fighting, and the fight lasted two whole days; but, just as the Evil One seemed about to overcome the saint, the latter said:-- "In the name of the Lord, get into my sack." In a moment the Evil One was in the sack, and St. Christopher tied the string, and took him to a blacksmith, and requested the use of a hammer. Then St. Christopher and the smith hammered the Evil One as thin as a penny. "I own I am _beaten_," said a voice from the sack. "Now let me out." "On one condition," said the saint. "Name it." "That you will never trouble me again." "I promise." The ferry-man now began to lead a life of charity. He never thought of himself, but lived wholly for others; and every one loved him, and all that were in distress came to him for comfort. One day he died, full of years, and, taking with him his wonderful sack, he started for the gates of Paradise. St. Peter opened the gate. But when he saw that the new-comer was St. Christopher, who had slighted his counsel, he refused to admit him. The Celestial City, blazing in splendor, stood on the top of a high mountain; the sound of music and the odors of flowers came through the gate as it was opened, and the saint with a heavy heart turned away from all the ravishing beauty, and, hardly knowing what he did, went down the mountain, until he came to the gate of the region where bad souls dwell. A youth at the gate said to him,-- "Come in." The gate opened, and the Evil One saw him. "Shut the gate! shut the gate!" said the Evil One to the youth. Far, far away the Holy City beamed with ineffable brightness, and up the hill again with a still heavy heart went St. Christopher. "If I could only get my sack inside the gate, I could wish myself into it; and once inside the gate I could never be turned out." He came up to the gate again, and called for St. Peter. The saint opened the gate a little. "I pray you in charity," said St. Christopher, "let me listen to the music." [Illustration: REVOKING THE EDICT OF NANTES.] The gate was set a little more ajar. Immediately St. Christopher threw into the celestial place the wonderful sack; he wished, and in a moment he was in the sack himself,--and he has remained in the region of light, music, flowers, and happiness ever since. * * * * * The Class went by rail to Rennes, one of the old capitals of Brittany. It was hardly interesting to them, but a pleasant ride took them to Vitré, where the boys visited the residence of Madame de Sévigné. Nantes, the ancient residence of the Dukes of Brittany, is situated on the river Loire, about forty miles from the sea. It is one of the largest and most beautiful of the provincial towns of France. In the old castle Henry IV. signed the Edict of Nantes, giving freedom of worship to the Protestants in France. This famous Edict was published April 13, 1598. The Reformers, or Huguenots, had at this time seven hundred and sixty churches. It was revoked by Louis XIV. in 1685, under the influence of his prelates, who persuaded him thus to seek expiation for his sins. The result of the act was that four hundred thousand Protestants, who were among the most industrious, intelligent, and useful people of France, left the country rather than to give up their religion. They took refuge in Great Britain, Holland, Prussia, Switzerland, and America. From them these countries learned some of the finest French arts. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was one of the many acts of injustice that opened the way for the French Revolution, by destroying public virtue. Some of the most terrible scenes of the Revolution were enacted at Nantes. One of the first visits made by the Class at Nantes was to the old warehouse, called the Salorges, built as an entrepot for colonial merchandize, which is associated with the inhuman murders of the Revolution. Here the monster Carrier caused men and women to be tied together and hurled into the Loire, making an exhibition of the cruelty which was known as Republican Marriages. It was in front of the Salorges that executions by water, called Noyades, were performed. Boats loaded with from twenty to forty victims were towed into the middle of the river, and were sunk by means of trap-doors in their sides, which were opened by cords communicating with the shore. If any of these wretched people attempted to escape by swimming, they were shot. As many as six hundred human beings perished in this way in a single day. The whole number of persons thus destroyed reached many thousands. Women and children were drowned as well as men. The river became so full of bodies that the air was made pestilent. This was during the dark days of the Reign of Terror, when Marat and Robespierre ruled France. Besides the victims of the Noyades were those who perished in other merciless ways. Five hundred children were shot in a single day, and were buried in trenches that had been prepared for the purpose. "I do not wonder that Charlotte Corday, who killed Marat, should have been regarded as a heroine," said Frank Gray. "I cannot understand how Frenchmen, who seem to be the most polite, obliging, kind-hearted, people in the world, could have been led to do the bloody deeds of the Reign of Terror." "That is because you have read history too much without thought. In reading history always go back to the causes of things. Read backward as well as forward. All the great palaces in France you have seen were built by the money of an overtaxed people who had no political rights. They were the glittering abodes of immorality. Again and again France was governed by wicked women who became favorites of the king. The Huguenots, who were the sincerely religious people of France, were compelled to leave the nation. Think of it,--four hundred thousand people going away from their native country at the unrestrained edict of one bad man. Do you wonder the people of France desired a Constitution for their protection? The nobler orders of the Catholic Church, the Jansenists and Port Royalists as they were called, were also suppressed. The Church became immoral, tyrannical, and almost wholly corrupt, an enemy to the rights of the people. The reaction against such a church, which violated all the precepts of the Gospel, was infidelity. [Illustration: FÉNELON AND THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY.] "During the whole of the reign of Louis XV. the cloud of Revolution was gathering. Louis saw it, but he was so given over to sensuality that it little troubled him. 'These things will last as long as I shall,' he said. '_Après nous le déluge_' (after us the deluge). He was wholly governed, and the nation ruled, by Madame de Pompadour, a corrupt and worthless woman, who made and dismissed ministers of State and cardinals, declared war and dictated terms of peace. She declared that even her lap-dog was weary of the fawnings of nobles. Are you surprised that Frenchmen should rise against such a state of things as this?" "Was not Louis XV. educated by Fénelon, who wrote _Télémaque_, the French text-book we have been studying?" asked Frank. "Yes, the most corrupt king of France was educated by the purest and most lovable man of genius that the times produced. The king was a wilful child, but it was thought that Fénelon had quite changed his character by his religious influence. He was subject to what were called 'mad fits.' I might tell you some pleasant stories of this period of his life. One day, when Fénelon had reproved him for some grave fault, he said,-- "'I know what I am, and I know also what you are.' "Fénelon's prudent conduct quite won back the affection of the child. "'I will leave the Duke of Burgundy [his title] behind the door when I am with you,' he used to say, 'and I will be only little Louis.' "Fénelon turned the boy's mind to piety, and for a time influenced him by it. 'All his mad fits and spites,' he said of his pupil, 'yielded to the name of God.' "But Fénelon, like all good and pure men of the time, was condemned by the court and the Church. _Télémaque_, written to train the mind of the young prince in the principles of virtue, caused him to lose favor with the court, and he spent the last years of his life in virtual exile. [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL AT NANTES.] [Illustration: LOUIS XV.] "Aside from Fénelon's influence the prince had much to make him vain. He was once ill, and on his recovery all Paris was filled with rejoicing. An immense crowd gathered around the palace on the eve of St. Louis's Day in honor of the convalescence. As the boy-king stood on the balcony of the palace on the occasion, Marshal Villeroy said to him,-- "'Look at all this company of people: all are yours; they all belong to you; you are their master.' "Think of a boy's being told that the people of Paris belonged to him! "I can wonder at the Reign of Terror, but I cannot be surprised at the Revolution when I view the history of France for the century that preceded it. It is rather a matter of surprise that an enlightened people should have submitted to tyranny so long." Nantes is the Paris of the Loire. Its streets, boulevards, public squares, the forest of masts in the river, and the trees that line its banks, all seem a copy of the bright and gay French capital. Its old cathedral is a queer-looking building, with towers scarcely higher than its roof; but it contains a most beautiful tomb which was erected in memory of Francis II. last Duke of Bretagne. It is adorned with figures of angels, the twelve Apostles, St. Louis, and Charlemagne. One of the most interesting excursions made by the Class from Nantes was to the ruin of the old castle of BLUE-BEARD. There existed, many centuries ago, a ferocious, cruel old lord, whose treatment of his wives and ogre-like tyranny to all around him, gave origin to the thrilling story of Blue-beard; indeed, the story was so nearly true that this old lord was actually called "Blue-beard" by his neighbors, so blue-black was his long and stubby beard. He lived in the old days when barons were fierce and despotic, and shut their wives and daughters up in dark dungeons or high castle casements, and thought little more of ordering a score of peasants off to instant execution than of eating their breakfasts. He was a rich old fellow, and had several castles scattered about the country, whither princes and dukes used to go and visit him, and share in his hunting-parties in the wildwoods. His castles were situated in the province of Brittany, and his real name was one which is still to be found in these secluded regions,--the Sieur Duval. The lapse of time has caused all his fine castles wholly to disappear, with one exception, and it is that which I am about to describe to you. Sieur Duval had his favorite residence on the banks of a lovely little river, about two miles from Nantes. Here he was near town, and might ride in on one of his high-tempered chargers whenever he listed, to join the revels of the dukes, or go wife-hunting. It was at this castle that his cruelties to his unhappy spouses are supposed to have occurred; and it was from Nantes that the brother of his last wife is said to have ridden in hot haste to rescue his wretched sister and make an end of the odious old tyrant. Taking a row-boat by the high, old bridge which, just on the outskirts of Nantes, spans the river Erdre, you find yourself at first on a broad sheet of water, with quaint, whitewashed stone-houses and huts, their roofs covered with red brick tiles, and occasionally more handsome mansions with lawns and gardens extending to the river-bank. Here you may perhaps observe a row of curious flat-boats with roofs, but open on all sides, lining both banks of the stream. In these are a number of hard-featured, dark-skinned women of all ages, washing clothes. They lean over the boat-sides, and scrub the shirts and handkerchiefs in the water, then withdraw them, lay them smoothly on some flat boards, like a table, and taking a flat hammer pound upon them. Presently you get past these, if you row vigorously, and come to pretty bends in the river, and find yourself beyond the thickly-settled part, amidst pleasant rural fields, with some wealthy merchant's mansion raising its towers above the green trees. After a while you approach a bright little village, all of whose houses form a single street just along the banks of the river. Here you disembark and pass along the village street, across a rickety bridge which spans a little inlet from the stream, and so out into the country, and through paths in the woods thickly grown with brush and wildflowers. Presently, soon after you have got out of sight of the village, you ascend a gentle hill, and suddenly come upon an old, old house, with its wooden ribs appearing, crossing each other, through the stone walls, and a roof that looks as if about to fall in upon the people who inhabit it. Just beyond this, deeply imbedded in shrubs, brush, thickly-grown ivies and other vines, and moss, is all that is left of Blue-beard's castle. The walls are still there, dividing the apartments. You can imagine the rooms and the tower which arose above the tall trees that here cluster on the river bank. And you may fancy, as you stand among the beautiful ruins, that you are on the very spot where the room used to be which Blue-beard forbade his last wife to enter. Here is the portal, now crumbled and almost covered with moss and ivy, where the old tyrant came in and out; there the wall where the last of his poor victims sat, looking out and straining her eyes to see her brother coming; beyond, the spot where Blue-beard was struck down, and received his deserts. It seems too beautiful a place for so remorseless an ogre; and as one looks out upon the lovely scenes where the tearful spouses mourned their lot, one cannot help thinking how happy they might have been in such a charming retreat, had they enjoyed it with loving husbands and happy homes. CHAPTER XVII. HOMEWARD. On the Cliffs at Havre.--Stories of French Authors.--Again on the Sea. "Only three days more remain to us in France," said Master Lewis, after spending two days in Nantes. "We will now return to Paris by rail, stopping a few hours in Orleans, and from Paris will go directly to Havre, whence we will take the steamer for home." "It seems to me," said Wyllys Wynn, "that, after what we have seen, I shall like no reading so well as history." "It has been my aim," said Master Lewis, "to take you to those places where the principal great events of the histories of England and France have occurred. I stopped at Carlisle to give you a lesson in the early history of Britain,--the periods of the Druids and the Romans. I took you to Glastonbury to give you a view of the history of the early English Church. I went with you to Aix-la-Chapelle that you might receive an impression of the dominion of Charlemagne. Normandy is the common ground of old English and French history. I was glad to select it for you as the direct object of our visit, although it has formed a small part of our journey. I, like Tommy, have had a secret which I have kept for the Club; it has been to interest you in the places and events which would lead you, on your return, to become more careful readers of the best books. I hope the journey will leave an historic outline in your minds that future reading will fill. Character is as much determined by the books one reads as by the company one keeps. Show me a boy's selection of books, and I will tell you what he is and what he is likely to become." "Master Lewis," said Wyllys, "says he has aimed to take us to such historic places as would give us, at the end of the journey, a connected picture of English and of French history. Let us try to associate the places we have seen with historic events. As I think of our Scottish and English journey, I connect,-- "Carlisle with the Druids and Romans. "Glastonbury with Early Christianity and the Boy Kings. "Normandy with William the Conqueror and his sons. "Nottingham with Robin Hood and the Norman and Plantagenet Kings. "Boscobel with King Charles. "Edinburgh with Mary, the Edwards, and the Douglases. "Kenilworth with Elizabeth. "Oxford with Canute and Alfred. "London with the Tudors, the Commonwealth, the Georges, and Victoria." "In our journey on the continent," said Frank, "I associate,-- "Brussels with Waterloo and Napoleon. "Aix-la-Chapelle with Charlemagne. "Ghent and Bruges with the Dukes of Flanders and Burgundy. "Calais with Mary Tudor and Edward III. of England. "Rouen with Charles VII. and Joan of Arc. "Paris with Charles IX., the Bourbons, and Napoleon. "Nantes with the Huguenots and the Revolution." "We have also had views of the homes and haunts of great authors," said Ernest. "I have made a scrap-book of leaves and flowers from the homes and graves of men of letters, and it includes souvenirs of nearly all the most eminent names in English literature." Havre is really a port of Paris, and is one of the most thriving maritime towns of France. Like most port towns it is more businesslike than picturesque. The Class made but two visits here, outside of the hotel. One of these was to the birthplace of Bernardin de St. Pierre in Rue de la Cordesis, and the other to the cliffs on which the great French light-houses are erected at a height of three hundred feet. [Illustration: MOLIÈRE.] It was in the bright twilight of a late day in August that the Class mounted the cliffs and overlooked the sea, whose waves still reflected the vermilion of the sky. The boys were sober at the thought that this was their last day in Europe, and that they were now to return to the set tasks of the school-room. [Illustration: THE READING OF "PAUL AND VIRGINIA."] "These cliffs," said Master Lewis, "were the favorite haunts of the author of 'Paul and Virginia.' He was a mere theorist, a daydreamer; and here he loved to gaze on the bright sea, and plan expeditions of republican colonists to such lands as he paints in his novels. His expeditions ended in the air. But he himself went to Mauritius, where he lived three years. On his return to Paris, while the brightness of tropical scenery still haunted him, he wrote 'Paul and Virginia.'" [Illustration: RACINE.] "When Corneille, the great Corneille, as the popular dramatist came to be called, read his masterpiece, _Polyeucte_, to a party of fashionable literary people in Paris, it was coolly received on account of the fine Christian sentiments it contained. The criticism was that the religion of the stage should be that, not of God, but of the gods. Even a bishop present took this view. "Bernardin de St. Pierre was as sharply criticised when he first read in public his beautiful romance of 'Paul and Virginia.' It was at a party given by Madame Necker. 'At first,' says a writer, 'every one listened in silence; then the company began to whisper, then to yawn. Monsieur de Buffon ordered his carriage, and slipped out of the nearest door. The ladies who listened were ridiculed when tears at last gathered in their eyes.' [Illustration: RACINE READING TO LOUIS XIV.] "_Polyeucte_ still lives in French literature, and the wits who condemned it are forgotten; 'Paul and Virginia' charmed France; fifty imitations of it were published in a single year, and it was rapidly translated into all European tongues. It remains a classic, but the critics in Madame Necker's parlors are recollected only for their mistake." "We must read the works of these French authors on our return," said Wyllys, "or at least the best selections from them. I shall wish to read 'Pascal's Provincial Letters' and the Letters of Madame de Sévigné, after what you have said of them." "You should also read some of the best selections from the works of Boileau, Molière, and Racine. I have only time to allude to them briefly here. "These authors were friends. They all lived in the time of the Grand Monarch, as Louis XIV. was called. La Fontaine, some of whose fables you have read, belongs to the same period, which is the greatest in French literature. "Louis XIV. appreciated nearly all the great writers of the time; he seems to have felt that great authors, like great palaces, would add lustre to his reign." "I think that we might better change our society on our return into a reading-club," said Tommy Toby. "It seems to me your proposal is a very good one," said Master Lewis. "We may be able to travel again. If we should visit Germany or the Latin lands together another year, a reading-club would be an excellent preparation for the journey." "Very much better than a Secret Society," said Frank. "Suppose you give the Class the secret you devised for our first meetings, Tommy." "Oh," said Tommy, soberly, "that, like most of my other plans, was just _nothing, after all_." Away from busy Havre the next morning, under the French and American flags, moved a little ocean world; and on the decks, looking back to the fading shores of old Normandy, and cherishing delightful memories of their zigzag journeys in historic lands, were the teacher and the lads whose winding ways we have followed. University Press: John Wilson & Son, Cambridge. Transcriber's Note Minor punctuation errors have been repaired. Hyphenation and use of accents has been made consistent. Use of quote marks is inconsistent, particularly around poetry and for continuing quotations, but is preserved as printed. The illustration caption, 'THE BLACK DOUGLAS SURPRISING AN ENEMY' on page 100 was omitted from the List of Illustrations. It has been added in this e-text. The uncaptioned sketch of thread from the Bayeux Tapestry, on page 164, is not included in the List of Illustrations. This may have been deliberate, as it is supposed to be a sketch by one of the class, and so has not been added by the transcriber. The List of Illustrations had the image on page 187 as 'OLD HAMPTON COURT', while the caption under the illustration read 'WHITEHALL'. The Transcriber has confirmed that the illustration is a picture of the old Whitehall Palace (see painting _The Old Palace of Whitehall_, by Hendrik Danckerts for comparison), and has amended the text in the List of Illustrations to match the caption in the text. Page 166 includes the word 'flustrated'. This may be a typographic error for 'frustrated', or it may be deliberate on the part of the author, perhaps a combination of 'flustered' and 'frustrated'. As there is no way to be sure which is the case, it is preserved as printed. The following amendments have been made-- Page vii--Falise amended to Falaise--"Statue of William the Conqueror at Falaise" Page vii--the word 'At' deleted and the amended to The, to match the caption in the main text--"The Death-bed of Francis II." Page 57--Ingraciate amended to Ingratiate--"... one on _Ingratiate_ (in grey she ate); ..." Page 173--Wyatt amended to Wyat--"... The Tower.--Sir Henry Wyat and His Cat.--Madame Tussaud's Wax Works...." Page 220--der amended to de--"All the Foresters of Flanders,--mighty Baldwin Bras de Fer, ..." The frontispiece illustration has been moved to follow the title page. Other illustrations have been moved where necessary so that they are not in the middle of a paragraph. 
35212	----	produced from scanned images at the Internet Archive.) Transcriber's note: All efforts have been made to reproduce this book as printed. Besides the obvious typographical errors, no attempt has been made to correct or equalize the punctuation or spelling of the English or the French of the original book. [Illustration] [Illustration] THE CATHEDRALS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE _The Cathedral Series_ _The following, each 1 vol., library 12mo, cloth, gilt top, profusely illustrated. $2.50_ _The Cathedrals of Northern France BY FRANCIS MILTOUN_ _The Cathedrals of Southern France BY FRANCIS MILTOUN_ _The Cathedrals of England BY MARY J. TABER_ _The following, each 1 vol., library 12mo, cloth, gilt top, profusely illustrated. Net, $2.00_ _The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine BY FRANCIS MILTOUN_ _The Cathedrals of Northern Spain BY CHARLES RUDY_ _L. C. PAGE & COMPANY New England Building, Boston, Mass._ [Illustration: ST. ANDRÉ ... _de BORDEAUX_] THE CATHEDRALS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE By FRANCIS MILTOUN AUTHOR OF "THE CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN FRANCE," "DICKENS' LONDON," ETC., WITH NINETY ILLUSTRATIONS, PLANS, AND DIAGRAMS, By BLANCHE McMANUS [Illustration] BOSTON L. C. Page and Company MDCCCCV _Copyright, 1904_ BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY (INCORPORATED) _All rights reserved_ Published August, 1904 _Third Impression_ Colonial Press Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. Boston, Mass., U. S. A. CONTENTS PAGE Introduction 11 PART I. SOUTHERN FRANCE IN GENERAL I. The Charm of Southern France 23 II. The Church in Gaul 34 III. The Church Architecture of Southern France 50 PART II. SOUTH OF THE LOIRE I. Introductory 71 II. L'Abbaye de Maillezais 81 III. St. Louis de la Rochelle 82 IV. Cathédrale de Luçon 85 V. St. Front de Périgueux 87 VI. St. Pierre de Poitiers 92 VII. St. Etienne de Limoges 104 VIII. St. Odilon de St. Flour 112 IX. St. Pierre de Saintes 115 X. Cathédrale de Tulle 118 XI. St. Pierre d'Angoulême 120 XII. Notre Dame de Moulins 126 XIII. Notre Dame de le Puy 134 XIV. Notre Dame de Clermont-Ferrand 144 XV. St. Fulcran de Lodève 152 PART III. THE RHONE VALLEY I. Introductory 159 II. St. Etienne de Chalons-sur-Saône 170 III. St. Vincent de Macon 174 IV. St. Jean de Lyon 177 V. St. Maurice de Vienne 186 VI. St. Apollinaire de Valence 190 VII. Cathédrale de Viviers 195 VIII. Notre Dame d'Orange 197 IX. St. Véran de Cavaillon 200 X. Notre Dame des Doms d'Avignon 204 XI. St. Siffrein de Carpentras 221 XII. Cathédrale de Vaison 226 XIII. St. Trophime d'Arles 228 XIV. St. Castor de Nîmes 236 XV. St. Théodorit d'Uzès 245 XVI. St. Jean d'Alais 249 XVII. St. Pierre d'Annecy 252 XVIII. Cathédrale de Chambéry 255 XIX. Notre Dame de Grenoble 258 XX. Belley and Aoste 267 XXI. St. Jean de Maurienne 269 XXII. St. Pierre de St. Claude 272 XXIII. Notre Dame de Bourg 277 XXIV. Glandève, Senez, Riez, Sisteron 280 XXV. St. Jerome de Digne 283 XXVI. Notre Dame de Die 287 XXVII. Notre Dame et St. Castor d'Apt 289 XXVIII. Notre Dame d'Embrun 292 XXIX. Notre Dame de l'Assomption de Gap 296 XXX. Notre Dame de Vence 300 XXXI. Cathédrale de Sion 302 XXII. St. Paul Troix Château 305 PART IV. THE MEDITERRANEAN COAST I. Introductory 313 II. St. Sauveur d'Aix 323 III. St. Reparata de Nice 328 IV. Ste. Marie Majeure de Toulon 332 V. St. Etienne de Fréjus 335 VI. Église de Grasse 339 VII. Antibes 341 VIII. Ste. Marie Majeure de Marseilles 342 IX. St. Pierre d'Alet 350 X. St. Pierre de Montpellier 352 XI. Cathédrale d'Agde 358 XII. St. Nazaire de Béziers 363 XIII. St. Jean de Perpignan 368 XIV. Ste. Eulalia d'Elne 372 XV. St. Just de Narbonne 375 PART V. THE VALLEY OF THE GARONNE I. Introductory 383 II. St. André de Bordeaux 396 III. Cathédrale de Lectoure 402 IV. Notre Dame de Bayonne 405 V. St. Jean de Bazas 411 VI. Notre Dame de Lescar 413 VII. L'Eglise de la Sède: Tarbes 417 VIII. Cathédrale de Condom 420 IX. Cathédrale de Montauban 422 X. St. Etienne de Cahors 425 XI. St. Caprias d'Agen 429 XII. Ste. Marie d'Auch 432 XIII. St. Etienne de Toulouse 439 XIV. St. Nazaire de Carcassone 449 XV. Cathédrale de Pamiers 461 XVI. St. Bertrand de Comminges 464 XVII. St. Jean-Baptiste d'Aire 469 XVIII. Sts. Benoit et Vincent de Castres 471 XIX. Notre Dame de Rodez 474 XX. Ste. Cécile d'Albi 482 XXI. St. Pierre de Mende 490 XXII. Other Old-Time Cathedrals in and about the Basin of the Garonne 495 APPENDICES I. Sketch Map Showing the Usual Geographical Divisions of France 503 II. A Historical Table of the Dioceses of the South of France up to the beginning of the nineteenth century 504 III. The Classification of Architectural Styles in France according to De Caumont's "Abécédaire d'Architecture Religieuse" 510 IV. A Chronology of Architectural Styles in France 511 V. Leading Forms of Early Cathedral Constructions 513 VI. The Disposition of the Parts of a Tenth-Century Church as defined by Violet-le-Duc 514 VII. A Brief Definitive Gazetteer of the Natural and Geological Divisions Included in the Ancient Provinces and Present-Day Departments of Southern France, together with the local names by which the _pays et pagi_ are commonly known 516 VIII. Sketch Map of the Bishoprics and Archbishoprics of the South of France at the Present Day 519 IX. Dimensions and Chronology 520 Index 545 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE St. André de Bordeaux _Frontispiece_ The Concordat (From Napoleon's Tomb) 43 St. Louis de La Rochelle 82 Cathédrale de Luçon 85 St. Front de Périgueux 87 Detail of the Interior of St. Front de Périgueux 90 Poitiers 93 St. Etienne de Limoges 105 Reliquary of Thomas à Becket 111 Cathédrale de Tulle facing 118 St. Pierre d'Angoulême facing 120 Notre Dame de Moulins facing 126 Notre Dame de Le Puy facing 134 Le Puy 138 The Black Virgin, Le Puy 143 Notre Dame de Clermont-Ferrand facing 144 St. Vincent de Macon facing 174 St. Jean de Lyon facing 176 St. Apollinaire de Valence 190 St. Véran de Cavaillon 200 Notre Dame des Doms d'Avignon 205 Villeneuve-les-Avignon facing 212 Notre Dame des Doms d'Avignon facing 218 St. Trophime d'Arles 228 St. Trophime d'Arles facing 228 Cloisters, St. Trophime d'Arles 233 St. Castor de Nîmes 236 St. Castor de Nîmes 237 St. Théodorit d'Uzès 245 Cathédrale de Chambéry 255 Notre Dame de Grenoble 258 St. Bruno 261 Belley 265 St. Jean de Maurienne 269 St. Pierre de St. Claude facing 272 Notre Dame de Bourg 275 Notre Dame de Sisteron facing 280 St. Jerome de Digne 283 Notre Dame d'Embrun 292 The Ramparts of Aigues-Mortes 320 St. Sauveur d'Aix 321 Detail of Doorway of the Archbishop's Palace, Fréjus 338 Eglise de Grasse 339 Marseilles 343 The Old Cathedral, Marseilles 345 St. Pierre de Montpellier facing 352 Cathédrale d'Agde 358 St. Nazaire de Béziers 361 St. Jean de Perpignan 368 Ste. Eulalia d'Elne 372 St. Just de Narbonne facing 374 Cloister of St. Just de Narbonne facing 378 Notre Dame de Bayonne facing 404 Eglise de la Sède, Tarbes 417 St. Etienne de Cahors facing 424 Ste. Marie d'Auch facing 432 St. Etienne de Toulouse facing 438 Nave of St. Etienne de Toulouse 445 St. Nazaire de Carcassonne facing 448 The Old Cité de Carcassonne before and after the Restoration 451 Two Capitals of Pillars in St. Nazaire de Carcassonne; and the Rude Stone Carving of Carcas 454 St. Nazaire de Carcassonne facing 454 Cathédrale de Pamiers 461 St. Bertrand de Comminges facing 464 St. Jean-Baptiste d'Aire 469 Sts. Benoit et Vincent de Castres facing 470 Notre Dame de Rodez facing 474 Choir-Stalls, Rodez 480 Ste. Cécile d'Albi facing 482 St. Pierre de Mende facing 490 Sketch Map of France 503 Medallion 510 Leading Forms of Early Cathedral Constructions 513 Plan of a Tenth Century Church 514 Sketch Map of the Bishoprics and Archbishoprics of the South of France at the Present Day 519 St. Caprias d'Agen (diagram) 520 Baptistery of St. Sauveur d'Aix (diagram) 521 Ste. Cécile d'Albi (diagram) 522 St. Pierre d'Angoulême (diagram) 523 St. Trophime d'Arles (diagram) 524 Notre Dame des Doms d'Avignon (diagram) 525 St. Etienne de Cahors (diagram) 527 St. Veran de Cavaillon (diagram) 528 Cathédrale de Chambéry (diagram) 529 Notre Dame de Clermont-Ferrand (diagram) 530 St. Bertrand de Comminges (diagram) 530 Notre Dame de Le Puy (diagram) 532 St. Etienne de Limoges (diagram) 532 St. Jean de Lyon (diagram) 533 St. Just de Narbonne (diagram) 535 Notre Dame d'Orange (diagram) 536 St. Front de Périgueux (diagram) 537 St. Jean de Perpignan (diagram) 537 St. Pierre de Poitiers (diagrams) 538 Notre Dame de Rodez (diagram) 539 St. Etienne de Toulouse (diagram) 541 St. Paul Trois Châteaux (diagram) 542 Cathédrale de Vaison (diagram) 543 [Illustration] _The Cathedrals of Southern France_ INTRODUCTION Too often--it is a half-acknowledged delusion, however--one meets with what appears to be a theory: that a book of travel must necessarily be a series of dull, discursive, and entirely uncorroborated opinions of one who may not be even an intelligent observer. This is mere intellectual pretence. Even a humble author--so long as he be an honest one--may well be allowed to claim with Mr. Howells the right to be serious, or the reverse, "with his material as he finds it;" and that "something personally experienced can only be realized on the spot where it was lived." This, says he, is "the prime use of travel, and the attempt to create the reader a partner in the enterprise" ... must be the excuse, then, for putting one's observations on paper. He rightly says, too, that nothing of perilous adventure is to-day any more like to happen "in Florence than in Fitchburg." A "literary tour," a "cathedral tour," or an "architectural tour," requires a formula wherein the author must be wary of making questionable estimates; but he may, with regard to generalities,--or details, for that matter,--state his opinion plainly; but he should state also his reasons. With respect to church architecture no average reader, any more than the average observer, willingly enters the arena of intellectual combat, but rather is satisfied--as he should be, unless he is a Freeman, a Gonse, or a Corroyer--with an ampler radius which shall command even a juster, though no less truthful, view. Not from one book or from ten, in one year or a score can this be had. The field is vast and the immensity of it all only dawns upon one the deeper he gets into his subject. A dictionary of architecture, a compendium or gazetteer of geography, or even the unwieldy mass of fact tightly held in the fastnesses of the Encyclopædia Britannica will not tell one--in either a long or a short while--all the facts concerning the cathedrals of France. Some will consider that in this book are made many apparently trifling assertions; but it is claimed that they are pertinent and again are expressive of an emotion which mayhap always arises of the same mood. Notre Dame at Rodez is a "warm, mouse-coloured cathedral;" St. Cécile d'Albi is at once "a fortress and a church," and the once royal city of Aigues-Mortes is to-day but "a shelter for a few hundred pallid, shaking mortals." Such expressions are figurative, but, so far as words can put it, they are the concentrated result of observation. These observations do not aspire to be considered "improving," though it is asserted that they are informative. Description of all kinds is an art which requires considerable forethought in order to be even readable. And of all subjects, art and architecture are perhaps the most difficult to treat in a manner which shall not arouse an intolerant criticism. Perhaps some credit will be attained for the attempts herein made to present in a pleasing manner many of the charms of the ecclesiastical architecture of southern France, where a more elaborate and erudite work would fail of its object. As Lady Montagu has said in her "Letters,"--"We travellers are in very hard circumstances. If we say nothing new, we are dull, and have observed nothing. If we tell any new thing, we are laughed at as fabulous and romantic." This book is intended as a contribution to travel literature--or, if the reader like, to that special class of book which appeals largely to the traveller. Most lovers of art and literature are lovers of churches; indeed, the world is yearly containing more and more of this class. The art expression of a people, of France in particular, has most often first found its outlet in church-building and decoration. Some other countries have degenerated sadly from the idea. In recent times the Anglo-Saxon has mostly built his churches,--on what he is pleased to think are "improved lines,"--that, more than anything else, resemble, in their interiors, playhouses, and in their exteriors, cotton factories and breweries. This seemingly bitter view is advanced simply because the writer believes that it is the church-members, using the term in its broad sense, who are responsible for the many outrageously unseemly church-buildings which are yearly being erected; not the architects--who have failings enough of their own to answer for. It is said that a certain great architect of recent times was responsible for more bad architecture than any man who had lived before or since. Not because he produced such himself, but because his feeble imitators, without his knowledge, his training, or his ambition, not only sought to follow in his footsteps, but remained a long way in the rear, and stumbled by the way. This man built churches. He built one, Trinity Church, in Boston, U. S. A., which will remain, as long as its stones endure, an entirely successful transplantation of an exotic from another land. In London a new Roman Catholic cathedral has recently been erected after the Byzantine manner, and so unexpectedly successful was it in plan and execution that its author was "medalled" by the Royal Academy; whatever that dubious honour may be worth. Both these great men are dead, and aside from these two great examples, and possibly the Roman Catholic cathedral, and the yet unachieved cathedral of St. John the Divine, in New York City, where, in an English-speaking land, has there been built, in recent times, a religious edifice of the first rank worthy to be classed with these two old-world and new-world examples? They do these things better in France: Viollet-le-Duc completed St. Ouen at Rouen and the cathedral at Clermont-Ferrand, in most acceptable manner. So, too, was the treatment of the cathedral at Moulins-sur-Allier--although none of these examples are among the noblest or the most magnificent in France. They have, however, been completed successfully, and in the true spirit of the original. To know the shops and boulevards of Paris does not necessarily presume a knowledge of France. This point is mentioned here from the fact that many have claimed a familiarity with the cathedrals of France; when to all practical purposes, they might as well have begun and ended with the observation that Notre Dame de Paris stands on an island in the middle of the Seine. The author would not carp at the critics of the first volume of this series, which appeared last season. Far from it. They were, almost without exception, most generous. At least they granted, _unqualifiedly_, the reason for being for the volume which was put forth bearing the title: "Cathedrals of Northern France." The seeming magnitude of the undertaking first came upon the author and artist while preparing the first volume for the press. This was made the more apparent when, on a certain occasion, just previous to the appearance of the book, the author made mention thereof to a friend who _did_ know Paris--better perhaps than most English or American writers; at least he ought to have known it better. When this friend heard of the inception of this book on French cathedrals, he marvelled at the fact that there should be a demand for such; said that the subject had already been overdone; and much more of the same sort; and that only yesterday a certain Miss---- had sent him an "author's copy" of a book which recounted the results of a journey which she and her mother had recently made in what she sentimentally called "Romantic Touraine." Therein were treated at least a good half-dozen cathedrals; which, supplementing the always useful Baedeker or Joanne, and a handbook of Notre Dame at Paris and another of Rouen, covered--thought the author's friend at least--quite a representative share of the cathedrals of France. This only substantiates the contention made in the foreword to the first volume: that there were doubtless many with a true appreciation and love for great churches who would be glad to know more of them, and have the ways--if not the means--smoothed in order to make a visit thereto the more simplified and agreeable. Too often--the preface continued--the tourist, alone or personally conducted in droves, was whirled rapidly onward by express-train to some more popularly or fashionably famous spot, where, for a previously stipulated sum, he might partake of a more lurid series of amusements than a mere dull round of churches. "Cities, like individuals, have," says Arthur Symons, "a personality and individuality quite like human beings." This is undoubtedly true of churches as well, and the sympathetic observer--the enthusiastic lover of churches for their peculiarities, none the less than their general excellencies--is the only person who will derive the maximum amount of pleasure and profit from an intimacy therewith. Whether a great church is interesting because of its antiquity, its history, or its artistic beauties matters little to the enthusiast. He will drink his fill of what offers. Occasionally, he will find a combination of two--or possibly all--of these ingredients; when his joy will be great. Herein are catalogued as many of the attributes of the cathedrals of the south of France--and the records of religious or civil life which have surrounded them in the past--as space and opportunity for observation have permitted. More the most sanguine and capable of authors could not promise, and while in no sense does the volume presume to supply exhaustive information, it is claimed that all of the churches included within the classification of cathedrals--those of the present and those of a past day--are to be found mentioned herein, the chief facts of their history recorded, and their notable features catalogued. _PART I_ _Southern France in General_ I THE CHARM OF SOUTHERN FRANCE The charm of southern France is such as to compel most writers thereon to become discursive. It could not well be otherwise. Many things go to make up pictures of travel, which the most polished writer could not ignore unless he confined himself to narrative pure and simple; as did Sterne. One who seeks knowledge of the architecture of southern France should perforce know something of the life of town and country in addition to a specific knowledge of, or an immeasurable enthusiasm for, the subject. Few have given Robert Louis Stevenson any great preëminence as a writer of topographical description; perhaps not all have admitted his ability as an unassailable critic; but the fact is, there is no writer to whom the lover of France can turn with more pleasure and profit than Stevenson. There is a wealth of description of the country-side of France in the account of his romantic travels on donkey-back, or, as he whimsically puts it, "beside a donkey," and his venturesome though not dangerous "Inland Voyage." These early volumes of Stevenson, while doubtless well known to lovers of his works, are closed books to most casual travellers. The author and artist of this book here humbly acknowledge an indebtedness which might not otherwise be possible to repay. Stevenson was devout, he wrote sympathetically of churches, of cathedrals, of monasteries, and of religion. What his predilections were as to creed is not so certain. Sterne was more worldly, but he wrote equally attractive prose concerning many things which English-speaking people have come to know more of since his time. Arthur Young, "an agriculturist," as he has been rather contemptuously called, a century or more ago wrote of rural France after a manner, and with a profuseness, which few have since equalled. His creed, likewise, appears to be unknown; in that, seldom, if ever, did he mention churches, and not at any time did he discuss religion. In a later day Miss M. E. B. Edwards, an English lady who knows France as few of her countrywomen do, wrote of many things more or less allied with religion, which the ordinary "travel books" ignored--much to their loss--altogether. Still more recently another English lady, Madam Marie Duclaux,--though her name would not appear to indicate her nationality,--has written a most charming series of observations on her adopted land; wherein the peasant, his religion, and his aims in life are dealt with more understandingly than were perhaps possible, had the author not been possessed of a long residence among them. Henry James, of all latter-day writers, has given us perhaps the most illuminating accounts of the architectural joy of great churches, châteaux and cathedrals. Certainly his work is marvellously appreciative, and his "Little Tour in France," with the two books of Stevenson before mentioned, Sterne's "Sentimental Journey,"--and Mr. Tristram Shandy, too, if the reader likes,--form a quintette of voices which will tell more of the glories of France and her peoples than any other five books in the English language. When considering the literature of place, one must not overlook the fair land of Provence or the "Midi of France"--that little-known land lying immediately to the westward of Marseilles, which is seldom or never even tasted by the hungry tourist. To know what he would of these two delightful regions one should read Thomas Janvier, Félix Gras, and Mêrimêe. He will then have far more of an insight into the places and the peoples than if he perused whole shelves of histories, geographies, or technical works on archæology and fossil remains. If he can supplement all this with travel, or, better yet, take them hand-in-hand, he will be all the more fortunate. At all events here is a vast subject for the sated traveller to grasp, and _en passant_ he will absorb not a little of the spirit of other days and of past history, and something of the attitude of reverence for church architecture which is apparently born in every Frenchman,--at least to a far greater degree than in any other nationality,--whatever may be his present-day attitude of mind toward the subject of religion in the abstract. France, be it remembered, is not to-day as it was a century and a half ago, when it was the fashion of English writers to condemn and revile it as a nation of degraded serfs, a degenerate aristocracy, a corrupt clergy, or as an enfeebled monarchy. Since then there has arisen a Napoleon, who, whatever his faulty morals may have been, undoubtedly welded into a united whole those widely divergent tendencies and sentiments of the past, which otherwise would not have survived. This was prophetic and far-seeing, no matter what the average historian may say to the contrary; and it has in no small way worked itself toward an ideal successfully, if not always by the most practical and direct path. One thing is certain, the lover of churches will make the round of the southern cathedrals under considerably more novel and entrancing conditions than in those cities of the north or mid-France. Many of the places which shelter a great cathedral church in the south are of little rank as centres of population; as, for instance, at Mende in Lozère, where one suddenly finds oneself set down in the midst of a green basin surrounded by mountains on all sides, with little to distract his attention from its remarkably picturesque cathedral; or at Albi, where a Sunday-like stillness always seems to reign, and its fortress-church, which seems to regulate the very life of the town, stands, as it has since its foundation, a majestic guardian of well-being. There is but one uncomfortable feature to guard against, and that is the _mistral_, a wind which blows down the Rhône valley at certain seasons of the year, and, in the words of the habitant, "blows all before it." It is not really as bad as this, but its breath is uncomfortably cold, and it does require a firm purpose to stand against its blast. Then, too, from October until March, south of Lyons, the nights, which draw in so early at this season of the year, are contrastingly and uncomfortably cold, as compared with the days, which seem always to be blessed with bright and sunshiny weather. It may be argued that this is not the season which appeals to most people as being suitable for travelling. But why not? Certainly it is the fashion to travel toward the Mediterranean during the winter months, and the attractions, not omitting the allurements of dress clothes, gambling-houses, and _bals masqués_ are surely not more appealing than the chain of cities which extend from Chambéry and Grenoble in the Alps, through Orange, Nîmes, Arles, Perpignan, Carcassonne, and the slopes of the Pyrenees, to Bayonne. In the departments of Lozère, Puy de Dôme, Gard and Auvergne and Dordogne, the true, unspoiled Gallic flavour abides in all its intensity. As Touraine, or at least Tours, claims to speak the purest French tongue, so this region of streams and mountains, of volcanic remains, of Protestantism, and of an--as yet--unspoiled old-worldliness, possesses more than any other somewhat of the old-time social independence and disregard of latter-day innovations. Particularly is this so--though perhaps it has been remarked before--in that territory which lies between Clermont-Ferrand and Valence in one direction, and Vienne and Rodez in another, to extend its confines to extreme limits. Here life goes on gaily and in animated fashion, in a hundred dignified and picturesque old towns, and the wise traveller will go a-hunting after those which the guide-books complain of--not without a sneer--as being dull and desultory. French, and for that matter the new régime of English, historical novelists are too obstinately bent on the study of Paris, "At all events," says Edmund Gosse, "since the days of Balzac and George Sand, and have neglected the provincial boroughs." They should study mid-France on the spot; and read Stevenson and Mérimée while they are doing it. It will save them a deal of worrying out of things--with possibly wrong deductions--for themselves. The climatic conditions of France vary greatly. From the gray, wind-blown shores of Brittany, where for quite three months of the autumn one is in a perpetual drizzle, and the equally chilly and bare country of the Pas de Calais, and the more or less sodden French Flanders, to the brisk, sunny climate of the Loire valley, the Cevennes, Dauphiné, and Savoie, is a wide range of contrast. Each is possessed of its own peculiar characteristics, which the habitant alone seems to understand in all its vagaries. At all events, there is no part of France which actually merits the opprobrious deprecations which are occasionally launched forth by the residents of the "garden spot of England," who see no topographical beauties save in their own wealds and downs. France is distinctly a self-contained land. Its tillers of the soil, be they mere agriculturists or workers in the vineyards, are of a race as devoted and capable at their avocations as any alive. They do not, to be sure, eat meat three times a day--and often not once a week--but they thrive and gain strength on what many an English-speaking labourer would consider but a mere snack. Again, the French peasant is not, like the English labourer, perpetually reminded, by the independence of the wealth surrounding him, of his own privations and dependence. On the contrary, he enjoys contentment with a consciousness that no human intervention embitters his condition, and that its limits are only fixed by the bounds of nature, and somewhat by his own industry. Thus it is easy to inculcate in such a people somewhat more of that spirit of "_l'amour de la patrie_," or love of the land, which in England, at the present time, appears to be growing beautifully less. So, too, with love and honour for their famous citizens, the French are enthusiastic, beyond any other peoples, for their monuments, their institutions, and above all for their own province and department. With regard to their architectural monuments, still more are they proud and well-informed, even the labouring classes. Seldom, if ever, has the writer made an inquiry but what it was answered with interest, if not with a superlative intelligence, and the Frenchman of the lower classes--be he a labourer of the towns or cities, or a peasant of the country-side--is a remarkably obliging person. In what may strictly be called the south of France, that region bordering along the Mediterranean, Provence, and the southerly portion of Languedoc, one is manifestly environed with a mellowness and brilliance of sky and atmosphere only to be noted in a sub-tropical land, a feature which finds further expression in most of the attributes of local life. The climate and topographical features take on a contrastingly different aspect, as does the church architecture and the mode of life of the inhabitants here in the southland. Here is the true romance country of all the world. Here the Provençal tongue and its literature have preserved that which is fast fleeting from us in these days when a nation's greatest struggle is for commercial or political supremacy. It was different in the days of Petrarch and of Rabelais. But there are reminders of this glorious past yet to be seen, more tangible than a memory alone, and more satisfying than mere written history. At Orange, Nîmes, and Arles are Roman remains of theatres, arenas, and temples, often perfectly preserved, and as magnificent as in Rome itself. At Avignon is a splendid papal palace, to which the Holy See was transferred by Clement V. at the time of the Italian partition, in the early fourteenth century, while Laura's tomb, or the site of it, is also close at hand. At Clermont-Ferrand, in Auvergne, Pope Urban, whose monument is on the spot, urged and instigated the Crusades. The Christian activities of this land were as strenuous as any, and their remains are even more numerous and interesting. Southern Gaul, however, became modernized but slowly, and the influences of the Christian spirit were not perhaps as rapid as in the north, where Roman sway was more speedily annulled. Still, not even in the churches of Lombardy or Tuscany are there more strong evidences of the inception and growth of this great power, which sought at one time to rule the world, and may yet. II THE CHURCH IN GAUL Guizot's notable dictum, "If you are fond of romance and history," may well be paraphrased in this wise: "If you are fond of history, read the life histories of great churches." Leaving dogmatic theory aside, much, if not quite all, of the life of the times in France--up to the end of the sixteenth century--centred more or less upon the Church, using the word in its fullest sense. Aside from its religious significance, the influence of the Church, as is well known and recognized by all, was variously political, social, and perhaps economic. So crowded and varied were the events of Church history in Gaul, it would be impossible to include even the most important of them in a brief chronological arrangement which should form a part of a book such as this. It is imperative, however, that such as are mentioned should be brought together in some consecutive manner in a way that should indicate the mighty ebb and flow of religious events of Church and State. These passed rapidly and consecutively throughout Southern Gaul, which became a part of the kingdom of the French but slowly. Many bishoprics have been suppressed or merged into others, and again united with these sees from which they had been separated. Whatever may be the influences of the Church, monastic establishments, or more particularly, the bishops and their clergy, to-day, there is no question but that from the evangelization of Gaul to the end of the nineteenth century, the parts played by them were factors as great as any other in coagulating and welding together the kingdom of France. The very large number of bishops which France has had approximates eight thousand eminent and virtuous names; and it is to the memory of their works in a practical way, none the less than their devotion to preaching the Word itself, that the large number of magnificent ecclesiastical monuments have been left as their heritage. There is a large share of veneration and respect due these pioneers of Christianity; far more, perhaps, than obtains for those of any other land. Here their activities were so very great, their woes and troubles so very oppressive, and their final achievement so splendid, that the record is one which stands alone. It is a glorious fact--in spite of certain lapses and influx of fanaticism--that France has ever recognized the sterling worth to the nation of the devotion and wise counsel of her churchmen; from the indefatigable apostles of Gaul to her cardinals, wise and powerful in councils of state. The evangelization of Gaul was not an easy or a speedy process. On the authority of Abbé Morin of Moulins, who, in _La France Pontificale_, has undertaken to "chronologize all the bishops and archbishops of France from the first century to our day," Christianity came first to Aix and Marseilles with Lazare de Béthanie in 35 or 36 A. D.; followed shortly after by Lin de Besançon, Clement de Metz, Demêtre de Gap, and Ruf d'Avignon. Toward the end of the reign of Claudian, and the commencement of that of Nero (54-55 A. D.), there arrived in Gaul the seven Apostle-bishops, the founders of the Church at Arles (St. Trophime), Narbonne (St. Paul), Limoges (St. Martial), Clermont (St. Austremoine), Tours (St. Gatien), Toulouse (St. Saturnin), and Trèves (St. Valère). It was some years later that Paris received within its walls St. Denis, its first Apostle of Christianity, its first bishop, and its first martyr. Others as famous were Taurin d'Evreux, Lucien de Beauvais, Eutrope de Saintes, Aventin de Chartres, Nicaise de Rouen, Sixte de Reims, Savinien de Sens, and St. Crescent--the disciple of St. Paul--of Vienne. From these early labours, through the three centuries following, and down through fifteen hundred years, have passed many traditions of these early fathers which are well-nigh legendary and fabulous. The Abbé Morin says further: "We have not, it is true, an entirely complete chronology of the bishops who governed the Church in Gaul, but the names of the great and noble army of bishops and clergy, who for eighteen hundred years have succeeded closely one upon another, are assuredly the most beautiful jewels in the crown of France. Their virtues were many and great,--eloquence, love of _la patrie_, indomitable courage in time of trial, mastery of difficult situation, prudence, energy, patience, and charity." All these grand virtues were practised incessantly, with some regrettable eclipses, attributable not only to misfortune, but occasionally to fault. A churchman even is but human. With the accession of the third dynasty of kings,--the Capetians, in 987,--the history of the French really began, and that of the Franks, with their Germanic tendencies and elements, became absorbed by those of the Romanic language and character, with the attendant habits and customs. Only the Aquitanians, south of the Loire, and the Burgundians on the Rhône, still preserved their distinct nationalities. The feudal ties which bound Aquitaine to France were indeed so slight that, when Hugh Capet, in 990, asked of Count Adelbert of Périgueux, before the walls of the besieged city of Tours: "Who made thee count?" he was met with the prompt and significant rejoinder, "Who made thee king?" At the close of the tenth century, France was ruled by close upon sixty princes, virtually independent, and yet a still greater number of prelates,--as powerful as any feudal lord,--who considered Hugh Capet of Paris only as one who was first among his peers. Yet he was able to extend his territory to such a degree that his hereditary dynasty ultimately assured the unification of the French nation. Less than a century later Duke William of Normandy conquered England (1066); when began that protracted struggle between France and England which lasted for three hundred years. Immediately after the return of the pious Louis VII. from his disastrous crusade, his queen, Eleanor, the heiress of Poitou and Guienne, married the young count Henry Plantagenet of Maine and Anjou; who, when he came to the English throne in 1153, "inherited and acquired by marriage"--as historians subtly put it--" the better half of all France." Until 1322 the Church in France was divided into the following dioceses: Provincia Remensis (Reims) Provincia Rotomagensis (All Normandy) Provincia Turonensis (Touraine, Maine, Anjou, and Brittany) Provincia Burdegalensis (Poitou, Saintonge, Angumois, Périgord, and Bordelais) Provincia Auxitana (In Gascoigne) Provincia Bituricensis (Berri, Bourbonnais, Limosin, and Auvergne) Provincia Senonensis (Sens) Provincia Lugdunensis (Bourgogne and Lyonnais) Provincia Viennensis (Vienne on the Rhône) Provincia Narbonensis (Septimania) Provincia Arelatensis (Arles) Provincia Aquensis (Aix-en-Provence) Provincia Ebredunensis (The Alpine Valleys) The stormy days of the reign of Charles V. (late fourteenth century) throughout France were no less stringent in Languedoc than elsewhere. Here the people rose against the asserted domination of the Duke of Anjou, who, "proud and greedy," was for both qualities abhorred by the Languedocians. He sought to restrain civic liberty with a permanent military force, and at Nîmes levied heavy taxes, which were promptly resented by rebellion. At Montpellier the people no less actively protested, and slew the chancellor and seneschal. By the end of the thirteenth century, social, political, and ecclesiastical changes had wrought a wonderful magic with the map of France. John Lackland (_sans terre_) had been compelled by Philippe-Auguste to relinquish his feudal possessions in France, with the exception of Guienne. At this time also the internal crusades against the Waldenses and Albigenses in southern France had powerfully extended the royal flag. Again, history tells us that it was from the impulse and after influences of the crusading armies to the East that France was welded, under Philippe-le-Bel, into a united whole. The shifting fortunes of France under English rule were, however, such as to put little stop to the progress of church-building in the provinces; though it is to be feared that matters in that line, as most others of the time, went rather by favour than by right of sword. Territorial changes brought about, in due course, modified plans of the ecclesiastical control and government, which in the first years of the fourteenth century caused certain administrative regulations to be put into effect by Pope John XXII. (who lies buried beneath a gorgeous Gothic monument at Avignon) regarding the Church in the southern provinces. So well planned were these details that the Church remained practically under the same administrative laws until the Revolution. Albi was separated from Bourges (1317), and raised to the rank of a metropolitan see; to which were added as suffragans Cahors, Rodez, and Mende, with the newly founded bishoprics of Castres and Vabres added. Toulouse was formed into an archbishopric in 1327; while St. Pons and Alet, as newly founded bishoprics, were given to the ancient see of Narbonne in indemnification for its having been robbed of Toulouse. The ancient diocese of Poitiers was divided into three, and that of Agen into two by the erection of suffragans at Maillezais, Luçon, Sarlat, and Condom. By a later papal bull, issued shortly after their establishment, these bishoprics appear to have been abolished, as no record shows that they entered into the general scheme of the revolutionary suppression. On August 4, 1790, all chapters of cathedral churches, other than those of the metropoles (the mother sees), their bishops, and in turn their respective curés, were suppressed. This ruling applied as well to all collegiate churches, secular bodies, and abbeys and priories generally. Many were, of course, reëstablished at a subsequent time, or, at least, were permitted to resume their beneficent work. But it was this general suppression, in the latter years of the eighteenth century, which led up to the general reapportioning of dioceses in that composition of Church and State thereafter known as the Concordat. [Illustration: _The Concordat_ (_From Napoleon's Tomb_)] Many causes deflected the growth of the Church from its natural progressive pathway. The Protestant fury went nearly to fanaticism, as did the equally fervent attempts to suppress it. The "Temples of Reason" of the Terrorists were of short endurance, but they indicated an unrest that has only in a measure moderated, if one is to take later political events as an indication of anything more than a mere uncontrolled emotion. Whether a great future awaits Protestantism in France, or not, the power of the Roman Church is undoubtedly waning, in attracting congregations, at least. Should a Wesley or a Whitfield arise, he might gain followers, as strong men do, and they would draw unto them others, until congregations might abound. But the faith could hardly become the avowed religion of or for the French people. It has, however, a great champion in the powerful newspaper, _Le Temps_, which has done, and will do, much to popularize the movement. The Protestantism of Lot and Lot et Garonne is considerable, and it is of very long standing. It is recorded, too, that as late as October, 1901, the Commune of Murat went over _en masse_ to Protestantism because the Catholic bishop at Cahors desired his communicants to rise from their beds at what they considered an inconveniently early hour, in order to hear mass. This movement in Languedoc was not wholly due to the tyranny of the Duke of Anjou; it was caused in part by the confiscation or assumption of the papal authority by France. This caused not only an internal unrest in Italy, but a turbulence which spread throughout all the western Mediterranean, and even unto the Rhine and Flanders. The danger which threatened the establishment of the Church, by making the papacy a dependence of France, aroused the Italian prelates and people alike, and gave rise to the simultaneous existence of both a French and an Italian Pope. Charles V. supported the French pontiff, as was but natural, thus fermenting a great schism; with its attendant controversies and horrors. French and Italian politics became for a time inexplicably mingled, and the kingdom of Naples came to be transferred to the house of Anjou. The Revolution, following close upon the Jansenist movement at Port Royal, and the bull Unigenitus of the Pope, resulted in such riot and disregard for all established institutions, monarchical, political, and religious, that the latter--quite as much as the others--suffered undue severity. The Church itself was at this time divided, and rascally intrigue, as well as betrayal, was the order of the day on all sides. Bishops were politicians, and priests were but the tools of their masters; this to no small degree, if we are to accept the written records. Talleyrand-Périgord, Bishop of Autun, was a member of the National Assembly, and often presided over the sittings of that none too deliberate body. In the innovations of the Revolution, the Church and the clergy took, for what was believed to be the national good, their full and abiding share in the surrender of past privileges. At Paris, at the instance of Mirabeau, they even acknowledged, in some measure, the principle of religious liberty, in its widest application. The appalling massacres of September 2, 1792, fell heavily upon the clergy throughout France; of whom one hundred and forty were murdered at the _Carmes_ alone. The Archbishop of Arles on that eventful day gave utterance to the following devoted plea: "_Give thanks to God, gentlemen, that He calls us to seal with our blood the faith we profess. Let us ask of Him the grace of final perseverance, which by our own merit we could not obtain._" The Restoration found the Church in a miserable and impoverished condition. There was already a long list of dioceses without bishops; of cardinals, prelates, and priests without charges, many of them in prison. Congregations innumerable had been suppressed and many sees had been abolished. The new dioceses, under the Concordat of 1801, one for each department only, were of vast size as compared with those which had existed more numerously before the Revolution. In 1822 thirty new sees were added to the prelature. To-day there are sixty-seven bishoprics and seventeen archbishoprics, not including the colonial suffragans, but including the diocese of Corsica, whose seat is at Ajaccio. Church and State are thus seen to have been, from the earliest times, indissolubly linked throughout French dominion. The king--while there was a king--was the eldest son of the Church, and, it is said, the Church in France remains to-day that part of the Roman communion which possesses the greatest importance for the governing body of that faith. This, in spite of the tendency toward what might be called, for the want of a more expressive word, irreligion. This is a condition, or a state, which is unquestionably making headway in the France of to-day--as well, presumably, as in other countries--of its own sheer weight of numbers. One by one, since the establishment of the Church in Gaul, all who placed any limits to their ecclesiastical allegiance have been turned out, and so turned into enemies,--the Protestants, the Jansenists, followers of the Bishop of Ypres, and the Constitutionalists. Reconciliation on either side is, and ever has been, apparently, an impossibility. Freedom of thought and action is undoubtedly increasing its license, and the clergy in politics, while a thing to be desired by many, is, after all, a thing to be feared by the greater number,--for whom a popular government is made. Hence the curtailment of the power of the monks--the real secular propagandists--was perhaps a wise thing. We are not to-day living under the conditions which will permit of a new Richelieu to come upon the scene, and the recent act (1902) which suppressed so many monastic establishments, convents, and religious houses of all ranks, including the Alpine retreat of "La Grande Chartreuse," may be taken rather as a natural process of curtailment than a mere vindictive desire on the part of the State to concern itself with "things that do not matter." On the other hand, it is hard to see just what immediate gain is to result to the nation. III THE CHURCH ARCHITECTURE OF SOUTHERN FRANCE The best history of the Middle Ages is that suggested by their architectural remains. That is, if we want tangible or ocular demonstration, which many of us do. Many of these remains are but indications of a grandeur that is past and a valour and a heroism that are gone; but with the Church alone are suggested the piety and devotion which still live, at least to a far greater degree than many other sentiments and emotions; which in their struggle to keep pace with progress have suffered, or become effete by the way. To the Church, then, or rather religion--if the word be preferred--we are chiefly indebted for the preservation of these ancient records in stone. Ecclesiastical architecture led the way--there is no disputing that, whatever opinions may otherwise be held by astute archæologists, historians, and the antiquarians, whose food is anything and everything so long as it reeks of antiquity. The planning and building of a great church was no menial work. Chief dignitaries themselves frequently engaged in it: the Abbot Suger, the foremost architect of his time--prime minister and regent of the kingdom as he was--at St. Denis; Archbishop Werner at Strasbourg; and William of Wykeham in England, to apportion such honours impartially. Gothic style appears to have turned its back on Italy, where, in Lombardy at all events, were made exceedingly early attempts in this style. This, perhaps, because of satisfying and enduring classical works which allowed no rivalry; a state of affairs to some extent equally true of the south of France. The route of expansion, therefore, was northward, along the Rhine, into the Isle of France, to Belgium, and finally into England. No more true or imaginative description of Gothic forms has been put into literature than those lines of Sir Walter Scott, which define its characteristics thus: "... Whose pillars with clustered shafts so trim, With base and capital flourished 'round, Seemed bundles of lances which garlands had bound." In modern times, even in France, church-building neither aspired to, nor achieved, any great distinction. Since the Concordat what have we had? A few restorations, which in so far as they were carried out in the spirit of the original were excellent; a few added members, as the west front and spires of St. Ouen at Rouen; the towers and western portal at Clermont-Ferrand; and a few other works of like magnitude and worth. For the rest, where anything of bulk was undertaken, it was almost invariably a copy of a Renaissance model, and often a bad one at that; or a descent to some hybrid thing worse even than in their own line were the frank mediocrities of the era of the "Citizen-King," or the plush and horsehair horrors of the Second Empire. Most characteristic, and truly the most important of all, are the remains of the Gallo-Roman period. These are the most notable and forceful reminders of the relative prominence obtained by mediæval pontiffs, prelates, and peoples. These relations are further borne out by the frequent juxtaposition of ecclesiastical and civic institutions of the cities themselves,--fortifications, palaces, châteaux, cathedrals, and churches, the former indicating no more a predominance of power than the latter. A consideration of one, without something more than mere mention of the other, is not possible, and incidentally--even for the church-lover--nothing can be more interesting than the great works of fortification--strong, frowning, and massive--as are yet to be seen at Béziers, Carcassonne, or Avignon. It was this latter city which sheltered within its outer walls that monumental reminder of the papal power which existed in this French capital of the "Church of Rome"--as it must still be called--in the fourteenth century. To the stranger within the gates the unconscious resemblance between a castellated and battlemented feudal stronghold and the many churches,--and even certain cathedrals, as at Albi, Béziers, or Agde,--which were not unlike in their outline, will present some confusion of ideas. Between a crenelated battlement or the machicolations of a city wall, as at Avignon; or of a hôtel de ville, as at Narbonne; or the same detail surmounting an episcopal residence, as at Albi, which is a veritable _donjon_; or the Palais des Papes, is not a difference even of degree. It is the same thing in each case. In one instance, however, it may have been purely for defence, and in the other used as a decorative accessory; in the latter case it was no less useful when occasion required. This feature throughout the south of France is far more common than in the north, and is bound to be strongly remarked. Two great groups or divisions of architectural style are discernible throughout the south, even by the most casual of observers. One is the Provençal variety, which clings somewhat closely to the lower valley of the Rhône; and the other, the Aquitanian (with possibly the more restricted Auvergnian). These types possess in common the one distinctive trait, in some form or other, of the round-arched vaulting of Roman tradition. It is hardly more than a reminiscence, however, and while not in any way resembling the northern Gothic, at least in the Aquitanian species, hovers on the borderland between the sunny south and the more frigid north. The Provençal type more nearly approximates the older Roman, and, significantly, it has--with less interpolation of modern ideas--endured the longest. The Aquitanian style of the cathedrals at Périgueux and Angoulême, to specialize but two, is supposed to--and it does truly--bridge the gulf between the round-arched style which is _not_ Roman and the more brilliant and graceful type of Gothic. With this manner of construction goes, of course, a somewhat different interior arrangement than that seen in the north. A profound acquaintance with the subject will show that it bears a certain resemblance to the disposition of parts in an Eastern mosque, and to the earlier form of Christian church--the basilica. In this regard Fergusson makes the statement without reservation that the Eglise de Souillac more nearly resembles the Cairène type of Mohammedan mosque than it does a Christian church--of any era. A distinct feature of this type is the massive pointed arch, upon which so many have built their definition of Gothic. In truth, though, it differs somewhat from the northern Gothic arch, but is nevertheless very ancient. It is used in early Christian churches,--at Acre and Jaffa,--and was adopted, too, by the architects of the Eastern Empire long before its introduction into Gaul. The history of its transportation might be made interesting, and surely instructive, were one able to follow its orbit with any definite assurance that one was not wandering from the path. This does not seem possible; most experts, real or otherwise, who have tried it seem to flounder and finally fall in the effort to trace its history in consecutive and logical, or even plausible, fashion. In illustration this is well shown by that wonderful and unique church of St. Front at Périgueux, where, in a design simple to severity, it shows its great unsimilarity to anything in other parts of France; if we except La Trinité at Anjou, with respect to its roofing and piers of nave. It has been compared in general plan and outline to St. Marc's at Venice, "but a St. Marc's stripped of its marbles and mosaics." In the Italian building its founders gathered their inspiration for many of its structural details from the old Byzantine East. At this time the Venetians were pushing their commercial enterprises to all parts. North-western France, and ultimately the British Isles, was the end sought. We know, too, that a colony of Venetians had established itself as far northward as Limoges, and another at Périgueux, when, in 984, this edifice, which might justly be called Venetian in its plan, was begun. No such decoration or ornamentation was presumed as in its Adriatic prototype, but it had much beautiful carving in the capitals of its pillars and yet other embellishments, such as pavements, monuments, and precious altars, which once, it is said, existed more numerously than now. Here, then, was the foundation of a new western style, differing in every respect from the Provençal or the Angevinian. Examples of the northern pointed or Gothic are, in a large way, found as far south as Bayonne in its cathedral; in the spires of the cathedral at Bordeaux; and less grandly, though elegantly, disposed in St. Nazaire in the old _Cité de Carcassonne_; and farther north at Clermont-Ferrand, where its northern-pointed cathedral is in strong contrast to the neighbouring Notre Dame du Port, a remarkable type distinctly local in its plan and details. From this point onward, it becomes not so much a question of defining and placing types, as of a chronological arrangement of fact with regard to the activities of the art of church-building. It is doubtless true that many of the works of the ninth and tenth centuries were but feeble imitations of the buildings of Charlemagne, but it is also true that the period was that which was bringing about the development of a more or less distinct style, and if the Romanesque churches of France were not wholly Roman in spirit they were at least not a debasement therefrom. Sir Walter Scott has also described the Romanesque manner of church-building most poetically, as witness the following quatrain: "Built ere the art was known By pointed aisle and shafted stalk The arcades of an alleyed walk To emulate in stone." However, little remains in church architecture of the pre-tenth century to compare with the grand theatres, arenas, monuments, arches, towers, and bridges which are still left to us. Hence comparison were futile. Furthermore, there is this patent fact to be reckoned with, that the petty followers of the magnificent Charlemagne were not endowed with as luxurious a taste, as large a share of riches, or so great a power; and naturally they fell before the idea they would have emulated. As a whole France was at this period amid great consternation and bloodshed, and traces of advancing civilization were fast falling before wars and cruelties unspeakable. There came a period when the intellect, instead of pursuing its rise, was, in reality, degenerating into the darkness of superstition. The church architecture of this period--so hostile to the arts and general enlightenment--was undergoing a process even more fatal to its development than the terrors of war or devastation. It is a commonplace perhaps to repeat that it was the superstition aroused by the Apocalypse that the end of all things would come with the commencement of the eleventh century. It was this, however, that produced the stagnation in church-building which even the ardour of a few believing churchmen could not allay. The only great religious foundation of the time was the Abbey of Cluny in the early years of the tenth century. When the eleventh century actually arrived, Christians again bestirred themselves, and the various cities and provinces vied with each other in their enthusiastic devotion to church-building, as if to make up for lost time. From this time onward the art of church-building gave rise to that higher skill and handicraft, the practice of architecture as an art, of which ecclesiastical art, as was but natural, rose to the greatest height. The next century was productive of but little change in style, and, though in the north the transition and the most primitive of Gothic were slowly creeping in, the well-defined transition did not come until well forward in the twelfth century, when, so soon after, the new style bloomed forth in all its perfected glory. The cathedrals of southern France are manifestly not as lively and vigorous as those at Reims, Amiens, or Rouen; none have the splendour and vast extent of old glass as at Chartres, and none of the smaller examples equal the symmetry and delicacy of those at Noyon or Senlis. Some there be, however, which for magnificence and impressiveness take rank with the most notable of any land. This is true of those of Albi, Le Puy, Périgueux, and Angoulême. Avignon, too, in the _ensemble_ of its cathedral and the papal palace, forms an architectural grouping that is hardly rivalled by St. Peter's and the Vatican itself. In many of the cities of the south of France the memory of the past, with respect to their cathedrals, is overshadowed by that of their secular and civic monuments, the Roman arenas, theatres, and temples. At Nîmes, Arles, Orange, and Vienne these far exceed in importance and beauty the religious establishments. The monasteries, abbeys, and priories of the south of France are perhaps not more numerous, nor yet more grand, than elsewhere, but they bring one to-day into more intimate association with their past. The "Gallia-Monasticum" enumerates many score of these establishments as having been situated in these parts. Many have passed away, but many still exist. Among the first of their kind were those founded by St. Hilaire at Poitiers and St. Martin at Tours. The great Burgundian pride was the Abbey of Cluny; much the largest and perhaps as grand as any erected in any land. Its church covered over seventy thousand square feet of area, nearly equalling in size the cathedrals at Amiens and at Bourges, and larger than either those at Chartres, Paris, or Reims. This great church was begun in 1089, was dedicated in 1131, and endured for more than seven centuries. To-day but a few small fragments remain, but note should be made of the influences which spread from this great monastic establishment throughout all Europe; and were second only to those of Rome itself. The lovely cloistered remains of Provence, Auvergne, and Aquitaine, the comparatively modern Charterhouse--called reminiscently the Escurial of Dauphiné--near Grenoble, the communistic church of St. Bertrand de Comminges, La Chaise Dieu, Clairvaux, and innumerable other abbeys and monasteries will recall to mind more forcibly than aught else what their power must once have been. Between the seventh and tenth centuries these institutions flourished and developed in all of the provinces which go to make up modern France. But the eleventh and twelfth centuries were the golden days of these institutions. They rendered unto the land and the people immense service, and their monks studied not only the arts and sciences, but worked with profound intelligence at all manner of utile labour. Their architecture exerted a considerable influence on this growing art of the nation, and many of their grand churches were but the forerunners of cathedrals yet to be. After the twelfth century, when the arts in France had reached the greatest heights yet attained, these religious establishments were--to give them historical justice--the greatest strength in the land. In most cases where the great cathedrals were not the works of bishops, who may at one time have been members of monastic communities themselves, they were the results of the efforts of laymen who were direct disciples of the architect monks. The most prolific monastic architect was undoubtedly St. Bénigne of Dijon, the Italian monk whose work was spread not only throughout Brittany and Normandy, but even across the Channel to England. One is reminded in France that the nation's first art expression was made through church-building and decoration. This proves Ruskin's somewhat involved dicta, that, "architecture is the art which disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man ... a building raised to the honour of God has surely a use to which its architectural adornment fits it." From whatever remote period the visible history of France has sprung, it is surely from its architectural remains--of which religious edifices have endured the most abundantly--that its chronicles since Gallo-Roman times are built up. In the south of France, from the Gallic and Roman wars and invasions, we have a basis of tangibility, inasmuch as the remains are more numerous and definite than the mere pillars of stone and slabs of rock to be found in Bretagne, which apocryphally are supposed to indicate an earlier civilization. The _menhirs_ and _dolmens_ may mean much or little; the subject is too vague to follow here, but they are not found east of the Rhône, so the religion of fanaticism, of whatever species of fervour they may have resulted from, has left very little impress on France as a nation. After the rudest early monuments were erected in the south, became ruined, and fell, there followed gateways, arches, aqueducts, arenas, theatres, temples, and, finally, churches; and from these, however minute the stones, the later civilizing and Christianizing history of this fair land is built up. It is not possible to ignore these secular and worldly contemporaries of the great churches. It would be fatal to simulate blindness, and they could not otherwise be overlooked. After the church-building era was begun, the development of the various styles was rapid: Gothic came, bloomed, flourished, and withered away. Then came the Renaissance, not all of it bad, but in the main entirely unsuitable as a type of Christian architecture. Charles VIII. is commonly supposed to have been the introducer of the Italian Renaissance into France, but it was to Francois I.--that great artistic monarch and glorifier of the style in its domestic forms at least--that its popularization was due, who shall not say far beyond its deserts? Only in the magnificent châteaux, variously classed as Feudal, Renaissance, and Bourbon, did it partake of details and plans which proved glorious in their application. All had distinctly inconsistent details grafted upon them; how could it have been otherwise with the various fortunes of their houses? There is little or nothing of Gothic in the château architecture of France to distinguish it from the more pronounced type which can hardly be expressed otherwise than as "the architecture of the French châteaux." No single word will express it, and no one type will cover them all, so far as defining their architectural style. The castle at Tarascon has a machicolated battlement; Coucy and Pierrefonds are towered and turreted as only a French château can be; the ruined and black-belted château of Angers is aught but a fortress; and Blois is an indescribable mixture of style which varies from the magnificent to the sordid. This last has ever been surrounded by a sentiment which is perhaps readily enough explained, but its architecture is of that decidedly mixed type which classes it as a mere hybrid thing, and in spite of the splendour of the additions by the houses of the Salamander and the Hedgehog, it is a species which is as indescribable (though more effective) in domestic architecture as is the Tudor of England. With the churches the sentiments aroused are somewhat different. The Romanesque, Provençal, Auvergnian, or Aquitanian, all bespeak the real expression of the life of the time, regardless of whether individual examples fall below or rise above their contemporaries elsewhere. The assertion is here confidently made, that a great cathedral church is, next to being a symbol of the faith, more great as a monument to its age and environment than as the product of its individual builders; crystallizing in stone the regard with which the mission of the Church was held in the community. Church-building was never a fanaticism, though it was often an enthusiasm. There is no question but that church history in general, and church architecture in particular, are becoming less and less the sole pursuit of the professional. One does not need to adopt a transcendent doctrine by merely taking an interest, or an intelligent survey, in the social and political aspects of the Church as an institution, nor is he becoming biassed or prejudiced by a true appreciation of the symbolism and artistic attributes which have ever surrounded the art of church-building of the Roman Catholic Church. All will admit that the æsthetic aspect of the church edifice has always been the superlative art expression of its era, race, and locality. _PART II_ _South of the Loire_ I INTRODUCTORY The region immediately to the southward of the Loire valley is generally accounted the most fertile, abundant, and prosperous section of France. Certainly the food, drink, and shelter of all classes appear to be arranged on a more liberal scale than elsewhere; and this, be it understood, is a very good indication of the prosperity of a country. Touraine, with its luxurious sentiment of châteaux, counts, and bishops, is manifestly of the north, as also is the border province of Maine and Anjou, which marks the progress and development of church-building from the manifest Romanesque types of the south to the arched vaults of the northern variety. Immediately to the southward--if one journeys but a few leagues--in Poitou, Saintonge, and Angoumois, or in the east, in Berri, Marche, and Limousin, one comes upon a very different sentiment indeed. There is an abundance for all, but without the opulence of Burgundy or the splendour of Touraine. Of the three regions dealt with in this section, Poitou is the most prosperous, Auvergne the most picturesque,--though the Cevennes are stern and sterile,--and Limousin the least appealing. Limousin and, in some measure, Berri and Marche are purely pastoral; and, though greatly diversified as to topography, lack, in abundance, architectural monuments of the first rank. Poitou, in the west, borders upon the ocean and is to a great extent wild, rugged, and romantic. The forest region of the Bocage has ever been a theme for poets and painters. In the extreme west of the province is the Vendée, now the department of the same name. The struggles of its inhabitants on behalf of the monarchical cause, in the early years of the Revolution, is a lurid page of blood-red history that recalls one of the most gallant struggles in the life of the monarchy. The people here were hardy and vigorous,--a race of landlords who lived largely upon their own estates but still retained an attachment for the feudatories round about, a feeling which was unknown elsewhere in France. Poitiers, on the river Clain, a tributary of the Vienne, is the chief city of Poitou. Its eight magnificent churches are greater, in the number and extent of their charms, than any similar octette elsewhere. The valley of the Charente waters a considerable region to the southward of Poitiers. "_Le bon Roi_" Henri IV. called the stream the most charming in all his kingdom. The chief cities on its banks are La Rochelle, the Huguenot stronghold; Rochefort, famed in worldly fashion for its cheeses; and Angoulême, famed for its "_Duchesse_," who was also worldly, and more particularly for its great domed cathedral of St. Pierre. With Auvergne one comes upon a topographical aspect quite different from anything seen elsewhere. Most things of this world are but comparative, and so with Auvergne. It is picturesque, certainly. Le Puy has indeed been called "by one who knows," "the most picturesque place in the world." Clermont-Ferrand is almost equally attractive as to situation; while Puy de Dôme, Riom, and St. Nectaire form a trio of naturally picturesque topographical features which it would be hard to equal within so small a radius elsewhere. The country round about is volcanic, and the face of the landscape shows it plainly. Clermont-Ferrand, the capital, was a populous city in Roman times, and was the centre from which the spirit of the Church survived and went forth anew after five consecutive centuries of devastation and bloodshed of Vandals, Visigoths, Franks, Saracens, Carlovingians and Capetians. Puy de Dôme, near Clermont-Ferrand, is a massive rocky mount which rises nearly five thousand feet above the sea-level, and presents one of those uncommon and curious sights which one can hardly realize until he comes immediately beneath their spell. Throughout this region are many broken volcanic craters and lava streams. At Mont Doré-le-Bains are a few remains of a Roman thermal establishment; an indication that these early settlers found--if they did not seek--these warm springs of a unique quality, famous yet throughout the world. An alleged "Druid's altar," more probably merely a _dolmen_, is situated near St. Nectaire, a small watering-place which is also possessed of an impressively simple, though massive, Romanesque church. At Issiore is the _Eglise de St. Pol_, a large and important church, built in the eleventh century, in the Romanesque manner. Another most interesting great church is _La Chaise Dieu_ near Le Puy, a remarkable construction of the fourteenth century. It was originally the monastery of the _Casa Dei_. It has been popularly supposed heretofore that its floor was on a level with the summit of Puy de Dôme, hence its appropriate nomenclature; latterly the assertion has been refuted, as it may be by any one who takes the trouble to compare the respective elevations in figures. This imposing church ranks, however, unreservedly among the greatest of the mediæval monastic establishments of France. The powerful feudal system of the Middle Ages, which extended from the Atlantic and German Oceans nearly to the Neapolitan and Spanish borders--afterward carried still farther into Naples and Britain--finds its most important and striking monument of central France in the Château of Polignac, only a few miles from Le Puy. This to-day is but a ruin, but it rises boldly from a depressed valley, and suggests in every way--ruin though it be--the mediæval stronghold that it once was. Originally it was the seat of the distinguished family whose name it bears. The Revolution practically destroyed it, but such as is left shows completely the great extent of its functions both as a fortress and a palace. These elements were made necessary by long ages of warfare and discord,--local in many cases, but none the less bloodthirsty for that,--and while such institutions naturally promulgated the growth of Feudalism which left these massive and generous memorials, it is hard to see, even to-day, how else the end might have been obtained. Auvergne, according to Fergusson, who in his fact has seldom been found wanting, "has one of the most beautiful and numerous of the 'round-Gothic' styles in France ... classed among the perfected styles of Europe." Immediately to the southward of Le Puy is that marvellous country known as the Cevennes. It has been commonly called sterile, bare, unproductive, and much that is less charitable as criticism. It is not very productive, to be sure, but a native of the land once delivered himself of this remark: "_Le mûrier a été pendant longtemps l'arbre d'or du Cevenol._" This is prima-facie evidence that the first statement was a libel. In the latter years of the eighteenth century the Protestants of the Cevennes were a large and powerful body of dissenters. A curious work _in English_, written by a native of Languedoc in 1703, states "that they were at least ten to one Papist. And 'twas observed, in many Places, the Priest said mass only for his Clerk, Himself, and the Walls." These people were not only valiant but industrious, and at that time held the most considerable trade in wool of all France. To quote again this eighteenth-century Languedocian, who aspired to be a writer of English, we learn: "God vouchsafed to Illuminate this People with the Truths of the Gospel, several Ages before the Reformation.... The _Waldenses_ and _Albigenses_ fled into the Mountains to escape the violence of the Crusades against them.... Cruel persecution did not so wholly extinguish the Sacred Light in the _Cevennes_, but that some parts of it were preserved among its Ashes." As early as 1683 the Protestants in many parts of southern France drew up a _Project_ of non-compliance with the Edicts and Declarations against them. The inhabitants in general, however, of the wealthy cities of Montpellier, Nîmes and Uzès were divided much as factions are to-day, and the Papist preference prevailing, the scheme was not put into execution. Because of this, attempted resistance was made only in some parts of the Cevennes and Dauphiné. Here the dissenters met with comfort and assurance by the preachings of several ministers, and finally sought to go out proselytizing among their outside brethren in affliction. This brought martyrdom, oppression, and bloodshed; and finally culminated in a long series of massacres. Children in large numbers were taken from their parents, and put under the Romish faith, as a precaution, presumably, that future generations should be more tractable and faithful. It is told of the Bishop of Alais that upon visiting the curé at Vigan, he desired that forty children should be so put away, forthwith. The curé could find but sixteen who were not dutiful toward the Church, but the bishop would have none of it. Forty was his quota from that village, and forty must be found. Forty _were_ found, the rest being made up from those who presumably stood in no great need of the care of the Church, beyond such as already came into their daily lives. It seems outrageous and unfair at this late day, leaving all question of Church and creed outside the pale, but most machination of arbitrary law and ruling works the same way, and pity 'tis that the Church should not have been the first to recognize this tendency. However, these predilections on the part of the people are scarcely more than a memory to-day, in spite of the fact that Protestantism still holds forth in many parts. Taine was undoubtedly right when he said that it was improbable that such a religion would ever satisfy the French temperament. Limousin partakes of many of the characteristics of Auvergne and Poitou. Its architectural types favour the latter, and its topographical features the former. The resemblance is not so very great in either case, but it is to be remarked. Its chief city, Limoges, lies to the northward of the _Montagnes du Limousin_, on the banks of the Vienne, which, through the Loire, enters the Atlantic at St. Nazaire. In a way, its topographical situation, as above noted, accounts far more for its tendencies of life, the art expression of its churches, and its ancient enamels and pottery of to-day, than does its climatic situation. It is climatically of the southland, but its industry and its influences have been greatly northern. With the surrounding country this is not true, but with its one centre of population--Limoges--it is. II L'ABBAYE DE MAILLEZAIS Maillezais is but a memory, so far as its people and power are concerned. It is not even a Vendean town, as many suppose, though it was the seat of a thirteenth-century bishopric, which in the time of Louis Quatorze was transferred to La Rochelle. Its abbey church, the oldest portion of which dates from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, is now but a ruin. In the fourteenth century the establishment was greatly enlarged and extensive buildings added. To-day it is classed, by the Commission des Monuments Historiques, among those treasures for which it stands sponsor as to their antiquity, artistic worth, and future preservation. Aside from this and the record of the fact that it became, in the fourteenth century, the seat of a bishop's throne,--with Geoffroy I. as its first occupant,--it must be dismissed without further comment. [Illustration] III ST. LOUIS DE LA ROCHELLE The city of La Rochelle will have more interest for the lover of history than for the lover of churches. Its past has been lurid, and the momentous question of the future rights of the Protestants of France made this natural stronghold the battle-ground where the most stubborn resistance against Church and State was made. The siege of 1573 was unsuccessful. But a little more than half a century later the city, after a siege of fourteen months, gave way before the powerful force brought against it by Cardinal Richelieu in person, supported by Louis XIII. For this reason, if for no other, he who would know from personal acquaintance the ground upon which the mighty battles of the faith were fought will not pass the Huguenot city quickly by. The Huguenot stronghold of La Rochelle naturally might not be supposed to possess a very magnificent Roman cathedral. As a matter of fact it does not, and it has only ranked as a cathedral city since 1665, when the bishopric was transferred from Maillezais. The city was in the hands of the Huguenots from 1557 until the siege of 1628-1629; and was, during all this time, the bulwark of the Protestant cause in France. The present cathedral of St. Louis dates only from 1735. Its pseudo-classic features classify it as one of those structures designated by the discerning Abbé Bourassé as being "cold-blooded and lacking in lustre." It surely is all of that, and the pity is that it offers no charm whatever of either shape or feature. It is of course more than likely that Huguenot influence was here so great as to have strangled any ambition on the part of the mediæval builders to have erected previously anything more imposing. And when that time was past came also the demise of Gothic splendour. The transition from the pointed to the superimposed classical details, which was the distinctive Renaissance manner of church-building, was not as sudden as many suppose, though it came into being simultaneously throughout the land. There is no trace, however, in the cathedral of St. Louis, of anything but a base descent to features only too well recognized as having little of churchly mien about them; and truly this structure is no better or worse as an art object than many others of its class. The significant aspect being that, though it resembles Gothic not at all, neither does it bear any close relationship to the Romanesque. The former parish church of St. Barthèlemy, long since destroyed, has left behind, as a memory of its former greatness, a single lone tower, the work of a Cluniac monk, Mognon by name. It is worth hours of contemplation and study as compared with the minutes which could profitably be devoted to the cathedral of St. Louis. [Illustration] IV CATHÉDRALE DE LUÇON When the see of Luçon was established in the fourteenth century it comprehended a territory over which Poitiers had previously had jurisdiction. A powerful abbey was here in the seventh century, but the first bishop, Pierre de la Veyrie, did not come to the diocese until 1317. The real fame of the diocese, in modern minds, lies in the fact that Cardinal Richelieu was made bishop of Luçon in the seventeenth century (1606 to 1624). The cathedral at Luçon is a remarkable structure in appearance. A hybrid conglomerate thing, picturesque enough to the untrained eye, but ill-proportioned, weak, effeminate, and base. Its graceful Gothic spire, crocketed, and of true dwindling dimensions, is superimposed on a tower which looks as though it might have been modelled with a series of children's building-blocks. This in its turn crowns a classical portal and colonnade in most uncanny fashion. In the first stage of this tower, as it rises above the portal, is what, at a distance, appears to be a diminutive _rosace_. In reality it is an enormous clock-face, to which one's attention is invariably directed by the native, a species of local admiration which is universal throughout the known world wherever an ungainly clock exists. The workmanship of the building as a whole is of every century from the twelfth to the seventeenth, with a complete "restoration" in 1853. In the episcopal palace is a cloistered arcade, the remains of a fifteenth-century work. A rather pleasing situation sets off this pretentious but unworthy cathedral in a manner superior to that which it deserves. [Illustration] V ST. FRONT DE PÉRIGUEUX The grandest and most notable tenth-century church yet remaining in France is unquestionably that of St. Front at Périgueux. From the records of its history and a study of its distinctive constructive elements has been traced the development of the transition period which ultimately produced the Gothic splendours of the Isle of France. It is more than reminiscent of St. Marc's at Venice, and is the most notable exponent of that type of roofing which employed the cupola in groups, to sustain the thrust and counterthrust, which was afterward accomplished by the ogival arch in conjunction with the flying buttress. Here are comparatively slight sustaining walls, and accordingly no great roofed-over chambers such as we get in the later Gothic, but the whole mass is, in spite of this, suggestive of a massiveness which many more heavily walled churches do not possess. Paradoxically, too, a view over its roof-top, with its ranges of egg-like domes, suggests a frailty which but for its scientifically disposed strains would doubtless have collapsed ere now. This ancient abbatial church succeeded an earlier _basilique_ on the same site. Viollet-le-Duc says of it: "It is an importation from a foreign country; the most remarkable example of church-building in Gaul since the barbaric invasion." The plan of the cathedral follows not only the form of St. Marc's, but also approximates its dimensions. The remains of the ancient basilica are only to be remarked in the portion which precedes the foremost cupola. St. Front has the unusual attribute of an _avant-porch_,--a sort of primitive narthen, as was a feature of tenth-century buildings (see plan and descriptions of a tenth-century church in appendix), behind which is a second porch,--a vestibule beneath the tower,--and finally the first of the group, of five central cupolas. The _clocher_ or belfry of St. Front is accredited as being one of the most remarkable eleventh-century erections of its kind in any land. It is made up of square stages, each smaller than the other, and crowned finally by a conic cupola. Its early inception and erection here are supposed to account for the similarity of others--not so magnificent, but like to a marked degree--in the neighbouring provinces. Here is no trace of the piled-up tabouret style of later centuries, and it is far removed from the mosque-like minarets which were the undoubted prototypes of the mediæval clochers. So, too, it is different, quite, from the Italian _campanile_ or the _beffroi_ which crept into civic architecture in the north; but whose sole example in the south of France is believed to be that curious structure which still holds forth in the papal city of Avignon. Says Bourassé: "The cathedral of St. Front at Périgueux is unique." Its foundation dates with certitude from between 1010 and 1047, and is therefore contemporary with that of St. Marc's at Venice--which it so greatly resembles--which was rebuilt after a fire between 977 and 1071. [Illustration: _Detail of the Interior of St. Front de Périgueux_] The general effect of the interior is as impressive as it is unusual, with its lofty cupolas, its weighty and gross pillars, and its massive arches between the cupolas; all of which are purely constructive elements. There are few really ornamental details, and such as exist are of a severe and unprogressive type, being merely reminiscent of the antique. In its general plan, St. Front follows that of a Grecian cross, its twelve wall-faces crowned by continuous pediments. Eight massive pillars, whose functions are those of the later developed buttress, flank the extremities of the cross, and are crowned by pyramidal cupolas which, with the main roofing, combine to give that distinctive character to this unusual and "foreign" cathedral of mid-France. St. Front, from whom the cathedral takes its name, became the first bishop of Périgueux when the see was founded in the second century. VI ST. PIERRE DE POITIERS IN 1317 the diocese of Poitiers was divided, and parts apportioned to the newly founded bishoprics of Maillezais and Luçon. The first bishop of Poitiers was St. Nectaire, in the third century. By virtue of the Concordat of 1801 the diocese now comprehends the Departments of Vienne and Deux-Sèvres. The cathedral of St. Pierre de Poitiers has been baldly and tersely described as a "mere Lombard shell with a Gothic porch." This hardly does it justice, even as to preciseness. The easterly portion is Lombard, without question, and the nave is of the northern pointed variety; a not unusual admixture of feature, but one which can but suggest that still more, much more, is behind it. The pointed nave is of great beauty, and, in the westerly end, contains an elaborate _rosace_--an infrequent attribute in these parts. [Illustration: Poitiers] The aisles are of great breadth, and are quite as lofty in proportion. This produces an effect of great amplitude, nearly as much so as of the great halled churches at Albi or the aisleless St. André at Bordeaux, and contrasts forcibly in majesty with the usual Gothic conception of great height, as against extreme width. Of Poitiers Professor Freeman says: "It is no less a city of counts than Angers; and if Counts of Anjou grew into Kings of England, one Countess of Poitiers grew no less into a Queen of England; and when the young Henry took her to wife, he took all Poitou with her, and Aquitaine and Gascogne, too, so great was his desire for lands and power." Leaving that aspect apart--to the historians and apologists--it is the churches of Poitiers which have for the traveller the greatest and all-pervading interest. Poitiers is justly famed for its noble and numerous mediæval church edifices. Five of them rank as a unique series of Romanesque types--the most precious in all France. In importance they are perhaps best ranked as follows: St. Hilaire, of the tenth and eleventh centuries; the Baptistère, or the Temple St. Jean, of the fourth to twelfth centuries; Notre Dame de la Grande and St. Radegonde, of the eleventh and twelfth centuries; and La Cathédrale, dating from the end of the Romanesque period. Together they present a unique series of magnificent churches, as is truly claimed. When one crosses the Loire, he crosses the boundary not only into southern Gaul but into southern Europe as well; where the very aspects of life, as well as climatic and topographical conditions and features, are far different from those of the northern French provinces. Looking backward from the Middle Ages--from the fourteenth century to the fourth--one finds the city less a city of counts than of bishops. Another aspect which places Poitiers at the very head of ecclesiastical foundations is that it sustained, and still sustains, a separate religious edifice known as the Baptistère. It is here a structure of Christian-Roman times, and is a feature seldom seen north of the Alps, or even out of Italy. There is, however, another example at Le Puy and another at Aix-en-Provence. This Baptistère de St. Jean was founded during the reign of St. Hilaire as bishop of Poitiers, a prelate whose name still lives in the Église St. Hilaire-le-Grand. The cathedral of St. Pierre is commonly classed under the generic style of Romanesque; more particularly it is of the Lombard variety, if such a distinction can be made between the two species with surety. At all events it marks the dividing-line--or period, when the process of evolution becomes most marked--between the almost pagan plan of many early Christian churches and the coming of Gothic. In spite of its prominence and its beauty with regard to its accessories, St. Pierre de Poitiers does not immediately take rank as the most beautiful, nor yet the most interesting, among the churches of the city: neither has it the commanding situation of certain other cathedrals of the neighbouring provinces, such as Notre Dame at Le Puy, St. Maurice at Angers, or St. Front at Périgueux. In short, as to situation, it just misses what otherwise might have been a commanding location. St. Radegonde overhangs the river Clain, but is yet far below the cathedral, which stands upon the eastern flank of an eminence, and from many points is lost entirely to view. From certain distant vantage-ground, the composition is, however, as complete and imposing an ensemble as might be desired, but decidedly the nearer view is not so pleasing, and somewhat mitigates the former estimate. There is a certain uncouthness in the outlines of this church that does not bring it into competition with that class of the great churches of France known as _les grandes cathédrales_. The general outline of the roof--omitting of course the scanty transepts--is very reminiscent of Bourges; and again of Albi. The ridge-pole is broken, however, by a slight differentiation of height between the choir and the nave, and the westerly towers scarcely rise above the roof itself. The easterly termination is decidedly unusual, even unto peculiarity. It is not, after the English manner, of the squared east-end variety, nor yet does it possess an apse of conventional form, but rather is a combination of the two widely differing styles, with considerably more than a suggested apse when viewed from the interior, and merely a flat bare wall when seen from the outside. In addition three diminutive separate apses are attached thereto, and present in the completed arrangement a variation or species which is distinctly local. The present edifice dates from 1162, its construction being largely due to the Countess Eleanor, queen to the young Earl Henry. The high altar was dedicated in 1199, but the choir itself was not finished until a half-century later. There is no triforium or clerestory, and, but for the aisles, the cathedral would approximate the dimensions and interior outlines of that great chambered church at Albi; as it is, it comes well within the classification called by the Germans _hallenkirche_. Professor Freeman has said that a church that has aisles can hardly be called a typical Angevin church; but St. Pierre de Poitiers is distinctly Angevin in spite of the loftiness of its walls and pillars. The west front is the most elaborate constructive element and is an addition of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with flanking towers of the same period which stand well forward and to one side, as at Rouen, and at Wells, in England. The western doorway is decorated with sculptures of the fifteenth century, in a manner which somewhat suggests the work of the northern builders; who, says Fergusson, "were aiding the bishops of the southern dioceses to emulate in some degree the ambitious works of the Isle of France." The ground-plan of this cathedral is curious, and shows, in its interior arrangements, a narrowing or drawing in of parts toward the east. This is caused mostly by the decreasing effect of height between the nave and choir, and the fact that the attenuated transepts are hardly more than suggestions--occupying but the width of one bay. The nave of eight bays and the aisles are of nearly equal height, which again tends to produce an effect of length. There is painted glass of the thirteenth century in small quantity, and a much larger amount of an eighteenth-century product, which shows--as always--the decadence of the art. Of this glass, that of the _rosace_ at the westerly end is perhaps the best, judging from the minute portions which can be seen peeping out from behind the organ-case. The present high altar is a modern work, as also--comparatively--are the tombs of various churchmen which are scattered throughout the nave and choir. In the sacristy, access to which is gained by some mystic rite not always made clear to the visitor, are supposed to be a series of painted portraits of all the former bishops of Poitiers, from the fourteenth century onward. It must be an interesting collection if the outsider could but judge for himself; as things now are, it has to be taken on faith. A detail of distinct value, and a feature which shows a due regard for the abilities of the master workman who built the cathedral, though his name is unknown, is to be seen in the tympana of the canopies which overhang the stalls of the choir. Here is an acknowledgment--in a tangible if not a specific form--of the architectural genius who was responsible for the construction of this church. It consists of a sculptured figure in stone, which bears in its arms a compass and a T square. This suggests the possible connection between the Masonic craft and church-building of the Middle Ages; a subject which has ever been a vexed question among antiquaries, and one which doubtless ever will be. The episcopal residence adjoins the cathedral on the right, and the charming Baptistère St. Jean is also close to the walls of, but quite separate from, the main building of the cathedral. The other architectural attractions of Poitiers are nearly as great as its array of churches. The Musée is exceedingly rich in archæological treasures. The present-day Palais de Justice was the former palace of the Counts of Poitou. It has a grand chamber in its _Salle des Pas-perdus_, which dates from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries as to its decorations. The ramparts of the city are exceedingly interesting and extensive. In the modern hôtel de ville are a series of wall decorations by Puvis de Chavannes. The Hôtel d'Aquitaine (sixteenth century), in the Grand Rue, was the former residence of the Priors of St. John of Jerusalem. The _Chronique de Maillezais_ tells of a former bishop of Poitiers who, about the year 1114, sought to excommunicate that gay prince and poet, William, the ninth Count of Poitiers, the earliest of that race of poets known as the troubadours. Coming into the count's presence to repeat the formula of excommunication, he was threatened with the sword of that gay prince. Thinking better, however, the count admonished him thus: "No, I will not. I do not love you well enough to send you to paradise." He took upon himself, though, to exercise his royal prerogative; and henceforth, for his rash edict, the bishop of Poitiers was banished for ever, and the see descended unto other hands. The generally recognized reputation of William being that of a "_grand trompeur des dames_," this action was but a duty which the honest prelate was bound to perform, disastrous though the consequences might be. Still he thought not of that, and was not willing to accept palliation for the count's venial sins in the shape of that nobleman's capacities as the first chanter of his time,--poetic measures of doubtful morality. VII ST. ETIENNE DE LIMOGES "_Les Limosinats_ leave their cities poor, and they return poor, after long years of labour." --DE LA BÉDOLLIERE. Limoges was the capital around which centred the life and activities of the _pays du Limousin_ when that land marked the limits of the domain of the Kings of France. (Guienne then being under other domination.) The most ancient inhabitants of the province were known as _Lemovices_, but the transition and evolution of the vocable are easily followed to that borne by the present city of Limoges, perhaps best known of art lovers as the home of that school of fifteenth century artists who produced the beautiful works called _Emaux de Limoges_. [Illustration: _St. Etienne de Limoges_] The earliest specimens of what has come to be popularly known as Limoges enamel date from the twelfth century; and the last of the great masters in the splendid art died in 1765. The real history of this truly great art, which may be said to have taken its highest forms in ecclesiology,--of which examples are frequently met with in the sacristies of the cathedral churches of France and elsewhere--is vague to the point of obscurity. A study of the subject, deep and profound, is the only process by which one can acquire even a nodding acquaintance with all its various aspects. It reached its greatest heights in the reign of that artistic monarch, François I. To-day the memory and suggestion of the art of the enamelists of Limoges are perpetuated by, and, through those cursory mentors, the guide-books and popular histories, often confounded with, the production of porcelain. This industry not only flourishes here, but the famous porcelain earth of the country round about is supplied even to the one-time royal factory of Sèvres. St. Martial was the first prelate at Limoges, in the third century. The diocese is to-day a suffragan of Bourges, and its cathedral of St. Etienne, while not a very ancient structure, is most interesting as to its storied past and varied and lively composition. Beneath the western tower are the remains of a Romanesque portal which must have belonged to an older church; but to all intents and purposes St. Etienne is to-day a Gothic church after the true northern manner. It was begun in 1273 under the direct influence of the impetus given to the Gothic development by the erection of Notre Dame d'Amiens, and in all its parts,--choir, transept, and nave,--its development and growth have been most pleasing. From the point of view of situation this cathedral is more attractively placed than many another which is located in a city which perforce must be ranked as a purely commercial and manufacturing town. From the Pont Neuf, which crosses the Vienne, the view over the gardens of the bishop's palace and the Quai de l'Evêché is indeed grand and imposing. Chronologically the parts of this imposing church run nearly the gamut of the Gothic note--from the choir of the thirteenth, the transepts of the fourteenth and fifteenth, to the nave of the early sixteenth centuries. This nave has only latterly been completed, and is preceded by the elegant octagonal tower before mentioned. This _clocher_ is a thirteenth-century work, and rises something over two hundred and four feet above the pavement. In the north transept is a grand rose window after the true French mediæval excellence and magnitude, showing once again the northern spirit under which the cathedral-builders of Limoges worked. In reality the façade of this north transept might be called the true front of the cathedral. The design of its portal is elaborate and elegant. A series of carved figures in stone are set against the wall of the choir just beyond the transept. They depict the martyrdom of St. Etienne. The interior will first of all be remarked for its abundant and splendidly coloured glass. This glass is indeed of the quality which in a later day has often been lacking. It dates from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, except a part, readily discernible, which is of the nineteenth. The remains of a precious choir-screen are yet very beautiful. It has been removed from its original position and its stones arranged in much disorder. Still it is a manifestly satisfying example of the art of the stone-carver of the Renaissance period. It dates from 1543. Bishop Langeac (d. 1541), who caused it to be originally erected, is buried close by, beneath a contemporary monument. Bishops Bernard Brun (d. 1349) and Raynaud de la Porte (d. 1325) have also Renaissance monuments which will be remarked for their excess of ornament and elaboration. In the crypt of the eleventh century, presumably the remains of the Romanesque church whose portal is beneath the western tower, are some remarkable wall paintings thought to be of a contemporary era. If so, they must rank among the very earliest works of their class. The chief treasures of the cathedral are a series of enamels which are set into a reredos (the canon's altar in the sacristy). They are the work of the master, Noel Loudin, in the seventeenth century. In the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville is a monumental fountain in bronze and porcelain, further enriched after the manner of the mediæval enamel workers. The _collection de ceramique_ in the Musée is unique in France, or for that matter in all the world. The _ateliers de Limoges_ were first established in the thirteenth century by the monks of the Abbey of Solignac. A remarkable example of the work of the _émailleurs limousins_ is the twelfth-century reliquary of Thomas à Becket, one-time Archbishop of Canterbury. [Illustration: _Reliquary of Thomas à Becket_] At the rear of the cathedral the Vienne is crossed by the thirteenth-century bridge of St. Etienne. Like the cathedrals, châteaux, and city walls, the old bridges of France, where they still remain, are masterworks of their kind. To connect them more closely with the cause of religion, it is significant that they mostly bore the name of, and were dedicated to, some local saint. VIII ST. ODILON DE ST. FLOUR Though an ancient Christianizing centre, St. Flour is not possessed of a cathedral which gives it any great rank as a "cathedral town." The bishopric was founded in 1318, by Raimond de Vehens, and the present cathedral of St. Odilon is on the site of an ancient basilica. It was begun in 1375, dedicated in 1496, and finished--so far as a great church ever comes to its completion--in 1556. Its exterior is strong and massive, but harmonious throughout. Its façade has three portals, flanked by two square towers, which are capped with modern _couronnes_. The interior shows five small naves; that is, the nave proper, with two aisles on either side. Beside the western doorway are somewhat scanty traces of mediæval mural paintings depicting Purgatory, while above is the conventionally disposed organ _buffet_. A fine painting of the late French school is in one of the side chapels, and represents an incident from the life of St. Vincent de Paul. In another chapel is a bas-relief in stone of "The Last Judgment," reproduced from that which is yet to be seen in the north portal of Notre Dame de Reims. In the chapel of St. Anthony of Padua is a painting of the "Holy Family," and in another--that of Ste. Anne--a remarkable work depicting the "Martyred St. Symphorien at Autun." In the lower ranges of the choir is some fine modern glass by Thévenot, while high above the second range is a venerated statue of _Le Christ Noir_. From this catalogue it will be inferred that the great attractions of the cathedral at St. Flour are mainly the artistic accessories with which it has been embellished. There are no remarkably beautiful or striking constructive elements, though the plan is hardy and not unbeautiful. It ranks among cathedrals well down in the second class, but it is a highly interesting church nevertheless. A chapel in the nave gives entrance to the eighteenth-century episcopal palace, which is in no way notable except for its beautifully laid-out gardens and terraces. The sacristy was built in 1382 of the remains of the ancient Château de St. Flour, called De Brezons, which was itself originally built in the year 1000. IX ST. PIERRE DE SAINTES The chief architectural feature of this ancient town--the _Mediolanum Santonum_, chief town of the Santoni--is not its rather uninspiring cathedral (rebuilt in 1585), nor yet the church of St. Eutrope (1081--96) with its underground crypt--the largest in France. As a historical monument of rank far more interest centres around the Arc de Triomphe of Germanicus, which originally formed a part of the bridge which spans the Charente at this point. It was erected in the reign of Nero by Caius Julius Rufus, a priest of Roma and Augustus, in memory of Germanicus, Tiberius, his uncle, and his father, Drusus. The bridge itself, or what was left of it, was razed in the nineteenth century, which is of course to be regretted. A monument which could have endured a matter of eighteen hundred years might well have been left alone to takes its further chances with Father Time. Since then the bridge has been rebuilt on its former site, a procedure which makes the hiatus and the false position of the arch the more apparent. The cloister of the cathedral, in spite of the anachronism, is in the early Gothic manner, and the campanile is of the fifteenth century. Saintes became a bishopric, in the province of Bordeaux, in the third century. St. Eutrope--whose name is perpetuated in a fine Romanesque church of the city--was the first bishop. The year 1793 saw the suppression of the diocesan seat here, in favour of Angoulême. In the main, the edifice is of a late date, in that it was entirely rebuilt in the latter years of the sixteenth century, after having suffered practical devastation in the religious wars of that time. The first mention of a cathedral church here is of a structure which took form in 1117--the progenitor of the present edifice. Such considerable repairs as were necessary were undertaken in the fifteenth century, but the church seen to-day is almost entirely of the century following. The most remarkable feature of note, in connection with this _ci-devant_ cathedral, is unquestionably the luxurious flamboyant tower of the fifteenth century. This really fine tower is detached from the main structure and occupies the site of the church erected by Charlemagne in fulfilment of his vow to Pepin, his father, after defeating Gaiffre, Duc d'Aquitaine. In the interior two of the bays of the transepts--which will be readily noted--date from the twelfth century, while the nave is of the fifteenth, and the vaulting of nave and choir--hardy and strong in every detail--is, in part, as late as the mid-eighteenth century. The Église de St. Eutrope, before mentioned, is chiefly of the twelfth century, though its crypt, reputedly the largest in all France, is of a century earlier. Saintes is renowned to lovers of ceramics as being the birthplace of Bernard Pallisy, the inventor of the pottery glaze; and is the scene of many of his early experiments. A statue to his memory adorns the Place Bassompierre near the Arc de Triomphe. X CATHÉDRALE DE TULLE The charm of Tulle's cathedral is in its imposing and dominant character, rather than in any inherent grace or beauty which it possesses. It is not a beautiful structure; it is not even picturesquely disposed; it is grim and gaunt, and consists merely of a nave in the severe Romanesque-Transition manner, surmounted by a later and non-contemporary tower and spire. In spite of this it looms large from every view-point in the town, and is so lively a component of the busy life which surrounds it that it is--in spite of its severity of outline--a very appealing church edifice in more senses than one. [Illustration: CATHÉDRALE _de TULLE...._] Its tall, finely-proportioned tower and spire, which indeed is the chief attribute of grace and symmetry, is of the fourteenth century, and, though plain and primitive in its outlines, is far more pleasing than the crocketed and rococo details which in a later day were composed into something which was thought to be a spire. In the earliest days of its history, this rather bare and cold church was a Benedictine monastery whose primitive church dated as far back as the seventh century. There are yet remains of a cloister which may have belonged to the early church of this monastic house, and as such is highly interesting, and withal pleasing. The bishopric was founded in 1317 by Arnaud de St. Astier. The Revolution caused much devastation here in the precincts of this cathedral, which was first stripped of its _trésor_, and finally of its dignity, when the see was abolished. XI ST. PIERRE D'ANGOULÊME Angoulême is often first called to mind by its famous or notorious Duchesse, whose fame is locally perpetuated by a not very suitable column, erected in the Promenade Beaulieu in 1815. There is certainly a wealth of romance to be conjured up from the recollection of the famous Counts of Angoulême and their adherents, who made their residence in the ancient château which to-day forms in part the Hôtel de Ville, and in part the prison. Here in this château was born Marguerite de Valois, the Marguerite of Marguerites, as François I. called her; here took welcome shelter, Marie de Medici after her husband's assassination; and here, too, much more of which history tells. [Illustration: ST. PIERRE ... _a' ANGOULÊME_] What most histories do not tell is that the cathedral of St. Pierre d'Angoulême, with the cathedral of St. Front at Périgueux and Notre Dame de Poitiers, ranks at the very head of that magnificent architectural style known as Aquitanian. St. Ansone was the first bishop of the diocese--in the third century. The see was then, as now, a suffragan of Bordeaux. Religious wars, here as throughout Aquitaine, were responsible for a great unrest among the people, as well as the sacrilege and desecration of church property. The most marked spoliation was at the hands of the Protestant Coligny, the effects of whose sixteenth-century ravages are yet visible in the cathedral. A monk--Michel Grillet--was hung to a mulberry-tree,--which stood where now is the Place du Murier (mulberry),--by Coligny, who was reviled thus in the angry dying words of the monk: "You shall be thrown out of the window like Jezebel, and shall be ignominiously dragged through the streets." This prophecy did not come true, but Coligny died an inglorious death in 1572, at the instigation of the Duc de Guise. This cathedral ranks as one of the most curious in France, and, with its alien plan and details, has ever been the object of the profound admiration of all who have studied its varied aspects. Mainly it is a twelfth-century edifice throughout, in spite of the extensive restorations of the nineteenth century, which have eradicated many crudities that might better have been allowed to remain. It is ranked by the Ministère des Beaux Arts as a _Monument Historique_. The west front, in spite of the depredations before, during, and after the Revolution, is notable for its rising tiers of round-headed arches seated firmly on proportionate though not gross columns, its statued niches, the rich bas-reliefs of the tympanum of its portal, the exquisite arabesques, of lintel, frieze, and archivolt, and, above all, its large central arch with _Vesica piscis_, and the added decorations of emblems of the evangels and angels. In addition to all this, which forms a gallery of artistic details in itself, the general disposition of parts is luxurious and remarkable. As a whole, St. Pierre is commonly credited as possessing the finest Lombard detail to be found in the north; some say outside of Italy. Certainly it is prodigious in its splendour, whatever may be one's predilections for or against the expression of its art. The church follows in general plan the same distinctive style. Its tower, too, is Lombard, likewise the rounded apside, and--though the church is of the elongated Latin or cruciform ground-plan--its possession of a great central dome (with three others above the nave--and withal aisleless) points certainly to the great domed churches of the Lombard plain for its ancestry. The western dome is of the eleventh century, the others of the twelfth. Its primitiveness has been more or less distorted by later additions, made necessary by devastation in the sixteenth century, but it ranks to-day, with St. Front at Périgueux, as the leading example of the style known as Aquitanian. Above the western portal is a great window, very tall and showing in its glass a "Last Judgment." A superb tower ends off the _croisillon_ on the north and rises to the height of one hundred and ninety-seven feet. "Next to the west front and the domed roofing of the interior, this tower ranks as the third most curious and remarkable feature of this unusual church." This tower, in spite of its appealing properties, is curiously enough not the original to which the previous descriptive lines applied; but their echo may be heard to-day with respect to the present tower, which is a reconstruction, of the same materials, and after the same manner, so far as possible, as the original. As the most notable and peculiar details of the interior, will be remarked the cupolas of the roof, and the lantern at the crossing, which is pierced by twelve windows. For sheer beauty, and its utile purpose as well, this great _lanthorn_ is further noted as being most unusual in either the Romanesque or Gothic churches of France. The choir is apse-ended and is surrounded by four chapels of no great prominence or beauty. The south transept has a _tour_ in embryo, which, had it been completed, would doubtless have been the twin of that which terminates the transept on the north. The foundations of the episcopal residence, which is immediately beside the cathedral (restored in the nineteenth century), are very ancient. In its garden stands a colossal statue to Comte Jean, the father of François I. Angoulême was the residence of the Black Prince after the battle of Poitiers, though no record remains as to where he may have lodged. A house in the Rue de Genève has been singled out in the past as being where John Calvin lived in 1533, but it is not recognizable to-day. XII NOTRE DAME DE MOULINS "_Les Bourbonnais sont aimables, mais vains, légers et facilement oublieux, avec rien d'excessif, rien d'exubérance dans leur nature._" --ANDRÉ ROLLAND. Until he had travelled through Bourbonnais, "the sweetest part of France--in the hey-day of the vintage," said Sterne, "I never felt the distress of plenty." This is an appropriate enough observation to have been promulgated by a latter-day traveller. Here the abundance which apparently pours forth for every one's benefit knows no diminution one season from another. One should not allow his pen to ramble to too great an extent in this vein, or he will soon say with Sterne: "Just Heaven! it will fill up twenty volumes,--and alas, there are but a few small pages!" [Illustration: NOTRE DAME _de MOULINS_] It suffices, then, to reiterate, that in this plenteous land of mid-France there is, for all classes of man and beast, an abundance and excellence of the harvest of the soil which makes for a fondness to linger long within the confines of this region. Thus did the far-seeing Bourbons, who, throughout the country which yet is called of them, set up many magnificent establishments and ensconced themselves and their retainers among the comforts of this world to a far greater degree than many other ruling houses of mediæval times. Perhaps none of the great names, among the long lists of lords, dukes, and kings, whose lands afterward came to make the solidarity of the all-embracing monarchy, could be accused of curtailing the wealth of power and goods which conquest or bloodshed could secure or save for them. The power of the Bourbons endured, like the English Tudors, but a century and a half beyond the period of its supremacy; whence, from its maturity onward, it rotted and was outrooted bodily. The literature of Moulins, for the English reading and speaking world, appears to be an inconsiderable quantity. Certain romances have been woven about the ducal château, and yet others concerning the all-powerful Montmorencies, besides much history, which partakes generously of the components of literary expression. In the country round about--if the traveller has come by road, or for that matter by "_train omnibus_"--if he will but keep his eyes open, he will have no difficulty in recognizing this picture: "A little farmhouse, surrounded with about twenty acres of vineyard, and about as much corn--and close to the house, on one side, a _potagerie_ of an acre and a half, full of everything which could make plenty in a French peasant's house--and on the other side a little wood, which furnished wherewithal to dress it." To continue, could one but see into that house, the picture would in no small degree differ from this: "A family consisting of an old, gray-headed man and his wife, with five or six sons and sons-in-law, and their several wives, and a joyous genealogy out of them ... all sitting down together to their lentil soup; a large wheaten loaf in the middle of the table; and a flagon of wine at each end of it, and promised joy throughout the various stages of the repast." Where in any other than this land of plenty, for the peasant and prosperous alike, could such a picture be drawn of the plenitude which surrounds the home life of a son of the soil and his nearest kin? Such an equipment of comfort and joy not only makes for a continuous and placid contentment, but for character and ambition; in spite of all that harum-scarum Jeremiahs may proclaim out of their little knowledge and less sympathy with other affairs than their own. No individualism is proclaimed, but it is intimated, and the reader may apply the observation wherever he may think it belongs. Moulins is the capital of the Bourbonnais--the name given to the province and the people alike. The derivation of the word Bourbon is more legendary than historical, if one is to give any weight to the discovery of a tablet at _Bourbonne-les-Bains,_ in 1830, which bore the following dedication: DEO, APOL LINI BORVONI ET DAMONAE C DAMINIUS FEROX CIVIS LINGONUS EX VOTO Its later application to the land which sheltered the race is elucidated by a French writer, thus: "Considering that the names of all the cities and towns known as _des sources d'eaux thermales_ commence with either the prefix _Bour_ or _Bor_, indicates a common origin of the word ... from the name of the divinity which protects the waters." This is so plausible and picturesque a conjecture that it would seem to be true. Archæologists have singled out from among the most beautiful _chapelles seigneuriales_ the one formerly contained in the ducal palace of the Bourbons at Moulins. This formed, of course, a part of that gaunt, time-worn fabric which faces the westerly end of the cathedral. Little there is to-day to suggest this splendour, and for such one has to look to those examples yet to be seen at Chambord or Chenonceaux, or that of the Maison de Jacques Coeur at Bourges, with which, in its former state, this private chapel of the Bourbons was a contemporary. The other chief attraction of Moulins is the theatrical Mausolée de Henri de Montmorency, a seventeenth-century work which is certainly gorgeous and splendid in its magnificence, if not in its æsthetic value as an art treasure. The fresh, modern-looking cathedral of Notre Dame de Moulins is a more ancient work than it really looks, though in its completed form it dates only from the late nineteenth century, when the indefatigable Viollet-le-Duc erected the fine twin towers and completed the western front. The whole effect of this fresh-looking edifice is of a certain elegance, though in reality of no great luxuriousness. The portal is deep but unornamented, and the rose window above is of generous design, though not actually so great in size as at first appears. Taken _tout ensemble_ this west front--of modern design and workmanship--is far more expressive of the excellent and true proportions of the mediæval workers than is usually the case. The spires are lofty (312 feet) and are decidedly the most beautiful feature of the entire design. The choir, the more ancient portion (1465-1507), expands into a more ample width than the nave and has a curiously squared-off termination which would hardly be described as an apside, though the effect is circular when viewed from within. The choir, too, rises to a greater height than the nave, and, though there is no very great discrepancy in style between the easterly and westerly ends, the line of demarcation is readily placed. The square flanking chapels of the choir serve to give an ampleness to the ambulatory which is unusual, and in the exterior present again a most interesting arrangement and effect. The cathedral gives on the west on the Place du Château, with the bare, broken wall of the ducal château immediately _en face_, and the Gendarmerie, which occupies a most interestingly picturesque Renaissance building, is immediately to the right. The interior arrangements of this brilliant cathedral church are quite as pleasing and true as the exterior. There is no poverty in design or decoration, and no overdeveloped luxuriance, except for the accidence of the Renaissance tendencies of its time. There is no flagrant offence committed, however, and the ambulatory of the choir and its queer overhanging gallery at the rear of the altar are the only unusual features from the conventional decorated Gothic plan; if we except the _baldachino_ which covers the altar-table, and which is actually hideous in its enormity. The bishop's throne, curiously enough,--though the custom is, it appears, very, very old,--is placed _behind_ the high-altar. The triforium and clerestory of the choir have gracefully heightened arches supported by graceful pillars, which give an effect of exceeding lightness. In the nave the triforium is omitted, and the clerestory only overtops the pillars of nave and aisles. The transepts are not of great proportions, but are not in any way attenuated. Under the high-altar is a "Holy Sepulchre" of the sixteenth century, which is penetrated by an opening which gives on the ambulatory of the choir. There is a bountiful display of coloured glass of the Renaissance period, and, in the sacristy, a _triptych_ attributed to Ghirlandajo. There are no other artistic accessories of note, and the cathedral depends, in the main, for its satisfying qualities in its general completeness and consistency. XIII NOTRE DAME DE LE PUY "Under the sun of the _Midi_ I have seen the Pyrenees and the Alps, crowned in rose and silver, but I best love Auvergne and its bed of gorse." --PIERRE DE NOLHAC. Le Puy has been called--by a discerning traveller--and rightly enough, too, in the opinion of most persons--"_the most picturesque spot in the world_." Whether every visitor thereto will endorse this unqualifiedly depends somewhat on his view-point, and still more on his ability to discriminate. Le Puy certainly possesses an unparalleled array of what may as well be called rare attractions. These are primarily the topographical, architectural, and, first, last, and all times, picturesque elements which only a blind man could fail to diagnose as something unique and not to be seen elsewhere. [Illustration: NOTRE DAME _de LE PUY_.] In the first category are the extraordinary pinnacles of volcanic rock with which the whole surrounding landscape is peopled; in the second, the city's grand architectural monuments, cathedrals, churches, monastery and the château of Polignac; while thirdly, the whole aspect is irritatingly picturesque to the lover of topographical charm and feature. Here the situation of the city itself, in a basin of surrounding peaks, its sky-piercing, turreted rocks, and the general effect produced by its architectural features all combine to present emotions which a large catalogue were necessary to define. Moreover, Le Puy is the gateway to a hitherto almost unknown region to the English-speaking tourist. At least it would have been unknown but for the eulogy given it by the wandering Robert Louis Stevenson, who, in his "Travels with a Donkey," (not "On a Donkey,"--mark the distinction), has made the Cevennes known, at least as a nodding acquaintance, to--well, a great many who would never have consciously realized that there was such a place. Le Puy is furthermore as yet unspoiled by the "conducted tourist," and lives the same life that it has for many generations. Electric trams have come to be sure, and certain improvements in the way of boulevards and squares have been laid out, but, in the main, the narrow, tortuous streets which ascend to its cathedral-crowned height are much as they always were; and the native pays little heed to the visitor, of which class not many ever come to the city--perhaps for the reason that Le Puy is not so very accessible by rail. Both by the line which descends the Rhône valley and its parallel line from Paris to Nîmes, one has to branch off, and is bound to lose from three to six hours--or more, at some point or other, making connections. This is as it should be--in spite of the apparent retrogression. When one really does get to Le Puy nothing should satisfy him but to follow the trail of Stevenson's donkey into the heart of the Cevennes, that wonderful country which lies to the southward, and see and know for himself some of the things which that delectable author set forth in the record of his travels. Monastier, Le Cheylard, La Bastide, Notre Dame des Neiges, Mont Mézenac, and many more delightful places are, so far as personal knowledge goes, a sealed book to most folk; and after one has visited them for himself, he may rest assured they will still remain a sealed book to the mass. The ecclesiastical treasures of Le Puy are first and foremost centred around its wonderful, though bizarre, Romanesque cathedral of Notre Dame. Some have said that this cathedral church dates from the fifth century. Possibly this is so, but assuredly there is no authority which makes a statement which is at all convincing concerning any work earlier than the tenth century. Le Puy's first bishop was St. Georges,--in the third century,--at which time, as now, the diocese was a suffragan of Bourges. The cathedral itself is perched on a hilltop behind which rises an astonishing crag or pinnacle,--the _rocher Corneille_, which, in turn, is surmounted by a modern colossal bronze figure, commonly called _Notre Dame de France_. The native will tell you that it is called "the Virgin of Le Puy." Due allowance for local pride doubtless accounts for this. Its height is fifty feet, and while astonishingly impressive in many ways, is, as a work of art, without beauty in itself. [Illustration: _Le Puy_] There is a sort of subterranean or crypt-like structure, beneath the westerly end of the cathedral, caused by the extreme slope of the rock upon which the choir end is placed. One enters by a stairway of sixty steps, which is beneath the parti-coloured façade of the twelfth century. It is very striking and must be a unique approach to a cathedral; the entrance here being two stories below that of the pavement of nave and choir. This porch of three round-arched naves is wholly unusual. Entrance to the main body of the church is finally gained through the transept. The whole structure is curiously kaleidoscopic, with blackish and dark brown tints predominating, but alternating--in the west façade, which has been restored in recent times--with bands of a lighter and again a darker stone. It has been called by a certain red-robed mentor of travel-lore an ungainly, venerable, but singular edifice: quite a non-committal estimate, and one which, like most of its fellows, is worse than a slander. It is most usually conceded by French authorities--_who might naturally be supposed to know their subject_--that it is very nearly the most genuinely interesting exposition of a local manner of church-building extant; and as such the cathedral at Le Puy merits great consideration. The choir is the oldest portion, and is probably not of later date than the tenth century. The glass therein is modern. It has a possession, a "miraculous virgin,"--whose predecessor was destroyed in the fury of the Revolution,--which is supposed to work wonders upon those who bestow an appropriate votive offering. To the former shrine came many pilgrims, numbering among them, it is said rather indefinitely and doubtfully, "several popes and the following kings: Louis VII., Philippe-Auguste, Philippe-le-Hardi, Charles VI., Charles VII., Louis XI., and Charles VIII." To-day, as if doubtful of the shrine's efficacy, the pilgrims are few in number and mostly of the peasant class. The bays of the nave are divided by round-headed arches, but connected with the opposing bay by the ogival variety. The transepts have apsidal terminations, as is much more frequent south of the Loire than in the north of France, but still of sufficient novelty to be remarked here. The east end is rectangular--which is really a very unusual attribute in any part of France, only two examples elsewhere standing out prominently--the cathedrals at Laon and Dol-de-Bretagne. The cloister of Notre Dame, small and simple though it be, is of a singular charm and tranquillity. With the tower or cupola of this cathedral the architects of Auvergne achieved a result very near the _perfectionnement_ of its style. Like all of the old-time _clochers_ erected in this province--anterior to Gothic--it presents a great analogy to Byzantine origin, though, in a way, not quite like it either. Still the effect of columns and pillars, in both the interior construction and exterior decoration of these fine towers, forms something which suggests, at least, a development of an ideal which bears little, or no, relation to the many varieties of _campanile_, _beffroi_, _tour_ or _clocher_ seen elsewhere in France. The spire, as we know it elsewhere, a dominant pyramidal termination, the love of which Mistral has said is the foundation of patriotism, is in this region almost entirely wanting; showing that the influence, from whatever it may have sprung, was no copy of anything which had gone before, nor even the suggestion of a tendency or influence toward the pointed Gothic, or northern style. Therefore the towers, like most other features of this style, are distinctly of the land of its environment--Auvergnian. This will call to mind, to the American, the fact that Trinity Church in Boston is manifestly the most distinctive application, in foreign lands, of the form and features of the manner of church-building of the Auvergne. Particularly is this to be noted by viewing the choir exterior with its inlaid or geometrically planned stonework: a feature which is Romanesque if we go back far enough, but which is distinctly Auvergnian in its mediæval use. For sheer novelty, before even the towering bronze statue of the Virgin, which overtops the cathedral, must be placed that other needle-like basaltic eminence which is crowned by a tiny chapel dedicated to St. Michel. This "_aiguille_," as it is locally known, rises something over two hundred and fifty feet from the river-bed at its base; like a sharp cone, dwindling from a diameter of perhaps five hundred feet at its base to a scant fifty at its apex. St. Michel has always had a sort of vested proprietorship in such pinnacles as this, and this tiny chapel in his honour was the erection of a prelate of the diocese of Le Puy in the tenth century. The chapel is Romanesque, octagonal, and most curious; with its isolated situation,--only reached by a flight of many steps cut in the rock,--and its tesselated stone pavements, its mosaic in basalt of the portal, and its few curious sculptures in stone. As a place of pilgrimage for a twentieth-century tourist it is much more appealing than the Virgin-crowned _rocher Corneille_; each will anticipate no inconsiderable amount of physical labour, which, however, is the true pilgrim spirit. The château of Polignac _compels_ attention, and it is not so very foreign to church affairs after all; the house of the name gave to the court of Louis XIV. a cardinal. To-day this one-time feudal stronghold is but a mere ruin. The Revolution finished it, as did that fury many another architectural glory of France. [Illustration: _The Black Virgin, Le Puy_] XIV NOTRE DAME DE CLERMONT-FERRAND Clermont-Ferrand is the hub from which radiates in the season,--from April to October,--and in all directions, the genuine French _touriste_. He is a remarkable species of traveller, and he apportions to himself the best places in the _char-à bancs_ and the most convenient seats at _table d'hôte_ with a discrimination that is perfection. He is not much interested in cathedrals, or indeed in the twin city of Clermont-Ferrand itself, but rather his choice lies in favour of Mont Doré, Puy de Dôme, Royat, St. Nectaire, or a dozen other alluring tourist resorts in which the neighbouring volcanic region abounds. By reason of this--except for its hotels and cafés--Clermont-Ferrand is justly entitled to rank as one of the most ancient and important centres of Christianity in France. [Illustration: NOTRE DAME _de CLERMONT-FERRAND_] Its cathedral is not of the local manner of building: it is of manifest Norman example. But the Église Notre Dame du Port is Auvergnian of the most profound type, and withal, perhaps more appealing than the cathedral itself. Furthermore the impulse of the famous crusades first took form here under the fervent appeal of Urban II., who was in the city at the Council of the Church held in 1095. Altogether the part played by this city of mid-France in the affairs of the Christian faith was not only great, but most important and far-reaching in its effect. In its cathedral are found to a very considerable extent those essentials to the realization of the pure Gothic style, which even Sir Christopher Wren confessed his inability to fully comprehend. It is a pleasant relief, and a likewise pleasant reminder of the somewhat elaborate glories of the Isle of France, to come upon an edifice which at least presents a semblance to the symmetrical pointed Gothic of the north. The more so in that it is surrounded by Romanesque and local types which are peers among their class. Truly enough it is that such churches as Notre Dame du Port, the cathedral at Le Puy, and the splendid series of Romanesque churches at Poitiers are as interesting and as worthy of study as the resplendent modern Gothic. On the other hand, the transition to the baseness of the Renaissance,--without the intervention of the pointed style,--while not so marked here as elsewhere, is yet even more painfully impressed upon one. The contrast between the Romanesque style, which was manifestly a good style, and the Renaissance, which was palpably bad, suggests, as forcibly as any event of history, the change of temperament which came upon the people, from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries. This cathedral is possessed of two fine western towers (340 feet in height), graceful in every proportion, hardy without being clumsy, symmetrical without weakness, and dwindling into crowning spires after a manner which approaches similar works at Bordeaux and Quimper. These examples are not of first rank, but, if not of masterful design, are at least acceptable exponents of the form they represent. These towers, as well as the western portal, are, however, of a very late date. They are the work of Viollet-le-Duc in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and indicate--if nothing more--that, where a good model is used, a modern Gothic work may still betray the spirit of antiquity. This gifted architect was not so successful with the western towers of the abbey church of St. Ouen at Rouen. Externally the cathedral at Clermont-Ferrand shows a certain lack of uniformity. Its main fabric, of a black volcanic stone, dates from 1248 to 1265. At this time the work was in charge of one Jean Deschamps. The church was not, however, consecrated until nearly a century later, and until the completion of the west front remained always an unfinished work which received but scant consideration from lovers of church architecture. The whole structure was sorely treated at the Revolution, was entirely stripped of its ornaments and what monuments it possessed, and was only saved from total destruction by a subterfuge advanced by a local magistrate, who suggested that the edifice might be put to other than its original use. The first two bays of the nave are also of nineteenth-century construction. This must account for the frequent references of a former day to the general effect of incompleteness. To-day it is a coherent if not a perfect whole, though works of considerable magnitude are still under way. The general effect of the interior is harmonious, though gloomy as to its lighting, and bare as to its walls. The vault rises something over a hundred feet above the pavement, and the choir platform is considerably elevated. The aisles of the nave are doubled, and very wide. The joints of pier and wall have been newly "pointed," giving an impression of a more modern work than the edifice really is. The glass of the nave and choir is of a rare quality and unusually abundant. How it escaped the fury of the Revolution is a mystery. There are two fifteenth-century rose windows in the transepts, and a more modern example in the west front, the latter being decidedly inferior to the others. The glass of the choir is the most beautiful of all, and is of the time of Louis IX., whose arms, quartered with those of Spain, are shown therein. The general effect of this coloured glass is not of the supreme excellence of that at Chartres, but the effect of mellowness, on first entering, is in every way more impressive than that of any other cathedral south of the Loire. The organ _buffet_ has, in this instance, been cut away to allow of the display of the modern _rosace_. This is a most thoughtful consideration of the attributes of a grand window; which is obviously that of giving a pleasing effect to an interior, rather than its inclusion in the exterior scheme of decoration. In the choir is a _retable_ of gilded and painted wood, representing the life of St. Crépinien, a few tombs, and in the chapels some frescoes of the thirteenth century. There is the much-appreciated astronomical clock--a curiosity of doubtful artistic work and symbolism--in one of the transepts. A statue of Pope Urban II. is _en face_ to the right of the cathedral. At the Council of 1095 Urban II. preached for the first crusade to avenge the slaughter "of pilgrims, princes, and bishops," which had taken place at Romola in Palestine, and to regain possession of Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre from the Turkish Sultan, Ortock. The enthusiasm of the pontiff was so great that the masses forthwith entered fully into the spirit of the act, the nobles tearing their red robes into shreds to form the badge of the crusader's cross, which was given to all who took the vow. By command of the Pope, every serf who took the cross was to obtain his liberty from his overlord. This fact, perhaps, more than any other led to the swelled ranks of the first crusade under Peter the Hermit. The rest is history, though really much of its written chronicle is really romance. Clermont was a bishopric in the third century, with St. Austremoine as its first bishop. The diocese is to-day a suffragan of Bourges. At the head of the Cours Sablon is a fifteenth-century fountain, executed to the order of a former bishop, Jacques d'Amboise. The bibliothèque still preserves, among fifty thousand volumes and eleven hundred MSS., an illuminated folio Bible of the twelfth century, a missal which formerly belonged to Pope Clement VI., and a ninth-century manuscript of the monk, Gregory of Tours. Near the cathedral in the Rue de Petit Gras is the birthplace of the precocious Blaise Pascal, who next to Urban II.--if not even before him--is perhaps Clermont's most famous personage. A bust of the celebrated writer is let into the wall which faces the Passage Vernines, and yet another adorns the entrance to the bibliothèque; and again another--a full-length figure this time--is set about with growing plants, in the Square Blaise Pascal. Altogether one will judge that Pascal is indeed the most notable figure in the secular history of the city. This most original intellect of his time died in 1662, at the early age of thirty-nine. XV ST. FULCRAN DE LODÈVE Lodève, seated tightly among the mountains, near the confluence of the rivers Solondre and Lergue, not far from the Cevennes and the borders of the Gévaudan, was a bishopric, suffragan of Narbonne, as early as the beginning of the fourth century. It had been the capital of the Gallic tribe of the Volsques, then a pagan Roman city, and finally was converted to Christianity in the year 323 by the apostle St. Flour, who founded the bishopric, which, with so many others, was suppressed at the Revolution. The city suffered greatly from the wars of the Goths, the Albigenses, and later the civil wars of the Protestants and Catholics. The bishops of Lodève were lords by virtue of the fact that the title was bought from the viscounts whose honour it had previously held. _St. Guillem Ley Desert_ (O. F.), a famous abbey of the Benedictines, founded by an ancestor of the Prince of Orange, is near by. The ancient cathedral of St. Fulcran is situated in the _haute-ville_ and dates, as to its foundation walls, from the middle of the tenth century. The reconstructed present-day edifice is mainly of the thirteenth century, and as an extensive work of its time is entitled to rank with many of the cathedral churches which survived the Revolution. By the end of the sixteenth century, the last remaining work and alterations were completed, and one sees therefore a fairly consistent mediæval church. The west façade is surmounted by _tourelles_ which are capped with a defending _mâchicoulis_, presumably for defence from attack from the west, as this battlement could hardly have been intended for mere ornament, decorative though it really is. The interior height rises to something approximating eighty feet, and is imposing to a far greater degree than many more magnificent and wealthy churches. The choir is truly elegant in its proportions and decorations, its chief ornament being that of the high-altar, and the white marble lions which flank the stalls. From the choir one enters the ruined cloister of the fifteenth century; which, if not remarkable in any way, is at least distinctive and a sufficiently uncommon appendage of a cathedral church to be remarked. A marble tomb of a former bishop,--Plantavit de la Pause,--a distinguished prelate and bibliophile, is also in the choir. This monument is a most worthy artistic effort, and shows two lions lying at the foot of a full-length figure of the churchman. It dates from 1651, and, though of Renaissance workmanship, its design and sculpture--like most monumental work of its era--are far ahead of the quality of craftsmanship displayed by the builders and architects of the same period. The one-time episcopal residence is now occupied by the _hôtel de ville_, the _tribunal_, and the _caserne de gendarmerie_. As a shelter for civic dignity this is perhaps not a descent from its former glory, but as a _caserne_ it is a shameful debasement; not, however, as mean as the level to which the papal palace at Avignon has fallen. The guide-book information--which, be it said, is not disputed or reviled here--states that the city's manufactories supply _surtout des draps_ for the army; but the church-lover will get little sustenance for his refined appetite from this kernel of matter-of-fact information. Lodève is, however, a charming provincial town, with two ancient bridges crossing its rivers, a ruined château, _Montbrun_, and a fine promenade which overlooks the river valleys round about. _PART III The Rhône Valley_ I INTRODUCTORY The knowledge of the geographer Ptolemy, who wrote in the second century with regard to the Rhône, was not so greatly at fault as with respect to other topographical features, such as coasts and boundaries. Perhaps the fact that Gaul had for so long been under Roman dominion had somewhat to do with this. He gives, therefore, a tolerably correct account as to this mighty river, placing its sources in the Alps, and tracing its flow through the lake _Lemannus_ (Leman) to _Lugdunum_ (Lyon); whence, turning sharply to the southward, it enters the Mediterranean south of Arles. Likewise, he correctly adds that the upper river is joined with the combined flow of the Doubs and Saône, but commits the error of describing their source to be also in the Alps. Philip Gilbert Hamerton, who knew these parts well,--his home was near Autun,--has described the confluence of the Saône and Rhône thus: "The width and depth of the two rivers are equal, but the swift-flowing Rhône discharges twice the volume of water of the slow-running Saône. They also differ remarkably in colour. The Saône is emerald-green and the Rhône blue-green. Here the minor river loses its name and character, and, by an unusual process, the slowest and most navigable stream in Europe joins the swiftest and least navigable. The _Flumen Araris_ ceases and becomes the _Rhodanus_." The volume of water which yearly courses down the Rhône is perhaps greater than would first appear, when, at certain seasons of the year, one sees a somewhat thin film of water gliding over a wide expanse of yellow sand and shingle. Throughout, however, it is of generous width and at times rises in a true torrential manner: this when the spring freshets and melting Alpine snows are directed thither toward their natural outlet to the sea. "Rivers," said Blaise Pascal, "are the roads that move." Along the great river valleys of the Rhône, the Loire, the Seine, and the Rhine were made the first Roman roads, the prototypes of the present-day means of communication. The development of civilization and the arts along these great pathways was rapid and extensive. Two of them, at least, gave birth to architectural styles quite differing from other neighbouring types: the _Romain-Germanique_--bordering along the Rhine and extending to Alsace and the Vosges; and the _Romain-Bourguignon_, which followed the valley of the Rhône from Bourgogne to the Mediterranean and the Italian frontier, including all Provence. The true source of the Rhône is in the Pennine Alps, where, in consort with three other streams, the Aar, the Reuss, and the Ticino, it rises in a cloven valley close to the lake of Brienz, amid that huge jumble of mountain-tops, which differs so greatly from the popular conception of a mountain range. Dauphiné and Savoie are to-day comparatively unknown by parlour-car travellers. Dauphiné, with its great historical associations, the wealth and beauty of its architecture, the magnificence of its scenery, has always had great attractions for the historian, the archæologist, and the scholar; to the tourist, however, even to the French tourist, it remained for many years a _terra incognita_. Yet no country could present the traveller with a more wonderful succession of ever-changing scenery, such a rich variety of landscape, ranging from verdant plain to mountain glacier, from the gay and picturesque to the sublime and terrible. Planted in the very heart of the French Alps, rising terrace above terrace from the lowlands of the Rhône to the most stupendous heights, Dauphiné may with reason claim to be the worthy rival of Switzerland. The romantic associations of "La Grande Chartreuse"; of the charming valley towns of Sion and Aoste, famed alike in the history of Church and State; and of the more splendidly appointed cities of Grenoble and Chambéry, will make a new leaf in the books of most peoples' experiences. The rivers Durance, Isère, and Drôme drain the region into the more ample basin of the Rhône, and the first of the three--for sheer beauty and romantic picturesqueness--will perhaps rank first in all the world. The chief associations of the Rhône valley with the Church are centred around Lyon, Vienne, Avignon, and Arles. The associations of history--a splendid and a varied past--stand foremost at Orange, Nîmes, Aix, and Marseilles. It is not possible to deal here with the many _pays et pagi_ of the basin of the Rhône. Of all, Provence--that golden land--stands foremost and compels attention. One might praise it _ad infinitum_ in all its splendid attributes and its glorious past, but one could not then do it justice; better far that one should sum it up in two words--"Mistral's world." The popes and the troubadours combined to cast a glamour over the "fair land of Provence" which is irresistible. Here were architectural monuments, arches, bridges, aqueducts, and arenas as great and as splendid as the world has ever known. Aix-en-Provence, in King René's time, was the gayest capital of Europe, and the influence of its arts and literature spread to all parts. To the south came first the Visigoths, then the conflicting and repelling Ostrogoths; between them soon to supplant the Gallo-Roman cultivation which had here grown so vigorously. It was as late as the sixth century when the Ostrogoths held the brilliant sunlit city of Arles; when follows a history--applicable as well to most of all southern France--of many dreary centuries of discordant races, of varying religious faiths, and adherence now to one lord and master, and then to another. Monuments of various eras remain; so numerously that one can rebuild for themselves much that has disappeared for ever: palaces as at Avignon, castles as at Tarascon and Beaucaire, and walled cities as at Aigues-Morte. What limitless suggestion is in the thought of the assembled throngs who peopled the tiers of the arenas and theatres of Arles and Nîmes in days gone by. The sensation is mostly to be derived, however, from thought and conjecture. The painful and nullifying "_spectacles_" and "_courses des taureaux_," which periodically hold forth to-day in these noble arenas, are mere travesties on their splendid functions of the past. Much more satisfying--and withal more artistic--are the theatrical representations in that magnificent outdoor theatre at Orange; where so recently as the autumn of 1903 was given a grand representation of dramatic art, with Madame Bernhardt, Coquelin, and others of the galaxy which grace the French stage to-day, taking part therein. Provençal literature is a vast and varied subject, and the women of Arles--the true Arlesians of the poet and romancer--are astonishingly beautiful. Each of these subjects--to do them justice--would require much ink and paper. Daudet, in "_Tartarin_," has these opening words, as if no others were necessary in order to lead the way into a new world: "IT WAS SEPTEMBER AND IT WAS PROVENCE." Frederic Mistral, in "Mirèio," has written the great modern epic of Provence, which depicts the life as well as the literature of the ancient troubadours. The "Fountain of Vaucluse" will carry one back still further in the ancient Provençal atmosphere; to the days of Petrarch and Laura, and the "little fish of Sorgues." What the Romance language really was, authorities--if they be authorities--differ. Hence it were perhaps well that no attempt should be made here to define what others have failed to place, beyond this observation, which is gathered from a source now lost to recollection, but dating from a century ago at least: "The southern or Romance language, the tongue of all the people who obeyed Charlemagne in the south of Europe, proceeded from the parent-vitiated Latin. "The Provençaux assert, and the Spaniards deny, that the Spanish tongue is derived from the original Romance, though neither the Italians nor the French are willing to owe much to it as a parent, in spite of the fact that Petrarch eulogized it, and the troubadours as well. "The Toulousans roundly assert that the Provençal is the root of all other dialects whatever (_vide Cazeneuve_). Most Spanish writers on the other hand insist that the Provençal is derived from the Spanish (_vide Coleccion de Poesias Castellanas; Madrid, 1779_)." At all events the idiom, from whatever it may have sprung, took root, propagated and flourished in the land of the Provençal troubadours. Whatever may have been the real extent of the influences which went out from Provence, it is certain that the marriage of Robert with Constance--daughter of the first Count of Provence, about the year 1000--was the period of a great change in manners and customs throughout the kingdom. Some even have asserted that this princess brought in her train the troubadours who spread the taste for poetry and its accompaniments throughout the north of France. The "Provence rose," so celebrated in legend and literature, can hardly be dismissed without a word; though, in truth, the casual traveller will hardly know of its existence, unless he may have a sweet recollection of some rural maid, who, with sleeves carefully rolled up, stood before her favourite rose-tree, tenderly examining it, and driving away a buzzing fly or a droning wasp. These firstlings of the season are tended with great pride. The distinctive "rose of Provence" is smaller, redder, and more elastic and concentric than the _centifoliæ_ of the north, and for this reason, likely, it appears the more charming to the eye of the native of the north, who, if we are to believe the romanticists, is made a child again by the mere contemplation of this lovely flower. The glory of this rich red "Provence rose" is in dispute between Provence and Provins, the ancient capital of La Brie; but the weight of the argument appears to favour the former. Below Arles and Nîmes the Rhône broadens out into a many-fingered estuary, and mingles its Alpine flood with the blue waters of the Mediterranean. The delta has been formed by the activity and energy of the river itself, from the fourth century--when it is known that Arles lay sixteen miles from the sea--till to-day, when it is something like thirty. This ceaseless carrying and filling has resulted in a new coast-line, which not only has changed the topography of the region considerably, but may be supposed to have actually worked to the commercial disadvantage of the country round about. The annual prolongation of the shores--the reclaimed water-front--is about one hundred and sixty-four feet, hence some considerable gain is accounted for, but whether to the nation or the "squatter" statistics do not say. The delta of the Rhône has been described by an expansive French writer as: "Something quite separate from the rest of France. It is a wedge of Greece and of the East thrust into Gaul. It came north a hundred (or more) years ago and killed the Monarchy. It caught the value in, and created the great war-song of the Republic." There is a deal of subtlety in these few lines, and they are given here because of their truth and applicability. II ST. ETIENNE DE CHALONS-SUR-SAÔNE "The cathedral at Chalons," says Philip Gilbert Hamerton,--who knew the entire region of the Saône better perhaps than any other Anglo-Saxon,--"has twin towers, which, in the evening, at a distance, recall Notre Dame (at Paris), and there are domes, too, as in the capital." An imaginative description surely, and one that is doubtless not without truth were one able to first come upon this riverside city of mid-France in the twilight, and by boat from the upper river. Chalons is an ideally situated city, with a placidness which the slow current of the Saône does not disturb. But its cathedral! It is no more like its Parisian compeer than it is like the Pyramids of Egypt. In the first place, the cathedral towers are a weak, effeminate imitation of a prototype which itself must have been far removed from Notre Dame, and they have been bolstered and battened in a shameful fashion. The cathedral at Chalons is about the most ancient-looking possession of the city, which in other respects is quite modern, and, aside from its charming situation and general attractiveness, takes no rank whatever as a centre of ancient or mediæval art. Its examples of Gallic architecture are not traceable to-day, and of Roman remains it possesses none. As a Gallic stronghold,--it was never more than that,--it appealed to Cæsar merely as a base from which to advance or retreat, and its history at this time is not great or abundant. A Roman wall is supposed to have existed, but its remains are not traceable to-day, though tradition has it that a quantity of its stones were transported by the monk Bénigne for the rotunda which he built at Dijon. The city's era of great prosperity was the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when its fortifications were built up anew, its cathedral finished, and fourteen churches held forth. From this high estate it has sadly fallen, and there is only its decrepit cathedral, rebuilt after a seventeenth-century fire, and two churches--one of them modern--to uphold its ecclesiastical dignity. The towers of the cathedral are of the seventeenth century, but the so-called "Deanery Tower" is more ancient, and suggestive of much that is militant and very little that is churchly. The interior has been restored, not wholly with success, but yet not wholly spoiled. In plan and arrangement it is a simple and severe church, but acceptable enough when one contemplates changes made elsewhere. Here are to be seen no debased copies of Greek or Roman orders; which is something to be thankful for. The arches of the nave and choir are strong and bold, but not of great spread. The height of the nave, part of which has come down from the thirteenth century, is ninety feet at least. There are well-carved capitals to the pillars of the nave, and the coloured glass of the windows of triforium and clerestory is rich without rising to great beauty. In general the style is decidedly a _mélange_, though the cathedral is entitled to rank as a Gothic example. Its length is 350 feet. The _maître-autel_ is one of the most elegant in France. Modern improvement has cleared away much that was picturesque, but around the cathedral are still left a few gabled houses, which serve to preserve something of the mediæval setting which once held it. The courtyard and its dependencies at the base of the "Deanery Tower" are the chief artistic features. They appeal far more strongly than any general accessory of the cathedral itself, and suggest that they once must have been the components of a cloister. The see was founded in the fifth century as a suffragan of Lyon. III ST. VINCENT DE MACON The _Mastieo_ of the Romans was not the Macon of to-day, though, by evolution, or corruption, or whatever the process may have been, the name has come down to us as referring to the same place. The former city did not border the river, but was seated on a height overlooking the Saône, which flows by the doors of the present city of Macon. Its site is endowed with most of the attributes included in the definition of "commanding," and, though not grandly situated, is, from any riverside view-point, attractive and pleasing. When it comes to the polygonal towers of its olden cathedral, this charming and pleasing view changes to that of one which is curious and interesting. The cathedral of St. Vincent is a battered old ruin, and no amount of restoration and rebuilding will ever endow it with any more deserving qualities. [Illustration: ST. VINCENT _de MACON_.] The Revolution was responsible for its having withered away, as it was also for the abolishment of the see of Macon. The towers stand to-day--lowered somewhat from their former proportions--gaunt and grim, and the rich Burgundian narthen, which lay between, has been converted--not restored, mark you--into an inferior sort of chapel. The destruction that fell upon various parts of this old church might as well have been more sweeping and razed it to the ground entirely. The effect could not have been more disheartening. Macon formerly had twelve churches. Now it has three--if we include this poor fragment of its one-time cathedral. Between the Revolution and the coronation of Napoleon I. the city was possessed of no place of worship. Macon became an episcopal see, with Placide as its first bishop, in the sixth century. It was suppressed in 1790. The bridge which crosses the river to the suburb of St. Laurent is credited as being the finest work of its kind crossing the Saône. Hamerton has said that "its massive arches and piers, wedge-shaped to meet the wind, are pleasant to contemplate after numerous festoons of wire carrying a roadway of planks." This bridge was formerly surmounted, at either end, with a castellated gateway, but, like many of these accessories elsewhere, they have disappeared. The famous bridge at Cahors (shown elsewhere in this book) is the best example of such a bridge still existing in France. As a "cathedral city," Macon will not take a high rank. The "great man" of Macon was Lamartine. His birthplace is shown to visitors, but its present appearance does not suggest the splendid appointments of its description in that worthy's memoirs. Macon is the _entrepôt_ of the abundant and excellent _vin du Bourgogne_, and the strictly popular repute of the city rests entirely on this fact. [Illustration: ST. JEAN _de LYON_.] IV ST. JEAN DE LYON The Lyonnais is the name given to that region lying somewhat to the westward of the city of Lyon. It is divided into three distinct parts, _le Lyonnais_ proper, _le Forez_, and _le Beaujolais_. Its chief appellation comes from that of its chief city, which in turn is more than vague as to its etymology: _Lugdunum_ we know, of course, and we can trace its evolution even unto the Anglicized Lyons, but when philologists, antiquarians, and "pedants of mere pretence" ask us to choose between _le corbeau_--_lougon_, _un eminence_--_dounon_, _lone_--an arm of a river, and _dun_ the Celtic word for height, we are amazed, and are willing enough to leave the solving of the problem to those who will find a greater pleasure therein. Lyon is a widely-spread city, of magnificent proportions and pleasing aspect, situated as it is on the banks of two majestic, though characteristically different rivers, the Rhône and the Saône. In many respects it is an ideally laid-out city, and the scene from the heights of Fourvière at night, when the city is brilliant with many-lighted workshops, is a wonderfully near approach to fairy-land. Whether the remarkable symmetry of the city's streets and plan is the result of the genius of a past day, or of the modern progressive spirit, is in some doubt. Certainly it must originally have been a delightfully planned city, and the spirit of modernity--though great--has not by any means wholly eradicated its whilom charm of another day. It may be remarked here that about the only navigable portion of the none too placid Rhône is found from here to Avignon and Arles, to which points, in summer at least, steam-craft--of sorts--carry passengers with expedition and economy--down-stream; the journey up-river will amaze one by the potency of the flood of this torrential stream--so different from the slow-going Saône. The present diocese, of which the see of Lyon is the head, comprehends the Department of the Rhône et Loire. It is known under the double vocable of Lyon et Vienne, and is the outgrowth of the more ancient ecclesiastical province of Vienne, whose archiepiscopal dignity was domiciled in St. Maurice. It was in the second century that St. Pothin, an Asiatic Greek, came to the ancient province of Lyon as archbishop. The title carried with it that of primate of all Gaul: hence the importance of the see, from the earliest times, may be inferred. The architectural remains upon which is built the flamboyant Gothic church of St. Nizier are supposed to be those of the primitive cathedral in which St. Pothin and St. Irenæus celebrated the holy rites. The claim is made, of course, not without a show of justification therefor, but it is a far cry from the second century of our era to this late day; and the sacristan's words are not convincing, in view of the doubts which many non-local experts have cast upon the assertion. The present _Église St. Nizier_ is furthermore dedicated to a churchman who lived as late as the sixth century. The present cathedral of St. Jean dates from the early years of the twelfth century, but there remains to-day another work closely allied with episcopal affairs--the stone bridge which spans the Saône, and which was built some two hundred years before the present cathedral by Archbishop Humbert. Though a bridge across a river is an essentially practical and utile thing, it is, perhaps, in a way, as worthy a work for a generous and masterful prelate as church-building itself. Certainly this was the case with Humbert's bridge, he having designed the structure, superintended its erection, and assumed the expense thereof. It is recorded that this worthy churchman gained many adherents for the faith, so it may be assumed that he builded as well as he knew. St. Jean de Lyon dates from 1180, and presents many architectural anomalies in its constructive elements, though the all-pervading Gothic is in the ascendant. From this height downward, through various interpolations, are seen suggestions of many varieties and styles of church-building. There is, too, an intimation of a motif essentially pagan if one attempts to explain the vagaries of some of the ornamentation of the unusual septagonal Lombard choir. This is further inferred when it is known that a former temple to Augustus stood on the same site. If this be so, the reasoning is complete, and the classical ornament here is of a very early date. The fabric of the cathedral is, in the main, of a warm-coloured freestone, not unlike dark marble, but without its brilliancy and surface. It comes from the heights of Fourvière,--on whose haunches the cathedral sits,--and by virtue of the act of foundation it may be quarried at any time, free of all cost, for use by the Church. The situation of this cathedral is most attractive; indeed its greatest charm may be said to be its situation, so very picturesquely disposed is it, with the Quai de l'Archevêché between it and the river Saône. The choir itself--after allowing for the interpolation of the early non-Christian fragments--is the most consistently pleasing portion. It presents in general a fairly pure, early Gothic design. Curiously enough, this choir sits below the level of the nave and presents, in the interior view, an unusual effect of amplitude. With the nave of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the style becomes more mixed--localized, one may say--if only consistent details might be traced. At any rate, the style grows perceptibly heavier and more involved, without the simplicity of pre-Gothic work. Finally, as one comes to the heavily capped towers, there is little of grace and beauty left. In detail, at least, if not in general, St. Jean runs quite the whole scale of mediæval architectural style--from the pure Romanesque to the definite, if rather mixed, Gothic. Of the later elements, the most remarkable is the fifteenth-century Bourbon chapel, built by Cardinal Charles and his brother Pierre. This chapel presents the usual richness and luxuriance of its time. If all things are considered, it is the chief feature of interest within the walls. The west front has triple portals, reminiscent, as to dimensions, of Amiens, though by no means so grandly peopled with statues; the heavy, stunted towers, too, are not unlike those of Amiens. These twin towers are of a decidedly heavy order, and are not beautiful, either as distinct features or as a component of the ensemble. Quite in keeping also are the chief decorations of the façade, which are principally a series of superimposed medallions, depicting, variously, the signs of the zodiac, scenes from the life of St. Jean, and yet others suggesting scenes and incidents from Genesis, with an admixture of heraldic symbolism which is here quite meaningless and singularly inappropriate, while still other entablatures present scenes illustrating the "Legend of St. Nicholas" and "The Law of Aristotle." The general effect of the exterior, the façade in particular, is very dark, and except in a bright sunlight--which is usual--is indeed gloomy. In all probability, this is due to the discolouring of the soft stone of which the cathedral is built, as the same effect is scarcely to be remarked in the interior. In a tower on the south side--much lower, and not so clumsily built up as the twin towers--hangs one of the greatest _bourdons_ in France. It was cast in 1662, and weighs ten thousand kilos. Another curiosity of a like nature is to be seen in the interior, an astronomical clock--known to Mr. Tristram as "that great clock of Lippius of Basle." Possessed of a crowing cock and the usual toy-book attributes, this great clock is a source of perennial pride to the native and the makers of guide-books. Sterne, too, it would appear, waxed unduly enthusiastic over this really ingenious thing of wheels and cogs. He said: "I never understood the least of mechanism. I declare I was never able yet to comprehend the principles of a squirrel-cage or a knife-grinder's wheel, yet I will go see this wonderful clock the first thing I do." When he did see it, he quaintly observed that "it was all out of joint." The rather crude coloured glass--though it is precious glass, for it dates from the thirteenth century, in part--sets off bountifully an interior which would otherwise appear somewhat austere. In the nave is a marble pulpit which has been carved with more than usual skill. It ranks with that in St. Maurice, at Vienne, as one of the most beautiful in France. The cathedral possesses two _reliques_ of real importance in the crosses which are placed to the left and right of the high-altar. These are conserved by a unique custom, in memory of an attempt made by a _concile génêral_ of the church, held in Lyon in 1274, to reconcile the Latin and Greek forms of religion. The sacristy, in which the bountiful, though not historic, _trésor_ is kept, is in the south transept. Among the archives of the cathedral there are, says a local antiquary, documents of a testamentary nature, which provided the means for the up-keep of the fabric without expense to the church, until well into the eighteenth century. On the apex of the height which rises above the cathedral is the Basilique de Notre Dame de Fourvière--"one of those places of pilgrimage, the most venerated in all the world," says a confident French writer. This may be so; it overlooks ground which has long been hallowed by the Church, to a far greater degree than many other parts, but, like so many places of pilgrimage of a modern day, its nondescript religious edifice is enough to make the church-lover willingly pass it by. The site is that of the ancient _Forum Vetus_ of the Romans, and as such is more appealing to most than as a place of pilgrimage. V ST. MAURICE DE VIENNE "At the feet of seven mountains; on the banks of a large river; an antique city and a _cité neuve_." --FRANÇOIS PONSARD. Though widowed to-day of its bishop's throne, Vienne enjoys with Lyon the distinction of having its name attached to an episcopal see. The ancient archbishopric ruled over what was known as the Province of Vienne, which, if not more ancient than that of Lyon, dates from the same century--the second of our Christian era--and probably from a few years anterior, as it is known that St. Crescent, the first prelate of the diocese, was firmly established here as early as 118 A. D. In any event, it was one of the earliest centres of Christianity north of the Alps. To-day, being merged with the diocese of Lyon, Vienne is seldom credited as being a cathedral city. Locally the claim is very strongly made, but the Mediterranean tourist never finds this out, unless, perchance, he "drops off" from the railway in order to make acquaintance with that remarkable Roman temple to Augustus, of which he may have heard. Then he will learn from the _habitants_ that by far their greatest respect and pride are for their _ancienne Cathédrale de St. Maurice_, which sits boldly upon a terrace dominating the course of the river Rhône. In many respects St. Maurice de Vienne will strike the student and lover of architecture as being one of the most lively and appealing edifices of its kind. The Lombard origin of many of its features is without question; notably the delightful gallery on the north side, with its supporting columns of many grotesque shapes. Again the parapet and terrace which precede this church, the ground-plan, and some of the elevations are pure Lombard in motive. There are no transepts and no ancient chapels at the eastern termination; the windows running down to the pavement. This, however, does not make for an appearance at all _outré_--quite the reverse is the case. The general effect of the entire internal distribution of parts, with its fine approach from the nave to the sanctuary and choir, is exceedingly notable. Of the remains of the edifice, which was erected on the foundations of a still earlier church, in 1052 (reconstructed in 1515), we have those of the primitive, but rich, ornamentation of the façade as the most interesting and appealing. The north doorway, too, indicates in its curious _bas-reliefs_, of the twelfth or thirteenth centuries, a luxuriance which in the north--in the Romanesque churches at least--came only with later centuries. There are few accessories of note to be seen in the choir or chapels: a painting of St. Maurice by Desgoffés, a small quantity of fourteenth-century glass, the mausoleum of Cardinal de Montmorin, a sixteenth-century tomb, and, in one of the chapels, some modern glass of more than usual brilliance. The pulpit is notable, and, with that in St. Jean de Lyon, ranks as one of the most elaborate in France. For the rest, one's admiration for St. Maurice de Vienne must rest on the glorious antiquity of the city, as a centre of civilizing and Christianizing influence. When Pope Paschal II. (1099-1118) confirmed the metropolitan privileges of Vienne, and sent the _pallium_ to its archbishop, he assigned to him as suffragans the bishops of Grenoble, Valence, Dié, Viviers, Geneva, and St. Jean de Maurienne, and conferred upon him the honorary office of primate over Monstiers in Tarentaise. Still later, Calixtus II. (1119-24) favoured the archbishopric still further by not only confirming the privileges which had gone before, but investing the archbishop with the still higher dignity of the office of primate over the seven ecclesiastical Provinces of Vienne, Bourges, Bordeaux, Auch, Narbonne, Aix, and Embrun. [Illustration] VI ST. APOLLINAIRE DE VALENCE Valence, the Valentia of the Romans, is variously supposed to be situated in southeastern France, Provence, and the Cevennes. For this reason it will be difficult for the traveller to locate his guide-book reference thereto. It is, however, located in the Rhône valley on the very banks of that turgid river, and it seems inexplicable that the makers of the red-covered couriers do not place it more definitely; particularly in that it is historically so important a centre. The most that can usually be garnered by the curious is that it is "well built in parts, and that those parts only are of interest to the traveller." As a matter of fact, they are nothing of the sort; and the boulevards, of which so much is made, are really very insignificant; so, too, are the cafés and restaurants, to which far more space is usually given than to the claim of Valence as an early centre of Christianity. Valence is not a great centre of population, and is appealing by reason of its charming situation, in a sort of amphitheatre, before which runs the swift-flowing Rhône. There is no great squalor, but there is a picturesqueness and charm which is wholly dispelled in the newer quarters, of which the guide-books speak. There is, moreover, in the cathedral of St. Apollinaire, a small but highly interesting "Romanesque-Auvergnian" cathedral; rebuilt and reconsecrated by Urban II., in the eleventh century, and again reconstructed, on an entirely new plan, in 1604. Besides this curious church there is a "Protestant temple," which occupies the former chapel of the ancient Abbey of St. Rufus, that should have a singularly appealing interest for English-speaking folk. The préfecture occupies another portion of the abbey, which in its various disintegrated parts is worthy of more than passing consideration. The bishopric was founded here at Valence in the fourth century--when Emelien became the first bishop. The see endures to-day as a suffragan of Avignon; whereas formerly it owed obedience to Vienne (now Lyon et Vienne). The ancient cathedral of St. Apollinaire is almost wholly conceived and executed in what has come to be known as the Lombard style. The main body of the church is preceded on the west by an extravagant rectangular tower, beneath which is the portal or entrance; if, as in the present instance, the comprehensive meaning of the word suggests something more splendid than a mere doorway. There has been remarked before now that there is a suggestion of the Corinthian order in the columns of both the inside and outside of the church. This is a true enough detail of Lombard forms as it was of the Roman style, which in turn was borrowed from the Greeks. In later times the neo-classical details of the late Renaissance period produced quite a different effect, and were in no way comparable to the use of this detail in the Lombard and Romanesque churches. In St. Apollinaire, too, are to be remarked the unusual arch formed of a rounded trefoil. This is found in both the towers, and is also seen in St. Maurice at Vienne, but not again until the country far to the northward and eastward is reached, where they are more frequent, therefore their use here may be considered simply as an interpolation brought from some other soil, rather than an original conception of the local builder. Here also is seen the unusual combination of an angular pointed arch in conjunction with the round-headed Lombard variety. This, in alternation for a considerable space, on the south side of the cathedral. It is a feature perhaps not worth mentioning, except from the fact that both the trefoil and wedge-pointed arch are singularly unbeautiful and little in keeping with an otherwise purely southern structure. The aisles of St. Apollinaire, like those of Notre Dame de la Grande at Poitiers, and many other Lombardic churches, are singularly narrow, which of course appears to lengthen them out interminably. If any distinctive style can be given this small but interesting cathedral, it may well be called the style of Lyonnaise. It dates from the twelfth century as to its foundations, but was rebuilt on practically a new ground-plan in 1604. To-day it is cruciform after the late elongated style, with lengthy transepts and lofty aisles. The chief feature to be observed of its exterior is its heavy square tower (187 feet) of four stories. It is not beautiful, and was rebuilt in the middle nineteenth century, but it is imposing and groups satisfactorily enough with the _ensemble_ round about. Beneath this tower is a fine porch worked in Crussol marble. There is no triforium or clerestory. In the choir is a cenotaph in white marble to Pius VI., who was exiled in Valence, and who died here in 1799. It is surmounted by a bust by Canova, whose work it has become the fashion to admire sedulously. VII CATHÉDRALE DE VIVIERS The bishopric of Viviers is a suffragan of Avignon, and is possessed of a tiny cathedral church, which, in spite of its diminutive proportions, overtops quite all the other buildings of this ancient capital of the Vivarais. The city is a most picturesque setting for any shrine, with the narrow, tortuous streets--though slummy ones--winding to the cliff-top on which the city sits high above the waters of the Rhône. The choir of this cathedral is the only portion which warrants remark. It is of the fourteenth century, and has no aisles. It is in the accepted Gothic style, but this again is coerced by the Romanesque flanking tower, which, to all intents and purposes, when viewed from afar, might well be taken for a later Renaissance work. A nearer view dissects this tower into really beautiful parts. The base is square, but above--in an addition of the fifteenth century--it blooms forth into an octagon of quite original proportions. In the choir are some Gobelin tapestries and paintings by Mignard; otherwise there are no artistic attributes to be remarked. VIII NOTRE DAME D'ORANGE The independent principality of Orange (which had existed since the eleventh century), with the papal State of Avignon, the tiny Comté Venaissin, and a small part of Provence were welded into the Department of Vaucluse in the redistribution of political divisions under Napoleon I. The house of Nassau retains to-day the honorary title of Princes of Orange, borne by the heir apparent to the throne of Holland. More anciently the city was known as the Roman _Arausio_, and is yet famous for its remarkable Roman remains, the chief of which are its triumphal arch and theatre--one of the largest and most magnificent, if not actually the largest, of its era. The history of the church at Orange is far more interesting and notable than that of its rather lame apology for a cathedral of rank. The see succumbed in 1790 in favour of Avignon, an archbishopric, and Valence, one of its suffragans. The persecution and oppression of the Protestants of Orange and Dauphiné are well-recorded facts of history. A supposedly liberal and tolerant maker of guide-books (in English) has given inhabitants of Orange a hard reputation by classing them as a "ferocious people." This rather unfair method of estimating their latter-day characteristics is based upon the fact that over three hundred perished here by the guillotine during the first three months of the Revolution. It were better had he told us something of the architectural treasures of this _ville de l'art célèbre_. He does mention the chief, also that "the town has many mosquitoes," but, as for churches, he says not a word. The first bishop was St. Luce, who was settled here in the fourth century, at the same time that St. Ruff came to Avignon. As a bishopric, Orange was under the control of St. Trophime's successors at Arles. Notre Dame d'Orange is a work of little architectural pretence, though its antiquity is great as to certain portions of its walls. The oldest portion dates from 1085, though there is little to distinguish it from the more modern additions and reparations, and is in no way suggestive of the splendour with which the ancient Roman theatre and arch were endowed. The chief attribute to be remarked is the extreme width of nave, which dates from 1085 to 1126. The cathedral itself, however, is not an architectural example of any appealing interest whatever, and pales utterly before the magnificent and splendid preservations of secular Roman times. Since, however, Orange is a city reminiscent of so early a period of Christianity as the fourth century, it is to be presumed that other Christian edifices of note may have at one time existed: if so, no very vivid history of them appears to have been left behind, and certainly no such tangible expressions of the art of church-building as are seen in the neighbouring cities of the Rhône valley. [Illustration] IX ST. VÉRAN DE CAVAILLON "It is the plain of Cavaillon which is the market-garden of Avignon; from whence come the panniers of vegetables and fruits, the _buissons d'artichauts_, and the melons of 'high reputation.'" Such is the rather free paraphrase of a most charmingly expressed observation on this Provençal land of plenty, written by an eighteenth-century Frenchman. If it was true in those days, it is no less true to-day, and, though this book is more concerned with churches than with _potagerie_, the observation is made that this fact may have had not a little to do with the early foundation of the church, here in a plenteous region, where it was more likely to prosper than in an impoverished land. The bishopric was founded in the fifth century by St. Genialis, and it endured constantly until the suppression in 1790. All interest in Cavaillon, in spite of its other not inconsiderable claims, will be centred around its ancient cathedral of St. Véran, immediately one comes into contact therewith. The present structure is built upon a very ancient foundation; some have said that the primitive church was of the seventh century. This present cathedral was consecrated by Pope Innocent IV. in person, in 1259, and for that reason possesses a considerable interest which it would otherwise lack. Externally the most remarkable feature is the arrangement and decoration of the apside--there is hardly enough of it to come within the classification of the chevet. Here the quintuple flanks, or sustaining walls, are framed each with a pair of columns, of graceful enough proportions in themselves, but possessed of inordinately heavy capitals. An octagonal cupola, an unusual, and in this case a not very beautiful feature, crowns the centre of the nave. In reality it serves the purpose of a lantern, and allows a dubious light to trickle through into the interior, which is singularly gloomy. To the right of the nave is a curiously attenuated _clocher_, which bears a clock-face of minute proportions, and holds a clanging _bourdon_, which, judging from its voice, must be as proportionately large as the clock-face is small. Beneath this tower is a doorway leading from the nave to the cloister, a beautiful work dating from a much earlier period than the church itself. This cloister is not unlike that of St. Trophime at Arles, and, while plain and simple in its general plan of rounded arches and vaulting, is beautifully worked in stone, and admirably preserved. In spite of its severity, there is no suggestion of crudity, and there is an elegance and richness in its sculptured columns and capitals which is unusual in ecclesiastical work of the time. The interior of this church is quite as interesting as the exterior. There is an ample, though aisleless, nave, which, though singularly dark and gloomy, suggests a vastness which is perhaps really not justified by the actual state of affairs. A very curious arrangement is that the supporting wall-pillars--in this case a sort of buttress, like those of the apside--serve to frame or enclose a series of deep-vaulted side chapels. The effect of this is that all of the flow of light, which might enter by the lower range of windows, is practically cut off from the nave. What refulgence there is--and it is not by any means of the dazzling variety--comes in through the before-mentioned octagon and the upper windows of the nave. In a chapel--the gift of Philippe de Cabassole, a friend of Petrarch's--is a funeral monument which will even more forcibly recall the name and association of the poet. It is a seventeenth-century tomb of Bishop Jean de Sade, a descendant of the famous Laura, whose ashes formerly lay in the Église des Cordeliers at Avignon, but which were, it is to be feared, scattered to the winds by the Revolutionary fury. At the summit of Mont St. Jacques, which rises high above the town, is the ancient _Ermitage de St. Véran_; a place of local pilgrimage, but not otherwise greatly celebrated. X NOTRE DAME DES DOMS D'AVIGNON It would be difficult to say with precision whether Avignon were more closely connected in the average mind with the former papal splendour, with Petrarch and his Laura, or with the famous Félibrage. Avignon literally reeks with sentimental associations of a most healthy kind. No probable line of thought suggested by Avignon's historied and romantic past will intimate even the mawkish, the sordid, or the banal. It is, in almost limitless suggestion, the city of France above all others in which to linger and drink in the life of its past and present to one's fullest capacities. For the "literary pilgrim," first and foremost will be Avignon's association with Petrarch, or rather he with it. For this reason it shall be disposed of immediately, though not in one word, or ten; that would be impossible. [Illustration: _Notre Dame des Doms d'Avignon_] "'The grave of Laura!' said I. 'Indeed, my dear sir, I am obliged to you for having mentioned it,'" were the words with which the local bookseller was addressed by an eighteenth-century traveller. "'Otherwise one might have gone away, to their everlasting sorrow and shame, without having seen this curiosity of your city.'" The same record of travel describes the guardian of this shrine as "a converted Jew, who, from one year's end to another, has but two duties to perform, which he most punctually attends to. The one to take care of the grave of Laura, and to show it to strangers, the other to give them information respecting all the curiosities. Before his conversion, he stood at the corner by the Hôtel de Ville offering lottery tickets to passers-by, and asking, till he was hoarse, if they had anything to sell. Not a soul took the least notice of him. His beard proved a detriment in all his speculations. Now that he has become a Christian, it is wonderful how everything thrives with him." At the very end of the Rue des Lices will be found the last remains of the Église des Cordeliers--reduced at the Revolution to a mere tower and its walls. Here may be seen the spot where was the tomb of Laura de Sade. Arthur Young, writing just before the Revolution, described it as below; though since that time still other changes have taken place, with the result that "Laura's Grave" is little more than a memory to-day, and a vague one at that. "The grave is nothing but a stone in the pavement, with a figure engraved on it already partly effaced, surrounded by an inscription in Gothic letters, and another on the wall adjoining, with the armorial bearings of the De Sade family." To-day nothing but the site--the location--of the tomb is still there, the before-mentioned details having entirely disappeared. The vault was apparently broken open at the Revolution, and its ashes scattered. It was here at Avignon, in the Église de St. Claire, as Petrarch himself has recorded, that he first met Laura de Sade. The present mood is an appropriate one in which to continue the Petrarchian pilgrimage countryward--to the famous Vaucluse. Here Petrarch came as a boy, in 1313, and, if one chooses, he may have his _déjeuner_ at the _Hôtel Pétrarque et Laure_; not the same, of course, of which Petrarch wrote in praise of its fish of Sorgues; but you will have them as a course at lunch nevertheless. Here, too, the famed _Fontaine_ first comes to light and air; and above it hangs "Petrarch's Castle," which is not Petrarch's castle, nor ever was. It belonged originally to the bishops of Cavaillon, but it is possible that Petrarch was a guest there at various times, as we know he was at the more magnificent _Palais des Papes_ at Avignon. This château of the bishops hangs perilously on a brow which rises high above the torrential _Fontaine_, and, if sentiment will not allow of its being otherwise ignored, it is permissible to visit it, if one is so inclined. No special hardship is involved, and no great adventure is likely to result from this journey countryward. Tourists have been known to do the thing before "just to get a few snapshots of the fountain." As to why the palace of the popes came into being at Avignon is a question which suggests the possibilities of the making of a big book. The popes came to Avignon at the time of the Italian partition, on the strength of having acquired a grant of the city from Joanna of Naples, for which they were supposed to give eighty thousand golden crowns. They never paid the bill, however; from which fact it would appear that financial juggling was born at a much earlier period than has hitherto been supposed. Seven popes reigned here, from 1305 to 1370; when, on the termination of the Schism, it became the residence of a papal legate. Subsequently Louis XIV. seized the city, in revenge for an alleged affront to his ambassador, and Louis XV. also held it for ten years. The curious fact is here recalled that, by the treaty of Tolentino (12th February, 1797), the papal power at Rome conceded formally for the first time--to Napoleon I.--their ancient territory of Avignon. On the terms of this treaty alone was Pope Pius allowed to remain nominal master of even shreds of the patrimony of St. Peter. The significant events of Avignon's history are too great in purport and number to be even catalogued here, but the magnificent papal residence, from its very magnitude and luxuriance, compels attention as one of the great architectural glories, not only of France, but of all Europe as well. Here sat, for the major portion of the fourteenth century, the papal court of Avignon; which the uncharitable have called a synonym for profligacy, veniality, and luxurious degeneracy. Here, of course, were held the conclaves by which the popes of that century were elected; significantly they were all Frenchmen, which would seem to point to the fact of corruption of some sort, if nothing more. Rienzi, the last of the tribunes, was a prisoner within the walls of this great papal stronghold, and Simone Memmi of Sienna was brought therefrom to decorate the walls of the popes' private chapel; Petrarch was _persona grata_ here, and many other notables were frequenters of its hospitality. The palace walls rise to a height of nearly ninety feet, and its battlemented towers add another fifty; from which one may infer that its stability was great; an effect which is still further sustained when the great thickness of its sustaining walls is remarked, and the infrequent piercings of windows and doorways. This vast edifice was commenced by Pope Clement V. in the early years of the thirteenth century, but nothing more than the foundations of his work were left, when Benedict XII., thirty years later, gave the work into the hands of Peter Obreri--who must have been the Viollet-le-Duc of his time. Revolution's destroying power played its part here, as generally throughout France, in defacing shrines, monuments, and edifices, civil and ecclesiastical, with little regard for sentiment and absolutely none for reason. The mob attacked the papal palace with results more disastrous than the accumulated debasement of preceding centuries. The later régime, which turned the magnificent halls of this fortress-like palace into a mere barracks--as it is to-day--was quite as iconoclastic in its temperament. One may realize here, to the full, just how far a great and noble achievement of the art and devotion of a past age may sink. The ancient papal palace at Avignon--the former seat of the power of the Roman Catholic religion--has become a mere barracks! To contemplate it is more sad even than to see a great church turned into a stable or an abattoir--as can yet be seen in France. In its plan this magnificent building preserves its outlines, but its splendour of embellishment has very nearly been eradicated, as may be observed if one will crave entrance of the military incumbent. [Illustration: VILLENEUVE-. _les-AVIGNON_] In 1376 Pope Gregory XI. left Avignon for Rome,--after him came the two anti-popes,--and thus ended what Petrarch has called "_L'Empia Babilonia_." The cathedral of Notre Dame des Doms pales perceptibly before the splendid dimensions of the papal palace, which formerly encompassed a church of its own of much more artistic worth. In one respect only does the cathedral lend a desirable note to the _ensemble_. This, by reason of its commanding situation--at the apex of the Rocher des Doms--and by the gilded statue of the Virgin which surmounts the tower, and supplies just the right quality of colour and life to a structure which would be otherwise far from brilliant. From the opposite bank of the Rhône--from Villeneuve-les-Avignon--the view of the parent city, the papal residence, the cathedral, and that unusual southern attribute, the _beffroi_, all combine in a most glorious picture of a superb beauty; quite rivalling--though in a far different manner--that "plague spot of immorality,"--Monte Carlo, which is mostly thought to hold the palm for the sheer beauty of natural situation. The cathedral is chiefly of the twelfth century, though even a near-by exterior view does not suggest any of the Gothic tendencies of that era. It is more like the heavy bungling style which came in with the Renaissance; but it is not that either, hence it must be classed as a unique variety, though of the period when the transition from the Romanesque to Gothic was making inroads elsewhere. It has been said that the structure dates in part from the time of Charlemagne, but, if so, the usual splendid appointments of the true Charlemagnian manner are sadly lacking. There may be constructive foundations of the eleventh century, but they are in no way distinctive, and certainly lend no liveliness to a building which must ever be ranked as unworthy of the splendid environment. As a church of cathedral rank, it is a tiny edifice when compared with the glorious northern ground-plans: it is not much more than two hundred feet in length, and has a width which must be considerably less than fifty feet. The entrance, at the top of a long, winding stair which rises from the street-level of the Place du Palais to the platform of the rock, is essentially pagan in its aspect; indeed it is said to have previously formed the portal of a pagan temple which at one time stood upon the site. If this be so, this great doorway--for it is far larger in its proportions than any other detail--is the most ancient of all the interior or exterior features. The high pediment and roof may be pointed Gothic, or it may not; at any rate, it is in but the very rudimentary stage. Authorities do not agree; which carries the suggestion still further that the cathedral at Avignon is of itself a queer, hybrid thing in its style, and with not a tithe of the interest possessed by its more magnificent neighbour. The western tower, while not of great proportions, is rather more massive than the proportions of the church body can well carry. What decoration it possesses carries the pagan suggestion still further, with its superimposed fluted pillars and Corinthian columns. The gloomy interior is depressing in the extreme, and whatever attributes of interest that it has are largely discounted by their unattractive setting. There are a number of old paintings, which, though they are not the work of artists of fame, might possibly prove to be of creditable workmanship, could one but see them through the gloom. In the before-mentioned porch are some frescoes by Simone Memmi, executed by him in the fourteenth century, when he came from Sienna to do the decorations in the palace. The side chapels are all of the fourteenth century; that of St. Joseph, now forming the antechamber of the sacristy, contains a noteworthy Gothic tomb and monument of Pope John XXII. It is much mutilated to-day, and is only interesting because of the personality connected therewith. The custodian or caretaker is in this case a most persistently voluble person, who will give the visitor little peace unless he stands by and hears her story through, or flees the place,--which is preferable. The niches of this highly florid Gothic tomb were despoiled of their statues at the Revolution, and the recumbent effigy of the Pope has been greatly disfigured. A much simpler monument, and one quite as interesting, to another Pope, Benedict XII.,--he who was responsible for the magnificence of the papal palace,--is in a chapel in the north aisle of the nave, but the _cicerone_ has apparently no pride in this particular shrine. An ancient (pagan?) altar is preserved in the nave. It is not beautiful, but it is undoubtedly very ancient and likewise very curious. The chief accessory of interest for all will doubtless prove to be the twelfth-century papal throne. It is of a pure white marble, rather cold to contemplate, but livened here and there with superimposed gold ornament. What decoration there is, chiefly figures representing the bull of St. Luke and the lion of St. Mark, is simple and severe, as befitted papal dignity. To-day it serves the archbishop of the diocese as his throne of dignity, and must inspire that worthy with ambitious hopes. The chapter of the cathedral at Avignon--as we learn from history--wears purple, in company with cardinals and kings, at all celebrations of the High Mass of Clara de Falkenstein. From a well-worn vellum quarto in the library at Avignon one may read the legend which recounts the connection of Ste. Clara de Mont Falcone with the mystery of the Holy Trinity; from which circumstance the honour and dignity of the purple has been granted to the prelates of the cathedral. No mention of Avignon, or of Arles, or of Nîmes could well be made without a reference to the revival of Provençal literature brought about by the famous "Félibrage," that brotherhood founded by seven poets, of whom Frederic Mistral is the most popularly known. The subject is too vast, and too vastly interesting to be slighted here, so perforce mere mention must suffice. The word Félibre was suggested by Mistral, who found it in an old hymn. Its etymology is uncertain, but possibly it is from the Greek, meaning "a lover of the beautiful." The original number of the Félibres was seven, and they first met on the fête-day of Ste. Estelle; in whose honour they adopted the seven-pointed star as their emblem. Significantly, the number seven has much to do with the Félibres and Avignon alike. The enthusiastic Félibre tells of Avignon's seven churches, its seven gates, seven colleges, seven hospitals, and seven popes--who reigned at Avignon for seven decades; and further that the word Félibre has seven letters, as, also, has the name of Mistral, one of its seven founders--who took seven years in writing his epics. [Illustration: NOTRE DAME _des DOMS d'AVIGNON_] The machicolated walls, towers, and gateways of Avignon, which protected the city in mediæval times, and--history tells us--sheltered twice as many souls as now, are in a remarkable state of preservation and completeness, and rank foremost among the masterworks of fortification of their time. This outer wall, or _enceinte_, was built at the instigation of Clement VI., in 1349, and was the work of but fourteen years. A hideously decorated building opposite the papal palace--now the _Conservatoire de Musique_--was formerly the papal mint. The ruined bridge of St. Bénezet, built in the twelfth century, is a remarkable example of the engineering skill of the time. Surmounting the four remaining arches--still perfect as to their configuration--is a tiny chapel dedicated to St. Nicholas, which formerly contained _reliques_ of St. Bénezet. The extraordinary circumstance which led up to the building of this bridge seems legendary, to say the least. It is recorded that St. Bénezet, its founder, who was a mere shepherd, became inspired by God to undertake this great work. The inspiration must likewise have brought with it not a little of the uncommon skill of the bridge-builder, and, considering the extent and scope of the projected work, something of the spirit of benefaction as well. The foundation was laid in 1171, and it was completed, after seventeen years of labour, in 1188. On this bridge, near the entrance to the city, was erected a hospital of religious persons, who were denominated _Les Frères du Pont_, their offices being to preserve the fabric, and to afford succour to all manner of travellers. The boldness and utility of this undertaking,--it being the only means of communication between Avignon and the French territory beyond the Rhône,--as well as the permanency assured to it by the annexing of a religious foundation, cannot fail to grant to the memory of its holy founder something more than a due share of veneration on behalf of his genius and perspicacity. XI ST. SIFFREIN DE CARPENTRAS The tiny city of Carpentras, most picturesquely situated on the equally diminutive river Auzon which enters the Rhône between Orange and Avignon, was a Roman colony under Augustus, and a bishopric under St. Valentin in the third century. A suffragan of Avignon, the papal city, the see was suppressed in 1790. The Bishops of Carpentras, it would appear, were a romantic and luxury-loving line of prelates, though this perhaps is aught against their more devout virtues. They had a magnificent palace overhanging the famous "Fountain of Vaucluse," and repaired thither in mediæval times for the relaxation which they evidently much appreciated. They must have been veritable patrons of literature and the arts, as Petrarch and his fellows-in-art were frequently of their household. The ancient cathedral of St. Siffrein is dedicated to a former bishop of Carpentras, who died in the sixth century. As this church now stands, its stones are mainly of the early sixteenth century. The west façade is entirely without character, and is pierced at the pavement with a gross central doorway flanked by two others; poor copies of the _Greco-Romain_ style, which, in many of its original forms, was certainly more pleasing than here. Each of these smaller doorways have for their jambs two beautifully toned columns of red jasper, from a baptistère of which there are still extensive remains at Venasque near by. This baptistère, by the way, and its neighbouring Romanesque and Gothic church, is quite worth the energy of making the journey countryward, eleven kilometres from Carpentras, to see. It is nominally of the tenth century, but is built up from fragments of a former Temple to Venus, and its situation amid the rocks and tree-clad hilltops of the Nesque valley is most agreeable. The portal on the south side--though, for a fact, it hardly merits the dignity of such a classification--is most ornately sculptured. A figure of the Virgin, in the doorway, it locally known as Notre Dame des Neiges. Much iconographic symbolism is to be found in this doorway, capable of various plausible explanations which shall not be attempted here. It must suffice to say that nowhere in this neighbourhood, indeed possibly not south of the Loire, is so varied and elaborate a collection of symbolical stone-carving to be seen. There is no regularly completed tower to St. Siffrein, but a still unachieved tenth-century _clocher_ in embryo attaches itself on the south. The interior presents the general effect of Gothic, and, though of late construction, is rather of the primitive order. There are no aisles, but one single nave, very wide and very high, while the apse is very narrow, with lateral chapels. Against the western wall are placed four paintings; not worthy of remark, perhaps, except for their great size. They are of the seventeenth or eighteenth century. A private corridor, or gallery, leads from this end of the church to the episcopal palace, presumably for the sole use of the bishops and their guests. The third chapel on the right is profusely decorated and contains a valuable painting by Dominique de Carton. Another contains a statue of the Virgin, of the time of Louis XIV., and is very beautiful. A tomb of Bishop Laurent Buti (d. 1710) is set against the wall, where the apse adjoins the nave. Rearward on the high-altar is a fine painting by an unknown artist of the Italian school. The old-time cathedral of St. Siffrein was plainly not of the poverty-stricken class, as evinced by the various accessories and details of ornamentation mentioned above. It had, moreover, in conjunction with it, a most magnificent and truly palatial episcopal residence, built by a former cardinal-bishop, Alexandri Bichi, in 1640. To-day it serves the functions of the _Palais de Justice_ and a prison; in the latter instance certainly a fall from its hitherto high estate. Built about by this ancient residence of the prelates of the Church is also yet to be seen, in much if not quite all of its pristine glory, a _Gallo-Romain arc de Triomphe_ of considerable proportions and much beauty of outline and ornament. As to period, Prosper Mérimée, to whom the preservation of the ancient monuments of France is largely due, has said that it is contemporary with its compeer at Orange (first or second century). The Porte d'Orange, in the Grande Rue, is the only _relique_ left at Carpentras of the ancient city ramparts built in the fourteenth century by Pope Innocent VI. XII CATHÉDRALE DE VAISON The Provençal town of Vaison, like Carpentras and Cavaillon, is really of the basin of the Rhône, rather than of the region of the snow-crowned Alps which form its background. It is of little interest to-day as a cathedral city, though the see dates from a foundation of the fourth century, by St. Aubin, until the suppression of 1790. Its former cathedral is hardly the equal of many others which have supported episcopal dignity, but it has a few accessories and attributes which make it notable. Its nave is finely vaulted, and there is an eleventh-century cloister, which flanks the main body of the church on the left, which would be remarked under any circumstances. The cloister, though practically a ruin,--but a well preserved one,--shows in its construction many beautiful Gallo-Romain and early Gothic columns which are exceedingly beautiful in their proportions. In this cloister, also, are some fragments of early Christian tombs, which will offer unlimited suggestion to the archæologist, but which to the lover of art and architecture are quite unappealing. The _Église St. Quinin_ is a conglomerate edifice which has been built up, in part, from a former church which stood on the same site in the seventh century. It is by no means a great architectural achievement as it stands to-day, but is highly interesting because of its antiquity. In the cathedral the chief article of real artistic value is a _bénitier_, made from the capital of a luxurious Corinthian column. One has seen sun-dials and drinking-fountains made from pedestals and sarcophagi before--and the effect has not been pleasing, and smacks not only of vandalism, but of a debased ideal of art, but this column-top, which has been transformed into a _bénitier_, cannot be despised. The _bête-noir_ of all this region, and of Vaison in particular,--if one is to believe local sentiment,--is the high sweeping wind, which at certain seasons blows in a tempestuous manner. The habitant used to say that "_le mistral, le Parlement, et Durance sont les trois fléaux de Provence_." [Illustration] XIII ST. TROPHIME D'ARLES "In all the world that which interests me most is _La Fleur des 'Glais'_ ... It is a fine plant.... It is the same as the _Fleurs des Lis d'Or_ of the arms of France and of Provence." --FREDERIC MISTRAL. [Illustration: ST. TROPHIME _d'ARLES_ ...] Two French writers of repute have recently expressed their admiration of the marvellous country, and the contiguous cities, lying about the mouth of the Rhône; among which are Nîmes, Aigues-Mortes, and--of far greater interest and charm--Arles. Their opinions, perhaps, do not differ very greatly from those of most travellers, but both Madame Duclaux, in "The Fields of France," and René Bazin, in his _Récits de la Plaine et de la Montagne_, give no palm, one to the other, with respect to their feeling for "the mysterious charm of Arles." It is significant that in this region, from Vienne on the north to Arles and Nîmes in the south, are found such a remarkable series of Roman remains as to warrant the statement by a French antiquarian that "in Rome itself are no such temples as at Vienne and Nîmes, no theatres so splendidly preserved as that at Orange,--nor so large as that of Arles,--and that the magnificent ruined colosseum on the Tiber in no wise has the perfections of its compeer at Nîmes, nor has any triumphal arch the splendid decorations of that at Reims in the champagne country." With these facts in view it is well to recall that many non-Christian influences asserted themselves from time to time, and overshadowed for a temporary period those which were more closely identified with the growth of the Church. The Commission des Monuments Historiques catalogue sixteen notable monuments in Arles which are cared for by them: the Amphitheatre, the remains of the Forum,--now built into the façade of the Hôtel du Nord,--the remains of the Palais de Constantin, the Abbey of Montmajour, and the one-time cathedral of St. Trophime, and its cloister--to particularize but a few. To-day, as anciently, the ecclesiastical province is known as that of Aix, Arles, and Embrun. Arles, however, for a time took its place as an archbishopric, though to-day it joins hands again with Aix and Embrun; thus, while enjoying the distinction of being ranked as an archbishopric, its episcopal residence is at Aix. It was at Arles that the first, and only, English pope--Adrian Breakspeare--first entered a monastic community, after having been refused admission to the great establishment at St. Albans in Hertfordshire, his native place. Here, by the utmost diligence, he acquired the foundation of that great learning which resulted in his being so suddenly proclaimed the wearer of the tiara, in 1154. St. Trophime came to Arles in the first century, and became the first bishop of the diocese. The first church edifice on this site was consecrated in 606 by St. Virgil, under the vocable of St. Etienne. In 1152 the present church was built over the remains of St. Trophime, which were brought thither from St. Honorat des Alyscamps. So far as the main body of the church is concerned, it was completed by the end of the twelfth century, and only in its interior is shown the development of the early ogival style. The structure was added to in 1430, when the Gothic choir was extended eastward. The aisles are diminutively narrow, and the window piercings throughout are exceedingly small; all of which makes for a lack of brilliancy and gloom, which may be likened to the average crypt. The only radiance which ever penetrates this gloomy interior comes at high noon, when the refulgence of a Mediterranean sun glances through a series of long lancets, and casts those purple shadows which artists love. Then, and then only, does the cathedral of St. Trophime offer any inducement to linger within its non-impressive walls. The exterior view is, too, dull and gloomy--what there is of it to be seen from the Place Royale. By far the most lively view is that obtained from across the ruins of the magnificent Roman theatre just at the rear. Here the time-resisting qualities of secular Roman buildings combine with the cathedral to present a bright, sunny, and appealing picture indeed. St. Trophime is in no sense an unworthy architectural expression. As a Provençal type of the Romanesque,--which it is mostly,--it must be judged as quite apart from the Gothic which has crept in to but a slight extent. The western portal is very beautiful, and, with cloister, as interesting and elaborate as one could wish. It is the generality of an unimposing plan, a none too graceful tower and its uninteresting interior, that qualifies the richness of its more luxurious details. The portal of the west façade greatly resembles another at St. Gilles, near by. It is a profusely ornamented doorway with richly foliaged stone carving and elaborate _bas-reliefs_. The tympanum of the doorway contains the figure of a bishop in sacerdotal costume, doubtless St. Trophime, flanked by winged angels and lions. The sculptures here date perhaps from the period contemporary with the best work at Paris and Chartres,--well on into the Middle Ages,--when sculpture had not developed or perfected its style, but was rather a bad copy of the antique. This will be notably apparent when the stiffness and crudeness of the proportions of the figures are taken into consideration. [Illustration: _Cloisters, St. Trophime d'Arles_] The wonderful cloister of St. Trophime is, on the east side, of Romanesque workmanship, with barrel vaulting, and dates from 1120. On the west it is of the transition style of a century later, while on the north the vaulting springs boldly into the Gothic of that period--well on toward 1400. The capitals of the pillars of this cloistered courtyard are most diverse, and picture in delicately carved stone such scenes of Bible history and legend as the unbelief of St. Thomas, Ste. Marthe and the Tarasque, etc. It is a curious _mélange_ of the vagaries of the stone carver of the Middle Ages,--these curiously and elaborately carved capitals,--but on the whole the _ensemble_ is one of rare beauty, in spite of non-Christian and pagan accessories. These show at least how far superior the classical work of that time was to the later Renaissance. The cemetery of Arles, locally known as Les Alyscamps, literally teems with mediæval and ancient funeral monuments; though many, of course, have been removed, and many have suffered the ravages of time, to say nothing of the Revolutionary period. One portion was the old pagan burial-ground, and another--marked off with crosses--was reserved for Christian burial. It must have been accounted most holy ground, as the dead were brought thither for burial from many distant cities. Danté mentions it in the "Inferno," Canto IX.: "Just as at Arles where the Rhône is stagnant The sepulchres make all the ground unequal." Ariosto, in "Orlando Furioso," remarks it thus: "Many sepulchres are in this land." St. Rémy, a few leagues to the northeast of Arles, is described by all writers as wonderfully impressive and appealing to all who come within its spell;--though the guide-books all say that it is a place without importance. René Bazin has this to say: "_St. Rémy, ce n'est pas beau, ce St. Rémy_." Madame Duclaux apostrophizes thus: "We fall at once in love with St. Rémy." With this preponderance of modern opinion we throw in our lot as to the charms of St. Rémy; and so it will be with most, whether with regard to its charming environment or its historical monuments, its arch, or its funeral memorials. One will only come away from this charming _petite ville_ with the idea that, in spite of its five thousand present-day inhabitants, it is something more than a modern shrine which has been erected over a collection of ancient relics. The little city breathes the very atmosphere of mediævalism. [Illustration] XIV ST. CASTOR DE NÎMES Like its neighbouring Roman cities, Nîmes lives mostly in the glorious past. In attempting to realize--if only in imagination--the civilization of a past age, one is bound to bear always in mind the _motif_ which caused any great art expression to take place. Here at Nîmes the church builder had much that was magnificent to emulate, leaving style apart from the question. [Illustration: _St. Castor de Nîmes_] He might, when he planned the cathedral of St. Castor, have avowed his intention of reaching, if possible, the grace and symmetry of the _Maison Carée_; the splendour of the temple of Diana; the majesty of the _Tour Magna_; the grandeur of the arena; or possibly in some measure a blend of all these ambitious results. Instead, he built meanly and sordidly, though mainly by cause of poverty. The Church of the Middle Ages, though come to great power and influence, was not possessed of the fabulous wealth of the vainglorious Roman, who gratified his senses and beautified his surroundings by a lavish expenditure of means, acquired often in a none too honest fashion. The imperative need of the soul was for a house of worship of some sort, and in some measure relative to the rank of the prelate who was to guard their religious life. This took shape in the early part of the eleventh century, when the cathedral of St. Castor was built. Of the varied and superlative attractions of the city one is attempted to enlarge unduly; until the thought comes that there is the making of a book itself to be fashioned out of a reconsideration of the splendid monuments which still exist in this city of celebrated art. To enumerate them all even would be an impossibility here. The tiny building known as the _Maison Carée_ is of that greatness which is not excelled by the "Divine Comedy" in literature, the "Venus of Milo" in sculpture, or the "Transfiguration" in painting. The delicacy and beauty of its Corinthian columns are the more apparent when viewed in conjunction with the pseudo-classical portico of mathematical clumsiness of the modern theatre opposite. This theatre is a dreadful caricature of the deathless work of the Greeks, while the perfect example of _Greco-Romain_ architecture--the _Maison Carée_--will endure as long as its walls stand as the fullest expression of that sense of divine proportion and _magique harmonie_ which the Romans inherited from the Greeks. Cardinal Alberoni called it "a gem which should be set in gold," and both Louis Quatorze and Napoleon had schemes for lifting it bodily from the ground and reëstablishing it at Paris. _Les Arènes_ of Nîmes is an unparalleled work of its class, and in far better preservation than any other extant. It stands, welcoming the stranger, at the very gateway of the city, its _grand axe_ extending off, in arcaded perspective, over four hundred and twenty feet, with room inside for thirty thousand souls. These Romans wrought on a magnificent scale, and here, as elsewhere, they have left evidences of their skill which are manifestly of the non-decaying order. * * * * * The Commission des Monuments Historiques lists in all at Nîmes nine of these historical monuments over which the paternal care of the Ministère de l'Instruction Publique et des Beaux Arts ever hangs. As if the only really fine element in the Cathedral of St. Castor were the façade, with its remarkable frieze of events of Bible history, the Commission has singled it out for especial care, which in truth it deserves, far and away above any other specific feature of this church. Christianity came early to Nîmes; or, at least, the bishopric was founded here, with St. Felix as its first bishop, in the fourth century. At this time the diocese was a suffragan of Narbonne, whilst to-day its allegiance is to the archiepiscopal throne at Avignon. The cathedral of St. Castor was erected in 1030, restored in the thirteenth century, and suffered greatly in the wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These depredations have been--in part--made good, but in the main it is a rather gaunt and painful fabric, and one which is unlooked for amid so magnificent neighbours. It has been said by Roger Peyer--who has written a most enticing monograph on Nîmes--"that without prejudice we can say that the churches constructed in the city _dans nos jours_ are far in advance of the cathedral." This is unquestionably true; for, if we except the very ancient façade, with its interesting sculptured frieze, there is little to impress the cathedral upon the mind except its contrast with its surrounding architectural peers. The main plan, with its flanking north-westerly square tower, is reminiscent of hundreds of parish churches yet to be seen in Italy; while its portal is but a mere classical doorway, too mean even to be classed as a detail of any rank whatever. The façade has undergone some breaking-out and stopping-up of windows during the past decade; for what purpose it is hard to realize, as the effect is neither enhanced nor the reverse. A gaunt supporting buttress, or what not, flanks the tower on the south and adds, yet further, to the incongruity of the _ensemble_. In fine, its decorations are a curious mixture of a more or less pure round-headed Roman style of window and doorway, with later Renaissance and pseudo-classical interpolations. With the interior the edifice takes on more of an interesting character, though even here it is not remarkable as to beauty or grace. The nave is broad, aisleless, and bare, but presents an air of grandeur which is perhaps not otherwise justified; an effect which is doubtless wholly produced by a certain cheerfulness of aspect, which comes from the fact that it has been restored--or at least thoroughly furbished up--in recent times. The large Roman nave, erected, it has been said, from the remains of a former temple of Augustus, has small chapels, without windows, beyond its pillars in place of the usual side aisles. Above is a fine gallery or _tribune_, which also surrounds the choir. The modern mural paintings--the product of the Restoration period--give an air of splendour and elegance, after the manner of the Italian churches, to an appreciably greater extent than is commonly seen in France. In the third chapel on the left is an altar-table made of an early Christian sarcophagus; a questionable practice perhaps, but forming an otherwise beautiful, though crude, accessory. [Illustration] XV ST. THÉODORIT D'UZÈS The ancient diocese of Uzès formerly included that region lying between the Ardèche, the Rhône, and the Gardon, its length and breadth being perhaps equal--fourteen ancient leagues. As a bishopric, it endured from the middle of the fifth century nearly to the beginning of the nineteenth. In ancient Gallic records its cathedral was reckoned as some miles from the present site of the town, but as no other remains than those of St. Théodorit are known to-day, it is improbable that any references in mediæval history refer to another structure. This church is now no longer a cathedral, the see having been suppressed in 1790. The bishop here, as at Lodève and Mende, was the count of the town, and the bishop and duke each possessed their castles and had their respective spheres of jurisdiction, which, says an old-time chronicler, "often occasioned many disputes." Obviously! In the sixteenth century most of the inhabitants embraced the Reformation after the example of their bishop, who, with all his chapter, publicly turned Protestant and "sent for a minister to Geneva." What remains of the cathedral to-day is reminiscent of a highly interesting mediæval foundation, though its general aspect is distinctly modern. Such rebuilding and restoration as it underwent, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, made of it practically a new edifice. The one feature of mark, which stands alone as the representative of mediæval times, is the charming tower which flanks the main body of the church on the right. It is known as the "Tour Fenestrelle" and is of the thirteenth century. It would be a notable accessory to any great church, and is of seven stories in height, each dwindling in size from the one below, forming a veritable campanile. Its height is 130 feet. The interior attractions of this minor church are greater than might be supposed. There is a low gallery with a superb series of wrought-iron _grilles_, a fine tomb in marble--to Bishop Boyan--and in the transept two paintings by Simon de Chalons--a "Resurrection" and a "Raising of Lazarus." The inevitable obtrusive organ-case is of the seventeenth century, and like all of its kind is a parasitical abomination, clinging precariously to the western wall. The sacristy is an extensive suite of rooms which contain throughout a deep-toned and mellow oaken wainscot. For the rest, the lines of this church follow the conventionality of its time. Its proportions, while not great, are good, and there is no marked luxuriance of ornament or any exceeding grace in the entire structure, if we except the detached tower before mentioned. The situation of the town is most picturesque; not daintily pretty, but of a certain dignified order, which is the more satisfying. The ancient château, called Le Duché, is the real architectural treat of the place. XVI ST. JEAN D'ALAIS Alais is an ancient city, but greatly modernized; moreover it does not take a supreme rank as a cathedral city, from the fact that it held a bishop's throne for but a hundred years. Alais was a bishopric only from 1694 to 1790. The cathedral of St. Jean is an imposing structure of that obtrusive variety of architectural art known as "Louis Quinze," and is unworthy of the distinction once bestowed upon it. Perhaps it is due to the fact that the Cevenole country was so largely and aggressively Protestant that the see of Alais did not endure. Robert Louis Stevenson tells of a stranger he met in these mountain parts--that he was a Catholic, "and made no shame of it. No shame of it! The phrase is a piece of natural statistics; for it is the language of one of a minority.... Ireland is still Catholic; the Cevennes still Protestant. Outdoor rustics have not many ideas, but such as they have are hardy plants and thrive flourishingly in persecution." Built about in the façade of this unfeeling structure are some remains of a twelfth-century church, but they are not of sufficient bulk or excellence to warrant remark. An advancing porch stands before this west façade and is surmounted by a massive tower in a poor Gothic style. The vast interior, like the exterior, is entirely without distinction, though gaudily decorated. There are some good pictures, which, as works of art, are a decided advance over any other attributes of this church--an "Assumption," attributed to Mignard, in the chapel of the Virgin; in the left transept, a "Virgin" by Deveria; and in the right transept an "Annunciation" by Jalabert. Alais is by no means a dull place. It is busy with industry, is prosperous, and possesses on a minute scale all the distractions of a great city. It is modern to the very core, so far as appearances go. It has its Boulevard Victor Hugo, its Boulevard Gambetta, and its Lycée Dumas. The Hôpital St. Louis--which has a curious doubly twisted staircase--is of the eighteenth century; a bust of the Marquis de la Fère-Alais, the Cevenole poet, is of the nineteenth; a monument of bronze, to the glory of Pasteur, dates from 1896; and various other bronze and stone memorials about the city all date and perpetuate the name and fame of eighteenth and nineteenth-century notables. The Musée--another recent creation--occupies the former episcopal residence, of eighteenth-century construction. The Hôtel de Ville is quite the most charming building of the city. It has fine halls and corridors, and an ample bibliothèque. Its present-day Salle du Conseil was the ancient chamber of the _États du Languedoc_. XVII ST. PIERRE D'ANNECY The Savoian city of Annecy was formerly the ancient capital of the Genevois. Its past history is more closely allied with other political events than those which emanated from within the kingdom of France; and its ecclesiastical allegiance was intimately related with Geneva, from whence the episcopal seat was removed in 1535. In reality the Christian activities of Annecy had but little to do with the Church in France, Savoie only having been ceded to France in 1860. Formerly it belonged to the ducs de Savoie and the kings of Sardinia. Annecy is a most interesting city, and possesses many, if not quite all, of the attractions of Geneva itself, including the Lake of Annecy, which is quite as romantically picturesque as Lac Leman, though its proportions are not nearly so great. The city's interest for the lover of religious associations is perhaps greater than for the lover of church architecture alone, but, as the two must perforce go hand in hand the greater part of the way, Annecy will be found to rank high in the annals of the history and art of the religious life of the past. In the chapel of the Visitation, belonging to the convent of the same name, are buried St. François de Sales (d. 1622) and Ste. Jeanne de Chantal (d. 1641). The chapel is architecturally of no importance, but the marble ornament and sculptures and the rich paintings are interesting. The ancient chapel of the Visitation--the convent of the first monastery founded by St. Francis and Ste. Jeanne--immediately adjoins the cathedral. Christianity first came to Annecy in the fourth century, with St. Emilien. For long after its foundation the see was a suffragan of the ancient ecclesiastical province of Vienne. To-day it is a suffragan of Chambéry. The rather ordinary cathedral of St. Pierre has no great interest as an architectural type, and is possessed of no embellishments of a rank sufficiently high to warrant remark. It dates only from the sixteenth century, and is quite unconvincing as to any art expression which its builders may have possessed. The episcopal palace (1784) adjoins the cathedral on the south. [Illustration] XVIII CATHÉDRALE DE CHAMBÉRY The city of Chambéry in the eighteenth century must have been a veritable hotbed of aristocracy. A French writer of that day has indeed stated that it is "the winter residence of all the aristocracy of Savoie; ... with twenty thousand francs one could live _en grand seigneur_; ... a country gentleman, with an income of a hundred and twenty louis d'or a year, would as a matter of course take up his abode in the town for the winter." To-day such a basis upon which to make an estimate of the value of Chambéry as a place of residence would be, it is to be feared, misleading. Arthur Young closes his observations upon the agricultural prospects of Savoie with the bold statement that: "On this day, left Chambéry much dissatisfied,--for the want of knowing more of it." Rousseau knew it better, much better. "_S'il est une petite ville au monde où l'on goûte la douceur de la vie dans un commerce agréable et sûr, c'est Chambéry._" Savoie and the Comté de Nice were annexed to France only as late as 1860, and from them were formed the departments of Savoie, Haute-Savoie, and the Alpes-Maritimes. Chambéry is to-day an archbishopric, with suffragans at Annecy, Tarentaise, and St. Jean de Maurienne. Formerly conditions were reversed, and Chambéry was merely a bishopric in the province de Tarentaise. Its first bishop, Michel Conseil, came in office, however, only in 1780. The cathedral is of the fourteenth century, in the pointed style, and as a work of art is distinctly of a minor class. The principal detail of note is a western portal which somewhat approaches good Gothic, but in the main, both inside and out, the church has no remarkable features, if we except some modern glass, which is better in colour than most late work of its kind. As if to counteract any additional charm which this glass might otherwise lend to the interior, we find a series of flamboyant traceries over the major portion of the side walls and vaulting. These are garish and in every way unpleasing, and the interior effect, like that of the exterior, places the cathedral at Chambéry far down the scale among great churches. Decidedly the architectural embellishments of Chambéry lie not in its cathedral. The chapel of the ancient château, dating in part from the thirteenth century, but mainly of the Gothic-Renaissance period, is far and away the most splendid architectural monument of its class to be seen here. _La Grande Chartreuse_ is equally accessible from either Chambéry or Grenoble, and should not be neglected when one is attempting to familiarize himself with these parts. [Illustration] XIX NOTRE DAME DE GRENOBLE It is an open question as to whether Grenoble is not possessed of the most admirable and impressive situation of any cathedral city of France. At all events it has the attribute of a unique background in the _massif de la Chartreuse_, and the range of snow-clad Alps, which rise so abruptly as to directly screen and shelter the city from all other parts lying north and east. Furthermore this natural windbreak, coupled with the altitude of the city itself, makes for a bright and sunny, and withal bracing, atmosphere which many professed tourist and health resorts lack. Grenoble is in all respects "a most pleasant city," and one which contains much of interest for all sorts and conditions of pilgrims. Anciently Grenoble was a bishopric in the diocese of the Province of Vienne, to whose archbishop the see was at that time subordinate. Its foundation was during the third century, and its first prelate was one Domninus. In the redistribution of dioceses Grenoble became a suffragan of Lyon et Vienne, which is its status to-day. As might naturally be inferred, in the case of so old a foundation, its present-day cathedral of Notre Dame partakes also of early origin. This it does, to a small degree only, with respect to certain of the foundations of the choir. These date from the eleventh century, while succeeding eras, of a mixed and none too pure an architectural style, culminate in presenting a singularly unconvincing and cold church edifice. The "pointed" tabernacle, which is the chief interior feature, is of the middle fifteenth century, and indeed the general effect is that of the late Middle Ages, if not actually suggestive of still later modernity. The tomb of Archbishop Chissé, dating from 1407, is the cathedral's chief monumental shrine. To the left of the cathedral is the ancient bishop's palace; still used as such. It occupies the site of an eleventh-century episcopal residence, but the structure itself is probably not earlier than the fifteenth century. In the _Église de St. André_, a thirteenth-century structure, is a tomb of more than usual sentimental and historical interest: that of Bayard. It will be found in the transept. No mention of Grenoble could well ignore the famous monastery of _La Grande Chartreuse_. Mostly, it is to be feared, the monastery is associated in mundane minds with that subtle and luxurious _liqueur_ which has been brewed by the white-robed monks of St. Bruno for ages past; and was until quite recently, when the establishment was broken up by government decree and the real formula of this sparkling _liqueur_ departed with the migrating monks. The opinion is ventured, however, that up to the time of their expulsion (in 1902), the monks of St. Bruno combined solitude, austerity, devotion, and charity of a most practical kind with a lucrative commerce in their distilled product after a successful manner not equalled by any religious community before or since. [Illustration: S. Bruno] The Order of St. Bruno has weathered many storms, and, during the Terror, was driven from its home and dispersed by brutal and riotous soldiery. In 1816 a remnant returned, escorted, it is said, by a throng of fifty thousand people. The cardinal rule of the Carthusians is abstemiousness from all meat-eating; which, however, in consideration of their calm, regular life, and a diet in which fish plays an important part, is apparently conducive to that longevity which most of us desire. It is related that a certain Dominican pope wished to diminish the severity of St. Bruno's regulations, but was met by a delegation of Carthusians, whose _doyen_ owned to one hundred and twenty years, and whose youngest member was of the ripe age of ninety. The amiable pontiff, not having, apparently, an argument left, accordingly withdrew his edict. Of all these great Charterhouses spread throughout France, _La Grande Chartreuse_ was the most inspiring and interesting; not only from the structure itself, but by reason of its commanding and romantic situation amid the forest-clad heights of the Savoyan Alps. The first establishment here was the foundation of St. Bruno (in 1084), which consisted merely of a modest chapel and a number of isolated cubicles. This foundation only gave way--as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries--to an enlarged structure more in accord with the demands and usage of this period. The most distinctive feature of its architecture is the grand cloister, with its hundred and fifteen Gothic arches, out of which open the sixty cells of the sandalled and hooded white-robed monks, who, continuing St. Bruno's regulation, live still in isolation. In these cells they spent all of their time outside the hours of work and worship, but were allowed the privilege of receiving one colleague at a time. Here, too, they ate their meals, with the exception of the principal meal on Sundays, when they all met together in the refectory. The _Église de la Grande Chartreuse_ itself is very simple, about the only distinctive or notable feature being the sixteenth-century choir-stalls. At the midnight service, or at _matins_, when the simple church is lit only by flaming torches, and the stalls filled with white-robed _Chartreux_, is presented a picture which for solemnity and impressiveness is as vivid as any which has come down from mediæval times. The chanting of the chorals, too, is unlike anything heard before; it has indeed been called, before now, angelic. Petrarch, whose brother was a member of the order, has put himself on record as having been enchanted by it. As many as ten thousand visitors have passed through the portals of _La Grande Chartreuse_ during the year, but now in the absence of the monks--temporary or permanent as is yet to be determined--conditions obtain which will not allow of entrance to the conventual buildings. No one, however, who visits either Grenoble or Chambéry should fail to journey to St. Laurent du Pont--the gateway of the fastness which enfolds _La Grande Chartreuse_, and thence to beneath the shadow of the walls which for so long sheltered the parent house of this ancient and powerful order. [Illustration: _Belley_] XX BELLEY AND AOSTE En route to Chambéry, from Lyon, one passes the little town of Belley. It is an ancient place, most charmingly situated, and is a suffragan bishopric, strangely enough, of Besançon, which is not only Teutonic in its tendencies, but is actually of the north. At all events, Belley, in spite of its clear and crisp mountain air, is not of the same climatic zone as the other dioceses in the archbishopric of Besançon. Its cathedral is distinctly minor as to style, and is mainly Gothic of the fifteenth century; though not unmixed, nor even consistent, in its various parts. No inconsiderable portion is modern, as will be plainly seen. One distinctly notable feature is a series of Romanesque columns in the nave, possibly taken from some pagan Roman structure. They are sufficiently of importance and value to be classed as "_Monuments Historiques_," and as such are interesting. Aoste (Aoste-St.-Genix) is on the site of the Roman colony of Augustum, of which to-day there are but a few fragmentary remains. It is perhaps a little more than a mile from the village of St. Genix, with which to-day its name is invariably coupled. As an ancient bishopric in the province of Tarentaise, it took form in the fourth century, with St. Eustache as its first bishop. To-day the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of all this region--the Val-de-Tarentaise--is held by Tarentaise. [Illustration] XXI ST. JEAN DE MAURIENNE St. Jean de Maurienne is a tiny mountain city well within the advance-guard of the Alpine range. Of itself it savours no more of the picturesque than do the immediate surroundings. One can well understand that vegetation round about has grown scant merely because of the dearth of fructifying soil. The valleys and the ravines flourish, but the enfolding walls of rock are bare and sterile. This is the somewhat abbreviated description of the _pagi_ garnered from an ancient source, and is, in the main, true enough to-day. Not many casual travellers ever get to this mountain city of the Alps; they are mostly rushed through to Italy, and do not stop short of the frontier station of Modane, some thirty odd kilometres onward; from which point onward only do they know the "lie of the land" between Paris and Piedmont. St. Jean de Maurienne is to-day, though a suffragan of Chambéry, a bishopric in the old ecclesiastical province of Tarentaise. The first archbishop--as the dignity was then--was St. Jacques, in the fifth century. The cathedral of St. Jean is of a peculiar architectural style, locally known as "Chartreusian." It is by no means beautiful, but it is not unpleasing. It dates, as to the epoch of its distinctive style, from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, though it has been so fully restored in our day that it may as well be considered as a rebuilt structure, in spite of the consistent devotion to the original plan. The chief features of note are to be seen in its interior, and, while they are perhaps not of extraordinary value or beauty, in any single instance, they form, as a whole, a highly interesting disposition of devout symbols. Immediately within the portico, by which one enters from the west, is a plaster model of the tomb of Count Humbert, the head of the house of Savoie. In the nave is an altar and mausoleum in marble, gold, and mosaic, erected by the Carthusians to St. Ayrald, a former bishop of the diocese and a member of their order. In the left aisle of the nave is a tomb to Oger de Conflans, and another to two former bishops. Through the sacristy, which is behind the chapel of the Sacred Heart, is the entrance to the cloister. This cloister, while not of ranking greatness or beauty, is carried out, in the most part, in the true pointed style of its era (1452), and is, on the whole, the most charming attribute of the cathedral. The choir has a series of carved stalls in wood, which are unusually acceptable. In the choir, also, is a _ciborium_, in alabaster, with a _reliquaire_ which is said to contain three fingers of John the Baptist, brought to Savoie in the sixth century by Ste. Thècle. The crypt, beneath the choir, is, as is most frequently the case, the remains of a still earlier church, which occupied the same site, but of which there is little record extant. XXII ST. PIERRE DE ST. CLAUDE St. Claude is charmingly situated in a romantic valley of the Jura. The sound of mill-wheels and the sight of factory chimneys mingle inextricably with the roaring of mountain torrents and the solitude of the pine forest. The majority of the inhabitants of these valleys lead a simple and pastoral life, with cheese-making apparently the predominant industry. Manufacturing of all kinds is carried on, in a small way, in nearly every hamlet--in tiny cottage _ateliers_--wood-carving, gem-polishing, spectacle and clock-making, besides turnery and wood-working of all sorts. [Illustration: ST. PIERRE _de ST. CLAUDE_] St. Claude, with its ancient cathedral of St. Pierre, is the centre of all these activities; which must suggest to all publicists of time-worn and _ennuied_ lands a deal of possibilities in the further application of such industrial energies as lie close at hand. In 1789, when Arthur Young, in his third journey through France, passed through St. Claude, the count-bishop of the diocese, the sole inheritor of its wealthy abbey foundation and all its seigneurial dependencies, had only just enfranchised his forty thousand serfs. Voltaire, the atheist, pleaded in vain the cause of this Christian prelate, and for him to be allowed to sustain his right to bond-men; but opposition was too great, and they became free to enjoy property rights, could they but once acquire them. Previously, if childless, they had no power to bequeath their property; it reverted simply to the seigneur by custom of tradition. In the fifth century, St. Claude was the site of a powerful abbey. It did not become an episcopal see, however, until 1742, when its first bishop was Joseph de Madet. At the Revolution the see was suppressed, but it rose again, phoenix-like, in 1821, and endures to-day as a suffragan of Lyon et Vienne. The cathedral of St. Pierre is a fourteenth-century edifice, with later work (seventeenth century) equally to be remarked. As a work of restoration it appears poorly done, but the entire structure is of more than ordinary interest; nevertheless it still remains an uncompleted work. The church is of exceedingly moderate dimensions, and is in no sense a great achievement. Its length cannot be much over two hundred feet, and its width and height are approximately equal (85 feet), producing a symmetry which is too conventional to be really lovable. Still, considering its environment and the association as the old abbey church, to which St. Claude, the bishop of Besançon, retired in the twelfth century, it has far more to offer in the way of a pleasing prospect than many cathedrals of greater architectural worth. There are, in its interior, a series of fine choir-stalls in wood, of the fifteenth century--comparable only with those at Rodez and Albi for their excellence and the luxuriance of their carving--a sculptured _Renaissance retable_ depicting the life of St. Pierre, and a modern high-altar. This last accessory is not as worthy an art work as the two others. [Illustration: _Notre Dame de Bourg_] XXIII NOTRE DAME DE BOURG The chief ecclesiastical attraction of Bourg-en-Bresse is not its one-time cathedral of Notre Dame, which is but a poor Renaissance affair of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. The famous Église de Brou, which Matthew Arnold described so justly and fully in his verses, is a florid Gothic monument which ranks among the most celebrated in France. It is situated something less than a mile from the town, and is a show-piece which will not be neglected. Its charms are too many and varied to be even suggested here. There are a series of sculptured figures of the prophets and apostles, from a fifteenth or sixteenth-century _atelier_, that may or may not have given the latter-day Sargent his suggestion for his celebrated "frieze of the prophets." They are wonderfully like, at all events, and the observation is advisedly included here, though it is not intended as a sneer at Sargent's masterwork. This wonderful sixteenth-century Église de Brou, in a highly decorated Gothic style, its monuments, altars, and admirable glass, is not elsewhere equalled, as to elaborateness, in any church of its size or rank. Notre Dame de Bourg--the cathedral--though manifestly a Renaissance structure, has not a little of the Gothic spirit in its interior arrangements and details. It is as if a Renaissance shell--and not a handsome one--were enclosing a Gothic treasure. There is the unusual polygonal apside, which dates from the fifteenth or sixteenth century, and is the most curious part of the entire edifice. The octagonal tower of the west has, in its higher story, been replaced by an ugly dome-shaped excrescence surmounted by an enormous gilded cross which is by no means beautiful. The west façade in general, in whose portal are shown some evidences of the Gothic spirit, which at the time of its erection had not wholly died, is uninteresting and all out of proportion to a church of its rank. The interior effect somewhat redeems the unpromising exterior. There is a magnificent marble high-altar, jewel-wrought and of much splendour. The two chapels have modern glass. A fine head of Christ, carved in ivory, is to be seen in the sacristy. Previous to 1789 it was kept in the great council-chamber of the _États de la Bresse_. In the sacristy also there are two pictures, of the German school of the sixteenth century. There are sixty-eight stalls, of the sixteenth century, carved in wood. Curiously enough, these stalls--of most excellent workmanship--are not placed within the regulation confines of the choir, but are ranged in two rows along the wall of the apside. XXIV GLANDÈVE, SENEZ, RIEZ, SISTERON The diocese of Digne now includes four _ci-devant_ bishoprics, each of which was suppressed at the Revolution. The ruins of the ancient bishopric of Glandève are to-day replaced by the small town of D'Entrevaux, whose former cathedral of St. Just has now disappeared. The see of Glandève had in all fifty-three bishops, the first--St. Fraterne--in the year 459. Senez was composed of but thirty-two parishes. It was, however, a very ancient foundation, dating from 445 A. D. Its cathedral was known as Notre Dame, and its chapter was composed of five canons and three dignitaries. At various times forty-three bishops occupied the episcopal throne at Senez. [Illustration: NOTRE DAME _de SISTERON_] The suppression likewise made way with the bishopric at Riez, a charming little city of Provence. The see was formerly composed of fifty-four parishes, and its cathedral of Notre Dame had a chapter of eight canons and four dignitaries. The first bishop was St. Prosper, in the early part of the fifth century. Ultimately he was followed by seventy-four others. Two "councils of the church" were held at Riez, the first in 439, and the second in 1285. The diocese of Sisteron was situated in the charming mountain town of the Basses-Alps. This brisk little fortress-city still offers to the traveller many of the attractions of yore, though its former cathedral of Notre Dame no longer shelters a bishop's throne. Four dignitaries and eight canons performed the functions of the cathedral, and served the fifty parishes allied with it. The first bishop was Chrysaphius, in 452, and the last, François Bovet, in 1789. This prelate in 1801 refused the oath of allegiance demanded by the new régime, and forthwith resigned, when the see was combined with that of Digne. The ancient cathedral of Notre Dame de Sisteron of the eleventh and twelfth centuries is now ranked as a "_Monument Historique_." It dates, in the main, from the twelfth century, and is of itself no more remarkable than many of the other minor cathedrals of this part of France. Its chief distinction lies in its grand _retable_, which is decorated with a series of superb paintings by Mignard. The city lies picturesquely posed at the foot of a commanding height, which in turn is surmounted by the ancient citadel. Across the defile, which is deeply cut by the river Durance, rises the precipitous Mont de la Baume, which, with the not very grand or splendid buildings of the city itself, composes the ensemble at once into a distinctively "old-world" spot, which the march of progress has done little to temper. It looks not a little like a piece of stage-scenery, to be sure, but it is a wonderful grouping of the works of nature and of the hand of man, and one which it will be difficult to duplicate elsewhere in France; in fact, it will not be possible to do so. [Illustration] XXV ST. JEROME DE DIGNE The diocese of Digne, among all of its neighbours, has survived until to-day. It is a suffragan of Aix, Arles, and Embrun, and has jurisdiction over the whole of the Department of the Basses-Alps. St. Domnin became its first bishop, in the fourth century. The ancient Romanesque cathedral of Notre Dame--from which the bishop's seat has been removed to the more modern St. Jerome--is an unusually interesting old church, though bare and unpretentious to-day. It dates from the twelfth century, and has all the distinguishing marks of its era. Its nave is, moreover, a really fine work, and worthy to rank with many more important. There are, in this nave, some traces of a series of curious wall-paintings dating from the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries. St. Jerome de Digne--called _la cathédrale fort magnifiante_--is a restored Gothic church of the early ages of the style, though it has been placed--in some doubt--as of the fifteenth century. The apse is semicircular, without chapels, and the general effect of the interior as a whole is curiously marred by reason of the lack of transepts, clerestory, and triforium. This notable poverty of feature is perhaps made up for by the amplified side aisles, which are doubled throughout. The western portal, which is of an acceptable modern Gothic, is of more than usual interest as to its decorations. In the tympanum of the arch is a figure of the Saviour giving his blessing, with the emblems of the Evangelists below, and an angel and the pelican--the emblem of the sacrament--above. Beneath the figure of the Saviour is another of St. Jerome, the patron, to whom the cathedral is dedicated. A square, ungainly tower holds a noisy peal of bells, which, though a great source of local pride, can but prove annoying to the stranger, with their importunate and unseemly clanging. The chief accessories, in the interior, are an elaborate organ-case,--of the usual doubtful taste,--a marble statue of St. Vincent de Paul (by Daumas, 1869), and a sixteenth or seventeenth-century statue of a former bishop of the diocese. Digne has perhaps a more than ordinary share of picturesque environment, seated, as it is, luxuriously in the lap of the surrounding mountains. St. Domnin, the first bishop, came, it is said, from Africa at a period variously stated as from 330 to 340 A. D., but, at any rate, well on into the fourth century. His enthronement appears to have been undertaken amid much heretical strife, and was only accomplished with the aid of St. Marcellin, the archbishop of Embrun, of which the diocese of Digne was formerly a suffragan. The good St. Domnin does not appear to have made great headway in putting out the flame of heresy, though his zeal was great and his miracles many. He departed this world before the dawn of the fifth century, and his memory is still brought to the minds of the communicants of the cathedral each year on the 13th of February--his fête-day--by the display of a reliquary, which is said to contain--somewhat unemphatically--the remains of his head and arm. Wonderful cures are supposed to result to the infirm who view this _relique_ in a proper spirit of veneration, and devils are warranted to be cast out from the true believer under like conditions. A council of the Church was held at Digne in 1414. XXVI NOTRE DAME DE DIE The _Augusta Dia_ of the Romans is to-day a diminutive French town lying at the foot of the _colline_ whose apex was formerly surmounted by the more ancient city. It takes but little ecclesiastical rank, and is not even a tourist resort of renown. It is, however, a shrine which encloses and surrounds many monuments of the days which are gone, and is possessed of an ancient Arc de Triomphe which would attract many of the genus "_touriste_", did they but realize its charm. The cathedral, dedicated to the Virgin, sheltered a bishop's throne from the foundation of the bishopric until 1285, when a hiatus ensued--apparently from some inexplicable reason--until 1672, when its episcopal dignity again came into being. Finally, in 1801, the diocese came to an end. St. Mars was the first bishop, the see having been founded in the third century. The porch of this cathedral is truly remarkable, having been taken from a former temple to Cybele, and dates at least from some years previous to the eleventh century. Another portal of more than usual remark--known as the _porte rouge_--is fashioned from contemporary fragments of the same period. While to all intents and purposes the cathedral is an early architectural work, its rank to-day is that of a restored or rebuilt church of the seventeenth century. The nave is one of the largest in this part of France, being 270 feet in length and seventy-six feet in width. It has no side aisles and is entirely without pillars to break its area, which of course appears more vast than it really is. What indications there are which would place the cathedral among any of the distinct architectural styles are of the pointed variety. Aside from its magnificent dimensions, there are no interior features of remark except a gorgeous Renaissance pulpit and a curious _cène_. XXVII NOTRE DAME ET ST. CASTOR D'APT Apt is doubtfully claimed to have been a bishopric under St. Auspice in the first century, but the ancient _Apta Julia_ of Roman times is to-day little more than an interesting by-point, with but little importance in either ecclesiological or art matters. Its cathedral--as a cathedral--ceased to exist in 1790. It is of the species which would be generally accepted as Gothic, so far as exterior appearances go, but it is bare and poor in ornament and design, and as a type ranks far down the scale. In its interior arrangements the style becomes more florid, and takes on something of the elaborateness which in a more thoroughly worthy structure would be unremarked. The chief decoration lies in the rather elaborate _jubé_, or choir-screen, which stands out far more prominently than any other interior feature, and is without doubt an admirable example of this not too frequent attribute of a French church. Throughout there are indications of the work of many epochs and eras, from the crypt of the primitive church to the Chapelle de Ste. Anne, constructed by Mansard in the seventeenth century. This chapel contains some creditable paintings by Parrocel, and yet others, in a still better style, by Mignard. The crypt, which formed a part of the earlier church on this site, is the truly picturesque feature of the cathedral at Apt, and, like many of its kind, is now given over to a series of subterranean chapels. Among the other attributes of the interior are a tomb of the Ducs de Sabron, a marble altar of the twelfth century, a precious enamel of the same era, and a Gallo-Romain sarcophagus of the fifth century. As to the exterior effect and ensemble, the cathedral is hardly to be remarked, either in size or splendour, from the usual parish church of the average small town of France. It does not rise to a very ambitious height, neither does its ground-plan suggest magnificent proportions. Altogether it proves to be a cathedral which is neither very interesting nor even picturesque. The little city itself is charmingly situated on the banks of the Coulon, a small stream which runs gaily on its way to the Durance, at times torrential, which in turn goes to swell the flood of the Rhône below Avignon. The former bishop's palace is now the préfecture and Mairie. [Illustration] XXVIII NOTRE DAME D'EMBRUN Embrun, not unlike its neighbouring towns in the valley of the Durance, is possessed of the same picturesque environment as Sisteron and Digne. It is perched high on that species of eminence known in France as a _colline_, though in this case it does not rise to a very magnificent height; what there is of it, however, serves to accentuate the picturesque element as nothing else would. The episcopal dignity of the town is only partial; it shares the distinction with Aix and Arles. The Église Notre Dame, though it is still locally known as "_la cathédrale_," is of the twelfth century, and has a wonderful old Romanesque north porch and peristyle set about with gracefully proportioned columns, the two foremost of which are supported upon the backs of a pair of weird-looking animals, which are supposed to represent the twelfth-century stone-cutter's conception of the king of beasts. In the tympanum of this portal are sculptured figures of Christ and the Evangelists, in no wise of remarkable quality, but indicating, with the other decorative features, a certain luxuriance which is not otherwise suggested in the edifice. The Romanesque tower which belongs to the church proper is, as to its foundations, of very early date, though, as a finished detail, it is merely a rebuilt fourteenth-century structure carried out on the old lines. There is another tower, commonly called "_la tour brune_," which adjoins the ancient bishop's palace, and dates from at least a century before the main body of the church. The entire edifice presents an architectural _mélange_ that makes it impossible to classify it as of any one specific style, but the opinion is hazarded that it is all the more interesting a shrine because of this incongruity. The choir, too, indicates that it has been built up from fragments of a former fabric, while the west front is equally unconvincing, and has the added curious effect of presenting a variegated façade, which is, to say the least and the most, very unusual. A similar suggestion is found occasionally in the Auvergne, but the interweaving of party-coloured stone, in an attempt to produce variety, has too often not been taken advantage of. In this case it is not so very pleasing, but one has a sort of sympathetic regard for it nevertheless. In the interior there are no constructive features of remark; indeed there is little embellishment of any sort. There is an eighteenth-century altar, in precious marbles, worked after the old manner, and in the sacristy some altar-fittings of elaborately worked Cordovan leather, a triptych which is dated 1518, some brilliant glass of the fifteenth century, and in the nave a Renaissance organ-case which encloses an organ of the early sixteenth century. Near by is Mont St. Guillaume (2,686 metres), on whose heights is a _sanctuaire_ frequented by pilgrims from round about the whole valley of the Durance. From "Quentin Durward," one recalls the great devotion of the Dauphin of France--Louis XI.--for the statue of Notre Dame d'Embrun. XXIX NOTRE DAME DE L'ASSOMPTION DE GAP Gap is an ancient and most attractive little city of the Maritime Alps, of something less than ten thousand inhabitants. Its cathedral is also the parish church, which suggests that the city is not especially devout. The chapter of the cathedral consists of eight canons, who, considering that the spiritual life of the entire Department of the Hautes-Alpes--some hundred and fifty thousand souls--is in their care, must have a very busy time of it. St. Demetrius, the friend of St. John the Evangelist, has always been regarded as the first apostle and bishop of the diocese. He came from Rome to Gaul in the reign of Claudian, and began his work of evangelization in the environs of Vienne under St. Crescent, the disciple of St. Paul. From Vienne Demetrius came immediately to Gap and established the diocese here. Numerous conversions were made and the Church quickly gained adherents, but persecution was yet rife, as likewise was superstition, and the priests were denounced to the governors of the province, who forthwith put them to death in true barbaric fashion. Amid these inflictions, however, and the later Protestant persecutions in Dauphiné, the diocese grew to great importance, and endures to-day as a suffragan of Aix, Arles, and Embrun. The Église de Gap has even yet the good fortune to possess personal _reliques_ of her first bishop, and accordingly displays them with due pride and ceremony on his _jour de fête_, the 26th October of each year. Says a willing but unknowing French writer: "Had Demetrius--who came to Gap in the first century--any immediate successors? That we cannot say. It is a period of three hundred years which separates his tenure from that of St. Constantine, the next prelate of whom the records tell." Three other dioceses of the former ecclesiastical province have been suppressed, and Gap alone has lived to exert its tiny sphere of influence upon the religious life of the present day. The history of Gap has been largely identified with the Protestant cause in Dauphiné. There is, in the Prefecture, a monument to the Due de Lesdiguières--Françoise de Bonne--who, from the leadership of the Protestants went over to the Roman faith, in consideration of his being given the rank of _Connétable de France_. Why the mere fact of his apostasy should have been a sufficient and good reason for this aggrandizement, it is difficult to realize in this late day; though we know of a former telegraph messenger who became a count. Another reformer, Guillaume Farel, was born and lived at Gap. "He preached his first sermon," says History, "at the mill of Burée, and his followers soon drove the Catholics from the place; when he himself took possession of the pulpits of the town." From all this dissension from the Roman faith--though it came comparatively late in point of time--rose the apparent apathy for church-building which resulted in the rather inferior cathedral at Gap. No account of this unimportant church edifice could possibly be justly coloured with enthusiasm. It is not wholly a mean structure, but it is unworthy of the great activities of the religious devotion of the past, and has no pretence to architectural worth, nor has it any of the splendid appointments which are usually associated with the seat of a bishop's throne. Notre Dame de l'Assomption is a modern edifice in the style _Romano-Gothique_, and its construction, though elaborate both inside and out, is quite unappealing. This is the more to be marvelled at, in that the history of the diocese is so full of incident; so far, in fact, in advance of what the tangible evidences would indicate. XXX NOTRE DAME DE VENCE Vence,--the ancient Roman city of Ventium,--with five other dioceses of the ecclesiastical province of Embrun, was suppressed--as the seat of a bishop--in 1790. It had been a suffragan bishopric of Embrun since its foundation by Eusèbe in the fourth century. The ancient cathedral of Notre Dame is supposed to show traces of workmanship of the sixth, tenth, twelfth, and fifteenth centuries, but, excepting that of the latter era, it will be difficult for the casual observer to place the distinctions of style. The whole ensemble is of grim appearance; so much so that one need not hesitate to place it well down in the ranks of the church-builder's art, and, either from poverty of purse or purpose, it is quite undistinguished. In its interior there are a few features of unusual remark: an ancient sarcophagus, called that of St. Véran; a _retable_ of the sixteenth century; some rather good paintings, by artists apparently unknown; and a series of fifty-one fifteenth-century choir-stalls of quite notable excellence, and worth more as an expression of artistic feeling than all the other features combined. The only distinction as to constructive features is the fact that there are no transepts, and that the aisles which surround the nave are doubled. XXXI CATHÉDRALE DE SION The small city of Sion, the capital of the Valais, looks not unlike the pictures one sees in sixteenth-century historical works. It is brief, confined, and unobtrusive. It was so in feudal times, when most of its architecture partook of the nature of a stronghold. It is so to-day, because little of modernity has come into its life. The city, town, or finally village--for it is hardly more, from its great lack of activity--lies at the foot of three lofty, isolated eminences. A great conflagration came to Sion early in the nineteenth century which resulted in a new lay-out of the town and one really fine modern thoroughfare, though be it still remarked its life is yet mediæval. Upon one of these overshadowing heights is the present episcopal residence, and on another the remains of a fortress--formerly the stronghold of the bishops of Sion. On this height of La Valère stands the very ancient church of Ste. Catherine (with a tenth or eleventh-century choir), occupying, it is said, the site of a Roman temple. In the mid-nineteenth century the Jesuits gained a considerable influence here and congregated in large numbers. The city was the ancient Sedanum, and in olden time the bishop bore also the title of "Prince of the Holy Empire." The power of this prelate was practically unlimited, and ordinances of state were, as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century, made in his name, and his arms formed the embellishments of the public buildings and boundary posts. Rudolf III., king of Burgundy, from the year 1000, made them counts of Valais. St. Théodule was the first bishop of Sion,--in the fourth century,--and is the patron of the diocese. In 1070 the bishop of Sion came to England as papal legate to consecrate Walkelin to the see of Winchester. In 1516 Bishop Schinner came to England to procure financial aid from Henry VIII. to carry on war against France. The cathedral in the lower town is a fifteenth-century work which ought--had the manner of church-building here in this isolated region kept pace with the outside world--to be Renaissance in style. In reality, it suggests nothing but the earliest of Gothic, and, in parts, even Romanesque; therefore it is to be remarked, if not admired. Near by is the modern episcopal residence. The records tell of the extraordinary beauty and value of the _trésor_, which formerly belonged to the cathedral: an ivory pyx, a reliquary, and a magnificent manuscript of the Gospels--given by Charles the Great to St. Maurice, and acquired by the town in the fourteenth century. This must at some former time have been dispersed, as no trace of it is known to-day. Sion was formerly a suffragan bishopric of Tarantaise, which in turn has become to-day a suffragan of Chambéry. XXXII ST. PAUL TROIS CHÂTEAUX St. Paul Trois Châteaux is a very old settlement. As a bishopric it was known anciently as Tricastin, and dates from the second century. St. Restuit was its first bishop. It was formerly the seat of the ancient Roman colony of _Augusta Tricastinorum_. Tradition is responsible for the assertion that St. Paul was the first prelate of the diocese, and being born blind was cured by Jesus Christ. This holy man, after having recovered his sight, took the name of Restuit, under which name he is still locally honoured. One of his successors erected to his honour, in the fourth century, a chapel and an altar. These, of course have disappeared--hence we have only tradition, which, to say the least, and the most, is, in this case, quite legendary. The city was devastated in the fifth century by the Vandals; in 1736 by the Saracens; and taken and retaken by the Protestants and Catholics in the fourteenth century. As a bishopric the "Tricastin city" comprised but thirty-six parishes, and in the rearrangement attendant upon the Revolution was suppressed altogether. Ninety-five bishops in all had their seats here up to the time of suppression. Certainly the religious history of this tiny city has been most vigorous and active. The city conserves to-day somewhat of its ancient birthright, and is a picturesque and romantic spot, in which all may tarry awhile amid its tortuous streets and the splendid remains of its old-time builders. Few do drop off, even, in their annual rush southward, in season or out, and the result is that St. Paul Trois Châteaux is to-day a delightfully "old world" spot in the most significant meaning of the phrase. Of course the habitant still refers to the seat of the former bishop's throne as a cathedral, and it is with pardonable pride that he does so. This precious old eleventh and twelfth-century church is possessed of as endearing and interesting an aspect as the city itself. It has been restored in recent times, but is much hidden by the houses which hover around its walls. It has a unique portal which opens between two jutting columns whose shafts uphold nothing--not even capitals. In fact, the general plan of the cathedral follows that of the Latin cross, though in this instance it is of rather robust proportions. The transepts, which are neither deep nor wide, are terminated with an apse, as is also the choir, which depends, for its embellishments, upon the decorative effect produced by eight Corinthian columns. The interior, the nave in particular, is of unusual height for a not very grand structure; perhaps eighty feet. Its length is hardly greater. The orders of columns rise vaultwards, surmounted by a simple entablature. These are perhaps not of the species that has come to be regarded as good form in Christian architecture, but which, for many reasons, have found their way into church-building, both before and since the rise of Gothic. Under a triforium, in blind, is a sculptured drapery; again a feature more pagan than Christian, but which is here more pleasing than when usually found in such a false relation. Both these details are in imitation of the antique, and, since they date from long before the simulating of pseudo-classical details became a mere fad, are the more interesting and valuable as an art-expression of the time. For the rest, this one-time cathedral is uncommon and most singular in all its parts, though nowhere of very great inherent beauty. An ancient gateway bears a statue of the Virgin. It was the gift of a former Archbishop of Paris to the town of his birth. An ancient Dominican convent is now the _École Normale des Petits Frères de Marie_. Within its wall have recently been discovered a valuable mosaic work, and a table or altar of carved stone. In the suburbs of the town have also recently been found much beautiful Roman work of a decorative nature; a geometric parchment in mosaic; a superb lamp, in worked bronze; a head of Mercury (now in the Louvre), and much treasure which would make any antiquarian literally leap for joy, were he but present when they were unearthed. Altogether the brief résumé should make for a desire to know more of this ancient city whose name, even, is scarcely known to those much-travelled persons who cross and recross France in pursuit of the pleasures of convention alone. _PART IV_ _The Mediterranean Coast_ I INTRODUCTORY The Mediterranean shore of the south of France, that delectable land which fringes the great tideless sea, bespeaks the very spirit of history and romance, of Christian fervour, and of profane riot and bloodshed. Its ancient provinces,--Lower Languedoc, the Narbonensis of Gaul; Provence, the most glorious and golden of all that went to make up modern France,--the mediæval capital of King René, Aix-en-Provence, and the commercial capital of the Phoceans (559 B. C.), Massilia, all combine in a wealth of storied lore which is inexhaustible. The tide of latter-day travel descends the Rhône to Marseilles, turns eastward to the conventional pleasures of the Riviera, and utterly neglects the charms of La Crau, St. Rémy, Martiques, and Aigues-Mortes; or the more progressive, though still ancient cathedral cities of Montpellier, Béziers, Narbonne, or Perpignan. There is no question but that the French Riviera is, in winter, a land of sunshiny days, cool nights, and the more or the less rapid life of fashion. Which of these attractions induces the droves of personally-, semi-, and non-conducted tourists to journey thither, with the first advent of northern rigour, is doubtful; it is probably, however, a combination of all three. It is a beautiful strip of coast-line from Marseilles to Mentone, and its towns and cities are most attractively placed. But a sojourn there "in the season," amid the luxury of a "palace-hotel," or the bareness of a mediocre _pension_, is a thing to be dreaded. Seekers after health and pleasure are supposed to be wonderfully recouped by the process; but this is more than doubtful. Vice is rarely attractive, but it is always made attractive, and weak tea and _pain de ménage_ in a Riviera boarding-house are no more stimulating than elsewhere; hence the many virtues of this sunlit land are greatly nullified. "A peculiarity of the Riviera is that each of the prominent watering-places possesses a tutelary deity of our own. (Modest this!) Thus, for instance, no visitor to Cannes is allowed to forget the name of Lord Brougham, while the interest at Beaulieu and Cap Martin centres around another great English statesman, Lord Salisbury. Cap d'Antibes has (or had) for its _genius loci_ Grant Allen, and Valescure is chiefly concerned with Mrs. Humphry Ward and Mrs. Oliphant." This quotation is, perhaps, enough to make the writer's point here: Why go to the Riviera to think of Lord Brougham, long since dead and gone, any more than to Monte Carlo to be reminded of the unfortunate end which happened to the great system for "breaking the bank" of Lord----, a nineteenth-century nobleman of notoriety--if not of fame? The charm of situation of the Riviera is great, and the interest awakened by its many reminders of the historied past is equally so; but, with regard to its architectural remains, the most ready and willing temperament will be doomed to disappointment. The cathedral cities of the Riviera are not of irresistible attraction as shrines of the Christian faith; but they have much else, either within their confines or in the immediate neighbourhood, which will go far to make up for the deficiency of their religious monuments. It is not that the architectural remains of churches of another day, and secular establishments, are wholly wanting. Far from it; Fréjus, Toulon, Grasse, and Cannes are possessed of delightful old churches, though they are not of ranking greatness, or splendour. Still the fact remains that, of themselves, the natural beauties of the region and the heritage of a historic past are not enough to attract the throngs which, for any one of a dozen suspected reasons, annually, from November to March, flock hither to this range of towns, which extends from Hyères and St. Raphael, on the west, to Bordighera and Ospadeletti, just over the Italian border, on the east. It is truly historic ground, this; perhaps more visibly impressed upon the mind and imagination than any other in the world, if we except the Holy Land itself. Along this boundary were the two main routes, by land and by water, through which the warlike and civil institutions of Rome first made their way into Gaul, conquered it, and impressed thereon indelibly for five hundred years the mighty power which their ambition urged forward. At Cimiez, a suburb of Nice, they have left a well-preserved amphitheatre; at Antibes the remains of Roman towers; Villefranche--the port of Nice--was formerly a Roman port; Fréjus, the former _Forum Julii_, has remains of its ancient harbour, its city walls, an amphitheatre, a gateway, and an arch, and, at some distance from the city, the chief of all neighbouring remains, an aqueduct, the crumbling stones of which can be traced for many miles. Above the promontory of Monaco, where the Alps abruptly meet the sea, stands the tiny village of _La Turbie_, some nineteen hundred feet above the waters of the sparklingly brilliant Mediterranean. Here stands that venerable ruined tower, the great _Trophoea Augusti_ of the Romans, now stayed and strutted by modern masonry. It commemorates the Alpine victories of the first of the emperors, and overlooks both Italy and France. Stripped to-day of the decorations and sculptures which once graced its walls, it stands as a reminder of the first splendid introduction of the luxuriant architecture of Rome into the precincts of the Western Empire. Here it may be recalled that sketching, even from the hilltops, is a somewhat risky proceeding for the artist. The surrounding eminences--as would be likely so near the Italian border--are frequently capped with a fortress, and occupied by a small garrison, the sole duty of whose commandant appears to be "heading off," or worse, those who would make a picturesque note of the environment of this _ci-devant_ Roman stronghold. The process of transcribing "literary notes" is looked upon with equal suspicion, or even greater disapproval, in that--in English--they are not so readily translated as is even a bad drawing. So the admonition is here advisedly given for "whom it may concern." From the Rhône eastward, Marseilles alone has any church of a class worthy to rank with those truly great. Its present cathedral of Ste. Marie-Majeure assuredly takes, both as to its plan and the magnitude on which it has been carried out, the rank of a masterwork of architecture. It is a modern cathedral, but it is a grand and imposing basilica, after the Byzantine manner. Westward, if we except Béziers, where there is a commanding cathedral; Narbonne, where the true sky-pointing Gothic is to be found; and Perpignan, where there is a very ancient though peculiarly disposed cathedral, there are no really grand cathedral churches of this or any other day. On the whole, however, all these cities are possessed of a subtle charm of manner and environment which tell a story peculiarly their own. Foremost among these cities of Southern Gaul, which have perhaps the greatest and most appealing interest for the traveller, are Carcassonne and Aigues-Mortes. Each of these remarkable reminders of days that are gone is unlike anything elsewhere. Their very decay and practical desertion make for an interest which would otherwise be unattainable. Aigues-Mortes has no cathedral, nor ever had; but Carcassonne has a very beautiful, though small, example in St. Nazaire, treated elsewhere in this book. Both Aigues-Mortes and Carcassonne are the last, and the greatest, examples of the famous walled and fortified cities of the Middle Ages. Aigues-Mortes itself is a mere dead thing of the marshes, which once held ten thousand souls, and witnessed all the pomp and glitter which attended upon the embarking of Louis IX. on his chivalrous, but ill-starred, ventures to the African coasts. "Here was a city built by the whim of a king--the last of the Royal Crusaders." To-day it is a coffin-like city with perhaps a couple of thousand pallid, shaking mortals, striving against the marsh-fever, among the ruined houses, and within the mouldering walls of an ancient Gothic burgh. [Illustration: _The Ramparts of Aigues-Mortes_] [Illustration: _St. Sauveur d'Aix_] II ST. SAUVEUR D'AIX Aix, the former capital of Provence, one of the most famous ancient provinces, the early seat of wealth and civilization, and the native land of the poetry and romance of mediævalism, was the still more ancient _Aquæ Sextiæ_ of the Romans--so named for the hot springs of the neighbourhood. It was their oldest colony in Gaul, and was founded by Sextius Calvinus in B. C. 123. In King René's time,--"_le bon roi_" died at Aix in 1480,--_Aix-en-Provence_ was more famous than ever as a "gay capital," where "mirth and song and much good wine" reigned, if not to a degenerate extent, at least to the full expression of liberty. In 1481, just subsequent to René's death, the province was annexed to the Crown, and fifty years later fell into the hands of Charles V., who was proclaimed King of Arles and Provence. This monarch's reign here was of short duration, and he evacuated the city after two months' tenure. During all this time the church of Aix, from the foundation of the archbishopric by St. Maxine in the first century (as stated rather doubtfully in the "_Gallia Christiania_"), ever advanced hand in hand with the mediæval gaiety and splendour that is now past. Who ever goes to Aix now? Not many Riviera tourists even, and not many, unless they are on a mission bent, will cross the Rhône and the Durance when such appealingly attractive cities as Arles, Avignon, and Nîmes lie on the direct pathway from north to south. Formerly the see was known as the Province of Aix. To-day it is known as Aix, Arles, and Embrun, and covers the Department of Bouches-du-Rhône, with the exception of Marseilles, which is a suffragan bishopric of itself. The chief ecclesiastical monuments of Aix are the cathedral of St. Sauveur, with its most unusual _baptistère_; the church of St. Jean-de-Malte of the fourteenth century; and the comparatively modern early eighteenth-century church of La Madeleine, with a fine "Annunciation" confidently attributed by local experts to Albrecht Dürer. The cathedral of St. Sauveur is, in part, an eleventh-century church. The portions remaining of this era are not very extensive, but they do exist, and the choir, which was added in the thirteenth century, made the first approach to a completed structure. In the next century the choir was still more elaborated, and the tower and the southern aisle of the nave added. This nave is, therefore, the original nave, as the northern aisle was not added until well into the seventeenth century. The west façade contains a wonderful, though non-contemporary, door and doorway in wood and stone of the early sixteenth century. This doorway is in two bays, divided by a pier, on which is superimposed a statue of the Virgin and Child, framed by a light garland of foliage and fruits. Above are twelve tiny statuettes of _Sibylles_ or the theological virtues placed in two rows. The lower range of the archivolt is divided by pilasters bearing the symbols of the Evangelists, deeply cut arabesques of the Genii, and the four greater prophets--Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. Taken together, these late sculptures of the early sixteenth century form an unusually mixed lot; but their workmanship and disposition are pleasing and of an excellence which in many carvings of an earlier date is often lacking. The interior shows early "pointed" and simple round arches, with pilasters and pediment which bear little relation to Gothic, and are yet not Romanesque of the conventional variety. These features are mainly not suggestive of the Renaissance either, though work of this style crops out, as might be expected, in the added north aisle of the nave. The transepts, too, which are hardly to be remarked from the outside,--being much hemmed about by the surrounding buildings,--also indicate their Renaissance origin. The real embellishments of the interior are: a triptych--"The Burning Bush," with portraits of King René, Queen Jeanne de Laval, and others; another of "The Annunciation;" a painting of St. Thomas, by a sixteenth-century Flemish artist; and some sixteenth-century tapestries. None of these features, while acceptable enough as works of art, compare in worth or novelty with the tiny _baptistère_, which is claimed as of the sixth century. This is an unusual work in Gaul, the only other examples being at Poitiers and Le Puy. It resembles in plan and outline its more famous contemporary at Ravenna, and shows eight antique columns, from a former temple to Apollo, with dark shafts and lighter capitals. The dome has a modern stucco finish, little in keeping with the general tone and purport of this accessory. The cloister of St Sauveur, in the Lombard style, is very curious, with its assorted twisted and plain columns, some even knotted. The origin of its style is again bespoke in certain of the round-headed arches. Altogether, as an accessory to the cathedral, if to no other extent, this Lombard detail is forceful and interesting. III ST. REPARATA DE NICE "What would you, then? I say it is most engaging, in winter when the strangers are here, and all work day and night; but it is a much better place in summer, when one can take their ease." --PAUL ARÈNE. Whatever may be the attractions of Nice for the travelled person, they certainly do not lie in or about its cathedral. The guide-books call it simply "the principal ecclesiastical edifice ... of no great interest," which is an apt enough qualification. In a book which professes to treat of the special subject of cathedral churches, something more is expected, if only to define the reason of the lack of appealing interest. One might say with the Abbé Bourassé,--who wrote of St. Louis de Versailles,--"It is cold, unfeeling, and without life;" or he might dismiss it with a few words of lukewarm praise, which would be even less satisfying. More specifically the observation might be passed that the lover of churches will hardly find enough to warrant even passing consideration _on the entire Riviera_. This last is in a great measure true, though much of the incident of history and romance is woven about what--so far as the church-lover is concerned--may be termed mere "tourist points." At all events, he who makes the round, from Marseilles to San Remo in Italy, must to no small extent subordinate his love of ecclesiastical art and--as do the majority of visitors--plunge into a whirl of gaiety (_sic_) as conventional and unsatisfying as are most fulsome, fleeting pleasures. The sensation is agreeable enough to most of us, for a time at least, but the forced and artificial gaiety soon palls, and he who puts it all behind him, and strikes inland to Aix and Embrun and the romantically disposed little cathedral towns of the valley of the Durance, will come once again into an architectural zone more in comport with the subject suggested by the title of this book. It is curious to note that, with the exception of Marseilles and Aix, scarce one of the suffragan dioceses of the ancient ecclesiastical province of Aix, Arles, and Embrun is possessed of a cathedral of the magnitude which we are wont to associate with the churchly dignity of a bishop. St. Reparata de Nice is dismissed as above; that of Antibes was early transferred or combined with that of Grasse; Grasse itself endured for a time--from 1245 onward--but was suppressed in 1790; Glandève, Senez, and Riez were combined with Digne; while Fréjus has become subordinate to Toulon, though it shares episcopal dignity with that city. In spite of these changes and the apparently inexplicable tangle of the limits of jurisdiction which has spread over this entire region, religion has, as might be inferred from a study of the movement of early Christianity in Gaul, ever been prominent in the life of the people, and furthermore is of very long standing. The first bishop of Nice was Amantius, who came in the fourth century. With what effect he laboured and with what real effect his labours resulted, history does not state with minutiæ. The name first given to the diocese was _Cemenelium_. In 1802 the diocese of Nice was allied with that of Aix, but in the final readjustment its individuality became its own possession once more, and it is now a bishopric, a suffragan of Marseilles. As to architectural splendour, or even worth, St. Reparata de Nice has none. It is a poor, mean fabric in the Italian style; quite unsuitable in its dimensions to even the proper exploitation of any beauties that the style of the Renaissance may otherwise possess. The general impression that it makes upon one is that it is but a makeshift or substitute for something more pretentious which is to come. The church dates from 1650 only, and is entirely unworthy as an expression of religious art or architecture. The structure itself is bare throughout, and what decorative embellishments there are--though numerous--are gaudy, after the manner of stage tinsel. IV STE. MARIE MAJEURE DE TOULON The episcopal dignity of Toulon is to-day shared with Fréjus, whereas, at the founding of the diocese, Toulon stood alone as a bishopric in the ecclesiastical province of Arles. This was in the fifth century. When the readjustment came, after the Revolution, the honour was divided with the neighbouring coast town of Fréjus. In spite of the fact that the cathedral here is of exceeding interest, Toulon is most often thought of as the chief naval station of France in the Mediterranean. From this fact signs of the workaday world are for ever thrusting themselves before one. As a seaport, Toulon is admirably situated and planned, but the contrast between the new and old quarters of the town and the frowning fortifications, docks, and storehouses is a jumble of utilitarian accessories which does not make for the slightest artistic or æsthetic interest. Ste. Marie Majeure is a Romanesque edifice of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Its façade is an added member of the seventeenth century, and the belfry of the century following. The church to-day is of some considerable magnitude, as the work of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries comprehended extensive enlargements. As to its specific style, it has been called Provençal as well as Romanesque. It is hardly one or the other, as the pure types known elsewhere are considered, but rather a blend or transition between the two. The edifice underwent a twelfth-century restoration, which doubtless was the opportunity for incorporating with the Romanesque fabric certain details which we have come since to know as Provençal. During the Revolution the cathedral suffered much despoliation, as was usual, and only came through the trial in a somewhat imperfect and poverty-stricken condition. Still, it presents to-day some considerable splendour, if not actual magnificence. Its nave is for more reasons than one quite remarkable. It has a length of perhaps a hundred and sixty feet, and a width scarcely thirty-five, which gives an astonishing effect of narrowness, but one which bespeaks a certain grace and lightness nevertheless--or would, were its constructive elements of a little lighter order. In a chapel to the right of the choir is a fine modern _reredos_, and throughout there are many paintings of acceptable, if not great, worth. The pulpit, by a native of Toulon, is usually admired, but is a modern work which in no way compares with others of its kind seen along the Rhine, and indeed throughout Germany. One of the principal features which decorate the interior is a tabernacle by Puget; while an admirable sculptured "Jehovah and the Angels" by Veyrier, and a "Virgin" by Canova--which truly is not a great work--complete the list of artistic accessories. The first bishop of Toulon, in the fifth century, was one Honoré. V ST. ETIENNE DE FRÉJUS The ancient episcopal city of Fréjus has perhaps more than a due share of the attractions for the student and lover of the historic past. It is one of the most ancient cities of Provence. Its charm of environment, people, and much else that it offers, on the surface or below, are as irresistible a galaxy as one can find in a small town of scarce three thousand inhabitants. And Fréjus is right on the beaten track, too, though it is not apparent that the usual run of pleasure-loving, tennis-playing, and dancing-party species of tourist--at a small sum per head, all included--ever stop here _en route_ to the town's more fashionable Riviera neighbours--at least they do not _en masse_--as they wing their way to the more delectable pleasures of naughty Nice or precise and proper Mentone. The establishment of a bishopric here is somewhat doubtfully given by "_La Gallia Christiania_" as having been in the fourth century. Coupled with this statement is the assertion that the cathedral at Fréjus is very ancient, and its foundation very obscure; but that it was probably built up from the remains of a "primitive temple consecrated to an idol." Such, at least, is the information gleaned from a French source, which does not in any way suggest room for doubt. Formerly the religious administration was divided amongst a provost, an archdeacon, a sacristan, and twelve canons. The diocese was suppressed in 1801 and united with that of Aix, but was reëstablished in 1823 by virtue of the Concordat of 1817. To-day the diocese divides the honour of archiepiscopal dignity with that of Toulon. The foundations of St. Etienne are admittedly those of a pagan temple, but the bulk of the main body of the church is of the eleventh century. The tower and its spire--not wholly beautiful, nor yet in any way unbeautiful--are of the period of the _ogivale primaire_. As to style, in so far as St. Etienne differs greatly from the early Gothic of convention, it is generally designated as Provençal-Romanesque. It is, however, strangely akin to what we know elsewhere as primitive Gothic, and as such it is worthy of remark, situated, as it is, here in the land where the pure round-arched style is indigenous. The portal has a doorway ornamented with some indifferent Renaissance sculptures. To the left of this doorway is a _baptistère_ containing a number of granite columns, which, judging from their crudeness, must be of genuine antiquity. There is an ancient Gothic cloister, hardly embryotic, but still very rudimentary, because of the lack of piercings of the arches; possibly, though, this is the result of an afterthought, as the arched openings appear likely enough to have been filled up at some time subsequent to the first erection of this feature. The bishop's palace is of extraordinary magnitude and impressiveness, though of no very great splendour. In its fabric are incorporated a series of Gallo-Roman pilasters, and it has the further added embellishment of a pair of graceful twin _tourelles_. The Roman remains throughout the city are numerous and splendid, and, as a former seaport, founded by Cæsar and enlarged by Augustus, the city was at a former time even more splendid than its fragments might indicate. To-day, owing to the building up of the foreshore, and the alluvial deposits washed down by the river Argens, the town is perhaps a mile from the open sea. [Illustration: _Detail of Doorway of the Archibishop's Palace, Fréjus_] [Illustration] VI ÉGLISE DE GRASSE Grasse is more famed for its picturesque situation and the manufacture of perfumery than it is for its one-time cathedral, which is but a simple and uninteresting twelfth-century church, whose only feature of note is a graceful doorway in the pointed style. The diocese of Grasse formerly had jurisdiction over Antibes, whose bishop--St. Armentaire--ruled in the fourth century. The diocese of Grasse--in the province of Embrun--did not come into being, however, until 1245, when Raimond de Villeneuve was made its first bishop. The see was suppressed in 1790. There are, as before said, no accessories of great artistic worth in the Église de Grasse, and the lover of art and architecture will perforce look elsewhere. In the Hôpital are three paintings attributed to Rubens, an "Exaltation," a "Crucifixion," and a "Crowning of Thorns." They may or may not be genuine works by the master; still, nothing points to their lack of authenticity, except the omission of all mention thereof in most accounts which treat of this artist's work. VII ANTIBES Cap d'Antibes, on the Golfe Jouan, is one of those beauty-spots along the Mediterranean over which sentimental rhapsody has ever lent, if not a glamour which is artificial, at least one which is purely æsthetic. One must not deny it any reputation of this nature which it may possess, and indeed, with St. Raphael and Hyères, it shares with many another place along the French Riviera a popularity as great, perhaps, as if it were the possessor of even an extraordinarily beautiful cathedral. The churchly dignity of Antibes has departed long since, though its career as a former bishopric--in the province of Aix--was not brief, as time goes. It began in the fourth century with St. Armentaire, and endured intermittently until the twelfth century, when the see was combined with that of Grasse, and the ruling dignity transferred to that place. VIII STE. MARIE MAJEURE DE MARSEILLES "These brown men of Marseilles, who sing as they bend at their oars, are Greeks." --CLOVIS HUGHES. Marseilles is modern and commercial; but Marseilles is also ancient, and a centre from which have radiated, since the days of the Greeks, much power and influence. It is, too, for a modern city,--which it is to the average tourist,--wonderfully picturesque, and shows some grand architectural effects, both ancient and modern. [Illustration: _Marseilles_] The _Palais de Long Champs_ is an architectural grouping which might have dazzled luxurious Rome itself. The Chamber of Commerce, with its decorations by Puvis de Chavannes, is a structure of the first rank; the _Cannebière_ is one of those few great business thoroughfares which are truly imposing; while the docks, shipping, and hotels, are all of that preëminent magnitude which we are wont to associate only with a great capital. As to its churches, its old twelfth-century cathedral remains to-day a mere relic of its former dignity. [Illustration: _The Old Cathedral, Marseilles_] It is a reminder of a faith and a power that still live in spite of the attempts of the world of progress to live it down, and has found its echo in the present-day cathedral of Ste. Marie Majeure, one of the few remarkably successful attempts at the designing of a great church in modern times. The others are the new Westminster Roman Catholic Cathedral London, the projected cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, and Trinity Church in Boston. As an exemplification of church-building after an old-time manner adapted to modern needs, called variously French-Romanesque, Byzantine, and, by nearly every expert who has passed comment upon it, by some special _nomenclature of his own_, the cathedral at Marseilles is one of those great churches which will live in the future as has St. Marc's at Venice in the past. Its material is a soft stone of two contrasting varieties,--the green being from the neighbourhood of Florence, and the white known as _pierre de Calissant_,--laid in alternate courses. Its deep sunken portal, with its twin flanking Byzantine towers, dominates the old part of the city, lying around about the water-front, as do few other churches, and no cathedrals, in all the world. It stands a far more impressive and inspiring sentinel at the water-gate of the city than does the ludicrously fashioned modern "sailors' church" of Notre Dame de la Gard, which is perched in unstable fashion on a pinnacle of rock on the opposite side of the harbour. This "curiosity"--for it is hardly more--is reached by a cable-lift or funicular railway, which seems principally to be conducted for the delectation of those winter birds of passage yclept "Riviera tourists." The true pilgrim, the sailor who leaves a votive offering, or his wife or sweetheart, who goes there to pray for his safety, journeys on foot by an abrupt, stony road,--as one truly devout should. This sumptuous cathedral will not please every one, but it cannot be denied that it is an admirably planned and wonderfully executed _neo-Byzantine_ work. In size it is really vast, though its chief remarkable dimension is its breadth. Its length is four hundred and sixty feet. At the crossing is a dome which rises to one hundred and ninety-seven feet, while two smaller ones are at each end of the transept, and yet others, smaller still, above the various chapels. The general effect of the interior is--as might be expected--_grandoise_. There is an immensely wide central nave, flanked by two others of only appreciably reduced proportions. Above the side aisles are galleries extending to the transepts. The decorations of mosaic, glass, and mural painting have been the work of the foremost artists of modern times, and have been long in execution. The entire period of construction extended practically over the last half of the nineteenth century. The plans were by Léon Vaudoyer, who was succeeded by one Espérandieu, and again by Henri Rêvoil. The entire detail work may not even yet be presumed to have been completed, but still the cathedral stands to-day as the one distinct and complete achievement of its class within the memory of living man. The pillars of the nave, so great is their number and so just and true their disposition, form a really decorative effect in themselves. The choir is very long and is terminated with a domed apse, with domed chapels radiating therefrom in a symmetrical and beautiful manner. The episcopal residence is immediately to the right of the cathedral, on the Place de la Major. Marseilles has been the seat of a bishop since the days of St. Lazare in the first century. It was formerly a suffragan of Arles in the Province d'Arles, as it is to-day, but its jurisdiction is confined to the immediate neighbourhood of the city. IX ST. PIERRE D'ALET In St. Pierre d'Alet was a former cathedral of a very early date; perhaps as early as the ninth century, though the edifice was entirely rebuilt in the eleventh. To-day, even this structure--which is not to be wondered at--is in ruins. There was an ancient abbey here in the ninth century, but the bishopric was not founded until 1318, and was suppressed in 1790. The most notable feature of this ancient church is the wall which surrounds or forms the apside. This quintupled _pan_ is separated by four great pillars, in imitation of the Corinthian order; though for that matter they may as well be referred to as genuine antiques--which they probably are--and be done with it. The capitals and the cornice which surmounts them are richly ornamented with sculptured foliage, and, so far as it goes, the whole effect is one of liberality and luxury of treatment. Immediately beside the ruins of this old-time cathedral is the Église St. André of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. X ST. PIERRE DE MONTPELLIER _La Ville de Montpellier_ "Elle est charmante et douce ... Avec son vast ciel, toujours vibrant et pur, * * * * * Elle est charmante avec ses brunes jeunes filles ... le noir diamant de leurs yeux!" --HENRI DE BORNIER. Montpellier is seated upon a hill, its foot washed by two small and unimportant rivers. A seventeenth-century writer has said: "This city is not very ancient, though now it be the biggest, fairest, and richest in Languedoc, after Toulouse." [Illustration: ST. PIERRE _de MONTPELLIER_] From a passage in the records left by St. Bernard, the Abbot of Clairvaux, it is learned that there was a school or seminary of physicians here as early as 1155, and the perfect establishment of a university was known to have existed just previous to the year 1200. This institution was held in great esteem, and in importance second only to Paris. To-day the present establishment merits like approbation, and, sheltered in part in the ancient episcopal palace, and partly enclosing the cathedral of St. Pierre, it has become inseparable from consideration in connection therewith. The records above referred to have this to say concerning the university: "Tho' Physic has the Precendence, yet both Parts of the Law are taught in one of its Colleges, by Four Royal Professors, with the Power of making Licentiates and Doctors." Continuing, he says: "The ceremony of taking the M. D. degree is very imposing; if only the putting on and off, seven times, the old gown of the famous Rabelais." Montpellier was one of "the towns of security" granted by Henry IV. to the Protestants, but Louis XIII., through the suggestions of his cardinals, Richelieu and Mazarin, forced them by arms to surrender this place of protection. The city was taken after a long siege and vigorous defence in 1622. Before the foundation of Montpellier, the episcopal seat was at Maguelonne, the ancient Magalonum of the Romans. The town does not exist to-day, and its memory is only perpetuated by the name Villeneuve les Maguelonne, a small hamlet on the bay of that name, a short distance from Montpellier. The Church had a foothold here in the year 636, but the ferocity of Saracen hordes utterly destroyed all vestiges of the Christian faith in their descent upon the city. Says the Abbé Bourassé: "In the eleventh century another cathedral was dedicated by Bishop Arnaud, and the day was made the occasion of a fête, in consideration of the restoration of the church, which had been for a long time abandoned." It seems futile to attempt to describe a church which does not exist, and though the records of the later cathedral at Maguelonne are very complete, it must perforce be passed by in favour of its descendant at Montpellier. Having obtained the consent of François I., the bishop of Maguelonne solicited from the pontiff at Rome the privilege of transferring the throne. In a bull given in 1536, it was decreed that this should be done forthwith. Accordingly, the bishop and his chapter transferred their dignity to a Benedictine monastery at Montpellier, which had been founded in 1364 by Pope Urban V. The wars of the Protestants desecrated this great church, which, like many others, suffered greatly from their violence, so much so that it was shorn entirely of its riches, its reliquaries, and much of its decoration. The dimensions of this church are not great, and its beauties are quite of a comparative quality; but for all that it is a most interesting cathedral. The very grim but majestic severity of its canopied portal--with its flanking cylindrical pillars, called by the French _tourelles élancés_--gives the key-note of it all, and a note which many a more perfect church lacks. This curious porch well bespeaks the time when the Church was both spiritual and militant, and ranks as an innovation--though an incomplete and possibly imperfect one--in the manner of finishing off a west façade. Its queer, suspended canopy and slight turreted towers are unique; though, for a fact, they suggest, in embryo, those lavish Burgundian porches; but it is only a suggestion, because of the incompleteness and bareness. However, this porch is the distinct fragment of the cathedral which will appeal to all who come into contact therewith. The general effect of the interior is even more plain than that of the outer walls, and is only remarkable because of its fine and true proportions of length, breadth, and height. The triforium is but a suggestion of an arcade, supported by black marble columns. The clerestory above is diminutive, and the window piercings are infrequent. At the present time the choir is hung with a series of curtains of _panne_--not tapestries in this case. The effect is more theatrical than ecclesiastical. The architectural embellishments are to-day practically _nil_, but instead one sees everywhere large, uninterrupted blank walls without decoration of any sort. The principal decorations of the southern portal are the only relaxation in this otherwise simple and austere fabric. Here is an elaborately carved tympanum and an ornamented architrave, which suggests that the added mellowness of a century or two yet to come will grant to it some approach to distinction. This portal is by no means an insignificant work, but it lacks that ripeness which is only obtained by the process of time. Three rectangular towers rise to unequal heights above the roof, and, like the western porch, are bare and primitive, though they would be effective enough could one but get an _ensemble_ view that would bring them into range. They are singularly unbeautiful, however, when compared with their northern brethren. [Illustration] XI CATHÉDRALE D'AGDE This tiny Mediterranean city was founded originally by the Phoenicians as a commercial port, and finally grew, in spite of its diminutive proportions, to great importance. Says an old writer: "Agde is not so very big, but it is Rich and Trading-Merchantmen can now come pretty near Agde and Boats somewhat large enter into the Mouth of the River; where they exchange many Commodities for the Wines of the Country." Agde formerly, as if to emphasize its early importance, had its own viscounts, whose estates fell to the share of those of Nîmes; but in 1187, Bernard Atton, son of a Viscount of Nîmes, presented to the Bishop of Agde the viscounty of the city. Thus, it is seen, a certain good-fellowship must have existed between the Church and state of a former day. Formerly travellers told tales of Agde, whereby one might conclude its aspect was as dull and gloomy as "Black Angers" of King John's time; and from the same source we learn of the almost universal use of a dull, slate-like stone in the construction of its buildings. To-day this dulness is not to be remarked. What will strike the observer, first and foremost, as being the chief characteristic, is the castellated _ci-devant_ cathedral church. Here is in evidence the blackish basalt, or lava rock, to a far greater extent than elsewhere in the town. It was a good medium for the architect-builder to work in, and he produced in this not great or magnificent church a truly impressive structure. The bishopric was founded in the fifth century under St. Venuste, and came to its end at the suppression in 1790. Its former cathedral is cared for by the _Ministère des Beaux-Arts_ as a _monument historique_. The structure was consecrated as early as the seventh century, when a completed edifice was built up from the remains of a pagan temple, which formerly existed on the site. Mostly, however, the work is of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, notably the massive square tower which, one hundred and twenty feet in height, forms a beacon by sea and a landmark on shore which no wayfarer by ship, road, or rail is likely to miss. A cloister of exceedingly handsome design and arrangement is attached to the cathedral, where it is said the _mâchicoulis_ is the most ancient known. This feature is also notable in the roof-line of the nave, which, with the extraordinary window piercings and their disposition, heightens still more the suggestion of the manner of castle-building of the time. The functions of the two edifices were never combined, though each--in no small way--frequently partook of many of the characteristics of the other. Aside from this really beautiful cloister, and a rather gorgeous, though manifestly good, painted altar-piece, there are no other noteworthy accessories; and the interest and charm of this not really great church lie in its aspect of strength and utility as well as its environment, rather than in any real æsthetic beauty. [Illustration: _St. Nazaire de Béziers_] XII ST. NAZAIRE DE BÉZIERS St. Nazaire de Béziers is, in its strongly fortified attributes of frowning ramparts and well-nigh invulnerable situation, a continuation of the suggestion that the mediæval church was frequently a stronghold in more senses than one. The church fabric itself has not the grimness of power of the more magnificent St. Cécile at Albi or Notre Dame at Rodez, but their functions have been much the same; and here, as at Albi, the ancient episcopal palace is duly barricaded after a manner that bespeaks, at least, forethought and strategy. These fortress-churches of the South seem to have been a product of environment as much as anything; though on the other hand it may have been an all-seeing effort to provide for such contingency or emergency as might, in those mediæval times, have sprung up anywhere. At all events, these proclaimed shelters, from whatever persecution or disasters might befall, were not only for the benefit of the clergy, but for all their constituency; and such stronghold as they offered was for the shelter, temporary or protracted, of all the population, or such of them as could be accommodated. Surely this was a doubly devout and utilitarian object. In this section at any rate--the extreme south of France, and more particularly to the westward of the _Bouches-du-Rhône_--the regional "wars of religion" made some such protection necessary; and hence the development of this type of church-building, not only with respect to the larger cathedral churches, but of a great number of the parish churches which were erected during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The other side of the picture is shown by the acts of intolerance on the part of the Church, for those who merely differed from them in their religious tenets and principles. Fanatics these outsiders may have been, and perhaps not wholly tractable or harmless, but they were, doubtless, as deserving of protection as were the faithful themselves. This was not for them, however, and as for the violence and hatred with which they were held here, one has only to recall that at Béziers took place the crowning massacres of the Albigenses--"the most learned, intellectual, and philosophic revolters from the Church of Rome." Beneath the shadow of these grim walls and towers over twenty thousand men and women and children were slaughtered by the fanatics of orthodox France and Rome; led on and incited by the Bishop of Béziers, who has been called--and justly as it would seem--"the blackest-souled bigot who ever deformed the face of God's earth." The cathedral at Béziers is not a great or imposing structure when taken by itself. It is only in conjunction with its fortified walls and ramparts and commanding situation that it rises to supreme rank. It is commonly classed as a work of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, and with the characteristics of its era and local environment, it presents no very grand or ornate features. Its first general plan was due to a layman-architect, Gervais, which perhaps accounts for a certain lack of what might otherwise be referred to as ecclesiastical splendour. The remains of this early work are presumably slight; perhaps nothing more than the foundation walls, as a fire in 1209 did a considerable damage. The transepts were added in the thirteenth century, and the two dwarfed towers in the fourteenth, at which period was built the _clocher_ (151 feet), the apside, and the nave proper. There is not a great brilliancy or refulgent glow from the fabric from which St. Nazaire de Béziers is built; as is so frequent in secular works in this region. The stone was dark, apparently, to start with, and has aged considerably since it was put into place. This, in a great measure, accounts for the lack of liveliness in the design and arrangement of this cathedral, and the only note which breaks the monotony of the exterior are the two statues, symbolical of the ancient and the modern laws of the universe, which flank the western portal--or what stands for such, did it but possess the dignity of magnitude. So far as the exterior goes, it is one's first acquaintance with St. Nazaire, when seen across the river Orb, which gives the most lively and satisfying impression. The interior attributes of worth and interest are more numerous and pleasing. The nave is aisleless, but has numerous lateral chapels. The choir has a remarkable series of windows which preserve, even to-day, their ancient protecting _grilles_--a series of wonderfully worked iron scrolls. These serve to preserve much fourteenth-century glass of curious, though hardly beautiful, design. To a great extent this ancient glass is hidden from view by a massive eighteenth-century _retable_, which is without any worth whatever as an artistic accessory. A cloister of the fourteenth century flanks the nave on the south, and is the chief feature of really appealing quality within the confines of the cathedral precincts. The view from the terrace before the cathedral is one which is hardly approachable elsewhere. For many miles in all directions stretches the low, flat plain of Languedoc; the Mediterranean lies to the east; the Cevennes and the valley of the Orb to the north; with the lance-like Canal du Midi stretching away to the westward. As might be expected, the streets of the city are tortuous and narrow, but there are evidences of the march of improvement which may in time be expected to eradicate all this--to the detriment of the picturesque aspect. [Illustration] XIII ST. JEAN DE PERPIGNAN Perpignan is another of those provincial cities of France which in manners and customs sedulously imitate those of their larger and more powerful neighbours. From the fact that it is the chief town of the Départment des Pyrénêes-Orientales, it perhaps justifies the procedure. But it is as the ancient capital of Rousillon--only united with France in 1659--that the imaginative person will like to think of it--in spite of its modern cafés, tram-cars, and _magazins_. Like the smaller and less progressive town of Elne, Perpignan retains much the same Catalonian flavour of "physiognomy, language, and dress;" and its narrow, tortuous streets and the _jalousies_ and _patios_ of its houses carry the suggestion still further. The Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659 changed the course of the city's destinies, and to-day it is the fortress-city of France which commands the easterly route into Spain. The city's Christian influences began when the see was removed hither from Elne, where it had been founded as early as the sixth century. The cathedral of St. Jean is a wonderful structure. In the lines of its apside it suggests those of Albi, while the magnitude of its great strongly roofed nave is only comparable with that of Bordeaux as to its general dimensions. The great distinction of this feature comes from the fact that its Romanesque walls are surmounted by a truly ogival vault. This great church was originally founded by the king of Majorca, who held Rousillon in ransom from the king of Aragon in 1324. The west front is entirely unworthy of the other proportions of the structure, and decidedly the most brilliant and lively view is that of the apside and its chapels. There is an odd fourteenth-century tower, above which is suspended a clock in a cage of iron. The whole design or outline of the exterior of this not very ancient cathedral is in the main Spanish; it is at least not French. This Spanish sentiment is further sustained by many of the interior accessories and details, of which the chief and most elaborate are an altar-screen of wood and stone of great magnificence, a marble _retable_ of the seventeenth century, a baptismal font of the twelfth or thirteenth century, some indifferent paintings, the usual organ _buffet_ with fifteenth-century carving, and a tomb of a former bishop (1695) in the transept. The altars, other than the above, are garish and unappealing. A further notable effect to be seen in the massive nave is the very excellent "pointed" vaulting. There are, close beside the present church, the remains of an older St. Jean--now nought but a ruin. The Bourse (locally called _La Loge_, from the Spanish _Lonja_) has a charming cloistered courtyard of a mixed Moorish-Gothic style. It is well worthy of interest, as is also the citadel and castle of the King of Majorca. The latter has a unique portal to its chapel. It is recorded that Bishop Berengarius II. of Perpignan in the year 1019 visited the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, and on his return built a church or chapel on similar lines in memory of his pilgrimage. No remains of it are visible to-day, nor can it be further traced. Mention of it is made here from the fact that it seems to have been a worthy undertaking,--this memorial of a prelate's devotion to his faith. [Illustration] XIV STE. EULALIA D'ELNE Elne is the first in importance of the dead cities which border the Gulf of Lyons. It is the ancient _Illiberis_, frequently mentioned by Pliny, Livy, and, latterly, Gibbon. To-day it is ignored by all save the _commis voyageur_ and a comparatively small number of the genuine French _touristes_. Formerly the ancient province of Rousillon, in which Elne is situated, and which bordered upon the Spanish frontier, was distinctly Spanish as to manners and customs. It is, moreover, the reputed spot where Hannibal first encamped after crossing the Pyrenees on his march to Rome. Like Bayonne, at the other extremity of the Pyrenean mountain chain, it commanded the gateway to Spain, and even to-day is the real entrance of the railway route to Barcelona, as is Bayonne to Madrid. Between these two cities, for a distance approaching one hundred and eighty miles, there is scarce a highway over the mountain barrier along which a wheeled vehicle may travel with comfort, and the tiny Republic of Andorra, though recently threatened with the advent of the railway, is still isolated and unspoiled from the tourist influence, as well as from undue intercourse with either France or Spain, which envelop its few square miles of area as does the Atlantic Ocean the Azores. To-day Elne is no longer the seat of a bishop, the see of Rousillon having been transferred to Perpignan in the fourteenth century, after having endured from the time of the first bishop, Domnus, since the sixth century. There has been left as a reminder a very interesting and beautiful smaller cathedral church of the early eleventh century. Alterations and restorations, mostly of the fifteenth century, have changed its material aspect but little, and it still remains a highly captivating monumental glory; which opinion is further sustained from the fact that the _Commission des Monuments Historiques_ has had the fabric under its own special care for many years. It is decidedly a minor edifice, and its parts are as unimpressive as its lack of magnitude; still, for all that, the church-lovers will find much crude beauty in this Romanesque basilica-planned church, with its dependant cloister of a very beautiful flowing Gothic of the fifteenth century. The chief artistic treasures of this ancient cathedral, aside from its elegant cloister, are a _bénitier_ in white marble; a portal of some pretensions, leading from the cathedral to its cloister; a fourteen-century tomb, of some considerable artistic worth; and a _bas-relief_, called the "Tomb of Constans." There is little else of note, either in or about the cathedral, and the town itself has the general air of a glory long past. [Illustration: ST. JUST _de NARBONNE_] XV ST. JUST DE NARBONNE The ancient province of Narbonenses--afterward comprising Languedoc--had for its capital what is still the city of Narbonne. One may judge of the former magnificence of Narbonne by the following lines of _Sidonius Apollinaris_: "Salve Narbo potens Salubritate, Qui Urbè et Rure simul bonus Videris, Muris, Civibus, ambitu, Tabernis, Portis, Porticibus, Foro, Theatro, Delubris, Capitoliis, Monetis, Thermis, Arcubus, Harreis, Macellis, Pratis, Fontibus, Insulus, Salinis, Stagnis, Flumine, Merce, Ponte, Ponto, Unus qui jure venere divos Lenoeum, Cererum, Palem, Minervam, Spicis, Palmite, Poscius, Tapetis." Narbonne is still mighty and healthful, if one is to judge from the activities of the present day; is picturesque and pleasing, and far more comfortably disposed than many cities with a more magnificently imposing situation. The city remained faithful to the Romans until the utmost decay of the western empire, at which time (462) it was delivered to the Goths. It was first the head of a kingdom, and later, when it came to the Romans, it was made the capital of a province which comprised the fourth part of Gaul. This in turn was subdivided into the provinces of _Narbonenses_, _Viennensis_, the _Greek Alps_, and the _Maritime Alps_, that is, all of the later _Savoie_, _Dauphiné_, _Provence_, _Lower Languedoc_, _Rousillon_, _Toulousan_, and the _Comté de Foix_. Under the second race of kings, the Dukes of _Septimannia_ took the title of _Ducs de Narbonne_, but the lords of the city contented themselves with the name of viscount, which they bore from 1134 to 1507, when Gaston de Foix--the last Viscount of Narbonne--exchanged it for other lands, with his uncle, the French king, Louis XII. The most credulous affirm that the Proconsul Sergius Paulus--converted by St. Paul--was the first preacher of Christianity at Narbonne. The Church is here, therefore, of great antiquity, and there are plausible proofs which demonstrate the claim. The episcopal palace at Narbonne, closely built up with the Hôtel de Ville (rebuilt by Viollet-le-Duc), is a realization of the progress of the art of domestic fortified architecture of the time. Like its contemporary at Laon in the north, and more particularly after the manner of the papal palace at Avignon and the archbishop's palace at Albi, this structure combined the functions of a domestic and official establishment with those of a stronghold or a fortified place of no mean pretence. Dating from 1272, the cathedral of St. Just de Narbonne suggests comparison with, or at least the influence of, Amiens. It is strong, hardy, and rich, with a directness of purpose with respect to its various attributes that in a less lofty structure is wanting. The height of the choir-vault is perhaps a hundred and twenty odd feet, as against one hundred and forty-seven at Amiens, and accordingly it does not suffer in comparison. It may be remarked that these northern attributes of lofty vaulting and the high development of the _arc-boutant_ were not general throughout the south, or indeed in any other region than the north of France. Only at Bazas, Bordeaux, Bayonne, Auch, Toulouse, and Narbonne do we find these features in any acceptable degree of perfection. The architects of the Midi had, by resistance and defiance, conserved antique traditions with much greater vigour than they had endorsed the new style, with the result that many of their structures, of a period contemporary with the early development of the Gothic elsewhere, here favoured it little if at all. Only from the thirteenth century onward did they make general use of ogival vaulting, maintaining with great conservatism the basilica plan of Roman tradition. In many other respects than constructive excellence does St. Just show a pleasing aspect. It has, between the main body of the church and the present Hôtel de Ville and the remains of the ancient _archevêché_, a fragmentary cloister which is grand to the point of being scenic. It dates from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and is decidedly the most appealing feature of the entire cathedral precincts. [Illustration: CLOISTER OF ST. JUST _de NARBONNE_....] The cathedral itself still remains unachieved as to completeness, but its _tourelles_, its vaulting, its buttresses, and its crenelated walls are most impressive. There are some elaborate tombs in the interior, in general of the time of Henri IV. The _trésor_ is rich in missals, manuscripts, ivories, and various altar ornaments and decorations. The choir is enclosed with a series of arena-like _loges_, outside which runs a double aisle. There are fragmentary evidences of the one-time possession of good glass, but what paintings are shown appear ordinary and are doubtless of little worth. Decidedly the cathedral is an unusually splendid, if not a truly magnificent, work. _PART V_ _The Valley of the Garonne_ I INTRODUCTORY The basin of the Garonne includes all of the lower Aquitanian province, Lower Languedoc,--still a debatable and undefinable land,--and much of that region known of lovers of France, none the less than the native himself, as the _Midi_. Literally the term _Midi_ refers to the south of France, but more particularly that part which lies between the mouth of the Rhône and the western termination of the Pyrenean mountain boundary between France and Spain. The term is stamped indelibly in the popular mind by the events which emanated from that wonderful march of the legion, known as "_Les Rouges du Midi_," in Revolutionary times. We have heard much of the excesses of the Revolution, but certainly the vivid history of "_Les Rouges_" as recounted so well in that admirable book of Félix Gras (none the less truthful because it is a novel), which bears the same name, gives every justification to those valiant souls who made up that remarkable phalanx; of whose acts most historians and humanitarians are generally pleased to revile as cruelty and sacrilege unspeakable. Félix Gras himself has told of the ignoble subjection in which his own great-grandfather, a poor peasant, was held; and Frederic Mistral tells of a like incident--of lashing and beating--which was thrust upon a relative of his. If more reason were wanted, a perusal of the written records of the Marseilles Battalion will point the way. Written history presents many stubborn facts, difficult to digest and hard to swallow; but the historical novel in the hands of a master will prove much that is otherwise unacceptable. A previous acquaintance with this fascinating and lurid story is absolutely necessary for a proper realization of the spirit which endowed the inhabitants of this section of the _pays du Midi_. To-day the same spirit lives to a notable degree. The atmosphere and the native character alike are both full of sunshine and shadow; grown men and women are yet children, and gaiety, humour, and passion abound where, in the more austere North, would be seen nought but indifference and indolence. It is the fashion to call the South languid, but nowhere more than at Bordeaux--where the Garonne joins La Gironde--will you find so great and ceaseless an activity. The people are not, to be sure, of the peasant class, still they are not such town-dwellers as in many other parts, and seem to combine, as do most of the people of southern France, a languor and keenness which are intoxicating if not stimulating. Between Bordeaux and Toulouse are not many great towns, but, in the words of Taine, one well realizes that "it is a fine country." The Garonne valley, with a fine alluvial soil, grows, productively and profitably, corn, tobacco, and hemp; and by the utmost industry and intelligence the workers are able to prosper exceedingly. The traveller from the Mediterranean across to the Atlantic--or the reverse--by rail, will get glimpses now and then of this wonderfully productive river-bottom, as it flows yellow-brown through its osier-bedded banks; and again, an intermittent view of the Canal du Midi, upon whose non-raging bosom is carried a vast water-borne traffic by barge and canal-boat, which even the development of the railway has not been able to appreciably curtail. Here, too, the peasant proprietor is largely in evidence, which is an undoubted factor in the general prosperity. His blockings, hedgings, and fencings have spoiled the expanse of hillside and vale in much the same manner as in Albion. This may be a pleasing feature to the uninitiated, but it is not a picturesque one. However, the proprietorship of small plots of land, worked by their non-luxury demanding owners, is accountable for a great deal of the peace and plenty with which all provincial France, if we except certain mountainous regions, seems to abound. It may not provide a superabundance of this world's wealth and luxury, but the French farmer--in a small way--has few likes of that nature, and the existing conditions make for a contentment which the dull, brutal, and lethargic farm labourer of some parts of England might well be forced to emulate, if even by ball and chain. Flat-roofed houses, reminiscent of Spain or Italy--born of a mild climate--add a pleasing variety of architectural feature, while the curiously hung bells--with their flattened belfries, like the headstones in a cemetery--suggest something quite different from the motives which inspired the northern builders, who enclosed their chimes in a roofed-over, open-sided cubicle. The bells here hang merely in apertures open to the air on each side, and ring out sharp and true to the last dying note. It is a most picturesque and unusual arrangement, hardly to be seen elsewhere as a characteristic feature outside Spain itself, and in some of the old Missions, which the Spanish Fathers built in the early days of California. Between Bayonne and Bordeaux, and bordered by the sea, the Garonne, and the Adour, is a nondescript land which may be likened to the deserts of Africa or Asia, except that its barrenness is of the sea salty. It is by no means unpeopled, though uncultivated and possessed of little architectural splendour of either a past or the present day. Including the half of the department of the Gironde, a corner of Lot et Garonne, and all of that which bears its name, the Landes forms of itself a great seaboard plain or morass. It is said by a geographical authority that the surface so very nearly approaches the rectilinear that for a distance of twenty-eight miles between the dismal villages of Lamothe and Labonheyre the railway is "a visible meridian." The early eighteenth-century writers--in English--used to revile all France, so far as its topographical charms were concerned, with panegyrics upon its unloveliness and lack of variety, and of being anything more than a flat, arid land, which was not sufficient even unto itself. What induced this extraordinary reasoning it is hard to realize at the present day. Its beauties are by no means as thinly sown as is thought by those who know them slightly--from a window of a railway carriage, or a sojourn of a month in Brittany, a week in Provence, or a fortnight in Touraine. The _ennui_ of a journey through France is the result of individual incapacity for observation, not of the country. Above all, it is certainly not true of Guienne or Gascony, nor of Provence, nor of Dauphiné, nor Auvergne, nor Savoie. As great rivers go, the Garonne is not of very great size, nor so very magnificent in its reaches, nor so very picturesque,--with that minutiæ associated with English rivers of a like rank,--but it is suggestive of far more than most streams of its size and length, wherever found. Its source is well within the Spanish frontier, in the picturesque Val d'Aran, where the boundary between the two countries makes a curious détour, and leaves the crest of the Pyrenees, which it follows throughout--with this exception--from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. The Garonne becomes navigable at Cazères, some distance above Toulouse, and continues its course, enhanced by the confluence of the Tarn, the Lot, the Arriège, and the Dordogne, beyond the junction of which, two hundred and seventy odd miles from the head of navigation, the estuary takes on the nomenclature of _La Gironde_. Of the ancient provinces of these parts, the most famous is Guienne, that "fair duchy" once attached--by a subtle process of reasoning--to the English crown. It is distinguished, as to its economic aspect, by its vast vineyards, which have given the wines, so commonly esteemed, the name of claret. These and the other products of the country have found their way into all markets of the world through the Atlantic coast metropolis of Bordeaux. The Gascogne of old was a large province to the southward of Guienne. A romantic land, say the chroniclers and _mere litterateurs_ alike. "Peopled by a race fiery, ardent, and impetuous ... with a peculiar tendency to boasting, hence the term _gasconade_." The peculiar and characteristic feature of Gascogne, as distinct from that which holds in the main throughout these parts, is that strange and wild section called the _Landes_, which is spoken of elsewhere. The ancient province of Languedoc, which in its lower portion is included in this section, is generally reputed to be the pride of France with regard to climate, soil, and scenery. Again, this has been ruled otherwise, but a more or less intimate acquaintance with the region does not fail to endorse the first claim. This wide, strange land has not vastly changed its aspect since the inhabitants first learned to fly instead of fight. This statement is derived to a great extent from legend, but, in addition, is supported by much literary and historical opinion, which has recorded its past. It is not contemptuous criticism any more than Froissart's own words; therefore let it stand. When the French had expelled the Goths beyond the Pyrenees, Charlemagne established his governors in Languedoc with the title of Counts of Toulouse. The first was Corson, in 778; the second St. W. du Courtnez or Aux-Cornets, from whence the princes of Orange derive their pedigree, as may be inferred from the hunting-horns in their arms. Up to the eighteenth century these states retained a certain independence and exercise of home rule, and had an Assembly made up of "the three orders of the kingdom," the clergy, the nobility, and the people. The Archbishop of Narbonne was president of the body, though he was seldom called upon but to give the king money. This he acquired by the laying on of an extraordinary imposition under the name of "_Don-Gratuit_." The wide, rolling country of Lower Languedoc has no very grand topographical features, but it is watered by frequent and ample streams, and peopled with row upon row of sturdy trees, with occasional groves of mulberries, olives, and other citrus fruits. Over all glows the luxuriant southern sun with a tropical brilliance, but without its fierce burning rays. Mention of the olive suggests the regard which most of us have for this tree of romantic and sentimental association. As a religious emblem, it is one of the most favoured relics which has descended to us from Biblical times. A writer on southern France has questioned the beauty of the growing tree. It does, truly, look somewhat mop-headed, and it does spread somewhat like a mushroom, but, with all that, it is a picturesque and prolific adjunct to a southern landscape, and has been in times past a source of inspiration to poets and painters, and of immeasurable profit to the thrifty grower. The worst feature which can possibly be called up with respect to Lower Languedoc is the "skyey influences" of the Mistral, dry and piercingly cold wind which blows southward through all the Rhône valley with a surprising strength. Madame de Sévigné paints it thus in words: "_Le tourbillon, l'ouragan, tous les diables dechainés qui veulent bien emporter votre château._" Foremost among the cities of the region are Toulouse, Carcassonne, Montpellier, Narbonne, and Béziers, of which Carcassonne is preëminent as to its picturesque interest, and perhaps, as well, as to its storied past. The Pyrenees have of late attracted more and more attention from the tourist, who has become sated with the conventionality of the "trippers' tour" to Switzerland. The many attractive resorts which the Pyrenean region has will doubtless go the way of others elsewhere--if they are given time, but for the present this entire mountain region is possessed of much that will appeal to the less conventional traveller. Of all the mountain ranges of Europe, the Pyrenees stand unique as to their regularity of configuration and strategic importance. They bind and bound Spain and France with a bony ligature which is indented like the edge of a saw. From the Atlantic at Bayonne to the Mediterranean at Port Bou, the mountain chain divides its valleys and ridges with the regularity of a wall-trained shrub or pear-tree, and sinks on both sides to the level plains of France and Spain. In the midst of this rises the river Garonne. Its true source is in the Piedrafitta group of peaks, whence its waters flow on through Toulouse, various tributaries combining to give finally to Bordeaux its commanding situation and importance. Around its source, which is the true centre of the Pyrenees, is the parting line between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. On one side the waters flow down through the fields of France to the Biscayan Bay, and on the other southward and westward through the Iberian peninsula. Few of the summits exceed the height of the ridge by more than two thousand feet; whereas in the Alps many rise from six to eight thousand feet above the _massif_, while scenic Mont Blanc elevates its head over fifteen thousand feet. As a barrier, the Pyrenees chain is unique. For over one hundred and eighty miles, from the Col de la Perche to Maya--practically a suburb of Bayonne--not a carriage road nor a railway crosses the range. The etymology of the name of this mountain chain is in dispute. Many suppose it to be from the Greek _pur_ (fire), alluding to the volcanic origin of the peaks. This is endorsed by many, while others consider that it comes from the Celtic word _byren_, meaning a mountain. Both derivations are certainly apropos, but the weight of favour must always lie with the former rather than the latter. The ancient province of Béarn is essentially mediæval to-day. Its local tongue is a pure Romance language; something quite distinct from mere _patois_. It is principally thought to be a compound of Latin and Teutonic with an admixture of Arabic. This seems involved, but, as it is unlike modern French, or Castilian, and modern everything else, it would seem difficult for any but an expert student of tongues to place it definitely. To most of us it appears to be but a jarring jumble of words, which may have been left behind by the followers of the various conquerors which at one time or another swept over the land. II ST. ANDRÉ DE BORDEAUX "One finds here reminders of the Visigoths, the Franks, the Saracens, and the English; and the temples, theatres, arenas, and monuments by which each made his mark of possession yet remain." --AURELIAN SCHOLL. Taine in his _Carnets de Voyage_ says of Bordeaux: "It is a sort of second Paris, gay and magnificent ... amusement is the main business." Bordeaux does not change. It has ever been advanced, and always a centre of gaiety. Its fêtes and functions quite rival those of the capital itself,--at times,--and its opera-house is the most famed and magnificent in France, outside of Paris. It is a city of enthusiastic demonstrations. It was so in 1814 for the Bourbons, and again a year later for the emperor on his return from Elba. In 1857 it again surpassed itself in its enthusiasm for Louis Napoleon, when he was received in the cathedral, under a lofty dais, and led to the altar with the cry of "_Vive l'empereur_;" while during the bloody Franco-Prussian war it was the seat of the provisional government of Thiers. Here the Gothic wave of the North has produced in the cathedral of St. André a remarkably impressive and unexpected example of the style. In the general effect of size alone it will rank with many more important and more beautiful churches elsewhere. Its total length of over four hundred and fifty feet ranks it among the longest in France, and its vast nave, with a span of sixty feet, aisleless though it be, gives a still further expression of grandeur and magnificence. It is known that three former cathedrals were successfully destroyed by invading Goths, Saracens, and warlike Normans. Yet another structure was built in the eleventh century, which, with the advent of the English in Guienne, in the century following, was enlarged and magnified into somewhat of an approach to the present magnificent dimensions, though no English influence prevailed toward erecting a central tower, as might have been anticipated. Instead we have two exceedingly graceful and lofty spired towers flanking the north transept, and yet another single tower, lacking its spire, on the south. The portal of the north transept--of the fourteenth century--is an elaborate work of itself. It is divided into two bays that join beneath a dais, on which is a statue of Bertrand de Goth, who was Pope in 1305, under the name of Clement V. He is here clothed in sacerdotal habits, and stands upright in the attitude of benediction. At the lower right-hand side are statues of six bishops, but, like that of Pope Clement, they do not form a part of the constructive elements of the portal, as did most work of a like nature in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but are made use of singly as a decorative motive. The spring of the arch which surrounds the tympanum is composed of a cordon of foliaged stone separating the six angels of the _première archivolte_ from the twelve apostles of the second, and the fourteen patriarchs and prophets of the third. In the tympanum are three _bas-reliefs_ superimposed one upon the other, the upper being naturally the smaller. They represent the Christ triumphant, seated on a dais between two angels, one bearing a staff and the other a veil, while above hover two other angelic figures holding respectively the moon and sun. The arrangement is not so elaborate or gracefully executed as many, but in its simple and expressive symbolism, in spite of the fact that the whole added ornament appears an afterthought, is far more convincing than many more pretentious works of a similar nature. Another exterior feature of note is seen at the third pillar at the right of the choir. It is a curious double (back-to-back) statue of Ste. Anne and the Virgin. It is of stone and of the late sixteenth century, when sculpture--if it had not actually debased itself by superfluity of detail--was of an excellence of symmetry which was often lacking entirely from work of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The choir-chevet is a magnificent pyramidal mass of piers, pinnacles, and buttresses of much elegance. The towers which flank the north transept are adorned with an excellent disposition of ornament. The greater part of this cathedral was constructed during the period of English domination; the choir would doubtless never have been achieved in its present form had it not been for the liberality of Edward I. and Pope Clement V., who had been the archbishop of the diocese. The cathedral of St. André dates practically from 1252, and is, in inception and execution, a very complete Gothic church. Over its aisleless nave is carried one of the boldest and most magnificent vaults known. The nave is more remarkable, however, for this gigantic attribute than for any other excellencies which it possesses. In the choir, which rises much higher than the nave, there comes into being a double aisle on either side, as if to make up for the deficiencies of the nave in this respect. The choir arrangement and accessories are remarkably elaborate, though many of them are not of great artistic worth. Under the organ are two sculptured Renaissance _bas-reliefs_, taken from the ancient _jube_, and representing a "Descent from the Cross" and "Christ Bearing the Cross." There are two religious paintings of some value, one by Jordaens, and the other by Alex. Veronese. Before the left transept is a monument to Cardinal de Cheverus, with his statue. Surrounding the stonework of a monument to d'Ant de Noailles (1662) is a fine work of wood-carving. The high-altar is of the period contemporary with the main body of the cathedral, and was brought thither from the Église de la Réole. The Province of Bordeaux, as the early ecclesiastical division was known, had its archiepiscopal seat at Bordeaux in the fourth century, though it had previously (in the third century) been made a bishopric. III CATHÉDRALE DE LECTOURE Lectoure, though defunct as a bishopric to-day, had endured from the advent of Heuterius, in the sixth century, until 1790. In spite of the lack of ecclesiastical remains of a very great rank, there is in its one-time cathedral a work which can hardly be contemplated except with affectionate admiration. The affairs of a past day, either with respect to Church or State, appear not to have been very vivid or highly coloured; in fact, the reverse appears to be the case. In pre-mediæval times--when the city was known as the Roman village of _Lactora_--it was strongly fortified, like most hilltop towns of Gaul. The cathedral dates for the most part from the thirteenth century, and in the massive tower which enwraps its façade shows strong indications of the workmanship of an alien hand, which was neither French nor Italian. This tower is thought to resemble the Norman work of England and the north of France, and in some measure it does, though it may be questioned as to whether this is the correct classification. This tower, whatever may have been its origin, is, however, one of those features which is to be admired for itself alone; and it amply endorses and sustains the claim of this church to a consideration more lasting than a mere passing fancy. The entire plan is unusually light and graceful, and though, by no stretch of opinion could it be thought of as Gothic, it has not a little of the suggestion of the style, which at a former time must have been even more pronounced in that its western tower once possessed a spire which rose to a sky-piercing height. The lower tower still remains, but the spire, having suffered from lightning and the winds at various times, was, a century or more ago, removed. The nave has a series of lateral chapels, each surmounted by a sort of gallery or tribune, which would be notable in any church edifice, and there is fine traceried vaulting in the apsidal chapels, which also contain some effective, though modern coloured glass. The former episcopal residence is now the local Mairie. On a clear day, it is said, the towers of the cathedral at Auch may be seen to the northward, while in the opposite direction the serrated ridge of the Pyrenees is likewise visible. [Illustration: NOTRE DAME _de BAYONNE_] IV NOTRE DAME DE BAYONNE "Distant are the violet Pyrenees, wonderful and regal in their grandeur. The sun is bright, and laughs joyously at the Béarnais peasant." --JEAN RAMEAU. Bayonne is an ancient town, and was known by the Romans as _Lapurdum_. As a centre of Christianity, it was behind its neighbours, as no bishopric was founded here until Arsias Rocha held the see in the ninth century. No church-building of remark followed for at least two centuries, when the foundations were laid upon which the present cathedral was built up. Like the cities and towns of Rousillon, at the opposite end of the Pyrenean chain, Bayonne has for ever been of mixed race and characteristics. Basques, Spaniards, Béarnese, and "alien French"--as the native calls them--went to make up its conglomerate population in the past, and does even yet in considerable proportions. To the reader of history, the mediæval Béarn and Navarre, which to-day forms the Department of the Basses-Pyrénées in the southwest corner of France, will have the most lively interest, from the fact of its having been the principality of _Henri Quatre_, the "good king" whose name was so justly dear. The history of the Béarnese is a wonderful record of a people of which too little is even yet known. Bayonne itself has had many and varied historical associations, though it is not steeped in that antiquity which is the birthright of many another favoured spot. Guide-books and the "notes-and-queries columns" of antiquarian journals have unduly enlarged upon the fact that the bayonet--to-day a well-nigh useless appendage as a weapon of war--was first invented here. It is interesting as a fact, perhaps, but it is not of æsthetic moment. The most gorgeous event of history connected with Bayonne and its immediate vicinity--among all that catalogue, from the minor Spanish invasions to Wellington's stupendous activities--was undoubtedly that which led up to the famous Pyrenean Treaty made on the Isle du Faisan, close beside the bridge, in the river Bidassoa, on the Spanish frontier. The memory of the parts played therein by Mazarin and De Haro, and not less the gorgeous pavilion in which the function was held, form a setting which the writers of "poetical plays" and "historical romances" seem to have neglected. This magnificent apartment was decorated by Velasquez, who, it is said, died of his inglorious transformation into an upholsterer. The cathedral at Bayonne is contemporary with those at Troyes, Meaux, and Auxerre, in the north of France. It resembles greatly the latter as to general proportions and situation, though it possesses two completed spires, whereas St. Etienne, at Auxerre, has but one. In size and beauty the cathedral at Bayonne is far above the lower rank of the cathedrals of France, and in spite of extensive restorations, it yet stands forth as a mediæval work of great importance. From a foundation of the date of 1140, a structure was in part completed by 1213, at which time the whole existing fabric suffered the ravages of fire. Work was immediately undertaken again, commencing with the choir; and, except for the grand portal of the west front, the whole church was finished by the mid-sixteenth century. Restoration of a late date, induced by the generosity of a native of the city, has resulted in the completion of the cathedral, which, if not a really grand church to-day, is an exceedingly near approach thereto. The fine western towers are modern, but they form the one note which produces the effect of _ensemble_, which otherwise would be entirely wanting. The view from the Quai Bergemet, just across the Adour, for picturesqueness of the quality which artists--tyros and masters alike--love to sketch, is reminiscent only of St. Lo in Normandy. Aside from the charm of its general picturesqueness of situation and grouping, Notre Dame de Bayonne will appeal mostly by its interior arrangements and embellishments. The western portal is still lacking the greatness which future ages may yet bestow upon it, and that of the north transept, by which one enters, is, though somewhat more ornate, not otherwise remarkable. A florid cloister of considerable size attaches itself on the south, but access is had only from the sacristy. The choir and apse are of the thirteenth century, and immediately followed the fire of 1213. Neither the transepts nor choir are of great length; indeed, they are attenuated as compared with those of the more magnificent churches of the Gothic type, of which this is, in a way, an otherwise satisfying example. The patriotic Englishman will take pride in the fact that the English arms are graven somewhere in the vaulting of the nave. He may not be able to spy them out,--probably will not be,--but they likely enough existed, as a mid-Victorian writer describes them minutely, though no modern guides or works of local repute make mention of the feature in any way. The triforium is elegantly traceried, and is the most worthy and artistic detail to be seen in the whole structure. The clerestory windows contain glass of the fifteenth century; much broken to-day, but of the same excellent quality of its century, and that immediately preceding. The remainder of the glass, in the clerestory and choir, is modern. In the sacristy is a remarkable series of perfectly preserved thirteenth-century sculptures in stone which truthfully--with the before-mentioned triforum--are the real "art treasures" of the cathedral. The three naves; the nave proper and its flanking aisles; the transepts, attenuated though they be; and the equally shallow choir, all in some way present a really grand effect, at once harmonious and pleasing. The pavement of the sanctuary is modern, as also the high-altar, but both are generously good in design. These furnishings are mainly of Italian marbles, hung about with tapestries, which, if not of superlative excellence, are at least effective. Modern mural paintings with backgrounds in gold decorate the _abside_ chapels. There are many attributes of picturesque quality scattered throughout the city: its unique trade customs, its shipping, its donkeys, and, above any of these, its women themselves picturesque and beautiful. All these will give the artist many lively suggestions. Not many of the class, however, frequent this Biscayan city; which is a loss to art and to themselves. A plea is herein made that its attractions be better known by those who have become _ennuied_ by the "resorts." V ST. JEAN DE BAZAS At the time the grand cathedrals of the north of France were taking on their completed form, a reflex was making itself felt here in the South. Both at Bayonne and Bazas were growing into being two beautiful churches which partook of many of the attributes of Gothic art in its most approved form. St. Jean de Bazas is supposedly of a tenth-century foundation, but its real beginnings, so far as its later approved form is concerned, came only in 1233. From which time onward it came quickly to its completion, or at least to its dedication. It was three centuries before its west front was completed, and when so done--in the sixteenth century--it stood out, as it does to-day, a splendid example of a façade, completely covered with statues of such proportions and excellence that it is justly accounted the richest in the south of France. It quite equals, in general effect, such well-peopled fronts as Amiens or Reims; though here the numbers are not so great, and, manifestly, not of as great an excellence. This small but well-proportioned church has no transepts, but the columnar supports of its vaulting presume an effect of length which only Gothic in its purest forms suggests. The Huguenot rising somewhat depleted and greatly damaged the sculptured decorations of its façade, and likewise much of the interior ornament, but later repairs have done much to preserve the effect of the original scheme, and the church remains to-day an exceedingly gratifying and pleasing example of transplanted Gothic forms. The diocese dates from the foundation of Sextilius, in the sixth century. VI NOTRE DAME DE LESCAR The bishopric here was founded in the fifth century by St. Julian, and lasted till the suppression of 1790; but of all of its importance of past ages, which was great, little is left to-day of ecclesiastical dignity. Lescar itself is an attractive enough small town of France,--it contains but a scant two thousand inhabitants,--but has no great distinction to important rank in any of the walks of life; indeed, its very aspect is of a glory that has departed. It has, however, like so many of the small towns of the ancient Béarn, a notably fine situation: on a high _coteau_ which rises loftily above the _route nationale_ which runs from Toulouse to Bayonne. From the terrace of the former cathedral of Notre Dame can be seen the snow-clad ridge of the Pyrenees and the umbrageous valley and plain which lie between. In this verdant land there is no suggestion of what used--in ignorance or prejudice--to be called "an aspect austere and sterile." The cathedral itself is bare, unto poverty, of tombs and monuments, but a mosaic-worked pavement indicates, by its inscriptions and symbols, that many faithful and devout souls lie buried within the walls. The edifice is of imposing proportions, though it is not to be classed as truly great. From the indications suggested by the heavy pillars and grotesquely carved capitals of its nave, it is manifest that it has been built up, at least in part, from remains of a very early date. It mostly dates from the twelfth century, but in that it was rebuilt during the period of the Renaissance, it is to the latter classification that it really belongs. The curiously carved capitals of the columns of the nave share, with the frescoes of the apse, the chief distinction among the accessory details. They depict, in their ornate and deeply cut heads, dragons and other weird beasts of the land and fowls of the air, in conjunction with unshapely human figures, and while all are intensely grotesque, they are in no degree offensive. There is no exceeding grace or symmetry of outline in any of the parts of this church, but, nevertheless, it has the inexplicable power to please, which counts for a great deal among such inanimate things as architectural forms. It would perhaps be beyond the powers of any one to explain why this is so frequently true of a really unassuming church edifice; more so, perhaps, with regard to churches than to most other things--possibly it is because of the local glamour or sentiment which so envelops a religious monument, and hovers unconsciously and ineradicably over some shrines far more than others. At any rate, the former cathedral of Notre Dame at Lescar has this indefinable quality to a far greater degree than many a more ambitiously conceived fabric. The round-arched window and doorway most prevail, and the portal in particular is of that deeply recessed variety which allows a mellow interior to unfold slowly to the gaze, rather than jump at once into being, immediately one has passed the outer lintel or jamb. The entire suggestion of this church, both inside and out, is of a structure far more massive and weighty than were really needed for a church of its size, but for all that its very stable dimensions were well advised in an edifice which was expected to endure for ages. The entire apse is covered, inside, with a series of frescoes of a very acceptable sort, which, though much defaced to-day, are the principal art attribute of the church. Their author is unknown, but they are probably the work of some Italian hand, and have even been credited to Giotto. The choir-stalls are quaintly carved, with a luxuriance which, in some manner, approaches the Spanish style. They are at least representative of that branch of Renaissance art which was more representative of the highest expression than any other. In form, this old cathedral follows the basilica plan, and is perhaps two hundred feet in length, and some seventy-five in width. The grandfather of Henri IV. and his wife--_la Marguerites des Marguerites_--were formerly buried in this cathedral, but their remains were scattered by either the Huguenots or the Revolutionists. Curiously enough, too, Lescar was the former habitation of a Jesuit College, founded by Henri IV. after his conversion to the Roman faith, but no remains of this institution exist to-day. [Illustration] VII L'ÉGLISE DE LA SÈDE: TARBES Froissart describes Tarbes as "a fine large town, situated in a plain country; there is a city and a town and a castle ... the beautiful river Lisse which runs throughout all Tharbes, and divides it, the which river is as clear as a fountain." Froissart himself nods occasionally, and on this particular occasion has misnamed the river which flows through the city, which is the Adour. The rest of his description might well apply to-day, and the city is most charmingly and romantically environed. Its cathedral will not receive the same adulation which is bestowed upon the charms of the city itself. It is a poor thing, not unlike, in appearance, a market-house or a third-rate town hall of some mean municipality. Once the Black Prince and his "fair maid of Kent" came to this town of the Bigorre, to see the Count of Armagnac, under rather doleful circumstances for the count, who was in prison and in debt to Gaston Phoebus for the amount of his ransom. The "fair maid," however, appears to have played the part of a good fairy, and prevailed upon the magnificent Phoebus to reduce the ransom to the extent of fifty thousand francs. In this incident alone there lies a story, of which all may read in history, and which is especially recommended to those writers of swash-buckler romances who may feel in need of a new plot. There is little in Tarbes but the memory of a fair past to compel attention from the lover of antiquity, of churches, or of art; and there are no remains of any note--even of the time when the Black Prince held his court here. The bishopric is very ancient, and dates from the sixth century, when St. Justin first filled the office. In spite of this, however, there is very little inspiration to be derived from a study of this quite unconvincing cathedral, locally known as the Église de la Sède. This Romanesque-Transition church, though dating from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, has neither the strength and character of the older style, nor the vigour of the new. The nave is wide, but short, and has no aisles. At the transept is a superimposed octagonal cupola, which is quite unbeautiful and unnecessary. It is a fourteenth-century addition which finally oppresses this ungainly heavy edifice beyond the hope of redemption. Built upon the façade is a Renaissance portal which of itself would be a disfigurement anywhere, but which here gives the final blow to a structure which is unappealing from every point. The present-day prefecture was the former episcopal residence. The bishopric, which to-day has jurisdiction over the Department of the Hautes-Pyrénées, is a suffragan of the mother-see of Auch. VIII CATHÉDRALE DE CONDOM The history of Condom as an ecclesiastical see is very brief. It was established only in 1317, on an ancient abbey foundation, whose inception is unknown. For three centuries only was it endowed with diocesan dignity. Its last _titulaire_ was Bishop Bossuet. The fine Gothic church, which was so short-lived as a cathedral, is more worthy of admiration than many grander and more ancient. It dates from the early sixteenth century, and shows all the distinct marks of its era; but it is a most interesting church nevertheless, and is possessed of a fine unworldly cloister, which as much as many another--more famous or more magnificent--must have been conducive to inspired meditation. The portal rises to a considerable height of elegance, but the façade is otherwise austere. In the interior, a choir-screen in cut stone is the chief artistic treasure. The sacristy is a finely decorated and beautifully proportioned room. In the choir is a series of red brick or terra-cotta stalls of poor design and of no artistic value whatever. The ancient residence of the bishops is now the Hôtel de Ville, and is a good example of late Gothic domestic architecture. It is decidedly the architectural _pièce de resistance_ of the town. IX CATHÉDRALE DE MONTAUBAN Montauban, the location of an ancient abbey, was created a bishopric, in the Province of Toulouse, in 1317, under Bertrand du Puy. It was a suffragan of the see of Toulouse after that city had been made an archbishopric in the same year, a rank it virtually holds to-day, though the mother-see is now known by the double vocable of Toulouse-Narbonne. Montauban is in many ways a remarkable little city; remarkable for its tidy picturesqueness, for its admirable situation, for the added attraction of the river Tarn, which rushes tumblingly past its _quais_ on its way from the Gorges to the Garonne; in short, Montauban is a most fascinating centre of a life and activity, not so modern that it jars, nor yet so mediæval that it is uncomfortably squalid. The lover of architecture will interest himself far more in the thirteenth-century bridge of bricks which crosses the Tarn on seven ogival arches, than he will in the painfully ordinary and unworthy cathedral, which is a combination of most of the undesirable features of Renaissance church-building. The façade is, moreover, set about with a series of enormous sculptured effigies perched indiscriminately wherever it would appear that a foothold presented itself. There are still a few unoccupied niches and cornices, which some day may yet be peopled with other figures as gaunt. Two ungraceful towers flank a classical portico, one of which is possessed of the usual ludicrous clock-face. The interior, with its unusual flood of light from the windows of the clerestory, is cold and bare. Its imposed pilasters and heavy cornices are little in keeping with the true conception of Christian architecture, and its great height of nave--some eighty odd feet--lends a further chilliness to one's already lukewarm appreciation. The one artistic detail of Montauban's cathedral is the fine painting by Ingres (1781-1867) to be seen in the sacristy, if by any chance you can find the sacristan--which is doubtful. It is one of this artist's most celebrated paintings, and is commonly referred to as "The Vow of Louis XIII." [Illustration: ST. ETIENNE _de CAHORS_.] X ST. ETIENNE DE CAHORS St. Genulphe was the first bishop of Cahors, in the fourth century. The diocese was then, as now, a suffragan of Albi. The cathedral of St. Etienne was consecrated in 1119, but has since--and many times--been rebuilt and restored. This church is but one of the many of its class, built in Aquitaine at this period, which employed the cupola as a distinct feature. It shares this attribute in common with the cathedrals at Poitiers, Périgueux, and Angoulême, and the great churches of Solignac, Fontevrault, and Souillac, and is commonly supposed to be an importation or adaptation of the domes of St. Marc's at Venice. A distinct feature of this development is that, while transepts may or may not be wanting, the structures are nearly always without side aisles. What manner of architecture this style may presume to be is impossible to discuss here, but it is manifestly not Byzantine _pur-sang_, as most guide-books would have the tourist believe. Although much mutilated in many of its accessories and details, the cathedral at Cahors fairly illustrates its original plan. There are no transepts, and the nave is wide and short, its area being entirely roofed by the two circular cupolas, each perhaps fifty feet in diameter. In height these two details depart from the true hemisphere, as has always been usual in dome construction. There were discovered, as late as 1890, in this church, many mural paintings of great interest. Of the greatest importance was that in the westerly cupola, which presents an entire composition, drawn in black and colour. The cupola is perhaps forty feet in diameter, and is divided by the decorations into eight sectors. The principal features of this remarkable decoration are the figures of eight of the prophets, David, Daniel, Jeremiah, Jonah, Ezra, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Habakkuk, each a dozen or more feet in height. Taken as a whole, in spite of their recent discovery, these elaborate decorations are supposed to have been undertaken by or under the direction of the bishops who held the see from 1280 to 1324; most likely under Hugo Geraldi (1312-16), the friend of Pope Clement V. and of the King of France. This churchman was burned to death at Avignon, and the see was afterward administered by procuration by Guillaume de Labroa (1316-1324), who lived at Avignon. It is then permissible to think that these wall-paintings of the cathedral at Cahors are perhaps unique in France. Including its sustaining wall, one of the cupolas rises to a height of eighty-two feet, and the other to one hundred and five feet. The north portal is richly sculptured; and the choir, with its fifteenth-century ogival chapels, has been rebuilt from the original work of 1285. The interior, since the recently discovered frescoes of the cupolas, presents an exceedingly rich appearance, though there are actually few decorative constructive elements. The apse of the choir is naturally pointed, as its era would indicate, and its chapels are ornamented with frescoes of the time of Louis XII.; neither very good nor very bad, but in no way comparable to the decorations of the cupolas. The only monument of note in the interior is the tomb of Bishop Alain de Solminiac (seventeenth century). The paintings of the choir are supposed to date from 1315, which certainly places them at a very early date. A doorway in the right of the nave gives on the fifteenth-century cloister, which, though fragmentary, must at one time have been a very satisfactory example. The ancient episcopal palace is now the prefecture. The bishop originally bore the provisional title of Count of Cahors, and was entitled to wear a sword and gauntlets, and it is recorded that he was received, upon his accession to the diocese, by the Vicomte de Sessac, who, attired in a grotesque garb, conducted him to his palace amid a ceremony which to-day would be accounted as buffoonery pure and simple. From the accounts of this ceremony, it could not have been very dignified or inspiring. The history of Cahors abounds in romantic incident, and its capture by Henry of Navarre in 1580 was a brilliant exploit. Cahors was the birthplace of one of the French Popes of Avignon, John XXII. (who is buried in Notre Dame des Doms at Avignon). XI ST. CAPRAIS D'AGEN Agen, with Cahors, Tulle, Limoges, Périgueux, Angoulême, and Poitiers, are, in a way, in a class of themselves with respect to their cathedrals. They have not favoured aggrandizement, or even restoration to the extent of mitigating the sentiment which will always surround a really ancient fabric. The cathedral at Bordeaux came strongly under the Gothic spell; so did that at Clermont-Ferrand, and St. Nazaire, in the Cité de Carcassonne. But those before-mentioned did not, to any appreciable extent, come under the influence of the new style affected by the architects of the Isle of France during the times of Philippe-Auguste (d. 1223). At the death of Philippe le Bel (1314), the royal domain was considerably extended, and the cathedrals at Montpellier, Carcassonne, and Narbonne succumbed and took on Gothic features. The diocese of Agen was founded in the fourth century as a suffragan of Bordeaux. Its first bishop was St. Phérade. To-day the diocese is still under the parent jurisdiction of Bordeaux, and the see comprises the department of Lot-et-Garonne. A former cathedral church--St. Etienne--was destroyed at the Revolution. The Romanesque cathedral of St. Caprais dates, as to its apses and transepts, from the eleventh century. Its size is not commonly accredited great, but for a fact its nave is over fifty-five feet in width; greater than Chartres, and nearly as great as Amiens in the north. This is a comparison which will show how futile it is not to take into consideration the peers, compeers, or contemporaries of architectural types when striving to impress its salient features upon one's senses. This immense vault is covered with a series of cupolas of a modified form which finally take the feature of the early development of the ogival arch. This, then, ranks as one of the early transitions between barrel-vaulted and domed roofs, and the Gothic arched vaulting which became so common in the century following. As to the general ground-plan, the area is not great. Its Romanesque nave is stunted in length, if not in width, and the transepts are equally contracted. The choir is semicircular, and the general effect is that of a tri-apsed church, seldom seen beyond the immediate neighbourhood of the Rhine valley. The interior effect is considerably marred by the modern mural frescoes by Bézard, after a supposed old manner. The combination of colour can only be described as polychromatic, and the effect is not good. There are a series of Roman capitals in the nave, which are of more decided artistic worth and interest than any other distinct feature. At the side of the cathedral is the _Chapelle des Innocents_, the ancient chapter-house of St. Caprais, now used as the chapel of the college. Its façade has some remarkable sculptures, and its interior attractions of curiously carved capitals and some tombs--supposed to date from the first years of the Christian era--are of as great interest as any of the specific features of the cathedral proper. XII STE. MARIE D'AUCH The first bishop of Auch was Citerius, in the fourth century. Subsequently the Province d'Auch became the see of an archbishop, who was Primate of Aquitaine. This came to pass when the office was abolished or transferred from Eauze in the eighth century. The diocese is thus established in antiquity, and endures to-day with suffragans at Aire, Tarbes, and Bayonne. The cathedral of Ste. Marie d'Auch is not of itself an ancient structure, dating only from the late fifteenth century. Its choir, however, ranks among the most celebrated in the Gothic style in all Europe, and the entire edifice is usually accorded as being the most thoroughly characteristic (though varied as to the excellence of its details) church of the _Midi_ of France, though built at a time when the ogival style was projecting its last rays of glory over the land. [Illustration: STE. MARIE _d'AUCH_] In its general plan it is of generous though not majestic proportions, and is rich and aspiring in its details throughout. An ancient altar in this present church is supposed to have come from the humble basilica which was erected here by St. Taurin, bishop of Eauze, soon after the foundation of the see. If this is so, it is certainly of great antiquity, and is exceedingly valuable as the record of an art expression of that early day. Taurin II., in 845, rebuilt a former church, which stood on the site of the present cathedral; but, its dimensions not proving great enough for the needs of the congregation, St. Austinde, in 1048, built a much larger church, which was consecrated early in the twelfth century. Various other structures were undertaken, some completed only in part and others to the full; but it was not until 1548 that the present Ste. Marie was actually consecrated by Jean Dumas. "This gorgeous ceremony," says the Abbé Bourassé, "was accomplished amid great pomp on the anniversary day of the dedication of the eleventh-century basilica on the same site." In 1597 further additions were made to the vaulting, and the fine choir glass added. Soon after this time, the glass of the nave chapels was put into place, being the gift of Dominique de Vic. The final building operations--as might be expected--show just the least suspicion of debasement. This quality is to be remarked in the choir-screen, the porch and towers, and in the balustrades of the chapels, to say nothing of the organ supports. The west front is, in part, as late as the seventeenth century. In this façade there is an elaborately traceried rose window, indicating in its painted glass a "Glory of Angels." It is not a great work, as these chief decorative features of French mediæval architecture go, but is highly ornate by reason of its florid tracery, and dates, moreover, from that period when the really great accomplishment of designing in painted glass was approaching its maturity. If any feature of remark exists to excite undue criticism, it is that of a certain incongruity or mixture of style, which, while not widely separated in point of time, has great variation as to excellence. In spite of this there is, in the general _ensemble_, an imposing picturesqueness to which distance lends the proverbial degree of enchantment. The warm mouse-coloured cathedral and its archbishop's palace, when seen in conjunction with the modern ornamental gardens and _escalier_ at the rear, produces an effect more nearly akin to an Italian composition than anything of a like nature in France. It is an _ensemble_ most interesting and pleasing, but as a worthy artistic effort it does perhaps fall short of the ideal. The westerly towers are curious heavy works after the "French Classical" manner in vogue during the reign of Louis XIV. They are not beautiful of themselves, and quite unexpressive of the sanctity which should surround a great church. The portal is richly decorated, and contains statues of St. Roche and St. Austinde. It has been called an "imitation of the portal of St. Peter's at Rome," but this is an opinion wholly unwarranted by a personal acquaintance therewith. The two bear no resemblance except that they are both very inferior to the magnificent Gothic portals of the north. The interior embellishments are as mixed as to style, and of as varied worth, as those of the exterior. The painted glass (by a Gascon artist, Arnaud de Moles, 1573) is usually reckoned as of great beauty. This it hardly is, though of great value and importance as showing the development of the art which produced it. The colour is rich,--which it seldom is in modern glass,--but the design is coarse and crude, a distinction that most modern glass has as well. _Ergo_, we have not advanced greatly in this art. The chief feature of artistic merit is the series of one hundred and thirteen choir-stalls, richly and wonderfully carved in wood. If not the superior to any others in France, these remarkable examples of Renaissance woodwork are the equal of any, and demonstrate, once again, that it was in wood-carving, rather than sculptures in stone, that Renaissance art achieved its greatest success. A distinct feature is the disposition made of the accessories of the fine choir. It is surrounded by an elaborate screen, surmounted by sculpture of a richness quite uncommon in any but the grander and more wealthy churches. Under the reign of St. Louis many of the grand cathedrals and the larger monastic churches were grandly favoured with this accessory, notably at Amiens and Beauvais, at Burgos in Spain, and at Canterbury. Here the elaborate screen was designed to protect the ranges of stalls and their canopied _dossiers_, and give a certain seclusion to the chapter and officiants. Elsewhere--out of regard for the people it is to be presumed--this feature was in many known instances done away with, and the material of which it was constructed--often of great richness--made use of in chapels subsequently erected in the walls of the apside or in the side aisles of the nave. This is to be remarked at Rodez particularly, where the reërected _clôture_ is still the show-piece of the cathedral. The organ _buffet_ is, as usual (in the minds of the local resident), a remarkably fine piece of cabinet-work and nothing more. One always qualifies this by venturing the opinion that no one ever really does admire these overpowering and ungainly accessories. What triforium there is is squat and ugly, with ungraceful openings, and the high-altar is a modern work in the pseudo-classic style, quite unworthy as a work of art. The five apsidal chapels are brilliant with coloured glass, but otherwise are not remarkable. In spite of all incongruity, Ste. Marie d'Auch is one of those fascinating churches in and about which one loves to linger. It is hard to explain the reason for this, except that its environment provides the atmosphere which is the one necessary ingredient to a full realization of the appealing qualities of a stately church. The archiepiscopal palace adjoins the cathedral in the rear, and has a noble _donjon_ of the fourteenth century. Its career of the past must have been quite uneventful, as history records no very bloody or riotous events which have taken place within or before its walls. Fénelon was a student at the College of Auch, and his statue adorns the Promenade du Fossé. [Illustration: ST. ETIENNE _de TOULOUSE_] XIII ST. ETIENNE DE TOULOUSE The provincialism of Toulouse has been the theme of many a French writer of ability,--offensively provincial, it would seem from a consensus of these written opinions. "Life and movement in abundance, but what a life!" ... "The native is saved from coarseness by his birth, but after a quarter of an hour the substratum shows itself." ... "The working girl is graceful and has the vivacity of a bird, but there is nothing in her cackle." ... "How much more beautiful are the stars that mirror themselves in the gutter of the Rue du Bac." ... "There is a yelp in the accents of the people of the town." Contrariwise we may learn also that "the water is fine," "the quays are fine," and "fine large buildings glow in the setting sun in bright and softened hues," and "in the far distance lies the chain of the Pyrenees, like a white bed of watery clouds," and "the river, dressed always in smiling verdure, gracefully skirts the city." These pessimistic and optimistic views of others found the contributors to this book in somewhat of a quandary as to the manner of mood and spirit in which they should approach this provincial capital. They had heard marvels of its Romanesque church of St. Saturnin, perhaps the most perfect and elaborate of any of its kind in all France; of the curious amalgamated edifice, now the cathedral of St. Etienne, wherein two distinct church bodies are joined by an unseemly ligature; of the church of the Jacobins; and of the "seventy-seven religious establishments" enumerated by Taine. All these, or less, were enough to induce one to cast suspicion aside and descend upon the city with an open mind. Two things one must admit: Toulouse does somewhat approach the gaiety of a capital, and it _is_ provincial. Its list of attractions for the visitor is great, and its churches numerous and splendid, so why carp at the "ape-like manners" of the corner loafers, who, when all is said, are vastly less in number here than in many a northern centre of population. The Musée is charming, both as to the disposition of its parts and its contents. It was once a convent, and has a square courtyard or promenade surrounded by an arcade. The courtyard is set about with green shrubs, and a lofty brick tower, pierced with little arched windows and mullioned with tiny columns, rises skyward in true conventual fashion. Altogether the Musée, in the attractiveness of its fabric and the size and importance of its collections, must rank, for interest to the tourist, at the very head of those outside Paris itself. As for the churches, there are many, the three greatest of which are the cathedral of St. Etienne, St. Saturnin, and the Église des Jacobins; in all is to be observed the universal application or adoption of _des matériaux du pays_--bricks. In the cathedral tower, and in that of the Église des Jacobins, a Gothic scheme is worked out in these warm-toned bricks, and forms, in contrast with the usual execution of a Gothic design, a most extraordinary effect; not wholly to the detriment of the style, but certainly not in keeping with the original conception and development of "pointed" architecture. In 1863 Viollet-le-Duc thoroughly and creditably restored St. Saturnin at great expense, and by this treatment it remains to-day as the most perfectly preserved work extant of its class. It is vast, curious, and in a rather mixed style, though thoroughly Latin in motive. It is on the border-line of two styles; of the Italian, with respect to the full semicircular arches and vaulting of the nave and aisles; the square pillars destitute of all ornament, except another column standing out in flat relief--an intimation of the quiet and placid force of their functions. With the transition comes a change in the flowered capitals, from the acanthus to tracery and grotesque animals. There are five domes covering the five aisles, each with a semicircular vault. The walls, with their infrequent windows, are very thick. The delightful belfry--of five octagonal stages--which rises from the crossing of the transepts, presents, from the outside, a fine and imposing arrangement. So, too, the chapelled choir, with its apse of rounded vaults rising in imposing tiers. This fine church is in direct descent from the Roman manner; built and developed as a simple idea, and, like all antique and classical work,--approaching purity,--is a living thing, in spite of the fact that it depicts the sentiment of a dead and gone past. It might not be so successfully duplicated to-day, but, considering that St. Saturnin dates from the eleventh century, its commencement was sufficiently in the remote past to allow of its having been promulgated under a direct and vigorous Roman influence. The brick construction of St. Saturnin and of the cathedral is not of that justly admired quality seen in the ancient Convent of the Jacobins, which dates from the thirteenth century. Here is made perhaps the most beautiful use of this style of mediæval building. It is earlier than the Pont de Montauban, the churches at Moissac or Lombez, and even the cathedral at Albi, but much later than the true Romanesque brickwork, which alternated rows of brick with other materials. The builders of Gallo-Romain and Merovingian times favoured this earlier method, but work in this style is seldom met with of a later date than the ninth century. The Église of St. Saturnin shows, in parts, brickwork of a century earlier than the Église des Jacobins, but, as before said, it is not so beautiful. When the Renaissance came to deal with _brique_, it did not do so badly. Certainly the domestic and civil establishments of Touraine in this style--to particularize only one section--are very beautiful. Why the revival was productive of so much thorough badness when it dealt with stone is one of the things which the expert has not as yet attempted to explain; at least, not convincingly. The contrasting blend of the northern and southern motive in the hybrid cathedral at Toulouse will not remain unnoticed for long after the first sensation of surprise at its curious ground-plan passes off. Here are seen a flamboyant northern choir and aisles in strange juxtaposition with a thirteenth-century single vaulted nave, after the purely indigenous southern manner. This nave nearly equals in immensity those in the cathedrals of Albi and Bordeaux. It has the great span of sixty-two feet, necessitating the employment of huge buttresses, which would be remarkable anywhere, in order to take the thrust. The unobstructed flooring of this splendid nave lends an added dignity of vastness. Near the vaulted roof are the only apertures in the walls. Windows, as one knows them elsewhere, are practically absent. [Illustration: _Nave of St. Etienne de Toulouse_] The congregations which assemble in this great aisleless nave present a curiously animated effect by reason of the fact that they scatter themselves about in knots or groups rather than crowding against either the altar-rail or pulpit, occasionally even overflowing into the adjoining choir. The nave is entirely unobstructed by decorations, such as screens, pillars, or tombs. It is a mere shell, _sans_ gallery, _sans_ aisles, and _sans_ triforium. The development of the structure from the individual members of nave and choir is readily traced, and though these parts show not the slightest kind of relationship one to the other, it is from these two fragmentary churches that the completed, if imperfect, whole has been made. The west front, to-day more than ever, shows how badly the cathedral has been put together; the uncovered bricks creep out here and there, and buildings to the left, which formerly covered the incongruous joint between the nave and choir, are now razed, making the patchwork even more apparent. The square tower which flanks the portal to the north is not unpleasing, and dates from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The portal is not particularly beautiful, and is bare of decorations of note. It appears to have been remodelled at some past time with a view to conserving the western rose window. There are no transepts or collateral chapels, which tends to make the ground-plan the more unusual and lacking in symmetry. The choir (1275-1502) is really very beautiful, taken by itself, far more so than the nave, from which it is extended on a different axis. It was restored after a seventeenth-century fire, and is supposed to be less beautiful to-day than formerly. There are seventeen chapels in this choir, with much coloured glass of the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, all with weird polychromatic decorations in decidedly bad taste. Toulouse became a bishopric in the third century, with St. Saturnin as its first bishop. It was raised to the rank of archiepiscopal dignity in 1327, a distinction which it enjoys to-day in company with Narbonne. Six former suffragan bishoprics, Pamiers, Rieux, Mirepoix, Saint-Papoul, Lombez, and Lavaur were suppressed at the Revolution. In the magnificent Musée of the city is _un petit monument_, without an inscription, but bearing a cross _gammée_ or _Swastika_, and a palm-leaf, symbols of the divine Apollo and Artemis. It seems curious that this tiny record in stone should have been found, as it was, in the mountains which separate the sources of the Garonne and the Adour, as the _Swastika_ is a symbol supposedly indigenous to the fire and sun-worshippers of the East, where it figures in a great number of their monuments. It is called, by the local antiquary, a Pyrenean altar. If this is so, it is of course of pagan origin, and is in no way connected with Christian art. [Illustration: St. NAZAIRE _de CARCASSONNE_] XIV ST. NAZAIRE DE CARCASSONNE With old and new Carcassonne one finds a contrast, if not as great as between the hyphenated Hungarian cities of Buda and Pest, at least as marked in detail. In most European settlements, where an old municipality adjoins a modern one, walls have been razed, moats filled, and much general modernization has been undertaken. With Carcassonne this is not so; its winding ways, its _culs-de-sacs_, narrow alleys, and towering walls remain much as they always were, and the great stronghold of the Middle Ages, vulnerable--as history tells--from but one point, remains to-day, after its admirable restoration of roof and capstone, much as it was in the days when modern Carcassonne was but a scattering hamlet beneath the walls of the older fortification. One thing will always be recalled, and that is that a part of the _enceinte_ of the ancient _Cité_ was a construction of the sixth century--the days of the Visigoths--and that its subsequent development into an almost invulnerable fortress was but the endorsement which later centuries gave to the work and forethought of a people who were supposed to possess no arts, and very little of ingenuity. This should suggest a line of investigation to one so minded; while for us, who regard the ancient walls merely as a boundary which sheltered and protected a charming Gothic church, it is perhaps sufficient to recall the inconsistency in many previous estimates as to what great abilities, if any, the Goths possessed. If it is true that the Visigoths merely followed Roman tradition, so much the more creditable to them that they preserved these ancient walls to the glory of those who came after, and but added to the general plan. Old and new Carcassonne, as one might call them, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had each their own magistrates and a separate government. The _Cité_, elevated above the _ville_, held also the garrison, the _presidial_ seat, and the first seneschalship of the province. The bishopric of the _Cité_ is not so ancient as the _ville_ itself; for the first prelate there whose name is found upon record was one Sergius, "who subscribed to a 'Council' held at Narbonne in 590." [Illustration: _The Old Cité de Carcassonne before and after the Restoration_] St. Hilaire, who founded the abbey at Poitiers, came perhaps before Sergius, but his tenure is obscure as to its exact date. The cathedral of St. Michel, in the lower town, has been, since 1803, the seat of the bishop's throne. It is a work unique, perhaps, in its design, but entirely unfeeling and preposterous in its overelaborate decorations. It has a long parallelogram-like nave, "_entièrement peinte_," as the custodian refers to it. It has, to be sure, a grand vault, strong and broad, but there are no aisles, and the chapels which flank this gross nave are mere painted boxes. Episcopal dignity demanded that some show of importance should be given to the cathedral, and it was placed in the hands of Viollet-le-Duc in 1849 for restoration. Whatever his labours may have been, he doubtless was not much in sympathy with this clumsy fabric, and merely "restored" it in some measure approaching its twelfth-century form. It is with St. Nazaire de Carcassonne, the tiny _église_ of the old _Cité_ and the _ci-devant_ cathedral that we have to do. This most fascinating church, fascinating for itself none the less than its unique environment, is, in spite of the extended centuries of its growth, almost the equal in the purity of its Gothic to that of St. Urbain at Troyes. And this, in spite of evidences of rather bad joining up of certain warring constructive elements. The structure readily composes itself into two distinct parts: that of the Romanesque (round arch and barrel vault) era and that of the Gothic of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. No consideration of St. Nazaire de Carcassonne is possible without first coming to a realization of the construction and the functions of the splendidly picturesque and effective ramparts which enclosed the ancient _Cité_, its cathedral, châteaux, and various civil and domestic establishments. In brief, its history and chronology commences with the Visigoth foundation, extending from the fifth to the eighth centuries to the time (1356) when it successfully resisted the Black Prince in his bloody ravage, by sword and fire, of all of Languedoc. Legend has it that in Charlemagne's time, after that monarch had besieged the town for many years and was about to raise the siege in despair, a certain tower,--which flanked the château,--defended only by a _Gauloise_ known as _Carcaso_, suddenly gave way and opened a breach by which the army was at last able to enter. A rude figure perpetuating the fame of this _Madame Carcaso_--a veritable Amazon, it would seem--is still seen, rudely carved, over the Porte Narbonnaise. [Illustration: _Two Capitals of Pillars in St. Nazaire de Carcassonne; and the Rude Stone Carving of Carcas_] It is the inner line of ramparts which dates from the earliest period. The château, the postern-gate, and most of the interior construction are of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, while the outer fortification is of the time of St. Louis, the latter part of the thirteenth century. [Illustration: ST. NAZAIRE ... _de CARCASSONNE_] The Saracens successfully attacked and occupied the city from 713 to 759, but were routed by Pepin-le-Bref. In 1090 was first founded the strong _vicomtale_ dynasty of the Trencavels. In 1210 the Crusaders, under Simon de Montfort and the implacable Abbot of Citeaux, laid siege to the _Cité_, an act which resulted in the final massacre, fifty of the besieged--who surrendered--being hanged, and four hundred burned alive. In addition to the walls and ramparts were fifty circular protecting towers. The extreme length of the inner enclosure is perhaps three-quarters of a mile, and of the outer nearly a full mile. It is impossible to describe the magnitude and splendour of these city walls, which, up to the time of their restoration by Viollet-le-Duc, had scarcely crumbled at all. The upper ranges of the towers, roof-tops, ramparts, etc., had become broken, of course, and the sky-line had become serrated, but the walls, their foundations, and their outline plan had endured as few works of such magnitude have before or since. Carcassonne, its history, its romance, and its picturesque qualities, has ever appealed to the poet, painter, and historian alike. Something of the halo of sentiment which surrounds this marvellous fortified city will be gathered from the following praiseful admiration by Gustave Nadaud: CARCASSONNE "'I'm growing old, I've sixty years; I've laboured all my life in vain; In all that time of hopes and fears I've failed my dearest wish to gain; I see full well that here below Bliss unalloyed there is for none. My prayer will ne'er fulfilment know; I never have seen Carcassonne, I never have seen Carcassonne! "'You see the city from the hill-- It lies beyond the mountains blue, And yet to reach it one must still Five long and weary leagues pursue, And, to return, as many more! Ah! had the vintage plenteous grown, The grape withheld its yellow store! I shall not look on Carcassonne, I shall not look on Carcassonne! "'They tell me every day is there Not more nor less than Sunday gay; In shining robes and garments fair The people walk upon their way. One gazes there on castle walls As grand as those of Babylon, A bishop and two generals! I do not know fair Carcassonne, I do not know fair Carcassonne! "'The curé's right; he says that we Are ever wayward, weak, and blind; He tells us in his homily Ambition ruins all mankind; Yet could I there two days have spent, While the autumn sweetly shone, Ah, me! I might have died content When I had looked on Carcassonne, When I had looked on Carcassonne! "'Thy pardon, Father, I beseech, In this my prayer if I offend; One something sees beyond his reach From childhood to his journey's end. My wife, our little boy, Aignan, Have travelled even to Narbonne, My grandchild has seen Perpignan, And I have not seen Carcassonne, And I have not seen Carcassonne!' "So crooned one day, close by Limoux, A peasant double bent with age, 'Rise up, my friend,' said I, 'with you I'll go upon this pilgrimage.' We left next morning his abode, But (Heaven forgive him) half way on The old man died upon the road; He never gazed on Carcassonne, Each mortal has his Carcassonne!" St. Nazaire is possessed of a Romanesque nave which dates from 1096, but the choir and transepts are of the most acceptable Gothic forms of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This choir is readily accounted as a masterwork of elegance, is purely northern in style and treatment, and possesses also those other attributes of the _perfectionnement_ of the style--fine glass, delicate fenestration, and superlative grace throughout, as contrasted with the heavier and more cold details of the Romanesque variety. The nave was dedicated by Urbain II., and was doubtless intended for defence, if its square, firmly bedded towers and piers are suggestive of that quality. The principal _porte_--it does not rise to the grandeur of a _portail_--is a thorough Roman example. The interior, with its great piers, its rough barrel-vault, and its general lack of grace and elegance, bespeaks its functions as a stronghold. A Romanesque tower in its original form stands on the side which adjoins the ramparts. With the choir comes the contrast, both inside and out. The apside, the transepts, the eleven gorgeous windows, and the extreme grace of its piers and vaulting, all combine in the fullest expression of the architectural art of its time. This admirable Gothic addition was the work of Bishop Pierre de Rochefort in 1321. The transept chapels and the apse are framed with light soaring arches, and the great easterly windows are set with brilliant glass. In a side chapel is the former tomb of Simon de Montfort, whose remains were buried here in 1218. At a subsequent time they were removed to Montfort l'Amaury in the Isle of France. Another remarkable tomb is that of Bishop Radulph (1266). It shows an unusually elaborate sculptured treatment for its time, and is most ornate and beautiful. In the choir are many fine fourteenth-century statues; a tomb with a sleeping figure, thought to be that of Bishop du Puy of Carcassonne; statues of the Virgin, St. Nazaire, and the twelve apostles; an elaborate high-altar; and a pair of magnificent candlesticks, bearing the arms of Bishop Martin (1522). An eleventh-century crypt lies beneath the choir. The sacristy, as it is to-day, was formerly a thirteenth-century chapel. The organ is commonly supposed to be the most ancient in France. It is not of ranking greatness as a work of art, but it is interesting to know that it has some redeeming quality, aside from its conventional ugliness. The _tour carrée_, which is set in the inner rampart just in front of the cathedral, is known as the Bishop's Tower. It is a tower of many stages, and contains some beautifully vaulted chambers. The celebrated _tour des Visigoths_, which is near by, is the most ancient of all. The entrance to the old _Cité_ is _via_ the Pont Vieux, which is itself a mediæval twelfth or thirteenth century architectural monument of rare beauty. In the middle of this old bridge is a very ancient iron cross. [Illustration] XV CATHÉDRALE DE PAMIERS "Une _petite ville sur la rive droite de l'Ariège, siege d'un évêche_." These few words, with perhaps seven accompanying lines, usually dismiss this charming little Pyrenean city, so far as information for the traveller is concerned. It is, however, one of these neglected tourist points which the traveller has ever passed by in his wild rush "across country." To be sure, it is considerably off the beaten track; so too are its neighbouring ancient bishoprics of Mirepoix and St. Bertrand de Comminges, and for that reason they are comparatively unspoiled. The great and charming attraction of Pamiers is its view of the serrated ridge of the Pyrenees from the _promenade de Castellat_, just beyond the cathedral. For the rest, the cathedral, the fortified _Église de Notre Dame du Camp_, the ancient _Église de Cordeliers_, the many old houses, and the general sub-tropical aspect of the country round about, all combine to present attractions far more edifying and gratifying than the allurements of certain of the Pyrenean "watering-places." The cathedral itself is not a great work; its charm, as before said, lies in its environments. Its chief feature--and one of real distinction--is its octagonal _clocher_, in brick, dating from the fourteenth century. It is a singularly graceful tower, built after the local manner of the _Midi_ of France, of which St. Saturnin and the Église des Jacobins at Toulouse are the most notable. Its base is a broad square machicolated foundation with no openings, and suggests, as truly as does the tower at Albi, a churchly stronghold unlikely to give way before any ordinary attack. In the main, the church is a rebuilt, rather than a restored edifice. The nave, and indeed nearly all of the structure, except its dominant octagonal tower, is of the seventeenth century. This work was undertaken and consummated by Mansart after the manner of that period, and is far more acceptable than the effect produced by most "restored churches." The eleventh-century abbey of St. Antoine formed originally the seat of the throne of the first bishop of Pamiers, Bernard Saisset, in 1297. XVI ST. BERTRAND DE COMMINGES To-day St. Bertrand de Comminges, the ancient _Lugdunum Convenarum_ (through which one traces its communistic foundation), is possessed of something less than six hundred inhabitants. Remains of the Roman ramparts are yet to be seen, and its _ci-devant_ cathedral,--of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries--suppressed in 1790, still dominates the town from its heights. Arthur Young, writing in the eighteenth century, describes its situation thus: "The mountains rise proudly around and give their rough frame to this exquisite little picture." The diocese grew out of the monkish community which had settled here in the sixth century, when the prelate Suavis became its first bishop. To-day the nearest bishop's seat is at Tarbes, in the archbishopric of Auch. [Illustration: ST. BERTRAND _de COMMINGES_] As to architectural style, the cathedral presents what might ordinarily be called an undesirable mixture, though it is in no way uninteresting or even unpleasing. The west front has a curious Romanesque doorway, and there is a massiveness of wall and buttress which the rather diminutive proportions of the general plan of the church make notably apparent. Otherwise the effect, from a not too near view-point, is one of a solidity and firmness of building only to be seen in some of the neighbouring fortress-churches. A tower of rather heavy proportions is to-day capped with a pyramidal slate or timbered apex after the manner of the western towers at Rodez. From a distance, this feature has the suggestion of the development of what may perhaps be a local type of _clocher_. Closer inspections, when its temporary nature is made plain, disabuses this idea entirely. It is inside the walls that the great charm of this church lies. It is elaborately planned, profuse in ornament,--without being in any degree redundant,--and has a warmth and brilliancy which in most Romanesque interiors is wanting. This interior is representative, on a small scale, of that class of structure whose distinctive feature is what the French architect calls a _nef unique_, meaning, in this instance, one of those great single-chambered churches without aisles, such as are found at Perpignan, new Carcassonne, Lodève, and in a still more amplified form at Albi. There are of course no aisles; and for a length of something over two hundred feet, and a breadth of fifty-five, the bold vault--in the early pointed style--roofs one of the most attractive and pleasing church interiors it is possible to conceive. Of the artistic accessories it is impossible to be too enthusiastic. There are sixty-six choir-stalls, most elaborately carved in wood--perhaps mahogany--of a deep rich colouring seldom seen. Numerous other sculptured details in wood and stone set off with unusual effect the great and well-nigh windowless side walls. The organ _buffet_ of Renaissance workmanship--as will naturally be inferred--is a remarkably elaborate work, much more to be admired than many of its contemporaries. Among the other decorative features are an elaborately conceived "tree of Jesse," an unusually massive rood-loft or _jube_, and a high-altar of much magnificence. The choir is surrounded by eleven chapels, showing in some instances the pure pointed style, and in the latter ones that of the Renaissance. A fourteenth-century funeral monument of Bishop Hugh de Castillione is an elaborate work in white marble; while a series of paintings on the choir walls,--illustrating the miracles of St. Bertrand,--though of a certain crudity, tend to heighten the interest without giving that effect of the over-elaboration of irrelative details not unfrequently seen in some larger churches. At St. Bertrand de Comminges and the cathedrals at Arles, Cavaillon, and Aix-en-Provence, Elne-en-Roussillon, and Le Puy-en-Velay are conserved--in a more or less perfect state of preservation--a series of delightful twelfth-century cloisters. These churches possess this feature in common with the purely monastic houses, whose builders so frequently lavished much thought and care on these enclosed and cloistered courtyards. As a mere detail--or accessory, if you will,--an ample cloister is expressive of much that is wanting in a great church which lacks this contributory feature. Frequently this part was the first to succumb to the destroying influence of time, and leave a void for which no amount of latter-day improvement could make up. Even here, while the cloister ranks as one of the most beautiful yet to be seen, it is part in a ruinous condition. [Illustration] XVII ST. JEAN-BAPTISTE D'AIRE This city of the Landes, that wild, bleak region of sand-dunes and shepherds, abuts upon the more prosperous and fertile territory of the valley of the Adour. By reason of this juxtaposition, its daily life presents a series of contrasting elements as quaint and as interesting as those of the bordering Franco-Spanish cities of Perpignan and Bayonne. From travellers in general, and lovers of architecture in particular, it has ever received but scant consideration, though it is by no means the desert place that early Victorian writers would have us believe. It is in reality a well-built mediæval town, with no very lurid events of the past to its discredit, and, truthfully, with no very marvellous attributes beyond a certain subtle charm and quaintness which is perhaps the more interesting because of its unobtrusiveness. It has been a centre of Christian activity since the days of the fifth century, when its first bishop, Marcel, was appointed to the diocese by the mother-see of Auch. The cathedral of St. Jean-Baptiste belongs to the minor class of present-day cathedrals, and is of a decidedly conglomerate architectural style, with no imposing dimensions, and no really vivid or lively details of ornamentation. It was begun in the thirteenth century, and the work of rebuilding and restoration has been carried on well up to the present time. [Illustration: STS. BENOIT et VINCENT _de CASTRES_] XVIII STS. BENOIT ET VINCENT DE CASTRES Castres will ever rank in the mind of the wayfarer along the byways of the south of France as a marvellous bit of stage scenery, rather than as a collection of profound, or even highly interesting, architectural types. It is one of those spots into which a traveller drops quite unconsciously _en route_ to somewhere else; and lingers a much longer time than circumstances would seem to justify. This is perhaps inexplicable, but it is a fact, which is only in a measure accounted for by reason of the "local colour"--whatever that vague term of the popular novelist may mean--and customs which weave an entanglement about one which is difficult to resist. The river Agout is as weird a stream as its name implies, and divides this haphazard little city of the Tarn into two distinct, and quite characteristically different, parts. Intercourse between Castres and its faubourg, Villegondom, is carried on by two stone bridges; and from either bank of the river, or from either of the bridges, there is always in a view a ravishingly picturesque _ensemble_ of decrepit walls and billowy roof-tops, that will make the artist of brush and pencil angry with fleeting time. The former cathedral is not an entrancingly beautiful structure; indeed, it is not after the accepted "good form" of any distinct architectural style. It is a poor battered thing which has suffered hardly in the past; notably at the hands of the Huguenots in 1567. As it stands to-day, it is practically a seventeenth-century construction, though it is yet unfinished and lacks its western façade. The vaulting of the choir, and the chapels are the only constructive elements which warrant remark. There are a few paintings in the choir, four rather attractive life-size statues, and a series of severe but elegant choir-stalls. The former _évêché_ is to-day the Hôtel de Ville, but was built by Mansart in 1666, and has a fine _escalier_ in sculptured stone. As a centre of Christianity, Castres is very ancient. In 647 there was a Benedictine abbey here. The bishopric, however, did not come into being until 1317, and was suppressed in 1790. XIX NOTRE DAME DE RODEZ The cathedral at Rodez, whose diocese dates from the fifth century and whose first bishop was St. Amand, is, in a way, reminiscent--in its majesty of outline and dominant situation--of that at Albi. It is not, however, after the same manner, but resembles it more particularly with respect to its west façade, which is unpierced in its lower stages by either doorway or window. Here, too, the entrance is midway in its length, and its front presents that sheer flank of walled barrier which is suggestive of nothing but a fortification. [Illustration: NOTRE DAME _de RODEZ_ ...] This great church--for it is truly great, pure and simple--makes up in width what it lacks in length. Its nave and aisles are just covered by a span of one hundred and twenty feet,--a greater dimension than is possessed by Chartres or Rouen, and nearly as great as Paris or Amiens. Altogether Notre Dame de Rodez is a most pleasing church, though conglomerate as to its architecture, and as bad, with respect to the Renaissance gable of its façade, as any contemporary work in the same style. Rodez lacks, however, the great enfolding tower central of Albi. This mellow and warm-toned cathedral, from its beginnings in the latter years of the thirteenth century to the time when the Renaissance cast its dastardly spell over the genius who inspired its original plan, was the result of the persevering though intermittent work of three centuries, and even then the two western towers were left incomplete. This perhaps was fortunate; otherwise they might have been topped with such an excrescence as looms up over the doorless west façade. The Gascon compares the pyramidal roofs which cap either tower--and with some justness, too--to the pyramids of Egypt, and for that reason the towers are, to him, the most wonderful in the universe. Subtle humour this, and the observer will have little difficulty in tracing the analogy. Still, they really are preferable, as a decorative feature, to the tomb-like headboard which surmounts the central gable which they flank. The ground-plan is singularly uniform, with transepts scarcely defined--except in the interior arrangements--and yet not wholly absent. The elaborate tower, called often and with some justification the _beffroi_, which flanks, or rather indicates, the northerly transept, is hardly pure as to its Gothic details, but it is a magnificent work nevertheless. It dates from 1510, is two hundred and sixty-five feet high, and is typical of most of the late pointed work of its era. The final stage is octagonal and is surmounted by a statue of the Virgin surrounded by the Evangelists. This statue may or may not be a worthy work of art; it is too elevated, however, for one to decide. The decorations of the west front, except for the tombstone-like Renaissance gable, are mainly of the same period as the north transept tower, and while perhaps ultra-florid, certainly make a fine appearance when viewed across the _Place d'Armes_. This west front, moreover, possesses that unusual attribute of a southern church, an elaborate Gothic rose window; and, though it does not equal in size or design such magnificent examples as are seen in the north, at Reims, Amiens, or Chartres, is, after all, a notable detail of its kind. The choir, chevet, and apside are of massive building, though not lacking grace, in spite of the absence of the _arcs-boutants_ of the best Gothic. Numerous grotesque gargoyles dot the eaves and gables, though whether of the spout variety or mere symbols of superstition one can hardly tell with accuracy when viewed from the ground level. The north and south portals of the transepts are of a florid nature, after the manner of most of the decorations throughout the structure, and are acceptable evidence of the ingenious craft of the stone-carver, if nothing more. The workmanship of these details, however, does not rise to the heights achieved by the architect who outlined the plan and foundation upon which they were latterly imposed. They are, too, sadly disfigured, the tympanum in the north portal having been disgracefully ravished. The interior arrangements are doubly impressive, not only from the effect of great size, but from the novel colour effect--a sort of dull, glowing pink which seems to pervade the very atmosphere, an effect which contrasts strangely with the colder atmosphere of the Gothic churches of the north. A curious feature to be noted here is that the sustaining walls of the vault rest directly on piers _sans_ capitals; as effective, no doubt, as the conventional manner, but in this case hardly as pleasing. Two altars, one at either end of nave and choir, duplicate the arrangement seen at Albi. The organ _buffet_, too, is of the same massiveness and elaborateness, and is consequently an object of supreme pride to the local authorities. It seems difficult to make these useful and necessary adjuncts to a church interior of the quality of beauty shared by most other accessories, such as screens, altars, and choir-stalls, which, though often of the contemporary Renaissance period, are generally beautiful in themselves. The organ-case, however, seems to run either to size, heaviness, or grotesqueness, or a combination of all. This is true in this case, where its great size, and plentifully besprinkled _rococo_ ornament, and unpleasantly dull and dingy "pipes" are of no æsthetic value whatever. The organ, moreover, occupies the unusual position--in a French church--of being over the western doorway. The nave is of extreme height, one hundred and ten feet, and is of unusual width, as are also the aisles. The rose window, before remarked, shows well from the inside, though its glass is not notable. A series of badly arched lancets in the choir are ungraceful and not in keeping with the other constructive details. The delicately sculptured and foliaged screen or _jubé_ at the crossing is a late fifteenth-century work. In one of the chapels is now to be seen, in mutilated fragments, the ancient sixteenth-century _clôture du choeur_. It was a remarkable and elaborate work of _bizarre_ stone-carving, which to-day has been reconstructed in some measure approaching its former completeness by the use of still other fragments taken from the episcopal palace. The chief feature as to completeness and perfection is the doorway, which bears two lengthy inscriptions in Latin. The facing of the _clôture_ throughout is covered with a range of pilasters in Arabesque, but the niches between are to-day bare of their statues, if they ever really possessed them. [Illustration: _Choir-stalls, Rodez_] The choir-stalls and bishop's throne in carved wood are excellent, as also an elaborately carved wooden _grille_ of a mixed Arabesque and Gothic design. There are four other chapel or alcove screens very nearly as elaborate; all of which features, taken in conjunction one with the other, form an extensive series of embellishments such as is seldom met with. Two fourteenth-century monuments to former prelates are situated in adjoining chapels, and a still more luxurious work of the same period--the tomb of Gilbert de Cantobre--is beneath an extensive altar which has supposedly Byzantine ornament of the tenth century. Rodez was the seat of a bishop (St. Amand) as early as the fifth century. Then, as now, the diocese was a suffragan of Albi, whose first bishop, St. Clair, came to the mother-see in the century previous. XX STE. CÉCILE D'ALBI The cathedral of Ste. Cécile d'Albi is one of the most interesting, as well as one of the most curious, in all France. It possesses a quality, rare among churches, which gives it at once the aspect of both a church and a fortress. As the representative of a type, it stands at the very head of the splendid fortress-churches of feudal times. The remarkable disposition of its plan is somewhat reflected in the neighbouring cathedral at Rodez and in the church at Esnades, in the Department of the Charente-Inférieure. In the severe and aggressive lines of the easterly, or choir, end, it also resembles the famous church of St. Francis at Assisi, and the ruined church of Sainte Sophie at Famagousta in the Island of Cyprus. [Illustration: ST. CÉCILE _d'ALBI_ ...] It has been likened by the imaginative French--and it needs not so very great a stretch of the imagination, either--to an immense vessel. Certainly its lines and proportions somewhat approach such a form; as much so as those of Notre Dame de Noyon, which Stevenson likened to an old-time craft with a high poop. A less æsthetic comparison has been made with a locomotive of gigantic size, and, truth to tell, it is not unlike that, either, with its advancing tower. The extreme width of the great nave of this church is nearly ninety feet, and its body is constructed, after an unusual manner, of a warm, rosy-coloured brick. In fact the only considerable portions of the structure not so done are the _clôture_ of the choir, the window-mullions, and the flamboyant Gothic porch of the south side. By reason of its uncommon constructive elements,--though by no means is it the sole representative of its kind in the south of France,--Ste. Cécile stands forth as the most considerable edifice of its kind among those which were constructed after this manner of Roman antiquity. Brickwork of this nature, as is well known, is very enduring, and it therefore makes much for the lasting qualities of a structure so built; much more so, in fact, than the crumbling soft stone which is often used, and which crumbles before the march of time like lead in a furnace. Ste. Cécile was begun in 1282, on the ruins of the ancient church of St. Croix. It came to its completion during the latter years of the fourteenth century, when it stood much as it does to-day, grim and strong, but very beautiful. The only exterior addition of a later time is the before-remarked florid south porch. This _baldaquin_ is very charmingly worked in a light brown stone, and, while flamboyant to an ultra degree, is more graceful in design and execution than most works of a contemporary era which are welded to a stone fabric whose constructive and decorative details are of quite a distinctly different species. In other words, it composes and adds a graceful beauty to the brick fabric of this great church; but likely enough it would offend exceedingly were it brought into juxtaposition with the more slim lines of early Gothic. Its detail here is the very culmination of the height to which Gothic rose before its final debasement, and, in its spirited non-contemporaneous admixture with the firmly planted brick walls which form its background, may be reckoned as a _baroque_ in art rather than as a thing _outré_ or misplaced. In further explanation of the peculiar fortress-like qualities possessed by Ste. Cécile, it may be mentioned here that it was the outcome of a desire for the safety of the church and its adherents which caused it to take this form. It was the direct result of the terrible wars of the Albigenses, and the political and social conditions of the age in which it was built,--the days when the Church was truly militant. Here, too, to a more impressive extent than elsewhere, if we except the papal palace at Avignon, the episcopal residence as well takes on an aspect which is not far different from that possessed by some of the secular châteaux of feudal times. It closely adjoins the cathedral, which should perhaps dispute this. In reality, however, it does not, and its walls and foundations look far more worldly than they do devout. As to impressiveness, this stronghold of a bishop's palace is thoroughly in keeping with the cathedral itself, and the frowning battlement of its veritable _donjon_ and walls and ramparts suggests a deal more than the mere name by which it is known would justify. Such use as it was previously put to was well served, and the history of the troublous times of the mediæval ages, when the wars of the Protestants, "the cursed Albigenses," and the natural political and social dissensions, form a chapter around which one could weave much of the history of this majestic cathedral and its walled and fortified environment. The interior of the cathedral will appeal first of all by its very grand proportions, and next by the curious ill-mannered decorations with which the walls are entirely covered. There is a certain gloom in this interior, induced by the fact that the windows are mere elongated slits in the walls. There are no aisles, no triforium, and no clerestory; nothing but a vast expanse of wall with bizarre decorations and these unusual window piercings. The arrangement of the openings in the tower are even more remarkable--what there are of them, for in truth it is here that the greatest likeness to a fortification is seen. In the lower stages of the tower there are no openings whatever, while above they are practically nothing but loopholes. The fine choir-screen, in stone, is considered one of the most beautiful and magnificent in France, and to see it is to believe the statement. The entire _clôture_ of the choir is a wonderful piece of stonework, and the hundred and twenty stalls, which are within its walls, form of themselves an excess of elaboration which perhaps in a more garish light would be oppressive. The wall-paintings or frescoes are decidedly not beautiful, being for the most part crudely coloured geometrical designs scattered about with no relation one to another. They date from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and are doubtless Italian as to their workmanship, but they betray no great skill on the part of those unknowns who are responsible for them. The pulpit is an unusually ornate work for a French church, but is hardly beautiful as a work of art. No more is the organ-case, which, as if in keeping with the vast interior, spreads itself over a great extent of wall space. Taken all in all, the accessories of the cathedral at Albi, none the less than the unique plan and execution thereof, the south porch, the massive tower, the _jube_ and _clôture_ of the choir, the vast unobstructed interior, and the _outré_ wall decorations, place it as one of the most consistently and thoroughly completed edifices of its rank in France. Nothing apparently is wanting, and though possessed of no great wealth of accessory--if one excepts the choir enclosure alone--it is one of those shrines which, by reason of its very individuality, will live long in the memory. It has been said, moreover, to stand alone as to the extensive and complete exemplification of "_l'art decoratif_" in France; that is, as being distinctively French throughout. The evolution of these component elements took but the comparatively small space of time covered by two centuries--from the fourteenth to the sixteenth. The culmination resulted in what is still to be seen in all its pristine glory to-day, for Ste. Cécile has not suffered the depredation of many another shrine. The general plan is distinctly and indigenously French; French to the very core--born of the soil of the _Midi_, and bears no resemblance whatever to any exotic from another land. With the decorative elements the case may be somewhat qualified. The _baldaquin_--like the choir-screen--more than equals in delicacy and grace the portals of such masterworks as Notre Dame de Rouen, St. Maclou, or even the cathedral at Troyes, though of less magnitude than any of these examples. On the other hand, it was undoubtedly inspired by northern precept, as also were the ornamental sculptures in wood and stone which are to be seen in the interior. Albi was a bishopric as early as the fourth century, with St. Clair as its first bishop. At the time the present cathedral was begun it became an archbishopric, and as such it has endured until to-day, with suffragans at Rodez, Cahors, Mende, and Perpignan. XXI ST. PIERRE DE MENDE In the heart of the Gévaudan, Mende is the most picturesque, mountain-locked little city imaginable, with no very remarkable features surrounding it, nor any very grand artificial ones contained within it. The mountains here, unlike the more fruitful plains of the lower Gévaudan, are covered with snow all of the winter. It is said that the inhabitants of the mountainous upper Gévaudan used to "go into Spain every winter to get a livelihood." Why, it is difficult to understand. The mountain and valley towns around Mende look no less prosperous than those of Switzerland, though to be sure the inhabitants have never here had, and perhaps never will have, the influx of tourists "to live off of," as in the latter region. [Illustration: ST. PIERRE _de MENDE_] During an invasion of the _Alemanni_ into Gaul, in the third century, the principal city of Gévaudan was plundered and ruined. The bishop, St. Privat, fled into the Cavern of Memate or Mende, whither the Germans followed and killed him. The holy man was interred in the neighbouring village of Mende, and the veneration which people had for his memory caused them to develop it into a considerable place. Such is the popular legend, at any rate. The city had no bishop of its own, however, until the middle of the tenth century. Previously the bishops were known as Bishops of Gévaudan. At last, however, the prelates fixed their seat at Mende, and "great numbers of people resorted thither by reason of the sepulchre of St. Privat." By virtue of an agreement with Philippe-le-Bel, in 1306, the bishop became Count of Gévaudan. He claimed also the right of administering the laws and the coining of specie. Mende is worth visiting for itself alone and for its cathedral. It is difficult to say which will interest the absolute stranger the more. The spired St. Pierre de Mende is but a fourteenth-century church, with restorations of the seventeenth, but there is a certain grimness and primitiveness about its fabric which would otherwise seem to place it as of a much earlier date. The seventeenth-century restorations amounted practically to a reconstruction, as the Calvinists had partly destroyed the fabric. The two fine towers of the century before were left standing, but without their spires. The city itself lies at a height of over seven hundred kilometres, and the _pic_ rises another three hundred kilometres above. The surrounding "green basin of hillsides" encloses the city in a circular depression, which, with its cathedral as the hub, radiates in long, straight roadways to the bases of these verdure-clad hills. It is not possible to have a general view of the cathedral without its imposing background of mountain or hilltops, and for this reason, while the entire city may appear dwarfed, and its cathedral likewise diminished in size, they both show in reality the strong contrasting effect of nature and art. The cathedral towers, built by Bishop de la Rovère, are of sturdy though not great proportions, and the half-suggested spires rise skyward in as piercing a manner as if they were continued another hundred feet. As a matter of fact one rises to a height of two hundred and three feet, and the other to two hundred and seventy-six feet, so at least, they are not diminutive. The taller of these pleasing towers is really a remarkable work. The general plan of the cathedral is the conventional Gothic conception, which was not changed in the seventeenth-century reconstruction. The nave is flanked with the usual aisles, which in turn are abutted with ten chapels on either side. Just within the left portal is preserved the old _bourdon_ called _la Non-Pareille_, a curiosity which seems in questionable taste for inclusion within a cathedral. The rose window of the portal shows in the interior with considerable effect, though it is of not great elegance or magnificence of itself. In the _Chapelle des Catechismes_, immediately beneath the tower, is an unusual "Assumption." As a work of art its rank is not high, and its artist is unknown, but in its conception it is unique and wonderful. There are some excellent wood-carvings in the _Chapelle du Baptistère_, a description which applies as well to the stalls of the choir. Around the sanctuary hang seven tapestries, ancient, it is said, but of no great beauty in themselves. In a chapel on the north side of the choir is a "miraculous statue" of _la Vierge Noir_. The organ _buffet_ dates from 1640, and is of the ridiculous overpowering bulk of most works of its class. The bishopric, founded by St. Sévérein in the third century at Civitas Gabalorum, was reëstablished at Mende in the year 1000. The Ermitage de St. Privat, the holy shrine of the former habitation of the holy man whose name it bears, is situated a few kilometres away on the side of Mont Mimat. It is a favourite place of pilgrimage, and from the platform of the chapel is to be had a fine view of the city and its cathedral. XXII OTHER OLD-TIME CATHEDRALS IN AND ABOUT THE BASIN OF THE GARONNE _Dax_ At Dax, an ancient thermal station of the Romans, is a small cathedral, mainly modern, with a portal of the thirteenth century. It was reconstructed from these thirteenth-century remains in the seventeenth century, and exhibits no marks of beauty which would have established its ranking greatness even at that time. Dax was a bishopric in the province of Auch in the third century, but the see was suppressed in 1802. _Eauze_ Eauze was an archbishopric in the third century, when St. Paterne was its first dignitary. Subsequently--in the following century--the archbishopric was transferred to Auch. As _Elusa_ it was an important place in the time of Cæsar, but was completely destroyed in the early part of the tenth century. Eauze, therefore, has no church edifice which ever ranked as a cathedral, but there is a fine Gothic church of the late fifteenth century which is, in every way, an architectural monument worthy of remark. _Lombez_ The bishopric of Lombez, in the ancient ecclesiastical province of Toulouse, endured from 1328 (a tenth-century Benedictine abbey foundation). Its first bishop was one Roger de Comminges, a monk who came from the monastic community of St. Bertrand de Comminges. The see was suppressed in 1790. _St. Papoul_ St. Papoul was a bishopric from 1317 until 1790. Its cathedral is in many respects a really fine work. It was an ancient abbatial church in the Romanesque style, and has an attractive cloister built after the same manner. _Rieux_ Rieux is perhaps the tiniest _ville_ of France which has ever possessed episcopal dignity. It is situated on a mere rivulet--a branch of the Arize, which itself is not much more, but which in turn goes to swell the flood of La Garonne. Its one-time cathedral is perhaps not remarkable in any way, though it has a fine fifteenth-century tower in _brique_. The bishopric was founded in 1370 under Guillaumé de Brutia, and was suppressed in 1790. _Lavaur_ Lavaur was a bishopric, in the ecclesiastical province of Toulouse, from 1317 to 1790. Its cathedral of brick is of the fourteenth century, with a _clocher_ dating from 1515, and a smaller tower, embracing a _jacquemart_, of the sixteenth century. In the interior is a fine sixteenth-century painting, but there are no other artistic treasures or details of note. _Oloron_ Oloron was a bishopric under St. Gratus in the sixth century; it ceased its functions as the head of a diocese at the suppression of 1790. The former cathedral of Ste. Marie is a fine Romanic-Ogivale edifice of the eleventh century, though its constructive era may be said to extend well toward the fifteenth before it reached completion. There is a remarkably beautiful Romanesque sculptured portal. The nave is doubled, as to its aisles, and is one hundred and fifty feet or more in length and one hundred and six wide, an astonishing breadth when one comes to think of it, and a dimension which is not equalled by any minor cathedral. There are no other notable features beyond the general attractiveness of its charming environment. The ancient _évêche_ has a fine Romanesque tower, and the cathedral itself is reckoned, by a paternal government, as a "_monument historique_," and as such is cared for at public expense. _Vabres_ Vabres was a bishopric which came into being as an aftergrowth of a Benedictine foundation of the ninth century, though its episcopal functions only began in 1318, and ceased with the Revolutionary suppression. It was a suffragan in the archiepiscopal diocese of Albi. Its former cathedral, while little to be remarked to-day as a really grand church edifice, was by no means an unworthy fane. It dates from the fourteenth century, and in part is thoroughly representative of the Gothic of that era. It was rebuilt in the eighteenth century, and a fine _clocher_ added. _St. Lizier or Couserans_ The present-day St. Lizier--a tiny Pyrenean city--was the former Gallo-Romain city of Couserans. It retained this name when it was first made a bishopric by St. Valère in the fifth century. The see was suppressed in 1790. The Église de St. Lizier, of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, consists of a choir and a nave, but no aisles. It shows some traces of fine Roman sculpture, and a mere suggestion of a cloister. The former bishop's palace dates only from the seventeenth century. _Sarlat_ A Benedictine abbey was founded here in the eighth century, and from this grew up the bishopric which took form in 1317 under Raimond de Roquecarne, which in due course was finally abolished and the town stripped of its episcopal rank. The former cathedral dates from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and in part from the fifteenth. Connected therewith is a sepulchral chapel, called the _tour des Maures_. It is of two _étages_, and dates from the twelfth century. _St. Pons de Tomiers_ St. Pons is the seat of an ancient bishopric now suppressed. It is a charming village--it can hardly be named more ambitiously--situated at the source of the river Jaur, which rises in the Montagnes Noir in Lower Languedoc. Its former cathedral is not of great interest as an architectural type, though it dates from the twelfth century. The façade is of the eighteenth century, but one of its side chapels dates from the fourteenth. _St. Maurice de Mirepoix_ Mirepoix is a charming little city of the slopes of the Pyrenees. Its ancient cathedral of St. Maurice dates from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and has no very splendid features or appointments,--not even of the Renaissance order,--as might be expected from its magnitude. Its sole possession of note is the _clocher_, which rises to an approximate height of two hundred feet. The bishopric was founded in 1318 by Raimond Athone, but was suppressed in 1790. [Illustration: THE END.] _Appendices_ I [Illustration: _Sketch map showing the usual geographical divisions of France. I., north; II., northwest; III., east; IV., southwest; V., southeast: also the present departments into which the government is divided, with their names; and the mediæval provinces which were gradually absorbed into the kingdom of France._ _There is in general one bishopric to a department._ _The subject-matter of this book treats of all of southwestern and southeastern France; with, in addition, the departments of Saône-et-Loire, Jura, Rhône, Loire, Ain, and Allier._] II _A Historical Table of the Dioceses of the South of France up to the beginning of the nineteenth century._ _Province d'Aix_ _Name_ _Diocese founded_ _First bishop_ _Date of suppression_ Aix _Nice, Avignon, Ajaccio, and Digne were allied therewith in 1802, and Marseilles and Alger in 1822._ (Archbishopric) First century (?) St. Maxim (?) Antibes Transferred to Grasse Apt First century (?) St. Auspice 1790 Grasse (Jurisdiction over Antibes.) Gap Fifth century St. Démétrius Riez Fifth century St. Prosper 1790 Fréjus Fourth century Acceptus Sisteron Fifth century Chrysaphius _Province d'Albi_ Albi Fourth century St. Clair Bishopric (Archbishopric) 1317 (?) Anthime Castres 647 as a Benedictine Robert, the first 1790 Abbey. Abbot 1317 as a Bishopric Mende Third century at St. Sévérein Civitas Gabalorum. and Genialis Reëstablished here in the year 1000 Cahors Fourth century St. Genulphe Rodez Fifth century St. Amand Arisitum Sixth century detached Déothaire Rejoined from the diocese of to Rodez Rodez 670 Vabres Benedictine 1790 Abbey, 862. Bishopric, 1317 _Province d'Arles_ Arles First century St. Trophime 1790 (Archbishopric) Marseilles First century St. Lazare St. Paul-Trois Second century St. Restuit 1790 Châteaux, or Tricastin Toulon Fifth century Honoré 1790 Orange Fifth century St. Luce 1790 _Province d'Auch_ Eauze Third century St. Paterne 720 (Archbishopric) Auch Fourth century Citerius (Bishopric then Archbishopric) Dax Third century St. Vincent 1802 Lectoure Sixth century Heuterius 1790 Comminges Sixth century Suavis 1790 Conserans Fifth century St. Valère 1790 Aire Fifth century Marcel Bazas Sixth century Sextilius (?) Tarbes Sixth century St. Justin Oloron Sixth century Gratus 1790 Lescar Fifth century St. Julien 1790 Bayonne Ninth century Arsias Rocha _Province d'Avignon_ Avignon Fourth century St. Ruf (Bishopric, becoming Archbishopric in fifteenth century) Carpentras Third century St. Valentin 1790 Vaison Fourth century St. Aubin 1790 Cavaillon Fifth century St. Genialis 1790 _Province de Bordeaux_ Bordeaux (Bishopric) Third century (Archbishopric) Fourth century Oriental Agen Fourth century St. Phérade Condom Raimond de (Ancient Galard abbey--foundation date unknown) Bishopric) Fourteenth century Angoulême Third century St. Ansome Saintes Third century St. Eutrope 1793 Poitiers Third century St. Nectaire Maillezais Fourteenth century Geoffrey I. (afterward at La Rochelle) Luçon 1317 Pierre de La (Seventh-century Veyrie abbey) Périgueux Second century St. Front Sarlat 1317 Raimond de (Eighth-century Roquecorne Benedictine abbey) _Province de Bourges_ Bourges Third century St. Ursin (Archbishopric) Clermont-Ferrand Third century St. Austremoine St. Flour 1318 Raimond de (Ancient priory) Vehens Limoges Third century St. Martial Tulle 1317 Arnaud de (Seventh-century Saint-Astier Benedictine abbey) Le Puy Third century St. Georges _Province d'Embrun_ Embrun (Archbishopric) Fourth century St. Marcellin 1793 Digne Fourth century St. Domnin Antibes Fourth century St. Armentaire (afterward at Grasse) Grasse Raimond de 1790 Villeneuve (1245) Vence Fourth century Eusèbe 1790 Glandève Fifth century Fraterne 1790 Senez Fifth century Ursus 1790 Nice Fourth century Amantius (formerly at Cemenelium) _Province de Lyon_ Lyon _The Archbishop of Lyon was Primate of Gaul._ (Archbishopric) Second century St. Pothin Autun Third century St. Amateur Mâcon Sixth century Placide 1790 Chalon-sur-Saône Fifth century Paul 1790 Langres Third century St. Just Dijon Bishopric in 1731 Jean Bonhier (Fourth-century abbey) Saint Claude Bishopric in 1742 Joseph de (Fifth-century Madet abbey) _Province de Narbonne_ Narbonne Third century St. Paul 1802 (Archbishopric) Saint-Pons-de- 1318 Pierre Roger 1790 Tomières(Tenth- century abbey) Alet 1318 Barthélmy 1790 (Ninth-century abbey) Béziers Fourth century St. Aphrodise 1702 Nîmes Fourth century St. Felix Alais 1694 Chevalier de 1790 Saulx Lodève Fourth century (?) St. Flour 1790 Uzès Fifth century Constance 1790 Agde Fifth century St. Vénuste 1790 Maguelonne Sixth century Beotius (afterward at Montpellier) Carcassonne Sixth century St. Hilaire Elne Sixth century Domnus (afterward at Perpignan) _Province de Tarentaise_ Tarentaise Fifth century St. Jacques (Archbishopric) Sion Fourth century St. Théodule Aoste Fourth century St. Eustache Chambéry 1780 Michel Conseil _Province de Toulouse_ Toulouse (Bishopric) Third century St. Saturnin (Archbishopric) 1327 Pamiers 1297 Bernard Saisset (Eleventh-century abbey) Rieux 1317 Guillaume de Brutia Montauban 1317 Bertrand du Puy (Ancient abbey) Mirepoix 1318 Raimond 1790 Athone Saint-Papoul 1317 Bernard de la 1790 Tour Lombès 1328 Roger de 1790 (Tenth-century Commminges abbey) Lavaur 1317 Roger d'Armagnac 1790 _Province de Vienne_ Vienne Second century St. Crescent 1790 (Archbishopric) Grenoble Third century Domninus Genève (Switz.) Fourth century Diogène 1801 Annency 1822 Claude de Thiollaz Valence Fourth century Emelien Dié Third century Saint Mars Viviers Fifth century Saint Janvier 1790 St. Jean de Fifth century Lucien Maurienne III _The Classification of Architectural Styles in France according to De Caumont's "Abécédaire d'Architecture Religieuse."_ Architecture Primordiale From the Vth to the Xth centuries. Romaine Secondaire From the end of the Xth century to the beginning of the XIIth Tertiaire or transition XIIth century Architecture Primitive XIIIth century Ogivale Secondaire XIVth century Tertiaire XVth and the first part of the XVIth century [Illustration] IV _A Chronology of Architectural Styles in France_ Following more or less upon the lines of De Caumont's territorial and chronological divisions of architectural style in France, the various species and periods are thus further described and defined: The Merovingian period, commencing about 480; Carlovingian, 751; Romanesque or Capetian period, 987; Transitional, 1100 (extending in the south of France and on the Rhine till 1300); early French Gothic or Pointed (_Gothique à lancettes_), mid-twelfth to mid-thirteenth centuries; decorated French Gothic (_Gothique rayonnant_), from the mid-thirteenth to mid-fifteenth centuries, and even in some districts as late as the last decade of the fifteenth century; Flamboyant (_Gothique flamboyant_), early fifteenth to early sixteenth; Renaissance, dating at least from 1495, which gave rise subsequently to the _style Louis XII. and style François I_. With the reign of Henri II., the change to the Italian style was complete, and its place, such as it was, definitely assured. French writers, it may be observed, at least those of a former generation and before, often carry the reference to the _style de la Renaissance_ to a much later period, even including the neo-classical atrocities of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. _Bizarre_ or _baroque_ details, or the _style perruque_, had little place on French soil, and the later exaggerations of the _rococo_, the styles _Pompadour_ and _Dubarri_, had little if anything to do with church-building, and are relevant merely insomuch as they indicate the mannerisms of a period when great churches, if they were built at all, were constructed with somewhat of a leaning toward their baseness, if not actually favouring their eccentricities. V [Illustration: _Neo-Basilica-IX Cent._ _Lombard Cruciform XI Century_ _The Romanesque Of Southern France in the XI Century_ _Norman Cruciform Plan XI Century_ _Leading forms of early cathedral constructions_] VI _The disposition of the parts of a tenth-century church, as defined by Viollet-le-Duc_ Of this class are many monastic churches, as will be evinced by the inclusion of a cloister in the diagram plan. Many of these were subsequently made use of, as the church and the cloisters, where they had not suffered the stress of time, were of course retained. St. Bertrand de Comminges is a notable example among the smaller structures. In the basilica form of ground-plan, which obtained to a modified extent, the transepts were often lacking, or at least only suggested. Subsequently they were added in many cases, but the tenth-century church _pur sang_ was mainly a parallelogram-like structure, with, of course, an apsidal termination. [Illustration: _Plan X Century Church_] A The choir B The _exedra_, meaning literally a niche or throne--in this instance for the occupancy of the bishop, abbot, or prior--apart from the main edifice C The high-altar D Secondary or specially dedicated altars E The transepts, which in later centuries expanded and lengthened G The nave proper, down which was reserved a free passage separating the men from the women H The aisles I The portico or porch which precedes the nave (_i. e._, the narthen of the primitive basilica), where the pilgrims who were temporarily forbidden to enter were allowed to wait K A separate portal or doorway to cloisters L The cloister M The towers; often placed at the junction of transept and nave, instead of the later position, flanking the west façade N The baptismal font; usually in the central nave, but often in the aisle O Entrance to the crypt or confessional, where were usually preserved the _reliques_ of the saint to whom the church was erected P The tribune, in a later day often surrounded by a screen or _jubé_ VII _A brief definitive gazetteer of the natural and geological divisions included in the ancient provinces and present-day departments of southern France, together with the local names by which the pays et pagi are commonly known_ Gévaudan In the Cevennes, a region of forests and mountains Velay A region of plateaux with visible lava tracks Lyonnais-Beaujolais The mountain ranges which rise to the westward of Lyons Morvan An isolated group of porphyrous and granite elevations Haute-Auvergne The mountain range of Cantal Basse-Auvergne The mountain chains of Mont Dore and _des Dômes_ Limousin A land of plateaux, ravines, and granite Agenais Rocky and mountainous, but with its valleys among the richest in all France Haut-Quercy A rolling plain, but with little fertility Bas-Quercy The plains of the Garonne, the Tarn, and the Avéyron Armagnac An extensive range of _petites montagnes_ running in various directions Landes A desert of sand, forests, and inlets of the sea Béarn A country furrowed by the ramifications of the range of the Pyrenees Basse-Navarre A Basque country situated on the northern slope of the Pyrenees Bigorre The plain of Tortes and its neighbouring valleys Savoie A region comprising a great number of valleys made by the ramifying ranges of the Alps. The principal valleys being those of Faucigny, the Tarentaise, and the Maurienne Bourbonnais A country of hills and valleys which, as to general limits, corresponds with the Department of the Allier Nivernais An undulating region between the Loire and the Morvan Berry A fertile plain, slightly elevated, to the northward of Limousin Sologne An arid plain separated by the valleys of the Cher and the Indre Gatinais A barren country northeast of Sologne Saintonge Slightly mountainous and covered with vineyards--also in parts partaking of the characteristics of the _Landes_ Angoumois A hilly country covered with a growth of vines Périgord An _ensemble_ of diverse regions, often hilly, but covered with a luxuriant forest growth Bordelais (Comprising Blayais, Fronsadais, Libournais, Entre-deux-mers, Médoc, and Bazadais.) The vine-lands of the Garonne, La Gironde, and La Dordogne Dauphiné Another land of mountains and valleys. It is crossed by numbers of ranges and distinct peaks. The principal subdivisions are Viennois, Royonnais Vercors, Trièves, Dévoluy, Oisons, Graisivaudan, Chartreuse, Queyras Valgodemar, Champsaur. Provence A region of fertile plains dominated by volcanic rocks and mountains. It contains also the great pebbly plain in the extreme southwest known as the Crau Camargue The region of the Rhône delta Languedoc Properly the belt of plains situated between the foot of the Cevennes and the borders of the Mediterranean Rousillon The region between the peaks of the Corbière and the Albère mountain chain. The population was originally pure Catalan Lauragais A stony plateau with red earth deposited in former times by the glaciers of the Pyrenees Albigeois A rolling and fertile country Toulousain A plain well watered by the Garonne and the Ariège Comminges The lofty Pyrenean valleys of the Garonne basin VIII [Illustration: _Sketch map of the bishoprics and archbishoprics of the south of France at the present day_] IX _Dimensions and Chronology_ CATHEDRALE D'AGDE Bishopric founded, Vth century Bishopric suppressed, 1790 Primitive church consecrated, VIIth century Main body of present cathedral, XIth to XIIth centuries ST. CAPRIAS D'AGEN [Illustration] Former cathedral of St. Etienne, destroyed at the Revolution, 1790 Apse and transepts of St. Caprias, XIth century Width of nave, 55 feet ST. JEAN BAPTISTE D'AIRE Cathedral begun, XIIIth century ST. SAVEUR D'AIX [Illustration] Eglise St. Jean de Malte, XIVth century Remains of a former St. Saveur's, XIth century Choir, XIIIth century Choir elaborated, XIVth century South aisle of nave, XIVth century Tower, XIVth century Carved doors, 1503 Episcopal palace, 1512 North aisle of nave, XVIIth century Baptistère, VIth century ST. JEAN D'ALAIS A bishopric only from 1694 to 1790 Remains of a XIIth century church STE. CECILE D'ALBI [Illustration] Begun, 1277 Finished, 1512 South porch, 1380-1400 Tower completed, 1475 Choir-screen, 1475-1512 Wall paintings, XVth to XVIth centuries Organ, XVIIIth century Choir stalls, 120 in number Height of tower, 256 feet Length, 300 (320?) feet Width of nave, 88 feet Height of nave, 98 feet ST. PIERRE D'ALET Primitive cathedral, IXth century (?) Rebuilt, XIth century Eglise St. André, XIVth to XVth centuries ST. PIERRE D'ANGOULEME [Illustration] City ravaged by Coligny, XVIth century Cathedral rebuilt from foundations of primitive church, 1120 Western dome, XIIth century Central and other domes, latter part of XIIth century Episcopal palace restored, XIXth century General restoration of cathedral, after the depredations of Coligny, 1628 Height of tower, 197 feet ST. PIERRE D'ANNECY Christianity first founded here, IVth century Cathedral dates from XIVth century Tomb of St. François de Sales, 1622 Tomb of Jeanne de Chantal, 1641 Episcopal palace, 1784 ST. CASTOR D'APT Gallo-Romain sarcophagus, Vth century Tomb of Ducs de Sabron, XIIth century Chapelle de Ste. Anne, XVIIth century ST. TROPHIME D'ARLES [Illustration] Primitive church on same site, 606 Foundations of present cathedral laid, 1152 Nave completed, 1200 Choir and chapels, 1423-1430 Cloisters, east side, 1221 Cloisters, west side, 1250 Cloisters, north side, 1380 Length, 240 feet Width, 90 feet Height, 60 feet Height of clocher, 137 feet STE. MARIE D'AUCH Ancient altar, IVth century First cathedral built by Taurin II., 845 Another (larger) by St. Austinde, 1048 Present cathedral consecrated, 1548 Additions made and coloured glass added, 1597 West front, in part, XVIIth century Towers, 1650-1700 Episcopal palace, XIVth century Length, 347 feet Height to vaulting, 74 feet NOTRE DAME DES DOMS D'AVIGNON [Illustration] Territory of Avignon acquired by the Popes from Joanna of Naples, 1300 Popes reigned at Avignon, 1305-1370 Avignon formally ceded to France by Treaty of Tolentino, 1797 Palais des Papes begun, XIIIth century Pope Gregory left Avignon for Rome, 1376 Cathedral dates chiefly from XIIth century Nave chapels, XIVth century Frescoes in portal, XIVth century Height of walls of papal palace, 90 feet " " tower " " " 150 feet Length of cathedral, 200 (?) feet Width of cathedral, 50 (?) feet NOTRE DAME DE BAYONNE Foundations, 1140 Choir and apse, XIIth century Destroyed by fire, 1213 Choir rebuilt, 1215 Completed and restored, XVIth century ST. JEAN DE BAZAS Foundations date from Xth century Walls, etc., 1233 West front, XVIth century CATHEDRALE DE BELLEY Gothic portion of cathedral, XVth century ST. NAZAIRE DE BEZIERS Primitive church damaged by fire, 1209 Transepts, XIIIth century Towers, XIVth century Apside and nave, XIVth century Glass and grilles, XIVth century Cloister, XIVth century Height of clocher, 151 feet ST. ANDRE DE BORDEAUX Three cathedral churches here before the XIth century Romanesque structure, XIth century Present cathedral dates from 1252 North transept portal, XIVth century Noailles monument, 1662 Length, 450 feet Width of nave, 65 feet NOTRE DAME DE BOURG Main body dates from XVth to XVIIth centuries Choir and apse, XVth to XVIth centuries Choir stalls, XVIth century ST. ETIENNE DE CAHORS [Illustration] Bishopric founded, IVth century Cathedral consecrated, 1119 Cupola decorations, 1280-1324 Choir chapels, XVth century Choir, 1285 Tomb of Bishop Solminiac, XVIIth century Choir paintings, 1315 Cloister, XIIth to XVth century Cupolas of nave, 50 feet in diameter Cupolas of choir, 49 feet in height Height from pavement to cupolas of choir, 82 feet Height from pavement to cupolas of nave, 195 feet Portal and western towers, XIVth century ST. NAZAIRE DE CARCASSONNE Present-day cathedral, St. Michel, in lower town, 1083 Restored by Viollet-le-Duc, 1849 Visigoth foundation walls of old Cité, Vth to VIIIth centuries Cité besieged by the Black Prince, 1536 Château of Cité and postern gate, XIth and XIIth centuries Outer fortifications with circular towers of the time of St. Louis, XIIIth century Length inside the inner walls, 1/4 mile Length inside the outer walls, 1 mile Saracens occupied the Cité, 783 Routed by Pepin le Bref, 759 Viscountal dynasty of Trencavels, 1090 Besieged by Simon de Montfort, 1210 Romanesque nave of St. Nazaire, 1096 Choir and transepts, XIIIth and XIVth centuries Remains of Simon de Montfort buried here (since removed), 1218 Tomb of Bishop Radulph, 1266 Statues in choir, XIVth century High-altar, 1522 Crypt, XIth century Sacristy, XIIIth century The "Pont Vieux," XIIth and XIIIth centuries ST. SIFFREIN DE CARPENTRAS A Roman colony under Augustus, Ist century St. Siffrein, patron of the cathedral, died, XVIth century Edifice mainly of the XVIth century Paintings in nave, XVIIIth and XIXth centuries Tomb of Bishop Buti, 1710 Episcopal palace built, 1640 Arc de Triomphe, Ist or IId century Porte d'Orange, XIVth century ST. BENOIT DE CASTRES Cathedral dates mainly from XVIIth century ST. VERAN DE CAVAILLON [Illustration] Cathedral consecrated by St. Veran, in person, 1259 Tomb of Bishop Jean de Sade, XVIIth century ST. ETIENNE DE CHALONS-SUR-SAONE Cathedral completed, XVIth century Rebuilt, after a disastrous fire, XVIIth century Remains of early nave, dating from XIIIth century Bishopric founded, Vth century Height of nave, 90 feet Length of nave, 350 feet CATHEDRALE DE CHAMBERY [Illustration] First bishop, Michel Conseil, 1780 Main body of cathedral dates from XIVth century NOTRE DAME DE CLERMONT-FERRAND [Illustration] Choir and nave, 1248-1265 Urban II. preached the Crusades here, 1095 Sanctuary completed, XIIIth century Nave completed, except façade, XIVth century Rose windows, XVth century Western towers and portal, XIXth century Height of towers, 340 feet Height of nave, 100 feet ST. BERTRAND DE COMMINGES [Illustration] First monastery here, VIth century Present cathedral mainly XIIth to XIVth centuries First bishop, Suavis, VIth century Monument to Bishop Hugh de Castellane, XIVth century Length, 210 feet (?) Width, 55 feet (?) CATHEDRALE DE DAX Main fabric, XIIIth century Reconstructed, XVIIIth century NOTRE DAME DE DIE A bishopric in 1285, and from 1672 until 1801 Porch, XIth century Romanesque fragments in "Porte Rouge," XIth century Restored and rebuilt, XVIIth century Length of nave, 270 feet Width of nave, 76 feet CATHEDRALE D'EAUZE Town destroyed, Xth century Gothic church (not, however, the former cathedral), XVth century STE. EULALIE D'ELNE Cathedral rebuilt from a former structure, XVth century Cloister, XVth century NOTRE DAME D'EMBRUN North porch and peristyle, XIIth century Romanesque tower rebuilt, XIVth century The "Tour Brune" XIth century High-altar, XVIIIth century Painted triptych, 1518 Coloured glass, XVth century Organ and gallery, XVIth century NOTRE DAME DE GRENOBLE Foundations of choir, XIth century Tabernacle, XVth century Tomb of Abbé Chissé, 1407 Former episcopal palace, XIth century Present episcopal palace, on same site, XVth century Eglise St André, XIIIth century "La Grande Chartreuse," founded by St. Bruno, 1084 "La Grande Chartreuse," enlarged, XVIth to XVIIth centuries Monks expelled, 1816 and 1902 ST. LOUIS DE LA ROCHELLE City besieged unsuccessfully, 1573 City besieged and fell, XVIIth century Huguenots held the city from 1557 to 1629 Present cathedral dates from 1735 NOTRE DAME DE LE PUY [Illustration] First bishop, St. Georges, IIId century Primitive cathedral, Vth century West façade of present edifice, XIIth century Choir, Xth century Virgin of Le Puy, 50 feet in height Aguille de St. Michel, 250 feet in height, 50 feet in circumference at top, 500 feet at base ST. ETIENNE DE LIMOGES [Illustration] Nave, XVth and XVIth centuries Romanesque portion of nave, XIth century Lower portion of tower, XIth century Clocher, XIIIth century Choir, XIIIth century Transepts, XIVth and XVth centuries Choir-screen, 1543 Coloured glass, XVth and XIXth centuries Tomb of Bishop Brun, 1349; de la Porte, 1325; Langeac, 1541 Crypt, XIth century Height of clocher, 240 feet Enamels of reredos, XVIIth century ST. FULCRAN DE LODEVE City converted to Christianity, 323 Earliest portion of cathedral, Xth century Main portion of fabric, XIIth century Cathedral completed, XVIth century Tomb of Bishop de la Panse, 1658 Height of nave, 80 feet CATHEDRALE DE LUCON Ancient abbey, VIIth century First bishop appointed, 1317 Richelieu bishop here, 1616-1624 Main fabric of cathedral dates from XIIth to XVIIth centuries Fabric restored, 1853 Cloister of episcopal palace, XVth century ST. JEAN DE LYON [Illustration] Bridge across Saône, Xth century Earliest portions of cathedral, 1180 _Concile générale_ of the Church held at Lyons, 1245 and 1274 Portail, XVth century Glass of choir, XIIIth and XIVth centuries Great bourdon, 1662 Weight of great bourdon, 10,000 kilos Chapelle des Bourbons, XVth century Astronomical clock, XVIth and XVIIth centuries STE. MARIE MAJEURE DE MARSEILLES First bishop, St. Lasare, Ist century Ancient cathedral built upon the ruins of a temple to Diana, XIth century New cathedral begun, 1852 Practically completed, 1893 Length, 460 feet Height of central dome, 197 feet ST. JEAN DE MAURIENNE Relique of St. Jean Baptiste, first brought here in VIth century Cloister, 1452 ST. PIERRE DE MENDE First bishop, Xth century Main fabric of cathedral, XIVth century Restoration, XVIIth century Towers, XVIth century Organ-case, 1640 Height of western towers, 203 and 276 feet ST. PIERRE DE MONTPELLIER Bishopric removed here from Maguelonne, 1536 Pope Urban V. consecrated present cathedral in a former Benedictine abbey, 1364 Length of nave, 181 feet Width of nave, 49 feet Length of choir, 43 feet Width of choir, 39 feet NOTRE DAME DE MOULINS Towers and west front, XIXth century Choir and nave, 1465-1507 Coloured glass, XVth and XVIth centuries Choir restoration completed, 1885 Sepulchre, XVIth century Height of western spires, 312 feet Château of Ducs de Bourbon (facing the cathedral) XIVth century ST. JUST DE NARBONNE [Illustration] Choir begun, 1272-1330 Choir rebuilt, XVIIIth century Remains of cloister, XIVth and XVth century Towers, XVth century Tombs of bishops, XIVth to XVIth centuries Organ buffet, 1741 Height of choir vault, 120 (127?) feet ST. CASTOR DE NIMES St. Felix the first bishop, IVth century St. Castor as bishop, 1030 Cathedral damaged by wars of XVIth and XVIIth centuries Length of grande axe of Arena, 420 feet Capacity of Arena, 80,000 persons STE. MARIE D'OLORON Earliest portions, XIth century Completed, XVth century Length of nave, 150 feet Width of nave, 106 feet NOTRE DAME D'ORANGE [Illustration] Oldest portions, 1085 Nave, 1085-1126 CATHEDRALE DE PAMIERS Clocher, XIVth century Nave rebuilt, XVIIth century Ancient Abbey of St. Antoine, XIth century First bishop, Bernard Saisset, 1297 ST. FRONT DE PERIGUEUX [Illustration] Primitive monastery founded, VIth century Cathedral dates from 984-1047 Cathedral rebuilt, XIIth century Cathedral restored, XIXth century Pulpit in carved wood, XVIIth Confessionals, Xth or XIth century Paintings in vaulting, XIth century Length of nave, 197 feet Height of pillars of nave, 44 feet Height of cupola of clocher, 217 feet Height of great arches in interior, 65 feet ST. JEAN DE PERPIGNAN [Illustration] Tower, XIVth century Rétable, XIV century Altar-screen, XIVth century Bishop's tomb, 1695 ST. PIERRE DE POITIERS [Illustration] Eglise St. Hilaire, Xth and XIth centuries Baptistère, IVth to XIIth centuries St. Radegonde, XIth and XIIth centuries Cathedral begun, 1162 High-altar dedicated, 1199 Choir completed, 1250 Western doorway, XVth century Coloured glass, XIIIth and XVIIIth centuries [Illustration] NOTRE DAME DE RODEZ [Illustration] Dates chiefly from 1275 Choir, XIVth century Nave, XVth century Cross-vaults, tribune, sacristy door, and façade, from about 1535 Clôture of choir designed by Cusset Terrace to episcopal palace designed by Philandrier, 1550 Episcopal palace itself dates, in the main, from XVIIth century Rose window of façade is the most notable in France south of the Loire, excepting Poitiers ST. PIERRE DE SAINTES Eglise St. Eutrope, 1081-1096 Primitive cathedral, 1117 Cathedral rebuilt, 1585 First two bays of transept, XIIth century Nave completed, XVth century Vaulting of choir and nave, XVth to XVIIth centuries Height of flamboyant tower (XIVth century), 236 feet CATHEDRALE DE SARLAT Benedictine abbey dates from VIIIth century Cathedral mainly of XIth and XIIth centuries Sepulchral chapel, XIIth century CATHEDRALE DE SION First bishop, St. Théodule, IVth century Choir of Eglise Ste. Catherine, Xth or XIth century Bishop of Sion sent as papal legate to Winchester, 1070 Main body of cathedral, XVth century ST. PIERRE DE ST. CLAUDE Abbey founded by St. Claude, Vth century Bishopric founded by Jos. de Madet, 1742 Bishopric suppressed, 1790 Bishopric revived again, 1821 Main fabric of cathedral, XIVth century Cathedral restored, XVIIIth century Length, 200 feet (approx.) Width, 85 feet " Height, 85 feet " ST. ODILON DE ST. FLOUR Bishopric founded, 1318 Present cathedral begun, 1375 " " dedicated, 1496 " " completed, 1556 Episcopal palace, 1800 Château de St. Flour, 1000 ST. LISIER OR COUSERANS Former cathedral, XIIth and XIIIth centuries Bishop's palace, XVIIth century STE. MARIE MAJEURE DE TOULON Main body of fabric, XIth and XIIth centuries Façade, XVIIth century Length of nave, 160 feet Width of nave, 35 feet ST. ETIENNE DE TOULOUSE [Illustration] Nave, XIIIth century Tower, XVth and XVIth century Choir, 1275-1502 Bishopric founded, IIId century Archbishopric founded, 1327 Width of nave, 62 feet ST PAUL TROIS CHATEAUX [Illustration] Chapel to St. Restuit first erected here, IVth century Town devastated by the Vandals, Vth century " " " " Saracens, 736 " " " " Protestants, XIVth century " " " " Catholics, XIVth century Former cathedral, XIth and XIIth centuries CATHEDRALE DE TULLE Benedictine foundation, VIIth century Cloister, VIIth century (?) Bishopric founded, 1317 Romanesque and transition nave, XIIth century ST. THEODORIT D'UZES Inhabitants of the town, including the bishop, mostly became Protestant, XVIth century Cathedral rebuilt and restored, XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries Tour Fénestrelle, XIIIth century Organ-case, XVIIth century Height of the "Tour Fénestrelle," 130 feet CATHEDRALE DE VAISON Cloister, XIth century Eglise de St. Quinin, VIIth century [Illustration] ST. APOLLINAIRE DE VALENCE Cathedral rebuilt and reconsecrated by Urban II., XIth century Reconstructed, 1604 Bishopric founded, IVth century Foundations laid, XIIth century Cenotaph to Pius VI., 1799 Height of tower, 187 feet CATHEDRALE DE VABRES Principally, XIVth century Rebuilt and reconstructed, and clocher added, XVIIIth century NOTRE DAME DE VENCE Fabric of various eras, VIth, Xth, XIIth, and XVth centuries Rétable, XVIth century Choir-stalls, XVth century ST. MAURICE DE VIENNE Bishopric dates from IId century St. Crescent, first bishop, 118 Cathedral begun, 1052 Reconstructed, 1515 Coloured glass, in part, XIVth century Tomb of Cardinal de Montmorin, XVIth century Metropolitan privileges of Vienne confirmed by Pope Paschal II., 1099 CATHEDRALE DE VIVIERS Choir, XIVth century Tower, XIVth and XVth centuries INDEX Abbey of Cluny, 59, 61. Abbey of Montmajour, 230. Acre, 56. Adelbert, Count of Périgueux, 38. Adour, River, 417. Agde, 53, 358, 359. Agde, Cathédrale de, 358-360, 520. Agen, 42, 429. Agen, St. Caprais de, 429, 431, 520. Agout, River, 471. Aigues-Mortes, 228, 319, 320. Aire, St. Jean Baptiste de, 469, 470, 521. Aix, 36, 230, 283, 293, 323, 324. Aix St. Jean de Malte, 324. Aix, St. Sauveur de, 323-327, 521. Ajaccio, 47. Alais, 249-251. Alais, St. Jean de, 249-251, 521. Alberoni, Cardinal, 240. Albi, 27, 41, 53, 54, 61, 95, 98, 274. Albi, Ste. Cécile de, 363, 482-489, 522. Albigenses, The, 365, 485, 486. Alet, 42. Alet, St. Pierre de, 350, 351, 522. Amantius, 330. Amiens, 60, 62. Andorra, Republic of, 373. Angers, Château at, 66. Angers, St Maurice d', 97. Angoulême, 55, 61, 73, 120, 124. Angoulême, St. Pierre de, 73, 120-125, 523. Anjou, 45, 71. Anjou, Duke of, 40, 44. Anjou, Henry Plantagenet of, 39. Anjou (La Trinité), 56. Annecy, 252-254, 256. Annecy, St. Pierre de, 252-254, 523. Antibes, 330, 339, 341. Aosti, 268. Apt, 289-291. Apt, St. Castor de, 523. Aquitaine, 38, 62. Aquitanians, The, 38. Aquitanian architecture, 54, 55, 66. Arc de Triomphe (Saintes), 115. Architecture, Church, 50-56. Ariosto, 235. Arles, 28, 33, 61, 217, 228-235, 283, 293. Arles, Archbishop of, 46. Arles, St. Trophime de, 37, 202, 228-235, 524. Arnaud, Bishop, 354. Auch, St. Marie de, 432-438, 524. Auch, College of, 438. Augustus, 221. Autun, Bishop of (Talleyrand-Périgord), 46. Auvergne, 29, 62, 72-74. Auzon, 221. Avignon, 33, 41, 53, 54, 241. Avignon, Papal Palace at, 377, 485. Avignon, Notre Dame des Doms, 204-220, 525. Avignon, Ruf d', 36. Baptistère of St. Siffrein de Carpentras, 222. Baptistère, The (Poitiers), 95, 96, 101. Basilique de Notre Dame de Fourvière, 185. Bayonne, 28, 57, 373, 387, 405-407, 410, 411. Bayonne, Notre Dame de, 405-410, 525. Bazas, St. Jean de, 411, 412, 526. Bazin, René, 229, 235. Bearn, Province of, 395, 406. Beauvais, Lucien de, 37. Becket, Thomas à, 111. Belley, 267. Belley, Cathédrale de, 526. Benedict XII., Pope, 211, 216. Bénigne, 171. Berengarius II., 371. Berri, 71, 72. Besançon, 267, 274. Besançon, Lin de, 36. Béthanie, Lazare de, 36. Bézard, 431. Béziers, 53, 363-365. Béziers, Bishop of, 365. Béziers, St. Nazaire de, 363-367, 526. Bichi, Alexandri, 224. Bishops of Carpentras, 221. Bishop of Ypres, 48. "Black Prince," The, 418, 453. Blois, Château at, 66. Breakspeare, 230. Bretagne, Slabs in, 64. Bridge of St. Bénezet, 219. Bordeaux, 57, 384, 387, 396, 397, 401. Bordeaux, St. André de, 94, 396-401, 526. Bossuet, Bishop, 420. Bourassé, Abbé, 83, 89, 328, 354, 433. Bourbons, The, 126, 127. 130. Bourg, 277-279. Bourg, Notre Dame de, 277-279, 526. Bourges, 41, 62. Bovet, François, 281. Boyan, Bishop, 247. Buti, Bishop Laurent, 224. Cæsar, 171. Cahors, 42, 44, 425, 428. Cahors, St. Etienne de, 425-428, 527. Cairène type of mosque, 55. Calixtus II., 189. Canal du Midi, 367. Canova, 194, 334. Capet, Hugh, 38, 39. Carcassonne, 28, 53, 319, 449-457. Carcassonne, St. Nazaire de, 57, 319, 449-460, 527. Carpentras, 221-226. Carpentras, St. Siffrein de, 221-225, 528. Carton, Dominique de, 224. Castres, 42, 471. Castres, Sts. Benoit et Vincent de, 471-473, 528. Cathédrale d'Agde, 358-360, 520. Cathédrale de Belley, 526. Cathédrale de Chambéry, 255-257, 529. Cathédrale de Condom, 420, 421. Cathédrale de Dax, 530. Cathédrale d'Eauze, 531. Cathédrale de Lectoure, 402-404. Cathédrale de Luçon, 85, 86, 533. Cathédrale de Montauban, 422-424. Cathédrale de Pamiers, 461-463, 536. Cathédrale de Sarlat, 540. Cathédrale de Sion, 302-304, 540. Cathedral of St. Michel, Carcassonne, 451, 452. Cathédrale de Tulle, 118, 119, 542. Cathédrale de Vabres, 543. Cathédrale de Vaison, 226, 227, 543. Cathedrale de Viviers, 195, 196, 544. Cavaillon, 226. Cavaillon, St. Veran de, 200-203, 528. Cevennes, 30, 72, 76-79, 136. Chalons, Simon de, 247. Chalons-sur-Saône, St. Etienne de, 170-173, 529. Chambéry, 28, 253, 255-257, 264, 267, 270. Chambéry, Cathédrale de, 529. Chapelle des Innocents, Agen, 431. Charente, River, 115. Charlemagne, 58, 59, 214. Charles V., 40, 45, 323. Charles VIII., 65. Charles the Great, 304. Charterhouse, near Grenoble, 62. Chartres, 60, 62, 232. Chartres, Aventin de, 37. Chartreuse, La Grande, 48, 162, 531. Chavannes, Puvis de, 102, 342. Chissé, Archbishop, 260. Chrysaphius, Bishop, 281. Church of St. Saturnin (Toulouse), 440-444. Church of the Jacobins (Toulouse), 440, 441, 443, 444. Clairvaux, 62. Clement V., Pope, 33, 211, 398, 400. Clement VI., 219, Clermont-Ferrand, 29, 33, 52, 57, 73, 74. Clermont-Ferrand, Notre Dame de, 144-151, 530. Clermont (St. Austremoine), 37. Cluny, Abbey of, 51, 59. Coligny, 121. Comminges, 464. Comminges, Roger de, 496. Comminges, St. Bertrande, 62, 464-468, 530. Comté de Nice, 256. Condom, 42. Condom, Cathédrale de, 420, 421. Conflans, Oger de, 271. Conseil, Michel, 256. Constantin, Palais de, 230. Corsica, Diocese of, 47. Coucy, Chateau at, 66. Coulon, 291. Danté, 134. Daudet, 165. Dauphiné, 30, 161, 162, 297, 298. Dax, 495. Dax, Cathédrale de, 530. Delta of Rhône, 168. D'Entrevaux, 280. De Sade, Laura, 204, 207, 208. Deveria, 250. Dié, Notre Dame de, 287, 288, 531. Digne, 281, 283-286. Dijon, 171. Dijon, St. Bénigne of, 63. Dioceses of Church in France, 39, 40. Diocese of Corsica, 47. Domninus, 259. Dordogne, 29. Duclaux, Madame, 25, 229, 235. Ducs de Sabron, Tomb of, 290. Duke of Anjou, 40, 44. Dumas, Jean, 433. Durance, River, 162, 292. Dürer, Albrecht, 325. Eauze, 495, 496. Eauze, Cathédrale de, 531. Edward I., 400. Edwards, Miss M. E. B., 24. Eglise de Brou, 277. Eglise des Cordeliers, 207. Eglise de Grasse, 339, 340. Eglise de la Grande Chartreuse, 263. Eglise de St André, 260, 351. Eglise de St. Claire, 208. Eglise de St. Pol, 75. Eglise de Souillac, 55. Eglise Notre Dame du Port, 145. Eglise St Nizier, 179. Eglise St. Quinin, 227. Eleanor of Poitou and Guienne, 39. Elne, 369, 372, 373. Elne, Ste. Eulalia de, 372-374, 532. _Emaux_ de Limoges, 104-107. Embrun, 230, 283, 285, 292-295, 300. Embrun, Notre Dame de, 292-295, 531. Escurial of Dauphiné, 62. Espérandieu, 348. Etats du Languedoc, 251. Eusèbe, 300. Evreaux, Taurin d', 37. Farel, Guillaume, 298. "Félibrage," The, 204, 218. Fénelon, 438. Fère-Alais, Marquis de la, 251. Fergusson, 99. Flanders, 30. "Fountain of Vauclause," 221. François I., 65, 120, 124, 354. Freeman, Professor, 95, 99. Fréjus, 330, 335, 336. Fréjus, St. Etienne de, 335-338. Froissart, 417. Gap, 296-299. Gap, Demêtre de, 36. Gap, Notre Dame de l'Assomption de, 296, 299. Gard, 29. Gard, Notre Dame de la, 346, 347. Garonne, River, 44, 388, 389. Gascogne, 390. Geneva, 252. Geraldi, Hugo, 427. Gervais, 365. Ghirlandajo, 133. Glandève, 280. Gosse, Edmund, 29. Gothic architecture, 60-65. Grasse, 330, 339. Grasse, Eglise de, 339, 340. Grasse, Felix, 24, 384. Gregory XI., Pope, 213. Grenoble, 28, 258-264. Grenoble, Notre Dame de, 258-264, 531. Guienne, 41, 389, 390. Guienne, Eleanor of, 39. Hamerton, Philip Gilbert, 159, 160, 170. Henri IV., 353, 406, 416. Honoré, 334. Hôtel d'Aquitaine (Poitiers), 102. Humbert, Archbishop, 180. Humbert, Count, 271. Ingres, 423, 424. Innocent IV., 201. Innocent VI., 225. Issiore, 75. Jaffa, 56. Jalabert, 250. James, Henry, 25. Janvier, Thomas, 26. Joanna of Naples, 209. John XXII., Pope, 41, 216, 428. Jordaens, 401. L'Abbaye de Maillezais, 81. Lackland, John, 40. La Cathédrale (Poitiers), 96. La Chaise Dieu, 62, 75. Lac Leman, 252. L'Eglise de la Sède Tarbes, 417-419. "La Grande Chartreuse," 48, 162, 531. Lake of Annecy, 252. La Madeleine, Aix, 324. Lamartine, 176. Languedoc, 32, 40, 44, 390, 391. La Rochelle, 73, 82, 83. La Rochelle, St. Louis de, 82-84, 532. La Trinité at Anjou, 56. Laura, Tomb of, 33. Lavaur, 497, 498. Lectoure, 402. Lectoure, Cathédrale de, 402-404. Les Arènes, 240. Lescar, 413. Lescar, Notre Dame de, 413-416. Lesdiguières, Duc de, 298. Les Frères du Pont, 220. Le Puy, 61, 134-136, 327. Le Puy, Notre Dame de, 97, 134-143, 532. Limoges, 57, 79, 80, 104, 105. Limoges (St. Martial), 37. Limoges, St. Etienne de, 104-111, 532. Limousin, 71, 72. Lodève, 246. Lodève, St. Fulcran de, 152-155, 533. Loire valley, 30. Lombardy, 33. Lombez, 496. Lot, 44. Loudin, Noel, 110. Louis IV., 240. Louis VII., 39. Louis XI., 295. Louis XIII., 353. Louis XIV., 210, 224. Louis XV., 210. Louis Napoleon, 397. Lozère, 28. Luçon, 42. Luçon, Cathédrale de, 85, 86, 533. Lyon, 28, 177, 178, 259, 267, 273. Lyon, St. Jean de, 177-185, 533. Macon, St. Vincent de, 174-176. Madet, Joseph de, 273. Maguelonne, 353, 354. Maillezais, 42. Maillezais, L'Abbaye de, 81. Maine, Henry Plantagenet of, 39. Maison Carée, The, 240. Mansard, 290. Marseilles, 36, 314, 318, 342. Marseilles, Ste. Marie-Majeure de, 318, 342-349, 534. Maurienne, 269-271. Maurienne, St. Jean de, 256, 269-271, 534. Memmi, Simone (of Sienna), 211, 216. Mende, 42, 246, 490, 492. Mende in Lozère, 27. Mende, St. Pierre de, 490-494, 534. Mérimée, Prosper, 26, 30, 224. Metz, Clement de, 36. Midi, The, 383-395. Midi, Canal du, 386. Mignard, 250, 282, 290. Mimat, Mont, 494. Mirabeau, 46. Mirepoix, 501. Mirepoix, St. Maurice de, 501. Mistral, Frederic, 163, 165, 218, 228. Modane, 270. Mognon, 84. Moles, Arnaud de, 436. Monastery of La Grande Chartreuse, 260. Montauban, 422. Montauban, Cathédrale de, 422-424. Mont de la Baume, 282. Mont Doré-le-Bains, 74. Monte Carlo, 213. Montfort, Simon de, 455, 459. Montmajour, Abbey of, 230. Montpellier, 40, 352-354. Montpellier, St. Pierre de, 352-357, 534. Mont St. Guillaume, 295. Morin, Abbé, 36, 37. Moulins, Notre Dame de, 126-133, 534. Nadaud, Gustave, 455-457. Naples, Joanna of, 209. Naples, Kingdom of, 45. Napoleon, 27, 210, 240. Narbonne, 42, 53, 54, 241, 375, 376. Narbonne, St. Just de, 375-379, 535. Narbonne (St. Paul), 37. Nero, Reign of, 36. Neiges, Notre Dame des, 223. Nice, St. Reparata de, 328-331. Nîmes, 28, 33, 40, 61, 218, 228, 229, 236-242. Nîmes, St. Castor de, 236-244, 535. Notre Dame de l'Assomption de Gap, 296-299. Notre Dame de Bayonne, 405-410, 525. Notre Dame de Bourg, 277-279, 526. Notre Dame de Clermont-Ferrand, 144-151, 530. Notre Dame de Dié, 287, 288, 531. Notre Dame de Doms d'Avignon, 204-220, 525. Notre Dame d'Embrun, 292-295, 531. Notre Dame de la Gard, 346, 347. Notre Dame de la Grande (Poitiers), 95. Notre Dame de Grenoble, 258-264, 531. Notre Dame de Le Puy, 97, 134-143, 532. Notre Dame de Lescar, 413-416. Notre Dame de Moulins, 126-133, 534. Notre Dame des Neiges, 223. Notre Dame d'Orange, 197-199, 536. Notre Dame de Rodez, 363, 474-481, 539. Notre Dame et St. Castor d'Apt, 289-291. Notre Dame de Vence, 300, 301, 544. Notre Dame du Port, 57. Noyon, 60. Obreri, Peter, 212. Oloron, 498, 536. Oloron, Ste. Marie d', 498, 536. Orange, 28, 33, 61, 225, 229. Orange, Notre Dame d', 197-199, 536. Orb, River, 366, 367. Order of St. Bruno, 260, 261, 263. Palais de Justice (Poitiers), 102. Palais des Papes, 54, 209. Palais du Constantin, 230. Palissy, Bernard, 117. Pamiers, 461. Pamiers, Cathédrale de, 461-463, 536. Paris, 29, 37, 46, 62, 232, 270. Parrocel, 290. Pascal, Blaise, 150, 151, 160. Paschal II., 189. Pas de Calais, 30. Pause, Plantavit de la, 154. Périgueux, 55-57, 61. Périgueux, St. Front de, 56, 87-91, 97, 537. Perpignan, 28, 368, 369, 373. Perpignan, St. Jean de, 368-371, 537. Petrarch, 204, 207-209, 211, 213, 221, 264. Peyer, Roger, 242. Philippe-Auguste, 40. Philippe-le-Bel, 41. Piedmont, 270. Pierrefonds, Château at, 66. Pius VI., 194. Pius, Pope, 210. Plantagenet, Henry (of Maine and Anjou), 39. Poitiers, 42, 73, 95-97, 327. Poitiers, Notre Dame de la Grande, 95. Poitiers (St. Hilaire), 61. Poitiers, St. Pierre de, 92-101, 538. Poitou, 71-73. Poitou, Eleanor of, 39. Polignac, Château de, 75, 76, 135, 143. Port Royal, 45. Provence, 32, 62, 163-167, 313. Provençal architecture, 54, 55, 57, 66. Ptolemy, 159. Puy, Bertrand du, 422. Puy de Dôme, 29, 73, 74. Puy, Notre Dame de la, 97, 134-143, 532. Pyrenees, The, 393-395. Religious movements in France, 23-48. René, King, 323, 326. Révoil, Henri, 348. Rheims, 60, 62, 229. Rheims, Sixte de, 37. Rhône valley, 28. Richelieu, Cardinal, 85. Rienzi, 211. Rieux, 497. Riez, 280, 281. Riom, 73. Riviera, The, 313-320. Rochefort, 73. Rocher des Doms, 213. Rodez, 29, 42, 274. Rodez, Notre Dame de, 363, 474-481, 539. Rouen, 60. Rouen, Nicaise de, 37. Rouen (St. Ouen), 52. Rousillon, 368, 369, 372. Rousseau, 256. Rovère, Bishop de la, 492. Rubens, 340. Ruskin, 63. St. Albans in Hertfordshire, 230. St. André de Bordeaux, 94, 396-401, 526. St. Ansone, 121. St. Apollinaire de Valence, 190-194, 543. St. Armand, 474, 481. St. Armentaire, 339, 341. St. Astier, Armand de, 119. St. Aubin, 226. St. Auspice, 289. St. Austinde, 433, 435. St. Austremoine, 37, 150. St. Ayrald, 271. St. Bénezet, 219. St. Bénigne of Dijon, 63. St. Benoit de Castres, 471-473, 528. St. Bertrand de Comminges, 62, 464-468, 530. St. Bruno, Monks of, 260-263. St. Caprais d'Agen, 429, 431, 520. St. Castor d'Apt, 523. St. Castor de Nîmes, 236-244, 535. Ste. Catherine, Church of, 303. St. Cécile d'Albi, 363, 482-489, 522. St. Clair, 489. Ste. Clara de Mont Falcone, 217. St. Claude, 272-274. St. Claude, St. Pierre de, 272-274, 540. St. Crescent, 37, 186, 296. St. Demetrius, 296. St. Denis, The bishop of, 37. St. Denis, 51. St. Domnin, 285. St. Emilien, 253. Ste. Estelle, 218. St. Etienne, 230. St. Etienne d'Auxerre, 407. St. Etienne de Cahors, 425-428, 527. St. Etienne de Chalons-sur-Saône, 170-173, 529. St. Etienne de Fréjus, 335-338. St. Etienne de Limoges, 104-111, 532. St. Etienne de Toulouse, 439-448, 541. St. Eulalie d'Elne, 372-374, 531. St. Eustache, 268. St. Eutrope (Saintes), 115-117. St. Felix, 241. St. Flour, St. Odilon de, 112-114, 540. St. François de Sales, 253. St. Fraterne, 280. St. Front de Périgueux, 56, 87-91, 97, 537. St. Fulcran de Lodève, 152-155, 533. St. Gatien (Tours), 37. St. Genialis, 201. St. Georges, 137. St. Gilles, 232. St. Hilaire, 61, 95, 96. St. Honorat des Alyscamps, 231. St. Jean d'Alais, 249-251, 521. St. Jean-Baptiste d'Aire, 469, 470, 521. St. Jean de Bazas, 411, 412, 526. St. Jean de Lyon, 177-185, 533. St. Jean-de-Malte, Aix, 324. St. Jean de Maurienne, 256, 269-271, 534. St. Jean de Perpignan, 368-371, 537. Ste. Jeanne de Chantal, 253. St. Jerome de Digne, 281, 283-286. St. Julian, 413. St. Juste de Narbonne, 375-379, 535. St. Lizier, 499, 540. St. Lizier, Eglise de, 499, 500, 540. St. Louis de La Rochelle, 82-84, 532. St. Marcellin, 285. St. Marc's at Venice, 56, 87-89, 346, 425. Ste. Marie d'Auch, 432-438, 524. Ste. Marie d'Oloron, 498, 536. Ste. Marie Majeure de Marseilles, 318, 342-349, 534. Ste. Marie Majeure de Toulon, 332-334, 541. St. Mars, 287. Ste. Marthe, 134. St. Martial, 37, 107. St. Martin (Tours), 61. St. Maurice, 304. St. Maurice d'Angers, 97. St. Maurice de Mirepoix, 501. St. Maurice de Vienne, 179, 184, 186-189, 193, 544. St. Maxine, 324. St. Michel, 142. St. Nazaire de Beziers, 363-367, 526. St. Nazaire de Carcassonne, 57, 319, 449-460, 527. St. Nectaire, 73, 74, 92. St. Odilon de St. Flour, 112-114, 540. St. Ouen de Rouen, 52. St. Papoul, 496, 497. St. Paul (Narbonne), 37. St. Paul Trois Châteaux, 305-309, 542. St. Phérade, 430. St. Pierre d'Alet, 350, 351, 522. St. Pierre d'Angoulême, 73, 120-125, 523. St. Pierre d'Annecy, 252-254, 523. St. Pierre de Mende, 490-494, 534. St. Pierre de Montpellier, 352-357, 534. St. Pierre de Poitiers, 92-101, 538. St. Pierre de Saintes, 115-117, 539. St. Pierre de St. Claude, 272-274, 540. St. Pons, 42. St. Pons de Tomiers, 500, 501. St. Pothin, 179. St. Privat, 491, 494. St. Prosper, 281. St. Radegonde (Poitiers), 95-98. St. Rémy, 235. St. Reparata de Nice, 328-331. St. Restuit, 305. St. Saturnin (Toulouse), 37. St. Sauveur d'Aix, 323-327, 521. St. Siffrein de Carpentras, 221-225, 528. St. Taurin, 433. St. Théodorit d'Uzès, 245-248, 542. St. Théodule, 303. St. Thomas, 134. St. Trophime, 230, 232. St. Trophime d'Arles, 37, 202, 228-235, 524. St. Valentin, 221. St. Valère (Trèves), 37. St. Venuste, 359. St. Véran, 301. St. Véran de Cavaillon, 200-203, 528. St. Vincent de Macon, 174-176. St. Vincent de Paul, Statue of, 285. St. Virgil, 230. Saintes, Eutrope de, 37. Saisset, Bernard, 463. Saône, River, 170, 174, 181. Sarlat, 42, 500. Sarlat, Cathédrale de, 540. Savoie, 30, 252, 256, 271. Scott, Sir Walter, 51, 58. Senez, 280. Senlis, 60. Sens, Savinien de, 37. Sévigné, Madame de, 392. Sion, Cathédrale de, 302-304, 540. Sisteron, 281. Sterne, 126, 184. Stevenson, R. L., 23, 30, 135, 249. Strasbourg, 51. Suavis, 464. Suger, Abbot, 51. Talleyrand-Périgord (Bishop of Autun), 46. Tarascon, Castle at, 66. Tarasque, The, 134. Tarbes, 417. 418. Tarbes, L'Eglise de la Sède, 417-419. Tarentaise, 256, 268, 270. Tarn, River, 422. Thevenot, 113. Toulon, 330, 332. Toulon, St. Marie Majeure de, 332-334, 541. Toulouse, 42, 439-441. Toulouse, Musée of, 441, 447. Toulouse, St. Etienne de, 439-448, 541. Toulouse, St. Saturnin, 37. "Tour Fenestrelle," 247. Touraine, 29, 71, 72. Tours, 29. Tours (St. Gatien), 37. Tours (St. Martin), 61. Treaty of Tolentino, 210. Trèves (St. Valère), 37. Tricastin, 305, 306. Trinity Church, Boston, 141, 346. Tulle, Cathédrale de, 118, 119, 542. Tuscany, 33. Unigenitus, Bull, 45. Urban, Pope, 33. Urban II., 145, 149, 150, 191, 458. Urban V., 354. Uzès, 245-248. Uzès, St. Theodorit de, 245-248, 542. Vabres, 42, 499. Vabres, Cathédrale de, 543. Vaison, 226, 227. Vaison, Cathédrale de, 226, 227, 543. Valence, 29. Valence, St. Apollinaire de, 190-194, 543. Vaucluse, 208. Vaudoyer, Léon, 348. Vehens, Raimond de, 112. Venasque, 222. Vence, 300, 301. Vence, Notre Dame de, 300, 301, 544. Vendée, La, 72. Veronese, Alex., 401. Veyrie, Réne de la, 85. Veyrier, 334. Vic, Dominique de, 434. Vienne, 29, 61, 229, 253, 259, 273, 296. Vienne, St. Maurice, 179, 184, 186-189, 193, 544. Villeneuve-les-Avignon, 213. Villeneuve, Raimond de, 339. Viollet-le-Duc, 88, 131, 146, 377, 442, 452, 455. Viviers, Cathédrale de, 195, 196, 544. Voltaire, 273. Werner, Archbishop, 51. Westminster Cathedral, London, 345. William of Wykeham (England), 51. William, Duke of Normandy, 39. Wykeham, William of, 51. Young, Arthur, 24, 208, 256, 273, 464. Ypres, Bishop of, 48. 
34772	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 34772-h.htm or 34772-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/34772/34772-h/34772-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/34772/34772-h.zip) STAINED GLASS TOURS IN FRANCE by CHARLES HITCHCOCK SHERRILL New York: John Lane Company, MCMVIII London: John Lane, The Bodley Head Copyright, 1908, by John Lane Company [Illustration: INTERIOR OF SAINTE CHAPELLE, PARIS. _Built by St. Louis (Louis IX) 1248. Window surfaces pleasantly broken up into "medallion" designs. Walls constructed almost entirely of sheets of richly toned glass (see Page 26)._] TO THAT REMORSELESS CRITIC _MY WIFE_ THIS BOOK IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION 13 THIRTEENTH CENTURY AND EARLIER 25 THIRTEENTH CENTURY TOURS 37 FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES 117 FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURY TOURS 134 SIXTEENTH CENTURY 197 SIXTEENTH CENTURY TOURS 212 ITINERARIES 295 INDEX 297 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS SAINTE CHAPELLE, PARIS _Frontispiece_ PAGE MEDALLION PANEL, LOUVRE 28 MAP, THIRTEENTH CENTURY TOURS 40 MEDALLION LANCET, TOURS 54 CHARTRES TRANSEPTS 72 THIRTEENTH CENTURY ROSE, LAON 104 FIFTEENTH CENTURY "CANOPY," ST. LÔ 120 MAP, FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES TOURS 136 FIFTEENTH CENTURY "CANOPY," RIOM 158 RENAISSANCE "PICTURE," MONTFORT L'AMAURY 200 MAP, SIXTEENTH CENTURY TOURS 214 RENAISSANCE ROSE, SENS 220 CREATION WINDOW, TROYES 228 CONSTABLE OF MONTMORENCY AND HIS SONS 270 TREE OF JESSE, BEAUVAIS 282 DEDICATION OF THE STE. CHAPELLE 292 FOREWORD The purpose of this book is a very simple one. It is to provide an answer to the question, "Where does one find good stained glass in France, and how can it most conveniently be seen?" All the books upon this subject are more or less technical and are intended rather for the student than the sightseer. During the six years that the writer has been studying glass, he has so often been asked the above question, as to finally conclude that an answer in the form of a simple touring handbook might be of service. To that end he has put together notes taken on sundry vacation trips. The reader should be indulgent, for the writer is not an authority on glass--just a lawyer on a holiday. In addition to the purpose already described, it is hoped that this little book may also serve to lure forth into the charming French country some who have hitherto neither heard nor cared much about glass, so that they may see the wonderful beauty that the stained-glass window can alone reveal. CHARLES HITCHCOCK SHERRILL. 20, East 65th Street, New York, Christmas, 1907. INTRODUCTION The reason for the existence of a window is obvious. When the dwelling ceased to be a cave and became a house, the need for a light aperture at once arose. Neither the house nor the window concern us until long after the house had been made thoroughly habitable, and its windows after much evolution are finally filled with a sheet of translucent substance, which, while excluding the weather, would admit the light. Our interest does not begin until the wish to decorate the house naturally brought about a desire to decorate the window. We will pass over the story of the discovery of glass and its gradual improvement; nor will we pause to consider the very earliest examples now extant, nor examine the steps through which it must have passed to reach so advanced a stage as we find in the twelfth century. This is a book to tell where to see windows, and therefore it must not take up stained glass until a period is reached when examples are sufficiently numerous and beautiful to repay a visit to them. At what date then, shall we make our beginning? There is practically nothing until we come to the charming remains of the twelfth century; but because these latter are very few and those few in churches which also contain glass of the next century, we shall commence with the heading of "Thirteenth Century and Earlier." That explains why we have selected this particular epoch as the starting point of our investigations. Our windows will themselves disclose to us that the Golden Age of French stained glass falls of itself into three subdivisions--the first comprising the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the second the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and the third the sixteenth century. Of the second subdivision we shall find but few examples, of the first more, and of the third most. No matter how far back we push our researches, we are sure to be surprised at the advanced state of the art represented by any window which attempts a picture. In fact, we shall happen upon no satisfactory traces of the evolution which must have led up to even the crudest and oldest story-window. We are forced, therefore, to conclude that this evolution must have occurred in another art, and the result there evolved transferred into this one. This conclusion is much strengthened when we read that St. Sophia, built by Justinian during the sixth century in Constantinople, contained not only glass mosaics on the walls, but also in its windows. Here we have the key to the puzzle. The many artists who were then occupied in designing mosaics, worked out their pictures in little pieces of glass on the wall until they had developed along that line as far as possible. Then they doubtless bethought themselves that these glass mosaics would be even more effective if they could devise a means of illuminating their picture by letting the light shine through the colour. To accomplish this they contrived to hold the morsels of glass securely in place, first by wooden or stucco frames, and later by long ribbons of lead having channels on each side to retain the edges of the glass. This form of mosaic so held up to the light became a stained-glass window. Thus we easily understand that when the idea arrived of taking the mosaic picture off the wall and putting it into the embrasure of the window, the art of making that picture out of bits of glass had already been fully developed. We shall avoid the technicalities of glass making, as they do not suit our holiday mood. Nor is there good reason why we should discuss any use of glass save that which is required in the construction of our windows. Let us, however, in passing, refer to the very curious fact that a severe blow was dealt to all other sorts of glassware when the artists turned their attention to the making of windows. Glassware had constantly improved in design and colour up to the time (early in the twelfth century) when the great interest in windows sprang up. This new taste seemed to at once throw all other developments of this material into a comatose condition which lasted on through the five centuries composing the Golden Age of the window. This observation receives a peculiar confirmation when we notice that, at the end of the sixteenth century, stained glass suddenly lost its vogue at the same time that glassware sprang into renewed favour through the artistic skill and inventive genius of the Venetians. Indeed, the decadence of stained glass seemed to be the signal for the revival of hollow glassware. To revert for a moment to the time when window making caused a halt in the improvement of hollowware, it is interesting to note that glass making then left its former haunts and betook itself to the forests, where it lurked until the stained-glass window having shot its bolt, hollowware again engaged the attention of the artists and was once more manufactured nearer to the homes of its purchasers. During this period of partial seclusion the glass produced was of a peculiar quality called in English "forest glass" and in French "verre de fougère" (referring to the wild fern or bracken which was burnt to provide the necessary alkali). The two names combine to explain to us that wood and not coal was used by the glass-blower and also that his alkali had to be gotten in an unusual way. The toughness of this "forest glass" was admirably suited to the requirements of the window-maker. As this book will be confined to an examination of French stained glass, it is appropriate to cite Theophilus, who when in the twelfth century he wrote his celebrated Latin treatise on this general subject, stated that the art was a French one. This makes it all the more important that we trace its beginnings in France, as well as inquire whence came the influence which so strongly marked them. This inquiry will reveal that it was to Byzantium that the early glaziers were indebted for their quaint style of drawing. In early glass we will observe the constrained, ungainly poses of the bodies, arms and legs, as well as the staring-eyed, ill-proportioned heads, not only in the medallion type of windows, but also in the larger figures glaring down from the clerestories. Very interesting conclusions may be reached if we place side by side three figures, one taken from thirteenth century glass, another from a Limoges enamel made any time from the tenth to the thirteenth century, and the third from the famous mosaics of St. Mark's in Venice. We have selected an enamel from Limoges because that was the only locality in which a continued as well as a renowned cult of enamelling existed in France during the centuries named, while the reason for choosing St. Mark's is that it is one of the finest extant examples of Byzantine art. Notice the same constraint in the drawing of all these three figures, the same awkward pulling of garment folds to delineate the form, and the same quaint morsel of conventional architecture about the top (which last, by the way, indicated that the personage below was a high dignitary of either church or state). The resemblance is too striking to be merely a coincidence, especially as each of these figures used in the comparison is typical of hundreds of others. This very resemblance hints at its own explanation. The dates of the figures show the order in which these peculiarities of style must have been transmitted. The Byzantine mosaics of St. Mark's are much the oldest; then came the Limoges enamels, and lastly the stained glass windows. Thus we learn not only where our windows originated in France, but also whence came the designs that the Limoges enamellers taught the glazier. Abbe Texier, in his "Essai Historique et Descriptif sur les Argentiers et les Emailleurs de Limoges" (1841), says that French stained glass began in the neighbourhood of Limoges, whose highly vaunted school of enamellers were strongly influenced by the Byzantine types of the Venetian school and that therefore it was but natural that the glass artist should also have yielded to the Byzantine influence. As showing how this influence reached Limoges, he states that in 979 a Venetian colony settled there for the purpose of trading in spices and other commodities of the East, conveyed from Egypt by way of Marseilles. Winston says that the Venetian Doge Orseolo I came to sojourn in France in 978 and that the erection of the Church of St. Front, Périgueux (near Limoges), is ascribed to him. James Ferguson, in his Illustrated Handbook of Architecture, tells us that the Venetians (as the great carriers and merchants of the Levant) were in constant communication with Byzantium. These facts provide a ready explanation of why these same pronounced Byzantine types can be remarked first in the mosaics of St. Mark's, next in the enamels of Limoges and lastly on the stained glass windows of the thirteenth century. The older the glass, the more closely does the drawing follow these models; the attitudes are more constrained and awkward, and the folds of the garment are more tightly drawn around the figures, nor does the artist allow himself any freedom from the traditions of that school. Later on the drawing becomes more graceful and the lines are freer. Anyone who desires to go thoroughly into the technical side of this art will find a most exhaustive and scholarly book in Lewis F. Day's "Windows of Stained Glass" (1897). The best book in French is Oliver Merson's excellent "Vitraux" (1895). Let us now postpone any further consideration of the general subject until after we, with our own eyes, have seen enough windows to have collected material for discussion. This brings us to the selection of towns, and the consideration of routes. We have referred to how naturally stained glass divides itself into three epochs, viz.: 1. Thirteenth century and earlier. 2. Fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. 3. Sixteenth century. Visits to the glass of these epochs will be, for convenience, subdivided into the following tours: EPOCH I (_a_) Bourges, Poitiers, Tours, Angers, Le Mans, Chartres. (_b_) Auxerre, Sens, Troyes, Chalons, Rheims. (_c_) Soissons, Laon, St. Quentin, Amiens. EPOCH II (_a_) Evreux, Rouen. (_b_) Bourges, Moulins, Riom, Clermont-Ferrand, Eymoutiers, Limoges, Poitiers, Angers, Le Mans (Alençon), Sées, Verneuil, Chartres. Also separate visit to Quimper. EPOCH III (_a_) Vincennes, Sens, Troyes, Chalons. (_b_) Montfort l'Amaury, Conches, Pont-Audemer, Caudebec, Rouen (Grand-Andely, Elbeuf, Pont de l'Arche). (_c_) Ecouen, Montmorency, Chantilly (St. Quentin), Beauvais. Also separate visits to Bourg, Auch and Champigny-sur-Veude. At the back of the book will be found a table showing distances by road, and also the usual index. It must be admitted that even in so delightful a country as France, one's wanderings gain an added zest if guided by a more definite purpose than is the slave of the red-backed Baedeker, intent upon exhausting the sights of every place visited. This admitted, we have then to consider not only the stranger on his first visit to France, but also the experienced traveller who already knows the beauties of its roads and the lazy charm of its historic towns. If our reader is of the latter sort he will especially hail some new quest as a reason for revisiting old scenes in search of charms heretofore unseen or unappreciated. It was especially him that the writer had in mind when putting together the rambling notes covering six years of glass study. He knows what varied forms of beauty await those who are sufficiently energetic to escape from the ultra-modern charms of Paris, that fascinator of foreigners. He knows the quaint villages, the perfect roads, the ancient castles, the magnificent cathedrals that are waiting to be explored. To him we will tell the story of a wonderful beauty where light lies imprisoned in colour--a beauty which can be seen nowhere so well as in France. What if you have already visited every nook and corner of this picturesque land? Come out again with us and add another to the many reasons for your love of France. Take up the modern equivalent of the pilgrim's staff and shell and fare forth, being well assured that your eyes will be opened to the appreciation of something which, to be loved, has only to be wisely seen--the window of stained glass. THIRTEENTH CENTURY AND EARLIER Before spending any time in studying the subject of stained glass windows, let us go and see some good ones. One of the safest ways to learn how to appreciate any art is to look at fine examples of it. Of stained glass this is particularly true, because no method of reproduction, even colour photography, can give any idea of the unique result there obtained by combining light with colour. No flat tints can ever produce the effect of warmth and translucence that is yielded by colour illuminated through and through by the rays of the sun. We will assume that we are in Paris. Fortunately for our purpose there are easily accessible two splendid specimens of early glass, one the glazing of the Ste. Chapelle and the other the rose windows high up in the western façade and in the transept ends of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. The former is the most perfect instance of a thirteenth century chapel preserving intact its original glazing, while the rose in the northern transept of Notre Dame is probably the finest one of its period in the world. Thus we make an excellent beginning and our interest is at once stimulated to see more. Observe the difference in the placing of these windows, as well as in the points from which we view them, as it will prove peculiarly useful in disclosing how they should be set in order to best reveal their beauties. Every tourist that visits Paris goes, as a matter of course, to the Ste. Chapelle, that net of Gothic in which lies enmeshed such treasures of colour and light. This sparkling marvel lies modestly nestled among the law courts, whose plainer modern buildings serve but to accentuate its wonderful beauty. We shall not be long in learning who was its founder, for the golden fleur de lis of France and castles of Castile strewed over its walls of glass mutely remind us that it was built by the good Louis IX and that with him was associated his mother, Queen Blanche of Castile. No king of France so loved and befriended our gentle art as St. Louis. In many another French window this same combination of heraldic emblems will demonstrate how diligently these two royalties (or others in their honour) strove to introduce and spread the luminous beauty of this craft. This fragile chef d'oeuvre was constructed by order of its royal patron to provide a sanctuary worthy to contain the sacred relics acquired by him in the Holy Land. No effort or expense was spared to fit it for its high purpose. By reason of its royal founder as well as of its object, we can be sure that in the Ste. Chapelle we have an example of the best taste of the thirteenth century. St. Louis laid the first stone in 1245, and so expeditiously was the work carried on that it was finished and consecrated April 25, 1248, and we read that all its wealth of glass was installed before the consecration. Although we shall refrain from technical words as much as possible, we can see at a glance why these were called "medallion" windows. Each subject treated is enclosed in a narrow round framing of colour, thus breaking up the entire surface into medallions. It prevented confusion of subjects and at the same time gave a balance to their treatment. It is a good omen for the future of our combined sightseeing and study that we can begin with something so complete and charming as the perfect Ste. Chapelle. And yet, although it is glowingly, mystically lovely with a beauty attributable chiefly to its glass, other thirteenth century churches will teach us to notice that here it is the interior that is benefited and not the windows. So small is the edifice that we cannot stand far enough away from the glass to let it develop the glittering glow that refraction of the rays of light lends to the glazing of the thirteenth century, but which no other period can show us. In order to fully realise what we have lost by being too near the windows, take the short stroll that brings you to the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Enter its great gloom, go forward until you are opposite the rose window in the north transept, and look up. If you have in you any poetry, any sensuous sympathy with colour and light, you will receive an artistic thrill so strong as to at once elevate you to membership in our Brotherhood of Glass Lovers. Our pilgrim staring up at the great rose window will note the splendid purplish glow that comes from it. Now he will realise that he missed this gorgeous jewelled gleam at the Ste. Chapelle, and for the reason that he was too close to the glass. After he has grown accustomed to this new feature, he will begin to notice some of the causes for it. The effect is undoubtedly glowing purple, and yet it is not produced by purple glass. It results from the merging of the reds and blues, rendered possible, nay, assisted by the smallness of the pieces of the glass, and this observation also explains why this same effect was not obtained in later periods when the glass fragments become so large that the colours remain distinct and do not run into each other. Because we are too near the Ste. Chapelle glass we remember it as red and blue, but the memory of the Notre Dame windows, which can be viewed from a proper distance, is a splendid purple. [Illustration: 13TH CENTURY MEDALLION, MUSÉE DU LOUVRE. _Window surface broken up into medallions, each enclosing a little scene. The black outlines of the picture are provided by the leaden strips which hold together the pieces of glass. Paint is used only to mark the features, folds in the garments, etc. Here the lead lines assist the picture--later they mar it._] It is to be hoped that you have had the good fortune to first visit these two buildings on a rainy or grey day. That is the sort of weather for a glass pilgrim to be abroad and stirring, for his windows will be lighted to the same extent all around the church. If it is a sunny day, the windows towards the sun will seem thin in colour, whilst those on the shady side will be thick and flatly toned. He may assure himself that he is mistaken, and that the difference in effect is caused by the strong glare of the sun on the one side, and on the other side the lack of it--we repeat that he may assure himself of this, but he will get the wrong effect, notwithstanding. Make a mental note of this point and when you go glass hunting, join the farmers in praying for rain! We must seek elsewhere than in Paris to find what this mosaic of tiny morsels of different hued glass can accomplish in the small chapels surrounding the choir of a great cathedral. We shall learn what a glorifying curtain of subdued colour it will provide and how when viewed from the nave of the church these chapels become gleaming caverns, forming a semi-circular background for the well-lighted choir in their midst. Even whilst we are drinking in the great beauty of this splendidly impressive half-circle of chapels, we must realise that delightful as is this method of subduing and beautifying the light, it would be most unwise to use this same style of glass in the clerestory above. Not only would the choir be too dark, but, besides, we would lose the contrast of light against gloom that renders it so impressive in its dignity. This observation introduces another type of glazing for which we shall seek in vain after this century. If we demand more light from our clerestory and at the same time insist on coloured glass, then we must use fewer strips of light-obscuring lead, which means fewer and larger pieces of glass. Thus we will obtain more illumination than is yielded by the heavily-leaded windows below. Now we begin to understand that the light of the medallion window is sombre because so much of its surface is occupied by the great quantity of lead required to bind together its small pieces of glass. These numerous lead lines serve a very artistic purpose, for, by breaking the refraction of the rays of light passing through the small bits of glass and diffusing them, they have much to do with blending the colours and producing the delightful jewelled effect that we at once noticed in Notre Dame. We have purposely used the phrase "much to do," because it is only one of several causes. The quality of the glass itself had a great share in that result. It is quite different from that found later on, for it was, as yet, quite imperfect, and no two pieces had the same thickness or were surfaced alike. This very unevenness assisted in breaking up the light rays. Another cause for its brilliancy was that its translucence was not obscured by paint. A piece of glass was yellow or blue because its colour was introduced while it was being made in the pot and therefore was diffused throughout the mass. For this reason it was called "pot metal glass." We shall find that later on they discovered how to tint the surface of glass by the invention first of staining and later by enamelling, both of which had a marked effect and will be spoken of at the proper time. One of the results of colouring glass in the pot was that generally the tone would not be equal throughout; for instance, a piece of blue glass would not be evenly blue in all its parts. This difference in the shading of each piece, as well as the unevenness of its surface, produced a brilliancy which the more perfect methods that came later could never hope to achieve. The freedom from surface paint made possible a limpidity of colour which by contrast makes later painted or enamelled windows seem almost dull. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the only paint used was a brown pigment, which served to delineate features and sometimes to accentuate the folds of garments, etc. We must also remember that as the artist worked with small pieces of glass and therefore used a great many lead lines, all the outlines needed by his picture could be put in with leads, and hence it was only natural that he became very expert in drawing with them. The result of his skill in this particular is surprisingly attractive and we shall sorely miss it later, when less and less attention was paid to the drawing and decorative value of the leads because of the increased desire for large pieces of glass with pictures painted upon them. In fact, so far from early traditions did they of the sixteenth century stray, that we shall see strips of lead running right across an arm or a face! Their value from an artistic standpoint seemed at that time nearly forgotten, and instead of being used to beautify the drawing, they were only tolerated as a part of the machinery necessary to support the glass in its framework. Before leaving the subject of paint upon glass, it is well to remark that although we may admire the brilliancy of these early windows and may rejoice that the artist had not yet learned to obscure his colour, nevertheless, if we were examining windows in Italy, that land of everlasting sunshine, we might find a little painting upon the surface a genuine relief to the eye. There is such a thing as too much sunshine. Geography must be considered in criticising glass. We promised to avoid as much as possible the study of the technical, but it must be admitted that we have drifted into it, and that our attempt to learn why clerestory windows differ from the lower ones, has brought with it an exposition of the technique of the thirteenth century. To briefly recapitulate, it consists of-- (_a_) Small pieces of glass. (_b_) Obviously requiring a great many lead lines to bind them together. (_c_) Glass that is uneven in surface and in the distribution of its colour. (_d_) Glass coloured throughout the mass (pot metal glass). (_e_) Glass that is practically unobscured by paint. But let us get up to our clerestory windows. It has been instructive arriving there, but now let us see what had to be done to admit more light through these upper embrasures. In the first place it was clear that there had to be less leading, which meant larger pieces of glass. For this purpose there was devised a conventional style of decoration giving a most pleasing result. This consisted of a series of large figures of saints, kings, or other great personages. Unfortunately we cannot see this sort of clerestory window in Paris, but a visit to Bourges or Rheims or Chartres will soon convince you how splendidly they serve their purpose. At Notre Dame, in the choir clerestory, one sees only a poor imitation of the destroyed old windows; owing to the paint upon the glass, the yellows are dull and the reds are thick and muddy. When you have seen one of these rows of huge figures, the reason for the device becomes clear. The folds of garments of such size permitted the use of large sheets of glass, and as little lead and no paint were needed, the light was not obscured. The drawing of the folds, etc., was executed by the leads which, in any event, were required for structural reasons. So large are some of these figures that often we shall find that their eyes were not drawn with pigment, but were separately leaded in. This would not have been agreeable in the lower range of windows, but high up in the air, far above the observer's head, it produced the effect desired. Nor was this the only trick indulged in by the artist. Sometimes he permitted himself very odd uses of colour. You will notice that during this century he generally employed brown glass instead of white for flesh tints. Of course he did not have what we call white glass--that was a perfection not yet reached, but he might have used pink. No, he preferred brown; and when you have seen the glorious rows of clerestory figures looking down upon you at Rheims or Chartres, you will know that he was right. His colours were so rich and strong that white glass in the faces would have been too sharp a contrast and would have spoilt the harmony of tones. Nor was this the only strange choice of tints. You will be startled to read that blue is used for the hair of the Christ in a Crucifixion scene, and yet so cleverly was it worked in that many an observer of the splendid east window of Poitiers Cathedral has gone away without noticing that the hair is blue or that the cross is bright red! The effect of the picture was achieved, proof that the artist knew and developed the possibilities existing in his materials. That certainly always has been and always will be one of the great tests of artistic ability. While in Notre Dame notice another method of glazing prevalent in that century and which also had for its raison d'être the need for light in the upper windows. This is what is called "grisaille," a panel of greenish-grey glass, sometimes surrounded by a border of the same tone, sometimes by one of gayer tints, but always, during this period, a broad border. Back in the twelfth century, where we first find these windows, the borders are wider still. Their small pieces of glass are held together by leads arranged in conventional designs, often in what is called strap work, _i.e._, the seeming interlacing of straps in a sort of basket pattern, very simple and agreeable. The light comes through in a cool, silvery tone which blends well with the stone structure about it. In Notre Dame we see examples of these windows, some with grisaille borders, and also a few with coloured ones, but on our travels we shall find much better types at Bourges, at Chalons-sur-Marne, and elsewhere. As a result of our sightseeing we will learn that the best of the early glaziers realised that to compensate for the dim light yielded by the medallion windows below, it was necessary to have better illumination from above. Of course this combination in perfection was not often accomplished, but we generally find that if the artist did not himself take care to admit sufficient light, somebody that came later corrected the error. Often we find that the monks, to obtain more light in the choir, removed the coloured panels and substituted plain glass. In several instances, notably at Amiens, they attempted to sanctify their vandalism by destroying only so much stained glass in a window as to leave a large white cross upon it. When we come to the next century we shall see what this vandalism in favour of better-lighted church interiors is going to produce. For the sake of clearness let us review the steps by which we have reached our conclusions. First we saw that the thirteenth century window has far more charm in its colour than in its drawing, which, although generally true of all glass, is never so emphatically true as during this period. While examining the colour composition, we have learnt how a window is constructed, and that in turn has taught us why it is best to view it from a little distance. The next step was to conclude that therefore this style of glass was not well adapted to domestic architecture or for small buildings. Further, we have remarked the odd style of drawing then in vogue which, traced back, proves but one of the many imprints which Byzantine art left upon those times. More time might at this point be profitably devoted to study, but this little volume is not intended for a text-book. Its chief object is to persuade you to go about France and see for yourself its wonderful windows. It is to be hoped that even this small amount of research will prove useful in increasing your enjoyment of the glass. Let us now consider how many and which towns we will visit, and also how we can most satisfactorily group them together so as to provide convenient trips. THIRTEENTH CENTURY PILGRIMAGES The glass we have seen in Paris gives but a hint of the richness of this period exemplified elsewhere in France. How much or how little we shall see depends upon the reader. If he has time or inclination for but one example, he should visit Chartres. In giving this advice we solemnly warn him that if he has even a faint idea of seeing more than one, then he should defer Chartres until the last. It so far surpasses the others that they must be seen before it or they will suffer by comparison. If the reader can only visit a few towns, then he will doubtless wish to consider what else they contain besides glass, as these other features may influence him in making his selection. For example, if he is interested in tapestry it is clear that he will prefer Rheims and Angers to other churches equally important in their glass, but lacking such additional attractions. Then, too, nearness to Paris may decide him in favour of one cathedral instead of another requiring a longer journey. With each of our towns we will mention any such extra inducement as tapestry, paintings, etc. At the back will be found a table of distances, not only from Paris, but also from each town to the next. If the reader has plenty of time, we suggest three pilgrimages. If his time is in any way limited, he can either take one or more of them, or else make such adjustment of them as best suits his convenience. It must, of course, be understood that there is some thirteenth century glass which will not be visited by us, but any one who has followed these itineraries will have seen all of the best. When we reflect how fragile is a glass window, it is really marvellous that we shall find so much of this easily destroyed beauty after the stress of centuries. Only a few churches can show anything like a complete series of windows, and fewer still a series all glazed during the same period. Chartres, that treasure-house of glass, is the nearest approach to a perfectly complete example. Le Mans, perhaps, is next. Bourges is splendid in its thirteenth century glory, but there the hypercritical may find that the fifteenth century glazing of the nave chapels interferes with the earlier effect. The clerestory of Rheims Cathedral boasts row on row of gorgeous kings and bishops, but there we look in vain for the medallion windows to give us the usual glowing chapels below. These differences are not mentioned to criticise, but to point out that we shall find a variety and not a monotony of beauty. Now for the three itineraries: (_a_) Our first tour is the longest, starts at the point most distant from Paris, and then works back to that city. We begin at Bourges, 4-¼ hours by railway, 227 kilometres by road. From Bourges we go to Poitiers, then to Tours, to Angers, to Le Mans, and end at Chartres. Chartres is only 1-¼ hours from Paris, 88 kilometres by road. (_b_) Before starting on the second tour we must consult time-tables in order to make connections for Auxerre, which is 35 minutes beyond La Roche, a station on the main line to Lyons and the south. If we could take a through train from Paris, the journey would be under three hours. By automobile it is 168 kilometres, leaving Paris by the road to Fontainebleau. From Auxerre we come back to Sens, then to Troyes, to Chalons-sur-Marne, and lastly to Rheims, two hours from Paris (145 kilometres). If the time or inclination of the pilgrim makes it expedient that this trip be shortened, then, if he is a railway traveller, let him begin by Troyes and come around by Chalons and Rheims. If, on the other hand, he is travelling by automobile, he might as well see Sens just before Troyes, because by road Sens is not much off the line from Paris to Troyes and is well worth that small detour. The railway journey, however, between Sens and Troyes is a tedious one of more than two hours, because it is a branch line where there are no expresses. (_c_) The last tour is most convenient to Paris, and although clearly secondary in importance as a glass pilgrimage, the scenery is so very attractive that it will particularly appeal to the automobilist and bicyclist. We begin by visiting Soissons, an hour and a quarter by train (95 kilometres by road), then Laon, next St. Quentin and last Amiens, an hour and a quarter by train (131 kilometres) from Paris. If he is "en automobile," the pilgrim may return to Paris by way of Beauvais, for it is not much out of his way. If, however, he is travelling by railway, then he should omit Beauvais, for he will find only exasperatingly slow trains from Amiens to Beauvais. The thirteenth century glass there is unimportant, and, besides, we shall later visit it for that of the sixteenth century. If the reader intends to take all of these three tours he should begin with (_c_), then take (_b_), and lastly (_a_). If he can take but two, then begin with (_b_) and end with (_a_). If there is time but for one, (_a_) is the best. The automobilist may unfold his maps and prepare a combination trip if he likes, for that is one of the licensed joys of automobiling. The old-fashioned traveller by railway will, however, find the order here set out the most convenient one. There is a splendid series of medallion windows around the choir chapels of the Cathedral of Clermont-Ferrand, but it is too far out of our way to be properly included in any of the above tours. Rouen, too, has fine medallion work of this period in its cathedral, but the later glass there is so much more interesting that we will not include it in these groups. Both these towns will be visited later in their appropriate order, and we shall then have an opportunity to enjoy their delightful thirteenth century windows. [Illustration: 13TH CENTURY TOURS. (_a_) _Bourges_, _Poitiers_, _Tours_,_ Angers_, _Le Mans_, _Chartres_. (_b_) _Auxerre_, _Sens_, _Troyes_, _Chalons_, _Rheims_. (_c_) _Soissons_, _Laon_, _St. Quentin_, _Amiens_. (_For table of distances, see Page 295._)] BOURGES The writer will never forget his first impression of Bourges Cathedral, as, mounted on a bicycle, he approached it over the rolling country that lies to the east towards Nevers. For a long time it seemed a great rock rising from the plain, which steadily grew larger and larger until, all at once, it took on the outlines of a huge cathedral. Fantastic as it may seem in the telling, this vast bulk looming up against the sky exactly symbolised for him the word "Bourges." To fully appreciate this great church one should approach it this way and let it grow before one's eyes. This is true of but few cathedrals, among which there is an easily recalled instance in England. No one ever realises all the soft grey beauty of Ely unless, thanks to his slow progress down the river Ouse, he has seen it gradually arise from the green setting of fen lands. Perhaps one reason why Bourges, when viewed from a distance, does not immediately disclose itself to be a cathedral is because one sees no perpendicular lines. On one side the great tower so tapers as to seem to slant inward, while on the other side the flying buttresses present an even greater divergence from the perpendicular. All this increases the rock-like appearance and defers the realisation that it is architecture and not nature until one is so near as to perceive some of the details. In one respect Bourges is like the town of Amiens, in that nearly all its architectural beauty is centred in the cathedral and seems to have been content to bourgeon and blossom there. Bourges has, however, one advantage in possessing a wonderful "house that Jack built," the fifteenth century palace of Jacques Coeur, a rich merchant and banker whose wealth was the cause of his final overthrow and banishment on a trumped-up charge of debasing the coinage. Even the fact that he had lent money freely to Charles VII did not save him. Later on (page 151) we shall consider the cathedral's fifteenth century glass, and we shall then examine the splendid window given by Jacques Coeur, perhaps the finest that period can show. Chief among the charms of the cathedral's exterior are the splendid five-portalled west front, and the lace-like garment of flying buttresses that gracefully hangs about its sides and east end. The great apse is built upon the remains of the old Roman walls, which so elevates it above the neighbouring houses as to provide a clear view of the flying buttresses. Unfortunately, the west front does not fare so well. There is hardly a cathedral in Europe so shut in on the west by adjoining buildings. They huddle so closely about it that one has no opportunity to stand off and properly observe the elaborate carvings and other architectural features that unite to make the beauty of this famous façade. From the way in which each succeeding story decreases in size, it is easy to see why the big northern tower appeared to slant inward when viewed from a distance. Like one of the cathedral towers at Rouen, it is named the Tour du Beurre because it was built with money received from the sale of indulgences to eat butter during Lent. Most Americans have, during the day-dreams of their childhood, conjured up a mental picture of the vast interior of an ancient cathedral, and of the mysteriously impressive gloom that would some day there meet their eyes. It is doubtful if any other church more completely realises this fancy of our childhood. As one enters the great building he receives an impression never to be forgotten. A feeling of vastness lays hold upon one even more strongly than at Beauvais and Amiens, both of which are actually loftier. Here the seeming height is increased by the five rows of windows, one above the other. This addition to the usual allotment of three tiers (lower arches, triforium and clerestory) gives an unusual number of light apertures. While there are no transepts, their absence leaves unbroken the lines of the side walls and thus increases the apparent size of the interior. And what a wealth of thirteenth century glass! It gleams and glows and glistens on every side, near at hand and far off in the soft richness of the choir chapels. We find it everywhere except in the nave chapels, which were glazed in the fifteenth century. Perhaps if it were not for the increased light which these later panels admit, we might find the church too much darkened by its sombre earlier glass. It is clear, however, that care was taken even from the first to sufficiently illumine the nave, because it possesses a fine series of thirteenth century grisaille windows, enriched and enlivened by broad borders of colour. The noble chapels that encircle the choir show us the effect of mosaic medallions at their best. Above in the clerestory, "like watchmen on a leaguered wall," are stationed a glorious row of large figures which are not to be surpassed anywhere. The richness of their costumes, of the backgrounds, even of the borders, is most sumptuous. We have already noted the absence of the transepts. On our travels we shall notice that the north and south ends of transepts generally contain great rose windows. To compensate the glass artist for their absence here, the architect gave him an opportunity to glaze an elaborate series of forty-five small ones. They extend all around the interior, no two alike, and must be seen for one to appreciate how greatly they add to the interest and charm of the cathedral. It is contended by some that Bourges provides the finest field for the study of thirteenth century glass, but in this opinion we cannot agree, although gladly admitting everything else claimed for it by its staunchest adherents. Our reason for preferring Chartres is that it has more windows, and that they are practically all of the same period, so that the eye does not there find the distraction caused here by the fifteenth century glazing of the nave chapels. We prefer to rank the first four in the following order of excellence: Chartres, Bourges, Rheims, and Le Mans. It will be interesting to learn whether or not the reader agrees with us. At any rate he should see them, and now that we have enticed him so far away from Paris, he will find it as easy to return by the route that includes them as by any other. POITIERS Among the many beauties of France must certainly be accounted its "cities built upon a hill." There are a goodly number of them and their lofty position has tended to preserve them from change more than cities so placed that their expansion into suburbs was easier. Without doubt there is something fascinating, something irresistibly dominating about a town that looks down upon us. Fortunate it is for us lovers of the picturesque, whom, alas, the uses of modern convenience have made "dwellers in the plain," that during mediæval times the vital need of safety forced its citizens to seek the refuge of heights! No one can question the right of quaint old Poitiers to be as haughty as hill towns have always been--nay, haughtier. Think of the days when through the House of Plantagenet she gave rulers to England--when these same kings governed not only England but also the whole western half of France! We do not always remember what a long strip of territory was ruled by the Angevin dynasty, stretching all the way from the Pyrenees across the Channel and up to Scotland. One of the greatest encounters that marked the long and bitter struggle between the English and French was the Battle of Poitiers, when in 1356 the English under the Black Prince defeated and took prisoner John the Good of France and slew 11,000 Frenchmen. It was, indeed, a bloody baptism when our hill town stood sponsor to such a conflict of warring nations. There are few cities in France which more richly repay a visit than this rather out-of-the-way place, and fewer still which have so many varied inducements to offer. The architectural remains are not only interesting but differ materially in character and epoch. The situation of the city is most striking. It is perched on the top of a flat-iron shaped hill upon the point of which the picturesque Jardin de Blossac smiles down upon the winding river Clain. It is not in this book that you should look for a description of the wonderful triple interpenetrated chimney of the Palais de Justice, nor the fourth century church of St. Jean, nor the ivory-like carvings on the façade of Notre Dame de la Garde. Hie thee to a guide-book for these, and the like of them, and let us to our quest! In all glass of this period, nay, of any period or any century, we shall never find a more splendid window than the Crucifixion at the east end of the cathedral. In our introduction we said that glass should not be studied from written description, but that it must be seen. Of this window this observation is even more true than of any other. Its breadth and size indicate that it dates from early in the century. The harmony and the beauty of its colours are beyond words to describe. Indeed, so ingeniously are they combined to produce their effect, that the detail is apt to escape the observer. Even after spending some time before it he may be surprised to learn that the cross is ruby-red and that the hair of the Saviour is blue. If he had read this in a book it would have been impossible to convince him that the result could be one of such great beauty. Unfortunately for the many excellent medallion windows in this cathedral, there are also a great number of uncoloured ones. It does not take us long to decide that a medallion window should never be lighted from within, because that enables one to see the cumbersome machinery used to produce its effect. One should never become aware of the numerous small pieces of unevenly surfaced glass and the vast complexity of leads which in combination produce such glorious results, but only when the light comes from without. Not only do these white panes reveal these ugly details, but by their glare they effectually extinguish the warm glow which we are accustomed to expect from the richly-coloured mosaics of the medallions. Near the west end there is a good deal of fine strapwork grisaille evidently put there to light that end of the church in contrast to the dimmer light which must have prevailed at the east end when all the medallions were still in place. Even if there were not many fine thirteenth century panels in this cathedral, and even if the town itself were not full of many interesting sights, still we would have been amply repaid for our visit by the Crucifixion window, the chef d'oeuvre of its time. Near the cathedral is the church of St. Radegonde. This long narrow edifice has no transepts, nor, indeed, the usual division into choir and nave, and yet it boasts of a rose window, and a fine one, too, over its northern portal. The colour is really delightful and contains much of the brilliant blue for which Poitiers is famous. Its chief interest is that instead of having its figures broken up so as to monotonously radiate from the centre (which is generally true of rose windows) they are, so to speak, right side up, and all participate in forming the picture of the "Last Judgment." There is some thirteenth century glass on the southern side of this church, but not so well preserved or so good. The windows on the northern side between the north portal and the east end are of the next century and will be considered later (page 172). We may say, however, in passing, that they are unique in that they have bright figures distributed upon a grisaille background which is surrounded by a border of rich colour. TOURS Of all the great battles which have marked the world's history there are few, if any, which so distinctly stand out from the centuries as the Battle of Tours. It was this bloody victory which in 732 rolled back the world-conquering Saracens and determined that Europe should be Christian and not Moslem. On that epoch-making day, the bloody axe of Charles Martel graved deep his name on the annals of France. But Tours has many another claim to historic renown. Touraine, the province of which it is the capital, is strewed with magnificent châteaux, whose very elaboration and beauty testify to how greatly French royalty and nobility loved its temperate climate. On our way from Poitiers to Tours, we shall pass through several charming little valleys and find attractive, though quiet, scenery, during most of the journey. The immediate surroundings of Tours are not pleasing. It impresses one as a dull, grey city seated demurely beside the sands that so ungracefully border most of the lower part of the river Loire. There is little to recall the echoes of the great battle and less still to remind one of the delightful mediæval residences which are such an attractive feature throughout the rest of Touraine. Although the cathedral was under construction all the way from the twelfth century to the sixteenth, its various styles are so combined as to make it an interesting building. It does not, however, seem to merit the enthusiastic praise lavished upon it by Henry IV and many another of its admirers. The chief objection to the interior is that it appears oppressively narrow. The explanation of this cramped effect is that the architect did not avail himself of the usual device of slightly increasing its width as the walls rose. This was generally done elsewhere and served to correct the contracted appearance which perspective tends to give as one looks up from the floor. This architectural trick is an old one, for we know that the Greeks used it not only in shaping the sides of their columns, but also to preserve the appearance of straightness in the chief horizontal lines of their buildings. In the absence of this device the walls seem to crowd together above us, thus accentuating the unpleasant narrowness of the nave. The fine rosaces in the ends of the transepts contain fourteenth century glass, and the western rose with its gallery of eight lancets below, excellent Renaissance glazing. The chief glory of the interior, however, is the fine medallion panels all through the choir, not only in the chapels, but also, and most unusually, in the fifteen large lights of the clerestory. These clerestory medallions date from the latter part of the century, and their lateness is evidenced in a number of ways, among others, by the fact that the medallions are oval instead of round and also that they extend to the edge of the embrasure, leaving little or no room for the border. This can also be observed in the easternmost choir windows of Coutances Cathedral. We have noted before that the choir clerestory at this time was generally given over to large figures of kings, bishops, etc., in order to secure more light than medallions would admit. In the Tours clerestory the fifth window on the right and the fifth on the left (just above the great altar) show an attempt to correct the darkening effect of the medallions by alternating with them horizontal stripes of grisaille. Notice that in the easternmost embrasure the three medallions of the second tier, when considered together, form a picture of The Last Supper. This is a more elaborate exposition of the same idea exemplified by the Annunciation at the east end of the Clermont-Ferrand clerestory. A quaint touch is observable in the two medallions which show little figures of donors, each holding up in his two hands a model of his gift window. One of these is in the left-hand lower corner of the window just left of the eastern one, and the other in the right-hand corner of the sixth on the right. Some of the Tours choir chapels are glazed in white, which combined with the pierced triforium, serves to correct the lack of light caused by the unusual treatment of the clerestory. [Illustration: 13TH CENTURY MEDALLION LANCET, TOURS. _The shapes of the medallions vary widely. Difficult to distinguish the little pictures, although we are near the windows; the early glazier valued the colour effect of his window more than the legends. Later his picture becomes larger, and of great importance._] ANGERS A bad name dies hard and often lingers years after it is no longer deserved. A striking example of this is found in the now unjust appellation, "Black Angers." Black it may have been in the days when its streets were dirty and narrow, but black it is no longer. Black it may have seemed to the townspeople when their humble dwellings were frowned down upon by the seventeen gloomy towers of its haughty thirteenth century castle. Now the towers of the castle are razed, the walls that girdled the city are tumbled into the great moat to form broad boulevards, and altogether it is as agreeable a place as was ever vilified by an outgrown name. Its most important edifice, St. Maurice Cathedral, is not only a perfect treasure-house of glass, but is also the depository of a profusion of admirable tapestries. Those interested in the latter will find here (even more than at Rheims) what an added inducement they provide for the sightseer. All around the nave are suspended the series of the Apocalypse (as they are called), while on the walls of the transepts are yet others dating from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Nor are these all, for packed away in chests are many more, which upon the occasion of certain church festivals are brought out to hang in a row around the outside of the cathedral. In fact, it is only on these festival days that one learns that the interior wall space is insufficient to display half of the church's possessions. Having set out this additional reason for visiting St. Maurice Cathedral, let us now turn to its chief charm, the splendid twelfth and thirteenth century glazing. We shall find the nave windows filled with the largest and best preserved collection of twelfth century glass that exists. They are very wide and high, characteristic of that early period. In the choir there are fourteen excellent examples of the thirteenth century medallion type, and there are others in the transepts. We shall not now speak of the two great fifteenth century rose windows, nor of the very large canopy ones which adorn the transepts, nor of the few sixteenth century panels. It is proper to say here, however, that they are excellent examples of those later periods, thus rendering this cathedral one of the best in which to compare glass styles all the way from the twelfth century to the sixteenth. The chief glory of the edifice, however, consists of those which date from the early mosaic period. So few and so unsatisfactory are the remains elsewhere found of twelfth century glass, and so excellent are they here, that it is to this church that one should come to study it. It is a most fortunate coincidence for the student that the same interior also contains many of the best types of the thirteenth century, because this very contiguity enables him to conveniently contrast them with those of the twelfth. The finer distinctions between their traits are much more noticeable to him where the examples are side by side than they would be if he had to carry the picture in his mind from one place to another. He will at once notice that the earlier borders are much wider than the later ones; some of those in the nave occupy nearly one-fourth of the window space on each side, or in other words, if brought together, the borders would fill nearly half of the entire width of the embrasure. He will also observe that the figures in the earlier ones are made of larger pieces of glass and have the draperies more tightly drawn about them. It is very significant that the pieces of glass are larger in the earlier windows: note this carefully, because in many books we are told that the later artist of the thirteenth century had no choice but to content himself with the small morsels of glass, as he had no others. Thus they would have us believe that his wonderful jewelled glow was merely the lucky result of having nothing but small fragments at his disposal. Even so brief a study of twelfth century glass as to show that the pieces then used were uniformly larger than those of the thirteenth or jewel period, is enough to demonstrate that the later artist deliberately used the smaller bits even with the added trouble of more leading. He did so for the very purpose of obtaining the sparkle and sheen that was never achieved before nor since, and therefore he should receive due credit for his results. A close examination of both the choir and nave windows will yield us many quaint and interesting details. The first on the left contains a large Virgin placed upon a panel occupying all of the window that is not given over to a wide grisaille border. Six small medallions are arranged about this panel, half of each on the panel and half protruding over the border. One of these small medallions is placed at each corner and one in the middle of the two long sides, like the pockets on a pool table. The charming elaboration and colour work of the twelfth century borders throughout the nave cannot fail to be noticed. The set of thirteenth century windows placed about the choir have some gorgeous blues and brilliant rubies. The fifth, counting from the left side, proves to be a Tree of Jesse window, a sort of pictorially genealogical tree which we will frequently encounter on our travels. In this case the treatment is unusual, as the vine, winding up throughout the window from the loins of Jesse in the lowest medallion, not only distributes its historical personages over the central panes, but also up and down the borders as well. The very wide embrasures of this church give us an excellent opportunity of studying the colours of this period. While we are in Angers we must visit the church of St. Serge. As we are now seeking early glass the chief interest of this small interior consists of the five grisaille windows of the twelfth century which, with their graceful design of pale brownish strapwork picked out and accentuated by points of colour, leave little to be desired in their soft beauty. They are to be found in the choir, and are considered by most authorities to be the best type of twelfth century grisaille work that exists. During a later pilgrimage we shall come again to this church to inspect the attractive fifteenth century canopy windows which decorate the nave clerestory (see page 175). LE MANS The great personages in the windows of St. Julien Cathedral looked down upon a portentous spectacle on that day in the year 1133, when Henry I of England stood holding in his arms his little grandson, Henry Plantagenet, to be baptised by the Bishop of Le Mans. The vast throng that gathered for this ceremony, both within and without the newly completed cathedral, little thought that the helpless babe would one day become not only Henry II, King of England, but also the ruler of the mighty Angevin empire, which included all of England and the western half of France. They could not have foreseen that this little one would cause the House of Plantagenet to take its place in history as one of the greatest of royal houses. Strange sights have these splendid old windows gazed down upon, but never have they tempered the glare of the sun for the christening of a babe who so widely outgrew the place of his birth. In one way or another this cathedral has been connected with many a royal family. In its archives we read that when in November, 1217, it was decided to extend the choir over the Gallo-Roman wall, not only was the consent of King Philip Augustus necessary, but also that of Queen Berengaria, the widow of Richard Coeur de Lion. This double approval was needed, since Philip Augustus, although overlord, had given Le Mans to Queen Berengaria in settlement of her claims upon certain Norman towns which he had captured. Perched upon a hill rising from the river Sarthe the cathedral soars into the air from its lofty site as boldly as befits the chief sanctuary of an embattled city boasting of more than twenty sieges. Impressive as it is from the river, it is still more so from the little plain which lies just below it inside the town. There is hardly a cathedral whose east end is so beautifully revealed as is St. Julien's from this viewpoint. We cannot help but be deeply impressed as it swings out clear against the sky, girdled by its thirteen chapels, hung about by its innumerable flying buttresses and to us rendered specially alluring by the great area of window space filled with the many lead lines and heavy iron saddle-bars which we have learnt to know mean glazing of the thirteenth century. The view of the east end of an elaborate Gothic church is always fascinating, but in this instance its height above us, the great number of chapels and the unobstructed view make it unique. The nave was constructed too early to be greatly elaborated, but if compensation is needed, it is fully provided by the thoroughly mediæval feeling which awaits one on entering the little square just before its west entrance. The opposite side of the square is occupied by Le Grabatoire, an ancient dwelling built in the first half of the sixteenth century and in an admirable state of preservation. The traveller in France generally finds that buildings which surround an old cathedral are so much more recent in construction that they provide a jarring contrast. Here at Le Mans, on the contrary, its immediate surroundings thoroughly imbue us with the spirit of the middle ages and we are in a proper frame of mind to enter the portal and appreciate the Old World beauty inside. The interior amply fulfills the promises of the exterior. The luminous glory of the broad surfaces of the glass that seem suspended about the lofty choir is something long to be remembered. This is not the place to speak of the transepts because they were glazed in the fifteenth century; they are very fine, especially the one to the north. Oddly enough, the south end of the south transept has no window at all; its large wall space serves as a back for the organ (see page 178). Let us begin our investigations with the nave. Its triforium is a graceful gallery, but is not pierced, while the clerestory above it contains only modern glass, and therefore they will not long detain us. In the west front is one broad window of the round arched Norman type, obviously of the period which we are now considering. Within a wide border are square panels representing scenes from the life of St. Julien, after whom the edifice is named. Although this window is very broad, even for its early type, it is nevertheless not large enough to appear alone in the great west wall, and as a result, it narrows the appearance of the nave. When we move up into the choir and look back, this effect becomes all the more noticeable, while the nave is even further dwarfed by the fact that the architect, taking advantage of the greater height of the transepts, placed a clerestory window just above the point where the ridge pole of the nave joins the crossing. Thus the lone west window and the clerestory opening just above the nave roof combine to lower and contract that oldest part of the church. But to return to the nave windows; all the lower range are small and all modern except eight, the three western ones on each side and those over the two smaller west entrances. Of these eight all but two are medallions. One of them (the third from the west on the north side) is of interest because it has a border consisting of four little panels on each side enclosing figures. This sort of border is extremely rare, except in Tree of Jesse windows, where the personages are sometimes used in this way to help make up the border. An instance of this may be seen in the central panel of the second triforium window on the south side of the choir and it may also be noticed in the fifth window on the left in the east end of Angers Cathedral. We have just said that all but two of these lower nave lights are filled with medallions--of these two (the second and third on the south side), one might write a book. The writer prefers the second window to any other in France. It was made some time between 1093 and 1120 and represents the "Ascension." As this book is not written to describe glass, but only to persuade the reader to view it, we will content ourselves by saying "go and see." The blue and the ruby backgrounds have a limpidity of colour that cannot be rivaled. Of the third window it is fair to say that some of the panes were brought from other embrasures of this church. The upper panel, enclosing a bust of Christ, with the drapery of blue and a blue halo upon a background of ruby sprinkled with blue stars, is most delightful. These two are indeed treasures and are all that were left by the ravages of the great fire which in 1120 destroyed the earlier church. Passing from the nave to the choir we are at once struck by the grandiose effect there caused by the loftier sweep of its lines. The choir chapels have lost nearly all their original glazing, but fortunately that little gem, the Lady Chapel, still has all its eleven windows filled with medallions. These encircling chapels not only give great width to the choir, but still further width is added by the fact that the ambulatory is double. The first triforium that goes around above us is not pierced, but just above it we find the spacious embrasures of the second triforium. These latter are the largest of their kind the writer has ever seen; in fact, they are large enough to be placed in the clerestory of most cathedrals. Not satisfied with these, the architect has still further increased the lighting of the choir and given greater scope for the glazier by placing above this second triforium the lofty windows of the true clerestory, those toward the west of six lancets each, and those toward the east of two. All the panels of this great curtain of light are glazed in the mosaic style, but the pieces of glass used are noticeably larger than we have been accustomed to find in the medallion treatment. As a result, the amount of leading is reduced and a great deal more colour meets our eye, colour whose individual tones we can recognise, and not the sort, which, conflicting with other colour, produces a confused purple. At St. Julien Cathedral we get a richer tone from the medallions than we find anywhere else, but this gain in richness is partially offset by losing some of the sparkling gleam which would have resulted from smaller bits of glass set in more leads. Perhaps some of our readers will agree with Viollet-le-Duc and other great architects and writers, in regarding this choir a finer monument of the thirteenth century than that of Bourges or Chartres. If the nave of Le Mans Cathedral were as splendidly glazed as the other parts of that edifice, we might have to reconsider our opinion that Chartres affords the best chance for the student of that early period to pursue his researches. CHARTRES Across the rolling grain-covered plain of La Beauce winds a long depression worn by the river Eure. Along the side of this depression we find Chartres, sloping gently up from the little river that bathes its feet and proudly lifting into the air the grey and green bulk of its cathedral, culminating in the two finest spires in France. Its light stone and the softly-shaded tiles of the roof combine to give us a delicious impression of delicate greenish grey. This softness of tone outside gives no hint of the minster gloom within, athwart which shimmer the rich dark rays slanting through the jewelled windows. Nowhere can there be found such a contrast between the exterior and interior of a cathedral. This marked difference serves but to distinguish and accentuate the special charms of each, and together they make our memory of the cathedral a most precious possession of our mental picture gallery. As the pilgrim enters Chartres Cathedral, there is an impressive moment at hand for him, for he is penetrating the Holy of Holies of stained glass. Not only is it the most delightful expression of the thirteenth century, but also of any century, and we speak not only of France, but of all Europe. One is almost staggered by the wealth and profusion of windows--174--and nearly all of the thirteenth century. In the west front the use of slightly larger pieces and the wonderful limpidity confirms the fact that the lovely rose showing the Last Judgment, as well as its three attendant lancets below, are of the twelfth century; the rest of the interior was glazed in the next century. Notwithstanding all that has been written of this wonderful glass, more still remains hidden away in its pregnant mystery, that mystery that lays hold upon all who view it, be he poet, or unromantic follower of one of the homely trades whose guilds have added so generously to the tale of windows. Nor have revelations of this mystery been made alike to all. What one man has spelt out from it may remain incomprehensible to another. The obvious fact to one mind seems to another but a quaint conceit. Lasteyrie, when he told his story in 1841, felt that there was a marvellous symbolism about the change in the strength of the light, brighter as it approached the cross formed by the transepts and then growing darker as one withdrew further from that Christian emblem of spiritual illumination. To him this thought was full of great charm and some of us may agree in his poetic conception. Others may feel that the brilliancy of the remote west windows seems to refute rather than support his theory. It is certain, however, that the revelation of harmony comes to us all alike. It is related that a certain lad thought himself listening to music from the glass itself when the organ commenced playing during the time he was gazing raptly up at one of the great rose windows. This harmony of colours, this melodious flowing of tone into tone, is a glimpse vouchsafed to us all into the solemn mystery that dwells within this enchanted bower of light. James Russell Lowell says: "I gaze round on the windows, pride of France! Each the bright gift of some mechanic guild, Who loved their city and thought gold well spent To make her beautiful with piety." If Rheims is to be known as the cathedral of kings, or Amiens characterised as the Bible in stone, then Chartres must be styled the chief sanctuary of the mediæval guilds. We have spoken of the splendid array of royalties around the clerestory of Rheims, and how they and the many coronations of which they are reminiscent fully justify the proud title of "Royal Rheims." Against this wealth of royal reminiscence Chartres can show but one coronation, that of Henry IV. So far was he from being disgruntled by the long siege necessitated by the stubborn defence of its burghers, that he elected to be crowned in their cathedral, partly, we feel sure, to show the approval of a warrior king for their fighting qualities. No, it is not a long array of kings that are set about to guard its windows and bear witness to their power and beneficence. At Chartres, more than anywhere in France, the Middle Ages seem to have bequeathed to us the great heartbeat of their middle classes. Here we see about us the sturdy workers of the city, the guilds of its industrious burghers. True, the great rose windows of the transepts show us the royalty and chivalry of the kingdom, but somehow they seem decorative and not dominating as they do at Rheims. Nor are our friends of the guilds here present by any man's let or by virtue of kingly condescension. At Laon there are statues of oxen in the cathedral towers, put there in kindly remembrance of their services in dragging up the great stones from the plain far below; but at Chartres it is no kindly remembrance that has disposed about the nave and elsewhere the glass histories of guild upon guild. They are in the place because they are of the place, nor is there any attempt to disguise the homely occupations of the donors. In other towns we occasionally find a panel bearing a statement that it was presented by some company of craftsmen, but the subject is almost always a scriptural one and throws no light upon the work-a-day existence of the members. Here it is very different, for so proud were the honest workmen of the crafts which they plied, that they took infinite pains to have their windows set out scenes descriptive of the work and life of the association which gave it. The history of the Chartres guilds is well worth delving into, and one finds a luminous index provided by the long series of panels around the lower part of the nave. The glass speaks eloquently of how well organised and how rich were the middle classes of Chartres, and nowhere else can anything like so complete or interesting a set be seen. Goldsmiths, cobblers, vintners, tanners, moneychangers--so the list goes on until it swells into a total of nearly forty, and of each there is provided some little group depicting the service performed for the community by that particular trade. Several of the guilds gave more than one window, nor are they confined to the nave aisles, some having strayed so far as the choir clerestory. But for all that the windows here speak more eloquently than elsewhere of the sturdy craftsmen--the bourgeoisie that formed the backbone of old France--we must not forget that they also bear witness to the gallantry and generosity of the knightly and titled classes. To glass lovers this cathedral has a peculiar interest in the fact that St. Louis was baptised within its walls. May we not be permitted the delusion that to the undeveloped faculties of the royal babe the wonderful harmony of these windows came as a lullaby, and that the echo of this lullaby finally grew into the great love for stained glass which he later developed? Of this love we have found many traces, all leading up to its ultimate expression in the Ste. Chapelle of Paris. And where more appropriately could a French king, who loved glass, have been christened? Where else would he have had about him on his beloved windows such an array of his subjects, representing not only the highest, but also those of humbler rank, a bodyguard of four thousand figures of nobles, gentry, burghers and craftsmen? Nor are these figures content but to decorate, for some of them by their grouping serve to narrate for us nearly forty legends. A splendid proof of how much he loved this cathedral, so often revisited by him, is afforded by his splendid gift, the Rose of France, as they call the great window in the north transept. Here are the familiar combination of the French fleur de lis and the castles of Castile showing that Louis and his mother, Blanche of Castile, joined in this royal gift. In splendid reds, lemon-yellows and browns it tells the story of the glorification of the Virgin, thus repeating what we see in the carvings of the northern porch. The gorgeous five tall pointed windows below aid it to produce a glorious ensemble. Nor is it only in this quarter that we see traces of the nobler classes, for was not the south transept end decorated in similar wise with scenes showing the glorification of Christ, the gift of Dreux and Bretagne? Again we find the windows inside repeating what is shown by the carvings in the porch outside. The five tall pointed lancets under this rose are especially noteworthy, for the two which, on either side, flank the middle one containing Christ are each filled with an Evangelist carried on the shoulders of a Prophet, a very physical way of depicting the power of prophecy. [Illustration: CROSSING AND SOUTH TRANSEPT, CHARTRES. (13TH CENTURY.) _No photograph can even hint at the wealth of deep, warm colour that fills these windows. The early date of those in the right foreground indicated by their broad borders. Below the Rose, four of the lancets show Evangelists borne on the shoulders of Prophets._] This is not the place to tell of the wonderful carvings that abound within and without this great temple, and are especially delightful around the stone screen that separates the choir from the ambulatory; nor shall we take upon us to speak in detail of the subterranean chapel to the Virgin who bore a Child, the pagan legends concerning whom "the memory of man runneth not to the contrary." For us they are but accessories to the wonderful whole which provides so magnificent a casket for the preservation and exposition of the most splendid heritage of windows that has come down to us. Although completely outclassed by the cathedral's greater glory, the glazing of the church of St. Pierre is not only pleasing to the eye, but also provides a very complete and well-preserved demonstration of how the transition was effected from the light-obstructing mosaic medallions to the overlighted interiors of the fourteenth century (see page 188). AUXERRE Our memories of architecture are generally those of form and not of colour. To this rule there are, however, a few exceptions, and of these the cathedral of St. Etienne at Auxerre is one of the most noteworthy. One remembers it chiefly for its rich brown colour, partly due to the tint of the stone and partly to the terra-cotta tiles which cover its roof. The deeper hue of the tiles calls out all the warmth in the shading of the stone and they together make a mellow brown picture, especially attractive if seen for the first time in the tones which it takes on towards twilight, when the low rays of the sun perform for it the same service that they do for the interior of the Corpus Christi quadrangle at Oxford. Another cathedral whose colour lingers in our memory is Chartres, where the dull green tiles of the roof tone into the greyish stone of the building, accentuating and enriching it, and leaving with us a distinct impression of a soft-hued grey church. A very picturesque city is Auxerre, sloping up from the river, with its three chief churches rising watchfully above the monotonous level of the house-tops like huge rocks anchoring the city more firmly to its foundations. Not so bulkily impressive but equally noticeable is the quaint old bell tower, which, from its great height, rings out every now and again reminders of the flight of time. The proportions of the cathedral interior are very harmoniously adjusted. The noticeable features are that the ambulatory is lower than the nave, and that the Lady Chapel at the east end is square instead of being rounded. In view of the geographical location of Auxerre one would expect to find glass of the more florid Burgundian type; but instead it is clearly of the Champagne school. There is a quantity of good sixteenth century glazing and we would especially call the visitor's attention to the fine blues, which he should not fail to notice. The windows we have come to see, however, are to be found in the chapels and the upper lights of the choir. Henri Villeneuve in 1220 caused to be placed in the choir clerestory the great row of fifteen, each consisting of two bays surmounted by a small rose. This arrangement is very graceful and gives an agreeable grouping. The colouring and drawing of the large figures with which they are filled testify to the good taste of their donor. Nor are the windows in the clerestory any more worthy of notice than the twenty-nine which we shall find below surrounding the choir and filling the choir chapels--almost all complete and containing fine types of the medallion style. The three nearest the transepts on each side and one or two others are glazed in white, the result of well-meaning sacrilege on the part of the monks seeking to secure more light. Fortunately their hands were stayed, so that enough of the old panels are left to give us the jewelled gleam which we are seeking. There is an unique arrangement in some of the embrasures of Auxerre which we must not fail to note. It provides an early example of the use of grisaille to increase the illumination of the interior. In several instances the coloured figure or panel has two borders, the one next it being of grisaille and the outside one of rich colour. Possibly the contrast will strike us as being too marked. We shall find that in the next century this combination is carried to such an extreme as to become positively disagreeable, but here at Auxerre it is so skillfully employed that it is not at all unpleasant. In any event, it is far better than white panes used for the same purpose. SENS In these days of telephones, telegrams, express trains, automobiles, newspapers and printed books, it is difficult for us to realize that in mediæval times thought traveled but slowly, and that two cities a few leagues apart were much more widely separated than they would now be if divided by the ocean. To-day a piece of news, an invention, some new artistic method, is flashed around the world and at once meets the eye of millions of readers. All this excites no comment. When, however, we notice that in some mediæval period a novelty in one country very shortly thereafter appeared and was used in a neighbouring one, we are forced to conclude that there must have been some very unusual occurrence to have so far set at naught the difficulty of news transmission to which we have just referred. The history of the middle ages does not contain a stranger example of such a rapid spread of something novel than that presented by the story of how and of why William of Sens (who, in building the Cathedral of Sens, constructed the first thoroughly Gothic church) came to have the honour of introducing Gothic architecture into England by a call to rebuild Canterbury Cathedral. It so happened that just as he was completing his great work and disclosing to the world the new beauty of Gothic architecture, Pope Alexander III, exiled from Rome, took up his residence at Sens (September 30, 1163, till April 11, 1165). It is recorded that on the 19th of April, 1164, surrounded by a gorgeous array of cardinals and bishops gathered there in attendance upon the papal residence, he consecrated the altar of the Holy Virgin in the cathedral then rapidly approaching completion. Where the Pope was, there also was the centre of the Christian world, and thither of course repaired the clergy from all parts of Europe. These distinguished pilgrims were witnesses of William's first bold attempt at the pointed arch, the chief characteristic of his great cathedral. To see was to admire. Its beauty was so striking that they could not fail to remember and recount it when they returned to their home towns, thus stimulating other architects to copy this new architecture. Never before nor since had a builder so well timed a gathering of admiring ecclesiastics. Among those who came, and saw, and remembered, was Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, himself an exile from his see. He dwelt four years at Sens (1166-70) and what he saw there impelled him to invite William of Sens in preference to all the English architects to rebuild the Cathedral of Canterbury. It would seem strange even now, and a thing worthy of comment, if a French architect were chosen to construct an important English church, but how much more extraordinary was it that Thomas à Becket should have taken this step in 1174, after the disastrous fire which destroyed the earlier church on the site of the present Cathedral of Canterbury. William succeeded in completing the choir as it stands to-day, but it cost him his life, for as he was superintending the finishing touches of his great work, he fell from a high scaffold and received injuries from which he died. Through this introduction of the young French Gothic into England he exercised a noteworthy influence upon the beginnings of ecclesiastical Gothic in that country. We have told this story here because we know the architect and the glazier worked hand in hand. This association grows more interdependent as the Gothic blossoms into decoration and as more wall space is devoted to windows. It is fair to assume that the stained glass style then prevailing in France must have accompanied its sister, Gothic architecture, upon the latter's invasion of England, and an examination of the early medallions at Canterbury tends to confirm this theory. Since à Becket was having the new Gothic of Sens copied, why not also its admirable glazing? In any event we know that French glass was well known and much admired by the English, and later we shall recount several instances of its being brought to glaze English churches, and even requirements made in English contracts that French and not domestic glass should be provided. While it is true that the early glass of Sens Cathedral is not so abundant as that of the sixteenth century, we have come here at this time because nothing finer is known than the few medallion windows which remain to us along the north wall of the choir. They date from the end of the twelfth century and are large, strong in tone, and in excellent preservation. The clerestory lights of the choir are filled with attractive examples of grisaille enlivened by large geometric figures in points of red, blue, etc. These designs are constructed with slender lines and without too much colour, so that plenty of soft silvery light is admitted to illuminate the choir below. So well lighted is it from the clerestory above that we are forced to conclude that all the chapel embrasures below must at one time have been filled with the gloom-producing medallions. It is unfortunate that the original set of medallions below is not complete, because if it were, we would now be able to see, thanks to the charming grisaille in the clerestory, a perfect combination of the well-lighted choir surrounded by the sombre gleam of its protecting chapels. Such a combination is rare. At Tours, at Troyes, even at Bourges, we find ourselves wishing that we had a little more light from above to set off by contrast the dark splendour of the jewelled caverns below. The clerestory at Sens shows us just the luminous effect which we have sought elsewhere, but, alas! our coloured dusk below, which should go hand in hand with it, has been almost entirely dissipated. As a result we are left with an impression of too bright an interior. The minster gloom with all its dignity is gone! We shall return later to Sens to see its splendid glass of the sixteenth century (see page 218). TROYES Of all the French schools of glass which at one time or another gained renown, none ever surpassed that of Champagne. Not only do we know this from the pages of history, but it is easily proved by the innumerable examples found in the many churches of Troyes, the ancient capital of that province. The fame of the glass artists of Champagne not only began early but lasted long. In fact, in its capital, the perfected methods of the sixteenth century became so firmly established that their style and vigour lasted far over into the seventeenth century, which was not generally true elsewhere. Troyes has always enjoyed prominence and that, too, along different lines; "Troy weight" testifies to the wide fame of its jewellers. In our travels we shall observe that most towns have but one or two churches whose windows repay a visit. Troyes and Rouen are the marked exceptions to this rule, for in each we shall find many well worth examining and a great wealth of glass. Then, too, both these cities provide facilities for studying the art from the earliest to the latest period of its golden age. We will postpone consideration of Rouen until we take up the sixteenth century because its thirteenth century glass is unimportant. This is not true of Troyes, for if by some sudden calamity all its splendid Renaissance windows were destroyed, we would still most heartily recommend that our pilgrim visit the city to see the early glass in the cathedral and in the fairy-like church of St. Urbain. These two buildings alone provide the best of reasons for including Troyes in this tour. The story of the foundation of that architectural eggshell, St. Urbain, is very interesting. In 1261 there became Pope a certain Jacques Pantaléon, a native of Troyes. After his elevation to the pontificate he remembered his humble beginnings, and so far from being ashamed that his father had been a small shopkeeper, he bought the ground whereon his father's shop had stood, as well as some of the neighbouring buildings, and erected, about 1263, one of the most delightful and airy examples of fragile grace in all Gothic architecture. The walls seem literally to be constructed of glass, so slender are the stone uprights between the windows, and so wholly is this little church uplifted and upheld by the innumerable flying buttresses that stretch away from its roof and delicate sides like the supporting guy ropes of a tent. At the Ste. Chapelle in Paris we noticed that although medallion panels give a splendid dark warmth, they do not admit light enough for a small structure. Perhaps in St. Urbain we shall feel there is too much light. The medallions of the period are there, but only in small numbers and imbedded in large fields of silvery grisaille. The lower half of the clerestory windows is in grisaille and it is only in the upper half that we find coloured figures. While it is true that we lose the silvery hue that simple grisaille generally yields, still, in exchange, we receive a low-toned glow that is delightful. The proportion of glass surface to wall space is here so great that if the grisaille had not been warmed by touches of colour, there would really have been a glare, though the embrasures contain no white glass. The more we study the subject the clearer it becomes that the glazier thoroughly understood and appreciated the possibilities of the medium in which he worked. As we pass from St. Urbain to the larger and more impressive Cathedral of St. Pierre, we shall notice that although the artist felt the necessity for the lighter treatment in the dainty chapel-like church, he found it more appropriate in the larger edifice to so glaze his windows as to fill the place with the more solemn and dignified light suited to its greater size. The choir of the cathedral provides an unusually complete and satisfying example of this period, not only in its girdle of chapels, but also above in the gorgeous row of thirteen clerestory windows from which ferocious-looking figures stare down upon us from glittering eyes leaded into Byzantine faces. Splendid as they are, we feel that a little more light should have been admitted, and this thought must also have struck the glazier, because he resorted to a trick in the choir chapels to better illumine the eastern part of the structure. If you will step into one of these chapels you will find that in most of them he has substituted grisaille for the medallions in the lancet on either hand nearest the choir. When you stood in the choir ambulatory, this device escaped you because the arch which provides the entrance to the chapel conceals these two nearest lancets. The result of the trick is that two side-lights, properly softened by the grisaille, are thrown into the chapel. If white panes had been used, they would have illuminated the inner side of the medallion panels, thus revealing their ugly machinery of leads, and, worse still, effectually destroying their power to transmit a combination of colour and glow. Ample illumination has been furnished this cathedral by its pierced triforium and the great expanse of its clerestory, but, thanks to the remarkably warm tone of the glass, we do not find it anywhere overlighted. Even the later glass which adorns the nave and transepts and which we will discuss farther on, is so unusually strong in colour that we avoid that sharpness of contrast between thirteenth and fifteenth century work to be seen at Bourges. Decidedly, St. Pierre is one of the most beautiful interiors in France for the glass lover, and he should not fail to see what the best examples of the Champagne school has done for this church, the charm of which lays hold upon him directly he enters it (see page 222). CHALONS-SUR-MARNE Certain travellers and most tourists think they can, from studying maps and reading books, obtain a very fair impression of a town before they visit it, and that the chief result of their visit will be to fill in sundry local details. If people of that ilk desire to remain high in their own estimation, they had best omit Chalons from their travels. Let us assume that one of these aforesaid folk plans a visit to Chalons. He will probably begin by studying the map, which shows a city seemingly drawn out along both sides of a long, straight street. His practised mind will conclude this the proper method to enter the town and that he can easily find his way about. Step number two will be the consultation of histories. Here he will fall upon the account of the great Battle of Chalons, in which Attila, the "Scourge of God," met in 451 his final check, the combined army of Romans, Franks and Visigoths there putting a bloody end to his dream of an anti-Christian empire erected upon the crumbling remains of "the power that once was Rome's." Anyone who has noticed how surprisingly few decisive victories have been followed by widespread or lasting results must have remarked that the Battle of Chalons stands out prominently as an exception to this rule. So much for what the maps and the histories have disclosed to our experienced tourist. He is doomed to a bitter disappointment. To-day in this quiet little city of yellowish-grey houses he will find nothing reminiscent of that old-time victory. Not only will his dip into history thus prove to have been in vain, but what is more, the street plan has given him a very wrong idea of a really very pretty place. The writer himself well remembers how the map misled him. He remarked thereon the long straight street; therefore, on emerging from the railway station, he proceeded up this tiresome thoroughfare, which he found equipped with the usual provincial tram-line, both trying to tie the older part of the town to the distant railway station that bears its name. As a disappointment this first impression of Chalons was a pronounced success! Don't fall into the same error. This was the wrong way to enter the town, but there is also a right way, especially for one who believes in first impressions. If you want to be in a mood to enjoy the glass, branch off to the right when you reach the canal (which is not far from the station), and you will come into a park called the Jard, one of the prettiest combinations of green trees and water to be found in any provincial French city. On a later visit the writer stumbled upon this park, with the result that instead of a mental picture of an ugly town built on both sides of an ugly street, he carried away pleasantly revised memories not only of the charming Jard, but also of several little water-courses meandering through the town, affording lovely vistas every now and again in most unexpected ways. It seems certain that these streams feel equally bitterly about the ugly street, because as soon as they come near it, they promptly hide their heads and pass under it, carefully keeping out of sight in small tunnels. Wait until you see the street, and you won't blame the streams. Now that you have by means of the woody refreshment of the green Jard purified your perceptions from the taint of railway dirt, let us enter the cathedral. We shall find the glass more interesting and instructive than impressive, but to this general observation we must make an exception on behalf of the thirteenth century windows in the clerestory behind and above the altar; they undeniably leave little to be desired. The blue of their backgrounds combines excellently with the tones of the figures. In one of the panels which shows the Crucifixion, we can readily discern that the bars supporting it at the back (called saddle bars) have been moved to one side so as not to interfere with the two figures on either side of the cross. This displacement of the saddle bars to leave undisturbed the drawing of an important personage was quite usual at that time. Later on the glazier seemed to have no objection to the intrusion of the iron bars, just as he grew to disregard the running of his leads across faces, arms, etc. This church also boasts of a fine rose window in the north transept, which is rendered even more effective by the gallery of lancets beneath it. The especial interest of the cathedral to a student of glass is undoubtedly its grisaille windows, some plain and some banded across by highly-coloured panels of the medallion type. This latter arrangement we find along the north wall of the nave, while those containing grisaille alone are in the triforium and clerestory. In the case of the banded ones we shall notice that it is only the middle third of each which has the highly-coloured panels, all the rest being grisaille, doubtless for the purpose of giving plenty of light to the nave. Although a most interesting arrangement, the effect is not that of great beauty. Some of the narrow triforium panels have a border of plain grisaille surrounding the central panel of colour work in which there are no figures; this is quite unusual. A study of the use of colour with grisaille in that century is not complete without a visit to Chalons, but this having been said we must admit that notwithstanding the splendid panels in the choir clerestory and the fine rose window in the north transept, there are several more inspiring places for one wishing to learn how greatly thirteenth century glass can beautify a religious interior. Some of the finest and most valuable twelfth and thirteenth century panels have been removed from the cathedral, and are now the property of the Musée des Arts Decoratifs, in Paris. Unfortunately they are not always on exhibition. On the south side of the nave is a fine series of Renaissance windows, but these, together with the grey and gold figure panels of St. Alpin, and the excellent coloured ones of the fine church of Notre Dame, will be discussed in our sixteenth century pilgrimages (see page 233). RHEIMS Royal Rheims! In this title, "apt alliteration's artful aid" not only appeals to our ear, but is also fully justified by history. In its splendid cathedral were crowned almost all the kings of France, the sacred oil used in the ceremony having been, saith the old legend, brought from heaven by a dove for the baptism in 496 of Clovis, King of the Franks, and thereafter preserved in a sacred vessel locked away in the tomb of St. Remi. Because of this having been for so many years, nay centuries, the place of royal consecration, what more appropriate decoration could have been devised for the great clerestory embrasures than the series of the first thirty-six kings of France, each window containing in its lower half the archbishop that consecrated the king above him! All these seventy-two figures are seated, because convention demanded this if the personage represented was dead. Down upon us from their lofty station about the nave clerestory gleam these long rows of the royalties and ecclesiastical dignitaries of France, a marvellous exemplification of what colour in glass can accomplish. An echoing gleam comes to us from the clerestory of the choir; but there the figures are those of great bishops, not only of Rheims, but also of other cities in its diocese, like Laon, Soissons, etc. At first thought it may seem bad English to speak of a gleam of light as an echo of another gleam, but before you criticise the expression, stand patiently for awhile in this great house of God, looking up at these splendid windows; perhaps there will at last come over you a feeling that in all this noble harmony of colour, this blending of soft tones, there is--there must be--some dim harmony of music. One never receives this peculiar impression except from glass of the thirteenth century; later glass lacks the depth and vibration of tone, even though it gains added brilliancy. Especially splendid is the effect of the kings dominating the nave below. Those near the transepts have a deep blue background, whilst a few close to the west end have behind and around them a soft, rich red. There is no other place where such sombre depth of hue can be seen in a clerestory glazed during the thirteenth century. At Bourges they are magnificent, but their beauty is of a different and brighter sort. Here at Rheims, although raised high in the air, they yield the same dusky glow that elsewhere we usually find in the medallion panels of the choir chapels below. So wonderful are the windows above you that there is a fair chance that you would have left the cathedral without noticing that below there are no medallion windows at all; in fact, that practically none of its lower panes are glazed in colour. This is owing to the almost incredible folly of the monks of Rheims who, in the years 1739-68, removed the coloured glass from the lower embrasures to admit more light. During the two years following October, 1755, they committed the same act of vandalism in the church of St. Remi. The cathedral has three fine rose windows, of which the western one with its bright-hued gallery of kings below it is far the best. The north rose window is good, although we miss the qualities which the north rose of Notre Dame at Paris has taught us to expect. The south rose contains glass of the sixteenth century and therefore seems pale and out of place amidst the older glories. The west rosace should be seen toward sunset so as to get the rays of the sun passing directly through it. Earlier in the day it is almost gloomy in tone. There has been much discussion as to the interpretation of the figures in the gallery of kings below, but now it seems settled that it represents the coronation of the converted pagan Clovis, King of the Franks. The windows of the transepts are glazed with grisaille of a very greenish tone and somewhat darker than that generally found at this time. Among them we observe one of the series of bishops which has apparently crept away from its fellows in the choir and come around the corner into the south transept. Although the bishop series lacks, to some extent, the crude, almost savage glory of the nave's stern array of kings, they are more carefully made. As in the king windows, here also we find an upper and a lower row of personages, but in addition, a feature very much out of the ordinary and which should be remarked. Instead of placing two bishops below to balance the two above, there is but one bishop below in each window, while the space adjoining him is occupied by a fanciful representation of his cathedral. There is no attempt to accurately portray the building, although the glass artist might as well have done so, for he has gone to the pains of making no two of these little cathedral pictures alike. So minutely has he gone into detail that each has a tiny rose window and each rose is markedly different from the others. The idea is a quaint one and shows the artist to have been fertile in ideas. So dark are the faces of the bishops as to make them look in one or two cases as though they were wearing masks. This effect is heightened by the fact that the eyes are glazed in lighter hues. In the midst of all this gorgeous and sparkling colour, what a splendid picture may we not conjure up of the scene on the 17th day of July, 1429, when Charles VII, led in by Joan of Arc, had here the kingly crown placed upon his brow. With what vast satisfaction must the grand old kings have gleamed and glowed in sombre delight that their glorious cathedral was once more French, once more fulfilling its centuries-old duty of consecrating a French king, and especially that all this had been effected by a staunch French maid, than whom patriotism has never had a more worthy exemplar. It was but common justice that during the act of coronation of the king to whom she had restored not only a throne, but also a united people, she stood at the foot of the altar holding aloft her victorious standard. A chronicler of the time truly said that having shared in all the hardships she richly deserved to share in the honours. Not only in the cathedral do we glass hunters find justification for the title "Royal Rheims." Once more we shall see a row of French kings, this time in the small nave clerestory lights of the old church of St. Remi. In manner similar to that employed at the cathedral we also find bishops adorning the choir clerestory. Fine as these two series are, and valuable, too (because they are earlier), we must confess that they do not produce the effect which the wonderful depth of colour gave us at the cathedral. The choir clerestory embrasures are really too small to afford room for the two rows of bishops one above the other. The choir chapel windows are partly modern, and partly old with too much restoration, so that the effect is not coherent. We must, however, remark a fine Crucifixion in the middle of the east end. It is undoubtedly twelfth century and, although technically well worthy of observation, lacks the beauty which we have a right to expect from that period. The glass in the large, round Romanesque embrasures at the west end, although copied on old models, is modern and very thin in colour. A careful look at the nave clerestory will reveal that in order to complete the set of seated kings a novel method was adopted. Many of the original panels were divided in two at the middle, the upper half being used in one embrasure and the lower half in another, the missing half in each case being supplied by modern glass made to imitate the old. This reads as though the effect would be bad, but on the contrary, it is fairly good and, at all events, the designs are in accordance with the original drawings. Besides its glass, Rheims has another great attraction for the traveller in its wealth of tapestry. A magnificent series of ten presented in 1530 by Robert de Lenoncourt hangs in the transepts of St. Remi, whilst in the cathedral we shall find around the nave walls another series of fourteen given in the same year by the same donor. The cathedral is also adorned with other tapestries which, although perhaps not of such engrossing interest as the Lenoncourt series, are nevertheless treasures. As glass viewers it is well to observe that the rich decoration provided by these splendid hangings prevents us from noticing the otherwise obnoxious glare from the uncoloured windows just over them. We mention this here because as between two interesting glass towns some of our readers might incline to one where tapestries can be seen in addition to the glass. The Cathedral of Angers provides also the same double inducement. SOISSONS During the two tours just concluded we have visited all the most important treasure-houses of thirteenth century glass. There is, however, a very agreeable secondary tour. Regarded as a glass pilgrimage, it is not to be compared with the two which we have finished, but this must not be taken to mean that the glass will not be worth inspection. Besides, most of the windows to be seen are of the period, thus making it an essentially thirteenth century pilgrimage. To one in whom the love of glass and devotion to the gentle sport of automobiling is about equal, this trip will be much more attractive than the last two. The scenery through which he will pass and the history that will be recalled will add very much to the charm of this itinerary and it is therefore particularly recommended to the automobilist and especially to the exercise-loving bicyclist. The distances between the towns are not great and the landscape is varied and delightful. Beginning with Soissons, our road lies through the picturesque mediæval stronghold of Coucy-le-Château to the high-perched hill city of Laon, then over the plain at its foot to battleworn St. Quentin, and lastly across the rolling country to the splendid Cathedral of Amiens. Amiens is on the line of the Paris-London expresses, so we have excellent train service back to Paris. We will let the traveller find his way as best he may from Paris to Soissons and will join him there. He will soon observe that there has departed from Soissons the ancient glory which was hers when under Clovis, the great king of the Franks, she became the capital of his strong province of Neustria. To-day we find a quiet provincial city of only about 13,000 inhabitants, where the chief movement and life seems to centre in the barracks. One noticeable feature of the town is the really fine west front, all that remains of the Abbey of St. Jean-des-Vignes, for nine years the home of the exiled Thomas à Becket. Even from its present denuded state of desolate loneliness one realises how splendid the complete building must have been, and the now empty and staring rose window above the central portal makes us sigh for the stained glass that must once have adorned that huge opening. Soissons is one of the towns which benefited by the great love felt by St. Louis and his mother, Blanche of Castile, for stained glass. The northern rose of the cathedral is a proof of their beneficence, and is an excellent example of its type. The central pane is occupied by a figure of the Virgin Mary, and circling round her are the medallion panels which are so much more satisfactory than the spokes-of-a-wheel treatment so popular in the next century. Around the outside of the medallions is a double border of panels containing the arms of the royal benefactress, a field of red bearing the golden castles of Castile. As for the rest of the interior, so much of its original glazing has been destroyed that the effect of glow is entirely dissipated. The nave has lost its coloured panels, and only fragments remain in the western rose. The large lancets about the east end of the choir clerestory are most decorative, and further, they provide an opportunity of testing our ability to judge glass. At first sight we are convinced that they are of true thirteenth century mosaic work, and might continue to think so, if they were not betrayed by the comparison afforded by the two genuine medallion lancets just below them in the Lady Chapel. Even then we may remain undecided, which indecision is justified when we learn their history. They were repaired and restored in 1816, much of the old glass being retained and the old designs carefully followed. This explains not only why they lack the depth of tone seen in the complete medallions below them, but also why they were so deceptive until this touchstone of comparison was applied. Notice the Adam and Eve window to the right, as the design is very unusual. In the six scenes there depicted, one above the other, Adam and Eve are of course nude, and appear always she on the left side and he on the right of each little scene, with some other personage or object between them in the middle. As a result we have a perpendicular column of Eves on one side and of Adams on the other, the light glass used to make the flesh colour forming a secondary border for the window. The southern transept is an architectural freak, because instead of a rose window it has a rounded end like the apse chapel generally found at the eastern extremity of a church. As a novelty it is agreeable, but it deprives the glazier of one of his rose windows. LAON Those proceeding upon this pilgrimage by automobile or bicycle, will find a treat awaiting them between Soissons and Laon. The road lies through Coucy-le-Château, the impressive and well-preserved ruin of a massive mediæval fortress. The huge round towers at its corners, connected by walls thirty-five feet thick, frown down from their rocky perch upon a pleasant valley below. Snuggled up against these protecting walls is the little town, which we enter by a narrow gateway crowded in between two great solemn towers. On we go through the narrow old streets and out another well-defended portal and off on our journey. When first we espy Laon we are far off on the rolling plain which surrounds its base. It looms high in the air, the four towers of its cathedral peering out above the encircling houses, all seeming to keep watch over the tiring zigzags by means of which the road lazily climbs the height. A city built upon a hill always possesses a fascination, more especially when it has a history as long and interesting as this one. The lofty situation makes the town seem to hold itself aloof and lends it a certain proud mystery which impels us to seek to know more of it--to penetrate its reserve. Laon is even more picturesque and striking than most French hill towns, because the height upon which it stands rises abruptly from a great plain. None of the height is lost and thus all the beauty is saved. After observing how remote it is upon its long, narrow hilltop, one can well understand why the later Carlovingian kings selected this stronghold for their capital. In those early times there was no artillery to endanger their loftily secure repose. The cathedral, which is a really fine one, presents us with some of those familiarly quaint touches that prove Gothic architecture to have been so close to the heart of its times. Perched aloft among the open spaces that interpenetrate its light towers, are life-size statues of oxen, in kindly memory of the beasts of burden that hauled up from the plain below the great stones used in the building. Within the cathedral, although there is but little glass, it is all of this period and, besides, is so grouped as to do itself the greatest credit possible. All we shall find is a rose filled with medallions in the north transept and another and far finer one in the square eastern end, below which are ranged three gorgeous lancets of imposing dimensions. The northern rose contains scenes representing the sciences as understood and practised in the thirteenth century. One's memory of this rose is blue with hints of green, while of the eastern series it is reddish purple. The centre of the splendid eastern rose is occupied by a figure of the Virgin Mary between John the Baptist and Isaiah, and around this group are two circles of medallions, the inner one of twelve containing the Apostles, and the outer, of twenty-four, the Elders of the Apocalypse. This concentration of all the old glass in these two quarters has the satisfactory result that anyone standing at the crossing and looking either into the north transept or into the choir, sees nothing but the splendid richness of mosaic medallions, and is not distracted by the sight of any other style of glazing. The placing of this fine glass more than compensates for its limited amount. After this sweeping praise, we may indulge ourselves in one mild criticism: the glass in the east end would seem richer still if it were not so much illuminated from within by the white glazed windows along the sides of the choir. If this were toned down, even by modern glass, it would cause a decided improvement. At St. Quentin, we are more than reconciled to the presence of modern glass in the chapels around the choir, because it so modifies the light as to permit the thirteenth century panels in the choir clerestory to sparkle and gleam as they should. The north rose at Laon is of rare construction; the stone framework is so cumbersome, and the amount of glazed surface so modest, as to almost destroy the appearance of a rosace, and to substitute therefor that of a series of holes let into a wall. Also notice that the east rose is glazed flush with the stonework, thus presenting a level surface on the inside, while just below, in marked contrast, the three lancets are deeply recessed within. This method of constructing a rose is unusual; another example is the west rose at Mantes. The square eastern end, instead of the usual rounded apse, is believed to be one of the many results seen throughout this diocese of the influence exerted by a twelfth century English bishop. Whatever the reason for this square apse, it admirably suits the rest of the edifice. [Illustration: 13TH CENTURY ROSE AND LANCETS, LAON. _Medallions are admirably suited to rounded apertures in Rose, and assist in producing effect of huge blossom; later the lines radiated more from the centre and tended toward a wheel effect._] Before leaving this delightful hilltop, we must not fail to take a stroll around the boulevards which have been constructed upon the overturned walls. The views from this promenade out over the great plain below linger long in one's memory. ST. QUENTIN A few miles from Madrid lies the famous palace of the Escorial, built upon a ground plan following as closely as possible the shape of a gridiron. It was erected by King Philip II in pious memory of his famous victory at St. Quentin on St. Lawrence's Day, 1557. St. Lawrence achieved martyrdom by being roasted alive on a gridiron, hence the selection of that humble utensil as a design for the royal thank-offering. There are few more interesting monuments to commemorate a victory, and one would hardly expect to hear that a battle won in northern France is commemorated by a palace far to the south across the Pyrenees. Many a time in history did St. Quentin make herself famous by her stout defences, but none ever won her so much fame as this defeat which, by delaying the Spanish forces, enabled the French armies to assemble behind her and save Paris. It was a great victory for Philip, but it cost him the possession of the French capital. As we stood upon the lofty heights at Laon, we looked far out over a wide plain, across which, forty-five kilometres to the northwest, lies St. Quentin. The quiet streets of this well-to-do city afford little to remind us of the mediæval strife that so often raged through them. We hear no sounds that recall to us the angry noises of besiegers without, which so often carried dismay to the stout hearts of its burghers. Unlike Laon, its situation and its buildings now present little to recall the picture of the past. The huge barn-like exterior of its great church is quite different from those we have been seeing. Even its triple-tiered flying buttresses have so short a span as to entirely miss the decorating possibilities which we have a right to expect. It lacks the lightness and grace of the true Gothic; in fact, to tell the truth, it looms up big and bulky, more like an Italian church than the beautiful French ones. But when we have once passed inside, we are provided with a most agreeable surprise, for it is much more attractive than many whose external promise has been greater. There are two sets of transepts, one beyond the other, which unusual feature not only enhances the charm of the interior, but also causes its beauty to reveal itself in a more leisurely fashion. But to the glass! In the choir clerestory are seven double windows, of which the lancets each hold two great dignitaries, one above the other. The small rosaces above, which serve to tie together these pairs of lancets, are very pleasing, nor should we fail to note the handsome wide borders of the lancets themselves, plentifully besprinkled with fleur de lis. We must particularly appreciate the service performed by the modern glass around the choir chapels in so subduing the light as to permit these splendid lancets to receive all their illumination from without and therefore to disclose, undiminished in any way, that warm glow that makes them so delightful. The hideous polychrome painting of the interior also assists in this fruitful modification of the light, but this is the only possible apology for its presence! The oldest glass here is that which fills the two side windows of the Lady Chapel. Each has twenty medallions, those on the left showing Old Testament scenes, and those on the right, episodes from the life of the Virgin. One of the large transepts has a moderately-sized rose window which does not as usual contain figures, but, instead, is filled with designs in colour. The absence of the figures does not spoil the effect; in fact, the story depicted in glass of this period is nothing like so important as the colour scheme. The details of the legend are generally elaborately worked out, often in quaint episodes, but upon this the beauty of the window does not depend. Indeed, it is not until we are at such a distance that we can no longer distinguish the little figures that the charm of the glass begins to lay hold upon us. The reason we do not find more thirteenth century panels here is because the older part of the church was reconstructed during the reign of Louis XI. Furthermore, when we consider the many sieges to which the town has been subjected, as well as the great fire of October 14, 1669, it seems strange that even this much of so fragile a treasure has survived. In this connection it is interesting to learn that in 1557, Philip II instructed his artillery to avoid hitting the great church. This very appreciation of art and respect for religion perhaps explains why, as soon as he had captured the city, he so promptly confiscated the church's gorgeous tapestries to be used later in decorating the Escorial! In 1766 an attempt was made to negotiate for them so that they could be restored to their original home, but the Spaniards replied that they could not part with so glorious a trophy. Nor was the ravaging hand of the warrior the only hostile force to which the unfortunate edifice was subjected. January 25, 1572, during a tempest, one of the great choir windows was blown in, and on Easter Day, 1582, the same fate befell the great window of the first northern transept, this time with fatal results, for in falling it killed four priests. The old glass in the nave clerestory was removed by the monks in 1747 to secure more light, which form of vandalism was, unfortunately, only too common. We must not leave without commenting upon what a delightful monument of fifteenth century Gothic is afforded by the south end of the easterly transepts. Below is a chapel shut in by a light stone screen of admirable design; above it the stretch of wall is relieved with gracefully carved patterns, while higher still appear four large lancets surmounted by a rosace, all excellently glazed. The lancets have richly coloured single figures below canopies of such size that their pinnacles occupy more than half the height of the embrasures. The only criticism possible of the otherwise satisfactory adjustment of the various portions of this south wall is that the rose is too high up and too small to balance the splendid lancets below it. Of sixteenth century glass there are two fine examples in the north end of this same pair of transepts, but we will postpone further reference to them until later on (see page 269). Before leaving the town, one should visit the Salle Syndicale in the Hotel de Ville in order to see the fine François Premier fireplace, and the double arched ceiling with its quaint corbels. The windows of this room formerly contained a long series of sixteenth century scenes from the life and labours of Hercules, but a Prussian shell destroyed all but five of them. When he leaves St. Quentin, bound for Amiens, the traveller by railway is quite as well off as the automobilist or the bicyclist. Up to this stage of our journey the two latter have had a decided advantage, but now the country has less attractions to offer and the road is one of those straight Routes Nationales whose only apology for their monotony is that they save distance. AMIENS At Amiens there is not much glass, and yet the student will not have wasted his time, for he will there see one of the finest cathedrals in Europe, and will furthermore be able to note what the lack of coloured glass means, in this way learning to value it even more highly than before. If a visit to this great church renders us no other service than this, we shall all agree that it is no small one. We shall never again question that a magnificent ecclesiastical interior is not only vastly improved, but actually needs its light tempered by stained glass. Our pilgrim has long ere this learnt that he cannot always rely on guide-books to tell him whether or not fine windows are to be found in certain towns, and therefore we may serve a useful purpose and save some reader a disappointing trip by setting out the facts. The cathedral owes its chief beauty to the extraordinary detail and amount of sculpture to be found without and within. So complete are the scriptural events chronicled upon its west front that Ruskin has given it the title of the "Bible in Stone." Nor are the carvings which are to be found inside in any way inferior to those which fascinate us without. The stone screen which runs around the ambulatory would alone repay much study, but the most notable display of the carver's art is the little army of nearly four thousand figures upon the choir stalls. Notwithstanding this wealth of sculpture, we are struck by the bareness of the lofty interior. We long for a touch of mystery and cannot but feel that in the glare of light streaming through the immensely tall uncoloured windows everything is too clearly revealed and there is lacking the softness which would add so much to the beauty of the carvings. What a change there would be for the better if we could wave a wand and by some fairy power will back into the windows their ancient glories. Everything is too stately and cold, too sharply outlined; in fact, far too much denuded of the mysterious charm, the awe-inspiring gloom which lays hold upon us at Chartres or Bourges. Although but little of its glass has survived, it is almost all of the thirteenth century, and some is very good. In one of the choir chapels to the left is an interesting Tree of Jesse in the medallion style. The left window of the easternmost chapel has a charming blue background and a novel use of small white birds in its border. Above us in the easternmost window of the clerestory (the only one in the clerestory that has survived intact) another unique feature catches the eye--its four slender lancets contain some very decorative lettering introduced into the design. This lettering is glazed in white on a blue background and its legend when deciphered sets out that those three windows were given by Bernard d'Abbeville, Bishop of Amiens, in the year 1269. In contrast to these meagre remains of glass, there are also to be seen three fine rose windows which are completely glazed. They all have quaint names, that in the west façade being called the "Rose of the Sea"; that in the north the "Rose of the Winds"; that in the south the "Rose of Heaven." This poetic and quaintly familiar method of naming windows is not unknown elsewhere; it is also found at Chartres. The huge western rose, thirty-eight feet in diameter, although dating from 1241, has lost its original glass and was reglazed in the sixteenth century. There are no figures in the north rose, but instead a mosaic of colour; we have noticed a similar arrangement at St. Quentin. In the south rose, red predominates, but with it there is also considerable green. If the reader decides to visit Amiens, notwithstanding the small amount of glass to be seen there, he will surely conclude that the day has not been wasted, for he will not leave that splendid interior without a truer appreciation of the great service which the glass artist rendered to the architect, as well as a sigh for the fragile beauty which is no longer there. FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES Nowhere in art can there be found so abrupt a change of style as that which marks in stained glass the arrival of the fourteenth century. So noticeable is the difference between the windows of the thirteenth and those of the fourteenth centuries that it can be seen at a glance. Not only were the new styles very distinctive, but they were also very enduring, for even when the fifteenth century arrived it did little but elaborate the ideas introduced by the fourteenth, and for that reason we should consider them together as forming one epoch. The new results which we now find are not only in effect, but also in light and in placing of figures. This transformation took place within a few years and was, therefore, as sudden in point of time as it was in treatment, which latter is so marked that it excites our curiosity as to its causes. It is safe to assume that we have here happened upon not only one novelty but a coincidence of several, as otherwise the change would have been much less abrupt. Most of the new elements which in combination so suddenly produced such a sweeping change can be studied from the glass which has survived to these modern days, but of one we can now only read: this was the demand for domestic glass, and unfortunately but few examples of it are left to us. The old chroniclers tell us of many private houses and buildings devoted to civil uses having their windows glazed in colour, a form of luxury hitherto found only in religious edifices. We know that it then began to be widely used, especially in Paris, but it did not survive the turbulence of those times. The effect of this novel use on glass styles was very marked. Obviously it was not practicable to employ the same sort of glass in the smaller rooms of a dwelling house that we have seen so effective in the larger interiors of religious edifices. We notice that beautiful as is the thirteenth century Ste. Chapelle, its "dim religious light" is unsuited for any building devoted to secular uses. No, the medallion window with its deep-toned panes and profusion of leads would not serve for civil or domestic purposes, nor, on the other hand, could we bring down the big personages from the clerestories of cathedrals; they were most impressive when seen from the distance which their lofty situation necessitated, but they were much too crude and coarse in their workmanship to be lowered to the level of the observer's eye. For this new demand of domestic architecture it was obvious that something must be devised which would give more light. One method of effecting it was using coloured figures on a soft grisaille background, but this has only to be seen to be found unsatisfactory. Some examples of this exist in the north side of Ste. Radegonde at Poitiers. They are interesting, but the figures start out from the light background so violently as to plainly make them unsuitable in small interiors. Plain grisaille was not rich enough to be used in a fine private house. As a compromise between these two methods they arrived at the use of a border of greyish simulated Gothic architecture to frame the central coloured figure of a window. In this way the border admitted the light and the figure gave the richness; these Gothic frames were called "canopies." But why a frame of architecture? The interest in Gothic had by this time spread throughout the fair land of France. Many beautiful examples of it had just come into being before people's eyes--it was the delight of all. It was but natural that this noble style, still young, should be introduced by the glazier, especially as it lent itself to the demand for more light. Besides, in knowledge of Gothic, the glass artist was second only to the architect, as the windows were made to suit the church, not the church the windows. This observation upon the relation of the glazier to the architect brings us to another reason for the abrupt change in stained glass, and of this we can to-day readily find examples. We have said that the artist had to make his glass to suit the window apertures. About that time the architect was changing their shape. Instead of being broad and single windows they were now more numerous but narrower and taller, and were brought together in groups of two or more, separated only by stone mullions. Above this cluster of narrow lancets and in order to taper them off gracefully, were placed smaller openings called tracery lights. Without this tapering at the top, the group below would look unfinished and ill-proportioned. The few, though wide windows used during the thirteenth century were found to give too little light, and, besides, were not as decorative as the Gothic architect demanded for his more elaborate style. This new period in architecture is called "Decorated," which name has also properly been applied to its glass. The architect not only did everything in his power to gain more light by providing many more wall apertures, but doubtless he also insisted that the glazier assist in this endeavour. We have just seen that the latter complied with this request by surrounding his coloured figures with light-admitting architectural frames of greyish-yellow. Nor did he stop there: he helped the architect to bind together more harmoniously his groups of narrow lights into which the whole window was now split up, for he realised that horizontal bands of light colour placed straight across these narrow lights would effect this purpose. The slender stone mullions which divided them showed too many perpendicular lines and tended to make the windows seem spindling, but this was corrected by the broad bands of light afforded by the grey and yellow canopy tops running along over the heads of the saints occupying the tall narrow panes. Perhaps the reader is already asking whence the artist obtained so much grey and yellow, because thirteenth century glass leaves rather a strong purple memory behind it. To answer this question is to bring forward another new thing and one which also had a large share in abruptly changing the styles. About the beginning of the fourteenth century it was discovered that if silver were floated upon the surface of glass and then exposed to the furnace, the result would be a bright yellow stain. The word "stain" is used advisedly, because by this method the surface received a durable colour not removable like paint. We have already seen that pot-metal colour was introduced throughout the mass during the time of the making of the glass and was therefore part of it from the beginning. This new stain was not applied until after the glass was made, and no other tint but yellow could be produced in this way. The discovery of this valuable secret has been variously recounted, but always the credit is given to blind chance, some silver happening to drip upon glass which, when burnt, disclosed to the surprised workman the new and beautiful yellow. Its great value in admitting light as well as in enriching the tones of a window was at once appreciated. No longer was it necessary to laboriously lead in a bit of yellow pot-metal glass where that hue was demanded by the design. Now all that was done was to float a little silver upon a large piece of glass at the point or points required, expose it to the fire, and behold! a tint that made glorious the hair of angels, or the robes of saints and high dignitaries. Touches of this rich colour also made possible architectural frames which would otherwise have seemed dull, flat and opaquely grey. Each little pinnacle could be brightened up, lines of yellow would enliven columns and the canopy window in its light soft beauty was made practicable. [Illustration: 15TH CENTURY "CANOPY" WINDOW, ST. LÔ. _Name given because of Gothic canopy used to frame the coloured figures. The pale grey glass in the canopy portion admitted much more light than the earlier windows richly coloured throughout. Note the modestly drawn donors in the lowest panels._ _14th century canopies seldom filled the whole embrasure, appearing only in bands across a grisaille field; besides, their architecture was much cruder, they lacked pedestals, etc._] It is an unfortunate fact that the best glass of this period is not to be seen in Paris, although we can get a fair idea of its effect from the fifteenth century canopied figures in the clerestory of St. Sévérin. A few of those at the west end of this church are at once seen to differ in their design from the others, although all are of the true canopy type. These few to the west were brought from their original place in the choir of St. Germain des Prés. At St. Sévérin we shall note several points which serve to distinguish the canopies of the fifteenth century from the earlier ones of the fourteenth. The difference is chiefly in the use of more colours in the later figures, as well as more careful architectural detail in their canopies. Further, to make his windows lighter in tone, the French glazier of the fourteenth century generally used bands of canopies only across the middle third of the surface, filling the uppermost and lowest thirds with grisaille. The fifteenth century canopies almost invariably filled the entire embrasure. Frequently during the fourteenth century the artist was not content with the light admitted by his canopies, but added to it by using white for one or more of the saints' robes. This practice so reduced the number of colours in the background and the garments that we seldom find more than two colours within the niches of fourteenth century canopies, while in the fifteenth century we almost always find four. Then, too, there is an added feature of decoration in the later ones which is generally lacking earlier: across the back of the niche a coloured curtain is carried shoulder high behind the figure, and this curtain is almost always damasked. This can be remarked at St. Sévérin, where we shall also see that all the figures stand upon elaborate pedestals, another sign that we are looking at work of the fifteenth century, for in the fourteenth they would have lacked pedestals and be found standing upon grass or some other natural and unarchitectural base. The artist was so careful to cling closely to contemporary conventions that sometimes we happen upon very amusing compromises. For example, here tradition demanded pedestals, so there they are, even though he had to make the rather ridiculous combination of a figure standing upon a half-circle of cloud neatly balanced upon the pedestal's tessellated pavement. The conventions demanded the little pavement, the design required the clouds, so he gave us both! In these days when we are so occupied in copying older art, it is interesting to see traces of a time when they jealously clung to the styles and forms which were then new. A brilliant yellow was the only tint obtainable by the process of staining, but it is also true that other new colours were secured, although by means of an entirely different discovery which, of itself, provided yet another new thing to combine with those already enumerated in changing glass methods. This discovery took place early in the fourteenth century and made it possible to superimpose another colour upon white or coloured glass. The method of producing this effect was very simple: the end of the blowpipe was dipped first into liquid glass of one colour, and then into another, with the result that the bubble when blown was of one colour inside and of another outside. The bubble was then opened out into the flat sheet as usual. This process had always been followed to make red glass, which was really a sheet of white coated with ruby, but now all sorts of combinations were made. Thus a brilliant purple could be obtained by coating a piece of red glass with blue; red on yellow would give a splendid orange; blue on yellow a brilliant green. Although invented early in the fourteenth century, this process did not have all its possibilities developed until during the fifteenth, when the number of layers was gradually increased until we find some specimens showing six different coats. We shall enjoy the results when we visit Quimper or Eymoutiers or Bourges. The French have a very descriptive name for glass treated in this manner: they call it "verre doublé," or "lined glass," referring to the fact that there are two layers. The abrupt change in glass windows which took place at the beginning of the fourteenth century becomes less extraordinary when we recapitulate the various discoveries in the art and realise what an effect must have been caused by such a combination as that of (_a_) the chance-revealed yellow stain; (_b_) domestic use which required glass fit for small, well-lighted interiors; (_c_) the demands of the architect for his narrowed and more numerous window apertures, and lastly (_d_) the enriching of the artist's palette due to the new process of doubling the sheets of glass. The whole trend is now towards much more light, larger pieces of glass, brighter colours and more attention to the design at the expense of the colour effect of the window. We have now not only set forth the great change that was so speedily effected in the style and appearance of stained glass, but further, we have enumerated the various novelties, both in popular requirements and in technique, which brought about the light tones of the fourteenth century. The steps by which was effected this transition from the thirteenth century mosaic type with its rudimentary suggestion of a canopy, to the fourteenth century figure ensconced in his little sentry-box, can be seen on but few existing windows; in fact, so little transition glass is there that the change strikes one all the more forcibly. There are, however, a few available for this purpose, notably the three eastern lancets of the Lady Chapel in the Abbey Church at Fécamp, and a certain window in the north transept of Amiens Cathedral. The Fécamp lancets show us the first step, where, although the glass is still entirely mosaic, the architecture at the top is brought down the sides of the figure so as to complete the sentry-box. Of course this admits no more light than the regular medallion lancets which conveniently assist our comparison by flanking on either side the three easterly ones. We have thus arrived at the enframing canopy, but have not yet conformed to the demand for more light which had now become so insistent. How will this be done? A mosaic medallion could not well be put upon a light surface, as it would look splotchy and unfinished (viz.: first chapel on the left of choir ambulatory in Rouen Cathedral), nor would it do to station unframed, isolated, coloured figures on an uncoloured surface (viz.: Ste. Radegonde at Poitiers). To avoid the unfinished appearance, they hit upon the idea of surrounding the coloured figure with a frame-like architectural border (as just seen at Fécamp), and then put this framed picture in the midst of the plain panes. This step is exemplified by a large double-lanceted window just west of the north transept door in Amiens Cathedral. The entire window is surcharged with a number of these canopy-framed figures arranged in parallel perpendicular lines. We have now gained more light, and it is easy to see what is coming next. Instead of placing the small canopies up and down the window (as at Amiens), it would obviously be more effective to assemble them in bands across it. Both Sées and Evreux serve to illustrate this manner of glazing. There are many examples that mark the slow development from these fourteenth century horizontal rows of canopies across a grisaille or quarry background, to the perfected canopy window of the fifteenth century, where the service of admitting light is entirely transferred from the grisaille or quarry to the canopy itself. This has been rendered possible by greatly increasing the space allotted to the simulated stonework, so as to enable it to let in all the illumination required, and at the same time perform its duty of framing the coloured part of the picture. These windows at Fécamp and Amiens are very instructive as showing us the experimental steps which resulted in the satisfactory combination of picture and illumination, instead of splotches of colour on a light field. It must not be thought that we have dwelt too long on this particular period of transition, for this is the only time during the Golden Age of glass that there took place an abrupt change in styles, and therefore a speedy and marked transition. There was certainly nothing hasty in the way that the broad borders and larger glass pieces of the twelfth century developed into the narrower borders and more minutely mosaic method of the thirteenth. As to the transition from the fourteenth to the fifteenth century, so slowly and so imperceptibly was it effected that we have decided to study those two centuries together as one epoch, the second being but the natural elaboration of the first. Lastly, nothing could be more measured and deliberate than the steps by which the fifteenth century canopy developed into the sixteenth century large picture panel, by first changing the canopy from Gothic to Renaissance, then enlarging the scene within the new canopy until it finally outgrew the need for the frame, and emerged therefrom in its completed state, often covering a whole window. If at this point we turn to our histories, we shall soon encounter reasons which convincingly explain why there remains so little fourteenth-fifteenth century glass for us to see. This was the period of the English occupation of a large portion of France. A peaceful possession of a part of the country might not have interfered with the course of art in other quarters, but the English possession was far from a peaceful one. Fighting, and that of the bitterest kind, went on continually. We have only to mention the "Hundred Years War" with England (1337-1453), marked by the disastrous defeats of Crécy (1346) and of Poitiers (1356), to be reminded of that. It is true that Bertrand du Guesclin won a short-lived success against the English (1364), but 1415 sees them again victorious at Agincourt and their occupation of Paris in 1421. This temporary victory of Du Guesclin proved an evil thing for France, as it prolonged the fighting and increased the frightful carnage which drenched French soil with blood. It is clear that during times like these the nobility was not in a position to interest itself in beautifying châteaux or churches. They were most earnestly concerned in the gentle art of erecting fortifications; safety and strength were of vital importance; beauty had to stand aside and wait. The records show many instances of great architectural enterprises being halted from lack of funds or from other motives, a case in point being Troyes Cathedral, upon which no work was done for a long period of years. The nobility were injured more than the lower classes by these wars, and in the great defeats of Crécy, Poitiers and Agincourt their losses were frightful. Many a titled family lost its estates and many another was exterminated. In battle the middle and lower classes suffered proportionately less, because the French placed most of their reliance upon armoured knights and disdained to avail themselves of the bourgeoisie to the same extent as the English, whose splendid bowmen and yeomanry were so potent a factor in winning those great victories. The fact that the great families of France were so grievously crippled during these wars goes far to explain why glass painting languished for lack of the support which the luxury-loving class of society was not then able to give it. Almost as serious for the nobles as the losses in battle and other ravages of war, was the reign of the subtle Louis XI (1461-81), who devoted his entire life to destroying the strength of the nobility and to building upon its ruins the centralised power of the throne, meanwhile guarding this increase of kingly power by encouraging the growth of the gendarmerie, and generally the military reliability of the bourgeoisie. One incident from his life provides us with a fact of great interest to a glass student. Upon the occasion of the repulse of the Bretons by the inhabitants of the French city of St. Lô, Louis presented to the cathedral of that town, as an expression of his approval of the bravery of its citizens, a fine set of stained glass windows. As an event in political statecraft it is most significant: he did not ennoble or enrich certain leaders, but gave the entire fighting populace a royal gift. To us it has a peculiar interest, because the incident shows that stained glass was held in such high esteem as to be considered a worthy gift from a king to a city. But before turning from a review of the evil days which fell upon France, we must notice that although the nobility suffered more heavily from battle and statecraft than any other class, the times were tragic enough for all Frenchmen, whether noble or peasant, rich or poor. The plague raged throughout the land--not once, but many times--during these two centuries and its fearsome grasp fell upon all alike. Nor was this misery enough; to all these calamities was added that of civil war of the worst type--the war of the masses against the classes. The scorn in which the nobles held the poor man was but the natural outcome of the feudal state. The man in armour despised Jacques Bonhomme, as he called him. When in 1358 the disorders afflicting the body politic caused this contempt and ill-treatment to so increase that it could no longer be endured, the uprising of the oppressed against the oppressor assumed in hideous satire the name of the Jacquerie. Before it could be finally put down, French soil was drenched again and again with blood. Even this short dip into contemporary history has revealed enough to make it passing strange that any glass at all was made in France during those trying times, and stranger still that, if made, it should have survived. We have just seen that during most of these two centuries the French kings were fully occupied at home, first in fighting the English, with France as the battleground, and later in subduing their arrogant nobles and adding Burgundy, Franche Comté, Artois, Provence and Brittany to the French crown. At the end of this period, with their home lands cleared of the English and the centralised power of the throne much strengthened, we shall see how, under Louis XII (1498) and Francis I (1515), war was carried on outside the borders of France. Under the influences of this freedom from the ravages of war, combined with taste for art learnt during the Italian campaigns and brought back to France, there sprang up an aesthetic revival called the French Renaissance. This new development is going to give us a very different style of glass painting, which we will study later under the title of the sixteenth century. Before starting out to visit the glass of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, there are several remarks to be made upon it as a whole. There is not nearly so much left for us to see as there is of the thirteenth century. It is not going to be so easy to reach it and we shall have to take longer trips. We may journey far off to the western corner of Brittany to see the admirable Cathedral of Quimper, or else down south near Angoulême where we find in the small village of Eymoutiers a most charming example. Of sixteenth century glass we shall find much; of thirteenth a great deal; but of fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, only a little. At first one undoubtedly prefers the windows of the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuries, but after one has studied glass for awhile, he will surely come to feel that there is a certain fascination about the silvery glow of a canopy window that is not surpassed by the jewelled glitter of the thirteenth century or the more brilliant colouring and drawing of the sixteenth. During the period now under discussion there was a great deal of good glass made, and from the records we learn of many a fine window now long since destroyed. A fair way to judge the French glass-makers is to learn what their contemporaries across the channel thought of them. For this purpose it is worth citing from the contract for glazing Beauchamp Chapel at Warwick, which contract was made by the Earl of Warwick's executors with a certain John Prudde of Westminster, dated 1447. This contract requires that no English glass be used, but that the windows be glazed "only with best foreign glass procurable and to use as little white, green and black glass as possible." John Prudde got his material from France. We find another apposite statement in Britton's History of Exeter Cathedral. He says that 500 square feet of glass was bought for the cathedral in 1302-4 and that when another large purchase was made in 1317 they sent to Rouen for it. From these citations, selected from many similar ones, we may safely gather that the English considered French glass the best, which is most significant when one reflects that just at that time English glass was at its highest point. FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURY PILGRIMAGES From the standpoint of one who finds himself in Paris, it is not going to be very convenient to visit the glass we are now considering. If he will content himself with a little, he can see that without much difficulty. He has but to visit the two nearby cities of Evreux and Rouen, each of them only an hour and a half by train from Paris and not far removed from each other. The latter is, admittedly, peculiarly a place to study sixteenth century glass--its numerous churches are full of it. While it is better to visit Rouen in connection with the sixteenth century, still we have mentioned it at this time because one of its churches, St. Ouen, affords such a beautifully complete exposition of fourteenth century glazing. Besides, it is near Evreux, and therefore we advise that it be visited now so that the glass at St. Ouen can be seen directly after that in the Cathedral of Evreux. If our reader wishes to thoroughly study the glass of this period, we would advise him to begin with a longer trip, which we will outline, and then conclude with Evreux and Rouen, because he will then be enabled, after seeing the fourteenth century glass of Rouen, to immediately pass on to the study of the sixteenth century windows which are so splendid and abundant in the other churches of that Mecca of the glass student. Now for the longer tour just mentioned. It should begin at Bourges, four hours and a quarter from Paris by train. Thence we go south to Clermont-Ferrand (on our way stopping to visit its little neighbour, Riom), next across the mountains which overshadow these last two towns, to Eymoutiers, which lies close to Limoges, the next city in order. From Limoges we go north to Poitiers, then to Angers, to Le Mans, through Alençon to Sées, to Verneuil, and conclude with Chartres, an hour and a quarter from Paris by express. Although this is a long tour, we can safely promise that it will repay the pilgrim. If the pilgrim has already visited Chartres for its thirteenth century glass, he probably took occasion to see that of the fourteenth century in the church of St. Pierre. In that event he can omit Chartres at this time. If he wishes, he can go on from Verneuil to Evreux (43 kilometres), and thus link this longer trip to the shorter one already described. It is only in the event that he travels by automobile or bicycle that we suggest a stop at Moulins on his way from Bourges to Riom, for his way lies through it; but if he travels by train, then, because of the finer and more plentiful glass he is about to see, Moulins may well be omitted. We would not recommend visiting Limoges if it were not directly upon his road, no matter by what means of transportation he travels. There is hardly a place in France where fifteenth century glass can be seen to greater advantage than in the Cathedral of Quimper, but it is too far from any other glass place to be combined therewith into a tour. It is tucked away in the northwestern part of France, eleven hours from Paris by express, and is only mentioned here so that if the traveller finds himself in its neighbourhood he may not fail to avail himself of the opportunity. The long tour beginning at Bourges and ending at Chartres, will, if supplemented by the short one to Evreux and Rouen, show him most of the best glass of this period which has come down to our time. It is easily distinguishable from that of the century preceding it as well as of the century following, and has a beauty all its own. [Illustration: 14TH and 15TH CENTURIES TOURS. (_a_) _Evreux, Rouen._ (_b_) _Bourges, Moulins, Riom, Clermont-Ferrand, Eymoutiers, Limoges, Poitiers, Angers, Le Mans_, (_Alençon_), _Sées, Verneuil, Chartres._ _Also separate visit to Quimper._ (_For table of distances, see page 295._)] EVREUX In one's mental picture of a town there is almost always a single feature which stands out prominently at the expense of the others. For example, winding crowded streets are apt to rise in one's mind when London is mentioned. The broad straight thoroughfares of St. Petersburg are sure to give roominess and breadth to our memory of the Russian capital. In a similar fashion when the writer thinks of Evreux there always promptly arises a picture of the narrowness which not only characterises the cathedral's nave, but also the little channels into which the river Iton subdivides itself in preparation for its leisurely meandering through the town. Nor must this be taken as a reproach to Evreux. The little branches of the Iton add very materially to the quiet beauty of the place. So, too, beauty is, though indirectly, lent to the cathedral's interior by the very narrowness of its nave. A nave only 21 feet wide made very difficult the problem of later joining to it a roomy choir, but the architect hit upon an ingenious device to secure greater width for the latter without having the difference unpleasant to the eye when viewed from other parts of the church. Just behind the columns at the edge of the transept crossing he deftly swelled out his choir walls at such an angle that from no part of the nave is the curving swelling of these walls visible. The chapels that surround this graceful choir are separated from the ambulatory by light carved wooden screens, very dainty and each one different. The windows all about us reveal this to be a perfect treasure-house of fourteenth century glass, for it has more of this period than any other church in France except, perhaps, St. Ouen, at Rouen. In our preliminary talk about the fourteenth century we referred to the startling abruptness with which taste in glass veered around from the light-obscuring medallions of the preceding century to the light-admitting treatment of the fourteenth. We there stated that the two favourite methods of getting more light were, first, the canopy treatment, and second, but to a less extent, grisaille windows with rich borders which were sometimes, but not always, surcharged with coloured figures or panels. At Evreux we shall not only find many an excellent example of both these new methods, but also interesting proof of how early in the century the new style laid hold upon public taste and that, too, in a very fully developed and completed form. The windows given by Guillaume d'Harcourt, dated 1310, show us the canopy window with a perfection of architectural elaboration that is surprising when we consider its early date. Not only is the canopy well advanced in its detail, but we find that the blue background is damasked, a feature of adornment that elsewhere took some time to develop. The use of grisaille to increase the illumination of the interior is here amply illustrated, as is also a certain variation of it, very much in vogue at that time, partly because it was decorative, and partly, perhaps mostly, because it was so easy to glaze. This is the so-called "quarry window" of white or grisaille glass with its surface composed of either square (_carré_) or diamond-shaped panels. These quarry windows were not only easy to lead, but their formal design broke up the surface of the glass very agreeably, especially when here and there touches of colour were introduced. Nor were these quarries always used without colour decoration, for around the choir triforium we shall see them surcharged with gay heraldic blazons, while above, in the clerestory, they serve to fill out such portions of the embrasures as are not occupied by the bands of canopies. It was some time before the fourteenth century glazier arrived at the point of filling the entire embrasure with his canopy, and therefore this hesitating use of bands of canopies across a light field is often seen. Below in the choir chapels even less of the space is devoted to canopies and more to quarries or grisaille than in the clerestory. Passing to the nave, almost all the window surface of the chapels is given over to grisaille; indeed, it is only across the upper third that one sees the quaint little fourteenth century canopies. So, too, the clerestory is all grisaille except for an occasional panel in colour. The finest work of the period here is around the choir clerestory--the colours are richer and every part of the decoration more carefully studied. Notice that in the fourth on the left, the second lancet contains a kneeling figure holding up in his two hands a model of the window which he is offering; his name appears in large letters below--M. Raoul De Ferrières. The rich red background, surrounded by the golden canopy, makes a very effective combination. This same pleasant conceit is found again in the most westerly lancet of the fourth choir chapel on the right, but here the figure is much smaller and the model of the gift window not so carefully drawn. Almost all these clerestory lights display facts concerning their donors set out in bold lettering that adds materially to the decorative effect. A few of the panels were glazed in the next century; they are readily picked out by the perfected drawing of their canopies, the fact that they completely fill the embrasures, the pedestals beneath them, etc. Of these later ones, the first on the left especially merits our attention: within its elaborate canopy framing are a triple tier of niches. In the middle tier, the second niche contains the Dauphin (later Louis XI) and the fourth, Charles VII, his father. This reference to the fifteenth century brings us to the consideration of its numerous examples found here, for the Lady Chapel, all the north transept and part of the southern are glazed in that later style. In the Lady Chapel the canopies enclose a double tier of niches which contain scenes remarkable for their strong colouring, as well as for the unusual number of individuals in each little group. Under the second canopy on the lower tier of the first window on the left is depicted Christ feeding the multitude, and no less than twenty-five figures can be counted: this is the greatest number the writer has ever observed in a canopy panel. The transepts are most charming. Each is lighted by a large rose, while the east and west walls have each not only two great six-lancet windows, but in addition, the triforium gallery is pierced and is carried around under the rose. Where the triforium passes below the rose we have in each case eight lancets filled with canopies enclosing single figures, and in the clerestory of the north transept the same treatment--elsewhere the lancets contain grisaille or quarries surcharged with coloured bosses or shields--the whole bordered in colour. Throughout all this interior so much grisaille and quarry work was used that one should select a rainy or grey day for one's visit, because on a sunny day the illumination is distinctly garish. Nor is it for the Cathedral alone that we have come here--so fine is the glazing at St. Taurin that we would have included Evreux in our tour even if there had been nothing to enjoy at the Cathedral. The east end of the choir juts out from the body of the church, and is lighted all round by seven lofty windows, each of two lancets except the westerly pair, which have four. The treatment of all these lancets is alike: the enframing canopy encloses three tiers of niches, one above the other, in each of which is a little scene in colour. One pair of these windows, the second from the west, are modern, but so faithfully are they modelled after their neighbours, that they do not mar the effect of the whole. Instead of one lone saint beneath each canopy (then so common as to be almost monotonous) we have here groups, always agreeable and sometimes amusing. For example, the lower left-hand corner of the window just left of the centre shows us St. Taurin rescuing a lady from some very pointed flames, while a red imp, evidently much annoyed at being exorcised, is darting off, much to the pious satisfaction of five smug onlookers. In accordance with the conventions, each niche has at the back a damasked curtain, above which a glimpse is afforded of an interior lighted by three windows, all very delicately portrayed. It seems ridiculously incongruous to find cows and other animals in the foreground of such a niche. Unfortunately, this absurd combination of tradition and realism was not rare during that epoch. The original glazing of the upper part of the southwesterly window has been replaced by a later Ascension scene, running across all four lancets. At the end of the south transept is a broad window, very interesting because of the different types of canopies in its six lancets. The chief charm of the interior is undoubtedly the choir, whose deliciously soft-toned glazing is so complete as to afford the student not only valuable material, but also (and this is much rarer) an excellent impression of the general effect sought for by the fifteenth century glazier. ROUEN In this sketch we will chiefly turn our attention to the church of St. Ouen, although we will also take a peep into the Cathedral and into St. Maclou. We will defer until our sixteenth century tours a fuller comment upon this city (see page 249), because any one who has studied the subject, even in the most cursory way, knows that he must go to Rouen for Renaissance glass. Although the splendid windows of its numerous churches bear witness to what that later period did for our art, it is nevertheless entirely proper that we should come here at this time, if only for a preliminary visit, because the study of fourteenth century glass cannot be satisfactorily concluded without viewing the splendidly complete exhibition of it in the church of St. Ouen. Here we shall see for ourselves why Rouen glass was then so highly esteemed, not only in France, but also across the Channel. We referred before to the fact that after Exeter Cathedral had in 1302-4 purchased glass for its windows and it became necessary in 1317 to procure another large quantity, it was to Rouen that they sent for it, a significant tribute to the skill and repute of the Rouen craftsmen. Ample witness to the causes for the Englishmen's admiration is afforded by the justly famous fourteenth century glazing of St. Ouen. It is best to approach and enter it by the south portal, for, although a very graceful and symmetrical Gothic edifice, the west front is unfortunately of a much later period than the rest of the structure, and is noticeably lacking in lightness and beauty. Notwithstanding nearly all the windows are glazed in colour, the brilliancy of the lighting strikes us as soon as we step inside and is especially noticeable if we have but freshly come from the inspection of interiors whose light has been dimmed by thirteenth century glass. It is evident that the St. Ouen windows were glazed at a moment when the reaction from the sombre beauties of the thirteenth century was at its height. Undoubtedly strict injunctions were laid upon the designer of the glass that he should so complete his task as to leave the church well lighted. In complying with his instructions he not only has used a great deal of white glass, but also has availed himself of the lighter tones of such colours as his pictures required. Nowhere else will we find so complete a series of patriarchs, saints, apostles, bishops and abbots. They are strung out around us on every side and provide a wealth of material for investigation. Perhaps one might wish that they had been depicted in stronger hues, especially as they range about the clerestory on a white background, with white glass in the triforium windows below them. On the other hand there is a possibility that if the colours had been stronger, the contrast between them and the background might have proved disagreeable. In passing it is interesting to note that all the abbots are arrayed in blue robes, but in accordance with the scheme of colour just mentioned, the blue is very light in tint. Below, in the choir, and around the transepts, we find canopy windows, but there, too, their effectiveness is lessened by too many panels of white. In the nave the large figures in the windows of the upper range have much more colour than those in the lower, and the inscription below each is in such bold lettering as to permit of each letter being separately leaded in. The north transept contains a fine rose window, but, unfortunately, in accordance with the conventions of that epoch, the figures radiate from the centre like slices in a pie. The result is a wheel effect and not that of a great blossoming rose. The glass, not only in this rose but also in the one of the south transept, is sixteenth century and will be described later. The regularity and completeness of the architecture of this church is accentuated by the long series of personages that decorate its windows. It is but natural that there results the symmetrical beauty which always follows the consistent carrying into effect of a well-thought-out plan. The desire of the architect for a well-lighted interior has also been everywhere carefully observed. As a whole, the effect of the windows must undoubtedly be admired, but on the other hand, if we were to be denied the warmth that a little additional colour would have given, we ought at least to have found as a compensation that soft silvery light which the best glass of this period affords, but which is here rendered impossible by the excessive use of white panes. The Cathedral's fourteenth century glass, while not presenting the splendid ensemble that one sees at St. Ouen, is nevertheless not only instructive in its variety, but is also so placed as to exhibit itself to the greatest advantage. It is to be found in the Lady Chapel, the choir clerestory, the north transept, and the north nave aisle. The two large windows on each side of the Lady Chapel are so wide as to permit of four lancets in each. The treatment is the same throughout: a broad coloured border encloses a grisaille field, across the middle third of which is a coloured figure under a canopy, which of course has not yet acquired a pedestal. Evidence of careful attention to detail is seen in the borders, which are not only very elaborate, but are also enlivened in one case by a number of little green birds, in another by brown squirrels, and in a third by white angels playing musical instruments. This feature is but rarely met. The modern glass in the three easterly windows is rendered harmless by the height of the altar rising in front of them. Broad coloured borders are also found around the clerestory, but there each enclosed surface of grisaille has to rely for its adornment upon five round blue bosses surcharged with golden sunbursts. The three easternmost panels, however, bear large coloured figures, the central one being Christ on the Cross. The rose in the north transept is of the wheel type, and is too pale, because of the excessive use of colourless glass, especially in the radiating arms. At the end of each arm and also at other points are introduced medallions of mosaic pattern. The light is admitted in accordance with the conventions, but the contrast is too great between the plain and the mosaic panes. This same contrast is even more unpleasant in the chapel just at the junction of this transept and the choir ambulatory where a few mosaic medallions are frankly placed on a light field, without even the plausible excuse therefor which is afforded in the rose above by certain round apertures especially suited for medallions. The artist is evidently still groping for a satisfactory adjustment of his design and colour to the demand for light. This period is also exemplified, although in a different way, in the second, fifth, sixth and eighth windows in the north nave aisle. There, across the lower part of the light quarries in each of the four lancets, is placed a coloured figure behind whom hangs a curtain of contrasting colour, but entirely lacking canopy framing; each lancet is surrounded by a gay border. This treatment is not so pleasing as that just observed in the Lady Chapel, for the nave figures lack the finished appearance there lent by the canopy framing. The small curtain is better than no background at all, but we are still evidently in transition. Of the fifteenth century glass in the cathedral, but little can be said; that in the south transept rose is good, while the chapel leading from that transept to the choir ambulatory contains two lofty-pinnacled canopy windows that would be excellent if they were not marred by their upper panes being filled in with disjointed fragments of thirteenth century medallions. At St. Maclou (see page 251) ten out of the twelve windows in the semi-circle of four chapels at the east end of the choir contain a softly lovely set of fifteenth century canopies whose lofty and intricate pinnacles are delicately outlined against backgrounds of lilac, blue, green, etc., always in the lighter shades. The lower parts of these windows have not fared so well as the upper portions, but they have not been damaged enough to detract from the general effect. So light are most of the tones used, that one fears the ensemble will appear too pale when viewed from the proper distance; but such is not the case, thanks to the admirable harmony between the soft colours and the dainty canopies. An occasional fifteenth century panel is to be met with elsewhere in Rouen (_i.e._, the westernmost in the north wall at St. Vincent), but they are neither sufficiently numerous nor noteworthy to be cited here. We shall carry away as our chief souvenirs of this preliminary visit to Rouen, memories of the complete glazing of St. Ouen, the varied exhibition of contemporary transitional types found at the Cathedral, and St. Maclou's delicately tinted half-circle of eastern chapels. BOURGES When we visited the Cathedral of Bourges to inspect the glass of the thirteenth century (see page 42) we referred to that of the fifteenth which fills the windows of the nave chapels. It is to inspect these that we now make our second visit. It is very usual for chapels to radiate from around the choir of a church, but rarer to find them introduced into the side walls of the nave after the completion of the edifice. Perhaps it would not prove so eminently satisfactory at Bourges if it were not for the fact that the cathedral lacks transepts; but whatever the reason, the result in this instance is admirable. The window apertures of these nave chapels indicate that they were constructed at a later period than the rest of the cathedral, for instead of the single broad windows which we find elsewhere about the interior, the lighting of each chapel is effected by a group of lancets bound together to form one very wide window space, the lancets being separated only by narrow stone mullions. To this architectural indication of date is added that of the glass, which is among the best that is known of the fifteenth century canopy type. The glazing of these chapels varies greatly in excellence, but is always good. In almost every case the windows consist of four lancets. We note here the custom of placing upon the window a small kneeling figure of the donor, and from contemporary paintings we are able to affirm that the glass artist made these portraits as perfect as his skill permitted. In the chapel given by Pierre Trousseau not only do we find the donor but also his sister and his two brothers. This tendency to introduce various members of the family increased steadily in vogue, so much so that in the sixteenth century we shall often find two or three generations kneeling in a row in the lower panels. In the first two chapels on the left the personages hold in their hands long winding scrolls on which there is writing. This form of decoration was also much elaborated in the next century, and very successfully, too. But the greatest of all fifteenth century chapels is the most easterly one on the north, just at the point where the choir chapels succeed to those of the nave. It was given by Jacques Coeur, the merchant prince of Bourges, who became treasurer of France under Charles VII. It is as beautiful in detail and ensemble as a canopy window has ever been made. The mullions separating its four lancets are not allowed to interfere with the one great subject that extends over them all. Across the top of this picture is carried the most elaborate Gothic dome ever attempted in glass painting. The ceiling beneath it is blue sprinkled with golden stars, and the groining of the arches which support it is golden also. The robes of the figures, beautiful in combination of colour, are elaborated to the last degree of decorative detail. Notice along the edge of the kneeling saint's robe a row of simulated embroidery panels gay with colour and gold. It is clear that Jacques Coeur employed upon this window the best glass artist to be found, just as he must have engaged the most skillful architects and builders for his palace, to the glories of which we alluded in our thirteenth century pilgrimage. This window and that dwelling stamp him as one of the most intelligently appreciative patrons of the arts which his time produced. The fact that the cathedral is built upon the edge of the old Roman walls makes possible a well-lighted crypt instead of the gloomy cavern generally found beneath the choirs of most cathedrals. In the embrasures at the eastern end of this lower church or crypt have been placed a set of fifteenth century windows taken from the old Ste. Chapelle of Bourges, each consisting of four canopies. Under the two central ones of each stand the coloured figures in the usual way, but under the two outer canopies the figures are partly concealed behind simulated architectural columns. This unique arrangement serves to render the glass architecture all the more convincing. It would have been well if other towns had followed the example set by Bourges in thus preserving in some store-house like a cathedral the glass of other edifices which had to be destroyed. If we travel by automobile from Bourges to Clermont-Ferrand, we will probably elect to pass through Nevers and Moulins. We have already advised the railway traveller not to alight at Moulins and he will probably not do so at Nevers. About the latter we will say but a word. Although the cathedral has a special interest in that it is one of the two churches in France having an apse at its western as well as its eastern end (the other is at Besançon), it need not detain him, because it has no old glass. If he decides to stop to look at the cathedral, he should not fail to see the old palace of the Dukes of Bourbon, with the story of Lohengrin carved by Jean Goujon on the outside of its graceful spiral staircase. MOULINS If our pilgrim in going south from Bourges to Clermont-Ferrand passed through Nevers, this slight detour has brought Moulins right upon his road. In this event he must avail himself of the opportunity to visit the cathedral, because its glass, although not of sufficient importance to demand breaking a railway journey, is distinctly worth seeing if he is passing the door. Besides, the sacristy of this church contains the splendid fifteenth century triptych, so long attributed to Ghirlandajo, but now conceded to have been the work of an unknown Moulins painter who, for want of more particular information, is called the Master of Moulins. Around the choir ambulatory there are a few canopy windows of the fifteenth century. Most of them are good, but one on the north side is quite remarkable and should be particularly noticed. The scene depicted is the Crucifixion and the background seems to be of a deep ruby. Closer inspection shows it to consist of a multitude of tiny red angels so crowded together as to give the effect, when viewed from a little distance, of a richly damasked surface. The result is as satisfactory as the method of obtaining it is original. There are also some good sixteenth century windows around the choir which are easily distinguishable because the architecture of their canopies is so obviously Renaissance and so far removed from Gothic. As the automobilist or bicyclist passes through this town, he will be struck by the attractive local feature of large diamond-shaped patterns in black or dark bricks on the red brick walls of the houses. The effect is most decorative. RIOM On our trip south from Moulins we come upon Riom, a quiet little place living on its memories of mediæval importance and treasuring within the shady circle of its wall-replacing boulevards many fine houses and other testimonials to its former wealth and importance. In an old-world country like France it is not unusual to find striking contrasts between those parts of a city which have been absolutely modernised and other portions still preserving their ancient appearance. Between neighbouring towns, however, it is not often that we shall notice so startling a difference as is effected by the 14 kilometres separating Riom from Clermont-Ferrand. It seems impossible, while in the quiet streets of this town, to realise that we are so near the busy city of Clermont-Ferrand, active in many modern manufacturing industries, a railway centre, in short, a distinctly twentieth century community. Geographically those few kilometres are only a step, but historically they will transport us four or five centuries. Here we are in an atmosphere not later than the sixteenth century, although for glass lovers the interest of the place goes back still another. The fifteenth century feature which attracts us most in Riom is the Ste. Chapelle, which now serves as the chapel for the Palais de Justice, through which we must pass to reach it. The practical hand of the altering architect has fallen heavily upon this beautiful chapel. In 1822 he took away its lower part in order to gain room for the Court of Appeals which is just below. He graciously allowed the upper half to remain a chapel, but, of course, the introduction of a new floor at half the height of the original building caused the destruction of the lower portions of the seven fine windows. Each has four large lancets and is a remarkable example of the highly-developed canopy type of the middle of the fifteenth century. Upon these are displayed a great company of richly attired personages, affording us a rare opportunity to observe the dress of the upper classes of that day. The jewels, furs and other decorative details are not more minutely studied than are the architectural features of the canopies. Each figure holds in its hands a long paper scroll upon which there is writing. These scrolls form a most effective and agreeable feature, and their use as a form of decoration was frequently seen during that century. It appears at its best in the Tree of Life rose in the south transept at Carcassone. The four central panels at the bottom contain the donors, always an attractive detail if only they are modest in size and placing. We should try to see these windows on a rainy or grey day. It must be remembered that we no longer view them from below as their artist originally intended, because the action of the architect in 1822 has brought us up on a level with them. The chapel is so small and the windows so large that if the day is sunny we are not able to withdraw a sufficient distance to readjust the perspective, and therefore a dull day, by softening the light, greatly increases their charm. [Illustration: 15TH CENTURY "CANOPY" WINDOW, SAINTE CHAPELLE, RIOM. _Gothic details carefully elaborated. Curtains suspended across backs of niches give the artist another colour, while white winding scrolls assist canopy portions in admitting light. Donors are here more important but not yet intrusive, as seen later._] CLERMONT-FERRAND The situation of this city is as beautiful as it is remarkable. Imagine a long, fertile plain from which rises suddenly a great range of hills. The plain is monotonously flat and the hills are abruptly steep, while higher than all their heights towers the round-topped mountain of Puy-de-Dôme, which gives its name to this department of France. Nestling just below the hills, upon the extreme western edge of the level country, lies the vigorous and progressive city of Clermont-Ferrand, whose activities and commerce are fed by roads leading in every direction across the broad expanse of the fertile district of Limagne. From the top of the cathedral tower the view is most striking and delightful. To the east, as far as the eye can reach, stretches out a long vista of cultivated fields, but when we turn to the west the change is positively startling. Hill is piled on hill and mountain on mountain, and all so near at hand as to make us feel that, with the naked eye, we can discern figures moving on the top of the Puy-de-Dôme, whose knob-like crest towers proudly above its surrounding and supporting heights. There are but few views like this in France, for it is rare to find so bold a range of hills rising so sharply from so wide a plain. After descending the many steps which take us back into the cathedral, we shall soon be convinced that if most of the thirteenth century glass towns had not been so accessible to Paris, a visit to this cathedral must have been suggested in order to see the fine set of medallion windows that in the apse chapels form a screen of gleaming sombre colour all around the choir--a screen so complete as to produce that effect of glistening caverns which we have found so beautiful in the glass of that century. Clermont-Ferrand was left off the thirteenth century list partly because of its distance from Paris, and partly because, if that distance had been overcome, there are no other towns in its vicinity noteworthy for their thirteenth century glass. Now that we are considering the glass of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, distance from Paris no longer proves an argument against this visit, because that period cannot be seen unless one is willing to go far afield. Besides, Clermont-Ferrand fits nicely into a series of towns rich in glass of these centuries, so we have every reason for the visit at this juncture. The cathedral is a noble example of Gothic, the spacious nave being separated from the choir by two transepts, each of which possesses a fine rose window of the fourteenth century with a gallery of small lancets below. These rose windows seem thrust too high up against the roof; in fact, if it were not for the row of lancets below, the effect would be unpleasant. This method of placing them in the wall is, however, in accordance with the best traditions of that time. The glass panels which go to make up the rose windows radiate in distinct lines from the centre. The lancets below the south rose are filled with diaper in rich colour, while across them, as if to bind them together, are drawn two bands of white rosettes. The lancets under the north rose have circles and spots of colour on a grisaille ground. Of the glass that once adorned the nave, practically nothing remains but the small roses at the tops of the windows, but these are quite attractive. It is to the choir that we must turn for the greatest charm of the interior. The sober richness of the thirteenth century panels in the chapels below is admirably set off and accompanied by the well-lighted clerestory above. Around this clerestory appears a row of large fifteenth century figures in colour framed in canopies upon a background of grisaille quarries (diamond-shaped panes). Perhaps there is a little too much contrast between the figures and the quarries, but the effect is good and certainly the light is admitted in a more satisfactory way than at Chartres, where the monks, to secure more light, replaced the rich borders of the early choir clerestory windows by white glass. As seen from the nave or from the transepts, the choir is most pleasing, a warm half light below and a brilliant clerestory above. In the two easternmost panels of the latter the artist shows us how it was sometimes possible to make one large picture by the juxtaposition of two or more, which at first glance seem entirely distinct. On the left is the Virgin Mary in what appears to be a large oval frame. On the right, and facing her, is a bust of the Father emerging from clouds. Although at first these two panels seem entirely separate, a comparison of the subject of each indicates that taken together they form a picture of the Annunciation. This method was not uncommon. At Tours, three eastern medallions of the clerestory, although seemingly distinct, really combine to form the Last Supper. We should not fail to notice at Clermont-Ferrand how very harmoniously the styles of different centuries assist each other in producing a well-glazed interior. We do not find the conflict in effect which exists at Bourges. In fact, there are but few places where glass epochs are combined in such an attractively unobtrusive manner. EYMOUTIERS When from the top of Clermont-Ferrand Cathedral we viewed the mountains of the Puy-de-Dôme range, it seemed not only that anyone planning a trip across them would have a difficult climb, but that any idea of going by train was an impossibility. Modern engineering skill, however, overcomes all obstacles, stops at nothing, and the railway awaits our command to take us over the mountains to Eymoutiers and Limoges. The grades are so steep that no expresses are attempted and therefore we have before us a tedious five-hour trip on a way train. The first and the last parts of this journey are very delightful for the automobilist or bicyclist, because of the views revealed from time to time by the windings of the road. More than half the trip, however, is quite uninteresting, as the way lies through clefts in the hills at too great an elevation for much foliage or verdure. When we descend to the village of Eymoutiers on the other side of the mountains, all the difficulties and tedium of our climb will be forgotten. There the traveller will find a charming little inn by the river, where he can have a delicious repast of trout from the neighbouring mountain stream. He will be served on a cosy terrace, which is sheltered from the sun by vines and cooled by a tinkling fountain shooting into the air a slender spray of icy water. As a glass shrine, Eymoutiers is one of the most delightful that our pilgrim will meet on his travels and one to which his memory will often pleasantly revert. He need not look about for a cathedral or for any great religious edifice. Instead, he will find a quaint, oddly-shaped church whose older western half is so dimly lighted by its few deeply-embrasured windows as to provide an excellent foil for the silvery light of the fourteen that illumine the eastern half. We cannot properly call it the choir end, because the church seems to have three choirs placed side by side, opening into each other, the central one extending a little more to the east than its two sisters. At the Ste. Chapelle in Paris we have observed that the deeply-hued medallion windows of the thirteenth century were not suited to a small interior--that their materials and construction required that they be viewed from the greater distance afforded within a cathedral in order to yield to the observer a properly combined glow from their warmth of colour. On the other hand, at Eymoutiers, we shall learn that the canopy window is as beautiful in its soft lighting of a small interior as at Bourges it is appropriate in the lower windows of a great nave, or at Quimper in its delicate illumination of a splendid clerestory. Before we have been long in the little Eymoutiers church we shall begin to notice that the later windows in the central eastern bay have much more colour than the earlier ones in the right and left ones. In these two side bays the figures have only one colour besides white in their costumes, and but one also in the backgrounds; while on the other hand, in the central bay the figures have never less than two colours in their costumes; and further, that besides the one in their backgrounds, an additional colour is there contributed by a curtain stretched across the niches, shoulder-high, behind the figures. Then, too, these later figures in the central bay have coloured halos, and the little ceilings under the canopies beneath which they stand are brightly tinted. The local authorities date the glazing of the central bay from the latter part of the fifteenth century and that of the two side ones from the middle. The difference in the colour schemes of the two sets confirms this dating. This same marked difference in the number of colours exists at Quimper, where the choir windows glazed in the first years of the fifteenth century have but few tints, while, on the other hand, there are many in those of the nave which date from the latter part of that century. As accentuating this enrichment of the artist's palette which the passage of time seemed to effect, it is noticeable that the early tracery lightings of the two side bays are very light in tone, being mostly white or some faint hue or yellow stain, while the later traceries of the central bay contain deep reds and blues, etc. A close examination of these windows repays us by revealing several quaint manifestations of the strict adherence to tradition for which the mediæval glass artists are noted. Contemporary conventions demanded that St. Christopher have a tessellated pavement as the floor of his canopy, but the legend requires that he must stand in water, so we find not only the pavement but also upon it a semi-circular pool of water in which the saint stands. So, too, the Virgin Mary is poised upon a halfmoon-shaped cloud, neatly balanced on the conventional pavement. Though these little touches make us moderns smile, they were doubtless at the time approved as showing that the artist was well schooled. Our reader should make every effort to visit Eymoutiers, for there he will truly feel the delicate charm of the canopy window. The church is glazed throughout in one style and as a type of perfection will linger in his memory in much the same way as Ste. Foy at Conches, which we will visit later for its sixteenth century glass. The canopy window, when properly placed, yields a far softer beauty than any glass can show in the century before or the century that came after, and it is greatly to be regretted that so few of them survived the stress of those battle-troubled days. Before we start on our way over rolling hills to Limoges, we must not fail to observe in Eymoutiers a certain quaint custom of building distinctive of that town. The topmost story of almost all the dwelling-houses is not walled up on the street side. This open top floor is used to store fuel. Under the eaves there is a pulley by which the bundles of wood are pulled up from the street by a block and tackle and swung in under the roof. LIMOGES After a charming ride of fifty kilometres from Eymoutiers, we arrive at Limoges, sloping picturesquely up from the banks of the winding river Vienne. We elsewhere set out our reasons for believing that the Byzantine influence upon the beginnings of French art was first and most potently exercised at Limoges, the cradle of French enamel. After remaining dormant for centuries, the enameller's art has again been quickened into life in its old home. Its younger sister, stained glass, however, never seems to have returned to its birthplace; in fact, if it were not necessary to pass through Limoges on our way north from Eymoutiers, we would not have included it in this trip. While the cathedral contains some fourteenth century glass, it lacks sufficient quantity or quality to repay one coming from a distance to see it. From Eymoutiers our route takes us through Limoges, and what it can show of glass, we, like conscientious pilgrims, must not fail to inspect. Now for the cathedral! Architecturally it is very satisfactory. Just inside the west door of the nave there is a finely-carved stone jubé or arch, in fact so good is it that we shall not see a better except in the little church of La Madeleine at Troyes, or in St. Etienne-du-Mont in Paris. Around the clerestory of the choir are thirteen double lancet windows, presented in the fourteenth century by Bishop Pierre Rodier. Unfortunately, only two of them (those of Ste. Valerie and St. Martial) are preserved intact, but the others have been so judiciously restored that we have a very good idea of how they originally looked. They consist of large coloured figures in canopies, surrounded, however, by too much grisaille. The revulsion from too little light in the preceding century sometimes produced the curse of too much in the fourteenth. This placing of subjects upon a light surface cannot help but cause an unpleasant contrast between its soft tone and the stronger colour of the figures. In the ambulatory chapels on the north side of the choir, there are two complete windows of this period, both of them grisaille with gay heraldic devices and coloured borders. In one the light field is arranged in quarries (diamond-shaped spaces), each quarry having its own little border of colour; this is very unusual. Here the contrast of rich tones and grisaille is not so disagreeable as in the clerestory. In the south transept is a large rose window containing conventional designs in red and blue, but no figures. We find the same objection to the placing of this window and to its construction that we did to the rose windows at Clermont-Ferrand: it is too high up and seems crowded against the roof, while its lines radiate so obviously from the centre as to make it resemble a wheel, whose spokes are too thick. The century before did well to have medallions placed around the central opening of its rose windows, for they gave the effect of a huge blossom and not the stiff look of a wheel. As we leave Limoges on our way to Poitiers we shall find, if we travel by automobile or bicycle, that the road along the Vienne, following the picturesque windings of that charming river, is one of the most delightful in all France. POITIERS Upon one of our thirteenth century pilgrimages the reader has already been taken to Poitiers (see page 47). Not only has he visited the cathedral and seen its glorious Crucifixion window, but he has also entered the smaller church of St. Radegonde to view the thirteenth century glass there. For the purpose of this trip he must again repair to the latter church to see a unique manifestation of the effect produced by the new demand for more light, which is the most marked feature of the taste in glass of the fourteenth century. The windows which we are now seeking are the four in the north wall between the north portal and the choir. They are undoubtedly interesting, but can hardly be called beautiful. In order to admit as much light as possible, the greater part of their surfaces is filled with light greenish-grey grisaille, whose design is that of a number of circles, each circle impinging on the next. Scattered irregularly upon the grisaille are many small-sized personages in deep colour. Around the whole is a brilliant border. The contrast between the gay hues of the figures (and also of the border) and the light tone of the grisaille is not only too sharp to be pleasant, but it also destroys the harmonious ensemble which is the great charm in the early canopy window. It seems logical that the light-admitting canopy should be used as a frame for the richly-coloured figure which it encloses, but there is no artistic excuse for spotting light grisaille with sharply-outlined, strongly-toned figures, and then framing the whole by the harsh lines of a coloured conventional border. At Bourges the beauties of the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries can be seen at the same time, and each enjoyed, although for different reasons. Here at St. Radegonde, however, the charming thirteenth century rose window above the north portal enjoys an easy victory over the glaring contrasts of its fourteenth century neighbours. The latter should be inspected because they are unique in their elaborate method of admitting light, but they point to a road which should not be followed. It is interesting to note that at the time of their construction these windows were very highly considered. There was no reason why they should not have been of the best, because this church has long benefited by the generosity of pilgrims to the tomb of the saint beneath its choir. Among these none was more devoted than Anne of Austria, the queen of Louis XIII. Nor is this shrine the only attraction to the pious which the church can boast, for in the south wall there is a small recess protected by an iron grille enclosing what is represented to be a footprint of Jesus Christ. This is still an object of much veneration. These facts must be taken into consideration, because a church to which crowds of votaries for centuries resorted would surely contain no glass inappropriate to the wealth and high standing of these pilgrims. In fact, a certain hallmark is thus given its windows, which enables us by means of it to judge of the taste of the time. ANGERS There is hardly a religious edifice in existence where so many periods of glass are represented by such uniformly good examples as in St. Maurice Cathedral at Angers. In a former visit (see page 55) we observed that its nave contains the greatest amount of twelfth century work which any French church can show and also that in its choir and transepts there are many fine medallion windows of the thirteenth century. Now we will take up the really gorgeous fifteenth century glass, beginning with the two large west windows of the north transept. So elaborated and full of architectural detail are they that their canopies alone occupy more than half the entire window space. We have generally seen the canopy used only as a frame, but here there is more frame than picture! Each of these two windows contains four niches enclosing brilliantly-hued figures, two in the lower half and two in the upper half of each window. The glass forming the canopy part is much deeper in tone than we have been accustomed to find, having a strong greenish shade similar to that found in many English fourteenth century canopies (as, for example, those in New College Chapel, Oxford). We have noted before that English glass is generally more highly coloured in the fourteenth than in the fifteenth century, but the contrary is true in France, where the fourteenth is much softer in tone than that found in the next century. These windows provide a case in point. It is perhaps well that they are so strongly toned, for even as it is, they seem rather pale in comparison with the early medallion windows all around them. The embrasures which they fill were built in the thirteenth century and are therefore larger than those generally found in the fifteenth; the extremely strong saddle bars necessary to support this great weight of glass are so noticeable to the observer that they seem to isolate the panels containing the figures and thus hurt the frame effect of the canopy. Perhaps the pilgrim will find this comment is hypercritical, for the windows are undoubtedly very effective. They were given by Bishop Jean-Michel about 1440. One is naturally curious to see the work done by an artist in his home town, for if not of his best, it is apt to be typical and show the influence which his natural environment exercised upon him. For this reason we turn with considerable interest to see what was accomplished by André Robin, when called in 1452 to reglaze the rose windows of the transepts. The stone traceries had been constructed in the thirteenth century, and though it is difficult to adapt later glass to earlier framework, the result here has been very successful, much more so than, for example, in the case of the west rose of the Ste. Chapelle in Paris. In the north rose window Robin put the Resurrection. Christ is in the centre and from Him there radiate sixteen elongated panes bearing yellow and blue angels. The resurrected dead are shown in the act of pushing up the covers of their tombs, a conventional method of representing them. Above are little scenes illustrating the occupations of each month of the year. Upon the south rose there appear the signs of the zodiac, and below them the Elders of the Apocalypse. In these Elders we may trace a reference to the splendid set of Apocalypse tapestries which hang around the interior. The most northerly window on the east side of the transept is also by Robin. The subject is the Crucifixion, and it was finished in 1499. In Angers there is yet another set of fifteenth century windows, and to see them we must go to the little church of St. Serge, in whose choir we have already studied the charming twelfth century grisaille. These windows are of the canopy type and are placed in the nave clerestory. There are three on each side, the two westerly ones being of three broad lancets each and the easterly one of two lancets. The colour contrasts are good and the architecture in the canopy framing very convincing, both in size and adjustment. LE MANS During the course of our former visit to Le Mans Cathedral (see page 60) we remarked that the transepts were glazed in the fifteenth century. The glass is good and the north rose is particularly well worth seeing. Of the transepts themselves, it may be said that no others in all France are provided with windows in such a curiously irregular way, no two corresponding portions of wall having the same or even similar ones. There is no window at all in the south transept end, but instead there is a solid wall against which the organ is backed. The west side of this transept has two very large windows with coloured borders framing grisaille, upon which are small circles and squares. On the east side the wall has even fewer openings. Crossing over to the north transept, we find still more irregular arrangement, there being a marked difference in amount of window space, as well as in the shape and adjustment between the east and the west wall. There is, however, a distinct improvement over the south transept in that here there are canopy windows and that, too, of no ordinary type. But it is to the north end of this transept that we must turn to have our admiration as well as our interest thoroughly aroused. The writer believes this to be the finest example of a rose window, blossoming out at the top of a well-adjusted group of lancets, that the fifteenth century can afford. At Clermont-Ferrand and Limoges we have noticed that the tendency at that time was to crowd the rose up too high against the roof and then try to counteract the effect by placing beneath it a row of lancets to bring down the whole group. At Le Mans the adjustment in the wall is perfect. Further, the lower range of windows is treated with the respect it deserves, for not only is the rose beautifully glazed, but the lancets have also received the artist's careful attention: they are graceful, good-sized and filled with a triple tier of excellent canopied figures. The rose is poised above and between the points of two wide lancet windows, each of which is in turn divided perpendicularly by mullions. The subject, The Crowning of the Virgin, is admirably treated, and nothing could be more delightful than the numerous angels singing and playing upon various musical instruments. For the honour of the fifteenth century glazier it is well that we should see this splendid effect, because we might otherwise conclude that, notwithstanding his brilliant success in producing canopy panels, he never grasped the full possibilities of the rose window. SÉES En route from Le Mans to Sées we must pass directly through Alençon, famous for its lace, and especially for the sort known as Point d'Alençon. If en automobile we should stop here long enough to see the Renaissance glass in the church of Notre Dame. Although of a later period than that which we are now considering, we must not be so narrow-minded as to deliberately pass by fine glass, no matter when it was made. The exterior of Notre Dame struck the writer as curiously emblematic of the impression which one receives of the town. The church is squat and ugly, but it is redeemed by the lace-like Gothic of its western porch, which, fearful lest it be not remarked, thrusts itself out into the street. In similar fashion, Alençon as a town has its commonplaceness condoned by reason of the beauty of its lace, a beauty which is constantly thrust upon your attention by its inhabitants. The glass to be noticed is around the nave clerestory. A most charming stone setting is provided for this sixteenth century glazing by the broad and high embrasures of six lancets each. Particularly note how, at the top of each sheaf of lancets, the delicate lines of the traceries flow upward and inward like flames aspiring from a broad-based fire, seeking the outlet above of a narrow chimney. The picture period is here at its best, and the artist, regardless of the upright stone mullions, has spread his subject across all the lancets of each embrasure, and has lavished upon them all the shades of his richly stocked palette. Over the west portal we have the same shape of window, but here it is broader and permits of eight lancets. The subject is the well-worn one of Jesse and his descendants, but the design is distinctly novel, and an unusual amount of green foliage against a blue background lends a pleasant tone to the picture. The descendants are relegated to the upper panes, while the major portion of the great surface is divided equally between Jesse (on the right) and a large panel enclosing the scene of the Saviour's birth (on the left). Of the rest of the glass in this church it is kindly comment to say that it is unsatisfactory. But let us push on to Sées, 20 kilometres further. One reads but little of the cathedral there, and more's the pity, because from any point of view it is not only admirable, but picturesquely delightful. Placed upon a slight eminence in the midst of a wide basin, this elevation suffices to make it visible from a long distance on every side. Its gracefully aspiring twin spires, its mantle of flying buttresses, the charming conformation of its eastern end, all conspire to allure us and fill us with expectations of what a nearer view may reveal. Nor does the interior fail to realise all this distant promise. What a graceful lightness of stonework is everywhere visible, supplemented by the glazier's intelligent delicacy of touch. The nave alone lacks its ancient glass. Nowhere in France or elsewhere can the fourteenth century glass artist be seen to greater advantage than at Sées. Very happy is the way in which his light-admitting grisaille has been enlivened and decorated by coloured borders and bands of richly-toned, canopy-framed figures. At Evreux we will find him more splendid, more varied, but here, around the choir and the transepts, he has worked out more consistently, more coherently, his new idea of combining translucence and colour decoration. Dainty, almost dangerously fragile as is the stonework that supports the upper windows, the glazier's handwork is daintier still--a film of soft grisaille held in a spider's web of lead lines, whilst across the middle third are bands of early canopies. Not only in the clerestory of choir and transepts, but also in the choir chapels below, do we find this treatment uniformly carried out. The completeness of the scheme of decoration, as well as the satisfactory adjustment of colour to grisaille, give an ensemble which we elsewhere seek in vain. Not satisfied with the illumination provided by his airy clerestory, the architect has pierced his triforium gallery throughout. In this lower tier there has been no attempt to introduce figures, the glazier having contented himself with surrounding his grisaille by decorated borders. The only exception to this rule is where the triforium gallery passes below the lovely rosaces that decorate the transept ends--there, in each case, the row of ten lancets is filled, alas! with modern glass whose thin tones betray it at once. Fortunately one is too much absorbed in looking at the great roses above to notice them very intently. So high up are these rosaces in their respective walls that the arching of the ceiling actually passes in front of their upper corners. That in the south transept is a wheel window with medallions in the ends of the spokes, but instead of the rest of the openings being glazed in grisaille (as at Rouen Cathedral), colour is here used throughout. Very different is the north transept rose, from the centre of which six broad arms diverge, separating groups of blossom-like apertures. The colour is good, but would have been better had there been omitted the white borders that make the coloured panels seem about to start from their sockets. The luminous effectiveness of the interior is utilised and accentuated by the placing of the double-faced altar on a raised platform in the middle of the crossing where the transepts can contribute to its glory equally with the choir. The high altar carries off the unusual honour of this central position with great dignity and success. So much are we seized and held by the charm of the general effect that we are not tempted, as is so often the case elsewhere, to solace ourselves with spelling out quaint details in individual windows. Nevertheless, that form of research is here well worth while. Three times on the south side of the choir clerestory and again in the second choir chapel on the left, do we find the donors, ingenuously holding in their uplifted hands small models of their gift windows. Several times we will note two canopy panels whose stories must be read together, as for example in the first choir chapel on the right, where a mounted man in armour is piercing with his spear the side of the crucified Christ in the next panel to the right. Interesting as are these and many other similar details, it is the softly tinted illumination of the whole interior, more than any particular feature, that makes us remember Sées Cathedral as one of the most satisfactory French examples of fourteenth century glazing. VERNEUIL Long before one reaches Verneuil he remarks a great tower looming high above the surrounding house-tops, a tower so commanding as to seem to beckon us from afar, and then later when we have reached its foot, to make us halt awhile in its shadow to enjoy the innumerable delicate details of its architecture, which render a near view as delightful as the distant prospect is imperious. It is not often in France that one sees so striking a landmark, which must have been vastly more significant still in those battleworn years of the middle ages when Verneuil was for so long an important post on the frontier between France and the territory held by the English. There may still be seen one of the massive round towers of the ancient fortifications, its great size bearing witness to the importance attached to the possession and defence of the city. Nor is Verneuil lacking in other and more homely charms, for it preserves many of its old timbered houses, as well as others of stone and brick decorated at one corner by a gracefully carved tourelle. On making our way to the centre of the town we find that the great tower belongs to the church of La Madeleine, which occupies one end of the spacious market-place. No more ill-assorted collection of incongruous elements were ever found in one edifice. The lofty uplift of the choir and transepts rises so much above the low roof-tree of the nave, that viewed from a little distance, there seems no connecting link between the eastern portion of the church and the great tower at the western end. The transepts are so short as to extend but little beyond the sides of the choir, and furthermore there are two sets of transepts, side by side, and opening into each other. It is to the eastern and loftier part of the edifice that we must repair. Here about the choir and the two parallel chapels that adjoin it are a dozen windows containing fifteenth century canopies, mostly arranged in two tiers, one above the other. Note that it is groups rather than single figures that appear within the enframing niches, and that the stories told by these panels are more elaborate, even if less effective than their grander contemporaries in the transepts. These latter are fine tall-pinnacled examples, each canopy enclosing a single figure, and are found in three of the four great embrasures that light the end walls of the transepts. The fourth contains Renaissance canopies. Throughout all this fifteenth century glass the deepness of the tones used in the figures within the niches is most noticeable. There are also several sixteenth century windows, the most noteworthy one being a Tree of Jesse in the east end of the southerly chapel. A large figure of the Virgin holding the Infant Jesus is shown standing on the vine just at the point where the branches separate. Jesse's descendants, drawn to a smaller scale, are emerging from blossoms all about the Virgin, whom they are intently regarding. Although the fifteenth century glass in La Madeleine is not so splendid as some we have seen elsewhere, it is in such quantity and variety as to afford valuable facilities for comparison and study. There is also good glass to be seen in the church of Notre Dame. The picturesque old-world flavour of Verneuil will perhaps make it a greater favourite with us than some towns possessing more important windows. On leaving Verneuil, whether we decide to return to Paris via Chartres, or to link this trip on to the next by passing directly to Evreux and thence to Rouen, we may, by means of a slight detour, go through Nonancourt. If we do, we should delay there long enough to enter the church to see the low fifteenth century windows along the nave aisles, as well as the larger Renaissance ones that stretch in a long row around the whole length of the clerestory. It will be worth the few additional kilometres to the automobilist, although hardly demanding the breaking of a railway journey. CHARTRES Besides its wondrous cathedral, Chartres has another though a more modest sanctuary which also possesses its original glazing almost intact. This is the church of St. Pierre, a unique example of the glazier's attempt to meet the objection of light obstruction charged against the thirteenth century mosaic method. His treatment of the clerestory lights is of peculiar interest. There are no transepts. Around the clerestory each window is divided perpendicularly in half, one side being glazed in colour and the other in soft grisaille. The only difference in the nave clerestory is that there each window is divided perpendicularly into three instead of two, the middle division in each case containing colour work and the two outside ones, grisaille. This method of glazing, plus the fact that the triforium is pierced, produces the desired amount of illumination within, but one can hardly say that it is produced in an altogether satisfactory manner. It is inevitable that this sandwiching of strips of colour between others of grisaille should reduce the value of the tints and dull their glow. The effect is very strange--it is as if tall shutters of dark hue had been prepared for grisaille windows, but that these shutters had only been put up on one side of each. Whether one admires it or not, the method is novel, and worth examining. The new demand for more light has been met, but we have not yet reached the perfection of church illumination. For this we must wait until the fully elaborated canopy panels of the fifteenth century, for in those the glazier hit upon just the right proportion of colour and translucency by means of convincingly complete designs containing no jarring contrasts. It is well if one defers this inspection of St. Pierre, and does not go to it straight from the sombre glories of the cathedral. Such an immediate comparison will render it difficult to realise what an agreeable experience the smaller edifice affords for the student of glass (see page 67). Do not fail to go into the Lady Chapel to see the delightful set of twelve enamels representing the Apostles, by many considered the chef d'oeuvre of the master of that craft, Leonard Limousin. They are remarkable not only for their delicious combination of tones and shades, but also for their unusually large size (two feet high by one foot broad). One is not surprised at the great care everywhere apparent in their workmanship when one learns that they were ordered by Francis I, who, however, did not live to see them finished. His son, Henry II, presented them to Diane de Poitiers for her Château d'Anet. Before leaving St. Pierre, observe how excellently the architect adjusted the relative heights of the bays, triforium and clerestory; so graceful is the result that we depart with the impression of an edifice of unusually agreeable proportions. QUIMPER Far off in the western corner of France dwells that strange race, the Bretons. Leave behind you Paris, the standard-bearer of things modern, and set out for distant Quimper, the westernmost outpost of French glass. You will find yourself in the midst of a curious folk whose origin is unknown, in a bleak country where over a million people speak an uncouth Celtic tongue utterly unlike French; where customs, handed down from father to son, persist for centuries; where modern costume is ignored and the peasant glories in his bright blue and gold jacket adorned with glittering buttons. You have even passed beyond the fabled forest of Broceliande, where Vivien held the great Merlin by her magic spell. Quimper must be visited for its own sake because there are no neighbouring glass towns. Long as is the journey, it is safe to say that you will be repaid for its discomforts. Arrive, if you can, on a Sunday. The roomy interior of the cathedral is quite as attractive as the elaborate Gothic detail outside has promised. Here during service, perhaps more than anywhere else in France, will the middle ages seem to you still to be lingering on. No stiff rows of pews obtrude their modern convenience upon your notice. You will find the great church filled with group upon group of Breton men and women sitting on rude rush-bottomed chairs, the men in their gay attire and the women wearing quaint white caps which vary slightly in each little village or commune. All this serves to take us back into feudal times; we sink into a seat and observe the intense interest with which our neighbours are following the ringing exhortations of the priest, couched in homely phrases, quite like the discourse which his predecessors in the fifteenth century preached from the same pulpit to a very similar audience. Our mood becomes so mediæval as to almost make the ancient stained glass seem contemporary. It is a pleasant thought that the series of canopy windows made for the choir clerestory in 1417 by Jamin Sohier should have been continued and carried along the clerestory of the nave and transepts by his son, also named Jamin Sohier, towards the end of the same century. One of these later ones near the west front bears the date 1496. Some of those in the nave were sadly injured by the stress of time, and a few altogether destroyed; but they have been repaired and replaced most successfully, pious care having been taken to restore them as nearly as possible to their original condition. This was done during the years 1867 to 1874 by M. Luçon at the expense of the State. The nave windows of the younger Sohier are much more brilliant, both in richness and in variety of colours, than the earlier choir windows of his father. The gradual development of the verre doublé (or double sheets of glass) placed a greater variety of tints at the disposal of the artist, and he eagerly took advantage of his enriched palette. By comparing the choir panels with the later ones of the nave, we have here an excellent opportunity to study the development of the canopy window. We cannot help but feel that although the earlier ones lack the brilliancy and glow which characterise those constructed later, this lack is more than balanced by the delicious softness of the light which they transmit. It is interesting to observe how many of them set forth the legend of St. Christopher. Do not fail to notice the skillful contrast of a strong yellow with a rich green of which the east windows of the north transept provide several excellent examples. There is a striking peculiarity in the ground plan of this church. The choir is not upon the same axis as the nave, but inclines at quite an angle to the north. This peculiarity also exists in one or two other French churches, and the local authorities always delight to tell you that it is a form of Gothic symbolism intended to represent the drooping to one side of the Saviour's head on the Cross. When the true explanation is discovered, it generally proves to be of a more practical nature. The same slant to the north is observable in the choir of Saint Jean, at Troyes; there it was caused by the fact that the street line on the south side of the choir had to be pushed northward after the great fire of 1524. At Quimper the explanation is even more interesting. In 1239 Bishop Raynaud wished to add to his cathedral the chapel of Notre Dame (founded in 1028 by the Count of Cornoucilles) which stood a little to the east and was across a small street. He extended his choir so as to take in the chapel; but as it lay a little to the north of the true easterly line, he had to slant his choir to effect his purpose. This explanation may not be poetically symbolical, but it is historically accurate. SIXTEENTH CENTURY We have now reached the perfected period of stained glass, by some called the Renaissance, and by others the Cinque-cento. The latter affords a graceful recognition of Italian inspiration in the revival of French art at the beginning of the sixteenth century. By this time the reader will have appreciated the truth of the statement in our introduction that stained glass saves us the trouble of dividing it into periods, because it falls of itself into divisions whose boundaries, oddly enough, coincide approximately with those of the centuries. This was heretofore illustrated when the canopy window appeared upon the scene and caused the abrupt change from the sombre glittering tones of the thirteenth century to the light-admitting silvery-grey glass of the fourteenth. Now we are about to see how another change came at the end of the fifteenth century, when the Renaissance sprang full-grown, not Minerva-like from the brows of Jove, but from those of Mars, the God of War, for it was the Italian wars of Louis XII and Francis I that brought about this sudden regeneration of all branches of French art. What the French soldiers saw in Italy they remembered and told at home, and, moreover, many of their trophies bore witness to the wonderful development then reached by Italian art. The fact that after several centuries French territory was at last relieved from distress of war naturally resulted in a sudden interest in building of all sorts. Because of this, architecture was among the first of the arts to be affected by the new Italian taste. We have before noticed the inter-relation of the needs and styles of the architect with those of the glass artist, and therefore we are not surprised to find our windows testifying that the latter quickly perceived Gothic architecture was being superseded by the classic style. During the last two centuries he had grown to appreciate more and more the light-admitting advantages of the canopy window, but now he changes the simulated architecture from Gothic to Renaissance. In his designs we notice an even more important change, which results from the fact that he now enjoys a good working knowledge of the laws of perspective and hastens to avail himself of it in order to lend greater depth to his picture. Indeed, in some instances, he carried the use of perspective almost to an abuse. His predecessors in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries knew nothing of these rules, which, indeed, were then unknown in every art. On our way down through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, because most of the windows are either canopy, or grisaille surcharged with figures, we are by their very nature denied an opportunity to observe the same gradual development of perspective which was contemporaneously taking place in painting. The result is that when in the sixteenth century the glass artist decided to branch out from the conventional canopy style and indulge his taste in the more ambitious effort of the picture window, the sudden change from no perspective to an abundance is all the more noticeable. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the only hint obtainable of an increasing interest in perspective was when we noticed that fifteenth century canopies were more elaborate than those of the fourteenth, not only because they had much more intricate pinnacles, but also by reason of the curtains hanging in the back of the niches, and other details showing attempts to gain depth in the picture. In his large picture windows the sixteenth century artist also has more chance to show us how greatly the discovery of enamelling on glass has enriched his palette. During the two preceding centuries his development of verre doublé (or glass in double layers) has been yielding a constantly increasing variety of hues in the costumes of his personages, backgrounds, etc.; but now he adds his brilliant enamels and fairly riots in colour. We shall often have occasion to deplore that the glazier of the Renaissance never truly grasped the full artistic possibilities of the black outlines ready to his hand in the leads, and that he failed to realise, as did his predecessors, that the more the drawing was executed by the leads the more attractive and convincing the resulting picture would be. Towards the end of this epoch this disregard for their usefulness in the design was often carried to such an extreme that one concludes the artist must have regarded them as of no service except to hold the glass in position. Some of the men who indulged most in enamel painting became so engrossed in this form of decorating glass as to consider the leads an intrusion, and as tending to reduce the size of the sheets, which they preferred should be of large size in order to facilitate the painting thereon of their pictures. To recapitulate, the most noticeable features of the new régime are then-- (_a_) Renaissance architecture depicted instead of Gothic. (_b_) Larger scenes. (_c_) Use of perspective. (_d_) Greatly increased diversity of colour. (_e_) Use of enamel painting. (_f_) Increasing carelessness in use of leads. [Illustration: "DESCENT OF THE HOLY GHOST," MONTFORT L'AMAURY (16TH CENTURY). _Architecture depicted now entirely Renaissance. Tracery lights above, much simplified, lend artist more room for his picture. Lead lines now mar the picture, instead of only providing the outlines. Drawing greatly perfected; note the excellent grouping, the "Golden Tongues," etc. Kneeling donors are not only too large but intrude upon the subject. (See page 237)._] Not only does Renaissance architecture supersede the older Gothic on our windows, but it very naturally brings with it certain characteristics of the new architect. For example, because he generally placed the date conspicuously upon his edifice, so in Renaissance glass we find the glazier introducing the date upon some panel of the simulated architecture. Before this time, windows were seldom dated; now this custom soon became firmly established and various methods for it were devised. In the parish church at Les Iffs, in Brittany, the west panel of the small chapel on the south side of the choir bears its date upon a gold coin held by one of the figures. The writer remembers this well, because, finding no date, it struck him that it might be on the coin. He piled three chairs, one on top of the other, climbed up, and there it was. Immediately after the discovery, the chairs fell down! Notwithstanding the richness which the artist's palette has attained, we occasionally meet an indication that he has not forgotten the cool silvery-grey formerly yielded by the canopy window. He now sought to obtain the same result in another fashion by occasionally restricting the colour of a picture window to various shades of grey (or very light brown), relieved by flesh tints where needed, and enlivened by touches of yellow stain. We sometimes find a church glazed throughout in this style, as, for example, St. Pantaléon at Troyes. It was, however, chiefly used in smaller edifices and for domestic or civil purposes. This particular manifestation of sixteenth century style outlived most of its contemporaries and is found as late as the end of the next century. By this last observation we are naturally led to comment upon the almost complete collapse of the cult of stained glass that came at the end of this century. People seemed to no longer care for it, although it had for more than four hundred years been so highly esteemed. We read of many instances of artists who had no orders for work and therefore had to turn their talents into other channels. That master of so many arts, Bernard Palissy, writing at the end of the century, tells us that so completely had the sale of glass fallen into disrepute that it was then hawked about from village to village by those who sold old clothes and old iron, and that although the art was a noble one, many of its practitioners found it difficult to get enough to live upon. For this passing of interest there have been many reasons advanced, but perhaps the most convincing is that of surfeit. Certain it is that an enormous quantity of stained glass was produced during the sixteenth century, much of which has survived. Of course, in some quarters the cult lasted longer than in others, but then it is generally traceable to the existence there of a peculiarly gifted group of glass artists. We shall find this true at Troyes, where the skill and fame of Linard Gonthier and his school produced such a demand for their work as to cause the art in that locality to survive far into the seventeenth century. While it is true that during the sixteenth century glass reached its highest perfection, it is but natural that on the way up it should have outgrown many of the indications of craft tradition which we have from time to time noticed. The perfected picture no longer needed certain conventional signs to tell its story. Perspective and improved drawing obviated the need of them. There are, however, several instances which show that even the sixteenth century artist felt the charm of quaintness, though to a lesser degree than his predecessors. For example, a window in Caudebec Cathedral (the Passage of the Red Sea by the Israelites) takes pains to identify the sea by having the waves glazed in red! Though he had discarded most of the conventions, he retained and much beautified a few of them. For example, in Tree of Jesse windows, he far outstripped the older schools in grace and elaboration of treatment. As an indication of the interest felt in allegory by the later men we must invite attention to the so-called "Wine Press" window. Here we have the same branching vine found in the Tree of Jesse, but in this case it springs from the wounded Christ, who is being bruised in the press (or sometimes from His pressed-out blood), and spreads out over the panes, bearing as its blossoms saints, apostles or historical personages. In a few instances it rises from the wine pressed by Christ from the grapes. Windows of this type are to be seen at Conches, at Troyes and many other places, but nowhere is the idea so elaborated as at St. Etienne-du-Mont in Paris. Sometimes the heads displayed on the vines indicate another tendency of this century, which can be particularly noted in the last cited window (by Pinaigrier) and in Engrand Le Prince's Tree of Jesse at St. Etienne (Beauvais). In these two the heads prove to be accurate portraits of contemporary royalties and church dignitaries, a fashion then much affected and highly esteemed. Another evidence of this same tendency to add personal touches is shown in the greatly increased use of armorial bearings, not only serving as the sole decorations of a panel, but also appearing upon picture subjects. These coats of arms are not only agreeable in effect, but also by their heraldry are very useful in fixing dates. Many of these armorial bearings were, however, destroyed after the edict of 1792, forbidding their use. Most sixteenth century windows bear the donor's figure, nor shall we find excessive modesty shown by the man who paid the price. In this connection it is interesting to note that although stained glass has always been very expensive, strangely enough the expense has remained practically constant throughout all its history, providing, of course, one takes into consideration the varying purchasing power of money. In fact, the cost thus corrected varies so little from epoch to epoch as to be positively surprising. When we consider how costly was a gift of this sort, perhaps it is not extraordinary that, during the sixteenth century, we generally find upon it the givers' portraits; the wonder is that the custom was not more widely spread before. Unfortunately, the donor was now more aggressive than his predecessors, for often the figure is not only too large, but actually intrudes upon the subject of the window. Frequently not content to appear alone, he had the portraits of several of his family added as well. Before we make our selection of towns to be visited, let us look about us in Paris, for it has not a little glass to show us. PARIS Before starting on our thirteenth century tours, Paris supplied us with very useful results from our comparison of the glass in the Ste. Chapelle with that of the north rose at Notre Dame. Not so satisfactory was our study of the fifteenth century canopy windows at St. Sévérin in that city. We shall, however, find excellent sixteenth century glass in several of the Paris churches, and will thus be afforded an opportunity to prepare for our excursions by obtaining in advance some idea of the style of that period, and shall also find some examples by its best artists. Let us begin at St. Germain l'Auxerrois, whose charmingly light tower and graceful exterior seem to give the lie to the sinister fact that from this very belfry rang out the signal for the massacre of St. Bartholomew. The west wall of the north transept provides a reason for here beginning our study of sixteenth century glass, because there, side by side, are two very similar windows, harmonising agreeably one with the other, and yet the architecture of the canopies of one is fifteenth century Gothic, and of the other, Renaissance. This very conveniently illustrates for us one of the marked changes which came over our glass. If the canopies were not enough to date them, other details are not lacking to perform that service. The earlier window has all the features of the distant landscape put in with the leads, while in the later one they are delicately painted on greyish blue; especially note this in the well scene. The other windows in this transept are also attractive and the warmth of some of the reds in the bed draperies of the earlier one of the pair just mentioned should be noticed. The adjusting of the figures to their panes in the transept rose windows is adroitly handled, particularly some of the kneeling angels in the south one. In the west wall of the south transept, the problem of placing a central figure when the architect provided only four, instead of five lancets, is gracefully overcome. At St. Gervais we have one of the few opportunities to compare two of the greatest artists produced by the new school--Robert Pinaigrier and Jean Cousin--but that is about all that can be said for this ugly church, where architecture, white windows and modern glass combine to drive away the student. The best window is by Pinaigrier, the Judgment of Solomon (second on the right in the choir chapels); it is dated 1531, and although considered by many his masterpiece, seems to us to have too much marble pavement, etc., for its personages; and further, the little scenes in the tracery lights contrast disagreeably not only with the picture below, but also with its minarets and their sky background which jut up into the space above. We must, however, note how the accurate perspective contributed by the lines of the pavement and the distant architecture facilitates the correct stationing of the figures without confusing them as to position or foreshortening. His, also, are the twelve panels in the Lady Chapel, giving scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary: here the composition is delightful. We may remark in passing that at least one of them displays verses which by reason of their quaint expressions are less suited to our times than to the more unrestrained speech of those earlier days. Jean Cousin's window, the Martyrdom of St. Lawrence (1551), is the first on the right in the choir, and though good in technique, is not attractive. We should reserve judgment upon his work until after we have visited Vincennes. Across the river and at the top of the hill crowned by the Panthéon is to be found an edifice that looks more like an architectural freak than a church--St. Etienne-du-Mont. It seems to realise its own ugliness and tries to conceal itself behind the Panthéon. Once we enter its portal we find a vast improvement over the distressing exterior of this confection of stone. There are plenty of spacious windows and a general airy effect. Swung high in the air across the front of the choir is a graceful stone jubé arch, seemingly fastened to the columns at each end by double loops of delicate spiral stairways. The choir is so lightly constructed, and with so few obstructing columns, that the whole of the ambulatory space becomes a part of it. This arrangement enables us to enjoy the glazing of the ambulatory and the choir chapels from all parts of the building. A little door marked "Sacristie" leads off from the ambulatory through a corridor to the Chapel of the Catechism. Along the west wall of this chapel are ranged a series of twelve panels by Pinaigrier, and because they are on the level of the observer's eye, he is afforded every facility for examining what could be accomplished by a great artist in enamelling colour on glass. In fact, there is no place in France where this can be more conveniently studied. Although all twelve are fine, that devoted to the allegory of the wine press is easily the best. Oddly enough, it was the gift of a rich wine merchant. In it are to be found faithful portraits of Pope Paul II, Emperor Charles V, Francis I, and Henry VIII of England, as well as sundry cardinals and archbishops, all in rich ceremonial costume. Needless to say, those individuals have nothing to do with the subject of the window, but the opportunity to display portraits of them was too good for the artist to waste. This frequently appears on glass of the period and sometimes the result verges on the ludicrous. After visiting these stately temples, the quiet church of St. Merri appears even more modest and retiring than its obscure site just off the busy quarter about the Hotel De Ville really renders it. In fact, so well is it hidden that we would have missed it had we not been seeking very carefully. The windows here are more interesting than beautiful and their effectiveness has been impaired in several ways. We read that during the eighteenth century those in charge of the church, after careful deliberation, replaced a great deal of the coloured by white glass, especially in the nave, where they removed the two central lancets of each group of four, leaving only the upper half of the two outer ones. Of course, the result was not only disastrous to the window's general effect, but entirely extinguishes any warmth of tone in such glass as remains. We cannot but deplore the absence of the abstracted panes, for the remains in the side lancets and tracery lights evidence such skill, as well in combination of tones as in drawing (more particularly in the handling of perspective), that one can readily imagine what harm has been done. Even the few scenes that are left are well worth inspection, and are as interesting as any of this epoch in Paris. Notice in the third window on the right, the way in which the landscape is carried back until it ends in a little red-topped tower, from which peer out two heads. Fortunately, these deliberate and painstaking vandals spared the glass in the three westerly windows on each side of the choir, and also in the eastern walls of the transepts. The panels on the left, showing the history of Joseph, are better than their neighbours across the choir. Of the sixteenth century glass to be seen in Paris, this much can be said: it varies markedly, illustrates most of the types of that time, and is therefore very useful in preparing us for the tours we are about to take. SIXTEENTH CENTURY TOURS We shall have to approach the subject of viewing sixteenth century glass in a very different spirit from that in which we undertook the tours of the preceding centuries. We can no longer set up any claim to thoroughness. If our pilgrim visited all the places recommended in our thirteenth century excursions, as well as those for the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, he can rest with the comfortable assurance that he has seen about all of the really good glass of those periods. Now we have a different problem. There has survived a great deal more glass from the sixteenth century than from all the preceding ones combined. He cannot hope to see it all, and we will have to limit ourselves to sketching out for him three tours covering the best--supplementing these by several detached cities, so that if the glass hunter happens in their neighbourhood he will not overlook them. He will find, however, some compensations for the bewilderment caused by the great quantity of sixteenth century glass, the chief of which is that either Rouen or Troyes provides in its many churches a complete exposition of that period's style. If the pilgrim's time is limited, he can accomplish more during a short stay in those two cities than he could upon any tour which might be outlined. Two other compensations provided by this abundance of material are--first, that there is a great deal of good glass to be seen in Paris, and furthermore, the automobilist especially will delight to learn that there are a half-dozen points in its immediate neighbourhood which offer an excellent excuse for a half-day's outing. For the leisurely traveller who has both time and inclination, we will arrange three tours; but he must understand that although they will provide him with a sight of the best sixteenth century glass, there will still be left a number of towns worth visiting. Each of these trips will begin in Paris. On Tour (_a_) we first stop at Vincennes, just outside the fortifications, then on to Sens, to Troyes, to Chalons-sur-Marne and back to Paris. Tour (_b_) takes us by way of Versailles to Montfort l'Amaury; then to that perfect shrine of Renaissance glass, Conches; next to Pont-Audemer; then across the Seine by boat to Caudebec, and from there upstream, by the interesting old Abbey of St. Wandrille and the stately Jumièges to Rouen. From Rouen we run out to Grand-Andely, Elbeuf or Pont de l'Arche before we push up the river Seine to Paris. Tour (_c_) will particularly recommend itself to the automobilist, and most of the points are quite near Paris. We go out through St. Denis to the town of Montmorency, then through the wood of Montmorency to Ecouen, and next a little further on to Chantilly. From there our route lies across to Beauvais, and back to Paris. As stated before, several of the towns comprised in these three tours are so close to Paris as to enable a glass lover with a half-day on his hands to pleasantly employ it in a short excursion by train or automobile. Of course, if he travels by train he can hardly hope in half a day to see more than one of these. If, however, he is an automobilist and therefore untrammelled by time-tables, he can combine several. For example, a glance at the map will reveal that Ecouen, Montmorency and Chantilly are so close together that an automobilist can fit them into one day. A word of warning is not out of place for one about to visit these nearby towns. He must be careful to ascertain from his Baedeker or from the public prints, upon which days they are open to the public. Montfort l'Amaury and Ecouen can be seen any day; Vincennes and Chantilly, Thursdays and Sundays, etc., but these statistics had better be verified in the manner suggested because the regulations are changed from time to time. There are three very important glass shrines which are, however, so located as to make it impossible to combine them into a tour. These are the Cathedral of Auch (down in the southwest near Toulouse), the chapel of the château of Champigny-sur-Veude in Touraine, and the famous church of Brou at Bourg in Savoy. The pilgrim should make every effort to see them. [Illustration: 16TH CENTURY TOURS. (_a_) _Vincennes, Sens, Troyes, Chalons._ (_b_) _Montfort l'Amaury, Conches, Pont-Audemer, Caudebec, Rouen, (Grand-Andely, Elbeuf, Pont de l'Arche)._ (_c_) _Montmorency, Ecouen, Chantilly (St. Quentin), Beauvais._ _Also separate visits to Bourg, Auch and Champigny-sur-Veude._ (_For table of distances, see page 295._)] VINCENNES Vincennes lies so close to Paris that it can be reached by an electric car which starts from the Louvre. Its sternly forbidding fortress of the most approved feudal type, and the delightful park, have been the scene of many an interesting episode in French history. In the old forest which was the predecessor of the modern park, good Louis IX was wont to seat himself beneath an oak and measure out to all comers that even-handed justice which supplied one of the reasons for his canonisation. Often, on our travels, we have noted how enthusiastically he espoused the cause of stained glass, and, therefore, we of the Brotherhood of Glass Lovers should feel a sympathetic glow of interest whenever we happen upon any scene hallowed by his personality. As for the castle, perhaps the best proof of its great strength is its sinister record of having served during many reigns as a dungeon for prisoners of State. Many are the great names on its roster of prisoners, nor shall we wonder it was chosen for that purpose after climbing to the top of its donjon tower and remarking the vast thickness of its walls surrounded by the deep, yawning moat that isolates it from the smiling countryside. It is with a feeling of relief that we turn from the contemplation of such a subject to the delight which awaits us in the graceful Gothic chapel with its fine vaultings, set off by the superb set of windows from the hand of that great master, Jean Cousin. Poor windows, they have suffered many vicissitudes since their completion in 1558; it was not enough that they should be subjected to the ordinary hazards of time--they were actually taken out of their settings and moved away! After an interval they turned up in 1816 in the collection of Lenoir. Later they were restored to their original embrasures, but some of the heads and limbs having been lost, a bungling repairer replaced them by fragments from other panels. Fortunately for us, the last restoration in 1878 has corrected this and they are now in condition to show us what their artist intended to set forth. Notwithstanding the glaring light from the uncoloured windows to the west, these stained glass pictures are so delightful in tone and drawing as to give us a very high opinion of Jean Cousin. It was but natural that he should, in accordance with the custom of his time, seize this opportunity to recommend himself to royal favour, and, therefore, we must not criticise him for putting Henry II attired as a Knight of St. Michael in one of the eastern windows. We may, however, very properly object to the presence of the royal mistress, Diane de Poitiers, among the Holy Martyrs! Henry II must have lacked a keen sense of humour, or the artist might have run some risks in so placing the fair Diane. The subjects of these windows are taken from the stories of the Apocalypse and allow the artist wide scope for his fancy, of which he avails himself to the fullest extent. He also indulges in several daring combinations of colour, as for example, in depicting the flames in the panel to the right of the central one, where he used lilac, yellow, brown and red, and each colour in several shades. Just below, in his shipwreck picture, he again represents the flames in the same bold way. Then, too, there is a distinctly bluish tone to his enframing stone canopies; all this sounds very raw and harsh, but the general effect is nevertheless excellent. This was the official chapel of the Order of the Saint Esprit, so we are not surprised to find upon some of the windows knights of that order in full regalia. Vincennes is perhaps the best place to study Jean Cousin; certainly far better than his birthplace, Sens, which we next visit. There the cathedral contains but two examples of his skill, but they are veritable masterpieces. SENS Even the most enthusiastic admirer of Sens could not bring himself to describe that city, or the surrounding country, as picturesque. The latter is monotonously flat, relieved only by occasional chalk ridges. The town straggles away from the river Yonne with little to remind us of its former glories except the cathedral and its immediate neighbourhood. As we cross the bridge near the railway station we will remark a very incongruous service which practical science has exacted from a relic of the past. Rising from the parapet at the highest point of the bridge is a crucifix up the back of which runs a wire ending over the head of Christ in an incandescent electric light! When we passed through Sens on our earlier trip (see page 77) we took occasion to relate the fateful coincidence which took place in the twelfth century when representatives from all parts of Christian Europe came there to visit the exiled Pope just in time to see William of Sens completing, in the cathedral, the first great step in Gothic. This coincidence not only caused the rapid spread of the new style of architecture to every part of the Christian world represented by these visiting delegates, but also explains why Thomas à Becket, then sojourning in Sens, selected this architect to rebuild Canterbury Cathedral in far-off England. Now we come to a sixteenth century tale which serves to show that the people of the Middle Ages were likewise keenly interested in art and that an artist's fame travelled perhaps even more widely, all things considered, than it does to-day. The beautifully light and graceful transepts at Sens were built by Martin Cambiche, who was also the architect of Beauvais Cathedral and likewise drew the plans for the west front of St. Pierre at Troyes. First let us look at the cathedral's exterior. When viewing the west front we are struck by the appearance of unusually great breadth, due partly to the construction of the cathedral itself and partly to the placing of the Officialité (a thirteenth century building) which has its greatest length extending to the south level with the cathedral's west front. Note the device of the Officialité's architect to increase the seeming length of his front by gradually diminishing the distances between his buttresses. Within this fine hall St. Louis (Louis IX) was betrothed. This ponderous appearance of breadth resulting from the juxtaposition of these two buildings might have produced too massive an effect if it were not for the almost coquettish fashion in which the tower rises up at the cathedral's southwest corner, giving a decided uplift and point to the entire façade. Although the cathedral has far fewer windows than we shall see at Troyes (because its triforium is not pierced), the lighting here is almost garish, owing to the fact that the clerestory embrasures are glazed only in grisaille. In the charming transepts, however, we obtain what is perhaps the ideal lighting sought for by the glass artist of the sixteenth century. The windows are very numerous and of such general excellence as to render these the best glazed transepts in France. They have not only unusually ample window space in their sides, but have also large low-reaching panels below the big rose windows which, as usual, decorate the upper portion of the end walls. So generous was this architect in the number and size of wall apertures as to prove how greatly he esteemed the assistance of the glazier. The records show that those in charge of the building made most intelligent use of the opportunity provided by the unusual amount of window space. They sent far and wide for the best artists. We read that in 1500 they summoned from Troyes three master glass painters, Lyenin-Varin, Jean Verrat and Balthazar Godon, and turned a large part of the work over to them. These men finished their task in three years, and the result amply justifies their selection. The rose windows are especially pleasing, that to the south showing the Last Judgment with many repetitions of the Angel Gabriel, and that to the north a most charming throng of angels playing upon various musical instruments, the interweaving of the glass tones being as harmonious as befits this heavenly choir. The best known window in this part of the church is a very brilliant Tree of Jesse with a red background bearing on one of its branches the celebrated Grey Jackass (a familiar figure in the old "Fête des Fous"): it is at the north end of the east wall of the south transept. Of the beauty of these transepts, as well as of the way in which their architecture and glass prove mutually helpful, too much cannot be said. The most famous windows in the church are two by Jean Cousin, who, although born in this city in 1501, is only represented in his home cathedral by these examples. His glorious St. Eutropius is in the third chapel on the right of the nave, but even finer still is the Tiburtine Sibyl in the Notre Dame de Lorette chapel on the right side of the choir ambulatory. It is only fair to this second window to say that it was somewhat damaged during the siege of 1814. After inspecting these two products of his genius, it is easy to understand why Jean Cousin enjoyed so wide a fame. We have already referred to the splendid relics of the twelfth century which are found on the other side of the choir ambulatory. The result of this very convenient opportunity to compare the best work of the twelfth and the sixteenth centuries is that we are sure to be startled by the difference not only in results, but also in methods. [Illustration: SOUTH TRANSEPT, SENS (16TH CENTURY). _The Rose is now greatly elaborated, its lines more flowing, and its position in the wall beautified by the graceful adjustment of the lancets below._] TROYES To-day the flat country of the ancient province of Champagne, broken only by occasional ridges of the chalk which underlie the surface to the great advantage of its famous grapes, affords but little of interest to the traveller by automobile, and has only its level going to recommend it to the bicyclist. There is not enough traffic on its roads to enliven the monotony of the journey. How different must it have been when these same highways teemed with interesting groups from every rank of society, all crowding to the famous fair of Troyes, which during the Middle Ages was the bourne of so many traders, knights and other seekers of adventure from all parts of Christendom. In those days no one would have had leisure to notice the monotony of the scenery, so engrossed would he have been in those passing crowds made up of every nationality of Europe, all repairing to this great mart of trade. During those halcyon days of commercial distinction there must have been laid broad foundations of cosmopolitan tastes, and a reflection upon those times makes it easier to understand why so many artists should later have been born citizens of that stout burgh. This also explains why so large a number of Flemish and Italian artists resorted hither, leaving marked traces of their influence. This prosperity was temporarily checked by the edict of Louis X forbidding the Flemish to trade at its fairs, and the absence of these lowlanders was soon followed by that of the Italians. From this cause, combined with others, the fairs lost their importance, and the Hundred Years War coming soon after, put the finishing touches to the city's decadence. The damaging and dreary years of the English occupation were, however, enlivened by the episode of the marriage of Henry V of England to Catherine of France, attended by all the pomp and pageantry that would naturally be attracted thither by so notable an event. Troyes did not, however, recover her old commercial prestige until just before the beginning of the sixteenth century. Then she took such a bound forward as, through the new wealth of her citizens, to make possible that encouragement of art which developed the unrivalled school of glass painters soon to make her famous far and near. In fact, so widely was their fame spread and so firmly were they established, that their school persisted far into the seventeenth century, the vigour of their art long outliving that of most of the other French glass centres. There is no place in France in which one can better see examples of the various ramifications of the sixteenth century style in glass. We have here not only the cathedral, but church after church full of the work of the best masters. We shall see not only the picture window in lively colour, but also that in the subdued style of grey and yellow stain, to which we have alluded before. Furthermore, in the Library there is a series of historical panels which is not excelled anywhere, the secular topics of the scenes giving an excellent opportunity to show costumes and manners of the times. Nor must one confine oneself within the exact limits of the sixteenth century, because we have noted that here the style of that century extended practically unchanged far into the next. We shall begin when the style begins and we shall follow it as long as its healthy life continues. Of the numerous churches in Troyes, those which chiefly interest the glass student are the Cathedral, St. Urbain, St. Jean, St. Nizier, La Madeleine, St. Pantaléon, St. Nicolas, and St. Martin-ès-Vignes. Besides these churches, there is also the Library to be visited for its series of windows devoted to civic subjects. For a description of that Gothic eggshell, St. Urbain, turn back to page 82, where will also be found an account of the splendid thirteenth century glass that makes the choir of the Cathedral so glorious. Let us begin our stroll about the town by a visit to St. Jean. It would be difficult for a church to more completely preserve its mediæval appearance than this one. Besides, the way in which it is tucked in between two crooked, narrow old streets conforms to the most approved rules of stage setting. Its quaint, irregular exterior makes it appear a picturesque medley of three or four churches of varying size, while its ancient belfry perched on one side like a feather in a cap lends the ensemble an almost jaunty air. The altar before which Louis II was crowned and Henry V of England married, has been removed to the east and placed in the more modern Lady Chapel. We get an interesting hint of the great value attached to stained glass when we learn that the original of a window on the right side of the nave clerestory (showing the coronation of Louis II) was demanded as part of the ransom of Francis I when he was captured at the Battle of Pavia. This original window is said to be somewhere in Spain. The axis of the choir slants quite noticeably from that of the nave, and the priests say that this slant is intended to symbolise the inclination of the head of Christ on the Cross after His death. We notice the same difference in axis, as well as the same tradition, at Quimper, but we there learned that the true explanation was not so poetic. Here also we are obliged to reject the quaint legend of the priests; the municipal improvements after the great fire which ravaged the city in 1524, necessitated the rectification of the street line, and the north side of the choir had to be slanted to conform thereto. The glass is in many ways of interest, but has been a good deal mutilated. That in the nave has suffered most, but fortunately much of its beauty remains. Notice the admirable Judgment of Solomon on the south side. In the choir and in its chapels we shall get a real taste of the Troyes glass school, some of the windows being excellent, especially that of the brothers Gonthier, showing the Marriage Feast at Cana, the Manna in the Desert, etc. In many of the churches in this city we shall observe paintings hung upon the walls, and two of those which decorate this sanctuary will serve to remind us that Pierre Mignard, the great painter of Louis XIV, was born here. Another ancient church, and one much richer in glass, is St. Nizier. Its original glazing had remained practically intact until in August, 1901, when a most unusual calamity overcame some of it. An anarchist exploded a bomb in a chapel on the north of the choir. We have observed what our poor friend has had to endure in many places, but to be shattered by an anarchistic explosion seems a most incongruous fate. It is, however, a pleasant surprise to find how little damage was done by this act of vandalism. The finest window is undoubtedly that which adorns the south transept and shows Religion overcoming Heresy. The central one in the choir (the Virgin Mary and the Apostles receiving the Holy Ghost) is by the celebrated Macadré of Troyes, but the writer finds its effect injured by the fact that the artist (probably to indicate that the side panels are to be considered in conjunction with the central one) allows the hands of certain figures at the side to extend over upon the central panel. This century surely went far enough in its disregard for the delimiting duties of the leads, but when we find an artist so careless of the properties of his materials as to put a hand over on the other side of a stone mullion, it would seem that the limit had been exceeded. The most ancient of all the Troyes churches is La Madeleine. It contains a marvellous jubé arch swung in air between the two western columns of the choir. Although of stone, the workmanship is so delicate and lace-like that we are not surprised that the epitaph of its builder buried below used to read that he calmly awaited the Judgment Day with no fear of the stone arch falling upon him. The glass around the choir is excellent, but we must go to the Lady Chapel to see the best. On the right is a Tree of Jesse, remarkable for the number of figures it contains. The east window is the gift of the Jewellers' Guild, which fact is carefully set forth thereon. To the left is a fine example of glass-making, but in addition to that, because of the treatment of its subject, it is as interesting as one will often find. Beginning at the lower left-hand corner and reading to the right, are a series of scenes depicting the creation of the world, Garden of Eden, etc. The imagination of the artist set forth the creation of the world in a manner surprisingly close to the latest theories of modern science. He starts with a round glowing ball of matter which, by means of rotation upon its axis, develops in the succeeding pictures, first, a more symmetrical shape, and then the appearance of land, formation of continents, etc., etc. On the left of each of these scenes stands the figure of Jehovah, in a costume resembling that of a high priest. There is hardly a window in France that tells as much or is more interesting in the telling than this one. [Illustration: "CREATION" WINDOW, LA MADELEINE, TROYES (16TH CENTURY). _Read from left to right, beginning with lowest tier. Earth evolved from chaos, shown by glowing yellow ball revolving on its axis; birth of Eve, etc. Tracery Lights above are becoming simpler in form as elaborate Gothic gives way to Renaissance._] Now we come to a style that is better shown here than anywhere else--the picture window composed of grey and occasionally some flesh tints, with touches of yellow stain to relieve it. Two churches are entirely glazed in this manner--St. Pantaléon and St. Nicolas. The latter, it is true, has one or two of its upper windows in colour, but the general effect is that of a church glazed in grey and stain. Of course, these two interiors, because of this glazing, are very brilliantly lighted, and in the opinion of the writer, much too brilliantly. This method proved very felicitous when devoted to domestic purposes (as found towards the end of this century and during the early part of the next), but for a religious edifice, although interesting, it is doubtful if it is beautiful or suitable. There are some unusual architectural features to be found in both these churches. St. Nicolas has a very graceful stone gallery extending across the western end approached by a gradually bending staircase, the supports of which are of admirable design. St. Pantaléon can hardly be said to be attractive. The interior is too high and too glaringly lighted, but it affords the best opportunity to study this grey and stain style. Notice that freely as is the yellow stain used to enliven the monotony of the greys, it does not succeed in producing the charming silvery tone yielded by the canopy window of the two preceding centuries. Here and there one observes an attempt to modify the ultra-yellowish grey tone by introducing blues into the borders. The falseness of style everywhere noticeable reaches its climax in a gallery on the left near the entrance, containing two stone figures which appear to be looking down from it. Do not fail to visit St. Pantaléon in order to study its unusual glazing, but do so out of curiosity and not expecting beauty, or you will be disappointed. Its lack of charm will, however, prove useful if you go straight on from here to the Cathedral, for by contrast it will intensify your appreciation of the sympathetic assistance which the wealth of colour there lends to the splendid architectural effect of the interior. We have already taken our reader to inspect the thirteenth century glass around the choir, but now we will have him stop in the nave to see the work which the sixteenth century produced. One immediately notices the particularly clear fresh colouring of the glass, and this, combined with its great quantity (for the pierced triforium permits an additional row of windows besides the clerestory above and the aisles below), produces an impression which is so unique, and so distinctive, that it always lingers in the memory. The rather unpleasant contrast noticed at Bourges between the depth and the warmth of the thirteenth century and the lighter tones of the later glass is fortunately absent from Troyes. The reason for this is the unusually rich colour of the later windows. From so many excellent ones it is difficult to select a few to mention, but we particularly commend the fourth on the right (a Tree of Jesse) and the one in the fourth chapel on the left, Linard Gonthier's famous Wine Press. The Tree of Jesse is not only a beautiful example of its type, but is rather out of the ordinary because it has a red instead of a blue background. Upon this window, as well as on most of the others, are to be seen the donors, their coats-of-arms, and other interesting sixteenth century features. Gonthier's Wine Press is so well known as hardly to call for a word of description. Christ is stretched out in the press, His blood running into a chalice, while from His breast springs a vine spreading over the window, bearing as its blossoms the twelve Apostles. Although this window is dated 1625, it is in the best style of the sixteenth century and shows no tendency towards decadence in either drawing or colouring. Before leaving the interior, notice an odd architectural device in the north rose. This window is of the wheel type and has a supporting column running up through it as far as its middle, suggesting a gigantic pinwheel. There is a similar supporting column in the north rose at Tours, but there it runs straight up through the window to the top, and unfortunately is too heavily and solidly built. Nearly all mediæval glass was adorned with religious subjects, and therefore we have an unusual treat when we visit the large hall of the Library and examine the thirty-two panels that fill its eight large windows. They are from the hand of Linard Gonthier, and the scenes are commemorative of the visit to Troyes of Henry IV in 1595. Very charming, indeed, are these pictures of the life and pageants of the time. There are many familiar little touches, such as a small boy being pushed off into the water by the crowd, etc. Some of the panels are also rich in armorial bearings. We have purposely delayed until the last any reference to St. Martin-ès-Vignes because it was entirely glazed at the time when the Troyes sixteenth century school, although still worthy of its traditions, was about reaching its end. This glass is uniformly good and provides a most pleasing interior, obviously relying for its effect upon the glazing. The dating is that of the earlier years of the seventeenth century. If we examine the windows too closely we easily find indications of a decadence of style. For instance, the second on the left gives so much importance to the kneeling donors that, although we cannot deny the excellence of the work, we must strongly criticise the taste which made them so prominent a feature. Regarded as a whole, however, the result in this church is so excellent that it clearly proves what we have before stated, viz.: the virility and strength of the glassmaker's art at Troyes outlasted that of most of the contemporary French schools. CHALONS-SUR-MARNE Before paying our second visit here to examine the sixteenth century windows, let us turn back to page 87 and refresh our memory by glancing through the account of our thirteenth century trip to this city. We shall thus be reminded of the modestly retiring beauty of its small parks, as well as of its cathedral and two fine churches. Every style of sixteenth century glass is to be found in Chalons, but for all that it would hardly be selected as one of the best places in which to compare them. The small church of St. Alpin has in its nave a series of excellent windows of yellow stain and grey such as we noticed in St. Pantaléon and St. Nicolas at Troyes. In those two churches the relatively great window space exposes the weakness of this style by demonstrating that in large interiors it makes the light glaring. By contrast, in St. Alpin, where the nave ceiling is low and the window apertures small, this method of glazing, by admitting a great deal of light, produces a very happy effect. In this St. Alpin glass there are marked traces of Italian taste, more so than in that at Troyes, though the latter is commonly credited with being the most noticeably affected by foreign influence. The first one on the right, showing St. Alpin before Attila, is delightful, every advantage having been taken of the softness of tone which is the chief merit of this particular treatment. Some of the others are also good, but the one just mentioned is the best. Around the choir are interesting coloured panels, but so broken up into small scenes as to be rendered ineffective. The handsome church of Notre Dame does not, in its windows, fulfill the promise of its architecture. A great deal of the glass is new, and much of the old is mutilated, but in the lower row on the left side of the nave there are several brilliant examples of what the sixteenth century Champagne school could accomplish in the picture window. Especially vigorous and striking is the first on the left, showing St. James encouraging the Spaniards to defeat the Moors. It is as good a battle picture in glass as one will find. In the fifth on the left (a Crucifixion scene) we note a trick often observed in this province, for the little golden stars are separately leaded into the blue sky. Passing on to the Cathedral, disappointment awaits us. On our former visit we found it so fruitful and interesting in thirteenth century glass that we had a right to expect more than is yielded by the inspection of the row of sixteenth century windows which extend along the lower right side of the nave. The canopies in the sixth one betray that it is fifteenth century, but all the others are later. The first on the right is the most interesting of this series, although it is the poorest in execution. On eleven of its compartments are represented scenes from the Creation, Garden of Eden, etc., wherein certain quaint conceits are noticeable. Unfortunately its many nudes are very poorly drawn and the glass used is mediocre in quality. We can here clearly see that, although the artist of this period was saved a great deal of lead work by his large pieces of glass, their use required him to select sheets of evener tone and better quality than in the days when his pieces were much smaller. MONTFORT L'AMAURY An agreeable route from Paris to Conches, etc., is by way of Montfort l'Amaury, which lies beyond Versailles, just off the main road to Dreux, and 45 kilometres distant from Paris. If the pilgrim is travelling by train or if he wishes to go straight from Paris to Conches, he should then postpone until another occasion his visit to Montfort l'Amaury, and will thus keep in store for himself a very pleasant half-day automobile excursion. The object of the visit proves to be a small church which has preserved its sixteenth century glazing practically intact. Nothing could be more simple than its ground plan, for there are no transepts, no chapels, simply one long building rounded at the east end, whose shape suggests that of a man's thumb. While we must not expect to find so splendid a glass series as at Conches, neither must we fail to appreciate that here is a church with thirty-three windows, all of the sixteenth century, and in excellent state of preservation. As we enter by the small south portal the effect that meets our eye is most agreeable. Closer inspection of the windows unfortunately reveals that they vary markedly in quality and are evidently the work of different artists. It cannot be denied that many of them are commonplace, although none is really poor. Their dating helps to explain this mediocrity, for they were constructed towards the end of the sixteenth century, at a time when our art was hurrying into decadence. The few earlier ones, and especially that dated 1544, are the best. The latter is the eighth on the left and depicts Jesus being shown to the people. Another, the third on the left, tells the story of Joseph, and is an obvious example of the Italian influence so prevalent during that epoch. The scene in which he is escaping from Potiphar's wife is almost an exact copy from Raphael. We must not fail to remark the third from the eastern end, in which the Holy Ghost is descending upon the assembled disciples in the form of a shower of golden tongues. The grouping of the figures, the play of the colours, and the richness lent by these touches of gold, all combine to make a brilliant picture. The second to the right of this contains the Falling of Manna in the Wilderness, but as the tones used here are much lower, and the manna is depicted as a rain of white spots, the window, as a whole, is much quieter than the one just described. In the church at Montfort l'Amaury an instructive light is thrown upon the obtrusive appearance of donors so frequently found during the sixteenth century. We know that the figures are often so large as to be positively obnoxious, but it is here demonstrated beyond doubt that the artist worked very much more carefully upon these portraits than upon the rest of his window. There are few places where this can be more conveniently studied, and for this reason our visit has been a useful one, even though the glass be of a class a little below the best. CONCHES There are four modest shrines to which every glass lover should contrive to repair, no matter what may be the difficulties in the way nor how much time it may take. Of these four, one at Fairford (near Oxford) is in England, while the other three are in France, and are the Ste. Chapelle in Paris, the village church at Eymoutiers and Ste. Foy at Conches. In each we find the church completely glazed in one period and, furthermore, with the best glass then procurable. The scene that to-day meets our eye in each of these small sanctuaries is practically the same that rewarded the artist the day he completed his work. We have frequently had occasion on our tours to notice how much certain glass would have been improved if contrasting windows could but be removed from the edifice, or the edifice itself in some way changed. There will be no need for any such mental correction of the picture when we visit Conches. Here, after you have closed the door on the twentieth century life outside, you feel that you have turned back the finger of time and are living in the days of that eloquent beauty which speaks out to you from its windows. Perhaps nowhere else will you get the wonderful accord of tone with tone and hue with hue that makes the colour at Conches so radiantly lovely. We find ourselves in a very simple church about twice as long as broad, the only departure from its rectangular plan being a small five-sided chapel which projects from its eastern end. There is nothing to aid the glass in its service of making splendid the interior. In fact, one might add that there is nothing which dares insult it by an offer of so obviously unnecessary assistance. Practically all the windows are of the sixteenth century, and they are so fine that it seems unfair to call particular attention to the elaborate set designed by Aldegrevers, a pupil of Albrecht Dürer. These fill the seven tall windows of two lancets each, which light the eastern chapel and are dated 1520. Of the forty-two subjects upon these windows, those in the upper range show scenes from the life of Christ and those in the lower from that of Ste. Sophia. It is unfair to describe them; they should be seen. At this point we may comment that although it is occasionally possible to convey some idea of an individual panel by technical description, it is useless to attempt, by means of words, to give a reader a just conception of such an interior as the glass produces at Conches. Beside these by Aldegrevers there are eighteen others whose dates, running from 1540 to 1553, show them to be of slightly later construction. In the fourth on the right the allegorical subject contains an unusual detail. A group of figures represent the Liberal Arts, and among them, Music: upon her insignia appears a musical phrase expressed in proper notation. This representation of written music upon glass is extremely rare. We shall see another of the very infrequent instances when we visit Caudebec. Among the finest windows is the fifth on the right, which represents the allegory of the Wine Press. Here the subject is not treated in the usual gruesome fashion. It is not the blood of Christ which serves as the wine but, instead, the juice of grapes which He is crushing in the press. Throughout all these windows the distant landscapes are depicted in much more convincing colouring than is usually found at this time. This seems due to the fact that the light blue glass used for that purpose is left clear of all paint except that needed for delineation. Elsewhere these blue backgrounds often have so much paint upon them as to be rendered partly opaque and therefore incapable of simulating the depth necessary for great distances. In strength as well as in judicious combination of a surprisingly wide range of colours, their century can show few examples to rival these. Not only is their value enhanced by the simplicity of the interior which they decorate, and which, therefore, has nothing to distract our attention from their beauty, but this very beauty is made all the more impressive by the sharp contrast provided by the dullness of the little town outside and the plain exterior of the church which it so glorifies. PONT-AUDEMER The church of St. Ouen at Pont-Audemer will always have for the writer that peculiar charm of almost proprietary right which the discoverer is sure to feel in something upon which he has happened unexpectedly. On his way through the town he saw the church, and having noticed from the outside that the windows contained stained glass, he stopped and went in, undeterred by the positively dishevelled look of the unfinished and dismantled west front. A delightful surprise awaited him. Around the walls of the nave, the space usually occupied by the triforium gallery here becomes a broad frieze so exquisitely carved in Gothic patterns as seemingly to drape the walls with lace. In fact, you hardly notice the unfinished condition of the upper part of the church, so engrossed are you in this very unusual feature, one of which any cathedral in France might be proud. And in the embrasures below, what a gallery of harmonious glass! Not only are the individual windows excellent, but they harmonise so well as to make one feel that each artist must have been at the greatest pains to make his work contribute to and not interfere with the general scheme. It is for the glass hunter a treasure trove to find a church which has preserved a complete glazing of one period, but to have the windows all good, and better still, in such charming accord with each other, makes the occasion of his visit to Pont-Audemer a red-letter day. The ground plan of the church is somewhat broken up, but even that seems but to add to the charm of the interior. The first window to the left in what might be called the choir ambulatory is not only the best but by far the most interesting. Without any definite division of its surface into panels, the whole picture seems to gracefully resolve itself into four contrasting scenes from the Old and the New Testament, entitled "Devant la Loy," "Soubz la Loy," "Devant la Grace," "Soubz la Grace." The effect of clouds in the sky is very elaborately worked out, while here and there between them peep forth the head and wings of little cherubs--it is really very engaging. Possibly the over-captious visitor may consider the combination of small heads and surrounding clouds somewhat reminiscent of the buttons holding down upholstery, but such a carping critic should be packed off about his ill-tempered business! In a window on the right side of the nave the donors are ranged along a little gallery in the lowest panel. This method has in its favour that it does not present them as intruders on the picture, so often the case in this century. We carry away with us a charming impression of the service rendered by the glass in toning the light for the graceful stone carvings on the nave walls. The effect is unique. On the outskirts of the town there is a small church, St. Germain, whose east window is an agreeable example of fifteenth century canopy work. CAUDEBEC-EN-CAUX Our way from Pont-Audemer lies for some little distance through the large Fôret de Brotonne, one of those tidy symmetrical woods produced by the excellent system of French forestry. Its excellence, however, is largely practical, for all the charm of the "forest primeval" is pruned away. On reaching the banks of the Seine we find ourselves in full view of the pretty town of Caudebec, its graceful cathedral spire beckoning us across the water. It is just at this point in the river that there occurs the Mascaret, the local name given to a swift-rushing wave produced by the conflict between the incoming tide and the outgoing current of the river; it takes place only at stated intervals and is then viewed by numerous tourists. Assuming that we have arrived at a time when the Mascaret is not interfering with navigation, we embark upon a flat, open ferry-boat and soon reach the bank on the other side and are off to the cathedral. Few French churches have their Gothic architecture lightened and beautified by more infinite detail of carving than this at Caudebec, while over all rises an airy spire encircled at three different heights by a stone crown--a form of decoration very unusual and quite lovely. Above the west portal is a gallery that attracts our notice because its open-work stone railing is composed of Gothic letters. Once inside the church, we realise that the windows are well worth a visit, particularly to one seeking quaint details in glass, for there are many such here. We have already referred in our introduction to the first window on the right, the Israelites crossing the Red Sea. In order to render the scene as descriptive and realistic as possible, red glass is used to make the sea, thus removing any possible doubt in the observer's mind as to the identity of that body of water. Almost opposite (the second on the left) is a Tree of Jesse, upon which the descendants appear at full length instead of as the usual busts. Much golden brown is used, not only in the intricate convolutions of the vine, but also in the costumes and in the stone terrace supporting the pavilion below which Jesse is seated. Above the small north portal is a pleasing canopy window of the fifteenth century whose unusual feature is that the bottom of it is curved to fit the arched top of the door. Because of this unusual base, the customary pedestals at the foot could not be used, but the irregularly shaped space is tastefully filled with decorations of yellow stain, surcharged with shields whose heraldry catches the eye of the American traveller, because they bear stars on a blue field, as well as red and white stripes. Fifteenth century canopies also fill the first window to the east of this portal and the three to the west, one being dated 1442, and all containing four lancets. A couple of windows across the church are also of this type, while the whole of the side-lights of the clerestory contain contemporary light-admitting panels, whose colour is restricted to a few round bosses bearing golden rays, and to the broad golden borders which here are carried up into and almost fill the tracery panes above. Another very unusual feature (and one which we have just noticed at Conches) is the presence of two pieces of music written out in the form called "full chant" and borne by angels. If one can spare the time, Villequier, four kilometres down the Seine, should be visited. The small church there has seven excellent sixteenth century windows, one of which, that in the centre on the north side, is really famous. The lower half of its three lancets each contains a figure on a white background bearing an etched damasked pattern, bordered richly in gold. Across the entire upper half is spread out a spirited naval battle in which four ships are engaged. The armoured knights are depicted with great vigour, while excellent use is made of the artistic possibilities provided by three great pennants, two of red with white crosses, and one of yellow bearing a black eagle. The route from Caudebec to Rouen is charming, thanks to the ever-changing views provided by the windings of the Seine. If we please, we may stop on the way to view the Abbey of St. Wandrille (recently purchased by Maeterlinck) and also the loftily impressive ruins of the Abbey of Jumièges. Jumièges, in the midst of its beautiful park, is most picturesquely situated within one of those very pronounced loops so common in the lower Seine, which seem to signify the unwillingness of its waters to depart from this delightful corner of France. ROUEN Upon approaching Rouen one is sure to be struck by the insolent daring of its situation. Lying on a sloping plain beside the river, it seems to disdain the well-nigh impregnable site afforded by the steep cliffs which rise just to the northeast. The history of the city bears out the audacity of its location. Through all the centuries its inhabitants concerned themselves so continuously in conquering other peoples that little time was left in which to consider the security of their own homes. The Norman boasted that his strongest defence was a vigorous offence, and he made good his boast. The town of William the Conqueror seems always to have been imbued by the spirit which gave him his name, and the triumphs of the Normans in England, and later in Italy, are but natural expressions of that virility of race which endures to the present day. Upon the arms of the city there appears a lamb with one of its forefeet lifted. Upon this is based the old Norman saying, "L'agneau de la ville a toujours la patte levée," a homely comment upon the restless spirit of its citizens and their disposition to be always up and doing. Perhaps the most characteristic feature of Rouen when viewed from a distance is the great number of its spires that shoot up above the house-tops, earning for it the sobriquet of the City of Churches. This very attractive detail is all the more striking because so rarely seen in French towns, and is particularly reminiscent to one freshly arrived from England, a country whose church towers are such a charming feature of the landscape. Full of significant history is this Rouen--a history branded for all time by the cowardly fire that ended the tortures of Joan of Arc, that strangely potent and beautiful spirit. Fortunately, no trace remains of that dastardly deed. Turning to a less sinister page in the city's history, we see on one side of the market-place, a small pagoda-like structure called the old tower of the Fiérté. Here, on Ascension Day in every year, was freed a prisoner selected by the people, and that this privilege was jealously retained by them is proved by the existence of a complete list of the prisoners so freed from 1210 to 1790. Nor do the records stop there: they also narrate many a fierce encounter resulting from the determination of the burghers to preserve this right. Most of the quaint features of the town have been modernised away--so thriving a commerce as here flourishes could not long tolerate the old narrow crooked streets. Where old features remain they are so obviously protected as to look almost theatrical. Of this the two best examples are the clockbearing archway over the street which bears its name (Grosse Horloge), and the ancient carved wood housefront transported from its original site, affixed to another dwelling and dubbed the House of Diane de Poitiers. Placed just at the point where ships coming in from the sea must transfer their freight to the smaller vessels that go up the Seine, Rouen is so intent upon her commerce, that all the principal hotels are strung along the quays on the riverfront, a very unusual arrangement in a French town. When we visited the church of St. Ouen to see its fifteenth century glass, we mentioned the esteem in which the Rouen glass-makers were held at that time both at home and abroad. From what we are now about to see we can judge for ourselves how much truer it must have been in the sixteenth century. The number of splendidly glazed churches which have been preserved for our inspection almost consoles us for the long list of others swept away by the ruthless vandalism of the Revolution, and, to a less extent, by the peaceful hand of time or the mailed fist of war. The principal ones we should visit (beside St. Ouen already described) are St. Maclou, St. Vincent, St. Patrice, St. Godard, St. Romain and the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Perhaps the least interesting sixteenth century glass is in that gem of Gothic architecture, St. Maclou, whose florid façade has its bizarre charm accentuated by the graceful bowing outwards of the west front. The glass that attracts us most is in the transept rose windows, the lancets below them and in the very brilliant western rose. All these roses are dwarfed by the excessive size of the pendent lancets: it is all the more unfortunate, because considered separately the roses as well as the lancets are excellent. The earlier windows in the choir chapels have been described in our former visit (see page 144). In the south transept a well-composed Crucifixion scene is carried across all the lancets. The north transept contains a Tree of Jesse on a blue background, and oddly enough, the tree has white branches. In leaving St. Maclou, notice the dainty spiral staircase that winds up at the south side of the door; it seems almost too delicate to be made of stone. St. Vincent has its entire lower part lighted by large embrasures completely glazed with glass of this period, producing a singularly brilliant and luminous effect all about us. The columns which separate the ambulatory from the choir are so slender that they do not materially interfere with our view, and thus the whole interior is exposed at once, an enclosure of glorious colour. In fact, it is not too much to say of this church and, to a less extent, of the two which we shall next visit, that they are bowers of iridescent glowing light. There are two Trees of Jesse at St. Vincent, one over the north portal, and another at the east end of the south aisle, but inspection of the latter reveals that the genealogical tree rises not from Jesse but from St. Anne! In the true Jesse tree over the northern door the branches are white, a peculiarity just noticed at St. Maclou. St. Patrice differs from St. Vincent in that, instead of seeming to stand in the midst of a circle of luminous colour, our attention is rather directed towards the splendid bow-window at the east with its Crucifixion scene, to which all the rest of the glass seems decorously subordinated. Although glazed a little later than St. Vincent, it yields the same splendidly luminous effect, the natural result of a series of panels all of this period. The chief boast of this church is the Triumph of the Law of Grace by Jean Cousin in the Lady Chapel. Nor is his the only great name that we shall find frequently upon the glass of Rouen. One window much admired for its felicitous combination of theoretically uncongenial colours is that which sets forth the legend of St. Hubert. Its greens, reds, yellows and blues must be seen before one can believe that it is possible to agreeably unite them. Our next church is St. Godard, whose ancient glories have been so restored and replaced by modern trash that we find it hard to believe that, when it possessed its original glass, no church in all Normandy could vie with it. To-day it is far less attractive than St. Vincent and St. Patrice, the latter of which, by the way, now contains several of the original windows of St. Godard. The second in the chapel named after St. Romain, depicting scenes from his life, is one of the few in the church which is not either restored or renewed. It is so good in every way that one is surprised the other windows do not seem more out of place by contrast. We sigh for the days when there was justified the phrase used by the Norman peasant in describing good wine, "As red as the windows of St. Godard." Near the railway station is St. Romain, which, though less ancient than those which we have just visited, is the fortunate possessor of glass brought from several of the churches swept away by the Revolution. Particularly notice the spirited scene of St. Romain slaying the Gargouille, the fabled dragon of early Rouen. On the left, in what seems to be a transept, is a pretty window at the bottom of which appear such a sensibly modest row of small kneeling donors that we could wish that all sixteenth century glaziers might have seen them, and had been thereby restrained from their customary exaggeration in this particular. Unfortunately, the ancient panels were not large enough to fill the embrasures here provided, so this extra space was filled by wide borders of light modern glass. The result is that these borders admit such a flood of light as to drown the beauties of the older panels. Now we have arrived at the Cathedral. Before we enter, let us feast our eyes upon the delicate Gothic detail which softens and decorates its sturdy west front. At the southwest corner rises the Tour du Beurre, built (as was the same named tower at Bourges) from the moneys received out of the sale of indulgences to eat butter during Lent. The modern iron spire is so well designed as to seem hardly out of place among its older sisters. We should enter by the north portal. Just outside it is an enclosure formerly devoted to exhibiting the wares of booksellers, which is shut off from the street by a light Gothic screen. Viewed through it the wonderful carvings on the north portal become doubly effective. The interior of the cathedral is as full of interest as the best style of Gothic can make it. On the right is a very attractive zigzag stairway which leads up to the library. In the Lady Chapel are two especially fine tombs, one of the Duc de Brézé, husband of the famous Diane de Poitiers, and the other of Louis XII's great Minister, Cardinal d'Amboise. The fourteenth century glass of this chapel has already been described (see page 144). The 130 windows which light the cathedral's interior are mostly glazed in colour, but they are the product of various centuries and are of varying excellence. We find here but eight thirteenth century medallion windows, but they are delightful. Two of them are in the nave, the third and fourth on the left. The others are in the choir ambulatory and are so placed as to be singularly effective. If one stands in either the north or the south aisle of the nave and looks directly east, the only glass which meets his eye is that of windows brilliant with these early medallions, far off at the other end of the great cathedral. Just at this time the western rose window chiefly concerns us because it is of the sixteenth century. Its concentric circles of white angels, red seraphim, green palm branches, etc., provide a strong contrast between the reds and yellows (filling the centre third of it) and the dark greens and dark blues of the outer two-thirds. In the southeasterly corner of the south transept, the window on the east, as well as that on the south, are worthy of our attention. The latter is by Jean Cousin, and its six panels show six virtues, each entitled in Latin. Those of us who are subject to fits of depression should especially observe "Fortitudo," for there the bishop has slain the Blue Devil, and is pursuing its lilac and its green brothers! Although St. Ouen has already been visited for its magnificently complete fourteenth century glazing (see page 144), the rose windows of its transepts are such noteworthy examples of the Renaissance that we must not omit a comment upon them at this point. That in the north transept has its diverging figures arranged like herrings in a barrel, but while those at the sides and around the lower part are light in tone, those in the upper part are red seraphim and blue cherubim: this is very unusual. The south rose is peopled by a multitude of small personages, each occupying a pane by itself. Careful examination reveals that we have here a Tree of Jesse. He is in the middle, but it is only with some difficulty that we distinguish the branches of the vine radiating from him. Before leaving Rouen the traveller should see the interesting carvings on the House of Bourgetheroulde, depicting the Field of the Cloth of Gold, nor will he fail to admire the magnificent apartments which Norman love of equity constructed for it in the Palais de Justice. Besides the towns already visited, there are three others near Rouen which contain interesting glass, Grand-Andely, Elbeuf and Pont de l'Arche, distant, respectively, 33, 20 and 18 kilometres from Rouen. They are worth a visit if one can spare the time, but we risk an anti-climax in recommending our traveller to see them after the glories of the Norman capital. The nearness of these towns and also of Pont-Audemer (48 kilometres), Caudebec (35 kilometres), and Conches (51 kilometres), suggests a way in which one can change the whole itinerary just outlined. This can be done by using Rouen as a centre from which to run out and back, and thus visit all this group of six without cutting oneself off from one's base. To one at all encumbered with luggage, this suggestion will probably appeal. GRAND-ANDELY Of the trio just mentioned, Grand-Andely is much the most interesting, in fact it deserves greater renown for its glass than it at present enjoys. Unfortunately only one side of the church retains its original glazing, but we find ample compensation for this, because the entire southern half is filled with brilliant sixteenth century subjects, not only along the chapels below, but also in the clerestory. After a delightful hour spent here one readily credits the tale that a youth of the neighbourhood, by constantly contemplating their glories, so developed his love of colour that he determined to devote his life to painting. This youth was Nicolas Poussin. The great width of the embrasures, as well as their number (six in the nave and four in the choir, on each side, both above and below), provide ample scope for the display of the glazier's skill. Among so many of such excellence it is difficult to select which to praise the most, but the third on the right in the nave clerestory (dated 1560), because of Abraham's gorgeous yellow robe, as well as the blue canopy with red draperies above the aged Isaac, will linger longest in the writer's memory. Even when viewed on a dull, grey day, one cannot escape from the impression that a bright sun is shining outside, because of the brilliancy of this window's hues. It is one of the few examples of this epoch to possess that peculiarity, which, by the way, is so common among the mosaic type of the thirteenth century. This tendency towards the ornate, everywhere apparent throughout this series, finds its ultimate expression in the sixth nave chapel on the right, where the stonework of the Renaissance canopies is heavily overlaid with golden designs. The choir's four southerly clerestory windows each contains a large figure under a canopy of the time, the treatment varying in each case. Below, in the south wall of the choir, the tracery lights of the two easternmost windows are filled with diminutive angels, eleven praying or playing musical instruments in one of them, and in the other, nine, each carrying a symbol of the Passion. The way in which each angel is adjusted to the small pane it occupies is very graceful. The apse end is square, in the English fashion. Its great east window contains good fourteenth century canopy work, in bands across a grisaille field. The subsequent addition of a Lady Chapel to the east has injured the effect of this glass, not only by an entrance being cut through it below, but also because the second tier of canopies is entirely shut off from the light by the wall of this later chapel built against it outside. There is thus left only the third, or upper tier, for our inspection. If the northern side of this church were as fortunate as the southern in the possession of its original glazing, this would rank among the best French glass shrines, which is high praise. ELBEUF Elbeuf has two churches worthy of our attention, St. Etienne and St. Jean, but the former is very much the better. In St. Jean the first four windows on the right, three of those opposite them, and the first on each side in the Lady Chapel are all of the sixteenth century. There is, however, so much restoration as to greatly diminish our interest, except in the Lady Chapel. There the one to the right displays scenes from the life of the Virgin, with a label below each. The lower right-hand panel, in which appear Joseph and Mary, carries realism to an extraordinary point, while its label prevents any misunderstanding of its meaning. However unsatisfactory St. Jean may prove, we shall be consoled when we enter St. Etienne. There the whole effect leads up to and culminates in the splendid bay that, with its three lofty windows, each containing three lancets in double tiers, forms the eastern end of the choir. There are no transepts, the nave joining directly on to the choir. Although the nave glass is all modern, it does not affront the glories of its older neighbours in the choir, which is, unfortunately, so often the case elsewhere. One is tempted to confine one's comments to the splendid easterly screen of colour, but that would be discriminating unjustly. The famous legend of St. Hubert, dated 1500 (the second from the east in the southerly choir aisle), has been too much restored, but this is the only one that can be thus reproached. In the east end of this aisle we find at the bottom of a window two panels with tapestry-makers at work, showing that it was the gift of that guild. Across, in the north aisle, the easternmost window in the north wall is a Tree of Jesse, dated 1523. Jesse is seated beneath a pavilion; from the tent pole sprouts a vine, out of whose blossoms arise the usual half-length figures. In the topmost pane of the traceries, the Virgin is seen emerging from a great lily. PONT DE L'ARCHE Pont de l'Arche, approached from Rouen, is most picturesque. It lies snuggled down by the river, its bridge flung invitingly towards you across the Seine, while behind it the forest comes down the steep slope almost to the town. The church, perched high upon a corner of the old fortifications, seems to be keeping watch over the homes of its parishioners. Its elaborately carved exterior gives rise to expectations that are not realised, for within we find but little glass to arrest our attention, although what there is dates from the sixteenth century. At the eastern end of the north wall there is a Tree of Jesse, but it is clumsily imagined and coarsely drawn. The flowers upon the vine are too large, and from them protrude great half-length figures, so much out of balance with the rest of the design as to render the ensemble lumbering and ungraceful. The reason for our visit is provided by the second window east from the south portal. The upper part shows Christ walking on the sea. Below, reaching across the entire window, is a scene full of the liveliest local interest. A boat is being drawn under an arch of the bridge over the Seine, and pulling upon the two long tow-ropes are groups of the townspeople, fifteen of them and two teams of horses tugging at one rope, and eighteen and one team at the other. These groups are carefully painted in enamel. A second vessel is being similarly assisted under another arch of the bridge, the tow-rope in this instance being made fast to a rowboat. The details of the bridge, of the fortified island in the right foreground, and of the enamelled figures of the citizens, are all most engaging. In the matter of correct perspective, the artist relies heavily upon the indulgence of the spectator, but otherwise the panel is agreeable, full of quaint interest, and absolutely unique. MONTMORENCY GLASS The tour which we now propose will prove particularly attractive to the automobilist or bicyclist, although we do not by that statement desire to discourage the traveller by train. He will find the same glass and the same towns, but he will miss the opportunity to enjoy, en route, the forests of Montmorency and Chantilly which during the summer are so alluring. During the first part of the journey we will see glass designed for moderate sized interiors and, therefore, adapted for close inspection. On these windows will be found many careful portraits of the donors, some of which in their perfection of treatment have never been surpassed. It would be unfortunate if this itinerary for any reason should be omitted, because without it our study of sixteenth century glass would not be comprehensively complete. We leave Paris by the road going north through St. Denis: our pilgrim will hardly, upon this occasion, stop to visit the Abbey Church, because nearly all of its glass is modern and glaringly poor. What there is of old glass is twelfth century and either fragmentary or much restored and repaired. The celebrated window showing the devout figure of its donor, Abbot Suger, excites our reverence, hardly our admiration. Its chief interest lies in the fact that there has come down to us the good abbot's own account of this among other windows which he presented. The tombs of the French kings are, of course, most impressive, and provide one of the great sights of France to one interested however slightly in its history, but to-day we are in pursuit of stained glass, so the Abbey of St. Denis must wait until another occasion. The road straight on to the north leads to Ecouen, but that visit must be deferred a little, so just outside of St. Denis we turn sharply to the left and after eight kilometres arrive at Montmorency, delightfully perched upon a hill with orchards on every side. From the little platform just outside the west front we get a fine view of the forest of the same name which, fortunately for American eyes, has not been so pruned as to no longer resemble a forest. From Montmorency we take the right hand to Ecouen there to rejoin the straight road running north out of St. Denis. We follow this road to Chantilly, where the Montmorency glass ends, then turn northwest to Beauvais, and after enjoying its splendid cathedral, return to Paris. At this point let us remark that although automobiles and trains undoubtedly add to the comfort of the traveller, it would be better for us on this particular trip if we could substitute for them a mediæval belief in magic. Then our first move would certainly be to seize a fairy wand and summon as our guide that glorious warrior, courtier and patron of the arts, the great constable, Anne de Montmorency. Nothing could be more incongruous than the selection for him of a woman's name, even though borrowed from the Queen of Louis XII. The reason for summoning him is most obvious: it was he who built the castles of Ecouen and Chantilly, while the church at Montmorency, though founded by his father, William, was completed by the son. Who, then, could better tell us their stories or more delightfully revive by familiar anecdote the originals of their glass portraits? Even after our conjuring had secured for us his company, we might find ourselves in trouble, unless we were willing to discard our automobile or train for a stout horse. The arts by which we secured his presence in the flesh might seem to him quite natural, for magic was much more respected in his time than in these more practical days, but it is greatly to be feared that the puffing engine would overcome that stern courage, tested in many a stricken field, and that it would take the utmost vigilance on our part to prevent him from bolting back into the sixteenth century. After accompanying him to Montmorency and Ecouen, and after wandering together through the forest, park and château of Chantilly, we shall bid him farewell, but we must not be surprised if he stoutly objects to our turning off towards Beauvais, demanding that, having recalled him from the spirit world, we hear his story out, and to that end push on to St. Quentin. The lusty old warrior would be quite right, for the chronicle of his career would be incomplete if it omitted the delaying and glorious defeat he there received while commanding the French forces, thereby providing time for Henry II to rally the remaining strength of France and save Paris from the victorious Philip II of Spain. The result of that battle proved highly satisfactory to both victor and vanquished, for while its delay saved Paris, on the other hand Philip's victory so elated him that in memory thereof he erected the famous palace of the Escorial near Madrid. Though most of us will conclude to refuse the Constable's request, some few of our company may desert us and follow him to St. Quentin. Once there, they must not fail to view the two splendid sixteenth century windows in the second northern transept of the church already visited on our thirteenth century tour. They are each two and a half metres wide by nine and a quarter high. One is dedicated to Ste. Barbe and is dated 1533, and the other, dated 1541, to Ste. Catherine, each displaying elaborately gruesome episodes depicting the martyrdom of the heroine. The latter one shows God the Father at the top receiving the saint, who is borne upward by flying angels. In the lowest panel we remark Catherine's headless body sitting bolt upright, while nearby on the floor lies her severed head intently regarding it (see page 107). MONTMORENCY Up a steep road that has more turns and branches than a grape-vine, and suddenly we come out on a little platform before the west front of the diminutive church of St. Martin. Off to the west and around on each side there unfolds a panorama of smiling valleys and green hillocks in most enticing succession. As one enters the western portal, he first observes that the three westerly windows on each side are modern, and of these there can be no higher praise than that they harmonise admirably with their fourteen ancient neighbours to the east of them. These fourteen are chiefly interesting because of the delicacy of their composition, which is really delicious. [Illustration: CONSTABLE OF MONTMORENCY AND HIS FIVE SONS, MONTMORENCY CHURCH (16TH CENTURY). _Here the donors are frankly the important feature. So proud were the Constable and his wife (Madeleine de Savoie) of their five sons and seven daughters that we find four pairs of windows portraying them._] Perhaps the chief interest here is the gallery of family portraits afforded by the donor's figures upon the panes. Among the many admirably drawn faces of distinguished scions of the House of Montmorency, the best is that of the founder of this church, William, the father of our friend the great Constable, which is behind the altar, to the left. It is evidently the work of a great artist. The fourth on the right and the fourth on the left (and, therefore, opposite each other) are two windows containing one, Anne de Montmorency, and the other, his wife, Madeleine de Savoie, each attended by their children. These two were made about 1563, while those to the east of them range from 1523 to 1533. The Constable is supported by his five sons and his wife by her seven daughters. She is looking toward the altar, but he is looking across at her. Each of these domestic groups occupies nearly half of the entire embrasures, but it does so in such a frank manner as to entirely avoid the appearance of intrusion, so generally the result of portraits like these. As we walk around the church we are amazed that so fragile a medium as glass should have preserved through all the centuries these portraits in more perfect condition than many which were consigned to canvas or marble. In fact, one wonders why this was not more often done, and at the same time wishes it had been effected as frankly as in these two just described, and not by the intrusion of donors upon a window devoted to another subject. It is impossible to repress a smile upon noticing that the Crucifixion scene which bears the portrait of its donor, Guy de Laval, shows him kneeling in the central panel, while the crucifix is in a side one! Lest these comments may have seemed severely intended, let us point out a few of the many lovely features. For instance, the second window from the east in the north wall has in its central panel the Virgin holding the Infant Jesus, who reaches out His baby hand to receive a dove. The greensward below is picked out with bright flowers and peopled by small animals, quite as one sees them on the early tapestries. Nothing could be more charming. The tracery lights are excellently treated throughout, sometimes in a most unusual manner. Above the window just described, we find on a lilac field thirteen golden coins, each bearing a different head. This comment upon the higher panes leads us to speak of a most delicate group of four panels perched up above the north portal. Across them extends what appears to be a long cloister having a rich damasked curtain fastened shoulder-high from column to column, above which is afforded a distant prospect of gardens, etc., while in each of the panels there stands a female saint. But little height is needed for this picture, so the traceries above come down low, and are filled by a throng of blue eaglets on a golden ground, the heraldic insignia of the Montmorencys. Before the Battle of Bouvines the shield of this house bore but four eaglets, but on that day Mathieu de Montmorency captured twelve of the enemy's standards with his own hand. In recognition of these deeds of prowess King Philip Augustus added twelve more eaglets to his arms, one for each captured standard, thus raising the total to sixteen. These arms we shall see often repeated in the windows at Montmorency, Ecouen and Chantilly. A visit to this little church is a delightful experience and fills us with eager expectation of what its founder's son, the great Constable, can show us in his two castles of Ecouen and Chantilly. We are tempted to stray off into the charming forest which stretches away more than five miles to the northwest and to revel in the natural beauty of its chestnut trees, but the Constable awaits us, so off we must be to Ecouen. ECOUEN Ecouen is generally visited because of its fine château, built on the crest of a hill and entirely surrounded by a delightful wood except on the side where from a flowered terrace there is disclosed a far-reaching view out over a smiling country. But it is not the château which lures us hither, but the parish church down in the town that nestles at the foot of the castle walls. The château has lost its old glass, the two panels from its chapel showing the children of Anne de Montmorency being now in the chapel at Chantilly, which place also rejoices in the possession of the famous series of forty-four scenes from the adventures of Cupid and Psyche, which originally decorated the now destroyed Salle des Gardes at Ecouen. For us, therefore, the château has lost most of its charm; if you wish to inspect it you must obtain a carte d'entrée from the Chancellerie de la Legion d'Honneur in Paris, for it is now a school for daughters of members of that order, and is not open to the public. For those of us who have come here to see the parish church there will be no bother about permits, for none is needed. This church not only contains excellent Renaissance windows, but upon them we shall find a fine array of Montmorency portraits as well. The upper panels of the lofty lancets that flank the high altar are filled with scriptural scenes, but below they contain, that to the left, Anne de Montmorency with his five sons, and that to the right, his wife attended by five daughters. Although we have here the same family portraits as those seen in Montmorency Church, this pair is much older (1544-5), and not only shows the children as much younger than at Montmorency (1563), but also has but five daughters instead of the seven seen on the later glass. Nor are these the only similar pairs of these windows. The Constable was so proud of his children and of their number that he seemed to never tire of having them portrayed on glass. We have just referred to a third pair (dated 1544) made for the chapel of Ecouen château, but now at Chantilly, and there is still a fourth pair in the nearby church of Mesnil-Aubry which are the latest of all, for the Constable is there shown with a snow-white beard. At Ecouen we observe that the parents occupy each a separate panel from the children, but at Chantilly the parent panels are both missing. The remaining three windows on the south side of the choir bear as donors still other Montmorencys, but the work is later and not nearly so good. The high altar concealed the lower half of the central eastern windows, so they did the next most sensible thing to lowering the altar back--they transferred to a little northern chapel the panels it obscured. The whole northerly side of the choir opens out into a chapel whose northern and eastern ends are lighted by three large embrasures filled with excellent Renaissance glazing, depicting scenes from the life of the Virgin. Especially fine is the second from the east, showing in the lower half, the death of the Virgin, while above are clouds peopled with angels, all leading up to the Father in the top pane of the tracery. The traceries of the three easternmost choir embrasures are filled with blue eaglets on a golden ground, the insignia of the Montmorencys. This same treatment of the traceries may also be remarked in the chapel of the château; in fact, they are all that remains there of the original glazing. We have already admired this same form of decoration over the north portal at the Montmorency Church. It seems a pity that the Ecouen glass now at Chantilly could not be restored to the embrasures for which it was made; it obviously does not belong where it is now found, and, besides, it loses there the historic significance which it would enjoy in its old home at the château of Ecouen. CHANTILLY At one time or another during our glass pilgrimages we have happened upon examples of other mediæval arts and crafts which all combine to make France so absorbingly interesting. It has been reserved for our visit to Chantilly to show us one of the formal gardens of Old France in which nature has been made to yield to the whim and fancy of the landscape artist. Most travellers have seen the famous gardens of Versailles and have heard that they were designed and arranged by Le Notre, but those at Chantilly were designed by this same master before he was called by the King to do his greatest work at Versailles. There are many who prefer his earlier effort, and we must be grateful to our glass for having brought us to this delightful spot. The forest of Chantilly, which covers over six thousand acres, forms an excellent foil for the formal stateliness of the gardens. One is not allowed to visit the château except on Thursdays and Sundays and not then if it happens to be a day when there is racing at the Chantilly track. This regulation is to prevent race crowds from overrunning the château and grounds. The beautiful building with its priceless collections was the private property of the Duc d'Aumale and was by him presented to the Institut de France. In a long low gallery especially constructed for them, and which receives all its light through them, is a much travelled and widely discussed series of forty-four panels narrating episodes from the adventures of Cupid and Psyche. They are of the yellow stain and grey type which we have noticed at Troyes and Chalons, but here the workmanship is far superior. Note that the grey is in places almost brown, and that the yellow is used but sparingly. The high state of perfection to which the design and drawing are carried, combined with the fact that their subjects are non-religious, make them delightfully unique. It is easy to observe the strong influence of Italian art, not only in their general style but also in the very liberal borrowing of designs from well-known Italian paintings. Until recently they were attributed to that versatile master of many arts, Bernard Palissy, but that has been definitely disproved. They are now generally acknowledged to be the work of Cocxyen, a Flemish student of Van Orley (who made the windows of Ste. Gudule in Brussels), and the Italian influence is explained by the fact that he studied in Rome. These panels are dated 1542-4 and were originally made for the windows of the Salle des Gardes at the Château of Ecouen upon the order of Constable Anne de Montmorency. The Revolution dislodged them and they found their way into a museum arranged by Lenoir. This collection was dispersed in 1818. It is narrated that the Prince de Condé, when visiting the museum, admired this set of glass. Hearing someone remark that they had formerly adorned a castle belonging to his family (meaning Ecouen), he had them bundled up and packed off to his château at Chantilly, where they have since remained. This picturesque tale serves to show that stained glass panels were not then regarded as necessarily stationary. We have seen several other instances of this lack of respect for their stout iron bars. They were beautiful and valuable, and therefore, when the occasion arose, they were removed! Excellent as is the work upon these panels and graceful as are the figures, we cannot but notice that our art is taking rapid strides towards its decadence. They are no longer windows where the full value of colour and leading are appreciated and used. In this set they are careful colourless paintings on glass in which the artistic value of the leads is so disregarded that they no longer provide or even assist the drawing--they only mar it as they run across the panes wherever their supporting strength is necessary. We have arrived at a time when the windows are becoming painted pictures done in the manner of paintings on canvas. The artist no longer remembers that stained glass is a separate art and that he has certain advantages in technique over the oil painter, just as the latter has over him. The small ante-chapel has on each side a tall window. In the middle of each is set a large panel of sixteenth century glass, the one on the right showing five Montmorency daughters kneeling in a row, attended by Ste. Agathe, and the one on the left their five brothers, also kneeling, and similarly attended by St. John. The remainder of the embrasure is, in each case, filled with modern glass done in the Renaissance manner and intended to harmonise with the older panel in its midst. The artist devoted more care to the faces of the boys than to those of their sisters, for although the latter are monotonously alike in drawing and posture, the former differ markedly. The face of the smallest boy is most diverting. His hands are clasped in prayer, but unlike his more devout brothers and sisters, his eyes are not turned toward the altar, but he is gazing out into the chapel with childish curiosity. In these two panels the leads are not so cumbrously intrusive, but there is a lesson which every glass artist should learn from an inspection of the carefully painted windows at Ecouen, Montmorency and Chantilly. He cannot fail to notice how the misuse of the leads has been accentuated by the careful painting, and he should carry away with him a firm conviction that the more delicate the design the less it can afford to quarrel with the leading. BEAUVAIS The average tourist looks forwards with keen interest to his first visit to Beauvais. He has, of course, heard of the ancient glories of its tapestry, which industry is still kept up by the French Government. He has also read that the perfect French cathedral would be composed of the choir of Beauvais, the nave of Amiens, the west front of Rheims and the towers of Chartres: so of the choir of Beauvais he expects great things. Nor will he be disappointed, especially if he first views it from the Amiens road. This approach reveals the town to him in the most picturesque way imaginable. On reaching the brow of a short hill he becomes suddenly aware of Beauvais, lying below him in the valley beside a lazy river. One could more properly say that he first saw not the town, but the amazing uplift of the cathedral, and next the town about it. The great height of this edifice is accentuated by the fact that only the choir and the transepts are now standing. Long ago the nave succumbed to the great strain which its unnatural height put upon the materials of which it was constructed, and collapsed. The architect's vaulting ambition o'erleapt itself. In fact it is only by means of constant shoring and repairing that this choir, the loftiest in France, is preserved in a safe and solid condition. When the pilgrim descends into the town he comes upon many interesting timber-framed houses, some of them with second stories projecting over the arcaded footway below and exhibiting quaintly attractive carvings on their heavy beams. We find an intelligent attempt to preserve the best traditions of the older Beauvais tapestry in the modern factory. Just as formerly, it bears floral designs and very rarely personages, being of the sort called "basse lice," and woven on a horizontal frame, thereby differing from the "haute lice" of the Gobelins factory, where the frames are perpendicular. Not only in the Cathedral, but also in the church of St. Etienne, do we find excellent glass of the sixteenth century. The latter's fine Gothic choir, adorned with graceful flying buttresses, provides a strong contrast to its sturdier Romanesque nave. The glass is only to be found around the choir, and is well deserving of its high repute. One should notice the tone of the blues, especially in the background of the church's finest window, a Tree of Jesse, the first on the left from the Lady Chapel. It is the work of Engrand le Prince, and is one of the best known examples of the irrelevant use of portraits of high dignitaries. Their half-length figures appear as blossoms on the vine. Among the fourteen, almost all contemporary likenesses, the most recognisable are Francis I and Henry II. At the back of the choir clerestory there is a fine window, blue with golden rays of the sun spreading out over it. The legend of St. Hubert is very agreeably set out just to the east of the small south portal, the green used therein being seldom surpassed. [Illustration: "TREE OF JESSE" ST. ETIENNE, BEAUVAIS (16TH CENTURY). _Popular subject in stained glass; the vine springing from the loins of Jesse generally bears his descendants as blossoms, and culminates above in a great lily from which emerge the Virgin and Child. Here occurs an interesting 16th century variation--among the descendants of Jesse appear contemporary portraits, Francis I, Henry II, etc._] It is difficult to express in words the effect of extreme loftiness which strikes one as he enters the south door of the Cathedral. It seems almost impossible to shake off this impression; in fact, one is constantly being surprised that he does not grow accustomed to the great sweep of the upward lines. In the two great rose windows which decorate the transept ends, and in the double row of lancets below each, there is excellent glass of this period. The northern rose shows the golden rays of the sun spreading out over a blue background, reminding us of its prototype at St. Etienne. Below, the ten figures of women are attributed to Le Pot. The southern rose contains the history of the Creation with such interesting detail as to well repay the trouble to decipher it caused by its great height above us. Below are two handsome rows of lancets dated 1551, the upper containing prophets, and the lower, saints. The western wall, rising abruptly at the point where the nave should commence, has in its north and south corners two chapels. Each of these chapels has large sixteenth century windows, the northerly one in the west wall, the Descent from the Cross, being very fine; in fact, it is by some considered the best in the cathedral. The choir also has fine Renaissance glass, although in several of the choir chapels (especially in the Lady Chapel) and around the clerestory at the east end, there are some very interesting thirteenth century windows, one, in particular, a Tree of Jesse, rendered attractive by the halo of flying birds about the head of the Saviour. So tall are the clerestory embrasures that generally only the middle portion of them contains personages, the upper and lower parts being filled with grisaille. Most of these upper embrasures were glazed in the fourteenth century, and show to a marked degree the revulsion from the sombre mosaic, and the demand for greater illumination. All this glass would be much more effective if nearer the eye of the observer, the great height at which it is placed not only spoiling the perspective, but resulting in a jumble of colours. The City Hall contains the flag which the gallant townswoman, Jeanne Hachette, captured with her own hands upon the occasion of the attack on the city made by Charles the Bold and his army. Although this gallant deed was performed in 1472, it has never been forgotten by the people of Beauvais, and its anniversary is reverently commemorated upon the 29th of every June. BOURG In addition to the glass seen during these three trips, there are three isolated churches whose windows are so interesting as well as important that one should not be contented to conclude his sixteenth century studies without visiting them. Not only is each one of them distant from other contemporary glass, but it would seem as though the Imp of the Perverse had taken a hand in placing them as far away from each other as possible. Bourg is down south in Savoy; Auch is near Toulouse in the southwest; and Champigny-sur-Veude is off in the western part of Touraine, near the lower reaches of the river Loire. Each of these three not only was completely glazed during this epoch, but has also retained its glass in good condition. In each case the special interest which causes our visit is quite peculiar and very different from that which attracts us to the others. When we concluded our trips of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries we were confronted with the advisability of a separate journey to Quimper, and in like manner we should now decide to visit Bourg, Auch and Champigny-sur-Veude. It must be confessed that it is inconvenient, but it will prove well worth while. First in importance is the church of Brou at Bourg. Although Savoy now forms part of France, we shall, upon this excursion, find proof that it was not always French, and shall furthermore encounter much interesting history wrapped up in the tale of the building and glazing of the church of Brou. Up in the north, at St. Quentin, we found the high-water mark (on French soil) of that splendid empire which the Spaniard, Charles V, agglomerated under his banner and which he resigned to his son, Philip II, the victor of the Battle of St. Quentin. So vast and important was his empire that he lacked only France to have all the continent of Europe beneath his sway. It was the aunt of this Emperor Charles V, Marguerite d'Autriche, who built the exquisite church of Brou in memory of her husband, Philibert le Beau, Duke of Savoy, killed in a hunting accident. After this glance at history, it is not difficult to understand why Marguerite sent to Flanders for her architect and for her glass designers, for as Flanders was part of her nephew's empire, none was more fully advised than she of the high reputation then enjoyed by the artists of the Low Countries. Apropos of the way in which her husband Philibert died, it is related that when his father had been at the point of death from a similar hunting accident, Philibert's mother, Marguerite de Bourbon, had vowed to erect a chapel to St. Hubert, patron saint of huntsmen, if he recovered. Her failure to comply with this vow was by many firmly believed to be the reason why her son Philibert was killed upon the hunting field, and that his untimely end was a solemn warning that a vow to St. Hubert must be strictly kept. In any event, St. Hubert must have been fully satisfied with the manner in which the oath was finally carried out, for the chapel so built has remained to amaze and delight many generations. The wonderful marble tombs, the graceful rood screen, the splendid glass, all go to prove that there was here lavished everything that wealth, power and intelligence could command. It is bewildering to decide with which of the eighteen windows we shall begin our inspection. Because of our interest in the foundress and her husband, let us commence with that in the choir, which is at the left of the most easterly window. Upon this one and its neighbour to the left we shall see spread out much concerning the life, family and habits of Philibert. The first window shows the Duke himself attended by his patron saint, St. Philibert, while in the background there looms up his favourite ducal palace of Pont d'Ain, where he lived and died. As indicating the importance of his duchy there are arranged above him thirteen shields displaying the arms of provinces at one time part of Savoy. The next window to the left bears a splendid array of thirty-five shields whose heraldry serves to complete our information about Duke Philibert by showing the individuals composing his family tree. Those on the right are of the paternal line of Savoy, and on the left we follow his mother's line (the House of Bourbon) as far up as Louis IX, whose arms appear at the very top of the embrasure. It is most fitting that the arms of our old friend, the royal patron of stained glass, should preside over the most brilliant window in this famously glazed sanctuary. It is to be noticed that this church is very rich in heraldic blazons; in fact, upon five of its windows we find seventy-one shields. The Chapelle des Sept Joies contains a gorgeous work, the Crowning of the Virgin, in which every effort of the glassmaker's skill seems to have been exerted. Above the principal subject runs a panel-like frieze showing in allegory the Triumph of Christ. This frieze is done in grey and yellow stain. The whole window would leave nothing to be desired in either technique or colour if it were not made the victim of an exaggerated outbreak of the curse of donors' figures. The foundress and her husband are not only allowed to intrude upon the drawing of the general subject, but each of them is actually larger than the figure of the Virgin. The records show that this church (begun in 1511) had all its glass installed at the time of its completion in 1536, thus showing that the windows were made during the most vigorous part of the century, a fact thoroughly borne out by internal evidence. We may consider ourselves fortunate that the use of this glorious building for a store-house during the Revolution damaged the glass so little. In this connection it is surprising to read that its beauty was so much appreciated that the people voted to preserve it as a public monument, thus staying the hand of the ever-ready vandalism which then raged through so many French churches. A sketch of Bourg would not be complete without a reference to the noble poem of Matthew Arnold. The following lines are particularly appropriate to the moving cause for our visit to this lovely shrine: So sleep, forever sleep, O marble Pair! Or, if ye wake, let it be then, when fair On the carved western front a flood of light Streams from the setting sun, and colours bright Prophets, transfigured Saints, and Martyrs brave, In the vast western window of the nave; And on the pavement round the tomb there glints A chequer-work of glowing sapphire-tints, And amethyst, and ruby--then unclose Your eyelids on the stone where ye repose, And looking down on the warm rosy tints, Which chequer, at your feet, the illumined flints, Say: "What is this? We are in bliss--forgiven-- Behold the pavement of the courts of Heaven!" AUCH Seventy-seven kilometres west of Toulouse there lies the interesting city of Auch, built upon a hillside rising sharply from the river Gers. Here one will happen upon many an ancient architectural bit which will take him back to the days when Henry of Navarre here entertained, much against her will, his mother-in-law, Catherine de Medicis, in this south-western corner of France, far off from her beloved Paris. The very remoteness has preserved many of its old-world features, and this ancient flavour, combined with the picturesque position above the river, renders it distinctly a town to be visited. But something more than the general mediæval air of Auch is the cause for our long jaunt hither. This reason we shall find in the eighteen windows that adorn the choir ambulatory of the cathedral of Ste. Marie. An inscription in the Gascon dialect on the final one of the series tells us that they are by the hand of Arnaud Desmoles and that they were finished June 25, 1513. We have here the work of a Frenchman, a Gascon at that, and there is no trace of Italian, German or any other foreign influence; it is the true flower of the country's genius growing on its native soil. Perhaps the drawing and the colouring are not quite so good as we may see elsewhere, but it is purely French. Any imperfection of detail is hardly noticed, because we are instantly struck by the ensemble of eighteen windows made for the building which they decorate, as well as for each other, and all by the same artist. His scheme of subjects, showing the agreement between the teachings of the Old and those of the New Testament, is fully carried through to its completion. The colours show strength and yet are not too robust. The proportions, too, are very satisfactory, each window being about three times as high as it is broad. Their stories begin with the creation of the world and carry us on, step by step, until they conclude with the appearance of Christ to His disciples. The central part of each embrasure is filled by a large personage, with sundry smaller figures above, and groups below. It is but natural that so complete a series as this should have always enjoyed a wide reputation. Although we may feel, after examining them, that they do not reach the standard of perfection attained by some of their contemporaries elsewhere, still they cannot fail to please us. The charm lent by their logical completeness causes us to prefer them to others where the perfection of drawing and style in the individual window is partly offset by lack of harmony with others near it. CHAMPIGNY-SUR-VEUDE Any mention of Touraine generally calls up before us the picture of a smiling country through which rolls the lazy Loire hemmed in by its sandy banks, with every now and again the vision of a charming château, type of the best mediæval architecture. To the glass lover, however, the chief and almost the only attraction of the province is the cathedral at Tours (see page 51). We say "almost," because although not generally known and but seldom visited by the tourist, Touraine has another glass shrine lying within a few kilometres of the Château de Chinon. The chapel in which we find this glass was formerly part of the Château of Champigny-sur-Veude, but the chapel alone remains. Before we enter, the writer wishes to deliver himself of a partial explanation or apology, and he does so for the following reason: he has all along inveighed bitterly against the curse of donors' figures upon windows, but on this occasion he must frankly admit that he is guilty of taking you to see glass of which a most interesting feature is these very representations of the donors. In fact the chapel has a peculiar value because it contains thirty-six portraits of the Bourbon-Montpensier family. They are to be found along the lowest panels, each one kneeling before a prie-dieu. The chapel is admirably lighted, partly due to the destruction of the old château, but chiefly to the eleven large windows, each seven by three and a half metres. The same scheme of decoration prevails throughout. Lowest down we find the kneeling donors; above them and occupying far more space are historical episodes from the life of Louis IX, of peculiar interest to us, his humble followers in the love of stained glass. Among the most interesting of these glass pictures may be cited one showing a battle with the Saracens in the Holy Land, several portraying ships filled with armoured knights, and particularly the episode of St. Louis dedicating the Ste. Chapelle at Paris. Above these in the roomy oval traceries are scenes from the Passion. Highest of all are small panes containing either a capital L with a crown slipped down around it, or a bird's wing similarly encircled by a crown, referring respectively to King Louis and the Bourbons. The only variation from the regularity of this general scheme is the east window, which shows the creation of the world and has below it Christ between the two thieves. The fact that this chapel is to-day completely glazed in its original glass and that there is a thorough coherence of style throughout, would alone serve to repay us for the long trip from Paris; but when we add the fact that this is a Bourbon portrait gallery, an historical interest is at once added to its other attractions. These arguments in its favour will keep us from observing too keenly how much the crudeness of some of the colours accentuates the dullness of others. It would be better if the greens could be softened and the greys enlivened. Lest we may seem by thus criticising the glass to wish to disparage it, we make haste to urge our reader to visit Champigny. He will find ample compensation for its isolation from other glass of its century by the many châteaux which make a trip through Touraine so enjoyable. [Illustration: DEDICATION OF PARIS STE. CHAPELLE AT CHAMPIGNY-SUR-VEUDE. _Panel containing kneeling donors not shown. 16th century glass picture of a 13th century event. (See page 26)._] ITINERARIES SHOWING DISTANCES IN KILOMETRES THIRTEENTH CENTURY Paris--227--Bourges--190--Poitiers--103--Tours--107--Angers--87--Le Mans--124--Chartres--88--Paris. Paris--168--Auxerre--59--Sens--63--Troyes--79--Chalons--41--Rheims --145--Paris. Paris--95--Soissons--35--Laon--46--St. Quentin--75--Amiens--131--Paris. FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES Paris--94--Evreux--51--Rouen--133--Paris. Paris--227--Bourges--97--Moulins--82--Riom--14--Clermont-Ferrand--148 --Eymoutiers--50--Limoges--120--Poitiers--124--Angers--87--Le Mans--49--Alençon--21--Sées--64--Verneuil--54--Chartres--88--Paris. Paris--555--Quimper. SIXTEENTH CENTURY Paris--5--Vincennes--107--Sens--63--Troyes--79--Chalons--160--Paris. Paris--45--Montfort l'Amaury--72--Conches--56--Pont-Audemer--32-- Caudebec--34--Rouen--133--Paris. (Rouen--33--Grand-Andely, Rouen--20 --Elbeuf, Rouen--18--Pont de l'Arche.) Paris--18--Montmorency--8--Ecouen--27--Chantilly--50--Beauvais--78 --Paris. Paris--466--Bourg. Paris--701--Auch. Paris--279--Champigny-sur-Veude. INDEX KILOMETRES FROM PARIS EPOCHS PAGE 192 Alençon 16th Century 180 131 Amiens 13th " 112 302 Angers 13th " 55 302 Angers 15th " 175 701 Auch 16th " 290 168 Auxerre 13th " 74 78 Beauvais 16th " 281 466 Bourg 16th " 285 227 Bourges 13th " 42 227 Bourges 15th " 151 161 Caudebec 16th " 245 160 Chalons 13th " 87 160 Chalons 16th " 233 279 Champigny-sur-Veude 16th " 292 36 Chantilly 16th " 277 88 Chartres 13th " 67 88 Chartres 14th " 188 383 Clermont-Ferrand 15th " 160 117 Conches 16th " 239 18 Ecouen 16th " 274 124 Elbeuf 16th " 261 94 Evreux 14th " 137 410 Eymoutiers 15th " 164 99 Grand-Andely 16th " 258 129 Laon 13th " 103 393 Limoges 14th " 169 214 Mans (Le) 13th " 60 214 Mans (Le) 15th " 178 45 Montfort l'Amaury 16th " 236 18 Montmorency 16th " 270 289 Moulins 15th " 155 97 Nonancourt 15th " 187 334 Poitiers 13th " 47 334 Poitiers 14th " 172 167 Pont-Audemer 16th " 242 114 Pont de l'Arche 16th " 263 555 Quimper 15th " 191 145 Rheims 13th " 92 368 Riom 15th " 157 133 Rouen 14th " 144 133 Rouen 16th " 249 176 St. Quentin 13th " 107 180 Sées 14th " 180 112 Sens 13th " 77 112 Sens 16th " 218 95 Soissons 13th " 99 233 Tours 13th " 51 156 Troyes 13th " 82 156 Troyes 16th " 222 118 Verneuil 15th " 185 5 Vincennes 16th " 215 * * * * * Transcriber's note: Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors; otherwise, every effort has been made to remain true to the author's words and intent. 
26450	----	Transcriber's note: Minor spelling inconsistencies, mainly hyphenated words, have been harmonised. Obvious printer errors have been repaired. Accents: In French sentences, most of them italicised, accents have been added when necessary according to the French spelling of the time. In an English context, French words have no accents if there are no accents in the original text. In case of an inconsistent use of accents, the French spelling has been favoured. The advertisement for other books in the series have been removed from page 3 to the end of this e-book. _The Story of Paris_ [Illustration: _Winged Victory of Samothrace._] THE STORY OF PARIS _by Thomas Okey_ _With Illustrations by_ _Katherine Kimball_ _London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd. Aldine House, 10-13 Bedford Street Covent Garden, W.C. * * * New York: E.P. Dutton & Co.--1919_ _First Edition, 1906_ _Reprinted, 1911; July, 1919_ "I will not forget this, that I can never mutinie so much against France but I must needes looke on Paris with a favourable eye: it hath my hart from my infancy; whereof it hath befalne me, as of excellent things, the more other faire and stately cities I have seene since, the more hir beauty hath power and doth still usurpingly gaine upon my affections. I love that citie for hir own sake, and more in hir only subsisting and owne being, than when it is fall fraught and embellished with forraine pompe and borrowed garish ornaments. I love hir so tenderly that hir spottes, her blemishes and hir warts are deare unto me. I am no perfect French man but by this great citie, great in people, great in regard of the felicitie of hir situation, but above all great and incomparable in varietie and diversitie of commodities; the glory of France and one of the noblest and chiefe ornaments of the world. God of his mercy free hir and chase away all our divisions from hir. So long as she shall continue, so long shall I never want a home or a retreat to retire and shrowd myselfe at all times." --MONTAIGNE. "Quand Dieu eslut nonante et dix royaumes Tot le meillor torna en douce France." COURONNEMENT LOYS. PREFACE In recasting _Paris and its Story_ for issue in the "Mediæval Towns Series," opportunity has been taken of revising the whole and of adding a Second Part, wherein we have essayed the office of cicerone. Obviously in so vast a range of study as that afforded by the city of Paris, compression and selection have been imperative: we have therefore limited our guidance to such routes and edifices as seemed to offer the more important objects of historic and artistic interest, excluding from our purview, with much regret, the works of contemporary artists. On the Louvre, as the richest Thesaurus of beautiful things in Europe, we have dwelt at some length and even so it has been possible only to deal broadly with its contents. A book has, however, this advantage over a corporeal guide; it can be curtly dismissed without fear of offence, when antipathy may impel the traveller to pass by, or sympathy invite him to linger over, the various objects indicated to his gaze. In a city where change is so constant and the housebreaker's pick so active, any work dealing with monuments of the past must needs soon become imperfect. Since the publication of _Paris and its Story_ in the autumn of 1904, a picturesque group of old houses in the Rue de l'Arbre Sec, including the Hôtel des Mousquetaires, the traditional lodging of Dumas' d'Artagnan, has been swept away and a monstrous mass of engineering is now reared on its site: even as we write other demolitions of historic buildings are in progress. Care has, however, been taken to bring this little work up to date and our constant desire has been to render it useful to the inexperienced visitor to Paris. Success in so complicated and difficult a task can be but partial, and in this as in so many of life's aims "our wills," as good Sir Thomas Browne says, "must be our performances, and our intents make out our actions; otherwise our pious labours shall find anxiety in our graves and our best endeavours not hope, but fear, a resurrection." It now remains to acknowledge our indebtedness to the following, among other authorities, which are here set down to obviate the necessity for repeated footnotes, and to indicate to readers who may desire to pursue the study of the history and art of Paris in more detail, some works among the enormous mass of literature on the subject that will repay perusal. For the general history of France, the monumental _Histoire de France_ now in course of publication, edited by E. Lavisse; Michelet's _Histoire de France_, _Recits de l'Histoire de France_, and _Procès des Templiers_; Victor Duruy, _Histoire de France_; the cheap and admirable selection of authorities in the seventeen volumes of the _Histoire de France racontée par les Contemporains_, edited by B. Zeller; _Carl Faulmann, Illustrirte Geschichte der Buchdruckerkunst_; the Chronicles of Gregory of Tours, Richer, Abbo, Joinville, Villani, Froissart, De Comines; _Géographie Historique_, by A. Guerard; Froude's essay on the Templars; _Jeanne d'Arc, Maid of Orleans_, by T. Douglas Murray; _Paris sous Philip le Bel_, edited by H. Geraud. For the later Monarchy, the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods, the Histories of Carlyle, Mignet, Michelet and Louis Blanc; the _Origines de la France Contemporaine_, by Taine; the _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. VIII.; the Memoirs of the Duc de St. Simon, of Madame Campan, Madame Vigée-Lebrun, Camille Desmoulins, Madame Roland and Paul Louis Courier; the _Journal de Perlet_; _Histoire de la Société Française pendant la Révolution_, by J. de Goncourt; Goethe's _Die Campagne in Frankreich_, 1792; _Légendes et Archives de la Bastille_, by F. Funck Brentano; Life of Napoleon I., by J. Holland Rose; _L'Europe et la Révolution Française_, by Albert Sorel; the periodical, _La Révolution Française_; _Contemporary American Opinion of the French Revolution_, by C.D. Hazen. For the particular history of Paris, the exhaustive and comprehensive _Histoire de la Ville de Paris_, by Michel Félibien and Guy Alexis Lobineau; the so-called _Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris_, edited by L. Lalanne; _Paris Pendant la Domination Anglaise_, by A. Longnon; the more modern _Paris à Travers les Ages_, by M.F. Hoffbauer, E. Fournier and others; the _Topographie Historique du Vieux Paris_, by A. Berty and H. Legrand, and other works now issued or in course of publication by the Ville de Paris. Howell's _Familiar Letters_, Coryat's _Crudities_, Evelyn's _Diary_, and Sir Samuel Romilly's _Letters_, contain useful matter. For the chapters on Historical Paris, E. Fournier's _Promenade Historique dans Paris_, _Chronique des Rues de Paris_, _Énigmes des Rues de Paris_; the Marquis de Rochegude's _Guide Pratique à Travers le Vieux Paris_; the _Dictionnaire Historique de Paris_, by G. Pessard, and the excellent _Nouvel Itinéraire Guide Artistique et Archéologique de Paris_, by C. Normand, published by the _Société des Amis des Monuments Parisiens_. For French art, Félibien's _Entretiens_; the writings of Lady Dilke; _French Painting in the Sixteenth Century_, by L. Dimier; _Histoire de l'Art, Peinture, École Française_, by Cazes d'Aix and J. Bérard; the compendious _History of Modern Painting_, by R. Muther; _The Great French Painters_, by C. Mauclair; _La Sculpture Française_, by L. Gonse; _Mediæval Art_, by W.R. Lethaby; the Catalogue of the _Exposition des Primitifs Français_ (1904); _Le Peinture en Europe, Le Louvre_, by Lafenestre and Richtenberger, and the official catalogues of the Louvre collections. All these have been largely drawn upon and supplemented by affectionate memories of an acquaintance with Paris and many of its citizens dating back for more than thirty years. May we add a last word of practical counsel. Distances in Paris are great, and the traveller who would economise time and reduce fatigue will do well to bargain with his host to be free to take the mid-day meal wherever his journeyings may lead him. _April, 1906._ PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION The demolition of Old Paris has proceeded apace since the publication of the _Story of Paris_ in 1906. The Tower of Dagobert; the old Academy of Medicine; the Annexe of the Hôtel Dieu and a whole street, the Rue du Petit Pont; the Hôtel of the Provost of Paris--all have fallen under the housebreakers' picks. As we write the curious vaulted entrance to the old charnel houses of St Paul is being swept away and the revision of this little book has been a melancholy task to a lover of historic Paris. Part II. of the work has been brought up to date and the changes in the Louvre noted: it is much to be regretted that the new edition of the official Catalogue of the Foreign Schools of Painting promised by the authorities in 1909 has not yet seen the light. _May, 1911._ CONTENTS PAGE _Introduction_ 1 PART I.: THE STORY CHAPTER I _Gallo-Roman Paris_ 9 CHAPTER II _The Barbarian Invasions--St. Genevieve--The Conversion of Clovis--The Merovingian Dynasty_ 20 CHAPTER III _The Carlovingians--The Great Siege of Paris by the Normans--The Germs of Feudalism_ 35 CHAPTER IV _The Rise of the Capetian Kings and the Growth of Feudal Paris_ 51 CHAPTER V _Paris under Philip Augustus and St. Louis_ 64 CHAPTER VI _Art and Learning at Paris_ 84 CHAPTER VII _Conflict with Boniface VIII.--The States-General--The Destruction of the Knights-Templars--The Parlement_ 107 CHAPTER VIII _Étienne Marcel--The English Invasions--The Maillotins--Murder of the Duke of Orleans--Armagnacs and Burgundians_ 121 CHAPTER IX _Jeanne D'Arc--Paris under the English--End of the English Occupation_ 138 CHAPTER X _Louis XI. at Paris--The Introduction of Printing_ 144 CHAPTER XI _Francis I.--The Renaissance at Paris_ 151 CHAPTER XII _Rise of the Guises--Huguenot and Catholic--The Massacre of St. Bartholomew_ 171 CHAPTER XIII _Henry III.--The League--Siege of Paris by Henry IV.--His Conversion, Reign and Assassination_ 186 CHAPTER XIV _Paris under Richelieu and Mazarin_ 204 CHAPTER XV _The Grand Monarque--Versailles and Paris_ 223 CHAPTER XVI _Paris under the Regency and Louis XV.--The brooding Storm_ 242 CHAPTER XVII _Louis XVI.--The Great Revolution--Fall of the Monarchy_ 256 CHAPTER XVIII _Execution of the King--Paris under the First Republic--The Terror--Napoleon--Revolutionary and Modern Paris_ 271 PART II.: THE CITY SECTION I _The Cité--Notre Dame--The Sainte Chapelle--The Palais de Justice_ 295 SECTION II _St. Julien le Pauvre--St. Sévérin--The Quartier Latin_ 313 SECTION III _École des Beaux Arts--St. Germain des Prés--Cour du Dragon--St. Sulpice--The Luxembourg--The Odéon--The Cordeliers--The Surgeons' Guild--The Musée Cluny--The Sorbonne--The Panthéon--St. Étienne du Mont--Tour Clovis--Wall of Philip Augustus--Roman Amphitheatre_ 318 SECTION IV _The Louvre--Sculpture: Ground Floor_ 333 SECTION V _The Louvre (continued)--Pictures: First Floor_ 350 SECTION VI _The Ville (S. of the Rue St. Antoine)--The Hôtel de Ville--St. Gervais--Hôtel Beauvais--Hôtel of the Provost of Paris--SS. Paul and Louis--Hôtel de Mayenne--Site of the Bastille--Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal--Hôtel Fieubert--Hôtel de Sens--Isle St. Louis_ 400 SECTION VII _The Ville (N. of the Rue St. Antoine)--Tour St. Jacques--Rue St. Martin--St. Merri--Rue de Venise--Les Billettes--Hôtels de Soubise, de Hollande, de Rohan--Musée Carnavalet--Place Royale--Musée Victor Hugo--Hôtel de Sully_ 407 SECTION VIII _Rue St. Denis--Fontaine des Innocents--Tower of Jean sans Peur--Cour des Miracles--St. Eustache--The Halles--St. Germain l'Auxerrois_ 417 SECTION IX _Palais Royal--Théâtre Français--Gardens and Cafés of the Palais Royal--Palais Mazarin (Bibliothèque Nationale)--St. Roch--Vendôme Column--Tuileries Gardens--Place de la Concorde--Champs Élysées_ 424 SECTION X _The Basilica of St. Denis and the Monuments of the Kings, Queens and Princes of France_ 436 _Index_ 441 ILLUSTRATIONS _The Winged Victory of Samothrace (Photogravure) Frontispiece_ _Map of the Successive Walls of Paris_ _facing_ 1 _The Cité_ 11 _Remains of Roman Amphitheatre_ 14 _Tower of Clovis_ 25 _St. Germain des Prés_ 31 _St. Julien le Pauvre_ 38 _St. Germain l'Auxerrois_ 45 _Wall of Philippe Auguste, Cour de Rouen_ 67 _La Sainte Chapelle_ 73 _Refectory of the Cordeliers_ 77 _Notre Dame and Petit Pont_ 95 _Tower in Rue Valette in which Calvin is said to have lived_ 99 _Palace of the Archbishop of Sens_ 115 _Palais de Justice, Clock Tower and Conciergerie_ 119 _Tower of Jean Sans Peur_ 135 _Tower of St. Jacques_ 153 _Pont Notre Dame_ 157 _Chapel, Hôtel de Cluny_ 158 _Tower of St. Étienne du Mont_ 161 _La Fontaine des Innocents_ 171 _West Wing of Louvre by Pierre Lescot_ 173 _Tritons and Nereids from the Old Fontaine des Innocents_ (_Jean Goujon_) " 174 _Catherine de' Medici_ (_French School_) 180 _Petite Galerie of the Louvre_ 183 _Hôtel de Sully_ 195 _Old Houses near Pont St. Michel, showing spire of the Ste. Chapelle_ 201 _The Medici Fountain, Luxembourg Gardens_ 209 _Pont Neuf_ 211 _The Institut de France_ 221 _Portion of the East Façade of the Louvre, from Blondel's drawing_ (_reproduced by permission of M. Lampue_) " 236 _River and Pont Royal_ 239 _South Door of Notre Dame_ 253 _Hôtel de Ville from River_ 293 _Chapel of Château at Vincennes_ 296 _Near the Pont Neuf_ 297 _Notre Dame--Portal of St. Anne_ 301 _Notre Dame--south side_ 303 _Notre Dame--south side from the Seine_ 304 _St. Sévérin_ 315 _Old Academy of Medicine_ 317 _Interior of Notre Dame_ 320 _Cour de Dragon_ 323 _Tower and Courtyard of Hôtel Cluny_ 325 _Arches in the Courtyard of the Hôtel Cluny_ 329 _Interior of St. Étienne du Mont_ 332 _Diana and the Stag_ (_Jean Goujon_) " 342 _St. George and the Dragon_ (_M. Colombe_) " 344 _Triptych of Moulins_ (_Maître de Moulins_) " 370 _Portrait of Elizabeth of Austria_ (_François Clouet_) _facing_ 372 _Shepherds of Arcady_ (_Poussin_) " 376 _Landing of Cleopatra at Tarsus_ (_Lorrain_) " 378 _Embarkation for the Island of Cythera_ (_Watteau_) " 382 _Grace before Meat_ (_Chardin_) " 384 _Madame Récamier_ (_David_) " 388 _The Binders_ (_Millet_) " 394 _Landscape_ (_Corot_) " 396 _St. Gervais_ 402 _Hôtel of the Provost of Paris_ 404 _West door of St. Merri_ 409 _Cloister of the Billettes, fifteenth century_ 410 _Archives Nationales, Hôtel Soubise, showing towers of Hôtel de Clisson_ 411 _Tower at the corner of the Rue Vieille du Temple_ 413 _Place des Vosges, Maison de Victor Hugo_ 418 _Cathedral of St. Denis_ 437 _Plan of Paris_ " 448 _The majority of the photographs of sculpture have been taken by Messrs._ HAWEIS AND COLES, _while most of the other photographs are reproduced by permission of Messrs._ GIRAUDON. [Illustration: Map of the Successive Walls of Paris.] INTRODUCTION The History of Paris, says Michelet, is the history of the French monarchy: "Paris, France and the Dukes and Kings of the French, are three ideas," says Freeman, "which can never be kept asunder." The aim of the writer in the following pages has been to narrate the story of the capital city of France on the lines thus indicated. Moreover, men are ever touched by "sad stories of the death of kings," the pomp and majesty and the fate of princes. By a pathetic fallacy their capacity to suffer is measured by their apparent power to enjoy, and those are moved to tears by the spectacle of a Dauphin surrendered to the coarse and brutal tutelage of a sans-culotte, who read without emotion of thousands of Huguenot children torn from their mothers' arms and flung to the novercal cruelties of strangers in blood and creed. In the earlier chapters the legendary aspect of the story has been drawn upon rather more perhaps than an austere historical conscience would approve, but it is precisely a familiarity with these romantic stories, which at least are true in impression if not in fact, that the sojourner in Paris will find most useful, translated as they are in sculpture and in painting, on the decoration of her architecture, both modern and ancient, and implicit in the nomenclature of her ways. The story of Paris presents a marked contrast with that of an Italian city-state whose rise, culmination and fall may be roundly traced. Paris is yet in the stage of lusty growth. Time after time, like a young giantess, she has burst her cincture of walls, cast off her outworn garments and renewed her armour and vesture. Hers are no grass-grown squares and deserted streets; no ruined splendours telling of pride abased and glory departed; no sad memories of waning cities once the mistresses of sea and land; none of the tears evoked by a great historic tragedy; none of the solemn pathos of decay and death. Paris has more than once tasted the bitterness of humiliation; Norseman and Briton, Russian and German have bruised her fair body; the dire distress of civic strife has exhausted her strength, but she has always emerged from her trials with marvellous recuperation, more flourishing than before. Since 1871, when the city, crushed under a twofold calamity of foreign invasion and of internecine war, seemed doomed to bleed away to feeble insignificance, her prosperity has so increased that house rent has doubled and population risen from 1,825,274 in 1870 to 2,714,068 in 1901. The growth of Paris from the settlement of an obscure Gallic tribe to the most populous, the most cultured, the most artistic, the most delightful and seductive of continental cities has been prodigious, yet withal she has maintained her essential unity, her corporate sense and peculiar individuality. Paris, unlike London, has never expatiated to the effacement of her distinctive features and the loss of civic consciousness. The city has still a definite outline and circumference, and over her gates to-day one may read, _Entrée de Paris_. The Parisian is, and always has been, conscious of his citizenship, proud of his city, careful of her beauty, jealous of her reputation. The essentials of Parisian life remain unchanged since mediæval times. Busy multitudes of alert, eager burgesses crowd her streets; ten thousand students stream from the provinces, from Europe, and even from the uttermost parts of the earth, to eat of the bread of knowledge at her University. The old collegiate life is gone, but the arts and sciences are freely taught as of old to all comers; and a lowly peasant lad may carry in his satchel the portfolio of a prime minister or the insignia of a president of the republic, even as his mediæval prototype bore a bishop's mitre or a cardinal's hat. The boisterous exuberance of youthful spirits still vents itself in rowdy student life to the scandal of bourgeois placidity, and the poignant self-revelation and gnawing self-reproach of a François Villon find their analogue in the pathetic verse of a Paul Verlaine. Beneath the fair and ordered surface of the normal life of Paris still sleep the fiery passions which, from the days of the Maillotins to those of the Commune, have throughout the crises of her history ensanguined her streets with the blood of citizens.[1] Let us remember, however, when contrasting the modern history of Paris with that of London, that the questions which have stirred her citizens have been not party but dynastic ones, often complicated and embittered by social and religious principles ploughing deep in the human soul, for which men have cared enough to suffer, and to inflict, death. [Footnote 1: "_Faudra recommencer_" ("We must begin again"), said, to the present writer in 1871, a Communist refugee bearing a great scar on his face from a wound received fighting at the barricades.] Those writers who are pleased to trace the permanency of racial traits through the life of a people dwell with satisfaction on passages in ancient authors who describe the Gauls as quick to champion the cause of the oppressed, prone to war, elated by victory, impatient of defeat, easily amenable to the arts of peace, responsive to intellectual culture; terrible, indefatigable orators but bad listeners, so intolerant of their speakers that at tribal gatherings an official charged to maintain silence would march, sword in hand, towards an interrupter, and after a third warning cut off a portion of his dress. If the concurrent testimony of writers, ancient, mediæval and modern, be of any worth, Gallic vanity is beyond dispute. Dante, expressing the prevailing belief of his age, exclaims, "Now, was there ever people so vain as the Sienese! Certes not the French by far."[2] Of their imperturbable gaiety and their avidity for new things we have ample testimony, and the course of this story will demonstrate that France, and more especially Paris, has ever been, from the establishment of Christianity to the birth of the modern world at the Revolution, the parent or the fosterer of ideas, the creator of arts, the soldier of the ideal. She has always evinced a wondrous preventive apprehension of coming changes. Sir Henry Maine has shown in his _Ancient Law_ that the idea of kingship created by the accession of the Capetian dynasty revolutionised the whole fabric of society, and that "when the feudal prince of a limited territory surrounding Paris began ... to call himself _King of France_, he became king in quite a new sense." The earliest of the western people beyond Rome to adopt Christianity, she had established a monastery near Tours, a century and a half before St. Benedict, the founder of Western monasticism, had organised his first community at Subiaco. In the Middle Ages Paris became the intellectual light of the Christian world. From the time of the centralisation of the monarchy at Paris she absorbed in large measure the vital forces of the nation, and all that was greatest in art, science and literature was drawn within her walls, until in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, she became the centre of learning, taste and culture in Europe.[3] "Alone of the capitals of Modern Europe," said Freeman, "Paris can claim to have been the creator of the state of which it is now the head." The same authority bears witness to the unique position held by France in her generous and liberal treatment of new subjects, and the late historian, Mr. C.A. Fyffe, told the writer that when travelling in Alsace in 1871 the inhabitants of that province, so essentially German in race, were passionately attached to France, and more than once he heard a peasant exclaim, unable even to express himself in French: "_Nimmer will ich Deutsch sein._" [Footnote 2: _Inf._ XXIX. 121-123. A French commentator consoles himself by reflecting that the author of the _Divina Commedia_ is far more vituperative when dealing with certain Italian peoples, whom he designates as hogs, curs, wolves and foxes.] [Footnote 3: Cobbett, comparing the relative intellectual culture of the British Isles and of France between the years 1600 and 1787, found that of the writers on the arts and sciences who were distinguished by a place in the _Universal, Historical, Critical and Bibliographical Dictionary_, one hundred and thirty belonged to England, Scotland and Ireland, and six hundred and seventy-six to France.] During the first Empire and the Restoration, after the tempest was stilled and the great heritage of the Revolution taken possession of, an amazing outburst of scientific, artistic and literary activity made Paris the _Ville Lumière_ of Europe. She is still the city where the things of the mind and of taste have most place, where the wheels of life run most smoothly and pleasantly, where the graces and refinements and amenities of social existence, _l'art des plaisirs fins_, are most highly developed and most widely diffused. There is something in the crisp, luminous air of Paris that quickens the intelligence and stimulates the senses. Even the scent of the wood fires as one emerges from the railway station exhilarates the spirit. The poet Heine used to declare that the traveller could estimate his proximity to Paris by noting the increasing intelligence of the people, and that the very bayonets of the soldiers were more intelligent than those elsewhere. Life, even in its more sensuous and material phases, is less gross and coarse,[4] its pleasures more refined than in London. It is impossible to conceive the pit of a London theatre stirred to fury by an innovation in diction in a poetical drama, or to imagine anything comparable to the attitude of a Parisian audience at the cheap holiday performances at the Français or the Odéon, where the severe classic tragedies of Racine, of Corneille, of Victor Hugo, or the well-worn comedies of Molière or of Beaumarchais are played with small lure of stage upholstery, and listened to with close attention by a popular audience responsive to the exquisite rhythm and grace of phrasing, the delicate and restrained tragic pathos, and the subtle comedy of their great dramatists. To witness a _première_ at the Français is an intellectual feast. The brilliant house; the pit and stalls filled with black-coated critics; the quick apprehension of the points and happy phrases; the universal and excited discussion between the acts; the atmosphere of keen and alert intelligence pervading the whole assembly; the quaint survival of the time-honoured "overture"--three knocks on the boards--dating back to Roman times when the Prologus of the comedy stepped forth and craved the attention of the audience by three taps of his wand; the chief actor's approach to the front of the stage after the play is ended to announce to Mesdames and Messieurs what in these days they have known for weeks before from the press, that "the piece we have had the honour of playing" is by such a one--all combine to make an indelible impression on the mind of the foreign spectator. [Footnote 4: "Nous cuisinons même l'amour."--TAINE.] The Parisian is the most orderly and well-behaved of citizens. The custom of the _queue_ is a spontaneous expression of his love of fairness and order. Even the applause in theatres is organised. A spectacle such as that witnessed at the funeral of Victor Hugo in 1885, the most solemn and impressive of modern times, is inconceivable in London. The whole population (except the Faubourg St. Germain and the clergy) from the poorest labourer to the heads of the State issued forth to file past the coffin of their darling poet, lifted up under the Arc de Triomphe, and by their multitudinous presence honoured his remains borne on a poor bare hearse to their last resting-place in the Panthéon. Amid this vast crowd, mainly composed of labourers, mechanics and the _petite bourgeoisie_, assembled to do homage to the memory of the poet of democracy, scarcely an _agent_ was seen; the people were their own police, and not a rough gesture, not a trace of disorder marred the sublime scene. The Parisian democracy is the most enlightened and the most advanced in Europe, and as of old the Netherlanders, in their immortal fight for freedom against the monstrous and appalling tyranny of Spain, were stirred to heroic deeds by the psalms of Clément Marot, even so to-day, where a few desperate and devoted men are moved to wrestle with a brutal despotism, the Marseillaise is their battle hymn. It is to Paris that the dearest hopes and deepest sympathies of generous spirits will ever go forth in "The struggle, and the daring rage divine for liberty, Of aspirations toward the far ideal, enthusiast dreams of brotherhood." "Siede Parigi in una gran pianura, Nell' ombilico a Francia, anzi nel core. Gli passa la riviera entro le mura, E corre, ed esce in altra parte fuore; Ma fa un' isola prima, e v'assicura Della città una parte, e la migliore: L'altre due (ch' in tre parti è la gran terra) Di fuor la fossa, e dentro il fiume serra." _Orlando Furioso_, Canto xiv. Part I.: The Story CHAPTER I _Gallo-Roman Paris_ The mediæval scribe in the fulness of a divinely-revealed cosmogony is wont to begin his story at the creation of the world or at the confusion of tongues, to trace the building of Troy by the descendants of Japheth, and the foundation of his own native city by one of the Trojan princes made a fugitive in Europe by proud Ilion's fall. Such, he was very sure, was the origin of Padua, founded by Antenor and by Priam, son of King Priam, whose grandson, yet another Priam, by his great valour and wisdom became the monarch of a mighty people, called from their fair hair, Galli or Gallici. And of the strong city built on the little island in the Seine who could have been its founder but the ravisher of fair Helen--Sir Paris himself? The naïve etymology of the time was evidence enough. But the modern writer, as he compares the geographical position of the capitals of Europe, is tempted to exclaim, _Cherchez le marchand!_ for he perceives that their unknown founders were dominated by two considerations--facilities for commerce and protection from enemies: and before the era of the Roman road-makers, commerce meant facilities for water carriage. As the early settlers in Britain sailed up the Thames, they must have observed, where the river's bed begins somewhat to narrow, a hill rising from the continuous expanse of marshes from its mouth, easily defended on the east and west by those fortified posts which, in subsequent times, became the Tower of London and Barnard's Castle, and if we scan a map of France, we shall see that the group of islands on and around which Paris now stands, lies in the fruitful basin of the Seine, known as the Isle de France, near the convergence of three rivers; for on the east the Marne, on the west the Oise, and on the south the Yonne, discharge their waters into the main stream on its way to the sea. In ancient times the great line of Phoenician, Greek and Roman commerce followed northwards the valleys of the Rhone and of the Saone, whose upper waters are divided from those of the Yonne only by the plateau of Dijon and the calcareous slopes of Burgundy. The Parisii were thus admirably placed for tapping the profitable commerce of north-west Europe, and by the waters of the Eure, lower down the Seine, were able to touch the fertile valley of the Loire. The northern rivers of Gaul were all navigable by the small boats of the early traders, and, in contrast with the impetuous sweep of the Rhone and the Loire in the south and west, flowed with slow and measured stream:[5] they were rarely flooded, and owing to the normally mild winters, still more rarely blocked by ice. Moreover, the Parisian settlement stood near the rich cornland of La Beauce, and to the north-east, over the open plain of La Valois, lay the way to Flanders. It was one of the river stations on the line of the Phoenician traders in tin, that most precious and rare of ancient metals, between Marseilles and Britain, and in the early Middle Ages became, with Lyons and Beaucaire, one of the chief fairs of that historic trade route which the main lines of railway traffic still follow to-day. The island now known as the Cité, which the founders of Paris chose for their stronghold, was the largest of the group which lay involved in the many windings of the Seine, and was embraced by a natural moat of deep waters. To north and south lay hills, marshes and forests, and all combined to give it a position equally adapted for defence and for commerce. [Footnote 5: The Seine takes five hours to flow through the seven miles of modern Paris.] [Illustration: THE CITÉ.] The Parisii were a small tribe of Gauls whose island city was the home of a prosperous community of shipmen and merchants, but it is not until the Conquest of Gaul by the Romans that Lutetia, for such was its Romanised name, joins the great pageant of history. It was-- "Armèd Cæsar falcon-eyed,"[6] who saw its great military importance, built a permanent camp there and made it a central _entrepôt_ for food and munitions of war. And when in 52 B.C. the general rising of the tribes under Vercingétorix threatened to scour the Romans out of Gaul and to destroy the whole fabric of Cæsar's ambition, he sent his favourite lieutenant, Labienus, to seize Lutetia where the Northern army of the Gauls was centred. Labienus crossed the Seine at Melun, fixed his camp on a spot near the position of the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, and began the first of the historic sieges for which Paris is so famous. But the Gaulish commander burnt the bridges, fired the city, and took up his position on the slopes of the hill of Lutetius (St. Genevieve) in the south, and aimed at crushing his enemy between his own forces and an army advancing from the north. Labienus having learnt that Cæsar was in a tight place, owing to a check at Clermont and the defection of the Eduans, by a masterly piece of engineering recrossed the Seine by night at the Point du Jour, where the double viaduct of the girdle railway crosses to-day, and when the Gauls awoke in the morning they beheld the bannered host of the Roman legions in battle array on the plain of Grenelle beneath. They made a desperate attempt to drive them against the river, but they lost their leader and were almost annihilated by the superior arms and strategy of the Romans. Labienus was able to join his master at Sens, and the irrevocable subjugation of the Gauls soon followed. With the tolerant and enlightened conquerors came the Roman peace, Roman law, Roman roads, the Roman schoolmaster; and a more humane religion abolished the Druidical sacrifices. Lutetia was rebuilt and became a prosperous and, next to Lyons, the most important of Gallo-Roman cities. It lay equidistant from Germany and Britain and at the issue of valleys which led to the upper and lower Rhine. The quarries of Mount Lutetius produced an admirable building stone, kind to work and hardening well under exposure to the air, whose white colour may have won for Paris the name of Leucotia, or the White City, by which it is sometimes known to ancient writers. Cæsar had done his work well, for so completely were the Gauls Romanised, that by the fifth or sixth century their very language had disappeared.[7] [Footnote 6: "_Cesare armato con gli occhi grifani._"--_Inferno_, iv. 123.] [Footnote 7: Of some 10,000 ancient inscriptions found in Gaul, only twenty are in Celtic, and less than thirty words of Celtic origin now remain in the French language.] But towards the end of the third century three lowly wayfarers were journeying from Rome along the great southern road to Paris, charged by the Pope with a mission fraught with greater issues to Gaul than were the Cæsars and all their legions. Let us recall somewhat of the appearance of the city which Dionysius, Rusticus and Eleutherius saw as they neared its suburbs and came down what is now known as the Rue St. Jacques. After passing the arches of the aqueduct, two of which exist to this day, that crossed the valley of Arcueil and brought the waters of Rungis,[8] Paray and Montjean to the baths of the imperial palace and the public fountains, they would discern on the hill of Lutetius to their right, the Roman camp, garrison and cemetery. Lower down to the east they would catch a glimpse of a great amphitheatre, capable of accommodating 10,000 spectators.[9] [Footnote 8: The water supply of Paris is even now partly derived from these sources, and flows along the old repaired Roman aqueduct.] [Footnote 9: Part of this amphitheatre was laid bare in 1869 by some excavations made for the Compagnie des Omnibus between the Rues Monge and Linné. Unhappily, the public subscription initiated by the Académie des Inscriptions to purchase the property proved inadequate, and the Company retained possession of the land. In 1883, however, other excavations were undertaken in the Rue de Navarre, which resulted in the discovery of other remains of the amphitheatre which have been preserved and made into a public park.] [Illustration: REMAINS OF ROMAN AMPHITHEATRE.] On their left, where now stands the Lycée St. Louis, would be the theatre of Lutetia, and further on, the imposing and magnificent palace of the Cæsars, with its gardens sloping down to the Seine. The turbulent little stream of the Bièvre flowed by the foot of Mons Lutetius on the east, entering the main river opposite the eastern limit of the _civitas_ of Lutetia, gleaming white before them and girdled by the waters of the Seine. A narrow eel-shaped island, subsequently known as the Isle de Galilée, lay between the Isle of the Cité and the southern bank; two islands, the Isles de Notre Dame and des Vaches, divided by a narrow channel to the east, and two eyots, the Isles des Juifs and de Bussy, to the west. Another islet, the Isle de Javiaux or de Louviers, lay near the northern bank beyond the two eastern islands. Crossing a wooden bridge, where now stands the Petit Pont, they would enter the forum under a triumphal arch. Here would be the very foyer of the city; a little way to the left the prefect's palace and the basilica, or hall of justice;[10] to the right the temple of Jupiter. As they crossed the island they would find it linked to the northern bank by another wooden bridge (the Grand Pont) replaced by the present Pont Notre Dame.[11] In the distance to the north stood Mons Martis (Montmartre), villas nestling on its slopes and crowned with the temples of Mars and Mercury, four of whose columns are preserved in the church of St. Pierre: to the west the aqueduct from Passy bringing its waters to the mineral baths located on the site of the present Palais Royal. A road, now the Rue St. Martin, led to the north; to the east, fed by the streams of Menilmontant and Belleville, lay the marshy land which is still known as the quarter of the Marais. [Footnote 10: In 1848 some remains were found of the old halls of this building, and of its columns, worn by the ropes of the boatmen who used to moor their craft to them. In 1866 fragments of the triumphal arch were found in digging the foundations of the new Hôtel Dieu.] [Footnote 11: In 860 a new bridge was built east of the Grand Pont by Charles the Bold and defended by a tower at its head. The money-changers were established on the bridge by Louis VI., and it became known subsequently as the Pont au Change.] Denis, who by the mediæval hagiographers is invariably confused with Dionysius the Areopagite, and his companions, preached and taught the new faith unceasingly and met martyrs' deaths. In the _Golden Legend_ he is famed to have converted much people to the faith, and "dyde do make many churches, and at length was brought before the judge who dyde do smyte off the hedes of the thre felawes by the temple of Mercurye. And anone the body of Saynte Denys reysed hymselfe up and bare his hede beetwene his armes, as the angels ladde hym two leghes fro the place which is sayd the hille of the martyrs unto the place where he now resteth by his election and the purveance of god. And there was heard so grete and swete a melodye of angels that many that herd it byleuyd in oure lorde." The work that Denis and his companions began was more fully achieved in the fourth century by the rude Pannonion soldier, St. Martin, who also evangelised at Paris. He is the best-known of Gallic saints, and the story of his conversion one of the most popular in Christendom. When stationed at Amiens he was on duty one bitter cold day at the city gate, and espied a poor naked beggar asking alms. Soldiers in garrison are notoriously impecunious, and Martin had nothing to give; but drawing his sword he cleaved his mantle in twain, and bestowed half upon the shivering wretch at his feet. That very night the Lord Jesus appeared to him in a dream surrounded by angels, having on His shoulders the half of the cloak which Martin had given to the beggar. Turning to the angels, Jesus said: "Know ye who hath thus arrayed Me? My servant Martin, though yet unbaptised, hath done this." After this vision Martin received baptism and remained steadfast in the faith. The illiterate and dauntless soldier became the fiery apostle of the faith, a vigorous iconoclast, throwing down the images of the false gods, breaking their altars in pieces and burning their temples. Of the Roman gods, Mercury, he said, was most difficult to ban, but Jove was merely stupid[12] and brutish, and gave him least trouble. [Footnote 12: "_Jovem brutum atque hebetem._"] On the 16th of March 1711, some workmen, digging a burial crypt for the archbishops of Paris under the choir of Notre Dame, came upon a wall, six feet below the pavement, which contemporary antiquarians believed to be the wall of the original Christian basilica over which the cathedral was built, but which modern authorities affirm to have been part of the old Gallo-Roman wall of the Cité. In the fabric of this wall the early builders had incorporated the remains of a temple of Jupiter, and among the _débris_ were found the fragments of an altar raised to Jove in the reign of Tiberius Cæsar by the _Nautæ_, a guild of Parisian merchant-shippers, and the table of another altar on whose foyer still remained some of the very burnt wood and incense used in the last pagan sacrifice. The mutilated stones, with their rude Gallo-Roman reliefs and inscriptions,[13] may be seen in the Frigidarium of the Thermæ, the old Roman baths by the Hôtel de Cluny, and are among the most interesting of historical documents in Paris. The Corporation of _Nautæ Parisiaci_, one of the most powerful of the guilds, among whose members were enrolled the chief citizens of Lutetia, who dedicated this altar to Jove, were the origin of the Commune or Civil Council of Paris, whose Provost[14] was known as late as the fourteenth century as the _Prévôt des Marchands d'Eau_. Their device was the _Nef_, or ship, which is and has been throughout the ages, the arms of Paris, and which to this day may be seen carved on the vaultings of the Roman baths. [Footnote 13: On the former may still be read: TIB ... CAESARE AVG. IOVI. OPTVM ... MAXSVMO. ARAM. NAVTAE. PARISIACI PVBLICE. POSIERVNT.] [Footnote 14: Not to be confounded with the Royal Provost, a king's officer, who in 1160 replaced the Capetian viscounts. The office was abolished in 1792.] In the great palace of which these baths formed but a part was enacted that scene so vividly described in the pages of Gibbon,[15] when, in 355, Julian, after his victories over the Alemanni and the Franks, was acclaimed Augustus by the rebellious troops of Constantius. He had admonished the sullen legions, angry at being detached from their victorious and darling commander for service on the Persian frontier, and had urged them to obedience, but at midnight the young Cæsar was awakened by a clamorous and armed multitude besieging the palace, and at early dawn its doors were forced; the reluctant Julian was seized and carried through the streets in triumph, lifted on a shield, and for diadem crowned with a military collar, to be enthroned and saluted as emperor. In after life the emperor-philosopher looked back with tender regret to the three winters he spent in Paris before his elevation to the imperial responsibilities and anxieties. He writes of the busy days and meditative nights he passed in his dear Lutetia, with its two wooden bridges, its pure and pleasant waters, its excellent wine. He dwells on the mildness of its climate, where the fig-tree, protected by straw in the winter, grew and fruited. One rigorous season, however, the emperor well remembered[16] when the Seine was blocked by huge masses of ice. Julian, who prided himself on his endurance, at first declined the use of those charcoal fires which to this day are a common and deadly method of supplying heat in Paris. But his rooms were damp and his servants were allowed to introduce them into his sleeping apartment. The Cæsar was almost asphyxiated by the fumes, and his physicians to restore him administered an emetic. Julian in his time was beloved of the Lutetians, for he was a just and tolerant prince whose yoke was easy. He had purged the soil of Gaul from the barbarian invaders, given Lutetia peace and security, and made of it an important, imperial city. His statue, found near Paris, still recalls his memory in the hall of the great baths of the Lutetia he loved so well. [Footnote 15: French authorities believe the scene to have been enacted in the old palace of the Cité.] [Footnote 16: The present writer recalls a similar glacial epoch in Paris during the early eighties, when the Seine was frozen over at Christmas time.] The so-called apostasy of this lover of Plato and worshipper of the Sun, who never went to the wars or travelled without dragging a library of Greek authors after him, was a philosophic reaction against the harsh measures,[17] the bloody and treacherous natures of the Christian emperors, and the fierceness of the Arian controversy. The movement was but a back-wash in the stream of history, and is of small importance. Julian's successors, Valentinian and Gratian, reversed his policy but shared his love for the fair city on the Seine, and spent some winters there. Lutetia had now become a rich and cultured Gallo-Roman city. [Footnote 17: By the law of 350 A.D. it was a capital offence to sacrifice to or honour the old gods. The persecuted had already become persecutors. Boissier, _La Fin du Paganisme_.] CHAPTER II _The Barbarian Invasions--St. Genevieve--The Conversion of Clovis--The Merovingian Dynasty_ In the Prologue to _Faust_, the Lord of Heaven justifies the existence of the restless, goading spirit of evil by the fact that man's activity is all too prone to flag,-- "_Er liebt sich bald die unbedingte Ruh._"[18] [Footnote 18: "He soon hugs himself in ease at any price."] As with men so with empires: riches and inaction are hard to bear. It was not so much a corruption of morals as a growing slackness and apathy in public life and an intellectual sloth that hastened the fall of the Roman Empire. Owing to the gradual exhaustion of the supply of slaves its economic basis was crumbling away. The ruling class was content to administer and enjoy rather than to govern: unwilling or incompetent to grapple with the new order of things.[19] For centuries the Gauls had been untrained in arms and habituated to look to the imperial legions for defence against the half-savage races of men, giants in stature and strength, surging like an angry sea against their boundaries. [Footnote 19: To protect home producers against the competition of the Gallic wine and olive growers, Roman statesmen could conceive nothing better than the stupid expedient of prohibiting the culture of the vine and olive in Gaul.] The end of the fifth century is the beginning of the evil times of Gallic story: the confederation of Frankish tribes who had conquered and settled in Belgium saw successive waves of invasion pass by, and determined to have their part in the spoils. They soon overran Flanders and the north, and at length under Clovis captured Paris and conquered nearly the whole of Gaul. That fair land of France, "one of Nature's choicest masterpieces, one of Ceres' chiefest barns for corn, one of Bacchus' prime wine cellars and of Neptune's best salt-pits," became the prey of the barbarian. The whole fabric of civilisation seem doomed to destruction, Gaul had become the richest and most populous of Roman provinces; its learning and literature were noised in Rome; its rhetoricians drew students from the mother city herself; it was the last refuge of Græco-Roman culture in the west. But at the end of the sixth century Gregory of Tours deplores the fact that in his time there were neither books, nor readers, nor scholar who could compose in verse or prose, and that only the speech of the rustic was understood. He playfully scolds himself for muddling prepositions and confusing genders and cases, but his duty as a Christian priest is to instruct, not to charm, and so he tells the story of his times in such rustic Latin as he knows. He draws for us a vivid picture of Clovis, his savage valour, his astuteness, his regal passion. After the victory at Soissons over Syagrius, the shadowy king of the Romans, Clovis was met by St. Rémi, who prayed that a vase of great price and wondrous beauty among the spoil might be returned to him. "Follow us," said the king, "to Soissons, where the booty will be shared." Before the division took place Clovis begged that the vase might be accorded to him. His warriors answered: "All, glorious king, is thine." But before the king could grasp the vase, one, jealous and angry, threw his _francisque_[20] at it, exclaiming: "Thou shalt have no more than falls to thy lot." The broken vase was however apportioned to the king, who restored it to the bishop. But Clovis hid the wound in his heart, and at the annual review in the Champ de Mars near Paris, as the king strode along the line inspecting the weapons of his warriors, he stopped in front of the uncourtly soldier, took his axe from him, complained of its foul state, and flung it angrily on the ground. As the man stooped to pick it up Clovis, with his own axe, cleft his skull in twain, exclaiming: "Thus didst thou to the vase at Soissons." "Even so," says Gregory quaintly, "did he inspire all with great fear." [Footnote 20: The favourite arm of the Franks, a short battle-axe, used as a missile or at close quarters.] At this point of our story we are met by the first of those noble women, heroic and wise, for whom French history is pre-eminent. In the early fifth century "saynt germayn[21] of aucerre and saynt lew of troyes, elect of the prelates of fraunce for to goo quenche an heresye that was in grete brytayne, now called englond, came to nannterre for to be lodged and heberowed and the people came ageynst theym for to have theyr benyson. Emonge the people, saynt germayn, by thenseignemente of the holy ghoost, espyed out the lytel mayde saynt geneuefe, and made hyr to come to hym, and kyste hyr heed and demaunded hyr name, and whos doughter she was, and the people aboute hyr said that her name was geneuefe, and her fader seuere, and her moder geronce, whyche came unto hym, and the holy man sayd: is this child yours? They answerd: Ye. Blessyd be ye, said the holy man, whan god hath gyven to you so noble lignage, knowe ye for certeyn that the day of hyr natiyuyte the angels sange and halyowed grete mysterye in heuen with grete ioye and gladnes." [Footnote 21: Again we quote from the _Golden Legend_.] Tidings soon came to Paris that Attila, the felon king of Hungary, had enterprised to destroy and waste the parts of France, and the merchants for great dread they had, sent their goods into cities more sure. Genevieve caused the good women of the town to "wake in fastynges and in orysons, and bade the bourgeyses that they shold not remeuve theyr goodes for by the grace of god parys shold have none harme." At first the people hardened their hearts and reviled her, but St. Germain, who had meantime returned to Paris, entreated them to hearken to her, and our Lord for her love did so much that the "tyrantes approachyd not parys, thanke and glorye to god and honoure to the vyrgyn." At the siege of Paris by Childeric and his Franks, when the people were wasted by sickness and famine, "the holy vyrgyne, that pyte constrayned her, wente to the sayne for to goe fetche by shyp somme vytaylles." She stilled by her prayers a furious tempest and brought the ships back laden with wheat. When the city was at length captured, King Childeric, although a paynim, saved at her intercession the lives of his prisoners, and one day, to escape her importunate pleadings for the lives of some criminals, fled out of the gates of Paris and shut them behind him. The saint lived to build a church over the tomb of St. Denis and to see Clovis become a Christian. She died in 509, and was buried on the hill of Lutetius, which ever since has borne her name. The faithful built a little wooden oratory over her tomb, which Clovis and his queen Clotilde replaced in 506 by a great basilica dedicated to SS. Peter and Paul,--whose length the king measured by the distance he could hurl his axe--and the famous monastery of St. Genevieve.[22] [Footnote 22: Her figure was a favourite subject for the sculptors of Christian churches. She usually bears a taper in her hand and a devil is seen peering over her shoulder. This symbolises the miraculous relighting of the taper after the devil had extinguished it. The taper was long preserved at Notre Dame.] The conversion of Clovis is the capital fact of early French history. Clotilde had long[23] importuned him to declare himself a Christian, and he had consented to the baptism of their firstborn, but the infant's death within a week seemed an admonition from his own jealous gods. A second son, however, recovered from grievous sickness at his wife's prayers, and this, aided perhaps by a shrewd insight into the trend of events, induced him to lend a more willing ear to the teachers of the new Faith. In 496 the Franks were at death grapple with their German foes at Tolbiac. Clovis, when the fight went against him, invoked the God of the Christians and prayed to be delivered from his enemies. His cry was heard and the advent of the new Lord of Battles was winged with victory. [Footnote 23: If we may believe Gregory of Tours, her arguments were vituperative rather than convincing. "Your Jupiter," said she, "is _omnium stuprorum spurcissimus perpetrator_."] The conversion of Clovis was a triumph for the Church: in her struggle with the Arian heresy in Gaul, she was now able to enforce the arguments of the pen by the edge of the sword. Her scribes are tender to his memory, for his Christianity was marked by few signs of grace. He remained the same savage monarch as before, and did not scruple to affirm his dynasty and extend his empire by treachery and by the assassination of his kinsmen. To the Franks, Jesus was but a new and more puissant tribal deity. "Long live the Christ who loves the Franks," writes the author of the prologue to the Salic law; and when the bishop was one day reading the Gospel story of the Passion, the king, _qui moult avait grand compassion_, cried out: "Ah! had I been there with my Franks I would have avenged the Christ." Nor was their ideal of kinship any loftier. Their realm was not a trust, but a possession to be divided among their heirs, and the jealousy and strife excited by the repeated partitions among sons, make the history of the Merovingian[24] dynasty a tale of cruelty and treachery whose every page is stained with blood. [Footnote 24: Merovée, second of the kings of the Salic Franks, was fabled to be the issue of Clodio's wife and a sea monster.] [Illustration: TOWER OF CLOVIS.] Clovis, in 508, made Paris the official capital of his realm, and at his death in 511 divided his possessions between his four sons--Thierry, Clodomir, Childebert and Clothaire. Clodomir after a short reign met his death in battle, leaving his children to the guardianship of their grandmother, Clotilde. One day messengers came to her in the old palace of the Cæsars on the south bank of the Seine from Childebert and Clothaire praying that their nephews might be entrusted to them. Believing they were to be trained in kingly offices that they might succeed their father in due time, Clotilde granted their prayer and two of the children were sent to them in the palace of the Cité. Soon came another messenger, bearing a pair of shears and a naked sword, and Clotilde was bidden to determine the fate of her wards and to choose for them between the cloister and the edge of the sword. An angry exclamation escaped her: "If they are not to be raised to the throne, I would rather see them dead than shorn." The messenger waited to hear no more and hastened back to the two kings. Clothaire then seized the elder of the children and stabbed him under the armpit. The younger, at the sight of his brother's blood, flung himself at Childebert's feet, burst into tears, and cried: "Help me, dear father, let me not die even as my brother." Childebert's heart was softened and he begged for the child's life. Clothaire's only answer was a volley of insults and a threat of death if he protected the victim. Childebert then disentwined the child's tender arms clasping his knees--he was but six years of age--and pushed him to his brother, who drove a dagger into his breast. The tutors and servants of the children were then butchered, and Clothaire became at his brother's death, in 558, sole king of the Franks.[25] The third child, Clodoald, owing to the devotion of faithful servants escaped, and was hidden for some time in Provence. Later in life he returned to Paris and built a monastery at a place still known by his name (St. Cloud) about two leagues from the city. [Footnote 25: Among the wives of Clothaire was the gentle Radegonde, who turned with horror from the bloody scenes of the palace to live in works of charity with the poor and suffering, and in holy communion with priests and bishops. She was at length consecrated a deaconess by St. Médard, donned the habit of a nun, and founded a convent at Poitiers, where the poet Fortunatus had himself ordained a priest that he might be near her. Radegonde's memory is dear to us in England, for it was a small company of her nuns who settled on the Green Croft by the river bank below Cambridge, and founded a priory whose noble church and monastic buildings were subsequently incorporated in Jesus College when the nunnery was suppressed by Bishop Alcock in 1496.] In the days of Siegbert and Chilperic, kings of Eastern and Western France, the consuming flames of passion and greed again burst forth, this time fanned by the fierce breath of feminine rivalry. Siegbert had married Brunehaut, daughter of the Visigoth king of Spain: Chilperic had espoused her sister, Galowinthe, after repudiating his first wife, Adowere. When Galowinthe came to her throne she found herself the rival of Fredegonde, a common servant, with whom Chilperic had been living. He soon tired of his new wife, a gentle and pliant creature, Fredegonde regained her supremacy and one morning Galowinthe was found strangled in bed. The news came to King Siegbert and Brunehaut goaded him to avenge her sister's death. Meanwhile Chilperic had married Fredegonde, who quickly compassed the murder of her only rival, the repudiated queen, Adowere. Soon Chilperic drew the sword and civil war devastated the land. By foreign aid Siegbert captured and spoiled Paris and compelled a peace. Scarcely, however, had the victor dismissed his Germain allies, when Chilperic fell upon him again. Siegbert now determined to make an end. He entered Paris, and prepared to crush his enemy at Tournay. As he set forth, St. Germain, bishop of Paris, seized his horse's bridle and warned him that the grave he was digging for his brother would swallow him too. When he reached Vitry two messengers were admitted to see him. As he stood between them listening to their suit he was stabbed on either side by two long poisoned knives: the assassins had been sent by Fredegonde. But Fredegonde's tale of blood was not yet complete. She soon learned that Merovée, one of Chilperic's two sons by Adowere, had married Brunehaut. Merovée followed the rest of her victims, and Clovis, the second son, together with a sister of Adowere, next glutted her vengeance. "One day, after leaving the Synod of Paris," writes St. Gregory, "I had bidden King Chilperic adieu and had withdrawn conversing with the bishop of Albi. As we crossed the courtyard of the palace (in the Cité) he said: 'Seest thou not what I perceive above this roof?' I answered, 'I see only a second building which the king hath built.' He asked again, 'Seest thou naught else?' I weened he spoke in jest and did but answer--'If thou seest aught else, prithee show it unto me.' Then uttering a deep sigh, he said: 'I see the sword of God's wrath suspended over this house.'" Shortly after this conversation Chilperic having returned from the chase to his royal villa of Chelles, was leaning on the shoulder of one of his companions to descend from his horse, when Landeric, servant of Fredegonde, stabbed him to death. Thirty years were yet to pass before the curtain falls on the acts of the rival queens, their sons and grandsons, but the heart revolts at the details of the wars and lusts of these savage potentates. Battle and murder had destroyed Brunehaut's children and her children's children until none were left to rule over the realms but herself and the four sons of Thierry II. The nobles, furious at the further tyranny of a cruel and imperious woman, plotted her ruin, and in 613, when Brunehaut, sure of victory, marched with two armies against Clothaire II., she was betrayed near Paris to him, her implacable enemy. He reproached her with the death of ten kings, and set her on a camel for three days to be mocked and insulted by the army. The old and fallen queen was then tied to the tail of a horse: the creature was lashed into fury and soon all that remained of the proud queen was a shapeless mass of carrion. The traditional place where Brunehaut met her death is still shown at the corner of the Rue St. Honoré and the Rue de l'Arbre Sec. Thierry's four sons had already been put to death. In 597 her rival Fredegonde, at the height of her prosperity, had died peacefully in bed, full of years, and was buried in the church of St. Vincent[26] by the side of Chilperic, her husband. [Footnote 26: (_See_ pp. 32 and 36.)] Amid all this ruin and desolation, when the four angels of the Euphrates seem to have been loosed on Gaul, one force was silently at work knitting up the ravelled ends of the rent fabric of civilisation and tending a lamp which burned with the promise of ideals, nobler far than those which fed the ancient faith and polity. The Christian bishops were everywhere filling the empty curule chairs in the cities and provinces of Gaul. At the end of the sixth century, society lived in the Church and by the Church, and the sees of the archbishops and bishops corresponded to the Roman administrative divisions. All that was best in the old Gallo-Roman aristocracy was drawn into her bosom, for she was the one power making for unity and good government. From one end of the land to the other the bishops visited and corresponded with each other. They alone had communion of ideas, common sentiments and common interests. St. Gregory, bishop of Tours, was the son of a senator; St. Germain of Auxerre was a man of noble lineage, who had already exercised high public functions before he was made a bishop; St. Germain of Autun was ever on the move, now in Brittany, now at Paris, now at Arles, to crush heresy, to threaten a barbarian potentate, or to sear the conscience and, if need were, ban the person of a guilty Christian king. By the end of the sixth century two hundred and thirty-eight monastic institutions had been founded in Gaul, and from the sixth to the eighth century, eighty-three churches were built. The monasteries were so many nurseries of the industry, knowledge and learning which had not perished in the barbarian invasions; so many cities of refuge from violence and rapine, where the few who thirsted after righteousness and burned with charity might find shelter and protection. "Every letter traced on paper," said an old abbot, "is a blow to the devil." The ecclesiastical and monastic schools took the place of the destroyed Roman day-schools, and whatever modicum of learning the Frankish courts could boast of, was due to the monks and nuns of their time; for some at least of these potentates when not absorbed in the gratification of their lusts, their vengeance, greed or ambition, were possessed by nobler instincts. [Illustration: ST. GERMAIN DES PRÉS.] To St. Germain of Autun, made bishop in 555, Paris owes one of her earliest ecclesiastical foundations. His influence over Childebert, king of Paris, was great. He obtained an order that those who refused to destroy pagan idols in their possession were to answer to the king, and when Childebert and his warriors, seized by an irresistible fighting impulse, marched into Spain, and were bought off the siege and sack of Saragossa by the present of the tunic of St. Vincent, he induced the king to found the abbey and church of St. Vincent (St. Germain des Prés), to receive the relic and a great part of the spoil of Toledo, consisting of jewels, golden chalices, books and crucifixes of marvellous craftsmanship. In the same reign was begun on the site of the present sacristy of Notre Dame a great basilica, dedicated to St. Stephen, so magnificently decorated that it was compared to Solomon's Temple for the beauty and the delicacy of its art. The church of Ste. Marie or Notre Dame, already existing in 365, stood on a site extending westward into the present Place du Parvis Notre Dame. During this great outburst of zeal and devotion, another monastery (St. Vincent le Rond), was established and dedicated to St. Vincent, which subsequently became associated with the name of the earlier St. Germain of Auxerre (l'Auxerrois). A curious episode is found in Gregory's _Chronicle_, which is characteristic of the times, and proves that a monastery and church of St. Julien le Pauvre were already in existence. An impostor, claiming to have the relics of St. Vincent and St. Felix, came to Paris, but refused to deposit them with the bishop for verification. He was arrested and searched, and the so-called relics were found to consist of moles' teeth, the bones of mice, some bears' claws and other rubbish: they were flung into the Seine and the impostor was put in prison. Gregory, who was lodging in the monastery of St. Julien le Pauvre, went into the church shortly after midnight to say matins, and found the creature, who had escaped from the bishop's prison, lying drunk on the pavement. He had him dragged away into a corner, but so intolerable was the stench that the pavement was purified with water and sweet smelling herbs. When the bishops, who were at Paris for a synod, met at dinner the next day, the impostor was identified as a fugitive slave of the bishop of Tarbes. Dagobert the Great, who came to the throne in 628, and his favourite minister, St. Eloy, goldsmith and bishop (founder of the convent in Paris which long bore his name), are enshrined in the hearts of the people in many a song and ballad: St. Eloy, with his good humour, his ruddy countenance, his eloquence, gentleness, modesty, wit, and wide charity, singing in the church processions _à haute gamme jubilant et trépudiant_ like David of old before the ark: Dagobert, the Solomon of the Franks, the terror of the oppressor, the darling of the poor. The great king was fond of Paris and established himself there when not scouring his kingdom to administer justice or to crush his enemies. He was the second founder of the monastery of St. Denis, which he rebuilt and endowed with great magnificence, and to which he gave much importance by the establishment there of a great fair, which soon drew merchants from all parts of Europe. He was a patron of the arts and employed St. Eloy to make reliquaries[27] for St. Denis and the churches in Paris, of such richness and beauty that they were admired of the whole of France. [Footnote 27: The works of art traditionally ascribed to St. Eloy are many. He is reported to have made a golden throne set with stones (or rather two thrones, for he used his material so honestly and economically). He was made master of the mint, and thirteen pieces of money are known which bear his name. He decorated the tombs of St. Martin and St. Denis, and constructed reliquaries for St. Germain, Notre Dame, and other churches.] The monkish scribes who wrote the Chronicles of St. Denis were not ungrateful to the memory of good King Dagobert, for it is there related that one day, as a holy anchorite lay sleeping on his stony couch on an island, being heavy with years, a venerable, white-haired man appeared to him and bade him rise and pray for the soul of King Dagobert of France. As he arose he beheld out at sea a crowd of devils bearing the king away in a little boat towards Vulcan's Cauldron, beating and tormenting him cruelly, who called unceasingly on St. Denis of France, on St. Martin and St. Maurice. Then thunder and tempest rolled down from heaven, and the three glorious saints appeared to him, arrayed in white garments. He was much affrighted, and on asking who they were, was answered: "We be they whom Dagobert hath called, and are come to snatch him from the hands of the devils and bear him to Abraham's bosom." The saints then vanished from before him and sped against the devils and reft the soul from them, which they were tormenting with threats and buffetings, and bare it to the joys perdurable of Paradise, chanting the words of the Psalmist _Beatus quem eligisti_. CHAPTER III _The Carlovingians--The Great Siege of Paris by the Normans--The Germs of Feudalism_ Chaos and misery followed the brilliant reign of Dagobert. In half a century his race had faded into the feeble _rois fainéants_, degenerate by precocious debauchery, some of whom were fathers at fourteen or fifteen years of age and in their graves before they were thirty. The bow of power is to him who can bend it, and in an age when human passions are untamed, the one unpardonable vice in a king is weakness. Soon the incapable, impotent and irresolute Merovingians were thrust aside by the more puissant Carlovingian race. Charles Martel, although buried with the Frankish kings at St. Denis, was content with the title of Duke of the Franks, and hesitated to proclaim himself king. He, like the other mayors of the palace, ruled through feeble and pensioned puppets when they did not contemptuously leave the throne vacant. In 751 Pepin the Short sent two prelates to sound Pope Zacchary, who, being hard pressed by the Lombards, lent a willing ear to their suit, agreed that he who was king in fact should be made so in name, and authorised Pepin to assume the title of king. Chilperic III., like a discarded toy, was relegated to a monastery at St. Omer, and Pepin the Short anointed at Soissons by St. Boniface bishop of Mayence, from that sacred "ampul full of chrism" which a snow-white dove had brought in its mouth to St. Rémi wherewith to anoint Clovis at Rheims. In the year 754 Stephen III., the first pope who had honoured Paris by his presence, came to ask the reward of his predecessor's favour and was lodged at St. Denis. There he anointed Pepin anew, with his sons Charles and Carloman, and compelled the Frankish chieftains, under pain of excommunication, to swear allegiance to them and their descendants. The city of Lutetia had much changed since the messengers of Pope Fabianus entered five centuries before. On that southern hill where formerly stood the Roman camp and cemetery were now the great basilica and abbey of St. Genevieve. The amphitheatre and probably much of the palace of the Cæsars were in ruins, all stripped of their marbles to adorn the new Christian churches. The extensive abbatial buildings and church, resplendent with marble and gold, on the west, dedicated to St. Vincent, were henceforth to be known as St. Germain of the Meadows (des Prés), for the saint's body had been translated from the chapel of St. Symphorien in the vestibule to the high altar of the abbey church a few weeks before the pope's arrival at St. Denis. The Cité[28] was still held within decayed Gallo-Roman walls, and the Grand and Petit Ponts of wood crossed the arms of the Seine. On the site of the old pagan temple to Jupiter by the market-place stood the church Our Lady: to the south-east stood the church of St. Stephen. The devotion of the _Nautæ_ had been transferred from Apollo to St. Nicholas, patron of shipmen, Mercury had given place to St. Michael, and to each of those saints oratories were erected. Other churches and oratories adorned the island, dedicated to St. Gervais, and St. Denis of the Prison (_de la chartre_), by the north wall where, abandoned by his followers, the saint was visited by his divine Lord, who Himself administered the sacred Host. A nunnery dedicated to St. Eloy, where three hundred pious nuns diffused the odour of Jesus Christ through the whole city, occupied a large site opposite the west front of Notre Dame. Near by stood a hospital, founded and endowed a century before by St. Landry, bishop of Paris, for the sick poor, which soon became known as the Hostel of God (_Hôtel Dieu_). The old Roman palace and basilica had been transformed into the official residence and tribunal of justice of the Frankish kings. On the south bank stood the church and monastery of St. Julien le Pauvre. A new Frankish city was growing on the north bank, bounded on the west by the abbey of St. Vincent le Rond, and on the east by the abbey of St. Lawrence. Houses clustered around the four great monasteries, and suburbs were in course of formation. The Cité was still largely inhabited by opulent merchants of Gallo-Roman descent, who were seen riding along the streets in richly decorated chariots drawn by oxen. [Footnote 28: The term Cité (_civitas_) was given to the old Roman part of many French towns.] Charlemagne during his long reign of nearly half a century (768-814) was too preoccupied with his noble but ineffectual purpose of cementing by blood and iron the warring races of Europe into a united _populus Christianus_, and establishing, under the dual lordship of emperor and pope, a city of God on earth, to give much attention to Paris. He did, however, spend a Christmas there, and was present at the dedication of the church of St. Denis, completed in 775 under Abbot Fulrad. It was a typical Frankish prince whom the Parisians saw enthroned at St. Denis. He had the abundant fair hair, shaven chin and long moustache we see in the traditional pictures of Clovis. Above middle height, with large, bright piercing eyes, which, when he was angered shone like carbuncles, he impressed all by the majesty of his bearing, in spite of a rather shrill and feeble voice and a certain asymmetrical rotundity below the belt. [Illustration: ST. JULIEN LE PAUVRE.] Abbot Fulrad was a sturdy prince and for long disputed the possession of some lands at Plessis with the bishop of Paris. The decision of the case is characteristic of the times. Two champions were deputed to act for the litigants, and met before the Count of Paris[29] in the king's chapel of St. Nicholas in the Palace of the Cité, and a solemn judgment by the cross was held. While the royal chaplain recited psalms and prayers, the two champions stood forth and held their arms outstretched in the form of a cross. In this trial of endurance the bishop's deputy was the first to succumb; his fainting arms drooped and the abbot won his cause. [Footnote 29: The Carlovingians had been careful to abolish the office of mayor of the palace.] Paris had grown but slowly under the Frankish kings. They lived ill at ease within city walls. Children of the fields and the forests, whose delight was in the chase or in war, they were glad to escape from Paris to their villas at Chelles or Compiègne. But the civil power of the Church grew apace. In the early sixth century the abbots of St. Germain des Prés at Paris held possession of nearly 90,000 acres of land, mostly arable, in various provinces: their annual revenue amounted to about £34,000 of our money: they ruled over more than 10,000 serfs. From a list of the lands held in Paris in the ninth century by the abbey of St. Pierre des Fossés,[30] and published in the _Trésor des piéces rares ou inédites_, we are able to form some idea of the vast extent of monastic possessions in the city. The names of the various properties whose boundaries touch those of the abbey lands are given: private owners are mentioned only four times, whereas to ecclesiastical and monastic domains there are no less than ninety references. These monastic settlements were veritable garden cities, where most of our modern fruits, flowers and vegetables were cultivated; where flocks and herds were bred, and all kinds of poultry, including pheasants and peacocks, reared. Guilds of craftsmen worked and flourished; markets were held generally on saints' days, and pilgrimages were fostered. Charlemagne was an honest coiner and a protector of foreign traders; he was tolerant of the Jews, the only capitalists of the time, and under him Paris became the "market of the peoples," and Venetian and Syrian merchants sought her shores. [Footnote 30: St. Pierre was subsequently enriched by the possession of the body of St. Maur, brought thither in the Norman troubles by fugitive monks from Anjou, and the monastery is better known to history under the name of St. Maur des Fossés. The entrails of our own Henry V. were buried there. Rabelais, before its secularisation, was one of its canons, and Catherine de' Medicis once possessed a château on its site. Monastery and château no longer exist.] In Gallo-Roman days few were the churches outside the cities, but in the great emperor's time every villa[31] is said to have had its chapel or oratory served by a priest. Charlemagne was a zealous patron of such learning as the epoch afforded, and sought out scholars in every land. English, Irish, Scotch, Italian, Goth, and Bavarian--all were welcomed. The English scholar Alcuin, master of the Cloister School at York, became his chief adviser and tutor. He would have every child in his empire to know at least his paternoster, and every abbot on election was required to endow the monastery with some books. The choice of authors was not a wide one: the Old and New Testaments; the writings of the Fathers, especially St. Augustine, the emperor's favourite author; Josephus; the works of Bede; some Latin authors, chiefly Virgil; scraps of Plato translated into Latin--a somewhat exiguous and austere library, but one which reared a noble and valiant line of scholars and statesmen to rule the minds and bridle the savage lusts of the coming generations of men. Under Irish and Anglo-Saxon influences the cramped, minute script of the Merovingian scribes grew in beauty and lucidity; gold and silver and colour illuminated the pages of their books. The golden age of the Roman peace seemed dawning again in a new _Imperium Christianorum_. [Footnote 31: The villa of those days was a vast domain, part dwelling, part farm, part game preserve.] Towards the end of his reign the old emperor was dining with his court in a seaport town in the south of France, when news came that some strange, black, piratical craft had dared to attack the harbour. They were soon scattered, but the emperor was seen to rise from the table, and go to a window, where he stood gazing fixedly at the retreating pirates. Tears trickled down his cheeks and none dared to approach him. At length he turned and said: "Know ye my faithful servants, wherefore I weep thus bitterly? I fear not these wretched pirates, but I am afflicted that they should dare to approach these shores, and sorely do grieve when I foresee what evil they will work on my sons and on my people." His courtiers deemed they were Breton or Saracen pirates, but the emperor knew better. They were the terrible Northmen, soon to prove a bloodier scourge to Gaul than Hun or Goth or Saracen; and to meet them Charlemagne left an empire distracted by civil war, and a nerveless, feeble prince, Louis the Pious, Louis the Forgiving, fitter for the hermit's cell than for the throne and sword of an emperor. In 841 the black boats of the sea-rovers for the first time entered the Seine, and burnt Rouen and Fontenelle. In 845 a fleet of one hundred and twenty vessels swept up its higher waters and on Easter Eve captured, plundered and burnt Paris, sacked its monasteries and churches and butchered their monks and priests. The futile Emperor Charles the Bald bought them off at St. Denis with seven thousand livres of silver, and they went back to their Scandinavian homes gorged with plunder--only to return year by year, increased in numbers and ferocity. Words cannot picture the terror of the citizens and monks when the dread squadrons, with the monstrous dragons carved on their prows, their great sails and threefold serried ranks of men-of-prey, were sighted. Everyone left his home and sought refuge in flight; the monks hurried off with the bodies of the saints, the relics and treasures of the sanctuary, to hide them in far-away cities. In 852 Charles' soldiers refused to fight, and for two hundred and eighty-seven days the pirates ravaged the valley of the Seine at their will. Never within memory or tradition were such things known. Rouen, Bayeux, Beauvais, Paris, Meaux, Melun, Chartres, Evreux, were devastated; the islands of the Seine were whitened by the bones of the victims, and similar horrors were wrought along the other rivers of France. In 858 a body of the freebooters settled on the island of Oissel, below Rouen, and issued forth _en excursion_ to spoil and slay and burn at their pleasure: the once rich city of Paris was left a cinder heap; the abbey of St. Genevieve was sacked and burnt, Notre Dame, St. Stephen, St. Germain des Prés and St Denis alone escaping at the cost of immense bribes. Charles ordered two fortresses to be built for the defence of the approaches to the bridges, and continued his feeble policy of paying blackmail. In 865 St. Denis was pillaged. In 866 Robert the Strong, Count of Paris, had won the title of the Maccabeus of France, by daring to stand against the fury of the Northmen and to defeat them; but having in the heat of battle with the terrible Hastings taken off his cuirass, he was killed. By order of Charles, St. Denis was fortified in 869, after another pillage of St. Germain. In 876 began a second period of raids of even greater ferocity under the Norwegian Rollo the Gangr[32] (the walker), a colossus so huge that no horse could be found to bear him. In 884 the whole Christian people seemed doomed to perish. Flourishing cities and monasteries became heaps of smoking ruins; along the roads lay the bodies of priests and laymen, noble and peasant, freeman and serf, women and children and babes at the breast to be devoured of wolves and vultures. The very sanctuaries[33] were become the dens of wild beasts, the haunt of serpents and creeping things. [Footnote 32: The remains of the great Viking's castle are still shown at Aalesund, in Norway.] [Footnote 33: When Alan Barbetorte, after the recovery of Nantes, went to give thanks to God in the cathedral, he was compelled to cut his way, sword in hand, through thorns and briers.] In 885 a great league of pirates--Danes, Normans, Saxons, Britons and renegade French--on their way to ravage the rich cities of Burgundy drew up before Paris; and their leader, Siegfroy, demanded passage to the higher waters. Paris, forsaken by her kings and emperors for more than a century, scarred and bled by three spoliations, was now to become a beacon of hope. The Roman walls were repaired, the towers on the north and south banks were strengthened. Bishop Gozlin, in whom great learning was wedded to incomparable fortitude, defied the pirates, warning them that the citizens were determined to resist and to hold Paris for a bulwark to the land. Of this most terrible of the Norman sieges of Paris, we have fuller record. A certain monk of St. Germain des Prés, Abbo by name, who had taken part in the defence, was one day sitting in his cell reading his Virgil. Desiring to exercise his Latin, and give an example to other cities, he determined to sing of a great siege with happier issue than that of Troy.[34] Abbo saw the black hulls and horrid prows of the pirates' boats as they turned the arm of the Seine below Paris, seven hundred strong vessels, and many more of lighter build. For two leagues and a half the very waters of the Seine were covered with them, and men asked into what mysterious caves the river had retreated. On November 26th, 885, the attack began at the unfinished tower on the north bank, replaced in later times by the Grand Châtelet. Three leaders stand eminent among the defenders of the city: Bishop Gozlin, the great warrior priest; his nephew, Abbot Ebles of St. Denis; and Count Eudes (Hugh) of Paris, son of Robert the Strong. The air is darkened with javelins and arrows; bishop and abbot are in the very eye of danger; the latter with one shaft spits seven of the besiegers, and mockingly bids their fellows take them to the kitchen to be cooked. On the morrow, reinforced by fresh troops, the assault is renewed, stones are hurled, arrows whistle; the air is filled with groans and cries; the defenders pour down boiling oil and melted wax and pitch. The hair of some of the Normans takes fire; they burn and the Parisians shout--"Jump into the Seine; the water will make your hair grow again and then look you that it be better combed." One well-aimed millstone says Abbo, sends the souls of six to hell. The baffled Northmen retire, entrench a camp at St. Germain l'Auxerrois, and prepare rams and other siege artillery. [Footnote 34: It must be admitted, however, that the poet's uncouth diction is anything but Virgilian.] Abbo now pauses to bewail the state of France: no lord to rule her, everywhere devastation wrought by fire and sword, God's people paralysed at the advancing phalanx of death, Paris alone tranquil, erect and steadfast in the midst of all their thunderbolts, _polis ut regina micans omnes super urbes_, a queenly city resplendent above all towns. The second attack begins with redoubled fury. After battering the walls of the north tower, monstrous machines on sixteen wheels are advanced and the besiegers strive to fill the fosse. Trees, shrubs, slaughtered cattle, wounded horses, the very captives slain before the eyes of the besieged, are cast in to fill the void. Bishop Gozlin brings down the Norman chieftain, who had butchered the prisoners, by a well-aimed arrow: his body, too, is flung into the fosse. The enemy cover the plain with their swords and the river with their bucklers; fireships are loosed against the bridge. In the city women fly to the sanctuaries; they roll their hair in the dust, beat their breasts and rend their faces, calling on St. Germain: "Blessed St. Germain, succour thy servants." The fighters on the walls take up the cry; Bishop Gozlin invokes the Virgin, Mother of the Redeemer, Star of the Sea, bright above all other stars, to save them from the cruel Danes. [Illustration: ST GERMAIN L'AUXERROIS.] On February 6th, 886, a sudden flood sweeps away the Petit Pont, and its tower, with twelve defenders, is isolated. With shouts of triumph the Northmen cross the river and surround it. The twelve refuse to yield, and fire is brought. The warriors (a touching detail) fearing lest their falcons be stifled, cut them loose. There is but one vessel wherewith to quench the flames and that soon drops from their hands; the little band rush forth; they set their backs against the ruins of the bridge, their faces to their foes and fought a hopeless fight. The walls of the city are lined with their kinsmen and friends impotent to help; the enemies of God, doomed one day to dine at Pluto's cauldron, press upon them; they fight till Phoebus sinks to the depths of the sea, so great is the courage of despair. The survivors are promised their lives if they will yield, they are disarmed, then treacherously slain, and their souls fly to heaven. But one, Hervé, of noble bearing and of great beauty, deemed a prince, is spared for ransom. With thunderous voice he refuses to bargain his life for gold, falls unarmed on his foes and is cut to pieces. "These things," writes Monk Abbo, "I saw with mine eyes," and he gives the names of the heroic twelve who went to receive the palm of martyrdom: Ermenfroi, Hervé, Herland, Ouacre, Hervi, Arnaud, Seuil, Jobert, Hardre, Guy, Aimard, Gossuin. Their names are inscribed on a little marble tablet over the Place du Petit Pont,[35] near the spot where they fell. Hail to the brave who across twelve centuries thrill our hearts to-day! They were examplars to the land; they helped to make France by their desperate courage and noble self-sacrifice, and to win for Paris the hegemony of her cities. The city is at length revictualled by Henry of Saxony and again the Parisians are left to themselves. On the sixth of April Bishop Gozlin, their shield, their two-edged axe, whose shaft and bow were terrible, passes to the Lord. On May 12th, Eudes steals away to implore further help from the emperor, and as soon as he sees the imperialists on the march returns and hews his way into Paris, to share the terrors of the siege. Henry the Saxon again appears, but is ambushed and slain and his army melts away. Yet again Paris is abandoned by her emperor and seeks help of heaven, for the waters are low, the besiegers are able to get footing on the island, set fire to the gates and attack the walls. The body of St. Genevieve, which had been transferred to the Cité, is borne about, and at night the ghostly figure of St. Germain is seen by the sentinels to pass along the ramparts, sprinkling them with holy water and promising salvation. Charles the Fat, the Lord's anointed, now appears with a multitude of a hundred tongues and encamps on Montmartre, but while the Parisians are preparing to second him in crushing their foes, they learn that the cowardly emperor has bought them off with a bribe and permission to winter in Burgundy. The Parisians, however, refused to give them passage and by an unparalleled feat of engineering they transported their ships overland for two miles and set sail again above the city. Next year, as Gozlin's successor, Bishop Antheric, was sitting at table with Abbot Ebles, a fearful messenger brought news that the _acephali_[36] were again in sight. Forgetting the repast, the two churchmen seized their weapons, called the city to arms, hastened to the ramparts, and the abbot slew their pilot with a well-aimed shaft. The Normans are terrified, and at length a treaty is made with their leaders, who promised not to ravage the Marne and some even entered Paris. But the ill-disciplined hordes were hard to hold in and bands of brigands, as soon as the ramparts were passed, began to plunder and slew a score of Christian men. The Parisians in their indignation sought out and--Hurrah! cries Abbo--found five hundred Normans in the city and slew them. But the bishop protected those that took refuge in his palace, instead of killing them as he ought to have done--_potius concidere debens_. For a time Paris had respite; cowardly Charles the Fat was deposed, and in 887 Count Eudes was acclaimed king of France after his return from Aquitaine, whose duke he had brought to subjection. He counselled a gathering of all the peoples outside Paris to make common cause against the Normans, and Abbo saw the proud Franks march in with heads erect, the skilful and polished Aquitaines, the Burgundians too prone to flight. But nought availed: the motley host soon melted away. [Footnote 35: The tablet has now (1911) disappeared. _See_ p. 313.] [Footnote 36: Abbo's favourite epithet. They were without a head, for they knew not Christ, the Head of Mankind.] At the extreme north-east of Paris the Rue du Crimée leads to a group of once barren hills, part of which is now made into the Park of the Buttes Chaumont. Here, by the Mount of the Falcon (Montfaucon[37]) in 892 King Eudes fell upon an army of Northmen, who had come against Paris and utterly routed them. Antheric, the noble pastor, with his virgin-like face, led three hundred footmen into the fight and slew six hundred of the _acephali_. But Abbo's muse now fails him, for Eudes, noble Eudes, is no more worthy of his office, and Christ's sheep are perishing. Where is the ancient prowess of France? Three vices are working her destruction: pride, the sinful charms of Venus (_foeda venustas veneris_) and love of sumptuous garments. Her people are arrayed in purple vesture, and wear cloaks of gold; their loins are cinctured with girdles rich with precious stones. Monk Abbo wearies not of singing, but the deeds of noble Eudes are wanting; all the poet craves is another victory to rejoice Heaven; another defeat of the black host of the enemy. [Footnote 37: In the Middle Ages and down to 1761 Montfaucon had a sinister reputation. There stood the gallows of Paris, a great stone gibbet with its three rows of chains, near the old Barrière du Combat, where the present Rue de la Grange aux Belles abuts on the Boulevard de la Villette.] Alas! the noble Eudes was now a king with rebellious vassals. Paris was never captured again, but the _acephali_ were devouring the land. The grim spectres of Famine and Plague made a charnel-house of whole regions of France, while Eudes was fighting the Count of Flanders, a rival king, and the ineffectual emperor, Charles the Simple. He it was who after Eudes' death, by the treaty of St. Claire sur Epte in 902, surrendered to the barbarians the fair province, subsequently to be known as Normandy. The new prayer in the Litany, "From the fury of the Northmen, good Lord deliver us," was heard, and the dread name of Rollo vanishes from history to live again in song. Under the title of Robert, assumed from his god-father, he reappears to win a dukedom and a king's daughter; the Normans are broken in to Christianity, law and order; their land becomes one of the most civilized regions of France; the fiercest of church levellers are known as the greatest of church builders in Christendom. They gave their name to a style of Christian architecture in Europe and a line of kings to England,[38] Naples and Sicily. [Footnote 38: William the Conqueror was also known as William the Builder.] The people of Paris and of France never forgot the lesson of the dark century of the invasions. A subtle change had been operating. The empire had decomposed into kingdoms; the kingdoms were segregating into lordships. Men in their need were attracted to the few strong and dominant lords whose courage and resource afforded them a rallying point and shelter against disintegrating forces: the poor and defenceless huddled for protection to the seigneurs of strongholds which had withstood the floods of barbarians that were devastating the land. The seeds of feudalism were sown in the long winter of the Norman terror. CHAPTER IV _The Rise of the Capetian Kings and the Growth of Feudal Paris_ From 936 to the coronation of Hugh Capet at Noyon in 987, the Carlovingians exercised a slowly decaying power. The real rulers at Paris were Hugh the Tall and Hugh Capet,[39] grandson and great-grandson of Robert the Strong. They revolutionized the ideal of kingship and founded the line of kings of France which stretches onward through history for a thousand years until the guillotine of the Revolution cut it in twain. It is Hugh Capet whom Dante, following a legend of his time, calls the son of a butcher of Paris, and whom he hears among the weeping souls cleaving to the dust and purging their avarice in the fifth cornice of Purgatory. [Footnote 39: The surname Capet is said to have originated in the _capet_ or hood of the abbot's mantle which Hugh wore as lay Abbot of St. Martin's, having laid aside the crown after his coronation.] Their patrimony was a small one--the provinces of the Isle de France, La Brie, La Beauce, Beauvais and Valois; but their sway extended over the land of the Langue d'oil, with its strenuous northern life, _le doux royaume de la France_, the sweet realm of France, whose head was Paris, cradle of the great French Monarchy and home of art, learning and chivalry. The globe of the earth, symbol of universal empire, gives way to the hand of justice as the emblem of kingship. The Capets were, it is true, at first little more than seigneurs over other seigneurs, some of whom were almost as powerful as they; but that little, the drop of holy chrism by which they were consecrated of the Church, and the support of the French jurists, contained within them a promise and potency of future grandeur. They were the Lord's anointed, supported by the Lord's Vicar on earth: to disobey them was to disobey God: tribal sovereignty was to give way to territorial sovereignty. The people, long forsaken by their emperors, had in their turn forsaken them, in order "not to be at the mercy of all the great ones they surrendered themselves to one of the great ones" and in exchange for protection gave troth and service. Cities, churches and monasteries now assumed a new aspect. Paris had demonstrated the value of a walled city, and during the latter part of the Norman terror, from all parts of North France, monks and nuns and priests had brought their holy relics within it as to a city of refuge. Gone were its lines of villas from Gallo-Roman times extending freely into the country. The ample spaces within gave place to crowded houses and narrow streets held in a rigid ring of walls and moats. The might of the archbishops, bishops and abbots increased: they sat in the councils of kings and dominated the administration of justice; the moral, social and political life of the country centred around them. Armed with the sword and the cross they held almost absolute sway over their little republics, coined money, levied taxes, disposed of small armies and went to the chase in almost regal state. The advent of the year 1000 was regarded with universal terror in Christendom. A fear, based on a supposed apocalyptic prophecy that the end of the world was at hand, paralysed all political and social life. Churches were too small to contain the immense throngs of fearful penitents: legacies and donations from conscience-stricken worshippers poured wealth into their treasuries. But once the awe-inspiring night of the vernal equinox that began the year 1000 had passed, and the bright March sun rose again on the fair earth, unconsumed by the wrath of God, the old world "seemed to thrill with new life; the earth cast off her outworn garments and clothed herself in a rich and white vesture of new churches." Everywhere in Europe, and especially in Paris and in France, men strove in emulation to build the finest temples to God. The wooden roofs of the Merovingian and Carlovingian basilicas had ill withstood the ravage of war and fire. Stone took the place of wood, the heavy thrust of the roof led to increased mural strength, walls were buttressed, columns thickened. Massive towers of defence, at first round, then polygonal, then square, flanked the west fronts, veritable keeps, where the sacred vessels and relics might be preserved and defended in case of attack. Soon spaces are clamant for decoration and the stone soars into the beauty of Gothic vaulting and tracery. The growth of Paris is more intimately associated with the Capets than with any of the earlier dynasties, and at no period in its history is the ecclesiastical expansion more marked. Under the long reign of Hugh's son, King Robert the Pious, no less than fourteen monasteries and seven churches were built or rebuilt in or around the city; a new and magnificent palace and hall of Justice, with its royal chapel dedicated to St. Nicholas, rose on the site of the old Roman basilica and palace in the Cité. The king was no less charitable than pious; troops of the poor and afflicted followed him when he went abroad, and he fed a thousand daily at his table. But notwithstanding his munificent piety, he was early made to feel the power of the Church. His union with Queen Bertha, a cousin of the fourth degree, whom he had married a year before his accession, was condemned by the pope as incestuous, and he was summoned to repudiate her. Robert, who loved his wife dearly, resisted the papal authority, and excommunication and interdict followed.[40] Everyone fled from him; only the servants are said to have remained, who purged with fire all the vessels which were contaminated by the guilty couple's touch. The misery of his people at length subdued the king's spirit, and he cast off his faithful and beloved queen. [Footnote 40: A dramatic representation of the delivery of the papal bull, painted by Jean Paul Laurens, hangs in the museum of the Luxembourg.] The beautiful and imperious Constance of Aquitaine, her successor, proved a penitential infliction second only in severity to the anathemas of the Church. Troops of vain and frivolous troubadours from her southern home, in all kinds of foreign and fantastic costumes, invaded the court at Paris and shocked the austere piety of the king. He perceived the corrupting influence on the simple manners of the Franks of their licentious songs, lascivious music and dissolute lives, but was powerless to dismiss them. The tyrannous temper of his new consort became the torment of his life. He was forced even to conceal his acts of charity. One day, on returning from prayers, Robert perceived that his lance by the queen's orders had been adorned with richly chased silver. He looked around his palace and was not long in finding a poor, tattered wretch whom he ordered to search for a tool, and the pair locked themselves in a room; the silver was soon stripped from the lance, the king hastily thrust it into the beggar's wallet and bade him escape before the queen discovered the loss. The poor whom he admitted to his table, despite the angry protests of the queen, at times ill repaid his charity. On one occasion a tassel of gold was cut from his robe, and on the thief being discovered the king simply remarked: "Well, perhaps he has greater need of it than I, may God bless its service to him." The very fringe was sometimes stripped from his cloak as he walked abroad, but he never could be induced to punish any of these poor spoilers of his person. It is in King Robert's reign that we read of one of the earliest revolts against the institution of slavery, which was regarded as an integral part of the divine order of things. It was the custom of the Church at Paris to send serfs to the law courts to give evidence for their bishop or prior, or to do battle for them in the event of a judicial duel. The freemen in the eleventh century began to rebel against fighting with a despised serf, and refused the duel, whereupon early in the next century the king and his court decided that the serfs might lawfully testify and fight against freemen, and whoso refused the trial by battle should lose his suit and suffer excommunication. The prelates exchanged serfs, used them as substitutes in times of war, allowed them to marry outside their church or abbey only by special permission and on condition that all children were equally divided between the two proprietors. If a female serf married a freeman he and their children became serfs. Serfs were only permitted to make a will by consent of their master; every favour was paid for and liberty bought at a great price. Merchants even and artizans in towns owed part of their produce to the seigneur. In the eleventh century burgesses as well as serfs and Jews were given to churches, exchanged, sold or left in wills by their seigneurs. The story of mediæval Paris is the story of the efforts of serf and burgess to win their economic freedom. The declining years of King Robert were embittered by the impiety of rebellious sons, who were reduced to submission only at the price of a protracted and bloody campaign in Burgundy. The broken-hearted father did not long survive his victory. He died in 1031, and the benisons and lamentations of the poor and lowly winged his spirit to its rest. If we may believe some writers, pious King Robert's memory is enshrined in the hymnology of the Church, which he enriched with some beautiful compositions. He was often seen to enter St. Denis in regal habit to lead the choir at matins, and would sometimes challenge the monks to a singing contest. In 1053, towards the end of Henry I.'s almost unchronicled reign, an alarming rumour came to Paris. The priests of St. Ermeran at Ratisbon claimed to have possession of the body of St. Denis, which they alleged had been stolen from the abbey in 892 by one Gisalbert. The loss of a province would not have evoked livelier emotion, and Henry at once took measures to convince France and Christendom that the true body was still at St. Denis. Before an immense concourse of bishops, abbots, princes and people, presided over by the king, his brother and the archbishops of Rheims and of Canterbury, the remains of St. Denis and his two companions were solemnly drawn out of the silver coffers in which they had been placed by Dagobert, together with a nail from the cross and part of the crown of thorns, all locked with two keys in a chest richly adorned with gold and precious stones, and preserved in a vault under the high altar. After having been borne in procession they were exposed on the high altar for fifteen days and then restored to their resting-place. The stiff-necked priests of Ratisbon, fortified with a papal bull of 1052, still maintained their claim to the possession of the body, but no diminution was experienced in the devotion either of the French peoples or of strangers of all nations to the relics at St. Denis. The chief architectural event of Henry's reign at Paris was the rebuilding on a more magnificent scale of the Merovingian church and abbey of St. Martin in the Fields (des Champs), whose blackened walls and desolate lands were eloquent of the Norman terror. The buildings stood outside Paris about a mile beyond the Cité on the great Roman road to the north, where St. Martin on his way to Paris healed a leper. The foundation, which soon grew to be one of the wealthiest in France, included a hostel for poor pilgrims endowed by Philip I. with a mill on the Grand Pont, to which the monks added the revenue from an oven.[41] In the eighteenth century, when the monastery was secularised, the abbot was patron of twenty-nine priories, three vicarates and thirty-five parishes, five of which were in Paris. Some of the old building has been incorporated in the existing Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers. The Gothic Priory chapel, with its fine twelfth-century choir, is used as a machinery-room, and the refectory, one of the most precious and beautiful creations attributed to Pierre de Montereau, is now a library. [Footnote 41: The possession of an oven was a lucrative monopoly in mediæval times. The writer has visited a village in South Italy where this curious privilege is still possessed by the parish priest, who levies a small indemnity of a few loaves, made specially of larger size, for each use of the oven.] Philip I. brought to the indolent habit inherited from his father a depraved and vicious nature. After a regency of eight years he became king at the age of fifteen, and lived to defile his youth and dishonour his manhood by debauchery and adultery, simony and brigandage. Early in his career he followed the evil counsels of his provost Étienne, and purposed the spoliation of the treasury of St. Germain des Prés to pay for his dissolute pleasures. "As the sacrilegious pair," says the chronicler, "drew near the relics, Étienne was smitten with blindness and the terrified Philip fled." Philip after a reign void of honour or profit to France left his son Louis VI. (the Lusty) a heritage of shame, a kingdom reduced to little more than a baronage over a few _comtés_, whose cities of Paris, Etampes, Orleans and Sens were isolated from royal jurisdiction by insolent and rebellious vassals. Many of the great seigneurs were but freebooters, living by plunder. The violence and lawlessness of these and other smaller scoundrels, who levied blackmail on merchants and travellers, made commerce almost impossible. Corruption, too, had invaded many of the monasteries and fouled the thrones of bishops, and a dual effort was made by king and Church to remedy the evils of the times. The hierarchy strove to centralise power at Rome that the Church might be purged of wolves in sheep's clothing: the Capetian monarchs to increase their might at Paris in order to subdue insolent and powerful vassals to law and obedience. In 1097 the Duke of Burgundy learned that Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury was about to pass through his territory with a rich escort on his way to Rome. The usual ambush was laid and the party were held up. As the duke hastened to spoil his victims, crying out--"Where is the archbishop?" he turned and saw Anselm, impassive on his horse, gazing sternly at him. In a moment the savage and lawless duke was transformed to a pallid, stammering wretch with downcast eyes, begging permission to kiss the old man's hand and to offer him a noble escort to safeguard him through his territory. It was the moral influence of prelates such as this and monks such as St. Bernard that enabled the hierarchy to enforce the celibacy of the clergy, to cleanse the bishoprics and abbeys, to wrest the privilege of conferring benefices from lay potentates and feudal seigneurs who bartered them for money, and to make and unmake kings. The end of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth centuries saw the culmination of the power of the reformed orders. All over France, religious houses--the Grande Chartreuse, Fontevrault, Cîteaux, Clairvaux--sprang up as if by enchantment. Men and women of all stations and classes flocked to them, a veritable host of the Lord, "adorning the deserts with their holy perfection and solitudes by their purity and righteousness." St. Bernard, the terror of mothers and of wives, by his austerity, his loving-kindness,[42] his impetuous will and masterful activity, his absolute faith and remorseless logic, his lyric and passionate eloquence, carried all before him and became the dictator of Christendom. He it was who with pitying gesture as of a kind father, his eyes suffused with tender joy, received Dante from the hands of Beatrice in the highest of celestial spheres, and after singing the beautiful hymn to the Virgin, led him to the heaven of heavens, to the very ecstasy and culmination of beatitude in the contemplation and comprehension of the triune God Himself. But religious no less than seculars are subdued by what they work in. Already in the tenth century Richer complained that the monks of his time were beginning to wear rich ornaments and flowing sleeves, and with their tight-fitting garments[43] looked like harlots rather than monks. [Footnote 42: He was said to be "kind even to Jews."] [Footnote 43: The indignant scribe is most precise: they walked abroad _artatis clunibus et protensis natibus_.] In the polluting atmosphere of Philip's reign matters had grown worse. St. Bernard denounced the royal abbey of St. Denis as "a house of Satan, a den of thieves." "The walls of the churches of Christ were resplendent with colour but His poor were naked and left to perish; their stones were gilded with the money of the needy and wretched to charm the eyes of the rich." In 1095 the task of cleansing the Abbey of St. Maur des Fossés at Paris seemed so hopeless, that the abbot resigned in despair rather than imperil his soul, and a more resolute reformer was sought. In 1107 the bishop of Paris was commanded by Rome to proceed to the abbey of St. Eloy and extirpate the evils there flourishing, for the nuns, it was reported, had so declined in grace, owing to the proximity of the court and intercourse with the world, that they had lost all sense of shame and lived in open sin, breaking the bonds of common decency. The scandal was so great that the bishop determined to cut them off from the house of the Lord; the abbey was reduced to a priory and given over to the abbot of the now reformed monastery of St. Maur, and its vast lands were parcelled out into several parishes.[44] The rights of the canons of Notre Dame were to be maintained; on St. Eloy's day the abbot of St. Maur was to furnish them with six pigs, two and a half measures of wine and three of fine wheat, and on St. Paul's day with eight sheep, the same quantity of wine, six crowns and one obole. The present Rue de la Cité and the Boulevard du Palais give approximately the east and west boundaries of the suppressed abbey, part of whose site is now occupied by the Prefecture de Police. [Footnote 44: The reformers always discover the nunneries to be so much more corrupt than the monasteries, but it is a little suspicious that in every case the former are expropriated to the latter. The abbot of St. Maur evidently had some qualms concerning the expropriation of St. Eloy, and wished to restore it to the bishop.] But the way of the reformer is a hard one. At the Council of Paris, 1074, the abbot of Pontoise was severely ill-treated for supporting, against the majority of the Council, the pope's decrees excluding married clerics from the churches, and the reform of the canons of Notre Dame led to exciting scenes. Bishop Stephen of Senlis was sent in 1128 to introduce the new discipline, but the archdeacons and canons, supported by royal favour, resisted, and Bishop Stephen was stripped of his revenues and hastened back to his metropolitan, the archbishop of Sens. The archbishop laid Paris under interdict and the influence of St. Bernard himself was needed to compose the quarrel. On Sunday, August 20, 1133, when returning from a visitation to the abbey of Chelles, the abbot and prior of St. Victor[45] at Paris were ambushed and the prior was stabbed. Some years later, in the reign of Louis VII., Pope Eugene III. came to seek refuge in Paris from the troubles excited at Rome by the revolution of Arnold of Brescia, and celebrated mass before the king at the abbey church of St. Genevieve. The canons had stretched a rich, silken carpet before the altar on which the pontiff's knees might rest, and when he retired to the sacristy to disrobe, his officers claimed the carpet, according to usage. The canons and their servants resisted, there was a bout of fisticuffs and sticks, the king intervened, anointed majesty himself was struck, and during the scuffle which ensued the carpet was torn to shreds in a tug-of-war between the claimants. Here was urgent need for reform. The pope decided to introduce the new discipline and appointed a fresh set of canons. The dispossessed canons met them with insults and violence, drowned their voices by howling and other indignities, and only ceased on being threatened with the loss of their eyes and other secular penalties. [Footnote 45: _See_ note 2, p. 63.] Louis VI., the _noble damoiseau_ as he is called by the Chronicle of St. Denis, enthroned in 1108, was the pioneer of the great French Monarchy, ever on the move, hewing his way, sword in hand, through his domains, subduing the violence, and burning and razing the castles of his insolent and disobedient vassals. The famous Suger, abbot of St. Denis, was his wise and firm counsellor, who led the Church to make common cause with him and lend her diocesan militia. The king would have the peasant to till, the monk to pray, and the pilgrim and merchant to travel in peace. He was an itinerant regal justiciary, destroying the nests of brigands, purging the land with fire and sword from tyranny and oppression. Wise in council, of magnificent courage in battle, he was the first of the Capetians to associate the cause of the people with that of the monarchy. They loved him as a valiant soldier-king, destroyer and tamer of feudal tyrants, the protector of the Church, the vindicator of the oppressed. He lifted the sceptre of France from the mire and made of it a symbol of firm and just government. It is in Louis' reign that we have first mention of the Oriflamme (golden flame) of St. Denis, which took the place of St. Martin's cloak as the royal standard of France. The Emperor Henry V. with a formidable army was menacing the land. Louis rallied all his friends to withstand him and went to St. Denis to pray for victory. Pope Eugene and Abbot Suger received Louis, who fell prostrate before the relics. Suger then took from the altar the standard--famed to have been sent by heaven, and formerly carried by the first liege man of the abbey, the Count de Vexin, when the monastery was in danger of attack--and handed it to the king: the pope gave him a pilgrim's wallet. The sacred banner was fashioned of silk in the form of a gonfalon, of the colours of fire and gold, and was suspended at the head of a gilded lance.[46] [Footnote 46: A modern reproduction may be seen in the church of St. Denis, but the exact shape is doubtful, no less than three different forms being known to antiquarians.] The strenuous reign of Louis was marked by a great expansion of Paris, which became more than ever the ordinary dwelling-place of the king and the seat of his government. The market which from Roman times had been held at the bifurcation of the northern road near the fields (Champeaux), belonging to St. Denis of the Prison, was extended. William of Champeaux founded the great abbey of St. Victor,[47] famed for its sanctity and learning, where Abelard taught and St. Thomas of Canterbury, whose hair shirt was long preserved there, and St. Bernard lodged. At the urgent prayer of his wife Adelaide, the king built a nunnery at Montmartre, and lavishly endowed it with lands, ovens, the house of Guerri, a Lombard money-changer, some shops and a slaughter-house in Paris, and a small _bourg_, still known as Bourg la Reine, about five miles south of the city. Certain rights of fishing at Paris, to which Louis VII. added five thousand herrings yearly from the port of Boulogne, were also granted. The churches of Ste. Geneviève la Petite, founded to commemorate the miraculous staying of the plague of the burning sickness (_les ardents_); of St. Jacques de la Boucherie; and of St. Pierre aux Boeufs, so named from the heads of oxen carved on the portal, were also built. [Footnote 47: The abbey was suppressed at the time of the Revolution and the site is now occupied by the Halle aux Vins.] CHAPTER V _Paris under Philip Augustus and St. Louis_ During twenty-eight years of the reign of Louis VII. no heir to the crown was born. At length, on the 22nd of August, 1165, Adelaide of Champagne, his third wife, lay in child-bed and excited crowds thronged the palace in the Cité. The king, "afeared of the number of his daughters and knowing how ardently his people desired a child of the nobler sex," was beside himself with joy when the desire of his heart was held up to him; curious eyes espied the longed-for heir through an aperture of the door and in a moment the good news was spread abroad. There was a sound of clarions and of bells and the city as by enchantment shone with an aureole of light. An English student roused by the uproar and the glare of what seemed like a great conflagration leapt to the window and beheld two old women hurrying by with lighted tapers. He asked the cause. They answered: "God has given us this night a royal heir, by whose hand your king shall suffer shame and ill-hap." This was the birth of Philip le Dieu-donné--Philip sent of Heaven--better known as Philip Augustus. Under him and Louis IX. mediæval Paris, faithfully reflecting the fortunes of the French Monarchy, attained its highest development. When Philip Augustus took up the sceptre at fifteen years of age, the little realm of the Isle de France was throttled by a ring of great and practically independent feudatories, and in extent was no larger than half-a-dozen of the eighty-seven departments into which France is now divided. The English king held the mouths of all the great rivers and all the great cities, Rouen, Tours, Bordeaux. In thirty years Philip had burst through to the sea, subdued the Duke of Burgundy and the great counts, wrested the sovereignty of Normandy, Brittany and Maine from the English Crown, won Poitou and Aquitaine, crushed the emperor and his vassals in the memorable battle of Bouvines, and become one of the greatest of European monarchs. The king, who had owed his life to the excellence of his armour,[48] was received in Paris with a frenzy of joy. The whole city came forth to meet him, flowers were strewn in his path, the streets were hung with tapestry, Te Deums sung in all the churches, and for seven days and nights the popular enthusiasm expressed itself in dance, in song and joyous revel. It was the first national event in France. The Count of Flanders was imprisoned in the new fortress of the Louvre, where he lay for thirteen years, with ample leisure to meditate on the fate of rebellious feudatories. "Never after," say the chroniclers, "was war waged on King Philip, but he lived in peace." [Footnote 48: In the ardour of the fight the king found himself surrounded by the enemy's footmen, was unhorsed, and while they were vainly seeking for a vulnerable spot in his armour some French knights had time to rescue him.] Two vast undertakings make the name of Philip Augustus memorable in Paris--the beginning of the paving of the city and the building of its girdle of walls and towers. One day as the king stood at the window of his palace, where he was wont to distract himself from the cares of state by watching the Seine flow by, some carts rattled along the muddy road beneath the window and stirred so foul and overpowering an odour that the king almost fell sick. Next day the provost and the sheriffs and chief citizens were summoned before him and ordered to set about paving the city with stone. The work was not however completed until the reign of Charles V., a century and a half later. It was done well and lasted till the sixteenth century, when it was replaced by the miserable cobbles, known as the pavement of the League. Whether the city grew much sweeter is doubtful; certainly Paris in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was as evil-smelling as ever. Montaigne, in the second half of the sixteenth century, complains that the acrid smell of the mud of Paris weakened the affection he bore to that fair city, and Howell writes in 1620, "the city is always dirty, and by perpetual motion the mud is beaten into a thick, black and unctuous oil that sticks so that no art can wash it off, and besides the indelible stain it leaves, gives so strong a scent that it may be smelt many miles off, if the wind be in one's face as one comes from the fresh air of the country." Horace Walpole in the eighteenth century, called Paris "the beastliest town in the universe." [Illustration: WALL OF PHILIPPE AUGUSTE, COUR DE ROUEN.] The great fortified wall of Philip Augustus began at the north-west water-tower, which stood just above the present Pont des Arts, and passed through the quadrangle of the Louvre, where a line on the paving marks its course, to the Porte St. Honoré, near the Oratoire. It continued northwards within the line of the present Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau and by the Rue du Jour to the Porte Montmartre, whose site is marked by a tablet on No. 30 Rue Montmartre. Turning eastward by the Painters' Gate (135 Rue St. Denis) and the Porte St. Martin, near the Rue Grenier St. Lazare, the fortification described a curve in a south-easterly direction by the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, where traces of the wall have been found at No. 55, and where part of a tower may be seen at No. 57. The line of the wall continued in the same direction by the Lycée Charlemagne, No. 101 Rue St. Antoine, where stood another gate, to the north-east water-tower, known as the Tour Barbeau, which stood near No. 32 Quai des Célestins. The opposite or southern division began at the south-east water-tower, La Tournelle, and the Gate of St. Bernard on the present Quai de la Tournelle, and went southward just within the Rues des Fossés St. Bernard and Cardinal Lemoine, to the Porte St. Victor, near No. 2 Rue des Écoles. The wall then turned westward above the Rue Clovis, where at No. 7 one of the largest and best-preserved remains may be seen. It enclosed the abbey of St. Genevieve, continued within the Rue des Fossés St. Jacques, and, between the Porte St. Jacques and the Porte St. Michel doubled outwards to enclose the Parloir aux Bourgeois near the south end of the Rue Victor Cousin. The south-western angle was turned near the end of the Rue Soufflot and the beginning of the Rue Monsieur le Prince. Crossing the Boulevard St. Germain, it then followed within the line of the latter street, and continued within the Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie. In the Cour de Rouen, entered through the Passage du Commerce, No. 61 Rue St. André des Arts, an important remnant may be seen with the base of a tower, and where the Rue Mazet cuts the last-named street stood the Porte du Buci. We may now trace the march of the wall and towers within the Rue Mazarine and across the Rue Guénégaud, where in a court behind No. 29 other fragments exist, to the south-west water-tower, the notorious Tour de Nesle[49] whose site is occupied by the east wing of the Institut. The west passage of the Seine was blocked by chains, which were drawn at night from tower to tower and fixed on boats and piles just above the line of the present Pont des Arts. A similar chain blocked the east passage of the river, drawn from the Tour Barbeau to La Tournelle, crossing the islands now known as the Isle St. Louis. The wall was twenty years building and was completed in 1211. It was eight feet thick, pierced by twenty-four gates and fortified by about five hundred towers. Much of the land it enclosed was not built upon; the _marais_ on the north bank were drained and cultivated for market and fruit gardens. [Footnote 49: Jeanne de Burgogne, queen of Philip le Long, lived at the Hôtel de Nesle, and is said to have seduced scholars by night into the tower, had them tied in sacks and flung into the Seine. If we may believe Villon, this was the queen-- "Qui commanda que Buridan Fust jetté en ung sac en Seine." Legend adds that the schoolman, made famous by his thesis, that if an ass were placed equidistant between two bundles of hay of equal attraction he would die of hunger before he could resolve to eat either, was saved by his disciples, who placed a barge, loaded with straw, below the tower to break his fall.] The moated château of the Louvre, another of Philip's great buildings stood outside the wall, on the site of the old Frankish camp or _Lower_, and commanded the valley route to Paris. It was at once a fortress, a treasury, a palace and a prison. Parts of two wings of the structure are incorporated in the present palace of the Louvre, and the site of the remaining wings, the massive keep and the towers, are marked out on the pavement of the quadrangle. The king erected also (1181-1183) two great warehouses at the old market at Champeaux: one for the drapers, the other for the weavers, that the merchants might sell their wares under cover and lock up their goods at night. They were known as _les Halles_, and the market ever since has borne that name. Here too Philip caused to be burnt at the stake the first heretics[50] executed at Paris, sparing the women and other simple folk who had been misled by the chief sectaries, of whom one, beyond the reach of earthly penalties and buried in the cemetery of les Innocents, was finally excommunicated, his bones exhumed and flung on a dungheap. "_Beni soit le Seigneur en toutes choses!_" says Pigord the chronicler who tells the story. [Footnote 50: It should be remembered that heresy was the solvent antisocial force of the age and was regarded with the same feelings of abhorrence as anarchist doctrines and propaganda are regarded by modern statesmen.] Of the impression that the Paris of Philip Augustus made on a provincial visitor, we were able, fortunately, to give some account. "I am at Paris," writes Guy of Bazoches, about the end of the twelfth century, "in this royal city, where the abundance of nature's gifts not only retains those that dwell there but invites and attracts those who are afar off. Even as the moon surpasses the stars in brightness, so does this city, the seat of royalty, exalt her proud head above all other cities. She is placed in the bosom of a delicious valley, in the centre of a crown of hills, which Ceres and Bacchus enrich with their gifts. The Seine, that proud river which comes from the east, flows there through wide banks and with its two arms surrounds an island which is the head, the heart, and the marrow of the whole city; two suburbs extend to right and left, even the lesser of which would rouse the envy of many another city. These suburbs communicate with the island by two stone bridges; the Grand Pont towards the north in the direction of the English sea, and the Petit Pont which looks towards the Loire. The former bridge, broad, rich, commercial, is the centre of a fervid activity, and innumerable boats surround it laden with merchandise and riches. The Petit Pont belongs to the dialecticians, who pace up and down disputing. In the island adjacent to the king's palace, which dominates the whole town, the palace of philosophy is seen where study reigns alone as sovereign, a citadel of light and immortality." After Louis VIII.'s brief reign of three years, there rises to the seat of kings at Paris one of the gentlest and noblest of the sons of men, a prince indeed, who, amid all the temptations of absolute power maintained a spotless life, and at death laid down an earthly crown to assume a fairer and an imperishable diadem among the saints in heaven. All that was best in mediævalism--its desire for peace and order and justice; its fervent piety, its passion to effect unity among Christ's people and to wrest the Holy Land from the pollution of the infidel; its enthusiasm for learning and for the things of the mind; its love of beauty--all are personified in the life of St. Louis. The young prince was eleven years of age when his father died. During his minority he was nurtured in learning and piety[51] by his mother, Blanche of Castile, whose devotion to her son, and firm and wise regency were a fitting prelude to the reign of a saintly king. Even after he attained his majority, St. Louis always sought his mother's counsel and was ever respectful and submissive to her will. When the news of her death reached him in the Holy Land, he went to his oratory, fell on his knees before the altar, submissive to the will of God, and cried out with tears in his eyes, that he had loved the queen, "his most dear lady and mother, beyond all mortal creatures." [Footnote 51: She was wont to say to her son--"I would rather see thee die than commit a mortal sin."] The king's conception of his office was summed up in two words--_Gouverner bien_. "Fair son," said he one day to Prince Louis, his heir, "I pray thee win the affection of thy people. Verily, I would rather that a Scotchman came from Scotland and ruled the kingdom well and loyally than that thou shouldst govern it ill." Joinville his biographer tells with charming simplicity how the king after hearing mass in the chapel at Vincennes outside Paris was wont to walk in the woods for refreshment and then, sitting at the foot of an old oak tree, whose position is still shown, would listen to the plaints of his poorer people without let of usher or other official and administer justice to them. At other times, clothed in a tunic of camlet, a surcoat of wool (_tiretaine_) without sleeves, a mantle of black taffety, and a hat with a peacock's plume, he would walk with his Council in the garden of his palace in the Cité, and on the poorer people crowding round him all speaking at once he would cry: "Silence! one at a time," and call for a carpet to be spread on the ground, on which he would sit, surrounded with his councillors, and judge them diligently. In 1238 St. Louis was profoundly shocked by the news that the crown of thorns was a forfeited pledge at Venice for an unpaid loan advanced by some Venetian merchants to the Emperor Baldwin of Constantinople. He paid the debt,[52] redeemed the pledge, and secured the relic for Paris. The king met his envoys at Sens, and barefooted, himself carried the sacred treasure enclosed in three caskets, one of wood, one of silver and one of gold, to Paris. The procession took eight days to reach the city, and so great were the multitudes who thronged to see it, that a large platform was raised in a field outside the walls, from which several prelates exposed it in turn to the veneration of the people. Thence it was taken to the cathedral of Notre Dame, the king dressed in a simple tunic, and barefoot, still carrying the relic. From the cathedral it was transferred to the royal chapel of St. Nicholas within the precincts of the palace. A year later the Emperor Baldwin was constrained to part with other relics, including a piece of the true cross, the blade of the lance and the sponge of the Passion. To enshrine them and the crown of thorns the chapel of St. Nicholas was demolished and the beautiful Sainte Chapelle built in its place. The upper chapel was dedicated to the relics; the lower to the Blessed Virgin, and on solemn festivals the king would himself expose the relics to the people. St. Louis was zealous in his devotion and for a time attended matins in the new chapel at midnight, until, suffering much headache in consequence, he was persuaded to have the office celebrated in the early morning before prime. His piety, however, was by no means austere: he had all the French gaiety of heart, dearly loved a good story, and was excellent company at table, where he loved to sit conversing with Robert de Sorbon, his chaplain. "It is a bad thing," he said one day to Joinville, "to take another man's goods, because _rendre_ (to restore) is so difficult, that even to pronounce the word makes the tongue sore by reason of the r's in it." [Footnote 52: By a subtle irony, part of the money was derived from the tribute of the Jews of Paris.] [Illustration: LA SAINTE CHAPELLE.] At another time they were talking of the duties of a layman towards Jews and Infidels. "Let me tell you a story," said St. Louis. "The monks of Cluny once arranged a great conference between some learned clerks and Jews. When the conference opened, an old knight who for love of Christ was given bread and shelter at the monastery, approached the abbot and begged leave to say the first word. The abbot, after some protest against the irregularity, was persuaded to grant permission, and the knight, leaning on his stick, requested that the greatest scholar and rabbi among the Jews might be brought before him. 'Master,' said the knight, 'do you believe that the Blessed Virgin Mary gave birth to Jesus and held Him at her breast, and that she is the Virgin Mother of God?' The Jew answered that he believed it not at all. 'Then,' said the knight, 'fool that thou art to have entered God's house and His church, and thou shalt rue it,' Thereupon he lifted his stick, smote the rabbi under the ear and felled him to the ground. The terrified Jews fled, carrying their master with them, and so," said St. Louis, "ended the conference. And I tell you, let none but a great clerk dispute; the business of a layman when he hears the Christian religion defamed is to defend it with his sharp sword and thrust his weapon into the miscreant's body as far as it will go." St. Louis, however, did not apply the moral in practice. Although severe in exacting tribute from the Jews, he spent much money in converting them and held many of their orphan children at the font; to others he gave pensions, which became a heavy financial burden to himself and his successors. He was stern with blasphemers, whose lips he caused to be branded with a hot iron. "I have heard him say," writes Joinville, "with his own mouth, that he would he were marked with a red-hot iron himself if thereby he could banish all oaths and blasphemy from his kingdom. Full twenty-two years have I been in his company, and never have I heard him swear or blaspheme God or His holy Mother or any Saint, howsoever angry he may have been: and when he would affirm anything, he would say, 'Verily it is so, or verily it is not so,' Before going to bed he would call his children around him and recite the fair deeds and sayings of ancient princes and kings, praying that they would remember them for good ensample; for unjust and wicked princes lost their kingdoms through pride and avarice and rapine." When he was in the east he heard of a Saracen lord of Egypt who caused all the best books of philosophy to be transcribed for the use of young men, and he determined to do the like for the youth of Paris. Five thousand scribes were employed to copy the Scriptures and the writings of the Fathers and classic authors, preserved in various abbeys in France. He had a convenient and safe place built at the treasury of the Sainte Chapelle, where he housed the books, for a church without a library was said to be a fortress without ammunition. Scholars had free access to them, and he himself was wont in his leisure time to shut himself up there for study, reading rather the Holy Fathers than the writings of the best doctors of his own time. St. Louis was a steadfast friend to the religious orders. On his return from the Holy Land he brought with him six monks from Mount Carmel and established them on the north bank of the Seine, near the present Quai des Célestins; they were subsequently transferred to the University quarter, on a site now occupied by the Marché aux Carmes. The prior of the Grande Chartreuse was also prayed to spare a few brothers to found a house in Paris; four were sent, and the king endowed them with his Château de Vauvert, including extensive lands and vineyards. The château was reputed to be haunted by evil spirits, and the street leading thither as late as the last century was known as the Rue d'Enfer. St. Louis began a great church for them, and the eight cells, each with its three rooms and garden, were increased to thirty before the end of his reign; in later times the order became one of the richest in Paris and occupied a vast expanse of land to the south of the Luxembourg. The fine series of paintings illustrating the life of St. Bruno, by Lesueur, now in the Louvre, was executed for the smaller cloister of the monastery. The Grands Augustins were established on the south bank of the Seine, near the present Pont Neuf, and the Serfs de la Vierge, known later as the Blancs Manteaux, from their white cloaks, in the Marais. They were subsequently amalgamated with the Guillemites, or the Hermits of St. William, and at No. 14 Rue des Guillemites some remains of their monastery may yet be seen. The church of the Blancs Manteaux, rebuilt in the seventeenth century, also exists in the street of that name. In 1217 the first of the Dominicans were seen at Paris. On the 12th of September seven preaching friars, among whom were Laurence the Englishman and a brother of St. Dominic, established themselves in a house near the _parvis_ of Notre Dame. In 1218 the University gave them a home opposite the church of St. Étienne des Grez (St. Stephen of the Greeks), in the Rue St. Jacques, and in the following year, when St. Dominic came to Paris, the brothers had increased to thirty. The saint himself drew up the plans of their monastery and always cherished a particular affection for the Paris house. Their church was opened in 1220, and being dedicated to St. Jacques, the Dominicans were known as Jacobins all over France. St. Louis endowed them with a school; they soon became one of the most powerful and opulent of the religious orders, and their church, a burial-place for kings and princes. The Friars Minor soon followed. St. Francis himself, in his deep affection for France, had determined to go to Paris and found a house of his order, but being dissuaded by his friend, Cardinal Ugolin, sent in 1216 a few of his disciples. These early friars, true _poverelli di Dio_, would accept no endowment of house or money, and supporting themselves by their hands, carried their splendid devotion among the poor, the outcast, and the lepers of Paris. In 1230 the Cordeliers, as they were called,[53] accepted the _loan_ of a house near the walls in the south-western part of the city; St. Louis built them a church, and left them at his death part of his library and a large sum of money.[54] They too soon became rich and powerful and their church one of the largest and most magnificent in Paris. St. Bonaventure and Duns Scotus taught at their school of theology; their monastery in the sixteenth century was the finest and most spacious in Paris, with cells for a hundred friars and a vast refectory, which still exists. St. Louis founded the hospital known as the Quinze-Vingts (15 + 20) for three hundred poor knights whose eyes had been put out by the Saracens. Subsequently it became a night shelter for a like number of blind beggars whither they might repair after their long quest in the streets of Paris. St. Louis at his death left them an annual _rente_ of thirty livres parisis that every inmate might have a good mess of pottage daily, and Philip le Bel ordered a fleur-de-lys to be embroidered on their dress that they might be known as the king's poor folk. The buildings, now transferred to the Rue de Charenton, originally covered a vast area of ground between the Palais Royal and the Louvre, and were sold in 1779 to a syndicate of speculators by Cardinal de Rohan of diamond-necklace[55] notoriety; an act of jobbery which brought his Eminence a handsome commission. The Quinze-Vingts were privileged to place collecting-boxes and to beg inside the churches. Since, however, the differences in the relative opulence of churches was great, the right to beg in certain of the richer ones was put up to auction every year, and those who promised to pay the highest premium to the funds of the hospital were adjudicated the privilege of begging there. This curious arrangement was in full vigour until the latter half of the eighteenth century, when the foundation was removed. Twelve blind brothers and twelve seeing brothers--husbands of blind women who were lodged there on condition that they served as leaders through the streets--had a share in the management of the institution. Luxury seems to have sometimes invaded the hostel, for in 1579 a royal degree forbade the sale of wine to the brethren and denounced the blasphemy with which their conversation was often tainted. In 1631 they were forbidden to use stuffs other than serge or cloth for their garments, or to use velvet for ornament. [Footnote 53: On account of the cord they wore round their habit.] [Footnote 54: St. Louis loved the Franciscans, and in the _Fioretti_ a beautiful story is told how the king, in the guise of a pilgrim, visiting Brother Giles at Perugia, knelt with the good friar in an embrace of fervent affection for a great space of time in silence. They parted without speaking a word, marvellously comforted.] [Footnote 55: The innocence of Marie Antoinette in this scandalous affair has been clearly established. See _L'affaire du Collier_, by M. Funck Brentano. Paris, 1903.] [Illustration: REFECTORY OF THE CORDELIERS.] The establishment of the abbeys of St. Antoine, of the Friars of the Holy Cross, and of the Sisters of St. Bega or Béguines, were also due to the king's piety, and the whole city was surrounded with religious houses. "Even as a scribe," says an old writer, "who hath written his book illuminates it with gold and silver, so did the king illumine his kingdom with the great quantity of the houses of God that he built." St. Louis was, however, firm in his resistance to ecclesiastical arbitrariness. The prelates complained to him on one occasion that Christianity was going to the dogs, because no one feared their excommunications, and prayed that he would order his sergeants to lend the secular arm to enforce their authority. "Yes," answered the king, "if you will give me the particulars of each case that I may judge if your sentence be just." That, they objected, appertained to the ecclesiastical courts, but St. Louis was inflexible, and they remained unsatisfied. Many were St. Louis' benefactions to the great hospital of Paris, the Hôtel Dieu. Rules, dating from 1217, for the treatment of the sick poor were elaborated in his reign with admirable forethought. The sick, after confession and communion, were to be put to bed and treated as if they were the masters of the house. They were to be daily served with food before the nursing friars and sisters, and all that they desired was to be freely given if it could be obtained and were not prejudicial to their recovery. If the sickness were dangerous the patient was to be set apart and to be tended with especial solicitude. The sick were never to be left unguarded and even to be kept seven days after they were healed, lest they should suffer a relapse. The friars and sisters were to eat twice a day: the sick whenever they had need. A nurse who struck a patient was excommunicated. Viollet le Duc was of opinion that in many respects the Hôtel Dieu in the Middle Ages was superior to our modern hospitals. Among many details denoting the tender forethought of the administrator, we may note that in the ward for the grievously sick and infirm the beds were made lower, and 60 _cottes_ of white fur and 300 felt boots were provided to keep the poor patients warm when they were moved from their beds to the _chambres aisées_. In later times, lax management and the decline of piety which came with the religious and political changes of the Renaissance made reform urgent, and in 1505 the Parlement appointed a committee of eight _bourgeois clercs_ to control the receipts. The buildings were much increased in 1636, but were never large enough, and in 1655 the priory of St. Julien was united to the hospital. "As many as 6000 patients," says Félibien, writing in 1725, "have been counted there at one time, five or six in one bed." No limitations of age or sex or station or religion or country were set. Everybody was received, and in Félibien's time the upkeep amounted to 500,000 livres per annum. The old Hôtel Dieu was situated to the south of Notre Dame, and stood there until rebuilt on its present site in 1878. St. Louis sought diligently over all the land for the _grand sage homme_ who would prove an honest and fearless judge, punishing the wicked without regard to rank or riches; and what he exacted of his officers he practised himself. He punished his own brother, the Count of Artois, for having forced a sale of land on an unwilling man, and ordered him to make restitution. The Sire de Coucy, one of the most powerful of his barons, was summoned to Paris and in spite of his bravado, arrested, imprisoned in the Louvre and sentenced to death, for having hanged three young fellows for poaching. The sale of the provostship of Paris was abolished and a man of integrity, Étienne Boileau, appointed with adequate emoluments. So completely was this once venal office rehabilitated, that no seigneur regarded the post as beneath him. Boileau was wont to sleep in his clothes on a camp bed in the Châtelet to be in readiness at any hour, and often St. Louis would be seen sitting beside the provost on the judgment seat, watching over the administration of justice. The judicial duel in civil cases was forbidden; the Royal Watch instituted to police the streets of Paris; the charters of the hundred crafts of Paris were confirmed and many privileges granted to the great trade guilds. In 1270 St. Louis put on a second time the crusader's badge, "the dear remembrance of his dying Lord," and met his death in the ill-fated expedition to Tunis. So feeble was the king when he left Paris, that Joinville carried him from the Hôtel of the Count of Auxerre to the Cordeliers, where the old friends and fellow-warriors in the Holy Land parted for ever. When stricken with the plague the dying monarch was laid on a couch strewn with ashes. He called his son, the Count of Alençon to him, gave wise and touching counsel, and, after holy communion, recited the seven penitential psalms: having invoked "Monseigneurs St. James and St. Denis and Madame St. Genevieve," he crossed his hands on his heart, gazed towards heaven and rendered his soul to his Creator. _Piteuse chouse est et digne de pleurer le trépassement de ce saint prince_, says Joinville, to whom the story was told by the king's son--"A piteous thing it is and worthy of tears the passing away of this holy prince." The bones of the dead king, from which the flesh[56] had been removed by boiling, were sent for burial to St. Denis, which he had chosen for the place of his sepulture. Joinville,[57] his friend and companion, from whose priceless memoirs we have chiefly drawn, ends his story thus:--"I make known to all readers of this little book that the things which I say I have seen and heard of the king are true, and steadfastly shall they believe them. And the other things of which I testify but by hearsay, take them in a good sense if it please you, praying God that by the prayers of Monseigneur St. Louis it may please Him to give us those things that He knoweth to be necessary as well for our bodies as for our souls. Amen." [Footnote 56: It was buried in the church of Monreale at Palermo.] [Footnote 57: Joinville was a brave and tender knight; he tells us that before starting to join the crusaders at Marseilles he called all his friends and household before him, and declared that if he had wronged any one of them reparation should be made. After a severe penance he was assoiled, and as he set forth, durst not turn back his eyes lest his heart should be melted at leaving his fair château of Joinville and his two children whom he loved so dearly.] King Louis was tall of stature, with a spare and graceful figure; his face was of angelic sweetness, with eyes as of a dove, and crowned with abundant fair hair. As he grew older he became somewhat bald and held himself slightly bent. "Never," says Joinville, when describing a charge led by the king, which turned the tide of battle, "saw I so fair an armed man. He seemed to sit head and shoulders above all his knights; his helmet of gold was most fair to see, and a sword of Allemain was in his hand. Four times I saw him put his body in danger of death to save hurt to his people." [Illustration: INTERIOR OF NOTRE DAME.] CHAPTER VI _Art and Learning at Paris_ Two epoch-making developments--the creation of Gothic architecture and the rise of the University of Paris--synchronise with the period covered by the reigns of Philip Augustus and St. Louis, and may now fitly be considered. The memory of the Norman terror had long passed from men's minds. The Isle de France had been purged of robber lords, and with peace and security, wealth and population had increased. The existing churches were becoming too small for the faithful and new and fairer temples replaced the old: the massive square towers, the heavy walls and thick pillars of the Norman builders, blossomed into grace and light and beauty. Already in the beginning of the twelfth century the church of St. Denis was in urgent need of extension. On festival days so great were the crowds pressing to view the relics, that many people had been trodden under foot, and Abbot Suger determined to build a larger and nobler church. Great was the enthusiasm of the people as the new temple rose. Noble and burgess, freeman and serf, harnessed themselves like beasts of burden to the ropes and drew the stone from the quarry. A profound silence reigned, broken only by the murmur of those who confessed their sins when a halt was made. A trumpet sounded, banners were unfurled, and the silent host resumed its way. Arrived at the building the whole multitude burst forth into a song of praise. All would lend their aid in raising the new house of God and of His holy martyrs, and the burial-place of their kings. In 1161 Maurice de Sully, a peasant's son, who had risen to become bishop of Paris, determined to erect a great minster adequate to the demands of his time. The old churches of Notre Dame and of St. Stephen[58] and many houses were demolished, and a new street, called of Notre Dame, was made. Sully devoted the greater part of his life and private resources to the work. The king, the pope, seigneurs, guilds of merchants and private persons, vied with each other in making gifts. Two years were spent in digging the foundations of the new Notre Dame, and in 1163 Pope Alexander III. is said to have laid the first stone. In 1182, the choir being finished, the papal legate, Henri de Châteaux-Marcay, consecrated the high altar, and in 1185 the Patriarch of Jerusalem celebrated mass in the choir. At Sully's death, in 1196, the walls of the nave were erect and partly roofed, and the old prelate left a hundred livres for a covering of lead. The transepts and nave were completed in 1235. [Footnote 58: The relics were transferred to a new church of St. Stephen (St. Étienne du Mont), built by the abbot of St. Genevieve as a parish church for his servants and tenants.] In 1240 an ingenious and sacrilegious thief, climbing to the roof to haul up the silver candlesticks from the altar by a noose in a rope, set fire to the altar cloth, and the choir was seriously injured. Sully's work had been Romanesque, and choir and apse were now rebuilt in the new style, to harmonise with the remainder of the church. By the end of the thirteenth century the chapels round the apse and in the nave, the Porte Rouge and the south portal were added, and the great temple was at length completed. The choir of St. Germain des Prés and the exquisite little church of St. Julien le Pauvre were rebuilt at the end of the twelfth century, and the beautiful refectory of St. Martin des Champs was created about 1220. But the culmination of Gothic art is reached in the wondrous sanctuary that St. Louis built for the crown of thorns, "the most precious piece of Gothic," says Ruskin, "in Northern Europe." Michelet saw a whole world of religion and poetry--tears of piety, mystic ecstasy, the mysteries of divine love--expressed in the marvellous little church, in the fragile and precious paintings of its windows.[59] The work was completed in three years, and has been so admirably restored by Viollet le Duc that the visitor may gaze to-day on this pure and peerless gem almost as St. Louis left it, for the gorgeous interior faithfully reproduces the mediæval colour and gold. During the Revolution it was used as a granary and then as a club. It narrowly escaped destruction, and men now living can remember seeing the old notices on the porch of the lower chapel--_Propriété nationale à vendre_. All that remains of the relics has long been transferred to the treasury of Notre Dame. The old Quinze-Vingts, the Chartreux, the Cordeliers, St. Croix de la Bretonnerie, St. Catherine, the Blancs Manteaux, the Mathurins and other masterpieces of the Gothic builders have all disappeared. [Footnote 59: The early glass-workers were particularly fond of their beautiful red. "Wine of the colour of the windows of the Sainte Chapelle," was a popular locution of the time.] Gothic architecture was eminently a product of the Isle de France. "France not only _led_," says Mr. Lethaby, "but _invented_. In a very true sense what we call Gothic is Frenchness of the France which had its centre in Paris." The thirteenth century rivals the finest period of Greek art for purity, simplicity, nobility and accurate science of construction. Imagination was chastened by knowledge, but not systematised into rigid rules. Each master solved his problem in his own way, and the result was a charm, a variety, and a fertility of invention, never surpassed in the history of art. Early French sculpture is a direct descendant of Greek art, which made its way into Gaul by the Phoenician trade route, and the Merovingian Franks were always in touch with the Eastern Mediterranean, and with the stream of early Byzantine[60] art. French artists achieved a perfection in the representation of the human form which anticipated by a generation the work of the Pisani in Italy, for the early thirteenth-century statues on the west front of Chartres Cathedral are carved with a naturalness and grace which the Italian masters never surpassed, and the marvellously mature and beautiful silver-gilt figure of a king, in high relief, found in 1902 immured in an old house at Bourges and exhibited in 1904 among the Primitifs Français at the Louvre, was wrought more than a century before the birth of Donatello. Some fragments of the old sculptures that adorned St. Denis and other twelfth and thirteenth-century churches may still be found in the museums of Paris. The influence of the French architects, as Emile Bertaux has demonstrated in the first volume of his _Art dans l'Italie Méridionale_, extended far beyond the limits of France, and is clearly traceable in the fine hunting-palace, erected for Frederic II. in the thirteenth century, at Castello del Monte, near Andria, in Apulia. But of the names of those who created these wonderful productions few are known; the great masterpieces of the thirteenth century are mostly anonymous. Jean de Chelles, one of the masons of Notre Dame, has left his name on the south portal and the date, Feb. 12, 1257, on which it was begun, "in honour of the holy Mother of Christ." He was followed by Pierre de Montereau, "master of the works of the church of Blessed Mary at Paris," whose name thus appears in a deed of sale dated 1265. The Sainte Chapelle is commonly attributed to Pierre de Montereau, but the attribution is a mere guess. [Footnote 60: The researches of Professor Strzygowski of Gratz, and other authorities in the field of Byzantine and Eastern archæology, tend to prove the dominant importance of the Christian East in the development of early ecclesiastical architecture and the subordinate influence of Roman models.] Nor did the love of beauty during this marvellous age express itself solely in architecture. If we were asked to specify one trait which more than any other characterises the "dark ages" and differentiates them from modern times, we should be tempted to say, love of brightness and colour. Within and without, the temples of God were resplendent with silver and gold, with purple and crimson and blue; the saintly figures and solemn legends on their porches, the capitals, the columns, the groins of the vaultings, the very crest of the roof, were lustrous with colour and gold. Each window was a complex of jewelled splendour; the pillars and walls were painted or draped with lovely tapestries and gorgeous banners: the shrines and altars glittered like Aaron's breastplate, with precious stones--jasper and sardius and chalcedony, sapphire and emerald, chrysolite and beryl, topaz and amethyst and pearl. The Church illuminated her sacred books with exquisite painting, bound them with precious fabrics, and clasped them with silver and gold; the robes of her priests and ministrants were rich with embroideries. "People," said William Morris, "have long since ceased to take in impressions through their eyes," indeed so insensible, so atrophied to colour have the eyes of moderns grown amid their drab surroundings, that the aspect of a building wherein skilful hands have in some small degree essayed to realise the splendour of the past dazes the beholder; a sense of pain rather than of delight possesses him and he averts his gaze. Nor were the churches of those early times anything more than an exquisite expression of what men were surrounded by in their daily lives and avocations. The houses[61] and oratories of noble and burgess were rich with ivories exquisitely carved, with sculptures and paintings, tapestry and enamels: the very utensils of common domestic use were beautiful. Men did not prate of art: they wrought in love and simplicity. The very word art, as denoting a product of human activity different from the ordinary daily tasks of men, was unknown. If painting was an art, even so was carpentry. A mason was an artist: so was a shoemaker. Astronomy and grammar were arts: so was spinning. Apothecaries and lawyers were artists: so was a tailor. Dante[62] uses the word _artista_ as denoting a workman or craftsman, and when he wishes to emphasise the degeneracy of the citizens of his time as compared with those of the old Florentine race, he does so by saying that in those days their blood ran pure even _nell' ultimo artista_ (in the commonest workman). Let us be careful how we speak of these ages as "dark"; at least there were "retrievements out of the night." Already before the tenth century the basilica of St. Germain des Prés was known as St. Germain _le doré_ (the golden), from its glowing refulgence, and St. Bernard as we have seen, declaimed against the resplendent colour and gold in the churches of his time. Never since the age of Pericles has so great an effusion of beauty descended on the earth as during the wondrous thirteenth century in the Isle de France and especially in Paris.[63] [Footnote 61: Brunetto Latini, in the thirteenth century contrasted the high towers and grim stone walls of the fortress-palaces of the Italian nobles with the large, spacious and painted houses of the French, their rooms adorned _pour avoir joie et delit_ and surrounded with orchards and gardens.] [Footnote 62: Par. XVI. 51.] [Footnote 63: Another delusion of moderns is that there was an absence of personal cleanliness in those ages. In the census of the inhabitants of Paris, who in 1292 were subject to the Taille, there are inscribed the names of no less than twenty-six proprietors of public hot baths, a larger proportion to population than exists to-day, and Dr. Gasquet has described in his _English Monastic Life_ the admirable provisions for personal cleanliness made in mediæval monasteries.] We pass from the enthusiasm of art to that of learning. From earliest times, schools, free to the poor, had been attached to every great abbey and cathedral in France. At the end of the eleventh century four were eminent at Paris: the schools of St. Denis, where the young princes and nobles were educated; of the Parvis Notre Dame, for the training of young _clercs_,[64] the famous _Scola Parisiaca_, referred to by Abelard; of St. Genevieve; and of St. Victor, founded by William of Champeaux, one of the most successful masters of Notre Dame. The fame of this teacher drew multitudes of young men from the provinces to Paris, among whom there came, about 1100, Peter Abelard, scion of a noble family of Nantes. By his wit, erudition and dialectical sublety he soon eclipsed his master's fame and was appointed to a chair of philosophy in the school of Notre Dame. William, jealous of his young rival, compassed his dismissal, and after teaching for a while at Melun, Abelard returned to Paris and opened a school on Mont St. Genevieve, whither crowds of students followed him. So great was the fame of this brilliant lecturer and daring thinker that his school was filled with eager listeners from all countries of Europe, even from Rome herself. [Footnote 64: Hence the name of _clerc_ applied to any student, even if a layman.] Abelard was proud and ambitious, and the highest prizes of an ecclesiastical and scholastic career seemed within his grasp. But Fulbert, canon of Notre Dame, had a niece, accomplished and passing fair, Héloïse by name, who was an enthusiastic admirer of the great teacher. It was proposed that Abelard should enter the canon's house as her tutor, and Fulbert's avarice made the proposition an acceptable one. Abelard, like Arnault Daniel, was a good craftsman in his mother tongue, a facile master of _versi d'amore_, which he would sing with a voice wondrously sweet and supple. Now Abelard was thirty-eight years of age: Héloïse seventeen. _Amor al cor gentil ratto s'apprende_,[65] and Minerva was not the only goddess who presided over their meetings. For a time Fulbert was blind, but scandal cleared his eyes and Abelard was expelled from the house; Héloïse followed and took refuge with her lover's sister in Brittany, where a child, Astrolabe, was born. Peacemakers soon intervened and a secret marriage was arranged, which took place early one morning at Paris, Fulbert being present. But the lovers continued to meet; scandal was again busy and Fulbert published the marriage. Héloïse, that the master's advancement in the Church might not be impeded, gave the lie to her uncle and fled to the nuns of Argenteuil. Fulbert now plotted a dastardly revenge. By his orders Abelard was surprised in his bed, and the mutilation which, according to Eusebius, Origen performed on himself, was violently inflicted on the great teacher. All ecclesiastical preferment was thus rendered canonically impossible; Abelard became the talk of Paris, and in bitter humiliation retired to the abbey of St. Denis. Before he made his vows, however, he required of Héloïse that she should take the veil. The heart-broken creature reproached him for his disloyalty, and repeating the lines which Lucan puts into the mouth of Cornelia weeping for Pompey's death, burst into tears and consented to take the veil. [Footnote 65: "Love is quickly caught in gentle heart."--Inf. V. 100.] A savage punishment was inflicted by the ecclesiastical courts on Fulbert's ruffians, who were made to suffer the _lex talionis_ and the loss of their eyes: the canon's property was confiscated. The great master, although forbidden to open a school at St. Denis, was importuned by crowds of young men not to let his talents waste, and soon a country house near by was filled with so great a company of scholars that food could not be found for them. But enemies were vigilant and relentless, and he had shocked the timid by doubting the truth of the legend that Dionysius the Areopagite had come to France. In 1124 certain of Abelard's writings on the Trinity were condemned, and he took refuge at Nogent-sur-Seine, near Troyes, under the patronage of the Count of Champagne. He retired to a hermitage of thatch and reeds, the famous Paraclete, but even there students flocked to him, and young nobles were glad to live on coarse bread and lie on straw, that they might taste of wisdom, the bread of the angels. Again his enemies set upon him; he surrendered the Paraclete to Héloïse and a small sisterhood, and accepted the abbotship of St. Gildes in his own Brittany. A decade passed, and again he was seen in Paris. His enemies now determined to silence him, and St. Bernard, the dictator of Christendom, denounced his writings. Abelard appealed for a hearing, and the two champions met in St. Stephen's church at Sens before the king, the hierarchy and a brilliant and expectant audience; the ever-victorious knight-errant of disputation, stood forth, eager for the fray, but St. Bernard simply rose and read out seventeen propositions from his opponent's works, which he declared to be heretical. Abelard in disgust left the lists, and was condemned unheard to perpetual silence. The pope, to whom he appealed, confirmed the sentence, and the weary soldier of the mind, old and heart-broken, retired to Cluny; he gave up the struggle, was reconciled to his opponents, and died absolved by the pope near Chalons in 1142. His ashes were sent to Héloïse, and twenty years later she was laid beside him at the Paraclete. A well-known path, worn by generations of unhappy lovers, leads to a monument in Père-la-Chaise Cemetery at Paris which marks the last resting-place of Abelard and Héloïse, whose remains were transferred there in 1817. It is commonly believed that Abelard's school on Mont St. Genevieve was the origin of the Latin Quarter in Paris, but the migration to the south had probably begun before Abelard came, and was rather due to the overcrowding of the episcopal schools. Teachers and scholars began to swarm to the new quarter over the bridge where quiet, purer air and better accommodation were found. Ordinances of Bishop Gilbert, 1116, and Stephen, 1124, transcribed by Félibien, make this clear. So disturbed were the canons by the numbers of students in the cloister, that _externes_ were to be no longer admitted, nor other schools allowed on the north side where the canons lodged. The growing importance of the new schools, which tended to the advantage of the abbey of St. Genevieve, soon alarmed the bishops, and the theologians were ordered to lecture only between the two bridges (the Petit and Grand Ponts.) But it was Abelard's brilliant career that attracted like a lodestar the youth of Europe to Paris, and made that city the "oven where the intellectual bread of the world was baked." Providence, it was said, had given Empire to Germany, Priestcraft to Italy, Learning to France. What a constellation of great names glows in the spiritual firmament of mediæval Paris: William of Champeaux, Peter Lombard, Maurice de Sully, Pierre de Chartreux, Abelard, Gilbert[66] l'Universel, Adrian IV., St. Thomas of Canterbury, and his biographer John of Salisbury. Small wonder that the youth of the twelfth century sought the springs of learning at Paris! [Footnote 66: Afterwards bishop of London.] [Illustration: NOTRE DAME AND PETIT PONT.] There was no discipline or college life among the earliest students. Each master, having obtained his license from the bishop's chancellor, rented a room at his own cost, and taught what he knew--even, it was sometimes complained, what he did not know. We read of one Adam du Petit Pont, who, in the twelfth century, expounded Aristotle in the back-room of a house on the bridge amid the cackle of cocks and hens, and whose _clientèle_ had many a vituperative contest with the fish-fags of the neighbourhood. The students grouped themselves according to nationalities, and with their masters held meetings in any available cloister, refectory, or church. When funds were needed, a general levy was made and any balance that remained was spent in a festive gathering in the nearest tavern. The aggregation of thousands of young men, some of whom were cosmopolitan vagabonds, gave rise to many evils. Complaints are frequent among the citizens of the depredations and immoralities of riotous _clercs_, who lived by their wits or by their nimble fingers, or by reciting or singing licentious ballads:--the _paouvres escolliers_, whose miserable estate, temptations, debauchery, ignoble pleasures, remorse and degradation have been so pathetically sung by François Villon, master of arts, poet, bohemian, burglar and homicide. The richer scholars often indulged in excesses, and of the vast majority who were poor, some died of hunger. It was the spectacle of half-starving _clercs_ begging for bread that evoked the compassion of pious founders of colleges, which originally were simply hostels for needy scholars. On the return of Louis VII. from a pilgrimage to Becket's shrine, his brother Robert founded about 1180 the church of St. Thomas of Canterbury and a hostel for fifteen students, who, in 1217, were endowed with a chapel of their own, dedicated to St. Nicholas, and were then known as the poor scholars of St. Nicholas.[67] In 1171 a London merchant (Jocius de Londonne), passing through Paris on his return from the Holy Land, touched by the sight of some starving students begging their bread, founded a hostel for eighteen poor scholars at the Hôtel Dieu, who in return for lodging and maintenance were to perform the last Christian rites to the friendless dead. This, known as the college of the Dix-huit, was afterwards absorbed in the Sorbonne. In 1200 Étienne Belot and his wife, burgesses of Paris, founded a hostel for thirteen poor scholars who were known as the _bons enfants_. In all, some dozen colleges were in being when St. Louis came to the throne. In 1253, St. Louis' almoner, Robert of Cerbon or Sorbon, a poor Picardy village, founded[68] a modest college of theology, and obtained from Blanche of Castile a small house above the palace of the Thermæ where he was able to maintain a few poor students of theology. Friends came to his aid and soon sixteen were accommodated, to whom others, able to maintain themselves, were added. In 1269 a papal bull confirmed the establishment of the _pauvres maistres estudiants_ in the faculty of theology at Paris. Even when enriched by later founders it was still called _la pauvre Sorbonne_. By the renown of their erudition the doctors of the Sorbonne became the great court of appeal in the Middle Ages in matters of theology, and the Sorbonne synonymous with the university. Some of the hostels were on a larger scale. The college of Cardinal Lemoine, founded in 1302 by the papal legate, housed sixty students in arts and forty in theology. Most were paying residents, but a number of bursaries were provided for those whose incomes were below a certain amount. Each _boursier_ was given daily two loaves of white bread of twelve ounces, "the common weight in the windows of Paris bakers." [Footnote 67: The two churches still existed in the eighteenth century and stood on the site of the southern Cours Visconti and Lefuel of the present Louvre.] [Footnote 68: The actual originator was, however, the queen's physician, Robert de Douai, who left a sum of money which formed the nucleus of the foundation.] In 1304, Jeanne of Navarre, wife of Philip the Fair, left her mansion near the Tour de Nesle and 2000 livres annually to found the college of Navarre for seventy poor scholars, twenty in grammar, thirty in philosophy, and twenty in theology. The first were allowed four sous weekly; the second, six; the third, eight. If any were possessed of annual incomes respectively of thirty, forty and sixty livres, they ceased to hold bursaries. The maintenance fund seems, however, to have been mismanaged, for we soon read of the scholars of the college walking the streets of Paris every morning crying--"Bread, bread, good people, for the poor scholars of Madame of Navarre!" Some forty colleges were in existence by the end of the fourteenth century and had increased to fifty by the end of the fifteenth; in the seventeenth, Evelyn gives their number as sixty-five. In Félibien's time some had disappeared, for in his map (1725) forty-four colleges only are marked. Nearly the whole of these colleges clustered around the slopes of Mont St. Genevieve, which at length became that Christian Athens that Charlemagne dreamt of. Each college had its own rules. Generally students were required to attend matins (in summer at 3 a.m., winter at 4), mass, vespers and compline. When the curfew of Notre Dame sounded, they retired to their dormitories. Leave to sleep out was granted only in very exceptional cases. Tennis was allowed, cards and dice were forbidden. The college of Montaigu, founded in 1314 by Archbishop Gilles de Montaigu, housed eighty-two poor scholars in memory of the twelve apostles and seventy disciples. There the rod was never spared to the _fainéant_; the discipline so severe, that the college became the terror of the youth of Paris, and fathers were wont to sober their libertine sons by threatening to make _capetes_[69] of them. This was the _Collège de Pouillerye_ denounced by Rabelais and notorious to students as the _Collège des Haricots_, because they were fed there chiefly on beans. Erasmus was a poor _boursier_ there, disgusted at its mean fare and squalor, and Calvin, known as the "accusative," from his austere piety. Desmoulins, the inaugurator of the Revolution, and St. Just, its fiery and immaculate apostle, sat on its benches. To obtain admission to the college of Cluny (1269) the scholar must pass an entrance examination. He then spent two years at logic, three at metaphysics, two in Biblical studies; he held weekly disputations and preached every fortnight in French; he was interrogated every evening by the president on his studies during the day. If students evinced no aptitude for learning they were dismissed; if only moderate progress were made, the secular duties of the college devolved upon them. It was the foundation of these colleges which organised themselves, about 1200, into powerful corporations of masters and scholars (_universitates magistrorum et scholiarum_) that gave the university its definite character. [Footnote 69: The Montaigu scholars were called _capetes_ from their peculiar _cape fermée_, or cloak, such as Masters of Arts used to wear. The Bibliothèque Ste. Geneviève occupies the site of the college.] [Illustration: TOWER IN RUE VALETTE IN WHICH CALVIN IS SAID TO HAVE LIVED.] When the term "university" first came into use is unknown. It is met with in the statutes (1215) which, among other matters, define the limits of age for teaching. A master in the arts must not lecture under twenty-one; of theology under thirty-five. Every master must undergo an examination as to qualification and moral fitness at the Episcopal Chancellor's Court. Early in the twelfth century the four faculties of Law, Medicine, Arts and Theology were formed and the national groups reduced to four: French, Picards, Normans and English. Each group elected its own officers, and in 1245 at latest the _Quatre Nations_ were meeting in the church of St. Julien le Pauvre to choose a common head or rector, who soon superseded the chancellor as head of the university. The rectors in process of time exercised almost sovereign authority in the Latin Quarter; they ruled a population of ten thousand masters and students, who were exempt from civic jurisdiction. In 1200 some German students ill-treated an innkeeper who had insulted their servant. The provost of Paris and some armed citizens attacked the students' houses and blood was shed, whereupon the masters of the schools complained to the king, who was fierce in his anger, and ordered the provost and his accomplices to be cast into prison, their houses demolished and vines uprooted. The provost was given the choice of imprisonment for life or the ordeal by water. Then followed a series of ordinances which abolished secular jurisdiction over the students and made them subject to ecclesiastical courts alone. In the reign of Philip le Bel a provost of Paris dared to hang a scholar. The rector immediately closed all classes until reparation was made, and on the Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin the _curés_ of Paris assembled and went in procession, bearing a cross and holy water to the provost's house, against which each cast a stone, crying, in a loud voice--"Make honourable reparation, thou cursed Satan, to thy mother Holy Church, whose privileges thou hast injured, or suffer the fate of Dathan and Abiram." The king dismissed his provost, caused ample compensation to be made, and the schools were reopened. The famous Petit Pré aux Clercs (Clerks' Meadow) was the theatre of many a fight with the powerful abbots of St. Germain des Prés.[70] From earliest times the students had been wont to take the air in the meadow, which lay between the monastery and the river, and soon claimed the privilege as an acquired right. In 1192 the inhabitants of the monastic suburb resented their insolence, and a free fight ensued, in which several scholars were wounded and one was killed. The rector inculpated the abbot, and each appealed to Rome, with what result is unknown. After nearly a century of strained relations and minor troubles, Abbot Gerard in 1278 had walls and other buildings erected on the way to the meadow: the scholars met in force and demolished them. The abbot, who was equal to the occasion, rang his bells, called his vassals to arms and sent a force to seize the gates of the city that gave on the suburb, to prevent reinforcements reaching the scholars; his retainers then attacked the rioters, killed several and wounded many. The rector complained to the papal legate and threatened to close the schools if reparation were not made and justice done within fifteen days, whereupon the legate ordered the provost of the monastery to be expelled for five years. The royal council forced the abbot to exile ten of his vassals, to endow two chantries for the repose of the souls of slain _clercs_ and compensate their fathers by fines of two hundred and four hundred livres respectively, and to pay the rector two hundred livres to be distributed among poor scholars. In 1345 another bloody fight took place between the monks and the scholars over the right to fish there. [Footnote 70: There were two Prés, the Petit Pré roughly represented by the area now enclosed by the Rues de Seine, Jacob and Bonaparte; and the Grand Pré which extended nearly to the Champ de Mars. A narrow stream, the Petite Seine, divided them.] Many circumstances contributed to make Paris the capital of the intellectual world in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. France has ever been the home of great enthusiasms and has not feared to "follow where airy voices lead." The conception and enforcement of a Truce of God (_Trève de Dieu_) whereby all acts of hostility in private or public wars ceased during certain days of the week or on church festivals; the noble ideal of Christian chivalry; the first crusade--all had their origin in France. The crusaders carried the prestige of the French name and diffused the French idiom over Europe. It was a French monk preaching in France who gave voice to the general enthusiasm; a French pope approved his impassioned oration; a French shout "_Dieu le veut_" became the crusader's war-cry. The conquest of the Holy Land was organised by the French, its first Christian king was a French knight, its laws were indited in French, and to this day every Christian in the East is a Frank whatever tongue he may speak. The French jurists were famed for their supreme excellence all over Western Europe. In the thirteenth century Brunette Latini wrote his most famous work, the _Livres dou Trésor_, in French, because it was _la parleure plus delitable, il plus commune à toutes gens_ ("the most delightful of languages and the most common to all peoples"). Martin da Canale composed his story of Venice in French for the same reason, and Marco Polo dictated his travels in French in a Genoese prison. When St. Francis was sending the brothers to establish the order in distant lands, he himself chose France, but was dissuaded by his friend, Cardinal Ugolin. "When inebriated with love and compassion for Christ," says the writer of the _Speculum_, "and overflowing with sweetest melody of the Spirit, ofttimes would he find utterance in the French tongue; the strains of the divine whisperings which his ear had caught he would express in a French song of joyous exultation, and making the gestures of one playing a viol, he would sing in French of our Lord Jesus Christ." Never in the history of civilisation were men possessed with such passion for the spiritual life or such faith in the reasoning faculty as in the thirteenth century in Paris. The holiest mysteries were analysed and defined; everywhere was a search for new things. Conservative Churchmen became alarmed and complained of disputants and blasphemers exercising their wits at every street corner. The four camel-loads of manuscripts, the works and commentaries of Aristotle, brought by the Jews from Spain--a monstrous and mutilated version translated from Greek into Arabic and from Arabic into Latin--became the battle-ground of the schools. The Church at first forbade the study of Aristotle, then by the genius of Aquinas, Christianised and absorbed him; his works became a kind of intellectual tennis-ball bandied between the Averroists, who carried their teachings to a logical consequence, and the more orthodox followers of Aquinas. For three years the faculty was torn asunder by the rival factions. Siger of Brabant, whose eternal light Dante saw refulgent amid other doctors of the Church in the heaven of the Sun, was an Averroist; Siger-- "Che leggendo nel vico degli strami Sillogizzò invidiosi veri."[71] [Footnote 71: Par. X. 136. "Who lecturing in Straw St. deduced truths that brought him hatred."] The Rue du Fouarre (Straw), where Siger taught and perhaps Dante studied was the street of the Masters of the Arts. Every house in it was a hostel for scholars or a school. It was in the Rue du Fouarre that Pantagruel "held dispute against all the regents, professors of arts and orators and did so gallantly that he overthrew them all and set them all upon their tails." The street still exists, though wholly modernised, opposite the foot of the Petit Pont. Its name has been derived from the straw spread on the floor of the schools or on which the students sat, but there is little doubt that Benvenuto da Imola's[72] explanation, that it was so named from a hay and straw market held there, is the correct one. [Footnote 72: Benvenuto was certainly in France and possibly in Paris during the fourteenth century. At any rate he would be familiar with Parisian students, many of whom were Italians.] The wonderful thirteenth century saw the meridian glory of the university. It was the age of the great Aristotelian schoolmen who all taught at Paris--Albertus Magnus, St. Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus and Roger Bacon, their candid critic, who carried the intellectual curiosity of the age beyond the tolerance of his Franciscan superiors and twice suffered disciplinary measures at Paris. In the fourteenth century the university of Paris was as renowned as ever. Among many tributes from great scholars we choose that of Richard de Bury, bishop of Durham, who in his _Philobiblon_ writes: "O Holy God of gods in Zion, what a mighty stream of joy made glad our hearts whenever we had leisure to visit Paris, the Paradise of the world, and to linger there; where the days seemed ever few for the greatness of our love! There are delightful libraries more aromatic than stores of spicery; there are luxuriant parks of all manners of volumes; there are Academic meads shaken by the tramp of scholars; there are lounges of Athens; walks of the Peripatetics; peaks of Parnassus; and porches of the Stoics. There is seen the surveyor of all arts and sciences Aristotle, to whom belongs all that is most excellent in doctrine, so far as relates to this passing sublunary world; there Ptolemy measures epicycles and eccentric apogees and the nodes of the planets by figures and numbers; there Paul reveals the mysteries; there his neighbour Dionysius arranges and distinguishes the hierarchies; there the virgin Carmentis reproduces in Latin characters all that Cadmus collected in Phoenician letters; there indeed opening our treasures and unfastening our purse-strings we scattered money with joyous heart and purchased inestimable books with mud and sand." In 1349 the number of professors (_maistres-regents_) on the rolls was 502; in 1403 they had increased to 709, to which must be added more than 200 masters of theology and canon law. "The University," wrote Pope Alexander IV. in a papal bull, "is to the Church what the tree of life was to the earthly Paradise, a fruitful source of all learning, diffusing its wisdom over the whole universe; there the mind is enlighted and ignorance banished and Jesus Christ gives to His spouse an eloquence which confounds all her enemies." But decadence soon ensued. The multiplication and enrichment of colleges proved fatal to the old democratic vigour and equality. Some colleges pretended to superiority and the movement lost its unity. Scholasticism had done its work and no new movement took its place. Teachers lost all originality and did but ruminate and comment on the works of their great predecessors. Schools declined in numbers, scholars in attendance and ordinances were needed to correct the abuses covered by the title of scholar. The Jacobin and Cordelier teachers, moreover, had exhausted much life from the university; but its fame continued, and Luther in his early conflicts with the papacy appealed against the pope to the university of Paris. But it made the fatal blunder of opposing the Reform and the Renaissance, instead of absorbing them, and the interest of those great movements centres around the college of France. In the general decay, however, the Jesuit College of Clermont, known later as of Louis le Grand, stood forth renowned and exuberant. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the erudition of its teachers, their excellent method and admirable discipline, made it the premier college of Paris and in the heyday of its fame five hundred scholars crowded its halls, among them the scions of the nobility of France. Towards the end of the eighteenth century the university had its seat in the college and concentrated there the endowments, or such as had escaped spoliation, of twenty-six suppressed colleges. The college of Louis le Grand and nine others of the multitude that clustered around the hill of St. Genevieve, were all that survived when the Revolution burst forth, and it is not without interest to note that on 19th June 1781, the central body sitting at the famous Jesuit college unanimously awarded a prize of six hundred livres to a poor young _boursier_ of the college of Arras, named Louis François Maximilian Marie Robespierre, for twelve years of exemplary conduct and of success in examinations and competitions. Before we close this chapter a word of acknowledgment is due to the mediæval church in Paris for her careful fostering of elementary education. By the Taille of 1292 already referred to, we learn that schools for children of both sexes were distributed nearly over the whole of the city radiating from the mother church of Notre Dame. At the beginning of the fifteenth century twenty-one parishes had one or two of these schools; in 1449 a thousand schoolboys took part in a procession to Notre Dame to render thanks for the recovery of Normandy. The Church inspected the sanitary condition of the schools and exacted a standard of proficiency for the qualification of masters and mistresses. CHAPTER VII _Conflict with Boniface VIII.--The States-General--The Destruction of the Knights-Templars--The Parlement_ In 1302 the eyes of Europe were again drawn to Paris where the Fourth Philip, surnamed the Fair, a prince who, in Dante's grim metaphor, scourged the shameless harlot of Rome from head to foot, and dragged her to do his will in France, was grappling with the great pontiff, Boniface VIII.--the most resolute upholder of the papacy in her claim to universal secular supremacy--and essaying a task which had baffled the mighty emperors themselves. The king knowing he had embarked on a struggle in which the greatest potentates had been worsted, determined to appeal to the patriotism of all classes of his subjects and fortify himself on the broad basis of such popular opinion as then existed. For the first time the States-General were summoned, after the burning of the papal bull in Paris on the memorable Sunday of 11th February 1302. Their meeting marks an epoch in French history, and for the first time members of the _Tiers État_ (the third estate, or commons), sat beside the privileged orders of clergy and nobles, and were recognised as one of the legitimate orders of the realm. The assembly was convoked to meet in Notre Dame on the 10th of April. The question was the old one which had rent Christendom asunder for centuries: Was the pope at Rome to be supreme over the princes and peoples of the earth in secular as well as in spiritual matters? The utmost enthusiasm prevailed, and though the prelates spoke with a somewhat timid voice, the assembled members swore to risk their lives and property rather than sacrifice the honour of the crown and their own liberties to the insolent usurpation of Rome. Excommunication followed, but Philip had ordered all the passes from Italy to be guarded, so that no papal letter or messenger should enter France. "Boniface, who," says Villani, the Florentine chronicler, "was proud and scornful, and bold to attempt every great deed, magnanimous and puissant," replied by announcing the publication of a bull deposing the king from his throne and releasing his subjects from their allegiance. Philip at an assembly in the garden of the palace in the Cité, and in presence of the chief ecclesiastical, religious and lay authorities, again laid his case before the people and read an appeal against the pope to a future Council of the Church. The bull of deposition was to be promulgated on 8th September. On the 7th, while the aged pope was peacefully resting at his native city of Anagni, Guillaume de Nogaret, Philip's minister, bearing the royal banner of France, Sciarra Colonna and other disaffected Italian nobles, with three hundred horsemen, flung themselves into Anagni, crying--"Death to Pope Boniface." The papal palace was unguarded: at the first alarm the cardinals fled and hid themselves, and all but a few faithful servants forsook their master. The defenceless pope believed that his hour was come, but, writes Villani, "Great-souled and valiant as he was, he said, 'Since like Jesus Christ I must be taken by treachery and suffer death, at least I will die like a pope.' He commanded his servants to robe him in the mantle of Peter, to place the crown of Constantine on his head and the keys and crozier in his hands." He ascended the papal throne and calmly waited. Guillaume, Sciarra and the other leaders burst into the apartment, sword in hand, uttering the foulest of insults; but awed and cowed by the indomitable old pontiff, who stood erect in appalling majesty, their weapons dropped as though their hands were palsied and none durst offend him. They set a guard outside the room and proceeded to loot the palace. For three days the grand old pope--he was eighty-six years of age--remained a prisoner, until the people of Anagni rallied and rescued him, and he returned to Rome. In a month the humiliated Boniface died of a broken heart, and before two years were passed his successor in Peter's chair, Pope Clement V., revoked all his bulls and censures, expunged them from the papal register, solemnly condemned his memory and restored the Colonna family to all their honours. Dante, who hated Boniface as cordially as Philip did, and cast him into hell, was yet revolted at the cruelty of the "new Pilate, who had carried the fleur-de-lys into Anagni, who made Christ captive, mocked Him a second time, renewed the gall and vinegar, and slew Him between two living thieves." But the "new Pilate was not yet sated." The business at Anagni had only been effected _spendendo molta moneta_; the disastrous battle of Courtrai and the inglorious Flemish wars had exhausted the royal treasury; and the debasement of the coinage availing nought, Philip turned his lustful eyes on a once powerful lay order, whose chief seat was at Paris and whose wealth and pride were the talk of Christendom. After the capture of Jerusalem and the establishment there of a Christian kingdom, pilgrims flocked to the holy places. Soon, however, piteous stories reached Jerusalem of the cruel spoliation and murder of unarmed pilgrims, on their journey from the coast, by hordes of roving lightly-armed Bedouins, against whom the heavily-armed Franks were powerless. The evil was growing well-nigh intolerable when, in 1118, two young French nobles, Hugh of Payens and Godfrey of St. Omer, with other seven youths of highest birth, bound themselves into a lay community, with the object of protecting the pilgrims' way. They took the usual vows of poverty, charity and obedience; St. Bernard drew up their Rule--and we may be sure it was austere enough--pope and patriarch confirmed it. Their garb was a mantle of purest white linen with a red cross embroidered on the shoulder. The order was housed in a wing of the palace, which was built on the site of Solomon's Temple, hard by the Holy Sepulchre, and its members called themselves the Poor Soldiers of Christ and of Solomon's Temple. Their banner, half of black, half of white, was inscribed with the device "_non nobis Domine_." Their battle-cry "Beauceant," and their seal, two figures on horseback, have not been satisfactorily interpreted--the latter probably portrays a knight riding away with a rescued pilgrim. Soon the little band of nine was joined by hundreds of devoted youths from rich and noble families; endowments to provide them with arms and horses and servants flowed in, and thus was formed the most famous, the purest and the most heroic body of warriors the world has ever seen. Hugh de Payens had gathered three hundred Knights-Templars around him at Jerusalem: in five years nearly every one had been slain in battle. But enthusiasm filled the ranks faster than they were mowed down: none ever surrendered and the order paid no money for ransom. When hemmed in by overwhelming numbers, they fought till the last man fell, or died, a wounded captive, in the hands of the Saracens. Of the twenty-two Grand Masters, seven were killed in battle, five died of wounds, and one of voluntary starvation in the hands of the infidel. When Acre was lost, and the last hold of the Christians in the Holy Land was wrested from them, only ten Knights-Templars of the five hundred who fought there escaped to Cyprus. They chose Jacques de Molay for Grand Master, replenished their treasury and renewed their members; but their mission was gone for ever. The order was exempt from episcopal jurisdiction and subject to the pope alone; its wealth, courage and devotion were rusting for lack of employment. Boniface VIII., with that grandeur and daring which make of him, despite his faults, so magnificent a figure in history, conceived the idea of uniting them with the other military orders--the Hospitallers and the Teutonic Knights--and making of the united orders an invincible army to enforce on Europe the decrees of a benevolent and theocratic despotism. They soon became suspected and hated by bishops and kings alike, and at length were betrayed by the papacy itself to their enemies. In 1304, a pair of renegade Templars,[73] who for their crimes were under sentence of imprisonment for life in the prison at Toulouse, sought an introduction to the king, and promised in return for their liberty to give information of certain monstrous crimes and sacrileges of common and notorious occurrence in the order. Depositions were taken and sent to Philip's creature, Pope Clement V. Some communication passed between them, but no action was taken and the matter seemed to have lapsed. About a year after these events the pope wrote an affectionate letter to Jacques de Molay, inviting him to bring the treasure of the order and his chief officers to France, to confer with himself and the king respecting a new crusade. Jacques and his companions, suspecting nothing, came and were received by pope and king with great friendliness: the treasure, twelve mules' load of gold and silver, was stored in the vaults of the great fortress of the Templars at Paris. Some rumours reached de Molay of the delation made by the Toulousian prisoners, but the pope reassured him in an interview, April 1307, and lulled him into security. On 14th September of the same year the royal officers of the realm were ordered to hold themselves armed for secret service on 12th October, and sealed letters were handed to them to be opened that night. At dawn on the 13th, all the Templars in France were arrested in their beds and flung into the episcopal gaols, and the bishops then proceeded to "examine" the prisoners. One hundred and forty were dealt with in Paris, the centre of the order. The charges and a confession of their truth by the Grand Master were read to them; denial, they were told, was useless: liberty would be the reward of confession, imprisonment the penalty of denial. [Footnote 73: The contemporary chronicler, Villani, says of one of these scoundrels that he "was named Nosso Dei, one of our Florentines, a man filled with every vice."] A few confessed and were set free. The remainder were "examined." Starvation and torture of the most incredible ferocity did their work. Thirty-six died under the rack in Paris, and many more in other places; most of the remainder confessed to anything the inquisitors required. Clement, warned by the growing feeling in Europe, now became alarmed, and the next act in the drama opens at the abbey of St. Genevieve in Paris, where a papal commission sat to hear what the Templars had to say in their defence. All were invited to give evidence and promised immunity in the name of the pope. Hundreds came to Paris to defend their order,[74] but having been made to understand by the bishops that they would be burned as heretics if they retracted their confessions, they held back for a time until solemnly assured by the papal commissioners that they had nothing to fear, and might freely speak. Ponzardus de Gysiaco, preceptor of Payens, then came forward and disclosed the atrocious means used to extort confessions, and said if he were so tortured again he would confess anything that were demanded of him; he would face death, however horrible, even by boiling and fire, in defence of his order, but long-protracted and agonising torture was beyond human endurance. Ponzardus was sent back to confinement and the warders were bidden to see that he suffered naught for what he had said. The rugged old master, Jacques de Molay, scarred by honourable wounds, the marks of many a battle with the infidel, was brought before the court and his alleged confession read to him. He was stupefied, and swore that if his enemies were not priests he would know how to deal with them. A second time he was examined and preposterous charges of unnatural crimes were preferred against the order by the king's chancellor, Guillaume de Nogaret. They were drawn from a chronicle at St. Denis, and based on certain statements alleged to have been made by Saladin, Sultan of Babylon (Egypt). Again he was stupefied, and declared he had never heard of such things. And now the Templars' courage rose. Two hundred and thirty-one came forward, emaciated, racked and torn; among them one poor wretch was carried in, whose feet had been burnt by slow fires.[75] Nearly all protested that the confessions had been wrung from them by torture, that their accusers were perjurers, and that they would maintain the purity of their order _usque ad mortem_ ("even unto death"). Many complained that they were poor, illiterate soldiers, neither able to pay for legal defence nor to comprehend the charges indicted in Latin against them. It was Philip's turn now to be alarmed, but the prelates were equal to the crisis. The archbishop of Sens, metropolitan of Paris and brother of the king's chief adviser, convoked a provincial court at his palace in Paris, and condemned to the stake fifty-four of the Knights who had retracted their confessions. On the 10th of May the papal commissioners were appealed to: they expressed their sorrow that the episcopal court was beyond their jurisdiction, but would consider what might be done. Short time was allowed them. The stout-hearted archbishop was not a man to show weakness; he went steadily on with his work, and in spite of appeals from the papal judges for delay, the fifty-four were led forth on the afternoon of the 12th[76] to the open country outside the Porte St. Antoine, near the convent of St. Antoine des Champs, and slowly roasted to death. They bore their fate with the constancy of martyrs, each protesting his innocence with his last breath, and declaring that the charges alleged against the order were false. Two days later, six more were sent to the stake at the Place de Grève. In spite of threats, the prelates went on with their grim work of terror. Many of the bravest Templars still gave the lie to their traducers, but the majority were cowed; further confessions were obtained, and the pope was satisfied. The proudest, bravest and richest order in Christendom was crushed or scattered to the four corners of the world; their vast estates were nominally confiscated to the Knights Hospitallers. But our "most dear brother in Christ, Philip the king, although he was not moved by avarice nor intended the appropriation of the Templars' goods"[77] had to be compensated for the expense of the prosecution: the treasure of the order failed to satisfy the exorbitant claims of the crown, and the Hospitallers were said to have been impoverished rather than enriched by the transfer. [Footnote 74: The indictment covers seven quarto pages. The charges may be briefly classified as blasphemy, heresy, spitting and trampling on the crucifix, obscene and secret rites, and unnatural crimes.] [Footnote 75: An approved method of extracting confessions. As late as 1584 at the examination of a papal emissary, the titular archbishop of Cashel, before the Lords Justices, Archbishop Loftus and Sir H. Wallop at Dublin, the easy method failing to do any good "we made commission," writes Loftus to Walsingham, "to put him to torture such as your honour advised us, which was to toast his feet against the fire with hot boots. Yielding to the agony he confessed," etc.--Froude's _History_, x. p. 619.] [Footnote 76: There is a significant entry on page 273 of the published trial: _in ista pagina nihil est scriptum_. The empty page tells of the moment when the papal commissioners, having heard that the fifty-four had been burned, suspended the sitting.] [Footnote 77: _Nihil sibi appropriare intendebat._] [Illustration: PALACE OF THE ARCHBISHOP OF SENS.] The last act was yet to come. On 11th March 1314, a great stage was erected in the _parvis_ of Notre Dame, and there, in chairs of state, sat the pope's envoy, a cardinal, the archbishop of Sens, and other officers of Christ's Church on earth. The Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, and three preceptors were exposed to the people; their alleged confession and the papal bull suppressing the order, and condemning them to imprisonment for life, were read by the cardinal. But, to the amazement of his Eminence, when the clauses specifying the enormities to which the accused had confessed were being recited, the veteran Master and the preceptor of Normandy rose, and in loud voices, heard of all the people, repudiated the confession, and declared that they were wholly guiltless, and ready to suffer death. They had not long to wait. Hurried counsel was held with the king, and that same night Jacques de Molay and the preceptor of Normandy were brought to a little island on the Seine, known as the Isle of the Trellises,[78] and burnt to death, protesting their innocence to the last. [Footnote 78: Or the isle of the Jews, which, with its sister islet of Bussy, were subsequently joined to the island of the Cité, and now form the Place Dauphine and the land that divides the Pont Neuf. Philip watched the fires from his palace garden.] "God pays debts, but not in money." An Italian chronicler relates that the Master, while expiring in the flames, solemnly cited pope and king to meet him before the judgment-seat of God. In less than forty days Clement V. lay dead: in eight months Philip IV. was thrown by his horse. Seven centuries later the grisly fortress of the Templars opened its portals, and the last of the unbroken line of the kings of France was led forth to a bloody death. Those who would read the details of the dramatic examination at Paris before the papal commissioners, may do so in the minutes published by Michelet.[79] The great historian declares that a study of the evidence shook his belief in the Templars' innocence, and that if he were writing his history again, he must needs alter his attitude towards them. Such is not the impression left on the mind of the present writer. Moreover it has been pointed out that there is a suspicious identity in the various groups of testimonies, corresponding to the episcopal courts whence such testimonies came. The royal officers, after the severest search, could find not a single compromising document in the Templars' houses, nothing but a few account books, works of devotion and copies of St. Bernard's Rule. There were undoubtedly unworthy and vicious knights among the fifteen thousand Templars belonging to the order, but the charges brought against them are too monstrous for belief. The call which they had responded to so nobly, however, had long ceased. They were wealthy, proud and self-absorbed. Sooner or later they must infallibly have gone the way of all organisations which have outlived their use and purpose. It is the infamy of their violent destruction for which pope and king must answer at the bar of history. [Footnote 79: It is to be hoped that some English scholar will do for these most important records, the earliest report of any great criminal trial which we possess, what Mr. T. Douglas Murray has done for the Trial and Rehabilitation of Joan of Arc.] Philip's reign is also remarkable for the establishment of the Parlement in Paris. From earliest times of the Monarchy, the kings had dispensed justice, surrounded by the chief Churchmen and nobles of the land, thus constituting an ambulatory tribunal which was held wherever the sovereign might happen to be. In 1302 Philip restricted it to judicial functions, and housed it in his palace of the Cité, which on the kings ceasing to dwell there in 1431 became the Palais de Justice. The ancient palace was rebuilt and enlarged by Philip. A vast hall with a double barrel-roof decorated with azure and gold, supported by a central row of columns adorned with statues of the kings of France--the most spacious and most beautiful Gothic chamber in France--and other courts and offices accommodated the Parlement. The tribunal was at first composed of twenty-six councillors or judges, of whom thirteen were lawyers, presided over by the royal chancellor, and sat twice yearly for periods of two months. It consisted of three chambers or courts.[80] The nobles who at first sat among the lay members gradually ceased to attend owing to a sense of their legal inefficiency, and the Parlement became at length a purely legal body. During the imprisonment of John the Good in England, the Parlement[81] sat _en permanence_, and henceforth became the _cour souveraine et capitale_ of the kingdom. The purity of its members was maintained by severest penalties. In 1336 one of the presidents was convicted of receiving bribes and hanged. Twelve years later the falsification of some depositions was punished with the same severity, and in 1545 a corrupt chancellor was fined 100,000 livres, degraded, and imprisoned for five years. The chief executive officer of the Parlement, known as the Concierge, appointed the bailiffs of the court and had extensive local jurisdiction over dishonest merchants and craftsmen, whose goods he could burn. His official residence, known as the Conciergerie, subsequently became a prison, and so remains to this day. The entrance flanked by the two ancient _tours de César et d'Argent_, is one of the most familiar objects in Paris. There the Count of Armagnac was assassinated and the cells are still shown where Marie Antoinette, Madame Roland, and many of the chief victims of the Terror were lodged before their execution; where Danton, Hébert, Chaumette, and Robespierre followed each other in one self-same chamber. [Footnote 80: In the seventeenth century the councillors had increased to one hundred and twenty and the courts to seven.] [Footnote 81: The term "Parlement" was originally applied to the transaction of the common business of a monastic establishment after the conclusion of the daily chapter.] [Illustration: PALAIS DE JUSTICE, CLOCK TOWER AND CONCIERGERIE.] CHAPTER VIII _Étienne Marcel--the English Invasions--The Maillotins--Murder of the Duke of Orleans--Armagnacs and Burgundians_ With the three sons of Philip who successively became kings of France, the direct line of the Capetian dynasty ends: with the accession of Philip VI. in 1328, the house of Valois opens the sad century of the English wars--a period of humiliation and defeat, of rebellious and treacherous princes, civil strife, famine and plague, illumined only by the heroism of a peasant-girl, who, when king and nobles were sunk in shameless apathy or sullen despair, saved France from utter extinction. Pope after pope sought to make peace, but in vain: _Hui sont en paix, demain en guerre_ ("to-day peace, to-morrow war") was the normal and inevitable situation until the English had wholly subjected France or the French driven the English to their natural boundary of the Channel. Never since the days of Charlemagne had the French Monarchy been so powerful as when the Valois came to the throne: in less than a generation Crecy and Poitiers had made the English name a terror in France, and a French king, John the Good, was led captive to England. In 1346 Paris saw her _faubourgs_ wasted, the palace of St. Germain and the fortress of Montjoie St. Denis[82] spoiled and burnt, and the English camp fires nightly glowing. Once again, as in the dark Norman times, she rose and determined to save herself. Étienne Marcel, the leader of the movement, whose statue now stands near the site of the Maison aux Piliers was a rich merchant prince of old family, a member of the great drapers' guild, and elected Provost of the _Marchands d'Eau_ in 1355. He it was who bought for 2400 florins of gold the Maison des Dauphins, better known as the Maison aux Piliers or Hôtel de Ville, on the Place de Grève and transferred thither the seat of the civic administration from the old Parloir aux Bourgeois, enclosed in the south wall of Paris. The Dauphin,[83] who had assumed the title of Lieutenant-General, convoked the States-General at Paris, but he was forced by Marcel and his party to grant some urgent reforms, and a Committee of National Defence was organised by the trade guilds and the provost, who became virtually dictator of Paris. Marcel's rule was however stained by the butchery of the Marshal of Champagne and the Duke of Normandy before the very eyes of the Dauphin in the palace of the Cité, who, horrified, fled to Compiègne to rally the nobles. During the ensuing anarchy the poor, dumb, starving serfs of France, in their hopeless misery and despair, rose in insurrection and swept like a flame over the land. Froissart, who writes from the distorted stories told him by the seigneurs, has woefully exaggerated the atrocities of the _Jacquerie_."[84] There was much arson and pillage, but barely thirty of the nobles are known to have perished. Of the merciless vengeance taken by the seigneurs there is ample confirmation: the wretched peasants were easily out-manoeuvred and killed like rats by the mail-clad nobles and their men-at-arms. Meanwhile the Dauphin was marching on Paris: Marcel seized the Louvre and set 3000 workmen to fortify the city. In less than a year the greater part of the northern walls, with gates, bastilles and fosses, was completed--the greatest feat, says Froissart, the provost ever achieved. A citizen army was raised, whose hoods of red and blue, the colours of Paris, distinguished them from the royal sympathisers. Marcel turned for support to the _Jacques_, and on their suppression essayed to win over Charles of Navarre. On 30th November 1357, Charles stood on the royal stage on the walls of the abbey of St. Germain des Prés, whence the kings of France were wont to witness the judicial combats in the Prés aux Clercs, and addressed an assembly of 10,000 citizens. _Moult longuement_ he sermonised, says the _Grandes Chroniques_, so that dinner was over in Paris before he finished. After yet another harangue at the Maison aux Piliers on 15th June 1358, he was acclaimed by people with "Navarre! Navarre!" and elected the Captain of Paris. An obscure period of plot and counterplot followed which culminated in the ruin of Marcel and his followers. Froissart accuses the provost of a treacherous intent to open the gates of St. Honoré and of St. Antoine to Navarre's English mercenaries at midnight on 31st July, and gives a dramatic story of the discovery of the plot and slaying of the provost by Jean Maillart, his friend and associate. We supplement his version from the Chronicle of St. Denis: on the last day of July, Marcel and his suite repaired to the bastille of St. Denis and ordered the guards to surrender the keys to Charles of Navarre's treasurer. Maillart, who had been won over by the Dauphin, had preceded him. The guard refused to hand over the keys and an angry altercation ensued between the former friends. Maillart mounted horse, seized a royal banner, sped to the Halles and to the cry of "Montjoie St. Denis!" called the royal partizans to arms: a similar appeal was made by Pepin des Essards. Meanwhile Marcel had reached the bastille of St. Antoine, where he was met by Maillart and the royal partizans. "Stephen, Stephen!" cried the latter, "what dost thou here at this hour?" "I am here," answered the provost, "to guard the city whose governor I am." "_Par Dieu_," retorted Maillart, "thou art here for no good," and turning to his followers, said, "Behold the keys which he holds to the destruction of the city." Each gave the other the lie. "Good people," protested Marcel, "why would you do me ill? All I wrought was for your good as well as mine." Maillart for answer smote at him, crying, "Traitor, _à mort, à mort_!" There was a stubborn fight, and Maillart felled the provost by a blow with his axe; six of the provost's companions were slain, and the remainder haled to prison. Next day the Dauphin entered Paris in triumph, and the popular leaders were executed on the Place de Grève. The provost's body was dragged to the court of the church of St. Catherine du Val des Écoliers, naked, that it might be seen of all, on the very spot where the bodies of the Marshal of Champagne and the Duke of Normandy had been flung six months before: after a long exposure it was cast into the Seine. All the reforms were revoked by the king, but the remembrance of the time when the merchants and people of Paris had dared to speak to their royal lord face to face of justice and good government, was never obliterated. [Footnote 82: The royal war-cry, "Montjoie St. Denis," was uttered when the king took the Oriflamme from the altar at St. Denis.] [Footnote 83: During John the Good's reign, the province of Dauphiny had been added to the French crown, and the king's eldest son took the title of Dauphin.] [Footnote 84: So called from the familiar appellation "Jacques Bonhomme," applied half in contempt, half in jest, by the seigneurs to the peasants who served them in the wars.] Next year the English peril again threatened Paris. The invasion of 1359 resembled a huge picnic or hunting expedition. The king of England and his barons brought their hunters, falcons, dogs and fishing tackle. They marched leisurely to Bourg la Reine, less than two leagues from Paris, pillaged the surrounding country and turned to Chartres, where tempest and sickness forced Edward III. to come to terms. After the treaty of Bretigny, in 1360, the Parisians saw their good King John again, who was ransomed for a sum equal to about ten million pounds of present-day value. The memory of this and other enormous ransoms exacted by the English, endured for centuries, and when a Frenchman had paid his creditors he would say,--_j'ai payé mes Anglais_.[85] ("I have paid my English.") A magnificent reception was accorded to the four English barons who came to sign the Peace at Paris. They were taken to the Sainte Chapelle and shown the fairest relics and richest jewels in the world, and each was given a spine from the crown of thorns, which he deemed the noblest jewel that could be presented to him. [Footnote 85: Howell mentions the locution in a letter dated 1654.] The Dauphin, who on the death of good King John in London (1364) became Charles V., by careful statesmanship succeeded in restoring order to the kingdom and to its finances[86] and in winning some successes against the English. [Footnote 86: Charles taxed and borrowed heavily. Even the members of his household were importuned for loans, however small. His cook lent him frs. 67.50.] In 1370 their camp fires were again seen outside Paris: but Marcel's wall had now been completed. Charles refused battle and allowed them to ravage the suburbs with impunity. Before the army left, an English knight swore he would joust at the gates of the city, and spurred lance in hand against them. As he turned to ride back, a big butcher lifted his pole-axe, smote the knight on the neck and felled him; four others battered him to death, "their blows," says Froissart, "falling on his armour like strokes on an anvil." By wise council rather than by war Charles won back much of his dismembered country. He was a great builder and patron of the arts. The Louvre, being now enclosed within the new wall and no longer part of the defences of Paris, was handed over to Raymond of the Temple, Charles' "beloved mason," to transform into a sumptuous palace with apartments for himself and his queen, the princes of the blood and the officers of the royal household. The rooms were decorated with sculpture by Jean de St. Romain, _tailleur d'ymages_ and other carvers in stone, and with paintings, by Jean d'Orléans. Each suite was furnished with a private chapel, those of the king and queen being carved with much "art and patience." A gallery was built for the minstrels and players of instruments. A great garden was planted towards the Rue St. Honoré on the north and the old wall of Philip Augustus on the east, in which were an "Hôtel des Lions," or collection of wild beasts, and a tennis court, where the king and princes played. The palace accounts still exist, with details of payments for "wine for the stone-cutters which the king our lord gave them when he came to view the works." Jean Callow and Geoffrey le Febre were paid for planting squares of strawberries, hyssop, sage, lavender, balsam, violets, and for making paths, weeding and carrying away stones and filth; others were paid for planting bulbs of lilies, double red roses and other good herbs. Twenty francs were paid to Gobin d'Ays, "who guards our nightingales of our chastel of the Louvre." The first royal library was founded by Charles, and Peter the Cage-maker was employed to protect the library windows of stained glass from birds--it overlooked the falconry--and other beasts, by trellises of wire. In order that scholars might work there at all hours, thirty small chandeliers were provided and a silver lamp was suspended from the vaulting. Solemn masters at _grants gages_ were employed to translate the most notable books[87] from Latin into French; scribes and bookbinders of the university were exempted from the watch. An interesting payment of six francs in gold, made to Jacqueline, widow of a mason "because she is poor and helpless and her husband met his death in working for the king at the Louvre," demonstrates that royal custom had anticipated modern legislation. [Footnote 87: This priceless collection of books, which at length filled three rooms, was appropriated for a nominal sum by the Duke of Bedford during the English occupation in Paris and sent to England. A few, barely fifty, have survived, of which the greater number have been acquired by the Bibliothèque Nationale.] Charles surrendered the royal palace in the Cité, associated with bitter memories of Marcel's dictatorship, to the Parlement, and partly bought, partly erected an irregular group of exquisite Gothic mansions and chapels which he furnished with sumptuous magnificence and surrounded with tennis courts, falconries, menageries, delightful and spacious gardens--a _hostel solennel des grands esbattements_, "where," as the royal edict runs, "we have had many joys and with God's grace have recovered from several great sicknesses, wherefore we are moved to that hostel by love, pleasure and singular affection." This royal city within a city, known as the Hôtel St. Paul, covered together with the monastery and church of the Célestins, a vast space, now roughly bounded by the Rue St. Paul, the quai des Célestins and the Rue de Sully, the Rue de l'Arsenal and the Rue St. Antoine. Charles VII. was the last king who dwelt there; the buildings fell to ruin, and between 1519 and 1551 were gradually sold. No vestige of this palace of delight now remains, nothing but the memory of it in a few street names,--the streets of the Fair Trellis, of the Lions of St. Paul, of the Garden of St. Paul, and of the Cherry Orchard. To Charles V. is also due the beautiful chapel of Vincennes and the completion of Étienne Marcel's wall. This third enclosure, began at the Tour de Billi, which stood at the angle formed by the Gare de l'Arsenal and the Seine, extended north by the Boulevard Bourdon, the Place de la Bastille, and the line of the inner Boulevards to the Porte St. Denis; it then turned south-west by the old Porte Montmartre, the Place des Victoires and across the garden of the Palais Royal to the Tour du Bois, a little below the present Pont du Carrousel. It was fortified by a double moat and square towers. The south portion was never begun. In 1370, Charles' provost, Hugues Aubriot, warned his royal master that the Hôtel St. Paul would be difficult to defend, and advised him to replace the Bastille[88] of St. Antoine by a great stronghold which might serve as a state prison[89] and as a defence from within and without. In 1380 the dread Bastille of sinister fame, with its eight towers, was raised--ever a hateful memory to the citizens, for it was completed by the royal provost when the provost of the merchants had been suppressed by Charles VI. in 1383. [Footnote 88: Each gate of the new wall was defended by a kind of fortress called a Bastide or Bastille.] [Footnote 89: Aubriot is said to have been the first prisoner incarcerated in the dungeon of his own Bastille.] "Woe to thee O land, when thy king is a child!" During the minority and reign of Charles VI. France lay prostrate under a hail of evils that menaced her very existence, and Paris was reduced to the profoundest misery and humiliation. The breath had not left the old king's body before his elder brother, the Count of Anjou, who was hiding in an adjacent room, hastened to seize the royal treasure and the contents of the public exchequer. No regent had been appointed, and the four royal dukes, the young king's uncles of Anjou, Burgundy, Bourbon, and Berri, began to strive for power. In 1382 Anjou, who had been suffered to hold the regency, sought to enforce an unpopular tax on the merchants of Paris. A collector having seized an old watercress seller at the Halles with much brutality, the people revolted, armed themselves with the loaded clubs (_maillotins_) stored in the Hôtel de Ville for use against the English, attacked and put to death with great cruelty some of the royal officers and opened the prisons. The court temporised, promised to remit the tax and to grant an amnesty; but with odious treachery caused the leaders of the movement to be seized, put them in sacks and flung them at dead of night into the Seine. The angry Parisians now barricaded their streets and closed their gates against the king. Negotiations followed and by payment of 100,000 francs to the Duke of Anjou the citizens were promised immunity and the king and his uncles entered the city. But the court nursed its vengeance, and after the victory over the Flemings at Rosebecque, Charles and his uncles with a powerful force marched on Paris. The Parisians, 20,000 strong, stood drawn up in arms at Montmartre to meet him. They were asked who were their chiefs and if the Constable de Clisson might enter Paris. "None other chiefs have we," they answered, "than the king and his lords: we are ready to obey their orders." "Good people of Paris," said the Constable on his arrival at their camp, "what meaneth this? meseems you would fight against your king." They replied that their purpose was but to show the king the puissance of his good city of Paris. "'Tis well," said the Constable, "if you would see the king return to your homes and put aside your arms." On the morrow, 11th January 1383, the king and his court, with 12,000 men-at-arms, appeared at the Porte St. Denis, and there stood the provost of the merchants with the chief citizens in new robes, holding a canopy of cloth of gold. Charles, with a fierce glance, ordered them back; the gates were unhinged and flung down; the royal army entered as in a conquered city. A terrible vengeance ensued. The President of the Parlement and other civil officers, with three hundred prominent citizens, were arrested and cast into prison. In vain was the royal clemency entreated by the Duchess of Orleans, the rector of the university and chief citizens all clothed in black. The bloody diurnal work of the executioner began and continued until a general pardon was granted on March 1st on payment of an enormous fine. The liberties of the city met the same fate. The Maison aux Piliers reverted to the crown, the provostship of the merchants, and all the privileges of the Parisians, were suppressed, and the hateful taxes reimposed. Never had the heel of despotism ground them down so mercilessly; yet was no niggardly welcome given to Isabella of Bavaria, Charles' consort, on her entry into Paris in 1389. "I, the author of this book," says Froissart, after describing at length the usual incidents of a royal procession--the fountains running with wines, aromatic with Orient spices, the music, the ballets, the spectacles, the sumptuous decorations--"I marvelled when I beheld such great foison, for all the grant Rue St. Denis was as richly covered with cloth of camelot and of silk like as were all the cloth had for nothing or that we were in Alexandria or Damascus." A curious incident is related by the chronicler of St. Denis; Charles, desirous of being present incognito at the wondrous scene, bade Savoisy take horse and let him ride behind _en croupe_. Thus mounted the pair rode to the Châtelet to see the queen pass. There they found much people and a strong guard of sergeants, armed with stout staves with which the officers smote amain to keep back the press, and in the scuffle the king received many a thwack on the shoulders, whereat was great merriment when the thing was known at court in the evening. Three years later a royal progress of far different nature was witnessed in Paris. The king, a poor demented captive, was borne in by the Duke of Orleans to the Hôtel St. Paul. In 1393, when he had somewhat recovered from his madness, a grand masked ball was given to celebrate the wedding of one of the ladies of honour who was a widow. The marriage of a widow was always the occasion of riotous mirth, and Charles disguised himself and five of his courtiers as satyrs. They were sewed up in tight-fitting vestments of linen, which were coated with resin and pitch and covered with rough tow; on their heads they wore hideous masks. While the ladies of the court were celebrating the marriage the king and his companions rushed in howling like wolves and indulged in the most uncouth gestures and jokes. The Duke of Orleans, drawing too near with a torch to discover their identity, set fire to the tow and in a second they were enveloped in so many shirts of Nessus. Unable to fling off their blazing dresses they madly ran hither and thither, suffering the most excruciating agony and uttering piteous cries. The king happened to be near the young Duchess of Berri who, with admirable presence of mind, flung her robe over him and rescued him from the flames. One knight saved himself by plunging into a large tub of water in the kitchen, one died on the spot, two died on the second day, another lingered for three days in awful torment. The horror of the scene[90] so affected Charles that his madness returned more violently than ever. His queen abandoned him and he was left to wander like some wild animal about his rooms in the Hôtel St. Paul, untended, unkempt, verminous, his only companion his low-born mistress Odette. [Footnote 90: The scene is quaintly illustrated in an illuminated copy of Froissart in the British Museum.] The bitterness of the avuncular factions was now intensified. The House of Burgundy by marriage and other means had grown to be one of the most powerful in Europe and was at fierce enmity with the House of Orleans. At the death of Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, his son Jean sans Peur, sought to assume his father's supremacy as well as his title: the Duke of Orleans, strong in the queen's support, determined to foil his purpose. Each fortified his hôtel in Paris and assembled an army. Friends, however, intervened; they were reconciled, and in November 1407 the two dukes attended mass at the Church of the Grands Augustins, took the Holy Sacrament and dined together. As Jean rose from table the Duke of Orleans placed the Order of the Porcupine round his neck; swore _bonne amour et fraternité_, and they kissed each other with tears of joy. On 23rd November a forged missive was handed to the Duke of Orleans, requiring his attendance on the queen. He set forth on a mule, accompanied by two squires and five servants carrying torches. It was a sombre night, and as the unsuspecting prince rode up the Rue Vieille du Temple behind his little escort, humming a tune and playing with his glove, a band of assassins fell upon him from the shadow of the postern La Barbette, crying "_à mort, à mort_" and he was hacked to death. Then issued from a neighbouring house at the sign of Our Lady, Jean sans Peur, a tall figure concealed in a red cloak, lantern in hand, who gazed at the mutilated corpse. "_C'est bien_," said he, "let's away." They set fire to the house to divert attention and escaped. Four months before, the house had been hired on the pretext of storing provisions, and for two weeks a score of assassins had been concealed there, biding their time. On the morrow, Burgundy with the other princes went to asperse the dead body with holy water in the church of the Blancs Manteaux, and as he drew nigh, exclaiming against the foul murder, blood is said to have issued from the wounds. At the funeral he held a corner of the pall, but his guilt was an open secret, and though he braved it out for a time he was forced to flee to his lands in Flanders for safety. In a few months, however, Jean was back in force at Paris, and a doctor of the Sorbonne pleaded an elaborate justification of the deed before the assembled princes, nobles, clergy and citizens at the Hôtel St. Paul. The poor crazy king was made to declare publicly that he bore no ill-will to his dear cousin of Burgundy, and later, on the failure of a conspiracy of revenge by the queen and the Orleans party, to grant full pardon for a deed "committed for the welfare of the kingdom." The cutting of the Rue Étienne Marcel has exposed the strong machicolated tower still bearing the arms of Burgundy (two planes and a plumb line), which Jean sans Peur built to fortify the Hôtel de Bourgogne, as a defence and refuge against the Orleans faction and the people of Paris. The Orleans family had for arms a knotted stick, with the device "_Je l'ennuis_": the Burgundian arms with the motto, "_Je le tiens_," implied that the knotted stick was to be planed and levelled. The arrival of Jean sans Peur, and the fortification of his hôtel were the prelude to civil war, for the Orleanists and their allies had rallied to the Count of Armagnac, whose daughter Anne, the new Duke Louis of Orleans had married, and fortified themselves in their stronghold on the site now occupied by the Palais Royal. [Illustration: TOWER OF JEAN SANS PEUR.] The Armagnacs, for so the Orleanists were now called, thirsted for revenge, and for five years Paris was the scene of frightful atrocities as each faction gained the upper hand and took a bloody vengeance on its rivals. At length the infamous policy of an alliance with the English was resorted to. The temptation was too great for the English king, and in 1415 Henry V. met the French army, composed almost entirely of the Armagnacs, at Agincourt, and inflicted on it a defeat more disastrous than Crecy or Poitiers. The famous oriflamme of St. Denis passed from history in that fatal year of 1415. The Count of Armagnac hurried to Paris, seized the mad king and the dauphin, and held the capital. In 1417 the English returned under Henry V. The Burgundians had promised neutrality, and the defeated Armagnacs were forced in their need to "borrow[91] of the saints." But hateful memories clung to them in Paris and they were betrayed. On the night of 29th May 1418, the son of an ironmonger on the Petit Pont, who had charge of the wicket of the Porte St. Germain, crept into his father's room and stole the keys while he slept. The gate was then opened to the Burgundians, who seized the person of the helpless and imbecile king. Some Armagnacs escaped, bearing the dauphin with them, and the remainder were flung into prison. The Burgundian partisans in the city, among whom was the powerful corporation of the butchers and fleshers, now rose, and on Sunday, 14th June, ran to the prisons. A night of terror ensued. Before dawn, fifteen hundred Armagnacs were indiscriminately butchered under the most revolting circumstances; the count himself perished, and a strip of his skin was carried about Paris in mockery of the white scarf of the Armagnacs. Jean sans Peur and Queen Isabella[92] entered the city, amid the acclamation of the people, and soon after a second massacre followed, in spite of Jean's efforts to prevent it. Burgundy was now master of Paris, but the Armagnacs were swarming in the country around and the English marching without let on the city. In these straits he sought a reconciliation with the dauphin and his Armagnac counsellors at Melun, on 11th July 1419. On 10th September a second conference was arranged, and duke and dauphin, each with ten attendants, met in a wicker enclosure on the bridge at Montereau. Jean doffed his cap and knelt to the dauphin, but before he could rise was felled by a blow from an axe and stabbed to death. [Footnote 91: They melted down the reliquaries in the Paris churches.] [Footnote 92: In 1417 Charles, returning from a visit to the queen at the castle of Vincennes, met the Chevalier Bois-Burdon going thither. He ordered his arrest, and under torture a confession reflecting on the queen's honour was extorted. Bois-Burdon was delivered to the provost at the Châtelet, and one night, _sans declarer la cause au people_, sewn in a sack and dropped into the Seine. The queen was banished to Tours, and her jewels and treasures confiscated. Furious with the king and the Armagnac faction, she made common cause with the Duke of Burgundy.] In 1521 a monk at Dijon showed the skull of Jean sans Peur to Francis I., and pointing to a hole made by the assassin's axe, said: "Sire, it was through this hole that the English entered France." On receipt of the news of his father's murder, the new Duke of Burgundy, Philip le Bon, flung himself into the arms of the English, and by the treaty of Troyes on May 20, 1420, Henry V. was given a French princess to wife and the reversion of the crown of France, which, after Charles' death, was to be united ever more to that of England. But the French crown never circled Henry's brow: on August 31, 1422, he lay dead at Vincennes. His body after being embalmed was exposed with great pomp in the royal abbey of St. Denis before its translation to Westminster Abbey and an infant son of nine months was left to inherit the dual monarchy. Within a few weeks of Henry's death the hapless king of France was entombed under the same roof; a royal herald cried "for God's pity on the soul of the most high and most excellent Charles, king of France, our natural sovereign lord," and in the next breath hailed "Henry of Lancaster, by the grace of God, king of France and of England, our sovereign lord." All the royal officers broke their wands, flung them in the tomb and reversed their maces as a token that their functions were at an end. The red rose of Lancaster was added to the arms of Paris and at the next festival the Duke of Bedford was seen in the Sainte Chapelle of St. Louis, exhibiting the crown of thorns to the people as Regent of France, and a statue[93] of Henry V. of England was raised in the great hall of the Palais de Justice, following on the line of the kings of France from Pharamond to Charles. [Footnote 93: The statue was mutilated at the expulsion of the English in 1446 and was destroyed in the fire of 1618.] CHAPTER IX _Jeanne d'Arc--Paris under the English--End of the English Occupation_ The occupation of Paris by the English was the darkest hour in her story, yet amid the universal misery and dejection the treaty of Troyes was hailed with joy. When the two kings, riding abreast _moult noblement_, followed by the Dukes of Clarence and Bedford, entered Paris after its signature, the whole way from the Porte St. Denis to Notre Dame was filled with people crying, "_Noël, noël!_" The university, the parlement, the queen-mother, the whole of North France, from Brittany and Normandy to Flanders, from the Channel to the line of the Loire, accepted the situation, and the Duke of Burgundy, most powerful of the royal princes, was a friend of the English. Yet a few French hearts beat true. While the regent Duke of Bedford was entering Paris, a handful of knights unfurled the royal banner at Melun, crying--"Long live King Charles, seventh of the name, by the grace of God king of France!" And what a pitiful incarnation of national independence was this to whom the devoted sons of France were now called to rally!--a feeble youth of nineteen, indolent, licentious, mocked at by the triumphant English as the "little king of Bourges." The story of the resurrection of France at the call of an untutored village girl is one of the most enthralling dramas of history, which may not here be told. When all men had despaired; when the cruelty, ambition and greed of the princes of France had wrought her destruction; when the miserable dauphin at Chinon was prepared to seek safety by an ignominious flight to Spain or Scotland; when Orleans, the key to the southern provinces, was about to fall into English hands--the means of salvation were revealed in the ecstatic visions of a simple peasant maid. Jeanne deemed her mission over after the solemn coronation at Rheims, but to her ill-hap, was persuaded to follow the royal army after the retreat of the English from Senlis, and on 23rd August she occupied St. Denis. She declared at her trial that her voices told her to remain at St. Denis, but that the lords made her attack Paris. On the 8th September the assault was made, but it was foiled by the king's apathy, the incapacity and bitter jealousy of his counsellors, and the action of double-faced Burgundy. In the afternoon Jeanne, while sounding the depth of the fosse with her lance,[94] was wounded by an arrow in the thigh. She remained till late evening, when she was carried away to St. Denis at whose shrine she hung up her arms--her mysterious sword from St. Catherine de Fierbois and her banner of pure white, emblazoned with the fleur-de-lys and the figure of the Saviour, with the device "Jesu Maria." [Footnote 94: An equestrian statue in bronze stands at the south end of the Rue des Pyramides, a few hundred yards from the spot where the Maid fell before the Porte St Honoré.] Six months later, while Charles was sunk in sloth at the château of Sully, Jeanne was captured by the Burgundians at the siege of Compiègne, and her enemies closed on her like bloodhounds. The university of Paris and the Inquisition wrangled for her body, but English gold bought her from her Burgundian captors and sent her to a martyr's death at Rouen. Those who would read the sad record of her trial may do so in the pages of Mr. Douglas Murray's translation of the minutes of the evidence, and may assist in imagination at the eighteen days' forensic baiting of the hapless child (she was but nineteen years of age), whose lucid simplicity broke through the subtle web of theological chicanery which was spun to entrap her by the most cunning of the Sorbonne doctors. "The English burnt her," says a Venetian merchant, "thinking that fortune would turn in their favour, but may it please Christ the Lord that the contrary befall them!" And so in truth it happened. Disaster after disaster wrecked the English cause; the Duke of Bedford died, Philip of Burgundy and Charles were reconciled, and Queen Isabella went to a dishonoured grave. The English were driven out of Paris, and in 1453, of all the "large and ample empery" of France, won at the cost of a hundred years of bloodshed and cruel devastation, a little strip of land at Calais and Guines alone remained to the English crown. Charles, who with despicable cowardice had suffered the heroic Maid to be done to death by the English without a thought of intervention, was moved to call for a tardy reparation of the atrocious injustice at Rouen; and a quarter of a century after the Te Deum sung in Notre Dame at Paris for her capture, another, a very different scene, was witnessed in the cathedral. "The case for her rehabilitation," says Mr. Murray, "was solemnly opened there, and the mother and brothers of the Maid came before the court to present their humble petition for a revision of her sentence, demanding only 'the triumph of truth and justice.' The court heard the request with some emotion. When Isabel d'Arc threw herself at the feet of the Commissioners, showing the papal rescript and weeping aloud, so many joined in the petition that at last, we are told, it seemed that one great cry for justice broke from the multitude." The story of Paris under the English is a melancholy one. Despite the coronation of the young king at Notre Dame and the rigid justice and enlightened policy of Bedford's regency, they failed to win the affection of the Parisians. Rewards to political friends, punishments and confiscations inflicted on the disaffected, the riotous and homicidal conduct of some of the English garrison, the depression in commerce and depreciation of property brought their inevitable consequences--a growing hatred of the English name.[95] The chapter of Notre Dame was compelled to sell the gold vessels from the treasury. Hundred of houses were abandoned by their owners, who were unable to meet the charges upon them. In 1427 by a royal instrument the rent of the Maison des Singes was reduced from twenty-six livres to fourteen, "seeing the extreme diminution of rents." [Footnote 95: In 1421 and 1422 the people of Paris had seen Henry V. and his French consort sitting in state at the Louvre, surrounded by a brilliant throng of princes, prelates and barons. Hungry crowds watched the sumptuous banquet and then went away fasting, for nothing was offered them. "It was not so in the former times under our kings," they murmured, "then was open table kept, and servants distributed the meats and wine even of the king himself."] Some curious details of life in Paris under the English have come down to us. By a royal pardon granted to Guiot d'Eguiller, we learn that he and four other servants of the Duke of Bedford, and of our "late very dear and very beloved aunt the Duchess of Bedford whom God pardon," were drinking one night at ten o'clock in a tavern where hangs the sign of _L'Homme Armé_.[2] Hot words arose between them and some other tipplers, to wit, Friars Robert, Peter, and William of the Blancs Manteaux, who were disguised as laymen and wearing swords. Friar Robert lost his temper and struck at the servants with his naked sword. The friar, owing to the strength of the wine or to inexperience in the use of secular weapons, cut off the leg of a dog instead of hitting his man; the friars then ran away, pursued by three of the servants--Robin the Englishman, Guiot d'Eguiller and one Guillaume. The fugitive friars took refuge in a deserted house in the Rue du Paradis (now des Francs Bourgeois), and threw stones at their pursuers. There was a fight, during which Guillaume lost his stick and snatching Guiot's sword struck at Friar Robert through the door of the house. He only gave one "_cop_," but it was enough, and there was an end of Friar Robert. A certain Gilles, a _povre homme laboureur_, went to amuse himself at a game of tennis in the hostelry kept by Guillaume Sorel, near the Porte St. Honoré, and fell a-wrangling with Sorel's wife concerning some lost tennis balls. Madame Sorel clutched him by the hair and tore out some handfuls. Gilles seized her by the hood, disarranged her coif, so that it fell about her shoulders, "and in his anger cursed God our Creator." This came to the bishop's ears, and Gilles was cast for blasphemy into the bishop's oven, as the episcopal prison was called, where he lay in great misery. He was examined and released on promising to offer a wax candle of two pounds' weight before the image of our Lady of Paris at the entrance of the choir of Notre Dame. The fifteen years of English rule at Paris came to a close in 1446. Three years before that date, a goldsmith was at _déjeuner_ with a baker and a shoemaker, and they fell a-talking of the state of trade, of the wars and of the poverty of the people of Paris. The goldsmith[96] grumbled loudly and said that his craft was the poorest of all; people must have shoes and bread, but none could afford to employ a goldsmith. Then, thinking no evil, he said that good times would never return in Paris until there were a French king, the university full again, and the Parlement obeyed as in former times. Whereupon Jean Trolet, the shoemaker, added that things could not last in their present state, and that if there were only five hundred men who would agree to begin a revolution, they would soon find thousands leagued with them. Jean Trolet's loose tongue cost him dear, but the general unrest which this incident illustrates burst forth in plot after plot, and on 13th April, 1446, the Porte St. Jacques was opened by some citizens to the Duke of Richemont, Constable of France, who, with 2000 knights and squires, entered the city and, to the cry of _Ville gagnée!_ the fleur-de-lys waved again from the ramparts of Paris. The English garrison under Lord Willoughby fortified themselves in the Bastille of St. Antoine but capitulated after two days. Bag and baggage, out they marched, circled the walls as far as the Louvre, and embarked for Rouen amid the execrations of the people. Never again did an English army enter Paris until the allies marched in after Waterloo in 1815. [Footnote 96: The fifteenth-century goldsmiths of Paris: Loris, the Hersants, and Jehan Gallant, were famed throughout Europe.] CHAPTER X _Louis XI. at Paris--The Introduction of Printing_ Paris saw little of Charles VII. who, after the temporary activity excited by the expulsion of the English, had sunk into his habitual torpor and bondage to women. In 1461 the wretched monarch, morbid and half-demented, died of a malignant disease, all the time haunted by fears of poison and filial treachery. The people named him Charles _le bien servi_ (the well-served), for small indeed was the praise due to him for the great deliverance. When the new king, Louis XI., quitted his asylum at the Burgundian court to be crowned at Rheims and to repair to St. Denis, he was shocked by the contrast between the rich cities and plains of Flanders and the miserable aspect of the country he traversed--ruined villages, fields that were so many deserts, starving creatures clothed in rags, and looking as if they had just escaped from dungeons. It is beyond the scope of the present work to describe the successful achievement of Louis' policy of concentrating the whole government in himself as absolute sovereign of France, by the overthrow of feudalism and the subjection of the great nobles with their almost royal power and state. His indomitable will, his consummate patience, his profound knowledge of human motives and passions, his cynical indifference to means, make him one of the most remarkable of the kings of France. In 1465, menaced by a coalition of nobles, the so-called League of the Public Good, Louis hastened to the capital. Letters expressing his tender affection for his dear city of Paris preceded him--he was coming to confide to them his queen and hoped-for heir; rather than lose his Paris, which he loved beyond all cities of the world, he would sacrifice half his kingdom. But the Parisians were far from being impressed by the majesty of their new monarch. "Our king," says De Comines, "used to dress so ill that worse could not be--often wearing bad cloth and a shabby hat with a leaden image stuck in it." When he entered Abbeville with the magnificent Duke of Burgundy, the people said "_Benedicite!_ is that a king of France? Why, his horse and clothes together are not worth twenty francs!" and a Venetian ambassador was amazed to see the most mighty and most Christian king take his dinner in a tavern on the market-place of Tours, after hearing mass in the cathedral. The citizens remembered, too, his refusal to accord them some privileges granted to other cities; they were sullen at first and would not be wooed. The university declined to arm her scholars, Church and Parlement were hostile. The idle, vagabond _clercs_ of the Palais and the Cité composed coarse gibes and satirical songs and ballads against his person. Louis, however, set himself with his insinuating grace of speech to win the favour of the Parisians. He supped with the provost and sheriffs and their wives at the Hôtel de Ville. He chose six members from the burgesses, six from the Parlement and six from the university, to form his Council, and with daring confidence, decided to arm Paris. A levy of every male able to bear arms between sixteen and sixty years of age was made, and the citizen army was reviewed near St. Antoine des Champs, in the presence of the king and queen. From 60,000 to 80,000 men, half of them well-armed, marched past, with sixty-seven banners of the trades guilds, not counting those of the municipal officers, the Parlement and the university. The nobles were checkmated, and they were glad to accede to a treaty which gave them ample spoils, and Louis, time to recover himself. The "Public Good" was barely mentioned. Louis, when at Paris, refused to occupy the Louvre and chose to dwell in the new Hôtel des Tournelles, near the Porte St. Antoine, built for the Duke of Bedford and subsequently presented to Louis when Dauphin by his royal father; for thither a star led him one evening as he left Notre Dame. Often would he issue _en bourgeois_ from the Tournelles to sup with his gossips in Paris and scarcely a day passed without the king being seen at mass in Notre Dame. "When King Louis," says De Comines, "retired from the interview[97] with Edward IV. of England, he spake with me by the way and said he found the English king too ready to visit Paris, which thing was not pleasing to him. The king was a handsome man and very fond of women; he might find some affectionate mistress there, who would speak him so many fair words that she would make him desire to return; his predecessors had come too often to Paris and Normandy, and he did not like his company this side the sea, but beyond the sea he was glad to have him for friend and brother." [Footnote 97: At the conclusion of the Hucksters' Peace at Amiens.] Louis had long desired to punish the Count of St. Pol for treachery, and as a result of a treaty with Charles of Burgundy, in 1475, had him at length in the Bastille. Soon on a scaffold in the Place de Grève his head rolled from his body at a tremendous _coup_ of Petit Jean's sword, and a column of stone twelve feet high erected where he fell, gave terrible warning to traitorous princes, however mighty; for the count was Constable of France, the king's brother-in-law, a member of the Imperial House of Luxemburg, and connected with many of the sovereign families of Europe. Two years later another noble victim, the Duke of Nemours, fell into the king's power and saw the inside of one of Louis' iron cages in the Bastille. The king, who had learnt that the chains had been removed from the prisoner's legs, that he might go to hear mass, commanded his jailer not to let him budge from his cage except to be tortured (_gehenné_) and the duke wrote a piteous letter, praying for clemency and signing himself _le pauvre Jacques_. In vain: him, too, the headsman's axe sent to his account at the Halles. The news of the humiliating Peace of Peronne, after the king had committed the one great folly of his career by gratuitously placing himself in Charles the Bold's power,[98] was received by the Parisians with many gibes. The royal herald proclaimed at sound of trumpet by the crossways of Paris: "Let none be bold or daring enough to say anything opprobrious against the Duke of Burgundy, either by word of mouth, by writing, by signs, paintings, roundelays, ballads, songs or gestures." On the same day a commission seized all the magpies and jackdaws in Paris, whether caged or otherwise, which were to be registered according to their owners, with all the pretty words that the said birds could repeat and that had been taught them: the pretty word that these chattering birds had been taught to say was "Peronne." Louis' abasement at Peronne was, however, amply avenged by the battle of Granson, when the mighty host of "invincible" Charles was overwhelmed by the Switzers in 1476. A year later, the whole fabric of Burgundian ambition was shattered and the great duke lay a mutilated and frozen corpse before the walls of Nancy. Louis' joy at the destruction of his enemy was boundless, but in the very culmination of his success he was struck down by paralysis, and though he rallied for a time the end was near. Haunted by fear of treachery, he immured himself in the gloomy fortress of Plessis. The saintly Francesco da Calabria, relics from Florence, from Rome, the Holy Oil from Rheims, turtles from Cape Verde Islands--all were powerless; the arch dissembler must now face the ineluctable prince of the dark realms, who was not to be bribed or cajoled even by kings. [Footnote 98: The reader will hardly need to be reminded that this amazing folly forms one of the principal episodes in Scott's _Quentin Durward_.] When at last Louis took to his bed, his physician, Jacques Cottier, told him that most surely his hour was come. Confession made, he gave much political counsel and some orders to be observed by _le Roi_, as he now called his son, and spoke, says De Comines, "as dryly as if he had never been ill. And after so many fears and suspicions Our Lord wrought a miracle and took him from this miserable world in great health of mind and understanding. Having received all the sacraments and suffering no pain and always speaking to within a paternoster of his death, he gave orders for his sepulture. May the Lord have his soul and receive him in the realm of Paradise!" It was in Louis' reign that the art of printing was introduced into Paris. As early as 1458 the master of the mint had been sent to Mainz to learn something of the new art, but without success. In 1463, Fust and his partner, Schöffer, had brought some printed books to Paris, but the books were confiscated and the partners were driven out of the city, owing to the jealousy of the powerful corporation of the scribes and booksellers, who enjoyed a monopoly from the Sorbonne of the sale of books in Paris; and in 1474 Louis paid an indemnity of 2500 crowns to Schöffer for the confiscation of his books and for the trouble he had taken to introduce printed books into his capital. In 1470, at the invitation of two doctors of the Sorbonne, Guillaume Fichet and Jean de la Puin, Ulmer Gering of Constance and two other Swiss printers set up a press near Fichet's rooms in the Sorbonne. In 1473 a press was at work at the sign of the Soleil d'Or (Golden Sun), in the Rue St. Jacques, under the management of two Germans, Peter Kayser, Master of Arts, and John Stohl, assisted by Ulmer Gering. In 1483 the last-named removed to the Rue de la Sorbonne, where the doctors granted to him and his new partner, Berthold Rumbolt of Strassburg, a lease for the term of their lives. They retained their sign of the Soleil d'Or, which long endured as a guarantee of fine printing. The earliest works had been printed in beautiful Roman type, but unable to resist the favourite Gothic introduced from Germany, Gering was led to adopt it towards the year 1480, and the Roman was soon superseded. From 1480 to 1500 we meet with many French printers' names: Antoine Vérard, Du Pré, Cailleau, Martineau, Pigouchet--clearly proving that the art had then been successfully transplanted. The re-introduction of Roman characters about 1500 was due to the famous house of the Estiennes, whose admirable editions of the Latin and Greek classics are the delight of bibliophiles. Robert Estienne was wont to hang proof sheets of his Greek and Latin classics outside his shop, offering a reward to any passer-by who pointed out a misprint or corrupt reading. Their famous house was the meeting-place of scholars and patrons of literature. Francis I. and his sister Margaret of Angoulême, authoress of the Heptameron, were seen there, and legend says that the king was once kept waiting by the scholar-printer while he finished correcting a proof. All the Estienne household, even the children, conversed in Latin, and the very servants are said to have grown used to it. In 1563 Francis I. remitted 30,000 livres of taxes to the printers of Paris, as an act of grace to the professors of an art that seemed rather divine than human. But in spite of royal favour printing was a poor career. The second Henry Estienne, who composed a Greek-Latin lexicon, died in poverty at a hospital in Lyons; the last of the family, the third Robert Estienne, met a similar miserable end at the Hôtel Dieu in Paris. So great was the reaction in the university against the violence of the Lutherans and the daring of the printers, that in 1534 all the presses were ordered to be closed. In 1537 no book was allowed to be printed without permission of the Sorbonne, and in 1556 an order was made, it is said at the instance of Diane de Poitiers, that a copy in vellum of every book printed by royal privilege should be deposited at the royal library. After Gering's death the forty presses then working in Paris were reduced to twenty-four, in order that every printer might have sufficient work to live by and not be tempted by poverty to print prohibited books or execute cheap and inferior printing. CHAPTER XI _Francis I.--The Renaissance at Paris_ The advent of the printing-press and the opening of a Greek lectureship by Gregory Tyhernas and Hermonymus of Sparta at the Sorbonne warns us that we are at the end of an epoch. With the accession of Charles VIII. and the beginning of the Italian wars a new era is inaugurated. Gothic architecture had reached its final development and structural perfection, in the flowing lines of the flamboyant style;[99] painting and sculpture, both in subject and expression, assume a new aspect. The diffusion of ancient literature and the discovery of a new world, open wider horizons to men's minds, and human thought and human activity are directed towards other, and not always nobler, ideals. Mediævalism passes away and Paris begins to clothe herself in a new vesture of stone. [Footnote 99: Flamboyant windows were a natural, technical development of Gothic. The aim of the later builders was to facilitate the draining away of the water which the old mullioned windows used to retain.] The Paris of the fifteenth century was a triple city of overhanging timbered houses, "thick as ears of corn in a wheatfield," of narrow, crooked streets,[100] unsavoury enough, yet purified by the vast open spaces and gardens of the monasteries, from which emerged the innumerable spires and towers of her churches and palaces and colleges. In the centre was the legal and ecclesiastical Cité, with its magnificent Palais de Justice; its cathedral and a score of fair churches enclosed in the island, which resembled a great ship moored to the banks of the Seine by five bridges all crowded with houses. One of the most curious characteristics of Old Paris was the absence of any view of the river, for a man might traverse its streets and bridges without catching a glimpse of the Seine. [Footnote 100: The drainage of an old city was offensive to the smell rather than essentially insanitary. "Mediæval sewers," says Dr. Charles Creighton in his _History of Epidemics in Britain_, pp. 323-4, "were banked-up water-courses ... freely open to the greatest of all purifying agents, the oxygen of the air."] The portal of the Petit Châtelet at the end of the Petit Pont opened on the university and learned district on the south bank of the Seine, with its fifty colleges and many churches clustering about the slopes of the mount of St. Genevieve, which was crowned by the great Augustine abbey and church founded by Clovis. Near by, stood the two great religious houses and churches of the Dominicans and Franciscans, the Carthusian monastery and its scores of little gardens, the lesser monastic buildings and, outside the walls, the vast Benedictine abbatial buildings and suburb of St. Germain des Prés, with its stately church of three spires, its fortified walls, its pillory and its permanent lists, where judicial duels were fought. On the north bank lay the busy, crowded industrial and commercial district known as the Ville, with its forty-four churches, the hôtels of the rich merchants and bankers, the fortified palaces of the nobles, all enclosed by the high walls and square towers of Charles the Fifth's fortifications, and defended at east and west by the Bastille of St. Antoine and the Louvre. To the east stood the agglomeration of buildings known as Hôtel St. Paul, a royal city within a city, with its manifold princely dwellings and fair gardens and pleasaunces sloping down to the Seine; hard by to the north was the Duke of Bedford's Hôtel des Tournelles, with its memories of the English domination. At the west, against the old Louvre, were among others, the hôtels of the Constable of Bourbon and the Duke of Alençon, and out in the fields beyond, the smoking kilns of the Tuileries (tile factories). [Illustration: TOWER OF ST. JACQUES.] North and east and west of the municipal centre, the Maison aux Piliers, on the Place de Grève, was a maze of streets filled with the various crafts of Paris. The tower of the great church of St. Jacques de la Boucherie, as yet unfinished, emerged from the butchers' and skinners' shops and slaughter-houses, which at the Rue des Lombards met the clothiers and furriers; the cutlers and the basket-makers were busy in streets now swept away to give place to the Avenue Victoria. Painters, glass-workers and colour merchants, grocers and druggists, made bright and fragrant the Rue de la Verrerie, weavers' shuttles rattled in the Rue de la Tixanderie (now swallowed up in the Rue de Rivoli); curriers and tanners plied their evil-smelling crafts in the Rue (now Quai) de la Mégisserie, and bakers crowded along the Rue St. Honoré. The Rue des Juifs sheltered the ancestral traffic of the children of Abraham. At the foot of the Pont au Change, on which were the shops of the goldsmiths and money-lenders stood the grim thirteenth-century fortress of the Châtelet, the municipal guard-house and prison; to the north in the Rue de Heaumarie (Armourers) lay the Four aux Dames or prison of the abbesses of Montmartre; further on westward stood the episcopal prison, or Four de l'Evêque. North-west of the Châtelet was the Hôtel du Chevalier du Guet or watch-house and round about it a congeries of narrow, crooked lanes, haunts of ill-fame, where robbers lurked and vice festered. A little to the north were the noisy market-place of the Halles and the cemetery of the Innocents with its piles of skulls, and its vaulted arcade painted (1424) with the Dance of Death. Further north stood the immense abbey of St. Martin in the Fields, with its cloister and gardens and, a little to the west, the grisly crenelated and turreted fortress of the Knights-Templars, huge in extent and one of the most solid edifices in the whole kingdom. This is the Paris conjured from the past with such magic art by Victor Hugo in "Notre Dame," and gradually to be swept away in the next centuries by the Renaissance, pseudo-classic and Napoleonic builders and destroyers, until to-day scarcely a wrack is left behind. With the Italian campaigns of Charles VIII., _notre petit roi_, as Brantôme calls him, and of the early Valois-Orleans kings, France enters the arena of European politics, wrestles with the mighty Emperor Charles V. and embarks on a career of transalpine conquest. But in Italy, conquering France was herself conquered by the charm of Italian art, Italian climate and Italian landscape. When Charles VIII. returned to Paris from his expedition to Naples he brought with him a collection of pictures, tapestry, and sculptures in marble and porphyry, that weighed thirty-five tons; by him and his successors Italian builders, Domenico da Cortona and Fra Giocondo, were employed. The latter supervised the rebuilding of the Petit Pont and after the destruction of the last wooden Pont Notre Dame in 1499--when the whole structure, with its houses and shops, fell with a fearful crash into the river--he was made head of the Commission of Parisian artists who replaced it by a noble stone bridge, completed in 1507. This, too, was lined with tall gabled houses of stone, and adorned with the arms of Paris and statues of Notre Dame and St. Denis. On its restoration in 1659 the façades of the houses were decorated with medallions of the kings of France held by caryatides bearing baskets of fruit and flowers on their heads. These houses were the first in Paris to be numbered, odd numbers on one side, even on the other, and were the first to be demolished when, on the eve of the Revolution, Louis XVI. ordered the bridges to be cleared. The French Renaissance is indissolubly associated with Francis I., who in 1515 inherited a France welded into a compact, absolute monarchy, and inhabited by a prosperous and loyal people; for the twelfth Louis had been a good and wise ruler, who to the amazement of his people returned to them the balance of a tax levied to meet the cost of the Genoese Expedition, which had been over estimated, saying, "It will be more fruitful in their hands than in mine." Commerce had so expanded that it was said that for every merchant seen in Paris in former times there were, in his reign, fifty. Scarce a house was built along an important street that was not a merchant's shop or for the practice of some art. Louis introduced the cultivation of maize and the mulberry into France, and so rigid was his justice that poultry ran about the open fields without risk of pillage from his soldiers. It was the accrued wealth of his reign, and the love inspired by "Louis, father of his people,"[101] that supported the magnificence, the luxury and the extravagance of Francis I. The architectural creations of the new style were first seen in Touraine, in the royal palaces of Blois and Chambord, and other princely and noble châteaux along the luscious and sunny valleys of the Loire. Italian architecture was late in making itself felt in Paris, where the native art made stubborn resistance. [Footnote 101: The good king's portrait by an Italian sculptor may be seen in the Louvre, Room VII., and on his monument in St. Denis he kneels beside his beloved and _chère Bretonne_, Anne of Brittany whose loss he wept for eight days and nights.] [Illustration: PONT NOTRE DAME.] The story of the state entry of Francis I. into Paris after the death of Louis XII., as told by Galtimara, Margaret of Austria's envoy, who witnessed the scene from a window, is characteristic. After the solemn procession which was _belle et gorgiaise_ he saw the king, clothed in a glittering suit of armour and mounted on a barbed charger, accoutred in white and cloth of silver, prick his steed, making it prance and rear, _faisant rage_, that he might display his horsemanship, his fine figure and dazzling costume before the queen and her ladies. It was all _bien gorrière à voir_. "Born between two adoring women," says Michelet, "Francis was all his life a spoilt child." Money flowed through his hands like water[102] to gratify his ambition, his passions and his pleasures. Doubtless his interviews with Da Vinci at Amboise, where he spent much of his time in the early years of his reign, fired that enthusiasm for art, especially for painting, which never wholly left him; for the veteran artist, although old and paralysed in the right hand, was otherwise in possession of all his incomparable faculties. [Footnote 102: "He was well named after St. Francis, because of the holes in his hands," said a Sorbonne doctor.] [Illustration: CHAPEL, HÔTEL DE CLUNY.] The question as to the existence of an indigenous school of painting before the Italian artistic invasion is still a subject of acrimonious discussion among critics; there is none, however, as to its existence in the plastic arts. The old French tradition died hard, and not before it had stamped upon Italian Renaissance architecture the impress of its native genius and adapted it to the requirements of French life and climate. The Hôtel de Cluny, finished in 1490, still remains to exemplify the beauty of the native French domestic architecture modified by the new style. The old Hôtel de Ville,[103] designed by Dom. da Cortona and submitted to Francis in 1532, was dominated by the French style, and not until nearly a century after the first Italian Expedition were the last Gothic builders superseded. The fine Gothic church of St. Merri was begun as late as 1520 and not finished till 1612, and the transitional churches of St. Étienne and St. Eustache remind one, by the mingling of Gothic and Renaissance features, of the famous metamorphosis of Agnel and Cianfa in Dante's Inferno, and one is tempted to exclaim, _Ome, come ti muti! Vedi, che già non sei nè duo nè uno!_[104] [Footnote 103: The authorship of this famous building is much canvassed by authorities. M.E. Mareuse, secretary of the Committee of Inscriptions, affirms that Domenico must be considered the _unique architecte_ of our old Municipal Palace: other writers claim with equal confidence Pierre Chambiges as the architect. Charles Normand after an exhaustive examination of documents, declares that the Italian master's design was followed in the south court, but that after his death in 1549 the design was ordered to be revised and the great façade was erected in a style wholly different from the original plan. This eminent authority inclines to the belief that the new design was due to Du Cerceau. Certain it is that French masters were associated with Domenico, for we know that on the 19th June 1534, a rescript came from the city fathers to the masters Pierre Chambiges, Jacques Arasse, Jehan Aesselin, Loys Caquelin and Dominique de Cortona, reminding them that it would be more seemly to push the works forward and keep an eye on the workmen instead of going away to dine together.] [Footnote 104: "Ah! me, how thou art changed! See, thou art neither two nor one."] [Illustration: TOWER OF ST. ÉTIENNE DU MONT.] After the death of Da Vinci Francis never succeeded in retaining a first-rate painter in his service. Andrea del Sarto and Paris Bordone did little more than pay passing visits, and the famous school of Fontainebleau was founded by Rosso and Primaticcio, two decadent followers of Michel Angelo. The adventures of that second-rate artist and first-rate bully, Benvenuto Cellini, at Paris, form one of the most piquant episodes in artistic autobiography. After a gracious welcome from the king he was offered an annual retaining fee of three hundred crowns. He at once dismissed his two apprentices and left in a towering rage, only returning on being offered the same appointments that had been enjoyed by Leonardo da Vinci--seven hundred crowns a year, and payment for every finished work. The Petit Nesle[105] was assigned to Cellini and his pupils as a workshop, the king assuring him that force would be needed to evict the possessor--it had been assigned to the provost--adding, "Take great care you are not assassinated." On complaining to the king of the difficulties he met with and the insults offered to him on attempting to gain possession, he was answered: "If you are the Benvenuto I have heard of, live up to your reputation; I give you full leave." Benvenuto took the hint, armed himself, his servants and two apprentices, and bullied the occupants and rival claimants out of their wits. It was at this Tour de Nesle that Francis paid Cellini a surprise visit with his mistress Madame d'Estampes, his sister Margaret of Valois, the Dauphin and his wife Catherine de' Medici, the Cardinal of Lorraine, Henry II. of Navarre, and a numerous train of courtiers. The artist and his merry men were at work on the famous silver statue of Jupiter for Fontainebleau, and amid the noise of the hammering the king entered unperceived. Cellini had the torso of the statue in his hand, and at that moment a French lad who had caused him some little displeasure had felt the weight of the master's foot, which sent him flying against the king. But the artist had done a bad day's work by evicting a servant of Madame d'Estampes from the tower, and the injured lady and Primaticcio, her _protégé_, decided to work his ruin. When Cellini arrived at Fontainebleau with the statue, Francis ordered it to be placed in the grand gallery decorated by Rosso. Primaticcio had just arranged there the casts which he had been commissioned to bring from Rome, and Benvenuto saw what was meant--his own work was to be eclipsed by the splendour of the masterpieces of ancient art. "Heaven help me!" cried he, "this is indeed to fall against the pikes!" Now the god held the globe of the earth in the left hand, the thunderbolt in the right. The artist contrived to thrust a portion of a large wax candle as a torch between the flames of the bolt, and set the statue up on its gilded pedestal. Madame entertained the king late at table, hoping that he would either forget the work or see it in a bad light; but when Francis entered the gallery late at night, followed by his courtiers, "which by God's grace was my salvation," says Cellini, the statue was illuminated by a flood of light from the torch which so enhanced its beauty that the king was ravished with delight, and expressed himself in ecstatic praise, declaring the statue to be more beautiful and more marvellous than any of the antique casts around. His enemies were thus discomfited, and on Madame d'Estampes endeavouring to depreciate the work, she was grossly mocked by the artist in a very characteristic and quite untranscribable way. Benvenuto was more than ever patronised by the king, who did him the great honour of accosting him as _mon ami_, and approving his scheme for the fortification of Paris. Cellini often recalled with pleasure the four years he spent with the _gran re Francesco_ at Paris. [Footnote 105: The Petit Nesle comprised the south-west gate and tower: the Grand Nesle, the Hôtel de Nesle within the wall. See p. 68.] "The French are remembered in Italy only by the graves they left there," said De Comines, and once again the Italian campaigns ended in disaster. At the defeat of Pavia, in 1525--the Armageddon of the French in Italy--the efforts and sacrifices of three reigns were lost and the _gran re_, whose favourite oath is said to have been _foi de gentilhomme_, went captive to the king of Spain in Madrid, whence he issued, stained by perjury, and three years later, signed "the moral annihilation of France in Europe," at Cambray. During the tranquil intervals that ensued on this rude awakening from dreams of an Italian Empire, and between the third and fourth wars with the emperor, the king was able to initiate a project that had long been dear to him. "Come," says Michelet, "in the still, dark night, climb the Rue St. Jacques, in the early winter's morning. See you yon lights? Men, yea, old men, mingled with children, are hurrying, a folio under one arm, in the hand an iron candlestick. Do they turn to the right? No, the old Sorbonne is yet sleeping snug in her warm sheets. The crowd is going to the Greek schools. Athens is at Paris. That man with the fine beard in majestic ermine is a descendant of emperors--Jean Lascaris: that other doctor is Alexander, who teaches Hebrew." The schools they were pressing to were those of the Royal College of France. Already in 1517 Erasmus had been offered a salary of a thousand francs a year, with promise of further increment, to undertake the direction of the college, but declined to leave his patron the emperor. The prime movers in the great scheme were the king's confessor, Guillaume Parvi, and the famous Grecian, Guillaume Budé, who in 1530 was himself induced to undertake the task which Erasmus had declined. Twelve professors were appointed in Greek, Hebrew, mathematics, philosophy, rhetoric and medicine, each of the twelve with a salary of two hundred gold crowns (about £80), and the dignity of royal councillors. The king's vast scheme of a great college and magnificent chapel, with a revenue of 50,000 crowns for the maintenance (_nourriture_) of six hundred scholars, where the most famous doctors in Christendom should offer gratuitous teaching in all the sciences and learned languages, was never executed. Too much treasure had been wasted in Italy, and it was not till the reign of Louis XIII. that it was partially carried out. The first stone was laid in 1610, the works were slowly continued under succeeding reigns, and the project had only been partially carried out when the monarchy fell. The college as we now see it was not completed till 1842. Chairs were founded for Arabic by Henry III., for surgery, anatomy and botany by Henry IV., and for Syrian by Louis XIV. Little is changed to-day; the placards, so familiar to students in Paris, announcing the lectures are indited in French instead of in Latin as of old; the lectures are still free to all, and the most famous scholars of the day teach there, but in French and not in Latin.[106] [Footnote 106: Students in Paris in the days of King Francis had cause to remember gratefully that monarch's solicitude, for a maximum of charges was fixed, and an order made that every hotel-keeper should affix his prices outside the door, that extortion might be avoided. Among other maxima, the price of a pair of sheets, to "sleep not more than five persons," was to be five deniers (a penny).] How dramatic are the contrasts of history! While the new learning was organising itself amid the pomp of royal patronage; while the young Calvin was sitting at the feet of its professors and the Lutheran heresy germinating at Paris, Ignatius Loyola, an obscure Spanish soldier and gentleman, thirty-seven years of age, was sitting--a strange mature figure--among the boisterous young students at the College of St. Barbara, patiently preparing himself for dedication to the service of the menaced Church of Rome; and in 1534, on the festival of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, a little group of six companions met around the fervent student, in the crypt of the old church at Montmartre, and decided to found on the holy hill of St. Denis' martyrdom the first house of the Society of Jesus. In 1528, says the writer of the so-called _Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris_, the king began to pull down the great tower of the Louvre, in order to transform the château into a _logis de plaisance_, "yet was it great pity for the castle was very fair and high and strong, and a most proper prison to hold great men." The tall, massive keep, which darkened the royal apartments in the south wing, was the tower here meant, and after some four months' work, and an expenditure of 2,500 livres, the grim pile, with its centuries of history, was cleared away. Small progress, however, had been made with the restoration of the old château up to the year 1539, when the heavy cost of preparing the west wing for the reception of the Emperor Charles V., induced Francis to consider a plan which involved the replacement of the whole fabric by a palace in the new Renaissance style, and the picturesque palace with its high crenelated walls, its strong towers, high-pitched roofs, dormer windows, and tall chimneys, its gilded emblazonry, its vanes, splendid with azure and gold glittering in the sun, as painted in the Duke of Berry's _Book of Hours_, was doomed. In 1546 Pierre Lescot, Seigneur de Clagny, was appointed architect without salary, but given the office of almoner to the king, and made lay abbot of Clermont. Pierre Lescot was an admirable artist, who has left us some of the finest examples of early French Renaissance architecture in Paris. But Francis lived only to see the great scheme begun, most of Lescot's work being done under Henry II. From the same anonymous writer we learn something of Parisian life in the reign of Francis I. One day a certain Monsieur Cruche, a popular poet and playwright, was performing moralities and novelties on a platform in the Place Maubert, and among them a farce "funny enough to make half a score men die of laughter, in which the said Cruche, holding a lantern, feigned to perceive the doings of a hen and a salamander."[107] The amours of the king with the daughter of a councillor of the Parlement, named Lecoq, were only too plainly satirised. But it is ill jesting with kings. A few nights later, Monsieur Cruche was visited by eight disguised courtiers, who treated him to a supper in a tavern at the sign of the Castle in the Rue de la Juiverie, and induced him to play the farce before them. When the unhappy player came to the first scene, he was set upon by the king's friends, stripped and beaten almost to death with thongs. They were about to put him in a sack and throw him into the Seine, when poor Cruche, crying piteously, discovered his priestly tonsure, and thus escaped. [Footnote 107: The salamander was figured on the royal arms of Francis.] After the defeat at Pavia, the king became morbidly pious. By trumpet cry at the crossways of Paris, we learn from the _Journal_, games--quoits, tennis, contreboulle--were prohibited on Sundays; children were forbidden to sing along the streets, going to and from school; blasphemers[108] were to be severely punished. In 1527 a notary was burned alive in the Place de Grève for a great blasphemy of our Lord and His holy Mother. In June of the next year some Lutherans struck down and mutilated an image of the Virgin and Child at a street corner near St. Gervais; the king was so grieved and angry that he wept violently, and offered a reward of one hundred gold crowns, but the offenders could not be found. Daily processions came from the churches to the spot, and all the religious orders, clothed in their habits, followed "singing with such great fervour and reverence that it was fair to see." The rector, doctors, masters, bachelors and scholars of the university, and children with lighted tapers, went there in great reverence. On Corpus Christi day the street was draped and a fair canopy stretched over the statue. The king himself walked in procession, bearing a white taper, his head uncovered in _moult gran révérence_; hautboys, clarions and trumpets played melodiously; cardinals, prelates, great seigneurs and nobles, each with his taper of white wax, followed, with the royal archers of the guard in their train. On the morrow a procession from all the parishes of Paris, with banners, relics and crucifixes, accompanied by the king and nobles, brought a new and fair image of silver, two feet in height, which the king had caused to be made. Francis himself ascended a ladder and placed it where the other image had stood, then kissed it and descended with tears in his eyes. Thrice he kneeled and prayed, the bishop of Lisieux, his almoner, reciting fair orisons and lauds to the honour of the glorious Virgin and her image. Again the trumpets, clarions and hautboys played the _Ave Regina cælorum_, and the king, the cardinal of Louvain, and all the nobles presented their tapers to the Virgin. Next day the Parlement, the provost and sheriffs, came and put an iron trellis round the silver image for fear of robbers.[109] [Footnote 108: For the first offence a fine; for the second, the lips to be cloven; for the third, the tongue pierced; for the fourth, death.] [Footnote 109: The image was stolen in 1545 and replaced by one of wood. This was struck down in 1551, and the bishop of Paris substituted for it one of marble.] Never were judicial and ecclesiastical punishments so cruel and recurrent as during the period of the Renaissance. It is a common error to suppose that judicial cruelty reached its culmination in the Middle Ages.[110] Punishments are described with appalling iteration in the pages we are following. The Place de Grève was the scene of mutilations, tortures, hangings, and quarterings of criminals and traitors, the king and his court sometimes looking on. Coiners of false money were boiled alive at the pig-market; robbers and assassins were broken on the wheel and left to linger in slow agony (_tant qu'ils pourraient languir_). The Lutherans were treated like vermin, and to harbour them, to possess or print or translate one of their books, meant a fiery death. In 1525 a young Lutheran student was put in a tumbril and brought before the churches of Notre Dame and St. Genevieve, crying mercy from God and Mary and St. Genevieve; he was then taken to the Place Maubert, where, after his tongue had been pierced, he was strangled and burnt. A _gendarme_ of the Duke of Albany was burnt at the pig-market for having sown Lutheran errors in Scotland. [Footnote 110: "The moral brutality of the Renaissance is clearly shown in its punishments. In this matter it reached with perfection its prototype, the times of the cruel Roman Emperors.... Never has 'justice' been more barbarous; not even in the darkest Middle Ages has torture been more refined, more devilish, than in the days of Humanism.... Truly it is no accident that immediately after, indeed, even before, the end of the Renaissance, everywhere in Western Europe the fires began to glow wherein thousands of unhappy wretches expired in torments for the sake of their faith; men's minds were only too well prepared for such horrors." GUSTAV KÖRTING (_Anfänge der Renaissancelitteratur_, pp. 161, 162.)] On Corpus Christi day, 1532, a great procession was formed, the king and provost walking bare-headed to witness the burning of six Lutherans--a scene often repeated. The Fountain of the Innocents, the Halles, the Temple, the end of the Pont St. Michel, the Place Maubert, and the Rue St. Honoré were indifferently chosen for these ghastly scenes. Almost daily the fires burnt. A woman was roasted to death for eating flesh on Fridays. In 1535, so savage were the persecutions, that Pope Paul III., with that gentleness which almost invariably has characterised the popes of Rome in dealing with heresy, wrote to Francis protesting against the horrible and execrable punishments inflicted on the Lutherans, and warned him that although he acted from good motives, yet he must remember that God the Creator, when in this world, used mercy rather than rigorous justice, and that it was a cruel death to burn a man alive; he therefore prayed and required the king to appease the fury and rigour of his justice and adopt a policy of mercy and pardon. This noble protest was effective, and some clemency was afterwards shown. But in 1547 the fanatical king, a mass of physical and moral corruption, soured and gloomy, went to his end amid the barbarities wreaked on the unhappy Vaudois Protestants. The cries of three thousand of his butchered subjects and the smoke from the ruins of twenty-five towns and hamlets were the incense of his spirit's flight. One important innovation at court, fraught with evil, is due to Francis. "In the matter of ladies," says Du Bellay, "I must confess that before his time they frequented the court but rarely and in small numbers, but Francis on coming to his kingdom and considering that the whole decoration of a court consisted in the presence of ladies, willed to people it with them more than was the custom in ancient times." Then was begun that unhappy intervention of women in the government of the state, the results of which will be only too evident in the further course of this story. [Illustration: LA FONTAINE DES INNOCENTS.] CHAPTER XII _Rise of the Guises--Huguenot and Catholic--the Massacre of St. Bartholomew_ "Beware of Montmorency and curb the power of the Guises," was the counsel of the dying Francis to his son. Henry II., dull and heavy-witted that he was, neglected the advice, and the Guises flourished in the sun of royal favour. The first Duke of Guise and founder of his renowned house was Claude, a poor cadet of René II., Duke of Lorraine. He succeeded in allying by marriage his eldest son and successor, Francis, to the House of Bourbon; his second son, Charles, became Cardinal of Lorraine, and his daughter, wife to James V. of Scotland. Duke Francis, by his military genius and wise statesmanship; Charles, by his learning and subtle wit, exalted their house to the lofty eminence it enjoyed during the stirring period that now opens. In 1558, after the disastrous defeat of Montmorency at St. Quentin, when Paris lay at the mercy of the Spanish and English armies, the duke was recalled from Italy and made Lieutenant-General of the realm. By a short and brilliant campaign, he expelled the English from Calais, and recovered in three weeks the territory held by them for more than two hundred years. Francis gained an unbounded popularity, and rose to the highest pinnacle of success; but short time was left to his royal master wherein to enjoy a reflected glory. On the 27th June 1559, lists were erected across the Rue St. Antoine, between the Tournelles and the Bastille. The peace with Spain, and the double marriage of the king's daughter to Philip II. of Spain and of his sister to the Duke of Savoy, were to be celebrated by a magnificent tournament in which the king, proud of his strength and bodily address, was to hold the field with the Duke of Guise and the princes against all comers. For three days the king distinguished himself by his triumphant prowess, and at length challenged the Count Montgomery de Lorge, captain of the Scottish Guards; the captain prayed to be excused, but the king insisted and the course was run. Several lances were broken, but in the last encounter, the stout captain failed to lower his shivered lance quickly enough, and the broken truncheon struck the royal visor, lifted it and penetrated the king's eye. Henry fell senseless and was carried to the palace of the Tournelles, where he died after an agony of eleven days. Fifteen years later, Montgomery was captured fighting with the Huguenots, and beheaded on the Place de Grève while Catherine de' Medici looked on "_pour goûter_," says Félibien quaintly, "_le plaisir de se voir vangée de la mort de son mary_." The tower in the interior of the Palais de Justice, where the unhappy Scottish noble was imprisoned after his capture, was known as the Tour Montgomery, until demolished in the reign of Louis XVI. There was, however, little love lost between Henry's queen, Catherine de' Medici, and her royal husband, who had long neglected her for the maturer charms of his mistress, Diane de Poitiers. [Illustration: WEST WING OF LOUVRE BY PIERRE LESCOT.] Henry saw Lescot's admirable design for the reconstruction of the west wing of the Louvre completed. The architect had associated a famous sculptor, Jean Goujon, with him, who executed the beautiful figures in low relief which still adorn the quadrangle front between the Pavilion de l'Horloge and the south-west angle, and the noble Caryatides, which support the musicians' gallery in the Salle Basse, or Grande Salle of Charles V.'s Louvre, now known as the Salle des Caryatides. The agreement, dated 5th September 1550, awards forty-six livres each for the four plaster models and eighty crowns each for the four carved figures. Lescot preserved the external wall of the old château as the kernel of his new wing, and the enormous strength of the original building of Philip Augustus may be estimated by the fact that the embrasures of each of the five casements of the first floor looking westwards now serve as offices. So _grandement satisfait_ was Henry with the perfection of Lescot's work, that he determined to continue it along the remaining three wings, that the court of the Louvre might be a _cour non-pareille_. The south wing was, however, only begun when his tragic death occurred, and the present inconsequent and huge fabric is the work of a whole tribe of architects, whose intermittent activities extended over the reigns of nine French sovereigns. Lescot and Goujon were also associated in the construction of the most beautiful Renaissance fountain in Paris, the Fontaine des Innocents, which formerly stood against the old church of the Innocents at the corner of the Rue aux Fers. It was while working on one of the figures of this fountain that Jean Goujon is traditionally said to have been shot as a Huguenot during the massacre of St. Bartholomew.[111] [Footnote 111: A document recently discovered at Modena however, proves that Goujon, after the massacre of Vassy, fled to Italy with other Protestants and died in obscurity at Bologna.] [Illustration: TRITONS AND NEREIDS FROM THE OLD FONTAINE DES INNOCENTS. _Jean Goujon._] Europe was now in travail of a new era, and unhappy France reeled under the tempest of the Reformation. A daring spirit of enquiry and of revolt challenged every principle on which the social fabric had been based, and the only refuge in the coming storm in France was the Monarchy. Never had its power been more absolute. The king's will was law--a harbour of safety, indeed, if he were strong and wise and virtuous: a veritable quicksand, if feeble and vicious. And to pilot the state of France in these stormy times, Henry II. left a sickly progeny of four princes, miserable puppets, whose favours were disputed for thirty years by ambitious and fanatical nobles, queens and courtesans. Francis II., a poor creature of sixteen years, the slave of his wife Marie Stuart and of the Guises, was called king of France for seventeen months. He it was who sat daily by Mary in the royal garden, on the terrace at Amboise overlooking the Loire, and, surrounded by his brothers and the ladies of the court, gazed at the revolting and merciless executions of the Protestant conspirators,[112] who, under the Prince of Condé, had plotted to destroy the Guises and to free the king from their influence. It was the first act in a horrible drama, a dread pursuivant of the civil and religious wars which were to culminate in the massacre of St. Bartholomew at Paris. The stake was a high one, for the victory of the reformers would sound the death-knell of the Catholic cause in Europe. There is little reason to doubt that the queen-mother, Catherine de' Medici, who now emerges into prominence, was genuinely sincere in her disapproval of the horrors of Amboise, and in her efforts to bring milder counsels to bear in dealing with the Huguenots whom she feared less than the Guises; but the fierce passions roused by civil and religious hatred were uncontrollable. When the Huguenot noble, Villemongis, was led to the scaffold at Amboise, he dipped his hands in the blood of his slaughtered comrades, and, lifting them to heaven, cried: "Lord, behold the blood of Thy children; Thou wilt avenge them." It has been truly said that the grass soon grows over blood, shed on the battle-field; never over blood shed on the scaffold. Treachery and assassination were the interludes of plots and battles, and the thirst for vengeance during thirty years was never slaked. In 1563 the Duke of Guise was shot in the back by a fanatical Huguenot, and as the wounded Prince of Condé was surrendering his sword to the Duke of Anjou after the defeat of 1569, the Baron de Montesquieu, _brave et vaillant gentilhomme_, says Brantôme, rode up, exclaiming: "Mort Dieu! kill him! kill him!" and blew out the wounded captive's brains with a pistol shot. [Footnote 112: One thousand two hundred are said to have suffered death during the month of vengeance.] The treaty of St. Germain, which has so often been charged on Catherine as an act of perfidy, was rather an imperative necessity, if respite were to be had from the misery into which the land had fallen. Its conditions were honourably carried out, and Catholic excesses were impartially and severely repressed. Charles IX., who was now twenty years of age and strongly attached to Coligny, began to assert his independence of the queen-mother and of the Guises,[113] and his first movement was in the direction of conciliation. The young king offered the hand of his fair sister, Princess Marguerite, to Henry of Navarre, and received the Admiral and Jeanne of Navarre with much honour at court. Pressure was brought to bear upon him, but, pope or no pope, said Charles, he was determined to conclude the marriage and himself would take Margot by the hand in open church and give her away. The party of the Guises, and especially Paris, were furious. The capital, with the provost, the Parlement, the university, the prelates, the religious orders, had always been hostile to the Huguenots. The people could with difficulty be restrained at times from assuming the office of executioners as Protestants were led to the stake. Any one who did not uncover as he passed the image of the Virgin at the street corners, or who omitted to bend the knee as the Host was carried by, was attacked as a Lutheran. When the heralds published the peace with the Huguenots at the crossways of Paris, filth and mud were thrown at them, and they went in danger of their lives: now Coligny and his Huguenots were holding their heads high in Paris, proud and insolent and a heretic prince of Navarre was to wed the king's sister. [Footnote 113: Henry of Guise had succeeded to the dukedom after his father's assassination.] Jeanne of Navarre died soon after her arrival at court,[114] but the alliance was hurried on. The betrothal took place in the Louvre, and on Sunday, 17th August 1572, a high dais was erected outside Notre Dame for the celebration of the marriage. When the ceremony had been performed by the Cardinal de Bourbon, Henry conducted his bride to the choir of the cathedral, and went walking in the bishop's garden while mass was sung. The office ended, he returned and led his wife to the bishop's palace to dinner, and a magnificent state supper at the Louvre concluded this momentous day. Three days of balls, masquerades and tourneys followed, amid the murmuring of a sullen populace. These were the _noces vermeilles_--the red nuptials--of Marguerite of France and Henry of Navarre. [Footnote 114: Suspicions of poison were entertained by the Huguenots. Jeanne, in a letter to the Marquis de Beauvais, complained that holes were made in her rooms and wardrobes that she might be spied upon.] Meanwhile Catherine and Charles had differed on a matter of foreign policy. Her support of the Prince of Orange against Spain in the Netherlands was conditional on an alliance with England and the marriage of her son the Duke of Alençon with Elizabeth. But the English Queen's habitual duplicity made any reliance on her word impossible and when Marie learned that Elizabeth, while professing her inclination for the Duke and her desire to aid the Protestant cause in Flanders, was protesting to her Council that she would never marry a boy with a pock-spoiled face, and was in secret communication with Alva, to turn the situation to her own profit, she flung herself into Guise's arms and abandoned Coligny and the Huguenots: for the disastrous defeat of the Protestants at Mons and the growing fury of the Catholic fanatics at Paris, threatened to wreck the throne, and while Elizabeth was toying with these tremendous issues the furies were let loose. Charles still chivalrously determined to stand by Coligny. Catherine, terrified at the result of her own work, and resolved to regain her ascendency, conspired with her third son, the Prince of Anjou, the future Henry III., to destroy and have done with the Protestants. Coligny had often been warned of the danger he would run in Paris, but the stout old soldier knew no fear, and came to take part in the festivities of the wedding. The sounds of revelry had barely died away when Coligny, who was returning from the Louvre, by the east gate, the Porte Bourbon, to his hôtel, walking slowly and reading a petition, was fired at from a window as he passed the cloister of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, and wounded in the arm. He stopped and noted the house whence the smoke came: it was the house of the preceptor of the Duke of Guise. The king was playing at tennis when the news reached him: he flung down his racquet, exclaiming, "What! shall I never be in peace? must I suffer new trouble every day?" and went moody and pensive to his chamber. In a few moments the Prince of Condé and Henry of Navarre burst in, uttering indignant protests, and begged permission to leave Paris. Charles assured them he would do justice, and that they might safely remain: in the afternoon he went with his mother and the princes to visit the admiral. The king asked to be left alone in the wounded man's chamber, remained a long time with him, and protesting that though the wound was his friend's, the grief was his own, swore to avenge him. Coligny once again was warned by his friends to beware of the court, but he refused to distrust Charles. Many and conflicting are the reports of what followed. We shall not be accused of any Protestant bias if we base our story mainly on that of the two learned Benedictine priests[115] who are responsible for five solid tomes of the _Histoire de la Ville de Paris_. On the morrow of the attempt on Coligny's life, the queen-mother invited Charles and his brother of Anjou to walk, after dinner, in the garden of her new palace in the Tuileries:[116] they were joined by the chief Catholic leaders, and a grand council was held. The queen dwelt on the perilous situation of the monarchy and the Catholic cause, and urged that now was the time to act: Coligny lay wounded; Navarre and Condé were in their power at the Louvre; for ten Huguenots in Paris the Catholics could oppose a thousand armed men; rid France of the Huguenot chiefs and a formidable evil were averted. Her course was approved, but the leaders shrank from including the two princes of Navarre and Condé: they were to be given their choice--recantation or death. By order of the king 12,000 arquebusiers were placed along the river and the streets, and arms were carried into the Louvre. The admiral's friends, alarmed at the sinister preparations, protested to Charles but were reassured and told to take Cosseins and fifty arquebusiers to guard his house. The provost of Paris was then summoned by the Duke of Guise and ordered to arm and organise the citizens and proceed to the Hôtel de Ville at midnight. The king, Guise said, would not lose so fair an opportunity of exterminating the Huguenots. The Catholic citizens were to tie a piece of white linen on their left arm and place a white cross in their caps that they might be recognised by their friends. At midnight the windows of their houses were to be illuminated by torches, and at the first sound of the great bell at the Palais de Justice the bloody work was to begin. Meanwhile Catherine, doubtful of Charles, repaired to his chamber with Anjou and her councillors to fix his wavering purpose; she heaped bitter reproaches upon him, worked on his fears with stories of a vast Huguenot conspiracy and hinted that cowardice prevented him from seizing the fairest opportunity that God had ever offered, to free himself from his enemies. She repeated an Italian prelate's vicious epigram: "_Che pietà lor ser crudel, che crudeltà lor ser pietosa_,"[117] and concluded by threatening to leave the court with the Duke of Anjou rather than witness the destruction of the Catholic cause. Charles, who had listened sullenly, and, if we may believe Anjou, for a long while angrily refused to sacrifice Coligny, was at length stung by the taunt of cowardice and broke into a delirium of passion; he swore by _la mort dieu_ to compass the death of every Huguenot in France, that none might be left to reproach him afterwards. [Footnote 115: Félibien and Lobineau, 1725.] [Footnote 116: Catherine was accustomed to treat of important state matters requiring absolute secrecy in her new garden. The _pourparlers_ between her and Lord Buckhurst, relative to the proposed marriage of Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Anjou, took place under the trees in the Tuileries garden.] [Footnote 117: "That to show pity was to be cruel to them: to be cruel to them was to show pity."] [Illustration: CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. _French School, 16th Century._] Catherine gave him no time for farther vacillation. The great bell of St. Germain l'Auxerrois was rung, and at two in the morning of Sunday, St. Bartholomew's Day, 24th August 1572, the Duke of Guise and his followers issued forth to do their Sabbath morning's work. Cosseins saw his leader coming and knew what was expected of him. Guise, who believed the blood of his murdered father lay on Coligny's head, made sure of his vengeance. The admiral's door was forced, his servants were poignarded, and Besme, a German in the service of Guise, followed by others, burst into his room. The old man stood erect in his _robe de chambre_, facing his murderers. "Art thou the admiral?" demanded Besme. "I am he," answered Coligny with unfaltering voice and, gazing steadily at the naked sword pointed at his breast, added, "Young man, thou shouldst show more respect to my white hairs; yet canst thou shorten but little my brief life." For answer he was pierced by Besme's sword and stabbed to death by his companions. Guise stood waiting in the street below and the body was flung down to him from the window. He wiped the blood from the old man's face, looked at it, and said, "It is he!" Spurning the body with his foot he cried, "Courage, soldiers! we have begun well; now for the others, the king commands it." Meanwhile the bell of the Palais de Justice, answering that of St. Germain, was booming forth its awful summons, and the citizens hastened to perform their part. All the Huguenot nobles dwelling near the admiral were pitilessly murdered, and a similar carnage took place at the Louvre. Marguerite, the young bride of Navarre, in her Memoirs, tells of the horrors of that morning, how, when half-asleep, a wounded Huguenot nobleman rushed into her chamber, pursued by four archers, and flung himself on her bed imploring protection, followed by a captain of the guard from whom she gained his life. She entreated the captain to lead her to her sister's room, and as she fled thither, more dead than alive, another fugitive was hewn down by a hallebardier only three paces from her; she fell fainting in the captain's arms. Meanwhile Charles, the queen-mother, and Anjou, after the violent scene in the king's chamber, had lain down for two hours' rest and then went to a window which overlooked the _basse-cour_ of the Louvre, to see the "beginning of the executions." If we may believe Henry's story, they had not been there long before the sound of a pistol shot filled them with dread and remorse, and a messenger was sent to bid Guise spare the admiral and stay the whole undertaking; but the nobleman who had been sent returned saying that Guise had told him it was too late: the admiral was dead, and the executions had begun all over the city. A dozen Protestant nobles of the suites of Condé and Navarre, who at the king's invitation had taken up their quarters in the Louvre, were seized; one was even dragged from a sick-bed: all were taken to the courtyard and hewn in pieces by the Swiss guards under the eyes of Charles, who cried: "Let none escape." Meantime the Catholic leaders had been scouring the streets on horseback, shouting to the people that a Huguenot conspiracy to murder the king had been discovered, and that it was the king's wish that all the Huguenots should be destroyed. A list of the Huguenots in Paris had been prepared and all their houses marked. None was spared. Old and young, women and children, were pitilessly butchered. All that awful Sunday the orgy of slaughter and pillage went on; every gate of the city had been closed and the keys brought to the king. Night fell and the carnage was not stayed. Two days yet and two nights the city was a prey to the ministers of death, and some Catholics, denounced by personal enemies, were involved in the massacre. The resplendent August sun, the fair sky and serene atmosphere were held to be a divine augury, and a white thorn in the cemetery of the Innocents blooming out of season was hailed as a miracle and a visible token from God that the Catholic religion was to blossom again by the destruction of the Huguenots. The murders did not wholly cease until September. Various were the estimates of the slain--20,000, 5,000, 2,000. A goldsmith named Cruce went about displaying his robust arm and boasting that he had accounted for 400 Huguenots. The streets, the front of the Louvre, the public places were blocked by dead bodies; tumbrils[118] were hired to throw them into the Seine, which literally for days ran red with blood. [Footnote 118: The municipality gave presents of money to the archers who had taken part in the massacre, to the watermen who prevented the Huguenots from crossing the Seine, and to grave-diggers for having buried in eight days about 1,100 bodies.] [Illustration: PETITE GALERIE OF THE LOUVRE.] The princes of Navarre and Condé saw the privacy of their chambers violated by a posse of archers on St. Bartholomew's morning; they were forced to dress and were haled before the king, who with a fierce look and glaring eyes, swore at them, reproached them for waging war upon him, and ordered them to change their religion. On their refusal he grew furious with rage, and by dint of threats wrung from them a promise to go to mass. Charles is said to have stood at a window in the Petite Galerie of the Louvre and to have fired across the river with a long arquebus on some Huguenots who, being lodged on the southern side, in the Huguenot quarter, known as _la petite Genève_, had escaped massacre, and were riding up to learn what was passing. The statement is much canvassed by authorities. It is at least permissible to doubt the assertion, since the first floor[119] of the Petite Galerie, where the king is traditionally believed to have placed himself, was not in existence before the time of Henry IV. If the ground floor be meant, a further difficulty arises from the fact that the southern end was not furnished with a window in Charles IX.'s time. [Footnote 119: Now known as the Galerie d'Apollon.] On the 26th of August the king was forced to avow responsibility before the Parlement for measures which he alleged had been necessary to suppress a Huguenot insurrection aiming at the assassination of himself and the royal family and the destruction of the Catholic religion in France. The ears of the Catholic princes of Europe and of the pope were abused by this specious lie; they believed that the Catholic cause had been saved from ruin; the so-called victory was hailed with transports of joy, and a medal was struck in Rome to celebrate the defeat of the Huguenots.[120] [Footnote 120: _Ugonottorum strages._ Inscription on the obverse of the medal.] Such was the massacre of St. Bartholomew in Paris. The death-roll of the victims is known to the Recording Angel alone. It was a tremendous folly no less than an indelible crime, for it steeled the heart of every Protestant to avenge his slaughtered brethren. To "take Paris justice" became synonymous with assassination all over Protestant Europe. Many of the Huguenot leaders escaped from Paris while the soldiers sent to despatch them were pillaging, and the flames of civil strife burst forth fiercer than ever. The court had prepared for massacre, not for war; and while the king was receiving the felicitations of the courts of Spain and Rome, he was forced by the Peace of La Rochelle to concede liberty of conscience to the Protestants and to restore their sequestered estates and offices. After two years of agony of mind and remorse, Charles IX. lay dying of consumption, abandoned by all save his faithful Huguenot nurse. The blood flowing from his nostrils seemed a token of God's wrath; and moaning "Ah! _ma mie_, what bloodshed! what murders! I am lost! I am lost!" the poor crowned wretch passed to his account. He had not yet reached his twenty-fourth year. CHAPTER XIII _Henry III.--The League--Siege of Paris by Henry IV.--His Conversion, Reign and Assassination_ When the third of Catherine's sons, having resigned the sovereignty of Poland, was being consecrated at Rheims, the crown is said to have twice slipped from his head, the insentient diadem itself shrinking in horror from the brow of a prince destined to pollute it with deeper shame. Treacherous and bloody, Henry mingled grovelling piety with debauchery, and made of the court at Paris a veritable Alsatia, where paid assassins who stabbed from behind and _mignons_ who struck to the face, were part of the train of every prince. The king's minions with their insolent bearing, their extravagant and effeminate dress, their hair powdered and curled, their neck-ruffles so broad that their heads resembled the head of John the Baptist on a charger,--gambling, blaspheming swashbucklers--were hateful alike to Huguenot and Catholic. On 29th April 1578 three of them fought out a famous quarrel with three of the Guises' bullies at the horse market subsequently converted into the Place Royale. The duel began at five o'clock in the morning and was fought so furiously that three of the combatants lost their lives. Quélus, the king's favourite minion, with fifteen wounds, lingered for thirty-three days, Henry constantly at his bedside and offering in vain large sums of money to the surgeons to save him. Less than four years after St. Bartholomew the Peace of 1576 gave the Huguenots all they had ever demanded or hoped for. In 1582 died the Duke of Alençon, Catherine's last surviving son and heir to the throne; Henry, in spite of a pilgrimage on foot by himself and his queen to Notre Dame de Cléry from which they returned with blistered feet, gave no hope of posterity and the Catholic party were confronted by the possibility of the sceptre of St. Louis descending to a relapsed heretic. A tremendous wave of feeling ran through France, and a Holy League was formed to meet the danger, with the Duke of Guise as leader. The king tried in vain to win some of the Huguenot and League partisans by the solemn institution of the Order of the Holy Ghost,[121] in the church of the Augustinians, to commemorate his elevation to the thrones of Poland and France on the day of Pentecost. The people were equally recalcitrant. When Henry entered Paris after the campaign of 1587, they shouted for their idol, the Balafré,[122] crying, "Saul has slain his thousands but David his tens of thousands." The king in his jealousy and disgust forbade Guise to enter Paris; Guise coolly ignored the command, and a few months later arrived at the head of a formidable train of nobles, amid the joyous acclamation of the people, who greeted him with chants of "_Hosannah, Filio David!_" Angry scenes followed. The duke sternly called his master to duty, and warned him to take vigorous measures against the Huguenots or lose his crown; the king, pale with anger, dismissed him and prepared to strike. [Footnote 121: Examples of magnificent costumes of the order may be seen in the Cluny Museum.] [Footnote 122: The Duke of Guise was so called from his face being scarred by a wound received at the battle of Dolmans.] On the night of the 11th May a force of Royal Guards and 4,000 Swiss mercenaries entered Paris, but the Parisians, with that genius for insurrection which has always characterised them, were equal to the occasion. The sixteen sections into which the communal government of the city was divided met; in the morning the people were under arms; and barricades and chains blocked the streets. The St. Antoine section, ever to the front, stood up to the king's Guards and to the Swiss advancing to occupy their quarter, defeated them, and with exultant cries rushed to threaten the Louvre itself. Henry was forced to send his mother to treat with the duke; she returned with terms that meant a virtual abdication. Henry took horse and fled, vowing he would come back only through a breach in the walls. But Guise was supreme in Paris, and the pitiful monarch was soon forced to yield; he signed the terms of his own humiliation, and went to Blois to meet Guise and the States-General with bitterness in his heart, brooding over his revenge. Visitors to the château of Blois, which has the same thrilling interest for the traveller as the palace of Holyrood, will recall the scene of the tragic end of Guise, the incidents of which the official guardians are wont to recite with dramatic gesture. Fearless and impatient of warnings, the great captain fell into the trap prepared for him and was done to death in the king's chamber, like a lion caught in the toils. Henry, who had heard mass and prayed that God would be gracious to him and permit the success of his enterprise, hastened to his mother, now aged and dying. "Madame," said he, "I have killed the king of Paris and am become once more king of France." The Cardinal of Lorraine, separated from the king's chamber only by a partition, paled as he heard his nephew's struggles. "_Ne bougez pas_," said the Marshal of Aumont putting his hand to his sword, "the king has some accounts to settle with you too." Next morning the old cardinal was led out and hewn in pieces. The two bodies were burnt and the ashes scattered to the winds to prevent their being worshipped as relics: it was Christmas Eve of 1588. The stupid crime brought its inevitable consequences-- "Revenge and hate bring forth their kind, Like the foul cubs their parents are." The Commune of Paris and the Leaguers were stung to fury; the Sorbonne declared the king deposed; the pope banned him and a popular preacher called for another blood-letting. Henry, in a final act of shame and despair, flung himself into the king of Navarre's arms, and on the 31st July 1589, the two Henrys encamped at St. Cloud and threatened Paris with an army of 40,000 men. On the morrow Jacques Clément, a young Dominican friar, after preparing himself by fasting, prayer and holy communion, left Paris with a forged letter for the king, reached the camp and asked for a private interview. While Henry was reading the letter the friar snatched a knife from his sleeve and mortally stabbed him.[123] He lingered until 2nd August, and after pronouncing Henry of Navarre his lawful successor and bidding his Council swear allegiance to the new dynasty, the last of the thirteen Valois kings passed to his doom. Catherine de' Medici had already preceded him, burdened with the anathemas of the Cardinal of Bourbon. The people of Paris swore that if her body were brought to St. Denis they would fling it to the shambles or into the Seine, and a famous theologian, preaching at St. Bartholomew's church, declared to the faithful that he knew not if it were right to pray God for her soul, but that if they cared to give her in charity a Pater or an Ave they might do so for what it was worth. This was the reward of her thirty years of devoted toil, of vigils and of plots to further the Catholic cause. Not until a quarter of a century had passed were her ashes laid beside those of her husband in the rich Renaissance tomb, which still exists, in the royal church of St. Denis. Jacques Clément, who had been cut to pieces by the king's Guards, was worshipped as a martyr, and his mother rewarded for having given birth to the saviour of France. [Footnote 123: The king had premonitions of a violent end. One day, after keeping Easter at Negeon with great devotion, he suddenly returned to the Louvre and ordered all the lions, bears, bulls, and other wild animals kept in the _Hôtel des Lions_, reconstructed in 1570 for Charles IX., for baiting by dogs, to be shot. He had dreamt that he was set upon and eaten by wild beasts.] Henry of Navarre, unable to carry on the siege with a divided army, directed his course for Normandy. The exultant Parisians proclaimed the Cardinal of Bourbon king, under the title of Charles X., and the Duke of Mayenne, with a large army, marched forth to give battle to Henry. So confident were the Leaguers of victory, that their leaders hired windows along the Rue St. Antoine to witness the return of the duke bringing the "Béarnais"[124] dead or a prisoner. Henry did indeed return, but it was after a victorious campaign. He captured the Faubourg St. Jacques, and fell upon the abbey of St. Germain des Prés while the astonished monks were preparing to sing mass, climbed the steeple of the church and gazed on Paris. Having refreshed his troops, the Béarnais suffered them to pillage the city south of the Seine, and turned to the west to fix his capital at Tours. In 1590 he won the brilliant victory at Ivry over the armies of the League and of Spain which Macaulay has popularised in a stirring poem: the road to Paris was open and Henry sat down to besiege the city. [Footnote 124: So called derisively, because he was born and brought up in the poor province of Béarn, in the Pyrenees.] The Leaguers fought and suffered with the utmost constancy; reliquaries were melted down for money, church bells for cannon, and the clergy and religious orders were caught by the military enthusiasm. The bishop of Senlis and the prior of the Carthusians, two valiant Maccabees, were seen, crucifix in one hand, a pike in the other, leading a procession of armed priests, monks and scholars through the streets. Friars from the mendicant orders were among them, their habits tucked up, hoods thrown back, casques on their heads and cuirasses on their breasts. All marched sword by side, dagger in girdle, musket on shoulder, the strangest army of the church militant ever seen. As they passed the Pont Notre Dame the papal legate was crossing in his carriage, and was asked to stop and give his blessing. After this benediction a salvo of musketry was called for, and some of the host of the Lord, forgetting that their guns were loaded with ball, killed a papal officer and wounded a servant of the ambassador of Spain. Four months the Parisians endured starvation and all the attendant horrors of a siege, the incidents of which, as described by contemporaries, are so ghastly that the pen recoils from transcribing them. At length, when they were at the last extremity, the Duke of Parma arrived with a Spanish army, forced Henry to raise the siege, and revictualled the city. After war, anarchy. In November 1591 it was discovered that secret letters were passing between Brizard, an officer in the service of the Duke of Mayenne in Paris, and a royalist at St. Denis. The sections demanded Brizard's instant execution, and on his discharge by the Parlement the _curé_ of St. Jacques fulminated against that body and declared that cold steel must be tried (_faut jouer des couteaux_). A secret revolutionary committee of ten was appointed, and a _papier rouge_ or lists of suspects in all the districts of Paris was drawn up under three categories: P. (_pendus_), those to be hanged; D. (_dagués_), those to be poignarded; C. (_chassés_), those to be expelled. On the night of the 15th November a meeting was held at the house of the _curé_ of St. Jacques, and in the morning the president of the Parlement, Brisson, was seized and dragged to the Petit Châtelet, where a revolutionary tribunal, in black cloaks, on which were sewn large red crosses, condemned him to death. Meanwhile two councillors of the Parlement, Larcher and Tardif, had been seized, the latter by the _curé_ of St. Cosme, and haled to the Châtelet. All three were dragged to a room, and the executioner was forced to hang them from a beam; the bodies were then stripped, an inscription was hung about their necks, and they were suspended from the gallows in the Place de Grève. The sections believed that Paris would rise: they only shocked the more orderly citizens. The Duke of Mayenne, who was at Lyons, on the receipt of the news hastened to Paris, temporised a while and, when sure of support, seized four of the most dangerous leaders of the sections and hanged them without trial in the Salle basse of the Louvre. All save the more violent partisans were now weary of the strife and the Leaguers themselves were divided. The sections aimed at a theocratic democracy; another party favoured the Duke of Mayenne; a third, the Duke of Guise; a fourth, the Infanta of Spain. It was decided to convoke the States-General at Paris in 1593, and a conference was arranged with Henry's supporters at Suresnes. Crowds flocked there, crying, "Peace, peace; blessed be they who bring it; cursed they who prevent it." Henry knew the supreme moment was come. France was still profoundly Catholic: he must choose between his religion and France. He chose to heal his country's wounds and perhaps to save her very existence. Learned theologians were deputed to confer with him at Paris, whom he astonished and confounded by his knowledge of Scripture; they declared that they had never met a heretic better able to defend his cause. But on 23rd July 1573, he professed himself convinced, and the same evening wrote to his mistress, Gabrielle d'Estrées, that he had spoken with the bishops, and that a hundred anxieties were making St. Denis hateful to him. "On Sunday," he adds, "I am to take the perilous leap. _Bonjour_, my heart; come to me early to-morrow. It seems a year since I saw you. A million times I kiss the fair hands of my angel and the mouth of my dear mistress." On Sunday, under the great portal of St. Denis, the archbishop of Bourges sat enthroned in a chair covered with white damask and embroidered with the arms of France and of Navarre. He was attended by many prelates and the prior and monks of St. Denis: the cross and the book of the Gospels were held before him. Henry drew nigh. "Who are you?" demanded the archbishop. "I am the king." "What do you ask?" "I wish to be received in the bosom of the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church." "Is it your will?" "Yes, I will and desire it." Henry then knelt and made profession of his faith, kissed the prelate's ring, received his blessing and was led to the choir, where he knelt before the high altar and repeated his profession of faith on the holy Gospels amid cries of "_Vive le roi!_" The clerical extremists in Paris anathematised all concerned. Violent _curés_ again donned their armour, children were baptised and mass was sung by cuirassed priests. The _curé_ of St. Cosme seized a partisan, and with other fanatics of the League hastened to the Latin Quarter to raise the university. But the people were heartsick of the whole business; and when Henry entered Paris after his coronation at Chartres, resplendent in velvet robes embroidered with gold and seated on his dapple grey charger, his famous helmet with its white plumes ever in his hand saluting the ladies at the windows, he was hailed with shouts of joy. Shops were reopened, the artisan took up his tools and the merchant went to his counter with a sigh of relief. A general amnesty was proclaimed, and the Spanish garrison were allowed to depart with their arms. As they filed out of the Porte St. Denis in heavy rain, three thousand strong, the king was sitting at a window above the gates. "Remember me to your master," he cried, "but do not return." On the morrow the provost and sheriffs and chief citizens came to the Louvre bearing presents of sweetmeats, sugar-plums and malmsey wine. "Yesterday I received your hearts, to-day I receive your sweets," the king remarked; all were charmed by his wit, his forbearance and generosity. The stubborn university was last to give way, but when the doctors of theology learnt that Henry had touched for the king's evil and that many had been cured, they too were convinced. Paris, "well worth a mass," was wooed and won. The memorable Edict of Nantes established liberty of worship and political equality for the Protestants. The war with Spain was brought to a successful issue, and Henry, with his minister the Duke of Sully, probably the greatest financial genius France has ever known, by wise and firm statesmanship lifted the country from bankruptcy to prosperity and contentment. [Illustration: HÔTEL DE SULLY.] Henry, like one of his predecessors, had of _bastards et bastardes une moult belle compagnie_, but as yet no legitimate heir. A divorce from Marguerite of Valois and a politic marriage with the pope's niece, Marie de' Medici,[125] gave him a magnificent dowry (600,000 golden crowns and a yearly income of 20,000), an additional bond to the papacy, and several children. Margot, once convinced that the divorce was not to enable Henry to marry that _bagasse_ Gabrielle, made small objection and soon consoled herself. In 1606 one of her discarded lovers was executed in front of her dwelling in the palace of the archbishop of Sens for having shot his rival in her affections, a young page of twenty, as he was handing her into her carriage. [Footnote 125: Her majesty, we learn from the _Mémoires_ of L'Estoile, was of a rich figure, stout, fine eyes and complexion. She used no paint, powder or other _vilanie_.] Like all his race, Henry was susceptible to the charms of the daughters of Eve, but, unlike his descendants, he never sacrificed France to their tears and wiles. When the question of the succession was urgent and he thought of marrying Gabrielle d'Estrées, Sully opposed the union. The impatient Gabrielle used all her powers of fascination to compass the dismissal of the great minister, who was present at the interview in her room at the cloister of St. Germain, and who has left us a vivid description of the scene. Gabrielle burst into passionate reproaches and employed in turn all the arts of feminine guile. Her eyes streaming with tears, sobbing and wailing, she seized her royal lover's hand and smothered it with kisses; she called for a poignard that by plunging it into her heart he might behold his image graven there; she appealed to his love for their children and flung herself hysterically on the bed, protesting she could live no longer seeing herself disgraced, and a servant whom so many complained of, preferred to a mistress whom all praised. It was of no avail. "Let me tell you," answered Henry, calmly, "if I must choose between you and Sully, I would sooner part with ten mistresses such as you than one faithful servant such as he." In 1610 the king was making great preparations for a war with Austria, and, on the 14th May, desiring to consult Sully, who was unwell in his rooms at the Arsenal, he determined to spare him the fatigue of travelling to the Louvre, and to drive to the Arsenal. With much foreboding the king had agreed to the coronation of Marie de' Medici, which had been celebrated at St. Denis with great pomp. The ceremony was attended by two sinister incidents: the Gospel for the day, taken from Mark x., included the answer of Jesus to the Pharisees who tempted Him by asking--"Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife?"--the Gospel was hurriedly changed; and when the usual largesse of gold and silver pieces was thrown to the crowd not a voice cried, "_Vive le roi_," or "_Vive la reine_." That night the king tossed restless on his bed, pursued by evil dreams. On the morrow his counsellors begged him to defer his journey, but nineteen plots to assassinate him had already failed: he gently put aside their warnings, and repeated his favourite maxim that fear had no place in a generous heart. It was a warm day, and the king entered his open carriage, attended by the Dukes of Epernon and Montbazon and five other courtiers; a number of _valets de pied_ followed him. In the narrow Rue de la Ferronnerie the carriage was stopped by a block in the traffic, and the servants were sent round by the cemetery of the Innocents. While the king was listening to the reading of a letter by the Duke of Epernon, one Francis Ravaillac, who had been watching his opportunity for twelve months, placed his foot on a wheel of the coach, leaned forward, and plunged a knife into the king's breast. Before he could be seized he pulled out the fatal steel and doubled his thrust, piercing him to the heart. "_Je suis blessé_," cried Henry, and never spoke again. Ravaillac was seized, and all the refined cruelties inflicted on regicides were practised upon him. He was dragged to the Place de Grève, his right hand cut off, and, with the fatal knife, flung into the flames; the flesh was torn from his arms, breast and legs; melted lead and boiling oil were poured into the wounds. Horses were then tied to each of his four limbs, the body was torn to pieces and burnt to ashes.[126] Some writers have inculpated the Jesuits for the murder, but it may more reasonably be attributed to the fury of a crazy fanatic. Certain it is that Henry's heart was given to the Jesuits for the church of their college of la Flèche, which was founded by him. [Footnote 126: In 1586 six poor wretches convicted of plotting the assassination of Queen Elizabeth were dragged to Tyburn, "hanged but for a moment, taken down while the susceptibility of agony was unimpaired and cut in pieces afterwards with due precautions for the protraction of the pain."--Froude's _History_.] The first Bourbon king has left his impress on the architecture of Paris. "Soon as he was master of Paris," says a contemporary, "one saw naught but masons at work." Small progress had been made during the reign of Henry II.'s three sons with their father's plans for the rebuilding of the Louvre. The work had been continued along the river front after Lescot's death in 1578 by Baptiste du Cerceau, and Catherine de' Medici had erected a gallery on the south, known as the Petite Galerie--a ground-floor building with a terrace on top, intended for a meeting-place and promenade but not for residence. She had also begun in 1564 the palace of the Tuileries, which, like the Louvre, was designed to be a quadrangular building and of which the west wing alone was ever constructed, but abandoned it on being warned by her astrologer, Ruggieri, that she should die under the ruins of a house near St Germain.[127] Henry, soon after he had entered Paris, elaborated a vast scheme for finishing the Tuileries, demolishing the churches of St. Thomas and St. Nicholas, quadrupling the size of the old Louvre, and joining the two palaces by continuing the Grande Galerie, already begun by Catherine, to the west, to afford a means of escape in the event of an attack on the Louvre. Towards the east the hôtels d'Alençon, de Bourbon and the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois were to be demolished, and a great open space was to be levelled between the new east front of the Louvre and the Pont Neuf. At Henry's accession Catherine's architects, Philibert de l'Orme and Jean Bullant, had completed the superb domed central pavilion of the Tuileries, with its two contiguous galleries, and begun the end pavilions, the former using the Ionic order as a delicate flattery of Catherine, "since among the ancients that order was employed in temples dedicated to a goddess." The gardens, with the famous maze and Palissy's beautiful grotto or fountain, had been completed in 1476, and for some years were a favourite promenade for Catherine and her court. Henry's plans were so far carried out that on New Year's day, 1606, he could lead the Dauphin along the Grande Galerie to the Pavilion de Flore at the extreme west of the river front, and enter the south wing of the Tuileries which had been extended to meet it. The Pavilion de Flore thus became the angle of junction between the two palaces. An upper floor was imposed on the Petite Galerie, and adorned with paintings representing the kings of France. Unhappily the fire of 1661 destroyed all the portraits save that of Marie de' Medici by Porbus, and all the subsequent decorations by Poussin. Henry intended the ground floor of the Grande Galerie for the accommodation of his best craftsmen--painters, sculptors, goldsmiths, tapestry weavers, smiths, and others. The quadrangle, however, remained as the last Valois had left it--half Renaissance, half Gothic--and the north-east and south-east towers of the original château were still standing to be drawn by Sylvestre towards the middle of the seventeenth century. [Footnote 127: The new palace was situated in the parish of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, the parish church of the Louvre.] The unfinished Hôtel de Ville was taken in hand after more than half-a-century and practically completed.[128] The larger, north portion of the Pont Neuf was built, the two islets west of the Cité were incorporated with the island to form the Place Dauphine and the ground that now divides the two sections of the bridge--a new street, the Rue Dauphine, being cut through the garden of the Augustins and the ruins of the college of St. Denis. The Place Royale (now des Vosges) was designed and partly built--that charming relic of seventeenth and eighteenth century fashionable Paris, where Molière's _Précieuses_ lived. [Footnote 128: The north tower was left only partially constructed, and was finished by Louis XIII.] Henry also partly rebuilt the Hôtel Dieu, created new streets, and widened others.[129] New fountains and quays were built; the Porte du Temple was reopened, and the Porte des Tournelles constructed. Unhappily, some of the old wooden bridges remained, and on Sunday, 22nd December 1596, the Pont aux Meuniers (Miller's Bridge), just below the Pont au Change, suddenly collapsed, with all its shops and houses, and sixty persons perished. They were not much regretted, for most of them had enriched themselves by the plunder of Huguenots, and during the troubles of the League. The bridge was rebuilt of wood, at the cost of the captain of the corps of archers, and as the houses were painted each with the figure of a bird, the new bridge was known as the Pont aux Oiseaux (Bridge of Birds). It spanned the river from the end of the Rue St. Denis and the arch of the Grand Châtelet to the Tour de l'Horloge of the Palais de Justice. In 1621, however, it and the Pont au Change were consumed by fire in a few hours and, in 1639, the two wooden bridges were replaced by a bridge of stone, the Pont au Change, which stood until rebuilt in 1858. [Footnote 129: By a curious coincidence the widening of the Rue de la Ferronnerie had been ordered just before the king was assassinated.] [Illustration: OLD HOUSES NEAR PONT ST. MICHEL, SHOWING SPIRE OF THE STE. CHAPELLE.] We are able to give the impression which the Paris of Henri Quatre made on an English traveller, a friend of Ben Jonson and author of _Coryat's Crudities, hastily gobbled up in five months' Travell_. The first objects that met Coryat's eye are characteristic. As he travelled along the St. Denis road he passed "seven[130] faire pillars of freestone at equal distances, each with an image of St. Denis and his two companions, and a little this side of Paris was the fairest gallows I ever saw, built on Montfaucon, which consisted of fourteene fair pillars of freestone." He notes "the fourteene gates of Paris, the goodly buildings, mostly of fair, white stone and"--a detail always unpleasantly impressed on travellers--"the evil-smelling streets, which are the dirtiest and the most stinking I ever saw in any city in my life. Lutetia! well dothe it brooke being so called from the Latin word _lutum_, which signifieth dirt." Coryat was impressed by the bridges--"the goodly bridge of white freestone nearly finished (the Pont Neuf); a famous bridge that far exceedeth this, having one of the fairest streets in Paris called our Ladies street; the bridge of Exchange where the goldsmiths live; St. Michael's bridge, and the bridge of Birds." He admires the "Via Jacobea, full of booke-sellers' faire shoppes, most plentifully furnished with bookes, and the fair building, very spacious and broad, where the Judges sit in the Palais de Justice, the roofs sumptuously gilt and embossed, with an exceeding multitude of great, long bosses hanging downward." Coryat next visited the fine quadrangle of the Louvre, whose outside was exquisitely wrought with festoons, and decked with many stately pillars and images. From Queen Mary's bedroom he went to a room[131] "which excelleth not only all that are now in the world but also all that were since the creation thereof, even a gallery, a perfect description whereof would require a large volume, with a roofe of most glittering and admirable beauty. Yea, so unspeakably fair is it that a man can hardly comprehend it in his mind that hath not seen it with his bodily eyes." The Tuileries gardens were the finest he ever beheld for length of delectable walks. [Footnote 130: They marked the seven resting-places of the saint as he journeyed to St. Denis after his martyrdom.] [Footnote 131: The Grande Galerie.] Next day Coryat saw the one thing above all he desired to see, "that most rare ornament of learning Isaac Casaubon," who told him to observe "a certain profane, superstitious ceremony of the papists--a bedde carried after a very ethnicall manner, or rather a canopy in the form of a bedde, under which the Bishop of the city, with certain priests, carry the Sacrament. The procession of Corpus Christi," he adds, "though the papists esteemed it very holy, was methinks very pitiful. The streets were sumptuously adorned with paintings and rich cloth of arras, the costliest they could provide, the shews of Our Lady street being so hyperbolical in pomp that it exceedeth all the rest by many degrees. Upon public tables in the streets they exposed rich plate as ever I saw in my life, exceeding costly goblets and what not tending to pomp; and on the middest of the tables stood a golden crucifix and divers other gorgeous images. Following the clergy, in capes exceeding rich, came many couples of little singing choristers, which, pretty innocent punies, were so egregiously deformed that moved great pity in any relenting spectator, being so clean shaved round about their heads that a man could perceive no more than the very rootes of their hair." At the royal suburb Coryat saw "St. Denis, his head enclosed in a wonderful, rich helmet, beset with exceeding abundant pretious stones," but the skull itself he "beheld not plainly, only the forepart through a pretty, crystall glass, and by light of a wax candle." CHAPTER XIV _Paris under Richelieu and Mazarin_ Before Coryat left Paris he rode a sorry jade to Fontainebleau which, "though I did excarnificate his sides," would not stir until a gentleman of the court drew his rapier and ran him to the "buttock." At the palace he saw the "Dolphin whose face was full and fat-cheeked, his hair black, his look vigorous and courageous." The Dolphin that Coryat saw came to the throne, at nine years of age, in 1610, as Louis XIII. For a time the regent, Marie de' Medici, was content to suffer the great Sully to hold office, but soon favouritism and the greed of princes, to the ill-hap of France, drove him in the prime of life from Paris into the retirement of his château of Villebon, and a feeble and venal Florentine, Concini, who came to Paris in the time of Marie, took his place. The Prince of Condé, now a Catholic, the Duke of Mayenne, and a pack of nobles fell upon the royal treasury like hounds on their quarry. In 1614, so critical was the financial situation, that the States-General were called to meet in the Salle Bourbon,[132] but to little purpose. Recriminations were bandied between the noblesse and the Tiers État. The insolence of the former was intolerable. One member of the Tiers was thrashed by a noble and could obtain no redress. The clergy refused to bear any of the public burdens. The orator of the Tiers, speaking on his knees according to usage, warned the court that despair might make the people conscious that a soldier was none other than a peasant bearing arms, and that when the vine-dresser took up the arquebus he might one day cease to be the anvil and become the hammer. But there was no thought for the common weal; each order wrangled for its own privileges, and their meeting-place was closed on the pretext that the hall was wanted for a royal ballet. No protest was raised, and the States-General never met again until the fateful meeting at Versailles, in 1789, when a similar pretext was tried, with very different consequences. Among the clergy, however, sat a young priest of twenty-nine years of age, chosen for their orator, Armand Duplessis de Richelieu, who made rapid strides to fame. [Footnote 132: In the Hôtel de Bourbon, east of the old Louvre, sometimes known as the Petit Bourbon. It was demolished to give place to the new east façade of the Louvre.] In 1616 the nobles were once more in arms, and Condé was again bought off. The helpless court was in pitiful straits and the country drifting to civil war, when Richelieu, who, meanwhile, had been made a royal councillor and minister for foreign affairs, took the Condé business in hand. He had the prince arrested in the Louvre itself and flung into the Bastille; the noble blackmailers were declared guilty of treason, and three armies marched against them. The triumph of the court seemed assured, when Louis XIII., now sixteen years of age, suddenly freed himself from tutelage, and with the help of the favourite companion of his pastimes, Albert de Luynes, son of a soldier of fortune, determined to rid himself of Concini. The all-powerful Florentine, on 24th April 1617, was crossing the bridge that spanned the eastern fosse of the Louvre, when the captain of the royal Guards, who was accompanied by a score of gentlemen, touched him on the shoulder and told him he was the king's prisoner. "I, a prisoner!" exclaimed Concini, moving his hand towards his sword. Before he could utter another word he fell dead, riddled with pistol shots; Louis appeared at a window, and all the Louvre resounded with cries of "_Vive le roi!_" Concini's wife, to whom he owed his ascendency over the queen-mother, was accused of sorcery, beheaded and burnt on the Place de Grève; Marie was packed off to Blois and Richelieu exiled to his bishopric of Luçon. De Luynes, enriched by the confiscated wealth of the Concini, now became supreme at Paris only to demonstrate a pitiful incapacity. The nobles had risen and were rallying round Marie; the Protestants were defying the state; but Luynes was impotent, and soon went to a dishonoured grave, leaving chaos behind him. Richelieu's star was now in the ascendant. The king drew near to his mother, and both turned to the one man who seemed able to knit together the distracted state. A cardinal's hat was obtained for him from Rome, and the illustrious churchman ruled in Paris for eighteen years. Everything went down before his commanding genius, his iron will and his indefatigable industry. "I reflect long," said he, "before making a decision, but once my mind is made up, I go straight to the goal. I mow down all before me, and cover all with my scarlet robe." The Huguenots, backed by the English, aimed at founding an independent republic: Richelieu captured La Rochelle[133] and wiped them out as a political party. The great nobles sought to divide power with the crown: he demolished their fortresses, made them bow their necks to the royal yoke or chopped off their heads. They defied the king's edict against duelling: the Count of Bouteville, the most notorious duellist of his time, and the Count of Les Chapelles were sent to the scaffold for having defiantly fought duels in the Place Royale in open noonday, at which the Marquis of Buffy was killed. The execution made a profound impression, for the Count was a Montmorency, and the Condés, the Orleans, the Montmorencys and all the most powerful nobles brought pressure to bear on the king and swore that the sentence should never be carried out. But Richelieu was firm as a tower. "It is an infamous thing," he told Louis, "to punish the weak alone; they cast no baleful shade: we must keep discipline by striking down the mighty." Richelieu crushed the Parlement and revolutionised the provincial administrations. He maintained seven armies in the field, and two navies on the seas at one and the same time. He added four provinces to France--Alsace, Lorraine, Artois and Rousillon, humiliated Austria and exalted his country to the proud position of dominant factor in European politics. He foiled plot after plot and crushed rebellion. The queen-mother, Gaston Duke of Orleans her second son and heir to the throne, the Marquis of Cinq-Mars the king's own favourite--each tried a fall with the great minister, but was thrown and punished with pitiless severity. Marie herself was driven to exile--almost poverty--at Brussels, and died a miserable death at Cologne. The despicable Gaston, who twice betrayed his friends to save his own skin, was watched, and when the queen, Anne of Austria, gave birth to a son after twenty years of marriage, he was deprived of his dignities and possessions and interned at Blois. The Marquis of Cinq-Mars, and the last Duke of Montmorency, son and grandson of two High Constables of France, felt the stroke of the headsman's axe. [Footnote 133: The Church of Notre Dame des Victoires commemorates the victory.] In 1642, when the mighty cardinal had attained the highest pinnacle of success and fame, a mortal disease declared itself. His physicians talked the usual platitudes of hope, but he would have none of them, and sent for the _curé_ of St. Eustache. "Do you pardon your enemies?" the priest asked. "I have none, save those of the state," replied the dying cardinal, and, pointing to the Host, exclaimed, "There is my judge." Louis heard of his death without emotion, and simply remarked--"Well, a great politician has gone." In six months his royal master was gone too. Paris, under Marie de' Medici and Richelieu, saw many and important changes. In 1612 a new Jacobin monastery was founded in the Rue St. Honoré for the reformed Dominicans, destined later to be the theatre of Robespierre's triumphs and to house the great Jacobin revolutionary club.[134] In the same year the queen-regent bought a château and garden from the Duke of Piney-Luxembourg, and commissioned her architect, Solomon Debrosse, to build a new palace in the style of the Pitti at Florence. The work was begun in 1615, and resulted in the picturesque but somewhat Gallicised Italian palace which, after descending to Gaston of Orleans and his daughter the Grande Mademoiselle, ends a chequered career as palace, revolutionary prison, house of peers, and socialist meeting-place by becoming the respectable and dull Senate-house of the third Republic. The beautiful Renaissance gardens have suffered but few changes; adorned with Debrosse's picturesque fountain, they form one of the most charming parks in Paris. The same architect was employed to restore the old Roman aqueduct of Arcueil and finished his work in 1624. In 1614 the equestrian statue in bronze of Henry IV., designed by Giovanni da Bologna, and presented to Marie by Cosimo II. of Tuscany, reached Paris after many vicissitudes and was set up on the Pont Neuf by Pierre de Fouqueville, who carved for it a beautiful pedestal of marble, whereon were inscribed the most signal events and victories of Henry's reign. This priceless statue was melted down for cannon during the Revolution, and for years its site was occupied by a _café_. In 1818, during the Restoration, another statue of Henry IV., by Lemot, cast from the melted figure of Napoleon I. on the top of the Vendôme column, was erected where it now stands. The founder, who was an imperialist, is said to have avenged the emperor by placing pamphlets attacking the Restoration in the horse's belly. [Footnote 134: The Marché St. Honoré now occupies its site.] [Illustration: THE MEDICI FOUNTAIN, LUXEMBOURG GARDENS.] In the seventeenth century the Pont Neuf was one of the busiest centres of Parisian life. Streams of coaches and multitudes of foot-passengers passed by. Booths of all kinds displayed their wares; quacks, mountebanks, ballad-singers and puppet-shows, drew crowds of listeners. Evelyn describes the footway as being three to four feet higher than the road; and at the foot of the bridge, says the traveller, is a water-house, "whereon, at a great height is the story of our Saviour and the Woman of Samaria pouring water out of a bucket. Above is a very rare dyall of several motions with a chime. The water is conveyed by huge wheels, pumps and other engines, from the river beneath." This was the famous Château d'Eau, or La Samaritaine, erected in 1608 and rebuilt in 1712 to pump water from the Seine and distribute it to the Louvre and the Tuileries palaces. The timepiece was an _industrieuse horloge_, which told the hours, days, and months. The present baths of La Samaritaine mark its site and retain its name. [Illustration: PONT NEUF.] In 1624, Henry the Fourth's great scheme for enlarging and completing the Louvre was committed by Richelieu to his architect, Jacques Lemercier, and the first stone of the Pavilion de l'Horloge was laid on 28th June by Louis. Lemercier was great enough and modest enough to adopt his predecessor's design and having erected the pavilion, continued Lescot's west wing northwards, turned the north-west angle and carried the north wing to about a fourth of its designed extent. The Pavilion de l'Horloge thus became the central feature of the west wing, which was exactly doubled in extent. The south-east and north-east towers of the eastern wing of the old Gothic Louvre, however, remained intact, and even as late as 1650 Sylvestre's drawing shows us the south-east tower still standing and the east wing only partly demolished. Lemercier also designed a grand new palace for the cardinal, north of the Rue St. Honoré, including in the plans two theatres: a small one to hold about six hundred spectators, and a larger one, which subsequently became the opera-house, capacious enough to seat three thousand. Magnificent galleries, painted by Philippe de Champaigne and other artists, represented the chief events in the cardinal's reign, and were hung with the portraits of the great men of France, each with a Latin distich in letters of gold. The courts were adorned with carvings of ships' prows and anchors, symbolising the cardinal's function as Grand Master of Navigation; spacious gardens, with an avenue of chestnut trees, which cost 300,000 francs to train, added to its splendours. In this palace the great minister, busy with a yet vaster scheme for building an immense Place Ducale to the north, passed away leaving its stately magnificence to the king, whose widow, Anne of Austria, inhabited it during the regency with her sons, Louis XIV. and Philip, Duke of Orleans, the founder of the Bourbon-Orleans family. The famous architect, François Mansard, was employed by her to extend the Palais Royal as it was then called, which in 1652 was occupied by Henrietta Maria, Charles I.'s widow, whose court ill repaid the hospitality of France by acts of Vandalism. In 1661, on the marriage of Henrietta Anne, her daughter, to the Duke of Orleans it was assigned to the Orleans princes, a portion being reserved for Louis XIV. where he lodged his mistress Mme. de la Vallière. The palace subsequently became infamous as the scene of almost incredible orgies during the regency. In 1730 Philip II.'s austere and pious son, Prince Louis, after having made an _auto-da-fé_ of forty pictures of the nude from the Orleans collection, permitted the destruction of Richelieu's superb avenue of trees. The buildings were further extended by Philip Egalité, who erected shops along the sides of the gardens, which as _cafés_ and gambling-saloons became a haunt of fashionable vice and dissipation in the late eighteenth century. The gardens of the royal palaces had always been open to well-dressed citizens, but notices forbade entrance to beggars, servants, and all ill-clad persons under pain of imprisonment, the carcan, and other graver penalties. Egalité, however, to win popularity, opened his gardens without restriction, and they soon became the forum of the revolutionary agitation. Here Camille Desmoulins declaimed his impassioned orations and called Paris to arms. The gambling-hells, of which there were over three hundred, survived the Revolution, and Blücher and many an officer of the allied armies lost immense sums there. The Palais Royal became subsequently the residence of Louis Philippe, and now serves as the meeting-place of the Conseil d'État. In the early seventeenth century nine lovers of literature associated themselves for the purpose of holding a friendly symposium, where they discoursed of books, and read and criticised each other's compositions; the meetings were followed by a modest repast and a peripatetic discussion. The masterful cardinal, who would rule the French language as well as the state, called the nine together, and in 1635 organised them into an Académie Française, whose function should be to perfect and watch over the purity of the French tongue. The Parlement granted letters-patent, limited the number of academicians to forty, and required them to take cognisance of French authors and the French language alone. The original nine, however, were far from gratified, and always regretted the "golden age" of early days. Richelieu established the Jardin des Plantes for the use of medical students, where demonstrations in botany were given; he rebuilt the college and church of the Sorbonne where his monument,[135] by Girardon from Lebrun's designs, may still be seen. He cheapened the postal service,[136] established the Royal Press at the Louvre which in twenty years published seventy Greek, Latin, Italian and French classics. He issued the first political weekly gazette in France, was a liberal patron of men of letters and of artists, and saw the birth and fostered the growth of the great period of French literary and artistic supremacy. [Footnote 135: In 1793 the tomb was desecrated, and the head removed from the body, but in 1863, as an inscription tells, the head was recovered by the historian Duruy, and after seventy years reunited to the trunk.] [Footnote 136: A letter from Paris to Lyons was taxed at two sous.] Another of Henry the Fourth's plans for the aggrandisement of Paris was carried out by the indefatigable minister. As early as 867 the bishops of Paris had been confirmed by royal charter, in their possession of the two islands east of the Cité, the Isle Notre Dame and Isle aux Vaches. From time immemorial these had been used as timber-yards, and in 1616 the chapter of the cathedral was induced to treat with Christophe Marie, contractor for the bridges of France, and others, who agreed to fill in the channel[137] which separated the islands; to cover them with broad streets of houses and quays, and to build certain bridges; but expressly contracted never to fill up the arm of the Seine between the Isle Notre Dame, and the Cité. The first stone of the new bridge which was to connect the islands with the north bank was laid by Louis XIII. in 1614 and named Pont Marie, after the contractor. In 1664 a church, dedicated to St. Louis, was begun on the site of an earlier chapel by Levau, but not completed until 1726 by Donat. [Footnote 137: The Rue Poulletier marks the line of the old channel between the islands.] The new quarter soon attracted the attention of rich financiers, civic officers, merchants and lawyers, some of whose hôtels were designed by Levau, and decorated by Lebrun and Lesueur. Madame Pompadour's brother lived there; the Duke of Lauzan, husband of the Grande Mademoiselle, lived in his hôtel on the Quai d'Anjou (No. 17); Voltaire lived with Madame du Châtelet in the Hôtel Lambert (No. 1 Quai d'Anjou). To the _précieuses_ of Molière's time the Isle St. Louis (for so it was called) became the Isle de Delos, around whose quays the gallants and ladies of the period were wont to promenade at nightfall. _The Isle_, as it is now familiarly known, is one of the most peaceful quarters of Paris, and has a strangely provincial aspect to the traveller who paces its quiet streets. In 1622 Paris was raised from its subjection to the Metropolitan of Sens, and became for the first time the seat of an archbishopric; the diocese was made to correspond to the old territories of the Parisii. Among the many evils attendant on a monarchy, which Samuel recited to the children of Israel, that of the possibility of a regency might well have found place. Louis XIV. was less than five years of age when his father died, and once again the great nobles turned the difficulties of the situation to their own profit. By a curious anomaly, while women were excluded from succession to the throne of France, the queen-mother was invariably preferred to all other claimants for the Regency, and Anne of Austria became regent in accordance with old custom. She retained in office Cardinal Mazarin, Richelieu's faithful disciple, chosen by him to continue the traditions of his policy. The new cardinal-minister, scion of an old Sicilian family, was a typical Italian; he had none of his predecessor's virile energy and directness of purpose, but ruled by his subtle wit and cool, calculating patience. "Time and I," was his device. He was an excellent judge of men, and profoundly distrusted "the unlucky," always satisfying himself that a man was "lucky," before he employed him. Conscious of his foreign origin, Mazarin hesitated to take strong measures, and advised a policy of conciliation with the disaffected nobles. Anne filled their pockets, and for a time the whole language of the court is said to have consisted of the five little words "_La reine est si bonne_." But the ambitious courtiers soon aimed at higher game, and a plot was discovered to assassinate the foreign cardinal; the Duke of Beaufort, chief conspirator, a son of the Duke of Vendôme, and grandson of Henry IV., by Gabrielle d'Estrées, was imprisoned in the keep at Vincennes, and his associates interned at their châteaux. The finances which Richelieu had left in so flourishing a condition were soon exhausted by the lavish benevolence of the court, and were unhappily in the hands of Emery (a clever but cynical official, who had formerly been a fraudulent bankrupt), whose rigorous exactions and indifference to public feeling aroused the indignation of the whole nation. In 1646, 23,800 defaulters lay rotting in the jails, and an attempt to enforce an odious tax on all merchandise entering Paris led to an explosion of popular wrath. The Parlement, by the re-assertion of its claims to refuse the registration of an obnoxious decree of the crown, made itself the champion of public justice; the four sovereign courts met in the hall of St. Louis, and refused to register the tax. Anne was furious and made the boy-king hold a "bed[138] of justice" to enforce the registration of the decree. But the Parlement stood firm, declared itself the guardian of the public and private weal, claiming even to reform abuses and to discuss and vote on schemes of taxation. So critical was the situation that the court was forced to bend, and to postpone the humiliation of the Parlement to a more convenient season. The glorious issue of the campaigns of Condé against the Houses of Spain and Austria seemed to offer the desired opportunity. On 26th August 1648, while a Te Deum was being sung at Notre Dame for the victory of Lens, and a grand trophy of seventy-three captured flags was displayed to the people, three of the most stubborn members of the Parlement were arrested. One escaped, but while the venerable Councillor Broussel was being hustled into a carriage, a cry was raised, which stirred the whole of Paris to insurrection. In the excitement a street porter was shot by a captain of the Guards, the Marquis of Meilleraye, and the next morning the court, aroused by cries of "Liberty and Broussel," found the streets of Paris barricaded and the citizens in arms. De Retz, the suffragan archbishop of Paris, came in his robes to entreat Anne to appease the people, but was snubbed for his pains. "It is a revolt," she cried, "to imagine a revolt possible; these are silly tales of those who desire it: the king will enforce order." De Retz, angry and insulted, left to join the insurrection and to become its leader. The venerable president of the Parlement, Molé, and the whole body of members next repaired to the Palais Royal with no better success: Anne's only answer was a gibe. As they returned crestfallen from the Palais Royal they were driven back by the infuriated people, who threatened them with death, and clamoured for Broussel's release or Mazarin as a hostage. Nearly all the councillors fled, but the president, with exalted courage, faced them and, answering gravely, as if in his judgment-seat, said, "If you kill me, all my needs will be six feet of earth": he strode on with calm self-possession, amid a shower of missiles and threats, to the hall of St. Louis. The echo of Cromwell's triumph in England, however, seemed to have reached the Palais Royal, and the queen-regent was at length induced to treat. The demands of the people were granted and Broussel was liberated, amid scenes of tumultuous joy. [Footnote 138: So named from the wooden seat, or _couche de bois_, covered with rich stuff embroidered with _fleur-de-lys_, on which the king sat when he attended a meeting of the Parlement.] In February of the next year the regency made an effort to reassert its authority. The queen and the royal princes left Paris for the palace of St. Germain and gathered an army under Condé: the Parlement taxed themselves heavily, tried their hands at organising a citizen militia, and allied themselves with the popular Duke of Beaufort, now at liberty, and leader of a troop of brilliant but giddy young nobles. The Bastille was captured by the Parlement, and the university promised its support and a subsidy. Thus arose the civil war of the Fronde, one of the most extraordinary contests in history, whose name is derived from the puerile street fights with slings, of the printers' devils and schoolboys of Paris. The incidents of the war read like scenes in a comic opera. A hundred thousand armed citizens were besieged by eight thousand soldiers. The evolution of a burlesque form of cavalry, called the corps of the _Portes Cochères_, formed by a conscription of one horseman for every house with a carriage gate, became the derision of the royal army. They issued forth, beplumed and beribboned, and fled back to the city, amid the execrations of the people, at the sight of a handful of troops. Every defeat--and the Parisians were always defeated--formed a subject for songs and mockery. Councils of war were held in taverns, and De Retz was seen at a sitting of the Parlement in the hall of St. Louis with a poignard sticking out of his pocket: "There is the archbishop's prayer-book," said the people. The more public-spirited members of the Parlement soon, however, tired of the folly; Mazarin won over De Retz by the offer of a cardinal's hat, and a compromise was effected with the court, which returned to Paris in April 1649. The People were still bitter against Mazarin, and invaded the Palais de Justice, demanding the cardinal's signature to the treaty, that it might be burned by the common hangman. Successful generals are bad masters, and the jackboot was now supreme at court. Soon Condé's insolent bearing and the vanity of his _entourage_ of young nobles, dubbed _petits maîtres_, became intolerable: he was arrested at the Louvre, and sent to the keep at Vincennes. But Mazarin, thinking himself secure, delayed the promised reward to De Retz, who joined the disaffected friends of Condé: the court, again foiled, was forced to release Condé, surrender the two princes, and exile the hated Mazarin, who, none the less, ruled the storm by his subtle policy from Cologne. Condé, disgusted alike with queen and Parlement, now fled to the south, and raised the standard of rebellion. The second phase of the wars of the Fronde became a more serious matter. Turenne, won over by the court, was given command of the royal forces, and moved against Condé. The two armies, after indecisive battles, raced to Paris and fought for its possession outside the Porte St. Antoine. The Frondeurs occupied what is now the Faubourg St. Antoine: the royalists the heights of Charonne. It was a stubborn and bloody contest. The armies were led by the two greatest captains of the age, and fought under the eyes of their king, who with the queen-mother watched the struggle from the eminence now crowned by the cemetery of Père la Chaise. "I have seen not one Condé to-day, but a dozen," cried Turenne, as victory inclined to the Royalists. The last word was, however, with the Duke of Orleans: while he sat hesitating in the Luxembourg, the Grande Mademoiselle ordered the guns of the Bastille to be turned against Turenne, and the citizens opened the gates to Condé. Again his incorrigible insolence and brutality made Paris too hot for him, and with the disaffected princes he returned to Flanders to seek help from his country's enemies--a fatal mistake, which Mazarin was not slow to turn to advantage. He prudently retired while public feeling was won over to the young king, who was soon entreated by the Parlement and citizens to return to Paris. When the time was ripe, Mazarin had the Duke of Orleans interned at Blois, Condé was condemned to death _in contumacio_: De Retz was sent to Vincennes. Ten councillors of the Parlement were imprisoned or degraded, and in three months Mazarin returned to Paris with the pomp and equipage of a sovereign. It was the end of the Fronde, and of the attempt of the Parlement of Paris, a venal body[139] devoid of representative basis, to imitate the functions of the English House of Commons. The crown emerged from the contest more absolute than before, and Louis never forgot the days when he was a fugitive with his mother, and driven to lie on a hard mattress at the palace of St. Germain. In 1655 the Parlement of Paris met to prepare remonstrances against a royal edict: the young king heard of it while hunting at Vincennes, made his way to the hall of St. Louis booted[140] and spurred, rated the councillors and dissolved the sitting. [Footnote 139: One of the schemes of Francis I. to raise money had been to offer the benches to the highest bidders, and under the law of 1604 the office of councillor became a hereditary property on payment to the court of one-sixtieth of its value. Moreover, the Parlement was but a local body, one among several others in the provinces.] [Footnote 140: The added indignity of the whip is an invention of Voltaire.] The years following on the internal peace were a period of triumphant foreign war and diplomacy. Mazarin achieved his purpose of marrying the Infanta of Spain to his royal master; he added to and confirmed Richelieu's territorial gains and guided France at last to triumph over the Imperial House of Austria. On 9th March 1661, after a pathetic scene in his sumptuous palace, where the stricken old cardinal dragged his tottering steps along its vast galleries, casting a despairing look on the marvellous treasures of art he had collected and sorrowing like a child at the idea of separating from them for ever, the great Italian, "whose heart was French if his tongue were not," confronted death at Vincennes with firmness and courage. Mazarin was, however, a costly servant, who bled his adopted country to satisfy his love for the arts and splendours of life, to furnish dowries to his nieces, and to exalt his family. His vast palace (now the Bibliothèque Nationale), with its library of 35,000 volumes, freely open to scholars, was furnished with princely splendour. He left 2,000,000 livres to found a college for the gratuitous education of sixty sons of gentlemen from the four provinces--Spanish, Italian, German and Flemish--recently added to the crown, in order that French culture and grace might be diffused among them; they were to be taught the use of arms, horsemanship, dancing, Christian piety, and _belles-lettres_. A vast domed edifice was raised on the site of the Tour de Nesle, and became famous as the College of the Four Nations. It was subsequently expropriated and given by the Convention to the five learned academies of France, and is now known as the Institut de France. [Illustration: THE INSTITUT DE FRANCE.] CHAPTER XV _The Grand Monarque--Versailles and Paris_ The century of Louis XIV., whose triumphs have been so extravagantly celebrated by Voltaire, saw the culmination and declension of military glory and literary splendour at Paris, and of regal magnificence at Versailles. Gone were the times of cardinal dictators. When the ministers came after Mazarin's death to ask the king whom they should now address themselves to, the answer came like a thunderbolt: "To me!" What brilliant constellations of great men cast their influences over the beginning of Louis XIV.'s reign! "Sire," said Mazarin, when dying, "I owe you all, but I can partially acquit myself by leaving you Colbert:"--austere Colbert, whose Atlantean shoulders bore the burden of five modern ministries; whose vehement industry, admirable science and sterling honesty created order out of financial chaos and found the sinews of war for an army of 300,000 men before the Peace of Ryswick and 450,000 for the war of the Spanish succession; who initiated, nurtured and perfected French industries; who created a navy that crushed the combined English and Dutch fleets off Beachy Head, swept the Channel for weeks, burnt English ports, carried terror into English homes, and for a time paralysed English commerce. Louvois, his colleague, organised an army that made his master the arbiter of Europe; Condé and Turenne were its victorious captains. Vauban, greatest of military engineers, captured towns in war and made them impregnable in peace, and shared with Louvois the invention of the combined musket and bayonet, the deadliest weapon of war as yet contrived. De Lionne, by masterly diplomacy, prepared and cemented the conquests of victorious generals. Supreme in arts of peace were Corneille, Molière, Racine, La Fontaine, Lebrun, Claude Lorrain, Puget, Mansard, and Perrault. We shall learn in the sequel what the Grand Monarque did with this unparalleled inheritance. None of the great ones of the earth is so intimately known to us as the magnificent histrion, whose tinselled grandeur and pompous egoism have been laid bare by the Duke of St. Simon, prince of memoirists. Never has the frippery of a court been shrivelled by such fierce and consuming light, glaring like a fiery sun on its meretricious splendours. And what a court it is! What a gilded crowd of princes and paramours, harlots and bastards, struts, fumes and intrigues through these Memoirs! By a few strokes of his pen, in words that bite like acid, he etches for us the fools and knaves, the wife-beaters and adulterers, the cardsharpers and gamesters, the grovelling sycophants with their petty struggles for precedence or favour, their slang, their gluttony and drunkenness, their moral and physical corruption. External grandeur and regal presence,[141] a profound belief in his divinely-appointed despotism, and in earlier years a rare capacity for work, the lord of France certainly possessed. "He had a grand mien," says St. Simon, "and looked a veritable king of the bees." Much has been made of Louis' incomparable grace and respectful courtesy to women; but the courtesy of a king who doffs his hat to every serving wench yet contrives a staircase to facilitate the debauching of his queen's maids-of-honour, and exacts of his mistresses and the ladies of his court submission to his will and pleasure, even under the most trying of physical disabilities, is at least wanting in consistency. Louis' mental equipment was less than mediocre; he was ignorant of the commonest facts of history, and fell into the grossest blunders in public. Like all small-minded men, he was jealous of superior merit and preferred mediocrity rather than genius in his ministers. Small wonder that his reign ended in shame and disaster. [Footnote 141: Louis used, however, to stilt his low stature by means of thick pads in his boots.] On the 6th of June 1662, the young Louis, notwithstanding much public misery consequent on two years of bad harvests, organised a magnificent carrousel (tilting) in the garden that fronted the Tuileries. Five companies of nobles, each led by the king or one of the princes, were apparelled in gorgeous costumes as Romans, Persians, Turks, Armenians and Indians. Louis, who arrayed as emperor, led the Romans, was followed by a superb train of many squires, twenty-four pages, fifty horses each led by two grooms, and fifty footmen dressed as lictors, carrying gilded fasces. The royal princes headed similar processions. So great was the display of jewels that all the precious stones in the world seemed brought together; so richly were the costumes of the knights and the trappings of the horses embroidered with gold and silver that the cloth beneath could barely be seen. An immense amphitheatre afforded seats for a multitude of spectators, and in a smaller pavilion, richly gilded, sat the two queens of France, the queen of England, and the royal princesses. The first day was spent in tilting at Medusa heads and heads of Moors: the second at rings. The king is said to have greatly distinguished himself by his skill. Maria Theresa, his young queen, distributed the prizes, and the garden was afterwards named the Place du Carrousel. Louis, however, hated Paris, for his forced exile and the humiliations of the Fronde rankled in his memory. Nor were the associations of St. Germain any more pleasant. A lover of the chase and all too prone to fall into the snares of "fair, fallacious looks and venerial trains," the retirement of his father's hunting lodge at Versailles, away from the prying eyes and mocking tongues of the Parisians, early attracted him. There he was wont to meet his mistress, Madame de la Vallière, and there he determined to erect a vast pleasure-palace and gardens. The small château, built by Lemercier in the early half of the seventeenth century, was handed over to Levau in 1668, who, carefully respecting his predecessor's work in the Cour de Marbre, constructed two immense wings, which were added to by J.H. Mansard, as the requirements of the court grew. The palace stood in the midst of a barren, sandy plain, but Louis' pride demanded that Nature herself should bend to his will, and an army of artists, engineers and gardeners was concentrated there, who at the sacrifice of incredible wealth and energy, had so far advanced the work that the king was able to come into residence in 1682. In spite of seas of reservoirs fed by costly hydraulic machinery at Marly, which lifted the waters of the Seine to an aqueduct that led to Versailles, the supply was deemed inadequate, and orders were given to divert the river Eure between Chartres and Maintenon to the gardens of the palace. For years an army of thirty thousand men was employed in this one task, at a cost of money and human life greater than that of many a campaign. So heavy was the mortality in the camp that it was forbidden to speak of the sick, and above all of the dead, who were carried away in cartloads by night for burial. All that remains of this cruel folly are a few ruins at Maintenon. After the failure of this scheme, subterranean water-courses were contrived. The _plaisir du roi_ must be sated at any cost, and at length a magnificent garden was created, filled with a population of statues and adorned with gigantic fountains. Soon however, the king tired of the bustle and noise of Versailles, and a miserable and swampy site at Marly, the haunt of toads and serpents and creeping things, was transformed into a splendid hermitage. Hills were levelled, great trees brought from Compiègne, most of which soon died and were as quickly replaced; fish-ponds, adorned by exquisite paintings, were made and unmade; woods were metamorphosed into lakes, where the king and a select company of courtiers disported themselves in gondolas and where cascades refreshed their ears in summer heat; precious paintings, statues and costly furniture charmed the eye inside the hermitage--and all to receive the king and his intimates from Wednesday to Saturday on a few occasions in the year. St. Simon with passionate exaggeration declares that Marly cost more than Versailles.[142] Nothing remains to-day of all this splendour: it was neglected by Louis' successors and sold in lots during the Revolution. [Footnote 142: Taine, basing his calculation on a MS. bound with the monogram of Mansard, estimated the cost of Versailles in modern equivalent at about 750,000,000 francs (£30,000,000 sterling.)] After a life of wanton licentiousness, Louis, at the age of forty, was captivated by the mature charms of a widow of forty-three, a colonial adventuress of noble descent, who after the death of her husband, the crippled comic poet Scarron, became governess to the king's children by Madame de Montespan. Soon after the death of Maria Theresa, the widow Scarron, known to history as Madame de Maintenon, was secretly married to her royal lover, who for the remainder of his life remained her docile slave. A narrow bigot in matters of religion and completely under the influence of fanatics, Madame de Maintenon persuaded Louis that a crusade against heresy would be a fitting atonement for his past sins. By the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 22nd October 1685, the charter of Protestant liberties was destroyed, and those who had given five out of ten marshals to France, including the great Turenne, were denied the right of civil existence. Whole cities were depopulated; tens of thousands (for the Huguenots had long ceased to exist as a political force) of law-abiding citizens expatriated themselves and carried their industries to enrich foreign lands.[143] Many pastors were martyred, and drummers stationed at the foot of the scaffold drowned their exhortations. Let us not say persecution is ineffective; the Huguenots who at one time threatened to turn the scale in favour of the Protestant powers and to wreck the Catholic cause in Europe, practically disappear from history. On the whole, the measure was approved by Paris; Racine, La Fontaine, the great Jansenist Arnault, as well as Bossuet and Massillon, applauded. Louis was hailed a second Constantine, and believed he had revived the times of the apostles. But the consequences were far-reaching and disastrous. In less than two months the Catholic James II. of England was a discrowned fugitive, and the Calvinist William of Orange, the inveterate enemy of France, sat in his place; England's pensioned neutrality was turned to bitter hostility, and every Protestant power in Europe stirred to fierce resentment. Seven years of war ensued, which exhausted the immense resources of France; seven years,[144] rich in glory perhaps, but lean years indeed to the dumb millions who paid the cost in blood and money. [Footnote 143: The writer, whose youth was passed among the descendants of the Huguenot silk-weavers of Spitalfields, has indelible memories of their sterling character and admirable industry.] [Footnote 144: Marshal Luxembourg was dubbed the _Tapissier de Notre Dame_ (the upholsterer of Notre Dame), from the number of captured flags he sent to the cathedral.] After three short years of peace and recuperation, the acceptance of the crown of Spain by Louis' grandson, Philip of Anjou, in spite of Maria Theresa's solemn renunciation for herself and her posterity of all claim to the Spanish succession, roused all the old jealousy of France and brought her secular enemy, the House of Austria, to a new coalition against her. Woe to the nation whose king is thrall to women. The manner in which this momentous step was taken is characteristic of Louis. Two councils were held in Madame de Maintenon's room at Versailles; her advice was asked by the king, and apparently turned the scale in favour of acceptance. "For a hundred years," says Taine, "from 1672 to 1774, every time a king of France made war it was by pique or vanity, by family or private interest, or by condescension to a woman." Still more amazing is the fact that, for years, the court of Madrid was ruled by a Frenchwoman, Madame des Ursins, the _camarera mayor_ of Philip's queen, who made and unmade ministers, controlled all public appointments, and even persuaded the French ambassador to submit all despatches to her before sending them to France. Madame de Maintenon was equally omnipotent at Versailles; she decided what letters should or should not be shown to the king, kept back disagreeable news, and held everybody in the hollow of her hand, from humblest subject to most exalted minister. This was the atmosphere from which men were sent to meet the new and more potent combination of States that opposed the Spanish succession. Chamillart, a pitiful creature of Madame de Maintenon's, sat in Colbert's place; gone were Turenne and Condé and Luxembourg; the armies of the descendant of St. Louis were led by the Duke of Vendôme, a foul lecher, whose inhuman vices went far to justify the gibe of Mephistopheles that men use their reason "_um thierischer als jedes Thier zu sein_." The victories of the Duke of Marlborough and of Prince Eugene spread consternation at Versailles. When, in 1704, the news of Blenheim oozed out, the king's grief was piteous to see. Scarce a noble family but had one of its members killed, wounded, or a prisoner. Two years later came the defeat of Ramillies, to be followed in three months by the disaster at Turin. The balls and masquerades and play at Marly went merrily on; but at news of the defeat of Oudenarde and the fall of Lille, even the reckless courtiers were subdued, and for a month gambling and even conversation ceased. At the sound of an approaching horseman they ran hither and thither, with fear painted on their cheeks. Wildest schemes for raising money were tried; taxes were levied on baptisms and marriages; sums raised for the relief of the poor and the maintenance of highways were expropriated, and the wretched peasants were forced to repair the roads without payment, some dying of starvation at their work. King and courtiers, with ill-grace, sent their plate to the mint and a plan for the recapture of Lille was mooted, in which Louis was to take part, but, for lack of money, the king's ladies were not to accompany him to the seat of war as they had hitherto done.[145] The expedition was to remain a secret; but the infatuated Louis could withhold nothing from Madame de Maintenon, who never rested until she had foiled the whole scheme and disgraced Chamillart, for having concealed the preparations from her. [Footnote 145: In a previous campaign the king had taken his queen and two mistresses with him in one coach. The peasants used to amuse themselves by coming to see the "three queens."] Versailles had now grown so accustomed to defeats that Malplaquet was hailed as half a victory; but, in 1710, so desperate was the condition of the treasury, that a financial and social _débâcle_ was imminent. The Dauphin, on leaving the opera at Paris, had been assailed by crowds of women shouting, "Bread! bread!" and only escaped by throwing them money and promises. To appease the people, the poor were set to level the boulevard near St. Denis, and were paid in doles of bread--bad bread. Even this failed them one morning, and a woman who made some disturbance was dragged to the pillory by the archers of the watch. An angry mob released her, and proceeded to raid the bakers' shops. The ugly situation was saved only by the firmness and sagacity of the popular Marshal Boufflers. Another turn of the financial screw was now meditated, and, as the taxes had already "drawn all the blood from his subjects, and squeezed out their very marrow," the conscience of the lord of France was troubled. His Jesuit confessor, Le Tellier, promised to consult the Sorbonne, whose learned doctors decided that, since all the wealth of his subjects rightly belonged to the king, he only took what was his own. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the quarrel between Jansenists and Jesuits concerning subtle doctrinal differences had grown acute through the publication of Pascal's immortal _Lettres Provinciales_, and by Quesnel's _Réflexions Morales_ which the Jesuits had succeeded in subjecting to papal condemnation. In 1709, Le Tellier induced his royal penitent to decree the destruction of one of the two Jansenist establishments, and Port Royal des Champs, between Versailles and Chevreuse, rendered famous by the piety and learning of Arnault, Pascal and Nicolle, was doomed. On the night of 28th October 1709, the convent was surrounded by Gardes Françaises and Suisses, and on the following morning the chief of the police, with a posse of archers of the watch entered, produced a _lettre de cachet_, and gave the nuns a quarter of an hour to prepare for deportation. The whole of the sisters were then brutally expelled, "_comme on enlève les créatures prostituées d'un lieu infâme_," says St. Simon, and scattered among other religious houses in all directions. The friends of the buried were bidden to exhume their dead, and all unclaimed bodies were flung into a neighbouring cemetery, where dogs fought for them as for carrion. The church was profaned, all the conventual buildings were razed and sold in lots, not one stone being left on another; the very ground was ploughed up and sown, "not, it is true with salt," adds St. Simon, and that was the only favour shown. Two years after the scene at Port Royal, amid the heartless gaiety of the court, the Angel of Death was busy in Louis' household. On 14th April 1711, the old king's only lawful son, the Grand Dauphin, expired; on 12th February 1712, the second Dauphiness, the sweet and gentle Adelaide of Savoy, Louis' darling, died of a malignant fever; six days later the Duke of Burgundy, her husband, was struck down; on 8th March, the Duke of Brittany, their eldest child, followed them. Three Dauphins had gone to the vaults of St. Denis in less than a year; mother, father, son, had died in twenty-four days--a sweep of Death's scythe, enough to touch even the hearts of courtiers. In a few days the king gave orders for the usual play to begin at Marly, and the dice rattled while the bodies of the Dauphin and Dauphiness lay yet unburied. In May 1714, the Duke of Berri, son of the Grand Dauphin, died, and the sole direct heir to the throne was now the king's great-grandson, the Duke of Anjou, a sickly child of five years. On September 1715, the Grand Monarque made a calm and an edifying end to his long reign of seventy-two years, declaring that he owed no man restitution, and trusted in God's mercy for what he owed to the realm. He called the young child, who was soon to be Louis XV., to his bedside, and apparently without any sense of irony, exhorted him to remember his God, to cherish peace, to avoid extravagance, and study the welfare of his people. After receiving the last sacraments he repeated the prayers for the dying in a firm voice and, calling on God's aid, passed peacefully away. None but his official attendants, his priest and physicians, saw the end: two days before, Madame de Maintenon had retired to St. Cyr. The demolition of what remained of mediæval Paris proceeded apace during Louis XIV.'s lifetime, and, at his death, the architectural features of its streets were substantially those of the older Paris of to-day. Colbert had taken up the costly legacy of the unfinished Louvre before the petrified banalities of Versailles and Marly had engulfed their millions, and, in 1660, the Hôtel de Bourbon was given over to the housebreakers to make room for the new east wing of the palace. So vigorously did they set to work that when Molière, whose company performed there three days a week in alternation with the Italian opera, came for the usual rehearsal, he found the theatre half demolished. He applied to the king, who granted him the temporary use of Richelieu's theatre in the Palais Royal, and his first performance there was given on 20th January 1661. Levau was employed to carry on Lemercier's work on the Louvre, and had succeeded in completing the north wing and the river front in harmony with Lescot's design, when in 1664 Colbert stayed further progress and ordered him to prepare a model in wood of his proposed east wing. Levau was stupefied, for he had elaborated with infinite study a design for this portion of the palace, which he regarded as of supreme importance, and which he hoped would crown his work. He had already laid the foundations and erected the scaffolding when the order came. Levau made his model, and a number of architects were invited to criticise it: they did, and unanimously condemned it. Competitive designs were then exhibited with the model and submitted to Colbert, who took advantage of Poussin's residence at Rome to send them to the great Italian architects for their judgment. The Italians delivered a sweeping and general condemnation, and Poussin advised that Bernini should be employed to design a really noble edifice. Louis was delighted by the suggestion, and the loan of the architect of the great Colonnade of St. Peter's was entreated of the pope by the king's own hand in a letter dated 11th April 1665. Bernini, in spite of his sixty-eight years, came to Paris, accompanied by his son, where he was treated like a prince, and drew up a scheme of classic grandeur. Levau's work on the east front was destroyed, and in October 1665, Bernini's foundations were begun. The majestic new design, however, ignored the exigencies of existing work and of internal convenience, and gave opportunities for criticisms and intrigue, which Colbert and the French architects,[146] forgetting for the moment all domestic rivalry, were not slow to make the most of. The offended Italian, three days after the ceremony of laying the foundation stone by the king on the 17th October 1665, left to winter in Rome, promising to return with his wife in the following February. He carried with him a munificent gift of 3000 gold louis and a pension of 12,000 livres for himself and of 1,200 for his son. The pension was paid regularly up to 1674, but the great Bernini was never seen in Paris again. [Footnote 146: Bernini, according to Charles Perrault, was short in stature, good-humoured, and seasoned his conversation with parables, good stories and _bons mots_; never tiring of talking of his own country, of Michel Angelo and of himself. For a full history of these intrigues, see Ch. Normand's _Paris_.] Among the designs originally submitted to Colbert, and approved by him and Lebrun, was one which had not been sent to Rome. It was the work of an amateur, Claude Perrault, a physician, whose brother, Charles Perrault, was chief clerk in the Office of Works. This was brought forth early in 1667, and a commission, consisting of Levau, Lebrun, Claude Perrault and others, appointed to report on its practicability. Levau promptly produced his own discarded designs, and both were submitted to the king for a final decision on 13th May. Louis was fascinated by the stately classicism of Perrault's design, and this was adopted. "Architecture must be in a bad state," said his rivals, "since it is put in the hands of a physician." Colbert seems, however, to have distrusted Claude's technical powers and on his brother Charles' advice a council of specialists, consisting of Levau, Lebrun, and Claude was appointed under the presidency of Colbert. Charles was made secretary and many were the quarrels between the rival architects over practical details. Perrault's new wing was found to be seventy-two feet too long, but the sovereign fiat had gone forth, the new east façade was raised and the whole of Levau's river front was masked by a new façade, rendered necessary by the excessive length of Perrault's design. The whole south wing[147] is in consequence much wider than any of the others which enclose the great quadrangle. Poor Levau's end was hastened by vexation and grief. Even to this day the north-east wing of Perrault's façade projects unsymmetrically beyond the line of the north front. The work has been much criticised and much praised. It evoked Fergusson's ecstatic admiration, was extolled by Reynolds and eulogised by another critic as one of the finest pieces of architecture in any age. Strangely enough, neither of these ever saw, nor has anyone yet seen, more than a partial and stunted realisation of Perrault's design, for, as the accompanying reproduction of a drawing by Blondel demonstrates, the famous east front of the Louvre is like a giant buried up to the knees, and the present first-floor windows were an afterthought, their places having been designed as niches to hold statues. The exactitude of Blondel's elevations was finally proved in 1903 by the admirable insight of the present architect of the Louvre, Monsieur G. Redon, who was led to undertake the excavations which brought to light a section of Perrault's decorated basement, by noticing that the windows of the ground floor evidently implied a lower order beneath. This basement, seven and a half metres in depth, now buried, was in Perrault's scheme designed to be exposed by a fosse of some fifteen to twenty metres in width, and the whole elevation and symmetry of the wing would have immensely gained by the carrying out of his plans. [Footnote 147: Levau's south façade was not completely hidden by Perrault's screen, for the roofs of the end and central pavilions emerged from behind it until they were destroyed by Gabriel in 1755.] [Illustration: PORTION OF THE EAST FAÇADE OF THE LOUVRE FROM BLONDEL'S DRAWING, SHOWING PERRAULT'S BASE.] The construction was, however, interrupted in 1676, owing to the king's abandonment of Paris. Colbert strenuously protested against the neglect of the Louvre, and warned his master not to squander his millions away from Paris and suffer posterity to measure his grandeur by the ell of Versailles. It availed nothing. In 1670, 1,627,293 livres were allotted to the Louvre; in 1672 the sum had fallen to 58,000 livres; in 1676 to 42,082; in 1680 the subsidies practically ceased, and the great palace was utterly neglected until 1754 when Perrault's work was feebly continued by Gabriel and Soufflot. Two domed churches in the south of Paris--the Val de Grâce and St. Louis of the Invalides--were also erected during Louis XIV.'s lifetime. Among the many vows made by Anne of Austria during her twenty-two years' unfruitful marriage was one made in the sanctuary of the nunnery of the Val de Grâce, to build there a magnificent church to God's glory if she were vouchsafed a Dauphin. At length, on 18th April 1645, the proud queen was able to lead the future king, a boy of seven years, to lay the first stone. The church was designed by F. Mansard on the model of St. Peter's at Rome, and was finished by Lemercier and others. A refuge had been founded as early as Henry IV.'s reign in an old abbey in the Faubourg St. Marcel, for old and disabled soldiers. Louis XIV., the greatest creator of _invalides_ France had seen, determined in 1670 to extend the foundation, and erect a vast hospital, capable of accommodating his aged, crippled or infirm soldiers. Bruant and J.H. Mansard[148] among other architects were employed to raise the vast pile of buildings which, when completed, are said to have been capable of housing 7,000 men. A church dedicated to St. Louis was comprehended in the scheme, and, in 1680, a second Église Royale was erected, whose gilded dome is so conspicuous an object in south Paris; the Église Royale, which Mansard designed, was subsequently added to the church of St. Louis, and became its choir. Louis XIV., anticipating Napoleon's maxim that war must support war, raised the funds needed for the foundation by ingeniously requiring all ordinary and extraordinary treasurers of war to retain two deniers[149] on every livre that passed through their hands. [Footnote 148: Jules Hardouin, the younger Mansard, was a nephew and pupil of François Mansard, and assumed his uncle's name. The latter was the inventor of the Mansard roof.] [Footnote 149: The sixth part of a sou.] The old city gates of the Tournelle, Poissonnière (or St. Anne), St. Martin, St. Denis, the Temple, St. Jacques, St. Victor, were demolished, and triumphal arches, which still remain, erected to mark the sites of the Portes St. Denis and St. Martin. Another arch, of St. Antoine, was designed to surpass all existing or ancient monuments of the kind, and many volumes were written concerning the language in which the inscription should be composed, but the devouring maw of Versailles had to be filled, and the arch was never completed. The king for whose glory the monument was to be raised, cared so little for it, that he suffered it to be pulled down. Many new streets[150] were made, and others widened, among them the ill-omened Rue de la Ferronnerie. The northern ramparts were levelled and planted with trees from the Porte St. Antoine in the east to the Porte St. Honoré in the west, and in 1704 it was decided to continue the planting in the south round the Faubourg St. Germain. The Place Louis le Grand (now Vendôme), and the Place des Victoires were created; the river embankments were renewed and extended, and a fine stone Pont Royal by J.H. Mansard, the most beautiful of the existing bridges of Paris, was built to replace the old wooden structure that led from the St. Germain quarter to the Tuileries. This in its turn had replaced a ferry (_bac_) established by the Guild of Ferrymen, to transport the stone needed for the construction of the Tuileries, and the street which leads to the bridge still bears the name of the Rue du Bac. The Isle Louviers was acquired by the Ville, and the evil-smelling tanneries and dye-houses that disfigured the banks of the Seine between the Grève and the Châtelet were cleared away; many new fountains embellished the city, and ten new pumps increased the supply of water. The poorer quarters were, however, little changed from their old insanitary condition. A few years later Rousseau, fresh from Turin, was profoundly disappointed by the streets of Paris as he entered the city by the Faubourg St. Marceau. "I had imagined," he writes, "a city as fair as it was great, and of a most imposing aspect, whose superb streets were lined with palaces of marble and of gold. I beheld filthy, evil-smelling, mean streets, ugly houses black with dirt, a general air of uncleanness and of poverty, beggars and carters, old clothes shop and tisane sellers." [Footnote 150: Twelve alone were added to the St. Honoré quarter by levelling the Hill of St. Roch and clearing away accumulated rubbish.] [Illustration: RIVER AND PONT ROYAL.] It is now time to ask what had been done with the magnificent inheritance which the fourteenth Louis had entered upon at the opening of his reign: he left to his successor, a France crushed by an appalling debt of 2,400,000,000 livres; a noblesse and an army in bondage to money-lenders; public officials and fund-holders unpaid, trade paralysed, and the peasants in some provinces so poor that even straw was lacking for them to lie upon, many crossing the frontiers in search of a less miserable lot. Scarcity of bread made disease rampant at Paris, and as many as 4,500 sick poor were counted at one time in the Hôtel Dieu alone. Louis left a court that "sweated hypocrisy through every pore," and an example of licentious and unclean living and cynical disregard of every moral obligation, which ate like a cancer into the vitals of the aristocracy. CHAPTER XVI _Paris under the Regency and Louis XV.--The brooding Storm_ Under the regency of the profligate Philip of Orleans, a profounder depth was sounded. The vices of Louis' court were at least veiled by a certain regal dignity, and the Grand Monarque was always keenly sensitive, and at times nobly responsive, to any attack upon the honour of France; but under the regent, libertinage and indifference to national honour were flagrant and shameless. The Abbé Dubois, a minister worthy of his prince, was, says St. Simon, "a mean-looking, thin little man, with the face of a ferret, in whom every vice fought for mastery." This creature profaned the seat of Richelieu and Colbert, and rose to fill a cardinal's chair. The revenues of seven abbeys fed his pride and luxury, and his annual income was estimated at 1,534,000 livres, including his bribe from the English Government. Visitors to Venice whose curiosity may have led them into the church of S. Moisè, will remember to have seen there a monument to a famous Scotchman--John Law. This is the last home of an outlaw, a gambler, and an adventurer, who, by his amazing skill and effrontery, plunged the regency into a vortex of speculation, and for a time controlled the finances of France. He persuaded the regent that by a liberal issue of paper money he might wipe out the accumulated national deficit of 100,000,000 livres, revive trade and industry, and inaugurate a financial millennium. In 1718 Law's Bank at Paris after a short and brilliant career as a private venture, was converted into the Banque Royale, and by the artful flotation of a gigantic trading speculation called the Mississippi Company, the bank-notes and company shares were so manipulated that the latter were inflated to twenty times their nominal value. The whole city seethed in a ferment of speculation. The offices of the Bank in the Rue Quincampoix were daily besieged by a motley crowd of princes, nobles, fine ladies, courtesans, generals, prelates, priests, bourgeois and servants. A hunchback made a fortune by lending his back as a desk; lacqueys became masters in a day, and a _parvenu_ foot-man, by force of habit, jumped up behind his own carriage in a fit of abstraction. The inevitable catastrophe came at the end of 1719. The Prince of Conti was observed taking away three cartloads of silver in exchange for his paper; a panic ensued, every holder sought to realise, and the colossal fabric came down with a crash, involving thousands of families in ruin and despair. Law, after bravely trying to save the situation and narrowly escaping being torn in pieces, fled to poverty and death at Venice, and the financial state of France was worse than before. Law was not, however, absolutely a quack; there was a seed of good in his famous system of mobilising credit, and the temporary stimulus it gave to trade permanently influenced mercantile practice in Europe. In 1723, Louis XV. reached his legal majority. The regent became chief minister, and soon paid the penalty of his career of debauchery, leaving as his successor the Duke of Bourbon, degenerate scion of the great Condé and one of the chief speculators in the Mississippi bubble. A perilous lesson had two years before been instilled into the mind of the young Louis. After his recovery from an illness, an immense concourse of people had assembled at a _fête_ given in the gardens of the Tuileries palace; enormous crowds filled every inch of the Place du Carrousel and the gardens; the windows and even the roofs of the houses were alive with people crying "_Vive le roi!_" Marshal Villeroi led the little lad of eleven to a window, showed him the sea of exultant faces turned towards him, and exclaimed, "Sire, all this people is yours; all belongs to you. Show yourself to them, and satisfy them; you are the master of all." The Infanta of Spain, at four years of age, had been betrothed to the young king, and in 1723 was sent to Paris to be educated for her exalted future. She was lodged in the Petite Galerie of the Louvre, over the garden still known as the Garden of the Infanta,[151] and after three years of exile the homesick little maid was returned to Madrid; for Louis' weak health made it imperative that a speedy marriage should be contracted if the succession to the throne were to be assured. The choice finally fell on the daughter of Stanislaus Leczynski, a deposed king of Poland and a pensioner of France. Voltaire relates that the poor discrowned queen was sitting with her daughter Marie in their little room at Wissembourg when the father, bursting in, fell on his knees, crying, "Let us thank God, my child!" "Are you then recalled to Poland?" asked Marie. "Nay, daughter, far better," answered Stanislaus, "you are the queen of France." A magnificent wedding at Fontainebleau exalted gentle, pious Marie from poverty to the richest queendom in Europe; to a life of cruel neglect and almost intolerable insult. [Footnote 151: It extended as far as the entrance to the quadrangle opposite the Pont des Arts. Blondel's drawings show a double line of trees, north and south, enclosing a Renaissance garden of elaborate design: a charming _bosquet_, or wood, filled the eastern extremity.] The immoral Duke of Bourbon was followed by Cardinal Fleury, and at length France experienced a period of honest administration, which enabled the sorely-tried land to recover some of its wonted elasticity. The Cardinal was, however, dominated by the Jesuits, and both Protestants and Jansenists felt their cruel hand. During the persecution of the Jansenists in 1782 a deacon, named Pâris, died and was canonised by the popular voice. Miracles were said to have been wrought at his sepulchre in the cemetery of St. Médard; fanatics flung themselves down on the tomb and writhed in horrible convulsions. So great was the excitement and disorder that the Archbishop of Paris denounced the miracles as the work of Satan, and the Government ordered the cemetery to be closed. The next morning a profane inscription was found over the entrance to the cemetery:-- "_De par le roi défense à Dieu De faire miracle en ce lieu._"[152] [Footnote 152: "By order of the king, God is forbidden to work miracles in this place."] Before Louis sank irrevocably into the slothful indulgence that stained his later years, he was stirred to essay a kingly _rôle_ by Madame de Chateauroux, the youngest of four sisters who had successively been his mistresses. She fired his indolent imagination by appeals to the memory of his glorious ancestors, and the war of the Austrian succession being in progress, Louis set forth with the army of the great Marshal Saxe for Metz, where in August 1744 he was stricken down by a violent fever, and in an access of piety was induced to promise to dismiss his mistress and return to his abused queen. As he lay on the brink of death, given up by his physicians and prepared for the end by the administration of the last sacraments, a royal phrase admirably adapted to capture the imagination of a gallant people came from his lips. "Remember," he said to Marshal Noailles, "remember that when Louis XIII. was being carried to the grave, the Prince of Condé won a battle for France." The agitation of the Parisians as the king hovered between life and death was indescribable. The churches were thronged with sobbing people praying for his recovery; when the courtiers came with news that he was out of danger they were borne shoulder high in triumph through the streets, and fervent thanksgiving followed in all the churches. People hailed him as Louis le Bien-Aimé; even the callous heart of the king was pierced by their loyalty and he cried, "What have I done to deserve such love?" So easy was it to win the affection of this warm-hearted people. The brilliant victories of Marshal Saxe, and the consequent Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, brought some years of prosperity. Wealth increased; Paris became more than ever a centre of intellectual splendour and social refinement, where the arts administered to luxurious ease and to the fair frailties of passion. But it was a period of riotous pride and regal licentiousness unparalleled even in the history of France. Louis XIV. at least exacted good breeding and wit in his mistresses: his descendant enslaved himself to the commonest and most abandoned of women. For twenty years the destinies of the people, and the whole patronage of the Government, the right to succeed to the most sacred and exalted offices in the Church, were bartered and intrigued for in the chamber of a harlot and procuress, and under the influence of the Pompadours and the Du Barrys a crowned _roué_ allowed the state to drift into financial, military and civil[153] disaster. [Footnote 153: In 1753 between 20th January and 20th February two hundred persons died of want (_misère_) in the Faubourg St. Antoine.] "Authentic proofs exist," says Taine, "demonstrating that Madame de Pompadour cost Louis XV. a sum equal to about seventy-two millions of present value (£2,880,000)." She would examine the plans of campaign of her marshals in her boudoir, and mark with patches (_mouches_) the places to be defended or attacked. Such was the mad extravagance of the court that to raise money recourse was had to taxation of the clergy, which the prelates successfully resisted; the old quarrel with the Jansenists was revived, and soon Church and Crown were convulsed by an agitation that shook society to its very base. During the popular ferment the king was attacked in 1757 by a crack-brained fanatic named Damiens, who scratched him with a penknife as he was entering his coach at Versailles. The poor crazy wretch, who at most deserved detention in an asylum, was first subjected to a cruel judicial torture, then taken to the Place de Grève, where he was lacerated with red-hot pincers and, after boiling lead had been poured into the wounds, his quivering body was torn to pieces by four horses, and the fragments burned to ashes. A few years later the long-suffering Jansenists were avenged with startling severity. The Jesuits, to their honour be it said, shocked by the infamies of the royal seraglio in the Parc aux Cerfs, made use of their ascendency at Court to awaken in the king's mind some sense of decency: they did but add the bitter animosity of Madame de Pompadour to the existing hostility of the Parlement of Paris. Louis, urged by his minister the Duke of Choiseul, and by the arts of his mistress, abandoned the Jesuits to their enemies: the Parlement suppressed the Society, secularised its members and confiscated its property. The closing years of the Well-Beloved's reign were years of unmitigated ignominy and disaster. Indian conquests were muddled away, and the gallant Dupleix died broken-hearted and in misery at Paris. Canada was lost. During the Seven Years' War the incapacity and administrative corruption of Madame de Pompadour's favourites made them the laughing-stock of Paris. In 1770 the Duke of Choiseul refused to tolerate the vile Du Barry, whom we may see in Madame Campan's Memoirs sitting on the arm of Louis' chair at a council of state, playing her monkey tricks to amuse the old sultan, snatching sealed orders from his hand and making the royal dotard chase her round the council chamber. She swore to ruin the duke and, aided by a cabal of Jesuit sympathisers and noble intriguers, succeeded in compassing his dismissal. The Parlement of Paris paid for its temerity: it and the whole of the parlements in France were suppressed, and seven hundred magistrates exiled by _lettres de cachet_. Every patriotic Frenchman now felt the gathering storm. Madame Campan writes that twenty years before the crash came it was common talk in her father's house (he was employed in the Foreign Office) that the old monarchy was rapidly sinking and a great change at hand. Indeed, the writing on the wall was not difficult to read. The learned and virtuous Malesherbes and many another distinguished member of the suppressed parlements warned the king of the dangers menacing the crown, but so sunk was its wearer in sensual stupefaction that he only murmured: "Well, it will last my time," and with his flatterers and strumpets uttered the famous words--"_Après nous le déluge_." So lost to all sense of honour was Louis, that he defiled his hands with bribes from tax-farmers who ground the faces of the poor, and became a large shareholder in an infamous syndicate of capitalists that bought up the corn of France in order to export and then import it at enormous profit. This abominable _Pacte de Famine_ created two artificial famines in France; its authors battened on the misery of the people, and for any who lifted their voices against it the Bastille yawned. In 1768 the poor abused and neglected queen, Marie Leczinska died. The court sank from bad to worse: void now of all dignity, all gaiety, all wit and all elegance, it drifted to its doom. Six years passed, when Louis was smitten by confluent small-pox and a few poor women were left to perform the last offices on the mass of pestiferous corruption that once was the fifteenth Louis of France.[154] None could be found to embalm the corpse, and spirits of wine were poured into the coffin which was carried to St. Denis without pomp and amid the half-suppressed curses of the people. Before the breath had left the body, a noise as of thunder was heard approaching the chamber of the Dauphin and Marie Antoinette: it was the sound of the courtiers hastening to grovel before the new king and queen. Warned that they had now inherited the awful legacy of the French monarchy, they flung themselves in tears on their knees, and exclaimed--"O God, guide and protect us! We are too young to govern." [Footnote 154: Some conception of the insanitary condition of the court may be formed by the fact that fifty persons were struck down there by this loathsome disease during the king's illness.] The degradation of the monarchy during the reign is reflected in the condition of the Louvre. Henry IV.'s great scheme, which Louis XIII. had inherited and furthered, included a colossal equestrian statue, which was to stand on a rocky pedestal in the centre of a new Place, before the east front of the Louvre, but the regency revoked the scheme, and for thirty years nothing was done. It had even been proposed under the ministry of Cardinal Fleury to pull the whole structure down and sell the site. The neglect of the palace during these years is almost incredible. Perrault's fine façade was hidden by the half-demolished walls of the Hôtels de Longueville, de Villequier, and de Bourbon. The east wing itself was unroofed on the quadrangle side and covered with rotting boarding. Perrault's columns on the outer façade were unchannelled, the capitals unfinished, the portal unsculptured, and the post-office stabled its horses along the whole of the wing from the middle entrance to the north angle. The royal apartments of Anne of Austria in the Petite Galerie were used as stables; so, too, were the halls where now is housed the collection of Renaissance sculpture. The Infanta's garden was a yard where grooms exercised their horses; a colony of poor artists and court attendants were lodged in the upper floors, and over most of the great halls entresols were constructed to increase this kind of accommodation. The building was described as a huge caravanserai, where each one lodged and worked as he chose, and over which might have been placed the legend, "_Ici on loge à pied et à cheval_." Worse still, an army of squatters, ne'er-do-wells, bankrupts and defaulting debtors took refuge in the wooden sheds left by the contractors, or built others--a miserable gangrene of hovels--against the east façade. Perrault's base had been concealed by rubbish and apparently forgotten. Stove-pipes issued from the broken windows of the upper floors, the beautiful stone-work was blackened by smoke, cracked by frost and soiled by rusting iron clamps; the quadrangle was a chaos of uncut stone, rubbish and filth, in the centre of which, where the king's statue was designed to stand, the royal architect had built himself a large mansion; a mass of mean houses encumbered the Carrousel, and the almost ruined church of St. Nicholas was a haunt of beggars. Such a grievous eyesore was the building that the provost in 1751 offered, in the name of the citizens, to repair and complete the palace if a part were assigned to them as an Hôtel de Ville. In 1754 Madame de Pompadour's brother, M. de Marigny, had been appointed Commissioner of Works, and Louis was persuaded to authorise the repair and completion of the Louvre. Gabriel being made architect set about his work in 1758 by clearing out the squatters and the accumulated rubbish in the quadrangle, and evicting the occupants of the stables. The ruins of the Hôtels de Longueville, de Villequier, and de Bourbon were demolished and grass plots laid before Perrault's east front, which was restored and for the first time made visible. The west front, giving on the quadrangle, was then repaired and the third floor nearly completed, when funds were exhausted and it was left unroofed. An epigram, put into the mouth of the king of Denmark, who visited Paris in 1768, tersely describes the condition of the palace at this time:-- "J'ai vu le Louvre et son enceinte immense, Vaste palais qui depuis deux cent ans, Toujours s'achève et toujours se commence. Deux ouvriers, manoeuvres fainéants, Hâtent très lentement ces riches bâtiments Et sont payés quand on y pense."[155] [Footnote 155: "I have seen the Louvre and its huge enclosure, a vast palace which for two hundred years is always being finished and always begun. Two workmen, lazy hodmen, speed very slowly those rich buildings, and are paid when they are thought of."] During Louis XVI.'s reign little or nothing was done. Soufflot was making feeble efforts to complete Perrault's north front when the Revolution came to arrest his work. So lost to reverence and devoid of artistic sentiment were the official architects of this period, that a sacrilege worse than any wrought by revolutionists was perpetrated at the instance of the canons of Notre Dame. Louis XIV. had begun the vandalism by demolishing the beautiful old Gothic high altar and replacing it by a huge, ponderous anachronism in marble, on whose foundation stone, laid in 1699, was placed an inscription to the effect that Louis the Great, son of Louis the Just, having subdued heresy, established the true religion in his realm and ended wars gloriously by land and sea, built the altar to fulfil the vow of his father, and dedicated it to the God of Arms and Master of Peace and Victory under the invocation of the Holy Virgin, patroness and protector of his States. The beautiful fifteenth-century stalls, the choir screen, and many of the fine old Gothic tombs of marble and bronze in the church, the monuments of six centuries, were destroyed. But to the reign of Louis the Well-Beloved was reserved the crowning infamy: in 1741 the glorious old stained-glass windows, rivalling those of Chartres in richness, were destroyed by Levreil and replaced by grisaille with yellow fleur-de-lys ornamentation. Happily the destruction of the rose windows was deemed too expensive, and they escaped. The famous colossal statue of St. Christopher, the equestrian monument of Philip le Bel, and a popular statue of the Virgin, were broken down by these clerical iconoclasts. In 1771 the canons instructed Soufflot to throw down the pillar of the central porch, with its beautiful statue of Christ, to make room for their processions to enter. The priceless sculpture of the tympanum was cut through to make a loftier and wider entrance, and the whole symmetry of the west front was grievously destroyed.[156] This hideous architectural deformity remained until a son of the Revolution, Viollet le Duc, restored the portal to its original form. After the havoc wrought at Notre Dame, Soufflot's energies were diverted to the holy mount of St. Genevieve. Louis XV. had attributed his recovery at Metz to the intercession of the saint, and in 1754, when the abbot complained to the king of the almost ruined condition of the abbey church, he found a sympathetic listener. Soufflot and the chapter, who shared the prevalent contempt of Gothic, decided to abandon the venerable old pile, with its millennial associations of the patron saint of Paris, and to build a grand domed classic temple on the abbey lands to the west. Funds for the sacred work were raised by levying a tax on public lotteries. The old church, with the exception of the tower, was finally demolished in 1802, when the rude stone coffin which had held the body of St. Genevieve until it was burnt by revolutionary fanatics, was transferred to St. Étienne du Mont. [Footnote 156: The aspect of the west front with Soufflot's "improvements" is well seen in _Les Principaux Monuments Gothiques de l'Europe_, published in Brussels, 1843.] [Illustration: SOUTH DOOR OF NOTRE DAME.] On 6th September 1764, the crypt of the new St. Genevieve being completed, the Well-Beloved laid the first stone of the church. Scarcely was the scaffolding removed after thirteen years of constructive labour, and the expenditure of sixteen millions of livres, when it became necessary to call in Soufflot's pupil Rondelet, to shore up the walls and strengthen the columns which had proved too weak to sustain the weight of the huge cupola. But before the temple was consecrated, the Revolutionists came, and noting its monumental aspect used it with admirable fitness as a Panthéon Français for the remains of their heroes; the dome designed to cover the relics of St. Genevieve soared over the ashes of Voltaire, Mirabeau, Rousseau and Marat. Thrice has this unlucky fane been the prize of Catholic and Revolutionary reactionaries. In 1806 Napoleon I. restored it to Christian worship; in 1822 the famous inscription--"_Aux grands Hommes la Patrie reconnaissante_" was removed by Louis XVIII., and replaced by a dedication to God and St. Genevieve; in 1830 Louis Philippe, the citizen king, transferred it to secular and monumental uses, and restored the former inscription; in 1851 the perjured Prince-President Napoleon, while the streets of Paris were yet red with the blood of his victims, again surrendered it to the Catholic Church; in 1885 it was reconverted to a national Walhalla for the reception of Victor Hugo's remains. The pseudo-classic church of St. Sulpice, begun in 1665 and not completed until 1777, is a monument of the degraded taste of this unhappy time. At least three architects, Gamart, Levau and the Italian Servandoni, are responsible for this monstrous pile, whose towers have been aptly compared by Victor Hugo to two huge clarionets. The building has, however, a certain _puissante laideur_, as Michelet said of Danton, and is imposing from its very mass, but it is dull and heavy and devoid of all charm and imagination. Nothing exemplifies more strikingly the mutation of taste that has taken place since the eighteenth century than the fact that this church is the only one mentioned by Gibbon in the portion of his autobiography which refers to his first visit to Paris, where it is distinguished as "one of the noblest structures in Paris." CHAPTER XVII _Louis XVI.--The Great Revolution--Fall of the Monarchy_ Crowned vice was now succeeded by crowned folly. The grandson of Louis XV., a well-meaning but weak and foolish youth, and his thoughtless, pleasure-loving queen, were confronted by state problems that would have taxed the genius of a Richelieu in the maturity of his powers. Injustice, misery, oppression, discontent, were clamant and almost universal; taxes had doubled since the death of Louis XIV.; there were 30,000 beggars in Paris alone, and from 720,000 in 1700 the population had in 1784 decreased to 620,000. The penal code was of inhuman ferocity; law was complicated, ruinous and partial, and national credit so low that loans could be obtained only against material pledges and at interest five times as great as that paid by England. Wealthy bishops and abbots[157] and clergy, noblesse and royal officials, were wholly exempt from the main incidents of taxation; for personal and land taxes, tithes and forced labour, were exacted from the common people alone. No liberty of worship, nor of thought: Protestants were condemned to the galleys by hundreds; booksellers met the same fate. Authors and books were arbitrarily sent by _lettres de cachet_ to the Bastille or Vincennes. Yet in spite of all repression, a generation of daring, witty, emancipated thinkers in Paris was elaborating a weapon of scientific, rationalistic and liberal doctrine that cut at the very roots of the old _régime_. "I care not whether a man is good or bad," says the Deity in Blake's prophetic books, "all I care, is whether he is a wise man or a fool." While France was in travail of the palingenesis of the modern world, the futile king was trifling with his locks and keys and colouring maps, the queen playing at shepherdesses at Trianon or performing before courtiers, officers and equerries the _rôles_ of Rosina in the _Barbier de Seville_ and of Colette in the _Devin du Village_, the latter composed by the democratic philosopher, whose _Contrat Social_ was to prove the Gospel of the Revolution.[158] Jean Jacques Rousseau, the solitary, self-centred Swiss engraver and musician, has described for us in words that will bear translation how an ineffaceable impression of the sufferings of the people was burnt into his memory, and the fire of an unquenchable hatred of their oppressors was kindled in his breast. Journeying on foot between Paris and Lyons, he was one day diverted from his path by the beauty of the landscape, and wandered about, seeking in vain to discover his way. "At length," he writes, "weary, and dying of thirst and hunger, I entered a peasant's house, not a very attractive one, but the only one I could see. I imagined that here as in Switzerland every inhabitant of easy means would be able to offer hospitality. I entered and begged that I might have dinner by paying for it. The peasant handed me some skim milk and coarse barley bread, saying that was all he had. The milk seemed delicious and I ate the bread, straw and all, but it was not very satisfying to one exhausted by fatigue. The man scrutinised me and judged by my appetite the truth of the story I had told. Suddenly, after saying that he perceived I was a good, honest youth and not there to spy upon him, he opened a trap door, descended and returned speedily with some good wheaten bread, a ham appetising but rather high, and a bottle of wine which rejoiced my heart more than all the rest. He added a good thick omelette and I enjoyed a dinner such as those alone who travel on foot can know. When it came to paying, his anxiety and fears again seized him; he would have none of my money and pushed it aside, exceedingly troubled, nor could I imagine what he was afraid of. At last he uttered with a shudder the terrible words, _commis, rats de cave_" ("assessors, cellar rats"). He made me understand that he hid the wine because of the _aides_,[159] and the bread because of the _tailles_,[160] and that he would be a ruined man if it were supposed that he was not dying of hunger. That man, although fairly well-off, dared not eat the bread earned by the sweat of his brow, and could only escape ruin by pretending to be as miserable as those he saw around him. I issued forth from that house indignant as well as affected, deploring the lot of that fair land where nature had lavished all her gifts only to become the spoil of barbarous tax-farmers (_publicans_)." And Voltaire, that implacable avenger of injustice, in verse that rends the heart, has in _les Finances_, (1775), pictured a peaceful home ruined; its inmates evicted to misery, to the galleys and to death, by the cruel exactions of the royal director of the _aides_ and _gabelles_, with his _sergents de la finance habillés en guerriers_. The elder Mirabeau too has told how he saw a bailiff cut off the hand of a peasant woman who had clung to her kitchen utensils when distraint was made on her poor possessions for dues exacted by the tax-farmers. In 1776 two poor starving wretches were hanged on the gallows of the Place de Grève at Paris for having stolen some bread from a baker's shop. [Footnote 157: Taine estimates the revenues of thirty-three abbots in terms of modern values at from 140,000 to 480,000 francs (£5,600 to £19,200). Twenty-seven abbesses enjoyed revenues nearly as large.] [Footnote 158: The score of Rousseau's opera is still preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale.] [Footnote 159: The Excise duty.] [Footnote 160: Personal and land-taxes paid by the humbler classes alone.] "But though the gods see clearly, they are slow In marking when a man, despising them, Turns from their worship to the scorn of fools." Half a century had elapsed since that meal in the peasant's house when the Nemesis that holds sleepless vigil over the affairs of men stirred her pinions and, like a strong angel with glittering sword, prepared to avenge the wrongs of a people whose rulers had outraged every law, human and divine, by which human society is held together. King, nobles, and prelates had a supreme and an awful choice. They might have led and controlled the Revolution; they chose to oppose it, and were broken into shivers as a potter's vessel. After the memorable cannonade at Valmy, a knot of defeated German officers gathered in rain and wind moodily around the circle where they durst not kindle the usual camp-fire. In the morning the army had talked of nothing but spitting and devouring the whole French nation: in the evening everyone went about alone; nobody looked at his neighbour, or if he did, it was but to curse and swear. "At last," says Goethe, "I was called upon to speak, for I had been wont to enliven and amuse the troop with short sayings. This time I said, 'From this day forth, and from this place, a new era begins in the history of the world and you can all say that you were present at its birth.'" This is not the place to write the story of the French Revolution. Those who would read the tremendous drama may be referred to the pages of Carlyle. As a formal history, that work of transcendent genius is open to criticism, especially on the score of accuracy in detail. Indeed to the present writer the magnificent and solemn prosody seems to partake of the nature of a Greek chorus--the comment of an idealised spectator, assuming that the hearer has the drama unfolding before his eyes. Recent researches have supplemented and modified our knowledge. It is no longer possible to accept the more revolting representations of the misery[161] of the French peasantry as true of the whole of France, for France before the Revolution was an assemblage of many provinces of varying social conditions, subjected to varying administrative laws. Nor can we accept Carlyle's portraiture of Robespierre as history, after Louis Blanc's great work. So far from Robespierre having been the bloodthirsty protagonist of the later Terror, it was precisely his determination to make an end of the more savage excesses of the extreme Terrorists and to chastise their more furious pro-consuls, such as Carrier and Fouché, that brought about his ruin. It was men like Collot d'Herbois, Billaud Varenne and Barrère, the bloodiest of the Terrorists, who, to save their own heads, united to cast the odium of the later excesses on Robespierre, and to overthrow him.[162] The Thermidorians had no intention of staying the Terror and the actual consequences of their success were wholly unexpected by them. But whatever defects there be in Carlyle, his readers will at least understand the significance of the Revolution, and why it is that the terrible, but temporary excesses which stained its progress have been so unduly magnified by reactionary politicians, while the cruelties of the White Terror[163] are passed by. [Footnote 161: It is difficult, however, to read the sober and irrefutable picture of their miserable condition, given in the famous Books II. and V. of Taine's _Ancien Régime_, without deep emotion.] [Footnote 162: See also Bodley's _France_, where the author favours the view that Robespierre was not a democrat with a thirst for blood, but rather a man of government, destroyed as a reactionary by surviving Revolutionists who saw their end coming.] [Footnote 163: After the Thermidorian reaction in 1795, ninety-seven Jacobins were massacred by the royalists at Lyons on 5th May; thirty at Aix on 11th May. Similar horrors were enacted at Avignon, Arles, and Marseilles, and at other places in the south.] Camille Desmoulins has described in his Memoirs how on 11th July he was lifted on the famous table, known as the tripod of the Revolution, in front of the Café Foy, in the garden of the Palais Royal, and delivered that short but pregnant oration which preceded the capture of the Bastille on the 14th, warning the people that a St. Bartholomew of patriots was contemplated, and that the Swiss and German troops in the Champ de Mars were ready for the butchery. As the crowd rushed to the Hôtel de Ville, shouting "To arms!" they were charged by the Prince de Lambesc at the head of a German regiment, and the first blood of the Revolution in Paris was shed. The Bastille, like the monarchy, was the victim of its past sins. That grisly fortress, long useless as a defence of Paris, with the jaws of its rusty cannon opening on the most populous quarter of the city to overawe sedition, and its sinister memories of the Man in the Iron Mask,[164] symbolised in the popular mind all that was hateful in the old _régime_, though it had long ceased to be more than occasionally used as a state prison. If we would restore its aspect we must imagine the houses at the ends of the Rue St. Antoine and the Boulevard Henri IV. away and the huge mass erect on their site and on the lines marked in white stone on the present Place de la Bastille. A great portal, always open by day, yawned on the Rue St. Antoine opposite the Rue des Tournelles and gave access to the first quadrangle which was lined with shops and the houses of the _personnel_ of the prison: then came a second gate, with entrances for carriages and for foot passengers, each with its drawbridge. Beyond these a second quadrangle was entered, to the right of which stood the Governor's house and an armoury. Another double portal to the left gave entrance across the old fosse once fed by the waters of the Seine, to the prison fortress itself, with its eight tall blackened towers, each divided into five floors, and its crenelated ramparts. [Footnote 164: A whole library has been written concerning the identity of this famous prisoner. There is little doubt that the mask was of velvet and not of iron, and that the mysterious captive who died on 19th November 1703 in the Bastille, was Count Mattioli of Bologna, who was secretly arrested for having betrayed the confidence of Louis XIV.] The Bastille, which in the time of the English rule, had seen as its captains the Duke of Exeter, Falstaff, and invincible Talbot, was first used in Richelieu's time as a permanent state prison, and filled under Louis XIV. with Jansenists and Protestants, who were thus separated from the prisoners of the common jails; and, later, under Louis XV. by a whole population of obnoxious pamphleteers and champions of philosophy. Books as well as their authors were incarcerated, and released when considered no longer dangerous; the tomes of famous _Encyclopédie_ spent some years there. From the middle of the eighteenth century the horrible, dark and damp dungeons, half underground and sometimes flooded, formerly inhabited by the lowest type of criminals, were reserved as temporary cells for insubordinate prisoners, and since the accession of Louis XIV. they were no more used. The Bastille during the reigns of the three later Louis was the most comfortable prison in Paris, and detention there rather than in the other prisons was often sought for and granted as a favour; the prisoners might furnish their rooms, and have their own libraries and food. In the middle of the seventeenth century, certain rooms were furnished at the king's expense for those who were without means. The rooms were warmed, the prisoners well fed, and sums varying from three to thirty-five francs per day, according to condition,[165] were allotted for their maintenance. A considerable amount of personal liberty was allowed to many and indemnities were in later years paid to those who had been unjustly detained. But a prison where men are confined indefinitely without trial and at a king's arbitrary pleasure is none the less intolerable, however its horrors be mitigated. Prisoners were sometimes forgotten, and letters are extant from Louvois and other ministers, asking the governor to report how many years certain prisoners had been detained, and if he remembered what they were charged with. In Louis XIV.'s reign 2228 persons were incarcerated there; in Louis XV.'s, 2567. From the accession of Louis XVI. to the destruction of the prison the number had fallen to 289. Seven were found there when the fortress was captured, the remainder having been transferred to Vincennes and other prisons by the governor who had some fears of treachery within but none of danger from without. Four were accused of forgery, two insane; one, the Count of Solages, accused of a monstrous crime, was detained there to spare the feelings of his family. So unexpected was the attack, that although well furnished with means of defence, the governor had less than twenty-four hours' provisions in hand when the assault began. [Footnote 165: Only five francs were allowed for a bourgeois; a man of letters was granted ten; a Marshal of France obtained the maximum.] The Bastille, some time before its fall, was already under sentence of demolition, and various schemes for its disposal were before the court. One project was to destroy seven of the towers, leaving the eighth standing in a dilapidated state. On the site of the seven, a pedestal formed of chains and bolts from the dungeons and gates was to bear a statue of Louis XVI. in the attitude of a liberator, pointing with outstretched hand towards the remaining tower in ruins. But Louis XVI. was always too late, and the Place de la Bastille, with its column raised to those who fell in the Revolution of July, 1830, now recalls the second and final triumph of the people over the Bourbon kings. Some stones of the Bastille were, however, "in order that they might be trodden under foot by the people for ever," built into the new Pont Louis Seize, subsequently called Pont de la Révolution and now known as Pont de la Concorde; others were sold to speculators and were retailed at prices so high that people complained that Bastille stones were as dear as the best butcher's meat. Models of the Bastille, dominoes, inkstands, boxes and toys of all kinds were made of the material and had a ready sale all over France. Far to the west and on the opposite side of the Seine is the immense area of the Champ de Mars, where, on the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, was enacted the fairest scene of the Revolution. The whole population of Paris, with their marvellous instinct of order and co-operation, spontaneously set to work to dig the vast amphitheatre which was to accommodate the 100,000 representatives of France, and 400,000 spectators, all united in an outburst of fraternal love and hope to swear allegiance to the new Constitution before the altar of the Fatherland. The king had not yet lost the affection of his people. As he came to view the marvellous scene an improvised bodyguard of excavators, bearing spades, escorted him about. When he was swearing the oath to the Constitution, the queen, standing on a balcony of the _École militaire_, lifted up the dauphin as if to associate him in his father's pledge. Suddenly the rain which had marred the great festival ceased, the sun burst forth and flooded in a splendour of light, the altar, Bishop Talleyrand, his four hundred clergy, and the king with upraised hand. The solemn music of the _Te Deum_ mingled with the wild pæan of joy and enthusiasm that burst from half a million throats. The unconscionable folly, the feeble-minded vacillation and miserable trickery by which this magnificent popularity was muddled away is one of the saddest tragedies in the stories of kings. It is clear from Sir S. Romilly's letters that after the acceptance of the Constitution, Louis was popular among all classes. But the people, with unerring instinct, had fixed on the queen as one of the chief obstacles to what might have been a peaceful revolution. Neither Marie Antoinette nor Louis Capet comprehended the tremendous significance of the forces they were playing with--the resolute and invincible determination of a people of twenty-six millions to emancipate itself from the accumulated wrongs of centuries. "_Eh bien! factieux_," said Marie to the Commissioners from the Assembly after the return from Varennes, "_vous triomphez encore!_" The despatches and opinions of American ambassadors during this period are of much value. The democratic Thomas Jefferson, reviewing in later years the course of events, declared that had there been no queen there would have been no revolution. Governor Morris, whose anti-revolutionary and conservative leanings made him the friend and confidant of the royal family, writes to Washington on January 1790: "If only the reigning prince were not the small-beer character he is, and even only tolerably watchful of events, he would regain his authority," but "what would you have," he continues scornfully "from a creature who, in his situation, eats, drinks, and sleeps well, and laughs, and is as merry a grig as lives. He must float along on the current of events and is absolutely a cypher." Nor would the court forego its crooked ways. "The queen is even more imprudent," Morris writes in 1791, "and the whole court is given up to petty intrigues worthy only of footmen and chambermaids." Moreover, in its amazing ineptitude, the monarchy had already toyed with republicanism by lending active military support to the revolutionists in America, at a cost to the already over-burdened treasury of 1,200,000,000 livres. The American ambassador, Benjamin Franklin, was crowned at court with laurel as the apostle of liberty, and in the very palace of Versailles, medallions of Franklin were sold, bearing the inscription: "_Eripui coelo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis_" ("I have snatched the lightning from heaven and the sceptre from tyrants"). The revolutionary song, _Ça ira_, owes its origin to Franklin's invariable response to inquiries as to the progress of the American revolutionary movement.[166] There was explosive material enough in France to make playing with celestial fire perilous, and while the political atmosphere was heavy with the threatening storm, thousands of French soldiers returned saturated with enthusiasm and sympathy for the American revolution. Already before the Feast of the Federation the queen had been in secret correspondence with the _émigrés_ at Turin and at Coblenz who were conspiring to throttle the nascent liberty of France. Madame Campan relates that the queen made her read a confidential letter from the Empress Catherine of Russia, concluding with these words: "Kings ought to proceed in their career undisturbed by the cries of the people as the moon pursues her course unimpeded by the howling of dogs." Mirabeau was already in the pay of the monarchy; and attempts were made to buy over Robespierre, who up to 10th August was an avowed defender of the Constitution, by an offer of the emoluments and the nominal post of tutor to the dauphin in return for his support of the royal cause. [Footnote 166: When Sir S. Romilly called on Franklin in 1783, the latter expressed his amazement that the French Government had permitted the publication of the American Constitution, which produced a great impression in Paris. The music of _Ça ira_, taken from a dance tune, _Le Carillon National_, very popular in the _guinguettes_ of Paris, has been published in the _Révolution Française_ for 16th December 1898.] As early as December 1790 the court had been in secret communication with the foreigner. Louis' brother, the Count of Artois (afterwards Charles X.), with the queen's and king's approval, had made a secret treaty with the House of Hapsburg, the hereditary enemy of France, by which the sovereigns of Austria, Prussia and Spain agreed to cross the frontier at a given signal, and close on France with an army a hundred thousand strong. It was an act of impious treachery, and the beginning of the doom of the French Monarchy. Yet if but some glimmer of intelligence and courage had characterised the preparations for the flight of the royal family to join the armed forces waiting to receive them near the frontier, their lives at least had been saved. The incidents of the four months' "secret" preparations to leave the Tuileries as described by Madame Campan--the disguised purchases of elaborate wardrobes of underlinen and gowns; the making of a dressing-case of enormous size, fitted with many and various articles from a warming-pan to a silver porringer; the packing of the diamonds--read like scenes in a comedy. The story of the pretended flight of the Russian baroness and her family; the start delayed by the queen losing her way in the slums of the Carrousel; the colossal folly of the whole business has been told by Carlyle in one of the most dramatic chapters in history. The Assembly declared on hearing of Louis' flight, that the government of the country was unaffected and that the executive power remained in the hands of the ministers. After voting a levy of three hundred thousand National Guards to meet the threatened invasion, they passed calmly to the discussion of the new Penal Code. The king returned to Paris through an immense and silent multitude. "Whoever applauds the king," said placards in the street, "shall be thrashed; whoever insults him, hung." The idea of a republic as a practical issue of the situation was now for the first time put forward by the extremists, but met with little sympathy, and a Republican demonstration in the Champ de Mars was suppressed by the Assembly by martial law at the cost of many lives. Owing to the aversion felt by Marie Antoinette to Lafayette, who with affectionate loyalty more than once had risked his popularity and life to serve the crown, the court made the fatal mistake of opposing his election to the mayoralty of Paris and paved the way for the triumph of Pétion and of the Dantonists. At the news of the first victories of the invading Prussians and _émigrés_, Louis added to his amazing tale of follies by vetoing the formation of a camp near Paris and by turning a deaf ear to the earnest entreaties of the brave and sagacious Dumouriez and accepting his resignation. He sent a secret agent with confidential instructions to the _émigrés_ and the coalesced foreign armies: the ill-starred proclamation[167] of the Duke of Brunswick completed the destruction of the monarchy. While the French were smarting under defeat and stung by the knowledge that their natural defender, the king, was leagued with their enemies, this foreign soldier warned a high-spirited and gallant nation that he was come to restore Louis XVI. to his authority, and threatened to treat as rebellious any town that opposed his march, to shoot all persons taken with arms in their hands, and in the event of any insult being offered to the royal family to take exemplary and memorable vengeance by delivering up the city of Paris to military execution and complete demolition. When the proclamation reached Paris at the end of July 1792, it sounded the death knell of the king and the triumph of the Republicans. Paris was now to become, in Goethe's phrase, the centre of the "world whirlwind"--a storm centre launching forth thunderbolts of terror. After the Assembly had twice refused to bring the king to trial, the extremists were able to organise and direct an irresistible wave of popular indignation towards the Tuileries, and on 10th August the palace was stormed. While a band of brave and devoted Swiss guards was being cut to pieces in hundreds, the feeble and futile king had fled to the Assembly and was sitting safely with his wife and children in a box behind the president's chair. [Footnote 167: It was composed by one of the _émigrés_, M. de Limon, approved by the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia, and signed, against his better judgment, by the Duke of Brunswick.] No room for compromise now. The printed trial of Charles I. was everywhere sold and read. "This," people said, "was how the English dealt with an impossible king and became a free nation." Old and new were in death-grapple, and the lives of many victims, for the people lost heavily,[168] had sealed the cause of the Revolution with a bloody consecration. Unhappily, the city of Paris, like all great towns in times of scarcity (and since 1780 scarcity had become almost permanent), had been invaded by numbers of starving vagabonds--the dregs that always rise to the surface in periods of political convulsion, ready for any villainy. When news came of the capture of Verdun, of the indecent joy of the courtiers, and that the road to Paris was open to the avenging army of Prussians, the horrors of the Armagnac massacres were renewed during four September days at the prisons of Paris, while the revolutionary ministry and the Assembly averted their gaze and, to their everlasting shame, abdicated their powers. The September massacres were the application by a minority of desperate and savage revolutionists of the _ultima ratio_ of kings to a desperate situation: the tragedy of King Louis is the tragedy of a feeble prince called to rule in a tremendous crisis, where weakness and well-meaning folly are the fatalest of crimes. [Footnote 168: The numbers have been variously estimated from 100 to 5000 killed on the popular side.] On 21st September 1792 royalty was formally abolished, and on the 22nd, when "the equinoctional sun marked the equality of day and night in the heavens," civil equality was proclaimed at Paris. CHAPTER XVIII _Execution of the King--Paris under the First Republic--the Terror--Napoleon--Revolutionary and Modern Paris_ An inscription opposite No. 230 Rue de Rivoli indicates the site of the old Salle du Manége, or Riding School,[169] of the Tuileries, where the destinies of modern France were debated. Three Assemblies--the Constituent, the Legislative and the prodigious National Convention--filled its long, poorly-furnished amphitheatre, decorated with the tattered flags captured from the Prussians and Austrians, from 7th November 1789 to 9th May 1793. [Footnote 169: The Académie d'Équitation was an expensive and exclusive establishment where the young nobles and gentlemen of fortune were taught fencing, riding and dancing. It was long and narrow, 240 feet by 60, and only the most powerful voices could be heard in the Assembly. The Rue de Rivoli between the Rues d'Alger and de Castiglione cuts through the site.] There, on Wednesday, 16th January 1793, began the solemn judgment of Louis XVI. by 721 representatives of the people of France. The sitting opened at ten o'clock in the morning, but not till eight in the evening did the procession of deputies begin, as the roll was called, to ascend the tribune, and utter their word of doom. All that long winter's night, and all the ensuing short winter's day, the fate of a king trembled in the balance, as the judgment: death--banishment: banishment--death, with awful alternation echoed through the hall. Amid the speeches of the deputies was heard the chatter of fashionable women in the boxes, pricking with pins on cards the votes for and against death, and eating ices and oranges brought to them by friendly deputies. Above, in the public tribunes, sat women of the people, greeting the words of the deputies with coarse gibes. Betting went on outside. At every entrance, cries, hoarse and shrill, were heard of hawkers selling "The Trial of Charles I." Time-serving Philip Egalité, Duke of Orleans, voted _la mort_, but failed to save his skin. An Englishman was there--Thomas Paine, author of the _Rights of Man_ and deputy for Calais. His voice was raised for clemency, for temporary detention, and banishment after the peace. "My vote is that of Paine," cried a member, "his authority is final for me." One deputy was carried from a sick-bed to cast his vote in the scale of mercy; others slumbering on the benches were awakened and gave their votes of death between two yawns. At length, by eight o'clock on the evening of the 17th, exactly twenty-four hours after the voting began, the President rose to read the result. A most august and terrible silence reigned in the Assembly as President Vergniaud rose and pronounced the sentence "Death" in the name of the French nation. The details of the voting as given in the _Journal de Perlet_, 18th January 1793, are as follows: "Of the 745 members one had died, six were sick, two absent without cause, eleven absent on commission, four abstained from voting. The absolute majority was therefore 361. Three hundred and sixty-six voted for death, three hundred and nineteen for detention and banishment, two for the galleys, twenty-four for death with various reservations, eight for death with stay of execution until after the peace, two for delay with power of commutation." Three Protestant ministers and eighteen Catholic priests voted for death. Louis' defenders were there and asked to be heard; they were admitted to the honours of the sitting. At eleven o'clock the weary business of thirty-seven hours was ended, only, however, to be resumed the next morning, for yet another vote must decide between delay or summary execution. Again the voice of Paine was heard pleading for mercy, but without avail. At three o'clock on Sunday morning the final voting was over. Six hundred and ninety members were present, of whom three hundred and eighty voted for death within twenty-four hours. To the guillotine on the fatal Place de la Révolution, formerly Place Louis XV., the very scene of a terrible panic at his wedding festivities which cost the lives of hundreds of sightseers, the sixteenth Louis of France was led on the morning of 21st January 1793. As he turned to address the people, Santerre ordered the drums to beat--it was the echo of the drums reverberating through history which had smothered the cries of the Protestant martyrs sent to the scaffold by the fourteenth Louis a century before. This was the beginning of that _année terrible_, into which was crowded the most stupendous struggle in modern history. Threatened by the monarchies of Europe, united to crush the Revolution, France, in the tremendous words of Danton, flung to the coalesced kings, the head of a king as a gage of battle. A colossal energy, an unquenchable devotion were evoked by the supreme crisis, and directed by a committee of nine inexperienced young civilians, sitting in a room of the Tuileries at Paris, to whom later Carnot, an engineer officer, was added. "The whole Republic," they proclaimed, "is a great besieged city: let France be a vast camp. Every age is called to defend the liberty of the Fatherland. The young men will fight: the married will forge arms. Women will make clothes and tents: children will tear old linen for lint. Old men shall be carried to the market-place to inflame the courage of all." In twenty-four hours, 60,000 men were enrolled; in two months, fourteen armies organised. Saltpetre for powder failed; it was torn from the bowels of the earth. Steel, too, and bronze were lacking: iron railings were transmuted into swords, and church bells and royal statues into cannon. Paris became a vast armourer's shop. Smithy fires in hundreds roared and anvils clanged in the open places--one hundred and forty at the Invalides, fifty-four at the Luxembourg. The women sang as they worked:-- "Cousons, filons, cousons bien, V'là des habits de notre fabrique Pour l'hiver qui vient. Soldats de la Patrie Vous ne manquerez de rien."[170] [Footnote 170: "Sew we, spin we, sew we well, behold the coats we have made for the winter that is coming. Soldiers of the Fatherland, ye shall want for nothing."] The smiths chanted to the rhythm of their strokes:-- "Forgeons, forgeons, forgeons bien!" On the new standards waving in the breeze ran the legend: "The French people risen against Tyrants." Toulon was in the hands of the English; Lyons in revolt. With enemies in her camp, with one arm tied by the insurrection in La Vendée, the Revolution hurled her ragged and despised _sans-culottes_,[171] against her enemies. How vain is the wisdom of the great! Burke thought that the Revolution had expunged France in a political sense out of the system of Europe, and his opinion was shared by every European statesman; but before the year closed, the proud and magnificently accoutred armies of kings were scattered over the borders, civil war was crushed, the Revolution triumphant. Soon the "dwarfish, ragged _sans-culottes_, the small black-looking Marseillaises dressed in rags of every colour," whom Goethe saw tramping out of Mayence "as if the goblin king had opened his mountains and sent forth his lively host of dwarfs," had forced Prussia, the arch-champion of monarchy, to make peace and leave its Rhine provinces in the hands of regicides. Meanwhile terror reigned in Paris. In the frenzy of mortal strife the Revolution struck out blindly and cut down friend as well as foe; the innocent with the guilty. At least the guillotine fell swiftly and mercifully. Gone were the days of the wheel, the rack, the boiling lead and the stake. Under the _ancien régime_ the torture of _accused_ persons was one of the sights shown to foreigners in Paris. Evelyn, when visiting the city in 1651, was taken to see the torture of an _alleged_ thief in the Châtelet, who was "wracked in an extraordinary manner, so that they severed the fellow's joints in miserable sort." Failing to extort a confession, "they increased the extension and torture, and then placing a horne in his mouth, such as they drench horses with, poured two buckets of water down, so that it prodigiously swelled him." There was another "malefactor" to be dealt with, but the traveller had seen enough, and he leaves, reflecting that it represented to him "the intolerable sufferings which our Blessed Saviour must needs undergo when His body was hanging with all its weight upon the nailes of the Crosse." [Footnote 171: The term implied rather an excess than a defect of nether garment and was applied in scorn by the fashionable wearers of _culottes_ to the plebeian wearers of trousers.] Too much prominence has been given by historians to the dramatic and violent activities of the men of '93 to the exclusion of acts of peaceful and constructive statesmanship. The 11,210 decrees issued by the National Convention in Paris from September '92 to October '95, included a comprehensive and admirable scheme for national education, with provision for free meals in elementary schools and the moral and physical training of the young. It fulminated against the degradation of public monuments, ordered an inventory to be made of all collections of works of art, and decided that the Republic be charged with the maintenance of artists sent to Rome. It decreed the adoption, began the discussion, and voted the most important articles of the civil code. It inaugurated the telegraph and the decimal system, established the uniformity of weights and measures, the bureau of longitudes, reformed the calendar, instituted the Grand Livre, increased and completed the Museum of Natural History, opened the Museum of the Louvre, created the Conservatoire of the Arts and Crafts, the Conservatoire of Music, the Polytechnic School and the Institute. The Convention abolished negro slavery in the French colonies, and Wilberforce reminded a hostile House of Commons that infidel and anarchic France had given example to Christian England in the work of emancipation. In 1793 it was reported that the aged Goldoni had been in receipt of a pension from the _ancien régime_ and was now dependent on the slender resources of a compassionate nephew: the Convention at once decreed as an act of justice and beneficence that the pension of 4000 livres should be renewed, and all arrears paid up. This is but one of many acts of grace and succour among its records. The closing months of '95 were sped with those whiffs of grape-shot from the Pont Royal and the Rue St. Honoré, that shattered the last attempt, this time by the Royalists, at government by insurrection. The Convention closed its stupendous career, and five Directors of the Republic met in a room furnished with an old table, a sheet of paper and an ink-bottle, and set about organising France for a normal and progressive national life. But Europe had by her fatuous interference with the internal affairs of France sown dragons' teeth indeed and a nation of armed men had sprung forth, nursing hatred of monarchy and habituated to victory. "_Eh, bien, mes enfants_," cried a French general before an engagement when provisions were wanting to afford a meal for his troops, "we will breakfast after the victory." But militarism invariably ends in autocracy. The author of those whiffs of grape-shot was appointed in 1796 Commander-in-Chief of the army of Italy, and a new and sinister complexion was given to the policy of the Republic. "Soldiers," cries Napoleon, "you are half-starved and almost naked; the Government owes you much but can do nothing for you. Your patience, your courage do you honour, but win for you neither glory nor profit. I am about to lead you into the most fertile plains of the world; you will find there great cities and rich provinces; there you will reap honour, glory and riches. Soldiers of Italy, will you lack courage?" This frank appeal to the baser motives that sway men's minds, this open avowal of a personal ambition, was the beginning of the end of Jacobinism in France. Soon the wealth of Italy streamed into the bare coffers of the Directory at Paris:--20,000,000 of francs from Lombardy, 12,000,000 from Parma and Modena, 35,000,000 from the Papal States, an equally large sum from Tuscany; one hundred finest horses of Lombardy to the five Directors, "to replace the sorry nags that now draw your carriages"; convoys of priceless manuscripts and sculpture and pictures to adorn Parisian galleries. So persistent were these raids on the collections of art in Italy that Napoleon is known there to this day as _il gran ladrone_ and the chief duty of the new French officials in Italy, said Lucien Bonaparte, was to supervise the packing of pictures and statues for Paris. No less than 5233 of these works of art were confiscated by the Allies in 1815, and returned to their former owners. In less than a decade the rusty old stage properties and the baubles of monarchy were furbished anew, sacred oil from the little phial of Rheims anointed the brow of a new dynast, and a Roman Pontiff blessed the diadem with which a once poor, pensioned, disaffected Corsican patriot crowned himself lord of France in Notre Dame. The old pomposities of a court came strutting back to their places:--Arch Chancellors, Grand Electors, Constables, Grand Almoners, Grand Chamberlains, Grand Marshals of the Palace, Masters of the Horse, Masters of the Hounds, Madame Mère and a bevy of Imperial Highnesses with their ladies-in-waiting. One thing only was wanting, as a Jacobin bitterly remarked--the million of men who were slain to end all that mummery. The fascinating story of how this amazing transformation was effected cannot be told here. The magician who wrought it was possessed of a soaring imagination, of a mental instrument of incomparable force and efficiency, of an iron will, a prodigious intellectual activity, and a piercing insight into the conditions of material success, rarely, if ever before, united in the same degree in one man. Napoleon Bonaparte was of ancient, patrician Florentine blood, and perchance the descendant of one of those of Fiesole-- "In cui riviva la sementa santa Di quei Romani che vi rimaser quando Fu fatto il nido di malizia tanta."[172] He cherished a particular affection for Italy, and, so far as his personal aims allowed, treated her generously. His descent into Lombardy awakened the slumbering sense of Italian nationality. In more senses than one, says Mr. Bolton King the historian of Italian unity, Napoleon was the founder of modern Italy. [Footnote 172: _Inferno_, XV. 76-78.--"In whom lives again the seed of those Romans who remained there when the nest (Florence) of so much wickedness was made."] The reason of Napoleon's success in France is not far to seek. Two streams of effort are clearly traceable through the Revolution. The earlier thinkers, such as Montesquieu, Voltaire, D'Alembert, Diderot and the Encyclopedists, whose admiration for England was unbounded, aimed at reforming the rotten state of France on the basis of the English parliamentary and monarchical system: it was a middle-class movement for the assertion of its interests in the state and for political freedom. The aim of the Jacobin minority, inspired by the doctrines of the _Contrat Social_ of Rousseau, was to found a democratic state based on the principle of the sovereignty of the people. If the French crown and the monarchies of Europe had allowed the peaceful evolution of national tendencies, the Constitutional reformers would have triumphed, but in their folly they tried to sweep back the tide, with the result we have seen. For when everything is put to the touch, when victory is the price of self-sacrifice, it is the idealist who comes to the front, and as the nineteenth-century prophet Mazzini taught, men will lay down their lives for principles but not for interests. Let us not forget that it was the Jacobin minority who in the heat and glow of their convictions saved the people of France. Led astray by their old guides, abandoned in a dark and trackless waste, their heads girt with horror, menaced by destruction on every side, the people groped, wandering hither and thither seeking an outlet in vain. At length a voice was heard, confidant, thrilling as a trumpet call; "Lo this is the way! follow, and ye shall emerge and conquer!" It may not have been the best way, but it was _a_ way and they followed. It is easy enough to pour scorn on the _Contrat Social_ as a political philosophy, but an ideal, a faith, a dogma are necessary to evoke enthusiasm, the contempt of material things and of death itself. These the _Contrat Social_ gave. It defined with absolute precision the principles latent in the movement of reform that broke up mediævalism. Does power descend from God, its primeval source; or does it ascend, delegated from the people? Once stated, the French mind with its intense lucidity and logicality saw the line of cleavage between old and new--divine right: or sovereignty of the people--and bade all men choose where they would stand. The _Contrat Social_ with its consuming passion for social justice, its ideal of a state founded on the sovereignty of the people, became the gospel of the time. Men and women conned its pages by heart and slept with the book under their pillows. Napoleon himself in his early Jacobin days was saturated with its doctrines, and in later times astutely used its phrases as shibboleths to cloak his acts of despotism. But in that terrible revolutionary decade the Jacobins had spent their lives and their energies. A profound weariness of the long and severe tension, and a yearning for a return to orderly civil life came over men's minds. The masses were still sincerely attached to the Catholic faith: the middle-classes hailed with relief the advent of the strong man who proved himself able to crush faction; the peasants were won by a champion of the Revolution who made impossible the return of the _aides_, the _tailles_, the _gabelles_, and all the iniquitous oppressions of the _ancien régime_ and guaranteed them the possession of the confiscated _émigré_ and ecclesiastical lands; the army idolised the great captain who promised them glory and profit; the Church rallied to an autocrat who restored the hierarchy. Moreover, the brilliancy of Napoleon's military genius was balanced by an all-embracing political sagacity. The chief administrative decrees of the Convention, especially those relating to education and the civil and penal codes, were welded into form by ceaseless energy. Everything he touched was indeed degraded from the Republican ideal, but he drove things through, imposed his own superhuman activity into his subordinates, and became one of the chief builders of modern France. "The gigantic entered into our very habits of thought," said one of his ministers. But his efforts to maintain the stupendous twenty years' duel with the combined forces of England and the continental monarchies, and his own overweening ambition, broke him at length, and he fell, to fret away his life caged in a lonely island in mid-Atlantic. The new ideas were none the less revolutionary of social life. The salon, that eminently French institution, soon felt their power. The charming irresponsible gaiety and frivolity of the old _régime_ gave place to more serious preoccupation with political movements. The fusing power of Rousseau's genius had melted all hearts; the solvent wit of Voltaire and the precise science of the Encyclopedists were a potent force even among the courtiers themselves. The centre of social life shifted from Versailles to Paris and the salons gained what the court lost. Fine ladies had the latest pamphlet of Siéyès read to them at their toilette, and maids caught up the new phrases from their mistresses' lips. Did a young gallant enter a salon excusing himself for being late by saying, "I have just been proposing a motion at the club," every fair eye sparkled with interest. A deputy was a social lion, and a box for the National Assembly exchanged for one at the opera at a premium of six livres. Speeches were rehearsed at the salons and action determined. Chief of the hostesses was Madame[173] Necker: at her crowded receptions might be seen Abbé Siéyès, the architect of Constitutions; Condorcet, the philosopher; Talleyrand, the patriotic bishop; Madame de Staël, with her strong, coarse face and masculine voice and gestures. More intimate were the Tuesday suppers at which a dozen chosen guests held earnest communion. Madame de Beauharnais was noted for her excellent table, and her Tuesday and Thursday dinners: at her rooms the masters of literature and music had been wont to meet. Now came Buffon the naturalist; Bailly of Tennis Court oath fame; Clootz, the friend of humanity. The widow of Helvetius, with her many memories of Franklin, welcomed Volney, author of the _Ruins of Empires_, and Chamfort, the candid critic of Academicians. At the salon of Madame Pancroute, Barrère, the glib orator of the Revolution, was the chief figure. [Footnote 173: Mlle Curchod, for whom Gibbon "sighed as a lover but renounced as a son."] Julie Talma was famed for her literary and artistic circle. Here Marie Joseph Chenier, the revolutionary dramatic poet of the Comédie Française, declaimed his couplets. Here came Vergniaud, the eloquent chief of the ill-fated Gironde; Greuze, the painter; Roland, the stern and minatory minister, who spoke bitter words, composed by his wife, to the king; Lavoisier, the chemist, who is said to have begged that the axe might be stayed while he completed some experiments, and was told that the Republic had no lack of chemists. Madame du Deffand, whose hôtel in the Rue des Quatre Fils still exists, welcomed Voltaire, D'Alembert, Montesquieu and the Encyclopedists. In the street, the great open-air salon of the people, was a feverish going to and fro. Here were the tub-thumpers of the Revolution holding forth at every public place; the strident voices of ballad-singers at the street corners; hawkers of the latest pamphlets hot from the Quai des Augustins; the sellers of journals crying the _Père Duchesne_, _L'Ami du Peuple_, the _Jean Bart_, the _Vieux Cordelier_. Crowds gathered round Bassett's famous shop for caricature at the corner of the Rue St. Jacques and the Rue des Mathurins. The walls of Paris were a mass of variegated placards and proclamations. The charming signs of the old _régime_, the Pomme rouge, the Rose Blanche, the Ami du Coeur, the Gracieuse, the Trois Fleurs-de-lys Couronnées gave place to the "Necker," the "National Assembly," the "Tiers," the "Constitution"--these, too, soon to be effaced by more Republican appellations. For on the abolition of the monarchy and the inauguration of the Religion of Nature, the words "royal" and "saint" disappear from the revolutionary vocabulary. A new calendar is promulgated: streets and squares are renamed: Rues des Droits de l'Homme, de la Révolution, des Piques, de la Loi, efface the old landmarks. We must now say Rue Honoré, not St. Honoré, and Mont Marat for Montmartre. Naturalists had written of the queen bee: away with the hated word! She is now named of all good patriots the _abeille pondeuse_, the egg-laying bee. In the Punch and Judy shows the gallows gives place to the guillotine. No more emblems on playing cards of king, queen, and knave: allegorical figures of Genius, Liberty and Equality take their places, and since Law alone is above them all, Patriotism, as it flings down its biggest card, shall cry no longer, "Ace of trumps," but "Law of trumps," and "Genius of trumps." Chess terms too were republicanised. Furniture becomes of Spartan simplicity. The people lie down on patriotic beds and eat and drink from patriotic mugs and platters. Lotteries are abolished, regulations launched against the sale of indecent literature, drawings or paintings; the open following of the profession of Rahab prohibited; bull fights suppressed. Silver buckles are needed by the national war chest: shoes shall now be clasped by patriotic buckles of copper. The monarchial "_vous_" (you) shall give place to "_toi_" (thou); and "monsieur" and "madame" to "_citoyen_" and "_citoyenne_." The formal subscriptions to letters, "Your humble servant," "Your obedient servant," shall no more recall the old days of class subjection; we write now "Your fellow citizen," "Your friend," "Your equal." Every house bears an inscription, giving the names and ages of the occupants, decorated with patriotic colours of red, white and blue, with figures of the Gallic cock and the _bonnet rouge_. Over every public building runs the legend, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity or Death"[174]--it is even seen over the cages of the wild beasts at the Jardin des Plantes. [Footnote 174: The meaning of this much misunderstood phrase was simply that the citizens were ready to sacrifice their lives in defence of the revolutionary principles.] Nowhere did the revolutionary ploughshare cut deeper than among the clergy and the religious orders. Nearly forty monasteries and convents were suppressed in Paris, and strange scenes were those when the troops of monks and friars issued forth to secular life, some crying "_Vive Jésus le Roi, et la Révolution_," for the new ideas had penetrated even the cloister. The barbers' shops were invaded, and strange figures were seen smoking their pipes along the Boulevards. Some went to the wars; others, especially the Benedictines, appealed for teaching appointments; many faithful to their vows, went forth to poverty, misery, and death. The nuns and sisters gave more trouble, and the scenes that attended their expulsion and that of the non-juring clergy burned into the memories of the pious. "What do they take from me?" cried the _curé_ of St. Marguerite in his farewell sermon. "My cure? All that I have is yours, and it is you they despoil. My life? I am eighty-four years of age, and what of life remains to me is not worth the sacrifice of my principles." Descending the pulpit the venerable priest passed through a sobbing congregation to a garret in one of the Faubourgs. There were but few, however, who imitated the dignified protest of the _curé_ of St. Marguerite. Many a pulpit rang with fiery denunciations, which recalled the savage fanaticism of the League. Some of the younger clergy and a few of the bishops were on the side of the early Revolutionists. The Abbé Fouchet was the Peter the Hermit of the crusade for Liberty, and so popular were his sermons in Notre Dame that a seat there fetched twenty-four sous. But the corruption and apostasy of the hierarchy as a whole, and their betrayal of the people, had borne its acrid fruit of popular contempt and hostility, and the fanaticism of the worship of Reason answered the fanaticism of the Cross. In Notre Dame and other churches, which became Temples of Reason, statues of Liberty replaced those of the _ci-devant_ Holy Virgin and every _Décadi_ services were held in honour of Liberty or of the Supreme Being. _The Rights of Man_, the Constitution, despatches from the armies and new laws were read. Prayers were made to the Supreme Being and Liberty was invoked. Patriotic hymns were sung, virtuous acts in the sections recited and addresses on morality, the domestic virtues and other ethical subjects were given. In some, an orator of morality was appointed. Births, marriages and deaths were announced and--an essential detail--_collections_ were made in aid of suffering Humanity. A _Décadi_ Ritual[175] was printed with a selection of hymns and prayers to be used in the Temples of Reason. The services were crowded, famous preachers often evoked tears, tracts were published and saints of Liberty were in course of evolution. But less than eight years after Robespierre's solemn Festival of the _Être Suprème_ all the hierarchy of the old religion returned, sixty archbishops and bishops, and an army of priests, and a gorgeous Easter Mass in Notre Dame celebrated the reestablishment of the Catholic faith by Napoleon, the heir of the Revolution. [Footnote 175: The services seem to have been not very dissimilar to a modern Ethical Society meeting. The notorious Festival of the 20th Brumaire was a Fête of Liberty not of Reason, the mistake being due to a careless transcription in the _procès-verbal_ of the Convention. A living representative of Liberty was chosen as less likely to tend to idolatry than an image of stone. See _La Révolution Française_, 14th April 1899, _La Déesse de la Liberté_.] It is not within the scope of the present work to deal with the later annals of Paris. Superficial students of her modern history have freely charged her with political irresponsibility and fickleness; no charge could be less warranted by facts. For a thousand years her citizens were loyal and faithful subjects of a monarchy, and endured for a century and a half an infliction of misgovernment, oppression and grinding taxation such as probably no other European people would have tolerated. With touching fidelity and indomitable steadfastness they have cherished the principles of the Great Revolution, in whose name they swept the shams and wrongs of the _ancien régime_ away. There is a profounder truth than perhaps Alphonse Karr imagined in his famous epigram, _Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose_. Every political upheaval of the nineteenth century in Paris has been at bottom an effort to realise the revolutionary ideals of political freedom and social equality in the face of external violence or internal corruption and treachery. Twice the hated Bourbons were reimposed on the people of Paris by the bayonets of the foreigner: twice they rose and chased them away. A compromise followed--that of a citizen king, Louis Philippe of Orleans, once a Jacobin doorkeeper and a soldier of the Revolution, who had fought valiantly at Valmy and Jemappes--but he too identified himself with reactionary ministers, and became a fugitive to England, the bourne of deposed kings. The Second Republic which followed grew distrustful of the people and disfranchised at one stroke 3,000,000 citizens: one of the causes of the success of the _coup d'état_ of Napoleon III. was an astute edict which restored universal suffrage. During the negation of political rectitude and decency which characterised the period of the Second Empire, a little band of Republicans refused to bow the knee to the new pinchbeck Cæsar, "the man," says Freeman, "whose lips uttered the words _je le jure_ and kept the oath by a December massacre." Inspired by Victor Hugo, their fiery poet and seer, whose _Châtiments_ have the passionate intensity of an Isaiah, they braved exile, poverty, calumny and flattery; they "stooped into a dark, tremendous sea of doubt, pressed God's lamp to their breasts and emerged" to witness a sad and bitter day of reckoning, when the corruption and vice of the Second Empire were swallowed up in shame and disaster at Sedan.[176] The Third Republic, with admirable energy and patriotism, rose to save the self-respect of France. The first and Imperial war, up to Sedan, was over in a month; the second national and popular war endured for five months. [Footnote 176: "The collapse of the Empire is tremendous. I have no pity for the melodramatic villain who ends as he began, in causeless and wanton blood." Lord Coleridge, _Life_, ii., p. 172.] Dynastic and ecclesiastical ambition die hard, and the new Republic has had to weather many a storm in her career of a third of a century. Carducci in a fine poem has imagined Letizia, mother of the Bonapartes, a wandering shade haunting the desolate house at Ajaccio, recalling the tragic fate of her children, and, like a Corsican Niobe, standing on her threshold, fiercely stretching forth her arms to the savage Ocean, calling from America, from Britain, from burning Africa, some one of her hapless progeny to find a haven in her breast. But the assegais of South African savages laid low the last hope of the Imperialists, and it may reasonably be predicted that neither the shades nor the living descendants of Bonaparte or Bourbon will ever trouble again the internal peace of France nor her people be ruled by one "regnant by right divine and luck o' the pillow." Throughout the whole land a profound desire of peace possesses men's minds[177] and a firm determination to effect a material and moral recuperation from the disasters of the Empire. [Footnote 177: "We could rouse no enthusiasm," said the head of a State Department to the writer at the time of the Fashoda incident, "even for a war for the recovery of Alsace and Lorraine, much less against England."] The beneficent results of the Great Revolution have leavened the whole world. In no small degree may it be said of France that by her stripes we have been healed. With true insight the Revolutionists perceived that national liberty is the one essential element of national progress:-- "When liberty goes out of a place it is not the first to go, Nor the second or third to go, It waits for all the rest to go, it is the last." But the great work is yet incomplete. Political liberty and equality have been won. A more tremendous task awaits the peoples of the old and new worlds alike--to achieve industrial emancipation and inaugurate a reign of social justice. And we know that Paris will have no small part in the solution of this problem. * * * * * It now remains to consider the impress which this stormy period left on the architecture of Paris. We have seen that the Convention assigned the royal Palace of the Louvre for the home of a national museum. The neglect of the fabric, however, continued. Already Marat had appropriated four of the royal presses and their accessories for the _Ami du Peuple_ and the types founded for Louis XIV. were used to print the diatribes of the fiercest advocate of the Terror. All along the south façade, print and cook shops were seen, and small huckstering went on unheeded. In 1794 the ground floor of the Petite Galerie was used as a Bourse. On the Place du Carrousel, and the site of the Squares du Louvre were a mass of mean houses which remained even to comparatively recent times. In 1805 the masterful will and all-embracing activity of Napoleon were directed to the improvement of Paris, which he determined to make the most beautiful capital in the world. His architects, Percier and Fontaine, were set to work on the Louvre, and yet another vast plan was elaborated for completing the Palace. A northern wing, corresponding to Henry's IV.'s south wing, was to be built eastwards along the new Rue de Rivoli, from the Pavilion de Marsan at the north end of the Tuileries; the Carrousel was to be traversed by a building, separating the two palaces, designed to house the National Library, the learned Societies and other bodies. The work was begun in 1812, the Emperor commanding that the grand apartments were to be prepared for the sovereigns who would come, _à lui faire cortège_, after the success of the Russian campaign! Of this ambitious plan, however, all that was carried out was a portion of the Rue de Rivoli façade, from the Pavilion de Marsan to the Pavilion de Rohan, which latter was finished under the Restoration. Some external decorative work was done on the south façade. Perrault's Colonnade was restored, the four façades of the quadrangle were completed, and a new bridge to lead to the "Palace of the Arts" was built. Little or nothing was done to further Napoleon's plan until the Republic of 1848 decreed the completion of the north façade, which was actually achieved under the Second Empire by Visconti in 1857, who built other structures, each with three courts, inside the great space enclosed by the north and south wings to correct their want of parallelism. Later (1862-1868), Henry the Fourth's long gallery and the Pavilions de Flore and Lesdiguières were rebuilt, and smaller galleries were added to those giving on the Cour des Tuileries: after the disastrous fire which destroyed the Tuileries in 1871, the Third Republic restored the Pavilions de Flore and de Marsan. But the vicissitudes of this wonderful pile of architecture are not yet ended. The discovery of Perrault's base at the east and of Lemercier's at the north, will inevitably lead to their proximate disclosure. Ample space remains at the east for the excavation of a wide and deep fosse, which would expose the wing to view as Perrault intended it; but on the Rue de Rivoli side the problem is more difficult, and probably a narrow fosse, or _saut de loup_, will be all that space will allow there. Napoleon I.'s new streets near the Tuileries and the Louvre soon became the fashionable quarter of Paris. The Italian arcades and every street name recalled a former victory of the Consulate in Italy and Egypt. The military glories of a revolutionary empire, which at one time transcended the limits of that of Charlemagne; which crashed through the shams of the old world and toppled in the dust their imposing but hollow state, were wrought in bronze on the Vendôme Column, cast from the cannon captured from every nation in Europe. The Triumphal Arch of the Carrousel, crowned by the bronze horses from St. Mark's at Venice; the majestic Triumphal Arch of the Etoile--a partially achieved project--all paraded the Emperor's fame. Of more practical utility were the quays built along the south bank of the Seine and the bridges of Austerlitz and Jena, which latter Blücher would have blown up had Wellington permitted it. The erection of the new church of the Madeleine, begun in 1764, had been interrupted by the Revolution, and in 1806, Napoleon ordered that it should be completed as a Temple of Glory. The Restoration transformed it to a Catholic church, which was finally completed under Louis Philippe in 1842, and it soon became the most fashionable place of worship in Paris. Napoleon drove sixty new streets through the city, cleared away the posts that marked off the footways, began the raised pavements and kerbs, and ordered the drainage to be diverted from the gutters in the centre of the roadway. The Restoration erected two basilicas--Notre Dame de Lorette and St. Vincent de Paul. The Expiatory Chapel raised to the memory of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette on the site of the old cemetery of the Madeleine--where they lay, until transferred to St. Denis, in one red burial with the brave Swiss Guards who vainly spent their lives for them--is now threatened with demolition. Three new bridges--of the Invalides, the Archevêché and Arcole--were added, and fifty-five new streets. Under the citizen king, Napoleon's Arch of Triumph of the Etoile was completed, and the Columns of Luxor, on the Place de la Concorde, and of July on the Place de la Bastille, were raised. It was the period of the admirable architectural restorations of Viollet le Duc. The great architect has described how his passion for Gothic was stirred when, taken as a boy to Notre Dame, the rose window of the south transept seized on his imagination. While gazing at it the organ began to play, and he thought that the music came from the window--the shrill, high notes from the light colours, the solemn, bass notes from the dark and more subdued hues. It was a reverent and admiring spirit such as this which inspired the famous architect's loving treatment of the Gothic restoration in Paris and all over France. To him more than to any other artist we owe the preservation of such masterpieces as Notre Dame and the Sainte Chapelle. But the great changes which have made modern Paris were effected under the Second Empire. In 1854, when the Haussmannisation of the city began, the Paris of the First Empire and of the Restoration remained essentially unaltered. It was a city of a few grand streets and of many mean ones. Pavements were still rare, and drainage was imperfect. In a few years the whole aspect was changed. Twenty-two new boulevards and avenues were created. Streets of appalling uniformity and directness were ploughed through Paris in all directions. "Nothing is more brutal than a straight line," says Victor Hugo, and there is little of interest in the monotonous miles of dreary coincidence which constitute the architectural legacy of the Second Empire. The sad task of the Third Republic has been to heal the wounds and cover up the destruction wrought by the Civil War of 1871. The chief architectural creations of the Third Republic are the Hôtel de Ville, the new Sorbonne, the Trocadero, and the completion of the magnificent and colossal temple, rich with precious marble and stone of every kind, which, at a cost of £10,000,000 sterling, has been raised to the Muses at the end of the Avenue de l'Opéra. The Church, too, has lavished her millions on the mighty basilica of the Sacré Coeur, which towers over Paris from the heights of Montmartre. [Illustration: HÔTEL DE VILLE FROM RIVER.] But some of the glory of past ages remains hidden away in corners of the city; some has been recovered from the vandalism of iconoclastic eighteenth-century architects, canons, revolutionists and nineteenth-century prefects. Let us now wander awhile about the great city and refresh our memories of her dramatic past by beholding somewhat of the interest and beauty which have been preserved to us; for "to be in Paris itself, amid the full, delightful fragrance of those dainty visible things which Huguenots despised--that, surely, were the sum of good fortune!" "I see ... long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing.... I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long, long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time, of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out."--DICKENS. Part II: The City SECTION I _The Cité--Notre Dame--The Sainte-Chapelle[178]--The Palais de Justice_[179] [Footnote 178: Open 11-4 or 5. Closed Mondays and Chief Festivals.] [Footnote 179: Open daily, except Sundays, 11-4.] If the traveller will place himself on the Pont Royal, or on the Pont du Carrousel, and look towards the Cité when the tall buildings, the spire of the Sainte Chapelle and the massive grey towers of Notre Dame are ruddy with the setting sun, he will enjoy a scene of beauty not easily surpassed in Europe. Across the picture, somewhat marred by the unlovely Pont des Arts, stride the arches of the Pont Neuf with their graceful curves; below is the little green patch of garden and the cascade of the weir; in the centre of the bridge the bronze horse with Henry IV., its royal rider, almost hidden by the trees, stands facing the site of the old garden of the Palais, where St. Louis sat on a carpet judging his people, and whence Philip the Fair watched the flames that were consuming the Grand Master and his companion of the Knights Templars. To the left are the picturesque mediæval towers of the Conciergerie and the tall roof of the belfry of the Palais. Around all are the embracing waters of the Seine breaking the light with their thousand facets. The island, when seen from the east as one sails down the river, is not less imposing, for the great mother church of Notre Dame, with the graceful buttresses of the apse like folded pinions, seems to brood over the whole Cité. [Illustration: CHAPEL OF CHÂTEAU AT VINCENNES.] [Illustration: NEAR THE PONT NEUF.] From the time when Julius Cæsar addressed his legions on the little island of _Lutetia Civitas Parisiorum_ to the present day, two millenniums of history have been enacted there, and few spots are to be found in Europe where so many associations are crowded together. In Gallo-Roman times the island was, as we have seen, even smaller, five islets having been incorporated with it since the thirteenth century. Some notion of the changes that have swept over its soil may be conceived on scanning Félibien's 1725 map, where no less than eighteen churches are marked, scarce a wrack of which now remains on the island. We must imagine the old mediæval Cité as a labyrinth of crooked and narrow streets, with the present broad Parvis of Notre Dame of much smaller extent, at a higher level, enclosed by a low wall and approached by steps. Against the north tower leaned the Baptistery (St. Jean le Rond) and St. Denis of the Ferry against the apse. St. Pierre aux Boeufs, whose façade has been transferred to St. Sévérin's on the south bank, stood at the east corner, St. Christopher at the west corner of the present Hôtel Dieu which covers the site of eleven streets and three churches. The old twelfth-century hospital, demolished in 1878, occupied the whole space south of the Parvis between the present Petit Pont and the Pont au Double. It possessed its own bridge, the Pont St. Charles, over which the buildings stretched, and joined the annexe (1606), which, until 1909, existed on the opposite side of the river. NOTRE DAME. The traveller who stands on the Parvis before the Church of Our Lady at Paris beholds the embodiment and most perfect expression of early Gothic architecture, the central type and model of the new style created by the genius of the masters of the Isle de France in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. On the west front the builders have lavished all their artistic powers in a synthetic exposition of their outlook on life and eternity. As the worshipper approaches the central portal his eye is arrested by a representation of the ultimate and most solemn fact of human destiny, the Last Judgment. On the lintel the dead are seen rising from their graves at the last trump; prelate, noble and serf in one equality of doom. Above, the fine figure of St. Michael is seen weighing souls in the balance. At his left the damned are hauled in chains by grinning demons to Hell: at his right the elect raise joyful eyes toward Heaven. Crowning the tympanum is Christ the Judge, flanked by angels, and by the Virgin and the Baptist kneeling in intercession while He shows His wounded hands. On the archivolts are, to the right of the spectator, demons and damned souls and quaint personifications of death: to his left the heavenly host, choirs of angels, seated prophets and doctors and the army of martyrs. On the jambs are the five wise and five foolish virgins; apostles and saints on the embrasures of the door; below them reliefs of the virtues, each symbolised above its opposite vice. On the central pillar stands Christ in act of blessing; below Him, bas-reliefs typifying the seven liberal arts.[180] [Footnote 180: This portal suffered much from the vandalism of Soufflot and his clerical employers of the eighteenth century (p. 252): all that remains of the original carvings in the tympanum is a portion of the figure of Christ and the angels. The Revolutionary Chaumette, when it was proposed to destroy the Gothic _simulacra_ of superstition, protected the carvings on the west portals on the plea that they related to astronomy, to philosophy and the arts. The astronomer Dupuis was added to the Commission and the reliefs were saved.] We turn to the lovely portal of the Virgin under the north tower. In the lower compartment of the tympanum is figured the ark of the Covenant attended by prophets and kings; above, is the burial of the Virgin, and crowning all, Our Lady in glory. On the archivolts are angels, patriarchs, prophets, and kings. The jambs and casements are decorated with thirty-seven marvellously vivid reliefs of the signs of the Zodiac, the seasons and labours of the year, a kind of almanac of stone of rare invention and execution. On the embrasures of the door are, among others, the favourite Parisian saints: Denis, Genevieve and Stephen. On the central pier, below the Virgin and Child, are the Creation, Temptation and Fall. The whole of this portal will repay careful inspection. St. Anne's portal, under the south tower, is more archaic, and indeed some of its sculptures are believed to have come from an earlier Romanesque building. Along the lintel are seen episodes in the life of St. Anne and in the life of Mary: in the central band, to the left, are the Presentation, the Annunciation, the Visitation; in the middle the Nativity in various scenes; to the right Herod, and the Adoration of the Magi. The whole of these reliefs are twelfth-century work, with the exception of the Presentation, which is thirteenth century. In the hemicycle above are the Virgin and Child under a Byzantine canopy with angels and founders on either side. On the central pier stands St. Marcel, Bishop of Paris, banning the horrible serpent that made his lair in a tomb: the retreating serpent's tail is seen on the pier. Both on this and on the north portal traces of painting still remain. Before leaving, we note the beautiful mediæval wrought hinges (restored) which came from the old church of St. Stephen and which have been copied for the central portal. The three portals were completed in 1208. Above them and across the whole façade runs a gallery of kings, twenty-eight in number--a perennial source of controversy. Authorities are divided between the kings of France and the kings of Israel and Judah, the royal ancestry of the Virgin. From the analogy of other cathedrals we incline to the latter view. The gallery dates not later than 1220, but the statues are modern reproductions. Yet higher, on the pierced balustrade, is a group of the Virgin between two angels and on either side, over the N. and S. portals, Adam and Eve. A gallery of graceful columns knits the towers together (which were intended to be crowned by spires) before they soar from the façade. Between the towers, in olden times, as we know from an illumination in a Froissart MS., stood a great statue of the Virgin. The whole of this glorious fretwork of stone, including the tracery of the rose window, was once refulgent with gold and azure and crimson, and the finished front in its mediæval glory has been compared to a colossal carved and painted triptych. [Illustration: NOTRE DAME--PORTAL OF ST. ANNE.] On the central pier of the greater portal of the N. transept, called of the Cloister, we note a fine ancient statue of the Virgin, famed for its grace of expression. The smaller Porte Rouge, further eastward, is remarkable for some well-preserved antique sculpture: a Coronation of the Virgin in the tympanum and six scenes in the life of St. Marcel in the archivolt: some old gargoyles and reliefs may be seen on either side of the door. We pursue our way by the east end of the cathedral, where in mediæval times was an open waste, the Motte aux Papelards, the playground of the cathedral servants, the graceful outlines of the apse and the bold sweep of the flying buttresses ever varying in beauty as we pace around. The south portal (ill seen through the iron railings) called of St. Stephen or of the Martyrs is decorated with statues of the saint and of other martyrs, with scenes of their martyrdom. The inscription (p. 88) may be seen at the base to the R. [Illustration: NOTRE DAME--SOUTH SIDE.] [Illustration: NOTRE DAME--SOUTH SIDE--FROM THE SEINE.] We may now enter the noble and harmonious interior, unhappily bared of its rich old decorations, its tombs and statues cleared away, its fine Gothic altar destroyed by clerical and royal vandals to give place to renaissance and pseudo-classic pomposities (p. 252). We approach the choir from the right aisle, noting a fourteenth-century statue of the Virgin and Child on the left as we reach the entrance, perhaps the very statue before which _povre Gilles_ did his penance (p. 142) and proceed to examine all that remains of the "histories" in stone on the choir wall round the ambulatory, twenty-three in number, begun in 1319 by Master Jean Ravy, mason of Notre Dame, and finished (_parfaites_) by Master Jean le Bouteiller in 1351, all _dorez et bien peints_. Those on the choir screen were destroyed by the Cardinal Archbishop de Noailles in 1725. On the north side are twelve reliefs drawn from earlier New Testament history: on the south are nine from later episodes in the life of Christ. These naïve mediæval sculptures of varying merit will repay careful examination. The gilding and colouring are modern. Of the jewelled splendour of the western rose and of the two great rose windows of the transepts the eye will never tire. With every changing light new beauties and new combinations of colour reveal themselves. Those who care to read the subjects will discern in the north transept rose, incidents depicted in the life of the Virgin, and eighteen founders and benefactors: in the south are apostles and bishops crowned by angels. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF NOTRE DAME.] We return to the Porte Rouge in the Rue du Cloître opposite which is the Rue Massillon, where at Nos. 4 and 6 we may note some remains of the cloisters and canons' dwellings, once a veritable city within a city, fifty-one houses with gardens sequestered within a wall having four gates. We continue to the Rue Chanoinesse, where, No. 10, is the site of Canon Fulbert's house: at No. 18, by the courtesy of Messieurs Allez Frères, we may visit the curious old fifteenth-century tower of Dagobert[181] which marks the site of the old port of St. Landry and affords a fine view of the north side of Notre Dame. We return to No. 10 and descend the Rue des Chantres to the Quai aux Fleurs: at No. 9, the site of the house of Abelard and Héloïse, an inscription recalls the names of the unhappy lovers, "... for ever sad, for ever dear, Still breathed in sighs, still ushered with a tear." [Footnote 181: Now (1911) demolished.] We turn westward along the Quai and ascend on our L., the narrow Rue de la Colombe, across which a double line of stones traces the position of the Gallo-Roman wall, that enclosed the Cité. We continue to ascend, and on our L., No. 26 Rue Chanoinesse, we enter a small court where we find a portion of the old pavement of St. Aignan's church, with the almost effaced lineaments on the tombstones of those, now forgotten, who were doubtless famous churchmen in their time, and where St. Bernard wept a whole day, fearing that God had withdrawn from him the power of converting souls. This faint trace of the past wealth of churches remains, but where are the sanctuaries of Ste. Geneviève des Ardents, St. Pierre des Arces, St. Denis of the Prison, St. Germain le Vieux, Ste. Croix, St. Symphorien, St. Martial, St. Bartholomew, and the church of the Barnabites, which replaced that of St. Anne, which replaced the old Abbey church of St. Eloy, all clustering around their parent church of Our Lady like nuns under their patroness' mantle? Until comparatively recent times the church of St. Marine was used as a joiner's workshop, and one of the chapels of Ste. Madeleine, parish church of the water-sellers, served as a wine merchant's store! All that survives of the ancient splendour of the Cité are Notre Dame and some portions of the Palais, including the Ste. Chapelle. We turn R. to the Rue d'Arcole that has swept away the old church of St. Landry, near which, until the reign of Louis XIII., a market was held for the sale of foundling children at thirty sous. The scandal was abolished by the efforts of the gentle St. Vincent de Paul, Anne of Austria's confessor. Turning L. along this street we emerge on the Parvis, which we skirt to the R. along the façade of the new Hôtel Dieu, and reach the Rue de la Cité. We turn R., cross to the L. and follow the broad Rue de Lutèce to the Palais de Justice. THE SAINTE CHAPELLE AND THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE. Entering the Cour du Mai by the great iron grille which has replaced the old stone portal, flanked by two towers, a passage on the left leads us to the Cour de la Ste. Chapelle (p. 86). We enter by the west porch of the lower chapel. On the central pier is a restored figure of the Virgin whose original is said to have bowed her head to the famous Scotch theologian Duns Scotus, in recognition of his championship of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, in 1304: in the decoration of the base of the column and of the embrasures of the door, the Fleur-de-Lys of St. Louis is seen alternating with the Castilian Tower of his mother, Blanche of Castile, a decorative motive repeated in the painting of the chapel. Beautiful as are the vaultings and proportions of the lower chapel, and the decoration, copied, as in the upper chapel, from traces of the original colouring found under the whitewash, the visitor will doubtless prefer to ascend, after a cursory inspection, the narrow, winding stairway to the resplendent upper sanctuary, whose dazzling brilliancy moved an ancient writer to declare that "in the contest between light and darkness in architecture, the creator of the Ste. Chapelle in the pride of his victory built with light itself." In the apse, flooded by streams of colour falling from the windows, is the platform or tribune where, in a rich reliquary of gold, glittering with precious stones, and under a baldachin, the holy relics from Constantinople were exposed in days of old. Part of the tribune is preserved and one of the staircases by which it is ascended, that to the N., is said to date from the founder's time, and may often have been trodden by the very feet of St. Louis himself. Little else of the interior furniture has escaped destruction. The beautiful high altar, the rood loft, the choir stalls, have long disappeared. Four only of the statues of the apostles bearing the crosses of consecration are said to be originals--the fourth and fifth on each side of the nave counting from the west door; the relics, or all that escaped the political storms of the _année terrible_, are now at Notre Dame, and the reliquary that contained them went to feed the hungry war-chest of the revolutionary armies. But the thirteenth-century jewelled windows, as left to us by the admirable restorers of 1855, are of paramount interest. The wealth of design and amplitude of the series are truly amazing. The panels, numbering about eleven hundred, are a compendium of sacred history and a revelation of the world to come: the whole scene from the Creation to the Apocalypse is unrolled before our eyes, pictured in a transparent symphony of colour. Seven windows of the nave and four of the apse deal with Old Testament history: three at the end of the apse with the New. The eighth window of the nave (the first to the R. of entrance), dealing with the story of the Translation of the relics from Constantinople, although the most restored--nineteen only of the sixty-seven subjects are original--is perhaps the most interesting, for among the nineteen may be seen St. Louis figured by the contemporary artist: receiving the relics at Sens; assisting to carry the relics, barefoot; taking part at the exposition of the relics with his queen and his mother; receiving an embassy from the Emperor Baldwin; carrying the Byzantine cross which holds a portion of the true cross. Another of the original panels contains a representation of the Cité with the enveloping arms of the Seine. The rose window at the west end is obviously later, and dates from the fifteenth century. In olden times the lower part of the central window of the apse was made of white glass that the people massed in the courtyard below might behold the relics as St. Louis and his successors, after exhibiting them to the privileged congregation in the chapel, turned round to show them. Against the south wall of the nave is a little oratory with a squint through which it is said Louis XI. used to venerate the relics unobserved. We step out from the west door of the upper chapel to examine the more richly decorated upper portal. The carvings are all modern and, except such as were suggested by traces of the old work, are copied from the west front of Notre Dame and other churches. Many a solemn and many a strange scene have been enacted in this royal oratory; the strangest of all perhaps when Charles V. of France, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV., and his son Wenceslaus, king of the Romans, in the _rôle_ of the three Holy Kings, came to venerate the relics and laid oblations before the shrine. Before we turn away from the building we should observe on the west façade above the rose window wherein the architect has literally sported with the difficulties of construction in stone a charming design of fleurs-de-lys framed by quatrefoils along the balustrade; the central design is an R. (rex), crowned by two angels. The present spire is a fourth erection. The second, which replaced the original spire in 1383, was one of the wonders of Paris, and fell a victim to fire in 1630. A third, erected by Louis XIII., was demolished in 1791, and in 1853 Lassus, Viollet le Duc's principal colleague in the restoration of the chapel, designed the graceful flèche we see to-day. We return to the Cour du Mai: on the R., before we ascend the great stairway, we look down on the nine steps leading from the Vestibule (now a Café Restaurant) of the Conciergerie, up which those doomed to the guillotine ascended to the fatal tumbrils awaiting them in the courtyard. We ascend to the Galerie Marchande: the stairway, rebuilt after the fire of 1776, replaced the old flight of stairs at whose feet heralds proclaimed treaties of peace and tournaments, criminals were branded, and books condemned by the Parlement, burned. Here Pantagruel loved to stand and cut the stirrup-straps of the fat councillors' mules, and see the _gros suflé de conseiller_ fall flat when he tried to mount; and here the clercs of the Basoche planted the annual May-tree, brought from the forest of Bondy, with much playing of drums and trumpets and elaborate ceremony. The Galerie Marchande, formerly known as the Galerie Mercière, was once a busy and fashionable bazaar, where lines of shops displayed fans, shoes, slippers and other dainty articles of feminine artillery. The further galleries were also invaded by the traders, who were only finally evicted in 1842. We turn R. and enter the Grande Salle or, as it is now known, the Salle des Pas Perdus. It, too, was once a busy mart, booksellers especially predominating, most of whom had stations there, much as we see them to-day, round the Odéon Theatre. Vérard's address was--"At the image of St. John the Evangelist, before Notre Dame de Paris, and at the first pillar in the Grande Salle of the Palais de Justice, before the chapelle where they sing the mass for Messieurs of the Parlement." Gilles Couteau's address was at "The Two Archers in the Rue de la Juiverie and at the third pillar at the Palais." Every pillar had its bookseller's shop. In 1618 the great chamber, the finest of its kind in Europe, with its rich stained glass, its double vaultings resplendent with blue and gold, was gutted by fire, and its long line of statues of the kings of France, from Pharamond to Henry IV.--the _rois fainéants_ with pendent arms and lowered eyes, the valiant warrior kings with heads and arms erect--disappeared for ever. This was the hall where the clercs of the Basoche performed their _farces_, _sottises_ and _moralités_, and where Victor Hugo has placed the scene of the famous performance of the _moralité_, composed by Pierre Gringoire,[182] so vividly described in the opening chapters of _Notre Dame_. [Footnote 182: Notes exist of payments in 1502, 1505 to Pierre Gringoire, _histrion et facteur_ for the mysteries--well and honestly performed--at the entries of Madame la reine, before the portail of the Châtelet.] Debrosse, who built the new Salle in 1622, left a noble and harmonious Renaissance chamber, which, again restored after the fire of 1776, endured until its destruction by fire during the Commune. The present rather frigid hall was completed in 1878 by J.L. Duc, who respected the traditional form and amplitude of the older structures. Nearly opposite the monument to Malesherbes (R.) was the position of the old Pilier des Consultations, where the lawyers were wont to give gratuitous legal help to the poor. The best time to visit the Hall is in the afternoon, when the courts are sitting and when the footsteps of the lawyers and their clients are indeed lost amid the buzz of conversation as they pace up and down. The _Première Chambre_ to the L., in the north-west corner of the Hall, is one of the most profoundly interesting in the agglomerated mass of buildings known as the Palais de Justice. This, now somewhat reduced in size, was the old _Grande Chambre_, rebuilt by Louis XII. on the occasion of his marriage with Princess Mary of England, which replaced the earlier bed-chamber of St. Louis. Fra Gioconda's sumptuous decorations of 1502, which won for it the name of the _Chambre dorée_, the gold used being, it is said, equal in purity to the famous Dutch golden florin, have been partially restored. Here the kings of France held their Beds of Justice; here the Fronde held its sittings, and here on 15th April, 1654, the young king Louis XIV. strode in, booted and spurred, and is said to have uttered the famous words _l'État c'est moi_. Here too, renamed the Salle Égalité, the dread Revolutionary Tribunal held its sittings and condemned 2742 victims; here on 14th October 1793, at half-past four in the morning, appeared Marie Antoinette, "widow of Louis Capet," before her implacable judges and heard her doom; hence the twenty-one Girondins trooped forth to their common fate; here Robespierre, St. Just, and, at length, the unwearied minister of death, Fouquier-Tinville himself, the revolutionary public prosecutor, heard their condemnation. We leave by the Cour du Mai and note, to our L., the restored clock tower, replacing the most ancient and famous clock of Paris. It was renewed by Germain Pilon in 1588 and restored in 1685. Demolished during the Revolution, the face and decoration were again renewed in 1852. The silvery-toned bell that hung here, called the _tocsin_, cast in 1371 and known as the _cloche d'argent_, was accused, together with the bell of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, before the Commune on 21st August 1792, of having given the signal for the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and its immediate destruction was ordered. We turn along the picturesque river façade, and between its two mediæval towers, de César and d'Argent, enter the Conciergerie.[183] The condemned cell of Marie Antoinette (transformed into a chapel) and the cell of Robespierre are shown, together with the chapel where the Girondins passed their last night and where their legendary banquet is famed to have taken place. The so-called _Cuisine de St. Louis_, a remain of the old Gothic palace of Philip le Bel, is no longer shown. The third tower on the river façade, which we pass on our way westward, has been wholly rebuilt. In the original tower was the judicial torture-chamber (an adjunct of every court of justice in olden times), used to wrest confessions from prisoners and evidence from unwilling witnesses, hence its name of Tour Bon Bec or Bavarde. The fine western façade and the Salle des Pas Perdus of the Cour d'Assises, looking on the Place Dauphine, were completed in 1868. [Footnote 183: Permission to visit on Thursdays, 9-5, to be obtained by written application to the Prefect of Police, Rue de Lutèce.] Few Law Courts in Europe have so venerable a history as the Palais de Justice. From the times when the Roman prætor set up his court, more than two thousand years ago, to the present day, a temple of Law and Justice has ever stood on this spot. SECTION II _St. Julien le Pauvre--St. Sévérin--The Quartier Latin._ As we fare S. from the W. end of the Parvis of Notre Dame and cross the Petit Pont, we behold the old Roman Road, now Rue St. Jacques, rising straight before us and on the annexe of the Hôtel Dieu,[184] to the L. of the Place du Petit Pont find inscribed their names (p. 46), who nearly twelve centuries ago dared:-- "For that sweet motherland which gave them birth, Nobly to do, nobly to die." On the site of the Place stood the Petit Châtelet, demolished in 1782, a gloomy prison where many a rowdy student was incarcerated. To the L. of the Rue du Petit Pont[184] we turn by the Rue de la Bûcherie and on our R. find the Rue St. Julien le Pauvre. Here on the L., hidden behind a pair of shabby wooden gates, stands the modest little twelfth-century church, now used for the Uniat Greek services, where St. Gregory of Tours found the drunken impostor (pp. 32, 33), where the University of Paris first held its sittings, and where twice a year the royal provost attended to swear to preserve the privileges of the rector, masters and scholars. Near by stood the house of Buridan (_note_, p. 68). At the end of the street we turn R. by the old Rues Galande and St. Sévérin: at No. 4 of the latter, we see a trace of the original naming of the streets by Turgot, the marks of the erasure of the word "Saint" during the Revolution being clearly visible. Parallel with this street to the N. is the Rue de la Huchette, from which opens the curious old Rue du Chat qui Pêche and the Rue Zacharie, in mediæval times called Sac à Lie, which communicates with the Rue St. Sévérin. To our L. is the fine Gothic church of St. Sévérin, one of the most beautiful and interesting in Paris, on the site of the oratory of Childebert I., where St. Cloud was shorn and took his vows. On the thirteenth-century N. portal of the tower have been replaced the two small lions in relief between which, in olden times, the curés are said to have exercised justice. We note the thirteenth-century W. portal, transferred from the old church of St. Pierre aux Boeufs, and enter for the sake of the beautiful Gothic interior, mainly fifteenth century, with its double aisles and ambulatory and fine stained-glass in the nave. We turn L., on leaving, along the Rue des Prêtres St. Sévérin (No. 5 is the site of the old Collège de Lisieux) which is continued by the Rue Boutebrie, in former times the Rue des Enlumineurs, famous for those who practised the art, "_che alluminare chiamata è in Parisi_."[185] At the end of the Rue des Prêtres we turn L. along the picturesque Rue de la Parcheminerie, where we may recall the old poet Corneille sitting at a cobbler's stall while his gaping shoe was patched, and where still remain, among other curious old houses, Nos. 6 and 7, which in the thirteenth century were owned by the canons of Norwich Cathedral, who maintained a number of scholars there. We are now on the very foyer of the University quarter, in mediæval times swarming with poor scholars, the busy hive of knowledge, and so notorious for its misery and rowdy depravity, that Charles V. during his regency had the Rue du Fouarre closed at curfew by strong iron grilles. We pass on to the Rue St. Jacques, then R. to the Boulevard St. Germain, again sharply to the L. and descend the new Rue Dante, R. of which, in the Rue Domat, are some quaint old houses: at 12 _bis_ is the site of the old Collège de Cournouailles (Brittany). The Rue Dante is continued by the Rue du Fouarre (Straw Street) where Siger taught (p. 103) and in one of whose colleges the author of the _Divina Commedia_ probably sat as a scholar. The houses are all modernised and the name alone remains. We turn R. along the Rue Galande, noting R. the Rue des Anglais which reminds us that there the English scholars congregated. We pass on by the Rue Lagrange and reach the place Maubert of dread memories, for here were burnt many a Protestant martyr and the famous printer philosopher, Étienne Dolet, friend of Erasmus, of Marot and of Melancthon, whose statue in bronze stands on the Place. Dolet's martyrdom is still yearly celebrated there by democratic Parisians, and the Place has always been famous for its barricades during the Fronde and later Revolutionary times. We cross the Boulevard to the Rue des Carmes, whose name recalls the Carmelite monastery founded by St. Louis, and at No. 15 find the site of the old Italian College (Collège des Lombards). Much of this "hostel of the poor Italian scholars of the charity of Our Lady," as rebuilt by two Irish priests, Michael Kelly and Patrick Moggin, still exists, including the chapel, and is partly occupied by a Catholic Workmen's Club It gave shelter to forty missionary priests and an equal number of poor Irish scholars, and the earliest disciples of Loyola found temporary shelter there. Some idea of the vast extent of the ancient foundation may be gained by walking round to 34 Rue de la Montagne Ste. Geneviève on the other side of the Marché where the principal portal may be seen. We return to the Place Maubert, which we recross, and descend direct before us to the Rue de la Bûcherie on our L. This street was the centre of the medical students, and from 1369 to the times of Louis XIV. the Faculty of Medicine held its lectures and demonstrations there. At No. 13 still remains the old anatomical and surgical theatre of the Faculty erected in 1617, which has been acquired by the Municipality, but had a neglected, almost ruined aspect when we last passed (Feb. 1906).[186] We continue along this street and return to the Place du Petit Pont. [Footnote 184: The annexe, the inscription and the Rue du Petit Pont--all have disappeared (1911).] [Footnote 185: _Purgatorio_, XI. 81.] [Illustration: ST. SÉVÉRIN.] [Illustration: OLD ACADEMY OF MEDICINE.] SECTION III _École des Beaux Arts_[187]--_St. Germain des Prés_--_Cour du Dragon_--_St. Sulpice_--_The Luxembourg_--_The Odéon_--_The Cordeliers_--_The Surgeons' Guild_--_The Musée Cluny_[188]--_The Sorbonne_[189]--_The Panthéon_[190]--_St. Étienne du Mont_--_Tour Clovis_--_Wall of Philip Augustus_--_Roman Amphitheatre_ [Footnote 186: Now demolished (1911).] [Footnote 187: Open Sundays, 10-4.] [Footnote 188: Open 11-4 or 5, closed Mondays and Chief Festivals.] [Footnote 189: May be visited Thursdays and Sundays, 11-4. Apply Concierge, 7 Rue des Écoles.] [Footnote 190: Open 10-4 or 5, closed Mondays and Festivals.] We cross to the S. bank of the Seine by the Pont du Carrousel (or des Saints Pères). Opposite on the Quai Malaquais stands the École des Beaux Arts (on the site of the old Convent of the Petits Augustins where Lenoir organised his museum), founded by the Convention and now one of the most important art-teaching centres in Europe. We turn S. by the Rue Bonaparte, and soon find the entrance, on the R., to the first courtyard, in which we note, on our R., the fine Portal of the Château of Anet, built for Diana of Poitiers by Delorme and Goujon (1548): opposite the entrance, giving access to the second courtyard, is placed a façade, transitional in style, from the Château of Gaillon. An hour may profitably be spent on Sundays strolling through the rooms viewing the interesting collection of casts and reproductions of masterpieces of painting by the pupils of the school. Delaroche's famous Hemicycle, representing the great artists of every age, seventy-five figures larger than life, will be found in the theatre of the Musée des Antiquités entered from the second courtyard. We continue along the Rue Bonaparte past the new Académie de Médecine and on our L. soon sight the grey pile of the old Abbey Church of St. Germain des Prés, once refulgent in colour and gold. A part of the great tower is said to have resisted the Norman conflagrations, but the church as we now behold it, is that rebuilt 1000-1163; enlarged in 1237 and restored at various periods in the first half of the nineteenth century. Of the great fortress-monastery, with its immense domains of land; its cloisters, walls and towers; its prison and pillory, over which the puissant abbots once held sway, only a memory remains. The fortifications were razed in the seventeenth century and gave place to artizans' houses. The famous Fair of St. Germain has long been suppressed, where Henry IV. on the royal entry of Marie de' Medici, after promising the merchants that they should grow rich, since his queen had _de l'argent frais_, disappointed them all by chaffering much and buying nothing. Over the entrance of the church within the W. porch is a well-preserved Romanesque relief of the Last Supper. Some bases and capitals of the triforium date from the twelfth century, but the heavy Romanesque capitals of the eleventh century nave are restorations, and the beautiful early Gothic choir has also been much modified at various epochs. The interest of the interior is enhanced to the lover of French art by Flandrin's admirable frescoes (p. 391), illustrating scenes from the Old and New Testaments. Unhappily, they are seen with difficulty, and a bright, sunny day is necessary to appreciate the masterly art, the noble and reverent spirit that animates them. One of the most successful and best seen is the Entry into Jerusalem, L. of the choir. If we turn by the Rue de l'Abbaye, N. of the church, we shall find part of the sixteenth-century Abbot's Palace yet standing, and a walk round the apse and the S. side of the church will afford a view of its massive bulk, its flying buttresses and steep-pitched roof. Crossing the Place St. Germain obliquely to the S.W. we reach the Rue de Rennes: at No. 50 is the entrance of the picturesque Cour du Dragon with an eighteenth-century figure of a Dragon carved over it. At the end of this curious courtyard, paved, as old Paris was paved, with the gutter down the middle, will be seen two old towers enclosing stairways. We return to the Rue Bonaparte and faring still S. reach the huge fabric of St. Sulpice with its massive, gloomy towers and pretentious façade of cumbrous splendour. We enter for the sake of Delacroix' fine paintings in the side chapel R. of entrance: Jacob wrestling with the Angel; Heliodorus driven from the Temple; and St. Michael and the Dragon. In this and in many of the numerous chapels are other decorative paintings by modern artists, few of which will probably appeal to the visitor. It was in this church that Camille Desmoulins was wedded to Lucille, Robespierre acting as best man. On the S. side of the ample Place St. Sulpice is the great Catholic Seminary,[191] and the whole neighbourhood has an essentially ecclesiastical character. Shops and emporiums displaying _objets de piété_; all kinds of church furniture and art (most of it bad art) abound. We continue our southward way by the Rue Férou, opposite the end of which is the Musée du Luxembourg containing a collection of such contemporary sculpture and paintings as has been deemed worthy of acquisition by the State. The rooms are crowded with statuary and pictures which evince much talent and technical skill, but the visitor will be impressed by few works of great distinction. The English traveller, perchance, will leave with kindlier feelings towards those responsible for the Chantrey pictures, though envious of a collection whose catholicity embraces works by two great modern masters, Londoners by option--Legros and Whistler. But any impression that may be left on the traveller's mind by the inspection of the examples of contemporary French art exhibited in this museum should be supplemented and corrected by an examination of decorative works of greater range in the chief public edifices, such as the Hôtel de Ville, the Sorbonne, the Panthéon and the École de Médecine. We enter the Luxembourg Gardens by the gate R. of the museum, turn L., pass the façade of the palace and opposite its E. wing discover the charming old Medici Fountain. After strolling about the delightful gardens, unhappily by the erection of the Observatory in 1672 reduced by more than one-third of their former extent, we leave by the gate N. of the Medici Fountain which gives on the Rue Vaugirard opposite the Odéon Theatre, formerly the _Théâtre de la Nation_, where the _Comédie Française_ performed for a few years after 1781. The Paris booksellers still have their stalls inside the colonnade even as they used to do in the great Salle of the Palais de Justice. [Footnote 191: Now suppressed and the building taken over by the State (1911).] [Illustration: COUR DU DRAGON.] Descending (R. of the Odéon) the Rues Corneille, Casimir Delavigne and Antoine Dubois, we strike the Rue de l'École de Médecine where (No. 15 to R.) will be seen the Refectory, all that remains of the great Franciscan monastery, and now used as a pathological museum (Musée Dupuytren), for medical students. In this hall was laid the body of Marat after his assassination by Charlotte Corday, and the famous club of the Cordeliers, where the gentler rhetoric of Camille Desmoulins vied with the thunderous declamation of Danton to stir republican fervour, met in the Hall of Theology. We pass to No. 5, where are some remains of the old School of Surgery or Guild of SS. Cosmas and Damian, founded by St. Louis; adjacent stood the church of St. Cosmas, famous for the fiery zeal of its curé during the times of the League. The surgeons of the Guild being compelled by their charter to give professional aid to the poor every Monday, the churchwardens obtained a papal Bull authorising them to erect in their church a suitable consulting-room for the use of the patients. In 1694 the surgeons built an anatomical theatre which, enlarged in 1710, is now used as an art school. We continue our pilgrimage and, crossing the Boulevard St. Michel to the Rue des Écoles, descend on our L. the Rue de la Sorbonne and find the entrance to the beautiful late Gothic palace built for the abbots of Cluny in 1490. [Illustration: TOWER AND COURTYARD OF HÔTEL CLUNY.] The delightful old mansion, (p. 159) now the Musée de Cluny, is crowded with a selection of mediæval and renaissance objects unparalleled in Europe for variety and excellence and beauty. The rooms themselves, with their fine carved chimney-pieces, where on winter days wood-fires, fragrant and genial, burn, are not the least charming part of the museum. Many of the exhibits (about 12,000) are uncatalogued, and the old catalogue, long out of date, may well be classed among the antiquities. The traveller will doubtless return again and again to this rich and fascinating museum. The present installation is provisional, and we do but indicate the chief classes of objects exhibited, most of which are clearly labelled. L. of vestibule, Rooms I. and II. contain a miscellaneous collection of wood carving, statuary, ivories, etc. Room III. has some important examples of carved and painted altar-pieces: 709 is late fifteenth-century work; 712, Flemish of the sixteenth century; 710, a German domestic altar-piece, near which stands a fine Flemish altar-piece (no number), carved with scenes from the Passion. On a screen in the centre are some important paintings, carvings and other objects of ecclesiastical art from the Rothschild Collection. Room IV. shows some beautiful renaissance furniture, cabinets, medals, etc. To the R. is the smaller Room V. The chief exhibits here are an eighteenth-century Neapolitan _Crèche_, with more than fifty doll-like figures; a rich tabernacle of plateresque Spanish work, and some furniture of interest. We return and descend to Room VI. (on the R), a large hall, where many important mediæval sculptures will be seen. At the four corners are thirteenth-century statues from the Ste. Chapelle. We may also mention: 429 (under a glass case), some lovely fourteenth-century statuettes, mourners from the tomb of Philip the Bold, by the Burgundian artist, Claus Sluter; a painted statue of the Baptist, Sienese work; statuette in wood of the Virgin, French art of the fourteenth century; 725, statuette in wood of St. Louis from the Ste. Chapelle. Other noteworthy examples of mediæval plastic art by French, Italian and Netherland craftsmen will be found in this room, and around the walls are specimens of tapestries, carvings, paintings and mosaics, among the last being some from St. Denis and one, 4763, by David Ghirlandaio from St. Merri. We cross a passage to the parallel Hall VII., where hang three grand pieces of early sixteenth century Flemish tapestry, illustrating the story of David and Bathsheba. Among the statuary are: 251, Virgin and Child, French work of early sixteenth century; 448, The Three Fates, attributed to Germain Pilon, and said to be portraits of Diana of Poitiers and her daughters. 449, The Forsaken Ariadne; 456, Sleep; 450, Venus and Cupid; 479, a small and beautiful entombment, are French work of the sixteenth century. Hall VIII. Here are exhibited the sumptuously decorated robes of the Order of the Holy Ghost (p. 187); other examples of fine tapestry; a Venetian Galley Lamp; and some statuary of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We return to the passage and ascend the stairs to the first floor. Here are three galleries devoted to Faiences and other specimens of the potter's art of French, Italian, Flemish, German, Spanish, Persian and Moorish provenance. All are of admirable craftsmanship, the Italian (including some from Faenza itself, the home of Faience ware) being of especial beauty and excellence. Among the Della Robbia ware is an exquisite Child-Baptist by Andrea. We now ascend three steps to the room which contains, among other objects, a matchless collection of Limoges enamels; some Venetian glass; and the marvellous fifteenth-century tapestries from Boussac, probably the finest of that fine period which have survived to us. The upper portion illustrates the Life and Martyrdom of St. Stephen; the lower, the story of the Lady and the Unicorn, or the Triumph of Chastity. We descend to the Gallery of Hispano-Moorish and Persian pottery, and cross to a suite of small rooms where specimens of Jewish sanctuary art, old musical instruments, wedding cassoni and Flemish cabinets are displayed. We then turn R. to the Hall of Francis I., with a stately bed of the period; carved cabinets and cupboards, and proceed direct to the room devoted to the ivories. These are of extraordinary variety and beauty, and range from the sixth century downwards. The next room is crowded with an equally varied collection of bronze and iron work, among which we note a fifteenth-century statuette in bronze of Joan of Arc. The examples of the locksmith's art shown are of great beauty and excellence. The elaboration of French keys has a peculiar origin. Henry III., as a mark of royal favour, permitted his minions to possess a key of his private apartment: as a piece of swagger the royal favourite was wont to wear the key ostentatiously on his breast, whereby French smiths were spurred in emulation to produce keys of exquisite craftsmanship and design. Another kind of interest attaches to the key (No. 5962 in the case on the L. as we enter) which was made by Louis XVI. The following room contains specimens of the goldsmith's art. 5104 is a curious sixteenth-century model of a ship in gilded bronze, with figures of Charles V. and his court on the deck: it has an ingenious mechanism for discharging toy cannon. 5299, is a set of chessmen in rock crystal; 4988, the face of an altar, rich gold repoussé work, was given by the Emperor, Henry II., to Bale Cathedral. The glass case in the centre holds nine golden Visigothic crowns found near Toledo in 1860, the largest is that of King Reccesvinthus who reigned in the latter half of the seventh century; 5044 is a fourteenth-century Italian processional cross of great beauty. We retrace our steps to the Hall of Francis I., turn R. and enter the private chapel. Opposite the charming little apse are placed some admirably preserved fourteenth-century reliefs in stone from the Abbey of St. Denis. On leaving, we turn R. along the passage, hung with armour and weapons, to the stairway, descend to Room VI., ground floor, open a door at its W. end, and in the twinkling of an eye are swept back nigh two thousand years along the stream of the ages, for the frigidarium of the Baths of the Palace of the Cæsars is before us, a fabric of imperial architecture, spoiled of its decorations but yet massive and strong, as of elemental strength, defiant of time, the imperishable mark of Rome. We descend and find in the centre the altar (p. 17), bearing the inscription of the _Nautæ_. A statue of the Emperor Julian; some thirteenth and fourteenth-century statues are also exhibited. We may enter and rest in the garden where a twelfth-century cloister portal from the Benedictine Abbey of Argenteuil, a fourteenth-century portal from the Abbey of St. Denis, and other fragments of architecture are placed. [Illustration: ARCHES IN THE COURTYARD OF THE HÔTEL CLUNY.] We return to the Rue des Écoles which we cross to the imposing new University buildings. The vestibule, grand staircase and amphitheatre are of noble and stately proportions and adorned with mural paintings, among which Puvis de Chavannes' great composition, The Sacred Grove, in the amphitheatre, is of chief interest.[192] We continue along the Rue de la Sorbonne and soon reach the old chapel, all that remains of Richelieu's Sorbonne, containing his tomb, a masterpiece of monumental art of the late seventeenth century, designed by Lebrun and executed by Girardon. The church of St. Benoist and its cloister, where François Villon assassinated his rival Chermoyé, has also been swept away. We proceed by the Rue Victor Cousin, a continuation of the Rue de la Sorbonne, and debouch on the broad Rue Soufflot. Turning L., an inscription on No. 14 marks the site of the Dominican monastery where the great schoolmen, Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas taught. Opposite (No. 9), at the corner of the Rue St. Jacques is the site, marked by a plan, of the old Porte St. Jacques of the Philip Augustus wall. We are now on the Mount of St. Genevieve, crowned by the majestic and eminent Panthéon, whose pediment is adorned by David d'Angers' sculptures, representing La Patrie, between Liberty and History, distributing crowns to her children. Among the figures are Malesherbes, Voltaire, Rousseau, Mirabeau, Carnot, Bonaparte, behind whom stand an old grenadier and the famous drummer-boy of Arcole. [Footnote 192: The Collège de France may be seen further along the Rue des Écoles at the corner of the Rue St. Jacques.] The Panthéon has the most magnificent situation and, except the new church of the Sacré Coeur, is the most dominant building in Paris. Its dome is seen from nearly every eminence commanding the city, and has a certain stately, almost noble, aspect. But the spacious interior, despite the efforts of the artists of the third Republic, is chilling to the spectator. Swept and garnished, it has no warmth of historical or religious associations; it is devoid of human sentiment. The choice of painters to decorate the interior was an amazing act of official insensibility. The most discordant artistic temperaments were let loose on the devoted building. Puvis de Chavannes, the only painter among them who has grasped the limitation of mural art, has painted with restraint and noble simplicity incidents in the story of St. Genevieve. Jean Paul Laurens is responsible for a splendid but incongruous representation of the death of St. Genevieve. A St. Denis, scenes in the lives of Clovis, Charlemagne, St. Louis, and Jeanne d'Arc, by Bonnat, Blanc, Levy, Cabanel and Lenepveu, are all excellent work of the kind so familiar to visitors to the Salon at Paris, but lacking in harmony and in inspiration. The angel appearing to Jeanne d'Arc seems to have been modelled from a _figurante_ at the opera. The visitor who has perused the opening chapters of this book will have no difficulty in following the subjects depicted on the walls. A more ambitious scheme of decoration was abruptly closed by the Coup d'État of Napoleon III.: Chenavard, who had been commissioned, in 1848, to decorate the interior by a series of forty cartoons, illustrating the "History of Man from his first sorrows to the French Revolution," found his gigantic project made abortive by the Prince President's treachery. To the L. of the Panthéon, the library of St. Genevieve stands on the site of the Collège Montaigu and behind, in the Rue Clotilde, will be seen the steep-pitched roof of the old dormitory and refectory of the monastery of St. Genevieve: to our L. stands the picturesque church of St. Étienne du Mont (p. 85), whose interior is architecturally of much interest. The triforium, supported by round pillars and arches, in its turn supports a _tournée_, with another row of arches and pillars; some fine sixteenth-century coloured glass still remains. Biard's florid choir screen (p. 344) or _jubé_ will at once attract the visitor, and the ever-present worshippers around the rich shrine R. of the choir will tell him that there such relics of the holy patroness of Paris as survived the Revolution are preserved. Two inscriptions near by recall the historical associations of the site. Leaving by the door this side of the choir, we issue into the Rue Clovis: opposite we sight the so-called Tower of Clovis, now enclosed in the buildings of the Lycée Henri IV., and once the tower of the fine old abbey church of St. Genevieve. A closer examination from the courtyard proves it to be partly Romanesque, partly Gothic. We descend the Rue Clovis and at No. 7 find one of the best-preserved remains of the Philip Augustus wall. Proceeding to the end of the Rue Clovis, we turn R., ascend the Rue Cardinal Lemoine, and cross to the Rue Rollin, which we descend to its intersection with the Rue Monge: in the Rue de Navarre opposite will be found the ruins of the old Roman Arena (p. 13). To return, we descend the Rue Monge, which terminates at the Place Maubert, where we find ourselves on familiar ground; or we may re-ascend the Rue Rollin, retracing our steps to the Rue Cardinal Lemoine, cross L. to the Place Contrescarpe and on our L. find the interesting Rue Mouffetard with curious old houses: 99, the site of the Palace of the Patriarchs of Alexandria and Jerusalem, is now the Marché des Patriarchs. The street terminates at the church of St. Médard, whose notorious cemetery (p. 245) is now a Square. We retrace our steps, noting L. the old fountain at the corner of the Rue Pot de Fer, continue to the end of the Rue Mouffetard, and descend by the Rue Descartes, where at No. 50 is an inscription marking the site of the Porte St. Marcel called Porte Bordet. We pass the École Polytechnique, on the site of the old College of Navarre, and continue down the Rue de la Montagne Ste. Geneviève to the Place Maubert. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF ST. ÉTIENNE DU MONT.] SECTION IV _The Louvre[193]--Sculpture: Ground Floor._ [Footnote 193: The Louvre is open from 9-5 in summer, from 10-4 in winter. On Sundays it is open from 10-4. It is closed on Mondays and holidays and on Thursdays till 1 o'clock.] No other edifice in Europe contains so vast a treasure of things beautiful and rare as the great royal palace of the Louvre, whose growth we have traced in our story. From periods so remote that works of art sometimes termed ancient are in comparison but of yesterday to the productions of the generation of artists who have just passed away, we may study the varying phases of the manifestation through the ages of the artistic sense in man. From Egypt, Chaldea and Assyria, from Persia, Phoenicia and Greece, rich and marvellous collections afford a unique opportunity for the study of comparative æsthetics. We may safely assume, however, that the traveller will be chiefly interested in the manifold examples of the plastic and pictorial arts, here exhibited, from Greece downwards. In the limited space at our disposal we can do no more than indicate the principal and choicest objects in the various rooms, praying those whose leisure and interest impel them to more thorough examination of any one department, to possess themselves of the admirable and exhaustive special catalogues issued by the Directors of the Museum. The nucleus of the gallery of sculpture and painting was formed by Francis I. and the Renaissance princes at the palace of Fontainebleau, where the canvases at the beginning of the seventeenth century had reached nearly 200. Colbert, during the reign of Louis XIV. by the purchase of the Mazarin and other Collections, added 647 paintings and nearly 6000 drawings in ten years. In 1681 the Cabinet du Roi, for so the collection of royal pictures was called, was transferred to the Louvre. They soon, however, followed their owner to Versailles, but some hundred were subsequently returned to Paris, where they might be inspected at the Luxembourg Palace by the public on Wednesdays and Saturdays. In 1709 Bailly, the keeper of the king's cabinet, took an inventory of the paintings and they were found to number 2376. In 1757 all were again returned to Versailles, and it was not until 1793, when the National Convention, on Barrère's motion, took the matter in hand, that they were restored to the Parisians and, together with the works of art removed from the suppressed churches and monasteries preserved by Lenoir, formed the famous gallery of the Louvre, which was formally opened to the public on the first anniversary of the memorable 10th of August. The arrival of the artistic spoils from Italy was stage-managed by Napoleon with consummate skill and imposing spectacular effect. Amid the applauding multitudes of Parisians a long procession of triumphal cars slowly wended its way, loaded with famous pictures, securely packed, but each bearing its title in monumental inscription. THE TRANSFIGURATION, by RAPHAEL: THE CHRIST, by TITIAN, etc. Then followed the heavy rumbling of massive cars groaning under the weight of sculptures, these too inscribed: THE APOLLO BELVEDERE: THE LAOCOON, etc. Other chariots loaded with trunks containing famous books, precious manuscripts, captured flags, trophies of arms, gave the scene all the pomp and circumstance of a veritable Roman triumph. These spoils, which almost choked the Louvre during Napoleon's reign, were reduced by the return, in 1815, of 5233 works of art to their original owners under British supervision, and during the removal of the statues and pictures, ostentatiously effected to the bitter humiliation of the Parisians, British sentinels were stationed along the galleries and British soldiers stood under arms in the quadrangle and the Place du Carrousel to protect the workmen. Before beginning our artistic pilgrimage let us pay grateful tribute to the memory of Alexandre Lenoir, to whose tact and love for the arts we owe the preservation of so many priceless objects here, at St. Denis, and other museums of Paris. Appointed by the National Assembly, Director of a _Commission pour les Monuments_ formed to collect all objects of art worthy of preservation during the search for lead coffins to be cast into bullets, he induced the authorities to grant him the use of the monastery of the Petits Augustins (now part of the École des Beaux Arts) for their storage. There the admirable official succeeded in rescuing some 500 historical and royal monuments from Paris and St. Denis and some 2,600 pictures from the confiscated monasteries and ecclesiastical establishments, although existing receipts for about 600 pictures reclaimed from Lenoir by the Revolutionary Tribunal and burned, prove that he was only partially successful. In 1793 the National Convention assigned the Petits Augustins to Lenoir as a Museum of French Monuments, and the collection was pieced together, somewhat unskilfully it is true, and arranged in six rooms: many of the objects were in due time destined to find their way back to St. Denis, others to enrich the Louvre. (_a_) ANCIENT SCULPTURE. Entering the quadrangle of the Louvre and making our way to the S.W. angle we shall see, traced on the granite paving by a line of smaller stones, the outline of the E. and N. walls and towers of the old fortress of Philip Augustus, the position of the E. gateway, the Porte de Bourbon, being marked by its two flanking towers. Enclosed within these lines, the site of the massive old keep is shown by two circular strings of stones on the asphalt. Lescot's and Goujon's beautiful façade (p. 173) is now before us. Although the whole of the decorative sculpture was designed by Goujon, only three groups of figures can be safely attributed to his hand; those that adorn the three _oeil de boeuf_ windows of the ground floor: Fame and Victory; Peace, and War disarmed; History and Glory. Concerning the two first-named figures--Fame blowing a trumpet, and a winged Victory offering a crown of laurel--on either side of the window in the S.W. angle, it is related that one day as King Henry II. sat at table with his architect, he asked him what he had in mind when he made the design. "Sire," answered Lescot, "by the first figure I meant Ronsard, and by the trumpet, the power of his verse, which carried his name to the four quarters of the earth." Ronsard, who was present, returned the compliment by a flattering poetic epistle which he sent to Lescot. Goujon's figures, destined for the pediment of the attic, were placed by Napoleon I. most awkwardly over the entrances to the Egyptian and Assyrian collections in the E. wing, and utterly spoiled of their effect. The monograms on either side of the windows: two D's interlaced with the bar of an H, or two C's with the whole of the letter H, are variously interpreted as the initials of Diana of Poitiers and Henry II. or Catherine de' Medici and Henry II. We enter the palace by the Pavilion de l'Horloge (the clock pavilion) and, turning L. find on our L. a door which opens to the Salle des Caryatides (p. 173). Here, in the old Salle Basse, memories crowd upon us--the dangling bodies of the four terrorist chiefs of the Sections hanged by the Duke of Mayenne from the beams of the old ceiling; the Red Nuptials of fair Queen Margot and Henri Quatre; the chivalrous and handsome, but ill-fated young hero of Lepanto, Don John of Austria, on his way, in 1576, to the Netherlands, his brain seething with romantic dreams of rescuing Mary Queen of Scots and seating her beside himself on the throne of England, taking part in a royal ball, disguised as a Moor, and leaving, smitten by the charms of Queen Margot; the lying in state of the murdered Henri; the dying Mazarin wheeled in his chair to witness the royal performances by Molière. Beneath our feet in the _caves_ are part of the foundations of the old feudal château, and pillars and fragments of old sculpture discovered in 1882-1884. We note Goujon's Caryatides (p. 174), traverse the hall, filled with Roman sculpture and, turning R. along the Corridor de Pan, enter the Salle Grecque, which contains a small but precious collection of Greek sculptures. In the centre are three archaic works: a draped Juno, and in glass cases, a Head of Apollo, and a Head of a Man, the latter still bearing traces of the original colouring. Also in cases are: Head of a Lapith from the Parthenon; and Head of a woman attributed to the sculptor Calamis, acquired in 1908 from the Humphrey Ward collection. Three bas-reliefs from a temple of Apollo at Thasos show a marked advance in artistic expression, which reaches its ultimate perfection in the lovely fragment of the Parthenon frieze, and in a mutilated metope from the same temple. An interesting comparison is afforded by the metopes (The Labours of Hercules) from the Temple of Jupiter at Olympia, earlier and transitional in style but admirable in craftsmanship. On the walls and in the embrasures of the S. windows are a number of stele, or sepulchral reliefs,[194] executed by ordinary funeral masons, which will demonstrate the remarkable general excellence of Attic sculpture in the finest period: 766, to Philis, daughter of Cleomedes, is especially noteworthy. Even the inferior reliefs are characterised by an atmosphere of dignified and restrained melancholy. [Footnote 194: The architectural framework is believed to represent the portal of Hades.] We return to the Corridor de Pan and continue past the Salle des Caryatides through halls filled with Græco-Roman work of secondary importance, to the sanctuary of the serenely beautiful Venus of Melos, the best-known and most admired of Greek statues in Europe. Much has been written by eminent critics as to the attitude of the complete statue. Three conflicting theories may be briefly summarised: (1) That the left hand held an apple, the right supporting the drapery; (2) that the figure was a Victory holding a shield and a winged figure on an orb; (3) the latest conjecture, by Solomon Reinach, that the figure is the sea-goddess Amphitrite, who held a trident in the extended left arm. It was to this exquisite creation[195] of idealised womanhood that the poet Heine dragged himself in May 1848 to bid adieu to the lovely idols of his youth, before he lay, never again to rise, on his mattress-grave in the Rue d'Amsterdam. "As I entered the hall," he writes, "where the most blessed goddess of beauty, our dear lady of Melos, stands on her pedestal, I well-nigh broke down, and fell at her feet sobbing piteously, so that even a heart of stone must be softened. And the goddess gazed at me compassionately, yet withal so comfortless, as who should say: 'Seest thou not that I have no arms and cannot help thee?'" [Footnote 195: We are credibly informed that this priceless statue was first offered to the English Government for 4,000 francs and refused! The French Government bought it for 6,000 francs.] To the R. of the Salle de la Venus de Milo is the Salle Melpomene, with a fine colossal figure of the Tragic Muse, and, No. 419[196] (163), an excellent Head of a Woman. We enter the Salle de la Pallas de Velletri, and ranged along its centre find: 436, a fine bust of Alexander the Great; the Venus of Arles, 439, said to be a copy of an early work by Praxiteles; a magnificent Head of Homer, 440; and 441, Apollo, the Lizard-slayer, after a bronze by Praxiteles. The colossal Pallas, in a recess to the R., was found at Velletri in 1797: it is another Roman reproduction of a Greek bronze. Near the entrance to the next room stands a pleasing Venus, 525, and in the centre the famous "Borghese Gladiator" or _Héros Combattant_, actually, a warrior attacking a mounted Amazon. An inscription states that it is the work of Agasias of Ephesus. To the R. is a fine Marsyas, doomed to be flayed alive by order of Apollo; to L. 562, the Borghese Centaur, and near the exit, 529, the charming Diana of Gabii, a Greek girl fastening her mantle. We pass to the Salle du Tibre, in the centre of which stands the famous Diana and the Stag, acquired for Francis I., much admired and over-rated by the sculptors of the renaissance: at the end is a colossal group, symbolising the Tiber and Rome. We turn R. and again enter the Corridor de Pan, pass through the Salle Grecque and reach the Rotonde with the Borghese Mars in its centre. We turn L., continue direct through Rooms XIV. to XVIII. the old Petite Galerie[197] and the apartments of the queen mothers of France still retaining their ceiling decorations by Romanelli. We then turn R. to the spacious Salle d'Auguste, (XIX), at the end of which, in a recess, stands a majestic draped statue of Augustus. In the centre are a bust, 1204, said to be the head of Antiochus III., king of Syria 223-187 B.C., and 1207 the stately Roman Orator as Mercury, which an inscription on the tortoise states to be the work of Cleomanes, an Athenian. In this and the subsequent halls are placed many imperial busts[198] of much historical and some artistic interest. [Footnote 196: Unfortunately the numeration of the sculpture in the Louvre is in a most chaotic state. Some of the objects are unnumbered; others retain their old numbers, yet others have both old and new numbers.] [Footnote 197: There was originally a fosse between it and the garden which Marie de' Medici bridged by a wooden structure, known as the Pont d'Amour, to facilitate interviews with her favourite Concini.] [Footnote 198: It may not be inopportune to summarise here, Bienkowski's criterion for dating Roman busts, which is as follows: Augustan and Julio-Claudian epoch, head only rendered; Flavian, shoulders rendered but juncture of arms not indicated; the sculptors of Trajan's time included the juncture of the arms, and of Hadrian's and the Antonines, part of the upper arm. Later, the bust developed to a half-length figure. It is necessary of course to exclude decapitated busts subsequently restored or fitted with heads of another epoch.] We return to Room XVIII. where we find, 1205, the colossal bust of Antinous, the beautiful young favourite of Hadrian, who in a fit of melancholy flung himself into the Nile and (deified) became the most popular of the gods in the Panthéon of the later Empire: the eyes were originally formed of jewels. This is the bust referred to by J.A. Symonds, in his _Sketches and Studies in S. Europe_, as by far the finest of the simple busts of the imperial favourite. In Room XV. is a statue, 1121, of the Emperor Julian, found at Paris, some curious Mithraic reliefs, and, in Room XIV. are interesting Roman altars and sacrificial reliefs. We again enter the Rotonde, turn L. and proceed across the Vestibule Daru to the Escalier Daru, ascending which, we are confronted by the majestic Victory of Samothrace, one of the noblest examples of Greek art, wrought immediately before it had spent its creative force and began to direct a subtle and technical mastery to serve private luxury and pomp. We descend and return to the Quadrangle. (_b_) MEDIÆVAL AND RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE. We cross the quadrangle to the S.E. and enter[199] the Musée des Sculptures du Moyen Age et de la Renaissance, where the sense of beauty inherent in the Gallic race is seen expressed in a medium which has always appealed to its peculiar objective and lucid temperament. We proceed to Room I., which contains some typical early Madonnas and other figures in wood and stone; a fifteenth-century statuette in marble (No. 211), in the embrasure of the second window, is worthy of special attention. The fine sepulchral monument of Phil. Bot, Seneschal of Burgundy, an effigy on a grave-stone borne by eight mourners, illustrates a favourite design of the Burgundian sculptors. The recumbent figure, 224, of Philippe VI. of France (1350), attributed to Andrieu Beaunepveu, the art-loving Charles V's. _cher ymagier_, is one of the earliest attempts at portraiture. Centre of hall, 887 and 888, recumbent statues of Charles IV. and Jeanne d'Évreux, fourteenth-century, by Jean de Liège. The tomb of Philippe de Morvillier, 420, in the recess of a window, is an example of early fifteenth-century acrolithic monumental sculpture; the head and hands of the figure being of marble according to a common custom dating from Greek times. On either side of the entrance are fine busts of Charles VIII. and Marie of Anjou. [Footnote 199: Now (1911) entered from the E. portal (_Antiquités Égyptiennes_).] Rooms II., IX. and X. should next be visited. In IX. stands the oldest fragment of mediæval sculpture in the Louvre, a capital from the old abbey of St. Genevieve, whereon an eleventh-century artist has carved a quaint relief of Daniel in the Lions' Den. The Virgin and Child in the same room, 37, is late twelfth-century; the painted statue of Childebert, 48, from the abbey of St. Germain, is an example of the more mature art of the thirteenth century, as are also in Room II., 78, a scene in the Inferno from Notre Dame, and two lovely angels from the tomb of St. Louis' brother, in the embrasures of the window. The fourteenth-century Madonnas in these mediæval rooms possess a peculiar, intimate character and mark the change of feeling which came over French artists of the time. The impersonal, unemotional and regal bearing of the thirteenth-century figures give way to a more naturalistic treatment. The Virgin's impassive features soften; they become more human; she turns to her child with a maternal smile (which later becomes conventionalised into a simper), or permits a caress. In Room X. are: 889, 890, two fifteenth-century statues, admirable and living portraitures of Charles V. and his queen, from the church of the Célestins, whose preservation is due to the excellent Lenoir--statues famous in their day, and mentioned by the contemporary Christine de Pisan as _moult proprement faits_; 892, a fifteenth-century statue in wood of St. John; 943, Eve, a fine example of the German school of the sixteenth century, painted and gilded; other works are temporarily placed in this room. We return to Room III., noting in passing (Room IX.) 875, a small thirteenth-century relief of St. Matthew writing his Gospel at the dictation of an angel. [Illustration: DIANA AND THE STAG. _Jean Goujon._] The stubborn individuality of French sculptors who long resisted the encroaching advance of the Italian renaissance is well seen in Room III. by the works of Michel Colombe (? 1430-1570), after whom this hall is named. The exquisite relief on the L. wall, St. George and the Dragon, displays an art touched indeed by the new Italian life, but impressed with an intimate charm and spirit which are eminently French. The Virgin and Child, 143, and the tombs of Roberte Legendre and her husband have also been ascribed to this truly great master. The fine effigies of Philippe de Comines the annalist, and his wife, 126, are wrought in the traditional French manner, the decorations on the tomb being obviously by another and Italianised artist; the shells on the shields denote that the knight had made the pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella in Galicia. Beneath is the tomb of their daughter, Jeanne. The sixteenth-century Virgin of Ecouen, 144, is typically French in treatment; the large relief on the L. wall from the old church of St. Jacques de la Boucherie, 199, is an excellent example of transitional Franco-Italian sculpture; and the half-reclining bronze effigy of Prince Carpi from the great Franciscan church (the Cordeliers) of Paris, is wholly Italian in style. The gruesome figure, _La Mort_, in the embrasure of a window, from the old cemetery of Les Innocents, and a fine bust, 173, of John of Alesso, will also be noted. We pass to Room IV., dominated by the most eminent sculptor of the French renaissance, Jean Goujon (? 1520-1567), whose famous Diana and the Stag, from a fountain at Diana of Poitiers' château of Anet, marks the increasing influence of the Italians, and especially of Cellini, who were attracted to Fontainebleau by the patronage of Francis I. A more intimate example, however, of Goujon's genius will be seen in the beautiful bas-reliefs on the L. wall, Tritons and Nereids, from the Fontaine des Innocents, executed 1548-49, and those (R. wall) from the old choir screen of St. Germain l'Auxerrois in 1544, happily rescued from clerical vandals.[200] For sheer loveliness of form and poetry of outline, those reliefs are unsurpassed by any contemporary artist. His younger contemporary, Germain Pilon (1535-1590), is well represented in this room. The Three Graces (_trois grâces décentes_), which Catherine de' Medici commissioned him to execute, to sustain an urn containing the heart of her royal husband at the Célestins, is an early work; the admirable kneeling bronze effigy, 257, of René of Birague, a maturer production. The four cardinal virtues in oak were executed for the abbey church of St. Genevieve: they were originally covered with stucco and held on high the saint's reliquary. The too lachrymose Madonna in terra-cotta, 256, already ushers in the decadence. Portrait busts of Henry II., 227, the vicious Henry III., 253, and of the feeble Charles IX., 252, are also to be noted. Pilon's pupil, Bart. Prieur (d. 1611), is responsible for the monument to the Constable Anne of Montmorency and Madeleine of Savoy, in the recess of a window, and the three bronze statues placed by the opposite wall. With Pierre Biard the elder, who about 1600 executed the elaborate choir-screen of St. Étienne du Mont, the French renaissance sinks to a not inglorious end. His Fame (224, _bis_), in Room III. and a copy of Giov. da Bologna's Mercury, made for the Duke of Epernon's tomb, hints at the impending pomposity and extravagance of the later French pseudo-classic school. Room V. affords an instructive comparison with some productions of the Italian renaissance. 332, Florentine school, is a charming bust of Beatrice d'Este, the girl bride of Lodovico il Moro, autocrat of Milan. The fine bas-relief, 386, Julius Cæsar, was formerly ascribed to Donatello; 389, Virgin and Child, is also a school work; 403, the Child-Baptist, is a good example of Mino da Fiesole's sweet and tender style, as are some Madonna bas-reliefs in the embrasure of the first window. Here, too, and in the next window, are some well-wrought early renaissance reliefs in bronze (scenes in the life of a physician), by a Paduan artist, from the tomb of a celebrated professor of Verona, Marc'antonio della Torre. In the lunette of the R. wall is embedded Cellini's Nymph of Fontainebleau, and on either side of the noble portal from the Palazzo Stanza at Cremona, which forms the entrance to Room VI., stand the divine Michael Angelo's so-called Two Slaves, actually fettered Virtues intended for the unfortunate tomb of Pope Julius II. These priceless statues, given to Francis I. by Robert Strozzi, subsequently found their way to Richelieu's garden, and during the later years of the monarchy lay neglected in a stable in the Faubourg du Roule: when put up to auction in 1793 the vigilant and admirable Lenoir seized them for his Musée National at the Augustins. Among other objects we note, 396, a fine bust of Filippo Strozzi by Benedetto da Maiano. We enter Room VI. The excellent bust of the Baptist, 383, by Desiderio da Settignano is officially assigned to Donatello, and the coloured Virgin and Child in wood to the Sienese Jacopo della Quercia. Room VII. contains many beautiful specimens of della Robbia ware, and among the statues and busts we note Louis XII. by Lorenzo da Mugiano, of which the head has been restored. Provisionally placed in this room is a recently acquired relief in marble of the Madonna by Agostino di Duccio. [Footnote 200: The canons decided that these were unworthy of the enlightened taste of the eighteenth century and had them cleared away. The relief of the Evangelists was discovered in 1850 embedded in the wall of a house in the Rue St. Hyacinthe.] [Illustration: ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON. _Michel Colombe._] (_c_) MODERN SCULPTURE. We cross the quadrangle to the N.W. and find the entrance to the Musée des Sculptures Modernes, where we may trace the rapid decline and utter degradation of French sculpture during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and some signs of its recovery during the revolutionary period. Many causes contributed to the decay; the essentially bourgeois and commonplace taste of Colbert and the influence of his artistic henchman, Lebrun; the slavish worship of Græco-Roman and Roman models, fostered by the creation of the École de Rome; and the teachings of critics like Lessing and Winkelmann, who drew their inspiration not from pure Greek models, but from the decadent and sterile art of the Empire, stored in the Vatican. Among the artists whose individuality stands forth from the mass of sculptures in these rooms is Charles Antoine Coysevox (1640-1720), who gives his name to Room I. to the L. of the vestibule. His chief works are in the "royal pandemonium," at Versailles, but in the vestibule will be found excellent examples of his art, 555, Nymph with a shell, and 560, Shepherd playing a flute. In Room I., 561, Marie Adelaide of Savoy as Diana; 557, a fine bronze bust of the great Condé and a bust of Ant. Coypel acquired in 1910, are worth attention, as is also 552, the grand monument to Mazarin in Room II. Pierre Puget (1622-1694), who gives his name to this hall, began his career as a carver of figure-heads at the arsenals of Toulouse and Marseilles. He was the chief exponent of the bombastic and exuberant art of the century, and the inventor of the peculiar gusty draperies in statuary known as the _coup de vent dans la statuaire_. 794, Milo (the famous athlete of Crotona), attacked by a Lion, his most popular work, and 796, a relief, Diogenes and Alexander, esteemed by Gonse one of the most _éclatante_ creations of modern sculpture, will be found in this room. Some bronzes, 702-704, Louis XIII., Anne of Austria, and the child Louis XIV., from an old monument on the Pont au Change by Simon Guillain (1581-1658) are of interest. The Coustous, Nicholas (1658-1733) and Guillaume (1677-1746), nephews and pupils of Coysevox are represented in Room III. 547, Apollo presenting the Image of Louis XIV. to France (embrasure of window); 548, Adonis (centre of room); 549, Julius Cæsar; and 550, Louis XV., are due to the former: the statue of Louis' queen Maria Leczinska, 543, to the latter, whose masterpiece, the Horse-tamers of Marly, stands at the entrance of the Champs Élysées opposite Coysevox', Mercury and Fame on winged horses, at the entrance to the Tuileries Gardens. J.B. Pigalle (1714-1785) is but poorly represented by: 785, a bronze bust of Guérin; and 781, a Mercury in lead, which has much suffered from exposure to the atmosphere in the Luxembourg Gardens. A most talented portraitist in marble was J.J. Caffieri (1725-1792), whose seven masterly busts in the foyer of the Théâtre Français, paid for by free passes, which the artist promptly sold, will be familiar to playgoers. His diploma work, The River, 518 (L. of entrance), and a bust of the poet Nivelle de la Chaussée, 519 (embrasure of window), will be found in this room. J.A. Houdon (1741-1828), whose admirable bust of Molière, and marvellously vivid statue of the seated Voltaire--the greatest production of eighteenth-century French sculpture--will be also known to playgoers at the Français, gives his name to Room IV. Few artists maintained so high and consistent a standard of excellence.[201] 716 is a replica in bronze of a statue of Diana, executed for the Empress Catherine II. of Russia; 708, Diderot; 711, Rousseau; 712 Voltaire; 713, Franklin; 715, Washington; 717, Mirabeau, are busts of revolutionary heroes of which many replicas exist, executed at seventy-two francs each (if with shoulders ninety-six francs), to save himself from starvation during the revolutionary period. Two exquisitely charming terra-cotta busts in glass cases of the children, Louise and Alexandre Brogniart, and 1034, 1035, the original busts in plaster of Mme. Houdon and Sabine Houdon, will also be noted. Like Caffieri, Houdon was an _habitué_ of the Français, and in his old age would totter to the theatre supported by his servant, to calmly sleep the performance out. A favourite exponent of the suave and languishing style that appealed to the decadent tastes of the age was Antoine Pajou (1730-1809) here represented by 775, a Bacchante, and 772, Maria Leczinska as Charity. Other two works by Pigalle, 782, Love and Friendship, and 783, bust of Marshal Saxe, may be noticed before quitting this room. Room V. is dedicated to A.D. Chaudet (1763-1810), whose diploma work, Phorbas and OEdipus, 533, is here shown; 537, a Bacchante, is a rather poor example of the art of Claude Michel (1738-1814), known as Clodion whose popularity rivalled that of his master Pajou, and whose prodigious output of marble and terra-cotta sculpture failed to keep pace with the demands of his clients. 777 is Pajou's, The Forsaken Psyche. By the seductive and sentimental Canova are 523 and 524, variants of a favourite theme, Love and Psyche.[202] With some sense of relief we enter the more invigorating atmosphere of Room VI., named after the sturdy François Rude (1784-1855), who flung off the yoke of the Roman classicists, and from whose simple, austere atelier issued works instinct with a new life, such as the dramatic group, The Departure of the Volunteers of 1792, on the E. base of the Triumphal Arch of the Etoile. Rude, who rescued the art from the fetid atmosphere of a corrupt society and emancipated it from a hide-bound pedagogy, is here represented by his Jeanne d'Arc, 813; Maurice de Saxe, 811; and 815, Napoleon awakening to Immortality, a model for a monument to the Emperor. In the centre are 810, Mercury in bronze, and the Neapolitan fisher lad (no number). Rude's contemporary and fellow-liberator, David d'Angers (1789-1856), chiefly renowned for his pediment sculpture on the Panthéon (p. 330) is here represented by 566, Philopoeman, the famous general of the Achaen League; busts of Arago and of Béranger; 567 _bis_, Child and Grapes, and a series of medals in the embrasures of the windows. Of Antoine Barye (1796-1875), pupil of père Rude and another victorious assailant of the "Bastille of Classicism," this room exhibits three masterly works in bronze; 494, Centaur and Lapith; 495, Jaguar and Hare; and (no number), Tiger and Crocodile. A later contemporary and excellent master was Jean Baptiste Carpeaux (1827-1875), after whom Room VII. is named. Here stand his models for the famous group, Dancing, which adorns the Opera façade; and for The Four Quarters of the World, at the Fountain of the Observatoire. Among others of his productions may be cited a bronze group, Ugolino and his Children. In a new room (Salle Moderne) are some more recent works transferred from the Luxembourg, among which is Chapu's Joan of Arc. [Footnote 201: _Copiez, copiez toujours et surtout copiez juste_ was his favourite maxim.] [Footnote 202: The best criticism passed on this facile artist was uttered by Flaxman: "That man's hand is too great for his head."] SECTION V _The Louvre (continued)--Pictures: First Floor._ (_a_) FOREIGN SCHOOLS. We enter by the Pavilion Denon, in the middle of the S. wing, opposite the Squares du Louvre which are bounded on the W. by the Place du Carrousel and the monument to Gambetta. Turning L. along the Galerie Denon we mount the Escalier Daru to the first landing below the Winged Victory (p. 341), turn R., ascend to a second landing, and on either side find two charming frescoes from the Villa Lemmi, which was decorated by Botticelli to celebrate the Nuptials of Lorenzo Tornabuoni and Giovanna Albizzi.[203] To the L., 1297, The Three Graces are presented to the bride; R., 1298, The Seven Liberal Arts to the bridegroom. The latter fresco is generally believed to have been the work of a pupil. On the wall that forms an angle with this is a fresco, The Crucifixion, 1294, by Fra Angelico from the Dominican monastery at Fiesole. A door L. of 1297 leads to ROOM VII. containing a small but choice collection of early Italian paintings, all of which will repay careful study. We note on the entrance wall, 1260, a Virgin and Child by Cimabue--if indeed we may now assign any work to that elusive personality.[204] L. of this is a genuine Giotto, 1312, described by Vasari: St. Francis receiving the Stigmata. In the predella, Vision of Pope Innocent III.; Papal Confirmation of the Rule; The Saint preaching to the Birds--each scene portrayed with all the sweet simplicity of a chapter in the Fioretti. Below 1260 is a predella, 1302, by Taddeo Gaddi: Death of the Baptist; the Crucifixion; Martyrdom of the Saint. On the R. wall is 1301, a conventional early Florentine Annunciation by Agnolo Gaddi, his pupil. Among the early Sienese on the L. wall is 1383, a charming little Simone Martini: Christ bearing the Cross. The gem of the collection and one of the most precious pictures in Europe is 1290, on this wall, Fra Angelico's Coronation of the Virgin, which Vasari declared might have been painted by one of the blessed spirits or angels represented in the picture, so unspeakably delightful were their forms; so gentle and delicate their mien, so glorious their coloration. "Even so," he adds, "must they be in heaven and I never gaze on this picture without discovering fresh beauties, nor withdraw my eyes from it, satisfied with seeing." The scenes in the predella are from the life of St. Dominic and form an interesting parallel with those of the Giotto. Other works by the angelic master are (L. of this) 1293, Martyrdom of SS. Cosmas and Damian, and 1294A, The Resurrection: R. is 1291, The Dance of Herodias. R. of 1383 is 1278 by Gentile da Fabriano: The Presentation, a portion of a predella. To the same is also attributed by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, 1279, Virgin and Child and Donor, Pandolfo Malatesta. 1422 _bis_, is by Pisanello: Portrait of a Princess of the House of Este, identified by Mr G.F. Hill, from the sprig of juniper in her dress, as Ginevra d'Este, married to Sigismondo Malatesta in 1435. R. of 1291 is 1319, the Apotheosis of St. Thomas Aquinas by Benozzo Gozzoli, described by Vasari. On opposite wall, 1272, formerly assigned to Masaccio: portraits of Giotto, the artist himself Paolo Uccelo, Donatello, Manetti and Brunelleschi; painted, says Vasari, "that posterity might keep them in memory." R. of this is 1273, a battle scene by the same, similar to that in our National Gallery. Both had been badly restored even in Vasari's time. L. of 1272 are 1343 and 1344: a Nativity, and a Virgin and Child with Angels and Saints adoring, by Fra Filippo Lippi. The former, according to gossiping Vasari, was executed at the Convent of S. Margherita at Prato where having been smitten by the _bellissima grazia ed aria_ of one of the novices, Lucrezia Buti, Fra Lippo painted her portrait in this picture, fell madly in love, and eloped[205] with her: the latter exquisite painting Vasari extols as a most rare work which was held in the greatest esteem by the masters of his day. Opposite on L. wall is 1525, a predella: Birth of the Virgin, considered by Crowe and Cavalcaselle an excellent example of Luca Signorelli's art. R. wall, 1321, the Visitation, and 1322, an intimate domestic scene, painted with much tenderness, a bibulous old Florentine magistrate bending to embrace his little grandson, are masterly works by Domenico Ghirlandaio. 1296, Virgin and Child and St. John, is a beautiful early work by Botticelli, and 1367 is a like subject by Mainardi, in a tondo, a popular form of composition invented by Botticelli. R. of exit is 1295, a copy of the master's famous Madonna of the Magnificat at Florence. L. wall, 1263, Virgin and Child, SS. Julian and Nicholas by Lorenzo di Credi, highly eulogised by Vasari as the artist's most careful work in oil wherein he surpassed himself. 1566 (L. of exit), is an indifferent late painting by Perugino. In the lunette over the door is a Raphael school fresco formerly attributed to the master and bought for the sum of 207,000 francs in 1875! We now enter the long GRANDE GALERIE, ROOM VI. and begin with Section A. On the R. is 1565, Holy Family, by Perugino. 1567, Combat of Love and Chastity, by the same, was painted in 1505 to the elaborate specification of the enthusiastic and acquisitive patron of the renaissance, Isabella d'Este, Marchioness of Mantua, for her famous "Grotta." The artist's slovenly execution of the work brought him a well-deserved rebuke from the Marchioness. 1261, by Lorenzo Costa, a flattering symbolic representation of the Court at Mantua was also painted for her. Isabella, to whom a Cupid hands a laurel crown, is seen standing near a grove of trees, surrounded by poets and philosophers. [Footnote 203: For further details, we may refer the reader to Vernon Lee's essay: "Botticelli at the Villa Lemmi," _Juvenilia_ I.] [Footnote 204: "It cannot be proved that a single picture attributed to Cimabue was painted by him." Editorial Note to new edition of _Crowe and Cavalcaselle_, I., p. 181.] [Footnote 205: Crowe and Cavalcaselle, however, assign the work to Pesellino, who is represented in this room by two small pictures, 1414 and 1415, on the wall.] Among the Francias we distinguish, 1436, a Crucifixion; 1556 is a Pietà by Cosimo Tura in the characteristic hard manner of the Ferrarese master, being the upper portion of the central altar-piece, Virgin and Child Enthroned, in the National Gallery; 1417, Virgin and Child with two Saints, is a doubtful Pinturicchio; 1114, Virgin and Child between SS. Jerome and Zanobi is a good example of Albertinelli's pleasing but somewhat characterless style; 1516 and 1516A are two Andrea del Sartos; 1264 is another Lorenzo di Credi: Christ and the Magdalen. Last of all we note 1418, a rather inky Nativity, in the grand and broad-manner of the later Roman School by Giulio Romano, much admired by Vasari. We return to the L. wall and note 1526, Signorelli's Adoration of the Magi; further on are 1154, an excellent Fra Bartolomeo, The Holy Family, and 1153, The Annunciation, a graceful and suave composition, original in treatment, by the same master. We pass to some more Andrea del Sartos: 1515, according to Vasari, a _Nostra Donna bellissima_, was painted in quick time for Francis I., and 1514, Charity, was executed in Paris for the _gran re_ and highly esteemed by him. This picture has much suffered by transference from the worm-eaten original panel to canvas, in 1750, and by a later restoration in 1799. We are soon arrested by some masterpieces of the Milanese school, and first by the Da Vincis: 1599 is the famous Virgin of the Rocks, whose genuineness is warmly championed by French critics as against the similar picture in the National Gallery stoutly defended as the original by English authorities. Professor Legros with impartial judgment assures us that both are copies of a lost original; 1597, a doubtful attribution, is a rather effeminate John the Baptist, by some critics believed to be a second Gioconda portrait; 1600, the supposed portrait of Lucrezia Crivelli, mistress of Ludovico il Moro, is also ascribed by the official catalogue to Da Vinci. It would, however, be hard to persuade us that Leonardo had any hand in this portrait, excellent though it be, which seems rather by Beltraffio, Solario, or another of the Milanese masters; 1602, Bacchus, is another doubtful Leonardo. 1488, L. of 1597, is an admirable work by Sacchi: Four Doctors of the Church with symbols of the Evangelists. By Solario, a younger contemporary of Da Vinci, are 1532, a Crucifixion; 1530, a masterpiece, the much admired Virgin of the Green Cushion; and 1533, Head of the Baptist. The sweet and tender Luini is seen almost at his best in 1355, Salome with the Baptist's head: other works by him are 1362, Silence, and 1353, a Holy Family. At the end of this section hangs 1169, Beltraffio's, Virgin of the Casio Family, esteemed by Vasari the painter's best production. We proceed to Section B, same wall, where hang two grand Mantegnas, painted for Isabella d'Este's "Grotta," towards the end of the artist's career. 1375, Parnassus, executed in 1497, represents the Triumph of Venus over Mars, celebrated by Apollo and the Muses--a delightful group of partially draped female figures dancing to Apollo's lyre; 1376, Triumph of Virtue (_virtù_, mental and moral excellence) over the Vices of Sensuality and Sloth, a less successful composition, executed in 1502. Another masterpiece is 1374, Our Lady of Victory, a noble and virile work, painted in 1496 to commemorate the defeat of the French at Taro in 1495 by Isabella's consort, Francesco Gonzaga, the donor, who is seen kneeling in full armour; 1373, is an earlier work, the central and most important of the three sections of the predella of the Triptych at S. Zeno in Verona--a powerful, reverent, though somewhat hard, conception of the cardinal tragedy of Christianity. From Mantegna to his brothers-in-law, Gentile and Giovanni Bellini and other Venetian masters the transition is easy. The school is here represented by a most valuable collection from Bartolomeo Vivarini, No. 1607, to Guardi. 1158, Giovanni Bellini, Virgin and Saints; and 1158A, a Man's Portrait, are however dubious attributions. 1156, Two Portraits; and 1157, a Venetian Envoy at Cairo, are Gentile school works. 1134, by Antonello da Messina, A Condottiere, is an amazingly vivid and powerful portrait. Carpaccio's St. Stephen preaching at Jerusalem, 1211, is part of the _Historia_ of the Protomartyr, painted for St. Stephen's Guild at Venice. The naïve attempts at local colour--Turkish women sitting on the ground in groups as they may still be seen in Turkey to-day, and quaint architectural details--are noteworthy. Cima is well represented by 1259, Virgin and Child, with the Baptist and the Magdalen. 1351, A Holy Family, by Lotto, was formerly assigned to Dosso Dossi. 1350 is an early and charming little work, St. Jerome, by the same master. We return to Palma Vecchio's grand composition, 1399, The Adoration of the Shepherds, which under a false signature, once passed for a Titian. 1135, Holy Family, with SS. Sebastian and Catherine, is a form of composition known as a Santa Conversazione, which Palma brought to its ultimate perfection. The official catalogue of 1903 persists in ascribing it to Giorgione. The claims of Palma himself, Pellegrino da San Daniele, Cariani and Sebastiano del Piombo, have all found protagonists among modern critics. How excellent a standard of craftsmanship was maintained by the Venetian school is well exemplified by 1673, a portrait by an unknown artist. 1352, The Visitation, by Sebastiano del Piombo, although much injured by restorers, is a fair example of that master's grandiose style in his Roman period. We now reach the Titians. 1577 and 1580, are good average _Sante Conversazioni_, the latter is, however, assigned by Mr. Berenson to a pupil. 1581, The Supper at Emmaus, a mature and genuine work; and 1578, the much-admired Virgin and Child with the Rabbit, painted in 1530, next claim our attention. 1593 and 1591 are unknown portraits, the former attributed by Crowe and Cavalcaselle to Pordenone. On the R. wall opposite the Carpaccio is hung, 1587, a magnificent work of the painter's[206] old age, Jupiter and Antiope, unhappily much injured by fire and by more than one restoration. Two characteristic _Sante Conversazioni_ from Bonifazio's atelier may next be noted, 1172, over a doorway; and 1171, skied on the L. wall. The later interpreters of the pomp and grandeur of the Venetian state, Veronese and Tintoret, are represented to L. and R. by several typical canvases. Among these we note, 1196 (L. wall), an excellent Veronese, The Supper at Emmaus; and 1465, a sketch by Tintoret for the great Paradiso in the Ducal Palace. The eighteenth-century masters (following after the Jupiter and Antiope) are well exemplified in a fine Canaletto, 1203, View of the Salute Church and the Grand Canal; and several good examples of the more romantic Guardi. A Last Supper, 1547, and other works by Tiepolo, the last of the Venetian masters of the grand style; and some Bassanos--1429, by Jacopo, Giov. da Bologna is an admirable portrait--conclude the collection of Venetians. We pass to the Italian Eclectics, the once admired but now depreciated Carracci, Guido Reni and Domenichino. 1613, St. Cecilia, is a famous picture by the last named. R. of the next section (C), are two Peruginos; 1564, a beautiful tondo, Virgin and Child, Saints and Angels; and 1566A, St. Sebastian, a careful and pleasing study of the nude. We cross to the L. wall, rich with examples of Raphael, and of his school; and turn first to a lovely little panel, 1509, Apollo and Marsyas, of most enigmatical authorship,[207] bought in 1883 from Mr. Morris Moore for 200,000 francs. Sold, in 1850, as a Mantegna, it has since been variously assigned to Raphael, Perugino, Timoteo Viti, and Francia. Perugino's influence, however, if not his hand, is sufficiently obvious. 1506, unknown Portrait, is another doubtful Raphael, confidently attributed by Morelli to Perugino's pupil, Bacchiacca. We are on more certain ground with 1497, the popular Virgin of the Diadem, undoubtedly designed by the master during his Roman period, and probably executed by his pupil, Giulio Romano. 1501, St. Margaret, painted during the same period for Francis I., was also, according to Vasari, almost wholly executed by Giulio. This unhappy picture was, however, _racommodé_ (mended) in 1685, and since has been severely mauled by restorers. 1507, Joan of Aragon: the head alone, says Vasari, was painted by the master who left the portrait to be completed by his famous pupil. 1499, the charming little Holy Family, was probably executed by a pupil. 1508, two unknown portraits, has small claim to be classed as a Raphael. The exquisite little panels, 1502 and 1503, of St. Michael and St. George, are, however, precious and genuine works painted in 1504 at Urbino. They symbolise the overthrow of the hated tyrant Cæsar Borgia, and the return of the exiled Duke Guidobaldo to his loving subjects. On the R. wall of Section D. are hung some works by the Italian Naturalists (a seceding school from the Eclectics), to whose chief representative Caravaggio (called the anti-Christ of painting), is due 1121, Death of the Virgin. This realistic representation of a sacred subject so shocked the pious at Rome that it was removed from the church for which it was painted. 1124, Portrait of Alof, Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, brought the artist a chain of gold, two Turkish prisoners and a knighthood. Salvator Rosa's Landscape, 1480; and a characteristic and much-appreciated Battle Scene, 1479, hang on this wall. [Footnote 206: Mr. H. Cook has, however, given reasons for post-dating Titian's birth from 1477 to 1489-90, in spite of the master's twice repeated assertion of his great age in letters to Charles V. See _Nineteenth Century_ Magazine, 1902, p. 156.] [Footnote 207: It is, however, accepted by Eugène Müntz as a genuine Raphael, executed at Florence about 1507.] We cross to the L. wall, devoted to the Spanish school. The recently acquired El Greco (no number), King Ferdinand, is one of that master's best works outside Spain. By Ribera, who was obviously much influenced by the Italian Naturalists are: 1723, St. Paul the Hermit; 1722, The Entombment; and 1721, Adoration of the Shepherds, the last a masterpiece, wrought in the sombre manner of this powerful artist. From the magnificent show of Murillos stands forth, 1709, The Immaculate Conception, a favourite Spanish theme, by the most popular of Spanish masters. This grandiose representation of the Woman of the Apocalypse, clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet, was acquired at the Soult sale in 1852 for 615,000 francs. From the same collection came the superb composition 1710, The Birth of the Virgin, of which a small sketch in oil is possessed by the National Gallery. We cross to the R. wall where hangs 1716, The Miracle of S. Diego; at the prayer of the saint, angels descend from heaven and prepare a miraculous repast for his needy Franciscan friars, to the great amazement of brother cook. Other Murillos, including a characteristic Beggar Boy, 1717 (L. wall) will be seen on either side. By Velasquez, the supreme master of the school are: (L. wall) 1734, Meeting of Thirteen Spanish Gentlemen, Velasquez and Murillo standing left of the group; and 1732, one of the many portraits scattered about Europe of Philip IV. The sombre Zurbaran is represented by 1739 and 1738, A Bishop's Funeral, and St. Pierre Nolasque and St. Raymond de Peñafort. Four portraits, 1704-1705B, by the facile and popular Madrid artist Goya, should by no means be passed without notice. There follows next a small collection of English paintings, rather indifferent in quality, but historically of much interest, by reason of the inspiration drawn from Constable and Bonington by the Barbizon school. Bonington, whose untimely death was a grievous loss to modern art, passed much of his time in Paris and was the link between the Valley of the Stour and the Forest of Fontainebleau. We pass to some productions of the German school. On the R. wall hang 2738 and 2738C, Episodes in the Life of St. Ursula by the Master of St. Sévérin.[208] Opposite is 2737, an earlier specimen of the Cologne school, Descent from the Cross, by the Master of St. Bartholomew. 2709 and 2709A, Head of an Old Man, and Head of a Child, are ascribed to Albert Dürer. But the chief glory of this collection are the Holbein portraits on the L. wall, four of which are of supreme excellence; 2715, Erasmus; 2714, William Wareham, Archbishop of Canterbury; 2713, Nicholas Kratzer, Astrologer to Henry VIII.; and 2718, Anne of Cleves. 2719, Richard Southwell is a doubtful Holbein. [Footnote 208: From an age when the personality of the painter was of less importance than the subjects he painted, few names of German artists have come down to us.] Section E is filled with Flemish paintings. R. hangs, among other of his works, Phil. de Champaigne's masterpiece, 1934, portraits of Mother Catherine Agnes Arnaud and of his own daughter, Sister Catherine, painted for the Convent of Port Royal. The intimate association of this grave and virile artist, who settled at Paris when nineteen years of age, with the austere and pious Jansenists of Port Royal, is also traceable in 1928, The Last Supper. On the L. are some excellent works by Rubens: 2075, Flight of Lot; 2077, Adoration of the Magi; 2113, Portrait of Helen Fourment, the artist's second wife, and their two children; 2144, Lady's Portrait, said to be that of Suzanne Fourment. The ignoble Kermess, 2115, will be familiar to readers of Zola. Section F on the L. is occupied by a rich collection of Rembrandt's works: 2548, the oft-reproduced Flayed Ox, is a masterly rendering of an unattractive subject; no number, Old Man Reading; in 2547 the artist has immortalised his faithful servant, Hendrickje Stoffels; 2536, Tobit and the Angel; 2549 and 2550, Bathsheba, and Susannah and the Elders are two studies of the nude; 2542, The Joiner's Family, formerly known as the Holy Family; 2540, Philosopher in Meditation. 2537, The Good Samaritan; and 2539, The Supper at Emmaus, are painted with profound and reverent piety. Opposite the Rembrandts are Gerard Dow's masterpiece; 2348, The Sick Woman, and other works by the same artist. We now enter at the end of the Grande Galerie, the new SALLE VANDYCK, ROOM XVII. Here, among other portraits, by the first of portrait painters (according to Reynolds) hangs the superb rendering of Charles I., 1967, bought by Louis XV. for Madame du Barry's boudoir on the fiction that it was a family picture, since the page holding the horse was named Barry. Michelet says that he never visited the Louvre without pausing to muse before this historic canvas.[209] Before we descend to the new Rubens room we note by this master three large canvases, 2086, 2087, 2096: Birth of Marie de' Medici at Florence; her education; the widowed Queen as Regent of France, which properly belong to the suite of paintings exposed in the SALLE DE RUBENS, ROOM XVIII. to which we now descend. In this sumptuous hall, specially erected for the purpose, are exhibited, with the three exceptions noted, the famous paintings completed in 1625 by the artist and his pupils for the Luxembourg Palace to the order of the Regent Marie. These spacious and grandiose compositions illustrate in pompous and pagan symbolism the chief events in her career: all the principal figures are due to Reubens' own hand. Reynolds was wont to say of Reubens' colouring that his figures looked as if they fed on roses: these, however, would seem to have fed upon less ethereal diet. L. of entrance, 2085, The Three Fates spinning Marie's destiny; L. wall, 2088, Reception of her Portrait; R. wall, 2089, Her Marriage by Procuration to Henry--the Grand Duke Ferdinand of Tuscany, her uncle, places the ring on her finger; L., 2090, Disembarkation at Marseilles; R., 2091, The Marriage at Lyons; L., 2092, Birth of Louis XIII. at Fontainebleau; R., 2093, Departure of Henry for Germany, who hands to his consort the symbols of the Regency; L., 2094, Coronation of Marie at St. Denis: the dogs are said to have been painted by Snyders; R., 2095, Apotheosis of Henry. Like the ascending Faust in Henry's portly form,-- "Bleibt ein Erdenrest Zu tragen peinlich." L., 2097, Marie's journey to Anjou; R., 2098, Exchange at Hendaye of the Princess Elizabeth of France affianced to Philip IV., and of Anne of Austria, affianced to Louis XIII.; L., 2099, Felicity of the Regency--this picture was hastily improvised at Paris; R., 2100, The Majority of Louis XIII.; L., 2101, Escape of Marie from the Château of Blois; R., 2102, Reconciliation with her son, Louis XIII., at Angers; End wall, L., 2103, Conclusion of Peace; R., 2104, Meeting between Marie and Louis in Olympia. R. of entrance, 2105, The Triumph of Truth. [Footnote 209: The picture subsequently found its way to the apartments of Louis XVI., and followed him from Versailles to Paris. The vacillation of this ill-fated monarch towards his advisers, says Michelet, was much influenced by a fixed idea that Charles I. lost his head for having made war on his people, and that James II. lost his crown for having abandoned them.] Enclosing this hall are a series of Cabinets XX.-XXXVI., containing a large and important collection of works by the Netherland painters. We ascend, turn R., and enter Room XX., which is devoted to Franz Hals and contains 2386 and 2387, superb portraits of Nicholas van Beresteyn and his wife; and 2388 the same, with their Family; 2383, Descartes. Room XXI., Cuyp, after whom the room is named, is seen in four typical works, 2341-2344; 2415 and 2414 are excellent Dutch Interiors by Peter de Hoogh. In Room XXII. reigns the jovial Van Steen: two characteristic paintings are here shown; 2578, Feast in an Inn, and 2580, Evil Company. 2587 is a masterly Terburg, The Amorous Soldier, and 2459 a similar subject treated by Gabriel Metsu. Room XXIII. is assigned to Van Goyen, and Room XXIV. to Adrian van Ostade, Hals' pupil. In the latter room, 2495, the so-called Family of the Painter, and 2496, The Schoolmaster, stand forth pre-eminent. 2509 and 2510, Travellers Halting and a Winter Scene, are by Adrian's brother, Isaac. Room XXV. is rich in landscapes by Ruysdael, of which 2557, The Forest, and 2558, Tempest near the Dykes of Holland, are masterpieces: 2588, The Music Lesson, is a fine Terburg. Room XXVI., dedicated to Hobbema, contains his fine landscapes: 2403, A Forest Scene, and 2404, The Mill, and another exquisite Terburg, 2589, The Concert. Some typical Paul Potters also hang here. We proceed round to Room XXIX., which holds a precious collection of Van Eycks and Memlings. 1986 is an exquisite little masterpiece painted by Jean with infinite patience and care, Virgin and Child and Donor. Fine Memlings are:--2024, The Baptist; 2025, The Magdalen; 2027, Marriage of St. Catherine; 2028, a Triptych--the Resurrection, St. Sebastian and the Ascension Here too are hung, 1957, Gerard Dow's Wedding at Cana; 2196, Van der Weyden's Descent from the Cross, and some excellent Flemish school paintings. Room XXX. is the Quentin Matsys Room: 2029 is the well-known Banker and his Wife, of which many replicas exist; 2030, by the same artist, Virgin and Child. The fine example of the fifteenth-century painter, known as the Master of the Death of Mary, 2738, hangs in this room. This profoundly reverent and sincere work consists of: a central panel, Descent from the Cross, below which is The Last Supper, and above, in the lunette, St. Francis receiving the Stigmata; Friar Leo is seen asleep against a rock. A remarkable work by Peter Brueghel, The Blind leading the Blind, will also arrest attention. Room XXXI., named after Anthony More, contains a miscellaneous collection, among which the artist's portraits (2481A) of Edward VI. of England, and of (2479) a Spanish Dwarf, and Peter Brueghel's Village, 1918, and a Country Dance, 1918B, are of chief interest. The Teniers Room, XXXII., shows some excellent works by the younger master: 2155, St. Peter denies his Lord; 2156, The Prodigal Son; 2157, Works of Charity; 2158, Temptation of St. Anthony. We next pass to three rooms in which are hung works by Netherland artists, formerly in the La Caze collection, among which, in Room XXXIII., are 2579, Van Steen's, Family Repast; and 2454, Nicholas Maes', Grace before Meat. In XXXIV. are two well-known works: 1916, Adrian Brouwer's, The Smoker; and 2384, The Gipsy, a masterpiece by Franz Hals. A fine Vandyck, 1979, Head of an Old Man; Rubens' portrait of Marie de' Medici, 2109; and a sketch in oils, 2122, Elevation of the Cross, are in Room XXXV. We return to the Salle Vandyck and the Grande Galerie, along which we retrace our steps and enter, at its further end, the SALON CARRÉ, ROOM IV. where an assortment of masterpieces is hung from the various schools we have visited. We begin with the Raphaels: On the L. (W. wall), 1496, La Belle Jardinière, painted in 1507, is the most delightful of the Florentine Madonnas for which it is said a flower-girl of Florence sat; Vasari relates that the unfinished mantle was left to Ridolfo Ghirlandaio to complete; 1498, The Holy Family, styled of Francis I. and designed at Rome (1518) in the zenith of the artist's power, was presented by Pope Leo X. to Francis' queen; the inky hand of Giulio had no small part in the work. In the same year was painted 1504, (diagonally opposite) the dramatic St. Michael, a picture which evoked much interest at Rome, and whose coloration was adversely criticised by Sebastiano del Piombo; here also the hand of Giulio is all too apparent, and the picture, moreover, has suffered much in its transference from wood to canvas. 1505, N. wall, the masterly and authentic portrait of Baltazar Castiglione, was executed in 1506. On the same wall among the Venetians we find the much-disputed Al Fresco Concert, 1136, here ascribed to Giorgione, an ascription which has the support of Morelli and Berenson. The magnificent Titian, 1590, variously known as Titian and his Mistress, and the Lady with the Mirror, is supposed to be the portraits of Duke Alfonso of Ferrara and his mistress, Laura Diante, later his wife, the daughter of a poor artizan who more than once sat to Titian as a model. The portrait on the S. wall, 1592, The Man with the Glove, extolled by Vasari as an _opera stupenda_, and 1584, The Entombment, on the E. wall, are the two greatest Titians in the Louvre, where the artist's majesty and power are displayed in their highest degree. 1583, The Crown of Thorns, E. wall, is a work of the painter's old age.[210] The sensual features of Francis I., 1588, S. wall, were painted from a medal. [Footnote 210: See, however, note to p. 357.] By Tintoret is 1464, Susannah; and by Veronese, the grand composition that expatiates over the S. wall, 1192, known as The Marriage at Cana, executed in his most pompous and stately manner for the refectory of the Benedictine monastery of St. Giorgio Maggiore at Venice. The artist is seen in the foreground playing a viol: Titian a bass viol. Many other historical figures are more or less convincingly identified by critics. On the opposite wall is another large refectory composition, 1193, The Supper in the House of Simon the Pharisee. A characteristic ceiling decoration, Rebellion and Treason, from the Hall of the Council of the Ten at Venice; and 1190, N. wall, Holy Family, are by the same artist. The Portrait, 1601, N. wall, by Da Vinci of his friend Monna Lisa, wife of Fr. del Giocondo, known as La Gioconda, is the most fascinating picture in Europe. A whole symphony of praise has been lavished on this miraculously beautiful creation in which psychical and physical perfection have been blended with potent and subtle genius. 1598, S. wall, Virgin and Child and St. Anne, attributed to the same, though of somewhat doubtful authenticity, is worth careful study. By another Milanese master is 1354, S. wall, Luini's Virgin and Sleeping Child. Of the two fine Correggios, 1117 and 1118, N. wall, The Marriage of St. Catherine, and Jupiter and Antiope, the former is referred to by Vasari, in his life of Girolamo da Carpi, as a divine thing, wherein the figures are so superlatively beautiful that they seem to have been painted in Paradise; the latter formed part of Isabella d'Este's collection, to which we have so often referred. 1731, N. wall, is the marvellous portrait by Velasquez of the Infanta Margarita Maria, Philip IV.'s fair-haired darling child by his second wife. This is one of the most characteristic of the master's work out of Spain, and profoundly influenced Manet and the Modern Impressionist School. The great French master Poussin's typical classical subject, 741, together with Jouvenet's masterpiece, 437, Descent from the Cross, have also their place of honour in this Hall. In the SALLE DUCHÂTEL, ROOM V. entered from the N.E. angle of this room, we find, R., some Luini frescoes: 1359, 1360, the Nativity, and The Adoration of the Magi, and 1361, Christ Blessing, full of this master's tenderness and charm. Some excellent portraits by Antonio Moro, 2480, 2481 and, a most beautiful Memling, 2026, Virgin and Child with Donors, will also be noted. As we pursue our way to the Escalier Daru at the end of the room, we pass L. and R., one of the earliest and one of the latest works of Ingres (p. 390), 421, OEdipus and the Sphinx, painted in 1808; and the most popular nude in the French school, 422, _La Source_, painted in 1856. (_b_) THE FRENCH SCHOOL. The great schools of Christian painting in Western Europe which we have reviewed, were born, grew and flourished in the free cities of the Netherlands and of Italy. French masters working in Paris, Tours, Dijon, Moulins, Aix, and Avignon, were inevitably subdued by the dominant and powerful masters of the north and south, and how far they succeeded in impressing a local and racial individuality on their works is, and long will be, a fruitful theme for criticism. The collection of French Primitifs of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, exhibited in Paris in 1904, and the publication of Dimier's[211] uncompromising and powerful defence of those critics who, like himself, deny the existence of any indigenous French School of painting whatsoever, have recently concentrated the attention of the artistic world on a passionately debated controversy. Undoubtedly most of the examples of the so-called Franco-Flemish school which formerly hung unquestioned among collections of Flemish paintings, did when massed together, as they were in 1904 in the Pavilion de Marsan, display more or less well-defined extra-Flemish characteristics--a modern feeling for Nature and an intimate realism in the treatment of landscapes, a freer, more supple and more vivacious drawing of the human figure--reasonably explained by the theory of a school of painters expressing independent local feeling and genius. But even if all the paintings which the patriotic bias of French critics now attributes to French or Franco-Flemish masters[212] be accepted, the continuity is broken by many gaps which can only be filled by assuming, after the fashion of biologists, the existence of missing links. [Footnote 211: _French Painting in the Sixteenth Century_, by L. Dimier. 1904.] [Footnote 212: A more rational classification into schools would perhaps, as Dimier has hinted, follow the lines of racial division--French and Teutonic. For many of the Flemish artists were French in race, as, for instance, Roger Van der Weyden, who was known to Italians as Rogerus Gallicus, and called himself Roger de la Pasture.] We make our way to the small but increasing collection of French Primitifs possessed by the Louvre, along the Grande Galerie as far as Section D. and, turning R., enter Rooms IX.-XIII. Beginning with Room X., devoted to fifteenth-century masters, on the L. wall is 995, Martyrdom of St. Denis, ascribed to the Burgundian Jean Malouet, court painter of Jean sans Peur, and owing its completion to Henri Bellechose, after the former's death in 1415. To L. of the main subject, the saint is seen in prison, receiving the sacred Host from the hands of Christ; 996, a Pietà on the L. wall has also been attributed to Malouet. 999, L. wall, a portrait group of Jean Jouvénal des Ursins and his family, by an unknown fifteenth-century artist, is admirable in execution and important for contemporary costumes. Below (1005A) is the fine picture so admired in the exhibition of the Primitifs in 1904 by the Maître de Moulins,[213] St Mary Magdalen and Donatrix, eminently French in feeling. 1004 and 1005, portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Bourbon, are now catalogued under this master's name. The realistic Pietà (1001B) on the L. wall is assigned to the school of Nicholas Froment of the papal city of Avignon. 288 and 289 at either end of the R. wall, portraits of Guillaume Jouvénal des Ursins and of Charles VII., are by the well-known Jehan Fouquet of Tours, who unites the gentleness of the Tuscan school with the vivacity of the Gallic temperament. 998D, Virgin and Donors, is now tentatively ascribed to the Master of the Legend of St. Ursula. We next note a Crucifixion, the famous altar-piece (998A) of the Parlement of Paris recently transferred from the Palais de Justice. To the L. are St. Louis and the Baptist, R., St. Denis and Charlemagne; in the background are seen the old Louvre and the abbey of St. Germain. 998C is a similar altar-piece from St. Germain des Prés, painted about 1490, Descent of the Cross; in the background are other representations of the old Louvre, St. Germain and Montmartre. 304A, portraits of good King René and his second wife Jeanne de Laval, by Nicholas Froment of Avignon. (1001D) St. Helena and the Miracle of the Cross, by an unknown artist, about 1480. R. of entrance, Christ, St. Agricola and Donor, school of Avignon; below this hangs 997A, portrait of the sinister Jean sans Peur, and 997B, portrait of Philip le Bon of Burgundy, artist unknown. We pass to ROOM XI. which contains a series of most interesting historical portraits. Among the sixteenth-century painters cited by Félibien,[214] the Vasari of French painting, most of whom are but names to us, we may distinguish the Clouet family of four generations. The senior Jehan, born in Flanders in 1420, came to France in 1460 as painter to the Duke of Burgundy. His son, also, named Jehan, figures in the Royal accounts in 1528 as valet and court painter to Francis I., and was known as Maître Jehan or Jehanet. To him, an artist of great simplicity and charm, are attributed 126 and 127, R. wall, portraits of his royal master. Sons of the junior Jehan were François (1500-1572), the best-known and most talented of the Clouets, who was naturalised in 1541, and Jehan the younger, known as Clouet de Navarre (1515-1589), court painter to Margaret of Valois. By the former, who assisted his father during the last ten years of his life and succeeded him as court painter, are two admirable portraits, 128 and 129, of Charles IX. and his queen, Elizabeth of Austria; 130, Henry II., and (on the end wall) 131, the Duke of Guise, are also attributed to him. To the latter artist is ascribed 134, Louis of St. Gelais. Each of these elusive personalities, whose Flemish ancestry is evident, was known as Maître Jehanet, and much confusion has thus arisen. We now turn to some portraits by unknown artists of the period, among which may be noted: 1033, Henry III.; 132, Charles IX.; 1024, Diana of France, legitimised daughter of Henry II.; 1030, Catherine de' Medici; 1035, Ball given by Henry III. in celebration of the marriage of his favourite minion, Anne, Duke of Joyeuse, with Margaret of Lorraine in 1581; the king is seen seated with his mother, Catherine de' Medici, and his wife, Louise of Lorraine; the Duke of Guise (le Balafré) leans against his chair. On the same wall are 1015, François, Duke of Guise; and 1007, King Francis I. On the end wall, 1032, Henry III.; by the window opposite, 1022, the young Duke of Alençon (p. 178), by no means ill-favoured; and 1023, Louise of Lorraine, queen of Henry III. By a contemporary of the later Clouets, Jean Cousin (1501-1589), is 155 on the L. wall, The Last Judgment. Cousin was a versatile craftsman, and some stained glass by him still exists at S. Gervais and in the chapel at Vincennes. Among other artists mentioned by Félibien is Martin Fréminet (1567-1616), whose Mercury commanding Æneas to forsake Dido, 304, hangs on the end wall. [Footnote 213: The late fifteenth-century artist, provisionally known as the Master of Moulins and also as the Painter of the Bourbons, is the author of the famous Triptych of the Cathedral of Moulins. Some critics believe him to be identical with Jehan Perréal (Jehan de Paris).] [Footnote 214: _Entretiens sur les Vies et sur les Ouvrages des plus Excellens Peintres Anciens et Modernes._ André Félibien. Paris, 1666-1688.] [Illustration: THE TRIPTYCH OF MOULINS. _Maître de Moulins._] [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF ELIZABETH OF AUSTRIA, WIFE OF CHARLES IX. _François Clouet._] The two years' sojourn of Solario in France at the invitation of the Cardinal of Amboise, of Da Vinci at the solicitation of Louis XII., and the foundation of the school of Fontainebleau in 1530 by Rosso (1496-1540), Primaticcio (1504-1570), and Nicolo dell' Abbate (1512-1571), mark the eclipse of whatever schools of French painting were then existing; for the grand manner and dramatic power of the Italians, fostered by royal patronage, carried all before them. This room possesses by Rosso, known as Maître Roux, 1485, a Pietà, and 1486, The Challenge of the Pierides, and Primaticcio is represented by some admirable drawings exhibited in cases in the centre of the room. Readers of Vasari will remember numerous references in his pages to Italian artists who went to serve, and agents employed to buy Italian works for, the _gran re Francesco nel suo luogo di Fontainebleo_. But the sterility of the Fontainebleau school may be inferred from the fact that when Marie de' Medici desired to have the walls of the Luxembourg royally decorated, she was compelled to have recourse to a foreigner, Rubens. Neglecting for a moment Room XII. and turning to ROOM XIII. we come upon some charming works by the brothers Lenain, whom Félibien dismisses in a few lines, while giving scores of pages to artists whose names and works have long been forgotten. So little is known of the brothers Antoine and Louis, who died in 1648, and Matthieu, who survived them nearly thirty years, that critics have only partially succeeded in differentiating their works, which are usually exhibited under their united names. Obviously dominated by the Netherland masters, their manner is yet pervaded by essentially French qualities--a love of Nature and a certain atmosphere of poetry and gentleness alien to the Flemish and Dutch schools. Nine of their works are here seen. A Smithy, 540; Peasants playing at Cards, 546; and Return from Haymaking, 542, are good examples. Skied in this room is 976, portrait of Louis XIII. by Simon Vouet (1590-1649), leader of the new academic French school of the seventeenth century, an artist of prodigious activity and master of the army of court painters who served Louis XIV. Vouet, who had worked in Italy, acquired there the grand and spacious manner of the later Venetians, which was admirably adapted to the decorative requirements of his royal patrons. To his pupil, Eustache Lesueur (1617-1655), is due 586, St. Bruno and his Companions bestowing Alms, one of the famous series illustrating the life of St. Bruno, of which the greater number are in ROOM XII. whither we now return. This eminently religious and tender artist is well represented in the Louvre, and the sympathetic student will appreciate the austere and sincere devotion expressed in these pictures, painted for the brethren of the Charterhouse in the Rue d'Enfer. The finest, a masterpiece, both in beauty of composition and depth of feeling, is 584, The Death of St. Bruno. The artist's careful application to his monumental task may be estimated by the fact that 146 preliminary drawings for this series are preserved in the Louvre. Lesueur's modesty and high purpose went almost unheeded amid the exultant prosperity of the fashionable courtier-artists of his day. We retrace our steps, pass through Room XIII., turn R., and enter the spacious ROOM XIV. also devoted to seventeenth-century artists. Lesueur is here seen in another masterpiece; 560, R. wall, St. Paul at Ephesus, a _mai_[215] picture; and 556, same wall, Christ bearing His Cross. The influence of Raphael in the former is very apparent. The hierophant of the school, Vouet, is represented in this room by some dozen examples, among which hangs his masterpiece 971, L. wall, Presentation at the Temple. A work, 25, Charity, by his short-lived rival, Jacques Blanchard, (1600-1638), known in his day as the French Titian, may be seen towards the end of this long gallery on the R. wall. A talented artist too was Jean de Bologne, an Italian by birth and known as Le Valentin (1591-1634). A good example of his style will be seen in 56 (same wall), Susannah. We now turn to Nicholas Poussin (1594-1665), the greatest master of his age, whose exalted and lucid conceptions, ripe scholarship, admirable art and fertility of invention, may be adequately appreciated at the Louvre alone, which holds a matchless collection of nearly fifty of his works. The visitor, fresh from the rich and glowing colour, the grandeur and breadth of the later Italians, will perchance experience a certain chill before the sobriety, the cold intellectuality and severe classic reserve of this powerful artist. Let us however remember his aim and ideal: to produce a picture in which correct drawing and science of linear and aerial perspective should subserve harmony of composition, lucid expression and classic grace. To approach Poussin and his younger contemporary Claude rightly, the traveller will do well to free his mind from Ruskin's partial and prejudiced depreciation of these two supreme masters, in order to effect an equally partial appreciation of Turner.[216] The story of Poussin's single-minded and stubborn application to his art cannot here be told. After a life of poverty at Paris and two unsuccessful attempts to work his way to Rome, he at length reached that Mecca of French artists, where a commission to paint two pictures, now at Vienna, for Cardinal Barbarini, established his reputation. Two of his works executed about 1630 during this first Roman period hang here; 709 and 710, R. wall, The Rain of Manna, and, The Philistines smitten by Plague. In 1640, after two years' negotiations and the personal intervention of Louis XIII., he was persuaded to return to Paris to take part in the decoration of the Louvre; but in spite of his generous pay and of the fine _palazzetto_ and charming garden allotted to him for residence, the petty jealousies, chicanery and low standard of his rivals, revolted his artistic conscience: he obtained leave to return to Rome "to fetch his wife," and never left the eternal city again. Two of his works painted during this second and last Roman period are 717 (L. of entrance), Institution of the Eucharist, and 735 (L. wall), a ceiling composition executed for Richelieu, Time rescuing Truth from the assaults of Envy and Discord, whose subjective interest is obvious; 704, L. of entrance, Rebecca at the Well, is described at great length by Félibien, who saw it in progress. It was painted (1648) for a rich patron who desired a composition treated like Guido's Virgin, and filled with several young girls of differing types of beauty. The finished picture so delighted amateurs at Paris that large sums were offered in vain to divert it from the fortunate possessor; 711, L. wall, is the famous Judgment of Solomon (1649). On the same wall are 731, Echo and Narcissus; 734, his masterpiece, Shepherds of Arcady--a group of shepherds of the Vale of Tempe in the heyday of health and beauty, are arrested in their enjoyment of life by the warning inscription on a tomb: _Et in arcadia ego_ (I, too, once lived in Arcady); 736-739, The Four Seasons were painted (1660-1664) for Richelieu. These beautiful compositions, more especially the last, The Deluge, typifying winter, will repay careful study. On the R. wall are, 724, the well-known Rape of the Sabine Women; 740, a most perfect work of his maturity, Orpheus and Eurydice (1659); and 742, Apollo and Daphne, his last work, left unfinished. Such are some of the more striking manifestations of this remarkable genius who alone, says Hazlitt, has the right to be considered as the painter of classical antiquity. His integrity was so rigid that he once returned part of the price paid for one of his works which he deemed excessive. To the modern, Poussin is somewhat antipathetic by reason of his scholarly aloofness and insensibility to the passions and actualities of life. As Reynolds remarked: he lived and conversed with ancient statues so long, that he was better acquainted with them than with the people around him, and had studied the ancients so much, that he had acquired a habit of thinking in their way. He saw Nature through the glass of Time, says Hazlitt, and his friend Dom Bonaventura tells how he often met the solitary artist sketching in the Forum or returning from the Campagna with specimens of moss, pebbles, flowers, etc., to be used as models. When asked the secret of his artistic perfection, he would modestly answer: "_Je n'ai rien négligé._" [Footnote 215: The Goldsmiths' Guild of Paris was accustomed, from 1630-1701, to present to Notre Dame an _ex-voto_ picture every May-day, painted by the most renowned artist of the time.] [Footnote 216: The reader may be referred to Hazlitt's essay, _On a Landscape of Nicholas Poussin_, as an antidote to Ruskin's wayward criticism.] [Illustration: SHEPHERDS OF ARCADY. _Poussin._] Claude Gelée (1600-1682) known as Claude, and one of the greatest names in the history of modern painting, also spent most of his artistic career at Rome. He was the first to bring the glory of the sun and the sun-steeped atmosphere on to canvas. He touches a new chord in the symphony of colour and by his poetic charm and romantic feeling stirs a deeper emotion. He, too, was a strenuous, implacable worker, a loving student of Nature, passing days in silent abstraction before her varying moods. The Louvre possesses sixteen Claudes, among which we may emphasise on the L. wall, 310, View of a Port; 311, a poetic and glowing representation of the Roman Forum, before the old Campo Vaccino, with its romantic and picturesque aspect, had been excavated by modern archæologists. 314 and 316, Landing of Cleopatra at Tarsis, and Ulysses restoring Chryseis to her father, are typical imaginary classic compositions and variations on the artist's favourite theme--the effects of sunlight on an atmosphere of varying luminosity and on the limpid, rippling waves of the sea. We now come to the grand monarque of the arts at Paris during the century, Charles Lebrun (1619-1690), founder of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture that finally eclipsed the old Painters' Guild which, from the thirteenth century, had monopolised the exercise of the art at Paris. So tyrannous had the Guild become that, in 1646, it ordered the number of court painters to be reduced to four each for the king and queen. An attempt to apply this regulation to the painters lodged at the Louvre roused Lebrun's hostility, who induced the regent, Anne of Austria, to found a rival Académie Royale on the model of the famous Academy of St. Luke at Florence. Twelve _anciens_ were chosen by lot and the new Academy, Lebrun at its head, was inaugurated on 1st February 1648. The angry Guild swooped down on the Academy on 19th March, armed with a police warrant, to seize all its pictures and effects, a blow which Lebrun parried by a royal decree annulling the warrant. Hereupon the Guild organised their own Academy of St. Luke under the leadership of Vouet and Mignard, and after some temporary reconciliations and as many bickerings and hostilities, Lebrun won Mazarin's favour by a judicious gift of two paintings, and the Académie Royale obtained in 1658 a new constitution, an increase of members to forty, free quarters, and pensions, which, under Colbert, were raised to 4,000 livres. The Guild fought hard and won some concessions, but the Académie Royale remained supreme, and both were finally overwhelmed in the revolutionary storm. [Illustration: LANDING OF CLEOPATRA AT TARSUS. _Lorrain._] In 1661 Lebrun was commanded by Louis XIV. to paint cartoons for tapestry illustrating the life of Alexander the Great. Five of these huge canvases hang in this room, R. and L., 509-513; 511, R. wall, The Family of Darius at Alexander's Feet, so charmed the king that he appointed Lebrun first royal painter, and granted him a patent of nobility. For thirty years the royal favourite was sole arbiter of taste and ruled supreme over the arts, until his star paled before the rising luminary, his rival Mignard. Lebrun's best work is to be seen at Versailles, but 510, R. wall, The Battle of Arbela, is an excellent example of his facile and adroit style. In 1686 the old favourite was commanded by Louis to paint a rival picture to Mignard's, Christ bearing His Cross, which was incensed with extravagant adulation by the courtiers. Lebrun set to work and in three months completed his Christ on the Cross, which the king loudly appreciated. Both pictures, 630 and 500, now hang on the L. wall a few paces from each other. Pierre Mignard (1612-1695) was a fellow-pupil with Lebrun under Vouet, and like him in early years a sojourner in Rome: his popular Madonnas, modelled from his Italian wife, added a new word (_mignardes_) to the French language. One such, 628, hangs a little further along this wall. In 1657 he won royal favour by a portrait of the young Louis, a branch of art in which he excelled. Mignard was a supple flatterer, and Louis sat to him many times. Once, later in the monarch's life, his royal sitter asked if he observed any change. "Sire," answered the courtly painter, "I only perceive a few more victories on your brow." A portrait of Madame de Maintenon, 639, is seen (L. wall) in this room. Mignard's greatest work, however, great in range if not in art, is the painting of the cupola of the church at the Val de Grâce, which is not only an indifferent painting, but was the occasion of a bad poem by his friend Molière.[217] Two other eminent portraitists, Nicholas Largillière (1656-1746), and Hyacinth Rigaud (1659-1743), may now fitly be considered. [Footnote 217: _La Gloire du Dome du Val de Grâce._ The subject of the picture is La Gloire des Bienheureux, and contains 200 figures.] By Rigaud, who was regarded as the first painter of Europe for truth of resemblance united with magnificence of presentment, are: a masterly portrait of Bossuet, 783; and a superb rendering of the _roi-soleil_, 781, both on the L. wall. Further along, on the same wall, are 784, portrait of his mother in two aspects painted for the sculptor Coysevox; and his last work, 780, Presentation at the Temple. Rigaud was especially successful with the rich bourgeoisie of Paris, and later became court painter, supreme in expressing the grandiose and inflated pomposities of the age. He, says Reynolds, in the tumour of his presumptuous loftiness, was the perfect example of Du Pile's rules, that bid painters so to draw their portraits that they seem to speak and say to us: "Stop, look at me! I am that invincible king: majesty surrounds me. Look! I am that valiant soldier: I struck terror everywhere. I am that great minister, etc." By Largillière, who lacks the psychological insight of his contemporary, is, L. wall, 483, Portrait of the Comte de la Chartre. He was a master of the accessories and upholstery of portraiture and painted some 1500 sitters during his long career, part of which was passed in England as court painter to Charles II. and James II. A third successful portraitist was Jean Marc Nattier (1685-1766), whose ingenious and compliant art aimed at endowing a commonplace sitter with distinction and grace, and who generally was able to strike a happy medium between flattery and truth. Better represented at Versailles, he is but poorly seen here in 657, R. wall, A Magdalen, and 661A, L. wall, Unknown Portrait. 441 is an interesting portrait of Fagon, Louis XIV.'s favourite physician, by Jean Jouvenet (1644-1717), known as Le Grand, a talented and docile pupil of Lebrun, whose four large compositions executed for the church of St. Martin des Champs, 432-435, are hung in this room. 434, R. wall, Resurrection of Lazarus, is perhaps the best. His works are a connecting link between the pompous spread-eagle manner of the _Siècle de Louis XIV._ and the gay abandonment and heartless frivolity of the reign of Louis XV. We pass from this room to the Collection of Portraits in ROOM XV. of which some few possess artistic importance and many historical interest. We bestow what attention we may desire and pass direct to ROOM XVI. devoted to seventeenth-century art. Chief among the painters who interpreted the refined sensuality and more pleasant vices of the age, yet not of them, was Antoine Watteau (1684-1721), the melancholy youth from French Flanders, who began by painting St. Nicholases at three francs a week and his board, but who soon invented a new manner and became famous as the _Peintre des Scènes Galantes_. These scenes of coquetry, frivolity and amorous dalliance, with their patched, powdered and scented ladies and gallants, toying with life in a land where, like that of the Lotus Eaters, it seems always afternoon, he clothes with a refined and delicate vesture of grace and fascination. He has a poetic touch for landscape and a tender, pathetic sense of the tears in mortal things which make him akin to Virgil in literature, for over the languorous and swooning air and sun-steeped glades the coming tempest lours. His success, as Walter Pater suggests, in painting these vain and perishable graces of the drawing-room and garden-comedy of life, with the delicate odour of decay which rises from the soil, was probably due to the fact that he despised them. The whole age of the Revolution lies between these irresponsible and gay courtiers in the _scènes galantes_ of Watteau and the virile peasant scenes in the "epic of toil" painted by Millet. In this room hangs his Academy picture, the Embarkation for Cythera, 982, L. wall, its colour unhappily almost worn away by over cleaning. His pupils, Pater (1696-1736), and Lancret (1690-1743), imitated his style, but were unable to soar to the higher plane of their master's genius. The former is represented by a Fête Champêtre, 689, R. wall: the latter by the Four Seasons, 462-465, R. wall; on the L. wall, 468, The Music Lesson, and 469, Innocence, both from the Palace of Fontainebleau. The Fête Galante dies with these artists whom we shall meet again better represented in the Salle La Caze. A famous contemporary of Pater and Lancret and first painter to the king was Charles Antoine Coypel (1694-1752), grandson of Noël Coypel (1629-1707), and son of Antoine (1661-1722), both of whom are represented in the Louvre (Rooms XIV.-XVI., 157-166, and 167-175), His Perseus and Andromeda, 180, hangs R. of the entrance of this room. Charles André Vanloo (1705-1765), known as Carle Vanloo, (whose grandfather, Jacob Vanloo, is represented by two pictures, 2451, 2452, hung among the Dutch artists in Rooms XXIV. and XXVI.), enjoyed a great vogue in his day. His facile drawing and riotous colour temporarily enriched the language with a new verb--to _vanlooter_. 899, on the L. wall, A Hunting Picnic, is an admirable specimen of his supple talent. The flaunting sensuality of François Boucher (1703-1770), and of Jean Honoré Fragonnard (1732-1806), who lavished undoubted genius and ignoble industry in the service of the depraved boudoir tastes of the Pompadours and Du Barrys that ruled at Versailles, are seen here and in the Salle la Caze in all their eloquent vulgarity. That Boucher had in him the elements of a great painter may be inferred from the charming little sketch, 30, R. wall, Diana, and from the excellent interior, 50A, L. wall, Breakfast. His popular pastoral scenes, executed with amazing facility, with their beribboned shepherds and dainty shepherdesses, are exemplified in 32 and 33, R. wall, and 34 and 35, L. wall. Other works by this fluent servant of La Pompadour are 31, R. wall, Venus commanding Vulcan to forge arms for Æneas, and 36, L. wall, Vulcan presenting them to Venus. Boucher with all his faults was a grand decorative artist of extraordinary versatility, but the loose habits and careless methods of his later days are reflected in slovenly drawing and waning powers of invention. Reynolds, who visited him in Paris, noted the change, and describes how he found the artist at work on a large picture without studies or models of any kind, and on expressing his surprise, was told by Boucher that he did in earlier days use them, but had dispensed with them for many years. Fragonnard, who on his return from Rome, had set about some canvases in the grand traditional style of the earlier masters, of which an example may be seen in 290, R. wall, Coresus[218] and Callirrhoe, soon perceived that fame lay not in that direction, and devoted himself with exuberant talent and unconscionable facility to satisfy the frivolous tastes and refined animality of royal and courtly patrons. For it was a time when life was envisaged as a perpetual feast of enjoyment; a vision of roguish eyes and rouged and patched faces of sprightly beribboned and perfumed gallants, playing at shepherds and shepherdesses, of luxurious sensuality untrammelled by a Christianity minus the Ten Commandments, soon to be hustled away by the robust and democratic ideals of David. Another early work of Fragonnard in this room is 291, R. wall, The Music Lesson: some of his more characteristic productions we shall meet with in the Salle La Caze. A somewhat feeble protest against the prevailing vulgarity and debasement of contemporary art was made by Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin (1699-1779) and Jean Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805) in their rendering of scenes of domesticity and of the pathos of simple lives. Chardin is well seen in this room in his laborious studies of still life, 89 and 90, L. wall, diploma works, and in 91 and 92, same wall, The Industrious Mother, and Grace before Meat. The last, a delightful work, won for the artist Diderot's powerful advocacy, and made him the popular interpreter of bourgeois intimacies. Other patient studies of still life are: 95, 96, 101, and 102; and R. wall 94. On the same wall hang, 97, The Ape as Antiquary, and 99, The Housewife. If Chardin touches the border-line between sentiment and sentimentality, Greuze (end wall) in 369, Return of the Prodigal; 370, A Father's Crime; and 371, The Undutiful Son, certainly oversteps it. Each of these became the theme of extravagant eulogy and didactic preachments by Diderot, his literary protagonist, who hailed him as a French Hogarth making Virtue amiable and Vice odious. An even more equivocal note is struck (L. wall) in 372A, The Milkmaid; and 372, The Broken Pitcher, where as Gautier acutely remarks, the artist contrives to make Virtue exhale the same sensual delight as Vice had done, and to suggest that Innocence will fall an easy victim to temptation. Madame Du Barry was much attracted by the latter picture and possessed a replica of it. Other works and studies, R. wall, by the artist are in this room. 368, end wall, Severus Reproaching Caracalla, was painted as a diploma picture. But Greuze essayed here a flight beyond his powers: to his profound disgust the Academy refused to admit him as an historical, and classed him as a _genre_ painter. No survey of eighteenth century French painting would be complete without some reference to Claude Joseph Vernet (1714-1789), the famous marine and landscape artist, whose paintings of the principal ports of France are hung in the Musée de la Marine on the second floor. Here we may distinguish among some score of his works: 921, The Bathers; 923, A Landscape; and 932, A Seascape: The Setting Sun, all on the L. wall. [Illustration: EMBARKATION FOR THE ISLAND OF CYTHERA. _Watteau._] [Footnote 218: Coresus, a priest of Bacchus at Calydon, whose love was scorned by the nymph Callirrhoe, called forth a pestilence on the land. The Calydonians, ordered by the oracle to sacrifice the nymph, led her to the altar. Coresus, forgetting his resentment, sacrificed himself instead of her, who, conscious of ingratitude, killed herself at a fountain.] [Illustration: GRACE BEFORE MEAT. _Chardin._] It will now be opportune to make our way to the La Caze collection. We pass out from the end of this room and descend the Escalier Daru to the first landing; then ascend L. of the Victory of Samothrace to the Rotonde, pass direct through the Salle des Bijoux, and turn L. through Room II. to ROOM I. The La Caze collection. We note on the R. wall, an excellent Lenain, 548, A Peasant Meal, and some admirable portraits by Largillière, 484-491, of which the last, Portrait of the Artist, his Wife and Daughter, is a masterly work. Among the fine portraits by Rigaud, 791-795, that of the Young Duke of Lesdiguières, stands pre-eminent. We cross to the L. wall, where the rich collection of works by Watteau and his followers is placed: 983, Gilles, a scene from a Comedy, is one of Watteau's most precious pictures. Near it are: 984, The Disdainful; 986, Gathering in a Park. 985, Sly-Puss, a charming little picture, is followed by 988, 989, 990 and 992, four other studies. 991 is a carefully finished classical subject, Jupiter and Antiope. Near these are grouped: 470-473, four small works by Lancret, and 690-693, a like number of typical variations of the _scène galante_ by Pater. We next note 659, a fine portrait group by Nattier: Mlle. de Lambec as Minerva, arming her brother the young Count of Brienne. To the same skilful portraitist are due: 660, a Knight of Malta; and 661, A Daughter of Louis XV. as a Vestal Virgin. By Boucher are: 48, R. of entrance, The Painter in his Studio, and R. wall, 47, The Three Graces; 46 and 49, L. wall, Venus and Vulcan, and Vulcan's Forge. Fragonnard is represented by some of his characteristic works executed with wonderful sleight of hand, 292-301. The prevailing taste of his patrons may be judged by 295, L. wall, a sketch of one of his most successful and oftenest repeated subjects. On this same wall are a varied series of Chardin's studies of still life; a poor replica, 93, of his Grace before Meat; 104, The Ape as Painter, and other similar homely subjects. Here also are two historical revolutionary portraits by Greuze: 378, The Girondin, Gensonné, and 379, the Poet-Deputy, Fabre d'Eglantine. Among the later Venetians are some Tintorets, R. wall: 1468, Susannah; 1469, Virgin and Child, Saints and Donor; 1470, Portrait of Pietro Mocenigo. Spanish art is represented by a fine but unpleasing Ribera, 1725, Boy with a Club-foot, and to Velasquez are ascribed: 1735, The Infanta Maria Teresa, Queen of Louis XIV.; 1736, Unknown Portrait; 1733, L. of entrance, Philip IV. 1945 and 1946, R. wall, the Provost and Sheriffs, and Jean de Mesme, President of the Parlement of Paris, are excellent examples of Philippe de Champaigne's austere and honest art. From the studios of Boucher and of Comte Joseph Marie Vien (1716-1809) there came towards the end of the eighteenth century the virile, revolutionary figure of Jacques Louis David (1748-1825), who burst like a thunderstorm on the corrupt artistic atmosphere of the age, sweetening and bracing French art for half a century. Shocked by the slovenly drawing and vulgarity of the fashionable masters, and nursed on Plutarch, he applied himself to the study of the antique with a determination to rejuvenate the painter's art and establish a school, drawing its inspiration from heroic Greece and Rome. The successive phases of this potent but rather theatrical genius may be well followed in the Louvre. Neglecting for the present his earlier and pre-revolutionary works, we retrace our steps through Room II. noting in passing, 143, The Funeral at Ornans (a remarkable, realistic painting by a later revolutionary, to whom we shall return) and enter ROOM III. on the L. wall of which hangs 188, David's famous canvas: The Sabine Women, over which he brooded during his imprisonment in the Luxembourg after the Thermidorian reaction. David regarded this composition as the most successful expression of his theory of art. He studied whole libraries of antiquities and vainly imagined it to be the most "Greek" of all his works. Nothing, however, could be farther removed from the tranquil self-restraint and noble simplicity of Greek art than these self-conscious, histrionic groups of figures, without one touch of naturalness. The old preoccupation with classic models inherited from Poussin and the Roman school, still dominates even this revolutionary artist, who best displays his great genius when he forgets his theories and paints direct from life, as in 199, Mme. Récamier; and 198 (opposite wall), Pius VII. David's fierce Jacobinism (he had been a member of the terrible Committee of Public Safety) did not prevent him from worshipping the rising star of the First Consul, who, on assuming the Imperial crown, appointed him court painter and commissioned him to execute, 202A, Consecration of Napoleon I. at Notre Dame. In this grandiose historic scene, containing at least 150 portraits, the eye is at once drawn to the central actor who, having crowned himself, is placing a diadem on the kneeling Josephine's brow. The story runs, that David had originally drawn Pope Pius VII. with hands on knees. Bonaparte entering the studio, at once ordered the artist to represent the pontiff in the act of blessing, exclaiming: "I didn't bring him all this way to do nothing." For this picture and for the Distribution of the Eagles 180,000 francs were paid. [Illustration: MADAME RÉCAMIER. _David._] Among the painters of the new school was Pierre Prud'hon (1758-1823), whose fame was made by two pictures, 747 and 756, on opposite walls, first exhibited in 1808: Justice and Divine Wrath pursuing Crime; and the graceful but somewhat invertebrate, Rape of Psyche. 746, an Assumption, was executed for the Tuileries Chapel in 1819. Other works by this master, whose Correggiosity is evident, hang in the room. Two famous pupils of David were François Pascal Simon Gérard (1770-1837) and Antoine Jean Gros (1771-1835). By the former, known as the King of Painters and Painter of Kings, are: 328, Love and Psyche; and 332, a charming portrait of the painter Isabey and his daughter. By the latter, who owed the Imperial favour to the good graces of Josephine, are: 391, Bonaparte at Arcole; 392A, Lieut. Sarlovèze, a typical Beau-Sabreur portrait; and 388, Bonaparte visiting victims of the Plague at Jaffa, a striking composition, which advanced the artist to the front rank of his profession. Gros was the parent of the grand battle-pictures of the future; the painter of the Napoleonic epos. Young artists were wont to attach a sprig of laurel to this work in which the first signs of the coming storm of Romanticism are discerned. The real champion of the movement was, however, Jean Louis André Théodore Géricault (1791-1824), whose epoch-making picture, 338, The Raft of the Medusa, we now observe. This daring and passionate revolt from frigid classicism and preoccupation with a conventional antiquity was received but coldly by the professional critics on its appearance in 1819, though with enthusiasm by the people. Failing to find a buyer at Paris, its exhibition in England by a speculator, proved a financial success. 339-343, are military subjects of lesser range by this young innovator: 348, Epsom Races, was painted in England in 1821, three years before his premature death. To follow on with the French school we retrace our steps by the Rotonde and the Escalier Daru through Room XVI. to Room XV., L. of which, is the entrance to ROOM VIII. We revert to David whose Oath of the Horatii, 189, exhibited in 1785; and The Lictors bearing to Brutus the Bodies of his Sons, 191, exhibited in the fateful year 1789, hang skied on the R. wall. These paintings, hailed with prodigious enthusiasm, revolutionised the fashions and tastes of the day and gave artistic expression to the coming political and social changes. 200A on the same wall, The Three Ladies of Ghent, was painted during the artist's exile in Belgium, for the old Terrorist was naturally not a _persona grata_ to the restored Bourbons. Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1857), the most famous of David's pupils, two of whose works we have seen in Room V., was the bitterest opponent of the new Romantic school and steadfast champion of his master's artistic ideal. To him more than to any other teacher is due the tradition of clean, correct and comely drawing that characterises the French school. It is somewhat difficult perhaps for a foreigner, observing the paintings by Ingres in this room, fully to comprehend[219] the reverence in which he is held by his countrymen. More than once Professor Legros has described to the present writer the thrill of emotion that passed through him and his fellow-students when they saw the aged master enter the École des Beaux Arts at Paris. If, however, the visitor will inspect the marvellous Ingres drawings in the Salle des Desseins (p. 394), he will appreciate his genius more adequately. The master's chief work in the present room is 417, R. wall, Apotheosis of Homer, a ceiling composition in which the arch-poet, laurel-crowned, has at his footstool seated figures symbolising the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_, while the most famous poets and philosophers of the ages are grouped below him. The Odalisque, 422B, L. wall, is a characteristic nude, and a few other subject pictures will be noted. Among his portraits, 418, Cherubini; 428B, Bertier de Vaux, are generally regarded as masterpieces. Ingres despised colour, he never appealed to the emotions; his type of beauty is external and soulless, and he leaves the spectator cold. [Footnote 219: Whistler, while disliking his art, was wont to wish he had been his pupil.] Meanwhile the new Romantic school of brilliant colourists grew and flourished. Ary Scheffer, Delaroche, Delacroix, cradled in the storms of the revolutionary period, are all represented around us. The sentimental Ary Scheffer (1795-1858) is seen, L. wall, in 841, St. Augustine and St. Monica, an immensely popular but affected and feeble composition. Some portraits by this artist may be also found on the walls. Greater than he in breadth of composition, opulence of colour and artistic virtuosity, was Paul Delaroche, whose Death of Queen Elizabeth, 216, end wall, now asserts itself. His greatest work, however, and one which won him much fame, is his well-known Hemicycle in the Beaux Arts (p. 319). A twin spirit with Géricault was the impetuous Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), who is more fully hung in this collection. Of the brilliant compositions which with indefatigable industry he poured forth in the heyday of the movement, we may note some excellent examples: 212, L. wall, The Wreck of Don Juan; 211, L. wall, Jewish Wedding at Morocco; and, 213, Capture of Constantinople by the Venetians and Franks. Earlier works are, 207, R. of entrance, Virgil and Dante nearing the City of Dis, executed with feverish energy in a few weeks for the Salon of 1822; and 208, L. of entrance, The Massacre of Scio, a glowing canvas painted in 1834. Jean Hippolyte Flandrin (1809-1864), the Lesueur of the century, and like him uniting artistic genius and wide erudition with profound religious faith and true modesty, is represented most poorly of all; 284, Portrait of a Young Girl being the only example of this master's work here. Flandrin can only be truly appreciated in the church of St. Germain des Prés (p. 320). Before we turn to the Barbizon painters, we note Gros' fine composition, 389, L. wall, Napoleon at Eylau; and 390, R. wall, Francis I. and Charles V. visiting the Tombs at St. Denis. With Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867), the all-father of the modern French landscape school, and chief of the little band of enthusiasts who grouped themselves about him at Barbizon, we touch the greatest artistic movement of the age. Jean Baptiste Camille Corot (1796-1875), the ever-young and gentle spirit, the tenderest emanation of the century; Jean François Millet (1814-1875), the inspired and cultured peasant, mightiest of them all, grand and solemn interpreter of the fundamental and tragic pathos of human toil, ever discerning God's image in the most bent and ill-shapen of his creatures; Constant Troyon (1810-1865), the grandest animal painter of his day; Narcisse Diaz de la Peña (1809-1876), once a poor errand lad with a maimed leg, painter of forest depths and of the rich hues of summer foliage; Charles François Daubigny (1817-1878), latest of the little band, faithful and tender student of nature, painter of the countryside, of the murmuring waters of the Seine and the Oise--these once despised and rejected of men have long won fame and appreciation. No princely patronage shone on them in their early struggles nor smoothed their path; they wrought out the beauty of their souls under the hard discipline of poverty in loving and awful communion with Nature. They have revealed to us new tones of colour in the air, in the forest and the plain, and a new sense of the pathos and beauty in simple lives and common things. 827, L. wall, is Rousseau's Forest at Fontainebleau, a fine effect of setting sun and loving representation of his favourite tree, the oak; 829 and 830, R. wall, are also by this master. On the same wall 643, Millet's Spring, whose coloration at first sight may seem forced and strange, is absolutely faithful to Nature, as the writer who once observed similar colour effects in the forest can testify. 644, The Gleaners, "the three fates of poverty," is, next to the Angelus, the most popular of Millet's works. Corot, the Theocritus of modern painting, is represented by 138, the lovely and poetical Morning, 141, Souvenir de Mortefontaine and 141 _bis_, Castelgandolfo. R. and L. are, 889 and 890, two grand and massive compositions by Troyon: Oxen going to the Plough; and, The Return to the Farm: landscapes that smell of the very earth, and rendered with a marvellous breadth of style and penetrating sympathy; 184, end wall, and 185, R. of entrance, Grape Harvest in Burgundy, and Spring, are by Daubigny. One of the most aggressive, ebullient and individual of painters was Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), whose harshly realistic Funeral at Ornans we have seen in Room II. In 1855 Courbet, finding his works badly hung in the International Exhibition at Paris, erected a wooden shed near the entrance, where he exhibited thirty-eight of his large pictures, and defiantly painted outside in big letters--REALISM: G. COURBET. Strong of body and coarse in habit, this _peintre-animal_, as he was called, delighted to _épater le bourgeois_, and painted his studies of the nude with a brutal reality that stripped the female form of all the beauty and grace with which the superior ideality of man has invested it. This swashbuckler of realism, who despised the old masters, denounced imagination as humbug, and would have great men, railway stations, factories and mines painted as the _vérités vraies_, the saints and miracles of the age, was, however, often better than his artistic creed, and is here represented by some pleasing Fontainebleau pictures: L. wall, 147, Deer in Covert; R. wall, 66, Source of the Puits Noir, and L., 147 _bis_, The Waves, a most powerful and original interpretation of the sombre majesty of the sea. For in truth the creed of Realism, whether in literature or in art, involves a fallacy, and the creations of the imaginative and idealistic faculty in man are as real as those which result from the faculty of seeing mean things meanly and coarse things coarsely. Courbet's violent revolutionary nature nearly cost him his life in 1848 and involved him in the Commune in 1871, during which he presided over the destruction of the Vendôme Column (though he saved the Luxembourg and the Thiers' collection from the violence of the people). Poor Courbet, mulcted in enormous damages for his share in the overthrow of the Column, was ruined and died in exile. A more potent revolutionist, the arch-Impressionist Manet and founder of the school, has at length forced the portals of the Louvre and is represented by the celebrated Olympia, 204, around which so many fierce battles were waged in 1865. We proceed to supplement this small collection of Barbizon pictures by a visit to the recently acquired (1903) Thomy-Thiéry and Chauchard collections. Returning to the Salle La Caze by Room XVI., and the Escalier Daru, we issue from it, pass direct before us and continue through the rooms devoted to exhibits of furniture (in Hall II. is a superb specimen of cabinet-work--Louis XV.'s writing-table). Turning R., we then enter a series of Cabinets, containing an admirable and most important collection of drawings, beginning with the early Italian masters and following on chronologically to the later Italians and to the German, Netherland and French masters. If the visitor have leisure he will be repaid by returning at some convenient time to study these carefully. But even the most hurried traveller should not omit to glance through them, and more especially at the lovely Da Vincis in the second cabinet and the Ingres drawings further along. Arrived at the end, we shall find on our L. a wooden staircase, which we mount and reach ROOM XXXVII. the Salle Française de 1830. Here are exhibited Delaroche's Princes in the Tower; Flandrin's Portrait of Mme. Vinet and some early works of the Barbizon school; Corot, 139, the Forum at Rome; 140, the Colosseum; 141F, The Belfry at Douai and others. Millet's sketch of the Church at Gréville, 641, was found in his studio after his death; another study is 642, The Bathers; 644A, The Seamstress, 642A is a portrait of the artist's sister-in-law. By Rousseau are two small landscapes, 831 and 832; and The Landes, 830, a masterpiece. Diaz and Dupré are seen in a number of studies and paintings. ROOM XXXVIII. contains the Thomy-Thiéry pictures, excellently hung and forming one of the most rich and precious collections in the Louvre. On the R. wall as we enter are a numerous series of _genre_ paintings, happily conceived and wrought by Alexandre Gabriel Decamps (1803-1860). This room holds many excellent Rousseaus, among which are: 2896, Banks of the Loire; 2900, an excellent study of his favourite Oak Trees; 2901, The Pyrenees; 2903, Springtide. Millet is well represented by a priceless little collection: 2892, The Binders; 2890, The Rubbish-burners; 2893, The Winnower; 2894, A Motherly Precaution; 2895, The Wood Chopper. By Corot are shown no less than twelve examples: 2801-2812. All are most exquisitely poetical and delicate, but we may specially note: 2804, Shepherds' Dance at Sorrento; 2805, The Pollard Willows; 2806, Souvenir of Italy; 2807, The Pond; 2808, Entrance to a Village; 2810, View of Sin-le-Noble; 2811, Evening. A magnificent set of Troyons next claims our admiration, eleven in all, 2906-2916, of which: 2913, Girl with Turkeys; 2909, Morning; 2914, The Barrier; 2916, The Heights of Suresnes, are superlative. The ten Diaz pictures, 2854-2863, are of perhaps lesser interest, although they will all repay careful attention. Of Daubigny's intimate landscapes thirteen are offered to our appreciation, 2813-2825, among which: 2821, The Thames at Erith; 2822, The Mill at Gyliers; and 2824, Morning, are notable. By the melancholy and poetical Jules Dupré (1812-1889), whose landscapes oft breathe the tragic pathos of storm and desolation, and who is said to have broken into a passionate outburst of tears and sobs as he watched the magnificent spectacle of a nocturnal tempest, are twelve compositions, 2864-2875; and let us not omit some half-score Delacroix, 2843-2853, among which is a rare religious subject, 2849, Christ on the Cross. The glass cases in the centre of the room exhibit a numerous collection of bronzes by Barye, whom we have seen among the modern sculptors in Room VI. [Illustration: THE BINDERS. _Millet._] [Illustration: LANDSCAPE. _Corot._] ROOM XXXIX. is the Salle Française du Second Empire and contains Horace Vernet's well known, The Barrière de Clichy, Defence of Paris in 1814; and Ary Scheffer's, Death of Géricault. 2938 is the great caricaturist Daumier's portrait of Théodore Rousseau. Numerous examples of the myopic art of Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier (1815-1891) will attract attention in this Room. To reach the Chauchard collection, provisionally exhibited in the old Colonial office, we descend to the first floor, traverse the Grande Galerie and the new Rubens Room. This, _prodigieux accroissement de richesses_, as it is termed by the official catalogue, contains a large number of masterpieces by the Barbizon painters and raises the Louvre collections of that school to supreme importance. No less than eight Millet's are included, the most famous of which, if not the greatest, The Angelus, 102, is much faded, but always attracts a crowd of admirers. 103, Woman at the Well, is a scene at the artist's birthplace; 104, is one of the most inspired of the master's creations, The Shepherdess watching her Flock. 99, The Winnower; 105, Girl with a Distaff, and 106, The Sheep Fold--a lovely pastoral scene by night. Among the twenty-six Corots are many of his finest works; 6, Goatherd playing the Flute; 8, The Dance of the Nymphs; 15, Rest beneath the Willows; 16, The Ford; 20, Forest Glade: Souvenir of Ville Avray; 24, Dance of Shepherdesses; 27, The Mill of St. Nicholas-les-Arras. Some noble Rousseaus are included: 107, Avenue in the Forest of d'Isle-Adam; 108, Pond by the Wayside; 112, Road in the Forest of Fontainebleau. Troyon's score of canvases make a brave show: 127, The White Cow, painted in 1856, was a favourite of the artist who kept it by him until his death and bequeathed it to his mother. By Charles Jacque, the painter of sheep, three works are shown including 72, The Great Sheepfold. Daubigny, Descamps, Diaz and others of the school are well represented in the collection. Admirers of "the little master of little pictures" will find among the twenty-six Meissonier's, which the Chauchard bequest brings to the Louvre, two of the most famous of his works: 87, The Napoleonic picture, Campaign of France, 1814; and 80, Amateurs of Painting. All these examples of the most successful but least inspired of modern artists exemplify his patient, concentrated, meticulous style. By an ingenious fiction that the installation is only provisional, six characteristic Venetian pictures by the veteran, Ziem, have been retained in the collection.[220] 136, is, however, wrongly named, and should read Scene from the Giudecca. [Footnote 220: Pictures by living artists are excluded from the Louvre.] We have completed our rapid survey of the chief paintings in the Louvre, for the more recent developments of French art must be sought in the Luxembourg, where they are all too inadequately represented. The self-imposed limitations of this work will not carry us thither, but the most cursory visit to the Louvre would be incomplete without some notice of the collections of Persian and Egyptian art which we may conveniently glance at on our way as we leave. Descending to the first floor by the staircase up which we mounted, we turn obliquely to the R. and enter the E. gallery containing the Persian terra-cotta reliefs and other objects from the royal palace of Darius, and Artaxerxes,[221] his son, at Susa, including the marvellous coloured Frieze of the Archers; one of the colossal capitals (restored), that supported the roof of the Throne Room; a model of the same; and some fine terra-cotta reliefs of Lions and of winged Bulls. [Footnote 221: The student of history will not need to be reminded that the famous retreat of the Ten Thousand, so dramatically described by Xenophon, was occasioned by the death in battle of their ally Cyrus, in his ill-omened attempt to dispossess his brother, Artaxerxes, of the crown of Persia.] We pass on through the Mediæval and Renaissance collections, turn an angle R., and enter the South Gallery, where some remarkable specimens of ancient art will be found among the Egyptian Antiquities. The painted statue (Hall III.) of the Seated Scribe is one of the most precious examples the world possesses of an art admirable in its naturalism and power of vivid portraiture, and the charming figure of a priestess, known as _Dame Toui_, exquisitely wrought in wood, is equally noteworthy. A superb example of a royal papyrus of the Book of the Dead will also invite attention. We pass on through a suite of beautifully decorated rooms filled with a choice collection of Etruscan and Greek Ceramic art, each of which offers a rich feast of beauty and historic interest. At length we reach again the collection of paintings, Room III., whence we may pass through the Salle des Bijoux with a small exhibit of ancient jewellery, to the Rotonde, and turning L., enter the magnificent Galerie d'Apollon (the old Petite Galerie of Henry IV.), and examine the wealth of enamels; the exquisite productions of the goldsmith's art as applied to the sacred vessels of the church; precious stones; cameos; and such as remain of the old crown jewels. We may leave the palace by returning to the Rotonde; pass through the Salle La Caze and descend the Escalier Henry II. to the L., noting the caissons of its ceiling, decorated by Jean Goujon, and reach the Quadrangle under the Pavilion de l'Horloge, where we began our visit; or we pass from the Rotonde down the Escalier Daru to the exit in the Pavilion Denon, which gives on the Squares du Louvre. In the latter case it will be of some interest before leaving to pass for a moment by the exit and along the Galerie Mollien, where on the R. among the models of Roman masterpieces executed for Francis I., under Primaticcio's supervision, will be found one of the Laocoon, which shows its condition before Bernini's bungling restoration had deformed the group. To the unsated sightseer there yet remain the rich and comprehensive collections of Egyptian and Asiatic antiquities on the ground floor of the E. wing entered on either side of the E. portal. SECTION VI _The Ville (S. of the Rue St. Antoine)--The Hôtel de Ville[222]--St. Gervais--Hôtel Beauvais--Hôtel of the Provost of Paris--SS. Paul and Louis--Hôtel de Mayenne--Site of the Bastille--Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal[223]--Hôtel Fieubert--Hôtel de Sens--Isle St. Louis._ [Footnote 222: Open, 2-4, by ticket obtained at the Secretary's office.] [Footnote 223: Open, 10-4, daily, except Chief Festivals.] We take the _Métropolitain_ to the Hôtel de Ville station and make our way to the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, formerly Place de Grève, a little W. of the station. In 1141 a sloping bank of sand (grève), to the E. of the Rue St. Martin and facing the old port of the Nautæ at St. Landry on the island of the Cité, was ceded by royal charter, to the burgesses of Paris for a payment of seventy livres. "It is void of houses," says the charter, "and is called the _gravia_, and is situated where the old market-place (_vetus forum_) existed." This was the origin of the famous Place de Grève,[224] where throbbed the very heart of civic, commercial and industrial Paris. On its eastern side stood the old Maison aux Piliers, a long, low building, whose upper floor was supported by columns. Here every revolutionary and democratic movement has been organised, from the days of Marcel to those of the Communes of 1789--when the last Provost of the Merchants met his death--and of 1871, when the fine old Renaissance Hôtel de Ville was destroyed by fire. The place of sand was much smaller in olden times, and from 1310, when Philip the Fair burned three heretics, to September, 1822, when the last political offenders, the four serjeants of Rochelle, were executed, and to July 1830, when the last murderer was hung there, has soaked up the blood of many a famous enemy of State and Church and of innumerable notorious and obscure criminals, including the infamous Marquise de Brinvilliers, who was burned alive, and Cartouche, broken on the wheel. A permanent gibbet stood there and a market cross, and there during the English wars the infuriated Parisians tied the hands and feet of hundreds of English prisoners taken at Pontoise and flung them into the Seine. Every St. John's eve--the church and cloister of St. Jean stood behind the Hôtel de Ville--a great bonfire was lighted in the Place de Grève, fireworks were let off, and a salvo of artillery celebrated the festival. When the relations between Crown and Commune were felicitous the king himself would take part in the _fête_ and fire the pile with a torch of white wax decorated with crimson velvet. A royal supper and ball in the Grande Salle concluded the revels. Not infrequently the ashes at the stake where a poor wretch had met his doom had scarcely cooled before the joyous flames and fireworks of the Feu de St. Jean burst forth, and the very day after the execution of the Count of Bouteville the people were dancing round the fires of St. John. The present Hôtel de Ville, by Ballu and Deperthes, completed in 1882,[225] is one of the finest modern edifices in Europe, and contains some of the most important productions of contemporary French painters and sculptors: Puvis de Chavannes, Carolus Duran, Benjamin Constant, Jean Paul Laurens, Carrière Dalou, Chapu and others. [Footnote 224: The masons of Paris were wont to stand on the Place waiting to be hired, and sometimes contrived to exact higher wages. Hence the origin of the term _faire grève_ (to go out on strike).] [Footnote 225: Charles Normand, founder of the Société des Amis des Monuments, appeals for information concerning the fate of the old inscription commemorating the laying of the foundation stone of the former Hôtel de Ville in 1533. It is said to have been appropriated (_se serait emparé_) by an Englishman in 1874.] We pass to the E. of the Hôtel, where stands the church of St. Gervais and St. Protais, whose façade by Solomon Debrosse (1617) "is regarded," says Félibien (1725), "as a masterpiece of art by the best architectural authorities" ("_les plus intelligens en architecture_"). The church, which has been several times rebuilt, occupies the site of the old sixth-century building, near which stood the elm tree where suitors waited for justice to be done by the early kings. "_Attendre sous l'orme_" ("To wait under the elm") is still a proverbial expression for waiting till Doomsday. [Illustration: ST. GERVAIS.] The lofty Gothic interior, dating from the late fifteenth century, is lighted by some sixteenth and seventeenth-century stained glass, and among the pictures that have escaped transportation to the Louvre may be noted a lunette over the clergy stalls R. of the nave, God the Father, by Perugino; and a remarkable tempera painting, The Passion, attributed to Dürer's pupil, Aldegräver, in the fifth chapel, L. aisle. The curious old panelled and painted little Chapelle Scarron (fourth to the L.) and the sixteenth-century carved choir stalls from the abbey church of Port Royal are of interest: the beautiful vaulting of the Lady Chapel is also noteworthy. Some good modern paintings may be seen (with difficulty) in the side chapels. The Rue François Miron leading E. from the Place St. Gervais was part of the Rue St. Antoine, before the cutting of the Rue de Rivoli, and the chief artery from the E. to the centre of Paris. On the R. of this street, No. 26, Rue Geoffrey l'Asnier, is the fine portal of the seventeenth-century Hôtel de Châlons, where the whilom ambassador to England, Antoine de la Borderie, lived (1608). Yet further on in the Rue François Miron is the Rue de Jouy: at No. 7, is the charming Hôtel d'Aumont by Hardouin Mansard. We continue our eastward way along the Rue François Miron and among other interesting houses note No. 68, the princely Hôtel de Beauvais, erected 1660, for Anne of Austria's favourite _femme de chambre_, Catherine Henriette Belier, wife of Pierre Beauvais. The street façade has been much disfigured and the magnificent wrought-iron balcony, whence Anne, Mazarin and Turenne, together with the Queen of England, watched the solemn entry of Louis XIV. and his consort Maria Thérèse, has been destroyed: but the beautiful circular porch with its Doric columns and metopes and the stately courtyard where the architect, Jean Lepautre, has triumphed over the irregularity of the site and created a marvellous symmetry of form--all this still remains, together with the noble stairway on the L., decorated by the Flemish sculptor, Desjardins. In the house at the sign of the Falcon which formerly stood on this spot, Tasso in the splendour of his early years was lodged by his patron, the Cardinal d'Este, and composed the greater part of the _Gerusalemme Liberata_. The Rue François Miron is continued by the Rue St. Antoine: at No. 119, we enter the Passage Charlemagne and pass to the second courtyard where remains a goodly portion of the old Hôtel of the Royal Provost of Paris,[226] given to Aubriot by Charles V. At No. 101 is the site of one of the gates of the Philip Augustus wall and at No. 99 stands the Jesuit Church of St. Paul and St. Louis, in the typical baroque style so familiar to visitors to Rome. The once lavishly decorated interior has suffered much from the Revolutionists. Germain Pilon's Virgin still remains in the chapel L. of the high altar, but the four angels in silver that sustained the hearts of Louis XIII. and XIV., and the noble bronze statues from the mausoleum of the Princes of Condé, admired by Bernini, are only a memory. At No. 65, a malodorous court leads to the old vaulted entrance to the charnel-houses of St. Paul, where Rabelais and the Man with the Iron Mask were buried;[227] and to the R. of this vault a narrow street leads to the Marché Ste. Catherine on the site of the canons' houses of the monastery of Ste. Catherine du Val des Écoliers (p. 124). At the corner of the Rue du Petit Musc is the magnificent Hôtel de Mayenne, begun by Du Cerceau for Diana of Poitiers and completed for the Duke of Mayenne, leader of the forces of the League: this too has a fine courtyard. The chamber in which the leaders of the League met and decided to assassinate Henry III. still exists. An inscription over No. 5 marks the site of the forecourt of the Bastille where the revolutionists penetrated on 14th July: on the pavement in front of No. 1 and across the end of the street and in front of No. 5 Place de la Bastille, round the opposite corner, lines of white stones mark part of the huge space on which the gloomy and sinister old fortress stood. We turn S.W. by the Boulevard Henry IV., past the imposing new barracks of the Garde Républicaine, and then L. by the Rue de Sully. At No. 3 we enter the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, one of the most important libraries of Paris, where an attendant will show Sully's private cabinet and antechamber, with the rich decorations as they were left by his successor, including a ceiling painted by Vouet. Many an intimate outpouring of the Victor of Ivry's domestic woes did Sully endure here--complaints of his ill-tempered Marie's scoldings, the contrast between his lawful wife's sour greetings and the endearing graces and merry, roguish charms of his mistresses; their quarrels and exactions. All of which the great minister would listen to reprovingly, and exhort his dejected royal master not to permit himself, who had vanquished the hosts of his enemies in battle, to be overcome by a woman's petulancy. To the S. of the library the Boulevard Morland marks the channel which separated the Isle de Louviers from the N. bank of the river. We return to the Boulevard Henry IV. and cross to the Quai des Célestins, where on our L. stands part of a tower of the Bastille, discovered in 1899 during the construction of the Metropolitan Railway and transferred here. At the corner of the Rue du Petit Musc opposite, is the fine Hôtel Fieubert, erected by Hardouin Mansard (1671) on part of the site of the Royal Hôtel St. Paul. The principal façade, 2 _bis_ Quai des Célestins, has unhappily been irretrievably spoilt by subsequent additions. Continuing westward, we note No. 32, the site of the Tour Barbeau of the Philip Augustus wall. An inscription bids us remember that there stood the old Tennis Court of the Croix Noire, where Molière's troupe of the Illustre Théâtre performed in 1645. Turning R. up the Rue Falconnier, we come upon (L.) the grand old fifteenth-century palace of the archbishops of Sens (p. 114), now a glass merchant's warehouse. We regain the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville by the Quai of the same name, or cross the Pont Marie, and stroll about the quiet streets of the Isle St. Louis (p. 214), and return by the Pont Louis Philippe at its western extremity. [Illustration: HÔTEL OF THE PROVOST OF PARIS.] [Footnote 226: All demolished (1911).] [Footnote 227: Under process of demolition (1911).] SECTION VII _The Ville (N. of the Rue St. Antoine)--Tour St. Jacques--Rue St. Martin--St. Merri--Rue de Venise--Les Billettes--Hôtels du Soubise,[228] de Hollande, de Rohan[229]--Musée Carnavalet[230]--Place Royale--Musée Victor Hugo[230]--Hôtel de Sully._ [Footnote 228: Open Sundays, 12-3.] [Footnote 229: Open Thursdays at 2 o'clock by a permit from the Director.] [Footnote 230: Open daily (except Monday) 10-4 or 5 (1 fr.). Thursdays and Sundays free. Closed till 12.30 Tuesdays.] Two parallel historic roads named of St. Martin and of St. Denis cut northwards through the mass of houses that now crowd the Marais: the latter, the Grande Chaussée de Monseigneur St. Denis, to the shrine of the martyred saint of Lutetia, the former, the great Roman Street which led to the provinces of the north. [Illustration: WEST DOOR OF ST. MERRI.] We set forth northwards from the Place du Châtelet, at the foot of the Pont au Change, where stood the massive pile of the Grande Châtelet, originally built to defend the bridge from the Norman pirates as the Petit Châtelet was to defend the Petit Pont. It subsequently became the official seat and prison of the Provost of Paris, where he held his criminal court and organised the City Watch, and was demolished in 1802. Below this festered an irregular maze of slums, the aggregation of seven centuries, the most fetid, insanitary and criminal quarter of Paris, known as the Vallée de Misère, which only disappeared in 1855. On our R. soars the beautiful flamboyant Gothic tower, all that remains of the great church of St. Jacques de la Boucherie. This fine monument was saved by the good sense of the architect Giraud who, when the church was sold to the housebreakers during the Revolution, inserted a clause in the warrant exempting the tower from demolition. It was afterwards used as a lead foundry and twice narrowly escaped destruction by fire. Purchased by the Ville, it seemed safe at last, but again it was threatened in 1853 by the prolongation of the Rue de Rivoli: luckily, however, the new street just passed by on the north. The statue of Pascal under the vaulting reminds the traveller that the great thinker conducted some barometrical experiments on the summit, and the statues of the patron saints of craftsmen in the niches, that under its shadow the industrial arts were practised. We ascend the Rue St. Martin from the N.E. corner of the Square, and on our R. find the late Gothic church of St. Merri, built on the site of the seventh-century Chapel of St. Pierre, where Odo Falconarius, one of the defenders of Paris in the siege of 886, is known to have been buried. We enter for the sake of the beautiful sixteenth-century glass in the choir and a curious old painting of the same epoch in the first chapel beyond the entrance to the sacristy, Ste. Geneviève and her Flock, with a view of Paris in the background. We continue to ascend the street, noting No. 122, an old fountain and some reliefs, and soon reach, R. and L., the quaint and narrow mediæval Rue de Venise, formerly the Ruelle des Usuriers, home of the Law speculators (p. 242). At No. 27, L. of the Rue St. Martin and corner of the Rue Quincampoix, is the old inn of the Epée de Bois (now à l'Arrivée de Venise), where Prince de Hoorn and two other nobles assassinated and robbed a banker in open day and were broken alive on the wheel in the Place de Grève. Mirabeau and L. Racine, with other wits are said to have met there and Mazarin granted letters patent to a company of dancing masters who taught there, under the direction of the Roi des Violins: from these modest beginnings grew the National Academy of Dancing. We return E. along the Rue de Venise and pass to its end; then cross obliquely to the R. and continue E., along the Rue Simon le Franc, traversing the Rue du Temple, to the Rue des Blancs Manteaux. This we follow still eastward to its intersection with Rue des Archives. Turning down this street to the R. we cross, and at Nos. 24 or 26 enter the fifteenth-century cloister (restored) of the monastery of the Billettes, founded at the end of the thirteenth century to commemorate the miracle of the Sacred Host, which had defied the efforts of Jonathan, the Jew to destroy it by steel, fire and boiling water. The chapel, built on the site of the Jew's house in 1294, was rebuilt in 1754, and is now a Protestant church. The miraculous Host was preserved as late as the early eighteenth century in St. Jean en Grève, and carried annually in procession on the octave of Corpus Christi. We return northwards along the Rue des Archives, and reach at the corner of the Rue des Francs Bourgeois the fine pseudo-classic Hôtel de Soubise, now the National Archives, erected in 1704 for the Princesse de Soubise on the site of the old Hôtel of the Constable of France, Olivier de Clisson, where Charles VI., after his terrible vengeance on the revolted burgesses, agreed to remit further punishment, and where the Duke of Clarence established himself at the time of the English occupation. It became later (1553) the fortress of the Guises and rivalled the Louvre in strength and splendour. The picturesque Gothic portal (restored) of the old Hôtel de Clisson still exists higher up the Rue des Archives. The lavishly decorated Hôtel de Soubise, entered from the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, in which are exhibited historical documents and other objects of profound interest, though bereft of much of its former splendour is well worth a visit. The sumptuous chambers contain much characteristic and well-preserved decorative work by Boucher, Natoire, Carle Vanloo and others.[231] Opposite the hôtel and between Nos. 59 and 57 may be seen a portion of a tower, repaired in brick, of the old Philip Augustus wall, and in the courtyard of the Mont de Piété (No. 55) the line of the wall is traced: a nearer view of the tower may be obtained from the courtyard to the R. [Footnote 231: At the north end of the Rue des Archives is the site, now a square and a market, of the grisly old fortress of the Knights Templars, whose walls and towers and round church were still standing a century ago. The enclosure was a famous place of refuge for insolvent debtors and political offenders, and sheltered Rousseau in 1765 when a _lettre de cachet_ was issued for his arrest. In the gloomy keep, which was not destroyed until 1811, were imprisoned the royal family of France after the abandonment of the Tuileries on 10th August 1792. The old market of the Temple, the centre of the _petites industries_ of Paris, has been recently demolished. West of this is the huge Museum of the Arts and Crafts (Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers), on the site of the abbatial buildings and lands of St. Martin of the Fields, still preserving in its structure the beautiful thirteenth-century church and refectory of the Abbey.] [Illustration: CLOISTER OF THE BILLETTES, FIFTEENTH CENTURY.] [Illustration: ARCHIVES NATIONALES, HÔTEL SOUBISE, SHOWING TOWERS OF HÔTEL DE CLISSON.] [Illustration: TOWER AT THE CORNER OF THE RUE VIELLE DU TEMPLE.] We proceed eastward past the rebuilt church of the Blancs Manteaux and at the corner of the Rue Vieille du Temple find a charming Gothic tourelle (restored), all that remains of the mansion built in 1528 by Jean de la Balue. Descending the Rue Vieille du Temple to the R., we may examine (No. 47) the old Hôtel de Hollande, erected in 1638, where the Dutch ambassadors resided; and ascending, at No. 87, we find the Hôtel de Rohan (1712), home of the Cardinal de Rohan of diamond-necklace fame, now the Imprimerie Nationale. The Salon des Singes, charmingly decorated by Huet, and other interesting rooms are shown. The fine relief by Le Lorrain of the Horses of Apollo in a passage to the R. of the courtyard should by no means be missed. We return to the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, and at No. 38 find an inscription[232] over the entrance to a picturesque court which marks the place where the Duke of Orleans was assassinated by Jean Sans Peur (p. 132). Still proceeding E. we pass yet more interesting domestic architecture--No. 31, Hôtel d'Albret, where goody Scarron used to visit Madame de Montespan and where she was appointed governess to the royal bastards; 25, Hôtel de Lamoignon, once occupied by Diana of France, daughter of Henry II., and where Malesherbes was born. [Footnote 232: Removed to give place to the name of a firm of wholesale chemists (1911).] Nos. 14 and 16, corner of the Rue de Sévigné, is the Hôtel de Carnavalet, a magnificent renaissance mansion, in raising which no less than four famous architects had part--Lescot, Bullant, Du Cerceau and the elder Mansard. For twenty years (1677-1697) it was the home of Madame Sévigné, queen of letter-writers. Her _Carnavalette_, as she delighted to call it, is now the civic museum of Paris. The beautiful reliefs over the entrance, including the two superb lions against a background of trophies, are by Goujon, as are also the satyrs' heads on the keystones of the arcades of the courtyard. The Four Seasons and some of the lateral figures that decorate the courtyard were designed by him. In the centre stands a bronze statue of Louis XIV as a Roman conqueror, by Coysevox, which once stood on the Place de Grève before the old Hôtel de Ville. The museum, which contains a collection,[233] historic and prehistoric, relating to the city of Paris, is especially rich in objects, all carefully labelled, illustrating the great Revolution, and is of profound interest to students of that period: the second floor is devoted to the last siege of Paris. From the museum we fare yet further E. along the Rue des Francs Bourgeois to the Place Royale (now des Vosges), the site of the Palace of the Tournelles, once a favourite pleasure-house with a fair garden, of the kings of France, and where the Duke of Bedford lived during the English occupation, projecting to transform it into an English park for his exclusive use. There the ill-fated Henry II. lay eleven days in excruciating agony (p. 172), calling for his _seule princesse_, the beloved Diana, while Catherine, like a she-dragon, watched lest her rival entered. After his death the palace becoming hateful to Catherine, she had it demolished. It was subsequently used as a horse-market, and there the three minions of Henry III. began their bloody duel with the three bullies of the Duke of Guise at five in the morning of 27th April 1578, and fought on until every one was either slain or severely wounded. [Footnote 233: Recently augmented.] How different is the present aspect of this once courtly square! Here noble gentlemen in dazzling armour jousted, while from the windows of each of the thirty-five pavilions, gentle dames and demoiselles smiled gracious guerdon to their cavaliers. Around the bronze statue of Louis XIII., proudly erect on the noble horse cast by Daniello da Volterra, in the midst of the gardens, fine ladies were carried in their sedan-chairs and angry gallants fought out their quarrels. And now on this royal Place, the Perle du Marais, the scene of these brilliant revels, peaceful inhabitants of the east of Paris sun themselves and children play. Bronze horse and royal rider went to the melting pot of the Revolution to be forged into cannon that defeated and humbled the allied kings of Europe, and a feeble marble equestrian statue, erected under the Restoration, occupies its place. We cross the Square obliquely and at No. 6, Victor Hugo's old house, find a delightful little museum of portraits, busts, casts, illustrations of his works in various mediums, and personal and intimate objects belonging to the poet. It was at this house that in 1847 the two greatest novelists of their age met. Dickens has described how he was welcomed with infinite courtesy and grace by Hugo, a noble, compact, closely-buttoned figure, with ample dark hair falling loosely over his clean-shaven face and with features never so keenly intellectual, and softened by a sweet gentility. We leave the Place by the S. exit, and entering the Rue St. Antoine turn R. to No. 62, where stands the Hôtel de Sully, built by Du Cerceau in 1634. The stately but now rather grimy inner courtyard is little altered, but the fine façade has been disfigured by the erection of a mean building between the wings. We return from the Métropolitain station at the end of the Rue François Miron. [Illustration: PLACE DES VOSGES, MAISON DE VICTOR HUGO.] SECTION VIII _Rue St. Denis--Fontaine des Innocents--Tower of Jean sans Peur--Cour des Miracles--St. Eustache--The Halles--St. Germain l'Auxerrois._ From the Châtelet Station of the Métropolitain we strike northwards along the Rue St. Denis, passing R. and L. the Rue des Lombards, the Italian business quarter of old Paris, where Boccaccio, son of Boccassin, the money-changer, was born. We continue past the ill-omened Rue de la Ferronnerie and soon reach the Square and Fontaine des Innocents. This charming renaissance fountain was transferred here in 1786 from the corner of the old Rues aux Fers (now the widened Rue Berger) and St. Denis, where it had been designed and decorated by Lescot and Goujon to celebrate the solemn entry of Henry II. in 1549. The beautiful old fountain has been considerably modified and somewhat debased. The longer side has been divided to make a third, and a new fourth side has been added by Pajou. The whole has been elevated much too high by the addition of the terrace steps, and an unsightly dome has been added. Five of the exquisite reliefs of the Naiads by Goujon still remain, and three have been added by Pajou. These latter may be distinguished by their higher relief and lack of refinement. The site of the immense Necropolis of Les Innocents,[234] which for six centuries swallowed up half the dead of Paris, roughly corresponds to the parallelogram formed by the modern Rues Berger, St. Denis, Ferronnerie and de la Lingerie, and one of the old vaulted charnel-houses may still be seen at the ground floor of No. 7 Rue des Innocents. The huge piles of human remains and skulls that grinned from under the gable roof of the gallery painted with the Dance of Death were, in 1786, carted away to the catacombs under Paris, formed by the old Gallo-Roman quarrymen as they quarried the stone used to rebuild Lutetia. For centuries this enclosure was the refuge of vagabonds and scamps of all kinds, a receptacle for garbage, the haunt of stray cats and dogs, whose howlings by night made sleep impossible to nervous folk; and the lugubrious _clocheteur_, or crier of the dead, with lantern and bell, his tunic figured with skull and cross-bones, bleating forth:-- "Reveillez-vous gens qui dormez, Priez Dieu pour les trépassez." was no soothing lullaby. [Footnote 234: According to Sir Thomas Browne, bodies soon consumed there. "Tis all one to lie in St. Innocents' churchyard as in the sands of Egypt, ready to be anything in the ecstasy of being ever, and as content with six feet as the _moles_ of Adrianus." "_Tabesne cadavera solvat An rogas haud refert._"--LUCAN.] A curious early fifteenth-century rhyme is associated with this charnel-house. One morning, two _bourgeoises_ of Paris, the wife of Adam de la Gonesse and her niece, went abroad to have a little flutter and eat two sous' worth of tripe in a new inn. On their way they met Dame Tifaigne, the milliner, who recommended the tavern of the "Maillez," where the wine was excellent. Thither they went and fared not wisely but too well. When fifteen sous had already been spent, they determined to make a day of it, and ordered roast goose with hot cakes. After further drinking, gauffres, cheese, peeled almonds, pears, spices and walnuts were called for, and the feast ended in songs. When the bad quarter of an hour came, their sum of sous proving inadequate, they parted with some of their finery to meet the score, and at midnight left the inn dancing and singing-- "Amours au vireli m'en vois." The streets of Paris, however, at midnight were unsafe even for sober ladies, and these soon fell among thieves, were stripped of the rest of their clothing, then taken up for dead by the watch and flung into the mortuary in the cemetery of the Innocents; but, to the terror of the gravedigger, were found lying outside the next morning, singing-- "Druin, Druin, ou es allez? Apporte trois harens salez Et un pot de vin du plus fort." Pursuing our way N. by the Rue St. Denis we pass (R.) the restored fourteenth-century church of St. Leu and St. Gilles, and on our L. two old reliefs of St. Peter and St. Andrew embedded in the corner of a modern house at the corner of the Rue St. Denis and the Rue Étienne Marcel. Near by stood the Painters' Gate of the Philip Augustus wall. We turn L. by the latter street and soon sight on our R. the massive machicolated Tower of Jean sans Peur (p. 133). It was at the Hôtel de Bourgogne that the Confrères de la Passion de Jésus Christ were performing in the sixteenth century, and where in 1548 they were forbidden by royal decree to play the mystery of the Passion any longer, and limited to profane, decent and lawful plays. From 1566-1576 the comédiens of the Hôtel de Bourgogne continued their performances, which at length became so gross that complaints were made of the _blasphèmes et impudicités_ enacted there, and that not a farce was played that was not _orde_, _sale et vilaine_. Repeated ordinances were levelled at the actors, aiming at the purification of the stage and preventing words of _double entente_. It was here, too, that the most exalted and noble masterpieces of Corneille and Racine--_Le Cid_, _Andromaque_ and _Phèdre_--were first enacted. We turn R. by the Rue Française, again R. by the Rue Tiquetonne, then L. by the curious Rue Dussoubs to the new Rue Réamur, where on the opposite side, to the L., is the narrow passage between Nos. 100 and 102 that leads to the once notorious Cour des Miracles, so vividly portrayed in Victor Hugo's _Notre Dame_. It was here that Jean Du Barry and his mistress, Jeanne Vaubernier, kept a gambling-hell. Jeanne, subsequently married to Jean's brother, was the daughter of a monk and formerly known as Mademoiselle Lange. She it was who became the famous Du Barry, mistress of Louis XV. Here also dwelt Hébert, editor of the foul _Père Duchesne_. Both perished on the scaffold. We cross the Cour and leave by the Rue Damiette (L.), turn again L. and descend the Rue du Nil to the Rue des Petits Carreaux. This we follow to the L., and continue down it and the busy and picturesque Rue Montorgeuil, noting (L.) No. 78, the curious house at the sign of the Rocher de Cancale. 72-64 were part of the roomy sixteenth-century posting house of the Golden Compasses, and have quaint reliefs carved on their façades. We may enter at 64, the spacious old coaching yard, still used by market carts and waggons. The courtyard on the opposite side, No. 47, was the office of the old sedan-chair porters. We continue to descend, and at length sight the tall apse of the majestic church of St. Eustache, which towers over the Halles. Begun in 1532 by Pierre Lemercier, it was not completed until more than a century later by Jacques Lemercier, architect of the extended Louvre. We enter, by the side portal, the spacious, lofty and beautiful interior with its not unpleasing mingling of Gothic and Renaissance architecture. It was here that in 1587 a friar reciting the story of the execution of Mary Queen of Scots roused his hearers to such a tempest of passion that the whole congregation melted into a common paroxysm of tears. Here, too, on 4th April 1791 was celebrated, amid the gloom and sorrow of a whole people, the funeral of their "Sovereign-Man," Mirabeau. Not till five o'clock did the league-long procession reach the church in solemn silence, interrupted only by the sound of muffled drums and wailing music, "new clangour of trombones and metallic dirge-voice, amid the infinite hum of men." After the funeral oration a discharge of arms brought down some of the plaster from the vaultings of the church, and the body went--the first tenant--to the Panthéon of the heroes of the Fatherland. We leave by the west portal--a monstrous pseudo-classic pile, added 1775-1778. To our L. is the vast area once covered by a congeries of picturesque Halles and streets:--the Halle aux Draps; the Marché des Herborists, with their mysterious stores of simples and healing herbs and leeches; the potato and onion markets; the butter and cheese markets; the fish market; the queer old Rue de la Tonnellerie, under whose shabby porticoes, sellers of rags, old clothes, iron and furniture, crowded against the bread market; the Marché des Prouvaires, beloved of thrifty housewives--all swallowed up by the vast modern structure of iron and glass, known as Les Halles. The Halle au Blé, or corn market, last to disappear, was built on the site of the Hôtel de la Reine which Catherine de' Medici had erected when frightened from the Tuileries by her astrologer Ruggieri. The site is now occupied by the Bourse de Commerce, but one curious decorated and channelled column, which conceals a stairway used by Catherine and her Italian familiar when they ascended to the roof to consult the stars, has been preserved. The Rue Pirouette N. of the Halles reminds us that there, until the reign of Louis XVI., stood the royal pillory, a tall octagonal tower of two floors. The unhappy wretches condemned to exposure there were placed with head and hands protruding through holes in a revolving wheel, and were left for three hours on three market days, to the gibes and missiles of the populace. There, too, was a place of execution for state offenders, the Constable of Clisson in 1344 and _le pauvre Jacques_ (p. 147) in 1477 having perished on this spot. From the Place St. Eustache we cross (L.) to the Rue Vauvilliers, formerly the Rue du Four St. Honoré, the west side of which still retains much of its old aspect, and many of the shops, their old signs: _Au Chou Vert_; _Le Panier Fleuri_, etc. Descending this street southwards, a turn (R.) up the Rue de Vannes will bring us to the Ruggieri column, transformed (1812) into a fountain, as the inscription tells. Resuming our way down the Rue Vauvilliers we turn R. by the Rue St. Honoré and opposite, at the corner of the Rue de l'Arbre Sec, find the old fountain of the Croix du Trahoir, erected in the reign of François I. and rebuilt by Soufflot in 1775. Here tradition places the cruel death of Queen Brunehaut (p. 29). Descending this street to the Rue de Rivoli, we note, No. 144, to the L. an inscription marking the site of the Hôtel de Montbazon where Coligny was assassinated. We cross to the Rue Perrault and soon reach the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois from whose tower rang the signal for the St. Bartholomew butchery. The porch was added in 1431 for the convenience of distinguished worshippers; for it was the parish church of the Château of the Louvre and consequently the royal chapel. The saints and martyrs on the portail and porch are therefore closely associated with the history of Paris: opposite to us extends Perrault's famous E. façade of the Louvre. SECTION IX _Palais Royal--Théâtre Français--Gardens and Cafés of the Palais Royal--Palais Mazarin (Bibliothèque Nationale)_[235]_--St. Roch--Vendôme Column--Tuileries Gardens--Place de la Concorde--Champs Élysées._ [Footnote 235: Open Tuesdays and Fridays, 10 to 4.] From the Palais Royal Station of the Métropolitain we issue before the great palace begun by Richelieu (p. 212). To our L. stands the Théâtre Français, occupied by the Comédie Française since 1799, on the site of the old Variétés Amusantes or Palais Variétés built in 1787, a little to the W. of Richelieu's Theatre of the Palais Cardinal. This latter was the scene of Molière's triumphs and of his piteous death, and the original home of the French Opera whose position is indicated by an inscription at the corner of the Rues de Valois and St. Honoré. It was at the Théâtre des Variétés, when the staid old Comédie Française was rent by rival factions that Chenier's patriotic tragedy, _Charles IX._, was performed on 4th November 1789, and the pit acclaimed Talma with frantic applause as he created the _rôle_ of Charles IX., and the days of St. Bartholomew were acted on the stage. The bishops tried to stop the performances, and priests refused absolution to those of their penitents who went to see them. The Royalists among the Comedians replied at the Nation (the Odéon) by playing a royalist repertory, _Cinna_ and _Athalie_, amid shouts from the pit for _William Tell_ and the _Death of Cæsar_, and the stage became an arena where political factions strove for mastery. Men went to the theatre armed as to a battle. Every couplet fired the passions of the audience, the boxes crying, "_Vive le Roi!_" to be answered by the hoarse voices of the pit, "_Vive la nation!_" Shouts were raised for the busts of Voltaire and of Brutus: they were brought from the foyer and placed on the stage. The very kings of shreds and patches on the boards came to blows and the Roman toga concealed a poignard. For a time "idolatry" triumphed at the Nation, but Talma and the patriots at length won. A reconciliation was effected, and at a performance of the _Taking of the Bastille_, on 8th January 1791, Talma addressed the audience, saying that they had composed their differences. Naudet, the Royalist champion, was recalcitrant, and amid furious shouts from the pit, "On your knees, citizen!" at length gave way, embraced Talma with ill-grace, and on the ensuing nights the Revolutionary repertory, _The Conquest of Liberty_, _Rome Saved_, and _Brutus_, held the boards. In the stormy year of 1830, when the July Revolution made an end for ever of the Bourbon cause in Paris, the Comédie Française again became a scene of fierce strife. _Hernani_, a drama in verse, had been accepted from the pen of Victor Hugo, the brilliant and exuberant master of the new Romantic school of poets who had determined to emancipate themselves from the traditions, long since hardened into dogmas, of the great dramatists of the siècle de Louis Quatorze. On the night of the first performance each side--Romanticists and Classicists--had packed the theatre with partisans. The air was charged with feeling; the curtain rose, but less than two lines were uttered before the pent-up passions of the audience burst forth:-- DOÑA JOSEFA--"Serait-ce déjà lui? C'est bien à l'escalier Dérobé--" The last word had not passed the actress' lips when a howl of execration rose from the devotees of Racine, outraged by the author's heresy in permitting an adjective to stray into the second line of verse. The Romanticists, led by Théophile Gautier, answered in withering blasphemies; the Classicists began to "... prove their doctrine orthodox By apostolic blows and knocks," and the pit became a pandemonium of warring factions. Night after night the literary sects renewed their fights, and the representations, as Hugo said, resembled battles rather than performances. The year 1830 was the '93 of the classic drama, but the passions it evoked have long since been calmed and _Hernani_ and _Le Roi s'Amuse_, the latter suppressed by Louis Philippe after its first appearance, have taken their places in the classic repertory of the Français beside the tragedies of Corneille and Racine. At No. 161 Rue St. Honoré, now Café de la Régence, beloved of chess players, is the site of the Porte St. Honoré of the Charles V. wall before which Joan of Arc was wounded at the Siege of Paris in 1429. The old chess-players' temple where Diderot loved to watch the matches; where the author of _Gil Blas_ beheld in a vast and brilliantly lighted salon, a score of silent and grave _pousseurs de bois_ (wood-shovers) surrounded by crowds of spectators amid a silence so profound that the movement of the pieces alone could be heard; where Voltaire and D' Alembert were often seen; where Jean Jacques Rousseau, dressed as an Armenian, drew such crowds that the proprietor was forced to seek police protection; where Robespierre loved to play a cautious game and the young and impecunious Napoleon Bonaparte, an impatient player and bad loser, waited on fortune; where strangers from all corners of the earth congregated as in an arena where victory was esteemed final and complete; where Poles, Turks, Moors and Hindoos in their picturesque garbs made a scene unparalleled even at the Rialto of Venice; where on Sunday afternoons a seat was worth a monarch's ransom--this classic Café de la Régence which, until 1852, stood on the Place du Palais Royal, no longer exists. We enter the gardens of the Palais by the colonnade to the R. of the Théâtre Français and pass N. along the W. colonnade. On this side was situated the famous Café de Foy (p. 261), founded in 1700, whose proprietor was in early days alone permitted to place chairs and tables on the terrace. There, in the afternoon, would sit the finely apparelled sons of Mars, and other gay dogs of the period, with their scented perukes, amber vinaigrettes, silver-hilted swords and gold-headed canes quizzing the passers-by. In summer evenings, after the conclusion of the opera at 8-30, the _bonne compagnie_ in full dress would stroll under the great overarching trees of the _grande allée_, or sit at the cafés listening to open-air performers, sometimes revelling in the moonlight as late as the small hours of the morning. It was from one of the tables of the Café Foy that Camille Desmoulins sounded the war-cry of the Revolution. Every day a special courier from Versailles brought the bulletins of the National Assembly, which were read publicly amid clamorous interjections. Spies found their office a perilous one, for, if discovered, they were ducked in the basins of the fountains, and when feeling grew more bitter, risked meeting a violent death. Later the Café Foy made a complete _volte-face_, raised its ices to twenty sous and grew Royalist in tone. Its frequenters came armed with sword-sticks and loaded canes, raised their hats when the king's name was uttered, and one evil day planted a gallows outside the café, painted with the national colours. The excited patriots stormed the house, expelled the Royalists and disinfected the salon with gin. Next day the Royalists returned in force and cleansed the air with incense: after many fatalities the café was closed for some days and the triumph of the Jacobins at length made any suspicion of Royalism too perilous. During the occupation of Paris by the allies many a fatal duel between the foreign officers and the Imperialists was initiated there. The extremer section of the Revolutionists frequented the Café Corazza, still extant on this side of the garden, which soon became a minor Jacobin's, where, after the club was closed, the excited orators continued their discussions: Chabot, Collot d'Herbois and other Terrorists met there. The Café Valois was patronised by the Feuillants, and so excited the ire of the Fédérés, who met at the Caveau, that one day they issued forth, assailed their opponents' stronghold and burned the copies of the _Journal de Paris_ found there. In the earlier days of the Revolution when its leaders looked for sympathy to England, "a brave and generous nation, whose name alone like that of Rome evokes ideas of Liberty," the people during an exhibition of anti-monarchical feeling went about destroying the insignia of royalty. On coming in the Palais Royal to the sign of the English king's head over a restaurant, an orator mounted a chair in the gardens, and informed them that it was the head of a good king, ruling over a free nation: it was spared, amid shouts of "_Vive la Liberté_." Later, at the Café des Milles Colonnes, the handsome Madame Romain, _La Belle Limonadière_, sat majestically on a real throne used by a king whom Napoleon had overthrown. We leave the gardens by the issue in the middle of the N. colonnade, mount the steps and at the corner of the Rue Vivienne and the Rue des Petits Champs opposite, come upon the Palais Mazarin (p. 222), now the Bibliothèque Nationale, with a fine façade on each street. In the Rue Vivienne stood also the princely Hôtel Colbert, of which only the name remains--the Passage Colbert. We turn W. along the Rue des Petits Champs and skirt the W. walls of the modernised palace northwards along the Rue de Richelieu to the main Cour d'Honneur, opposite the Square Louvois. Hence we may enter some rooms, which contain a magnificent and matchless collection of printed books, bindings and illuminated MSS. The second of the two halls where these treasures are exposed, the Galerie Mazarin, is a part of the old palace and retains its fine frescoed ceiling. As we retrace our steps down the Rue Richelieu we may enter, on our L. the equally rich and sumptuous museum of coins, medals, antiques, intaglios, gems, etc. Having regained the Rue des Petits Champs, we resume our westward way, noting at No. 45, corner of the Rue St. Anne, the fine double façade of the Hôtel erected by Lulli and bearing the great musician's coat-of-arms, a design of trumpets, lyres and cymbals, and soon cross the Avenue de l'Opéra to the Rue St. Roch on our L. This we descend to the church of the same name, with old houses still nestling against it, famous for Bonaparte's whiffs of grape-shot that scattered the Royalist insurrectionary forces stationed there on 5th October 1795. We descend to the Rue de Rivoli. To our L., at the Place des Pyramids, a statue of Joan of Arc recalls her ill-advised attack on Paris, and to our R., on the railings of the Tuileries Garden opposite No. 230, Rue de Rivoli, is the inscription marking the site of the Salle du Manége (p. 271). Northward hence extend Napoleon's Rues de Castiglione and de la Paix, the Regent Street of Paris, divided by the Place Vendôme, which was intended by its creator, Louvois, to be the most spacious in the city. A monumental parallelogram of public offices was designed to enclose the Place, but Versailles engulfed the king's resources and the ambitious scheme was whittled down, the area much reduced, and the site and foundations of the new buildings were handed over to the Ville. What the Allies failed to do in 1814 the Commune succeeded in doing in 1871, and the boastful Column of Vendôme, a pitiful plagiarism of Trajan's Column at Rome, was laid in the dust, only however to be raised again by the Third Republic in 1875. We enter the Tuileries Gardens crossing the Terrace of the Feuillants, all that is left of the famous monastery and grounds where Lafayette's club of constitutional reformers met. The beautiful gardens remain much as Le Notre designed them for Louis XIV: every spring the orange trees, some of them dating back it is said to the time of Francis I., are brought forth from the orangery to adorn the central avenue, and the gardens become vocal with many voices of children at their games--French children with their gentle humour and sweet refined play. R. and L. of the central avenue we find the two marble exhedræ, erected in 1793 for the elders who presided over the floral celebrations of the month of Germinal by the children of the Republic. Of the gorgeous palace of the Tuileries at the E. end of the gardens, with its inharmonious but picturesque façade stretching across the western limit of the Louvre from the Pavilion de Flore to the Pavilion de Marsan, not one stone is left on another. We remember it after its fiery purgation by the Commune in 1871, a gaunt shell blackened and ruined, fitting emblem of the wreck which the enthroned wantonness and corruption of the Second Empire had made of France. We fare again westward along the gardens and emerge into the Place de la Concorde by the gate adorned with Coysevox' statues, Fame and Mercury on Winged Horses, facing, on the opposite side of the vast area, Guillaume Coustou's Horse Tamers from Marly. The Place, formerly of Louis XV., with its setting of pavilions adorned with groups of statuary representing the chief cities of France, was created by Gabriel in 1763-1772 on the site of a dreary, marshy waste used as a depot for marble. It was adorned in 1763 with an equestrian statue of Louis XV., by Pigalle, elevated on a pedestal which was decorated at the corners by statues of the cardinal virtues. Mordant couplets, two of which we transcribe, affixed on the base, soon expressed the judgment of the Parisians:-- "_Grotesque monument! Infâme piédestal! Les vertus sont à pied, le vice est à cheval._" "_Il est ici comme à Versailles, Toujours sans coeur et sans entrailles._" After the fall of the monarchy the Place was known as the Place de la Révolution, and in 1792, Louis XV. with the other royal simulacra in bronze having been forged into the cannon that thundered against the allied kings of Europe, a plaster statue of Liberty was erected, at whose side the guillotine mowed down king and queen, revolutionist and aristocrat in one bloody harvest of death, ensanguining the very figure of the goddess herself, who looked on with cold and impassive mien. She too fell, and in her place stood a _fascis_ of eighty-three spears, symbolising the unity of the eighty-three departments of France. In 1795 the Directory changed the name to Place de la Concorde, and again in 1799 a seated statue of Liberty holding a globe was set up. In the hollow sphere a pair of wild doves built their nest--a futile augury, for in 1801 Liberty II. was broken in pieces, and the model for a tall granite column erected in its place by Napoleon I. One year passed and this too disappeared. After the Restoration, among the other inanities came, in 1816, a second statue of Louis XV., and the Place resumed its original name. Ten years later an expiatory monument to Louis XVI. was begun, only to be swept away with other Bourbon lumber by the July Revolution of 1830. At length the famous obelisk from Luxor, after many vicissitudes, was elevated in 1836 where it now stands. The Place as we behold it dates from 1854, when the deep fosses which surrounded it in Louis XV.'s time, and which were responsible for the terrible disaster that attended the wedding festivities of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, were filled up, and other improvements and embellishments effected. The vast space and magnificent vistas enjoyed from this square are among the finest urban spectacles in Europe. To the north, on either side of the broad Rue Royale which opens to the Madeleine, stand Gabriel's fine edifices (now the Ministry of Marine and the Cercle de la Rue Royale), designed to accommodate foreign ambassadors. To the south is the Palais Bourbon, now the Chamber of Deputies; to the east are the gardens of the Tuileries, and to the west is the stately Grande Avenue of the Champs Élysées rising to the colossal Arch of Triumph crowning the eminence of the Place de l'Étoile. As our eyes travel along the famous avenue, memories of the military glories and of the threefold humiliation of Imperial France crowd upon us. For down its ample way there marched in 1814 and 1815 two hostile and conquering armies to occupy Paris, and in 1871 the immense vault of the Arc de Triomphe, an arch of greater magnitude than any raised to Roman Cæsars, echoed to the shouts of another exultant foreign host, mocking as they strode beneath it at the names of German defeats inscribed on its stones. And on the very Place de la Concorde, German hussars waltzed in pairs to the brazen music of a Uhlan band, while a line of French sentries across the entrance to the Tuileries gardens gazed sullenly on. To this day the mourning statue of Strassbourg with her sable drapery and immortelles, still keeps alive the bitter memory of her loss. To the south of the Champs Élysées is the Cours de la Reine, planted by Catherine de' Medici, for two years the most fashionable carriage drive in Paris. This we follow and at No. 16 find the charming Maison François I. brought from Moret, stone by stone, in 1826. To the north, in the Cours de Gabriel, a fine gilded grille, surmounted with the arms of the Republic, gives access to the Élysée, the official residence of the President. It was once Madame Pompadour's favourite house in Paris, and the piece of land she appropriated from the public to round off her gardens is still retained in its grounds. In the Avenue Montaigne, leading S.W. from the Rond Point (once the Allée des Veuves, a retired walk used by widows during their term of seclusion) Nos. 51 and 53 stand on the site of the notorious Bal Mabille,[236] the temple of the bacchanalia of the gay world of the Second Empire. In 1764 the Champs Élysées ended at Chaillot, a little to the W. of the Rond Point, an old feudal property which Louis XI. gave to Philippe de Comines in 1450, and which in 1651 sheltered the unhappy widow of Charles I. Here Catherine de' Medici built a château, but château and nunnery of the Filles de Sainte Marie, founded by the English queen, disappeared in 1790. S. of the Champs Élysées on the opposite bank of the Seine rises the gilded dome of the Invalides, and to the S.W. stretches the vast field of Mars, the scene of the Feast of Pikes, and now encumbered with the relics of four World-Fairs. [Footnote 236: A description of this and of other public balls of the Second Empire will be found in Taine's _Notes sur Paris_, which has been translated into English.] The Paris we have rapidly surveyed is, mainly, enclosed by the inner boulevards, which correspond to the ramparts of Louis XIII. on the north, demolished by his successor between 1676 and 1707, and the line of the Philip Augustus wall and the Boulevard St. Germain on the south. Beyond this historic area are the outer boulevards which mark the octroi wall of Louis XVI.; further yet are the Thiers wall and fortifications of 1841. Within these wider boundaries is the greater Paris of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, of profound concern to the economical and social student, but of minor interest to the ordinary traveller. The vogue of the brilliant and gay inner boulevards of the north bank so familiar to the foreigner in Paris is of comparatively recent growth. In the early nineteenth century the boulevard from the Place de la Madeleine to the Rue Cambon was almost deserted by day and dangerous by night--a vast waste, the proceeds of the confiscated lands of the Filles de la Conception. From the Boulevard Montmartre to the Boulevard St. Martin followed lines of private hôtels, villas, gardens and convent walls. A great mound which separated the Boulevard St. Martin from the Boulevard du Temple was not cleared away until 1853. From 1760 to 1862 the Boulevard du Temple was a centre of pleasure and amusement, where charming suburban houses and pretty gardens alternated with cheap restaurants, hotels, theatres, cafés, marionette shows, circuses, tight-rope dancers, waxworks, and cafés-chantants. In 1835, so lurid were the dramas played there, that the boulevard was popularly known as the _Boulevard du Crime_. In the early nineteenth century the favourite promenade of Parisian _flaneurs_ was displaced from the Palais Royal to the Boulevard des Italiens, whither the proprietors of cafés and restaurants followed. A group of young fellows entered one evening a small _cabaret_ near the Comédie Italienne (now Opéra Comique), found the wine to their taste and the cuisine excellent, praised host and fare to their friends, and the modest _cabaret_ developed into the Café Anglais, most famous of epicurean temples, frequented during the Second Empire by kings and princes, to whom alone the haughty proprietor would devote personal care. The sumptuous cafés Tortoni, founded in 1798, and De Paris, opened 1822, have long since passed away. So has the Café Hardy, whose proprietor invented _déjeuners à la fourchette_, although its rival and neighbour, the Café Riche, stills exists. Many others of the celebrated cafés of the Boulevards have disappeared or suffered a transformation into the more popular Brasseries and Tavernes of which so many, alternating with the theatres, restaurants and dazzling shops that line the most-frequented evening promenade of Paris, invite the thirsty or leisurely pleasure-seeker of to-day. Nowhere may the traveller gain a better impression of the essential gaiety and sociability of the Parisian temperament than by sitting outside a café on the boulevards on a public festival and observing his neighbours and the passers-by: their imperturbable good humour; their easy manners; their simple enjoyments; their quick intelligence, alert gait and expressive gestures; the wonderful skill of the women in dress. The glittering halls of pleasure that appeal to so many visitors, the Bohemian cafés of the outer boulevards, the Folies Bergères, the Moulins Rouges, the Bals Bulliers, with their meretricious and vulgar attractions, frequented by the more facile daughters of Gaul, "whose havoc of virtue is measured by the length of their laundresses' bills," as a genial satirist of their sex has phrased it--all these manifestations of _la vie_, so unutterably dull and sordid, are of small concern to the cultured traveller. The intimate charm and spirit of Paris will be heard and felt by him not amid the whirlwind of these saturnalia largely maintained by the patronage of English-speaking visitors, but rather in the smaller voices that speak from the inmost Paris which we have essayed to describe. Nor can we bid more fitting adieu to Lutetia than by translating Goethe's words to Eckermann: "Think of the city of Paris where all the best of the realms of nature and art in the whole earth are open to daily contemplation, a world-city where the crossing of every bridge or every square recalls a great past, and where at every street corner a piece of history has been unfolded." SECTION X _The Basilica of St. Denis and the Monuments of the Kings, Queens and Princes of France._ No historical pilgrimage to Paris would be complete without a visit to the Sanctuary of its protomartyr and the burial-place of its kings. Taking train from the Gare du Nord, either main line or local train-tramway and being arrived at the railway station of the grimy industrial suburb of St. Denis, we cross the canal and continue along the Rue du Chemin de Fer and the Rue de la République, to the Cathedral, architecturally the most important relic of the great age of the early ecclesiastical builders. The west façade before us, completed about 1140 by Abbot Suger, is of profound interest, for here we may behold the round Romanesque arch side by side with the Pointed, and the very first grip of the new Gothic on the heavy Norman architecture it was about to overthrow. The sculptures on the W. portals, however, almost wholly and clumsily renewed, need not detain us long. We enter and descend from the sombre vestibule. As we wait for the verger we revel in the airy and graceful symmetry of the nave and aisles; the beautiful raised choir and lovely apse with its chevets and round of chapels, where structural science and beauty of form are so admirably blended. The choir was so far advanced in 1143 that mass was sung at the high altar during a heavy storm while the incomplete ribs of the new Gothic vaulting swayed over head. In 1219, however, Suger's structure was nearly destroyed by fire and the upper part of the choir, the nave and transepts were afterwards rebuilt in the pure Gothic of the times, the more active reconstruction being effected between 1231 and 1281. A visit to the monuments is unhappily a somewhat mingled experience. Owing to the inscrutable official regulations in force, the best of the mediæval tombs are only seen with difficulty and from a distance that renders any appreciation of their beauty impossible.[237] The monuments are mainly those claimed by Lenoir for his Museum at Paris when the decree of 1792 was promulgated, ordering the "effacement of the proud epitaphs and the destruction of the Mausoleums, that recalled the dread memories of kings": they were restored to their original places so far as possible by Viollet le Duc. The head of St. Denis is said to have been found when his shrine was desecrated and appropriated by the revolutionists, and in the cant of the time was brought back to Paris by "a miracle greater and more authentic than that which conveyed it from Montmartre to St. Denis, a miracle of the regeneration of opinion, registered not in the martyrology but in the annals of reason." [Footnote 237: We cannot too strongly impress on the traveller the desirability of visiting the admirable Musée de Sculpture Comparée at the Trocadero where casts of the most important sculpture and architecture in France, including many of the monuments, here and elsewhere in Paris, may be conveniently studied.] [Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF ST. DENIS.] We are first led past some mediæval tombs in the N. transept, then by those of the family of St. Louis, which include that of his eldest son, one of the most beautiful creations of thirteenth-century sculpture. Our own Henry III. who attended the funeral is figured among the mourners around the base which are only partially seen from afar. The monument to Louis XII. and his beloved and _chère Bretonne_, Anne, is next shown. It is in Italian style and was wrought by the Justes, a family of Tourraine sculptors. The Royal effigies are twice rendered: once naked in death under a tabernacle and again kneeling in prayer. Before we ascend the steps leading to the raised ambulatory, we are shown across the choir, and R. of the high altar, the fine thirteenth-century tomb of Dagobert, with some quaint reliefs, impossible to see in detail, illustrating his legend (p. 34) and a statue of Queen Nantilde also of the thirteenth century. Nor should we omit to note the two rare and beautiful twelfth-century statues, in the style of the Chartres sculpture, of a king and queen on either side of the portal of the N. transept brought from the church of Notre Dame de Corbeil. To our L. is a masterpiece of the French renaissance, the tomb by Lescot and Pilon of Henry II. and Catherine de' Medici, who are represented twice, as in the monument to Louis XII. We ascend the steps to the ambulatory and below, to our L., are summarily shown some important Valois tombs: Philippe de Valois, John II., Charles V. and others, by contemporary sculptors, such as Andrieu Beaunepveu and Pierre de Chelles--all of great interest to the traveller but utterly impossible of appreciation under the cursory glance permitted by the vergers. A second monument to Henry II. and Catherine, with recumbent and draped figures, is next indicated; Catherine is portrayed in her old age and rigid devotion. As we pace round the ambulatory we are shown some remains of twelfth-century stained glass in the choir chapels (that in the Lady Chapel including the figure of Abbot Suger,) and a modern representation of the Oriflamme to the L. of the high altar. Opposite the sacristy is a curious twelfth-century tomb from St. Germain des Prés, with the effigy of Queen Fredegonde outlined in mosaic and copper. We descend to the gloomy old crypt, with the curious Romanesque capitals of its columns, where now lie the remains of the later Bourbons. On returning to the church the tombs of Philip the Bold and Philip the Fair are shown, and to the L. the grandiose monument to Francis I., designed by Delorme, with five kneeling effigies: the king, Claude his queen, and their three children. The fine base reliefs represent the battles of Marignano and Cerisole. Then follows the beautiful urn executed by Pierre Bontemps, to contain the heart of the _gran re Francesco_. In conclusion, we are permitted to see the tombs of Louis of Orleans and of Valentine of Milan, early fifteenth-century, by a Milanese artist; and Charles of Etampes, an excellent work of the middle of the fourteenth-century. Before returning to Paris we should not omit to walk round the basilica and examine the sculptures of the portal of the N. transept, which have suffered less from iconoclasts and restorers. [Illustration: Map of Paris.] INDEX A ABBEYS, their foundation and growth, 30 Abbo, his story of the siege of Paris, 43-49 Abbots, their power and wealth, 39, 52 Abelard and Héloïse, 91-93; their tomb, 93; and house, 305 Académie Française, 213 _Acephali_, the, 47, 49 Adam du Petit Pont, 94 Agincourt, 134 Aignan's, St., remains of, 305 Alcuin, 40 Alençon, Duke of, 177, 187 Amphitheatre, Roman, 13, 14, 332 _Ancien Régime_, the, 275, 280, 286 Anselm, story of, 58 Antheric, Bishop, 47, 48 Antoine, St., Abbey of, 79 Antoinette, Marie, _note_, 78, 249, 257, 265, 268, 311, 312 Aqueduct, Roman, 13, 208 Aquinas, 103, 104 Aristotle, study of, at Paris, 103 Armagnac, Count of, 134 Armagnacs, the, 134; massacre of, 136 Augustins, the Grands, 75 Austria, Anne of, 207, 212, 215, 217, 237 B BACON, ROGER, 104 Bailly, 282 Balafré, le, 187 Bal des Ardents, 131 Barrère, 282 Barry, Mme. du, 248, 421 Bartholomew, St., massacre of, 175, 179-185 Basoche, the, 309 Bastille, the, 128, 146, 218, 261-264; column of, 291; site of, 406 Baths, Roman, 13, 17; public, _note_, 90 Bazoches, Guy of, his impression of Paris, 69 Beauharnais, Mme. de, 282 Beaux Arts, École des, 318 Bedford, Duke of, _note_, 127; Regent at Paris, 137; his death there, 140 Béguines, the, 79 Bellay, du, 169 Benvenuto da Imola, 104 Bernard, St., 58, 59, 61, 63, 89, 92 Bernini, 234, 235, 398 Bibliothèque Nationale, 222, 429; de l'Arsenal, 406 Billettes, cloister of, 410 Bishops, their power and patriotism, 30 Blancs Manteaux, church of, 133 Blancs Manteaux, the, 76, 142 Boccaccio, 417 Bonaventure, St., 78 Boniface VIII., Pope, 107-109, 111 Boulevards, the, 238, 434-436 Bourbon, Hôtel de, 204, 233 Bretigny, treaty of, 125 Brunehaut, her career and death, 27-29 Brunswick, Duke of, his proclamation, 269 Bullant, Jean, 198 Burgundy, Duke of, 132; defeat of, 146 Buridan, _note_, 68, 313 Bursaries, foundation of, 97 Bussy, Island of, _note_, 117 C CÆSAR, JULIUS, 11, 13, 297 Café Corazza, 428 Café de Foy, 261, 427 Café de la Régence, 426, 427 Café Milles Colonnes, 428 _Ça ira_, origin of, 266 Calvin, 98, 164 Campan, Madame, Memoirs of, 248, 267 Capet, Hugh, 51 Capetians, rise of, 51 Cards, playing, renamed, 203 Carlovingians, their rise, 35 Carlyle, his history, 260, 268 Carmelites, the, 75, 316 Carrousel, the, 225; arch of, 291 Casaubon, Isaac, 202 Castile, Blanche of, 70, 96 Catholic Faith, restoration of, 286 Cellini, at Paris, 160, 163 Champ de Mars, 22, 261, 264, 433 Champeaux, William of, 63, 90, 94; market of, 63 Champs Élysées, 432 Chapelle, Sainte, the, 72, 86, 306-309 Charlemagne at St. Denis, 37; his love of learning, 40 Charles, the Bold, 41; the Fat, 47, 48; the Simple, 49 Charles V., completes Marcel's wall, 125; his success against English, 125; a great builder, 126 Charles VI., minority of, 128; narrow escape of, 131; his vengeance on the Parisians, 130; his madness, 131 Charles VII., 138; his wretched death, 144 Charles VIII, 151 Charles IX., 176; his pitiful death, 185 Charles X., 267 Charonne, 219 Charterhouse, the monks of, 75 Châtelet, the Grand, 44, 154, 408 Châtelet, the Petit, 152, 192, 408 Chaumette, _note_, 299 Chelles, Jean de, 87 Chenier, Marie Joseph, 282 Childebert, 26 Chilperic III., 35 Choiseul, Duke of, 248 Cité, the, 11, _note_, 36, 37, 295 Clarence, Duke of, 138 Claude Lorrain, 224, 377 Clement V., Pope, 111 Clément, Jacques, 189, 190 Clergy, their wealth, 256 Clisson, Constable of, 129 Clootz, 282 Clotilde, 24, 26 Cloud, St., 27 Clovis, captures Paris, 21; stories of, 21, 24; conversion of, 24; makes Paris his capital, 26; Tower of, 331 Cluny, Hôtel de, 159; Museum of, 324-329 Colbert, 223, 234, 235, 237 Coligny, Admiral, 176; attempted assassination of, 178; his assassination, 181 Collège, de Cluny, 98; de France, 163, 329; des Jesuits, 105; des Lombards, 316; de Montaigu, 97; de Navarre, 97; de la Sorbonne, 96 Colleges, foundation of, 95-98 Comédie Française, 424-426 Comines, De, 145, 148, 163 Commune, origin of, 17 Conciergerie, the, 120, 312 Concini, assassination of, 205 Condé, Prince of, 175, 176, 178, 183, 204, 209, 210 Condorcet, 282 Constance of Aquitaine, 54 Contrat, Social, the, 279, 280 Convention, the National, its constructive work, 275 Cordeliers, the, 76; club of, 324 Corneille, 224, 314 Cortona, Dom. da, 155, 159 Coryat, his impressions of Paris, 200-203 Cour du Dragon, 321; des Miracles, 421; de Rouen, 67 Crecy, 121,134 D DAGOBERT THE GREAT, 33, 34, 305 Damiens, 247 Dante, 59, 89, 103, 109, 159, 278 Danton, 273, 324 Dark Ages, the so-called, 88, 89 Da Vinci, 158, 354, 372 Debrosse, Solomon, 208 Deffand, Mme. du, 282 Denis, St., legends of, 15; Abbey of, 33; body of, exposed, 56; church of, 23, 84, 193; head of, 203; tombs at, 436-440 Desmoulins, Camille, 98, 213, 261, 324 Diamond necklace, the, 78 Dickens, at Paris, 416 Dionysius, 13, 15 Dolet, Étienne, 316 Dominic, St., at Paris, 76 Dominicans, the, 76 Dubois, Abbé, 242 Durham, Bishop of, his praise of Paris, 104 E EBLES, ABBOT, 44, 47 Edward IV., of England, 146 Egalité, Philip, 213, 272 Elizabeth, Queen, her crooked policy, 177 Eloy, St., 33; abbey of, 37, 60 Élysée, the, 433 Emigrés, the, 267, 268 Empire, the second, its fall, 287; changes under, at Paris, 292 Encyclopedists, the, 279, 281, 282 English Barons at Paris, 125 English, occupy Paris, 138; expelled from Paris, 143 Erasmus, 98, 163 Estampes, Mme. d', 162 Estiennes, the, 148-150 Estrées, Gabrielle d', 193, 195, 196, 216 Étienne du Mont, St., _note_, 85, 159, 331 Etoile, Arch of, l', 291 Eudes, Count, 44, 47, 48, 49 Eugene III., Pope, at Paris, 61 Eustache, St., church of, 159, 421 Evelyn, at Paris, 210, 275 F FEUDALISM, rise of, 50, 52 Fioretti, the, _note_, 78 Fontainebleau, school of, 160, 372 Francis I., 149, 156, 157; fixes hotel charges, _note_, 164; his morbid piety, 166; and death, 169; Maison de, 433 Francis II., 175 Francis, St., 102 Franciscan Refectory, 322 Franciscans, the, 76 Franklin, Benjamin, 266, 282 Fredegonde, her career and death, 27-29 French art, its stubborn individuality, 159 French language, the, its universality, 102 Froissart, 300 Fronde, the, 218, 219 Fulbert, Canon, 91 Fulrad, Abbot, 38 G GALERIE, GRANDE, 198, 353 Galerie, Petite, 198, 250, 399 Galilée, Island of, 14 Gauls, their permanent traits, 3, 4 Genevieve, St., 22, 23, 47; church and abbey of, 23, 36, 61, 112, 254, 331 Germain, St., of Paris, 28, 30 Germain, St., des Prés, church and abbey of, 32, 36, 85, 89, 152, 319-321; abbot's palace of, 321 Germain, St., l'Auxerrois, 22, 30; church of, 32, 44, 423 Gervais, St., church of, 36, 402 Gibbon, 255, _note_, 282 Giocondo, Fra, 155 Girondins, the, 311, 312 Goethe, 259, 269, 275, 436 Goldoni, 275 Gothic architecture, rise of, 53, 84-88; its development to Flamboyant style, 151 Goujon, Jean, 174, 337, 343, 399, 415; his death, _note_, 174 Gozlin, Bishop, 43, 45, 46, 47 Greek first taught at Paris, 151 Gregory, St., 21, 28, 30, 31, 32 Greuze, 282, 384, 386 Guillaume de Nogaret, 113 Guillemites, the, 76 Guise, Cardinal of, 171 Guise, Duke of, 178, 180, 187; assassination of, 188 Guises, the, 171, 175, 176 H HALLE AUX VINS, the, 63 Halles, the, 69, 129, 146, 154, 422 Heine, his appreciation of Paris, 5; at the Louvre, 339 Helvetius, 282 Henry I., 56 Henry II., 171; his tragic death, 172 Henry III., 178, 186, 188; his assassination, 189 Henry V. of England, 136, 137 Henry VI. of England, 137, 141 Heretics, first execution of, 69 Holy Ghost, order of, 187, 326 Hôtel, d'Aumont, 403; de Beauvais, 403; de Bourbon, 153; Burgundy, 133; Carnavalet, 415; de Clisson, 412; Dieu, 37, 80, 81, 200, 297; Fieubert, 406; de Hollande, 414; de Lulli, 429; de Mayenne, 405; de Nesle, 68; Provost of Paris, 403; de Rohan, 413; St. Paul, 127, 133, 152; de Soubise, 411; de Sully, 416; des Tournelles, 146, 153; de Ville, 159, 199, 292, 400 Hugo, Victor, 7, 155, 255, 287, 310; house of, 416 Huguenots, the, 175, 176, 177, 179, 206, 228 I INFANTA, the, 244; garden of, 244, 250 Innocents, cemetery of the, 69, 155, 182, 417-420; fountain of, 417 Institut, the, 222 Invalides, the, 237 Iron Mask, Man of, 261, 405 Isabella of Bavaria, her welcome, 130; joins Jean sans Peur, 136 Italian art at Paris, 155, 159 J JACOBINS, the, 76; club of, 208 Jacquerie, the, 122 Jacques, St., de la Boucherie, 63, 154, 408 Jansenists, the, 231, 245, 247 Jean sans Peur, 131-136, 414, 420 Jeanne d'Arc wounded at siege of Paris, 139; her trial and rehabilitation, 140 Jefferson, Thomas, 265 Jesuits, the, 164, 198, 231, 245, 247, 248 John the Good, 118, 121, 125 Joinville, 81, _note_, 82 Julian, the Emperor, 17; statue of, 18, 341; his love of Paris, 18 Julien le Pauvre, St., church of, 32, 37, 85, 99, 313 Justice, bed of, 216 L LATIN QUARTER, the, 93, 99 Latini, Brunetto, _note_, 89 Lavoisier, 282 Law, John, 242, 243 League, the, 187, 188, 191, 193 Lebrun, 215, 224, 235, 378, 379 Leczinska, Marie, 244, 249 Lemercier, Jacques, 210, 421 Lenoir, Alexandre, 335 Lescot, his work on the Louvre, 165, 173, 174 Lesueur, 75, 215, 373, 374 Levau, 215, 234 Lombard, Peter, 94 Londonne, Jocius de, 96 Lorraine, Cardinal of, assassinated, 189 Louis VI., the Lusty, 58, 62, 63 Louis, St., his youth, 70; affection for his mother, 70; conception of kingship, 71; popular justice, 71; piety, 72; love of stories, 72; the Jews and, 73, 74; founds library of Sainte Chapelle, 75; his rigid justice, 79, 81; death, 81; personal appearance and prowess, 83 Louis, St., island of, 214, 407; church of, 215 Louis XI. at Paris, 145, 146; his death, 148 Louis XII. returns taxes, 156 Louis XIII., 204, 205, 208 Louis XIV., 212, 215, 220; his court, 224, 225; hatred of Paris, 225; his "three queens" at the wars, 230; his death, 233 Louis XV., his majority, 243; popularity, 244, 246; death, 249 Louis XVI., 256, 257; trial and execution of, 271-273 Louis XVIII., 255 Louis Philippe, 287 Louviers, island of, 14, 240, 406 Louvois, 224 Louvre, the, 68, 126, 164, 173, 198, 210, 233-237, 250-252, 289-290, 333-336; Sculpture, ancient, 336-341; mediæval and renaissance, 341-346; modern, 346-350; Pictures, foreign schools, 350-368; French schools, 368-398; Persian and Egyptian art, 398-399 Loyola, Ignatius, 164 Lutetia, 11, 14, 18, 19 Luther, appeals to Paris, 104 Lutherans at Paris, 167, 169 Luxembourg, palace of, 208; museum of, 322; palace and gardens of, 322 Luxor, column of, 291 Luynes, Albert de, 205 M MADELEINE, Church of, 291 Maillart, Jean, 123 Maillotins, the, 129 Maintenon, Mme. de, 227, 228, 229, 231, 233 Maison aux Piliers, 122, 123, 130 Manége, Salle du, 271, 429 Mansard, François, 212, 237 Mansard, J.H., 226, 237 Marais, the, 15, 407 Marat, 255, 289, 324 Marcel, Étienne, 122-124 Marchands d'Eau, Provost of, 122 Margaret of Angoulême, 149 Marguerite of Valois, 176, 177, 181, 194, 195 Marly, 227, 230, 232 Marseillaises, the, 275 Martel, Charles, 35 Martin, St., legend of, 16 Martin, St., des Champs, 57, 86, 155, _note_, 412 Maur des Fossés, St., _note_, 39, 60 Mayenne, Duke of, 192, 204 Mazarin, 213, 216, 219, 222; palais, 222, 429 Mazzini, 279 Médard, St., church of, 333 Medici, Catherine de', 173, 176, 180; her death, 189 Medici, Marie de', 195, 196, 204, 206, 207 Medici fountain, 322 Medicine, faculty of, 318 Merovingian dynasty, 26 Merri, St., church of, 159, 408 Mirabeau, 255, 267; funeral of, 422; the elder, 258 Mississippi bubble, the, 243 Molay, Jacques de, 111, 112, 113, 116 Molière, 224, 233 Monarchy, growing power of, 174; absolutism of, 220, 223 Monasteries, reform of, 60; suppression of, 284 Montereau, Pierre de, 57, 88 Montfaucon, 48; gallows of, 201 Montgomery, Count of, 172 Montjoie, St. Denis, war cry of, _note_, 121 Montmartre, 15; abbey of, 65 Morris, Governor, 265 Morris, William, 88 N NANTES, EDICT OF, revocation of, 228 Napoleon I., 276, 277, 278, 279, 281, 289, 290, 291, 426 Napoleon, Louis, 255, 287 Navarre, Charles of, 123 Navarre, Henry of, 178, 183, 189; his conversion and kingship, 193, 194; divorce, 193; assassination, 197; statue of, 208, 210 Navarre, Jeanne of, 176, 177 _Nautæ_, altar of, 17, 328 Necker, Mme., 282 Nemours, Duke of, execution of, 147 Nicholas, St., chapel of, 39, 72; church of, 251 _Noces vermeilles_, the, 177 Normans, the, 41, 49 Norwich, Canons of, 314 Notre Dame, church of, 32, 36, 72, 85, 107, 109, 116, 142, 143, 252, 298-305; de Lorette, 291; des Victoires, 206; island of, 14; Parvis of, 297 O ODÉON, theatre of the, 322 Opera, Italian, the, 233 Opera, the new, 293 Orders, the religious, 59 Oriflamme, the, 62, 440 Orleans, Duke of, 133; assassinated, 136; Philip of, 212, 242 Orme, Philibert de l', 198 Ovens, public, 57 P PAINE, THOMAS, 272 Palace of Archbishop of Sens, 407 Palais de Justice, 53, 118, 137, 152, 309-313 Palais Royal, 15, 212, 213, 217, 234; gardens of, 261, 427 Palissy, 199 Panthéon, the, 254, 330 Paris, her essential unity, 2; apprehension of coming changes, 4; intellectual culture, 5, 21; conquest by Romans, 12; origin of, 9-12; geographical position, 10-13; device of, 17; sacked by the Northmen, 41; siege of, by Northmen, 43; growth under Capets, 53; expansion under Louis VI., 63; evil smells at, 65; first paving of, 65; capital of intellectual world, 101; faubourgs wasted by English, 121, 124, 125; first library at, 126; occupied by English, 138, 143; life at, under English, 141-143; bridges of, 152; sieges of, by Henry of Navarre, 189, 191; sections of, their insurrection, 191, 192; its dirt, 202; misery at, 231, 241, 247, 256; a vast camp, 273, 274 Parisian democracy, its enlightenment, 7 Parisians, their responsive nature and love of order, 6; loss of liberties, 130; their loyalty and tolerance, 286 Parisii, the, 10, 11 Parlement, the, 118, 216-218, 220 Parloir aux Bourgeois, 122 Pascal, 231 Passion, Confrères de la, 420 Paul, St., charnel-houses, 405 Paul and Louis, SS., church of, 405 Peasantry, their condition, 260 Pepin the Short, 35 Père la Chaise, 220 Peronne, peace of, 146 Perrault, Charles, 235; Claude, 224, 235-236, 250 Petit, Nesle, the, 160 Philip I., 57 Philip Augustus, birth of, 64; his entry into Paris, 65; wall of, 65-68, 405, 407 Philip le Bel, 78, 100, 107, 117 Philip VI., 121 Pierre, St., church of, 15 Pierre aux Boeufs, St., church of, 63, 297 Pillory, the, 423 Place, Châtelet, 407; de la Concorde, 430-433; de Grève, 116, 146, 154, 168, 197, 400; Maubert, 169, 316; Royale, 186, 200, 207, 415, 416; Vendôme, 429 Plantes, Jardin des, 214 Poitiers, 121, 134; Diana of, 150, 173 Pol, St., Count of, 146 Pompadour, Mme., 215, 247 Pont, au Change, _note_, 15, 154, 200; de la Concorde, 264; Grand, 15, 70; Marie, 214; aux Meuniers, 200; Neuf, 210; Notre Dame, 155; aux Oiseaux, 200; Petit, 14, 70, 152, 155; Royal, 240 Ponzardus de Gysiaco, 113 Pope Paul III., his humane protest, 169 Port Royal, suppression of, 232 Porte, St. Antoine, 124; St. Denis, 123, 238; St. Jacques, 143; St. Martin, 238 Poussin, 234, 375-377 Prés aux Clercs, the, 100; students at, 101 Printing, art of, at Paris, 148-150 Provost, of Marchands d'Eau, 17; suppressed, 130; royal, _note_, 17 Puget, 224, 347 Punishments, cruelty of, during Renaissance, 168 Q QUAI, DES AUGUSTINS, 283; de la Mégisserie, 154 Quinze-Vingts, the, 78 R RABELAIS, _note_, 39, 98, 405 Racine, 224 Radegonde, St., _note_, 27 Ravaillac, 197 Reason, temples of, 285, 286 Reformation, the, 174 Renaissance, architecture at Paris, 156 Republic, the second, 287 Republic, the third, 287, 292 Retz, de, Cardinal, 216, 219 Revolution, the great, its beneficent results, 288 Reynolds, 236, 361, 362, 377, 380 Richelieu, 205, 206, 208, 214 Robert the Pious, 53, 54, 55 Robespierre, 106, 260, 267, 426 Roch, St., church of, 429 Rohan, Cardinal of, 78 Rollo, 42, 49 Romilly, Sir S., his letters, 265 Ronsard, 337 Rousseau, J.J., 240, 255, 257, 281, 426 Royalty abolished, 270 Rue, des Anglais, 316; de l'Arbre Sec, 29, 423; des Archives, 410, 412; du Bac, 240; des Blancs Manteaux, 410; du Dante, 316; Étienne Marcel, 133, 420; de la Ferronnerie, 238, 417; du Fouarre, 103, 316; François Miron, 403; des Francs Bourgeois, 412; Guénégaud, 68; des Lombards, 154, 417; Montorgeuil, 421; Mouffetard, 333; des Petits Champs, 429; Quincampoix, 243; de Rivoli, 154; St. Antoine, 405; St. Denis, 407; St. Jacques, 13, 149, 283, 313; St. Martin, 15, 408; de Venise, 409; Vieille du Temple, 136, 414 Ruggieri column, 422, 423 Ruskin, 86, 375 S SACRÉ COEUR, church of the, 293 Salisbury, John of, 94 Salons, the, 281 Samaritaine, la, 210 _Sans-culottes_, the, 274 Savoy, Adelaide of, 232 Saxony, Henry of, 47 Scholars, poor, at Paris, 94 Schools, rise of, at Paris, 90; elementary, 106 Scotus Duns, 78, 306 Sculpture, French, 87 Seigneurs, their lawlessness, 58 Sens, archbishop of, 61, 114, 116 September, massacres of, 270 Serfs, at Paris, 54 Sévérin, St., church of, 297, 314 Sévigné, Mme. de, 415 Sick, the care of in Middle Ages, 80 Siéyès, 281, 282 Siger, 103, 316 Signs, old, 283, 423 Simon, St., Duke of, 224, 232, 242 Sorbon, Robert of, 72, 96 Sorbonne, the, 292; chapel of, 329 Soufflot, 237, 252, 254 Staël, Mme. de, 282 States-General, the, 107, 122, 192, 204 Stephen, St., church of, 32, 85 Streets, renaming of, 283 Stuart, Marie, 175 Suger, Abbot, 62, 84 Sully, Duke of, 193, 196, 406 Sully, Maurice de, 85, 94 Sulpice, St., church of, 255, 321 T TALLEYRAND, 265, 282 Talma, Julie, 282 Tasso, 405 Tellier, le, 231 Templars, destruction of, 109-118; fortress of, 117, 155 Terror, the, 260, 275; the White, 261 Thermidorians, the, 260 Thomas, St., of Canterbury, 94; church of, 95 Thorns, Crown of, redeemed by St. Louis, 71 _Tiers État_, the, 107 Tolbiac, battle of, 24 Torture, late use of in England, _note_, 114 Tour de Nesle, 68 Trellises, island of, 117 Tribunal, revolutionary, 311 Trocadero, the, 292, _note_, 438 Truce of God, the, 101 Tuileries, the, 153, 273; gardens of, 179, 430; palace of, 198; attack on, 269 Turenne, 219, 260 Twelve, the, 46, 47, 313 U UNIVERSITY, origin of the, 98; decadence of, 104; the modern, 329 Ursins, Mme. des, 229 V VACHES, ISLE DES, 14 Val de Grâce, 237 Vallière, Mme. de la, 212, 226 Valois, House of, 121 Varennes, flight to, 267 Vauban, 224 Vendôme, Duke of, 230; column of, 291, 430; place, 240 Venetian merchants at Paris, 40 Vergniaud, 272, 282 Versailles, 226, 230 Victoires, Place des, 240 Victor, St., abbey of, 61 Villon, François, _note_, 68, 94, 330 Vincennes, chapel of, 128 Vincent, St., 36; de Paul, church of, 291 Viollet le Duc, 80, 292 Volney, 282 Voltaire, 215, 223, 244, 255, 258, 281, 426 W WALL, GALLO-ROMAN, 16, 36; of Philip-Augustus, 66, 68, 233, 330; of Marcel, 123; of Charles V., 128 Wars, religious, 175 Watch, the royal, 81 Willoughby, Lord, 143 Workmen, compensation of; by Charles V., 127 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, BRUNSWICK ST., STAMFORD ST., S.E. 1, AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK. _The Mediæval Town Series_ ASSISI.* By LINA DUFF GORDON. [_4th Edition._ BRUGES.+ By ERNEST GILLIAT-SMITH. [_3rd Edition._ BRUSSELS.+ By ERNEST GILLIAT-SMITH. CAIRO.+ By STANLEY LANE-POOLE. [_2nd Edition._ CAMBRIDGE.+ By CHARLES W. STUBBs, D.D. CHARTRES.+ By CECIL HEADLAM. CONSTANTINOPLE.* By WILLIAM H. HUTTON. [_2nd Edition._ EDINBURGH.+ By OLIPHANT SMEATON. FERRARA.+ By ELLA NOYES. FLORENCE.+ By EDMUND G. GARDNER. [_8th Edition._ LONDON.+ By HENRY B. WHEATLEY. [_2nd Edition._ MOSCOW.* By WIRT GERRARE. [_2nd Edition._ NUREMBERG.* By CECIL HEADLAM. [_4th Edition._ PARIS.+ By THOMAS OKEY. PERUGIA.* By MARGARET SYMONDS and LINA DUFF GORDON. [_5th Edition._ PRAGUE.* By Count Lutzow. ROME.+ By NORWOOD YOUNG. [_4th Edition._ ROUEN.+ By THEODORE A. COOK. [_3rd Edition._ SEVILLE.+ By WALTER M. GALLICHAN. SIENA.+ By EDMUND G. GARDNER. [_2nd Edition._ TOLEDO.* By HANNAH LYNCH. [_2nd Edition._ VERONA.+ By ALETHEA WIEL. [_2nd Edition._ VENICE.+ By THOMAS OKEY. _The prices of these(*) are 3s. 6d. net in cloth, 4s. 6d. net in leather; these(+) 4s. 6d. net in cloth, 5s. 6d. net in leather._ 
37937	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 37937-h.htm or 37937-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37937/37937-h/37937-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37937/37937-h.zip) Transcriber's note: Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Text printed in italics in the original document is enclosed here between underscores, as in _italics_. A WANDERER IN PARIS * * * * * OTHER WORKS BY E. V. LUCAS Mr. Ingleside Over Bemerton's Listener's Lure London Lavender One Day and Another Fireside and Sunshine Character and Comedy Old Lamps for New The Hambledon Men The Open Road The Friendly Town Her Infinite Variety Good Company The Gentlest Art The Second Post A Little of Everything A Swan and Her Friends A Wanderer in Florence A Wanderer in London A Wanderer in Holland The British School Highways and Byways in Sussex Anne's Terrible Good Nature The Slowcoach Sir Pulteney The Life of Charles Lamb and The Pocket Edition of the Works of Charles Lamb: I. Miscellaneous Prose; II. Elia; III. Children's Books; IV. Poems and Plays; V. and VI. Letters * * * * * [Illustration: HÔTEL DE SENS THE RUE DE L'HÔTEL DE VILLE] A WANDERER IN PARIS by E. V. LUCAS With Sixteen Illustrations in Colour by Walter Dexter and Thirty-Two Reproductions from Works of Art "I'll go and chat with Paris" _--Romeo and Juliet_ TENTH EDITION Methuen & Co. Ltd. 36 Essex Street W.C. London _First Published (Crown 8vo)_ _August 5th 1909_ _Second Edition ( " )_ _September 1909_ _Third Edition ( " )_ _October 1909_ _Fourth Edition ( " )_ _January 1910_ _Fifth Edition ( " )_ _June 1910_ _Sixth Edition ( " )_ _December 1910_ _Seventh Edition, revised (Fcap. 8vo)_ _September 1911_ _Eighth Edition (Crown 8vo)_ _October 1911_ _Ninth Edition ( " )_ _March 1912_ _Tenth Edition ( " )_ _February 1913_ PREFACE Although the reader will quickly make the discovery for himself, I should like here to emphasise the fact that this is a book about Paris and the Parisians written wholly from the outside, and containing only so much of that city and its citizens as a foreigner who has no French friends may observe on holiday visits. I express elsewhere my indebtedness to a few French authors. I have also been greatly assisted in a variety of ways, but especially in the study of the older Paris streets, by my friend Mr. Frank Holford. E. V. L. NOTE Since this new edition was prepared for the press the devastating theft of Leonardo da Vinci's "Monna Lisa" was perpetrated. Pages 81-87 therefore--describing that picture as one of the chief treasures of the Louvre--must change their tense to the past. E. V. L. CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I THE ENGLISH GATES OF PARIS 1 CHAPTER II THE ILE DE LA CITÉ 9 CHAPTER III NOTRE DAME 31 CHAPTER IV SAINT LOUIS AND HIS ISLAND 54 CHAPTER V THE MARAIS 61 CHAPTER VI THE LOUVRE: I. THE OLD MASTERS 78 CHAPTER VII THE LOUVRE: II. MODERN PICTURES AND OTHER TREASURES 97 CHAPTER VIII THE TUILERIES 114 CHAPTER IX THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE, THE CHAMPS ELYSÉES AND THE INVALIDES 132 CHAPTER X THE BOULEVARD ST. GERMAIN AND ITS TRIBUTARIES 158 CHAPTER XI THE LATIN QUARTER 170 CHAPTER XII THE PANTHÉON AND SAINTE GENEVIÈVE 188 CHAPTER XIII TWO ZOOS 199 CHAPTER XIV THE GRANDS BOULEVARDS: I. THE MADELEINE TO THE OPERA 214 CHAPTER XV A CHAIR AT THE CAFÉ DE LA PAIX 227 CHAPTER XVI THE GRANDS BOULEVARDS: II. THE OPERA TO THE PLACE DE LA RÉPUBLIQUE 244 CHAPTER XVII MONTMARTRE 260 CHAPTER XVIII THE ELYSÉE TO THE HÔTEL DE VILLE 276 CHAPTER XIX THE PLACE DES VOSGES AND HUGO'S HOUSE 299 CHAPTER XX THE BASTILLE, PÈRE LACHAISE AND THE END 306 INDEX 321 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR THE RUE DE L'HÔTEL DE VILLE _Frontispiece_ THE COURTYARD OF THE COMPAS D'OR _To face page_ 6 THE ILE DE LA CITÉ FROM THE PONT DES ARTS " 40 NOTRE DAME " 58 THE ARC DE TRIOMPHE DE L'ETOILE " 74 THE PARC MONCEAU " 116 THE ARC DE TRIOMPHE DU CARROUSEL " 124 THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE " 140 THE PONT ALEXANDRE III. " 160 THE FONTAINE DE MÉDICIS " 180 THE MUSÉE CLUNY " 200 THE RUE DE BIÈVRE " 222 THE BOULEVARD DES ITALIENS " 240 THE PORTE ST. DENIS " 258 THE SACRE COEUR DE MONTMARTRE FROM THE BUTTES-CHAUMONT " 280 THE PLACE DES VOSGES, SOUTHERN ENTRANCE " 300 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN BLACK AND WHITE MAP. From a Drawing by B. C. Boulter _front Cover_ THE NATIVITY. Luini (louvre) _to face page_ 16 From a Photograph by Mansell GIOVANNA TORNABUONI AND THE CARDINAL VIRTUES--Fresco from the Villa Lemmi. Botticelli (Louvre) " 20 LA VIERGE AUX ROCHERS. Leonardo da Vinci (Louvre) " 26 From a Photograph by Neurdein SAINTE ANNE, LA VIERGE, ET L'ENFANT JÉSUS. Leonardo da Vinci. (Louvre) " 36 From a Photograph by Neurdein LA PENSÉE. Rodin (Luxembourg) " 46 From a Photograph by Neurdein BALTHASAR CASTIGLIONE. Raphael (Louvre) " 52 From a Photograph by Neurdein L'HOMME AU GANT. Titian (Louvre) " 64 From a Photograph by Neurdein PORTRAIT DE JEUNE HOMME. Attributed to Bigio (Louvre) " 70 From a Photograph by Alinari THE WINGED VICTORY OF SAMOTHRACE. (Louvre) " 80 From a Photograph by Giraudon LA JOCONDE: MONNA LISA. Leonardo da Vinci (Louvre) " 86 From a Photograph by Neurdein PORTRAIT D'UNE DAME ET SA FILLE. Van Dyck (Louvre) " 94 From a Photograph by Mansell LE VALLON. Corot (Louvre, Thomy-Thierret Collection) " 106 From a Photograph by Neurdein LE PRINTEMPS. Rousseau (Louvre, Thomy-Thierret Collection) " 120 From a Photograph by Neurdein VIEUX HOMME ET ENFANT. Ghirlandaio (Louvre) " 136 From a Photograph by Mansell VÉNUS ET L'AMOUR. Rembrandt (Louvre) " 146 From a Photograph by Neurdein LES PÈLERINS D'EMMAÜS. Rembrandt (Louvre) " 154 From a Photograph by Neurdein LA VIERGE AU DONATEUR. J. van Eyck (Louvre) " 166 From a Photograph by Neurdein PORTRAIT DE SA MÈRE. Whistler (Luxembourg) " 176 LA BOHÉMIENNE. Franz Hals (Louvre) " 186 From a Photograph by Neurdein STE. GENEVIÈVE. Puvis de Chavannes (Panthéon) " 190 From a Photograph by Neurdein LA LEÇON DE LECTURE. Terburg (Louvre) " 206 From a Photograph by Neurdein LA DENTELLIÈRE. Vermeer of Delft (Louvre) " 216 From a Photograph by Woodbury GIRL'S HEAD. Ecole de Fabriano (Louvre) " 228 From a Photograph by Mansell LE BÉNÉDICITÉ. Chardin (Louvre) " 234 From a Photograph by Giraudon MADAME LE BRUN ET SA FILLE. Madame Le Brun (Louvre) " 246 From a Photograph by Hanfstaengl LE PONT DE MANTES. Corot (Louvre, Moreau Collection) " 252 From a Photograph by Neurdein LA PROVENDE DES POULES. Troyon (Louvre, Thomy-Thierret Collection) " 266 From a Photograph by Alinari THE WINDMILL. R. P. Bonington (Louvre) " 274 L'AMATEUR D'ESTAMPES. Daumier (Palais des Beaux Arts) " 286 LE BAISER. Rodin (Luxembourg) " 294 From a Photograph by Neurdein LA BERGÈRE GARDANT SES MOUTONS. Millet (Louvre, Chauchard Collection) " 308 LE MONUMENT AUX MORTS. A. Bartholomé (Père la Chaise) " 316 From a Photograph by Neurdein A WANDERER IN PARIS CHAPTER I THE ENGLISH GATES OF PARIS The Gare du Nord and Gare St. Lazare--The Singing Cabman--"Vivent les femmes!"--Characteristic Paris--The Next Morning--A Choice of Delights--The Compas d'Or--The World of Dumas--The First Lunch--Voisin wins. Most travellers from London enter Paris in the evening, and I think they are wise. I wish it were possible again and again to enter Paris in the evening for the first time; but since it is not, let me hasten to say that the pleasure of re-entering Paris in the evening is one that custom has almost no power to stale. Every time that one emerges from the Gare du Nord or the Gare St. Lazare one is taken afresh by the variegated and vivid activity of it all--the myriad purposeful self-contained bustling people, all moving on their unknown errands exactly as they were moving when one was here last, no matter how long ago. For Paris never changes: that is one of her most precious secrets. The London which one had left seven or eight hours before was populous enough and busy enough, Heaven knows, but London's pulse is slow and fairly regular, and even at her gayest, even when greeting Royalty, she seems to be advising caution and a careful demeanour. But Paris--Paris smiles and Paris sings. There is an incredible vivacity in her atmosphere. Sings! This reminds me that on the first occasion that I entered Paris--in the evening, of course--my cabman sang. He sang all the way from the Gare du Nord to the Rue Caumartin. This seemed to me delightful and odd, although at first I felt in danger of attracting more attention than one likes; but as we proceeded down the Rue Lafayette--which nothing but song and the fact that it is the high road into Paris from England can render tolerable--I discovered that no one minded us. A singing cabman in London would bring out the Riot Act and the military; but here he was in the picture: no one threw at the jolly fellow any of the chilling deprecatory glances which are the birthright of every light-hearted eccentric in my own land. And so we proceeded to the hotel, often escaping collision by the breadth of a single hair, the driver singing all the way. What he sang I knew not; but I doubt if it was of battles long ago: rather, I should fancy, of very present love and mischief. But how fitting a first entry into Paris! An hour or so later--it was just twenty years ago, but I remember it so clearly--I observed written up in chalk in large emotional letters on a public wall the words "Vivent les femmes!" and they seemed to me also so odd--it seemed to me so funny that the sentiment should be recorded at all, since women were obviously going to live whatever happened--that I laughed aloud. But it was not less characteristic of Paris than the joyous baritone notes that had proceeded from beneath the white tall hat of my cocher. It was as natural for one Parisian to desire the continuance of his joy as a lover, even to expressing it in chalk in the street, as to another to beguile with lyrical snatches the tedium of cab-driving. I was among the Latin people, and, as I quickly began to discover, I was myself, for the first time, a foreigner. That is a discovery which one quickly makes in Paris. But I have not done yet with the joy of entering and re-entering Paris in the evening--after the long smooth journey across the marshes of Picardy or through the orchards of Normandy and the valley of the Seine--whichever way one travels. But whether one travels by Calais, Boulogne, Dieppe or Havre, whether one alights at the Gare du Nord or St. Lazare, once outside the station one is in Paris instantly: there is no debatable land between either of these termini and the city, as there is, for example, between the Gare de Lyons and the city. Paris washes up to the very platforms. A few steps and here are the foreign tables on the pavements and the foreign waiters, so brisk and clean, flitting among them; here are the vehicles meeting and passing on the wrong or foreign side, and beyond that, knowing apparently no law at all; here are the deep-voiced newsvendors shouting those magic words _La Patrie!_ _La Patrie!_ which, should a musician ever write a Paris symphony, would recur and recur continually beneath its surface harmonies. And here, everywhere, are the foreign people in their ordered haste and their countless numbers. The pleasure of entering and re-entering Paris in the evening is only equalled by the pleasure of stepping forth into the street the next morning in the sparkling Parisian air and smelling again the pungent Parisian scent and gathering in the foreign look of the place. I know of no such exuberance as one draws in with these first Parisian inhalations on a fine morning in May or June--and in Paris in May and June it is always fine, just as in Paris in January and February it is always cold or wet. His would be a very sluggish or disenchanted spirit who was not thus exhilarated; for here at his feet is the holiday city of Europe and the clean sun over all. And then comes the question "What to do?" Shall we go at once to "Monna Lisa"? But could there be a better morning for the children in the Champs-Elysées? That beautiful head in the His de la Salle collection--attributed to the school of Fabriano! How delightfully the sun must be lighting up the red walls of the Place des Vosges! Rodin's "Kiss" at the Luxembourg--we meant to go straight to that! The wheel window in Notre Dame, in the north transept--I have been thinking of that ever since we planned to come. So may others talk and act; but I have no hesitancies. My duty is clear as crystal. On the first morning I pay a visit of reverence and delight to the ancient auberge of the Compas d'Or at No. 64 Rue Montorgeuil. And this I shall always do until it is razed to the earth, as it seems likely to be under the gigantic scheme, beyond Haussmann almost, which is to renovate the most picturesque if the least sanitary portions of old Paris at a cost of over thirty millions of pounds. Unhappy day--may it be long postponed! For some years now I have always approached the Compas d'Or with trembling and foreboding. Can it still be there? I ask myself. Can that wonderful wooden hanger that covers half the courtyard have held so long? Will there be a motor-car among the old diligences and waggons? But it is always the same. From the street--and the Rue Montorgeuil is as a whole one of the most picturesque and characteristic of the older streets of Paris, with its high white houses, each containing fifty families, its narrowness, its barrows of fruit and green stuff by both pavements, and its crowds of people--from the street, the Compas d'Or is hardly noticeable, for a butcher and a cutler occupy most of its façade; but the sign and the old carvings over these shops give away the secret, and you pass through one of the narrow archways on either side and are straightway in a romance by the great Dumas. Into just such a courtyard would D'Artagnan have dashed, and leaping from one sweating steed leap on another and be off again amid a shower of sparks on the stones. Time has stood still here. There is no other such old inn left. The coach to Dreux--now probably a carrier's cart--still regularly runs from this spot, as it has done ever since the beginning of the sixteenth century. Rows of horses stand in its massive stables and fill the air with their warm and friendly scent; a score of ancient carts huddle in the yard, in a corner of which there will probably be a little group of women shelling peas; beneath the enormous hanger are more vehicles, and masses of hay on which the carters sleep. The ordinary noise of Paris gives way, in this sanctuary of antiquity, to the scraping of hoofs, the rattle of halter bolts, and the clatter of the wooden shoes of ostlers. It is the past in actual being--Civilisation, like Time, has stood still in the yard of the Compas d'Or. That is why I hasten to it so eagerly and shall always do so until it disappears for ever. There is nothing else in Paris like it. And after? Well, the next thing is to have lunch. And since this lunch--being the first--will be the best lunch of the holiday and therefore the best meal of the holiday (for every meal on a holiday in Paris is a little better than that which follows it), it is an enterprise not lightly to be undertaken. One must decide carefully, for this is to be an extravagance: the search for the little out-of-the-way restaurant will come later. To-day we are rich. [Illustration: THE COURTYARD OF THE COMPAS D'OR, RUE MONTORGEUIL] This book is not a guide for the gastronome and gourmet. How indeed could it be, even although when heaven sends a cheerful hour one would scorn to refrain? Yet none the less it would be pleasant in this commentary upon a city illustrious for its culinary ingenuity and genius to say something of restaurants. But what is one to say here on such a theme? Volumes are needed. Every one has his own taste. For me Voisin's remains, and will, I imagine, remain the most distinguished, the most serene, restaurant in Paris, in its retired situation at the corner of the Rue Saint-Honoré and the Rue Cambon, with its simple decoration, its unhastening order and despatch, its Napoleonic head-waiter, its Bacchic wine-waiter (with a head that calls for vine leaves) and its fastidious cuisine. To Voisin's I should always make my way when I wished not only to be delicately nourished but to be quiet and philosophic and retired. Only one other restaurant do I know where the cooking gives me the satisfaction of Voisin's--where excessive richness never intrudes--and that is a discovery of my own and not lightly to be given away. Voisin's is a name known all over the world: one can say nothing new about Voisin's; but the little restaurant with which I propose to tantalise you, although the resort of some of the most thoughtful eaters in Paris, has a reputation that has not spread. It is not cheap, it is little less dear indeed than the Café Anglais or Paillard's, to name the two restaurants of renown which are nearest to it; its cellar is poor and limited to half a dozen wines; its two rooms are minute and hot; but the idea of gastronomy reigns--everything is subordinated to the food and the cooking. If you order a trout, it is the best trout that France can breed, and it is swimming in the kitchen at the time the solitary waiter repeats your command; no such asparagus reaches any other Paris restaurant, no such Pré Salé and no such wild strawberries. But I have said enough; almost I fear I have said too much. These discoveries must be kept sacred. And for lunch to-day? Shall it be chez Voisin, or chez Foyot, by the Sénat, or chez Lapérouse (where the two Stevensons used to eat and talk) on the Quai des Augustins? Or shall it be at my nameless restaurant? Voisin's to-day, I think. CHAPTER II THE ILE DE LA CITÉ Paris Old and New--The Heart of France--Saint Louis--Old Palaces--Henri IV.'s Statue--Ironical Changes--The Seine and the Thames--The Quais and their Old Books--Diderot and the Lady--Police and Red Tape--The Conciergerie--Marie Antoinette--Paris and its Clocks--Méryon's Etchings--French Advocates--A Hall of Babel--Sainte Chapelle--French Newspapers Serious and Comic--The Only Joke--The English and the French. Where to begin? That is a problem in the writing of every book, but peculiarly so with Paris; because, however one may try to be chronological, the city is such a blend of old and new that that design is frustrated at every turn. Nearly every building of importance stands on the site of some other which instantly jerks us back hundreds of years, while if we deal first with the original structure, such as the remains of the Roman Thermes at the Cluny, built about 300, straightway the Cluny itself intrudes, and we leap from the third century to the nineteenth; or if we trace the line of the wall of Philip Augustus we come swiftly to so modern an institution as the Mont-de-Piété; or if we climb to such a recent thoroughfare as the Boulevard de Clichy, with its palpitatingly novel cabarets and allurements, we must in order to do so ascend a mountain which takes its name from the martyrdom of St. Denis and his companions in the third century. It is therefore well, since Paris is such a tangle of past and present, to disregard order altogether and to let these pages reflect her character. Expect then, dear reader, to be twitched about the ages without mercy. Let us begin in earnest by leaving the mainland and adventuring upon an island. For the heart of Paris is enisled: Notre Dame, Sainte Chapelle, the Palais de Justice, the Hôtel Dieu, the Préfecture de Police, the Morgue--all are entirely surrounded by water. The history of the Cité is the history of Paris, almost the history of France. Paris, the home of the Parisii, consisted of nothing but this island when Julius Cæsar arrived there with his conquering host. The Romans built their palace here, and here Julian the Apostate loved to sojourn. It was in Julian's reign that the name was changed from Lutetia (which it is still called by picturesque writers) to Parisea Civitas, from which Paris is an easy derivative. The Cité remained the home of government when the Merovingians under Clovis expelled the Romans, and again under the Carlovingians. The second Royal Palace was begun by the first of the Capets, Hugh, in the tenth century, and it was completed by Robert the Pious in the eleventh. Louis VII. decreed Notre Dame; but it was Saint Louis, reigning from 1226 to 1270, who was the father of the Cité as we now know it. He it was who built Sainte Chapelle, and it was he who surrendered part of the Palace to the Law. While it was the home of the Court and the Church the island naturally had little enough room for ordinary residents, who therefore had to live, whether aristocrats or tradespeople, on the mainland, either on the north or south side of the river. The north side was for the most part given to merchants, the south to scholars, for Saint Louis was the builder not only of Sainte Chapelle but also of the Sorbonne. Very few of the smaller buildings of that time now remain: the oldest Paris that one now wanders in so delightedly, whether on the north bank or the south, whether near the Sorbonne or the Hôtel de Sens, dates, with a few fortunate exceptions, from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Nowhere may the growth of Paris be better observed and better understood than on the highest point on this Island of the City--on the summit of Notre Dame. Standing there you quickly comprehend the Paris of the ages: from Cæsar's Lutetia, occupying the island only and surrounded by fields and wastes, to the Paris of this year of our Lord, spreading over the neighbouring hills, such a hive of human activity and energy as will hardly bear thinking of--a Paris which has thrown off the yoke not only of the kings that once were all-powerful but of the Church too. By the twelfth century the kings of France had begun to live in smaller palaces more to their personal taste, such as the Hôtel Barbette, the Hôtel de Sens (much of which still stands, as a glass factory, at the corner of the Rue de l'Hôtel de Ville and the Rue de Figuier, one of the oldest of the Paris mansions), the Hôtel de Bourgogne (in the Rue Etienne Marcel: you may still see its tower of Jean Sans Peur), the Hôtel de Nevers (what remains of which is at the corner of the Rue Colbert and Rue Richelieu), and, of course, the Louvre. Charles VII. (1422-1461) was the first king to settle at the Louvre permanently. To gain the Ile de la Cité we leave the mainland of Paris at the Quai du Louvre, and make our crossing by the Pont Neuf. Neuf no longer, for as a matter of historical fact it is now the oldest of all the Paris bridges: that is, in its foundations, for the visible part of it has been renovated quite recently. The first stone of it was laid by Henri III. in 1578: it was not ready for many years, but in 1603 Henri IV. (of Navarre) ventured across a plank of it on his way to the Louvre, after several previous adventurers had broken their necks in the attempt. "So much the less kings they," was his comment. He lived to see the bridge finished. Behind the statue of this monarch, whom the French still adore, is the garden that finishes off the west end of the Ile very prettily, sending its branches up above the parapet. Here we may stop; for we are now on the Island itself, midway between the two halves of the bridge, and the statue has such a curious history, so typical of the French character, that I should like to tell it. The original bronze figure, erected by Louis XIII. in 1614, was taken down in 1792, a time of stress, and melted into a commodity that was then of vastly greater importance than the effigies of kings--namely cannon. (As we shall see in the course of this book, Paris left the hands of the Revolutionaries a totally different city from the Paris of 1791.) Then came peace again, and then came Napoleon, and in the collection at the Archives is to be seen a letter written by the Emperor from Schönbrunn, on August 15th, 1809, stating that he wishes an obelisk to be erected on the site of the Henri IV. statue--an obelisk of Cherbourg granite, 180 pieds d'élévation, with the inscription "l'Empereur Napoléon au Peuple Français". That, however, was not done. Time passed on, Napoleon fell, and Louis XVIII. returned from his English home to the throne of France, and was not long in perpetrating one of those symmetrical ironical jests which were then in vogue. Taking from the Vendôme column the bronze statue of Napoleon (who was safely under the thumb of Sir Hudson Lowe at St. Helena, well out of mischief), and to this adding a second bronze statue of the same usurper intended for some other site, the monarch directed that they should be melted into liquid from which a new statue of Henri IV.--the very one at which we are at this moment gazing--should be cast. It was done, and though to the Röntgen-rayed vision of the cynic it may appear to be nothing more or less than a double Napoleon, it is to the world at large Henri IV., the hero of Ivry. I have seen comparisons between the Seine and the Thames; but they are pointless. You cannot compare them: one is a London river, and the other is a Paris river. The Seine is a river of light; the Thames is a river of twilight. The Seine is gay; the Thames is sombre. When dusk falls in Paris the Seine is just a river in the evening; when dusk falls in London the Thames becomes a wonderful mystery, an enchanted stream in a land of old romance. The Thames is, I think, vastly more beautiful; but on the other hand, the Thames has no merry passenger steamers and no storied quais. The Seine has all the advantage when we come to the consideration of what can be done with a river's banks in a great city. For the Seine has a mile of old book and curiosity stalls, whereas the Thames has nothing. And yet the coping of the Thames embankment is as suitable for such a purpose as that of the Seine, and as many Londoners are fond of books. How is it? Why should all the bookstalls and curiosity stalls of London be in Whitechapel and Farringdon Street and the Cattle Market? That is a mystery which I have never solved and never shall. Why are the West Central and the West districts wholly debarred--save in Charing Cross Road, and that I believe is suspect--from loitering at such alluring street banquets? It is beyond understanding. The history of the stall-holders of the quais has been told very engagingly by M. Octave Uzanne, whom one might describe as the Austin Dobson and the Augustine Birrell of France, in his work _Bouquinistes et Bouquineurs_. They established themselves first on the Pont Neuf, but in 1650 were evicted. (The Paris bridges, I might say here, become at the present time the resort of every kind of pedlar directly anything occurs to suspend their traffic.) The parapets of the quais then took the place of those of the bridge, and there the booksellers' cases have been ever since. But no longer are they the gay resort that once they were. It was considered, says M. Uzanne, writing of the eighteenth century, "quite the correct thing for the promenaders to gossip round the bookstalls and discuss the wit and fashionable writings of the day. At all hours of the day these quarters were much frequented, above all by literary men, lawyers clerks and foreigners. One historical fact, not generally known, merits our attention, for it shows that not only the libraries and the stall-keepers assisted in drawing men of letters to the vicinity of the Hôtel Mazarin, but there also existed a 'rendez-vous' for the sale of English and French journals. It was, in fact, at the corner of the Rue Dauphine and the Quai Conti that the first establishment known as the Café Anglais was started. One read in big letters on the signboard: Café Anglais--Becket, propriétaire. This was the meeting place of the greater part of English writers visiting Paris who wished to become acquainted with the literary men of the period, the encyclopædists and poets of the Court of Louis XV. This Café offered to its habitués the best-known English papers of the day, the _Westminster Gazette_, the _London Evening Post_, the _Daily Advertiser_, and the various pamphlets published on the other side of the Channel.... "You must know that the Quai Conti up to the year 1769 was only a narrow passage leading down to a place for watering horses. Between the Pont Neuf and the building known as the Château-Gaillard at the opening of the Rue Guénégaud, were several small shops, and a small fair continually going on. "This Château-Gaillard, which was a dependency of the old Porte de Nesle, had been granted by Francis I. to Benvenuto Cellini. The famous Florentine goldsmith received visits from the Sovereign protector of arts and here executed the work he had been ordered to do, under his Majesty's very eyes.... "One calls to mind that Sterne, in his delightful _Sentimental Journey_, was set down in 1767 at the Hôtel de Modène, in the Rue Jacob, opposite the Rue des Deux-Anges, and one has not forgotten his love for the quais and the adventure which befell him while chatting to a bookseller on the Quai Conti, of whom he wished to buy a copy of Shakespeare so that he might read once more Polonius' advice to his son before starting on his travels. "Diderot, in his _Salon_ of 1761, relates his flirtation with the pretty girl who served in one of these shops and afterwards became the wife of Menze. 'She called herself Miss Babuti and kept a small book shop on the Quai des Augustins, spruce and upright, white as a lily and red as a rose. I would enter her shop, in my own brisk way: "Mademoiselle, the 'Contes de la Fontaine' ... a 'Petronius' if you please."--"Here you are, Sir. Do you want any other books?"--"Forgive me, yes"--"What is it?"--"La 'Religieuse en Chemise.'"--"For shame, Sir! Do you read such trash?"--"Trash, is it, Mademoiselle? I did not know...."'" [Illustration: THE NATIVITY LUINI (_Louvre_)] M. Uzanne's pages are filled with such charming gossip and with character-sketches of the most famous booksellers and book-hunters. One pretty trait that would have pleased Mary Lamb (and perhaps did, in 1822, when her brother took her to the "Boro' side of the Seine") is mentioned by M. Uzanne: "The stall-keeper on the quais always has an indulgent eye for the errand boy or the little bonne [slavey] who stops in front of his stall and consults gratis 'La Clef des Songes' or 'Le Secrétaire des Dames'. Who would not commend him for this kind toleration? In fact it is very rare to find the bookseller in such cases not shutting his eyes--metaphorically--and refraining from walking up to the reader, for fear of frightening her away. And then the young girl moves off with a light step, repeating to herself the style of letter or the explanation of a dream, rich in hope and illusions for the rest of the day." But the best description of the book-hunter of the quais is that given to Dumas by Charles Nodier. "This animal," he said, "has two legs and is featherless, wanders usually up and down the quais and the boulevards, stopping at all the old bookstalls, turning over every book on them; he is habitually clad in a coat that is too long for him and trousers that are too short; he always wears on his feet shoes that are down at the heel, a dirty hat on his head, and, under his coat and over his trousers, a waistcoat fastened together with string. One of the signs by which he can be recognised is that he never washes his hands." Henri IV.'s statue faces the Place Dauphine and the west façade of the Palais de Justice. At No. 28 in the Place Dauphine Madame Roland was born, little thinking she was destined one day to be imprisoned in the neighbouring Conciergerie, which, to those who can face the difficulties of obtaining a ticket of admission, is one of the most interesting of the Island's many interesting buildings. But the process is not easy, and there is only one day in the week on which the prison is shown. The tickets are issued at the Préfecture of Police--the Scotland Yard of Paris--which is the large building opposite Sainte Chapelle. One may either write or call. I advise writing; for calling is not as simple as it sounds: simplicity and sightseeing in Paris being indeed not on the best terms. It was not until I had asked five several officials that I found even the right door of the vast structure, and then having passed a room full of agents (or policemen) smoking and jesting, and having climbed to a third storey, I was in danger of losing for ever the privilege of seeing what I had fixed my mind upon, wholly because, although I knew the name and street of my hotel, I did not know its number. Who ever dreamed that hotels have numbers? Has the Savoy a number in the Strand? Is the Ritz numbered in Piccadilly? Not that I was living in any such splendour, but still, on the face of it, a hotel has a name because it has no number. "C'est égal," the gentleman said at last, after a pantomime of impossibility and reproach, and I took my ticket, bowed to the ground, replaced my hat and was free to visit the Conciergerie on the morrow. Such are the amenities of the tourist's life. Let me here say that the agents of Paris are by far its politest citizens, and in appearance the healthiest. I have never met an uncivil agent, and I once met one who refused a tip after he had been of considerable service to me. Never did I attempt to tip another. They have their defects, no doubt: they have not the authority that we give our police: their management of traffic is pathetically incompetent; but they are street gentlemen and the foreigner has no better friend. The Conciergerie is the building on the Quai de l'Horloge with the circular towers beneath extinguishers--an impressive sight from the bridges and the other bank of the river. Most of its cells are now used as rooms for soldiers (André Chénier's dungeon is one of their kitchens); but a few rooms of the deepest historical interest have been left as they were. These are displayed by a listless guide who rises to animation only when the time comes to receive his bénéfice and offer for sale a history of his preserves. One sees first the vaulted Salle Saint Louis, called the Salle des Pas Perdus because it was through it that the victims of the Revolution walked on their way to the Cour de Mai and execution. The terribly significant name has since passed to the great lobby of the Palais de Justice immediately above it, where it has less appropriateness. It is of course the cell of Marie Antoinette that is the most poignant spot in this grievous place. When the Queen was here the present room was only about half its size, having a partition across it, behind which two soldiers were continually on guard, day and night. The Queen was kept here, suffering every kind of indignity and petty tyranny, from early September, 1793, until October 16th. Her chair, in which she sat most of the time, faced the window of the courtyard. A few acts of kindness reached her in spite of the vigilance of the authorities; but very few. I quote the account of two from the official guide, a poor thing, which I was weak enough to buy: "The Queen had no complaint to make against the concierges Richard nor their successors the Baults. It is told that one day Richard asked a fruitseller in the neighbourhood to select him the best of her melons, whatever it might cost. 'It is for a very important personage, then?' said the seller disdainfully, looking at the concierge's threadbare clothes. 'Yes,' said he, 'it is for some one who was once very important; she is so no longer; it is for the Queen.' 'The Queen,' exclaimed the tradeswoman, turning over all her melons, 'the Queen! Oh, poor woman! Here, make her eat that, and I won't have you pay for it....' "One of the gendarmes on duty having smoked during the night, learnt the following day that the Queen, whom he noticed was very pale, had suffered from the smell of the tobacco; he smashed his pipe, swearing not to smoke any more. It was he also who said to those who came in contact with Marie Antoinette: 'Whatever you do, don't say anything to her about her children'." For her trial the Queen was taken to the Tribunal sitting in what is now the First Circle Chamber of the Palais de Justice, and led back in the evening to her cell. She was condemned to death on the fifteenth, and that night wrote a letter to her sister-in-law Elizabeth which we shall see in the Archives Nationales: it is firmly written. [Illustration: GIOVANNA TORNABUONI AND THE CARDINAL VIRTUES BOTTICELLI. FRESCO FROM THE VILLA LEMMI (_Louvre_)] The Conciergerie had many other prisoners, but none so illustrious. Robespierre occupied for twenty-four hours the little cell adjoining that of the Queen, now the vestry of the chapel. Madame Du Barry and Madame Récamier had cells adjacent to that of Madame Roland. Later Maréchal Ney was imprisoned here. The oldest part of all--the kitchens of Saint Louis--are not shown. The Pont au Change, the bridge which connects the Place du Châtelet with the Boulevard du Palais, the main street of the Ile de la Cité, was once (as the Ponte Vecchio at Florence still is) the headquarters of goldsmiths and small bankers. Not the least of the losses that civilisation and rebuilders have brought upon us is the disappearance of the shops and houses from the bridges. Old London Bridge--how one regrets that! At the corner of the Conciergerie is the Horloge that gives the Quai its name--a floridly decorated clock which by no means conveys the impression that it has kept time for over five hundred years and is the oldest exposed time-piece in France. Paris, by the way, is very poor in public clocks, and those that she has are not too trustworthy. The one over the Gare St. Lazare has perhaps the best reputation; but time in Paris is not of any great importance. For most Parisians there is an inner clock which strikes with perfect regularity at about twelve and seven, and no other hours really matter. And yet a certain show of marking time is made in the hotels, where every room has an elaborate ormolu clock, usually under a glass case and rarely going. And in one hotel I remember a large clock on every landing, of which I passed three on my way upstairs; and their testimony was so various that it was two hours later by each, so that by the time I had reached my room it was nearly time to get up. On asking the waiter the reason he said it was because they were synchronised by electricity. There has been a Tour de l'Horloge at this corner of the Conciergerie ever since it was ordained by Philippe le Bel in 1299; the present clock, or at least its scheme of decoration, dates, however, from Henri III.'s reign, about 1585. The last elaborate restoration was in 1852. In the tower above was a bell that was rung only on rare occasions. The usual accounts of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew say that the signal for that outrage was sounded by the bell of St. Germain l'Auxerrois; but others give it to the bell of the Tour de l'Horloge. As they are some distance from each other, perhaps both were concerned; but since St. Germain l'Auxerrois is close to the Louvre, where the King was waiting for the carnage to begin, it is probable that it rang the first notes. One of Méryon's most impressive and powerful etchings represents the Tour de l'Horloge and the façade of the Conciergerie. It is a typical example of his strange and gloomy genius, for while it is nothing else in the world but what it purports to be, it is also quite unlike the Tour de l'Horloge and the façade of the Conciergerie as any ordinary eyes have seen them. They are made terrible and sinister: they have been passed through the dark crucible of Méryon's mind. To see Paris as Méryon saw it needs a great effort of imagination, so swiftly and instinctively do these people remove the traces of unhappiness or disaster. It is the nature of Paris to smile and to forget; from any lapse into woe she recovers with extraordinary rapidity. Méryon's Paris glowers and shudders; there is blood on her hands and guilt in her heart. I will not say that his concept is untrue, because I believe that the concept formed by a man of genius is always true, although it may not contain all the truth, and indeed one has to recall very little history to fall easily into Méryon's mood; but for the visitor who has chosen Paris for his holiday--the typical reader, for example, of this book--Mr. Dexter's concept of Paris is a more natural one. (I wish, by the way, before it is too late, that Mr. Muirhead Bone would devote some time to the older parts of the city--particularly to the Marais. How it lies to his hand!) Since we are at the gates of the Palais de Justice let us spend a little time among the advocates and their clients in the great hall--the Salle des Pas Perdus. (In an interesting work, by the way, on this building, with a preface by the younger Dumas, the amendment, "La Salle du temps perdu" is recommended.) The French law courts, as a whole, are little different from our own: they have the same stuffiness, they give the same impression of being divided between the initiated and the uninitiated, the little secret society of the Bar and the great innocent world. But the Salle des Pas Perdus is another thing altogether. There is nothing like that in the Strand. Our Strand counsel are a dignified, clean-shaven, be-wigged race, striving to appear old and inscrutable and important. They are careful of appearances; they receive instructions only through solicitors; they affect to weigh their words; sagacious reserve is their fetish. Hence our law courts, although there are many consultations and incessant passings to and fro, are yet subdued in tone and overawing to the talkative. But the Palais de Justice!--Babel was inaudible beside it. In the Palais de Justice everyone talks at once; no one cares a sou for appearances or reticence; there are no wigs, no shorn lips, no affectation of a superhuman knowledge of the world. The French advocate comes into direct communication with his client--for the most part here. The movement as well as the vociferation is incessant, for out of this great hall open as many doors as there are in a French farce, and every door is continually swinging. Indeed that is the chief effect conveyed: that one is watching a farce, since there has never been a farce yet without a legal gentleman in his robes and black velvet cap. The chief difference is that here there are hundreds of them. As a final touch of humour, or lack of gravity, I may add that notices forbidding smoking are numerous, and every advocate and every client is puffing hard at his cigarette. Victor Hugo's _Notre Dame_ begins, it will be remembered, in the great Hall of the Palais de Justice, where Gringoire's neglected mystery play was performed and Quasimodo won the prize for ugliness. The Hall, as Hugo says, was burned in 1618: by a fire which, he tells us, was made necessary by the presence in the archives of the Palais of the documents in the case of the assassination of Henri IV. by Ravaillac. Certain of Ravaillac's accomplices and instigators wishing these papers to disappear, the fire followed as a matter of course, as naturally as in China a house had to be burned down before there could be roast pig. Sainte Chapelle, which, with the kitchens of Saint Louis under the Conciergerie, is all that remains of the royal period of the Palais de Justice, is, except on Mondays, always open during the reasonable daylight hours and is wholly free from vexatious restrictions. Sanctity having passed from it, the French sightseers do not even remove their hats, although I have noticed that the English and Americans still find the habit too strong. The Chapelle may easily disappoint, for such is the dimness of its religious light that little is visible save the dark coloured windows. One is, however, conscious of perfect proportions and such ecclesiastical elegance as paint and gold can convey. It is in fact exquisite, yet not with an exquisiteness of simplicity but of design and elaboration. It is like a jewel--almost a trinket--which Notre Dame might have once worn on her breast and tired of. Its flêche is really beautiful; it darts into the sky with only less assurance and joy than that of Notre Dame, and I always look up with pleasure to the angel on the eastern point of the roof. [Illustration: LA VIERGE AUX ROCHERS LEONARDO DA VINCI (_Louvre_)] What one has the greatest difficulty in believing is that Sainte Chapelle is six hundred and fifty years old. It was built for the relics brought from the Crusades by Saint Louis, which are now in the Treasury of Notre Dame. The Chapel has, of course, known the restorer's hand, but it is virtually the original structure, and some of the original glass is still here preserved amid reconstructions. To me Sainte Chapelle's glass makes little appeal; but many of my friends talk of nothing else. Let us thank God for differences of taste. During the Commune (as recently as 1871) an attempt was made to burn Sainte Chapelle, together with the Palais de Justice, but it just failed. That was the third fire it has survived. From Sainte Chapelle we pass through the Rue de Lutèce, which is opposite, across the Boulevard, because there is a statue here of some interest--that of Renaudot, who lived in the first half of the seventeenth century at No. 8 Quai du Marché Neuf, close by, and founded in 1631 the first French newspaper, the _Gazette de France_. Little could he have foreseen the consequences of his rash act! It is amusing to stand here a while and meditate on the torrent that has proceeded from that small spring. Other cities have as busy a journalistic life as Paris, and in London the paper boys are more numerous and insistent, while in London we have also the contents' bills, which are unknown to France; and yet Paris seems to me to be more a city of newspapers than even London is. Perhaps it is the kiosques that convey the impression. The London papers and the Paris papers could not well be more different. In the matter of size, Paris, I think, has all the advantage, for one may read everything in a few minutes; but in the matter of ingredients the advantage surely lies with us, for although English papers tell far too much, and by their own over-curiousness foster inquisitiveness and busy-bodydom, yet they have some sense of what is important, and one can always find the significant news. In Paris, if one excepts the best papers, the _Temps_ in particular, the significant news is elusive. What one will find, however, is a short story or a literary essay written with distinction, an anecdote of the day by no means adapted for the young person, and a number of trumpery tragedies of passion or excess, minutely told; and in the _Figaro_ once or twice a week an excellent humorous or satirical drawing. The signed articles are always good, and when critical usually fearless, but the unsigned notices of a new play or spectacle credit it with perfection in every detail; and here, at any rate, as in our best reviews of books, we are in a position to feel some of the satisfaction that proceeds from conscious superiority. But, it has to be remembered, in Paris people go to the theatre automatically, whereas we pick and choose and have our reasons, and even talk of one play being moral and another immoral, and therefore in Paris an honest criticism of a play is of little importance. The Paris _Daily Mail_ seems to have fallen into line very naturally, for I find in it, on the morning on which I write these lines, a puff of the Capucines revue, saying that it kept the house in continuous laughter by its innocent fun, and will doubtless draw all Paris. As if (i) the laughter in any Paris theatre was ever continuous, and as if (ii) there was ever any innocent fun at the Capucines, and as if (iii) all Paris would go near that theatre if there were! One reason, I imagine, for the diffuseness of the English paper and the brevity of the French, is that the English have so little natural conversation that they find it useful to acquire news on which to base more; while the French need no such assistance. The English again are interested in other nations, whereas the French care nothing for any land but France. There is no space in which to continue this not untempting analysis: it would require much room, for to understand thoroughly the difference between, say, the _Daily Telegraph_ and the _Journal_ is to understand the difference between England and France. The French comic papers one sees everywhere--except in people's hands. I suppose they are bought, or they would not be published; but I have hardly ever observed a Frenchman reading one that was his own property. The fault of the French comic paper is monotony. Voltaire accused the English of having seventy religions and only one sauce; my quarrel with the French is that they have seventy sauces and only one joke. This joke you meet everywhere. Artists of diabolical cleverness illustrate it in colours every week; versifiers and musicians introduce it into songs; comic singers sing it; playwrights dramatise it; novelists and journalists weave it into prose. It is the oldest joke and it is ever new. Nothing can prevent a Parisian laughing at it as if it were as fresh as his roll, his journal or his petit Gervais. For a people with a world-wide reputation for wit, this is very strange; but in some directions the French are incorrigibly juvenile, almost infantine. Personally I envy them for it. I think it must be charming never to grow out of such an affection for indecency that even a nursery mishap can still be always funny. One of the comic papers must, however, be exempted from these generalisations. _Le Rire_, _Le Journal Amusant_, _La Vie Parisienne_ and the scores of cheaper imitations may depend for their living on the one joke; but _L'Assiette au Beurre_ is more serious. _L'Assiette au Beurre_ is first and foremost a satirist. It chastises continually, and its whip is often scorpions. Even its lighter numbers, chiefly given to ridicule, contain streaks of savagery. At the end of the brief Rue de Lutèce is the great Hôtel Dieu, the oldest hospital in Paris, having been founded in the seventh century; and to the left of it is one of the Paris flower markets, where much beautiful colour may be seen very formally and unintelligently arranged. Gardens are among those things that we order (or shall I say disorder?) better than the French do. And now we will enter Notre Dame. CHAPTER III NOTRE DAME Pagan Origins and Christian Predecessors--The Beginnings of Notre Dame--Victor Hugo--The Dangers of Renovation--Old Glass and New--A Wedding--The Cathedral's Great Moment--The Hundred Poor Girls and Louis XVI.--The Revolution--Mrs. Momoro, Goddess of Reason--The Legend of Our Lady of the Bird--Coronation of Napoleon--The Communards and the Students--The Treasures of the Sacristy--Three Hundred and Ninety-seven Steps--Quasimodo and Esmeralda--Paris at our Feet--The Eiffel Tower--The Devils of Notre Dame--The Precincts--Notre Dame from the Quai. If the Ile de la Cité is the eye of Paris, then, to adapt one of Oliver Wendell Holmes' metaphors, Notre Dame is its pupil. It stands on ground that has been holy, or at least religious, for many centuries, for part of its site was once occupied by the original mother church of Paris, St. Etienne, built in the fourth century; and close by, in the Place du Parvis, have been discovered the foundations of another church, dating from the sixth century, dedicated to Sainte Marie; while beneath that are the remains of a Temple of Apollo or Jupiter, relics of which we shall see at the Cluny. The origin of Notre Dame, the fusion of these two churches, is wrapped in darkness; but Victor Hugo roundly states that the first stone of it was laid by Charlemagne (who reigned from 768 to 814, and whose noble equestrian statue stands just outside), and the last by Philip Augustus, who was a friend of our Richard Coeur de Lion. The more usual account of the older parts of the Notre Dame that one sees to-day is that the first stone of it was laid in 1163, in the reign of Louis VII., by Pope Alexander III., who chanced then to be in Paris engaged in the task of avoiding his enemies, the Ghibellines, and that in almost exactly a hundred years, in the reign of Saint Louis, it was completed. (I say completed, but as a matter of fact it is not completed even yet, for each of the square towers was designed to carry a spire, and I remember seeing at the Paris Exhibition of 1889 a number of drawings of the cathedral by young architects, with these spires added. It is, however, very unlikely that they will ever sprout, and I, for one, hope not.) Victor Hugo is, of course, if not the first authority on Notre Dame, its most sympathetic poet, lover and eulogist; and it seems ridiculous for me to attempt description when every book shop in Paris has a copy of his rich and fantastic romance, Book III. of which is an interlude in the story wholly given to the glory of the cathedral. You may read there not only of what Notre Dame is, but of what it is not and should be: the shortcomings of architects and the vandalism of mobs are alike reported. Mobs! Paris is seared with cicatrices from the hands of her matricidal children, and Notre Dame especially so. Attempts to set her on fire were made not only by the revolutionaries but by the Communards too. These she resisted, but much of her statuary went during the Revolution, the assailants sparing the Last Judgment on the façade, but accounting very swiftly for a series of kings of Israel and Judah (who, however, have since been replaced) under the impression that they were monarchs of native growth and therefore not to be endured. The statue of the Virgin in the centre of the façade, with Adam and Eve on each side, is not, I may say, the true Notre Dame of Paris: She is within the church--much older and simpler, on a column to the right of the altar as we face it. She is a sweeter and more winning figure than that between our first parents on the façade. When I first knew Notre Dame it was, to the visitor from the open air, all scented darkness. And then as one grew accustomed to the gloom the cathedral opened slowly like a great flower--not so beautifully as Chartres, but with its own grandeur and fascination. That was twenty years ago. It is not the same since it has been scraped and lightened within. That old clinging darkness has gone. There are times of day now, when the sun spatters on the wall, when it might be almost any church; but towards evening in the gloom it is Notre Dame de Paris again, mysterious and a little sinister. A bright light not only chases the shade from its aisles and recesses but also shows up the garishness of its glass. For the glass of France, usually bad, is here often almost at its worst. That glorious wheel window in the north transept--whose upper wall has indeed more glass than stone in it--could not well be more beautiful, and the rose window over the organ is beautiful too. But for the rest, the glass is either too pretty, as in the case of the window over the altar, so lovely in shape, or utterly trumpery. The last time I was in Notre Dame I followed a wedding party through the main and usually locked door, but although I was the first after the bride and her father, I was not quick enough to set foot on the ceremonial carpet, which a prudent verger rolled up literally upon their heels. It was a fortunate moment on which to arrive, for it meant a vista of the nave from the open air right up the central aisle, and that, except in very hot weather, is rare, and probably very rare indeed when the altar is fully lighted. The secret of Notre Dame, both within and without, is to be divined only by loitering in it with a mind at rest. To enter intent upon seeing it is useless. Outside, one can walk round it for ever and still be surprised by the splendid vagaries, humours and resource of its stone; while within, one can, by making oneself plastic, gradually but surely attain to some of the adoration that was felt for this sanctuary by Quasimodo himself. Let us sit down on one of these chairs in the gloom and meditate on some of the scenes which its stones have witnessed. While it was yet building Raymond VII., Count of Toulouse, was scourged before the principal doorway for heresy, on a spot where the pillory long stood. That was in 1229. In 1248 St. Louis, on his way to the Holy Land, visited Notre Dame to receive his pilgrim's staff and scrip from the Bishop. In 1270 the body of St. Louis lay in state under this roof before it was carried to St. Denis for burial. Henry VI. of England was crowned here as King of France--the first and last English king to receive that honour. One Sunday in 1490, while Mass was being celebrated, a man called Jean l'Anglais (as we should now say, John Bull) snatched the Host from the priest's hand and profaned it: for which crime he was burnt. In 1572 Henri IV. (then Henri of Navarre) was married to Marguerite de Valois, but being a Protestant he was not allowed within the church, and the ceremony was therefore performed just outside. When, however, he entered Paris triumphantly as a conqueror and a Catholic in 1594, he heard Mass and assisted at the Te Deum in Notre Dame like a true Frenchman and ironist. In 1611 his funeral service was celebrated here. Some very ugly events are in store for us; let something pretty intervene. On February 9th, 1779 (in the narrative of Louise de Grandpré, to whom the study of Notre Dame has been a veritable passion), a large crowd pressed towards the cathedral; the ground was strewed with fresh grass and flowers and leaves; the pillars were decorated with many coloured banners. In the choir the vestments of the saints were displayed: the burning tapers lit up the interior with a dazzling brightness: the organ filled the church with joyful harmony, and the bells rang out with all their might. The whole court was present, the King himself assisting at the ceremony, and the galleries were full to overflowing of ladies of distinction in the gayest of dresses. Then slowly, through the door of St. Anne, entered a hundred young girls dressed in white, covered with long veils and with orange blossom on their heads. These were the hundred poor girls whom Louis XVI. had dowered in memory of the birth of Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte of France, afterwards Duchess of Angoulême, and it was his wish to assist personally at their wedding and to seal their marriage licences with his sword, which was ornamented on the handle or pommel with the "fleur de lys". Through the door of the Virgin entered at the same time one hundred young men, having each a sprig of orange blossom in his button-hole. The two rows advanced together with measured steps, preceded by two Swiss, who struck the pavement heavily with their halberds. They advanced as far as the chancel rails, where each young man gave his hand to a young girl, his fiancée, and marched slowly before the King, bowing to him and receiving a bow in return. They were then married by the Archbishop in person. A very charming incident, don't you think? Such a royal gift, adds Louise de Grandpré, would be very welcome to-day, when there are so many girls unmarried, for the want of a dot. Every rich young girl who is married ought to include in her corbeille de noces the dot of some poor girl. All women, remarks Louise de Grandpré, have a right to this element of love, which is sanctified by marriage, honoured by men and blessed by God. Christian marriage, says Louise de Grandpré, is a nursery not only of good Catholics but still more of good citizens. It is much to be wished, she concludes, that obstacles could be removed, because one deplores the depopulation of France. [Illustration: SAINTE ANNE, LA VIERGE, ET L'ENFANT JÉSUS LEONARDO DA VINCI (_Louvre_)] The most fantastic and discreditable episode in the history of Notre Dame occurred one hundred and fifteen years ago, when the Convention decreed the Cult of Reason, and Notre Dame became its Temple. A ballet dancer was throned on the high altar, Our Lady of Paris was taken down, and statues of Voltaire and Rousseau stepped into the niches of the saints. Carlyle was never more wonderful than in the three or four pages that describe this cataclysm. He begins with the revolt of the Curate Parens, followed by Bishop Gobel of Paris clamouring for an honest calling since there was no religion but Liberty. "The French nation," Carlyle writes, "is of gregarious imitative nature; it needed but a fugle-motion in this matter; and Goose Gobel, driven by Municipality and force of circumstances, has given one. What Curé will be behind him of Boissise; what Bishop behind him of Paris? Bishop Grégoire, indeed, courageously declines; to the sound of 'We force no one; let Grégoire consult his conscience'; but Protestant and Romish by the hundred volunteer and assent. From far and near, all through November into December, till the work is accomplished, come letters of renegation, come Curates who 'are learning to be Carpenters,' Curates with their new-wedded Nuns: has not the day of Reason dawned, very swiftly, and become noon? From sequestered Townships come Addresses, stating plainly, though in Patois dialect, that 'they will have no more to do with the black animal called Curay, _animal noir appelé Curay_.' "Above all things, there come Patriotic Gifts, of Church-furniture. The remnant of bells, except for tocsin, descend from their belfries, into the National melting-pot to make cannon. Censers and all sacred vessels are beaten broad; of silver, they are fit for the poverty-stricken Mint; of pewter, let them become bullets, to shoot the 'enemies _du genre humain_'. Dalmatics of plush make breeches for him who had none; linen albs will clip into shirts for the Defenders of the Country: old-clothesmen, Jew or Heathen, drive the briskest trade. Chalier's Ass-Procession, at Lyons, was but a type of what went on, in those same days, in all Towns. In all Towns and Townships as quick as the guillotine may go, so quick goes the axe and the wrench: sacristies, lutrins, altar-rails are pulled down; the Mass-Books torn into cartridge-papers: men dance the Carmagnole all night about the bonfire. All highways jingle with metallic Priest-tackle, beaten broad; sent to the Convention, to the poverty-stricken Mint. Good Sainte Geneviève's _Chasse_ is let down: alas, to be burst open, this time, and burnt on the Place de Grève. Saint Louis's Shirt is burnt;--might not a Defender of the Country have had it?... "For the same day, while this brave Carmagnole-dance has hardly jigged itself out, there arrive Procureur Chaumette and Municipals and Departmentals, and with them the strangest freightage: a New Religion! Demoiselle Candeille, of the Opera; a woman fair to look upon, when well rouged; she, borne on palanquin shoulder-high; with red woollen nightcap; in azure mantle; garlanded with oak; holding in her hand the Pike of the Jupiter-_Peuple_, sails in: heralded by white young women girt in tricolor. Let the world consider it! This, O National Convention wonder of the universe, is our New Divinity; _Goddess of Reason_, worthy, and alone worthy of revering. Her henceforth we adore. Nay were it too much to ask of an august National Representation that it also went with us to the _ci-devant_ Cathedral called of Notre-Dame, and executed a few strophes in worship of her? "President and Secretaries give Goddess Candeille, borne at due height round their platform, successively the Fraternal kiss; whereupon she, by decree, sails to the right-hand of the President and there alights. And now, after due pause and flourishes of oratory, the Convention, gathering its limbs, does get under way in the required procession towards Notre-Dame;--Reason, again in her litter, sitting in the van of them, borne, as one judges, by men in the Roman costume; escorted by wind-music, red nightcaps, and the madness of the world.... "'The corresponding Festival in the Church of Saint-Eustache,' says Mercier, 'offered the spectacle of a great tavern. The interior of the choir represented a landscape decorated with cottages and boskets of trees. Round the choir stood tables overloaded with bottles, with sausages, pork-puddings, pastries and other meats. The guests flowed in and out through all doors: whosoever presented himself took part of the good things: children of eight, girls as well as boys, put hand to plate, in sign of Liberty; they drank also of the bottles, and their prompt intoxication created laughter. Reason sat in azure mantle aloft, in a serene manner; Cannoneers, pipe in mouth, serving her as acolytes. And out of doors,' continues the exaggerative man, 'were mad multitudes dancing round the bonfire of Chapel-balustrades, of Priests' and Canons' stalls; and the dancers,--I exaggerate nothing,--the dancers nigh bare of breeches, neck and breast naked, stockings down, went whirling and spinning, like those Dust-vortexes, forerunners of Tempest and Destruction.' At Saint-Gervais Church, again, there was a terrible 'smell of herrings'; Section or Municipality having provided no food, no condiment, but left it to chance. Other mysteries, seemingly of a Cabiric or even Paphian character, we leave under the Veil, which appropriately stretches itself 'along the pillars of the aisles,'--not to be lifted aside by the hand of History. [Illustration: THE ILE DE LA CITÉ FROM THE PONT DES ARTS TOUR ST. JACQUES CONCIERGERIE STE. CHAPELLE NOTRE DAME] "But there is one thing we should like almost better to understand than any other: what Reason herself thought of it, all the while. What articulate words poor Mrs. Momoro, for example, uttered; when she had become ungoddessed again, and the Bibliopolist and she sat quiet at home, at supper? For he was an earnest man, Bookseller Momoro; and had notions of Agrarian Law. Mrs. Momoro, it is admitted, made one of the best Goddesses of Reason; though her teeth were a little defective.--And now if the Reader will represent to himself that such visible Adoration of Reason went on 'all over the Republic,' through these November and December weeks, till the Church woodwork was burnt out, and the business otherwise completed, he will perhaps feel sufficiently what an adoring Republic it was, and without reluctance quit this part of the subject." I quote in the following pages freely from Carlyle, because the Revolution is the most important event in the history of Paris and so horribly recent (you may still see the traces of Bonaparte's whiff of grape-shot on the façade of St. Roch), and also because when there is such an historian to borrow from direct, paraphrase becomes a crime. None the less, I feel it my duty to say that the attitude of this self-protective contemptuous superior Scotchman towards the excitable French and their hot-headed efforts for freedom often enrages me as much as his vivid narrative fascinates and moves. In 1794, when the New Religion had died down, the Church became a store for wine confiscated from the Royalists. In the year following, after the whiff of grape-shot, the old religion was re-established. A strange interregnum! How long ago was this?--only one hundred and fifteen years--not four generations. Could it happen again? Will it?... These revolutionaries, it may be remarked, were not the only licentious rioters that Notre Dame had known, for in its early days it was the scene every year of the Fête des Fous, an orgy of gluttony and conviviality, in which, however, one who was a true believer on all other days might partake. After these lurid saturnalia it is pleasant again to dip into the gentle pages of Louise de Grandpré, where, among other legends of Notre Dame, is the pretty story of a statue of the Virgin--now known as the Virgin with the bird. In the Rue Chanoinesse there lived a young woman, very devout, who came every day to pray. She brought with her her son, a little fellow, very wide-awake and full of spirits: his mother had taught him to say his prayers. Cyril would close his little hands to say his "Ave Maria," and he would throw a kiss to the little Jesus, his dear friend, complaining sometimes to his mother that the little Jesus would not play with him. "You are not good enough yet," said his mother; "Jesus plays only with the little children in Paradise." A very severe winter fell and the young mother fell ill and no longer came to church. Cyril never saw the little Jesus now, but he often thought of him as he played at the foot of his mother's bed. On one of those days when the sky was dull and leaden and the air heavy and depressing, and the poor woman was rather worse and more hopeless than usual, she became so weak they thought each moment would be her last. Cyril could not understand why his mother no longer smiled at him or stroked his hair or called him to her. With his little heart almost bursting and his eyes full of tears, he said, "I will go and tell the little Jesus of my trouble." While they were attending to the poor mother the child disappeared. He ran as fast as his little legs would carry him and entered the cathedral by the cloister door, crossed the transept, and was soon at the foot of the statue of the Virgin Mary, where he was accustomed to say his prayers with his mother. "Little Jesus," said he, "Thou art very happy, Thou hast Thy Mother; mine, who was so good, is always asleep now and I am alone. Little Jesus, wake my mother up, and I will give you my best toys, morning and evening I will send you the sweetest kiss and say my best prayer. And look, to begin with, I have brought you my favourite bird: he is tame and will eat the golden crumbs of Paradise out of your hand." At the same time he stretched out his little closed hand towards Jesus. The divine child stretched out His hand and Cyril let his beloved little bird escape. The bird, who had a lovely coloured plumage, flew straight to the hand of the Infant Christ and has remained there to this day. The Virgin smiled on the child, and her white stone robe at that moment became the same colour as the bird's plumage. Cyril, with his heart very full, got up to go out, but before leaving the church turned round to have one more look at his little bird he loved so dearly: he was struck with delight and astonishment when he heard the favoured bird singing one of its sweetest songs in honour of the Virgin and her Child. When Cyril returned to his home he went into his mother's room without making the least noise to see if she was still asleep. The young mother was sitting upright in her bed, her head, still very bad, resting on a pillow, but her wide-open eyes were looking for her little one. "I was quite sure the little Jesus would wake you up," said Cyril, climbing on to her bed. "I took Him my bird this morning to take care of for me in the Garden of Paradise." Life once more returned to the poor woman and she kissed her boy. When you next go to Notre Dame, Louise de Grandpré adds, be sure to visit the Vierge à l'oiseau, who always hears the prayers of the little ones. It was in 1804 that Notre Dame enjoyed one of its most magnificent moments--at the coronation of Napoleon and Josephine Beauharnais. The Duchess d'Abrantès wrote an account of the ceremony which, in French, is both picturesque and rapturous. "The pope was the first to arrive. At the moment of his entering the cathedral, the clergy intoned Tu es Petrus, and this solemn chant made a deep impression on all. Pius the VII. advanced to the end of the cathedral with a majestic yet humble grace.... The moment when all eyes were most drawn to the Altar steps was when Josephine received the crown from the Emperor and was solemnly consecrated by him Empress of the French. When it was time for her to take an active part in the great ceremony, the Empress descended from the throne and advanced towards the altar, where the Emperor awaited her.... "I saw," the Duchess continues, "all that I have just told you, with the eyes of Napoleon. He was radiant with joy as he watched the Empress advancing towards him; and when she knelt ... and the tears she could not restrain fell upon her clasped hands, raised more towards him than towards God: at this moment, when Napoleon, or rather Bonaparte, was for her her true providence, at this instant there was between these two beings one of those fleeting moments of life, unique, which fill up the void of years. "The Emperor invested with perfect grace every action of the ceremony he had to perform: above all, at the moment of crowning the Empress. This was to be done by the Emperor himself, who after receiving the little closed crown surmounted by a cross, had to place it on his own head first, and then place it on the Empress's head. He did this in such a slow, gracious and courtly manner that it was noticed by all. But at the supreme moment of crowning her who was to him his lucky star, he was almost coquettish, if I may use the term. He placed the little crown, which surmounted the diadem of brilliants, on her head, first putting it on, then taking it off and putting it on again, as if assuring himself that it should rest lightly and softly on her. "But Napoleon," the Duchess concludes, "when it came to his own crown, hastily took it from the Pope's hands and placed it haughtily on his own head--a proceeding which doubtless startled his Holiness." Ten years pass and we find Louis XVIII. and his family attending Mass at the same altar. Twenty-six years later, in 1840, a service was held to commemorate the restoration of the ashes of the Emperor to French soil, and in 1853 Napoleon III. and Eugénie de Montijo were married here, under circumstances of extraordinary splendour. And then we come to plunder and lawlessness again. On Good Friday, 1871, while Père Olivier was preaching, a company of Communards entered and from thenceforward for a while the cathedral was occupied by the soldiers. For some labyrinthine reason the destruction of Notre Dame by fire was decided upon, and a huge pile of chairs and other material soaked in petrol was erected (this was only thirty-eight years ago), and no doubt the building would have been seriously injured, if not destroyed, had not the medical students from the Hôtel Dieu, close by, rushed in and saved it. [Illustration: LA PENSÉE RODIN _(Luxembourg)_] Among the preachers of Notre Dame was St. Dominic, to whom in the pulpit the Virgin appeared, bringing with her his sermon all to his hand in an effulgent volume; here also preached Père Hyacinthe, but with less direct assistance. That the Treasury is an object of interest to English-speaking visitors is proved by the notice at the door: "The Persons who desire to visit the Trésor are kindly requested to wait the guide here for a few minutes, himself charged of the visit"; but I see no good reason why any one should enter it. Those, however, that do will see vessels of gold, much paraphernalia of ecclesiastical pride and pomp, and certain holy relics. The crown of thorns is here, given to St. Louis by the King of Constantinople and carried to Notre Dame, on the 18th of August, 1239, by the barefoot king. Here also are pieces of the Cross, for the protection of which St. Louis built Sainte Chapelle, the relics afterwards being transferred to Notre Dame; and here is a nail from the Cross--one of the nails of which even an otherwise sceptical Catholic can be sure, because it was given to Charlemagne by Constantine. Charlemagne gave it to Aix la Chapelle, Charles the Bold brought it from Aix to St. Denis, and from St. Denis it came to Notre Dame, where it is enclosed in a crystal case. The menace of 397 spiral steps in a narrow, dark and almost airless turret, is no light matter, but it is essential to see Paris from the summit of Notre Dame. That view is the key to the city, and the traveller who means to study this city as it deserves, penetrating into the past as industriously and joyously as into the present, must begin here. He will see it all beneath him and around him in its varying ages, and he will be able to proceed methodically and intelligently. Immediately below is the Parvis, the scene of the interrupted execution of Esmeralda, and it was from one of the galleries below that Quasimodo slung himself down to her rescue. Here, where we are now standing, she must often have stood, looking for her faithless Phoebus. Only one of the bells that Quasimodo rang is still in the tower. Hugo draws attention to the shape of the island, like that of a ship moored to the mainland by various bridges, and he suggests that the ship on the Paris scutcheon (the ship that is to be seen in the design of the lamps around the Opera) is derived from this resemblance. It may be so. On each side of us, north and south, are the oldest parts of Paris that still stand; in the north the Marais, behind the Tour Saint-Jacques, and in the south the district between the Rue de Bièvre and the Boulevard St. Michel. On the south side of the river lived the students, clerics and professors--Dante himself among them, in this very Rue de Bièvre, as we shall see; while in the Marais, as we shall also see, dwelt the nobility. West of St. Eustache in the Middle Ages was nothing but waste ground and woodland, a kind of Bois, at the edge of which, where the Louvre now spreads itself, was a royal hunting lodge, the germ of the present vast palace. When the Marais passed out of favour, the aristocracy crossed the river to the St. Germain quarter, which clusters around the twin spires of St. Clotilde that now rise in the south-west. And then the Rue Saint-Honoré and the Grands Boulevards were built, and so the city grew and changed until the two culminating touches were put to it: by M. Eiffel, who built the tower, and M. Abadie, architect of the beautiful and unreal Basilique du Sacré-Coeur that crowns the heights of Montmartre. The chief eminences that one sees are, near at hand, the needle-spire of Sainte Chapelle, in the north the grey mass of St. Eustache, the Châtelet Theatre (advertising at this moment "Les Pilules du Diable" in enormous letters), the long roofs of the Halles, and the outline of the medieval Tour Saint-Jacques. Farther west the bulky Opera; then, right in front, the Trocadéro's twin towers, with Mont Valérien looming up immediately between them; and so round to the south--to the Invalides and St. Clotilde, the Panthéon and the heights of Geneviève. A wonderful panorama. Of all the views of Paris I think that from Notre Dame is the most interesting, because the point is most central; but the views from Montmartre, from the Tour Saint-Jacques, the Panthéon and the Arc de Triomphe should be studied too. The Eiffel Tower has dwarfed all those eminences; they lie far below it, mere ant-hills in the landscape, although they seem high enough when one essays their steps; yet, although it makes them so lowly, these older coigns of vantage should not for a moment be considered as superseded, for each does for its immediate vicinage what the Eiffel giant can never do. From the Arc de Triomphe, for example, you command all the luxurious activity of the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne and the wonderful prospect of the Champs Elysées, ending with the Louvre; and from the Panthéon you may examine the roofs of the Latin Quarter and see the children at play in the gardens of the Luxembourg. The merit of the Eiffel Tower is that he shows you not only Paris to the ultimate edges in every direction save on the northern slopes of Montmartre, but he shows you (almost) France too. How long the Eiffel Tower is to stand I cannot say, but I for one shall feel sorry and bereft when he ceases to straddle over Paris. For though he is vulgar he is great, and he has come to be a symbol. When he goes, he will make a strange rent in the sky. This year (1909) is his twentieth: he and I first came to Paris at the same time; but his life is serene to-day compared with what it was in his infancy. At that time his platforms were congested from morn to dusk; but few visitors now ascend even to the first stage and hardly any to the top. No visitor, however, who wants to synthesise Paris should omit this adventure. Only in a balloon can one get a better view, but in no balloon adrift from this green earth would I, for one, ever trust myself, although I must confess that the procession of those aerial monsters that floated serenely past the Eiffel Tower on the last occasion that I climbed it, suggested nothing but content and security. They rose one by one from the bosky depths of the Bois, five miles away, gradually disentangled themselves from the surrounding verdure, assumed their independent buoyant rotundity and came straight to my waiting eye. In an hour I counted fifteen, and by the time the last was free of the earth the first was away over Vincennes, with the afternoon sun turning its mud-coloured silk to burnished gold. Paris has always one balloon floating above her, but fifteen is exceptional. Notre Dame remains, however, the most important height to scale, for Notre Dame is interesting in every particular, it is soaked in history and mystery. Notre Dame is alone in the possession of its devils--those strange stone fantasies that Méryon discovered. Although every effort is made to familiarise us with them--although they sit docilely as paper-weights on our tables--nothing can lessen the monstrous diablerie of these figures, which look down on Paris with such greed and cruelty, cunning and cynicism. The best known, the most saturnine, of all, who leans on the parapet exactly by the door at the head of the steps, fixes his inhuman gaze on the dome of the Invalides. Is it to be wondered at that he wears that expression? A small family dwells in a room just behind this chimera, subsisting by the sale of picture-postcards. It is a strange abode, and an imaginative child would have a good start in life there. To him at any rate the demons no doubt would soon lose their terrors and become as friendly as the heavenly host that are posed so radiantly and confidently on the ascent to the flèche--perhaps even more so. But to the stranger they must remain cruel and horrible, creating a sense of disquietude and alarm that it is surely the business of a cathedral to allay. Curious anomaly! Let us descend. Before leaving the Ile de la Cité, the Rue Chanoinesse, to the north of Notre Dame, leading out of the Rue d'Arcole (near a blackguard pottery shop), should be looked at. The cloisters of Notre Dame once extended to this street and covered the ground between it and the cathedral. The canons, or chanoines, lived here, and there are still a few attractive old houses; but the rebuilder is very busy just now. At No. 10, Fulbert, the uncle of Héloïse, is said to have lived; at No. 18 was the Tour Dagobert, a fifteenth-century building, by climbing which one had an excellent view of Notre Dame, but in the past year it has been demolished and business premises cover its site. At No. 26 are (or were) the ruins of the twelfth-century chapel of St. Aignan, where the faithful, evicted from Notre Dame by the Reign of Reason, celebrated Mass in secret. Saint Bernard has preached here. The adjacent streets--the Rue de Colombe, Rue Massillon, Rue des Ursins and Rue du Cloître-Notre-Dame--have also very old houses. [Illustration: BALTHASAR CASTIGLIONE RAPHAEL _(Louvre)_] For the best view of the exterior of Notre Dame one must take the Quai de l'Archevêché, from which all its intricacies of masonry may be studied--its buttresses solid and flying, its dependences, its massive bulk, its grace and strength. CHAPTER IV ST. LOUIS AND HIS ISLAND The Morgue--The Ile St. Louis--Old Residents--St. Louis, the King--The Golden Legend--Religious Intolerance--Posthumous Miracles--Statue of Barye--The Quai des Célestins. On the way from Notre Dame to the Ile St. Louis we pass a small official-looking building at the extreme east end of the Ile de la Cité. It is the Morgue. But the Morgue is now closed to idle gazers, and you win your way to a sight of that melancholy slab with the weary bodies on it and the little jet of water playing on each, only by the extreme course of having missed a relation whom you suspected of designs upon his own life or whom you imagine has been the victim of foul play. No doubt the authorities were well advised (as French municipal authorities nearly always are) in closing the Morgue; but I think I regret it. The impulse to drift into that low and sinister building behind Notre Dame was partly morbid, no doubt; but the ordinary man sees not only too little death, but is too seldom in the presence of such failure as for the most part governs here: so that the opportunity it gave was good. I still recall very vividly, in spite of all the millions of living faces that should, one feels, have blurred one's prosperous vision, several of the dead faces that lay behind the glass of this forlorn side-show of the great entertainment which we call Paris. An old man with a white imperial; more than one woman of that dreadful middle-age which the Seine has so often terminated; a young man who had been stabbed.... Well, the Morgue is closed to the public now, and very likely no one who reads this book will ever enter it. The Ile St. Louis, to put it bluntly, is just as commonplace as the Ile de la Cité is imposing. It has a monotony very rare in the older parts of Paris: it is all white houses that have become dingy: houses that once were attractive and wealthy and are now squalid. One of the largest of the old palaces is to-day a garage; there is not a single house now occupied by the kind of tenant for which it was intended. Such declensions are always rather melancholy, even when--as, for example, at Villeneuve, near Avignon--there is the beauty of decay too. But on the Ile St. Louis there is no beauty: it belongs to a dull period of architecture and is now duller for its dirt. Standing on the Quai d'Orléans, however, one catches Notre Dame against the evening sky, across the river, as nowhere else, and it is necessary to seek the Ile if only to appreciate the fitness of the Morgue's position. The island was first called L'Ile Notre Dame, and was uninhabited until 1614. It was then developed and joined to the Ile de la Cité and the mainland by bridges. The chief street is the Rue St. Louis, at No. 3 in which lived Fénélon. The church of St. Louis is interesting for a relic of the unfortunate Louise de la Vallière. At No. 17 on the Quai d'Anjou is the Hôtel Lauzun, which the city of Paris has now acquired, and in which once lived together for a while the authors of _Mademoiselle de Maupin_ and _Les Fleurs de Mal_. Of Saint Louis, or Louis IX., who gives his name to this island, and whose hand is so visible in the Ile de la Cité, it is right to know something, for he was the father of Paris. Louis was born in 1215, the year of Magna Charta, and succeeded to the throne while still a boy. The early years of his reign were restless by reason of civil strife and war with England, in which he was victor (at Tailleburg, at Saintes and at Blaize), and then came his departure for the Holy Land, with 40,000 men, in fulfilment of a vow made rashly on a sick-bed. The King was blessed at Notre Dame, as we have seen, and departed in 1248, leaving his mother Blanche de Castile as regent. But the Crusade was a failure, and he was glad to return (with only the ghost of his army) and to settle down for the first time seriously to the cares of his throne. He was a good if prejudiced king: he built wisely and well, not only Sainte Chapelle, as we have seen, but the Sorbonne; he devised useful statutes; he established police in Paris; and, more perhaps than all, he made Frenchmen very proud of France. So much for his administrative virtues. When we come to his saintliness I would stand aside, for is he not in _The Golden Legend_? Listen to William Caxton: "He forced himself to serve his spirit by diverse castigation or chastising, he used the hair many times next his flesh, and when he left it for cause of over feebleness of his body, at the instance of his own confessor, he ordained the said confessor to give to the poor folk, as for recompensation of every day that he failed of it, forty shillings. He fasted always the Friday, and namely in time of lent and advent he abstained him in those days from all manner of fish and from fruits, and continually travailed and pained his body by watchings, orisons, and other secret abstinences and disciplines. Humility, beauty of all virtues, replenished so strong in him, that the more better he waxed, so, as David, the more he showed himself meek and humble, and more foul he reputed him before God. "For he was accustomed on every Saturday to wash with his own hands, in a secret place, the feet of some poor folk, and after dried them with a fair towel, and kissed much humbly and semblably their hands, distributing or dealing to every one of them a certain sum of silver, also to seven score poor men which daily came to his court, he administered meat and drink with his own hands, and were fed abundantly on the vigils solemn. And on some certain days in the year to two hundred poor, before that he ate or drank, he with his own hands administered and served them both of meat and drink. He ever had, both at his dinner and supper, three ancient poor, which ate nigh to him, to whom he charitably sent of such meats as were brought before him, and sometimes the dishes and meats that the poor of our Lord had touched with their hands, and special the sops of which he fain ate, made their remnant or relief to be brought before him, to the end that he should eat it; and yet again to honour and worship the name of our Lord on the poor folk, he was not ashamed to eat their relief." Qualities have their defects, and such a frame of mind as that can lead, for all the good motive, to injustice and even cruelty. Christ's lesson of the Roman coin is forgotten as quickly as any. Louis' passion for holiness, which became a kind of self-indulgence, led him into a hard and ugly intolerance and acts of severe oppression against those whom he styled heretics. His short way with the Jews recalled indeed those of our own King John, who was very nearly his contemporary. I know not if he pulled out their teeth, but he once did what must have been as bad, if not worse, for he published an ordinance "for the good of his soul," remitting to his Christian subjects the third of their debts to the Jews; and he also expressed it as his opinion that "a layman ought not to dispute with an unbeliever, but strike him with a good sword across the body," the most practical expression of muscular sectarianism that I know. Louis' religious fanaticism was, however, his end; for he was so ill-advised as to undertake a new Crusade against the unbelievers of Morocco, and there, while laying siege to Tunis, he died of the plague. That was in 1270, when he was only fifty-five. [Illustration: NOTRE DAME: SOUTH FAÇADE (FROM THE QUAI DE MONTEBELLO) STE. CHAPELLE] Twenty-seven years later Pope Boniface the Eighth raised him to the Calendar of Saints, his day being August 25th. But according to _The Golden Legend_, which I for one implicitly believe (how can one help it, written as it is?), the posthumous miracles of Louis did not wait for Rome. They began at once. "On that day that S. Louis was buried," we there read, "a woman of the diocese of Sens recovered her sight, which she had lost and saw nothing, by the merits and prayers of the said debonair and meedful king. Not long after, a young child of Burgundy both dumb and deaf of kind, coming with others to the sepulchre or grave of the saint, beseeching him of help, kneeling as he saw that the others did, and after a little while that he thus kneeled were his ears opened and heard, and his tongue redressed and spake well. In the same year a woman blind was led to the said sepulchre, and by the merits of the saint recovered her sight. Also that same year two men and five women, beseeching S. Louis of help, recovered the use of going, which they had lost by divers sickness and languors. "In the year that S. Louis was put or written in the catalogue of the holy confessors, many miracles worthy to be prized befell in divers parts of the world at the invocation of him, by his merits and by his prayers. Another time at Evreux a child fell under the wheel of a water-mill. Great multitude of people came thither, and supposing to have kept him from drowning, invoked God, our Lady and his saints to help the said child, but our Lord willing his saint to be enhanced among so great multitude of people, was there heard a voice saying that the said child, named John, should be vowed unto S. Louis. He then, taken out of the water, was by his mother borne to the grave of the saint, and after her prayer done to S. Louis, her son began to sigh and was raised on life." We leave the island by the Pont Sully, first looking at the statue of Barye, the sculptor of Barbizon, many of whose best small bronzes are in the Louvre (to say nothing of the shops of the dealers in the Rue Laffitte) and several of his large groups in the public gardens of Paris, one, for example, being near the Orangery in the Tuileries. Barye's monument standing here at the east end of the Ile St. Louis balances Henri IV. at the west end of the Ile de la Cité. Crossing to the mainland we ought to look at the old houses on the Quai des Célestins, particularly the old Hôtel de la Valette, now the Collège Massillon, into whose courtyard one should boldly peep. At No. 32 we touch very interesting history, for here stood, two and a half centuries ago, Molière's Illustre Théâtre, the stage entrance to which may be seen at 15 Rue de l'Ave Marie. And now for the Marais. CHAPTER V THE MARAIS A £32,000,000 Rebuilding Scheme--Romance and Intrigue--The Temple--The Archives--Illustrious Handwriting--The "Uncle" of Paris--The Wall of Philip Augustus--Old Palaces now Rookeries--The Carnavalet--The Perfect Museum--Latude--Napoleon--Madame de Sévigné--Chained Streets--John Law--The Rue St. Martin. The Marais is that district of old streets and palaces which is bounded on the south by the Rue St. Antoine, on the east by the Rue du Turenne, on the west by the Rue du Temple, and fades away in the north somewhere below the Rue de Bretagne. The Rue des Francs Bourgeois is its central highway east and west. It was my original intention to devote a large proportion of this book to this fascinating area--to describe it minutely street by street--and I have notes for that purpose which would fill half the volume alone. But the publication of the £32,000,000 scheme for renovating this and other of the older parts of Paris (one of the principal points in which is the isolation of the Musée Carnavalet, which is the heart of the Marais), coming just at that time, acted like a douche of iced water, and I abandoned the project. Instead therefore I merely say enough (I hope) to impress on every reader the desirability, the necessity, of hastening to the Rue des Francs Bourgeois and its dependencies, and refer them to the two French writers whom I have found most useful in my own researches--the Marquis de Rochegude, author of a _Guide Pratique à travers le Vieux Paris_ (Hachette) and the Vicomte de Villebresme, author of _Ce que reste du Vieux Paris_ (Flammarion). To these I would add M. Georges Cain, the director of the Carnavalet, to whom I refer later. No matter where one enters the Marais, it offers the same alluring prospect of narrow streets and high and ancient houses, once the abode of the nobility and aristocracy, but now rookeries and factories--and, over all, that sense of thorough insanitation which so often accompanies architectural charm in France and Italy, and which seems to matter so little to Latin people. Hence the additional wickedness of destroying this district. The Municipality, however, having acquired superfine foreign notions as to public health, will doubtless have its way. Wherever one enters the Marais one finds the traces of splendour, intrigue and romance; howsoever modern conditions may have robbed them of their glory, to walk in these streets is, for any one with any imagination, to recreate Dumas. For the most part one must make one's own researches, but here and there a tablet may be found, such as that over the entrance to a narrow and sinister passage at No. 38 Rue des Francs Bourgeois, which reads thus: "Dans ce passage en sortant de l'hôtel Barbette le Duc Louis d'Orléans frère du Roi Charles VI. fut assassiné par Jean Sans Peur, Duc de Bourgogne, dans la nuit du 23 ou 24 Novembre, 1407". Five hundred years ago! That gives an idea of the antiseptic properties of the air of Paris. The Duke of Orléans, I might remark here, was symmetrically avenged, for his son assassinated Jean Sans Peur on the bridge of Montereau all in due course. The Marais was at its prime from the middle of the fifteenth century to the beginning of the eighteenth; at which period the Faubourg St. Antoine was abandoned by fashion for the Faubourg St. Germain, as we shall see when the time comes to wander in the Rue de Varenne and the Rue de Grenelle on the other side of the river. Let us enter the Marais by the Rue du Temple at the Square du Temple, a little south of the Place de la République. One must make a beginning somewhere. The Temple, which has now disappeared, was the head-quarters of the Knight Templars of France before their suppression in 1307: it then became the property of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, who held it until the Revolution, when all property seems to have changed hands. Rousseau found sanctuary here in 1765; and here Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette were imprisoned for a while in 1792. More tragic by far, it was here that the little Dauphin died. Napoleon pulled down the Tower: Louis XVIII. on his accession awarded the property to the Princesse de Condé, and Louis-Philippe, on his, took it back again. The Rue du Temple has many interesting old houses and associations. Just north of the Square is the church of Elizabeth of Hungary, the first stone of which was laid in 1628 by a less sainted monarch, Marie de Médicis. It is worth entering to see its carved wood scenes from Scripture history. At 193 once lived Madame du Barry; at 153 was, in the reign of Louis XV., the barreau des vinaigrettes--the vinaigrette being the forerunner of the cab, a kind of sedan chair and jinrickshaw; at 62 died Anne de Montmorency, Constable of France, in the Hôtel de Montmorency. [Illustration: L'HOMME AU GANT TITIAN _(Louvre)_] From the Square du Temple we may also walk down the Rue des Archives, parallel with the Rue du Temple on the east. This street now extends to the Rue de Rivoli. It is rich in old palaces, some with very beautiful relics of their grandeur still in existence, such as the staircase at No. 78. The fountain at the corner of the Rue des Haudriettes dates only from 1705. At No. 58 is the gateway, restored, of the old palace of the Constable de Clisson, built in 1371. Later it belonged to the Guise family and then to the Soubise. The Revolution made it the property of the State, and Napoleon directed that the Archives should be preserved here. The entrance is in the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, across the green court; but do not go on a cold day, because there is no heating process, owing to the age of the building and the extraordinary value of the collections. The rooms in themselves are of some interest for their Louis XV. decoration and mural paintings, but one goes of course primarily to see the handwriting of the great. Here is the Edict of Nantes signed by Henri IV.; a quittance signed by Diana de Poictiers, very boldly; a letter to Parliament from Louis XI., in his atrocious hand; a codicil added by Saint Louis to his will on board a vessel on the coast of Sardinia, exquisitely written. The scriveners have rather gone off than improved since those days; look at the "Registre des enquêteurs royaux en Normandie," 1248, for a work of delicate minuteness. Marie Thérèse, wife of Louis XIV., wrote an attractive hand, but Louis XIV.'s own signature is dull. Voltaire is discovered to have written very like Swinburne. Relics of the Revolution abound. Here is Marie Antoinette's last letter to the Princess Elizabeth, written the night before she was executed; a letter of Pétion, bidding his wife farewell, and of Barbaroux to his mother, both stained with tears. Here also is the journal of Louis XVI., 1766-1792, and the order for his inhumation (as Louis Capet), 21st January, 1793. His will is here too; and so is Napoleon's. I say no more because the collection is so vast, and also because a franc buys a most admirable catalogue, with facsimiles, beginning with the monogram of Charlemagne himself. On leaving the Archives we may take an easterly course along the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, with the idea of making eventually for the Carnavalet; but it is well to loiter, for this is the very heart of the Marais. One's feet will always be straying down byways that call for closer notice, and it is very likely that the Carnavalet will not be reached till to-morrow after all. Indeed, let "Hasta mañana" be your Marais motto. One of the first buildings that one notices is the Mont de Piété, the chief of the Paris pawnbroking establishments. I am told that the system is an admirable one; but my own experience is against this opinion, for I was unable on a day of unexpected stress at the end of 1907 to effect an entrance at the very reasonable hour of a quarter past five. The closing of the English pawnbrokers at seven--the very moment at which the ordinary man's financial troubles begin--is sufficiently uncivilised; but to cease to lend money on excellent gold watches at five o'clock in the afternoon (with the bank closed on the morrow, too, being New Year's Day) is a scandal. My adventures in search of relief among French tradesmen who had been at my feet as recently as yesterday, before supplies had broken down, I shall never forget, nor shall I relate them here. This aims at being an agreeable book. It is interesting to note that one of the entrances to the Mont de Piété is reserved for clients who wish to raise money on deeds, and I have seen cabmen very busy in bringing to it people who quite shamelessly hold their papers in their hands. And why on earth not? And yet your English pawner seldom reaches the Three Brass Balls with such publicity or by any other medium than his poor feet. Our Mont de Piété for the respectable is the solicitor's office. A trace of the wall, and one of its towers, built around Paris by Philip Augustus in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, may be seen in the courtyard of the Mont de Piété; but the wall is better observed in the Rue des Guillemites, at No. 14. All about here once stood a large convent of the Blancs-Manteaux, or Servants of the Virgin Mary, an order which came into being in Florence in the thirteenth century and of whom the doctor Benazzi was the general. After the Blancs-Manteaux came the Hermits of St. Guillaume, or Guillemites, and later the Benedictines took it over. Next the Mont de Piété at the back is the church of the Blancs-Manteaux in its modern form. It is plain and unattractive, but it wears an air of some purpose, and one feels that it is much used in this very popular and not too happy quarter. Just opposite, in a doorway, I watched an old chiffonnière playing with a grey rabbit. Every inch of this neighbourhood offers priceless material to the hand of Mr. Muirhead Bone. One of the old tavern signs of Paris is to be seen close by, at the corner of the Rue des Blancs-Manteaux and the Rue des Archives: a soldier standing by a cannon, representing l'homme armé. It is a comfortable little retreat and should be encouraged for such antiquarian piety. The pretty turret at the corner of the Rue des Francs Bourgeois and the Rue Vieille du Temple marks the site of the hôtel of Jean de la Balue. Turning to the left up the Rue Vieille du Temple we come at No. 87 to a very beautiful ancient mansion, with a spacious courtyard, built in 1712 for the Cardinal de Rohan. It is now the national printing works: hence the statue of Gutenberg in the midst. Visitors are allowed to see the house itself once a week, but I have not done so. You will probably not be interfered with if you just step to the inside of the second courtyard to see the bas-relief of the steeds of Apollo. Nos. 102 to 108 in the same street mark the remains of another fine eighteenth-century hôtel. There is also a house which one should see in the lower part of the street, on the south side of the Francs Bourgeois--No. 47, where by penetrating boldly one comes to a perfect little courtyard with some beautiful carvings in it, and, above, a green garden, tended, when I was there, by a Little Sister of the Poor. The principal courtyard has a very interesting bas-relief of Romulus and Remus at their usual meal, and also an old sundial. This palace was built in 1638. Returning to the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, we find at No. 38 the little impasse already referred to, where the Duc d'Orléans was assassinated. At No. 30 is a very impressive red-brick palace with a courtyard, now a nest of offices and factories, once the hôtel of Jean de Fourcy. A bust of Henri IV. has a place there. At No. 25 on the other side (seen better from the Rue Pavée) is an even more splendid abode--now also cut up into a rookery--the Hôtel de Lamoignon, once Hôtel d'Angoulême, built for Diane, Duchess of Angoulême, daughter of Henri II.: hence the symbols of the chase in the ornamentation. The hotel passed to President de Lamoignon in 1655. And here is the Carnavalet--the spacious building, with a garden and modern additions, on the left--once the Hôtel des Ligneries, afterwards the Hôtel de Kernevenoy, afterwards the Hôtel de Sévigné, and now the museum of the city of Paris. The only way to understand Paris is to make repeated visits to this treasure-house. You will find new entertainment and instruction every time, because every time you will carry thither impressions of new objects of interest whose past you will want to explore. For in the Carnavalet every phase of the life of the city, from the days of the Romans and the Merovingians to our own, is illustrated in one way or another. The pictures of streets alone are inexhaustible: the streets that one knows to-day as they were yesterday and the day before yesterday and hundreds of years ago; the streets one has just walked through on the way here, in their stages of evolution: such, for example, as the picture of the wooden Pont des Meuniers in 1380 with the Tour Saint-Jacques behind it; the streets with dramas of the Revolution in progress, such as the picture of the emblems of Royalty being burned before the statue of Liberty (where the Luxor column now stands) in the Place de la Concorde on August 10th, 1793; such as the picture of the famous "serment" being taken in the court of the Jeu de Paume on June 20th, 1789; such as the picture of the funeral of Marat. For the perfection of topographical drawing look at the series by F. Hoffbauer. But it is impossible and needless to particularise. The visitor with a topographical or historical bent will find himself in a paradise and will return and return. One visit is ridiculous. The catalogue, I may say, is not good, therein falling into line with the sculpture catalogue at the Louvre. Everything may be in it, but the arrangement is poor. In such a museum every article and every picture should of course have a description attached, if only for the benefit of the poor visitor, the humblest citizen of Paris whose museum it is. There are a few works of art here too, as well as topographical drawings. Georges Michel, for example, who looked on landscape much as Méryon looked on architecture and preferred a threatening sky to a sunny one, has a prospect from the Plaine St. Denis. Vollon paints the Moulin de la Galette on Montmartre as it was in 1865; Troyon spreads out St. Cloud. Here also are a charming portrait by Chardin of his second wife; the well-known picture of David's Life School; drawings by Watteau; an adorable unsigned "Marchand de Lingerie"; an enchanting leg on a blue pillow by Boucher; a portrait by Prud'hon of an unknown man, very striking; and some exquisite work by Louis Boilly. [Illustration: PORTRAIT DE JEUNE HOMME ATTRIBUTED TO BIGIO _(Louvre)_] The Musée is strong in Henri IV. and the later Louis, but it is of course in relics of the Revolution and Napoleon that the interest centres. A casquette of Liberty; the handle of Marat's bathroom; a portrait of "La Veuve Capet" in the Conciergerie, in the room that we have seen; a painted life-mask of Voltaire, very horrible, and the armchair in which he died; a copy of the constitution of 1793 bound in the skin of a man; Marat's snuff-box; Madame Roland as a sweet and happy child,--these I remember in particular. Latude is, however, the popular figure--Latude the prisoner of the Bastille who escaped by means of implements which he made secretly and which are now preserved here, near a portrait of the enfranchised gentleman, robust, portly and triumphant, pointing with one hand to his late prison while the other grasps the rope ladder. Latude's history is an odd one. He was born in 1725, the natural son of a poor girl: after accompanying the army in Languedoc as a surgeon, or surgeon's assistant, he reached Paris in 1748 and proceeded to starve. In despair he hit upon an ingenious trick, which wanted nothing but success to have made him. He prepared an infernal machine of infinitesimal aptitude--a contrivance of practically harmless but perhaps somewhat alarming explosives--and this he sent anonymously to the Marquise de Pompadour, and then immediately after waited upon her in person at Versailles to say that he had overheard some men plotting to destroy her by means of this kind of a bomb, and he had come post-haste to warn her and save her life. It was a good story, but Latude seems to have lacked some necessary gifts as an impostor, for his own share was detected and he was thrown into the Bastille on the 1st of May, 1749. A few weeks later he was transferred to the prison at Vincennes, from which he escaped in 1750. A month later he was retaken and again placed in the Bastille, from which he escaped six years later. He got away to Holland, but was quickly recaptured; and then again he escaped, after nine more years. He was then treated as a lunatic and put into confinement at Charenton, but was discharged in 1777. His liberty, however, seems to have been of little use to him, and he rapidly qualified for gaol again by breaking into a house and threatening its owner, a woman, with a pistol, and he was imprisoned once more. Altogether he was under lock and key for the greater part of thirty-five years; but once he was free in 1784 he kept his head, and not only remained free but became a popular hero, and did not a little, by reason of a heightened account of his sufferings under despotic prison rule, to inflame the revolutionaries. These memoirs, by the way, in the preparation of which he was assisted by an advocate named Thiery, were for the most part untruthful, and not least so in those passages in which Latude described his own innocence and ideals. Our own canonised prison-breaker, Jack Sheppard, was a better hero than this man. The little room devoted to Napoleon is filled with an intimate melancholy. Many personal relics are here--even to a toothbrush dipped in a red powder. His nécessaires de campagne so compactly arranged illustrate the minute orderliness of his mind, and the workmanship of the travelling cases that hold them proves once again his thoroughness and taste. Everything had to be right. One of his maps of la campagne de Prusse is here; others we shall see at the Invalides. The relics of Madame de Sévigné, who once lived in this beautiful house, are not very numerous; but they exercise their spell. Her salon is very much as she left it, except that the private staircase has disappeared and a china closet takes its place. Within these walls have La Rochefoucauld and Bossuet conversed; here she sat, pen in hand, writing her immortal letters. "Lisons tout Madame de Sévigné" was the advice of Sainte-Beuve, while her most illustrious English admirer, Edward FitzGerald, often quotes her. He came to her late, not till 1875, but she never loosened her hold. "I have this Summer," he wrote to Mrs. W. H. Thompson, "made the Acquaintance of a great Lady, with whom I have become perfectly intimate, through her Letters, Madame de Sévigné. I had hitherto kept aloof from her, because of that eternal Daughter of hers; but 'it's all Truth and Daylight,' as Kitty Clive said of Mrs. Siddons. Her Letters from Brittany are best of all, not those from Paris, for she loved the Country, dear Creature; and now I want to go and visit her 'Rochers,' but never shall." "I sometimes lament," he says (to Mrs. Cowell), "I did not know her before; but perhaps such an acquaintance comes in best to cheer one toward the end." With these pleasant praises in our ears let us leave the Carnavalet. The Rue de Sévigné itself has many interesting houses, notably on the south side of the Rue des Francs Bourgeois; No. 11, for example, was once a theatre, built by Beaumarchais in 1790. That is nothing; the interesting thing is that he built it of material from the destroyed Bastille and the destroyed church of St. Paul. The fire station close by was once the Hôtel de Perron de Quincy. It was in this street, on the day of the Fête Dieu in 1392, that the Constable de Clisson, whose house we saw in the Rue des Archives, was attacked by Pierre de Craon. The Rue des Francs Bourgeois is the highway of the Marais, and the Carnavalet is its greatest possession; but, as I have said, the Marais is inexhaustible in architectural and historical riches. We may work our way through it, back to the Rue du Temple by any of these ancient streets; all will repay. The Rue du Temple extends to the Rue de Rivoli, striking it just by the Hôtel de Ville, but the lower portion, south of the Rue Rambuteau, is not so interesting as the upper. There is, however, to the west of it, just north of the Rue de Rivoli, a system of old streets hardly less picturesque (and sometimes even more so) than the Marais proper, in the centre of which is the church of St. Merry, with one of the most wonderful west fronts anywhere--a mass of rich and eccentric decoration. The Saint himself was Abbot of Autun. He came to Paris in the seventh century to visit the shrines of St. Denis and St. Germain. At that time the district which we are now traversing was chiefly forest, in which the kings of France would hunt, leaving their palace in the Ile de la Cité and crossing the river to this wild district--wild though so near. St. Merry established himself in his simple way near a little chapel in the woods, dedicated to St. Peter, that stood on this spot, and there he died. After his death his tomb in the chapel performed such miracles that St. Peter was forgotten and St. Merry was exalted, and when the time came to rebuild, St. Merry ousted St. Peter altogether. [Illustration: THE ARC DE TRIOMPHE DE L'ETOILE (APPROACHING FROM THE AVENUE DU BOIS DE BOULOGNE)] St. Merry's florid west front is in the Rue St. Martin, once the Roman road from Paris to the north and to England, and by the Rue St. Martin we may leave this district; but between it and the Rue du Temple there is much to see--such as, for example, the Rue Verrerie, south of St. Merry's, the head-quarters of the ancient glassworkers; the Rue Brisemiche, quite one of the best of the old narrow Paris streets, with iron staples and hooks still in the walls at Nos. 20, 23, 26 and 29, to which chains could be fastened so as to turn a street into an impasse during times of stress and thus be sure of your man; the Rue Taillepin, also leading out of the Rue du Cloître St. Merry into the Rue St. Merri, which has some fine old houses of its own, notably No. 36 and the quaint Impasse du Boeuf at No. 10. Parallel with the Rue St. Merry farther north is the Rue de Venise, which the Vicomte de Villebresme boldly calls the most picturesque in old Paris. Now a very low quarter, it was once literally the Lombard Street of Paris, the chief abode of Lombardy moneylenders, while the long and beautiful Rue Quincampoix, into which it runs on the west, was also a financial centre, containing no less an establishment than the famous Banque of John Law, the Scotchman who for a while early in the eighteenth century controlled French finance. When Law had matured his Mississippi scheme, he made the Rue Quincampoix his head-quarters, and houses in it, we read, that had been let for £40 a year now yielded £800 a month. In the winter of 1719-20 Paris was filled with speculators besieging Law's offices for shares. But by May the crash had come and Law had to fly. Many a house in the Rue Quincampoix, which is now sufficiently innocent of high finance, dates from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. There is a fine doorway at No. 34. We may regain the Rue St. Martin, just to the east, by the Rue des Lombards, which brings us to the flamboyant front of St. Merry's once more. The Rue St. Martin, which confesses its Roman origin in its straightness, is still busy with traffic, but neither itself nor the Rue St. Denis, two or three hundred yards to the west, is one-tenth as busy as it was before the Boulevard Sebastopol was cut between them to do all the real work. It is a fine thoroughfare and no doubt of the highest use, but what beautiful narrow streets of old houses it must have destroyed! We may note in the Rue St. Martin the pretty fountain at No. 122, and the curious old house at No. 164, and leave it at the church of St. Nicholas-des-Champs, no longer in the fields any more than London's St. Martin's is. And now after so many houses let us see some pictures! CHAPTER VI THE LOUVRE: I. THE OLD MASTERS The Winged Victory of Samothrace--Botticelli's Fresco--Luini--Ingres--The Salon Carré--La Joconde--Leonardo da Vinci--Pater, Lowell and Vasari--Early Collectors--Paul Veronese--Copyists--The Salle des Primitifs--The Grande Galerie--Landor's Pictorial Creed--The Great Schools--Rembrandt--Van Dyck and Rubens--Amazing Abundance--The Dutch Masters--The Drawings. It is on the first landing of the Escalier Daru, at the end of the Galerie Denon, that one of the most priceless treasures of the Louvre--one of the most splendid things in the world--is to be found: it has been before us all the way along the Galerie Denon, that avenue of noble bronzes, the first thing that caught the eye: I mean the "Winged Victory of Samothrace". Every one has seen photographs or models of this majestic and exquisite figure, but it must be studied here if one is to form a true estimate of the magical mastery of the sculptor. The Victory is headless and armless and much mutilated; but that matters little. She stands on the prow of a trireme, and for every one who sees her with any imagination must for all time be the symbol of triumphant and splendid onset. The figure no doubt weighs more than a ton--and is as light as air. The "Meteor" in a strong breeze with all her sails set and her prow foaming through the waves does not convey a more exciting idea of commanding and buoyant progress. But that comparison wholly omits the element of conquest--for this is essential Victory as well. The statue dates from the fourth century B.C. It was not discovered until 1863, in Samothrace. Paris is fortunate indeed to possess not only the Venus of Milo but this wonder of art--both in the same building. Before entering the picture galleries proper, let us look at two other exceedingly beautiful things also on this staircase--the two frescoes from the Villa Lemmi, but particularly No. 1297 on the left of the entrance to Gallery XVI., which represents Giovanna Tornabuoni and the Cardinal Virtues, and is by Sandro Filipepi, whom we call Botticelli. For this exquisite work alone would I willingly cross the Channel even in a gale, such is its charm. A reproduction of it will be found opposite page 20, but it gives no impression of the soft delicacy of colouring: its gentle pinks and greens and purples, its kindly reds and chestnut browns. One should make a point of looking at these frescoes whenever one is on the staircase, which will be often. The ordinary entrance to the picture galleries of the Louvre is through the photographic vestibule on the right of the Winged Victory as you face it, leading to the Salle Duchâtel, notable for such differing works as frescoes by Luini and two pictures by Ingres--representing the beginning and end of his long and austere career. The Luinis are delightful--very gay and, as always with this tender master, sweet--especially "The Nativity," which is reproduced opposite page 16. The Ingres' (which were bequeathed by the Comtesse Duchâtel after whom the room is named) are the "OEdipus solving the riddle of the Sphinx," dated 1808, when the painter was twenty-eight, and the "Spring," which some consider his masterpiece, painted in 1856. He lived to be eighty-six. English people have so few opportunities of seeing the work of this master (we have in oils only a little doubtful portrait of Malibran, very recently acquired, which hangs in the National Gallery) that he comes as a totally new craftsman to most of us; and his severity may not always please. But as a draughtsman he almost takes the breath away, and no one should miss the pencil heads, particularly a little saucy lady, from his hand in the His de la Salle collection of drawings in another part of the Louvre. In the Salle Duchâtel is also a screen of drawings with a very beautiful head by Botticelli in it--No. 48. From the rooms we then pass to the Salon Carré (so called because it is square, and not, as I heard one American explaining to another, after the celebrated collector Carré who had left these pictures to the nation), and this is, I suppose, for its size, the most valuable gallery in the world. It is doubtful if any other combination of collections, each contributing of its choicest, could compile as remarkable a room, for the "Monna Lisa," or "La Joconde," Leonardo da Vinci's portrait of the wife of his friend Francesco del Giocondo, which is its greatest glory and perhaps the greatest glory of all Paris too, would necessarily be missing. [Illustration: THE WINGED VICTORY OF SAMOTHRACE _(Louvre)_] Paris without this picture would not be the Paris that we know, or the Paris that has been since 1793 when "La Joconde" first became the nation's property--ever more to smile her inscrutable smile and exert her quiet mysterious sway, not only for kings and courtiers but for all. When all is said, it is Leonardo who gives the Louvre its special distinction as a picture gallery. Without him it would still be magnificent: with him it is priceless and sublime. For not only are there the "Monna Lisa" and (also in the Salon Carré) the sweet and beautiful "Madonna and Saint Anne," but in the next, the Grande Galerie, are his "Virgin of the Rocks," a variant of the only Leonardo in our National Gallery, and the "Bacchus" (so like the "John the Baptist") and the "John the Baptist" (so like the "Bacchus") and the portrait of the demure yet mischievous Italian lady who is supposed to be Lucrezia Crivelli, and who (in spite of the yellowing ravages of time) once seen is never forgotten. The Louvre has all these (together with many drawings), but above all it has the Monna Lisa, of which what shall I say? I feel that I can say nothing. But here are two descriptions of the picture, or rather two descriptions of the emotions produced by the picture on two very different minds. These I may quote as expressing, between them, all. I will begin with that of Walter Pater: "As we have seen him using incidents of sacred story, not for their own sake, or as mere subjects for pictorial realisation, but as a cryptic language for fancies all his own, so now he found a vent for his thought in taking one of these languid women, and raising her, as Leda or Pomona, as Modesty or Vanity, to the seventh heaven of symbolical expression. "_La Gioconda_ is, in the truest sense, Leonardo's masterpiece, the revealing instance of his mode of thought and work. In suggestiveness, only the _Melancholia_ of Dürer is comparable to it; and no crude symbolism disturbs the effect of its subdued and graceful mystery. We all know the face and hands of the figure, set in its marble chair, in that circle of fantastic rocks, as in some faint light under sea. Perhaps of all ancient pictures time has chilled it least.[1] As often happens with works in which invention seems to reach its limit, there is an element in it given to, not invented by, the master. In that inestimable folio of drawings, once in the possession of Vasari, were certain designs by Verrocchio, faces of such impressive beauty that Leonardo in his boyhood copied them many times. It is hard not to connect with these designs of the elder, by-past master, as with its germinal principle, the unfathomable smile, always with a touch of something sinister on it, which plays over all Leonardo's work. Besides, the picture is a portrait. From childhood we see this image defining itself on the fabric of his dreams; and but for express historical testimony, we might fancy that this was but his ideal lady, embodied and beheld at last. What was the relationship of a living Florentine to this creature of his thought? By what strange affinities had the dream and the person grown up thus apart, and yet so closely together? Present from the first incorporeally in Leonardo's brain, dimly traced in the designs of Verrocchio, she is found present at last in _Il Giocondo's_ house. That there is much of mere portraiture in the picture is attested by the legend that by artificial means, the presence of mimes and flute-players, that subtle expression was protracted on the face. Again, was it in four years and by renewed labour never really completed, or in four months and as by stroke of magic, that the image was projected? "The presence that rose thus so strangely beside the waters, is expressive of what in the ways of a thousand years men had come to desire. Hers is the head upon which all 'the ends of the world are come,' and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a moment beside one of those white Greek Goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty, into which the soul with all its maladies has passed! All the thoughts and experience of the world have etched and moulded there, in that which they have of power to refine and make expressive the outward form, the animalism of Greece, the lust of Rome, the mysticism of the middle age with its spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, the return of the Pagan world, the sins of the Borgias. She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants; and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands. The fancy of a perpetual life, sweeping together ten thousand experiences, is an old one; and modern philosophy has conceived the idea of humanity as wrought upon by, and summing up in itself, all modes of thought and life. Certainly Lady Lisa might stand as the embodiment of the old fancy, the symbol of the modern idea." [1] Yet for Vasari there was further magic of crimson in the lips and cheeks, lost for us. _Pater's note._ This was what the picture meant for Pater; whether too much, is beside the mark. Pater thought it and Pater wrote it, and that is enough. To others, who are not as Pater, it says less, and possibly more. This, for example, is what "Monna Lisa" suggested to one of the most distinguished and civilised minds of our time--James Russell Lowell:-- She gave me all that woman can, Nor her soul's nunnery forego, A confidence that man to man Without remorse can never show. Rare art, that can the sense refine Till not a pulse rebellious stirs, And, since she never can be mine, Makes it seem sweeter to be hers! Finally, since we cannot (I believe) spend too much time upon this picture, let me quote Vasari's account of it. "For Francesco del Giocondo, Leonardo undertook to paint the portrait of Monna Lisa, his wife, but, after loitering over it for four years, he finally left it unfinished. This work is now in the possession of the King Francis of France, and is at Fontainebleau. Whoever shall desire to see how far art can imitate nature may do so to perfection in this head, wherein every peculiarity that could be depicted by the utmost subtlety of the pencil has been faithfully reproduced. The eyes have the lustrous brightness and moisture which is seen in life, and around them are those pale, red, and slightly livid circles, also proper to nature, with the lashes, which can only be copied, as these are, with the greatest difficulty; the eyebrows also are represented with the closest exactitude, where fuller and where more thinly set, with the separate hairs delineated as they issue from the skin, every turn being followed, and all the pores exhibited in a manner that could not be more natural than it is: the nose, with its beautiful and delicately roseate nostrils, might be easily believed to be alive; the mouth, admirable in its outline, has the lips uniting the rose-tints of their colour with that of the face, in the utmost perfection, and the carnation of the cheek does not appear to be painted, but truly of flesh and blood; he who looks earnestly at the pit of the throat cannot but believe that he sees the beating of the pulses, and it may be truly said that this work is painted in a manner well calculated to make the boldest master tremble, and astonishes all who behold it, however well accustomed to the marvels of art. "Monna Lisa was exceedingly beautiful, and while Leonardo was painting her portrait, he took the precaution of keeping some one constantly near her, to sing or play on instruments, or to jest and otherwise amuse her, to the end that she might continue cheerful, and so that her face might not exhibit the melancholy expression often imparted by painters to the likenesses they take. In this portrait of Leonardo's, on the contrary, there is so pleasing an expression, and a smile so sweet, that while looking at it one thinks it rather divine than human, and it has ever been esteemed a wonderful work, since life itself could exhibit no other appearance." [Illustration: LA JOCONDE: MONNA LISA LEONARDO DA VINCI _(Louvre)_] King Francis I. (who met our Henry VIII. on the Field of the Cloth of Gold) bought the picture of Monna Lisa from the artist for a sum of money equal now to £20,000. It was on a visit to Francis that Leonardo died. "Monna Lisa" was the most valuable picture in the cabinet of Francis I. and was first hung there in 1545. It is very interesting to think that this work, the peculiar glory of the Gallery, should also be its nucleus, so to speak. The Venus of Milo and the Winged Victory, which I have grouped with "Monna Lisa" as its chief treasures, were not added until the last century. Among other pictures in the Louvre which date from the inception of a royal collection in the brain of Francis I. are the "Virgin of the Rocks" by Leonardo, Raphael's "Sainte Famille" (No. 1498) and "Saint Michael," Andrea del Sarto's "Charité" and Piombo's "Visitation". Louis XIII. began his reign with about fifty pictures and increased them to two hundred, while under Louis XIV., the Louvre's most conspicuous friend, the royal collection grew from these two hundred to two thousand--assisted greatly by Colbert the financier, who bought for the Crown not only much of the collection of the banker Jabach of Cologne, the Pierpont Morgan of his day, who had acquired the art treasures of our own Charles I., but also the Mazarin bibelots. Under Louis XIV. and succeeding monarchs the pictures oscillated between the Louvre, the Luxembourg and Versailles. The Revolution centralised them in the Louvre, and on 8th November, 1793, the collection was made over to the public. During the first Republic one hundred thousand francs a year were set aside for the purchase of pictures. But we are in the Salon Carré. Close beside "La Joconde" is that Raphael which gives me personally more pleasure than any of his pictures--the portrait, beautiful in greys and blacks, of Count Baldassare Castiglione, reproduced opposite page 52; here is a Correggio (No. 1117) bathed in a glory of light; here is a golden Giorgione; here is an allegory by Titian (No. 1589) not so miraculously coloured as the Correggio but wonderfully rich and beautiful; here is a little princess by Velasquez; and near it a haunting portrait of a young man (No. 1644) which has been attributed to many hands, but rests now as the work of Francia Bigio. I reproduce it opposite page 70. And that is but a fraction of the treasures of the Salon Carré. For there are other Titians, notably the portrait (No. 1592) of a young man with a glove (reproduced opposite page 64) marked by a beautiful gravity; other Raphaels, more characteristic, including "La Belle Jardinière" (No. 1496), filled with a rich deep calm; the sweetest Luini that I remember (No. 1354), and the immense "Marriage at Cana" by Paolo Veronese, which when I saw it recently was being laboriously engraved on copper by a gentleman in the middle of the room. It was odd to watch so careful a piece of translation in the actual making--to see Veronese's vast scene with its rich colouring and tremendous energy coming down into spider-like scratches on two square feet of hard metal. I did not know that such patience was any longer exercised. This picture, by the way, has a double interest--the general and the particular. As Whistler said of Switzerland, you may both admire the mountain and recognise the tourist on the top. It is full of portraits. The bride at the end of the table is Eleanor of Austria; at her side is Francis I. (who found his way into as many pictures as most men); next to him, in yellow, is Mary of England. The Sultan Suliman I. and the Emperor Charles V. are not absent. The musicians are the artist and his friends--Paul himself playing the 'cello, Tintoretto the piccolo, Titian the bass viol, and Bassano the flute. The lady with a toothpick is (alas!) Vittoria Colonna. It is, by the way, always student-day at the Louvre--at least I never remember to have been there, except on Sundays, when copyists were not at work. Many of the copies are being made to order as altar pieces in new churches and for other definite purposes. Not all, however! A newspaper paragraph lying before me states that the authorities of the Louvre have five hundred unfinished copies on their hands, abandoned by their authors so thoroughly as never to be inquired for again. I am not surprised. From the Salle Carré we enter the Grande Galerie, which begins with the Florentine School, and ends, a vast distance away, with Rembrandt. But first it is well to turn into the little Salle des Primitifs Italiens, a few steps on the right, for here are very rare and beautiful things: Botticelli's "Madonna with a child and John the Baptist" (No. 1296); Domenico Ghirlandaio's "Portrait of an old man and a boy" (No. 1322), which I reproduce opposite page 136, that triumph of early realism, and his "Visitation" (No. 1321), with its joyful colouring, culminating in a glorious orange gown; Benedetto Ghirlandaio's "Christ on the way to Golgotha" (No. 1323, on the opposite wall), a fine hard red picture; two little Piero di Cosimos (on each side of the door), very mellow and gay--representing scenes in the marriage of Thetis and Peleus; Fra Filippo Lippi's "Madonna and Child with two sainted abbots" (No. 1344), and the "Nativity" next it (No. 1343); a sweet and lovely "Virgin and Child" (No. 1345) of the Fra Filippo Lippi school; another, also very beautiful, by Mainardi (No. 1367); a canvas of portraits, including Giotto and the painter himself, by Paolo Uccello (No. 1272), the very picture described by Vasari in the _Lives_; and Giotto's scenes in the life of St. Francis, in the frame of which, as we shall see, I once, for historical comparison, slipped the photograph of M. Henri Pol, charmeur des oiseaux. These I name; but much remains that will appeal even more to others. To walk along the Grande Galerie is practically to traverse the history of art: Italian, Spanish, British, German, Flemish and Dutch paintings all hang here. Nothing is missing but the French, which, however, are very near at hand. Some lines of Landor which always come to my mind in a picture gallery I may quote hereabouts with peculiar fitness, and also with a desire to transfer the haunting--a very good one even if one does not agree with the reference to Rembrandt, which I do not:-- First bring me Raphael, who alone hath seen In all her purity Heaven's Virgin Queen, Alone hath felt true beauty; bring me then Titian, ennobler of the noblest men; And next the sweet Correggio, nor chastise His little Cupids for those wicked eyes. I want not Rubens's pink puffy bloom, Nor Rembrandt's glimmer in a dirty room With these, nor Poussin's nymph-frequented woods His templed heights and long-drawn solitudes. I am content, yet fain would look abroad On one warm sunset of Ausonian Claude. It is no province of this book to take the place of a catalogue; but I must mention a few pictures. The left wall is throughout, I may say, except in the case of the British pictures, the better. Here, very early, is the lovely "Holy Family" of Andrea del Sarto (No. 1515); here hang the four Leonardos which I have mentioned and certain of his derivatives; a beautiful Andrea Solario (No. 1530); a Lotto, very modern in feeling (No. 1350); a very striking "Salome" by Luini (1355), and the same painter's "Holy Family" (No. 1353); Mantegna; a fine Palma; Bellini; Antonello da Messina; more Titians, including "The Madonna with the rabbit" (No. 1578) and "Jupiter and Antiope" (No. 1587); a new portrait of a man in armour by Tintoretto, lately lent to the Louvre, one of his gravest and greatest; and so on to the sweet Umbrians--to Perugino and to Raphael, among whose pictures are two or three examples of his gay romantic manner, the most pleasing of which (No. 1509), "Apollo and Marsyas," is only conjecturally attributed to him. We pass then to Spain--to Murillo, who is represented here both in his rapturous saccharine and his realistic moods, "La Naissance de la Vierge" (No. 1710) and "Le Jeune Mendicant" (No. 1717); to Velasquez, who, however, is no longer credited with the lively sketch of Spanish gentlemen (No. 1734); and to Zurbaran, the strong and merciless. The British pictures are few but choice, including a very fine Raeburn, and landscapes by Constable and Bonington, two painters whom the French elevated to the rank of master and influence while we were still debating their merits. Such a landscape as "Le Cottage" (No. 1806) by Constable, with its rich English simplicity, brings one up with a kind of start in the midst of so much grandiosity and pomp. It is out of place here, and yet one is very happy to see it. From Britain we pass to the Flemish and Germans--to perfect Holbeins, including an Erasmus and Dürer; to Rubens, who, however, comes later in his full force, and to the gross and juicy Jordaens. Then sublimity again; for here is Rembrandt of the Rhine. After Leonardo, Rembrandt is to me the glory of the Louvre, and especially the glory of the Grande Galerie, the last section of which is now hung with twenty-two of his works. Not one of them is perhaps superlative Rembrandt: there is nothing quite so fine as the portrait of Elizabeth Bas at the Ryks, or the "School of Anatomy" at the Mauritshuis, or the "Unjust Steward" at Hertford House; but how wonderful they are! Look at the miracle of the flying angel in the picture of Tobias--how real it is and how light! Look closely at the two little pictures of the philosopher in meditation. I have chosen the beautiful "Venus et L'Amour" and the "Pèlerins d'Emmaus" for reproduction; but I might equally have taken others. They will be found opposite pages 146 and 154. On the other wall are a few pictures by Rembrandt's pupils and colleagues, such as Ferdinand Bol and Govaert Flinck, who were always on the track of the master; and more particularly Gerard Dou: note the old woman in his "Lecture de la Bible," for it is Rembrandt's mother, and also look carefully at "La Femme Hydropique," one of his most miraculously finished works--a Rembrandt through the small end of a telescope. From these we pass to the sumptuous Salle Van Dyck, which in its turn leads to the Salle Rubens, and one is again filled with wonder at the productivity of the twain--pupil and master. Did he never tire, this Peter Paul Rubens? Did a new canvas never deter or abash him? It seems not. No sooner was it set up in his studio than at it he must have gone like a charge of cavalry, magnificent in his courage, in his skill and in his brio. What a record! Has Rubens' square mileage ever been worked out, I wonder. He was very like a Frenchman: it is the vigour and spirit of Dumas at work with the brush. In the Louvre there are fifty-four attested works, besides many drawings; and it seems to me that I must have seen as many in Vienna, and as many in Dresden, and as many in Berlin, and as many in Antwerp, and as many in Brussels, to say nothing of the glorious landscape in Trafalgar Square. He is always overpowering; but for me the quieter, gentler brushes. None the less the portrait of Helène Fourment and their two children, in the Grande Galerie, although far from approaching that exquisite picture in the Liechtenstein Gallery in Vienna, when the boys were a little older, is a beautiful and living thing which one would not willingly miss. Van Dyck was, of course, more austere, less boisterous and abundant, but his record is hardly less amazing, and he seems to have faced life-size equestrian groups, such as the Charles the First here, without a tremor. The Charles is superb in his distinction and disdain; but for me, however, Van Dyck is the painter of single portraits, of which, no matter where I go, none seems more noble and satisfying than our own Cornelius Van Voorst in Trafalgar Square. But the "Dame et sa Fille," which is reproduced on the opposite page, is very beautiful. [Illustration: UNE DAME ET SA FILLE VAN DYCK _(Louvre)_] All round the Salle Rubens are arranged the little cabinets in which the small Dutch pictures hang--the Jan Steens and the Terburgs, the Hals' and the Metsus, the Ruisdaels and the Karel du Jardins, the Ostades and the golden Poelenburghs. Of these what can I say? There they are, in their hundreds, the least of them worth many minutes' scrutiny. But a few may be picked out: the Jan van Eyck (No. 1986) "La Vierge au Donateur," reproduced opposite page 166, in which the Chancellor Rollin reveres the Virgin on the roof of a tower, and small wild animals happily play around, and we see in the distance one of those little fairy cities so dear to the Flemish painter's imagination; David's "Noce de Cana"; Metsu's "Vierge et Enfant" the Memling and the Rogier van der Weyden, close by; Franz Hals' "Bohémienne," reproduced opposite page 186; Van der Heyden's lovely "Plaine de Haarlem" (No. 2382); Paul Potter's "Bois de La Haye" (No. 2529), almost like a Diaz, and his little masterpiece No. 2526; the Terburgs: the "Music Lesson" (No. 2588) and the charming "Reading Lesson" (No. 2591) with the little touzled fair-haired boy in it, reproduced opposite page 206; Ruisdael's "Paysage dit le Coup de Soleil" (No. 2560); Hobbema's "Moulin à eau" (No. 2404); and, to my eyes, almost first of all, Vermeer of Delft's "Lacemaker" (No. 2456), reproduced opposite page 216. These are all I name. So much for the paintings by the masters of the world. The Louvre also has drawings from the same hands, which hang in their thousands in a series of rooms on the first floor, overlooking the Rue de Rivoli. Here, as I have said, are other Leonardos (look particularly at No. 389), and here, too, are drawings by Raphael and Rembrandt, Correggio and Rubens (a child's head in particular), Domenico Ghirlandaio and Chardin, Mantegna and Watteau, Dürer and Ingres. I reproduce only one, a study attributed to the school of Fabriano, opposite page 228. Here one may spend a month in daily visits and wish never to break the habit. We have in England hardly less valuable and interesting drawings, but they are not to be seen in this way. One must visit the Print Room of the British Museum and ask for them one by one in portfolios. The Louvre, I think, manages it better. CHAPTER VII THE LOUVRE: II. MODERN PICTURES The Early French Painters--Richard Parkes Bonington--Chardin--Historical Paintings--Bonington again--The Moreau Collection--The Thomy-Thierret Collection--The Chauchard Collection. French pictures early and late now await us. On our way down the Grande Galerie we passed on the right two entrances to other rooms. Taking that one which is nearer the British School, we find ourselves in Salle IX., leading to Salle X. and so on to Galerie XVI., which completes the series. In Salle X. the beginnings of French art may be studied, and in particular the curious Japanese effects of the Ecole d'Avignon. Here also is very interesting work by Le Maître de Moulins and a remarkable series of drawings in the case in the middle, representing the Siege of Troy. Salle XI. is notable for its portraits by Clouet and others; in Salle XII. we find Le Sueur, and in Salle XIII. the curious brothers Le Nain, of whom there are very interesting examples at the Ionides collection at South Kensington, but nothing better than the haymaking scene here, No. 542. French painting of the seventeenth century bursts upon us in the great Salle XIV. or Galerie Mollien, of which Nicolas Poussin and Ausonian Claude are the giants, thus completing Landor's pleasant list with which we entered the Grande Galerie in the last chapter. There are wonderful things here, but so crowded are they that I always feel lost and confused. There is, however, compensation and relief, for the room also contains one minute masterpiece which perhaps not more than five out of every thousand visitors have seen, and yet which can be studied with perfect quietness and leisure. This is a tiny water-colour in the revolving screen in the middle. There is much delicate work in this screen, dainty aquatint effects by the Dutchmen Ostade and Van der Heyden, Weenix and Borssom, and so forth; but finest of all (as so often happens) is a little richly-coloured drawing of Nottingham by Bonington, who, as we shall see, has a way of cropping up unsuspectedly and graciously in this great collection--and very rightly, since he owed so much to that Gallery. He was one of the youngest students ever admitted, being allowed to copy there at the age of fifteen, while at the Beaux Arts. That was in the year after Waterloo. There may in the history of the Gallery have been copyists equally young, but there can never have been one more distinguished or who had deeper influence on French art. Paris not only made Bonington's career but ended it, for it was while sketching in its streets ten years or more later that he met with the sunstroke which brought about his death when he was only twenty-seven, and stilled the marvellous hand for ever. Salle XV. is given up to portraits, among them--and shall I say chief of them, certainly chief of them in point of popularity--the adorable portrait of Madame Elizabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun and her daughter, painted by herself, which is perhaps the best-known French picture, and of which I give a reproduction opposite page 246. On a screen in this room are placed the latest acquisitions. When last I was there the more noticeable pictures were a portrait by Romney of himself, rich and melancholy, recalling to the mind Tennyson's monologue, and a sweet and ancient religieuse by Memling. There were also some Corot drawings, not perhaps so good as those in the Moreau collection, but very beautiful, and a charming old-world lady by Fragonard. These probably are by this time distributed over the galleries, and other new arrivals have taken their place. I hope so. Galerie XVI., which leads out of the Salle des Portraits, brings us to French art of the eighteenth century--to Greuze and David, to Fragonard and Watteau, to Lancret and Boucher, and, to my mind, most charming, most pleasure-giving of all, to Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin, who is to be seen in perfection here and in the distant room which contains the Collection La Caze. It is probable that no painter ever had quite so much charm as this kindly Frenchman, whose loving task it was to sweeten and refine homely Dutch art. Chardin is the most winsome of all painters: his brush laid a bloom on domestic life. The Louvre has twenty-eight of his canvases, mostly still-life, distributed between the Salle La Caze and Salle No. XVI., where we now are. The most charming of all, which is to be seen in the Salle La Caze, is reproduced opposite page 234. Having walked down the left wall of the Salle, it is well to slip out at the door at the end for a moment and refresh oneself with another view of Botticelli's fresco, which is just outside, before returning by the other wall, as we have to go back through the Salle des Portraits in order to examine Salle VIII., a vast room wholly filled with French paintings of the first half of the nineteenth century, bringing the nation's art to the period more or less at which the Luxembourg takes it up, though there is a certain amount of overlapping. No room in the Louvre so wants weeding and re-hanging as this, for it is a sad jumble. Search, however, for the magnificent examples by the great _plein-airistes_. They are lost in this wilderness; but there they are for those that seek--the two vast Troyons; Corot's magic "Souvenir de Castel-Gondolfon"; a great Daubigny, "Les Vendances de Bourgogne," very hard and fine, and the same gigantic painter's large and lovely harvest scene, "Le Moisson"; Rousseau's "Sortie de Forêt," not unlike the Rousseau in the Wallace Collection in London, with its natural archway of branches and rich tenderness of colour; the sublime "La Vague," by Courbet; lastly Millet's "Les Glaneuses," the three stooping women in the cornfield who come to the inward eye almost as readily as the figures in the "Angelus". The red, blue and yellow of their head-kerchiefs alone would make this picture worth a millionaire's ransom. We leave the room by the door opposite that through which we came and find ourselves again in the Grande Galerie. The way now is to the left, through the Italian Schools, through the Salon Carré (why not stay there and let French art go hang?) through the Galerie d'Apollon (of which more anon), through the Rotunda and the Salle des Bijoux (whither we shall return), to another crowded late eighteenth and early nineteenth century French room chiefly notable for David's Madame Récamier on her joyless little sofa. (Why didn't we stay in the Salon Carré?) In this room also are two large Napoleonic pictures--one by Gros representing General Bonaparte visiting the plague victims at Jaffa in 1799; the other, by David, of the consecration service in Notre Dame, described in an earlier chapter. To see this kind of picture, at which the French have for many years been extremely apt, one must of course go to Versailles, where the history of France is spread lavishly over many square miles of canvas. From this room--La Salle des Sept Cheminées--we pass through a little vestibule, with Courbet's great village funeral in it, to the very pleasant Salle La Caze, containing the greater part of the collection of the late Dr. La Caze, and notable chiefly for the Chardins of which I have already spoken, and also, by the further door, for a haunting "Buste de femme" attributed to the Milanese School. But there are other admirable pictures here, including a Velasquez, and it repays study. Leaving by the further door and walking for some distance, we come to the His de la Salle collection of drawings, from which we gain the Collection Thiers, which should perhaps be referred to here, although there is not the slightest necessity to see it at all. The Thiers collection, which occupies two rooms, is remarkable chiefly for its water-colour copies of great paintings. The first President of the Republic employed patient artists to make copies suitable for hanging upon his walls of such inaccessible works as the "Last Judgment" of Michael Angelo and Raphael's Dresden Madonna. The results are certainly extraordinary, even if they are not precisely la guerre. The Arundel Society perhaps found its inspiration in this collection. Among the originals there is a fine Terburg. On leaving the Thiers collection, one comes to a narrow passage with a little huddle of water-colours, very badly treated as to light and space, and well worth more consideration. These pictures should not be missed, for among them are two Boningtons, a windmill in a sombre landscape, which I reproduce opposite page 274, and next to it a masterly drawing of the statue of Bartolommé Colleoni at Venice, which Ruskin called the finest equestrian group in the world. Bonington, who had the special gift of painting great pictures in small compass (just as there are men who can use a whole wall to paint a little picture on), has made a drawing in which the original sculptor would have rejoiced. It would do the Louvre authorities good if these Boningtons, which they treat so carelessly, were stolen. Nothing could be easier; I worked out the felony as I stood there. All that one would need would be a few friends equally concerned to teach the Louvre a lesson, behind whose broad backs one could ply the diamond and the knife. Were I a company promoter this is how I should spend my leisure hours. Such theft is very nigh virtue. Among other pictures in these bad little rooms--Nos. XVII. and XVIII.--are some Millets and Decamps. Three more collections--and these really more interesting than anything we saw in Galeries XIV. or XVI., or the Salle des Sept Cheminées--await us; but two of them need considerable powers of perambulation. Chronology having got us under his thumb we must make the longer journey first--to the Collection Moreau. The Collection Moreau is to be found at the top of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, the entrance to which is in the Rue de Rivoli. In the lower part of this building are held periodical exhibitions; but the upper parts are likely at any rate for a long time to remain unchanged, and here are wonderful collections of furniture, and here hang the few but select canvases brought together by Adolphe Moreau and his son, and presented to the nation by M. Etienne Moreau-Nelaton. In the Thomy-Thierret collection in another top storey of the same inexhaustible palace (to which our fainting feet are bound) are Corots of the late period; M. Moreau bought the earlier. Here, among nearly forty others, you may see that portrait of Corot painted in 1825, just before he left for Rome, which his parents exacted from him in return for their consent to his new career and the abandonment of their rosy dreams of his success as a draper. Here you may see "Un Moine," one of the first pictures he was able to sell--for five hundred francs (twenty pounds). Here is the charming marine "La Rochelle" painted in 1851 and given by Corot to Desbarolles and by Desbarolles to the younger Dumas. Here is the very beautiful Pont de Mantes, reproduced opposite page 252, belonging to his later manner, and here also is an exceptionally merry little sketch, "Bateau de pêche à marée basse". I mention these only, since selection is necessary; but everything that Corot painted becomes in time satisfying to the student and indispensable to its owner. Among the pencil drawings we find this exquisite lover of nature once more, with fifteen studies of his Mistress. One of the most interesting of the Moreau pictures is Fantin-Latour's "Hommage à Delacroix," with its figures of certain of the great and more daring writers and painters of the day, 1864, the year after Delacroix's death. They are grouped about his framed portrait--Manet, red haired and red bearded, a little like Mr. Meredith in feature; Whistler, with his white feather black and vigorous, and his hand on the historical cane; Legros (the only member of the group who is still living, and long may he live!) and Baudelaire, for all the world like an innocent professor. Manet himself is represented here by his famous "Déjeuner sur l'herbe," which the scandalised Salon of 1863 refused to hang, and three smaller canvases. Among the remaining pictures which gave me most pleasure are Couture's portrait of Adolphe Moreau the younger; Daumier's "La République"; Carrière's "L'enfant à la soupière" (notice the white bowl); Decamps' "La Battue," curiously like a Koninck; and Troyon's "Le Passage du Gué," so rich and sweet. From the Collection Moreau, with its early Barbizon pictures, one ought to pass to the Chauchard with its middle period, and then to the Collection Thomy-Thierret; but let us go to the Thomy-Thierret now. It needs courage and endurance, for the room which contains these exquisite pictures is only to be reached on foot after climbing many stairs and walking for what seem to be many miles among models of ships and other neglected curiosities on the Louvre's topmost floor. But once the room is reached one is perfectly happy, for every picture is a gem and there is no one there. M. Thomy-Thierret, who died quite recently, was a collector who liked pictures to be small, to be rich in colour, and to be painted by the Barbizon and Romantic Schools. Here you may see twelve Corots, all of a much later period than those bequeathed by M. Moreau, among them such masterpieces as "Le Vallon" (No. 2801), reproduced opposite the next page, "Le Chemin de Sèvres" (No. 2803), "Entrée de Village" (No. 2808), "Les Chaumières" (No. 2809), and "La Route d'Arras" (No. 2810). Here are thirteen Daubignys, including "Les Graves de Villerville" (No. 28,177), and one sombre and haunting English scene--"La Tamise à Erith" (No. 2821). Here are ten Diazes, most beautiful of which to my eyes is "L'Éplorée" (No. 2863). Here are ten Rousseaus, among them "Le Printemps" (No. 2903), with its rapturous freshness, which I reproduce opposite page 120, and "Les Chênes" (No. 2900), such a group of trees as Rousseau alone could paint. Here are six Millets, my favourite being the "Précaution Maternelle" (No. 2894), with its lovely blues, which again reappear in "Le Vanneur" (No. 2893). Here are eleven Troyons, of which "La Provende des poules" (No. 2907), with its bustle of turkeys and chickens around the gay peasant girl beneath a burning sky, reproduced opposite page 266, is one of the first pictures to which my feet carry me on my visits to Paris. Here are twelve Duprés, most memorable of which is "Les Landes" (No. 2871). And here also are Delacroix', Isabeys and Meissoniers. The Chauchard pictures--140 in number--which are now hanging in five rooms leading from the Salle Rubens, were bequeathed to the nation by M. Alfred Chauchard, proprietor of the Magasins du Louvre (which some visitors to Paris have considered the only Louvre). Among the pictures are twenty-six by Corot, twenty-six by Meissonier, eight by Millet (including "L'Angelus") and eight by Daubigny. [Illustration: LE VALLON COROT _(Louvre: Thomy-Thierret Collection)_] I may say at once that the Chauchard Collection does not compare with the Thomy-Thierret in courage. M. Thomy-Thierret liked his pictures to be small and exquisite and happy. Within the limits imposed the Barbizon painters never did anything more delightful or indeed better. The whole collection--and it is beyond price--is homogeneous: it embodies the taste of one man. M. Moreau and his son had a robuster taste, a bolder eye. They wanted strength as well as sweetness, or strength alone. Their collection has not quite the homogeneity of the Thomy-Thierret, but one feels here also that personality has honestly been at work bringing together things of beauty and power that pleased it, and nothing else. But M. Chauchard.... It is perfectly evident in a moment that M. Chauchard had neither knowledge nor taste. He merely had acumen. At a certain moment in his successful life, one feels, M. Chauchard extended himself before the fire-place, stroked his spreading _favoris_ (so like those of our own Whiteley), and announced "I must have some pictures". Other prosperous men saying the same thing have forthwith taken their courage in their hands and bought pictures; but M. Chauchard as I see him (both in his dazzling marble bust and in the portrait by Benjamin Constant), was not like that. "I must have some pictures," he announced, and then quickly reverted to type and cast about as to the best means of discovering whose pictures were most worth buying. That is how the Chauchard Collection came about, if I am not mistaken: it was the venture of an essentially commercial man--an investor-in-grain--who also desired a reputation of virtuosity but did not want to lose money over it. As it happens M. Chauchard was well advised. But wonderful as they are, beautiful as they are, valuable as they are, there is not a picture here which suggests to the visitor that it ever brought a real gladness to the eyes of its owner in his own home. But I can convince you only too easily that M. Chauchard had no taste. Do you remember when driving out to Longchamp, through the Bois, either to the Races or to Suresnes, just after you pass the Cascade, you come on the left to a windmill overlooking the course, and on the right to a white villa, all alone and unreal? A club house, one naturally thinks it, for the French Jockey Club, or something of that kind. You may have forgotten the villa, but you will recall it when I say that on the very trim vivid lawn in front of it, scattered about, supposed to be counterfeiting life, are various animals in stone--a stag, a doe, some dogs, all white and motionless, in the best mortuary manner, and all, to you and me, outrageous. Well, that was one of M. Chauchard's homes. M. Chauchard was the owner of that lawn and its occupants. The man who looking out of his window could feast his eye on these triumphs of the monumental mason was the same man who bought for his walls sheep by Jacque and Millet, and cattle and dogs by Troyon.... No matter. M. Chauchard acquired pictures and left them to the French Nation, and they are now on view for ever (always excepting the fatal Continental Mondays) for all to rejoice in. The first really compellingly beautiful work as one enters--the first picture to touch the emotions--is Rousseau's "La Charrette". It was painted in 1862, five years before the painter's death, which left the villagers of Barbizon the richer by a studio-chapel. It is a mere trifle and it is as wonderful as a summer day: a forest glade, in the midst of which a tiny wagon and white horse with blue trappings are seen beneath a burning sky, such a picture as ought to have a wall if not a room to itself: such a picture as I should like to see placed above an altar. It is the same subject--a forest wagon--that provided what in some ways is the best or most attractive Corot here. His "La Charrette" is a large easy landscape lit by the gracious light of which he alone had the secret. In the foreground is a deep sandy road with the charrette labouring through it. But before we came to this we had stood before one of the finest of the seven Daubignys, "La Seine à Bezons," a river scene of almost terrible calm, with Mont Valerien in the distance and geese and boats on the near shore, and implicit in it the sincerity, strength and humility of this great man. At the end of the room hang two large and busy Troyons, one on each side of M. Chauchard himself, the donor of the feast, whose bust in the whitest Carrara, with the whiskers in full fig and the _croix de grand officier du Legion d'honneur_ meticulously carved upon it, stands here, as stipulated in the will. These two Troyons, of which there are eighteen in all, are I think the largest. One represents cows sauntering lazily down to drink; the other the return from the market of a mixed herd of cattle and sheep, with a donkey in panniers, being driven by a man on a white horse. As was his wont, Troyon chose a road on the edge of a cliff with a very green border of turf and an exquisite glimpse of sea to the left. None of the new Troyons perhaps is as fine as those in Salle VIII. of the Louvre proper, but this is a superb thing. The "Boeufs se rendant au labour" and the "Le Retour à la ferme" in Salle VIII. should be visited after the Chauchards. And so we leave the first and largest room, in the midst of which are two cases of Barye's bronzes--lions and tigers, bears and deer, snakes and birds--and enter the first room on the left as we came in; and here we begin to see for the first time pictures with special knots of people before them. For the Meissoniers begin here. And of Meissonier what am I to say? For Meissonier leaves me cold. He is marvellous; but he leaves me cold. He painted with a fidelity and spirit that border on the magical; but those qualities that I want in a picture, those callings of deep to deep, one seeks in vain. Hence I say nothing of Meissonier, except that he was a master, that there are twenty-six of his masterpieces here, and that the crowd opposite his "1814" extends to the opposite side. How can one spend time over "Le cheval de l'ordonnance" and the "Petit Poste de Grand'-Garde" when Daubigny's "Les Laveuses (effet de soleil couchant)" hangs so near--this great placid green picture, so profoundly true as to be almost an act of God? Corot's "Etang de Ville d'Avray" is here too, liquid and tender. The little room that leads out of this is usually almost unenterable by reason of the press before Meissonier's "1814". This undoubtedly is one of the little great pictures of the world, and I can understand the enthusiasm of the French sightseer, whose blood is still stirrable by the enduring personality of the saturnine man on the white horse. Neighbouring pictures are a rich cattle piece by Diaz, immediately over "1814"; Rousseau's "La Mare," which is not a little like the Koninck in the Ionides Collection at South Kensington, and the same painter's "La Mare au pied du coteau" with its lovely middle distance. Here too is one of Corot's many _pêcheurs_, who little knew as they fished on so quietly in the still gentle light that they were being rendered immortal by the quaint little bourgeois with the long pipe, sketching on the bank. One of the finest of the Duprés is also here--"La Vanne," a deep green scene of water. In the last room we come at last to that painter whose work, next perhaps to Meissonier's, is the magnet which draws such a steady stream of worshippers to this new shrine of art--to Jean François Millet. M. Chauchard had eight Millets, including the "Angelus," but though it is the "Angelus" which is considered of many to be the very core of this collection, I find more pleasure in "La Bergère gardant ses moutons" (reproduced opposite page 308), which I would call, I think, the best picture of all. It has been remarked that no picture containing sheep can ever be a bad picture; but when Millet paints them, and when they are grazing beneath such a sky, and when one of those grave sweet peasant women--a monument of patient acceptance and the humility that comes from the soil--is their shepherdess, why then it is almost too much; and the brave ardent Jacque, whose "Moutons au Pâturage" hangs close by, is half suspected of theatricalism. Millet is so great, so full of large elemental simplicity and truth that one regrets that his eight pictures have not a room to themselves. That they should be elbowed by the neat dancing-master _chefs d'oeuvre_ of Meissonier is something of a catastrophe. Thinking over the collection, I have very strongly the feeling already expressed that it was wrongly assembled. The investor rather than the enthusiast is too apparent. M. Chauchard, it is true, refrained from making money by his acquisitions, since he gave them to the nation, and this is eternally to his credit. None the less I find it difficult to esteem him as perhaps one should even in the light of a generous testator. One so wants pictures to be loved. And of all pictures that are lovable and that long to pass into their owner's being--to engentle his eyes and enrich his experience and deepen his nature--none equal those that were painted by the little group of friends who in the middle of the last century made the white-walled village of Barbizon their head-quarters and the Forest of Fontainebleau their happy hunting-ground and a Wordsworthian passion for nature their creed. Such pictures deserve the most faithful owners and the most thoughtful hospitality.... But if we cannot get all as we wish it, at least we must be grateful for the next best thing, and to M. Chauchard and the Louvre authorities we must all be supremely grateful. The Louvre is to-day the most wonderful museum in the world; but what would one not give to be able to visit it as it was in 1814, when it was in some respects more wonderful still. For then it was filled with the spoils of Napoleon's armies, who had instructions always to bring back from the conquered cities what they could see that was likely to beautify and enrich France. It is a reason for war in itself. I would support any war with Austria, for example, that would bring to London Count Czernin's Vermeer and the Parmigianino in the Vienna National Gallery; any war with Germany that would put the Berlin National Gallery at our disposal. Napoleon had other things to fight for, but that comprehensive brain forgot nothing, and as he deposed a king he remembered a blank space in the Louvre that lacked a Raphael, an empty niche waiting for its Phidias. The Revolution decreed the Museum, but it was Napoleon who made it priceless and glorious. After the fall of this man a trumpery era of restitution set in. Many of his noble patriotic thefts were cancelled out. The world readjusted itself and shrank into its old pettiness. Priceless pictures and statues were carried again to Italy and Austria, Napoleon to St. Helena. CHAPTER VIII THE TUILERIES A Vanished Palace--The Most Magnificent Vista--Enter Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette--The Massacre of the Swiss Guards--The Blood of Paris--A Series of Disasters--The Growth of Paris--The Napoleonic Rebuilders--The Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel--The Irony of History--A Frock Coat Rampant--The Statuary of Paris--The Gardens of the Tuileries--Monsieur Pol, Charmer of Birds--The Parisian Sparrow--Hyde Park--The Drum. Had we turned our back only thirty-eight years ago on Frémiet's statue of Joan of Arc (which was not there then) in the Place de Rivoli, and walked down what is now the Rue de Tuileries towards the Seine, we should have had on our left hand a beautiful and imposing building--the Palace of the Tuileries, which united the two wings of the Louvre that now terminate in the Pavillon de Marsan just by the Place de Rivoli and the Pavillon de Flore on the Quai des Tuileries. The palace stretched right across this interval, thus interrupting the wonderful vista of to-day from the old Louvre right away to the Arc de Triomphe--probably the most extraordinary and beautiful civilised, or artificial, vista in the world. The palace had, however, a sufficiently fine if curtailed share of it from its own windows. All Parisians upwards of forty-five must remember the Palace perfectly, for it was not destroyed until 1871, during the Commune, and it was some years after that incendiary period before all traces were removed and the gardens spread uninterruptedly from the Carrousel to the Concorde. The Palace of the Tuileries (so called because it occupied a site previously covered by tile kilns) was begun in 1564 and had therefore lived for three centuries. Catherine de Médicis planned it, but, as we shall read later, she lost interest in it very quickly owing to one of those inconvenient prophecies which were wont in earlier times so to embarrass rulers, but which to-day in civilised countries have entirely gone out. The Tuileries was a happy enough palace, as palaces go, until the Revolution: it then became for a while the very centre of rebellion and carnage; for Louis XVI. and the Royal Family were conveyed thither after the fatal oath had been sworn in the Versailles tennis-court. Then came the critical 10th of August, when the King consented to attend the conference in the Manège (now no more, but a tablet opposite the Rue Castiglione marks the spot) and thus lost everything. The massacre of the Swiss Guards followed: but here it is impossible, or at least absurd, not to hear Carlyle. Mandal, Commander of the National Guard, I would premise, has been assassinated by the crowd; the Constitutional Assembly sits in the Manège, and the King, a prisoner in the Tuileries, but still a hesitant and an optimist, is ordered to attend it. At last he consents. "King Louis sits, his hands leant on his knees, body bent forward; gazes for a space fixedly on Syndic Roederer; then answers, looking over his shoulder to the Queen: _Marchons!_ They march; King Louis, Queen, Sister Elizabeth, the two royal children and governess: these, with Syndic Roederer, and Officials of the Department; amid a double rank of National Guards. The men with blunderbusses, the steady red Swiss gaze mournfully, reproachfully; but hear only these words from Syndic Roederer: 'The King is going to the Assembly; make way'. It has struck eight, on all clocks, some minutes ago: the King has left the Tuileries--forever. [Illustration: THE PARC MONCEAU] "O ye stanch Swiss, ye gallant gentlemen in black, for what a cause are ye to spend and be spent! Look out from the western windows, ye may see King Louis placidly hold on his way; the poor little Prince Royal 'sportfully kicking the fallen leaves'. Fremescent multitude on the Terrace of the Feuillants whirls parallel to him; one man in it, very noisy, with a long pole: will they not obstruct the outer Staircase, and back-entrance of the Salle, when it comes to that? King's Guards can go no farther than the bottom step there. Lo, Deputation of Legislators come out; he of the long pole is stilled by oratory; Assembly's Guards join themselves to King's Guards, and all may mount in this case of necessity; the outer Staircase is free, or passable. See, Royalty ascends; a blue Grenadier lifts the poor little Prince Royal from the press; Royalty has entered in. Royalty has vanished for ever from your eyes.--And ye? Left standing there, amid the yawning abysses, and earthquake of Insurrection; without course; without command: if ye perish, it must be as more than martyrs, as martyrs who are now without a cause! The black Courtiers disappear mostly; through such issues as they can. The poor Swiss know not how to act: one duty only is clear to them, that of standing by their post; and they will perform that. "But the glittering steel tide has arrived; it beats now against the Château barriers and eastern Courts; irresistible, loud-surging far and wide;--breaks in, fills the Court of the Carrousel, blackbrowed Marseillese in the van. King Louis gone, say you; over to the Assembly! Well and good: but till the Assembly pronounce Forfeiture of him, what boots it? Our post is in that Château or stronghold of his; there till then must we continue. Think, ye stanch Swiss, whether it were good that grim murder began, and brothers blasted one another in pieces for a stone edifice?--Poor Swiss! they know not how to act: from the southern windows, some fling cartridges, in sign of brotherhood; on the eastern outer staircase, and within through long stairs and corridors, they stand firm-ranked, peaceable and yet refusing to stir. Westermann speaks to them in Alsatian German; Marseillese plead, in hot Provençal speech and pantomime; stunning hubbub pleads and threatens, infinite, around. The Swiss stand fast, peaceable and yet immovable; red granite pier in that waste-flashing sea of steel. "Who can help the inevitable issue; Marseillese and all France on this side; granite Swiss on that? The pantomime grows hotter and hotter; Marseillese sabres flourishing by way of action; the Swiss brow also clouding itself, the Swiss thumb bringing its firelock to the cock. And hark! high thundering above all the din, three Marseillese cannon from the Carrousel, pointed by a gunner of bad aim, come rattling over the roofs! Ye Swiss, therefore: _Fire!_ The Swiss fire; by volley, by platoon, in rolling fire: Marseillese men not a few, and 'a tall man that was louder than any,' lie silent, smashed upon the pavement;--not a few Marseillese, after the long dusty march, have made halt _here_. The Carrousel is void; the black tide recoiling; 'fugitives rushing as far as Saint-Antoine before they stop'. The Cannoneers without linstock have squatted invisible, and left their cannon; which the Swiss seize.... "Behold, the fire slackens not; nor does the Swiss rolling-fire slacken from within. Nay they clutched cannon, as we saw; and now, from the other side, they clutch three pieces more; alas, cannon without linstock; nor will the steel-and-flint answer, though they try it. Had it chanced to answer! Patriot onlookers have their misgivings; one strangest Patriot onlooker thinks that the Swiss, had they a commander, would beat. He is a man not unqualified to judge; the name of him Napoleon Buonaparte. And onlookers, and women, stand gazing, and the witty Dr. Moore of Glasgow among them, on the other side of the River: cannon rush rumbling past them; pause on the Pont Royal; belch out their iron entrails there, against the Tuileries; and at every new belch, the women and onlookers 'shout and clap hands'. City of all the Devils! In remote streets, men are drinking breakfast-coffee; following their affairs; with a start now and then, as some dull echo reverberates a note louder. And here? Marseillese fall wounded; but Barbaroux has surgeons; Barbaroux is close by, managing, though underhand and under cover. Marseillese fall death-struck; bequeath their firelock, specify in which pocket are the cartridges; and die murmuring, 'Revenge me, Revenge thy country!' Brest Fédéré Officers, galloping in red coats, are shot as Swiss. Lo you, the Carrousel has burst into flame!--Paris Pandemonium! Nay the poor City, as we said, is in fever-fit and convulsion: such crisis has lasted for the space of some half hour. "But what is this that, with Legislative Insignia, ventures through the hubbub and death-hail, from the back-entrance of the Manège? Towards the Tuileries and Swiss: written Order from his Majesty to cease firing! O ye hapless Swiss, why was there no order not to begin it? Gladly would the Swiss cease firing: but who will bid mad Insurrection cease firing? To Insurrection you cannot speak; neither can it, hydra-headed, hear. The dead and dying, by the hundred, lie all around; are borne bleeding through the streets, towards help; the sight of them, like a torch of the Furies, kindling Madness. Patriot Paris roars; as the bear bereaved of her whelps. On, ye Patriots: Vengeance! Victory or death! There are men seen, who rush on, armed only with walking-sticks. Terror and Fury rule the hour. "The Swiss, pressed on from without, paralysed from within, have ceased to shoot; but not to be shot. What shall they do? Desperate is the moment. Shelter or instant death: yet How, Where? One party flies out by the Rue de l'Echelle; is destroyed utterly, '_en entier_'. A second, by the other side, throws itself into the Garden; 'hurrying across a keen fusillade'; rushes suppliant into the National Assembly; finds pity and refuge in the back benches there. The third, and largest, darts out in column, three hundred strong, towards the Champs Elysées: 'Ah, could we but reach Courbevoye, where other Swiss are!' Wo! see, in such fusillade the column 'soon breaks itself by diversity of opinion,' into distracted segments, this way and that;--to escape in holes, to die fighting from street to street. The firing and murdering will not cease; not yet for long. The red Porters of Hôtels are shot at, be they _Suisse_ by nature, or _Suisse_ only in name.... "Surely few things in the history of carnage are painfuller. What ineffaceable red streak, flickering so sad in the memory, is that, of this poor column of red Swiss 'breaking itself in the confusion of opinions'; dispersing, into blackness and death! Honour to you, brave men; honourable pity, through long times! Not martyrs were ye; and yet almost more. He was no King of yours, this Louis; and he forsook you like a King of shreds and patches: ye were but sold to him for some poor sixpence a-day; yet would ye work for your wages, keep your plighted word. The work now was to die; and ye did it. Honour to you, O Kinsmen." [Illustration: LE PRINTEMPS ROUSSEAU _(Louvre: Thomy-Thierret Collection)_] Is that too dreadful an association for this spot? It is terrible; but to visit Paris without any historical interest is too materialistic a proceeding, and to have the historical interest in Paris and be afraid of a little blood is an untenable position. Paris is steeped in blood. The Tuileries had not seen all its riot yet; July 29th, 1830, was to come, when, after another taste of monarchy, revived in 1814 after its murder on that appalling 10th of August (which was virtually its death day, although the date of the birth of the First Republic stands as September 21st, 1793), the mob attacked the Palace, the last Bourbon king, Charles X., fled from it and from France, and Louis-Philippe of Orléans mounted the throne in his stead. But that was not all. Another seventeen and a half years and revengeful time saw Louis-Philippe, last of the Orléans kings, escaping in his turn from another besieging crowd, and the establishment of the Second Republic. During the Second Empire some of the old splendour returned, and it was here, at the Tuileries, that Napoleon III. drew up many of his plans for the modern Paris that we now know; and then came the Prussian war and the Third Republic, and then the terrible Communard insurrection in the spring of 1871, in which the Tuileries disappeared for ever. Napoleon III., as I have said, assisted by Baron Haussmann, toiled in the great pacific task of renovating Paris, not with the imaginative genius of his uncle, but with an undeniable largeness and sagacity. He it was who added so greatly to the Louvre--all that part in fact opposite the Place du Palais Royal and the Magasins du Louvre as far west as the Rue de Rohan. A large portion of the corresponding wing on the river side was his too. But here is a list, since we are on the subject of modern Paris--which began with the great Napoleon's reconstruction of the ravages (beneficial for the most part) of the Revolutionaries--of the efforts made by each ruler since that epoch. I borrow the table from the Marquis de Rochegude. "Napoleon I.--Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, Vendôme Column, Façade du Corps Legislatif, Commencement of the Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile, La Bourse, the Bridges d'Austerlitz, d'Iéna, des Arts, de la Cité, several Markets, Quais d'Orsay, de Billy, du Louvre, Montebello, de la Tournelle; the Eastern and Northern Cemeteries; numbering the houses in 1806, begun without success in 1728; pavements in the streets and doing away with the streams or flowing gutters in the middle of the streets." (How like Napoleon to get the houses numbered on a clear system! Throughout Paris the odd numbers occupy one side of the street and the even the other. All are numbered from the Seine outwards.) "The Restoration.--Chapel Expiatoire, N.D. de Bonne-Nouvelle, N.D. de Lorette, St. Vincent de Paul; Bridges of the Invalides, of the Archbishopric, d'Arcole; Canals of St. Denis and St. Martin; fifty-five new streets; lighting by gas." (It was about 1828 that cabs came in. They were called fiacres from the circumstance that their originator carried on his business at the sign of the Grand St. Fiacre.) "Louis-Philippe, 1830-1848.--Finished the Madeleine, Arc de Triomphe, erected the Obelisk (Place de la Concorde), Column of July; Bridges: Louis-Philippe, Carrousel; Palace of the Quai d'Orsay; enlarged the Palais de Justice; restored Notre Dame and Sainte Chapelle; Fountains: Louvois, Cuvier, St. Sulpice, Gaillon, Molière; opened the Museums of Cluny and the Thermes. In 1843--1,100 streets. "Napoleon III., 1852-1870.--Embellished Paris--execution of Haussmann's plans, twenty-two new boulevards; Streets Lafayette, Quatre-Septembre, de Turbigo; Bvd. St. Germain; Rues des Ecoles, de Rivoli, the Champs Elysées Quarter, the Avenues Friedland, Hoche, Kléber, the Marceau, de L'Impératrice, many squares; a part of new Louvre; Churches of St. Augustine, The Trinity, St. Ambroise, Ste. Clotilde (finishing of); Theatres, Châtelet, Lyrique, du Vaudeville; Tribunal of Commerce, Hôtel Dieu, Barracks, Central Markets (also the ceinture railway); finishing of the Laribosière hospital, the Fountain of St. Michel, the Bridges of Solferino, L'Alma, the Pont au Change. In 1861, 1,667,841 inhabitants. "The Commune.--Burning of the Tuileries, the Ministry of Finance, the Louvre Library, the Hôtel de Ville, the Palace of the Legion of Honour, the Palace of the Quai d'Orsay, the Lyric, the Châtelet and the Porte St. Martin theatres, etc. "The Republic.--Reconstruction of the buildings burnt by the Commune; Avenue de l'Opéra, the Opera House; Streets: Etienne Marcel, Réaumur, Avenue de la République, etc. In 1892, 4,090 streets, in 1902 there were 4,261 streets. The Exhibition 1878 left the Trocadero, and that of 1889 the Eiffel Tower, and that of 1900 the two Palaces of the Champs-Elysées and the bridge Alexander III." (To this one should add the Métro, still uncompleted, which has the advantage over London's Tubes of being only just below the surface, so that no lift is needed.) [Illustration: THE ARC DE TRIOMPHE DU CARROUSEL (WEST FAÇADE)] The Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, at the east end of the gardens, is a mere child compared with the Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile, which stands there, so serenely and magnificently, at the end of the vista in the west, nearly two amazing miles away; it could be placed easily, with many feet to spare, under that greater monument's arch (as Victor Hugo's coffin was); but it is more beautiful. Both were the work of Napoleon, both celebrate the victories of 1805-06. The Carrousel is surmounted by a triumphal car and four horses; but here again, as in the case of the statue of Henri IV. on the Pont Neuf, there have been ironical changes. Napoleon, when he ordained the arch, which was intended largely to reproduce that of Severus at Rome, ravished for its crowning the quadriga from St. Mark's at Venice: those glorious gleaming horses over the door. That was as it should be: he was a conqueror and entitled to the spoils of conquest. But after his fall came, as we have seen, a pedantic disgorgement of such treasure; the golden team trotted back to the Adriatic, and a new decoration had to be provided for the Carrousel. Hence the present one, which represents--what? It is almost inconceivable; but, Louis XVIII. having commissioned it, it represents the triumph no longer of Napoleon but of the Restoration! Amusing to remember this under the Third Republic, as one looks up at it and then at the bas-reliefs of the battle of Austerlitz, the peace of Tilsit, the capitulation of Ulm, the entry into Munich, the entry into Vienna and the peace of Pressburg. Time's revenges indeed. Standing under the Arc du Carrousel one makes the interesting but disappointing discovery that the Arc de Triomphe, the column of Luxor in the Place de la Concorde, the fountain, the Arc du Carrousel, the Gambetta monument and the Pavillon Sully of the Louvre do not form a straight line, as by all the laws of French architectural symmetry they should--especially here, where compasses and rulers seem to have been at work on every inch of the ground, and, as I have ascertained, general opinion considers them to do. All is well, from the west, until the Arc du Carrousel; it is the Gambetta and the Pavilion Sully that throw it out. The Gambetta! This monument fascinates me, not by its beauty nor because I have any especial reverence for the statesman; but simply by the vigour of his clothes, the frock coat and the light overcoat of the flamboyant orator, holding forth for evermore (or until his hour strikes), urgent and impetuous and French. To the frock coat in sculpture we in London are no strangers, for have we not Parliament Square? but our frock coats are quiescent, dead even, things of stone. Gambetta's, on the contrary, is tempestuous--surely the most heroic frock coat that ever emerged from the quarries of Carrara. It might have been cut by the Great Mel himself. I have never seen a computation of the stone and bronze population of Paris, but the statues must be thousands strong. A Pied Piper leading them out of the city would be worth seeing, although I for one would regret their loss. Paris, I suppose, was Paris no less than now in the days before Gambetta masqueraded as a Frock Coated Victory almost within hail of the Winged Victory of Samothrace; but Paris certainly would not be Paris any more were some new turn of the wheel to whisk him away and leave the Place du Carrousel forlorn and tepid. The loss even of the smug figure of Jules Simon, just outside Durand's, would be something like a bereavement. I once, by the way, saw this statue wearing, after a snowstorm, a white fur cap and cape that gave him a character--something almost Siberian--beyond anything dreamed of by the sculptor. It is not until one has walked through the gardens of the Tuileries that the wealth of statuary in Paris begins to impress the mind. For there must be almost as many statues as flowers. They shine or glimmer everywhere, as in the Athenian groves--allegorical, symbolical, mythological, naked. The Luxembourg Gardens, as we shall see, are hardly less rich, but there one finds the statues of real persons. Here, as becomes a formal garden projected by a king, realism is excluded. Formal it is in the extreme; the trees are sternly pollarded, the beds are mathematically laid out, the paths are straight and not to be deviated from. None the less on a hot summer's day there are few more delightful spots, with the placid bonnes sitting so solidly, as only French women can sit, over their needlework, and their charges flitting like discreet butterflies all around them; and here are two old philosophers--another Bouvard and Pécuchet--discussing some problem of conduct or science, and there a family party lunching heartily, without shame. Pleasant groves, pleasant people! But the best thing in the Tuileries is M. Pol. Who is M. Pol? Well, he may not be the most famous man in Paris, but he is certainly the most engaging. M. Pol is the charmer of birds--"Le Charmeur d'oiseaux au Jardin des Tuileries," to give him his full title. There may be other charmers too at their pretty labours; but M. Pol comes easily first: his personality is so attractive, his terms of intercourse with the birds so intimate. His oiseaux are chiefly sparrows, whom he knows by name--La Princesse, Le Loustic, Garibaldi, La Baronne, l'Anglais, and so forth. They come one by one at his call, and he pets them and praises them; talks pretty ironical talk; uses them (particularly the little brown l'Anglais) for sly satirical purposes, for there are usually a few English spectators; affects to admonish and even chastise them, shuffling minatory feet with all the noise but none of the illusion of seriousness; and never ceases the while to scatter his crumbs or seeds of comfort. It is a very charming little drama, and although carried on every day, and for some hours every day, it has no suggestion of routine; one feels that the springs of it are sweetness and benevolence. He is a typical elderly Latin, this M. Pol, a little unmindful as to his dress, a little inclined to shamble: humorous, careless, gentle. When I first saw him, years ago, he fed his birds and went his way: but he now makes a little money by it too, now and then offering, very reluctantly, postcards bearing pictures of himself with all his birds about him and a distich or so from his pen. For M. Pol is a poet in words as well as deeds: "De nos petits oiseaux," he writes on one card:-- "De nos petits oiseaux, je suis le bienfaiteur, Et je vais tous les jours leur donner la pâture, Mais suivant un contrat dicté par la nature Quand je donne mon pain, ils me donnent leur coeur." I think this true. It is a little more than cupboard love that inspires these tiny creatures, or they would never settle on M. Pol's hands and shoulders as they do. He has charmed the pigeons also; but here he admits to a lower motive:-- "Ils savent, les malins, que leur couvert est mis, C'est en faisant du bien qu'on se fait des amis." It amused me one day at the Louvre to fix one of these photographs in the frame of Giotto's picture of St. Francis (in Salle VII.), one of the scenes of which shows him preaching to the birds, thus bridging the gulf between the centuries and making for the moment the Assisi of the Saint and the Paris of M. Briand one. London has its noticeable lovers of animals too--you may see in St. Paul's churchyard in the dinner hour isolated figures surrounded and covered by pigeons: the British Museum courtyard also knows one or two, and the Guildhall: quite like Venice, both of them, save that no one is excited about it; while in St. James's Square may be seen at all hours of every day the mysterious cat woman with her pensioners all about her on their little mats. Every city has these humorists--shall I say? using the word as it was wont to be used long ago. But M. Pol--M. Pol stands alone. It is not merely that he charms the birds but that he is so charming with them. The pigeon feeders of London whom I have watched bring their maize, distribute it and go. M. Pol is more of a St. Francis than that: as I have shown, he converses, jokes and exchanges moods with his friends. Although he is acquainted with pigeons, his real friends are the gamins of the air, the sparrows, true Parisians, who have the best news. Pigeons, one can conceive, pick up a fact here and there, but it would have a foreign or provincial flavour. Now if there is one thing which bores a true Parisian it is talk of what is happening outside Paris. The Parisian's horizons do not extend beyond his city. The sun for him rises out of the Bois de Vincennes, and evening comes because it has sunk into the Bois de Boulogne. Hence M. Pol's wisdom in choosing the sparrow for his companion, his oiseau intime. So far had I written when I chanced to walk into London by way of Hyde Park, and there, just by the Achilles statue, was a charming gentleman in a tall white hat whistling a low whistle to a little band of sparrows who followed him and surrounded him and fluttered up, one by one, to his hand. We talked a little together, and he told me that the birds never forget him, though he is absent for eight months each year. His whistle brings them at once. So London is all right after all. And I have been told delightful things about the friends of the grey squirrels in Central Park; so New York perhaps is all right too. The Round Pond of Paris is at the Tuileries--not so vast as the _mare clausum_ of Kensington Gardens, but capable of accommodating many argosies. Leaving this Pond behind us and making for the Place de la Concorde, we have on the right the remains of a monastery of the Cistercians, one of the many religious houses which stood all about the north of the Gardens at the time of the Revolution and were first discredited and emptied by the votaries of Reason and then swept away by Napoleon when he made the Rue de Rivoli. The building on the left is the Orangery. It is in this part that the temporary pavilions are erected for the banquets to provincial mayors and such pleasant ceremonies, while in the summer some little exhibition is usually in progress. But what is that sound? The beating of a drum. We must hasten to the gates, for that means closing time. CHAPTER IX THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE--THE CHAMPS-ELYSÉES AND THE INVALIDES A Dangerous Crossing--An Ill-omened Place--Louis the XVI. in Prosperity and Adversity--January 21st, 1793--The End of Robespierre--The Luxor Column--The Congress of Wheels--England and France--The Champs Elysées--The Parc Monceau--A Terrestrial Paradise--Oriental Museums--The Etoile's Tributaries--The Arc de Triomphe--The Avenue du Bois de Boulogne--A Vast Pleasure-ground--Happy Sundays--Longchamp--The Pari-mutuel--Spotting a Winner--Two Crowded Corners--The Rival Salons--The Palais des Beaux-Arts--Dutch Masters--Modern French Painters--Superb Drawing--Fairies among the Statues--The Pont Alexandre III.--The Fairs of Paris--A Vast Alms-house--A Model Museum--Relics of Napoleon--The Second Funeral of Napoleon--The Tomb of Napoleon. The Place de la Concorde by day is vast rather than beautiful, and by night it is a congress of lamps. By both it is dangerous, and in bad weather as exposed as the open sea. But it is sacred ground and Paris is unthinkable without it. The interest of the Place is summed up in the Luxor column, which may perhaps be said to mark what is perhaps the most critical site in modern history; for where the obelisk now stands stood not so very long ago the guillotine. The Place's name has been Concorde only since 1830 It began in 1763, when a bronze statue of Louis XV. on horseback was erected there, surrounded by emblematic figures, from the chisel of Pigalle, of Prudence, Justice, Force and Peace. Hence the characteristic French epigram:-- "O la belle statue, O le beau piédestal! Les Vertus sont à pied, le Vice est à cheval." Before this time the Place had been an open and uncultivated space; it was now enclosed, surrounded with fosses, made trim, and called La Place Louis Quinze. In 1770, however, came tragedy; for on the occasion of the marriage of the Dauphin, afterwards the luckless Louis XVI., with the equally luckless Marie Antoinette, a display of fireworks was given, during which one of the rockets (as one always dreads at every display) declined the sky and rushed horizontally into the crowd, and in the resulting stampede thousands of persons fell into the ditches, twelve hundred being killed outright and two thousand injured. Twenty-two years later, kings having suddenly become cheap, the National Convention ordered the statue of Louis XV. to be melted down and recast into cannon, a clay figure of Liberté to be set up in its stead, and the name to be changed to the Place de la Révolution. This was done, and a little later the guillotine was erected a few yards west of the spot where the Luxor column now stands, primarily for the removal of the head of Louis XVI., in whose honour those unfortunate fireworks had been ignited. The day was January 21st, 1793. "King Louis," says Carlyle, "slept sound, till five in the morning, when Cléry, as he had been ordered, awoke him. Cléry dressed his hair: while this went forward, Louis took a ring from his watch, and kept trying it on his finger; it was his wedding-ring, which he is now to return to the Queen as a mute farewell. At half-past six, he took the Sacrament; and continued in devotion, and conference with Abbé Edgeworth. He will not see his Family: it were too hard to bear. "At eight, the Municipals enter: the King gives them his Will, and messages and effects; which they, at first, brutally refuse to take charge of: he gives them a roll of gold pieces, a hundred and twenty-five louis; these are to be returned to Malesherbes, who had lent them. At nine, Santerre says the hour is come. The King begs yet to retire for three minutes. At the end of three minutes, Santerre again says the hour is come. 'Stamping on the ground with his right-foot, Louis answers: "_Partons_, Let us go."'--How the rolling of those drums comes in, through the Temple bastions and bulwarks, on the heart of a queenly wife; soon to be a widow! He is gone, then, and has not seen us? A Queen weeps bitterly; a King's Sister and Children. Over all these Four does Death also hover: all shall perish miserably save one; she, as Duchesse d'Angoulême, will live,--not happily. "At the Temple Gate were some faint cries, perhaps from voices of pitiful women: '_Grâce! Grâce!_' Through the rest of the streets there is silence as of the grave. No man not armed is allowed to be there: the armed, did any even pity, dare not express it, each man overawed by all his neighbours. All windows are down, none seen looking through them. All shops are shut. No wheel-carriage rolls, this morning, in these streets but one only. Eighty thousand armed men stand ranked, like armed statues of men; cannons bristle, cannoneers with match burning, but no word or movement: it is as a city enchanted into silence and stone: one carriage with its escort, slowly rumbling, is the only sound. Louis reads, in his Book of Devotion, the Prayers of the Dying: clatter of this death-march falls sharp on the ear, in the great silence; but the thought would fain struggle heavenward, and forget the Earth. "As the clocks strike ten, behold the Place de la Révolution, once Place de Louis Quinze: the Guillotine, mounted near the old Pedestal where once stood the Statue of that Louis! Far round, all bristles with cannons and armed men: spectators crowding in the rear; D'Orléans Egalité there in cabriolet. Swift messengers, _hoquetons_, speed to the Townhall, every three minutes: near by is the Convention sitting,--vengeful for Lepelletier. Heedless of all, Louis reads his Prayers of the Dying; not till five minutes yet has he finished; then the Carriage opens. What temper he is in? Ten different witnesses will give ten different accounts of it. He is in the collision of all tempers; arrived now at the black Maelstrom and descent of Death: in sorrow, in indignation, in resignation struggling to be resigned. 'Take care of M. Edgeworth,' he straitly charges the Lieutenant who is sitting with them: then they two descend. "The drums are beating: '_Taisez-vous_, Silence!' he cries 'in a terrible voice, _d'une voix terrible_'. He mounts the scaffold, not without delay; he is in puce coat, breeches of gray, white stockings. He strips off the coat; stands disclosed in a sleeve-waistcoat of white flannel. The Executioners approach to bind him: he spurns, resists; Abbé Edgeworth has to remind him how the Saviour, in whom men trust, submitted to be bound. His hands are tied, his head bare, the fatal moment is come. He advances to the edge of the Scaffold, 'his face very red,' and says: 'Frenchmen, I die innocent: it is from the Scaffold and near appearing before God that I tell you so. I pardon my enemies: I desire that France----' A General on horseback, Santerre or another, prances out, with uplifted hand: '_Tambours!_' The drums drown the voice. Executioners, do your duty!' The Executioners, desperate lest themselves be murdered (for Santerre and his Armed Ranks will strike, if they do not), seize the hapless Louis: six of them desperate, him singly desperate, struggling there; and bind him to their plank. Abbé Edgeworth, stooping, bespeaks him: 'Son of Saint Louis, ascend to Heaven'. The Axe clanks down; a King's Life is shorn away. It is Monday the 21st of January, 1793. He was aged Thirty-eight years, four months and twenty-eight days. [Illustration: VIEUX HOMME ET ENFANT GHIRLANDAIO _(Louvre)_] "Executioner Samson shows the Head: fierce shout of _Vive la République_ rises, and swells; caps raised on bayonets, hats waving; students of the College of Four Nations take it up, on the far Quais; fling it over Paris. D'Orléans drives off in his cabriolet: the Townhall Councillors rub their hands, saying, 'It is done, It is done'. There is dipping of handkerchiefs, of pike-points in the blood. Headsman Samson, though he afterwards denied it, sells locks of the hair: fractions of the puce coat are long after worn in rings.--And so, in some half-hour it is done; and the multitude has all departed. Pastry-cooks, coffee-sellers, milkmen sing out their trivial quotidian cries: the world wags on, as if this were a common day. In the coffee-houses that evening, says Prudhomme, Patriot shook hands with Patriot in a more cordial manner than usual. Not till some days after, according to Mercier, did public men see what a grave thing it was." The guillotine for more ordinary purposes worked in the Place du Carrousel, not far from Gambetta's statue to-day; but from May, 1793, until June, 1794, it was back in the Place de la Concorde (then Place de la Révolution) again, accounting during that time for no fewer than 1,235 offenders, including Charlotte Corday, Madame Roland and Marie Antoinette. The blood flowed daily, while the tricoteuses looked on over their knitting and the mob howled. Another removal, to the Place de la Bastille, and then on 28th July, 1794, the engine of justice or vengeance was back again to end a life and the Reign of Terror in one blow. What life? But listen: "Robespierre," lay in an anteroom of the Convention Hall, while his Prison-escort was getting ready; the mangled jaw bound up rudely with bloody linen: a spectacle to men. He lies stretched on a table, a deal-box his pillow; the sheath of the pistol is still clenched convulsively in his hand. Men bully him, insult him: his eyes still indicate intelligence; he speaks no word. 'He had on the sky-blue coat he had got made for the Feast of the _Être Suprême_'--O Reader, can thy hard heart hold out against that? His trousers were nankeen; the stockings had fallen down over the ankles. He spake no word more in this world. "And so, at six in the morning, a victorious Convention adjourns. Report flies over Paris as on golden wings; penetrates the Prisons; irradiates the faces of those that were ready to perish: turnkeys and _moutons_, fallen from their high estate, look mute and blue. It is the 28th day of July, called 10th of Thermidor, year 1794. "Fouquier had but to identify; his Prisoners being already Out of Law. At four in the afternoon, never before were the streets of Paris seen so crowded. From the Palais de Justice to the Place de la Révolution, for _thither_ again go the Tumbrils this time, it is one dense stirring mass; all windows crammed; the very roofs and ridge-tiles budding forth human Curiosity, in strange gladness. The Death-tumbrils, with their motley Batch of Outlaws, some twenty-three or so, from Maximilien to Mayor Fleuriot and Simon the Cordwainer, roll on. All eyes are on Robespierre's Tumbril, where he, his jaw bound in dirty linen, with his half-dead Brother and half-dead Henriot, lie shattered; their 'seventeen hours' of agony about to end. The Gendarmes point their swords at him, to show the people which is he. A woman springs on the Tumbril; clutching the side of it with one hand, waving the other Sibyl-like; and exclaims: 'The death of thee gladdens my very heart, _m'enivre de joie_'; Robespierre opened his eyes; '_Scélérat_, go down to Hell, with the curses of all wives and mothers!'--At the foot of the scaffold, they stretched him on the ground till his turn came. Lifted aloft, his eyes again opened; caught the bloody axe. Samson wrenched the coat off him; wrenched the dirty linen from his jaw: the jaw fell powerless, there burst from him a cry;--hideous to hear and see. Samson, thou canst not be too quick! "Samson's work done, there bursts forth shout on shout of applause. Shout, which prolongs itself not only over Paris, but over France, but over Europe, and down to this generation. Deservedly, and also undeservedly. O unhappiest Advocate of Arras, wert thou worse than other Advocates? Stricter man, according to his Formula, to his Credo and his Cant, of probities, benevolences, pleasures-of-virtue, and suchlike, lived not in that age. A man fitted, in some luckier settled age, to have become one of those incorruptible barren Pattern-Figures, and have had marble-tablets and funeral-sermons. His poor landlord, the Cabinet-maker in the Rue Saint-Honoré, loved him; his Brother died for him. May God be merciful to him and to us! "This is the end of the Reign of Terror." In 1799 the Place won its name Concorde. The next untoward sight that it was to see was Prussian and Russian soldiers encamping there in 1814 and 1815, and in 1815 the British. By this time it had been renamed Place Louis Quinze, which in 1826 was changed to Place Louis Seize, and a project was afoot for raising a monument to that monarch's memory on the spot where he fell. But the Revolution of 1830 intervened, and "Concorde" resumed its sway, and in 1836 Louis-Philippe, the new king (whose father, Philippe Egalité, had perished on the guillotine here), erected the Luxor column, which had been given to him by Mohammed Ali, and had once stood before the great temple of Thebes commemorating on its sides the achievements of Rameses II. Since then certain symbolic statues of the great French cities (including unhappy Strassburg) have been set up, and the Place is a model of symmetry; and at the time that I write (1909) a great part of it is enclosed within hoardings for I know not what purpose, but I hope a subway for the saving of the lives of pedestrians, for it must be the most perilous crossing in the world. One has but to set foot in the roadway and straightway motor-cars and cabs spring out of the earth and converge upon one from every point of the compass, in the amazing French way. Concorde, indeed! [Illustration: THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE (LOOKING NORTH) AUTOMOBILE CLUB THE MADELEINE MINISTÈRE DE LA MARINE] If the Place de la Concorde may be called at night a congress of lamps, the Champs-Elysées in the afternoon may be said to be a congress of wheels. Wheels in such numbers and revolving at such a pace are never seen in England, not even on the Epsom road on Derby Day. For there is no speed limit for the French motor-car. Nor have we in England anything like this superb roadway, so wide and open, climbing so confidently to the Arc de Triomphe, with its groves on either side at the foot, and the prosperous white mansions afterwards. It is not our way. We English, with our ambition to conquer and administer the world, have neglected our own home; the French, with no ambition any longer to wander beyond their own borders, have made their home beautiful. The energy which we as a nation put into greater Britain, they have put into buildings, into statues, into roads. The result is that we have the Transvaal, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and India, but it is the French, foregoing such possessions and all their anxieties, who have the Champs-Elysées. The Champs-Elysées were planned and laid out by Marie de Médicis in 1616, and the Cours la Reine, her triple avenue of trees, still exists; but Napoleon is the father of the scheme which culminates so magnificently in the Arc de Triomphe. The particular children's paradise of Paris is in the gardens between the main road and the Elysée, where they bowl their hoops and spin their Diabolo spools, and ride on the horses of minute round-abouts turned by hand, and watch the marionettes, with the tired eyes of Alphonse Daudet, who sits for ever, close by, in very white stone, watching them. Here also are the open-air cafés, the Ambassadeurs and the Alcazar, while on the other, the river, side are the Jardin de Paris, a curiously Lutetian haunt, and Ledoyen's, one of the pleasantest of restaurants in summer. Just above this point we ought to turn to the left to visit the Petit Palais and cross the Pont Alexandre III., but since we are on the way let us now climb to the Etoile, and on to the Bois, first, however, just turning off the Rond-Point for a moment to look at No. 3 Avenue Matignon, where Heine (beside whose grave we are to stand on Montmartre) suffered and died. The Place de l'Etoile might be called a kind of gilt-edged Seven Dials, since so many roads lead from it. Aristocratic Paris comes to a head here. On the right runs from it the Avenue de Friedland, leading to the Boulevard Haussmann, which meets with so inglorious an end at the Rue Taitbout, but is perhaps to be cut through to join the Boulevard Montmartre. Next on the right is the Avenue Hoche, running directly into the Parc Monceau, a terrestrial paradise to which good mondaines certainly go when they die. A little appartement overlooking the Parc Monceau--there is tangible heaven, if you like! The Parc itself is small but perfect, elegant and expensive and verdant. The children (one feels) are all titled, the bonnes are visibly miracles of distinction and the babies masses of point lace; the ladies on the chairs must be Comtesses or Baronnes, and the air is carefully scented. That is the Parc Monceau. It needed but one detail to make it complete, and that was supplied a few years ago: a statue of Guy de Maupassant, consisting of a block of the most radiant marble to be procured, with the novelist as its apex, and at the base a Parisienne reading one of his stories. Other statues there are: of Ambroise Thomas the composer, to whom Mignon offers a floral tribute; of Pailleron the dramatist, attended by an actress; of Gounod surrounded by Marguerite, Juliet, Sappho and a little Love; and of Chopin seated at the piano, with the figures of Night and Harmony to inspire him. These are only a few; but they are typical. Every statue in the Parc has a damsel or two, according to his desire. It is the mode. There is also a minute lake, on the edge of which have been set up a number of Corinthian columns; and before you have been seated a minute, an old woman appears from nowhere and demands twopence for what she poetically calls an armchair, the extra penny being added as a compliment to the two uncomfortable wires at the side which you had been wishing you could break off. Such is the Parc Monceau, the like of which exists not in London: the ideal pleasaunce of the wealthy. Through it, I might add, you may drive; but only at a walking pace--_au pas_. If the horse were to trot he might shake some petals off. At the western gate is the Musée Cernuschi, containing a collection of oriental pottery and bronzes. I am no connoisseur of these beautiful things, but I advise all readers of this book to visit both this museum and the Guimet in the Place d'Iéna, which is a treasury of Japanese and Chinese art. Returning to the Etoile, the next avenue is the Avenue de Wagram, running north to the Porte d'Asnières, while that which continues the Avenue des Champs-Elysées in a straight line west by north is the Avenue de la Grande Armée, running to the Porte Maillot and Neuilly. On the left the first avenue is the Avenue Marceau, which leads to the Place de l'Alma; the next the Avenue d'Iéna, leading to the Place d'Iéna; the next, the Avenue Kléber, running straight to the Trocadéro (into which I have never penetrated) and Passy, where the English live; the next, the Avenue Victor Hugo, which never stops; and finally the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, the most beautiful roadway in new Paris, along which we shall fare when we have examined the Arc de Triomphe. This trophy of success was begun, as I have said, by Napoleon to celebrate the victories of 1805 and 1806; Louis-Philippe finished it in 1836. Why Louis XVIII. did not destroy it or complete it as a further memorial of the Restoration, I cannot say. Napoleon's original idea was, however, tampered with by his successors, who allowed a bas-relief representing the Blessings of Peace in 1815 to be included. The sculptures are otherwise wholly devoted to the glorification of war, Napoleon and the French army; but they are not to be studied without serious inconvenience. My advice to the conscientious student would be to buy photographs or picture postcards, and examine them at home: the Arc de Triomphe is too great and splendid for such detail. From the top one can see all round Paris, and though one cannot look down on it all as from the Eiffel Tower, or see, beneath one, such an interesting district as from Notre Dame, it is yet a wonderfully interesting view. The Avenue du Bois de Boulogne has the finest road in what is, so to speak, the Marais of the present day; that is to say, in the modern quarter of the aristocratic and wealthy. We have seen riches and rank moving from the Marais to the Faubourg St. Germain and from the Faubourg St. Germain to the Faubourg St. Honoré, and now we find them here, and here they seem likely to remain. And indeed to move farther would be foolish, for surely there never was, and could not be, a more beautiful city site than this anywhere in the world--with its wide cool lawns on either side, and its gay colouring, and the Bois so near. Here too, on the heads of the comfortable complacent bonnes, are the most radiant caps you ever saw. The Bois de Boulogne, which takes its name from the little town of Boulogne to the south of it, now a suburb of Paris, began its life as a Paris park in the eighteen-fifties. Before that it was a forest of great trees, which indeed remained until the Franco-Prussian war, when they were cut down in order that they might not give cover to the enemy. That is why the present groves are all of a size. I cannot describe the Bois better than by saying that it is as if Hyde Park, Sandown Park, Kempton Park, and Epping Forest were all thrown together between Shepherd's Bush, Acton and the river. London would then have something like the Bois; and yet it would not be like the Bois at all, because it would rapidly become a desert of newspapers and empty bottles, whereas, although in the summer populous with picnic parties, the Bois is always clean and fresh. There are several gates to the Bois, but the principal ones are the Porte Maillot at the end of the Avenue de la Grande Armée, and the Porte Dauphine at the end of the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, and it is through the latter that the thousands of vehicles pass on their way to the races on happy Sundays in the spring and autumn. Most English people visiting the Bois merely drive to the races and back again; it is quite the exception to find any one who really knows the Bois--who has walked round the two lakes, Lac Inférieur, which feeds the cascade under which one may walk (as at Niagara), and Lac Supérieur; who has seen a play in the Théâtre de Verdure, or an exhibition at Bagatelle, the villa of the late Sir Richard Wallace, who gave the Champs-Elysées its drinking fountains and London the Wallace Collection. Bagatelle now belongs to Paris. Every English visitor, however, remembers the stone animals, dogs and deer, in the lawn of the Villa de Longchamp on the right as one approaches the race-course, and the windmill on the left, one of the several inoperative windmills of Paris, which marks the site of the old Abbey of Longchamp, founded by Isabella, the sister of Saint Louis. [Illustration: VÉNUS ET L'AMOUR REMBRANDT _(Louvre)_] The Bois has two restaurants of the highest quality and price--Armenonville, close to the Porte Maillot, a favourite dining-place when the Fête de Neuilly is in progress, in the summer, and the Pré Catelan, near Lac Inférieur and close to the point where the Allée de la Reine-Marguerite and the Allée de Longchamp cross. In the summer it is quite the thing for the young bloods who frequent the night cafés on Montmartre to drive into the Bois in the early morning and drink a glass of milk in the Pré Catelan's dairy, perhaps bringing the milkmaids with them. The Bois has two race-courses, but it is at Longchamp that the principal races are run--the Grand Prix and the Conseil Municipal. Racing men tell me that the defect of the pari-mutuel system is that one cannot arrange one's book, since the odds are always more or less of a surprise; but to one who does not bet on horses anywhere but in Paris, and who views an English bookmaker with alarm, if not positive terror, the pari-mutuel seems perfect in its easy and silent workings and the dramatic unfolding of its surprises. For first you have the fun of picking out your horse; then quietly putting your money on him, to win or for a place; and then, after the race is run and your horse is a winner, you have those five to ten delightfully anxious minutes while the actuaries are working out the odds. An experience of my own will illustrate not only the method of the system but the haphazard principles on which a stranger's modest gambling can be done. On the morning of the races I had visited the Louvre with Mr. Dexter, the artist of this book. We had not much time, and were therefore proposing to look only at the Leonardos and the Rembrandts, which are separated by a considerable stretch of gallery hung with other pictures. On leaving the Leonardos we walked briskly towards the Dutch end; Mr. Dexter, however, loitered here and there, and I was some distance ahead when he called me back to see a Holbein. It was worth going back for. In the afternoon at Longchamp, when the time came before the race to pick out the horses who were to have the honour of carrying my money, I noticed that one of them was named Holbein. Having already that day been pleased with a Holbein, I accepted the circumstance as a line of guidance, and placed a five-franc piece on the brave animal. He came in first, and being an outsider his price was 185.50. The Longchamp course is perfectly managed. There are three places where one may go--to the pesage, which costs twenty francs for a cavalier and ten francs for a dame; to the pavillon, which is half that price; or to the pelouse, where the people congregate, which costs a franc. Perfect order reigns everywhere. For the wanderer who has no carriage awaiting him and no appointments to hurry him there are two entertaining things to do when the races are over on a fine Sunday afternoon. One is to cross the Seine to Suresnes by the adjacent bridge and sitting at the café that faces it, watch the crowd and the traffic, for this is on a main road from Paris to the country; or walking the other way, one may enjoy a similar spectacle at the Café du Sport outside the Porte Maillot and study at one's ease the happy French in holiday mood--the husbands with their wives and their two children, and the Sunday lovers arm in arm. And now we return to the Champs-Elysées in order to look at some pictures and admire a beautiful bridge. For the Avenue Alexandre III., as for the Pont Alexandre III., Paris is indebted to the 1900 Exhibition. These are her permanent gains, and very valuable they are. Of the two white palaces on either side of this green and spacious Avenue, that on the right, as we face the golden dome of the Invalides, is the home of the Salon and of various exhibitions. I say Salon, but Paris now has many Salons, two of which, in more or less amicable rivalry, occupy this building at the same time. In one, the Salon proper, the Salon of the old guard, the Royal Academicians of France, there are miles of paint but few experiments; in the other, where the more independent spirits--the New Englishers, so to speak--hang their works in personal groups, there are fewer miles but more outrages. For outrages, however, pure and simple (or even impure and complex), I recommend the Salon that is now held in the early spring in some of the old Exhibition buildings on the banks of the river, close to the Pont d'Alexandre III. I have seen pictures there--nudities, in the manner of Aztec decorations, by the youngest French artists of the moment--which made one want to scream. It was said once that the French knew how to paint but not what to paint, and the English what to paint but not how to paint it. Since then there has been such a fusing of nationalities, such increased and humble appreciation on the part of the English painters of the best French methods, that one can no longer talk in that kind of cast-iron epigram; but it is impossible to see some of the crude innovating work now being done without the reflection that France is rapidly and successfully creating a school of artists who not only know not what to paint but how to paint too. The Palais des Beaux-Arts, which was built for the collection of pictures at the Exhibition of 1900, is now a permanent gallery for the preservation of the various works of art acquired from time to time by the municipality of Paris, thus differing from the Luxembourg collections, which are national. The Palais has become a kind of brother of the Carnavalet, the one being the historical museum of Paris and the other--the Palais--the artistic museum of Paris. The Palais undoubtedly contains much that is not of the highest quality, but no one who is interested in modern French painting and drawing can afford to neglect it, while the recent acquisition of the Collection Dutuit, consisting chiefly of small but choice pictures of the Dutch masters, including a picture of Rembrandt with his dog, from his own hand, has added a rather necessary touch of antiquity. One of the special rooms is devoted to pictures of the opulent Félix Ziem, painter of Venetian sunsets and the sky at its most golden, wherever it may be found, who is still (1909) living in honourable state on those slopes of the mountain of fame which are reserved for the few rare spirits that become old masters before they die, and who presented his pictures to Paris a few years ago; another room is filled with the works of the late Jean Jacques Henner, whose pallid nudities, emerging from voluptuous gloom, still look yearningly at one from the windows of so many Paris picture dealers. Henner, I must confess, is not a painter whom I greatly esteem; but few modern French artists were more popular in their day. He died in 1905, and this gift of his work was made by his son. Other French artists to have rooms of their own in the Palais are Jean Carriès the sculptor, who died in 1894 at the age of thirty-nine, after an active career in the modelling of quaint and grotesque and realistic figures, one of the best known and most charming of his many works being "La Fillette au Pantin" (No. 1338 in the collection); and Jules Dalou (1838-1902), also a sculptor, a man of more vigour although of less charm than his neighbour in the Palais. That strange gift of untiring abundant creativeness which the French have so notably, Dalou also shared, his busy fingers having added thousands of new figures to those that already congest life, while he modelled also many a well-known head. I think that I like best his "Esquisses de Travailleurs". Nothing here, however, is so fascinating as Dalou's own head by Rodin in the Luxembourg. Of the picture collection proper I am saying but little, for it is in a fluid state, and even in the catalogue before me, the latest edition, there is no mention of several of its finest treasures: among them Manet's portrait of Théodore Duret, a sketch of an old peasant woman's hand by Madame David, a Rip Van Winkle by that modern master of the grotesque and Rabelaisian, Jean Véber, and one of Mr. Sargent's Venetian sketches--the racing gondoliers. For the most part it is like revisiting the past few Salons, except that the pictures are more choice and less numerous; but one sees many old friends, and all the expected painters are here. It is of course the surprises that one remembers--the three Daumiers, for example, particularly "L'Amateur d'Estampes," reproduced opposite page 286, and "Les Joueurs d'Echecs," and the fine collection of the drawings of Puvis de Chavannes and Daniel Vierge. I was also much taken with some topographical drawings by Adrian Karbowski--No. 494 in the catalogue. Other pictures and drawings which should be seen are those by Cazin (a sunset), Pointelin, Steinlen (some work-girls), Sisley, Lebourg, and Harpignies, who exhibits water-colours separated in time by fifty-nine years, 1849 to 1908. The drawings on a whole are far better than the paintings. In the collection Dutuit look at Ruisdael's "Environs de Haarlem," Terburg's "La Fiancée," Hobbema's "Les Moulins" and a woodland scene, Pot's "Portrait of a Man," Van de Velde's landscape sketches, and the Rembrandt. The rooms downstairs are not worth visiting. Among the statuary, some of which is very good, particularly a new unsigned and uncatalogued Joan of Arc, is a naked Victor Hugo holding a MS. in his hand; while Frémiet of course confronts the door, this time with a really fine George and the Dragon, George having a spear worthy of the occasion, and not the short and useless broadsword which he brandishes on the English sovereign. On my last visit to this thinly populated gallery I was for some time one of three visitors, until suddenly the vast spaces were humanised by the gracious and winsome presence of a band of Isidora Duncan's gay little dancers, with a kindly companion to tell them about the pictures, and--what interested them more--the statues. These tiny lissome creatures flitting among the cold rigid marbles I shall not soon forget. And so we come to the Pont Alexandre III., the bridge whose width and radiance are an ever fresh surprise and joy, and make our way to the Invalides, at the end of the prospect, across the great Esplanade des Invalides, so quiet to-day, but for a month of every year, so noisy and variegated with round-abouts and booths. It is, by the way, well worth while, whenever one is in Paris, to find out what fair is being held. For somewhere or other a fair is always being held. You can get the particulars from the invaluable _Bottin_ or _Bottin Mondain_, which every restaurant keeps, and which is even exposed to public scrutiny on a table at the Gare du Nord, and for all I know to the contrary, at the other stations too. This is one of the lessons which might be learned from Paris by London, where you ask in vain for a _Post Office Directory_ in all but the General Post Office. _Bottin_, who knows all, will give you the time and place of every fair. The best is the Fête de Neuilly, which is held in the summer, just outside the Porte Maillot, but all the arrondissements have their own. They are crowded scenes of noisy life; but they are amusing too, and their popularity shows you how juvenile is the Frenchman's heart. One should enter the Invalides from the great Place and round off the inspection of the Musée de l'Armée by a visit to Napoleon's tomb; that, at least, is the symmetrical order. The Hôtel des Invalides proper, which set the fashion in military hospitals, was built by Louis XIV., who may be seen on his horse in bas-relief on the principal façade. The building once sheltered and tended 7,000 wounded soldiers; but there are now only fifty. From its original function as a military hospital for any kind of disablement it has dwindled to a home for a few incurables; while the greater portion of the building is now given up to collections and to civic offices. There could be no greater contrast than that between the imposing architecture of the main structure and the charming domestic façade in the Boulevard des Invalides, which is one of the pleasantest of the old Paris buildings and has some of the simplicity of an English almshouse. [Illustration: LES PÈLERINS D'EMMAÜS REMBRANDT _(Louvre)_] It is not until we enter the great Court of Honour that we catch sight of Napoleon, whose figure dominates the opposite wall. Thereafter one thinks of little else. Louis XIV. disappears. Passing some dingy frescoes which the weather has treated vilely, we enter the Musée Historique on the left--unless one has an overwhelming passion for artillery, armour and the weapons of savages, in which case one turns to the right. I mention the alternative because there is far too much to see on one visit, and it is well to concentrate on the more interesting. For me guns and armour and the weapons of savages are without any magic while there are to be seen such human relics as have been brought together in the Musée Historique on the opposite side of the Court. The whole place, by the way, is a model for the Carnavalet, in that everything is precisely and clearly labelled. This, since it is a favourite resort of simple folk--soldiers and their parents and sweethearts--is a thoughtful provision. The Musée Historique has at every turn something profoundly interesting, and incidentally it tells something of the men from whom numbers of Paris streets take their names; but the real and poignant interest is Napoleon. The Longwood room is to me too painful. The project of the admirable administrator has been to illustrate the whole pageant of French arms; but the Man of Destiny quickly becomes all-powerful, and one finds oneself looking only for signs and tokens of his personality. So it should be, under the shadow of the Dome which covers his ashes. I would personally go farther and collect at the Invalides all the Napoleonic relics that one now must visit so many places to see--the Carnavalet, Fontainebleau, the Musée Grévin, our own United Service Museum in Whitehall (as if we had the right to a single article from St. Helena!), Madame Tussaud's, and Versailles. There is even a room at the Arts Décoratifs devoted nominally to Napoleon, but it has few articles of personal interest and none of any intimacy--merely splendid costumes for occasions and ceremonials of State, with a few of Josephine's lace caps among them. Its purpose is to illustrate the Empire rather than the Emperor, but the Invalides should have what there is. At the Invalides you may, I suppose, see in three or four rooms more Napoleonic relics of a personal character than anywhere else. In Whitehall is the chair he died in; but here is his garden-seat from St. Helena, one bar of which was removed to allow him as he sat to pass his arm through and be more at his ease as he looked out to the ocean that was to do nothing for him. At Whitehall is the skeleton of his horse Marengo; here is the saddle. Here are his grey redingote and more than one of his hats. Among the relics in the special Napoleonic rooms those of his triumph and his fall are mixed. Here is the bullet that wounded him at Ratisbon; here are his telescopes and his maps, his travelling desks and his pistols; here are the toys of the little Duke of Reichstadt; here is the walking stick on which Napoleon leaned at St. Helena, his dressing-gown, his bed, his armchair and his death-mask. Here are the railings of the tomb at St. Helena, and a case of leaves and stones and pieces of wood and other natural surroundings of the same spot. Here also is the pall that covered his coffin on the way to its final burial under the Dome close by. It is a fitting end to the study of these storied corridors to pass to the tomb of the protagonist of the drama we have been contemplating. The Emperor's remains were brought to Paris in 1840, nineteen years after his death at St. Helena. Thackeray, in his _Second Funeral of Napoleon_, wrote a vivid, although to my mind hateful, description of the ceremonial: a piece of complacent flippancy, marked by the worst kind of French irreverence, which shows him in his least admirable mood, particularly when he is pleased to be amusing over the difference between the features of the Emperor dead and living. None the less it is an absorbing narrative. One looks down upon the sarcophagus, which lies in a marble well. It is simple, solemn and severe, and to a few persons, not Titmarshes, inexpressibly melancholy. The Emperor's words from his will, "Je désire que mes cendres reposent sur les bords de la Seine, au milieu de ce peuple français que j'ai tant aimé," are placed at the entrance to the crypt. He had not the Invalides in mind when he wrote them; but one feels that the Invalides is as right a spot for him as any in this land of short memories and light mockeries. CHAPTER X THE BOULEVARD ST. GERMAIN AND ITS TRIBUTARIES An Aristocratic Quarter--Adrienne Lecouvreur--A Grisly Museum--A Changeless City--The Pasteur Institute--The Golden Key--The Stoppeur--Sterne--The Beaux Arts--A Wilderness of Copies--Voltaire Clad and Naked--The Mint--An Inquisitive Visitor--Bad Money. From the Invalides the Boulevard St. Germain, the west to east highway of the Surrey side of Paris, is easily gained; but it is not in itself very interesting. The interesting streets either cross it or run more or less parallel with it, such as the old and winding Rue de Grenelle, which we come to at once, the home of the Parisian aristocracy after its removal from the Marais. The houses are little changed: merely the tenants; and certain Embassies are now here. No. 18 was once the Hôtel de Beauharnais, the home of the fair Joséphine; at the Russian Embassy, No. 79, the Duchesse d'Estrées lived. In an outhouse at No. 115 was buried in unconsecrated ground Adrienne Lecouvreur, the tragedienne who made tragedy, the beloved of Maréchal Saxe. Scribe's drama has made her story known--how her heart was too much for her, and how Christian burial was refused her by a Christian priest. The Rue St. Dominique, parallel with the Rue de Grenelle nearer the river, is equally old and august. At No. 13 lived Madame de Genlis, the monitress of French youth. Still nearer the river runs the long Rue de l'Université, which also has an illustrious past and a picturesque present, some great French noble having built nearly every house. One of the first old streets to cross the Boulevard St. Germain is the Rue du Bac, a roadway made when the Palace of the Tuileries was building, to convey materials from Vaugiraud to the _bac_ (or ferry boat) which crossed the Seine where the Pont Royal now stands. This street also is full of ancient palaces and convents. Chateaubriand died at 118-120. At 128 is the Séminaires des Missions Etrangères, with a terrible little museum called the Chambre des Martyrs, very French in character, displaying instruments of torture which have been used upon missionaries in China and other countries inimical (like poor Adrienne's priest) to Christianity. The Rue des Saints-Pères resembles the Rue du Bac, but is more attractive to the loiterer because it has perhaps the greatest number of old curiosity shops of any street in Paris. They touch each other: perhaps they take in each other's dusting. I never saw a customer enter; but that of course means nothing. One might be sure of finding a case made of peau de chagrin here and be equally sure that Balzac had trodden this pavement before you. You will see, however, nothing or very little that is beautiful, because Paris does not care much for sheer beauty. The Rue des Saints-Pères runs upwards into the Rue de Sèvres, where old convents cluster and the Bon Marché raises its successful modern bulk. It was in the Abbaye-aux-Bois, once at the corner of the Rue de Sèvres and the Rue de la Chaise, but now buried beneath a gigantic block of new flats, that Madame Récamier lived from 1814 until her death in 1849, visited latterly every day by the faithful Chateaubriand. M. Georges Cain has a charming chapter on this friendship and its scene in his _Promenades dans Paris_, of which an English translation, entitled _Walks in Paris_, has recently been published. Returning to the Boulevard St. Germain, which we leave as often as we touch it, I remember that, on the south side, between the Invalides end and the statue of the inventor of the semaphore, used to be a little shop devoted to the sale of trophies of Joan of Arc. And since it used to be there, it follows that it is there still, for nothing in Paris ever changes. One of the great charms of Paris is that it is always the same. I can think of hardly any shop that has changed in the last ten years. This means, I suppose, that the French rarely die. How can they, disliking as they do to leave Paris? It is the English and the Scotch, born to forsake their homes and live uncomfortably foreign lives, who die. [Illustration: THE PONT ALEXANDRE III (FROM THE EAST) EIFFEL TOWER TROCADÉRO] If one is interested in seeing the Pasteur Institute, now is the time, for it is not far from the Rue de Sèvres, in the Rue Falguière, named after Falguière the sculptor of the memorial to Pasteur in the Place Breteuil: one of the best examples of recent Paris statuary, with a charming shepherd boy playing his pipe to his flock on one side of the pediment, and grimmer scenes of disease on the others. This monument, however, is some distance from the Institute, the Place Breteuil being the first carrefour in that vast and endless avenue which leads southwards from Napoleon's tomb. The Institute itself has a spirited statue of Jupille the shepherd, one of its first patients, in his struggle with the wolf that bit him. Pasteur's tomb is here, but I have not seen it, as I arrived on the wrong day. One of the most attractive of the Boulevard St. Germain's byways is entered just round the corner of the Rue de Rennes. This is the Cour du Dragon, which is not only a relic of old Paris, but old Paris is still visible hard at work in it. The Cour du Dragon is a narrow court gained by an archway over which a red dragon perches, holding up the balcony with his vigorous pinions. It was the Hôtel Taranne in the reigns of Charles VI. and VII. and Louis XI.; later it became a famous riding and fencing school. It is now a cheerful nest of artisans--coppersmiths, locksmiths, coal merchants and the like, who fill it with brisk hammerings, while at the windows above, with their green shutters, the songs of caged birds mingle in the symphony. As in all Parisian streets or courts where signs are hung, the golden key is prominent. (There is one in Mr. Dexter's picture of the Rue de l'Hôtel de Ville.) What the proportion of locksmiths is to the population of Paris I cannot say; but their pretty symbol is to be seen everywhere. The reason of their numbers is not very mysterious when we recollect that practically every one that one meets in this city, and certainly all the people of the middling and working classes, live in flats, and all want keys. The streets and streets of the small houses with which East London is covered are unknown in Paris, where every façade is but the mask which hides vast tenements packed with families. No wonder then that the serrurier is so busy. Another sign which probably puzzles many English people is that of the stoppeur. Bellows' dictionary does not recognise the word. What is a stoppeur and what does he stop? I discovered the answer in the most practical way possible; for a Frenchman, in a crowd, helped me to it by pushing his lighted cigar into my back and burning a hole in it, right in the middle of the coat, where a patch would necessarily show. I was in despair until the femme de chambre reassured me. It was nothing, she said: all that was needed was a stoppeur. She would take the coat herself. It seems that the stoppeur's craft is that of mending holes so deftly that you would not know there had been any. He ascertains the pattern by means of a magnifying glass, and then extracts threads from some part of the garment that does not show and weaves them in. I paid three francs and have been looking for the injured spot ever since, but cannot find it. It is a modern miracle. Diagonally opposite the Court of the Dragon is the Church of St. Germain--not the St. Germain who owns the church at the east end of the Louvre, but St. Germain des Prés, a lesser luminary. It has no particular beauty, but a number of frescoes by Flandrin, the pupil of Ingres, give it a cachet. Flandrin's bust is to be observed on the north wall. The frescoes cannot be seen except under very favourable conditions, and therefore for me the greatness of Flandrin has to be sought in his drawings at the Luxembourg and the Louvre--sufficient proof of his exquisite hand. Before descending the Rue Bonaparte to the river, let us ascend it to see the great church of St. Sulpice and its paintings by Delacroix in the Chapel of the Holy Angels. Under the Convention St. Sulpice was the Temple of Victory, and here General Bonaparte was feasted in 1799. The church is famous for its music and an organ second only to that of St. Eustache. And now let us descend the Rue Bonaparte to the quais, where several buildings await us, beginning with the Beaux-Arts at the foot of the street; but first the Rue Jacob, which bisects the Rue Bonaparte, should be looked at, for it has had many illustrious inhabitants, including our own Laurence Sterne, who lodged here, at No. 46, in the Hôtel of his friend Madame Rambouillet (of the easy manners) when he was studying the French for _A Sentimental Journey_. It was here perhaps that he penned the famous opening sentence: "'They order,' said I, 'these things better in France'"--which no other writer on Paris has succeeded in forgetting. At No. 20 lived Adrienne Lecouvreur, and hither Voltaire must often have come, for he greatly admired her. At No. 7 is a fine old staircase and an old well in the court. The Palais des Beaux-Arts, where the Royal Academy Schools of Paris are situated, is an unexhilarating building containing a great number of unexciting paintings. Indeed, I think that no public edifice of Paris is so dreary: within and without one has a sense not exactly of decay but certainly of neglect. This is not the less odd when one thinks of the purpose of the institution, which is to foster the arts, and when one thinks also of the spotless perfection in which the Petit Palais, the latest of the Parisian picture galleries, is maintained. The spirit, however, is willing, if the flesh is weak, for in the first and second courts are examples of the best French architecture, and a bust of Jean Goujon is let into the wall of the Musée des Antiques. The building contains a number of casts of the best sculptures and an amphitheatre with Delaroche's pageant of painters on the hemicycle and Ingres' Victory of Romulus over the Sabines opposite it; but there is not always enough light to see either well. For the best view of Delaroche's great work one must go upstairs to the Gallery. The library also is upstairs, with many thousand of valuable works on art and a collection of drawings by the masters, access to which is made easy to genuine students. By returning to the first court we come to the Musée de la Renaissance, which now occupies an old chapel of the Couvent des Petits-Augustins, on the site of which the Palais de Beaux-Arts was built. Here are more casts and copies, and there are still more in the adjoining Cour du Mûrier, where stands the memorial of Henri Regnault, the painter, and the students who died with him during the defence of Paris in 1870-71. We then enter the Salle de Melpomène, so called from the dominating cast of the Melpomene at the Louvre, and are straightway among what seem at the first glance to be old friends from all the best galleries of the world but too quickly are revealed as counterfeits. Rembrandt's School of Anatomy and the Syndics, our own National Gallery Correggio, the Dresden Raphael, the Wallace Collection Velasquez (the Lady with a Fan), one of Hals' groups of arquebusiers, and Paul Potter's Bull: all are here, together with countless others, all the work of Beaux-Arts students, and some exceedingly good, but also (like most copies) exceedingly depressing. In other rooms almost pitch dark are modelled studies of expression and paintings which have won the Grand Prix of Rome during the past two hundred years. It is odd to notice how few names one recognises: it is as though, like the Newdigate, this prize were an end in itself. Having contemplated the statue of Voltaire in his robes outside the Institut, the next building of importance after the Beaux Arts, you may, if you so desire, gaze upon the same philosopher in a state of nature by entering the Institut itself, and ascending to its Bibliothèque. There he sits, the skinny cynic, among the books which he wrote and the books which he read and the books which would not have been written but for him. I was glad to see him thus, for it showed me where our own Arouet, Mr. Bernard Shaw, found his inspiration when he too subjected recently his economical frame to the maker of portraits. Mr. Shaw sat, however, only to a photographer (although a very good one, Mr. Coburn); when he visited Rodin it was for the head, a replica of which may be seen at the Luxembourg. Speaking of heads, the Institut is a wilderness of them: heads line the stairs; heads line the walls not only of its own Bibliothèque but of the Bibliothèque de Mazarin, which also is here, a haven for every student that cares to seek it: heads of the great Frenchmen of all time and of the Cæsars too. The Pont des Arts, which leads direct from the old Louvre to the Institut (a connection, if ever, no longer of any importance), is for foot passengers only. One is therefore more at ease there in observing the river than on the noisy bridge of stone. But it is inexcusably ugly and leaves one continually wondering what Napoleon was about to allow it to be built--and of iron too--in his day of good taste. Looking up stream, the Pont Neuf is close by with the thin green end of the Cité's wedge protruding under it and, in winter, Henri IV. riding proudly above. In summer, as Mr. Dexter's drawing shows, he is hidden by leaves. A basin has been constructed at this point from which the tide is excluded, and here are washing houses and swimming baths; for Parisians, having a river, use it. [Illustration: LA VIERGE AU DONATEUR J. VAN EYCK _(Louvre)_] The Hôtel des Monnaies, close by the Beaux Arts, is another surprise. One would expect in such a country as France, with its meticulously exact control of its public offices, that its Mint, the institution in which its money was made, would be a miracle of precision and efficiency. Efficiency it may have; but its proceedings are casual beyond belief: the workmen in the furnaces loaf and smoke and stare at the visitors and exchange comments on them; the floors are cluttered up with lumber; the walls are dirty; the doors do not fit. A very considerable amount of work seems to be accomplished--there are machines constantly in movement which turn out scores of coins a minute, not only for France but for her few and dispiriting colonies and for other countries; and yet the feeling which one has is that France here is noticeably below herself. I was shown round by a very charming attendant, who handled the new coins as though he loved them and took precisely that pride in the place that the Government seems to lack. The design on the French franc, although it ought to be cut, I think, a little deeper, a little more boldly, is very attractive, both obverse and reverse, and it is a pleasant sight to see the bright creatures tumbling out of the machine as fast as one can count. Pleasanter still is it to the frail human eye when the same process is repeated with golden Louis'--baskets full of which stand negligently about as though it were the cave of the Forty Thieves. An Englishman's perhaps indiscreet questions as to what precautions were taken to prevent leakage amused the guide beyond all reason. "It is impossible," he said; "the coins are weighed. They must correspond to the prescribed weight." "But who," my countryman went on, in the relentless English way, "checks the weigher?" "Another," said the guide. "But a time must come," continued the Briton, who probably had a business of his own and had suffered, "when there is no one left to check--when the last man of all is officiating: how then?" Our guide laughed very happily, and repeated that there were no thieves there; and I daresay he is right. "Perhaps," I said, to the English inquisitor, "perhaps, like assistants in sweet shops, they are allowed at first to help themselves so much that they acquire a disgust for money." He looked at me with eyes of stone. I think he had Scotch blood. "Perhaps," he said at last. My own contribution to the guide's entertainment was the production, before a machine that was shooting five-franc pieces into a bowl at the rate of one a second, of the four bad (démonétisé) coins of the same value which had been forced upon me during the few days I had then been in Paris. They gave immense delight. Several mintners (or whatever they are called) stopped working in order to join in the inspection. It was the general opinion that I had been badly treated: although, of course, I ought to have known. Three of the coins were simply those of other nations no longer current in France, and for them I could get from two to three francs each at an exchange. Unless, of course, a man of the world put in, I liked to sell them to a waiter, and then I should get perhaps a slightly better price. "Be careful, however," said he, "that he does not give them back to you in the next change." The fourth coin was frankly base metal and ought not to have taken in a child. That, by the way, was given to me at a Post Office, the one under the Bourse, and I find that Post Offices are notorious for this habit with foreigners. The mintners generally agreed that it was a scandal, but they did so without heat--bearing indeed this misfortune (not their own) very much as their countryman La Rochefoucauld had observed men to do. After the coins we saw the medal-stampers at work, each seated in a little hole in the ground before his press. The French have a natural gift for the designing of medals, and they are interested in them as souvenirs not only of public but of private events--such as silver weddings, birthdays and other anniversaries. Upstairs there is a collection of medals by the best designers--such as Roty, Patey, Carial, Chaplain, Dupuis, Dupré--many of them charming. Here also are collections of the world's coinage and of historical French medals. CHAPTER XI THE LATIN QUARTER Old Prints--Procope, Tortoni, and Le Père Lunette--The Luxembourg Palace--Rodin--Modern Paintings--A Sinister Crypt--A Garden of Sculpture--The Students of the Latin Quarter--The Sorbonne--A Beautiful Museum--The Cluny's Treasures--Marat and Danton--Old Streets and Dirty--The River Bièvre--Inspired Topography--Dante in Paris. The high road from the centre of Paris to the Latin Quarter is across the Pont du Carrousel and up the narrow Rue Mazarine, which skirts the Institut. We have seen on the Quai des Célestins the site of one of Molière's theatres: here, at Nos. 12-14, is the house in which he established his first theatre, on the last day of 1643. The Rue Mazarin runs into the Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie Française, at No. 14 in which was that theatre, whose successor stands at the foot of the Rue Richelieu. Parallel with the Rue Mazarin is the Rue de Seine, interesting for its old print shops, not the least interesting department of which is the portfolios containing students' sketches, some of them very good. (I might equally have said some of them very bad.) Crossing the Boulevard St. Germain we climb what is now the Rue de l'Odéon to the Place and theatre of that name, with the statue of Augier the dramatist before it. The Place de l'Odéon demands some attention, for at No. 1, now the Café Voltaire, was once the famous Café Procope, very significant in the eighteenth century, the resort of Voltaire and the Encyclopædists, and later of the Revolutionaries. Camille Desmoulins indeed made it his home. You may see within portraits of these old famous habitués. Procopio, a Sicilian who founded his establishment for the shelter of poor actors and students (whom Paris then loathed in private life), was the father of all the Paris cafés. The Café Procope was to men of intellect what some few years later Tortoni's was to men of fashion. The Café Tortoni was in the Boulevard des Italiens. Let Captain Gronow tell its history: "About the commencement of the present [nineteenth] century, Tortoni's, the centre of pleasure, gallantry, and entertainment, was opened by a Neapolitan, who came to Paris to supply the Parisians with good ice. The founder of this celebrated café was by name Veloni, an Italian, whose father lived with Napoleon from the period he invaded Italy, when First Consul, down to his fall. Young Veloni brought with him his friend Tortoni, an industrious and intelligent man. Veloni died of an affection of the lungs, shortly after the café was opened, and left the business to Tortoni; who, by dint of care, economy, and perseverance, made his café renowned all over Europe. Towards the end of the first Empire, and during the return of the Bourbons, and Louis Philippe's reign, this establishment was so much in vogue that it was difficult to get an ice there; after the opera and theatres were over, the Boulevards were literally choked up by the carriages of the great people of the court and the Faubourg St. Germain bringing guests to Tortoni's. "In those days clubs did not exist in Paris, consequently the gay world met there. The Duchess of Berri, with her suite, came nearly every night incognito; the most beautiful women Paris could boast of, old maids, dowagers, and old and young men, pouring out their sentimental twaddle, and holding up to scorn their betters, congregated here. In fact, Tortoni's became a sort of club for fashionable people; the saloons were completely monopolised by them, and became the rendez-vous of all that was gay, and I regret to add, immoral. "Gunter, the eldest son of the founder of the house in Berkeley Square, arrived in Paris about this period, to learn the art of making ice; for prior to the peace, our London ices and creams were acknowledged, by the English as well as foreigners, to be detestable. In the early part of the day, Tortoni's became the rendez-vous of duellists and retired officers, who congregated in great numbers to breakfast; which consisted of cold pâtés, game, fowl, fish, eggs, broiled kidneys, iced champagne, and liqueurs from every part of the globe. "Though Tortoni succeeded in amassing a large fortune, he suddenly became morose, and showed evident signs of insanity: in fact, he was the most unhappy man on earth. On going to bed one night, he said to the lady who superintended the management of his café, 'It is time for me to have done with the world'. The lady thought lightly of what he said, but upon quitting her apartment on the following morning, she was told by one of the waiters that Tortoni had hanged himself." Some one should write a book--but perhaps it has been done--on the great restaurateurs. Paris would, of course, provide the lion's share; but there would be plenty of material to collect in other capitals. The life of our own Nicol of the Café Royal, for example, would not be without interest; and what of Sherry and Delmonico? While on the subject of meeting-places of remarkable persons, I might say that a latter-day resort of intellectuals who have allowed the world and its temptations to be too much for them is not so very far away from us at this point--the cabaret of Le Père Lunette at No. 4 Rue des Anglais. I do not say that this is a modern Procope, but it has some of the same characteristics: men of genius have met here and illustrious portraits are on the wall; but they are not frescoes such as could be included in this book, for old Father Spectacles puts satire before propriety. In the colonnade round the Odéon theatre are bookstalls, chiefly offering new books at very low rates. We emerge on the south side in the Rue Vaugiraud, with the Médicis fountain of the Luxembourg just across the road. The Luxembourg Palace was built by Marie de Médicis, the widow of Henri IV., and it fulfilled the functions of a palace until the Revolution, when, prisons being more important than palaces, it became a prison. Among those conveyed hither were the Vicomte de Beauharnais and his wife Joséphine, who was destined one day to be anything but a prisoner. After the Revolution the Luxembourg became the Palace of the Directoire and then the Palace of the First Consul. In 1800 Napoleon moved to the Tuileries, and a little while afterwards he established the Senate here, and here it is still. I cannot describe the Palace, for I have never been in it, but the Musée I know well. The Luxembourg galleries are dedicated to modern art. They have nothing earlier than the nineteenth century, and may be said to carry on the history of French painting from the point where it is left in Room VIII. at the Louvre, while little is quite so modern as the permanent portion of the Petit Palais. One plunges from the street directly into a hall of very white sculpture, which for the moment affects the sight almost like the beating wings of gulls. The difference between French and English sculpture, which is largely the difference between nakedness and nudity, literally assaults the eye for the moment; and then the more beautiful work quietly begins to assert itself--Rodin's "Pensée," on the left, holding the attention first and gently soothing the bewildered vision. Rodin indeed dominates this room, for here are not only his "Pensée" (the "Penseur" is not so very far away, two hundred yards or so, at the Panthéon), but his "John the Baptist," gaunt and urgent in the wilderness (with Dubois' "John the Baptist as a boy" near by, to show from what material prophets are evolved) and the exquisite "Danaïdes" and the "Age d'Airain," and the giant heads of Hugo and Rochefort, and the little delicate sensitive Don Quixotic head of Dalou the sculptor, which has just been added, and the George Wyndham and the G.B.S. and other recent portraits; while through the doorway to the next room one sees the "Baiser," immense and passionate. I reproduce both the "Baiser," opposite page 294, and the "Pensée," opposite page 46. Other work here that one recalls is the charming group by Frémiet, "Pan and the Bear Cubs," Dubois' fascinating "Florentine Singing-boy of the Fifteenth Century," a peasant by Dalou, a Great Dane and puppies by Le Courtier, and the very beautiful head in the doorway to Room I.--"Femme de Marin," by Cazin the painter. But other visitors, other tastes, of course. Before entering Room I. there are two small rooms on the right of the sculpture gallery which should be entered, one given up to the more famous Impressionists and one to foreign work. The chief Impressionists are Degas, Renoir, Monet, Sisley and their companions, almost all of whom seem to me to have painted better elsewhere than here. Monet's "Yachts in the River" rise before me, as I write, with the warm sun upon them, and I still see in the mind's eye the torso of a young woman by Legros: but this room always depresses me, the effect largely I believe of the antipathetic Renoir. The other room has a floating population. Recently the painters have been Belgian: but at another time they may be German or English, when the Belgians will recede to the cellars or be lent to provincial galleries. The pictures in the Luxembourg are many, but the arresting hand is too seldom extended. Cleverness, the bane of French art, dominates. In the first room Rodin's "Baiser" is greater than any painting; but Harpignies' "Lever de Lune" is here, and here also is one of Pointelin's sombre desolate moorlands. In a glass case some delicate bowls by Dammouse are worth attention; but I think his work at the Arts Décoratifs at the Louvre is better. The second room is notable for the Fantin-Latour drawings in the middle, with others by Flandrin and Meissonier; the third for Carolus-Duran's "Vieux Lithographe" and a case of drawings by modern black and white masters, including Legros and Steinlen; here also is another Pointelin. In Room IV. is a coast scene--"Les Falaises de Sotteville," in a lovely evening light, by Bouland, which falls short of perfection but is very grateful to the eyes. In Room V. is a portrait group by Fantin-Latour recalling the "Hommage à Delacroix," which we saw in the Collection Moreau, but less interesting. The studio is that of Manet at Batignolles. Here also is a beautiful snow scene by Cazin--an oasis indeed. In Room VI. we find Cazin again with "Ishmael," and two sweet and misty Carrières, a powerful if hard Legros, Carolus-Duran's portrait of the ruddy Papa Français the painter, Blanche's vivid group of the Thaulow family, with the gigantic Fritz bringing the strength of a bull-fighter to the execution of one of his tender landscapes, and finally Whistler's portrait of his mother, which I reproduce on the opposite page--one of the most restful and gentlest deeds of his restless, irritable life. [Illustration: PORTRAIT DE SA MÈRE WHISTLER _(Luxembourg)_] Room VII. is remarkable for Rodin's "Bellona" and Tissot's curious exercises in the genre of W. P. Frith--the story of the Prodigal Son. But the picture which I remember most clearly and with most pleasure is Victor Mottez's "Portrait of Madame M.," which has a deep quiet beauty that is very rare in this gallery. In the same room, placed opposite each other, although probably not with any conscious ironical intention, are a large scene in the Franco-Prussian War by De Neuville, and Carrière's "Christ on the Cross". In Room VIII. are a number of meretricious Moreaus, Caro-Delvalle's light and, to me, oddly attractive, group, "Ma Femme et ses Soeurs," and the portrait of Mlle. Moréno of the Comédie Française by Granié, which is reproduced opposite page 308, a picture with fascination rather than genius. In the doorway between Room VIII. and Room IX. hangs a small water-colour by Harpignies, but in Room IX. itself is nothing that I can recollect. Room X. has Picard's charming "Femme qui passe," Harpignies' Coliseum, very like a Moreau Corot, and a Flandrin; and in Room XI. are Bastien Lepage's "Portrait of M. Franck," Le Sidaner's "Dessert," Vollon's "Port of Antwerp," very beautiful, and Carolus-Duran's famous portrait of "Madame G. F. and her children". On leaving the Musée it is worth while to take a few steps more to the left, for they bring us to another sinister souvenir of the Reign of Terror--to St. Joseph des Carmes, the Chapel of the Carmelite monastery in which, in September, 1792, the Abbé Sicard and other priests who had refused to take the oath of the Constitution were imprisoned and massacred, as described by Carlyle in Book I., Chapters IV. and V. of "The Guillotine," with the assistance of the narrative of one of the survivors, _Mon Agonie de Trente-Huit Heures_, by Jourgniac Saint-Méard. In the crypt one is shown not only the tombs but traces of the massacre. A walk in the Luxembourg gardens would, if one had been nowhere else, quickly satisfy the stranger as to the interest of the French in the more remarkable children of their country. In these gardens alone are statues, among many others, in honour of Chopin, Watteau, Delacroix, Sainte-Beuve, Le Play the economist, Fabre the poet, George Sand, Henri Murger, the novelist of the adjacent Latin Quarter, and Théodore de Banville, the modern maker of ballades and prime instigator of some of the most charming work in French form by Mr. Lang and Mr. Dobson and W. E. Henley. There are countless other statues of mythological and allegorical figures, some of them very striking. One of the most interesting of all is the "Marchand de Masques" by Astruc, among the masks offered for sale being those of Corot, Dumas, Berlioz and Balzac. The Luxembourg gardens lead to the Avenue de l'Observatoire, a broad and verdant pleasaunce with a noble fountain at the head, in the midst of which an armillary sphere is held up by four undraped female figures representing the four quarters of the globe, at whom a circle of tortoises spout water from the surface of the basin. Beneath the upholders of the sphere are eight spirited sea horses by Frémiet, the sculptor who designed "Pan and the Bear Cubs" in the Luxembourg. A few yards to the west of this fountain is one of the simplest and most satisfying of Parisian sculptured memorials, at the corner of the Rue d'Assas and the Boulevard de l'Observatoire--the bas-relief on the Tarnier maternity hospital, representing the benevolent Tarnier in his merciful work. Let us now descend the Boulevard St. Michel to the Sorbonne, which is the heart of the Latin Quarter (or perhaps the brain would be the better word), disregarding for the moment the Panthéon, and turning our backs on the Observatoire and the Lion de Belfort, in the streets around which, every September, the noisiest of the Parisian fairs rages, and on the Bal Bullier, where the shop assistants of this neighbourhood grasp each other in the dance every Thursday and Sunday night. Not that this high southern district of Paris is not interesting; but it is far less interesting than certain parts nearer the Seine, and this book may not be too long. The Sorbonne is not exciting, but it is not unamusing to watch young France gaining knowledge. I have called it the heart of the Latin Quarter, although when one thinks of the necessitous, irresponsible youthful populace of these slopes, it is rather in a studio than in a lecture centre that one would fix its cardiac energy. That, however, is the fault of Du Maurier and Murger; for I suppose that for every artist that the Latin Quarter fosters it has scores of other students. But here I am in unknown territory. This book, which describes (as I warned you) Paris wholly from without, is never so external as among the young bloods who are to be met at night in the Café Harcourt, or who dance at the annual ball of the Quatz'-Arts, or plunge themselves into congenial riots when unpopular professors mount the platform. I know them not; I merely rejoice in their existence, admire their long hair and high spirits and happy indigence, and wish I could join them among Jullien's models, or in the disreputable cabaret of Le Père Lunette, or at a solemn disputation, such as that famous one in which the sophist Buridan, after being thrown into the Seine in a sack and rescued, "maintained for a whole day the thesis that it was lawful to slay a Queen of France". The Sorbonne takes its name from Robert de Sorbon, the confessor of St. Louis, who had suffered much as a theological student and wished others to suffer less; for students in his day existed absolutely on charity. St. Louis threw himself into his confessor's scheme, and the Sorbonne, richly endowed, was opened in 1253, in its original form occupying a site in a street with the depressing name of Coupe-Gueule. From a hostel it soon became the Church's intellect, and for five and a half centuries it thus existed, almost continually, I regret to say, pursuing what Gibbon calls "the exquisite rancour of theological hatred". Its hostility to Joan of Arc and the Reformation were alike intense. Richelieu built the second Sorbonne, on the site of the present one. The Revolution in its short sharp way put an end to it as a defender of the faith, and in 1808, under Napoleon, it sprang to life again with a broader and humaner programme as the Université de France. [Illustration: THE FONTAINE DE MÉDICIS (GARDEN OF THE LUXEMBOURG)] Although arriving on the wrong day (a very easy thing to do in Paris) I induced the concierge to show me Puvis de Chavannes' vast and beautiful fresco in the Sorbonne's amphitheatre, entitled "La Source"--which is, I take it, the spring of wisdom. Thursday is the right day. In the chapel is the tomb of Richelieu, a florid monument with the dying cardinal and some very ostentatious grief upon it. Near by stands an elderly gentleman who charges twice as much for postcards as the dealers outside; but one must not mind that. The church is not impressive, nor has a recent meretricious work by Weerts, representing the Love of Humanity and the Love of Country--the crucified Christ and a dead soldier--done it much good. Before it is a monument to Auguste Comte. And now let us descend the hill and cheer and enrich our eyes in one of the most remarkable museums in the world--the Cluny. Paris is too fortunate. To have the Louvre were enough for any city, but Paris also has the Carnavalet. To have the Carnavalet were enough, but Paris also has the Cluny. The Musée de Cluny is devoted chiefly to applied art, and is a treasury of mediæval taste. It is an ancient building, standing on the site of a Roman palace, the ruins of whose baths still remain. The present mansion was built by a Benedictine abbot in the fifteenth century: it became a storehouse of beautiful and rare objects in 1833, when the collector Alphonse du Sommerard bought it; and on his death the nation acquired both the house and its treasures, which have been steadily increasing ever since. Without, the Cluny is a romantic blend of late Gothic and Renaissance architecture: within, it is like the heaven of a good arts-and-craftsman; or, to put it another way, like an old curiosity shop carried out to the highest power. I do not say that we have not as good collections at South Kensington; but it is beyond doubt that the Cluny has a more attractive setting for them. To particularise would merely be to convert these pages into an incomplete catalogue (and what is duller than that?), but I may say that one passes among sculpture and painting, altar-pieces and knockers, pottery and tapestry, Spanish leather and lace, gold work and glass, enamel and musical instruments, furniture (the state bed of Francis I.) and ivories (note those by Van Opstal), ironwork and jewels, fireplaces and exquisite slippers. The old keys alone are worth hours: some of them might almost be called jewels; be sure to look at Nos. 6001 and 6022. Everything is remarkable. Writing in London, in a thick fog, at some distance of time since I saw the Cluny last, I remember most vividly those keys and a banc d'orfèvre near them; a chimney-piece, beautiful and vast, from an old house at Châlons-sur-Marne; certain carvings in wood in the great room next the Thermes: the "Quatre Pleurants" of Claus de Worde; a dainty Marie Madeleine by a Fleming, about 1500 (there is another Marie Madeleine, in stone, in an adjacent room, kneeling with her alabaster box of ointment, but by no means penitent); and the Jesus on the Mount of Olives with the sleeping disciples. I remember also, in one of the faience galleries, two delightful groups by Clodion--a "Satyre mâle" with two baby goat-feet playing by him, and a "Satyre femelle," very charming, also with two little shaggy mites at her knees. The "Fils de Rubens," in his little chair, is also a pleasant memory; and there is one of those remarkable Neapolitan reconstructions of the Nativity, of which the museum at Munich has such an amazing collection--perhaps the prettiest toys ever made. But as I have said, the Cluny is wonderful throughout, and it is almost ridiculous to particularise. It is also too small for every taste. For the lover of the hues that burn in Rhodian ware it is most memorable for its pottery; while of the many Parisians who visit it in holiday mood a large percentage make first for the glass case that contains its two famous ceintures. The Curator of the Carnavalet, as we have seen, is a topographer and antiquary of distinction; the Director of the Cluny, M. Haraucourt, is a poet, one of whose ballads will be found in English form in a later chapter. He is in a happy environment, although his Muse does not look back quite as, say, Mr. Dobson's loves to do. The singer of the "Pompadour's Fan" and the "Old Sedan Chair" would be continually inspired at the Cluny. In the Gardens of the Musée we can feel ourselves in very early times; for the baths are the ruins of a Roman palace built in 306, the home for a while of Julian the Apostate; a temple of Mercury stood on the hill where the Panthéon now is; and a Roman road ran on the site of the Rue St. Jacques, just at the east of the Cluny, leading out of Paris southwards to Italy. On leaving the Cluny let us take a few steps westward along the Rue de l'Ecole de Médicine, and stop at No. 15, where the Cordeliers' Club was held, whither Marat's body was brought to lie in state. His house, in which Charlotte Corday stabbed him, was close by, where the statue of Broca now stands. In the Boulevard St. Germain, at the end of the street, we come to Danton's statue and more memories of the Revolution. "What souvenirs of the past," says Sardou, "does the statue of Danton cast his shadow upon. At No. 87 Boulevard St. Germain--where the woman Simon keeps house! it was there 31st March, 1793--at six o'clock in the morning, the rattling of the butt ends of muskets was heard on the pavement in the midst of wild cries and protestations of the crowd, they had dared to arrest Danton, the Titan of the Revolution, the man of the 10th of August!--at the same time on the Place de l'Odéon, at the corner of the Rue Crébillon, Camille Desmoulins had been arrested. An hour later they were both in the Luxembourg prison, and it was there Camille heard of the death of his mother. "The Passage du Commerce still exists. It is a most picturesque old quarter, rarely visited by Parisians. At No. 9 is Durel's library, where Guillotin in 1790 practised cutting off sheep's heads with 'his philanthropic beheading machine'. It is generally given out that he was guillotined himself, but 'Lemprière' says he died quietly in his bed, of grief at the infamous abuse his instrument was put to. In the shop close by was the printing office of the _l'Ami du Peuple_, and Marat in his dressing-gown (lined with imitation panther skin) used to come and correct the proofs of his bloody journal." Between the Cluny and the river is a network of very old, squalid and interesting streets. Here the students of the middle ages found both their schools and their lodgings: among them Dante himself, who refers to the Rue de Fouarre (or straw, on which, following the instructions of Pope Urban V., the students sat) as the Vico degli Strami. It has now been demolished. The two churches here are worth a visit--St. Severin and St. Julien-le-Pauvre, but the reader is warned that the surroundings are not too agreeable. In the court adjoining St Julien's are traces of the wall of Philip Augustus, of which we saw something at the Mont de Piété. All these streets, as I say, are picturesque and dirty, but I think the best is the Rue de Bièvre, which runs up the hill of St. Etienne from the Quai de Montebello, opposite the Morgue, and can be gained from St. Julien's by the dirty Rue de la Boucherie, of which this street and its westward continuation, the Rue de la Huchette, Huysmans, the French novelist and mystic, writes--as of all this curious district--in his book, _La Bièvre et Saint Severin_, one of the best examples of imaginative topography that I know. Let us see what he says of the Bièvre, the little river which gives the street its name and which once tumbled down into the Seine at this point, but is now buried underground like the New River at Islington. "The Bièvre," he writes, "represents to-day one of the most perfect symbols of feminine misery exploited by a big city. Originating in the lake or pond of St. Quentin near Trappes, it runs quietly and slowly through the valley that bears its name. Like many young girls from the country, directly it arrives in Paris the Bièvre falls a victim to the cunning wide-awake industry of a catcher of men.... To follow all her windings, it is necessary to ascend the Rue du Moulin des Prés and enter the Rue de Gentilly, and then the most extraordinary and unsuspected journey begins." Inspired by the passage of which these are the opening words, I set out one day to trace the Bièvre to daylight, but it was a cheerless enterprise, for the Rue Monge is a dreary street, and the new Boulevards hereabouts are even drearier because they are wider. I found her at last, by peeping through a hoarding in the Boulevard Arago, with tanneries on each side of her; and then I gave it up. [Illustration: LA BOHÉMIENNE FRANZ HALS _(Louvre)_] At the Cluny we saw the Thermes, a visible sign of Roman occupation; just off the Rue Monge is another, the amphitheatre, still in very good condition, with the grass growing between the crevices of the great stone seats. You will find it in the Place des Arènes, a vestige of Roman manners and pleasures now converted into an open space for children and _bonnes_ and surrounded by flats. But save for the desertion that the ages have brought it, the arena is not so very different, and standing there, one may easily reconstruct the spectators and see again the wild beasts emerging from the underground passages, which still remain. And now for the Panthéon, which rises above us. CHAPTER XII THE PANTHÉON AND ST. GENEVIÈVE A Church's Vicissitudes--St. Geneviève--A Guardian of Paris--Illustrious Converts--_The Golden Legend_--A Sabbath-breaker--Geneviève's Sacred Body--Her Tomb--The Panthéon Frescoes--Joan of Arc--The Panthéon Tombs--Mirabeau and Marat--Voltaire's Funeral--The Thoughts of the Thinker--From the Dome--St. Etienne-du-Mont--The Fate of St. Geneviève--The Relic-hunters--The Mystery of the Wine-press. The Panthéon, like the Madeleine, has had its vicissitudes. The new Madeleine, as we shall see, was begun by Napoleon as a splendid Temple of military glory and became a church; the new Panthéon was begun by Louis XV. as a splendid cathedral and became a Temple of Glory, not, however, military but civil. Louis XV., when he designed its erection on the site of the old church, intended it to be the church of St. Geneviève, whose tomb was its proudest possession; when the Revolution altered all that, it was made secular and dedicated "aux grands hommes la patrie reconnaissante," and the first grand homme to be buried there was Mirabeau (destined, however, not to remain a grand homme very long, as we shall see), and the next Voltaire. In 1806 Napoleon made it a church again; in 1830 the Revolutionaries again secularised it; in 1851 it was consecrated again, and in 1885 once more it became secular, to receive the body of Victor Hugo, and secular it has remained; and considering everything, secular it is likely to be, for whatever of change and surprise the future holds for France, an excess of ecclesiastical ecstasy is hardly probable. So much of Louis XV.'s idea remains, in spite of the perversion of his purpose, that scenes from the life of St. Geneviève are painted on the Panthéon's walls and sculptured on its façade; while in its last sacred days the church was known again as St. Geneviève's. Possibly there are old people in the neighbourhood who still call it that. I hope so. The life of St. Geneviève, as told in _The Golden Legend_, is rather a series of facile miracles than a human document, as we say. She was born in the fifth century at Nanterre, and early became a protégée of St. Germain, who vowed her to chastity and holiness, from which she never departed. Her calling, like that of her new companion on the canon, St. Joan, was that of shepherdess, and one of Puvis de Chavannes' most charming frescoes in the Panthéon represents her as a shadowy slip of a girl kneeling to a crucifix while her sheep graze about her. I reproduce it opposite the next page. Her mother, who had, like most mothers, a desire that her daughter should marry and have children, once so far lost her temper as to strike Geneviève on the cheek; for which offence she became blind. (A very comfortable corner of heaven is, one feels, the due of the mothers of saints.) She remained blind for a long time, until remembering that St. Germain had promised for her daughter miraculous gifts, she sent for Geneviève and was magnanimously cured. After the death of her parent, Geneviève moved to Paris, and there she lived with an old woman, dividing the neighbourhood into believers and unbelievers in her sanctity, as is ever the way with saints. Here the Devil persecuted and attacked her with much persistence and ingenuity, but wholly without effect. During her long life she made Paris her principal home, and on more than one occasion saved it: hence her importance not only to the Parisians, who set her above St. Denis (whom she reverenced), but to this book. Her power of prayer was gigantic; she literally prayed Attila the Hun out of his siege of Paris, and later, when Childeric was the besieger and Paris was starving, she brought victuals into the city by boat in a miraculous way: another scene chosen by Puvis de Chavannes in his Panthéon series. Childeric, however, conquered, in spite of Geneviève, but he treated her with respect and made it easy for her to approach Clovis and Clotilde and convert them to Christianity--hence the convent of St. Geneviève, which Clovis founded, remains of which are still to be seen by the church of St. Etienne-du-Mont, in the two streets named after those early Christians--the Rue Clovis and the Rue Clotilde. Christianity had been introduced into Paris by Saint Denis, Geneviève's hero, in the third century; but then came a reaction and the new faith lost ground. It was St. Geneviève's conversion of Clovis that re-established it on a much firmer basis, for he made it the national religion. [Illustration: STE. GENEVIÈVE PUVIS DE CHAVANNES (_Panthéon_)] "This holy maid," says Caxton, "did great penance in tormenting her body all her life, and became lean for to give good example. For sith she was of the age of fifteen years, unto fifty, she fasted every day save Sunday and Thursday. In her refection she had nothing but barley bread, and sometime beans, the which, sodden after fourteen days or three weeks, she ate for all delices. Always she was in prayers in wakings and in penances, she drank never wine ne other liquor, that might make her drunk, in all her life. When she had lived and used this life fifty years, the bishops that were that time, saw and beheld that she was over feeble by abstinence as for her age, and warned her to increase a little her fare. The holy woman durst not gainsay them, for our Lord saith of the prelates: Who heareth you heareth me, and who despiseth you despiseth me, and so she began by obedience to eat with her bread, fish and milk, and how well that, she so did, she beheld the heaven and wept, whereof it is to believe that she saw appertly our Lord Jesus Christ after the promise of the gospel that saith that, Blessed be they that be clean of heart for they shall see God; she had her heart and body pure and clean." Caxton also tells quaintly the story of one of the first miracles performed by Geneviève's tomb: "Another man came thither that gladly wrought on the Sunday, wherefor our Lord punished him, for his hands were so benumbed and lame that he might not work on other days. He repented him and confessed his sin, and came to the tomb of the said virgin, and there honoured and prayed devoutly, and on the morn he returned all whole, praising and thanking our Lord, that by the worthy merits and prayers of the holy virgin, grant and give us pardon, grace, and joy perdurable." To St. Geneviève's tomb we shall come on leaving the Panthéon, but here after so much about her adventures when alive I might say something about her adventures when dead. She was buried in 511 in the Abbey church of the Holy Apostles, on the site of which the Panthéon stands. Driven out by the Normans, the monks removed the saint's body and carried it away in a box; and thereafter her remains were destined to rove, for when the monks returned to the Abbey they did not again place them in the tomb but kept them in a casket for use in processions whenever Paris was in trouble and needed supernatural help. Meanwhile her tomb, although empty, continued to work miracles also. Early in the seventeenth century her bones were restored to her tomb, which was made more splendid, and there they remained until the Revolution. The Revolutionists, having no use for saints, opened Geneviève's tomb, burned its contents on the Place de Grève, and melted the gold of the canopy into money. They also desecrated the church of St. Etienne-du-Mont (which we are about to visit) and made it a Temple of Theophilanthropy. A few years later the stone coffer was removed to St. Etienne-du-Mont, where it now is, gorgeously covered with Gothic splendours; but as to how minute are the fragments of the saint that it contains which must have been overlooked by the incendiary Revolutionaries, I cannot say. They are sufficient, however, still to cure the halt and the lame and enable them to leave their crutches behind. The Panthéon is a vast and dreary building, sadly in need of a little music and incense to humanise it. The frescoes are interesting--those of Puvis de Chavannes in particular, although a trifle too wan--but one cannot shake off depression and chill. The Joan of Arc paintings by Lenepveu are the least satisfactory, the Maid of this artist carrying no conviction with her. But when it comes to that, it is difficult to say which of the Parisian Maids of art is satisfactory: certainly not the audacious golden Amazon of Frémiet in the Place de Rivoli. Dubois' figure opposite St. Augustin's is more earnest and spiritual, but it does not quite realise one's wishes. I think that I like best the Joan in the Boulevard Saint-Marcel, behind the Jardin des Plantes. The vault of the Panthéon may be seen only in the company of a guide, and there is a charge. To be quite sure that Rousseau is in his grave is perhaps worth the money; but one resents the fee none the less. Great Frenchmen's graves--especially Victor Hugo's--should be free to all. There is no charge at the Invalides. You may stand beside Heine's tomb in the Cimetière de Montmartre without money and without a guide, but not by Voltaire's in the Panthéon; Balzac's grave in Père Lachaise is free, Zola's in the Panthéon costs seventy-five centimes. The guide hurries his flock from one vault to another, at one point stopping for a while to exchange badinage with an echo. Rousseau, as I have said, is here; Voltaire is here; here are General Carnot, President Carnot with a mass of faded wreaths, Soufflot--who designed the Panthéon, thinking his work was for St. Geneviève, and who died of anxiety owing to a subsidence of the walls; Victor Hugo, and, lately moved hither, not without turmoil and even pistol shots, the historian of the Rougon-Macquart family and the author of a letter of accusation famous in history. Not without turmoil! which reminds one that the Panthéon's funerals have been more than a little grotesque. I said, for example, that Mirabeau was the first prophet of reason to be buried here, amid a concourse of four hundred thousand mourners; yet you may look in vain for his tomb. And there is a record of the funeral of Marat, in a car designed by David; yet you may look in vain for Marat's sarcophagus also. The explanation (once more) is that we are in France, the land of the fickle mob. For within three years of the state burial of Mirabeau, with the National Guard on duty, the Convention directed that he should be exhumed and Marat laid in his place. Mirabeau's body therefore was removed at night and thrown into the earth in the cemetery of Clamart. Enter Marat. Marat, however, lay beneath this imposing dome only three poor months, and then off went he, a discredited corpse, to the graveyard of St. Etienne-du-Mont close by. Voltaire, however, and Rousseau held their own, and here they are still, as we have seen. Voltaire came hither under circumstances at once tragic and comic. The cortège started from the site of the Bastille, led by the dead philosopher in a cart drawn by twelve horses, in which his figure was being crowned by a young girl. Opposite the Opera house of that day--by the Porte St. Martin--a pause was made for the singing of suitable hymns (from the Ferney Hymnal!) and on it came again. Surrounding the car were fifty girls dressed by David for the part; in the procession were other damsels in the costumes of Voltaire's characters. Children scattered roses before the horses. What could be prettier for Voltaire? But it needed fine weather, and instead came the most appalling storm, which frightened all the young women (including Fame, from the car) into doorways, and washed all the colour from the great man's effigy. Remembering all these things, one realises that Rodin's _Penseur_, who was placed before the Panthéon in 1906, has something to brood over and break his mind upon. I noticed also among the graves that of one Ignace Jacqueminot, and wondering if it were he who gave his name to the rose, I was so conscious of gloom and mortality that I hastened to the regions of light--to the sweet air of the Mont du Paris and the blue sky over all. And later I climbed to the lantern--a trifle of some four hundred steps--and looked down on Paris and its river and away to the hills, and realised how much better it was to be a live dog than a dead lion. For the tomb of St. Geneviève we have only a few steps to take, since it stands, containing all of her that was not burned, in the church of St. Etienne-du-Mont. The first martyr, although he gives his name to the church and is seen suffering the stone-throwers in the relief over the door, is, however, as nothing. St. Geneviève is the true patron. St. Etienne's is one of the most interesting churches in Paris, without and within. The façade is bizarre and attractive, with its jumble of styles, its lofty tower and Renaissance trimmings, and the sacristan's prophet's-house high up, on the northern side of the odd little extinguisher. You see this best, and his tiny watchdog trotting up and down his tiny garden, by descending the hill a little way and then turning. Within, the church is fascinating. The pillars of the very lofty nave and aisles are slender and sure, the vaulting is delicate and has a unique carved marble rood-loft to divide the nave from the choir, stretching right along the church, with a rampe of great beauty. The pulpit is held up by Samson seated upon his lion and grasping the jawbone of an ass. The last time I saw this pulpit was during the Fête of St. Geneviève, which is held early in January, when it contained a fluent nasal preacher to whom a congregation that filled every seat was listening with rapt attention. At the same time a moving procession of other worshippers was steadily passing the tomb, which was a blaze of light and heat from some hundreds of candles of every size. The man in front of me in the queue, a stout bourgeois, with his wife and two small daughters, bought four candles at a franc each. He was all nervousness and anxiety before then, but having watched them lighted and placed in position, his face became tranquil and gay, and they passed quickly out, re-entered their motor-cab and returned to the normal life. Outside the church was a row of stalls wholly given up to the sale of tokens of the saint--little biographies, medals, rosaries, and all the other pretty apparatus of the long-memoried Roman Catholic Church. I bought a silver pendant, a brief biography, and a tiny metal statue. I feel now that had I also bought a candle, as I was minded to, I should have escaped the cold that, developing two or three days later, kept me in bed for nearly a fortnight. One must be thorough. The church not only has agreeable architectural features and the tomb of this good woman, it has also some admirable glass, not exactly beautiful but very quaint and interesting, including a famous window by the Pinaigriers, representing the mystery of the wine-press, as drawn from Isaiah: "I have trodden the wine-press alone, and of the people there was none with me". The colouring is very rich and satisfying, even if the design itself offends by its literalism and want of imagination--Christianity being figured by the blood of Christ as it gushes forth into barrels pressed from his body as relentlessly as ever was juice of the grape. All this is horrible, but one need not study it minutely. There are other windows less remarkable but not less rich and glowing. Other illustrious dust that lies beneath this church is that of Racine and Pascal. CHAPTER XIII TWO ZOOS The Tour d'Argent--Frédéric's Homage to America--A Marquis Poet--The Halle des Vins--A Free Zoo--Peacocks in Love--A Reminiscence--The Museums of the Jardin des Plantes--A Lifeless Zoo--Babies in Bottles--The Jardin d'Acclimatation--The Cheerful Gallas--A Pretty Stable--Dogs on Velvet--A Canine Père Lachaise--The Sunday Sportsmen--Panic at the Zoos--The Besieged Resident--The Humours of Famine. On the day of one of my visits to the Jardin des Plantes I lunched at the Tour d'Argent, a restaurant on the Quai de la Tournelle, famous among many dishes for its delicious canard à la presse. No bird on this occasion passed through that luxurious mill for me: but the engines were at work all around distilling essential duck with which to enrich those slices from the breast that are all that the epicure eats. Over a simpler repast I studied a bewildering catalogue of the "Créations of Frédéric"--Frédéric being M. Frédéric Delair, a venerable chef with a head like that of a culinary Ibsen, stored with strange lore of sauces. By what means one commends oneself to Frédéric I cannot say, but certain it is that if he loves you he will immortalise you in a dish. Americans would seem to have a short cut to his heart, for I find the Canapé Clarence Mackay, the Filet de Sole Loië Fuller, the Filet de Sole Gibbs, the Fondu de Merlan Peploe, the Poulet de Madame J. W. Mackay, and the Poire Wanamaker. None of these joys tempted me, but I am sorry now that I did not partake of the Potage Georges Cain, because M. Georges Cain knows more about old Paris than any man living; and who knows but that a few spoonfuls of his Potage might not have immensely enriched this book! The Noisette de Pré-Salé Bodley again should have been nourishing, for Mr. Bodley is the author of one of the best of all the many studies of France. Instead, however, I ate very simply, of ordinary dishes--foundlings, so to speak, named after no one--and amused myself over my coffee in examining the Marquis Lauzières de Thémines' poésie sur les Créations de Frédéric (to the air of "la Corde Sensible"). Two stanzas and two choruses will illustrate the noble poet's range:-- Que de filets de sole on y consomme! Sole Néron, Cardinal, Maruka. Dosamentès, Edson ... d'autres qu'on nomme Victor Renault, Saintgall, Hérédia. La liste est longue! rognons, côtelettes, Poulet Sigaud et Canard Mac-Arthur, Filets de lièvre Arnold White et Noisettes De Pré-salé, Langouste Wintherthur. Ce que je fais n'est pas une réclame, Je vous le dis pour être obligeant. Je m'en voudrais d'encourir votre blâme Pour avoir trop vanté LA TOUR D'ARGENT. Les noms des OEufs de cent façons s'étalent, OEufs Bûcheron, oeufs Claude Lowther. OEufs Tuck, Rathbone, oeufs Mackay que n'égalent Que les chaud-froids de volaille Henniker. Que d'entremets ont nom de "la Tournelle"! Et plus souvent, le vocable engageant Du restaurant, car plus d'un plat s'appelle (Gibier, beignets, salade) "Tour d'Argent". Ami lecteur, pour faire bonne chère, Ecoute-moi, ne sois pas négligent, Va-t-en dîner, si ta santé t'est chère, Au Restaurant nommé LA TOUR D'ARGENT. (Odd work for Marquises!) [Illustration: THE MUSÉE CLUNY (COURTYARD)] On the way to the Jardin des Plantes from this restaurant it is not unamusing to turn aside to the Halles des Vins and loiter a while in these genial catacombs. Here you may see barrels as the sands of the sea-shore for multitude, and raw wine of a colour that never yet astonished in a bottle, and I hope, so far as I am concerned, never will: unearthly aniline juices that are to pass through many dark processes before they emerge smilingly as vins, to lend cheerfulness to the windows of the épicier and gaiety to the French heart. Even with the most elementary knowledge of French one would take the Jardin des Plantes to be the Parisian Kew, and so to some small extent it is; but ninety-nine per cent. of its visitors go not to see the flora but the fauna. It is in reality the Zoo of the Paris proletariat. Paris, unlike London, has two Zoos, both of which hide beneath names that easily conceal their zoological character from the foreigner--the Jardin des Plantes, where we now find ourselves, which is free to all, and the Jardin d'Acclimatation, on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne, near the Porte Maillot, which costs money--a franc to enter and a ridiculous supplément to your cabman for the privilege of passing the fortifications in his vehicle: one of Paris's little mistakes. To the Jardin d'Acclimatation we shall come anon: just now let us loiter among the wild animals of the Jardin des Plantes, which is as a matter of fact a far more thorough Zoo than that selecter other, where frivolity ranks before zoology. Our own Zoo contains a finer collection than either, and our animals are better housed and ordered, but this Parisian people's Zoo has a great advantage over ours in that it is free. All zoological gardens should of course be free. The Jardin des Plantes has another and a dazzling superiority in the matter of peacocks. I never saw so many. They occur wonderfully in the most unexpected places, not only in the enclosures of all the other open-air animals, but in trees and on roofs and amid the bushes--burning with their deep and lustrous blue. But on the warm day of spring on which I saw them first they were not so quiescent. Regardless of the proprieties they were most of them engaged in recommending themselves to the notice of their ladies. On all sides were spreading tails bearing down upon the beloved with the steady determination of a three-masted schooner, and now and then caught like that vessel in a shattering breeze (of emotion) which stirred every sail. In England one might feel uncomfortable in the midst of so naked a display of the old Adam, but in Paris one becomes more reconciled to facts, and (like the new cat in the adage) ceases to allow "I am ashamed" to wait upon "I would". The peahens, however, behaved with a stolid circumspection that was beyond praise. These vestals never lifted their heads from the ground, but pecked on and on, mistresses of the scene and incidentally the best friends of the crowds of ouvriers and ouvrières ("V'là le paon! Vite! Vite!") at every railing. But the Parisian peacock is not easily daunted. In spite of these rebuffs the batteries of glorious eyes continued firing, and wider and wider the tails spread, with a corresponding increase of disreputable déshabillé behind; and so I left them, recalling as I walked away a comic occurrence at school too many years ago, when a travelling elocutionist, who had induced our headmaster to allow him to recite to the boys, was noticed to be discharging all his guns of tragedy and humour (some of which I remember distinctly at the moment) with a broadside effect that, while it assisted the ear, had a limiting influence on gesture and by-play, and completely eliminated many of the nuances of conversational give and take. Never throughout the evening did we lose sight of the full expanse of his shirt front; never did he turn round. Never, do I say? But I am wrong. Better for him had it been never: for the poor fellow, his task over and his badly needed guinea earned, forgot under our salvoes of applause the need of caution, and turning from one side of the platform to the other in stooping acknowledgment, disclosed a rent precisely where no man would have a rent to be. My advice to the visitor to the Jardin des Plantes is to be satisfied with the living animals--with the seals and sea-lions, the bears and peacocks, the storks and tigers; and, in fair weather, with the flowers, although the conditions under which these are to be observed are not ideal, so formally arranged on the flat as they are, with traffic so visibly adjacent. But to the glutton for museums such advice is idle. Here, however, even he is like to have his fill. Let him then ask at the Administration for a ticket, which will be handed to him with the most charming smile by an official who is probably of all the bureaucrats of Paris the least deserving of a tip, since zoological and botanical gardens exist for the people, and these tickets (the need for which is, by the way, non-existent) are free and are never withheld--but who is also of all the bureaucrats of Paris the most determined to get one, even, as I observed, from his own countrymen. Thus supplied you must walk some quarter of a mile to a huge building in which are collected all the creatures of the earth in their skins as God made them, but lifeless and staring from the hands of taxidermic man. It is as though the ark had been overwhelmed by some such fine dust as fell from Vesuvius, and was now exhumed. One does not get the same effect from the Natural History Museum in the Cromwell Road; it is, I suppose, the massing that does it here. Having walked several furlongs amid this travesty of wild and dangerous life, one passes to the next museum, which is devoted to mineralogy and botany, and here again are endless avenues of joy for the muséephile and tedium for others. Lastly, after another quarter of a mile's walk, the palatial museum of anatomy is reached, the ingenious art of the late M. Frémiet once more providing a hors d'oeuvre. At the Arts Décoratifs we find on the threshold a man dragging a bear cub into captivity; at the Petit Palais, St. George is killing the dragon just inside the turnstile; and here, near the umbrella-stand, is a man being strangled by an orang-outang. Thus cheered, we enter, and are at once amid a very grove of babies in bottles: babies unready for the world, babies with two heads, babies with no heads at all, babies, in short, without any merit save for the biologist, the distiller, and the sightseer with strong nerves. From the babies we pass to cases containing examples of every organ of the human form divine, and such approximations as have been accomplished by elephants and mice and monkeys--all either genuine, in spirits, or counterfeited with horrible minuteness in wax. Also there are skeletons of every known creature, from whales to frogs, and I noticed a case illustrating the daily progress of the chicken in the egg. And now for the other Zoo, the Zoo of the classes. Perhaps the best description is to call it a playground with animals in it. For there are children everywhere, and everything is done for their amusement--as is only natural in a land where children persist through life and no one ever tires. In the centre of the gardens is an enclosure in which in the summer of 1908 were encamped a colony of Gallas, an intelligent and attractive black people from the border of Abyssinia, who flung spears at a target, and fought duels, and danced dances of joy and sorrow, and rounded up zebras, and in the intervals sold curiosities and photographs of themselves with ingratiating tenacity. It was a strange bizarre entertainment, with greedy ostriches darting their beaks among the spectators, and these shock-headed savages screaming through their diversions, and now and again a refined slip of a black girl imploring one mutely to give a franc for a five centimes picture postcard, or murmuring incoherent rhapsodies over the texture of a European dress. All around the enclosure the Parisian children were playing, some riding elephants, others camels, some driving an ostrich cart, and all happy. But the gem of the Jardin is the Ecurie, on one side for ponies--scores of little ponies, all named--the other for horses; on one side a riding school for children, on the other side a riding school for grown-up pupils, perhaps the cavalry officers of the future. The ponies are charming: Bibiche, landaise, Volubilité, cheval landais, Céramon, cheval finlandais, Farceur, from the same country, Columbine, née de Ratibor, and so forth. There they wait, alert and patient too, in the manner of small ponies, and by-and-by one is led off to the Petit manège for a little Monsieur Paul or Etienne to bestride. The Ecurie is a model of its kind, with its central courtyard and offices for the various servants, sellier, piqueur and so forth. [Illustration: LA LEÇON DE LECTURE TERBURG (_Louvre_)] Near by is a castellated fortress which might belong to a dwarf of blood but is really a rabbit house. Every kind of rabbit is here, with this difference from the rabbit house in our Zoo, that the animals are for sale; and there is a fragrant vacherie where you may learn to milk; and in another part is a collection of dogs--tou-tous and lou-lous and all the rest of it--and these are for sale too. This is as popular a department as any in the Jardin. The expressions of delight and even ecstasy which were being uttered before some of the cages I seem still to hear. The Parisians may be kind fathers and devoted mothers: I am sure that they are; but to the observer in the streets and restaurants their finest shades of protective affection would seem to be reserved for dogs. One sees their children with bonnes; their dogs are their own care. The ibis of Egypt is hardly more sacred. An English friend who has lived in the heart of Paris for some time in the company of a fox terrier tells me that on their walks abroad in the evening the number of strangers who stop him to pass friendly remarks upon his pet or ask to be allowed to pat it--or who make overtures to it without permission--is beyond belief. No pink baby in Kensington Gardens is more admired. Dogs in English restaurants are a rarity: but in Paris they are so much a matter of course that a little pâtée is always ready for them. It was of course a French tongue that first gave utterance to the sentiment, "The more I see of men the more I like dogs"; but I cannot pretend to have observed that the Frenchman suffers any loss in prestige or power from this attention to the tou-tou and the lou-lou. Nothing, I believe, will ever diminish the confidence or success of that lord of creation. He may to the insular eye be too conscious of his charms; he may suggest the boudoir rather than the field of battle or the field of sport; he may amuse by his hat, astonish by his beard, and perplex by his boots; but the fact remains that he is master of Paris, and Paris is the centre of civilisation. The Parisians not only adore their dogs in life: they give them very honourable burial. We have in London, by Lancaster Gate, a tiny cemetery for these friendly creatures; but that is nothing as compared with the cemetery at St. Ouen, on an island in the Seine. Here are monuments of the most elaborate description, and fresh wreaths everywhere. The most striking tomb is that of a Saint Bernard who saved forty persons but was killed by the forty-first--a hero of whose history one would like to know more, but the gate-keeper is curiously uninstructed.[2] [2] I have since learned that this is the same dog, Barry by name, who has a monument on the St. Bernard Pass, and is stuffed in the Natural History Museum at Berne. But I know nothing of his connexion with Paris. I walked among these myriad graves, all very recent in date, and was not a little touched by the affection that had gone to their making. I noted a few names: Petit Bob, Espérance (whose portrait is in bas-relief accompanied by that of its master), Peggie, Fan, Pincke, Manon, Dick, Siko, Léonette (aged 17 years and 4 months), Toby, Kiki, Ben-Ben ("toujours gai, fidèle et caressant"--what an epitaph to strive for!), Javotte, Nana, Lili, Dedjaz, Trinquefort, Teddy and Prince (whose mausoleum is superb), Fifi (who saved lives), Colette, Dash (a spaniel, with a little bronze sparrow perching on his tomb), Boy, Bizon (who saved his owner's life and therefore has this souvenir), and Mosque ("regretté et fidèle ami"). There must be hundreds and hundreds altogether, and it will not be long before another "Dog's Acre" is required. Standing amid all the little graves I felt that the one thing I wanted to see was a dog's funeral. For surely there must be impressive obsequies as a preparation to such thoughtful burial. But I did not. No melancholy cortège came that way that afternoon; Fido's pompes funèbres are still a mystery to me. But to my mind the best dogs in Paris are not such toy pets as for the most part are here kept in sacred memory, but those eager pointers that one sees on Sunday morning at the Gare du Nord, and indeed at all the big stations, following brisk, plump sportsmen with all the opéra bouffe insignia of the chase--the leggings and the belt and the great satchel and the gun. For the Frenchman who is going to shoot likes the world to know what a lucky devil he is: he has none of our furtive English unwillingness to be known for what we are. I have seen them start, and I have waited about in the station towards dinner time just to see them return, with their bags bulging, and their steps springing with the pride and elation of success, and the faithful pointers trotting behind. Everything is happy at the Jardins des Plantes and d'Acclimatation to-day: but it was not always so. During a critical period of 1870 and 1871 the cages were in a state of panic over the regular arrival of the butcher--not to bring food but to make it. Mr. Labouchere, the "Besieged Resident," writing on December 5th, 1870, says: "Almost all the animals in the Jardin d'Acclimatation have been eaten. They have averaged about 7 f. a lb. Kangaroo has been sold for 12 f. the lb. Yesterday I dined with the correspondent of a London paper. He had managed to get a large piece of mufflon, and nothing else, an animal which is, I believe, only found in Corsica. I can only describe it by saying that it tasted of mufflon, and nothing else. Without being absolutely bad, I do not think that I shall take up my residence in Corsica, in order habitually to feed upon it." On December 18th Mr. Labouchere was at Voisin's. The bill of fare, he says, was ass, horse and English wolf from the Zoological Gardens. According to a Scotch friend, the English wolf was Scotch fox. Mr. Labouchere could not manage it and fell back on the patient ass. Voisin's, by the way, was the only restaurant which never failed to supply its patrons with a meal. If you ask Paul, the head waiter, he will give you one of the siege menus as a souvenir. Mr. Labouchere's description of typical life during the siege may be quoted here as offering material for reflection as we loiter about this city so notable to-day for pleasure and plenty. "Here is my day. In the morning the boots comes to call me. He announces the number of deaths which have taken place in the hotel during the night. If there are many he is pleased, as he considers it creditable to the establishment. He then relieves his feelings by shaking his fist in the direction of Versailles, and exits growling 'Canaille de Bismarck'. I get up. I have breakfast--horse, _café au lait_--the _lait_ chalk and water--the portion of horse about two square inches of the noble quadruped. Then I buy a dozen newspapers, and after having read them discover that they contain nothing new. This brings me to about eleven o'clock. Friends drop in, or I drop in on friends. We discuss how long it is to last--if friends are French we agree that we are sublime. At one o'clock get into the circular railroad, and go to one or other of the city gates. After a discussion with the National Guards on duty, pass through. Potter about for a couple of hours at the outposts; try with glass to make out Prussians; look at bombs bursting; creep along the trenches; and wade knee-deep in mud through the fields. The Prussians, who have grown of late malevolent even towards civilians, occasionally send a ball far over one's head. They always fire too high. French soldiers are generally cooking food. They are anxious for news, and know nothing about what is going on. As a rule they relate the episode of some _combat d'avant-poste_ which took place the day before. The episodes never vary. 5 P.M.--Get back home; talk to doctors about interesting surgical operations; then drop in upon some official to interview him about what he is doing. Official usually first mysterious, then communicative, not to say loquacious, and abuses most people except himself. 7 P.M.--Dinner at a restaurant; conversation general; almost every one in uniform. Still the old subjects--How long will it last? Why does not Gambetta write more clearly? How sublime we are; what a fool every one else is. Food scanty, but peculiar.... After dinner, potter on the Boulevards under the dispiriting gloom of petroleum; go home and read a book. 12 P.M.--Bed. They nail up the coffins in the room just over mine every night, and the tap, tap, tap, as they drive in the nails, is the pleasing music which lulls me to sleep." Here is another extract illustrating the pass to which a hungry city had come: "Until the weather set in so bitter cold, elderly sportsmen, who did not care to stalk the human game outside, were to be seen from morning to night pursuing the exciting sport of gudgeon fishing along the banks of the Seine. Each one was always surrounded by a crowd deeply interested in the chase. Whenever a fish was hooked, there was as much excitement as when a whale is harpooned in more northern latitudes. The fisherman would play it for some five minutes, and then, in the midst of the solemn silence of the lookers-on, the precious capture would be landed. Once safe on the bank, the happy possessor would be patted on the back, and there would be cries of 'Bravo!' The times being out of joint for fishing in the Seine, the disciples of Izaak Walton have fallen back on the sewers. The _Paris Journal_ gives them the following directions how to pursue their new game: 'Take a long strong line, and a large hook, bait with tallow, and gently agitate the rod. In a few minutes a rat will come and smell the savoury morsel. It will be some time before he decides to swallow it, for his nature is cunning. When he does, leave him five minutes to meditate over it; then pull strongly and steadily. He will make convulsive jumps; but be calm, and do not let his excitement gain on you, draw him up, _et voilà votre dîner_.'" There is still hardly less excitement when a fish is landed by a quai fisherman, but the emotion is now purely artistic. CHAPTER XIV THE GRANDS BOULEVARDS: I. THE MADELEINE TO THE OPERA From Temple to Church--Napoleon the Christian--The Chapelle Expiatoire--More Irony of History--Mi-Carême--The Art of Insolence--Spacious Streets--The Champions of France--Marius--Letter-boxes and Stamps--The Facteur at the Bed--Killing a Guide no Murder--The Largest Theatre in the World--A Theatrical Museum. The Madeleine has had a curious history. The great Napoleon built it, on the site of a small eighteenth-century church, as a Temple of Glory, a gift to his soldiers, where every year on the anniversaries of Austerlitz and Jena a concert was to be held, odes read, and orations delivered on the duties and privileges of the warrior, any mention of the Emperor's own name being expressly forbidden. That was in 1806. The building was still in progress when 1815 came, with another and more momentous battle in it, and Napoleon and his proposal disappeared. The building of the Temple of Glory was continued as a church, and a church it still is; and the memory of Jena and Austerlitz is kept alive in Paris by other means (they have, for example, each a bridge), no official orations are delivered on the soldier's calling, no official odes recited. It was a noble idea of the Emperor's, and however perfunctorily carried out, could not have left one with a less satisfied feeling than some of the present ceremonials in the Madeleine, which has become the most fashionable Paris church. Napoleon, however, is not wholly forgotten, for in the apse, I understand, is a fresco representing Christ reviewing the chief champions of Christianity and felicitating with them upon their services, the great Emperor being by no means absent. Herr Baedeker says that the fresco is there, but I have not succeeded in seeing it, for the church is lit only by three small cupolas and is dark with religious dusk. Within, the Madeleine is a surprise, for it does not conform to its fine outward design. One expects a classic severity and simplicity, and instead it is paint and Italianate curves. The wisest course for the visitor is to avoid the steps and the importunate mendicants at the railings, and slip in by the little portal on the west side where the discreet closed carriages wait. Louis XVIII., with his passion--a very natural one--to obliterate Napoleon and the revolutionaries and resume monarchical continuity, wished to complete the Madeleine as a monument to Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette; but he did not persevere with the idea. He built instead, on the site of the old cemetery of the Madeleine, where Louis XVI. and the Queen had been buried, the Chapelle Expiatoire. It is their memory only which is preserved here, for, after Waterloo, their bones were carried to St. Denis, where the other French kings lie. Their statues, however, are enshrined in the building (which is just off the Boulevard Haussmann, isolated solemnly and impressively among chestnut trees and playing children), the king being solaced by an angel who remarks to him in the words used by Father Edgeworth on the scaffold, "Fils de St. Louis, montez au ciel!" and the queen by religion, personified by her sister-in-law, Madame Elizabeth. The door-keeper, who conducted me as guide, was in raptures over Louis XVI.'s lace and the circumstance that he was hewn from a single block of marble. I liked his enthusiasm: these unfortunate monarchs deserve the utmost that sculptor and door-keeper can give them. Paris has changed its mind more completely and frequently than any city in the world--and no illustration of that foible is better than this before us. Consider the sequence: first the king; then the prisoner; then the execution--the body and head being carried to the nearest cemetery, the Madeleine, where the guillotine's victims were naturally flung, and carelessly buried. Ten months later the queen's body and head follow. (It is said that the records of the Madeleine contain an entry by a sexton, which runs in English, "Paid seven francs for a coffin for the Widow Capet".) That was in 1793. Not until 1815 do they find sepulture befitting them, and then this chapel rises in their honour and they become saints. [Illustration: LA DENTELLIÈRE JAN VERMEER OF DELFT (_Louvre_)] Among other bodies buried here was that of Charlotte Corday. Also the Swiss Guards, whom we saw meeting death at the Tuileries. A strange place, and to-day, in a Paris that cares nothing for Capets, a perfect example of what might paradoxically be called well-kept neglect. To me the Madeleine has always a spurious air: nothing in it seems quite true. Externally, its Roman proportions carry no hint of the Christian religion; within, there is a noticeable lack of reverence. Every one walks about, and the Suisses are of the world peculiarly and offensively worldly. Standing before the altar with its representation of the Magdalen, who gives the church its name, being carried to Heaven, it is difficult to realise that only thirty-eight years ago this very spot was running red with the blood of massacred Communards. I remember the Madeleine most naturally as I saw it once at Mi-Carême, from an upper window at Durand's, after lunch. It was a dull day and the Madeleine frowned on the human sea beneath it; for the Place before it and the Rue Royale were black with people. The portico is always impressive, but I had never before had so much time or such excellent opportunity to study it and its relief of the Last Judgment, an improbable contingency to which few of us were giving much thought just then. Not only were the steps crowded, but two men had climbed to the green roof and were sitting on the very apex of the building. The Mi-Carême carnival in Paris, I may say at once, is not worth crossing the Channel for. It is tawdry and stupid; the life of the city is dislocated; the Grands Boulevards are quickly some inches deep in confetti, all of which has been discharged into faces and even eyes before reaching the ground; the air is full of dust; and the places of amusement are uncomfortably crowded. The Lutetian humours of the Latin Quarter students and of Montmartre are not without interest for a short time, but they become tedious with extraordinary swiftness and certainty as the morning grows grey. Each side of the Madeleine has its flower markets, and they share the week between them. Round and about Christmas a forest of fir-trees springs up. At the back of the Madeleine omnibuses and trams converge as at the Elephant. For a walk along the Grands Boulevards this temple is the best starting-point; but I do not suggest that the whole round shall be made. By the Grands Boulevards the precisian would mean the half circle from the Madeleine to the Place de la République and thence to the Place de la Bastille; or even the whole circle, crossing the river by the Pont Sully to the Boulevard St. Antoine, which cuts right through the Surrey side and crosses the river by the Pont de la Concorde and so comes to the Rue Royale and the Madeleine again. Those are the Grands Boulevards; but when the term is conversationally used it means nothing whatever but the stretch of broad road and pavement, of vivid kiosques and green branches, between the Madeleine and the Rue Richelieu: that is the Grands Boulevards for the flâneur and the foreigner. All the best cafés to sit at, all the prettiest women to stare at, all the most entertaining shop windows, are found between these points. The prettiest women to stare at! Here I touch on a weakness in the life of Paris which there is no doubt the Boulevards have fostered. Staring--more than staring, a cool cynical appraisement--is one of the privileges which the Boulevardier most prizes. I have heard it said that he carries staring to a fine art; but it is not an art at all, and certainly not fine; it is just a coarse and disgusting liberty. It is nothing to him that the object of his interest is accompanied by a man; his code ignores that detail; he is out to see and to make an impression and nothing will stop him. One must not, however, let this ugly practice offend one's sensibility too much. Foreigners need not necessarily do as the Romans do, but it is not their right to be too critical of Rome; and liberty is the very air of the Boulevards. Live and let live. If one is going to be annoyed by Paris, one had better stay at home. The Grands Boulevards might be called the show-rooms of Paris: it is here that one sees the Parisians. In London one may live for years and never see a Londoner; not because Londoners do not exist, but because London has no show-rooms for their display. There is no Boulevard in London; the only streets that have a pavement capable of accommodating both spectators and a real procession of types are deserted, such as Portland Place and Kingsway. The English, who conquer and administer the world, dislike space; the French, a people at whose alleged want of inches we used to mock, rejoice in space. Think of the Champs-Elysées and the Bois, and then think of Constitution Hill and Hyde Park, and you realise the difference. Take a mental drive by any of the principal Boulevards--from the Madeleine eastward to the Place de la République and back to the Madeleine again by way of the Boulevards de Magenta and Clichy and down the Boulevard Malesherbes, and then take a mental drive from Hyde Park Corner by way of Piccadilly, the Strand, Fleet Street, Cannon Street, Lombard Street, Cheapside, Holborn, Oxford Street and Park Lane to Hyde Park Corner again and you realise the difference. In wet weather in Paris it is possible to walk all day and not be splashed. Think of our most fashionable thoroughfare, just by Long's Hotel, when it is raining--our Rue de la Paix. The only street in London of which a Frenchman would not be ashamed is the Mile End Road. At the Taverne Olympia--just past the old houses standing back from the pavement, on the left, which are built on the wall of the old moat, when this Boulevard really was a bulwark or fortification--at the Taverne Olympia, upstairs, is one of the few billiard saloons in Paris in which exhibition games are continually in progress, and in which one can fill many amusing half-hours and perhaps win a few louis. Years ago I used to frequent the saloon in a basement under the Grand Café, a few doors east of the Olympia, but it has lost some of its prestige. The best play now is at Olympia and at Cure's place in the Rue Vivienne. Every day of the year, for ever and ever, a billiard match is in progress. So you may say is, in the winter, the case in London at Burroughs and Watts', or Thurston's, but these are very different. In London the match is for a large number of points and it may last a week or a fortnight. Here there are scores of matches every afternoon and evening and the price of admission is a consommation. By virtue of one glass of coffee you may sit for hours and watch champion of France after champion of France lose and win, win and lose. The usual game is played by three champions of France and is for ten cannons off the red. The names of the players, on cards, are first flung on the table, and the amateur of sport advances from his seat and stakes five francs on that champion of France whom he favours. Five francs is the unit. On my first visit, years ago, the champion whom I, very unsoundly but not perhaps unnaturally, supported, was one Lucas. Poor fellow, on that afternoon he did his best, but he never got home. The great Marius was too much for him. Marius in those days was a very fine player and the hero of the saloon at the Grand Café. A Southerner I should guess; for I have seen his doubles by the score in the cafés of Avignon and Nîmes. He was short and thick, with a bald head and a large sagacious nose and a saturnine smile and a heavy moustache. Winning and losing were all one to him, although it is understood that fifty centimes are contributed by each of his backers to a champion of France when he brings it off. Marius looked down his nose in the same way whatever happened. He was no Roberts; he had none of the Cæsarian masterfulness, none of the Napoleonic decision, of that king of men. The modern French game does not lend itself to such commanding excellence, such Alpine distinction. The cannon is all: there is no longer any of the quiet and magical disappearance of the ball into a pocket which makes the English game so fascinating. Such was Marius when I first saw him, and quite lately I descended to his cellar again and found him unaltered, except that he was no longer a master except very occasionally, and that he had grown more sardonic. I do not wonder at it. It may not be, in Paris, "a lonely thing to be champion," as Cashel Byron says, but it must be a melancholy thing to be no longer the champion that you were. A home of rest for ex-champions would draw my guinea at once. The ten or eight cannons off the red, I might add, are varied now and then. Sometimes there is a match between two players for a hundred points. Sometimes three players will see which can first make eight cannons, each involving three cushions (trois bandes). This is a very interesting game to watch, although it may be a concession to decadence. [Illustration: THE RUE DE BIÈVRE (FROM THE QUAI DE MONTEBELLO) PANTHÉON] We come next to the Rue Scribe, and crossing it, are at "Old England," a shop where the homesick may buy such a peculiarly English delicacy as marmalade, beneath the shadow of the gigantic Grand Hotel, notable not only for its million bedrooms but for marking the position of one of the few post offices of Paris, and also the only shop in the centre of the city which keeps a large and civilised stock of Havana cigars. One can live without Havana cigars, but post offices are a necessity, and in Paris they conceal themselves with great success; while, as for letter-boxes, it has been described as a city without one. To a Londoner accustomed to the frequent and vivid occurrence at street corners of our scarlet obelisks, it is so. Quite recently I heard of a young Englishman, shy and incorrigibly one-languaged, who, during a week in Paris, entrusted all his correspondence to a fire-alarm. But, as a matter of fact, Paris has letter-boxes in great number, only for the most part they are so concealed as to be solely for the initiated. Directly one learns that every tobacconist also sells stamps and either secretes a letter-box somewhere beneath his window, or marks the propinquity of one, life becomes simple. Although normally one never has, in France, even in the official receptacle of one of the chief of the Bureaux des Postes, any of that confidence that one reposes in the smallest wall-box in England; yet one must perforce overcome this distrust or use only pneumatiques. The French do not carry ordinary letters very well, but if you register them nothing can keep the postman from you. A knock like thunder crashes into your dreams, and behold he is at your bedside, alert and important, be-ribboned with red tape, tendering for your signature a pen dipped in an inkstand concealed about his person. Every one who goes to France for amusement should arrange to receive one registered letter. Its letter-boxes may be a trifle farcical, but in its facilities given to purchasers of stamps France makes England look an uncivilised country. Why it should be illegal for any one but a postal official to supply stamps in my own land, I have never been informed, nor have any of the objections to the system ever been explained away. In France you may get your stamps anywhere--from tobacconists for certain; from waiters for certain; from the newspaper kiosques for certain; and from all tradespeople almost for certain: hence one is relieved of the tiresome delays in post offices that are incident to English life. But I am inclined to think that when it comes to the post office proper, England has the advantage. The French post office (when you have found it) is always crowded and always overheated; and you remember what I told the men in the Mint. To return to the Grand Hotel, I am minded to express the wish that something could be done to rid its pavement of the sly leering detrimental with an umbrella who comes up to the foreigner and offers his services as a guide to the night side of Paris. Not until an Englishman has killed one of these pests will this part of Paris be endurable. But from what I have observed I should say that few murders are less likely to occur.... And so we come to the Café de la Paix, and turning to the left, the Opera is before us. The Opera is one of the buildings of Paris that are taken for granted. We do not look at it much: we think of it as occupying the central position, adjacent to Cook's, useful as a place of meeting; we buy a seat there occasionally, and that is all. And yet it is the largest theatre in the world (the work of that Charles Garnier whose statue is just outside), and although it is not exactly beautiful, its proportions are agreeable; it does not obtrude its size (and yet it covers three acres); it sits very comfortably on the ground, and an incredible amount of patient labour and thought went to its achievement, as any one may see by walking round it and studying the ornamentation and the statuary, among which is Carpeaux's famous lively group "La Danse". One very pleasant characteristic of the Opera is the modesty with which it announces its performances: nothing but a minute poster in a frame, three or four times repeated, giving the information to the passer-by. Larger posters would impair its superb reserve. The Opera has a little museum, the entrance to which is in the Rue Auber corner, by the statue of the architect (with his plan of the building traced in bronze below his bust). This museum is a model of its kind--small but very pertinent and personal in character. Here are one of Paganini's bows and his rosin box; souvenirs of Malibran presented to her by some Venetian admirers in 1835; Berlioz' season ticket for the Opera in 1838, and a page of one of his scores; Rossini in a marble statuette, asleep on his sofa, wearing that variety of whisker which we call a Newgate fringe; Rossini on his death-bed, drawn by L. Roux, and a page of a score and a cup and saucer used by him; a match box of Gounod's, a page of a score, and his marble bust; Meyerbeer on his death-bed, drawn by Mousseaux, a decoration worn by that composer, and a page of his score; two of Cherubini's tobacco boxes and a page of his score; Danton's clay caricature of Liszt--all hair and legs--at the piano, and a caricature of Liszt playing the piano while Lablache sings and Habeneck conducts; a bust of Fanny Cerrito, danseuse, in 1821--with a mischievous pretty face--that Cerrito of whom Thomas Ingoldsby rhymed; and a bust of Emma Livry, a danseuse of a later day, who died aged twenty-three from injuries received from fire during the répétition génerale of the "Muette de Portici" on November 15th, 1862. In a little coffer near by are the remains of the clothes the poor creature was wearing at the time. What else is there? Many busts, among them Delibes the composer of "Coppélia," whose grave we shall see in the Cimetière de Montmartre: here bearded and immortal; autograph scores by Verdi, Donizetti, Victor Massé, Auber, Spontini (whose very early piano also is here), and Hérold; a caricature by Isabey of young Vestris bounding in mid-air, models of scenes of famous operas, and a host of other things all displayed easily in a small but sufficient room. If all museums were as compact and single-minded! CHAPTER XV A CHAIR AT THE CAFÉ DE LA PAIX The Green Hour--In the Stalls of Life--National Contrasts and the Futility of Drawing Them--The Concierge--The Bénéfice Hunters--The Claque--The Paris Theatre--The Paris Music Hall--The Everlasting Joke--The Real French--A Country of Energy--A City of Waiters--Ridicule--Women--Cabmen--The Levelling of the Tourist--French Intelligence--The Chauffeurs--The Paris Spectacle. And now since it is the "green hour"--since it is five o'clock--let us take a chair outside the Café de la Paix and watch the people pass, and meditate, here, in the centre of the civilised world, on this wonderful city of Paris and this wonderful country of France. I am not sure but that when all is said it is not these outdoor café chairs of Paris that give it its highest charm and divide it from London with the greatest emphasis. There are three reasons why one cannot sit out in this way in London: the city is too dirty; the air is rarely warm enough; and the pavements are too narrow. But in Paris, which enjoys the steadier climate of a continent and understands the æsthetic uses of a pavement, and burns wood, charcoal or anthracite, it is, when dry, always possible; and I, for one, rejoice in the privilege. This "green hour"--this quiet recess between five and six in which to sip an apéritif, and talk, and watch the world, and anticipate a good dinner--is as characteristically French as the absence of it is characteristically English. The English can sip their beverages too, but how different is the bar at which they stand from the comfortable stalls (so to speak) in the open-air theatres of the Boulevards in which the French take their ease. At every turn one is reminded that these people live as if the happiness of this life were the only important thing; while if we subtract a frivolous fringe, it may be said of the English that (without any noticeable gain in such advantages as spirituality confers) they are always preparing to be happy but have not yet enough money or are not yet quite ready to begin. The Frenchman is happy now: the Englishman will be happy to-morrow. (That is, at home; yet I have seen Englishmen in Paris gathering honey while they might, with both hands.) But the French and English, London and Paris, are not really to be compared. London and Paris indeed are different in almost every respect, as the capitals of two totally and almost inimically different nations must be. For a few days the Englishman is apt to think that Paris has all the advantages: but that is because he is on a holiday; he soon comes to realise that London is his home, London knows his needs and supplies them. Much as I delight in Paris I would make almost any sacrifice rather than be forced to live there; yet so long as inclination is one's only master how pleasant are her vivacity and charm. But comparisons between nations are idle. For a Frenchman there is no country like France and no city like Paris; for an Englishman England is the best country and London the most desirable city. For a short holiday for an Englishman, Paris is a little paradise; for a short holiday for a Frenchman, London is a little inferno. [Illustration: GIRL'S HEAD ÉCOLE DE FABRIANO (_Louvre_)] Each country is the best; each country has advantages over the other, each country has limitations. The French may have wide streets and spacious vistas, but their matches are costly and won't light; the English, even in the heart of London, may be contented with narrow and muddy and congested lanes, but their sugar at least is sweet. The French may have abolished bookmakers from their race-courses and may give even a cabman a clean napkin to his meals, but their tobacco is a monopoly. The English may fill their streets with newspaper posters advertising horrors and scandals, but they are permitted now and then to forget their vile bodies. The French may piously and prettily erect statues of every illustrious child of the State, but their billiard tables are now without pockets. London may have a cleaner Tube railway system than Paris, but Paris has the advantage of no lifts and a correspondence ticket at a trifling cost which will take you everywhere, whereas London's Tubes belonging to different companies the correspondence is expensive. Again with omnibuses, London may have more and better, but here again the useful correspondence system is to be found only in Paris. London may be in darkness for most of the winter and be rained upon by soot all the year round; but at any rate the Londoner is master in his own house or flat and not the cringing victim of a concierge, as every Parisian is. That is something to remember and be thankful for. Paris has an atmosphere, and a climate, and good food, and attentive waiters, and a cab to every six yards of the kerb, and no petty licensing tyrannies, and the Champs-Elysées, and immunity from lurid newspaper posters, and good coffee, and the Winged Victory, and Monna Lisa; but it also has the concierge. At the entrance to every house is this inquisitive censorious janitor--a blend in human shape of Cerberus and the Recording Angel. The concierge knows the time you go out and (more serious) the time you come in; what letters and parcels you receive; what visitors, and how long they stay. The concierge knows how much rent you pay and what you eat and drink. And the worst of it is that since the concierge keeps the door and dominates the house you must put a good face on it or you will lose very heavily. Scowl at the concierge and your life will become a harassment: letters will be lost; parcels will be delayed; visitors will be told you are at home; a thousand little vexations will occur. The concierge in short is a rod which, you will observe, it is well to kiss. The wise Parisian therefore is always amiable, and generous too, although in his heart he wishes the whole system at the devil. And here I ought to say that although one is thus conscious of certain of the defects and virtues of each nation, I have no belief whatever in any large interchange of characteristics being possible. Nations I think can borrow very little from each other. What is sauce for the goose is by no means necessarily sauce for the oie, and the meat of an homme can easily be the poison of a man. The French and the English base life on such different premises. To put the case in a nutshell, we may say that the French welcome facts and the English avoid them. The French make the most of facts; the English persuade themselves that facts are not there. The French write books and plays about facts, and read and go to the theatre to see facts; the English write books and plays about sentimental unreality, and read and go to the theatre in order to be diverted from facts. The French live quietly and resignedly at home among facts; the English exhaust themselves in games and travel and frivolity and social inquisitiveness, in order to forget that they have facts in their midst. One always used to think that the English were the most willing endurers of impositions and monopolies; but I have come to the conclusion that a people that can continue to burn French matches and use French ink and blotting-paper, bend before the concierge and suffer the claque and the French theatre attendant, must be even weaker. Only a people in love with slavery would continue to endure the black bombazined harpies who turn the French theatres into infernos, first by their very presence and secondly by their clamour for a bénéfice. They do nothing and they levy a tax on it. So far from exterminating them, this absurd lenient French people has even allowed them to dominate the cinematoscope halls which are now so numerous all over Paris. I sit and watch them and wonder what they do all day: in what dark corner of the city they hang like bats till the evening arrives and they are free to poison the air of the theatres and exact their iniquitous secret commission. The habit of London managers to charge sixpence for a programme--an advertisement of his wares such as every decent and courteous tradesman is proud to give away--is sufficiently monstrous; but I can never enough honour them for excluding these bénéfice hunters. Whatever may be said of French acting and French plays there is no doubt that our theatres are more comfortable and better managed. A Frenchman visiting a theatre in London has no difficulties: he buys his seat at the office, is shown to it and the matter ends. An Englishman visiting a theatre in Paris has no such ease. He must first buy his ticket (and let him scrutinise the change with some care and despatch); this ticket, however, does not, as in London, carry the number of his seat: it is merely a card of introduction to the three gentlemen in evening dress and tall hats who sit side by side in a kind of pulpit in the lobby. One of them takes his ticket, another consults a plan and writes a number on it, and the third hands it back. Another difficulty has yet to come, for now begins the turn of the harpies. Why the English custom is not followed, and a clean sweep made of both the men in the pulpit and the women inside, one has no notion; for in addition to being a nuisance they must reduce the profits. I mentioned the claque just now. That is another of the Frenchman's darling bugbears which the English would never stand. Every Frenchman to whom I have spoken about it shares my view that it is an abomination, but when I ask why it is not abolished he merely shrugs his shoulders: "Why should it be?--one can endure it," is the attitude; and that indeed is the Frenchman's attitude to most of the things that he finds objectionable. They are, after all, only trimmings; the real fabric of his life is not injured by them; therefore let them go on. Yet while one can understand the persistence of certain Parisian defects, the long life of the claque remains a mystery. Upon me the periodical and mechanical explosions of this body of hirelings have an effect little short of infuriation. One is told that the actors are responsible rather than the managers, and this makes its continuance the more unreasonable, for the result has been that in their efforts to acquire the illusion of applause, they have lost the real thing. French audiences rarely clap any more. When it comes to the consideration of the French stage, there is again no point in making comparisons. It is again a conflict of fact and sentiment. The French are intensely interested in the manifestations of the sexual emotion, and they have no objection to see the calamities and embarrassments and humours to which it may lead worked out frankly on the boards or in literature: hence a certain sameness in their plays and novels. The majority of the English still think that physical matters should be hidden: hence our dramatists and novelists having had to find other themes, adventure, eccentricity and character have won their predominant place. That is all there is to it. The French stage is the best--to a Frenchman or a gallicised Englishman; the English stage is the best--to the English. The English go rather to see; the French to hear. In other words a blind Frenchman would be better pleased with his national stage than a blind Englishman with his. The blind Frenchman would at any rate not miss the jokes, which, though he knew them all before, he could not resist; whereas the Englishman would be deprived of the visible touches of which the personæ of our drama are largely built up. In a drama of passion, whether treated seriously or lightly, words necessarily are more than idiosyncrasies. [Illustration: LE BÉNÉDICITÉ CHARDIN _(Louvre)_] In the Paris music halls the comic singers merely sing--they have little but words to give. London music hall audiences may have an undue affection for red noses and sordid domestic details; but they do expect a little character, even if it is coarse character, during the evening, and they get it. There is little in the French hall. Personality is discouraged here; richness, quaintness, unction, irresponsibility, eccentricity--such gifts as once pleased us in Dan Leno and now are to be found in a lesser degree but very agreeably in Wilkie Bard--these are superfluities to a French comic singer. All that is asked of him is that he shall be active, shall have a resonant voice, and shall commit to memory a sufficient number of cynical reflections on life. A gramophone producing any rapid indecent song would please the French more than a hundred Harry Lauders. (And yet when all is said it must be far easier to live in a country where decency, as we understand and painfully cultivate it, has not everywhere to be considered. The life at any rate of the French author, publisher, editor and magistrate, to name no others, is immensely simplified.) But from my point of view the worst characteristic of the French music hall and variety stage is the revue. The revue is indeed a standing proof of the incontrovertible fact that however the hotel proprietors may feel about it, the Parisian does not want English people in his midst. (Why should he?) The revue in its quiddity is a device for excluding foreigners from theatres; for it is not only dull and monotonous, but being for the most part a satire on Parisian politics is incomprehensible too. I am not here to defend the English pantomime, but not all its agonies (as Ruskin called them) reach such a height of tedium as a revue can achieve. A Frenchman ignorant of English at Drury Lane on Boxing Night might be bewildered and even stunned; but he would at any rate know something of what was happening and his eyes would be kept busy. An Englishman at a revue knows nothing, for there is no story, and very little money is spent on the stage picture: it is just a steady cataract of topical talk. I have endured many revues, always hoping against hope that some one would be witty or funny, that some ingenious satirical device would occur. But I have never been rewarded. No matter what the nominal subject, the jokes have been the same: the old old mots à double entente, the old old outspoken indecency.... The stream of people continues to be incessant and of incredible density--all walking at the same pace, all talking as only the French can talk, rich and poor equally owners of the pavement. Now and then a camelot offers a toy or a picture postcard; boys bring _La Patrie_ or _La Presse_; a performer bends and twists a piece of felt into every shape of hat, culminating in Napoleon's famous chapeau à cornes.... One thing that one notices is the absence of laughter. The French laugh aloud very seldom. Even in their theatres, at the richest French jokes, their approval is expressed rather in a rippling murmur counterfeiting surprise than a laugh. Animation one sees, but on these Boulevards behind that is often a suggestion of anxiety. The dominant type of face seen from a chair at the Café de la Paix is not a happy one.... It is when one watches this restless moving crowd, or the complacent audiences at the farces, or the diners in restaurants eating as if it were the last meal, and when one looks week after week at the comic papers of Paris, with their deadly insistence on the one and apparently only concern of Parisian life, that one has most of all to remind oneself that these people are not the French, and that one is a superficial tourist in danger of acquiring very wrong impressions. This is the fringe, the froth. One has only to remember a very few of the things we have seen in Paris to realise the truth of this. Never was a harder working people. Look at the early hours that Paris keeps: contrast them with London's slovenly awakening. Look at the amazing productivity of a notoriously idle and careless set--the artists: the old Salon with its miles of pictures twice a year, and the other Salons, hardly less crowded, and the minor exhibitions too. Look at the industry of the Paris stage: the new plays that are produced every week, involving endless rehearsals day and night. Look at the energy of the French authors, dramatic as well as narrative, of the journalists and printers. Think of the engineers, the motor-car manufacturers, the gardeners and the vintners. Think of the bottle-makers. (But one cannot: such a thought causes the head to reel in this city of bottles.) No, we are not seeing France, we foreign visitors to "the gay capital". Don't let us labour under any such mistake. The industrious, level-headed, cheerful French people do not exhibit themselves to the scrutinising eyes of the Café de la Paix, do not spend all their time as _Le Rire_ would have us believe, do not over eat and over drink. Around and about one all the time, as one watches this panorama, the swift and capable waiters are busy. Every one carries away from Paris one mastering impression upon the inward eye: I am not sure that mine is not a blur of waiters in their long white aprons. At the Paris Exhibition of 1900, over the principal entrance at the south-west corner of the Place de la Concorde, was the gigantic figure of a young and fashionable woman in the very heyday of her vivacity, allurement and smartness. She personified Paris. But not so would I symbolise that city. In any coat of arms of Paris that I designed would certainly be a capable young woman, but also a waiter, sleek, attentive and sympathetic. Paris may be a city of feminine charm and domination; but to the ordinary foreigner, and especially the Englishman, it is far more a city of waiters. Women we have in England too: but waiters we have not. There are waiters in London, no doubt, but that is the end of them: there are, to all intents and purposes, no waiters in the provinces, where we eat exclusively in our own houses. And even in London we must brace ourselves to find such waiters as there are: we must indulge in heroic feats of patience, and, once the waiter comes into view, exercise most of the vocal organs to attract his notice and obtain his suffrages. In other words, there is in London perhaps one waiter to every five thousand persons; whereas in Paris there are five thousand waiters, more or less, to every one person. Or so it seems. It is a city of waiters; it is _the_ city of waiters. Still the people stream by, and one wonders whence the idea comes that the French are a particularly small race. It is not true. Look at that tall boulevardier with some one else's hat (why do so many Frenchmen seem to be wearing other men's hats?) and the immense beard. Look at those two long-haired artists from the Latin Quarter, in velvet clothes and black sombreros. In England they would be stared at and laughed at; but here no one is laughed at at all, and only the women are stared at. It is interesting to note how little street ridicule there is in France. The Frenchman mocks, but he does not, as I think so many of the English do, search for the ridiculous; or at any rate it is not the same kind of ridiculousness that we pillory. In England we bring such sandpaper of prejudice and public opinion to bear upon eccentricity that every one becomes smooth and ordinary--like every one else. But in France--to the superficial observer, at any rate--individuality is encouraged and nourished; in France either no one is ridiculous or every one is. Some one once remarked to me that never in Paris do you see a woman with any touch of the woods. It is true. The Parisian women suggest the boudoir, the theatre, the salon, the sewing-room, the kitchen, and now and then even the fields; but never the woods.... One misses also in Paris the boy of from fifteen to eighteen. Younger boys there are, and young men abound, but youths of that age one does not much see, and very rarely indeed a father and son together. In fact the generations seem to mix very little: in the restaurants men of the same age are usually together: beards lunch with beards.... And the road is dense too. There is a block every few minutes, while the agents in the centre of the carrefour do their best to control the four streams of traffic. It is odd that a people with so much sense of order and red tape should fail so signally to produce an organiser of traffic. Certain it is that the stupidest Kentish giant who joins the Metropolitan police force has a better idea of such a duty than any of these polished gentlemen in caps. Partly perhaps because in London the police are feared and obeyed, and in Paris the drivers, particularly the cabmen, care for no one. The words Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité are not stencilled all over our churches and public buildings, you see. The cabmen! My impression now is, writing here in England, that the Paris cochers are all exactly alike. They have white hats and blue coats and bad horses and black moustaches, and their backs entirely fill the landscape. They beat their horses and shout at them all the time. One seldom sees an accident, although they never look as if they were going to avoid one. That is partly because they are a weary and cynical folk, and partly because in France the roads belong to vehicles, and not, as in England, to foot-passengers. In England if you are run over, you can prosecute the driver and get damages; in France if you are run over, the driver (one has always heard) can prosecute you for being in the way. [Illustration: THE BOULEVARD DES ITALIENS (LOOKING EAST)] No matter with what fervour is the entente fostered and nourished, the Parisian cabman will see to it that the hatchet is never too deeply interred, that the racial excrescences are not too smoothly planed. Polite hotel managers, obsequious restaurateurs, smiling sommeliers and irradiated shopkeepers may do their best to assure the Anglo-Saxon that he is among a people that exist merely to do him honour and adore his personality; but directly he hails a cab he knows better. The truth is then his. Not that the Parisian cocher hates a foreigner. Nothing so crude as that. He merely is possessed by a devil of contempt that prompts him to humiliate and confound us. To begin with he will not appear to want you as a fare; he will make it a favour to drive you at all. He will then begin his policy of humorous pin-pricks. Though you speak with the accent of Mounet-Sully himself he will force you to pronounce the name of your destination not once but many times, and then very likely he will drive you somewhere else first. You may step into his cab with a feeling that Paris is becoming a native city: you will emerge wishing it at the bottom of the sea. That is the cocher's special mission in life--subtly and insidiously to humiliate the tourist. He does it like an artist and as an artist--for his own pleasure. It is the only compensation that his dreary life carries. The French, I fancy, are not less capable of stupidity than any other people. There is an idea current that they are the most intelligent of races, but I believe this to be a fallacy, proceeding from the fact that the French language lends itself to epigrammatic expression, and that every French child dips his cup into the common reservoir of engaging idioms and adroit phrases. This means that French conversation, even among the humblest, is better than English conversation under similar and far more favourable conditions; but it means no more. It gives no real intelligence. The incapacity of the ordinary Frenchman to get enough imagination into his ear (so fine that it can distinguish between the most delicate vowel sounds in his own language) to enable it to understand a foreign pronunciation is partly a proof of this. But take him at any time off his regular lines, present a new idea to him, and he can be as stupid as a Sussex farm labourer. It is the same with America. Just as the French language imposes wit on its user, so is every American, man or woman, fitted at birth with the mechanism of humour. Yet how few are humorous! But the cocher is not the only cabman of Paris: there remains the driver of the auto. The motor cab has not elbowed out the horse cab in Paris as it has in London, nor probably will it, for the Parisians are not in a hurry; but for Longchamp and such excursions the auto is indispensable, and the motor cabman becomes more and more a characteristic of the streets. Our London chauffeurs are sufficiently implacable, blunt and churlish, but the Parisian chauffeur is like fate. There is no escape if you enter his car: he lights his cigarette, sinks his back into his seat, and his shoulders into his back, and his head into his shoulders, and drives like the devil. He seems to have no life of his own at all: he exists merely to urge his car wherever he is told. The foreigner has no hold whatever upon the chauffeur; he arranges the meter to whatever tariff he pleases, and before you can examine the dial at the end of the journey he has jerked up the flag. When you keep him waiting his meter devours your substance. Always terrible, he is worst in winter, when he is dressed entirely in hearth-rugs. The old cocher for me. But it grows chilly and it is dinner time. Let us go. Yet first I would remind you that we chose the Café de la Paix for our reverie only because it is the centre, and we were intent upon the centre. But the pavement chairs of all the cafés of Paris are interesting, and it is equally good to sit in any populous bourgeois quarter where one can watch the daily indigenous life of this city, which the visitor who remains for the most part in the visitors' districts can so easily miss. The busy, capable girls and women shopping--their pretty uncovered heads all so neatly and deftly arranged, and their bags and baskets in their hands; the chair mender blowing his horn; the teams of white horses, six or eight in single file, with high collars and bells, drawing blocks of stone or barrels of wine; the tondeur de chiens, with his mournful pipe and box of scissors; the brisk errand boys; the neat little milliners with their band-boxes; now and then a slovenly soldier and a well-groomed erect agent. Paris as a spectacle is perpetually new and amusing. CHAPTER XVI THE GRANDS BOULEVARDS: II. THE OPERA TO THE PLACE DE LA RÉPUBLIQUE The Christmas Baraques--The Rue de la Chaussée d'Antin--The Rue Laffitte--La Musée Grévin--The Bibliothèque Nationale--The Roar of Finance--Tailors as Cartoonists--A Bee-hive Street--Cities within the City--Pompes Funèbres--The Church as Advertiser--The Great Marguery--Gates which are not Gates--The Life of St. Denis--Highways from Paris--The First Theatre--St. Martin's Act of Charity--The Arts et Métiers; a Modern Cluny--Statues of the Republic. From the Place de l'Opéra to the Place de la République is an interesting and instructive walk, but at no time of the day a very easy one; and between five o'clock and half-past six, and eight and ten, on the north pavement, it is always almost a struggle; but when the baraques are in full swing around Christmas and the New Year, it is a struggle in earnest, at any rate as far as the Rue Drouot. Indeed Christmas and New Year, but especially Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, are great times in France, and presents are exchanged as furiously as with us. On Christmas Eve--Réveillon as it is called--no one would do anything so banal as to go to bed. The restaurants obtain a special permission to remain open, and tables are reserved months in advance. Montmartre, never very sleepy, takes on a double share of wakefulness. The first street on our left, the Rue de la Chaussée d'Antin, is one of the busiest in Paris, with excellent shops and many interesting associations. Madame Récamier lived at No. 7, the site of the Hôtel d'Antin. So also did Madame Necker and Madame Roland, and for a while Edward Gibbon. Chopin lived at No. 5. This street, by the way, has suffered almost more than any other from the Parisian fickleness in nomenclature. It began as the Rue de la Chaussée Gaillon, then Rue de l'Hôtel Dieu, then Rue de la Chaussée d'Antin, from Richelieu's Hôtel d'Antin, then the Rue Mirabeau, from the revolutionary who lodged and died at No. 42, then, when Mirabeau's body was removed ignominiously from the Panthéon, the Rue Mont Blanc, and in 1815 it became once again the Rue de la Chaussée d'Antin. At the foot of the Rue Laffitte one should stop, because one gets there a glimpse of Montmartre's white and oriental cathedral, hanging in mid-air, high above Paris and the church of Notre Dame de Lorette. This street is, to me, one of the most entertaining in the city, for almost every other shop is a picture-dealer's, and to loaf along it, on either side, is practically to visit a gallery. Two or three of these shops keep as a continual sign the words "Bronzes de Barye". The Rue Laffitte was named after the banker Jacques Laffitte, whose bank was in the Rue de la Chaussée d'Antin. Cerutti, who delivered Mirabeau's funeral oration, set up his revolutionary journal _La Feuille Villageoise_ here. At the Hôtel Thelusson at the end of the street the Incroyables and the Merveilleuses assembled. Among the guests was General Buonaparte, and it was here that he first met Joséphine Beauharnais. The Musée Grévin, to which we soon come on the left, is the Parisian Tussaud's; and it is as much better than Tussaud's as one would expect it to be. Tussaud's is vast and brilliant; the Musée Grévin is small and mysterious. There is so little light that every one seems wax, and one has to look very narrowly and anxiously at all motionless figures. The particular boast of the Grévin is its groups: not so much the Pope and his pontifical cortège, the coulisses of the Opera (a scene of coryphées and men about town), and the Fête d'Artistes, as the admirable tableaux of the Revolution. To the untutored eye of one who, like myself, avoids waxworks, the Grévin figures and grouping are good and, what is perhaps more important, intelligent. Pains have been taken to make costumes and accessories historically accurate, and in many cases the actual articles have been employed, notably in the largest tableau of all--"Une Soirée à Malmaison"--which was arranged under the supervision of Frédéric Masson, the historian, an effigy of whom stands near by. Among these scenes the historical sense of the French child can be really quickened. There are also tableaux of Rome in the time of the early Christians--very clever and painful. [Illustration: MADAME LE BRUN ET SA FILLE MADAME LE BRUN _(Louvre)_] At the Rue Drouot, at the conjunction of the Boulevards des Italiens and de Montmartre, there is an angle. Hitherto we have been walking west by north; we now shall walk west by south. From this point we shall also observe a difference in the character of the street, which will become steadily more bourgeois. At this corner, where the traffic is always so congested, owing largely to the omnibuses with the three white horses abreast that cross to and from the Rue Richelieu, all the best cafés are behind us. If that £32,000,000 reconstruction scheme of which I have already spoken comes to pass, this point will be unrecognisable, for among the items in that programme is the uniting of the Boulevard Haussmann, which now comes to an abrupt end at the Rue Taitbout, with the Boulevard de Montmartre, which, as a glance at the map will show, is in a line with it. But my hope is that the improvement will be long deferred. It is in the Rue Richelieu that the Bibliothèque Nationale stands, where the foreign resident in Paris may read every day, precisely as at the British Museum, provided always that he is certified by his Consul to be worthy of a ticket, and the visitor may on certain days examine priceless books and autographs, prints and maps and cameos and wonderful antiquities. Here once lived Cardinal Mazarin, and it is in the galerie that bears his name that the rarest bindings are to be seen--some from Grolier's own shelves. Among the MSS. is that of Pascal's _Pensées_. The library, which is now perhaps the finest in existence, has been built up steadily by the kings of France, even from Charlemagne, but Louis XII. was the first of them who may really be called a bibliophile, to be worthily followed by François I. It was not until 1724, in the reign of Louis XV., that the royal collection was removed to this building. The Revolution greatly added to its wealth by transferring hither the libraries of the destroyed convents and monasteries. The treasures in the Cabinet de Médailles I cannot describe; all I can say is that they ought not to be missed. They may be called an extension of the Galerie d'Apollon in the Louvre. Before leaving the Bibliothèque I should add that in certain of its rooms, with an entrance in the Rue Vivienne, exhibitions are periodically held, and it is worth while to ascertain if one is in progress. In the spring of 1908 I saw there a most satisfying display of Rembrandt's etchings. It was in one of the old book-shops in the neighbourhood of the Bibliothèque that I received my first impression of the Paris Bourse. I was turning over little pocket editions of Voltaire's _Pucelle_ and naughty Crébillons and such ancient boudoir fare, when I began to be conscious of a sound as of a thousand boys' schools in deadly rivalry. On hurrying out to learn the cause I found Paris in its usual condition of self-containment and intent progress; no one showed any sign of inquisitiveness or excitement; but on the steps of the Bourse I observed a shouting, gesticulating mob of men who must, I thought, be planning a new Reign of Terror. But no; they were merely financiers engaged in the ordinary work of life. The Bourse is free, and I climbed the steps, pushed through the money-makers, and entered. Never again. I have seen men engaged in the unlovely task of acquiring lucre by more or less improper means in various countries, but I never saw anything so horrible as the rapacity expressed upon the faces of this heated Bourse populace. Capel Court is not indifferent to the advantages of a successful coup, but Capel Court differs from the Bourse not only in a comparative retention of its head, but also in a certain superficial appearance of careless aristocracy. Capel Court dresses well and keeps time for a practical joke now and then. The Bourse is shabby and in the grip of avarice. Wall Street and the Chicago pit, I am told, are worse: I have not seen them; but no race-course scramble for odds could exceed the horrors of that day in the Bourse. The home, by the way, of this daily vociferous service of Mammon, was built on the site of the old convent of the Filles de St. Thomas. During the Revolution the connection between the Bourse and Heaven was even closer, for the church of the Petits Pères was then set apart for Exchange purposes. Returning to the point where we left the Boulevard--at the Rue Richelieu--I am moved to ask what would happen in London if Messrs. Baker in the Tottenham Court Road or Messrs. Gardiner in Knightsbridge were suddenly to break out into caricature and embellish their windows with scarifying cartoons of Kings, Kaisers, Presidents and Premiers? The question may sound odd, but it is simple enough if you visit the High Life tailor at the corner of the Rue Richelieu, or, farther east, a similar establishment at the corner of the Rue de Rougemont, for it then becomes obvious that it is quite part of the duties of the large Parisian clothier to do his part in forming public opinion. These cartoons are always bold and clever, although often too municipal for the foreigner's apprehension. I have said somewhere that one of my favourite streets in Paris is the Rue Montorgeuil. That is largely, as I have explained, because it is old and narrow, and the people swarm in it, and the stalls are so many, and the houses are high and white and take the sun so bravely, and it smells of Paris; and also, of course, because the Compas d'Or is here, bringing the middle ages so nigh. Another favourite is the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre (which is now the next on the left eastward) for its busy happy shops and its moving multitudes. In its own narrow way it is almost as crowded as the Grands Boulevards. A little way up this street, on the right, is a gateway leading into a very curious backwater, as noticeably quiet as the highways are noisy and restless: the Cité Bergère, the largest of those cités within a cité of which Paris has several, to be compared in London only with St. Helen's Place in Bishopsgate or Park Row at Knightsbridge. The Cité Bergère is practically nothing but hotels--high and narrow, with dirty white walls and dirty green shutters--very cheap, and very incurious as to the occupations of their guests, whether male or female. It has a gate at each end which is closed at night and penetrated thereafter only at the goodwill of the concierge, whom it is well to placate. The Cité Bergère leads into the Cité Rougemont (hence offering an opportunity to an innkeeper between the two to hang out the imposing sign of the Hôtel des Deux Cités), and from the Cité Rougemont you gain that district of Paris where the woollen merchants congregate. Returning to the Grands Boulevards, the next street on the left is the Rue Rougemont, and if we take this we come in a few moments to the Conservatoire, where so many famous musicians have been taught, and where Coquelin and Sarah Bernhardt learned the art of elocution. There is a little museum at the Conservatoire in which every variety of musical instrument is preserved, together with a few personal relics, such as a cast of Paganini's nervous magical hand, with its long sharply pointed fingers, and the death-mask of Chopin. Close to the Conservatoire is the darkest church in Paris--Saint Eugène, a favourite spot for funeral services. I chanced once to stay in a room overlooking this church, until the smell of mortality became too constant. There was a funeral every day: every morning the undertakers' men were busy in the preparations for the ceremony--draping the façade with heavy curtains of a blackness that seemed to darken the circumambient air: every afternoon removing it, together with the other trappings of the ritual--the candlesticks and furniture. It is not without reason that the French undertaker ambushes beneath the imposing style of Pompes Funèbres. It was, by the way, on the walls of Saint Eugène, each side of the door, that I first saw any of those curious affiches, made, I suppose, necessary, or at any rate prudent, by recent events in France, directing notice to--advertising, I almost wrote, and indeed why not?--the advantages of religion. Religion (this is what the notice came to in essence), religion has its points after all. When President Fallières' daughter was married, it remarked, where was the ceremony performed? In a church. (Ha, Ha!) Who, it asked, is called to visit a man on his death-bed, no matter how wicked he has been? A priest. (Touché!) And so forth. Surely a strange document. In the same street is an old book-stall whose shelves are fastened to the wall, giving the appearance of an open-air library for all--the Carnegie idea at its best. There used to be one on the side of the Hôtel Chatham in the Rue Volney (opposite Henry's excellent American Bar) but it has now gone. We may regain the Boulevards by turning down the long Rue du Faubourg Poissonière, which leads direct, through the Rue Montorgeuil, to the Halles and the Pont Neuf--a very good walk. Passing Marguery's great restaurant on the left, famous for its filet de sole in a special sauce, which every one should eat once if only to see the great Marguery on his triumphant progress through the rooms, bending his white mane over honoured guests, we come to a strange thing--a massive archway in the road, parallel with the pavements, which I think needs a little explanation. It will take us far from the Grands Boulevards: as far, in fact, as _The Golden Legend_; for the arch is the Porte St. Denis, and St. Denis is the patron saint of Paris. [Illustration: LE PONT DE MANTES COROT _(Louvre: Moreau Collection)_] St. Denis was not a Frenchman but an Athenian, who was converted by St. Paul in person, after considerable discussion. Indeed, discussion was not enough: it needed a miracle to win him wholly. "And as," wrote Caxton, "S. Denis disputed yet with S. Paul, there passed by adventure by that way a blind man tofore them, and anon Denis said to Paul: If thou say to this blind man in the name of thy God: See, and then he seeth, I shall anon believe in him, but thou shalt use no words of enchantment, for thou mayst haply know some words that have such might and virtue. And S. Paul said: I shall write tofore the form of the words, which be these: In the name of Jesu Christ, born of the virgin, crucified and dead, which arose again and ascended into heaven, and from thence shall come for to judge the world: See. And because that all suspicion be taken away, Paul said to Denis that he himself should pronounce the words. And when Denis had said those words in the same manner to the blind man, anon the blind man recovered his sight. And then Denis was baptized and Damaris his wife and all his meiny, and was a true Christian man and was instructed and taught by S. Paul three years, and was ordained bishop of Athens, and there was in predication, and converted that city, and great part of the region, to christian faith." Denis was sent to France by Pope Clement, and he converted many Parisians and built many churches, until the hostile strategy of the Emperor Domitian prevailed and he was tortured, the scene of the tragedy being Montmartre. "The day following," says Caxton, "Denis was laid upon a gridiron, and stretched all naked upon the coals of fire, and there he sang to our Lord saying: Lord thy word is vehemently fiery, and thy servant is embraced in the love thereof. And after that he was put among cruel beasts, which were excited by great hunger and famine by long fasting, and as soon as they came running upon him he made the sign of the cross against them, and anon they were made most meek and tame. And after that he was cast into a furnace of fire, and the fire anon quenched, and he had neither pain ne harm. And after that he was put on the cross, and thereon he was long tormented, and after, he was taken down and put into a dark prison with his fellows and many other Christian men. "And as he sang there the mass and communed the people, our Lord appeared to him with great light, and delivered to him bread, saying: Take this, my dear friend, for thy reward is most great with me. After this they were presented to the judge and were put again to new torments, and then he did do smite off the heads of the three fellows, that is to say, Denis, Rusticus, and Eleutherius, in confessing the name of the holy Trinity. And this was done by the temple of Mercury, and they were beheaded with three axes. And anon the body of S. Denis raised himself up, and bare his head between his arms, as the angel led him two leagues from the place, which is said the hill of the martyrs, unto the place where he now resteth, by his election, and by the purveyance of God. And there was heard so great and sweet a melody of angels that many of them that heard it believed in our Lord." Any one making the pilgrimage from, say, Notre Dame to the town of St. Denis to-day, can follow the saint's footsteps, for the Rue St. Denis at the foot of Montmartre leads out into the Rue du Faubourg St. Denis, and that street right over Montmartre, Caxton's hill of the martyrs, to St. Denis itself. I do not pretend that the legend as it is thus given has not been subjected to severe criticism; but when one has no certain knowledge, the best story can be considered the best evidence, and I like Caxton better than the others, even though it conflicts a little with the legend of St. Geneviève. It is she, I might add, who is credited with having inaugurated the pilgrimage to St. Denis's bones. The Rue St. Denis was more than the road to the saint's remains: it was the great north road out of Paris to the sea. Just as the old Londoners bound for the north left by the City Road and passed through the village of Highgate, so did the French traveller leave by the Rue St. Denis and pass through the village of St. Denis. Similarly the Rue St. Martin was the high-road to Germany. In the old days, when this street was a highway, the Porte St. Denis had some meaning, for it stood as a gateway between the city and the country; but to-day, when the course of traffic is east and west, it stands (like the Porte St. Martin) merely as an obstruction in the Grand Boulevard--not quite so foolish as our own revised Marble Arch, but nearly so. The Porte St. Denis dates from 1673 and celebrates, as the bas-reliefs indicate, the triumphs of Louis XIV. in Germany and Holland; the Porte St. Martin (to which we are just coming) belongs to the same period and commemorates other successes of the same monarch. The Rue St. Denis is one of the most entertaining of the old streets of Paris, although adulterated a little by omnibuses and a sense of commerce. But to have boundless time before one, and no cares, and no fatigue, and starting at the Porte St. Denis to loiter along it prepared to penetrate every inviting court and alluring by-street--that is a great luxury. The first theatre in Paris, and indeed in France, was in the Hospital of the Trinity in the Rue St. Denis. That was early in the fifteenth century, and it was designed for the performance of Mystery plays in which the protagonist was, of course, Jesus Christ. Paris has now many theatres, with other ideals; but whatever their programmes may be, they proceed from that early and pious spring. We come next to the Boulevard de Strasbourg, running north to the Gare de l'Est, and the Boulevard de Sébastopol, running south to the Ile de la Cité; and then to the second archway, the Porte St. Martin. St. Martin (who was Bishop of Tours) lived in Paris for a while, and it was here that he performed the miracle of healing a leper by embracing him--an act commemorated by Henri I. in the founding of the Priory of St. Martin, which stood a little way down the Rue St. Martin on the left, on a site on which the Musée des Arts et Métiers now stands. But it was at Amiens that the saint's most beautiful act--the gift of his cloak to a beggar--was performed, and perhaps I may be allowed to quote here, from another book of mine, the translation of a poem by M. Haraucourt, the curator of the Cluny museum, celebrating that deed:-- CHARITY Because so bitter was the rain, Saint Martin cut his cloak in twain, And gave the beggar half of it To cover him and ease his pain. But being now himself ill clad, The Saint's own case was no less sad. So piteously cold the night; Though glad at heart he was, right glad. Thus, singing, on his way he passed, While Satan, grim and overcast, Vowing the Saint should rue his deed, Released the cruel Northern blast. Away it sprang with shriek and roar, And buffeted the Saint full sore, Yet never wished he for his cloak; So Satan bade the deluge pour. Huge hail-stones joined in the attack, And dealt Saint Martin many a thwack, "My poor old head!" he smiling said, Yet never wished his cape were back. "He must, he shall," cried Satan, "know Regret for such an act," and lo, E'en as he spoke the world was dark With fog and frost and whirling snow. Saint Martin, struggling toward his goal, Mused thoughtfully, "Poor soul! poor soul! What use to him was half a cloak? I should have given him the whole." The cold grew terrible to bear, The birds fell frozen in the air: "Fall thou," said Satan, "on the ice Fall thou asleep, and perish there." He fell, and slept, despite the storm, And dreamed he saw the Christ Child's form Wrapped in the half the beggar took, And seeing Him, was warm, so warm. The Arts et Métiers is a museum devoted to the progress of mechanics and the useful crafts: a kind of industrial exhibition, a modern utilitarian Cluny. It is a memorial of the world's ingenuity and the ingenuity of France in particular, and one cannot have a much better reminder that the frivolity of the Grands Boulevards is not all. Apropos, however, of the frivolity of the Grands Boulevards, I may say that the case that was attracting most interest on the Sunday that I was here contained a collection of all the best mechanical toys of the past dozen years, with their dates affixed. The only article in the vast building which seemed to serve no useful purpose was a mirror cracked during the Commune by a bullet, with the bullet still in it. In the square opposite the Musée is the statue of Béranger, who for many years made the ballads of the French nation. [Illustration: THE PORTE ST. DENIS (SOUTH FAÇADE)] Returning to the Grands Boulevards once more, we pass first the Porte St. Martin theatre, where the great Coquelin played Cyrano, and where he was rehearsing _Chantecler_ when he died, and then the Ambigu, home of sensational melodrama, and come very shortly to the Place de la République, with its great central monument. The Republic thus celebrated is not merely the Third and present Republic, but all the efforts in that direction which the French have made, as the twelve reliefs round the base will show, for they begin with the scene in the Jeu de Paume in 1789, and end with the National Fête on July 14th, 1880. Paris would still have statues of the République if this were to go, for there is one by Dalou, the sculptor of these bas-reliefs, in the Place de la Nation, and another by Soitoux at the Institut. Dalou (whose work we saw in such profusion at the Little Palace in the Champs-Elysées) made a very spirited and characteristic group, with the Republic standing high on a chariot being drawn by lions and urged forward by an ouvrier and an ouvrière. There is another and hardly less direct walk eastward to the Place de la République, which, taken slowly and amusedly, instructs one as fully in the manners of the busy small Parisian as the Boulevards in those of the flâneur. This route is by the Rue de Provence, the Rue Richer, the Rue des Petites-Ecuries and the Rue Château d'Eau--practically a straight line, and in the old days a highway. You see the small Parisian at his busiest--at her busiest--this way. CHAPTER XVII MONTMARTRE Steep Streets--The Musée Moreau--The Sacré-Coeur--Françoise-Marguerite--Paris and Her Beggars--A Ferocious Cripple--The Communard Insurrection--The Maison Dufayel--Heinrich Heine--The Cimetière de Montmartre--The Boulevard de Clichy--Cabarets Good and Bad--An Aged Statesman is Entertained--Three Bals--Paris and Late Hours--The Night Cafés--The Tireless Dancers--A Coat-tail--The Dead Maître d'Hôtel. One may gain Montmartre by every street that runs off the Grands Boulevards on the left, between the Opéra and the Place de la République; but when the night falls and the tide begins to turn that way, it is the Rue Blanche and the Rue Pigalle that do most of the work. All are very steep. To the wayfarer climbing the hill in no hurry, I recommend for its interest the Rue des Martyrs (Balzac once lived at No. 47), leading out of the Rue Laffitte; or, starting from the Boulevards at a more easterly point, one may gain it by the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre, which runs into the Rue des Martyrs at Notre Dame de Lorette and is full of activity and variety. By taking the Rue de la Rochefoucauld one may spend a few minutes in a little white building there which was once the home and studio of the painter Gustave Moreau and is now left to the nation as a permanent memorial of his labours. In industry the man must have approached Rubens and Rembrandt, for this, though a large house, is literally filled with paintings and drawings and studies, which not only cover the walls but cover screens built into the walls, and screens within screens, and screens within those. The menuisier and Moreau together have contrived to make No. 14 Rue de la Rochefoucauld the most tiring house in Paris--at least to me, who do not admire the work of this painter, or at any rate do not want to see more of it than is in the Luxembourg, where may be seen several of his pictures, including the most famous of all, the Salome. Herr Baedeker considers that Moreau's works have a charm of their own, but I do not find it. I find a striving after the grandiose and startling, with only occasional lapses into sincerity and good colour. It is better than Wiertz, no doubt; but less entertaining, because less shocking. Montmartre's life may for our purpose be divided into three distinct periods: day, evening, and the small hours. By day one may roam its streets of living and of dead and study Paris from its summit; in the evening its cabarets are in full swing; and then comes midnight when its supper cafés open, not to close or cease their melodies until the shops are doing business again. Montmartre (so called because it was here that St. Denis and his associates were put to death) really is a mountain, as any one who has climbed to the Sacré-Coeur can tell. The last two hundred yards are indeed nearly as steep as the Brecon Beacons; but the climb is worth it if only for the view of Paris. (There is, however, a funicular railway.) As for the cathedral, that seems to me to be better seen and appreciated from the distance: from the train as one enters Paris in the late afternoon, with the level sun lighting its pure walls; from the heights on the south side of the river; from the Boulevard des Italiens up the Rue Laffitte; and from the Buttes-Chaumont, as in Mr. Dexter's exquisite drawing. For the cathedral itself is not particularly attractive near at hand, and within it is cold and dull and still awaiting its glass. It was, however, one of the happiest thoughts that has come to Rome in our time to set this fascinating bizarre Oriental building here. It gave Paris a new note that it will now never lose. Before leaving, one ought perhaps to have a peep at Françoise-Marguerite, for one is not likely to see her equal again. Françoise-Marguerite, otherwise known as La Savoyarde de Montmartre, is the great bell given to the cathedral by the province of Savoy. She weighs nineteen tons, is nine feet tall, and her voice has remarkable timbre. Behind the new cathedral lies the old church of St. Pierre-de-Montmartre, on the side of which, it is said, once stood a temple of Mars. (Hence, for some lexicographers, Mont-Mars and Montmartre; but I prefer to think of St. Denis wandering here without his head.) It was in the crypt of this church, I have somewhere read, that Ignatius Loyola, with Xavier and Laine, founded the order of Jesuits. I attended early mass at the Sacré-Coeur church on January 1st, 1908. It was snowing lightly and very cold, and as I came away, at about eight, and descended the hill towards Paris, I was struck by the spectacle of the lame and blind and miserable men and women who were appearing mysteriously from nowhere to descend the hill too, groping and hobbling down the slippery steepnesses. Such folk are an uncommon sight in Paris, where every one seems to be, if not robust, at any rate active and capable, and where, although it eminently belongs to the poor as much as to the rich, extreme poverty is rarely seen. In London, where the poor convey no possessive impression, but, except in their own quarters, suggest that they are here on sufferance, one sees much distress. In Paris none, except on this day, the first of the year--and on one or two others, such as July 14th--when beggars are allowed to ask alms in the streets. For the rest of the year they must hide their misery and their want, although I still tremble a little as I remember the importunities of the Montmartre cripple of ferocious aspect and no legs at all, fixed into a packing-case on wheels, who, having demanded alms in vain, hurls himself night after night along the pavement after the hard-hearted, urging his torso's chariot by powerful strokes of his huge hands on the pavement, as though he rowed against Leander, with such menacing fury that I for one have literally taken to my heels. He is the only beggar I recollect meeting except on the permitted days, and then Paris swarms with them. Standing on the dome of the cathedral one has the city at one's feet, not as wonderfully as on the Eiffel Tower, but nearly so. From the Buttes-Chaumont we see Montmartre: here we see the Buttes-Chaumont, which, before it was a park, shared with Montmartre the gypsum quarries from which plaster of Paris is made. Beyond the Buttes-Chaumont is Père Lachaise, a hill strangely mottled by its grave-stones, while immediately below us is the Cimetière du Nord, which we are about to visit for the sake of certain very interesting tombs. One realises quickly the strategical value of this mountain. Paris has indeed been bombarded from it twice--by Henri IV., and again, only thirty-eight years ago. It was indeed on Montmartre that the Communard insurrection began, for it was the cannon on these heights that the rebel soldiers at once made for after the assassination of their officers. They held them for a while, but were then overpowered and forced to take up their quarters in the Buttes-Chaumont and Père Lachaise, which were shelled by the National Guard from Montmartre until the brief but terrible mutiny was over. The great dome, close by us on the left, which might be another Panthéon, crowns the Maison Dufayel. Who is Dufayel? you ask. Well, who is Wanamaker, who was Whiteley? M. Dufayel is the head of the gigantic business in the Boulevard Barbès, a northern continuation of the Boulevard de Magenta. His advertisements are on every hoarding. I think the Maison Dufayel is well worth a visit, especially as there is no need to buy anything: you may instead sip an apéritif, listen to the band or watch the cinematoscope. One also need have none of that fear of what would happen were there to be a sudden panic which always keeps me nervous if ever I am lured into the Magasins du Louvre or the Galeries Lafayette; for at Dufayel's there is space, whereas at those vast shopping centres there is a congestion that, in a time of stress would lead to perfectly awful results. The Maison Dufayel is not so varied a repository as Wanamaker's or Whiteley's: but in its way it is hardly less remarkable. Its principal line is furniture, and I never saw so many beds in my life. It was M. Dufayel who brought to perfection the deposit system of payment, and his agents continually range the otherwise pleasant land of France, collecting instalments. Since I had wandered into this monstrous establishment, which may not be as large as Harrod's Stores but feels infinitely vaster, I determined to buy something, and decided at last upon a French picture-book for an English child. Buying it was a simple operation, but I then made the mistake of asking that it might be sent to England direct. One should never do that in a bureaucratic country. The lady led me for what seemed several miles through various departments until we came late in the day to rows and rows of Frenchmen and Frenchwomen each in a little glass box. These boxes were numbered and ran to hundreds. We stopped at last before, say, 157, where my guide left me. The Frenchman in the box denied at once that the book could go by post. It was too large. It must go by rail. For myself, I did not then care how it went or if it went at all: I was tired out. But feeling that such an act as to abandon the parcel and run would be misconstrued and resented in a home of such perfect mechanical order, I waited until he had written for a quarter of an hour in a fine flowing hand with a pen sharper than a serpent's tooth, and then I paid the required number of francs and set out on the desperate errand of finding the street again. The book was a week on its journey. Go to Dufayel's, I say, most certainly, for it is quite amusing; but go when you are young and strong. To me the most interesting thing on Montmartre is the grave of Heinrich Heine in the Cimetière du Nord, a strange irregular city of dead Parisians all tidily laid away in their homes in its many streets, over which a busy rumbling thoroughfare has been carried on a viaduct. I had Heine's _Salon_ with me when I was last in Paris, and I sought his grave again one afternoon with an increased sense of intimacy. A medallion portrait of the mournful face is cut in the marble, and on the grave itself are wistful echoes of the _Buch der Lieder_. A little tin receptacle is fixed to the stone, and I looked at the cards which in the pretty German way visitors had left upon the poet and his wife; for Frau Heine lies too here. All were German and all rain-soaked (or was it tears?) [Illustration: LA PROVENDE DES POULES TROYON _(Louvre: Thomy-Thierret Collection)_] Matthew Arnold in his poem called Heine's grave black: the present one is white. How do the lines run? "_Henri Heine_"----'tis here! That black tombstone, the name Carved there--no more! and the smooth, Swarded alleys, the limes Touch'd with yellow by hot Summer, but under them still, In September's bright afternoon, Shadow, and verdure, and cool. Trim Montmartre! the faint Murmur of Paris outside; Crisp everlasting-flowers, Yellow and black, on the graves. Half blind, palsied, in pain, Hither to come, from the streets' Uproar, surely not loath Wast thou, Heine!--to lie Quiet, to ask for closed Shutters, and darken'd room, And cool drinks, and an eased Posture, and opium, no more; Hither to come, and to sleep Under the wings of Renown. Ah! not little, when pain Is most quelling, and man Easily quell'd, and the fine Temper of genius so soon Thrills at each smart, is the praise, Not to have yielded to pain No small boast, for a weak Son of mankind, to the earth Pinn'd by the thunder, to rear His bolt-scathed front to the stars; And, undaunted, retort 'Gainst thick-crashing, insane, Tyrannous tempests of bale, Arrowy lightnings of soul * * * * * Ah! as of old, from the pomp Of Italian Milan, the fair Flower of marble of white Southern palaces--steps Border'd by statues, and walks Terraced, and orange-bowers Heavy with fragrance--the blond German Kaiser full oft Long'd himself back to the fields, Rivers, and high-roof'd towns Of his native Germany; so, So, how often! from hot Paris drawing-rooms, and lamps Blazing, and brilliant crowds, Starr'd and jewell'd, of men Famous, of women the queens Of dazzling converse--from fumes Of praise, hot, heady fumes, to the poor brain That mount, that madden--how oft Heine's spirit outworn Long'd itself out of the din, Back to the tranquil, the cool Far German home of his youth See! in the May-afternoon, O'er the fresh, short turf of the Hartz, A youth, with the foot of youth, Heine! thou climbest again. * * * * * But something prompts me: Not thus Take leave of Heine! not thus Speak the last word at his grave! Not in pity, and not With half censure--with awe Hail, as it passes from earth Scattering lightnings, that soul! The Spirit of the world, Beholding the absurdity of men-- Their vaunts, their feats--let a sardonic smile, For one short moment wander o'er his lips. _That smile was Heine!_--for its earthly hour The strange guest sparkled; now 'tis passed away. That was Heine! and we, Myriads who live, who have lived, What are we all, but a mood, A single mood, of the life Of the Spirit in whom we exist, Who alone is all things in one? Spirit, who fillest us all! Spirit, who utterest in each New-coming son of mankind Such of thy thoughts as thou wilt! O thou, one of whose moods, Bitter and strange, was the life Of Heine--his strange, alas, His bitter life!--may a life Other and milder be mine! May'st thou a mood more serene, Happier, have utter'd in mine! May'st thou the rapture of peace Deep have embreathed at its core; Made it a ray of thy thought, Made it a beat of thy joy! Heine has many illustrious companions. If you would stand by the grave of Berlioz and Ambroise Thomas, of Offenbach, who set all Europe humming, of Delibes the composer of Genée's "Coppélia," of the brothers Goncourt, of Renan, who wrote the _Life of Christ_, or of Henri Murger, who discovered Bohemia, of De Neuville, painter of battles, of Halévy and Meilhac the playwrights, or of Théophile Gautier the poet, you must seek the Cimetière du Nord. Montmartre in the evening centres in the Boulevard de Clichy--a high-spirited thoroughfare. Many foreigners visit it only then, and the Boulevard spreads its wares accordingly, and very tawdry some of them are. Here, for example, is a garish façade labelled "Ciel," in which a number of grubby blackguards dressed as saints and angels first bring refreshments at a franc a glass, and then offer the visitor a "prêche humoristique" followed by variations of Pepper's ghost in what are called "scènes paradisiaques," the whole performance being cold, tawdry and very stupid. Next door is "Enfer," where similar delights are offered, save that here the suggestion is not of heaven but hell. Instead therefore of grubby blackguards as saints we have grubby blackguards as devils. On the opposite side of the road is the Cabaret du Néant, where you are received with a mass for the dead sung by the staff, and sit at tables made of coffins. It is hardly necessary to say that very few Parisians enter these places. The singing cabarets, however, are different: they are genuine, and one needs to be not only a Parisian but a very well-informed Parisian to appreciate them, for the songs are palpitatingly topical and political. The Quatz'-Arts, the Lune-Rousse and the Chat-Noir (once so famous, but now lacking in the genius either of Salis, its founder, or of Caran d'Ache, Steinlen or Willette, who helped to make it renowned) are all in the Boulevard de Clichy. So also is Aristide Bruant's cabaret, where an organised shout of welcome awaits every visitor, and Aristide--in costume a cross between a poet and a cowboy--sings his realistic ballads of Parisian street life. Here also is the Moulin-Rouge, which in the old days of the elephant was in its spurious way amusing, but is now rebuilt and redecorated out of knowledge, and for all the words you hear might be on Broadway. Here also, at the extreme western end of the Boulevard, is the Hippodrome, now a hippodrome only in name and given up to the popular cinematoscope. I regret the loss of the real Paris Hippodrome. Paris still has her permanent circuses, but the Hippodrome is gone. It was there that, one night, in 1889, I chanced to sit very near the royal box, into which, with much bowing and scraping of managers, a white-haired old gentleman with the features of a lion and an eagle harmoniously blended was ushered. He was only seventy-nine, this old gentleman, and he was in the thick of such duties as fall to the Leader of the Opposition and promoter of Home Rule for Ireland; but he followed every step of the performance like a schoolboy, and now and then he sent for an official to have something explained to him, such as, on one occasion, the workings of the artificial snow-storm which overwhelmed Skobeleff's army. That ill-fated Russian general was the hero of the spectacle, a remarkable one in its way; but to me the restless animation and whole-hearted enjoyment of Mr. Gladstone was the finer entertainment. Montmartre has also three dancing halls, two of which are genuine and one a show-place. The genuine halls are the Moulin-de-la-Galette, high on the hill on the steepest part of it above the Moulin-Rouge, and the Elysée in the Boulevard de Rochechouart, which are open only two or three times a week and which are thronged by the shop-assistants and young people of the neighbourhood. The spurious hall is the Bal Tabarin, which is open every evening and is a spectacle. It is, however, by no means unamusing, and I have spent many pleasant idle hours there. Willette's famous fresco of the apotheosis of the Parisian leg decorates a wall-space over the bar with peculiar fitness. At all the bals the men who dance retain their hats and often their overcoats, and for the most part leave their partners with amazing abruptness at the last step. Some of the measures are conspicuous for a lack of restraint that would decimate an English ballroom; but one must not take such displays "at the foot of the letter": they do not mean among these Latin romps and frolics what they would mean with us, whose emotions are less facile and sense of fun less physical. And so we come to midnight, when Montmartre enters its third, and, to a Londoner exasperated by the grandmotherly legislation of his own city, its most entertaining phase. The idea that Paris is a late city is an illusion. Paris is not a late city: it is a city with a few late streets. Paris as a whole goes to bed as early as London, if not earlier, as a walk in the residential quarters will prove. Montmartre is late, and the Boulevards des Capucines and des Italiens are late, although less so; and that is about all. When it is remembered that Paris rises and opens its shops some hours earlier than London, and that the Parisians value their health, it will be recognised that Paris could not be a late city. One must remember also that the number of all-night cafés is very small, so small that by frequenting them with any diligence one may soon come to know by sight most of the late fringe of this city, both amateurs and professionals. One is indeed quickly struck by their numerical weakness. There is a fashion in night cafés as in hats; change is made as suddenly and as inexplicably. One month every one is crowding into, let us say, the Chat Vivant, and the next the Chat Vivant kindles its lamps and tweaks its mandolins in vain: all the world passes its doors on the way to the Nid de Nuit. What is the reason? No one knows exactly; but we must probably once again seek the woman. A new dancer (or shall I say attachée?) has appeared, or an old dancer or attachée transferred her allegiance. And so for a while the Nid has not a free table after one o'clock, and on a special night--such as Mi-Carême, or Réveillon, or New Year's Eve--it is the head-waiter and the door-keeper of the Nid into whose hands are pressed the gold coins and bank notes to influence them to admit the bloods and their parties and find them a table. A year ago the douceur (often fruitless) would have gone to the officials of the Chat Vivant. They remain, when all has been said against them, simple and well-mannered places, these half-dozen famous cafés on which the sun always rises. To think so one must perhaps graduate on the Boulevards, but once they are accepted they can become an agreeable habit. Sleepiness is as unknown there as the writings of Thomas à Kempis. Not only the dancers de la maison but the visitors too are tireless. There may be ways of getting ennui into a Parisian girl, but certainly it is not by dancing. Nor does the band tire either, one excellent rule at all of them being that there should be no pause whatever between the tunes, from the hour of opening until day. [Illustration: THE WINDMILL R. P. BONINGTON (_Louvre_)] There lies before me as I write an amusing memorial of the innocent high spirits that can prevail on such a special all-night sitting as Réveillon: one of the tails of a dress coat, lined with white satin on which a skilful hand has traced with a fountain pen (my own) two very intimate scenes of French life. These drawings were made between five and six in the morning in the intervals of the dance, the artist, lacking paper, having without a word taken a table knife and shorn off his coat-tails for the purpose. His coat, I may say, was already being worn inside out, with one of the leather buckles of his braces as a button-hole. A tall burly man, with a long red Boulevard beard, he had thrown out signs of friendliness to me at once, and we became as brothers. He drew my portrait on the table-cloth; I affected to draw his. He showed me where I was wrong and drew it right. He then left me, in order to walk for a while on an imaginary tight-rope across the floor, and having safely made the journey and turned again, with infinite skill in his recoveries from falling and the most dexterous managing of a balancing-pole that did not exist, he leaped lightly to earth again, kissed his hand to the company, and again sat by me and resumed his work; finally, after other diversions, completing the chef d'oeuvre that is now lying on my desk and lending abandon to what is otherwise a stronghold of British decorum. We parted at seven. I have never seen him since, but I find his name often in the French comic papers illustrating yet other phases of their favourite pleasantry for the entertainment of this simple and tireless people. Another incident I recall that is equally characteristic of Montmartre. "Ça ne fait rien," said a head-waiter when we had expressed regret on hearing of the death of the maître d'hotel, for whom (an old acquaintance) we had been asking. "Ça ne fait rien: it is necessary to order supper just the same." True. True indeed everywhere, but particularly true on Montmartre. CHAPTER XVIII THE ELYSÉE TO THE HÔTEL DE VILLE The Most Interesting Streets--Pet Aversions--The Rue de la Paix--The Vendôme Column--A Populous Church--The Whiff of Grapeshot--Alfred de Musset--The Molière Quarter--A Green and White Oasis--Camille Desmoulins at the Café de Foy--Charles Lamb in Paris--The Cloître de St. Honoré--The Massacre of St. Bartholomew--St. Germain of Auxerre--A Satisfied Corpse--Catherine de Médicis' Observatory--St. Eustache--A Wonderful Organ-The Halles--French Economy and English Want of It--The Goat-herd--The Assassination of Henri IV.--The Tour St. Jacques-Pascal, Theologian and Inventor of Omnibuses--A Sinister Spot--The Paris Town-hall--A Riot of Frescoes--Etienne Marcel--The Hôtel de Ville and Politesse--An Ancient Palace--Old Streets--Madame de Beauvais' Mansion--A Quiet Courtyard--The Church of St. Paul and St. Louis--Rabelais' Grave. The Elysée, the official home of the French president--Paris's White House and Buckingham Palace--is situated in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, which is one of the most entertaining streets in the whole city in which to loiter; that is, if you like, as I do, the windows of curiosity dealers and jewellers and print shops. Not that bargains are to be obtained here: far from it: it is not like the Rue des Saints Pères or the Rue Mazarine across the river; but merely as a series of windows it is fascinating. I like it as much as I dislike the Rue Lafayette, which has always been my aversion, not only because it is interminable and commercial and noisy, but because it leads back to England and work; yet since, however, when one arrives in Paris it leads from England and work, I must be a little lenient, and there is also a café in it where the diamond merchants compare gems quite openly. Remembering these extenuating circumstances I unhesitatingly award the palm for undesirability in a Paris street to the Rue du Quatre-Septembre and the Rue Réaumur, which are sheer Shaftesbury Avenue, and, as in Shaftesbury Avenue, cause one to regret the older streets and houses whose place they have usurped. The Rue de Rivoli I dislike too: that strange mixture of very good hotels (the Meurice, for instance, is here) and rubbishy shops full of tawdry jewellery to catch the excursionist. How it happened that such a site should have been allowed to fall into such hands is a mystery. An additional objection to the Rue de Rivoli is that the one English acquaintance whom one least wishes to meet is always there. The Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré becomes the Rue Saint-Honoré at the Rue Royale. The Rue Saint-Honoré is also a good street for shop windows, but not the equal of its more aristocratic half; just as that is surpassed here by the Rue de la Paix, to which we now come on the left, and which contains more things that I can do without, made to perfection, than any street I ever saw. At its foot is the Place Vendôme, with the beautiful column in the midst on which Napoleon's campaign of 1805 is illustrated in a bronze spiral that constitutes at once, I suppose, the most durable and the longest picture in the world. The bronze came very properly from the melted Russian and Austrian cannons. Napoleon stands at the top, imperially splendid; but as we saw in the chapter on the "Ile de la Cité," it was not always so: for his first statue was removed by Louis XVIII. to be used for the new Henri IV. In its stead a fleur-de-lys surmounted the column. Then came Louis-Philippe, who erected a new statue of the Emperor, not, however, imperially clad; and then Napoleon III., who substituted the present figure. But in 1870 the Communards succeeded in bringing the column down, and it has only been vertical again since 1875. Thus it is to be a Paris monument! Returning to the Rue Saint-Honoré, in which, by the way, are several old and interesting houses, such as No. 271, the Cabaret du Saint-Esprit, a great resort in the Reign of Terror of spectators wishing to see the tumbrils pass, and No. 398, where Robespierre lodged, we come to St. Roch's church, on the left, interesting both in itself and in history. It has been called the noisiest church in Paris, and certainly it is difficult to find a time when feet are silent there. The attraction is St. Roch's wealth of shrines, of a rather theatrical character, such as the wise poor love: an entombment, a calvary and a nativity, all very effective if not beautiful. Beauty does not matter, for on Good Friday the entombment holds thousands silent before it. The church, which is in the baroque style that it is so easy to dislike, is too florid throughout. Among the many monuments are memorials of Corneille and Diderot, both of whom are buried here. The music of St. Roch is, I am told, second only to that of the Madeleine. So much for St. Roch within. Historically it chances to be of immense importance, for it was here, and in the streets around and about the church, that the whiff of grapeshot blew which dispersed the French Revolution into the air. That was on October 5th, 1795, and it was not only the death of the Revolution but it was the birth of the conquering Buonaparte. Carlyle is superb: "Some call for Barras to be made Commandant; he conquered in Thermidor. Some, what is more to the purpose, bethink them of the Citizen Buonaparte, unemployed Artillery-Officer, who took Toulon. A man of head, a man of action: Barras is named Commandant's-Cloak; this young Artillery-Officer is named Commandant. He was in the Gallery at the moment, and heard it; he withdrew, some half-hour, to consider with himself: after a half-hour of grim compressed considering, to be or not to be, he answers _Yea_. "And now, a man of head being at the centre of it, the whole matter gets vital. Swift, to Camp of Sablons; to secure the Artillery, there are not twenty men guarding it! A swift Adjutant, Murat is the name of him, gallops; gets thither some minutes within time, for Lepelletier was also on march that way: the Cannon are ours. And now beset this post, and beset that; rapid and firm: at Wicket of the Louvre, in Cul-de-sac Dauphin, in Rue Saint-Honoré, from Pont-Neuf all along the north Quays, southward to Pont _ci-devant_ Royal,--rank round the Sanctuary of the Tuileries, a ring of steel discipline; let every gunner have his match burning, and all men stand to their arms! "Lepelletier has seized the Church of Saint-Roch; has seized the Pont-Neuf, our piquet there retreating without fire. Stray shots fall from Lepelletier; rattle down on the very Tuileries Staircase. On the other hand, women advance dishevelled, shrieking, Peace; Lepelletier behind them waving his hat in sign that we shall fraternise. Steady! The Artillery-Officer is steady as bronze; can, if need were, be quick as lightning. He sends eight-hundred muskets with ball-cartridges to the Convention itself; honourable Members shall act with these in case of extremity: whereat they look grave enough. Four of the afternoon is struck. Lepelletier, making nothing by messengers, by fraternity or hat-waving, bursts out, along the Southern Quai Voltaire, along streets and passages, treble-quick, in huge veritable onslaught! Whereupon, thou bronze Artillery-Officer--? 'Fire!' say the bronze lips. And roar and thunder, roar and again roar, continual, volcano-like, goes his great gun, in the Cul-de-sac Dauphin against the Church of Saint-Roch; go his great guns on the Pont-Royal; go all his great guns;--blow to air some two-hundred men, mainly about the Church of Saint-Roch! Lepelletier cannot stand such horse-play; no Sectioner can stand it; the Forty-thousand yield on all sides, scour towards covert. 'Some hundred or so of them gathered about the Théâtre de la République; but,' says he, 'a few shells dislodged them. It was all finished at six.' [Illustration: THE SACRÉ-COEUR DE MONTMARTRE, FROM THE BUTTES-CHAUMONT] "The Ship is _over_ the bar, then; free she bounds shoreward,--amid shouting and vivats! Citoyen Buonaparte is 'named General of the Interior, by acclamation'; quelled Sections have to disarm in such humour as they may; sacred right of Insurrection is gone forever! The Sieyes Constitution can disembark itself, and begin marching. The miraculous Convention Ship has got to land;--and is there, shall we figuratively say, changed, as Epic Ships are wont, into a kind of _Sea Nymph_, never to sail more; to roam the waste Azure, a Miracle in History! "'It is false,' says Napoleon, 'that we fired first with blank charge; it had been a waste of life to do that.' Most false: the firing was with sharp and sharpest shot: to all men it was plain that here was no sport; the rabbets and plinths of Saint-Roch Church show splintered by it to this hour.--Singular: in old Broglie's time, six years ago, this Whiff of Grapeshot was promised; but it could not be given then; could not have profited then. Now, however, the time is come for it, and the man; and behold, you have it; and the thing we specifically call _French Revolution_ is blown into space by it, and become a thing that was!--" Crossing the Place du Théâtre-Français we come to that historic home of the best French drama, where Molière is still played frequently, and one has some respite from the theme of facile promiscuity which dominates most of the other theatres of Paris. A new statue of Alfred de Musset has lately been set up under the Comédie Française. I copy from a writer very unlike him a passage of criticism to remember as one stands by this monument: "Give a look, if you can, at a Memoir of Alfred de Musset written by his Brother. Making allowance for French morals, and Absinthe (which latter is not mentioned in the Book), Alfred appears to me a fine Fellow, very un-French in some respects. He did not at all relish the new Romantic School, beginning with V. Hugo, and now alive in ---- and Co.--(what I call the Gargoyle School of Art, whether in Poetry, Painting, or Music)--he detested the modern 'feuilleton' Novel, and read Clarissa!... Many years before A. de M. died he had a bad, long, illness, and was attended by a Sister of Charity. When she left she gave him a Pen with 'Pensez à vos promesses' worked about in coloured silks: as also a little worsted 'Amphore' she had knitted at his bedside. When he came to die, some seventeen years after, he had these two little things put with him in his Coffin." That, by Edward FitzGerald, no natural friend to the de Mussets of the world, is very pretty. The Rue de Richelieu runs up beside the Comédie Française. We have already been in this street to see the Bibliothèque Nationale, entering it from the Boulevard, but let us now walk up it, first to see the Molière monument, so appropriate just here, and also to glance at No. 50, a house still unchanged, where once lived an insignificant couple named Poisson, whose daughter Jeanne Antoinette Poisson lived to become famous as Madame La Pompadour. In souvenirs of Molière Paris is still rich. We are coming soon to No. 92 Rue Saint-Honoré, where he was born; we are coming to the church of St. Eustache, where he was christened on January 15th, 1622, and where his second son was christened too. We are coming also to the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, where he was married and where his first son was baptised. In St. Roch he once stood as a godfather; and close to us now, at the corner of the Rue Saint-Honoré and the Rue Valois, was one of his theatres. And he died close to his monument, at No. 40 Rue de Richelieu. This then is the Molière quarter. We now enter the Palais Royal, that strange white and green oasis into which it is so simple never to stray. When I first knew Paris the Palais Royal was filled with cheap restaurants and shops to allure the excursionist and the connoisseur of those books which an inspired catalogue once described as very curious and disgusting. It is now practically deserted; the restaurants have gone and few shops remain; but in the summer the band plays to happy crowds, and children frolic here all day. I have, however, never succeeded in shaking off a feeling of depression. The original palace was built by Richelieu and was then the Palais Cardinal. After his death it became the Palais Royal and was enlarged, and was the scene of notorious orgies. Camille Desmoulins made it more serious, for it was here that he enflamed the people by his words on July 12th, 1789, and started them on their destroying career. That was in the Café de Foy. Carlyle thus describes the scene: "But see Camille Desmoulins, from the Café de Foy, rushing out, sibylline in face; his hair streaming, in each hand a pistol! He springs to a table: the Police satellites are eyeing him; alive they shall not take him, not they alive him alive. This time he speaks without stammering:--Friends! shall we die like hunted hares? Like sheep hounded into their pinfold; bleating for mercy, where is no mercy, but only a whetted knife? The hour is come; the supreme hour of Frenchman and Man; when Oppressors are to try conclusions with Oppressed; and the word is, swift Death, or Deliverance forever. Let such hour be _well_-come! Us, meseems, one cry only befits: To Arms! Let universal Paris, universal France, as with the throat of the whirlwind, sound only: To arms--To arms! yell responsive the innumerable voices; like one great voice, as of a Demon yelling from the air: for all faces wax fire-eyed, all hearts burn up into madness. In such, or fitter words, does Camille evoke the Elemental Powers, in this great moment.--Friends, continues Camille, some rallying sign! Cockades; green ones;--the colour of Hope!--As with the flight of locusts, these green tree-leaves; green ribands from the neighbouring shops; all green things are snatched, and made cockades of. Camille descends from his table, 'stifled with embraces, wetted with tears'; has a bit of green riband handed him; sticks it in his hat. And now to Curtius' Image-shop there; to the Boulevards; to the four winds; and rest not till France be on fire!" Desmoulins in bronze now stands in the garden, near this spot. It is an interesting statue by Boverie, who showed great courage in his use of a common chair, dignified here into a worthy adjunct of liberation. Under Napoleon the Tribunate sat in the Palais Royal, and after Napoleon the Orleans family made it their home. The Communards, always thorough, burned a good deal of it in 1871, and it is now a desert and the seat of the Conseil d'Etat. Let us leave it by the gateway leading to the Rue de Valois and be happier again. The Rue de Valois is an interesting and picturesque street, but its greatest attraction to me is its association with Charles Lamb. His hotel--the Europe, just opposite the gateway--has recently been rebuilt and is now called the Grand Hôtel du Palais Royal et de l'Europe, and the polished staircase on which his infinitesimal legs slipped about so comically on his late and not too steady returnings (and how could he be steady when Providence ordained that the waiter of whom in his best stammering French he ordered an egg, on his first visit to a restaurant, should have so misunderstood the order as to bring in its place a glass of eau de vie--an error, we are told, which gave Lamb much pleasure?) the polished staircase has now gone; but the hotel stands exactly where it did, and every thing else is the same--the Boeuf à la Mode is still close by and still one of the best restaurants in Paris, and the Place de Valois is untouched, with its most attractive archway leading to the Rue des Bons-Enfants and giving on to the vista of the Rue Montesquieu, with its hundred signs hanging out exactly as in 1823. We now return to the Rue Saint-Honoré. The three old houses, 180, 182 and 184, opposite the Magasins du Louvre, belonged before the Revolution to the Canons of Saint-Honoré. The courtyard here--the Cloître du Saint-Honoré--is one of the most characteristic examples of dirty Paris that remain, but very picturesque too. To peep in here is almost certainly to be rewarded by some Hogarthian touch, and to walk up the Rue des Bons-Enfants yields similar experiences and some very pleasant glimpses of old Paris. Still going east we turn down past the Oratoire on the right, with Coligny's monument on its south side, into the Rue de Rivoli, and across the Rue du Louvre obliquely to the old church we see there, opposite the east end of the Louvre and Napoleon's iron gates. This church is that of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, not to be confounded with the St. Germain of St. Germain des Prés across the river. St. Germain l'Auxerrois is historically one of the most interesting of the Paris churches, for it was St. Germain's bell that gave the signal for the massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572. Charles IX. is said to have fired at the Huguenots (doubtless with Catherine de Médicis at his shoulder, anxious for the success of his aim) from one of the windows in the Louvre overlooking this space. [Illustration: L'AMATEUR D'ESTAMPES DAUMIER (_Palais des Beaux Arts_)] St. Germain of Auxerre began as a layman--the ruler of Burgundy. Divine revelation, however, indicated that the Church was his true calling, and he therefore succeeded Saint Amadour as Bishop, "gave," in Caxton's words, "all his riches to poor people, and changed his wife into his sister". He took to the new life very thoroughly. He fasted every day till evening and then ate coarse bread and drank water and used no pottage and no salt. "In winter ne summer he had but one clothing, and that was the hair next his body, a coat and a gown, and if it happed so that he gave not his vesture to some poor body, he would wear it till it were broken and torn. His bed was environed with ashes, hair, and sackcloth, and his head lay no higher than his shoulders, but all day wept, and bare about his neck divers relics of saints. He ware none other clothing, and he went oft barefoot and seldom ware any girdle. The life that he led was above man's power. His life was so straight and hard that it was marvel and pity to see his flesh, and was like a thing not credible, and he did so many miracles that, if his merits had not gone before, they should have been trowed phantasms." St. Germain's miracles were more interesting than those of, say, his convert Sainte Geneviève. He conjured devils; he forbade fire to burn him; having fed his companions on the only calf of a friendly cow-herd, he put the bones and the skins together and life returned to it; he also raised one of his own disciples from the dead and conversed with him through the walls of his tomb, but on the disciple saying that in his late condition "he was well and all things were to him soft and sweet," he permitted him to remain dead. He also found his miraculous gifts very useful in the war; but his principal interest to us is that he is supposed to have visited England and organised the Establishment here. St. Germain's church has a little old glass that is charming and much bad new. The south transept window, although sheer kaleidoscope, is gay and attractive. At the back of the church runs the narrow and medieval Rue de l'Arbre-Sec, extending to the Rue Saint-Honoré. At No. 4 is, or was, the Hôtel des Mousquetaires, where, when it was the Belle Etoile, d'Artagnan drank and swaggered. Let us take this street and come to St. Eustache by way of another and less terrible souvenir of Catherine de Médicis. The Rue de l'Arbre-Sec leads to the Rue Sauval and to the circular Rue de Viarmes surrounding the Bourse de Commerce. Here we see a remarkable Doric column, all that remains of the palace which Catherine built in order to avoid the fate predicted for her by a soothsayer--that she would perish in the ruins of a house near St. Germain's. The Tuileries, which she was then building, being far too near St. Germain's to be comfortable after such a remark, she erected the Hôtel de la Reine, the tower being designed for astrological study in the company of her Italian familiar, Ruggieri. All else has gone: the tower and the stars remain. A few steps down the Rue Oblin and we are at St. Eustache, which has to my eyes the most fascinating roof of any church in Paris and a very attractive nave. The interior, however, is marred by the presence of what might be called a church within a church, destroying all vistas, and it is only with great difficulty that one can see the exquisite rose window over the organ. It is a church much used by the poor--who even call it Notre Dame des Halles--but its music on festival days brings the rich too. Like most other Paris churches of any importance, St. Eustache had its secular period. The Feast of Reason was held here in 1793; in 1795 it was the Temple of Agriculture. In 1791 Mirabeau, the first of the illustrious, as we saw, to be buried in the Panthéon, was carried here in his coffin for a funeral service, at which guns were fired that brought down some of the plaster. Voiture the poet was buried here. The church has always been famous for the splendour of its festivals and for its music, its present organ, once much injured by Communard bombs, being one of the finest in the world. No reader of this book who cares for solemn music should fail to ascertain the St. Eustache festivals. On St. Cecilia's day entrance is very difficult, but an effort should be made. Eustache, or Eustace, the Saint, had no direct association with Paris, as had our friends St Germain and St. Geneviève and St. Denis and St. Martin and St. Merry; but he had an indirect one, having been a Roman soldier under the Emperor Trajan, whose column was the model for the Vendôme column. In the Sacristy, however, are preserved some of the bones not only of himself but of his wife and family, brought hither from St. Denis. One of his teeth is here too, and one special bone, the gift of Pope Alexander VII. to an influential Catholic. Why our London markets should be so dull and unattractive and the Halles so entertaining is a problem which would perhaps require an ethnological essay of many pages to elucidate. But so it is. Smithfield, Billingsgate, Leadenhall, Covent Garden--one has little temptation or encouragement to loiter in any of them; but the Halles spread welcoming arms. I have spent hours there, and would spend more. In the very early morning it is not too agreeable a neighbourhood for the idle spectator, nor is he desired, although if he is prepared to endure a little rough usage with tongue and elbow he will be vastly amused by what he sees; but later, when all the world is up, the Halles entreat his company. Their phases are three: the first is the arrival of the market carts with their merchandise, very much as in our own Covent Garden, but multiplied many times and infinitely more vocal and shattering to the nerves. (I once occupied a bedroom within range of this pandemonium.) The second phase, a few hours later, sees the descent upon the market of the large caterers--buyers for the restaurants, great and small, the hotels and pensions. That is between half-past five and half-past seven. And then come the small buyers, the neat servants, the stout housewives, all with their baskets or string bags. This is our time; we may now loiter at our ease secure from the swift and scorching sarcasms of the crowded dawn. The Halles furnish another proof of the quiet efficiency of Frenchwomen. At every fruit and vegetable stall--and to me they are the most interesting of all--sits one or more of these watchful creatures, cheerful, capable and always busy either with the affairs of the stall or with knitting or sewing. The Halles afford also very practical proof of the place that economy is permitted to hold in the French cuisine: as much being done for the small purse as for the large one. In England we are ashamed of economy; by avoiding it we hope to give the impression that we are not mean. The wise French either care less for their neighbour's opinions or have agreed together to dispense with such insincerities; and the result is that if a pennyworth of carrots is all that your soup requires you need not buy two pennyworth, and so forth. Little portions of vegetables for one, two or more persons, all ready for the pot, can be bought, involving no waste whatever, and with no faltering or excuse on the part of the purchaser to explain so small an order. In France a customer is a customer. There are no distinctions; although I do not deny that in the West End of Paris, where the Americans and English spend their money, subtle shades of courtesy (or want of it) have crept in. I have been treated like a prince in a small comestible shop where I wanted only a pennyworth of butter, a pennyworth of cheese and a pennyworth of milk. It is pennies that make the French rich; no one can be in any doubt of that who has taken notice of the thousands of small shops not only in Paris but in the provinces. Any one making an early morning visit to the Halles should complete it by seeing my goat-herd, who leads his flocks thereabouts and eastward. He is the prettiest sight I ever saw in Paris. There are several goat-herds--even Passy knows them--but my goat-herd is here. By eight o'clock he has done; his flock is dry. He wears a blue cloth tam-o'-shanter (if there can be such a thing: it is really the cap of the romantic mountaineer of comic opera) and he saunters carelessly along, piping melancholy notes on a shepherd's pipe--not unlike the lovely wailing that desolates the soul in the last act of _Tristan und Isolde_. When a customer arrives he calls one of his goats, sits down on the nearest doorstep--it may be a seventeenth-century palace--and milks a cupful; and then he is off again, with his scrannel to his lips, the very type of the urban Strephon. We may leave les Halles (pronounced lay al, and not, as one would think, lays all: one of the pitfalls for the English in Paris) by the Rue Berger, and enter the Square des Innocents to look at its decorative fountain. The next street below the Rue des Innocents is the Rue de la Ferronnerie, where, on May 14th, 1610, Henri IV. was assassinated by Ravaillac before the door of No. 3. And so by the Rue St. Denis, which one is always glad to enter again, and the Rue de Rivoli, we come to Saint-Jacques, that grey aged isolated tower which we have seen so often from the heights and in the distance. It is a beautiful Gothic building, at the summit of which is the figure of St. James with his emblems, the originals of which are at the Cluny. The tower belonged to the church of St. Jacques-la-Boucherie, but that being in the way when Napoleon planned the Rue de Rivoli, it had to go. The tower has not lately been open to the climbers, and I have never seen Paris from St. James's side, but I hope to. Blaise Pascal experimented here in the density of air; hence the presence of his statue below. It was also to Pascal, of whom we now think only as an ironist and wistful theologian, that Paris owes her omnibuses, for it was he that devised the first, which began to run on March 18th, 1662, from the Luxembourg to the Bastille. Pascal owed his conversion to his escape from a carriage accident on the Pont Neuf. His grave we saw at St. Etienne-du-Mont. In crossing the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville one must not forget that this was once the terrible Place de Grève, the site of public executions for five centuries. Here we meet Catherine de Médicis again, for it was by her order that after the Massacre of St. Bartholomew the Huguenots Briquemont and Cavagnes were hanged here, and here also was executed Captain Montgomery, whom we are to meet in the next chapter. The foster-sister of Marie de Médicis was burned alive in the Place de Grève as a sorcerer; and Ravaillac, after assassinating Henri IV., here met his end. Among later victims was the famous Cartouche, of whom Thackeray wrote so entertainingly. The Hôtel de Ville is not a building that I for one should choose to revisit, nor do I indeed advise others to bother about it at all; but externally at any rate it is fine, with its golden sentinels on high. Its chief merit is bulk; but there is a certain interest in observing a Republican palace of our own time, if only to see how near it can come to the real thing. A saturnine guide displays a series of spacious apartments, the principal attraction of which is their mural painting. All the best French Royal Academicians (so to speak) of twenty years ago had a finger in this pie, and their fantasies sprawl over ceilings and walls. With the exception of one room, the history of Paris is practically ignored, allegory being the master vogue. Poetry, Song, Inspiration, Fame, Ambition, Despair--all these undraped ladies may be seen, and many others. Also Electricity and Steam, Science and Art, distinguishable from their sisters only by the happy chance that although they forgot their clothes they did not forget their symbols. [Illustration: LE BAISER RODIN (_Luxembourg_)] One beautiful thing only did I see, and that was a large design, perhaps the largest there, of Winter, by Puvis de Chavannes. But to say that I saw it is an exaggeration: rather, I was conscious of it. For the architect of the salon in which Puvis was permitted to work forgot to light it. In the historical room there are crowded scenes by Laurens of the past of Paris--the hero of which is Etienne Marcel, whose equestrian statue may be seen from the windows, under the river façade of the building. Etienne Marcel, Merchant Provost, controlled Paris after the disastrous battle of Poictiers, where the King and the Dauphin were both taken prisoners. Power, however, made him headstrong, and he was killed by an assassin. It is from the Hôtel de Ville that the city of Paris is administered, with the assistance of the Préfecture de Police on the island opposite. The Hôtel de Ville contains, so to speak, the Paris County Council, and I have been told that no building is so absurdly over-staffed. That may or may not be true. The high officials do not at any rate allow business to exclude the finer graces of life, for in the great hall in which I waited for the cicerone were long tables on which were some twenty or thirty baskets containing visiting cards, and open books containing signatures, and before each basket was a card bearing the name of an important functionary of the Hôtel de Ville--such as the Préfet de la Seine, and the Sous-Préfet, and their principal secretaries, and so forth. Every minute or so some one came in, found the basket to which he wished to contribute, and dropped a card in it. I wondered to what extent the social machinery of Paris bureaucracy would be disorganised if I were to change a few baskets, but I did not embark upon an experiment the results of which I should have had no means of contemplating and enjoying. After leaving the Hôtel de Ville and its modern splendours, we may walk eastward along the Rue de l'Hôtel de Ville, one of the narrowest and dirtiest relics of old Paris, and so come to the Hôtel de Sens. But first notice, at the corner of the Rue des Nonnains-d'Hyères, at the point at which Mr. Dexter made his drawing, the very ancient stone sign of the knife-grinder. The Hôtel de Sens, in the Place de l'Ave Maria, at the end of the Rue de l'Hôtel de Ville, is almost if not quite the most attractive of the old palaces. Although it has been allowed to fall into neglect, it is still a wonderfully preserved specimen of fifteenth-century building. The turrets are absolutely beautiful. The Archbishop of Sens built it, and for nearly three centuries it remained the home of power and wealth, among its tenants being Marguerite of Valois. Then came the Revolution and its decline into a coach office, from which it is said the Lyons mail, made familiar to us by the Irvings, started. During a later revolution, 1830, a cannon ball found a billet in the wall, and it may still be seen there, I am told, although these eyes missed it. The Hôtel is now a glass factory. The city of Paris ought to acquire it before it sinks any lower. It is at the foot of the Rue de l'Ave Maria, hard by, that Molière's theatre, which we saw from the Quai des Célestins in an earlier chapter, is found. Here Molière was arrested at the instance of the unpaid tallow chandler. Our way now is by the Rue Figuier, of which the Hôtel de Sens is No. 1, to the Rue François-Miron, all among the most fascinating old architecture and association. At No. 8 Rue Figuier, for instance, Rabelais is said to have lived, and what could be better than that? At No. 17, we have what the Vicomte de Villebresme calls a "jolie niche du XVe siècle". This street leads into the Rue de Jouy, also exceedingly old, with notable buildings, such as No. 7, the work of Mansard père, and No. 9, and on the left of the Impasse Guépine, which existed in the reign of Saint Louis. In the Rue François-Miron, if you do not mind exhibiting a little inquisitiveness, enter the doorway of No. 68, and look at the courtyard and the staircase. Here you get an excellent idea of past glories, while the outer doors or gates give an excellent idea of past danger too. For life in Paris in the days in which this street was built must have been very cheap after dark. It is not dear even now in certain parts. This was an historic mansion. It was built for Madame de Beaumaris, femme de chambre of Anne of Austria, and on its balcony, now removed, on August 20th, 1660, Anne stood with Mazarin and others when Louis XIV. entered Paris. No. 82 still retains a balcony of great charm. We now enter the very busy Rue St. Antoine at its junction with the Rue de Rivoli. Almost immediately on our right is a gateway leading into a very charming courtyard, which is not open to the public, but into which one may gently trespass; it is the school of the Frères Chrétiens, founded by Frère Joseph, the good priest with the sweet and sad old face whose bust is on the wall. A few steps farther bring us to the church of St. Paul and St. Louis, a florid and imposing fane, to which Victor Hugo (to whose house we are now making our way) carried his first child to be christened, and presented to the church two holy water stoops in commemoration. Here also Richelieu celebrated his first mass. One of Delacroix's best early works (we saw the picture called "Hommage à Delacroix," you will remember, in the Moreau collection at the Louvre) is in the left transept, "Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane". On no account miss the Passage Charlemagne (close to the St. Paul Station on the Métro) for it is a curious, busy and very French by-way, and it possesses the remains of a palace of the fourteenth century. In the Passage de St. Pierre is the site of the old cemetery of St. Paul's in which Rabelais was buried. CHAPTER XIX THE PLACE DES VOSGES AND HUGO'S HOUSE A Beautiful Square--The Palais des Tournelles--Revolutionary Changes--Madame de Sévigné and Rachel--Hugo's Crowded Life--A Riot of Relics--Victorious Versatility--Dumas' Pen--The Age of Giants--Dickens--"Les Trois Dumas". Were we to walk a little farther along the busy Rue St. Antoine towards the Place de la Bastille, we should come, on the left, a few yards past the church of St. Louis, to the Rue de Birague, at the head of which is the beautiful red gateway of which Mr. Dexter has made such a charming picture. This is the southern gateway of the Place des Vosges, a spacious green square enclosed by massive red and white houses of brick and stone which once were the abode, when the Place des Vosges was the Place Royale, of the aristocracy of France. Before that time the courtyard of the old Palais des Tournelles was here, where Henri II. was killed in a tournament in 1559, through an accident for which Captain Montgomery of the Scotch Guard, whose fault Catherine de Médicis deemed it to be, was executed, as we have just seen, in the Place de l'Hôtel-de-Ville. Catherine de Médicis, not content with thus avenging her husband's death, demolished the Palais des Tournelles, and a few years later Henri IV., to whom old Paris owes so much, built the Place Royale, just as it is now. His own pavilion was the centre building on the south side, comprising the gateway which Mr. Dexter has drawn; the Queen's was the corresponding building on the north side. Around dwelt the nobles of the Court--such at any rate as were not living in the adjoining Marais. Richelieu's hotel embraced Nos. 21-23 as they now are. It was in front of that mansion that the famous duel between Montmorency-Bouteville and Des Chapelles against Bussy and Beuvron was fought. The spirit of the great Dumas, one feels, must haunt this Place: for it is peopled with ghosts from his brave romances. The decay of the Place des Vosges began, of course, when the aristocracy moved over to the Faubourg St. Germain, although it never sank low. The Revolution then took it in hand, and naturally began by destroying the statue of Louis XIII. in the centre, which Richelieu had set up, while its name was changed from Place Royale to its present style in honour of the Department of the Vosges, the first to contribute funds to the new order. In 1825, under Charles X., Louis XIII. in a new stone dress returned to his honoured position in the midst of the square, and all was as it should be once more, save that no longer did lords and ladies ruffle it here or in the Marais. [Illustration: THE PLACE DES VOSGES (SOUTHERN ENTRANCE, IN THE RUE BIRAGUE)] The most picturesque associations of the Place des Vosges are historical; but it has at any rate three houses which have an artistic interest. At No. 1 was born that gifted and delightful lady in whose home in later years we have spent such pleasant hours--Madame de Sévigné, or as she was in those early days (she was born in 1626) Marie de Rabutin-Chantal. At No. 13 lived for a while Rachel the tragedienne. According to Herr Baedeker, who is not often wrong, she died here too: but other authorities place her death at Carmet, near Toulon. I like to think that this rare wayward and terrible creature of emotion was once an inhabitant of these walls. The third house is No. 6, in the south-eastern corner, the second floor of which, from 1833 to 1848, was the home of Victor Hugo. It is now a Hugo museum. Although Hugo occupied only a small portion, the whole house is now dedicated to his spreading memory. Let us enter. There is nothing in England like the Hugo museum. I have been to Carlyle's house in Cheyne Row; to Johnson's house at Lichfield; to Wordsworth's house at Grasmere; to Milton's house at Chalfont St. Giles; to Leighton's House at Kensington; and the impression left by all is that their owners lived very thin lives. The rooms convey a sense of bareness: one is struck not by the wealth of relics but by the poverty of them; while for any suggestion that these men were pulsating creatures of friendship one seeks in vain. But Hugo--Hugo's house throbs with life and energy and warm prosperous amities. Every inch is crowded with mementoes of his vigour and his triumphs, yes, and his failures too. Here are portraits of him by the hundred, at all ages, caricatures, lampoons, play bills, first editions, popular editions, furniture by Hugo, decorations by Hugo, drawings by Hugo, scenes in Hugo's life in exile, wreaths, busts, portraits of his grandchildren (who taught him the exquisite art of being a grandfather), his death-bed, his death-mask, the cast of his hands. Hugo, Hugo, everywhere, always tremendous and splendid and passionate and French. Among the more valuable possessions of this museum are Bastien-Lepage's charcoal drawing of the master; Besnard's picture of the first night of Hernani with the young romantic on the stage taking his call and hurling defiance at the gods; Steinlen's oil painting (there are not many oil paintings by this great draughtsman and great Parisian) "Les Pauvres Gens"; Daumier's cartoon "Les Châtiments"; Henner's "Sarah la Baigneuse" from _Les Orientales_; allegories by Chifflart; beautiful canvases by Carrière and Fantin-Latour; and Devambez's "Jean Valjean before the tribunal of Arras," in which Jean is curiously like Gladstone in a bad coat; Vierge's drawing of the funeral of Georges Hugo, during the siege; and Yama Motto's curious scene of Hugo's own funeral, of which there are many photographs, including one of the coffin as it lay in state for two days under the Arc de Triomphe. There are also a number of Hugo relics which the camelots of that day were selling to the crowds. Hugo, it is well known, nursed a private ambition to be a great artist, and in my opinion he was a great artist. There are on these walls drawings from his hand which are magnificent--mysterious and sombre fortresses on impregnable cliffs, scenes in enchanted lands with more imagination than ever Doré compassed, and some of the sinister cruelty and power of Méryon. Hugo was ingenious too: he decorated a room with coloured carvings in the Chinese manner and he made the neatest folding table I ever saw--hinged into the wall so that when not in use it takes up no floor-space whatever. It is amusing to follow Hugo's physiognomy through the ages, at first beardless, looking when young rather like Bruant, the chansonnier of to-day; then the coming of the beard, and the progress of it until the final stage in which the mental eye now always sees the old poet--white and strong and benevolent--the Hugo, in short, of Bonnat's famous portrait. On a table is a collection of literary souvenirs of intense interest: Hugo's pen and inkstand, and the great Dumas' pen presented to Hugo in 1860 after writing with it his last "15 or 20" volumes (fifteen _or_ twenty--how like him!); Lamartine's inkstand, offered "to the master of the pen"; George Sand's match-box for those endless cigarettes, and with it her travelling inkstand. In another room upstairs are the six pens used by Hugo in writing _Les Humbles_. Dumas' pen is not by any means the only Dumas relic here; portraits of him are to be seen, one of them astonishingly negroid. Had he too worked for liberty and carried in his breast or even on his sleeve a great heart that, like Hugo's, responded to every call and beat furiously at the very whisper of the word injustice, he too would have his museum to-day not less remarkable than this. But to write romances was not enough: there must be toil and suffering too. Dumas and Hugo were born in the same year, 1802: Balzac was then three. In 1809 came Tennyson and Gladstone; in 1811 Thackeray and in 1812 Browning and Dickens. What was the secret of that astounding period? Why did the first twelve years of the last century know such energy and abundance? To walk through the rooms of this Hugo museum, however casually, is to be amazed before the vitality and exuberance not only of this man but of the French genius. It is truly only the busy who have time. I wish none the less that there was a museum for Alexandre the Great. I would love to visit it: I would love to see his kitchen utensils alone. The generous glorious creature, "the seven and seventy times to be forgiven"! As it was, no one being about, I kissed the pen with which he had written his last "15 or 20" novels (the splendid liar!). I wish too that we had a permanent Dickens' museum in London--say at his house in Devonshire Terrace, which is now a lawyer's office. What a fascinating memorial of Merry England it might become, and what a reminder to this attenuated specialising day of the vigour and versatility and variety and inconquerable vivacity of that giant! Just as no one can leave Hugo's house without a quickening of imagination and ambition, so no one could leave that of Charles Dickens. In addition to this museum Hugo has his monument in the Place Victor Hugo, far away in a residential desert in the north-west of Paris, a bronze figure of the poet as a young man seated on a rock, with Satire, Lyric Poetry and Fame attending him; while on the façade of the house where he died, No. 124 Avenue Victor Hugo, is a medallion portrait. He figures also in a fresco in the Hôtel de Ville. Dumas' monument is in the garden of the Place Malesherbes in the Avenue de Villiers. Doré designed it, as was perhaps fitting. The sturdy Alexandre sits, pen in hand, on the summit, his West Indian hair curling vigorously into the sky, with d'Artagnan and three engrossed readers at the base. It is not quite what one would have wished; but it is good to visit. His son, the dramatist, the author of that adorable joke against his father's vanity--that he was capable of riding behind his own carriage to persuade people that he kept a black servant--has a monument close by; and the gallant general of whom one reads such brave stories in the first volume of the _Mémoires_ is to be set there too, and then the Place, I am told, will be re-named the Place des Trois Dumas. CHAPTER XX THE BASTILLE, PÈRE LACHAISE AND THE END A Thoughtful Municipality--The Fall of the Bastille--Revolt and Revolution--The Column of July--A Paris Canal--Deliberate Building--The Buttes-Chaumont--A City of the Dead--Père la Chaise--Bartholomé's Monument--The Cimetière de Mont Parnasse--The Country round Paris--What we have Missed--Conclusion. The Place des Vosges is close to the Place de la Bastille, which lies to the east of it along the Rue St. Antoine. The prison has gone for ever, but one is assisted by a thoughtful municipality to reconstruct it, a task of no difficulty at all if one remembers with any vividness the models in the Carnavalet or the Archives, or buys a pictorial postcard at any neighbouring shop. The contribution of the pious city fathers is a map on the façade of No. 36 Place de la Bastille, and a permanent outline of the walls of the dreadful building inlaid in the road and pavement, which one may follow step by step to the satisfaction of one's imagination and the derangement of the traffic until it disappears into cafés and shops. One has to remember, however, that the surface of the ground was much lower, the prison being surrounded by a moat and gained only by bridges. For the actual stones one must go to the Pont de la Concorde, the upper part of which was built of them in 1790. The Bastille's end came in 1789, at the beginning of the Revolution, on the day after the National Guard was established, when the people of Paris rose under Camille Desmoulins and captured it, thus not only displaying but discovering their strength. Carlyle was never more scornful, never more cruelly vivid, than in his description of this event. I must quote a little, it is so horribly splendid: "To describe this Siege of the Bastille (thought to be one of the most important in History) perhaps transcends the talent of mortals. Could one but, after infinite reading, get to understand so much as the plan of the building! But there is open Esplanade, at the end of the Rue Saint-Antoine; there are such Forecourts, _Cour Avanceé, Cour de l'Orme_, arched Gateway (where Louis Tournay now fights); then new drawbridges, dormant-bridges, rampart-bastions, and the grim Eight Towers: a labyrinthic Mass, high-frowning there, of all ages from twenty years to four hundred and twenty;--beleaguered, in this its last hour, as we said, by mere Chaos come again! Ordnance of all calibres; throats of all capacities; men of all plans, every man his own engineer: seldom since the war of Pygmies and Cranes was there seen so anomalous a thing. Half-pay Elie is home for a suit of regimentals; no one would heed him in coloured clothes: half-pay Hulin is haranguing Gardes Françaises in the Place de Grève. Frantic Patriots pick up the grapeshots; bear them, still hot (or seemingly so), to the Hôtel-de-Ville:--Paris, you perceive, is to be burnt! Flesselles is 'pale to the very lips'; for the roar of the multitude grows deep. Paris wholly has got to the acme of its frenzy; whirled, all ways, by panic madness. At every street-barricade, there whirls simmering a minor whirlpool,--strengthening the barricade, since God knows what is coming; and all minor whirlpools play distractedly into that grand Fire-Maelstrom which is lashing round the Bastille. "And so it lashes and it roars. Cholat the wine-merchant has become an impromptu cannoneer. See Georget, of the Marine Service, fresh from Brest, ply the King of Siam's cannon. Singular (if we were not used to the like): Georget lay, last night, taking his ease at his inn; the King of Siam's cannon also lay, knowing nothing of _him_, for a hundred years. Yet now, at the right instant, they have got together, and discourse eloquent music. For, hearing what was toward, Georget sprang from the Brest Diligence, and ran. Gardes Françaises also will be here, with real artillery: were not the walls so thick!--Upwards from the Esplanade, horizontally from all neighbouring roofs and windows, flashes one irregular deluge of musketry, without effect. The Invalides lie flat, firing comparatively at their ease from behind stone; hardly through portholes show the tip of a nose. We fall, shot; and make no impression! [Illustration: LA BERGERE GARDANT SES MOUTONS MILLET (_Louvre, Chauchard Collection_)] "Let conflagration rage; of whatsoever is combustible! Guard-rooms are burnt, Invalides mess-rooms. A distracted 'Perukemaker with two fiery torches' is for burning 'the saltpetres of the Arsenal';--had not a woman run screaming; had not a Patriot, with some tincture of Natural Philosophy, instantly struck the wind out of him (butt of musket on pit of stomach), overturned barrels, and stayed the devouring element. A young beautiful lady, seized escaping in these Outer Courts, and thought falsely to be De Launay's daughter, shall be burnt in De Launay's sight; she lies swooned on a paillasse: but again a Patriot, it is brave Aubin Bonnemère the old soldier, dashes in, and rescues her. Straw is burnt; three cartloads of it, hauled thither, go up in white smoke: almost to the choking of Patriotism itself; so that Elie had, with singed brows, to drag back one cart; and Réole the 'gigantic haberdasher' another. Smoke as of Tophet; confusion as of Babel; noise as of the Crack of Doom! "Blood flows; the aliment of new madness. The wounded are carried into houses of the Rue Cerisaie; the dying leave their last mandate not to yield till the accursed Stronghold fall. And yet, alas, how fall? The walls are so thick! Deputations, three in number, arrive from the Hôtel-de-Ville; Abbé Fauchet (who was of one) can say, with what almost superhuman courage of benevolence. These wave their Town-flag in the arched Gateway; and stand, rolling their drum; but to no purpose. In such Crack of Doom De Launay cannot hear them, dare not believe them: they return, with justified rage, the whew of lead still singing in their ears. What to do? The Firemen are here, squirting with their fire-pumps on the Invalides cannon, to wet the touchholes; they unfortunately cannot squirt so high; but produce only clouds of spray. Individuals of classical knowledge propose _catapults_. Santerre, the sonorous Brewer of the Suburb Saint-Antoine, advises rather that the place be fired, by a 'mixture of phosphorus and of oil-of-turpentine spouted up through forcing-pumps': O Spinola-Santerre, hast thou the mixture _ready_? Every man his own engineer! And still the fire-deluge abates not: even women are firing, and Turks; at least one woman (with her sweetheart), and one Turk. Gardes Françaises have come: real cannon, real cannoneers. Usher Maillard is busy; half-pay Elie, half-pay Hulin rage in the midst of thousands. "How the great Bastille Clock ticks (inaudible) in its Inner Court there, at its ease, hour after hour; as if nothing special, for it or the world, were passing! It tolled One when the firing began; and is now pointing towards Five, and still the firing slakes not.--Far down, in their vaults, the seven Prisoners hear muffled din as of earthquakes; their Turnkeys answer vaguely. "Wo to thee, De Launay, with thy poor hundred Invalides! Broglie is distant, and his ears heavy: Besenval hears, but can send no help. One poor troop of Hussars has crept, reconnoitering, cautiously along the Quais, as far as the Pont Neuf. 'We are come to join you,' said the Captain; for the crowd seem shoreless. A large-headed dwarfish individual, of smoke-bleared aspect, shambles forward, opening his blue lips, for there is sense in him; and croaks: 'Alight then, and give up your arms!' The Hussar-Captain is too happy to be escorted to the Barriers, and dismissed on parole. Who the squat individual was? Men answer, It is M. Marat, author of the excellent pacific _Avis au Peuple_! Great truly, O thou remarkable Dogleech, is this thy day of emergence and new-birth: and yet this same day come four years--!--But let the curtains of the Future hang." After some hours the deed is done and Paris re-echoes to the cries "La Bastille est prise!" "In the Court, all is mystery, not without whisperings of terror; though ye dream of lemonade and epaulettes, ye foolish women! His Majesty, kept in happy ignorance, perhaps dreams of double-barrels and the Woods of Meudon. Late at night, the Duke de Liancourt, having official right of entrance, gains access to the Royal Apartments; unfolds, with earnest clearness, in his constitutional way, the Job's-news. '_Mais_,' said poor Louis, '_c'est une révolte_, Why, that is a revolt!'--'Sire,' answered Liancourt, 'it is not a revolt,--it is a revolution.'" That was July 14th, 1789; but it is not the July that the Colonne de Juillet in the centre of the Place celebrates. That July was forty-one years later, not so late but that many Parisians could remember both events. July 27th to 29th, 1830, the Second Revolution, which overturned the Bourbons and set Louis-Philippe of Orleans in the siège périlleux of France. Louis-Philippe himself erected this monument in memory of the six hundred and fifteen citizens who fell in his interests and who are buried beneath. Their names are cut in the bronze of the column, on the summit of which is the beautiful winged figure of Liberty. Beneath the vault of the Colonne, and immediately beneath the Colonne itself, runs the great canal which brings merchandise into Paris from the east, entering the Seine between the Pont Sully and the Pont d'Austerlitz. At this point it is not very interesting, but from the Avenue de la République, where it re-emerges again into the light of day, and thence right away to the Abattoirs de Villette, it is very amusing to stroll by. The Paris _Daily Mail_, which in its eager paternal way has taken English and American visitors completely under its wing, is diurnally anxious that its readers should make a tour of these abattoirs. But not I. That a holiday in Paris should include the examination of a slaughter-house strikes me as a joyless proposition, putting thoroughness far before pleasure. But the _Daily Mail_ is like that; it also does its best on the second and fourth Wednesdays in every month to get its compatriots down the Paris sewers. And I suppose they go. Strange heart of the tourist! We never think of penetrating either to the sewers or the slaughter-houses of our native land; we have no theories of sewers, no data for comparison; we love the upper air and the sun. But being in a foreign city we cheerfully give the second or fourth Wednesday to such delights. Having taken the _Daily Mail's_ advice and visited the abattoirs (which I have not done), one cannot do better than return to Paris by way of the canal, sauntering beside it all the way to the Rue Faubourg du Temple, where one passes into the Place de la République and the stir of the city once more. The canal descends from the heights of La Villette in a series of long steps, as it were (or, to take the most dissonant simile possible to devise, like the lakes at Wootton), built up by locks. Idling by this canal one sees many agreeable phases of human toil. Many commodities and materials reach Paris by barge, and it is on these quais and in the Villette basin that the unloading is done; while the barges themselves are pleasant spectacles--so long and clean and broad--very Mauretanias beside the barges of Holland--with spacious deck-houses that are often perfect villas, the wife and children watering the flowers at the door. One quai is given up wholly to lime. This arrives in thousands of little solid sacks which stevedores whiter than millers transfer to the carts, that, in their turn, creak off to disorganise the traffic of a hundred streets and provoke the contempt of a thousand drivers before they reach their destined building, on which the workmen have already been engaged for two years and will be engaged for two years more. There is no hurry in constructional work in Paris--except of course on Exhibitions, which spring up in a night. The same piece of road that was up in the Rue Lafayette for some surface trouble in a recent April, I found still up in October. But they have the grace, when rebuilding a house in the city, to hide their deliberate processes behind a wooden screen--such a screen as was opposite the Café de la Paix, at the south-east corner of the Boulevard des Capucines, for, it seems to me, years. If, however, one is walking beside the canal in the other direction, up the hill instead of down, one will soon be nearer the Victoria Park of Paris, the park of the east end, than at any other time, and this should be visited as surely as the abattoirs should be avoided: unless, of course, one is a well-informed or thoughtful butcher. We have seen the Parc Monceau; well, the antithesis of the Parc Monceau, which has no counter-part in London, is the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont. Both are children's paradises, the only difference in the children being social position. The Parc des Buttes-Chaumont is sixty acres of trees and walks and perpendicular rocks and water, the special charm of which is its diversified character, rising in the midst to an immense height made easy for carriages and perambulators by a winding road. It has a deep gorge crossed by a suspension bridge, a lake for boats, a cascade, and thousands of chairs side by side, touching, lining the roads, on which the maids and matrons of La Villette and Belleville sew and gossip, while the children play around. The parc was made in the sixties: before then it had been a waste ground and gypsum quarry--hence its attractive irregularities. How wonderful the heights and cathedral of Montmartre can appear from one of the peaks of the Buttes-Chaumont, Mr. Dexter's drawing shows. The Buttes-Chaumont is the most easterly point we have yet reached; but there is another parc more easterly still awaiting us, not unlike the Buttes-Chaumont in its acclivities, but unlike it in this particular, that it is a parc not of the living but the dead. I mean Père Lachaise. Père Lachaise! What kind of an old man do you think gave his name to this cemetery? Most persons, I imagine, see him as white-haired and venerable: not twinkling, like Papa Gontier, but serene and noble and sad. As a matter of fact he was a père only by profession and courtesy. Père Lachaise was Louis XIV.'s fashionable confessor (Landor has a diverting imaginary conversation between these two), and the cemetery took its name from his house, which chanced to occupy the site of the present chapel. The ground was enclosed as a burial ground as recently as 1804, which means of course that the famous tomb of Abélard and Héloise, to which all travellers find their way, is a modern reconstruction. The remains of La Fontaine and Molière and other illustrious men who died before 1804 were transferred here, just as Zola's were recently transferred from the cemetery of Montmartre to the Panthéon, but with less excitement. Père Lachaise cannot be taken lightly. The French live very thoroughly, but when they die they die thoroughly too, and their cemeteries confess the scythe. There may be, to our thinking, too much architecture; but it is serious. There is no mountebanking (as at Genoa), nor is there any whining, as in some of our own churchyards. Death to a Frenchman is a fact and a mystery, to be faced when the time comes, if not before, and to be honoured. On certain festivals of the year there are a thousand mourners to every acre of Père Lachaise. The natural entrance is by the Rue de la Roquette, but it is less fatiguing to enter at the top, at the new gate in the Avenue du Père Lachaise, and walk downhill; for the paths are steep and the cemetery covers a hundred acres and more. The objection to this course is that one loses some of the sublimity of Bartholomé's _Monument aux Morts_ at the foot of the mountain on which the chapel stands. This monument faces the principal entrance with the careful design of impressing the visitor, and its impact can be tremendous. We approach it by the Avenue Principale, in which lies Alfred de Musset, with the willow waving over his tomb and his own lines upon it. And then one enters seriously upon this strange pilgrimage among names and memories. Chopin lies here, his music stilled, and Talma the tragedian; Beaumarchais and Maréchal Ney; Cherubini and Alphonse Daudet; Balzac, his pen for ever idle, and Delacroix; Béranger, who made the nation's ballads, and Brillat-Savarin, all his dinners eaten; Michelet, the historian, and Planquette, the composer of _Les Cloches de Corneville_; Daumier, the great artist who saw to the heart of things, and Corot, who befriended Daumier's last years; Daubigny and Rosa Bonheur, Thiers and Scribe; Rachel, once so very living, and many Rothschilds now poorer than I. [Illustration: LE MONUMENT AUX MORTS A. BARTHOLOMÉ (_Père la Chaise_)] Paris has other cemeteries, as we know, for we have walked through that of Montmartre; but there is also the Cimetière de Montparnasse, where lie Sainte-Beuve and Leconte de Lisle, Théodore de Banville, master of _vers de société_, and Fantin-Latour, Baudelaire (lying beneath a figure of the Genius of Evil), and Barbey d'Aurevilly, the dandy-novelist. There are also the cemeteries of Passy and Picpus, but into these I have never wandered. Lafayette lies at Picpus, which is behind a convent in the Rue de Picpus, and costs fifty centimes to see, and there also were buried many victims of the guillotine besides those whose bodies were flung into the earth behind the Madeleine. * * * * * All the space at my disposal has been required by Paris itself; and such is the human interest that at any rate in the older parts clings to every stone and saturates the soil, that I do not know that I have had any temptation to rove beyond the fortifications. But that of course is not right. No one really knows the Parisians until he sees them in happy summer mood in one of the pleasure resorts on the Seine, or winning money at Enghien, or lunching in one of the tree-top restaurants at Robinson. We have indeed been curiously unenterprising, and it is all owing to the fascination of Paris herself and the narrow dimensions of this book. We have not even been to St. Denis, to stand among the ashes of the French kings; we have not descended the formal slopes of St. Cloud; we have not peeped into Corot's little chapel at Ville d'Avray; we have not seen the home of Sèvres porcelain; we have not scaled Mont-Valérien; we have not taken boat for Marly-le-Roi; we have not wandered marvelling but weary amid the battle scenes of Versailles, or smiled at the pretty fopperies of the hamlet of the Petit Trianon. We have not known the groves either of the Bois de Vincennes or the Bois de Meudon. Much less have we fed those guzzling gourmands, the carp of Chantilly, or lost ourselves before the little Raphael there, or the curious Leonardo sketch for La Joconde, or the sweet simplicities of the pretty Jean Fouquet illuminations, particularly the domestic solicitude of the ladies attending upon the birth of John the Baptist; less still have we forgotten the restlessness and urgency of Paris amid the allées and rochers of the Forest of Fontainebleau, and the still white streets of Barbizon, or even on the steps of the château where the Great Emperor, thoughts of whom are never very distant--are indeed too near--bade farewell to his Old Guard in 1814. Greater Paris, it will be gathered, is hardly less interesting than Paris herself; and indeed how pleasant it would be to write about it! But not here. Of Paris within the fortifications have I, I wonder, conveyed any of the fascination, the variety, the colour, the self-containment. I hope so. I hope too that at any rate these pages have implanted in a few readers the desire to see this beautiful and efficient city for themselves, and even more should I value the knowledge that they had excited in others who are not strangers to Paris the wish to be there again. To do justice to such a city, with such a history, is of course an impossibility. What, however, should not be impossible is to create a goût. INDEX ABATTOIRS, the, 312. Abbaye-aux-Bois, 160. Abélard, 315. Advocates and barristers, 24. Alvantes, Duchesse d', 45. Angelo, Michael, 102. Anne of Austria, 297. Antoinette, Marie, 20, 21, 71, 215, 216. Apollon, Galerie d', 248. Arbre-Sec, Rue de l', 288. Arc de Triomphe, 114, 142-45, 302. Archives, the, 64, 65. Arènes, the, 187. Aristocratic homes, 62, 145, 158. Arnold, Matthew, quoted, 267-69. Artagnan, D', 288. Arts et Métiers, Musée de, 258. Astruc, 178. Attila the Hun, 190. Aurevilly, B. d', 317. Austerlitz, 214. Ave-Maria, Rue de l', 297. BAEDEKER, 215, 261, 301. "Bagatelle," 146. Bal Bullier, 179. Balloons, 51. Balzac, 159, 178, 194, 260, 304, 316. Banville, T. de, 178, 317. Barbizon School, 100, 103-6. Bard, Wilkie, 235. Barristers and advocates, 24. Barry, the St. Bernard dog, 208. Bartholomé, 316. Bartholomew, St., Massacre of, 23, 286. Barye, the sculptor, 60, 245. Bassano, 89. Bastien-Lepage, 177. Bastille, the, 72, 306-12. Baudelaire, Charles, 56, 104, 317. Beauharnais, Joséphine, 45, 158, 174. Beaumarchais, 316. Beaumaris, Madame de, 297. Beaux-Arts, Palais des, 150. Beggars in Paris, 263. Bellini, 91. Bénéfices, 231, 232. Béranger, 258. Bergère, Cité, 250. Berlioz, 178, 225, 269. Bernard, Saint, 52. Bernhardt, 251. _Besieged Resident, the_, 210-13. Besnard, 302. Bibliothèque de Mazarin, 166. ---- Nationale, 247. Bièvre, the river, 186, 187. Bigio, 88. Billiards in Paris, 220-22. Birague, Rue de, 299. Birds, the charmer of, 127-30. Birrell, Mr. Augustine, 15. Blanche, 177. ---- Rue, 260. Bodley, Mr., 200. Boilly, 71. Bois de Boulogne, the, 145-49. Bol, 93. Bone, Mr. Muirhead, 24, 67. Bonheur, Rosa, 317. Bonington, 92, 98, 102. Bonnat, 303. Bons Enfants, Rue des, 286. Bookhunters, 17, 18. Bookstalls in Paris and London, 14-18. Borssom, 98. Botticelli, 79, 80, 89. Bottin, 154. Boucher, 70, 99. Bouland, 176. Boulevardiers, 219, 239. Boulevards, Grands, 218, 219. Bourse, the, 248, 249. Boverie, 285. Brillat-Savarin, 316. Brisemiche, Rue, 75. Browning, 304. Bruant, Aristide, 271, 303. Building in Paris, 313. Buridan, 180. Buttes-Chaumont, Parc, 264, 314. CABARETS artistiques, 270, 271. Cabman, the singing, 2. Cabmen in Paris, 240-42. Café de la Paix, 227-43. Cafés, 227, 228. ---- night, 273-75. Cain, M. Georges, 160, 200. Canals, 313. Capel Court, 249. Capucines, Boulevard des, 220-24, 273. Caran d'Ache, 271. Carlyle, 178. ---- quoted, 37-41, 116-21, 134-37, 138-40, 279-81, 284, 285, 307-11. Carnavalet, Musée, 61, 69-74. Caro-Delvalle, 177. Carolus-Duran, 176, 178. Carpeaux, 110, 225. Carrière, 105, 176, 177, 302. Carriès, 151. Carrousel, Arc de, 117-21. Cartoons in the street, 249. Cartouche, 294. Caxton, William, quoted, 57, 59, 189-91, 253-55, 289. Cazin, 152, 175, 176. Cemeteries in Paris, 315-17. Cerrito, 226. Cerutti, 245. Champions of France, 221. Champs-Elysées, 141, 142. Chanoinesse, Rue, 52. Chantilly, 318. Chardin, 70, 95, 99. Charlemagne, Passage, 298. Charles X., 300. Charmer of birds, the, 127-30. Chateaubriand, 159, 160. Chauchard Collection, 106. Chaudet, 110. Chauffeurs in Paris, 242, 243. Chaussée d'Antin, Rue de la, 245. Chavannes, Puvis de, 152, 181, 190, 193, 295. Cherubini, 226. Chifflart, 302. Childeric, 190. Chopin, 143, 178, 245, 251, 316. Christianity in Paris, 190. Church music, 289. Churches-- Blancs-Manteaux, 67. Madeleine, 188. Panthéon, 188-96. Petits Pères, 249. Sacré-Coeur, 262. St. Elizabeth of Hungary, 64. ---- Etienne-du-Mont, 193, 196-98. ---- Eugène, 251. ---- Eustache, 40, 289. ---- Germain du Pré, 163. ---- ---- l'Auxerrois, 286-88. ---- Jacques-la-Boucherie, 293. ---- Joseph de Carmes, 178. ---- Julien le Pauvre, 185. ---- Merry, 76. ---- Nicholas-des-Champs, 77. ---- Paul and St. Louis, 298. ---- Roch, 278-81, 283. ---- Severin, 185. ---- Sorbonne, 181. ---- Sulpice, 163. "Ciel," 270. Cigars in Paris, 223. Cimetières in Paris, 264, 266-70. ---- du Nord, 266-70. Claque, the, 233. Clarac collection, 110. Claude, 91, 98. Clichy, Boulevard, 270. Clocks in Paris, 22. Clotilde, 190. Clouet, 97. Clovis, 190. Cluny, Musée de, 181-84. Coligny, 286. Colonna, Vittoria, 89. Colonne de Juillet, 311, 312. Commune, the, 27, 115, 124, 217, 258, 264, 278, 285. Compas d'Or, the, 5, 6. Comte, 181. Concierge, the, 230. Conciergerie, the, 19-23. Concorde, the Place de La, 132-40. ---- Pont de la, 307. Conservatoire, the, 251. Constable, 92. Coquelin, 251, 259. Corday, Charlotte, 216. Corot, 99, 103, 105, 178, 317. Correggio, 88, 91, 95. Cosimo, Piero di, 90. Cour du Dragon, 161. Coustou, 110. Couture, 105. Coyzevox, 110. Curiosity shops, 159. _DAILY MAIL_ in Paris, 312. Dalou, 151, 175, 259. Dammouse, 176. Dancing halls, 272. Dante, 185, 187. Daubigny, 105, 317. Daudet, Alphonse, 142, 316. Daumier, 152, 302, 317. David, 99, 101, 194, 195. ---- Madame, 152. ---- G., 95. Da Vinci, Leonardo, 81-87, 318. Death and the French, 95, 315. Decamps, 103, 105. Degas, 175. Delacroix, 100, 104, 106, 178, 298, 316. Delair, Frédéric, 199-201. Delaroche, 164. Delibes, 226, 269. De Musset, 56, 282, 316. De Neuville, 177, 270. Denis, Saint, 253. Desmoulins, Camille, 171, 284, 285. Devils of Notre Dame, 51, 52. Dexter, Mr., as a tipster, 148. ---- ---- his conception of Paris, 24. Diaz, 105. Dickens, Charles, 304. Diderot and the pretty bookseller, 17. Dobson, Mr. Austin, 15, 178, 184. Dogs in Paris, 207-9. ---- cemetery, the, 208, 209. Donizetti, 226. Doré, 303. Dou, 93. Drouot, Rue, 246, 247. Dubois, 175, 193. Duel, a famous, 300. Dufayel, Maison, 264-66. Dumas, Alexandre, 62, 93, 178, 300, 303, 304, 305. ---- ---- fils, 24, 104. Duncan, Isidora, 153. Dupré, 106. Dürer, 95. Dutch School, the, 94, 95, 153. Dutuit collection, 150, 153. ECONOMY in Paris, 291, 292. Eiffel Tower, the, 50. Elizabeth, Madame, 216. Elocutionist, the, 203. Elysée, the, 276. ---- de Montmartre, 272. "Enfer," 270. Enghien, 318. English and French, 141, 227-40. Estrées, Duchesse d', 158. Etoile, Place de l', 142-45. Eustache, Saint, 290. Execution of Louis XVI., 134-37. ---- ---- Robespierre, 138-40. Eyck, J. van, 95. FABRIANO, 96. Fairs in Paris, 147, 153. Falguière, 161. Fallières, President, 252. Fantin-Latour, 104, 176, 302, 317. Faubourg Saint-Honoré, Rue du, 276. ---- Poissonière, Rue du, 252. Ferronnerie, Rue de la, 293. Fête de St. Geneviève, 197. Figuier, Rue, 297. FitzGerald, Edward, quoted, 73, 282. Flandrin, 163, 176. Flinck, 93. Flower markets, 218. Fontainebleau, 318. Fouquet, Jean, 318. Fragonard, 99. François I., 86, 87, 89, 248. François-Miron, Rue, 297. Françoise-Marguerite, 262. Francs-Bourgeois, Rue des, 61, 68, 74. Frémiet, 114, 153, 175, 179, 193, 205. French, the, 29. ---- and English, 141, 227-40. ---- Revolution, 37-41, 116-21, 134-37, 138-40, 279-81, 284, 285, 307-11. GALLAS, the, 206. Gambetta monument, 126. Gare de Lyon, 3. ---- du Nord, 3, 209. ---- St. Lazare, 3. Garnier, Charles, 225. Gautier, 270. Genée, 270. Geneviève, St., 188-92, 196, 197, 255. Genlis, Madame de, 159. Germain, Saint, 286-88. Ghirlandaios, the, 90, 95. Gibbon, 245. Giotto, 90, 129. Gladstone, 271, 302, 304. Goat-herd, the, 292. Gold and silver, 111. _Golden Legend, The_, 57, 59, 189-91, 253-55, 289. Goncourts, 270. Goujon, Jean, 110. Gounod, 143, 226. Grand Café, 220. Grandpré, Louise de, quoted, 35-37, 42-44. Grands Boulevards, 218, 219. Granié, 177. Grenelle, Rue de, 158. Greuze, 99. Grève, Place de, 293. Grévin, the Musée, 246. Grolier, 247. Gronow, Captain, quoted, 171-73. Guides, 224. Guillotine, the, 133-40. HABENECK, 226. Halévy, 270. Halles, the, 290-92. ---- des Vins, the, 201. Hals, 95. Haraucourt, M. Edmond, 183. ---- ---- translated, 257. Harpignies, 152, 176, 177. Haussmann, Boulevard, 216, 247. ---- Baron, 122, 123. Heine, Henrich, 142, 194, 266-69. Héloïse, 52, 315. Henley, W. E., 178. Henner, 151, 302. Henri II., 299. ---- IV., 12, 13, 35, 112, 264, 278, 293, 294, 300. Hérold, 226. Heyden, van der, 95, 98. Hippodrome, 271. His de la Salle collection, 80, 95, 101. Hobbema, 95, 153. Hoffbauer, 70. Horloge, the, 22. Hospital of the Trinity, 256. Hôtel de Ville, 294-96. ---- ---- ---- Rue de l', 296. ---- ---- Sens, 296. ---- des Monnaies, 167-69. Houdon, 110. Hugo, Victor, 25, 32, 48, 124, 153, 189, 298, 300-5. ---- Georges, 302. Huysmanns, quoted, 187. Hyacinthe, Père, 47. ILE de la Cité, 9-30. ---- St. Louis, the, 54-60. Imprimerie Nationale, 68. Ingres, 80, 95, 100, 163, 164. Innocents, Square des, 293. Institut, the, 166. Invalides, Hôtel des, 154-57. Isabey, 106, 226. Italiens, Boulevard des, 245, 273. JABACH, 87. Jacqueminot, Ignace, 195. Jardin d'Acclimatation, 202, 205-7. ---- des Plantes, 201-5. Jena, 214. Jeraud, 110. Joan of Arc, 114, 153, 160, 193. "Joconde, La," 81-87, 318. Joke, the one, 29, 238, 275. Joseph, Frère, 298. Josephine, the Empress, 45, 158, 174. Jouy, Rue de, 297. KARBOWSKI, 152. Key, sign of the, 162. LABLACHE, 226. Labouchere, Mr., quoted, 210-13. Lachaise, Père, 315-17. Lafayette, 317. ---- Rue, 277, 314. Laffitte, Jacques, 245. ---- Rue, 245. La Fontaine, 315. Lamartine, 303. Lamb, Charles, 285, 286. ---- Mary, 17. Lancret, 99. Landor quoted, 91. Lang, Mr. Andrew, 178. Latin Quarter, 179-81. Latude, 71-73. Lauder, Harry, 235. Laurens, 295. Law, John, 76. Le Brun, 99. Le Courtier, 175. Lecouvreur, Adrienne, 158, 164. Legros, 104, 175, 176. Le Nain, 97. Leno, Dan, 235. Lepage, Bastien, 302. Le Sidaner, 177. Letter-boxes, 223. Lippi, Fra Filippo, 90. Lisle, Leconte de, 317. Livry, Emma, 226. Liszt, 226. London and bookstalls, 14. ---- ---- Paris, 14, 24, 27, 129, 146, 154, 201, 219, 227-40, 238, 249, 273, 290-92. Longchamp, 146-49. Lotto, 91. Louis-Philippe, 121, 123, 140, 144, 312. Louis, Saint, 10, 27, 35, 47, 56-60, 65, 180. ---- XII., 248. ---- XIII., 87, 300. ---- XIV., 87, 297, 315. ---- XV., 133, 188, 248. ---- XVI., 36, 65, 115, 133, 215, 311. ---- XVIII., 46, 125, 215. Louvre, Musée du, 78-113. Lowell, J. R., quoted, 85. Loyola, 263. Lucas the failure, 221. Luini, 80, 88, 91. Luxembourg, the, 173-79. Luxor column, the, 132, 140. Lyons mail, the, 296. MADELEINE, the, 188, 214-18. Mainardi, 90. Malibran, 225. Manet, 100, 104, 152, 176. Mantegna, 91, 95. Marais, the, 61-77. Marat, 71, 195. Marcel, Etienne, 295. Marguery, 252. Marie Antoinette, 20, 21, 71, 215, 216. Marius, 221. Marly le Roi, 318. Martin, Saint, 257, 258. Martyrs, Chambre de, 159. ---- Rue des, 260. Massacre of Swiss Guards, 115-21. Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 23, 286. Massé, Victor, 226. Masson, Frédéric, 246. Maupassant, Guy de, 143. Mazarin, 247, 297. ---- Rue, 276. Medals and their designers, 169. Médicis, Catherine de, 115, 287, 288, 293, 299. ---- fountain, the, 173. ---- Marie de, 141, 294. Meilhac, 270. Meissonier, 106, 176. Memling, 95, 99. Méryon, Charles, 23, 24, 51, 303. Messina, Antonello di, 91. Metsu, 95. Meudon, 318. Meyerbeer, 226. Mi-Carême, 217, 218, 273. Michel, Georges, 70. Michelet, 316. Millet, 100, 103, 106. Mint, the Paris, 167-69. Mirabeau, 194, 245, 289. Molière, 60, 170, 282, 283, 297, 315. Monceau, Parc, 142, 143, 314. Monet, 175. Money, bad, in Paris, 168. Monnaies, Hôtel de, 167-69. "Monna Lisa," 81-87, 318. Mont de Piété, the, 66. ---- Parnasse, Cimetière, 317. ---- Valérien, 318. Montesquieu, Rue, 286. Montgomery, Captain, 294, 299. Montmartre, 245, 254, 260-75. Montorgeuil, Rue, 5, 250. Moreau collection, 103. ---- Musée, 261. Morgue, the, 54, 55. Mottez, 177. Motto, Yama, 302. Moulin-de-la-Galette, 272. ---- Rouge, 271. Moulins, Le Maître de, 97. Mousseaux, 226. Murger, Henri, 178, 180, 270. Murillo, 92. Musée de l'Armée, 154-57. ---- ---- Arts et Métiers, 258. ---- Carnavalet, 61, 69-74. ---- Cernuschi, 143. ---- de Cluny, 181-84. ---- du Conservatoire, 251. ---- Grévin, 246. ---- Guimet, 144. ---- du Louvre, 78-113. ---- de Luxembourg, 174-79. ---- Moreau, 261. ---- de l'Opéra, 225, 226. Musées des Jardin des Plantes, 204, 205. Music in Paris, 289. ---- Hall, the, in Paris, 234, 235. Musical trophies, 225, 226, 251. Musset, Alfred de, 56, 282, 316. Mystery plays, 256. NAPOLEON and the Arc de Triomphe, 144. ---- ---- ---- end of the Revolution, 279-81. ---- ---- ---- Madeleine, 214. ---- ---- ---- Old Guard, 318. ---- ---- ---- Panthéon, 188. ---- ---- ---- statue of Henri IV., 13. ---- ---- ---- Vendôme column, 278. ---- at St. Sulpice, 163. ---- his coronation, 44-46. ---- ---- early palaces, 174. ---- ---- interest in art, 112, 113. ---- ---- iron bridge, 166. ---- ---- relics, 154-57. ---- ---- second funeral, 157. ---- ---- tomb, 157. ---- ---- two Arcs, 124, 125, 126. ---- in two pictures, 101. ---- meets Josephine, 246. ---- relics at the Carnavalet, 73. ---- III., 46, 122, 123. ---- ---- rebuilds Paris, 122. Néant, Cabaret de, 270. Necker, 245. Newspapers in France, 27-30. New Year's Eve, 273. New York, 129. Ney, 316. Night cafés, 273-75. Nodier, Charles, on the book-hunter, 18. Notre Dame, 11, 26, 31-53. OFFENBACH, 269. Olivier, Père, 46. Olympia Taverne, 220. Opera, the, 48, 225. Ostade, 98. PAGANINI, 225, 251. Pailleron, 143. Painting, modern, 149. Paix, Café de la, 227-43. ---- Rue de la, 277. Palais de Justice, the, 24-26. ---- des Beaux-Arts, 150, 164, 165. ---- Royal, the, 283. Palma, 91. Panthéon, the, 188-96. Pari-Mutuel, the, 147, 148. Paris and balloons, 51. ---- ---- beggars, 263. ---- ---- Christianity, 190. ---- ---- economy, 291, 292. ---- ---- its aristocratic quarters, 62, 158. ---- ---- ---- billiard saloons, 220-22. ---- ---- ---- bird's-eye views, 145. ---- ---- ---- cemeteries, 315-17. ---- ---- ---- civic museums, 69-74. ---- ---- ---- clocks, 22. ---- ---- ---- dogs, 207-9. ---- ---- ---- early history, 9, 10. ---- ---- ---- fickleness, 216, 245. ---- ---- ---- flats, 162. ---- ---- ---- Mint, 167-69. ---- ---- ---- mobs, 32. ---- ---- ---- newspapers, 27-30. ---- ---- ---- restaurants, 7. ---- ---- ---- Royal Academy Schools, 164, 165. ---- ---- ---- royal palaces, 11. ---- ---- ---- Salons, 149. ---- ---- ---- sculpture, 126, 127. ---- ---- ---- stations, 1, 2. ---- ---- ---- statuary, 178. ---- ---- ---- two Zoos, 201. ---- ---- ---- views, 196, 264. ---- ---- ---- waiters, 238. ---- ---- late hours, 273. ---- ---- London, 14, 24, 27, 154, 201, 219, 227-40, 238, 249, 273, 290-92. ---- ---- the play, 28. ---- ---- ---- post, 223, 224. ---- ---- ---- ship, 48. ---- as Méryon saw it, 23, 24. ---- fairs, 153. ---- from Notre Dame, 11, 48, 49. ---- ---- the Eiffel Tower, 50, 51. ---- in the small hours, 273-75. ---- pleasure of entering, 1-4. ---- under siege, 209-13. Parisian, the, his provinciality, 130. Pascal, 198, 247, 293. Passy, Cimetière de, 317. Pasteur, 160. Pater, Walter, quoted, 82-84. Pawning in Paris, 66. Peacocks, the, 202-4. Père Lachaise, 264, 315-17. ---- Lunette, Le, 173. Perugino, 91. Picard, 177. Picpus, Cimetière de, 317. Pigalle, Rue, 110, 260. Pinaigriers, the, 198. Planquette, 316. Pointelin, 152. Pol, Henri, 90, 127-30. Police of Paris, the, 19, 240. Pompadour, Madame la, 283. Pompeii, treasures of, 110, 111. Pompes Funèbres, 251. Pont au Change, the, 22. ---- Alexandre III., 153. ---- de la Concorde, 307. ---- Neuf, 12. Porte Maillot, 149. ---- St. Denis, 253-56. ---- St. Martin, 256. Post, the, in Paris, 223, 224. Pot, 153. Potter, 95. Poussin, 91, 98. Préfecture de Police, the, 18. Print shops, 170. Procope, Café, 171. Prud'hon, 70 Puget, 110. QUAI des Célestins, 60. Quasimodo, 25, 48. Quatre-Septembre, Rue du, 277. RABELAIS, 297, 298. Rachel, 301, 317. Racine, 198. Raeburn, 92. Ramly, 110. Raphael, 87, 88, 91, 92, 102, 318. Ravaillac, 293, 294. Reason, Goddess of, 39, 41. ---- the Cult of, 37-41. Réaumur, Rue, 277. Récamier, Madame, 101, 159, 160,245. Religion advertised, 252. Rembrandt, 91, 92, 93, 151, 248. Renan, 270. Renaudon, 27. Renoir, 175. Republic, Third, 124. Republican palace, a, 294. Republics in statuary, 259. République, Place de la, 259. Restaurants, 6-8, 147, 173, 199-201, 244, 252, 286. Restoration, the, 123-25. Réveillon, 244, 273. Revolution, the, 33, 65, 71, 87, 113, 133-39, 178, 246, 259, 279, 281, 284, 285, 289, 300, 307-11. ---- of 1830, 296, 311, 312. Revue, the, 235, 236. Richelieu, 181, 284, 298, 300. ---- Rue de, 247, 282, 283. Riding schools, 206. Rivoli, Rue de, 277. Robespierre, 138-40, 278. Robinson, 318. Rochefoucauld, Rue, 260. Rodin, 174, 175, 177, 195. Roland, Madame, 18, 71, 245. Roman remains in Paris, 8, 31, 182, 187. Romney, 99. Rossini, 225, 226. Rothschild collection, 111. Rougemont, Cité, 251. Rousseau, J. J., 106, 193. Rubens, 91, 93, 94, 95. Rude, 110. Ruggieri, 289. Ruisdael, 95, 152. SACRÉ-COEUR, the, 245, 262. St. Antoine, Rue, 297-99. ---- Bartholomew, Massacre of, 23, 286. ---- Cloud, 318. ---- Denis, 189, 215, 318. ---- ---- Rue, 255, 256. ---- Dominic, 47. ---- Francis, 129. ---- Geneviève, 188-92, 196, 197, 255. ---- Germain, 189. ---- Honoré, Rue, 277-86. ---- Martin Priory, 257. ---- ---- Rue, 76, 257. ---- Merry, 75. ---- Peter, 75. Sainte-Beuve, 317. ---- Chapelle, 26, 27. Saints-Pères, Rue, 159, 276. ---- the mothers of, 190. Salis, Rodolphe, 271. Salons, the, 149. Samson, the headman, 137, 139. Sand, George, 178, 303. Sargent, 152. Sarto, Andrea del, 91. Scheffer, 100. Scribe, 317. Sculpture in Paris, 78, 106-10, 126, 127, 178, 259. Seine, the, 14. Sens, Hôtel de, 296. Sévigné, Madame de, 73, 301. Sèvres, 318. Sewers, the, 312. Shaftesbury Avenue, 277. Shaw, Mr. Bernard, 166. Sicard, the Abbé, 178. Siege of 1870, the, 210-13. Sisley, 152, 175. Soitoux, 259. Solario, 91. Sorbonne, the, 179-81. Steinlen, 152, 176, 271, 302. Sterne, Laurence, 16, 163. Stockbrokers in Paris, 249. Stoppeur, the, 162. Street life in Paris, 236-43. Streets, favourite, 250, 276, 277. Student life, 180. Suresnes, 149. Swiss Guards, 115-21, 216. TABARIN, Bal, 272. Tailors, political, 249. Talma, 316. Temple, the, 63. Tennyson, 304. Terburg, 95, 102, 153. Terra-cottas, 110. Thackeray, 157, 294, 304. Thames, the, 14. Thaulow, 177. Theatre, the first, 256. ---- the, in Paris, 232-34. Theatres, 28, 282. Thémines, the Marquis de, 200. Thiers, 317. ---- collection, 102. Thomas, Ambroise, 143, 269. Thomy-Thierret collection, 105, 106. Tiber, the, 109. Tintoretto, 89, 91. Tissot, 177. Titian, 88, 89, 91. Tortoni, Café, 171-73. Tour d'Argent, the, 199-201. ---- Saint-Jacques, 293. Traffic, 240. Trajan, 290. Triomphe, Arc de, 114, 142-45, 302. _Tristan und Isolde_, 292. Troyon, 70, 105, 106. Tuileries, the, 114-31. UCCELLO, 90. Uzanne, Octave, on the booksellers, 15, 16. VALOIS, Rue, 285. Van de Velde, 153. ---- Dyck, 94. Vasari, quoted, 85, 86. Véber, 152. Velasquez, 88, 101. Vendôme, Place, 277, 278. Venus of Milo, 107. Verdi, 226. Vermeer, 95. Veronese, 88, 89. Versailles, 318. Vestris, 226. Viarmes, Rue de, 288. Victor Hugo, Avenue de, 305. Vierge, 152, 302. Views in Paris, 11, 48-50, 145, 196, 262. Villebresme, Vicomte de, 297. Ville d'Avray, 318. ---- Hôtel de, 294-96. ---- ---- ---- Rue de l', 296. Vincennes, 318. Vinci, 81-87, 95, 318. Virgin, the, and the Bird, 42-44. Voisin's, 7. Vollon, 70, 177. Volney, Rue, 252. Voltaire, 71, 166, 194, 195. Vosges, Place des, 299. WAITERS, 238. Wallace, Sir Richard, 146. Watteau, 70, 95, 99, 178. Waxworks in Paris, 246. Weenix, 98. Weerts, 181. Weyden, Roger van der, 95. Whiff of Grapeshot, the, 279-81. Whistler, 104, 177. Wiertz, 261. Willette, 271, 272. Winged Victory, 78, 79, 87. Women in Paris, 219, 239, 291. ZIEM, 151. Zola, 194, 315. Zurbaran, 92. ABERDEEN: THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
38997	----	Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. The errata listed at the end of the "Embellishments" were corrected in this edition. PARIS AND THE PARISIANS IN 1835. VOL. I. Preparing for publication, by the same Author, In 3 vols. post 8vo. with 15 Characteristic Engravings. THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF JONATHAN JEFFERSON WHITLAW OR, SCENES ON THE MISSISSIPPI. PARIS AND THE PARISIANS, IN 1835. VOL. I. [Illustration: Drawn & Etched by A. Hervieu.] LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. Publisher in Ordinary to His Majesty, 1835. PARIS AND THE PARISIANS IN 1835. BY FRANCES TROLLOPE, AUTHOR OF "DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS," "TREMORDYN CLIFF," &c. "Le pire des états, c'est l'état populaire."--CORNEILLE. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET, Publisher in Ordinary to His Majesty. 1836. LONDON: PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY, Dorset Street, Fleet Street. PREFACE. From the very beginning of reading and writing--nay, doubtless from the very beginning of speaking,--TRUTH, immortal TRUTH has been the object of ostensible worship to all who read and to all who listen; and, in the abstract, it is unquestionably held in sincere veneration by all: yet, in the detail of every-day practice, the majority of mankind often hate it, and are seen to bear pain, disappointment, and sorrow more patiently than its honoured voice when it echoes not their own opinion. Preconceived notions generally take a much firmer hold of the mind than can be obtained by any statement, however clear and plain, which tends to overthrow them; and if it happen that these are connected with an honest intention of being right, they are often mistaken for principles;--in which case the attempt to shake them is considered not merely as a folly, but a sin. With this conviction strongly impressed upon my mind, it requires some moral courage to publish these volumes; for they are written in conformity to the opinions of ... perhaps none,--and, worse still, there is that in them which may be considered as contradictory to my own. Had I before my late visit to Paris written a book for the purpose of advocating the opinions I entertained on the state of the country, it certainly would have been composed in a spirit by no means according in all points with that manifested in the following pages: but while profiting by every occasion which permitted me to mix with distinguished people of all parties, I learnt much of which I was--in common, I suspect, with many others--very profoundly ignorant. I found good where I looked for mischief--strength where I anticipated weakness--and the watchful wisdom of cautious legislators, most usefully at work for the welfare of their country, instead of the crude vagaries of a revolutionary government, active only in leading blindfold the deluded populace who trusted to them. The result of this was, first a wavering, and then a change of opinion,--not as to the immutable laws which should regulate hereditary succession, or the regret that it should ever have been deemed expedient to violate them--but as to the wisest way in which the French nation, situated as it actually is, can be governed, so as best to repair the grievous injuries left by former convulsions, and most effectually to guard against a recurrence of them in future. That the present policy of France keeps these objects steadily in view, and that much wisdom and courage are at work to advance them, cannot be doubted; and those most anxious to advocate the sacred cause of well-ordered authority amongst all the nations of the earth should be the first to bear testimony to this truth. London, December 1835. CONTENTS TO THE FIRST VOLUME. LETTER I. Difficulty of giving a systematic account of what is doing in France.--Pleasure of revisiting Paris after long absence.--What is changed; what remains the same. Page 1 LETTER II. Absence of the English Embassy.--Trial of the Lyons Prisoners.--Church of the Madeleine.--Statue of Napoleon. 7 LETTER III. Slang.--Les Jeunes Gens de Paris.--La Jeune France. --Rococo.--Décousu. 12 LETTER IV. Théâtre Français.--Mademoiselle Mars.--Elmire.--'Charlotte Brown.'--Extract from a Sermon. 17 LETTER V. Exhibition of Living Artists at the Louvre.--The Deluge.--Poussin and Martin.--Portraits.--Appearance of the company. 22 LETTER VI. Society.--Morality.--False Impressions and False Reports. --Observations from a Frenchman on a recent publication. 32 LETTER VII. Alarm created by the Trial of the Lyons Prisoners.--Visits from a Republican and from a Doctrinaire: reassured by the promises of safety and protection received from the latter. 41 LETTER VIII. Eloquence of the Pulpit.--L'Abbé Coeur.--Sermon at St. Roch.--Elegant Congregation.--Costume of the younger Clergy. 50 LETTER IX. Literature of the Revolutionary School.--Its low estimation in France. 59 LETTER X. Lonchamps.--The "Three Hours' Agony" at St. Roch.--Sermons on the Gospel of Good-Friday.--Prospects of the Catholics. --O'Connell. 66 LETTER XI. Trial Chamber at the Luxembourg.--Institute.--M. Mignet. --Concert Musard. 76 LETTER XII. Easter-Sunday at Notre Dame.--Archbishop.--View of Paris.--Victor Hugo.--Hôtel Dieu.--Mr. Jefferson. 83 LETTER XIII. "Le Monomane". 91 LETTER XIV. The Gardens of the Tuileries.--Legitimatist.--Republican. --Doctrinaire.--Children.--Dress of the Ladies.--Of the Gentlemen.--Black Hair.--Unrestricted Admission.--Anecdote. 101 LETTER XV. Street Police.--Cleaning Beds.--Tinning Kettles.--Building Houses.--Loading Carts.--Preparing for the Scavenger.--Want of Drains.--Bad Pavement.--Darkness. 112 LETTER XVI. Preparations for the Fête du Roi.--Arrival of Troops.--Champs Elysées.--Concert in the Garden of the Tuileries.--Silence of the People.--Fireworks. 120 LETTER XVII. Political chances.--Visit from a Republican.--His high spirits at the prospects before him.--His advice to me respecting my name.--Removal of the Prisoners from Ste. Pélagie.--Review.--Garde de Paris.--The National Guard. 130 LETTER XVIII. First Day of the Trials.--Much blustering, but no riot.--All alarm subsided.--Proposal for inviting Lord B----m to plead at the Trial.--Society.--Charm of idle conversation. --The Whisperer of good stories. 141 LETTER XIX. Victor Hugo.--Racine. 151 LETTER XX. Versailles.--St. Cloud. 170 LETTER XXI. History of the Vicomte de B----. His opinions.--State of France.--Expediency. 180 LETTER XXII. Père Lachaise.--Mourning in public.--Defacing the Tomb of Abelard and Eloïsa.--Baron Munchausen.--Russian Monument.--Statue of Manuel. 189 LETTER XXIII. Remarkable People.--Distinguished People.--Metaphysical Lady. 196 LETTER XXIV. Expedition to the Luxembourg.--No admittance for Females.--Portraits of "Henri."--Republican Costume.--Quai Voltaire.--Mural Inscriptions.--Anecdote of Marshal Lobau.--Arrest. 206 LETTER XXV. Chapelle Expiatoire.--Devotees seen there.--Tri-coloured flag out of place there.--Flower Market of the Madeleine. --Petites Maîtresses. 220 LETTER XXVI. Delicacy in France and in England.--Causes of the difference between them. 227 LETTER XXVII. Objections to quoting the names of private individuals. --Impossibility of avoiding Politics.--_Parceque_ and _Quoique_.--Soirée Antithestique. 237 LETTER XXVIII. New Publications.--M. de Lamartine's "Souvenirs, Impressions, Pensées, et Paysages."--Tocqueville and Beaumont.--New American regulation.--M. Scribe.--Madame Tastu.--Reception of different Writers in society. 249 LETTER XXIX. Sunday in Paris.--Family Groups.--Popular Enjoyment. --Polytechnic Students.--Their resemblance to the figure of Napoleon.--Enduring attachment to the Emperor. --Conservative spirit of the English Schools.--Sunday in the Gardens of the Tuileries.--Religion of the Educated. --Popular Opinion. 257 LETTER XXX. Madame Récamier.--Her Morning Parties.--Gérard's Picture of Corinne.--Miniature of Madame de Staël.--M. de Châteaubriand.--Conversation on the degree in which the French Language is understood by Foreigners.--The necessity of speaking French. 269 LETTER XXXI. Exhibition of Sèvres China at the Louvre.--Gobelins and Beauvais Tapestry.--Legitimatist Father and Doctrinaire Son.--Copies from the Medicean Gallery. 281 LETTER XXXII. Eglise Apostolique Française.--Its doctrine.--L'Abbé Auzou. --His Sermon on "les Plaisirs Populaires." 290 LETTER XXXIII. Establishment for Insane Patients at Vanves.--Description of the arrangements.--Englishman.--His religious madness. 307 LETTER XXXIV. Riot at the Porte St. Martin.--Prevented by a shower of Rain.--The Mob in fine weather.--How to stop Emeutes. --Army of Italy.--Théâtre Français.--Mademoiselle Mars in Henriette.--Disappearance of Comedy. 319 LETTER XXXV. Soirée dansante.--Young Ladies.--Old Ladies.--Anecdote.--The Consolations of Chaperones.--Flirtations.--Discussion upon the variations between young Married Women in France and in England.--Making love by deputy.--Not likely to answer in England. 329 LETTER XXXVI. Improvements of Paris.--Introduction of Carpets and Trottoirs.--Maisonnettes.--Not likely to answer in Paris. --The necessity of a Porter and Porter's Lodge.--Comparative Expenses of France and England.--Increasing Wealth of the Bourgeoisie. 347 LETTER XXXVII. Horrible Murder.--La Morgue.--Suicides.--Vanity. --Anecdote.--Influence of Modern Literature.--Different appearance of Poverty in France and England. 358 LETTER XXXVIII. Opéra Comique.--"Cheval de Bronze."--"La Marquise." --Impossibility of playing Tragedy.--Mrs. Siddons's Readings.--Mademoiselle Mars has equal power.--_Laisser aller_ of the Female Performers.--Decline of Theatrical Taste among the Fashionable. 371 LETTER XXXIX. The Abbé de Lamennais.--Cobbett.--O'Connell.--Napoleon. --Robespierre. 381 LETTER XL. Which Party is it ranks second in the estimation of all?--No Caricatures against the Exiles.--Horror of a Republic. 389 LETTER XLI. M. Dupré.--His Drawings in Greece.--L'Eglise des Carmes.--M. Vinchon's Picture of the National Convention. --Léopold Robert's Fishermen.--Reported cause of his Suicide.--Roman Catholic Religion.--Mr. Daniel O'Connell. 400 LETTER XLII. Old Maids.--Rarely to be found in France.--The reasons for this. 408 EMBELLISHMENTS TO THE FIRST VOLUME. Louvre Page 30 Morning at the Tuileries Gardens 106 "Pro Patria" 140 "Ce soir, à la Porte St. Martin."--"J'y serai." 218 Tuileries Gardens (on Sunday) 264 Porte St. Martin 322 P. 155, line 2, _read_ given--P. 224, line 23, _read_ new. PARIS AND THE PARISIANS IN 1835. LETTER I. Difficulty of giving a systematic account of what is doing in France.--Pleasure of revisiting Paris after long absence.--What is changed; what remains the same. Paris, 11th April 1835. MY DEAR FRIEND, In visiting Paris it certainly was my intention to describe in print what I saw and heard there; and to do this as faithfully as possible, I proposed to continue my old habit of noting in my journal all things, great and small, in which I took an interest. But the task frightens me. I have been here but a few days, and I already find myself preaching and prosing at much greater length than I approve: I already feel that I am involved in such a mizmaze of interesting subjects, that to give anything like an orderly and well-arranged digest of them, would beguile me into attempting a work greatly beyond my power to execute. The very most I can hope to do will be but to "skim lightly over the surface of things;" and in addressing myself to you, I shall feel less as if I were about to be guilty of the presumption of writing "a work on France," than if I threw my notes into a less familiar form. I will then discourse to you, as well as I may, of such things as leave the deepest impression among the thousand sights and sounds in the midst of which I am now placed. Should it be our will hereafter that these letters pass from your hands into those of the public, I trust that nobody will be so unmerciful as to expect that they shall make them acquainted with everything past, present, and to come, "respecting the destinies of this remarkable country." It must indeed be a bold pen that attempts to write of "Young France," as it is at present the fashion to call it, with anything like a reasonable degree of order and precision, while still surrounded by all the startling novelties she has to show. To reason of what she has done, what she is doing, and--more difficult still--of what she is about to do, would require a steadier head than most persons can command, while yet turning and twisting in all directions to see what this Young France looks like. In truth, I am disposed to believe that whatever I write about it will be much in the style of the old conundrum-- "I saw a comet rain down hail I saw a cloud" &c. And here you will remember, that though the things seen are stated in the most simple and veracious manner, much of the meaning is occult, depending altogether upon the stopping or pointing of the narrative. This stopping or pointing I must leave to you, or any other readers I may happen to have, and confine myself to the plain statement of "I saw;" for though it is sufficiently easy to see and to hear, I feel extremely doubtful if I shall always be able to understand. It is just seven years and seven months since I last visited the capital of the "Great Nation." The interval is a long one, as a portion of human life; but how short does it appear when the events that it has brought forth are contemplated! I left the white banner of France floating gaily over her palaces, and I find it torn down and trampled in the dust. The renowned lilies, for so many ages the symbol of chivalric bravery, are everywhere erased; and it should seem that the once proud shield of St. Louis is soiled, broken, and reversed for ever. But all this was old. France is grown young again; and I am assured that, according to the present condition of human judgment, everything is exactly as it should be. Knighthood, glory, shields, banners, faith, loyalty, and the like, are gone out of fashion; and they say it is only necessary to look about me a little, to perceive how remarkably well the present race of Frenchmen can do without them;--an occupation, it is added, which I shall find much more profitable and amusing than lamenting over the mouldering records of their ancient greatness. The good sense of this remonstrance is so evident, that I am determined henceforth to profit by it; remembering, moreover, that, as an Englishwoman, I have certainly no particular call to mourn over the fading honours of my country's rival. So in future I shall turn my eyes as much as I can from the tri-coloured flag--(those three stripes are terribly false heraldry)--and only think of amusing myself; a business never performed anywhere with so much ease as at Paris. Since I last saw it, I have journeyed half round the globe; but nothing I have met in all my wanderings has sufficed to damp the pleasure with which I enter again this gay, bright, noisy, restless city,--this city of the living, as beyond all others it may be justly called. And where, in truth, can anything be found that shall make its air of ceaseless jubilee seem tame?--or its thousand depôts of all that is prettiest in art, lose by comparison with any other pretty things in the wide world? Where do all the externals of happiness meet the eye so readily?--or where can the heavy spirit so easily be roused to seek and find enjoyment? Cold, worn-out, and dead indeed must the heart be that does not awaken to some throb of pleasure when Paris, after long absence, comes again in sight! For though a throne has been overturned, the Tuileries still remain;--though the main stock of a right royal tree has been torn up, and a scion sprung from one of the roots, that had run, wildly enough, to a distance, has been barricaded in, and watered, and nurtured, and fostered into power and strength of growth to supply its place, the Boulevards, with their matchless aspect of eternal holiday, are still the same. No commotion, however violent, has yet been able to cause this light but precious essence of Parisian attractiveness to evaporate; and while the very foundations of society have been shaken round them, the old elms go on, throwing their flickering shadows upon a crowd that--allowing for some vagaries of the milliner and tailor--might be taken for the very same, and no other, which has gladdened the eye and enlivened the imagination since first their green boughs beckoned all that was fairest and gayest in Paris to meet together beneath them. Whilst this is the case, and while sundry other enchantments that may be named in their turn continue to proclaim that Paris is Paris still, it would be silly quarrelling with something better than bread-and-butter, did we spend the time of our abode here in dreaming of what has been, instead of opening our eyes and endeavouring to be as much awake as possible to look upon all that is. Farewell! LETTER II. Absence of the English Embassy.--Trial of the Lyons Prisoners.--Church of the Madeleine.--Statue of Napoleon. It may be doubtful, perhaps, whether the present period[1] be more favourable or unfavourable for the arrival of English travellers at Paris. The sort of interregnum which has taken place in our embassy here deprives us of the centre round which all that is most gay among the English residents usually revolves; but, on the other hand, the approaching trial of the Lyons prisoners and their Parisian accomplices is stirring up from the very bottom all the fermenting passions of the nation. Every principle, however quietly and unobtrusively treasured,--every feeling, however cautiously concealed,--is now afloat; and the most careless observer may expect to see, with little trouble, the genuine temper of the people. The genuine temper of the people?--Nay, but this phrase must be mended ere it can convey to you any idea of what is indeed likely to be made visible; for, as it stands, it might intimate that the people were of one temper; and anything less like the truth than this cannot easily be imagined. The temper of the people of Paris upon the subject of this "atrocious trial," as all parties not connected with the government are pleased to call it, varies according to their politics,--from rage and execration to ecstasy and delight--from indifference to enthusiasm--from triumph to despair. It will be impossible, my friend, to ramble up and down Paris for eight or nine weeks, with a note-book in my hand, without recurring again and again to a theme that meets us in every _salon_, murmurs through the corridors of every theatre, glares from the eyes of the republican, sneers from the lip of the doctrinaire, and in some shape or other crosses our path, let it lead in what direction it may. This being inevitable, the monster must be permitted to protrude its horns occasionally; nor must I bear the blame should it sometimes appear to you a very tedious and tiresome monster indeed. Having announced that its appearance may be frequently expected, I will leave you for the present in the same state of expectation respecting it that we are in ourselves; and, while we are still safe from its threatened violence, indulge in a little peaceable examination of the still-life part of the picture spread out before me. The first objects that struck me as new on re-entering Paris, or rather as changed since I last saw them, were the Column of the Place Vendôme, and the finished Church of the Madeleine. Finished indeed! Did Greece ever show any combination of stones and mortar more graceful, more majestic than this? If she did, it was in the days of her youth; for, poetical association apart, and the unquestionably great pleasure of learned investigation set aside, no ruin can possibly meet the eye with such perfect symmetry of loveliness, or so completely fill and satisfy the mind, as does this modern temple. Why might not our National Gallery have risen as noble, as simple, as beautiful as this? As for the other novelty--the statue of the sometime Emperor of the French, I suspect that I looked up at it with rather more approbation than became an Englishwoman. But in truth, though the name of Napoleon brings with it reminiscences which call up many hostile feelings, I can never find myself in Paris without remembering his good, rather than his terrible actions. Perhaps, too, as one gazes on this brazen monument of his victories, there may be something soothing in the recollection that the bold standard he bore never for an instant wantoned on a British breeze. However, putting sentiment and personal feeling of every kind apart, so much that is admirable in Paris owes its origin to him, that his ambition and his usurpations are involuntarily forgotten, and the use made of his ill-gotten power almost obliterates the lawless tyranny of the power itself. The appearance of his statue, therefore, on the top of the column formed of the cannon taken by the armies of France when fighting under his command, appeared to me to be the result of an arrangement founded upon perfect propriety and good taste. When his effigy was torn down some twenty years ago by the avenging hands of the Allies, the act was one both of moral justice and of natural feeling; and that the rightful owners of the throne he had seized should never have replaced it, can hardly be matter of surprise: but that it should now again be permitted to look down upon the fitful fortunes of the French people, has something of historic propriety in it which pleases the imagination. This statue of Napoleon offers the only instance I remember in which that most grotesque of European habiliments, a cocked-hat, has been immortalized in marble or in bronze with good effect. The original statue, with its flowing outline of Roman drapery, was erected by a feeling of pride; but this portrait of him has the every-day familiar look that could best satisfy affection. Instead of causing the eye to turn away as it does from some faithful portraitures of modern costume with positive disgust, this _chapeau à trois cornes_, and the well-known loose _redingote_, have that air of picturesque truth in them which is sure to please the taste even where it does not touch the heart. To the French themselves this statue is little short of an idol. Fresh votive wreaths are perpetually hung about its pedestal; and little draperies of black crape, constantly renewed, show plainly how fondly his memory is still cherished. While Napoleon was still among them, the halo of his military glory, bright as it was, could not so dazzle the eyes of the nation but that some portentous spots were discerned even in the very nucleus of that glory itself; but now that it shines upon them across his tomb, it is gazed at with an enthusiasm of devoted affection which mixes no memory of error with its regrets. It would, I think, be very difficult to find a Frenchman, let his party be what it might, who would speak of Napoleon with disrespect. I one day passed the foot of his gorgeous pedestal in company with a legitimate _sans reproche_, who, raising his eyes to the statue, said--"Notre position, Madame Trollope, est bien dure: nous avons perdu le droit d'être fidèles, sans avoir plus celui d'être fiers." FOOTNOTE: [1] April 1835. LETTER III. Slang.--Les Jeunes Gens de Paris.--La Jeune France.--Rococo.--Décousu. I suppose that, among all people and at all times, a certain portion of what we call slang will insinuate itself into familiar colloquial intercourse, and sometimes even dare to make its unsanctioned accents heard from the tribune and the stage. It appears to me, I confess, that France is at present taking considerable liberties with her mother-tongue. But this is a subject which requires for its grave discussion a native critic, and a learned one too. I therefore can only venture distantly and doubtingly to allude to it, as one of the points at which it appears to me that innovation is visibly and audibly at work. I know it may be said that every additional word, whether fabricated or borrowed, adds something to the riches of the language; and no doubt it does so. But there is a polished grace, a finished elegance in the language of France, as registered in the writings of her Augustan age, which may well atone for the want of greater copiousness, with which it has been sometimes reproached. To increase its strength, by giving it coarseness, would be like exchanging a high-mettled racer for a dray-horse. A brewer would tell you, that you gained in power what you lost in grace: it may be so; but there are many, I think, even in this age of operatives and utilitarians, who would regret the change. This is a theme, however, as I have said before, on which I should not feel myself justified in saying much. None should pretend to examine, or at any rate to discuss critically, the niceties of idiom in a language that is not native to them. But, distinct from any such presumptuous examination, there are words and phrases lawfully within the reach of foreign observation, which strike me as remarkable at the present day, either from their frequent recurrence, or for something of unusual emphasis in the manner in which they are employed. _Les jeunes gens de Paris_ appears to me to be one of these. Translate it, and you find nothing but "the young men of Paris;" which should seem to have no more imposing meaning than "the young men of London," or of any other metropolis. But hear it spoken at Paris--Mercy on me! it sounds like a thunderbolt. It is not only loud and blustering, however; you feel that there is something awful--nay, mystical, implied by the phrase. It appears solemnly to typify the power, the authority, the learning--ay, and the wisdom too, of the whole nation. _La Jeune France_ is another of these cabalistic forms of speech, by which everybody seems expected to understand something great, terrible, volcanic, and sublime. At present, I confess that both of these, pronounced as they always are with a sort of mysterious emphasis, which seems to say that "more is meant than meets the ear," produce rather a paralysing effect upon me. I am conscious that I do not clearly comprehend all the meaning with which they are pregnant, and yet I am afraid to ask, lest the explanation should prove either more unintelligible or more alarming than even the words themselves. I hope, however, that ere long I shall grow more intelligent or less timid; and whenever this happens, and I conceive that I fully comprehend their occult meaning, I will not fail to transmit it faithfully to you. Besides these phrases, and some others that I may perhaps mention hereafter as difficult to understand, I have learned a word quite new to me, and which I suspect has but very recently been introduced into the French language; at least, it is not to be found in the dictionaries, and I therefore presume it to be one of those happy inventions which are permitted from time to time to enrich the power of expression. How the Academy of former days might have treated it, I know not; but it seems to me to express a great deal, and might at this time, I think, be introduced very conveniently into our own language: at any rate, it may often help me, I think, as a very useful adjective. This new-born word is "_rococo_," and appears to me to be applied by the young and innovating to everything which bears the stamp of the taste, principles, or feelings of time past. That part of the French population to whom the epithet of _rococo_ is thus applied, may be understood to contain all varieties of old-fashionism, from the gentle advocate for laced coats and diamond sword-knots, up to the high-minded venerable loyalist, who only loves his rightful king the better because he has no means left to requite his love. Such is the interpretation of _rococo_ in the mouth of a doctrinaire: but if a republican speaks it, he means that it should include also every gradation of orderly obedience, even to the powers that be; and, in fact, whatever else may be considered as essentially connected either with law or gospel. There is another adjective which appears also to recur so frequently as fully to merit, in the same manner, the distinction of being considered as fashionable. It is, however, a good old legitimate word, admirably expressive too, and at present of more than ordinary utility. This is "_décousu_;" and it seems to be the epithet now given by the sober-minded to all that smacks of the rambling nonsense of the new school of literature, and of all those fragments of opinions which hang so loosely about the minds of the young men who discourse fashionably of philosophy at Paris. Were the whole population to be classed under two great divisions, I doubt if they could be more expressively designated than by these two appellations, the _décousu_ and the _rococo_. I have already stated who it is that form the _rococo_ class: the _décousu_ division may be considered as embracing the whole of the ultra-romantic school of authors, be they novelists, dramatists, or poets; all shades of republicans, from the avowed eulogists of the "spirited Robespierre" to the gentler disciples of Lamennais; most of the schoolboys, and all the _poissardes_ of Paris. LETTER IV. Théâtre Français.--Mademoiselle Mars.--Elmire.--Charlotte Brown.--Extract from a Sermon. It was not without some expectation of having "Guilty of rococoism" recorded against me, that I avowed, very soon after my arrival, the ardent desire I felt of turning my eyes from all that was new, that I might once again see Mars perform the part of Elmire in the "Tartuffe." I was not quite without fear, too, that I was running some risk of effacing the delightful recollections of the past, by contemplating the change which seven years had made. I almost feared to let my children behold a reality that might destroy their _beau idéal_ of the only perfect actress still remaining on the stage. But "Tartuffe" was on the bills: it might not soon appear again; an early dinner was hastily dispatched, and once more I found myself before the curtain which I had so often seen rise to Talma, Duchenois, and Mars. I perceived with great pleasure on reaching the theatre, that the Parisians, though fickle in all else, were still faithful in their adoration of Mademoiselle Mars: for now, for perhaps the five hundredth representation of her Elmire, the barricades were as necessary, the _queue_ as long and as full, as when, fifteen years ago, I was first told to remark the wonderful power of attraction possessed by an actress already greatly past the first bloom of youth and beauty. Were the Parisians as defensible in their ordinary love of change as they are in this singular proof of fidelity, it would be well. It is, however, strange witchery. That the ear should be gratified, and the feelings awakened, by the skilful intonations of a voice the sweetest perhaps that ever blest a mortal, is quite intelligible; but that the eye should follow with such unwearied delight every look and movement of a woman, not only old--for that does sometimes happen at Paris--but one known to be so from one end of Europe to the other, is certainly a singular phenomenon. Yet so it is; and could you see her, you would understand why, though not how, it is so. There is still a charm, a grace, in every movement of Mademoiselle Mars, however trifling and however slight, which instantly captivates the eye, and forbids it to wander to any other object--even though that object be young and lovely. Why is it that none of the young heads can learn to turn like hers? Why can no arms move with the same beautiful and easy elegance? Her very fingers, even when gloved, seem to aid her expression; and the quietest and least posture-studying of actresses contrives to make the most trifling and ordinary movement assist in giving effect to her part. I would willingly consent to be dead for a few hours, if I could meanwhile bring Molière to life, and let him see Mars play one of his best-loved characters. How delicious would be his pleasure in beholding the creature of his own fancy thus exquisitely alive before him; and of marking, moreover, the thrill that makes itself heard along the closely-packed rows of the parterre, when his wit, conveyed by this charming conductor, runs round the house like the touch of electricity! Do you think that the best smile of Louis le Grand could be worth this? Few theatrical pieces can, I think, be calculated to give less pleasure than that of "Charlotte Brown," which followed the "Tartuffe;" but as the part of Charlotte is played by Mademoiselle Mars, people will stay to see it. I repented however that I did not go, for it made me cross and angry. Such an actress as Mars should not be asked to try a _tour de force_ in order to make an abortive production effective. And what else can it be called, if her touching pathos and enchanting grace are brought before the public, to make them endure a platitude that would have been hissed into oblivion ere it had well seen light without her? It is hardly fair to expect that a performer should create as well as personate the chief character of a piece; but Mademoiselle Mars certainly does nothing less, when she contrives to excite sympathy and interest for a low-born and low-minded woman, who has managed to make a great match by telling a great falsehood. Yet "Charlotte Brown" is worth seeing for the sake of a certain tragic look given by this wonderful actress at the moment when her falsehood is discovered. It is no exaggeration to say, that Mrs. Siddons never produced an expression of greater power. It is long since I have seen any theatre so crowded. I remember many years ago hearing what I thought an excellent sermon from a venerable rector, who happened to have a curate more remarkable for the conscientious manner in which he performed his duty to the parish, and the judicious selection of his discourses, than for the excellence of his original sermons. "It is the duty of a minister," said the old man, "to address the congregation which shall assemble to hear him with the most impressive and most able eloquence that it is within the compass of his power to use; and far better is it that the approved wisdom of those who have passed away be read from the pulpit, than that the weak efforts of an ungifted preacher should fall wearily and unprofitably on the ears of his congregation. The fact that his discourse is manuscript, instead of printed, will hardly console them for the difference." Do you not think--with all reverence be it spoken--that the same reasoning might be very usefully addressed to the managers of theatres, not in France only, but all the world over? If it cost too much to have a good new piece, would it not be better to have a good old one? LETTER V. Exhibition of Living Artists at the Louvre.--The Deluge.--Poussin and Martin.--Portraits.--Appearance of the company. I have been so little careful about dates and seasons, as totally to have forgotten, or rather neglected to learn, that the period of our arriving at Paris was that of the Exhibition of Living Artists at the Louvre: and it is not easy to describe the feeling produced by entering the gallery, with the expectation of seeing what I had been used to see there, and finding what was, at least, so very different. Nevertheless, the exhibition is a very fine one, and so greatly superior to any I had heretofore seen of the modern French school, that we soon had the consolation of finding ourselves amused, and I may say delighted, notwithstanding our disappointment. But surely there never was a device hit upon so little likely to propitiate the feelings which generate applause, as this of covering up Poussin, Rubens, Raphael, Titian, and Correggio, by hanging before them the fresh results of modern palettes. It is indeed a most un-coquettish mode of extorting attention. There are some pictures of the Louvre Gallery in particular, with which my children are well acquainted, either by engravings or description, whose eclipse produced a very sad effect. "The Deluge" of Poussin is one of these. Perhaps it may have been my brother's striking description of this picture which made it pre-eminently an object of interest to us. You may remember that Mr. Milton, in his elegant and curious little volume on the Fine Arts, written at Paris just before the breaking up of Napoleon's collection, says in speaking of it--"Colouring was unquestionably Poussin's least excellence; yet in this collection there is one of his pictures--the Deluge--in which the effect produced by the mere colouring is most singular and powerful. The air is burdened and heavy with water; the earth, where it is not as yet overwhelmed, seems torn to pieces by its violence: the very light of heaven is absorbed and lost." I give you this passage, because I remember no picture described with equal brevity, yet brought so powerfully before the imagination of the reader. Can the place where one comes to look for this be favourable for hanging our illustrious countryman's representation of the same subject? It is doing him a most ungratifying honour; and were I Mr. Martin, or any other painter living, I would not consent to be exposed to the invidious comparisons which must inevitably ensue from such an injudicious arrangement. How exceedingly disagreeable, for instance, must it be for the artists--who, I believe, not unfrequently indulge themselves by hovering under the incognito of apparent indifference near their favourite works--to overhear such remarks as those to which I listened yesterday in that part of the gallery where Le Sueur's St. Brunos hang!--"Certainly, the bows on that lady's dress are of a delicate blue," said the critic; "and so is the drapery of Le Sueur, which, for my sins, I happen to know is hid just under it.... Would one wish a better contrast to what it hides, than that unmeaning smile--that cold, smooth, varnished skin,--those lifeless limbs, and the whole unspeakable tameness of this thing, called _portrait d'une dame_?" He spoke truly; yet was there but little point in what he said, for it might have referred with equal justice to many a pretty lady doomed to simper for ever in her gilded frame. On the whole, however, portraits are much less oppressively predominating than with us; and among them are many whose size, composition, and exquisite style of finishing redeem them altogether from the odium of being _de trop_ in the collection. I cannot but wish that this style of portrait-painting may find favour and imitation in England. Lawrence is gone; and though Gérard on this side of the water, and indeed too many to rehearse on both, are left, whose portraitures of the human face are admirable; true to nature; true to art; true to expression,--true, even to the want of it; I am greatly inclined to believe that the enormous sums annually expended on these clever portraits contribute more to lower than to raise the art in popularity and in the genuine estimation of the public. The sums thus lavished may be termed patronage, certainly; but it is patronage that bribes the artist to the restraint, and often to the destruction, of his genius. Is there, in fact, any one who can honestly deny that a splendid exhibition-room, crowded with ladies and gentlemen on canvass, as large as life, is a lounge of great tediousness and inanity? We may feel some satisfaction in recognising at a glance the eyes, nose, mouth, and chin of many of our friends and acquaintance,--nay, our most critical judgment may often acknowledge that these familiar features are registered with equal truth and skill; but this will not prevent the exhibition from being very dull. Nor is the thing much mended when each portrait, or pair of portraits, has been withdrawn from the gaudy throng, and hung up for ever and for ever before the eyes of their family and friends. The fair lady, sweetly smiling in one division of the apartment, and the well-dressed gentleman looking _distingué_ in another, contribute as little at home as they did when suspended on the walls of the academy to the real pleasure and amusement of the beholder. At the exhibition this year at the Louvre are many exquisite full-length portraits in oil, of which the canvass measures from eighteen inches to a foot in height, and from a foot to ten inches in width. The composition and style of these beautiful little pictures are often such as to detain one long before them, even though one does not recognise in them the features of an acquaintance. Their unobtrusive size must prevent their ever being disagreeably predominant in the decoration of a room; while their delicate and elaborate finish, and the richness of their highly-studied composition, will well reward attention; and even the closest examination, when directed to them, either by politeness, affection, or connoisseurship, can never be disappointed. The Catalogue of the exhibition notices all the pictures which have been either ordered or purchased by the king or any of the royal family; and the number is so considerable as to show plainly that the most liberal and widely-extended patronage of art is a systematic object with the government. The gold medal of the year has been courteously bestowed upon Mr. Martin for his picture of the Deluge. Had I been the judge, I should have awarded it to Stuben's Battle of Waterloo. That the faculty of imagination is one of the highest requisites for a painter is most certain; and that Mr. Martin pre-eminently possesses it, not less so. But imagination, though it can do much, cannot do all; and common sense is at least equally important in the formation of a finished artist. The painter of the great day of Waterloo has both. His imagination has enabled him to dive into the very hearts and souls of the persons he has depicted. Passion speaks in every line; and common sense has taught him, that, however powerful--nay, vehement, might be the expression he sought to produce, it must be obtained rather by the patient and faithful imitation of Nature than by a bold defiance of her. The Assassination of the Duc de Guise, by M. Delaroche, is an admirable and highly popular work. It requires some patient perseverance to contest inch by inch the slow approach to the place where this exquisite piece of finishing is hung--but it well rewards the time and labour. One or two lovely little pictures by Franquelin made me envy those who have power to purchase, and sigh to think that they will probably go into private collections, where I shall never see them more. There are, indeed, many pictures so very good, that I think it possible the judges may have relieved themselves from the embarrassment of declaring which was best, by politely awarding the palm to the stranger. I could indulge myself, did I not fear to weary you, by dwelling much longer upon my agreeable recollections of this extensive exhibition--containing, by the way, 2,174 pictures,--and might particularise many very admirable works. Nevertheless, I must repeat, that thus hiding the precious labours of all schools, and of all ages of painting, by the promiscuous productions of the living artists of France during the last year, is a most injudicious device for winning for them the golden opinions of those who throng from all quarters of the world to visit the Louvre. This exhibition reaches to about three-fourths of the gallery; and where it ceases, a grim curtain, suspended across it, conceals the precious labours of the Spanish and Italian schools, which occupy the farther end. Can anything be imagined more tantalising than this? And where is the living artist who could stand his ground against such cruel odds? To render the effect more striking still, this dismal curtain is permitted so to hang as to leave a few inches between its envious amplitude and the rich wall--suffering the mellow browns of a well-known Murillo to meet and mock the eye. Certainly not all the lecturers of all the academies extant could point out a more effectual manner of showing the modern French artist wherein he chiefly fails: let us hope he will profit by it. As I am writing of Paris, it must be almost superfluous to say that the admission to this collection is gratis. I cannot quit the subject without adding a few words respecting the company, or at least a part of it, whose appearance, I thought, gave very unequivocal marks of the march of mind and of indecorum;--for a considerable sprinkling of very particularly greasy citizens and citizenesses made itself felt and seen at every point where the critical crowd was thickest. But-- "Sweetest nut hath sourest rind;" and it were treason here, I suppose, to doubt that such a proportion of intellect and refinement lies hid under the soiled _blouse_ and time-worn petticoat, as is at least equal to any that we may hope to find enveloped in lawn, and lace, and broadcloth. It is an incontrovertible fact, I think, that when the immortals of Paris raised the barricades in the streets, they pulled them down, more or less, in society. But this is an evil which those who look beyond the present hour for their sources of joy and sorrow need not deeply lament. Nature herself--at least such as she shows herself, when man, forsaking the forest, agrees with his fellows to congregate in cities--Nature herself will take care to set this right again. "Strength will be lord of imbecility;" and were all men equal in the morning, they would not go to rest till some amongst them had been thoroughly made to understand that it was their lot to strew the couches of the rest. Such is the law of nature; and mere brute numerical strength will no more enable a mob to set it aside, than it will enable the ox or the elephant to send us to plough, or draw out our teeth to make their young one's toys. For the present moment, however, some of the rubbish that the commotion of "the Ordonnances" stirred up may still be seen floating about on the surface; and it is difficult to observe without a smile in what chiefly consists the liberty which these immortals have so valiantly bled to acquire. We may truly say of the philosophical population of Paris, that "they are thankful for small matters;" one of the most remarkable of their newly-acquired rights being certainly the privilege of presenting themselves dirty, instead of clean, before the eyes of their magnates. [Illustration: Drawn & Etched by A. Hervieu. LOUVRE. London, Published by Richard Bentley, 1835.] I am sure you must remember in days of yore,--that is to say, before the last revolution,--how very agreeable a part of the spectacle at the Louvre and in the Tuileries Gardens was constituted by the people,--not the ladies and gentlemen--they look pretty much the same everywhere; but by the careful coquetry of the pretty costumes, now a _cauchoise_, and now a _toque_,--the spruce neatness of the men who attended them,--nay, even by the tight and tidy trimness of the "wee things" that in long waist, silk apron, snow-white cap, and faultless _chaussure_, trotted beside them. All these added greatly to the pleasantness and gaiety of the scene. But now, till the fresh dirt (not the fresh gloss) of the Three Days' labour be worn off, dingy jackets, uncomely _casquettes_, ragged _blouses_, and ill-favoured round-eared caps, that look as if they did duty night and day, must all be tolerated; and in this toleration appears to consist at present the principal external proof of the increased liberty of the Parisian mob. LETTER VI. Society.--Morality.--False Impressions and False Reports.--Observations from a Frenchman on a recent publication. Much as I love the sights of Paris,--including as we must under this term all that is great and enduring, as well as all that is for ever changing and for ever new,--I am more earnestly bent, as you will readily believe, upon availing myself of all my opportunities for listening to the conversation within the houses, than on contemplating all the marvels that may be seen without. Joyfully, therefore, have I welcomed the attention and kindness that have been offered me in various quarters; and I have already the satisfaction of finding myself on terms of most pleasant and familiar intercourse with a variety of very delightful people, many of them highly distinguished, and, happily for me, varying in their opinions of all things both in heaven and earth, from the loftiest elevation of the _rococo_, to the lowest profundity of the _décousu_ school. And here let me pause, to assure you, and any other of my countrymen and countrywomen whose ears I can reach, that excursions to Paris, be they undertaken with what spirit of enterprise they may, and though they may be carried through with all the unrestrained expense that English wealth can permit, yet without the power by some means or other of entering into good French society, they are nothing worth. It is true, that there is something most exceedingly exhilarating to the spirits in the mere external novelty and cheerfulness of the objects which surround a stranger on first entering Paris. That indescribable air of gaiety which makes every sunshiny day look like a fête; the light hilarity of spirit that seems to pervade all ranks; the cheerful tone of voice, the sparkling glances of the numberless bright eyes; the gardens, the flowers, the statues of Paris,--all together produce an effect very like enchantment. But "use lessens marvel;" and when the first delightful excitement is over, and we begin to feel weary from its very intensity, the next step is backward into rationality, low spirits, and grumbling. From that moment the English tourist talks of nothing but wide rivers, magnificent bridges, prodigious _trottoirs_, unrivalled drains, and genuine port. It is at this stage that the traveller, in order to continue his enjoyment and bring it to perfection, should remit his examination of the exterior of noble _hôtels_, and endeavour to be admitted to the much more enduring enchantment which prevails within them. So much has already been said and written on the grace and charm of the French language in conversation, that it is quite needless to dwell upon it. That _good things_ can be said in no other idiom with equal grace, is a fact that can neither be controverted nor more firmly established than it is already. Happily, the art of expressing a clever thought in the best possible words did not die with Madame de Sévigné; nor has it yet been destroyed by revolution of any kind. It is not only for the amusement of an hour, however, that I would recommend the assiduous cultivation of good French society to the English. Great and important improvements in our national manners have already arisen from the intercourse which long peace has permitted. Our dinner-tables are no longer disgraced by inebriety; nor are our men and women, when they form a party expressly for the purpose of enjoying each other's society, separated by the law of the land during half the period for which the social meeting has been convened. But we have much to learn still; and the general tone of our daily associations might be yet farther improved, did the best specimens of Parisian habits and manners furnish the examples. It is not from the large and brilliant parties which recur in every fashionable mansion, perhaps, three or four times in each season, that I think we could draw much improvement. A fine party at Lady A----'s in Grosvenor Square, is not more like a fine party at Lady B----'s in Berkeley Square, than a fine party in Paris is to one in London. There are abundance of pretty women, handsome men, satin, gauze, velvet, diamonds, chains, stars, moustaches, and imperials at both, with perhaps very little deserving the name of rational enjoyment in either. I suspect, indeed, that we have rather the advantage on these crowded occasions, for we more frequently change the air by passing from one room to another when we eat our ices; and as the tulip-tinctured throng enjoy this respite from suffocation by detachments, they have often not only opportunity to breathe, but occasionally to converse also, for several minutes together, without danger of being dislodged from their standing-ground. It is not, therefore, at the crowded roll-calls of all their acquaintance that I would look for anything rational or peculiar in the _salons_ of Paris, but in the daily and constant intercourse of familiar companionship. This is enjoyed with a degree of pleasant ease--an absence of all pomp, pride, and circumstance, of which unhappily we have no idea. Alas! we must know by special printed announcement a month beforehand that our friend is "at home,"--that liveried servants will be in attendance, and her mansion blazing with light,--before we can dare venture to pass an evening hour in her drawing-room. How would a London lady stare, if some half-dozen--though perhaps among the most chosen favourites of her visiting-list--were to walk unbidden into her presence, in bonnets and shawls, between the hours of eight and eleven! And how strangely new would it seem, were the pleasantest and most coveted engagements of the week, formed without ceremony and kept without ostentation, to arise from a casual meeting at the beginning of it! It is this ease, this habitual absence of ceremony and parade, this national enmity to constraint and tediousness of all kinds, which renders the tone of French manners so infinitely more agreeable than our own. And the degree in which this is the case can only be guessed at by those who, by some happy accident or other, possess a real and effective "open sesame!" for the doors of Paris. With all the superabundance of vanity ascribed to the French, they certainly show infinitely less of it in their intercourse with their fellow-creatures than we do. I have seen a countess, whose title was of a dozen fair descents, open the external door of her apartment, and welcome the guests who appeared at it with as much grace and elegance as if a triple relay of tall fellows who wore her colours had handed their names from hall to drawing-room. Yet in this case there was no want of wealth. Coachman, footman, abigail, and doubtless all fitting etceteras, owned her as their sovereign lady and mistress. But they happened to have been sent hither and thither, and it never entered her imagination that her dignity could be compromised by her appearing without them. In short, the vanity of the French does not show itself in little things; and it is exactly for this reason that their enjoyment of society is stripped of so much of the anxious, sensitive, ostentatious, self-seeking etiquette which so heavily encumbers our own. There are some among us, my friend, who might say of this testimony to the charm of French society, that there was danger in praising, and pointing out as an example to be followed, the manners of a people whose morality is considered as so much less strict than our own. Could I think that, by thus approving what is agreeable, I could lessen by a single hair's-breadth the interval which we believe exists between us in this respect, I would turn my approval to reproof, and my superficial praise to deep-dyed reprobation: but to any who should express such a fear, I would reply by assuring them that it would require a very different species of intimacy from any to which I had the honour of being admitted, in order to authorise, from personal observation, any attack upon the morals of Parisian society. More scrupulous and delicate refinement in _the tone of manners_ can neither be found nor wished for anywhere; and I do very strongly suspect, that many of the pictures of French depravity which have been brought home to us by our travellers, have been made after sketches taken in scenes and circles to which the introductions I so strongly recommend to my countrywomen could by no possibility lead them. It is not of such that I can be supposed to speak. Apropos of false impressions and false reports, I may repeat to you an anecdote which I heard yesterday evening. The little committee in which it was related consisted of at least a dozen persons, and it appeared that I was myself the only one to whom it was new. "It is rather more than two years ago," said the speaker, "that we had amongst us an English gentleman, who avowed that it was his purpose to write on France, not as other men write--superficially, respecting truths that lie obvious to ordinary eyes--but with a research that should make him acquainted with all things above, about, and underneath. He professed this intention to more than one dear friend; and more than one dear friend took the trouble of tracing him in his chase after hidden truths. Not long after his arrival among us, this gentleman became intimately acquainted with a lady more celebrated for the variety of her friendships with men of letters than for the endurance of them. This lady received the attentions of the stranger with distinguished kindness, and, among other proofs of regard, undertook to purvey for him all sorts of private anecdotes, great and little, that from the mass he might form an average estimate of the people; assuring him at the same time, that no one in Paris was more _au fait_ of its secret histories than herself. This," continued my informant, "might be, and I believe was, very particularly true; and the English traveller might have been justified in giving to his countrymen and countrywomen as much insight into such mysteries as he thought good for them: but when he published the venomous slanders of this female respecting persons not only of the highest honour, but of the most unspotted reputation, he did what will blast his name as long as his charlatan book is remembered." Such were the indignant words, and there was nothing in the tone with which they were uttered to weaken their expression. I tell you the tale as I heard it; but I will not repeat much more that was said on the same subject, nor will I give any A..., B..., or C... hints as to the names so freely mentioned. Some degree of respectability ought certainly to attach to those from whom important information is sought respecting the morals and manners of a country, when it is the intention of the inquirer that his observations and statements upon it should become authority to the whole civilized world. The above conversation, however, was brought to a laughing conclusion by Madame C----, who, addressing her husband as he was seconding the angry eloquence I have repeated, said, "Calmez-vous donc, mon ami: après tout, le tableau fait par M. le Voyageur des dames Anglaises n'a rien à nous faire mourir de jalousie." I suspect that neither you nor any other lady of England will feel disposed to contradict her. Adieu! LETTER VII. Alarm created by the Trial of the Lyons Prisoners.--Visits from a Republican and from a Doctrinaire: reassured by the promises of safety and protection received from the latter. We have really had something very like a panic amongst us, from the rumours in circulation respecting this terrible trial, which is now rapidly approaching. Many people think that fearful scenes may be expected to take place in Paris when it begins. The newspapers of all parties are so full of the subject, that there is little else to be found in them; and all those, of whatever colour, which are opposed to the government, describe the manner in which the proceedings are to be managed, as the most tyrannical exercise of power ever practised in modern Europe. The legitimate royalists declare it to be illegal, inasmuch as the culprits have a right to be tried by a jury of their peers--the citizens of France; whereas it appears that this their chartered right is denied them, and that no other judge or jury is to be permitted in their case than the peers of France. Whether this accusation will be satisfactorily answered, I know not; but there certainly does appear to be something rather plausible, at least, in the objection. Nevertheless, it is not very difficult to see that the 28th Article of the Charter may be made to answer it, which says,-- "The Chamber of Peers takes cognizance of high-treason, and of attempts against the safety of the state, _which shall be defined by law_." Now, though this _defining by law_ appears, by what I can learn, to be an operation not yet quite completed, there seems to be something so very like high-treason in some of the offences for which these prisoners are to be tried, that the first clause of the article may do indifferently well to cover it. The republican journals, pamphlets, and publications of all sorts, however, treat the whole business of their detention and trial as the most tremendous infringement of the newly-acquired rights of Young France; and they say--nay, they do swear, that crowned king, created peers, and placed ministers never dared to venture upon anything so tyrannical as this. All that the unfortunate Louis Seize ever did, or suffered to be done--all that the banished Charles Dix ever threatened to do--never "roared so loud, and thundered in the index," as does this deed without a name about to be perpetrated by King Louis-Philippe the First. At last, however, the horrible thing has been christened, and PROCÈS MONSTRE is its name. This is a happy device, and will save a world of words. Before it received this expressive appellation, every paragraph concerning it began by a roundabout specification of the horrific business they were about to speak of; but since this lucky name has been hit upon, all prefatory eloquence is become unnecessary: _Procès Monstre!_ simply _Procès Monstre!_ expresses all it could say in two words; and whatever follows may safely become matter of news and narrative respecting it. This news, and these narratives, however, still vary considerably, and leave one in a very vacillating state of mind as to what may happen next. One account states that Paris is immediately to be put under martial law, and all foreigners, except those attached to the different embassies, civilly requested to depart. Another declares all this to be a weak invention of the enemy; but hints that it is probable a pretty strong _cordon_ of troops will surround the city, to keep watch day and night, lest _les jeunes gens_ of the metropolis, in their mettlesome mood, should seek to wash out in the blood of their fellow-citizens the stain which the illegitimate birth of the monster has brought upon France. Others announce that a devoted body of patriots have sworn to sacrifice a hecatomb of National Guards, to atone for an abomination which many believe to originate with them. Not a few declare that the trial will never take place; that the government, audacious as they say it is, dare do no more than hold up the effigy of the monster to frighten the people, and that a general amnesty will end the business. In truth, it would be a tedious task to record one half of the tales that are in circulation on this subject: but I do assure you, that listening to the awful note of preparation for all that is to be done at the Luxembourg is quite enough to make one nervous, and many English families have already thought it prudent to leave the city. At one moment we were really worked into a state very nearly approaching terror by the vehement eloquence of a fiery-hot republican who paid us a visit. I ventured to lead to the terrible subject by asking him if he thought the approaching political trials likely to produce any result beyond their disagreeable influence on the convenience of the parties concerned; but I really repented my temerity when I saw the cloud which gathered on his brow as he replied:-- "Result! What do you call result, madam? Is the burning indignation of millions of Frenchmen a result? Are the execrations of the noble beings enslaved, imprisoned, tortured, trampled on by tyranny, a result? Are the groans of their wives and mothers--are the tears of their bereaved children--a result?--Yes, yes, there will be results enough! They are yet to come, but come they will; and when they do, think you that the next revolution will be one of three days? Do your countrymen think so? does Europe think so? There has been another revolution, to which it will more resemble." He looked rather ashamed of himself, I thought, when he had concluded his tirade,--and well he might: but there was such a hideous tone of prophecy in this, that I actually trembled as I listened to him, and, all jesting apart, thoughts of passports to be signed and conveyances to be hired were arranging themselves very seriously in my brain. But before we went out for the evening, all these gloomy meditations were most agreeably dispersed by a visit from a staid old doctrinaire, who was not only a soberer politician, but one considerably more likely to know what he was talking about than the youth who had harangued us in the morning. Anxious to have my fears either confirmed or removed, I hastened to tell him, half in jest, half in earnest, that we were beginning to think of taking an abrupt leave of Paris. "And why?" said he. I stated very seriously my newly-awakened fears; at which he laughed heartily, and with an air of such unfeigned amusement, that I was cured at once. "Whom can you have been listening to?" said he. "I will not give up my authority," I replied with proper diplomatic discretion; "but I will tell you exactly what a gentleman who has been here this morning has been saying to us." And I did so precisely as I have repeated it to you; upon which he laughed more heartily than before, and rubbing his hands as if perfectly delighted, he exclaimed, "Delicious! And you really have been fortunate enough to fall in with one of these _enfans perdus_? I really wish you joy. But do not set off immediately: listen first to another view of the case." I assured him that this was exactly what I wished to do, and very truly declared that he could do me no greater favour than to put me _au fait_ of the real state of affairs. "Willingly will I do so," said he; "and be assured I will not deceive you." Whereupon I closed the _croisée_, that no rattling wheels might disturb us, and prepared to listen. "My good lady," he began with great kindness, "soyez tranquille. There is no more danger of revolution at this time in France than there is in Russia. Louis-Philippe is adored; the laws are respected; order is universally established; and if there be a sentiment of discontent or a feeling approaching to irritation among any deserving the name of Frenchmen, it is against these miserable _vauriens_, who still cherish the wild hope of disturbing our peace and our prosperity. But fear nothing: trust me, the number of these is too small to make it worth while to count them." You will believe I heard this with sincere satisfaction; and I really felt very grateful, both for the information, and the friendly manner in which it was given. "I rejoice to hear this," said I: "but may I, as a matter of curiosity, ask you what you think about this famous trial? How do you think it will end?" "As all trials ought to end," he replied: "by bringing all such as are found guilty to punishment." "Heaven grant it!" said I; "for the sake of mankind in general, and for that portion of it in particular which happen at the present moment to inhabit Paris. But do you not think that the irritation produced by these preparations at the Luxembourg is of considerable extent and violence?" "To whatever extent this irritation may have gone," he answered gravely, "it is an undoubted fact,--undoubted in the quarter where most is known about the matter,--that the feeling which approves these preparations is not only of greater extent, but of infinitely deeper sincerity, than that which is opposed to it. What you have heard to-day is mere unmeaning bluster. The trial, I do assure you, is very popular. It is for the justification and protection of the National Guard;--and are we not all National Guards?" "But are all the National Guards true?" "Perhaps not. But be sure of this, that there are enough true to _égorger_ without any difficulty those who are not." "But is it not very probable," said I, "that the republican feeling may be quite strong enough to produce another disturbance, though not another revolution? And the situation of strangers would probably become very embarrassing, should this eventually lead to any renewed outbreakings of public enthusiasm." "Not the least in the world, I do assure you: for, at any rate, all the enthusiasm, as you civilly call it, would only elicit additional proof of the stability and power of the government which we are now so happy as to enjoy. The enthusiasm would be speedily calmed, depend upon it." "A peaceable traveller," said I, "can wish for no better news; and henceforward I shall endeavour to read and to listen with a tranquil spirit, let the prisoners or their partisans say what they may." "You will do wisely, believe me. Rest in perfect confidence and security, and be assured that Louis-Philippe holds all the English as his right good friends. While this is the case, neither Windsor Castle nor the Tower of London itself could afford you a safer abode than Paris." With this seasonable and very efficient encouragement, he left me; and as I really believe him to know more about the new-born politics of "Young France" than most people, I go on very tranquilly making engagements, with but few misgivings lest barricades should prevent my keeping them. LETTER VIII. Eloquence of the Pulpit.--L'Abbé Coeur.--Sermon at St. Roch.--Elegant Congregation.--Costume of the younger Clergy. There is one novelty, and to me a very agreeable one, which I have remarked since my return to this volatile France: this is the fashion and consideration which now attend the eloquence of her preachers. Political economists assert that the supply of every article follows the demand for it in a degree nicely proportioned to the wants of the population; and it is upon this principle, I presume, that we must account for the present affluence of a talent which some few years ago could hardly be said to exist in France, and might perhaps have been altogether denied to it, had not the pages both of Fenelon and his eloquent antagonist, Bossuet, rendered such an injustice impossible. It was, I think, about a dozen years ago that I took some trouble to discover if any traces of this glorious eloquence remained at Paris. I heard sermons at Notre Dame--at St. Roch--at St. Eustache; but never was a search after talent attended with worse success. The preachers were nought; they had the air, too, of being vulgar and uneducated men,--which I believe was, and indeed still is, very frequently the case. The churches were nearly empty; and the few persons scattered up and down their splendid aisles appeared, generally speaking, to be of the very lowest order of old women. How great is now the contrast! Nowhere are we so certain of seeing a crowd of elegantly-dressed and distinguished persons as in the principal churches of Paris. Nor is it a crowd that mocks the eye with any tinsel pretensions to a rank they do not possess. Inquire who it is that so meekly and devoutly kneels on one side of you--that so sedulously turns the pages of her prayer-book on the other, and you will be answered by the announcement of the noblest names remaining in France. Though the eloquence of the pulpit has always been an object of attention and interest to me in all countries, I hardly ventured on my first arrival here to inquire again if anything of the kind existed, lest I should once more be sent to listen to an inaudible mumbling preacher, and to look at the deaf and dozing old women who formed his congregation. But it has needed no inquiry to make us speedily acquainted with the fact, that the churches have become the favourite resort of the young, the beautiful, the high-born, and the instructed. Whence comes this change? "Have you heard l'Abbé Coeur?" was a question asked me before I had been here a week, by one who would not for worlds have been accounted _rococo_. When I replied that I had not even heard of him, I saw plainly that it was decided I could know very little indeed of what was going on in Paris. "That is really extraordinary! but I engage you to go without delay. He is, I assure you, quite as much the fashion as Taglioni." As the conversation was continued on the subject of fashionable preachers, I soon found that I was indeed altogether benighted. Other celebrated names were cited: Lacordaire, Deguerry, and some others that I do not remember, were spoken of as if their fame must of necessity have reached from pole to pole, but of which, in truth, I knew no more than if the gentlemen had been private chaplains to the princes of Chili. However, I set down all their names with much docility; and the more I listened, the more I rejoiced that the Passion-week and Easter, those most Catholic seasons for preaching, were before us, being fully determined to profit by this opportunity of hearing in perfection what was so perfectly new to me as popular preaching in Paris. I have lost little time in putting this resolution into effect. The church of St. Roch is, I believe, the most fashionable in Paris; it was there, too, that we were sure of hearing this celebrated Abbé Coeur; and both these reasons together decided that it was at St. Roch our sermon-seeking should begin: I therefore immediately set about discovering the day and hour on which he would make his appearance in the pulpit. When inquiring these particulars in the church, we were informed, that if we intended to procure chairs, it would be necessary to come at least one good hour before the high mass which preceded the sermon should begin. This was rather alarming intelligence to a party of heretics who had an immense deal of business on their hands; but I was steadfast in my purpose, and, with a small detachment of my family, submitted to the preliminary penance of sitting the long silent hour in front of the pulpit of St. Roch. The precaution was, however, perfectly necessary, for the crowd was really tremendous; but, to console us, it was of the most elegant description; and, after all, the hour scarcely appeared much too long for the business of reviewing the vast multitude of graceful personages, waving plumes, and blooming flowers, that ceased not during every moment of the time to collect themselves closer and closer still about us. Nothing certainly could be more beautiful than this collection of bonnets, unless it were the collection of eyes under them. The proportion of ladies to gentlemen was on the whole, we thought, not less than twelve to one. "Je désirerais savoir," said a young man near me, addressing an extremely pretty woman who sat beside him,--"Je désirerais savoir si par hasard M. l'Abbé Coeur est jeune." The lady answered not, but frowned most indignantly. A few minutes afterwards, his doubts upon this point, if he really had any, were removed. A man far from ill-looking, and farther still from being old, mounted the tribune, and some thousands of bright eyes were riveted upon him. The silent and profound attention which hung on every word he uttered, unbroken as it was by a single idle sound, or even glance, showed plainly that his influence upon the splendid and numerous congregation that surrounded him must be very great, or the power of his eloquence very strong: and it was an influence and a power that, though "of another parish," I could well conceive must be generally felt, _for he was in earnest_. His voice, though weak and somewhat wirey, was distinct, and his enunciation clear: I did not lose a word. His manner was simple and affectionate; his language strong, yet not intemperate; but he decidedly appealed more to the hearts of his hearers than to their understandings; and it was their hearts that answered him, for many of them wept plenteously. A great number of priests were present at this sermon, who were all dressed in their full clerical habits, and sat in places reserved for them immediately in front of the pulpit: they were consequently very near us, and we had abundant opportunity to remark the traces of that _march of mind_ which is doing so many wondrous works upon earth. Instead of the tonsure which we have been used to see, certainly with some feeling of reverence--for it was often shorn into the very centre of crisped locks, while their raven black or shining chesnut still spoke of youth that scrupled not to sacrifice its comeliness to a feeling of religious devotion;--instead of this, we now saw unshaven crowns, and more than one pair of flourishing _favoris_, nourished, trained, and trimmed evidently with the nicest care, though a stiff three-cornered cowl in every instance hung behind the rich and waving honours of the youthful head. The effect of this strange mixture is very singular. But notwithstanding this bold abandonment of priestly costume among the junior clergy, there were in the long double row of anointed heads which faced the pulpit some exceedingly fine studies for an artist; and wherever the offending Adam was subdued by years, nothing could be in better keeping than the countenances, and the sacred garb of those to whom they belonged. Similar causes will, I suppose, at all times produce similar effects; and it is therefore that among the twenty priests at St. Roch in 1835, I seemed to recognise the originals of many a holy head with which the painters of Italy, Spain, and Flanders have made me familiar. The contrast furnished by the deep-set eyes, and the fine severe expression of some of these consecrated brows, to the light, airy elegance of the pretty women around them, was sufficiently striking; and, together with the mellow light of the shaded windows, and the lofty spaciousness of the noble church, formed a spectacle highly picturesque and impressive. After the sermon was over, and while the gaily-habited congregation fluttered away through the different doors like so many butterflies hastening to meet returning sunshine, we amused ourselves by wandering round the church. It is magnificently large for a parish church; but, excepting in some of the little chapels, we found not much to admire. That very unrighteous old churchman, the Abbé Dubois, has a fine monument there, restored from Les Petits Augustins; and a sort of marble medallion, bearing the head of the immortal Corneille--immortal despite M. Victor Hugo--is also restored, and placed against one of the heavy columns of, I think, the centre aisle. But we paused longest in a little chapel behind the altar--not the middle one, with its well-managed glory of crimson light, though that is very beautiful; but in the one to the right of it, which contains a sculptured Calvary. It is, I believe, only one of _les stations_, of which twelve are to be found in different parts of the church; but it has a charm--seen as we saw it, with a strong effect of accidental light, bringing forward the delicate figure of the adoring Magdalene, and leaving the Saviour in the dark shadow and repose of death--that sets at defiance all the connoisseurship of art, and taking from you all faculty to judge, leaves only the power to feel. Under these circumstances, whether quite delusive or not I hardly know, this group appeared to us one of exceeding beauty. The high altar of St. Roch, and the extremity of the carpeted space enclosed round it, is most lavishly, beautifully, and fragrantly adorned with flowers of the choicest kind, all flourishing in the fullest bloom in boxes and vases. It is the only instance I remember in which the perfume of this most fair and holy decoration actually pervaded the church. They certainly offer the sweetest incense that can be found to breathe its grateful life and spirit out on any altar; and were it not for the graceful swinging of the censers, which very particularly pleases my eye, I would recommend to the Roman Catholic church henceforth an economy of their precious gums, and advise them to offer the incense of flowers in their stead. Before we left the church, about a hundred and fifty boys and girls, from ten to fourteen years of age, assembled to be catechised by a young priest, who received them behind the Lady Chapel. His manner was familiar, caressing and kind, and his waving hair fell about his ears like the picture of a young St. John. LETTER IX. Literature of the Revolutionary School.--Its low estimation in France. Among many proofs of attentive kindness which I have received from my Paris friends, their care to furnish me with a variety of modern publications is not the least agreeable. One fancies everywhere, that it is easy, by the help of a circulating library, to know tolerably well what is going on at Paris: but this is a mighty fond delusion; though sometimes, perhaps, our state may be the more gracious from our ignorance. One gentleman, to whom I owe much gratitude for the active good-nature with which he seems willing to assist me in all my researches, has given me much curious information respecting the present state of literature and literary men in France. In this department of human greatness, at least, those of the party which has lost power and place have a most decided pre-eminence. Would it be a pun to say that there is poetical justice in this? The active, busy, bustling politicians of the hour have succeeded in thrusting everything else out of place, and themselves into it. One dynasty has been overthrown, and another established; old laws have been abrogated, and hundreds of new ones framed; hereditary nobles have been disinherited, and little men made great;--but amidst this plenitude of destructiveness, they have not yet contrived to make any one of the puny literary reputations of the day weigh down the renown of those who have never lent their voices to the cause of treason, regicide, rebellion, or obscenity. The literary reputations both of Châteaubriand and Lamartine stand higher, beyond all comparison, than those of any other living French authors: yet the first, with all his genius, has often suffered his imagination to run riot, and the last has only given to the public the leisure of his literary life. But both of them are men of honour and principle, as well as men of genius; and it comforts one's human nature to see that these qualities will keep themselves aloft, despite whatever squally winds may blow, or blustering floods assail them. That both Châteaubriand and Lamartine belong rather to the imaginative than to the _positif_ class, cannot be denied; but they are renowned throughout the world, and France is proud of them. The most curious literary speculations, however, suggested by the present state of letters in this country, are not respecting authors such as these: they speak for themselves, and all the world knows them and their position. The circumstance decidedly the most worthy of remark in the literature of France at the present time, is the effect which the last revolution appears to have produced. With the exception of history, to which both Thiers and Mignet have added something that may live, notwithstanding their very defective philosophy, no single work has appeared since the revolution of 1830 which has obtained a substantial, elevated, and generally acknowledged reputation for any author unknown before that period: not even among all the unbridled ebullitions of imagination, though restrained neither by decorum, principle, nor taste,--not even here (excepting from one female[2] pen, which might become, were it the pleasure of the hand that wields it, the first now extant in the world of fiction,) has anything appeared likely to survive its author; nor is there any writer who during the same period has raised himself to that station in society, by means of his literary productions, which is so universally accorded to all who have acquired high literary celebrity in any country. The name of M. Guizot was too well known before the revolution for these observations to have any reference to him; and however much he may have distinguished himself since July 1830, his reputation was made before. There are, however, little writers in prodigious abundance; and though as perfectly sure of the truth of what I have here stated as that I am alive to write it, I should expect a terrible riot about my ears, could such words be heard by the swarm of tiny geniuses that settle in clusters, some on the newspapers, some on the theatres, and some on the busy little printing-press of the tale-tellers--could they catch me, I am sure I should be stung to death. How well I can fancy the clamour!... "Infamous libeller!" cries one; "have not I achieved a reputation? Do I not receive yearly some hundreds of francs for my sublime familiarity with sin and misery? and are not my works read by 'Young France' with ecstasy? Is not this fame?" "And I," says another,--"is it of such as I and my cotemporary fellow-labourers in the vast field of new-ploughed speculation that you speak?" "What call you reputation, woman?" says a third: "do not the theatres overflow when I send murder, lust, and incest on the stage, to witch the world with wondrous wickedness?" "And, I too," groans another,--"am I not famous? Are not my delicious tales of unschooled nature in the hands of every free-born youth and tender maid in this our regenerated Athens? Is not this fame, infamous slanderer?" Were I obliged to answer all this, I could only say, "_Arrangez-vous, canaille!_ If you call this fame, take it, try it, make the most of it, and see where you will be some dozen years hence." Notwithstanding this extraordinary lack of great ability, however, there never, I believe, was any period in which the printing-presses of France worked so hard as at present. The revolution of 1830 seems to have set all the minor spirits in motion. There is scarcely a boy so insignificant, or a workman so unlearned, as to doubt his having the power and the right to instruct the world. "Every breathing soul in Paris took a part in this glorious struggle," says the recording newspaper;--"Yes, all!" echoes the smutched mechanic, snorting and snuffing the air with the intoxicating consciousness of imputed power;--"Yes!" answer the _galopins_ one and all, "it is we, it is we!" And then, like the restless witches on the barren heath that their breath has blasted, the great reformers rouse themselves again, and looking from the mischief they have done to the still worse that remains behind, they mutter prophetically, "We'll do--we'll do--we'll do!" To me, I confess, it is perfectly astonishing that any one can be found to class the writers of this restless _clique_ as "the literary men of France." Yet it has been done; and it is not till the effects of the popular commotion which brought them into existence has fully subsided, that the actual state of French literature can be fairly ascertained. Béranger was not the production of that whirlwind: but, in truth, let him sing what or when he will, the fire of genuine poetic inspiration must perforce flash across the thickest mist that false principles can raise around him. He is but a meteor perhaps, but a very bright one, and must shine, though his path lie amongst unwholesome exhalations and most dangerous pitfalls. But he cannot in any way be quoted as one of the new-born race whose claim to genuine fame I have presumed to doubt. That flashes of talent, sparkles of wit, and bursts of florid eloquence are occasionally heard, seen, and felt even from these, is, however, certain: it could hardly be otherwise. But they blaze, and go out. The oil which feeds the lamp of revolutionary genius is foul, and such noxious vapours rise with the flame as must needs check its brightness. Do not, however, believe me guilty of such presumption as to give you my own unsupported judgment as to the position which this "new school" (as the _décousu_ folks always call themselves) hold in the public esteem. Such a judgment could be little worth if unsupported; but my opinion on this subject is, on the contrary, the result of careful inquiry among those who are most competent to give information respecting it. When the names of such as are best known among this class of authors are mentioned in society, let the politics of the circle be what they may, they are constantly spoken of as a Paria caste that must be kept apart. "Do you know ---- ----?" has been a question I have repeatedly asked respecting a person whose name is cited in England as the most esteemed French writer of the age,--and so cited, moreover, to prove the low standard of French taste and principle. "No, madam," has been invariably the cold reply. "Or ----?" "No. He is not in society." "Or ----?" "Oh no! His works live an hour (too long!) and are forgotten." Should I therefore, my friend, return from France with an higher idea of its good taste and morality than I had when I entered it, think not that my own standard of what is right has been lowered, but only that I have had the pleasure of finding it differed much less than I expected from that of our agreeable and hardly-judged neighbours on this side the water. But I shall probably recur to this subject again; and so, for the present, farewell! FOOTNOTE: [2] G. Sand. LETTER X. Lonchamps.--The "Three Hours' Agony" at St. Roch.--Sermons on the Gospel of Good-Friday.--Prospects of the Catholics.--O'Connell. I dare say you may know, my friend, though I did not, that the Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of Passion-week are yearly set apart by the Parisians for a splendid promenade in carriages, on horseback, and on foot, to a part of the Bois de Boulogne called Lonchamps. What the origin could be of so gay and brilliant an assemblage of people and equipages, evidently coming together to be stared at and to stare, on days so generally devoted to religious exercises, rather puzzled me; but I have obtained a most satisfactory explanation, which, in the hope of your ignorance, I will communicate. The custom itself, it seems, is a sort of religious exercise; or, at any rate, it was so at the time of its institution. When the _beau monde_ of Paris first adopted the practice of repairing to Lonchamps during these days of penitence and prayer, a convent stood there, whose nuns were celebrated for performing the solemn services appointed for the season with peculiar piety and effect. They sustained this reputation for many years; and for many years all who could find admittance within their church thronged to hear their sweet voices. This convent was destroyed at _the_ revolution (_par excellence_), but the horses and carriages of Paris still continue to move for evermore in the same direction when the last three days of Lent arrive. The cavalcade assembled on this occasion forms an extremely pretty spectacle, rivalling a spring Sunday in Hyde Park as to the number and elegance of the equipages, and greatly exceeding it in the beauty and extent of the magnificent road on which they show themselves. Though the attending this congregation of wealth, rank, and fashion is still called "going to Lonchamps," the evolutions of the company, whether in carriages, on horseback, or on foot, are at present almost wholly confined to the noble avenue which leads from the entrance to the Champs Elysées up to the Barrière de l'Etoile. From about three till six, the whole of this ample space is crowded; and I really had no idea that so many handsome, well-appointed equipages could be found collected together anywhere out of London. The royal family had several handsome carriages on the ground: that of the Duke of Orleans was particularly remarkable for the beauty of the horses, and the general elegance of the "turn-out." The ministers of state, and all the foreign legations, did honour to the occasion; most of them having very complete equipages, chasseurs of various plumage, and many with a set of four beautiful horses really well harnessed. Many private individuals, also, had carriages which were handsome enough, together with their elegant lading, greatly to increase the general brilliancy of the scene. The only individual, however, except the Duke of Orleans, who had two carriages on the ground, two feathered chasseurs, and twice two pair of richly-harnessed steeds, was a certain Mr. T----, an American merchant, whose vast wealth, and still more vast expenditure, is creating considerable consternation among his sober-minded countrymen in Paris. We were told that the exuberance of this gentleman's transatlantic taste was such, and such the vivacity of his inventive fancy, that during the three days of the Lonchamps promenade he appeared on the ground each day with different liveries; having, as it should seem, no particular family reasons for preferring any one set of colours to another. The ground was sprinkled, and certainly greatly adorned, by many very elegant-looking Englishmen on horseback; the pretty caprioles, sleek skins, and well-managed capers of that prettiest of creatures, a high-bred English saddle-horse, being as usual among the most attractive parts of the show. Nor was there any deficiency of Frenchmen, with very handsome _montures_, to complete the spectacle; while the ample space under the trees on either side was crowded with thousands of smart pedestrians; the whole scene being one vast moving mass of pomp and pleasure. Nevertheless, the weather on the first of the three days was very far from favourable: the wind was so bitterly cold that I countermanded the carriage I had ordered, and instead of going to Lonchamps, we actually sat shivering over the fire at home; indeed, before three o'clock, the ground was perfectly covered with snow. The next day promised something better, and we ventured to emerge: but the spectacle was really vexatious; many of the carriages being open, and the shivering ladies attired in all the light and floating drapery of spring costume. For it is at Lonchamps that all the fashions of the coming season are exhibited; and no one can tell, however fashion-wise they be, what bonnet, scarf or shawl, or even what prevailing colour, is to be worn in Paris throughout the year, till this decisive promenade be over. Accordingly the milliners had done their duty, and, in fact, had far outstripped the spring. But it was sad to see the beautiful bunches of lilac, and the graceful, flexible laburnums--each a wonder of art--twisted and tortured, bending and breaking, before the wind. It really seemed as if the lazy Spring, vexed at the pretty mimicry of blossoms she had herself failed to bring, sent this inclement blast on purpose to blight them. Everything went wrong. The tender tinted ribbons were soon dabbled in a driving sleet; while feathers, instead of wantoning, as it was intended they should do, on the breeze, had to fight a furious battle with the gale. It was not therefore till the following day--the last of the three appointed--that Lonchamps really showed the brilliant assemblage of carriages, horsemen, and pedestrians that I have described to you. Upon this last day, however, though it was still cold for the season--(England would have been ashamed of such a 17th of April)--the sun did come forth, and smiled in such a sort as greatly to comfort the pious pilgrims. We remained, like all the rest of Paris, driving up and down in the midst of the pretty crowd till six, when they gradually began to draw off, and all the world went home to dinner. The early part of this day, which was Good-Friday, had been very differently passed. The same beautiful and solemn music which formerly drew all Paris to the Convent in the Bois de Boulogne is now performed in several of the churches. We were recommended to hear the choir of St. Roch; and it was certainly the most impressive service at which I was ever present. There is much wisdom in thus giving to music an important part in the public ceremonies of religion. Nothing commands and enchains the attention with equal power: the ear may be deaf to eloquence, and the thoughts may often grovel earthward, despite all the efforts of the preacher to lead them up to heaven; but few will find it possible to escape from the effect of music; and when it is of such a character as that performed in the Roman Catholic church on Good-Friday, it can hardly be that the most volatile and indifferent listener should depart unmoved. This service was advertised as "The Three Hours' Agony." The crowd assembled to listen to it was immense. It is impossible to speak too highly of the composition of the music; it is conceived in the very highest tone of sublimity; and the deeply effective manner of its performance recalled to me an anecdote I have heard of some young organist, who, having accompanied an anthem in a manner which appeared greatly superior to that of the usual performer, was asked if he had not made some alteration in the composition. "No," he replied, "I have not; but I always read the words when I play." So, I should think, did those who performed the services at St. Roch on Good-Friday; and nothing can be imagined more touching and effective than the manner in which the whole of these striking ceremonies were performed and arranged there. The awful gospel of the day furnished a theme for the impassioned eloquence of several successive preachers; one or two of whom were wonderfully powerful in their manner of recounting the dreadful narrative. They were all quite young men; but they went through the whole of the appalling history with such deep solemnity, such strength of imagery and vehemence of eloquence, as to produce prodigious effect. At intervals, while the exhausted preachers reposed, the organ, with many stringed instruments, and a choir of exquisite voices, performed the same gospel, in a manner that made one's whole soul thrill and quiver within one. The suffering--the submission--the plaintive yet sublime "It is finished!" and the convulsive burst of indignant nature that followed, showing itself in thunder, hail, and earthquake, were all brought before the mind with most miraculous power. I have been told since, that the services at Notre Dame on that day were finer still; but I really find some difficulty in believing that this is possible. During these last and most solemn days of Lent, I have been endeavouring by every means in my power to discover how much fasting, of any kind, was going on. If they fast at all, it is certainly performed in most strict obedience to the very letter of the gospel: for, assuredly, they "appear not unto men to fast." Everything goes on as gaily as if it were the season of the carnival. The _restaurans_ reek with the savoury vapour of a hundred dishes; the theatres are opened, and as full as the churches; invitations cease not; and I can in no direction perceive the slightest symptom of being among a Roman Catholic population during a season of penitence. And yet, contradictory as the statement must appear, I am deeply convinced that the clergy of the church of Rome feel more hope of recovered power fluttering at their hearts now, than they have done at any time during the last half-century. Nor can I think they are far wrong in this. The share which the Roman Catholic priests of this our day are said to have had in the Belgian revolution, and the part, more remarkable still, which the same race are now performing in the opening scenes of the fearful struggle which threatens England, has given a new impulse to the ambition of Rome and of her children. One may read it in the portly bearing of her youthful priests,--one may read it in the deep-set meditative eye of those who are older. It is legible in their brand-new vestments of gold and silver tissue; it is legible in the costly decorations of their renovated altars; and deep, deep, deep is the policy which teaches them to recover with a gentle hand that which they have lost by a grasping one. How well can I fancy that, in their secret synods, the favourite text is, "No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment; for that which is put in to fill it up, taketh from the garment, and the rent is made worse." Were they a whit less cautious, they must fail at once; but they tickle their converts before they think of convincing them. It is for this that the pulpits are given to young and eloquent men, who win the eye and ear of their congregations long before they find out to what point they wish to lead them. But while the young men preach, the old men are not idle: there are rumours of new convents, new monasteries, new orders, new miracles, and of new converts, in all directions. This wily, worldly, tranquil-seeming, but most ambitious sect, having in many quarters joined themselves to the cause of democracy, sit quietly by, looking for the result of their work, and watching, like a tiger that seems to dose, for the moment when they may avenge themselves for the long fast from power, during which they have been gnawing their heart-strings. But they now hail the morning of another day. I would that all English ears could hear, as mine have done, the prattle that prophesies the downfall of our national church as a thing certain as rain after long drought! I would that English ears could hear, as mine have done, the name of O'Connell uttered as that of a new apostle, and his bold bearding of those who yet raise their voices in defence of the faith their fathers gave them, triumphantly quoted in proof of the growing influence both of himself and his popish creed,--which are in truth one and inseparable! But forgive me!--all this has little to do with my subject, and it is moreover a theme I had much better not meddle with. I cannot touch it lightly, for my heart is heavy when I turn to it; I cannot treat it powerfully, for, alas! I have no strength but to lament. "Hé! que puis-je au milieu de ce peuple abattu? Benjamin est sans force, et Juda sans vertu." LETTER XI. Trial Chamber at the Luxembourg.--Institute.--M. Mignet.--Concert Musard. As a great and especial favour, we have been taken to see the new chamber that has been erected at the Luxembourg for the trial of the political prisoners. The appearance of the exterior is very handsome, and though built wholly of wood, it corresponds perfectly, to all outward seeming, with the old palace. The rich and massive style of architecture is imitated to perfection: the heavy balustrades, the gigantic bas-reliefs, are all vast, solid, and magnificent; and when it is stated that the whole thing has been completed in the space of two months, one is tempted to believe that Alladdin has turned doctrinaire, and rubbed his lamp most diligently in the service of the state. The trial-chamber is a noble room; but from the great number of prisoners, and greater still of witnesses expected to be examined, the space left for the public is but small. Prudence, perhaps, may have had as much to do with this as necessity: nor can we much wonder if the peers of France should desire to have as little to do with the Paris mob upon this occasion as possible. I remarked that considerable space was left for passages, ante-rooms, surroundings, and outposts of all sorts;--an excellent arrangement, the wisdom of which cannot be questioned, as the attendance of a large armed force must be indispensable. In fact, I believe it ever has been and ever will be found, that troops furnish the only means of keeping a remarkably free people in order. It was, however, very comforting and satisfactory to hear the manner in which the distinguished and agreeable individual who had procured us the pleasure of seeing this building discoursed of the business which was to be carried on there. There is a quiet steadiness and confidence in their own strength among these doctrinaries, that seems to promise well for the lasting tranquillity of the country; nor does it impeach either their wisdom or sincerity, if many among them adhere heart and hand to the government, though they might have better liked a white than a tri-coloured banner to wave over the palace of its head. Whatever the standers-by may wish or feel about future struggles and future changes, I think it is certain that no Frenchman who desires the prosperity of his country can at the present moment wish for anything but a continuance of the tranquillity she actually enjoys. If, indeed, democracy were gaining ground,--if the frightful political fallacies, among which the very young and the very ignorant are so apt to bewilder themselves, were in any degree to be traced in the policy pursued by the existing government,--then would the question be wholly changed, and every honest man in full possession of his senses would feel himself called upon to stay the plague with all his power and might. But the very reverse of all this is evidently the case; and it may be doubted if any sovereign in Europe has less taste for license and misrule than King Louis-Philippe. Be very sure that it is not to him that the radicals of any land must look for patronage, encouragement, or support: they will not find it. After quitting the Luxembourg, we went to the _bureau_ of the secretary at the Institute, to request tickets for an annual sitting of the five Academies, which took place yesterday. They were very obligingly accorded--(O that our institutions, our academies, our lectures, were thus liberally arranged!)--and yesterday we passed two very agreeable hours in the place to which they admitted us. I wish that the Polytechnic School, when they took a fancy for changing the ancient _régimes_ of France, had included the uniform of the Institute in their proscriptions. The improvement would have been less doubtful than it is respecting some other of their innovations: for what can be said in defence of a set of learned academicians, varying in age from light and slender thirty to massive and protuberant fourscore, wearing one and all a fancy blue dress-coat "embroidered o'er with leaves of myrtle"? It is really a proof that very good things were said and done at this sitting, when I declare that my astonishment at the Corydon-like costume was forgotten within the first half-hour. We first witnessed the distribution of the prizes, and then heard one or two members speak, or rather read their compositions. But the great fête of the occasion was hearing a discourse pronounced by M. Mignet. This gentleman is too celebrated not to have excited in us a very earnest wish to hear him; and never was expectation more agreeably gratified. Combined with the advantages of a remarkably fine face and person, M. Mignet has a tone of voice and play of countenance sufficient of themselves to secure the success of an orator. But on this occasion he did not trust to these: his discourse was every way admirable; subject, sentiment, composition, and delivery, all excellent. He had chosen for his theme the history of Martin Luther's appearance before the Diet at Worms; and the manner in which he treated it surprised as much as it delighted me. Not a single trait of that powerful, steadfast, unbending character, which restored light to our religion and freedom to the mind of man, escaped him: it was a mental portrait, painted with the boldness of outline, breadth of light, and vigour of colouring, which mark the hand of a consummate master. But was it a Roman Catholic who pronounced this discourse?--Were they Roman Catholics who filled every corner of the theatre, and listened to him with attention so unbroken, and admiration so undisguised? I know not. But for myself, I can truly declare, that my Protestant and reformed feelings were never more gratified than by listening to this eloquent history of the proudest moment of our great apostle's life, pronounced in the centre of Cardinal Mazarin's palace. The concluding words of the discourse were as follows: "Sommé pendant quatre ans de se soumettre, Luther, pendant quatre ans, dit non. Il avait dit non au légat; il avait dit non au pape; il dit non à l'empereur. Dans ce non héroïque et fécond se trouvait la liberté du monde." Another discourse was announced to conclude the sitting of the day. But when M. Mignet retired, no one appeared to take his place; and after waiting for a few minutes, the numerous and very fashionable-looking crowd dispersed themselves. I recollected the anecdote told of the first representation of the "Partie de Chasse de Henri Quatre," when the overture of Mehul produced such an effect, that the audience would not permit anything else to be performed after it. The piece, therefore, was _remise_,--and so was the harangue of the academician who was to have followed M. Mignet. You will confess, I think, that we are not idle, when I tell you that, after all this, we went in the evening to _Le Concert Musard_. This is one of the pastimes to which we have hitherto had no parallel in London. At half-past seven o'clock, you lounge into a fine, large, well-lighted room, which is rapidly filled with company: a full and good orchestra give you during a couple of hours some of the best and most popular music of the season; and then you lounge out again, in time to dress for a party, or eat ices at Tortoni's, or soberly to go home for a domestic tea-drinking and early rest. For this concert you pay a franc; and the humble price, together with the style of toilet (every lady wearing a bonnet and shawl), might lead the uninitiated to suppose that it was a recreation prepared for the _beau monde_ of the Faubourg; but the long line of private carriages that occupies the street at the conclusion of it, shows that, simple and unpretending as is its style, this concert has attractions for the best company in Paris. The easy _entrée_ to it reminded me of the theatres of Germany. I remarked many ladies coming in, two or three together, unattended by any gentleman. Between the acts, the company promenaded round the room, parties met and joined, and altogether it appeared to us a very agreeable mode of gratifying that French necessity of amusing one's self out of one's own house, which seems contagious in the very air of Paris. LETTER XII. Easter-Sunday at Notre Dame.--Archbishop.--View of Paris.--Victor Hugo.--Hôtel Dieu.--Mr. Jefferson. It was long ago decided in a committee of the whole house, that on Easter-Sunday we should attend high mass at Notre Dame. I shall not soon forget the spectacle that greeted us on entering. Ten thousand persons, it was said, were on that day assembled in the church; and its dimensions are so vast, that I have no doubt the statement was correct, for it was crowded from floor to roof. The effect of the circular gallery, that at mid-height encompasses the centre aisle, following as it does the graceful sweep of the chapel behind the altar, and filled row after row with gaily-dressed company up, as it seemed, almost to the groining of the roof, was beautiful. The chairs on this occasion were paid for in proportion to the advantageousness of the position in which they stood, and by disbursing an extra franc or two we obtained very good places. The mass was performed with great splendour. The dresses of the archbishop and his train were magnificent; and when this splendid, princely-looking personage, together with his court of dignitaries and priests, paraded the Host round the church and up the crowded aisle spite of the close-wedged throng, they looked like a stream of liquid gold, that by its own weight made way through every obstacle. The archbishop is a mild and amiable-looking man, and ceased not to scatter blessings from his lips and sprinkle safety from his fingers'-ends upon the admiring people, as slowly and gracefully he passed among them. The latter years of this prelate's life have been signalized by some remarkable changes. He has seen the glories and the penitences of his church alike the favourite occupation of his king;--he has seen that king and his highest nobles walking in holy procession through the streets of Paris;--he has seen that same king banished from his throne and his country, a proscribed and melancholy exile, while the pomp and parade of his cherished faith were forbidden to offend the people's eyes by any longer pouring forth its gorgeous superstitions into the streets;--he has seen his own consecrated palace razed to its foundation, and its very elements scattered to the winds:--and now, this self-same prelate sees himself again well received at the court whence Charles Dix was banished; and, stranger still, perhaps, he sees his startled flock once more assembling round him, quietly and silently, but steadily and in earnest; while he who, within five short years, was trembling for his life, now lifts his head again, and not only in safety, but, with all his former power and pride of place, is permitted to "Chanter les _oremus_, faire des processions, Et répandre à grands flots les bénédictions." It is true, indeed, that there are no longer any Roman Catholic processions to be seen in the streets of Paris; but if we look within the churches, we find that the splendour concentrated there, has lost nothing of its impressive sumptuousness by thus changing the scene of its display. The service of this day, as far as the music was concerned, was in my opinion infinitely less impressive than that of Good-Friday at St. Roch. This doubtless arose in a great degree from the style of composition; but I suspect, moreover, that my imagination was put out of humour by seeing about fifty fiddlers, with every appearance of being (what they actually were) the orchestra of the opera, performing from a space enclosed for them at the entrance of the choir. The singing men and boys were also stationed in the same unwonted and unecclesiastical place; and though some of those hired for the occasion had very fine Italian voices, they had all the air of singing without "reading the words;" and, on the whole, my ear and my fancy were disappointed. Victor Hugo's description of old Paris as seen from the towers of Notre Dame sent us labouring to their summit. The state of the atmosphere was very favourable, and I was delighted to find that the introduction of coal, rapid as its progress has lately been, has not yet tinged the bright clear air sufficiently to prevent this splendid panorama from being distinctly seen to its remotest edge. That impenetrable mass of dun, dull smoke, that we look down upon whenever a mischievous imp of curiosity lures us to the top of any dome, tower, or obelisk in London, can hardly fail of making one remember every weary step which led to the profitless elevation; but one must be tired indeed to remember fatigue while looking down upon the bright, warm, moving miniature spread out below the towers of Notre Dame. What an intricate world of roofs it is!--and how mystically incomprehensible are the ins and outs, the bridges and the islands, of the idle Seine! A raft, caught sight of at intervals, bearing wood or wine; a floating wash-house, with its line of bending naïads, looking like a child's toy with figures all of a row; and here and there a floating-bath,--are all this river shows of its power to aid and assist the magnificent capital which has so strangely chosen to stretch herself along its banks. When one thinks of the forest of masts which we see covering whole miles of extent in London, it seems utterly unintelligible how that which is found needful for the necessities of one great city should appear so perfectly unnecessary for another. Victor Hugo's picture of the scene he has fancied beneath the towers of Notre Dame in the days of his Esmeralda is sketched with amazing spirit; though probably Paris was no more like the pretty panorama he makes of it than Timbuctoo. I heartily wish, however, that he would confine himself to the representation of still-life, and let his characters be all of innocent bricks and mortar: for even though they do look shadowy and somewhat doubtful in the distance, they have infinitely more nature and truth than can be found among all his horrible imaginings concerning his fellow-creatures. His description of the old church itself, too, is delicious: for though it has little of architectural reality or strict graphic fidelity about it, there is such a powerful air of truth in every word he says respecting it, that one looks out and about upon the rugged stones, and studies every angle, buttress, and parapet, with the lively interest of old acquaintance. I should like to have a legend, as fond and lingering in its descriptions, attached to some of our glorious and mysterious old Gothic cathedrals at home. This sort of reading gives a pleasure in which imagination and reality are very happily blended; and I can fancy nothing more agreeable than following an able romancer up and down, through and amongst, in and out, the gloomy, shadowy, fanciful, unintelligible intricacies of such a structure. How well might Winchester, for instance, with its solemn crypts, its sturdy Saxon strength, its quaintly-coffined relics of royal bones, its Gothic shrines, its monumental splendour, and its stately magnitude, furnish forth the material for some such spirit-stirring record! Having spent an hour of first-rate interest and gratification in wandering inside and outside of this very magnificent church, we crossed the Place, or _Parvis_, of Notre Dame, to see the celebrated hospital of the Hôtel Dieu. It is very particularly large, clean, airy, and well-ordered in every way; and I never saw sick people look less miserable than some scores of men and women did, tucked snugly up in their neat little beds, and most of them with a friend or relative at their side to console or amuse them. The access to the wards of this building is as free as that into a public bazaar; but there is one caution used in the admission of company which, before I understood it, puzzled me greatly. There are three doors at the top of the fine flight of steps which leads to the building. The centre one is used only as an exit; at the other two are placed guards, one a male, the other a female. Through these side-doors all who enter must pass--the men on one side, the women on the other; and all must submit to be pretty strictly examined, to see that they are conveying nothing either to eat or drink that might be injurious to the invalids. The covered bridge which opens from the back part of the Hôtel Dieu, connecting _l'Isle de la Cité_ with the left bank of the Seine, with its light glass roof, and safe shelter from wind, dust, or annoyance of any kind, forms a delightful promenade for the convalescent. The evening of this day we spent at a _soirée_, where we met, among many other pleasant persons, a very sensible and gentlemanlike American. I had the pleasure of a long conversation with him, during which he said many things extremely worth listening to. This gentleman has held many distinguished diplomatic situations, appears to have acquired a great deal of general information, and moreover to have given much attention to the institutions and character of his own country. He told me that Jefferson had been the friend of his early life; that he knew his sentiments and opinions on all subjects intimately well, and much better than those who were acquainted with them no otherwise than by his published writings. He assured me most positively that Jefferson was NOT a democrat in principle, but believed it expedient to promulgate the doctrine, as the only one which could excite the general feeling of the people, and make them hang together till they should have acquired strength sufficient to be reckoned as one among the nations. He said, that Jefferson's ulterior hope for America was, that she should, after having acquired this strength, give birth to men distinguished both by talent and fortune; that when this happened, an enlightened and powerful aristocracy might be hoped for, without which HE KNEW that no country could be really great or powerful. As I am assured that the word of this gentleman may be depended on, these observations--or rather, I should say, statements--respecting Jefferson appear to me worth noting. LETTER XIII. "Le Monomane." As a distinguished specimen of fashionable horror, I went last night to the Porte St. Martin to see "The Monomane," a drama in five acts, from the pen of a M. Duveyrier. I hardly know whether to give you a sketch of this monstrous outrage against common sense or not; but I think I will do so, because I flatter myself that no one will be silly enough to translate it into English, or import it in any shape into England; and, therefore, if I do not tell you something about it, you may chance to die without knowing to what prodigious lengths a search after absurdity may carry men. But first let me mention, as not the least extraordinary part of the phenomenon, that the theatre was crowded from floor to roof, and that Shakspeare was never listened to with attention more profound. However, it does not follow that approval or admiration of any kind was either the cause or the effect of this silent contemplation of the scene: no one could be more devoted to the business of the hour than myself, but most surely this was not the result of approbation. If I am not very clear respecting the plot, you must excuse me, from my want of habitual expertness in such an analysis; but the main features and characters cannot escape me. An exceedingly amiable and highly intellectual gentleman is the hero of this piece; a part personated by a M. Lockroi with a degree of ability deserving a worthier employment. This amiable man holds at Colmar the office of _procureur du roi_; and, from the habit of witnessing trials, acquires so vehement a passion for the shedding of blood on the scaffold, that it amounts to a mania. To illustrate this singular trait of character, M. Balthazar developes his secret feelings in an opening speech to an intimate friend. In this speech, which really contains some very good lines, he dilates with much enthusiasm on the immense importance which he conceives to attach to the strict and impartial administration of criminal justice. No man could deliver himself more judge-like and wisely; but how or why such very rational and sober opinions should lead to an unbounded passion for blood, is very difficult to understand. The next scene, however, shows the _procureur du roi_ hugging himself with a kind of mysterious rapture at the idea of an approaching execution, and receiving with a very wild and mad-like sort of agony some attempts to prove the culprit innocent. The execution takes place; and after it is over, the innocence of the unfortunate victim is fully proved. The amiable and excellent _procureur du roi_ is greatly moved at this; but his repentant agony is soon walked off by a few well-trod melodramatic turns up and down the stage; and he goes on again, seizing with ecstasy upon every opportunity of bringing the guilty to justice. What the object of the author can possibly be in making out that a man is mad solely because he wishes to do his duty, I cannot even guess. It is difficult to imagine an honest-minded magistrate uttering more common-place, uncontrovertible truths upon the painful duties of his station, than does this unfortunate gentleman. M. Victor Hugo, speaking of himself in one of his prefaces, says, "Il (Victor Hugo) continuera donc fermement; et chaque fois qu'il croira nécessaire de faire bien voir à tous, dans ses moindres détails, une idée utile, une idée sociale, une idée humaine, il posera le théâtre déssus comme un verre grossissant."[3] It strikes me that M. Duveyrier, the ingenious author of the Monomane, must work upon the same principle, and that in this piece he thinks he has put a magnifying-glass upon "une idée sociale." But I must return to my analysis of this drama of five mortal acts.--After the execution, the real perpetrator of the murder for which the unfortunate victim of legal enthusiasm has innocently suffered appears on the scene. He is brought sick or wounded into the house of a physician, with whom the _procureur du roi_ and his wife are on a visit. Balthazar sees the murderer conveyed to bed in a chamber that opens from that of his friend the doctor. He then goes to bed himself with his wife, and appears to have fallen asleep without delay, for we presently see him in this state come forth from his chamber upon a gallery, from whence a flight of stairs descends upon the stage. We see him walk down these stairs,--take some instrument out of a case belonging to the doctor,--enter the apartment where the murderer has been lodged,--return,--replace the instrument,--wash his bloody hands and wipe them upon a hand-towel,--then reascend the staircase and enter his lady's room at the top of it; all of which is performed in the silence of profound sleep. The attention which hung upon the whole of this long silent scene was such, that one might have supposed the lives of the audience depended upon their not waking this murderous sleeper by any sound; and the applause which followed the mute performance, when once the awful _procureur du roi_ was again safely lodged in his chamber, was deafening. The following morning it is discovered that the sick stranger has been murdered; and instantly the _procureur du roi_, with his usual ardour in discovering the guilty, sets most ably to work upon the investigation of every circumstance which may throw light upon this horrible transaction. Everything, particularly the case of instruments, of which one is bloody, and the hand-towel found in his room, stained with the same accusing dye--all tends to prove that the poor innocent physician is the murderer: he is accordingly taken up, tried, and condemned. This unfortunate young doctor has an uncle, of the same learned profession, who is addicted to the science of animal magnetism. This gentleman having some suspicion that Balthazar is himself the guilty person, imagines a very cunning device by which he may be made to betray himself if guilty. He determines to practise his magnetism upon him in full court while he is engaged in the duties of his high office, and flatters himself that he shall be able to throw him into a sleep or trance, in which state he may _par hasard_ let out something of the truth. This admirable contrivance answers perfectly. The attorney-general does fall into a most profound sleep the moment the old doctor begins his magnetising manoeuvres, and in this state not only relates aloud every circumstance of the murder, but, to give this confession more sure effect, he writes it out fairly, and sets his name to it, being profoundly asleep the whole time. And here it is impossible to avoid remarking on the extreme ill fortune which attends the sleeping hours of this amiable attorney-general. At one time he takes a nap, and kills a man without knowing anything of the matter; and then, in a subsequent state of oblivion, he confesses it, still without knowing anything of the matter. As soon as the unfortunate gentleman has finished the business for which he was put to sleep, he is awakened, and the paper is shown to him. He scruples not immediately to own his handwriting, which, sleeping or waking, it seems, was the same; but testifies the greatest horror and astonishment at the information the document contains, which was quite as unexpected to himself as to the rest of the company. His high office, however, we must presume, exempts him from all responsibility; for the only result of the discovery is an earnest recommendation from his friends, particularly the old and young doctors, that he should travel for the purpose of recovering his spirits. There is a little episode, by the way, from which we learn, that once, in one of his alarming slumbers, this amiable but unfortunate man gave symptoms of wishing to murder his wife and child; in consequence of which, it is proposed by the doctors that this tour for the restoration of his spirits should be made without them. To this separation Balthazar strongly objects, and tells his beautiful wife, with much tenderness, that he shall find it very dull without her. To this the lady, though naturally rather afraid of him, answers with great sweetness, that in that case she shall be extremely happy to go with him; adding tenderly, that she would willingly die to prove her devotion. Nothing could be so unfortunate as this expression. At the bare mention of his hobby-horse, _death_, his malady revives, and he instantly manifests a strong inclination to murder her,--and this time without even the ceremony of going to sleep. Big with the darling thought, his eyes rolling, his cheek pale, his bristling hair on end, and the awful genius of Melodrame swelling in every vein, Balthazar seats himself on the sofa beside his trembling wife, and taking the comb out of her (Mademoiselle Noblet's) beautiful hair, appears about to strangle her in the rope of jet that he pulls out to its utmost length, and twists, and twists, and twists, till one really feels a cold shiver from head to foot. But at length, at the very moment when matters seem drawing to a close, the lady throws herself lovingly on his bosom, and his purpose changes, or at least for a moment seems to change, and he relaxes his hold. At this critical juncture the two doctors enter. Balthazar looks at them wildly, then at his wife, then at the doctors again, and finally tells them all that he must beg leave to retire for a few moments. He passes through the group, who look at him in mournful silence; but as he approaches the door, he utters the word 'poison,' then enters, and locks and bolts it after him. Upon this the lady screams, and the two doctors fly for a crow-bar. The door is burst open, and the _procureur du roi_ comes forward, wide awake, but having swallowed the poison he had mentioned. This being "the last scene of all that ends this strange eventful history," the curtain falls upon the enthusiastic attorney-general as he expires in the arms of his wife and friends. We are always so apt, when we see anything remarkably absurd abroad, to flatter ourselves with the belief that nothing like it exists at home, that I am almost afraid to draw a parallel between this inconceivable trash, and the very worst and vilest piece that ever was permitted to keep possession of the stage in England, lest some one better informed on the subject than myself should quote some British enormity unknown to me, and so prove my patriotic theory false. Nevertheless, I cannot quit the subject without saying, that as far as my knowledge and belief go, English people never did sit by hundreds and listen patiently to such stuff as this. There is no very atrocious vice, no terrific wickedness in the piece, as far as I could understand its recondite philosophy; but its silliness surely possesses the silliness of a little child. The grimaces, the dumb show, the newly-invented passions, and the series of impossible events, which drag through these five longsome acts, seem to show a species of anomaly in the human mind that composed the piece, to which I imagine no parallel can be found on record. Is this the result of the march of mind?--is it the fruit of that universal diffusion of knowledge which we are told is at work throughout the world, but most busily in France?... I shall never understand the mystery, let me meditate upon it as long as I will. No! never shall I understand how a French audience, lively, witty, acute, and prone to seize upon whatever is ridiculous, can thus sit night after night with profound gravity, and the highest apparent satisfaction, to witness the incredible absurdity of such a piece as "Le Monomane." There is one way, and one way only, in which the success of this drama can be accounted for intelligibly. May it not be, that "LES JEUNES GENS," wanton in their power, have determined in merry mood to mystify their fellow-citizens by passing a favourable judgment upon this tedious performance? And may they not now be enjoying the success of their plot in ecstasies of private laughter, at seeing how meekly the dutiful Parisians go nightly to the Porte St. Martin, and sit in obedient admiration of what it has pleased their youthful tyrants to denominate "a fine drama"? But I must leave off guessing; for, as the wise man saith, "the finding out of parables is a wearisome labour of the mind." Some critic, speaking of the new school of French dramatists, says that "they have heaved the ground under the feet of Racine and Corneille." If this indeed be so, the best thing that the lovers of tragedy can do is to sit at home and wait patiently till the earth settles itself again from the shock of so deplorable an earthquake. That it will settle itself again, I have neither doubt nor fear. Nonsense has nothing of immortality in its nature; and when the storm which has scattered all this frothy scum upon us shall have fairly blown over and passed away, then I suspect that Corneille and Racine will still find solid standing-ground on the soil of France;--nay, should they by chance find also that their old niches in the temple of her great men remain vacant, it is likely enough that they may be again invited to take possession of them; and they may keep it too perhaps for a few more hundred years, with very little danger that any greater than they should arrive to take their places. FOOTNOTE: [3] _Translation._--He will continue then firmly; and every time that he shall think it necessary to make visible to all, in its least details, a useful idea, a social idea, a humane idea, he will place upon it the theatre, as a magnifying-glass. LETTER XIV. The Gardens of the Tuileries.--Legitimatist.--Republican.-- Doctrinaire.--Children.--Dress of the Ladies.--Of the Gentlemen.--Black Hair.--Unrestricted Admission.--Anecdote. Is there anything in the world that can be fairly said to resemble the Gardens of the Tuileries? I should think not. It is a whole made up of so many strongly-marked and peculiar features, that it is not probable any other place should be found like it. To my fancy, it seems one of the most delightful scenes in the world; and I never enter there, though it is long since the enchantment of novelty made any part of the charm, without a fresh feeling of enjoyment. The _locale_ itself, independent of the moving throng which for ever seems to dwell within it, is greatly to my taste: I love all the detail of its embellishment, and I dearly love the bright and happy aspect of the whole. But on this subject I know there are various opinions: many talk with distaste of the straight lines, the clipped trees, the formal flower-beds, the ugly roofs,--nay, some will even abuse the venerable orange-trees themselves, because they grow in square boxes, and do not wave their boughs in the breeze like so many ragged willow-trees. But I agree not with any one of these objections; and should think it as reasonable, and in as good taste, to quarrel with Westminster Abbey because it did not look like a Grecian temple, as to find fault with the Gardens of the Tuileries because they are arranged like French pleasure-grounds, and not like an English park. For my own part, I profess that I would not, if I had the power, change even in the least degree a single feature in this pleasant spot: enter it at what hour or at what point I will, it ever seems to receive me with smiles and gladness. We seldom suffer a day to pass without refreshing our spirits by sitting for a while amidst its shade and its flowers. From the part of the town where we are now dwelling, the gate opposite the Place Vendôme is our nearest entrance; and perhaps from no point does the lively beauty of the whole scene show itself better than from beneath the green roof of the terrace-walk, to which this gate admits us. To the right, the dark mass of unshorn trees, now rich with the flowers of the horse-chesnut, and growing as boldly and as loftily as the most English-hearted gardener could desire, leads the eye through a very delicious "continuity of shade" to the magnificent gate that opens upon the Place Louis-Quinze. To the left is the widely-spreading façade of the Tuileries Palace, the ungraceful elevation of the pavilion roofs, well nigh forgotten, and quite atoned for by the beauty of the gardens at their feet. Then, just where the shade of the high trees ceases, and the bright blaze of sunshine begins, what multitudes of sweet flowers are seen blushing in its beams! An universal lilac bloom seems at this season to spread itself over the whole space; and every breeze that passes by, comes to us laden with perfume. My daily walk is almost always the same,--I love it so well that I do not like to change it. Following the shady terrace by which we enter to the point where it sinks down to the level of the magnificent esplanade in front of the palace, we turn to the right, and endure the splendid brightness till we reach the noble walk leading from the gateway of the centre pavilion, through flowers, statues, orange-trees, and chesnut-groves, as far as the eye can reach, till it reposes at last upon the lofty arch of the Barrière de l'Etoile. This _coup-d'oeil_ is so beautiful, that I constantly feel renewed pleasure when I look upon it. I do indeed confess myself to be one of those "who in trim gardens take their pleasure." I love the studied elegance, the carefully-selected grace of every object permitted to meet the pampered eye in such a spot as this. I love these fondly-nurtured princely exotics, the old orange-trees, ranged in their long stately rows; and better still do I love the marble groups, that stand so nobly, sometimes against the bright blue sky, and sometimes half concealed in the dark setting of the trees. Everything seems to speak of taste, luxury, and elegance. Having indulged in a lingering walk from the palace to the point at which the sunshine ceases and the shade begins, a new species of interest and amusement awaits us. Thousands of chairs scattered just within the shelter of this inviting covert are occupied by an interminable variety of pretty groups. I wonder how many months of constant attendance there, it would take before I should grow weary of studying the whole and every separate part of this bright picture? It is really matchless in beauty as a spectacle, and unequalled in interest as a national study. All Paris may in turn be seen and examined there; and nowhere is it so easy to distinguish specimens of the various and strongly-marked divisions of the people. This morning we took possession of half a dozen chairs under the trees which front the beautiful group of Pelus and Aria. It was the hour when all the newspapers are in the greatest requisition; and we had the satisfaction of watching the studies of three individuals, each of whom might have sat as a model for an artist who wished to give an idea of their several peculiarities. We saw, in short, beyond the possibility of doubt, a royalist, a doctrinaire, and a republican, during the half-hour we remained there, all soothing their feelings by indulging in two sous' worth of politics, each in his own line. A stiff but gentleman-like old man first came, and having taken a journal from the little octagon stand--which journal we felt quite sure was either "La France" or "La Quotidienne"--he established himself at no great distance from us. Why it was that we all felt so certain of his being a legitimatist I can hardly tell you, but not one of the party had the least doubt about it. There was a quiet, half-proud, half-melancholy air of keeping himself apart; an aristocratical cast of features; a pale care-worn complexion; and a style of dress which no vulgar man ever wore, but which no rich one would be likely to wear to-day. This is all I can record of him: but there was something pervading his whole person too essentially loyal to be misunderstood, yet too delicate in its tone to be coarsely painted. Such as it was, however, we felt it quite enough to make the matter sure; and if I could find out that old gentleman to be either doctrinaire or republican, I never would look on a human countenance again in order to discover what was passing within. The next who approached us we were equally sure was a republican: but here the discovery did little honour to our discernment; for these gentry choose to leave no doubt upon the subject of their _clique_, but contrive that every article contributing to the appearance of the outward man shall become a symbol and a sign, a token and a stigma, of the madness that possesses them. He too held a paper in his hand, and without venturing to approach too nearly to so alarming a personage, we scrupled not to assure each other that the journal he was so assiduously perusing was "Le Réformateur." Just as we had decided what manner of man it was who was stalking so majestically past us, a comfortable-looking citizen approached in the uniform of the National Guard, who sat himself down to his daily allowance of politics with the air of a person expecting to be well pleased with what he finds, but nevertheless too well contented with himself and all things about him to care over-much about it. Every line of this man's jocund face, every curve of his portly figure, spoke contentment and well-being. He was probably one of that very new race in France, a tradesman making a rapid fortune. Was it possible to doubt that the paper in his hand was "Le Journal des Débats?" was it possible to believe that this man was other than a prosperous doctrinaire? [Illustration: Drawn & Etched by A. Hervieu. MORNING AT THE TUILERIES. London, Published by Richard Bentley, 1835.] Thus, on the neutral ground furnished by these delightful gardens, hostile spirits meet with impunity, and, though they mingle not, enjoy in common the delicious privileges of cool shade, fresh air, and the idle luxury of an _al fresco_ newspaper, in the midst of a crowded and party-split city, with as much certainty of being unchallenged and uninterrupted as if each were wandering alone in a princely domain of his own. Such, too, as are not over splenetic may find a very lively variety of study in watching the ways of the little dandies and dandiesses who, at some hours of the day, swarm like so many hummingbirds amidst the shade and sunshine of the Tuileries. Either these little French personages are marvellously well-behaved, or there is some superintending care which prevents screaming; for I certainly never saw so many young things assembled together who indulged so rarely in that salutary exercise of the lungs which makes one so often tremble at the approach of "Soft infancy, that nothing can, but cry." The costumes of these pretty creatures contribute not a little to the amusement; it is often so whimsical as to give them the appearance of miniature maskers. I have seen little fellows beating a hoop in the full uniform of a National Guard; others waddling under the mimicry of kilted Highlanders; and small ladies without number in every possible variety of un-babylike apparel. The entertainment to be derived from sitting in the Tuileries Gardens and studying costume is, however, by no means confined to the junior part of the company. In no country have I ever seen anything approaching in grotesque habiliments to some of the figures daily and hourly met lounging about these walks. But such vagaries are confined wholly to the male part of the population; it is very rare to see a woman outrageously dressed in any way; and if you do, the chances are five hundred to one that she is not a Frenchwoman. An air of quiet elegant neatness is, I think, the most striking characteristic of the walking costume of the French ladies. All the little minor finishings of the female toilet appear to be more sedulously cared for than the weightier matters of the pelisse and gown. Every lady you meet is _bien chaussée_, _bien gantée_. Her ribbons, if they do not match her dress, are sure to accord with it; and for all the delicate garniture that comes under the care of the laundress, it should seem that Paris alone, of all the earth, knows how to iron. The whimsical caprices of male attire, on the contrary, defy anything like general remark; unless, indeed, it be that the air of Paris appears to have the quality of turning all the _imperials_, _favoris_, and _moustaches_ which dwell within its walls to jetty blackness. At a little distance, the young men have really the air of having their faces tied up with black ribbon as a cure for the mumps; and, handsome as this dark _chevelure_ is generally allowed to be, the heavy uniformity of it at present very considerably lessens its striking effect. When every man has his face half covered with black hair, it ceases to be a very valuable distinction. Perhaps, too, the frequent advertisements of compositions infallible in their power of turning the hair to any colour except "what pleases God," may tend to make one look with suspicious eyes at these once fascinating southern decorations; but, at present, I take it to be an undoubted fact, that a clean, close-shaven, northern-looking gentleman is valued at a high premium in every _salon_ in Paris. It is not to be denied that the "glorious and immortal days" have done some injury to the general appearance of the Tuileries Gardens. Before this period, no one was permitted to enter them dressed in a _blouse_, or jacket, or _casquette_; and no one, either male or female, might carry bundles or baskets through these pretty regions, sacred to relaxation and holiday enjoyment. But liberty and unseemly sordidness of attire being somehow or other jumbled together in the minds of the sovereign mob,--not sovereign either--the mob is only vice-regal in Paris as yet;--but the mob, however, such as it is, has obtained, as a mark of peculiar respect and favour to themselves, a new law or regulation, by which it is enacted that these royal precincts may become like unto Noah's ark, and that both clean and unclean beasts may enter here. Could one wish for a better specimen of the sort of advantage to be gained by removing the restraint of authority in order to pamper the popular taste for what they are pleased to call freedom? Not one of the persons who enter the gardens now, were restricted from entering them before; only it was required that they should be decently clad;--that is to say, in such garments as they were accustomed to wear on Sunday or any other holiday; the only occasions, one should imagine, on which the working classes could wish to profit by permission to promenade in a public garden: but the obligation to appear clean in the garden of the king's palace was an infringement on their liberty, so that formality is dispensed with; and they have now obtained the distinguished and ennobling privilege of being as dirty and ill-dressed as they like. The power formerly intrusted to the sentinel, wherever there was one stationed, of refusing the _entrée_ to all persons not properly dressed, gave occasion once to a saucy outbreaking of French wit in one of the National Guard, which was amusing enough. This civic guardian was stationed at the gates of a certain _Mairie_ on some public occasion, with the usual injunction not to permit any person "_mal-mise_" to enter. An _incroyable_ presented himself, not dressed in the fashion, but immoderately beyond it. The sentinel looked at him, and lowered his piece across the entrance, pronouncing in a voice of authority-- "You cannot enter." "Not enter?" exclaimed the astonished beau, looking down at the exquisite result of his laborious toilet; "not enter?--forbid me to enter, sir?--impossible! What is it you mean? Let me pass, I say!" The imperturbable sentinel stood like a rock before the entrance: "My orders are precise," he said, "and I may not infringe them." "Precise? Your orders precise to refuse me?" "Oui, monsieur, précis, de refuser qui que ce soit que je trouve mal-mis." LETTER XV. Street Police.--Cleaning Beds.--Tinning Kettles.--Building Houses.--Loading Carts.--Preparing for the Scavenger.--Want of Drains.--Bad Pavement.--Darkness. My last letter was of the Tuileries Gardens; a theme which furnished me so many subjects of admiration, that I think, if only for the sake of variety, I will let the smelfungus vein prevail to-day. Such, then, being my humour,--or my ill-humour, if you will,--I shall indulge it by telling you what I think of the street-police of Paris. I will not tell you that it is bad, for that, I doubt not, many others may have done before me; but I will tell you that I consider it as something wonderful, mysterious, incomprehensible, and perfectly astonishing. In a city where everything intended to meet the eye is converted into graceful ornament; where the shops and coffee-houses have the air of fairy palaces, and the markets show fountains wherein the daintiest naïads might delight to bathe;--in such a city as this, where the women look too delicate to belong wholly to earth, and the men too watchful and observant to suffer the winds of heaven to visit them too roughly;--in such a city as this, you are shocked and disgusted at every step you take, or at every gyration that the wheels of your chariot can make, by sights and smells that may not be described. Every day brings my astonishment on this subject to a higher pitch than the one which preceded it; for every day brings with it fresh conviction that a very considerable portion of the enjoyment of life is altogether destroyed in Paris by the neglect or omission of such a degree of municipal interference as might secure the most elegant people in the world from the loathsome disgust occasioned by the perpetual outrage of common decency in their streets. On this branch of the subject it is impossible to say more; but there are other points on which the neglect of street-police is as plainly, though less disgustingly, apparent; and some of these I will enumerate for your information, as they may be described without impropriety; but when they are looked at in conjunction with the passion for graceful decoration, so decidedly a characteristic of the French people, they offer to our observation an incongruity so violent, as to puzzle in no ordinary degree whoever may wish to explain it. You cannot at this season pass through any street in Paris, however pre-eminently fashionable from its situation, or however distinguished by the elegance of those who frequent it, without being frequently obliged to turn aside, that you may not run against two or more women covered with dust, and probably with vermin, who are busily employed in pulling their flock mattresses to pieces in the street. There they stand or sit, caring for nobody, but combing, turning, and shaking the wool upon all comers and goers; and, finally, occupying the space round which many thousand passengers are obliged to make what is always an inconvenient, and sometimes a very dirty _détour_, by poking the material, cleared from the filth, which has passed into the throats of the gentlemen and ladies of Paris, back again into its checked repository. I have within this half-hour passed from the Italian Boulevard by the Opera-house, in the front of which this obscene and loathsome operation was being performed by a solitary old crone, who will doubtless occupy the place she has chosen during the whole day, and carry away her bed just in time to permit the Duke of Orleans to step from his carriage into the Opera without tumbling over it, but certainly not in time to prevent his having a great chance of receiving as he passes some portion of the various animate and inanimate superfluities which for so many hours she has been scattering to the air. A few days ago I saw a well-dressed gentleman receive a severe contusion on the head, and the most overwhelming destruction to the neatness of his attire, in consequence of a fall occasioned by his foot getting entangled in the apparatus of a street-working tinker, who had his charcoal fire, bellows, melting-pot, and all other things necessary for carrying on the tinning trade in a small way, spread forth on the pavement of the Rue de Provence. When the accident happened, many persons were passing, all of whom seemed to take a very obliging degree of interest in the misfortune of the fallen gentleman; but not a syllable either of remonstrance or remark was uttered concerning the invasion of the highway by the tinker; nor did that wandering individual himself appear to think any apology called for, or any change in the arrangement of his various chattels necessary. Whenever a house is to be built or repaired in London, the first thing done is to surround the premises with a high paling, that shall prevent any of the operations that are going on within it from annoying in any way the public in the street. The next thing is to arrange a footpath round this paling, carefully protected by posts and rails, so that this unavoidable invasion of the ordinary foot-path may be productive of as little inconvenience as possible. Were you to pass a spot in Paris under similar circumstances, you would fancy that some tremendous accident--a fire, perhaps, or the falling in of a roof--had occasioned a degree of difficulty and confusion to the passengers which it was impossible to suppose could be suffered to remain an hour unremedied: but it is, on the contrary, permitted to continue, to the torment and danger of daily thousands, for months together, without the slightest notice or objection on the part of the municipal authorities. If a cart be loading or unloading in the street, it is permitted to take and keep a position the most inconvenient, in utter disregard of any danger or delay which it may and must occasion to the carriages and foot-passengers who have to travel round it. Nuisances and abominations of all sorts are without scruple committed to the street at any hour of the day or night, to await the morning visit of the scavenger to remove them: and happy indeed is it for the humble pedestrian if his eye and nose alone suffer from these ejectments; happy, indeed, if he comes not in contact with them, as they make their unceremonious exit from window or door. "_Quel bonheur!_" is the exclamation if he escapes; but a look, wholly in sorrow and nowise in anger, is the only helpless resource should he be splashed from head to foot. On the subject of that monstrous barbarism, a gutter in the middle of the streets expressly formed for the reception of filth, which is still permitted to deform the greater portion of this beautiful city, I can only say, that the patient endurance of it by men and women of the year one thousand eight hundred and thirty-five is a mystery difficult to understand. It really appears to me, that almost the only thing in the world which other men do, but which Frenchmen cannot, is the making of sewers and drains. After an hour or two of very violent rain last week, that part of the Place Louis-Quinze which is near the entrance to the Champs Elysées remained covered with water. The Board of Works having waited for a day or two to see what would happen, and finding that the muddy lake did not disappear, commanded the assistance of twenty-six able-bodied labourers, who set about digging just such a channel as little boys amuse themselves by making beside a pond. By this well-imagined engineering exploit, the stagnant water was at length conducted to the nearest gutter; the pickaxes were shouldered, and an open muddy channel left to adorn this magnificent area, which, were a little finishing bestowed upon it, would probably be the finest point that any city in the world could boast. Perhaps it will hardly be fair to set it amongst my complaints against the streets of Paris, that they have not yet adopted our last and most luxurious improvement. I cannot but observe, however, that having passed some weeks here, I feel that the Macadamised streets of London ought to become the subject of a metropolitan jubilee among us. The exceeding noise of Paris, proceeding either from the uneven structure of the pavement, or from the defective construction of wheels and springs, is so violent and incessant as to appear like the effect of one great continuous cause,--a sort of demon torment, which it must require great length of use to enable one to endure without suffering. Were a cure for this sought in the Macadamising of the streets, an additional advantage, by the bye, would be obtained, from the difficulties it would throw in the way of the future heroes of a barricade. There is another defect, however, and one much more easily remedied, which may fairly, I think, come under the head of defective street-police. This is the profound darkness of every part of the city in which there are not shops illuminated by the owners of them with gas. This is done so brilliantly on the Boulevards by the _cafés_ and _restaurans_, that the dim old-fashioned lamp suspended at long intervals across the _pavé_ is forgotten. But no sooner is this region of light and gaiety left, than you seem to plunge into outer darkness; and there is not a little country town in England which is not incomparably better lighted than any street in Paris which depends for its illumination upon the public regulations of the city. As it is evident that gas-pipes must be actually laid in all directions in order to supply the individuals who employ it in their houses, I could in no way understand why these most dismal _réverbères_, with their dingy oil, were to be made use of in preference to the beautiful light which almost outblazes that of the sun; but I am told that some unexpired contract between Paris and her lamplighters is the cause of this. Were the convenience of the public as sedulously studied in France as in England, not all the claims of all the lamplighters in the world, let it cost what it might to content them, would keep her citizens groping in darkness when it was so very easy to give them light. But not to dwell ungratefully upon the grievances which certainly disfigure this city of delight, I will not multiply instances; yet I am sure I may assert, without fear of contradiction or reproach, that such a street-police as that of London would be one of the greatest civic blessings that King Philippe could possibly bestow upon his "_belle ville de Paris_." LETTER XVI. Preparations for the Fête du Roi.--Arrival of Troops.--Champs Elysées.--Concert in the Garden of the Tuileries.--Silence of the People.--Fireworks. May 2, 1835. For several days past we have been watching the preparations for the King's fête, which though not quite equal to those in the days of the Emperor, when all the fountains in Paris ran wine, were on a large and splendid scale, and if more sober, were perhaps not less princely. Temporary theatres, ball-rooms, and orchestras in the Champs Elysées--magnificent fireworks on the Pont Louis-Seize--preparations for a full concert immediately in front of the Tuileries Palace, and arrangement of lamps for general illuminations, but especially in the Gardens, were the chief of these; but none of them struck us so much as the daily-increasing number of troops. National Guards and soldiers of the line divided the streets between them; and as a grand review was naturally to make a part of the day's pageantry, there would have been nothing to remark in this, were it not that the various parties into which the country is divided perpetually leads people to suppose that King Philippe finds it necessary to act on the defensive. Numberless are the hints, as you may imagine, on this theme that have been thrown out on the present occasion; and it is confidently asserted in some quarters, that the reviewing of large bodies of troops is likely to become a very fashionable and frequent, if not a very popular, amusement here. If, indeed, a show of force be necessary to ensure the tranquillity of this strife-worn land, the government certainly do right in displaying it; but if this be not the case, there is some imprudence in it, for the effect much resembles that of "A rich armour, worn in heat of day, That scalds with safety." Yesterday, then, being marked in the calendar as sacred to St. Jacques and St. Philippe, was kept as the fête of the present King of the French. The weather was brilliant, and everything looked gay, particularly around the courtly region of the Tuileries, Champs Elysées, and all parts near or between them. Being assured by a philosophical looker-on upon all such assemblings of the people as are likely to show forth indications of their temper, that the humours of the Champs Elysées would display more of this than I could hope to find elsewhere, I was about to order a carriage to convey us there; but my friend stopped me. "You may as well remain at home," said he; "from a carriage you will see nothing but a mob: but if you will walk amongst them, you may perhaps find out whether they are thinking of anything or nothing." "Anything?--or nothing?" I repeated. "Does the _anything_ mean a revolution? Tell me truly, is there any chance of a riot?" Instead of answering, he turned to a gentleman of our party who was just returned from the review of the troops by the king. "Did you not say you had seen the review?" he demanded. "Yes; I am just come from it." "And what do you think of the troops?" "They are very fine troops,--remarkably fine men, both the National Guards and the troops of the line." "And in sufficient force, are they not, to keep Paris quiet if she should feel disposed to be frolicsome?" "Certainly--I should think so." It was therefore determined, leaving the younger part of the females behind us however in case of the worst, that we should repair to the Champs Elysées. No one who has not seen a public fête celebrated at Paris can form an idea of the scene which the whole of this extensive area presents: it makes me giddy even to remember it. Imagine a hundred swings throwing their laughing cargoes high into the air; a hundred winged ships flying in endless whirl, and bearing for their crews a _tête-à-tête_ pair of holiday sweethearts: imagine a hundred horses, each with two prancing hoofs high poised in air, coursing each other in a circle, with nostrils of flame; a hundred mountebanks, chattering and gibbering their inconceivable jargon, some habited as generals, some as Turks,--some offering their nostrums in the impressive habit of an Armenian Jew, and others rolling head-over-heels upon a stage, and presenting a dose with the grin of Grimaldi. We stopped more than once in our progress to watch the ways of one of these animals when it had succeeded in fascinating its prey: the poor victim was cajoled and coaxed into believing that none of woman born could ever taste of evil more, if he would but trust to the one only true, sure, and certain specific. At all sides of us, as we advanced, we were skirted by long lines of booths, decked with gaudy merchandise, rings, clasps, brooches, buckles, most tempting to behold, and all to be had for five sous each. It is pretty enough to watch the eager glances and the smirking smiles of the damsels, with the yielding, tender looks of the fond boys who hover round these magazines of female trumpery. Alas! it is perhaps but the beginning of sorrow! In the largest open space afforded by these Elysian fields were erected two theatres, the interval between them holding, it was said, twenty thousand spectators. While one of these performed a piece, pantomimic I believe, the other enjoyed a _relâche_ and reposed itself: but the instant the curtain of one fell, that of the other rose, and the ocean of heads which filled the space between them turned, and undulated like the waves of the sea, ebbing and flowing, backwards and forwards, as the moon-struck folly attracted them. Four ample _al fresco_ enclosures prepared for dancing, each furnished with a very respectable orchestra, occupied the extreme corners of this space; and notwithstanding the crowd, the heat, the sunshine, and the din, this exercise, which was carried on immediately under them, did not, I was told, cease for a single instant during the whole of that long summer-day. When one set of fiddlers were tired out, another succeeded. The activity, gaiety, and universal good-humour of this enormous mob were uniform and uninterrupted from morning to night. These people really deserve fêtes; they enjoy them so heartily, yet so peaceably. Such were the great and most striking features of the jubilee; but we hardly advanced a single step through the throng which did not exhibit to us some minor trait of national and characteristic revelry. I was delighted to observe, however, throughout the whole of my expedition, that, according to our friend's definition, "_nobody was thinking of anything_." But what pleased me incomparably more than all the rest was the temperate style of the popular refreshments. The young men and the old, the time-worn matron and the dainty damsel, all alike slaked their thirst with iced lemonade, which was furnished in incredible quantities by numberless ambulant cisterns, at the price of one sou the glass. Happily this light-hearted, fête-loving population have no gin-palaces to revel in. But hunger was to be satisfied as well as thirst; and here the _friand_ taste of the people displayed itself by dozens of little chafing-dishes lodged at intervals under the trees, each with its presiding old woman, who, holding a frying-pan, for ever redolent of onions, over the coals, screamed in shrill accents the praises of her _saucisses_ and her _foie_. This was the only part of the business that was really disagreeable: the odour from these _al fresco_ kitchens was not, I confess, very pleasant; but everything else pleased me exceedingly. It was the first time I ever saw a real mob in full jubilee; and I did not believe it possible I could have been so much amused, and so not at all frightened. Even before one of these terribly odoriferant kitchens, I could not help pausing for a moment as I passed, to admire the polite style in which an old woman who had taken early possession of the shade of a tree for her _restaurant_ defended the station from the wheelbarrow of a merchant of gingerbread who approached it. "Pardon, monsieur!... Ne venez pas, je vous prie, déranger mon établissement." The two grotesque old figures, together with their fittings up, made this dignified address delightful; and as it was answered by a bow, and the respectful drawing back of the wheelbarrow, I cannot but give it the preference over the more energetic language which a similar circumstance would be likely to produce at Bartholomew Fair. Altogether we were infinitely amused by this excursion; but I think I never was more completely fatigued in my life. Nevertheless, I contrived to repose myself sufficiently to join a large party to the Tuileries Gardens in the evening, where we were assured that _two hundred thousand persons_ were collected. The crowd was indeed very great, and the party soon found it impossible to keep together; but about three hours afterwards we had the satisfaction of assembling in safety at the same pleasant mansion from which we set out. The attraction which during the early part of the evening chiefly drew together the crowd was the orchestra in front of the palace. A large military band were stationed there, and continued playing, while the thousands and tens of thousands of lamps were being lighted all over the gardens. During this time, the king, queen, and royal family appeared on the balcony. And here the only fault which I had perceived in this pretty fête throughout the day showed itself so strongly as to produce a very disagreeable effect. From first to last, it seemed that the cause of the jubilee was forgotten; not a sound of any kind greeted the appearance of the royal party. That so gay and demonstrative a people, assembled in such numbers, and on such an occasion, should remain with uplifted heads, gazing on the sovereign, without a sound being uttered by any single voice, appeared perfectly astonishing. However, if there were no bravoes, there was decidedly no hissing. The scene itself was one of enchanting gaiety. Before us rose the illuminated pavilions of the Tuileries: the bright lights darting through the oleanders and myrtles on the balcony, showed to advantage the royal party stationed there. On every side were trees, statues, flowers, brought out to view by unnumbered lamps rising in brilliant pyramids among them, while the inspiring sounds of martial music resounded in the midst. The _jets d'eau_, catching the artificial light, sprang high into the air like arrows of fire, then turned into spray, and descended again in light showers, seeming to shed delicious coolness on the crowd; and behind them, far as the eye could reach, stretched the suburban forest, sparkling with festoons of lamps, that seemed drawn out, "fine by degrees and beautifully less," up to the Barrière de l'Etoile. The scene itself was indeed lovely; and if, instead of the heavy silence with which it was regarded, a loud heartfelt cheering had greeted the _jour de fête_ of a long-loved king, it would have been perfect. The fireworks, too, were superb; and though all the theatres in Paris were opened gratis to the public, and, as we afterwards heard, completely filled, the multitudes that thronged to look at them seemed enough to people a dozen cities. But it is so much the habit of this people, old and young, rich and poor, to live out of doors, that a slight temptation "bye common" is sufficient to draw forth every human being who is able to stand alone: and indeed, of those who are not, thousands are deposited in chairs, and other thousands in the arms of mothers and nurses. The Pont Louis-Seize was the point from which all the fireworks were let off. No spot could have been better chosen: the terraces of the Tuileries looked down upon it; and the whole length of the quays, on both sides of the river, as far as the _Cité_, looked up to it, and the persons stationed on them must have seen clearly the many-coloured fires that blazed there. One of the prettiest popular contrivances for creating a shout when fireworks are exhibited here, is to have rockets, sending up tri-coloured balls, blue, white, and red, in rapid succession, looking, as I heard a young republican say, "like winged messengers, from their loved banner up to heaven." I could not help remarking, that if the messengers repeated faithfully all that the tri-coloured banner had done, they would have strange tales to tell. The _bouquet_, or last grand display that finished the exhibition, was very fanciful and very splendid: but what struck me as the prettiest part of the whole show, was the Chamber of Deputies, the architecture of which was marked by lines of light; and the magnificent flight of steps leading to it having each one its unbroken fencing of fire, was perhaps intended as a mystical type of the ordeal to be passed in a popular election before this temple of wisdom could be entered. How very delightful was the abounding tea of that hot lamp-lit night!... And how very thankful was I this morning, at one o'clock, to feel that the _fête du roi_ was peaceably over, and I ready to fall soundly to sleep in my bed! LETTER XVII. Political chances.--Visit from a Republican.--His high spirits at the prospects before him.--His advice to me respecting my name.--Removal of the Prisoners from Ste. Pélagie.--Review.--Garde de Paris.--The National Guard. We are so accustomed, in these our luckless days, to hear of _émuetes_ and rumours of _émuetes_, here, there, and everywhere, that we certainly grow nerve-hardened, and if not quite callous, at least we are almost reckless of the threat. But in this city the business of getting up riots on the one hand, and putting them down on the other, is carried on in so easy and familiar a manner, that we daily look for an account of something of the kind as regularly as for our breakfast bread; and I begin already to lose in a great degree my fear of disagreeable results, in the interest with which I watch what is going on. The living in the midst of all these different parties, and listening first to one and then to another of them, is to a foreigner much like the amusement derived by an idle spectator from walking round a card-table, looking into all the hands, and then watching the manner in which each one plays his game. It has so often happened here, as we all know, that when the game has appeared over, and the winner in possession of the stake he played for, they have on a sudden shuffled the cards and begun again, that people seem always looking out for new chances, new bets, new losses, and new confusion. I can assure you, that it is a game of considerable movement and animation which is going on at Paris just now. The political trials are to commence on Tuesday next, and the republicans are as busy as a nest of wasps when conscious that their stronghold is attacked. They have not only been upon the alert, but hitherto in great spirits at the prospect before them. The same individual whose alarming communications on this subject I mentioned to you soon after we came here, called on me again a few days ago. I never saw a man more altered in the interval of a few weeks: when I first saw him here, he was sullen, gloomy, and miserable-looking in the extreme; but at his last visit he appeared gay, frolicsome, and happy. He was not disposed, however, to talk much on politics; and I am persuaded he came with a fixed determination not to indulge our curiosity by saying a word on the subject. But "out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh;" and this gentleman did not depart without giving us some little intimation of what was passing in his. Observe, that I do no treason in repeating to you whatever this young man said in my hearing; for he assured me the first time I ever saw him, that he knew me to be "_une absolutiste enragée_;" but that, so far from fearing to speak freely before me, there was nothing that would give him so much pleasure as believing that I should publish every word he uttered on the subject of politics. I told him in return, that if I did so, it should be without mentioning his name; for that I should be truly sorry to hear that he had been consigned to Ste. Pélagie as a rebel on my evidence. So we understand each other perfectly. On the morning in question, he began talking gaily and gallantly concerning the pleasures of Paris, and expressed his hope that we were taking care to profit by the present interval of public tranquillity. "Is this interval of calm likely to be followed by a storm?" said one of the party. "Mais ... que sais-je?... The weather is so fine now, you know.... And the opera? en vérité, c'est superbe!... Have you seen it yet?" "Seen what?" "Eh! mais, 'La Juive'! ... à présent il n'y a que cela au monde.... You read the journals?" "Yes; Galignani's at least." "Ah! ah!" said he, laughing; "c'est assez pour vous autres." "Is there any interesting news to-day in any of the papers?" "Intéressante? ... mais, oui ... assez.... Cependant...." And then again he rattled on about plays, balls, concerts, and I know not what. "I wish you would tell me," said I, interrupting him, "whether you think, that in case any popular movement should occur, the English would be molested, or in any way annoyed." "Non, madame--je ne le crois pas--surtout les femmes. Cependant, si j'étais vous, Madame Trollope, je me donnerai pour le moment le nom d'O'Connell." "And that, you think, would be accepted as a passport through any scene of treason and rebellion?" said I. He laughed again, and said that was not exactly what he meant; but that O'Connell was a name revered in France as well as at Rome, and might very likely belong one day or other to a pope, if his generous wishes for an Irish republic were too dear to his heart to permit him ever to accept the title of king. "An Irish republic? ... perhaps that is just what is wanted," said I. But not wishing to enter into any discussion on the niceties of speech, I waived the compliments he began to pay me on this liberal sentiment, and again asked him if he thought anything was going on amongst the friends of the prisoners that might impede the course of justice. Though not aware of the quibble with which I had replied to him, he answered me by another, saying with energy-- "No! ... never!... They will never do anything to impede the course of justice." "Will they do anything to assist it?" said I. He sprang from his chair, gave a bound across the room, as if to hide his glee by looking out of the window, and when he showed his face again, said with much solemnity--"They will do their duty." The conversation continued for some time longer, wavering between politics and dissipation; and though we could not obtain from him anything approaching to information respecting what might be going on among his hot-headed party, yet it seemed clear that he at least hoped for something that would lead to important results. The riddle was explained a very few hours after he left us. The political prisoners, most of whom were lodged in the prison of Ste. Pélagie, have been removed to the Luxembourg; and it was confidently hoped and expected by the republicans that enough malcontents would be found among the citizens of Paris to get up a very satisfactory _émeute_ on the occasion. But never was hope more abortive: not the slightest public sensation appears to have been excited by this removal; and I am assured that the whole republican party are so bitterly disappointed at this, that the most sanguine among them have ceased for the present to anticipate the triumph of their cause. I suspect, therefore, that it will be some time before we shall receive another visit from our riot-loving friend. Meanwhile preparations are going on in a very orderly and judicious style at the Luxembourg. The trial-chamber and all things connected with it are completed; tents have been pitched in the gardens for the accommodation of the soldiers, and guards stationed in such a manner in all directions as to ensure a reasonable chance of tranquillity to the peaceable. We have attended a review of very fine troops in the Place du Carrousel, composed of National Guards, troops of the line, and that most superb-looking body of municipal troops called _La Garde de Paris_. These latter, it seems, have performed in Paris since the revolution of 1830 the duties of that portion of the police formerly called _gendarmerie_; but the name having fallen into disrepute in the capital--(_les jeunes gens_, _par exemple_, could not bear it)--the title of _Garde de Paris_ has been accorded to them instead, and it is now only in the provinces that _gendarmes_ are to be found. But let them be called by what name they may, I never saw any corps of more superb appearance. Men and horses, accoutrements and discipline, all seem perfect. It is amusing to observe how slight a thread will sometimes suffice to lead captive the most unruly spirits. "What is there in a name?" Yet I have heard it asserted with triumphant crowings by some of the revolutionary set, that, thanks to their valour! the odious system was completely changed--that _gendarmes_ and _mouchards_ no longer existed in Paris--that citizens would never again be tormented by their hateful _surveillance_--and, in short, that Frenchmen were redeemed from thraldom now and for evermore; so now they have _La Garde de Paris_, just to take care of them: and if ever a set of men were capable of performing effectually the duties committed to their charge, I think it must be this well-drilled stalworth corps. The appearance of a large body of the National Guard too, when brought together, as at a review, in full military style, is very imposing. The eye at once sees that they are not ordinary troops. All the appointments are in excellent order; and the very material of which their uniform is made, being so much less common than usual, helps to produce this effect. Not to mention that the uniform itself, of dark blue, with the delicately white pantaloons, is peculiarly handsome on parade; much more so, I think, though perhaps less calculated for a battle-field, than the red lower garments by which the troops of the French line are at present distinguished. The king looks well on horseback--so do his sons. The whole staff, indeed, was gay and gallant-looking, and in style as decidedly aristocratic as any prince need desire. Shouts of "_Vive le Roi!_" ran cheerily and lustily along the lines; and if these may be trusted as indications of the feelings of the soldiery towards King Philippe, he may, I think, feel quite indifferent as to whatever other vows may be uttered concerning him in the distance. But in this city of contradictions one can never sit down safely to ruminate upon any one inference or conclusion whatever; for five minutes afterwards you are assured by somebody or other that you are quite wrong, utterly mistaken, and that the exact contrary of what you suppose is the real fact. Thus, on mentioning in the evening the cordial reception given by the soldiers to the king in the morning, I received for answer--"Je le crois bien, madame; les officiers leur commandent de le faire." We remained a good while on the ground, and saw as much as the confinement of a carriage would permit. Like all reviews of well-dressed, well-appointed troops, it was a gay and pretty spectacle; and notwithstanding the caustic reprimand for my faith in empty sounds which I have just repeated to you, I am still of opinion that King Philippe had every reason to be contented with his troops, and with the manner in which he was received by them. Every hour that one remains at Paris increases, I think, one's conviction of the enormous power and importance of the National Guard. Our volunteer corps, in the season of threatenings and danger, gave us unquestionably an immense accession of strength; and had the threatener dared to come, neither his legions nor his eagles, his veterans nor his victories, would have saved him from utter destruction. He knew this, and he came not: he knew that the little island was bristling from her centre to her shore with arms raised to strike, by the impulse of the heart and soul, and not by conscription; he knew this, and wisely came not. Our volunteers were armed men--armed in a cause that warmed their blood; and it is sufficient to establish their importance, that History must record the simple fact, that Napoleon looked at them and turned away. But, great as was the power of this critical show of volunteer strength among us, as a permanent force it was trifling when compared to the present National Guard of France. Not only are their numbers greater--Paris alone has eighty thousand of them,--but their discipline is perfect, and their practical habits of being on duty keep them in such daily activity, that a tocsin sounded within their hearing would suffice to turn out within an hour nearly the whole of this force, not only completely armed, equipped, and in all respects fit for service--not only each one with his quarters and rations provided, but each one knowing and feeling the importance of the duty he is upon as intimately as the general himself; and each one, in addition to all other feelings and motives which make armed men strong, warmed with the consciousness that it is his own stronghold, his own property, his own castle, as well as his own life, that he is defending. This force will save France from devouring her own vitals, if anything can do it. Among all the novelties produced by the ever-growing experience of men, and of which so many have ripened in these latter days, I doubt if any can be named more rationally calculated to fulfil the purpose for which it is intended than this organization of a force formed of the industrious and the orderly part of a community to keep in check the idle and disorderly,--and that, without taxing the state, compromising their professional usefulness, or sacrificing their personal independence, more than every man in his senses would be willing to do for the purpose of keeping watch and ward over all that he loves and values on earth. The more the power of such a force as this increases, the farther must the country where it exists be from all danger of revolution. Such men are, and must be, conservatives in the strongest sense of the word; and though it may certainly be possible for some who may be rebel to the cause of order to get enrolled among them, the danger of the enterprise will unquestionably prevent its frequent recurrence. The wolf might as safely mount guard in the midst of armed shepherds and their dogs, as demagogues and agitators place themselves in the ranks of the National Guard of Paris. [Illustration: Drawn & Etched by A. Hervieu. "PRO PATRIA!" London, Published by Richard Bentley. 1835.] LETTER XVIII. First Day of the Trials.--Much blustering, but no riot.--All alarm subsided.--Proposal for inviting Lord B----m to plead at the Trial.--Society.--Charm of idle conversation.--The Whisperer of good stories. 6th May 1835. The monster is hatched at last! The trials began yesterday, and we are all rejoicing exceedingly at having found ourselves alive in our beds this morning. What will betide us and it, as its scales or its plumes push forth and gather strength from day to day, I know not; but "sufficient for the day is the evil thereof;" and I do assure you in very sober earnest, that when Galignani's paper arrived this morning, the party round the breakfast-table was greatly comforted by finding that nothing more alarming than a few republican demands on the part of the prisoners, and a few monarchical refusals on the part of the court, took place. This interchange of hostilities commenced by some of the accused refusing to answer when their names were called;--then followed a demand for free admission to the chamber, during the trials, for the mothers, wives, and all other females belonging to the respective families of the prisoners;--and next, a somewhat blustering demand for counsel of their own choosing; the body of legal advocates, who, by general rule and common usage, are always charged with the defence of prisoners, not containing, as it should seem, orators sufficiently of their own _clique_ to content them. This was of course stoutly refused by the court, after retiring, however, for a couple of hours to deliberate upon it--a ceremony I should hardly have supposed necessary. The company of the ladies, too, was declined; and as, upon a moderate computation, their numerical force could not have amounted to less than five hundred, this want of gallantry in the Peers of France must be forgiven in favour of their discretion. The gentleman, however, who was appointed, as he said, by the rest, to request the pleasure of their society, declared loudly that the demand for it should be daily renewed. This reminds one of the story of the man who punished his wife for infidelity by making her sit to hear the story of her misdeeds rehearsed every day of her life, and pretty plainly indicates that it is the plan of the accused to torment their judges as much as they conveniently can. One of the prisoners named the celebrated Abbé de Lamennais, author of "Les Paroles d'un Croyant," as his advocate. The _procureur-général_ remarked, that it was for the interest of the defence that the rule for permitting lawyers only to plead should be adhered to. Next came a demand from one of the accused, in the name of all the rest, that permission for free and unrestrained intercourse between the prisoners of Lyons, Paris, and Marseilles should be allowed. This was answered only by the announcement that "the court was adjourned;" an intimation which produced an awful clamour; and as the peers quitted the court, they were assailed with vehement cries of "We protest! ... we protest!... We will make no defence!... We protest! ... we protest!" And so ended the business of the day. I believe that the government, and all those who are sufficiently connected with it to know anything of the real state of the case, were perfectly aware that no public movement was likely to take place at this stage of the business. Every one seems to know that the restless spirits, the desperate adventurers engaged in the extensive plot now under investigation, consider their trial as the best occasion possible for a political _coup de théâtre_, and that nothing would have disturbed their performance more than a riot before the curtain rose. Everything like panic seems now to have subsided, even among those who are farthest from the centre of action; and all the effects of this mighty affair apparently visible at present are to be seen on the faces of the republicans, who, according to their wont, strut about wherever they are most likely to be looked at, and take care that each one of their countenances shall be "Like to a book where men may read strange matters." I thank Heaven, nevertheless, that this first day is so well over. I had heard so over-much about it, that it became a sort of nightmare to me, from which I now feel happily relieved. It is quite clear, that if the out-of-door agitators should think proper to make any attempts to produce disturbance, the government feels quite equal to the task of making them quiet again, and of insuring that peaceable security to the country for which she has so long languished in vain. The military force employed at the Luxembourg is, however, by no means large. One battalion of the first legion of National Guards was in the court of the palace, and about four hundred troops of the line occupied the garden. But though no show of force is unnecessarily displayed, every one has the comfort of knowing that there is enough within reach should any necessity arise for employing it. I was told the other day, that when Lord B----m was in Paris, he was so kind as to visit M. Armand Carrel in prison; and that, on the strength of this proof of sympathy and affection, it has been suggested to the prisoners at the Luxembourg, that they should despatch a deputation of their friends to wait upon his lordship, requesting the aid of his eloquence in pleading their cause against the tyrants who so unjustifiably hold them in durance. The proposal, it seems, was very generally approved; but nevertheless, it was at last negatived on the representation of a person who had once heard his lordship argue in the French language. This is the more to be regretted by the friends of these suffering victims, since their choice of defenders is to be restricted to members of the bar: and this restriction, narrow-minded and severe as it is, would not exclude his lordship; a legal advocate being beyond all question a legal advocate all the world over. It was not till we had sent out in one or two directions to ascertain if all things were quiet, that we ventured to keep an engagement which we had made for last night to pass the _soirée_ at Madame de L*****'s. I should have been sorry to have lost it; for the business of the morning appeared to have awakened the spirits and set everybody talking. There are few things I like better than listening to a full, free flow of Paris talk; particularly when, as in this instance, the party is small and in a lively mood. It appears as if there were nothing like caution or reserve here in any direction. Among those whom I have had the satisfaction of occasionally meeting are some who figure amongst the most important personages of the day; but their conversation is as gaily unrestrained as if they had nothing to do but to amuse themselves. These, indeed, are not likely to commit themselves; but I have known others less secure, who have appeared to permit every thought that occurred to them to meet the ear of whoever chose to listen. In short, whatever restraint the police, which by its nature is very phoenix-like, may endeavour to put upon the periodical press, its influence certainly does not as yet reach the lips, which open with equal freedom for the expression of faith, scepticism, loyalty, treason, philosophy, and wit. In an intercourse so transient as mine is likely to be with most of the acquaintance I have formed here,--an intercourse consisting chiefly, as to the manner of it, of evening visits through a series of _salons_,--amusement is naturally more sought than information: and were it otherwise, I should, with some few exceptions, have reaped disappointment instead of pleasure; for it is evident that the same feeling which leads the majority of persons you meet in society here, to speak freely, prevents them from saying anything seriously. So that, after talking for an hour or two upon subjects which one should think very gravely important, a light word, a light laugh, ends the colloquy, and very often leaves me in doubt as to the real sentiments of those to whom I have been listening. But if not always successful in obtaining information, I never fail in finding amusement. Rarely, even for a moment, does conversation languish; and a string of lively nothings, or a startling succession of seemingly bold, but really unmeaning speculations, often make me imagine that a vast deal of talent has been displayed; yet, when memory sets to work upon it, little remains worth recording. Nevertheless, there is talent, and of a very charming kind too, in this manner of uttering trifles so that they may be mistaken for wit. I know some few in our own dear land who have also this happy gift; and, as a matter of grace and mere exterior endowment, I question if it be not fairly worth all the rest. But I believe we have it in about the same proportion that we have good actors of genteel comedy, compared to the number which they can boast of the same class here. With us this easy, natural style of mimicking real life is a rare talent, though sometimes possessed in great perfection; but with them it seems more or less the birthright of all. So is it with the gift of that bright colloquial faculty which bestows such indescribable grace upon the airy nothings uttered in French drawing-rooms. To listen to it, is very like quaffing the sparkling, frothy beverage native to their sunny hills;--French talk is very like champagne. The exhilaration it produces is instantaneous: the spirits mount, and something like wit is often struck out even from dull natures by merely coming in contact with what is so brilliant. I could almost venture to assert that the effect of this delightful inspiration might be perceived by any one who had gained admission to French society even if they did not understand the language. Let an observing eye, well accustomed to read the expression so legibly, though so transiently written in the countenances of persons in conversation,--let such a one only see, if he cannot hear, the effect produced by the hits and flashes of French eloquence. Allow me another simile, and I will tell you that it is like applying electricity to a bunch of feathers tied together and attached to the conductor by a thread: first one, then another starts, flies off, mounts, and drops again, as the bright spark passes lightly, gracefully, capriciously, yet still all making part of one circle. Of course, I am not speaking now of large parties; these, as I think I have said before, are wonderfully alike in all lands, and nothing approaching to conversation can possibly take place at any of them. It is only where the circle is restricted to a few that this sort of effect can be produced; and then, the impulse once given by a piquant word, seemingly uttered at random, every one present receives a share of it, and contributes in return all the lively thoughts to which it has given birth. But there was one gentleman of our party yesterday evening who had a most provoking trick of attracting one's attention as if on purpose to disappoint it. He was not quite like Molière's Timante, of whom Célimène says, "Et, jusques au bonjour, il dit tout à l'oreille;" but in the midst of pleasant talk, in which all were interested, he said aloud-- "_Par exemple!_ I heard the very best thing possible to-day about the King. Will you hear it, Madame B...?" This question being addressed to a decided doctrinaire, the answer was of course a reproachful shake of the head; but as it was accompanied by half a smile, and as the lady bent her fair neck towards the speaker, she, and she only, was made acquainted with "the best of all possible things," conveyed in a whisper. At another time he addressed himself to the lady of the house; but as he spoke across the circle, he not only fixed her attention, but that of every one else. "Madame!" said he coaxingly, "will you let me tell you a little word of treason?" "Comment?--de la trahison?... Apropos de quoi, s'il vous plaît?... Mais c'est égal--contez toujours." On receiving this answer, the whisperer of good stories got up from the depth of his arm-chair--an enterprise of some difficulty, for he was neither rapid nor light in his movements,--and deliberately walking round the chairs of all the party, he placed himself behind Madame de L*****, and whispered in her ear what made her colour and shake her head again; but she laughed too, telling him that she hated timid politics, and had no taste for any _trahisons_ which were not "_hautement prononcées_." This hint sent him back to his place; but it was taken very good-humouredly, for, instead of whispering any more, he uttered aloud sundry odds and ends of gossip, but all so well dressed up in lively wording, that they sounded very like good stories. LETTER XIX. Victor Hugo.--Racine. I have again been listening to some curious details respecting the present state of literature in France. I think I have before stated to you, that I have uniformly heard the whole of the _décousu_ school of authors spoken of with unmitigated contempt,--and that not only by the venerable advocates for the _bon vieux temps_, but also, and equally, by the distinguished men of the present day--distinguished both by position and ability. Respecting Victor Hugo, the only one of the tribe to which I allude who has been sufficiently read in England to justify his being classed by us as a person of general celebrity, the feeling is more remarkable still. I have never mentioned him or his works to any person of good moral feeling and cultivated mind, who did not appear to shrink from according him even the degree of reputation that those who are received as authority among our own critics have been disposed to allow him. I might say, that of him France seems to be ashamed. Again and again it has happened to me, when I have asked the opinions of individuals as to the merit of his different plays, that I have been answered thus:-- "I assure you I know nothing about it: I never saw it played." "Have you read it?" "No; I have not. I cannot read the works of Victor Hugo." One gentleman, who has heard me more than once persist in my inquiries respecting the reputation enjoyed by Victor Hugo at Paris as a man of genius and a successful dramatic writer, told me, that he saw that, in common with the generality of foreigners, particularly the English, I looked upon Victor Hugo and his productions as a sort of type or specimen of the literature of France at the present hour. "But permit me to assure you," he added gravely and earnestly, "that no idea was ever more entirely and altogether erroneous. He is the head of a sect--the high-priest of a congregation who have abolished every law, moral and intellectual, by which the efforts of the human mind have hitherto been regulated. He has attained this pre-eminence, and I trust that no other will arise to dispute it with him. But Victor Hugo is NOT a popular French writer." Such a judgment as this, or the like of it, I have heard passed upon him and his works nine times out of ten that I have mentioned him; and I consider this as a proof of right feeling and sound taste, which is extremely honourable, and certainly more than we have lately given our neighbours credit for. It pleased me the more perhaps because I did not expect it. There is so much meretricious glitter in the works of Victor Hugo,--nay, so much real brightness now and then,--that I expected to find at least the younger and less reflective part of the population warm in their admiration of him. His clinging fondness for scenes of vice and horror, and his utter contempt for all that time has stamped as good in taste or feeling, might, I thought, arise from the unsettled spirit of the times; and if so, he could not fail of receiving the meed of sympathy and praise from those who had themselves set that spirit at work. But it is not so. The wild vigour of some of his descriptions is acknowledged; but that is all of praise that I ever heard bestowed upon Victor Hugo's theatrical productions in his native land. The startling, bold, and stirring incidents of his disgusting dramas must and will excite a certain degree of attention when seen for the first time, and it is evidently the interest of managers to bring forward whatever is most likely to produce this effect; but the doing so cannot be quoted as a proof of the systematic degradation of the theatre. It is moreover a fact, which the play-bills themselves are alone sufficient to attest, that after Victor Hugo's plays have had their first run, they are never brought forward again: not one of them has yet become what we call a stock-play. This fact, which was first stated to me by a person perfectly _au fait_ of the subject, has been subsequently confirmed by many others; and it speaks more plainly than any recorded criticism could do, what the public judgment of these pieces really is. The romance of "Notre Dame de Paris" is ever cited as Victor Hugo's best work, excepting some early lyrical pieces of which we know nothing. But even this, though there are passages of extraordinary descriptive power in it, is always alluded to with much more of contempt than admiration; and I have heard it ridiculed in circles, whose praise was fame, with a light pleasantry more likely to prove an antidote to its mischief than all the reprobation that sober criticism could pour out upon it. But may not this champion of vice--this chronicler of sin, shame, and misery--quote Scripture and say, "A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country"? For I have seen a criticism in an English paper (The Examiner) which says, "_The_ Notre Dame _of Victor Hugo must take rank with the best romances by the author of_ Waverley.... _It transcends them in vigour, animation, and familiarity with the age._" In reply to the last point here mentioned, in which our countryman has given the superiority to Victor Hugo over Sir Walter Scott, a very strong testimony against its correctness has reached me since I have been in Paris. An able lawyer, and most accomplished gentleman and scholar, who holds a distinguished station in the Cour Royale, took us to see the Palais de Justice. Having shown us the chamber where criminal trials are carried on, he observed, that this was the room described by Victor Hugo in his romance; adding,--"He was, however, mistaken here, as in most places _where he affects a knowledge of the times of which he writes_. In the reign of Louis the Eleventh, no criminal trials ever took place within the walls of this building; and all the ceremonies as described by him resemble much more a trial of yesterday than of the age at which he dates his tale." The vulgar old adage, that "there is no accounting for taste," must, I suppose, teach us to submit patiently to the hearing of any judgments and opinions which it is the will and pleasure of man to pronounce; but it does seem strange that any can be found who, after bringing Sir Walter Scott and Victor Hugo into comparison, should give the palm of superiority to the author of "Notre Dame de Paris." Were the faults of this school of authors only of a literary kind, few persons, I believe, would take the trouble to criticise them, and their nonsense would die a natural death as soon as it was made to encounter the light of day: but such productions as Victor Hugo's are calculated to do great injury to human nature. They would teach us to believe that all our gentlest and best affections can only lead to crime and infamy. There is not, I truly believe, a single pure, innocent, and holy thought to be found throughout his writings: Sin is the muse he invokes--he would "Take off the rose From the fair forehead of an innocent love, And set a blister there;" Horror is his handmaid; and "thousands of liveried _monsters_ lackey him," to furnish the portraits with which it is the occupation of his life to disgust the world. Can there, think you, be a stronger proof of a diseased intellect among the _décousu_ part of the world, than that they not only admire this man's hideous extravagances, but that they actually believe him to be ... at least they say so ... a second Shakspeare!... A Shakspeare! To chastise as he deserves an author who may be said to defy mankind by the libels he has put forth on the whole race, requires a stouter and a keener weapon than any a woman can wield; but when they prate of Shakspeare, I feel that it is our turn to speak. How much of gratitude and love does every woman owe to him! He, who has entered deeper into her heart than ever mortal did before or since his day, how has he painted her?--As Portia, Juliet, Constance, Hermione;--as Cordelia, Volumnia, Isabella, Desdemona, Imogene! Then turn and see for what we have to thank our modern painter. Who are his heroines?--Lucrèce Borgia, Marion de Lorme, Blanche, Maguelonne, with I know not how many more of the same stamp; besides his novel heroine, whom Mr. Henry Lytton Bulwer calls "the most delicate female ever drawn by the pen of romance"--The Esmeralda! ... whose sole accomplishments are dancing and singing in the streets, and who ... delicate creature! ... being caught up by a horseman in a midnight brawl, throws her arms round his neck, swears he is very handsome, and thenceforward shows the delicate tenderness of her nature, by pertinaciously doting upon him, without any other return or encouragement whatever than an insulting caress bestowed upon her one night when he was drunk ... "delicate female!" But this is all too bad to dwell upon. It is, however, in my estimation a positive duty, when mentioning the works of Victor Hugo, to record a protest against their tone and tendency; and it is also a duty to correct, as far as one can, the erroneous impression existing in England respecting his reputation in France. Whenever his name is mentioned in England, his success is cited as a proof of the depraved state, moral and intellectual, of the French people. And such it would be, were his success and reputation such as his partisans represent them to be. But, in point of fact, the manner in which he is judged by his own countrymen is the strongest possible evidence that neither a powerful fancy, a commanding diction, nor an imagination teeming with images of intense passion, can suffice to ensure an author any exalted reputation in France at the present day if he outrages good feeling and good taste. Should any doubt the correctness of this statement, I can only refer them to the source from whence I derived the information on which it is founded,--I can only refer them to France herself. There is one fact, however, which may be ascertained without crossing the Channel;--namely, that when one of their reviews found occasion to introduce an article upon the modern drama, the editors acquitted themselves of the task by translating the whole of the able article upon that subject which appeared about a year and a half ago in the Quarterly, acknowledging to what source they were indebted for it. Were the name and the labours of Victor Hugo confined to his own country, it would now be high time that I should release you from him; but it is an English critic who has said, that he has heaved the ground from under the feet of Racine; and you must indulge me for a few minutes, while I endeavour to bring the two parties together before you. In doing this, I will be generous; for I will introduce M. Hugo in "Le Roi s'amuse," which, from the circumstance (the happiest, I was assured, that ever befel the author) of its being withdrawn by authority from the Théâtre Français, has become infinitely more celebrated than any other he has written. It may be remarked by the way, that a few more such acts of decent watchfulness over the morals and manners of the people may redeem the country from the stigma it now bears of being the most licentious in its theatre and its press in the world. The first glorious moment of being forbidden at the Français appears almost to have turned the lucky author's brain. His preface to "Le Roi s'amuse," among many other symptoms of insanity has the following:-- "Le premier mouvement de l'auteur fut de douter.... L'acte était arbitraire au point d'être incroyable.... L'auteur ne pouvait croire à tant d'insolence et de folie.... Le ministre avait en effet, de son droit divin de ministre, intimé l'ordre.... Le ministre lui avait pris sa pièce, lui avait pris son droit, lui avait pris sa chose. Il ne restait plus qu'à le mettre, lui poëte, à la Bastille.... Est-ce qu'il y a eu en effet quelque chose qu'on a appelé la révolution de Juillet?... Que peut être le motif d'une pareille mesure?... Il parait que nos faiseurs de censure se prétendent scandalisés dans leur morale par 'Le Roi s'amuse;' le nom seul du poëte inculpé aurait dû être une suffisante réfutation (!!!)... Cette pièce a révolté la pudeur des gendarmes; la brigade Léotaud y était, et l'a trouvé obscène; le bureau des moeurs s'est voilé la face; M. Vidocq a rougi.... Holà, mes maîtres! Silence sur ce point!... Depuis quand n'est-il plus permis à un roi de courtiser sur la scène une servante d'auberge?... Mener un roi dans un mauvais lieu, cela ne serait pas même nouveau non plus.... L'auteur veut l'art chaste, et non l'art prude.... Il est profondement triste de voir comment se termine la révolution de Juillet...." Then follows a _précis_ of the extravagant and hateful plot, in which the heroine is, as usual, "une fille séduite et perdue;" and he sums it up thus pompously:--"Au fond d'un des ouvrages de l'auteur il y a la fatalité--au fond de celui-ci il y a la providence." I wish much that some one would collect and publish in a separate volume all M. Victor Hugo's prefaces; I would purchase it instantly, and it would be a fund of almost inexhaustible amusement. He assumes a tone in them which, all things considered, is perhaps unequalled in the history of literature. In another part of the one from which I have given the above extracts, he says-- "Vraiment, le pouvoir qui s'attaque à nous n'aura pas gagné grand' chose à ce que nous, hommes d'art, nous quittions notre tâche consciencieuse, tranquille, sincère, profonde; notre tâche sainte...." What on earth, if it be not insanity, could have put it into Mr. Hugo's head that the manufacturing of his obscene dramas was "une tâche sainte"? The principal characters in "Le Roi s'amuse" are François Premier; Triboulet, his pander and buffoon; Blanche, the daughter of Triboulet, "la fille séduite," and heroine of the piece; and Maguelonne, another Esmeralda. The interest lies in the contrast between Triboulet pander and Triboulet père. He is himself the most corrupt and infamous of men; and because he is humpbacked, makes it both his pastime and his business to lead the king his master into every species of debauchery: but he shuts up his daughter to preserve her purity; and the poet has put forth all his strength in describing the worship which Triboulet père pays to the virtue which he passes his life as Triboulet pander in destroying. Of course, the king falls in love with Blanche, and she with him; and Triboulet pander is made to assist in carrying her off in the dark, under the belief that she was the wife of a nobleman to whom also his majesty the king was making love. When Triboulet père and pander finds out what he has done, he falls into a terrible agony: and here again is a _tour de force_, to show how pathetically such a father can address such a daughter. He resolves to murder the king, and informs his daughter, who is passionately attached to her royal seducer, of his intention. She objects, but is at length brought to consent by being made to peep through a hole in the wall, and seeing his majesty King Francis engaged in making love to Maguelonne. This part of the plot is brought out shortly and pithily. BLANCHE (_peeping through the hole in the wall_). Et cette femme! ... est-elle affrontée! ... oh!... TRIBOULET. Tais-toi; Pas de pleurs. Laisse-moi te venger! BLANCHE. Hélas!--Faites-- Tout ce que vous voudrez. TRIBOULET. Merci! This _merci_, observe, is not said ironically, but gravely and gratefully. Having arranged this part of the business, he gives his daughter instructions as to what she is to do with herself, in the following sublime verses:-- TRIBOULET. Écoute. Va chez moi, prends-y des habits d'homme, Un cheval, de l'argent, n'importe quelle somme; Et pars, sans t'arrêter un instant en chemin, Pour Evreux, où j'irai te joindre après-demain. --Tu sais ce coffre auprès du portrait de ta mère; L'habit est là,--je l'ai d'avance exprès fait faire. Having dismissed his daughter, he settles with a gipsy-man named Saltabadil, who is the brother of Maguelonne, all the details of the murder, which is to be performed in their house, a small cabaret at which the foul weather and the fair Maguelonne induce the royal rake to pass the night. Triboulet leaves them an old sack in which they are to pack up the body, and promises to return at midnight, that he may himself see it thrown into the Seine. Blanche meanwhile departs; but feeling some compunctious visitings about the proposed murder of her lover, returns, and again applying her ear to the hole in the wall, finds that his majesty is gone to bed in the garret, and that the brother and sister are consulting about his death. Maguelonne, a very "delicate female," objects too; she admires his beauty, and proposes that his life shall be spared if any stranger happens to arrive whose body may serve to fill the sack. Blanche, in a fit of heroic tenderness, determines to be that stranger; exclaiming, "Eh bien! ... mourons pour lui!" But before she knocks at the door, she kneels down to say her prayers, particularly for forgiveness to all her enemies. Here are the verses, making part of those which have overthrown Racine:-- BLANCHE. Oh! Dieu, vers qui je vais, Je pardonne à tous ceux qui m'ont été mauvais: Mon père et vous, mon Dieu! pardonnez-leurs de même Au roi François Premier, que je plains et que j'aime. She knocks, the door opens, she is stabbed and consigned to the sack. Her father arrives immediately after as by appointment, receives the sack, and prepares to drag it towards the river, handling it with revengeful ecstasy, and exclaiming-- Maintenant, monde, regarde-moi: Ceci, c'est un bouffon; et ceci, c'est un roi. At this triumphant moment he hears the voice of the king, singing as he walks away from the dwelling of Maguelonne. TRIBOULET. Mais qui donc m'a-t-il mis à sa place, le traître! He cuts open the sack; and a flash of lightning very melodramatically enables him to recognise his daughter, who revives, to die in his arms. This is beyond doubt what may be called "a tragic situation;" and I confess it does seem very hard-hearted to laugh at it: but the _pas_ that divides the sublime from the ridiculous is not distinctly seen, and there is something vulgar and ludicrous, both in the position and language of the parties, which quite destroys the pathetic effect. It must be remembered that she is dressed in the "habit d'homme" of which her father says so poetically-- Je l'ai d'avance exprès fait faire. Observe, too, that she is still in the sack; the stage directions being, "Le bas du corps, qui est resté vêtu, est caché dans le sac." BLANCHE. Où suis-je? TRIBOULET. Blanche! que t'a-t-on fait? Quel mystère infernal! Je crains en te touchant de te faire du mal.... Ah! la cloche du bac est là sur la muraille: Ma pauvre enfant, peux-tu m'attendre un peu, que j'aille Chercher de l'eau.... A surgeon arrives, and having examined her wound, says, Elle est morte. Elle a dans le flanc gauche une plaie assez forte: Le sang a dû causer la mort en l'étouffant. TRIBOULET. J'ai tué mon enfant! J'ai tué mon enfant! (_Il tombe sur le pavé._) FIN. All this is very shocking; but it is not tragedy,--and it is not poetry. Yet it is what we are told has heaved the earth from under Racine! After such a sentence as this, it must be, I know, _rococo_ to name him; but yet I would say, in his own words, D'adorateurs zélés à peine un petit nombre Ose des premiers temps nous retracer quelque ombre; Le reste.... Se fait initier à ces honteux mystères, Et blasphème le nom qu'ont invoqué leurs pères. As I profess myself of the _petit nombre_, you must let me recall to your memory some of the fragments of that noble edifice which Racine raised over him, and which, as they say, has now perished under the mighty power of Victor Hugo. It will not be lost time to do this; for look where you will among the splendid material of this uprooted temple, and you will find no morsel that is not precious; nothing that is not designed, chiseled, and finished by the hand of a master. Racine has not produced dramas from ordinary life; it was not his object to do so, nor is it the end he has attained. It is the tragedy of heroes and demi-gods that he has given us, and not of cut-purses, buffoons, and street-walkers. If the language of Racine be poetry, that of M. Hugo is not; and wherever the one is admired, the other must of necessity be valueless. It would be endless to attempt giving citations to prove the grace, the dignity, the majestic flow of Racine's verse; but let your eye run over "Iphigénie," for instance,--there also the loss of a daughter forms the tragic interest,--and compare such verses as those I have quoted above with any that you can find in Racine. Hear the royal mother, for example, describe the scene that awaits her: Un prêtre environné d'une foule cruelle Portera sur ma fille une main criminelle, Déchirera son sein, et d'un oeil curieux Dans son coeur palpitant consultera les dieux; --Et moi--qui l'amenai triomphante, adorée, Je m'en retournerai, seule, et désespérée. Surely this is of a better fabric than-- Tu sais ce coffre auprès du portrait de ta mère; L'habit est là,--je l'ai d'avance exprès fait faire. I have little doubt but that the inspired author, when this noble phrase, "exprès fait faire," suggested itself, felt ready to exclaim, in the words of Philaminte and Bélise-- Ah! que cet "exprès fait" est d'un goût admirable! C'est à mon sentiment un endroit impayable; J'entends là-dessous un million de mots.-- --Il est vrai qu'il dit plus de choses qu'il n'est gros. But to take the matter seriously, let us examine a little the ground upon which this school of dramatic writers found their claim to superiority over their classic predecessors. Is it not that they declare themselves to be more true to nature? And how do they support this claim? Were you to read through every play that M. Hugo has written--(and may you long be preserved from so great annoyance!)--I doubt if you would find a single personage with whom you could sympathise, or a single sentiment or opinion that you would feel true to the nature within you. It would be much less difficult, I conceive, so strongly to excite the imagination by the majestic eloquence of Racine's verses as to make you conscious of fellow-feeling with his sublime personages, than to debase your very heart and soul so thoroughly as to enable you to fancy that you have anything in common with the corrupt creations of Victor Hugo. But even were it otherwise--were the scenes imagined by this new Shakspeare more like the real villany of human nature than those of the noble writer he is said to have set aside, I should still deny that this furnished any good reason for bringing such scenes upon the stage. Why should we make a pastime of looking upon vulgar vice? Why should the lowest passions of our nature be for ever brought out in parade before us? "It is not and it cannot be for good." The same reasoning might lead us to turn from the cultured garden, its marble terraces, its velvet lawns, its flowers and fruits of every clime, that we might take our pleasure in a bog--and for all consolation be told, when we slip and flounder about in its loathsome slime, that it is more natural. I have written you a most unmerciful letter, and it is quite time that I should quit the theme, for I get angry--angry that I have no power to express in words all I feel on this subject. Would that for one short hour or so I had the pen which wrote the "Dunciad!"--I would use it--heartily--and then take my leave by saying, "Rentre dans le néant, dont je t'ai fait sortir." LETTER XX. Versailles.--St. Cloud. The Château de Versailles, that marvellous _chef-d'oeuvre_ of the splendid taste and unbounded extravagance of Louis le Grand, is shut up, and has been so for the last eighteen months. This is a great disappointment to such of our party as have never seen its interminable chambers and their gorgeous decorations. The reason assigned for this unwonted exclusion of the public is, that the whole of this enormous pile is filled with workmen; not, however, for the purpose of restoring it as a palace for the king, but of preparing it as a sort of universal museum for the nation. The buildings are in fact too extensive for a palace; and splendid as it is, I can easily believe no king of modern days would wish to inhabit it. I have sometimes wondered that Napoleon did not take a fancy to its vastness; but, I believe, he had no great taste in the upholstering line, and preferred converting his millions into the sinews of war, to the possession of all the carving and gilding in the world. If this projected museum, however, should be _monté_ with science, judgment and taste, and on the usual scale of French magnificence, it will be turning the costly whim of _le Grand Monarque_ to excellent account. The works which are going on there, were mentioned at a party the other evening, when some one stated that it was the intention of the King to convert one portion of the building into a gallery of national history, that should contain pictures of all the victories which France had ever won. The remark made in reply amused me much, it was so very French.--"Ma foi!... Mais cette galerie-là doit être bien longue--et assez ennuyeuse pour les étrangers." Though the château was closed to us, we did not therefore give up our purposed expedition to Versailles: every object there is interesting, not only from its splendour, but from the recollections it revives of scenes with whose history we are all familiar. Not only the horrors of the last century, but all the regal glories of the preceding one, are so well known to everybody, that there must have been a prodigious deal of gossip handed down to us from France, or we never could feel so much better acquainted with events which have passed at Versailles than with any scenes that have occurred at an equal distance of time at Windsor. But so it is; and the English go there not merely as strangers visiting a palace in a foreign land, but as pilgrims to the shrine of the princes and poets who have left their memory there, and with whose names and histories they are as familiar as if they belonged to us. The day we passed among the royal spectres that never fail to haunt one at this palace of recollections, was a mixture of sunshine and showers, and our meditations seemed to partake of the vicissitude. It is said that the great Louis reared this stupendous dwelling in which to pass the gilded hours of his idleness, because from St. Germain's he could see the plain of St. Denis, over which his funeral array was to pass, and the spire that marked the spot where his too precious dust was to be laid. Happy was it for him that the scutcheoned sepulchre of St. Denis was the most distant and most gloomy point to which his prophetic glance could reach! Could the great king have looked a little farther, and dreamed of the scenes which were destined to follow this dreaded passage to his royal tomb, how would he have blessed the fate which permitted him to pass into it so peacefully! It is quite wonderful to see how much of the elaborate decoration and fine finishing of this sumptuous place remains uninjured after being visited by the most ferocious mob that ever collected together. Had they been less intent on the savage object of their mission, it is probable that they would have sated their insane rage in destroying the palace itself, and the costly decorations of its singular gardens. Though far inferior in all ways either to the gardens of the Elector of Hesse Cassel at Wilhelmshöhe, or to those of the Grand Duke of Baden at Schwetzingen, those of Versailles are still highly interesting from many causes, and have so much of majesty and pomp about them, that one cannot look upon them without feeling that only the kings of the earth could ever have had a master's right to take their pleasure therein. Before we entered upon the orderly confusion of groves, statues, temples, and water-works through which it is necessary to be led, we made our grey-headed guide lead us round and about every part of the building while we listened to his string of interesting old stories about Louis Seize, and Marie Antoinette, and Monsieur, and le Comte d'Artois, (for he seemed to have forgotten that they had borne any other titles than those he remembered in his youth,) all of whom seemed to retain exactly the same place in his imagination that they had occupied some fifty years ago, when he was assistant to the keeper of the _orangerie_. He boasted, with a vanity as fresh as if it had been newly born, of the honours of that near approach to royalty which he had formerly enjoyed; recounted how the Queen called one of the orange-trees her own, because she fancied its blossoms sweeter than all the rest; and how from such a broad-leafed double-blossoming myrtle he had daily gathered a _bouquet_ for her majesty, which was laid upon her toilet exactly at two o'clock. This old man knew every orange-tree, its birth and history, as well as a shepherd knows his flock. The venerable father of the band dates his existence from the reign of François Premier, and truly he enjoys a green old age. The one surnamed Louis le Grand, who was twin brother, as he said, to that mighty monarch, looks like a youth beside it--and you are told that it has not yet attained its full growth. Oh! could those orange-trees but speak! could they recount to us the scenes they have witnessed; could they describe to us all the beauties over whom they have shed their fragrant flowers--all the heroes, statesmen, poets, and princes who have stepped in courtly paces beneath their shade; what a world of witty wickedness, of solemn warning, and of sad reflection, we should have! But though the orange-trees were mute, our old man talked enough for them all. He was a faithful servant to the old _régime_: and indeed it should seem that there is something in the air of Versailles favourable alike to orange-trees and loyalty; for never did I hear, while wandering amidst their aristocratic perfume, one word that was not of sound orthodox legitimate loyalty to the race for whose service they have for so many hundred years lived and bloomed. And still they blossom on, unscathed by revolution, unblighted though an usurper called them his;--happier in this than many of those who were once privileged to parade their dignity beneath their royal shade. The old servitors still move among these venerable vegetable grandees with the ceremonious air of courtiers, offering obsequious service, if not to the king himself, at least to his cousin-germans; and I am persuaded there is not one of these old serving-men, who wander about Versailles like ghosts revisiting the scenes of former happiness, who would not more humbly pull off his hat to François Premier or Louis le Grand in the greenhouse, than to any monarch of a younger race. Napoleon has left less trace of himself and his giant power at Versailles than anywhere else; and the naïads and hamadryads still lift their sculptured heads with such an eternity of stately grace, as makes one feel the evanescent nature of the interlude that was played among them during the empire. It is of the old race of Bourbon that the whole region is redolent. "There," said our old guide, "is the range of chambers that was occupied by the Queen ... those were the King's apartments ... there were the royal children ... there Monsieur ... and there the Comte d'Artois." Then we were led round to the fatal balcony which overhangs the entrance. It was there that the fallen Marie Antoinette stood, her young son in her arms, and the doomed King her husband beside her, when she looked down upon the demons drunk with blood, who sought her life. I had heard all this hateful, but o'er-true history, more than once before on the same spot, and shortening the frightful detail, I hastened to leave it, though I believe the good old man would willingly have spent hours in dwelling upon it. The day had been named as one on which the great waters were to play. But, little as Nature has to do with this pretty exhibition, she interfered on this occasion to prevent it. There was no water. The dry winter would, they told us, probably render it impossible to play them during the whole summer. Here was another disappointment; but we bore it heroically, and after examining and much admiring the numberless allegories which people the grounds, and to the creation of which, a poet must have been as necessary as a sculptor, we adjourned to the Trianons, there to meditate on all the ceaseless vicissitudes of female influence from Maintenon to Josephine. It is but a sad review, but it may serve well to reconcile the majority of womankind to the tranquil dreaminess of obscurity. The next thing to be done was dining--and most wretchedly done it was: but we found something to laugh at, nevertheless; for when the wine brought to us was found too bad to drink, and we ordered better, no less than four bottles were presented to us in succession, each one increasing in price, but being precisely of the same quality. When we charged the black-eyed daughter of the house with the fact, she said with perfect good-humour, but nowise denying it, that she was very sorry they had no better. When the bill was brought, the same damsel civilly hoped that we should not think ten sous (half-a-franc) too much to pay for having opened so many bottles. Now, as three of them were firmly corked, and carefully sealed besides, we paid our ten sous without any complaining. The looking at a fête at St. Cloud made part of the business of the day; but in order to get there, we were obliged to mount into one of those indescribable vehicles by which the gay _bourgeoisie_ of Paris are conveyed from palace to palace, and from _guinguette_ to _guinguette_. We had dismissed our comfortable _citadine_, being assured that we should have no difficulty in finding another. In this, however, we were disappointed, the proportion of company appearing greatly to exceed that of the carriages which were to convey them, and we considered ourselves fortunate in securing places in an equipage which we should have scorned indignantly when we quitted Paris in the morning. The whimsical gaiety of the crowd, all hurrying one way, was very amusing; all anxious to reach St. Cloud before the promised half-hour's display of water-works were over; all testifying, by look, gesture, voice, and words, that light effervescence of animal spirits so essentially characteristic of the country, and all forming a moving panorama so gay and so bright as almost to make one giddy by looking at it. Some among the capricious variety of vehicles were drawn by five or six horses. These were in truth nothing but gaily-painted waggons, hung on rude springs, with a flat awning over them. In several I counted twenty persons; but there were some few among them in which one or perhaps two seats were still vacant--and then the rapturous glee of the party was excited to the utmost by the efforts of the driver, as gay as themselves, to obtain customers to fill the vacancies. Every individual overtaken on the road was invited by the most clamorous outcries to occupy the vacant seats. "St. Cloud! St. Cloud! St. Cloud!" shouted by the driver and re-echoed by all his company, rang in the startled ears of all they passed; and if a traveller soberly journeying in the contrary direction was met, the invitation was uttered with tenfold vehemence, accompanied by shouts of laughter; which, far from offending the party who provoked it, was invariably answered with equal frolic and fun. But when upon one occasion a carriage posting almost at full gallop towards Versailles was encountered, the ecstasy of mirth with which it was greeted exceeds description. "St. Cloud! St. Cloud! St. Cloud!--Tournez donc, messieurs--tournez à St. Cloud!" The shouts and vociferations were enough to frighten all the horses in the world excepting French ones; and they must be so thoroughly broken to the endurance of din, that there is little danger of their starting at it. I could have almost fancied that upon this occasion they took part in it; for they shook their ropes and their tassels, snorted and tossed, very much as if they enjoyed the fun. After all, we, and many hundred others, arrived too late for the show, the supply of water failing even before the promised half-hour had elapsed. The gardens, however, were extremely full, and all the world looked as gay and as well-pleased as if nothing had gone wrong. I wonder if these people ever grow old,--that is, old as we do, sitting in the chimney-corner, and dreaming no more of fêtes than of playing at blind-man's-buff. I have certainly seen here, as elsewhere, men, and women too, grey-headed, and wrinkled enough to be as solemn as the most venerable judge upon the bench; but I never saw any that did not seem ready to hop, skip, jump, waltz, and make love. LETTER XXI. History of the Vicomte de B----. His opinions.--State of France.--Expediency. I have had a curious conversation this morning with an old gentleman whom I believed to be a thorough legitimate, but who turns out, as you will see, something else--I hardly know what to call it--_doctrinaire_ I suppose it must be, yet it is not quite that either. But before I give you his opinions, let me present himself. M. le Vicomte de B---- is a person that I am very sure you would be happy to know anywhere. His residence is not in Paris, but at a château that he describes as the most profound retirement imaginable; yet it is not more than thirty leagues from Paris. He is a widower, and his only child is a daughter, who has been some years married. The history of this gentleman, given as he gave it himself, was deeply interesting. It was told with much feeling, some wit, and no prolixity. Were I, however, to attempt to repeat it to you in the same manner, it would become long and tedious, and in every way as unlike as possible to what it was as it came fresh from the living fountain. In brief, then, I will tell you that he was the younger son of an old and noble house, and, for seven years, page to Louis Seize. He must have been strikingly handsome; and young as he was at the time of the first revolution, he seems already to have found the court a very agreeable residence. He had held a commission in the army about two years, when his father, and his only brother, his elder by ten years, were obliged to leave the country, to save their lives. The family was not a wealthy one, and great sacrifices were necessary to enable them to live in England. What remained became eventually the property of our friend, both father and brother having died in exile. With this remnant of fortune he married, not very prudently; and having lost his wife and disposed of his daughter in marriage, he is now living in his large dilapidated château, with one female servant, and an old man as major-domo, valet, and cook, who served with him in La Vendée, and who, by his description, must be a perfect Corporal Trim. I would give a good deal to be able to accept the invitation I have received to pay him a visit at his castle. I think I should find just such a _ménage_ as that which Scott so beautifully describes in one of his prefaces. But the wish is vain, such an excursion being quite impossible; so I must do without the castle, and content myself with the long morning visits that its agreeable owner is so kind as to make us. I have seen him frequently, and listened with great interest to his little history; but it was only this morning that the conversation took a speculative turn. I was quite persuaded, but certainly from my own preconceived notions only, and not from anything I have heard him say, that M. de B---- was a devoted legitimate. An old noble--page to Louis Seize--a royalist soldier in La Vendée,--how could I think otherwise? Yet he talked to me as ... you shall hear. Our conversation began by his asking me if I was conscious of much material change in Paris since I last visited it. I replied, that I certainly saw some, but perhaps suspected more. "I dare say you do," said he; "it is what your nation is very apt to do: but take my advice,--believe what you see, and nothing else." "But what one can see in the course of a month or two is so little, and I hear so much." "That is true; but do you not find that what you hear from one person is often contradicted by another?" "Constantly," I replied. "Then what can you do at last but judge by what you see?" "Why, it appears to me that the better plan would be to listen to all parties, and let my balancing belief incline to the testimony that has most weight." "Then be careful that this weight be not false. There are some who will tell you that the national feeling which for so many centuries has kept France together as a powerful and predominating people is loosened, melted, and gone;--that though there are Frenchmen left, there is no longer a French people." "To any who told me so," I replied, "I would say, that the division they complained of, arose not so much from any change in the French character, as from the false position in which many were unhappily placed at the present moment. Men's hearts are divided because they are diversely drawn aside from a common centre." "And you would say truly," said he; "but others will tell you, that regenerated France will soon dictate laws to the whole earth; that her flag will become the flag of all people--her government their government; and that their tottering monarchies will soon crumble into dust, to become part and parcel of her glorious republic." "And to these I should say, that they appeared to be in a very heavy slumber, and that the sooner they could wake out of it and shake off their feverish dreams, the better it would be for them." "But what would your inference be as to the state of the country from such reports as these?" "I should think that, as usual, truth lay between. I should neither believe that France was so united as to constitute a single-minded giant, nor so divided as to have become a mass of unconnected atoms, or a race of pigmies." "You know," he continued, "that the fashionable phrase for describing our condition at present is, that we are in _a state of transition_,--from butterflies to grubs, or from grubs to butterflies, I know not which; but to me it seems that the transition is over,--and it is high time that it should be so. The country has known neither rest nor peace for nearly half a century; and powerful as she has been and still is, she must at last fall a prey to whoever may think it worth their while to despoil her, unless she stops short while it is yet time, and strengthens herself by a little seasonable repose." "But how is this repose to be obtained?" said I. "Some of you wish to have one king, some another, and some to have no king at all. This is not a condition in which a country is very likely to find repose." "Not if each faction be of equal power, or sufficiently so to persevere in struggling for the mastery. Our only hope lies in the belief that there is no such equality. Let him who has seized the helm keep it: if he be an able helmsman, he will keep us in smooth water;--and it is no longer time for us to ask how he got his commission; let us be thankful that he happens to be of the same lineage as those to whose charge we have for so many ages committed the safety of our bark." I believe my countenance expressed my astonishment; for the old gentleman smiled and said, "Do I frighten you with my revolutionary principles?" "Indeed, you surprise me a little," I replied: "I should have thought that the rights of a legitimate monarch would have been in your opinion indefeasible." "Where is the law, my good lady, that may control necessity?... I speak not of my own feelings, or of those of the few who were born like myself in another era. Very terrible convulsions have passed over France, and perhaps threaten the rest of Europe. I have for many years stood apart and watched the storm; and I am quite sure, and find much comfort in the assurance, that the crimes and passions of men cannot change the nature of things. They may produce much misery, they may disturb and confuse the peaceful current of events; but man still remains as he was, and will seek his safety and his good, where he has ever found them--under the shelter of power." "There, indeed, I quite agree with you. But surely the more lawful and right the power is, the more likely it must be to remain tranquil and undisputed in its influence." "France has no longer the choice," said he, interrupting me abruptly. "I speak but as a looker-on; my political race is ended; I have more than once sworn allegiance to the elder branch of the house of Bourbon, and certainly nothing would tempt me to hold office or take oath under any other. But do you think it would be the duty of a Frenchman who has three grandsons native to the soil of France,--do you really think it the duty of such a one to invoke civil war upon the land of his fathers, and remembering only his king, to forget his country? I will not tell you, that if I could wake to-morrow morning and find a fifth Henry peacefully seated on the throne of his fathers, I might not rejoice; particularly if I were sure that he would be as likely to keep the naughty boys of Paris in order as I think his cousin Philippe is. Were there profit in wishing, I would wish for France a government so strong as should effectually prevent her from destroying herself; and that government should have at its head a king whose right to reign had come to him, not by force of arms, but by the will of God in lawful succession. But when we mortals have a wish, we may be thankful if the half of it be granted;--and, in truth, I think that I have the first and better half of mine to rejoice in. There is a stout and sturdy strength in the government of King Philippe, which gives good hope that France may recover under its protection from her sins and her sorrows, and again become the glory of her children." So saying, M. de B---- rose to leave me, and putting out his hand in the English fashion, added, "I am afraid you do not like me so well as you did.... I am no longer a true and loyal knight in your estimation ... but something, perhaps, very like a rebel and a traitor?... Is it not so?" I hardly knew how to answer him. He certainly had lost a good deal of that poetical elevation of character with which I had invested him; yet there was a mixture of honesty and honour in his frankness that I could not help esteeming. I thanked him very sincerely for the openness with which he had spoken, but confessed that I had not quite made up my mind to think that expediency was the right rule for human actions. It certainly was not the noblest, and therefore I was willing to believe that it was not the best. "I must go," said he, looking at his watch, "for it is my hour of dining, or I think I could dispute with you a little upon your word _expediency_. Whatever is really expedient for us to do--that is, whatever is best for us in the situation in which we are actually placed, is really right. Adieu!--I shall present myself again ere long; and if you admit me, I shall be thankful." So saying, he departed,--leaving us all, I believe, a little less in alt about him than before, but certainly with no inclination to shut our doors against him. LETTER XXII. Père Lachaise.--Mourning in public.--Defacing the Tomb of Abelard and Eloïsa.--Baron Munchausen.--Russian Monument.--Statue of Manuel. Often as I have visited the enclosure of Père Lachaise, it was with feelings of renewed curiosity and interest that I yesterday accompanied thither those of my party who had not yet seen it. I was well pleased to wander once more through the cypress alleys, now grown into fine gloomy funereal shades, and once more to feel that wavering sort of emotion which I always experience there;--one moment being tempted to smile at the fantastic manner in which affection has been manifested,--and the next, moved to tears by some touch of tenderness, that makes itself felt even amidst the vast collection of childish superstitions with which the place abounds. This mournful garden is altogether a very solemn and impressive spectacle. What a world of mortality does one take in at one glance! It will set one thinking a little, however fresh from the busy idleness of Paris,--of Paris, that antidote to all serious thought, that especial paradise for the worshippers of SANS SOUCI. A profusion of spring flowers are at this season hourly shedding their blossoms over every little cherished enclosure. There is beauty, freshness, fragrance on the surface.... It is a fearful contrast! I do not remember any spot, either in church or churchyard, where the unequal dignity of the memorials raised above the dust which lies so very equally beneath them all is shown in a manner to strike the heart so forcibly as it does at Père Lachaise. Here, a shovelful of weeds have hardly room to grow; and there rises a costly pile, shadowing its lowly neighbour. On this side the narrow path, sorrow is wrapped round and hid from notice by the very poverty that renders it more bitter; while, on the other, wealth, rank, and pride heap decorations over the worthless clay, striving vainly to conceal its nothingness. It is an epitome of the world they have left: remove the marble and disturb the turf, human nature will be found to wear the same aspect under both. Many groups in deep mourning were wandering among the tombs; so many indeed, that when we turned aside from one, with the reverence one always feels disposed to pay to sorrow, we were sure to encounter another. This manner of lamenting in public seems so strange to us! How would it be for a shy English mother, who sobs inwardly and hides the aching sorrow in her heart's core,--how would she bear to bargain at the public gate for a pretty garland, then enter amidst an idle throng, with the toy hanging on her finger, and, before the eyes of all who choose to look, suspend it over the grave of her lost child? An Englishwoman surely must lose her reason either before or after such an act;--if it were not the effect of madness, it would be the cause of it. Yet such is the effect of habit, or rather of the different tone of manners and of mind here, that one may daily and hourly see parents, most devoted to their children during their lives, and most heart-broken when divided from them by death, perform with streaming eyes these public lamentations. It is nevertheless impossible, let the manner of it differ from our own as much as it may, to look at the freshly-trimmed flowers, the garlands, and all the pretty tokens of tender care which meet the eye in every part of this wide-spread mass of mortal nothingness, without feeling that real love and real sorrow have been at work. One small enclosure attracted my attention as at once the most _bizarre_ and the most touching of all. It held the little grassy tomb of a young child, planted round with choice flowers; and at its head rose a semicircular recess, containing, together with a crucifix and other religious emblems, several common playthings, which had doubtless been the latest joy of the lost darling. His age was stated to have been three years, and he was mourned as the first and only child after twelve years of marriage. Below this melancholy statement was inscribed-- "Passans! priez pour sa malheureuse mère!" Might we not say, that Thought and affliction, passion, death itself, They turn to favour and to prettiness? It would, I believe, be more just, as well as more generous, instead of accusing the whole nation of being the victims of affectation instead of sorrow under every affliction that death can cause, to believe that they feel quite as sincerely as ourselves; though they have certainly a very different way of showing it. I wish they, whoever they are, who had the command of such matters, would have let the curious tomb of Abelard and Eloïsa remain in decent tranquillity in its original position. Nothing can assimilate worse than do its Gothic form and decorations with every object around it. The paltry plaster tablet too, that has been stuck upon it for the purpose of recording the history of the tomb rather than of those who lie buried in it, is in villanously bad taste; and we can only hope that the elements will complete the work they have begun, and then this barbarous defacing will crumble away before our grandchildren shall know anything about it. The thickly-planted trees and shrubs have grown so rapidly, as in many places to make it difficult to pass through them; and the ground appears to be extremely crowded nearly over its whole extent. A few neighbouring acres have been lately added to it; but their bleak, naked, and unornamented surface forbids the eye as yet to recognise this space as part of the enclosure. One pale solitary tomb is placed within it, at the very verge of the dark cypress line that marks the original boundary; and it looks like a sheeted ghost hovering about between night and morning. One very noble monument has been added since I last visited the garden: it is dedicated to the memory of a noble Russian lady, whose long unspellable name I forget. It is of white or greyish marble, and of magnificent proportions,--lofty and elegant, yet massive and entirely simple. Altogether, it appeared to me to be as perfect in taste as any specimen of monumental architecture that I have ever seen, though it had not the last best grace of sculpture to adorn it. There is no effigy--no statue--scarcely an ornament of any kind, but it seems constructed with a view to unite equally the appearance of imposing majesty and enduring strength. This splendid mausoleum stands towards the top of the garden, and forms a predominating and very beautiful object from various parts of it. Among the hundreds of names which one reads in passing,--I hardly know why, for they certainly convey but small interest to the mind,--we met with that of the _Baron Munchausen_. It was a small and unpretending-looking stone, but bore a host of blazing titles, by which it appears that this Baron, whom I, and all my generation, I believe, have ever looked upon as an imaginary personage, was in fact something or other very important to somebody or other who was very powerful. Why his noble name has been made such use of among us, I cannot imagine. In the course of our wanderings we came upon this singular inscription:-- "Ci-gît Caroline,"--(I think the name is Caroline,)--"fille de Mademoiselle Mars." Is it not wonderful what a difference twenty-one miles of salt-water can make in the ways and manners of people? There are not many statues in the cemetery, and none of sufficient merit to add much to its embellishment; but there is one recently placed there, and standing loftily predominant above every surrounding object, which is strongly indicative of the period of its erection, and of the temper of the people to whom it seems to address itself. This is a colossal figure of Manuel. The countenance is vulgar, and the expression of the features violent and exaggerated: it might stand as the portrait of a bold factious rebel for ever. LETTER XXIII. Remarkable People.--Distinguished People.--Metaphysical Lady. Last night we passed our _soirée_ at the house of a lady who had been introduced to me with this recommendation:--"You will be certain of meeting at Madame de V----'s many REMARKABLE PEOPLE." This is, I think, exactly the sort of introduction which would in any city give the most piquant interest to a new acquaintance; but it does so particularly at Paris; for this attractive capital draws its collection of remarkable people from a greater variety of nations, classes, and creeds, than any other. Nevertheless, this term "remarkable people" must not be taken too confidently to mean individuals so distinguished that all men would desire to gaze upon them; the phrase varying in its value and its meaning according to the feelings, faculties, and station of the speaker. Everybody has got his or her own "remarkable people" to introduce to you; and I have begun to find out, among the houses that are open to me, what species of "remarkable people" I am likely to meet at each. When Madame A---- whispers to me as I enter her drawing-room--"Ah! vous voilà! c'est bon; j'aurais été bien fâchée si vous m'aviez manquée; il y a ici, ce soir, une personne bien remarquable, qu'il faut absolument vous présenter,"--I am quite sure that I shall see some one who has been a marshal, or a duke, or a general, or a physician, or an actor, or an artist, to Napoleon. But if it were Madame B---- who said the same thing, I should be equally certain that it must be a comfortable-looking doctrinaire, who was, had been, or was about to be in place, and who had made his voice heard on the winning side. Madame C----, on the contrary, would not deign to bestow such an epithet on any one whose views and occupations were so earthward. It could only be some philosopher, pale with the labour of reconciling paradoxes or discovering a new element. My charming, quiet, graceful, gentle Madame D---- could use it only when speaking of an ex-chancellor, or chamberlain, or friend, or faithful servant of the exiled dynasty. As for the tall dark-browed Madame E----, with her thin lips and sinister smile, though she professes to hold a _salon_ where talent of every party is welcome, she never cares much, I am very sure, for any remarkableness that is not connected with the great and immortal mischief of some revolution. She is not quite old enough to have had anything to do with the first; but I have no doubt that she was very busy during the last, and I am positive that she will never know peace by night or day till another can be got up. If her hopes fail on this point, she will die of atrophy; for nothing affords her nourishment but what is mixed up with rebellion against constituted authority. I know that she dislikes me; and I suspect I owe the honour of being admitted to appear in her presence solely to her determination that I should hear everything that she thinks it would be disagreeable for me to listen to. I believe she fancies that I do not like to meet Americans; but she is as much mistaken in this as in most other of her speculations. I really never saw or heard of any fanaticism equal to that, with which this lady worships destruction. That whatever is, is wrong, is the rule by which her judgment is guided in all things. It is enough for her that a law on any point is established, to render the thing legalised detestable; and were the republic about which she raves, and of which she knows as much as her lap-dog, to be established throughout France to-morrow, I am quite persuaded that we should have her embroidering a regal robe for the most legitimate king she could find, before next Monday. Madame F----'s _remarkables_ are almost all of them foreigners of the philosophic revolutionary class; any gentry that are not particularly well off at home, and who would rather prefer being remarkable and remarked a few hundred miles from their own country than in it. Madame G----'s are chiefly musical personages. "Croyez-moi, madame," she says, "il n'y a que lui pour toucher le piano.... Vous n'avez pas encore entendu Mademoiselle Z----.... Quelle voix superbe!... Elle fera, j'en suis sûre, une fortune immense à Londres." Madame H----'s acquaintance are not so "remarkable" for anything peculiar in each or any of them, as for being in all things exactly opposed to each other. She likes to have her parties described as "Les soirées antithestiques de Madame H----," and has a peculiar sort of pleasure in seeing people sitting side by side on her hearth-rug, who would be very likely to salute each other with a pistol-shot were they to meet elsewhere. It is rather a singular device for arranging a sociable party; but her _soirées_ are very delightful _soirées_, for all that. Madame J----'s friends are not "remarkable;" they are "distinguished." It is quite extraordinary what a number of distinguished individuals I have met at her house. But I must not go through the whole alphabet, lest I should tire you. So let me return to the point from whence I set out, and take you with me to Madame de V----'s _soirée_. A large party is almost always a sort of lottery, and your good or bad fortune depends on the accidental vicinity of pleasant or unpleasant neighbours. I cannot consider myself to have gained a prize last night; and Fortune, if she means to make things even, must place me to-night next the most agreeable person in Paris. I really think that should the same evil chance that beset me yesterday pursue me for a week, I should leave the country to escape from it. I will describe to you the manner of my torment as well as I can, but must fail, I think, to give you an adequate idea of it. A lady I had never seen before walked across the room to me last night soon after I entered it, and making prisoner of Madame de V---- in the way, was presented to me in due form. I was placed on a sofa by an old gentleman with whom we have formed a great friendship, and for whose conversation I have a particular liking: he had just seated himself beside me, when my new acquaintance dislodged him by saying, as she attempted to squeeze herself in between us, "Pardon, monsieur; ne vous dérangez pas! ... mais si madame voulait bien me permettre" ... and before she could finish her speech, my old acquaintance was far away and my new one close beside me. She began the conversation by some very obliging assurances of her wish to make my acquaintance. "I want to discuss with you," said she. I bowed, but trembled inwardly, for I do not like discussions, especially with "remarkable" ladies. "Yes," she continued, "I want to discuss with you many topics of vital interest to us all--topics on which I believe we now think differently, but on which I feel quite sure that we should agree, would you but listen to me." I smiled and bowed, and muttered something civil, and looked as much pleased as I possibly could,--and recollected, too, how large Paris was, and how easy it would be to turn my back upon conviction, if I found that I could not face it agreeably. But, to say truth, there was something in the eye and manner of my new friend that rather alarmed me. She is rather pretty, nevertheless; but her bright eyes are never still for an instant, and she is one of those who aid the power of speech by that of touch, to which she has incessant recourse. Had she been a man, she would have seized all her friends by the button: but as it is, she can only lay her fingers with emphasis upon your arm, or grasp a handful of your sleeve, when she sees reason to fear that your attention wanders. "You are a legitimatist! ... quel dommage! Ah! you smile. But did you know the incalculable injury done to the intellect by putting chains upon it!... My studies, observe, are confined almost wholly to one subject,--the philosophy of the human mind. Metaphysics have been the great object of my life from a very early age." (I should think she was now about seven or eight-and-twenty.) "Yet sometimes I have the weakness to turn aside from this noble pursuit to look upon the troubled current of human affairs that is rolling past me. I do not pretend to enter deeply into politics--I have no time for it; but I see enough to make me shrink from despotism and legitimacy. Believe me, it cramps the mind; and be assured that a constant succession of political changes keeps the faculties of a nation on the _qui vive_, and, abstractedly considered as a mental operation, must be incalculably more beneficial than the half-dormant state which takes place after any long continuance in one position, let it be what it may." She uttered all this with such wonderful rapidity, that it would have been quite impossible for me to have made any observation upon it as she went along, if I had been ever so much inclined to do so. But I soon found that this was not expected of me. "'Twas hers to speak, and mine to hear;" and I made up my mind to listen as patiently as I could till I should find a convenient opportunity for changing my place. At different times, and in different climes, I have heretofore listened to a good deal of nonsense, certainly; but I assure you I never did nor ever can expect again to hear such a profusion of wild absurdity as this lady uttered. Yet I am told that she has in many circles the reputation of being a woman of genius. It would be but a vain attempt did I endeavour to go on remembering and translating all she said; but some of her speeches really deserve recording. After she had run her tilt against authority, she broke off, exclaiming-- "Mais, après tout,--what does it signify?... When you have once devoted yourself to the study of the soul, all these little distinctions do appear so trifling!... I have given myself wholly to the study of the soul; and my life passes in a series of experiments, which, if I do not wear myself out here," putting her hand to her forehead, "will, I think, eventually lead me to something important." As she paused for a moment, I thought I ought to say something, and therefore asked her of what nature were the experiments of which she spoke. To which she replied-- "Principally in comparative anatomy. None but an experimentalist could ever imagine what extraordinary results arise from this best and surest mode of investigation. A mouse, for instance.... Ah, madame! would you believe it possible that the formation of a mouse could throw light upon the theory of the noblest feeling that warms the heart of man--even upon valour? It is true, I assure you: such are the triumphs of science. By watching the pulsations of that _chétif_ animal," she continued, eagerly laying hold of my wrist, "we have obtained an immense insight into the most interesting phenomena of the passion of fear." At this moment my old gentleman came back to me, but evidently without any expectation of being able to resume his seat. It was only, I believe, to see how I got on with my metaphysical neighbour. There was an infinite deal of humour in the glance he gave me as he said, "Eh bien, Madame Trollope, est-ce que Madame ---- vous a donné l'ambition de la suivre dans ses sublimes études?" "I fear it would prove beyond my strength," I replied. Upon which Madame ---- started off anew in praise of _her_ science--"the only science worthy the name; the science...." Here my old friend stole off again, covered by an approaching tray of ices; and I soon after did the same; for I had been busily engaged all day, and I was weary,--so weary that I dreaded dropping to sleep at the very instant that Madame ---- was exerting herself to awaken me to a higher state of intelligence. I have not, however, told you one tenth part of the marvellous absurdities she poured forth; yet I suspect I have told you enough. I have never before met anything so pre-eminently ridiculous as this: but upon my saying so to my old friend as I passed him near the door, he assured me that he knew another lady, whose mania was education, and whose doctrines and manner of explaining them were decidedly more absurd than Madame ----'s philosophy of the soul. "Be not alarmed, however; I shall not bestow her upon you, for I intend most carefully to keep out of her way. Do you know of any English ladies thus devoted to the study of the soul?"... I am sincerely happy to say that I do not. LETTER XXIV. Expedition to the Luxembourg.--No admittance for Females.--Portraits of "Henri."--Republican Costume.--Quai Voltaire.--Mural Inscriptions.--Anecdote of Marshal Lobau.--Arrest. Ever since the trials at the Luxembourg commenced, we have intended to make an excursion thither, in order to look at the encampment in the garden, at the military array around the palace, and, in short, to see all that is visible for female eyes in the general aspect of the place, so interesting at the present moment from the important business going on there. I have done all that could be done to obtain admission to the Chamber during their sittings, and have not been without friends who very kindly interested themselves to render my efforts successful--but in vain; no ladies have been permitted to enter. Whether the feminine regrets have been lessened or increased by the daily accounts that are published of the outrageous conduct of the prisoners, I will not venture to say. _C'est égal_; get in we cannot, whether we wish it or not. It is said, indeed, that in one of the tribunes set apart for the public, a small white hand has been seen to caress some jet-black curls upon the head of a boy; and it was said, too, that the boy called himself George S----d: but I have heard of no other instance of any one not furnished with that important symbol of prerogative, _une barbe au menton_, who has ventured within the proscribed limits. Our humble-minded project of looking at the walls which enclose the blustering rebels and their patient judges has been at length happily accomplished, and not without affording us considerable amusement. In addition to our usual party, we had the pleasure of being accompanied by two agreeable Frenchmen, who promised to explain whatever signs and symbols might meet our eyes but mock our comprehension. As the morning was delightful, we agreed to walk to the place of our destination, and repose ourselves as much as the tossings of a _fiacre_ would permit on the way home. That our route lay through the Tuileries Gardens was one reason for this arrangement; and, as usual, we indulged ourselves for a delightful half-hour by sitting under the trees. Whenever six or eight persons wish to converse together--not in _tête-à-tête_, but in a general confabulation, I would recommend exactly the place we occupied for the purpose, with the chairs of the party drawn together, not spread into a circle, but collected in a group, so that every one can hear, and every one can be heard. Our conversation was upon the subject of various prints which we had seen exposed upon the Boulevards as we passed; and though our two Frenchmen were excellent friends, it was very evident that they did not hold the same opinions in politics;--so we had some very pleasant sparring. We have been constantly in the habit of remarking a variety of portraits of a pretty, elegant-looking youth, sometimes totally without letters--and yet they were not proofs, excepting of an antique loyalty,--sometimes with the single word "Henri!"--sometimes with a sprig of the pretty weed we call "Forget-me-not,"--and sometimes with the name of "Le Duc de Bordeaux." As we passed one of the cases this morning which stand out before a large shop on the Boulevards, I remarked a new one: it was a pretty lithographic print, and being very like an original miniature which had been kindly shown me during a visit I paid in the Faubourg St. Germain, I stopped to buy it, and writing my name on the envelope, ordered it to be sent home. M. P----, the gentleman who was walking beside me when I stopped, confirmed my opinion that it was a likeness, by his personal knowledge of the original; and it was not difficult to perceive, though he spoke but little on the subject, that an affectionate feeling for "THE CAUSE" and its young hero was at his heart. M. de L----, the other gentleman who had joined our party, was walking behind us, and came up as I was making my purchase. He smiled. "I see what you are about," said he: "if you and P---- continue to walk together, I am sure you will plot some terrible treason before you get to the Luxembourg." When we were seated in the Tuileries Gardens, M. de L---- renewed his attack upon me for what he called my seditious conduct in having encouraged the vender of a prohibited article, and declared that he thought he should but do his duty if he left M. P---- and myself in safe custody among the other rebellious characters at the Luxembourg. "My sedition," replied M. P----, "is but speculative. The best among us now can only sigh that things are not quite as they should be, and be thankful that they are not quite as bad as they might be." "I rejoice to find that you allow so much, mon cher," replied his friend. "Yes, I think it might be worse; par exemple, if such gentry as those yonder were to have their way with us." He looked towards three youths who were stalking up the walk before us with the air of being deeply intent on some business of dire import. They looked like walking caricatures--and in truth they were nothing else. They were republicans. Similar figures are constantly seen strutting upon the Boulevards, or sauntering, like those before us, in the Tuileries, or hovering in sinister groups about the Bois de Boulogne, each one believing himself to bear the brow of a Brutus and the heart of a Cato. But see them where or when you will, they take good care to be unmistakable; there is not a child of ten years old in Paris who cannot tell a republican when he sees him. In several print-shops I have seen a key to their mystical toilet which may enable the ignorant to read them right. A hat, whose crown if raised for a few inches more would be conical, is highest in importance, as in place; and the shade of Cromwell may perhaps glory in seeing how many desperate wrongheads still mimic his beaver. Then come the long and matted locks, that hang in heavy ominous dirtiness beneath it. The throat is bare, at least from linen; but a plentiful and very disgusting profusion of hair supplies its place. The waistcoat, like the hat, bears an immortal name--"GILET À LA ROBESPIERRE" being its awful designation; and the extent of its wide-spreading lapels is held to be a criterion of the expansive principles of the wearer. _Au reste_, a general air of grim and savage blackguardism is all that is necessary to make up the outward man of a republican of Paris in 1835. But, oh! the grimaces by which I have seen human face distorted by persons wearing this masquerading attire! Some roll their eyes and knit their brows as if they would bully the whole universe; others fix their dark glances on the ground in fearful meditation; while other some there be who, while gloomily leaning against a statue or a tree, throw such terrific meaning into their looks as might naturally be interpreted into the language of the witches in Macbeth-- "We must, we will--we must, we will Have much more blood,--and become worse, And become worse" ... &c. &c. The three young men who had just passed us were exactly of this stamp. Our legitimate friend looked after them and laughed heartily. "C'est à nous autres, mon cher," said de L----, "to enjoy that sight. You and yours would have but small reason to laugh at such as these, if it were not the business of us and ours to take care that they should do you no harm. You may thank the eighty thousand National Guards of Paris for the pleasure of quizzing with such a complacent feeling of security these very ferocious-looking persons." "For that I thank them heartily," replied M. P----; "only I think the business would have been quite as well done if those who performed it had the right to do so." "Bah! Have you not tried, and found you could make nothing of it?" "I think not, my friend," replied the legitimatist: "we were doing very well, and exerting ourselves to keep the unruly spirits in order, when you stepped in, and promised all the naughty boys in Paris a holiday if they would but make you master. They did make you master--they have had their holiday, and now...." "And now ..." said I, "what will come next?" Both the gentlemen answered me at once. "Riots," said the legitimatist. "Good order," said the doctrinaire. We proceeded in our walk, and having crossed the Pont Royal, kept along the Quai Voltaire, to avoid the Rue du Bac; as we all agreed that, notwithstanding Madame de Staël spoke so lovingly of it at a distance, it was far from agreeable when near. Were it not for a sort of English horror of standing before shop-windows, the walking along that Quai Voltaire might occupy an entire morning. From the first wide-spread display of "remarkable people" for five sous apiece--and there are heads among them which even in their rude lithography would repay some study--from this five-sous gallery of fame to the entrance of the Rue de Seine, it is an almost uninterrupted show;--books, old and new--rich, rare, and worthless; engravings that may be classed likewise,--_articles d'occasion_ of all sorts,--but, far above all the rest, the most glorious museums of old carving and gilding, of monstrous chairs, stupendous candlesticks, grotesque timepieces, and ornaments without a name, that can be found in the world. It is here that the wealthy fancier of the massive splendour of Louis Quinze comes with a full purse, and it is hence that beyond all hope he departs with a light one. The present royal family of France, it is said, profess a taste for this princely but ponderous style of decoration; and royal carriages are often seen to stop at the door of _magasins_ so heterogeneous in their contents as to admit all titles excepting only that of "_magasin de nouveautés_," but having at the first glance very greatly the air of a pawnbroker's shop. During this lounge along the Quai Voltaire, I saw for the first time some marvellously uncomely portraits, with the names of each inscribed below, and a running title for all, classing them _en masse_ as "_Les Prévenus d'Avril_." If these be faithful portraits, the originals are to be greatly pitied; for they seem by nature predestined to the evil work they have been about. Every one of them looks "Worthy to be a rebel, for to that The multiplying villanies of nature Do swarm upon him." It should seem that the materials for rebellion were in Shakspeare's days much of the same kind as they are in ours. If these be portraits, the originals need have no fear of the caricaturist before their eyes--their "villanies of nature" could hardly be exaggerated; and I should think that H. B. himself would try his pencil upon them in vain. On the subject which the examination of these _prévenus d'Avril_ naturally led to, our two French friends seemed to be almost entirely of the same opinion; the legitimatist confessing that "any king was better than none," and the doctrinaire declaring that he would rather the country should have gone without the last revolution, glorious and immortal as it was, than that it should be exposed to another, especially such a one as MM. les Prévenus were about to prepare for them. Being arrived at _le quartier Latin_, we amused ourselves by speculating upon the propensity manifested by very young men, who were still subjected to restraint, for the overthrow and destruction of everything that denotes authority or threatens discipline. Thus the walls in this neighbourhood abounded with inscriptions to that effect; "_A bas Philippe!_"--"_Les Pairs sont des assassins!_"--"_Vive la République!_" and the like. Pears of every size and form, with scratches signifying eyes, nose, and mouth, were to be seen in all directions: which being interpreted, denotes the contempt of the juvenile students for the reigning monarch. A more troublesome evidence of this distaste for authority was displayed a few days ago by four or five hundred of these disorderly young men, who assembling themselves together, followed with hootings and shoutings M. Royer Collard, a professor lately appointed by the government to the medical school, from the college to his home in the Rue de Provence. Upon all such occasions, this government, or any other, would do well to follow the hint given them by an admirable manoeuvre of General Lobau's, the commander-in-chief of the National Guard. I believe the anecdote is very generally known; but, in the hope that you may not have heard it, I will indulge myself by telling you the story, which amused me infinitely; and it is better that I should run the risk of your hearing it twice, than of your not hearing it at all. A party of _les jeunes gens de Paris_, who were exerting themselves to get up a little republican _émeute_, had assembled in considerable numbers in the Place Vendôme. The drums beat--the commandant was summoned and appeared. The young malcontents closed their ranks, handled their pocket-knives and walking-sticks, and prepared to stand firm. The general was seen to dismiss an aide-de-camp, and a few anxious moments followed, when something looking fearfully like a military engine appeared advancing from the Rue de la Paix. Was it cannon?... A crowd of high-capped engineers surrounded it, as with military order and address it wheeled about and approached the spot where the rioters had formed their thickest phalanx. The word of command was given, and in an instant the whole host were drenched to their skins with water. Many who saw this memorable rout, in which the laughing _pompiers_ followed with their leather pipes the scampering heroes, declare that no military manoeuvre ever produced so rapid an evacuation of troops. There is something in the tone and temper of this proceeding of the National Guard which appears to me strikingly indicative of the easy, quiet, contemptuous spirit in which these powerful guardians of the existing government contemplate its republican enemies. Having reached the Luxembourg and obtained admission to the gardens, we again rested ourselves, that we might look about at our ease upon a scene that was not only quite novel, but certainly very singular to those who were accustomed to the ordinary aspect of the place. In the midst of lilacs and roses an encampment of small white tents showed their warlike fronts. Arms, drums, and all sorts of military accoutrements were visible among them; while loitering troops, some smoking, some reading, some sleeping, completed the unwonted appearance of the scene. It would have been impossible, I believe, in all France to have fixed ourselves on a spot where our two French friends would have found so many incitements to unity of opinion and feeling as this. Our conversation, therefore, was not only very amicable, but ran some risk of being dull from the mere want of contradiction; for to a hearty conscientious condemnation of the proceedings which led to this trial of the _prévenus d'Avril_ there was an unanimous sentence passed _nem. con._ throughout the whole party. M. de L---- gave us some anecdotes of one or two of the persons best known among the prisoners; but upon being questioned respecting the others, he burst out indignantly in the words of Corneille-- ----"Le reste ne vaut pas l'honneur d'être nommé: Un tas d'hommes perdus de dettes et de crimes, Que pressent de nos loix les ordres légitimes, Et qui désespérant de les plus éviter, Si tout n'est renversé, ne sauraient subsister." "Ben trovato!" exclaimed P----; "you could not have described them better--but...." This "but" would very probably have led to observations that might have put our _belle harmonie_ out of tune, or at least have produced the renewal of our peaceable sparring, had not a little bustle among the trees at a short distance behind us cut short our session. It seems that ever since the trials began, the chief duty of the gendarmes--(I beg pardon, I should say, of _la Garde de Paris_)--has been to prevent any assembling together of the people in knots for conversation and gossipings in the courts and gardens of the Luxembourg. No sooner are two or three persons observed standing together, than a policeman approaches, and with a tone of command pronounces, "Circulez, messieurs!--circulez, s'il vous plaît." The reason for this precaution is, that nightly at the Porte St. Martin a few score of _jeunes gens_ assemble to make a very idle and unmeaning noise, the echo of which regularly runs from street to street till the reiterated report amounts to the announcement of an _émeute_. We are all now so used to these harmless little _émeutes_ at the Porte St. Martin, that we mind them no more than General Lobau himself: nevertheless, it is deemed proper, trumpery as the cause may be, to prevent anything like a gathering together of the mob in the vicinity of the Luxembourg, lest the same hundred-tongued lady who constantly magnifies the hootings of a few idle mechanics into an _émeute_ should spread a report throughout France that the Luxembourg was besieged by the people. The noise which had disturbed us was occasioned by the gathering together of about a dozen persons; but a policeman was in the midst of the group, and we heard rumours of an _arrestation_. In less than five minutes, however, everything was quiet again: but we marked two figures so picturesque in their republicanism, that we resumed our seats while a sketch was made from them, and amused ourselves the while in fancying what the ominous words could be that were so cautiously exchanged between them. M. de L---- said that there could be no doubt that they ran thus: "Ce soir, à la Porte St. Martin!" _Answer._--"J'y serai." [Illustration: Drawn & Etched by A. Hervieu. "CE SOIR À LA PORTE ST. MARTIN!" "J'Y SERAI." London, Published by Richard Bentley, 1836.] LETTER XXV. Chapelle Expiatoire.--Devotees seen there.--Tri-coloured flag out of place there.--Flower Market of the Madeleine.--Petites Maîtresses. Of all the edifices finished in Paris since my last visit, there is not one which altogether pleases me better than the little "Chapelle Expiatoire" erected in memory of Louis the Sixteenth, and his beautiful but ill-starred queen. This monument was planned and in part executed by Louis the Eighteenth, and finished by Charles the Tenth. It stands upon the spot where many butchered victims of the tyrant mob were thrown in 1793. The story of the royal bodies having been destroyed by quicklime is said to have been fabricated and circulated for the purpose of preventing any search after them, which might, it was thought, have produced a dangerous reaction of feeling among the whim-governed populace. These bodies, and several others, which were placed in coffins, and inscribed with the names of the murdered occupants, lay buried together for many years after the revolution in a large _chantier_, or wood-yard, at no great distance from the place of execution. That this spot had been excavated for the purpose of receiving these sad relics, is a fact well known, and it was never lost sight of from the terrible period at which the ground was so employed; but the unseemly vault continued undisturbed till after the restoration, when the bodies of the royal victims were sought and found. Their bones were then conveyed to the long-hallowed shrine of St. Denis; but the spot where the mangled remains were first thrown was consecrated, and is now become the site of this beautiful little Chapelle Expiatoire. The enclosure in which this building stands is of considerable extent, reaching from the Rue de l'Arcade to the Rue d'Anjou. This space is lined with closely-planted rows of cypress-trees on every side, which are protected by a massive railing, neatly painted. The building itself and all its accompaniments are in excellent taste; simple, graceful, and solemn. The interior is a small Greek cross, each extremity of which is finished by a semicircle surmounted by a semi-dome. The space beneath the central dome is occupied by chairs and benches covered with crimson velvet, for the use of the faithful--in every sense--who come to attend the mass which is daily performed there. As long as the daughter of the murdered monarch continued to reside in Paris, no morning ever passed without her coming to offer up her prayers at this expiatory shrine. One of the four curved extremities is occupied by the altar; that opposite to it, by the entrance; and those on either side, by two well-composed and impressive groups in white marble--that to the right of the altar representing Marie Antoinette bending beside a cross supported by an angel,--and that to the left, the felon-murdered monarch whose wretched and most unmerited destiny she shared. On the pedestal of the king's statue is inscribed his will; on that of the queen, her farewell letter to the Princess Elizabeth. Nothing can exceed the chaste delicacy of the few ornaments admitted into the chapel. They consist only, I think, of golden candlesticks, placed in niches in the white marble walls. The effect of the whole is beautiful and impressive. I often go there; yet I can hardly understand what the charm can be in the little building itself, or in the quiet mass performed there without music, which can so attract me. It is at no great distance from our apartments in the Rue de Provence, and a walk thither just occupies the time before breakfast. I once went there on a Sunday morning with some of my family; but then it was full--indeed so crowded, that it was impossible to see across the building, or feel the beauty of its elegant simplicity. The pale figures of the royal dead, the foully murdered, were no longer the principal objects; and though I have no doubt that all present were right loyal spirits, with whose feelings I am well enough disposed to sympathise, yet I could not read each saddened brow, and attach a romance to it, as I never fail to do during my week-day visits. There are two ladies, for example, whom I constantly see there, ever in the same place, and ever in the same attitude. The elder of these I feel perfectly sure must have passed her youth near Marie Antoinette, for it is at the foot of her statue that she kneels--or I might almost say that she prostrates herself, for she throws her arms forward on a cushion that is placed before her, and suffers her aged head to fall upon them, in a manner that speaks more sorrow than I can describe. The young girl who always accompanies and kneels beside her may, I think, be her granddaughter. They have each of them "_Gentlewoman born_" written on every feature, in characters not to be mistaken. The old lady is very pale, and the young one looks as if she were not passing a youth of gaiety and enjoyment. There is a grey-headed old man, too, who is equally constant in his attendance at this melancholy chapel. He might sit as a model for a portrait of _le bon vieux temps_; but he has a stern though sad expression of countenance, which seems to be exactly a masculine modification of what is passing at the heart and in the memory of the old lady at the opposite side of the chapel. These are figures which send the thoughts back for fifty years; and seen in the act of assisting at a mass for the souls of Louis Seize and his queen, produce a powerful effect on the imagination. I have ventured to describe this melancholy spot, and what I have seen there, the more particularly because, easy as it is of access, you might go to Paris a dozen times without seeing it, as in fact hundreds of English travellers do. One reason for this is, that it is not opened to the public gaze as a show, but can only be entered during the hour of prayer, which is inconveniently early in the day. As this sad and sacred edifice cannot justly be considered as a public building, the elevation of the tri-coloured flag upon it every fête-day might, I think, have been spared. Another, and a very different novelty, is the new flower-market, that is now kept under the walls and columns of the majestic church of La Madeleine. This beautiful collection of flowers appears to me to produce from its situation a very singular effect: the relative attributes of art and nature are reversed;--for here, art seems sublime, vast, and enduring; while nature is small, fragile, and perishing. It has sometimes happened to me, after looking at a work of art which raised my admiration to enthusiasm, that I have next sought some marvellous combination of mountain and valley, rock and river, forest and cataract, and felt as I gazed on them something like shame at remembering how nearly I had suffered the work of man to produce an equal ecstasy. But here, when I raised my eyes from the little flimsy crowd of many-coloured blossoms to the simple, solemn pomp of that long arcade, with its spotless purity of tint and its enduring majesty of graceful strength, I felt half inclined to scorn myself and those around me for being so very much occupied by the roses, pinks, and mignonette spread out before it. Laying aside, however, all philosophical reflections on its locality, this new flower-market is a delightful acquisition to the Parisian _petite maîtresse_. It was a long expedition to visit the _marché aux fleurs_ on the distant quay near Notre Dame; and though its beauty and its fragrance might well repay an hour or two stolen from the pillow, the sweet decorations it offered to the boudoir must have been oftener selected by the _maître d'hôtel_ or the _femme de chambre_ than by the fair lady herself. But now, three times in the week we may have the pleasure of seeing numbers of graceful females in that piquant species of dishabille, which, uniting an equal portion of careful coquetry and saucy indifference, gives to the morning attire of a pretty, elegant, Frenchwoman, an air so indescribably attractive. Followed by a neat _soubrette_, such figures may now be often seen in the flower-market of the Madeleine before the brightness of the morning has faded either from their eyes, or the blossoms they so love to gaze upon. The most ordinary linen gown, made in the form of a wrapper--the hair _en papillote_--the plain straw-bonnet drawn forward over the eyes, and the vast shawl enveloping the whole figure, might suffice to make many an _élégante_ pace up and down the fragrant alley incognita, did not the observant eye remark that a veil of rich lace secured the simple bonnet under the chin--that the shawl was of cashmere--and that the little hand, when ungloved to enjoy the touch of a myrtle or an orange blossom, was as white as either. LETTER XXVI. Delicacy in France and in England.--Causes of the difference between them. There is nothing perhaps which marks the national variety of manners between the French and the English more distinctly than the different estimate they form of what is delicate or indelicate, modest or immodest, decent or indecent: nor does it appear to me that all the intimacy of intercourse which for the last twenty years has subsisted between the two nations has greatly lessened this difference. Nevertheless, I believe that it is more superficial than many suppose it to be; and that it arises rather from contingent circumstances, than from any original and native difference in the capability of refinement in the two nations. Among the most obvious of these varieties of manner, is the astounding freedom with which many things are alluded to here in good society, the slightest reference to which is in our country banished from even the most homely class. It seems that the opinion of Martine is by no means peculiar to herself, and that it is pretty generally thought that "Quand on se fait entendre, on parle toujours bien." In other ways, too, it is impossible not to allow that there exists in France a very perceptible want of refinement as compared to England. No Englishman, I believe, has ever returned from a visit to Paris without adding his testimony to this fact; and notwithstanding the Gallomania so prevalent amongst us, all acknowledge that, however striking may be the elegance and grace of the higher classes, there is still a national want of that uniform delicacy so highly valued by all ranks, above the very lowest, with us. Sights are seen and inconveniences endured with philosophy, which would go nigh to rob us of our wits in July, and lead us to hang ourselves in November. To a fact so well known, and so little agreeable in the detail of its examination, it would be worse than useless to draw your attention, were it not that there is something curious in tracing the manner in which different circumstances, seemingly unconnected, do in reality hang together and form a whole. The time certainly has been, when it was the fashion in England, as it is now in France, to call things, as some one coarsely expresses it, _by their right names_; very grave proof of which might be found even in sermons--and from thence downwards through treatises, essays, poems, romances, and plays. Were we indeed to form our ideas of the tone of conversation in England a century ago from the familiar colloquy found in the comedies then written and acted, we must acknowledge that we were at that time at a greater distance from the refinement we now boast, than our French neighbours are at present. I do not here refer to licentiousness of morals, or the coarse avowal of it; but to a species of indelicacy which might perhaps have been quite compatible with virtue, as the absence of it is unhappily no security against vice. The remedy of this has proceeded, if I mistake not, from causes much more connected with the luxurious wealth of England, than with the severity of her virtue. You will say, perhaps, that I have started off to an immense distance from the point whence I set out; but I think not--for both in France and England I find abundant reason to believe that I am right in tracing this remarkable difference between the two countries, less to natural disposition or character, than to the accidental facilities for improvement possessed by the one people, and not by the other. It would be very easy to ascertain, by reference to the various literary records I have named, that the improvement in English delicacy has been gradual, and in very just proportion to the increase of her wealth, and the fastidious keeping out of sight of everything that can in any way annoy the senses. When we cease to hear, see, and smell things which are disagreeable, it is natural that we should cease to speak of them; and it is, I believe, quite certain that the English take more pains than any other people in the world that the senses--those conductors of sensation from the body to the soul--shall convey to the spirit as little disagreeable intelligence of what befalls the case in which it dwells, as possible. The whole continent of Europe, with the exception of some portion of Holland perhaps, (which shows a brotherly affinity to us in many things,) might be cited for its inferiority to England in this respect. I remember being much amused last year, when landing at Calais, at the answer made by an old traveller to a novice who was making his first voyage. "What a dreadful smell!" said the uninitiated stranger, enveloping his nose in his pocket-handkerchief. "It is the smell of the continent, sir," replied the man of experience. And so it was. There are parts of this subject which it is quite impossible to dwell upon, and which unhappily require no pen to point them out to notice. These, if it were possible, I would willingly leave more in the dark than I find them. But there are other circumstances, all arising from the comparative poverty of the people, which tend to produce, with a most obvious dependency of thing on thing, that deficiency of refinement of which I am speaking. Let any one examine the interior construction of a Paris dwelling of the middle class, and compare it to a house prepared for occupants of the same rank in London. It so happens that everything appertaining to decoration is to be had _à bon marché_ at Paris, and we therefore find every article of the ornamental kind almost in profusion. Mirrors, silk hangings, or-molu in all forms; china vases, alabaster lamps, and timepieces, in which the onward step that never returns is marked with a grace and prettiness that conceals the solemnity of its pace,--all these are in abundance; and the tenth part of what would be considered necessary to dress up a common lodging in Paris, would set the London fine lady in this respect upon an enviable elevation above her neighbours. But having admired their number and elegant arrangement, pass on and enter the ordinary bed-rooms--nay, enter the kitchens too, or you will not be able to judge how great the difference is between the two residences. In London, up to the second floor, and often to the third, water is forced, which furnishes an almost unlimited supply of that luxurious article, to be obtained with no greater trouble to the servants than would be required to draw it from a tea-urn. In one kitchen of every house, generally in two, and often in three, the same accommodation is found; and when, in opposition to this, it is remembered that very nearly every family in Paris receives this precious gift of nature doled out by two buckets at a time, laboriously brought to them by porters, clambering in _sabots_, often up the same stairs which lead to their drawing-rooms, it can hardly be supposed that the use of it is as liberal and unrestrained as with us. Against this may be placed fairly enough the cheapness and facility of the access to the public baths. But though personal ablutions may thus be very satisfactorily performed by those who do not rigorously require that every personal comfort should be found at home, yet still the want of water, or any restraint upon the freedom with which it is used, is a vital impediment to that perfection of neatness, in every part of the establishment, which we consider as so necessary to our comfort. Much as I admire the Church of the Madeleine, I conceive that the city of Paris would have been infinitely more benefited, had the sums expended upon it been used for the purpose of constructing pipes for the conveyance of water to private dwellings, than by all the splendour received from the beauty of this imposing structure. But great and manifold as are the evils entailed by the scarcity of water in the bed-rooms and kitchens of Paris, there is another deficiency greater still, and infinitely worse in its effects. The want of drains and sewers is the great defect of all the cities in France; and a tremendous defect it is. That people who from their first breath of life have been obliged to accustom their senses and submit without a struggle to the sufferings this evil entails upon them,--that people so circumstanced should have less refinement in their thoughts and words than ourselves, I hold to be natural and inevitable. Thus, you see, I have come round like a preacher to his text, and have explained, as I think, very satisfactorily, what I mean by saying that the indelicacy which so often offends us in France does not arise from any natural coarseness of mind, but is the unavoidable result of circumstances, which may, and doubtless will change, as the wealth of the country and its familiarity with the manners of England increases. This withdrawing from the perception of the senses everything that can annoy them,--this lulling of the spirit by the absence of whatever might awaken it to a sensation of pain,--is probably the last point to which the ingenuity of man can reach in its efforts to embellish existence. The search after pleasure and amusement certainly betokens less refinement than this sedulous care to avoid annoyance; and it may be, that as we have gone farthest of all modern nations in this tender care of ourselves, so may we be the first to fall from our delicate elevation into that receptacle of things past and gone which has engulfed old Greece and Rome. Is it thus that the Reform Bill, and all the other horrible Bills in its train, are to be interpreted? As to that other species of refinement which belongs altogether to the intellect, and which, if less obvious to a passing glance, is more deep and permanent in its dye than anything which relates to manners only, it is less easy either to think or to speak with confidence. France and England both have so long a list of mighty names that may be quoted on either side to prove their claim to rank high as literary contributors to refinement, that the struggle as to which ranks highest can only be fairly settled by both parties agreeing that each country has a fair right to prefer what they have produced themselves. But, alas! at the present moment, neither can have great cause to boast. What is good, is overpowered and stifled by what is bad. The uncontrolled press of both countries has thrown so much abominable trash upon literature during the last few years, that at present it might be difficult to say whether general reading would be most dangerous to the young and the pure in England or in France. That the Hugo school has brought more nonsense with its mischief, is, I think, clear: but it is not impossible that this may act as an antidote to its own poison. It is a sort of humbug assumption of talent which will pass out of fashion as quickly as Morrison's pills. We have nothing quite so silly as this; but much I fear that, as it concerns our welfare as a nation, we have what is more deeply dangerous. As to what is moral and what is not so, plain as at first sight the question seems to be, there is much that is puzzling in it. In looking over a volume of "Adèle et Théodore" the other day,--a work written expressly "_sur l'éducation_," and by an author that we must presume meant honestly and spoke sincerely,--I found this passage:-- "Je ne connais que trois romans véritablement moraux;--Clarisse, le plus beau de tous; Grandison, et Pamela. Ma fille les lira en Anglais lorsqu'elle aura dix-huit ans." The venerable Grandison, though by no means _sans tache_, I will let pass: but that any mother should talk of letting her daughter of "dix-huit ans" read the others, is a mystery difficult to comprehend, especially in a country where the young girls are reared, fostered, and sheltered from every species of harm, with the most incessant and sedulous watchfulness. I presume that Madame de Genlis conceived that, as the object and moral purpose of these works were good, the revolting coarseness with which some of their most powerful passages are written could not lead to evil. But this is a bold and dangerous judgment to pass when the question relates to the studies of a young girl. I think we may see symptoms of the feeling which would produce such a judgment, in the tone of biting satire with which Molière attacks those who wished to banish what might "faire insulte à la pudeur des femmes." Spoken as he makes Philaminte speak it, we cannot fail to laugh at the notion: yet ridicule on the same subject would hardly be accepted, even from Sheridan, as jesting matter with us. "Mais le plus beau projet de notre académie, Une entreprise noble, et dont je suis ravie, Un dessein plein de gloire, et qui sera vanté Chez tous les beaux-esprits de la postérité, C'est le retranchement de ces syllabes sales Qui dans les plus beaux mots produisent des scandales; Ces jouets éternels des sots de tous les temps, Ces fades lieux communs de nos méchans plaisans; Ces sources d'un amas d'équivoques infâmes Dont on vient faire insulte à la pudeur des femmes." Such an academy might be a very comical institution, certainly; but the duties it would have to perform would not suffer a professor's place to become a sinecure in France. LETTER XXVII. Objections to quoting the names of private individuals.--Impossibility of avoiding Politics.--_Parceque_ and _Quoique_.--Soirée Antithestique. It would be a pleasure to me to give you the names of many persons with whom I have become acquainted in Paris, and I should like to describe exactly the _salons_ in which I met them; but a whole host of proprieties forbid this. Where individuals are so well known to fame as to render the echoing of their names a matter of ordinary recurrence, I can of course feel no scruple in repeating the echo--one reverberation more can do no harm: but I will never be the first to name any one, either for praise or for blame, beyond the sanctuary of their own circle. I must therefore restrict myself to the giving you the best general idea I can of the tone and style of what I have seen and heard; and if I avail myself of the conversations I have listened to, it shall be in such a manner as to avoid the slightest approach to personal allusion. This necessary restraint, however, is not submitted to without regret: it must rob much of what I would wish to repeat of the value of authority; and when I consider how greatly at variance my impressions are on many points to some which have been publicly proclaimed by others, I feel that I deserve some praise for suppressing names which would stamp my statements with a value that neither my unsupported assertions, nor those of any other traveller, can be supposed to bear. Those who best know what I lose by this will give me credit for it; and I shall be sufficiently rewarded for my forbearance if it afford them a proof that I am not unworthy the flattering kindness I have received. We all declare ourselves sick of politics, and a woman's letters, at least, ought if possible to be free from this wearily pervading subject: but the describing a human being, and omitting to mention the heart and the brain, would not leave the analysis more defective, than painting the Parisians at this moment without permitting their politics to appear in the picture. The very air they breathe is impregnated with politics. Were all words expressive of party distinctions to be banished from their language--were the curse of Babel to fall upon them, and no man be able to discourse with his neighbour,--still political feeling would find itself an organ whereby to express its workings. One man would wear a pointed hat, another a flat one; one woman would be girt with a tri-coloured sash, and another with a white one. Some exquisites would be closely buttoned to the chin, while the lapels of others would open wide in all the expansive freedom of republican unrestraint. One set would be seen adorning Napoleon's pillar with trophies; another, prostrate before the altar of the elder Bourbon's monumental chapel; a third, marshalling themselves under the bloody banner of Robespierre to the tune of "Dansons la Carmagnole;" whilst a fourth, by far the most numerous, would be brushing their national uniforms, attending to their prosperous shops, and giving a nod of good-fellowship every time his majesty the king passes by. Some friends of mine entered a shop the other day to order some article of furniture. While they remained there, a royal carriage passed, and one of the party said-- "It is the queen, I believe?" "Yes, sir," replied the _ébéniste_, "it is the lady that it pleases us to call the queen. We may certainly call her so if we like it, for we made her ourselves; and if we find it does not answer, we shall make another.--May I send you home this table, sir?..." When politics are thus lightly mixed up with all things, how can the subject be wholly avoided without destroying the power of describing anything as we find it? Such being the case, I cannot promise that all allusion to the subject shall be banished from my letters; but it shall be made as little predominant as possible. Could I indeed succeed in transferring the light tone in which these weighty matters are generally discussed to the account I wish to give you of them, I need not much fear that I should weary you. Whether it be essentially in the nature of the people, or only a transitory feature of the times, I know not; but nothing strikes me so forcibly as the airy, gay indifference with which subjects are discussed on which hang the destinies of the world. The most acute--nay, often the most profound remarks are uttered in a tone of badinage; and the probabilities of future events, vital to the interests of France, and indeed of Europe, are calculated with as idle an air, and with infinitely more _sang froid_, than the chances at a game of _rouge et noir_. Yet, behind this I suspect that there is a good deal of sturdy determination in all parties, and it will be long ere France can be considered as one whole and united people. Were the country divided into two, instead of into three factions, it is probable that the question of which was to prevail would be soon brought to an issue; but as it is, they stand much like the uncles and nieces in the Critic, each keeping the other two in check. Meanwhile this temporary division of strength is unquestionably very favourable to the present government; in addition to which, they derive much security from the averseness which all feel, excepting the naughty boys and hungry desperadoes, to the disturbance of their present tranquillity. It is evident that those who do not belong to the triumphant majority are disposed for the most part to wait a more favourable opportunity of hostilely and openly declaring themselves; and it is probable that they will wait long. They know well, and are daily reminded of it, that all the power and all the strength that possession can give are vested in the existing dynasty; and though much deeply-rooted feeling exists that is inimical to it, yet so many of all parties are firmly united to prevent farther anarchy and revolution, that the throne of Louis-Philippe perhaps rests on as solid a foundation as that of any monarch in Europe: the fear of renewed tumult acts like the key-stone of an arch, keeping firm, sound, and in good condition, what would certainly fall to pieces without it. In addition to this wholesome fear of pulling their own dwellings about their ears, there is also another fear that aids greatly in producing the same result. Many of the riotous youths who so essentially assisted in creating the confusion which ended in uncrowning one king and crowning another, are, as far as I can understand, quite as well disposed to make a row now as they were then: but they know that if they do, they will most incontestably be whipped for it; and therefore, though they pout a little in private, they are, generally speaking, very orderly in public. Every one, not personally interested in the possible result of another uproar, must rejoice at this improvement in discipline. The boys of France must now submit to give way before her men; and as long as this lasts, something like peace and prosperity may be hoped for. Yet it cannot be denied, I think, that among these prudent men--these doctrinaires who now hold the high places, there are many who, "with high thoughts, such as Lycurgus loved," still dream of a commonwealth; or that there are others who have not yet weaned their waking thoughts from meditations on faith, right, and loyalty. But nevertheless, all unite in thinking that they had better "let things be," than risk making them worse. Nothing is more common than to hear a conversation end by a cordial and unanimous avowal of this prudent and sagacious sentiment, which began by an examination of general principles, and the frank acknowledgment of opinions which would certainly lead to a very different conclusion. It is amusing enough to remark how these advocates for expediency contrive each of them to find reasons why things had better remain as they are, while all these reasons are strongly tinted by their various opinions. "Charles Dix," says a legitimate in principle, but a _juste-milieu_ man in practice,--"Charles Dix has abdicated the throne, which otherwise must unquestionably be his by indefeasible right. His heir-apparent has followed the example. The country was in no state to be governed by a child; and what then was left for us, but to take a king from the same race which so for many ages has possessed the throne of France. _Louis-Philippe est roi, PARCEQU'il est Bourbon_." "Pardonnez-moi," replies another, who, if he could manage it without disturbing the tranquillity about him, would take care to have it understood that nothing more legitimate than an elective monarchy could be ever permitted in France,--"Pardonnez-moi, mon ami; _Louis-Philippe est roi, QUOIQU'il est Bourbon_." These two parties of the _Parceques_ and the _Quoiques_, in fact, form the great bulwarks of King Philippe's throne; for they both consist of experienced, practical, substantial citizens, who having felt the horrors of anarchy, willingly keep their particular opinions in abeyance rather than hazard a recurrence of it. They, in truth, form between them the genuine _juste-milieu_ on which the present government is balanced. That there is more of the practical wisdom of expediency than of the dignity of unbending principle in this party, can hardly be denied. They are "wiser in their generation than the children of light;" but it is difficult, "seeing what we have seen, seeing what we see," to express any heavy sentence of reprobation upon a line of conduct which ensures, for the time at least, the lives and prosperity of millions. They tell me that my friend the Vicomte has sapped my legitimate principles; but I deny the charge, though I cannot deliberately wish that confusion should take the place of order, or that the desolation of a civil war should come to deface the aspect of prosperity that it is so delightful to contemplate. This discrepancy between what is right and what is convenient--this wavering of principle and of action, is the inevitable consequence of repeated political convulsions. When the times become out of joint, the human mind can with difficulty remain firm and steadfast. The inconceivable variety of wild and ever-changing speculations which have long overborne the voice of established belief and received authority in this country, has brought the principles of the people into a state greatly resembling that of a wheel radiated with every colour of the rainbow, but which by rapid movement is left apparently without any colour at all. Our last _soirée_ was at the house of a lady who takes much interest in showing me "le Paris d'aujourd'hui," as she calls it. "Chère dame!" she exclaimed as I entered, "I have collected _une société délicieuse_ for you this evening." She had met me in the ante-room, and, taking my arm within hers, led me into the _salon_. It was already filled with company, the majority of which were gentlemen. Having found room for us on a sofa, and seated herself next to me, she said-- "I will present whomsoever you choose to know; but before I bring anybody up, I must explain who they all are." I expressed my gratitude, and she began:--"That tall gentleman is a great republican, and one of the most respectable that we have left of the _clique_. The party is very nearly worn out among the _gens comme il faut_. His father, however, is of the same party, and still more violent, I believe, than himself. Heaven knows what they would be at!... But they are both deputies, and if they died to-morrow, would have, either father or son, a very considerable mob to follow them to Père Lachaise; not to mention the absolute necessity which I am sure there would be to have troops out: c'est toujours quelque chose, n'est-ce pas? I know that you hate them all--and, to say truth, so do I too;--mais, chère amie! qu'est-ce que cela fait? I thought you would like to see them: they really begin to get very scarce in _salons_." I assured her that she was quite right, and that nothing in the whole Jardin des Plantes could amuse me better. "Ah ça!" she rejoined, laughing; "voilà ce que c'est d'être raisonnable. Mais regardez ce beau garçon leaning against the chimneypiece. He is one of _les fidèles sans tache_. Is he not handsome? I have him at all my parties; and even the ministers' ladies declare that he is perfectly charming." "And that little odd-looking man in black," said I, "who is he?... What a contrast!" "N'est-ce pas? Do they not group well together? That is just the sort of thing I like--it amuses everybody: besides, I assure you, he is a very remarkable person,--in short, it is M----, the celebrated atheist. He writes for the ----. But the Institute won't have him: however, he is excessively talked of--and that is everything.... Then I have two peers, both of them highly distinguished. There is M. de ----, who, you know, is King Philippe's right hand; and the gentleman sitting down just behind him is the dear old Duc de ----, who lived ages in exile with Louis Dix-huit.... That person almost at your elbow, talking to the lady in blue, is the Comte de P----, a most exemplary Catholic, who always followed Charles Dix in all religious processions. He was half distracted, poor man! at the last revolution; but they say he is going to dine with King Philippe next week: I long to ask him if it is true, but I am afraid, for fear he should be obliged to answer 'Yes;'--that would be so embarrassing!... Oh, by the way, that is a peer that you are looking at now;--he has refused to sit on the trial.... Now, have I not done _l'impossible_ for you?" I thanked her gratefully, and as I knew I could not please her better than by showing the interest I took in her menagerie, I inquired the name of a lady who was talking with a good deal of vehemence at the opposite side of the room. "Oh! that's a person that I always call my '_dame de l'Empire_.' Her husband was one of Napoleon's creations; and Josephine used to amuse herself without ceasing by making her talk--her language and accent are _impayables_!" "And that pretty woman in the corner?" "Ah! ... she is charming!... It is Madame V----, daughter of the celebrated Vicomte de ----, so devoted, you know, to the royal cause. But she is lately married to one of the present ministers--quite a love-match; which is an innovation, by the way, more hard to pardon in France than the introduction of a new dynasty. Mais c'est égal--they are all very good friends again.... Now, tell me whom I shall introduce to you?" I selected the heroine of the love-match; who was not only one of the prettiest creatures I ever saw, but so lively, intelligent, and agreeable, that I have seldom passed a pleasanter hour than that which followed the introduction. The whole of this heterogeneous party seemed to mix together with the greatest harmony; the only cold glance I saw given being from the gentleman designated as "King Philippe's right hand," towards the tall republican deputy of whose funeral my friend had predicted such honours. The _dame de l'Empire_ was indulging in a lively flirtation with one of the peers _sans tache_; and I saw the fingers of the exemplary Catholic, who was going to dine with King Philippe, in the _tabatière_ of the celebrated atheist. I then remembered that this was one of the _soirées antithestiques_ so much in fashion. LETTER XXVIII. New Publications.--M. de Lamartine's "Souvenirs, Impressions, Pensées, et Paysages."--Tocqueville and Beaumont.--New American regulation.--M. Scribe.--Madame Tastu.--Reception of different Writers in society. Though among the new publications sent to me for perusal I have found much to fatigue and disgust me, as must indeed be inevitable for any one accustomed for some scores of years to nourish the heart and head with the literature of the "_bon vieux temps_"--which means, in modern phrase, everything musty, rusty, rococo, and forgotten,--I have yet found some volumes which have delighted me greatly. M. de Lamartine's "Souvenirs, Impressions, Pensées, et Paysages" in the East, is a work which appears to me to stand solitary and alone in the world of letters. There is certainly nothing like it, and very little that can equal it, in my estimation, either as a collection of written landscapes or as a memorial of poetical feeling, just sentiment, and refined taste. His descriptions may perhaps have been, in some rare instances, equalled in mere graphic power by others; but who has painted anything which can excite an interest so profound, or an elevation of the fancy so lofty and so delightful? Alas! that the scenes he paints should be so utterly beyond one's reach! How little, how paltry, how full of the vulgar interests of this "working-day world," do all the other countries of the earth appear after reading this book, when compared to Judea! But there are few who could visit it as Lamartine has done,--there are very few capable of feeling as he felt--and none, I think, of describing as he describes. His words live and glow upon the paper; he pours forth sunshine and orient light upon us,--we hear the gale whispering among the palm-trees, see Jordan's rapid stream rushing between its flowery banks, and feel that the scene to which he has transported us is holy ground. The exalted tone of his religious feelings, and the poetic fervour with which he expresses them, might almost lead one to believe that he was inspired by the sacred air he breathed. It seems as if he had found the harps which were hung up of old upon the trees, and tuned them anew to sing of the land of David; he has "beheld the beauty of the Lord, and inquired in his temple," and the result is exactly what it should be. The manner in which this most poetic of travellers, while standing on the ruins of Tyre, speaks of the desolation and despair that appear settling upon the earth in these latter days, is impressive beyond anything I know of modern date. Had France produced no other redeeming volumes than these, there is enough within them to overpower and extinguish the national literary disgrace with which it has been reproached so loudly; and it is a comfort to remember that this work is as sure to live, as the literary labours of the diabolic school are to perish. It is perhaps good for us to read trash occasionally, that we may learn to value at their worth such thoughts as we find here; and while there are any left on earth who can so think, so feel, and so write, our case is not utterly hopeless. Great, indeed, is the debt that we owe to an author like this, who, seizing upon the imagination with power unlimited, leads it only into scenes that purify and exalt the spirit. It is a tremendous power, that of taking us how and where he will, which is possessed by such an author as this. When it is used for evil, it resembles fearfully the action of a fiend, tempting, dragging, beckoning, cajoling to destruction: but when it is for good, it is like an angel's hand leading us to heaven. I intended to have spoken to you of many other works which have pleased me; but I really at this moment experience the strangest sort of embarrassment imaginable in referring to them. Many agreeable new books are lying about before me; but while my head is so full of Lamartine and the Holy Land, everything seems to produce on me the effect of platitude and littleness. I must, however, conquer this so far as to tell you that you ought to read both Tocqueville and Beaumont on the United States. By the way, I am assured that the Americans declare themselves determined to change their line of conduct altogether respecting the national manner of receiving European sketches of themselves. This new law is to embrace three clauses. The first will enforce the total exclusion, from henceforth and for evermore, of all European strangers from their American homes; the second will recommend that all citizens shall abstain from reading anything, in any language written, or about to be written, concerning them and their affairs; and the third, in case the other two should fail, seems to take the form of a vow, protesting that they never will storm, rave, scold, or care about anything that anybody can say of them more. If this passes during the presidentship of General Jackson, it will immortalize his reign more than paying off the national debt. Having thus, somehow or other, slipped from the Holy Land to the United States of America, I feel sufficiently subdued in spirit to speak of lesser things than Lamartine's "Pilgrimage." On one point, indeed, a sense of justice urges me, when on the subject of modern productions, to warn you against the error of supposing that all the new theatrical pieces, which come forth here as rapidly and as brilliantly as the blossoms of the gum cistus, and which fade almost as soon, are of the nature and tendency of those I have mentioned as belonging to the Victor Hugo school. On the contrary, I have seen many, and read more, of these little comedies and vaudevilles, which are not only free from every imputation of mischief, but absolutely perfect in their kind. The person whose name is celebrated far above all others for this species of composition, is M. Scribe; and were it not that his extraordinary facility enables him to pour forth these pretty trifles in such abundance as already to have assured him a very large fortune, which offers an excellent excuse in these _positif_ times for him, I should say that he would have done better had he written less. He has shown on several occasions, as in "L'Ambitieux," "Bertrand et Raton," &c. that he can succeed in that most difficult of tasks, good legitimate comedy, as well as in the lighter labour of striking off a sparkling vaudeville. It is certain, indeed, that, spite of all we say, and say in some respects so justly, respecting the corrupted taste of France at the present era, there never was a time when her stage could boast a greater affluence of delightful little pieces than at present. I really am afraid to enter more at large upon this theme, from a literal _embarras de richesses_. If I begin to name these pretty, lively trifles, I shall run into a list much too long for your patience: for though Scribe is still the favourite as well as the most fertile source of these delightful novelties, there are one or two others who follow him at some little distance, and who amongst them produce such a sum total of new pieces in the year as would make an English manager tremble to think of;--but here the chief cost of bringing them out is drawn, not from the theatrical treasury, but from the ever-fresh wit and spirit of the performers. Such an author as Scribe is a national museum of invention--a never-failing source of new enjoyment to his lively countrymen, and he has probably tasted the pleasures of a bright and lasting reputation as fully as any author living. We are already indebted to him for many charming importations; and, thanks to the Yates talent, we begin to be not unworthy of receiving such. If we cannot have Shakspeare, Racine, and Molière got up for us quite "in the grand style of former years," these bright, light, biting, playful, graceful little pieces are by far the best substitutes for them, while we wait with all the patience we can for a new growth of players, who shall give honour due to the next tragedy Miss Mitford may bestow upon us. Another proof that it is not necessary to be vicious in order to be in vogue at Paris, and that purity is no impediment to success, is the popularity of Madame Tastu's poetry. She writes as a woman ought to write--with grace, feeling, delicacy, and piety. Her literary efforts, however, are not confined to the "flowery path of poesy;" though it is impossible not to perceive that she lingers in it with delight, and that when she leaves it, she does so from no truant inclination to wander elsewhere, but from some better impulse. Her work entitled "Education Maternelle" would prove a most valuable acquisition to English mothers desirous themselves of giving early lessons in French to their children. The pronunciation and accentuation are marked in a manner greatly to facilitate the task, especially to a foreigner; whose greatest difficulty, when attempting to teach the language without the aid of a native master, is exactly what these initiatory lessons are so well calculated to obviate. It is no small source of consolation and of hope, at a period when a sort of universal epidemic frenzy appears to have seized upon the minds of men, leading them to advocate as good that which all experience shows to be evil, and to give specimens of dirty delirium that might be collected in an hospital, by way of exalted works of imagination,--it is full of hope and consolation to find that, however rumour may clamour forth tidings of these sad ravings whenever they appear, fame still rests only with such as really deserve it. Let a first-rate collector of literary lions at Paris make it known that M. de Lamartine would appear at her _soirée_, and the permission to enter there would be sought so eagerly, that before eleven o'clock there would not be standing-room in her apartments, though they might be as spacious as any the "belle ville" can show. But let it be announced that the authors of any of the obscene masques and mummings which have disgraced the theatres of France would present themselves, and depend upon it they would find space sufficient to enact the part of Triboulet at the moment when he exclaims in soliloquy, "Que je suis grand ici!" LETTER XXIX. Sunday in Paris.--Family Groups.--Popular Enjoyment.--Polytechnic Students.--Their resemblance to the figure of Napoleon.--Enduring attachment to the Emperor.--Conservative spirit of the English Schools.--Sunday in the Gardens of the Tuileries.--Religion of the Educated.--Popular Opinion. Sunday is a delightful day in Paris--more so than in any place I ever visited, excepting Francfort. The enjoyment is so universal, and yet so domestic; were I to form my idea of the national character from the scenes passing before my eyes on that day, instead of from books and newspapers, I should say that the most remarkable features in it, were conjugal and parental affection. It is rare to see either a man or a woman, of an age to be wedded and parents, without their being accompanied by their partner and their offspring. The cup of light wine is drunk between them; the scene that is sought for amusement by the one is also enjoyed by the other; and whether it be little or whether it be much that can be expended on this day of jubilee, the man and wife share it equally. I have entered many churches during the hours of the morning masses, in many different parts of the town, and, as I have before stated, I have uniformly found them extremely crowded; and though I have never remarked any instances of that sort of penitential devotion so constantly seen in the churches of Belgium when the painfully extended arms remind one of the Hindoo solemnities, the appearance of earnest and devout attention to what is going on is universal. It is not till after the grand mass is over that the population pours itself out over every part of the town, not so much to seek as to meet amusement. And they are sure to find it; for not ten steps can be taken in any direction without encountering something that shall furnish food for enjoyment of some kind or other. There is no sight in the world that I love better than a numerous populace during their hours of idleness and glee. When they assemble themselves together for purposes of legislation, I confess I do not greatly love or admire them; but when they are enjoying themselves, particularly when women and children share in the enjoyment, they furnish a delightful spectacle--and nowhere can it be seen to greater advantage than in Paris. The nature of the people--the nature of the climate--the very form and arrangement of the city, are all especially favourable to the display of it. It is in the open air, under the blue vault of heaven, before the eyes of thousands, that they love to bask and disport themselves. The bright, clear atmosphere seems made on purpose for them; and whoever laid out the boulevards, the quays, the gardens of Paris, surely remembered, as they did so, how necessary space was for the assembling together of her social citizens. The young men of the Polytechnic School make a prominent feature in a Paris Sunday; for it is only on the _jours de fête_ that they are permitted to range at liberty through the town: but all occasions of this kind cause the streets and public walks to swarm with young Napoleons. It is quite extraordinary to see how the result of a strong principle or sentiment may show itself externally on a large body of individuals, making those alike, whom nature has made as dissimilar as possible. There is not one of these Polytechnic lads, the eldest of whom could hardly have seen the light of day before Napoleon had left the soil of France for ever,--there is hardly one of them who does not more or less remind one of the well-known figure and air of the Emperor. Be they tall, be they short, be they fat, be they thin, it is the same,--there is some approach (evidently the result of having studied their worshipped model closely in paintings, engravings, bronzes, marbles, and Sèvres china,) to that look and bearing which, till the most popular tyrant that ever lived had made it as well known as sunshine to the eyes of France, was as little resembling to the ordinary appearance and carriage of her citizens as possible. The tailor can certainly do much towards making the exterior of one individual look like the exterior of another; but he cannot do all that we see in the mien of a Polytechnic scholar that serves to recall the extraordinary man whose name, after years of exile and of death, is decidedly the most stirring that can be pronounced in France. Busy, important, and most full of human interest has been the period since his downfall; yet his memory is as fresh among them as if he had marched into the Tuileries triumphant from one of his hundred victories but yesterday. O, if the sovereign people could but understand as well as read!... And O that some Christian spirit could be found who would interpret to them, in such accents as they would listen to, the life and adventures of Napoleon the Great! What a deal of wisdom they might gain by it! Where could be found a lesson so striking as this to a people who are weary of being governed, and desire, one and all, to govern themselves? With precisely the same weariness, with precisely the same desire, did this active, intelligent, and powerful people throw off, some forty years ago, the yoke of their laws and the authority of their king. Then were they free as the sand of the desert--not one individual atom of the mighty mass but might have risen in the hurricane of that tempest as high as the unbridled wind of his ambition could carry him; and what followed? Why, they grew sick to death of the giddy whirl, where each man knocked aside his neighbour, and there was none to say "Forbear!" Then did they cling, like sinking souls in the act of drowning, to the first bold man who dared to replace the yoke upon their necks; they clung to him through years of war that mowed down their ranks as a scythe mows down the ripe corn, and yet they murmured not. For years they suffered their young sons to be torn from their sides while they still hung to them with all the first fondness of youth, and yet they murmured not;--for years they lived uncheered by the wealth that commerce brings, uncheered by any richer return of labour than the scanty morsel that sustained their life of toil, and yet they murmured not: for they had once more a prince upon the throne--they had once more laws, firmly administered, which kept them from the dreaded horrors of anarchy; and they clung to their tyrant prince, and his strict and stern enactments, with a devotion of gratitude and affection which speaks plainly enough their lasting thankfulness to the courage which was put forth in their hour of need to relieve them from the dreadful burden of self-government. This gratitude and affection endures still--nothing will ever efface it; for his military tyranny is passed away, and the benefits which his colossal power enabled him to bestow upon them remain, and must remain as long as France endures. The only means by which another sovereign may rival Napoleon in popularity, is by rivalling him in power. Were some of the feverish blood which still keeps France in agitation to be drawn from her cities to reinforce her military array, and were a hundred thousand of the sons of France marched off to restore to Italy her natural position in Europe, power, glory, and popularity would sustain the throne, and tranquillity be restored to the people. Without some such discipline, poor young France may very probably die of a plethora. If she has not this, she must have a government as absolute as that of Russia to keep her from mischief: and that she will have one or the other before long, I have not the least doubt in the world; for there are many very clever personages at and near the seat of power who will not be slow to see or to do what is needful. Meanwhile this fine body of young men are, as I understand, receiving an education calculated to make them most efficient officers, whenever they are called upon to serve. Unfortunately for the reputation of the Polytechnic School, their names were brought more forward than was creditable to those who had the charge of them, during the riots of 1830. But the government which the men of France accepted from the hands of the boys really appears to be wiser and better than they had any right to expect from authority so strangely constituted. The new government very properly uses the strength given it, for the purpose of preventing the repetition of the excesses to which it owes its origin; and these fine lads are now said to be in a state of very respectable discipline, and to furnish no contemptible bulwark to the throne. It is otherwise, however, as I hear, with most of the bodies of young men collected together in Paris for the purpose of education. The silly cant of republicanism has got among them; and till this is mended, continued little riotous outbreakings of a naughty-boy spirit must be expected. One of the happiest circumstances in the situation of poor struggling England at present is, that her boys are not republican. On the contrary, the rising spirit among us is decidedly conservative. All our great schools are tory to the heart's core. The young English have been roused, awakened, startled at the peril which threatens the land of their fathers! The _penny king_ who has invaded us has produced on them the effect usual on all invasions; and rather than see him and his popish court succeed in conquering England, they would rush from their forms and their cloisters to repel him, shouting, "Alone we'll do it, BOYS!"--and they would do it, too, even if they had no fathers to help them. But I have forgotten my Sunday holiday, while talking about the gayest and happiest of those it brings forth to decorate the town. Many a proud and happy mother may on these occasions be seen leaning on the arm of a son that she is very conscious looks like an emperor; and many a pretty creature, whom her familiarity, as well as her features, proclaims to be a sister, shows in her laughing eyes that the day which gives her smart young brother freedom is indeed a _jour de fête_ for her. You will be weary of the Tuileries Gardens; but I cannot keep out of them, particularly when talking of a Paris Sunday, of whose prettiest groups they are the rendezvous: the whole day's history may be read in them. As soon as the gates are open, figures both male and female, in dishabille more convenient than elegant, may be seen walking across them in every direction towards the _sortie_ which leads towards the quay, and thence onwards to _Les Bains Vigier_. Next come the after-breakfast groups: and these are beautiful. Elegant young mothers in half-toilet accompany their _bonnes_, and the pretty creatures committed to their care, to watch for an hour the happy gambols which the presence of the "chère maman" renders seven times more gay than ordinary. [Illustration: Drawn & Etched by A. Hervieu. TUILERIES GARDENS, ON SUNDAY. London, Published by Richard Bentley, 1835.] I have watched such, repeatedly, with extreme amusement; often attempting to read, but never able to pursue the occupation for three-quarters of a minute together, till they at last abandon it altogether, and sit with the useless volume upon their knee, complacently answering all the baby questions that may be proposed to them, while watching with the smiling satisfaction of well-pleased maternity every attitude, every movement, and every grimace of the darling miniatures in which they see themselves, and perhaps one dearer still. From about ten till one o'clock the gardens swarm with children and their attendants: and pretty enough they are, and amusing too, with their fanciful dresses and their baby wilfulness. Then comes the hour of early dinners: the nurses and the children retreat; and were it possible that any hour of the day could find a public walk in Paris unoccupied, it would be this. The next change shows the gradual influx of best bonnets,--pink, white, green, blue. Feathers float onwards, and fresh flowers are seen around: gay barouches rush down the Rues Castiglione and Rivoli; cabs swing round every corner, all to deposit their gay freight within the gardens. By degrees, double, treble rows of chairs are occupied on either side of every walk, while the whole space between is one vast moving mass of pleasant idleness. This lasts till five; and then, as the elegant crowd withdraws, another, less graceful perhaps, but more animated, takes its place. Caps succeed to bonnets; and unchecked laughter, loud with youth and glee, replaces the whispered gallantry, the silent smile, and all the well-bred ways of giving and receiving thoughts with as little disturbance to the circumambient air as possible. From this hour to nightfall the multitude goes on increasing; and did one not know that every theatre, every guinguette, every boulevard, every café in Paris were at the same time crammed almost to suffocation, one might be tempted to believe that the whole population had assembled there to recreate themselves before the windows of the king. Among the higher ranks the Sunday evening at Paris is precisely the same as that of any other day. There are the same number of _soirées_ going on, and no more; the same number of dinner-parties, just as much card-playing, just as much dancing, just as much music, and just as much going to the opera; but the other theatres are generally left to the _endimanchés_. You must not, however, imagine that no religious exercises are attended to among the rich and noble because I have said nothing especially about them on this point. On the contrary, I have great reason to believe that it is not alone the attractive eloquence of the popular preachers which draws such multitudes of wealthy and high-born females into the fashionable churches of Paris; but that they go to pray as well as to listen. Nevertheless, as to the general state of religion amongst the educated classes in Paris, it is quite as difficult to obtain information as it is to learn with anything like tolerable accuracy the average state of their politics. It is not that there is the least reserve or apparent hanging back when either subject is discussed; on the contrary, all seem kindly eager to answer every question, and impart to you all the information it is possible to wish for: but the variety of statements is inconceivable; and as I have repeatedly listened to very strong and positive assertions respecting the opinions of the majority, from those in whose sincerity I have perfect confidence, but which have been flatly contradicted by others equally deserving of credit, I am led to suppose that in effect the public mind is still wavering on both subjects. There is, in fact, but one point upon which I truly and entirely believe that an overwhelming majority exists,--and this is in the aversion felt for any farther trial of a republican form of government. The party who advocate the cause of democracy do indeed make the most noise--it is ever their wont to do so. Neither the Chamber of Deputies nor the Chamber of Peers can assemble nightly at a given spot to scream "Vive le Roi!" nor are the quiet citizens, who most earnestly wish to support the existing government, at all more likely to leave their busy shops for this purpose than the members of the two Chambers are to quit their _hôtels_;--so that any attempt to judge the political feelings of the people by the outcries heard in the streets must of necessity lead to error. Yet it is of such judgments, both at home and abroad, that we hear the most. As to the real private feelings on the subject of religion which exist among the educated portion of the people, it is still more difficult to form an opinion, for on this subject the strongest indications are often declared to prove nothing. If churches filled to overflowing be proof of national piety, then are the people pious: and farther than this, no looker-on such as myself should, I think, attempt to go. LETTER XXX. Madame Récamier.--Her Morning Parties.--Gérard's Picture of Corinne.--Miniature of Madame de Staël.--M. de Châteaubriand.--Conversation on the degree in which the French Language is understood by Foreigners.--The necessity of speaking French. Of all the ladies with whom I have become acquainted in Paris, the one who appears to me to be the most perfect specimen of an elegant Frenchwoman is Madame Récamier,--the same Madame Récamier that, I will not say how many years ago, I remember to have seen in London, the admired of all eyes: and, wonderful to say, she is so still. Formerly I knew her only from seeing her in public, where she was pointed out to me as the most beautiful woman in Europe; but now that I have the pleasure of her acquaintance, I can well understand, though you who know her only by the reputation of her early beauty may not, how and why it is that fascinations generally so evanescent are with her so lasting. She is, in truth, the very model of all grace. In person, manner, movement, dress, voice, and language, she seems universally allowed to be quite perfect; and I really cannot imagine a better mode of giving a last finish to a young lady's study of the graces, than by affording her an opportunity of observing every movement and gesture of Madame Récamier. She is certainly a monopolist of talents and attractions which would suffice, if divided in ordinary proportions, to furnish forth a host of charming women. I never met with a Frenchman who did not allow, that though his countrywomen were charming from _agrémens_ which seem peculiarly their own, they have fewer faultless beauties among them than may be found in England; but yet, as they say, "Quand une Française se mêle d'être jolie, elle est furieusement jolie." This _mot_ is as true in point of fact as piquant in expression;--a beautiful Frenchwoman is, perhaps, the most beautiful woman in the world. The perfect loveliness of Madame Récamier has made her "a thing to wonder at:" and now that she has passed the age when beauty is at its height, she is perhaps to be wondered at still more; for I really doubt if she ever excited more admiration than she does at present. She is followed, sought, looked at, listened to, and, moreover, beloved and esteemed, by a very large circle of the first society in Paris, among whom are numbered some of the most illustrious literary names in France. That her circle, as well as herself, is delightful, is so generally acknowledged, that by adding my voice to the universal judgment, I perhaps show as much vanity, as gratitude for the privilege of being admitted within it: but no one, I believe, so favoured could, when speaking of the society of Paris, omit so striking a feature of it as the _salon_ of Madame Récamier. She contrives to make even the still-life around her partake of the charm for which she is herself so remarkable, and there is a fine and finished elegance in everything about her that is irresistibly attractive: I have often entered drawing-rooms almost capable of containing her whole suite of apartments, and found them infinitely less striking in their magnificence than her beautiful little _salon_ in the Abbaye-aux-Bois. The rich draperies of white silk, the delicate blue tint that mixes with them throughout the apartment,--the mirrors, the flowers,--all together give an air to the room that makes it accord marvellously well with its fair inhabitant. One might fancy that Madame Récamier herself was for ever _vouée au blanc_, for no drapery falls around her that is not of snowy whiteness--and indeed the mixture of almost any colour would seem like profanation to the exquisite delicacy of her appearance. Madame Récamier admits morning visits from a limited number of persons, whose names are given to the servant attending in the ante-room, every day from four till six. It was here I had the pleasure of being introduced to M. de Châteaubriand, and had afterwards the gratification of repeatedly meeting him; a gratification that I shall assuredly never forget, and for which I would have willingly sacrificed one-half of the fine things which reward the trouble of a journey to Paris. The circle thus received is never a large one, and the conversation is always general. The first day that I and my daughters were there, we found, I think, but two ladies, and about half a dozen gentlemen, of whom M. de Châteaubriand was one. A magnificent picture by Gérard, boldly and sublimely conceived, and executed in his very best manner, occupies one side of the elegant little _salon_. The subject is Corinne, in a moment of poetical excitement, a lyre in her hand, and a laurel crown upon her head. Were it not for the modern costume of those around her, the figure must be mistaken for that of Sappho: and never was that impassioned being, the martyred saint of youthful lovers, portrayed with more sublimity, more high poetic feeling, or more exquisite feminine grace. The contemplation of this _chef-d'oeuvre_ naturally led the conversation to Madame de Staël. Her intimacy with Madame Récamier is as well known as the biting reply of the former to an unfortunate man, who having contrived to place himself between them, exclaimed,--"Me voilà entre l'esprit et la beauté!" To which bright sally he received for answer--"Sans posséder ni l'un ni l'autre." My knowledge of this intimacy induced me to take advantage of the occasion, and I ventured to ask Madame Récamier if Madame de Staël had in truth intended to draw her own character in that of Corinne. "Assuredly ..." was the reply. "The soul of Madame de Staël is fully developed in her portrait of that of Corinne." Then turning to the picture, she added, "Those eyes are the eyes of Madame de Staël." She put a miniature into my hand, representing her friend in all the bloom of youth, at an age indeed when she could not have been known to Madame Récamier. The eyes had certainly the same dark beauty, the same inspired expression, as those given to Corinne by Gérard. But the artist had too much taste or too little courage to venture upon any farther resemblance; the thick lips and short fat chin of the real sibyl being changed into all that is loveliest in female beauty on the canvass. The apparent age of the face represented in the miniature points out its date with tolerable certainty; and it gives no very favourable idea of the taste of the period; for the shock head of crisped Brutus curls is placed on arms and bust as free from drapery, though better clothed in plumpness, than those of the Medicean Venus. As we looked first at one picture, then at the other, and conversed on both, I was struck with the fine forehead and eyes, delightful voice, and peculiarly graceful turn of expression, of a gentleman who sat opposite to me, and who joined in this conversation. I remarked to Madame Récamier that few romances had ever had the honour of being illustrated by such a picture as this of Gérard, and that, from many circumstances, her pleasure in possessing it must be very great. "It is indeed," she replied: "nor is it my only treasure of the kind--I am so fortunate as to possess Girodet's original drawing from Atala, the engraving from which you must often have seen. Let me show you the original." We followed her to the dining-room, where this very interesting drawing is placed. "You do not know M. de Châteaubriand?" said she. I replied that I had not that pleasure. "It is he who was sitting opposite to you in the _salon_." I begged that she would introduce him to me; and upon our returning to the drawing-room she did so. The conversation was resumed, and most agreeably--every one bore a part in it. Lamartine, Casimir Delavigne, Dumas, Victor Hugo, and some others, passed under a light but clever and acute review. Our Byron, Scott, &c. followed; and it was evident that they had been read and understood. I asked M. de Châteaubriand if he had known Lord Byron: he replied, "Non;" adding, "Je l'avais précédé dans la vie, et malheureusement il m'a précédé au tombeau." The degree in which any country is capable of fully appreciating the literature of another was canvassed, and M. de Châteaubriand declared himself decidedly of opinion that such appreciation was always and necessarily very imperfect. Much that he said on the subject appeared incontrovertibly true, especially as respecting the slight and delicate shadows of expression of which the subtile grace so constantly seems to escape at the first attempt to convert it into another idiom. Nevertheless, I suspect that the majority of English readers--I mean the English readers of French--are more _au fait_ of the original literature of France than M. de Châteaubriand supposes. The habit, so widely extended amongst us, of reading this language almost from infancy, gives us a greater familiarity with their idiom than he is aware of. He doubted if we could relish Molière, and named Lafontaine as one beyond the reach of extra-Gallican criticism or enjoyment. I cannot agree to this, though I am not surprised that such an idea should exist. Every English person that comes to Paris is absolutely obliged to speak French, almost whether they can or can not. If they shrink from doing so, they can have no hope of either speaking or being spoken to at all. This is alone sufficient to account very satisfactorily, I think, for any doubt which may prevail as to the national proficiency in the language. No Frenchman that is at all in the habit of meeting the English in society but must have his ears and his memory full of false concords, false tenses, and false accents; and can we wonder that he should set it down as a certain fact, that they who thus speak cannot be said to understand the language they so mangle? Yet, plausible as the inference is, I doubt if it be altogether just. Which of the most accomplished Hellenists of either country would be found capable of sustaining a familiar conversation in Greek? The case is precisely the same; for I have known very many whose power of tasting the beauty of French writing amounted to the most critical acuteness, who would have probably been unintelligible had they attempted to converse in the language for five minutes together; whereas many others, who have perhaps had a French valet or waiting-maid, may possess a passably good accent and great facility of imitative expression in conversation, who yet would be puzzled how to construe with critical accuracy the easiest passage in Rousseau. A very considerable proportion of the educated French read English, and often appear to enter very ably into the spirit of our authors; but there is not one in fifty of these who will pronounce a single word of the language in conversation. Though they endure with a polite gravity, perfectly imperturbable, the very drollest blunders of which language is capable, they cannot endure to run the risk of making blunders in return. Everything connected with the externals of good society is held as sacred by the members of it; and if they shrink from offending _la bienséance_ by laughing at the mistakes of others, they avoid, with at least an equal degree of caution, the unpardonable offence of committing any themselves. I do not believe that it would be possible for a French person to enter into conversation merely for the pleasure of conversing, and not from the pressure of absolute necessity, unless he were certain, or at least believed himself to be so, that he should express himself with propriety and elegance. The idea of uttering the brightest or the noblest thought that ever entered a human head, in an idiom ridiculously broken, would, I am sure, be accompanied with a feeling of repugnance sufficient to tame the most animated and silence the most loquacious Frenchman in existence. It therefore falls wholly upon the English, in this happy period of constant and intimate intercourse between the nations, to submit to the surrender of their vanity, to gratify their love for conversation; blundering on in conscious defiance of grammar and accent, rather than lose the exceeding pleasure of listening in return to the polished phrase, the graceful period, the epigrammatic turn, which make so essential a part of genuine high-bred French conversation. But the doubts expressed by M. de Châteaubriand as to the possibility of the last and best grace of French writing being fully appreciated by foreigners, was not confined wholly to the English,--the Germans appeared to share it with us; and one who has been recently proclaimed as the first of living German critics was quoted as having confounded in his style, names found among the immortals of the French Pantheon, with those of such as live and die; _Monsieur_ Fontaine, and _Monsieur_ Bruyère, being expressions actually extant in his writings. More than once, during subsequent visits to Madame Récamier, I led her to speak of her lost and illustrious friend. I have never been more interested than while listening to all which this charming woman said of Madame de Staël: every word she uttered seemed a mixture of pain and pleasure, of enthusiasm and regret. It is melancholy to think how utterly impossible it is that she should ever find another to replace her. She seems to feel this, and to have surrounded herself by everything that can contribute to keep the recollection of what is for ever gone, fresh in her memory. The original of the posthumous portrait of Madame de Staël by Gérard, made so familiar to all the world by engravings--nay, even by Sèvres vases and tea-cups, hangs in her bed-room. The miniature I have mentioned is always near her; and the inspired figure of her Corinne, in which it is evident that Madame Récamier traces a resemblance to her friend beyond that of features only, appears to be an object almost of veneration as well as love. It is delightful to approach thus to a being that I have always been accustomed to contemplate as something in the clouds. Admirable and amiable as my charming new acquaintance is in a hundred ways, her past intimacy and ever-enduring affection for Madame de Staël have given her a still higher interest in my eyes. LETTER XXXI. Exhibition of Sèvres China at the Louvre.--Gobelins and Beauvais Tapestry.--Legitimatist Father and Doctrinaire Son.--Copies from the Medicean Gallery. We are just returned from an exhibition at the Louvre; and a very splendid exhibition it is--though, alas! but a poor consolation for the hidden treasures of the picture-gallery. Several magnificent rooms are now open for the display of works in tapestry and Sèvres porcelain; and however much we might have preferred seeing something else there, it is impossible to deny that these rooms contain many objects as wonderful perhaps in their way as any that the higher branches of art ever produced. The copy of Titian's portrait of his mistress, on porcelain, and still more perhaps that of Raphaël's "Virgin and St. John watching the sleep of the infant Jesus," (the _Parce somnum rumpere_,) are, I think, the most remarkable; both being of the same size as the originals, and performed with a perfection of colouring that is almost inconceivable. That the fragile clay of which porcelain is fabricated should so lend itself to the skill of the workman,--or rather, that the workman's skill should so triumph over the million chances which exist against bringing unbroken out of the fire a smooth and level _plaque_ of such extent,--is indeed most wonderful. Still more so is the skill which has enabled the artist to prophesy, as he painted with his greys and his greens, that the tints which flowed from his pencil of one colour, should assume, from the nicely-regulated action of an element the most difficult to govern, hues and shades so exquisitely imitative of his great original. But having acknowledged this, I have nothing more to say in praise of a _tour de force_ which, in my opinion, can only be attempted by the sacrifice of common sense. The _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of a Titian or a Raphaël are treasures of which we may lawfully covet an imitation; but why should it be attempted in a manner the most difficult, the most laborious, the most likely to fail, and the most liable to destruction when completed?--not to mention that, after all, there is in the most perfect copy on porcelain a something--I am mistress of no words to define it--which does not satisfy the mind. As far as regards my own feelings indeed, I could go farther, and say that the effect produced is to a certain degree positively disagreeable,--not quite unlike that occasioned by examining needlework performed without fingers, or watch-papers exquisitely cut out by feet instead of hands. The admiration demanded is less for the thing itself, than for the very defective means employed to produce it. Were there indeed none other, the inventor would deserve a statue, and the artist, like Trisotin, should take the air "_en carrosse doré_:" but as it is, I would rather see a good copy on canvass than on china. Far different, however, is the effect produced by this beautiful and ingenious branch of art when displayed in the embellishment of cups and plates, vases and tea-trays. I never saw anything more gracefully appropriate to the last high finish of domestic elegance than all the articles of this description exhibited this year at the Louvre. It is impossible to admire or to praise them too much; or to deny that, wonderfully as similar manufactories have improved in England within the last thirty years, we have still nothing equal to the finer specimens of the Sèvres porcelain. These rooms were, like every other place in Paris where human beings know that they shall meet each other, extremely full of company; and I have certainly never seen such ecstasy of admiration produced by any objects exhibited to the public eye, as was elicited by some of the articles displayed on this occasion: they are indeed most beautiful; the form, the material, the workmanship, all perfect. The Sèvres manufactory must, I think, have some individuals attached to it who have made the theory of colour an especial study. It is worth while to walk round the vast table, or rather platform, raised in the middle of the apartment, for the purpose of examining the different sets, with a view only to observe the effect produced on the eye by the arrangement of colours in each. The finest specimens, after the wonderful copies from pictures which I have already mentioned, are small breakfast-sets--for a _tête-à-tête_, I believe,--enclosed in large cases lined either with white satin or white velvet. These cases are all open for inspection, but with a stout brass bar around, to protect them from the peril of too near an approach. The lid is so formed as exactly to receive the tray; while the articles to be placed upon it, when in use, are arranged each in its own delicate recess, with such an attention to composition and general effect as to show all and everything to the greatest possible advantage. Some of these exquisite specimens are decorated with flowers, some with landscapes, and others with figures, or miniatures of heads, either superlative in beauty or distinguished by fame. These beautiful decorations, admirable as they all are in design and execution, struck me less than the perfect taste with which the reigning colour which pervades each set, either as background, lining, or border, is made to harmonize with the ornaments upon it. It is a positive pleasure, independent of the amusement which may be derived from a closer examination, to cast the eye over the general effect produced by the consummate taste and skill thus displayed. Those curious affinities and antipathies among colours, which I have seen made the subject of many pretty experimental lectures, must, I am sure, have been studied and acted upon by the _colour-master_ of each department; and the result is to my feelings productive of a pleasure, from the contemplation of the effect produced, as distinct from the examination of the design, or of any other circumstance connected with the art, as the gratification produced by the smell of an orange-blossom or a rose: it is a pleasure which has no connexion with the intellect, but arises solely from its agreeable effect on the sense. The eye seems to be unconsciously soothed and gratified, and lingers upon the rich, the soft, or the brilliant hues, with a satisfaction that positively amounts to enjoyment. Whoever may be occupied by the "delightful task" of fitting up a sumptuous drawing-room, will do well to take a tour round a room filled with sets of Sèvres porcelain. The important question of "What colours shall we mix?" would receive an answer there, with the delightful certainty that no solecism in taste could possibly be committed by obeying it. The Gobelins and Beauvais work for chairs, screens, cushions, and various other articles, makes a great display this year. It is very beautiful, both in design and execution; and at the present moment, when the stately magnificence of the age of Louis Quinze is so much in vogue--in compliment, it is said, to the taste of the Duc d'Orléans,--this costly manufacture is likely again to flourish. Never can a large and lofty chamber present an appearance of more princely magnificence than when thus decorated; and the manner in which this elaborate style of ancient embellishment is now adopted to modern use, is equally ingenious and elegant. Some political economists talk of the national advantage of decreasing labour by machinery, while others advocate every fashion which demands the work of hands. I will not attempt to decide on which side wisdom lies; but, in our present imperfect condition, everything that brings an innocent and profitable occupation to women appears to me desirable. The needles of France are assuredly the most skilful in the world; and set to work as they are upon designs that rival those of the Vatican in elegance, they produce a perfection of embroidery that sets all competition at defiance. In pursuing my way along the rail which encloses the specimens exhibited--a progress which was necessarily very slow from the pressure of the crowd,--I followed close behind a tall, elegant, aristocratic-looking gentleman, who was accompanied by his son--decidedly his son,--the boy "fathered himself;" I never saw a stronger likeness. Their conversation, which I overheard by no act of impertinent listening, but because I could not possibly avoid it, amused me much. I am seldom thrown into such close contact with strangers without making a fancy-sketch of who and what they are; but upon this occasion I was thrown out,--it was like reading a novel, the _dénouement_ of which is so well concealed as to evade guessing. The boy and his father were not of one mind; their observations were made in the spirit of different parties: the father, I suspect, was a royalist,--the son, I am sure, was a young doctrinaire. The crowd hung long upon the spot where a magnificent collection of embroidery for the seats and backs of a set of chairs was displayed. "They are for the Duke of Orleans," said the father. "Yes, yes," said the boy; "they are fit for him--they are princely." "They are fit for a king!" said the father with a sigh. The lad paused for a moment, and then said, _avec intention_, as the stage directions express it, "Mais lui aussi, il est fils de St. Louis; n'est-ce pas?" The father answered not, and the crowd moved on. All I could make of this was, that the boy's instructor, whether male or female, was a faithful disciple of the "_PARCEQU'il est Bourbon_" school; and whatever leaven of wavering faith may be mixed up with this doctrine, it forms perhaps the best defence to be found for attachment to the reigning dynasty amongst those who are too young to enter fully into the expediency part of the question. In the last of the suite of rooms opened for this exhibition, are displayed splendid pieces of tapestry from subjects taken from Rubens' Medicean Gallery. That the achievement of these enormous combinations of stitches must have been a labour of extreme difficulty, there can be no doubt; but notwithstanding my admiration for French needles, I am tempted to add, in the words of our uncompromising moralist, "Would it had been impossible!" LETTER XXXII. Eglise Apostolique Française.--Its doctrine.--L'Abbé Auzou.--His Sermon on "les Plaisirs Populaires." Among the multitude of friendly injunctions to see this, and to hear that, which have produced me so much agreeable occupation, I have more than once been very earnestly recommended to visit the "Eglise Apostolique Française" on the Boulevard St. Denis, for the purpose of hearing l'Abbé Auzou, and still more, that I might have an opportunity of observing the peculiarities of this mode of worship, or rather of doctrine; for, in fact, the ceremonies at the altar differ but little, as far as I can perceive, from those of the Church of Rome, excepting that the evident poverty of the establishment precludes the splendour which usually attends the performance of its offices. I have no very satisfactory data by which to judge of the degree of estimation in which this new sect is held: by some I have heard them spoken of as apostles, and by others as a Paria caste unworthy of any notice. Before hearing M. L'Abbé Auzou, or attending the service at his church, I wished to read some of the publications which explain their tenets, and accordingly called at the little bureau behind their chapel on the Boulevard St. Denis, where we were told these publications could be found. Having purchased several pamphlets containing catechism, hymns, sermons, and so forth, we entered into conversation with the young man who presided in this obscure and dark closet, dignified by the name of "Secrétariat de l'Eglise Apostolique Française." He told us that he was assistant minister of the chapel, and we found him extremely conversible and communicative. The chief differences between this new church and those which have preceded it in the reform of the Roman Catholic religion, appears to consist in the preservation of the external forms of worship, which other reformers have rejected, and also of several dogmas, purely doctrinal, and wholly unconnected with those principles of church power and church discipline, the abuse of which was the immediate cause of all protestant reform. They acknowledge the real presence. I find in the _Catéchisme_ these questions and answers: "Jésus-Christ est-il sous le pain, ou bien sous le vin?--Il est sous les deux espèces à la fois. "Et quand l'hostie est partagée?--Jésus-Christ est tout entier en chaque partie. "Que faut-il faire pendant le jour où l'on a communié?--Assister aux offices, et ensuite se réjouir de son bonheur avec ses parens et ses amis." * * * * * Their clergy are permitted to marry. They deny that any power of absolution rests with the priest, allowing him only that of intercession by prayer for the forgiveness of the penitent. Auricular confession is not enjoined, but recommended as useful to children. They profess entire toleration to every variety of Christian belief; but as the "Eglise Française" refuses to acknowledge dependance upon any _secte étrangère_,--by which phrase I conceive the Church of Rome to be meant,--they also declare, "d'après l'Evangile, que la religion ne doit jamais intervenir dans les gouvernemens temporels." They recognise the seven sacraments, only modifying that of penitence, as above mentioned. They deny the eternity of punishment, but I find no mention of purgatory. They do not enjoin fasting. I find in the _Catéchisme_ the following explanation of their doctrine on this head, which appears to be extremely reasonable. "L'Eglise Française n'impose donc pas le jeûne et l'abstinence?--Non; l'Eglise Apostolique Française s'en rapporte pour le jeûne aux fidèles eux-mêmes, et ne reconnaît en aucune façon le précepte de l'abstinence; mais, plus prudente dans ses principes, elle substitue à un jeûne de quelques jours une sobriété continuelle, et remplace une abstinence périodique par une tempérance de chaque jour, de chaque année, de toute la vie." In all this there appears little in doctrine, excepting the admission of the divine presence in the elements of the eucharist, that differs greatly from most other reformed churches: nevertheless, the ceremonies are entirely similar to those of the Roman Catholic religion. But whatever there may be either of good or of evil in this mixture, its effect must, I think, prove absolutely nugatory on society, from the entire absence of any church government or discipline whatever. That this is in fact the case, is thus plainly stated in the preface to their published Catechism:-- "L'Eglise Apostolique Française ne reconnaît aucune hiérarchie; elle repousse en conséquence l'autorité de tout pouvoir spirituel étranger, et de tout autre pouvoir qui en dépend ou qui s'y soumet. Elle ne reconnaît d'autre autorité spirituelle que celle qu'exercerait la réunion de ses fidèles; réunion qui, suivant les principes des apôtres, constitue seule ce que de leur temps on appelait EGLISE. "Elle n'est point salariée par l'état. L'administration de ses secours spirituels est gratuite. Elle n'a de tarif, ni pour les baptêmes, ni pour les mariages, ni enfin pour les inhumations. Elle vit de peu, et s'en remet à la générosité, ou plutôt à la volonté, des fidèles. "Ne reconnaissant pas d'hiérarchie, elle ne reconnaît pas non plus de division de territoire, soit en arrondissement, soit en paroisse: elle accueille donc tous les Chrétiens qui se présentent à elle pour mander à ses prêtres l'accomplissement des fonctions de ministres de Jésus-Christ." * * * * * The _décousu_ principles of the day can hardly be carried farther than this. A rope of sand is the only fitting emblem for a congregation so constituted; and, like a rope of sand, it must of necessity fall asunder, for there is no principle of union to prevent it. After I had finished my studies on the subject, I heard a sermon preached in the church,--not, however, by M. l'Abbé Auzou, who was ill, but by the same person with whom we had conversed at the _Secrétariat_. His sermon was a strong exposition of the abuses practised by the clergy of the Church of Rome,--a theme certainly more fertile than new. In reading some of the most celebrated discourses of the Abbé Auzou, I was the most struck with one entitled--"Discours sur les Plaisirs Populaires, les Bals, et les Spectacles." The text is from St. Matthew,--"Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest ... for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." In this singular discourse, among some things that are reasonable, and more that are plausible, it is impossible to avoid seeing a spirit of lawless uncontrol, which seems to breathe more of revolution than of piety. I am no advocate for a Judaical observance of the Sabbath, nor am I ignorant of the fearful abuses which have arisen from man's daring to arrogate to himself a power vested in God alone,--the power of forgiving the sins of man. The undue authority assumed by the sovereign pontiff of Rome is likewise sufficiently evident, as are many other abuses justly reprobated in the sermons of the Abbé Auzou. Nevertheless, education, observation, and I might say experience, have taught me that religion requires and demands that care, protection, and government which are so absolutely essential to the well-being of every community of human beings who would unite together for one general object. To talk of a self-governing church, is just as absurd as to talk of a self-governing ship, or a self-governing family. It should seem, by the reprobation expressed against the severity of the Roman Catholic clergy in these sermons, as well as from anecdotes which I have occasionally heard in society, that the Church of Rome and the Church of Calvin are alike hostile to every kind of dissipation, and that at the present moment they have many points of discipline in common--at least as respects the injunctions laid upon their congregations respecting their private conduct. M. l'Abbé Auzou says, in speaking of revolutionary reforms,-- "Rien n'est changé dans le sacerdoce; et l'on peut dire aussi des prêtres toujours romains, qu'ils n'ont rien oublié, qu'ils n'ont rien appris. Cependant, sous le règne de Napoléon leur orgueil a fléchi devant le grand intérêt de leur réinstallation.... Aussi, au retour de leur roi légitime, cet orgueil comprimé s'est-il relevé dans toute sa hauteur. Rome a placé son trône à côté de celui d'un roi, un peu philosophe, a-t-on dit, mais perclus et impotent. Et enfin, lorsque son successeur, d'abord accueilli par le peuple, est tombé entre les mains des prêtres, ceux-ci, profitant de son âge et de sa faiblesse, ont exploité les erreurs d'une jeunesse fougueuse, qui cependant lui avaient valu le surnom de Chevalier Français. Alors nous avons vu ce roi sacrifier sa popularité à leurs exigeances; appeler toute la nation à l'expiation de ses fautes personnelles, à son repentir, à sa pénitence; et la forcer à renier, pour ainsi dire, trente ans de gloire et de liberté.... Un roi que le remords poursuit, dévore, et qui ne reconnaît d'autre recours que dans le prêtre qui l'a soumis à sa loi par la menace et la terreur de l'enfer; ce roi, sous le coup d'une absolution conditionnelle et toujours suspendue, abdique, sans le savoir, en faveur de son confesseur.... "Roi! tu languis dans l'exil, et tes fautes sont punies jusque dans les dernières générations! "Les prêtres, les prêtres romains se sont cependant soumis à un nouveau prince, à qui la souveraineté nationale a remis le sceptre; ils prient enfin pour lui ... et l'on sait avec quelle sincérité. "Mais, peuple, comme leur joug s'appesantit sur toi!... Dans leur fureur mal-déguisée ils le disent.... La maison du Seigneur est déserte, et tu te rues avec fureur vers les plaisirs, les fêtes, les bals et les spectacles! Anathême donc contre les plaisirs, les fêtes et les bals! Anathême contre les spectacles! "Ne sont-ce point là, mes frères, les paroles qui tombent chaque jour menaçantes de la chaire de l'Eglise Romaine?... "Combien notre langage sera différent! Le Dieu des Juifs est bien notre Dieu; mais sa colère a été désarmée par le sacrifice que son fils lui a offert pour notre rédemption. "Pourquoi ce sang répandu sur la croix pour nos péchés si la satisfaction de nos besoins physiques, si nos fonctions intellectuelles, si l'entrainement des passions qui constituent notre être peuvent à chaque instant nous faire tomber dans le péché et nous précipiter dans l'abîme? "Aussi nous vous disons dans notre chaire apostolique,--Exécutez les commandemens de Dieu, adorez et glorifiez notre Père qui est aux cieux, pratiquez la morale de l'Evangile, aimez votre prochain comme vous-mêmes, et vous aurez accompli la loi de Jésus-Christ ... et nous ajoutons,--Vous êtes membre de la société pour laquelle vous avez été créés, et cette société vous impose des devoirs; en échange elle vous procure des jouissances et des plaisirs: remplissez vos devoirs et livrez-vous ensuite sans crainte aux jouissances et aux plaisirs qu'elle vous présente. Votre participation à ces mêmes plaisirs, à ces mêmes jouissances, est encore une partie de vos devoirs, et vous aurez accompli encore une fois la loi de Jésus-Christ." This doctrine may assuredly entitle the Eglise Apostolique Française to the appellation of a NEW CHURCH. M. l'Abbé Auzou goes on yet farther in the same strain:-- "Anathême!... Arme vieille, rouillée, émoussée, et que vous cherchez en vain à retremper dans le fiel de la colère et de la vengeance!... Anathême aux plaisirs! Et quoi! parceque Dieu a dit à notre premier père, Vous mangerez votre pain à la sueur de votre visage, l'homme serait condamné à rester toujours courbé sous le joug du travail? N'aura-t-il à espérer aucun adoucissement à ses peines?... "Non, sans doute ... vous dira le clergé romain, puisque Dieu a consacré le septième jour au repos? "Et quel est ce repos? "Sera-ce celui, qu'en vous servant du bras du séculier, vous avez tenté de lui imposer par une ordonnance préscrivant de fermer tous les établissemens qui décorent notre cité, nos cafés, nos restaurans, pour ne tolérer que l'ouverture des officines du pharmacien?--ordonnance dont une caricature spirituelle a fait si prompte justice." The following picture of a fanatical Sunday takes me back at once to America. There, however, its worst effect was to steep the senses in the unnecessary oblivion of a few more hours of sleep; but in Paris I should really expect that such restraint, were it indeed possible to impose it, would literally drive the sensitive and mobile population to madness. "Et quel est donc ce repos? "Sera-ce l'immobilité des corps; l'abandon de toutes nos facultés; l'oisiveté; l'ennui, compagnon inséparable de l'oisiveté; la prière; la méditation,--la méditation plus pénible pour la plupart des hommes que le travail des mains; et, enfin, vos sermons intolérans, et, qui pis est peut-être, si ennuyeux? "Ah! imposer à l'homme un pareil repos ne serait que suspendre son travail pour lui faire porter, comme à St. Simon de Cyrène, la croix de Jésus-Christ jusqu'au sommet escarpé du Calvaire." The Abbé then proceeds to promulgate his bull for the permission of all sorts of Parisian delights; nay, he takes a very pretty and picturesque ramble into the country, where "les jeunes garçons et les jeunes filles s'y livrent à des danses rustiques"--and, in short, gives so animated a picture of the pleasures which ought to await the Sabbath both in town and country, that it is almost impossible to read it without feeling a wish that every human being who through the six days of needful labour has been "weary worn with care" should pass the seventh amid the bright and cheering scenes he describes. But he effectually checks this feeling of sympathy with his views by what follows. He describes habitual drunkenness with the disgust it merits; but strangely qualifies this, by adding to his condemnation of the "homme dégradé qui, oubliant chaque jour sa dignité dans les excès d'une hideuse ivrognerie, _n'attend pas le jour que Dieu a consacré au repos_, à la distraction, aux plaisirs, pour se livrer à son ignoble passion," these dangerous words:-- "Mais condamnerons-nous sans retour notre frère pour un jour d'intempérance passagère, et blamerons-nous celui qui, cherchant dans le vin, ce présent du Ciel, un moment d'oubli des misères humaines, n'a point su s'arrêter à cette douce ivresse, oublieuse des maux et créatrice d'heureuses illusions?" Is not this using the spur where the rein is most wanting? I am persuaded that it is not the intention of the Abbé Auzou to advocate any species of immorality; but all the world, and particularly the French world perhaps, is so well disposed to amuse itself _coûte qui coûte_, that I confess I doubt the wisdom of enforcing the necessity of so doing from the pulpit. The unwise, unauthorised, and most unchristian severity of the Calvinistic and Romish priesthood may, I think, lawfully and righteously be commented upon and reprobated both in the pulpit and out of it; but this reprobation should not clothe itself in license, or in any language that can be interpreted as such. There are many, I should think, in every Christian land, both clergy and laity, but neither popish nor Calvinistic, who would shrink both from the sentiment and expression of the following passage:-- "Rappelons-nous que le patriarche Noé, lui qui planta la vigne et exprima le jus de son fruit, en abusa une fois, et que Dieu ne lui en fit point le reproche: Dieu punit, au contraire, le fils qui n'avait point caché cette faiblesse d'un père." There is some worldly wisdom, however, in the exclamation he addresses to his intolerant brethren. "Et vous, prêtres aveugles et impolitiques, laissez le peuple se livrer à ses plaisirs innocens; faites en sorte qu'il se contente de sa position; qu'il ne compare pas cette position pénible, douloureuse, avec l'oisiveté dans laquelle vous vivez vous-mêmes, et que vous ne devez qu'à la nouvelle dîme qui s'exprime de son front." He then proceeds to say, that it is not the poor only who are subjected to this severity, but the rich also ... "que le prêtre de la secte romaine veut arrêter, troubler dans ses plaisirs, dans ses délassemens."... "Un repas par lequel on célèbre l'union de deux jeunes coeurs, l'union de deux familles, et dans lequel règnent la joie, _et peut-être aussi un peu plus que de la gaîté_, est l'objet de la censure inexorable de ces prêtres rigides.... Ils oublient que celui qu'ils disent être leur maître a consacré ces réunions par sa présence, et que le vin ayant manqué par le trop grand usage qu'on en avait fait, il n'en a pas moins changé l'eau en vin. Ils sont tous disposés à répondre comme ce Janséniste à qui l'on rappelait cet intéressant épisode de la vie de Jésus,--'Ce n'est pas ce qu'il a fait de mieux.'--Impie! ... tu blasphêmes contre ton maître!... "Ah! mes frères, admirons, nous, dans la sincérité de notre coeur, cet exemple de bienveillance et de _sociabilité pratique_, et bénissons la bonté de Jésus." Then follows an earnest defence, or rather eulogy, of dancing. But though I greatly approve the exercise for young people, and believe it to be as innocent as it is natural, I would not, were I called upon to preach a sermon, address my hearers after this manner:-- "Quant aux bals, je ne chercherai point à les excuser, à les défendre, par _des exemples puisés dans l'écriture sainte_. Je ne vous représenterai point David dansant devant l'arche.... Je ne vous le donnerai pas non plus pour modèle, à vous, jeunes gens de notre France _si polie_, _si élégante_, car sans doute _il dansait mal_; puisque, suivant la Bible, Michal sa femme, voyant le roi David qui sautait et dansait, se moqua de lui et le méprisa dans son coeur." There is about as much piety as good taste in this. I have already given you such long extracts, that I must omit all he says,--and it is much in favour of this amusement. Such forbearance is the more necessary, as I must give you a passage or two more on other subjects. Among the general reasons which he brings forward to prove that fêtes and festivals are beneficial to the people, he very justly remarks that the occupation they afford to industry is not the least important, observing that the popish church takes no heed of such things; and then adds, addressing the manufacturers,-- "Et lorsque le besoin se fera sentir et pour vous et vos enfans, allez à l'Archevêché! ... à l'Archevêché! ... un jour la colère du peuple a éclaté,-- "Je n'ai fait que passer, il n'était déjà plus."... The date which this sermon bears on its title-page is 1834; but the event to which this line from Racine alludes was the destruction of the archiepiscopal palace, which took place, if I mistake not, in 1831. If the "_il n'était déjà plus_" alludes to the palace, it is correct enough, for destruction could not have done its work better: but if it be meant to describe the fate of MONSEIGNEUR L'ARCHEVÊQUE DE PARIS, the preacher is not a prophet; for, in truth, the sacrilegious rout "n'a fait que passer," and MONSEIGNEUR has only risen higher from the blow. Public orators of all kinds should be very cautious, in these moveable times, how they venture to judge from to-day what may be to-morrow. The only oracular sentence that can be uttered at present with the least chance of success from the developement of the future is, "Who can say what may happen next?" All who have sufficient prudence to restrict their prescience to this acute form of prophecy, may have the pleasure, let come what may, of turning to their neighbours triumphantly with the question--"Did I not tell you that something was going to happen?"--but it is dangerous to be one atom more precise. Even before this letter can reach you, my friend, M. l'Abbé's interpretation of "il n'était déjà plus" may be more correct than mine. I say this, however, only to save my credit with you in case of the worst; for my private opinion is, that Monseigneur was never in a more prosperous condition in his life, and that, "as no one can say what will happen next," I should not be at all astonished if a cardinal's hat were speedily to reward him for all he has done and suffered. I certainly intended to have given you a few specimens of the Abbé Auzou's manner of advocating theatrical exhibitions; but I fear they would lead me into too great length of citation. He is sometimes really eloquent upon the subject: nevertheless, his opinions on it, however reasonable, would have been delivered with better effect from the easy-chair of his library than from the pulpit of his church. It is not that what would be good when heard from the one could become evil when listened to from the other: but the preacher's pulpit is intended for other uses; and though the visits to a well-regulated theatre may be as lawful as eating, and as innocent too, we go to the house of God in the hope of hearing tidings more important than his minister's assurance that they are so. LETTER XXXIII. Establishment for Insane Patients at Vanves.--Description of the arrangements.--Englishman.--His religious madness. You will think perhaps that I have chosen oddly the object which has induced me to make an excursion out of town, and obliged me to give up nearly an entire day at Paris, when I tell you that it was to visit an institution for the reception of the insane. There are, however, few things which interest me more than an establishment of this nature; especially when, as in the present instance, my manner of introduction to it is such as to give me the hope of hearing the phenomena of these awful maladies discussed by those well acquainted with them. The establishment of MM. Voisin and Fabret, at Vanves, was mentioned to me as one in which many improvements in the mode of treating alienation of mind have been suggested and tried with excellent effect; and having the opportunity of visiting it in company with a lady who was well acquainted with the gentlemen presiding over it, I determined to take advantage of it. My friend, too, knew how to direct my attention to what was most interesting, from having had a relation placed there, whom for many months she had been in the constant habit of visiting. Her introduction obtained for me the most attentive reception, and the fullest explanation of their admirable system, which appears to me to combine, and on a very large and noble scale, everything likely to assuage the sufferings, soothe the spirits, and contribute to the health of the patients. Vanves is situated at the distance of one league from Paris, in a beautiful part of the country; and the establishment itself, from almost every part of the high ground on which it is placed, commands views so varied and extensive, as not only to render the principal mansion a charming residence, but really to make the walks and drives within the enclosure of the extensive premises delightful. The grounds are exceedingly well laid out, with careful attention to the principal object for which they are arranged, but without neglecting any of the beauty of which the spot is so capable. They have shade and flowers, distant views and sheltered seats, with pleasant walks, and even drives and rides, in all directions. The enclosure contains about sixty acres, to every part of which the patients who are well enough to walk about can be admitted with perfect safety. In this park are situated two or three distinct lodges, which are found occasionally to be of the greatest utility, in cases where the most profound quiet is necessary, and yet where too strict confinement would be injurious. Indeed, it appears to me that the object principally kept in view throughout all the arrangements, is the power of keeping patients out of sight and hearing of each other till they are sufficiently advanced towards recovery to make it a real pleasure and advantage to associate together. As soon as they reach this favourable stage of their convalescence, they mix with the family in very handsome rooms, where books, music, and a billiard-table assist them to pass the hours without _ennui_. Every patient has a separate sleeping-apartment, in none of which are the precautions necessary for their safety permitted to be visible. What would wear the appearance of iron bars in every other place of the kind that I have seen, are here made to look like very neat _jalousies_. Not a bolt or a bar is perceptible, nor any object whatever that might shock the spirit, if at any time a gleam of recovered intellect should return to visit it. This cautious keeping out of sight of the sufferers everything that might awaken them to a sense of their own condition, or that of the other patients, appears to me to be the most peculiar feature of the discipline, and is evidently one of the objects most sedulously kept in view. Next to this I should place the system of inducing the male patients to exercise their limbs, and amuse their spirits, by working in the garden, at any undertaking, however _bizarre_ and profitless, which can induce them to keep mind and body healthily employed. I know not if this has been systematically resorted to elsewhere; but the good sense of it is certainly very obvious, and the effect, as I was told, is found to be very generally beneficial; though it occasionally happens that some among them have fancied their dignity compromised by using a spade or a hoe,--and then some of the family join with them in the labour, to prove that it is merely a matter of amusement: in short, everything likely to cheer or soothe the spirits seems brought into use among them. The ground close adjoining to the house is divided into many small well-enclosed gardens; the women's apartments opening to some, the men's to others of them. In several of these gardens I observed neat little tables, such as are used in the _restaurans_ of Paris, with a clean cloth, and all necessary appointments, placed pleasantly and commodiously in the shade, at each of which was seated one person, who was served with a separate dinner, and with every appearance of comfort. Had I not known their condition, I should in many instances have thought the spectacle a very pleasing one. M. Voisin walked through all parts of the establishment with us, and there appeared to exist a perfectly good understanding between him and his patients. Among many regulations, which all appeared excellent, he told me that the friends of his inmates were permitted at all times, and under all circumstances, to visit them without any restraint whatever: an arrangement which can only be productive of confidence and advantage to all parties; as it is perfectly inconceivable that any one who had felt obliged to place an unhappy friend or relative under restraint should wish to interfere with the discipline necessary for his ultimate advantage; whereas a contrary system is likely to give occasion to constant doubts and fears on one hand, and to the possibility of ill treatment or unnecessary restraint on the other. In one of the courts appropriated to the use of such male patients as were sufficiently convalescent to permit their associating together, and amusing themselves with the different games in which they are permitted to share, we saw a young Englishman, now rapidly recovering, but who had scrawled over the walls of his own sleeping-apartment, poor fellow! with a pencil, a vast quantity of writing, almost wholly on religious subjects; proving but too plainly that he was one of the many victims of fanaticism. Every thought seemed pregnant with suffering, and sometimes bursts of agony were scrawled in trembling characters, that spoke the very extremity of terror. "Who is there can endure fire and flame for ever, for ever, and for ever?" "Death is before us--Hell follows it!" "The bottomless pit--groans--tortures--anguish--for ever!"... Such sentences as these were still legible, though much had been obliterated. Who can wonder that a mind thus occupied should lose that fine balance with which nature has arranged our faculties, making one keep watch and ward over the other?... This poor fellow lost his wits under the process of conversion: Judgment being entirely overthrown, Imagination had vaulted into its seat, pregnant with visions black as night, dark--oh! far darker than the tomb! "palled in the dunnest smoke of hell," and armed with every image for the eternity of torture that the ingenuity of man could devise. Who can wonder at his madness? And how many crimes are there recorded in the Newgate Calendar which equal in atrocity that of so distorting a mind, that sought to raise its humble hopes towards heaven! I felt particularly interested for this poor lunatic, both as my countryman, and the victim of by far the most fearful tyranny that man can exercise on man. Against all other injury it is not difficult to believe that a steadfast spirit can arm itself and say with Hamlet, "I do not set my life at a pin's fee." But against this, it were a vain boast to add, "And for my soul, what can it do to that, Being a thing immortal as itself?" For, alas! it is that very immortality which gives hope, comfort, and strength under every other persecution that paralyses the sufferer under this, and arms with such horrid strength the blasphemous wretch who teaches him to turn in terror from his God. M. Voisin told me that this unfortunate young man had been for some time daily becoming more calm and tranquil, and that he entertained not any doubt of his ultimate recovery. Excepting this my poor countryman, the only patient I saw whose situation it was particularly painful to contemplate was a young girl who had only arrived the preceding day. There was in her eyes a restless, anxious, agitated manner of looking about on all things, and gathering a distinct idea from none--a vague uncertainty as to where she was, not felt with sufficient strength to amount to wonder, but enough to rob her of all the feeling of repose which belongs to home. Poor girl! perhaps some faltering, unfixable thought brought at intervals the figure of her mother to her; for as I looked at her pale face, its vacant expression received more than once a sad but passing gleam of melancholy meaning. She coughed frequently; but the cough seemed affected,--or rather, it appeared to be an effort not so much required by her lungs, as by the need of some change, some relief--she knew not what, nor where nor how to seek it. She appeared very desirous of shaking off the attendance of a woman who was waiting upon her, and her whole manner indicated a sort of fretful unrest that it made one wretched to contemplate. But here again I was comforted by the assurance that there were no symptoms which forbade hope of recovery. I remember being told, when visiting the lunatic asylum near New York, that the most frequent causes of insanity were ascertained to be religion and drunkenness. Near Paris I find that love, high play, and politics are considered as the principal causes of this calamity; and certainly nothing can be more accordant with what observation would teach one to expect than both these statements. At New York the physician told me that madness arising from excessive drinking admitted, in the great majority of cases, of a perfect cure; but that religious aberration of intellect was much more enduring. At Paris I have heard the same; for here also it occasionally happens, though not often, that the reason becomes disturbed by repeated and frequent intoxication: but where either politics or love has taken such hold of the mind as to disturb the reasoning power, the recovery is less certain and more slow. Dr. Voisin told me that he uniformly found the first symptoms of insanity appear in the wavering, indifferent, and altered state of the affections towards relations and friends;--apathy, coldness, and, in some cases, dislike, and even violent antipathy, being sure to appear, wherever previous attachment had been the most remarkable. They sometimes, but not very often, take capricious fits of fondness for strangers; but never with any show of reason, and never for any length of time. The most certain symptom of an approach towards recovery is when the heart appears to be re-awakened to its natural feelings and old attachments. There was one old lady that I watched eating her dinner of vegetables and fruit at a little table in one of the gardens, who had adorned her bonnet with innumerable scraps of trumpery, and set it on her head with the most studied and coquettish air imaginable: she fed herself with the grace or grimace of a young beauty, eating grapes of a guinea a pound, from a plate of crystal, with a golden fork. I am sure she was enjoying all the happiness of feeling herself beautiful, elegant, and admired: and when I looked at the wrinkled ruin of her once handsome face, I could hardly think her madness a misfortune; for though I did not obtain any pitiful story concerning her, or any history of the cause which brought her there, I felt sure that it must in some way or other be connected with some feeling of deeply-mortified vanity: and if I am right in my conjecture, what has the world left for her equal in consolation to the wild fancies which now shed such simpering complacency over her countenance? And might we not exclaim for her in all kindness-- "Let but the cheat endure!--She asks not aught beside?" What was passing in this poor old head, it was easy enough to guess--wild as it was, and wide from the truth. But there was another, which, though I studied it as long as I could possibly contrive to do so, wholly baffled me; and yet I would have given much to know what thoughts were flitting through that young brain. She was a young girl, extremely pretty, with coal-black hair and eyes, and seated, quite apart from all, upon a pleasant shady bench in one of the gardens. Her face was like a fair landscape, over which passes cloud and sunshine in rapid succession: for one moment she smiled, and the next seemed preparing to weep; but before a tear could fall, her fine teeth were again displayed in an unmeaning smile. O, what could be the fleeting visions formed that worked her fancy thus? Could it be memory? Or was the fitful emotion caused by the galloping vagaries of an imagination which outstripped the power of reason to follow it? Or was it none of this, but a mere meaningless movement of the muscles, that worked in idle mockery of the intellect that used to govern them? I have sometimes thought it very strange that people should feel such deep delight in watching on the stage the representation of the utmost extremity of human woe that the mind of man can contrive to place before them; and I have wondered more, much more, at the gathering together of thousands and tens of thousands, whenever the law has doomed that some wretched soul should be separated by the hand of man from the body in which it has sinned: but I doubt if my own intense interest in watching poor human nature when deprived of reason is not stranger still. I can in no way account for it; but so it is. I can never withdraw myself from the contemplation of a maniac without reluctance; and yet I am always conscious of painful feelings as long as it lasts, and perfectly sure that I shall be followed by more painful feelings still when it is over. It is certain, however, that the comfort, the tenderness, the care, so evident in every part of the establishment at Vanves, render the contemplation of insanity there less painful than I ever found it elsewhere; and when I saw the air of healthy physical enjoyment (at least) with which a large number of the patients prepared to take their pastime, during their hours of exercise, each according to his taste or whim, amid the ample space and well-chosen accessories prepared for them, I could not but wish that every retreat fitted up for the reception of this unfortunate portion of the human race could be arranged on the same plan and governed by the same principles. LETTER XXXIV. Riot at the Porte St. Martin.--Prevented by a shower of Rain.--The Mob in fine weather.--How to stop Emeutes.--Army of Italy.--Théâtre Français.--Mademoiselle Mars in Henriette.--Disappearance of Comedy. Though Paris is really as quiet at present as any great city can possibly be, still we continue to be told regularly every morning, "qu'il y avait une émeute hier soir à la Porte St. Martin." But I do assure you that these are very harmless little pastimes; and though it seldom happens that the mysterious hour of revolution-hatching passes by without some arrest taking place, the parties are always liberated the next morning; it having appeared clearly at every examination that the juvenile aggressors, who are seldom above twenty years of age, are as harmless as a set of croaking bull-frogs on the banks of the Wabash. The continually repeated mention, however, of these nightly meetings, induced two gentlemen of our party to go to this often-named Porte St. Martin a few nights ago, in hopes of witnessing the humours of one of these small riotings. But on arriving at the spot they found it perfectly tranquil--everything wore the proper stillness of an orderly and well-protected night. A few military were, however, hovering near the spot; and of these they made inquiry as to the cause of a repose so unlike what was usually supposed to be the state of this celebrated quarter of the town. "Mais ne voyez-vous pas que l'eau tombe, messieurs?" said the national guard stationed there: "c'est bien assez pour refroidir le feu de nos républicains. S'il fait beau demain soir, messieurs, nous aurons encore notre petit spectacle." Determined to know whether there was any truth in these histories or not, and half suspecting that the whole thing, as well as the assurance of the civil _militaire_ to boot, was neither more nor less than a hoax, they last night, the weather being remarkably fine, again attempted the adventure, and with very different success. On this occasion, there was, by their description, as pretty a little riot as heart could wish. The numbers assembled were stated to be above four hundred: military, both horse and foot, were among them; pointed hats were as plenty as blackberries in September, and "banners waved without a blast" on the tottering shoulders of little ragamuffins who had been hired for two sous apiece to carry them. On this memorable evening, which has really made a figure this morning in some of the republican journals, a considerable number of the most noisy portion of the mob were arrested; but, on the whole, the military appear to have dealt very gently with them; and our friends heard many a crazy burst of artisan eloquence, which might have easily enough been construed into treason, answered with no rougher repartee than a laughing "Vive le Roi!" At one point, however, there was a vehement struggle before a young hero, equipped cap-à-pie à la Robespierre, could be secured; and while two of the civic guard were employed in taking him, a little fellow of about ten years old, who had a banner as heavy as himself on his shoulder, and who was probably squire of the body to the prisoner, stood on tiptoe before him at the distance of a few feet, roaring "Vive la République!" as loud as he could bawl. Another fellow, apparently of the very lowest class, was engaged, during the whole time that the tumult lasted, in haranguing a party that he had collected round him. His arms were bare to the shoulders, and his gesticulation exceedingly violent. "Nous avons des droits!" he exclaimed with great vehemence.... "Nous avons des droits!... Qui est-ce qui veut les nier?... Nous ne démandons que la charte.... Qu'ils nous donnent la charte!"... The uproar lasted about three hours, after which the crowd quietly dispersed; and it is to be hoped that they may all employ themselves honestly in their respective callings, till the next fine evening shall again bring them together in the double capacity of actors and spectators at the "petit spectacle." The constant repetition of this idle riot seems now to give little disturbance to any one; and were it not that the fines and imprisonments so constantly, and sometimes not very leniently inflicted, evidently show that they are thought worth some attention, (though, in fact, this system appears to produce no effect whatever towards checking the daring demonstrations of disaffection manifested by the rabble and their newspaper supporters,) one might deem this indifference the result of such sober confidence of strength in the government, as left them no anxiety whatever as to anything which this troublesome faction could achieve. Such, I believe, is in fact the feeling of King Philippe's government: nevertheless, it would certainly conduce greatly to the well-being of the people of Paris, if such methods were resorted to as would effectually and at once put a stop to such disgraceful scenes. [Illustration: Drawn & Etched by A. Hervieu. PORTE ST. MARTIN. London, Published by Richard Bentley, 1835.] "LIBERTY AND ORDER" is King Philippe's motto: he could only improve it by adding "Repose and Quiet;" for never can he reign by any other power than that given by the hope of repose and tranquillity. The harassed nation looks to him for these blessings; and if it be disappointed, the result must be terrible. Louis-Philippe is neither Napoleon nor Charles the Tenth. He has neither the inalienable rights of the one, nor the overpowering glory of the other; but should he be happy enough to discover a way of securing to this fine but strife-worn and weary country the tranquil prosperity that it now appears beginning to enjoy, he may well be considered by the French people as greater than either. Bold, fearless, wise, and strong must be the hand that at the present hour can so wield the sceptre of France; and I think it may reasonably be doubted if any one could so wield it, unless its first act were to wave off to a safe distance some of the reckless spirits who are ready to lay down their lives on the scaffold--or in a gutter--or over a pan of charcoal, rather than "live peaceably in that state of life unto which it has pleased God to call them." If King Louis-Philippe would undertake a crusade to restore independence to Italy, he might convert every traitor into a hero. Let him address the army raised for the purpose in the same inspiring words that Napoleon used of yore. "Soldats!... Partons! Rétablir le capitole.... Réveiller le peuple romain engourdi par plusieurs siècles d'esclavage.... Tel sera le fruit de vos victoires. Vous rentrerez alors dans vos foyers, et vos concitoyens diront en vous montrant--Il était de l'armée d'Italie!" And then let him institute a new order, entitled "L'Ordre Impérial de la Redingote grise," or "L'Ordre indomptable des Bras croisés," and accord to every man the right of admission to it, with the honour to boot of having an eagle embroidered on the breast of his coat if he conducted himself gallantly and like a Frenchman in the field of battle, and we should soon find the Porte St. Martin as quiet as the Autocrat's dressing-room at St. Petersburg. If such an expedient as this were resorted to, there would no longer be any need of that indecent species of safety-valve by which the noxious vapour generated by the ill-disposed part of the community is now permitted to escape. It may be very great, dignified, and high-minded for a king and his ministers to laugh at treasonable caricatures and seditious pleasantries of all sorts,--but I do greatly doubt the wisdom of it. Human respect is necessary for the maintenance and support of human authority; and that respect will be more profitably shown by a decent degree of general external deference, than by the most sublime kindlings of individual admiration that ever warmed the heart of a courtier. This "_avis au lecteur_" might be listened to with advantage, perhaps, in more countries than one. Since I last gave you any theatrical news, we have been to see Mademoiselle Mars play the part of Henriette in Molière's exquisite comedy of "Les Femmes Savantes;" and I really think it the most surprising exhibition I ever witnessed. Having seen her in "Tartuffe" and "Charlotte Brown" from a box in the first circle, at some distance from the stage, I imagined that the distance had a good deal to do with the effect still produced by the grace of form, movement, and toilet of this extraordinary woman. To ascertain, therefore, how much was delusion and how much was truth in the beauty I still saw or fancied, I resolved upon the desperate experiment of securing that seat in the balcony which is nearest to the stage. It was from this place that I saw her play Henriette; a character deriving no aid whatever from trick or stage effect of any kind; one, too, whose charm lies wholly in simple, unaffected youthfulness: there are no flashes of wit, no startling hits either of pathos or pleasantry--nothing but youth, gentleness, modesty, and tenderness--nothing but a young girl of sixteen, rather more quiet and retiring than usual. Yet this character, which seems of necessity to require youth and beauty in the performer, though little else, was personated by this miraculous old lady in a manner that not only enchanted me--being, as I am, _rococo_--but actually drew forth from the omnipotent _jeunes gens_ in the _parterre_ such clamorous rapture of applause as must, I think, have completely overset any actress less used to it than herself. Is not this marvellous? How much it is to be regretted that the art of writing comedy has passed away! They have vaudevilles here--charming things in their way; and we have farces at home that certainly cannot be thought of without enjoying the gratification of a broad grin. But for comedy, where the intellect is called upon as well as the muscles, it is dead and gone. The "Hunchback" is perhaps the nearest approach to it, whose birth I remember in our country, and "Bertrand and Raton" here; but in both cases the pleasurable excitement is produced more by the plot than the characters--more by the business of the scene than by the wit and elegance of the dialogue, except perhaps in the pretty wilfulness of Julia in the second act of the "Hunchback." But even here I suspect it was more the playful grace of the enchanting actress who first appeared in the part, than anything in the words "set down for her," which so delighted us. We do now and then get a new tragedy,--witness "Fazio" and "Rienzi;" but Comedy--genuine, easy, graceful, flowing, talking Comedy--is dead: I think she followed Sheridan to the grave and was buried with him! But never is one so conscious of the loss, or so inclined to mourn it, as after seeing a comedy of Molière's of the first order,--for his pieces should be divided into classes, like diamonds. What a burst of new enjoyment would rush over all England, or all France, if a thing like "The School for Scandal" or "Les Femmes Savantes" were to appear before them! Fancy the delight of sitting to hear wit--wit that one did not know by rote, bright, sparkling, untasted as yet by any--new and fresh from the living fountain!--not coming to one in the shape of coin, already bearing the lawful stamp of ten thousand plaudits to prove it genuine, and to refuse to accept which would be treason; but as native gold, to which the touchstone of your own intellect must be applied to test its worth! Shall we ever experience this? It is strange that the immense mass of material for comedy which the passing scenes of this singular epoch furnish should not be worked up by some one. Molière seems not to have suffered a single passing folly to escape him. Had he lived in these days, what delicious whigs, radicals, "penny-rint" kings, from our side of the water,--what tragic poets, republicans, and parvenus from his own, would he have cheered us withal! Rousseau says, that when a theatre produces pieces which represent the real manners of the people, they must greatly assist those who are present at them to see and amend what is vicious or absurd in themselves, "comme on ôte devant un miroir les taches de son visage." The idea is excellent; and surely there never was a time when it would be so easy or so useful to put it in practice. Would the gods but send a Sheridan to England and a Molière to France, we might yet live to see some of our worst misfortunes turned to jest, and, like the man choking in a quinsey, laugh ourselves into health again. LETTER XXXV. Soirée dansante.--Young Ladies.--Old Ladies.--Anecdote.--The Consolations of Chaperones.--Flirtations.--Discussion upon the variations between young Married Women in France and in England.--Making love by deputy.--Not likely to answer in England. Last night we were at a ball,--or rather, I should say, a "_soirée dansante_;" for at this season, though people may dance from night to morning, there are no balls. But let it be called by what name it may, it could not have been more gay and agreeable were this the month of January instead of May. There were several English gentlemen present, who, to the great amusement of some of the company, uniformly selected their partners from among the young ladies. This may appear very natural to you; but here it is thought the most unnatural proceeding possible. To a novice in French society, there is certainly no circumstance so remarkable as the different position which the unmarried hold in the drawing-rooms of England and _les salons_ of France. With us, the prettiest things to look at, and the partners first sought for the dance, are the young girls. Brilliant in the perfection of their youthful bloom, graceful and gay as young fawns in every movement of the most essentially juvenile of all exercises, and eclipsing the light elegance of their own toilet by loveliness that leaves no eyes to study its decoration,--it is they who, in spite of diamonds and of blonde, of wedded beauty or of titled grace, ever appear to be the principal actors in a ball-room. But "they manage these matters" quite otherwise "in France." Unfortunately, it may sometimes happen among us, that a coquettish matron may be seen to lead the giddy waltz with more sprightliness than wisdom; but she always does it at the risk of being _mal notée_ in some way or other, more or less gravely, by almost every person present;--nay, I would by no means encourage her to be very certain that her tonish partner himself would not be better pleased to whirl round the mazy circle with one of the slight, light, sylph-like creatures he sees flying past him, than with the most fashionable married woman in London. But in Paris all this is totally reversed; and, what is strange enough, you will find in both countries that the reason assigned for the difference between them arises from national attention to good morals. On entering a French ball-room, instead of seeing the youngest and loveliest part of the company occupying the most conspicuous places, surrounded by the gayest men, and dressed with the most studied and becoming elegance, you must look for the young things quite in the background, soberly and quietly attired, and almost wholly eclipsed behind the more fully-blown beauties of their married friends. It is really marvellous, considering how very much prettier a girl is at eighteen than she can possibly be some dozen years afterwards, to see how completely fashion will nevertheless have its own way, making the worse positively appear the better beauty. All that exceeding charm and fascination which is for ever and always attributed to an elegant Frenchwoman, belongs wholly, solely, and altogether to her after she becomes a wife. A young French girl, "_parfaitement bien élevée_," looks ... "_parfaitement bien élevée_;" but it must be confessed, also, that she looks at the same time as if her governess (and a sharp one) were looking over her shoulder. She will be dressed, of course, with the nicest precision and most exact propriety; her corsets will forbid a wrinkle to appear in her robe, and her _friseur_ deny permission to any single hair that might wish to deviate from the station appointed for it by his stiff control. But if you would see that graceful perfection of the toilet, that unrivalled _agacerie_ of costume which distinguishes a French woman from all others in the world, you must turn from mademoiselle to madame. The very sound of the voice, too, is different. It should seem as if the heart and soul of a French girl were asleep, or at least dozing, till the ceremony of marriage awakened them. As long as it is mademoiselle who speaks, there is something monotonous, dull, and uninteresting in the tone, or rather in the tune, of her voice; but when madame addresses you, all the charm that manner, cadence, accent can bestow, is sure to greet you. In England, on the contrary, of all the charms peculiar to youthful loveliness, I know none so remarkable as the unconstrained, fresh, natural, sweet, and joyous sound of a young girl's voice. It is as delicious as the note of the lark, when rising in the first freshness of morning to meet the sun. It is not restrained, held in, and checked into tameness by any fear lest it should too early show its syren power. Even in the dance itself, the very arena for the display of youthful gracefulness, the young French girl fails, when her well-taught steps are compared with the easy, careless, fascinating movements of the married woman. In the simple kindness of manner too, which, if there were no other attraction, would ever suffice to render an unaffected, good-natured young girl charming, there must be here a cautious restraint. A _demoiselle Française_ would be prevented by _bienséance_ from showing it, were she the gentlest-hearted creature breathing. A young Englishman of my acquaintance, who, though he had been a good deal in French society, was not initiated into the mysteries of female education, recounted to me the other day an adventure of his, which is german to the matter, though not having much to do with our last night's ball. This young man had for a long time been very kindly received in a French family, had repeatedly dined with them, and, in fact, considered himself as admitted to their house on the footing of an intimate friend. The only child of this family was a daughter, rather pretty, but cold, silent, and repulsive in manner--almost awkward, and utterly uninteresting. Every attempt to draw her into conversation had ever proved abortive; and though often in her company, the Englishman hardly thought she could consider him as an acquaintance. The young man returned to England; but, after some months, again revisited Paris. While standing one day in earnest contemplation of a picture at the Louvre, he was startled at being suddenly addressed by an extremely beautiful woman, who in the kindest and most friendly manner imaginable asked him a multitude of questions--made a thousand inquiries after his health--invited him earnestly to come and see her, and concluded by exclaiming--"Mais c'est un siècle depuis que je vous ai vu." My friend stood gazing at her with equal admiration and surprise. He began to remember that he had seen her before, but when or where he knew not. She saw his embarrassment and smiled. "Vous m'avez oublié donc?" said she. "Je m'appelle Eglé de P----.... Mais je suis mariée...." But to return to our ball. As I saw the married women taken out to dance one after the another, till at last there was not a single dancing-looking man left, I felt myself getting positively angry; for, notwithstanding the assistance given by my ignorant countrymen, there were still at least half a dozen French girls unprovided with chevaliers. They did not, however, look by many degrees so sadly disappointed as English girls would do did the same misfortune betide them. They, like the poor eels, were used to it; and the gentlemen, too, were cruelly used to the task of torture,--making their pretty little feet beat time upon the floor, while they watched the happy wedded in pairs--not wedded pairs--swim before their eyes in mazes which they would most gladly have threaded after them. When at length all the married ladies, young and old, were duly provided for, several staid and very respectable-looking gentlemen emerged from corners and sofas, and presenting themselves to the young expectants, were accepted with quiet, grateful smiles, and permitted to lead them to the dance. Old ladies like myself, whose fate attaches them to the walls of a ball-room, are accustomed to find their consolation and amusement from various sources. First, they enjoy such conversation as they can catch; or, if they will sit tolerably silent, they may often hear the prettiest airs of the season exceedingly well played. Then the whole arena of twinkling feet is open to their criticism and admiration. Another consolation, and frequently a very substantial one, is found in the supper;--nay, sometimes a passing ice will be caught to cheer the weary watcher. But there is another species of amusement, the general avowal of which might lead the younger part of the civilized world to wish that old ladies wore blinkers: I allude to the quiet contemplation of half a dozen sly flirtations that may be going on around them,--some so well managed! ... some so clumsily! But upon all these occasions, in England, though well-behaved old ladies will always take especial care not so to see that their seeing shall be seen, they still look about them with no feeling of restraint--no consciousness that they would rather be anywhere else than spectators of what is going forward near them. They feel, at least I am sure I do, a very comfortable assurance that the fair one is engaged, not in marring, but in making her fortune. Here again I may quote the often-quoted, and say, "They manage all these matters differently at least, if not better, in France." In England, if a woman is seen going through all the manoeuvres of the flirting exercise, from the first animating reception of the "How d'ye do?" to the last soft consciousness which fixes the eyes immovably on the floor, while the head, gently inclined, seems willing to indulge the happy ear in receiving intoxicating draughts of _parfait amour_,--when this is seen in England, even should the lady be past eighteen, one feels assured that she is not married; but here, without scandal or the shadow of scandal be it spoken, one feels equally well assured that she is. She may be a widow--or she may flirt in the innocence of her heart, because it is the fashion; but she cannot do it, because she is a young lady intending to be married. I was deeply engaged in these speculations last night, when an elderly lady--who for some reason or other, not very easy to divine, actually never waltzes--came across the room and placed herself by my side. Though she does not waltz, she is a very charming person; and as I had often conversed with her before, I now welcomed her approach with great pleasure. "A quoi pensez-vous, Madame Trollope?" said she: "vous avez l'air de méditer." I deliberated for a moment whether I should venture to tell her exactly what was passing in my mind; but as I deliberated, I looked at her, and there was that in her countenance which assured me I should have no severity to fear if I put her wholly in my confidence: I therefore replied very frankly,-- "I am meditating; and it is on the position which unmarried women hold in France." "Unmarried women?... You will scarcely find any such in France," said she. "Are not those young ladies who have just finished their quadrille unmarried?" "Ah!... But you cannot call them unmarried women. _Elles sont des demoiselles._" "Well, then, my meditations were concerning them." "Eh bien...." "Eh bien.... It appears to me that the ball is not given--that the music does not play--that the gentlemen are not _empressé_, for them." "No, certainly. It would be quite contrary to our ideas of what is right if it were so." "With us it is so different!... It is always the young ladies who are, at least, the ostensible heroines of every ball-room." "The ostensible heroines?"... She dwelt rather strongly upon the adjective, adding with a smile,--"Our ostensible, are our real heroines upon these occasions." I explained. "The real heroines," said I, "will, I confess, in cases of ostentation and display, be sometimes the ladies who give balls in return." "Well explained," said she, laughing: "I certainly thought you had another meaning. You think, then," she continued, "that our young married women are made of too much importance among us?" "Oh no!" I replied eagerly: "it is, in my opinion, almost impossible to make them of too much importance; for I believe that it is entirely upon their influence that the tone of society depends." "You are quite right. It is impossible for those who have lived as long as we have in the world to doubt it: but how can this be, if, upon the occasions which bring people together, they are to be overlooked, while young girls who have as yet no position fixed are brought forward instead?" "But surely, being brought forward to dance in a waltz or quadrille, is not the sort of consequence which we either of us mean?" "Perhaps not; but it is one of its necessary results. Our women marry young,--as soon, in fact, as their education is finished, and before they have been permitted to enter the world, or share in the pleasures of it. Their destiny, therefore, instead of being the brightest that any women enjoy, would be the most _triste_, were they forbidden to enter into the amusements so natural to their age and national character, because they were married." "But may there not be danger in the custom which throws young females, thus early and irrevocably engaged, for the first time into the society, and, as it were, upon the attentions of men whom it has already become their duty not to consider as too amiable?" "Oh no!... If a young woman be well-disposed, it is not a quadrille, or a waltz either, that will lead her astray. If it could, it would surely be the duty of all the legislators of the earth to forbid the exercise for ever." "No, no, no!" said I earnestly; "I mean nothing of the kind, I assure you: on the contrary, I am so convinced, from the recollections of my own feelings, and my observations on those of others, that dancing is not a fictitious, but a real, natural source of enjoyment, the inclination for which is inherent in us, that, instead of wishing it to be forbidden, I would, had I the power, make it infinitely more general and of more frequent occurrence than it is: young people should never meet each other without the power of dancing if they wished it." "And from this animating pleasure, for which you confess that there is a sort of _besoin_ within us, you would exclude all the young women above seventeen--because they are married?... Poor things!... Instead of finding them so willing as they generally are to enter on the busy scenes of life, I think we should have great difficulty in getting their permission to _monter un ménage_ for them. Marriage would be soon held in abhorrence if such were its laws." "I would not have them such, I assure you," replied I, rather at a loss how to explain myself fully without saying something that might either be construed into coarseness of thinking and a cruel misdoubting of innocence, or else into a very uncivil attack upon the national manners: I was therefore silent. My companion seemed to expect that I should proceed, but after a short interval resumed the conversation by saying,--"Then what arrangement would you propose, to reconcile the necessity of dancing with the propriety of keeping married women out of the danger which you seem to imagine might arise from it?" "It would be too national were I to reply, that I think our mode of proceeding in this case is exactly what it ought to be." "But such is your opinion?" "To speak sincerely, I believe it is." "Will you then have the kindness to explain to me the difference in this respect between France and England?" "The only difference between us which I mean to advocate is, that with us the amusement which throws young people together under circumstances the most likely, perhaps, to elicit expressions of gallantry and admiration from the men, and a gracious reception of them from the women, is considered as befitting the single rather than the married part of the community." "With us, indeed, it is exactly the reverse," replied she,--"at least as respects the young ladies. By addressing the idle, unmeaning gallantry inspired by the dance to a young girl, we should deem the cautious delicacy of restraint in which she is enshrined transgressed and broken in upon. A young girl should be given to her husband before her passions have been awakened or her imagination excited by the voice of gallantry." "But when she is given to him, do you think this process more desirable than before?" "Certainly it is not desirable; but it is infinitely less dangerous. When a girl is first married, her feelings, her thoughts, her imagination are wholly occupied by her husband. Her mode of education has ensured this; and afterwards, it is at the choice of her husband whether he will secure and retain her young heart for himself. If he does this, it is not a waltz or quadrille that will rob him of it. In no country have husbands so little reason to complain of their wives as in France; for in no country does the manner in which they live with them depend so wholly on themselves. With you, if your novels, and even the strange trials made public to all the world by your newspapers, may be trusted, the very reverse is the case. Previous attachments--early affection broken off before the marriage, to be renewed after it--these are the histories we hear and read; and most assuredly they do not tempt us to adopt your system as an amendment upon our own." "The very notoriety of the cases to which you allude proves their rare occurrence," replied I. "Such sad histories would have but little interest for the public, either as tales or trials, if they did not relate circumstances marked and apart from ordinary life." "Assuredly. But you will allow also that, however rare they may be in England, such records of scandal and of shame are rarer still in France?" "Occurrences of the kind do not perhaps produce so much sensation here," said I. "Because they are more common, you would say. Is not that your meaning?" and she smiled reproachfully. "It certainly was not my meaning to say so," I replied; "and, in truth, it is neither a useful nor a gracious occupation to examine on which side the Channel the greater proportion of virtue may be found; though it is possible some good might be done on both, were the education in each country to be modified by the introduction of what is best in the other." "I have no doubt of it," said she; "and as we go on exchanging fashions so amicably, who knows but we may live to see your young ladies shut up a little more, while their mothers and fathers look out for a suitable marriage for them, instead of inflicting the awkward task upon themselves? And in return, perhaps, our young wives may lay aside their little coquetries and become _mères respectables_ somewhat earlier than they do now. But, in truth, they all come to it at last." As she finished speaking these words, a new waltz sounded, and again a dozen couples, some ill, some well matched, swam past us. One of the pairs was composed of a very fine-looking young man, with blue-black _favoris_ and _moustaches_, tall as a tower, and seeming, if air and expression may be trusted, very tolerably well pleased with himself. His _danseuse_ might unquestionably have addressed her husband, who sat at no great distance from us, drawing up his gouty feet under his chair to let her pass, in these touching words:-- "Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart gone round Neptune's salt wash and Tellus' orbed ground, And thirty dozen moons, with borrow'd sheen, About the world have times twelve thirties been, Since Love our hearts and Hymen did our hands Unite commutual in most sacred bands." My neighbour and I looked up and exchanged glances as they went by. We both laughed. "At least you will allow," said she, "that this is one of the cases in which a married lady may indulge her passion for the dance without danger of consequences?" "I am not quite sure of that," replied I. "If she be not found guilty of sin, she will scarcely obtain a verdict that shall acquit her of folly. But what can induce that magnificent personage, who looks down upon her as if engaged in measuring the distance between them--what could induce him to request the honour of enclosing her venerable waist in his arm?" "Nothing more easily explained. That little fair girl sitting in yonder corner, with her hair so tightly drawn off her forehead, is her daughter--her only daughter, and will have a noble _dot_. Now you understand it?... And tell me, in case his speculation should not succeed, is it not better that this excellent lady, who waltzes so very like a duck, should receive all the eloquence with which he will seek to render himself amiable, upon her time-steeled heart, than that the delicate little girl herself should have to listen to it?" "And you really would recommend us to adopt this mode of love-making by deputy, letting the mamma be the substitute, till the young lady has obtained a brevet to listen to the language of love in her own person? However excellent the scheme may be, dear lady, it is vain to hope that we shall ever be able to introduce it among us. The young ladies, I suspect, would exclaim, as you do here, when explaining why you cannot permit any English innovations among you, "Ce n'est pas dans nos moeurs." * * * * * I assure you, my friend, that I have not composed this conversation _à loisir_ for your amusement, for I have set down as nearly as possible what was said to me, though I have not quite given it all to you; but my letter is already long enough. LETTER XXXVI. Improvements of Paris.--Introduction of Carpets and Trottoirs.--Maisonnettes.--Not likely to answer in Paris.--The necessity of a Porter and Porter's Lodge.--Comparative Expenses of France and England.--Increasing Wealth of the Bourgeoisie. Among the many recent improvements in Paris which evidently owe their origin to England, those which strike the eye first, are the almost universal introduction of carpets within doors, and the frequent blessing of a _trottoir_ without. In a few years, unless all paving-stones should be torn up in search of more immortality, there can be no doubt that it will be almost as easy to walk in Paris as in London. It is true that the old streets are not quite wide enough to admit such enormous esplanades on each side as Regent and Oxford Streets; but all that is necessary to safety and comfort may be obtained with less expense of space; and to those who knew Paris a dozen years ago, when one had to hop from stone to stone in the fond hope of escaping wet shoes in the Dog-days--tormented too during the whole of this anxious process with the terror of being run over by carts, fiacres, concous, cabs, and wheelbarrows;--whoever remembers what it was to walk in Paris then, will bless with an humble and grateful spirit the dear little pavement which, with the exception of necessary intervals to admit of an approach to the portes-cochère of the various _hôtels_, and a few short intervals beside, which appear to have been passed over and forgotten, borders most of the principal streets of Paris now. Another English innovation, infinitely more important in all ways, has been attempted, and has failed. This was the endeavour to introduce _maisonnettes_, or small houses calculated for the occupation of one family. A few such have been built in that new part of the town which stretches away in all directions behind the Madeleine; but they are not found to answer--and that for many reasons which I should have thought it very easy to foresee, and which I suspect it would be very difficult to obviate. In order to come at all within reach of the generality of French incomes, they must be built on too small a scale to have any good rooms; and this is a luxury, and permits a species of display, to which many are accustomed who live in unfurnished apartments, for which they give perhaps fifteen hundred or two thousand francs a year. Another accommodation which habit has made it extremely difficult for French families to dispense with, and which can be enjoyed at an easy price only by sharing it with many, is a porter and a porter's lodge. Active as is the race of domestic servants in Paris, their number must, I think, be doubled in many families, were the arrangement of the porter's lodge to be changed for our system of having a servant summoned every time a parcel, a message, a letter, or a visit arrives at the house. Nor does the taking charge of these by any means comprise the whole duty of this servant of many masters; neither am I at all competent to say exactly what does: but it seems to me that the answer I generally receive upon desiring that anything may be done is, "Oui, madame, le portier ou la portière fera cela;" and were we suddenly deprived of these factotums, I suspect that we should be immediately obliged to leave our apartments and take refuge in an hôtel, for I should be quite at a loss to know what or how many additional "helps" would be necessary to enable us to exist without them. That the whole style and manner of domestic existence throughout all the middling classes of such a city as Paris should hang upon their porters' lodges, seems tracing great effects to little causes; but I have been so repeatedly told that the failure of the _maisonnettes_ has in a great degree arisen from this, that I cannot doubt it. I know not whether anything which prevents their so completely changing their mode of life as they must do if living in separate houses, is to be considered as an evil or not. The Parisians are a very agreeable, and apparently a very happy population; and who can say what effect the quiet, steady, orderly mode of each man having a small house of his own might produce? What is admirable as a component part of one character, is often incongruous and disagreeable when met in another; and I am by no means certain if the snug little mansion which might be procured for the same rent as a handsome apartment, would not tend to circumscribe and tame down the light spirits that now send _locataires_ of threescore springing to their elegant _premier_ by two stairs at a time. And the prettiest and best _chaussés_ little feet in the world too, which now trip _sans souci_ over the common stair, would they not lag painfully perhaps in passing through a low-browed hall, whose neatness or unneatness had become a private and individual concern? And might not many a bright fancy be damped while calculating how much it would cost to have a few statues and oleanders in it?--and the head set aching by meditating how to get "ce vilain escalier frotté" from top to bottom? Yet all these, and many other cares which they now escape, must fall upon them if they give up their apartments for _maisonnettes_. The fact, I believe, is, that French fortunes, taken at the average at which they at present stand, could not suffice to procure the pretty elegance to which the middle classes are accustomed, unless it were done by the sacrifice of some portion of that costly fastidiousness which English people of the same rank seem to cling to as part of their prerogative. Though I am by no means prepared to say that I should like to exchange my long-confirmed habit of living in a house of my own for the Parisian mode of inhabiting apartments, I cannot but allow that by this and sundry other arrangements a French income is made to contribute infinitely more to the enjoyment of its possessor than an English one. Let any English person take the trouble of calculating, let their revenue be great or small, how much of it is expended in what immediately contributes to their personal comfort and luxury, and how much of it is devoted to the support of expenses which in point of fact add to neither, and the truth of this statement will become evident. Rousseau says, that "cela se fait," and "cela ne se fait pas," are the words which regulate everything that goes on within the walls of Paris. That the same words have at least equal power in London, can hardly be denied; and, unfortunately for our individual independence, obedience to them costs infinitely more on our side of the water than it does on this. Hundreds are annually spent, out of very confined incomes, to support expenses which have nothing whatever to do with the personal enjoyment of those who so tax themselves; but it must be submitted to, because "cela se fait," or "cela ne se fait pas." In Paris, on the contrary, this imperative phrase has comparatively no influence on the expenditure of any revenue, because every one's object is not to make it appear that he is as rich as his neighbour, but to make his means, be they great or small, contribute as much as possible to the enjoyment and embellishment of his existence. It is for this reason that a residence in Paris is found so favourable an expedient in cases of diminished or insufficient fortune. A family coming hither in the hope of obtaining the mere necessaries of life at a much cheaper rate than in England would be greatly disappointed: some articles are cheaper, but many are considerably dearer; and, in truth, I doubt if at the present moment anything that can be strictly denominated a necessary of life is to be found cheaper in Paris than in London. It is not the necessaries, but the luxuries of life that are cheaper here. Wine, ornamental furniture, the keep of horses, the price of carriages, the entrance to theatres, wax-lights, fruit, books, the rent of handsome apartments, the wages of men-servants, are all greatly cheaper, and direct taxes greatly less. But even this is not the chief reason why a residence in Paris may be found economical to persons of any pretension to rank or style at home. The necessity for parade, so much the most costly of all the appendages to rank, may here be greatly dispensed with, and that without any degradation whatever. In short, the advantage of living in Paris as a matter of economy depends entirely upon the degree of luxury to be obtained. There are certainly many points of delicacy and refinement in the English manner of living which I should be very sorry to see given up as national peculiarities; but I think we should gain much in many ways could we learn to hang our consequence less upon the comparison of what others do. We shudder at the cruel madness of the tyrant who would force every form to reach one standard; but those are hardly less mad who insist that every one, to live _comme il faut_, must live, or appear to live, exactly as others do, though the means of doing so may vary among the silly set so prescribed to, from an income that may justify any extravagance to one that can honestly supply none. This is a folly of incalculably rarer occurrence here than in England; and it certainly is no proof of the good sense of our "most thinking people," that for one private family brought to ruin by extravagance in France, there are fifty who suffer from this cause in England. It is easy to perceive that our great wealth has been the cause of this. The general scale of expense has been set so high, that thousands who have lived in reference to that, rather than to their individual fortunes, have been ruined by the blunder; and I really know no remedy so likely to cure the evil as a residence in Paris; not, however, so much as a means of saving money, as of making a series of experiments which may teach them how to make the best and most enjoyable use of it. I am persuaded, that if it were to become as much the fashion to imitate the French independence of mind in our style of living, as it now is to copy them in ragoûts, bonnets, moustaches, and or-molu, we should greatly increase our stock of real genuine enjoyment. If no English lady should ever again feel a pang at her heart because she saw more tall footmen in her neighbour's hall than in her own--if no sighs were breathed in secret in any club-house or at any sale, because Jack Somebody's stud was a cut above us--if no bills were run up at Gunter's, or at Howell and James's, because it was worse than death to be outdone,--we should unquestionably be a happier and a more respectable people than we are at present. It is, I believe, pretty generally acknowledged by all parties, that the citizens of France have become a more money-getting generation since the last revolution than they ever were before it. The security and repose which the new dynasty seems to have brought with it, have already given them time and opportunity to multiply their capital; and the consequence is, that the shop-keeping propensities with which Napoleon used to reproach us have crossed the Channel, and are beginning to produce very considerable alterations here. It is evident that the wealth of the _bourgeoisie_ is rapidly increasing, and their consequence with it; so rapidly, indeed, that the republicans are taking fright at it,--they see before them a new enemy, and begin to talk of the abominations of an aristocratic _bourgeoisie_. There is, in fact, no circumstance in the whole aspect of the country more striking or more favourable than this new and powerful impulse given to trade. It is the best ballast that the vessel of the state can have; and if they can but contrive that nothing shall happen to occasion its being thrown overboard, it may suffice to keep her steady, whatever winds may blow. The wide-spreading effect of this increasing wealth among the _bourgeoisie_ is visible in many ways, but in none more than in the rapid increase of handsome dwellings, which are springing up, as white and bright as new-born mushrooms, in the north-western division of Paris. This is quite a new world, and reminds me of the early days of Russell Square, and all the region about it. The Church of the Madeleine, instead of being, as I formerly remember it, nearly at the extremity of Paris, has now a new city behind it; and if things go on at the same rate at which they seem to be advancing at present, we shall see it, or at least our children will, occupying as central a position as St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. An excellent market, called Marché de la Madeleine, has already found its way to this new town; and I doubt not that churches, theatres, and restaurans innumerable will speedily follow. The capital which is now going so merrily on, increasing with almost American rapidity, will soon ask to be invested; and when this happens, Paris will be seen running out of town with the same active pace that London has done before her; and twenty years hence the Bois de Boulogne may very likely be as thickly peopled as the Regent's Park is now. This sudden accession of wealth has already become the cause of a great increase in the price of almost every article sold in Paris; and if this activity of commerce continue, it is more than probable, that the hitherto moderate fortunes of the Parisian _boursier_ and merchant will grow into something resembling the colossal capitals of England, and we shall find that the same causes which have hitherto made England dear will in future prevent France from being cheap. It will then happen, that many deficiencies which are now perceptible, and which furnish the most remarkable points of difference between the two countries, will disappear; great wealth being in many instances all that is required to make a French family live very much like an English one. Whether they will not, when this time arrives, lose on the side of unostentatious enjoyment more than they will gain by increased splendour, may, I think, be very doubtful. For my own part, I am decidedly of opinion, that as soon as heavy ceremonious dinners shall systematically take place of the present easy, unexpensive style of visiting, Paris will be more than half spoiled, and the English may make up their minds to remain proudly and pompously at home, lest, instead of a light and lively contrast to their own ways, they may chance to find a heavy but successful rivalry. LETTER XXXVII. Horrible Murder.--La Morgue.--Suicides.--Vanity.--Anecdote. --Influence of Modern Literature.--Different appearance of Poverty in France and England. We have been made positively sick and miserable by the details of a murder, which seems to show that we live in a world where there are creatures ten thousand times more savage than any beast that ranges the forest, "Be it ounce, or cat, or bear, Pard, or boar with bristled hair." This horror was perpetrated on the person of a wretched female, who appeared, by the mangled remains which were found in the river, to have been very young. But though thus much was discovered, it was many days ere, among the thousands who flocked to the Morgue to look at the severed head and mangled limbs, any one could be found to recognise the features. At length, however, the person with whom she had lodged came to see if she could trace any resemblance between her lost inmate and these wretched relics of a human being. She so far succeeded as to convince herself of the identity; though her means of judging appeared to be so little satisfactory, that few placed any reliance upon her testimony. Nevertheless, she at length succeeded in having a man taken up, who had lived on intimate terms with the poor creature whose sudden disappearance had induced this woman to visit the Morgue when the description of this mangled body reached her. He immediately confessed the deed, in the spirit, though not in the words, of the poet:-- "Mourons: de tant d'horreurs qu'un trépas me délivre! Est-ce un malheur si grand que de cesser de vivre? * * * * * Je ne crains pas le nom que je laisse après moi." The peculiarly horrid manner in which the crime was committed, and the audacious style in which the criminal appears to brave justice, will, it is thought, prevent any _extenuating circumstances_ being pleaded, as is usually done, for the purpose of commuting the punishment of death into imprisonment with enforced labour. It is generally expected that this atrocious murderer will be guillotined, notwithstanding the averseness of the government to capital punishment. The circumstances are, indeed, hideous in all ways, and the more so from being mixed up with what is miscalled the tender passion. The cannibal fury which sets a man to kill his foe that he may eat him, has fully as much tenderness in it as this species of affection. When "the passion is made up of nothing but the finest parts of love," it may, perhaps, deserve the epithet of tender; but we have heard of late of so many horrible and deliberate assassinations, originating in what newspapers are pleased to call "_une grande passion_" that the first idea which a love-story now suggests to me is, that the sequel will in all probability be murder "most foul, strange, and unnatural!" Is there in any language a word that can raise so many shuddering sensations as "_La Morgue_?" Hatred, revenge, murder, are each terrible; but La Morgue outdoes them all in its power of bringing together in one syllable the abstract of whatever is most appalling in crime, poverty, despair, and death. To the ghastly Morgue are conveyed the unowned dead of every description that are discovered in or near Paris. The Seine is the great receptacle which first receives the victims of assassination or despair; but they are not long permitted to elude the vigilance of the Parisian police: a huge net, stretched across the river at St. Cloud, receives and retains whatever the stream brings down; and anything that retains a trace of human form which is found amidst the product of the fearful draught is daily conveyed to La Morgue;--DAILY; for rarely does it chance that for four-and-twenty hours its melancholy biers remain unoccupied; often do eight, ten, a dozen corpses at a time arrive by the frightful caravan from "_les filets de St. Cloud_." I have, in common with most people, I believe, a very strong propensity within me for seeing everything connected directly or indirectly with any subject or event which has strongly roused my curiosity, or interested my feelings; but, strange to say, I never feel its influence so irresistible as when something of shuddering horror is mixed with the spectacle. It is this propensity which has now induced me to visit this citadel of death;--this low and solitary roof, placed in the very centre of moving, living, laughing Paris. No visit to a tomb, however solemn or however sad, can approach in thrilling horror to the sensation caused by passing the threshold of this charnel-house. The tomb calls us to the contemplation of the common, the inevitable lot; but this gathering place of sin and death arouses thoughts of all that most outrages nature, and most foully violates the sanctuary of life, into which God has breathed his spirit. But I was steadfast in my will to visit it, and I have done it. The building is a low, square, carefully-whited structure, situated on the Quai de la Cité. It is open to all; and it is fearful to think how many anxious hearts have entered, how many despairing ones have quitted it. On entering I found myself in a sort of low hall which contained no object whatever. If I mistake not, there is a chamber on each side of it: but it was to the left hand that I was led, and it was thither that about a dozen persons who entered at the same time either followed or preceded me. I do not too well remember how I reached the place where the bodies are visible; but I know that I stood before one of three large windows, through the panes of which, and very near to them, lighted also by windows in the roof, are seen a range of biers, sloping towards the spectator at an angle that gives the countenance as well as the whole figure of the persons extended on them fully to view. In this manner I saw the bodies of four men stretched out before me; but their aspect bore no resemblance to death--neither were they swollen or distorted in any way, but so discoloured as to give them exactly the appearance of bronze statues. Two out of the four had evidently been murdered, for their heads and throats gave frightful evidence of the violence that had been practised upon them; the third was a mere boy, who probably met his fate by accident: but that the fourth was a suicide, it was hardly possible to doubt; even in death his features held the desperate expression that might best paint the state of mind likely to lead to such an act. It was past mid-day when we entered the Morgue; but neither of the bodies had yet been claimed or recognised. This spectacle naturally set me upon seeking information, wherever I was likely to find it, respecting the average number of bodies thus exposed within the year, the proportion of them believed to be suicides, and the causes generally supposed most influential in producing this dreadful termination. I will not venture to repeat the result of these inquiries in figures, as I doubt if the information I received was of that strictly accurate kind which could justify my doing so; yet it was quite enough so, to excite both horror and astonishment at the extraordinary number which are calculated to perish annually at Paris by self-slaughter. In many recent instances, the causes which have led to these desperate deeds have been ascertained by the written acknowledgment of the perpetrators themselves, left as a legacy to mankind. Such a legacy might perhaps not be wholly unprofitable to the survivors, were it not that the motives assigned, in almost every instance where they have been published, have been of so frivolous and contemptible a nature as to turn wholesome horror to most ill-placed mirth. It can hardly be doubted, from the testimony of these singular documents, that many young Frenchmen perish yearly in this guilty and deplorable manner for no other reason in the world than the hope of being talked of afterwards. Had some solitary instance of so perverted a vanity been found among these records, it might perhaps have been considered as no more incredible than various other proofs of the enfeebling effects of this paltry passion on the judgment, and have been set down to insanity, produced by excessive egotism: but nothing short of the posthumous testimony of the persons themselves could induce any one to believe that scarcely a week passes without such an event, from such a cause, taking place in Paris. In many instances, I am told that the good sense of surviving friends has led them to disobey the testamentary instructions left by the infatuated young men who have thus acted, requesting that the wretched reasonings which have led them to it should be published. But, in a multitude of cases, the "Constitutionnel" and other journals of the same stamp have their columns filled with reasons why these poor reckless creatures have dared the distant justice of their Creator, in the hope that their unmeaning names should be echoed through Paris for a day. It is not long since two young men--mere youths--entered a _restaurant_, and bespoke a dinner of unusual luxury and expense, and afterwards arrived punctually at the appointed hour to eat it. They did so, apparently with all the zest of youthful appetite and youthful glee. They called for champagne, and quaffed it hand in hand. No symptom of sadness, thought, or reflection of any kind was observed to mix with their mirth, which was loud, long, and unremitting. At last came the _café noir_, the cognac, and the bill: one of them was seen to point out the amount to the other, and then both burst out afresh into violent laughter. Having swallowed each his cup of coffee to the dregs, the _garçon_ was ordered to request the company of the _restaurateur_ for a few minutes. He came immediately, expecting perhaps to receive his bill, minus some extra charge which the jocund but economical youths might deem exorbitant. Instead of this, however, the elder of the two informed him that the dinner had been excellent, which was the more fortunate as it was decidedly the last that either of them should ever eat: that for his bill, he must of necessity excuse the payment of it, as in fact they neither of them possessed a single sous: that upon no other occasion would they thus have violated the customary etiquette between guest and landlord; but that finding this world, its toils and its troubles, unworthy of them, they had determined once more to enjoy a repast of which their poverty must for ever prevent the repetition, and then--take leave of existence for ever! For the first part of this resolution, he declared that it had, thanks to his cook and his cellar, been achieved nobly; and for the last, it would soon follow--for the _café noir_, besides the little glass of his admirable cognac, had been medicated with that which would speedily settle all their accounts for them. The _restaurateur_ was enraged. He believed no part of the rhodomontade but that which declared their inability to discharge the bill, and he talked loudly, in his turn, of putting them into the hands of the police. At length, however, upon their offering to give him their address, he was persuaded to let them depart. On the following day, either the hope of obtaining his money, or some vague fear that they might have been in earnest in the wild tale that they had told him, induced this man to go to the address they had left with him; and he there heard that the two unhappy boys had been that morning found lying together hand in hand, on a bed hired a few weeks before by one of them. When they were discovered, they were already dead and quite cold. On a small table in the room lay many written papers, all expressing aspirations after greatness that should cost neither labour nor care, a profound contempt for those who were satisfied to live by the sweat of their brow--sundry quotations from Victor Hugo, and a request that their names and the manner of their death might be transmitted to the newspapers. Many are the cases recorded of young men, calling themselves dear friends, who have thus encouraged each other to make their final exit from life, if not with applause, at least with effect. And more numerous still are the tales recounted of young men and women found dead, and locked in each other's arms; fulfilling literally, and with most sad seriousness, the destiny sketched so merrily in the old song:-- Gai, gai, marions-nous-- Mettons-nous dans la misère; Gai, gai, marions-nous-- Mettons-nous la corde au cou. I have heard it remarked by several individuals among those who are watching with no unphilosophical eyes many ominous features of the present time and the present race, or rather perhaps of that portion of the population which stand apart from the rest in dissolute idleness, that the worst of all its threatening indications is the reckless, hard indifference, and gladiator-like contempt of death, which is nurtured, taught, and lauded as at once the foundation and perfection of all human wisdom and of all human virtue. In place of the firmness derived from hope and resignation, these unhappy sophists seek courage in desperation, and consolation in notoriety. With this key to the philosophy of the day, it is not difficult to read its influence on many a countenance that one meets among those who are lounging in listless laziness on the Boulevards or in the gardens of Paris. The aspect of these figures is altogether unlike what we may too often see among those who linger, sunken, pale, and hopeless, on the benches of our parks, or loiter under porticos and colonnades, as if waiting for courage to beg. Hunger and intemperance often leave blended traces on such figures as these, exciting at once pity and disgust. I have encountered at Paris nothing like this: whether any such exist, I know not; but if they do, their beat is distant from the public walks and fashionable promenades. Instead of these, however, there is a race who seem to live there, less wretched perhaps in actual want of bread, but as evidently thriftless, homeless, and friendless as the other. On the faces of such, one may read a state of mind wholly different,--less degraded, but still more perverted;--a wild, bold eye, that rather seeks than turns from every passing glance--unshrinking hardihood, but founded more on indifference than endurance, and a scornful sneer for any who may suffer curiosity to conquer disgust, while they fix their eye for a moment upon a figure that looks in all ways as if got up to enact the hero of a melodrame. Were I the king, or the minister either, I should think it right to keep an eye of watchfulness upon all such picturesque individuals; for one might say most truly, "Yon Cassius hath a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous." The friend to whom I addressed myself on the subject of these constantly-recurring suicides told me that there was great reason to believe that the increase of this crime, so remarkable during the last few years, might be almost wholly attributed to the "light literature," as it is called, of the period:--dark literature would be a fitter name for it. The total absence of anything approaching to a virtuous principle of action in every fictitious character held up to admiration throughout all the tales and dramas of the _décousu_ school, while every hint of religion is banished as if it were treason to allude to it, is in truth quite enough to account for every species of depravity in those who make such characters their study and their model. "How oft and by how many shall they be laughed to scorn!"--yet believing all the while, poor souls! that they are producing a sensation, and that the eyes of Europe are fixed upon them, notwithstanding they once worked as a tailor or a tinker, or at some other such unpoetical handiwork; for they may all be described in the words of Ecclesiasticus, with a very slight alteration,--"They would maintain the state of the world, and all their desire is in (forgetting) the work of their craft." LETTER XXXVIII. Opéra Comique.--"Cheval de Bronze."--"La Marquise."--Impossibility of playing Tragedy.--Mrs. Siddons's Readings.--Mademoiselle Mars has equal power.--_Laisser aller_ of the Female Performers.--Decline of Theatrical Taste among the Fashionable. The "Cheval de Bronze" being the _spectacle par excellence_ at the Opéra Comique this season, we have considered it a matter of sight-seeing necessity to pay it a visit; and we have all agreed that it is as perfectly beautiful in its scenery and decorations as the size of the theatre would permit. We gazed upon it, indeed, with a perfection of contentment, which, in secret committee afterwards, we confessed did not say much in favour of our intellectual faculties. I really know not how it is that one can sit, not only without murmuring, but with positive satisfaction, for three hours together, with no other occupation than looking at a collection of gewgaw objects, with a most unmeaning crowd, made for the most part by Nature's journeymen, incessantly undulating among them. Yet so it is, that a skilful arrangement of blue and white gauze, aided by the magic of many-coloured lights, decidedly the prettiest of all modern toys, made us exclaim at every fresh manoeuvre of the carpenter, "Beautiful! beautiful!" with as much delight as ever a child of five years old displayed at a first-rate exhibition of Punch. M. Auber's music has some pretty things in it; but he has done much better in days of yore; and the wretched taste exhibited by all the principal singers made me heartily wish that the well-appointed orchestra had kept the whole performance to themselves. Madame Casimir has had, and indeed still has, a rich and powerful voice: but the meanest peasant-girl in Germany, who trims her vines to the sound of her native airs, might give her a lesson on taste more valuable than all that science has ever taught her. I should like, could I do so with a conscience that should not reproach me with exaggeration, to name Miss Stephens and Madame Casimir as fair national specimens of English and French singing. And in fact they are so; though I confess that the over-dressing of Madame Casimir's airs is almost as much out of the common way here, as the chaste simplicity of our native syren's strains is with us: yet the one is essentially English, and the other French. We were told that the manager of our London theatres had been in Paris for the purpose of seeing and taking a cast from this fine Chinese butterfly. If this be so, Mr. Bunn will find great advantage from the extent of his theatre: that of the Opéra Comique is scarcely of sufficient magnitude to exhibit its gaudy but graceful _tableaux_ to advantage. But, on the other hand, I doubt if he will find any actress quite so _piquante_ as the pretty Madame ----, in the last act, when she relates to the enchanted princess, her mistress, the failure she had made in attempting by her _agaceries_ to retain the young female who had ventured into the magic region: and if he did, I doubt still more if her performance would be received with equal applause. A _petite comédie_ called "La Marquise" preceded this brilliant trifle. The fable must, I think, be taken, though greatly changed, from a story of George Sand. It has perhaps little in it worth talking about; but it is a fair specimen of one of that most agreeable of French nationalities, a natural, easy, playful little piece, at which you may sit and laugh in sympathy with the performers as much as with the characters, till you forget that there are such things as sorrow and sadness in the world. The acting in this style is so very good, that the author's task really seems to be the least important part of the business. It is not at one theatre, but at all, that we have witnessed this extraordinary excellence in the performance of this species of drama; but I doubt if the chasm which seems to surround the tragic muse, keeping her apart on a pedestal sacred to recollections, be at all wider or more profound in England than in France. In truth, it is less impassible with us than it is here; for though I will allow that our tragic actresses may be no better than those of France, seeing that a woman's will in the one case, and the Atlantic Ocean in the other, have robbed us of Mrs. Bartley and the Fanny--who between them might bring our stage back to all its former glory,--still they have neither Charles Kemble nor Macready to stand in the place that Talma has left vacant. I have indeed no doubt whatever that Mademoiselle Mars could read Corneille and Racine as effectively as Mrs. Siddons read Shakspeare in the days of Argyle-street luxury, and, like our great maga, give to every part a power that it never had before. I well remember coming home from one of Mrs. Siddons's readings with a passionate desire to see her act the part of Hamlet; and from another, quite persuaded that by some means the witch-scene in Macbeth should be so arranged that she should speak every word of it. In like manner, were I to hear Mars read Corneille, I should insist upon it that she ought to play the Cid; and if Racine, Oreste would probably be the first part I should choose for her. But as even she, with all her Garrick-like versatility, would not be able to perform every part of every play, tragedy must be permitted to repose for the present in France as well as in England. During this interregnum, it is well for them, considering how dearly they love to amuse themselves, that they have a stock of comedians, old, young, and middle-aged, that they need not fear should fail; for the whole French nation seem gifted with a talent that might enable them to supply, at an hour's warning, any deficiencies in the company. I seldom return from an exhibition of this sort without endeavouring in some degree to analyse the charm that has enchanted me: but in most cases this is too light, too subtile, to permit itself to be caught by so matter-of-fact a process. I protest to you, that I am often half ashamed of the pleasure I receive from ... I know not what. A playful smile, a speaking glance, a comic tone, a pretty gesture, give effect to words that have often nothing in them more witty or more wise than may often be met with (especially here) in ordinary conversation. But the whole thing is so thoroughly understood, from the "_père noble_" to the scene-shifter--so perfect in its getting-up--the piece so admirably suited to the players, and the players to the piece,--that whatever there is to admire and enjoy, comes to you with no drawbacks from blunders or awkwardness of any kind. That the composition of these happy trifles cannot be a work of any great labour or difficulty, may be reasonably inferred from the ceaseless succession of novelties which every theatre and every season produces. The process, for this lively and ready-witted people, must be pleasant enough--they must catch from what passes before them; no difficult task, perhaps--some _piquante_ situation or ludicrous _bévue_: the slightest thread is strong enough to hold together the light materials of the plot; and then must follow the christening of a needful proportion of male and female, old and young, enchanting and ridiculous personages. The list of these once set down, and the order of scenes which are to bring forth the plot arranged, I can fancy the author perfectly enjoying himself as he puts into the mouth of each character all the saucy impertinences upon every subject that his imagination, skilful enough in such matters, can suggest. When to this is added an occasional touch of natural feeling, and a little popular high-mindedness in any line, the _petite comédie_ is ready for the stage. It is certainly a very light manufacture, and depends perhaps more upon the fearless _laisser aller_ of both author and actor than upon the brilliancy of wit which it displays. That old-fashioned blushing grace too, so much in favour with King Solomon, and called in scripture phrase shamefacedness, is sacrificed rather too unmercifully by the female part of the performers, in the fear, as it should seem, of impairing the spirit and vivacity of the scene by any scruple of any kind. But I suspect these ladies miscalculate the respective value of opposing graces; Mademoiselle Mars may show them that delicacy and vivacity are not inseparable; and though I confess that it would be a little unreasonable to expect all the female vaudevillists of Paris to be like Mars, I cannot but think that, in a city where her mode of playing comedy has for so many years been declared perfect, it must be unnecessary to seek the power of attraction from what is so utterly at variance with it. The performance of comedy is often assisted here by a freedom among the actors which I have sometimes, but not often, seen permitted in London. It requires for its success, and indeed for its endurance, that the audience should be perfectly in good-humour, and sympathise very cordially with the business of the scene. I allude to the part which the performers sometimes take not only in the acting, but in the enjoyment of it. I never in my life saw people more heartily amused, or disposed more unceremoniously to show it, than the actors in the "Précieuses Ridicules," which I saw played a few nights ago at the Français. On this occasion I think the spirit of the performance was certainly heightened by this license, and for this reason--the scene represents a group in which one party must of necessity be exceedingly amused by the success of the mystification which they are practising on the other. But I own that I have sometimes felt a little _English stiffness_ at perceiving an air of frolic and fun upon the stage, which seemed fully as much got up for the performers as for the audience. But though the instance I have named of this occurred at the Théâtre Français, it is not there that it is likely to be carried to any offensive extent. The lesser theatres would in many instances do well to copy closely the etiquette and decorum of all kinds which the great national theatre exhibits: but perhaps it is hardly fair to expect this; and besides, we might be told, justly enough, to _look at home_. The theatres, particularly the minor ones, appear to be still very well attended: but I constantly hear the same observations made in Paris as in London upon the decline of theatrical taste among the higher orders; and it arises, I think, from the same cause in both countries,--namely, the late dinner-hour, which renders the going to a play a matter of general family arrangement, and often of general family difficulty. The opera, which is later, is always full; and were it not that I have lived too long in the world to be surprised at anything that the power of fashion could effect, I should certainly be astonished that so lively a people as the French should throng night after night as they do to witness the exceeding dulness of this heavy spectacle. The only people I have yet seen enjoying their theatres rationally, without abstaining from what they liked because it was unfashionable, or enduring what they did not, because it was the _mode_, are the Germans. Their genuine and universal love of music makes their delicious opera almost a necessary of life to them; and they must, I think, absolutely change their nature before they will suffer the silly conventional elegance supposed by some to attach to the act of eating their dinner late, to interfere with their enjoyment of it. I used to think the theatre as dear to the French as music to the Germans. But what is a taste in France is, from the firmer fibre of the national character, a passion in Germany;--and it is easier to abandon a taste than to control a passion. Perhaps, however, in England and France too, if some new-born theatrical talent of the first class were to "flame in the forehead of the morning sky," both Paris and London would submit to the degradation of dining at five o'clock in order to enjoy it: but late hours and indifferent performances, together, have gone far towards placing the stage among the popular rather than the fashionable amusements of either. LETTER XXXIX. The Abbé de Lamennais.--Cobbett.--O'Connell.--Napoleon.-- Robespierre. I had last night the satisfaction of meeting the Abbé de Lamennais at a _soirée_. It was at the house of Madame Benjamin Constant; whose _salon_ is as celebrated for the talent of every kind to be met there, as for the delightful talents and amiable qualities of its mistress. In general appearance, this celebrated man recalls an original drawing that I remember to have seen of Rousseau. He is greatly below the ordinary height, and extremely small in his proportions. His countenance is very striking, and singularly indicative of habitual meditation; but the deep-set eye has something very nearly approaching to wildness in its rapid glance. His dress was black, but had certainly more of republican negligence than priestly dignity in it; and the little, tight, chequered cravat which encircled his slender throat, gave him decidedly the appearance of a person who heeded not either the fashion of the day, or the ordinary costume of the _salon_. He, in company with four or five other distinguished men, had dined with Madame Constant; and we found him deep sunk in a _bergère_ that almost concealed his diminutive person, surrounded by a knot of gentlemen, with whom he was conversing with great eagerness and animation. On one side of him was M. Jouy, the well-known "_Hermite_" of the Chaussée d'Antin; and on the other, a deputy well known on the benches of the _côté gauche_. I was placed immediately opposite to him, and have seldom watched the play of a more animated countenance. In the course of the evening, he was brought up and introduced to me. His manners are extremely gentlemanlike; no stiffness or reserve, either rustic or priestly, interfering with their easy vivacity. He immediately drew a chair _vis-à-vis_ to the sofa on which I was placed, and continued thus, with his back turned to the rest of the company, conversing very agreeably, till so many persons collected round him, many of whom were ladies, that not feeling pleased, I suppose, to sit while they stood, he bowed off, and retreated again to his _bergère_. He told me that he must not remain long in Paris, where he was too much in society to do anything; that he should speedily retreat to the profound seclusion of his native Brittany, and there finish the work upon which he was engaged. Whether this work be the defence of the _prévenus d'Avril_, which he has threatened to fulminate in a printed form at the head of those who refused to let him plead for them in court, I know not; but this document, whenever it appears, is expected to be violent, powerful, and eloquent. The writings of the Abbé de Lamennais remind me strongly of those of Cobbett,--not, certainly, from their matter, nor even from the manner of treating it, but from the sort of effect which they produce upon the mind. Had the pen of either of them been wholly devoted to the support of a good cause, their writings would have been invaluable to society; for they both have shown a singular power of carrying the attention, and almost the judgment, of the reader along with them, even when writing on subjects on which he and they were perfectly at issue. Were there not circumstances in the literary history of both which contradict the notion, I should say that this species of power or charm in their writings arose from their being themselves very much in earnest in the opinions they were advocating: but as the Abbé de Lamennais and the late Mr. Cobbett have both shown that their faith in their own opinions was not strong enough to prevent them from changing them, the peculiar force of their eloquence can hardly be referred to the sincerity of it. I remember hearing a lively young barrister declare that he would rather argue against his own judgment than according to it; and I am sure he spoke in all sincerity,--much as he would have done had he said that he preferred shooting wild game to slaughtering tame chickens: the difficulty made the pleasure. But we cannot presume to suppose that either of the two persons whose names I have so incongruously brought together have written and argued on the same principle; and even if it were so, they have not the less changed their minds,--unless we suppose that they have amused themselves and the public, by sometimes arguing for what they believed to be truth, and sometimes only to show their skill. As to what Mr. Cobbett's principles might really have been, I think it is a question that must ever remain in uncertainty,--unless we adopt that easiest and most intelligible conclusion, that he had none at all. But it is far otherwise with M. de Lamennais: it is impossible to doubt that in his early writings he was perfectly sincere; there is a warmth of faith in them that could proceed from no fictitious fire. Nor is it easily to be imagined that he would have thrown himself from the height at which he stood in the opinion of all whom he most esteemed, had he not fancied that he saw truth at the bottom of that abyss of heresy and schism into which all good Catholics think that he has thrown himself. The wild republicanism which M. de Lamennais has picked up in his descent is, however, what has probably injured him most in the general estimation. Some few years ago, liberal principles were advocated by many of the most able as well as the most honest men in Europe; but the unreasonable excesses into which the ultras of the party have fallen seem to have made the respectable portion of mankind draw back from it, and, whatever their speculative opinions may be, they now show themselves anxious to rally round all that bears the stamp of order and lawful authority. It would be difficult to imagine a worse time for a man to commence republican and free-thinker than the present;--unless, indeed, he did so in the hope that the loaves and fishes were, or would be, at the disposition of that party. Putting, however, all hope of being paid for it aside, the period is singularly unpropitious for such a conversion. As long as their doctrine remained a theory only, it might easily delude many who had more imagination than judgment, or more ignorance than either: but so much deplorable mischief has arisen before our eyes every time the theory has been brought to the test of practice, that I believe the sound-minded in every land consider their speculations at present with as little respect as they would those of a joint-stock company proposing to colonize the moon. That the Abbé de Lamennais is no longer considered in France as the pre-eminent man he has been, is most certain; and as it is easy to trace in his works a regular progression downwards, from the dignified and enthusiastic Catholic priest to the puzzled sceptic and factious demagogue, I should not be greatly surprised to hear that he, who has been spoken of at Rome as likely to become a cardinal, was carrying a scarlet flag through the streets of Paris, with a conical hat and a Robespierre waistcoat, singing "_Ça ira_" louder than he ever chanted a mass. M. de Lamennais, in common with several other persons of republican principles with whom I have conversed since I have been in Paris, has conceived the idea that England is at this moment actually and _bonâ fide_ under the rule, dictation, and government of Mr. Daniel O'Connell. He named him in an accent of the most profound admiration and respect, and referred to the English newspapers as evidence of the enthusiastic love and veneration in which he was held throughout Great Britain! I waxed wroth, I confess; but I took wisdom and patience, and said very meekly, that he had probably seen only that portion of the English papers which were of Mr. Daniel's faction, and that I believed Great Britain was still under the dominion of King William the Fourth, his Lords and Commons. It is not many days since I met another politician of the same school who went farther still; for he gravely wished me joy of the prospect of emancipation which the virtue of the great O'Connell held out to my country. On this occasion, being in a gay mood, I laughed heartily, and did so with a safe conscience, having no need to set the enlightened propagandist right; this being done for me, much better than I could have done it myself, by a hard-headed doctrinaire who was with me. "O'Connell is the Napoleon of England," said the republican. "Not of England, at any rate," replied the doctrinaire. "And if he must have a name borrowed from France, let it be Robespierre's: let him be called magnificently the Robespierre of Ireland." "He has already been the redeemer of Ireland," rejoined the republican gravely; "and now _he has taken England under his protection_." "And I suspect that ere long England will take him under hers," said my friend, laughing. "Hitherto it appears as if the country had not thought him worth whipping; ... mais si un chien est méchant, si même ce ne serait qu'un vilain petit hargneux, il devrait être lié, ou bien pendu." Having finished this oracular sentence, the doctrinaire took a long pinch of snuff, and began discoursing of other matters: and I too withdrew from the discussion, persuaded that I could not bring it to a better conclusion. LETTER XL. Which Party is it ranks second in the estimation of all?--No Caricatures against the Exiles.--Horror of a Republic. I have been taking some pains to discover, by the aid of all the signs and tokens of public feeling within my reach, who among the different parties into which this country is divided enjoys the highest degree of general consideration. We know that if every man in a town were desired to say who among its inhabitants he should consider as fittest to hold an employment of honour and profit, each would probably answer, "Myself:" we know also, that should it happen, after the avowal of this very natural partiality, that the name of the second best were asked for, and that the man named as such by one were so named by all, this second best would be accounted by the disinterested lookers-on as decidedly the right and proper person to fill the station. According to this rule, the right and proper government for France is neither republican, nor military, nor doctrinaire, but that of a legitimate and constitutional monarchy. When men hold office, bringing both power and wealth, consideration will of necessity follow. That the ministers and their friends, therefore, should be seen in pride of place, and enjoying the dignity they have achieved, is natural, inevitable, and quite as it should be. But if, turning from this every-day spectacle, we endeavour to discover who it is that, possessing neither power nor place, most uniformly receive the homage of respect, I should say, without a shadow of doubt or misgiving, that it was the legitimate royalists. The triumphant doctrinaires pass no jokes at their expense; no _bons mots_ are quoted against them, nor does any shop exhibit caricatures either of what they have been or of what they are. The republicans are no longer heard to name them, either with rancour or disrespect: all their wrath is now poured out upon the present actual power of the prosperous doctrinaires. This, indeed, is in strict conformity to the principle which constitutes the foundation of their sect; namely, that whatever exists ought to be overthrown. But neither in jest nor earnest do they now show hostility to Charles the Tenth or his family: nor even do the blank walls of Paris, which for nearly half a century have been the favourite receptacle of all their wit, exhibit any pleasantries, either in the shape of hieroglyphic, caricature, or lampoon, alluding to them or their cause. I have listened repeatedly to sprightly and to bitter jestings, to judicious and to blundering reasonings, for and against the different doctrines which divide the country; but in no instance do I remember to have heard, either in jest or earnest, any revilings against the exiled race. A sort of sacred silence seems to envelope this theme; or if it be alluded to at all, it is far from being in a hostile spirit. "HENRI!" is a name that, without note or comment, may be read _ça et là_ in every quarter of Paris, that of the Tuileries not excepted: and on a wall near the Royal College of Henri Quatre, where the younger princes of the house of Orleans still study, were inscribed not long ago these very intelligible words:-- "Pour arriver à Bordeaux, il faut passer par Orléans." In short, whatever feelings of irritation and anger might have existed in 1830, and produced the scenes which led to the exile of the royal family, they now seem totally to have subsided. It does not, however, necessarily follow from this that the majority of the people are ready again to hazard their precious tranquillity in order to restore them: on the contrary, it cannot be doubted that were such a measure attempted at the present moment, it would fail--not from any dislike of their legitimate monarch, or any affection for the kinsman who has been placed upon his throne, but wholly and solely from their wish to enjoy in peace their profitable speculations at the _Bourse_--their flourishing _restaurans_--their prosperous shops--and even their tables, chairs, beds, and coffee-pots. Very different, however, is the feeling manifested towards the republicans. Never did Napoleon in the days of his most absolute power, or the descendants of Louis le Grand in those of their proudest state, contemplate this factious, restless race with such abhorrence as do the doctrinaires of the present hour. It is not that they fear them--they have no real cause to do so; but they feel a sentiment made up of hatred and contempt, which never seems to repose, and which, if not regulated by wisdom and moderation, is very likely eventually to lead to more barricades; though to none, I imagine, that the National Guards may not easily throw down. It is on the subject of this unpopular _clique_ that by far the greater part of the ever-springing Parisian jokes expends itself; though the doctrinaires get it "_pas mal_" in return, as I heard a national guardsman remark, as we were looking over some caricatures together. But, in truth, the republicans seem upon principle to offer themselves as victims and martyrs to the quizzing propensities of their countrymen. Harlequin does not more scrupulously adhere to his parti-coloured suit, than do the republicans of Paris to their burlesque costume. It is, I presume, to show their courage, that they so ostentatiously march with their colours flying; but the effect is very ludicrous. The symbolic peculiarities of their dress are classed and lithographed with infinite fun. Drolleries, too, on the parvenus of the Empire are to be found for the seeking; and when they beset King Philippe himself, it should seem that it is done with all the enthusiasm so well expressed by Garrick in days of yore:-- "'Tis for my king, and, zounds! I'll do my best!" The only extraordinary part of all this caricaturing on walls and in print-shops, is the license taken with those who have power to prevent it. The principle of legislation on this point appears, with a little variation, to be that of the old ballad: "Thoughts, words, and deeds, the statute blames with reason; But surely _jokes_ were ne'er indicted treason." In speaking of the parties into which France is divided, the three grand divisions of Carlists, Doctrinaires, and Republicans naturally present themselves first and foremost, and, to foreigners in general, appear to contain between them the entire nation: but a month or two passed in Paris society suffices to show one that there are many who cannot fairly be classed with either. In the first place, the Carlist party by no means contains all those who disapprove of treating a crown like a ready-made shoe, which, if it be found to pinch the person it was intended for, may be disposed of to the first comer who is willing to take it. The Carlist party, properly so called, demand the restoration of King Charles the Tenth, the immediate descendant and representative of their long line of kings--the prince who has been crowned and anointed King of France, and who, while he remains alive, must render the crowning and anointing of any other prince an act of sacrilege. Wherefore, in effect, King Louis-Philippe has not received "_le sacre_:" he is not as yet the anointed King of France, whatever he may be hereafter. Henri Quatre is said to have exclaimed under the walls of the capital, "Paris vaut bien une messe;" and it is probable that Louis-Philippe Premier thinks so too; but hitherto he has been able to have this performed only in military style--being incapable, in fact, of going through the ceremony either civilly or religiously. The Carlists are, therefore, those only who _en rigueur_ do not approve of any king but the real one. The legitimate royalists are, I believe, a much more numerous party. As strictly attached to the throne and to the principle of regular and legitimate succession as the Carlists, they nevertheless conceive that the pressure of circumstances may not only authorise, but render it imperative upon the country to accept, or rather to permit, the abdication of a sovereign. The king's leaving the country and placing himself in exile, is one of the few causes that can justify this; and accordingly the abdication of Charles Dix is virtual death to him as a sovereign. But though this is granted, it does not follow in their creed, that any part of the nation have thereupon a right to present the hereditary crown to whom they will. The law of succession, they say, is not to be violated because the king has fled before a popular insurrection; and having permitted his abdication, the next heir becomes king. This next heir, however, choosing to follow his royal father's example, he too becomes virtually defunct, and his heir succeeds. This heir is still an infant, and his remaining in exile cannot therefore be interpreted as his own act. Thus, according to the reasoning of those who conceive the abdication of the king and the dauphin to be acts within their own power, and beyond that of the nation to nullify, Henri, the son of the Duc de Berri, is beyond all doubt Henri Cinq, Roi de France. Of this party, however, there are many, and I suspect their number is increasing, who, having granted the power of setting aside (by his own act) the anointed monarch, are not altogether averse to go a step farther, if so doing shall ensure the peace of the country; and considering the infancy of the rightful heir as constituting insufficiency, to confess Louis-Philippe as the next in succession to be the lawful as well as the actual King of the French. It is this party who I always find have the most to say in support (or defence) of their opinions. Whether this proceed from their feeling that some eloquence is necessary to make them pass current, or that the conviction of their justice is such as to make their hearts overflow on the theme, I know not; but decidedly the sect of the "_Parcequ'il est Bourbon_" is that which I find most eager to discourse upon politics. And, to confess the truth, they have much to say for themselves, at least on the side of expediency. It is often a matter of regret with me, that in addressing these letters to you I am compelled to devote so large a portion of them to politics; but in attempting to give you some idea of Paris at the present moment, it is impossible to avoid it. Were I to turn from this theme, I could only do so by labouring to forget everything I have seen, everything I see. Go where you will, do what you will, meet whom you will, it is out of your power to escape it. But observe, that it is wholly for your sake, and not at all for my own, that I lament it; for, however flat and unprofitable my report may be, the thing itself, when you are in the midst of it, is exceedingly interesting. When I first arrived, I was considerably annoyed by finding, that as soon as I had noted down some piece of information as an undoubted fact, the next person I conversed with assured me that it was worth considerably less than nought; inasmuch as my informer had not only failed to give me useful instruction on the point concerning which I was inquiring, but had altogether deluded, deceived, and led me astray. These days of primitive matter-of-factness are now, however, quite passed with me; and though I receive a vast deal of entertainment from all, I give my faith in return to very few. I listen to the Carlists, the Henri-Quintists, the Philippists, with great attention and real interest, but have sometimes caught myself humming as soon as they have left me, "They were all of them kings in their turn." Indeed, if you knew all that happens to me, instead of blaming me for being too political, you would be very thankful for the care and pains I bestow in endeavouring to make a digest of all I hear for your advantage, containing as few contradictions as possible. And truly this is no easy matter, not only from the contradictory nature of the information I receive, but from some varying weaknesses in my own nature, which sometimes put me in the very disagreeable predicament of doubting if what is right be right, and if what is wrong be wrong. When I came here, I was a thorough unequivocating legitimatist, and felt quite ready and willing to buckle on armour against any who should doubt that a man once a king was always a king--that once crowned according to law, he could not be uncrowned according to mob--or that a man's eldest son was his rightful heir. But, oh! these doctrinaires! They have such a way of proving that if they are not quite right, at least everybody else is a great deal more wrong: and then they talk so prettily of England and _our_ revolution, and our glorious constitution--and the miseries of anarchy--and the advantages of letting things remain quietly as they are, till, as I said before, I begin to doubt what is right and what is wrong. There is one point, however, on which we agree wholly and heartily; and it is this perhaps that has been the means of softening my heart thus towards them. The doctrinaires shudder at the name of a republic. This is not because their own party is regal, but is evidently the result of the experience which they and their fathers have had from the tremendous experiment which has once already been made in the country. "You will never know the full value of your constitution till you have lost it," said a doctrinaire to me the other evening, at the house of the beautiful Princess B----, formerly an energetic propagandiste, but now a very devoted doctrinaire,--"you will never know how beneficial is its influence on every hour of your lives, till your Mr. O'Connell has managed to arrange a republic for you: and when you have tasted that for about three months, you will make good and faithful subjects to the next king that Heaven shall bestow upon you. You know how devoted all France was to the Emperor, though the police was somewhat tight, and the conscriptions heavy: but he had saved us from a republic, and we adored him. For a few days, or rather hours, we were threatened again, five years ago, by the same terrible apparition: the result is, that four millions of armed men stand ready to protect the prince who chased it. Were it to appear a third time--which Heaven forbid!--you may depend upon it that the monarch who should next ascend the throne of France might play at _le jeu de quilles_ with his subjects, and no one be found to complain." LETTER XLI. M. Dupré.--His Drawings in Greece.--L'Eglise des Carmes.--M. Vinchon's Picture of the National Convention.--Léopold Robert's Fishermen.--Reported cause of his Suicide.--Roman Catholic Religion.--Mr. Daniel O'Connell. We went the other morning, with Miss C----, a very agreeable countrywoman, who has however passed the greater portion of her life in Paris, to visit the house and atelier of M. Dupré, a young artist who seems to have devoted himself to the study of Greece. Her princes, her peasants, her heavy-eyed beauties, and the bright sky that glows above them,--all the material of her domestic life, and all the picturesque accompaniments of her classic reminiscences, are brought home by this gentleman in a series of spirited and highly-finished drawings, which give decidedly the most lively idea of the country that I have seen produced. Engravings or lithographs from them are, I believe, intended to illustrate a splendid work on this interesting country which is about to be published. In our way from M. Dupré's house, in which was this collection of Greek drawings, to his atelier--where he was kind enough to show us a large picture recently commenced--we entered that fatal "Eglise des Carmes," where the most hideous massacre of the first revolution took place. A large tree that stands beside it is pointed out as having been sought as a shelter--alas! how vainly!--by the unhappy priests, who were shot, sabred, and dragged from its branches by dozens. A thousand terrible recollections are suggested by the interior of the building, aided by the popular traditions attached to it, unequalled in atrocity even in the history of that time of horror. Another scene relating to the same period, which, though inferior to the massacre of the priests in multiplied barbarity, was of sufficient horror to freeze the blood of any but a republican, has, strange to say, been made, since the revolution of 1830, the subject of an enormous picture by M. Vinchon, and at the present moment makes part of the exhibition at the Louvre. The canvass represents a hall at the Tuileries which in 1795 was the place where the National Convention sat. The mob has broken in, and murdered Feraud, who attempted to oppose them; and the moment chosen by the painter is that in which a certain "_jeune fille nommée Aspasie Migelli_" approaches the president's chair with the young man's head borne on a pike before her, while she triumphantly envelopes herself in some part of his dress. The whole scene is one of the most terrible revolutionary violence. This picture is stated in the catalogue to belong to the minister of the interior; but whether the present minister of the interior, or any other, I know not. The subject was given immediately after the revolution of 1830, and many artists made sketches in competition for the execution of it. One of those who tried, and failed before the superior genius of M. Vinchon, told us, that the subject was given at that time as one likely to be popular, either for love of the noble resolution with which Boissy d'Anglas keeps possession of the president's chair, which he had seized upon, or else from admiration of the energetic female who has assisted in doing the work of death. In either case, this young artist said, the popularity of such a subject was passed by, and no such order would be given now. Finding myself again on the subject of pictures, I must mention a very admirable one which is now being exhibited at the "Mairie du Second Arrondissement." It is from the hand of the unfortunate Leopold Robert, who destroyed himself at Venice almost immediately after he had completed it. The subject is the departure of a party of Italian fishermen; and there are parts of the picture fully equal to anything I have ever seen from the pencil of a modern artist. I should have looked at this picture with extreme pleasure, had the painter still lived to give hope of, perhaps, still higher efforts; but the history of his death, which I had just been listening to, mixed great pain with it. I have been told that this young man was of a very religious and meditative turn of mind, but a Protestant. His only sister, to whom he was much attached, was a Catholic, and had recently taken the veil. Her affection for him was such, that she became perfectly wretched from the danger she believed awaited him from his heresy; and she commenced a species of affectionate persecution, which, though it failed to convert him, so harassed and distracted his mind, as finally to overthrow his reason, and lead him to self-destruction. This charming picture is exhibited for the benefit of the poor, at the especial desire of the unhappy nun; who is said, however, to be so perfect a fanatic, as only to regret that the dreadful act was not delayed till she had had time to work out the salvation of her own soul by a little more persecution of his. There is something exceedingly curious, and, perhaps, under our present lamentable circumstances, somewhat alarming, in the young and vigorous after-growth of the Roman Catholic religion, which, by the aid of a very little inquiry, may be so easily traced throughout France. Were we keeping our own national church sacred, and guarded both by love and by law, as it has hitherto been from all assaults of the Pope and ... Mr. O'Connell, it could only be with pleasure that we should see France recovering from her long ague-fit of infidelity,--and, as far as she is concerned, we must in Christian charity rejoice, for she is unquestionably the better for it; but there is a regenerated activity among the Roman Catholic clergy, which, under existing circumstances, makes a Protestant feel rather nervous,--and I declare to you, I never pass within sight of that famous window of the Louvre, whence Charles Neuf, with his own royal and catholic hand, discharged a blunderbuss amongst the Huguenots, without thinking how well a window at Whitehall, already noted in history as a scene of horror, might serve King Daniel for the same purpose. The great influence which the religion of Rome has of late regained over the minds of the French people has, I am told, been considerably increased by the priests having added to the strength derived from their command of pardons and indulgences, that which our Methodist preachers gain from the terrors of hell. They use the same language, too, respecting regeneration and grace; and, as one means of regaining the hold they had lost upon the human mind, they now anathematize all recreations, as if their congregations were so many aspirants to the sublime purifications of La Trappe, or so many groaning fanatics just made over to them from Lady Huntingdon's Chapel. That there is, however, a pretty strong force to stem this fresh spring-tide of moon-struck superstition, is very certain. The doctrinaires, I am told, taken as a body, are not much addicted to this species of weakness. I remember, during the prevalence of that sweeping complaint called the influenza, hearing of a "good lady," of the high evangelical _clique_, who said to some of the numerous pensioners who flocked to receive the crumbs of her table and the precepts of her lips, that she could make up some medicine that was very good for all POOR people that were seized with this complaint. "What can be the difference, ma'am," said the poor body who told me this, "between us and Madame C---- in this illness? Is not what is good for the poor, good for the rich too?" The same pertinent question may, I think, be asked in Paris just now respecting the medicine called religion. It is administered in large doses to the poor, to which class a great number of the fair sex of all ranks happily seem to have joined themselves, intending, at least, to rank themselves as among the poor in spirit; nay, parish doctors are regularly paid by authority; yet, if the tale be true, the authorities themselves take little of it. "It is very good for poor people;" but, like the hot-baths which Anstie talks of, "No creature e'er view'd Any one of the government gentry stew'd." Whether the returning power of this pompous and aspiring faith will mount as it proceeds, and embrace within its grasp, as it was wont to do, all the great ones of the earth, is a question that it may require some years to answer; but one thing is at least certain,--that its ministers will try hard that it shall do so, whether they are likely to succeed or not; and, at the worst, they may console themselves by the reflection of Lafontaine:-- "Si de les gagner je n'emporte pas le prix, J'aurais au moins l'honneur de l'avoir entrepris." One great one they have certainly already got, besides King Charles the Tenth,--even the immortal Daniel; and however little consequence you may be inclined to attach to this fact, it cannot be considered as wholly unimportant, since I have heard his religious principles and his influence in England alluded to in the pulpit here with a tone of hope and triumph which made me tremble. I heartily wish that some of those who continue to vote in his traitorous majority because they are pledged to do so, could hear him and his power spoken of here. If they have English hearts, it must, I think, give them a pang. LETTER XLII. Old Maids.--Rarely to be found in France.--The reasons for this. Several years ago, while passing a few weeks in Paris, I had a conversation with a Frenchman upon the subject of old maids, which, though so long past, I refer to now for the sake of the sequel, which has just reached me. We were, I well remember, parading in the Gardens of the Luxembourg; and as we paced up and down its long alleys, the "miserable fate," as he called it, of single women in England was discussed and deplored by my companion as being one of the most melancholy results of faulty national manners that could be mentioned. "I know nothing," said he with much energy, "that ever gave me more pain in society, than seeing, as I did in England, numbers of unhappy women who, however well-born, well-educated, or estimable, were without a position, without an _état_ and without a name, excepting one that they would generally give half their remaining days to get rid of." "I think you somewhat exaggerate the evil," I replied: "but even if it were as bad as you state it to be, I see not why single ladies should be better off here." "Here!" he exclaimed, in a tone of horror: "Do you really imagine that in France, where we pride ourselves on making the destiny of our women the happiest in the world,--do you really imagine that we suffer a set of unhappy, innocent, helpless girls to drop, as it were, out of society into the _néant_ of celibacy, as you do? God keep us from such barbarity!" "But how can you help it? It is impossible but that circumstances must arise to keep many of your men single; and if the numbers be equally balanced, it follows that there must be single women too." "It may seem so; but the fact is otherwise: we have no single women." "What, then, becomes of them?" "I know not; but were any Frenchwoman to find herself so circumstanced, depend upon it she would drown herself." "I know one such, however," said a lady who was with us: "Mademoiselle Isabelle B*** is an old maid." "Est-il possible!" cried the gentleman, in a tone that made me laugh very heartily. "And how old is she, this unhappy Mademoiselle Isabelle?" "I do not know exactly," replied the lady; "but I think she must be considerably past thirty." "C'est une horreur!" he exclaimed again; adding, rather mysteriously, in a half-whisper, "Trust me, she will not bear it long!" * * * * * I had certainly forgotten Mademoiselle Isabelle and all about her, when I again met the lady who had named her as the one sole existing old maid of France. While conversing with her the other day on many things which had passed when we were last together, she asked me if I remembered this conversation. I assured her that I had forgotten no part of it. "Well, then," said she, "I must tell you what happened to me about three months after it took place. I was invited with my husband to pay a visit at the house of a friend in the country,--the same house where I had formerly seen the Mademoiselle Isabelle B*** whom I had named to you. While playing _écarté_ with our host in the evening, I recollected our conversation in the Gardens of the Luxembourg, and inquired for the lady who had been named in it. "'Is it possible that you have not heard what has happened to her?' he replied. "'No, indeed; I have heard nothing. Is she married, then?' "'Married!... Alas, no! she has _drowned herself_!'" Terrible as this dénouement was, it could not be heard with the solemn gravity it called for, after what had been said respecting her. Was ever coincidence more strange! My friend told me, that on her return to Paris she mentioned this catastrophe to the gentleman who had seemed to predict it; when the information was received by an exclamation quite in character,--"God be praised! then she is out of her misery!" This incident, and the conversation which followed upon it, induced me to inquire in sober earnest what degree of truth there might really be in the statement made to us in this well-remembered conversation; and it certainly does appear, from all I can learn, that the meeting a single woman past thirty is a very rare occurrence in France. The arranging _un mariage convenable_ is in fact as necessary and as ordinary a duty in parents towards a daughter, as the sending her to nurse or the sending her to school. The proposal for such an alliance proceeds quite as frequently from the friends of the lady as from those of the gentleman: and it is obvious that this must at once very greatly increase the chance of a suitable marriage for young women; for though we do occasionally send our daughters to India in the hope of obtaining this much-desired result, few English parents have as yet gone the length of proposing to anybody, or to anybody's son, to take their daughter off their hands. I have not the least doubt in the world that, were the custom otherwise--were a young lady's claim to an establishment pointed out by her friends, instead of being left to be discovered or undiscovered as chance will have it,--I have no doubt in the world that in such a case many happy marriages might be the result: and where such an arrangement infringes on no feeling of propriety, but is adopted only in conformity to national custom, I can well believe that the fair lady herself may deem her having nothing to do with the business a privilege of infinite importance to her delicacy. But would our English girls like, for the satisfaction of escaping the chance of being an old maid, to give up the dear right of awaiting in maiden dignity till they are chosen--selected from out the entire world--and then of saying yes or no, as may please their fancy best? If I do not greatly mistake the national character of Englishwomen, there are very few who could be found to exchange this privilege for the most perfect assurance that could be given of obtaining a marriage in any other way. As to which is best and which is wisest, or even which is likely to produce, ultimately and generally, the most happy _ménage_, I will not pretend to say; because I have heard so much plausible, and indeed, in some respects, substantial reasoning in favour of the mode pursued here, that I feel it may be considered as doubtful: but as to which is and must be most agreeable to the parties chiefly concerned at the time the connexion is formed, herein I own I think there can be no question whatever that English men and English women have the advantage. With all the inclination in the world to believe that France abounds with loving, constant, faithful wives, and husbands too, I cannot but think that if they are so, it is in spite of the manner in which their marriages are made, and not in consequence of it. The strongest argument in favour of their manner of proceeding undoubtedly is, that a husband who receives a young wife as totally without impressions of any kind, (as a well-brought-up French girl certainly is,) has a better chance--or rather, has more _power_ of making her heart entirely his own, than any man can have that falls in love with a beauty of twenty, who may already have heard as tender sighs as he can utter breathed in her ear by some one who may have had no power to marry her, but who might have had a heart to love her, and a tongue to win her as well as himself. But against this how much is to be placed! However dearly a Frenchwoman may love her husband, he can never feel that it is a love which has selected him; and though it may sometimes happen that a pretty creature is applied for because of her prettiness, yet if the application be made and answered, and no question asked as to her will or wish in the affair, she can feel but little gratification even to her vanity--and certainly nothing whatever approaching to a feeling of tenderness at her heart. The force of habit is ever so inveterate, that it is not likely either nation can be really a fair and impartial judge of the other in a matter so entirely regulated by it. Therefore, all that I, as English, will venture to say farther on the subject is, that I should be sorry on this point to see us adopt the fashion of our neighbour France. I have reason to believe, however, that my friend of the Luxembourg Gardens exaggerated a good deal in his statement respecting the non-existence of single women in France. They do exist here, though certainly in less numbers than in England,--but it is not so easy to find them out. With us it is not unusual for single ladies to take what is called _brevet rank_;--that is, Miss Dorothy Tomkins becomes Mrs. Dorothy Tomkins--and sometimes _tout bonnement_ Mrs. Tomkins, provided there be no collateral Mrs. Tomkins to interfere with her: but upon no occasion do I remember that any lady in this predicament called herself the widow Tomkins, or the widow anything else. Here, however, I am assured that the case is different; and that, let the number of spinsters be great or small, no one but the near connexions and most intimate friends of the party know anything of the matter. Many a _veuve respectable_ has never had a husband in her life; and I have heard it positively affirmed, that the secret is often so well kept, that the nieces and nephews of a family do not know their maiden aunts from their widowed ones. This shows, at least, that matrimony is considered here as a more honourable state than that of celibacy; though it does not quite go the length of proving that all single women drown themselves. But before I quit this subject, I must say a few words to you concerning the old maids of England. There are few things which chafe my spirit more than hearing single women spoken of with contempt because they are such, or seeing them treated with less consideration and attention than those who chance to be married. The cruelty and injustice of this must be obvious to every one upon a moment's thought; but to me its absurdity is more obvious still. It is, I believe, a notorious fact, that there is scarcely a woman to be found, of any rank under that of a princess of the blood royal, who, at the age of fifty, has not at some time or in some manner had the power of marrying if she chose it. That many who have had this power have been tyrannically or unfortunately prevented from using it, is certain; but there is nothing either ridiculous or contemptible in this. Still less does a woman merit scorn if she has had the firmness and constancy of purpose to prefer a single life because she has considered it best and fittest for her: in fact, I know nothing more high-minded than the doing so. The sneering which follows female celibacy is so well known and so coarsely manifested, that it shows very considerable dignity of character to enable a woman to endure it, rather than act against her sense of what is right. I by no means say this by way of running a-tilt against all the ladies in France who have submitted, _bon gré, mal gré_, to become wives at the command of their fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts, and guardians: they have done exactly what they ought, and I hope all their pretty little quiet-looking daughters will do the same; it is the custom of the country, and cannot discreetly be departed from. But being on the subject, I am led, while defending our own modes of proceeding in the important affair of marriage, to remark also on the result of them. In permitting a young woman to become acquainted with the man who proposes for her before she consents to pass her whole life with him, I certainly see some advantage; but in my estimation there is more still in the protection which our usage in these matters affords to those who, rather than marry a man who is not the object of their choice, prefer remaining single. I confess, too, that I consider the class of single women as an extremely important one. Their entire freedom from control gives them great power over their time and resources, much more than any other woman can possibly possess who is not a childless widow. That this power is often--very often--nobly used, none can deny who are really and thoroughly acquainted with English society; and if among the class there be some who love cards, and tattle, and dress, and slander, they should be treated with just the same measure of contempt as the married ladies who may also occasionally be found to love cards, and tattle, and dress, and slander,--but with no more. It has been my chance, and I imagine that it has been the chance of most other people, to have found my dearest and most constant friends among single women. Of all the Helenas and Hermias that before marriage have sat "upon one cushion, warbling of one song," even for years together, how few are there who are not severed by marriage! Kind feelings may be retained, and correspondence (lazily enough) kept up; but to whom is it that the anxious mother, watching beside the sick couch of her child, turns for sympathy and consolation?--certainly not to the occupied and perhaps distant wedded confidante of her youthful days, but to her maiden sister or her maiden friend. Nor is it only in sickness that such friends are among the first blessings of life: they violate no duty by giving their time and their talents to society; and many a day through every house in England has probably owed some of its most delightful hours to the presence of those whom no duty has called "To suckle fools or chronicle small beer," and whose talents, therefore, are not only at their own disposal, but in all probability much more highly cultivated than any possessed by their married friends. Thus, spite of him of the Luxembourg, I am most decidedly of opinion, that, in England at least, there is no reason whatever that an unmarried woman should consign herself to the fate of the unfortunate Mademoiselle Isabelle. END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. LONDON: PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY, Dorset Street, Fleet Street. 
21498	----	FRANCE AND THE REPUBLIC A RECORD OF THINGS SEEN AND LEARNED IN THE FRENCH PROVINCES DURING THE 'CENTENNIAL' YEAR 1889 BY WILLIAM HENRY HURLBERT AUTHOR OF 'IRELAND UNDER COERCION' _WITH A MAP_ LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16th STREET 1890 _All rights reserved_ PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE LONDON Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1890 by William Henry Hurlbert in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington * * * * * CONTENTS INTRODUCTION PAGE I. Scope of the book--French Republicanism condemned by Swiss and American experience--Its relations to the French people xxiii II. M. Gambetta's Parliamentary revolution--What Germany owes to the French Republicans--Legislative usurpation in France and the United States xxvi III. The Executive in France, England, and America--Liberty and the hereditary principle--General Grant on the English Monarchy--Washington's place in American history xxxvii IV. The legend of the First Republic--A carnival of incapacity ending in an orgie of crime--The French people never Republican--Paris and the provinces--The Third Republic surrendered to the Jacobins, and committed to persecution and corruption--Estimated excess of expenditure over income from 1879 to 1889, 7,000,000,000 francs or 280,000,000_l._ li V. Danton's maxim, 'To the victors belong the spoils'--Comparative cost of the French and the British Executive machinery--The Republican war against religion.--The present situation as illustrated by past events lxviii VI. Foreign misconceptions of the French people--An English statesman's notion that there are 'five millions of Atheists' in France--Mr. Bright and Mr. Gladstone the last English public men who will 'cite the Christian Scriptures as an authority'--Signor Crispi on modern constitutional government and the French 'principles of 1789'--Napoleon the only 'Titan of the Revolution'--The debt of France for her modern liberty to America and to England lxxvi VII. The Exposition of 1889 an electoral device--Panic of the Government caused by Parisian support of General Boulanger--Futile attempt of M. Jules Ferry to win back Conservatives to the Republic--Narrow escape of the Republic at the elections of 1889--Steady increase of monarchical party since 1885---Weakness of the Republic as compared with the Second Empire lxxxix VIII. How the Republic maintains itself--A million of people dependent on public employment--M. Constans 'opens Paradise' to 13,000 Mayors--Public servants as political agents--Open pressure on the voters--Growing strength of the provinces.--The hereditary principle alone can now restore the independence of the French Executive--Diplomatic dangers of actual situation--Socialism or a Constitutional Monarchy the only alternatives xcvi CHAPTER I IN THE PAS-DE-CALAIS Calais--Natural and artificial France--The provinces and the departments--The practical joke of the First Consulate--The Counts of Charlemagne and the Prefects of Napoleon--President Carnot at Calais--Politics and Socialism in Calais--Immense outlay on the port, but works yet unfinished--Indifference of the people--A president with a grandfather--The 'Great Carnot' and Napoleon--The party of the 'Sick at heart'--The Louis XVI. of the Republic--Léon Say and the 'White Mouse'--Gambetta's victory in 1877--Political log-rolling, French and American--Republican extravagance and the 'Woollen Stocking'--Boulanger and his legend--Wanted a 'Great Frenchman'--The Duc d'Aumale and the Comte de Paris--The Republican law of exile--The French people not Republican--The Legitimists and the farmers--A French journalist explains the Presidential progress--Why decorations are given 1-22 CHAPTER II IN THE PAS-DE-CALAIS--(_continued_) Boulogne--Arthur Young and the Boulonnais--Boulogne and Quebec--The English and French types of civilisation--A French ecclesiastic on the religious question--The oppressive school law of 1886--The Church and the Concordat--Rural communes paying double for free schools--Vexatious regulations to prevent establishment of free schools--All ministers of religion excluded from school councils--Government officers control the whole system--Permanent magistrates also excluded--Revolt of the religious sentiment throughout France against the new system--Anxiety of Jules Ferry to make peace with the Church--Energy shown by the Catholics in resistance--St.-Omer--The Spanish and scholastic city of Guy Fawkes and Daniel O'Connell--M. De la Gorce, the historian of 1848--High character of the population--Improvement in tone of the French army--Morals of the soldiers--Devotion of the officers to their profession--Derangement of the Executive in France by the elective principle--The 'laicisation' of the schools--Petty persecutions--Children forbidden to attend the funeral of their priest--The Marist Brethren at Albert--Albert and the Maréchal d'Ancre--A chapter of history in a name--Little children stinting their own food, to send another child to school--President Carnot and the nose of M. Ferry--French irreligion in the United States--The case of Girard College--Can Christianity be abolished in France?--The declared object of the Republic--Morals of Artois--Dense population--Fanatics of the family--Increase of juvenile crime--American experience of the schools without religion--A New England report on 'atrocious and flagrant crimes in Massachusetts'--Relative increase of native white population and native crime in America--An American Attorney-General calls the public school system 'a poisonous fountain of misery and moral death'--A local heroine of St.-Omer--The statue of Jacqueline Robins--The Duke of Marlborough and the Jesuits College--A curious sidelight on English politics in 1710--How St.-Omer escaped a siege 23-43 CHAPTER III IN THE PAS-DE-CALAIS--(_continued_) Aire-sur-la-Lys--Local objections to a national railway--A visit to a councillor-general--Pentecost in Artois--The Artesians in 1789--Wealth and power of the clergy--Recognition of the Third Estate long before the Revolution--The English and the French clergy in the last century--Lord Macaulay and Arthur Young--Sympathy of the curés with the people--Turgot, Condorcet and the rural clergy---The Revolution and public education--M. Guizot the founder of the French primary schools--The liberal school ordinance of 1698--The Bishop of Arras, in 1740, on the duty of educating the people--The experience of Louisiana as to public schools and criminality--The two Robespierres saved and educated by priests--What came of it--A rural church and congregation in Artois--The notary in rural France--A village procession--'Beating the bounds' in France--An altar of verdure and roses--The villagers singing as they march--Ancient customs in Northern France 44-52 CHAPTER IV IN THE PAS-DE-CALAIS--(_continued_) Aire-sur-la-Lys--Local and general elections in France--A public meeting in rural Artois--A councillor-general and his constituents--Artois in the 18th and 19th centuries--Well-tilled fields, fine roads, hedges, and orchards--Effect of long or short leases--A meeting in a grange--French, English, and American audiences--Favouritism under the conscription--Extravagant outlay on scholastic palaces--Almost a scene--A political disturbance promoted--Canvassing in England and France--Tenure of office in the French Republic--'To the victors belong the spoils,' the maxim not of Jackson but of Danton--'Epuration,' what it means--If Republicans are not put into office 'they will have civil war'--'No justice of the peace nor public school teacher to be spared'--'Terror and anarchy carried into all branches of the public service'--M. de Freycinet declares that 'servants of the State have no liberty in politics'--The Tweed régime of New York officially organised in France---Men of position reluctant to take office--The expense of French elections--1,300,000_l._ sterling the estimated cost of an opposition campaign--A little dinner in a French country house--The French cuisine national and imported--An old Flemish city--Devastations of the Revolution--The beautiful Church of St.-Pierre--A picturesque Corps de Garde--The tournament of Bayard at Aire--Sixteenth-century merry-makings at Aire--Gifts to Mary of England on her marriage to Philip of Spain--The ancient city of Thérouanne--Public schools in the 17th century--Small landholders in France before 1789. 53-72 CHAPTER V IN THE SOMME Amiens--Picardy Old and New--Arthur Young and Charles James Fox in Amiens--'The look of a capital'--The floating gardens of Amiens--A stronghold of Boulangism--Protest of Amiens against the Terror of 1792--The French nation and the Commune of Paris--Vergniaud denounces the Parisians as the 'slaves of the vilest scoundrels alive'--Gambetta and his balloon--Amiens and the Revolution of September 1870--The rise of M. Goblet--The 'great blank credit opened to the Republic in 1870'--What has become of it--The Prussians in Amiens--Warlike spirit of the Picards--A political portrait of M. Goblet by a fellow citizen--A Roman son and his father's funeral--A typical Republican senator and mayor--How M. Petit demolished the crosses in the cemetery--M. Spuller as Prefect of the Somme--The Christian Brothers and their schools--M. Jules Ferry withholds the salaries earned by teachers--The Emperor Julian of Amiens--How the Sisters were turned out of their schools--The mayor, the locksmith, and the curate--Mdlle. de Colombel--A senatorial epistle--Ulysses deserted by Calypso--Why Boulangism flourishes at Amiens--The First Republic invoked to justify the destruction of crosses on graves--The Cathedral of Amiens and Mr. Ruskin. 73-94 CHAPTER VI IN THE SOMME--(_continued_) Amiens--Party names taken from persons--The effect of Republican misrule at Amiens--Why the Monarchists acted with the Boulangists--The Picards incline towards the Empire--How the Republic of 1848 captured France--Armand Marrast and the French mail coaches--Mr. Sumner's story--The political value of paint--Paris and the provinces--M. Mermeix offers with a few million francs and a few thousand rowdies to change the French Government--General Boulanger's campaign in Picardy--Capturing the mammas by kissing the babies--The Monarchical peasantry--The National Accounts of France not balanced for years--Conservatives excluded from the Budget Committee--The Boulanger programme--Expenses of the political machine in France, England, and America--The Boulangist campaign conducted by voluntary subscriptions--General Boulanger and the army--The common sewer of the discontent of France--The local finances of a French city--Municipal expenses of Amiens--Pressure of the octroi--A local deficit of millions since the Republicans got into power--The mayor and the prefect control the accounts--Immense expenditure on scholastic palaces--Estimated annual increase in France since 1880 of local indebtedness, 10,000,000_l._ sterling--M. Goblet on the growth of young men's monarchical clubs--History of the _octroi_--General prosperity of Picardy--Rural ideas of aristocracy--Land ownership in Ireland and France--'Land-grabbing' in Picardy a hundred years ago--The corvée abolished before the Revolution, but it still exists under the Republic, as a _prestation en nature_--Public education in Picardy two centuries ago--Small tenants as numerous under Edward II. in Picardy as small proprietors now are--Home rule needed in France--'The opinion of a man's legs' 95-124 CHAPTER VII IN THE AISNE St.-Gobain--Paris and the Ile-de-France--Reclamation of the commons--Mischievous haste in the Revolutionary transfer of lands--The evolution of property and order in France and England--The flower gardens of France--The home counties around London compared with the departments around Paris--Superiority of the French fruit and vegetable markets--The military city of La Fère--A local cabbage-leaf--French farmers and the Treaties of Commerce--Arthur Young at St.-Gobain--The largest mirror in the world--The great French glassworks--'An industrial flower on a seignorial stalk, springing from a feudal root'--Evolution without Revolution--Two centuries and a half of industrial progress--Labour in the Middle Ages--The Irish apostle of North-eastern France--The forests of France--A factory in a château--A centenarian royal porter--The Duchesse de Berri and the Empress Eugénie--A co-operative association of consumers--A great manufacturing company working on lines laid down under Louis XIV.--Glass-working, Venetian and French--A jointstock company of the 18th century--The old and new school of factory discipline--French industry and the Terror--'Two aristocrats' called in to save a confiscated property--St.-Gobain and the Eiffel Tower--Royal luxuries in 1673, popular necessaries of life in 1889--How great mirrors are cast--Beauty of the processes--The coming age of glass--Glass pavements and roofs--The hereditary principle among the working classes--Practical co-operation of capital and labour--Schools, asylums, workmen's houses and gardens, social clubs, and savings-banks--Co-operative pension funds--A great economic family--Of 2,650 workpeople more than 50 per cent. employed for more than ten years--A subterranean lake--The crypts of St.-Gobain and the Cisterns of Constantinople--A spectral gondolier--A Venetian promenade with coloured lanterns underground 125-161 CHAPTER VIII IN THE AISNE--(_continued_) Laon, Chauny, and St.-Gobain--The French Revolution and Spanish soda--The most extensive chemical works in France--A miniature Rotterdam--A Cité Ouvrière--The religious war in Chauny--Local and immigrant labour--M. Allain-Targé on Boulanger, the High Court of Justice, common sense and common honesty---French elections, matters of bargain and sale--'The blackguardocracy'--Sketches by a Republican minister--French freemasonry a persecuting sect--Their power in the Government--Utterly unlike the freemasonry of England, Germany, or America--The war against Christianity in France and Spanish America--1867 and the industrial progress of France--Extent of the chemical works of France--Retiring pensions for workmen--Chauny in the olden time--How the honest burghers freed their city in 1432--A contrast with the rioters of the Bastille in 1789--Henri IV. and La Belle Gabrielle--Chauny and the Revolution--The murder of d'Estaing--Chauny acclaims the Restoration, and gives a gold medal to the Prussian commandant--Public charity and public education in the 12th century--Benevolent foundations pillaged in 1793--Law and order under the _ancien régime_--A canal in the law courts--An enterprising American turns rubbish into indiarubber at Chauny 162-185 CHAPTER IX IN THE AISNE--(_continued_) Laon--A feudal fortress home--Chauny and the green monkeys of Rabelais--The festival of the jongleurs and the learned dogs--A damsel of Chauny on English good sense and Queen Victoria--A region of parks and châteaux--The cradle of the French Monarchy--How the Revolution robbed France--The rural reign of pillage and murder--Horrors committed in the provinces during 1789--Arthur Young and Gouverneur Morris on the general depravation and lawlessness--The National Assembly a mere noisy 'mob'--The outbreak of crime which preceded the Terror--The truth about Madame Roland--Her hatred of Marie Antoinette and her thirst for blood--The legend of the Gironde--Brissot de Warville on robbery as a virtuous action--The relations of the French Revolution to property--France more free before 1789 than after it--The laws against emigrants--Girls of fourteen condemned to death--Emigration made a crime, that property might be pillaged--How Irène de Tencin defended the family estate--The story of the Saporta family--The Laonnais in the 18th century--Wide-spread ruin of its churches, convents, and châteaux--Destruction of accumulated capital--How syndicates of rogues stole bronzes, brasswork, and monuments--The story of two châteaux--The bishop's château at Anizy--The burghers and the seigneurs in the 16th century--The local 'directory' in 1790--Wreck, ruin, and robbery--The Château of Pinon--Once the property of a granddaughter of Edward III. of England--A domain of the Duc d'Orléans--A tragedy of love and murder--Death of the Marquis d'Albret--How Pinon passed to the family of De Courvals--The present owner an American lady--The finest château in the Laonnais--What has the Laonnais gained from the ruin of the Anizy? 186-225 CHAPTER X. IN THE AISNE--(_continued_) Laon--The ruins of Coucy-le-Château--A rural inn in France--The sugar crisis--The birthplace of César de Vendóme--The bell which tolls and is heard by the dying alone--The hanging of boys for killing rabbits--Game laws, French and English--The true story of Enguerrand de Coucy--A little feudal city--The finest donjon in France--An official guardian--A dinner with four councillors-general--'What France really wants is a man'--Agricultural philosophers--How a councillor-general tested chemicals--Peasantry on the highway--A land of gardens--A city set on a hill--Simple good-natured people--A raging Boulangist at Laon--What a barber saw in Tonkin--The diamond belt of King Norodom--Castelin the friend of Boulanger--A revolutionary shoemaker on government by committees--Evils of the Exposition--Foreigners steal the ideas of France--The railways, the new feudal system--They are the real 'enemy' of the people--Extravagance of the ministers--Freemasonry at Laon--How it controls the press--The rise of Deputy Doumer--How he lost his seat in 1889--The author of 'Chez Paddy' at Château Thierry--Over-zeal of the curés--The question of working men's unions--M. Doumer's report on the Law of Associations--He proves that the Republic has done absolutely nothing with this law--'Five years' spent in drawing up a report--'The Republic never existed until 1879'--And nothing done for working men until 1888--M. de Freycinet and M. Carnot only 'studied measures which might be taken;' but were not!--The first practical step taken by M. Doumer by making an enormous report in 1888, recommending things to be done hereafter--The true Republic eluding for ten years questions which the Emperor grappled with in 1867--The voters of Laon in September defeat M. Doumer--A curious little chapter of French politics--M. Doumer's coquetry with General Boulanger--After his defeat M. Doumer becomes secretary of the President of the Chamber and lets the working men's question alone--Politics as a profession in France and the United States--Intense centralisation of power in France makes it easier and more profitable than in America 226-258 CHAPTER XI IN THE NORD Valenciennes--The shabbiest historic town in North-eastern France--Perfect cultivation of French Flanders--Cock-fighting and flowers--Prosperity of the cabarets--One to every forty-four inhabitants around Valenciennes--Growth of the mining and manufacturing towns--Interesting buildings in Valenciennes--Carelessness of the citizens about their city--A graceful edifice of the 15th century falling into ruins--Valenciennes in the days of the Hanse of London--Mediæval burghers and their sovereigns--A citizen of Valenciennes, in 1357, the richest man in Europe--Festivals in the olden times--Religious wars--Vauban at Valenciennes--How the clothworkers fled from the Spanish persecution--Dumouriez at Valenciennes--The Hôtel de Ville--Interesting local artists from Simon Marmion down to Watteau and Pater--The triptych of Rubens--Some historic portraits--The Musée Carpeaux--The coal mines of Anzin--14,035 workmen there employed and 200,210,702 tons of coal extracted--Competition with Belgium, the Pas-de-Calais, England, and Germany--The coal mines of Anzin organised a century and a half ago--The discovery of coal in North-eastern France--Energy shown by the local _noblesse_--Pierre Mathieu, an engineer, strikes the vein in 1734--The lords of the soil claim their rights over the coal--A long lawsuit ending in a compromise--A business arrangement under the _ancien régime_--The hereditary principle recognised in the organisation and undisturbed by the Revolution--An orderly, quiet, and prosperous town--A region of factories intermingled with farms--Charming home of the director--The company encourages workmen's homes, with gardens and allotments--An improvement on the Cité Ouvrière--2,628 model homes now occupied by workmen--For three francs a month a workman secures a well-built cottage, with drainage and cellarage, six good rooms and closets, and a plot of ground--2,500 families hold garden sites for cultivation--Fuel allowed, and a general 'participation in profits' of a practical sort--The right of the workmen to be consulted recognised at Anzin a century and a half ago--Beneficial and educational institutions--An industrial republic--How the National Assembly meddled with the mines--Mining laws in France, ancient and modern--Influence of politics on the output of the mines--Every Republican development at Paris diminishes, and every check to Republicanism at Paris develops, the great coal industry--The great strike of 1884--During that year the company expended for the benefit of the workmen a sum equivalent to the profits divided amongst the shareholders--What caused the collision therefore between capital and labour?--A syndicate of miners under a former Anzin workman, Basly, puts a pressure from Paris upon the workmen at Anzin to develop the strike--The pretext found in contracts granted to good workmen--The object of the strike to establish the equality of bad with good workmen--Boycotting and intimidation--Dynamite and Radical deputies from Paris--A Republican minister asks the company to accept Basly and his syndicate as an umpire--Bitter opposition of the Basly syndicate to the saving fund system--They demand a State pension fund--And pending this a fund controlled by the syndicate--A despotism of agitators--Upshot of the strike--The mines in the Pas-de-Calais--Visits to workmen's houses--Fine appearance and carriage of the miners--Their politics--Women and children--Good ventilation and sanitation of the mines--'No man can be a miner not bred to it as a boy'--Excellent housekeeping of the women--Miners of Southern and Northern France--Influence of high altitudes on character--The elective principle in the mines--Morals and conduct of the mining people--Churches and schools--A children's school at St. Waast--A digression into the Artois--What the Tiers-Etat of Northern France wanted in 1789--The _cahiers_ of the Tiers-Etat--Respect for vested interests--A visit to St.-Amand--The conspiracy of Dumouriez--Ruin of a magnificent abbey--A beautiful belfry--Interesting pictures by Watteau--Co-operation at Anzin--What its advantages are to the workmen--Eight per cent. dividends to the members in 1866, and an average during 23 years to 1889 of 11-80/100 per cent.--How the workmen and their families live--Table of articles purchased--Attendance upon the schools--Influence of women and families--Increase of juvenile crime under irreligious education in France and the United States--Louis Napoleon's National Retiring Fund for Old Age--Regulations of the Anzin Council affecting this fund--Average expenditure of the Anzin company for the benefit of workmen 'fifty centimes for every ton of coal extracted'--The Decazeville strikes in 1888--They begin with the murder of one of the best engineers and end with a workman's banquet to the engineer-in-chief 259-331 CHAPTER XII IN THE NORD--(_continued_) Lille--The _Flamand flamingant_--Pertinacity of the Flemish tongue--A historic city without monuments--Old customs and traditions--The Musée Wicar--The unique wax bust--A 'pious foundation' of art, and M. Carolus Duran--Excellent educational institutions of Le Nord--A land flowing with beer--Increase of the factory populations--Decrease of drunkenness in the cities--Increase in the rural districts--Special cabarets for women--Should women smoke?--Flemish cock-fighting and the example of England--A model Republican prefect--Juvenile prostitution--The souls of the people and their votes--Danton's system of uneducated judges--Dislike of good people to politics--A pessimist rebuked--The Monarchist majorities in Lille--Inaccurate representation of the people in the Chamber--Hazebrouck and its Dutch gardens--The Republic hated for its extravagance--Relative strength of Republican and Monarchical majorities--Elections conducted under secret instructions--Cutting down majorities--The case of M. Leroy-Beaulieu in the Hérault--Keeping out dangerous economists--Ballot 'stuffing' in France and the United States--The methods of Robespierre readopted--Systematic 'invalidation' of elections--The people must not choose the wrong men--Boulanger and Joffrin--'Tactical necessities' in politics--The delusion of universal suffrage--An Austrian view of the elective and hereditary principles--Energy of the Catholics in North-eastern France--Father Damien--Public charity--Hereditary mendicants in French Flanders--Dogs and _douaniers_--The division of communes--Foundling hospitals and the struggle for life--Mutual Aid Societies--Is woman a 'Clubbable' animal?--M. Welche and the agricultural syndicates--'Les Prévoyants de l'Avenir,' a phenomenal success--It begins in 1882 with 757 members and 6,237 francs; in 1889 it numbers 59,932 members, with a capital of 1,541,868 francs--The Franco-German war and the religious sentiment--The great Catholic University--Private contributions of 11,000,000 francs--The scientific and medical schools--M. Ferry and the free universities--Catholic education in France and the United States--The case of Girard College--The dangers of the French system--The monopoly of the University of France--Liberal outlay of the Catholics of Paris--A mediæval Catholic merchant--'The work of God' in a business partnership--Mutual assistance in the Lille factories--Model houses at Roubaix--A true _Mont-de-Piété_--The Masurel fund of 1607--Loans without interest--A prosperous charity plundered by the Republic--A benevolent fund of 455,454 francs in 1789 reduced to 10,408 francs in 1803--The fund restored under the Monarchy and Second Empire--The 'King William's Fund' of the Netherlanders in London--Count de Bylandt and Sir Polydore de Keyser 332-368 CHAPTER XIII IN THE MARNE Reims--The capital of the French kings--Clotilde and Clovis, Jeanne d'Arc and Urban II.--Vineyards and factories--The wines of Champagne known and unknown--The red wine of Bouzy--Mr. Canning and still Champagne--The syndication of famous brands--A visit to the cardinal archbishop--Employers and employed--The Catholic workmen's clubs and the Christian corporations--M. Léon Harmel--The religious education of a factory--How the workmen Christianised themselves--The conversion of a wife by a gown--The local authorities discouraging religion--'Planting Christians like vines'--'The Rights of Man' and capital and labour--Mediæval and modern methods compared--Capital and universal suffrage--Money in the first Revolution--Le Pelletier, the millionaire, and the mobs of the Palais Royal--The dramatic justice of a murder--Unwritten chapters of revolutionary history--The duty of employers--'The Masters' Catechism'--The invasion of 1870 and the Christian corporations--Modern syndications and the ancient _maîtrise_--Professional syndicates and professional strikes--Good out of evil--The working men and the upper classes--Count Albert de Mun--A popular vote against universal suffrage--The Holy See and the Catholic labour movement in France--The parochial clergy and the laymen--The Wesleyans and the Catholics--Privileged purveyors--The financial aspect of the Catholic corporations--A revival of the old guilds--The national system of the corporations--Provincial and general assemblies--The German _Cultur-Kampf_ and the French Catholic clubs--The Republican attack on religion--Religious freedom and freedom from religion--The State church of unbelief--The 'moral unity' men--Napoleon and Guizot--The Jacobins of 1792 and 1879--Moral unity under Louis XIV.--Alva and M. Jules Ferry--A chapter of the Revolution at Reims--Mr. Carlyle's little 'murder of about eight persons'--The political influence of massacres--The 'days of September' and the elections to the Convention--How they chose Jacobin deputies at Reims--The documentary story of the eight murders--Mayors under the Republic--The defence of Lille--How the Republic voted a monument and Louis Philippe built it--Desecration of a great cathedral--The legend of Ruhl and the sacred ampulla--The demolition of St.-Nicaise and the bargain of Santerre--How Napoleon disciplined the Faubourg St.-Antoine--Is the Cathedral of Reims in danger?--Its restoration under the cardinal archbishop--The budget of public worship--Expenses of the administration--The salaries of the clergy, Protestant and Catholic--Jewish rabbis paid less than servants in the Ministère--Steady cutting down of the budget--No statistics of religious opinion in France--A Benedictine archbishop--Great increase of the religious sentiment in Reims--The Church driven by the Republic into opposition--Léon Say and the present Government--The home of Montaigne--A deputy of the Dordogne invalidated to snub Léon Say--Socrates and David Hume in modern France--Dogmatic irreligion--Jules Simon on the proscription of Christianity--Abolishing the history of France--A practical protest of the Catholic Marne--The great pope of the crusades--Catholic and Masonic processions--The Triduum of Urban II.--A great celebration at Châtillon--Hildebrand and his disciple--The Angelus and the 'Truce of God'--Mgr. Freppel on the anti-religious war--Jeanne d'Arc at Reims--A magnificent festival--Gounod's Mass of the Maid of Orléans--Catholic protest against the persecution of the Jews--The Republic threatens the grand rabbis with the archbishops--Deriding a death-bed in a hospital--The amnesty of the Communards--The rehabilitation of crime--Tyranny in the village schools--Religious freedom in France and Turkey--The home of Jeanne d'Arc--'Laicising' Domrémy-la-Pucelle--Piety and hypnotism--The chamber and garden of Jeanne--Louis XI. and the French yeomen--A shrine converted into a show--A scurvy job in a place of pilgrimage--The banner of Patay--Jeanne and her voices--A western worshipper of the Maid of Orléans--The Château de Bourlémont--The Princesse d'Hénin and Madame de Staël--The revolutionary traffic in passports--A generous act of Madame Du Barry--'Laicisation' in the Vosges--The defeat of Jules Ferry--The Monarchists going up, the Republicans going down 369-436 CHAPTER XIV IN THE CALVADOS Val Richer--The home of Guizot--The French Protestants and the Third Republic--Free education in France the work of Guizot--Education in France checked by the Revolution--Mediæval provisions for public education--The effect of the English and the religious wars upon education in France--Indiscriminate destruction of educational foundations by the First Republic--Progress of illiteracy after 1793--The guillotine as a financial expedient--The Directory painted by themselves--The two Merlins--'Republican Titans' wearing royal livery--Barras on the cruelty of poltroons--Education under Napoleon--The Concordat and the Church--Napoleon's University of France--A machine for creating moral unity--The despotism of 1802 and 1882--The Liberals of 1830--Primary education under M. Guizot--The rights of the family and the encroachments of the State--Catholic vindication of Protestant liberty under Louis XIV.--The heirs of M. Guizot in Normandy and Languedoc--M. de Witt at Val Richer--Three historic châteaux--The birthplace of Montesquieu at La Brède--The Abbey of Thomas à-Becket--The Château de Broglie--Lisieux--M. Guizot as a landscape gardener--A Protestant statesman among the Catholics of the Calvados--The Sieur de Longiumeau and the sacred right of insurrection--'Moral unity' and 'moral harmony'--Catholicism in the Calvados, Brittany, and Poitou--Charlotte Corday--The historic family of De Witt--An election in the Calvados--The people and the functionaries--Bonnebosq--The Normans and personal liberty--The procedure of a French election--Mayors with votes in their sleeves--Glass urns and wooden boxes--Gerrymandering in France and America--Catholic constituents congratulating their Protestant candidate--'Vive le roi!'--M. Bocher on two Republican presidents--Wilsonism and the Norman farmers--The domestic distilleries--The war against religion in Normandy--'The Church as the key of trade'--How the officials revise the elections--Prefects interfering in the elections--A solid Monarchist department--Politics and the apple crop--The weak point of the Monarchists--The traditions of Versailles and 'modern high life'--Louis XV. and Barras--Madame Du Barry and Madame Tallien--The 'noble' grooms of ignoble _cocottes_--The Legitimists under the Empire--The war of 1870-71, and the fusion of classes--Historic names in the French army--Officers and the châteaux--An American minister and the Comte de Paris--The Monarchist and the Republican representatives--The Duc de Broglie in the Eure--Architectural evidence as to the social life of the _ancien régime_--The war of classes a consequence, not a cause, of the Revolution--The Vicomte de Noailles and Artemus Ward--Feudal serfs and New York anti-renters--Jefferson and _lettres de cachet_--The Bastille and the Tower of London--Don Quixote and the wine skins--The Château d'Eu--Private rights in the 14th century--The 'Nonpareil' of the world--La Grande Mademoiselle and her lieges at Eu--Her hospitals and charities--A quick-witted mayor--A model Republican prefect--The Duc de Penthièvre--The Orléans family at Eu--Local popularity of the Comte and Comtesse de Paris--Norman grievances, old and new--A Protestant movement in Normandy--American associations with Broglie, La Brède, and Val Richer--Mr. Bancroft on the ministers of Louis Philippe--The 'military council' of Royalist officers in the Revolution--Louis Philippe and Thiers--The rights of property under the Second Empire--The seizure of the Orléans property--The Jacobin levelling of incomes--The reformer Réal as an opulent count--The Orléans property restored in 1872, as a matter of 'common honesty'--What the princes recovered, and what they presented to France--The 'wounded conscience' of a nation--The daughter of Madame de Staël--The present Duc de Broglie and the anti-religions war--The Conservative republic made impossible--The Radical Jacobins rule the roast--'The Republic commits suicide to save itself from slaughter'--Floquet the master of Carnot--The war against God--Two statesmen of the South--Nîmes and M. Guizot--The religious wars in Languedoc--The son of M. Guizot at Uzès--Politics in the Gard--Catholics and Protestants fighting side by side--The late M. Cornelis de Witt--The hereditary principle in Holland--What the United States learned from the Netherlands and from England--How the Duke of York missed an American throne--A Protestant monarchist in the Lot-et-Garonne--The plums of Agen and the apricots of Nicole--Coeur de Lion and Bertrand de Boru--The home of Nostradamus--Why the Germans beat the French--The barber bard of Languedoc--Scaliger and the Huguenots--Nérac and the Reine Margot--The 'Lovers' War'--The Revocation and the Revolution--The ruin of property in 1793--Decline of the wealth of France--The monarchists of the Aveyron--A banquet of monarchist mayors--The need of a man in France--'A bolt out of the blue'--How the Duc d'Orléans demoralised the government--The young conscript at Clairvaux--Carnot surrenders to the Commune--A Russian verdict on the republican blunder--The 'Prince' of the people--How the Government has helped the Comte de Paris--Irregularities of republican taxation--Corsica and the Corrèze--France the most heavily taxed country in the world--Steady and enormous increase of taxation--Cost of collecting the revenue--Political dishonesty on the stump--The persecution of candidates--Invasion of private life--Bullying the magistrates--Public servants ordered to the polls--Curés fined for preaching religious duty--The Conférences du Sud-Ouest--M. Princeteau at Bordeaux--The fête of the Bastille at Bordeaux and Nîmes--A '_Fils de Dieu_' at Nîmes--Socialism at Alais--The suppression of inheritances--'Property a privilege to be abolished'--'Opulence an infamy'--The Socialists and the Government--Persecution of the Protestants--'Pray, what is God?'--Strength of Socialism in South-eastern France--Two typical departments--Socialism in the Bouches-du-Rhône--Historic France in the Calvados--Boulanger at Marseilles--A Socialist coachman at Arles--A great Catholic employer of labour at Marseilles--The largest glycerine works in the world--Church candles and dynamite--Taxing industries to death--Dutch competition with France--A Christian corporation in Marseilles--'An economical kitchen'--An uphill fight for law and order--The Christians of the 4th and of the 19th centuries--The Radicals hold the bridle--Shall France be Christian or Nihilist?--Ernest Renan on the situation in 1872--Jules Simon on the situation in 1882--The 'civic duties' of man and the guillotine--What will the situation be in 1892? 437-515 MAP OF FRANCE _at end of book_ * * * * * _Errata_ P. 24, 11 lines from top, _for_ rival _read_ rural. P. 64, line 1, _for_ de Royes _read_ de Royer. P. 91, line 6 from top. M. Spuller, Prefect of the Somme in 1880, was the brother of the present Minister of Foreign Affairs, not the Minister himself. P. 96, line 5 from top, _for Montauban _read_ Montaudon. P. 105, line 4 from bottom, _for_ being _read_ long. P. 395, 3 lines from top, _for_ Abbeys _read_ Abbaye. Wherever found, _for_ de Fallières _read_ Fallières. BIBLIOGRAPHY As I have not wished to swell the bulk of this book by references, and as many statements made in it concerning men and things of the first Republic may seem to my readers to need verification, I subjoin a brief list of authorities consulted by me in this connection. It is incomplete, but will be found to cover every material point concerning the epoch to which it refers. BIRÉ, E. La Légende des Girondins. CAMPARDON, EMILE. Le Tribunal Révolutionnaire à Paris d'après les Documents Originaux. DAUBAN, C. A. La Démagogie à Paris en 1793. DAUBAN, C. A. Les Prisons de Paris sous la Révolution. DAUBAN, C. A. Mémoires Inédits de Pétion, de Buzot et de Barbaroux. DAUBAN, C. A. Mémoires de Madame Roland. Etude sur Madame Roland. Lettres en partie inédites de Madame Roland. DE BARANTE. Histoire de la Convention Nationale. DE LAVERGNE, L. (de l'Institut). Economie rurale de la France depuis 1789. DE MONTROL, F. Mémoires de Brissot, publiés par son fils. DE PRESSENSÉ, EDMOND. L'Eglise et la Révolution Française. DONIOL, H. Histoire des Classes Rurales en France. DU BLED. Les Causeurs de la Révolution. DURAND DE MAILLANE. Histoire de la Convention Nationale. FEUILLET DE CONCHES. Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette et Madame Elisabeth. FORNERON, H. Histoire Générale des Emigrés. GALLOIS, LÉONARD. Histoire des Journaux et des Journalistes de la Révolution Française. GONCOURT, EDMUND ET JULES. Histoire de la Société Française pendant la Révolution. GRANIER DE CASSAGNAC. Histoire des Girondins et des Massacres de Septembre. GUILLON, l'Abbé. Les Martyrs de la Foi pendant la Révolution Française. HAMEL, ERNEST. Histoire de Robespierre. JEFFERSON, THOMAS. Memoirs and Correspondence. LAFERRIÈRE (de l'Institut). Essai sur l'histoire du Droit Français. MALLET DU PAN. Mémoires et Correspondance. MASSON, FRÉDÉRIC. Le Département des Affaires Etrangères pendant la Révolution. MORRIS, GOUVERNEUR. Diary and Letters. MORTIMER-TERNAUX. Histoire de la Terreur, 1792-1794, d'après des documents authentiques et inédits. ROCQUAIN, F. L'Esprit Révolutionnaire avant la Révolution. TISSOT, P. F. Histoire complète de la Révolution Française. VATEL, CH. Charlotte Corday. YOUNG, ARTHUR. Voyages en France pendant les années 1787-89. Traduction de M. Le Sage; Introduction par L. de Lavergne. * * * * * INTRODUCTION I This volume is neither a diary nor a narrative. To have given it either of these forms, each of which has its obvious advantages, would have extended it beyond all reasonable limits. It is simply a selection from my very full memoranda of a series of visits paid to different parts of France during the year 1889. These visits would never have been made, had not my previous acquaintance with France and with French affairs, going back now--such as it is--to the early days of the Second Empire, given me reasonable ground to hope that I might get some touch of the actual life and opinions of the people in the places to which I went. My motive for making these visits was the fact that what it has become the fashion to call 'parliamentary government,' or, in other words, the unchecked administration of the affairs of a great people by the directly elected representatives of the people, is now formally on its trial in France. We do not live under this form of government in the United States, but as a thoughtless tendency towards this form of government has shown itself of late years even in the United States and much more strongly in Great Britain, I thought it worth while to see it at work and form some notion of its results in France. Republican Switzerland has carefully sought to protect herself against this form of government. The Swiss Constitution of 1874 reposes ultimately on the ancient autonomy of the Cantons. Each Canton has one representative in the Federal Executive Council. The members of this Council are elected for three years by the Federal Assembly, and from among their own number they choose the President of the Confederation, who serves for one year only--a provision probably borrowed from the first American Constitution. The Cantonal autonomy was further strengthened in 1880 by the establishment of the Federal Tribunal on lines taken from those of the American Supreme Court. There is a division of the Executive authority between the Federal Assembly and the Federal Council, which is yet to be tested by the strain of a great European war, but which has so far developed no serious domestic dangers. The outline map which accompanies this volume will show that my visits, which began with Marseilles and the Bouches-du-Rhône, upon my return from Rome to Paris in January 1889, on the eve of the memorable election of General Boulanger as a deputy for the Seine in that month, were extended to Nancy in the east of France, to the frontiers of Belgium and the coasts of the English Channel in the north, to Rennes, Nantes, and Bordeaux in the west, and to Toulouse, Nîmes, and Arles in the south. I went nowhere without the certainty of meeting persons who could and would put me in the way of seeing what I wanted to see, and learning what I wanted to learn. I took with me everywhere the best books I could find bearing on the true documentary history of the region I was about to see, and I concerned myself in making my memoranda not only with the more or less fugitive aspects of public action and emotion at the present time, but with the past, which has so largely coloured and determined these fugitive aspects. Naturally, therefore, when I sat down to put this volume into shape, I very soon found it to be utterly out of the question for me to try to do justice to all that had interested and instructed me in every part of France which I had visited. I have contented myself accordingly with formulating, in this Introduction, my general convictions as to the present condition and outlook of affairs in France and as to the relation which actually exists between the Third Republic, now installed in power at Paris, and the great historic France of the French people; and with submitting to my readers, in support of these convictions, a certain number of digests of my memoranda, setting forth what I saw, heard, and learned in some of the departments which I visited with most pleasure and profit. In doing this I have written out what I found in my note-books less fully than the importance of the questions involved might warrant. But what I have written, I have written out fairly and as exactly as I could. I do not hold myself responsible for the often severe and sometimes scornful judgments pronounced by my friends in the provinces upon public men at Paris. But I had no right to modify or withhold them. In the case of conversations held with friends, or with casual acquaintances, I have used names only where I had reason to believe that, adding weight to what was recorded, they might be used without injury or inconvenience of any kind to my interlocutors. The sum of my conclusions is suggested in the title of this book. I speak of France as one thing, and of the Republic as another thing. I do not speak of the French Republic, for the Republic as it now exists does not seem to me to be French, and France, as I have found it, is certainly not Republican. II The Third French Republic, as it exists to-day, is just ten years old. It owes its being, not to any direct action of the French people, but to the success of a Parliamentary revolution, chiefly organised by M. Gambetta. The ostensible object of this revolution was to prevent the restoration of the French Monarchy. The real object of it was to take the life of the executive authority in France. M. Gambetta fell by the way, but the evil he did lives after him. He was one of the celebrities of an age in which celebrity has almost ceased to be a distinction. But the measure of his political capacity is given in the fact that he was an active promoter of the insurrection of September 4, 1870, in Paris against the authority of the Empress Eugénie. A more signal instance is not to be found in history of that supreme form of public stupidity which President Lincoln stigmatised, in a memorable phrase, as the operation of 'swapping horses while crossing a stream.' It was worse than an error or a crime, it was simply silly. The inevitable effect of it was to complete the demoralisation of the French armies, and to throw France prostrate before her conquerors. A very well-known German said to me a few years ago at Lucerne, where we were discussing the remarkable trial of Richter, the dynamiter of the Niederwald: 'Ah! we owe much to Gambetta, and Jules Favre, and Thiers, and the French Republic. They saved us from a social revolution by paralysing France. We could never have exacted of the undeposed Emperor at Wilhelmshöhe, with the Empress at Paris, the terms which those blubbering jumping-jacks were glad to accept from us on their knees.' The imbecility of September 4, 1870, was capped by the lunacy of the Commune of Paris in 1871. This latter was more than France could bear, and a wholesome breeze of national feeling stirs in the 'murders grim and great,' by which the victorious Army of Versailles avenged the cowardly massacre of the hostages, and the destruction of the Tuileries and the Hôtel de Ville. With what 'mandate,' and by whom conferred, M. Thiers went to Bordeaux in 1871, is a thorny question, into which I need not here enter. What he might have done for his country is, perhaps, uncertain. What he did we know. He founded a republic of which, in one of his characteristic phrases, he said that: 'it must be Conservative, or it could not be,' and this he did with the aid of men without whose concurrence it would have been impossible, and of whom he knew perfectly well that they were fully determined the Republic should not be Conservative. He became Chief of the State, and this for a time, no doubt, he imagined would suffice to make the State Conservative. He was supported by an Assembly in which the Monarchists of France predominated. The triumphant invasion and the imminent peril of the country had brought monarchical France into the field as one man. M. Gambetta's absurd Government of the National Defence, even in that supreme moment of danger when the Uhlans were hunting it from pillar to post, actually compelled the Princes of the House of France to fight for their country under assumed names, but it could not prevent the sons of all the historic families of France from risking their lives against the public enemy. All over France a general impulse of public confidence put the French Conservatives forward as the men in whose hands the reconstitution of the shattered nation would be safest. The popular instinct was justified by the result. From 1871 to 1877, France was governed, under the form of a republic, by a majority of men who neither had, nor professed to have, any more confidence in the stability of a republican form of government, than Alexander Hamilton had in the working value of the American Constitution which he so largely helped to frame, and which he accepted as being the best it was possible in the circumstances to get. But they did their duty to France, as he did his duty to America. To them--first under M. Thiers, and then under the Maréchal-Duc de Magenta--France is indebted for the reconstruction of her beaten and disorganised army, for the successful liquidation of the tremendous war-indemnity imposed upon her by victorious Germany, for the re-establishment of her public credit, and for such an administration of her national finances as enabled her, in 1876, to raise a revenue of nearly a thousand millions of francs, or forty millions of pounds sterling, in excess of the revenue raised under the Empire seven years before, without friction and without undue pressure. In 1869, the Empire had raised a revenue of 1,621,390,248 francs. In 1876, the Conservative Republic raised a revenue of 2,570,505,513 francs. With this it covered all the cost of the public service, carried the charges resulting from the war and its consequences, set apart 204,000,000 francs for public works, and yet left in the Treasury a balance of 98,000,000 francs. It is told of one of the finance ministers of the Restoration, Baron Louis, that when a deputy questioned him once about the finances, he replied, 'Do you give us good politics and I will give you good finances.' It seems to me that the budget of 1876 proves the politics of the Conservative majority in the French Parliament of that time to have been good. The Maréchal-Duc de Magenta was then president. M. Thiers had resigned his office in 1873, in consequence of a dispute with the Assembly, the true history of which may one day be edifying, and the Assembly had elected the Maréchal-Duc to fill his place. I have been told by one of the most distinguished public men in France that, in his passionate desire to prevent the election of the Maréchal Duc, M. Thiers was bent upon promoting a movement to bring against the soldier of Magenta an accusation like that which led to the condemnation of the Maréchal Bazaine, and that he was with difficulty restrained from doing this. Monstrous as this attempt would have been, it hardly seems more monstrous than the abortive attempt which was actually made, under the inspiration of M. Gambetta and his friends, to convict the Maréchal Duc and his ministers, 'the men of the 16th of May,' of conspiring, while in possession of the executive power, to bring about the overthrow of the Republic and the restoration of the Monarchy. M. Gambetta and his party having formed in 1877 what is known as 'the alliance of the 363,' determined to drive the Maréchal-Duc from the Presidency, to take the control of public affairs entirely into their own hands, and to reduce the Executive to the position created for Louis XVI. by the revolutionists of the First Republic, before the atrocious plot of August 10, 1792, made an end of the monarchy and of public order altogether, and prepared the way for the massacres of September. Whether the Maréchal-Duc might not have resisted this revolutionary conspiracy to the end it is not worth while now to inquire. Suffice it that he gave way finally, and, refusing to submit to the degradation of the high post he held, accepted M. Gambetta's alternative and relinquished it. It appears to me that the true aim of the Republicans (who had carried the elections of 1877 by persuading France that Germany would at once invade the country if the Conservatives won the day) is sufficiently attested by the fact that they chose, as the successor of the Maréchal-Duc, a public man chiefly conspicuous for the efforts he had made to secure the abolition of the Executive office! M. Grévy had failed to get the Presidency of the Republic suppressed when the organic law was passed in 1875. He was more successful when, on January 30, 1879, he consented to accept the Presidency. When he entered the Elysée, the executive authority went out of it. The Third French Republic, such as it now exists, was constituted on that day--the anniversary, by the way, oddly enough, of the decapitation of Charles I. of England at Whitehall. That is the date, not 'centennial,' but 'decennial,' which ought to have been celebrated in 1889 by the Third French Republic. In his first Message, February 7, 1879, M. Grévy formally said: 'I will never resist the national will expressed by its constitutional organs.' From that moment the parliamentary majority became the Government of France. Something very like this French parliamentary revolution of 1879 to which France is indebted for the Third Republic as it exists to-day, was attempted in the United States about ten years before. In both instances the intent of the parliamentary revolutionists was to take the life of a Constitution without modifying its forms. The failure of the American is not less instructive than the success of the French parliamentary revolution, and as all my readers, perhaps, are not as familiar with American political history as with some other topics, I hope I may be pardoned for briefly pointing this out. Upon the assassination of President Lincoln in April 1865 the Vice-President, Andrew Johnson, became President. He was a Southern man, and as one of the Senators from the Southern State of Tennessee he had refused to go with his State in her secession from the Union. To this he owed his association on the Presidential ticket with Mr. Lincoln at the election in 1864. He was no more and no less opposed to slavery in the abstract than President Lincoln, of whom it is well known that he regarded his own now famous proclamation of 1863 freeing the slaves in the seceded States, as an illegal concession to the Anti-Slavery feeling of the North and of Europe, and that he spoke of it with undisguised contempt, as a 'Pope's bull against the comet.' Like Mr. Lincoln, Andrew Johnson was devoted to the Union, but he was a Constitutional Democrat in his political opinions, and the Civil War having ended in the defeat of the Confederacy, he gradually settled down to his constitutional duty, as President of the United States, towards the States which had formed the Confederacy. This earned for him the bitter hostility of the then dominant majority in both Houses of Congress, led by a man of unbridled passions and of extraordinary energy, Thaddeus Stevens, a representative from Pennsylvania, a sort of American Couthon, infirm of body but all compact of will. It was the purpose of this majority to humiliate and chastise, not to conciliate, the defeated South. Already, under President Lincoln, this purpose had brought the leaders of the majority more than once into collision with the Executive. Under President Johnson they forced a collision with the Veto power of the President, by two unconstitutional bills, one attainting the whole people of the South, and the other aimed at the authority of the Executive over his officers. In the policy thus developed they had the co-operation of the Secretary at War, Mr. Stanton, and during the recess of Congress in August 1867 it became apparent that with his assistance they meant to subjugate the Executive. President Johnson quickly brought matters to an issue. He first, during the recess, suspended Mr. Stanton from the War Office, putting General Grant in charge of it, and upon the reassembling of Congress in December 1867 'removed' him, and directed him to hand over his official portfolio to General Thomas, appointed to fill the place _ad interim_. Thereupon the majority of the House carried through that body a resolution of impeachment, prepared, by a committee, the necessary articles, and brought the President to trial before the Senate, constituted as a court for 'high crimes and misdemeanours.' Two of the articles of impeachment were founded upon disrespect alleged to have been publicly shown by the President to Congress. The President, by his counsel, among whom were Mr. Evarts, since then Secretary of State, and now a Senator for New York, and Mr. Stanberry, an Attorney-General of the United States, appeared before the Senate on March 13, 1868. The President asked for forty days, in which to prepare an answer. The Senate, without a division, refused this, and ordered the answer to be filed within ten days. The trial finally began on March 30, and, after keeping the country at fever-heat for two months, ended on May 26, in the failure of the impeachment. Only three out of the eleven articles were voted upon. Upon each thirty-five Senators voted the President to be 'Guilty,' and nineteen Senators voted him to be 'Not guilty.' As the Constitution of the United States requires a two-thirds vote in such a trial, the Chief Justice declared the President to be acquitted, and the attempt of the Legislature to dominate the Executive was defeated. Seven of the nineteen Senators voting 'Not guilty' were of the Republican party which had impeached the President, and it will be seen that a change of one vote in the minority would have carried the day for the revolutionists. So narrow was our escape from a peril which the founders of the Constitution had foreseen, and against which they had devised all the safeguards possible in the circumstances of the United States. What, in such a case, would become of a French President? The American President is not elected by Congress except in certain not very probable contingencies, and when the House votes for a President, it votes not by members but by delegations, each state of the Union casting one vote. The French President is elected by a convention of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, in which every member has a vote, and the result is determined by an actual majority. The Senate of the United States is entirely independent of the House. A large proportion of the members of the French Senate are elected by the Assembly, and the Chamber outnumbers the Senate by nearly two to one. What the procedure of the French Senate, sitting as a High Court on the impeachment of a President by the majority of the Chamber, would probably be, may be gathered from the recent trial by that body of General Boulanger. With the resignation of the Maréchal-Duc and the election of M. Grévy the Government of France, ten years ago, became what it now is--a parliamentary oligarchy, with absolutely no practical check upon its will except the recurrence every four years of the legislative elections. And as these elections are carried out under the direct control, through the prefects and the mayors, of the Minister of the Interior, himself a member of the parliamentary oligarchy, the weakness of this check might be easily inferred, had it not been demonstrated by facts during the elections of September 22 and October 6, 1889. How secure this parliamentary oligarchy feels itself to be, when once the elections are over, appears from the absolutely cynical coolness with which the majority goes about what is called the work of 'invalidating' the election of members of the minority. Something of the sort went on in my own country during the 'Reconstruction' period which followed the Civil War, but it never assumed the systematic form now familiar in France. As practised under the Third Republic it revives the spirit of the methods by which Robespierre and the sections 'corrected the mistakes' made by the citizens of Paris in choosing representatives not amenable to the discipline of the 'sea-green incorruptible'; and as a matter of principle, leads straight on to that usurpation of all the powers of the State by a conspiracy of demagogues which followed the subsidized Parisian insurrection of August 10, 1792. Such a _régime_ as this sufficiently explains the phenomenon of 'Boulangism,' by which Englishmen and Americans are so much perplexed. Put any people into the machinery of a centralized administrative despotism in which the Executive is merely the instrument of a majority of the legislature, and what recourse is there left to the people but 'Boulangism'? 'Boulangism' is the instinctive, more or less deliberate and articulate, outcry of a people living under constitutional forms, but conscious that, by some hocus-pocus, the vitality has been taken out of those forms. It is the expression of the general sense of insecurity. In a country situated as France now is, it is natural that this inarticulate outcry should merge itself at first into a clamour for the revision of a Constitution which has been made a delusion and a snare; and then into a clamour for a dynasty which shall afford the nation assurance of an enduring Executive raised above the storm of party passions, and sobering the triumph of party majorities with a wholesome sense of responsibility to the nation. There would have been no lack of 'Boulangism' in France forty years ago had M. Thiers and his legislative cabal got the better of the Prince President in the 'struggle for life' which then went on between the Place St.-Georges and the Elysée! III There are two periods, one in the history of modern England, the other in the history of the United States, which directly illuminate the history of France since the overthrow of the ancient French Monarchy in 1792. One of these is the period of the Long Parliament in England. The other is the brief but most important interval which elapsed between the recognition of the independence of the thirteen seceded British colonies in America, at Versailles in 1783, and the first inauguration of Washington as President of the United States at New York on April 30, 1789. No Englishman or American, who is reasonably familiar with the history of either of these periods, will hastily attribute the phenomena of modern French politics to something essentially volatile and unstable in the character of the French people. My own acquaintance, such as it is, with France--for I should be sorry to pretend to a thorough knowledge of France, or of any country not my own--goes back, as I have intimated, to the early days of the Second Empire. It has been my good fortune, at various times, to see a good deal of the social and political life of France, and I long ago learned that to talk of the character of the French people is almost as slipshod and careless as to talk of the character of the Italian people. The French people are not the outgrowth of a common stock, like the Dutch or the Germans. The people of Provence are as different in all essential particulars from the people of Brittany, the people of French Flanders from the people of Gascony, the people of Savoy from the people of Normandy, as are the people of Kent from the people of the Scottish Highlands, or the people of Yorkshire from the people of Wales. The French nation was the work, not of the French people, but of the kings of France, not less but even more truly than the Italian nation, such as we see it gradually now forming, is the work of the royal House of Savoy. The sudden suppression of the National Executive by a parliamentary conspiracy at Paris in 1792 violently interrupted the orderly and natural making of France, just as the sudden suppression of the National Executive in 1649 after the occupation of Edinburgh by Argyll and the surrender of Colchester to Fairfax had put England at the mercy of Cromwell's 'honest' troopers, and of knavish fanatics like Hugh Peters, violently interrupted the making of Britain. It took England a century to recover her equilibrium. Between Naseby Field in 1645 and Culloden Moor in 1746 England had, except during the reign of Charles II., no better assurance of continuous domestic peace than France enjoyed first under Louis Philippe and then under the Second Empire. During those hundred years Englishmen were thought by the rest of Europe to be as excitable, as volatile, and as unstable as Frenchmen are not uncommonly thought by the rest of mankind now to be. There is a curious old Dutch print of these days in which England appears as a son of Adam in the hereditary costume, standing at gaze amid a great disorder of garments strewn upon the floor, while a scroll displayed above him bears this legend: I am an Englishman, and naked I stand here, Musing in my mind what garment I shall wear. Now I will wear this, and now I will wear that, And now I will wear--I don't know what! There was as much--and as little--reason thus to depict the England of the seventeenth, as there is thus to depict the France of the nineteenth century. If there had ever been, a hundred years ago, such a thing as a French Republic, founded, as the American Republic of 1787 was founded, by the deliberate will of the people, and offering them a reasonable prospect of maintaining liberty and law, that Republic would exist to-day. That we are watching the desperate effort of a centralised parliamentary despotism at Paris in the year 1890 to maintain a 'Third Republic' is conclusive proof that this was not the case. France--the French people, that is--- had no more to do with the overthrow of the monarchy of Louis XVI., with the fall of the monarchy of Charles X., with the collapse of the monarchy of July, or with the abolition of the Second Empire, than with the abdication of Napoleon I. at Fontainebleau. Not one of these catastrophes was provoked by France or the French people; not one of them was ever submitted by its authors to the French people for approval. Only two French governments during the past century can be accurately said to have been definitely branded and condemned as failures by the deliberate voice of the French people. One of these was the First Republic, which after going through a series of convulsions equally grotesque and ghastly, was swept into oblivion by an overwhelming vote of the French people in response to the appeal of the first Napoleon. The other was the Second Republic, which was put upon trial by the Third Napoleon on December 10, 1851, and condemned to immediate extinction by a vote of 7,439,219 to 640,737. I am at a loss to see how it is possible to deduce from these simple facts of French history the conclusion that the French people are, and for a century have been, madly bent upon getting a Republic established in France, unless, indeed, I am to suppose that the French Republicans proceed upon the principle said to be justified by the experience of countries in which the standard of mercantile morality is not absolutely puritanical--that three successive bankruptcies will enable a really clever man to retire from business with a handsome fortune! If it were possible, as happily it is impossible, that the American people could be afflicted with a single year of such a Republic as that which now exists in France, we would rid ourselves of it, if necessary, by seeking annexation to Canada under the crown of our common ancestors, or by inviting the exiled Dom Pedro to recross the Atlantic and accept the throne of a North American Empire, with substantial guarantees that if we should ever change our minds and put him politely on board a ship again for Europe, the cheque given to him on his departure would not be dishonoured on presentation to the national bankers! It is the penalty, I suppose, of our position in the United States, as the first and, so far, the only successful great republic of modern times, that we are expected to accept a sort of moral responsibility for all the experiments in republicanism, no matter how absurd, odious, or preposterous they may be, which it may come into the heads of people anywhere else in the world to try. I do not see why Americans who are not under some strenuous necessity of making stump speeches in or out of Congress, with an eye to some impending election, should submit to this without a protest. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery: it does not follow that it is the most agreeable. I do not know that Western drawing-rooms take more delight in the Japanese, who most amiably present themselves everywhere in the regulation dress-coat and white cravat of modern Christendom, than in the Chinese, who calmly and haughtily persist in wearing the ample, stately, and comfortable garments of their own people. The framers of the French Republican Constitution of 1875 did the United States the honour to copy incorrectly, and absolutely to misapply, certain leading features of our organic law. In order to accomplish purposes absolutely inconsistent with all American ideas of liberty and of justice, the parliamentary revolutionists who got possession of power in France in 1879 have so twisted to their own ends this French Constitution of 1875, that their government of the Third French Republic in 1890 really resembles the government of the Akhoond of Swat about as nearly as it resembles the government of the American Republic under Washington. The parliamentary revolutionists of the Third French Republic are Republicans first and then Frenchmen. The framers of the American Republic were Americans first and then Republicans. The Republic which they framed was an experiment imposed upon the American people, not by philosophers and fanatics, but by the force of circumstances. The ablest of the men who framed it were not Republicans by theory. On the contrary, they had been born and bred under a monarchy. Under that monarchy they had enjoyed a measure of civil and religious liberty which the Third Republic certainly refuses to Frenchmen in France to-day. M. Jules Ferry and M. Constans have no lessons to give in law or in liberty to which George Washington, or John Adams, or even Thomas Jefferson, would have listened with toleration while the Crown still adorned the legislative halls of the British colonies in America. Our difficulties with the mother country began, not with the prerogative of the Crown--that gave our fathers so little trouble that one of the original thirteen States lived and prospered under a royal charter from Charles II. down to the middle of the nineteenth century--but with the encroachments of the Parliament. The roots of the affection which binds Americans to the American Republic strike deep down into the history of American freedom under the British monarchy. The forms have changed, the living substance is the same. Americans know at least as well as Englishmen what the most intelligent of French Republicans apparently have still to learn, that liberty is impossible without loyalty to something higher than self-interest and self-will. This sufficiently explains to me a remark often cited as made to Sir Theodore Martin by General Grant during the ex-President's visit to England, to the effect that Englishmen 'live under institutions which Americans would give their ears to possess.' General Grant neither was, nor did he pretend to be, a great statesman. But he was an American of the Americans. Four years of Civil War and eight years of Presidential power had not been thrown away upon him. He came into the Presidency as the successor of Andrew Johnson, who was made President by the bullet of an assassin, and who was impeached, as I have said, before the Senate for doing his plain constitutional duty, by an unscrupulous parliamentary cabal. He left the Presidency, to be succeeded in it by a President who derived the more than doubtful title under which he took his seat from a Commission unknown to the Constitution, and accepted by the American people only as the alternative of political chaos and of a fresh civil war. Through his position at the head of the American army, General Grant, as I have already mentioned, had been drawn into the contest between President Johnson and the parliamentary cabal bent on breaking down the constitutional authority of the Executive. Going into the Presidency fresh from this drama, in 1869, General Grant went out of the Presidency in 1877, after a drama not less impressive and instructive had been enacted under his eyes, which threatened for many weeks to result in a complete failure of the machinery provided by the American Constitution for the lawful and orderly transmission of the executive authority. It did, in fact, result in the adoption by Congress of an extra-constitutional expedient, by which the orderly transmission of the executive authority was secured, but the lawful transmission of it--as I believe, and as I think I have reason to know General Grant believed--was defeated. Whether the constitutional machinery would or would not have carried us safely through if the final strain had been put upon it, is now an academic question not here to be discussed. But the final strain was evaded by the adoption of the extra-constitutional expedient to which I refer. An Electoral Commission was created by Congress to decide by which of two sets of Presidential electors claiming to have been chosen for that purpose the Presidential vote of certain States should be cast; and it is a curious circumstance that General Grant, who had seen his executive predecessor saved from removal by a single vote in the Senate in 1869, saw his executive successor established in the White House, in 1877, by a single vote in this Electoral Commission. It would have been strange indeed had the experience of General Grant failed to impress upon him, with at least equal force, the advantages to liberty of a hereditary executive acting as the fountain of social honour, and the disadvantages to liberty of an elective executive tending to become a distributing reservoir of political patronage. I once had a curious talk bearing on this subject with General Grant after he had retired from the Presidency. He had dined with me to meet and discuss a matter of some importance with a Mexican friend of mine, Señor Romero, long Minister of Finance in Mexico, and now Mexican Envoy at Washington. When I next met the ex-President he reverted with great interest to something which had been incidentally said at this dinner about the experiment of empire made in Mexico by Iturbide, the general who finally broke the power of Spain in that viceroyalty, and secured its independence. I showed him certain documents which I had obtained in Mexico through the kindness of Maximilian's very able Foreign Minister, Señor Ramirez, a most accomplished bibliophile, bearing upon Iturbide's plan for making the American Mediterranean a Mexican lake. He expected to break up the United States by asserting the right of the Mexican Empire to the mouths of the Mississippi, and the whole Spanish dominion as far as the Capes of Florida. 'It seems a mad thing now,' said the ex-President, 'but it was not so mad perhaps then,' and we went on to discuss the schemes of Burr and Wilkinson and the alleged treason of an early Tennessean senator. 'Perhaps it was not a bad thing for us,' he said, 'that the Mexicans shot their first Emperor--but was it a good thing for them?' 'I have sometimes wondered,' he added, 'what would have happened to us if Gates, or--what was at one time, as you know, quite on the cards--Benedict Arnold, instead of George Washington, had commanded the armies of the colonies successfully down to the end at Yorktown.' What indeed! That is a pregnant query, not hastily to be dealt with by genial after-dinner oratory about the self-governing capacity of the Anglo-Norman race--still less by Fourth of July declamations over what the leader of the Massachusetts Bar used to call the 'glittering generalities' of the American Declaration of Independence! The experience of the Latin states of the New World throws useful side-lights upon it. Of all these states between the Rio Grande and Cape Horn, only one began and has lived out its round half-century of independence without serious civil convulsions. This is--or rather was--the Empire of Brazil, of which Dom Pedro I., of the Portuguese reigning house of Braganza, on March 25, 1824, swore to maintain the integrity and indivisibility, and to observe, and cause to be observed, the political Constitution. That oath the Emperor and his son and successor, Dom Pedro II., who took it after him in due course, seem to have conscientiously kept. It does not appear to have impressed itself as deeply upon the consciences of the military and naval officers of the present day in Brazil, all of whom, of course, must have taken it substantially on receiving their commission from the chief of the State, and it now remains to be seen what will become hereafter of the Empire. The authors of the Brazilian Constitution fully recognised the impossibility of maintaining a constitutional government without some guarantee of the independence of the Executive. They found this guarantee not by applying checks and balances to the elective principle, but simply in the hereditary principle, just as they found the guarantee of the independence of the judiciary in the life-tenure of the magistrates, and they introduced into their Constitution what they called a 'moderating power.' This power was lodged, by the 98th article of the Brazilian Constitution, with the Emperor--and the article thus runs: 'The moderating power is the key of the whole political organisation, and it is delegated exclusively to the Emperor, as the supreme chief of the nation and its first representative, that he may incessantly watch over the maintenance of the independence, equilibrium, and harmony of the other political powers.' The key of the 'political organisation' of Brazil seems to have worked very well for fifty years. Now that it has been thrown away, it will be interesting to watch the results. The question, with us in the United States, from the beginning has been whether the carefully devised provisions of oar organic Constitution of 1787 would or would not be found in practice to protect the sentiment of loyalty to a National Union as effectually against popular caprice and political intrigues as the sentiment of loyalty to a National Crown has been protected in England by the hereditary principle. The American Revolution of 1776, and the foundation of the American Republic of 1787, can never be understood without a thorough appreciation of the fact that the issues involved in the English Revolution which placed the daughter of James II. on the English throne, and in the establishment subsequently of the House of Hanover, because it was an offshoot of the dethroned House of Stuart, were quite as intelligently discussed, and quite as thoroughly worked out, among the English in America as among the English in England. Without a thorough appreciation of this fact it is impossible to understand the conservative value to liberty in the United States, of the personal position and the personal influence of the first American President. Washington was, in truth, the uncrowned king of the new nation--'first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen.' What more and what less than this is there in the history of Alfred the Great? Washington founded no dynasty, but he made the American Presidency possible, and the American President is a king with a veto, elected, not by the people directly, but by special electors, for four years, and re-eligible. We celebrate the birthday of Washington like the birthday of a king. The same instinct gave his name to the capital of his nation, and that name was found a name to conjure with when the great stress came of the Civil War in 1861. The sentiment of loyalty, developed and twined about that name and about the Union which Washington had founded, was not only the glow at the core of the Northern resistance to secession: it was the secret and the explanation of that sudden revival of the spirit of national loyalty at the South after the war was over and an end was put to the villanies of 'Reconstruction,' by which European observers of American affairs have been and still are so much puzzled. For it must be remembered that the Father of his Country was a son of the South, and that his native state, Virginia, is the oldest of the American Commonwealths, and is known as 'the Mother of Presidents.' The historic Union is as much Southern as Northern. Its existence was put in peril in 1812 by the States of the extreme North. Its integrity was shattered for a time in 1861 by the States of the South. Before it was founded, in 1787, there was no such thing as an American nation. There were thirteen independent American States which for certain purposes only had formed what was described as a 'perpetual union,' under certain Articles of Confederation. These Articles were drawn up in 1778, at a time when the event of the war with the mother country was still most uncertain, and they were never finally ratified by all the States until 1781, two years before the Peace of Versailles. Under these Articles the national affairs of the Confederacy were controlled by the Congress of the States. No national Executive existed, not even such a nominal Executive as now exists in France. National affairs were managed during the recess of the Congress by a Committee, and this Committee could only confide the Presidency to any one member of the Committee for one year at a time out of three years. This was even worse than the elective kingship without a veto of the English Republicans of 1649. But how were the people of these thirteen independent States, each with a history, with interests, with prejudices, with sympathies of its own, to be brought together and induced to form, through a more perfect union, a nation, in the only way in which a nation can be formed, by the establishment of an independent national Executive? This was the question which was met and answered only after long debates, and with infinite difficulty, by the American Constitutional Convention of 1787. It is more than probable that this convention could never have been held without the influence and the presence of George Washington, who presided over its deliberations; and it is as certain as anything human can be, that the constitution which it framed would never have been accepted by the people of the States if they had not known that the executive office created by it would be filled by him. The political safeguards put about the American Executive by the constitution may or may not always resist such a strain as has already more than once been put upon them. The seceding States, in their constitution adopted at Montgomery in 1861, tried to strengthen these safeguards by extending the presidential term to six years, and making the President re-eligible only after an interval of six years more. But all our national experience goes to show that the more difficult it is for a mere majority of the people to make or unmake the authority which sets a final sanction upon the execution of the laws, the greater will be the safety of the public liberty and of private rights. So true is this that every American who witnessed, at London in 1887, the Jubilee of the Queen, felt, and was glad to feel, with a natural and instinctive sympathy, the honest contagion of that magnificent outburst of the loyalty of a great and free people to the hereditary representative of their historic liberties and of their historic law. I am sure that no intelligent Englishman can have witnessed the tremendous outpouring of the American people into New York on April 30, 1889, to do honour there to the hundredth anniversary of the first inauguration of George Washington, without a kindred emotion. To compare with the significance of either of these scenes that of the gigantic cosmopolitan fair dedicated at Paris in 1889 by President Carnot to the 'principles of 1789' is to exhaust the resources of the ridiculous. IV The antagonism which now exists between France and the Third Republic certainly did not exist between France and the ancient monarchy. The members of the États-Généraux of 1789, who were so soon permitted, by the incapacity of Louis XVI., to resolve that body into the chaotic mob which assumed the name of a National Assembly, were elected, not at all to change the fabric of the French Government, but simply to reform, in concert with the king, abuses, two-thirds of which were virtually defunct when the king took off his hat to the Three Orders at Versailles on the 5th of May, 1789, and the rest of which took a new lease of life, often under new names, from the follies and the crimes of the First Republic, after the 22nd of September, 1792. Two contemporary observers, watching the drama from very different points of view, Arthur Young and Gouverneur Morris, long ago discerned this. M. Henri Taine, and the group of conscientious historical students who, during the last quarter of a century, have been reconstructing the annals of the revolutionary period, have put it beyond all doubt. The enormous majority of the French people, and even of the people of Paris, were so little infatuated with the 'principles of 1789' that they regarded the advent to power of the first Napoleon with inexpressible relief, as making an end of what Arthur Young calls, and not too sternly, a series of constitutions 'formed by conventions of rabble and sanctioned by the _sans-culottes_ of the kennel.' Without fully understanding this, it is impossible to understand either the history of the Napoleons, or the present antagonism between France and the Third Republic. Of this I am so deeply convinced that I have thought it right to interweave, when occasion offered, with my account of things as they are in France, what I believe to be the historic truth as to things as they were in France at and before the period of the Revolution. To judge the France of 1890 fairly, and forecast its future intelligently, we must thoroughly rid ourselves of the notion that the masses of the French people had anything more to do with the dethronement and the murder of Louis XVI. than the masses of the English people had to do with the dethronement and the murder of Charles I. Neither crime was perpetrated to enlarge the liberties or to protect the interests of the people. We long ago got at the truth about the great English rebellion. 'Pride's Purge,' the 'elective kingship without a veto of the 'New Model,' and the merciless mystification of Bradshaw, tell their own story. Steering to avoid the Scylla of Strafford, the luckless Parliamentarians ran the ship of State full into the Charybdis of Cromwell. It is only within very recent times that the daylight of facts has begun to dissipate the mists of the French legend of 1789. Even Republican writers of repute now disdain to concern themselves more seriously with the so-called histories of Thiers, of Mignet, and of Lamartine than with the _Chevalier de Maison-Rouge_ of Alexandre Dumas and the _Charlotte Corday_ of M. Ponsard. Of course the legend dies hard--all legends do. Even the whipping of Titus Oates at the cart's tail through London did not kill the legend of Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey and the Popish Plot. The Republicans of the Third Republic have not scrupled to set up a statue to Danton. People who might easily learn the truth still speak, and not in France only, about Robespierre and Madame Roland in terms which really justify M. Biré in anticipating a time when Raoul-Rigault maybe celebrated as a patriot and Louise Michel as a heroine. No longer ago than in 1888 certain people, perhaps relying on the fact that M. Casimir Périer, the actual owner of the château at Vizille in which the famous meeting of the Estates of Dauphiny was held in 1788, is a Republican, actually undertook to 'ring up the curtain' on the Centennial of 1789 by representing Barnave and Mounier as clamouring in 1788 for a republic at Vizille! Of all which let us say with Mr. Carlyle, 'What should Falsehood do but decease, being ripe, decompose itself, and return to the Father of it?' To whom, alas! I fear, under this inexorable law must in due time revert too many of the fuliginous word-pictures of Mr. Carlyle's own dithyrambic prose concerning the 'French Revolution'! The giants who stalked through his inflamed imagination like spectres on the Brocken, may be seen to-day in the Musée de la Révolution at Paris, shrunken to their true proportions--a dreary procession, indeed, of dreamers, madmen, quacks and felons! How can that be called a 'Great Revolution,' of which it is recorded that before it had filled the brief orbit of a decade, it had made an end of the life or of the reputation of every single man conspicuous in initiating or promoting it? The men who began the English Revolution of 1688 organised the new order to which it led. The men who began the American Revolution of 1776 organised the new nation which it called into being. This must have been as true of the French Revolution had it been really an outcome of the 'principles of 1789,' or of any principles at all. But it was nothing of the kind. It was simply a carnival of incapacities, ending naturally in an orgie of crime. It was in the order of Nature that it should deify Mirabeau in the Pantheon, only to dig up his dishonoured remains and trundle them under an unmarked stone at the meeting of four streets, that it should set Bailly on a civic throne, only to drag him forth, under a freezing sky, to his long and dismal martyrdom amid a howling mob, that it should acclaim Lafayette as the Saviour of France, only to hunt him across the frontier into an Austrian prison. It was because France detested the Republic, and, detesting the Republic, might at any moment recall the Bourbons, that Napoleon executed the Duc d'Enghien. It was to make an end of claims older than his own upon the allegiance of a people essentially and naturally monarchical. It was a crime, but it was not a squalid and foolish crime like the murder of Louis XVI. It belonged to the same category with the execution of Conradin of Hohenstaufen by Charles of Anjou--not, indeed, as to its mere atrocity, but as to its motives and its intent. It announced to the French people the advent of a new dynasty, and left them no choice but between the Republic and the Empire. An autograph letter of Carnot, the grandfather of the actual President of the Third Republic, sold the other day in Paris may be cited to illustrate this point. Carnot, like many other regicides, would gladly have made his peace with Louis XVIII. His peace with some sovereign he knew that he must make. The letter I now refer to was written after the return of the Emperor from Elba, and it could hardly have been written had Carnot not believed that France might be rallied to the Empire and to its chief, because France could not exist without a monarchy and a monarch. The restoration of the monarchy was cordially accepted by the French people. The American friends of France celebrated it with a banquet in New York. France prospered under it. It laid the foundations of the French dominion in Africa, and thereby gave to modern France the only field of colonial expansion which can be said, down to the present time, to have enured to any real good either for French commerce or the French people. Certainly M. Ferry and the Republic have so far done nothing with Tonquin to dim the lustre of the monarchical conquest of Algiers. On the contrary, the Republic, through its occupation of Tunis, its 'pouting policy' towards England in Egypt, and its more recent intimations of a great French Africa to be carried eastward to the Atlantic, has prepared, and is preparing, for France in the perhaps not distant future a new chapter of political accidents upon the possible gravity and extent of which prudent Frenchmen meditate with dubious satisfaction. The sceptre passed as quietly from Louis XVIII. to Charles X. in France as from George IV. to William IV. in England. So far, indeed, as public disorder indicates public discontent, the English monarchy was in greater peril during the period between 1815 and 1830 than the French monarchy. When the Revolution of July came, no man thought seriously of asking France to accept a second trial of the Republic, and the crown was pressed upon the Duc d'Orléans, with the anxious assent of Lafayette, the friend of Washington, Mirabeau's 'Grandison-Cromwell' of the Revolution of 1789. Under the long reign of Louis Philippe France again prospered exceedingly. French art and French literature more than recovered their ancient prestige. Attempts were made to restore the elder branch of the Bourbons and to restore the dynasty of the Bonapartes. But no serious attempt was made to restore the Republic. The Revolution of 1848 took even Paris by surprise. The Republic which emerged from it filled France with consternation, and opened the way at once for the restoration of the Empire. On December 10, 1851, the French people made the Prince-President Dictator, by a vote the significance of which will be only inadequately appreciated if we fail to remember that the millions who cast it were by no means sure that, by putting the sword of France again into the hands of a Napoleon, they would not provoke the perils of a great European war. France did not court these perils, but she preferred them to the risks of a republic. I spent many months in France at that time, and to me, remembering what I then saw and heard among all sorts and conditions of men, not in the departments only but in Paris itself, the persistency with which the leaders of the present Republican party have set themselves, ever since they came definitely into power with M. Grévy in 1879, to reviving all the most odious traditions of the earlier Republican experiments, and to re-identifying the Republic with all that the respectable masses of the French people most hate and dread, has seemed from the first, and now seems, little short of judicial madness. It did not surprise me, therefore, in 1885, to find the banner of the monarchy frankly unfurled by M. Lambert de Ste.-Croix and scores of other Conservatives, as they then called themselves, at the legislative elections of that year. It did surprise me, however, to see the strength of the support which they instantly received throughout the country. For I believe the masses of the French people to be at heart monarchical, less from any sentiment of loyalty at all either to the race of their ancient kings or to the imperial dynasty, than because the experience of the last century, to which, as I think very unwisely, the Republican Government has appealed in what I cannot but call its rigmarole about the 'Centennial of 1789,' has led them to associate with the idea of a republic the ideas of instability and of anarchy, and with the idea of a monarchy the ideas of stability and of order. Now the Government of the Third Republic, first under M. Thiers and then under the Maréchal-Duc of Magenta, was so conducted from 1871 to 1877 as to shake this association. Under it Frenchmen had seen that a Republic might actually exist in France for seven years without disturbing social order, interfering with freedom of conscience, attacking the religion of the country, or wasting its substance. There were 'wars and rumours of wars' in the air in 1876. It was very loudly whispered that Germany, alarmed by the rapid advances of France towards a complete recovery of her national strength, meant suddenly and savagely to strike at her; and that, unless the essentially national and military Government of the Maréchal-Duc was replaced by a Government which would divert the resources of France largely into industrial, commercial, and colonial adventures, a new invasion might at any moment be feared. It ought to have been obvious that a Government which held in its hand a balance of 98,000,000 francs was much less likely to be wantonly attacked than a Government which meant to outrun its revenue. With a declared balance of 98,000,000 francs to the good, France might raise at the shortest notice 2,000,000,000 francs in a war loan. The balance of the Maréchal-Duc's Government was in fact a war-treasure, and a war-treasure of that magnitude was a tolerably effectual guarantee of peace. This ought, I say, to have been obvious; but it is the triumph of demagogic skill to prevent a great people from seeing as a mass what is perfectly plain to every man of them taken alone. Under the stress of a war-panic the French people, whose dread and dislike of republics in general had been lulled, as I have shown, into repose by seven years of a Conservative Republican rule, were led into granting the untested Republic of Gambetta the credit fairly earned by the tested Republic of Macmahon and of Thiers. M. Grévy, thought the incarnation of thrift, of peace at any price, and of commercial development, was elected President in 1879. M. Léon Say, a man of wealth and of business, from whom more circumspection might have been expected, lent himself, as Minister of the Finances, in combination with the rather visionary M. de Freycinet, to a grand scheme devised by M. Gambetta 'in a single night,' like Aladdin's Palace, for spending indefinite millions of money upon docks, railways and ports all over France, wherever there was a seat in the Chamber to be kept or won. The 'true Republicans,' as they call themselves, must be kept in power, the Republicans who hold it to be their mission--no, not their mission, for that word smacks of a Deity--but their proud prerogative, to rid France and the world of the Christian religion, to abolish all forms of worship and of monarchy from off the face of the earth, and generally to fashion the felicity of mankind, in and out of France, after their own mind. They went to work without delay. Having made the Executive, in the person of M. Grévy, a puppet, they began at once, in 1879, to pour out the money of the taxpayers like water, for what we know in the United States as 'purposes of political irrigation'; to 'purge' the public service, in all its branches, from the highest to the lowest, of all men not ready to swear allegiance to their creed; to create new posts and to fill them with the dependents and parasites of the Republican party chiefs. The balance of 98,291,105 fr. 28 c. (to be exact!) with which the Republic of Thiers and Macmahon had closed the year 1876, rapidly vanished. On April 20, 1878, M. Léon Say announced to the Chamber of Deputies that he expected the country to spend for 1879 a sum of 3,173,820,114 francs, and to meet this expenditure with an estimated income of 2,698,622,014 francs! In 1876 the expenditure of France had reached 2,680,146,977 francs, and the income of France had reached 2,778,438,082 fr. 66 c. Two years had sufficed to reverse the situation, and to convert an excess of receipts over expenditure under the Government of the Maréchal-Duc, amounting to more than 98,000,000 francs, into an excess of expenditure over receipts under his 'truly Republican' successor amounting to 475,148,100 francs! From that moment to this the Third Republic has been steadily expending for France year after year at least five hundred millions of francs, or twenty millions of pounds sterling, more than it has been able to collect from the French people in the way of normal revenue. The exact amount of this monstrous deficiency it is not easy to state with precision. So distinguished an economist as M. Leroy-Beaulieu, a Republican of the moderate type, puts it at the sum I have stated, of five hundred millions a year for ten years. At the elections of last year the Carnot Government ordered, or encouraged, the Prefect of the Hérault, M. Pointu-Norès, to oppose openly and energetically the election of M. Leroy-Beaulieu as a deputy for the district of Lodève in that department. Why? M. Leroy-Beaulieu is one of the few really able and distinguished Frenchmen, known beyond the limits of France, who may be regarded as sincere believers in the possibility of founding a substantial and orderly French Republic. But M. Leroy-Beaulieu, when he sees a deficiency in the public accounts, calls it a deficiency, and lifts up his voice in warning against a policy which accepts an annual deficiency of five hundred millions of francs as natural, normal, and to be expected in the administration of a great Republic. Therefore, the presence of M. Leroy-Beaulieu in the Chamber of Deputies is a thing to be prevented at any price. The 'Republicans' of the Hérault this year tried to prevent it not only by treating 'informal' ballots thrown for him as invalid, and accepting 'informal' ballots thrown against him as valid, but, as the report of a Committee of the Chamber admits, by 'irregularities' which in other countries would be described in harsher terms. Yet the majority of the new Chamber has postponed action upon this report of its own Committee till after the recess, and M. Leroy-Beaulieu is not yet allowed to occupy the seat which the voters of Lodève undoubtedly chose him to fill. If we accept M. Leroy-Beaulieu's estimate of the average annual deficiency in the French budget as correct, it is clear that the 'true Republicans' have mulcted France since 1879 in the round sum of five milliards of francs--or, in other words, of a second German War Indemnity! But a banker of eminence, thoroughly familiar with the French finances, tells me that M. Leroy-Beaulieu has underestimated the amount. He puts it himself at an annual average for the past decade of 700,000,000 francs. Thanks to the device adopted, I am sorry to say, by M. Léon Say, in 1879, of transferring to what is called the 'extraordinary budget' of each year numerous items which should properly find a place in the 'ordinary budget' of each year, it is not very easy to get at a precise and definite basis for estimating the real amount of these annual deficiencies. M. Amagat, a Republican deputy for the Department of the Cantal, who has distinguished himself and earned the hostility of the Carnot Government by his cool and methodical treatment of these financial matters, denounces this device as 'deplorable,' and as keeping alive the most strange 'illusions' among well-meaning French Republicans about the real condition of the national finances. Precisely! But the device was adopted expressly to keep alive these 'illusions,' in order that the 'illusions' might keep alive the politicians who adopted the device. It served M. Léon Say, who knew better, in 1879. It serves M. Rouvier, who, perhaps, does not know better, in 1890. The new Chamber met on November 12, 1889. A fortnight had hardly passed when M. Rouvier, as Minister of the Finances, the 'Minister of ill-omen' as M. Amagat calls him, rose in his place and, without a blush, affirmed that the budget for 1889 showed an excess of receipts over expenditure of 'forty millions of francs!' This bold statement was promptly telegraphed from Paris, by the correspondents of the foreign press in that city, to the four corners of the globe. What did it mean? It meant simply this: that, thanks to the financial success of the Government investment of the public money in a grand raree show at Paris, called a 'Universal Exposition,' such an excess of income over outlay appeared in what is called the 'ordinary budget.' As to the 'extraordinary' budget--oh! that is quite another matter. It is as if an English householder should divide his yearly accounts into 'ordinary' and 'extraordinary' accounts, putting under the 'ordinary' accounts his cab and railway fares, his club expenses, his transactions on the turf, and his ventures at Monte Carlo, but remitting to the 'extraordinary' accounts such unconsidered trifles as house-rent, domestic expenses, the bills of tailors and milliners, and taxes, local and imperial. For 1879, for example, M. Léon Say, as Finance Minister, gave in his 'ordinary' budget at 2,714,672,014 francs, which showed a reduction of 78,705,790 francs from the 'ordinary' budget of 1878; but with this cheerful statement M. Léon Say gave in also his 'extraordinary' budget at 460,674,566 francs, the whole of which rather important sum was to be raised, not out of the revenue, but by a loan! This system has been carried on ever since 1877, when the 'true Republicans' got possession of the legislature, two years before they put M. Grévy into the Elysée as President. On July 22, 1882, M. Daynaud, an authority on questions of finance, summed up the results in a speech delivered in the Chamber of Deputies. The Government in 1877 spent, in round numbers, 3,177,000,000 francs. In 1883 it spent 4,040,000,000 francs. All this without including what are called 'supplementary credits.' So that, putting these aside, it appears from the speech of M. Daynaud that, in seven years, between 1877 and 1883, the 'true Republicans' subjected the people of France to an increase of no less than 863,000,000 francs in their annual public expenditure. Meanwhile these same 'true Republicans,' who were thus adding hundreds of millions yearly to the public debt, struck hundreds of thousands out of the lawful income of the clergy of France. They ordered the dispersion by Executive decrees, and 'if necessary by military force,' of all religious orders and communities not 'authorised' by the Government. They drove nuns and Sisters of Charity, with violence and insult, out of their abodes. They expelled the religious nurses from the hospitals and the priests from the prisons and the almshouses. They 'laicised' the schools of France, throwing every symbol of religion--in many cases literally--into the street, forbidding, literally, the name of God to be mentioned within the walls of a school, and striking out every allusion to the Christian faith from the text-books supplied at the cost of the Christian parents of France to their children in the schools supported out of taxes paid by themselves. It is simply impossible to overstate the virulence and the violence of this official Republican war against religion which began under the Waddington Ministry almost as soon as it took possession of the government in 1879. It was formally opened under the leadership of M. Ferry. M. Ferry is admitted to be the ideal statesman of the Opportunist Republicans now in power. To him M. Carnot owes his Presidency of the Republic. In March 1879 M. Jules Ferry asked the Republican majority of the House to pass a law concerning the 'higher education,' in the draft of which he had inserted a clause ever since famous as 'Article 7,' depriving any Frenchman who might be a member of any religious corporation 'not recognised by the State' of the right to teach. This 'Article 7' was a revival of an amendment offered to but not carried by the Legislative Assembly of the Second Republic in 1849. The principle of it is as old as the Emperor Julian, who forbade Christians to teach in the schools of the Empire. M. Ferry's law was intended to repeal a previous law adopted in 1875, and which had not been then three years in operation. By the Law of July 12, 1875, the Republic of Thiers and Macmahon had modified, in the interest of liberty, the monopoly of higher education in France enjoyed by the State. It was an essentially wise, liberal, and 'progressive' law. But the Republicans of Gambetta could not endure it, for it gave the Christians of France the right to provide for the higher education of their children in their own way; so it must be abolished. It was abolished; and though the Senate, making a partial stand for law and for the equal rights of French citizens, struck out 'Article 7,' M. Ferry and his friends, who controlled the President, caused him to issue an Executive decree, to which I have already referred, breaking up the religious orders aimed at in 'Article 7.' This was in 1880. In 1882 the Chamber adopted a law proposed by M. Paul Bert, confirming to the State the monopoly of secondary education; and to-day we see M. Clémenceau, the avowed enemy of M. Jules Ferry and of the Opportunists, shaking hands with them in public, after the elections of 1889, on this one question of deadly hostility to all religion in the educational establishments of France. At a banquet given on December 3 by certain anti-Boulangist students in Paris to the Government deputies for the Seine, M. Clémenceau declared himself in favour of 'the union of all Republicans'--upon what lines and to what end?--'To prepare the Grand Social Revolution and make war upon the theocratic spirit which seeks to reduce the human mind to slavery!' In other words, the Third Republic is to combine the Socialism of 1848 with the Atheism of 1793, the National workshops with the worship of Reason, and to join hands, I suppose, with the extemporised 'Republic of Brazil' in a grand propaganda which shall secure the abolition, not only of all the thrones in Europe, but of all the altars in America. If language means anything and facts have any force, this is the inevitable programme of the French Republic of 1890, and this is the entertainment to which the Christian nations of the New World and the Old were invited at Paris in the great 'centennial' year 1889. Believing this to be the inevitable programme of the Republic, as represented by the Government of President Grévy so long ago as 1880, I was yet surprised, as 1 have said, to see the strength of the protest recorded against it by the voters of France at the Legislative elections in 1885, because the Republic of Thiers and Macmahon had made, and deservedly, so much progress in the confidence of the French people, that I had hardly expected to see the essentially conservative heart of France startled, even by three or four years' experience of the Government of M. Grévy, into an adequate sense of the perils into which these successors of the Maréchal-Duc were leading the country. 'A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush' is an essentially French proverb. Seven years of peace, liberty, and financial prosperity under the Conservative Republic should have gone far, I thought, to convince the average French peasant that he might, after all, be safe under a republic. Doubtless this impression of mine was not wholly unfounded. Yet, in spite of this important check upon the headway of the reaction against Republicanism provoked by the fanaticism and the financial extravagance of the Government of President Grévy--and in spite, too, of the open official pressure put upon the voters of France by the then Minister of the Interior, M. Allain-Targé, who issued a circular commanding all the prefects in France to stand 'neutral' between Republican candidates of all shades, but to exert themselves for the defeat of all 'reactionary' candidates; in spite of all this, the elections of October and November 1885 sent up about two hundred monarchical members, whose seats could by no trick or device be stolen from them, to the Chamber of Deputies, and pitted a popular vote of 3,608,578 declared enemies of the existing Republic against a popular vote of 4,377,063 citizens anxious to maintain or willing to submit to it. From that time to the present day the Government of the Third French Republic has been standing on the defensive. It has steadily lost ground, with every passing year, in the confidence and respect of the French people. The financial scandals, amid which President Grévy and his son-in-law, M. Wilson, disappeared and President Carnot was 'invented,' simply revealed a condition of things inherent in the very nature of the political organisation of France under the parliamentary revolutionists who came into power in 1879. The Third French Republic, such as these men have made it, is condemned, hopelessly and irretrievably condemned, by its creed to be a government of persecution and by its machinery to be a government of corruption. There is no escape for it. V It has made the Government of France--not the Administration, but the form, the constitution of the Government--a party question, and it has organised the party which insists that France shall be a Republic, openly and avowedly upon the maxim of Danton that 'to the victors belong the spoils.' What has come of this maxim in the United States, where the form and constitution of the Republic are accepted by all political parties, and the administration of the Government alone is a party question, I need not say. There are 'black points' even on the horizon of the American Republic, as all Americans know. But there is no point blacker than this, as to which, however, it is possible with us that good men of all political parties may act together in the future as they have acted together in the past for Civil Service Reform. But what is possible with us is not possible with the party of the Republic in France. For, by making the Republic a republic of religious persecution, the Republicans of the Republic of Gambetta, Jules Ferry, Carnot, and Clémenceau have made it necessarily a republic of political proscription, and political proscription inevitably means political corruption. If any man needs to learn this, let him study the story of the establishment of the Protestant Succession in England by Walpole, and the story of the overthrow of the United States Bank by President Jackson, in America. He may think the Protestant Succession in England, and the overthrow of the United States Bank in America, worth the price paid for each. But he will learn at least what the price was. It will not be the fault of the Carnot Government--certainly not of the most energetic member of that Government, M. Constans, Minister of the Interior--if the French people fail to learn this. A very much higher price will have to be paid for the extirpation of religion out of France, and the education of the French people into what M. Jules Ferry fantastically supposes to be 'Herbert Spencer's' gospel, identifying duty with self-indulgence! The late Chamber, doubtless having the then impending elections in view, voted to abolish the Secret Service Fund of the Ministry of the Interior. It was a Platonic vote, referring only to the Budget of 1890, nor did it take effect. But on December 14, 1889, M. Constans, having made the re-establishment of this fund a cabinet question, got up in the Chamber and boldly declared that he wanted a Secret Service Fund of 1,600,000 fr., or about 64,000_l._ sterling; that he did not care what the Right thought about such a fund; that he meant to use it to 'combat conspiracies against the Republic,' and that he expected the majority to give it to him as a mark of their personal confidence. That the War Office, in a country like France, should need a Secret Service Fund, is intelligible. It is intelligible that a Secret Service Fund should be legitimately required, perhaps, by the Foreign Office of a country like France. But why should a Secret Service Fund of more than 60,000_l._ sterling be required by the Home Secretary of a French Republic which is supposed to be 'a government of the people, by the people, for the people'? I have an impression, which it will require evidence to remove, that no such Secret Service Fund as this is at the disposal of the Chancellor of the German Empire; and I find the whole expense of the Home Office of the monarchy of Great Britain set down at less than half the amount which, after a brief debate, the Republicans of the new Chamber in France, by a majority of a hundred votes, quietly put under the control of the French Home Secretary, to show their 'confidence' in the excellent man to whose unhesitating manipulation, through his prefects, of the votes cast in September and October last, so many of them are universally believed in France to be really indebted for their seats! In the year 1889 the British budget shows an outlay on the Home Office of 29,963_l._ More than this, the 'Secret Service Fund' voted out of the pockets of the taxpayers of France into the strong box of the Minister of the Interior, considerably exceeds the cost of the British Treasury Office! In 1888 the British budget gave the First Lord of the Treasury, to cover the expenses of that great and important department of the British monarchical government, 60,222_l._, or nearly 4,000_l._ less than the Republicans of the Third French Republic have generously put at the disposal of M. Constans to 'combat conspiracies' against the life of a Republic of which in the same breath we are asked to believe that it has just been acclaimed with enthusiasm by the masses of the French people, as the fixed, final, and permanent government of their deliberate choice! At this rate it will actually cost the taxpayers of Republican France more than two-thirds as much merely to keep the Republic from being suddenly done to death some fine day between breakfast and dinner, as it costs the taxpayers of Great Britain to keep up the state and dignity of the British sovereign from year to year! The total annual amount, I find, of the Civil List of Great Britain annually voted to the Queen, of the annual grants to other members of the Royal Family, and of the Viceroyalty of Ireland is 557,000_l._ Of this amount the Hereditary Revenues, surrendered to the nation, cover 464,000_l._ This leaves an annual charge upon the taxpayers of 93,000_l._ sterling, or only 29,000_l._ more than the sum deliberately voted by the Republican Chamber at Paris into the hands of M. Constans to be by him used in 'combating conspiracies' against the Republic!--or, in other words and in plain English, in making things comfortable for his political friends, and uncomfortable for his political enemies! And this, observe, is a mere supplementary adjunct to the budget of this energetic and admirable minister, that budget having been fixed by the late Chamber for 1890 at 61,291,256 francs--or, in round numbers, 2,451,650_l._ sterling--of which handsome amount 13,059,570 francs, or 522,383_l._ sterling, being the outlay on the Central Administration and the préfectures, must be added to the 1,200,000 francs, or 48,000_l._ sterling, of the Presidential salary and allowances, in order to give us a basis for a fair approximate comparison of the cost to republican France of her executive President and prefects with the cost to monarchical Great Britain of her executive Sovereign, lords-lieutenant, and Viceroy of Ireland. Stated in round numbers, the result appears to be that for their republican President and their eighty-three republican prefects, the taxpayers of France pay annually out of their own pockets 570,383_l._ against 93,000_l._ paid annually out of their own pockets by the taxpayers of Great Britain for their monarchical sovereign, eighty-six lords-lieutenant, a Viceroy of Ireland, and thirty-two lieutenants of the Irish counties. From the point of view of the taxpayers, this would seem to lend some colour to Lord Beaconsfield's contention, that economy is to be found on the side of the system which rewards certain kinds of public service by 'public distinction conferred by the fountain of honour.' The threadbare witticism about the Bourbons of 1815, who had learned nothing and forgotten nothing, may well be furbished up for the benefit of the Republicans who now control the Third French Republic. However true it may, or may not, have been of the Comte de Provence and the Comte d'Artois, Henri IV., who was certainly a Bourbon of the Bourbons, had a quick wit at learning, and upon occasion also a neat knack of forgetting. He thought Paris well worth a mass, heard the mass, and got Paris. It was not necessary for the Republicans of the Third Republic, after the formidable lesson which France read them at the elections in 1885, to hear mass themselves. They were perfectly free to persist and to perish in their unbelief, and, like the hero of Sir Alfred Lyall's 'Land of Regrets,' 'Get damned in their commonplace way.' All that Christian France asked of them in 1885 was that they would leave their fellow-citizens as free to hear mass as they themselves were free not to hear it. They had only to let the religion of the French people alone, to respect the consciences and the civil liberty of their countrymen, and the tides that were rising against them, and the Republic because of them, must inevitably have begun to subside. The hostility between the Church and the Republic in France is absolutely, in its origin, one-sided. The Church is no more necessarily hostile to the Republic as a Republic in France, than it is to the Republic as a Republic in the United States or in Chile, or in Catholic Switzerland. The Church can be made hostile to a Republic by persecution and attack just as it can he made hostile in the same way to a monarchy. Neither Philippe le Bel nor Henry the Eighth was much of a Republican. But the Republicans of the Third Republic, in 1885, would learn nothing and forget nothing. They met the protest of millions of voters in France with a renewed virulence of Anti-Catholic and of Anti-Christian legislation, with an increased public expenditure, and with fresh political proscriptions. Their purpose and their programme were succinctly and clearly summed up in the explicit declaration of M. Brisson, one of the most conspicuous leaders of the Republican party, that 'the Republic should be established in France, if necessary, by arms!' What is the difference in principle between such a declaration as this and the attempt of the third Napoleon to establish an empire in Mexico by arms? In the one case we have a proselytising, atheistic Republic bent on abolishing the religion of an unquestionable majority of the French people; in the other, we have a proselytising emperor bent on organizing empire in Mexico. In the light of the doctrine that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, the one undertaking is as monstrous as the other. The undertaking of the Emperor failed disastrously in Mexico; I do not believe, and for many reasons, that the undertaking of the Republic will succeed in France. One, and the chief of these reasons, is, that I believe the hold of the Christian religion upon the body of the French people to be stronger, and not weaker, than it was before the propaganda of atheism began. In some of the chapters of this volume evidence, I think, will be found to show this. Under the plan which I have adopted in constructing the book, I have not attempted to marshal and co-ordinate the evidence. I have simply presented it, where it presented itself, either in conversations had by me at one or another place with persons qualified, as I thought, to speak with some authority, or in observations made by me in passing through one or another region. It was a part of my plan too, as I have said, to register, under the general heading of one or another department, not only what struck me most while visiting that department in the way of things seen or heard there, but also such conversations bearing on general subjects as I there had, and such notes as I there made from the books bearing on French history, which I took with me wherever I went. As this book is not a treatise but a record, as it is not intended to maintain a preconceived thesis, but simply to indicate the grounds on which I have myself come to certain conclusions and convictions, I thought the method I have adopted the fairest, both to my readers and to myself, that I could pursue. VI But as the point I have now touched, of the religious condition of France, is a specially grave and important point, I must ask my readers to pause with me upon it for a moment here in this Introduction. I am especially moved to do this because I have reason to think that very serious and very extraordinary delusions on this point exist outside of France, and especially in England. This is not unnatural when we remember that nine foreigners in ten take their impressions of France as a nation, not only from the current journalism and literature of Paris alone, but from a very limited range of the current literature and journalism even of Paris. Most Americans certainly, and I am inclined to think most Englishmen, who visit Paris, and see and know a good deal of Paris, are really in a condition of penumbral darkness as to the true social, religious, and intellectual life of the vast majority of the population even of Paris. We see the Paris of the boulevards, the Champs-Elysées, the first nights at the theatres, the restaurants, and the fashionable shops; the _Tout Paris_ of the gossips of the press, representing, possibly, one per cent. of the population of the French capital! Of the domestic, busy, permanent Paris, which keeps the French capital alive from year to year and from generation to generation--the Paris of industry and of commerce, of the churches, of the charities, of the schools, of the convents--how much do we see? There are a number of prosperous foreign colonies living in London now, most of whose leading members maintain business or social relations, more or less active, with one or another section of the English population of the great British metropolis. Perhaps, if we could get a plain, unvarnished account from some member of one of these colonies, of England and English life as they appear to him and to his compatriots, Englishmen might be as much confounded as I have known very intelligent and well-informed Frenchmen to be, by the notions of French life and of the condition of the French people, really and seriously entertained, not by casual foreign tourists, but by highly educated foreigners who really wished to know the truth. Not long after the Legislative Elections of 1885, the results of which astonished public men in England at the time as much almost as they did the satellites of the Government in Paris, I met at the house of a friend in London a very eminent English public man, whose name I do not feel quite at liberty to mention, but who is certainly regarded by great numbers of Englishmen as an authority without appeal, not only in regard to questions of English domestic policy, but in regard to European affairs in general. In the course of a general conversation--there were ten or twelve well-known people in the company--this distinguished public man expressed to me his great surprise at the importance which I 'seemed to attach to the religious sentiment in France.' I assured him that I not only 'seemed' to attach, but did in fact attach very serious importance to it, and I ventured to ask him why this should 'surprise' him. To this he replied textually--for I noted down the remark afterwards that evening--that he was 'under the impression that the religious sentiment was dead in France!' 'May I ask,' I replied, 'what can possibly have given you such an impression as this?' 'Oh, many things,' he answered with great emphasis, 'but particularly a statement which I saw in a statistical work of much authority, not very long ago, to the effect that there are in France _five millions of professed atheists_!' All who heard this amazing assertion were, I think, as completely taken aback by it as I was. Courtesy required that I should beg the distinguished man who made it to give me, if he could, the title of the work in which he had found it. This he promptly replied that he was at the moment unable to do. He, however, very nearly asphyxiated a very quiet and well-bred young Frenchman attached to the French Embassy in London, who was present, by appealing to him on the subject. 'No, no!' exclaimed the alarmed _attaché_, 'I dare say there is such a book, no doubt--no doubt--but I have never heard of it.' I have never been able to find this valuable work. When I do find it I shall institute a careful inquiry into the reasons which could have led five millions of French persons, or about one-seventh of the whole population of France, to take the pains to register themselves as 'atheists.' Presumably they must all have been adults, as the declaration, on such a subject, of infants, would scarcely, I take it, be collected, even by M. Jules Ferry, as evidence of the success of his great scheme for 'laicising' religion out of France. Meanwhile, I find it set down in the usual statistical authorities accessible in 1884, that out of the 36,102,021 inhabitants of France, 35,387,703 registered themselves, or were registered, as Catholics, 580,707 as Protestants, 40,439 as Israelites, and 81,951 as 'not professing any form of religion.' Yet I suppose that, if the eminent public man who saw, as in a vision, these five millions of registered atheists marching to the assault of Christianity in France were to announce their existence as a fact to a large public meeting in some great English provincial city to-morrow, we should have leaders in some of the English journals a day or two afterwards prognosticating the immediately impending downfall of all religion in France. Our modern democracies on both sides of the Atlantic have made such rapid and remarkable progress of late years in the art of forming opinions, that if Isaac Taylor could come back to the earth he left, not so very long ago, he would hardly, I think, recognise the planet. The fashion of taking it for granted that the whole world is fast going over to the gospel of ganglia and bathybius, of _vox populi et præterea nihil_, is not confined to the 'fanatics of impiety' in France. I have heard it seriously stated in a London drawing-room by another public man of repute within the last year, that he believed 'Mr. John Bright and Mr. Gladstone were the last two men who would ever cite the Christian Scriptures as an authority in the House of Commons.' The uncommonly good English of the Christian Scriptures may perhaps constitute an objection to their free use in addressing popular political assemblies. But, admitting this, I hesitate to accept the statement. That it should have been made however, and made by a man of more than ordinary ability, is perhaps a thing to be noted. But I revert to France. As the time drew near for the Legislative elections of 1889, the Republicans in power began to perceive that their methods had not been crowned with absolute success. The awkward corner caused by the enforced resignation of President Grévy had indeed been turned, because the Constitution of the Third Republic provides for the election of the President by the Assembly. But it is one thing to play a successful comedy in the Assembly with the help of what in America is called 'the cohesive power of the public plunder,' and quite another thing to get a satisfactory Chamber of Deputies re-elected by the people of France after four years of irritating and exasperating misrule. Much was expected from the dazzling effect upon the popular mind of the Universal Exposition at Paris--so much, indeed, that I have had the obvious incongruity of selecting for the celebration of the French Revolution by a French Republic the centennial of a year in which no French Republic existed, accounted for to me by a French Republican on the express ground that the legislative elections were fixed for 1889! There may have been some truth in this. For nothing could be more preposterous than the pretext alleged for the selection by the French Government. This or that thing which occurred at a particular time in a particular year may reasonably be made the occasion of a centennial or a semi-centennial celebration. But how is anybody to fix and celebrate the 'centennial' of a set of notions called 'the principles of 1789'? In the United States we have celebrated the 'Centennial' of the Declaration of Independence, and the Centennial of the first Inauguration of the first President. Did the French Government intend to invite the monarchies of Europe to celebrate the destruction by a mob of the Bastille on July 14, 1789? Hardly, I suppose! Or the Convocation of the States-General at Versailles on May 5, 1789? Certainly not--for the States-General were convoked, not under the 'principles of 1789,' but in conformity with an ancient usage and custom of the French monarchy. What are the 'principles of 1789'? And why should anybody in or out of France celebrate them? If by 'the principles of 1789' we are to understand the principles of modern constitutional government--and I know no other intelligible interpretation of the phrase--there is certainly no reason why anybody out of France should particularly concern himself with celebrating the adoption of these principles in France any more than with celebrating the adoption of them in England, or the United States, or Germany, or Spain, or Italy. The principles of modern constitutional government were certainly not intelligently adopted, and certainly not loyally carried out in France, by any of the governments which tumbled over one another in rapid succession in that distracted country between 1789 and 1815. Have they been intelligently adopted and loyally carried out in that distracted country to-day? That is a question, I think, not hastily to be answered! To ask the people of England, of the United States, of Germany, of Spain, of Italy, to unite in celebrating the principles of modern constitutional government, under the name of the 'principles of 1789,' at Paris, as if the world were indebted to Paris or to France for the discovery, and the promulgation, and the adoption of those principles, was really a piece of presumption which might have been pardoned to the fatuity of the Abbé Sieyès a hundred years ago, but was hardly to have been expected from educated Frenchmen in the year 1889. This was stated, with great good sense and commendable courtesy towards the French Government responsible for the absurdity, by the Italian Premier, Signor Crispi, in the Chamber of Deputies at Borne, on June 25, 1887. In reply to an interpellation of Signor Cavalotti, addressed to the then Foreign Minister of Italy, Signor Depretis, as to the intentions of the Italian Government with regard to the Universal Exposition of 1889 at Paris, Signor Crispi, then Minister of the Interior, made a striking speech (Signor Depretis being then ill of the disease of which he eventually died), in which he lucidly and forcibly gave the reasons of the Italian Government for declining to take any official part in the matter. He plainly intimated his conviction (which is the conviction, by the way, of a great many sensible people not premiers of Italy) that the business of Universal Expositions has been possibly overdone. But, without dwelling upon that point, he went on to show that it would be foolish for Italy to isolate herself from the other great powers by taking an official part in this particular 'Universal Exposition.' To the plea of Signor Cavalotti that liberated Italy ought to unite with France to celebrate 'the principles of 1789,' Signor Crispi thus replied; 'I agree with the honourable member that we are sons of 1789. But I must remind him that 1789 was preceded by the glorious English Revolution, and by the great American Revolution, in both of which had been manifested and established the principles which have subsequently prevailed throughout the world.' Whether the treatment of the Sovereign Pontiff at Rome by the government of United Italy, since 1871, has been entirely consistent with the principles of the 'glorious English Revolution,' or of the 'great American. Revolution,' I need not now consider. But that all the living political doctrines of which intelligent Frenchmen mean to speak when they talk about the 'principles of 1789' are the American political doctrines of 1776, and the English political doctrines of 1688, admits of no question. As to this, Signor Crispi was absolutely right, and it is creditable to him, as an Italian statesman and an Italian patriot, that he should have thus early and publicly declined to attach the liberty and the independence of Italy as a bob to the tail of an electioneering Exposition kite at Paris in 1889. To France and to the French Republics--first, second, and third--Italy owes a good deal less than nothing. To two rulers of France, both of them of Italian blood, the first and third Napoleon, she owes a great deal. But her chief political creditor, and her greatest statesman, Cavour, drew his political doctrines, not from the muddy French pool of the 'principles of 1789,' but from the original fountains of 1776 and 1688. Had Cavour been living in 1887, to answer the interpellation of Signor Cavalotti, he might, perhaps, have defined more sharply than it was given to Signor Crispi to do, the real relations between the French Revolution of 1789 and the national developments of modern Italy. Had the French Revolution of 1789 been left to exhaust itself within the limits of France, it would probably have ended--as the friends of the misguided Duc d'Orléans almost from the first expected to see it end--in the substitution of a comparatively capable for a positively incapable French king upon a constitutional French throne. In that event it would have interested Europe and the world no less, and no more, than the Fronde or the religious wars which came to a close with the coronation of Henry of Navarre. It was the fear of this, unquestionably, which drove the conspirators of the Gironde into forcing a foreign war upon their unfortunate country. The legend of Republican France marching as one man to the Rhine to liberate enslaved Europe has much less foundation in fact than the legend of Itsatsou and the horn of Roland. It is a pity to disturb historical fables which have flowered into immortal verse, but really there was not the slightest occasion, so far as Europe was concerned, for France in 1790 to 'stamp her strong foot and swear she would be free.' M. de Bourgoing's admirable diplomatic history of those days makes this quite clear. No power in Europe objected to her being as free as she liked. On the contrary, England, even in 1792, was both ready and anxious to recognise the insane French republic of that day, and to see the French royal family sent away to Naples or to Madrid. Pitt was too far-sighted a statesman not to be well aware that the commerce and the colonies of such a French republic were the natural prizes of English common sense and English enterprise. Nor was Austria indisposed to see the House of Bourbon, which had successfully disputed the supremacy of Europe with the Hapsburgs, humiliated and cast down. The French Revolution became Titanic only when it ceased to be a Revolution and ceased to be French. The magnificent stanzas of Barbier tell the true story of the riderless steed re-bitted, re-bridled, and mounted by the Italian master of mankind, the Cæsar for whom the eagle-eyed Catherine of Russia had so quietly waited and looked when the helpless and hopeless orgie of 1789 began. The Past from which he emerged, the Future which he evoked, both loom larger than human in the shadow of that colossal figure. What a silly tinkle, as of pastoral bells in some Rousseau's _Devin du Village_, have the 'principles of 1789,' when the stage rings again with the stern accents of the conqueror, hectoring the senators of the free and imperial city of Augsburg, for example, on his way to Wagram and to victory twenty years afterwards! 'Your bankers are the channel through which the gold of the eternal enemy of the Continent finds its way to Austria. I have made up my mind that I will give you to some king. To whom I have not yet settled. I will attend to that when I come back from Vienna.' And, as the faithful record of the _Drei Mohren_ tells us, 'Messieurs the senators withdrew, much mortified, and not at all pleased.' Nevertheless, when the conqueror kept his word, and having made a king of Bavaria to give them to, gave them to the king of Bavaria, Messieurs the senators, with a suppleness and a docility which would have done credit to Debry (who after proposing, as a republican, to organise 1,200 'tyrannicides' and murder all the kings and emperors of the earth, begged Napoleon to make him a baron), made haste to come and prostrate themselves before the new Bavarian Majesty and to protest that until the fortunate day of his arrival to reign over them they had never known what real happiness was. If there is one thing more certain than another in human history, it is that but for the English Revolution of 1688 and the American Revolution of 1776 the world in general would know and care to-day very little more about the French 'principles of 1789,' and the French Revolution, and the First French Republic, than the world in general knows or cares to-day about the wars in the Cevennes or the long conflict between the Armagnacs and the Bourguignons. Napoleon crumpled up the 'principles of 1789' and the Revolution and the Republic in his iron hand, and flung them all together into a corner. He meant that France and the world should think of other things. In 1810 Paganel, who, having been a 'patriot' of the Convention, had naturally become a liveried servant of the Emperor and King, thought he might venture to compose a 'Historical Essay on the French Revolution.' He dedicated it to the Imperial Chancellor of the Legion of Honour, and he wound up his preface with these words: 'And thus at last we see without astonishment, after this long series of errors, misfortunes, and crimes, the Republic disappear, and France implore the Supreme Being to vouchsafe to her the one great and potent genius who in these difficult circumstances was able to lift her up, to defend her, and to govern her!' The heart of Louis XVIII. would have been touched by the grateful humility of this repentant wretch. But the Emperor simply kicked him downstairs. He forbade the book to be published. The whole edition was put under lock and key, and never saw the light till liberty came back to France, with the white nag and the Bourbon lilies, in 1815. Surely here is a fact worth noting! Had this first history of the French Revolution, written as Paganel, a member of the Revolutionary Convention, wrote it, been published under the First Republic, the author would infallibly have been sent to the guillotine. Writing it under the First Empire he was merely snubbed, despite his fulsome adulation of the Emperor. His book was finally given to the world under the restored historic monarchy in 1818! In 1811, Chateaubriand, having been elected to succeed Marie-Joseph Chéniér, the brother of the republican poet André, murdered by the First Republic, as a member of the Institute, prepared a speech on the Convention, to be read before that august body. Napoleon heard of it and, without troubling himself to look at it, forbade it to be delivered. 'It is well for M. de Chateaubriand,' he said, 'that it was suppressed. If he had read it before the Institute, I would have flung him into the bottom of a dungeon, and left him there the rest of his natural life!' Napoleon knew the First Republic thoroughly. He had measured all its men, and all its records were in his hand. He could not get into or out of his carriage without treading on some incorruptible 'patriot' prostrate between its wheels with a petition for a préfecture, a title or a pension. The crimes and follies of the First Republic had made France and the world sick of its name. Its true story was a tale of shame and humiliation, not fit to be dragged out into the blaze of the glory of Imperial France. The First Republic was the deadly enemy both of liberty and of law. The conduct of its first envoy to the United States would have justified Washington in locking him up. When a stop was put to his mischievous impertinences, he preferred exile in America to the chance of the guillotine at Paris, and his name died out, I believe, curiously enough, with one of the chief instruments of the notorious Tweed Ring in New York. The first shots fired in anger under the American flag after the peace of 1783 were fired against cruisers of the French Republic captured in the West Indies by American men-of-war, to put an end to the ignorant and insolent attempt of what called itself a government at Paris to issue letters of marque on American soil against English commerce. So grateful was France to the Emperor for restoring the reign of law, that she never troubled herself about liberty, and but for the indomitable defence of constitutional liberty and national independence which England maintained, often single-handed, from the rupture of the peace of Amiens to the victory of Waterloo, the very names of the chief actors in the odious and ridiculous dramas of the Revolution would have long since faded, as Napoleon intended they should fade, out of the memory of the masses of mankind. VII How little confidence the Government of the Third Republic really felt in the efficacy of the 'principles of 1789,' and of the 'Centennial Exposition,' to save it at the polls in 1889 from the natural consequences of its intolerance and its corruption, was instructively shown by the absolute panic into which it was thrown by the election at Paris of General Boulanger on January 27. Here, at the very threshold of the great electoral year, rose the spectre of the 'man on horseback'! Certainly General Boulanger was not Napoleon Bonaparte. The Government, which had itself put General Boulanger on horseback, knew the strength and the weakness of the man himself. But it was the legend, not the man, they dreaded. If the French people, or even if Paris, really believed in the legend of Boulanger--and this tremendous vote of January 27 looked very much like it--it mattered little what the real value of the man might be, the legend would make him master of France. That would mean for the Third Republic the fate of the First Republic and of the Second, and for the men who had identified it with their own fanaticism and folly, and greed, and incapacity, a long farewell to all their greatness! As for the eventual results, what mattered these to them? The Universal Exposition might collapse, or it might be opened by General Boulanger on his black horse, instead of President Carnot in his landau. What did that signify? But it signified much that the men who had invented President Carnot were not likely to make part of the _cortège_ of General Boulanger. It is no exaggeration to say that from January 27, 1889, the Government of the Third French Republic was openly and visibly given up by night and by day to one great purpose alone--and that purpose was, not to glorify the 'principles of 1789,' not to celebrate the Republic--the grand statue of the Triumph of the Republic, destined to be set up with great pomp in the sight of the assembled human race, was actually left to be cast in plaster of Paris, no functionary caring to waste a sou on putting it into perennial bronze or enduring marble--no! the great dominant, unconcealed purpose of all the leaders of the Republic was, in some way--no matter how, by hook or by crook--to conjure that spectre of the First Consulate, riding about, awful and imminent, on the black horse of General Boulanger! Perhaps the high-water mark of this quite unparalleled and most instructive panic was the appearance, towards the end of the last parliamentary session, of M. Jules Ferry, the author of the odious 'Article 7,' the man who after hesitating--to his credit be it said--originally to propose that ministers of religion should be absolutely forbidden to teach the children of France in her public schools, at last succumbed to the vehemence of Paul Bert, the Condorcet of this modern persecution, and became the acknowledged leader of the war against Liberty and Religion--in the tribune of the Deputies, there to urge, and indeed to implore, the Conservative members to make peace with the persecutors, and save them from the peril of Boulanger! The scene of that day in the Chamber of Deputies was not one to be forgotten. The aspect and the accents of the Republican leader were at times absolutely pathetic with the pathos of unaffected terror. It was difficult to believe, whilst listening to him, that he could really have 'five millions of professed atheists' at his back, encouraging him to extirpate Christianity, root and branch, out of the land of France! Not less striking, in quite another sense, was the grim and stony silence with which the appeal of the Republican leader was received by the Right, representing, as the Third Republic has chosen to make the Right represent, the Religion, and with the Religion the Liberty, of France. It reminded me, I am sorry to say, of the way in which a naturally amiable and considerate householder might be expected to listen to the arguments of an adroit and accomplished burglar showing cause why he should be locked into the plate-closet to protect him from the police. M. Jules Ferry's offer was to suspend the application to certain religious bodies of the interdict fulminated against them by himself and the Republican Government. At last he paused, evidently oppressed by the steady, unresponsive gaze of his hearers. Then the silence was broken! 'Do you speak for the Government?' called out a fiery deputy of the Right. M. Jules Ferry hesitated a moment and then replied, 'No! I speak for myself; but there are many who think as I do!' 'You!' came back the hot response. 'You! bah!--you are nothing!' The real response came later, on September 22, when, in his own town of St.-Dié, the chief of the Opportunists, despite all the efforts of the prefect of the department and of the local authorities to carry him through, was beaten by a Monarchist. Obviously M. Ferry had heard how things looked from his committee at St.-Dié when he made his fruitless appeal to the Eight in the Chamber! Finding that nothing was to be expected from any cajolery of the Right, or any transactions with the outraged and awakened Christianity of France, the Government at last gave up the control of the impending elections unreservedly into the hands of M. Constans of Toulouse, of whom I have already spoken. To him, as Minister of the Interior, all the machinery of politics was abandoned. Every prefect in France became an electoral agent to do his bidding. For the first time too, I believe, even in French administrative history, all the employees of the post-offices and the telegraph offices were transferred from the control of the Director of Posts and Telegraphs to the direct control of the Minister of the Interior. Under his control they still remain, and it is now proposed to attach these services permanently to the Ministry which manages the elections. Can anybody fail to see what this means? At the suggestion of M. Constans, too, the Government resolved to attack the spectre. It determined to drive General Boulanger out of France. It is not easy to feel much sympathy with General Boulanger, who while Minister of War put into execution against the Comte de Paris and his family a most iniquitous decree, exiling them--for no other cause than the fact that they come of the family which made France a nation--from their country and their homes. But the proceedings which the Government of President Carnot took against General Boulanger were of such a character that the Procureur de la République, who was first directed to carry them out, withdrew from his post. Before they could be consummated by the arrest of General Boulanger, he suddenly left France. Into the subsequent action of the Senate, constituted as a 'High Court of Justice' to try him, I need not here enter. Suffice it that after a canvass organized in this fashion and in this spirit, and prosecuted by the Government with remorseless energy, the elections held on September 22 and October 6 have left the relative strength of the Government and of the Opposition in the new Chamber substantially what it was in the Chamber of 1885. This, in the circumstances, can only be described, in the language of one of the ablest Republican journalists in Paris, M. Jules Dietz of the _Journal des Débats_, as 'an escape from a disaster.' The repulse of the assailants at the Redan did not save Sebastopol for the Russians. The margin of the proclaimed majorities by which many of the Government members of the new Chamber were returned, is so very small as to suggest of itself the pressure, in a very practical and concrete form, of the hand of authority on the returns at the polls. In twenty cases these majorities ranged from 6 to 200 votes. In one case, in the Seine Inférieure, the details of which were given to me by persons of the highest character, with perfect liberty to use their names, the Government member was declared by the prefect, after two adjournments of the counting, to have been returned by a majority of 173 votes on a total poll, which proved upon examination to very considerably exceed the total number of voters registered in the district! But, taking the general return of the votes cast at these elections as authentic, it is perfectly plain that the Monarchical party in France is stronger to-day than it was in 1885, and that the Republican party is weaker in France to-day than it was in 1885. In 1885 the strength of the two parties stood as follows:-- Republicans of all shades 4,377,063 Conservatives and Monarchists 3,608,578 _________ Republican majority 768,485 In 1889 the strength of the two parties stands as follows:-- Conservative Monarchists 3,144,978 Boulangists 629,955 _________ 3,774,933 Opportunist Republicans 2,980,540 Radicals 981,809 Socialists 90,593 _________ 4,052,542 Republican majority 277,609 Here at once we see a falling off in the Republican majority, between 1885 and 1889, of no less than 490,876 votes. This is certainly significant enough when we remember that in 1885 the Monarchists did not everywhere and openly attack the Republic as a form of government, while in 1889 the issue was admitted on both sides to involve the existence of the Republic as a form of government. But this is not all. When we compare the total of the votes cast in 1885 and 1889, we find a diminution of no fewer than 788,821 votes. If this proves anything, it proves that the voters of France care very much less about the stability of the Republic in 1889 than they did in 1885. And this farther appears from the further fact that the falling off in the total of votes cast affected the Republican vote of 1889 much more seriously than it affected the Monarchical vote. Indeed it did not affect the Monarchical vote at all. On the contrary, while there was a positive falling off from the Republican vote of 324,521 between 1885 and 1889, there was a positive increase of the Monarchical vote, between 1885 and 1889, of 166,355. How is it possible to weigh the meaning of these figures fairly without seeing that a form of government which exists in France only in virtue of a majority which a change of 140,000 votes in a total poll of 7,827,475 would have turned into a minority, can hardly be said to rest upon as firm a basis, for example, as that of the Third Empire, with its plebiscitary majority of seven millions in 1870 responding to its majority of seven millions in 1852? Take away from the narrow Republican majority of 1889 the public functionaries, high and low, now counted in France by tens of thousands, with all who depend upon and are connected with them; give to the ballot in France the sanctity, freedom, and security which it has in England; compel the public authorities in France to abstain, as they are compelled in England to abstain, from direct interference with the exercise by the voters of the right of suffrage, and the evidence is overwhelming which goes to show that the Third Republic would be voted into limbo to-morrow! VIII To say this is to say that the Third Republic does not exist in France by the will of the French people; and this I believe to be absolutely true. The Third Republic exists by virtue of the control which its partisans have acquired of the administrative machinery of the Government, or, in other words, by virtue of political corruption and intimidation. So great has been the multiplication of functionaries great and small under the Third Republic, that it is not easy to get at an accurate estimate of their numbers. The best information I have been able to obtain leads me to believe that, exclusive of the military and naval forces, not less than two hundred thousand adult French citizens now draw their subsistence from the public treasury. This represents a population of at least a million of souls, so that we have nearly one in thirty of the inhabitants of France subjected to a direct or indirect pecuniary pressure from the central authorities at Paris. So openly is this pressure exerted under the Third Republic, that the Government of M. Carnot did not hesitate, during the Universal Exposition, and not long before the Legislative Elections began, to bring up no fewer than some thirteen thousand of the mayors of France to Paris at the public expense. There they were entertained--still at the public expense--with a sumptuous hospitality, which proves that, however orthodox the Republican Atheism may be of M. Constans, the Minister of the Interior, he has not yet struck the blessed St. Julian out of his calendar, at least when he is spending the money of the French taxpayers on his guests. If I may believe what I afterwards heard in more than one provincial town, these worthy mayors (every one of whom, let me observe, exercises a direct personal and official authority over the elections) carried back to his astonished and envious fellow-citizens tales of Arabian, Tunisian, Algerian, and Annamite nights at the Exposition, and on the Champs-Elysées, to which no pen but that of Diderot or of the younger Crébillon could do adequate justice. 'I do not believe the Sultan,' said a clever and amusing lady to me at Toulouse, 'threw open the doors of Paradise so wide to the German Kaiser, at Constantinople, as did our more than liberal M. Constans to the married Mayors of France at Paris!' On the other hand, at Honfleur, in the Calvados, it came to my knowledge that the local authorities, on the morning of the first Legislative Elections, brought over from another port on the Norman coast, a number of sailors, residents of Honfleur, and entitled to vote there, but absent in the pursuit of their calling. These honest Jack Tars came to Honfleur by the railway, in a kind of brigade, accompanied by a Government agent, who marched them up to the polls, and, having seen their votes safely deposited for the Government candidate, gave each man his return ticket for the next day, and set them all free to spend the interval in the bosom of their astonished and, I hope, delighted families. From the point of view of the domestic peace of France, this proceeding was perhaps less reprehensible than the Belshazzar's Feast of M. Constans and the thirteen thousand mayors. But from the point of view of the relations between the Third Republic and the deliberate independent electoral will of France, I think it must be admitted that they are, as the people say in the Western States of America, 'very much of a muchness!' I ought to add that in France the mayors of the chief towns (or _chefs-lieux_), the arrondissements, and the cantons are nominated by the Government at Paris. The mayors of the communes which owe their corporate freedom to the monarchy are elected, but the Third Republic has taken from them the control of their local taxation for purposes of the highest local interest. I should say also that all the sailors in France are obliged to be inscribed upon lists kept and controlled by the maritime prefects for the Ministry of the Marine, so that their whereabouts may be known or ascertainable at all times. Americans who understand the institutions of their own country find the true measure of the fitness of a people for self-government in their respect for the authority of a lawful Executive. The fatal mistake has been made by the Third as it was by the First French Republic of confounding respect for a lawful Executive with submission to an Executive controlled by a majority of the Legislature. The fact that the power of the public purse, in a constitutional government, is necessarily confided to the Legislature, makes this mistake fatal--fatal at once to the liberty of the taxpayers who supply the public purse, and of whom the members of the Legislature are simply the agents and trustees, and to the efficiency and integrity of the Executive. I see with much interest, while the sheets of this book are going through the press in London, that this very grave point emerges from a brief correspondence published in the English newspapers between the Chancellor of the British Exchequer, Mr. Goschen, and Lord Lewisham. Lord Lewisham, acting, it would appear, on behalf of a number of English Civil Servants, wrote to the Chancellor of the Exchequer concerning certain complaints of these servants, embodied in a memorial. In his reply, the Chancellor of the Exchequer alludes to an intimation which seems to have been made by the authors of this memorial of their intention to put a kind of pressure upon the Minister of the Crown through the House of Commons. Upon this Mr. Goschen observes: 'the memorialists should be reminded that their reference to an appeal to their representatives in Parliament, involving, as it would seem, a personal parliamentary canvass to determine the relations between the State and its employés, contemplates a course of action not only injurious to the public interests, but opposed to the best traditions of the Civil Service.' What the English Chancellor of the Exchequer here most wisely and properly condemns as a mischief a-brewing, has become the _jus et norma_ of 'the relations between the State and its employés' in France under the Third Republic. The persons charged to execute and enforce the laws in France have come, under the Third Republic, from the President downwards throughout the Civil Service, to regard themselves, and to be regarded by the people, as the mere servants and instruments of the persons deputed by the people to consider what the laws shall be, and to adjust the public taxation to the necessities of the public service. The result necessarily is that the majority of the French Chamber of Deputies under the Third Republic has visibly become an irresponsible oligarchy of a kind most dangerous to liberty and the public weal. By calling themselves, as they do, the 'party of the appeal to the people,' the French Imperialists show their doubtless well-founded conviction that the masses of the French people are essentially monarchical in their ideas as to the best tenure by which the Executive authority can be held. To believe this, is to believe that the masses of the French people are essentially lovers of order, not of disorder; that they instinctively put the executive above the legislative function in their conceptions of a political hierarchy, and therefore that they are essentially fitted for self-government. In this I am sure the Imperialists are right. But, unfortunately for them, the centralised administrative machinery of government in France by which the French people are now and have for a century past been prevented from governing themselves, though not indeed of Imperial origin, was so developed and perfected by the genius of the first Napoleon as to become identified in a sense with the Napoleonic dynasty. It is a great misfortune of the French people that all great changes in their political system, no matter how promoted or in what spirit, must be wrought out within the vicious circle of this centralized administrative machinery. The initiative in liberating France from this centralized administrative machinery can only come from within the vicious circle itself. An independent Executive of France made Chief of the State by the popular will, and protected, as the Executive of Great Britain is protected, in the interest of liberty and of the people, by the hereditary principle, might take this initiative and begin the great work of so distributing throughout France the administrative responsibilities and powers now concentrated at Paris as to make the French people for the first time really their own masters. Certainly no executive holding power by any tenure less independent and secure can ever effect this. That a real basis exists upon which this great work might be carried out in the local life, traditions, ideas and sympathies by which the widely different populations of what used to be known as the different provinces of the Kingdom of France are united among themselves and discriminated from one another, many able and well-informed Frenchmen believe. One of the most hasty and mischievous things done by the infatuated political tinkers of 1790 was to cut and carve up France into arbitrary political departments for the express purpose of disintegrating and destroying those ancient social and political organisms. This purpose has not been effectually accomplished. What has been accomplished is to superpose upon the ancient organic France another arbitrary and administrative France. This latter arbitrary and administrative France controlled by a legislative oligarchy, which first makes and then uses the French Executive for its own purposes, it is which now calls itself the Third French Republic. The traits and the tendencies as well as the origin of the Third Republic can be thoroughly studied at Paris. Without Paris the Third Republic never could have existed. It exists now in virtue of the political machinery of which Paris is the centre. That it could not withstand for a day any severe shock given to that machinery was confessed, as I have said, by its own government in the abject panic which followed the victory of General Boulanger at the polls of the capital on January 27, 1889. The traits and the tendencies of France, on the contrary, must be studied in the provinces. There was always more wit than wisdom in the famous saying of Heine--that to talk about the opinion of the provinces in France was like talking about the opinion of a man's legs--the head being the seat of thought, and Paris being the head. But the saying was uttered during the reign of Louis Philippe, and long before the establishment of universal suffrage by the Second Empire. With universal suffrage and with the development during the past twenty years of the railway and of the telegraphic system throughout France, the importance of the provinces relatively to Paris has greatly and steadily increased. While steam and electricity have, of course, increased the strength of the pressure which an aggressive oligarchy controlling the centralised administrative machinery of the Government at Paris can put upon the opinions and the interests of France, they have also, it must be remembered, increased the power of France to resist and to resent that pressure. They have established return currents, the force of which grows visibly greater every year. The great provincial towns and cities of France, for example, are ceasing to be dependent, as they formerly were, upon the press of Paris for their news and views of which passes in the capital. There are no such journals yet in any of the French provinces as the powerful newspapers which are to be found throughout the United Kingdom; but there is a steady and very notable growth in the circulation of the more important local journals, and the telegraph brings them the news of the day from Paris long before the Parisian papers can reach their readers. The development of these influences has been checked, and is still checked, by the official control at Paris of the telegraphic system, and it is worth noting here that, just before the legislative elections, the Minister of the Interior, to whom the control of the post office and of the telegraphs had been transferred, caused the telephone offices throughout France to be taken possession of by the officials of the Government, though the negotiations with the private companies owning the telephones for the purchase of them were still incomplete, and though the private owners formally protested against the act. But though the Government may check and retard, it cannot prevent the development of these influences. France, such as I have found it, full of activity, full of energy, leavened with a genuine leaven of religious faith, irritated by a persistent mockery of the forms of liberty into prizing and demanding the realities of liberty, must grow steadily stronger. The Republic condemned to a policy of persecution and of financial profligacy must grow steadily weaker. Instead of trying to develop France, or letting France develop herself into a republic, the partisans of a Republic have invented successive republics, each more grotesque and uncomfortable than its predecessor, and insisted on cramming France into them. So far the republics have gone to pieces and France has survived. So intense is her vitality, so tough appears to me to be the old traditional fibre in many parts of the French body politic, that before the great chapter of the _Gesta Dei per Francos_ can be safely assumed to be finally closed, a good many more milliards will have to be spent on that State Establishment of Irreligion and Disestablishment of God which the 'true Republicans' of the Third Republic call 'laicisation.' Long before those milliards can be raised and spent, the Third Republic will come to the bottom I believe, if not of the purse, certainly of the patience, of the French people. It is already admitted on all hands that so slight a thing as the reappearance of General Boulanger at Paris on September 21, 1889, would have completely reversed the general result of the elections of the next day. The birthday of the First Republic would have been celebrated by the funeral of the Third. The failure of General Boulanger then to reappear may have made an end of General Boulanger, but it certainly did not establish the Republic. On the contrary, here as we see is the Minister of the Interior, who knows the situation better than any of his colleagues, invalidating election after election in the Chamber of Deputies, and beginning the work of financial reform by demanding an enormous Secret Service Fund to protect the Republic against conspirators! Sooner or later this tragi-comedy must end. It concerns Europe and the world that it should end sooner rather than later, and that it should end with a pacific restoration of France to her proper place in the family of European States. Surely the most imperious necessity of the immediate future in Europe is a general disarmament. No French Republic can possibly propose or accept such a disarmament. No French Empire even could easily propose or accept such a disarmament. For the Republic and the Empire are jointly though not equally responsible for the humiliations and the disasters of the great Franco-German War. The historic French monarchy, restored through a revision of the existing Constitution by the deliberate will of the French people, might propose such a disarmament with a moral certainty that it would be accepted. Would not England necessarily stand by France in such a proposal? And is it not clear that the refusal of Central Europe to accept such a disarmament so proposed and supported would make that alliance with the Russian Empire, which is impossible to a French republic, both easy and natural with a French monarchy? I should have visited France to small purpose if I could suppose that such considerations as this will much affect the masses of the French people. Their present Minister of Public Instruction, M. Fallières, gave his measure of their average enlightenment on such points when he actually called upon the electors of the Lot-et-Garonne in September to vote against M. Cornelis Henry de Witt because a monarchical restoration would 'be followed by a revival of the _droits des Seigneurs_, and--by a Cossack invasion!' But there are many men in France alive to such considerations as this, and these men have many ways of reaching and influencing the political action of the masses of their countrymen. Such men see the vital relations of the diplomatic position of France to the grave domestic question of the public expenses. It is difficult to ascertain the actual cost of the military establishment of France on its present footing of an armed peace. But French officers of rank assure me that France is now keeping under arms at least 550,000 men, or more than one in seven of her adult male population available for national defence. 'We have more men under arms than Germany,' said a French general to me at Marseilles, 'which is absurd, because the German army for fighting purposes, in case of any sudden trouble with us, includes the armies of Austria, Hungary and Italy--so Germany saves money on her peace footing which we idly expend on ours.' What this officer did not say to me has been said by many other well-informed Frenchmen, that the recent military legislation of the parliamentary majority is demoralising this great military force and threatens its efficiency. The prominent position taken in the new Chamber since it assembled by M. Raynal, a Radical member for the Gironde who held the portfolio of Public Works under M. Gambetta in 1880 and again under M. Jules Ferry, is not of good omen for the army. It was M. Raynal who brought about the fall of General Gresley as Minister of War by an 'interpellation,' founded on the refusal of the War Minister to remove an officer of the Territorial Army because he was a monarchist. And now M. Raynal appears with a project for more effectually establishing the domination of the parliamentary majority by giving it the right to adjourn once a week for six successive weeks, all debates on any 'interpellation' to which the Government may object on 'grounds of public policy!' While the costly army of France is at the mercy of legislation under such conditions, the navy of France is managed, as appears from a drastic report presented some time ago by M. Gerville-Réache, an able Republican deputy from Guadeloupe, with at least as much regard to politics as to economy. M. Gerville-Réache showed that contracts were given out so recklessly that a supply of canned provisions, for example, had been laid in at Cherbourg sufficient for five years! At other stations supplies of all kinds were bought at prices ranging far above the market rates, and circulars were produced in which successive Ministers of Marine had ordered the commandants at different naval stations to 'expend every sou in their possession' on no matter what, 'before the expiration of the fiscal year, as any excess remaining in their hands would not only be lost to the Ministry by being ordered back into the Treasury, but would allow opportunities for impugning the forecast and judgment of the ministers!' Under such a system it is not surprising that Admiral Krantz, one of the best naval administrators France possesses, should have been forced to withdraw from the Tirard Government to satisfy a political Under-Secretary, M. Etienne. Is it possible that in the actual condition of France and of Europe such a system as this should last? If France drifts or is driven into a great European war, one of two things would seem to be inevitable. If the French armies are victorious, the general who commands them and restores the military prestige of France will be the master of the government and of the country. If the French armies are defeated, the Government will disappear in a whirlwind of national rage and despair. 'In that event,' said a Republican Senator to me, 'in that event--which I will not contemplate--the princes of the House of France would be recalled instantly and by acclamation; we should have nothing left but that or anarchy.' But putting aside the crisis of a great war, what other alternatives present themselves as the possible issues in peace of the system now dominant at Paris? Of what weight or avail in the policy of the parliamentary oligarchy which calls itself the Third Republic are the counsels of men like M. Léon Renault, M. Jules Simon, M. Ribot, M. Léon Say, who have tried in vain to constitute in France the Conservative Republic of M. Thiers? M. Léon Say left his seat in the Senate before the recent elections and presented himself in the Pyrenees as a candidate for the Chamber, with the well-understood expectation of finding himself eventually put into the presidency of that body. This was to be a guarantee of the Conservative Republic! Who actually fills that most important post? M. Floquet, who first distinguished himself under the Empire by publicly insulting the Emperor of Russia in the Palais de Justice during the visit of that potentate to Paris, and who resigned his seat as a deputy for the Seine in March 1871 to share 'the perils and sufferings,' as he put it, of his constituents, the Communards of Paris! For this M. Floquet was arrested at Biarritz and locked up at Paris till the end of the year 1871. How can France hope to find liberty within her own borders, or peace with honour abroad, under the domination of such men? On December 19, 1888, during a discussion of the budget of 1890 in the French Senate, M. Challemel-Lacour, a Republican of the Republicans, who actually allowed the red flag to be hoisted instead of the tricolour on the Hôtel de Ville of Lyons while he was prefect of the Rhône, and who represented the Republic for a time as Ambassador in London, made a remarkable speech, in which he warned his colleagues of the fate which they were preparing for the Republic. He is one of the three Senators of the Bouches-du-Rhône, and one of the four Vice-Presidents of a body now controlled by the Government, and therefore virtually by the majority of the Chamber of Deputies. He is more than this. An elaborate speech of his, delivered in the Assembly on September 4, 1874, in which he denied the 'right to teach' as threatening the 'moral unity of France,' was the signal of the deliberate war against all religion afterwards proclaimed by M. Gambetta, and since prosecuted by M. Jules Ferry. Out of that speech grew the policy of the Third Republic. Yet what did he say in 1888? He plainly declared his belief that the policy of the Government was driving the Republic headlong to its ruin. He spoke as a Republican, passionately reaffirming his faith in the Republic, and his desire to see it solidly founded in France. 'I conjure you, therefore,' he said, 'to take order, that the Republic may once more become the reign of law; that all may be protected in their persons, in their property, in their faith, not only against disorder in the streets, but against moral disorder, moral anarchy, defamation, calumny, against the fury of an unbridled, uncontrolled, irresponsible press. It is time to arrest the threatening ruin which must affect the humblest lives, if our sad fate be to witness the catastrophe of liberty!' M. Challemel-Lacour is an orator. The Senate was shaken and roused by his earnest appeal. A motion was made that his speech be ordered to be printed and posted on the walls of Paris. But the night came, and with the night the pressure of the powers indicted by the speech, and so no more was heard of it, and the budget of 1890 was voted by the outgoing Chamber, and the incoming Chamber has re-established in it a Secret Service Fund of 1,600,000 francs for the Minister of the Interior--and the work of 'invalidating' the elections of troublesome deputies goes merrily on, and in the remote valleys and hills of France poor village curates are mulcted of half their humble stipends for the offence of calling upon their parishioners to vote for the candidates who do not attack their religion. From this intolerable position there are two obvious ways of escape. One is the familiar Parisian way of the barricades. That way is not likely to be tried in the interest of liberty or of law. The other is the way which France sought to adopt in the recent elections, of a deliberate Revision of the Constitution, now hopelessly perverted into the instrument of a parliamentary oligarchy. The actual Government has just prevented a Revision in the interest of a Republican Dictator, which after all must have been more or less a leap in the dark out of a window. As between the only available window and the only available doorway of a dwelling in flames, it is intelligible that an emotional inmate, with the smell of the fire on his garments, should make for the window. But, the window being barred, what should restrain him from walking rationally out of the doorway? Any one of a dozen possible emergencies may compel a Revision of the Constitution--and any Revision of the Constitution now must mean either a Radical revolution, or a restoration of the hereditary Executive. Either of these would be a doorway; for France would know whither either of these must lead. M. Thiers, it is said by persons who ought to be well informed, might have led France thus out of a doorway in 1871, and into a restoration of the Monarchy. M. Thiers was an exceedingly able man, but it is hard to see how he could then have gone about to achieve this result. France in 1871 was still a conquered country occupied by the German armies. The Third Napoleon and his son were both then living. The Comte de Chambord was then in the strength of his years. The Comte de Paris had not then taken the steps which he afterwards took with so much wisdom and moral courage, to make an end of the rupture between Henri V. and the House of Orléans. The situation now is materially changed. The Imperialists are divided between Jerome the father and Victor the son. The Royalists are united. The France of Henri IV. and of Charles X. is represented to-day by the grandson of Louis Philippe. The _vox Dei_ and the _vox Populi_ meet in him as they met in the Prince of Orange when England, forty years after the criminal catastrophe of 1649, was driven by the flight of James II. into seating William and Mary, the grandson and the granddaughter of Charles I., upon the abdicated throne. How can an independent Executive ever be restored in France excepting in the person of Philippe VII.? Had the Revolution of 1830 never occurred he would now by the ancient law of succession be King of France and Navarre. Had the Revolution of 1848 never occurred he would now be King of the French under the Charter. If the era of revolutions is ever to be closed in France, must it not be by an Executive who shall be at once King of France and King of the French--King of France, as representing the historic growth into greatness and unity of the French nation; King of the French, as representing the personal liberties and the private rights of every citizen of the French commonwealth? * * * * * FRANCE AND THE REPUBLIC CHAPTER I IN THE PAS-DE-CALAIS CALAIS The men who, in 1790, brought about the formal division of France into departments, no doubt thereby facilitated the ephemeral transformation, in September 1792, of the ancient French monarchy into a French republic, 'one and indivisible.' But they also put their improvised republic thereby at the mercy of the marvellous Italian who blew its flimsy framework into shreds with his cannon in October 1795. In working out what George Sand calls 'the great practical joke' of the First Consulate, and the formidable reality of the Empire, Napoleon found, ready-fashioned to his hand and undamaged by the republican tinkers, a system of administration essentially despotic. This system did for him what Charlemagne did for himself when he got rid of the tribal dukes of the Merovingian epoch, and, as Gneist and Sir Robert Morier have shown, gathered into his own control the four unities which make up the unity of the State--the military, the police, the judiciary, and the finances. The counts of Charlemagne, removable at his pleasure, with no root in their _comitatus_ save his sovereign will, were the true prototypes of the modern French prefect. If the old provinces of France, which had a local life, organisation, and spirit of their own, had been taken as the units of government in 1790, the monarchy perhaps might hardly have been abolished in 1792 by a Convention so headlong and tumultuous that for one day it actually forgot, after abolishing the monarchy, to establish any government in its place. But if a republic had been founded through the action of the provinces of France, it would probably have been harder for Napoleon to make an end of it, than it was for Charlemagne to dispense with the recognition of local rights to which the Merovingian kings had submitted in the appointment of their hereditary _subreguli_, from among the local magnates of the shires. This, it seems to me, may be inferred from the fact, admitted on all hands in France, that the departments remain to-day what they were at first--mere administrative divisions which have taken no hold on the feelings and sympathies of the people, while the 'local patriotism' of the provinces is still a vivid reality. Frenchmen are still Gascons and Provençals, Bretons and Normans, Burgundians and Picards, and no country in the world is richer than France in local histories and chronicles. But so late as 1877 the local history of the Department of the Pas-de-Calais, in which I am now writing, could be described as 'unique in France,' and this local history is really a history, not of the department at all, but of the two important and interesting provinces of which it consists--Artois, namely, and the Boulonnais--each of which still preserves, after nearly a century, its own distinctive character in the physiognomy of the people, in their habits, their turn of mind, and their traditions. The attempt to fuse them into a new political entity has completely failed. No more has, apparently, come of it, locally, than would have come of an attempt to fuse Massachusetts and Rhode Island into a Department of Martha's Vineyard, or Kent and Sussex into a Department of New Haven. Possibly even less. For Artois and the Boulonnais never passed definitely under the French crown until the middle of the seventeenth century. Even Calais, after the Duke of Guise had wrested it from England, was conquered for Spain by the Archduke Albert, and a smiling little agricultural commune alone now commemorates, in its name of Thérouanne, the once great and flourishing episcopal capital of Morinia in which Clodion began the French monarchy, and which was mercilessly razed to the ground and abolished from off the face of the earth, little more than three hundred years ago, by the victorious emperor Charles the Fifth. Of this artificial department Calais is neither the chief town nor capital. It has scarcely a third of the population of Boulogne, and not much more than half the population of Arras, which is the seat of the préfecture; and though it is by no means so dreary and uninteresting a place as the casual traveller, seeing only the landing-pier, and the new station, which bears the name of the heroic Eustache de St.-Pierre, is apt to take it to be, it cannot compare, in point of beauty and interest, either with Boulogne or with Arras. But as the French head of the great historic ferry between England and the Continent, and as the seat of sundry thriving factories, it is both a busy and prosperous town. I found its streets swarming with people and its houses a flutter of flags and banners, when I came to it on June 3, 1889, to see the 'inauguration,' by President Carnot, of the works on which the French Government has been spending millions of francs during the past decade, with an eye to deepening and enlarging the harbour. The weather was magnificent. Several men-of-war of the Channel squadron lay off the port. Excursion steamers came in from England, bringing members of Parliament and miscellaneous British subjects, of the sort once indignantly denounced to me by the little old verger of a Midland cathedral as 'them terrible trippers.' The active and good-natured railway porters at the station were worn out with throngs of travellers pouring in from all the country round about. There was much animation everywhere, but nowhere any enthusiasm, though Calais, I suppose, must be a republican town, as at the election of a deputy, held here in 1886, the Government candidate, M. Camescasse, received 5,196 votes against 2,233 given to his Conservative opponent, M. Labitte. I am told, too, there is a good deal of Socialism among the factory workmen; and I can see that the place is full of _cabarets_ and _débits_, flowing not only with light beer and sour wine, but with spirits of a sort to make the consumers more clamorous about the rights than solicitous about the duties of man. I heard, in the course of the day, that at some points in his progress, the President was received with cries of 'Vive Boulanger!' but nothing of this sort passed under my own observation. What most struck me was that his presence appeared to be not an event at all, but merely an incident of a general holiday. Nor did the people seem to care much about the real event of the day, the 'inauguration' of the perfected port. Perhaps they knew that the port is not yet perfected. Those of them who went down to the pier at least knew, this--for a steamer of no very great size, the St.-André, I believe, trying to come in, grounded on the sand, and lay there thumping herself heavily for I know not how long. I heard this mishap described with much glee by a group of Boulonnais in the main street. 'Ah bah!' said one of them exultingly, 'they may spend what they like, Calais will never be Boulogne!' I breakfasted with a friend who lives much on a property he has in Picardy, and who came down to Calais to meet me. When I first knew him, years ago, he was a republican of the type of Cavaignac and a bitter enemy of the Empire, some of his kinsfolk in the Gironde having been ill-treated during the persecution which raged against the republicans and the royalists alike, in and around Bordeaux, after the _coup d'état_ of the Prince President. Of later years he has been growing indifferent to public affairs, and is now, I think, simply a pessimist, whom nothing but a foreign invasion of France is likely to rouse into activity again. 'What is the matter with the people here?' I asked him. 'Are they Boulangists, or do they simply dislike Carnot?' 'No!' he replied, 'I don't think they care much about Boulanger, and why should they dislike Carnot? There is nothing in him to like or to dislike. He is not a personality. He is only a functionary, and Frenchmen care nothing about functionaries. They know that this is an electoral job, and they care nothing about it, one way or the other.' 'But I saw an inscription on a banner in one of the streets,' I said, 'to this effect: "Calais always faithful to the Carnots!" Does that mean that the Carnots are of this country?' 'Not at all! The grandfather of Carnot was born in Burgundy somewhere. He married a young lady of St.-Omer, and in that way came to be sent by the Pas-de-Calais to the "Legislative" and the Convention. The inscription is amusing though,' he added, 'for, like these other inscriptions reciting the names of Lazare Carnot, and Hippolyte Carnot, and Sadi Carnot, it shows how hard some people are trying to work the President up into a personality. They want to make him out the heir of a dynasty--Carnot III.!' 'That is not a very republican way of looking at a President,' I observed. 'Possibly not, but it is a very French way of looking at one! We should be the most monarchical people in Europe if we were not the most anarchical. Give a public man a legend and a grandfather, and he can go a long way with us. I don't know that the grandfather will do without the legend, even when, as in this case, the grandfather has a legend of his own.' 'Is that legend of grandfather Carnot very strong in this region?' I asked. 'Neither in this region nor anywhere else,' he replied. 'I think it is very foolish of the managers in Paris to provoke comparisons by sending a political bagman to Germany to bring back the ashes of Papa Victory, as the Prince de Joinville brought back the dead Emperor from St. Helena. Carnot I., after all, was simply a good war minister, who loomed into greatness only in comparison with the rogue Pache and the phenomenal booby Bouchotte who preceded him. He was certainly no better than his successor Pétiet, and it was Pétiet, not he, who finally "organised victory" by sending Moreau to the Rhine, and Bonaparte to Italy. Napoleon, who knew them both, made Pétiet governor of Lombardy, and chose him, not Carnot, to organise the great camp at Boulogne. When Pétiet died, not long after Austerlitz, Napoleon gave him a much grander funeral in the Pantheon than can be got up now for the grandfather of Carnot. Most people have forgotten Pétiet, and it is a blunder to remind them of him. But this is a government of blunderers. See what trouble the Ferrys and the Freycinets are taking to unmake the legend Clémenceau made for Boulanger! Do what they may, that black horse is worth more to Boulanger to-day than Carnot's grandfather ever will be to Carnot III.' 'But has Carnot III. no value of his own? Has he not shown more firmness than people expected of him when this Boulangist business began?' 'Carnot III. is simply the firm-name of Ferry and De Freycinet. I am not fond of the scurrilities of Rochefort, as you know, but he sometimes hits the nail on the head very hard, as he did when, on the day after that comedy of the presidential election, he said "the fact that a man, if you ask him to dinner, will not put your spoons into his pocket is not a sufficient reason for making him president of a republic." Only,' he added reflectively, 'that was not quite their reason for making him president. It was that they thought he would let other people pocket the spoons.' This reminded me of what used to be said of Secretary Seward by his enemies, that he was 'honest enough himself, but cared nothing about honesty in other people.' 'I don't mean that exactly,' said my friend. 'What I mean is, that Carnot III. is not clever enough to know whether the people around him are or are not honest. His grandfather was. Carnot I. would have cut a great figure in our present Senate, and in the party of the "sick at heart"--the respectable gentlemen, I mean, who are always consenting, under the stress of some "reason of State," to vote for one or another piece of rascality, though it makes them "sick at heart" to do so. Carnot I. voted in this way for the murder of Louis XVI., and he takes pains to tell us that all his colleagues in the Convention who voted for it did so in dread of the mob in the galleries. Just in the same way he was sharp enough to join Napoleon during the Hundred Days, because he saw that his best chance of saving his own head and staying in France was to keep out the Bourbons. This Carnot III. is, I dare say, more honest and less calculating--for he is certainly more dull--than his grandfather. Perhaps he may turn out to be the Louis XVI. of the Republic.' How much has actually been spent on the works here to make Calais a great seaport, it is not easy to ascertain; but the lowest estimates stated to me seem to be quite out of proportion with the results actually achieved. My conversation on this point with my friend from Picardy is worth recording. 'Ten years ago,' he said, 'the amount to be spent on Calais was set down at eleven millions of francs. I feel quite sure that at least twice this sum has been actually spent here since the work began in 1881.' 'Why do you feel sure of this?' 'Because twice the first estimate has been avowedly spent everywhere in France on the whole scheme. Calais alone figures this year in the budget for sixteen millions and a half! You were in France, were you not, in 1880, and you must surely remember the songs that used to be sung in the streets:-- "C'est Léon Say, c'est Freycinet, C'est Freycinet, c'est Léon Say." 'These two men, both of them men of business, both financiers (though the "white mouse"[1] is a bit of a visionary) and both men of ability, deliberately adopted, in 1879, after a single conversation with Gambetta, a scheme improvised by him, who was neither a man of business nor a financier, but a declamatory Bohemian, for keeping up the war expenditure by committing France to the creation of a complete "commercial outfit." [1] This is the popular nickname of M. de Freycinet. 'The Republicans won the elections in 1877 by frightening France into a belief that a Conservative victory at the polls would be followed by a new German invasion. I am not sure, mind you, that this was an idle scare. For under the Conservative administration of our affairs we had cleared off in six years' time the frightful burdens imposed upon us by the war, by the senseless Parisian revolution of 1870, and by the Communist insurrection of 1871; and it is likely enough that Bismarck may have made up his mind to attack us if he saw us persist in a sane and sensible public policy. Be that as it may, Gambetta, Léon Say, and Freycinet, between them, did his work for him by plunging the country back into the financial morass from which the Conservatives had rescued it. They carried the new chamber with them into Gambetta's scheme for doing systematically and successfully what had been clumsily attempted in the Ateliers Nationaux of 1848. France was to be made a republic by spending nearly the amount of the German War indemnity on the construction of railways, canals, and ports all over the country. The sum stated in the outset was four thousand five hundred millions of francs--rather a pretty penny you must see!' 'I remember it,' I replied, 'and I remember thinking, when the scheme was first developed, that the adoption of it was a wonderful evidence of the financial vigour and vitality of France.' 'Thank you,' he replied rather bitterly. 'It was just such a proof of vigour and vitality that Dr. Sangrado used to get from his patients with his lancet. It was a great political manoeuvre, no doubt, and it commended itself to all the hungry politicians in France so promptly and so warmly, that within three years' time, in 1882, M. Tirard, who was then Finance Minister, and who is now on the box of the Carnot coach, had to admit that the expenditure then contemplated in carrying out this great idea could not possibly fall short of nine thousand one hundred and fifty millions of francs! This, observe, was seven years ago. To-day it has swelled, at the least, into eleven and perhaps to twelve thousand millions of francs. Why not? Gambetta, Léon Say, and Freycinet proclaimed the millennium of civil engineers and local candidates. What becomes of equality and fraternity if the smallest hamlet in the recesses of the Jura is not as much entitled to a local railway at the public expense as the largest port on the Bay of Biscay? Once let it be understood that the Government means to spend ten thousand millions on public works, and all the voters are ready to believe the Government has found the philosopher's stone. Nobody but the tax-gatherer will ever make them understand where the money comes from. And between the tax-gatherer and the taxpayer, a truly clever finance minister can always interpose successfully, for a certain length of time, the anodyne banker with a new form of public loan! We are the sharpest and thriftiest people alive in private affairs, and in public matters the most absolute fly-gobblers in the whole world!' I tried to console my friend by informing him that this particular kind of political financiering is not unknown in my own country. The scheme of Gambetta appears to me to be simply a development, on a grand scale, of the 'log-rolling principle,' on which, year after year, a measure known as the 'Rivers and Harbours Bill' is engineered, with more or less friction, through the Congress of the United States. It is regularly and diplomatically fought over between the two houses until an agreement about it is come to between the opposing forces, described by a recent American writer as 'the plutocracy at one end and the mobocracy at the other end' of our national legislature. In short, it has now become an 'institution,' and like other institutions it has its legendary hero, in a western legislator who is reputed to have re-elected himself for a number of years by 'putting through' successive appropriations for the 'improvement' of a stream which rose in an inaccessible mountain and emptied itself into an unfathomable swamp. 'That is very well,' said my friend gravely, 'very well indeed, but you have to do this thing every year, while Gambetta and Léon Say and De Freycinet committed France to it once for all and irremediably. And on what scale do you do this sort of thing?' I was forced to own that, upon this point, Washington so far lags shamefully in the rear of Paris. Our grandest 'log-rolling' in finance is, to the colossal operations of Gambetta, Léon Say, and De Freycinet, as is the ordinary iron lamp-post of New York to the Eiffel Tower. The 'Rivers and Harbours Bill,' in 1886, was only saved after a desperate struggle at the very end of the session, by a compromise over an 'ancient and fish-like' canal job in the North-West, the original promoter of which, long since passed beyond the hope, if not beyond the desire of hydraulic improvements, audaciously baptized it with the name of Father Hennepin, one of the glories of France in the New World. And yet the amount involved in the Bill did not exceed fourteen million dollars, or a beggarly seventy million francs. 'At that rate,' said my friend, 'it would take your great country more than a century to match what we have covered in ten years. And yet you are thought an enterprising people, and, what is more to the point, your treasury shows an annual surplus, while ours shows an annual deficit; and you have nearly twice our population, have you not, and more than ten times our area of territory? 'If I were to "improve" the roads and ponds on my property on the principle on which France has been "improving" her railway systems and her ports, I should bring up in bankruptcy. Where else can the country bring up? Nothing, so far, has saved us but the woollen stocking of the peasants. Come to my place in Picardy, and I will show you a dozen old fellows who go about dressed in blouses--who work like day-labourers--no! much better and harder than day-labourers now do. They will never tell you what they are thinking about; they will never tell me, though we are the best of friends; but you will see what they are--close at a bargain, shrewd, devoted to their farms and families. Well, they live on a third--yes, some of them on a quarter--of their incomes; they know just where every penny they have spent on the ground for twenty years has gone, and just what it has brought back to them, and every man of them can put his hand, if need be, on ten, twenty, thirty, forty thousand francs. That is the woollen stocking. But the most beautiful woman in the world can only give what she has. The woollen stocking holds no more than it holds. You can find the bottom of it if you keep on long enough--and then? And mark you, if I tell the shrewdest of these old fellows that the Government is spending ten thousand millions of francs on building railways from nowhere to nowhere, and digging ports in quicksands, what will he do? He will begin to think it is very hard that he can't get a railway built or a port dug. Do you wonder I am a pessimist?' 'But if this is the way in which they look at things, why do they clamour for Boulanger?' 'They don't clamour for Boulanger. That is to say the peasants, the rural people. It is in the towns--here in Calais, for example, at Boulogne, at Amiens--that they clamour for Boulanger. In the towns they read all manner of trash and listen to all manner of lies. You can get up a legend in the French towns for anybody or anything as easily to-day as in the middle ages--perhaps more easily. Look at this legend of Boulanger. It is a real legend to-day. You may be sure of that, and that is the real danger of it. The people who are fighting against it to-day are the people who made it. They wanted, they could not get on without, a great man. Ferry went to pieces, as you know, in 1885. Tonkin and the dead Courbet killed him. So they invented Boulanger. They made him War Minister. They put him on his black horse. They let him drive out the princes. Look at those five men seated there in front of that café. They are doubtless decent well-to-do shopkeepers, master mechanics--no matter what--I will wager you that of these five men, three believe Boulanger to be the first soldier of France, and that two of them believe the Government has driven him into exile to prevent the Germans from declaring war! That is enough to make them Boulangists.' 'Then they want war with Germany?' 'Yes, in this part of France I think they do. But the legend is just as effective where they do not want war with Germany. Last year I was in the country of Grévy, not far from Mont-sous-Vaudrey. There the peasants dread nothing so much as another war. They want peace there at any price. Well, then, a very shrewd old farmer told me he wanted to see Boulanger made Chief of the State. Why? Why because, as he said, Boulanger is the first general in Europe, and the Germans know it, and they go in fear of him; so that if Boulanger is made Chief of the State, they will think twice before they attack us! What do you say to that?' 'Is it not extraordinary,' I replied, 'that this legend, as you truly call it, should have been created so easily about a general who has no battle to show for it; not even a Montenotte, much less an Arcola or a Lodi?' 'What legend had Bonaparte when Barras put him at the head of the home army, and Pétiet sent him to Italy? He did not command at Toulon, and his one victory had been to blow the marshalled blackguards and lunatics of Paris into the Seine, as Mandat might and would have done on that dismal August 10, but for that hypocritical scoundrel Pétion. And didn't the authorities arrest Bonaparte after Toulon; and was he not struck from the active roll of general officers in France for refusing a command in La Vendée? So far as the army goes, there is better stuff for a legend to-day in Boulanger than there was in Bonaparte when he went to Italy. 'But observe that the Government made a legend of Boulanger, not for military but for political purposes. They were shut down to him. If they could have used M. de Lesseps, and if the Panama Canal had been a success, Lesseps would have served their purpose better than Boulanger. Without a "great Frenchman," I tell you the republic is impossible. Are they not trying to make a "great Frenchman" now of Carnot? If this could be done, if it were possible to make a "great Frenchman" of Carnot, I should not object. But it is absurd. And so for me, whatever the electors may do in September, the republic is hopeless. They made Boulanger to save it; now they are trying to unmake Boulanger to save it. It is childish, it is silly, it will not do! If they succeed in unmaking their legend of Boulanger, where are they? Not even where they were when they began to make it. On the contrary! They have made it perfectly plain that the republic is a parachute which falls without a balloon. Where are they to find the balloon? The Exposition has given the parachute a lift. The visit of the Prince of Wales gave it a lift. The Shah, if he comes, will give it a lift--not much--but a lift. But all these are expedients of a moment. All these will not give the republic a "great Frenchman."' 'All this,' I said, 'seems to bring us back to what you said this morning, that if you were not the most anarchical you would be the most monarchical people in Europe.' 'Precisely! and it is the plain truth. The republic was possible with MacMahon, for after all he was a personality. It was possible with Thiers, for though he was a little rascal and the greatest literary liar of the century except Victor Hugo, he was a personality, and a very positive personality. It might have been possible with Gambetta, for he too was a personality, odious and flatulent if you like, but still a personality. It was not possible with Grévy. It is not possible with Carnot. 'Let the elections go as they may, you will see that I am right. I wash my hands of it all. But when I think of it I see on the wall _Finis Galliæ_! For while I despair of the republic, I have no hope of a monarchy. Nothing but a personality can carry on the republic--and nothing but a personality can restore the monarchy. 'The friends of the poor little Prince Imperial understood this when they consented to let him go off to South Africa. If he had been in the hands of an English general of common sense, or of an English captain of common courage, he would no doubt have come back safe and sound. And in that case the odds are that we should be living to-day under the Third Empire instead of the Third Republic. 'As it is, the Empire, between the significance of Plon-Plon, and the insignificance of Prince Victor, is like the Republic between Ferry, the Tonkinese, and Carnot, who ought to spell his name _Carton_!' 'But how is it with the royalists?' 'Ah! their only "personality" known to the people--and that is the value of a personality in France--is the Duc d'Aumale--and who knows whether the Duc d'Aumale is a royalist? I have no doubt--absolutely no doubt,' he said with some emphasis, 'that Say and De Freycinet to-morrow would gladly join forces with the Conservatives to make the Duc d'Aumale president if the Conservatives would agree to it, and if the Duc would accept the place; for that would give the Republic a new lease of life in the first place, and in the second place it would utterly disintegrate the royalists, both white and blue. If the Duc is not a "great Frenchman" in the electoral sense of the phrase, he is the most creditably conspicuous of living Frenchmen, which is something.' 'More so than his nephew the Comte de Paris?' 'Yes, certainly, in the popular mind. Personally, I do not think he would make either so good a president of a republic, or so good a king as the Comte de Paris, whose manifesto I think shows him to be a man of clear and sound constitutional ideas, but the French people do not know him. It was a blunder, by the way, in my opinion,' he added after a moment, 'of Boulanger to expel the Comte de Paris. His exile and his action in exile have made him better known in France than he would have been, had he been left to live quietly at Eu and in Paris. Furthermore, what sort of a republic is it in which a family of princes cannot live without tempting the whole population to make one of them king? The expulsion of the princes belongs to the same category of political idiocies with the _pacte de famine_. Either the Republic is a reality accepted by the French people, or it is a sham imposed upon them by a party. If it is a reality, the princes are simply French citizens, as much entitled to live in France under the protection of the laws as if they were peasants. From this there is no escape logically or morally, and the men who voted for such an edict are neither good Republicans nor good Frenchmen. From the moment it was enacted and executed, the Republic ceased to be a national government. It was a _coup d'état_ and not a legal act, and every legislator who voted for it committed perjury at least as distinctly as the author of the _coup d'état_ of 1851. Could such a law possibly have been passed in your republic?' 'Certainly not,' I said. 'In fact, the people of many American States are free to treat with all possible public and private distinction a personage who not only was elected to a position which may be called princely, but who actually exercised for several years a greater authority over millions of American citizens than has belonged to any French king since Louis XVI., and, exercising it, waged war against the United States. But was there no pretence of constitutional authority for the passage of this law which you so strongly denounce?' 'Certainly not. There was no shadow of a legal pretext for passing it. It is, I think, the worst and also the silliest instance in our recent history of an appeal to that argument of rogues and tyrants called _salus populi_, as to which I am of the opinion of Louis Blanc, that the "safety" of no nation under heaven "is worth the sacrifice of a single principle of common justice." 'It was a blow struck in broad daylight at the personal rights of every French citizen; just as the removal of the princes from the army was a blow struck in broad daylight at the property rights of every French officer. That it was possible for a Government to strike these blows in cold blood, with no popular excitement instigating them, and with no public resentment following them, should show you, I think, how absurd it is to talk of the French people as a republican people. Any Government in power at Paris may be as arbitrary as it likes, but it must not be stupid. The expulsion of the princes was a crime against liberty; it was as arbitrary an act as the issue of a _lettre de cachet_. But it was also very stupid. It was stupid of the Government because it put them for a time under the thumb of Boulanger. It was stupid of Boulanger, because it put the Comte de Paris at once on a pedestal and forced him before France and Europe into the position of a saviour of society, for whom all the conservative forces of French society must henceforth inevitably work. Whatever becomes of Boulanger in the next elections, he has condemned the Opportunists irretrievably either to hew wood for the Socialists or to carry water for the Monarchists. And with them he has condemned himself. Wait and see if I am not right. 'Come and see me in Picardy. You will find more royalist farmers than I could have believed possible six years ago. If the Comte de Chambord had not kept the Legitimist country gentlemen so much apart as a caste from the peasants, there would be nothing easier than to sweep the country with a monarchist propaganda. It was the royalist peasantry who brought about the great emigration in 1789, long before the Terror, by burning and pillaging the châteaux all over France under orders from Paris, which they believed to be orders from the king. What puzzles them now is the notion lurking down in the bottom of their minds that the restoration of the monarchy will somehow put the country gentlemen over them, and this has much to do with making them, not republicans, but imperialists. As to the republic the overthrow of Grévy had a very bad effect upon the peasants and the farmers in my part of the country, and I believe it had everywhere.' 'Was M. Grévy, then, popular with them?' 'No, it was not that at all. It was the feeling that the Republic meant changes and uncertainty. A farmer--a fair specimen of this class in my country--expressed this to me in his own fashion only the other day. I asked him if he was coming to see the President here at Calais. "What is the use of that?" he said, "it is money out of pocket, and for what? Who knows how long he will be President? There was Grévy. Here is Boulanger. All that can do no good. With these short leases what can be done for the land?" There you have it. In Picardy and in Artois the people have long memories about the land. All these countries, as you know, were fought over again and again. There were so many wars that people got out of the way of making long leases, and the land suffered accordingly. In the last century these provinces, now so well and so richly cultivated, were in a very bad way through this. With leases of three, six, nine years, the farmers naturally took as few risks as possible in the way of improving the land. They were always making up the waste caused by the previous tenant, or shy of investing for the benefit of the next tenant. Towards the end of the century, and before the Revolution, small holdings began to increase, and the English fashion of long leases came in, and the agriculture improved accordingly. So you see why our farmers tend to monarchy from the point of view of long leases and land ownership, just as these sailors and fishermen here in the Boulonnais tend to it from the point of view of seamanship. You will make republicans of them when you get them to let the forecastle elect the cook captain. That will not be to-morrow nor, I think, next week.' I left Calais late at night for Boulogne, my friend going into Picardy, where I promised to join him later on. There was an immense crowd at the station, and I could not help admiring the good nature and cheery civility of the porters. The sub-officials in silver lace were not so admirable, but then they were only strutting about and objecting to things. The honest fellows who were getting twice as many passengers into a train as the train could possibly take, and helping bewildered provincials to find out where they really wanted to go, were, I thought, miraculously amiable and intelligent. At the last moment, just as we were moving off, a lively Parisian journalist tumbled into our compartment with his despatch-box and his portmanteau. He was in the full evening dress in which he had been parading about all day with the Presidential party; his white cravat was loose and awry, and the grey dust of the Calais streets and piers lay thick upon his glossy bottines; but he was in the best of spirits, for he had caught the train and would now reach Paris in the morning. 'But the President is going on to Boulogne, is he not?' I asked. 'Oh, yes! but what of that? It will be just what it was to-day, and I know what he is going to say. He will leave Boulogne early in the afternoon, and we shall have it all, an excellent account. It's not worth while to waste the time on Boulogne.' He had been with the President ever since the party left Paris, and thought the progression the whole, a success. 'Not at Calais,' that he admitted. There had certainly been no great enthusiasm at Calais. He did not think there had been any cries for Boulanger, but there was no emotion. This he explained by telling me that the people had not been properly '_stylé_.' 'In these cases, you know,' he said with the air of a connoisseur in enthusiasm, 'you must have a certain subtle _stylage_.' The word was new to me, but not so the thing. For I presently found that by a 'subtle _stylage_' of the people, my companion only meant what in America is known as 'working up a boom,' when the welfare of the Union requires that a President, or a presidential candidate, should perambulate a certain number of 'doubtful' States, or, in the picturesque language of the days of Andrew Johnson, go 'swinging round the circle.' If I am not misinformed, an analogous operation is occasionally performed in England, when some popular idol finds it worth his while to make an unpremeditated political tour. 'The thing was better done at Lens,' said my fellow-traveller. 'Do you know Lens? They are all miners there, you know--very curious people. I suppose they were glad to come up from under the ground and look at us. Some of the women, too, were pretty--really very pretty. It was all very well arranged. There is a good manager there, M.----. He made way, you know, in 1886, for Camescasse, to oblige the Government. The President gave him the Cross. It had a very good effect. At Bapaume, too, the President did a good thing. He decorated ---- there, who had so much trouble with the Christian Brothers.' 'For having trouble with the Christian Brothers?' I could not help asking. 'No! but the courts decided against him, and that was a misfortune. The President put it right by decorating him, for it is evident that he meant to do his duty, and a Government must stand by its friends. Do you know Bapaume? It is a pretty place--all factories. It was there, you know, that Faidherbe beat the Germans. A very pretty place.' CHAPTER II IN THE PAS-DE-CALAIS--_continued_ BOULOGNE Boulogne now, as in the days of Arthur Young, is surrounded with bright and pleasant villas and country houses, though many of the châteaux which Young was so much surprised to find inhabited by country gentlemen attending to their duties and living on their estates have disappeared. It is not only a larger and a more lively place than Calais; it is a more picturesque and a more interesting place. The old walls and ramparts of the upper town make such a striking contrast with the modern streets and squares of the lower town as reminds one vaguely of Quebec, the Channel coming into the landscape like the St. Lawrence. As at Quebec, too, the two civilisations of France and of England meet without mingling; and at Boulogne, as at Quebec, the French type, if not the stronger of the two, certainly proves itself to be the subtler, and decides the local physiognomy. I spent an hour at Boulogne, with a friend who now fills an important ecclesiastical position in one of the provinces of Central France, and who was passing a few weeks on the Channel for his health. He is one of the few French churchmen I personally know who heartily agree with Cardinal Manning in thinking that the abolition of the Concordat would greatly strengthen the Church in France, even if it involved a further serious sacrifice of the proprietary rights of the clergy. 'The way in which the people have come forward to the support of the congreganist schools against, the oppressive measures adopted in the law of 1886,' he said, 'confirms my old conviction, that a complete separation of the Church from the State in France, whatever its effect might be upon the State, would strengthen the Church.' He cited a number of instances within his own knowledge in which rival communes had established, and were carrying on, at the direct expense of the local farmers and residents, free or congreganist schools, while, of course, at the same time they were paying taxes for the lay public schools to which they would not send their children. 'And this in spite,' he said, 'of the ingenious devices with which the law of 1886 bristles for making the establishment of free and Christian schools difficult and expensive. For example, to begin with, the legislature actually tried to prevent us from calling our schools free schools, though as schools supported by the free subscriptions of the people they were distinctly "free" schools, as distinguished from the schools established by the law at the expense of the taxpayers. We were gravely informed that it was an act of war to call a free school free! In this same petty and childish spirit the congregations are called "associations" in the text of the law. When a free school is to be opened, the teacher who is to have charge of it must run the gauntlet of a series of public officers, all of them, if they are on good terms with the Government, presumably hostile to him as a Christian. He begins with the mayor of the Commune, who may object to his opening the school in the place he has chosen, on grounds of "good morals or of hygiene." Then he must go through with the Prefect of the Department, the Academic Inspector, and the Procureur of the Republic.' 'That is to say,' I asked, 'the law officer of the department? Why should he be brought into the business?' 'Why, indeed,' replied my friend. 'You must ask M. Ferry or M. Clémenceau. He can stir up the Academic Inspector to make some objection to the opening of the free school, if the Academic Inspector does not find and make an objection himself. If no objections are made within a month the school may be opened. If objections are made they must be made before the Council of the Department within a month. If the Council support the objections, the teacher must appeal from the decision to the Academic Inspector within ten days, and the Inspector must submit this appeal to the Superior Council of Public Instruction at the next ensuing session of that body. Now the Superior Council only meets twice a year, and as the appeal, according to the law, is only required to be heard "with the least possible delay," you will see that nothing can be easier than for the Academic Inspector and the Procureur between them to keep a decision in the air for months, or for a year, or even longer, and pending the appeal the school cannot be opened. 'As for the departmental councils, which are first to consider the objections made to the opening of the school, they no longer include, as they did under the Empire, representatives of the Catholic clergy, the Protestant sects, and the Israelites. All of these are struck out of the councils by this law of 1886, though fully ninety-nine hundredths of all the taxes paid to support the machinery, not only of public education but of the State, are paid by the Catholics, Protestants, and Israelites. Nor are the councils any longer allowed to elect their own vice-presidents. The prefect, a government _employé_, presides over the councils. The Academic Inspector, another government _employé_, is officially the president; four councillors-general, elected by the whole body of the council-general of the department, sit on the Departments of Primary Instruction Council, as do also the director or directors of the Normal Schools of Public Teachers, and four teachers, two male and two female, to be elected by the whole body of lay public school teachers of both sexes in the department, all of them paid _employés_ of the Government; and finally, two inspectors of public primary education nominated by the Minister of Public Instruction. So, as you see, out of a council consisting of fourteen members, ten are paid servants of the Government, directly concerned to discourage the development of the Christian schools. If questions and disputes between the lay public schools and the free Christian schools came before this council, one lay and one congreganist teacher may be admitted to join the council. But the wise and just provision of the earlier law, that two or more magistrates of the highest repute should be members of these councils, has been deliberately struck out of this aggressive law of 1886. 'Is it possible,' he said, 'to mistake either the spirit or the object of such a law? 'What gives me confidence and hope is the unquestionable effect which the law has had upon the religious life of France. It has aroused and stimulated it to more vigour and energy than I have seen it show for years past. If only the Church in France were to-day as free from any official connection with the State as it is in your country, I believe we should see such a revival of Catholic faith as has not been known in Europe for centuries. 'Do you remember,' he went on, 'how Ferry went to Rome after his expulsion from power? Yes? And doubtless you know what efforts he made there at that time to bring about a subterranean understanding between himself and the Vatican?' 'He is the only one of these Opportunists who really has a head on his shoulders, and you will find that he is under no illusions as to the possibility of any working alliance between the Opportunists and the Radicals which can save the former from going to the wall, like the Girondins in 1793. 'Perhaps,' he said, laughingly, 'we may live to see M. Ferry doing penance in a white sheet, with a candle in his hand, on the way to a seat in a monarchical Cabinet! Though I am no politician, yet--mark my words!--this republic has been so mismanaged that now it cannot live without the Radicals--and it cannot live with them! 'As for the Church; if you want to see what life and energy it is showing in its work, come and see me in the autumn. I will show you in the Limousin one of the establishments of the Congregation of the Holy Cross, or you can go into Mayenne and see twelve or fifteen of them. Or you ought to go to Ruille-sur-la-Loire, to see the modest cradle of this great congregation, which now, from its mother-house at Neuilly, is sending out Catholic life and faith all over the world, and the pulse of which is beating higher in France to-day than at any time since that true and simple servant of God, Dujarié, took it upon himself, from his obscure little parsonage, to begin the restoration of the Church from the crash of the Terror and the calamities of the First Empire.' 'How many years ago was it,' I asked, 'when this Congregation began its work in the United States?' 'Not quite fifty years ago,' he replied, 'and, as you know, its schools are flourishing in all parts of your Union, from the University (in Indiana) of Our Lady of the Lake, to New Orleans and New Jersey, and from Wisconsin to Texas. It numbers its pupils, too, by thousands here at home in France. 'I ask you to join me in the Limousin because I hope to be there in October, and then I can show you at Limoges what I am sure you would like to see--one of our best cathedrals, and some beautiful old glass in St.-Michel and St.-Pierre, not to mention the enamels still hidden away here and there in certain houses I wot of!' ST.-OMER Two of the most interesting places in the Pas-de-Calais are St.-Omer, once a name of terror to the worthy Englishmen who went in constant fear of the Pope and wooden shoes, and Aire-sur-la-Lys, which now embraces within its communal limits all that remains to-day of the once famous and important city of Thérouanne, the ancient capital of Morinia, and for thirty years the episcopal seat of the great Swiss bishop, St.-Omer, who made North-Eastern Gaul Christian in the seventh century. St.-Omer still preserves a certain grave and austere physiognomy, half-Spanish and half-scholastic; and it is easy for the imagination to people its quiet streets with the English and Irish students who frequented its collegiate halls from the days of Guy Faux to the days of Daniel O'Connell. But its importance is now military, not theological. M. Pierre de la Gorce, the accomplished historian of the Revolution of 1848, who lived here seven years as a magistrate, and who still resides here because he finds in the place 'a still air of delightful studies' congenial to his tastes and favourable to his historical labours, told me, in the course of a most interesting afternoon which I passed here with him, that the town is full of families living here on their incomes; and in going about the streets I was struck with the general air of quiet and unobtrusive well-being which marks the people. In his position as a magistrate, M. de la Gorce had the best possible opportunities for gauging the moral character of the inhabitants, and he assured me that during the whole period of his residence in St.-Omer, extending now over twelve or thirteen years, he has never known more than one serious domestic scandal to disturb the even tenour of its social life. Of how many towns of twenty thousand inhabitants could the same thing be truly said in England or the United States? During all these years, too, M. de la Gorce tells me, only two cases of alleged misconduct on the part of priests have occurred in St.-Omer, and in one of these cases the allegation was proved malignant and unfounded. Politically, St.-Omer seems to be strongly Republican. In 1886 it gave the Government candidate a majority of 1,281 votes on a total of 6,623, whereas in Boulogne at the same election the Republicans were beaten in the southern division, and carried the whole city by only a majority of 1,331 votes out of a total of 8,233. What I heard in St.-Omer of the officers stationed there was particularly interesting. There is a large garrison, and the greatest pains are taken by the officers not only with the military discipline, but with the schooling and general conduct of the troops. My own observation leads me to think this true, not of St.-Omer only, but of all the considerable garrison towns which I have visited in France during the past six or seven years. The old type of swashbuckling, absinthe-tippling, rakehelly French officer of whom, during the last years of the Empire, one saw and heard so much, seems to have passed away into history and literature. However it may be with the 'gaiter-buttons' in the next great war, I do not believe the staff of the next invading army will have much to teach the French officers of to-day, either about the principles of scientific warfare or about the topography of France. I am inclined to think that there are more French officers in St.-Omer alone to-day who can read and understand German than there were in all France in 1870. The _morale_ and carriage of the soldiers, too, are distinctly higher. The calling of men of all ranks and conditions under the colours has necessarily raised the moral and social level of the rank and file as well as of the officers; and it is quite certain that the army holds a higher place in the estimation of the better classes in France than it used to hold. M. de la Gorce cited to me several instances, here at St.-Omer, of young ladies of excellent family, three of them at least considerable heiresses, who have married young officers of merit solely because they were officers of merit, and who have gladly turned their backs on the flutter and glitter of fashionable Paris to share the quiet, unpretending quarters, and take a sympathetic interest in the serious military career of their husbands in this rather out-of-the-way garrison town. I do not find M. de la Gorce sanguine as to any early solution of the political problems with which France is still wrestling after a hundred years. He makes no secret of his conviction that nothing but a return to the constitutional monarchy can give the country lasting peace at home, or real influence abroad. But his impression seems to be that time alone can bring this about. He would have the royalists unfurl their banner, go into the elections with a plain declaration of their political creed, and await the progress of events. He cited, as a proof of the wisdom of this policy, the steady advance made by the Republicans after a mere handful of them came into the imperial legislature. They grew from five to thirty, simply because they stood firmly on their own principles, while the majority were disturbed and uncertain. The principle of the hereditary constitutional monarchy, he thought, should be plainly affirmed and presented to the French people, as their only real safeguard against the incessant disturbance and displacement of the executive machinery which results from the election of an executive chief. 'Let this be affirmed and presented,' said M. de la Gorce,' by a number--no matter how small it may be at first--of sincere and resolute men, and every successive shock and catastrophe will bring more and more support to them from all classes in France.' M. de la Gorce is of the opinion that the laicisation of the schools, whatever may be said of the motives and intent of those who have promoted it, has had a good effect on the congreganist schools, by stimulating the teachers and directors to make greater efforts for the improvement of their methods and their general machinery of instruction. This is quite in accord with the views of my friend whom I met at Boulogne--and indeed it is in the nature of things. The way in which the laicisation is carried out by the subaltern authorities seems to be admirably calculated also to inflame the religious zeal of the people. A very intelligent and liberal ecclesiastic, living here, tells me that, while M. Ferry is professing in the Chamber his great anxiety to co-operate with the Conservatives in modifying the decrees of 1791, in regard to religious associations, and talking about a more liberal treatment of the clergy and the Christian free schools, the local functionaries here, in Artois, lose no opportunity of irritating and annoying the Christian population. In the village of Moislains near Péronne, for example, he tells me the funeral took place the other day of the Abbé Sallier, for many years the curé of that parish; a man so much respected and beloved by the whole community that, notwithstanding an express request made by him in his will, that no discourse might be pronounced at his interment, and that it might be made as simple as possible, the people insisted on escorting the remains to the cemetery in a long procession headed by the mayor, the municipal council, and all the notabilities of the country round about. Naturally the people wished that their children, most of whom had been baptized by the abbé, might join in this procession; to prevent which an express order was issued by the school authorities, that the children should not be allowed to leave the school for that purpose. It is difficult to see how a petty persecution of this sort can be expected to promote the 'religious peace' about which M. Ferry perorates at Paris. The rural Artesians, my friend tells me, resent these proceedings very bitterly, and show their feelings in the most practical fashion, by subscribing freely to carry on the religious primary schools, and refusing to let their children attend the lay schools, which are kept up by the Government out of the taxes paid by themselves. This, with a thrifty and rather parsimonious population, like that which increases and multiplies so steadily in Artois, is a most significant fact. The Marist Brethren, who have their headquarter at the Ecole de Notre Dame in Albert, a town of some 4,000 inhabitants, about half-way between Arras and Amiens, are carrying on these religious schools most successfully. Albert itself is a very curious and interesting place. There are remains here of Roman fortifications which show that it was a point of importance under the Empire, and subterranean excavations of a most remarkable character, one of them extending for more than two miles. Down to the time of Henry IV. Albert was known as Ancre. Concini, the Florentine favourite of Mary de' Medici, bought the lordship of Ancre with the title of marquis. With the help of his clever Florentine wife, Leonora Galigai, he completely subjugated the queen and her weak son, Louis XIII.; and, without so much as drawing his sword in battle, made himself a marshal of France, How all this led him on to his ruin I need not recite. He was stabbed to death in the precincts of the Louvre by Vitry; his wife, arraigned as a sorceress, was strangled and burned; and their unfortunate little son was degraded. The marquisate and lordship of Ancre were bought, oddly enough, by another and very different Florentine race, the Alberti, who had come into France and established themselves in the Venaissin a hundred years before. So intense was the general hatred of the Concinis, that, upon acquiring Ancre, the Alberti unbaptized the place and gave it their own French name of Albert, which is still most honourably borne by their representatives, the ducal houses of Luynes and of Chaulnes. It is common enough in France, as it is in England, to find the names of families perpetuated in conjunction with those of places once their property--Kingston-Lacy, Stanton-Harcourt, Bagot's Bromley, Melton Mowbray are English cases in point. But this displacement of an old territorial designation by a family name is unusual. Some thing like it has taken place in our own times and in a remote south-western corner of France, where the people of Arles-les-Bains changed the name of their pleasant little town of orange groves and olives to Amélie, to commemorate their respect and affection for the excellent queen of Louis Philippe. There are factories at Albert; and a modern church is building there, not to the unmixed delight of architects and archæologists. But my concern now is with the work of the Marist Brothers who have made Albert their headquarters. This work is carried on with the direct and active co-operation of the people. At one little hamlet, for example, called, I think, Brébières, nearly a hundred children now attend the Marist school, whose parents pay for each child a subscription of three francs a month. There, not long ago, it was found that in one poor family of peasants a family council had been called to raise this modest sum in order that one of the children now of an age to attend the school might be sent to it. The two elder children settled the question by insisting that they would give up their own daily ration of milk to meet the expense. Will France be a nobler and stronger country when the priests who train the children of her peasantry into this spirit are driven out of the land? This is the real question which must be met and answered by the advocates of compulsory lay education in the public schools. The next step to be taken in the 'laicisation' of the schools has been already revealed in the famous 'Article 7' of M. Ferry. M. Ferry is the true, though more or less occult, head of the present Administration in France. 'M. Ferry,' said a caustic French Radical to me in Paris, 'ought to be the mask of M. Carnot. Nature gave him a Carnival nose for that purpose. Everything is topsy-turvy now in France, and so M. Carnot is the mask of M. Ferry. But the nose will come through before long.' Many years ago the public conscience of Philadelphia, then as now one of the most Protestant of American Protestant cities, was scandalised by the will of a French merchant, Stephen Girard; who, after acquiring a large fortune in that city, left it to found a college, within the precincts of which no minister of religion was, on any pretext whatever, to be allowed to appear. The stupid bigotry of this ignorant millionaire was the high-water mark of French Republican liberality during the dismal orgie of the First Republic. It is still the high-water mark of French Republican liberality under the Third Republic. The dream and desire of M. Ferry and his friends are to prohibit ministers of religion from taking any part whatever in the education of the French people. Already the municipal council of Paris has undertaken to 'bowdlerise' the literature of the world in order to prevent the minds of the young from being perverted by coming into contact with the name of God. These good butchers and bakers and candlestick-makers of the Seine really believe, like certain more academical persons of higher social pretensions in England and America, that the ineffable simpletons and scoundrels who for three or four years during the last decade of the last century made ducks and drakes at Paris of the public fortune and the private rights of the French people, were inspired harbingers of a new era. Outside of France it may be hard to suppose this possible, but nothing can be more certain than that the educational legislation of France since 1882 has been aimed steadily and directly at the abolition, not of Christianity alone, but of all religion. It is curious to see the common school system of New England, which in the beginning was the device of a theocracy bent on usurping the authority of parents over their children, taken up after more than two hundred years, and readjusted to the purposes of a set of men whom the Puritans would have unhesitatingly whipped to death at the cart's tail as blasphemers. Only the other day, in the Chamber, an ardent Republican member, M. Pichon, made a speech in which he openly avowed the object of laicising the schools to be the destruction of religion. 'Between you, the Catholics,' he exclaimed, 'and us, who are Republicans, there is a great abyss. The interests of the Church are incompatible with those of the Republican Government.' That the Republicans in the Assembly should have applauded this declaration is rather astonishing, since it was in substance an admission that the interests of the 'Republican Government' are inconsistent with those of an admittedly immense majority of the French people. But they did applaud it, and not long before M. Pichon made the speech a solid Republican vote of 232 members had been recorded for the suppression of the French Embassy to the Vatican. Is it surprising that the Catholics of France should be asking themselves all over the country whether it is possible for them to accept the Republic without abjuring their religion? The 'abyss' of which M. Pichon speaks has been dug, not by the Church, but by the theorists who have expelled the Sisters of Charity from the hospitals and the chaplains from the prisons of France, who refuse to the poor the right to pray in the almshouses, and who throw the crucifix out of school-houses which are maintained by the money of Catholic taxpayers. As between M. Pichon and M. Ferry and their fellow-conspirators on one side of this abyss, and the Marist Brethren and the little children of France on the other side of it, the history of the world hardly encourages the belief that it is the Marist Brethren and the little children who will finally be engulfed! It is a notable proof of the hold which Catholic ideas have upon the people in this part of France, that notwithstanding a marked tendency to emigration among the peasantry of the Boulonnais and of Artois, the population has steadily increased through the excess of births over deaths. This is not true of France as a whole. On the contrary, while the deaths in France in 1888 were 837,857, against an annual average of 847,968 from 1884 to 1887, the births diminished from an annual average of 937,090 between 1881 and 1884 to 882,639 in 1888, leaving the small excess of 44,772 over the deaths. Of these only 33,458 were of French parentage! In Artois and the Boulonnais, the population is more dense than in any other part of France, excepting the metropolitan regions. While France, as a whole, in 1881, gave an average of seventy inhabitants to the square kilomètre, which is the precise proportion in Bavaria--the arrondissement of Béthune in the coal-mining country of Artois (fed by an exceptional immigration from Belgium) gave 173 to the square kilomètre, which exceeds the proportion in any division of the German Empire except Saxony, Lübeck, Bremen, and Hamburg. The Department of the Pas-de-Calais, as a whole, gave 117 inhabitants to the square kilomètre, which is the precise proportion in Saxe-Altenburg, and exceeds by five the proportion in the British Islands taken as a whole. In the arrondissement of St.-Omer the rate of increase by natural growth some years ago outran that of the older sea-board States of the American Union. This phenomenon cannot be explained by the improvidence of the Artesians, for they are admittedly remarkable, even in France, for their frugality and their forecasting habit of mind. A friend of mine, who lives near St.-Omer, is probably right when he attributes it to their strong domestic tastes and habits, and to the influence over them of their religion. He says they are 'fanatics of the family.' Certainly in the cottages the children seem to have things all their own way, almost as much as in America. 'The Artesian parents,' my friend tells me, 'make their children the objects of their lives.' In the rural regions there is not much immorality. Concubinage, which is by no means uncommon in the towns, is exceedingly uncommon in the country of Artois. The agricultural Artesian wishes to be the recognised head of his house, hates to have things at loose ends, and habitually makes his wife a consulting partner in all his affairs. Even when he is not particularly devout he likes to be on good terms with, his curate, and has very positive ideas as to what is decent and becoming. 'In short,' said my friend, 'he is an ideal husbandman in every sense of that English word, for which we have no equivalent. The assize records show that offences against public morality are almost wholly confined to the towns in Artois, and it is a notable fact that these particular offences are much more frequently committed by persons who can read and write than by the illiterate.' My friend seemed to be startled when I told him that this 'notable fact' appeared to me to be quite in accordance with the nature of things, as set forth in the sound old maxim cited by the Apostle, that 'evil communications corrupt good manners.' So long as thirty years ago, the American Census showed that in the six New England States, in which the proportion of illiterate native Americans to the native white population was 1 to 312, the proportion to the native white population of native white criminals was 1 to 1,084; whereas, in the six southern States of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, and the two Carolinas, the proportion of native white illiterates being 1 to 12 of the native white population, the proportion of native white criminals to the native white population was only 1 to 6,670. Mr. Montgomery of California, Assistant-Attorney-General of the United States in the Administration of President Cleveland, working on the lines of inquiry suggested by such facts as these, did not hesitate, two years ago, to assert that 'the boasted New England public school system, as now by law established throughout the length and breadth of the American Republic, is a poisonous fountain fraught with the seeds of human misery and moral death.' He cites the official statistics given by a New England professor, Mr. Royce, to prove that 'there is hardly a state or country in the civilised world, where atrocious and flagrant crimes are so common as in educated Massachusetts,' and he shows that the alarming and unquestionable increase of crime in the United States cannot be attributed, as it too often is, to the 'foreign element in American society, the criminal rate of which has remained the same or even lessened, while the native criminals increased during 1860-1870, from 10,143 to 24,173.' During that decade the total population of the United States increased from 31,443,321 to 38,567,617. Deducting 2,466,752 for the increase by immigration, we have a general increase of 4,657,538 in the native American population, or of less than 15 per cent, against an increase of about 140 per cent. in the number of native white criminals! It is no part of my present purpose to discuss Mr. Montgomery's contention. But it seems to me to deserve grave consideration in connection with the adventure to which the French Republican Government has committed itself, of suddenly substituting for the religious and parental system of education in France, a French modification, in the interest of unbelief, of that American public school system which, as Mr. Montgomery maintains, rests upon the principle 'that the whole people must be educated to a certain degree at the public expense, irrespectively of any social distinctions.' I have already said that St.-Omer appears to be in its politics decidedly Republican. An odd illustration of this I found in a hot local controversy waging there over the setting up of a statue in one of the public squares, to commemorate the courage and patriotism of a local heroine, Jacqueline Robins. This statue, which, as a work of art is not unworthy to be compared with the statue of Jeanne Hachette at Beauvais, was set up, with much ceremony, in 1884 (I believe the State paid for it), and stands upon a pedestal, with an inscription setting forth how Jacqueline Robins, in the year 1710, saved the besieged city of St.-Omer by going off herself with a train of boats down the Aa to Dunkirk, and bringing back the provisions and munitions of war necessary for the defence of the city. As the city of St.-Omer was certainly not besieged in 1710, this inscription naturally excited the critical indignation of the local antiquaries, and on July 27, 1885, an exceedingly clear and conclusive report on the subject was laid before the Society of Antiquaries of Morinia, a body which has done good service to the cause of history in Northern France. From this report it plainly appears that St.-Omer was not besieged at all in 1710. Prince Eugene, who marched into Artois with the Duke of Marlborough in that year in pursuit of Villars, wished to attack St.-Omer after the fall of Douai and Béthune, but the States-General of Holland would not hear of it; and the gallant defence made of Aire-sur-la-Lys by the Marquis de Goesbriant kept the allies at bay so late in the year that no attempt upon St.-Omer could be made. The local chronicles rejoice over this escape, particularly, because they say the Duke of Marlborough had vowed special vengeance against the city, its authorities having refused to oblige him by getting out of the English Jesuits' College and sending him certain papers which the Duchess of Hamilton (the wife of the brilliant duke who was killed in Hyde Park by Lord Mohun and General Macartney) desired him to procure for her use in a law suit against 'Lord Bromley.'[2] St.-Omer, then, not having been besieged in 1710, why should a statue be set up in honour of an Audomaraise dame for delivering it? On this point the Report of the Society of Antiquaries throws a sufficient and interesting light. It seems that there really lived in St.-Omer in 1710 a certain dame Jacqueline Isabelle Robins, obviously a woman of mark and force, since she carried on a number of thriving industries, and among them the management, under a contract, of the boats between St.-Omer, Calais, and Dunkirk. Napoleon would have thought her much superior to Madame de Staël, for before she was forty years old she had married three husbands, and surrounded herself with six or seven flourishing olive branches. She was constantly in the law courts fighting for her rights, not against private persons only, but against the 'mayor and échevins of the city of St.-Omer.' Though St.-Omer, as I have said, was not besieged by the allies, it was constantly occupied by the troops of his Most Christian Majesty, who gave the magistrates and the people almost as much trouble as if they had been enemies, and the records show that not long before the surrender of Aire-sur-la-Lys to the allies in November 1710, the Comte d'Estaing (an ancestor of the Admiral who did such good service to the American cause), under orders from Versailles succeeded in bringing to St.-Omer from Dunkirk a complete supply of powder and other munitions of war. It seems to be likely enough that in this operation the military authorities availed themselves of the services of dame Jacqueline and of her boats. As she was a masterful dame, and, burying her third husband, who was twelve years her junior, in 1720, lived on to depart at the age of seventy-five in 1732, a local legend evidently grew up about her personal share in the events of the great war of 1710. The first official historian of St.-Omer, a worthy priest Dom Devienne, writing in 1782, gave this legend form. As he transformed Jacqueline from a rich and prosperous woman of affairs into a 'woman of the dregs of the people,' calling her Jane, by the way, instead of Jacqueline, she became, after the Revolution, a popular heroine; her third husband, who appears to have been a young Squire de Boyaval and a dashing grey mousquetaire of King Louis, was metamorphosed into a brewer's apprentice (Jacqueline among her other possessions owned a brewery); and now, in the year 1889 we have the thrifty dame who helped the king's officers carry out the king's orders for the supplying of St.-Omer, immortalised in bronze as an Audomaraise Jeanne Hachette or Maid of Saragossa! [2] This is a curious sidelight on English political history. 'Lord Bromley' was obviously Sir William Bromley, M.P., the bitter enemy of Marlborough, who earned the undying hatred of the Duchess by comparing her to Alice Perrers, the mistress of Edward III. In 1705 Harley prevented the election of Bromley as Speaker by re-publishing an account of the 'Grand Toure' written by him, and foisting into it notes intended to show that Bromley was a 'Papist.' Bromley was again a candidate for the same office in 1710, and Marlborough evidently hoped to get from St.-Omer documentary proof of the 'papistry' of his foe. The second Duchess of Hamilton came, I think, of a Catholic family, and may have thought she had a clue to these documents. The intrigue, however, failed, and Bromley was elected Speaker without opposition in November, 1710. Is not this worthy to stand on record with Sir Roger de Coverley's tale of the old coachman who had a monument in Westminster Abbey because he figured on the box of the coach in which Thomas Thynne of Longleat was barbarously murdered by Count Konigsmark? The Republican Mayor of St.-Omer took sides on the question of Jacqueline Robins in 1885 with the Republican 'Professor of History in the Lyceum,' both of them being 'officers of the Academy,' against the Society of Antiquaries; and I dare say the matter may affect the Parliamentary elections in September, 1889! CHAPTER III IN THE PAS-DE-CALAIS--_continued_ AIRE-SUR-LA-LYS It is a local tradition at Aire-sur-la-Lys that, about half a century ago, the good people of this ancient and picturesque town (which, like St.-Omer, remained a part of the Spanish dominions when all the rest of the Artois became French by the treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659) turned out with flags and music to welcome their mayor back from Paris, bringing the good news that the projected Northern railway should not pass through their territory, to disturb their settled trade. This unique incident is often cited to show the tenacious conservatism of the Artesians. I believe, however, it only proves that the people of Aire, dwelling in a region which has been fought over from time immemorial, had a well-grounded objection to the exclusively military views with which Marshal Soult then desired that the Government of Louis Philippe should take up and carry out the projected enterprise. At all events, Aire-sur-la-Lys now rejoices in a comfortable little railway station, which makes it an important point in the system of the Northern Railway of France. There, on a lovely evening in June, I found the carriage of M. Labitte, one of the Councillors-General of the department, waiting to take me to his charming and hospitable home in the richly-cultivated agricultural commune of St.-Quentin. It was on the eve of Pentecost when, as the German poet tells us, 'the woods and fields put off all sadness,' and a lovelier summer evening it would be hard to find even in England. M. Labitte is a Conservative and a devout Catholic. As I have already mentioned, he was a candidate in the Pas-de-Calais in 1886 for the seat in the Chamber now held by M. Camescasse, and received 74,554 votes against 86,356 for his opponent. In Aire he was beaten by only 22 votes out of a total of 3,536. His influence in the country here is, in a certain sense, hereditary, for he came of a family which in the last century gave many excellent ecclesiastics to the service of the Church, among a population then, as now, remarkable for its strong religious feeling. When the States-General were convened by Louis XVI. a century ago, the first date fixed for the elections in Artois had to be postponed, at the request of the Duc de Guines, because it interfered with Easter. The Artesians cared more for the Church than for the State. Yet, in no part of France was the calling of the States-General more popular, and nowhere were more efforts made before 1789 than in Artois to improve the condition of the people and to secure a more just and liberal fiscal administration. The clergy were extraordinarily powerful in Artois, alike by reason of their property and of the religious disposition of the people; and it is a curious and interesting fact that under the constitution of the Estates of Artois it was established (thanks to the union of the clergy with the Third Estate) that, while no votes of the nobility and the clergy united should bind the Third Estate, any joint vote of the Third Estate with either of the other two orders should bind them all. Here, long before the much-bewritten date of 1789, we have the Church in Artois arraying itself on the side of the tax-paying people against the privileged classes. Modern inquiries show, indeed, that this was the attitude of the great body of the French clergy long before what is called the 'Revolution.' The majority of the representatives of the clergy in the States-General of 1789 did not wait for the theatrical demonstrations in the Tennis Court of Versailles, about which so much nonsense has been talked and written, to join the Third Estate in insisting upon a real reform of the public service. No French historian has ventured to make such a picture of the Catholic clergy of France under the Bourbons as Lord Macaulay thought himself authorised to paint of the Protestant clergy of England under the Stuarts. There were flagrant scandals among the higher orders of the Church in France, no doubt, as there were in England. The names of Dubois, of Loménie de Brienne, of De Rohan are not associated with the cardinal virtues. De Jarente, Bishop of Orleans, driving Mdlle. Guimard to the opera in his coronetted and mitred coach, is not an edifying figure, nor is Louis de Grimaldi, Bishop of Mans, saying Mass in his red hunting-coat and breeches. But the Protestant Dean of St. Patrick's thought the execution for felony of another Protestant dean a capital theme for a merry ballad; and at the end of the eighteenth century Arthur Young painted the English rural clergy in very dark colours. The curates, the rectors, the monks of France as a body, showed under the old régime the same qualities of devout faith and Christian sympathy with the people with which they met and baffled their persecutors after the crash of the monarchy. The three representatives of the clergy who first struck hands with the Third Estate on June 13, 1789, were curates sent to Paris by a province more intensely Catholic than Artois. They were Poitevin priests from the region which we now know as La Vendée, and which only four years afterwards rose in arms to defend its altars and its homes against the intolerable despotism of the 'patriots' of Paris. When Turgot was put in charge of that work of fiscal reform which might have spared France the horrors and the disasters of the Revolution, had Louis XVI. been capable of standing even by Turgot to the end, he carried on an extensive correspondence with curates in Artois as well as in the other provinces of France, as the best means of educating the people to an intelligent appreciation of his purposes and of his plans. Condorcet, who treated the brutal murderers of the Duc de la Rochefoucauld with a complaisance which entitles him to the confidence of the most advanced anti-clerical philosophers of our own day, bears witness to the good intentions of Turgot's correspondents. He says, in his memoir of Turgot, printed at Philadelphia seven years before the Revolution of '89, that 'the curates, accustomed to preach sound morals, to appease the quarrels of the people, and to encourage peace and concord, were in a better position than any other men in France to prepare the minds of the people for the good work it was the intents of the ministers to do.' What was true of the French curates a hundred years ago is true of them to-day, the duties prescribed to them by the Church being still precisely what they were when Condorcet bore this testimony to the good dispositions of men much more conscientious than himself. Then, too, as now, the curates were required to look carefully after the education of the children in their parishes. France is indebted, not to the Revolution, but to a great Protestant historian and statesman, Guizot, and to King Louis Philippe for the foundation of her system of public education. The revolutionists of 1789 left the country worse off in this matter than they found it. The royal ordinance of Louis XIV. in 1698, which required the establishment of schoolmasters and schoolmistresses in every parish in which they were not then to be found, and fixed the salaries to be paid these masters and mistresses out of a public tax in every parish in which no foundations for their support existed, was distinctly a public-school law. This ordinance made it incumbent upon all parents and other persons who had charge of children to send them to the schools until they were fourteen years of age, and it also enjoined upon the curates the duty of 'watching with particular attention over the education of the children in their respective parishes.' The spirit in which the clergy of Artois, at least, discharged this duty appears in an ordinance of the Bishop of Arras issued in 1740, half a century before the Revolution of 1789, in which the bishop lays it down as a maxim that 'the greatest charity which can be shown the poor is to ensure them the means of obtaining an education.' This, down to thirty years ago, was the principle of legislation in Virginia upon the public school question, the State not attempting to interfere with the authority of parents over their children in the matter of education, but making an appropriation for the instruction of the children of the poor. That mischievous wind-bag Lakanal lived in Mississippi and Louisiana during his exile in America, and it is possible that his influence may have had something to do with the early adoption by another southern State, Louisiana, of the general public school system. However that may be, Louisiana in 1850 spent upon her public schools three times as much money annually as any of the New England States, with the result that, out of a native white population of 186,577, she had in her prisons 240 native white criminals, or 1 in 777 of the whole number, being 'the largest proportion of criminals to population at that time to be found in America, if not in the world.' Virginia, out of a native white population of 1,070,395 in 1860, had no more than 163 native white criminals in her prisons, or 1 in 6,566 of her native white population. It is a curious fact, by the way, that but for the fidelity of the French clergy before 1789, in carrying out the work imposed upon them by the ordinance of Louis XIV., and commended in the ordinance of the Bishop of Arras in 1740, two of the most conspicuous actors in the grotesquely horrible drama of the French Revolution would have starved to death in the streets of Arras, or grown up there in vagabondage. The clergy of St.-Vaast in the diocese of Arras found, in 1768, two wretched urchins thrown upon the world by an unnatural father. One of these, Maximilian Isidore de Robespierre, was born in 1758; the other, Augustus Bai Joseph de Robespierre, in 1764. The good priests picked them up, cared for them, and put them in the way of getting a good education, which they turned to such purpose that both of them eventually came to the guillotine in the flower of their years, and amid the cordially contemptuous execrations of decent people all over the world. One of the most accomplished public men in Massachusetts told me years ago, that he was stopped on his way to school one morning in 1794, by a friend of the family, who bade him run back at once and tell his father the news had come from Europe that 'the head of Robert Spear had been cut off.' 'Make haste,' said this gentleman, 'and your papa will give you a silver dollar, he will be so glad to hear it!' It was rather instructive to think of the 'sea-green incorruptible' and his idiotic 'Feast of the Supreme Being' on that beautiful clay of Pentecost, in the charming rural commune of St.-Quentin, the peace and happiness of which was for a time so cruelly broken up by his atrocities and follies a hundred years ago. The fine old church, near by my host's residence, has been restored with great taste and good sense. It was crowded at early mass with the farmers and their families, many of the men wearing their blouses, but all well-to-do, for this region is one of the richest and best cultivated districts of Northern France. The service was celebrated with much simplicity, but with no lack of due ceremony; the singing was excellent; and the priest's homily, a brief and very good discourse on the spirit of Christian charity, was listened to with great attention. The pretty custom prevails here, as in Normandy, of handing about in the congregation, at a certain point in the service, a basket of bread. Two gravely courteous old peasants presented the baskets in turn to all the people. The service over, the farmers stood and chatted together in groups in the churchyard and about the porch, and I heard much talk of the outlook for the crops, of the price of cattle, and of certain properties which had recently changed hands. Of politics next to nothing. My host was for many years a notary at Aire. He has transferred this position now to the husband of his only daughter, and occupies himself mainly with his agricultural interests. The notary, who is a personage everywhere in France, is especially a personage in Artois. This has come about in part through the great changes which have taken place in the proprietorship of land in this province during the last three centuries. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, after the province was substantially united with France by Louis XIV., great numbers of small proprietors, who had done well enough under the Spanish rule, found themselves forced, by the pressure of taxation, to part with their land, and there was a marked increase in the great estates, not only of the clergy but of the laity. After the First Consul took the country in hand, and began to reorganise it socially, on the principle laid down by him so often and so energetically, in his dealings with his councillors, that 'true civil liberty in a State depends upon the absolute safety of property,' there began to grow up in Artois a great middle class of landholders, corresponding in many conditions to the 'strong farmers' of Ireland. With the increase of this class came a natural increase in the importance and influence of the notaries, already and through the Spanish traditions very considerable in this region. In many parts of the province the notary is recognised as an unofficial, but authoritative, social arbiter, to whom may be safely referred for settlement all sorts of disputes, including very often questions of property which would elsewhere be taken before the courts of law. It was pleasant to see that the relation thus established between M. Labitte and the people generally had not been affected by the political agitation of the last ten years. When I drove about the country with him, I observed that he was saluted everywhere in the friendliest fashion, and that, as he more than once told me, by persons politically quite hostile to his re-election as councillor-general. After luncheon on Pentecost, a most interesting ceremony took place at St.-Quentin. A long procession made up of the inhabitants of the commune, the men wearing their best clothes, the young girls garlanded and dressed in white, set forth from the porch of the church, after a brief service there, and marched around the commune. It was the English beating of the bounds without the beating, and with the old religious rites. In the midst of the procession, which extended perhaps a quarter of a mile, the parish priest walked alone under an embroidered canopy borne up by young villagers. Acolytes, with lighted candles, moved on either side of the canopy. Before it was borne a white silk banner of the Virgin, and behind it a banner embroidered in gold. All the park and grounds of M. Labitte lying within the commune, and being thrown open to the people, a very beautiful altar of verdure and roses had been set up under a bower in the great garden behind the house, by the daughter of M. Labitte. Before this altar the procession paused, a brief service was performed there, and then the long line resumed its march, a chorus of some twenty male voices chanting, as it went, the Magnificat. Nothing could exceed the unaffected simplicity and seriousness of the people of both sexes and of all ages. The day was one of those perfect days, which, as Mr. Lowell says, come to the world in June, if ever they come at all; and as the long line wound its way around the fields, green with the prospering crops, beneath the orchards and the groves, and between the fragrant hedgerows, the silvery chiming of the bells in the old church alternated with the far-off chanting of the choristers, and the fitful breeze brought us, from time to time, the grave deep voice of the priest reciting, as he moved, the ancient prayers of hope and of thanksgiving. It was interesting to remember that under the first French attempt at a republic, this lovely rural spectacle would have been as impossible as it would be to-day under the rule of the Mahdi in the Soudan; and also, to reflect that France is governed to-day by men who dream of making it thus impossible once more. CHAPTER IV IN THE PAS-DE-CALAIS--_continued_ AIRE-SUR-LA-LYS. My host at St.-Quentin being a councillor-general, his term of office expires with the elections fixed to take place on July 28. There is no reason in the nature of things why councillors-general should be elected on the same lines with deputies and senators. On the contrary, it would seem to be very desirable that local rather than national considerations should govern the election of such functionaries. But it has been found difficult, even in England and Wales, to keep national party politics out of the election of the new county councillors, whose duties are modelled in some important respects upon those assigned to the councillors-general in France; and it is evident that the French local elections in July will be largely determined by considerations affecting the national elections which must take place in September and October. M. Labitte, who was elected a councillor-general by the Conservatives in this department six years ago, was defeated in 1886, as I have already said, in a by-election, held to fill a vacancy in the Chamber of Deputies. It is the wish of his party friends that he should offer himself as a candidate for re-election as a councillor-general on July 28; but he does not seem disposed to do this, preferring, I think, to keep himself quite free to do his very best to bring about a Conservative victory in the national elections in September, with the importance of which to the future of France he is deeply impressed. Meanwhile, he is giving a personal account of his stewardship as a councillor-general to his constituents in a series of 'conferences.' One of these conferences he was good enough to invite me to attend. It was held in a commune, distant some ten or twelve miles from St.-Quentin-par-Aire, and, as the custom of France is, it was held on a Sunday afternoon. M. Labitte's son-in-law drove out from Aire with his wife to dine and spend the evening with us. And about three o'clock M. Labitte, his son-in-law, and myself set out for the conference. Our road lay through a level but richly cultivated and, in its way, very beautiful region. In the last century, Artois seems to have been a kind of Ireland. The climate was excessively damp, the lack of forests and the undeveloped coal-mines left the peasantry dependent upon turf and peat for fuel; the roads were few and bad. There were good crops of grain; but the Intendant Bignon, drawing up a report on the province at the close of the seventeenth century, for the Duke of Burgundy, tells us the wars had made an end of all the manufactures, including the long-famous tapestry-works of Arras. 'There were few fruit-trees, little hay, and little manure.' Here and there some linen was made; but the trade of the province was carried on almost exclusively in grain, hops, flax, and wool. Iron and copper utensils, and coal and slates came to Artois from Flanders, cod-fish and cheese from the Low Countries, butter and all kinds of manufactured goods from England. Yet the population steadily increased all through the eighteenth century, while it was falling off in the neighbouring provinces of France. The worthy intendant thought the people sadly wanting in 'intelligence, activity, and practical sense,' and seems indeed, like a Malthusian before Malthus, half-inclined to attribute the phenomena of increase and multiplication in Artois to these defects. It would surprise him, I fancy, to look on the people and the land of Artois to-day. The land has become one of the most fertile and prosperous regions of France; the people, unaffected to any appreciable extent by immigration, and unchanged alike in race and in religion, increase and multiply as of old. The well-tilled fields, the well-kept and beautiful roads, the neat, green hedgerows, the orchards bear witness on every side to the intelligence, the activity, the practical sense of the inhabitants. M. Baudrillart in one of his invaluable treatises on the condition of France before the Revolution of 1789, gives us the main key of this great difference between the condition of agricultural Artois in the eighteenth century and its condition to-day. He cites a most curious appeal to the estates of Artois in behalf of the rural populations, from which it appears that the citizens of the chief towns had combined with the _noblesse_ and the higher clergy to keep the village curates and the farmers out of the provincial assemblies, and to throw the whole burden of taxation upon the agriculturists. 'The soil of Artois,' say the authors of this appeal, 'is quite as good as the soil of England; and yet the Artesian farmers can only get out of their labour on it one quarter as much as the English do.' It was the fiscal maladministration, they maintain, which checked the progress of agriculture and depressed the condition of the farmers; and it is interesting to observe that these rural reformers proposed to remedy the evils of which they complained, not by abolishing all the privileges of the privileged classes in a night, as did the headlong mob of the States-General at Paris in 1789, but by securing a fairer representation of the rural regions in the Provincial Estates, limiting the duration of the Provincial Parliaments to three years, and deciding that one-third of the seats should be vacated and refilled every year. This does not look as if the Artesians of the last century were particularly deficient either in intelligence or in practical sense. On our way to the conference we saw several sugar factories, most of them now abandoned, though the beet crops of Artois are still very important; and my companions told me that the people here, with all their traditional conservatism, are very quick to abandon any industry which ceases to promise good returns, and to change their crops as the conditions of the market change. We saw but few châteaux. One of the most considerable, standing well in view from the road in the midst of an extensive park, and approached by a long avenue of well-grown trees, seemed to be shut up. The proprietor, the Count de----, I was told had not visited it for two years past, one of his gamekeepers having been murdered in a conflict with some poachers. Under the existing laws in France, political conferences must be held within four walls. Trafalgar Square meetings would be as impossible in republican France as in monarchical Germany. As the commune in which M. Labitte was to meet his constituents possesses no convenient hall, and the local authorities were not particularly eager to facilitate the conference, one of the local Conservatives, a well-to-do farmer, had taken it upon himself to provide, at his own expense, a proper place of meeting, by fitting up a fine large barn with seats, and putting up a simple rustic platform in one corner of it for the speaker. It struck me that this was a symptom of genuine interest in the politics of his region not likely to be shown in similar circumstances by many English or American farmers. He was a man of middle age, with the quiet, self-possessed carriage, general among his class in all parts of France, and received us, in the large and neatly-furnished best room of his old-fashioned and very comfortable house, with frank and simple courtesy. On the walls hung a number of engravings and two or three small paintings. One of these represented the Duc d'Orléans, the father of the Comte de Paris, in the uniform of the celebrated corps of Chasseurs which he organised and to which he gave his name. 'That picture,' said the farmer, 'was given to my father by the prince. He used to stop here often while he was at the camp of the Chasseurs, and take his breakfast. I remember him perfectly, for I was then a well-grown lad, and he was always full of kindness and good spirits. Ah! if he had lived! We should not be where we are to-day in France, with all these debts and all these dangers!' The constituents of my host, all of them specially invited by letter to attend the conference, had already begun to assemble when we arrived, but some of them had two or three miles to walk after service in their respective churches, and it was nearly six o'clock when the conference began. By that time the large farmyard and the rooms of the house were filled with a company of perhaps a hundred and fifty men, almost all of them farmers. Among them was only one landowner of the aristocratic class, the Comte de----, who had walked over from his château about three miles off. He was a type of the old-fashioned French country gentleman, tall and sinewy, with finely cut features, simply, not to say carelessly, dressed, but with an unmistakable air of distinction, and a certain peremptory courtesy of manner which would infallibly have got him into trouble in the days when, near Baume-les-Dames, Arthur Young had to clear himself of the suspicion that he was a gentleman on pain of being promptly hanged from a lantern hook. The seats in the barn once filled, some fifty auditors grouped themselves in the farmyard about the wide-open doors of the barn, and M. Labitte mounted the extemporised platform. The proceedings had to be suspended for a few moments as the attention of the audience was suddenly drawn to the high road by the galloping past of two generals in full uniform, with their staff officers, from St.-Omer. There was no nomination of a chairman or a secretary, none of the inevitable formalities of an English or American political gathering. M. Labitte called the meeting to order by the simple process of beginning to address it. Nothing could be more direct and business-like than his speech. It was exactly what he told his hearers he meant it to be, an account of his stewardship as their councillor-general. He said not a word about the personal aspects of the party conflicts raging in France, and very little about the national aspects of that conflict. Speaking in a frank conversational way, and referring to his notes only for figures and dates, he gave his constituents a succinct picture of the effect upon their own local interests of the policy pursued by the Government of the Republic. He told them how much of their money had been spent under the action of the Council-General during the six years of his term, and on what it had been spent, and with what results. If they liked the picture, well and good; if not, the remedy was in their own hands at the next election. He had forewarned me to expect nothing demonstrative in the attitude of his audience. 'They listen most attentively,' he said, 'but they give you no sign either of agreement or disagreement, of satisfaction or dissatisfaction. At night, after the meeting is over, they will break up into little knots and coteries, and talk it all over among themselves. If they are pleased on the whole, one of the group finally will say: "Well, Labitte told us the truth," and that being admitted by the rest, the conference will be a success!' On this occasion the auditors were much more outspoken during the conference. Speaking of the unequal pressure upon the different communes of the military service, M. Labitte told them a story of a youth who came to him to get an exemption from service. 'I told him,' said M. Labitte, 'that I should be very glad to get it for him, but that his commune was not at that moment entitled to an exemption, and that I could not be a party to putting an injustice upon another commune. He was annoyed at this, and thought I ought to do him a favour, no matter at whose cost. I declined, and he went away. Some time after I met him, when he exultingly told me that he had seen one of my colleagues, a Republican, and had got from him the exemption he wanted. After that I heard stories put about to the effect that Labitte cared nothing about the pressure of the military service on the labouring people! Was I not right? Was it not my duty to see no favouritism shown to one commune at the expense of another?' To these queries there was a prompt and general response, 'Yes! yes! You were quite right,' and several voices cried out, 'Bravo!--quite right, Labitte.' Again, in dealing with the question of education, M. Labitte told his hearers of three instances in which small communes had been made to expend sums inordinately disproportionate to their resources upon what he called 'scholastic palaces,' although a great majority of the people in each instance distinctly refused to send their children to the lay schools established in these 'palaces.' One case was that of a commune of some seven hundred souls compelled to expend more than sixty thousand francs, or 2,400_l._ sterling, upon a 'scholastic palace'! 'I opposed these expenditures,' he said, 'for I think it is part of the duty of a councillor-general to look closely into the use made of your money.' This, also, the hearers applauded, not noisily at all, but with a kind of gratified murmur, not unlike the very loud purring of a very large cat. By this time it was evident that the speaker had his audience well in hand, and M. Labitte took up some points of attack made on himself. One of these was that he was a 'clerical.' He said that he certainly was a 'clerical,' if that meant a man who had a religion and respected it, and wished to see the religion of other people respected; and gliding on from this to the question of the religious education of children, he asked the people whether they wished to see the curates forbidden to teach their children the principles of their religion. He was instantly answered by a man standing in the crowd just outside the door of the barn, who, in a loud and rather husky voice, shouted out that 'the priest had no business in the school.' Several of the audience met this interruption with derisive laughter, and two or three of them sharply invited the man to hold his tongue and go about his business. For a moment it seemed as if we were about to have a scene. But M. Labitte interposed. With perfect good temper he replied to the man that he was quite of his opinion as to the proper place of a priest, and that he had no wish to see the children at school interfered with in their school hours by any instruction not a part of the school programme. He suggested, however, that, instead of shouting and clamouring, the man should wait till he, M. Labitte, had got through, and then come up 'amiably and prettily' on the platform and state his own views as fully as he liked. This made the man in the doorway angrier than ever, and as the audience good-naturedly laughed at him, he began to use rather abusive language. Upon this several stalwart peasants rose and made their way towards him with very plain intimations that if he did not take to the highway he would be carried there. The uproar was all over in five minutes. Some companions of the anti-clerical gentleman, not liking the look of the audience, contrived to surround him and led him off, and he disappeared uttering a threat or two of incoherent defiance as he went out of the farmyard. A burly farmer seated near me explained that 'the fellow was drunk. But,' he added, 'he was sent here to do all this, and I know who sent him. Do you see that high chimney across the road some way off among the trees? Well, he is a factory hand there. There are a number of them--they don't belong to this country, and the manufacturer is an intriguer. He wanted to be a councillor-general, and we beat him off. He doesn't like it--and that's at the bottom of it all.' M. Labitte spoke for about an hour, the audience gradually increasing and listening with close attention. At the end the farmer, who had arranged the conference, got up and thanked the councillor-general for the account he had given of his services, and then the meeting broke up as quietly as it had assembled, and with as little ceremony. Before the company began to leave the barn, a young man near the door asked for some information as to the duties likely to be imposed to protect the farmers, and getting a brief and clear reply, he said that would be very satisfactory--if only 'some proprietors would not put such high prices on their land.' The Count, who sat just in front of me and who had kept his hawk eye fixed on the speaker, chuckled to himself and said to me, 'That shot was meant for me!' Altogether the proceedings gave me a very favourable notion of the intelligence and the practical sense of the people. If all the constituencies in France could be handled in this direct fashion at the national elections in September, the result of those elections might be at least the approximative expression of the sense of the nation. But this is not to be expected. There is much more canvassing done, I think, by legislative candidates in France, and much less public speaking than in America or in England, and the pressure of the Government upon the voters is very much greater here even than it is in America. The proportion of office-holders to the population is much more considerable, and the recent governments have made the tenure of office in France even more dependent upon the political activity of the officials than it has ever been in the United States. This is one of the many evil legacies of the First Republic. The maxim that, 'to the victors belong the spoils,' I am sorry to say has been pretty extensively reduced to practice on my side of the Atlantic; but it was first formulated, not by Jackson, but by Danton. Louis Blanc tells us that this brutal Boanerges of the Jacobins startled even his allies one day, by cynically declaring that 'the revolution was a battle, and, like all battles, ought to end by the division of the spoils among the victors.' Gabriel Charmes, a republican of the republicans, reviewing the conduct of the governments which have succeeded each other in France with such kaleidoscope rapidity since the death of Thiers, deliberately declares that 'epuration is the watchword, and the true aim of Republican politics' in France. And 'epuration' is the euphemism invented to describe the simple process of kicking out the office-holder who is in, to make room for the office-seeker who is out. Gambetta began this process in December 1870, when he wrote to the Government at Paris: 'Authorise me and all my colleagues to "purify" the _personnel_ of the public administration, and it shall be done in very short order.' Within a month, the Minister of the Interior telegraphed to the prefects, 'you are authorised to make all the changes among the public school teachers, which, from a republican and political point of view, you may think desirable.' M. Crémieux, Minister of Justice, followed the work up so energetically, that by the end of the year 1871 he declared that he had 'weeded out eighteen hundred justices of the peace, and two hundred and eighty-nine magistrates of the courts and tribunals.' When the republicans of the different Radical shades got into power in 1877, the newly elected deputies, according to M. Floquet, held a meeting, and insisted upon a further 'epuration.' They were of the mind of the sub-prefect of Roanne, who telegraphed to his superior, 'If Republicans alone are not put into office, the Republicans will rise and we shall have civil war.' In January 1880, M. de Freycinet, then, as now, a Minister, loudly called for a 'reform of the _personnel_ of the Administration; and M. Gabriel Charmes, speaking of the then situation in France, tells us that only one prefect of the previous Republican Administration had escaped 'purification,' and not one procureur-general. 'Has a single justice of the peace,' he added, 'or a single public school teacher in the slightest degree open to suspicion, escaped the avenging hands of MM. Le Royes and Jules Ferry? Certainly not.' This was nine years ago. So thorough was the weeding, M. Charmes tells us, that, 'even the rural constables had not escaped, and the epuration policy had carried terror and anarchy into all branches of the public service.' In 1885 more than three millions of voters recorded their protest against these methods of government, and against the deputies who had identified these methods with the Republican form of government. This protest was met by M. de Freycinet, on January 16, 1886, with a speech, in the course of which he calmly said, 'Let no one henceforth forget that liberty to oppose the Government does not exist for the servants of the State.' That is to say, the Republican Government, which is itself the servant, and the paid servant, of the State, will not permit any of its fellow-servants and subordinates, who are also presumably French citizens and taxpayers, to form and express at the polls any opinion on public affairs differing from the opinions held by the ministers who make up the Government. It was upon this simple and beautiful principle that Mr. Tweed and his colleagues consolidated the local administration of affairs of the city of New York. Applied to the administration of the affairs of thirty-six millions of people in France, it ought certainly to produce results far transcending in splendour any achieved by the Tammany Ring. For M. Gabriel Charmes is quite in the right when he says that 'under this word of "epuration" lie concealed the most deplorable forms of personal greed, and the least avowable personal spites and rancours.' Like other clever devices, however, 'epuration' may possibly be carried too far. If it comes to pass that no actual functionary thinks his head safe, while, at the same time, every office the Government has to give represents a dozen or twenty 'expurgated,' and therefore exasperated and disaffected, previous holders of that office, the confidence of the garrison may be shaken while the animosity of the assailants is intensified. This point may possibly have been reached in France. If it has not been reached, the influence of the Government upon the voters must be very formidable. For the average French voter is hemmed in and hedged about by innumerable small functionaries who have it in their power to oblige or to disoblige him, to gratify or to vex him in all sorts of ways; and though the ballot is supposed to be sacred and secret in France, it can hardly be more sacred or more secret there than in other countries. And whatever protection against annoyance the ballot may give to the voter, nothing can protect the candidate. What I have heard in other regions I hear in Artois, that nothing is so difficult as to persuade men of position and character to take upon themselves the troubles, and expose themselves to the inconveniences, of an important political candidacy. There are a hundred ways in which a triumphant Administration conducted on the principles of the 'epuration' policy may harass and annoy an unsuccessful banner-bearer of the Opposition. The question of expense is another obstacle in the way of a thorough organisation of public opinion against such a Government. An average outlay of 400,000 francs per department would be required, I was told by an experienced friend in Paris, adequately to put into the line of political battle all the departments of France, large and small together. As there are eighty-three departments in France, this gives us a total of 33,200,000 francs, or some 1,300,000_l._ sterling, as the cost of a thorough political campaign against an established French Government. If we suppose each deputy to make a personal contribution of 20,000 francs to this war-chest, that will give us only about one-third of the necessary amount. The rest must be made up by the personal contributions of public-spirited citizens, and my own observation of public affairs, going back, now, over a good many lively and interesting political conflicts in the United States, leads me to believe that liberal contributions of this sort are, as a rule, more easily collected by the beneficiaries of a more or less unscrupulous Government actually in power, than by the disinterested advocates of a real political reformation. We wound up the day of the Conference with a delightful little dinner at St.-Quentin. The traditions of the old French _cuisine_ are not yet extinct in the provinces, nor, for that matter, in the private life of the true Parisians of Paris. They all centre in the famous saying of Brillat-Savarin, that a man may learn how to cook, but must be born to roast--a saying worthy of the philosophic magistrate who, coming to America, under the impression that he was to be fed upon roots and raw meat, went back to France convinced that a New England roast turkey and an Indian pudding were not to be matched in the old world. It is one of the many curious things of this curious world of the nineteenth century, that a _cuisine_ of made dishes of which Grimod de La Reynière long ago gave us the origin, in the downfall of the kitchens of the prince-bishops along the Rhine, should be gravely and generally accepted by Frenchmen themselves, or at least by the Parisians of literature and the boulevards, as the national _cuisine_ of France. The charming daughter of my host at St.-Quentin knew better; and she received with a graceful, housewifely satisfaction the neatly-turned compliments which one of the guests was old-fashioned and sensible enough to pay her upon the skill of her cook. The city of Aire-sur-la-Lys itself, like St.-Omer, shows traces still of its connection with Flanders and with Spain. I do not know if it is true of Aire as M. Lauwereyns de Roosendaele, writing about Jacqueline Robins, declares it to be of St.-Omer, that there are people there, even now, who think of the days of the Spanish rule as the 'good old times.' But there is a certain Castilian stateliness about the older buildings of Aire; and the portals of the larger residences, leading from the street into charming secluded courts, gay with trees and flowers, remind one of the zaguans of the Andalusian houses. Very Spanish, too, is the Jesuit Church, despite some extraordinary decorations due to the zeal of its more recent possessors. The Flemish past of the city is commemorated especially by a very remarkable little building known as the Corps de Garde, and by certain portions of the Church of St.-Pierre. Aire formerly had a cathedral, but during the worst period of the Terror that exemplary ruffian, Joseph Lebon of Arras, the unfrocked priest, who organised pillage and massacre throughout the Pas-de-Calais, frightened the good people of Aire into a frenzy of destruction and devilry. The Church of St.-Pierre was then a collegiate church, but it was turned over to the worship of the Supreme Being invented by Robespierre, desecrated and defaced and left in a deplorable state. It had already suffered, like so many other churches all over France and England, from the ingenious 'restorers' of the eighteenth century, who have left their sign-manual on the upper part of the edifice and on the mass of a huge organ loft which crushes and disfigures the main entrance. The greater part of the building is of the fifteenth century; and it has been restored within our own times as tastefully and effectively as in the circumstances was possible, under the supervision and in part, I believe, at the cost of a devoted and conscientious curate, a member of a Scotch family long fixed in Artois, the Abbé Scott, who took charge of the church at the end of the reign of Charles X. and who now lies buried in the building he did so much to preserve. It is a very considerable church, measuring three hundred feet in length and a hundred-and-twenty in width; with a height of seventy feet in the main nave. The ogival windows are filled with rich, stained glass; all the ancient monuments which escaped the fury of 1793 have been excellently restored, and the church bears witness in its condition to the active piety of the faithful of Aire. The 'Corps de Garde' is a quadrilateral jewel of Flemish architecture of the end of the sixteenth century. It was of old the central point of the city, where the armed citizens met who patrolled the streets like the burghers of Rembrandt's magnificent 'Ronde de Nuit.' A gallery runs round it of arcades, and brickwork supported by monolithic columns. Above these arcades runs a frieze of trophies of arms with the attributes of St. James--the mayor of the city in whose time it was built bore the name of this apostle--and the cross of Burgundy. The principal façade fronts the 'Grande Place,' and is surmounted by a picturesque pointed roof. An attic storey, running all around the building, is richly decorated with sculptures of the Theological and Cardinal Virtues, the Four Elements, and the patron saints of Aire--St. Nicholas and St. Anthony. On another façade is the sculptured niche, now vacant, wherein stood a statue of the Virgin, before which all the great processions, civic and military, were used to halt and do obeisance. In 1482, after the death of Charles the Bold, Louis XI. of France succeeded, 'by treachery and corruptions,' in annexing Aire for a time to the French crown, and the local records give a picturesque account of a French tournament held here in 1492, the year of the discovery of America, under the auspices of no less a person than the Chevalier 'sans peur et sans reproche.' Pierre du Terrail, dit le Bayard, came to Aire on July 19 in that year, and at once sent a trumpeter to proclaim through all the streets and squares that on the morrow, being July 20, he would hold a tournay under the walls of Aire, for all comers, 'of three charges with the lance, the steel points dulled; and twelve sword strokes to be exchanged, with no lists drawn, and on horseback in harness of battle.' The next day the combat to be renewed 'afoot with the lance until the breaking of the lance, and after that with the battle-axe so long as the judges might think fit.' The chroniclers celebrate in superlatives the valour and skill shown by the hero in these gentle and joyous assaults of arms, and the beauty of the Artesian dames and damsels who thronged from all the country round into Aire to witness the tournay, and take part in the dances and banquets which followed it. But the hearts of the people were evidently Flemish and Spanish, not French; for they hailed the restoration of the Austrian authority by Charles the Fifth with all manner of rejoicings. Charles, with his usual sagacity, confirmed all the ancient rights and privileges of the city and its corporations, which had been a good deal disturbed under the centralising rule of the French sovereigns, and a record of the year 1538 tells us that on the proclamation in that year of the truce of Borny, the Austrian authorities paid the treasurer of the city 'lxxviii. sols' for silver money 'thrown in joy to the people.' The treasurer himself seems to have been so enthusiastic on this occasion that he threw his own cap after the silver money, for the record adds a further payment to him 'for a certain cap belonging to him, which was likewise thrown to the people.' All the records of this age at Aire are picturesque with lively accounts of all manner of junketings, carousals, and festivities, and the good people seem to have passed no small part of their lives in merry-making. There is a curious entry on the occasion of the marriage of the Archduke Philip to Mary of England. This auspicious event was celebrated at Aire by a grand procession, followed by 'songs and ballads in honour of the married pair;' and the treasurer paid to 'Johan Gallant, goldsmith, iiii. livres iiii. sols for the silver presents, to wit, an eagle, a leopard, a lion, and a fool--all in silver--which were given to those who made the songs, ballads, and games in honour of the said good news!' Like Calais, St.-Omer, and other cities of this region, Aire offered a refuge in 1553 to the unfortunate inhabitants of the ancient historic city of Thérouanne, which, after a heroic defence by d'Essé de Montmorency, was taken in that year, five days after the death on the ramparts of the gallant commander, by the troops of Charles the Fifth, and by his orders razed to the ground. The details of this merciless destruction recall the sack of Rome by the Imperialists; and it is the blackest feature in the black record of the First French Revolution that the men who then got control for a time of the government of France, in the names of Liberty and Progress, deliberately and wantonly rivalled the most unscrupulous of the kings and emperors whom they were constantly denouncing, in their treatment, not of foreign fortresses conquered in war, but of French cities, of the lives and the property of French citizens, and of the most precious monuments of French history. Charles the Bold at Dinant and Charles the Fifth at Thérouanne were outdone, in the prostituted name of the French people, by the younger Robespierre at Toulon and by the paralytic Couthon at Lyons. The annals of these north-eastern cities of modern France are full of most curious and valuable materials for a really instructive history of the French people. The most cursory acquaintance with them suffices to show how much worse than worthless are the huge political pamphlets which during the last hundred years have passed current with the world as histories of the French Revolution, and how important to the future, not of France alone but of civilisation, is the work begun in our own times by writers like Mortimer-Ternaux, Granier de Cassagnac, Baudrillart, Biré, and Henri Taine. Here in Artois, under the conflicting influences of Flemish, Spanish, and French laws and customs, a genuine development of social and political life may be traced as clearly as in Scotland or in England, down to the sudden and violent strangulation of French progress by the incompetent States-General and the not less incompetent king in 1789. The archives of Aire show that the question of public education was a practical question there, at least as far back as at the beginning of the seventeenth century. In 1613, the magistrates asked and obtained the permission of the Archduke Albert and the Archduchess Isabella to lay a special tax on the city of Aire and two adjoining villages, for the purpose of founding a college, private citizens having already given an endowment of 750 florins a year for this object. The importance of this contribution may be estimated from the fact that after the siege of Aire by the French in 1641, a sum of I,000 florins left to the Collegiate Church of Aire by a canon of Tournay was found sufficient to restore the chapel of Our Lady, the whole right wing of the church, and many houses belonging to the canons, which had all been destroyed by the French artillery. No time was lost in opening the college to the youth of the city and the suburbs, and only a few years afterwards the priests in charge of it wrote to the Seigneur de Thiennes, asking for further endowments in order to increase the number of the teachers to twenty, so great was the affluence of scholars from all the country around, 'to the number at that time of more than three hundred.' The collegiate chapter of Aire appointed one of its canons superintendent of the school, under the title of the 'Ecolâtre.' There really seems to be as little foundation in fact for the common notion that there was no provision made for the education of the people in France before 1789, as for the notion, not less common, that there were no peasant proprietors in France before 1789. It is hardly excusable even that Mr. Carlyle, rhapsodising more than fifty years ago about the 'dumb despairing millions,' should have fallen into this error. For though De Tocqueville and Taine had not then exploded it in detail, Necker, in whose career Carlyle took so much interest, not only declared officially that there was 'an immense number' of such proprietors in France, but took the trouble to explain how it had come about. The law of 1790 establishing the land-tax required every parish to furnish a detailed account of the then existing properties in land, and it is shown by these that there then existed in France nearly two-thirds as many landholders as now exist, although the population of the country is now about twenty-five per cent. greater than it then was. CHAPTER V. IN THE SOMME. AMIENS By turns English, French, and Burgundian, Upper Picardy, of which Amiens was the capital, became definitely French under the astute policy of Louis XI. The Calaisis and the Boulonnais, with Ponthieu and Vimieu, eventually constituted what was called Lower Picardy, and the whole province, divided under the Bourbons into the two 'generalities' of Amiens and Soissons, formed before 1789 one of the twelve great departments of the monarchy, and was brought under the domain of the Parliament of Paris. The city of Amiens, associated now, I fear, chiefly, in the English and American mind, with 'twenty minutes' stop' on the way between Calais and Paris, and with a buffet which perhaps entitles it to be called the Mugby Junction of France, is really one of the most interesting of French cities. No student of Ruskin can need to be told that its glorious cathedral makes it one of the most interesting, not of French only, but of European cities; and two or three excellent small hotels make it a most comfortable as well as a most instructive midway station, not for 'twenty minutes,' but for a couple of days, between the capitals of England and France. Arthur Young found it so a hundred years ago, when he encountered there the illustrious Charles James Fox returning to London from a visit to the Anglomaniac Due d' Orléans, in the company of a charming 'Madame Fox,' of whom Arthur Young and London had no previous cognisance. Like Dijon, and Nancy, and Toulouse, and Rennes, and Rouen, Amiens still wears that 'look of a capital' which is as unmistakeable, if also as undefinable, as Hazlitt found the 'look of a gentleman' to be. York and Exeter, for example, in England, have this look, while Liverpool and Hull have it not. There are traces of the Spaniards in Amiens, as there are wherever that most Roman of all the Latin peoples has ever passed, and the curious _hortillonages_ of Amiens, which may be roughly described as a kind of floating kitchen gardens, remind one so strongly of the much more picturesque Chinampas of Mexico as to suggest the impression that the idea of establishing them may have come hither by way of Spain. At the present time, Amiens is a point of no small political interest. It is the bailiwick of one of the few really notable men of the actual Republican party in France--- M. Goblet--and yet it is one of the strongholds of Boulangism. There is an old song, the refrain of which, as I heard it sung, more years ago than I care to recall, always haunts me when I visit this ancient city:-- Vive un Picard, vive un Picard, Quand il s'agit de tete! The Picards have always shown, not only sense, but a kind of stubborn independence of character. In the days of anarchy which came upon France with the brief but ill-omened triumph of the Girondins, Amiens was the first of the French provincial cities to resist and denounce the too successful attempt of Danton and the commune of Paris to terrorise France by a skilful abuse of the imbecility of Roland. The authorities of Amiens were the first to protest against the outrageous pretensions of the 'commissioners,' who came there with Roland's commissions in one hand, and the secret instructions of Roland's colleague and master, Danton, in the other, to pillage the property of the inhabitants under the pretence of gathering supplies for the national defence, and to establish an irresponsible local despotism under the pretence of suppressing 'treason.' To them, in the first instance, belongs the credit of compelling Roland to get up before the Assembly on September 17, 1792, and confess that he had 'signed in the council commissions without knowing anything about the commissioners who were to use them;' and to them, therefore, in the first instance, history is indebted for the formal record which shows that the actual fall of the French monarchy was followed, and its formal abolition preceded, by the letting loose upon France of a swarm of scoundrels, who filled 'the prisons with prisoners as to whom no one knew by whom they were arrested; who gave over to pillage the treasures accumulated in the Tuileries, and in the houses of the emigrant aristocracy; who conveyed away everything which could tempt the cupidity of a subaltern, without any record whatever; and who were delivering over Paris and France to the most absurd folly and the most insatiable greed.' It was not the fault of Amiens if the efforts of Mazuyer and Kersaint demanding a law to show 'whether the French nation was sovereign, or the Commune of Paris,' and the sonorous eloquence of Vergniaud denouncing the 'citizens of Paris' as the 'slaves of the vilest scoundrels alive,' only led in the end to making France herself for a time the slave of these same 'vilest scoundrels alive.' In more recent times, Amiens received and entertained Gambetta on his way by balloon from Paris to Tours. I asked the veteran Count Léon de Chassepot, who for years was regularly returned at every election at the head of the municipal councillors of Amiens, how the people received Gambetta on that memorable occasion. His answer was that there really was no 'reception.' Gambetta came down in his balloon at a little place some way off, between Amiens and Montdidier, and when he reached Amiens he was too tired and hungry to think of 'receiving' people or making speeches. Count Léon de Chassepot had nothing, I believe, to do with the invention of the guns which bear his name. But he has a glance like a rifle-shot, and at fourscore years 'Spring still makes spring in the mind' of this vivacious veteran. I asked him how Amiens behaved when the news came there of the capture of Paris by the revolutionists of September 4, 1870. Was the new republic hailed with enthusiasm? 'Enthusiasm!' he said scornfully; 'why should it be? The people of Amiens were thinking of fighting the Prussians, not of upsetting the Government! They received the news with stupefaction, as a matter of little consequence in comparison with the invasion. The disaster of Sedan had afflicted them profoundly. The Empire was popular in Picardy. At the municipal elections which took place in Amiens just after the declaration of war--early in August 1870, that is--the Imperialist candidates had all been elected by overwhelming majorities. M. Goblet, now so prominent in the Republican counsels, made his appearance then as an anti-governmental candidate, together with M. Petit, the present Radical mayor of Amiens. M. Goblet got 530 votes, and M. Petit 423. They were the leading persons on that side, and the leading persons on the side of the Government received, respectively, 5,099 and 4,964 votes. This being the temper of the good people of Amiens at that time, you will understand that they were more astounded than pleased by the so-called revolution of September in Paris. But they were more patriotic than the people of Paris, and they acquiesced in the overthrow of the Government to show a united front to the enemy. He was within striking distance of Amiens, by the way, and the boulevardiers unfortunately thought that Paris was out of his reach.' The first act of the revolutionists of September, it appears, was to disorganise as far as they could the public service by removing the prefects, and putting their own people into place and power. They sent a certain M. Lardière down post-haste to Amiens to take the place of the then prefect of the Somme, M. de Guigné, and that was all they did to defend Amiens! In the course of a pleasant morning spent with M. Ansart, a gentleman of high character and position in Amiens, and with several of his friends, I heard much that was interesting as to this critical period. The attitude of the leading men throughout Picardy seems to have been in complete conformity with M. de Chassepot's account of the bearing of the city of Amiens. The mayor of a commune not far from Amiens, a marquis and a leading Imperialist, on getting the news of the political somersault executed at Paris, read out the bulletin to the people from the mairie, reminded them that the enemy were sure to come into Picardy, and then exclaimed, 'Well, my friends, since it seems we are in a republic, Long live the Republic!' This was the general feeling of good men everywhere at that time in France. Said one gentleman, a landed proprietor from Brittany, 'Nobody out of Paris who had a head on his shoulders approved what had been done in Paris. But by common consent a great blank credit was opened for the Republic all over France. If the Republicans would do their duty to France, not as party men but as patriots, France was ready to accept them. It is their own fault, and their fault alone, that the men who made this change at Paris went to pieces so fast in the public estimation. It is the fault of the Republicans, and their fault alone, that now, after nearly eighteen years, they are an offence to sensible and liberal men from one end of France to the other.' The new prefect sent down from Paris turned out to be a wind-bag. By the middle of November it became clear that Amiens must fall into the power of the enemy. The new prefect launched a ridiculous proclamation, blazing with adjectives, at the advancing Teutons, and then one fine night got out of the way as fast as possible, leaving the city and the department of the Somme to face the wrath of the not very placable conquerors. On November 28, the Prussians occupied the city, one French officer, Commandant Vogel, falling at his post, which he refused to surrender. Count Lehndorff, appointed to be German Prefect of the Somme, came down upon the people heavily for war contributions, which were raised under the management of M. Dauphin, who had been the Imperialist mayor of the city ever since 1868, and who has of late years been a conspicuous Republican. As peace drew near, Amiens had to borrow five millions of francs, for which M. Dauphin agreed the city should pay M. Oppenheim of Brussels a commission of 10 per cent., and issued its obligations at 7-1/2 per cent. for fifty years. Naturally the Germans are not much liked at Amiens. Count de Chassepot thinks the Picards in general really want war with Germany. They turned out very generally during the contest. He commanded a battalion of National Guards who turned out in full force, not a man missing, though they were armed with wretched old muskets, and perfectly understood what that must lead to for them. On making his rounds very early in the morning, he found, in an advanced post, at a point of great danger, a picket, a _sentinelle perdue_, who proved to be one of the most respectable men in Amiens, the first president of the Upper Court of the city, nearly sixty years of age, doing his duty as a private soldier. 'In a hospital here,' said M. de Chassepot, 'I have six hundred patients. Every man of them is eager for another turn with the Germans.' I was anxious to learn when and how it was that M. Goblet, just now the leading Republican personage of this part of France, began to appear conspicuously on the horizon. 'Not till Gambetta's new social strata began to appear,' I was told. This was in 1874. The finances of the city, left in a sad condition by the war, had been put into order by the municipal council which was elected during the German occupation in 1871; the public works had been restored, fine barracks built, and a sufficient number of school-houses. In return for those services the councillors who had rendered them were turned out in 1874, M. Dauphin among them, by the newly-organised 'Union républicaine.' This put M. Goblet at last into the council with his ally, M. Petit, the latter being the editor of a Radical journal, the _Progrès de la Somme_, which the military governor of Paris had ordered to be suppressed early in 1874, for its attacks on the then President, Marshal MacMahon. In 1876 M. Goblet became mayor of Amiens. 'The very next year, when the contest began between Gambetta as head of the Union of the Left and the President of the Republic, M. Goblet threw himself as ex-mayor of Amiens openly on the side of the ex-dictator, and made such speeches that he was dismissed from his office by the President in June 1877.' 'Did he like this?' 'No, he didn't like it at all. As Minister of the Interior, in more recent times, M. Goblet has knocked off the heads of a great number of mayors. But when his own head was knocked off in 1877, he loudly and scornfully denounced all municipal officers who would stoop to accept their positions from the national government.' 'In that you have the whole character of M. Goblet,' said another gentleman. 'I have known him from childhood. He is not a bad man, and, as you know, he is a man of ability, one of the very few able men to be found acting with President Carnot. But he is very vain, very ambitious, very excitable. As the associate of Petit, who is a rampant atheist, and of the anti-clericals generally, he has to pose as an unbeliever; but he is, in fact, nothing of the sort. His wife is a good woman, and he goes in great awe of her, which I think to his credit. I think if he felt his health suffering he would go to confession in a quiet way by night, just as the Gambetta prefect ran away from the Prussians in 1871. When the grand funeral of Admiral Courbet took place at Abbeville, and it was announced that Monseigneur Freppel would come and deliver the funeral service over that noble Christian sailor and patriot, the victim of Ferry, M. Goblet was in a dreadful state of mind. He said to me, "I think I shall not attend the funeral." "Pray why?" "Well, I wish to attend it, but I am sure that Bishop Freppel will say things offensive to me." "Pray accept my congratulations," I replied; "you really are in great luck that the first orator in France should take the trouble to come all the way to Picardy expressly to insult you on such an occasion!" So he thought better of it and attended, and his sensible wife afterwards thanked me for preventing her husband from behaving like a donkey.' 'An excellent woman, Madame Goblet!' 'Her husband owes her much, and he has some good friends. Comte de Chassepot prevented him from playing the stupid farce of a Roman son by sacrificing his father's funeral to a discussion on the laicisation of the schools; for, seeing what he had in his mind, Comte de Chassepot simply moved an adjournment of the council. His evil genius is M. Petit, now a senator, the present mayor of Amiens. I have caught M. Goblet offering the holy water with his hand behind my back to his wife; but M. Petit is an outspoken unbeliever, and a very type of the anti-christian demagogue.' Upon this he told me a story which, as it is certainly typical of the proceedings taken against religion all over France by functionaries of M. Petit's way of thinking, I shall set down here. In 1869 all the crosses and stones in the cemetery of the Madeleine at Amiens set up on graves held by temporary concessions had to be removed by reason of the lapse of these concessions. The then mayor and municipal council had them sold, and ordered the proceeds to be spent in erecting a large and beautiful cross with an image of the Saviour, and an inscription stating that this crucifix was erected in memory of all the dead buried in the cemetery whose crosses and tombs had been removed. This crucifix, called the 'Calvary of the Poor,' was thus a touching monument of the family affection of the poor among the people of Amiens. Outraged by this symbol, the Radical mayor of Amiens caused this Calvary to be dismantled, in the night of November 10, 1880, and the crosses to be sawn in pieces and thrown away beyond the limits of the cemetery. Surely this is an advance beyond Robespierre, and even beyond the senseless Vandalism which solemnly ordered the destruction of the tombs of the kings and heroes of France. Even Robespierre, when Cambon made his proposal that the Convention should violate the public faith pledged by the Constituent Assembly to the support of the French clergy by the State in exchange for the seizure by the State of the property of the Church, had sense enough to say, in a letter to his constituents opposing the project, that 'to attack religion directly was to strike a blow at the morals of the people.' I am not surprised to be told that, notwithstanding the support given him by the central government of the Republic at Paris, this worthy mayor has speedily lost popularity even with his own Radical party, and that in the most recent elections he barely escaped defeat. 'He is ensconced, though, comfortably as senator,' said my shrewd informant, 'and I dare say he will see his friend, M. Goblet, turned out of the Chamber! So--what does he care? His zeal against the Calvary in Amiens may hurt him with the poor people upon whose faith and whose affections he tramples; but, like his brutal expulsion of the Sisters from their schools and hospitals, and his truculence towards the religious processions in which the Picards delight, it recommends him to the clique who have got our poor France into their clutches at Paris, and who pose before all the gaping world at the Universal Exposition as friends of Liberty and Progress!' The laicisation of the schools has been pushed forward at Amiens, as elsewhere. It began under M. Spuller, now Minister of Foreign Affairs, who was made Prefect of the Somme in 1879. M. Goblet, who had then been mayor for a year, resigned, to become under-secretary in the Ministry of Justice, and the prefect put M. Delpech in his place. Everything, it will be seen, was moved from the centre at Paris. 'This M. Delpech and his associates,' said one of my informants, 'began the laicisation of the boys' schools. They were men who would not think of picking a man's pocket, but see how they behaved in this business! 'There were six primary schools at Amiens conducted by the Christian Brothers. Five of these had always been so conducted, and the sixth for twenty years. The Christian Brothers agreed to give up this sixth school, M. Petit promising them that, if they did this, they should not be disturbed in the others. Very soon this promise was broken, and they were turned out of the school of Notre-Dame. Then a charge was brought against one of the brethren of the school of St.-Leu. It was serious and went before the Assize Court, where the accused was promptly acquitted. But this took time, and while the proceedings were pending, our admirable M. Petit sent in a report to the Council recommending that the Brethren be dismissed from their four remaining schools. On August 26, 1879, the Council adopted this report, and within a week M. Spuller, the prefect, issued an order of expulsion, "in obedience," as he wrote, "to the resolution of the Municipal Council of Amiens, and to the wishes of the population."' M. Spuller appears to be a true disciple of Robespierre, who, in his famous socialistic speech before the Convention, affirming that bread, meat, and all provisions are not private, but common, property, laid down the maxim that, 'even if the measures proposed as their desire by the people are not necessary in the eyes of law-makers, they should be adopted.' _Civium ardor prava jubentium_ is a moral law for legislators of this admirable school. I should note by the way that these Brethren, thus expelled summarily, were refused payment of their already fixed salaries for the month of September. A debate ensuing, the question was finally remitted to M. Jules Ferry, 'Grand Master of the University of France,' who decided that the salaries were indeed due and the property of the Brethren, but that, as the work could not be done by reason of their expulsion, the salaries need not be paid! Furthermore, the municipality appraised the school furniture, which had been bought and paid for by the Brethren, and having ascertained its value, decided--that it belonged to the municipality! Will my readers think the expression of M. Fleury, an accomplished journalist of Amiens, to whom I am indebted for these details, at all too vigorous, when he described these proceedings as 'exactly defined in the French Dictionary, and in the 379th article of the Penal Code, under the word "theft"'? In August 1880, on the refusal of the Sisters in charge of the girls' school to take their pupils to an 'obligatory festival' during the time fixed on Sunday for divine service, M. Petit, the municipal Emperor Julian of Amiens, moved for 'the immediate laicisation of all the girls' schools in Amiens.' This was too much even for M. Goblet, who, to his credit, not only protested but voted against the proposition. It was, however, carried. M. Goblet and six other councillors withdrew, including the mayor, M. Delpech; and M. Petit thus became, by seniority, mayor of Amiens. 'When this happened,' said a citizen of Amiens to me, 'and M. Petit was thus put in charge of the rights and the property of the Sisters, it had been perfectly well known for ten years that, by the Parliamentary Inquest of 1871 into the story of the Commune of Paris, M. Petit had been proved to be the founder at Amiens of the secret society known as the "International," and yet he was never prosecuted, and he is now a senator of the Republic. How do you expect honest people, who respect the ordinary laws of order and civilisation, to support a Republic which accepts and promotes the members of such a society? 'On October 2, 1880, this remarkable mayor went in person with a locksmith and some others to the communal girls' school of St.-Leu, then managed by the Sisters. The Sisters had been already that day notified to leave the school-buildings "the next day." M. Petit ordered them to go out immediately. They showed the notification and declined to go till the next day. The curate of St.-Leu, with his vicar and with a member of the board of Churchwardens, came up and protested against this invasion of the school. "Show me the documents proving this house to be the property of the municipality," said the curate. M. Petit showed no documents, but demanded the keys. The curate refused to give them up. M. Petit ordered his locksmith to pick the locks, which was done, and then turning to the curate shouted out, "As for you, if you are here when the commissary comes, I will have you turned out by force." Upon this the curate, a venerable old man, withdrew. 'From the school of St.-Leu our local Robespierrot drove to the girls' school of St.-Jacques, sprang out of the municipal coach (paid for by the public treasury), dashed into the house, and seated himself without a word. 'One of the Sisters asked him civilly what he wished. "I wish you to get out of this house," he replied, "We cannot possibly leave in this way," answered a Sister who has for years devoted herself to this work. "I have nothing to say to you," he cried; "I want the Superior." The Superior quietly came and informed the mayor that the church officers had told her not to leave, excepting under force. "Very well, you shall have force! If you are not all out of here by Tuesday, I will put you all into the street!" 'Now observe the consequences to the taxpayer of Amiens! The Church of St.-Leu, as it happens, owned the greater part of the school-buildings. The church began proceedings against the city, and in August 1881, the tribunal ordered the city to give up the buildings seized by this adventurous mayor, and to withdraw its lay teachers. The upshot was that the performances of M. Petit, in one way or another--although M. Goblet, then in the ministry at Paris, came to the rescue of his demagogic ally--cost the taxpayers, in round numbers, some fifty thousand francs. Now you see why the laicising Republicans are so anxious to shake the whole system of the French magistracy. There may be judges at Berlin. It is not convenient there should be judges in Republican France!' This recalled to me what I heard the other day at Calais about the functionary decorated at Bapaume by President Carnot, because the tribunal had given a decision against him in a case raised by certain Christian Brothers whom he had unlawfully put out of property which, under the law, belonged to them. 'You think that a remarkable case!' said the Picard friend to whom I mentioned it. 'It is an everyday affair. Wait a minute! Let me show you the documents in regard to a performance of our worthy mayor and senator, which throws President Carnot into the shade. They are as amusing, too, as they are instructive, and I will give you copies of them which you may use as you like. You tell me people in England and America have no idea of what is going on in France? I assure you that people in France who know what is going on around them, have no idea of what it all means, or of what it must lead to in the end. 'Sometimes I think we were so stunned as a nation by the invasion and the Commune that we are still staggering about like a man knocked on the head in a dark road. 'But let me tell you the tale of M. Petit and Mademoiselle Colombel. Mademoiselle Colombel was a lay teacher at the head of one of our schools, the school of the Petit St.-Jean. I don't quite see, by the way,' he observed, 'why M. Petit and his squad have not changed the names of these schools. In Paris, you know, they had the courage to change the name of one of the great lyceums into the Lyceum Lakanal. To be sure it didn't stay changed very long, for even Paris--which suffers one of its boulevards to commemorate that wretched creature Victor Noir--wouldn't stand Lakanal. But to infect the minds of children with the names of little Saints--surely this is a monstrous thing! Well, Mademoiselle Colombel lost her temper one day, and tried to find it about the person of one of her little pupils, with slaps, and pinches, and other caresses of the kind. She was brought up before the police for it, and sentenced to pay a small fine with costs. She appealed, but the court confirmed the sentence of the police magistrate, who had acted strictly within the law. What followed? This was in May 1885. Mdlle. Colombel declared herself to be a persecuted martyr of "laicisation," and in that capacity called upon the mayor, M. Petit, for aid and comfort. I believe they were old allies in the sacred cause. Be this as it may, the mayor made himself her champion against the magistrate, and wrote her, for public use, this letter. Pray print it. It is a great thing for Amiens to possess a mayor, and for France to possess a senator, who can write such a letter. It ought to have been sent to the Exposition. '"Amiens, May 1885. '"Madame,--On the strength of calumnious imputations fomented by an Ulysses who could not console himself for the departure of Calypso, and complacently listened to, you have been prosecuted for cruelty to your pupils. '"After an inquiry as long and as voluminous as if the matter at issue had been a case for the Assize Court, this intrigue came to a miserable end before a simple police tribunal. From the moment, when, through a singular sort of suspicion about your natural judges, you were removed from the disciplinary action of your superiors, without any preliminary inquiry made by them, and, indeed, without apprising them of the matter, you should have been taken before the Courts. Nobody seemed to understand this, so you were condemned by default to pay a fine, trifling indeed, but so imposed as to take from you the right of appeal. Be this as it may, since some of the law officers of the Republic are ready to revive against the lay instructors of our schools, the methods of the law officers of the Empire, it is well your colleagues should know that, whilst I am at the head of the municipal administration of Amiens, they shall not be given over defenceless to the rancour of the clerical world, its dupes, or its accomplices. I have therefore the honour to inform you that I not only relieve you from all the costs of your case, but that, in order to soothe the trouble it may have caused you, I grant you an indemnity of one hundred francs! '"Against the sentence which condemned you put this proof of esteem and sympathy. Honest people and Republicans will think this testimony at least as good as any other. Accept, Madame, the assurances of my most distinguished consideration. '"The Mayor of Amiens, '"FRÉDÉRIC PETIT."' 'Ulysses bewailing the departure of Calypso is charming, is it not?' said my friend. 'M. Petit is a cotton-velvet manufacturer, and his classics are cotton classics. But what do you say to the applause of "honest people" acclaiming a mayor who puts his hand into the public treasury and makes a present out of it to soothe the injured feelings of a schoolmistress fined by a public tribunal for ill-treating her pupils? Can you ask for a more flagrant illustration of the state to which this Republic is bringing our public services? And the mayor who wrote this letter, and took this money out of the public treasury, and offered this open insult to the tribunals of the city of Amiens, has since then been made a senator of the Republic, with the help and concurrence of M. Dauphin, then First President of our Courts, whose plain official duty it was to revoke his commission as mayor as soon as this letter was published! With such men as this in the French Senate do you wonder the country laughs at senatorial courts of justice? I have no great opinion of General Boulanger, though I have as good an opinion of him as of M. Clémenceau, who invented him. But really is it not grotesque to see such cotton-velvet senators as this mayor of Amiens going about to decide questions of fidelity to public duty? Take my word for it' he continued, 'it is the direct personal knowledge which the people have of just such personages as the mayor of Amiens all over France, which makes two-thirds of the popular strength of General Boulanger. If the Senate and the Government succeed in putting about the impression that General Boulanger is no better than they are, they will no doubt weaken him with the people, but they will not strengthen themselves. This Third Republic is dying, not of any passion for the monarchy, not even of the Imperialist legend, which is very strong in the country--more because France was so prosperous under the third Napoleon than because France dominated Europe under the first Napoleon: it is dying of popular contempt. It is dying of the Goblets, the Petits, the Dauphins. They are to be found all over France--under different names--yes--but always the same: shallow, vain, vulgar sycophants of universal suffrage while they are out of place, bullies and traders when they are in power. And then!' he exclaimed after a pause, 'what most exasperates me is that they are such a pack of wordmongers, for ever ranting about things which may have intoxicated our grandfathers in 1792--they don't seem to me to have invented gunpowder, our grandfathers!--but which simply make sensible men sick to-day. 'Wait a moment! Let me complete the picture of our model Picard Republican senator for you. The Comte de Chassepot told you the story, did he not, of the Calvary in the cemetery of the Madeleine? Yes. But he did not show you the correspondence about it between the bishop and this charlatan of twopenny Atheism? No? Well it is a tit-bit, and I give it to you! Petit sent his order to the keeper of the cemetery of the Madeleine in November 1880, to raze the cross, saw off the arms, and detach from it the image of Christ. He was then, observe, not really mayor of Amiens, but only mayor by reason of the refusal of his senior to serve in the office. 'The work was done at night. The cross was destroyed. The image of the Saviour was thrown into a shed. 'Two days afterwards, the Bishop of Amiens wrote this letter to the Prefect of the Somme, Spuller, the same person who is now--heaven save the mark!--Minister of Foreign Affairs of the French Republic! '"Amiens: Nov. 12, 1880. '"Mr. Prefect,--A most deplorable incident--indeed a grave scandal--has just taken place at the cemetery of the Madeleine, and is exciting, with too much reason, the strongest and most painful feelings among the people of Amiens. '"The figure of our Saviour Christ, set up there in very special circumstances, and with a solemn ceremony in which more than 30,000 spectators took part, was clandestinely thrown down and taken away the night before last. It is impossible for me to imagine that the authorities can have ordered such a thing to be done. '"I must request you, Mr. Prefect, to order an inquiry to be made into this inexplicable affair, and to cause the authors of the act to be prosecuted according to law. Please accept the assurance of my respectful regard. '"[Illustration] AIME VICTOR-FRANCIS, '"Bishop of Amiens." 'To this letter, written by the highest ecclesiastical authority of the chief city of his préfecture--will you believe it?--M. Spuller, who is after all not a perfectly illiterate person like Petit, actually made no reply! 'But the cotton-velvet bagman of blasphemy three days afterwards, reading in the papers the letter of Bishop Guilbert, burst into print with this incredible but most instructive effusion, addressed to his friend the Prefect: '"Amiens: Nov. 15, 1880. '"Mr. Prefect,--I find this morning in the journals of the bishopric the text of a letter addressed to you by the Bishop of Amiens in regard to the suppression of the Catholic emblem placed at the entrance of the general cemetery of the Madeleine. '"It was by my order, and my written order, that the Christ of the Madeleine was removed. The only failure to comply with my orders was that the operation was performed in the evening after the cemetery was closed, instead of in the morning as I had directed. In acting thus, I have shown great tolerance; for, in virtue of Article 13 of the Law of the 7th Vendémiaire of the Year IV., circumscribed in its application, but not abrogated by the Law of the 18th Germinal year X., as is shown by a ministerial decree of the 7th Fructidor following: 'No sign special to any religion can be raised, fixed, and attached in any place whatever, so as to strike the eyes of citizens, except in an enclosure intended for the exercises of this religion, or in the interior of private houses, in the studios or warehouses of artists or merchants, or in public edifices destined to contain monuments of the arts."' 'Then followed a dozen pages of similar twaddle, meant to show that the mayor of Amiens was a most tolerant prince, in that he had not ordered the destruction of every cross set up on a private grave! 'Of course all these laws of the First Republic were long ago shot into space under the Consulate and the Empire, and of course, even if they had not been shot into space, a consecrated cemetery is an "enclosure intended for the exercises of religion." But what did that signify to M. Petit, who, in a public speech the year after, boasted that he "had not been married in church, and that his children had never been baptized." 'Did all this give the man any right to destroy and carry away a costly piece of artistic work, the property of the city?' Obviously, it is as absurd to expect peace and order in France under a republic in which men like M. Petit, and M. Spuller, and M. Dauphin, and M. Goblet are leading friends of the Government, as it would have been to expect peace and order in the England of the seventeenth century, when churchwardens--as at Banbury, for example--went about breaking at night into the churches confided to their care, and smashing the statues of the saints and defacing the glorious monuments of the past. After considering all these humours and graces of the most recent French Republic, as set forth by the senatorial mayor of Amiens, for the edification of Picardy and France, it was interesting to walk with Mr. Ruskin from the Place de Périgord up the 'Street of the Three Pebbles,' past the theatre and the Palais de Justice, to the south transept of that glorious cathedral which has not as yet been taken down by night, under the senatorial mayor or his friends the ministers, M. Spuller and M. Yves Guyot. Why should this 'Parthenon of Gothic architecture,' as M. Viollet-le-Duc calls it, be left standing when the Calvary of the poor at Amiens is cast down and sawn in pieces? For surely Mr. Ruskin, who has written many true and eloquent things, has written nothing truer than these words with which he brings to a close his remarkable paper called the 'Bible of Amiens':-- 'The life and gospel and power of Christianity are all written in the mighty works of its true believers, in Normandy and Sicily, on river-islets of France and in the river glens of England, on the rocks of Orvieto and by the sands of Arno. But of all, the simplest, completest, and most authoritative in its lessons to the active mind of Northern Europe, is this on the foundation-stones of Amiens. Believe it or not as you will--only understand how thoroughly it was once believed--and that all beautiful things were made and all brave deeds done in the strength of it--until what we may call "this present time," in which it is gravely asked whether religion has any effect on morals, by persons (senatorial and other) who have essentially no idea whatever of the meaning of either religion or morality.' CHAPTER VI. IN THE SOMME--_continued_ AMIENS Where party names are taken from persons, there we may be sure that the people are either losing, or have never had, the political instincts which alone can make popular government a government of law and order. The Englishmen who are readiest to proclaim themselves 'Gladstonians,' whatever may be their other merits, are hardly perhaps the most devoted champions either of the British constitution as it is, or of strictly constitutional reform. In France to-day, the Republican party is made up of clans, each taking the name of its chief. There are Ferryists and Clementists, as there were Gambettists; and the Government of the day is putting forth all its strength to check the drift over of what I suppose I may without impropriety call the Republican residuum into Boulangism. Here in Amiens the tide seems to be too strong for the authorities at Paris, and for that matter throughout the department of the Somme. At the election nearly a year ago, on August 19, 1888, of a deputy to fill the vacancy caused by the death of a Royalist member, M. de Berly, General Boulanger came forward as a candidate and was elected by an overwhelming majority. There are 160,400 electors in the department. Of these, 121,955 voted. General Boulanger received 76,094 votes, and his Republican competitor, M. Barnot, only 41,371, General Boulanger having been elected at the same time for the Nord and the Charente-Inférieure. General Boulanger resigned his seat and his Republican followers cast their votes for a Royalist, General de Montauban, who was elected. In the arrondissement of Amiens, with 57,527 registered voters, General Boulanger had a majority, in 1888, of 15,274 voters, the whole vote thrown there being 42,609. Yet, in 1881, on a total registration of 47,923 voters, the Republican candidates for Amiens, M. Goblet and M. Dieu, were elected by a combined majority of 7,094 votes. If the Boulangists carry Amiens, therefore, at the legislative election this year, it may be taken for granted, I think, that M. Goblet and his friend the senatorial mayor have not educated their fellow-citizens into very staunch and trustworthy supporters of the Republic. M. Fleury, the editor-in-chief of the Conservative _Echo de la Somme_, who made a pretty thorough canvass of the department before the election of August 19, 1888, gives me some curious details as to that election. The monarchists, both royalists and imperialists, gave a general and tacit, and in many cases an overt and active, support to General Boulanger, their object being the same as his--to bring about a repeal of the existing law of 1884, which was passed to prevent any real revision of the constitution in a sense hostile to the existing republican form of government. Of course if the people of the Somme had really cared anything about the Republic as a form of government, they ought to have defeated General Boulanger. It is the opinion of M. Fleury that the people of the Somme, and indeed of Picardy, not only care little or nothing about the Republic as a form of government, but actually and by a considerable majority prefer some monarchical form--probably, on the whole, the Empire. They are not in the least likely to express this preference at the polls, because, in common with the vast majority of the electors throughout France, they have been born and brought up to take their form of government from Paris. So long as the government at Paris--be it royal, imperial, or republican--controls the executive, the people of the provinces are extremely unlikely to make an emphatic effort of their own to be rid of that government. If Louis Philippe, in 1848, would have allowed Marshal Bugeaud to use the force at his command in Paris, the Republic improvised in February of that year would have been strangled before birth, to the extreme satisfaction of an enormous majority of the French people. This was afterwards overwhelmingly shown by the election of Louis Napoleon, when General Cavaignac, with all the advantage of the control of the machinery of government at Paris, could secure only a relatively insignificant popular vote at the polls against the representative of the imperial monarchy. I spent the winter in Paris two years afterwards as a youth, during my first tour in Europe, and I there heard an American resident of Paris, well known at that time in the world of French politics, Mr. George Sumner, a brother of the senator from Massachusetts, relate in the _salon_ of M. de Tocqueville a curious story of the days of February, which strikingly illustrates the disposition of the French provinces at that time to take whatever Paris might send them in the way either of administration or of revolution. The king refused to let the Maréchal Duc d'Isly restore order (as there is no doubt he could easily and quickly have done), on the ground that he had received the Crown from the National Guard in Paris, and that he would not allow it to be defended by the line against them. The recently published letters of his very popular son, the Duc d'Orléans, prove that, had that prince been then living, he probably would never have allowed this scruple to stand in the way of averting a social and political catastrophe. But the duc was in his untimely grave, and the control of events fell most unexpectedly into the hands of a few men who had no concerted plan of action, and, indeed, hardly knew whether they were awake or dreaming. 'They proclaimed a republic,' said Mr. Sumner, 'because they did not know what else to do;' but they were in a state of utter bewilderment at first, as to how they should get the republic accepted by the provinces. A happy thought struck M. Armand Marrast. In those days the French railway system was little developed. Most of the mails from Paris were carried through the country by malles-postes and diligences, and every evening an immense number of these coaches left the central bureau for all parts of France. M. Marrast sent into all the quarters of Paris and impounded, in one way or another, the services and the paintpots of every house and furniture painter upon whom his people could lay hands. These were all set to work upon the mail coaches. The royal arms, with the Charter and the Crown, were painted over, and the vehicles which, from Paris, carried to all parts of France the news of the proclamation of the Republic carried everywhere also an outward and visible sign of the establishment of the new government in the words 'République Française' brightly blazoned upon their panels. I recalled this story to Mr. Sumner years afterwards in New York, and he assured me not only that it was literally correct, but that he had been consulted himself about it by M. Marrast at the time. This particular device could not now be used as effectively. But, with the telegraph wires and the telephones in its control, any government which may get itself installed to-morrow in Paris would certainly have tremendous odds in its favour, from one end of France to the other. The immense increase of the French public debt under the republican administration since 1877 has correspondingly increased, all over France, the number of people known as _petits rentiers_, who, having invested their savings, in part or wholly, in the public securities, will be as quick to acquiesce in any revolution which they believe to have been successful at Paris, as they are slow to promote any revolution, no matter how desirable otherwise a change in the government may seem to them to be. So long as it is not shaken out of the public offices at Paris, the government of the Republic may probably count upon this vast body of quiet people, as confidently as the Empire counted upon it twenty years ago, or as the monarchy or the dictatorship might count upon it to-morrow, were the king or the dictator acclaimed in the capital. M. Fleury cites one of General Boulanger's most active supporters, M. Mermieix, as saying to him during the election in 1888, 'with a few millions of francs, the liberty of the press and of public billsticking, and three thousand rowdies, I can change the government of this country in less than a year.' The remark is slightly cynical. But the extreme anxiety of the government of the Republic to get General Boulanger either into a prison or out of Paris certainly goes far to justify the boast of M. Mermeix. 'I told General Boulanger at Doullens,' said M. Fleury, after going thither in company with him from Amiens, 'that he was sure of his election. My reason was that while I saw little real enthusiasm for him at Amiens, none at all indeed among the middle classes, and no open display of any on the part of the workmen, I found the peasants for him almost to a man. They crowded about his railway carriage. They insisted on shaking hands with him, many of them kissed his hand (that ancient form of homage lingering still in their traditions), they fired off guns, and, above all, the women held up their children to be kissed by him. This settled the question for me. When I saw him kissing the little girls, I knew that he had captured the mammas, and the mammas govern the rural regions of Picardy. 'At Doullens I said to him, "You may be sure of your results now. You will win by twenty-five thousand majority." He was very modest about it; but, though he certainly is not a great politician, he seemed to understand the meaning of this unquestionable popular interest in him and his progress. I could not help, however, calling his attention to the evidence it gave of what I believe to be the profoundly monarchical instincts of the peasantry in this part of France.' 'How did he take it? 'Oh! he said nothing, but smiled in a way which might mean anything. Of course his idea of a republic of honest men means, and can mean, nothing but a republic with a chief who is beyond the reach of deputies and contractors.' 'That,' I said, 'seems to have been simply Lafayette's idea, in 1792, of an American republic for France, with a hereditary executive; or, in other words, a French edition of the English "republic with a crown."' M. Fleury replied, that this is rather the aim of the monarchists than of the Boulangists. One of General Boulanger's lieutenants, M. Mermeix, already cited, told him frankly that the Boulangists want a sort of consulate stopping short of the Empire--a strong republic with a nationally nominated chief, freedom of conscience, freedom of education, no more parliaments, a simpler public administration, and the cutting out of the financial cancer which is destroying the resources of France. The coalition now existing between the royalists, the imperialists, and the Boulangists, in view of the elections of 1889, obviously rests upon the conviction, common to all these parties, that the Republic, as at present constituted, is so far committed to a policy of reckless public expenditure and of deliberately irreligious propagandism that its leaders cannot, if they would, either readjust the national finances or let the religious question alone. A man of much ability and of very high character, who has filled important financial posts under the Empire in this part of France, tells me that there has been no real balancing, now, of the public books for several years, because the members of the Cour des Comptes whose duty it is to get this done have found it impossible (and so reported) to get all the necessary accounts from the Ministry of Finance. As no Conservative members are permitted to sit on the Committee of the Budget, even such a monstrous thing as this passes unchecked by the Chamber. No wonder that he should tell me, M. Bethmont, one of the members of the Cour des Comptes and a Republican, is of the opinion that nothing can make matters straight again in France but an Emperor with a Liberal constitution, or, in other words, a revival of the Ollivier experiment of 1870. I tried in vain to get from M. Fleury some definite notion of the political programme of General Boulanger. As I have been constantly assured that the General formed his programme from his observation of the institutions of my own country during the short time which he spent in America, as one of the chosen representatives of France during the centennial celebration of the crowning victory of Yorktown, in 1881, I have long been not unnaturally curious to ascertain precisely how he proposes to 'Americanise' the actual government of France. But on this point I can get no more light from M. Fleury in Picardy--though M. Fleury spent some time with the General as a not unsympathetic ally--than I have been able to get from any of the General's most devoted partisans in Paris. In Picardy as in Paris, Boulangism seems to represent a destructive--or, if the phrase be more polite, a detergent--rather than a constructive force. It is not the less worthy of consideration, perhaps, on this account. But on this account it appears to me more likely to play a subordinate than a leading part in the political movement of these times. It is rather a broom, if I may so speak, than a sceptre which the 'brav' général' is expected to wield. In conversation with M. Fleury, another of General Boulanger's intimate and confidential lieutenants, M. Turquet, formerly an Under-Secretary of State in the Ministry of Fine Arts, who ran for a seat as deputy in the Aisne in 1885, summed up the programme of Boulangism as 'a programme of liberty.' 'I mean,' he said, 'real liberty, such as exists in America, not our Liberalism, which is spurious and archaic. Our actual republicans of to-day are Jacobins, sectarians. Their only notion is to persecute and proscribe, and they are infinitely further from liberty than you royalists are, for you have at your head a prince who has a thoroughly open mind. The form of government, after all, signifies little. The real question is not whether we shall have a monarchy or an empire, an autocracy or a democracy. It is whether we shall have liberty.'[3] [3] M. Turquet ran in September in the first arrondissement of the Seine against M. Yves Guyot, and there was no election. At the election in October the Government proclaimed M. Yves Guyot elected by a small majority. 'I answered him,' said M. Fleury, 'that what he said was very fine, and that the friend of Fourier, Victor Considérant, had said it before him. What I wanted to know, however, was, what the Boulangists proposed to do with the Catholics, the believers, in France should the General get into power.' 'We shall begin,' said M. Turquet, 'by suppressing the budget of worship. We shall do this to satisfy the blockheads who are a noun of multitude. 'But we shall restore, in another shape, to the clergy the indemnity which is certainly due to them. We shall give the bishoprics either a fixed sum, or a revenue proportional to the population of each bishopric, so that the people may receive gratuitously the offices of religion. This is a public service, and it shall be remunerated as it ought to be. As to the Religious Orders, they shall have full liberty to constitute themselves, to educate children, to care for the sick and infirm, so long as they keep within the limits of the common law. All property in mortmain shall be suppressed. A community of teachers, for instance, may own the college necessary for the students, but not a forest adjoining that college.' To M. Fleury's natural question how the college should be maintained, M. Turquet replied, 'You know as well as I do, that wealth no longer consists in real estate alone. You can now carry in your pocket a fortune in bonds payable to the bearer. The Religious Orders may own these, like other people. A dozen of us in the Chamber hold these views. You seem to think us Utopianists. But General Boulanger will make it possible for us to apply these ideas!' If General Boulanger and M. Turquet really imagine these views to be 'American,' it would be instructive for them to look into the masterly protests of the Catholic Archbishop of New York, against the doctrines of Mr. Henry George as adopted and expounded by Father McGlynn. The Catholic Church in the United States holds its own property, real and personal, and manages it to suit itself. It would be interesting to see an attempt made in the legislature of an American State, to carry through a law like the decrees issued in France in 1881, forbidding curates and vicars to receive legacies left to them for the benefit of the poor in their parishes, or to distribute to the poor sums left to the Bureau of Public Charity, with an express proviso that they should be distributed by the clergy of the place. On one very important question of French politics, M. Fleury, as a practical politician in this great and active department, gives me a good deal of useful light. This is the question of the expenses of the electoral machine. In France, as in America, no limit is set by the law to the possible expenditure of a political candidate. I have already given the estimate made for me in Artois of the general cost of the legislative elections, and I have been told by more than one well-informed French politician in other parts of France, that the average cost of a candidacy for a seat in the Chamber may be roughly estimated at twenty-five thousand francs, or a thousand pounds sterling. This would show, allowing two candidates only for each seat, an expenditure of thirty millions of francs, or twelve hundred thousand pounds, at each French parliamentary election, being very nearly the figure given me in Artois. We send only 330 members to Washington, but we elect a new House every two years. The British House of Commons, though more numerous even than the French Chamber, probably spends a good deal less upon getting itself elected than either the French or the American House.[4] [4] At this time (October, 1889) there is a difficulty in New York about a good candidate for the seat vacated by the death of the late Mr. S. S. Cox, being a prominent democratic member of Congress, because the candidate must consent to an annual 'assessment' on his salary for political purposes. The French Government, I am told, collects these 'contributions' easily, the deputies 'recouping' themselves by patronage. One of the 'working sub-prefects' of the Boulangist party in Picardy gave M. Fleury a very frank estimate of the expense of electing the General in 1888, in the Somme. He put it, in round numbers, at nearly or quite one hundred and twenty-five thousand francs, or five thousand pounds. This unusual outlay was made necessary by the great efforts of the Government to defeat the General. Furthermore, it was swollen by the disinterested devotion of many of the General's friends. Some of these auxiliaries spent days at the best hotels in Picardy labouring for the cause, with the result of a special hotel account, amounting to several thousand francs. Nothing makes men so thirsty as political emotion. Another partisan, at the head of a journal, sent in a bill for forty-five thousand francs expended by him upon printing and stationery, no charge being made for his personal services! The chief agents received about two thousand francs apiece. One of them must have worked very hard, for he earned no less than fifteen thousand francs. While all this expense was incurring in Picardy, furthermore, two other elections were pending, in each of which the General was a candidate, one in the Charente and one in the Nord. It would seem to be probable enough, therefore, that on these three elections In 1888 General Boulanger, or the Boulangists, must have spent at least two hundred and fifty thousand francs, or ten thousand pounds. 'Where did all this money come from?' is a not unnatural question. For M. Fleury tells me the General's bills were paid much more promptly than the bills of the Government candidates. It is an open secret apparently that the Government candidates are very bad paymasters when they are beaten. Some of the bills incurred by them in 1885, when the Conservatives swept so large a part of Northern France, were still due, it appears, in 1888. But the bills of General Boulanger were settled very soon after the close of the campaign. M. Mermeix insisted to M. Fleury that the General's war-chest was supplied by voluntary subscriptions. 'Every day,' he said, the General finds some ten thousand francs in his mails, and his followers 'are all either beggars or millionaires.' Another of the General's managers gave M. Fleury the names of two very rich persons, one of them a cattle merchant at La Villette, who subscribed between them a hundred and forty thousand francs to carry on the campaign in Picardy. The enormous importance given to General Boulanger by his terrified former associates in the Government seems to me to be a very striking proof of the little confidence they really have in their own hold upon the country, or in the permanency of 'republican institutions' as they now exist in France, and this adequately explains the readiness of speculators to 'invest' in what may be called the 'Boulangist bonds.' Such a report as that presented not very long ago to the Chamber by M. Gerville-Réache on the state of the navy in France suffices to show that the speculative maladministration of the French finances has been so great as to make it quite certain that any 'honest government' coming into power must reconstruct the system of the public indebtedness. That is an operation which can hardly be carried out by the most scrupulously honest government without very great profits to the financiers concerned in it, and I only set down what is said to me by respectable Frenchmen when I say that the Boulanger campaign funds are openly described, by persons not at all hostile to 'Boulangism,' as 'bets on the General.' 'The difference between the managers of the Boulangist campaign and the managers of the Government campaign,' said a gentleman to me in Amiens, 'is simply this--that the Boulangist managers are playing the game with private funds, and the others with public funds. So the latter, I think, will win, for they have the longest purse to draw on.' This gentleman is of the opinion, however, that but for General Saussier, in command of the garrison of Paris, General Boulanger, after the election of January 27, 1889, in which he took the capital by storm, might have turned the Government neck and heels out of doors. The weak point of Boulangism,' he said, 'is Boulanger.' 'He has no strength with the officers of the army. They have no confidence either in his character or in his ability; not that they think his character bad or deny his ability, but only that they regard him as a shallow, vacillating, and mediocre person who made himself valuable to the Republican politicians by going into alliances with them to which other officers of strong character and high ability would not stoop. As for the quarrel between Boulanger and these politicians, it is a beggars' quarrel, to be made up over the pot of broth. But it won't be made up, because they can't agree as to the distribution of the broth. Meanwhile all the chickens of France are going into the broth, and the peasant's pot will see them no more, as in the good old days of Henry IV.!' As for the absurd story that the Boulangist funds come from America, the only foundation I can find for that seems to be the intimacy, which, I believe, is no longer as close as it was, between General Boulanger, M. de Rochefort, and a French nobleman of an ancient historic family, who has married a very wealthy American wife, and who has long been known to entertain the most extreme, not to say revolutionary, notions in politics. The honest Boulangists who really hope to see a good government established by putting out M. Carnot and putting in General Boulanger, swell the tide of his supporters, apparently, here as elsewhere in France, because they blindly hope for everything from him which their experience forbids them to hope for from the men actually in power. As one of his most cynical supporters long ago said in Paris, he is 'the grand common sewer of the disgust of France.' His popularity with the common soldiers is another element to be counted with in estimating the strength of this military French Mahdi. I have struck up a friendship here at Amiens with an excellent woman who presides over a shop--not one of the _pâtisseries_ so justly celebrated by Mr. Ruskin--and who is a very good type of the shrewd, sensible French '_petite bourgeoise_,' such a woman as, I dare say, Jacqueline Robins of St.-Omer was in her own time. She has a son in the army, who is likely soon to be a corporal. '_Dame_, Monsieur,' she said to me, 'if M. Boulanger is not the best General in France, why did they make him Minister of War? You do not know what he did for the soldiers! My son when he gets his stripes is to marry--she is a very nice girl, an only child, do you know? and her father, who is very solid, will put her in her own furniture--and more than that! and they will have their own establishment. They could not have that, you know, but for General Boulanger, who made the new rule about the wives of the sub-officers. And they used to shave the soldiers--imagine it!--just like prisoners, and such beds as they gave them--it was a horror! Well, all that he changed, and he made the soup fit to eat.' 'The other generals are not very fond of him, you say? _Parbleu!_ that is likely enough! It is like the _conseillers_ here in the city--one of them does well, the others always find something to say behind his back! And that affair on the frontier! You know, Monsieur, he had all the army in hand--ah, well in hand--a hundred thousand men ready to march; and those rascals of Germans they knew it, and they gave up our man. I am glad we had no war. No! I do not want a war, but, _dame_, one must have teeth, you know, and be ready to show them!' 'You want to see your War Minister made president, then?' I asked. 'President? what does that signify? Chief of the State--Emperor; ah! those were the good times here in Amiens, Monsieur, not as it is to-day with the eternal debts that M. Dauphin made us a present of. Eh! an old hypocrite that man is! and with these _centimes additionnels_ that never end! And then these water-mètres! Eh! that is a pretty invention to make water as dear as wine at Amiens, and yet, God knows, wine is not too cheap, with the octroi of Amiens! It is worse than at Paris! Call him what you like, Monsieur, _c'est Boulanger qu'il nous faut_--that is to say, we must have a man at Paris. And you will see he is the man; all the mothers of soldiers will tell you that!' From the point of view of the municipal finances, the 'good old times' of the Empire may well have a charm for the taxpayers of Amiens. In 1870 Amiens, with 61,063 inhabitants, raised and spent a municipal revenue of rather more than a million and a half of francs, or, in round numbers, about 25 francs, or 20 shillings, _per capita_ of the population. A public loan, made in 1854, had been almost wholly paid off, and the city treasury still held 600,000 francs of a loan of 1,600,000 francs made in 1862 for certain public improvements. The municipal government cost 372,000 francs, and 180,000 francs were spent on the public schools. Of the municipal income, 987,802 francs were derived from four forms of direct taxation, and 770,000 francs from the _octroi_. This gave an average of a little less than 13 francs _per capita_ as the burden of the _octroi_ upon the population. In 1886 the population had increased to 74,000. The direct taxes brought in 1,184,724 francs, and the _octroi_, 1,498,459, making the average burden of the _octroi per capita_ 20 fr. 20 c., or an increase of about 50 per cent. in the pressure of that form of tax upon the population, as compared with 1870. As the _octroi_ is imposed upon food and beverages of all kinds--fuel, forage, and building materials--this tax is regarded in France as a measure for estimating the general well-being of the inhabitants. Thus measured, there would seem to be a falling off in the general well-being of the people of Amiens since 1883. For, while the pressure _per capita_ of the octroi is much greater than it was in 1870, the actual receipts from the _octroi_ were less with a population of 74,000 in 1886, than they were in 1883. In 1883 the _octroi_ yielded 1,533,140 francs. In 1886 it yielded only 1,498,459 francs. The falling off was in the receipts from beverages, from provisions, from forage, and from building materials. The tariff of the _octroi_ meanwhile has remained substantially without change from 1873 to the present time. It is an expensive tax to collect, the costs of collection in 1886 amounting to 11.85 per cent. of the receipts. Adding together now the receipts from the direct taxes and the _octroi_ of Amiens in 1886, we have a sum of 2,683,183 francs, or in round numbers about 1,100,000 francs more than in 1870. But while, as I have stated, in 1870 the receipts equalled and balanced the expenses of the municipal government, this is no longer the case. In 1886 Amiens, with an income of 2,683,183 francs, spent 4,162,294 francs, giving an average municipal outlay of 56 fr. 10 c. _per capita_ and an excess of expenditure over revenue of no less than 1,479,111 francs, or very nearly the total income and outlay of the city under the Empire. No wonder that the public debt of the department of the Somme, of which Amiens is the capital, seems in 1886 to have amounted to 18,303,496 francs! What inequalities of pressure upon the people of the department this involves may be estimated from the fact that, while there are in the Somme 836 communes, only 404, or less than half of these communes, are authorised to raise money by loans, and one-eighth of them to raise money by _octrois_. Yet we are constantly told that all inequalities and privileges were abolished throughout France by a stroke of the pen in the _annus mirabilis_ 1789![5] The taxation in 20 communes is estimated at 15 centimes, or less; in 87, at from 15 to 30; in 268, at from 31 to 50; in 428, at from 51 to 100; and in 33, at 100 centimes and upwards. These are the communal taxes. To these must be added 51 centimes for the departmental taxes, ordinary and extraordinary; 2 centimes for the land-tax; 19 centimes for the personal tax and taxes on personal property; 18.8 centimes for the doors and windows tax; and 39.6 centimes for licences. For Amiens these fractions taken together mount up to 119-4/10 centimes. [5] 'Privileges' were, in fact, abolished only by Napoleon in 1804. I have no wish to weary myself or my readers with figures. But these figures tell the story of the difference between the government of France under the much reviled Empire and under the present government, which is represented to us as the natural and admirable 'evolution' of republican institutions in this country. In 1870, as I have stated, the receipts and expenditure of the city of Amiens balanced one another. The city paid its way, and lived up to, not beyond, its means. With the war came upon it, of course, heavy and unexpected burdens: German local exactions, its share of the general German ransom of France, local war expenses, and its share of the general war expenditure. For three years the citizens left their affairs, thus disturbed and encumbered, to be managed by a municipal council trained in the methodical habits of the imperial administration, with the result that in 1874 the expenses of Amiens amounted to 2,479,802 francs, and its revenues to 2,016,130 francs, leaving thus a deficit of 463,672 francs, substantially accounted for by the necessary payments on a loan of 5,000,000 francs negotiated in Brussels by M. Dauphin at the very high rate of 7-1/2 per cent. The affairs of Amiens were arranged three years afterwards by a municipal Commission, which turned them over, in 1878, to the 'Republicans of Gambetta,' with a budget involving an expenditure of 2,686,660 francs, against a revenue from taxation of 2,249,245 fr. 52 c., showing a reduced deficit of no more than 437,405 francs. By 1880 the expenditure had risen to 3,156,616 francs, while the revenue stood at 2,531,762, showing a deficit of 624,854 francs, being an increase of nearly fifty per cent, in two years! From that time the gulf has gone on widening between the receipts and the expenditure of the ancient capital of Picardy, until the figures laid before me, as taken from the official reports, show during the seven years 1880-86, a total of 18,530,477.01 francs of receipts against a total of 24,551,977 francs of expenditure, leaving a deficit for these seven years of 5,021,500 francs, or more than the amount of the Dauphin loan incurred by Amiens as a consequence of the German occupation, and of the exactions of Count Lehndorff! What has been done during the past three years can only as yet be conjectured. The accounts are made up at the mayoralty office, and thence sent to the préfecture, and they do not get within range of the taxpayer for at least a twelvemonth afterwards. But M. Fleury assures me that between the years 1884 and 1888 the city expended in buildings, chiefly 'scholastic palaces' erected as batteries of aggressive atheism from which to beat down the temples of religion, no less than 1,700,000 francs; so that the total of deficit of the budget of Amiens, from 1880 to the present time, in all probability exceeds six millions of francs. If we assume the local finances of the rest of France to have been handled during the last decade on the same lines, there is nothing extravagant in the estimate made by a friend of mine, who formerly held a very high post in the Treasury, and who puts the accumulation of local deficits and the local indebtedness in France, independently of the national deficits and the national loans, since 1880, at two milliards of francs, or eighty millions of pounds sterling. For, although Amiens is an important city, it represents only about one four-hundred-and-fiftieth part of the population of France. While I was at Amiens in June M. Goblet came there and made a rather remarkable speech. It was in the main aimed at a society called the 'Association of the Conservative Young Men of Amiens,' all of whom, I am told, except the president, are young working men--mechanics, clerks, or the sons of clerks, mechanics, and working men--in short, a kind of French 'Tory democracy.' They are not Boulangists at all, but outspoken royalists. They support Boulanger simply and avowedly in order to get at a revision of the Constitution and make an end of the Republic. 'This association,' said M. Goblet, 'is making a tremendous stir. I admit its right to do this. It holds meetings and conferences; it listens to speeches in the city and the suburbs; it attacks both democracy and the Republic in no measured terms; it does not hesitate to denounce its enemies personally and by name, and neglects no means of acting on public opinion. These conservative young men speak and act energetically. They believe in the re-establishment of the monarchy; they desire it; they preach a reaction against all that we have done for twenty years past!' There could hardly be a more signal proof given of the reality and vitality of the anti-Republican movement in this part of France than these words of a Republican leader who began his political career, as I have shown, twenty years ago in a hopeless minority of Republicans under the Empire, who has since worked his way up the municipal ladder at Amiens and up the legislative ladder in Paris; and who, after reaching the top of the tree, now finds himself in imminent peril of slipping down again to the point from which he started. The force of the testimony is certainly not weakened by the fact that at the legislative elections in September, M. Goblet, standing as a candidate for the Chamber, was completely beaten. I have shown what a large part the _octroi_ plays in the revenue of a city like Amiens. Nothing resembling it, I believe, exists in England since the abolition, two or three years ago, of the coal dues in London; and, though I suppose it would be within the power of any American State to establish a tax of this sort within its own boundaries, it would be practically impossible to enforce it without coming into collision with the commercial rights of other States under the Federal Constitution. I once had to pay the _octroi_ tax on two brace of Maryland canvas-back ducks, which I was taking over from London to a Christmas dinner in Paris. But Maryland would not submit to an _octroi_ upon her birds entering New York. The importance of the _octroi_ at this time in the financial system of France is one of the most conclusive and most amusing proofs of the essentially superficial and ephemeral character of the alleged 'Great Revolution' of 1789. The _octroi_ was a revival in mediæval France of the Roman _portorium_ which survives in the Italian offices of the _dazio consume_ and in the _garitas_ of Spain and Spanish America. It was originally imposed as a local tax by a city, under the sanction of a royal charter. To get such a charter from a sovereign strong enough to enforce respect for it was essential to the citizens who bound themselves to one another to maintain their local independence against the barons in their neighbourhood; and when such a charter was granted by a sovereign it was said to be _octroyée_ by him. The tax therefore is rooted in a privilege. Amiens obtained the right to impose it in the fourteenth century. Of course the 'Great Revolution of 1789' swept this right away, one of the most obvious 'rights of man' being to pluck an apple in an orchard, take it into a town in his pocket, and eat it there. But equally, of course, the Republic in the year VII. on the 29th Vendémiaire re-established it; and in the next year, VIII., provided that the privilege should be exercised as under the sanction of the National Government, the National Government reserving the right to revise the tariffs fixed by the municipal councils, and thereby making the restored privilege of the _octrois_ another string whereby to fetter and control the local action of the people on their own affairs. The _octroi_ of Amiens was re-established on the 3rd of Brumaire next following. Under the Empire, the Restoration, and the Monarchy of July, the Council of State granted the _octrois_. Under the Republic of 1848 this power naturally went to the National Assembly as a means of legislative pressure and corruption. The Second Empire restored it to the Council of State; and it has now, naturally, gone back to the Chambers. Neither the people of the cities nor the rural populations like the _octroi_, but, in the immortal words of the late Mr. Tweed of New York, 'What can they do about it?' It is a ready-money tax, from which the taxpayer receives no visible equivalent, as he does when he pays a penny for a postage stamp. When he has paid it, he is simply allowed to take his own property where he wishes to take it, and do with it what he wishes to do. It is quite likely that this _octroi_ may have something to do with the disinclination of the common people in France to part with small change as readily as do the Americans, and even the English. They must always have 'money in the pocket' if they want to bring a sausage and a bottle of beer through a 'barrier,' whereas an American is never called upon to pay cash down to his Government except at a custom-house when he returns to his country from a foreign trip, or in exchange for a licence or a document of some sort which represents value received in one or another form. The time wasted over this tax in a city like Amiens is an extraordinary burden on the patience of the people, trained as the French people are to submit to a torment of eternal red tape, a week of which would drive an American or English town into open revolt. At Amiens, for example, there is a central bureau of the _octroi_, where the tax is received from the great breweries and warehouses after the amounts have been fixed by the officers on duty at those establishments. Then there are ten bureaux or 'barriers' at the railway stations, the slaughter-houses, and the fish-markets; and then again eight secondary bureaux, where the people must go and pay amounts of less than one franc. There are, and I am told have long been, loud complaints as to the inconvenient location of the bureaux; but nothing comes of these outcries as yet, and I presume nothing ever will come of them until something like an independent local administrative life exists in the provinces of France. The elements of such a life ought surely to be found, if anywhere, in this ancient province of Picardy. You cannot traverse it in any direction without being struck by the evident prosperity of the people. Arthur Young, a hundred years ago, travelling from Boulogne to Amiens, found only 'misery and miserable harvests.' He would find now only comfort and excellent crops. Possibly he would think of the country what he then thought of the region about Clermont and Liancourt, where, under the fostering care of the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, the farmers had developed a highly-diversified cultivation; 'here a field of wheat; there one of luzerne; clover in one direction, vetches in another; vines, cherry and other fruit trees making up a charming picture, which must, however, yield poor results.' But he would be wrong. This diversified culture of modern Picardy has been highly remunerative, and the extensive kitchen-gardening of the province is so still. The 'agricultural crisis' has doubtless hit the large farmers rather hard, but I am told they are standing up well under it--thanks to their past savings, and to French protection--better, indeed, than the large farmers in England; while the peasants proper are actually profiting by it. They not only get as much for their labour as when the large farmers were making money, but they are buying up land at lower rates. This may very possibly help the Republicans in the coming elections, for the peasants always give the credit of a state of things which is satisfactory to them to the Government of the day--be that Government what it may--so that while the larger farmers tend to Conservatism, the peasants will probably lean the other way. It is next to impossible to get a political opinion out of a Picard peasant, but I have more than once heard a peasant speak of the farmers in his neighbourhood as 'aristocrats,' which I took to be as precise a formula of political opinion as one was likely to get from him. It seemed to me to represent, among the peasants of to-day, the enlightened 'principles of 1889,' very much as the same formula, applied to the _noblesse_ of a century ago, represented, among the large farmers of that day, the 'principles of 1789.' Both then and now the formula simply means 'the man who has what I want to have is an aristocrat.' I think I have observed something like this in other countries--as, for example, in Ireland--where the guilty possessor of acres, however, is not only an 'aristocrat' but an 'alien,' as appears from a song popular in Kerry:-- The alien landlords have no right To the land God made for you; So we'll blow them up with dynamite, The thieving, hellish crew! Dynamite was unknown in Picardy a century and a half ago. And the Picard has very little, except his religion, in common with the Irish Celt. But the sentiment of this simple and pleasing little ditty glowed deep in the Picard heart long before the Revolution of 1789. The 'earth hunger,' which has given the act of 'land-grabbing' the first place in the category of human crimes, invented, long ago in Picardy, and especially in that part of Picardy now known as the Department of the Somme, a custom called the _coutume de mauvais gré_ or the _droit de marché_. Under this custom a tenant-farmer in Picardy considered himself entitled to sell the right to till his landlord's fields to anybody he liked, to give it as a dowry to his daughter, or to leave it to be divided among his heirs; and all this without reference to the expiration of his lease. If the landlord objected and went so far as to lease his land to another person, the previous tenant was regarded by his friends and by other farmers as a _dépointé_, entitled to take summary vengeance upon the 'land-grabber.' He might kill off his cattle, burn his crops and his buildings, and, if occasion served, shoot or knock him in the head. As the whole country was in a conspiracy, either of terror or of sympathy, to protect the _dépointé_ against the vengeance of the law, this cheerful 'custom' had a liberalising effect upon the Picard landholders. Rents fell, and if the value of landed property rose the landed proprietor got no advantage from that. The torch and the musket kept down the demand, which was equivalent practically to increasing the supply. The results of this 'custom' were such that in 1764, a quarter of a century before the Revolution of 1789, the king intervened, but in vain, to put a stop to it. The 'oppressed and downtrodden peasant' of Picardy under the _ancien régime_ did what he liked with his neighbour's property--that neighbour being a landlord--as cheerily as the manacled Celt of Mayo or Tipperary in our own times. Two years before the Revolution, in 1787, the assembly of the Generality of Amiens, by its president the Duc d'Hâvré, vainly urged the royal government to take resolute action in this matter. With the Revolution, of course, things grew worse very rapidly. The _dépointés_ became ardent lovers of liberty, equality, and fraternity; tore up all their leases, sent their landlords and the land-grabbers to the guillotine, or into emigration as traitors, and made themselves proprietors, in fee simple. There seems to be no doubt that the traditions of this _coutume de mauvais gré_ (which obviously had much more to do with the politics of Picardy a century ago than either Voltaire or Rousseau) still survive in the Department of the Somme, and every now and then break out in agrarian outrages, rick-burnings, and general incendiarism, whenever leases fall in and landlords try to raise their rents on the shallow pretext that land has risen in value. While these traditions show that there was no lack of energy and force among the 'downtrodden' Picard peasantry before the Revolution of 1789, the local history of the province also proves that the liberal ideas which are commonly supposed to have been introduced into France by the Revolution were at work in Picardy among the _noblesse_ and the clergy long before. The _corvée_, for example, of which we hear so much in many so-called histories of the French Revolution, was abolished under Louis XVI. in Picardy, before the States-General of 1789 were convened. That the _corvée_, in itself, cannot have been the absolutely intolerable thing it is commonly supposed to have been may be inferred, I think, from the fact that, under the name of _prestation en nature_, it still exists in many parts of the French Republic. It figures in all the schedules of departmental taxation which I have seen down to the year 1889; and, for that matter, it existed in New England down to a very recent date, if it does not now exist there. It was obviously liable to abuse, and doubtless was abused, and the Intendant of Picardy, M. d'Aguay, made a striking speech, on the benefits to be expected from its abolition, to the Provincial Parliament in 1787. From this speech we learn that the money value of the _corvée_ in hand had been computed at 900,000 livres, but that the Intendant working out the details of the abolition of the system, with the help of a number of the local landholders (commonly supposed to have been the tyrants who profited by the abuse), had reduced this estimate to 300,000 livres, at which sum the tax had been converted into a money payment for the maintenance of the roads, the province being thus relieved of two-thirds of the burden borne by it. It is instructive to learn that attempts to bring about similar results elsewhere in France were resented and resisted, not by the great landholders, but by the corvéable peasants themselves! What they really wanted, it would seem, was not so much to be relieved of the obligation of forced labour by a payment of money, as to have their roads made for them at the expense of the State, under the impression, ineradicable down to our own day, and elsewhere than in France, that what everybody pays nobody pays, an impression which is the trusty shield and weapon at once of the Socialists and of the Protectionists all over the world. Public education in Picardy, as well as elsewhere in France, long antedates the Revolution of 1789. Three centuries ago Olivier de Serre and Bernard Palissy lamented the foolish disposition of French peasants in the Limousin and in Picardy to give their elder sons a better education than they had themselves received. 'The poor man will spend a great part of what he has earned in the sweat of his brow, to make his son a gentleman; and at last this same gentleman will be ashamed to be found in company with his father, and will be displeased to be called the son of a labouring man. And if by chance the good man has other children, this gentleman it will be who will devour the others and have the best of everything; he never concerns himself to think how much he cost at school while his brothers were working at home with their father.' This reads like a complaint of the nineteenth century in democratic America, but it is, in fact, a complaint of the sixteenth century in feudal France. It must have been frequent enough in this part of Picardy, now the Department of the Somme. For from a very early time this region has been full of small farmers bent on bettering their own condition or that of their sons. In the public library of Abbeville there is a land register drawn up in 1312 for the service of the officers of King Edward II. of England, who had married Isabel of France, from which it appears that the small tenants in this part of Picardy were then as numerous as the small proprietors now are. 'One is led to believe,' says M. Baudrillart, 'that the only difference between the condition of the country then and now in this respect is, that the enfranchised labourer has in many cases simply taken the place of the feudal tenant and become proprietor of the soil.' So great has long been the number of small landholders in Picardy that in the province, taken generally, a holding of sixty hectares may pass for a large property, one of fifteen for a moderate estate, and one of ten for a small holding. The action of the French code upon this state of things since the Revolution and the Empire has, in the opinion of many intelligent observers, been mischievous. It has made it difficult to check the excessive subdivision of the land into holdings too small to be profitably and intelligently cultivated. There is no provision in the French law it seems, as there is in the German law, making it obligatory upon the heirs of a small landed property so to arrange their respective shares as not to impede the proper cultivation of the land. The great prosperity of kitchen-gardening in modern Picardy modifies the evils flowing from this state of things however, and those who know the country best tell me that, taken as a body, the small landholders of Picardy, thanks to their thrift in regard both of time and of money, are substantially well off. They don't like the townspeople, for the old traditions are not yet forgotten of the time in which Amiens and the other large towns used to shift the main burden of the expenses of the province upon the shoulders of the peasantry; and if anything like a genuine provincial legislature could be established, with a working system of 'Home Rule,' all the elements are here which might be developed into a healthy political activity. The system of working on France from the centre at Paris to the circumference has certainly been tried long enough, and thoroughly enough, to show that nothing but evil, and that continually, can be expected from it. More than fifty years have passed since Heine said: 'When I speak of France I speak of Paris--not of the provinces; just as when I speak of a man, I speak of his head, not of his legs. To talk about the opinion of the provinces is like talking about the opinion of a man's legs.' In this spirit France is still judged abroad, for in this spirit France is still governed at home. But if, on some fine morning, the legs should suddenly wake up with a very positive opinion of their own, the results may be awkward--not only for the government at Paris but for the rest of Europe. CHAPTER VII IN THE AISNE ST.-GOBAIN The short railway journey from Amiens on the Somme to La Fère on the Oise takes you through a country which, on a fine summer's morning, reminds one of the old Kentuckian description of an agricultural paradise--'tickle it with a hoe, and it laughs with a harvest.' As, in one direction, Picardy extends into the modern Department of the Pas-de-Calais, so in other directions it includes no inconsiderable part of the modern Departments of the Oise and of the Aisne. In this way it touches the central province of the Ile-de-France, the main body of which is now divided into the three Departments of the Seine, the Seine-et-Oise, and the Seine-et-Marne. From Amiens to La Fère, therefore, the pulse of the French capital may be said to throb visibly about you in the rural beauty of a region which owes its value and its fertility less to the natural qualities of the soil than to the quickening influences of the great metropolis. For centuries Paris lived mainly on the Ile-de-France, and the Ile-de-France on Paris. Since the steam-engine and the railway have opened, both to the province and to the capital, the markets of all France and of all Europe, both the province and the capital are infinitely more prosperous than in the old days when the lack of communications and the lawlessness of men made them dependent one upon the other. The steppes of Russia and the prairies of America now compete with the grain-fields of the Ile-de-France; the timber of the Baltic with its timber; and I have no doubt that, during his six years in the prison of Ham, Louis Napoleon drank there better Chambertin than ever found its way to the table of the Grand Monarque at Versailles, after a certain enterprising peasant walked all the way from his native province to the capital, beside his oxcart laden with casks, to prove to the king the merits of the true Burgundian vintage. Certainly it would never occur to anybody now in Soissons or Laon to make the journey to Paris, as people did a hundred and fifty years ago, to drink the water of the Seine, as being 'the best in the world, and a specific against burning fevers and obstructive ailments.' But the vast commons which lay waste throughout the Ile-de-France a hundred years ago are now green with crops; meadows have replaced the marshes; orchards and gardens on every side show what the Campagna of Rome may become, at no distant day, if Italy can make her peace with the Church, and the Italian capital remain, on terms of justice and reason, the capital of the Catholic world. Before the Revolution the Generality of Paris contained 150,000 arpents of waste commons; the Generality of Soissons 120,000 arpents. In 1778 a writer deplores the spectacle, 'within thirteen leagues of the capital, of vast marshes left to be inundated because they are common lands, producing not a single bundle of hay in a year, and affording scanty pasture to a few miserable cattle.' In a single hamlet this writer found 35 poor families feeding 22 cows and 220 sheep on 1,100 arpents of common land! I believe there are philanthropists in England and Scotland who think the enclosure and cultivation of common lands a crime against humanity; and it would be edifying to listen to a 'conference' between them and the shrewd, prosperous small farmers and gardeners who are tilling these great spaces to-day in the Ile-de-France. One of the few plainly advantageous results of the headlong Revolution of 1789 was the transfer into many private hands of the immense estates which were held by the abbeys and the clergy in and around Paris; and this transfer might perfectly well have been brought about by steady and systematic means without shaking the foundations of property and of order. We might then have seen throughout France what we see in England--the gradual and pacific evolution of a great industrial and commercial society on lines not contradicting, but conforming to, the traditions of the nation. The influence of the capital, of course, has had much to do with the extraordinary development in these regions of all kinds of horticulture. Nurseries, kitchen-gardens, flower-gardens occupy an increasing area of the Ile-de-France, and a constantly growing proportion of its inhabitants. M. Baudrillart says that in the single Department of the Seine-et-Oise this proportion has increased tenfold since 1860, and he puts it down for that Department in 1880 at 50,000 persons out of a total population of 577,798. The proportions can hardly, I should think, be much smaller in the Departments of the Aisne and of the Oise. How much this industry adds to the beauty of the country I need not say. Its influence is shown in a notable increase of the love of flowers among the population generally. The English villages no longer have the monopoly which they certainly once had of flower-plots before and around the cottages, and of plants carefully tended and blooming in the cottage windows. Years ago Dickens used to say that London was the only capital in the world in which you could count upon seeing something green and growing somewhere, no matter how gloomy otherwise might be the quarter into which you strolled. This is beginning to be true of not a few French towns and cities, while the conditions of successful horticulture, in its various branches, give the aspect of a garden to the rural regions in which it flourishes. The nursery gardens, which are the most extensive, seldom cover more than eight hectares; seed gardens range in extent from half a hectare to a hectare; the fruit gardens from half a hectare to two hectares; the gardeners who send up 'cut flowers' to market usually concentrate their activity upon half a hectare of soil. These cultivators are all capitalists in a small way, the least important of them requiring a capital of from four to five hundred pounds sterling. And land so employed is very often let on leases of three, six, or nine years, at thirty-five pounds a hectare. It is a curious thing that what may be called the 'Home Departments' of France around Paris should be so much richer in these highly-developed and remunerative forms of cultivation than the home counties of England around London. Why should flowers, fruits, and vegetables, as a rule, be so much better, so much cheaper, and so much more plentiful in the French than in the English capital? The superiority of the French markets cannot arise wholly from a difference of climate. Great risks are run in this respect by the horticulturists of Picardy and the Ile-de-France. M. Baudrillart tells a story of a large flower-gardener in the Seine-et-Oise who, during the severe winter of 1879-80, found his gardens deep in snow one morning, and, upon examining them, carefully made up his mind that he stood to lose nearly 2,500_l._ sterling worth of his best plants. That same evening he left for England, brought back eleven waggon-loads of plants to supply the place of those killed by the cold, and, by the spring, not only covered his losses but made a profit. With its 'polygon' and its promenades the little city of La Fère, set in the midst of well-tilled and fertile fields, has a martial air which harmonises with its history. During the religious wars which ended with the coronation of Henry of Navarre, this small Catholic stronghold was besieged, taken, and retaken no fewer than four times in twenty years; and, if we may believe an old sixteenth-century local ballad, the Huguenots behaved in a way which showed that the 'Reformation' had not improved their morals. The 'Déploration des Dames de la ville de La Fère tenues forcément par les ennemis de la religion catholique' draws a doleful picture of life in a conquered city three centuries ago. Est-ce pas bien chose assez déplorable De voir (hélas) son haineux à sa table Rire, chanter et vivre opulément De ce qu'avions gardé soigneusement? En nostre lict quand il veut il se couche, Faict nos maris aller à l'escarmouche Ou à la brèche, enconstre notre foy, Pour résister à Jésus et au Roy. There are soldiers enough in La Fère to-day, for it is an artillery station, as it was when Napoleon got his training here, but the peace of the picturesque little fortress-town is less troubled by them than by the politicians. A little local newspaper published here, which I bought of an urchin at the uninviting but thriving station of Tergnier, was full of paragraphs deriding and denouncing the clergy, which might have been inspired by that model patriot and philanthropist Curtius, who proposed in the year one of the Republic that the Government should make a bargain with the Deys of Tunis and Algiers to ransom the French held as slaves in those countries, exchanging them for French priests 'at the rate of three priests for one patriot'! 'What sort of a newspaper is this?' I asked a cheery, red-faced old man, well and substantially dressed, and, as he afterwards informed me, a cattle-breeder and dealer on his way from Amiens to Laon. 'That journal, Monsieur?' he replied with a kind of 'sniff': 'that leaf? It is a cabbage-leaf, Monsieur!' 'C'est une feuille de choux!' As for himself he was a Republican--no, not a Boulangist--but he had voted for Boulanger, and he would vote for him again. There must be an end of all those taxes. It was too strong. The land could not pay them. In his country a farm worth 30,000 francs eight years ago, to-day would not sell for 20,000 francs. The farms that were mortgaged would not pay the amount of the mortgages. Look at the taxes on cattle! These free-traders at Paris want to drive us out of our markets with meat on the hoof, and killed meat, from all the ends of the world. Here they are trying to patch up that treaty of commerce with Italy, and bring back all those competing cattle from Sardinia. That's a pretty idea! and for those Italians, who owe France everything and now lick the boots of M. de Bismarck. And now the Paris Chamber of Commerce wants an International Congress on treaties of commerce. The devil take the treaties of commerce!' At the station of La Fère I found waiting for me, one lovely morning in July, the _coupé_ of M. Henrivaux, the director of the famous and historical glassworks of St.-Gobain. When Arthur Young visited these works in 1787, he found them turning out, in the midst of extensive forests, 'the largest mirrors in the world.' The forests are less extensive now, but St.-Gobain still turns out the largest mirrors in the world. To this year's Exposition in Paris it has sent the most gigantic mirror ever made, showing a surface of 31.28 mètres; and the glory of St.-Gobain is nightly proclaimed to the world at Paris by the electric light which, from the summit of the Eiffel Tower, flashes out over the great city and the valley of the Seine an auroral splendour of far-darting rays, thanks to St.-Gobain and to the largest lens ever made by man. St.-Gobain, however, has other claims upon attention than its unquestioned rank as the most important seat of one of the most characteristic and important manufactures of our modern civilisation. In a most interesting paper upon the life and labours of M. Augustin Cochin, one of the most useful as well as one of the most distinguished of the many useful and distinguished Frenchmen whose names are associated with this great industry, M. de Falloux describes the works of St.-Gobain as 'an industrial flower upon a seignorial stalk springing from a feudal root.' The description is both terse and pregnant. The history of this great and flourishing industry, stretching back now over two centuries and a half, is a history of evolution without revolution. There is nothing in France more thoroughly French than St.-Gobain, nothing which has suffered less from the successive Parisian earthquakes of the past century, nothing which has preserved through them all more of what was good in its original constitution and objects. The establishment is like a green old oak, and, to borrow a phrase from Wordsworth, its days have been joined each to each 'by natural piety.' The place which it first took through privilege and favour, and could have taken in no other way, it has kept ever since for nearly two centuries and a half, and now holds by virtue of skill, energy, and that eternal vigilance which is both the price and the penalty of free competition. The 'Knights of Labour' in our America of to-day put the cart before the horse when they undertake to make labourers knights. The Middle Ages knew better, and went to work in a wiser fashion by making knights labourers. As early as the thirteenth century the glassworkers of France had great privileges granted them, and an old proverb explains this by telling us that 'to make a gentleman glassworker--_un gentilhomme verrier_--you must first get a gentleman.' As soon as it was established that by going into such a costly and artistic industry as this, a gentleman did not derogate from his rank, the first important step was taken towards the emancipation of industry. The glassworkers were exempted from _tailles, aydes et subsides_, from _ost, giste, chevaulchier et subventions_, or, in other words, military taxes could not be levied upon them, nor troops quartered upon them, nor requisitions made upon them. The _gentilhomme verrier_ had the right to carry a sword and to wear embroideries, to fish and to hunt, nor could the lord of a domain refuse to him, in return for a small fee, the right to cut whatever wood he needed for his furnaces, and to collect and burn the undergrowth into ashes for his manufacture. It was the richly and densely wooded country about St.-Gobain which led to the establishment at this spot in 1665 of the glassworks since developed into the great establishment of our day. Even now, though gas has long since taken the place of wood in the manufacture, and towns and farms have grown up in the neighbourhood, no less than 2,440 hectares of the 2,900 which make up the territory of St.-Gobain proper are still in woodland; and the forests extend far beyond the limits of the commune which bears the name of the Irish Catholic prince St.-Gobain, who came here in the seventh century, as St. Boniface went to the Rhine, to evangelise the country, and built himself a cell on the side of the mountain which overlooks the glassworks. Here he did his appointed work, and here, on June 2, 670, he was put to death. The mountain was then known as Mount Ereme or Mount Desert, and it is still heavily wooded throughout almost its whole extent. The French Government also owns a very large domain around and beyond St.-Gobain, about two-thirds, I am told, of the 10,000 hectares constituting thirteen per cent. of the whole area of the Department of the Aisne, which are still covered with forests.[6] These ten thousand hectares are the remnant of the immense _sylvacum_ of the Laonnois, the Andradawald of Eastern Gaul, through which Agrippa opened a great Roman road connecting the capital of the world by way of Milan, Narbonnese Gaul, Reims, and Soissons with the British Channel. At a short distance from St.-Gobain a part of this ancient road running from south to north through the lower forests of Coucy, is still in use, and is known by the name of Queen Brunehild's Causeway. The chronicle of St.-Bertin, cited by Bergier, attributes to that extraordinary woman the restoration of this whole road throughout Gaul, and she certainly built a magnificent abbey in the immediate neighbourhood. [6] The total revenue derived from the woods and forests of the State in France is set down in the Budget for 1890 at 25,614,300 francs, but the returns are 'lumped' and not given in detail. I am told that the forests around St.-Gobain yield about 400,000 francs of this revenue. Encouraged by the wise administration of Colbert, an association of glassworkers established itself at St.-Gobain in 1665 under the direction of a 'gentleman glassworker,' M. du Noyer. Twenty years afterwards, in 1688, a Norman 'gentleman glassworker,' M. Lucas de Nehou, who had joined this association, invented the process known as the _coulage_ of glass for mirrors, and this became the kernel of the great industry of St.-Gobain. The association took the name, in 1688, of the Thévart company, from De Nehou's most active colleague. It became the Plastrier Company in 1702, and ten years afterwards, in 1712, M. Geoffrin, the husband of the clever and enterprising friend of Voltaire and the Empress Catherine, took charge as administrator of the establishment. His wife really administered both the establishment and M. Geoffrin. It was she who confided the direction of the works in 1739 to M. Deslandes, and she is fairly entitled to her share of credit for the great progress made in the subsequent half-century down to 1789. Under the First Consulate St.-Gobain had to give up the privileges it had enjoyed and face the modern conditions of success. It has proved its claim to its ancient privileges by its triumphs ever since it surrendered them. The history of its relations with the crown and with the courts under the _ancien régime_ is a most curious, interesting, and instructive chapter of the political and social, as well as of the industrial, annals of France, and it has been admirably told by M. Augustin Cochin in his book on the manufactory of St.-Gobain from 1665 to 1866. A drive of less than an hour through a highly cultivated rolling country, made attractive by well-grown trees and luxuriant hedgerows, brought me to the clear, bright, prosperous-looking town of St.-Gobain. Its two thousand inhabitants owe their well-being, in one form or another, to the great company, and among the most comfortable as well as the most picturesque dwellings in the place are the houses built by the company, and conceded on very favourable terms to the families of men employed in the works. Piles of timber attested the activity of the forest administration. The people I passed, singly or in groups, saluted the director's carriage in a friendly, good-natured way, which seemed to show that here, at least, the 'irrepressible conflict' between capital and labour has not yet passed into the acute stage. A fine old church of the thirteenth century, with a tower of the sixteenth, and the noble trees which cover the slopes and shade the roadway of St.-Gobain, are no more in keeping with the standard English and American type of a manufacturing town than is the parklike domain in the midst of which rise the main buildings of the great manufactory itself. There M. Henrivaux gave me a cordial welcome. The château of St.-Gobain, in which the offices of the company have long been established, is a vast square edifice of the time and the style of Louis XIV. It occupies the site, and, I believe, comprises one remaining wing of an earlier château, which was stormed and partially destroyed by the English in the fourteenth century. Henry IV. was seigneur of St.-Gobain, and when the glassworks company, at the end of the seventeenth century, bought the domain and the buildings from the Count de Longueval, then governor of La Fère, the title of the crown to the property had to be extinguished as well as his. Nothing can be finer in its way than the wide panorama of forest-clad hills and rolling vales, dotted here and there with towns, villages, and châteaux, over which you gaze from the terrace in front of this unique establishment. It has its pleasure-grounds and its park. Within the main building, besides the extensive suite of apartments assigned to the director, who resides there with his family, is another handsome suite of apartments, reserved for the administrators, six in number, whenever they may choose, collectively or severally, to visit St.-Gobain. These apartments are furnished with stately simplicity, and the whole interior preserves the grand air of the eighteenth century. The _fleurs de lis_ still adorn the lofty chimney-pieces, the waxed floors are sedulously polished, and, as M. Henrivaux says, could the ghost of Lucas de Nehou have returned to St.-Gohain only a year or two ago, he would have been welcomed at the entrance gate by a Swiss wearing the royal liveries of the House of Bourbon, and resting majestically on his halberd, like the guards of the Scala Regia in the Vatican. This imposing warden has now passed away, at the ripe age of a hundred and two, and M. Henrivaux tells me that he was more alert and active to the last than his more celebrated contemporary at Paris, the venerable Chevreuil. When a new administrator first makes his appearance at St.-Gobain, I am told, he is received with music by day and an illumination at night, a grand mass is celebrated in the chapel dedicated to the royal Irish martyr, and the whole place assumes for a moment the aspect of another age. In one of the _salons_ of the administration, two pictures commemorate visits paid to the manufactory: one, under the Restoration, by the Duchesse de Berri, the mother of the Count de Chambord; the other, under the Second Empire, by the Empress Eugénie--pathetic pictures both, making the room a place wherein to 'sit upon the floor and tell strange stories of the deaths of kings.' Beside the canvas in which the Empress appears--a graceful, gracious woman in the prime of her life and her beauty--hangs a small mirror in a gilded frame, silvered by her own imperial hand in the great workroom of the manufactory. The work was well and deftly done, but so delicate is the process that when the light strikes athwart this mirror at a particular angle, you can clearly trace a faint hair line of shadow traversing it, the ineffaceable record of a ripple of laughter which broke from the Empress's lips at some gay remark made by one of the personages grouped about her while her hand was completing its task. I spent a delightful day with M. and Mme. Henrivaux, inspecting all parts of the manufactory of mirrors, visiting the houses provided for a considerable number of the workmen and their families, on terms most advantageous to them by the company, and inquiring into the working of the co-operative association founded by M. Cochin. This association is an association of consumers only, not of producers. Its original statutes were drawn up very carefully by M. Cochin, and as they have been as carefully observed by the members and the managers, it is the opinion of M. Henrivaux that the experiment has proved to be a success. This may be inferred from the fact that the title of 'co-operative' has been assumed in the town of St.-Gobain by a bakery, which seems to be managed on the principles of private competition under the 'co-operative' flag. If the 'trademark' were not popular, it would hardly have been assumed. The company also encourages societies among its own workmen and in the town for educational purposes, including a philharmonic and a choral society, and is liberal in its expenditure upon the schools, both here and at Chauny, the seat of its very important chemical works. At St.-Gobain alone, I understand, it is now making an outlay of some sixty thousand francs on new school-buildings, which is a larger sum than the total of the taxes paid by the people of the place. The 'budget' of the commune amounts to 27,500 francs, or rather more than ten francs _per capita_ of the population. Obviously the prosperity of the glassworks makes the prosperity of St.-Gobain, which, but for them, would doubtless soon relapse into the proportions of the little hamlet gathered, twelve hundred years ago, by the Irish evangelist about the miraculous fountain, which is said to have been evoked by him with a blow of his staff, and which still flows beneath the shelter of his church. When Arthur Young visited St.-Gobain a hundred years ago he congratulated himself on his 'good luck' in hitting upon a day when the furnaces were in full blast and the _coulage_ going on. A traveller of the present day who should reach St.-Gobain armed with the letters of introduction necessary to secure his admission into the works, and find the furnaces not in full blast and the _coulage_ not going on, would be in very bad luck indeed. For while in 1789 St.-Gobain was a privileged company, enjoying, for the output of its works here and in Normandy, and in the Faubourg St.-Antoine at Paris, a chartered monopoly, the output of its works to-day, under the wholesome pressure of competition with a fair field and no favour, is enormously greater than it was a century ago, both in volume and in value; and the position of St.-Gobain among the glassworks of the world is at least as high under the presidency of the Duc de Broglie, in 1889, as it was under the presidency of the Duc de Montmorency in 1789. Yet the company is still administered, not indeed according to the letter of its original statutes of the time of the Grand Monarque, but in the spirit of those statutes. It is an ancient dynasty which has simply accepted the changed conditions of modern life and modern activity, and conformed its operations to them without abandoning its fundamental principles. The successful advance of this great industry, through all the changes, convulsions, and developments of the past century, is quite as instructive as are the successive catastrophes of French politics during the same time. 'I think,' said M. Henrivaux to me, 'that when you compare the St.-Gobain of 1702 with the St.-Gobain of 1889, you will perhaps agree with me that there is some force in our double motto, 'tradition dans le progrès et hérédité dans l'honneur.' It is a curious fact that Lucas de Nehou, the inventor of plate glass, was originally induced by the founders of St.-Gobain to leave his own establishment at Tour-la-ville in Normandy and come to their works in Paris, because the Venetian glassworkers who had been invited by Colbert into France, refused to instruct the French workmen in their 'art and mystery.' They could not be blamed for this. Venice was then the acknowledged headquarters of the glass manufacture, and it was the unchangeable policy of the 'most serene Republic' to keep all her secrets to herself. A fundamental statute ordained that if any artisan or artist took his art into a foreign country he should be ordered to return. If he did not obey, his nearest relatives were to be imprisoned, in order that his affection for them might lead him to submit. If he submitted, his emigration should be forgiven, and he should be established in his industry at Venice. If he did not submit, a person was sent after him to kill him, and after he was well and duly killed his relatives were to be released. In the thirteenth century Venetian artists suffered death under this statute in Bologna, Florence, Mantua, and other Italian cities. Even in Venice the glassworks were rigidly confined to the island of Murano, in order to keep the workmen from coming into contact with strangers visiting the city. When the Republic, in 1665, as a matter of policy allowed a certain number of glassworkers to go to France, at the request of Colbert, and to take service there under Du Noyer at Paris, in his manufactory of mirrors, these workmen were forbidden to teach their trade to any Frenchman. The result, as I have said, was that Du Noyer finally brought about a combination with M. de Nehou, the owner of certain glassworks at Tour-la-ville in Normandy, that De Nehou came to Paris, that out of their joint enterprise eventually arose the company now known as the Company of St.-Gobain, that the French workmen trained by De Nehou did excellent work, and that De Nehou put himself in the way of making, towards the end of the seventeenth century, his invention of plate glass, which finally drove Venetian mirrors out of the markets of the world. The Venetian mirrors, charming as they are from the æsthetic point of view of decorative art, are simply blown glass rolled flat, cut, polished, and tinned. The art of making them came, like other arts, to Venice from the East, and in the sixteenth century the Venetian mirror was the true 'glass of fashion' all over Europe. The famous 'Galerie des Glaces' at Versailles, of which Louis XIV. was so proud, was filled up with mirrors of 'French manufacture after the fashion of Venice,' as the royal expense-rolls state, and it took De Nehou and his workmen five years--from 1678 to 1683--to do the work. Eight years afterwards, in 1691, he presented King Louis with certain 'large mirrors of plate glass,' the firstfruits of his invention, made in 1689. In 1693, he was made Director of the 'Royal Manufactory of Grand Mirrors,' and the manufactory was established in the ruined Château de St.-Gobain. A hundred years afterwards, in 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte occupied Venice with a French army and made an end of that 'most serene' republic, as he did, not long afterwards, of the least serene republic at Paris. He put Berthier in command, and a commission of French savants, of which Berthollet was a member, proceeded to pick the locks and investigate the mysteries of Venetian art. Their report upon the Venetian glassworks was to the effect that France knew more about the matter than Venice. 'The industries of Venice,' said these irreverent conquerors, 'as precocious as the industries of China, have stood still like them.' In this age of jointstock companies and limited liabilities, it may be interesting to see on what terms the original founders of the Company of St.-Gobain put their heads and their purses together, to establish a great industrial enterprise. Their articles of association were signed by twelve associates on February 1, 1703, some ten years after William Paterson and Lord Halifax laid the foundations of the Bank of England and of the British public debt. The capital of the company, estimated at 2,040,000 livres, was divided into twenty-four shares of 85,000 livres each, called 'sols,' and these again into twelve parts each, called 'deniers,' making a total of 288 'deniers.' These curious designations, taken from the currency of the time, were used down to the overthrow of the restored Bourbon monarchy in 1830. The owners of these shares, or 'deniers,' bound themselves solemnly never to make a loan, but to meet all the expenses of the enterprise by assessments in proportion to their holdings, and always to keep in hand a fund for current expenses of at least one million of livres. They were to receive ten per cent. on their capital, a special honorarium of 1,000 livres a year apiece, and a fee of two crowns for attendance at meetings. All misunderstandings were to be settled by arbitration, and all the proceedings were to be secret. Under these articles St.-Gobain grew up, prospered, withstood the shock of successive political revolutions in France, and kept its place in the front of the great industrial movement of the nineteenth century down to the year 1830. During this long life of over a century and a quarter, the payment of dividends seems to have been suspended for three years only, and that after the Terror, from 1794 to 1797. In 1792, when the Girondins and the Jacobins were tearing France to pieces between them, and courting foreign invasion as a stimulus to domestic anarchy, the works were stopped for a time in Paris, at Tour-la-ville and at St.-Gobain, but only for a time. The very able director of the company, M. Deslandes, originally selected, as I have said, by Madame Geoffrin, and who had vindicated her good judgment by managing the affairs of the company with success for thirty years, resigned his post in 1789. He was a model disciplinarian of the old school. In 1775, finding that some of the workmen at Tour-la-ville had been seduced from their duty by a glassmaker at La Fère-en-Tardenois, M. Deslandes called upon the Intendant at Soissons to clap them into prison. Turgot, the friend of Franklin, objected to this, but M. Deslandes gave him plainly to understand that 'a government which should tolerate such misconduct would be detestable.' When a great mirror was to be cast at St.-Gobain, M. Deslandes always took command of the works in full dress, his peruke well powdered and his sword by his side. Clearly such a director as this was out of keeping with a king who would not let his officers fire upon a howling mob, and who put on a red cap to oblige a swarm of drunken ruffians. M. Deslandes was followed into retirement by several of the administrators of the company, who emigrated, and in 1793 the Republic caused the cashier of the company, M. Guérin, to be guillotined on the heinous charge of corresponding with his former employers and friends beyond the frontier. Naturally this crime was committed, like so many similar crimes of that day, with an eye to the main chance. The shares of the administrators who had emigrated were confiscated, in the names of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and the confiscators sent sundry 'patriots' to sit on the administrative council of the company. Their incompetency was so ludicrous and mischievous that Robespierre, representing the State which had thus stolen an interest in the enterprise, could not stand it. He actually 'requisitioned' two noblemen--two 'aristocrats'--among the as yet undisturbed owners of the property, to come forward and direct it, just as the leader of a successful mutiny of convicts on board of a transport might 'requisition' the deposed captain and mate of the vessel to carry her safely through a storm! With the return of law and order in the person of the Corsican conqueror things resumed their normal course at St.-Gobain; and as I have already said, the company flourished under its old organisation down to the establishment of the Monarchy of July. Then the owners of the 'deniers' put themselves and their property under the general Civil Code, in the form of what is called in modern France a 'société anonyme,' and at the first general meeting of the 'société' in April 1831 the accounts of 128 years, over which no question had ever arisen among the representatives of the original holders, were presented and approved. Certainly this must be admitted to be a most noteworthy case of 'l'hérédité dans l'honneur.' The new 'société' has greatly extended and strengthened its operations since 1831. The works at Tour-la-ville have been abandoned, the site sold, and the workmen transferred to St.-Gobain. The glassworks of St.-Quirin, the proprietors of which, on the abolition in 1804 of privileges in general, had taken to making plate glass, were taken over in 1858 by the St.-Gobain company, together with certain other works at Mannheim in Germany and the chemical works at Cirey, and the 'société' assumed the name under which it is now known of 'The Company of Mirrors and Chemical Products of St.-Gobain, Chauny, and Cirey.' In 1863 it bought up the works at Stolberg near Aix-la-Chapelle in Rhenish Prussia, in 1868 a minor manufactory at Montluçon in the Department of the Allier, and finally during this current year 1889 it is establishing a manufactory at Pisa in Italy. The operations of the company, as it now exists, extend to six manufactories of mirrors, six manufactories of chemicals, a mine of iron pyrites, a salt mine, many thousand hectares of forests in this department of the Aisne and in the province of Lorraine, and to a local railway connecting St.-Gobain with Chauny, where the plate glass cast at St.-Gobain is polished and the mirrors are silvered. At St.-Gobain, besides the plate glass mirrors, glass is made for roofs, for floors, for pavements, for optical instruments, including the finest lenses used in the lighthouses of France. Here, as I have said, the lens was made now used at the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, from which, night after night, a gigantic auroral ray of electric light leaps into space and shoots for miles athwart the sky, to the inexpressible delight of the gaping crowds below, and I hope to the edification of the world of science. Since 1870 the output of the company from its various manufactories has more than doubled. It now amounts, in round numbers, to 800,000 square mètres a year of polished plate glass; to 500,000 square mètres a year of rough glass; to a million kilogrammes a year of blocks and castings for floors and roofings, and to eighty thousand kilogrammes a year of optical glasses of all sorts. In the time of Louis XIV. and before Lucas de Nehou had made his invention of plate glass, there was absolutely no public demand for what in those days were called 'large mirrors' made in the Venetian fashion, mirrors which to-day would not find a market in the most remote frontier towns of America or Australia. Colbert then wrote to the Comte d'Avaux apropos of the works of Lucas de Nehou in Normandy, that 'there was absolutely no market for large mirrors in the kingdom, the king being the only person who could possibly need them!' This was in 1673. In 1702, ten years after the invention of the process by which plate glass is made, a mirror with a surface area of one mètre cost 165 francs. In 1889 such a mirror costs 30 f. 25 c. A mirror with four mètres of surface area cost, in 1702, 2,750 francs. In 1889 it costs 136 francs. When we come down to modern times and to the much larger mirrors produced of late years, the fall in prices is extraordinary. In 1873 a mirror with ten square mètres of surface cost 1,200 francs. To-day such a mirror can be bought at St.-Gobain for 467 francs, showing a fall of nearly two-thirds in price within sixteen years! To-day the total production of polished plate glass in the world is estimated as follows:-- square mètres England (4 companies) 900,000 Belgium (6 companies) 600,000 Germany (4 companies) 150,000 United States (7 companies) 500,000 France (not including St.-Gobain) 130,000 St.-Gobain 800,000 --------- Total 3,080,000 From this it will be seen that nearly one quarter of the plate glass of a world in which plate glass, like champagne, is rapidly ceasing to be a luxury and becoming a necessity, is produced at this ancient establishment. With a keen perception of the tendencies of this age St.-Gobain, of late years, has been fitting its machinery to produce the very largest plates of glass possible to be made. Go where you like, from the Eden Theatre in Paris to the Casino of Monte Carlo, from the new monster hotel at the Gare St.-Lazare to the enormous edifice which an enterprising firm of tradesmen has planted in the centre of the Corso at Rome, and the vast glittering sheets of silvered glass turned out from the great forges everywhere confront you. At the French Exposition of 1878 St.-Gobain enabled the 'fly gobblers' of two hemispheres to admire themselves in the most gigantic mirror ever made down to that date. It measured six mètres and a half in height, by four mètres and eleven centimètres in width, which gave it a surface area of 26 mètres 12 centimètres. Naturally M. Henrivaux determined to surpass this prodigy in 1889, and to match the Eiffel Tower with a mirror. The Belgian rivals of St.-Gobain suspected this, it seems, and sent forth subtle persons to spy out the plans of the great French manufactory. These colossal plates of glass are cast upon immense 'tables' of metal, and by ascertaining the dimensions of the tables ordered for St.-Gobain the ingenious Belgians hoped to get the measure of the effort it would be necessary for them to outdo. In anticipation of this subtlety the director of St.-Gobain ordered two immense tables, and when these were sent to the manufactory, had them skilfully thrown into one. Upon the gigantic table thus prepared the grand mirror of the Exposition of 1889 was cast at the eleventh hour. This mirror was the special delight of the Shah of Persia during his visit of this year to Paris; and as I suppose the seven plate-glass manufactories which have grown up in my own beloved country under the benediction of the Protective Tariff, since a prohibitive duty was originally clapped on plate glass to encourage the one solitary establishment of the sort then existing in America, will give themselves up to producing something more stupendous still for the New York Exposition of 1892, I here set down its dimensions. It measures in height 7 mètres 63 centimètres, and in width 4 mètres 10 centimètres, giving it a superficial area of 34 mètres 24 centimètres. It is 12 millimètres thick, and weighs 940 kilogrammes. This enormous glass was cast from a single crucible, containing 1,600 kilogrammes of vitreous matter. To have seen this operation would have been worth a very much longer journey than that from New York to St.-Gobain, for the colour and glow of such a mass of vitreous matter in fusion can only be matched by the evanescent hues of a crimson aurora on a fine night in the North, or by the intense lights which play over the surface of a stream of molten lava. At every stage in the operation the utmost skill and delicacy of handling are required to convert what might easily pass for a heap of rubbish swept together from a macadamised roadway into the smooth, glittering, lustrous plate which the French so picturesquely call a _glace_, and which indeed most nearly resembles the evenly frozen surface of a crystal lakelet. These sands, silicates, chalks, and carbonates--rough contributions from Oken's 'silent realm of the minerals'--are first crushed and mingled together by machines--one of the best of them, I was glad to hear, of American invention--then passed on into the great rectangular hall, in which they are shot into the crucibles of the melting furnaces and fused, mainly by gas, on a system invented and perfected by the late Dr. Siemens, I believe, who made such a stir a decade ago at Glasgow by his discourse on the storage of force before the British Association. The furnaces which, according to their varying capacity, now require from eight to ten tons of coal a day, consumed, before the development of the Siemens system, from sixteen to twenty tons. Twenty-four hours now suffice for the fusion and the casting of the glass, and if the casting were now to be conducted as ceremoniously as in the time of that fine old martinet M. Deslandes, M. Henrivaux would pass his life in a cocked hat, knee-breeches, peruke, embroidered coat, and sword, for the casting now takes place every day and at a fixed hour. None the less, rather the more, it is a work still of extreme nicety, one to be done by experts, who must be as cool as soldiers under fire. In a certain way and measure it is like ladling out the molten lava of Vesuvius and pressing it into slabs for a lady's toilette-table. The plates, once cast, must be smoothed and made even. This is a very pretty process, and used to be performed by machines which bore the very pretty names of _valseuses_. That paviour's rammers should be called _demoiselles_ has always seemed to me an outrage and an impertinence, though I may suppose it finds its excuse in the short-waisted costumes of our grandmothers. But the movement of the glass-smoothing _valseuses_ was really a sort of waltz movement. The plates of glass were fixed with plaster on a solid rectangular table. Granite-dust was scattered upon the plates, and then a wooden plateau, armed on the under side with bands of cast iron or steel, was set to waltzing over it backwards and forwards with a semi-rotatory motion, the granite-dust supplied becoming finer and finer as the waltzing went on. Instead of these _valseuses_ two great plates of glass are now fixed side by side with plaster on huge tables, and two large ashlars are set turning by steam on their own axes while they describe a great orbit over the plates of glass. A stream of water constantly plays upon the plates, which are also constantly powdered with fine sand. The ashlars turn on their axes thirty or forty times a minute, and the plates of glass are usually smoothed and 'evened' on both faces now by these machines in from eight to nine hours, including the time spent in taking them out of the plaster after one face has been smoothed, and fixing them anew in the plaster, that the other face may fare as well. Here again a considerable economy of time has been made. And, after all, when one looks into the practical production of any of these great marvels of human industry, it is in this economy of time that the real advance of modern science beyond the results of ancient invention seems to consist. With all our nineteenth-century chorus of 'self-praising, self-admiring,' where should we be if certain--for the most part, uncertain and forgotten--men of genius had not invented the primordial processes which made art and civilisation possible? The workshop came first, and was the real marvel in the case of every great industry. To talk of the 'invention' of the steam-engine, for example, is an absurdity. The 'invention' was the engine, an invention as old as Egypt or China. The discovery that steam could be made to work the engine is the more modest modern achievement. In this industry of glass-making the amazing thing is that it should have come into the mind of a man so to apply the heat of burning wood to sands and silicates enclosed in an earthen vessel as to convert them into an entirely new substance possessing qualities not perceivable by any human sense in the sands, the silicates, or the earth. What our modern progress in chemistry and in mechanics has enabled the makers of glass to do, is greatly to reduce the trouble and cost of producing this entirely new substance, greatly to improve the quality of the substance produced, and to extend the range of the uses to which it can be applied. What would the Egyptians, who paid their tribute in glass to Rome, have thought of a serious order to pave the Via Sacra with blocks of purple glass? Yet such an order could be executed now at St.-Gobain, and when one sees the great flags weighing nine kilogrammes made here and used to let light into the cellarage below the carriage-ways, for example, of the huge Hôtel Continental, at Paris, it comes easily within the probabilities that the whole underworld of our great cities in time may thus come to be made available for divers uses, as so much of the underworld of Broadway now is in New York. The great 'pavement question' is an open question still, in spite of asphalte and of wood, and there would seem to be nothing in the nature of things to prevent its being eventually solved by the glassworkers. The roofing question clearly belongs to them. The casting of glass for roofs began, I believe, with England, in the time of Sir Joseph Paxton, but it has been immensely developed at St.-Gobain. Over a hundred thousand square mètres of glass roofing made here were required for the building of the Exposition of this year at Paris. All the most important railway stations in France, from Nantes to Strasburg (unless the Germans have changed this), and from Calais to Marseilles, are thus roofed. In great warehouses, markets, public museums, street galleries--like those of Victor Emmanuel at Milan--factories, workshops all over France and the Continent, this conversion of the roof into a colossal window has revolutionised matters within the last twenty years. The light is making its way even into Turkey, where the great bazaar at Salonica has been roofed in glass by St.-Gobain, and as the Chinese, who, despite their early invention of glass, never got beyond using it for beads and little bottles, have condescended to admit great French mirrors into the Imperial Palace at Pekin, the glass roof may, ere long, make its way even into China. In the form of tiles, such as are now made here, glass must inevitably, sooner or later, displace slates and shingles and terra-cotta for the roofs, even of private houses, it being quite certain that these glass tiles can be so used as to give a much better light in the garrets of private houses than can possibly be got through the windows. When that comes to pass the burglar's occupation of clambering stealthily from roof to roof will be seriously interfered with. What with glass roofs and glass floors and electricity, indeed, the city of the future is likely to be much more easily 'policed' and patrolled, as well as incomparably more cheery and habitable, than the city of to-day. Perhaps, too, when we all come to living in glass houses, the cause of peace and good neighbourhood may gain, and even Mrs. Grundy may grow more careful about looking into the affairs of her friends and acquaintances. If that much maligned potentate the Emperor Nero had any real notion of the capabilities of glass when he established the first glassworks at Rome, the lamentation with which he took farewell of the world, '_qualis artifex pereo_,' may have been inspired by regret at his not being allowed time enough to develop them. Certainly such gigantic mirrors as those which St.-Gobain has this year sent to the Exposition would have shown to better advantage in his colossal 'Golden House' than in any of our petty modern palaces. In what palace in England or in France to-day could a mirror measuring 7 mètres x 63 centimètres in height by 4 mètres x 12 centimètres in width, and thus displaying a surface of more than 30 square mètres, be placed, without dwarfing everything about it? These immense and magnificent mirrors must go hereafter to decorate palaces of public resort--'palaces of the people,' not palaces of princes. What was a royal luxury when Colbert wrote to D'Avaux in 1673 has become a popular attraction. The smallest restaurant in Paris would think itself discredited to-day were it decorated with one of the _grandes glaces_ for which Colbert in 1693 thought St.-Gobain would find no purchaser save the king; but the Grand Café and the Hôtel Terminus of the Gare St.-Lazare order mirrors in 1889 which no king of our times would very well know what to do with. Yet, once more, how the cost of these mirrors has fallen! In 1702 a plate-glass mirror showing two square mètres only by surface, cost, at St.-Gobain, 540 francs. In 1889 such a mirror, showing four square mètres of surface, costs, at St.-Gobain, 136 francs. A mirror showing ten square mètres of surface, which could not have been made in 1702 at any price, can now be had for 467 francs! In 1802, under Napoleon, a mirror showing four square mètres of surface cost 3,644 francs, or very nearly three times the present cost of a mirror, not tinned like the mirrors of 1802, but silvered, of twice and a half that size. While new markets are constantly opening to this great industry all over the world, the progress of chemical science and of mechanics is as constantly suggesting new economies and new improvements in the manufacture of glass, and St.-Gobain, though one of the most thoroughly French of all French 'institutions,' shows no Chauvinism in its incessant study and prompt appropriation of these economies and these improvements. During the invasion of 1814 the workmen of St.-Gobain marched off to Chauny to resist the advance of the Prussians, and the manufactory had to pay a heavy fine for its patriotism. But it avails itself as readily of German as of French science to-day, and I found M. Henrivaux entirely and minutely familiar with the very latest phenomena of the great change which is coming over the glassworks, as well as all the other industries, of Pittsburg, through the use there of natural gas instead of coal gas and coal. All the most recently invented furnaces--English, German, American--have been tried and tested here as soon as they were made; and the latest American 'crushers' and 'regulators' get to St.-Gobain as soon as they do to Pittsburg. The materials which go to the making of a plate-glass mirror pass through seven processes before the original heap of pebbles, dust, and ashes is transformed into a sheet of splendour and light. A hundred years ago more than ten days were required to complete these seven processes, from the crushing and mixing and putting into the furnace of the soda and the silicious sand and the charcoal and the lime and the broken glass, called here _calcin_, through the fusion, and the moulding, and the squaring, and the smoothing, and the washing, and the polishing. Now this is all done in half the time--127 hours instead of 246. With all this the condition of the workmen employed at St.-Gobain has also steadily improved. It seems always to have been good, relatively to the general conditions of workmen in other industries and other establishments in France. Under the original statutes, and in the time of the excellent M. Deslandes, the nominee of Madame Geoffrin, who ruled St.-Gobain with great success from 1759 down to the Revolution, the workmen of St.-Gobain, as I have shown, were looked after, as well as kept to their duty, on strictly patriarchal principles, not likely to find favour in modern eyes. That they did not themselves dislike the system may be inferred from the fact that no such thing as a strike has ever been known at St.-Gobain, and that a considerable proportion of the workmen employed here now are the direct descendants of workmen employed here in the last century. There are even workers by inheritance, as men may be soldiers and sailors or magistrates by inheritance. Of course with the great extension in our own time of the operation of the company, great numbers of workmen other than glassworkers have come into its employment. But in the glass manufactures alone there are now employed: at St.-Gobain 375 workmen, at Chauny 583, at Cirey-sur-Vezouze 628, at Montluçon 473, at Stolberg, in Rhenish Prussia, 842, at Waldhof, in Baden-Baden, 518; making, in all, 3,419. The wages of the workmen are paid by the day, by the month, or by the piece, according to the special work which they do, but in all cases (and this, I believe, has been the rule here from the beginning) the workman is interested in his work by one premium on the amount, and by another on the quality of the work done. Furthermore (and this also dates from the beginning) the company look after the primary education of the children of the workmen. At St.-Gobain, at Chauny, at Cirey, at Montluçon, and I believe, also, at Waldhof, it maintains schools for both sexes at its own expense, together with asylums and training schools for the children. In these there are now more than 1,400 children. When the company owns no such school it pays a subvention to the nearest school for the benefit of the children of its workmen. Here at St.-Gobain the company owns a number of houses, each house having a garden and dependencies, which it lets to the workmen at an average rental of eight francs a month. I saw not long ago, at one of the stations on a line newly opened by the Great Eastern Railway Company of England, very neat and even handsome cottages well built of brick and thoroughly comfortable, which are leased to servants of the company at 2s. 6_d_. a week, or ten shillings a month. The houses I saw at St.-Gobain let at less than seven shillings a month, were quite as large as those of the Great Eastern Company, and the gardens were much larger. I gathered from the remarks made to me at St.-Gobain by people who seemed to be both well-informed and well-disposed, that of late years the liberality of the company in regard to these houses has, in not a few cases, worked mischief rather than good. They are not confined to St.-Gobain, and the company owns and leases no fewer than 1,256 of them. A good many allotments of land around the factories are also made at nominal rates to the workmen, who cultivate them assiduously. The glass-founders are particularly favoured in making these leases and allotments. Besides these houses meant for families, the company provides lodgings near the factories for unmarried workmen, or for workmen whose homes are at a considerable distance from their work. Within the buildings of the manufactory itself at St.-Gobain, M. Henrivaux showed me some such lodgings, as well as several bath-rooms which the workmen are allowed to use on the payment of a very slight fee. It is his experience that the workmen prefer to consider the bath as a luxury, and to pay for it. All the relations between the company and its workmen, indeed, seem to me to be governed by a sensible avoidance on the part of the company of everything like fussy paternalism; and to this, in some measure, I have no doubt, must be attributed the remarkably smooth and easy working of these relations through so long a course of years. The workmen are treated, not like children, but like reasonable beings, who may be expected to avail themselves of advantages which are offered them with an eye at once to their own interests and to the interests of the company. The co-operative societies at St.-Gobain and at Chauny, for example, were founded in 1866, not by the company, but by the employees of the company under statutes carefully drawn up by M. Cochin, and the company simply undertook to assist them; in the first place by leasing them, at a low rent, the buildings necessary for the business, and in the next place by taking charge gratuitously of their financial operations. The goods supplied are sold only to members of the societies, as in the co-operative stores in England. The transactions amount to about 1,500,000 francs a year, the goods are sold at prices below those charged in the local shops, and the members divide an average annual profit of from eight to ten per cent. The management is entirely in the hands of the members. The company has founded at St.-Gobain a kind of savings-bank in which the workman may make deposits of from one franc to 400 francs, drawing interest at the rate of 4 per cent. per annum, until the maximum is reached, when the money is either paid back to the depositor or, if he prefers, invested for him, without charge by the company, in the public funds or in railway securities. In this way many of the workmen are coming to be small capitalists. If they wish also to become house-owners the company advances, at the lowest possible rate of interest, the necessary funds for the purchase, and workmen in good standing with the company find no difficulty in getting gratuitous advances of money repayable in small fixed amounts, upon showing good reasons for the advance. And in all the establishments of the company, except at Montluçon, where there is a special fund to give assistance in cases of accident or disease, the workmen and their families are entitled to medical advice and medicines at the expense of the company. In addition to all these arrangements for promoting a real community of interests between the company and its employees, there is a pension fund out of which retiring pensions, varying from one-fifth to one-fourth of the wages earned by the pensioner, are granted to employees who have served the company for a certain number of years, or who find themselves disabled from further service by age or by disease. A certain proportion, determinable by the circumstances of each case, of these pensions is settled upon the widows and young children of the pensioners; and in order to encourage habits of thrift and forecast among the workmen, the company undertakes to manage without charge the investment of a certain proportion of his wages by any workman in the 'pension fund' of the national government. The total outlay of the company upon these various methods of promoting a community of interests between itself and its employees amounted in 1888 to 438,033 francs, thus divided:-- francs Pensions 241,657 Medical Service 100,055 Schools and Religious Services 57,788 Recreations 17,667 Gifts and Assistance 19,758 The outlay upon 'recreation' is made in the form of subventions and prizes granted to associations of the workmen, such as shooting and gymnastic clubs and musical societies. The manufactory, for example, boasts a philharmonic society of its own, and there is a Choral Society of St.-Gobain. Both of these have scored successes in various public exhibitions. There is a rifle club, founded in 1861, and reconstituted in 1874, with an eye to the possible military necessities of the country. The relations between the company and its employees under this system, the germs of which were planted here two centuries ago, have assumed such a character that the workmen habitually speak not of the manufactory but of the 'maison.' They are and feel themselves to be members of a great economic family. Of 2,650 persons now actively employed in St.-Gobain, Chauny, and Cirey, 432, or 16.3 per cent., have been employed for more than thirty years; 411, or 15.5 per cent., for more than twenty and less than thirty years; 553, or 20.9 per cent., for more than ten and less than twenty years; and only 1,254, or 47.3 per cent., for less than ten years. It would be instructive to compare this record with the records of the most important industrial establishments in England and America during the past thirty years, and I should be glad to see this done by some of the people who talk so glibly in England and America of the inherent fickleness and instability of the French character, as offering an adequate explanation of the political catastrophes which have so often recurred in France during the past century. One of the most curious features of the establishment at St.-Gobain is a subterranean lake. The fine forests around St.-Gobain and La Fère--forests of oak, beech, elm, ash, birch, maple, yoke-elm, aspen, wild cherry, linden, elder, and willow--flourish upon a tertiary formation. The surface of clay keeps the soil marshy and damp, but this checks the infiltration of the rainwater and therefore favours the growth of the trees. In the calcareous rock the early inhabitants hollowed out for themselves caverns, in which they took refuge from their enemies and from the beasts of the forest; and these caverns, called by the people _creuttes_--an obvious corruption of the name of _crypts_, given them by the Roman conquerors of Gaul, just as the early French trappers gave the name of 'caches' to the Indian hiding-places of the Far West--are to be found all about Soissons and Laon. The more modern lords of St.-Gobain, its monks and its barons, dug out of the calcareous rock the stones which they used to build their châteaux and their churches, and they created great _creuttes_ beneath St.-Gobain. It seems to have occurred to M. Deslandes, during his long and skilful supervision of the works here, that these caverns might be put to the very practical use of securing an adequate water-supply. The idea has been thoroughly carried out, and the subterranean reservoir of St.-Gobain is much more impressive as a spectacle than the crypts of the Cisterns at Constantinople. It is kept filled to an average depth of one mètre by the infiltration of the surface waters and by the overflow of a pond, La Marette, on the plateau of St.-Gobain, and it covers an area of some 1,200 square mètres. After two or three hours spent in visiting the various departments of the glassworks overhead, M. Henrivaux led me through winding passages, which reminded me of the dismal vomitories at Baiæ, down into this strange underworld. Walls and pillars, partly of the natural rock, left in the working of the quarries, partly of masonry built up to strengthen the reservoir, give this weird water, when you reach it, the aspect rather of a stream than of a lake. A workman, who had preceded and guided us with a swinging lantern, put out a long boathook, and drew slowly around to the landing-place a long, shallow boat, into which he invited us to step. M. Henrivaux had kindly sent orders in the morning to have the reservoir illuminated with Venetian and Chinese lanterns of various colours. These had been hung from hooks in the rocks and pillars with infinite good taste at long intervals, so as to illuminate not too brilliantly the mystical darkness of the scene. Looking upon the vague, indefinite vista, as it glimmered away into an indefinable distance, one seemed really to stand Where Alp, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless by man, Down to a shoreless sea. Seating ourselves carefully in the boat, our silent boatman, like a spectral gondolier, rowed us silently along the labyrinthine canals of this dim and ghostly Venice. Vathek Beckford would have made them waterways to the Hall of Eblis. CHAPTER VIII IN THE AISNE--_continued_ LAON The lively little city of Chauny, standing in the heart of the rich and lovely valley of the Oise, the 'golden vale' of this part of France, has a history of its own of which I shall presently have something to say, and which throws some interesting light upon the general history of France. But Chauny owes its actual prosperity mainly to its connection with the Company of St.-Gobain. From a very early period in the annals of the company, the plate-glass made at St.-Gobain was sent across the country to Chauny, and thence by water to Paris, where it was polished and 'tinned' at the company's works in the Rue de Reuilly. When the first machines were invented for saving much of the manual labour spent upon these processes, it occurred to the managers of the company that these machines might be advantageously worked with the water-power of the Oise at Chauny. This was in the beginning of the present century. About the same time, thanks to the foreign wars provoked by the Girondists to promote the Revolution, it became very difficult to obtain the supplies of natural soda necessary for the manufacture of plate-glass, these supplies having been drawn, down to that time, almost exclusively from Alicante in Spain; and the chemist Leblanc hit upon a process for extracting soda on a great scale from sea-salt. Of this invention the managers of St.-Gobain promptly availed themselves; and, after a brief and unsatisfactory experiment at a place called Charlesfontaine, they established at Chauny some soda-works, which have since been developed into the most extensive chemical works in France. Taken in conjunction with the glassworks also now established here, these works extend over an area of some thirty hectares, fourteen of which are occupied by buildings. Numerous canals fed from the Oise traverse this immense area, some of them supplying water-power, others serving as waterways. The place, in short, is an industrial Amsterdam or Rotterdam in miniature, lying between the river Oise, the Canal de St.-Quentin, and the Canal de St.-Lazare. The Cité Ouvrière, built for the workmen by the company, lies beyond the Canal de St.-Lazare and on the road from Château Thierry in Champagne (the birthplace of La Fontaine) to Béthune in Artois. The streets and areas within the works are most appropriately baptized by the names of the eminent men of science to whom the company is indebted for great services either directly or indirectly: the Cour Lavoisier, the Rue Pelouze, the Rue Guyton de Morvaux, the Rue Leblanc, the Rue Gay-Lussac, the Cour Scheele, the Rue Hély d'Oisset. Besides the dwellings put up for the benefit of the workmen at Chauny, the company has built here a chapel, established a free dispensary, and organised excellent schools for the children of both sexes, under the supervision of the devoted Sisters, who have not yet been 'converted' out of Chauny. 'What is the feeling of the people here on this question of clerical teaching?' I asked an acquaintance of mine, who formerly filled an important post in the local administration of this region, and who now devotes himself to his flowers and his library in a charming old house of the eighteenth century, the high-walled courtyard of which is tapestried with luxuriant vines and creepers. 'All the sensible people in Chauny,' he said--'and there are many sensible people in Chauny, though in the old times our neighbours used to speak of us as "the monkies of Chauny"--are quite disgusted with all this newfangled nonsense, and with these incessant attacks on the clergy. The troublesome element here in Chauny is not to be found among the workmen: it is to be found among the people who do not work. Of course, everybody knows that it is the great chemical and glass works here which make Chauny prosperous. But for St.-Gobain we should be where we were a hundred years ago. And so there is a tendency all through the Department to come to Chauny, in hopes of finding work under the company. Of course, in nine cases out of ten, those who seek it thus do not get it, for it is the rule of the company always to give the preference to people from Chauny, or the immediate neighbourhood. 'Of course the unsuccessful "immigrants" linger about the place, and as they don't find work they go lounging about the town, and take to drink too often and, in short, soon become the raw material of which in these days the freemasons are making what they call "Republicans." You have it all,' he added, 'in the letter which M. Allain-Targé has just written, refusing to be a candidate this year for the Chambers.' I remembered very well the energy shown by M. Allain-Targé, as a Republican Minister of the Interior, at the time of the elections of October 18, 1885. He then issued an official circular instructing all the public functionaries that, while they were to be absolutely 'neutral' as between Republican candidates of different colours, they must exert themselves to the utmost as against all 'reactionary' candidates. I was much interested, therefore, to learn the present opinion of M. Allain-Targé as to the outlook of the Republic under his successor, M. Constans, in 1889. It was very instructive to find that M. Allain-Targé now declines to be a Republican candidate because, to use his own words, though the High Court of Justice may 'deliver the Republic from General Boulanger and his confederates, it is beyond the power of the High Court of Justice to bring France back--let us not say to the heroic age, but to the age of good faith, of disinterestedness, of common sense, and of that prudent, sincere, and loyal policy, thanks to which, during long years, France passed safely through so many serious trials.' 'The new generations of electors,' says M. Allain-Targé in this remarkable letter, 'exact of their representatives conditions to which I will not submit. I will not undertake to make the promises which it is now the fashion of candidates to lavish, and which I cannot regard as serious.' These 'new generations of electors' are the 'new social strata' about which Gambetta used to declaim so confidently only a few years ago, and I quite agreed with my philosophic friend near Chauny in thinking that no slight significance must attach to such a verdict upon them, pronounced in 1889 by an 'advanced Republican' like M. Allain-Targé, who only four years ago, in 1885, was the most active minister of a Government called into existence to carry out the ideas of Gambetta, and to found a stable republic upon these 'new social strata.' Put into plain English, this letter of M. Allain-Targé, who had more than any of his colleagues to do directly and in the way of business both with the electors and with the elected of France four years ago, and who now declines to have anything more to do with them all--simply means that the electors sell their votes to the highest bidder, and that the man who will make the most unscrupulous bid is likeliest to get the votes. It is hard to see much difference between such a verdict and the outspoken declaration of M. Paul de Cassagnac that law, order, property, and liberty in France are threatened to-day, not by a 'democracy,' but by a 'voyoucratie' or 'blackguardocracy.' The 'anti-clerical' agitation here, as elsewhere in France, I am assured, is plainly under the control of the 'freemasons.' Not that the 'freemasons' are avowedly very numerous here. But they are influential because they act together, in silence, and on lines common to the agitation all over France. 'Three or four energetic members of the order,' said one very intelligent man to me here at Chauny, 'can easily manage the whole official machinery of a large political district. To understand their methods and their organisation you must go back to the worship of Baphomet in the Middle Ages. In some of their lodges they reproduce with a goat one at least of the abominations which Von Hammer tells us were charged upon the Knights Templars as Baphometic. They are a sect--a persecuting sect, and a sect bent on absolutely destroying the Christian religion. To this end they parody the Christian symbols and the Christian scheme of charity and of good works. They do not, most of them, hold office, it being much more to the purpose for them to awe the officials, and that is their favourite way of working. There are, however, exceptions to this. If you go to Marmande in the South you will find a sub-prefect there who is a most energetic and mischievous "freemason." In the Aisne the Prefect is a freemason, and here all the public functionaries go in fear of the order. They own the newspaper, control profitable contracts of all sorts, and can make or mar the career of public servants, through their occult relations with people at headquarters in Paris.' I suggested that in England and Germany and the United States the 'freemasons' are not only regarded as friends of order and of law, but number among their dignitaries men of the highest official and personal rank. 'That is quite true, no doubt,' he said. 'But this order in France has, I believe, no official relations now with the order in either of these countries. Its affiliations are with the "freemasons" of Italy, of Belgium, and of Spain, so far as it has any affiliations. There have been "freemasons," as you must know, among the Radical leaders in Belgium who have not hesitated, while holding high public positions, to denounce Christianity in open meetings as a "corpse blocking the way of modern progress"; and what the freemasonry of Italy and of Spain is I am sure you must know.' I told him that in Spanish America and in Brazil I had met priests who were members of the order; and I particularly cited the case of an ecclesiastic of considerable importance, who in Costa Rica, some ten or twelve years ago, was at the head of the Order of Freemasons in that country. 'That may be,' he replied, 'but officers of our expedition into Mexico under Maximilian have told me that the freemasons in Mexico were active allies of the Liberals and of Juarez in their war against the Church.' This I could not contradict, for while I never heard that President Juarez was himself a 'freemason,' I know, from my conversations with him after the fall of the Empire, in 1871, that, though educated by the priests in Oajaca, as Robespierre was by the priests in Arras, he was an unbeliever of the type of the advanced Encyclopædists of the last century, and though not such a fanatic as Condorcet, strongly disposed, not only to deprive the Mexican clergy of their 'fueros' under the old Spanish system, but to make an end of Catholicism in Mexico if possible. Nor was he much more friendly to the Protestants, who were then trying, under Bishop Riley, to found a Protestant propaganda in Mexico. 'In France, at all events under the Third Republic,' he went on, 'the "freemasons" are the implacable enemies of religion. It was in full accord with them, and as a battle-cry in their interest, that Gambetta uttered his famous declaration that "Clericalism is the enemy!" And if the "freemasons" of any other country recognise and in any fashion affiliate with the Grand Orient of France, they ought to understand what they are doing, and to what objects they are lending themselves, consciously or unconsciously. You tell me that General Washington was a freemason. Yes, no doubt, but the freemasonry which he accepted was no more like the modern "freemasonry" of France than this Third Republic of ours is like the republic of which he was the founder!' The processes carried on in the great chemical works at Chauny are in their way as interesting as the processes carried on at St.-Gobain or in the glassworks here. But I cannot say they are as pleasant, or even as picturesque. Commercially speaking, the output of the chemical works of this great company is at least as important now as the output of its glassworks. The chemical works grew up out of the necessities of the glassworks. When the company was led, at the beginning of this century, by the pressure of the war epoch, to adopt in its glassworks the use of the artificial soda made by Leblanc, the Director soon found it advisable to have the artificial soda manufactured by the company itself. This led to the establishment of the chemical works at Chauny, and down to 1867 the company itself was the chief consumer of these chemical products. The Exposition of that year widened the horizon, by making France acquainted with the agricultural importance of the English fabrication of 'superphosphates' as fertilisers. At the Exposition of 1878 the Company of St.-Gobain exhibited, and received a gold medal, for superphosphates, which it was then turning out at the rate of 20,000 tons a year from three establishments--one at Chauny, one at L'Oseraie, and one at Montluçon. As the company was then turning out a great production of sulphuric acid, and owned the only important mine of pyrites in France, it went on with increasing energy, and now, in 1889, shows an output of 110,000 tons of superphosphates, from no fewer than six establishments--Chauny, Aubervilliers, Marennes, Saint-Fons near Lyon, L'Oseraie, and Montluçon. Besides these it possesses salt-works at Art-sur-Meurthe, its iron pyrites works at Sain-Bel, and some important deposits of phosphates at Beauval. These give employment to no fewer than 3,300 workmen, independently of those employed by the company at its various glassworks in the glass manufacture. At Chauny alone the chemical works employ 1,350 of these workmen. For these, as for its glassworkers, the company has established a system of savings institutions and of pensions. Medical advice and medicines are given gratuitously to the workmen and their families. The co-operative association founded by M. Cochin at St.-Gobain has not, I believe, been extended to the chemical works; but the company maintains establishments which supply the chief wants of the workpeople at cost price, and the dwellings provided for them, either gratuitously or at very low rents, now number more than seven hundred, independently of the dormitories for unmarried workmen. Retiring pensions, varying from one-fifth to one-fourth of the wages of the workmen, are granted to all after a certain number of years of service, and to workmen disabled by disease or by accidents. At the pyrites-mine of Sain-Bel, in the South, near Tarare, where more than 400 workmen are employed--300 as miners and the rest in the works above named, the former earning on an average 1,309 fr. 25 c., and the latter on an average 1,114 fr. 90 c. a year--a system exists under which any workman who chooses to put aside his savings in a _caisse de la vieillesse_ receives from the company, when he has completed twenty-five years of service, or has attained the age of fifty-five years, an annual pension more than equal to the amount at that time of his savings in the _caisse_. As I have said, the manufacture of chemical products is not so pleasant or so picturesque in itself as the manufacture of plate-glass and mirrors. Within the last decade the output of sulphuric acid alone from the company's works has more than doubled, and now amounts to more than 200,000 tons a year. The gases disengaged in the manufacture of chemical fertilisers, such as carbonic acid, sulphuretted hydrogen, fluorine of silicium, and so on, it was found at Chauny, destroyed entirely in a very short time the polish of the glass in the window-panes of the houses opposite to the works, and certainly did not improve either the respiratory organs or the general health of the workmen. The company therefore spent a good deal of time and of money in working out a system for the complete condensation of these gases. I am told that it has proved completely successful, and is now established in all the chemical works of the company, to the great advantage not only of the workmen, but of the company also. Although Chauny is really a very ancient city--dating back at least to the age of Charlemagne, when the monks of Cuissy and St.-Eloi-Fontaine, with the keen eye of those early agriculturists for a good thing, reclaimed its marshes and turned them into a fat land, yielding, as an old local _dicton_ tells us, the 'septem commoda vitæ, Poma, nemus, segetes, linum, pecus, herba, racemus.' --it has almost nothing to show to-day in the way of antique architecture. Of the 'seven comforts of life,' the vine has vanished also; but all the others flourish abundantly, and the people of Chauny have little to complain of on the score of the natural resources of their region. During the wars, though, of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the place was so often taken and retaken that its buildings were pretty well battered to pieces. The English of Harry the Fifth stormed it in 1417, and England held it for a quarter of a century, during which period an incident occurred much more creditable to the burghers of Chauny than is the taking of the Bastille in 1789 to the citizens of Paris. Monstrelet tells the story in a quaint and vigorous fashion. Chauny at that time was part of the appanage of the Duc d'Orléans, then a prisoner in England, and it was held for the conquerors by a French, nobleman, 'Messire Collard de Mailly,' who had accepted the office of Bailli of Vermandois from King Henry of England. The burghers of Chauny, who had lived for two centuries in the enjoyment of the rights and privileges granted them in a royal charter by Philip Augustus, did not like this state of things at all. So they made up their minds to demolish the castle, lest 'Messire Collard de Mailly' should fill it with English soldiers and make himself quite unendurable. It was a rather hardy enterprise, and the burghers went about it with great coolness and good sense. Theirs was a real rising of the citizens of a town to abate a nuisance which threatened their liberties, and not, like the attack on the Bastille, a blow struck at law, order, and the constituted authorities of a great kingdom by a subsidised mob; and their leaders were the most respectable men of Chauny--not a crew of thieves and murderers like the infamous Maillard, that 'hero of the Bastille,' against whom his own employers and allies were eventually forced to proceed as the chief of a gang of ruffians, and who, not content with assassinating political prisoners and stealing their property in Paris, roamed all over the Departments of the Seine and the Seine-et-Oise, torturing farmers to make them give up their money, and maddening the countryside with outrages not to be described. Jean and Mathieu de Longueval, Pierre Piat,[7] and other 'notable persons' of Chauny, bound themselves together by an oath, in 1432, to 'take the fortress of the city and demolish it.' They chose an occasion when the bailli, Collard de Mailly, and his brother, Ferry de Mailly, with some of their men, went riding out of the fortress 'to take their pleasure in the town.' [7] That 'Pierre Piat' was a man of character as well as of substance appears from the fact that he was charged with seeing that his wife, the cousin of a rich and charitable lady of Chauny, Marie Martine de Feure, who died in 1400, should each year receive, under the will of this good dame, 'a large piece of linen cloth whereof to make shrouds for the poor who might die in the hospital of the Hôtel-Dieu at Chauny.' Obviously there was much better stuff for the making of a true republic among these good burghers of Chauny in the fifteenth century than was to be found among the shouting mobs of the Palais-Royal in the eighteenth. With a few courageous 'companion adventurers,' previously posted in hiding near the castle, these determined burghers suddenly sallied 'forth from the place where they were watching the castle gates, and, no one paying any heed to them, entered the castle courtyard, drew up the bridge after them, and took possession.' 'News of this going after the two brothers, they were sore displeased, but they could do nothing,' says the chronicler; 'for the citizens who were in the plot straightway fell to sounding the tocsin, and gathering about the castle in great numbers, with arms and with sticks, were soon admitted into it.' The castle being thus secured, 'sundry notables of the city went to meet the two knights, and assured them that no harm should come to them or theirs, for that what had been done was done only for the peace and prosperity of the city.' Quite different this from the cowardly murder of the Governor of the Bastille, struck down after his surrender by some of Maillard's confederates, while that scoundrel himself still had his hand upon the unfortunate De Launay's collar. The 'Messires de Mailly' made the best of a bad business, and, with all their friends and followers, withdrew into an hotel in the town. There all their property was brought from the castle and delivered to them, which, having been done, the good people of Chauny 'with one accord fell to work to slight and demolish the said fortress, and this with such good-will that in a few days' time it was wholly razed and destroyed from top to bottom.' The bailli and his brother soon departed out of the place, and 'Messires Hector de Flavy and Waleran de Moreul,' who were sent to govern it by the Comte de Luxembourg, 'found the citizens much more stiff and disobedient than they had ever been before the desolation of the aforesaid castle!' After Joan of Arc had driven the English out of the realm, Charles VII. had the good sense to pardon the citizens of Chauny for destroying the castle, and it was never rebuilt. The Spanish occupied Chauny after their victory of St.-Quentin in 1557. Five years afterwards Condé and his Huguenots took the place, and did so much proselytising there that in 1589 Chauny was one of the first towns in France to recognise Henry of Navarre as King of France. It stood out for him when Laon and other important towns in this region had joined the League, and during his long struggle with the House of Guise it was a central point about which the hostile forces constantly manoeuvred. Henry himself came here often, and during the siege of La Fère 'La Belle Gabrielle' kept him company at Chauny, Sinceny, and Folembray. In the next century the French and the Imperialists fought all around the place, to the great disgust of the poor peasants, who hid themselves as eagerly in the woods from the troops of their own sovereign as from those of his imperial enemy; and in 1652, Chauny, after a sharp but short siege, surrendered to the Spaniards, who, however, agreed, by the terms of the capitulation, to 'maintain the burgesses in all their goods, rights, privileges, charges, and offices.' The Mayor of Chauny, Claude le Coulteux, behaved so well in the siege, that Louis XIV. ennobled him; and the curé of the church of St.-Martin, it is recorded, fought at the ramparts, and 'pointed the cannon with his own hand.' This was the last deed of arms in the annals of this little city, though the fortune of war has twice put Chauny under foreign rule. In 1814 the allies, and in 1870-71 the victorious Germans, occupied it, and laid it under contribution. That the Revolution of 1789 left the citizens of Chauny much less determined to do battle for their rights than their ancestors were in the days of the English invaders, may be fairly inferred, I think, from the very curious circumstance that, in 1815, they actually made a public subscription for the purpose of presenting a very handsome gold medal, weighing two ounces, to the Prussian Commander of Chauny, Colonel Von Beulwitz. This medal bore the inscription, in French, 'The grateful city of Chauny to M. Von Beulwitz, Commandant of Chauny.' The local authorities also asked, and obtained, for their Prussian satrap and his secretary the cross of the Legion of Honour! All this was no doubt very creditable to the German authorities, and not discreditable to the good people of Chauny. But it certainly seems to show that at the end of the Napoleonic era, the French people in the provinces were thoroughly weary of the Revolution and all its consequences. They welcomed peace at any price from any quarter. The testimony of all impartial contemporary observers accords with the deliberate opinion given by Gouverneur Morris to Alexander Hamilton in 1796, that the French people in general were royalists at heart, and utterly averse to the general overthrow of their institutions by the legislative mob at Paris, or, as Mirabeau comprehensively called them, 'that Wild Ass of the National Assembly.' At Chauny, in 1816, the inhabitants held a meeting under the presidency of the mayor, at which they declared, with great unanimity, that 'the people of Chauny had never, in fact and of their own free will, adopted the impious and seditious principles introduced in France by a factious minority, and that they regarded the death of the most Christian king, Louis XVI., as the most execrable of crimes.' Chauny was a city then of less than 4,000 inhabitants, but the peripatetic 'patriots' of 1793 had contrived to do mischief enough, even in this small and quiet corner of France, to earn the detestation of its people. They desecrated its churches, turning Notre-Dame into a saltpetre factory, stealing the church bells to sell them, pulling down the steeples and towers, and defacing the monuments. They arrested and imprisoned numbers of the best citizens, broke up the ancient hospitals, driving away the Sisters of Charity, and brought about the murder, by the revolutionary tribunals, of a celebrated French admiral, who co-operated in America with Rochambeau to secure the independence of the United States--the Comte d'Estaing, who was well known and very popular in Chauny. When the tribunal, after its fashion, called upon the fearless sailor for his name, he replied, 'You know my name perfectly well,--it suits you, perhaps, to pretend that you do not. But when you have cut off my head, as you mean to do, send it to the English fleet, and they will tell you my name!' Here at Chauny, as elsewhere, the first concern of these revolutionary 'friends of the people,' when they got possession of the machinery of the State, was to confiscate the funds devoted by the piety and the benevolence of past ages to the service of the people. The more closely one looks into the social annals of France, the more amazing it is that the world should so long have swallowed the monstrous misrepresentations current in our century, as to the condition of the French people before 1789, and especially as to the organisation, under the _ancien régime_, of public charity and of public education in France. Chauny possessed, as far back as the beginning of the twelfth century, a public hospital or Hôtel-Dieu, and a hospital for lepers called the 'Maladrerie.' Who founded the Hôtel-Dieu is not known, for in those 'ages of faith,' so lovingly described by Kenelm Digby, it was not thought so extraordinary a thing that a man or a woman should devote his or her substance to benevolent purposes, as it is fast coming to be in our own times. The mayor and sworn magistrates of the city were the official governors of the hospital, and the chaplain was taken from among the monks of Saint-Eloi-Fontaine. A century and a half afterwards, in 1250, the Abbot of Saint-Eloi-Fontaine received, under the wills of three burghers of Chauny, a sum equal to about 40,000 francs of our time for the service of the hospital of the Hôtel-Dieu. It is worth remembering that the Third French Republic has passed a law forbidding ecclesiastics to receive or execute such benevolent trusts as this. I have already alluded in a note to a subsequent legacy made to this institution in the fifteenth century by a pious dame of Chauny. A few years later, in 1419, Colart Le Miroirier, a resident of Chauny, left to the Hôtel-Dieu all his lands and goods at Chauny, Ognes, and Roy. The 'religious wars' wrecked the Hôtel-Dieu in the sixteenth century; but in 1620 a devout woman, Marie Dubuisson, took the work of reconstruction in hand, and the citizens followed it up; so that, by the end of the seventeenth century, it was well in order once more, and it continued to be administered for the benefit of the poor of Chauny till the 'patriots' confiscated it in 1793. Under the Empire, in 1811, the re-established hospital was combined with an orphan asylum, and both were put under the charge of the Sisters of Charity, one of whom, Sister Renée Canet, had the good sense to found here a little manufactory of hosiery and caps, which holds its own, I am told, despite the not very benevolent combinations against it of the local hosiers. The old buildings of the Hôtel-Dieu, however, no longer exist, and the chief public hospital of Chauny is installed in a large edifice put up under the Second Empire in 1865, and known as the 'Hospice-Sainte-Eugénie,' in honour of the Empress. It says something for the common sense of the local authorities that they have not insisted on changing the name of the institution. During the orgies of 1793 the paintpot was busy with all the streets and places of Chauny. The Rue de Prémontré, so called because some property there belonging to the famous abbey of the Præmonstratensians, became the _cul-de-sac_ or 'bag-bottom of Fraternity;' the Rue des Moinets took the name of Jean-Jacques Rousseau; while the Rue Ganton, the licensed abode of the social evil of Chauny, received, with exquisite tact and propriety, the name of the Roman hero Scævola! The monastery of the Holy Cross, founded by Mary of Clèves, Duchesse d'Orléans, about the end of the fifteenth century, was confiscated, and made the headquarters of the Republican Commission, the street on which it stood receiving the name of the 'Bag-bottom of Vigilance,' from the banner which was borne upon public occasions through the streets by this commission, on which was depicted 'the Eye of Vigilance, a symbol of that exercised by it over the enemies of the Republic and the people.' Another street in Chauny, the Rue des Bons Enfans, preserves the memory of the early foundation in the little city of public schools for the children of the poor--'les bons enfans escholiers.' Where now stands the communal school of Chauny stood, I am told, a public college, founded here in the earliest years of the fourteenth century. The buildings of this college were restored under the Regency and Louis XV. They were confiscated, and the establishment swept away by the worthy Revolutionists of 1793, at the same time that they gave a public ball in the Church of Notre-Dame in honour of the Tree of Liberty, which the young girls of the place were expected to attend 'in dresses of white, symbolic of their innocence, and adorned only with their virtues!' Besides this public college, Chauny, before the beneficent epoch of the Revolution, possessed a public school in each parish of the town. The schoolmaster, besides his regular scholars, who paid for their education, was expected to receive and educate eight poor children nominated by the mayor and sworn magistrates. For this he received, under Louis XIV., in 1706, forty setiers of wheat and fifty livres in money. It is interesting, also, to learn that the principal of the public college, when he happened to be a layman, received a salary, under Louis XIV., of 400 livres in addition to his dwelling-house. When he was a priest he received only 300 livres, but he might also receive 172 livres more as chaplain of the Hôtel-Dieu. The well-to-do citizens who sent their children to the college paid for each child forty sols a year. When law and order had been re-established by Napoleon in France, two citizens of Chauny, Carra and Dumoulin, in December 1802, got permission to re-open the college, which the Revolution had closed. It has never recovered its former importance however, and Chauny now possesses only a communal school, I am told, and two religious or free schools, besides the establishments maintained by the Company of St.-Gobain. One educational foundation of the _ancien régime_, however, still survives, in the bursaries of the Abbé Bouzier. Antoine Bouzier d'Estouilly, priest, abbot of Notre-Dame-lès-Ardres, doctor in science, doctor of the Sorbonne, canon and écolâtre of the collégiale of St.-Quentin, was a noble as well as a priest. He founded, on October 10, 1713, a fund for endowing two poor boys with the funds necessary to enable them, in his own words, 'to serve the Church as ecclesiastics, or the public in civil functions.' This phraseology is worth noting by people who are tempted to believe the nonsense current in our day to the effect that 'almost everything we know as modern civilisation in connection with institutions of a philanthropic sort has taken shape within the last hundred years, and is due to the influence of the Revolution of 1789 in France.' Nothing can be wider of the truth than this. On the contrary, the progress of modern civilisation in connection with such institutions was distinctly checked and thwarted for a time in France by the shock of this Revolution, and in other countries by the horror and indignation which the follies and crimes of the French Revolutionists excited. The foundation of the Abbé Bouzier was expressly intended by him to benefit 'the poorest' of those who should compete for its advantages, regard being had to their natural ability and aptitudes for study. Each beneficiary was to enjoy his scholarship for eight consecutive years, dating from his entrance into the third class. If he had got beyond the third class when he secured his nomination the difference was to run against him. For example, a scholar ready to enter the class of rhetoric who received a nomination was to hold his scholarship for six years only; if he was ready to enter upon the study of theology, law or medicine, for three years only; after the expiration of which another must be appointed to enjoy it. Provisions were also made to secure the good conduct of the beneficiaries. How this excellent foundation escaped the cupidity of the Revolutionists is not clear. From June, 1793, to March, 1795, the _Société Populaire_ of Chauny, organised by emissaries from Paris, ruled the town absolutely. The official authorities of the city and of the district went in abject terror of them; for a denunciation sent to the headquarters in Paris by this society was like a report sent thither from an army in the field by one of the legislative spies who accompanied the generals of the Republic, and swaggered about in the camps wearing the mountebank costumes which may be studied with amusement and advantage in the museum of the Revolution established this year in the Pavillon de Flore at Paris. The members of this _Société Populaire_ openly pillaged the churches and convents, made domiciliary visits, sold certificates of 'civism,' and dictated the most extraordinary measures of confiscation and outrage. Their loudest leader was a certain Pierre Gogois, who used to wind up their meeting by singing songs of his own composition, addressed to the 'crowned brigands who were trying to re-establish the abominable monarchy with the help of their anthropophagous hordes!' These worthies abolished the school kept by the 'Daughters of the Cross,' confiscated their property, and set up their own headquarters in the convent. In some way the Bouzier fund escaped their clutches, and it has been so well managed that in 1871 the income was found large enough to warrant the managers in establishing three scholarships instead of two. The good example of the Abbé has been followed in our own times by a Christian lady, Madame Lacroix of Sinceny. In memory of her son, a Councillor-General of the Aisne, who was universally esteemed throughout the department, and who died at the early age of thirty-five, this lady founded, a few years ago in perpetuity, eight prizes, to be annually competed for by the pupils of all the communal schools of the canton of Chauny, and by the pupils of the schools established here by the Company of St.-Gobain, as well as four full scholarships at the School of Arts and Industries in Châlons-sur-Marne. The prizes are to be competed for in applied geometry, in linear and ornamental drawing, as well as in all the obligatory studies of the schools concerned. The competitors for the four Châlons scholarships must be the sons of workmen, domestic servants, labourers, or persons employed in agriculture or in manufactures within the canton of Chauny, whose incomes or earnings do not amount to 2,000 francs a year. In 1874 the Municipal Council of Chauny founded six purses of 450 francs a year, each to be competed for by candidates wishing to fit themselves to compete for the Lacroix scholarships, the successful candidates being left at liberty to enter any one of the free schools in Chauny. As Madame Lacroix has made the curates of the churches of Notre-Dame and St.-Martin _ex-officio_ members of the council of her fund, it is to be presumed that the Government at Paris will find some way of striking these clergymen out of the list, as it has already struck all ministers of religion out of the local committees of supervision in educational matters throughout France, for a French Republic is nothing if not logical. My likening of Chauny to a French Rotterdam or Amsterdam may be excused when I say that in the middle of the last century the Mayor of Chauny assured the Intendant of Soissons that the municipality had to keep up no fewer than twenty-seven bridges. What with the Oise and its affluents, and the many watercourses created about the place, either to drain the marsh lands or to facilitate navigation, Chauny really is an aquatic little capital like Annecy in Savoy. Naturally its citizens set a certain value on their fishing rights, and it may edify those who obstinately insist on regarding the feudal ages as ages of brute force, to know that so early as in 1175 the citizens of Chauny, by the lieutenant of the bailliage, Messire Regnault Doucet, asserted and successfully maintained before the royal representatives their right to fish in all the waters round about their town in all lawful ways against the pretensions of no less a personage than the Duchesse d'Orléans. In 1540 this right was confirmed to them anew, and it was then shown that at an inquest held in 1475 the witnesses had testified that from time whereof the memory of man ran not to the contrary no citizen of Chauny had ever been molested in the exercise of his right to fish in the waters of Chauny either on behalf of the Duc d'Orléans or on behalf of the King. The local archives, which are singularly rich and well-preserved, are full of instances like this, which show that the general current of life in this corner of France, long before the Revolution, was determined neither by the caprices of the great, nor by the passions of the mob, but by systematic considerations of law and of tradition, until for the confusion of France, and more or less of the civilised world, the natural evolution and development of law and order were suddenly and insanely interrupted through the inconceivable weakness of a most amiable and useless king, by the 'wild asses' of Mirabeau, acting in 1789 under the pressure of what so friendly an eyewitness of their conduct as Gouverneur Morris calls the 'abominable' populace of Paris. So complete was the civilisation of this region long before the Revolution of 1789, that the mayor, the magistrates, and the citizens of Chauny, early in the seventeenth century, succeeded in breaking down and ruining an Italian gentleman, Cesare de Rusticis, who, thanks to Concini, had secured a royal patent for canalising the Oise from La Fère to Chauny. They got a notable advocate, M. Louis Vrevin, to draw up a protest against the enterprise in the most florid and elaborate fashion of the _Plaideurs_ of Racine, and by dint of bombarding the King's Council with the names of Julius Cæsar, Pompey, Xerxes, Sesostris, Cleopatra, Cicero, Tertullian, and others, got, in 1625, what we in America now call an 'injunction,' putting a stop to the works begun by this foreigner, who 'had come into France to fix the eye of curiosity upon the river Oyse and to disturb it.' And a century later I find an operation carried out here for converting a not very satisfactory private investment into cash at the expense of the State which really would not discredit the most ingenious American 'railway king' of our own times. This also concerned a canal, the canal which unites the Oise with the Somme. This waterway became the property in 1728 of a celebrated millionaire of that time, Antoine de Crozat, and after his death fell, in the division of his estates, to the share of his granddaughter, the Duchesse de Choiseul. It was not very profitable, and it represented a capital which ought to have yielded 2,200,000 livres a year. So a certain M. Laurent, who had built for the Duc de Choiseul his magnificent Château de Chanteloup, near Amboise (pulled down fifty years ago by Chaptal, the first great producer of beetroot sugar in France), undertook to get the canal turned into money. The plate-glass works of St.-Gobain were then under the direction of M. Deslandes, the clever nominee of Mme. Geoffrin. M. Laurent tried to persuade M. Deslandes to employ Picard coal (which could be brought by the canal) instead of wood in the furnaces at St.-Gobain. M. Deslandes made the experiment, but soon gave it up, as the coal smoke injured the plate-glass. He consented, however, to take four boatloads of the Picard coal and use it in the forges connected with the works. This was enough for M. Laurent, who went to Paris with an invoice of the four boatloads of coal, laid it before the Council with an elaborate paper setting forth the value to the canal of a traffic necessary to carry on the manufacture of the famous plate glass at St.-Gobain, and got the Council finally to purchase the Duchesse's canal on his own terms. I really do not see what M. Laurent had to learn either from the 'Contrat Social' of Rousseau or even from the American Declaration of Independence! If he had lived now he would have been a sharp competitor with a countryman of mine, of whom I am told in Chauny that he came here only a few years ago, inspected the chemical works, looked into the composition of certain heaps of rubbish thrown aside even by the sagacious managers of these works, and setting up near one of the canals a genuine wooden American shed, so applied to what he found in this rubbish certain processes for the vulcanisation of indiarubber as to produce at very low cost certain articles for which a great and increasing demand exists, and thus founded a considerable industry here. He has since turned his establishment over, I am told, to a company at a great profit to himself, and gone back 'to the Rocky Mountains.' I am sorry for this, for I should have been glad to 'interview' him! CHAPTER IX IN THE AISNE--_continued_ LAON It would be hard to find in France, or out of France, on a pleasant summer's day, a more charming drive than the highway which leads from Chauny, with its great modern industries and its lively, bustling people, to the little feudal town of Coucy-le-Château, perched upon its lofty hill and dominated by one of the grandest, if not, indeed, the grandest, of feudal fortress-homes. I do not know that Gargantua would now find the people of Chauny as entertaining as Rabelais tells us they were in his time. Then he 'amused himself much with the boatmen, and above all with those of Chauny in Picardy--wonderful chatterboxes, and great at bandying chaff on the subject of green monkeys.' There is no lack of boatmen now at Chauny, though the railway has taken away much of their living; but the glory of the green monkeys, I fear, has departed. In the days of Gargantua, the Chaunois were as famous as the Savoyards now are, for wandering over France with trained monkeys and trained dogs. On October 1 in each year, on the feast of St. Rémy, every one of these peripatetic citizens was expected to appear in his native town, there to join in a procession which marched from what is now known as the Port Royal to the Bailliage, bearing to the lieutenant-general of the king a traditional present in the form of a huge pasty, decorated with eggs and chestnuts, and surmounted by a pastry tower. To the confection of this pasty the famous mills of Chauny, reputed the best in France, were bound to contribute five _setiers_ of wheat, and the guild of the butchers a calf's head. Before the procession marched a learned dog, trained to all manner of tricks and devices, and upon either side of the dog the town trumpeters, sounding their finest and loudest _fanfares_. At the Bailliage the lieutenant-general received the procession, seated in a great chair of state in the midst of the hall, with wide open doors, that all the people crowding into the Place might see what went on within. Before this high functionary the learned dog advanced, quite alone, and performed all his best tricks. He then gave way to the bearer of the pasty. This having been gravely accepted, after the manner of a feudal homage, by the lieutenant-general, the bearer, passing it on to the servants of the Bailliage, proceeded himself to imitate as exactly and as skilfully as possible all the performances of his predecessor the learned dog, amid the shouting and applause of the multitude. This over, a great silence fell upon the whole assembly, and it then became the duty of the performer, assuming an attitude of profound and deferential obeisance, to salute the lieutenant-general after a fashion more easily describable by Rabelais or by M. Armand Silvestre than by me, and which seems to have been derived from some of the singular rites attributed by Von Hammer to the Templars, as a part of the ceremonial observed by them in their secret conclaves. When all this had been duly gone through with, the 'jongleurs' of Chauny received the Royal permission to resume their perambulations of the realm for another year, and the day wound up with junketings and jollifications all over the town. The 'jongleurs' and the learned dogs and the green monkeys have passed away, with the lieutenant-general of the king. But I found a certain homely shrewdness and vivacity in the people with whom I talked as they went in and out of the '_Pot d'Etain_,' the chief hostelry of the place, and the fact that this chief hostelry still keeps its good old-time name of the 'Tin Pot,' and has not changed itself into a 'Grand Hôtel de Chauny,' seemed to me to argue a survival here of common sense and sound local feeling. The host of the 'Tin Pot,' a solid, well-to-do personage, learned in crops and horses, gave me a capital trap, shaded with an awning such as is worn on the delightful little basket-waggons at Nice and Monte-Carlo, and a wide-awake driver for my trip to Coucy and Anizy, on the way to Laon. His daughter, a decidedly good-looking young lady, not wholly unconscious of her natural advantages, who kept the guests of the café in capital order, seemed to have no high opinion of the powers that be in France. She took up an English sovereign which I laid down on the counter when settling a bill, and looked at it with much interest. 'That weighs more than a napoleon,' she said; 'and who is the young lady? She is pretty, and it is a good head.' I explained that the lady was young because the coin was old, and that the head was the head of the Queen of Great Britain, who had reigned over that realm for more than fifty years. 'More than fifty years!' exclaimed the damsel; 'is it possible! And still the same queen! Ah! they are well behaved the English; no wonder they are rich. They are not such babies as we are!' After passing through the well-built and neatly kept _cités ouvrières_ of the Chauny branch of the Company of St.-Gobain, and the little suburb of Autreville, the highway to Coucy-le-Château, and to the once royal city of Soissons, runs through such fine woodlands, alternating with parks and highly-cultivated fields, that one seems to be traversing a great private domain. The trees are as well-grown as any you see in England; the hedges are luxuriant, the roadway is admirably made and perfectly well kept. The Comte de Brigode has a handsome château here, standing well in a large park; and there is a good deal of hunting and shooting here in the season. Near by, too, is the pleasant château of Lavanture, long the home of a branch established here of the once famous Dauphinese family of De Théis. It was brought here from the land of Bayard and of De Comines by a stalwart soldier, one of the lansquenet officers of Francis I., but its renown in Picardy is of a gentler and more humane type; and after giving a long succession of kindly and learned men to the public service through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it finally died out with Constance de Théis, Princesse de Salm, who was known under the Directory and the Empire in Paris as the 'Muse of Reason,' and the 'Boileau of Women,' and with her nephew, the last Baron de Théis, one of the most charming of men, and one of the most conscientious and accurate of archæologists and collectors. The baron died in 1874. The 'objets d'art et de haute curiosité,' brought together by him with infinite pains and unerring taste into his château of Lavanture, were dispersed under the hammer of the auctioneer, and Lavanture itself passed into the possession of another race. This whole region of the Laonnais and the Soissonnais is full of historic souvenirs. It may be almost called the cradle of the French monarchy. Its reasonably well authenticated annals go back to the Roman domination. Its mediæval monasteries were among the richest; its mediæval monks among the most learned and industrious and useful of France, draining the marsh-lands, reclaiming the wastes, clearing the forests. Its feudal barons were typical men of their order, alike in their virtues and in their vices. The seigneurs of Lizy and of Mareilly, of Esternay and of Roncy, of Mauny and Trucy, come and go through the archives of the towns and communes here, now defying the kings of France and trampling on the peasants, now standing by the peasants and still defying the kings; quarrelling with and plundering the Church to-day, doing penance to-morrow, and endowing chapels and convents. You continually come amid the smiling farms and fertile acres upon some shattered hold whose towers once rose above the hamlet and the church. A region such as this in England would be rich, not in historic ruins and historic recollections alone, but in ancient strongholds of feudal power converted gradually, through the gradual progress of a strong and steadfast race, into stately modern homes. It would have its Warwick Castle and its Charlecote, its Guy's Cliff and its Stoneleigh, as well as its Kenilworth. But in the great houses and the châteaux, of which there is no lack in the Laonnais and the Soissonnais, there is little now that is historic, save their names and their sites. They are standing witnesses to the essentially criminal and senseless character of the Revolution of 1789. The _Jacqueries_ which Arthur Young found raging all over France during that year of ill omen were not much less brutal and they were much more inexcusable than the _Jacqueries_ of 1357 for which the Comte de Foix and the Captal de Buch exacted the stern vengeance chronicled by Froissart. They were the cause and not the consequence of that emigration of the landed classes which contributed so much to the downfall of law and order in France. They were one of the justifying causes, not one of the excusable consequences, of the armed coalitions of the Continent against Revolutionary France. Pétion and the other scoundrels in Paris who stirred them up were doubtless 'political' criminals, to adopt a distinction without a difference much in favour in our times. But the peasants who took an active part in these crimes were simply brigands and assassins. They murdered men, they tortured women and children, they pillaged houses, while the King of France and Navarre was assembling the States-General to reform the abuses of the government. France was at peace with all the world. It was the fashion at Versailles and in the drawing-rooms of Paris to fall into spasms of sentimental emotion over periwinkles and over peasants--to rave about the instinctive nobility of human nature and the inherent Rights of Man. Never was any country in the world in less danger of being trampled under foot by 'tyrants and oppressors' than was France in 1789, when of a sudden, all over the kingdom, the peasants, who were about to be liberated and crowned with flowers, rose like wolves upon the landholders who were to liberate and to crown them--burst by night into defenceless châteaux, dragged tender women and young children out of their beds, and drove them out into the world penniless and to starve, demolished all the valuables they could not carry away, wrecked the buildings, burned the pictures, the works of art, and the libraries. The 'Terror' of 1793 at Paris was black and vile enough. But the Terror of 1789 in the provinces was blacker and more vile. Arthur Young met on the highway seigneurs flying from their homes half-naked, with their families, in the vain hope of finding shelter in the nearest town. At Montcuq, in what is now the Department of the Lot, the peasants broke into the château of the Marquise de Fondani, and carried off all the grain, all the beds, a hundred and twenty sheets, forty-two dozen towels, fifty-four tablecloths, two hundred and forty chemises, eleven silk dresses, twelve dresses of Indian muslin, thirty-two pairs of silk stockings, five fine Aubusson tapestries. The plundered mistress of the house was driven out, to live on the charity of her friends. Her aunt, aged ninety-four years, was thrown upon a dunghill, where she died gazing on the peasants whom she had cared for and treated with kindness for years, as they divided among themselves her house-linen, her furniture, her plate, her porcelains, the very doors and windows of her home. All this was in the summer of 1789, long before a German trumpet sounded to arms on the French frontier. And all this went on throughout the glorious year 1789 all over France. At Mamers, on the Dive, in Brittany, in July 1789, while the Gardes-Françaises were dishonouring the uniform they wore and disgracing the name of France by joining in the cowardly attack of a howling mob on the Bastille, and protecting the ruffians who butchered the unfortunate De Launay, the estimable peasants of that place seized two ladies, Madame de Barneval and Madame des Malets, and beat their teeth to pieces with stones like so many Comanche savages. The people of the city of Le Mans at the same time beat to death M. de Guilly, burned alive the aged Comte de Falconnière, broke into the Château de Juigné, cut off the ears and the noses of all the persons they found there, and drove them out with pitchforks, following and striking them till they died. In Provence similar horrors were committed at the same time, under the direct instigation of the local authorities, called there the consuls. In August, 1789, M. de Barras was cut in pieces before the eyes of his wife. Madame de Listenay and her two daughters were tied naked to trees and tormented. Madame de Monteau and all the inmates of her house were tormented for eight hours and then drowned in the lake in her own grounds. At Castelnau de Montmirail, near Cahors, the head of one of two brothers, De Ballud, was cut off and the blood left to drip upon the face of the surviving brother; the Comtesse de la Mire was seized in her own house by the peasants and her arms cut to pieces; M. Guillin was slain, roasted, and eaten before the eyes of his wife. At Bordeaux the Abbés de Longovian and Dupuy were beheaded and their heads carried about on pikes. M. de Bar was burned alive in his château. All these horrors, and innumerable others not less revolting, were committed all over France in cold blood, before the advance of the 'standard of the tyrants' had set M. Rouget de l'Isle to composing the declamatory rigmarole of the _Marseillaise_. Is it possible to regard a revolution which began in this hideous, cowardly, and burglarious fashion with any feelings other than those inspired by the Gordon riots of 1780 in London? If the truth in regard to these things could have been known in America in 1789, as it may now be learned from the unanswerable testimony of authentic contemporary documents in France, there can be little doubt that Washington would have treated anyone who begged him to accept a key of the Bastille as he would have treated Dickens's Hugh or Dennis tendering to him a key of Newgate prison, with the compliments of Lord George Gordon. From the private conversation and correspondence of the few Americans then in Europe who really knew what was going on in France, the most thoughtful and alert of our public men gathered enough of the truth to regard the first French Republic with loathing and contempt. Their general feeling on the subject is expressed in an entry in his diary made during the month of October, 1789, long before 'the Terror,' by Gouverneur Morris. 'Surely it is not the usual order of Divine Providence to leave such abominations unpunished. Paris is, perhaps, as wicked a spot as exists. Incest, murder, bestiality, fraud, rapine, oppression, baseness, cruelty, and yet this is the city which has stepped forward in the sacred cause of Liberty!' This picture of Paris in 1789 is the more impressive that it was not drawn by a Puritan or a Pharisee. Gouverneur Morris was eminently what is called a 'man of the world,' His diary abounds in proofs that, to use his own language, he was 'no enemy to the tender passion.' Indeed, while the elections for the States-General were going on, he appears to have been almost as much interested in finding out the fair author of an anonymous billet-doux as in unravelling the politics of the day. He was not so much scandalised by the immorality as appalled by the lawlessness of the French capital. He foresaw the failure of the Revolution from the outset. A week before the States-General met in April, 1789, he wrote to General Washington: 'One fatal principle pervades all ranks. It is a perfect indifference to the violation of all engagements.' He noted at the same time the fears of Necker lest it should be 'found impossible to trust the troops.' Of the Tiers-Etat, when it had carried into effect the grotesque and senseless dictum, of the Abbé Sieyès, that the Tiers-Etat, having thitherto been nothing in France, ought thenceforth to be everything, Morris expected only what came of it under its self-assumed title of a 'National Assembly.' 'It is impossible,' he wrote to Robert Morris in America, 'to imagine a more disorderly body. They neither reason, examine, nor discuss. They clap those whom they approve, and hiss those whom they disapprove.... I told their President frankly that it was impossible for such a mob to govern the country. They have unhinged everything. It is anarchy beyond conception, _and they will be obliged to take back their chains_.' All this was long before 'the Terror,' I repeat. It was long before 'the Terror' that the hotel of the Duc de Castries was stormed and pillaged in Paris by a mob because the son of the Duc, having been grossly insulted by a popular favourite, De Lameth, had called Lameth out, allowed Lameth's seconds to choose swords as the weapons, and then wounded Lameth. This monstrous performance the Assembly sanctioned. 'I think,' wrote Morris very quietly, 'it will lead to consequences not now dreamt of.' In this same year, 1789, long before 'the Terror,' Morris, noting in his diary a conversation with General Dalrymple, a kinsman of the rather celebrated Madame Elliot, observes, 'he tells me of certain horrors committed in Arras, but to these things we are familiarised.' It was this essentially criminal and anarchical character of the Revolution of 1789 which brought on 'the Terror,' not 'the Terror' which engendered the crime and the anarchy. Why should 'horrors' have been committed at Arras in 1789? The contemporary documents show that the people in and about Arras were much better off in 1789 than they had ever before been. The renting value of farms about Arras was nearly or quite thirty per cent. higher in 1750 than it had been in 1700, and it was nearly or quite 100 per cent. higher in 1800 than in 1750. M. de Calonne cites a farm which had brought only 1,800 livres in 1714 as bringing, in 1784, 3,800 livres. Men paid these advanced prices not for the ownership of the land, which before 1789 carried with it certain social distinctions and advantages, but for the use, the productive and commercial use, of the land. The horrors of which General Dalrymple spoke, at Arras as elsewhere throughout France--here, in the Laonnais and the Soissonnais, in Provence, in Normandy, in Languedoc--were perpetrated not by a downtrodden peasantry, rising to shake off oppression, nor yet in the frenzy of a great popular rally to resist a foreign invader. They were an outburst of crime stimulated, no doubt, as we are now enabled, by fearless and conscientious investigators of the documentary history of France, to see, by cabals of political conspirators at Paris, just as the Gordon riots at London in 1780 were stimulated by anti-Catholic fanatics. But in both cases the perpetrators were governed by the mere lust of pillage and destruction. Châteaux were broken into, sacked, and burned here in the Laonnais and the Soissonnais, as Lord Mansfield's house was broken into, sacked, and burned in London, because they were full of valuables to be looted. As the drama went on, other passions came into play--passions not less but more ignoble than the mere savage lust of plunder and destruction. A branded rogue and libeller, Brissot, hurried back from his exile beyond the Atlantic to compete with Camille Desmoulins in that noble work of 'denouncing' his fellow-citizens, which earned for Camille the ghastly title of '_procureur de la lanterne_.' Madame Roland, 'the soul of the Gironde,' sustained, inspired, and animated that most mischievous group with all the concentrated fires of envy, jealousy, and revenge, which had smouldered in her own heart from the time when, as a girl of seventeen, she had passed a week 'in the garrets' of the palace at Versailles with Madame Le Grand, one of the tirewomen of the Dauphiness. The firmness with which Madame Roland met her own fate on the scaffold has been sufficiently celebrated in poetry and in prose. But it is wholesome also to remember the ferocity with which, in the 'glorious' month of July, 1789, a fortnight after the capture of the Bastille, she clamoured for the blood of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI. In 1771 Marie Phlipon, the engraver's daughter, a girl of seventeen, educated, as her own Memoirs tell us, on 'Candide,' the 'Confessions of Rousseau,' and the 'Adventures of the Chevalier de Faublas,' came away from Versailles so gangrened with envy of the glittering personages among whom she had been condemned to play the part of a humble spectator, that 'she knew not what to do with the hatred in her heart.' In 1780 she took as her husband M. Roland, a small Government official. He styled himself M. Roland de la Platière, from the name of a small estate which belonged not to him but to his elder brother, an excellent priest and canon of Villefranche (who, by the way, was guillotined at Lyons in 1793), and in 1781 his young wife made him take her to Paris, where they spent some time in vain efforts to secure letters patent of nobility! The efforts failing, they went back to live at Lyons, where M. Roland was an inspector of manufactories, and from Lyons, in July, 1789, Madame Roland, now become at last a most classical Republican, wrote to her friend M. Bosc (who afterwards published her Memoirs), a letter denouncing the timidity of their political friends. 'Your enthusiasm,' she exclaims, 'is only a fire of straw! _If the National Assembly does not regularly bring to trial two illustrious heads, or if some generous imitators of Decius do not strike them down, you will all go to the devil._' I soften and tone down the final phrase of this extraordinary outburst, for though in the original it is but an indecorum as compared with that famous passage in the 'Memoirs of Madame Roland' which M. de Sainte-Beuve gracefully describes as 'an immortal act of indecency,' it is yet an indecorum of a sort more tolerable in the French than in the English tongue. If the style is the man, the style is also the woman. In 1771 Marie Phlipon 'knew not what to do with the hatred in her heart.' In 1789 Marie Roland, then on the eve of her appearance upon the public stage of the Revolution, had found 'what to do with the hatred in her heart.' In this letter to Bosc we have the 'soul of the Gironde' _tout entière à sa proie attachée_. She clung to her regicide purpose with the tenacity of a tigress. Everything which furthered it she approved, everything which retarded it she denounced. When the king and queen were brought back captives from Varennes to Paris in June 1791 she wrote, in an ecstasy of delight, to Bancal des Issarts, that 'thirty or forty thousand National Guards surrounded our great brigands'; and her desire was that 'the royal mannikin should be shut up, and his wife brought to trial.' She was then inclined to favour the scheme of a regency, of which her ally Pétion should be the chief. We know from his own nauseating account of his conduct while journeying back from Varennes to Paris with the unfortunate royal family, how unbridled were Pétion's dreams of his own probable share in this regency; and by a very curious coincidence a passage in the diary of Gouverneur Morris confirms, on the authority of Vicq d'Azyr, the Queen's physician, Pétion's odious revelations of his own vanity and vulgarity. Under the spell of this scheme Madame Roland seems for a time to have suspended her merciless pursuit of the sovereign whom she hated. She even got so far as almost to regret the failure of the royal fugitives to escape. Why? Because their escape 'would have made civil war inevitable!' These are her own words in a letter written to Bancal des Issarts, June 25, 1791: 'We can only be regenerated by blood!' This was the horrible core of her Republican creed. It made her the ally, the accomplice, the apologist by turns of all the most sanguinary wretches who grasped at power in her distracted country--of Marat, when in a spasm of unusual energy La Fayette sought to suppress his abominable journal; of Robespierre, whose eventual triumph was to seal her own fate and that of all her personal friends, including the one man whom in all her life she seems to have passionately loved; and of Danton, red with the blood of the helpless prisoners butchered in these massacres of September 1792, of which her husband, then a member of what called itself a 'Government' in France, did not hesitate publicly, and under his official signature, to speak to the people of Paris in these terms: 'I admired the 10th of August; I shuddered at the consequences of the 2nd of September' (at the consequences of the horrors that day perpetrated, as M. Edmond Biré very aptly points out, not at all at the horrors themselves); 'I well understood what must come of the long-deceived patience and of the justice of the people. I did not inconsiderately blame a first terrible movement, but I thought that it was well to prevent its being kept up, and those who sought to perpetuate it were deceived by their imagination!' This monstrous language was used by Roland in a placard published on the walls of Paris on September 13. The massacres had not then really ceased, and the 'first terrible movement' seemed likely to be followed by a second not less 'terrible,' which might make things dangerous, not for the prisoners huddled under lock and key only, but for certain members of the Legislative Assembly, the Girondists themselves! Is it conceivable that now, after a hundred years, rational beings should look back with any feelings but those of contempt and horror upon these 'patriots' of 1789? Madame Roland, 'the soul of the Gironde,' was simply the soul of a conspiracy of ambitious criminals masquerading in the guise of philanthropists and philosophers. There is something biblical in the dramatic completeness of the chastisement which overtook this unhappy woman. 'They that take the sword shall perish by the sword.' The murder of the king, which Madame Roland did so much to compass, led not indirectly to the ruin of her own most trusted political friends and associates. The murder of the queen, for which she had longed and laboured, was brought to pass, on October 16, 1793, by men who had then made up their minds to send herself to the scaffold, and who sent her to it, three weeks afterwards, on November 8, 1793. In the ridiculous revolutionary calendar of the epoch, this date stood as the 18th Brumaire; Year II. It was celebrated six years afterwards on the 18th Brumaire of the year VIII. of the Republic, by the advent to supreme authority of the Corsican soldier who was to found a despotic empire upon the results of that 'universal war' into which France had been insanely driven by 'the soul of the Gironde.' A mere coincidence, of course! It was a mere coincidence, too, that the Girondist, Dufriche-Valazé, who, at the trial of Louis XVI., especially gratified the personal malignity of Madame Roland by the insolence with which he treated the royal captive, should have tried to save his own head when he and his comrades at last were writhing in the iron grip of Robespierre, by eagerly denouncing his friend and associate, Valady, as the real author of a particularly virulent placard intended by the Girondists to turn the fury of the Parisian mob against the Jacobins! Seeing that he had disgraced himself to no purpose, the wretched creature, who had contrived to conceal a dagger about his person, drew it out when the merciless prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville, rising in his place, demanded, on October 29, 1793, that all the Girondists then on trial, having been found guilty by the jury--though no plea had been heard in their defence, and the judge had not summed up--should be instantly condemned to suffer death and the confiscation of their property under the Law of December 16, 1792--a law passed by the Girondists themselves, and highly approved by 'the soul of the Gironde.' Unobserved in the general excitement Valazé drove the dagger into his heart, and crying out, 'I am a dead man!' fell bleeding to the floor. When his companions had been removed by the guards, Fouquier-Tinville rose again in his place, and requested that the tribunal would order the corpse before them to be taken with the living criminals to the Place de la Révolution, and there with them _guillotined_! From this even the Convention shrank. But the dead body of Valazé was in fact carried in a little cart through the streets of Paris, behind the dismal cortège of the condemned, 'lying stretched upon the back, and the face uncovered,' on October 31. After the execution was over it was flung, with the remains of his companions, into a great pit. This was the end, for Madame Roland and her worshippers, in four short years, of the 'great reformation' of which, on May 17, 1790, she had written to one of her friends that it could only be carried through by 'burning many more châteaux!' For France, and the French people, the end of it, I fear, has not yet come. Rapine and confiscation have not been unknown, unfortunately, in the history of any civilised State. But under what modern government, excepting the government of the first French Republic, has sheer pillage, mere downright robbery, been recognised as a legitimate instrument of political propagandism, and, in fact, as a title to property? While the Girondists predominated in France, Brissot, self-styled de Warville, was their avowed leader; and Brissot, ten years before the Revolution, in his 'Philosophic Researches into the Rights of Property, and Robbery considered in the Light of Nature,' published at Chartres in 1780, had laid it down as a great principle that 'exclusive ownership is, in Nature, a real crime.' 'Our institutions,' said this worthy man, 'punish theft, which is a virtuous action, commended by Nature herself.' Clearly such 'institutions' needed a great reformation. It came. France was 'regenerated by blood,' and the disciples of Rousseau widened the area of human happiness, not by burning only, but by 'looting' all the houses they could break into. The châteaux having been duly pillaged and burned, and their owners driven to fly for their lives, the government, controlled by the 'principles' of Brissot, made emigration a crime, seized the remaining property of the 'emigrants,' and turned it over with a national title, to other people! A most interesting and valuable chapter in history is still to be written on the relation of the French Revolution to property in France. Such a history cannot be written by the unassisted light of the statutes and the code. Family records, private correspondence, the reports and despatches of the diplomatic agents of the successive French Governments between 1789 and 1799, must all be laid under contribution, if we are to get at the truth concerning the conditions under which a very large proportion of the land of France passed during that period, from the ownership of men who had much to lose by the changes of the Revolution, into the ownership of men who had everything to gain from those changes. The landed proprietors of France were driven into emigration, not that France might be free--for France was much more free before the emigration began in 1789 than she was in 1791--but that other people might get possession of their estates. Without understanding this, it is impossible to understand some of the most atrocious measures adopted, chiefly while the Girondists were masters, first by the Legislative Assembly, and then by the Convention, in regard to 'emigrants.' This subject was evidently dealt with in the Assembly and the Convention, as the American Colonel Swan discovered, in 1791, that the tobacco question was dealt with--'by a knot of men who disposed of all things as they liked, and who turned everything to account.' On October 23, 1792, for example, a decree was adopted inflicting the penalty of death on any emigrant who should return to France! A fortnight later, on November 8, 1791, a similar decree made it a capital offence for any 'emigrant' to enter a French colony! The first of these decrees was levelled at emigrants whose estates had been seized by the 'popular societies' all over France, and sold, or put in the way of being sold. The second was aimed at the owners of estates in such colonies as Hayti, then one of the richest and most flourishing, as it is now one of the most wretched and uncivilised islands in the world. A curious 'Minute Book' of the 'Friends of Liberty' at Port-au-Prince, which was given to me in 1871 by an old French resident of Santo Domingo, contains a list of the great proprietors of the island, annotated and marked in a way which indicates that a systematic plan of action against them was either then adopted, or about to be adopted, by the agents of the 'Friends' at Paris. As the spoliation went on, the decrees became more and more Draconian. In March and April 1793, it was decreed that 'any person convicted of emigration, or any priest within the category of priests ordered to be transported, who should be found on French territory, should be put to death within twenty-four hours!' As in many cases the question of the crime of emigration was to be decided by persons actually enjoying the property of the alleged emigrant, this short shrift was a most effectual 'warranty of title.' On March 5, 1793, it was decreed that, 'any young girl _aged fourteen_ or more, who, having emigrated, should have come back and have then been sent out of France by the authorities, and who should return to France a second time, should be forthwith _put to death_.' This is perhaps the most shamelessly felonious of all these felonious decrees, adopted, be it remembered, while Madame Roland was still the 'soul of the Gironde,' and still taking an active part in the preparation and promulgation of all the acts of the State! The object of this abominable decree was obvious. In some cases the property of families in France was actually saved and carried through the tempest of the Revolution by young girls, who fearlessly faced all the horrors of the time, remained in their homes, and, supported by a few faithful friends and servants, such as for the credit of human nature and the confusion of Schopenhauer, are really sometimes to be found doing their duty in such emergencies, successfully maintained their right to the estates of their fathers. Near the picturesque old capital of Le Puy in the Haute-Loire, Mademoiselle Irène de Tencin, after her father was driven from his château, remained there with her young brother and a few loyal servants--maintained her rights, collected what money she could, bought _assignats_ for gold, and so bought back the confiscated land and the furniture of her home. A tailor of Le Puy wished to marry her, and the 'Republican' council threatened her with death if she refused! 'Death on the spot!' she replied. Then they actually locked her up in prison for a year! But she held out to the end and carried her young brother safely through until the days of law came back. The decree of March 5, 1793, condemning girls of fourteen to death in certain cases, was intended to prevent 'emigrants' from sending back any more daughters of this type to France, to represent the rights of the family. About this there can be no manner of doubt. Could a more signal proof than this decree affords be given of the essentially predatory and criminal direction which was given to the domestic policy of France by the 'knot of men who disposed of all things as they liked, and who turned everything to account'? They had their tentacles out all over France. The 'Sociétés populaires,' of which I have seen it stated by writers of authority that no fewer than 52,000 existed, and were at work in 1792, served them everywhere, the local leaders of these 'societies' of course sharing with them in the general booty according to their several deserts. The story of a single family in Provence, as told in an admirable monograph by M. Forneron, illustrates perfectly the methods and the results of this organisation of confiscation in the name of patriotism and philanthropy. When the States-General were summoned in 1789 the Marquis de Saporta, a kinsman of the great house of Crillon, now represented by the Duchesse d'Uzès, was the seigneur of Montsallier, a domain near the ancient and picturesque little city of Apt between Avignon and Vaucluse. His own estate was large, and he had greatly increased it in 1770, by marrying a daughter of one of the richest planters in Hayti. Like many other men of his rank at that time, he was an ardent admirer of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and a firm believer in the native nobility and general perfectibility of man. He was a very popular landlord, and his generosity was equal to his wealth. During six months of a severe famine he fed the peasants of Montsallier at his own expense. He was one of the believers in Madame de Staël's man of destiny, her father, the Genevese banker, Necker. In November 1790 he was elected constitutional mayor of Apt, and inducted into office 'with much applause' by a solemn service in the parish church. In February 1791, a local patriot named Reboulin surnamed the 'Roman,' and an armourer named Thiebault who had joined the Marseilles club, and consequently were in correspondence with Paris, organised a systematic attack upon the Marquis. 'This man,' they said at Marseilles, 'is an enemy of the constitution by reason of his rank and of his rage at what is going on. He is a _ci-devant_ noble, who became mayor by intrigues and cabals.' From that moment no peace was given to the Saporta family till, one by one, they were driven out of France. The Marquis held out bravely as long as he could, and was the last to leave. When his wife left he gave her a passport signed by himself as mayor, in which he described her as the 'citoyenne Laporte,' the object of this being that no evidence should exist to show that Madame de Saporta had really 'emigrated.' In default of such evidence there was some chance that her property rights might be respected. After the fall of the Directory the Saportas ventured to come back, and in 1800 they finally recovered so much of their property as had not before that time been sold 'by the State.' There was not much left. A sister of the Marquis, the Marquise d'Eyragues, who had enjoyed a very large income before the Revolution, wrote to her nephew in 1800 that she esteemed herself very happy to recover a 'house to live in and two thousand francs a year.' Here in this beautiful region around Laon and Chauny and Coucy, the story of those evil days is told almost as instructively by the properties which then escaped ruin as by those which, like the estate of the Saportas, were confiscated and broken up. In the eighteenth century it was full of fine buildings--châteaux, churches, monasteries, hospitals. Go where you please, you come upon the sites of edifices, once local centres of civilisation, which were pillaged, burned, and demolished, while the 'national agents' ruled the provinces for the benefit of the speculators at Paris. Here stood the stately Château de Molerepaire, of which nothing now remains but a farmhouse; there, the ancient parish church of St. Paul at Mons-en-Laonnois, one of the finest in the district, now utterly gone, all its materials having been sold for the profit of certain 'national agents' in 1794. Wissignicourt possessed in 1789 one of the most beautiful churches in Northern France and two considerable châteaux. The church of St.-Rémi was first robbed of all its ornaments, and finally, in 1793, completely demolished. The Château de la Cressonnière, built in the sixteenth century by Claude de Massary, and inhabited by his descendants as resident landlords until the Revolution, has entirely disappeared. Of the Château de Wissignicourt, founded in the twelfth century by a baron of the great Picard family of De Hangest, some portions still exist. But this little commune, which occupies one of the most naturally charming sites in the Laonnois, between Anizy and Laon, is indebted to the 'patriots' of Chauny, who domineered over it during the Revolution, for the annihilation of local features, which in these days of railway travel and picturesque tourists would have materially enhanced the value of its not very fertile territory. These buildings, these châteaux and churches, were part of the accumulated capital of France, and certainly not the least important part of the accumulated capital of the commune of Wissignicourt. If they had been destroyed in the heat of conflict, as so many such buildings were destroyed in this country during the wars of religion, and in Germany, and even in Great Britain, the philosophers might have some plausible pretext at least for citing their favourite proverb that you 'cannot make an omelette without breaking some eggs.' And we might be invited to set off, against this loss of accumulated capital, certain important gains in the way of more liberal institutions and an enfranchised industry. But this is not the case. The vandalism of the Revolution of 1789 was perpetrated in cold blood. I speak, of course, now of the real authors of it all, at Paris, not of the mere mobs in the provinces, hot with the sordid lust of plunder or with personal spites and rancours--and it was perpetrated for the profit of those who promoted it. The bronzes and brasses and lead and hammered iron of the desecrated churches were turned into money, and the money went into the pockets of the 'patriots.' Monuments that would now be priceless were destroyed, for example, at St.-Denis, not in the least that the metal might be cast into cannon--I am told the military records show that the republican armies fought their battles, when finally they got to fighting them, exclusively with the artillery of the monarchy--but that the metal might be sold in the markets, and the proceeds confiscated by the vendors. Certain rogues at Chauny and their employers in Paris were doubtless the richer a hundred years ago for the desecration of the Church of St.-Rémi and the pillage of La Cressonnière and the Château de Wissignicourt. But Wissignicourt and its people are the poorer to-day for these performances. An instructive estimate might be made of the dead loss which the little city of Bourg-en-Bresse would have sustained during the past century if the sensible Savoyards of that place had not cunningly protected the magnificent statue-tombs of Marguerite d'Autriche, Marguerite de Bourbon and Philibert le Beau in their grand old church of Notre-Dame de Brou, against the rapacity of the revolutionary 'operators,' by cramming the whole church full of straw and hay. Soissons, in reality one of the very oldest cities in France, the seat, when Cæsar first assailed it, of a Gallic prince, whose authority extended beyond the Channel into Britain, and the cradle long afterwards of the first Frankish monarchy, might be taken, so far as its general aspect goes, for a creation of the Second Empire, were it not for its beautiful old cathedral, sadly damaged in 1793, but very successfully restored, and for the graceful towers of St.-Jean-des-Vignes. These latter were rescued with extreme difficulty by the townspeople themselves from the felonious fury of the democratic operators, who despoiled their city for ever of all the rest of that superb castellated abbey. Of St.-Médard without the walls, which, were it now standing, would be to the history of the French people what Winchester Cathedral is to the history of the English, only the subterranean chapels remain. The materials and the contents of the abbey itself were turned into cash. St.-Médard-lez-Soissons was only one of eighteen considerable Benedictine abbeys which down to the Revolution existed within the limits of the modern department of the Aisne of which Laon is the chief town. Besides these, this region, the early reclamation and cultivation of which, as I have already said, was chiefly due to the monastic orders, possessed, before 1793, sixteen abbeys and monasteries of the Premonstratensians. The mother abbey of this great order, founded by Saint-Norbert in the twelfth century, commemorates in its name the great agricultural work done by him and his disciples. Prémontré, 'the meadows of the monastery,' was the chief seat of the Order which a hundred years ago comprised more than eighteen hundred monasteries, the chapters-general of which were held here. The vast and stately buildings of Présmontré are still standing. They were constructed on a scale of royal grandeur, worthy of the Order, under the Abbé de Muyn, towards the end of the reign of Louis XIV., and they much resemble the buildings erected at the same time at the Grande Chartreuse, near Grenoble. Like these, they were seized upon in 1793 by the revolutionists. But in both cases the buildings were saved, those of the Grande Chartreuse because there was no temporal use to which they could be put, standing, as they do, high up above the gorges of the Guier, in their glorious solitude amid the pine-forests of Dauphiné; and these of Prémontré for exactly the opposite reason, because they were available for purposes more profitable than the sale of their materials was likely to be. They were converted first into a saltpetre factory by the little knot of financial operators who bought them for a song as 'national property.' Afterwards an attempt was made to establish glassworks in them. Then they became an orphan asylum, and now they are a great asylum for lunatics! St.-Jean-des-Vignes at Soissons, already mentioned, was the only monastery of the Joannists in France, and it was one of fifteen Cistercian abbeys in this region. The remaining ruins of the church of one of these Cistercian abbeys at Longpont, near Soissons, vindicate its ancient fame as one of the jewels of French religious architecture. It was built under St.-Louis, and consecrated in his presence. It shared, in 1793, the fate of the almost equally beautiful church of St.-Leger at Soissons, the apse, transepts, and cloisters of which, even in their present condition, suffice to show what Soissons lost when it was looted and desecrated. A worthy bishop of Soissons, M. de Garsignies, bought what remained of St.-Leger in 1850, and established there a seminary. Add to these edifices those of twelve commanderies of the Temple, ten commanderies of St. John of Jerusalem, two Chartreuses, ten collegiate churches, and more than a hundred and fifty priories, nunneries, and other religious communities, and it will be seen what a grand field of enterprise and speculation was thrown open in the Laonnais and the Soissonnais to the disciples of Brissot de Warville and of Condorcet by the seizure of the Church property alone. Scarcely less numerous than the religious edifices in this region were the châteaux. Of these comparatively few are now standing, either as picturesque ruins or as residences. The bas-reliefs and tapestry of the ancient buildings of La Ferté-Milon, the birthplace of Racine, are still worthy of a visit. Of Nanteuil, a fine château of the time of Francis I., a single tower remains. The magnificent manor-house of the Ducs de Valois at Villers-Cotterets (a little beyond the limits of the region I am now treating of) was made an historic monument by Napoleon III.; but it is none the better for base uses against which it surely ought to have been protected as the birthplace of Alexandre Dumas by the ghosts of Porthos, Athos, and Aramis! The towers and the donjon of the Château of Nesle on the Somme, whence sallied forth, in the time of Louis XV., the four much too famous sisters De Mailly, were not so maltreated in 1793 as to be quite uninhabitable when the first Napoleon passed a night there, during his final struggle for empire; and there still is to be seen the old Lombard-Roman church of St.-Leger, wherein was held a council strong enough to coerce Philip Augustus into doing what Henry VIII. refused, three centuries afterwards, to do, and to make him take back his divorced queen Ingelburga of Denmark. Braisnes, planted upon a peak, overlooks what is left of the exquisite twelfth-century church of St.-Yved, ruthlessly battered and abused in 1793, and robbed of certain matchless monuments in enamelled copper for the benefit of a syndicate of patriotic rogues. The Châteaux de Gandelu, de Neuville, de St.-Lambert are ruins. The lordly cradle of the great House of Guise; the tower of Marchais in which, tradition tells us, the League was first conceived by which the princes of Lorraine were backed in their struggle for the throne of France; the keep of Beaurevoir, one of the prisons of the Maid of Orléans--these may be seen. Of how many others, the names of which ring out as from a chronicle of French history, nothing but the names is left! Caulincourt, Coeuvres d'Estrées, de Bohain de Luxembourg, d'Armentières, de Conflans, de Condé, de Comin, de Buzancy, de Puységur. Two of the most important châteaux in this region in 1789 were those of Pinon and of Anizy. The first still exists, and stands substantially as it then stood, and is now admittedly the finest in the Laonnais. The second was wrecked and demolished. It is perhaps worth while to tell what befell Anizy, and how Pinon escaped. Both Anizy and Pinon are of very ancient origin. Anizy seems to have been a fortress of the Emperor Valentinian in the fourth century, and it was pillaged by the Vandals in the fifth. On December 26, 496, Clovis, in recognition of the baptism he had received on the preceding day at the hands of St.-Rémi in the cathedral church of Reims, gave the lordships of Anizy, Coucy, and Leuilly to that prelate. Two years afterwards St.-Rémi, who had made Laon a bishopric, gave Anizy to his nephew St.-Génébaud, the first bishop of Laon, to be held and the revenues thereof to be applied by the bishops of Laon for ever to the benefit of the poor of that diocese. He coupled the gift with a solemn curse and anathema upon all who should ever disturb or misapply the donation. From that time to 1789 Anizy was a lordship of the bishops of Laon, who in time were made dukes and peers of France. The annals of Laon attest the loyalty through long ages of the bishops of Laon to the injunctions laid upon them by St.-Rémi. The Normans came to Anizy, for example, in 883, and pillaged and ruined the place. Four years afterwards the bishop of Laon founded there a hospital, or Hôtel-Dieu, for the poor and infirm of the diocese, and the king, Charles le Gros, endowed it handsomely. In 904 Jeanne, sister of Raoul, bishop of Laon, with the help of her brother, founded at Anizy a priory of Sisters to receive and care for the young girls of the place. In 996, Adalberon, bishop of Laon, founded a maladrerie, or lepers' hospital, at Anizy, to be 'a refuge and place of healing for the poor of Anizy, Wissignicourt, and Pinon.' As time went on and the feudal system became more fully developed, the bishops of Laon found it judicious to establish one of those high feudal personages known as Vidames, and the relations of the Vidames of Laon with their episcopal superior, on the one hand, and with the people of such lordships as Anizy on the other, become very interesting. They are made more interesting still by the entrance upon the scene of the kings of France, contending for a real royal authority, of great barons like the Sires de Coucy bent on getting a complete local independence of any central government, and of the people of the communes, who very early saw their own game as between the Church, the barons, and the king, and played it here, as in so many other places, with most respectable skill and success. There is a picturesque story of Pope Benedict VIII., who held a council at Laon, going from Laon to view the episcopal château at Anizy, with a _cortège_ of cardinals and bishops, and on the way springing down nimbly from his horse to rescue the bishop of Cambray, obviously a prelate of much weight, under whom a little bridge gave way as they were crossing the river Lette. This was in the year 1018. A century later, in 1110, Gandri, bishop of Laon, summoned John Comte de Soissons, Robert II. Comte de Flandre, and Enguerrand I. Sire de Coucy, the three loftiest and lordliest personages then of this part of the world, to a conference at his château in Anizy, there to fix and define where the authority of the Sire de Coucy ended and that of the bishops of Laon began. In 1210 the burgh of Anizy became a free commune and elected its first mayor. The next year its seigneur, Robert de Châtillon, bishop-duke of Laon, at his own cost fortified the place with walls and towers, and did this so well that three years afterwards Enguerrand III. de Coucy, just then the most masterful person in all this part of France, thought it wise to treat with the bishop-duke as to their respective rights of ownership in the adjoining forest of Roncelais. They agreed so perfectly that the formidable lord of Coucy immediately afterwards did the bishop-duke and the people of Anizy the notable service of leading a band of his retainers against a company of brigands who were burning lonely farmhouses and carrying off the crops. Having got their mayor and their walls and their towers, the burghers of Anizy took to quarrelling with the bishop-dukes of Laon, and so got their communal rights suppressed by one of those prelates in 1230, only to see them re-established again half a century later in 1278, by another bishop-duke, Geoffroi de Beaumont, who made a compromise with his troublesome vassals, reserving only to himself the right to nominate the officers of justice. The king of France, Philippe le Hardi, be it observed, took sides with the burghers in this affair, and they raised a monument to him in 1293. This, with almost everything else of any importance in Anizy, was destroyed by the English of Edward III., in the next century, one of the local seigneurs, the lord of Locq (where a château still represents the extinct lordship) and the curé of the church of St.-Peter falling valiantly in the defence of their people. The bishop-duke came over to help them from Laon, and died in his château at Anizy the next year. In 1352, another bishop-duke founded a free market at Anizy for three days in each year, at the feast of St.-George, and in 1408 his successor built a grain-hall there. In 1513 Louis XII. granted the burghers a free market every Monday. This so incensed the then bishop-duke, Louis de Bourbon-Vendôme, that he tried to suppress the annual market and take back the grain-hall, in return for which attempts the worthy burghers pillaged his château at Anizy and pulled it nearly to pieces. Clearly the seigneurs did not have things all their own way in these good old times! For after several years of contention Louis de Bourbon-Vendôme came to terms with his burghers, and matters were put upon so friendly a footing that, in 1540, the bishop-duke began the erection at Anizy of a new château, to be surrounded with an extensive and beautiful park. The plans were made by the first architects and artists of the Renaissance; the sculptors of Francis I. were employed to decorate the façade with statues--the new buildings were connected with what remained of the earlier château by a grand gallery; pavilions flanked the main edifice and adorned the grand cour d'honneur. King Francis, during his stay at Folembray, frequently visited his cousin the Bishop-duke in this château, one of the great chambers of which was long known as the room of King Francis. When Louis de Bourbon-Vendôme died in 1557, the château was not entirely finished, and a lawsuit followed his death, between his personal heirs and the bishop-dukes for the possession of the buildings. It lasted for nearly a century, and when the prelates at last were declared to be the owners, in 1645, the stately edifice had fallen into a sad state of dilapidation. The Cardinal d'Estrées restored the façade in 1660, but one of his successors actually unroofed it and sold the lead. In 1750, a bishop-duke of quite another type, the Cardinal de Rochechouart, spent great sums of money upon it, restored it, and decorated it throughout, and made it one of the noblest residences in this part of France. At the same time he put in order all the public buildings of Anizy, and had the roads carefully paved throughout the borough. He was followed by a prelate of a like mind, Louis de Sabran, the last bishop-duke of Laon, who is still remembered in his episcopal city for his public spirit and his benevolence, and who made the park of Anizy his special care. Then came the Revolution. In 1790, the local 'directory' of the district of Chauny laid violent hands upon the château. It was in great part demolished, and what was left of it defaced. It was robbed of its precious furniture, pictures, and ornaments, its valuable chimney-pieces, its elaborate iron and brass work. The old trees were cut down in the park, and the railings destroyed. The fine old church of Ste.-Geneviève at the same time was first turned into a hall of meeting for the electors, who distrusted each other so profoundly that when their first meeting was held, May 3, 1790, the documents relating to the elections were locked up in a confessional, lest they should be stolen, and then deliberately wrecked and looted by the 'friends of Liberty,' or, in other words, by a squad of ruffians from Chauny and the neighbourhood, who, after putting on the sacerdotal vestments, marched about the church carrying the daïs, beat the crosses and the carved stalls to pieces, smashed and defaced the monuments and the altars, broke open the poor-box, and carried off all that was worth stealing. The stone slabs from the graves were sold, a saltpetre factory was established in the church, the presbytery was made a town-hall, and the 'worship of Reason,' in the person of a young woman of Chauny, was solemnly inaugurated at Anizy! The château and the park were sold by the self-constituted dictators of Anizy to one M. Orry de Sainte-Marie on August 7, 1792, for a nominal price. This M. Orry seems to have been an 'operator.' For in June, 1793, he sold the château to the 'ci-devant Vicomtesse de Courval,' the mother of the then owner of the Château of Pinon, about which I shall presently have something to say, and bought it back from her again in March 1795, leaving her the right to enjoy it until her death, which took place in 1806. All this curiously illustrates the perils and uncertainties of land-ownership in such times! In 1808, Orry de Sainte-Marie, having by that time become a justice of the peace at Anizy, and doubtless a fervent Imperialist, sold the château to M. Collet, Director of the Mint at Paris. From him it passed by sale, in 1824, to M. Senneville, and in 1841 to M. Lafont de Launoy. Let us turn now to Pinon, two kilomètres to the south of Anizy, long one of the chief seats of the power of the famous Sires de Coucy, one of whom seems to have been the real author of the arrogant motto since, in one or another form, attributed to more than one great family in France: Roi ne suis Ne prince, ne comte aussy: Je suis le Sire de Coucy. The Château of Pinon was originally built by Enguerrand II. of Coucy in the twelfth century. His grandfather Enguerrand I. had been invited by the Archbishop of Reims to establish himself at Pinon, which was a part of the splendid Christmas gift made by Clovis to the see of Reims, as I have already stated, after his baptism at Reims; and Enguerrand II., who appears to have been a typical baron, finding the place favourable for the feudal industry of levying toll on trade and commerce, there erected a great castle, one of the many legendary castles to be found all over Europe which boasted a window for every day in the year. He thought fit, however, to select for this castle a site which belonged to the Abbey of St.-Crispin the Great at Soissons, and thus got himself into trouble with the Church. Strong as he was, he found the Church too strong for him. The Bishop of Soissons compelled him to agree to pay an annual and perpetual rent to the Abbey, and made him also take the cross and go to the Holy Land to expiate his sacrilege. There he fell in battle. The grandson of this baron, Robert de Coucy, in 1213 granted the people of Pinon 'a right of assize according to the use and custom of Laon,' and the next year founded there a hospital. Twenty years afterwards Pinon became a commune, and John de Coucy granted the inhabitants a free market. The Château of Pinon passed in the 14th century to the elder branch of the great house of de Coucy, and in 1400 it was sold, under duress to Louis of France (Duc d'Orléans) by the last heiress of the house Marie de Coucy, daughter of Enguerrand VII. by his first wife Isabel, Princess Royal of England, and eldest daughter of Edward III. by Philippa of Hainault. A hundred years afterwards Louis XII. had taken possession of the estates and the château, and made a gift of these to his daughter Claude de France. In spite of this, however, the property passed into the hands of the ancient family of De Lameth, and towards the end of the seventeenth century the Château de Pinon witnessed one of the most romantic and abominable murders recorded in the annals of French gallantry. As Pinon is still, after all the chances and changes of seven hundred years, the finest inhabited château in the Soissonnais, and as, by a curious throw of the dice of Destiny, it now belongs to a fair compatriot of mine, perhaps I may be allowed to tell this somewhat gruesome tale, which has a flavour rather Italian than French. Charles Marquis d'Albret, the last of that illustrious race, Prince de Mortagne and Comte de Massant, was the nephew of the Maréchal d'Albret, and he came therefore, on the mother's side, of the royal blood of Henry of Navarre. He loved, not wisely but too well, Henriette de Roucy, Comtesse de Lameth, called 'la belle Picarde,' whose husband was seigneur of the Château de Pinon. In August 1678, the Marquis d'Albret was at the Château de Coucy with the army of Flanders, then commanded by the Marshal-Duke of Schomberg, who afterwards fell fighting for King William III. in Ireland at the battle of the Boyne. The Comte de Lameth, who had in some way discovered the relations which existed between his wife, 'la belle Picarde,' and the Marquis d'Albret, shut the comtesse into a room at Pinon, and compelled her, by threats and violence, to write a letter to the marquis giving him a rendezvous at Pinon. On the day mentioned in her letter the Comte de Lameth ordered six horses to be put to his coach, and (having previously put his wife under watch and ward) drove off with an escort to Laon. News of this was carried at once to Coucy. The Marquis set forth with a single attendant on horseback to Chavignon, where at the hostelry of La Croix Blanche, he was met, as from the letter of his lady-love he expected to be, by a servant from the Château de Pinon. Armed only with pistols in his holsters, he mounted after dark and rode on from Chavignon to Pinon. There, as he entered the park-gates, just after midnight, three men, one of them Jocquet, the valet de chambre of the Comte de Lameth, sallied out upon him from under an archway, and, feigning to take him for a robber, opened fire upon him. He killed one of his assailants, and then himself fell. About fifty years ago, the then proprietor of Pinon was building a lodge for one of his keepers when the workmen came upon a gold ring in digging for the foundation. It bore the engraved name of D'Albret, and the name of the royal regiment which he commanded. He had doubtless been buried where he fell in the park. This proprietor was the father of the late Baron de Courval, formerly an officer in the French army, who, during the Second Empire, married Miss Ray of New York. The De Courvals became possessors of Pinon through the murder of the Marquis d'Albret. The way in which this came about curiously illustrates the course of justice and injustice under the _ancien régime_. This differed more in form than in fact from the course of justice and injustice in our own time. Claude, Comte de Lameth, the jealous husband of 'la belle Picarde,' was a great personage, not only Comte de Lameth but Vicomte de Laon, d'Anizy, de Marchy, and de Croix, and seigneur of Bayencourt, Pinon, Bouchavannes, Clacy, Laniscourt, Quincy, '_et autres lieux_.' But the Marquis d'Albret was a greater personage still, and the widow of the marquis, who refused to believe the story of his affair with 'la belle Picarde,' was a _dame d'atours_ of the queen, Marie Thérèse. So also was the cousin-german of the marquis, and these two dames made such a clamour about the murder that the king, Louis XIV., and of course with the king the whole court, so waged war against the Comte de Lameth that his whole family found it wise to seek safety in flight, and fearing the confiscation of all his property, the Comte (whose wife had previously gone into an Ursuline convent) sold the estate and Château of Pinon, with other estates, to his friend Pierre Dubois de Courval, president of the parliament of Paris.[8] [8] The venom of this old history recurs in the Revolution, poisoning the minds of three Lameths, concerning whom Mr. Carlyle indulges in much quite unnecessary and grotesque emotion. In 1730 Dubois de Courval pulled down the ancient Château de Pinon, and, on the designs of Mansard, built the present stately and imposing edifice. Le Nôtre laid out for him also the extensive park, and, when he died, in 1764, he left Coucy-la-Ville and Fresnes to his elder son, and to his younger, with the title of Vicomte de Courval, the château and estates of Pinon. It was the widow of this younger son, Aimé-Louis Dubois de Courval, who, as I have already said, saved what could be saved of the Château of Anizy in 1793 by buying it from the enterprising M. Orry de Sainte-Marie. Her husband, a man of worth and of note in the parliament of Paris, died on the very eve of the great troubles, December 1, 1788. He was then in his sixty-seventh year, and as he had done nothing but good at Pinon, not only embellishing the château and the park, but giving much time and money to improve the condition of the people, he would probably have been sent to the guillotine at Paris by the local 'directory at Chauny' had he lived long enough, and his property confiscated, like the property of the bishops and dukes at Anizy. His oldest son was a lad of fifteen when the storm burst in 1789. His mother took his interests resolutely in hand. She came of two aristocratic stocks, the Millys and the Clermonts-Tonnerre, but she got the better of the democrats. Like old Madame Dupin at Chenonceaux, she carried herself and her property, by woman's wit and woman's will, through the Revolution. In 1791 she contrived to get her son, then only seventeen, elected commander of the National Guard at Anizy. He ripened rapidly, under the stress of the times, bought up the 'patriots' when it was necessary--and there is abundant evidence to show that they were always in the market, even at Paris and during the worst times of the Terror--was made a baron of the empire by Napoleon, elected President of the Canton of Anizy in 1811, a councillor-general of the Aisne in the same year, and deputy in 1814. With the Restoration he became once more Vicomte de Courval and seigneur of Pinon, having long before converted the park and gardens of the château into the 'English style,' with fine watercourses and an extensive lake, and died quietly at Paris in 1822. In 1794, at the age of twenty, he married a daughter of the Marquis de Saint-Mars. His son and successor, Ernest-Alexis Dubois de Courval, was taken into high favour by Charles X., but was nevertheless made a councillor-general of the Aisne under Louis Philippe. He married the only daughter of Moreau, who was a child of nine years old when her father fell fighting against France and Napoleon in 1813. In a curious Gothic tower which he built at Pinon are still preserved some of the standards captured from the enemies of France by Moreau, and these I am assured are the only such standards, excepting those of the Invalides, recovered through the efforts of the House of Peers, which existed in France before the Crimean War. In this tower the Vicomte de Courval formed a remarkable collection of mediæval arms and armour, antique furniture, stained glass, medals and coins. This region is very rich not only in Roman remains, but in druidical stones and other vestiges of the races which dwelt here before Cæsar came. Marcus Aurelius, Trajan, Hadrian, Alexander Severus, Probus, Gordian, Constantine and Constantius are all represented on the coins found in and around the property of M. de Courval; but one of his most interesting acquisitions was a silver coin bearing the name of Clovis, with the title of 'imperator.' There is a record at Anizy of a treasure of coins of Aurelius, found there so long ago as in the middle of the twelfth century; and under the bishop-dukes of Laon a collection of Roman coins and vases was gradually formed at the mairie of Anizy, which 'disappeared' soon after the 'patriots' of Chauny undertook to 'liberate' that commune. The American Vicomtesse de Courval, who now owns Pinon, and passes a part of each year there, is the widow of a son of this Ernest de Courval. Looking backward dispassionately over this 'centennial record' of two considerable estates in the Department of the Aisne, what advantages, social, political, or economical, can be shown to have enured to the people of the commune of Anizy and of Pinon from the revolutionary processes to which those estates were subjected a hundred years ago? Not a man in Anizy or in Pinon owns a rood of land now which he might not just as easily have owned had the alienation of the Church property in those communes been conducted through the gradual and systematic processes of law and order. Instead of one remarkable and interesting château, these communes would now possess two, each in the natural course of things, a centre of local activity and civilisation. Instead of one ancient church, much despoiled and damaged, Anizy would now possess three such churches, each in its own way an object of interest to architects and artists, and it would be possible for an honest gendarme or a poor labourer on the highway to hear mass, if he liked, in any one of them, without incurring the wrath of his superiors and the loss of his daily bread. CHAPTER X IN THE AISNE--_continued_ LAON The lofty hill on which the Sires de Coucy planted their chief fortress rises above the fields and forests of the Soissonnais as the Mont St.-Michel rises above the waves and the sands of the Norman coast. The narrow streets and quaint old houses of the little town of Coucy-le-Château are huddled around the outworks of the colossal castle, almost as closely as are the climbing streets and the terraced houses of St.-Michel around the martial monastery; and each of these two places is, in its own kind, unique. I had been strongly recommended to pass the night when I visited the château, not in the little city itself, though it boasts a 'Hôtel des Ruines,' but at a little wayside inn, rather indeed a restaurant and a baiting-place for travellers by the highway than an inn, which stands at the foot of the hill of Coucy. I took the advice, and had no cause to repent it. The walk up the hill, of some two miles, to the tower and the castle was simply delightful on a fine afternoon in June. Opposite my little inn is a small and rather dilapidated château of the eighteenth century, which originally must have been a very pleasant residence; and in the extensive meadows about it were grazing a number of fine cattle, the property of M. de Vaublanche. 'He is the only man hereabouts who takes any trouble with his beasts,' said my cheery, athletic young host, and leading the way for me into the meadows, he pointed out the princes of the herd, all of them really fine animals of the best French breeds, with as much pride as if he had been the owner. 'It gives more pleasure to see these--does it not, sir?--than to look at yonder dead chimney,' he said, pointing to some extensive sugarworks, all closed and deserted, on the other side of the road. The sugar crisis has been very sharp here, as in other parts of France, and many smokeless chimneys are to be seen here as in other departments. An embattled gateway of the thirteenth century welcomes the traveller now with its open arch as he approaches the town of Coucy, and the best views of the château are to be got from the road as you climb up the long ascent. In the quaint little town the house is still carefully preserved, and the chamber itself religiously kept in order, in which, on June 7, 1594, Gabrielle d'Estrées gave birth to a son destined afterwards to make his mark in the military annals of France as César, Duc de Vendôme. An inscription on a tablet in the wall thus commemorates his advent into the world: 'In this chamber was born, and in the chamber above was baptized, the legitimised son of France, de Vendôme, a prince of very good hopes, the child of the most Christian, most magnanimous, most invincible, and most clement King of France and of Navarre, Henry IV., and of Gabrielle d'Estrées, Duchesse de Beaufort.' Not far from this house is the ancient belfry of Coucy, wherein swings a bell of dolorous prestige, the tradition of Coucy averring that, whenever a citizen of Coucy is about to die, this bell tolls of itself, and is heard by him alone. Doubtless the communal schoolmaster will ere long drive this tradition out of the mind of the rising generation in Coucy. If so I trust, though I hardly expect, that he will drive out with it another and more mischievous tradition, born within the precincts of the ancient castle. Not once, but a dozen times, this year in different parts of France, I have seen allusions made, in political journals, to the monstrous right which the seigneurs of old possessed and exercised of hanging small boys for snaring and killing rabbits within their parks and woods. The old game laws of France, like the old game laws, and indeed like many other old laws, of England and of other countries, were not over-mild. Was not a woman first strangled and then burned in England for 'coining' in the year 1789, while the States-General were performing at Paris their fantastic overture to the ghastly drama of the Terror? Yet England in 1789 knew a great deal more of personal liberty than France knows now in 1889. The tradition of the seignorial right of hanging boys for killing rabbits originated, it is probable, with Enguerrand IV., Sire de Coucy, of whom it is told that, exasperated by three young lads, scholars of the monastic school of Saint-Nicolas-aux-Bois, whom he found shooting at rabbits and hares in his woods with bows and arrows, he had the lads seized and hanged. So far from doing this within his seignorial rights, however, was the Sire de Coucy, that the monks proceeded against him vigorously, and Saint-Louis had him arrested for it, and was with much difficulty restrained by the barons of the realm from hanging him in his turn. He was only pardoned on very severe conditions, one of which was that he should do penance for a number of years in his own castle of Coucy, where, the chroniclers tell us, he died 'in shame and repentance.' His successor, Enguerrand V., took the matter so much to heart that he led the life of an anchorite at Coucy, and had himself buried in the Abbey of Prémontré near the doorway; like Alonzo de Ojeda the Conquistador, the slab upon whose grave I saw some years ago at the entrance of the ruined church of San Francisco in Santo Domingo, with an inscription reciting that he was there laid to rest, by his own request, as a great sinner, upon whose ashes all who passed should tread. Tortuous little streets lead through the town of Coucy into a great green space which commands the castle. It is approached from the new and rather pretentious lodge in which the keeper of the castle now resides, through one of the finest and loftiest avenues in France. But the tallest trees are dwarfed by the gigantic donjon tower. This rises to a height still of at least 180 feet. It is 150 feet in circumference at the base, and slopes very gradually to the summit. The hall on the ground floor measures more than forty feet in diameter, the walls being of enormous thickness. Over one of the doorways is a defaced bas-relief representing a lion attacked and slain by Enguerrand I. de Coucy. The chimney-place in the ground floor hall would make a very respectable modern house, and there is a well within the hall said to be of unknown depth. The donjon consists of three storeys above the ground floor, the main hall on the first floor being particularly remarkable for its height. The vaulted ceiling of this hall must have been very fine, and throughout it is apparent that the builders of the Château de Coucy had the comfort of the inmates and a certain stately elegance of effect much more in mind than was common with the builders of castles in the thirteenth century. The walls at the summit are more than nine feet thick, and they were doubtless surmounted originally with a great circular gallery of wood covered in with a roof. The Sires de Coucy, like other crusaders, doubtless brought back all manner of rich carpets and stuffs from the East, and with these and the wonderful carved chests and massive woodwork of the time the Château de Coucy may well have been a much more agreeable place of abode than, from our modern acquaintance with their winding stone stairways and denuded walls, we are apt to imagine these great feudal fortresses to have been. The views from the summit now are simply superb. The vast forests over which Enguerrand, the builder, gazed, seeking out the sites on which he planted so many strongholds--(it is known that besides Coucy he erected at least eight other castles, from Folembray to Saint-Lambert)--have been replaced in great part by fertile fields and smiling towns. But the land is still richly wooded. Far down, in a little wilderness beneath us, the guardian pointed out to me an odd edifice looking like a combination of a modern Gothic church with a seaside villa. This, he told me, was the residence of a distinguished artist of Paris, who passes a part of every year in this region, making studies of forest scenery. Beyond this, in a large park, is a château of the Marquis de la Châtaigneraie, once a part of the domain of Coucy. The enceinte of the château is of enormous extent. The solidity of the walls and the towers resisted so successfully the mines and pickaxes of Richelieu that the great outlines of the immense building are still easily definable, with fine traces of the architecture of the great chapel. That St.-Louis and Henry IV. visited Coucy we know, and the guardian was good enough to give me very minute and particular information as to the chambers which they occupied. He was a curious fellow, this guardian, an Alsatian immigrant, he informed me. The people here, he thought, were not so much pleased as they ought to be that the Government had given him the place, which brings him in 400 francs a year, with the lodge I have mentioned for a residence, and the right to all the crops of any kind he can raise on the land attached to the château. He was then cutting the grass, which grew very well within the precincts of the château. But he took great pains to impress upon me that he was doing this, not so much for the sake of the hay he expected to make as for the accommodation of visitors like myself, 'to make the ground pleasanter to walk upon.' This was an attention which no right-minded person could fail to recognise with a _pour-boire_, particularly as the worthy guardian complained of the extremely poor quality of the wine grown about Coucy. I told him I had always heard that King Francis I. insisted on having his wine sent to him from this place. 'Ah!' he replied, 'in those days what did they know about good wine?' The rooks in countless numbers were flying and cawing all over the beautiful old place. 'I have tried to kill these birds,' said the guardian wearily. 'They destroy my peas. But the cartridges cost too much, and I have had to give it up.' He had been in his place four months. I might think it very pleasant seeing it in June. But if I could see it in February, with the wind howling 'through the tall trees and around the huge tower!' On my return to my neat little hostelry my host came out to meet me. 'He had just heard that four councillors-general, on their way home from a meeting, would like to dine at his house. Would I object to their dining with me--there was no other good room?' Naturally I was only too glad to share the room and the dinner with them. A very good dinner it was too. 'Men learn to cook, but are born to roast.' My host's cook was born to roast both fat chickens and a capital leg of mutton. One of the councillors-general, when they drove up, went out into the kitchen to examine and report upon the outlook. He came back presently rubbing his hands together with glee. 'Admirable!' he exclaimed; 'it will be a Belshazzar's feast--a superb leg of mutton, truly superb!' 'The first green peas of the season here!' said our host, coming in with them. 'You will see if they are good. They come late here, the green peas, but you see what they are when they do come.' The four councillors-general were all Republicans. One of them, a country banker, as I learned, was a trifle sarcastic about the prospects of the party. 'They are too soft,' he said, 'at Paris. They lack wrist. They do not hit hard enough. What we want is a man; where are we to find him?' Another, a tall grey-bearded man, an attorney, agreed with the banker as to the 'softness' of the authorities. 'I am a Republican of yesterday,' he said. 'I remember, under the Empire, how, when I spoke at Chauny, I spoke with a gendarme at the table behind me, and a couple of spies in the hall. That is what we should have now in these meetings where they abuse the Republic.' I observed that while this councillor, by the way, always spoke of 'the Republic,' the banker as invariably spoke of 'the Republican party.' They both agreed, however, and their companions agreed with them, that the real want was the 'want of a man.' 'The President is doing well though,' said the grey-bearded 'Republican of yesterday.' 'He is beginning to stand out against the horizon, is he not?' The others were not so sure of this, and then there arose a most lively and singularly outspoken exchange of views as to the different leaders of the Republican party. It would be hardly fair for me to cite these; but one remark made by the banker, in regard to a very conspicuous political personage, amused me. 'Yes,' he said in reply to one of his companions: 'yes; ---- is skilful--very skilful--but he has no foresight. Would you trust him with your pocket-book? No!' 'Oh certainly not!' It seemed they had been attending a conference about agriculture. They were all agreed as to the existence of 'an agricultural crisis,' but beyond that they seemed to be at sea. One councillor was quite sure that the thing to be done was to get the farmers to use cattle instead of horses in their work. The cattle cost less, worked as well, and they could be killed for beef. They were also more valuable as fertilisers. Upon this another councillor, apparently the only agriculturist of the company, went into a disquisition on chemical fertilisers and the scientific applications of them. 'I never believed in these chemicals,' he said, 'till last year. But last year I was in my fields, talking with my neighbour So-and-so, who has spent I know not how much on these chemicals. He went away with his men after a while, and I saw they had been applying their chemicals to a field sown like mine. An idea occurred to me. I went and brought a basket. I stepped across into their field and took a certain quantity of their chemicals. These I applied in a particular part of my field. Do you know the plants came up there wonderfully--but really quite wonderfully! There is no doubt there is a good deal in these chemicals! But one should test them first!' After dinner we sate out in front of the little inn for a time with our coffee. There was a good deal of coming and going, a tremendous clattering about of children in little wooden _sabots_, and much good-natured 'chaff' between the people of the inn, who came out to take the air after their day's work, and the passers-by. There seems to be little in the peasants here of that positive _morgue_, not to say arrogance, which marks the demeanour of their class in the western parts of France. There are regions in Brittany where the carriage of the peasants towards the 'bourgeois' gives reality and zest to the old story of the _ci-devant_ noble who called a particularly insolent varlet to order in the days of the first Revolution by saying to him: 'Nay, friend, you will be good enough to remember that we are living in a republic, and that I am your equal!' There was the most perfect civility and amiableness even in the interchange of not very delicate pleasantries between the people at Coucy. 'Don't go too near the butcher's shop!' called out one of the ostlers to a man with whom he had been talking as the latter drove off in his cart. 'Ah! you won't eat me, if I do,' the other replied; 'it would cost you too much!' An old farmer who sate sipping his _petit verre_ near me, explained to me that the man was a resident of Barisis, a little village not very far off, the dwellers in which from time immemorial have been known as 'the pigs of Barisis.' 'Try and pick up a husband on the way,' another of the stable lads called out after a pretty girl who paused with a companion, as she went by the place, to chat with him--'try and pick up a husband on the way and we'll keep the wedding feast here!' 'Ah bah!' the damsel rejoined in a merry voice, 'more marryers come your way than ours. Tie up the first one that comes and keep him for me!' This quickness to catch and return the ball certainly shows a greater natural or acquired alertness of mind among these Picard peasants than is commonly found in people of the same condition in rural England. The country all the way from Coucy to Laon is one continuous garden, and Laon itself is pre-eminently a city set on a hill. The Château de Coucy stands upon its pinnacle of rock, like a knight in armour, with folded arms, looking loftily down upon the world, conscious of his strength, and calmly awaiting attack. The fortress-city of Laon, a fortress from the earliest Roman days, looks out from the promontory on which it stands, over the wide expanse of plain beyond and around it, like an advanced sentinel, watchful and alert. You go up to it by long flights of steps, as in the case of so many high-perched Italian towns, and the fine winding carriage-way which has been constructed around the hill, commands, from beneath the beautiful trees by which it is shaded, a series of the finest imaginable views. It has suffered much, of course, from war, and not a little from the revolutionists. But its magnificent cathedral and the ancient palace of the bishop-dukes, now occupied by the courts of justice, have fared better than many other monuments. For some time past, however, the cathedral has been undergoing repairs, which is as much as to say that the interior is practically hidden from the eye by a maze of scaffolds and hoardings and ladders. Mr. Ruskin somewhere complains, not wholly without reason, that 'the French are always doing something to their cathedrals,' and the complaint is in order now both as to Laon and as to Nantes. No one can tell when the fine recumbent statue of Raoul de Coucy, who fell at Mansourah by the side of St.-Louis, will again be visible at Laon, or the matchless tomb of the Duchesse Anne at Nantes. Here, as in the region around Chauny and Coucy, I was struck with the extreme good-nature and simplicity of the people. Through the narrow, old-fashioned streets went the town-crier with his bell, calling 'Attention! attention! attention!' announcing an auction sale of furniture after the old custom which existed in some old American towns quite down to the middle of the present century. The people were at their trades in the street, as in the Italian towns, shoemakers hammering at their lasts, ironworkers banging and thumping away. When I had found the house of a gentleman whom I wished to see, in the beautiful old cathedral close, and had rung in vain a dozen times at the bell, a courteous passer-by paused, and asked me if I wished to find M.----. 'Eh!' he said, 'the house is shut up because he is in the country for the day. I think he will be here to-morrow; but if you will come with me I will show you a little inn not far from here where I know you will find his coachman, who can tell you exactly when he will return.' How long would a stranger have to ring at the door of a house in an English cathedral town before it would occur to anybody passing to stop and thus enlighten him? With all their kindness and good-nature, however, the people of Laon are not lukewarm in politics. I found a hairdresser, the local Figaro, a raging Boulangist. 'He had served in Tonkin; he had seen, with his own eyes seen the soldiers robbed and starved and left to die. He had seen, with his own eyes seen the Government people taking huge "wine-pots" from the natives. It was _infecte_! And the governor Richaud, whom they called back to France because he wished to expose the way in which his predecessor had taken thousands of francs and a diamond belt from the king of Cambodia, Norodom. I had surely heard of that?' I certainly had heard of that, for all France rang with the exposure made of it in the Chamber of Deputies--that is to say, all France rang with it for a couple of days. 'Yes! that is true. Paris forgets everything in a day, and Monsieur is speaking of Paris; but here in Laon we do not forget; Monsieur will see. Was it natural, I ask, Monsieur, that of all the people on board of the ship which was bringing back M. Richaud to France--he, only he, and his valet, his Chinese valet--I ask was it natural only they two should on the ocean have the cholera, and die? Was it natural? And if they died was that a reason why all the effects, all the papers--note that, Monsieur--all the papers of M. Richaud, the papers to prove that corruption exists there in Tonkin, should be thrown overboard, all thrown into the sea? Yes! and on what pretext? To save the rest of the ship from the cholera! Is it transparent, that? No! we must have Boulanger!' 'The light must be let in; we must have the light!' 'Were there many people of Figaro's mind in Laon and in the Department?' 'If there are many? You will see, Monsieur; here in the Aisne we shall elect the greatest friend of General Boulanger. Monsieur does not know him? M. Castelin--André Castelin. Ah! he is strong, Castelin! He was in Africa with General Boulanger. He was there with the General when he put his hand on that governor of Tunis, that Cambon, the brother, Monsieur knows, of that Cambon who was a deputy? Castelin saw the General at work in Tunis. He is with him, he will be with him in the new Chamber. We shall elect Castelin, and then--you will see!' My notes of Figaro's very clear and positive talk in the summer are not without interest to me now when I revise them in the autumn. For Figaro prophesied truly, and the Department of the Aisne certainly did elect M. André Castelin to be one of its Deputies at Paris. Another worthy citizen of Laon with whom I talked in his shop, a shoemaker, while much less confident than Figaro as to the results of the elections, was quite as positive in his hostility to the Government. It is the tendency of shoemakers all over the world, within my observations, to be extreme Radicals. The shoemakers of Lynn in Massachusetts long ago were the advanced guard, I remember, of the Abolitionists. They were the strength of the 'Old Org.--' the 'old organisation'--enemies of slavery, as slavery, without compromise or hesitation. Every man of them was as ready as the Simple Cobbler of Agawam to tackle any problem, terrestrial or celestial, at a moment's notice. It was idle to cite _ne sutor_ to them in matters of art or of politics, of science or of theology. My shoemaker of Laon was less of a fanatic, but not less of a philosopher, than his brethren of Lynn. He was opposed to the Republic, but he was equally opposed to the monarchy. He had his idea; it was that government must be abolished, and the affairs of the country carried on by committees of experts. He liked the law authorising professional syndicates; there he thought was the germ of the true system. The professional syndicates should nominate the experts, each syndicate the experts in its own business. These should meet, settle the general necessary budget, recommend measures. Then the people, in their communes, should act upon all this. It was his system. It would be long to develop. He was not a man to write or to speak, but he thought. As to the present situation he bitterly condemned the Exposition. It was a mistake, for it brought all the world to see the progress of France and to steal the French ideas. It also took too many people to Paris; that was good for the railways. But Proudhon long ago was right; the railways were the new feudal system; they were the enemy more than clericalism. Then see to what corruption this Exposition led. Had I not seen the votes, the credits given to the Ministers for entertaining? 'Ah! it was monstrous!' With this he drew a paper out of his pocket; he had it all there, with the dates and the figures. 'Observe, Monsieur, here, on April 6, the Chamber votes one million of francs--yes, one million of francs to be allowed for dinners, for balls, for punches, for I know not what, to the Ministers--only to the Ministers! How many are they? Ten! Yes! one hundred thousand francs to each of them for eating and drinking during the famous Exposition! Only there are some who get more, some who get less. That little watchmaker Tirard, they give him 250,000 francs! Did he ever earn 250,000 francs in his life? Never! and will they spend all this money on dinners and punches? No, never in life! It is just simply to pocket a million of the money of the people!' That the political contest will be sharp in Laon I am assured by a friend who is thoroughly familiar with the whole machinery of politics in this department of the Aisne. Laon, it seems, is the true headquarters of the freemasonry of this department, and in the Aisne, to use his language, 'the freemasons are the Government.' 'I mean this,' he said, 'in a more extensive sense than you may, perhaps, be disposed to accept. You will find, I think, if the Government secures a majority in the next Chamber, that the Aisne will have a good deal to say in the organisation of the Chamber. Then, perhaps, you will understand the true meaning of that letter of M. Allain-Targé, of which you heard at Chauny. There is a pretty comedy under it, for M. Allain-Targé, remember, is a freemason! 'It would be very amusing, but we taxpayers have to pay too much for the play. What you were told at Chauny about the freemasons in the department was quite true. Only you did not get the whole of the truth. Look at the press of the department! You saw at Chauny the building of the local journal there, _La Défense Nationale_'? Certainly I had seen it, for it is the most conspicuous and the newest edifice in the main street of Chauny, and so glorious with golden letters that I took it for a great insurance office. 'Very well; that journal is under the control of a Brother of the Order, a hatter at Chauny, M. Bugnicourt. Here, at Laon, the _Tribune_, the chief Republican organ of the department, is entirely in the hands of the Order. The chairman of the publishing company is Brother Dupuy. Go on towards Hirson by the railway and you will come to the busy little town of Vervins. Brother Dupuy sits in the Chamber of Deputies for Vervins, and at Vervins Brother Dupuy owns and prints another journal, _Le Libéral de Vervins_. The political director of the _Tribune_ here at Laon is Brother Doumer. Brother Doumer, as you know, is also a Deputy! And how did he become a Deputy? Let me tell you. It is an instructive story, and you will find M. Allain-Targé at work in it--that excellent man who will not make promises to the electors which he cannot keep.' 'In the winter of 1888, M. Ringuier, a Deputy from the second circumscription of Laon, unexpectedly died. The Order at once determined to capture his seat. With Brother Allain-Targé as Prefect, what could be easier? M. Allain-Targé hastened the new election almost indecently. Hardly a fortnight after the death of M. Ringuier, early in March 1888, the Brethren came up from all quarters to Laon, and it was announced that Brother Doumer had received the orthodox Republican nomination. Of course, with the préfecture and the freemason press of Laon, Chauny, Soissons, Château Thierry, Vervins, behind him, Doumer was elected. This year he will find it harder work, for all the opposition will be concentrated in support of Castelin, the friend of Boulanger. Brother Allain-Targé is no longer prefect, but his secretary, another Brother, Huc (no kinsman of the famous Abbé), is sub-prefect at Soissons, and the Brethren all over the department help each other in every circumscription. They are very strong among the Revenue officers, and that, as you will easily understand, gives them and the Order generally a very important invisible leverage! I could tell you now of a Brother at Soissons whom they mean to put into the Chamber. They knew his money value; they have got him into their shop. He is as stupid as he is rich--just as fit to be a deputy as to command the garrison of Paris. But they will get him nominated, and then the Government will get him elected, and then he will do the bidding of Brother Doumer and the others, to help them to put pressure on the ministers and on the President, and be helped by them to recoup himself, in one way or another, for all the cash advances he will make before he is elected.' Laon sends two deputies to the Chamber. My friend's opinion in August was that the Opposition now control the city, and that both of these seats would be carried against the Government. The event proved that he was right. He was right, too, as to the outlook at Château Thierry, the charming birthplace of La Fontaine, on the road to Epernay. There he expected to see the Republican candidate who sat in the late Chamber, M. Lesguillier, hold his seat against the monarchical candidate, M. de Mandat-Grancey, the author of a well-known and interesting book on Ireland, _Chez Paddy_. M. de Mandat-Grancey is a landed proprietor who has taken an active and successful part in promoting the improvement of the breed of horses in this country. He is a man of liberal ideas as well as a man of enterprise, and in the present agricultural 'crisis,' of which one hears so much in France, such men would certainly be of use in the Chamber. But at Château Thierry, according to my friend, 'everything is organised by the freemasons. They control a journal there, the _Avenir de l'Aisne_. The mayor, M. Morlot, is a freemason. Another freemason, an ex-deputy, M. Deville, wields great influence there. You will see that the recent deputy, who is an insignificant person, will be re-elected, and that M. de Mandat-Grancey, who would be of use, will be beaten.' 'Perhaps because he is an avowed monarchist,' I replied, 'and the people may be Republicans,' My friend looked at me for a moment. 'Are you speaking seriously?' Of course I was. 'Well, then, that astonishes me! Can you possibly suppose, after all you have seen and known of France, that the people in a place like Château Thierry are such simpletons as to believe that it makes the slightest difference what name you give to a government? They leave that sort of thing to the journalists and the village actors! They have long memories in the provinces! And they judge governments, not at all by their names, but by their men. They know the functionaries by heart. "Not much of a government," they say to one another, "that sends us so and so!" 'In this region the Empire is still very popular, thanks mainly to this. No! outside of the influence of the freemasons, which will be exerted against him through the pressure put upon the friends and families of the small army of government employés, and will therefore be formidable, what M. de Mandat-Grancey will have most to fear will be not the preference of the people for the Republic--for that, I tell you, does not exist--but the indiscreet zeal of some of the clergy in his behalf. 'It is natural the clergy should wish to be rid of this persecuting gang at Paris, and of these disgusting freemasons--quite natural. But they do not always remember one peculiarity of our peasants. There is a great love for the _culte_ here among our people--a very great love for it; but they do not like to be meddled with in politics by the curés or the priests. They will vote for the curé if the curé lets them alone. But if he bothers them about it they are much more likely to vote against him. 'If Constans knows his business he will tell that freemason Thévenot, the Keeper of the Seals, to let the curés and the clergy do all they feel disposed to do in politics. Pardie, I am not sure he has not already been suborning some of our curés to go into a conservative propaganda!' 'This is my great fear,' he added presently, 'for Soissons in September. We ought to carry that seat. The freemasons mean to make the Republicans accept a most absurd candidate there, as I have told you, and if we can only keep some of our clerical friends quiet, we shall beat him. But we shall see! If the curés hurt us sometimes by their over-zeal, on the other hand the Republican deputies and functionaries help us by making the Republic disreputable in the eyes of serious people, and that in all classes of society. 'Look at the working-men, for example, here in Laon. There are a good many of them who know M. Doumer much better since he became a deputy than they knew him when he was first a candidate! 'The question of the Sociétés Ouvrières is a question which means a good deal for the working-men. M. Doumer would have been well advised had he let it alone. But no! M. Doumer gets himself appointed to draw up a Report of the Chamber of Deputies on this question, with a Project of a Law to supersede, modify, extend the Law of 1867, under which co-operative societies have so far grown up in France. 'The Report and the Project, as finally edited by the aspiring deputy for Laon, a freemason as I have told you, are to be printed by another freemason, the worthy hatter, M. Bugnicourt, at Chauny, who is the chief personage of the _Défense Nationale_, and all the voters are to see how Brother Doumer devotes himself to the interests of the working classes, at Paris, while other deputies go about amusing themselves with the _danseuses du ventre_, and the other marvels of the Exposition. 'This is all very well. 'But Brother Doumer, in his desire to pose before the voters of the Aisne as the heaven-born deputy in whom the working-man may put his trust, takes the trouble to make it quite clear that the Republic has done absolutely nothing but appoint committees to sit upon "the great question" of co-operation among the working classes! 'Brother Doumer, as I have told you, was made a deputy in 1888. After taking his seat he was made a member of the Committee which has been conducting an "extra-parliamentary enquiry" on the subject of co-operative societies among working-men for work and for production, and with the question of contracts between employers and working-men for participation in the profits of industrial enterprises. 'This committee, he says in his Report, took the matter in hand in 1883, and spent _five years_ over it, getting its project of a law on these subjects into shape only in 1888, on the eve of the election of a new Chamber of Deputies! 'During these five long years, according to Brother Doumer, the Republic was content to let co-operation among working-men take its chances under a law passed in 1867, under the Second Empire. And yet, according still to Brother Doumer, the idea of co-operation among the working classes was an exclusively French idea, and not only an exclusively French idea, but an idea which came to birth only under the Republic of 1848 (he glides silently over the famous experiment of the National workshops of 1848). Is it not really remarkable that the Republicans of 1879 should have been willing to leave this "beautiful and generous" idea at the mercy of a law passed by the Empire, and which--still according to Brother Doumer--left the co-operative societies of working-men without privileges, without favour, and with no particular facilities for constituting themselves and for keeping themselves alive? 'I say the "Republicans of 1879" advisedly, for you will see, if you look at page 5 of this delightful Report, that--still according to Brother Doumer--we really had no republic, in fact, in France till 1879. These are his own words; "the Republic, having been reconstituted, (after the fall of the Empire) _first in name_, and afterwards in fact, a new impulse was given to co-operation. The ill-will towards all societies of working-men of the Governments of May 21 and of May 16, retarded the movement. It was only in 1879 that, the wounds of the country having been healed and liberty reconquered, we had leisure to occupy ourselves with the question of the organisation of labour." 'Is not this charming? Really, when one remembers what the "wounds of the country" were in 1871, and how those "wounds" were got first through the collapse of the wretched Government of the National Defence, and then through the Commune of Paris, the Governments of May 21 and May 16 may be credited with having done a good piece of work by "healing those wounds" and by "reconquering liberty." Is not this plain? 'But the "wounds having been healed," and "liberty having been reconquered," the true Republic, still according to Brother Doumer, was set free in 1879, to occupy itself with the question of the organisation of labour. Very good. '1879! that is ten years ago! And only in 1888 do we find the Republic really occupying itself, in the person of Brother Doumer, with this great question, this beautiful and generous idea! How very odd! And what a strange coincidence that Brother Doumer, elected a deputy by the grace of the freemasons in 1888, and wishing to be re-elected a deputy by their grace in 1889, should be the man of destiny called upon to solve this great question! 'He makes this perfectly plain! 'Two Ministers of Public Works, M. de Freycinet and M. Sadi Carnot,' he blandly observes, 'studied measures which might be taken in view of facilitating the concession to societies of working-men of certain public works! 'Ah! This is hard upon M. de Freycinet and M. Sadi Carnot, now President of the ideal Republic! They "studied," did they, "measures which might be taken"! But they never took any such measures! Oh, no! not they!' 'So the first year of the "true Republic" went by, and still co-operation languished under the Imperial law of 1867. Then in 1880 came M. de Lacretelle, who "presented to the Chambers a proposed law tending" to the same end which M. de Freycinet and M. Sadi Carnot had so unprofitably "studied"! Of course the Chamber eagerly adopted it? Not at all! It was never discussed! 'Two years thrown away by the true Republic! 'Then in 1881 M. Floquet (now the favourite candidate of Brother Doumer for the Presidency of the Chamber if the Republicans carry the elections of 1889), being made Prefect of the Seine, had a great impulse! "He wished to revive the decree of 1848 as to that department." Excellent man! But he did not in fact revive it! He did what he could. He "appointed a Committee to study the question!" And this studious Committee eventually evolved--what? "A new schedule of prices for the public works of the City of Paris, which favoured co-operative societies and contractors whose workmen were to participate in their profits!" 'So the fourth year of the true Republic began, and found the "beautiful and generous idea" still prostrate under the Imperial law of 1867! 'In 1882, still according to Brother Doumer, two deputies, M. Ballue backed by several colleagues, and M. Laroche-Joubert heroically rushed before the Chamber, each with a proposed law "tending" (how all these laws "tend"!) to make it obligatory upon all contractors for public works to give their workmen a share in their profits! But the Chamber paid no heed, and the fourth year of the true Republic ended, leaving the "beautiful and generous idea" still under the iron heel of the Imperial law of 1867! 'Then came March 20, 1883, and the Minister of the Interior rose at last to the height of his mission. He took it upon himself to issue a decree--instituting what? An extra-parliamentary committee to "study" the question of working-men's associations, and if, and how, they should be admitted to take part in the public works of the State!' 'Bravo!' 'And the committee was appointed. It consisted' (it is still Brother Doumer who speaks) "of directors and high functionaries of all the ministerial departments." It went to work. It heard "a great number of witnesses." It also showed conclusively "how complex was the question, _and how urgent the necessity of a solution_."' 'What then happened?' 'The committee immediately went to sleep! '"_After an interruption_ of more than a year" (it is still Brother Doumer who speaks), "_the extra-parliamentary committee resumed its sittings, on January_ 16, 1885!" 'Six years of the true Republic having now been spent in these desperate efforts to deal with the "beautiful and generous idea," and the election of a new Chamber being imminent for the autumn of 1885, M. Waldeck-Rousseau, Minister of the Interior, proceeded to lay before the re-awakened committee--what? A project of a law to relieve the co-operative idea from the crushing weight of the Imperial law of 1867? Not a bit of it! 'He proceeded (it is still Brother Doumer who speaks!) to lay before the Committee "_a summary of the studies upon which it ought to enter_!" 'According to Brother Doumer this "summary" was truly grand and even "vast." But alas! "the general elections," says Brother Doumer, sadly, "and afterwards successive ministerial crises, _suspended the inquiry during more than two years_! It was only in 1888 that the extra-parliamentary committee resumed its labours!" 'The Universal Exposition of 1889 was then organising and organising--let me ask you not for a moment to forget--with a specific eye, not so much to the "principles of 1789," about which our worthy ministers care as much as they do about the Edict of Nantes or the philosophy of Pascal, as to the Legislative elections of 1889! 'So what did the extra-parliamentary committee do in this _ninth year_ of the one "true Republic" for the "beautiful and generous idea" of co-operation? 'They adopted a decree--"a firm and practical decree"--promulgated June 6, 1888, "permitting several co-operative societies to contract for public works, especially in connection with the Exposition"! and they also adopted "two projects of laws"! '"The first of these projects" (it is still Brother Doumer who speaks), "aimed at the creation of a general provident fund, industrial, commercial, and agricultural, to be managed by the 'Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations.'" '"This very interesting project," says Brother Doumer, "_has not yet been submitted to the Chamber_. Sent up to be examined by the Ministry of the Interior to the Ministry of Commerce, it is there undergoing _a prolonged and inexplicable delay_!" 'No! no! Brother Doumer! "prolonged" if you like, but not "inexplicable!" 'And so, after now _ten years_, we have the true Republic which got complete possession in 1879 of all the machinery for giving force and effect to the "beautiful and generous" idea of co-operation, and for giving wings to that idea, leaving it still under the blighting curse of the Imperial law of 1867. 'And Doumer alone! Brother Doumer, whom Providence and the freemasons of Laon sent to the Chamber in 1888, has met the questions which have been "urgent" ever since 1848 with the grand practical solution of a "report" fifteen pages long, and of a "project of law" consisting of six titles and about a hundred clauses! 'Take this pamphlet with you,' said my friend, after going over it with me; 'take it, look into it minutely, and tell me if anything you have ever heard or read in the way of our Conservative attacks upon the flatulence, the fatuity, and the hypocrisy of these pretended friends of labour and of the working-man is to be compared, for cold-blooded cruelty, with this exposition made by Brother Doumer of the methods of his party. 'I don't know,' he added, 'what portfolio Brother Doumer expects to get if the Government carry these elections of 1889. He has kicked M. de Freycinet, as you see, into one corner, and President Carnot into another, for the benefit of his friend and ally, M. Floquet, so I suppose he expects to secure some commanding position, neither M. de Freycinet nor President Carnot being strong enough to resent the impertinences of an eminent freemason. But wherever they put him, this wonderful Report of his ought to be printed and circulated freely all over France by the Conservative committees. It is the most concise and eloquent history, that I know, of ten years of the true Republic in its relation to the working classes of France. You have seen at St.-Gobain the results of a co-operative association of working-men organized under statutes drawn up by a practical and liberal friend of labour, M. Cochin, in 1866, a year before the Imperial law of 1867 was passed. 'Wherever elsewhere in France you find the principle of co-operation adopted and bearing fruit for the benefit of working-men, pray remember that the "true Republic" has for ten years persistently evaded and dodged the problems with which the Empire grappled, and to which the Emperor gave a practical answer nearly a quarter of a century ago!' After following my friend carefully through his amusing and instructive vivisection of the Report presented to the late Chamber by the masonic member for Laon upon the project of law touching co-operation proposed by M. Floquet, I was not surprised, of course, to learn that the 'project' still remains a 'project.' It was adopted in what is called a 'Friday session' by the Chamber, and then sent up to die a natural death in the Senate--the Senate, be it remembered, being the absolute stronghold of the existing Republican Government. So that still, after ten years of power, the Republicans of M. Doumer's 'true Republic' leave the working-men of France, so far as co-operation can affect their interests, under the control of a law passed under the Empire more than twenty years ago. Clearly one of two things must be true: either this law, passed under the Empire more than twenty years ago, is a good and sufficient law, assuring to the working-men of France all the advantages, and protecting them against all the disadvantages, incident to the principle of co-operation, so far as this influence and this protection can be given by laws; or the Republicans of M. Doumer's 'true Republic' have been humbugging and trifling with the working-men of France on the subject ever since they contrived, ten years ago, to get the control of power at Paris. Upon one horn or the other of this dilemma, the 'true Republicans' clearly must elect to take their seats. The voters of Laon would appear to be of the mind that the 'true Republicans' of M. Doumer have been humbugging and trifling with them. For at the election of this year, M. Doumer lost his seat, and the candidate favoured by my Boulangist Figaro at Laon, M. Castelin, was elected. What followed is worth noting, to complete this picture of the working of representative institutions in one of the great French provinces under the Third Republic. M. Doumer, in his address to the electors of the Aisne, issued at Laon on August 15, 1889, was at great pains to explain what his own relations had been with Boulangism and with General Boulanger in 1888, before he became a deputy from Laon in the place of M. Ringuier. 'I frankly admit,' he observes in this very curious document, 'that I felt a lively sympathy with General Boulanger _while he was Minister of War_!... In the journal which I conducted I insisted on his being put back into the Cabinet, on the fall of the Goblet Ministry.' When, by the death of M. Ringuier in the early spring of 1888, a seat from the Aisne was suddenly vacated, the freemasons of Laon, as I have stated, selected M. Doumer as the Republican candidate to fill it. M. Doumer's friend, M. Floquet, was not then at the head of the Government, and General Boulanger was still in command of his army-corps at Clermont, coming up to Paris, as the Government affirmed, disguised and wearing blue spectacles, to organise political mischief, and generally making himself a terror and a trouble to the 'true Republicans,' who had made a great man of him for their own purposes. 'Eight days before the election, which was fixed for March 25, 1888,' says M. Doumer, in his address of this year to the voters, "I had no competitor, and my election seemed to be certain."' No doubt. The 'Brethren' had arranged everything. But suddenly the skies darkened! The Government of M. Tirard plucked up courage to make head against the 'brav' Général.' General Boulanger was relieved of his command at Clermont. Thereupon the Boulangists resolved to avail themselves of the impending election at Laon as an opportunity of responding to the attack of the Government by a demonstration of their strength in the provinces; and M. Doumer was suddenly served with a notice that the seat of which he had felt so sure would be wanted for General Boulanger! It was a cruel and a critical moment. What was to be done? To withdraw from the contest was to take sides virtually with General Boulanger against the Tirard Government, and much as M. Floquet and the friends of M. Doumer disliked M. Tirard, they were not ready to throw in their lot at that moment against him. So the Brethren, as my friend believes, were called upon to bring about an arrangement. What General Boulanger wanted was not to fill the seat for Laon; it was only to be elected to fill the seat for Laon. Plainly, therefore, the course of practical wisdom, for M. Doumer was to come to an understanding with the friends of General Boulanger. So this was done. The Parisian Committee of the General came into the Aisne, and at a conference, which M. Doumer admits that he held with them at Tergnier, it was agreed that after the first balloting, on March 31, 'the voters who then voted for General Boulanger as a protest, should vote for M. Doumer at the second balloting, and so elect him.' The first balloting came off in due course of time. Both M. Doumer, the Republican candidate, and M. Jacquemont, the Conservative candidate, were left in the rear by General Boulanger, who received some forty thousand votes--the election being held in 1888 under the _scrutin de liste_ adopted, before the elections of 1885, by the Republicans, in order to remedy what they had denounced as the 'intolerable' evils of the _scrutin d'arrondissement_. Under the stress of the Boulangist panic, these same Republicans suddenly threw the _scrutin de liste_ over again in 1889, to readopt and reimpose upon their beloved country the 'intolerable' evils of the _scrutin d'arrondissement_! The second balloting was to take place on March 31. Suppose that General Boulanger should take it into his head to force the fighting on that day at Laon--worse still, try to make an 'arrangement' with the Conservative candidate? What would then become of M. Doumer? So, on March 28, M. Doumer tells us he went up to Paris, from Laon in company with the chairman of one of the Republican committees, and there had an interview with a leading member of the committee of General Boulanger, the result of which was that the 'brav' Général' published a letter, in which he announced to the electors of the Aisne that he could not accept a seat which he could only occupy to the detriment of competitors 'beside whom, and not against whom, he had allowed himself to be made a candidate.' He wound up by requesting his friends in the Aisne 'to vote at the second balloting for the candidate who would best support the honour of the country and the interests of the Republic.' Then came, at Laon, a meeting of the Republican Committee of the Aisne, at which the chairman of the meeting, M. Lesguillier, was instructed to do his best to 'dissipate the somewhat equivocal effect' of the language used by General Boulanger in his letter, and to induce the Boulangist committee to work, on the 31st, for the election of M. Doumer. And so, on March 31, 1888, M. Doumer was finally put into the seat, which enabled him to draw up his model report on the great question of 'co-operation.' That the Boulangists of Laon are not wholly delighted with the course of M. Doumer in the late Chamber, and that the working-men of Laon are not deeply impressed by the value to them of his model report on 'co-operation,' may be inferred from his defeat by the Boulangist candidate M. Castelin under the _scrutin d'arrondissement_ in September, 1889. But M. Doumer is a typical French politician of the Third Republic, and as his alliance with M. Floquet seems to be firmer than ever, my friend in the Aisne is probably right in thinking that M. Doumer will still be heard of perhaps as a prefect, perhaps as a deputy filling the seat of some 'invalidated' deputy from Paris, perhaps as a Trésorier-Général, occupying one of the large number (I think there are eighty in all) of these lucrative posts, which it has been the custom of successive administrations under the Third Republic to distribute among their friends and supporters on retiring from power, as in England premiers, in like circumstances, distribute peerages and baronetcies and accolades of knighthood, one special difference between the two systems being that the rewards of political service bestowed in England not only entail no expense upon the taxpayers, but actually, I believe, bring a certain amount in the way of fees into the Treasury, whereas in France such rewards mean a steady increase of the public outlay. As the late parliament on the very last day of its existence adopted a plan proposed by M. Doumer himself for re-organising the system of _Trésoriers-Généraux_, and making these officers regular members of the staff of the Finance Ministry with fixed salaries, my friend in the Aisne thinks it likely enough that one of these posts may fill the eventual perspective of M. Doumer's political career. Meanwhile the defeated candidate for Laon has been comfortably lodged, at the public cost, in the Legislative Palace, as Secretary of the President of the Chamber, M. Floquet being President, and receives a salary of 15,000 francs, with perquisites and other advantages. We do this sort of thing occasionally in the United States, for the benefit of defeated political candidates. But in one important respect the professional politician in France is better off than the professional politician in America. Our pension list is by far the largest in the world, but we do not offer any prospect of a pension to civil servants. Nor have we so many paid legislative berths in which to lodge our professional politicians. The parliamentary business of the sixty millions of people who now inhabit the United States is done by eighty-four senators and 330 representatives, who receive something over $2,000,000 a year. The parliamentary business of less than forty millions of people inhabiting France is supposed to require the services of 300 senators and 578 deputies, who receive for doing it 11,937,940 francs, or, in round numbers, about $2,587,560. Whether the 878 French legislators really earn half a million of dollars more by their annual labours than do the 414 American legislators is a question which I leave my readers to settle after they shall have settled the previous question, whether either of those considerable sums of money is really earned by either body. But there can be no doubt, I think, that, under the existing economical conditions of society in the two republics, the aggregate number of professional politicians aiming at the 878 prizes of the profession in France is likely to be considerably in excess of the aggregate number of professional politicians aiming at the 414 prizes of the profession in the United States. Of course, too, this increase in the aggregate number of the competitors must necessarily be attended by a decline in the average standard of character and capacity among them: and as it is the settled policy of the French Republicans of the 'true Republic,' who have been in power for the past decade, to exclude all persons not of their party from any share in the general administration of the Republic, it is obvious that this lowering of the level of character and of capacity must be most marked among the professional politicians of the Republican party. This is a matter of scientific necessity, and not at all of sentiment; and it suffices to account for the unquestionable average inferiority of the Government members of the Senate and the Chamber to the Opposition members in point both of character and of capacity. The intense centralisation of power in France is another and a very important force working in the same direction. Outside of the Federal field of political ambition in the United States we have the State governments. But there can be no more than forty-two State governors in the United States, whereas in France there are eighty-six prefects, and three in Algiers, without counting the administrative authorities in the Regency of Tunis and in the French colonies. The governorships of the American States are elective offices, to be won only by local services and local combinations. But the administrative prizes of French politics can only be secured through the central administration at Paris, under pressure from the all-powerful cliques and combinations in the National Legislature. Briefly, therefore, it seems to me quite clear that under the Third Republic in France the profession of politics is rapidly becoming, if it has not already become, much more easy of access, and, in proportion to the capital of character and of ability required for entering upon it, much more remunerative, than it has ever yet been in the United States, unless perhaps during the domination of Mr. Tweed and the Tammany Ring over the taxpayers of New York. CHAPTER XI IN THE NORD VALENCIENNES It says but little for what Texans call the 'sabe' of the municipal authorities of Valenciennes that this, which ought to be one of the most picturesque and attractive, is really one of the shabbiest historic towns of North-eastern France. The streets are ill-paved and ill-kept, the public buildings are untidy, and the whole place contrasts most unfavourably, from this point of view, with the rich and beautifully cultivated region through which you reach it by the railway from Douai. This is the finest agricultural region in France--the old French Flanders, a 'fat' country as well as a flat. You hardly see a weed between Douai and Valenciennes. Great fields of beetroot are cultivated like flower-gardens, and the green and growing crops are as daintily ordered as the coils and plateaux of flowers with which it is the fashion to adorn dinner-tables _à la Russe_. It is not pleasant to be assured that the industrious dwellers in this land of Goshen are as fond of cock-fighting as the Spaniards, who probably enough introduced the amusement here during their long domination over what is now known as French Flanders, and that they are addicted also in a systematic way to the abominable practice of blinding bullfinches to make them better singers. I am told that in many communes the authorities actually give prizes for the best singing birds thus produced, and that 'blind bullfinch societies' are among the many associations regularly established and nourishing among the fields and villages. The old Flemish love of strong drink also survives here, as is shown by the number and the prosperous appearance of the cabarets. These average, for the whole Department of the Nord, no fewer than one to every sixty-six inhabitants, and around Valenciennes, the proportion rises as high as one to every forty-four. There is much subdivision of property, but it has not been pushed so far around Valenciennes as in some other portions of the department, a majority of the small properties extending to twenty-five hectares, and properties of from one hundred to three hundred hectares being considered large estates. Thanks to the energy and intelligence of many considerable landholders, a great improvement has taken place of late years in the agricultural methods and instruments in use throughout this department: the open drains have practically disappeared, the country has become more wholesome, as well as more fertile, and the farmers in general are admittedly much better off, despite the crisis. This increasing prosperity is given as an explanation of the decreasing average number of children. But French Flanders is nevertheless one of the densely populated parts of France, showing a population of 267 to the square league. It is proper to say, however, that this is chiefly due to the growth of certain great manufacturing centres. In the rural regions the population is much less dense, and the population of Valenciennes is actually declining. It fell from 23,291 in 1881 to 22,919 in 1886. The explanation is that people are moving out from Valenciennes into the new suburbs. Anzin, Thiers, Denain, and St.-Amand are increasing with the development of the manufactories which are growing up here around the great coal-fields. While I was at Valenciennes, there was a terrible commotion in the Paris newspapers over a certain colonel in the army, who, being in the service of a well-known arms factory, loudly protested against the alleged sale of that factory to the Germans, and the threatened consequent closing of its works near Paris. After much journalistic and parliamentary gunpowder had been burned, it came to light that the proprietors were simply making up their minds to transfer their works to the vicinity of Valenciennes as a necessary measure of economy. Notwithstanding the slovenly 'edility' of Valenciennes, I found it a very interesting place. The Hôtel du Commerce there is a very well-kept old-fashioned hostelry, installed in a stately and spacious house, long the residence of a considerable family. Indeed, one of my friends in Valenciennes was quite severe in his comments upon the indifference of the head of this family, still a man of large property, to this conversion of the ancestral mansion into an inn. With its fine gateway, its porter's lodge on either hand, its large courtyard shaded with well-grown old trees, and its well-proportioned apartments, it is certainly a specimen worth preserving of such a house as King Louis need not have disdained to enter, when he made Valenciennes and French Flanders definitely French in 1677. 'We have a noisy, ignorant set of people in power here now,' said my friend, 'who pulled down, not long ago, the finest of the only three good gates we had left, out of sheer stupidity; and you can see how they let things go at sixes and sevens all over the city. But the old-established citizens of Valenciennes are to blame also, not for the decline of our population perhaps, but for the gradual disappearance of all the features of the city worth preserving. Like the head of this family, they care nothing about the past.' In the course of a walk about the city, he showed me, in the Rue Nôtre-Dame, an edifice, the condition of which certainly excused his criticism of his fellow-citizens. It is an ancient dwelling-house of the fifteenth century, standing at the corner of two streets. A most graceful _tourelle_ markes the façade, and strikingly resembles that which decorates still the house at Paris near the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, in the vaulted doorway of which Louis, Duc d'Orléans, was murdered, a crime avenged by the death, on the bridge of Montereau, of its real author, Jean Sans-Peur, Duc de Bourgogne. The exterior ornamentation of this house is admirable, nor is it too far gone in dilapidation to be successfully restored. The door was locked, boardings were fixed in some of the beautiful windows, and advertisements of Amer-Picon and auctions and political meetings defaced the front. Obviously the house belonged originally to some personage of importance at a time when Valenciennes, the city of the Emperor Valentinian, was still one of the great marts of Western Europe and a capital of the civilisation of the West. Its population was then much larger than it now is. By the Scheldt, it communicated with the sea, and in the thirteenth century it was a member of the famous Hanse of London, which included also, Reims, St.-Quentin, Douai, Arras, St.-Omer, Abbeville, Amiens, Bruges, Ypres, and Ghent. This league dominated over the Channel. Its chief, the Count of the Hanse, who seems to have been in a manner a successor of the Roman Counts of the Saxon Shore, was chosen by the leagued cities from among the great burghers of Bruges. The privileges its representatives enjoyed in London were balanced by sundry rather monastic restrictions; but it was a great commercial corporation, and it played a great part in the social and economical history of mediæval Europe. As early as the ninth century Valenciennes and Mons had been so rich and influential, that they were regarded as the pillars of the '_noble Comté de Hainault, tenu de Dieu et du Soleil_.' With the crusades, the importance of Valenciennes notably increased, and with its importance the independence of its burghers. The leading part taken by Godfrey de Bouillon in the early crusades is a proof of the power of these Flemish towns. When Baldwin of Flanders assumed the imperial purple at Constantinople, he did it expressly to benefit the commerce of the Flemish cities. At this day it is believed that there exist, in some palace of the sultan at Constantinople, tapestries of Oudenarde taken to the East by Baldwin, who was born at Valenciennes in 1171. At Valenciennes, too, were born his sister, Isabelle of Hainault, the first wife of Philip Augustus of France, his brother Henry, Emperor of the East, and his two daughters. One of these daughters, Marguerite, grown to woman's estate, besieged Valenciennes because the burghers refused to recognise her as the born Countess of Hainault. Gilles Miniave, provost of the city, plainly said to her when he refused to surrender: 'We have taken and we intend to kill your soldiers, madame, as abettors of tyranny.' This was as much to the purpose in its way as the firing on the royal troops by the farmers of Lexington in America in 1775. In the middle of the fourteenth century Valenciennes was so wealthy that Jean Party, provost in 1357, was regarded as the richest man in Europe. He went to Paris during the fair of the Landit, and for his own account bought up all the goods brought there for sale at one swoop; he then retailed them at a great profit. He was invited to attend the court of France, and went there so magnificently attired as to excite the jealousy of the French nobles, who treated him in consequence with undue arrogance. He took off his cloak, enriched with fur and jewels, as no seat was offered him, made it into a roll, and sate down on it. When he rose with the rest to leave, he left the cloak where he had sate on it. The royal heralds, dazzled by the splendour of the garment, gathered it up, and one of them hastened with it after Jean Party, calling out to him that he had forgotten it. 'In my country,' said the haughty burgher turning towards the herald, 'it is not the custom for people to take their cushions away with them!' One of the predecessors of this proud citizen, Jean Bernier, gave a banquet in 1333 to all the allies of the Comte de Flanders, which is celebrated by the chroniclers as the grandest ever seen in Flanders. There were sixty-nine guests, including the kings of Bohemia and of Navarre, and six tables 'so sumptuous with gold and silver plate, that the like had never been seen.' In 1473 a chapter was held at Valenciennes of the Golden Fleece. In 1540 the city entertained Charles V., the Dauphin, and the Duc d'Orléans. In 1549 a society called 'the principality of pleasure' gave a festival to 562 guests in the woolstaplers' hall. Each guest was equipped with two flagons of silver, one for wine and the other for beer, and 1,700 pieces of silver and gold plate furnished forth the table, of which the chronicler observes, to the undying glory of the city, that 'all these vessels of silver and gold belonged to dwellers at Valenciennes; and also that _not one piece was lost_!' The glory passed away from Valenciennes with the religious wars. The place became a headquarters of Protestantism, and the Most Catholic King sent his armies to deal with it. The Spaniards took Valenciennes and long held it. In 1656, under Condé, they beat off the French under Turenne, and it was only in 1677 that Louis XIV. finally captured it, and turned it over to Vauban to be fortified. As the town stands much lower than the surrounding country, Vauban planned his works with an eye to flooding the region, if necessary, by the waters of the Scheldt. Valenciennes stands at 25.98 mètres above the sea-level. But Anzin, the chief suburb, is at 39 mètres, and the hills beyond at 80 mètres above the sea-level. When the Spaniards got the upper hand fairly in French Flanders, thousands of the workers in wool emigrated to England, carrying their industry with them. Many of these emigrants naturally went into the cloth-making West of England, and to this day I am told by genealogists Flemish names, translated or curiously transmogrified, are to be found in Somerset and Devonshire, which attest the extent and value to England of the exodus. What its real proportions were it is hard now to estimate. The chroniclers talk of a hundred thousand people going out from Flanders to England between the defeat of the Armada in 1588 and the repulse of the French from before Valenciennes in 1656. But the numbers are obviously conjectural. What is certain is, that during this period Valenciennes was the centre of a most interesting spiral movement (to use the phrase of Goethe) in the history of modern Europe. Coming down later to the contest between France, under Louis XIV., and the allies, led by Marlborough and Prince Eugene, we find Valenciennes again playing a leading part. And during the last blind, desperate effort of France to shake off the domination of the scoundrels who had fastened themselves upon her vitals at Paris after the collapse of the monarchy, Valenciennes became the theatre of the tolerably well-conceived, but intolerably ill-executed, attempt of Dumouriez to make himself a French Duke of Albemarle. It was quite as unprincipled as his political operations were at Paris in 1792, and in both cases he came to grief through his overweening self-confidence and consequent lack of the most ordinary prudence and forecast. A morning may be spent with both profit and pleasure in the galleries of the Hôtel de Ville at Valenciennes. The building is of the early seventeenth century, and was remodelled and partially reconstructed under the Second Empire. It is spacious and not without a certain dignity, but, like the streets and squares, it is ill kept. The galleries which occupy the whole of the second floor are extensive, well-lighted, and with a more careful and systematic arrangement of the pictures would be of considerable value to students of art. Valenciennes certainly had painters of merit before the sixteenth century. One of these, celebrated by Froissart, Maître André, was both a sculptor and a painter. In 1364 he became 'imagier' of Charles V. of France. The statues of that king, of Jeanne de Bourbon his queen, and of King John and King Philip, still extant at St.-Denis, are his work. Two exquisite manuscripts illuminated by him still exist; one in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, the other at Brussels. Simon Marmion, who died at Valenciennes on Christmas-day, 1489, was the court painter of that high and puissant prince, Philippe, Duc de Bourgogne, and ranked among the chiefs of the Flemish School. Pictures of his exist at Bruges, Nuremberg, and Paris. The Valenciennes museum has an _ex-voto_ on wood, the history of which is curious. It was found broken into two pieces, and hidden away behind a confessional in the cathedral of Notre-Dame. How it came there no one knows. It may have been flung there during the pillage of the church, or put there to save it. At all events, having been carefully (not too carefully) restored and cleaned, it now presents two interesting pictures, one of St. John, holding in his right hand a book on which the Paschal Lamb reposes, with an ecclesiastic kneeling before him in a red robe, covered with a transparent alb, a palm resting on his right arm. The other represents a dead body on a rug, half-covered with a shroud. Above, on a scroll, are the lines Da requiem cunctis, Deus, hic et ubique sepultis, Ut sint in requie, propter tua vulnera quinque. In 1782 the provost of Valenciennes, the baron Pujol de Lagrave, who served as provost till 1789, and again after the capture of the city by the Duke of York, established here a school of art not unworthy the birthplace of Watteau and of Pater. Both of these painters are represented in the collection, the former by a characteristic little 'Conversation under the Trees in a Park' and by an interesting portrait of the sculptor Pater, the father of the painter. The two families of Watteau and of Pater lived on terms of such friendly intimacy at Valenciennes that the father of Pater sent his son up to Paris, to study his art under Watteau. Watteau received his young compatriot so coldly, and made things so unpleasant for him, that he soon went back discouraged, to resume his career at home. There he encountered the hostility of the local corporation of St. Luke, that guild of painters refusing to allow him to practise his art without regularly passing through his apprenticeship, and taking his 'master's degree.' Pater resisted, and the case went before the magistracy of Valenciennes, before the Provincial Council of Hainault, and finally before the Parliament of Flanders. It was contested for several years, and finally resulted in an arrangement, under which Pater bound himself never to paint in Valenciennes, 'under any pretext whatsoever.' He might go to Paris and paint as much as he liked, but in Valenciennes painting was the privilege of the corporation of St. Luke. This has a pre-Adamite sound in modern ears. But even now no man may lawfully kill or cure the sick in London or Paris or New York without a diploma, despite the 'epoch-making' principles of 1879. And the new French Chamber of 1889 apparently intends to forbid all foreign physicians to attend upon patients in France! In Valenciennes, as a matter of fact, a liberal School of Art was established in 1782, by which time both Watteau and Pater had done their life's work and taken their places among the masters in a world-wide corporation of St. Luke. Two charming groups by Pater represent this painter in the Museum of his native city, together with a portrait of his sister, bequeathed by M. Bertin, the last representative of the Pater family in Valenciennes. A grand and well-known triptych by Rubens, representing the preaching, the martyrdom, and the entombment of St. Stephen, in three compartments, upon the extension of which, when closed, appears a bold and striking picture of the Annunciation, is one of the chief treasures of the Museum. It belonged to the noble monastery of St.-Amand, which was wrecked and pillaged during the Revolution, and, with the valuable library of the monastery, very rich in missals and manuscripts, was confiscated by the patriots of Valenciennes. Another Rubens, of less importance, originally belonged to the church of Notre-Dame de la Chaussée, which was pulled down, as well as pillaged, at the same time. It seems to have been rescued from the spoilers by the good people of the neighbourhood, and was honestly bought for the Museum in 1866, not magnificently 'presented' to it by official 'receivers,' not much better than the original thieves. François Pourbus of Bruges is represented here by two admirable full-length portraits of Philippe Emanuel de Croy, Comte de Solre, and of his sister, Marie de Croy, and by a full-length portrait of Dorothée de Croy, Duchesse d'Arschot, in a stately wedding-dress, painted, in the full maturity of his powers, at Paris, in 1617. This is the wedding-dress described, according to M. Foucart, an accomplished amateur of Valenciennes, one of the Conservators of the Museum, by Reiffenberg in his valuable book: '_Une existence de Grand Seigneur au XVI^e Siècle_,' and the Valenciennes Museum is particularly rich in pictures of interest from this, which may be called the documentary, point of view. Among these must be reckoned a curious painting of the mother and the wife of Henri III., with sundry dames of high degree, and women of the people violently squabbling together over a pair of trunk-hose, the property of the king, who lies prostrate in one corner of the canvas, struck down by the clenched fist of a man in the robes of a member of the Parliament of Paris. From this and from another painting on parchment which sets forth, as an inscription recites, 'the cruel martyrdom of the most reverend Cardinal de Guise by the inhuman tyrant Henri de Valois,' it may be clearly gathered that the people of French Flanders had very positive opinions, and were not slow to express them, long before the Abbé Sieyès constituted himself the Isaac Newton of political science. There is a goodly show, too, of historical portraits of interest, one of the Admiral de Coligny, which was exhibited at Paris in 1878, another of Fénelon, which came here from the pillage of the Chapterhouse of Cambray, another of Prince Maurice of Nassau, another of Hortense Mancini. A good full-length portrait of Bardo Bardi Magalotti, colonel of the 'Royal Italian' regiment under Louis XIV., is set in a very remarkable frame of superbly carved oak, part of the woodwork of the demolished church of St.-Géry. Of historical interest, too, is a large Van der Meulen, representing the defeat of Turenne before Valenciennes in 1656, by the Spanish army under Condé. From a bird's-eye view of Valenciennes in the background of this large canvas, we may see how much the city has lost by the gradual destruction of its finest architectural features. Within the last few years the Museum of Valenciennes has been endowed, through the munificence chiefly of a Wallachian nobleman, Prince George Stirbey, well known in Paris, with a unique collection of the works of Carpeaux, the sculptor of the famous groups which adorn the façade of the grand Opera House at Paris. Carpeaux was born at Valenciennes, and the fine statue of Watteau which stands now in the city was both suggested and executed by him. So long ago as 1860, when he began to recognise his own place in contemporary art, he expressed his wish to have his memory perpetuated in his native place by as complete a collection of his works as could be made; and in his will, drawn up in 1874, he left to Valenciennes all his models in plaster, and all the drawings for his works, together with all the sketch-books he had filled during his artistic life, and which were then in the keeping of his relations at Auteuil. In process of time Carpeaux found it necessary to part with a great many of his drawings, and Prince George Stirbey, who had bought most of them, after the death of the artist, divided them into three lots, one of which he gave to the Louvre, another to the School of Fine Arts at Paris, and the third and richest to Valenciennes. To this princely liberality, Valenciennes is indebted for the singular fulness and value of the Carpeaux collection which it now possesses. Among the portraits in the Museum proper, is one which ought to be sent to the Musée de la Révolution in Paris. It is a pastel of a typical Revolutionary personage, who bore the not very attractive name of Charles Cochon. He was one of the 'patriots' of 1792, and having vowed irreconcilable hatred to all kings and emperors, he was selected to go as a Commissary to the Army of the North after Dumouriez had delivered up Camus and his companions with Beurnonville to the Austrians. After the advent of Napoleon, this incorruptible Republican became one of the most serviceable servants of the new master of France, and ended his career as an Imperial senator, with the queer title of Comte de Lapparent! I wisely availed myself of my first morning in Valenciennes to visit these collections in the Hôtel de Ville, for in the afternoon M. Guary, the son of the distinguished director of the great coal mines of Anzin, which I especially desired to see, kindly drove into my comfortable old hotel and most hospitably insisted on carrying me off to the mines. At the beginning of the last century there was but a single house in all the territory now known as the Commune of Anzin. It is now the seat of a busy and growing town, a suburb, or--to speak more exactly--an extension beyond the walls of the city of Valenciennes. This town has been called into existence during the last century and a quarter by the operations of the Anzin Company, the largest coal-mining company in France. The concessions held and worked by this company cover an area of 28,054 hectares. Six years ago, when what is known as the great strike at Anzin attracted to this important region the attention of all persons interested in that question of labour, which the excellent M. Doumer tells us the 'true Republic' has been 'studying' in vain for ten years, the Anzin Company employed 14,035 workmen, of whom 2,180 were at work on the surface and 11,855 were employed on the subterranean work of the mines. The coal extracted, which had reached 1,677,366 tons in 1862, amounted in 1883 to 2,210,702 tons, being one-tenth part of all the coal-production of France. The coal-mining of Anzin is carried on now in the face of a great and increasing competition almost at its very doors. To the north and east lie the great coal-fields of Belgium, which in 1882 sent into France 4,064,625 tons of coal, and in 1883, 4,217,933 tons. On the north and west lie the great French coal-fields of the Pas-de-Calais, where, at Lens and other points, great discontent has shown itself during the current year among the miners, but which increased their output from 5,724,624 tons in 1882 to 6,148,249 tons in 1883. Then, beyond the Channel, England, which had sent into France, in 1882, 3,560,149 tons of coal, in 1883 sent in 3,818,205 tons; and, finally, from Germany in 1883 France took 1,186,769 tons against 1,035,418 tons. These figures will suffice to show the importance of Anzin as a coal-field. It draws its prosperity from roots struck deep into the soil nearly a century and a half ago, and long before the traditional institutions of France were thrown into the melting-pot, amid the cheers of a mob in the streets, by another mob which called itself a National Assembly. At the beginning of the last century, when, as I have said, there was but a single house in all the present territory of Anzin, coal was not known to exist in this part of France. In the Low Countries, then Austrian, and just beyond the French frontier, coal was mined, and it came into the head of an energetic dweller in the little town of Condé that what was found in Hainault might be found also in French Flanders. His name was Desambois, and he was not a rich man. But he succeeded in getting from Louis XV. a concession in 1717 authorising him to seek for coal within a considerable range of territory till 1740. The Crown even gave him a small subsidy. But the Mississippi bubble burst while he was struggling with the difficulties which surrounded him when he first struck certain imperfect veins of coal; and in the stress of that great crash he found himself obliged to part with his rights for the sum of 2,400 florins to two gentlemen of the _noblesse_, though not of the great _noblesse_, the Vicomte Desandrouin de Noelles, and M. Taffin. There is a portrait in the Musée at Valenciennes of M. Desandrouin which shows the qualities one would expect to find in a man who so long ago and in such circumstances undertook such an enterprise with a limit of no more than eighteen years before him. These two connected with themselves a brother of Desandrouin, a 'gentleman glassworker' at Fresnes, and two brothers named Pierre and Christophe Mathieu. They worked on, undiscouraged but unsuccessful, for twelve years, until, finally, on June 24, 1734, Pierre Mathieu, who was a trained engineer, found at Anzin the long-sought vein of bituminous coal. This auspicious day is commemorated on the simple slab which marks the burial-place of Mathieu in the communal church of Anzin. When one considers what the discovery meant, and what its results now mean, to the welfare and the prosperity of France, one is tempted to regard the 24th of June as a date almost as well worth celebrating by Frenchmen as the 14th of July. Marshal Villars is celebrated by a very uncomely obelisk on his battle-field of Denain near by, and General de Dampierre by a column in the public square of Anzin itself. Why should not Anzin set up a statue of Pierre Mathieu? A comparatively short time sufficed to convince the adventurous associates that they had indeed found the great veins they had sought. Pierre Taffin went to Paris and got a considerable extension from the Crown of their concession. Money was raised and the work went on, bringing labourers and settlers to Anzin and founding the new industry. Then came a new danger, which might have been foreseen. The lords of the soil at Anzin had been quite left out of the calculation, but the lords of the soil at Anzin in 1734 were quite as well awake to their legal rights, and to the advantages to be derived from a judicious use of these rights, as were the small farmers of Pennsylvania long afterwards, when prospecting engineers began to sink shafts and to pump up oil along the slopes of the Appalachians. The Prince de Croy-Solre and the Marquis de Cernay brought forward their title to share in the riches found beneath their acres. Desandrouin and his associates contested these claims as long as they could. But the contests ended, as the lawyers had seen from the first that it must, in a compromise. The Prince and the Marquis on the one hand with their titles to the land, and the Vicomte and his associates on the other with their royal concessions, came together, and in 1757 founded the Anzin Company. As in the case of St.-Gobain, the capital of the company was divided into sols and deniers. There were twenty-four deniers, of which the Prince de Croy-Solre received four for himself and two associates, the Vicomte Desandrouin five sols and four deniers, the heirs of M. Taffin three sols nine deniers, the Marquis de Cernay and his six associates eight sols, and the engineer Mathieu six deniers. The phraseology of the articles of association is somewhat quaint and ancient, but the spirit of them is essentially fair and equitable. The recital of the objects for which the company was formed is a model in its way, and shows that the authors of these articles--nobles, rôturiers, engineers, and notaries of the _ancien régime_ in 1757--had nothing to learn from Jean-Jacques Rousseau or the Abbé Sieyès as to the essential rights and duties of men in a civilised community. Thus it runs:-- 'To bring about a general union of the coal-pits in the territory of Fresnes, Anzin, Old Condé, Raismes, and St.-Vaast, put an end to all the differences and proceedings brought before the Council and as yet unsettled, make it possible to live in good union and a good understanding, and secure the interests of the State and of the public by forming solid establishments, there are adopted by this present act, which shall be duly ratified before a notary, the following articles.' These articles are nineteen in number, and, as in the case of St.-Gobain, one article binds the associates always to furnish, in proportion to their shares, whatever funds may be required for the enterprise. The hereditary principle is distinctly recognised in these articles not only as to the ownership of the shares, but as to the management, and the Prince de Croy-Solre and the Marquis de Cernay, with their successors, are accorded certain rights as arbitrators, and in the election of directors, a circumstance worth noting because I find that, notwithstanding the supposed abolition by the revolutionists of 1789 of the hereditary principle, and of titles of nobility and of privileges, these articles of association, just as they stood when they were signed and subscribed on November 27, 1757, were quietly recognised and registered, and a good fee taken for the recognition and the registration by the proper republican functionary at Paris, on the '11 Pluviôse, An XIII' of the Republic one and indivisible. The main street of Anzin, through which M. Guary drove me to the offices of the company, is a broad and well-paved highway, with many shade-trees, and the houses, for the main part, well built, though not particularly picturesque. M. Guary tells me there are a good many small _rentiers_ living here, which seems to show that the place must be orderly and quiet. Many of the houses are brightly painted, in blue, green, pink, and other colours not to be expected, and of cabarets the name is legion. M. Baudrillart pronounces intemperance to be a characteristic foible of the Flemish French, or French Flemings; but in these cabarets--which were, so far as I saw, rather exceptionally neat and even handsome--the customers seemed to be taking light beer and certain sweet beverages, rather than spirits. At the main office I found M. de Forcade, a son of the celebrated minister of Napoleon III., to whom when he retired, on the accession to power of M. Emile Ollivier, the Emperor addressed a remarkable letter, recognising, in the strongest terms that could be used, his abilities, his integrity, and his patriotism. M. de Forcade had just received a telegram from the father of M. Guary, at Paris, announcing his arrival at Anzin for the next day, and asking me to prolong my visit, which I was very glad to do. There are many factories at work in and around Anzin, but there is nothing Plutonian in the aspect of the place or of the neighbourhood, and the grimy side of coal-mining nowhere obtrudes itself. On the contrary the green fields, under a very high cultivation, everywhere encroach agreeably upon the town. The residence of M. Guary, the Director, stands in an exceedingly pretty park, and the mansion, a handsome modern château, is surrounded with fine and well-grown trees. You approach the mansion from the busy main streets of Anzin, traversed by a tramway leading to Denain, but from its windows and balconies which overlook the park, you gaze out upon the verdure and the spacious peace of a wide rural landscape. A certain proportion of the workmen employed in the mines prefer to live in the town; but it is the policy of the company to encourage the development of cottage life, and wherever I went throughout its extensive domain I found families of the workmen installed in comfortable homes, surrounded by gardens and by what are called in England 'allotments.' Of these the company now owns no fewer than 2,628. Originally these houses were built in the form of _cités ouvrières_; but it has been found by experience that these blocks of contiguous houses are open to certain objections from the point of view of health, as well as from the point of view of morals, and the more recent constructions are detached cottages. A model of one of these cottages was exhibited in the social economy section of the Exposition at Paris this year, But it was more satisfactory to see them actually inhabited and on the spot. Each cottage is built in a field of land of two acres in extent, and the rent varies from three francs and a half to six francs a month. For the lesser sum, or for forty-two francs a year, a workman at Anzin earning an average wage of three francs a day, or in round numbers a thousand francs a year, may thus secure a well-built house--most of those I saw were of brick--with proper drainage and cellarage, containing two good rooms on each of three floors, with closets, and standing in its own grounds. Compare this, not with the squalid and noisome single rooms for which in the worst parts of Spitalfields a rent of tenpence a day, or five shillings a week (Sunday being thrown in free when the weekly rent is duly paid), or thirteen pounds sterling a year is exacted--but with the average rental of lodgings in the manufacturing towns of Massachusetts! But this is not all. Whatever repairs are needed in these houses are made, not by the tenants, but by the company, and the company further leases to its workmen, who choose to avail themselves of them, at very low rates garden sites within each commune, for cultivation as kitchen-gardens. No fewer than 2,500 families now have such holdings under cultivation, making a total of 205 hectares thus put to profit by the workmen, who take a lively pleasure in cultivating them during their leisure hours. Every workman is allowed furthermore by the company seven hectolitres of ordinary coal per month for his own use. In cases of illness, or where a workman has a family of more than six persons, this allowance is increased. In 1888 the coal thus given by the company amounted to 598,550 quintals, representing a money value of 359,150 francs. This is not only a practical application of the Scriptural injunction 'not to muzzle the ox which treadeth out the grain;' it is a practical contribution to the solution of the great 'question' which M. Doumer in his Report tells us the 'true Republic' has been for ten years making believe to study--of the participation of the workman in the profits of the work. It is, indeed, from this economical and practical point of view, and not from the philanthropic point of view, it seems to me, that all these advantages conceded by the Anzin Company to its workmen should be considered. No man of common sense needs to be told that to deal successfully with industrial enterprises which require the investment of a large capital for the production of commodities liable to great fluctuations in price, the managers of such enterprises must be executive men employing executive methods. If all the workmen employed in such enterprises are to be admitted in the ordinary way to a participation in the profits, they must obviously be admitted to a participation in the councils, and in the direction of the policy of the managers. How is that to be brought about without endangering the success of the enterprises? To consult the workmen of the company on technical questions within the range of their regular employment is one thing; to consider the commercial and fiscal policy of the company in its relation with competing companies, and with the consuming public, in a general conclave of all the establishment, would be quite another thing. It is a curious fact that in the original statutes of 1757 the founders of Anzin expressly provided that the six directors of the company should, when necessary, consult not only the employés, but the workmen of the company--the '_ouvriers_;' and this provision was insisted on at a time when, as the doctrinaires of the nineteenth century would have us believe, 'labour' was not recognised in France as a social force to be considered. Under its existing system of management the Anzin Company makes its workmen real participants in the profits of its operations, without at the same time exposing them to participate in the losses. This is done not only through the singularly low rates at which the workmen are enabled to house themselves and their families, through the coal allowance, through the provision of cheap kitchen-gardens, and particularly through the establishment of a pension fund and of a savings-bank, but in many other forms. Advances repayable without interest, for example, are made to workmen who wish to buy or to build houses for themselves. These advances in 1888 stood in the books of the company at a total of 1,446,604 francs, of which 1,345,463 fr. 91 c. had been repaid, leaving a balance due to the company then of 101,140 fr. 9 c. With these funds workmen of the company had bought or built for themselves 741 houses, being thus visibly, and unanswerably to the extent of the value of these houses, participants in the profits of Anzin. Not less real is the participation of the workmen in the profits through the various beneficial and educational institutions which I visited with M. Guary, or with his son, and of which I shall presently speak. The concessions now possessed by the Anzin Company are eight in number: those of Vieux-Condé, Fresnes, Raismes, Anzin, Saint-Saulve, Denain, Odomez, and Hasnon. These concessions cover, in the form of an irregular polygon, about thirty continuous kilomètres of territory, stretching from Somain to the Belgian frontier, with a breadth varying from seven to twelve kilomètres. The total area amounts to 2,805,450 hectares. Of these concessions the four first-named were the original basis of the organisation of the company under the controlling influence of the Prince de Croy-Solre at the Château of l'Hermitage which still belongs to his family near Condé. The others have been acquired since 1807; Hasnon, the latest, which covers about 1,500 hectares, in 1843. But--and this is a notable fact--the Anzin Company from the beginning to this day has been organised and managed under the original statutes of 1757. Under these statutes, devised and drawn up absolutely under the _ancien régime_, and by an association of practical engineers and enterprising adventurers with feudal seigneurs, this great company has, for more than a century and a quarter, administered with signal success, and still administers, what may be fairly called an industrial republic, carrying on its affairs and developing its resources in the face of the enormous changes of modern life, and maintaining here, under what are thought to be the most trying conditions of labour, a most remarkable measure of harmony between an ever-increasing nation of labourers and a strictly limited administration, composed not only of capitalists, but of hereditary capitalists. What becomes of the rights of man and of the Abbé Sieyès, and of the Tiers-Etat, which 'ought to be everything,' and of the 'immortal principles of 1789,' in the face of all this? To the wisdom of the National Assembly the workmen and the Company of Anzin owe considerably less than nothing. The National Assembly, of course, meddled with the mines of France, as it meddled with everything else. It did endless debating over the subject, in the course of which Mirabeau declaimed eloquently against the doctrine of Turgot, that the mines belong to the men who find them, a doctrine which, after all, is much more rational than the more recent contention of sundry modern Orators of the Human Race that 'the mines belong to the miners'! But after it had talked itself hoarse, the Assembly had to descend to the prosaic business of legislation, and in dealing with the mines, as in dealing with other matters, it made a muddle of the laws which existed before it met, and left this muddle to be resolved into a new order of things legal, under the presiding genius of Napoleon. Under the _ancien régime_ the rights of the feudal lords of the land over the mines beneath the soil had been contested by the steadily increasing power of the sovereign. In the case of the Anzin Company, and of the articles of association adopted in 1757, we see the practical good sense of the practical men who adopted those articles bringing about a good working arrangement between the concessions granted by the Crown and the claims advanced by the lords of the land. The republican legislators in 1791 concocted a mining law, under which the dominion of the sovereign, taken over by the State, was brought into perpetual conflict with the recognised, but undefined, rights of the lords of the soil. Such was the mischief caused by this ill-digested law that, in 1810, Napoleon made an end of it, and substituted for it an imperial law, under which the absolute ownership of mines in France might be conferred by a concession of the Government. 'The act of concession,' says the seventh article of the law, 'gives a perpetual ownership of the mine, which from that moment may be disposed of and transmitted like any other kind of property, and no holder of it can be expropriated, except in the cases and under the forms prescribed with, regard to all other properties.' This law of course made an end both of the royalties of the old French system, and of the English and American doctrine that he who owns the land owns up to the sky and down to the centre of the earth. For while the State recognises under this law the owner of the surface, and provides that the State shall give him what may be called a kind of 'compensation for disturbance' though on a scale to be fixed by itself, it recognises in him no ownership whatever of the mine beneath his soil. Nor does it recognise under this law any right in the discoverer of a mine to a proprietary interest in a property which but for him might never have existed as an available property at all, either for the owner of the surface, or for the State, or for the concessionary of the State. The founders of the Anzin Company in 1757, it will be seen, recognised the right of Pierre Mathieu, the discoverer of bituminous coal at Anzin, to such a proprietary interest in the mine he had discovered; but they recognised it with a practical and sensible reference to the concurrent rights also of other people, and to the general utility. So much more deftly, it would appear, were practical questions, involving the interests of labour and of capital, handled under the _ancien régime_ by practical persons, whether nobles, engineers, or adventurers, who had a practical interest in settling them wisely, than by theoretical persons, 'philosophers and patriots,' whose only practical interest lay in 'unsettling' them, during the long legislative riot which began in 1789. The influence of this period upon labour and capital in France is well illustrated in the records of this company at Anzin. In 1720, when poor coal, _charbon maigre_, was first found by the Vicomte Desandrouin and his friends at Fresnes, fifty-five tons of the mineral were extracted. In 1734, Pierre Mathieu 'struck it rich' at Anzin, and work began in earnest. By 1744 the yearly output reached 39,685 tons. In 1757, when the Company of Anzin was finally formed, and the articles of association were signed, the output of the concessions worked by the company amounted to 102,000 tons. From that time it increased, not 'by leaps and bounds,' but steadily, till in 1789 it had reached 290,000 tons. In 1790 it increased again to 310,000 tons. Then came a decline--gradual at first, but as things grew worse at Paris, sharp and sudden. The output fell to 291,000 tons in 1791--fell again to 275,500 tons in 1792. With the murder of the king, and the final crash of law and order throughout France, in 1793 the output dropped suddenly to 80,000 tons, or less by 20 per cent. than it had been in 1756, the year before the company was finally formed. In the next year, 1794, it dropped again to 65,000 tons, a point below that of the production in 1752, four years before the formation of the company, when the lords of the land were in the thick of their legal battle with the Vicomte Desandrouin and the concessionnaires. Things began gradually to look better as it became more and more clear that the Republic could not last, and with the establishment of the Consulate and the Empire they grew better still. But it was not till 1813 that the output approached the figure reached in the last year of the monarchy, 1790. With the disasters of 1814 and 1815, of course, it fell again; but within two years after the restoration of the monarchy, in 1818, the output reached and passed the highest point attained before the Revolution, and stood at 334,482 tons. In 1830 the output had reached 508,708 tons, but the revolution of that year threw it back again, in 1831, to 460,864 tons. Under the monarchy of July, the production gradually, though not regularly, increased again, until in 1847 it had reached 774,896 tons, only to be struck down by the senseless Revolution of 1848 to 614,900 tons in 1849. It went up with the establishment of the second Empire in 1852 to 803,812 tons in 1853, and by 1870 had reached 1,633,818 tons. Under the governments of M. Thiers and of the Marshal-Duke of Magenta, during which, according to M. Doumer, the Republic existed 'only in name,' the output went up till, in 1877, it passed the two million limit, only to recede again with the advent to power of M. Gambetta and his friends, with their 'true Republic,' under which it fell in 1884 to 1,720,306 tons. The elections of 1885, marking the rise of a great conservative and monarchical reaction, were followed, in 1886, by an increase in the output of the Anzin mines to 2,337,439 tons; and in 1888, when from one end of France to the other, the Republic was officially and almost hysterically declared by the authorities to be in deadly peril, and men were speculating as to whether President Carnot, or General Boulanger, would open the Exposition in 1889, the Anzin output reached 2,595,581 tons. Of course, account must be taken of other than political considerations in estimating the significance of this record, nor do I wish unduly to dwell upon what may be called its barometrical value in the study of contemporaneous French history. But when we consider the relations of coal to all the great industries of our time, it is certainly noteworthy that for more than a century every development in Paris of a tendency favourable to republicanism in France, should appear to have been followed by an unfavourable effect, and every development unfavourable to republicanism in France by a favourable effect upon the production, at Anzin, of a mineral which has come to be the 'staff of life' of all modern industry and commerce. For during the whole of this period Anzin has been what it still is, the coal-capital, as St.-Gobain is the glass-capital, and Creuzot the iron-capital of France. Its mines produce about one-tenth of the total output of French coal. A falling off, therefore, in the output of the Anzin mines may be fairly enough taken as an indication of disease in the body politic of France. The most considerable falling off in this output of late years was in 1884, when the production fell to 1,720,306, from 2,210,702 in the preceding year, 1883. Two of the great French industries, the iron industry and the sugar industry, both of them most important consumers of coal, were then passing through a period of depression, the over-production of sugar in Germany having seriously damaged the French sugar-producers in particular. To meet the pressure put upon them by the decline in the demand for coal, the directors of the Anzin Company found it necessary to carry out certain economies, either through a reduction of wages or through some modification in their methods of production. If they had been allowed to do this through an undisturbed arrangement with their workmen, there is no reason to doubt that it would have been done with little friction, and with no injustice to anyone. Wages at Anzin had steadily risen from a daily average, for the surface workmen, of 3 fr. 67 c. to 4 fr. 52 c. in 1883, concurrently with the development at Anzin of that system of practical participation in the profits to which I have already alluded. For the subterranean workmen, the advance had been from 3 fr. 38 c. in 1879 to 3 fr. 72 c. in 1883. The spirit in which the Anzin Company has been administered from the beginning is strikingly illustrated by the steady advance in the wage of the workmen. In Belgium, one of the chief seats of the competition with Anzin for the coal-market of France, on the contrary, the wages of the workmen are subject to the fluctuations of the general market. In 1873, for example, the average wage of the workmen in the mines of Hainault, as given to me by M. Guary, was 4 fr. 69 c., or about 25 per cent. above the average wage of 1883 at Anzin. But 1873 was the year of the great advance in coal. In 1876 the average Hainault wage fell to 3 fr. 45 c.; in 1879 it fell to 2 fr. 68 c., and in 1880 it stood at 3 fr. 6 c. By 1880 the average wage at Anzin had risen (and steadily risen) to 4 fr. 23 c. During the year 1883 the expenditure of the Company upon the assistance fund, the pension fund, the medical services, the gratuitous supply of fuel, the cottages, in addition to, and not at the expense of, the wages paid, reached a total of 1,224,730 francs. During this same year the profits of the company, as stated after an inquiry by the French Minister of Public Works, amounted to 1,200,000 francs. This really seems to warrant the assertion that at Anzin in 1883 the profits of the mines were virtually divided into two equal portions, one of which went to Capital and the other to Labour. Assuming this assertion to be, even roughly speaking, accurate, why should there have been any serious collision between Capital and Labour, in such an organisation, over a question of practical economies necessarily advantageous to both? Yet there was such a collision. In February 1884, what is known as the great strike at Anzin broke out over a proposed improvement in the methods of working, the demonstrable effect of which must be to improve the position of the best workmen employed by the company, without doing real injustice to others. A similar strike had occurred a quarter of a century before, when the company insisted on introducing from England and Belgium the use of ponies in the subterranean galleries. But in 1884 the conservative instinct of the workmen, which predisposes them in all callings against innovations of any kind, was adroitly worked upon and influenced by the direct influence of the politicians of the 'true Republic' at Paris. A workman of the company named Basly, who had taken an active part in organising a syndicate of mining workmen under a law passed in 1881 to favour such syndications, put himself into communication with the advanced Radicals at Paris, constituted himself the champion of the syndicates of workmen, and, according to the testimony given before a parliamentary committee, fomented a formidable exterior pressure upon the workmen at Anzin, to bring about the strike which eventually took place, and in connection with which M. Basly became a conspicuous figure in French Republican politics, receiving a much larger wage as a deputy than he had ever earned in the mines at Anzin, where, as the books of the company show, though by no means an exceptionally good workman, he earned, in 1881, 4 fr. 93 c., and in 1882 4 fr. 71 c. a day. One obvious object of the syndicates of workmen being to establish a kind of despotic control over all the workmen of any calling, the syndicate of mining workmen at Anzin set itself, a year before the strike, in 1883, to break down what is known at Anzin (and elsewhere in France also, M. Guary tells me) as the system of 'marchandages.' Under this system the company makes contracts with the workmen at a fixed price for coal, deliverable during several months. A good workman, holding one of these contracts and stimulated by it, frequently gains from 20 to 25 per cent. more than the average daily wage of his class. The syndicate wished to establish 'equality' of wages, or, in other words, to put idle or inferior workmen on the same level with industrious and superior workmen. To this end, the leaders resorted to the methods usual in all such cases, of intimidation and actual violence. Workmen at Anzin who had taken 'marchandages' were attacked and beaten, some of them so severely as to disable them for weeks. At the parliamentary inquiry which followed the strike of 1884, such letters as the following, sent to workmen at Anzin, a year before, in 1883, were produced and read in evidence:-- 'CACHAPREZ 'Citizen,--In the name of the syndical chamber of the miners of Anzin, thou art forewarned that, if thou dost not cease thy _marchandage_, as we have informed Lagneaux, thou wilt pass, in the sight of thy brethren coal-miners, for a traitor and a coward, as well as thy seven comrades, who are worth no more than thyself. 'If thou dost not what we exact of thee, be not surprised to find thyself stretched out a bit, and to be laid up for three weeks, as well as the good-for-nothings who are working with thee. 'Receive our great contempt. 'A group of workmen who will caress thee one of these days if thou dost not give up thy marchandage.' Letters like these, which would not discredit the rural terrorists of Kerry and Clare, were followed, not only by attacks on the obnoxious workmen, but by the destruction of their flowers and vegetables in the gardens which, as I have stated, they are enabled by the company to cultivate. As a workman may go to his work as soon as he likes in the morning (the gates are closed just before six o'clock), they have their afternoons to themselves, and those of them who have gardens I found working there with great evident satisfaction at most of the points which I visited. With the outbreak of the 'strike' in 1884, matters grew worse. Dynamite was then called into play. Fusees were exploded under the windows and in the doorways of workmen who refused to be coerced into leaving their work. As nearly nine-tenths of the workmen had gone, or been driven, into the strike, the cabarets in which the region abounds were filled with crowds of idle men. Radical speakers and managers hurried down to Anzin from Paris, to harangue the multitude and stir the people up to mischief, and the position of the workmen who stood out against an agitation which they knew to be founded on no grievance of theirs, and which could have no possible result for them but to injure the company, with the prosperity of which they felt their own prosperity to be identified, became really dangerous. In the thick of the contest thus provoked and carried on, it is interesting to find M. Allain-Targé, of whom I have already had occasion to speak, in connection with his conduct as Minister of the Interior during the elections of 1885, appearing on the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry, of 1884, into the situation at Anzin, as a friend and advocate of the 'syndicate of workmen,' and urging the Anzin Company to accept the syndicate and its secretary, M. Basly, as an umpire between itself and the 'strikers,' who had been seduced or coerced into 'striking' by this very syndicate and its secretary! What possible good, either to Labour or to Capital, can be rationally expected--what possible harm to both may not be legitimately feared--from a republic controlled and administered by such men? One curious and important incidental object of the 'syndicate of workmen,' and of M. Basly in promoting this strike of 1884 at Anzin, revealed itself to me in the very full Report of the Parliamentary inquiry which M. Guary was good enough to put at my service. After devoting large sums of money to the various institutions and funds established by it for the benefit of the workmen, the Anzin Company invited the workmen themselves to contribute to their own savings and pension fund at the rate of three per cent. of their wages, the expenses of management being borne, of course, by the company. The 'syndicate of workmen' and M. Basly did not like this. They preferred that any contributions to be made by the workmen from their wages should be made, not to a fund guaranteed and administered by the company, but to a fund to be handled by the syndicate. Whereupon M. Basly wrote, and caused to be circulated among the workmen, a letter signed by himself as secretary of the syndicate, in which he bade them regard the proposal of the company as 'a snare set for their liberties.' 'To sign any such agreement as the company suggests,' he said, 'will be to sign your own death-warrant and that of your children!' 'Citizens! your enemies see our Union established. They know that we are on the point of having a pension fund solidly established _under the guarantee of the State_, which shall leave us all free to work whenever we like.' This idea of a Labour Pension Fund under the guarantee of the State is not, I need hardly say, of M. Basly's invention. It 'trots through the heads' of all manner of political adherents of M. Doumer's 'true Republic.' It was very neatly 'thrashed out' in a brief colloquy which. I noted down one day in Paris between a representative of the 'syndicate of jewellers' and a deputy, M. Thiessé. 'What would you think?' asked M. Thiessé, 'of an obligatory assessment on wages, intended to secure, by the authority of the State and with perfect safety, a certain pension to the workmen of your corporation?' Whereunto the jeweller, M. Favelier, replied: 'We prefer freedom in this respect, as well as from the point of view of our work.' M. Thiessé returned undismayed to the charge. 'Then you would prefer to organise a pension fund in your syndical chamber? But if you had not means enough to ensure pensions to your workmen, what would you think of an institution which would ensure them a pension and bread for their old age?' To which M. Favelier, suddenly striking the bull's eye and 'ringing the bell': 'We do not want the State called in, to lay new taxes upon us!' M. Basly, who is probably a consumer rather than a payer of taxes, had more 'advanced' views than the Parisian jeweller. But his chief immediate object evidently was to secure contributions from the wages of the Anzin workmen to a fund to be controlled by the syndicate. What the eventual meaning to the contributing workmen of a fund so controlled is likely to be may be inferred from an incident which came to my knowledge not long ago, in London. A question arose between a certain association of English engineers, and men employed by one of the great English railway companies, over an issue not unlike that presented at Anzin by the demand of the 'syndicate of miners,' that the Anzin workmen should give up their long time and profitable contracts. The men in the employment of the railway were old and excellent railway men, who were earning, on a kind of special contract, something like a pound a week apiece more than the usual rates paid to their class. They were members of the association referred to, and, as such, had for many years contributed to its funds under a system which promised them a certain pension at the expiration of a certain number of years. This being the situation, these men were notified by the association that if they did not give up their special contracts and content themselves with the usual wages earned by others of their class, they would, in the first instance, be fined, out of their own money in the hands of the association, a pound a week for a given time, at the end of which, if they still remained in disobedience, their pensions would be forfeited! I should be glad to know what 'employer' ever devised a more shameless plan than this for reducing workmen to slavery, moral and financial? Probably the laws of England, if called upon, would protect them against such outrages. But how is a workman in such circumstances to call upon the laws? How is he to meet the legal cost of defending his rights? How is he to face the organised hostility of men of his own class? The 'strike' at Anzin in 1884 ended as 'strikes' are apt to do. A certain proportion of the men who had been foremost in accepting or promoting it disappeared from the service of the company; others, and the majority, escaped from the domination of the 'syndicate' and of M. Basly. That the conduct of the company throughout the crisis was such as to commend itself to the workmen in general may, I think, be inferred from the fact that a fresh attempt to bring about a 'strike' at Anzin, since I visited the place, completely failed. The attempt originated with the leaders of a 'strike' which was actually carried out in the mines of the adjoining Department of the Pas-de-Calais. The means employed in 1884 to intimidate the workmen at Anzin were again used. The troops and the gendarmerie were, however, called out at Anzin, not to protect Capital against Labour, but to protect the working-men of Anzin who chose to keep out of the 'strike,' against men of their own class who tried to drive them into it. In this case the original 'strike' seems to have been provoked by local rather than general causes. The managers of the mines in the Pas-de-Calais had resolved to increase the output of their mines. This necessitated a considerable increase in the number of miners employed, and this augmented demand for mining labour, not unnaturally, led the men to demand an advance on their wages. They were encouraged to demand this advance, too, by a somewhat sudden rise in the market-price of certain descriptions of coal, and it is not perhaps surprising that it should not have occurred to them to ask themselves whether the rise in the market price did, or did not, mean a real increase of profits to their employers, who, of course, could only take a very partial advantage of the advance, on account of the long contracts under which by far the greater part of their output had to be delivered to their customers. I drove with the younger M. Guary through a charming bit of woodland country, to visit a newly-opened pit--the Lagrange pit. Part of the way led us through a large forest full of fine, well-grown trees. The shooting in this forest is good, chiefly deer and pheasants. It belongs to the domain of the State, and is leased to a former director of Anzin. That the country is a pleasant land to live in appears from such facts as this, as well as from the blue, yellow, russet and rose-pink houses which enliven the long highway from Valenciennes, and are the habitations of well-to-do people living here on their incomes. From Valenciennes to the Belgian frontier, indeed, the road is virtually one long continuous street of houses and gardens, as the railway is between New York and Philadelphia. M. Guary pointed out to me the house of another ex-director of Anzin who has invested in a considerable tract of land here, on which he has put up a number of exceedingly neat houses. They are built of brick, like the small houses to which the working-men of Philadelphia are indebted to the philanthropic enterprise of Mr. Drexel and Mr. Childs; but I think it would astonish Mr. Drexel and Mr. Childs to know that a brick house, containing four good 'upright' rooms and two good garret rooms, all wainscoted in hard wood and well fitted up, well drained, and with a large cellar and a garden rather wider than the house, running back for several hundred yards to a fringe of picturesque forest, can be rented here, from this private proprietor, for 120 francs, or $24 a year. At an average wage of 4 fr. 50 c. a day, working 25 days in the month, an average workman at Anzin may easily earn 1,350 francs a year, so that he may rent such a house as I have here described for a good deal less than one-tenth of his income. What is the ordinary proportion between the house-rent and the income of a respectable tradesman or mechanic in New York? But the Anzin workman who rents such a house as this on such terms, enjoys also free fuel, free medical attendance, and schooling for his children. We called at one of these private houses, seeing the miner, whom M. Guary knew very well, standing at ease in his doorway and surveying the scene with a pipe in his mouth. He was a shrewd, stalwart man of about forty, who glanced down complacently at his own well-developed limbs and laughed scornfully when I asked him what he thought of a proposition I had seen made at Paris, by a friend of the workmen, that forty should be fixed as the age of retiring pensions for miners. 'He may be a friend,' said the miner, 'but certainly he is not a miner!' This miner had long done his day's work in the mine, and after his pipe was going to work in his garden, where his vegetables were coming forward very well. Nothing could have been better than his manners--quiet, manly, civil, without the rather aggravating slyness of the ordinary French peasant, and with absolutely nothing of the infantine swagger of the small French _bourgeois_. These miners here wear a picturesque and practical costume, something between the garb of a sailor and the garb of a fireman, and as their life--like the life of a fireman or a sailor--is lived a good deal apart from the lives of other men, and has a constant spice in it of possible danger, they acquire a certain self-reliance and self-possession which give them a natural ease and even dignity of carriage. In talking with more than one of them I thought I detected a slight tone of contempt towards other workmen and especially towards the peasants, such as tinges the talk of a sailor about land-lubbers. M. Guary confirmed this, and told me that the men, especially of the old mining stock, certainly do regard themselves as rather better than their neighbours. This may have something to do with the Conservative strength in this region. Politics do not apparently run very high among the miners, either here or in the adjoining region of the Pas-de-Calais. Valenciennes covers three electoral districts, and the Anzin concessions extend into each of these districts. In the second or St.-Amand district there was rather a lively contest in September, between M. Girot, a Republican, and M. de Carpentier, a Boulangist. The latter received 5,894 votes, but the former was elected, with 8,331 votes. In the first Valenciennes district the outgoing member, an Imperialist, M. Renard, was re-elected, receiving 5,803 votes, against 4,856 given to his Republican competitor. In the second district another outgoing member, M. Thellier de Poncheville, a leading Royalist, was also re-elected, receiving 8,690 votes, against 7,263 given to his Republican opponent. In both of these cases it came within my knowledge that the authorities of the Department made the most open and unscrupulous efforts to prevent the return of the outgoing members. Both M. Thellier de Poncheville and M. Renard, however, sate on M. Pion's Committee on the mines, and the mining population of the region appear to have a singularly clear notion of the difference between sense and nonsense in dealing with mining matters. Our miner, who hit the difference so neatly between 'miners' and the 'friends of miners,' after a little chat on the doorway, asked us, very politely, to walk in and look at his home. It was very neatly and adequately furnished, with clocks in each of the ground-floor rooms, sundry framed mezzotints hanging on the walls, and a goodly show of neatly-kept crockery. The wife, looking older than her husband, but very probably his junior, cheerily pointed out to me the local improvement she had made by transferring the cooking-range from the front room, looking on the highway, to the back room looking into the garden. 'It is pleasanter, don't you think?' she said, 'to sit out of the kitchen; and then, with the kitchen at the back, one can always leave the door open. That is my idea!' We assured her we thought it an excellent idea and most creditable to her--a compliment which she received with modest satisfaction, saying, 'You know the wife must think of these things!' to which the husband good-naturedly assented, while the daughter, a well-grown good-looking girl of fourteen, looked up from her household duties, much interested in our visit. The husband, on his part, had contrived a convenient wine-cellar under the stairway. 'It will not hold much wine,'he said with a smile; 'but it is too large for all the wine I drink.' 'Ah!' said the wife archly, 'he likes cider much better!' This miner was employed in the new Lagrange pit, and though I was much struck by the neatness of his person and apparel, I was more struck by the general absence of anything like the griminess which we commonly associate with mines and mining among his fellows, whom I found still at work around the pits. M. Guary told me that this is a characteristic trait of the Anzin miners. In the buildings attached to each pit there is a large hall, called the miner's hall, where the men meet when they go down to and come up from their underworld. There each man has a box, under lock and key, bearing his number, in which he puts away his ordinary clothes when he dons his mining suit; the company--I should mention here--provides every man when he enters the service with a mining outfit. And to this hall there is attached a lavatory for the use of the men. The hall is well warmed in winter, and, being always on an upper floor, is well aired and ventilated in summer. From this hall at the Lagrange pit we walked into an adjoining room, where we found the miners going down the shaft in a great metallic basket, while the coal came up. While we stood there, there came up a magnificent lump of coal, of a very brilliant and even lustrous surface, around which the admiring miners crowded. This is a new vein, and the coal found in it, M. Guary tells me, burns with an unusually clear and intense flame. A miner with whom I talked a little had been to see the Exposition, and it was curious to perceive that he had been much more interested in the Anzin part of it than in anything else. He spoke indeed almost disrespectfully of the Eiffel Tower, and he was entirely convinced that the workmen at Anzin were much better off than the workmen at Paris, as to which I am not prepared to dispute his opinion. He had not seen the President, which did not appear to disturb him much; but he thought the beer at the Exposition 'very dear and very bad.' The engines, however, he frankly admired, though 'everybody can see that it is not possible to make better engines than are made at Anzin.' One curious thing he told me of the young miners who are drafted away into the military service. 'When they come back,' he said, 'some of them at first try other trades, but all that are of any use sooner or later come back to the mine. It is of no use,' he said reflectively, 'for any man to try to be a miner if he is not trained as a boy.' This is exactly Jack Tar's notion as to sailors. From the Lagrange pit we drove, still through pleasant woods and fresh green farming-lands, to Thiers, where the company has a large number of working-men's houses, together with a considerable church, a lay and a religious school, and other institutions. There we paid a visit to a delightful little old lady, with a face, full of wrinkled sweetness and humour, which Denner might have painted. She insisted upon showing us all over her home, and a little miracle it was of thrift and neatness and order; from the spotlessly clean little bedrooms with the high Flemish beds, the crucifix hanging over the bed, and prints--not always devout--on the walls, to the sitting-room with its shining mirror, highly polished tin and brass candlesticks and platters, and abundant china. She was a staunch Imperialist, and had portraits of the Emperor, with prints of Solferino and of Sedan. 'There it was that they betrayed him!' said the little old lady, with deep indignation in her voice. I had not the heart to ask her who these traitors were. The garrets I found filled with new-mown hay. 'It keeps there till we sell it,' she said, 'and then it smells so sweet!' which was undeniable. Behind her house (her son and his wife were both absent at their work) she showed us the garden, very trimly kept and gay with the old familiar flowers, and an arbour, in which she took especial pride, none of her neighbours possessing anything of the sort. At Thiers I talked with an officer of the company who had served for some time in one of the great mines of Southern France. The differences in the habits and character of the mining populations there and here he found very great, and, on the whole, he evidently thought the Northern miners much superior, in most essential points, to their fellows at the South. Certainly, according to him, they are neater in their persons, more cool and sensible, less credulous, less addicted to politics, and much more thrifty. 'The women, when they are well-behaved and good managers,' he said, 'have more influence with the men in the North. In the South and in Auvergne, I have sometimes thought the worst women had more influence with the men than the best.' He had an odd theory as to the effect of great altitudes on human character. 'In Auvergne and in Savoy,' he said, 'the higher up you go the more excitable and quarrelsome you find the people. Here in Flanders the people are placid, like the plains.' He called my attention, too, to the prevalence among the miners here at Anzin of a peculiar type of blonds with a sort of ruddy russet hair and beard, not quite the glowing Titianesque auburn, and yet by no means red. It is certainly a marked and peculiar tint, and may be seen faithfully reproduced in a large picture of the Anzin miners exhibited this year at Paris. I had supposed it to 'hark back' to the Scandinavians, who made themselves so much at home in all these fat and accessible regions after Charlemagne passed away. 'No,' said my philosophic engineer, 'it is due to the potash. These miners are so addicted to washing themselves and use such quantities of strong soap, that it has permanently affected their hair.' Upon which another engineer, also familiar with Auvergne, broke in: 'That's all very well; but I have seen many miners in Auvergne with the same tint of hair and beard, and you know that there they wash their faces, at the most, once a week!' This last speaker was an exceedingly shrewd man and, as I found, a strong Conservative. He had been asked to stand as a candidate for mayor in his commune, but had declined, though his personal popularity made his election almost a matter of form. I asked him why. 'Let myself be elected to a political office by my workmen!' he said; 'how can a sensible man think of such a thing? Ask men to give you their votes, and what authority will be left to you? No, I think I know my business too well for that. They tried that sort of thing, you know, during the war, and a beautiful business they made of it! I suspect it was the Germans who suggested it!' What I am told of the morals of the people here reminds me of the traditional reputation of certain sections of Pennsylvania settled by the Germans in the last century, and of the Dutch in Long Island. There is a good deal of drinking. _Buvettes_ are forbidden within the limits of the _cités ouvrières_, but in the communes they are very numerous, averaging, I am assured, as many as twenty to every 1,200 inhabitants. To open a _buvette_ nothing is needed but a police permission, and the _buvettes_ are kept, for the most part, by the wives of miners and other artisans, as a means of adding to the family income. Beer is very cheap, costing only two sous a litre. Wine and spirits are more costly, though a great deal of gin is made, and inexpensively made, in the country. There is much sociability among the people, and great practical liberality as to the conduct of young girls, the ancient practice known as 'bundling' in New England being still in vogue among these worthy Flemings. M. Baudrillart, who evidently inclines to a favourable judgment of these Northern populations, puts the truth on this point very considerately. 'Conspicuous historical examples,' he observes, 'prove to me that the flesh is weak in this province of Flanders. The severity of public opinion does not always make up for the laxity of the control exercised by principle. Unmarried mothers are numerous, and incidents of this sort are often regarded as simple errors of youth and inexperience, to be remedied by marriage. The marriage-tie when formed, however, is not less respected than among our rural populations in general, and cases of flagrant misconduct on the part of married women are rare.' Offences against persons and property are not relatively numerous here. On the contrary, while the proportion of persons accused of crime is 12 to the hundred thousand, for all France, in this Department of the Nord it falls to 8-1/3 to the hundred thousand, and this notwithstanding the numbers crowded into the great manufacturing towns of the department. In the Department of the Seine, which includes Paris, the proportion rises to 28 to the hundred thousand, and in the agricultural Department of the Eure, which is the champion criminal Department of France, to 30 to the hundred thousand. One might almost imagine that M. Zola must have gone to the Eure for his studies of French peasant-life. Without being particularly devout, the people of this region, I am told, are fond of their religious observances, and much dislike the persecution of the Church and the laicisation of the schools. At Thiers the church, which is a large one, fronting on an extensive Place Publique, was very handsomely decorated on Corpus Christi Sunday by the people of the commune. Flags and garlands were put up, too, all about the Place Publique. The Anzin Company are now building a large school for girls very near this church; and I visited, with M. Guary, one afternoon, the boys' school at Thiers. It is very well installed in a large building, with a playground and a gymnasium roofed in, but not walled. The teacher--a lay teacher, and a very quiet, sensible man--who lives in the school-building with his wife, told me he preferred to keep it thus, and the boys liked it better. They were at their lessons when I visited the school, and a very sturdy, comely lot of lads they were. Some of them were _en pénitence_, having slighted their lessons, as the teacher slily intimated, by reason of the great Church festival. This I thought not unlikely, and he did not appear to regard it as an absolutely unpardonable offence, while the juvenile criminals themselves were evidently quite cheery in their minds. In a room near the gymnasium were racks filled with wooden guns. These the teachers pointed out with pride. They were a gift from the company to his battalion of boys, who delighted in their regular military drill. He thought them, after only eighteen months' training, one of the best boy-battalions in the department, and would have liked to take them to Paris to compete for the athletic prizes. But to take up even a picked company of ten would have cost 400 francs, which he thought, and I agreed with him, might be better spent in Thiers. 'And then,' he said with a smile, 'what a life I should have led in Paris, with those ten boys to look after!' The Anzin Company used to spend 80,000 francs a year on keeping up its own schools. But it is so heavily taxed for the 'school palaces' which have been put up, and for the public schools, that it has materially reduced this outlay, though it still expends a large sum in various ways for the advantage of the children of its own workmen attending the public schools; and still keeps up certain religious schools, especially for the little children and the girls. One of these schools for little children which I visited at St.-Waast, kept by the Sisters, was a model. The little creatures, ranged in categories according to their years, were pictures of health and good humour, as they sate in rows at their little desks, or marched about, singing in choruses. One exercise, through which a number of them, from six to eight years old, were conducted by two of the Sisters, might have been studied from a fresco by Fra Angelico representing the heavenly choirs, and gave the most intense delight evidently to the singing children as well as to the smiling and kindly Sisters. There is a large church, too, at St.-Waast and a _cité ouvrière_. The commune, I believe, formerly was a part of the wide domain of the famous Abbey of St.-Waast which grew up near Arras over the burial-place of St.-Vadasius, to whom after the victory of Clovis over the Germans at Tolbiac in 495 the duty was confided of teaching the Frankish king his Christian catechism. He had a tough pupil, but he taught him, so well that King Clovis conceived a great affection for him, and got St.-Rémi to make him bishop, first of Arras, and then of Cambrai. At the time of the Revolution the great abbey near Arras, which bore his name, was one of the richest of the religious communities which, according to the very important _Avis aux députés des trois ordres de la province d'Artois_, so thoroughly and instructively analysed by M. Baudrillart, held among them in 1789 two-thirds of the land of that province. M. Baudrillart's analysis of this _Avis_ shows conclusively that a judicious and systematic overhauling of these ecclesiastical properties was absolutely necessary; but it also shows conclusively that the people of Artois who desired this wished to see it done decently and in order. They had a strong love of their provincial independence. Even Maximilian Robespierre, who was then bestirring himself in public matters at Arras, addressed his first political publication, which he called a 'manifesto,' not to the people of Artois, but to 'the Artesian nation.' This from the future executioner of the French federalists is sufficiently edifying as to the great 'national' impulse to which we are asked by a certain school of political rhapsodists to attribute that outbreak of chaos in France called the 'great French Revolution.' What the Tiers-Etat of the great and solidly constituted province of Artois really wanted before 1789 is clearly set forth in this remarkable _Avis_. They did not want the 'Rights of Man,' or the downfall of tyrants, or any vague nonsense of that sort. They wanted a more fair and equitable system of taxation, and a better system of agriculture. They had some practical ideas, too, as to how these things could be got, for they knew that these things had been got in England. 'The Englishman of our times,' they said, 'gets an income of 48,000 pounds from a square mile of land, whereas the Artesian can hardly get 12,000 pounds from the same area. Yet the soil of Artois is in nowise inferior to that of England. The enormous difference can only be attributed to the encouragement and the distinctions which the English Government bestows upon agriculture, and to the better system of the English administration.' This passage reads almost like an extract from the diary of Arthur Young, and it is noteworthy that Arthur Young at this same time, while he was commending in his diary the admirable quality of the deep, 'level, fertile plain of Flanders and Artois,' also expressed his opinion that 'nowhere in the world was human labour better rewarded than there.' Taken together, however, the _Avis_ and the diary of Arthur Young prove that the leaders of the Tiers-Etat of Artois in 1787 were neither radicals nor revolutionists, but practical men, who wished to see the value of their property improved, and the natural advantages of their province more adequately developed. To this end they thought it necessary that the constitution of the Provincial Estates should be reformed. Thanks to a combination, as the _Avis_ declares, of the municipalities of the towns with the _noblesse_ and the higher order of the clergy, the _curés_--'that most interesting class of men who are alone in a position to make the needs of the people understood and to work for their relief--were entirely excluded from the Provincial Estates in 1669, as were also the farmers, who alone can supply the means of perfecting our agriculture.' 'Here,' said the _Avis_, 'is the true cause of the prostration of our rural interests.' They proposed to apply a remedy by recasting the representation in the Provincial Estates, and giving 'two deputies out of three to the rural population.' This having been done, so that agriculture might get in Artois the voice which the author of the _Avis_ believed it to have in England, they then proposed a reconstruction of the system of taxation. On this point they inclined to adopt, from the South of France, the system of paying the taxes not in money but in kind. The system of the tithes, too, needed a complete overhauling, not with the mere object of abolishing the tithes, but in order that the gross inequalities which the _Avis_ sets forth as existing, in regard to the impact of the tithes, both territorial and personal, might be done away with, and the support of religion put upon a sound basis. This led naturally to a demand for the release of great areas of valuable soil in Artois from the control of religious communities, like the Abbey of St.-Waast, not a few of which were no longer in a condition to put these possessions to the best uses, either for the Church or for the country. In Artois, as in French Flanders, the extent of these ecclesiastical domains which had once been an advantage to the people, is admitted to have become disadvantageous to French agriculture with the decline of the feudal aristocracy and the growth of the royal power. Short leases only were granted in general by the Church and the monasteries, and under these short leases the farmers hesitated to improve their holdings. The authors of the _Avis_ desire that it may be made possible to obtain leases of even twenty-five years which should not be treated by the Treasury as an 'alienation' of the property leased. With such leases, they say, 'the farmer would not hesitate to lay out money upon his land, because he would feel sure of getting the benefit of the outlay. This,' they add, 'is one of the principal means which the English Government has employed in bringing agriculture to the state of perfection in which we now see it in that monarchy.' As the greater part of the _cahiers_ of grievances prepared by the Tiers-Etat of Artois for the States-General of 1789 have been lost, this _Avis_ is of great value, as setting before us the real objects of that order in Artois. The _cahiers_ of the Artesian _noblesse_ and the clergy for the States-General are all preserved, and in respect of the general objects to be aimed at in the States-General, these _cahiers_ go much farther than the _Avis_. They seem to show that in Artois, as throughout the kingdom, the _noblesse_ and the clergy were much more enamoured of what are now called the 'principles of 1789' than were the body of the agricultural population. The _noblesse_ and the clergy of Artois wished to see the States-General called at regular intervals, like the English Parliament. They wished the Provincial Estates to be maintained and to be convened annually, and they wished a provincial administration to be established under a system which should give the Tiers-Etat a representation equal to that of both the other orders united, and in which decisions should be reached not by a vote of the orders collectively, but by the members of the whole body voting individually, so that a measure as to which all the members for the Tiers-Etat should be of one mind, might at any time be carried if they could secure the adhesion of even a small number of the members from either of the other orders. Clearly it was not necessary, in the case of Artois, that the Tiers-Etat should be declared to be 'everything,' in order that justice might there be done to the wishes and the interests of the Tiers-Etat! And if not in the case of Artois, why in the case of any other French province? The _Avis_ shows that in Artois before 1789 the representatives of the Tiers-Etat had confidence in the liberality and the common sense of the _noblesse_ and of the clergy, and that they were disposed to consider all the abuses there needing reformation in the spirit of practical compromise which had presided over and made possible the development of liberty and of progress in Holland and in England, but of which no traces are to be found in the chaotic history of the 'National Assembly' of 1789. The authors of the _Avis_, for example, point out, in dealing with the questions of the tithes and of the seignorial dues in Artois, that it is the unequal and irregular impact, above all, of those impositions to which most of the evils flowing from them must be imputed; the ill-feeling they engender between the farmer and his landlord or his pastor, the bad blood they breed between the different orders. If the charges of one sort and another upon one field of a farmer's holding amounted, as was sometimes the case, to one-fifth of the value of the crop, while upon other fields of his holding the charges amounted to no more than one-thirtieth of the value of the crop, the farmer not unnaturally gave his chief care to the fields which were least heavily encumbered, without much troubling himself as to their agricultural merits relatively to the other fields. But while the authors of the _Avis_ earnestly desired to see all this changed, and called for the most complete revision and re-organisation of the agricultural system in Artois, they raised no philosophical clamour against privileges as privileges, and they had sense enough to see that no community could afford to bring about the abolition of the most obnoxious 'privileges' at the cost of any flagrant violations of the Rights of Property. 'Whatever may have been the origin of these rights,' say the authors of the _Avis_, 'their antiquity has made them property to be respected in the hands of those who possess it. To deprive these owners of these rights would be an injustice and an act of violence of which no citizen can possibly dream. The privileged orders must be asked to divest themselves of their privileges.' Here is a recognition of 'vested interests' for which we may look in vain from the motley mob of the 'National Assembly' into which the States-General of 1789 so rapidly resolved, or--to speak more exactly--dissolved, themselves! With men of the Tiers-Etat, in a province like Artois, who could see things so plainly and state them so fairly before the convocation of the States-General, what became the French Revolution, plunging the whole realm into anarchy, might surely have been made a reasonable and orderly evolution of liberty. Such a document goes a good way in support of the contention that with ordinary firmness, consistency, and courage on the part of the luckless Louis XVI., the convocation of the States-General in 1789, instead of leading France, as it actually led her, through a quagmire of blood and rapine, into what George Sand felicitously called the 'merciless practical joke of the Consulate,' and the stern reality of the despotic First Empire, might easily have resulted in converting the absolute monarchy of Louis XIV. into such a limited and constitutional monarchy as France really enjoyed under Louis XVIII. The pathway to the Inferno of the Terror was really paved with the good intentions of the king. Beyond St.-Waast lies the considerable town of St.-Amand-aux-Eaux, to which General Dumouriez transferred himself, on the pretence of taking the waters there, while he was working out his plans for saving France by marching on Paris and upsetting the Assembly. The plans miscarried mainly through his own fault, but it is a curious vindication of the patriotism of Dumouriez in making them that, while he was explaining to the lunatics in Paris, in January 1793, the absurdity of attempting to overthrow the English power in India, and the German empire in Europe, before feeding and clothing their armies on the frontier, de Beurnonville, whom Dumouriez was destined to seize and arrest at St.-Amand, was himself writing from the headquarters at Sarrelouis to Cochon Lapparent at Paris that everything was going to the dogs, and that the Government was mad about chimeras. 'We think of nothing,' he said, 'but giving liberty to people who don't ask us to do it, and with all the will in the world to be free ourselves, we don't know how to be!' St.-Amand now has a population of ten or twelve thousand souls. Part of the Anzin property lies within the communal limits, but the place is a busy place and has industries of its own. It is connected with Anzin and with Valenciennes by a steam tramway, and I went there with M. Guary one fine summer morning to see what is left of the once magnificent Benedictine monastery of the seventeenth century, which was the great feature of St.-Amand a hundred years ago. A picture preserved in the collection at Valenciennes gives a fair notion of the extent and magnificence of the abbey, the demolition of which has been going on from 1793 to this day. M. Guary remembers the stately ruins as much more extensive in his youth than they now are, and as the good people of St.-Amand have very recently allowed the local architect to put up, under the very shadow of the exquisitely beautiful belfry still standing, one of the most dismal and commonplace brick school-houses I have seen in France, it is to be presumed that a few more years will see everything pulled down, and replaced, perhaps, by a miniature reproduction in steel and iron of the Eiffel Tower. Before the deviltries of 1789 began, the marketplace of St.-Amand must have been one of the most picturesque in Northern Europe. The market is still held there, and the place was full when we crossed it of peasant women and peasants, carts laden with vegetables, tables set out with all manner of utensils, with fruits, with knicknacks. All was bustle and animation. It was the old picture, save for the uncomely modifications of our modern costume. But of the splendid architectural frame in which that picture once was set, how little now is left! Beside the lofty belfry, one of the most graceful seventeenth-century buildings now to be anywhere seen, a few arches of one of the cloisters and one of the great abbatial gatehouses converted into a town-hall! The Vandal Directory of Chauny dealt more rationally with Prémontré than the 'patriots' of St.-Amand with their superb abbey. Had they preserved it, their town would now have possessed not only an architectural monument of interest and importance, but ample space and the best possible 'installations' for all its public uses and offices. Like all the Benedictine abbeys, St.-Amand was a home of letters and of arts. What remains of its noble library is to be found, as I have said, in the collection at Valenciennes. Of the treasury which the abbey contained in the way of sculpture, painting, brass and iron work, carving in wood, no such account can be given. Such of these as escaped destruction were looted, sold, and dispersed. There is a tradition, well or ill-founded, that some exceedingly fine sixteenth-century monuments executed by Guyot de Beaugrant, the sculptor of the matchless chimney-piece which, in the Chambre Échévinale at Bruges, commemorates the expulsion of the French under Francis I. from Flanders, were brought here and set up in the abbey. If so, no trace of them remains. In the gatehouse, of which the local authorities have taken possession, a few fine old books, relics of the abbatial library, are still kept, and the vaulted chapter-room on the upper floor, used now as a council chamber, contains four interesting _dessus de porte_ painted here by Watteau. The subjects are scriptural, of course; but as, in spite of all her efforts, the obliging damsel who acted as our cicerone could not possibly manage the blinds and sashes of the lofty window in the octagonal room which they adorn, it was impossible to make out to what period of the artist's career they belong. Upon one of them--the 'Woman taken in Adultery'--we got light enough thrown to show that its colouring is admirable. It can hardly have been painted while Watteau was at work in Paris on his endless reproductions of the then popular St.-Nicholas, but must probably have been executed after his study of Rubens in the Luxembourg, and his failure to win the first prize at Rome had opened to him his true path to fame, and carried him into the French Academy of Fine Arts as 'the painter of festivals and of gallantry.' The fine old church of St.-Amand has fared better than the abbey. It has been judiciously restored, and the third Napoleon made it an historical monument. Despite the Radicalism of the place, we found it thronged with people of both sexes--the men, indeed, almost in a majority--attending a high mass. It was rather startling, as we emerged from this service on our way back to Anzin, to come upon a large cabaret which bore for its sign the words, in glaring gilt letters, 'Au Nouveau Bethléhem, Estaminet Barbès.' Whether this is the conventicle of a sect of believers in the revolutionary Barbès I could not learn. But it is just possible that the Barbès, whom it celebrates, may be the enterprising proprietor of the place, and that the sacred name he has given it is a relic of that familiar use of holy things which never scandalised the good people of the Middle Ages, particularly in Flanders and in France. Does not the best old inn in the comfortable town of Châlons-sur-Marne to this day bear the name of 'La Haute Mère de Dieu'? I have already said that the miners of Anzin have been practically enjoying all the advantages of co-operation, while the 'true Republicans' of M. Doumer have been 'studying' and going to sleep over that 'beautiful and generous idea.' As a matter of fact, the 'Co-operative Society of the Anzin Miners,' now known in commerce as 'Léon Lemaire et Cie of Anzin,' was founded, I find, even before the Co-operative Association of the Glass-workers at St.-Gobain. It was organised in 1865, two years before the passage of the Imperial law affecting co-operation. M. Casimir Périer, a son of the Minister of Louis Philippe, and the father of the present Republican deputy of the same name, was then a director of the Anzin Company. He had seen what M. Doumer fantastically imagines to be the purely French and republican 'idea' of co-operation carried out in England, the 'beautiful and generous idea,' as even every French schoolboy ought to know, being of English and not of French origin. M. Périer had been particularly struck by the great success of the Rochdale experiment--an experiment begun and carried out, as Mr. Holyoake has set forth at length, by weavers, who, being nearly at the end of their tether, and worn out with distress, had associated themselves into a company under the name of the 'Equitable Pioneers of Rochdale.' He looked thoroughly into the history of this experiment, and having convinced himself that the 'beautiful and generous' idea might bear as good fruit at Anzin as at Rochdale, he went to work in earnest, got the society organised, accepted the honorary chairmanship of it, and set it on its feet on February 21, 1865. M. Cochin took the same matter up at St.-Gobain, and in 1867 the Imperial law, about which M. Doumer and his 'true Republicans' have been cackling and dabbling for ten consecutive years, was enacted, and the co-operative associations became legally constituted bodies. The statutes which now govern the Anzin Association were adopted on December 8, 1867, and the Association was formally launched. The authorities at first could not be made to understand that a co-operative association was not a mercantile speculation, and for some time the Anzin Association was compelled to pay a regular fee for a licence, or 'patent,' as it is called in France. This exaction, however, was long ago given up. Under the original statutes the profits derived from the sale to the members of the Association, and to them only (a rule never departed from), of all the goods purchased by the Association, were to be divided into a hundred parts. Of these, seventy parts were to be distributed at the end of each year to the members, proportionally to the sales and deliveries made to each of them. Twenty parts were to be set aside for a reserve fund; and the remaining ten parts were to be used by the governing committee chiefly in paying the salaries of the manager and employees of the Association. Such was the success from the outset of the Anzin experiment that within six years, at a general meeting held on April 24, 1872, the Association adopted a resolution suspending the payment over into the reserve fund of the twenty parts of the profits set aside to be so paid, and ordering these twenty parts also to be paid over to the members semi-annually. The reserve fund had already reached proportions which made it unnecessary and even undesirable to increase it. The Association was originally constituted for a term of twenty years, from December 10, 1867. At a general meeting held on March 27, 1887, its life was prolonged for another twenty years, or to December 10, 1907. It might edify M. Doumer as to the nationality of the 'beautiful and generous' idea which his 'true Republicans' find it so difficult to 'study,' if he would take the trouble to visit this Anzin region. He would find the establishments of the Association currently known by the English name of 'stores.' I found one of them flourishing in every commune which I visited in the vicinity of Anzin; at St.-Waast, where the experiment was first made, at Denain, where during the past year it has been found necessary to establish two stores instead of one--at Anzin, at Fresnes, at Thiers, at Abscon, at Vieux-Condé! The Association, indeed, which began in 1865 with fifty-one members and a subscribed capital of 2,150 francs, now conducts no fewer than fifteen 'stores,' and now consists of no fewer than 3,118 families. The capital of the Association, originally fixed at 30,000 francs, in 600 shares of fifty francs each, was increased by a vote of a general meeting in April 1882 to 250,000 francs. The 'firm-name' is now 'Lemaire and Company,' the present manager being M. Léon Lemaire, who can use this 'firm-name' only for the affairs of the Association. The manager (or _gérant_) is elected at a general meeting to serve for three years, but he is always re-eligible. His salary is fixed by the governing committee, and the amount of it is charged to the general expenses. The governing committee has power also to present the manager, if it thinks proper, with a certain sum each year taken from the ten parts of the profits which are set apart by the statutes of the Association to be used for such purposes by the Committee. All the persons employed by the Association in various capacities are taken, as far as is found compatible with the interests of the business, from among the families of the members. This is particularly the case with regard to the young girls, of whom forty-eight are now employed in the different drapery and mercery stores, and an excellent practice has been adopted of calling in a certain number of girls when there is a special pressure of business to serve for a short period, these girls being regularly registered, and thus constituting a sort of reserve corps, from which the permanent employees are taken as vacancies are made. The operations of the Association cover all manner of commodities excepting butcher's meat, it having been found that there are insuperable difficulties in the way of dealing in butcher's meat over so wide an area. These difficulties do not exist in the case of what the French call _charcuterie_. A central pork butchery has been established just outside the _octroi_ at Anzin, and the business done in that line now averages about 30,000 kilogrammes a year, the difference per kilogramme between the buying and the selling prices averaging about eighteen francs. It is the iron rule of the Association never to sell at a figure beyond the average ruling retail prices in the shops, it being quite clear that if it should now and then be necessary, in order to cover the Association, to sell at prices equivalent with the shop prices, the members would still have a real advantage in the eventual distribution of the profits. It is impossible to examine the statutes, and the rules adopted under them, without being struck by the precision, clearness, and efficiency of the methods prescribed to keep the accountability of all the different agents of the Association within easily definable limits, and to simplify, in the final adjustment, the necessarily complicated accounts of so many stores dealing with customers many of whom must, from the force of circumstances, be allowed a credit of a fortnight as cash. The proof of all such methods, of course, is the net result. In the case of the Co-operative Association of Anzin this proof is conclusive in favour both of the methods and of the men by whom they have for now more than twenty years been administered. The operations of the Association for the first semester of its existence closed on February 22, 1866, with sales amounting to 71,020 fr. 10 c., and with the payment to the members of an 8 per cent. dividend, amounting in all to 8,228 francs. From that day to this, the semi-annual dividend has never fallen below eight per cent., excepting for the half-year ending August 22, 1868, when it was declared at 7-1/2 per cent. By August 1872 it readied 12 per cent. and stood there for three semesters. It then fell to 10 per cent., and stood there from February 28, 1874, to August 28, 1878, when it rose to 11. By August 31, 1879, it rose to 12, and by February 29, 1884, to 13 per cent., at which figure it has stood ever since down to February 28, 1889, with two exceptions--August 31, 1884, when it rose to 14, and February 28, 1887, when it fell to 12-1/4. The total amount of sales made to the members between February 1866 and February 1889 was 38,864,999 francs; and the total amount of dividends paid to the members during that period has been 4,585,557 fr. 69 c., showing an average dividend during these twenty-three years of 11.80 per cent. It appears to me that this is a very good account rendered of a very good stewardship, and involves, for the workmen interested, a number of useful practical lessons on the true relations of capital to labour, including the relations of their own capital to their own labour. There are now about 800 Co-operative Associations of Consumers in France; but the Anzin Association is by far the most important of them all. As the existing associations are estimated to consist on an average of 550 members each, we have 440,000 heads of families, and a total presumable population, therefore, of not far from 2,000,000, more or less successfully availing themselves of the co-operative principle in France. The net profits vary greatly in the returns of these associations, from 1 to 14 per cent. The Co-operative Coal Association of Roubaix shows a net profit of 21 per cent., and the Co-operative Bakery of the same busy and thriving city a profit of 23 per cent. But the Anzin Association not only covers more ground than any of the rest: it covers it in a more equably satisfactory fashion. During the past year, on an employed capital of 156,150 francs, it made sales amounting to 2,303,836 francs, with a gross profit of 450,497 fr. 61 c., and a net profit of 310,106 fr. 30 c. Each man had spent an average of 738 fr. 28 c., and received a net profit of 99 fr. 45 c. In other words, every holder of a 50 franc share paid for his share out of a single year's net profit, and pocketed 49 francs to boot! As indicating the scale of comfort attained in their daily life by these miners and their families, it is of interest to glance over the schedule of the goods and commodities supplied by these co-operative stores, it being premised that the stores do not keep or sell what are regarded as 'articles of luxury,' so that in these schedules we have the present scale of the necessaries and comforts of ordinary life among the more industrious and thrifty of the French working-classes. That even in the seventeenth century the French artisans, and the more prosperous of the French peasants, lived much more comfortably than one would infer from the pictures usually painted even by such historians as Michelet, who, with all his theories and all his imagination, took more trouble than M. Thiers to keep within hailing distance of the facts, would seem to be shown by the inventories and the wills of artisans and peasants disinterred during the last quarter of a century from the local archives of Troyes and other important towns. Here, in the Anzin district, to-day, we find these co-operative stores supplying to 3,000 families of the working-class 12,000 metrical quintals or bales of the finest quality of wheat flour, 3,000 of these going to the houses of the members, and 9,000 to the bakery of the Association, which turns out, on an average, 1,100 loaves, of 3 kilos each, per day. With this bread the members take from the stores annually 110,000 kilos of the best butter, 50,000 kilos of coffee, 37,000 kilos of chicory, 4,000 kilos of chocolate, 13,000 Marolles cheeses from the land of Brétigny--where Edward III. was scared by a tremendous thunderstorm, which made him 'think of the day of judgment,' into giving peace to France and liberty to her captive king--200,000 kilos of potatoes, 6,000 kilos of prunes d'Enté, 11,000 kilos of rice, 15,000 bottles of wine, 12,000 bottles of vinegar, 33,000 bottles of spirits of various sorts, 45,000 kilos of salt, 6,000 boxes of sardines, 100,000 kilos of maize and corn, 34,000 kilos of bran, 90,000 kilos of sugar, 20,000 kilos of beans, 30,000 kilos of ham, sausages, and other products of the pork-butchery. That butcher's meat, which, for the reasons I have mentioned, the stores cannot supply, plays a large proportional part in the obviously good dietary of these families, may, I think, be inferred from the fact that the stores annually dispose of 10,000 pots of the best French mustard, and of 1,000 kilos of white pepper. Vegetables and fruits are supplied in abundance by the country, and in many cases by the allotments of the workmen themselves, while beer, as I have said, is everywhere abundant and cheap. That the miners and working-people of Anzin are well lodged and well fed may be considered to be beyond a doubt. Let us now see what they do in the way of clothing themselves, and of furnishing their houses. They buy from the stores annually 30,000 francs'-worth of kitchen and household utensils, which are both well made and cheap in all this part of France, 600 kilos of mattrass wool, 4,400 yards of sheeting, 500 wool and cotton blankets and bedspreads, 9,000 towels, 44,000 pairs of sabots, 10,000 pairs of shoes, 4,600 caps and hats, 2,200 pairs of stockings, 3,700 shirts and 6,000 mètres of shirting, 17,000 mètres of _piqué_, 2,000 undervests and 2,000 mètres of flannel, 6,000 handkerchiefs, 52,000 mètres of linen goods, 17,000 mètres of lustrines; 7,200 mètres of merinos, 7,000 mètres of muslins, 14,000 mètres of _Indiennes_, 57,000 francs'-worth of mercers' wares, 24,000 mètres of calicoes, and, finally, 3,100 yards of velvet. When we remember that this is the annual outlay for keeping up the household wardrobe, not the original outlay in establishing it, it seems to me that the workpeople of Anzin ought to be, and indeed one need only walk and drive about the region to see that they are, at least as well clothed as they are housed and fed. Umbrellas even have come to be regarded as 'necessities' here, and the stores annually supply 1,300 of these useful but essentially fugitive articles. The men are clothed by their village tailors and bootmakers chiefly, so that the masculine wardrobe is represented in the accounts of the stores less extensively than the feminine. But the Anzin miners nevertheless annually invest in scarves and cravats to the number of more than 4,000. Each man on going into the employ of the company receives, as I have said, a complete mining outfit, the cost of which is not defrayed out of his wages. But the miners annually buy, on an average, 500 new mining-suits for themselves. Tables, chairs, bedsteads, bureaux, well made and often handsome, are to be had in all these communes at very low prices; and I went into no house in any of them which did not seem to me well equipped in these particulars. Engravings, coloured and plain and lithographs, are to be found in them all, and though the people are obviously not much addicted to literature, I found in one miner's house at Thiers quite a collection of books, and most of them good, sensible, and instructive books, installed in an upper chamber, in which the housewife said, her 'man' liked to sit and read when it was too hot out of doors in the garden. This good dame, by the way, was of the opinion that 'the house gives you the character of the wife,' and that 'the conduct of the husband depends upon the character of the wife.' Her own 'man' was evidently an excellent and orderly person, so I considered it a legitimate compliment to assure her that I entirely agreed with her. I hope, for the future of France, that she may be right. For there seems to be a tendency here, as there certainly is in other parts of France, to insist on sending their girls to the religious schools, even when they allow their boys to attend the lay schools, where they are exposed to having the 'true Republican' deputies and functionaries of the time get up--as M. Doumer did the other day, at the opening of a new lay school in the Aisne--and propound the doctrine that 'morals have nothing to do with religion.' The lay schools are attended, for example, in Anjou by 22,451 boys, and only 3,562 girls: while the free congreganist schools are attended by 25,360 girls, and only 5,232 boys. Adding the number together, this gives us a total of 30,592 children in the religious, as against 26,013 in the anti-religious or irreligious schools of one province. If my good housewife at Thiers is right as to the influence of the character of the women in France upon the conduct of the men, there is hope in these figures, which I am assured pretty fairly represent the state of things in Flanders as well as in Anjou, with the difference that the proportion of boys attending the religious schools is probably larger in Flanders than in Anjou. M. Doumer's doctrine that 'morals should be taught independently of religion' certainly did not commend itself to all his constituents. The _Journal de St.-Quentin_, commenting upon it, plainly said, 'The verdicts of our assize courts show us every day the result of the atheistic instructions recommended by M. Doumer and the rest of the Masonic Brothers. The truth simply is that if some remedy be not soon found for the situation created by these people, who are as stupid as they are mischievous, in a few years we shall be obliged either to decuple the gendarmerie, or to allow every citizen to go about armed with a revolver, in order to protect himself against our much too liberally emancipated young scolos!' Curiously enough this voice from St.-Quentin in France substantially echoes another voice from another St. Quentin in California--the seat of the State Penitentiary in that young and active and opulent American commonwealth. In California the plan of giving instruction in morality, independently of religion, has been tried much longer than in France, and certainly in circumstances much more favourable to its success. The result, as set forth in an Official Report of the resident director, cited by Mr. Montgomery, ex-assistant Attorney-General of the United States, in his treatise on 'The School Question,' is that, while the illiterate convicts in the California penitentiary, at the date of the report, numbered 112, against 985 who could read and write, '_among the younger convicts they could all read and write_'. I have already spoken of many of the advantages offered by the Anzin Company to its workmen and miners, as amounting really to a kind of participation in the profits of the company. This, I think, must be admitted to be clearly the case with regard to certain regulations affecting workmen's pensions, established here by the governing council of the company in December 1886. These regulations are to affect workmen who contribute to what is known as the 'National Retiring Fund for Old Age.' This fund was established originally in 1850 under the presidency of Louis Napoleon. It was re-organised by a law passed in July 1886, and by a decree issued in December 1886. It is under the guarantee of the State, and is administered by a committee co-operating with the Ministry of Commerce. Its object is to enable working-men and others to secure annuities up to the amount of 1,200 francs a year, at or after the age of fifty, by the payment of small regular assessments on their wages. The smallest sums are received by the fund, which of course is managed on principles not unlike those of the great life insurance companies. A running account is kept with the treasury to meet the current expenses of the fund, but all the rest of the money received by it is invested in the French public funds, or in securities guaranteed by the State. No part of the compound interest received by the fund is deducted to meet the expenses of administration. It all goes to the account of the depositors, the current expenses being met by the Deposit Fund, which manages the Retiring Fund. If at any time before that fixed for his enjoyment of the retiring pension, the depositor should be made incapable of work by some illness or accident, he is at once put into possession, without awaiting the age fixed in the original agreement, of a pension or annuity proportioned to the amount of his actual payments and to his age at the time when the incapacity is medically and legally established. Every year a certain amount is voted by the Chamber as a subvention to this fund, and out of this annual appropriation these 'premature pensions' may be increased by the committee in charge of the fund. This is a sort of practical State socialism beyond a doubt. But it is at least as respectable as the expenditure made in this year's budget of 6,500,000 francs, or about one fifth of the whole amount of the French naval pension list, on annuities of indemnification 'to the victims of the _coup d'état_ of 1851,' the _coup d'état_ of 1851 having been simply a collision between the Legislature of that year, trying to suppress the Executive, with the Executive trying to suppress the Legislature, with the result that the Executive carried the day, and that the French people, by an overwhelming majority, approved the victory of the Executive. Why the socialistic principles at the bottom of the National Retiring Fund for workmen should not be extended to others than working-men it is not easy to see. The French pension-list is now very heavy. It figures in this year's budget at nearly a hundred millions of francs, exclusive of the military and naval pensions, which amount to about one hundred and twenty-five millions more, and without counting the _débits de tabac_, which are in fact a kind of pensions used freely by deputies and other functionaries of influence to reward services of all sorts. Of these about two hundred were given away in 1888, the list filling five pages of the huge reports of the Finance Ministry. The National Retiring Fund for Old Age is managed by a high committee of sixteen, which must include two deputies, two state councillors, two presidents of mutual aid societies, and one manufacturer. Workmen who choose to avail themselves of the fund may break off and renew their payments into it as they like, and increase or diminish the amount of their annual deposits without affecting by any interruption the value of their previously acquired interest in the fund. Deposits may be made in the name of any person at or after the age of three years, so that a father may in this way, if he likes, form a small property for his children. The authorisation of the father, however, is not required to validate deposits made in the name or for the benefit of a child, unless these deposits are made by the children themselves, in which case they merely show the authority of their parents as guardians until they have attained the age of sixteen. Married women may make deposits independently of their husbands, but unless these deposits are gifts to them, they are held to be equally the property of the husband and wife where these are not legally separated. In case of the absence either of the husband or of the wife for more than a year, a justice of the peace may authorise the deposit of money to the exclusive benefit of the partner on the spot. Deposits of one franc are received from one person, but in no case can one person deposit more than one thousand francs a year. The capital deposited may be alienated to the fund or reserved. In the latter case the capital may be returned, but without interest, to the representatives of the depositor in case of death. Any reserved capital may be alienated for the purpose of increasing the income at a certain age, to be named by the depositor when he signs the alienation. The pension incomes are guaranteed by the State. They become payable at any full year of age selected by the depositor between fifty and sixty-five years. After sixty-five the pension-income is paid to the depositor from and after the first quarter-day following the deposit. Up to 360 francs the pension-incomes are not liable to be seized for debt. If they accrue from a capital presented to the depositor the donor may have them declared unsellable to their full amount. Funds deposited in the National Sayings Bank may be transferred in whole, or in part, to the National Retiring Fund for Old Age. Under the conditions of this fund an annual alienated deposit of 10 francs, begun at the age of thirty years, will secure the depositor at fifty an annuity of 28 fr. 62 c., at fifty-five of 47 fr. 89 c., at sixty of 81 fr. 43 c., and at sixty-five of 145 fr. 97 c. The regulations adopted by the Anzin Council in 1886 are intended to duplicate the results of this system of the National Retiring Fund for the benefit of any workman who chooses to make himself a depositor in the National Fund to the amount of 1-1/2 per cent. of his annual wages. Suppose, for example, a miner earning 1,500 francs a year chooses to deposit in the National Retiring Fund 22 fr. 50 c. a year. Upon verification of this the Anzin Company will pay into the same fund for him annually an equal sum. This would give the miner who began his deposit of 22 fr. 50 c. a year at the age of thirty, a pension-income at the age of fifty of 128 fr. 74 c., or just about the pension-income which he would draw at the age of sixty-five from the National Fund if he began a payment of 10 francs a year into that fund at the age of thirty-two. A miner who began his annual deposit of 22 fr. 50 c. in the National Fund at the age of twenty-one, taking advantage then of the regulations of the Anzin Council, would enjoy at fifty a pension-income of very nearly 250 francs a year. Under the Anzin regulations, the two payments made by and for the workmen concerned are inscribed in an individual bank-book which becomes his property. The sums paid in by the company are alienated, and to the exclusive advantage of the workman, while he is left at liberty to alienate or reserve his own payments. If he is married, of course his personal payments are held to be made one-half for the benefit of his wife. In the case of subterranean miners, the company will begin to carry out this system as soon as they enter its service, and without regard to their nationality. In the case of the surface workmen, they must be eighteen years of age, and must have been in the service of the company for at least three years without interruption. The reasons for the difference are obvious. The payments of the company cease at fifty years, but the workman is not obliged to draw his pension-income then, as by continuing his personal payments he can put it off, thereby increasing it until he attains the age of 55, 60, or 65. To meet the case of miners drawn into the army, the company, as long as the miner so drawn and returning to its service shall remain in its service, will pay in fractions, and within a period equal to that of his military service, into the National Fund for his benefit a sum equal to the percentage he would himself have paid into the National Fund upon his wages, calculating them as being the same during the period of his military service that they would have been had he remained there at work in the mine. In the case of a workman who falls ill or is injured, the company, if he is a member of a mutual aid society, which will make his personal percentage payments for him, will pay itself an equal sum during his illness or incapacity for at least one calendar year. After that each case must be separately dealt with. Furthermore, and in addition to these general conditions, the company will grant to workmen long in its service, who shall have made their regular payments to the National Retiring Fund under these regulations, when they give up work, supplementary pensions calculated at the rate of 3 francs a year for fifteen years of service for the miners, and of 1 fr. 50 c. a year for fifteen years for the surface workmen. These supplementary pensions are doubled for married workmen, so that they may amount to 90 francs a year for miners, and to 45 francs a year for surface workmen. On the whole, I think the miners of Anzin knew what they were about when they stood aloof from the 'strike' in the Pas-de-Calais. To do this was to aid the 'strikers' themselves much more effectually than by joining in the strike. For surely the spectacle of such an orderly prosperity as exists at Anzin, the result of equitable relations maintained for years between Capital and Labour, is the strongest possible argument in support of the reasonable demands of Labour. But what are the reasonable demands of Labour? It appeared from an inquiry made by the 'Society of Mineral Industries' after the great strike of 1883, that, out of ten coal-producing companies in the North of France which maintained Assistance Funds for the miners, the Anzin Company alone did this entirely at the expense of the company. The nine other companies reported a joint revenue of 821,133 francs in 1882 for these Assistance Funds, of which amount the workmen furnished 603,097 francs. The outlay for 1882 exceeded the revenues and amounted to 849,839 fr. 49 c. But, in addition to the 603,097 francs furnished by the workmen to these funds, the nine companies in question expended themselves, in pensions, medical service, school subventions, free fuel, hospitals and other contributions to the welfare of these 32,849 miners and workmen, no less than 2,942,694 fr. 91 c. So that while the workmen expended on an average 3 per cent. of their wages in maintaining Assistance Funds, these nine companies (excluding Anzin, where no demand was made on the workmen) expended for the benefit of the workmen and their families an amount equal to 9 per cent. of the wages paid by them, and to 24 per cent. of the interest and dividends paid to the stockholders. On the average the companies thus spent about 50 c. for every ton of coal extracted. Could labour reasonably demand more than this of capital? Under the leadership of deputies like MM. Basly and Camélinet, backed by the revolutionary press of Paris, the miners in another part of France, at Decazeville, went on 'strike' in January 1888. They began by brutally murdering M. Watrin, one of the best managers in the country. They kept the whole region idle and in terror for three months and a half. They inflicted great loss on the company and disturbed all the industries of France. They themselves lost 630,427 francs of wages. The company finally granted an increase of wages representing only 1-1/2 per cent. of the wages sacrificed by the strike. The Municipal Council of Paris, which had fomented the strike, magnificently gave the miners 10,000 francs of money which did not belong to them. All the Radical press together subscribed 70,000 more. The Decazeville charities gave 2,231! And the next year all the miners testified that they had been quite content with the wages before the strike, and gave a banquet to the chief engineer! CHAPTER XII IN THE NORD--_continued_ LILLE Thanks to Louis XIV., French Flanders became politically French more than two centuries ago. But it still remains essentially Flemish. The land has a life and a language of its own, like Brittany or Alsace. The French Fleming is rarely as haughty in his assertion of his nationality as the French Breton; but when a _Monsieur de Paris_, or any other outer barbarian, comes upon a genuine _Flamand flamingant_, there is no more to be made of him than of a _Breton bretonnant_, standing calmly at bay in a furrow of his field, or of the bride of Peter Wilkins enveloped in her graundee. Even in the great and busy cities of Lille and Roubaix, the Flemish tongue holds its own against the French with astonishing pertinacity. But if French Flanders is still more Flemish than French, the Flemings, I believe, are very good Frenchmen, just as I imagine the most enthusiastic Welshmen of Mr. Gladstone's beloved little principality, would be, after all, found, at a pinch, to be very good Englishmen. Architecturally, their ancient Flemish capital, Lille, now the chief town of the great Department of the Nord, is decidedly more French than Flemish. The seven sieges it has sustained have left it quite bare of great historic monuments, and during the past thirty years millions of francs have been spent upon its streets, squares, and boulevards, with the result of giving it the commonplace and comfortable look of a growing quarter of Paris. Its famous old walls have been improved off the face of the earth; and I am glad to say that few if any of the noisome cellars seem still to exist in which, when I first knew the place, not so very long ago, thousands of its industrious working people used to dwell like troglodytes. Marlborough's cannon spared the fine seventeenth-century Spanish Lonja, and there are traces still to be discerned about the modernised mairie of the ancient palace of Jean Sans Peur and Charles the Fifth. But there is no Flemish building here comparable with the Hôtel de Ville and the Beffroi of Douai. Of old Flemish customs and traditions, however, there is no lack in Lille, and I came upon a curious proof of the vitality of its local patriotism. This was the regular publication, in the most widely circulated morning newspaper, of a series of carefully prepared articles on the archæology and antiquities, the legends and the archives of the old Flemish capital. One of the editors of this journal showed me in his office a collection of these articles, reprinted from the newspaper, and now filling some twenty volumes. I spent my first midsummer morning at Lille in the Musée which has been installed in the Hôtel de Ville. The Wicar collection of drawings there, I need hardly say, is of itself a 'liberal education' in art. During his long residence at Rome in the Via del Vantaggio, the Chevalier Jean-Baptiste Wicar wasted neither his time nor his money. What treasures were then to be picked up by such a man--for Wicar died not long after the Revolution of July 1830! Where he found his Masaccios, Robert Browning told me that he knew; but where did he find that incomparable bust in wax which charms with all the mystic feminine grace and more than all the feminine beauty of the Mona Lisa? Possibly M. Carolus Duran may be able to throw light upon this; for he was one of the earliest beneficiaries who profited by the fund which the Chevalier Wicar founded for the purpose, as he says in his will, of 'giving to young men, natives of Lille, who devote themselves to the fine arts, the means of sojourning at Rome for four years, under certain conditions.' The Chevalier Wicar was a good Catholic, and he gave to his fund the title of the 'pious foundation of Wicar.' I suppose that under the Third Republic this monstrous recognition of an unscientific emotion would have sufficed to vitiate the scheme, in which case France would have lost the artistic achievements of M. Carolus Duran. The house in the Via del Vantaggio I believe still makes a part of the 'pious foundation,' and the municipality of Lille has very sensibly added a yearly sum of 800 francs to the 1,600 francs allotted under the will of the Chevalier Wicar to each beneficiary, together with a travelling outfit of 300 francs. Coming back from the Musée to breakfast in my very comfortable hotel near the _gare_, I found there awaiting me M. Grimbert of Douai, who had most obligingly come over to show me what the friends of religion and of liberty are doing in Lille to prove that the religious sentiment is not 'dead' in this part of France, and that the Christians of French Flanders do not intend to let their children be 'laicised' into the likeness of M. Jules Ferry and M. Paul Bert, without an effort to prevent it. The Department of the Nord has long been conspicuous in France for the number and the excellence of its educational institutions. The statistics collected by M. Baudrillart show that it stands side by side, in this respect, with the Department of the Seine. Of the 663 communes which make up the Department of the Nord, only three in 1881 were without a school. The department contains 1,680,784 inhabitants. Of these, considerably more than one-third, or 680,951, live in the 17 cantons and 129 communes of the arrondissement of Lille, which includes of course the city, and here we find 340 public schools, 1,038 classes for instruction, and 116 free educational establishments. Over against this organisation of education must be set a very notable development of intemperance. I do not infer this from the extraordinary amount of beer-drinking which goes on in the Nord, to the extent, according to M. Baudrillart, of 220 bottles a year to every man, woman, and child in the department, against 170 in the Ardennes and 153 in the Pas-de-Calais. For, after all, it may be doubted whether habitual drunkenness is much more common in beer-drinking than in wine-drinking countries; and there can be no question, I think, that it is much less common in countries in which wine is abundant and cheap, than in countries in which wine is an imported luxury. But the consumption of alcoholic liquors is apparently on the increase in this great department. At the beginning of this century, long before Lille and Roubaix had begun to draw into their factories such great numbers of the rural population as now yearly throng into these prosperous cities, a prefect of the department, M. Dieudonné, declared that it was not an unusual thing to see workmen in Lille who worked only three days in the week and spent the other four in drinking corn brandy and Hollands gin. At that time the workpeople of the sister city of Roubaix had a much better reputation, while of the rural populations of French Flanders Dr. Villermé then affirmed, after a careful study of their habits, that nothing was to be seen among them of the 'debauchery and the daily and disgusting drunkenness prevalent in the large towns.' Persons familiar with the rural aspects of the Nord assure me that this can no longer be said with truth of the rural farm-labourers. It is, probably, more true of the farmers and of their families than it was fifty years ago, but it is, unfortunately, also less true than it then was of the rural labourers. The number of small cabarets has quadrupled during the last quarter of a century in the arrondissement of Douai alone, which contains 6 cantons, 66 communes, and 131,278 inhabitants, the majority of them occupied in agriculture; and, taking the whole department, it appears that the consumption of spirits represents an increase of 100 per cent. in the average consumption of pure alcohol in the last forty years. It rose from 2.52 litres, in 1849, for every man, woman, and child, to 4.65 litres, in 1869, and it is now estimated to reach 6 litres, which would represent an annual consumption of about 16 bottles of brandy at 42 degrees, for every man, woman, and child in the department. I did not happen to see any drunken women or children in the department, but M. Jules Simon, in his work, _L'Ouvrière_, gives an uncanny account of feminine drunkenness at Lille, where there are special cabarets, it seems, for women. I believe no special estaminets have yet been set up there for women addicted to tobacco, and, indeed, I do not know that the civilisation of French Flanders has yet reached the point of treating the question 'whether women ought to smoke' as a practical question, worthy the grave attention of savants and philosophers. Possibly, if England, like France, had enjoyed the advantage of sixteen changes in her form of government, and of three successful foreign invasions, during the past century, questions of this sort might now subtend no greater an arc in England than they now subtend in France. And it certainly ought to interest Englishmen to know that the example of England is freely cited in Lille, Roubaix, Tourcoing, and other centres of Flemish life and activity, to support the 'noble and military' amusement of cock-fighting, to which the good people of these regions are extraordinarily addicted. A law was passed against this practice under the presidency of Prince Louis Napoleon in 1850, and many attempts have since been made to suppress it--but with small success. A Republican prefect of the Nord, some years ago, actually wrote to the President of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals that he would not hesitate to 'enforce the provisions of the law against cock-fighting whenever the practice seemed to be likely to become too general!' I do not know that I ever stumbled on a more delightful recognition of the Eleventh Commandment of demagogism, '_vox populi vox Dei_!' Naturally, with such encouragement as this, the sport of late years has been assuming, I am told, a recognised place among the amusements of the people. Fighting-cocks go into the arena as champions of the towns in which their owners dwell; and if the feathered Achilles of Roubaix does the feathered Hector of Tourcoing to death, the spectators not unfrequently take up the quarrel, divide into two camps, and have it out handsomely on the spot. These things I note because they tend to show how difficult it is to develop an ideal civilisation in a few years by the simple process of forbidding men to teach, or to believe in, the existence of a Divine Ruler of the Universe. For the same reason, and without unduly dwelling upon it, I may here record the statement made to me by an editor of an influential journal in Lille, that in no city in France has the evil of juvenile prostitution taken such root as here. When I expressed my surprise at this, the French law as to the _détournement de mineures_ being at least as stringent as the English, he replied: 'How can you expect such a law to be enforced under this Government?' and he then went on to show me in an old file of his journal an account, now some years old, of the adventures of a deputy from Versailles in the Palais Royal at Paris. 'Our Republicans,' he said, 'are firm believers in the great principle of the solidarity of all the party with all the haps and mishaps of every member of the party.' A more confirmed pessimist, by the way, than this journalist I have not seen in France. He was quite convinced that the Republicans would show a majority in the seven circumscriptions or districts of Lille at the elections in the autumn, and he criticised very severely the attitude of the Catholics at Lille in regard to politics. 'They are excellent people,' he said, 'but they think too much of the souls of the people and not enough of their votes.' I ventured to suggest that perhaps the picture which he had himself set before me of the moral condition of the city of Lille, at least, might be thought to afford some excuse for this preoccupation of the Catholics with the spiritual rather than the political interests of the people. But to this he would not listen for a moment. 'No, no!' he said; 'the first thing to be done for the souls of the people is to get rid of these fellows at Paris! Are they not paganizing the country? Here is this new law which is demoralising the army. Why do they wish to force the seminarists into the service? Is it not avowedly because they think this will stop the recruiting for the ranks of the clergy? Why are they attacking the foundations of the magistracy? Is it not because the French magistrates stand between them and the rights of the French clergy as French citizens? How far off are we from a revival of Danton's beautiful doctrine that, in order to consummate the regeneration of society, all conditions imposed upon the eligibility of citizens to act as judges ought to be immediately abolished, so that a tinker, or a butcher, or a bootblack, or a chiffonnier might be made a French magistrate just as well as a trained student of the laws? As you know, one of the first things Danton, as Minister of Justice, did was to carry through the Convention his famous decree making this doctrine law in France! 'I am worn out,' he said, 'with trying to make our good people here understand that they must go into the battle-field of politics and put these fellows out of power at Paris if they mean to prevent France from falling into absolute anarchy once more. I cannot make them move, and I believe we shall be beaten in all the seven districts of Lille.' I am glad to say the event proved that my pessimistic friend was by far too pessimistic. Of the seven seats to which the arrondissement of Lille is entitled, four were carried by the Monarchists--in two cases without an attempt seriously to contest them; and if the seven candidates had been voted for on a single list, that list would have been elected by the arrondissement. The Monarchists threw in the whole arrondissement 53,135 votes, the Opportunist Republicans 31,019, the Radicals 9,191, and the Socialists 1,011. So that the Monarchists had a clear majority of 11,814 votes over all the factions of the Republican party put together. In one district of Lille, the 1st, the Boulangists threw 4,376 votes. If we put these down, which we have no right to do, as Republican votes, the Monarchists still show a clear majority of 7,438 in the whole arrondissement of Lille, and, as I have said, if the representation of France by arrondissements were really a representation by arrondissements and not by circumscriptions, the seven hundred thousand people of this great and prosperous department of North-Eastern France would now be represented at Paris not by four Monarchists and three Republicans, but by seven Monarchists. This may serve to show how exceedingly unsafe it is to assume that the nominal party complexion of the majority in a Chamber elected as the present French Chamber has been really gives foreign observers anything like an accurate notion of the state of public opinion and the drift of popular feeling in France at this time. A friend to whom I am indebted for an analysis made with great care of the electoral results, not in this very important department alone, but throughout France, points out to me the exceedingly significant difference between the majorities given to the Monarchists and to the Republican deputies. In the 4th District of Lille, for example, M. des Rotours, the Monarchist candidate, received 10,555 votes, being the largest poll by far given to any candidate in the whole arrondissement, and not one vote was thrown against him. In the 6th District the Republican candidate was declared to be elected by no more than 199 majority in a total poll of 14,833 votes. In the 3rd District the Monarchist was elected by a majority of 1,441 votes, in a total poll of 16,081 votes. In the 5th District the Republican was returned by a majority of 281 votes in a total poll of 15,321 votes. In the 7th District the Monarchist was returned by a majority of 237 in a total poll of 14,463 votes. In the 1st District of Hazebrouck the Monarchist was returned by a majority of 6,861, in a total poll of 11,129 votes, and in the 2nd District of Hazebrouck by a majority of 5,269 in a total poll of 10,291! Hazebrouck is an essentially Flemish town of some 10,000 inhabitants, and the arrondissement, which comprises 7 cantons and 53 communes, contains 112,921 inhabitants, is absolutely Flemish. The early sixteenth-century church of St.-Nicholas at Hazebrouck, with its lofty and graceful spire, was begun about the time of the first voyage of Columbus, and is one of the most beautiful extant Flemish buildings of that time. The people of this arrondissement and their neighbours in the arrondissement of Dunkirk were almost as famous before 1789 as the Dutch for their skill as florists and their success in developing all manner of eccentric varieties of roses, tulips, primroses, and pinks. I do not know that they ever managed to produce a blue rose, but they came very near it, and at the present time their rich and level country is gay with cottage gardens. They are given to sociability also, for the arrondissement possesses, I am told, at least one cabaret for every 70 inhabitants. But then the cabarets in the department at large average 1 to every 61 inhabitants, and in the thoroughly agricultural arrondissement of Avesnes they number 1 for every 38 inhabitants. In the arrondissement of Avesnes, a property of from five to twenty hectares is called a small farm. In the arrondissement of Hazebrouck, a farmer cultivating from six to fifty hectares passes for an agriculturist of the middle class. The people are prosperous, and their hostility to the Republic seems to have its origin chiefly in the intolerance and extravagance of the Government. This is the case too, apparently, with their neighbours in the arrondissement of Dunkirk. The 1st District of Dunkirk elected a Boulangist Revisionist by a solid vote of 7,821 against 4,806 votes, given not to a Government Republican but to a Radical, while the 2nd District of Dunkirk elected a Monarchist by a majority of 5,036 votes in a poll of 11,168. In the face of such figures as these it seems to me that the friends of religion and of liberty in the Department of the Nord hardly merit the reproach put upon them by my pessimistic journalist at Lille of lukewarmness in the political battle of 1889. Neither he nor any one can well accuse them of lukewarmness in any other matter affecting the interests either of religion or of liberty. And I cannot help hoping that my Northern pessimist may perhaps have over-estimated the prevalence of juvenile prostitution in Lille as much as he certainly underestimated the devotion of the Monarchists of Lille to their political flag. His gloomy prognostications as to the issue at the polls were probably enough inspired by his thorough knowledge of the extraordinary preparations made by the authorities for manipulating the returns. On this point he gave me some particulars which appear to be borne out by subsequent events. It is curious for example to learn from the analytical table to which I have already referred in connection with the elections at Lille, that of the 164 Government candidates returned as elected at the first balloting of September 23, 87 were returned as elected by majorities of less than 1,000 votes, while of the 147 Monarchists returned as elected on the same day, only 48 were returned as elected by majorities of less than 1,000 votes. Of the 164 Republicans, 20, or about one in eight, were returned as elected by majorities of less than 200 votes; while of the 147 Monarchists, only 11, or about one in thirteen, were returned as elected by similar majorities. When we remember that the machinery of these elections was absolutely controlled by the prefects under instructions from M. Constans, the Minister of the Interior, which were not made public, this circumstance is certainly very significant. Some of the details sent me by my analytical correspondent make it still more significant. In the 2nd District of St.-Nazaire, for example, the Monarchist candidate was elected without a competitor, receiving 16,084 votes. In the 1st District of St.-Nazaire the Government candidate was returned by a majority of no more than 6 votes, the returns giving him 8,458 votes to 8,452 for his Monarchist opponent. This margin is almost as suggestive as the majority of 9 votes by which M. Razimbaud, a Government candidate for the district of St.-Pars, in the Department of the Hérault, was declared three days after the balloting of October 6 to have been returned over his Monarchist opponent, the Baron André Reille. In this same Department of the Hérault, the Prefect and the Councillors-General returned M. Ménard-Dorian, the Government candidate, as elected, at Lodève, over M. Leroy-Beaulieu, the distinguished political economist, by a majority of 67 votes. In this case it seems a certain number of votes thrown in one commune for both candidates were set aside, to be annulled for informality. When the returns went up to the Council for revision, the informal votes cast for M. Leroy-Beaulieu were declared invalid, the informal votes cast for M. Ménard-Dorian were declared good and valid, and M. Ménard-Dorian was proclaimed to have been elected. The Committee of the Chamber reported against the seating of M. Ménard-Dorian, and tried to have this report accepted, but as I write the Chamber has not accepted it, and the odds are that M. Leroy-Beaulieu, who, though a Moderate Republican, has made himself obnoxious to the Government by telling the truth about the financial condition of France, will be kept out of the seat which it is tolerably plain that he was elected to fill. It is difficult for an Englishman, even for an American, to understand the cynical coolness with which things of this sort are done in the French Republic of the present time, and not very easy to understand the apathetic way in which, when done, they are accepted by the French public. There seems to be little doubt that in England of late years ballot-boxes have been 'stuffed' only by the stupidity of the voters, and not by the ingenious rascality of the political managers. I wish I could with an easy conscience say the same thing of my own country. But even in the United States deliberate tampering with the returns of a political election has not, I think, been practised since the evil days of Reconstruction at the South with the calm disregard of appearances shown by the Government managers during the legislative contest of this year, 1889, in France; and certainly there has been nothing known in the Congress of the United States, since the days of Reconstruction, at all comparable with the systematic invalidation by the majority in the French Chamber of the elections of troublesome members since it assembled on November 12. In the cases of General Boulanger and of M. Naquet, the latter of whom resigned his seat in the Senate to stand as a Boulangist candidate for the Chamber, this invalidation was carried out openly as a party measure and precisely in the spirit of the famous or infamous resolution which Robespierre made the 'Section of the Pikes' adopt, to the effect that the electors of Paris must be protected against their own incapacity to choose 'true patriots' by having the 'true patriots' chosen for them. If this be one of the 'principles of 1789,' it must be admitted that the Third Republic is consistently and courageously acting upon it. It has undoubted advantages, but it has a tendency, perhaps, to put in question the value of what are commonly called representative institutions. Strike out of the theory of representative institutions the right divine of the people to choose the wrong men, and what is left of it? At the close of the election of September 22, 1889, in Paris, the major of the 2nd or Clignancourt District of the eighteenth arrondissement of the Department of the Seine declared that General Boulanger had received 7,816 votes out of 13,611 cast, and that he was therefore elected. Of his competitors, one M. Joffrin, described as a 'Possibilist,' had received 5,507 votes; M. Jules Roques, a Socialist, had received 359 votes, and for a citizen bearing the gloomy but respectable name of M. Cercueil, or 'M. Coffin,' one vote had been cast. Obviously General Boulanger was the man whom a majority of the voters of Clignancourt desired to represent them. If General Boulanger for their own sake could not be allowed to represent them, why not M. Cercueil? They certainly did not choose M. Cercueil to represent them. But as certainly they did not choose M. Joffrin to represent them. What really happened? The Prefect of the Seine, on hearing the result at Clignancourt, notified the Minister of the Interior, and orders were at once given to correct this egregious error into which the voters of Clignancourt had fallen as to what their true interest required. It was probably found that an 'informality' had occurred in certain communes, and that through this 2,494 votes must be annulled. News of this discovery was instantly sent to the Parisian newspapers. As it was supposed that they would give M. Joffrin a plurality of the votes to be recognised, sundry newspapers actually printed the name of M. Joffrin at the head of the list of candidates in the place usually accorded by a really enlightened press to the elect of universal suffrage. Unfortunately the official calculator is not of the blood of Bidder. It was found at the last moment that enough votes had not been 'annulled' to put M. Joffrin at the head of the poll, so that his name actually appears in sundry Parisian morning papers of September 23, first indeed in position, but over against it are recorded 5,500 votes, while the name of General Boulanger comes second with 5,880 votes! Clearly an awkwardness! In the _Journal des Débats_, which is a serious Republican journal of character, the election of General Boulanger by 7,816 votes was quietly announced, with a postscript to the effect that 'the Prefecture of the Seine' gave a different result, 'arising from the circumstance that in certain sections 2,494 votes bearing the name of General Boulanger had been asserted to be null and void,' and that, therefore, there would be a second election, or 'ballottage,' on October 6! There could hardly be a more pregnant commentary than this upon the candid admission made by the most respectable and influential Republican journal in Paris, the _Temps_, on October 17, 1885, that these 'second elections,' or 'ballottages,' are simply a device by which the Central Government at Paris is enabled to 'correct' the errors perpetrated by the voters of France at the elections which precede them. 'To learn the true sentiments of the country,' said the _Temps_, 'we must consult the elections of the 4th. On that day _universal suffrage was allowed_ to choose freely between the opposing parties and policies. The vote of to-morrow will not be as clear and precise, for it will be determined by _tactical necessities and by all sorts of combinations_.' Perfectly true! But, this being true, what becomes of 'popular sovereignty' and of the divine quality of the rights derived from universal suffrage as contrasted with rights derived from inheritance, or, for that matter, with rights derived from a dice-box or the shuffling of a pack of cards? Considering what the usual origin is of 'tactical necessities' in politics, and what forces determine political 'combinations of all sorts,' is it going too far to say that the odds, so far as public interests are concerned, are in favour of the dice-box or the pack of cards--provided the dice be not loaded or the cards specially packed? Some years ago, in my own country, a well-known Austrian dined with me one night, just before he sailed for Europe after a tour in the United States. We spoke of a public man just then filling a very responsible position at Washington, to which he had been named after a severely contested and very costly election. 'I thought him a very pleasant, intelligent man,' said my Austrian guest, 'but it struck me that you spend too much time and trouble and money on getting just such men into such places. We get very much the same calibre of men for the same kind of work much more economically and easily by the simple process of marrying a prince to a princess.' What I have seen and learned this year of the working of the electoral machinery in France under the Third Republic inclines me, as I have already said, to think that the Catholic children of light in Lille and in French Flanders generally may be doing better work both for Religion and for Liberty than my pessimistic journalist was disposed before the elections to believe. If they had given more time and thought and money to 'tactical necessities' and 'political combinations,' and less to the social and spiritual interests of the land in which they live, the results even of the elections might perhaps have been less satisfactory to them. For, as I have shown, the strength of the Monarchist vote in this region proved to be much greater than my pessimist thought it would be; and the Republicans of the Third Republic did a deal of canvassing for the Monarchists by making it very hard for men who love religion and liberty to vote for Republican candidates. Lord Beaconsfield's saying, that the world is governed by the people of whom it hears the least, is certainly not less true of the Catholic Church than it is of the world. The Catholic stock in French Flanders is as vigorous and full of sap as in Belgium or in Holland. It is interesting to hear educated people talking glibly in London or Paris about the decay of the Christian religion in the same breath in which they profess their unbounded admiration of the heroism of Father Damien. It was through no act or wish of Father Damien that the world at large came to know his name, or to take account of a work which was done not to be seen of men. He was simply a Flemish Catholic, doing what he believed to be the will of God. Throughout the broad rich plains of the great Department of the Nord, and in its crowded busy towns and cities, this Catholic faith is everywhere to be seen and felt--to be felt rather than to be seen in its fruits of charity, self-denial, and devout self-sacrifice. Nowhere in France is public charity, I am told, so extensively and efficiently organised, and the demands upon public charity are exceptionally great. The department is very rich and very prosperous, but it contains, like all frontier regions, a large floating population; and one of the best-informed men I met in Lille, a large landed proprietor in one of the wealthiest communes of the department, told me that there are probably more families or tribes of hereditary mendicants scattered over French Flanders than are to be found in any other French province. These are not nomads addicted to wandering off into other regions, but rather a kind of Northern lazzaroni. They do a little work occasionally, but as little and as seldom as possible. They are inveterate poachers, and the more industrious of them are habitual smugglers. In their way of prosecuting this industry, however, they show their fine natural instinct for avoiding labour. The most profitable trade they drive is in tobacco. This they get over the frontier from Belgium, and to get it they train a certain breed of dogs. They tie parcels of tobacco around the throats of these dogs, and then proceed to have the dogs well thrashed by one of their number dressed in the Custom-house uniform. A few lessons of this sort suffice to develop in the dogs a strong association of ideas between the odour of tobacco and the thwacks of a cudgel, and a dog well educated in this way may be trusted, after he has got his cargo in Belgium, to reach his master's den unvisited by the French _douane_. Baudrillart confirms this account. He puts the number of habitual applicants, largely from this mendicant class, for public relief in the department at from two hundred to two hundred and fifty thousand a year. Out of the 662 communes in the department there were only twenty in 1888 without a 'Bureau de Bienfaisance,' and the department spends five millions of francs a year on its charities, independently of nearly twice that amount expended upon hospitals, asylums, dispensaries, and the like, by private benevolence. Under the French law, private donors can found charities to be attached to the public 'Bureau de Bienfaisance,' and administered by the public officers, and one of the many evil effects of the war declared against Catholic France by the Third Republic is that it affects such charities very seriously. Even under the Empire trouble came of the occasional division of one commune into two or more communes, a question then arising as, for example, in a famous case of the communes of St.-Joseph and St.-Martin in the Loire, about the division between the poor of the two communes of three hospital beds left to the 'Bureau de Bienfaisance' of the original commune of St.-Martin. It was easier for the military saint himself to divide his cloak with the shivering beggar than for the commune which bore his name to divide three beds into two equal portions! At Lille, two or three years ago, a lady, Mme. Austin Laurand, the widow of M. Laurand, in accordance with her husband's will, gave 30,000 francs to the 'Bureau de Bienfaisance' of the city, the income thereof to be applied, under the supervision of three commissioners, to encouraging habits of thrift among the apprentices of Lille. Two hundred bank-books of five francs each are annually given to apprentices in the first two years of their apprenticeship, and the rest of the income is to be given in prizes each year to those of the bank-book holders who shall be shown to have been the most careful and thrifty in managing the results of their labour during the year. A law passed in 1874, before the 'true Republicans' of Gambetta and Ferry came into power, provides for a medical inspection and record of newly-born children, and this law puts infants, whenever it may be found necessary, under proper hygienic conditions. It has been nowhere so energetically carried out as in the Nord. Of course, such a law as this flies directly in the face of the great gospel of the 'survival of the fittest.' But though that gospel was introduced to Paris on the stage as one of the curiosities of the Centennial Exposition of 1889, it has made little progress as yet in Catholic France. Even at the theatres in Paris, I am glad to say, the popular instinct still regulates the _queue_ on principles quite inconsistent with the Darwinian maxims of 'every man for himself,' and 'the devil take the hindmost.' It will be an evil day for invalids and cripples bitten with the drama when the 'struggle for life' comes to be logically developed into the right of the strongest men to get first to the ticket office! Throughout the Department of the Nord, primary schools exist for the children who are taken in charge at their birth by public benevolence, and those to whom they are confided are obliged to see that the children attend these schools from the age of six to the age of twelve years. Under the influence of the Church acting upon the naturally sociable and gregarious temperament of the Flemish race, mutual aid societies have become very numerous of late years in the Nord. A hundred and fifty-two such societies now exist in the arrondissement of Lille alone. These numbered, in 1888, 7,249 honorary members and 35,270 paying members, and their assets were stated at about 3,000,000 francs. Only 3,649 women, however, were enrolled on their lists. Is this a confirmation, I wonder, of the theory entertained by Mr. Emerson and other philosophers, that woman is not a 'clubbable' animal? Putting this aside, however, for the moment as a more or less 'academic' question, it is of interest to note the very considerable development during the last few years of the principle of association among the working-men and producers of France, under the influence of the Church and of Conservative public men like M. Welche, one of the extra-parliamentary Ministers of the Marshal-Duke of Magenta, who did good service here at Lille as Prefect of the Department of the Nord, and who has made the French law of 1881 affecting 'professional syndicates,' so useful throughout the agricultural world of France. It is one of the organic statutes of the Society of 'Foreseers of the Future,' or 'Prévoyants de l'Avenir,' that all political and religious discussions are forbidden at the meetings of the society.' This society was established at Paris on December 12, 1880. On February 23, 1881, it was authorised to act as a 'Civil Society,' by the Minister of the Interior and the Prefect of Police. Its object is to 'ensure to all its members who shall have co-operated in maintaining it for twenty years, the first necessaries of life.' I shall not attempt here to go in detail into the statutes and organisation of the society. Suffice it to say that the statutes are brief, clear, and sensible, and that the organisation appears to be eminently practical. The members, to the number of whom no limit is set, the only indispensable condition being that they shall be in good health and actively employed in some trade or calling, pay an entrance fee of two francs, and a monthly due of one franc. This monthly due must be paid in advance, and a fine of 25 centimes is imposed for every month in arrears. Each member receives a book containing the statutes, which establishes his title to its benefits, and for which he pays 50 centimes. Donations may be received, and under the authority of the officers entertainments may be given, the profits of which go to the general fund. Any respectable person, no matter what may be his calling, may become a member, if he has attained the age of fifteen years, and women are not excluded. 'Having the same duties,' say the statutes, 'they have the same rights,' but, despite this, it is provided that women who are members shall not be fined if they fail to attend the general meeting on the second Sunday in January in each year, whereas men in the same case shall be mulcted in the sum of one franc, unless they shall have previously by letter excused themselves. Every member at the expiration of twenty full years of membership shall be entitled to his share of the interest earned during the twentieth year of his membership by the property of the society, the funds of which can only be invested in the three or five per cent. funds of the French nation. His regular contribution to the society will still go on, but he will receive his share of the interest earned thereafter regularly every three months. Should a pensioner die, the year's interest due to him shall be paid over to his heirs or assigns. The pension cannot be transferred or alienated, and the relations of a pensioner have no claim upon the amount of the payments made by him to the society. Should a member become an invalid, incapable of work, after fully paying up his dues to the society during five years, he may demand to be kept upon the books as a full member, and as such he will be entitled to his pension at the end of twenty years. The society can only be dissolved by a unanimous vote of the members at a general meeting; and if so dissolved the members must choose another society as nearly as possible resembling this, to which the property of the dissolved society shall be transferred. The funds for current expenses of the society can never exceed 1,500 francs. This society, as I have said, was founded in 1880. Its success has been really phenomenal. On January 1, 1882, it comprised 757 members, and its capital amounted to 6,237 francs. On January 18, 1886, it consisted of 15,008 members, and had a capital invested in French consols of 361,003 fr. 99 c. On April 1, 1889, it numbered 59,932 members, divided into 340 sections, and it possessed an invested capital of 1,541,868 fr. 26 c.! Of course the Tontine principle enters into the system, and it would be interesting to compute the probable pensions in 1902 of so many of the 757 persons who were members of the society in 1882 as may then be living to claim their share of the interest then earned by the then capital of the society. The minuteness, precision, and practical common sense with which the statutes of this organisation have been drawn up and provision made in its regulations against all the probable difficulties to be encountered in carrying it on, gives one a very favourable notion of the business capacity and of the character of the French working classes. No conditions as to sex or nationality are imposed upon membership, the only necessary qualification being that the person applying to be admitted shall be actively employed in some way, be domiciled in France, and be sixteen full years of age. It strikes me that organisations of this sort are more likely to promote a practical solution of the Labour question than combinations to secure the passage of laws fixing the number of hours for which a man shall be allowed to work. The Church has taken an active part in fostering the development of these mutual aid societies throughout this great department, and particularly in Lille and Roubaix. The disasters of the Franco-German war gave a great impulse to them. These disasters did more to strengthen and deepen than all the vulgar violence of the pseudo-scientific and pseudo-literary atheism of parliamentary Paris has yet done to weaken the religious sentiment in France, and the French Catholics cannot be cited to illustrate Aubrey de Vere's noble saying that 'worse than wasted weal is wasted woe.' I spent a most interesting morning at Lille with M. Grimbert in visiting the buildings and the collections of the great Catholic University which has been founded here to meet the assault of M. Ferry and his allies on the higher education in France. This Catholic University has been endowed and is maintained entirely by the private liberality of the Catholics of the Department of the Nord, and by the revenues it derives from the students who attend its courses. It is a thoroughly equipped university of the first rank. The Rector, Monseigneur Baunard, is a Roman prelate, and of the two vice-rectors, one is a prelate and the other a canon. These, with the Deans of the Faculties, and five professors elected from the corps of instructors, constitute the Academic Senate. The Administrative Council comprises the Archbishop of Cambrai, the Bishop of Arras (to the benevolence of one of whose predecessors France is indebted for the education which enabled Robespierre to avenge upon the Church and upon his country what in one of his letters he calls 'the intolerable slavery of an obligation received'), the Bishop of Lydda, the Chancellor of the University, and the Rector. The Theological Faculty comprises a dean and nine professors; the Law Faculty a dean, the Comte de Vareilles-Sommières, and thirteen professors. One of these gentlemen, M. Arthaut, was so kind as to receive M. Grimbert and myself, and to show us over the whole institution. The Medical Faculty comprises a dean, Dr. Desplats, and twenty-three professors; the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, a dean, Dr. Margerie, and seven professors; the Faculty of Sciences, a dean, Dr. Chautard, and nine professors. The buildings of the University now occupy two sides of an immense square in one of the finest quarters of Lille, and when fully completed will occupy the whole square. As they now stand they are by far the most striking edifices in Lille, and would do honour to any city in Europe. The area covered by them, I should say, is larger than that covered by the University of London, and certainly, from the architectural point of view, they need fear no comparison with the London establishment. The library, which is admirably arranged, already contains about 80,000 volumes, and the apparatus of the scientific schools is admittedly better than that of any institution in France. The outlay already made here exceeds 11,000,000 fr., or about 240,000_l._ sterling, all of which has been contributed freely by the Catholics of this region. On the face of things it appears to me that the existence of this University is somewhat inconsistent with the notion that 'the religious sentiment is dead in France.' The classes are now attended by between four and five hundred students, for whose accommodation three 'family houses' have been already built, in which students are lodged at an expense of from 1,000 to 1,400 fr. a year, and when the academic buildings now in process of construction are completed, more than a thousand students can be thus lodged. Two dispensaries, a Maternity Hospital, under the charge of Sisters of Charity of St.-Vincent de Paul, together with the large Hospital de la Charité, are directly connected with the clinical service of the medical faculty, and are so administered as to render the most important services to the industrious population of the city. The Electrical Department of the Faculty of Sciences is particularly well equipped, and one of the assistants in charge of this department, who showed us some improvements recently devised here in the working apparatus, surprised me by the extent and minute accuracy of his information as to all the most recent progress made in the applications of electricity to machinery, and to the arts on both sides of the Atlantic. I was not surprised, however, to learn from M. Arthaut that the astonishing prosperity of this great institution is viewed with extreme dissatisfaction by the authorities at Paris, and particularly by the University of France, which has been confirmed again under the Third Republic in the monopoly of academic privileges, of which it was very sensibly deprived by the Assembly under the Government of the Marshal-Duke of Magenta. By way of expressing this dissatisfaction with dignity and emphasis, the Government of the Third Republic actually forbids free Catholic universities to use the title of universities. M. Ferry's Article 7 not being yet law in this best of all possible French Republics, Catholics cannot be prevented from spending their own money in founding institutions which are really universities. But, at all events, they can be forbidden to give any one of them the title of a university, that being reserved for the State establishment, which, from Paris, extends its academic sway all over France. I called the attention of M. Arthaut to the fact that a great Catholic University has been this year founded in the capital of the Republic of the United States, and that the President of the Republic, himself a Protestant, not only attended the ceremonies of the foundation, but made a brief speech, in which he expressed his best wishes for its progress and prosperity. 'That, I am afraid,' said M. Arthaut, 'is a kind of republic which we are not likely to see established in France.' To measure the significance of this Catholic work in behalf of liberty and religion here at Lille, it must be borne in mind that the very men who are building it up with such splendid liberality and enterprise are compelled by the iniquitous laws of the Third Republic to bear their own share as taxpayers in supporting here at Lille another academic institution of a similar scope, but of less importance, under the direct control of the University of France, from all share in the administration of which religion and the ministers of religion are as rigidly excluded as that refugee of the First French Revolution, Stephen Girard, intended they should be from the college which he founded at Philadelphia. Of course the same thing is true of the Catholics all over France. Out of their pockets must come nine-tenths of the enormous sum, as yet quite incalculable, but certainly running far up in the hundreds of millions of francs which is still to be expended by the Third Republic upon its 'scholastic palace,' and the ever-increasing army of 'lay teachers,' male and female, whom it is yearly turning out of the educational institutions of France to seek the employment which a vast majority of them cannot possibly hope to find in the public schools, the lyceums and 'faculties' of the nation. On this point a Councillor-General whom I met here at Lille dwelt with very grave emphasis. 'We are educating here in France,' he said to me, 'hundreds of young men and young women every year under false pretences to enter a profession already overcrowded. For every post which now exists or which can be created within the next ten years in the educational system of these revolutionists at Paris, we are turning out at least a hundred applicants each year of each sex, who must necessarily be thrown upon the public. What will become of them? The young men will go into Nihilism, as young men of the same sort do in Russia; the young women will go upon the street. Only the other day at Paris, the Government advertised a competition for about 70 positions in the telegraphic service. How many young women applied? More than 800! What is to become of the 730 unsuccessful competitors? And what right has the State to flood the market thus, in advance of the necessities of the country, and at the cost of the taxpayers, with male and female teachers, any more than with carpenters, or with surgeons, or with confectioners?' One circumstance connected with the development of this great Catholic University at Lille (as an American I permit myself to give the institution its proper title) is of special significance. It is not the only institution of the kind which has been called into existence in France since the Third Republic began its war against religion in 1880. There is a Free Catholic institution at Lyons, which consists of three faculties under the administration of a company founded to receive and administer all sums given or bequeathed to organise the institutes. The Archbishop of Lyons is Chancellor of this institution, which has a dean and seven professors of theology, a dean and eighteen professors of law, with a secretary and librarian of that faculty, a dean and seven professors of letters, a dean and nine professors of science. There are similar institutions also at Angers and at Toulouse. All of these are freely supported by the private subscriptions of Catholic France, as is also the great Catholic Institute of Paris in the Rue Vaugirard, so admirably conducted by Monseigneur d'Hulst, the Vicar-General of Paris. Thanks to the law of July 12, 1875, and to the stand made by the friends of liberty and religion when the law of March 18, 1880, was finally enacted, the students of the Faculty of Law in these Catholic institutes still have the right to present themselves with the certificates of their several institutes at the public examinations for the diplomas of the baccalaureate, the licentiate and the doctorate in law, and for the certificate of capacity in the law, necessary to enable the successful candidates to practise the legal profession in France. To maintain the efficiency of the free Catholic institutions, the Catholics of France have spared during the last few years neither labour nor money. More than 17,000,000 francs have been contributed during that period to establish the Catholic educational system in Paris alone, and more than 2,000,000 francs are yearly subscribed there to keep it up. As I have already said, the University here at Lille represents an expenditure during the same period of more than 11,000,000 francs and a still larger prospective expenditure. It would be interesting, if it were possible, to learn how much out of their own pockets the propagandists of unbelief have expended during this same decade upon the irreligious education of the children of their countrymen! Were the truth attainable, the amount expended by them would be found to bear to the amount received by them from their propaganda of unbelief much less than the proportion of Falstaff's 'pennyworth of bread' to his 'intolerable deal of sack!' While the Catholics of France have been giving millions to defend the right of the French people to protect the faith of their children, these men have been expending hundreds of millions of the money of Catholic taxpayers upon school buildings, the contracts for erecting which have been controlled by themselves for their friends; they have been finding places in the public educational service for their friends, dependants and allies, and they have been comfortably drawing large salaries themselves from the Treasury. Set over against these incontrovertible facts, the fact, as incontrovertible, for which I am indebted here to M. Grimbert, that of the millions expended in defence of liberty and religion here at Lille, a very large proportion has been contributed by one single Catholic citizen of this ancient Flemish city, who has consecrated his life and his fortune to his faith in the spirit of the earliest Christian times, and I think my readers will agree with me, not only that the religious sentiment is not dead in France, but that it never was more living and more active in France, nor more full of promise for the social and political regeneration of this great people. I shall not run the risk of offending this good Catholic by naming him, though his name and his work are an open secret for every intelligent person in Lille. Suffice it that, coming of an old Flemish stock and bearing an old Flemish name, this citizen (the title of citizen means something respectable in these staunch old free cities) of Lille years ago insisted to his brother, who was his associate in the ownership and management of one of the largest commercial houses of this region, that they should take regularly into the partnership account of their business, for one-third of their annual profits, 'the work of God.' This was done; and from that day to this the proportion thus set apart of their profits has been regularly devoted to the service of the Church and of charity. But this is not all. The brother, of whom I speak with the reticence and the reverence due to a type of character not absolutely common in this age of the Golden Calf, has systematically limited his own personal expenses during the whole of these years to a few thousands of francs, devoting all the rest of his income to religious and benevolent objects. I should really like to see a calm business-like estimate made of the economical advantages likely to result to a country from extinguishing at an expense of several hundreds of millions of francs a year the faith which gives birth to characters such as this. I visited, in one of the suburbs of Lille, the extensive manufactories of another well-known house, the heads of which have worked out and established an excellent system of 'mutual assistance' among their employees, and built up a large and well-ordered _cité ouvrière_ on a plan substantially resembling that of those which I saw at St.-Gobain and at Anzin. A house for young girls established by this firm, very near their main factory, struck me as particularly admirable. It is under the management of the Sisters of St.-Vincent de Paul, who fill the place with a pervading spirit of cheerfulness and animation, quite indescribable. The dormitories were the perfection of neatness. The gymnastic hall and the grounds were in apple-pie order, and as the lower part of the large and airy building erected by the firm for this domicile is used during the day as a kind of crèche by the married women who leave their young children here while they are busy in the factory, the whole place was alive with merry and laughing little imps. I heard of other establishments of the same kind at and near Roubaix on a still larger scale. These I unfortunately had not time to visit. Under the Empire in 1865 a few energetic citizens of Lille induced the municipality to guarantee five per cent, interest on a capital of 2,000,000 francs for the establishment of a company to construct, let and sell houses for working-men under certain conditions as to the isolation of each house and as to its proper ventilation and drainage. The rental of these houses can never exceed eight per cent, on the cost of erection, those of one story never to cost more than 2,400 francs, and those of two stories more than 3,000 francs, including the cost of the land. The houses are built of brick with foundations and sills of Soignies stone. These were the original statutes, but the company is now allowed to build single-story houses on a larger scale with cellars, which may be rented for 400 francs a year or bought for 5,000 francs--a first payment in the case of purchase to be made of 500 francs, and after that the money to be paid in instalments of 40 francs a month over thirteen years. All the wells and pumps are supplied by the municipality. The municipality also makes an annual grant in aid of a very useful charity, founded under the Empire, and largely developed by private gifts and legacies, called the 'Invalids of Labour.' This now secures pensions to nearly a hundred workmen, disabled by serious accidents incurred in their labour or through some effort to help others in peril. It also gives temporary assistance in less severe cases. But the most characteristic institution which I found flourishing at Lille has a history worth telling. It strikingly illustrates the development under the old _régime_ in France and Flanders of those public works of benevolence of which we are so often and so audaciously asked to believe that they had no existence before the benign 'principles of 1789' bedewed the hearts of men, and it not less strikingly illustrates the demoralising and destructive influence upon all manner of sound and useful establishments throughout France of the headlong and reckless administration of public affairs by the successive 'governments' of the First Republic. In the year 1607, on September 27, a worthy Catholic citizen, Bartholomew Masurel, _bourgeois et manant_ of the city of Lille, came before two notaries, and declared 'that to succour the poor people of Lille in their necessities, and also for the salvation of his own soul and the souls of his predecessors and successors, he wished to establish a _Mont-de-Piété_, where money loans should be made without usury or interest, and not as they were made by the Lombards.' To this end Bartholomew Masurel gave, by a donation between living persons, and irrevocable, to take effect after his death, all his lands, fiefs, and houses which he owned at Lille, and in his country place, and the value of which might be estimated at a hundred and fifty thousand _livres parisis_, or in money of our day nominally 300,000 francs. In fact, the gift, I am told, represented about half a million francs of our days. But the good '_bourgeois et manant_' could not hold out till his death against the appeal which the sight of 'the poor people of Lille in their necessities' daily made to his kindly heart. So in 1609 he agreed with the Mayor, that he would turn over all these possessions at once to the magistrates to be applied to the purpose he meant to effect, the magistrates agreeing to secure to him an annuity out of the funds of the city of 1,200 florins, or about 1,562 francs of our time. Thereupon he went to work with the authorities to found his charity. From his statutes we learn that foundations of this kind were then common in French Flanders. He models them, as he says, upon 'those of similar foundations in our neighbouring towns and elsewhere.' No loans were to be made except to '_manants et habitants de la Ville Taille et Banlieue de Lille_,' and only to 'poor and necessitous persons who, not being able to gain their livelihood, were forced to borrow money;' nor were loans to be made to 'persons prodigal, of evil life, and accustomed to squander their goods.' For this due order was to be taken by the magistrates. At first the loans were limited to 24 florins (30 francs) to one person; the lowest sum loaned being 20 patars, or 1 fr. 25 c. of our times. So well had Bartholomew Masurel organised his charity, and so many good Christian souls swelled its funds by gifts and bequests, that within a year the maximum loan was raised to 50 florins, in 1669 to 100 florins, and in 1745 it was fixed at 120 florins, or 150 francs. At this figure it stood when the First Republic began its experiments. The fund was then known as 'the true Mont-de-Piété,' and was carried on under letters patent granted in 1609 by the Archduke Albert of Austria. When Lille became French in 1667, Louis XIV had to recognise and confirm all the rights and titles of this benevolent institution. It had rendered great service to the industries of Lille during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the growth of the funds enabling the managers to lend sums to weavers on their goods when trade fell off, and so relieving them from the necessity of parting with them for less than their value. Just before the Revolution the Masurel Fund amounted to 455,454 francs, of which 256,627 francs were in cash or in loans, and the rest in state funds and houses, yielding a revenue of 8,307 francs. On January 23, 1794, the National Convention coolly ordered that all 'objects of necessity deposited in any Mont-de-Piété for an amount not exceeding 20 francs should be at once restored without payment to their owners, and all such objects deposited for amounts below 50 and above 20 francs on payment, without interest, of the amount beyond 20 francs!' This 'liberal' legislation had been preceded on August 24, 1793, by another act of spoliation which ordered 'the payment of the capital of all sums at interest to be made in _assignats_, and the conversion of all the debts of the Communes, and of the suppressed public organisations throughout France into State debts. In consequence of these measures the whole property of the Masurel fund was found in 1803, when Napoleon began to overhaul the chaos to which the lunatics and plunderers of the Republic had reduced France, to amount to no more than 10,408 francs in real estate. This was the way in which the 'principles of 1789' developed the benevolent institutions of France, and introduced a new era! The authorities of Lille had the good sense and forecast thereupon to suspend the operations of the true _Mont-de-Piété_, and to set about restoring the fund as far and as fast as was possible. The Christian institution of Masurel had fared better than the 'Lombards.' This latter establishment had to be formally closed in 1796, as it was then found to have no more than 86,000 francs in its treasury, and this in _assignats_! In 1857 the Prefect of the Nord reported that the Masurel fund might be safely devoted anew to the purposes of its founder. It then amounted to 249,644 fr. By an imperial decree of 1860, all that remained of the property of the 'Lombards' was amalgamated with the Masurel fund, and the institution was put under the direction of the official Mont-de-Piété of Lille, but with a separate system of accounts, and began its operations again on the lines laid down by its founder in 1607. It has since worked so well that the maximum of the loans reimbursable, without interest, has risen from 30 francs in 1860 to 200 francs. In 1869, the maximum being 100 francs, the number of engagements and renewals was 10,933--the money loaned amounted to 75,460 fr. 50 c., in loans averaging 9fr. 14 c., and the capital of the fund to 257,231 fr. 27 c. In 1888, the maximum being 200 fr., there were 16,000 engagements and renewals, the loans amounted to 136,663 francs in average loans of 8 fr. 54 c., and the capital of the fund to 334,726 fr. 57 c. Of the 'similar foundations in other towns' which moved the pious emulation of Bartholomew Masurel nearly three centuries ago, how many, I wonder, still exist! And with them how many other monuments of the Christian civilisation of Flanders and of France were 'improved' off the face of the earth by the 'regenerators' of 1792? It was not by accident that I learned of the Masurel Mont-de-Piété; but when I went to the Municipal Secretary to ask him for some official account of its condition and its operation, that courteous functionary looked at me for a moment with astonishment and then said, 'I am delighted to give you what you want, and I assure you that, with one exception, you are the only foreigner who has ever asked for this information in the last seven years! The other was the English Protestant clergyman here in Lille, who happens to live or has his chapel, I am not sure which, just opposite the Mont-de-Piété!' I ought not to speak however of the Masurel foundation as 'unique.' I hope there may be many more men like the good Bartholomew Masurel in our time, and in other countries besides France, than we wot of. But the only modern institution of a kindred spirit with this of which I have any present cognisance began its career in England only fifteen years ago, and was founded curiously enough like the Masurel fund by men of the Low Countries. This is the 'Koning Willem's Fonds,' of the Netherlands Benevolent Society of London. At a dinner given at the Cannon Street Hotel on May 12, 1874, to celebrate the twenty-fifth year of the accession of King William III under the presidency of the Dutch Minister in England, the Count de Bylandt, the guests in a glow of loyalty and good-fellowship proposed to raise a contribution to be spent in the purchase of some handsome memorial of the occasion. A happy inspiration came to the Chairman, and he suggested to his countrymen that the best of all possible memorials of such an occasion would be to establish a fund for the relief of poor and worthy Netherlanders in London and to give it the name of their King. The suggestion was adopted by acclamation, and the result the 'Koning Willem's Fonds,' from which, as I find by examining its statutes and its records, gratuitous loans, precisely identical in their object and under conditions not essentially different, are made to deserving Hollanders in London. The 'fonds' is connected with a society doing the usual work of all such foreign benevolent societies in London. But it is a special fund, and as I learn from the Annual Report of the Society for January 1889, it has so far been administered with entire success, and with the result of enabling not a few honest and industrious Hollanders stranded in London to make a fair and prosperous start in life. That the fund is administered in the true practical spirit of the old Low Country benevolence, and its advantages appreciated as they ought to be, appears from the statement made by the Treasurer, Mr. Maas, in the Report for 1889, that the number of loans is increasing and the number of donations decreasing. In 1888 371_l._ were loaned as against 185_l._ in 1887, and 247_l._ given away as against 382_l._ in 1887. I observe, too, that the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Polydore de Keyser, gave at this annual meeting as his reason for joining the society which administers this fund that it had the courage to spend 251_l._ in excess of its assured income rather than send away the good which came to its door to be done. CHAPTER XIII IN THE MARNE REIMS No city in France has more to lose and less to gain from the triumph of the Third Republic over historic France than this ancient, rich, and royal city of Reims. The triumph of the Third Republic on the lines laid down by M. Challemel-Lacour in 1874 and re-affirmed at the elections of 1889, means the extinction of the religious sentiment in France. To extinguish the religious sentiment in France would be to empty the history of Reims of all its significance. It would be to filch from the city of St.-Rémi and of Clovis, of Urban II. and of Jeanne d'Arc, its great name--a robbery that surely would not enrich the Third Republic, but that would leave Reims poor indeed! Of course it is possible that the laicised, unbaptized, and atheistic French citizen of the future may come to regard the hegira of M. Gambetta from Paris to Tours in a balloon, and the occupation of Tonkin, as events of greater importance to mankind than the creation of France by Clotilde and Clovis, or the rescue of France from conquest and dismemberment by the pious peasant-girl of Domrémy, or the rolling back of Islam from the domination of the world by Urban II. Heaven forbid that I should assume to set any limit to the things which a truly scientific unbeliever is likely to believe! But while men still abide in the thick darkness of the Catholic faith, or even in the penumbral twilight of Protestant Christianity, I do not see how Reims is to be one bit the better, materially or morally, for the extinction of the religious sentiment in France. The arrondissement of Reims contains very nearly 200,000 people, of whom considerably more than one-third inhabit the city itself. A very large proportion of these are employed in the numerous factories which flourish here, and many more in the various industries connected with the incessantly growing commerce in those sparkling wines which have made the name of this ancient province synonymous with luxury and gaiety in the remotest corners of the world. Though Épernay is the real headquarters of this commerce, two or three of the most important houses connected with it are, and long have been, established at Reims, and some of the most remarkable of the vast cellars excavated in the chalk, in which these sparkling wines are stored throughout the Department of the Marne, are here to be seen. Here too, at least as well as at Épernay or Châlons, acquaintance may be made, at the right time and in the right places, with certain vintages of Champagne which seldom or never find their way into the channels of trade, not so much because of their rarity and high cost as because of their exceeding delicacy. It is almost impossible, for example, to find even at Paris the finest quality of the red _vin de cave_ of Bouzy. This is illustrated by the fact that the only samples of this exquisite wine sent to Paris for the Universal Exposition of 1889 were those sent by Bouché Fils at Mareuil-sur-Ay, and these represented only three vintages, the earliest being that of 1884. The daintily aromatic bouquet of this wine is seldom unaffected even by the short railway journey to the capital. Of course I know that by speaking of this or of any other still wine of Champagne, I put myself under the ban of Mr. Canning's famous declaration, so often cited by Lord Beaconsfield, that 'the man who says he likes still champagne will say anything.' Nevertheless what I have written, I have written--and I shall not take it back. This the less, that I cannot allow myself even to enter upon this theme of the vineyards of the chalky Marne and the cellars of Champagne. Were I to do this, I should have a tale to unfold, much too long, and involving too many points of controversy with the accepted gastronomic authorities in my own country, in England, and in Russia, to be brought within the compass of this volume. Suffice it that the great wine-growers of Champagne do not seem to me to be infidels, or to neglect the due provision of their own households in their philanthropic anxiety to promote the convivial happiness of the four quarters of the globe. The extent to which the syndication of vineyards for the production of the wines most in demand in one or another part of the world, has been developed of late years in Champagne is a noteworthy phenomenon. Not less noteworthy is the growing attention paid throughout this Department of the Marne of late years to scientific methods in agriculture, and the steady improvement in the condition of the rural population. Whether a similar improvement can be shown in the general condition of the urban population is not so clear as might be wished. That within certain limits such an improvement has taken place, is however undeniable; and this is of great interest, because it is distinctly due to the energy and decision with which the challenge flung down to the Christianity of this historic Christian heart of France has been taken up by the Catholics of Reims. In the course of a most interesting visit which I made in August to the Cardinal Archbishop of Reims, His Eminence was good enough to put me in the way of measuring for myself the work done among the factory people of this region by a great Christian organization, the centre and pivot of which was established here, but which is mow extending itself all over the country. Most assuredly there is nothing in the story of this work to indicate either the approaching death or the decay of the religious sentiment in France. This work rests, like all great works, upon certain principles. But these principles were worked out, not through any theoretical inquisition into the possibilities of society, but through a direct personal practical experience of the relations between an employer of labour and his employees. It is known now throughout France as the work of the 'Christian Corporations,' and it includes, as a part of its machinery, the 'Catholic Workmen's Clubs,' which are increasing and multiplying throughout France. Its founder, M. Léon Harmel, is at the head of an important manufactory at the Val-des-Bois near Reims. This manufactory was established here half a century ago by the father of M. Harmel, and the great social work which the son is now doing is the coming to fruit, after many years, of the virtues and the experience of his father. The Ardennes is the northernmost of the four Departments into which the wise men of 1790 divided the ancient province of Champagne, and M. Harmel, the father, had inherited a manufactory in that department. This he gave up to his brother, and removing to the Marne in 1840 he founded here the establishment of the Val-des-Bois. He was a devout and sincere Catholic, and he had lived all his life among a quiet and Catholic population in the Ardennes. He found himself surrounded in his new home by a totally different people. His new employees were amazed when they saw him attending mass at the parish church on Sunday. A few of their wives and daughters went there irregularly, but the men, as a rule, were 'total abstainers.' M. Harmel made no attempt to preach to his people otherwise than by his example. But the employer being regarded, in the light of modern progress, as the natural enemy of the employee, this example had little effect. M. Léon Harmel tells a delightful story of his father's first success in inducing some of his workmen, with whom he had fallen incidentally into conversation on the subject, to go over to Reims in the early morning at the beginning of Lent, and confess to an excellent priest there who was one of his friends. He spake with the men separately, and said nothing to any one of them of his conversations with the others. Meeting one of his converts on his return, M. Harmel asked him about his experience. 'Ah, sir!' the man replied, 'it is all very well, but I shall never be caught there again!' 'And, pray, why not?' 'Why I thought I was the only man going to confess. I saw no one when I went into the confessional, and the good priest was very good, and I was glad I went. But when I came to commune in the church, there were three of my comrades! How I looked at them, and how they looked at me! It will be all over the factory to-night, and we four will have no peace for six months! No! I shall not do this again!' The manufactory prospered. If the example of M. Harmel availed little against the public sentiment of the workpeople educated in utter indifference to all religion, in the way of inducing them to attend to their religious duties, his unvarying justice and benevolence, his readiness to succour and to advise them in all straits, and his unobtrusive devotion to his faith, at least exerted a wholesome effect upon their general conduct; and the factory of the Val-des-Bois earned a high reputation for its freedom from flagrant scandals and disorders. But this did not satisfy M. Harmel. After twenty years of single-handed and uphill work, he determined to seek help. On February 28, 1861, he established three Sisters of St.-Vincent de Paul in a small house which had been a wayside inn, and set about Christianising his people in earnest. There was no pomp or parade about the matter. The good Sisters were quite content to establish an asylum for the little children in what had been the stable of the inn, and to open their school in two little upper chambers. Two Jesuit Fathers came and devoted a month to a regular mission. Processions were organised and lectures given, some in the factory, others at the little inn. The novelty of the enterprise excited the attention of the people, and when a decided movement at last of interest in the mission made itself clearly felt, M. Harmel took advantage of it, with the help of the Sisters, to form Christian associations, first among the young girls, then among the young men, and then among the workmen themselves. The first young girl who gave an effectual impulse to the work, was a girl selected by the Sisters, with their usual sound instinct, because they found her capable of absolute devotion to a not by any means estimable mother, and to a decidedly reprehensible sister. She was a peasant-girl, brought up in a disorderly family, by no means choice or refined in her language; but the Sisters, for whom she conceived a great affection, saw that she was generous, fearless, and determined, and that was enough. With the girls, with the young men, with the workmen, no sort of direct or indirect pressure was ever for a moment employed. The associations which they formed were managed by themselves, M. Harmel, the priest whom he finally brought to Val-des-Bois, and for whom he built a chapel, and the missionary brethren, giving advice and aid only when and as it was asked. One excellent workman, who had been in the factory for many years, and who was much esteemed by M. Harmel, was asked one day by the priest why he had never taken any interest in the religious associations. 'I do take an interest in them,' he replied, 'and they are doing a great deal of good. I don't feel moved to join them, but I do them a great service often. Many a time in the cabarets I hear a man say, "Oh, the papa Harmel is a good man, no doubt; they are right to call him there 'the good father.' He is all that, but nobody can get any work there unless he is a little saint!" Then I get up and say, "Don't talk like a fool! You see me; I have worked for 'the good father' thirty-five years. I have never done my religious duties, but nobody treats me the worse for that! That shuts them up!"' One great obstacle, at the outset, to the success of these associations, out of which the 'Christian Corporations' were eventually to grow, was the hostility of the elder married women to the 'Enfans de Marie,' and the other societies of young girls. They objected that these societies broke up the Sunday balls, and when they were asked whether these Sunday balls did not lead to a good many scandals, they replied, 'Oh, young people must amuse themselves; we used to amuse ourselves!' They insisted too, that the girls would neglect their home duties to attend mass and the meetings of their new societies. One particularly recalcitrant dame made her husband's life a burden to him, because he not only encouraged his daughters in going to the Sisters, but actually went to mass himself. Finally, one day the poor man came to see the Sisters. He was evidently much exercised in his mind, and showing the Sisters a small sum of money he had, he said, 'I have saved this up to bring my old woman to a better mind, and I want you to help me.' They asked him how. 'Why, you see, all the trouble comes because she don't know you, and won't know you, and thinks everything wrong about you. Now if one of you will just take this money, and buy her a new Sunday gown, and take it to her as if it was a gift you wanted to make her, that will bring her all right, I know, and we shall have peace in the house!' What Sister could resist such an appeal? The pious fraud was perpetrated, and the worthy dame gave way along the whole line! This working population of Val-des-Bois, when M. Harmel began his work among them, it will be seen, was a fair type of the average working populations of France in those parts of France where the influence of Radicalism has been most potent, and the influence of the Church weakest. There is another factory in the same commune now. There are sixteen others within a radius of three French leagues, and the city of Reims, with its population of nearly a hundred thousand souls, is within half an hour of the place. All the disturbing currents of socialism, of agrarianism, of indifferentism play about and upon the place constantly. The Sunday ball is an institution still. The influence of the local authorities during the last ten years has been thrown against the Catholic associations, and therefore, from the nature of the case, in favour of dissipation, debauchery, and disorder. To see his work prosper in a soil so unpropitious and amid such hostile circumstances might well have quickened the faith of a man much colder and more sceptical than M. Harmel. In 1861, as I have said, not one workman could be found at Val-des-Bois who dared to go to mass. In 1867, at the request of forty of his workmen, M. Harmel assisted them in drawing up the statutes and arranging the programme of a Catholic Working-Men's Club. The initiative came from them. No pressure of any sort or kind was put upon them to take it. It was the free outcome of the influence exerted upon them by the example of the Harmel family and by the religious and charitable work which the Sisters and the priests had been doing at Val-des-Bois. Within a year the club doubled its membership. When the invasion came, in 1870, it was an established institution. 'M. Harmel planted his Christians at Val-des-Bois,' said to me one of the most interesting men I met at Reims, 'as our vine-growers in Champagne plant their vines. It is one of the mysteries of our viticulture that the grapes which yield our most delicate and exquisite wines of Ay, all sparkle and sunshine, can only be made to yield those wines when they are planted in our poorest and most chalky soil, and in regions where the climate is so ungenial that the plants have to be set as closely as possible together in the ground. We really huddle them together, as we do sheep in the hurdles in winter, to keep one another warm. This M. Harmel did with his converts. He taught his workmen to associate more closely with one another, he brought their minds and their hearts together, and let them act one upon another. He lived and moved and had his own being among them like a father, and in this way insensibly they came by degrees to regard each other as members of a family. He has always felt, and his whole life has shown it, that the "Declaration of the Rights of Man," whatever the motives of its authors may have been, put the weak of this world at the mercy of the strong, and set Capital free to deal with Labour as a mere matter of bargain and sale. The dominant idea in his mind has always been, as it was in the mind of his father before him--the "good father" of Val-des-Bois--not how to get the most work out of his workmen, but how best to do his own duty to his workmen, thinking that the best way to get them, on their part, to do their duty to him. All this, you see, is quite mediæval and Christian, not in the least modern and scientific! But has the modern and scientific way of looking at the relations of capital and labour, so far, been what may be called a great success? Do we seem to be in the way of organizing a solid modern society on the principles of the "struggle for life" and of the "survival of the fittest"? Certainly these principles are a logical outcome of the "Declaration of the Rights of Man," and of such legislation as that which in 1791 shattered to pieces at a blow the whole ancient and Christian organization of industry in our unhappy land of France! As certainly too, they are admirably fitted to secure either the complete subjugation of labour by capital or the relapse of France and of Europe into barbarism. Is not universal suffrage a natural and easy weapon of capital in any "struggle for life" with labour? Is it not clear that, in losing the notion of duty to his employer, the workman has necessarily lost the idea also of duty to his fellow-workmen? "Every man for himself" is the motto of modern democracy, and do we not see that the syndicates of workmen which it was the object of the Radicals to establish by their law of March 1884 concerning "professional syndicates," in order to facilitate and promote "strikes," are only kept together and made to work by sheer terrorism? What is the sanction of the measures ordered by such syndicates excepting the fear in which every member goes of his fellow-members? Does not that take us a long way on towards savage life? Does not that tend directly to build up a subterranean machinery of despotism which will be at the service of the shrewdest head and the longest purse whenever any real and decisive issue arises between organised capital and organised labour? 'Look at the part which money played in our first unhappy revolution! 'It is the most instructive part of that whole sad history, and yet, for a hundred different reasons, it is the part which from the beginning has been most obscured by a miscellaneous conspiracy of silence. Some day perhaps it will be possible to get a true life written of Le Pelletier de Saint-Fargeau, the millionaire Mephistopheles of Philippe Égalité. The hand that struck him to death in the very centre of the scene of his long machinations, there in the Palais Royal, with his vote, dooming the king to death, still as it were on his lips, did not strike at random. There was no such bit of dramatic justice done in those dark days as the killing of that man in that place between the giving of that vote and the murder of the king that followed it next day! 'But the story cannot be written yet. They were much more concerned about the death of Le Pelletier next day in the Convention, you will see if you look into the true records of the session, than they were about the murder of the king, which was then going on in the Place de la Révolution. They gave him--why not?--(the most active of them and the deepest in the plot were his property, bought and paid for)--they gave him a national funeral, and made his heiress--the greatest heiress she was in France--the ward of the nation. 'It was quite another vision he had in his mind for her! I will show you some day a curious letter of hers written after she became a duchess, about the Empress Joséphine. It is very instructive. She grew up a lovely, untameable, unmanageable young person, made a love-match, as you know, and with whom you know, broke her husband's heart, got a divorce and married again. To go into all this now would disturb the peace of families in no way responsible for her career or for the plots and schemes of her father. It would be like "flushing" the ghost of that monster Carrier who drowned the poor and the priests at Nantes, only to plague his descendants. His son was an excellent person who very properly changed his name. The most malicious thing I ever knew one woman say of another, was said of one of his grand-daughters at a foreign court by another Frenchwoman, jealous of her social success. "She is very charming, no doubt; but look at her mouth, and you will see she has carious teeth--_des dents Carrier_!" But when, if ever, the truth about that dark episode of Le Pelletier and his schemes is told, it will be seen how much more gold and private ambitions had to do with the final fatal drift of things after the destiny of France fell into the swirl of Paris, than all the howlings and ravings of the philosophers and the patriots. What happened in the last century will happen again whenever and wherever human society ceases to be held together by the idea of Duty. It is not the discontent of Labour which makes me most anxious as to the future. It is the egotism of Capital, educated and encouraged into egotism by the false doctrines of what is called Liberalism in this country, and provoked into egotism by the equally egotistic discontent of Labour. What I most value in the work of M. Harmel is the courage and precision with which he has from the first insisted upon the Duty of the employer to the employed. You have seen, of course, his _Catéchisme du Patron_?' The Cardinal Archbishop had given me a copy of this book, which is really one of the most remarkable contributions ever made to the practical study of the relations between Capital and Labour. In it M. Harmel has condensed, in the catechetical form of questions and answers, his lifelong experience in the work of ascertaining and fulfilling all the duties incumbent, from the point of view of Christian duty, upon the capitalist who employs the labour of his fellow-men in putting his capital into use and making it profitable. It would be very interesting merely as a theory of the true relations between Labour and Capital. It is more than interesting as the ripe expression of an experiment faithfully and successfully carried out by a man of resolute will and great practical ability for more than a quarter of a century in a field which, when he entered upon it, was certainly one of the most unpromising in the world. The 'Christian Corporation' was an established institution, as I have said, at Val-des-Bois, in 1870, when the war with Germany broke out. In 1871, after the storm of the invasion had been followed by the horrors of the Commune of Paris, the principles on which the industrial family at Val-des-Bois had been organised began to attract attention all over France. A club of Catholic working-men was opened at Paris in 1871, and a movement began in earnest for extending these institutions throughout France. It made rapid progress. In September 1874 a great disaster occurred at Val-des-Bois. The factory buildings took fire during the night of the 12th of that month, and despite the efforts of the whole population they were all in ashes when the morning broke. Before noon of the next day M. Harmel announced to his workmen that he had leased, at no small sacrifice of his immediate pecuniary interests, another factory at some distance from the Val-des-Bois, called La Neuville, and that the 'Christian Corporation' of Val-des-Bois might at once be transferred thither, and carried on as before until the reconstruction of its original site. The tidings of this calamity brought substantial succour from Catholic clubs all over France, from Marseilles to Nantes, and from Bordeaux to Lille. More than a hundred clubs were represented in this outburst of sympathy, and the disaster led, not indirectly, to a formal approval of the work in a brief issued by His Holiness Pius IX. on October 2, 1874. In 1878 there were more than four hundred clubs in France, with a membership of nearly a hundred thousand persons. Concurrently with the development of these clubs a movement went on for establishing an organisation of honorary members, not belonging to the working classes, who should co-operate with the clubs in promoting the principles represented by the 'Christian Corporations.' In 1875 a parliamentary inquiry was made into the condition of Labour in France; and on behalf of the committee which conducted this inquiry, the deputy, M. Ducarre, who drew up the report, declared it to be the opinion of the committee that all the syndicating movements of modern times point to the necessity of re-establishing the corporate system of labour which was destroyed by the First Republic in 1791. The language used in this Report is worth citing. 'All the remedies suggested for the existing state of things,' said M. Ducarre, 'may be summed up in this conclusion; there must be an end of the isolation of the individual labourer. This must be replaced by the action of collectivities, associations, or syndicates, whose duty it shall be to watch over the interests of every calling. In a word we must go back to the system of corporations of the trades, _maîtrises_, and _jurandes_, under which labour was so long carried on in France.' This Report found no favour in the eyes of the Radicals because it aimed at a good understanding and practical co-operation between Labour and Capital. Nine years afterwards, on March 21, 1884, a law was carried through the French Parliament authorising the establishment of 'professional syndicates.' The object of the Republicans, then as now controlling a majority of the Chamber, in passing this law, was to strengthen the trades unions as against the employers of France. The law, it will be observed, was passed at the time when a syndicate of miners in the North, which had no legal right to exist before the passage of the law, was actively promoting, under its leader, M. Basly, the great strike at Anzin of which I have spoken in a preceding chapter. But while the law of March 1884 legalised 'syndicates' of this aggressive, and in the nature of things tyrannical, type, it also necessarily legalised precisely such Christian corporations as those contemplated in the Report of 1875, and long before organised on the lines laid down by M. Harmel. A great and visible responsibility was thus thrown upon the employers of France and upon what are called the upper classes generally in that country. It was clear that, if they would energetically and systematically throw themselves into the work of bringing about a reconstruction of social order on the principles of co-operation and sympathy as opposed to the principle of antagonism between Capital and Labour, the law of 1884, intended to widen, might be effectually used to close the threatening breach between the employers and the employed. There seems to be little doubt that down to that time the promoters of the Christian Corporation movement in France had made greater headway with the working classes than with the employers. A Report presented in 1885 by the general committee of the Catholic clubs of France to the French bishops states this very plainly. This report was signed by the Marquis De La-Tour-du-Pin-Chambly, who from the beginning of M. Harmel's experiment at Val-des-Bois had been one of his most earnest and active coadjutors, by the Comte de la Bouillerie, Treasurer of the General Society, by the Comte de Mun, and by the Comte Albert de Mun, the moving spirit now of the whole work, who resigned his commission in the army to devote himself to it, and who went up from the Morbihan to Paris as a deputy in 1885, elected by 60,341 votes, to demand not only the restoration of the monarchy but a property restriction upon the suffrage. In 1889, under the _scrutin d'arrondissement_ readopted by the terrified Republicans to defeat 'Boulangism,' Count Albert de Mun was re-elected without opposition for the 2nd division of Pontivy. In no part of France is the passion of equality stronger than in the Morbihan; and the contempt of the people there for 'universal suffrage' is extremely instructive. 'Of the Christian Corporations,' says this Report of 1885, 'as of the working-men's clubs, it is proper to say that never in any place or at any time has any obstacle been offered to them by the working classes. On the contrary, there is plainly going on among the working classes, under the influence of the deplorable crises which affect the industrial world, an instinctive and ever-increasing movement towards this association of common and professional interests, the notion of which is suggested by the natural sentiment of right and wrong, as well as by some confused memory, obscured by revolutionary doctrines, of the traditions of Labour in France, which predisposes the working-man to seek safety in a return to the old system of the Corporations. A similar feeling exists among the employers, who desire, though they too often despair of seeing, a closer union of interests between themselves and their working-men. Wherever the movement languishes, one of the chief causes will be found to be the apathy, the discouragement, and the frivolity of the upper classes.' In the case of great factories like that of the Val-des-Bois, the Christian Corporations naturally are sufficient unto themselves. There the employer and the employed between them constitute a small world, which can take care of itself and carry out the numerous subsidiary features of the system, such as the promotion of domestic economy, the establishment of savings-funds, the organisation of festivals and of courses of instruction, without relying much, or at all, upon any co-operation from without. It is in the development of the system for the benefit of working-men who are isolated in their work, or employed in small establishments, that the co-operation of the upper classes is needed; and while I incline to think that there is still much ground for the strong language on this point employed in the Report of 1885, there appears to be no doubt that a great improvement has taken place during the last three or four years. In 1884 the efforts of the Cardinal Archbishop of Reims, the Bishop of Angers, and of other energetic prelates, secured the active participation of the Holy See in the promotion of this work. In February of that year a pilgrimage to Rome of members of the Catholic Clubs of France was organised. The pilgrims were received in special audience by Leo XIII., and he gave his Papal approbation and benediction to the work in a very remarkable address which produced a deep and widespread impression throughout Catholic France. Similar pilgrimages were made in 1887 and in 1889. One very important effect of this has been to bring about a better understanding between the parochial clergy of France in general and these steadily increasing lay organisations. It is in the nature of things that the clergy should be slow in giving their unreserved aid to any movement, no matter how admirable in itself, which involves a good deal of extra-clerical activity in matters religious. This was illustrated in the attitude of the English Protestant clergy towards Wesley and Whitfield, and there are some curious coincidences--of course absolutely undesigned--between some of the methods of the great and powerful Protestant sect of the Wesleyans and those of M. Harmel's Catholic Clubs. The Methodist 'class-leader,' for example, reappears in a modified form in the _zélateurs_ and _zélatrices_ of the Harmel Clubs and fraternities. These are members, working-men and working-women, who are willing to devote themselves to promoting religious sentiments and practices among their comrades, and who hold regular meetings to consider and work out the best and most practical way of doing this. It is not surprising that in many cases the curés should have looked with a little uneasiness upon the development of such a system until it had been fully considered and formally approved by the highest authority in the Church. Of its efficacy from the point of view of M. Harmel there can be no doubt. Something not wholly unlike the 'exclusive dealing' which contributes so much to the strength of Methodism in America has also been established for the benefit of the members of M. Harmel's Christian Corporation. This is 'exclusive dealing 'of an honest and honourable sort, and must not be confounded with the rascally 'exclusive dealing' known in Ireland as 'boycotting.' It combines a system of 'privileged purveyors' with an accumulative savings fund. The firm of Harmel Brothers, acting for the Corporation, makes contracts with tradesmen at Val-des-Bois--grocers, butchers, bakers, and the like--by which the tradesmen bind themselves to sell certain wares to members of the Christian Corporations, and to them only, at a fixed discount below the lowest current rate of prices--the wares to be of the best quality, under a penalty--and the lowest current rate to be fixed by an average taken from the current rates as given to Harmel Brothers by four dealers in such wares in the city of Reims, of whom two are to be named by them and two by the 'privileged purveyor.' Each member of the Corporation receives certificates, of one franc, ten sous, or ten centimes in value, from the office of Harmel Brothers, and these are taken by the 'privileged purveyor' in payment at their face value. For him they are each week cashed in money at the office of Harmel Brothers. If the members prefer to pay the 'privileged purveyor' in cash, or in orders upon their wages, the sums so paid are inscribed on the account of the Corporation. When the weekly or fortnightly accounts are made up, a certain percentage of the differences between the current market-price of the purchases made and the actual price so paid by the purchasers goes to what is called the 'Corporation profit,' the residue of the difference being paid over to the member with his or her wages. The 'Corporation profit' is a savings fund. Each member has a book showing--with his or her number, and with the full name of the head of the family to which he or she may belong--the amount of this fund standing each quarter to his or her credit, with interest at 5 per cent. This can only be drawn out by the member, on leaving the employment of the firm, in case of illness or incapacity, or at the age of fifty years. An actuary's estimate shows that the share of the Corporation profit accruing to each member in twenty-five years on an annual estimated average Corporation profit of 70 francs a member, with five per cent. interest, would be 3,300 francs. And this, be it observed, will have cost the member nothing, being simply a result of the union of employer and employed in a corporate dealing with the purveyors. In 1879 the annual budget of a hundred families at Val-des-Bois, earning among them 249,242 francs, showed an actual 'Corporation profit' of 91,319.05 francs, which ought to have been much larger had Val-des-Bois then possessed more than one butcher, baker, grocer, and tailor. These hundred families comprised 496 members, 279 of them employed in the factory and 217 occupied at home. During the last ten years, and especially since the passage of the law of March 1884, the scope of these Christian Corporations, not only at Val-des-Bois and at Reims, but all over France, has been considerably extended. Many of them have now the character of true guilds, as at Poitiers, for example, where there is a Corporation of the Builders under the invocation of St-Radegonda, another--Our Lady of the Keys--founded upon a syndicate of clothiers, and a third, of St.-Honoré, founded upon a syndicate of provision-dealers. At Lille I found a typical Corporation, that of the spinners and weavers, known as the Christian Corporation of St.-Nicholas. This was founded in May 1885. This Corporation admits workmen and workwomen, employees and manufacturers, belonging, either by residence or by connexion with the industry named, to the commune of Lille or to one of the adjoining communes. It had last year a membership of 887 persons, of whom 26 were master manufacturers and 37 employees, the rest being workmen and workwomen. Five large firms were represented in it. The Syndical Council was made up of a syndic employer, a syndic employee, and a syndic workman from each of these firms, and of a syndic workman, M. Courtecuisse, representing the members who were employed in other establishments. The directing bureau consisted of seven members, including the chaplain. It was presided over by one of the great manufacturers of Lille, M. Féron-Vrau, and the two vice-presidents were M. Edouard Bontry, of the house of Bontry-Droullers, and M. Courtecuisse already named. This Corporation, under the law of 1884, can own the buildings necessary for its meetings, its libraries, and its lecture-courses; it can establish among its members special savings funds, mutual assistance and pension funds; found and conduct offices for information bearing on the business of its members, and it may be consulted, under Article 6 of the Law of 1884, on 'all difficulties and misunderstandings and questions arising out of its specialty.' This provision--specially intended by the authors of the law to arm the 'strikers' of France against French employers--may thus, it will be seen, be turned quite as effectually to purposes of concord and harmony as to purposes of discontent and strife. The Corporation of St.-Nicholas may receive gifts and legacies in aid of its Corporation funds and purposes, and generally take an active part, like all these Corporations, as was pointed out by Leo XIII. in his 'Encyclical of April 20, 1884,' in protecting, under the 'guidance of the Faith, both the interests and the morals of the people.' It already has within its sphere of action a Confraternity of Our Lady of the Factory, comprising 548 members, a Mutual Aid Society with 218 members, an Assistance Fund with 409 members; and a Domestic Economy Fund, the principle of which is that certain dealers make a discount on their wares to members of the Corporation which is certified to by them in counters of different values. These counters are receivable by the Corporation in payment of the assessments and subscriptions of the members. The steady development of these institutions during the last four or five years has led to the organisation by them of a complete general system of administration, provincial and national. The Corporations are grouped not by departments but by provinces. Provincial assemblies are held, by which delegates are named to attend an annual general assembly at Paris. At the general assembly of 1889, held on June 24, 350 delegates were present, and the session of the assembly was opened by the delegation from Dauphiny, the chair being taken by one of its members, M. Roche, in virtue, as he explained to the crowded audience in the large hall of the Horticultural Society in the Rue de Grenelle, of his descent 'from a representative of the Estates of Dauphiny in 1789.' The work of the assembly was divided between four committees, one on moral and religious interests, one on public interests, one on commercial and industrial interests, and one on agricultural and rural interests. From this it will be seen that the principles of the movement are being systematically applied to the whole field of active life in France. The general maxim of the organisation is the sound, sensible, and military maxim, of St.-Vincent de Paul, 'let us keep our rules, and our rules will keep us,' and I think there can be no doubt that the French freemasons, and the fanatics of unbelief generally who have launched the government of the Third Republic upon its present course, will find this new Christian organisation of Capital and Labour a troublesome factor in the political field. We have seen what came in Germany of the _Cultur-Kampf_, and there are curious analogies between the work and the spirit of the Catholic Clubs in France to-day, and the ideas of Monseigneur von Ketteler, which gave vigour and vitality to the great 'party of the Centre,' in the contest with the Chancellor. Where the giant of Berlin had the wisdom to give way, the pigmies of Paris are likely to persist until they are crushed. For they have burned their ships, as the Chancellor never burned his, and they are dogmatists, while he is a statesman. He sought to control and use the Catholic Church in Germany. Their object is, as one of the ablest Republicans in France, Jules Simon, long ago told them, to supplant a State Church of belief by a State church of unbelief. In America and in England when men talk of 'religious freedom,' they mean the freedom of a man to profess and practise his own religion. What the Third French Republic means by 'religious freedom' is freedom from religion. Their legislation has tended, ever since 1877, not indirectly nor by implication, but directly and avowedly, to establish in France a state of things in which, not Catholics only, but all men who profess any form of religion, shall be treated as Protestants were in France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, or as Catholics were in Ireland under William III. This is the meaning of M. Gambetta's war-cry 'Clericalism is the enemy.' The phrase was his, but the policy was announced by his party long before he invented the phrase in 1877. It was distinctly formulated in 1874 by a Republican leader much better equipped for dealing with such questions than M. Gambetta, who was the Boanerges not the Paul of the French gospel of unbelief. On September 4, 1874, M. Challemel-Lacour, in a remarkable speech, laid it down as a fundamental principle of the Republican policy that the State should so control all the higher branches of education as to secure what he called 'the moral unity of France.' It was on this principle that Napoleon in 1808 had re-organised the University of France. M. Challemel-Lacour unhesitatingly called upon the Republicans to adopt it. If Catholics or Protestants or Israelites were allowed to found universities of their own and confer degrees and diplomas, what would become of the 'moral unity of France'? The duty of the Republicans was to protect and develop this 'moral unity.' So long as one Frenchman could be found in France who believed anything not believed by every other Frenchman, so long this 'moral unity' would be imperfect. The French Liberals of 1830 obviously made a great mistake when they put 'freedom of education' as a right of Frenchmen in the charter. M. Guizot, the great Protestant Minister of Louis Philippe, obviously made a great mistake when he established the principles of free primary education in 1833. The Republicans of 1848 obviously made a great mistake when they proclaimed 'freedom of education' as a Republican principle. The Jacobins of 1792 were the true 'children of light,' and they alone understood how really to achieve the 'moral unity of France,' M. Challemel-Lacour did not say this in so many words; but he did say in so many words that he objected to see any bill passed which should establish 'freedom of education,' and permit clerical persons to found universities, because, 'instead of establishing the moral unity of France, this newfangled liberty would only aggravate the division of Frenchmen into two sets of minds moving upon different lines to different conclusions. The young men educated in these universities,' he said, 'will become zealous apostles of Catholicism. The more ardour they put into their proselytism the more antagonism they will excite!' At this passage in M. Challemel-Lacour's extraordinary speech, according to the official report, a member of the Right broke in with the very natural exclamation, 'And why not? Is not that liberty? liberty for all?' To which M. Challemel-Lacour discreetly made no reply, but went on to say, 'Instead of establishing our moral unity, you will heap up combustibles in the country until shocks are produced and perhaps cataclysms!' This is the doctrine of the worthy Lord Mayor in 'Barnaby Rudge' who querulously exclaims to Mr. Harwood when that gentleman came to him asking for protection against the Gordon rioters, 'What are you a Catholic for? If you were not a Catholic the rioters would let you alone. I do believe people turn Catholics a-purpose to vex and worrit me!' 'Moral unity' would have saved the good Lord Mayor a great deal of trouble. 'Moral unity' would have kept things quiet and comfortable throughout the Roman Empire under Diocletian, and throughout the Low Countries under Phillip II. and Alva, and throughout England under Henry VIII. The Jacobins of 1792 did their best to organise 'moral unity' in France with the help of the guillotine, and of the Committee of Public Safety and of the hired assassins who butchered prisoners in cold blood. Here, at Reims, in September 1792, while Marat 'the Friend of the People' and Danton the 'Minister of Justice' were employing Maillard the 'hero of the Bastile' and his salaried cut-throats to promote public economy and private liberty by emptying the prisons of Paris, certain agents of Marat made a notable effort in behalf of the 'moral unity of France.' To this effort the melodramatic historians of the French Revolution have done scant justice. Mr. Carlyle, for example, alludes to it only in a casual half-disdainful way, which would be almost comical were the theme less ghastly. 'At Reims,' he observes, 'about eight persons were killed--and two were afterwards hanged for doing it.' The contest of this curious passage plainly shows that he imagined these 'eight persons' (more or less) to have been "killed" by the people of Reims, roused into a patriotic frenzy by the circular which Marat, Panis and Sergent sent out to the provinces calling upon all Frenchmen to imitate the 'people of Paris,' and massacre all the enemies of the Revolution at home before marching against the foreign invaders. That the 'people' of Reims thus aroused should only have killed 'about eight persons' really seemed to him, one would say, hardly worthy of a truly 'Titanic' and 'transcendental' epoch. There is something essentially bucolic in the impression which mobs and multitudes always seem to make upon Mr. Carlyle's imagination. Of what really happened at Reims in September 1792 he plainly had no accurate notion. He obviously cites from some second-hand contemporary accounts of the transactions there this statement, that 'about eight persons were killed,' because, as it happens, we have a full precise and official Report of the killing of all these persons, with their names and details of the massacre, drawn up on September 8, 1792, by the municipal authorities of Reims and signed by all the members of the Council General. Had Mr. Carlyle seen this Report, it would have shown him that Marat, Panis and Sergent knew what they were about when they sent out their famous or infamous circular, just as Marat and Danton knew what they were about when they organised the massacres of September in the prisons of Paris. The 'people' of Reims had no more to do with the killing of 'about eight persons' in the streets and squares of this historic city in September 1792 than the 'people' of Paris had to do with the atrocious butcheries at the Abbeys and Bicêtre and La Force and the Conciergerie. Mr. Carlyle ought to have learned even from the 'Histoire Parlementaire' of Buchez and Roux, which he seems to have freely consulted, that 'the days of September were an administrative business.' What actually happened at Reims in September 1792 is worth telling. It does not prove, as Mr. Carlyle almost dolefully takes it to prove, that in the provinces the 'Sansculottes only bellowed and howled but did not bite.' It does prove that when they bit, they bit to order, and under impulses no more 'Titanic' or 'transcendental' than those which in our own time lead active politicians to invent lies about the character of their opponents, and to manufacture emotional issues on the eve of a sharp political contest. The subsidised Parisian insurrection of August 10, 1792, prostrated the monarchy, but it did not found the Republic. It was the death knell both of Pétion and of the Girondists, who had been most active in secretly or openly promoting it. The Constitution having been torn into shreds, power became a prize to be fought for by all the demagogues and all the factions in Paris. The Legislative Assembly fell into the trough of the sea. The sections of Paris supported Marat in calmly laying hands on the printing-presses and material of the royal printing-office, and converting his abominable newspaper into a 'Journal of the Republic.' He was voted a special 'tribune of honour' in the hall of the Council. On August 19 he openly called upon the 'people' to 'march in arms to the prison of the Abbaye, take out the prisoners there, especially the officers of the Swiss Guard and their accomplices, and put them to the sword.' This was an electoral proceeding. The members of the National Convention were then about to be chosen. Under a law passed by the expiring legislature, electors of the members were first to be chosen by the voters on August 26, and the electors thus chosen were to meet on September 2, and choose the members of the Convention. It was in view of this second and decisive election day that Marat and Danton settled the date at which the great patriotic work of 'emptying the prisons' should begin, and it was in view of this day also that the circular already mentioned of Marat, Panis and Sergent was sent forth to all places at which a lively administration of murder and pillage would be most likely to conduce to the choice by the electors of deputies agreeable to the authors of the circular. The electors for the Department of the Marne chosen on August 26 were to meet in Reims on September 2, and choose the Deputies for that department to sit in the Convention. In Reims Marat had a faithful personal ally in the person of the Procureur-Syndic, the most important national functionary in the city. This man, Couplet, called Beaucourt, was a disreputable and apostate ex-monk who had married an ex-nun. His position, of course, gave him a great influence over the least respectable part of the population, and with Marat and Danton at his back in Paris he cared nothing for the mayor and the municipal authorities. From August 19 to August 31 he kept issuing incendiary placards and making inflammatory speeches in Reims. On August 31 he received an intimation from Paris that a column of so-called 'Volunteers' was in motion for Reims, and that he must have things ready for them. To this end he caused the arrest of the postmaster, M. Guérin, and of a poor young letter-carrier named Carton, on a charge of sequestrating and burning 'compromising letters' which ought to have been turned over to him and the 'justice of the Republic.' On the morning of the election day there marched into Reims the expected 'Volunteers,' who carried banners proclaiming them to be 'Men of the 10th of August.' Couplet received them and feasted them. They broke up into squads and went roaring about Reims denouncing 'the aristocrats' and demanding 'justice upon all public enemies.' They finally broke open the prison, and dragging out the unfortunate postmaster, cut him to pieces in front of the Hôtel de Ville. Some courageous citizens contrived to smuggle out of their reach the young letter-carrier, and took him for safety into the hall of the Municipal Council. There the murderers followed him, excited by a speech from the Procureur-Syndic, who knowing that no trial had been had, did not scruple to say that 'nothing could excuse the unfaithful letter-carrier.' The town officers tried to get Carton out by a back door, but Marat's murderers were too quick for them, and the poor youth was torn to pieces. While this was doing the Procureur-Syndic provided another victim. He arrested on some pretext a retired officer of the army, M. de Montrosier, ex-commandant of Lille, then in the house of his father-in-law, M. Andrieux, one of the first magistrates of Reims. M. de Montrosier being taken to prison, the Maratist mob broke again into the prison, dragged him out, killed him, and carried his head all over Reims on a pike. Meanwhile a detachment went out to a neighbouring village in quest of two of the canons of Reims, who had taken refuge there, brought them back to the city, and shot them dead in the street. Night now coming on, the apostles of the 'moral unity of France,' many of them by this time being exceedingly drunk, kindled a huge bonfire in front of the Hôtel de Ville, flung into it the mutilated corpses of their victims, and towards midnight laying hands upon two priests, MM. Romain and Alexandre, threw them into the flames! Another band during the evening broke into the venerable church of St.-Rémi, and tearing down the shields and banners which for fourteen centuries had hung above the tomb of the great Archbishop who made France a Christian kingdom, brought these to the bonfire and consumed them. During this day of horrors, the electors of the department had been in session. As the news reached them of what was going on in the streets, one thought came into the minds of all the decent men among them, to get through as fast as possible and quit the city. At the first ballot 442 electors were present. At the seventh only 203 remained. Of these 135, being the compact 'Republican' minority, gave their votes on that ballot to Drouet, the postmaster's son of Ste-Ménéhould, Mr. Carlyle's 'bold old dragoon,' who stopped the carriage of Louis XVI. at Varennes. He was one of the special adherents of Marat, and a most vicious and venal creature, as his own memoirs, giving among other matters an account of his grotesque attempt to fly down out of his Austrian prison with a pair of paper wings, abundantly attest. He escaped the guillotine, and naturally enough turned up under the empire as an obsequious sub-prefect at Ste-Ménéhould. The whole of the elections, which in normal circumstances would have occupied at least three days, were hurried through before midnight of the first day. Couplet, called Beaucourt, was satisfied. But so were not the 'men of the 10th of August,' They got their pay of course, but they wanted more blood. At 9 A.M. the next morning they seized the venerable curé of St.-Jean, the Abbé Paquot, and dragged him before Couplet, insisting that he should take the constitutional oath. Couplet tried to explain that the time for taking it had expired on August 26. But the courageous Abbé, looking his assassins in the face, said to them: 'I will not take it, it is against my conscience. If I had two souls I would gladly give one of them for you. I have but one, and it belongs to my God.' He had hardly uttered the words when he was struck down and cut to pieces. Almost at the same moment another priest more than eighty years of age, the curate of Rilly, refusing to take the oath, was hanged upon the bar of a street lantern before the eyes of the Mayor of Reims, who tried in vain to disperse or control these _sans-culottes_, who, according to Mr. Carlyle, 'howled and bellowed, but did not bite.' By this time the news came of the surrender of Verdun to the Prussians, and the tocsin began to sound from the great bells of the cathedral. The citizens of Reims suddenly took courage from the sense of the national peril, not to fall upon and slay helpless and unarmed prisoners, but to make head against the murderers and scoundrels who were domineering over their city. The local National Guards began to appear, and were shortly reinforced by a column of Volunteers from the country armed to meet the invaders. The Mayor took command of them and marched to the Hôtel de Ville. There they found that one Chateau, an agent of Couplet, had been secretly denounced by his employer as a spy and promptly hanged by the Parisians on the same lantern-bar from which the night before they had hanged the aged curé of Rilly. His dead body had been flung into the still blazing bonfire kept up all night with woodwork from the pillaged churches of Reims. The champions of 'moral unity' had also laid hands on the wife of this wretched man, and were on the point of throwing her alive into the flames when the Mayor and the troops appeared. The order to 'charge bayonets' was given and the whole brood of scoundrels thereupon broke and fled in all directions. All these details, with others too loathsome to be here reproduced, are, as I have said, taken from an official _procès verbal_ drawn up at Reims on September 8, 1792, and signed by every member of the Council-General. This record was produced when in 1795, after the fall of Robespierre had opened the way for the great reaction which finally made Napoleon master of France, the tribunals of the Department of the Marne took steps to bring to justice such of the assassins of 1792 as they could lay hands upon. On the 26 Thermidor, An III., two wretches, one a newspaper-vendor and the other a slopshop-keeper, were condemned to death and executed for the murder of the Abbé Paquot and of the curé of Rilly. Two others, a glazier and a shoemaker, were condemned to six years in the chain-gang. The evidence on which these assassins were convicted in 1795 had then been for two years in the hands of the municipal authorities at Reims. But during these two years France had been the football of the employers and accomplices of these assassins. The municipal authorities had been powerless to prevent these murders, which were committed in the public streets and under the protection of the Procureur-Syndic of the department, the official representative at Reims of the 'Minister of Justice,' Danton, at Paris. They were equally powerless to punish them. The Mayor of Reims was fortunate to escape denunciation at Paris for his attempt to save the lives of some of the victims. That was an offence against the 'moral unity' which the First Republic tried to establish. There was a heroic Mayor in those days at Lille named André. When the Duke of Saxe-Teschen with his wife, a sister of Marie Antoinette, appeared before Lille at the head of an Austrian army and demanded the surrender of the place, Mayor André, who was a Republican but not of the 'moral unity' type, replied that he had sworn to keep the place, and he would keep his oath. With the help of the Ancient Artillery Corporations of the old Flemish city (Corporations of which the 'Honourable Artillery Corps' of London and of Boston are offshoots), Mayor André did keep his oath and kept Lille. The Minister Roland, the respectable confederate of the virtuous Pétion, sent him promises of help, but no help. Why? Because Mayor André had taken the lead in a masculine protest of the honest people of Lille against that ruffianly invasion of the Tuileries by the mob on June 20 which the virtuous Pétion, Mayor of Paris, and his respectable confederate Roland had for their own purposes promoted. So Mayor André got words and no troops. But Lille took care of herself; bore a tremendous bombardment for days without flinching, and finally, in the early days of October, saw the Saxon Duke and his army march away, Valmy having opened the eyes of Brunswick to the utter futility and fanfaronnade of the French emigrant noblesse and princes, who had drawn up for him and persuaded him against his own better judgment to sign the too famous and fatal proclamation with which he heralded the Austro-Prussian advance into France. Mayor André having thus saved the grand North-eastern bulwark of France, his services had to be in some way recognised. But in what way? Paris voted that Lille had deserved well of the nation, which was obvious enough; also that Lille should get a million of francs towards repairing damages, which million of francs, I am assured, never reached Lille; also that a grand monument should commemorate the valour and constancy of Lille. But the grand monument was never erected until half a century afterwards, when King Louis Philippe took the matter up, and carried it through. With the proclamation of the Republic in September 1792 it ceased to be meritorious in Mayors and other municipal personages to protect life and property, repulse foreign invaders and punish domestic criminals. Varlet, the self-appointed 'Apostle of Liberty,' the man with the camp-chair and the red cap, whom Carnot, the grandfather of the present President, actually insisted that the Assembly should welcome to its floor, gave the keynote of the new order of things. 'We must draw a veil,' he exclaimed, 'over the Declaration of the Rights of Man!' And a veil was indeed drawn over the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Here at Reims, as elsewhere, proscriptions and confiscations were the order of the day. The glorious Cathedral of Reims itself, the Westminster and Canterbury in one of France, was in continual peril. Nothing really saved it and the Archi-episcopal palace but the religious and patriotic reverence of the people of Reims for the memory of Jeanne d Arc. In that Archi-episcopal palace the peasant girl of Domrémy, the Virgin saviour of France, had been lodged. In that Cathedral she had stood, her banner in her hand, and watched the solemn consecration of her mission and her triumph. The emissaries of plunder and murder from Paris shrank from driving the Rémois to extremities on that issue. But they desecrated the building and defaced it as much as they dared. I am told that Robespierre during his dictatorship interfered to put a stop to the vandalism of his disciples here, and that we owe to him the preservation of the magnificent groups which still exist of statues representing scenes in the life of the Virgin Mary. The groups above the head of the Virgin on the double lintel had already been dashed to pieces when he was appealed to. The groups below, still unharmed, afford unanswerable proof that the sculptors of this part of Europe in the thirteenth century must have been familiar with the best traditions of their art. If Robespierre preserved these, we may forgive him not only for sending his dear Camille Desmoulins and his detested Danton to the guillotine, but even for replacing the shattered groups of the Nativity, the Presentation, and the Death of the Virgin with this inscription of his own devising: 'The French people believe in the existence of God and in the immortality of the soul!' Under the First Consul this inscription gave place to the Latin dedication now visible. Pillaging he did not prevent, perhaps could not. One wizened old reprobate, Ruhl, got himself great Republican _kudos_ by persistently putting about a legend that he had successfully stolen the sacred ampulla, from which St.-Rémi had anointed Clovis King of France, and had dashed it to pieces in public. That he did indeed dash in pieces publicly a flask of glass is, I am assured, indubitable. But not less indubitable is it that he did not dash in pieces the sacred ampulla. Ruhl was a bit of a scholar, and his legend was obviously suggested to him by the traditional story of the Frankish warrior who smashed a sacred vase at Soissons, and whose own head the stalwart King Clovis afterwards clove in twain with his battle-axe on the Champ de Mars in requital of the deed. Curiously enough, it was written that the head of Ruhl should likewise in the end be smashed, as it was by himself with a pistol at Paris, May 20, 1795, to save it from the guillotine! All the churches of Reims did not escape so well as the Cathedral. St.-Nicaise, 'the jewel of Reims' and the masterpiece of a famous architect of the thirteenth century, Hues Libergiers, whose name is preserved in that of one of the chief streets of Reims, was pillaged and then pulled down, the materials and the site being sold at a 'mock auction' to Santerre, the enterprising brewer, who 'pulled the wires' of all the patriotic emotions of the Faubourg St.-Antoine from the outset of the Revolution, got himself thereby made a general, and in that capacity conducted Louis XVI. to the scaffold, where, as all the world knows, he ordered the drums to drown the last words of the King. He was an incorrigible and indefatigable speculator, and while he drove a roaring trade at Paris in beer, he was always on the look out for demolished churches and convents in the provinces. Napoleon took his measure promptly, subsidised and used him to good purpose. Hearing once that there was a ferment brewing in St.-Antoine, the Emperor sent an officer to Santerre. 'Go and tell that fellow,' he said, 'that if I hear one word from the Faubourg St.-Antoine I will have him instantly shot.' The 'Titanic' and 'transcendental' Faubourg remained as mute as a mouse! In no French city are the memories of the Revolutionary orgie more offensively out of key with the actual aspect and the great associations of the place than in Reims. Whatever may have been the ways of the working people here forty years ago, I have always been struck by their quiet and orderly demeanour, as well as by the general air of prosperity and animation which pervades the city. Its grand Cathedral, the most consummate type which exists of the great ogival architecture of the thirteenth century, stands, the archæologists tell us, on the spot where the Romans planted their citadel sixteen centuries ago. Like a citadel, it dominates the whole city to-day; a fortress no longer, like the Roman citadel, of armed force, but of faith, charity, and hope. Seven centuries have not shaken the solidity of its massive fabric. They who built it 'dreamt not of a perishable home.' But only a year ago a serious dislocation appeared in the framework of the stupendous rose-window over the grand entrance, and this, with other unsatisfactory symptoms observable here and there in the building, lend colour to the theory that the great chalk bed upon which the Cathedral stands may have been affected by the percolation of water from some deep trenches which, it seems, were dug near the northern and southern towers at the entrance of the Cathedral, during the year 1879, and unfortunately left open during the very inclement winter which followed. This is a rather alarming theory, particularly if it be true, as it is said to be, that since 1880 the towers have perceptibly come out of plumb. Fortunately the see of Reims is now in the charge of a prelate who fully appreciates the value to art and to civilisation, as well as to France and to the Church, of this magnificent edifice. When he came here from the bishopric of Tarbes, his first episcopate, in November 1874, one of the earliest steps taken by the present Cardinal Langénieux was to get a full report on the condition of the Cathedral from M. Millet, the accomplished successor of M. Viollet-le-Duc in the great work of the conservation and restoration of the historical monuments of France. M. Millet, on August 25, 1875, reported that the flying buttresses needed immediate attention, and that 'the gables and vaults of the western façade were seriously damaged, so that the rain water was penetrating the masonry and threatening the destruction of the numerous statues and sculptured ornaments of the grand western portal.' This portal, as every traveller knows, is simply matchless in the world. The Archhishop thereupon invited four of his personal friends, all at that time members of the Ministry--MM. Dufaure, Léon Say, Wallon, and Caillaux--to Reims, to see for themselves the state of the Cathedral. They came and inspected the building, and after their return to Paris prepared a bill, which became a law in December 1875, appropriating a sum of 2,033,411 francs in ten yearly instalments to the restoration of the Cathedral. The work began at once under the direction of M. Millet, who unfortunately died in 1879. It was prosecuted after his death by another able architect, M. Brugère, and is now in the hands of M. Darcy, who has shown by his work at Evreux and St.-Denis that he is no unworthy successor of Viollet-le-Duc. The appropriation made in 1875 has been expended, but I am glad to find, on looking into the Budget for 1890 of the Ministry of Public Worship, that a sum of 301,508 fr. 26 c. is still available for the works at Reims. This budget, by the way, is an instructive document. It shows that the whole outlay of the State in France upon all objects connected with public worship and religion in France and Algiers, excepting the service of the chaplains in the army and the navy, amounted in 1889 to a little more than one franc per head of the population! The whole expense in connection with the Catholic Church, the Calvinist and Lutheran confessions, the Israelitish religion and the Mussulmans, was no more than 45,337,145 francs, a sum less than the amount annually expended by the Protestant Episcopal Church of the single State of New York upon keeping up its churches, colleges, and clergy! What proportion this sum bears to the present annual income of the Church property confiscated under the first Republic it would be interesting to ascertain. A Protestant friend of mine in the south of France, who has made some investigations into this subject, tells me that it cannot possibly represent above _ten per cent_. of the present actual product of the former property of the Church. Of the whole sum, 228,000 francs were spent on the civil servants of the ministry. There are seven sub-chiefs of bureaux in this ministry, all of them now doubtless good atheists, who receive salaries of from 3,400 to 5,400 francs a year. The highest salary paid to a Protestant pastor even in Paris is 3,000 francs, or 120_l._ a year. The curé of Notre-Dame de Paris receives 2,400 francs, or less than 100_l._ a year. There are 580 curés of the first class who receive from 1,500 to 1,600 francs a year; 275 curés of the second class receiving 1,500 francs a year, and 2,527 curés of the third class receiving from 1,200 to 1,300 francs a year. The thirty-one clerks in the Ministry receive from 1,800 to 4,500 francs a year. The Vicar-General of Paris receives no more than 4,500 francs a year. The Archbishop of Paris receives, like all the other archbishops, 15,000 francs, or 600_l._, a year, which is the salary paid to the Director of the Ministry! The Grand Rabbi of the Central Consistory receives 12,000 and the Grand Rabbi of Paris 5,000 francs a year, and the salaries paid to the Israelitish ministers of religion range from 2,500 down to 600 francs, the latter amount being less by 300 francs than the wages of the servants in the Ministry. The Muftis and Imams in office receive from 300 to 1,200 francs a year. All these salaries, with the outlay on the construction, rent, or maintenance of buildings of all kinds used for religious purposes, pensions, and travelling expenses, are comprised in the total appropriation of 45,337,145 francs, or a little more than 1,800,000_l._ for the year 1889. During the same year 12,760,745 francs were appropriated for the Fine Arts service. I do not say that the sum thus devoted to the Fine Arts out of the pockets of the taxpayers of France was at all too large. But I do say that it is out of all proportion large as compared with the sum voted out of the pockets of the taxpayers to the maintenance of religious institutions, which an overwhelming majority of the people of France regard, and rightly regard, as essential to the stability of law and order. Furthermore, this Budget of 1889 shows the spirit in which the fanatics of 'moral unity' are prosecuting their war against all religions in France. In 1883 the Government's budget amounted to 53,528,206 francs. Here we have a reduction within six years of more than 8,000,000 francs. In 1883 M. Jules Roche, now a deputy for the first district of Chambéry and an ally of M. Clémenceau, proposed to reduce the Budget of Public Worship to 4,588,800 francs! The Third Republic, it will be seen, is getting on towards the proposition of M. Jules Roche--a proposition which clearly combines everything that is most open to objection in a legal connection between the State and religion with everything that is most odious and dangerous in an open war of the State against religion. During these six years the leaders of this war against religion have never dared to draw up a statistical account of the strength of the various religious bodies in France. In 1882 one of their followers, M. Alfred Talandier, on February 13, rashly proposed that a table should be officially prepared of the state of religious opinions in France; but the managers of the cause of 'moral unity' were too wily to walk into that trap; they quietly stifled the proposition. It really might be a little awkward, even for a Parliamentary oligarchy with a strongly-bitted Executive well in hand, to confront, let us say, 37,500,000 of Catholics, Protestants, Israelites, not to mention the Mussulmans in Africa, with a proposition to abolish a Budget of Worship amounting to a little over a franc a head, for the purpose of reducing France to a complete 'moral unity' of absolute unbelief in God and in the immortality of the human soul! Cardinal Langénieux took possession, as I have said, of the Archi-episcopal See of Reims in November 1874. Seldom has the right man been put into the right place more exactly at the right moment. It was in September 1874 that M. Challemel-Lacour unfolded the Republican programme of war to the knife against all religion. In September 1874, too, as I have mentioned, the burning of the factory at Val-des-Bois called out a general demonstration of sympathy from the Catholic working-men's clubs all over France, which attracted public attention to the movement; and in October 1874 Pius IX. issued a brief recognising its importance and earnestly commending it. The new Archbishop of Reims was exceptionally fitted by his training and his experience to promote such a movement. He was a Benedictine of the school of Cluny, bred in the traditions of that illustrious Order, to which, without exaggeration, it may be said that we owe almost everything that is best worth having in our Western civilisation. For upon what does human society rest in the last resort if not upon the two great pillars of the rule of St. Benedict--Obedience and Labour? As a priest, the new Archbishop had successively and successfully administered two of the most important parishes in Paris, one in the workmen's quarter of the Faubourg St.-Antoine, the other in the quarter of the noblesse, in the Faubourg St.-Germain. After a single year passed in the Episcopate at Tarbes, that pleasant city on the Adour which all the winds of the Pyrenees have not yet quite disinfected of the memory of Barère, he was translated to this great historic see in the prime of his vigour. For fifteen years he has so ruled it that the Christians of Reims and of the Marne now seize with delight upon every opportunity of manifesting their incorrigible indifference to the 'moral unity of France.' You meet workmen in the streets going about their work with religious medals openly displayed. The churches of Reims are filled with men on great Church festivals. Taking all the districts of the Marne together, the Revisionists and Monarchists at the elections of 1889 outnumbered considerably the Government Republicans. These latter polled 35,046 votes in the Marne, against 40,287 polled by the former. The Radicals, who are very strong in the first district of Reims, polled 11,037 votes there against a Revisionist vote of 9,230. Do not these figures show, what I believe to be the truth, that the 'true Republican' policy of reducing France to 'moral unity' by trampling on the traditions and coercing the consciences of the French people is steadily dividing the French people into two great camps--the camp of the Social and Radical revolution and the camp of the Monarchy? That there was no necessity for this is illustrated by what I have said as to the relations between the Cardinal Archbishop of Reims and the Republican Ministers of 1875 who came here on his invitation, and then took steps to secure the preservation and restoration of the Cathedral. One of these Republican Ministers, M. Léon Say, who is largely responsible for clothing the present Government with the power which it abuses, has just been signally humiliated by the present Government and the dominant majority. In the second district of Bergerac in the Dordogne, the Monarchist candidate for the Chamber, M. Thirion Montauban, received 6,708 votes, against 6,439 given to his Republican competitor. I took a special interest in this election, because M. Thirion-Montauban is the present proprietor of the house of Michel de Montaigne, which came into his possession through his marriage with the daughter of M. Magne, the eminent Finance Minister of Napoleon III. I made a visit there late in the summer, and found him busy with his canvass, on lines of respect for personal liberty and the right of men to think their own thoughts as to life and death, which would have commanded the cordial sympathy of the great Gascon sceptic. The tower, the study, the bedroom of Montaigne are preserved by him with religious care. The inscriptions on the walls which John Sterling copied so lovingly half a century ago are there still, and if indeed there be a life of faith as Tennyson says, 'in honest doubt,' the Pyrrhonist seigneur who thought before Pascal that the true philosophy was to laugh at philosophy, would not find himself a stranger in his old haunt to-day because its lower hall has been consecrated as a chapel. The opponents of M. Thirion-Montauban behaved throughout the contest with extraordinary violence, and on one occasion put him into serious personal peril. However, he was elected. When the Chamber met in November his election was contested. M. Léon Say took an active part in maintaining the validity of the returns which gave the seat to M. Thirion-Montauban, and the evidence in the case was overwhelmingly in his favour. Nevertheless after the Report of the Committee was made, the majority of the Chamber coolly invalidated the choice of the electors, and seated the candidate who had not been elected. It was an open secret that this was done quite as much to punish M. Léon Say as to exclude M. Thirion-Montauban. Intolerant as the 'true Republicans' are towards their political opponents, they are still more intolerant towards those 'false Republicans' who hesitate at framing the policy of a French Republic in the nineteenth century upon the principles which led to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Were Socrates alive and a Frenchman, he would stand no chance for a government chair of philosophy in a competition with the little atheist Aristodemus, and were David Hume to reappear at Reims, where he got his early schooling, he would certainly find himself treated by the authorities as no better than a Catholic. The irreligion of the Third Republic is a dogmatic irreligion. Bayle would find no favour in its eyes, because protesting, as he said he did 'from his inmost soul protest, against everything that was ever said or done,' he must of course protest against the Nihilism of M. Marcou and M. Paul Bert. Unfortunately for the 'true Republicans,' it is essential to their success that with the religious faith they should also abolish the patriotic traditions of France. M. Jules Simon, a Republican and a Republican Minister of Public Instruction, has found himself compelled to denounce in the clearest and strongest language the deliberate attempt which these 'true Republicans' are making 'to teach the children of France that the glory of France began with 1789, and that it was never so great as under the Convention.' Stuff like this is actually taught in the schools into which it is the object of the present French Government to drive by statute all the children of the country. 'These men,' says M. Jules Simon, 'who proscribe the name of Jesus Christ and forbid it to be mentioned in the schools of France, on the pretext that public education must be neutral in such matters, do not hesitate to have children compelled to attend schools in which they are taught that Louis XIV. was a tyrant without greatness or ability, and that Louis XVI. was an enemy of his country justly condemned and executed.' Of the great historic France--the France which aided the American colonies to establish their independence, after contesting with England the dominion of North America and of India for more than a century--the France of Montesquieu and of Rabelais, of Henri IV. and Sully, of François I. and St.-Louis, of Chivalry and of the Crusades, the coming generation of Frenchmen, if these fanatics can get their way, will know no more than their Annamite fellow-citizens in Asia. It is not surprising that a Government controlled by such men with such objects should have amnestied the criminals of the Commune. The _pétroleurs_ who destroyed the Tuileries and the Hôtel de Ville were only trying in their practical way to abolish the history of France before 1789. Here at Reims the history of France, I think, will die very hard. No one could doubt this who visited the Department of the Marne in the month of July 1887. When the 'moral unity' men began their sinister work in 1880, the Cardinal Archbishop of Reims was earnestly urging upon the Holy See the beatification of the great French pontiff, Urban II., the disciple, friend and successor of Hildebrand, and the canonisation of Jeanne d'Arc, 'that whitest lily in the shield of France, with heart of virgin gold.' On July 14, 1881, Leo XIII. confirmed the beatification of Urban II. and fixed of course the date of his death, July 29, as his place in the calendar of Church festivals. In July 1882 a solemn Triduum appointed by a Papal Rescript was celebrated with extraordinary pomp in the Cathedral of Reims. Two Cardinals, one the special Legate of the Pope, more than twenty bishops, several abbots of the great Benedictine Order of which Urban II. was a member, and hundreds of the clergy from all parts of France, were present. The Cardinal Legate was attended by Monsignor Cataldi, so long and so well known to all foreigners in Rome as the master of the ceremonies to the Pope. The Cathedral was crowded. 'What I should like to know,' said a quiet shrewd master workman who described to me the effect produced by the scene in the Cathedral, 'what I should like to know is why the Catholics of Reims have not the right upon such occasions to escort the Legate of the Head of the Church from the railway station to the Cathedral with a procession and with music and with banners? Is that liberty I ask you?' The question seems to me natural enough, particularly as I see that only the other day the Freemasons at Grenoble were permitted to force themselves, marching in a body with all their regalia and their emblems, into the funeral procession of a Prefect who was not a member of their order at all, and against the protest of the Bishop of Grenoble, who had been asked by the family of the dead man to give him the burial rites of the Church. That the Freemasons like other citizens should attend the funeral as individuals the Bishop was ready to admit, but he not unnaturally declined to acquiesce in the deliberate parade on such an occasion of a body openly and undisguisedly hostile to Christianity in all its forms. Without a procession, however, the Triduum of the great Pope of the Crusades was a great success in 1882. It led to the organisation of a movement for erecting a magnificent monument to the memory of Urban II. at his native place. Châtillon-sur-Marne, one of the loveliest little towns in the valley of the Marne, situated about twenty miles from Reims. Early in 1887 this monument was completed, and on July 21 in that year it was unveiled with a solemn ceremonial in the presence of the Cardinal Archbishop of Reims, of the Papal Nuncio at Paris, and of many French bishops, among them the great orator of the Chamber of Deputies, Monseigneur Freppel, Bishop of Angers. He delivered a most impressive discourse on the significance of the Crusades, every sentence of which was weighted with pregnant allusions to the actual condition of religious liberty in France. These allusions were curiously emphasised by the absence of the Bishop of Orléans, detained at his post in the city of 'Jeanne d'Arc' by the sudden 'laicisation' of the schools in his diocese! The day was what a perfect day in the summer of Northern France can be. The scene might have been planned by a poet or a painter. There are other Châtillons in France more famous in history, and held in higher honour therefore by those useful men the makers of guide-books, than Châtillon-sur-Marne; and it is in the nature of all castles to stand on picturesque sites, as of great rivers to flow by large towns. But neither the Châtillon which saw the birth of the Admiral de Coligny, nor the Châtillon which saw Napoleon throw away his sceptre with his scabbard, stands more beautifully than the quiet little town which nestles on its green plateau beneath the still majestic ruins of the château in which the great Pope of the Crusades was born. It overlooks, in the verdant valley of the Marne, the ancient priory of Binson, superbly renovated now, and restored in great measure through the zeal and energy of the Benedictine Archbishop of Reims. Around it sweeps a great circle of green and wooded hills, dotted over with fair mansions and lordly parks. For this province of Champagne is a land of wealth as well as of labour. From a shattered tower of the old feudal fortress floated side by side the flags of France and of the Holy See. Beside the ruins rose, sharply defined and well detached against the summer sky, the colossal statue of Urban II. upon its lofty pedestal of granite. About it were arrayed in a pomp of colour and of flowing vestments, the host of ecclesiastics drawn together to do homage and honour in the sight of all men to the illustrious French pontiff, whom the Church found not unworthy in days of great stress and sore trial to take up and carry forward the work of his friend and teacher and predecessor, Hildebrand. One need not be a Catholic to recognise the debt of mankind to Gregory VII., of whom, dying in exile and in seeming defeat at Salerno, Sir James Stephen has truly said that he has 'left the impress of his gigantic character upon all succeeding ages.' One need only be a moderately civilised man of common sense to recognise the debt of mankind to Odo de Châtillon, known in the pontificate as Urban II. Wherever in the world the evensong of the Angelus breathes peace on earth to men of good-will, it speaks of the great pontiff and of the Truce of God which he founded, that the races of Christian Europe, suspending their internecine strife, might unite to roll back into Asia once for all the threatening invasion of Islam. But the thousands upon thousands of people of both sexes and of all conditions in life who filled the vast plateau of Châtillon on that summer day in July 1887, and hailed with tumultuous shouts the monument of this great Frenchman and great Pope, visibly took a more than historic interest in the occasion. They were moved not only by those 'mystic chords of memory' of which President Lincoln knew the social and political value much better than the French fanatics of 'moral unity,' but by a vivid consciousness of the present peril of their country, their homes and their faith. Once more, as in the eleventh century and in the eighteenth, France needs to-day 'an invincible champion of the freedom of the Church, a defender of public peace, a reformer of morals, a scourge of corruption.' This was the true significance of this memorable scene in the Marne. It was in the minds of that whole multitude, and it stirred them all with a common impulse when the eloquent Bishop of Angers, after sketching in a bold and striking outline the career of Urban II., thus drove its lesson home:--'Urban II. and the Popes of the Middle Ages have made for evermore impossible any return to the pagan theory of the omnipotence of the State. Ah, no doubt, despite that signal defeat, despotism will return to the charge. More than once in the course of the ages we shall see fresh appeals to violence against a power which can defend itself only by appealing to moral authority. We shall see, as we saw under Henry of Germany, emperors, kings, and republics strive to forge chains for the Church by their laws and their decrees. But the memory of the heroic struggles of the eleventh century will not pass out of the minds of the people. Canossa will remain for ever an inevitable stage in the progress of every power which undertakes to suppress religion and the Church.' This festival of Urban II. fell in the week which includes the anniversary of the coronation of Charles VII. at Reims in the presence of Jeanne d'Arc, and the Cardinal Archbishop availed himself in July 1887 of this circumstance to crown the manifestation at Châtillon by a solemn commemoration in the Cathedral at Reims of the triumph of the peasant-girl of Domrémy. He was a schoolfellow at St.-Sulpice and has been a lifelong friend of Gounod, and upon his suggestion the great French composer produced for the commemoration his Mass of Jeanne d'Arc. He came from Paris himself to superintend the execution of the music. Simple, grand, choral, in the manner of Palestrina, music of the cathedral, not of the concert, I must leave my readers to imagine what its effect was beneath those vast and magnificent arches which had looked down four centuries ago upon the Maid of Orléans kneeling with her banner in her hand before the newly-anointed King who owed his crown to Heaven and to her, and praying that, now her mission was fulfilled, 'the gentle prince would let her go back to her own people and to tend her sheep.' I do not think it would be easy to convince anyone who that day witnessed the profound and silent emotion of those assembled thousands in the Cathedral of Reims that the religious sentiment is either dead or dying in France! In the evening of the same day the Cathedral was thronged again, and thousands of men stood there for an hour, as I saw men stand in Rome last year under the preaching of Padre Agostino, to listen to a very remarkable sermon from one of the most eloquent preachers in France, Canon Lemann of Lyons. In the course of this sermon the preacher incidentally, but with an obvious and courageous purpose, dwelt at some length upon the energy with which Urban II. had denounced and repressed the 'false Crusaders' who, under cover of the uprising of Christendom against the infidel, fell upon, persecuted, and massacred the Jews in Europe. This quiet and earnest protest against the 'Jew-baiting' tendency which is showing itself in France, as well as in Germany, was plainly understood, and as plainly commanded the sympathy of his hearers. This was the case also with his admirable treatment of the international aspects of the story of the Maid of Orléans. There was not a trace of Chauvinism in his citation of the simple and downright message sent by the Pucelle to the English before Orléans. 'I have been sent by God to throw you out of France.' Out of France she did throw them. 'In this,' said the preacher, 'Jeanne d'Arc did a great service to England as well as to France. The fair-haired nation of the North had fought side by side with France, Coeur de Lion with Philip Augustus, in the Crusades. When, therefore, the destined queen of the seas sought to establish herself as a Continental power in the heart of Europe, the Lord put in her way that grain of star-dust from Domrémy, forced her back to her vocation, and bade her content herself with being sovereign on the ocean.' I spoke of this allusion to the Jews with a most accomplished ecclesiastic who dined at the Archi-episcopal palace. He was very much pleased with it. 'One of the most mischievous things done,' he said, 'by the present Government is that it is certainly fomenting--I cannot say whether ignorantly or wilfully--a great deal of popular hostility to the Jews by giving important official positions to men who, though Israelites by blood, are in most cases no better Israelites than they are Christians. Very nearly half the préfectures in France are filled by such persons. When, as is too often the case, they carry out offensive and tyrannical measures against the Catholic schools and congregations in an unnecessarily offensive and tyrannical manner, it is very easy, as you must see, for hasty or malevolent persons to persuade the people that they do this because they are Jews, and as Jews hate the Christians. I know that the best Israelites in France regret this as much as I do. The policy of this Government is aimed as clearly at the extinction of the Jewish as of the Christian faith; at the Grand Rabbis as mercilessly as at the Archbishops of France.' This same ecclesiastic gave me some particulars of the virulence with which the anti-religious war is waged. He told me of one case of recent date in Paris in which the authorities of a hospital neglected for two days to pay any heed to the entreaties of a poor patient that they would send for a priest to attend him, the doctors having given him to understand that for him the end was near. The chaplains, it will be remembered, have been expelled from all the public hospitals. Finally some person in charge of the place, more humane than his fellows, sent out to a Lazarist house in the neighbourhood and asked the Lazarists to send a priest. The priest came. He was received very rudely, kept waiting a long time in an ante-room, and when he was finally conducted through the wards to the dying man, all sorts of vulgar and foolish jeers were uttered about his mission as he passed along; and it was with the greatest trouble that he finally succeeded in imposing some sort of decent respect for the death-bed of this poor sufferer upon the hospital attendants. 'This is the spirit,' said the priest who told me the tale, 'of the Commune, or rather of those Communards who murdered the hostages. These murderers simply put this spirit into deeds instead of words. They made the name of the Commune so odious that when Victor Hugo in 1876 proposed a general amnesty of the condemned Communards, the Chamber rejected it without taking a vote. 'In 1880 the same general amnesty was proposed, and the Chamber adopted it by a very large majority. Do you wonder that thoughtful men look with horror on the current which is carrying us in such a direction as that? At this moment two men of high personal character, Admiral Krantz and M. Casimir Périer, are lending their support to a Government which represents this current, and yet Admiral Krantz and M. Casimir Périer have recorded their deliberate conviction that the men who clamoured for an unconditional, indiscriminate amnesty for the Communards were simply abusing the name of clemency for the rehabilitation of crime. 'Look again,' he said, 'at the spirit in which the laicization of the schools is conducted. There are a hundred families we will say in a village. Ninety-nine of these families are Christian families, not families of saints--I wish I knew such a village as that!--but Christian families. Go into their homes, and you will see the crucifix hanging in the chambers, religious prints upon the walls. One family is a family of atheists. I suppose the case, for as a matter of fact I know no such family. But I will suppose it. There is a school in the village, and in that school there hangs a crucifix, the gift of some pious resident. Ninety-nine fathers and mothers of the village desire that crucifix to be respected. One father and one mother (a bold supposition this!) desire it to be removed. The authorities send in a man who plucks it down, before the children, and throws it out of the door. I simply state what has happened over and over again! Is there any respect for equal rights--for the rule of the majority, for freedom of conscience in such proceedings? Take the case of the Virgin of Béziers. In that ancient city stood two statues of the Virgin, one in bronze and one in marble. The civil authorities called upon the Church to suppress them. The Church authorities of course declined to do this. Thereupon the civil authorities take the money of the taxpayers and expend it in depriving the city of these two monuments. Suppose the Turkish authorities were to do a thing like this in a town full of Christians under their dominion, what would all the civilised world say about the Turks? 'And it is done in a French city by Frenchmen either to carry out their own self-will or to exasperate and insult their fellow-citizens, or for both reasons at once! 'Still another case you can see for yourself at Domrémy. There under a pious and patriotic foundation to which Louis XVIII largely contributed the home of Jeanne d'Arc, religiously preserved in its original state, was confided to the keeping of some Sisters. They dwelt in a neat edifice constructed on the grounds purchased to secure the house of the Pucelle, and there the children of Domrémy and the neighbouring communes came to school and were gratuitously taught. Only the other day the local authorities were instigated, I know not by whom--perhaps by the friends of M. Ferry at St.-Dié, which is not very far off--to "laicize" instruction in Domrémy. To this end they turn the Sisters out, put the home of Jeanne d'Arc under the charge of a lay guardian, who has to be paid by the State, of course, tax the commune to pay a lay teacher, and make the school a lay school at the very door of the home of the village maiden to whose religious faith France owes her freedom and her national existence!' I made a visit to Nancy and the Department of the Meurthe et Moselle not long after I had this conversation in Reims. The Mother Superior of the great Sisterhood of Christian Doctrine at Nancy confirmed this amazing story of the performances at Domrémy, and gave me many particulars of the petty persecutions to which the Sisters who conduct schools all over France are subjected. The schools are open at all hours to the invasion of Inspectors, who magnify their office too often in the eyes of the children by treating the teachers (lay as well as religious) with the sort of amiable condescension which marks the demeanour of an agent of the octroi overhauling the basket of a peasant-woman at a barrier. If a Sister has a religious book, her own property, lying on her desk, it is violently snatched up, and the children are invited to say whether it has been used to poison their young minds with religious ideas. 'In short,' said the Mother Superior very quietly, 'our Sisters are really much better treated in Protestant countries than in Catholic France.' Domrémy-la-Pucelle is a typical agricultural village of Eastern France. It is in the Department of the Vosges and in the verdant valley of the Meuse. I drove to it on a lovely summer's morning after visiting Vaucouleurs, where the Pucelle came before the stout Captain Robert de Beaudricourt and said to him, 'You must take me to the King. I must see him before Mid Lent, and I will see him if I walk my legs off to the knees!' This interview began her marvellous career. From certain articles in newspapers about a drama of _Jeanne d'Arc_, now performing at Paris, I gather that Jeanne's moral conquest of France which preceded and led to her material victory over the English invaders, has at last been satisfactorily explained by the scientific believers in hypnotism! Of this I can only say, with President Lincoln on a memorable occasion, 'for those who like this kind of explanation of historical phenomena, I should suppose it would be just the kind of explanation they would like.' The country between Vaucouleurs and Domrémy is agreeably diversified, well wooded in parts, and rich in fair meadow-lands. At Montbras a little old lady dwells and looks after her affairs in one of the most picturesque château of the sixteenth century to be seen in this part of France, machicolated, crenellated, and dominated by lofty towers. We passed, too, through Greux, a small village on the Meuse, the dwellers in which were astute enough to get themselves exempted by Charles VII from all talliages and subsidies 'by fabricating documents' to prove that Jeanne d'Arc was born there. The incident is curious as going to show that the 'downtrodden serfs' and 'manacled villeins' of the middle ages had their wits about them, and could take care of themselves when an opportunity offered, as well as the 'oppressed tenantry' of modern Ireland. Domrémy, which is no bigger than Greux, neither of them having three hundred inhabitants, straggles along the highway. The houses are well built--the church is a handsome, ogival building of the fifteenth century, restored in our day, but quite in keeping with the place and its associations. Within it, under a tomb built into the wall, lie the two brothers Tiercelin, sons of the godmother of Jeanne, who bore their testimony manfully to the character of the deliverer of France, when the Church was at last compelled to intervene in the interest of truth and justice between the French Catholics who had worshipped her as a 'creature of God,' and the English Catholics who had burned her as an emissary of the Evil One. Almost under the shadow of the church tower stands the house in which Jeanne was born and bred. A charming, old-fashioned garden, very well kept, surrounds it. If when you leave the church you pass around by the main street of the village, you soon find yourself in front of a neat iron railing which connects two modern buildings of no great size, but neat and unpretending. Entering the gateway of this railing you see before you, shaded by well-grown trees, one or two of which may possibly be of the date of the house, the quaint fifteenth-century façade of the house of Jacques d'Arc, and his wife Isabelle Vouthon, called Romée because she had made a pilgrimage to the Eternal City. A curious demi-gable gives the house the appearance of having been cut in two. But there is no reason to suppose it was ever any larger than it is now. Probably, indeed, this façade was erected long after the martyrdom of Jeanne. Over the ogival doorway is an escutcheon showing three shields, and the date, 1480, with an inscription, '_Vive Labeur, Vive le Roy Louys!_' This goes to confirm a local tradition that the façade was built at the cost of Louis XI., who understood much better than his father the political value to the crown and to the country of France of the marvellous career of the peasant girl of Domrémy. The date of this inscription is particularly significant. In 1479 was fought the battle of Guinegate, which was lost to France by the headlong flight of the French chivalry from the field. Louis XI. turned this disaster to good account. He made it the excuse for founding, in 1480, his regular army of mercenaries, liberating the peasants from the burden of personal military service to the lords, and drawing to himself the power of the State through taxation. '_Vive Labeur, Vive le Roy Louys!_' was a popular cry throughout France in 1480; for Labeur in those days meant what it means now in the _Terra di Lavoro_--the tilling of the fields. One of the three shields above this doorway has a similar significance. It is a bearing of three ploughshares. With it are emblazoned on the house of the Pucelle two other shields, one bearing the three royal fleurs-de-lys of France, and the other the arms granted to the family of the heroine--_azure_, a sword _argent_ pommelled and hilted _or_, and above a crown supported by two fleurs-de-lys. With these arms, as we know, the family took the name of De Lys. The name, the arms, and the inscription over the doorway were a perpetual witness to the peasants of Champagne and Lorraine of the unity of interests established by King Louis between the spade and the sceptre. With the help of an inspired daughter of the people, King Charles had driven the English into the sea, and delivered the land. With the help of the people, King Louis had broken the power of Burgundy, and put the barons under his foot. '_Vive Labeur, Vive le Roy Louys!_' I do not wonder this skilful craftsman 'of the empire and the rule' lamented on his death-bed in 1483, at Plessis-les-Tours, that he could not live to crown the edifice he had so well begun. We in England and America know him only in the magic mirror of the Wizard of the North. But France owes him a great debt. He was cruel, but in comparison with the cruelty of Lebon, of Barère, of Billaud-Varennes, his cruelty was tender mercy, He was a hypocrite, but his hypocrisy shows like candour beside the perfidy and the cant of Pétion and of Robespierre, while in the great 'art and mystery' of government he was a master where these modern apes of despotism were clumsy apprentices. The interior of the house of Jeanne is probably in the main what it was when Jeanne dwelt here with her parents, her sister and her brothers. The ground floor contains a general living-room, the large chimney-place of which may perhaps be of the time of Jeanne, and three bedrooms, one of which, a chamber measuring three mètres by four, and lighted only by a small dormer window looking out upon the garden, tradition assigns to Jeanne and to her sister. Here, the people of Domrémy believe, the maiden sate almost within the shadow of the old church-tower, and heard the voices of St. Catherine and St. Margaret, and Michael the Archangel, patron and defender of France, mingling with the sound of the church bells, and calling upon her to arise, and leave her village home and the still forests of Domrémy and her silly sheep, and go out into a world of war and confusion and violence, and rally the broken armies of her people, and lead them, like another Deborah or Judith, to victory. That Jeanne heard these voices or believed she heard them, the documentary evidence unearthed by Quicherat abundantly proves. It proves, too, that she was cool, clear-headed, self-possessed, thoroughly honest, and absolutely trustworthy in every relation of life. This being her character, what did she do? She made her way from her solitude in Lorraine to the court of the King at Chinon, with nothing but her faith in her voices and her mission to sustain her; put herself into the forefront of the battle of France, threw the English back into England, and saw the successor of St.-Rémi put the crown of Clovis upon the head of a prince whom nobody but herself could have led or driven to Reims. If anybody in Paris or elsewhere knowing all this feels quite sure that Jeanne did not hear the voices which she believed herself to have heard, he certainly is to be pitied. It may do him good to consider in his closet what Lord Macaulay has said in a certain celebrated essay concerning Sir Thomas More and the doctrine of Transubstantiation. A man may intelligently believe or disbelieve in the reality of the voices heard by Jeanne, but no man who intelligently disbelieves in them can need to be told that his disbelief rests upon no better scientific ground than the belief of the man who believes in them. To take the home of Jeanne d'Arc out of the keeping of devout women who share the faith of Jeanne, that faith which, well or ill founded, unquestionably saved France, was simply a stupid indecency. In the keeping of the Sisters the home of Jeanne was a shrine. In any other keeping it becomes a show. The essential vulgarity of the performance is bad enough. But a sharp-witted Domrémy man who took me on to Bourlémont in his 'trap' assured me, in a matter-of-fact way, that in the village the chief mover in the affair was commonly believed to have got a good _pot-de-vin_ for securing the position of keeper of the house for a person of his acquaintance. This may have been a bit of village scandal, but such performances naturally breed village scandals. Whether it was or was not a 'job' in this sense, it certainly marks as low a level of taste and education as the pillage by Barère and his copper 'Syndicate' of the historic tombs of France at St.-Denis in 1793. Some years ago all France was incensed by a nocturnal desecration of the statue of Duguesclin which stands at Dinan in the very lists in which five hundred years ago the Breton hero met and vanquished 'Sir Thomas of Canterbury.' The indignation of France was righteous, and if there was any foundation for the popular impression that the outrage was perpetrated by some English lads on a vacation tour, no language could well be too strong to apply to it. But I did not observe that any Parisian journalist alluded at that time to the way in which the ashes of Duguesclin himself were treated in 1795 at St.-Denis, by Frenchmen decked in tri-coloured scarves! It did not even occur to them to remember how long ago and by what hands the column of the Grand Army was pulled down in the very heart of Paris! While the force of Philistine fatuity can no further go than it has gone in the 'laicization' of the home of Jeanne d'Arc, I ought to say that the actual keeper of the place seemed to me to be a decent sort of fellow, not wholly destitute of respect for its traditions and its significance. The house and the garden are neatly kept. In the centre of the main room stands a fine model in bronze of the well-known statue of Jeanne d'Arc, by the Princess Mary of Orléans, with an inscription stating that it was given by the King, her father, to the Department of the Vosges, to be placed in the house where Jeanne was born. Commemorative tablets are set here and there in the walls; and in one of the modern buildings in front of the house a collection is kept of objects illustrating the life of the Pucelle. The most interesting of these is a banner given by General de Charette, to the valour of whose Zouaves the French are indebted for one of the few gleams of victory which brighten up the dark record of 1870 It was at Patay that in June 1429 the English, under Sir John Fastolf, for the first time broke in a stricken field and fled under the onset of the French, led by the Maid of Orléans, leaving the great Talbot to fall a prisoner into the hands of his enemies. And at Patay, again in December 1870, the German advance was met and repulsed by the 'Volunteers of the West,' that being the name under which the silly and intolerant 'Government of the National Defence' actually compelled the Catholic Zouaves to fight for their country, just as they forced the Duc de Chartres to draw his sword and risk his life for France as 'Robert Lefort.' These puerilities really almost disarm contempt into compassion. At Patay in 1870 the Zouaves saw three of their officers, all of one family, struck down in succession, two of them to death, as they advanced on the lines of the enemy, bearing a banner of the Sacré-Coeur, which had been presented to General de Charette by some nuns of Brittany only a few days before the battle. The banner, now at Domrémy, is a votive offering of General de Charette and his Zouaves in commemoration of the field on which they were permitted thus, after four centuries, to link the piety and the patriotic valour of modern France with the deathless traditions of Domrémy, of Orléans, and of Reims. This little museum contains, too, a picture given by an Englishman, of Jeanne binding up the wounds of an English soldier after the repulse of one of the English attacks. The soil has risen about the house of Jeanne, and this may have made the interior seem more gloomy than it once was. But the house is well and solidly built, and if it may be thought a fair specimen of the abodes of the well-to-do peasantry of Lorraine in the fifteenth century, they were as well lodged relatively to the general average of people at that time as those of the same class in Eastern France now on the average appear to be. Charles de Lys in the early seventeenth century seems to have been a man of note and substance. But the parents of Jeanne were simply peasant proprietors. At the entrance of the village church there is a statue of Jeanne, the work of a native artist, in which she appears kneeling in her peasant's dress, one hand pressed upon her heart and the other lifted towards Heaven. And in a little clump of fir-trees near her house stands a sort of monumental fountain, surmounted by a bust of the Pucelle. The house itself remained in the possession of the last descendant of the family, a soldier of the Empire named Gérardin, down to the time of the Restoration. Some Englishman, it is said, then offered him a handsome price for the cottage, with the object of moving it across the Channel, as an enterprising countryman of mine once proposed to carry off the house of Shakespeare to America. Gérardin, though a poor man, or perhaps because he was a poor man, refused. The department thereupon bought the house, the King gave Gérardin the cross of the Legion, and he was made a _garde forestier_. Upon the expulsion of the Sisters from the home of La Pucelle, some of the most respectable people in the department at once organized a fund, and built for them a very neat edifice in the village in which they are now installed. Fully four-fifths of the children of the country round about, I was told, still attend their free school. 'Ah! Sir,' said a cheery solid farmer of Domrémy to me, while I stood waiting for my 'trap,' to continue my journey, 'it does not amuse us at all to pay for the braying of all these donkeys! Do you know, it costs Domrémy, such as you see it, twelve hundred francs a year, this nonsense about the Sisters and the house of La Pucelle! And to what use? What harm did the Sisters do there? It is not the Pucelle who would have put them out, do you think? In the old time Domrémy paid no taxes because of the Pucelle. Now because of the Pucelle we must pay twelve hundred francs a year for what we don't want!' Some of my readers may thank me--as the guide-book gives no very accurate information on the subject--for telling them that Domrémy-la-Pucelle may be very easily, and in fine weather very pleasantly, visited from Neufchâteau on the railway line between Paris and Mirécourt. Neufchâteau itself is an interesting and picturesque town. It suffered severely from the religious wars, but two of its churches, St. Christopher and St. Nicholas, are worth seeing. There are two very good statues of Jeanne d'Arc, and the Hôtel de la Providence, kept by a most attentive dame, is a very good specimen of a small French provincial inn. There a carriage can be had for Domrémy, and with a luncheon-basket a summer's day may be most agreeably spent between Neufchâteau and the little station of Domrémy-Maxey-sur-Meuse, at which point, about three miles beyond Domrémy-la-Pucelle, you may strike the railway which leads to Nancy. The old capital of Lorraine, though not nearly so trim and well kept as it used to be, is still one of the most characteristic and interesting cities in France. Very near Domrémy-la-Pucelle, a resident of the country, M. Sédille, has built, on a fine hill overlooking the valley of the Meuse, a small chapel adorned with a group representing the Maiden kneeling before her Saints and the Archangel. This chapel stands on the place where, as tradition tells us, Jeanne first heard the heavenly 'voices.' It was then in the heart of a great forest, long since thinned away. It now commands a wide and beautiful view of a finely varied country. There, driving from Bourlémont on a lovely summer afternoon, I found a young pilgrim from the Far West of the United States doing homage to the memory of the Maid of Orléans. He had made his way here from Paris and the Exposition. 'I got enough of that,' he said, 'in about three days, with the help of a French conversation book.' His method was to look up a phrase as nearly as possible expressing what he wanted to say, and then to submit this phrase in the book to his interlocutor. 'How do you find the plan work?' I asked him. 'Oh, very well,' he replied; 'the French are so very obliging. I'm afraid it wouldn't work as well the other way, on our side of the pond.' His worship, not of heroes, but of heroines, was most simple and downright. 'I consider Joan of Arc,' he said, 'the greatest woman that ever walked the earth, and next to her Charlotte Corday. And these miserable Englishmen burnt one,' he added scornfully, 'and these miserable Frenchmen guillotined the other. I don't wonder this Old World is played out if they can't treat such women better than that!' He was charmed with the story of Adam Lux (caricatured by Mr. Carlyle), who (like André Chénier) invited death by his defiant homage to Charlotte Corday. 'Well now, I suppose,' he said, 'that if there had been fifty more men in Paris then as brave as that Adam Lux, they could have taken all those cowards and murderers and chucked them into the Seine!' He rejoiced over the Bishop of Verdun's projected monument to Jeanne, and I sent him to Châtillon by telling him that the statue of Urban II. stands third in height among the religious monuments of Europe after the Virgin of Le Puy and the St.-Charles of Arona. Bourlémont before the Revolution must have been one of the finest châteaux in France. It stands superbly on the plateau of a lofty hill. The park which surrounds it is very extensive and full of noble trees. The château was sacked and pillaged, and one great wing destroyed. This the Prince d'Hénin is now rebuilding on the original scale, and in the most perfect keeping with the stately and picturesque main body of the edifice. The whole of the interior, with the great hall and the chapel, has been restored and refurnished with admirable taste. Carved oak wainscotings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, antique armoires and cabinets and tables, mediæval tapestries--nothing is wanting. But the thoroughness of the reconstruction emphasizes the wanton folly and wickedness of the devastation which made it necessary. The Princesse d'Hénin of the Revolutionary time narrowly escaped the guillotine. She was one of many women of rank and worth who owed their lives to the courage and ability and generosity of Madame de Staël. After taking refuge in Switzerland, Madame de Staël organised a complete system for bringing away her imperilled friends from Paris. She gathered about her a small corps of clever and determined Swiss girls. These she sent one by one as occasion served, or circumstances required, into France, equipped with Swiss passports. On reaching Paris one of these girls would find a lady waiting to escape, change wardrobes with her, give her a Swiss passport properly viséd by the Swiss representative in Paris, furnish her with money if necessary, and set her safely on her way to the Cantons. When news came that she had arrived, the Swiss damsel in her turn would get a new passport from her Minister and return to Switzerland. Of course, such a system as this could not have been carried out so successfully as it was without more or less co-operation on the part of the 'incorruptible' Republican functionaries in France, and there can be little doubt that, under the régime of the scoundrels who made up the Committee of Public Security--Lebon, Panis, Drouet, Ruhl, and the rest--a regular traffic in passports and protections went on during the worst times of the Terror. It is remembered to the credit of an unhappy woman, who was born in the town of Vaucouleurs, and for whom nobody finds a good word, Madame Du Barry, that she deliberately gave up the certainty of securing her own escape from Paris, in 1793, in order to save Madame de Mortemart. The Duchesse de Mortemart was in hiding on the Channel coast, when Madame Du Barry, for whom a safe-conduct under an assumed name had been bought from one of the Terrorist 'Titans,' insisted that this safe-conduct should be sent from Paris to the Duchesse. The Duchesse used it and reached England in safety. Madame Du Barry remained to perish on the scaffold, leaving her goods and chattels to be stolen by the ruffians who sent her to the guillotine, just as the goods and chattels, the money and equipments and horses of the Duc de Biron were stolen by the Republican 'General' Rossignol, his successor. Domrémy is in the electoral district of Neufchâteau, and the elections of 1889 do not show that the 'laicization' policy has given the Republican cause a great impulse in this region. The Monarchist candidate in the Neufchâteau district received in September 1889 6,571 votes, and the Republican 6,590. This is one of the microscopic majorities which were so common in 1889, and which conclusively show what a difference in the general result was made by the open pressure of the Government on the electors. The Department of the Vosges sends up six deputies to the Chamber. In 1885 it sent up a solid Republican Deputation, including M. Méline, who was so conspicuous in 1889 in the matter of General Boulanger and M. Jules Ferry, the standard-bearer of 'laicization' and irreligion. In 1885 the Deputies were chosen by the _scrutin de liste_. The Republican majority shown by the vote for M. Méline was 6,949 on a total poll of 87,635. M. Méline, who headed the poll, received 47,292 votes. His Conservative opponent received 40,343. In 1889 the elections were made by the _scrutin d'arrondissement_. Five Republicans, not six, were chosen, and the defeated Republican candidate was no less a person than M. Jules Ferry himself! The first district of St.-Dié gave him 6,192 votes, and elected a Monarchist to replace him by 6,403 votes. It is not easy to overestimate the significance of this change. Probably enough the majority will emphasize it by 'invalidating' the election of the Monarchist! A comparison of the total votes in the Vosges of the two parties in 1889 with those of 1885 is instructive. In 1885 the strength, of the two parties respectively (the Conservatives not having then openly declared for the Monarchy) was, as I have said, 47,292 and 40,343. In 1889 the Republicans polled in all the districts of the department 47,116 votes, and their opponents 42,124. Here we have a falling off of 176 votes in the highest Republican strength against an increase of 1,781 in the highest Opposition strength, or, in other words, a falling off of 1,957 votes in the aggregate Republican majority, together with the defeat in his own district of the recognised leader of the Republican Government party. And yet the total of the votes polled rose from 87,635 in 1885 to 89,240 in 1889. The inference is obvious: that the Monarchists are on the upgrade, and the Republicans on the downgrade. If, with such results in such a region and in the face of such a contest as that of 1889, the Monarchists do not in the long run win, it will clearly be nobody's fault but their own! CHAPTER XIV IN THE CALVADOS VAL RICHER. Perhaps the most striking illustration that can be given of the true nature of the contest now waging between the Third Republic and France, is the share taken in it by the family and the representatives of the great Protestant statesman, who, under Louis Philippe, laid down the lines in France of a truly free and liberal system of public education. In the matter of education France was undoubtedly thrown backward and not forward by the First Republic. The number of illiterates--that is, of persons unable to read and write--naturally increased between 1789 and 1799 as the educational foundations which existed all over the kingdom shared the fate of the religious and charitable foundations. There was an abundance of ordinances and decrees about public education. But the chief practical work done was to confiscate the means by which the ancient system had been carried on. Baudrillart mentions educational foundations made by the great abbeys as early as in the seventh century. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Councils of the French Church created in each cathedral chapter a special prebend, the holder of which was to look after the education not only of clerical persons, but 'of all poor scholars,' and this 'gratuitously.' In the fourteenth century lay foundations for free public education are found, one in particular of importance established by a rich citizen, Jean Rose, for promoting the general education of the people at Meaux, the diocese afterwards of Bossuet, who under Louis XIV. was so active in promoting 'the moral unity' of France from his point of view. The long English wars interrupted the development of education, and many instances are found during that dismal period in which persons who had bought legal positions had to employ professional scribes to do their writing. In the sixteenth century schools increased and multiplied all over France. Rich citizens founded them for 'the instruction of all the children,' as at Provins in 1509, and at Roissy-en-Buè in 1521. In the rural regions the schoolmaster often received his pay in grain; he was sometimes attached to some public office. In many places he taught the children only for six months in each year. In short, education was carried on in France at that time very much as it was in the rural regions of the United States down to the second quarter of the current century. In many French parishes of the sixteenth century the schoolmaster 'boarded around' in the different families of the parish, just as he did in New England. The religious wars again disturbed the development of education. At Nîmes, where the archives I found had been carefully investigated by M. Puech, more than a third of the artisans could read, write, and keep their accounts at the end of the fifteenth century. After the close of the religious wars, it was no uncommon thing to find fathers signing their names in a very clerkly fashion, while their sons were forced to 'make their marks,' as being unable to write. Like causes produced like effects at the end of the eighteenth century. Not content with disestablishing the Church, the legislative tinkers of 1791, by a law passed on June 27 in that year, struck out of existence at a blow all the great industrial associations and corporations of France. These had provided for the education of the children of their members for centuries; but all the educational foundations were swept away with the hospitals and the charities. The men who grew to man's estate between 1793 and 1813 in France grew up in greater ignorance than their fathers. The worst national effects of the Terror did not disappear with the disappearance of the guillotine. Before the fall of Robespierre, the guillotine had come to be a financial expedient. 'We are coining money on the Place de la Révolution,' said the estimable Barére to his colleagues, and he counted that a poor week's work which yielded less 'than three millions of francs' from the confiscation of the property of the victims. When under the Directory _fusillades_ took the place of the too conspicuous guillotine, the confiscation still went on. The Directory did no more for education than the Terror had done. The five directors had other matters on their minds. Barras, of whom a not unfriendly historian gently observes that, 'while he lacked no other vice ancient or modern, he was neither very vain nor very cruel;' Mr. Carlyle's 'hungry Parisian pleasure-hunter,' Rewbell, of whom his special friend and colleague, Laréveillère-Lepaux, amiably records in his Memoirs that 'his legs were too small for his body,' and that he had 'a habit of attributing to himself speeches uttered and deeds done by other people;' Letourneur, a corpulent rustic, whose excellent wife loudly exulted over her joy in finding herself 'eating stewed beef out of Sèvres porcelain,' and who, being asked when he came back from the Jardin des Plantes whether he had seen Lacépède, innocently replied: 'No; but I saw La giraffe!'--Carnot, 'Papa Victory,' of whom Laréveillère says that 'nobody could endure his vanity and self-conceit;' and, lastly, Laréveillère himself, whom Carnot in his Memoirs, published at London in 1799, compares to a 'viper,' and says, 'after he has made a speech he coils himself up again'--these were hardly the men to give their nights and days to reconstructing the educational system of France! Merlin (of Douai), Minister of Justice under the quintette, really ruled France for nearly five years. This was Merlin, author of the 'Law of the Suspects,' which Mr. Carlyle, though obviously in the dark as to its real genesis and objects, finds himself constrained to stigmatize as the 'frightfullest law that ever ruled in a nation of men.' Mr. Carlyle does not seem to have observed that the author of this 'transcendental' law, the aim of which was to convert the French people into a swarm of spies and assassins, was not only one of the first of the Republican' Titans' to fall down and kiss the feet of Napoleon, but one of the first also to desert Napoleon, and embrace the knees of the returning King. On April 11, 1814, this creature, who had caused the Convention to reject a petition for a pardon presented by a man condemned for a crime, the real authors of which had confessed his innocence and their own guilt, on the ground that 'every sentence pronounced by the law should be irrevocable,' joined in a most fulsome address of welcome to the legitimate sovereign of France! His namesake Merlin (of Thionville), another 'Titan' whom Mr. Carlyle admires as riding out of captured Mayence still 'threatening in defeat,' was nimbler even than Merlin of Douai. On April 7, 1814, he wrote to King Louis begging to be allowed 'to serve the true, paternal government of France!' Concerning Merlin (of Douai), Barras, who made him 'Minister of Justice,' placidly says: 'Poltroons are always cruel. Merlin always hid himself in the moment of danger, and came out again only to strike the vanquished party.' Proscription and confiscation kept the Government which this worthy Republican directed much too busy to leave it any time for looking after the schools of France. When at last Napoleon gathered up the reins, he postponed the interests of public education to other, and from his point of view more pressing, concerns. The Concordat re-established the Church in France, but it did not re-endow the Church on a scale which would have enabled it at once to reconstruct its own educational system. In fact, the Concordat can hardly be said to have re-endowed the Church at all. Under the thirteenth article the Pope formally recognized the title of the purchasers of 'national property' in France to vast domains, the property through purchase, donations, or bequest of the Church, which had been made 'national property' only by the simple processes of exiling or murdering the owners and confiscating their estates. In consideration of this recognition, the State bound itself by Article XIV. of the Concordat to 'ensure to the bishops and the curates salaries befitting their functions,' and by Article XV. to 'protect the right of the Catholics of France to re-endow the churches.' As to the 'rising generation' of the French people the government of Napoleon concerned itself much more with the conscription than with the reconstruction of the schools, and though the Churches, both Catholic and Protestant, took this work in hand very early in the century, it was necessarily with inadequate means. Under the First Consulate a general law regulating public instruction was enacted, on May 1, 1802. Another was enacted shortly afterwards, and in 1808 appeared the famous decree of the Emperor founding the University system of France. Heaven knows how many schemes for founding this University system had been elaborated and submitted to him before, only to be torn up as 'ideological.' Cuvier affirms that he drew up twenty-three such schemes one after another. This decree of March 17, 1808, forbade the establishment of private schools without the authority of the Government, set up three degrees of public instruction, primary, secondary and superior, organised a body of Inspectors-General, and, in short, 'laicized' public education in France effectually as a machine to be controlled by the Imperial Government. Under the ancient Monarchy, France possessed twenty-four Universities. The Convention suppressed them all at a blow on September 15, 1793. This was little more than three months after the Convention itself had been 'suppressed' and forced to kiss the hand that smote it by Henriot and his cannoniers on June 28, 1793. A law abolishing the freedom of education was to have been expected from an assembly itself enslaved by an oligarchy of rogues and assassins. And this law left nothing standing in France to impede the execution of the Imperial decree of 1808, the first article of which was:--'Public education in the whole Empire is exclusively confided to the University.' Another article ordained that all the schools in France should take as the basis of their instruction 'fidelity to the Emperor, to the Imperial monarchy, the trustee of the happiness of the people, and to the Napoleonic dynasty, the conservator of the unity of France and of all the liberal ideas proclaimed in the constitutions of France.' The theology of all the French schools was to be in conformity with the Royal edict of Louis XIV., issued in 1682. Furthermore and expressly, 'the members of the University were required to keep the Grand-master and his officers informed of anything that may come to their knowledge contrary to the doctrine and the principles of the educational body in the establishments of public education!' Here we have the 'moral unity' of France organized by Napoleon in 1808 on the lines in which the Third Republic has been trying ever since 1874 to organize it! Put the word 'Republic' for the word 'Empire,' the phrase 'scientific atheism' for the phrase 'propositions of the clergy of France in 1682,' and you have in the Napoleonic organization of public education the organization controlled by M. Jules Ferry. Of the two despotisms, the despotism of 1808 seems to me the more compatible with public order and public prosperity. With public liberty neither of them is compatible. Under the ancient Monarchy and the clerical system of education liberty existed. The Jesuits and the Jansenists, the Dominicans and the Oratorians and the Benedictines, had their different principles of education, their different traditions, their different text-books. Under the Imperial University, and still more under the University of the Third Republic, differences became disloyalties. Under the University of France in 1808 every young French citizen was to accept the Catholic faith as defined by the clergy of France in 1682, and true allegiance bear to the Napoleonic dynasty. Under the University of France in 1890, every young French citizen is to disbelieve in God and a future life, and true allegiance bear to the Third French Republic. In 1808 as in 1890 the rights of freemen were first vindicated in this connection by the Catholic Church. On April 9, 1809, the Emperor issued a decree that no one should be admitted to a Catholic theological academy without a bachelor's diploma of the University. The bishops came at once into collision on this point with the Imperial prefects of 1809, as the bishops now came into collision on the decree of 1880 with M. Jules Ferry and the Republican prefects. The Imperial prefects of 1809 (not a few of them rabid Republicans in 1792) were merely the valets of the Emperor, as the prefects of 1890 are the valets of a Parliamentary oligarchy. The Emperor carried his point. But when the Emperor fell, and the constitutional monarchy was restored, the University of France ceased to be an Imperialist training-school. M. de Fontanes, appointed grand-master by the Emperor in 1809, kept his place under Louis XVIII. To keep it he made the University 'clerical.' Under Napoleon the scholars in the public schools of France had been divided into 'companies.' M. de Fontanes in 1815 ordered them to be divided into 'classes.' Under Napoleon the hours of study and of play were announced by a drum. In 1815 M. de Fontanes ordered them to be announced by a bell. Under Napoleon the boys all wore a uniform. M. de Fontanes in 1815 ordered the uniforms to be no longer of 'a military type.' Then the French Liberals who had not dared to stir under the Emperor began to attack both the clergy and the University. But when the Revolution of 1830 brought these 'Liberals' into power, they ceased at once to attack, and began at once to engineer the Imperial machinery of the University. M. Thiers even proclaimed this machinery to be 'the finest creation of the reign of Napoleon!' In 1833 the truest Liberal of them all, M. Guizot, struck a strenuous blow at this machinery of despotism. He could not deal with the University as a system, but he framed a law affecting 'primary education,' the principle of winch was that no man should be forced to send his child to school, but that schools should exist all over France to which any man who pleased might send his children if he was too poor to pay for their education. This principle of M. Guizot in 1883 was certainly not an outcome of the 'principles of 1789;' for it had been at the foundation of all the free schools of France during the middle ages, and under the absolute monarchy of Louis XIV. Talleyrand recognised it in his plan of 1791, which did not suit Condorcet and his 'ideologists.' It was not in the mere revival of this principle that the true liberalism of M. Guizot manifested itself. In the second article of his law this great statesman provided, in express terms, that 'the wishes of families should always be consulted and complied with in everything affecting the religious instruction of their children.' This was indeed a step far forward in the path of true liberalism. It was a distinct recognition of the rights of the family as against the encroachments of the State. It was the 'liberalism' not of the 'ideologists' of 1790, nor of the Third Republic according to M. Challemel-Lacour, but of the legislators who gave Lower Canada her equitable system of common and of dissident schools. It was the liberalism of those courageous men who, like Montgaillard, Bishop of St.-Pons, had dared, under Louis XIV., and after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, to protest in 1688 against imposing the Catholic communion by force upon the Huguenot ancestors of M. Guizot. As Minister of Public Instruction under Louis Philippe in 1833, this lover of true liberty simply got enacted into law the principles which had led him as a brilliant and rising young man of letters in 1812 to refuse to adulate the Emperor, and which he had plainly and fearlessly set forth as the necessary conditions of the constitutional government of France in his famous interview with Louis XVIII. three years afterwards. Under M. Guizot's law of 1833, the primary schools of France were much more than doubled in number during the reign of Louis Philippe. In the spirit of that law M. Guizot administered the affairs of France during his long tenure of official authority, and to him, more than to any other man, must be attributed the progress which France made under Louis Philippe in the direction of liberty, as Englishmen and Americans understand that much-abused word. That progress might never have been interrupted had the counsels of M. Guizot prevailed over those of M. Thiers with the aged monarch who trusted the one but yielded to the other, in February 1848. Now that a parliamentary oligarchy has deliberately undertaken, in the name of the 'moral unity of France,' to undo all that was done between 1833 and 1848 for educational liberty in France and to protect the moral independence of Frenchmen, it is in the highest degree interesting to find the principles of M. Guizot energetically maintained by the heirs of his blood and of his name, not only here in the Catholic Calvados which gave the great Protestant statesman so staunch a support through all his years of power, and surrounded him with affection and respect down to the last days of his long and illustrious life, but in Southern France also, and in the home of his Protestant ancestors. Val Richer will be a place of pilgrimage for lovers of liberty in the twentieth century, as La Brède is in the nineteenth. But the genius of the spot is more purely personal in the home of Guizot than in the birthplace of Montesquieu. The stately rectangular library at La Brède with its thousands of soberly-clad volumes, standing as he left them on its shelves, annotated by his own hand; the manuscripts still unfinished of the 'Lettres Persanes; the grave silent cabinet, with his chair beside his study-table, as if he had quitted it a moment before you came--all these are eloquent, indeed, of the great thinker whose 'Esprit des Lois,' too rich in ripe wisdom to be heeded by the headlong and haphazard political 'plungers' of 1789 in his own country, illuminated for Washington the problem of constituting a new nationality beyond the Atlantic. But La Brède has also a positive physiognomy of its own which takes you back to ages long before his birth. The frowning donjon of the thirteenth century, the machicolated round tower, the moat with its running water, the drawbridge, the vestibule with its columns of twisted oak, even the grand salon with the stately courtiers and captains, the gracious dames and damsels of the family of Sécondat gazing down from the walls, all these distract the eye and the mind. The distraction is agreeable, but still it is a distraction. It leads you from the biographical into the social and historical mood. You are delighted as at Meillant or Chenonceaux with a corner of ancient France, marvellously rescued from the red ruin of the Revolution. Val Richer, on the contrary, like Abbotsford, is the creation of the master whose spirit haunts the place. Like Abbotsford, it has an earlier history and older associations, but of these there are few or no material signs. Here stood the great abbey of which Thomas à-Becket once was abbot, and where he found a refuge during that exile from which, in his own words, he went back to England 'to play a game in which the stakes were heads!' From Bures, near Bayeux, in this department, where Henry was then holding his court, the four knights followed the Primate to Canterbury, sternly bent on showing their lord that they were neither 'sluggish nor half-hearted.' Of the abbatial buildings which stood here then few traces are left. But the handsome modern mansion built here by Guizot rests, I believe, on the massive foundations, and certainly incorporates some of the solid masonry above ground of the ancient abbot's house. The drive to Val Richer from the singularly picturesque old Norman town of Lisieux, within whose cathedral walls Henry of England was married to Eleanor of Guienne, is beautifully shaded all the way with noble trees, and bordered on either hand with parks and gardens. No English county can show a more strikingly English landscape--for this is the mother-country of Norman England, though now one of the main pillars of the nationality of France. The Lady Chapel of the Cathedral at Lisieux, indeed, was founded in the fifteenth century by Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, in express expiation of the 'false judgment on an innocent woman,' by which, as he lamentably confessed in his deed of gift, he had sent the deliverer of France to the stake at Rouen. The park, like the mansion of Val Richer, is the creation of M. Guizot. The monks of old had prepared the ground--for here, as everywhere, they kept alive the traditions of Roman landscape art. The parks which the Norman nobles made on both sides of the Channel were mainly devoted to the chase, like the 'paradises' of the Persians; but the monasteries possessed pleasure-grounds and gardens of all sorts. The beautifully broken and undulating surface of the park of Val Richer attests, I think, the fashioning hand of human art at more than one point; and M. Guizot, by whom most of the fine trees which now adorn the place were planted, took advantage, with the skill of a professional landscapist, of all the opportunities it offered him. I can well believe, with the most accomplished and appreciative of his English biographers, that the years which he passed here after his return from the exile into which he was driven by the unhappy interference of M. Thiers at the most critical moment of the disturbances of February 1848, were the happiest of his long and well-filled life. The halls and corridors of the mansion are tapestried with books. The green secluded alleys, the gentle knolls, the glades, the spacious meadows of the park, recall at every step the younger Pliny's incomparable picture of his Tuscan villa. '_Placida omnia et quiescentia._' 'A spirit of pensive peace broods over the whole place, making it not lovelier only, but more salubrious, making the sky more pure, the atmosphere more clear.' People who imagine convulsions and cataclysms to be a necessity of political life in France, will find it hard to explain the relations which existed throughout his whole career from the time when he took part in forming the first government of Louis Philippe to the day of his death between this great Protestant statesman and the Catholics of the Calvados. These relations still exist between his representatives at Val Richer and the Catholics of the Calvados. When the great Chancellor de l'Hôpital was using all his influence with Catherine de' Medici to prevent the outbreak of the religious wars of the sixteenth century, the Parisian rabble were set on by the satellites of the House of Guise to attack the house of the Sieur de Longjumeau in the Pré aux Clercs, as being a place of meeting for the Huguenots. The Sieur de Longjumeau had no respect for the 'sacred right of insurrection,' and, getting some of his friends into his house, gave the people risen in their majesty such a thrashing that they speedily disbanded. Upon this the 'moral unity' men of that time induced the Court to banish the Sieur de Longjumeau to his estates, on the ground that 'the most incompatible thing in a State is the existence of two forms of religion.' This is the doctrine of the Third Republic to-day. France cannot live with a mixed population of believers and of unbelievers. All Frenchmen must be Atheists. The political history of the Calvados for the last half-century, and especially of this region about Lisieux and Val Richer, meets this 'moral unity' theory with a practical demonstration of its absurdity. The great Protestant statesman and his Catholic constituents at Lisieux lived and worked together for liberty and for law, not in 'moral unity,' but in moral harmony. In moral harmony his Protestant son-in-law, M. Conrad de Witt, through a quarter of a century past has lived and worked for liberty and for law with his Catholic constituents of Pont-l'Evêque. The Catholics of the Calvados are not such intense Catholics as the Catholics of Brittany and Poitou. After the Norman rising of 1793 against the tyranny at Paris had collapsed so dismally in the ridiculous 'battle' of Pacy--a battle which began with the flight in a panic from the field of the vanquished Normans, and ended with the flight in a panic from the field of their victorious enemies the Parisians--the indignant Bretons and the Poitevins marched away to wage that contest for their homes and their altars which has immortalized the name of La Vendée. The less impassioned Normans made terms and took things as they were. To this day what is called the 'little Church' exists in Brittany, made up of peasants who regard the Concordat as an unworthy compact made with the persecutors and the plunderers of the Church of their fathers. The feeling of the Norman Catholics after Pacy and the miserable failure of the Girondist resistance to the Mountain took the form of silent disgust with the Republic and all its works. The Norman heroine in whose heart this silent disgust named up till it made her the avenger of innocent blood upon the most noisome reptile of the Revolution, had ceased to be a Catholic before the shame of her country moved her to her glorious and dreadful deed. But if the Catholics of the Calvados are less intense, they are not less sincere, than the Catholics of Brittany or Poitou. It is no indifference in matters of religion which makes them co-operate so cordially with their Protestant friends and representatives. It is because they value their religion, and mean that it shall be respected, that they honour the memory of the great minister who held sacred and inviolable the right of the parent to be heard and obeyed in the matter of the religious education of his children. The two daughters of M. Guizot married two brothers, the heirs of one of the most illustrious names in the annals of European liberty. One of these brothers, M. Conrad de Witt, now lives at Val Richer, and administers his large agricultural property lying there in the commune of St.-Ouen-le-Pin. Many years ago he won the gold medal of the French Society of Agriculture, and for twenty years past he has been President of the Agricultural Society of Pont-l'Evêque. In 1861, under the Empire, his fellow-citizens made him a Councillor-General for the Canton of Cambremer, in the Department of the Calvados, and he has kept his seat in that body ever since, until he last year declined a re-election, and made way for the candidacy of his nephew, M. Pierre de Witt. It was my good fortune to be at Val Richer when the election came off. The canvass had been carefully pushed; for, although the Republicans ostentatiously announced their intention not to make a contest in which they were sure to be beaten, M. Conrad de Witt and his nephew are not men to take anything for granted where serious interests are concerned. There were symptoms, too, that the Prefect of the Calvados, the Comte de Brancion, a newcomer (as all prefects now are in France, the average tenure of a prefect's official life since 1879 rarely exceeding eighteen months in one place), had been advised from Paris to show his zeal by contriving in some way to thwart, or at least to dampen, the victory of the nephew in July, as a preliminary to prevent the victory of the uncle in September. For M. Conrad de Witt was not only a Councillor-General of the Calvados, and Mayor of his own commune of St.-Ouen-le-Pin, he was sent to the Chamber of Deputies in 1885 as a Monarchist by the voters of the Calvados by a majority of 13,722 on a total poll of 89,064, and when he declined a re-nomination for the Council-General, he accepted a re-nomination for the Chamber. It was delightful to see the zealous interest taken in these contests, not only by the family at Val Richer, but by all the countryside. The elections for the Councils-General were held on Sunday, July 28, 1889. All through the preceding Saturday scouts kept coming in to Val Richer with the latest reports as to the state of things in the various communes of the canton. The tenor of these was uniform: 'There would be no contest; the only possible Republican candidate, a respectable physician who had some local strength in the commune in which he lived, founded upon his habit of gratuitously attending the poor of that commune, had positively declined to enter the field.' 'All the same,' said one energetic volunteer from this very commune, 'we don't mean to let a single honest voter stay at home. We understand this game. They want to make out that we are lukewarm about the battle that is to come off in September. That won't go!' 'Furthermore,' said another stalwart, keen-eyed, fresh-faced young farmer, who might have passed as a Yorkshire yeoman, 'furthermore, I don't trust this Republican cock till he's dead! I believe he's shamming, but he shan't catch us asleep. This Prefect at Caen is as busy as the Evil One. He means to play us a trick.' The shrewd young farmer was right. Early, very early, on Sunday morning, long before daybreak, indeed, there came hastening over to Val Richer from the commume of Bonnebosq, some miles away, a spirited young fellow, heart and soul in the fight, with the news that a story was putting about all over the canton that M. Pierre de Witt had decided, at the last moment, not to stand, and that, on the strength of this invention, the nomination of Dr. ---- would be urged. The polling had been fixed by the Prefect to begin in all the communes at 7 A.M., and to close at 6 P.M. No time was, therefore, to be lost in getting out a formal contradiction of this invention of the enemy, and the vigorous young volunteer from Bonnebosq had lost no time. He roused the candidate, got his instructions, and, before the polls were opened, his men were all over the canton at work. In the course of the day I drove over with M. Pierre de Witt to Bonnebosq, where we found the mother of this energetic young politician, a typical Norman mother, full of sense and fire, quietly proud of the activity and intelligence of her son, and quite as much in the day's work as he. 'Not a pretty trick,' she said, 'to play with Dr.----. He ought to be ashamed of it--and I am sure he is,' she added, with a droll twinkle in her eye, 'for it has turned out very badly! He will just be beaten like plaster. It would have been cleverer to behave like a decent man!' Bonnebosq had a very lively, cheery aspect on that Sunday afternoon. It is a busy prosperous little place, with about a thousand inhabitants. The village church, a new and very handsome French ogival building, most creditable to the architect, has just been built at an expense of several hundred thousand francs by a Catholic lady of the canton, and the people are very proud of it. It struck me that at Bonnebosq the outlook for a moral harmony between Frenchmen of divers religious communions contending together for equal rights and well-ordered liberty was decidedly better than the outlook for a 'moral unity' of France to be promoted by the authoritative suppression of all private initiative in the education of the French people. The traditions of the Norman race do not tend kindly towards a system under which the individual is to wither that the State may be more and more! As Mayor of the commune of St.-Ouen-le-Pin, M. Conrad de Witt had a busy day of it on Sunday, July 28. The holding of elections on Sunday is a tradition in France. Two elections were to be made--one of a Councillor-General and the other of a District Councillor. Under the laws of 1871 and 1874, these elections must be held in separate though adjoining buildings wherever this is practicable. Where the commune is too small to furnish these facilities, the two elections may be held in one place; but the votes for the two officers must be deposited in two different urns. These urns are placed upon a table, at which the Mayor of the commune presides with four assessors and a secretary, chosen by them from among the electors. As the electors have the day before them, the Mayor and the assessors are kept close prisoners at their posts till the polls are closed. Nor is their work over then. As soon as the clock strikes 6 P.M. the doors of the bureau close. But the Mayor and the assessors must then proceed 'immediately' to examine and establish the results of the voting. They choose from among the electors present a certain number of 'scrutineers' knowing how to read and write. These scrutineers take their seats at tables prepared for the purpose. At each table there must be at least four scrutineers. The Mayor and the assessors then empty the urns and count the votes, the secretary drawing up a _procès-verbal_ the while. If there are more or fewer votes than there were voters registered during the day as voting, this fact is stated and affirmed. Blank or illegible votes, votes which do not accurately give the name of the candidate voted for, or on which the voters have put their own names, are not counted as valid, but they are annexed to the _procès-verbal_. Votes not written on white paper, or which bear any external indication of their tenor, are included in the account as votes affecting the majority necessary to a choice, but they are not put to the credit of the candidate whose name they bear; so that, as a matter of fact, they tell against him. Moreover, if there are more votes found in the urns than voters registered as voting, the excess may be deducted from the number of votes given to the candidate who has a majority. I asked a very bright ruddy farmer in a spotless blue blouse, who was watching the elections with great interest in one of the communes, what he thought of this provision. 'It is a very good reason for watching the mayors,' he said; '_dame_! a clever mayor who knows his commune, and has good loose sleeves to his coat, can slip in a good many votes in this way against the candidate who he knows is likely to win!' I told him that in my own country we guarded the palladium of our liberties (a queer palladium that needs to be guarded) against this peril by using glass globes instead of the 'urns' employed in France, which are in fact wooden boxes. The idea delighted him. He rubbed his hands together with a chuckle, and said 'That would be capital! That would bother them! But for that reason we shall not have your glass urns!' When the votes have all been emptied out of the urns and verified and counted by the Mayor and the assessors, the Mayor distributes them among the scrutineers. At each table a scrutineer takes the votes up one by one, reads out in a clear voice the name of the candidate inscribed on each vote, and passes it to another scrutineer, who sees it duly registered, the Mayor and assessors the while supervising all the proceeding. In communes containing less than 300 inhabitants the Mayor and assessors themselves may scrutinise and declare the results. As St.-Ouen-le-Pin falls just two short of this number, M. Conrad de Witt not only lost his luncheon but his dinner. He never got back to the château till ten o'clock at night. The polling place in this commune was a small house opposite the village church. I walked over to it after breakfast through the fields and by lovely green lanes as deep as the lanes of Devonshire, with M. Pierre de Witt and one of his kinsmen. The mass was going on in the village church, and the singing of the choir seemed to me at least as fitting an accompaniment to the expression by the sovereign people of their sovereign will through bits of white paper--Mr. Whittier's 'noiseless snowflakes'--as the braying of a brass band, or the hoarse shouts of a more or less tipsy multitude. In the Protestant corner of this Catholic churchyard, under some fine trees, M. Guizot sleeps his last sleep in the simple tomb of his family. Here, again, I thought, was a moral harmony better than any 'moral unity'! We had a merry and an animated dinner that night at Val Richer. Message after message was brought in from the nearest communes, all of one tenor. The Republican 'trick' had evidently exasperated the worthy Norman voters, and brought them up to the polls most effectually! By ten o'clock it was clear that M. Pierre de Witt was elected by a majority too large to be 'whittled' away, and that the surreptitious appearance of the Republicans in the field had served only to emphasize their political weakness. In the canton, Cambremer itself, lying at a distance of eight or ten kilomètres, and Beuvron only remained to be heard from. It was possible harm might have been done there. For a law passed under the Empire in 1852, and undisturbed for obvious reasons by the Third Republic, allows the prefect of a department to determine into what sections he will divide a large commune for the purpose, according to the law, of 'bringing the electors nearer to the electoral urn.' This opens the way, of course, to a good deal of what in America would be known as official 'gerrymandering.' The thing may be of any country. The name we owe to Mr. Elbridge Gerry, once Vice-President of the United States; who, when his party controlled Massachusetts, devised a scheme for so framing the electoral districts of that State as to get his scattered party minorities together, and convert them thus into majorities. An outline map of the State thus districted was declared by one of his opponents to 'look like a salamander.' 'No! not like a salamander,' said another; 'it is a gerrymander.' Val Richer was full of little fairies in that bright summer weather. The Pied Piper of Hamelin must have passed that way, losing some stragglers of his army as he moved along. Wherever you strolled in the park you came unexpectedly upon little blonde heads and laughing eyes peering through the shrubbery, and saw small imps scampering madly off across the meadows. On the Sunday night of the election, music and mirth chased the hours away, till, just after midnight, a joyous clamour in the outer hall announced some event of importance. From the far-off Cambremer and Beuvron-sur-Auge a delegation of staunch electors had arrived to announce the crowning victory. Thanks to the distance and the 'sections,' the votes had been long in counting, but they had been counted, and not found wanting. One of these bringers of good tidings might have sat or stood for a statue of William the Conqueror preparing to make France pay dearly for the jest of the French King anent his colossal bulk. He was a man in the prime of life, but he cannot possibly have weighed less than 400 pounds. Yet he moved about alertly, and he had driven over in a light wagon at full speed (the Norman horses are very strong) to congratulate his candidate on the issue of a fray in which he had borne his own part most manfully. M. Pierre de Witt had received 1,042 votes as Councillor-General, against no more than 140 given to his medical competitor! One bold voter had deposited a single vote for General Boulanger! 'Had there been any disturbances anywhere?' No, none at all. 'We cheered when we got the returns,' said the giant; 'we cheered for M. de Witt, and we cried "Vive le Roi!" They didn't like it, but they were so badly beaten, they kept quiet. I believe though,' he added, 'they would have arrested us if we had cried "Vive Bocher!" That is more than they can bear!' and therewith he laughed aloud, a not unkindly, but formidable laugh. M. Bocher, who was made Prefect of the Calvados by M. Guizot, and who is now a senator for that department, is, I am assured, the special _bête noire_ of the Third Republic in Normandy. His long and honourable connection with the public service has won for him the esteem of all the people of the Calvados, while his thorough knowledge of the political history of the country and of his time, his cool clear judgment, his temperate but fearless assertion through good and evil report of his political convictions, and his keen insight into character, must give him long odds in any contest with the ill-trained and miserably-equipped political camp-followers who have been coming of late years into the front of the Republican battle. They gave M. Bocher a banquet not long ago at Pont-l'Evêque, at which he made a very telling speech, and brought down the house by inviting his hearers to contemplate M. Grévy and M. Carnot as typical illustrations of the great superiority of a republic over a monarchy, and of the elective over the hereditary principle! The Republicans, he said, had twice elected to the chief magistracy an austerely virtuous Republican whom they had finally been compelled to throw out at the window of the Elysée, as 'the complaisant and guilty witness, if not the interested accomplice, of scandals which revolted the public conscience!' And whom had the elective principle put into his place, under the pressure of irreconcilable personal rivalries, and of a threatened popular outbreak? A man whose recommendations were his own relative personal obscurity and the traditional reputation of his grandfather! With M. Grévy and M. Carnot the Norman farmers have a special quarrel which gave zest to the caustic periods of M. Bocher. The all-powerful son-in-law of M. Grévy, M. Wilson, proposed in the National Assembly in 1872, and with the influence of M. Thiers, then President, succeeded in passing a law heavily taxing, and in an inquisitorial fashion, the domestic fabrication of spirits. This is an old and prosperous industry in Normandy. It is carried on, according to an official estimate made in 1888, by above five hundred thousand farmers in France; and in Normandy particularly, a land of apples and pears, it is a great resource of the farmers. They make here a liquor called Calvados, which when it attains a certain age is much more drinkable and much less unwholesome than most of the casual cognac of our times. After three years this very unpopular law was repealed in 1875, mainly through the efforts of M. Bocher. It had plagued the farmers more than it benefited the Treasury. The _bouilleurs de cru_, as these domestic distillers are called, had made during the three years 1869-72, 1,199,000 hectolitres of spirits which paid excise duties. During the three years 1872-75 under the Wilson law the production fell to about 165,000 hectolitres a year. In the first year, 1875-76, after the repeal of the law it rose to 301,000 hectolitres. The sale of crosses of the Legion, official contracts and other operations not consistent with that virtue on which alone Montesquieu tells us a republic can safely repose, made an end of M. Wilson and of his father-in-law. But the enormous Republican deficit kept on increasing, and in 1888, under the presidency of M. Carnot, the Republicans revived a project formed by M. Carnot when Minister of Finance, in 1886, for imposing upon the _bouilleurs de cru_ anew the severe and inquisitorial taxation of 1872. Under the law introduced to effect this, January 12, 1888, the whole of the buildings in which any part of the processes of this production may be carried on must be open to the tax-officers _at all hours of the day or night_. As many of the _bouilleurs de cru_ are small farmers who use part of their houses for some of these processes, it may be imagined how bitterly they oppose such a law. They have no more love for tax-gatherers than the people of other countries have; but the English maxim that every man's house is his castle is a distinctly Norman maxim, and this menace offered to the sanctity and privacy of the domicile has profoundly exasperated the Norman populations. It is of a piece, they think, with the arbitrary school system and with the elaborate contrivances devised to deprive the communes of the right finally to certify and give effect to the returns of their own elections. Above all, it is an interference with an ancient and customary right. 'What business have these lawyers and doctors at Paris,' said a farmer here to me, 'to be meddling with our usages and ways here on our lands in Normandy? Let them fix general taxes, and leave us to pay them in our own way!' The war against the Church affects these Normans in the same way. It does not seem to rouse them into a kind of fanatical fervour, such as blazes up here and there in other parts of France, but it angers them as a disturbance of their settled habits and convictions. 'The Church,' said one of these Calvados farmers to M. de Witt; 'the Church is the key of our trade. They must not touch it!' What he meant was, that on Sunday at the village church the farmers, after the mass, are in the habit of talking over all their affairs together. It is a kind of social exchange for men whose calling in life keeps them far apart during the week. Is it to be supplanted for the benefit of the France of the future by cockpits and cabarets, or courses of lectures delivered in 'scholastic palaces,' by spectacled and decorated professors, on the 'struggle for life,' and the 'survival of the fittest'? The victory of M. Pierre de Witt in July was too complete to leave any pretext for meddling with its results of which the authorities liked to avail themselves. The law, however, gives abundant opportunities for such meddling wherever a plausible pretext can be found. After the votes of a commune have been verified and counted, two of the assessors start off at once with all the votes and papers for the chief town of the canton. The bureau of this chief town has power to 'verify and, if need be, remake the calculations which show the majority. It may modify the decisions of the communal bureaux as to the candidate to whom certain votes properly belong, may decide what votes are to be treated as entirely null, or to be counted in estimating the majority without being held as given to either candidate. It may also decide what votes belong to a candidate. It may also take away from the candidates elected, or claiming to have been elected, all votes found in the urn or urns in excess of the number of electors actually tallied as voting.' The decisions reached by the bureau are next to be collated with the _procès-verbaux_ of the communal bureaux--after which all the documents connected with the election, including the tally-lists of the voters, are to be sent to the prefect of the department. When the legislative elections came on in September the authorities of the Calvados made desperate efforts to break the solid front of the Monarchist deputation from this department. In the arrondissement of Pont-l'Evêque, where M. Conrad de Witt stood as the Monarchist candidate, the official interference against him was so open that the Prefect, M. de Brancion, did not hesitate to sign and circulate a letter intended to affect the elections, though by Article 3 of the law of November 30, 1875, regulating elections, all agents of the Government are expressly forbidden to distribute ballots, professions of faith, or circulars affecting the candidates. M. de Witt had cited to the electors a remarkable declaration made in the Senate by M. Léon Say as to the inevitable increase of local taxation which must be expected from the development and enforcement of the Government policy in regard to education. M. Léon Say resigned his seat in the Senate last year that he might enter the Chamber, his friends having convinced themselves, on no very apparent grounds, that his appearance in the Chamber would rally around him the support of Conservative men of all shades of opinion, and make him master of the situation. He was a candidate in the Hautes Pyrénées. The quotation made by M. de Witt from his sensible speech in the Senate much disturbed the Republicans in the Calvados, and some official application was evidently made to him on the subject; for, without denying that he had said in the Senate what was imputed to him, he seems to have assured the Republicans of the Calvados that it was absurd to suppose he would so speak of the Government policy when he was standing as a Government candidate for election to the Chamber. This obvious but quite irrelevant statement was instantly circulated all over the department by the Prefect himself. As it was very easily disposed of, it did no great harm. But it is a curious illustration of the way in which these election matters are managed now in France. M. de Witt was triumphantly re-elected, receiving 6,972 votes against 5,189 in the arrondissement of Pont-l'Evêque. The Monarchists also carried every other seat for the Calvados, making seven in all. In 1885, under the _scrutin de liste_, the votes given to M. de Witt show a Conservative majority in the Calvados of 13,722 in a total poll of 89,064. In 1889, taking all the districts together, the Calvados showed a Monarchist majority of 19,868 in a total poll of 82,216. This gives us a falling off in the total poll of 6,848, and an increase in the Monarchist majority of 6,497 votes! I called M. Conrad de Witt's attention, after the legislative elections were over, to an article in an English periodical by a French Protestant writer, M. Monod, in which the Monarchist majority of 1889 in the Calvados was attributed to the bad harvest of pears and apples. The veteran Protestant President of the Society of Agriculture in the Calvados smiled in a quiet and significant way, and simply said, 'Ah! I think we are more solid than that!' So indeed it would seem! The 'apple-blight' of the Calvados must obviously have extended into the neighbouring department of the Eure, or at least into the great and busy arrondissement of Bernay, which gave the Monarchist candidate in September 1889 the tremendous majority of 5,550 votes in a total poll of 12,772. Possibly, too, there may be some occult relation between this remarkable result and the presence in this arrondissement of one of the most distinguished of living Frenchmen, and one of the most outspoken champions of the Constitutional Monarchy. An able man with a mind of his own, and the courage to speak it, is a force in any country at any time. In France at this time such a man is a determining force. The obvious weakness of the Monarchical party in France was touched by the Committee of the Catholic Association in their report to which I have alluded in another chapter. It is the association in the popular mind of the monarchical idea with the traditions of Versailles and with the 'pomps and vanities' of what is ridiculously called '_le high-life_' of modern Paris. As a matter of fact, all that was silliest and most scandalous in the Court life of France in the eighteenth century was reproduced and exaggerated under the Directory. What is there to choose between Louis XV. doffing his hat beside the coach of Madame Du Barry, and Barras ordering Ouvrard to keep Madame Tallien in diamonds, opera-boxes, coaches and villas, out of the profits of public loans and contracts for the service of the 'Republic one and indivisible'? Formula for Formula (to speak after the manner of Mr. Carlyle), is not the Republican Formula of the two the more demoralizing, dismal, degraded, and altogether hopeless? What is called '_le high-life_' of Paris is neither Royalist nor Republican. It is merely shallow and vulgar, like the '_high-life_' of sundry other places ruled by governments of divers forms. But when young men born to names which in the popular mind represent the history of France show themselves as athletes in a Parisian circus, or appear as grooms on the carriages of _cocottes_ in the Bois de Boulogne, their folly naturally damages more or less in the public estimation the principles with which the names they bear are associated. Under the Empire the Legitimists, as a body, really played the game of the Emperor by holding themselves aloof from public life in all its departments, in accordance with the policy adopted by the Comte de Chambord. The inevitable effect of this policy was to widen the gulf between them and the body of the French people. It tended to bring about in France results like those aimed at by the National League in Ireland, and to prevent a gradual and wholesome reconciliation between the heirs of the class which was exiled and plundered during the Revolution, and the heirs of the classes which eventually profited by the proscriptions and confiscations of that unhappy time. The disastrous war of 1870-71 did much to counteract the social mischief thus wrought. The French Legitimists came forward in all parts of France to the defence of their country. They were brought thus into contact with the people and the people with them. They ceased to be a caste and began to be citizens. The way was thus prepared, too, for that fusion of the two great Royalist camps, the camp of the Legitimists and the camp of the Orleanists, which has since taken place. A very intelligent young officer of Engineers, himself the heir of an ancient name, told me at Dijon that there are at this time more men of the old families of France on the rolls of the army than ever before since 1789. Instead of rejoicing in this as the wholesome sign of a growing moral harmony between all classes of Frenchmen, the leaders of the Republican party have been incensed by it. Doubtless they regard it as an obstacle to the development of their idea of 'moral unity.' Under President Grévy, the Minister of War actually drove one of the best soldiers in France, General Schmidt, out of his command at Tours by insisting that he should forbid his officers to accept invitations from their friends who lived in the châteaux which are the glory of Touraine, the traditional garden of France. Imagine a High Church secretary-at-war in England issuing an order that no officer in a garrison corps should dine with a Catholic or a Dissenter. This was not a freak. It was a policy. It was in perfect keeping with an amazing attack made by the Republican press of Paris not long afterwards upon the then American Minister in France, Mr. Morton, now Vice-President of the United States, for giving a dinner in honour of the Comte de Paris. The Comte de Paris and his brother, the Duc de Chartres, had served with distinction on the staff of the Commander-in-Chief of the Union armies in America. They were the sons of a French sovereign, with whose government the government of the United States had long held close and friendly relations. The Comte de Paris is the author of the most careful, thorough, and impartial history yet written of the American Civil War of 1861-65. Yet, for showing his personal and official respect for a French prince possessing such claims upon the respect of Frenchmen as well as of Americans, the diplomatic representative of the United States was assailed with coarse and vulgar violence in the columns of journals assuming to represent the civilization of the capital of France! Some time after the incident to which I have referred at Tours occurred, I drove from St.-Malo to La Basse Motte, the charming and picturesque house of General de Charette, in the Ille-et-Vilaine, with the Marquis de la Roche-Jaquelein. The autumn manoeuvres of the French army were then going on. On the way he told me among other things that the officers of a cavalry brigade encamped for two or three days in the neighbourhood of his château had been forbidden by their brigade commander to accept a dinner to which he had invited, not only them, but their commander also! The general in command of the cavalry division fortunately happened to arrive before the day fixed for the dinner, and, having been informed of this state of affairs, quietly authorized the officers to attend the dinner, and attended it himself. Can anything be more absurd than to attempt to naturalize a Republic in France by identifying Republican institutions with such tyrannical interference as this in the private and social relations of French officers and citizens? The Third Republic has improved upon Cambon's piratical watchword, _Guerre aux châteaux; paix aux chaumières_. It makes war socially upon the _châteaux_, and it makes war religiously and financially upon the _chaumières_. All this must bring out into clearer relief before the French people the unquestionable personal superiority of the Monarchist over the Republican leaders and representatives. It is undeniable that an overwhelming majority of the ablest and most influential men in France, of all classes and conditions, are to-day in open opposition either to the policy or to the constitution of the existing Republic, or to both. Many--I think most of them--are agreed that the Monarchy must be restored if France is to be saved from anarchy and dismemberment. The rest of them are agreed that the Republic must be so remodelled as to become in fact, if not in name, a monarchy. In this condition of the country, the avowed Monarchists must inevitably draw to themselves the support of all who differ from them, not as to the end, but as to the means only. For the logic of events is steadily strengthening the verdict uttered by the Duc de Broglie three years ago on the Republican experiments, in a speech made by him before the Monarchist Union at Paris on May 29, 1887. 'All these political ghosts must go flitting by, but France will endure and remain, forced to pay the price of their follies in the form of interest on their loans!' There is no war now between the Château de Broglie and the cottages of the Eure; certainly no war between the château and the town of Broglie. The town is bright, pretty and prosperous. The park gates open into it as the park gates of Arundel Castle open into Arundel, but without even the semblance of a fortification. The park is very extensive and nobly planned, with a certain stateliness rather Italian than English. The ground undulates beautifully, and from its great elevation above the river and the town commands in all directions the most charming views. The roads and walks are admirably laid out, the trees well grown and lofty. The château itself dates back, as to its earlier portions, to the Hundred Years' War. It was more than once besieged by the English, and some of the ivy-grown walls and towers which overlook the town take you back to Edward III. and the Black Prince. But the long façade and the main buildings are of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, during which the De Broglies made so much French history. Within, the spacious saloons, the grand vestibule and hall, and the delightful library are in perfect keeping with the traditions of a family which for generations has given soldiers and statesmen to the service of a great people. Of course the château has been much restored during the present century, but its general disposition is what it was in 1789, and, like that of all the French châteaux of the eighteenth century, it attests the friendly relations which must have existed before the Revolution between the _château_ and the _chaumière_. The English mansions even of the time of Queen Anne are more defensible than these _châteaux_. The windows, of the sort which to this day are called French windows in England and America, are long windows opening like doors. On the ground floor they come down, indeed, nearly to the level of the lawn. It is perfectly obvious that no thought of a war of classes can have entered the minds of the architects who planned these edifices or of the owners for whom they were planned. Yet the problems of government which we imagine to be of our own times had been hotly discussed and were hotly discussing when these edifices were built. The ideas, not of Villegardelle only, but of Proudhon, were put forth in germ by De la Jonchère in 1720, in his 'Plan of a New Government.' The Château de Broglie resembles a feudal castle of the fourteenth or even of the sixteenth century no more than it resembles a Roman villa of the first century. The magnificent liberality with which the Vicomte de Noailles, himself a younger son, gave away all the feudal rights and privileges of the _noblesse_ on the night of August 4, 1789, has always, I am sorry to say, reminded me irresistibly of the patriotic ardour with which Mr. Artemus Ward devoted to the battle-field of freedom the remotest cousins of his wife. The evidence is overwhelming which goes to show that these feudal rights and privileges were practically no more oppressive in the France of 1789 than they were in the England of 1830. It is not even clear that the New York anti-renters of our time had not as good a case for ridding themselves of 'feudal' rights and privileges by storming the Capitol at Albany as the people of France for ridding themselves of those rights and privileges by storming the practically defenceless Bastille. The Bastille interfered no more with the liberty of Paris in 1789 than the Tower with the liberty of London. The only people in any particular peril of it were the 'black sheep' of the _noblesse_, as to whom even Jefferson, in the sketch of a charter of French Rights which he drew up in June 1789 and sent to Lafayette and the bookseller St.-Etienne, proposed that their personal liberty should be subject to a special kind of imprisonment at the prayer of their relations, or in other words to a regular 'lettre de cachet.' It is a curious illustration, by the way, of the incapacity of this National Assembly that in July 1789 its Committee for framing a Constitution actually invited a foreign envoy, Jefferson, to take part with them in their work. Jefferson had sense enough to decline the invitation; but what gleam of sense, political or other, had the blundering tinkers who gave it? The outcome of their gabble was that mob violence destroyed for Paris in the Bastille what London possesses in the Tower, an 'architectural document' of the highest authenticity and importance. To talk of French feudalism as having been overthrown by such men is absurd. If it had existed when they met, it would have very soon sent them about their business. But it did not exist when they met. The author of the curious _Précis d'une Histoire Générale de la Vie Privée des Français_, published in 1779, treats the whole subject of the private life, homes, manners, and fortunes of the French people expressly from the point of view of the great change which had come over them, 'since the abolition of feudalism.' The magnanimous achievement of the Vicomte de Noailles ought to rank in history with the victory of Don Quixote over the wine-skins, or with the revolutionary feat of that drum-major of the National Guard who slashed with his sabre the corpse of the unfortunate procureur-syndic Bayeux, lying battered to death in the Place des Tribunaux at Caen, on September 6, 1792, and whom the honest Normans of the Calvados afterwards kicked out of the city as 'fit only for killing dead men.' Even in the châteaux of the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth we get unanswerable architectural evidence to show a steady improvement in the social relations of the people with the noblesse. The Château d'Eu, for example, in the Seine-Inférieure, in which Louis Philippe entertained Prince Albert and Queen Victoria, and from which the Comte de Paris and his family were so lawlessly expelled in 1886, was a true fortress in the days when the Norman princes and their armies went and came between England and France, and Tréport saw many an armada. But in the fourteenth century we find Raoul de Brienne, Comte d'Eu, confirming to the people of Eu the immunity of their cattle, binding himself not 'to make any man work save for good wages and of his own good will,' not to requisitionise bread or wine but for money paid, not to seize any man's horses, and not 'to compel any man to seize and hale another man to prison except in cases of crime or of invasion.' When the great Duke of Guise rebuilt the château of brick in the sixteenth century, he put down most of the outer fortifications. Without these the château is as much a part of the town of Eu as Buckingham Palace is of St. James's Park. Catherine of Clèves, the widow of the great Duke of Guise, lived at Eu through her long widowhood in the friendliest relations with the good people of the town, while the architects were erecting for herself and her murdered husband, 'the nonpareil of the world,' as she called him (notwithstanding his admiration of Mme. de Noirmoutiers), the beautiful monuments which still adorn the collegiate church. Her daughter, the lovely and lively Princesse de Conti, gathered a gay and gallant company of friends about her, and lived an open-air life of hunting, promenades, and after-dinner 'games of wit,' upon the terraces, as unconcernedly at the end of the sixteenth century, I was about to say, as such a life could be lived here now. But I have to remember that at the end of the eighteenth century, and under the illumination of the 'ideas of 1789,' the tomb of this Princess in the chapel of Ste-Catherine was broken into, and her bones flung about on the floor of the mortuary vault, while at the end of this nineteenth century the legitimate owners of the château which has replaced the home of Louise de Lorraine et de Conti have been driven into exile for no other crime but that of their birth by a Government which professes to be a Government of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. In the middle of the seventeenth century the Château d'Eu, with the whole domain, was sold on behalf of the Duc de Joyeuse et d'Angoulême, the ruined heir of the Guises, to 'La Grande Mademoiselle,' the restless and ambitious daughter of Gaston d'Orléans, brother of Louis XIV. Her relations with the people of Eu were more than cordial. History concerns itself with her as the Bellona of the Fronde, and Court chronicles as the wife of that eminent scamp Lauzun. But at Eu she was the Providence of the poor and the helpless. She founded hospitals and charities of all sorts. The endowments of most of these were calmly confiscated during the Revolution. One hospital, so well endowed that, in spite of the _assignats_ and of dilapidation, it still had a revenue of 10,000 francs, was suppressed in 1810, and the building turned into a barrack, despite the remonstrances of a worthy Mayor who still lives in the local traditions of Eu. This functionary confronted Napoleon more creditably than the Mayor of Folkestone confronted Queen Elizabeth. He received the Emperor and began his harangue. Presently he stammered, hesitated, and broke down. 'What!' said Napoleon, 'Mr. Mayor, a man like you!' 'Ah! sire!' responded the quick-witted magistrate, 'in the presence of a man like your Majesty, I cease to be a man like myself!' Another of the foundations of the 'Grande Mademoiselle' still exists in the chief hospital of Eu, now become the property of the town. The treasurer and the physician of this hospital, both of them citizens of the highest character, who have filled their respective posts for years, are outspoken Royalists. At the elections of last year they voted as usual with their own party. When the elections were over, the Prefect of the Seine Inférieure requested the Municipal Council of Eu to remove both of them. This the Councillors, though Republicans, declined to do. Whereupon the Prefect removed them by a decree of his own! The Château d'Eu came into the possession of Louis Philippe through his mother, who was the daughter of the Duc de Penthièvre, and of whose admirable character and exemplary patience with her impossible husband Philippe Egalité, Gouverneur Morris paints so lively a picture. The Duke was so much beloved at Eu, where he habitually lived, that no personal harm came to him during the first years of the Revolution. He died at Vernon, on the eve of the Terror, and so was spared the pain of witnessing the excesses perpetrated at Eu as elsewhere, not only during that period but under the Directory. An accomplished resident of Eu showed me a decree of the Directory, issued in 1798, and ordering the people to meet on January 21: 'the anniversary of the just punishment of the last French King, and swear hatred to the Monarchy!' 'What has come of all that fury and folly?' he said. 'For years since then the people of Eu have not only "sworn," but shown, genuine affection and respect to two French Kings, Louis XVIII. and Louis Philippe. They didn't care much about Charles X., but they were contented under his reign. Eu owes the restoration of our noble churches and monuments to these kings, and to their representative the Comte de Paris. One of these kings brought the sovereign of England and her husband to visit Eu, and made us feel in our little Norman town that the great days of Normandy were not over. Of that fine collection of pictures and of portraits you have been admiring in the château, a great proportion belonged to the Duc de Penthièvre, and these, with many other valuable things in the château, were quietly taken out and saved when the robberies and blasphemies began here, by the Mayor of Eu of that day, who risked his life by doing that good deed. When the Comte and the Comtesse de Paris lived here, the park and the gardens were the pride and pleasure of the people. Those fountains are fed by water which the Comte de Paris had brought to Eu for the service of the town, and the town is served by it now. Every year Eu was filled with people who came and lived here because the Comte and the Comtesse de Paris were here. What good has their exile done to Eu? Here in Eu we know them. It is not they who are responsible for the local debt of Eu, of which we who have to pay it can get no account at all from our precious authorities, except in the form of a demand for more taxes! 'As to the last century, you are quite right. Here, in this part of Normandy, there were no such grievances then as we have now. There were troubles with bad roads and bad agriculture. There were quarrels about this right and that privilege. The curés didn't like the grand airs of the Church dignitaries. The squires (_hobereaux_) were conceited very often and ignorant and arrogant. We have not got rid of conceit and ignorance and arrogance, though, by cutting off the heads of a few squires a hundred years ago! No! as to Eu, at least, take my word for it, the happiest day we can see will be the day when we can welcome back here the Prince and the Princess who lived so pleasantly and so usefully with us and among us, as King and Queen of the French! We are royalists here because we know the Comte de Paris, and know that he would do his duty as the king of a free people, and be something better than the tool of a swarm of needy and self-seeking adventurers. There is a strong feeling here, too, about the intolerant interference of those atheists at Paris with the rights of parents and with freedom of conscience. Yet we are not in the least a priest-ridden people. On the contrary! I can show you a commune where the people, vexed with the charges of their curé, have deliberately organized a Protestant chapel. They sent to the Consistory at Paris, and got a minister, and they are doing very well! What we want here is private liberty and public economy. The Republic gives us neither. The Monarchy, we believe, will give us both!' Broglie in the Eure, like La Brède in the Gironde, and Val Richer in the Calvados, has associations of special interest to Americans. At La Brède was born a gallant grandson of Montesquieu, De Sécondat, who earned high promotion by his valour and his conduct in the American War of Independence, side by side with Custine, who took Speier and Metz for the Republic, and for his guerdon got the guillotine, and with Vioménil, who died bravely defending his King and the law in the palace of the Tuileries. Val Richer was the home of the great French statesman to whom we owe the best delineation of Washington we possess, and of whom Mr. Bancroft, the historian of the American Constitution, bears witness that, as premier of France, he unreservedly threw open to his researches all the archives of France in any way bearing upon the history of the United States. 'Nothing was refused me for examination,' he says, 'nor was one line of which I desired a copy withheld.' Broglie was the birthplace of another French soldier who learned in America to venerate the character of Washington, and whose life paid the forfeit under the first despotic French Republic of his loyalty to liberty and the law. Victor Charles de Broglie was a son of the veteran Marshal of France, 'cool and capable of anything,' whom Mr. Carlyle perorates about as the 'war-god.' As the Chief of Staff of Biron, in the army of the Rhine, he refused to recognise the usurpers of August 10, 1792, in a letter to his commander which is a model of common sense and military honour. Upon this letter Carnot, then a legislative Commissioner, or, in plain English, inspector and informer of the Convention, on duty with the army, made a report far from creditable either to his head or his heart. Victor Charles de Broglie was eventually guillotined. Taking farewell of his son, a child nine years old, he bade him 'never allow himself to believe that it was liberty which had taken his father's life.' The child grew to manhood and to fame, for ever mindful of this brave injunction. He was the Minister of Louis Philippe when the claims arising out of the lawless depredations of the First Republic and the Empire upon American commerce were finally recognised and settled by France, and Mr. Bancroft pays him a high and well-deserved tribute for the courage with which he insisted on keeping faith with the United States 'at the risk of his popularity and of his place.' Are we to think it a mere effect of chance, or only a coincidence, that the flag of the Constitutional Monarchy, as the sole alternative of anarchy in France, is supported by the descendants of Montesquieu, by the heirs of Guizot, and by the son of this Duc de Broglie to whose courage and integrity France and America were indebted for the equitable settlement of an international dispute originally provoked by the vulgar folly and impertinence of the first French Republic and of the disreputable envoys, Genet and Fauchet, whom it sent one after the other to the United States with orders to appeal from the Government of President Washington to the American people? It was by the 'Military Council' made up of officers trained in the school of the great Maréchal de Broglie, and not by the vapouring and venal demagogues of the Convention, that France was successfully organised to resist the Austro-Prussian invasion of 1792; and it was by the government of which the present Duc de Broglie was a leading member under the Maréchal Duc de Magenta, not by M. Gambetta and M. Jules Ferry, that the Third Republic was so administered when the fortunes of France were at their lowest ebb as to re-establish the finances, restore the credit, and renew the military strength of the French nation. For now more than two centuries the name of De Broglie has been made historical in France, not by the favour of princes--for neither in the camp nor in the cabinet have the De Broglies ever been courtiers--nor yet by the applause of the populace, but by the personal ability, the personal character, and the public services of the men who have borne it. If ever a man died for his loyalty to liberty and the law, it was Victor Charles de Broglie in 1794. His son, the earliest and most faithful ally in France of Clarkson and Wilberforce in their long crusade against negro slavery, never sought, but accepted his place among the peers of France after the Restoration. Such was his absolute independence that his first act in the Upper Chamber under Louis XVIII. was to record his solitary but emphatic protest against the condemnation of Marshal Ney. His political career recalls Seneca's theory of Ulysses--'nauseator' but fulfilling his Odyssey. He disliked but never shirked the responsibilities which were pressed upon him. It used to be said of M. Thiers that whenever Louis Philippe wished to get an unpopular measure carried, he contrived to make M. Thiers oppose it violently, upset the government upon it, come into power upon his victory, and then take the measure up himself and carry it through. The Duc de Broglie was not a politician of this adroit and acrobatic type. His yea was yea and his nay, nay in politics as in private life. He kept aloof from the Second Empire, as his grandfather, Mr. Carlyle's 'War-god Broglie,' had kept aloof from the first. But he never fell into the Republican folly of pretending to regard the Second Empire as a tyranny imposed upon the people of France against their will. On the contrary, he saw things not as he wished them to be, but as they were, and so he said of the Second Empire, 'It is the government which the masses of the people in France desire and which the upper classes of France deserve.' The sting of this saying was given to it by the acquiescence of the 'upper classes' in the blow struck by the Second Empire at the rights of property in France when it confiscated in 1852 the estates of the House of Orléans. This blow was aimed, of course, by Napoleon III. at the Monarchy of July; just as the blow struck by Napoleon at the Duc d'Enghien was aimed at the ancient monarchy. But in the one case as in the other, the iniquity of the blow affected the fundamental conditions of social order and peace in France. In the one case as in the other, an Imperial Government, assuming to be a government of law, committed itself to the most outrageous and despotic practices of the 'Terror' of 1793. In the charter of 1814, Louis XVIII. had abolished confiscation. In the Charter of 1830, Louis Philippe had re-affirmed this abolition. By the decrees of 1852, seizing the property of the House of Orléans, Napoleon III. re-established confiscation. In principle these decrees of 1852 were no better than the Jacobin decrees of September 1793, which fixed the proportion of his own income to be enjoyed by every citizen in France. Réal, the chairman, as we should call him, of the Finance Committee of the Convention of 1793, who calmly divided the income of every citizen into three categories: 'the necessary' not to exceed, in the case of a bachelor, 1,000 francs a year; 'the abundant' not to exceed 9,000 francs, of which one-half should go to the State; and the 'superfluous,' the whole of which must be paid into the public treasury, was a good Jacobin when he made this classification. He lived to become a good Imperialist, and to accept from the Emperor the title of Count, with a very large 'superfluous' income, of which he made very good use for his own private pleasure and satisfaction. The question as to these decrees of 1852 was brought up before the National Assembly on September 15, 1871, by the Comte de Mérode, who, 'in the name of justice and of common honesty,' insisted that the Treasury should cease to receive for public uses the income of the private property of the Orléans family, illegally confiscated by the decrees of January 22, 1852. The Government of the Republic at once responded that 'the responsibility of this act of spoliation belonged exclusively to its author; and the subject was referred to a Committee. This Committee reported in 1872 a law founded, in the plain language of the Committee 'upon that principle of common honesty which forbids' man to enrich himself at the 'expense of his neighbour.' The Report states that of the 'fifty-one direct descendants then living of King Louis Philippe, not one, to their honour be it said, had addressed any request on the subject, either to the Government or to the Assembly.' It states also, that having examined the subject carefully, the Committee were unanimously of the opinion that it was the duty of France 'to restore to the owners of this property what belonged to them; no longer to keep in the hands of the State what had never belonged to the State.' The Committee, considering the frightful disasters brought upon France by the war of 1870-71, could not recommend, said the Report, 'that the Treasury should now undertake absolutely to repair the consequences of an act repudiated by France. What it recommended was, that the Orléans family should be put into possession of all that was left of its own property, not that it should receive back the equivalent of the sums already consumed and dissipated.' At that time the Treasury had alienated under the decrees of 1852 no less than 70,000,000 francs of this lawful property of the Orléans family, unlawfully seized and confiscated. The whole property, when seized in 1852, was estimated by the Committee of 1872 at 80,000,000 francs. Between 1853 and 1870 the Treasury had received and spent 35,892,849 francs from sales of this property. It had also received and spent, from the sale of timber cut in the forests belonging to the property, 18,601,019 francs. Putting this large sum aside, it is obvious that in the shape of property actually sold, to the amount in round numbers of 36,000,000 francs, between 1853 and 1870, and of the interest on this amount during the same time, the Imperial Government had really converted to its own uses 70,000,000 francs which did not belong to it. Not one penny of these millions of francs was restored to its owners by the decrees of 1872. What the decrees of 1872 accomplished, with the approval of such extreme Republicans as M. Henri Brisson, was to put a stop to this public robbery of private owners. The Orléans estates not yet sold in 1872 were then estimated to yield an income of 1,200,000 francs. Before final action was taken by the Assembly, the Orléans princes voluntarily came forward and announced that they would accept no 'restitution' at the expense of the taxpayers of France of their property sold and alienated under the spoliation of 1852; and the text of the law as finally passed in 1872 expressly ordains that 'conformably to the renunciation offered before the presentation of the bill by the heirs of King Louis Philippe, and since renewed,' their unsold property, 'real and personal, seized by the State and not alienated before this date, be immediately restored to its owners.' As a matter of fact, therefore, under this law, the heirs of King Louis Philippe actually made the French Government a present in 1872 of many millions of francs, which belonged to them and did not belong to France or to the French Government. By doing this, they co-operated most creditably with every man of common honesty in the French Assembly in repairing the wrong done to every French citizen by the decrees of January 22, 1852, decrees justly described by M. Pascal Duprat in the Chamber, on November 22, 1872, as 'decrees of flat spoliation which had violated the sacred right of property, disregarded the fundamental rules of law, and profoundly wounded the public conscience.' However profoundly wounded the public conscience may have been by these decrees in 1852, the scornful words of the Duc de Broglie attest that it suffered in silence and for twenty years made no adequate outward sign! This cool and caustic statesman was born and brought up in the Catholic Church. He married a Protestant lady, one of the most charming and brilliant women of her time, the daughter of Madame de Staël, and he was the intimate friend and associate throughout his public life of M. Guizot. His son, the present duke, grew up in an atmosphere of practical religious liberality. It was the law of 1875 restricting the State monopoly of the higher branches of public education in France which concentrated against the present duke, under the Maréchal Duc de Magenta, the whole strength of the anti-religious elements in France. It was not to prevent the restoration of the monarchy by men like the Duc de Magenta and the Duc de Broglie, whom he well knew to be incapable of conspiring for any object whatever, that M. Gambetta uttered his war-cry: '_Le cléricalisme c'est l'ennemi!_' It was to rally behind himself and his own associates in the Republican party the great army of the Socialistic Radicals in France. It was to make the Conservative Republic of the Duc de Magenta and the Duc de Broglie impossible, that the Parliamentary conspirators of 1877 conceived and carried out, under cover of this war-cry, their scheme for suppressing the Executive in France. They have, as I believe, succeeded. They have made the Conservative Republic impossible. What is the result? The result is that no alternative of anarchy is left to sensible and moderate men in France but the Monarchy. This has been growing more and more apparent ever since 1885. In that year the Legislative elections were made under the _scrutin de liste_; and when the Government rallied after the shock of the first Conservative attack, almost all the seats left in peril by that attack were 'saved' at the supplementary election by surrendering them to Radical candidates. In 1889, under the fear of Boulanger, the _scrutin de liste_ was suddenly abandoned for the _scrutin d'arrondissement_, and the same thing happened again. At the first election, on September 22, 384 candidates of all parties were chosen in the 83 departments of France. Of these, 164 were Government Republicans and 44 Radicals. At the second election, on October 8, the remaining 177 seats were filled. Of these, 66 were carried by the Government Republicans, and no fewer than 57 surrendered to the Radicals. In other words, at the first election the Radicals secured just about a quarter of the 208 seats carried by the Republicans. At the second election they secured very nearly one half of the 123 seats carried by the Republicans. So that the Radicals finally muster 101 out of the 331 Republican home members of the present Chamber, and are, therefore, practically masters of the situation so far as the Republic is concerned. They made this perfectly clear as soon as the Chamber met by insisting upon and securing the election of M. Floquet, a Radical of the advanced left wing, as President of the Chamber. Were the Radicals to withdraw their support from the Government on any issue, it would be left with 254 members to face a combined opposition vote of 229 members, which might at any moment be converted into a hostile majority by the action of less than a third of the Radicals. When we remember that these 101 Radicals are represented in the Chair of the Chamber by a leader who was locked up for a year in 1871 for his participation in the revolt of the Commune, and who voted in 1876 for the full pardon of the convicts of the Commune, it will be obvious, I think, that the Republicans 'have committed suicide to save themselves from slaughter.' M. Floquet, imprisoned in 1871 for complicity with the Commune, was made Prefect of the Seine in 1882 by the men who have since made M. Carnot President of the Republic. As President of the Chamber, M. Floquet, under the existing régime in France, is now the superior of M. Carnot. Can there be any mistake as to the meaning of this? In 1882, as Prefect of the Seine, M. Floquet maintained the closest relations with the Municipal Council of Paris. M. Ferry's bill making primary education obligatory, and 'laicizing' that education, finally became law on July 26, 1881. The war against God in the schools began at once vigorously, and nowhere more vigorously than in Paris. M. Paul Bert had insisted, in his Report of 1879, upon the importance of protecting teachers who were scientific and philosophical Atheists against the pangs their consciences would suffer were they obliged to read or to hear recited passages from 'what is called Sacred History, that is to say, a mixture of positive history, with legends which have no value except in the eyes of believers.' In this spirit of the peddler who tried to 'scrub out the blood-stains' at Holyrood the law of 1881 was conceived. How it was executed we learn from M. Zévort, a distinguished inspector of the Academy of Paris, and by no means a Catholic. In some places the authorities ordered the words 'Love God, respect your parents,' to be effaced from the school-house walls. In others, children were compelled to give up the Catechisms which they had brought with them to school, intending to go on after school hours to the parish church. In this same year M. Fournier stated in the Senate that persons appointed by the Minister of Public Instruction to distribute prizes in the schools had made speeches to the children in which they spoke of all religion as mere superstition. He cited one such orator as contrasting 'scientific education, the only true education, which gives man the certainty of his own value and urges him onward to progress and to the Light,' with 'religious education which fatally plunges him into a murky night, and an abyss of deadly superstitions.' Another luminary of the State exclaimed in a burst of eloquence, 'Young citizenesses and young citizens! We have been accused of banishing God from the schools! It is an error! Nothing can be driven out which does not exist. Now God does not exist. What we have suppressed is only a set of emblems!' These emblems were the religious inscriptions, and the crucifixes, taken out of the school-houses. Of these emblems the Prefect of the Seine, in 1882, carelessly observed in the course of an enquiry before the Senate, that the removal of them was 'only a question of school furniture!' And the Municipal Council of Paris, with which M. Floquet in 1882 so cordially co-operated, formally adopted resolutions calling for the complete suppression in all the primary schools 'of all theological instruction whatsoever.' 'No one,' said one councillor, M. Cattiaux, with much solemnity, 'can prove the existence of God, and our teachers must not be compelled to affirm the existence of an imaginary being.' With M. Floquet as President of the Chamber, M. Carnot and his Ministers are at the mercy not of the Radicals only, but of the Radical allies of the Commune. The French Monarchists to-day are fighting out the battle of religion and of civilization for every country in Christendom. Though the Calvados was the chosen home of M. Guizot, it was not his birthplace. Like M. Thiers, whom he so little resembled in other particulars, M. Guizot was a son of the South. He was born at Nîmes, in the Gard, a city rather Republican than Royalist by its traditions, even under the old Monarchy. His father was an advocate, and by the charter of Nîmes, which organized in 1476 the 'consular' government of the city, it was provided that the first consul of Nîmes should always be taken from among 'the advocates graduated and versed in the law,' the second consulate only being left open to 'citizens, merchants, and graduated physicians.' As the fifteenth century is commonly admitted to have been a 'feudal' century, this provision attests the power of the robe as against the sword in a very interesting way, and at an interesting point in French history. The local nobility felt the slight put upon them very strongly, and made great efforts to have the system changed. These efforts were not successful till the end of the sixteenth century. In 1588 the Duc de Montmorency, Governor of Languedoc, issued a decree convoking the Council-General to consider the subject, and this assembly, after a stormy session, decided that 'the noblemen and gentlemen of the province should hold the first consulate alternately with the advocates.' The first nobleman of Languedoc who profited by this decision was Louis de Montcalm, an ancestor of the illustrious defender of Quebec. He became first consul of Nîmes in 1589, the year after the defeat of the great Spanish Armada against England. He was a Huguenot, and Nîmes in the days of the great Religious Wars had become a Protestant stronghold after its capture by the Huguenots on November 15, 1569. The Huguenot de Calvière, Baron de St.-Cosme, who took a leading part in that military adventure, was made Governor of Nîmes and a gentleman of the King's bedchamber by Henry of Navarre. As a Protestant and as an advocate, the father of M. Guizot naturally inclined to the Republican theory of Government in 1789. He very soon and as naturally opened his eyes to the abominations of the Republican practice, and in due course came to the guillotine under the Terror. To the day of her death his widow wore the deepest mourning for him, and his son, like the son of the murdered Victor Charles de Broglie, honoured his memory by an inflexible loyalty to the principles of justice and of liberty for which his father had died. I was not surprised, therefore, to find M. Guillaume Guizot, the Protestant son of the great Protestant statesman, at his pleasant rural home near Uzès as earnest and active in the summer of 1889 in organizing the monarchical party for the Legislative elections, as the staunchest Catholics of the Morbihan or of Champagne. Uzès, which gives a ducal title to the family of Crussol, is a picturesque and interesting town, and its electoral district made a gallant stand for liberty and order in the elections. It gave nearly 9,000 Monarchist against about 11,000 Republican votes, and the returns of the whole Department of the Gard, when compared with those of 1885, show a marked change to the disadvantage of the powers that be. In the first place the total of the votes polled fell off more than 10 per cent. in 1889 from the total in 1885. In 1885, 110,786 were polled. In 1889, 97,828. In the next place the Republican votes in the whole department fell off in 1889 nearly 20 per cent. from the Republican total in 1885, or from 58,328 to 46,323. In the third place the Republican majority over the Monarchists fell off more than 60 per cent. from the majority in 1885, or from 5,910 to 2,062. In the fourth place the Monarchists in the first district of Nîmes had a majority of more than 1,500 votes over the Government Republicans. And in the fifth place the Republicans, who in 1885 secured the whole delegation of six members from the Gard, in 1889 lost the seat for the second district of Alais, which the Monarchists carried by a majority of 1,305 votes over the combined strength of the Government Republicans and the Boulangist Revisionists. This district is a coal and iron-mining as well as a silk-growing district. It is fall of workmen, and it has been a point of attack for the Socialist and subversive leaders in France for many years past. All the traditions of Alais itself are strongly Protestant. The fortifications of the town were destroyed by Louis XIV. at the end of the seventeenth century, and at no great distance is the Tour du Bellot, the lonely spot which witnessed one of the most desperate conflicts between Cavalier and the royal troops. The slaughter of the Camisards, shut up in their burning tower, is a tale of horror still in the countryside. At Nîmes the memories of the long and merciless strife between the Catholics and the Protestants of Southern France are fresher still and more intense. M. Guillaume Guizot well remembers the bitterness of the passions roused at Nîmes by the local struggles between the 'two Religions' which followed the Restoration. His father was one day reasoning on the subject with a Protestant citizen of Nîmes, who suddenly pointed to a man passing on the other side of the street, and said: 'That man had a hand in the killing of my father here in the streets of Nîmes. How can you ask me to forget that?' The Republicans of the Third Republic, bent on coercing France into a 'moral unity' of Atheism, are fast making both Catholics and Protestants forget such things in the imminence of a new and common peril to the liberties and the rights of both. The two daughters of M. Guizot, as is well known, married two brothers, the heirs and representatives of the great Protestant and Republican family of De Witt. One of these brothers, M. Conrad de Witt, just re-elected a deputy for the Calvados, was my host at Val Richer. The other, M. Cornelis de Witt, the namesake of the statesman for whom his illustrious brother the Grand Pensionary of Holland sacrificed his own life in a vain effort to save him from the brutal fury of an ignorant and frantic multitude at the Hague, has just been taken, in the full force of his energies and his great ability, from the love of his friends and from the cause of liberty in France. As a deputy and a member of the Government he took an active part in the re-establishment of the finances and the public organisation of France after the disasters of 1870-71. As a director of the great mines at Auzin, and as Vice-President of the Paris, Lyons, and Mediterranean Railway Company, he was in close and constant touch with the working classes of France and with the great material interests of a country which he loved as his ancestors loved Holland. This is not the place in which to speak of the personal gifts and graces which will keep the name of M. Cornelis de Witt green in the memory of all who knew him. But of his great qualities as a citizen, and of the judgment absolutely unwarped by passion or by prejudice which gave weight to all his political convictions, it is the place to speak. After a fair and serious experiment, in which he took his part loyally, at founding in France the 'Conservative Republic' of M. Thiers, he thought that outlook for the future completely and hopelessly closed; and as it was neither in the traditions of Netherlandish liberty nor in his own virile and courageous temper to acquiesce in the domination of a political oligarchy ready, like Carrier and the Jacobins of 1792, to 'make France one vast cemetery rather than not regenerate it after their own minds!' M. Cornelis de Witt looked about him calmly for a way of escape. This way he found where the sagacious Netherlanders of the seventeenth century found it after the hard-won liberties of Holland had been prostrated by the mad revolt of a misled multitude against the Government of the Grand Pensionary, who had held his own against Cromwell and against Louis XIV., made Holland the first naval power of the world, and scared London with the thunder of the Dutch cannon in the Thames. Nothing but the restoration of the hereditary principle in the person of William of Orange saved Amsterdam and Rotterdam from falling at the end of the seventeenth century, as they fell at the end of the eighteenth, under the dominion of an invader. When the hereditary principle was again abandoned after the death of William of Orange, the domestic peace as well as the national prestige of Holland vanished with it, and though the Dutch people in the middle of the eighteenth century insisted upon seeing it for a time restored, the power of the Dutch Executive towards the end of the century was so much hampered and weakened by the local jealousies of the provinces, that in the Convention which framed the Constitution of the United States, Mr. Butler, who had travelled much in the Low Countries, successfully enforced the necessity of making the American Executive monarchical by a vivid description of the evils inflicted upon Holland by her departures from that principle. We took warning as to the perils of the Union from the example of the Low Countries, and as to the importance of the Executive from the example of Great Britain. There were many Americans indeed in 1788, men of worth and of weight both in private and in public affairs, who rather than accept Edmund Randolph's plan of confiding the Executive authority to a triumvirate, would have given their adhesion to the seriously mooted project of making the American Executive absolutely hereditary, and inviting the Prince-Bishop of Osnaburg to accept the office. The convictions of M. Cornelis de Witt are represented now with equal energy and determination in Normandy by his brother, M. Conrad de Witt, and by his son, M. Pierre de Witt, just elected a Councillor-General of the Calvados, and in Languedoc by his brother-in-law, M. Guillaume Guizot, and by his son, M. Cornelis Henri de Witt. The home of M. Cornelis Henri de Witt, near Tonneins, in the Lot-et-Garonne, stands in the heart of a land of fruits and vines. From the terrace of his château of Peyreguilhot, the eye ranges over a fine expanse of the valley of the Garonne, which at no great distance from Tonneins mingles with the Lot beneath the promontory of Nicole. The landscape is rich in colour. Great fields of tobacco alternate with extensive orchards. It is a land to be seen in the season of blossoms. The world-famed prunes of Bordeaux come mainly from about Agen, and the pleasant little commune of Nicole probably draws a much larger tribute to-day from London, in exchange for its precocious apricots, than it ever paid to London when the Plantagenet eaglets were rending the eagle of Winchester. The old traditions of Guienne seem to be much less vivid than those of Normandy or Brittany. I have heard Bretons speak of the Duchess Anne as the Scotch Jacobites still speak of the Stuarts. But though Coeur de Lion is still a popular hero in the land of Bertrand de Born, there is nothing there like the Provençal feeling in Provence. At St. Rémy, the beautiful birthplace of Nostradamus, a lively waiter in the excellent hotel of the 'Cheval Blanc,' taking me for a Frenchman of the north, contrived very skilfully to let me know that the Provençals do not hold themselves responsible for the failure of Northern France to repulse the Germans. 'If the Comte de Paris had not got the better long ago of the Comte de Provence,' he informed me, 'France would have been Provençal and not Provence French, and then things would have gone differently altogether.' But all Languedoc is as proud of its language as Wales. A youth who took me at Agen to see the shop and house of the 'barber-bard' was clearly of the opinion that the poetry of Lamartine and Victor Hugo would have been as fine as the poetry of Jasmin had they been so fortunate as to use his mother-tongue. 'The French language was a kind of Gallic patois mixed with German, while the true langue d'Oc, as I must know, was the language of the Romans.' This same philologist took me also to the little valley of 'Verona,' where he showed me not only a small vineyard, the property of Jasmin, but the house, the fountain, and the huge stone chair of Scaliger, 'a great philosopher descended from Julius Cæsar.' Joseph Scaliger, I believe, was really born in this house, which was given to his illustrious father by the Bishop of Agen; and Joseph with his own eyes saw some three hundred Huguenots burnt alive in Agen on the great Place du Gravier, where now the annual fairs of Agen are held under the stately elms. The lands of the Lot-et-Garonne are full of memories of the English wars, of the Albigensian crusade, of the long duel between the Church and the Calvinists. Tonneins, once a curious 'double city' of the middle ages, was destroyed in the seventeenth century by Louis XIII. for its fidelity to the Huguenot cause. Nérac, where Jeanne d'Albret and the two Margots held their gay and gallant courts, and Henry of Navarre established his headquarters during 'the Lovers' War,' suffered as severely for the like cause under Louis XIV. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes sent its most industrious inhabitants into exile, not a few of them crossing the Atlantic to join the Huguenot colonies in New York and in the Carolinas. 'But the Revolution of 1789 did Nérac more harm,' said an intelligent tradesman of the picturesque little city to me, 'than the Revocation. The Revocation drove away many honest people from Nérac, but the Revolution brought here a great many rogues.' The country around Nérac is extremely fertile, and great prizes were to be picked up here during the decade of proscription and confiscation. The Garenne, one of the loveliest public parks in France, in which a beautiful fountain sparkles and murmurs beneath two lofty elms planted by Henry of Navarre and Marguerite de Valois, was actually bought during the First Consulate by the city for a little over five thousand francs, or two hundred pounds sterling. The war of 1791 against 'privileges' soon became in Nérac, as elsewhere in France, a war against property. The immediate effect of this was not, what we are constantly told it was, to increase the wealth of France by 'redistributing' it amongst the active and industrious classes. It was, on the contrary, to diminish the wealth of France by lowering the real value of property. This is clearly shown by the extraordinary pains which Napoleon took to enforce respect for the rights of property as soon as he grasped the supreme power in the State. But one comes everywhere upon striking local proofs of it. At Najac in the Department of the Aveyron, for example, the obliging hotel-keeper will give you the key of one of the most magnificent ruined castles in Southern France, which, with its grand donjon, and all the massive circle of its walls and ramparts, was seized and sold, during the Terror, for _twelve francs_. The purchaser made a deal of money by converting the castle into a quarry, and when law and order were restored, he gladly parted with his very dubious title for the highly respectable advance on his investment of 1,500 francs. As a piece of successful 'gerrymandering' the Republican treatment of this Department of the Aveyron, by the way, in the elections of 1889, is worth mentioning. In 1885, under the _scrutin de liste_, the Aveyron was entitled to six deputies. It elected a solid Conservative representation. In 1889, under the _scrutin d'arrondissement_, the Government carved out seven seats for the Aveyron, and the electoral districts were so ingeniously framed as to secure two out of these seven seats for the Republicans--though the total of the votes cast in the department showed a clear majority for the Monarchists of 5,582! We had a banquet of Mayors while I was at Peyreguilhot; not such a Belshazzar's feast as M. Constans gave at Paris to the thirteen thousand, but a simple and interesting gathering of about a dozen intelligent and active elective magistrates. Under a recent law all Mayors, except in Paris, are now chosen by the Councils, but the Government can revoke their commissions. Our guests at Peyreguilhot were all shrewd, quiet, active men of the country. 'We shall be beaten in September,' said one of them to me, 'because the Government employs men enough to beat us. Moreover, our farmers say, "Why vote at all, for the Mayors and the Prefect throw our votes out and cheat us?" Then, too, we must have a man to vote for before we can make them move. They will not vote for the Monarchy as a principle. But give them a man who touches their imaginations and they will make him a Monarch.' They voted for Louis Napoleon as soon as they saw him take the Assembly resolutely by the throat. They would have voted, overwhelmingly, for Boulanger on September 22 had he suddenly reappeared in Paris, demanding a revision of the verdict of the High Court. This is true, I think, not of the Lot-et-Garonne alone, but of all France. It has been signally illustrated since the elections of 1889 by what Stendhal would have called the rapid 'crystallization' of public sympathy around the young Duc d'Orléans when he suddenly appeared in Paris. The Government was completely bewildered and demoralized by this 'bolt out of the blue.' Instead of quietly reconducting the prince to the frontier with a reprimand for his inconsiderate and unconventional patriotism, it stupidly locked him up in a prison haunted by legends disgraceful to the Republic, proceeded against him with clumsy vehemence, gave him time to show himself to the French people, in the words of the Duc d'Aumale, as a '_pur sang_,' a straightforward, dashing young French prince demanding the right of performing his military duty to the State, had him condemned, tardily resolved to pardon him, and wound up finally by sending him to Clairvaux to placate the criminal bullies of the Commune! What has been the result? It cannot be more exactly stated than in the words of the official organ of the Russian Empire at Brussels, _Le Nord_, a journal certainly not predisposed in favour of the House of Orléans by the success of the Orléanist Prince Ferdinand in Bulgaria. 'The appearance of this young exile,' said _Le Nord_, 'on the soil of France, not as a pretender or with political ideas, but simply as a Frenchman coming to establish his moral rights as a citizen by claiming to be allowed to perform his civic duties, and this with a rare combination of youthful dash, irreproachable modesty, and skilful self-possession was admirably fitted to awaken, and it has awakened, the sympathy of all who are politically disinterested.' This is strong language coming from the only great power in the world to which France can look as a possible ally in the present condition of Europe. It was emphasised by the ablest and most active of the French Imperialists, M. Paul de Cassagnac. 'To keep this young prince in prison is impossible. To do so would make him King of France within three years. To let him go, after keeping him for a week, is no longer a generous and magnanimous act. It is simply obeying the vigorous kick administered by the masters of the Government, the French people, who have been saying of the Orléans princes, "they won't move," and who now see a young Duc d'Orléans move forward with a gay virility which has a flavour of Henri IV.! If the young Duc d'Orléans is as intelligent as I am told, and believe that he is, he wouldn't change places with Carnot to-day!' Every 'ministerial crisis' which weakens the Government will strengthen the prestige acquired for the Monarchy by the young duke. He has won the women by his pluck, the fathers of families by his deference to the Comte de Paris, the Catholics by asking for a chaplain at Clairvaux, and the _chauvins_ by his military ardour. A friend of mine showed me in Paris ten days after the arrest of the prince a letter from Normandy, in which the writer said, 'Millions of francs would not have done what has been done by this simple act to revive and invigorate the monarchical party throughout this whole region.... _Le petit conscrit_ will be the prince of the people from this day forth. The gray-beards among the peasants shake their heads and say, "All the same, it is not such a nice thing, this conscription, and since he was out of it why run into it?" But the women reply, "Since our lads have to go in, it is plucky of the Comte de Paris to put his son in too!"' To make a handsome young prince a martyr of patriotism in the eyes of the women and the conscripts of France, is a highly original way of blocking the progress of his father to the throne! The Mayors at Peyreguilhot were all of one mind as to the fiscal conduct of the Republican Government. It was 'making life impossible for the agriculturists of all categories. The tax on the revenue of the land in the Lot-et-Garonne was levied still on a _cadastre_ drawn up in 1837; so that lands now lying idle were taxed as they were taxed fifty years ago when covered with vines. Thanks to this system, forty-two departments in France pay more than their due proportion of this tax, and the others less than their due proportion. The Aude, which is a very rich department, producing, if you take good and bad years together, more than 20,000,000 francs of wine alone every year, pays a million of francs less, and the Lot-et-Garonne nearly a quarter of a million more, than its due share of this tax.' M. de Witt confirmed these statements. The inequalities in national taxation, he tells me, are one of the crying grievances of France under the existing régime. Corsica, for example, pays only ninety-five centimes _per cent._ of revenue tax, while the Corrèze pays seven francs ninety cents, and there is one commune in the Gironde which actually pays ninety francs per cent. Besides the people pay the door and window tax, the furniture tax, the _prestations en nature_, the permanent personal tax, and the octrois and the _centimes additionnels_ levied for educational and other purposes. The taxes levied as _centimes additionnels_ for the Departments of France increased from 1878 to 1886 by 24,692,266 francs, and the taxes levied as _centimes additionnels_ for the Communes (exclusive of Paris) by 34,246,647 francs, while from 1878 to 1885 the total of the debts of the Communes increased at the rate of 55,000,000 francs a year! The departmental loans during the same period increased no less than 95 per cent., or from 128,417,499 francs in 1876 to 249,188,700 francs in 1886. Since the new Chamber met the air has been full of rumours of new loans, and of modifications of taxation. These modifications may ease the pressure on one point, but only by increasing it upon another point. No financier in France pretends to put the annual burden borne by the French people at much less than double the annual taxation of Great Britain. M. Méline, a Republican of the Republicans, admitted before the Chamber of Deputies on February 10, 1885, that the people of France were more heavily taxed at that time 'than those of any other country in the world.' He put the taxation of England at 57 francs a head, of the United States at 59 francs a head, of Germany at 44 francs a head, and of France at 104 francs a head. And to-day the French people are more heavily taxed than they were in 1885. The mere general expenses of collecting the revenue of France are set down in the Budget for 1890 at 107,343,926 francs, or, in round numbers, 4,293,745_l._; divided as follows. Direct and assimilated land taxes, 19,838,175 francs; registrations, domains, and stamps, 19,143,950; customs, 31,077,301; indirect taxes, 37,284,500 francs. M. de Witt represents the Canton of Castêl Moron in the Council-General of the Lot-et-Garonne, and he is Mayor of the Commune of Laparade. At the Legislative elections of last year, he contested the representation of the Nérac district with M. Fallières, the Minister of Public Instruction, and was defeated, receiving 6,484 votes against 8,967 given to the Minister. M. Fallières 'on the stump,' speaking with the authority of a Minister of 'Public Instruction,' actually assured the electors that to vote for M. de Witt was to vote to 're-establish seignorial rights, and to bring on a German or _Cossack_ invasion!' One result of this was, that M. de Witt was burned in effigy near Tonneins after the election! After the election of M. de Witt as Mayor of Laparade, he was accused before the tribunal at Marmande of 'corrupting' the electors of the commune. The accusation rested on 'conversations,' but the tribunal sentenced M. de Witt to a fine of a thousand francs, and several of his electors to smaller fines. They all appealed to the Court at Agen, where the case was pleaded by M. Piou, deputy for the Haute Garonne and one of the ablest barristers in Southern France. It throws an interesting light on the present condition of political life in France, that M. de Witt, though the sentence of the tribunal at Marmande was not sustained, had eventually to pay a fine of 500 francs on the ground that he had been guilty of 'excessive charity' to an old man of 80, named Sauvean, who had long been a pensioner of his family! The wonder is that his commission as Mayor by the choice of his fellow-citizens was not revoked by the Ministry at Paris. Under the Third Republic this is no uncommon thing. Early in the year 1889, M. Duboscq, Mayor of the commune of Labrit in the Landes, one of the many out-of-the way and charming places which in that part of France are associated with the memory of Henri IV., gave a dinner to M. Lambert de Ste.-Croix, the distinguished Monarchist leader, who died not long ago. For this offence--M. Lambert de Ste.-Croix having just then exasperated the Republicans beyond measure by a vigorous speech made at Dax on the Adour--M. Duboscq was actually suspended from his office by order of M. Floquet, now the President of the Chamber of Deputies! In reply to a question on the subject put by a deputy, M. Lamarzelle, M. Floquet calmly replied that lie had suspended M. Duboscq because, 'being a functionary of the Government, he had departed from the reserve proper in his position by inviting an opponent of the Government to dinner!' The Mayors of these communes, be it observed, are elected by the people, not appointed by the Government! So that under the practice of the French Republic, as represented by the present President of the Chamber, a Radical Mayor of Newcastle who should ask Mr. Gladstone to dinner ought to be 'suspended' at once by Lord Salisbury! This is municipal liberty in France under the Third Republic. As the Legislative elections are conducted under the supervision of the Mayors, the object of such performances as these is obvious enough. At the same time with M. Duboscq, M. Davezac de Moran, Mayor of Siest near Dax, was also suspended by M. Floquet for the offence of allowing the meeting of the Monarchical Committees, at which M. Lambert de Ste.-Croix made his speech, to be held in his own house at Dax! 'If you think,' said M. Lamarzelle to the Minister, 'to frighten us with all this, you are mistaken. At your age Robespierre had got himself guillotined!' During the Legislative elections of 1889 'the school-teachers, the postmen, the gendarmes, the highway supervisors and the labourers, were ordered to vote against the Monarchist candidates.' M. Delafosse, elected in the Calvados, publicly stated this in the _Matin_, and without contradiction. During the same elections the curés were officially forbidden to advise their people to vote for 'friends of religion,' and those who did so advise were fined after the election to the number of 300! M. Cornelis Henri de Witt is one of the most active and indefatigable promoters of what are known as the 'Conférences du Sud-Ouest.' These are meetings of the Monarchists organised on a systematic plan, which take place at brief intervals throughout the great Departments of South-Western France under the superintendence of a society of which M. Princeteau, a very influential and intelligent citizen of Bordeaux, is the President. M. Princeteau, like M. de Witt, is not only an indefatigable organiser, but an extremely popular and effective orator; and it is a curious proof of the efficiency of the Conservative machinery in South-Western France, that at the Legislative elections of 1889 the Radicals and the Socialists completely disappeared as parties from the contest in the Gironde. Thanks to the _scrutin d'arrondissement_, several seats from that department which ought to have gone to the Monarchists were kept by the Government; but upon the total poll the Monarchists and Revisionists show 84,376 votes against 83,108 given to the Government Republicans. Under the _scrutin de liste_ the eleven seats for the Gironde would pretty plainly have gone in 1889 to the Monarchists. In 1885 M. Cazauvielle, the leading Republican deputy, received 89,153 votes, or 6,000 more than the Republican total in 1889. As in 1889 the total poll amounted to 167,484 votes, and in 1885 to 162,286, it is clear that the Republican strength fell off, and that the Monarchist strength increased in the Gironde between 1885 and 1889. M. Princeteau told me that on July 14 he gave a fête in his grounds near Bordeaux to more than five thousand working people. While the fête was going on, a procession of Republicans with bands of music, bent on celebrating the fête of the Bastille, passed the grounds more than once with the obvious intent of drawing away some of his guests. This they completely failed to do. If the 'fête of the Bastille' was celebrated at Bordeaux as it was at Nîmes, this says as much for the good taste as for the sound politics of the Bordeaux workmen. At Nîmes on July 22, more than a week after the 'anniversary,' I found the city streets made perilous during the day and life made intolerable at night by such a clamour of chorus singers and such a clatter of fireworks as I had not supposed it possible could be got up beyond the domain of our own 'glorious and immortal' American Fourth of July. Several accidents were caused by 'serpents' and other fireworks, and when I asked a staid and sober citizen of this old Protestant capital why the law permitted such performances, he quietly answered: 'The law does not permit them. The authorities have formally forbidden them, but the authorities are elective, and they are more anxious to keep their places than to keep the peace.' To my question whether the extreme Radicals were very strong in Nîmes, he replied that nearly a fourth of the Republicans of Nîmes are avowed Socialists, mostly of the Anti-Boulangist Anti-Possibilist type. One of their candidates for a legislative seat announced his intention, if elected, to give some person, to be designated by his constituents, an order for one half of his legislative salary, to be drawn regularly, and applied 'by his committee to political purposes.' His political programme included the formal abolition of the Presidency, annual legislative elections, the nationalisation of the soil of France, the abolition of the regular army, the socialisation of all the means of production, gratuitous and obligatory education on the same lines for all the children of France, and through all the degrees of education, and the suppression of the right to bequeath or to inherit property of any kind,' On the latter point a rather intelligent Socialist with whom I made acquaintance while I was visiting the fine Roman Amphitheatre at Nîmes, and whom I took to be a skilled mechanic, was very explicit. He thought property a 'privilege' and therefore inconsistent with equality. He spoke in an oracular fashion, and he probably belonged to the class known among French workmen, not as '_sublimes_,' but as _'les fils de Dieu_.' 'Of what use,' he said, 'is it to abolish hereditary titles if you allow a man of one generation to give his son in the next generation the more serious advantage over his fellow of a property which he has done nothing and could do nothing to create?' I asked him if he agreed with St.-Just that 'opulence is an infamy.' He replied very seriously: 'Yes, I think if St.-Just said that he said the truth. Certainly I do not say that every rich man is infamous. That is another matter. But it is infamous that in a land of equality one man should have the means to give himself pleasures and execute achievements beyond his fellow-citizens.' He told me that he lived in Alais, where he said the Socialists of his type were much stronger than in Nîmes. The Legislative elections show that lie was right as to this. The Socialists carried the first division of Alais, throwing 7,205 votes against 2,425 Radicals and 4,218 Government Republicans. For the Government Republicans my friend of the Amphitheatre could find no words of contempt strong enough. 'They are all whitewashed Wilsons,' he said, and then he dilated with much eloquence on the case of a certain M. Hude,'a great friend of Rochefort' he scornfully exclaimed, 'who is a great friend of Boulanger. _Ah! voilà du propre!_ he is a wine-merchant, of course he is fond of the _pots-de-vin'_(the French phrase for bribes taken to promote jobs), 'and thus, when the chemical officers go to verify the quality of his wines, he calls in the Prefect of Police to prevent it, because he is a deputy!' He was particularly bitter, too, on the conversion by the Republicans of more than a thousand millions of francs lying in the savings banks into 3 per cent. funds. 'What right had they to do this?' he said indignantly. 'It was a trick to enslave the depositors!' In the first division of Nîmes the Socialists showed no great strength at the elections of 1889. The Monarchists far outnumbered them, but they threw votes enough to make the election very close, the Republicans numbering 6,598, the Socialists 1,519, and the Monarchists 8,174, so that the latter won the day by no more than fifty-seven votes. That they won it is due to the cordial co-operation of the Protestants with the Catholics on the question of Religious Liberty in support of a Catholic, M. de Bernis, who had twice been condemned to imprisonment for 'assisting' Catholic teachers thrown on the world by the 'laicization' of the schools of Nîmes! This co-operation began in 1885. The Protestants of the Gard have quite as much at stake in this conflict as the Catholics. The Protestant Seminaries are cut down like the Catholic. The appropriations formerly made in aid of new Protestant parishes are made no longer. No sums are allowed for Protestant missionary work in outlying districts. The Protestant Consistories have been deprived of their right to nominate candidates for examination as teachers. The Consistories and the Councils of the Elders are no longer allowed to receive and administer legacies for the relief of the poor, for hospitals or asylums. Formerly, where no manse existed in a commune, the Protestant minister was allowed a certain sum for lodgings. This has been stopped. In short, the Protestants, like the Catholics of France, find themselves treated by an oligarchy of irreligious fanatics as pariahs in their own country. The Protestants, like the Catholics, are driven into irreconcilable hostility against the Republic by a Parliamentary majority which treats all religious questions in the spirit of M. de Mortillet, Mayor of St.-Germain, and a Radical deputy for the Seine-et-Oise. In 1886 some speaker in the Chamber appealed in the course of his speech to the law of God. 'The law of God!' broke in M. de Mortillet; 'pray, what is God?' The more completely this spirit of the Mayor of St.-Germian gets the control of the Republican party, the more obvious it becomes that the Republic must gravitate into Socialism. As it steadily alienates from itself the vast multitudes of Frenchmen who are either religious men, or recognise the vital importance of religious institutions to the existing social order, it is compelled to court the alliance of the avowed enemies of the existing social order. This is strikingly illustrated in the political condition of the great Southern Department of the Bouches-du-Rhône. This department offers a most instructive contrast with the Calvados. In the Bouches-du-Rhône, the Government Republicans were as badly beaten in 1889 as in the Calvados. But in the Calvados they were beaten by the Monarchists, and in the Bouches-du-Rhône by the Radicals and the Socialists. In the Bouches-du-Rhône the Radicals and Socialists threw 52,989 votes, the Government Republicans no more than 7,218. Marseilles, the greatest commercial city in France, a city of 'Republicans before the Republic,' with traditions which give dignity to its democratic tendencies, repudiated the Republic of M. Jules Ferry and M. Carnot as emphatically as the Monarchical Morbihan. Even the Boulangists were nearly twice as strong, and the Monarchists were more than twice as strong in Marseilles as the Opportunist Republicans. The Boulangists threw there 13,123, and the Monarchists 14,445 votes. The strength of the Boulangists gives zest to a terse verdict upon the '_brav' général_' which I heard delivered by a _cocher_ in Marseilles on the eve of the famous January elections in Paris. Passing through one of the squares of the Mediterranean city, I observed two _cochers_ engaged in an animated debate. One of them from his box exclaimed 'I tell you Boulanger is the only real man in France!' To which the other replied as vehemently, 'And I tell you that he is nothing but the dealer in a low political hell! _c'est un croupier de mauvais aloi!_' He may have picked up the phrase from the _Petit Marseillais_, which is one of the few really well-edited newspapers in France. But it was a notable phrase, and it expresses, I think, the opinion of the sincere Radicals and Socialists, not only as to General Boulanger, but as to the politicians, now his bitterest enemies, who were his original friends and 'promoters.' A very smart and outspoken Provençal Socialist who drove me on a delightful morning from the once royal and always delectable city of Arles to the majestic ruins of Montmajeur, and the unique and wonderful deserted fortress-city of Les Baux, set no bounds to his speech about the official Republicans. We met near Montmajeur a neat private carriage. 'That is the carriage of M----,' he said, as we passed on. 'He is an aristocrat--but I think he will be Mayor of Axles. We have had an aristocratic major who gave to the people, and a Republican mayor who took from the people. I prefer the aristocrat, till we can make an end of all majors and all this rubbish of governments.' At the Legislative elections the Monarchists of Aries threw 8,540 votes, the Radicals 9,858, and the Government Republicans none at all. Of course the Radical members support the Government--but on their own terms. As these terms grow more exacting, the strength of the Monarchist reaction increases, and as the Monarchists grow stronger the Radical exactions become more imperious. The most active and earnest Monarchist whom I met in Marseilles, M. Fournier, assures me that the Marseilles Radicals are more intolerant of the Opportunists than they are even of the Monarchists. As one of the largest employers of labour in Marseilles, M. Fournier is in constant touch with the working population of the Bouches-du-Rhône. He is an earnest and devoted Catholic, and he has encouraged the foundation of a Christian Corporation among the people employed in his works. These works were founded half a century ago, in 1840, for the purpose of turning to practical results the interesting discoveries then made by M. Chevreuil, the famous centenarian dean of French science, as to the nature and properties of fatty substances. At the outset these works were taken up with the manufacture of stearine candles; but as in the case of the glass works of St.-Gobain, the chemical processes employed in creating one particular product were soon found to yield other very different and not less valuable results. I shall not attempt to enter into the mysteries of saponification and distillation, which cease to be mysteries when they are followed up from point to point through the extensive and orderly organisation of the Fournier Works; suffice it that at these works 600 men and 400 women are busily employed in turning every year 13,000 tons of African palm-oil, and of Australian, Russian, French, and American tallow into stearine candles, oleine, and glycerine. The output is enormous, amounting annually to 20,000,000 packets of candles of an average weight of 400 grammes a packet, to 3,300,000 kilogrammes of oleine, and to 1,200,000 kilogrammes of glycerine. How much of this latter product goes to the pharmacies and how much to the powder magazines of the world it is not easy to say. But it is easy to see that if the Bouches-du-Rhône get the better of the Calvados in the politics of France, there will be a serious falling off in the demand for altar lights and chamber candles, and a still more serious increase in the demand for nitro-glycerine! The output of the Fournier Works represents about one-fourth of the whole stearine and glycerine production of France, and as paraffin has of late years largely taken the place of stearine in the famous Price Works in England, the Fournier Works are now doubtless the most important of their kind in the world. Thirty years ago the candles produced here were almost all exported; now the home consumption just about equals the exportation, a fact as to which the truly paternal Government of France takes pains to leave no doubt in the minds of the producers by taxing candles heavily as an 'article of luxury.' They are subjected to a régie like cigars, and to the octroi, and these imposts, M. Fournier tells me, now amount to about fifty per cent, of their value. A knowledge of this circumstance may, perhaps, divert the wrath of travellers in France from the hotel-keeper, who claps a couple of francs for bougies into your bill if you pass half a summer's day in his house, to the Government which concerns itself much more actively with squeezing percentages out of the industries than with balancing the national budgets of France. Must not all taxes be paid by the ultimate consumer? What with these taxes and with the higher wage of labour in France, the stearine works of Marseilles find themselves taken at advantage by the energetic manufacturers of Holland. In the Fournier Works the average workman earns a daily wage of from 3 frs. 25 c. to 3 frs. 50 c.; the average workwomen, who do chiefly the clean and even pretty work of moulding the candles, making them up into packets, in large, very well ventilated and well ordered rooms, earn an average daily wage of 2 frs. 50 c. Both men and women work about ten hours a day. The 'eight-hours' doctrine of the political Socialists finds no more favour here with the real working people apparently than elsewhere in France. In Holland and Belgium and at Roubaix the average wage is about one franc less for both sexes. The Christian Corporation of the Fournier Works is organised upon the principles, but not exactly upon the lines, of the Harmel system. It is formed by a union of five religious associations among the workpeople, made up of the men, the married women, the young men, the young girls, and the children. Character and conduct are the conditions of membership, and under the direction of a General Council in which the employers take an active part, the Corporation has founded and administers for the common benefit a Consumers' Society which maintains an economical kitchen with refectories, a recreation hall with a bar, (not limited to soda water, lemonade, and tea), and a circulating library. The statutes of this Society leave the members a wide range of liberty, and the managers are chosen by the members. Of the profits five per cent first go to the reserve fund; dividends may then be declared of not more than ten per cent, on the capital stock of 10,000 francs, and the surplus, if any, forms a supplementary reserve. The economical kitchen is so well managed that it gives a customer (who must be employed in the works, but need not be a member of the Association) for 55 centimes, or a little more than fivepence, a bowl of soup, a large helping of meat and vegetables, half a pound of bread, and a third of a bottle of wine. A café-cognac (and the cognac good) may be had for 25 centimes more. In August of last year, with the help of the owners of the works, a Musical Society was established, and the workpeople are furnished gratuitously with medical advice and medicines. To these, in the case of invalid workmen who have been for two years employed in the works, is added a weekly allowance of six francs during illness. The owners have also founded a savings bank which pays six per cent. on sums below 3,000 francs, and four per cent. on sums above that amount. These are open to all the workpeople employed in the works, whether members or not of the Christian Corporation. In this fashion M. Fournier, and other devout and practical Catholics of the Bouches-du-Rhône are fighting the Republic by fighting the Socialistic Radicalism of which their department is the true headquarters, and to which the Republic has substantially surrendered. It is visibly an uphill fight in the Bouches-du-Rhône, and in South-Eastern France generally. But there is life in the convictions which nerve men to fight an uphill fight, and there is something in the fire and spirit of these militant Catholics of France which reminds one of Prudentius, the Pindar of Christian Spain, celebrating fifteen centuries ago the believers who upheld so manfully the rights of conscience against prætors and prefects bent on converting them to the beauty of 'moral unity'--_quod princeps colit ut colamus omnes_! When two men ride on a horse the man who holds the bridle is the master, and the Radicals hold the bridle of the French Government. The Radical Department of the Bouches-du-Rhône represents the Republic. The Monarchist Department of the Calvados represents France. If the Republic wins, the history of France before 1789 will be wiped out as with a sponge, and with it all the great qualities of the French people must disappear. Without an Executive, without a Past, and without a Religion, France would become the ideal nation of the Nihilists. If France wins, if she recovers the Executive unity and stability essential to her life as a nation, recovers the historic sense of her national growth into greatness, recovers for every man, woman, and child in France the simple human right to believe and to hope, then the Republic must inevitably vanish, for with all these things the Republic has made itself incompatible. If these were only my own conclusions, drawn from all that I saw and heard and learned in France during the year 1889, I might hesitate to adopt them as adequate and final. But how can I hesitate, when I find these conclusions of mine not obscurely foreshadowed as impending in 1872 by Ernest Renan, and re-affirmed as imminent in 1882 by Jules Simon? 'The edifice of our chimæras,' cried Ernest Renan in 1872,[9] 'has melted away like fairy castles in a dream. [9] _La Réforme intellectuelle et morale._ Ernest Renan. Paris, 1872. Presumption, puerile vanity, insubordination, feather-headedness, inability to grasp many different ideas at a glance, want of scientific sense, simple and stupid ignorance, here is the summary of our history for a year!... The Opposition, which pretended to have revolutionary remedies for all possible ills, has found itself at the end of a few days as unpopular as the fallen dynasty. The Republican Party, puffed up with the fatal errors which for half a century have been current as to the history of the Revolution, and which imagined itself able to play over again a game won eighty years ago only through circumstances utterly unlike those of to-day, has learned that it was a lunatic taking visions for realities. The legend of the Empire has been slain by Napoleon III. The legend of 1792 has been done to death by M. Gambetta. The legend of the Terror (for even the Terror had its legend among us!) has been hideously parodied by the Commune.' So cried M. Renan in 1872. 'Our worst disasters,' said M. Jules Simon in 1882,[10] 'have so far broken out only where great numbers of men are crowded together. Men begin with scepticism, from scepticism they go on rapidly to Nihilism, and from Nihilism to Social War. The labourer in the fields still has his faith; he still has his hope of another life; he has not yet unlearned the name of God. When he becomes a Nihilist we shall have the Commune in our cities, and beyond them the Jacqueries! It is impossible that the authorities should not see this. But the authorities obey the deputy, the deputy obeys the elector, and the elector obeys the agitator.' [10] _Dieu, Patrie, Liberté._ Par Jules Simon. Paris, 1882. 'There will soon be only two parties left in France; the party of the dynamiters, and the party of the do-nothings. Whatever moderate Republicans are left must go over either to violence or to indifference. Is it France alone which is thus threatened? It is the world. The Communists and the Fenians were not produced in France. But France attracts them. 'The liberty you pretend to be establishing is oppression. The neutral education you propose is the suppression of the human heart, of the human conscience. 'This "clericalism" which you declare to be the enemy, and which, when you are pushed to the wall, turns out to be Christianity--this "clericalism" which you attack and mean to exterminate, tell me, is this the power which lays your Ministers prostrate before your Deputies, and your Deputies prostrate before their electors? Is it "clericalism" which is stirring up Labour against Capital? Is it "clericalism" which preaches and supports "strikes"? Is it "clericalism" which manufactures dynamite and blows up houses? Is it "clericalism" which is transforming your literature into ribaldry and your theatres into brothels? Is it "clericalism" which shuts up your schools? Is it "clericalism" which transforms all the actions and relations of life into matters of contract and of calculation? Do you imagine that Christianity, if it be your enemy, is an enemy as terrible as Nihilism? And what other end but Nihilism can there be of your "neutral" obligatory schools and your atheistic laws? Already you go in fear of the very phrase which recognises the duties of man to God! You think it dangerous, you think it equivocal! You do not know that when you recoil before the name of God you abandon the traditions of France! 'Nay, you will not even hear now of man's duties to his country! This is another "dangerous," another "equivocal" phrase! You talk now in your programmes about the "civic duties" of man, for when these are taught there will be no danger of confounding the Monarchical France before 1789, which we must learn to hate, with the Republican France which we must love and admire!' Thus spoke Jules Simon in 1882. The 'civic duties' of man brought France in 1792 to the 'Law of Suspects,' to the headlong and brutal demolition of the whole social edifice, to confiscation, and to the guillotine. To what will the 'civic duties' of man bring France, and, with France, the civilization of Christendom, in 1892? [Illustration: France] * * * * * Catalogue of Books PUBLISHED BY MESSRS. LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. =Abbey and Overton.=--_THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY._ By CHARLES J. ABBEY and JOHN H. OVERTON. Cr. 8vo. 7s. 6d. =Abbott.=--_WORKS BY T. K. ABBOTT._ _THE ELEMENTS OF LOGIC._ 12mo. 3s. _ELEMENTARY THEORY OF THE TIDES_: the Fundamental Theories demonstrated without Mathematics. Crown 8vo. 2s. =Acton.=--_MODERN COOKERY FOR PRIVATE FAMILIES._ By ELIZA ACTON. With 150 Woodcuts. Fcp. 8vo. 4s. 6d. =Adams.=--_PUBLIC DEBTS_: an Essay on the Science of Finance. By HENRY C. ADAMS, Ph.D. 8vo. 12s. 6d. =A. K. H. B.=--_THE ESSAYS AND CONTRIBUTIONS OF A. K, H. B._ Cr. 8vo. 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37211	----	generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) Castles and Châteaux of Old Touraine and the Loire Country _WORKS OF FRANCIS MILTOUN_ _The following, each 1 vol., library 12mo, cloth, gilt top, profusely illustrated, $2.50_ _Rambles on the Riviera_ _Rambles in Normandy_ _Rambles in Brittany_ _The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine_ _The Cathedrals of Northern France_ _The Cathedrals of Southern France_ _The Cathedrals of Italy_ (_In preparation_) _The following, 1 vol., square octavo, cloth, gilt top, profusely illustrated. $3.00_ _Castles and Châteaux of Old Touraine and the Loire Country_ _L. C. PAGE & COMPANY New England Building, Boston, Mass._ [Illustration: A PEASANT GIRL OF TOURAINE] Castles and Châteaux OF OLD TOURAINE AND THE LOIRE COUNTRY BY FRANCIS MILTOUN Author of "Rambles in Normandy," "Rambles in Brittany," "Rambles on the Riviera," etc. _With Many Illustrations Reproduced from paintings made on the spot_ BY BLANCHE MCMANUS [Illustration] BOSTON L. C. PAGE & COMPANY 1906 _Copyright, 1906_ BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY (Incorporated) _All rights reserved_ First Impression, June, 1906 _COLONIAL PRESS_ _Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co._ _Boston, U. S. A._ [Illustration: Ed VELAY] By Way of Introduction This book is not the result of ordinary conventional rambles, of sightseeing by day, and flying by night, but rather of leisurely wanderings, for a somewhat extended period, along the banks of the Loire and its tributaries and through the countryside dotted with those splendid monuments of Renaissance architecture which have perhaps a more appealing interest for strangers than any other similar edifices wherever found. Before this book was projected, the conventional tour of the château country had been "done," Baedeker, Joanne and James's "Little Tour" in hand. On another occasion Angers, with its almost inconceivably real castellated fortress, and Nantes, with its memories of the "Edict" and "La Duchesse Anne," had been tasted and digested _en route_ to a certain little artist's village in Brittany. On another occasion, when we were headed due south, we lingered for a time in the upper valley, between "the little Italian city of Nevers" and "the most picturesque spot in the world"--Le Puy. But all this left certain ground to be covered, and certain gaps to be filled, though the author's note-books were numerous and full to overflowing with much comment, and the artist's portfolio was already bulging with its contents. So more note-books were bought, and, following the genial Mark Twain's advice, another fountain pen and more crayons and sketch-books, and the author and artist set out in the beginning of a warm September to fill those gaps and to reduce, if possible, that series of rambles along the now flat and now rolling banks of the broad blue Loire to something like consecutiveness and uniformity; with what result the reader may judge. Contents CHAPTER PAGE BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION v I. A GENERAL SURVEY 1 II. THE ORLÉANNAIS 30 III. THE BLAISOIS AND THE SOLOGNE 56 IV. CHAMBORD 94 V. CHEVERNY, BEAUREGARD, AND CHAUMONT 110 VI. TOURAINE: THE GARDEN SPOT OF FRANCE 128 VII. AMBOISE 148 VIII. CHENONCEAUX 171 IX. LOCHES 188 X. TOURS AND ABOUT THERE 203 XI. LUYNES AND LANGEAIS 221 XII. AZAY-LE-RIDEAU, USSÉ, AND CHINON 241 XIII. ANJOU AND BRETAGNE 273 XIV. SOUTH OF THE LOIRE 301 XV. BERRY AND GEORGE SAND'S COUNTRY 313 XVI. THE UPPER LOIRE 330 INDEX 337 List of Illustrations PAGE A PEASANT GIRL OF TOURAINE _Frontispiece_ ITINERARY OF THE LOIRE (MAP) facing 1 A LACE-MAKER OF THE UPPER LOIRE facing 4 THE LOIRE CHÂTEAUX (MAP) 9 THE ANCIENT PROVINCES OF THE LOIRE VALLEY AND THEIR CAPITALS (MAP) 15 THE LOIRE NEAR LA CHARITÉ facing 18 COIFFES OF AMBOISE AND ORLEANS facing 20 THE CHÂTEAUX OF THE LOIRE (MAP) facing 30 ENVIRONS OF ORLEANS (MAP) 39 THE LOIRET facing 42 THE LOIRE AT MEUNG facing 46 BEAUGENCY facing 50 ARMS OF THE CITY OF BLOIS 58 THE RIVERSIDE AT BLOIS facing 58 SIGNATURE OF FRANÇOIS PREMIER 60 CYPHER OF ANNE DE BRETAGNE, AT BLOIS 62 ARMS OF LOUIS XII. 65 CENTRAL DOORWAY, CHÂTEAU DE BLOIS facing 66 THE CHÂTEAUX OF BLOIS (DIAGRAM) 71 CYPHER OF FRANÇOIS PREMIER AND CLAUDE OF FRANCE, AT BLOIS 72 NATIVE TYPES IN THE SOLOGNE 89 DONJON OF MONTRICHARD facing 92 ARMS OF FRANÇOIS PREMIER, AT CHAMBORD 99 PLAN OF CHÂTEAU DE CHAMBORD 103 CHÂTEAU DE CHAMBORD facing 104 CHÂTEAU DE CHEVERNY facing 110 CHEVERNY-SUR-LOIRE 113 CHAUMONT facing 116 SIGNATURE OF DIANE DE POITIERS 118 THE LOIRE IN TOURAINE facing 134 THE VINTAGE IN TOURAINE facing 142 CHÂTEAU D'AMBOISE facing 148 SCULPTURE FROM THE CHAPELLE DE ST. HUBERT facing 164 CYPHER OF ANNE DE BRETAGNE, HÔTEL DE VILLE, AMBOISE 168 CHÂTEAU DE CHENONCEAUX facing 178 CHÂTEAU DE CHENONCEAUX (DIAGRAM) 179 LOCHES 189 LOCHES AND ITS CHURCH facing 192 SKETCH PLAN OF LOCHES 198 ST. OURS, LOCHES facing 198 TOURS facing 202 ARMS OF THE PRINTERS, _AVOCATS_, AND INNKEEPERS, TOURS 205 SCENE IN THE QUARTIER DE LA CATHÉDRALE, TOURS facing 208 PLESSIS-LES-TOURS IN THE TIME OF LOUIS XI. 213 ENVIRONS OF TOURS (MAP) 219 A VINEYARD OF VOUVRAY facing 222 MEDIÆVAL STAIRWAY AND THE CHÂTEAU DE LUYNES facing 224 RUINS OF CINQ-MARS facing 228 CHÂTEAU DE LANGEAIS facing 232 ARMS OF LOUIS XII. AND ANNE DE BRETAGNE 237 CHÂTEAU D'AZAY-LE-RIDEAU facing 244 CHÂTEAU D'USSÉ facing 248 THE ROOF-TOPS OF CHINON facing 252 RABELAIS 255 CHÂTEAU DE CHINON facing 258 CUISINES, FONTEVRAULT 265 CHÂTEAU DE SAUMUR facing 276 THE PONTS DE CÉ facing 284 CHÂTEAU D'ANGERS facing 288 ENVIRONS OF NANTES (MAP) 297 DONJON OF THE CHÂTEAU DE CLISSON facing 306 BERRY (MAP) 313 LA TOUR, SANCERRE 317 CHÂTEAU DE GIEN facing 318 CHÂTEAU DE VALENÇAY facing 322 GATEWAY OF MEHUN-SUR-YEVRE facing 324 LE CARRIOR DORÉ, ROMORANTIN 325 ÉGLISE S. AIGNAN, COSNE 331 POUILLY-SUR-LOIRE facing 332 PORTE DU CROUX, NEVERS facing 334 [Illustration: ITINERARY OF THE LOIRE (MAP)] Castles and Châteaux of Old Touraine and the Loire Country CHAPTER I. A GENERAL SURVEY Any account of the Loire and of the towns along its banks must naturally have for its chief mention Touraine and the long line of splendid feudal and Renaissance châteaux which reflect themselves so gloriously in its current. The Loire possesses a certain fascination and charm which many other more commercially great rivers entirely lack, and, while the element of absolute novelty cannot perforce be claimed for it, it has the merit of appealing largely to the lover of the romantic and the picturesque. A French writer of a hundred years ago dedicated his work on Touraine to "Le Baron de Langeais, le Vicomte de Beaumont, le Marquis de Beauregard, le Comte de Fontenailles, le Comte de Jouffroy-Gonsans, le Duc de Luynes, le Comte de Vouvray, le Comte de Villeneuve, _et als._;" and he might have continued with a directory of all the descendants of the _noblesse_ of an earlier age, for he afterward grouped them under the general category of "_Propriétaires des fortresses et châteaux les plus remarquables--au point de vue historique ou architectural_." He was fortunate in being able, as he said, to have had access to their "_papiers de famille_," their souvenirs, and to have been able to interrogate them in person. Most of his facts and his gossip concerning the personalities of the later generations of those who inhabited these magnificent establishments have come down to us through later writers, and it is fortunate that this should be the case, since the present-day aspect of the châteaux is ever changing, and one who views them to-day is chagrined when he discovers, for instance, that an iron-trussed, red-tiled wash-house has been built on the banks of the Cosson before the magnificent château of Chambord, and that somewhere within the confines of the old castle at Loches a shopkeeper has hung out his shingle, announcing a newly discovered dungeon in his own basement, accidentally come upon when digging a well. Balzac, Rabelais, and Descartes are the leading literary celebrities of Tours, and Balzac's "Le Lys dans la Vallée" will give one a more delightful insight into the old life of the Tourangeaux than whole series of guide-books and shelves of dry histories. Blois and its counts, Tours and its bishops, and Amboise and its kings, to say nothing of Fontevrault, redolent of memories of the Plantagenets, Nantes and its famous "Edict," and its equally infamous "Revocation," have left vivid impress upon all students of French history. Others will perhaps remember Nantes for Dumas's brilliant descriptions of the outcome of the Breton conspiracy. All of us have a natural desire to know more of historic ground, and whether we make a start by entering the valley of the Loire at the luxurious midway city of Tours, and follow the river first to the sea and then to the source, or make the journey from source to mouth, or vice versa, it does not matter in the least. We traverse the same ground and we meet the same varying conditions as we advance a hundred kilometres in either direction. Tours, for example, stands for all that is typical of the sunny south. Prune and palm trees thrust themselves forward in strong contrast to the cider-apples of the lower Seine. Below Tours one is almost at the coast, and the _tables d'hôte_ are abundantly supplied with sea-food of all sorts. Above Tours the Orléannais is typical of a certain well-to-do, matter-of-fact existence, neither very luxurious nor very difficult. Nevers is another step and resembles somewhat the opulence of Burgundy as to conditions of life, though the general aspect of the city, as well as a great part of its history, is Italian through and through. The last great step begins at Le Puy, in the great volcanic _Massif Centrale_, where conditions of life, if prosperous, are at least harder than elsewhere. Such are the varying characteristics of the towns and cities through which the Loire flows. They run the whole gamut from gay to earnest and solemn; from the ease and comfort of the country around Tours, almost sub-tropical in its softness, to the grime and smoke of busy St. Etienne, and the chilliness and rigours of a mountain winter at Le Puy. [Illustration: _A Lace-maker of the Upper Loire_] These districts are all very full of memories of events which have helped to build up the solidarity of France of to-day, though the Nantois still proudly proclaims himself a Breton, and the Tourangeau will tell you that his is the tongue, above all others, which speaks the purest French,--and so on through the whole category, each and every citizen of a _petit pays_ living up to his traditions to the fullest extent possible. In no other journey in France, of a similar length, will one see as many varying contrasts in conditions of life as he will along the length of the Loire, the broad, shallow river which St. Martin, Charles Martel, and Louis XI., the typical figures of church, arms, and state, came to know so well. Du Bellay, a poet of the Renaissance, has sung the praises of the Loire in a manner unapproached by any other topographical poet, if one may so call him, for that is what he really was in this particular instance. There is a great deal of patriotism in it all, too, and certainly no sweet singer of the present day has even approached these lines, which are eulogistic without being fulsome and fervent without being lurid. The verses have frequently been rendered into English, but the following is as good as any, and better than most translations, though it is one of those fragments of "newspaper verse" whose authors are lost in obscurity. "Mightier to me the house my fathers made, Than your audacious heads, O Halls of Rome! More than immortal marbles undecayed, The thin sad slates that cover up my home; More than your Tiber is my Loire to me, More Palatine my little Lyré there; And more than all the winds of all the sea, The quiet kindness of the Angevin air." In history the Loire valley is rich indeed, from the days of the ancient Counts of Touraine to those of Mazarin, who held forth at Nevers. Touraine has well been called the heart of the old French monarchy. Provincial France has a charm never known to Paris-dwellers. Balzac and Flaubert were provincials, and Dumas was a city-dweller,--and there lies the difference between them. Balzac has written most charmingly of Touraine in many of his books, in "Le Lys dans la Vallée" and "Le Curé de Tours" in particular; not always in complimentary terms, either, for he has said that the Tourangeaux will not even inconvenience themselves to go in search of pleasure. This does not bespeak indolence so much as philosophy, so most of us will not cavil. George Sand's country lies a little to the southward of Touraine, and Berry, too, as the authoress herself has said, has a climate "_souple et chaud, avec pluie abondant et courte_." The architectural remains in the Loire valley are exceedingly rich and varied. The feudal system is illustrated at its best in the great walled château at Angers, the still inhabited and less grand château at Langeais, the ruins at Cinq-Mars, and the very scanty remains of Plessis-les-Tours. The ecclesiastical remains are quite as great. The churches are, many of them, of the first rank, and the great cathedrals at Nantes, Angers, Tours, and Orleans are magnificent examples of the church-builders' art in the middle ages, and are entitled to rank among the great cathedrals, if not actually of the first class. With modern civic and other public buildings, the case is not far different. Tours has a gorgeous Hôtel de Ville, its architecture being of the most luxuriant of modern French Renaissance, while the railway stations, even, at both Tours and Orleans, are models of what railway stations should be, and in addition are decoratively beautiful in their appointments and arrangements,--which most railway stations are not. Altogether, throughout the Loire valley there is an air of prosperity which in a more vigorous climate is often lacking. This in spite of the alleged tendency in what is commonly known as a relaxing climate toward _laisser-aller_. Finally, the picturesque landscape of the Loire is something quite different from the harder, grayer outlines of the north. All is of the south, warm and ruddy, and the wooded banks not only refine the crudities of a flat shore-line, but form a screen or barrier to the flowering charms of the examples of Renaissance architecture which, in Touraine, at least, are as thick as leaves in Vallambrosa. Starting at Gien, the valley of the Loire begins to offer those monumental châteaux which have made its fame as the land of castles. From the old fortress-château of Gien to the Château de Clisson, or the Logis de la Duchesse Anne at Nantes, is one long succession of florid masterpieces, not to be equalled elsewhere. The true château region of Touraine--by which most people usually comprehend the Loire châteaux--commences only at Blois. Here the edifices, to a great extent, take on these superfine residential attributes which were the glory of the Renaissance period of French architecture. [Illustration: THE LOIRE CHÂTEAUX (MAP)] Both above and below Touraine, at Montrichard, at Loches, and Beaugency, are still to be found scattering examples of feudal fortresses and donjons which are as representative of their class as are the best Norman structures of the same era, the great fortresses of Arques, Falaise, Domfront, and Les Andelys being usually accounted as the types which gave the stimulus to similar edifices elsewhere. In this same versatile region also, beginning perhaps with the Orléannais, are a vast number of religious monuments equally celebrated. For instance, the church of St. Benoit-sur-Loire is one of the most important Romanesque churches in all France, and the cathedral of St. Gatien, with its "bejewelled façade," at Tours, the twin-spired St. Maurice at Angers, and even the pompous, and not very good Gothic, edifice at Orleans (especially noteworthy because its crypt is an ancient work anterior to the Capetian dynasty) are all wonderfully interesting and imposing examples of mediæval ecclesiastical architecture. Three great tributaries enter the Loire below Tours, the Cher, the Indre, and the Vienne. The first has for its chief attractions the Renaissance châteaux St. Aignan and Chenonceaux, the Roman remains of Chabris, Thézée, and Larçay, the Romanesque churches of Selles and St. Aignan, and the feudal donjon of Montrichard. The Indre possesses the château of Azay-le-Rideau and the sombre fortresses of Montbazon and Loches; while the Vienne depends for its chief interest upon the galaxy of fortress-châteaux at Chinon. The Loire is a mighty river and is navigable for nearly nine hundred kilometres of its length, almost to Le Puy, or, to be exact, to the little town of Vorey in the Department of the Haute Loire. At Orleans, Blois, or Tours one hardly realizes this, much less at Nevers. The river appears to be a great, tranquil, docile stream, with scarce enough water in its bed to make a respectable current, leaving its beds and bars of _sable_ and _cailloux_ bare to the sky. The scarcity of water, except at occasional flood, is the principal and obvious reason for the absence of water-borne traffic, even though a paternal ministerial department of the government calls the river navigable. At the times of the _grandes crues_ there are four metres or more registered on the big scale at the Pont d'Ancenis, while at other times it falls to less than a metre, and when it does there is a mere rivulet of water which trickles through the broad river-bottom at Chaumont, or Blois, or Orleans. Below Ancenis navigation is not so difficult, but the current is more strong. From Blois to Angers, on the right bank, extends a long dike which carries the roadway beside the river for a couple of hundred kilometres. This is one of the charms of travel by the Loire. The only thing usually seen on the bosom of the river, save an occasional fishing punt, is one of those great flat-bottomed ferry-boats, with a square sail hung on a yard amidships, such as Turner always made an accompaniment to his Loire pictures, for conditions of traffic on the river have not greatly changed. Whenever one sees a barge or a boat worthy of classification with those one finds on the rivers of the east or north, or on the great canals, it is only about a quarter of the usual size; so, in spite of its great navigable length, the waterway of the Loire is to be considered more as a picturesque and healthful element of the landscape than as a commercial proposition. Where the great canals join the river at Orleans, and from Chatillon to Roanne, the traffic increases, though more is carried by the canal-boats on the _Canal Latéral_ than by the barges on the Loire. It is only on the Loire between Angers and Nantes that there is any semblance of river traffic such as one sees on most of the other great waterways of Europe. There is a considerable traffic, too, which descends the Maine, particularly from Angers downward, for Angers with its Italian skies is usually thought of, and really is to be considered, as a Loire town, though it is actually on the banks of the Maine some miles from the Loire itself. One thousand or more bateaux make the ascent to Angers from the Loire at La Pointe each year, all laden with a miscellaneous cargo of merchandise. The Sarthe and the Loir also bring a notable agricultural traffic to the greater Loire, and the smaller confluents, the Dive, the Thouet, the Authion, and the Layon, all go to swell the parent stream until, when it reaches Nantes, the Loire has at last taken on something of the aspect of a well-ordered and useful stream, characteristics which above Nantes are painfully lacking. Because of its lack of commerce the Loire is in a certain way the most noble, magnificent, and aristocratic river of France; and so, too, it is also in respect to its associations of the past. It has not the grandeur of the Rhône when the spring freshets from the Jura and the Swiss lakes have filled it to its banks; it has not the burning activity of the Seine as it bears its thousands of boat-loads of produce and merchandise to and from the Paris market; it has not the prettiness of the Thames, nor the legendary aspect of the Rhine; but in a way it combines something of the features of all, and has, in addition, a tone that is all its own, as it sweeps along through its countless miles of ample curves, and holds within its embrace all that is best of mediæval and Renaissance France, the period which built up the later monarchy and, who shall not say, the present prosperous republic. Throughout most of the river's course, one sees, stretching to the horizon, row upon row of staked vineyards with fruit and leaves in luxuriant abundance and of all rainbow colours. The peasant here, the worker in the vineyards, is a picturesque element. He is not particularly brilliant in colouring, but he is usually joyous, and he invariably lives in a well-kept and brilliantly environed habitation and has an air of content and prosperity amid the well-beloved treasures of his household. The Loire is essentially a river of other days. Truly, as Mr. James has said, "It is the very model of a generous, beneficent stream ... a wide river which you may follow by a wide road is excellent company." The Frenchman himself is more flowery: "_C'est la plus noble rivière de France. Son domaine est immense et magnifique._" [Illustration: THE ANCIENT PROVINCES OF THE LOIRE VALLEY AND THEIR CAPITALS (MAP)] THE ANCIENT PROVINCES OF THE LOIRE VALLEY AND THEIR CAPITALS Bretagne Rennes Anjou Angers Touraine Tours Orléannais Orleans Berry Bourges Nivernais Nevers Bourbonnais Moulins Lyonnais Lyon Bourgogne Dijon Auvergne Clermont-Ferrand Languedoc Toulouse The Loire is the longest river in France, and the only one of the four great rivers whose basin or watershed lies wholly within French territory. It moreover traverses eleven provinces. It rises in a fissure of granite rock at the foot of the Gerbier-de-Jonc, a volcanic cone in the mountains of the Vivarais, a hundred kilometres or more south of Lyons. In three kilometres, approximately two miles, the little torrent drops a thousand feet, after receiving to its arms a tiny affluent coming from the Croix de Monteuse. For twelve kilometres the river twists and turns around the base of the Vivarais mountains, and finally enters a gorge between the rocks, and mingles with the waters of the little Lac d'Issarles, entering for the first time a flat lowland plain like that through which its course mostly runs. The monument-crowned pinnacles of Le Puy and the inverted bowl of Puy-de-Dôme rise high above the plain and point the way to Roanne, where such activity as does actually take place upon the Loire begins. Navigation, classed officially as "_flottable_," merely, has already begun at Vorey, just below Le Puy, but the traffic is insignificant. Meantime the streams coming from the direction of St. Etienne and Lyons have been added to the Loire, but they do not much increase its bulk. St. Galmier, the _source_ dear to patrons of _tables d'hôte_ on account of its palatable mineral water, which is about the only decent drinking-water one can buy at a reasonable price, lies but a short distance away to the right. At St. Rambert the plain of Forez is entered, and here the stream is enriched by numberless rivulets which make their way from various sources through a thickly wooded country. From Roanne onward, the _Canal Latéral_ keeps company with the Loire to Chatillon, not far from Orleans. Before reaching Nevers, the _Canal du Nivernais_ branches off to the left and joins the Loire with the Yonne at Auxerre. Daudet tells of the life of the _Canal du Nivernais_, in "La Belle Nivernaise," in a manner too convincingly graphic for any one else to attempt the task, in fiction or out of it. Like the Tartarin books, "La Belle Nivernaise" is distinctly local, and forms of itself an excellent guide to a little known and little visited region. At Nevers the topography changes, or rather, the characteristics of the life of the country round about change, for the topography, so far as its profile is concerned, remains much the same for three-fourths the length of this great river. Nevers, La Charité, Sancerre, Gien, and Cosne follow in quick succession, all reminders of a historic past as vivid as it was varied. From the heights of Sancerre one sees a wonderful history-making panorama before him. Cæsar crossed the Loire at Gien, the Franks forded the river at La Charité, when they first went against Aquitaine, and Charles the Bald came sadly to grief on a certain occasion at Pouilly. It is here that the Loire rises to its greatest flood, and hundreds of times, so history tells, from 490 to 1866, the fickle river has caused a devastation so great and terrible that the memory of it is not yet dead. This hardly seems possible of this usually tranquil stream, and there have always been scoffers. Madame de Sévigné wrote in 1675 to M. de Coulanges (but in her case perhaps it was mere well-wishing), "_La belle Loire, elle est un peu sujette à se déborder, mais elle en est plus douce_." Ancient writers were wont to consider the inundations of the Loire as a punishment from Heaven, and even in later times the superstition--if it was a superstition--still remained. [Illustration: _The Loire near La Charité_] In 1825, when thousands of charcoal-burners (_charbonniers_) were all but ruined, they petitioned the government for assistance. The official who had the matter in charge, and whose name--fortunately for his fame--does not appear to have been recorded, replied simply that the flood was a periodical condition of affairs which the Almighty brought about as occasion demanded, with good cause, and for this reason he refused all assistance. Important public works have done much to prevent repetitions of these inundations, but the danger still exists, and always, in a wet season, there are those dwellers along the river's banks who fear the rising flood as they would the plague. Chatillon, with its towers; Gien, a busy hive of industry, though with a historic past; Sully; and St. Benoit-sur-Loire, with its unique double transepted church; all pass in rapid review, and one enters the ancient capital of the Orléannais quite ready for the new chapter which, in colouring, is to be so different from that devoted to the upper valley. From Orleans, south, one passes through a veritable wonderland of fascinating charms. Châteaux, monasteries, and great civic and ecclesiastical monuments pass quickly in turn. Then comes Touraine which all love, the river meantime having grown no more swift or ample, nor any more sluggish or attenuated. It is simply the same characteristic flow which one has known before. The landscape only is changing, while the fruits and flowers, and the trees and foliage are more luxuriant, and the great châteaux are more numerous, splendid, and imposing. Of his well-beloved Touraine, Balzac wrote: "Do not ask me _why_ I love Touraine; I love it not merely as one loves the cradle of his birth, nor as one loves an oasis in a desert, but as an artist loves his art." Blois, with its bloody memories; Chaumont, splendid and retired; Chambord, magnificent, pompous, and bare; Amboise, with its great tower high above the river, follow in turn till the Loire makes its regal entrée into Tours. "What a spectacle it is," wrote Sterne in "Tristram Shandy," "for a traveller who journeys through Touraine at the time of the vintage." And then comes the final step which brings the traveller to where the limpid waters of the Loire mingle with the salty ocean, and what a triumphant meeting it is! [Illustration: _Coiffes of Amboise and Orleans_] Most of the cities of the Loire possess but one bridge, but Tours has three, and, as becomes a great provincial capital, sits enthroned upon the river-bank in mighty splendour. The feudal towers of the Château de Luynes are almost opposite, and Cinq-Mars, with its pagan "_pile_" and the ruins of its feudal castle high upon a hill, points the way down-stream like a mariner's beacon. Langeais follows, and the Indre, the Cher, and the Vienne, all ample and historic rivers, go to swell the flood which passes under the bridges of Saumur, Ancenis, and Ponts de Cé. From Tours to the ocean, the Loire comes to its greatest amplitude, though even then, in spite of its breadth, it is, for the greater part of the year, impotent as to the functions of a great river. Below Angers the Loire receives its first great affluent coming from the country lying back of the right bank: the Maine itself is a considerable river. It rises far up in the Breton peninsula, and before it empties itself into the Loire, it has been aggrandized by three great tributaries, the Loir, the Sarthe, and the Mayenne. Here in this backwater of the Loire, as one might call it, is as wonderful a collection of natural beauties and historical châteaux as on the Loire itself. Châteaudun, Mayenne, and Vendôme are historic ground of superlative interest, and the great castle at Châteaudun is as magnificent in its way as any of the monuments of the Loire. Vendôme has a Hôtel de Ville which is an admirable relic of a feudal edifice, and the _clocher_ of its church, which dominates many square leagues of country, is counted as one of the most perfectly disposed church spires in existence, as lovely, almost, as Texier's masterwork at Chartres, or the needle-like _flêches_ at Strasburg or Freiburg in Breisgau. The Maine joins the Loire just below Angers, at a little village significantly called La Pointe. Below La Pointe are St. Georges-sur-Loire, and three _châteaux de commerce_ which give their names to the three principal Angevin vineyards: Château Serrand, l'Epinay, and Chevigné. Vineyard after vineyard, and château after château follow rapidly, until one reaches the Ponts de Cé with their _petite ville_,--all very delightful. Not so the bridge at Ancenis, where the flow of water is marked daily on a huge black and white scale. The bridge is quite the ugliest wire-rope affair to be seen on the Loire, and one is only too glad to leave it behind, though it is with a real regret that he parts from Ancenis itself. Some years ago one could go from Angers to St. Nazaire by boat. It must have been a magnificent trip, extraordinarily calm and serene, amid an abundance of picturesque details; old châteaux and bridges in strong contrast to the prairies of Touraine and the Orléannais. One embarked at the foot of the stupendously towered château of King René, and for a _petite heure_ navigated the Maine in the midst of great _chalands_, fussy little _remorqueurs_ and _barques_ until La Pointe was reached, when the Loire was followed to Nantes and St. Nazaire. To-day this fine trip is denied one, the boats going only so far as La Pointe. Below Angers the Loire flows around and about a veritable archipelago of islands and islets, cultivated with all the luxuriance of a back-yard garden, and dotted with tiny hamlets of folk who are supremely happy and content with their lot. Some currents which run behind the islands are swift flowing and impetuous, while others are practically elongated lakes, as dead as those _lômes_ which in certain places flank the Saône and the Rhône. All these various branches are united as the Loire flows between the piers of the ungainly bridge of the Chemin-de-fer de Niort as it crosses the river at Chalonnes. Champtocé and Montjean follow, each with an individuality all its own. Here the commerce takes on an increased activity, thanks to the great national waterway known as the "Canal de Brest à Nantes." Here at the busy port of Montjean--which the Angevins still spell and pronounce _Montéjean_--the Loire takes on a breadth and grandeur similar to the great rivers in the western part of America. Montjean is dominated by a fine ogival church, with a battery of arcs-boutants which are a joy in themselves. On the other bank, lying back of a great plain, which stretches away from the river itself, is Champtocé, pleasantly situated on the flank of a hill and dominated by the ruins of a thirteenth-century château which belonged to the cruel Gilles de Retz, somewhat apocryphally known to history as "Barbe-bleu"--not the Bluebeard of the nursery tale, who was of Eastern origin, but a sort of Occidental successor who was equally cruel and bloodthirsty in his attitude toward his whilom wives. From this point on one comes within the sphere of influence of Nantes, and there is more or less of a suburban traffic on the railway, and the plodders cityward by road are more numerous than the mere vagabonds of the countryside. The peasant women whom one meets wear a curious bonnet, set on the head well to the fore, with wings at the side folded back quite like the pictures that one sees of the mediæval dames of these parts, a survival indeed of the middle ages. The Loire becomes more and more animated and occasionally there is a great tow of boats like those that one sees continually passing on the lower Seine. Here the course of the Loire takes on a singular aspect. It is filled with long flat islands, sometimes in archipelagos, but often only a great flat prairie surrounded by a tranquil canal, wide and deep, and with little resemblance to the mistress Loire of a hundred or two kilometres up-stream. All these isles are in a high state of cultivation, though wholly worked with the hoe and the spade, both of them of a primitiveness that might have come down from Bible times; rare it is to see a horse or a harrow on these "bouquets of verdure surrounded by waves." Near Oudon is one of those monumental follies which one comes across now and then in most foreign countries: a great edifice which serves no useful purpose, and which, were it not for certain redeeming features, would be a sorry thing indeed. The "Folie-Siffait," a citadel which perches itself high upon the summit of a hill, was--and is--an _amusette_ built by a public-spirited man of Nantes in order that his workmen might have something to do in a time of a scarcity of work. It is a bizarre, incredible thing, but the motive which inspired its erection was most worthy, and the roadway running beneath, piercing its foundation walls, gives a theatrical effect which, in a way, makes it the picturesque rival of many a more famous Rhine castle. The river valley widens out here at Oudon, practically the frontier of Bretagne and Anjou. The railroad pierces the rock walls of the river with numerous tunnels along the right bank, and the Vendean country stretches far to the southward in long rolling hills quite unlike any of the characteristics of other parts of the valley. Finally, the vast plain of Mauves comes into sight, beautifully coloured with a white and iron-stained rocky background which is startlingly picturesque in its way, if not wholly beautiful according to the majority of standards. Next comes what a Frenchman has called a "tumultuous vision of Nantes." To-day the very ancient and historic city which grew up from the Portus Namnetum and the Condivicnum of the Romans is indeed a veritable tumult of chimneys, masts, and locomotives. But all this will not detract one jot from its reputation of being one of the most delightful of provincial capitals, and the smoke and activity of its port only tend to accentuate a note of colour that in the whole itinerary of the Loire has been but pale. Below Nantes the Loire estuary has turned the surrounding country into a little Holland, where fisherfolk and their boats, with sails of red and blue, form charming symphonies of pale colour. In the _cabarets_ along its shores there is a strange medley of peasants, sea-farers, and fisher men and women. Not so cosmopolitan a crew as one sees in the harbourside _cabarets_ at Marseilles, or even Le Havre, but sufficiently strange to be a fascination to one who has just come down from the headwaters. The "Section Maritime," from Nantes to the sea, is a matter of some sixty kilometres. Here the boats increase in number and size. They are known as _gabares_, _chalands_, and _alléges_, and go down with the river-current and return on the incoming ebb, for here the river is tidal. Gray and green is the aspect at the Loire's source, and green and gray it still is, though of a decidedly different colour-value, at St. Nazaire, below Nantes, the real deep-water port of the Loire. By this time the river has amplified into a broad estuary which is lost in the incoming and outgoing tides of the Bay of Biscay. For nearly a thousand kilometres the Loire has wound its way gently and broadly through rocky escarpments, fertile plains, populous and luxurious towns,--all of it historic ground,--by stately châteaux and through vineyards and fruit orchards, with a placid grandeur. Now it becomes more or less prosaic and matter-of-fact, though in a way no less interesting, as it takes on some of the attributes of the outside world. This outline, then, approximates somewhat a portrait of the Loire. It is the result of many pilgrimages enthusiastically undertaken; a long contemplation of the charms of perhaps the most beautiful river in France, from its source to its mouth, at all seasons of the year. The riches and curios of the cities along its banks have been contemplated with pleasure, intermingled with a memory of many stirring scenes of the past, but it is its châteaux that make it famous. The story of the châteaux has been told before in hundreds of volumes, but only a personal view of them will bring home to one the manners and customs of one of the most luxurious periods of life in the France of other days. CHAPTER II. THE ORLÉANNAIS Of the many travelled English and Americans who go to Paris, how few visit the Loire valley with its glorious array of mediæval and Renaissance châteaux. No part of France, except Paris, is so accessible, and none is so comfortably travelled, whether by road or by rail. At Orleans one is at the very gateway of this splendid, bountiful region, the lower valley of the Loire. Here the river first takes on a complexion which previously it had lacked, for it is only when the Loire becomes the boundary-line between the north and the south that one comes to realize its full importance. The Orléannais, like many another province of mid-France, is a region where plenty awaits rich and poor alike. Not wholly given over to agriculture, nor yet wholly to manufacturing, it is without that restless activity of the frankly industrial centres of the north. In spite of this, though, the Orléannais is not idle. [Illustration: THE CHÂTEAUX OF THE LOIRE (MAP)] Orleans is the obvious _pointe de départ_ for all the wonderland of the Renaissance which is to follow, but itself and its immediate surroundings have not the importance for the visitor, in spite of the vivid historical chapters which have been written here in the past, that many another less famous city possesses. By this is meant that the existing monuments of history are by no means as numerous or splendid here as one might suppose. Not that they are entirely lacking, but rather that they are of a different species altogether from that array of magnificently planned châteaux which line the banks of the Loire below. To one coming from the north the entrance to the Orléannais will be emphatically marked. It is the first experience of an atmosphere which, if not characteristically or climatically of the south, is at least reminiscent thereof, with a luminosity which the provinces of old France farther north entirely lack. As Lavedan, the Académicien, says: "Here all focuses itself into one great picture, the combined romance of an epoch. Have you not been struck with a land where the clouds, the atmosphere, the odour of the soil, and the breezes from afar, all comport, one with another, in true and just proportions?" This is the Orléannais, a land where was witnessed the morning of the Valois, the full noon of Louis XIV., and the twilight of Louis XVI. The Orléannais formed a distinct part of mediæval France, as it did, ages before, of western Gaul. Of all the provinces through which the Loire flows, the Orléannais is as prolific as any of great names and greater events, and its historical monuments, if not so splendid as those in Touraine, are no less rare. Orleans itself contains many remarkable Gothic and Renaissance constructions, and not far away is the ancient church of the old abbey of Notre Dame de Cléry, one of the most historic and celebrated shrines in the time of the superstitious Louis XI.; while innumerable mediæval villes and ruined fortresses plentifully besprinkle the province. One characteristic possessed by the Orléannais differentiates it from the other outlying provinces of the old monarchy. The people and the manners and customs of this great and important duchy were allied, in nearly all things, with the interests and events of the capital itself, and so there was always a lack of individuality, which even to-day is noticeably apparent in the Orleans capital. The shops, hotels, cafés, and the people themselves might well be one of the _quartiers_ of Paris, so like are they in general aspect. The notable Parisian character of the inhabitants of Orleans, and the resemblance of the people of the surrounding country to those of the Ile of France, is due principally to the fact that the Orléannais was never so isolated as many others of the ancient provinces. It was virtually a neighbour of the capital, and its relations with it were intimate and numerous. Moreover, it was favoured by a great number of lines of communication by road and by water, so that its manners and customs became, more or less unconsciously, interpolations. The great event of the year in Orleans is the Fête de Jeanne d'Arc, which takes place in the month of May. Usually few English and American visitors are present, though why it is hard to reason out, for it takes place at quite the most delightful season in the year. Perhaps it is because Anglo-Saxons are ashamed of the part played by their ancestors in the shocking death of the maid of Domremy and Orleans. Innumerable are the relics and reminders of the "Maid" scattered throughout the town, and the local booksellers have likewise innumerable and authoritative accounts of the various episodes of her life, which saves the necessity of making further mention here. There are several statues of Jeanne d'Arc in the city, and they have given rise to the following account written by Jules Lemaitre, the Académicien: "I believe that the history of Jeanne d'Arc was the first that was ever told to me (before even the fairy-tales of Perrault). The 'Mort de Jeanne d'Arc,' of Casimir Delavigne, was the first fable that I learned, and the equestrian statue of the 'Maid,' in the Place Martroi, at Orleans, is perhaps the oldest vision that my memory guards. "This statue of Jeanne d'Arc is absurd. She has a Grecian profile, and a charger which is not a war-horse but a race-horse. Nevertheless to me it was noble and imposing. "In the courtyard of the Hôtel de Ville is a _petite pucelle_, very gentle and pious, who holds against her heart her sword, after the manner of a crucifix. At the end of the bridge across the Loire is another Jeanne d'Arc, as the maid of war, surrounded by swirling draperies, as in a picture of Juvenet's. This to me tells the whole story of the reverence with which the martyred 'Maid' is regarded in the city of Orleans by the Loire." One can appreciate all this, and to the full, for a Frenchman is a stern critic of art, even that of his own countrymen, and Jeanne d'Arc, along with some other celebrities, is one of those historical figures which have seldom had justice done them in sculptured or pictorial representations. The best, perhaps, is the precocious Lepage's fine painting, now in America. What would not the French give for the return of this work of art? The Orléannais, with the Ile de France, formed the particular domain of the third race of French monarchs. From 1364 to 1498 the province was an appanage known as the Duché d'Orleans, but it was united with the Crown by Louis XII., and finally divided into the Departments of Loir et Cher, Eure et Loir, and Loiret. Like the "pardons" and "benedictions" of Finistère and other parts of Bretagne, the peasants of the Loiret have a quaint custom which bespeaks a long handed-down superstition. On the first Sunday of Lent they hie themselves to the fields with lighted fagots and chanting the following lines: "Sortez, sortez d'ici mulots! Où je vais vous brûler les crocs! Quittez, quittez ces blés; Allez, vous trouverez Dans la cave du curé Plus à boire qu' à manger." Just how far the curé endorses these sentiments, the author of this book does not know. The explanation of the rather extraordinary proceeding came from one of the participants, who, having played his part in the ceremony, dictated the above lines over sundry _petits verres_ paid for by the writer. The day is not wound up, however, with an orgy of eating and drinking, as is sometimes the case in far-western Brittany. The peasant of the Loiret simply eats rather heavily of "_mi_," which is nothing more or less than oatmeal porridge, after which he goes to bed. The Loire rolls down through the Orléannais, from Châteauneuf-sur-Loire and Jargeau, and cuts the banks of _sable_, and the very shores themselves, into little capes and bays which are delightful in their eccentricity. Here cuts in the _Canal d'Orleans_, which makes possible the little traffic that goes on between the Seine and the Loire. A few kilometres away from the right bank of the Loire, in the heart of the Gatanais, is Lorris, the home of Guillaume de Lorris, the first author of the "Roman de la Rose." For this reason alone it should become a literary shrine of the very first rank, though, in spite of its claim, no one ever heard of a literary pilgrim making his way there. Lorris is simply a big, overgrown French market-town, which is delightful enough in its somnolence, but which lacks most of the attributes which tourists in general seem to demand. At Lorris a most momentous treaty was signed, known as the "Paix de Lorris," wherein was assured to the posterity of St. Louis the heritage of the Comte de Toulouse, another of those periodical territorial aggrandizements which ultimately welded the French nation into the whole that it is to-day. From the juncture of the _Canal d'Orleans_ with the Loire one sees shining in the brilliant sunlight the roof-tops of Orleans, the Aurelianum of the Romans, its hybrid cathedral overtopping all else. It was Victor Hugo who said of this cathedral: "This odious church, which from afar holds so much of promise, and which near by has none," and Hugo undoubtedly spoke the truth. Orleans is an old city and a _cité neuve_. Where the river laps its quays, it is old but commonplace; back from the river is a strata which is really old, fine Gothic house-fronts and old leaning walls; while still farther from the river, as one approaches the railway station, it is strictly modern, with all the devices and appliances of the newest of the new. The Orleans of history lies riverwards,--the Orleans where the heart of France pulsed itself again into life in the tragic days which were glorified by "the Maid." "The countryside of the Orléannais has the monotony of a desert," said an English traveller some generations ago. He was wrong. To do him justice, however, or to do his observations justice, he meant, probably, that, save the river-bottom of the Loire, the great plain which begins with La Beauce and ends with the Sologne has a comparatively uninteresting topography. This is true; but it is not a desert. La Beauce is the best grain-growing region in all France, and the Sologne is now a reclaimed land whose sandy soil has proved admirably adapted to an unusually abundant growth of the vine. So much for this old-time point of view, which to-day has changed considerably. The Orléannais is one of the most populous and progressive sections of all France, and its inhabitants, per square kilometre, are constantly increasing in numbers, which is more than can be said of every _département_. There are multitudes of tiny villages, and one is scarcely ever out of sight and sound of a habitation. [Illustration: _ENVIRONS of ORLEANS_ (MAP)] In the great forest, just to the west of Orleans, are two small villages, each a celebrated battle-ground, and a place of a patriotic pilgrimage on the eighth and ninth of November of each year. They are Coulmiers and Bacon, and here some fugitives from Metz and Sedan, with some young troops exposed to fire for the first time, engaged with the Prussians (in 1870) who had occupied Orleans since mid-October. There is the usual conventional "soldiers' monument,"--with considerably more art about it than is usually seen in America,--before which Frenchmen seemingly never cease to worship. This same _Forêt d'Orleans_, one of those wild-woods which so plentifully besprinkle France, has a sad and doleful memory in the traditions of the druidical inhabitants of a former day. Their practices here did not differ greatly from those of their brethren elsewhere, but local history is full of references to atrocities so bloodthirsty that it is difficult to believe that they were ever perpetrated under the guise of religion. Surrounding the forest are many villages and hamlets, war-stricken all in the dark days of seventy-one, when the Prussians were overrunning the land. Of all the cities of the Loire, Orleans, Blois, Tours, Angers, and Nantes alone show any spirit of modern progressiveness or of likeness to the capital. The rest, to all appearances, are dead, or at least sleeping in their pasts. But they are charming and restful spots for all that, where in melancholy silence sit the old men, while the younger folk, including the very children, are all at work in the neighbouring vineyards or in the wheat-fields of La Beauce. Meung-sur-Loire and Beaugency sleep on the river-bank, their proud monuments rising high in the background,--the massive tower of Cæsar and a quartette of church spires. Just below Orleans is the juncture of the Loiret and the Loire at St. Mesmin, while only a few kilometres away is Cléry, famed for its associations of Louis XI. The Loiret is not a very ample river, and is classed by the Minister of Public Works as navigable for but four kilometres of its length. This, better than anything else, should define its relative importance among the great waterways of France. Navigation, as it is known elsewhere, is practically non-existent. The course of the Loiret is perhaps twelve kilometres all told, but it has given its name to a great French _département_, though it is doubtless the shortest of all the rivers of France thus honoured. It first comes to light in the dainty park of the Château de la Source, where there are two distinct sources. The first forms a small circular basin, known as the "Bouillon," which leads into another semicircular basin called the "Bassin du Miroir," from the fact that it reflects the façade of the château in its placid surface. Of course, this is all very artificial and theatrical, but it is a pretty conceit nevertheless. The other source, known as the "Grande Source," joins the rivulet some hundreds of yards below the "Bassin du Miroir." The Château de la Source is a seventeenth-century edifice, of no great architectural beauty in itself, but sufficiently sylvan in its surroundings to give it rank as one of the notable places of pilgrimage for tourists who, said a cynical French writer, "take the châteaux of the Loire _tour à tour_ as they do the morgue, the Moulin Rouge, and the sewers of Paris." In the early days the château belonged to the Cardinal Briçonnet, and it was here that Bolingbroke, after having been stripped of his titles in England, went into retirement in 1720. In 1722 he received Voltaire, who read him his "Henriade." [Illustration: THE LOIRET] In 1815 the invading Prince Eckmühl, with his staff, installed himself in the château, when, after Waterloo, the Prussian and French armies were separated only by a barrier placed midway on the bridge at Orleans. It was here also that the Prussian army was disbanded, on the agreement of the council held at Angerville, near Orleans. There are three other châteaux on the borders of the Loiret, which are of more than ordinary interest, so far as great country houses and their surroundings go, though their histories are not very striking, with perhaps the exception of the Château de la Fontaine, which has a remarkable garden, laid out by Lenôtre, the designer of the parks at Versailles. Leaving Orleans by the right bank of the Loire, one first comes to La Chapelle-St. Mesmin. La Chapelle has a church dating from the eleventh century and a château which is to-day the _maison de campagne_ of the Bishop of Orleans. On the opposite bank was the Abbaye de Micy, founded by Clovis at the time of his conversion. A stone cross, only, marks the site to-day. St. Ay follows next, and is usually set down in the guide-books as "celebrated for good wines." This is not to be denied for a moment, and it is curious to note that the city bears the same name as the famous town in the champagne district, celebrated also for good wine, though of a different kind. The name of the Orléannais Ay is gained from a hermitage founded here by a holy man, who died in the sixth century. His tomb was discovered in 1860, under the choir of the church, which makes it a place of pilgrimage of no little local importance. At Meung-sur-Loire one should cross the river to Cléry, five kilometres off, seldom if ever visited by casual travellers. But why? Simply because it is overlooked in that universal haste shown by most travellers--who are not students of art or architecture, or deep lovers of history--in making their way to more popular shrines. One will not regret the time taken to visit Cléry, which shared with Our Lady of Embrun the devotions of Louis XI. Cléry's three thousand pastoral inhabitants of to-day would never give it distinction, and it is only the Maison de Louis XI. and the Basilique de Notre Dame which makes it worth while, but this is enough. In "Quentin Durward" one reads of the time when the superstitious Louis was held in captivity by the Burgundian, Charles the Bold, and of how the French king made his devotions before the little image, worn in his hat, of the Virgin of Cléry; "the grossness of his superstition, none the less than his fickleness, leading him to believe Our Lady of Cléry to be quite a different person from the other object of his devotion, the Madonna of Embrun, a tiny mountain village in southwestern France. "'Sweet Lady of Cléry,' he exclaimed, clasping his hands and beating his breast as he spoke, 'Blessed Mother of Mercy! thou who art omnipotent with omnipotence, have compassion with me, a sinner! It is true I have sometimes neglected you for thy blessed sister of Embrun; but I am a king, my power is great, my wealth boundless; and were it otherwise, I would double my _gabelle_ on my subjects rather than not pay my debts to you both.'" Louis endowed the church at Cléry, and the edifice was built in the fine flamboyant style of the period, just previous to his death, which De Commines gives as "_le samedy pénultième jour d'Aoust, l'an mil quatre cens quatre-vingtz et trois, à huit heures du soir_." Louis XI. was buried here, and the chief "sight" is of course his tomb, beside which is a flagstone which covers the heart of Charles VIII. The Chapelle St. Jacques, within the church, is ornamented by a series of charming sculptures, and the Chapelle des Dunois-Longueville holds the remains of the famous ally of Jeanne d'Arc and members of his family. In the choir is the massive oaken statue of Our Lady of Cléry (thirteenth century); the very one before which Louis made his vows. There is some old glass in the choir and a series of sculptured stalls, which would make famous a more visited and better known shrine. There is a fine sculptured stone portal to the sacristy, and within there are some magnificent old _armoires_, and also two chasubles, which saw service in some great church, perhaps here, in the times of Louis himself. The "Maison de Louis XI.," near the church, is a house of brick, restored in 1651, and now--or until a very recent date--occupied by a community of nuns. In the Grande Rue is another "Maison de Louis XI.;" at least it has his cipher on the painted ceiling. It is now occupied by the Hôtel de la Belle Image. Those who like to dine and sleep where have also dined and slept royal heads will appreciate putting up at this hostelry. [Illustration: _The Loire at Meung_] Meung-sur-Loire was the birthplace of Jehan Clopinel, better known as Jean de Meung, who continued Guillaume de Lorris's "Roman de la Rose," the most famous bit of verse produced by the _trouvères_ of the thirteenth century. The voice of the troubadour was soon after hushed for ever, but that thirteenth-century masterwork--though by two hands and the respective portions unequal in merit--lives for ever as the greatest of its kind. In memory of the author, Meung has its Rue Jehan de Meung, for want of a more effective or appealing monument. Dumas opens the history of "Les Trois Mousquétaires" with the following brilliantly romantic lines anent Meung: "_Le premier lundi du mois d'Avril, 1625, le bourg de Meung, où naquit l'auteur du 'Roman de la Rose.'_" (One of the authors, he should have said, but here is where Dumas nodded, as he frequently did.) Continuing, one reads: "The town was in a veritable uproar. It was as if the Huguenots were up in arms and the drama of a second Rochelle was being enacted." Really the description is too brilliant and entrancing to be repeated here, and if any one has forgotten his Dumas to the extent that he has forgotten D'Artagnan's introduction to the hostelry of the "Franc Meunier," he is respectfully referred back to that perennially delightful romance. Meung was once a Roman fortress, known as Maudunum, and in the eleventh century St. Liphard founded a monastery here. In the fifteenth century Meung was the prison of François Villon. Poor vagabond as he was then, it has become the fashion to laud both the personality and the poesy of Maître François Villon. By the orders of Thibaut d'Aussigny, Bishop of Orleans, Villon was confined in a strong tower attached to the side of the _clocher_ of the parish church of St. Liphard, and which adjoined the _château de plaisance_ belonging to the bishop. Primarily this imprisonment was due to a robbery in which the poet had been concerned at Orleans. He spent the whole of the summer in this dungeon, which was overrun with rats, and into which he had to be lowered by ropes. As his food consisted of bread and water only, his sufferings at this time were probably greater than at any other period in his life. Here the burglar-poet remained until October, 1461, when Louis XI. visited Meung, and, to mark the occasion, ordered the release of all prisoners. For this delivery, Villon, according to the accounts of his life, appears to have been genuinely grateful to the king. At Beaugency, seven kilometres from Meung, one comes upon an architectural and historical treat which is unexpected. In the eleventh century Beaugency was a fief of the bishopric of Amiens, and its once strong château was occupied by the Barons de Landry, the last of whom died, without children, in the thirteenth century. Philippe-le-Bel bought the fief and united it with the Comté de Blois. It was made an independent _comté_ of itself in 1569, and in 1663 became definitely an appanage of Orleans. The Prince de Galles took Beaugency in 1359, the Gascons in 1361, Duguesclin in 1370 and again in 1417; in 1421 and in 1428 it was taken by the English, from whom it was delivered by Jeanne d'Arc in 1429. Internal wars and warfares continued for another hundred and fifty years, finally culminating in one of the grossest scenes which had been enacted within its walls,--the bloody revenge against the Protestants, encouraged doubtless by the affair of St. Bartholomew's night at Paris. The ancient square donjon of the eleventh century, known as the Tour de César, still looms high above the town. It must be one of the hugest keeps in all France. The old château of the Dunois is now a charitable institution, but reflects, in a way, the splendour of its fourteenth-century inception, and its Salle de Jeanne d'Arc, with its great chimneypiece, is worthy to rank with the best of its kind along the Loire. The spiral staircase, of which the Loire builders were so fond, is admirable here, and dates from 1530. The Hôtel de Ville of Beaugency is a charming edifice of the very best of Renaissance, which many more pretentious structures of the period are not. It dates from 1526, and was entirely restored--not, however, to its detriment, as frequently happens--in the last years of the nineteenth century. Its charm, nevertheless, lies mostly in its exterior, for little remains of value within except a remarkable series of old embroideries taken from the choir of the old abbey of Beaugency. The Église de Notre Dame is a Romanesque structure with Gothic interpolations. It is not bad in its way, but decidedly is not remarkable as mediæval churches go. The old streets of Beaugency contain a dazzling array of old houses in wood and stone, and in the Rue des Templiers is a rare example of Romanesque civil architecture; at least the type is rare enough in the Orléannais, though more frequently seen in the south of France. The Tour St. Firmin dates from 1530, and is all that remains of a church which stood here up to revolutionary times. The square ruined towers known as the Porte Tavers are relics of the city's old walls and gates, and are all that are left to mark the ancient enclosure. [Illustration: _Beaugency_] The Tour du Diable and the house of the ruling abbot remain to suggest the power and magnificence of the great abbey which was built here in the tenth century. In 1567 it was burned, and later restored, but beyond the two features just mentioned there is nothing to indicate its former uses, the remaining structures having passed into private hands and being devoted to secular uses. The old bridge which crosses the Loire at this point is most curious, and dates from various epochs. It is 440 metres in length, and is composed of twenty-six arches, one of which dates from the fourteenth century, when bridge-building was really an art. Eight of the present-day arches are of wood, and on the second is a monolith surmounted by a figure of Christ in bronze, replacing a former chapel to St. Jacques. A chapel on a bridge is not a unique arrangement, but few exist to-day, one of the most famous being, perhaps, that on the ruined bridge of St. Bénezet at Avignon. Altogether, Beaugency, as it sleeps its life away after the strenuous days of the middle ages, is more lovable by far than a great metropolis. The traveller is well repaid who makes a stop at Beaugency a part of a three days' gentle ramble among the usually neglected towns and villages of the Orléannais and the Blaisois, instead of rushing through to Blois by express-train, which is what one usually does. Southward one's route lies through pleasant vineyards, on one side the Sologne, and on the other the Coteau de Guignes, which latter ranks as quite the best among the vine-growing districts of the Orléannais. Near Tavers is a natural curiosity in the shape of the "Fontaine des Sables Mouvants," where the sands of a tiny spring boil and bubble like a miniature geyser. Mer, another small town, follows, twelve kilometres farther on. Like Beaugency it is a somnolent bourg, and the life of the peasant folk round about, who go to market on one day at Beaugency and on another at Blois, and occasionally as far away as Orleans, is much the same as it was a century ago. There is a Boulevard de la Gare and a Grande Rue at Mer, the latter leading to a fine Gothic church with a fifteenth-century tower, which is admirable in every way, and forms a beacon by land for many miles around. The primitive church at Mer dates from the eleventh century, the side walls, however, being all that remain of that period. There is a sculptured pulpit of the seventeenth century, and a great painting, which looks ancient and is certainly a masterful work of art, representing an "Adoration of the Magi." When all is said and done, it is its irresistible and inexpressible charm which makes Mer well-beloved, rather than any great wealth of artistic atmosphere of any nature. Away to the south, across the Loire to Muides, runs the route to Chambord, through the Sologne, where immediately the whole aspect of life changes from that on the borders of the rich grain-lands of the Orléannais and La Beauce. All the way from Beaugency to Blois the Loire threads its way through a lovely country, whose rolling slopes, back from the river, are surmounted here and there by windmills, a not very frequent adjunct to the landscape of France, except in the north. Near Mer is Menars, with its eighteenth-century château of La Pompadour; Suèvres, the site of an ancient Roman city; the lowlands lying before Chambord; St. Die; Montlivault; St. Claude, and a score of little villages which are entrancing in their old-world aspect even in these days of progress. This completes the panorama to Blois which, with the Blaisois, forms the borderland between the Orléannais and Touraine. Before reaching Blois, Menars, at any rate, commands attention. It fronts upon the Loire, but is practically upon the northern border of the Forêt de Blois, hence properly belongs to the Blaisois. Menars was made a rendezvous for the chase by the wily and pleasure-loving La Pompadour, who quartered herself at the château, which afterward passed to her brother, De Marigny. Before the Revolution, Menars was the seat of a marquisate, of which the land was bought by Louis XV. for his famous, or infamous, _maîtresse_. The property has frequently changed hands since that day, but its gardens and terraces, descending toward the river-bank, mark it as one of those _coquette_ establishments, with which France was dotted in the eighteenth century. These establishments possessed enough of luxurious appointments to be classed as fitting for the butterflies of the time, but in no way, so far as the architectural design or the artistic details were concerned, were any of them worthy to be classed with the great domestic châteaux of the early years of the Renaissance. CHAPTER III. THE BLAISOIS AND THE SOLOGNE The Blésois or Blaisois was the ancient name given to the _petit pays_ which made a part of the government of the Orléannais. It was, and is, the borderland between the Orléannais and Touraine, and, with its capital, Blois, the city of counts, was a powerful territory in its own right, in spite of the allegiance which it owed to the Crown. Twenty leagues in length by thirteen in width, it was bounded on the north by the Dunois and the Orléannais, on the east by Berry, on the south by Touraine, and on the west by Touraine and the Vendomois. Blois, its capital, was famed ever in the annals of the middle ages, and to-day no city in the Loire valley possesses more sentimental interest for the traveller than does Blois. To the eastward lay the sands of the Sologne, and southward the ample and fruitful Touraine, hence Blois's position was one of supreme importance, and there is no wonder that it proved to be the scene of so many momentous events of history. The present day Department of the Loir et Cher was carved out from the Blaisois, the Vendomois, and the Orléannais. The Baisois was, in olden time, one of the most important of the _petits gouvernements_ of all the kingdom, and gave to Blois a line of counts who rivalled in power and wealth the churchmen of Tours and the dukes of Brittany. Gregory of Tours is the first historian who makes mention of the ancient _Pagus Blensensis_. One must not tell the citizen of Blois that it is at Tours that one hears the best French spoken. Everybody knows this, but the inhabitant of the Blaisois will not admit it, and, in truth, to the stranger there is not much apparent difference. Throughout this whole region he understands and makes himself understood with much more facility than in any other part of France. For one thing, not usually recalled, Blois should be revered and glorified. It was the native place of Lenoir, who invented the instrument which made possible the definite determination of the metric system of measurement. One reads in Bernier's "Histoire de Blois" that the inhabitants are "honest, gallant, and polite in conversation, and of a delicate and diffident temperament." This was written nearly a century ago, but there is no excuse for one's changing the opinion to-day unless, as was the misfortune of the writer, he runs up against an unusually importunate vender of post-cards or an aggressive _garçon de café_. [Illustration: ARMS OF THE CITY OF BLOIS] Blois, among all the cities of the Loire, is the favourite with the tourist. Why this should be is an enigma. It is overburdened, at times, with droves of tourists, and this in itself is a detraction in the eyes of many. Perhaps it is because here one first meets a great château of state; and certainly the Château de Blois lives in one's memory more than any other château in France. [Illustration: _The Riverside at Blois_] Much has been written of Blois, its counts, its château, and its many and famous _hôtels_ of the nobility, by writers of all opinions and abilities, from those old chroniclers who wrote of the plots and intrigues of other days to those critics of art and architecture who have discovered--or think they have discovered--that Da Vinci designed the famous spiral staircase. From this one may well gather that Blois is the foremost château of all the Loire in popularity and theatrical effect. Truly this is so, but it is by no manner of means the most lovable; indeed, it is the least lovable of all that great galaxy which begins at Blois and ends at Nantes. It is a show-place and not much more, and partakes in every form and feature--as one sees it to-day--of the attributes of a museum, and such it really is. All of its former gorgeousness is still there, and all the banalities of the later period when Gaston of Orleans built his ugly wing, for the "personally conducted" to marvel at, and honeymoon couples to envy. The French are quite fond of visiting this shrine themselves, but usually it is the young people and their mammas, and detached couples of American and English birth that one most sees strolling about the courts and apartments were formerly lords and ladies and cavaliers moved and plotted. The great château of the Counts of Blois is built upon an inclined rock which rises above the roof-tops of the lower town quite in fairy-book fashion,-- "... Bâtie en pierre et d'ardoise converte, Blanche et carrée au bas de la colline verte." Commonly referred to as the Château de Blois, it is really composed of four separate and distinct foundations; the original château of the counts; the later addition of Louis XII.; the palace of François I., and the most unsympathetically and dismally disposed _pavillon_ of Gaston of Orleans. [Illustration: _Signature of François Premier_] The artistic qualities of the greater part of the distinct edifices which go to make up the château as it stands to-day are superb, with the exception of that great wing of Gaston's, before mentioned, which is as cold and unfeeling as the overrated palace at Versailles. The Comtes de Chatillon built that portion just to the right of the present entrance; Louis XII., the edifice through which one enters the inner court and which extends far to the left, including also the chapel immediately to the rear; while François Premier, who here as elsewhere let his unbounded Italian proclivities have full sway, built the extended wing to the left of the inner court and fronting on the present Place du Château, formerly the Place Royale. Immediately to the left, in the Basse Cour de Château, are the Hôtel d'Amboise, the Hôtel d'Épernon, and farther away, in the Rue St. Honore, the Hôtel Sardini, the Hôtel d'Alluye, and a score of others belonging to the nobility of other days; all of them the scenes of many stirring and gallant events in Renaissance times. This is hardly the place for a discussion of the merits or demerits of any particular artistic style, but the frequently repeated expression of Buffon's "_Le style, c'est l'homme_" may well be paraphrased into "_L'art, c'est l'époque._" In fact one finds at all times imprinted upon the architectural style of any period the current mood bred of some historical event or a passing fancy. At Blois this is particularly noticeable. As an architectural monument the château is a picturesque assemblage of edifices belonging to many different epochs, and, as such, shows, as well as any other document of contemporary times, the varying ambitions and emotions of its builders, from the rude and rough manners of the earliest of feudal times through the highly refined Renaissance details of the imaginative brain of François, down to the base concoction of the elder Mansart, produced at the commands of Gaston of Orleans. [Illustration: CYPHER OF ANNE D'BRETANGE CHÂTEAU DE BLOIS] The whole gamut, from the gay and winsome to the sad and dismal, is found here. The escutcheons of the various occupants are plainly in evidence,--the swan pierced by an arrow of the first Counts of Blois; the ermine of Anne de Bretagne; the porcupine of the Ducs d'Orleans, and the salamander of François Premier. In the earliest structure were to be seen all the attributes of a feudal fortress, towers and walls pierced with narrow loopholes, and damp, dark dungeons hidden away in the thick walls. Then came a structure which was less of a fortress and more habitable, but still a stronghold, though having ample and decorative doorways and windows, with curious sculptures and rich framings. Then the pompous Renaissance with _escaliers_ and _balcons à jour_, balustrades crowning the walls, arabesques enriching the pilasters and walls, and elaborate cornices here, there, and everywhere,--all bespeaking the gallantry and taste of the _roi-chevalier_. Finally came the cold, classic features of the period of the brother of Louis XIII., decidedly the worst and most unlivable and unlovely architecture which France has ever produced. All these features are plain in the general scheme of the Château de Blois to-day, and doubtless it is this that makes the appeal; too much loveliness, as at Chenonceaux or Azay-le-Rideau, staggers the modern mortal by the sheer impossibility of its modern attainment. In plan the Château de Blois forms an irregular square situated at the apex of a promontory high above the surface of the Loire, and practically behind the town itself. The building has a most picturesque aspect, and, to those who know, gives practically a history of the château architecture of the time. Abandoned, mutilated, and dishonoured from time to time, the structure gradually took on new forms until the thick walls underlying the apartment known to-day as the Salle des États--probably the most ancient portion of all--were overshadowed by the great richness of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. One early fragment was entirely enveloped in the structure which was built by François Premier, the ancient Tour de Château Regnault, or De Moulins, or Des Oubliettes, as it was variously known, and from the outside this is no longer visible. From the platform one sees a magnificent panorama of the city and the far-reaching Loire, which unrolls itself southward and northward for many leagues, its banks covered by rich vineyards and crowned by thick forests. The building of Louis XII. presents its brick-faced exterior in black and red lozenge shapes, with sculptured window-frames, squarely upon the little tree-bordered _place_ of to-day, which in other times formed a part of that magnificent terrace which looked down upon the roof of the Église St. Nicolas, and the Jesuit Church of the Immaculate Conception, and the silvery belt of the Loire itself. [Illustration: ARMS OF LOIS XII] On the west façade of this vast conglomerate structure one sees the effigy of the porcupine, that weird symbol adopted by the family of Orleans. The choice of this ungainly animal--in spite of which it is most decorative in outline--was due to the first Louis, who was Duc d'Orleans. In the year 1393 Louis founded the order of the porcupine, in honour of the birth of Charles, his eldest son, who was born to him by Valentine de Milan. The legend which accompanied the adoption of the symbol--though often enough it was missing in the sculptured representations--was _Cominus et eminus_, which had its origin in the belief that the porcupine could defend himself in a near attack, but that when he himself attacked, he fought from afar by launching forth his spines. Naturalists will tell you that the porcupine does no such thing; but in those days it was evidently believed that he did, and in many, if not all, of the sculptured effigies that one sees of the beast there is a halo of detached spines forming a background as if they were really launching themselves forth in mid-air. Above this central doorway, or entrance to the courtyard, is a niche in which is a modern equestrian statue of Louis XII., replacing a more ancient one destroyed at the Revolution. This old statue, it is claimed, was an admirable work of art in its day, and the present statue is thought to be a replica of it. It originally bore the following inscription--a verse written by Fausto Andrelini, the king's favourite poet. [Illustration: _Central Doorway, Château de Blois_] "Hic ubi natus erat dextro Lodoicus Olympo, Sumpsit honorata Regia sceptra manu; Felix quæ tanti fulfit lux nuntia Regis; Gallia non alio Principe digna fuit. FAUSTUS 1498." According to an old French description this old statue was: "_très beau et très agréable ainsy que tous ses portraits l'ont représenté, comme celui qui est au grand portail de Bloys_." Above rises a balustrade with fantastic gargoyles with the pinnacles and fleurons of the window gables all very ornate, the whole topped off with a roofing of slate. Blois, in its general aspect, is fascinating; but it is not sympathetic, and this is not surprising when one remembers men and women who worked their deeds of bloody daring within its walls. The murders and other acts of violence and treason which took place here are interesting enough, but one cannot but feel, when he views the chimneypiece before which the Duc de Guise was standing when called to his death in the royal closet, that the men of whom the bloody tales of Blois are told quite deserved their fates. One comes away with the impression of it all stamped only upon the mind, not graven upon the heart. Political intrigue to-day, if quite as vulgar, is less sordid. Bigotry and ambition in those days allowed few of the finer feelings to come to the surface, except with regard to the luxuriance of surroundings. Of this last there can be no question, and Blois is as characteristically luxurious as any of the magnificent edifices which lodged the royalty and nobility of other days, throughout the valley of the Loire. A numismatic curiosity, connected with the history of the Château de Blois, is an ancient piece of money which one may see in the local museum. It is the oldest document in existence in which, or on which, the name of Blois is mentioned. On one side is a symbolical figure and the legend _Bleso Castro_, and on the other a _croix haussée_ and the name of the officer of the mint at Blois, _Pre Cistato, monetario_. The plan of the Château de Blois here given shows it not as it is to-day, but as it was at the death of Gaston d'Orleans in 1660. The constructions of the different epochs are noted on the plan as follows: ERECTED BY THE COMTES DE CHATILLON 1. Tour de Donjon, Château-Regnault, Moulins, or des Oubliettes. 2. Salle des États. 3. Tour du Foix or Observatory. ERECTED BY THE DUCS D'ORLEANS 4. Portico and Galerie d'Orleans. (Destroyed in part by the military.) 5. Galerie des Cerfs. (Built in part by Gaston, but made away with by the city of Blois when the Jardins du Roi were built.) ERECTED BY LOUIS XII. 6. Chapelle St. Calais. (Destroyed in part by the military.) 7. La Grande Vis, or Grand Escalier of Louis XI. 8. La Petite Vis, or Petit Escalier, in one chamber of which the corpse of the Duc de Guise was burned. 9. Portico and Galerie de Louis XII. 10. Portico. 11. Salle des Gardes,--of the queen on the ground floor and of the king on the first floor. 12. Bedchamber,--of the queen on the ground floor and of the king on the first floor. 13. Corps de Garde. 14. Kitchen. (To-day Salle de Réception for visitors.) ERECTED FROM THE TIME OF FRANÇOIS I. TO HENRI III. 15 and 16. Portico and Terrace Henri II. (In part built over by Gaston.) 17. Grand Staircase. 18. Galerie de François I. 19. Staircase of the Salle des États. (Destroyed by the military.) 20. First floor, Salle des Gardes of the queen; second floor, Salle des Gardes of the king. 21. Staircase leading to the apartments of the queen mother. Here also Henri III. had made the cells destined for the use of the Capucins, and here were closeted "_pour s'assurer de leur discretion_," the "_Quarante-Cinq_" who were to kill the Duc de Guise. 22. Cabinet Neuf of Henri III. (Second floor.) 23. Gallery where was held the reunion of the Tiers Etats of 1576. 24. First floor, bedchamber of the king; second floor, bedchamber of the queen. 25. Oratory. 26. Cabinet. 27. Passage to the Tour de Moulins. 28. Passage to the Cabinet Vieux, where the Duc de Guise was struck down. 29. Cabinet Vieux. 30. Oratory, where the two chaplains of the king prayed during the perpetration of the murder. 31. Garde-robe, where was first deposited the body of De Guise. ERECTED BY GASTON D'ORLEANS 32. Peristyle. (Destroyed by the military.) 33. Dome. 34. Pavilion des Jardins. 35. Pavilion du Foix. 36. Petit Pavilion of the Méridionale façade. (Destroyed in 1825.) 37. Terraces. 38. Bastions du Foix and des Jardins. 39. L'Eperon. 40. Le Jardin Haut, or Jardin du Roi. [Illustration: _The_ CHÂTEAUX _of_ BLOIS (DIAGRAM)] The interior court is partly surrounded by a colonnade, quite cloister-like in effect. At the right centre of the François I. wing is that wonderful spiral staircase, concerning the invention of which so much speculation has been launched. Leonardo da Vinci, the protégé of François, has been given the honour, and a very considerable volume has been written to prove the claim. [Illustration: _Cypher of François Premier and Claude of France, at Blois_] Within this "_tour octagone"--"qui fait à ses huit pans hurler un gorgone_"--is built this marvellous openwork stairway,--an _escalier à jour_, as the French call it,--without an equal in all France, and for daring and decorative effect unexcelled by any of those Renaissance motives of Italy itself. Its ascent turns not, as do most _escaliers_, from left to right, but from right to left. It is the prototype of those supposedly unique outside staircases pointed out to country cousins in the abodes of Fifth Avenue millionaires. It is as impossible to catalogue the various apartments and their accessories here, as it is to include a chronology of the great events which have passed within their walls. One thing should be remembered, and that is, that the architect Duban restored the château throughout in recent years. In spite of this restoration one may readily enough reconstruct the scene of the murder of the Duc de Guise from the great fireplace on the second floor before which De Guise was standing when summoned by a page to the kingly presence, from the door through which he entered to his death, and from the wall where hung the tapestry behind which he was to pass. All this is real enough, and also the "Tour des Oubliettes," in which the duke's brother, the cardinal, suffered, and of which many horrible tales are still told by the attendants. Duban, the architect, came with his careful restorations and pictured with a most exact fidelity the decorations and the furnishings of the times of François, of Catherine, and of Henri III. The ornate chimneypieces have been furbished up anew, the walls and ceilings covered with new paint and gold; nothing could be more opulent or glorious, but it gives the impression of a city dwelling or a great hotel, "newly done up," as the house renovators express it. One contrasting emotion will be awakened by a contemplation of the two great Salles des Gardes and the apartments of Catherine de Medici; here, at least for the moment, is a relief from the intrigues, massacres, and assassinations which otherwise went on, for one recalls that, at one period, "_danses, ballets et jeux_" took place here continuously. In the apartments of Catherine there is much to remind one of "the base Florentine," as it has been the fashion of latter-day historians to describe the first of the Medici queens. Nothing could be more sumptuous than the Galerie de la Reine, her _Cabinet de Toilette_, or her _Chambre à Coucher_, with its secret panels, where she died on the 5th of January, 1589, "adored and revered," but soon forgotten, and of no more account than "_une chèvre mort_," says one old chronicler. The apartments of Catherine de Medici were directly beneath the guard-room where the Balafré was murdered, and that event, taking place at the very moment when the "queen-mother" was dying, cannot be said to have been conducive to a peaceful demise. Here, on the first floor of the François Premier wing, the _reine-mère_ held her court, as did the king his. The great gallery overlooked the town on the side of the present Place du Château. It was, and is, a truly grand apartment, with diamond-paned windows, and rich, dark, wall decorations on which Catherine's device, a crowned C and her monogram in gold, frequently appears. There was, moreover, a great oval window, opposite which stood her altar, and a doorway, half concealed, led to her writing-closet, with its secret drawers and wall-panels which well served her purposes of intrigue and deceit. A hidden stairway led to the floor above, and there was a _chambre à coucher_, with a deep recess for the bed, the same to which she called her son Henri as she lay dying, admonishing him to give up the thought of murdering Guise. "What," said Henri, on this embarrassing occasion, "spare Guise, when he, triumphant in Paris, dared lay his hand on the hilt of his sword! Spare him who drove me a fugitive from the capital! Spare them who never spared me! No, mother, I will _not_." As the queen-mother drew near her end, and was lying ill at Blois, great events for France were culminating at the château. Henri III. had become King of France, and the Balafré, supported by Rome and Spain, was in open rebellion against the reigning house, and the word had gone forth that the Duc de Guise must die. The States General were to be immediately assembled, and De Guise, once the poetic lover of Marguerite, through his emissaries canvassed all France to ensure the triumph of the party of the Church against Henri de Navarre and his queen,--the Marguerite whom De Guise once professed to love,--who soon were to come to the throne of France. The uncomfortable Henri III. had been told that he would never be king in reality until De Guise had been made away with. The final act of the drama between the rival houses of Guise and Valois came when the king and his council came to Blois for the Assembly. The sunny city of Blois was indeed to be the scene of a momentous affair, and a truly sumptuous setting it was, the roof-tops of its houses sloping downward gently to the Loire, with the chief accessory, the coiffed and turreted château itself, high above all else. Details had been arranged with infinite pains, the guard doubled, and a company of Swiss posted around the courtyard and up and down the gorgeous staircase. Every nook and corner has its history in connection with this greatest event in the history of the Château of Blois. As Guise entered the council-chamber he was told that the king would see him in his closet, to reach which one had to pass through the guard-room below. The door was barred behind him that he might not return, when the trusty guards of the "Forty-fifth," under Dalahaide, already hidden behind the wall-tapestry, sprang upon the Balafré and forced him back upon the closed door through which he had just passed. Guise fell stabbed in the breast by Malines, and "lay long uncovered until an old carpet was found in which to wrap his corpse." Below, in her own apartments, lay the queen-mother, dying, but listening eagerly for the rush of footsteps overhead, hoping and praying that Henri--the hitherto effeminate Henri who played with his sword as he would with a battledore, and who painted himself like a woman, and put rings in his ears--would not prejudice himself at this time in the eyes of Rome by slaying the leader of the Church party. Guise died as Henri said he would die, with the words on his lips: "_A moi, mes amis!--trahison!--à moi, Guise,--je me meurs_," but the revenge of the Church party came when, at St. Cloud, the monk, Jacques Clément, poignarded the last of the Valois, and put the then heretical Henri de Navarre on the throne of France. Within the southernmost confines of the château is the Tour de Foix, so called for the old faubourg near by. The upper story and roof of this curious round tower was the work of Catherine de Medici, who installed there her astrologer and maker of philtres, Cosmo Ruggieri. Ruggieri was a most versatile person; he was astrologer, alchemist, and philosopher alike, besides being many other kinds of a rogue, all of which was very useful to the Medici now that she had come to power. Catherine built an outside stairway up to the platform of this tower, and a great, flat, stone table was placed there to form a foundation for Ruggieri's cabalistic instruments. Even this stone table itself was an uncanny affair, if we are to believe the old chronicles. It rang out in a clear sharp note whenever struck with some hard body, and on its surface was graven a line which led the eye directly toward the golden _fleur-de-lys_ on the cupola of Chambord's château, some three leagues distant on the other side of the Loire. What all this symbolism actually meant nobody except Catherine and her astrologer knew; at least, the details do not appear to have come down to enlighten posterity. Over the doorway of the observatory were graven the words, "_Vraniæ Sacrum_," _i. e._, consecrated to Uranius. Wherever Catherine chose to reside, whether in Touraine or at Paris, her astrologer and his "_observatoire_" formed a part of her train. She had brought Cosmo from Italy, and never for a moment did he leave her. He was a sort of a private demon on whom Catherine could shoulder her poisonings and her stabs, and, as before said, he was an exceedingly busy functionary of the court. That part of the structure built by Mansart for Gaston d'Orleans appears strange, solemn, and superfluous in connection with the sumptuousness of the earlier portions. With what poverty the architectural art of the seventeenth century expressed itself! What an inferiority came with the passing of the sixteenth century and the advent of the following! One finds a certain grandeur in the outlines of this last wing, with its majestic cupola over the entrance pavilion, but the general effect of the decorations is one of a great paucity of invention when compared to the more brilliant Renaissance forerunners on the opposite side of the courtyard. It was under the régime of Gaston d'Orleans that the gardens of the Château de Blois came to their greatest excellence and beauty. In 1653 Abel Brunyer, the first physician of Gaston's suite, published a catalogue of the fruits and flowers to be found here in these gardens, of which he was also director. More than five hundred varieties were included, three-quarters of which belonged to the flora of France. Among the delicacies and novelties of the time to be found here was the Prunier de Reine Claude, from which those delicious green plums known to all the world to-day as "Reine Claudes" were propagated, also another variety which came from the Prunier de Monsieur, somewhat similar in taste but of a deep purple colour. The _pomme de terre_ was tenderly cared for and grown as a great novelty and delicacy long before its introduction to general cultivation by Parmentier. The tomato was imported from Mexico, and even tobacco was grown; from which it may be judged that Gaston did not intend to lack the good things of life. All these facts are recounted in Brunyer's "Hortus Regius Blesensis," and, in addition, one Morrison, an expatriate Scotch doctor, who had attached himself to Gaston, also wrote a competing work which was published in London in 1669 under the title of "Preludia Botanica," and which dealt at great length with the already celebrated gardens of the Château de Blois. Morrison placed at the head of his work a Latin verse which came in time to be graven over the gateway of the gardens. This--as well as pretty much all record of it--has disappeared, but a repetition of the lines will serve to show with what admiration this paradise was held: "Hinc, nulli biferi miranda rosaria Pesti, Nec mala Hesperidum, vigili servata dracone. Si paradisiacis quicquam (sine crimine) campis Conferri possit, Blaesis mirabile specta. Magnifici Gastonis opus! Qui terra capaci ... * * * * * JACOBUS METELANUS SCOTUS." Not merely in history has the famous château at Blois played its part. Writers of fiction have more than once used it as an accessory or the principal scenic background of their sword and cloak novels; none more effectively than Dumas in the D'Artagnan series. The opening lines of "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne" are laid here. "It should have been a source of pride to the city of Blois," says Dumas, "that Gaston of Orleans had chosen it as his residence, and held his court in the ancient château of the States." Here, too, in the second volume of the D'Artagnan romances, is the scene of that most affecting meeting between his Majesty Charles II., King of England, and Louis XIV. Altogether one lives here in the very spirit of the pages of Dumas. Not only Blois, but Langeais, Chambord, Cheverny, Amboise, and many other châteaux figure in the novels with an astonishing frequency, and, whatever the critics may say of the author's slips of pen and memory, Dumas has given us a wonderfully faithful picture of the life of the times. In 1793 all the symbols and emblems of royalty were removed from the château and destroyed. The celebrated bust of Gaston, the chief artistic attribute of that part of the edifice built by him, was decapitated, and the statue of Louis XII. over the entrance gateway was overturned and broken up. Afterward the château became the property of the "domaine" and was turned into a mere barracks. The Pavilion of Queen Anne became a "_magasin des subsistances militaires_," the Tour de l'Observatoire, a powder-magazine, and all the indignities imaginable were heaped upon the château. In 1814 Blois became the last capital of Napoleon's empire, and the château walls sheltered the prisoners captured by the imperial army. Blois's most luxurious church edifice was the old abbey church of St. Sauveur, which was built from 1138 to 1210. It lost the royal favour in 1697, when Louis XIV. made Blois a city of bishops as well as of counts, and transferred the chapter of St. Sauveur's to the bastard Gothic edifice first known as St. Solenne, but which soon took on the name of St. Louis. In spite of the claims of the old church, this cold, unfeeling, and ugly mixture of tomblike Renaissance became, and still remains, the bishop's church of Blois. One must not neglect or forget the magnificent bridge which crosses the Loire at Blois. A work of 1717-24, it bears the Rue Denis Papin across its eleven solidly built masonry piers. Above the central arch is erected a memorial pyramid and tablet which states the fact that it was one of the first works of the reign of Louis XV. Blois altogether, then, offers a multitudinous array of attractions for the tourist who makes his first entrance to the châteaux country through its doors. The town itself has not the appeal of Tours, of Angers, or of Nantes; but, for all that, its abundance of historic lore, the admirable preservation of its chief monument, and the general picturesqueness of its site and the country round about make up for many other qualities that may be lacking. The Sologne, lying between Blois, Vierzon, and Châteauneuf-sur-Loire, is a great region of lakelets, sandy soil, and replanted Corsican pines, which to-day has taken on a new lease of life and a prosperity which was unknown in the days when the Comtes de Blois first erected that _maison de plaisance_, on its western border which was afterward to aggrandize itself into the later Château de Chambord. The soil has been drained and the vine planted to a hitherto undreamed of extent, until to-day, if the land does not exactly blossom like the rose, it at least somewhat approaches it. The _chaumières_ of the Sologne have disappeared to a large extent, and their mud walls and thatched roofs are not as frequent a detail of the landscape as formerly, but even now there is a distinct individuality awaiting the artist who will go down among these vineyard workers of the Sologne and paint them and their surroundings as other parts have been painted and popularized. It will be hot work in the summer months, and lonesome work at all times, but there is a new note to be sounded if one but has the ear for it, and it is to be heard right here in this tract directly on the beaten track from north to south, and yet so little known. The peasant of the Sologne formerly ate his _soupe au poireau_ and a morsel of _fromage maigre_ and was as content and happy as if his were a more luxurious board, as it in reality became when a stranger demanded hospitality. Then out from the _armoire_--that ever present adjunct of a French peasant's home, whether it be in Normandy, Touraine, or the Midi--came a bottle of _vin blanc_, bought in the wine-shops of Romorantin or Vierzon on some of his periodical trips to town. To-day all is changing, and the peasant of the Sologne nourishes himself better and trims his beard and wears a round white collar on fête-days. He is proud of his well-kept appearance, but his neighbours to the north and the south will tell you that all this hides a deep malice, which is hard to believe, in spite of the well recognized saying, "_Sot comme un Solognat_." The women have a physiognomy more passive; when young they are fresh and lip-lively, but as they grow older their charms pass quickly. The Sologne in most respects has changed greatly since the days of Arthur Young. Then this classic land was reviled and vehement imprecations were launched upon the proprietors of its soil,--"those brilliant and ambitious gentlemen" who figure so largely in the ceremonies of Versailles. To-day all is changed, and the gentleman farmer is something more than a _bourgeois parisien_ who hunts and rides and apes "_le sport_" of the English country squire. The jack-rabbit and the hare are the pests of the Sologne now that its sandy soil has been conquered, but they are quite successfully kept down in numbers, and the insects which formerly ravaged the vines are likewise less offensive than they used to be, so the Sologne may truly be said to have been transformed. To-day, as in the days of the royal hunt, when Chambord was but a shooting-box of the Counts of Blois, the Sologne is rife with small game, and even deer and an occasional _sanglier_. "_La chasse_" in France is no mean thing to-day, and the Sologne, La Beauce, and the great national forests of Lyons and Rambouillet draw--on the opening of the season, somewhere between the 28th of August and the 2d of September of each year--their hundreds of thousands of Nimrods and disciples of St. Hubert. The bearer of the gun in France is indeed a most ardent sportsman, and in no European country can one buy in the open market a greater variety of small game,--all the product of those who pay their twenty francs for the privilege of bagging rabbits, hares, partridges, and the like. The hunters of France enjoy one superstition, however, and that is that to accidentally bag a crow on the first shot means a certain and sudden death before the day is over. La Motte-Beuvron is celebrated in the annals of the Sologne; it is, in fact, the metropolis of the region, and the centre from which radiated the influences which conquered the soil and made of it a prosperous land, where formerly it was but a sandy, arid desert. La Motte-Beuvron is a long-drawn-out _bourgade_, like some of the populous centres of the great plain of Hungary, and there is no great prosperity or "up-to-dateness" to be observed, in spite of its constantly increasing importance, for La Motte-Beuvron and the country round about is one of the localities of France which is apparently not falling off in its population. La Motte has a most imposing Hôtel de Ville, a heavy edifice of brick built by Napoleon III.--who has never been accused of having had the artistic appreciation of his greater ancestor--after the model of the Arsenal at Venice. This is all La Motte has to warrant remark unless one is led to investigate the successful agricultural experiment which is still being carried out hereabouts. La Motte's hôtels and cafés are but ordinary, and there is no counter attraction of boulevard or park to place the town among those lovable places which travellers occasionally come upon unawares. To realize the Sologne at its best and in its most changed aspect, one should follow the roadway from La Motte to Blois. He may either go by tramway _à vapeur_, or by his own means of communication. In either case he will then know why the prosperity of the Sologne and the contentment of the Solognat is assured. Romorantin, still characteristic of the Sologne and its historic capital, is famous for its asparagus and its paternal château of François Premier, where that prince received the scar upon his face, at a tourney, which compelled him ever after to wear a beard. To-day the Sous-Préfecture, the Courts and their prisoners, the Gendarmerie, and the Theatre are housed under the walls that once formed the château royal of Jean d'Angoulême; within whose apartments the gallant François was brought up. [Illustration: _Native Types in the Sologne_] The Sologne, like most of the other of the _petits pays_ of France, is prolific in superstitions and traditionary customs, and here for some reason they deal largely of the marriage state. When the _paysan solognais_ marries, he takes good care to press the marriage-ring well up to the third joint of his spouse's finger, "else she will be the master of the house," which is about as well as the thing can be expressed in English. It seems a simple precaution, and any one so minded might well do the same under similar circumstances, provided he thinks the proceeding efficacious. Again, during the marriage ceremony itself, each of the parties most interested bears a lighted wax taper, with the belief that whichever first burns out, so will its bearer die first. It's a gruesome thought, perhaps, but it gives one an inkling of who stands the best chance of inheriting the other's goods, which is what matches are sometimes made for. The marriage ceremony in the Sologne is a great and very public function. Intimates, friends, acquaintances, and any of the neighbouring populace who may not otherwise be occupied, attend, and eat, drink, and ultimately get merry. But they have a sort of process of each paying his or her own way; at least a collection is taken up to pay for the entertainment, for the Sologne peasant would otherwise start his married life in a state of bankruptcy from which it would take him a long time to recover. The collection is made with considerable _éclat_ and has all the elements of picturesqueness that one usually associates with the wedding processions that one sees on the comic-opera stage. A sort of nuptial bouquet--a great bunch of field flowers--is handed round from one guest to another, and for a sniff of their fragrance and a participation in the collation which is to come, they make an offering, dropping much or little into a golden (not gold) goblet which is passed around by the bride herself. In the Sologne there is (or was, for the writer has never seen it) another singular custom of the marriage service--not really a part of the churchly office, but a sort of practical indorsement of the actuality of it all. The bride and groom are both pricked with a needle until the blood runs, to demonstrate that neither the man nor the woman is insensible or dreaming as to the purport of the ceremony about to take place. As every French marriage is at the Mairie, as well as being held in church, this double ceremony (and the blood-letting as well) must make a very hard and fast agreement. Perhaps it might be tried elsewhere with advantage. Montrichard, on the Cher, is on the borderland between the Blaisois and Touraine. Its donjon announces itself from afar as a magnificent feudal ruin. The town is moreover most curious and original, the great rectangular donjon rising high into the sky above a series of cliff-dwellers' chalk-cut homes, in truly weird fashion. There is nothing so very remarkable about cliff-dwellers in the Loire country, and their aspect, manners, and customs do not differ greatly from those of their neighbours, who live below them. Curiously enough these rock-cut dwellings appear dry and healthful, and are not in the least insalubrious, though where a _cave_ has been devoted only to the storage of wine in vats, barrels, and bottles the case is somewhat different. Montrichard itself, outside of these scores of homes burrowed out of the cliff, is most picturesque, with stone-pignoned gables and dormer-windows and window-frames cut or worked in wood or stone into a thousand amusing shapes. Montrichard, with Chinon, takes the lead in interesting old houses in these parts; in fact, they quite rival the ruinous lean-to houses of Rouen and Lisieux in Normandy, which is saying a good deal for their picturesque qualities. [Illustration: _Donjon of Montrichard_] One-third of Montrichard's population live underground or in houses built up against the hillsides. Even the lovely old parish church backs against the rock. Everywhere are stairways and _petits chemins_ leading upward or downward, with little façades, windows, or doorways coming upon one in most unexpected and mysterious fashion at every turn. The magnificent donjon is a relic of the work of that great fortress-builder, Foulques Nerra, Comte d'Anjou, who dotted the land wherever he trod with these masterpieces of their kind, most of them great rectangular structures like the donjons of Britain, but quite unlike the structures of their class mostly seen in France. Richard Coeur de Lion occupied the fortress in 1108, but was obliged to succumb to his rival in power, Philippe-Auguste, who in time made a breach in its walls and captured it. Thereafter it became an outpost of his own, from whence he could menace the Comte d'Anjou. CHAPTER IV. CHAMBORD Chambord is four leagues from Blois, from which point it is usually approached. To reach it one crosses the Sologne, not the arid waste it has been pictured, but a desert which has been made to blossom as the rose. A glance of the eye, given anywhere along the road from Blois to Chambord, will show a vineyard of a thousand, two thousand, or even more acres, where, from out of a soil that was once supposed to be the poorest in all wine-growing France, may be garnered a crop equalling a hundred dozen of bottles of good rich wine to the acre. This wine of the Sologne is not one of the famous wines of France, to be sure, but what one gets in these parts is pure and astonishingly palatable; moreover, one can drink large portions of it--as do the natives--without being affected in either his head or his pocket-book. From late September to early December there is a constant harvest going on in the vineyards, whose labourers, if not as picturesque and joyous as we are wont to see them on the comic-opera stage, are at least wonderfully clever and industrious, for they make a good wine crop out of a soil which previously gave a living only to charcoal-burners and goat-keepers. François was indeed a rare devotee of the building mania when he laid out the wood which surrounds Chambord and which ultimately grew to some splendour. The nineteenth century saw this great wood cut and sold in huge quantities, so that to-day it is rather a scanty copse through which one drives on the way from Blois. The country round about is by no means impoverished,--far from it. It is simply unworked to its fullest extent as yet. As it is plentifully surrounded by water it makes an ideal land for the growing of asparagus, strawberries, and grapes, and so it has come to be one of the most prosperous and contented regions in all the Loire valley. The great white Château de Chambord, with its turrets and its magnificent lantern, looms large from whatever direction it is approached, though mostly it is framed by the somewhat stunted pines which make up the pleasant forest. The vistas which one sees when coming toward Chambord, through the drives and alleys of its park, with the château itself brilliant in the distance, are charming and fairy-like indeed. Straight as an arrow these roadways run, and he who traverses one of those centring at the château will see a tiny white fleck in the sunlight a half a dozen kilometres away, which, when it finally is reached, will be admitted to be the greatest triumph of the art-loving monarch. François Premier was foremost in every artistic expression in France, and the court, as may be expected, were only too eager to follow the expensive tastes of their monarch,--when they could get the means, and when they could not, often enough François supplied the wherewithal. François himself dressed in the richest of Italian velvets, the more brilliant the better, with a preponderant tendency toward pink and sky blue. A dozen years after François came to the throne, a dozen years after the pleasant life of Amboise, when mother, daughter, and son lived together on the banks of the Loire in that "Trinity of love," the monarch and his wife, Queen Claude of France, the daughter of Louis XII. and Anne of Brittany, came to live at Chambord on the edge of the sandy Sologne waste. Here, too, came Marguerite d'Alençon, the ever faithful and devoted sister of François, the duke, her husband, and all the gay members of the court. The hunt was the order of the day, for the forest tract of the Sologne, scanty though it was in growth, abounded in small game. Chambord at this time had not risen to the grand and ornate proportions which we see to-day, but set snugly on the low, swampy banks of the tiny river Cosson, a dull, gloomy mediæval fortress, whose only aspect of gaiety was that brought by the pleasure-loving court when it assembled there. In size it was ample to accommodate the court, but François's artistic temperament already anticipated many and great changes. The Loire was to be turned from its course and the future pompous palace was to have its feet bathed in the limpid Loire water rather than in the stagnant pools of the morass which then surrounded it. As a triumph of the royal château-builder's art, Chambord is far and away ahead of Fontainebleau or Versailles, both of which were built in a reign which ended two hundred years later than that which began with the erection of Chambord. As an example of the arts of François I. and his time compared with those of Louis XIV. and his, Chambord stands forth with glorious significance. On the low banks of the Cosson, François achieved perhaps the greatest triumph that Renaissance architecture had yet known. It was either Chambord, or the reconstruction by François of the edifice belonging to the Counts of Blois, which resulted in the refinement of the Renaissance style less than a quarter of a century after its introduction into France by Charles VIII.,--if he really was responsible for its importation from Italy. François lacked nothing of daring, and built and embellished a structure which to-day, in spite of numerous shortcomings, stands as the supreme type of a great Renaissance domestic edifice of state. Every device of decoration and erratic suggestion seems to have been carried out, not only structurally, as in the great double spiral of its central stairway, but in its interpolated details and symbolism as well. It was at this time, too, that François began to introduce the famous salamander into his devices and ciphers; that most significant emblem which one may yet see on wall and ceiling of Chambord surrounded by the motto: "_Je me nourris et je meurs dans le feu._" [Illustration: _Arms of François Premier, at Chambord_] Chambord, first of all, gives one a very high opinion of François Premier, and of the splendours with which he was wont to surround himself. The apartments are large and numerous and are admirably planned and decorated, though, almost without exception, bare to-day of furniture or furnishings. To quote the opinion of Blondel, the celebrated French architect: "The Château de Chambord, built under François I. and Henri II., from the designs of Primatice, was never achieved according to the original plan. Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. contributed a certain completeness, but the work was really pursued afterward according to the notions of one Sertio." The masterpiece of its constructive elements is its wonderful doubly spiralled central staircase, which permits one to ascend or descend without passing another proceeding in the opposite direction at the same time. Whatever may have been the real significance of this great double spiral, it has been said that it played its not unimportant part in the intrigue and scandal of the time. It certainly is a wonder of its kind, more marvellous even than that spiral at Blois, attributed, with some doubt perhaps, to Leonardo da Vinci, and certainly far more beautiful than the clumsy round tower up which horses and carriages were once driven at Amboise. At all events, it probably meant something more than mere constructive ability, and a staircase which allows one individual to mount and another to descend without knowing of the presence of the other may assuredly be classed with those other mediæval accessories, sliding panels, hidden doorways, and secret cabinets. Beneath the dome which terminates the staircase in the Orleans wing are three caryatides representing--it is doubtfully stated--François Premier, La Duchesse d'Étampes, and Madame la Comtesse de Châteaubriand,--a trinity of boon companions in intrigue. In reality Chambord presents the curiously contrived arrangement of one edifice within another, as a glance of the eye at the plan will show. The fosse, the usual attribute of a great mediæval château--it may be a dry one or a wet one, in this case it was a wet one--has disappeared, though Brantôme writes that he saw great iron rings let into the walls to which were attached "_barques et grands bateaux_," which had made their way from the Loire via the dribbling Cosson. The Cosson still dribbles its life away to-day, its moisture having, to a great part, gone to irrigate the sandy Sologne, but formerly it was doubtless a much more ample stream. From the park the ornate gables and dormer-windows loom high above the green-swarded banks of the Cosson. It was so in François's time, and it is so to-day; nothing has been added to break the spread of lawn, except an iron-framed wash-house with red tiles and a sheet-iron chimney-pot beside the little river, and a tin-roofed garage for automobiles connected with the little inn outside the gates. The rest is as it was of yore, at least, the same as the old engravings of a couple of hundreds of years ago picture it, hence it is a great shame, since the needs of the tiny village could not have demanded it, that the foreground could not have been left as it originally was. The town, or rather village, or even hamlet, of Chambord is about the most abbreviated thing of its kind existent. There is practically no village; there are a score or two of houses, an inn of the frankly tourist kind, which evidently does not cater to the natives, the aforesaid wash-house by the river bank, the dwellings of the gamekeepers, gardeners, and workmen on the estate, and a diminutive church rising above the trees not far away. These accessories practically complete the make-up of the little settlement of Chambord, on the borders of the Blaisois and Touraine. Chambord has been called top-heavy, but it is hardly that. Probably the effect is caused by its low-lying situation, for, as has been intimated before, this most imposing of all of the Loire châteaux has the least desirable situation of any. There is a certain vagueness and foreignness about the sky-line that is almost Eastern, though we recognize it as pure Renaissance. Perhaps it is the magnitude and lonesomeness of it all that makes it seem so strange, an effect that is heightened when one steps out upon its roof, with the turrets, towers, and cupolas still rising high above. [Illustration: _PLAN OF CHAMBORD_] The ground-plan is equally magnificent, flanked at every corner by a great round tower, with another quartette of them at the angles of the interior court. Most of the stonework of the fabric is brilliant and smooth, as if it were put up but yesterday, and, beyond the occasional falling of a tile from the wonderful array of chimney-pots, but little evidences are seen exteriorly of its having decayed in the least. On the tower which flanks the little door where one meets the _concierge_ and enters, there are unmistakable marks of bullets and balls, which a revolutionary or some other fury left as mementoes of its passage. Considering that Chambord was not a product of feudal times, these disfigurements seem out of place; still its peaceful motives could hardly have been expected to have lasted always. The southern façade is not excelled by the elevation of any residential structure of any age, and its outlines are varied and pleasing enough to satisfy the most critical; if one pardons the little pepper-boxes on the north and south towers, and perforce one has to pardon them when he recalls the magnificence of the general disposition and sky-line of this marvellously imposing château of the Renaissance. François Premier made Chambord his favourite residence, and in fact endowed Pierre Nepveu--who for this work alone will be considered one of the foremost architects of the French Renaissance--with the inspiration for its erection in 1526. [Illustration: _Château de Chambord_] A prodigious amount of sculpture by Jean Cousin, Pierre Bontemps, Jean Goujon, and Germain Pilon was interpolated above the doorways and windows, in the framing thereof, and above the great fireplaces. Inside and out, above and below, were vast areas to be covered, and François allowed his taste to have full sway. The presumptuous François made much of this noble residence, perhaps because of his love of _la chasse_, for game abounded hereabouts, or perhaps because of his regard for the Comtesse Thoury, who occupied a neighbouring château. For some time before his death, François still lingered on at Chambord. Marguerite and her brother, both now considerably aged since the happier times of their childhood in Touraine, always had an indissoluble fondness for Chambord. Marguerite had now become Queen of Navarre, but her beauty had been dimmed with the march of time, and she no longer was able to comfort and amuse her kingly brother as of yore. His old pleasures and topics of conversation irritated him, and he had even tired of poetry, art, and political affairs. Above all, he shamefully and shamelessly abused women, at once the prop and the undermining influence of his kingly power in days gone by. There is an existing record to the effect that he wrote some "window-pane" verse on the window of his private apartment to the following effect: "Souvent femme varie; Mal habile quis'y fie!" If this be not apocryphal, the incident must have taken place long years before that celebrated "window-pane" verse of Shenstone's, and François is proven again a forerunner, as he was in many other things. Without doubt the Revolution did away with this square of glass, which--according to Piganiol de la Force--existed in the middle of the eighteenth century. Perhaps François's own jealous humour prompted him to write these cynical lines, and then again perhaps it is merely one of those fables which breathe the breath of life in some unaccountable manner, no one having been present at its birth, and hearsay and tradition accounting for it all. François, truly, was failing, and he and his sister discussed but sorrowful subjects: the death of his favourite son, Charles, the inheritor of the throne, at Abbeville, where he became infected with the plague, and also the death of him whom he called "his old friend," Henry VIII. of England, a monarch whose amours were as numerous and celebrated as his own. Henri II. preferred the attractions of Anet to Chambord, while Catherine de Medici and Charles IX. cared more for Blois, Chaumont, and Chenonceaux. Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. only considered it as a rendezvous for the chase, and the latter's successor, Louis XV., gave it to the illustrious Maurice de Saxe, the victor of Fontenoy, who spent his old age here, amid fêtes, pleasures, and military parades. Near by are the barracks, built for the accommodation of the regiment of horse formed by the maréchal and devoted to his special guardianship and pleasure, and paid for by the king, who in turn repaid himself--with interest--from the public treasury. The exercising of this "little army" was one of the chief amusements of the illustrious old soldier. "A de feints combats Lui-même en se jouant conduit les vieux soldats"-- wrote the Abbé de Lille in contemporary times. King Stanislas of Poland lived here from 1725 to 1733, and later it was given to Maréchal Berthier, by whose widow it was sold in 1821. It was bought by national subscription for a million and a half of francs and given to the Duc de Bordeaux, who immediately commenced its restoration, for it had been horribly mutilated by Maréchal de Saxe, and the surrounding wood had been practically denuded under the Berthier occupancy. The Duc de Bordeaux died in 1883, and his heirs, the Duc de Parme and the Comte de Bardi, are now said to spend a quarter of a million annually in the maintenance of the estate, the income of which approximates only half that sum. There are thirteen great staircases in the edifice, and a room for every day in the year. On the ground floor is the Salle des Gardes, from which one mounts by the great spiral to another similar apartment with a barrel-vaulted roof, which in a former day was converted into a theatre, where in 1669-70 were held the first representations of "Pourceaugnac" and "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme," and where Molière himself frequently appeared. The second floor is known as the "_grandes terrasses_" and surrounds the base of the great central lantern so admired from the exterior. On this floor, to the eastward, were the apartments of François Premier. The chapel was constructed by Henri II., but the tribune is of the era of Louis XIV. This tribune is decorated with a fine tapestry, made by Madame Royale while imprisoned in the Temple. At the base of the altar is also a tapestry made and presented to the Comte de Chambord by the women of the Limousin. The apartments of Louis XIV. contain portraits of Madame de Maintenon and Madame de Lafayette, a great painting of the "Bataille de Fontenoy," and another of the Comte de Chambord on horseback. CHAPTER V. CHEVERNY, BEAUREGARD, AND CHAUMONT From Chambord and its overpowering massiveness one makes his way to Chaumont, on the banks of the Loire below Blois, by easy stages across the plain of the Sologne. One leaves the precincts of Chambord by the back entrance, as one might call it, through six kilometres of forest road, like that by which one enters, and soon passes the little townlet of Bracieux. One gets glimpses of more or less modern residential châteaux once and again off the main road, but no remarkably interesting structures of any sort are met with until one reaches Cheverny. Just before Cheverny one passes Cour-Cheverny, with a curious old church and a quaint-looking little inn beside it. [Illustration: _Château de Cheverny_] Cheverny itself is, however, the real attraction, two kilometres away. Here the château is opened by its private owners from April to October of each year, and, while not such a grand establishment as many of its contemporaries round about, it is in every way a perfect residential edifice of the seventeenth century, when the flowery and ornate Renaissance had given way to something more severely classical, and, truth to tell, far less pleasing in an artistic sense. Cheverny belongs to-day to the Marquis de Vibraye, one of those undying titles of the French nobility which thrive even in republican France and uphold the best traditions of the _noblesse_ of other days. The château was built much later than most of the neighbouring châteaux, in 1634, by the Comte de Cheverny, Philippe Hurault. It sits green-swarded in the midst of a beautifully wooded park, and the great avenue which faces the principal entrance extends for seven kilometres, a distance not excelled, if equalled, by any private roadway elsewhere. In its constructive features the château is more or less of rectangular outlines. The pavilions at each corner have their openings _à la impériale_, with the domes, or lanterns, so customary during the height of the style under Louis XIV. An architect, Boyer by name, who came from Blois, where surely he had the opportunity of having been well acquainted with a more beautiful style, was responsible for the design of the edifice at Cheverny. The interior decorations in Cordovan leather, the fine chimneypieces, and the many elaborate historical pictures and wall paintings, by Mosnier, Clouet, and Mignard, are all of the best of their period; while the apartments themselves are exceedingly ample, notably the Appartement du Roi, furnished as it was in the days of "Vert Galant," the Salle des Gardes, the library and an elaborately traceried staircase. In the chapel is an altar-table which came from the Église St. Calais, in the château at Blois. Just outside the gates is a remarkable crotchety old stone church, with a dwindling, toppling spire. It is poor and impoverished when compared with most French churches, and has a most astonishing timbered veranda, with a straining, creaking roof running around its two unobstructed walls. The open rafters are filled with all sorts of rubbish, and the local fire brigade keeps its hose and ladders there. A most suitable old rookery it is in which to start a first-class conflagration. [Illustration: _Cheverny-sur-Loire_] Within are a few funeral marbles of the Hurault family, and the daily offices are conducted with a pomp most unexpected. Altogether it forms, as to its fabric and its functions, as strong a contrast of activity and decay as one is likely to see in a long journey. The town itself is a sleepy, unprogressive place, where automobilists may not even buy _essence à pétrole_, and, though boasting--if the indolent old town really does boast--a couple of thousand souls, one still has to journey to Cour-Cheverny to send a telegraphic despatch or buy a daily paper. Between Cheverny and Blois is the Forêt de Russy, which will awaken memories of the boar-hunts of François I., which, along with art in all its enlightening aspects, appears to have been one of the chief pleasures of that monarch. Perhaps one ought to include also the love of fair women, but with them he was not so constant. On the road to Blois, also, one passes the Château de Beauregard; that is, one usually passes it, but he shouldn't. It is built, practically, within the forest, on the banks of the little river Beauvron. An iron _grille_ gives entrance to a beautiful park, and within is the château, its very name indicating the favour with which it was held by its royal owner. It was in 1520 that François I. established it as a _rendezvous de chasse_. Under his son, Henri II., it was reconstructed, in part; entirely remodelled in the seventeenth century; and "modernized"--whatever that may mean--in 1809, and again, more lately, restored by the Duc de Dino. It belongs to-day to the Comte de Cholet, who has tried his hand at "restoration" as well. The history of this old château is thus seen to have been most varied, and it is pretty sure to have lost a good deal of its original character in the transforming process. The interior is more attractive than is the exterior. There is a grand gallery of portraits of historical celebrities, more than 350, executed between 1617 and 1638 by Paul Ardier, Counsellor of State, who thus combined the accomplishment of the artist with the sagacity of the statesman. The ceilings of the great rooms are mostly elaborate works in enamel and carved oak, and there is a tiled floor (_carrelage_) in the portrait gallery, in blue faïence, representing an army in the order of battle, which must have delighted the hearts of the youthful progeny who may have been brought up within the walls of the château. This pavement is moreover an excellent example of the craftsmanship of tile-making. One gains admission to the château freely from the _concierge_, who in due course expects her _pourboire_, and sees that she gets it. But what would you, inquisitive traveller? You have come here to see the sights, and Beauregard is well worth the price of admission, which is anything you like to give, certainly not less than a franc. One may return to Blois through the forest, or may continue his way down the river to Chaumont on the left bank. At Chaumont the Loire broadens to nearly double the width at Blois, its pebbles and sandbars breaking the mirror-like surface into innumerable pools and _étangs_. There is a bridge which connects Chaumont with the railway at Onzain and the great national highway from Tours to Blois. The bridge, however, is so hideous a thing that one had rather go miles out of his way than accept its hospitality. It is simply one of those unsympathetic wire-rope affairs with which the face of the globe is being covered, as engineering skill progresses and the art instinct dies out. [Illustration: _Chaumont_] The Château de Chaumont is charmingly situated, albeit it is not very accessible to strangers after one gets there, as it is open to the public only on Thursdays, from July to December. It is exactly what one expects to find,--a fine riverside establishment of its epoch, and in architectural style combining the well-recognized features of late Gothic and the early Renaissance. It is not moss-grown or decrepit in any way, which fact, considering its years, is perhaps remarkable. The park of the château is only of moderate extent, but the structure itself is, comparatively, of much larger proportions. The ideal view of the structure is obtained from midway on that ungainly bridge which spans the Loire at this point. Here, in the gold and purple of an autumn evening, with the placid and far-reaching Loire, its pools and its bars of sand and pebble before one, it is a scene which is as near idyllic as one is likely to see. The town itself is not attractive; one long, narrow lane-like street, lined on each side by habitations neither imposing nor of a tumble-down picturesqueness, borders the Loire. There is nothing very picturesque, either, about the homes of the vineyard workers round about. Below and above the town the great highroad runs flat and straight between Tours and Blois on either side of the river, and automobilists and cyclists now roll along where the state carriages of the court used to roll when François Premier and his sons journeyed from one gay country house to another. It is to be inferred that the aspect of things at Chaumont has not changed much since that day,--always saving that spider-net wire bridge. The population of the town has doubtless grown somewhat, even though small towns in France sometimes do not increase their population in centuries; but the topographical aspect of the long-drawn-out village, backed by green hills on one side and the Loire on the other, is much as it always has been. [Illustration: _Signature of Diane de Poitiers_] The château at Chaumont had its origin as far back as the tenth century, and its proprietors were successively local seigneurs, Counts of Blois, the family of Amboise, and Diane de Poitiers, who received it from Catherine in exchange for Chenonceaux. This was not a fair exchange, and Diane was, to some extent, justified in her complaints. Chaumont was for a time in the possession of Scipion Sardini, one of the Italian partisans of the Medici, "whose arms bore _trois sardines d'argent_," and who had married Isabelle de la Tour, "_la Demoiselle de Limieul_" of unsavoury reputation. The "_Demoiselle de Limieul_" was related, too, to Catherine, and was celebrated in the gallantries of the time in no enviable fashion. She was a member of that band of demoiselles whose business it was--by one fascination or another--to worm political secrets from the nobles of the court. One horrible scandal connected the unfortunate lady with the Prince de Condé, but it need not be repeated here. The Huguenots ridiculed it in those memorable verses beginning thus: "Puella illa nobilis Quæ erat tam amabilis." After the reign of Sardini and of his direct successors, the house of Bullion, Chaumont passed through many hands. Madame de Staël arrived at the château in the early years of the nineteenth century, when she had received the order to separate herself from Paris, "by at least forty leagues." She had made the circle of the outlying towns, hovering about Paris as a moth about a candle-flame; Rouen, Auxerre, Blois, Saumur, all had entertained her, but now she came to establish herself in this Loire citadel. As the story goes, journeying from Saumur to Tours, by post-chaise, on the opposite side of the river, she saw the imposing mass of Chaumont rising high above the river-bed, and by her good graces and winning ways installed herself in the affections of the then proprietor, M. Leray, and continued her residence "and made her court here for many years." Chaumont is to-day the property of the Princesse de Broglie, who has sought to restore it, where needful, even to reëstablishing the ancient fosse or moat. This last, perhaps, is not needful; still, a moated château, or even a moated grange has a fascination for the sentimentally inclined. At the drawbridge, as one enters Chaumont to-day, one sees the graven initials of Louis XII. and Anne de Bretagne, the arms of Georges d'Amboise, surmounted by his cardinal's hat, and those of Charles de Chaumont, as well as other cabalistic signs: one a representation of a mountain (apparently) with a crater-like summit from which flames are breaking forth, while hovering about, back to back, are two C's: [IMAGE OF TWO JOINED LETTER 'C' POSITIONED LIKE THIS: )(]. The Renaissance artists greatly affected the rebus, and this perhaps has some reference to the etymology of the name Chaumont, which has been variously given as coming from _Chaud Mont_, _Calvus Mont_, and _Chauve Mont_. Georges d'Amboise, the first of the name, was born at Chaumont in 1460, the eighth son of a family of seventeen children. It was a far cry, as distances went in those days, from the shores of the shallow, limpid Loire to those of the forceful, turgent Seine at Rouen, where in the great Cathedral of Notre Dame, this first Georges of Amboise, having become an archbishop and a cardinal, was laid to rest beneath that magnificent canopied tomb before which visitors to the Norman capital stand in wonder. The mausoleum bears this epitaph, which in some small measure describes the activities of the man. "Pastor eram cleri, populi pater; aurea sese Lilia subdebant, quercus et ipsa mihi. "Martuus en jaceo, morte extinguunter honores, Et virtus, mortis nescia, mort viret." His was not by any means a life of placidity and optimism, and he had the air and reputation of doing things. There is a saying, still current in Touraine: "_Laissez faire à Georges._" The second of the same name, also an Archbishop of Rouen and a cardinal, succeeded his uncle in the see. He also is buried beneath the same canopy as his predecessor at Rouen. The main portal of the château leads to a fine quadrilateral court with an open gallery overlooking the Loire, which must have been a magnificent playground for the nobility of a former day. The interior embellishments are fine, some of the more noteworthy features being a grand staircase of the style of Louis XII.; the Salle des Gardes, with a painted ceiling showing the arms of Chaumont and Amboise; the Salle du Conseil, with some fine tapestries and a remarkable tiled floor, depicting scenes of the chase; the Chambre de Catherine de Medici (she possessed Chaumont for nine years), containing some of the gifts presented to her upon her wedding with Henri II.; and the curious Chambre de Ruggieri, the astrologer whom Catherine brought from her Italian home, and who was always near her, and kept her supplied with charms and omens, good and bad, and also her poisons. Ruggieri's observatory was above his apartment. It was at Chaumont that the astrologer overstepped himself, and would have used his magic against Charles IX. He did go so far as to make an image and inflict certain indignities upon it, with the belief that the same would befall the monarch himself. Ruggieri went to the galleys for this, but the scheming Catherine soon had him out again, and at work with his poisons and philtres. Finally there is the Chambre de Diane de Poitiers, Catherine's more than successful rival, with a bed (modern, it is said) and a series of sixteenth-century tapestries, with various other pieces of contemporary furniture. A portrait of Diane which decorates the apartment is supposed to be one of the three authentic portraits of the fair huntress. The chapel has a fine tiled pavement and some excellent glass. Chaumont is eighteen kilometres from Blois and the same distance from Amboise. It has not the splendour of Chambord, but it has a greater antiquity, and an incomparably finer situation, which displays its coiffed towers and their _mâchicoulis_ and cornices in a manner not otherwise possible. It is one of those picture châteaux which tell a silent story quite independent of guide-book or historical narrative. It was M. Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont, the superintendent of the forests of Berry and the Blaisois, under Louis XVI., who gave hospitality to Benjamin Franklin, and turned over to the first American ambassador to France the occupancy of his house at Passy, where Franklin lived for nine consecutive years. Of this same M. de Chaumont Americans cannot have too high a regard, for his timely and judicious hospitality has associated his name, only less permanently than Franklin's, with the early fortunes of the American republic. Besides his other offices, M. de Chaumont was the intendant of the Hôtel des Invalides, at Paris, holding confidential relations with the ministry of the young king, and was in the immediate enjoyment of a fortune which amounted to two and a half million of francs, besides owning, in addition to Chaumont on the Loire, another château in the Blaisois. This château he afterward tendered to John Adams, who declined the offer in a letter, written at Passy-sur-Seine, February 25, 1779, in the following words: "... To a mind as much addicted to retirement as mine, the situation you propose would be delicious indeed, provided my country were at peace and my family with me; but, separated from my family and with a heart bleeding with the wounds of its country, I should be the most miserable being on earth...." The potteries, which now form the stables of the château at Chaumont, are somewhat reminiscent of Franklin. M. de Chaumont had established a pottery here, where he had found a clay which had encouraged him to hope that he could compete with the English manufacturers of the time. Here the Italian Nini, who was invited to Chaumont, made medallions much sought for by collectors, among others one of Franklin, which was so much admired as a work of art, and became so much in demand that in later years replicas were made and are well known to amateurs. The family of Le Ray de Chaumont were extensively known in America, where they became large landholders in New York State in the early nineteenth century, and the head of the family seems to have been an amiable and popular landlord. The towns of Rayville and Chaumont in New York State still perpetuate his name. The two male members of the family secured American wives; Le Ray himself married a Miss Coxe, and their son a Miss Jahel, both of New York. From an anonymous letter to the New York _Evening Post_ of November 19, 1885, one quotes the following: "It was in Blois that I first rummaged among these shops, whose attractions are almost a rival to those of the castle, though this is certainly one of the most interesting in France. The traveller will remember the long flight of stone steps which climbs the steep hill in the centre of the town. Near the foot of this hill there is a well-furnished book-shop; its windows display old editions and rich bindings, and tempt one to enter and inquire for antiquities. Here I found a quantity of old notarial documents and diplomas of college or university, all more or less recently cleared out from some town hall, or unearthed from neighbouring castle, and sold by a careless owner, as no longer valuable to him. This was the case with most of the parchments I found at Blois; they had been acquired within a few years from the castle of Madon, and from a former proprietor of the neighbouring castle of Chaumont (the _calvus mons_ of mediæval time), and most of them pertained to the affairs of the _seigneurie de Chaumont_. Contracts, executions, sales of vineyards and houses, legal decisions, _actes de vente_, loans on mortgages, the marriage contract of a M. Lubin,--these were the chief documents that I found and purchased." The traveller may not expect to come upon duplicates of these treasures again, but the incident only points to the fact that much documentary history still lies more or less deeply buried. CHAPTER VI. TOURAINE: THE GARDEN SPOT OF FRANCE "C'est une grande dame, une princesse altière, Chacun de ses châteaux, marqué du sceau royal, Lui fait une toilette en dentelle de pierre Et son splendide fleuve un miroir de cristal." It is difficult to write appreciatively of Touraine without echoing the words of some one who has gone before, and it is likely that those who come after will find the task no easier. Truly, as a seventeenth-century geographer has said: "Here is the most delicious and the most agreeable province of the kingdom. It has been named the garden of France because of the softness of its climate, the affability of its people, and the ease of its life." The poets who have sung the praises of Touraine are many, Ronsard, Remy Belleau, Du Bellay, and for prose authors we have at the head, Rabelais, La Fontaine, Balzac, and Alfred de Vigny. Merely to enumerate them all would be impossible, but they furnish a fund of quotable material for the traveller when he is writing home, and are equally useful to the maker of guide-books. One false note on Touraine, only, has ever rung out in the world of literature, and that was from Stendahl, who said: "_La Belle Touraine n'existe pas!_" The pages of Alfred de Vigny and Balzac answer this emphatically, and to the contrary, and every returning traveller apparently sides with them and not with Stendahl. How can one not love its prairies, gently sloping to the caressing Loire, its rolling hills and dainty ravines? The broad blue Loire is always vague and tranquil here, at least one seems always to see it so, but the beauty of Touraine is, after all, a quiet beauty which must be seen to be appreciated, and lived with to be loved. It is a land of most singular attractions, neither too hot nor too cold, too dry nor too damp, with a sufficiency of rain, and an abundance of sunshine. Its market-gardens are prolific in their product, its orchards overflowing with plenitude, and its vineyards generous in their harvest. Touraine is truly the region where one may read history without books, with the very pages of nature punctuated and adorned with the marvels of the French Renaissance. Louis XI. gave the first impetus to the alliance of the great domestic edifice--which we have come to distinguish as the residential château--with the throne, and the idea was amplified by Charles VIII. and glorified by François Premier. In the brilliant, if dissolute, times of the early sixteenth century François Premier and his court travelled down through this same Touraine to Loches and to Amboise, where François's late gaoler, Charles Quint, was to be received and entertained. It was after François had returned from his involuntary exile in Spain, and while he was still in residence at the Louvre, that the plans for the journey were made. To the Duchesse d'Étampes François said,--the duchess who was already more than a rival of both Diane and the Comtesse de Châteaubriant,--"I must tear myself away from you to-morrow. I shall await my brother Charles at Amboise on the Loire." "Shall you not revenge yourself upon him, for his cruel treatment of you?" said the wily favourite of the time. "If he, like a fool, comes to Touraine, will you not make him revoke the treaty of Madrid or shut him up in one of Louis XI.'s oubliettes?" "I will persuade him, if possible," said François, "but I shall never force him." In due time François did receive his brother king at Amboise and it was amid great ceremony and splendour. His guest could not, or would not, mount steps, so that great inclined plane, up which a state coach and its horses might go, was built. Probably there was a good reason for the emperor's peculiarity, for that worthy or unworthy monarch finally died of gout in the monastery of San Juste. The meeting here at Amboise was a grand and ceremonious affair and the Spanish monarch soon came to recognize a possible enemy in the royal favourite, Anne de Pisselieu. The emperor's eyes, however, melted with admiration, and he told her that only in France could one see such a perfection of elegance and beauty, with the result that--as is popularly adduced--the susceptible, ambitious, and unfaithful duchess betrayed François more than once in the affairs attendant upon the subsequent wars between France, England, and Spain. From Touraine, in the sixteenth century, spread that influence which left its impress even on the capital of the kingdom itself, not only in respect to architectural art, but in manners and customs as well. Whatever may be the real value of the Renaissance as an artistic expression, the discussion of it shall have no place here, beyond the qualifying statement that what we have come to know as the French Renaissance--which undeniably grew up from a transplanted Italian germ--proved highly tempting to the mediæval builder for all manner of edifices, whereas it were better if it had been confined to civic and domestic establishments and left the church pure in its full-blown Gothic forms. Curiously enough, here in Touraine, this is just what did happen. The Renaissance influence crept into church-building here and there--and it is but a short step from the "_gothique rayonnant_" to what are recognized as well-defined Renaissance features; but it is more particularly in respect to the great châteaux, and even smaller dwellings, that the superimposed Italian details were used. A notable illustration of this is seen in the Cathedral of St. Gatien at Tours. It is very beautiful and has some admirable Gothic features, but there are occasional constructive details, as well as those for decorative effect alone, which are decidedly not good Gothic; but, as they are, likewise, not Renaissance, they hence cannot be laid to its door, but rather to the architect's eccentricity. In the smaller wayside churches, such as one sees at Cormery, at Cheverny, and at Cour-Cheverny, there is scarcely a sign of Renaissance, while their neighbouring châteaux are nothing else, both in construction and in decoration. The Château de Langeais is, for the most part, excellent Gothic, and so is the church near by. Loches has distinct and pure Gothic details both in its church and its château, quite apart from the Hôtel de Ville and that portion of the château now used as the Sous-Préfecture, which are manifestly Renaissance; hence here in Touraine steps were apparently taken to keep the style strictly non-ecclesiastical. A glance of the eye at the topography of this fair province stamps it at once as something quite different from any other traversed by the Loire. Two of the great "routes nationales" cross it, the one via Orleans, leading to Nantes, and the other via Chartres, going to Bordeaux. It is crossed and recrossed by innumerable "routes secondaires," "départementales," "vicinales" and "particulières," second to none of their respective classes in other countries, for assuredly the roads of France are the best in the world. Many of these great ways of communication replaced the ancient Roman roads, which were the pioneers of the magnificent roadways of the France of to-day. Almost invariably Touraine is flat or rolling, its highest elevation above the sea being but a hundred and forty-six metres, scarce four hundred and fifty feet, a fact which accounts also for the gentle flow of the Loire through these parts. All the fruits of the southland are found here, the olive alone excepted. Mortality, it is said, and proved by figures, is lower than in any other part of France, and for this reason many dwellers in the large cities, if they may not all have a mediæval château, have at least a villa, far away from "the madding crowd," and yet within four hours' travel of the capital itself. [Illustration: THE LOIRE IN TOURAINE] Touraine, properly speaking, has no natural frontiers, as it is not enclosed by rivers or mountains. It is, however, divided by the Loire into two distinct regions, the Méridionale and the Septentrionale; but the dress, the physiognomy, the language, and the predilections of the people are everywhere the same, though the two sections differ somewhat in temperament. In the south, the Tourangeau is timid and obliging, but more or less engrossed in his affairs; in the north, he is proud, egotistical, and a little arrogant, but, above all, he likes his ease and comfort, something after the manner of "mynheer" of Holland. These are the characteristics which are enumerated by Stanislas Bellanger of Tours, in "La Touraine Ancienne et Moderne," and they are traceable to-day, in every particular, to one who knows well the by-paths of the region. Formerly the peasant was, in his own words, "_sous la main de M. le comte_," but, with the coming of the eighteenth century, all this was changed, and the conditions which, in England, succeeded feudalism, are unknown in Touraine, as indeed throughout France. The two great divisions which nature had made of Touraine were further cut up into five _petits pays_; les Varennes, le Veron, la Champeigne, la Brenne, and les Gâtines; names which exist on some maps to-day, but which have lost, in a great measure, their former distinction. There is a good deal to be said in favour of the physical and moral characteristics of the inhabitants of Touraine. Just as the descendants of the Phoceans, the original settlers of Marseilles, differ from the natives of other parts of France, so, too, do the Tourangeaux differ from the inhabitants of other provinces. The people of Touraine are a mixture of Romans, Visigoths, Saracens, Alains, Normans and Bretons, Anglais and Gaulois; but all have gradually been influenced by local conditions, so that the native of Touraine has become a distinct variety all by himself. The deliciousness of the "garden of France" has altered him so that he stands to-day as more distinctly French than the citizen of Paris itself. Touraine, too, has the reputation of being that part of France where is spoken the purest French. This, perhaps, is as true of the Blaisois, for the local bookseller at Blois will tell one with the most dulcet and understandable enunciation that it is at Blois that one hears the best accent. At any rate, it is something found within a charmed circle, of perhaps a hundred miles in diameter, that does not find its exact counterpart elsewhere. As Seville stands for the Spanish tongue, Florence for the Italian, and Dresden for the German, so Tours stands for the French. The history of the Loire in Touraine, as is the case at Le Puy, at Nevers, at Sancerre, or at Orleans, is abundant and vivid, and the monuments which line its banks are numerous and varied, from the fortress-château of Amboise to the Cathedral of St. Gatien at Tours with its magnificent bejewelled façade. The ruined towers of the castle of Cinq-Mars, with its still more ancient Roman "pile," and the feudal châteaux of the countryside are all eloquent, even to-day, in their appeal to all lovers of history and romance. There are some verses, little known, in praise of the Loire, as it comes through Touraine, written by Houdon des Landes, who lived near Tours in the eighteenth century. The following selection expresses their quality well and is certainly worthy to rank with the best that Balzac wrote in praise of his beloved Touraine. "La Loire enorgueillit ses antiques cités, Et courounne ses bords de coteaux enchantés; Dans ses vallons heureux, sur ses rives aimées, Les prés ont déployé leurs robes parfumées; Le saule humide et souple y lance ses rameaux. Ses coteaux sont peuplés, et le rocher docile A l'homme qui le creuse offre un champêtre asile. De notre vieille Gaule, ô fleuve paternel! Fleuve des doux climats! la Vallière et Sorel Sur tes bords fortunés naquirent, et la gloire A l'une dût l'amour, à l'autre la victoire." Again and again Balzac's words echo in one's ears from his "Scène de la Vie de Province." The following quotations are typical of the whole: "The softness of the air, the beauty of the climate, all tend to a certain ease of existence and simplicity of manner which encourages an appreciation of the arts." "Touraine is a land to foster the ambition of a Napoleon and the sentiment of a Byron." Another writer, A. Beaufort, a publicist of the nineteenth century, wrote: "The Tourangeaux resemble the good Adam in the garden of Eden. They drink, they eat, they sleep and dream, and care not what their neighbour may be doing." Touraine was indeed, at one time, a veritable Eden, though guarded by fortresses, _hallebardes_, and arquebuses, but not the less an Eden for all that. In addition it was a land where, in the middle ages, the seigneurs made history, almost without a parallel in France or elsewhere. Touraine, truly enough, was the centre of the old French monarchy in the perfection of its pomp and state; but it is also true that Touraine knew little of the serious affairs of kings, though some all-important results came from events happening within its borders. Paris was the law-making centre in the sixteenth century, and Touraine knew only the domestic life and pleasures of royalty. Etiquette, form, and ceremony were all relaxed, or at least greatly modified, and the court spent in the country what it had levied in the capital. Curiously enough, the monarchs were omnipotent and influential here, though immediately they quartered themselves in Paris their powers waned considerably; indeed, they seemed to lose their influence upon ministers and vassals alike. Louis XIII., it is true, tried to believe that Paris was France,--like the Anglo-Saxon tourists who descend upon it in such great numbers to-day,--and built Versailles; but there was never much real glory about its cold and pompous walls. The fortunes of the old châteaux of Touraine have been most varied. Chambord is vast and bare, elegant and pompous; Blois, just across the border, is a tourist sight of the first rank whose salamanders and porcupines have been well cared for by the paternal French government. Chaumont, Chenonceaux, Langeais, Azay-le-Rideau, and half a dozen others are still inhabited, and are gay with the life of twentieth-century luxury; Amboise is a possession of the Orleans family; Loches is, in part, given over to the uses of a sous-préfecture; and Chinon's châteaux are but half-demolished ruins. Besides these there are numerous smaller residential châteaux of the nobility scattered here and there in the Loire watershed. There have been writers who have sought to commiserate with "the poor peasant of Touraine," as they have been pleased to think of him, and have deplored the fact that his sole possession was a small piece of ground which he and his household cultivated, and that he lived in a little whitewashed house, built with his own hands, or those of his ancestors. Though the peasant of Touraine, as well as of other parts of the countryside, works for an absurdly small sum, and for considerably less than his brother nearer Paris, he sells his produce at the nearest market-town for a fair price, and preserves a spirit of independence which is as valuable as are some of the things which are thrust upon him in some other lands under the guise of benevolent charity, really patronage of a most demeaning and un-moral sort. At night the Touraine peasant returns to his own hearthstone conscious that he is a man like all of his fellows, and is not a mere atom ground between the upper and nether millstones of the landlord and the squire. He cooks his "_bouillie_" over three small sticks and retires to rest with the fond hope that on the next market-day following the prices of eggs, chickens, cauliflowers, or tomatoes may be higher. He is the stuff that successful citizens are made of, and is not to be pitied in the least, even though it is only the hundredth man of his community who ever does rise to more wealth than a mere competency. Touraine, rightly enough, has been called the garden of France, but it is more than that, much more; it is a warm, soft land where all products of the soil take on almost a subtropical luxuriance. Besides the great valley of the Loire, there are the valleys of the tributaries which run into it, in Touraine and the immediate neighbourhood, all of which are fertile as only a river-bottom can be. It is true that there are numerous formerly arid and sandy plateaux, quite unlike the abundant plains of La Beauce, though to-day, by care and skill, they have been made to rival the rest of the region in productiveness. The Département d'Indre et Loire is the richest agricultural region in all France so far as the variety and abundance of its product goes, rivalling in every way the opulence of the Burgundian hillsides. Above all, Touraine stands at the head of the vine-culture of all the Loire valley, the _territoire vinicole_ lapping over into Anjou, where are produced the celebrated _vins blancs_ of Saumur. The vineyard workers of Touraine, in the neighbourhood of Loches, have clung closely to ancient customs, almost, one may say, to the destruction of the industry, though of late new methods have set in, and, since the blight now some years gone by, a new prosperity has come. The day worker, who cares for the vines and superintends the picking of the grapes by the womenfolk and the children, works for two francs fifty centimes per day; but he invariably carries with him to the scene of his labours a couple of cutlets from a young and juicy _brebis_, or even a _poulet rôti_, so one may judge from this that his pay is ample for his needs in this land of plenty. [Illustration: _The Vintage in Touraine_] In the morning he takes his bowl of soup and a cup of white wine, and of course huge hunks of bread, and finally coffee, and on each Sunday he has his _rôti à la maison_. All this demonstrates the fact that the French peasant is more of a meat eater in these parts than he is commonly thought to be. Touraine has no peculiar beauties to offer the visitor; there is nothing _outré_ about it to interest one; but, rather, it wins by sheer charm alone, or perhaps a combination of charms and excellencies makes it so truly a delectable land. The Tourangeaux themselves will tell you, when speaking of Rabelais and Balzac, that it is the land of "_haute graisse, féconde et spirituelle_." It is all this, and, besides its spirituelle components, it will supply some very real and substantial comforts. It is the Eden of the gourmandiser of such delicacies as _truffes_, _rilettes_, and above all, _pruneaux_, which you get in one form or another at nearly every meal. Most of the good things of life await one here in abundance, with kitchen-gardens and vineyards at every one's back door. Truly Touraine is a land of good living. Life runs its course in Touraine, "_facile et bonne_," without any extremes of joy or sorrow, without chimerical desires or infinite despair, and the agreeable sensations of life predominate,--the first essential to real happiness. Some one has said, and certainly not without reason, that every Frenchman has a touch of Rabelais and of Voltaire in his make-up. This is probably true, for France has never been swept by a wave of puritanism such as has been manifest in most other countries, and _le gros rire_ is still the national philosophy. In a former day a hearty laugh, or at least an amused cynicism, diverted the mind of the martyr from threatened torture and even violent death. Brinvilliers laughed at those who were to torture her to death, and De la Barre and Danton cracked jokes and improvised puns upon the very edge of their untimely graves. Touraine has the reputation of being a wonderfully productive field for the book collector, though with books, like many other treasures of a past time, the day has passed when one may "pick up" for two sous a MS. worth as many thousands of francs; but still bargains are even now found, and if one wants great calf-covered tomes, filled with fine old engravings, bearing on the local history of the _pays_, he can generally find them at all prices here in old Touraine. There was a more or less apocryphal story told us and the landlady of our inn concerning a find which a guest had come upon in a little roadside hamlet at which he chanced to stop. He was one of those omnipresent _commis voyageurs_ who thread the French provinces up and down, as no other country in the world is "travelled" or "drummed." He was the representative for a brandy shipper, one of those substantial houses of the cognac region whose product is mostly sold only in France; but this fact need not necessarily put the individual very far down in the social scale. Indeed, he was a most amiable and cultivated person. Our fellow traveller had come to a village where all the available accommodations of the solitary inn were already engaged; therefore he was obliged to put up with a room in the town, which the landlord hunted out for him. Repairing to his room without any thought save that of sleep, the traveller woke the next morning to find the sun streaming through the opaqueness of a brilliantly coloured window. Not stained glass here, surely, thought the stranger, for his lodging was a most humble one. It proved to be not glass at all; merely four great vellum leaves, taken from some ancient tome and stuck into the window-framing where the glass ought to have been. Daylight was filtering dimly through the rich colouring, and it took but a moment to become convinced that the sheets were something rare and valuable. He learned that the pages were from an old Latin MS., and that the occupant of the little dwelling had used "_the paper_" in the place of the glass which had long since disappeared. The vellum and its illuminations had stood the weather well, though somewhat dimmed in comparison with the brilliancy of the remaining folios, which were found below-stairs. There were in all some eighty pages, which were purchased for a modest forty sous, and everybody satisfied. The volume had originally been found by the father of the old dame who then had possession of it in an old château in revolutionary times. Whether her honoured parent was a pillager or a protector did not come out, but for all these years the possession of this fine work meant no more to this Tourangelle than a supply of "paper" for stopping up broken window-panes. "She parted readily enough with the remaining leaves," said our Frenchman, "but nothing would induce her to remove those which filled the window." "No, we have no more glass, and these have answered quite well for a long time now," she said. And such is the simplicity of the French provincial, even to-day--_sometimes_. CHAPTER VII. AMBOISE As one approaches Amboise, he leaves the comparatively insalubrious plain of the Sologne and the Blaisois and enters Touraine. Amboise! What history has been made there; what a wealth of action its memories recall, and what splendour, gaiety, and sadness its walls have held! An entire book might be written about the scenes which took place under its roof. To-day most travellers are content to rush over its apartments, gaze at its great round tower, view the Loire, which is here quite at its best, from the battlements, and, after a brief admiration of the wonderfully sculptured portal of its chapel, make their way to Chenonceaux, or to the gay little metropolis of Tours. [Illustration: _Château d'Amboise_] No matter whither one turns his steps from Amboise, he will not soon forget this great fortress-château and the memories of the _petite bande_ of blondes and brunettes who followed in the wake of François Premier. Here, and at Blois, the recollections of this little band are strong in the minds of students of romance and history. Some one has said that along the corridors of Amboise one still may meet the wraiths of those who in former days went airily from one pleasure to another, but this of course depends upon the mood and sentiment of the visitor. Amboise has a very good imitation of the climate of the south, and the glitter of the Loire at midday in June is about as torrid a picture as one can paint in a northern clime. It is not that it is so very hot in degree, but that the lack of shade-trees along its quays gives Amboise a shimmering resemblance to a much warmer place than it really is. The Loire is none too ample here, and frets its way, as it does through most of its lower course, through banks of sand and pebbles in a more or less vain effort to look cool. Amboise is old, for, under the name of Ambatia, it existed in the fourth century, at which epoch St. Martin, the patron of Tours, threw down a pagan pyramidal temple here and established Christianity; and Clovis and Alaric held their celebrated meeting on the Ile St. Jean in 496. It was not long after this, according to the ancient writers, that some sort of a fortified château took form here. Louis-le-Bègue gave Amboise to the Counts of Anjou, and Hughes united the two independent seigneuries of the château and the bourg. After the Counts of Anjou succeeded the Counts of Berry, Charles VII., by appropriation, confiscation, seizure, or whatever you please to call it,--history is vague as to the real motive,--united Amboise to the possessions of the Crown in 1434. Louis XI. lived for a time at this strong fortress-château, before he turned his affections so devotedly to Plessis-les-Tours. Charles VIII. was born and died here, and it was he who added the Renaissance details, or at least the first of them, upon his return from Italy. Indeed, it is to him and to the nobles who followed in his train during his Italian travels that the introduction of the Renaissance into France is commonly attributed. It was at Amboise that Charles VIII., forgetful of the miseries of his Italian campaign, set about affairs of state with a renewed will and vigour. He was personally superintending some alterations in the old castle walls, and instructing the workmen whom he brought from Italy with him as to just how far they might introduce those details which the world has come to know as Renaissance, when, in passing beneath a low overhanging beam, he struck his head so violently that he expired almost immediately (April 17, 1498). Louis XII., the superstitious, lived here for some time, and here occurred some of the most important events in the life of the great François, the real popularizer of the new architectural Renaissance. It was in the old castle of Amboise, the early home of Louis XII., that his appointed successor, his son-in-law and second cousin, François, was brought up. Here he was educated by his mother, Louise de Savoie, Duchesse d'Angoulême, together with that bright and shining light, that Marguerite who was known as the "Pearl of the Valois," poetess, artist, and court intriguer. Here the household formed what in the early days François himself was pleased to call a "trinity of love." Throughout the structure may yet be seen the suggestions of François's artistic instincts, traced in the window-framings of the façade, in the interior decorations of the long gallery, and on the terrace hanging high above the Loire. In the park and in the surrounding forest François and his sister Marguerite passed many happy days of their childhood. Marguerite, who had already become known as the "tenth muse," had already thought out her "Heptameron," whilst François tried his prentice hand at love-rhyming, an expression of sentiment which at a later period took the form of avowals in person to his favourites. One recalls those stanzas to the memory of Agnes Sorel, beginning: "Gentille Agnès plus de loz tu mérite, La cause était de France recouvrir; Que ce que peut dedans un cloître ouvrir Close nonnaine? ou bien dévot hermite?" François was more than a lover of the beautiful. His appreciation of architectural art amounted almost to a passion, and one might well claim him as a member of the architectural guild, although, in truth, he was nothing more than a generous patron of the craftsmen of his day. François was the real father of the French Renaissance, the more splendid flower which grew from the Italian stalk. He had no liking for the Van Eycks and Holbeins of the Dutch school, reserving his favour for the frankly languid masters from the south. He brought from Italy Cellini, Primaticcio, and the great Leonardo, who it is said had a hand in that wonderful shell-like spiral stairway in the château at Blois. By just what means Da Vinci was inveigled from Italy will probably never be known. The art-loving François visited Milan, and among its curiosities was shown the even then celebrated "Last Supper" of Leonardo. The next we know is that, "_François repasse les Alpes ayant avec lui Mon Sieur Lyonard, son peintre_." Leonardo was given a pension of seven _ecus de France_ per year and a residence near Amboise. Vasari recounts very precisely how Leonardo expired in the arms of his kingly patron at Amboise, but on the other hand, the court chronicles have said that François was at St. Germain on that day. Be this as it may, the intimacy was a close one, and we may be sure that François felt keenly the demise of this most celebrated painter of his court. It was during those early idyllic days at Amboise that the character of François was formed, and the marvel is that the noble and endearing qualities did not exceed the baser ones. To be sure his after lot was hard, and his real and fancied troubles many, and they were not made the less easy to bear because of his numerous female advisers. In his youth at Amboise his passions still slumbered, but when they did awaken, they burst forth with an unquenchable fury. Meantime he was working off any excess of imagination by boar-hunts and falconry in the neighbouring forest of Chanteloup, and had more than one hand-to-hand affray with resentful citizens of the town, when he encroached upon what they considered their traditional preserves. So he grew to man's estate, but the life that he lived in his youth under the kingly roof of the château at Amboise gave him the benefits of all the loyalty which his fellows knew, and it helped him carry out the ideas which were bequeathed to him by his uncle. It was at a sitting of the court at Amboise, when François was still under his mother's wing,--at the age of twenty only,--that the Bourbon affair finally came to its head. Many notables were mixed up in it as partisans of the ungrateful and ambitious Bourbon, Charles de Montpensier, Connétable de France. It was an office only next in power to that of the sovereign himself, and one which had been allowed to die out in the reign of Louis XI. The final outcome of it all was that François became a prisoner at Pavia, through the treachery of the Connétable and his followers, who went over _en masse_ to François's rival, Charles V., who, as Charles II., was King of Spain. Of the subsequent meeting with the Emperor Charles on French soil, François said to the Duchesse d'Étampes: "It is with regret that I leave you to meet the emperor at Amboise on the Loire." And he added: "You will follow me with the queen." His queen at this time was poor Eleanor of Portugal, herself a Spanish princess, Claude of France, his first wife, having died. "These two," says Brantôme, "were the only virtuous women of his household." The Emperor Charles was visibly affected by the meeting, though, it is true, he had no love for his old enemy, François. Perhaps it was on account of the duchess, for whom François had put aside Diane. At any rate, the emperor was gallant enough to say to her: "It is only in France that I have seen such a perfection of elegance and beauty. My brother, your king, should be the envy of all the sovereigns of Europe. Had I such a captive at my palace in Madrid, there were no ransom that I would accept for her." François cared not for the lonely Spanish princess whom he had made his queen; but he was somewhat susceptible to the charms of his daughter-in-law, Catherine de Medici, the wife of his son Henri, who, when at Amboise, was his ever ready companion in the chase. François was inordinately fond of the hunt, and made of it a most strenuous pastime, full of danger and of hard riding in search of the boar and the wolf, which abounded in the thick underwood in the neighbourhood. One wonders where they, or, rather, their descendants, have disappeared, since nought in these days but a frightened hare, a partridge, or perhaps a timid deer ever crosses one's path, as he makes his way by the smooth roads which cross and recross the forest behind Amboise. When François II. was sixteen he became the nominal king of France. To Amboise he and his young bride came, having been brought thither from Blois, for fear of the Huguenot rising. The court settled itself forthwith at Amboise, where the majestic feudal castle piled itself high up above the broad, limpid Loire, feeling comparatively secure within the protection of its walls. Here the Loire had widened to the pretensions of a lake, the river being spanned by a bridge, which crossed it by the help of the island, as it does to-day. Over this old stone bridge the court approached the castle, the retinue brilliant with all the trappings of a luxurious age, archers, pages, and men-at-arms. The king and his new-found bride, the winsome Mary Stuart, rode well in the van. In their train were Catherine, the "queen-mother" of three kings, the Cardinal de Lorraine, the Duc de Guise, the Duc de Nemours, and a vast multitude of gay retainers, who were moved about from place to place like pawns upon the chess-board, and with about as much consideration. The gentle Mary Stuart, born in 1542, at Linlithgow, in stern Caledonia, of a French mother,--Marie de Lorraine,--was doomed to misfortune, for her father, the noble James V., prophesied upon his death-bed that the dynasty would end with his daughter. At the tender age of five Mary was sent to France and placed in a convent. Her education was afterward continued at court under the direction of her uncle, the Cardinal de Lorraine. By ten she had become well versed in French, Latin, and Italian, and at one time, according to Brantôme, she gave a discourse on literature and the liberal arts--so flourishing at the time--before the king and his court. Ronsard was her tutor in versification, which became one of her favourite pursuits. Mary Stuart's charms were many. She was tall and finely formed, with auburn hair shining like an aureole above her intellectual forehead, and with a skin of such dazzling whiteness--a trite saying, but one which is used by Brantôme--"that it outrivalled the whiteness of her veil." In the spring of 1558, when she was but sixteen, Mary Stuart was married to the Dauphin, the weak, sickly François II., himself but a youth. He was, however, sincerely and deeply fond of his young wife. Unexpectedly, through the death of Henri II. at the hands of Montgomery at that ever debatable tournament, François II. ascended the throne of France, and Mary Stuart saw herself exalted to the dizzy height which she had not so soon expected. She became the queen of two kingdoms, and, had the future been more propitious, the whole map of Europe might have been changed. Disease had marked the unstable François for its own, and within a year he passed from the throne to the grave, leaving his young queen a widow and an orphan. Shortly afterward "_la reine blanche_" returned to her native Scotland, bidding France that long, last, sad adieu so often quoted: "Farewell, beloved France, to thee! Best native land, The cherished strand That nursed my tender infancy! Farewell my childhood's happy day! The bark, which bears me thus away, Bears but the poorer moiety hence, The nobler half remains with thee, I leave it to thy confidence, But to remind thee still of me!" The young sovereigns had had a most stately suite of apartments prepared for them at Amboise, the lofty windows reaching from floor to ceiling and overlooking the river and the vast terrace where was so soon to be enacted that bloody drama to which they were to be made unwilling witnesses. This gallery was wainscoted with old oak and hung with rich leathers, and the lofty ceiling was emblazoned with heraldic emblems and monograms, as was the fashion of the day. Brocades and tapestries, set in great gold frames, lined the walls, and, in a boudoir or retiring-room beyond, still definitely to be recognized, was a remarkable series of embroidered wall decorations, a tapestry of flowers and fruits with an arabesque border of white and gold, truly a queenly apartment, and one that well became the luxurious and dainty Mary, who came from Scotland to marry the youthful François. Mary Stuart knew little at the time as to why they had so suddenly removed from Blois, but François soon told her, something after this wise: "Our mother," said he, "is deeply concerned with affairs of state. There is some conspiracy against her and your uncles, the Guises." "Tell me," she demanded, "concerning this dreadful conspiracy." "Were you not suspicious," he asked, querulously, "when we left for Amboise so suddenly?" "_Ah, non, mon François_, methought that we came here to hold a jousting tourney and to hunt in the forest...." "Well, at any rate, we are secure here from Turk, or Jew, or Huguenot, my queen," replied the king. Within a short space a council was called in the great hall of Amboise, which the Huguenot chiefs, Condé, Coligny, the Cardinal de Chatillon,--who appears to have been a sort of a religious renegade,--were requested to attend. A conciliatory edict was to be prepared, and signed by the king, as a measure for gaining time and learning further the plans of the conspirators. This edict ultimately was signed, but it was in force but a short time and was a subterfuge which the youthful king deep in his heart--and he publicly avowed the fact--deeply resented. Furthermore it did practically nothing toward quelling the conspiracy. Through the plains of Touraine and over the hills from Anjou the conspirators came in straggling bands, to rendezvous for a great _coup de main_ at Amboise. They halted at farms and hid in vineyards, but the royalists were on the watch and one after another the wandering bands were captured and held for a bloody public massacre when the time should become ripe. In all, two thousand or more were captured, including Jean Barri de la Renaudie. This man was the leader, but he was merely a bold adventurer, seeking his own advantage, and caring little what cause employed his peculiar talents. This was his last affair, however, for his corpse soon hung in chains from Amboise's bridge. Condé, Coligny, and the other Calvinists soon learned that the edict was not worth the paper on which it was written. After the two thousand had been dispersed or captured the "queen-mother" threw off the mask. She led the trembling child-king and queen toward the southern terrace, where, close beneath the windows of the château, was built a scaffold, covered with black cloth, before which stood the executioner clothed in scarlet. The prisoners were ranged by hundreds along the outer rampart, guarded by archers and musketeers. The windows of the royal apartment were open and here the company placed themselves to witness the butchery to follow. Speechless with horror sat the young king and queen, until finally, as another batch of mutilated corpses were thrown into the river below, the young queen swooned. "My mother," said François, "I, too, am overcome by this horrible sight. I crave your Highness's permission to retire; the blood of my subjects, even of my enemies, is too horrible to contemplate." "My son," said the bloodthirsty Catherine, "I command you to stay. Duc de Guise, support your niece, the Queen of France. Teach her her duty as a sovereign. She must learn how to govern those hardy Scots of hers." It was on the very terraced platform on which one walks to-day that, between two ranks of _hallebardiers_ and arquebusiers, moved that long line of bareheaded and bowed men whose prayers went up to heaven while they awaited the fate of the gallows. Either the cord or the sword-blade quickly accounted for the lives of this multitude, and their blood flowed in rivulets, while above in the gallery the willing and unwilling onlookers were gay with laughter or dumb with sadness. When all this horrible murdering was over the Loire was literally a reeking mass of corpses, if we are to believe the records of the time. The chief conspirators were hung in chains from the castle walls, or from the bridge, and the balustrades which overhang the street, which to-day flanks the Loire beneath the castle walls, were filled with a ribald crew of jeering partisans who knew little and cared less for religion of any sort. Some days after the execution of the Calvinists the "Protestant poet" and historian passed through the royal city with his _précepteur_ and his father, and was shown the rows of heads planted upon pikes, which decorated the castle walls, and thereupon vowed, if not to avenge, at least to perpetuate the infamy in prose and verse, and this he did most effectually. An odorous garden of roses, lilacs, honeysuckle, and hawthorn framed the joyous architecture of the château, then as now, in adorable fashion; but it could not purify the malodorous reputation which it had received until the domain was ceded by Louis XIV. to the Duc de Penthièvre and made a _duché-pairie_. It would be possible to say much more, but this should suffice to stamp indelibly the fact that Touraine, in general, and the château of Amboise, in particular, cradled as much of the thought and action of the monarchy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as did the capital itself. At any rate the memory of it all is so vivid, and the tangible monuments of the splendour and intrigue of the court of those days are so very numerous and magnificent, that one could not forget the parts they played--once having seen them--if he would. After the assassination of the Duc de Guise at Blois, Amboise became a prison of state, where were confined the Cardinal de Bourbon and César de Vendôme (the sons of Henri IV. and Gabrielle d'Estrées), also Fouquet and Lauzun. In 1762 the château was given by Louis XV. to the Duc de Choiseul, and the great Napoleon turned it over to his ancient colleague, Roger Ducos, who apparently cared little for its beauties or associations, for he mutilated it outrageously. [Illustration: _Sculpture from the Chapelle de St. Hubert_] In later times the history of the château and its dependencies has been more prosaic. The Emir Abd-el-Kader was imprisoned here in 1852, and Louis Napoleon stayed for a time within its walls upon his return from the south. To-day it belongs to the family of Orleans, to whom it was given by the National Assembly in 1872, and has become a house of retreat for military veterans. This is due to the generosity of the Duc d'Aumale into whose hands it has since passed. The restoration which has been carried on has made of Amboise an ideal reproduction of what it once was, and in every way it is one of the most splendid and famous châteaux of its kind, though by no means as lovable as the residential châteaux of Chenonceaux or Langeais. The Chapelle de St. Hubert, which was restored by Louis Philippe, is the chief artistic attraction of Amboise; a bijou of full-blown Gothic. It is a veritable architectural joy of the period of Charles VIII., to whom its erection was due. Its portal has an adorable bas-relief, representing "La Chasse de St. Hubert," and showing St. Hubert, St. Christopher, and St. Anthony, while above, in the tympanum, are effigies of the Virgin, of Charles VIII., and of Anne de Bretagne. The sculpture is, however, comparatively modern, but it embellishes a shrine worthy in every way, for there repose the bones of Leonardo da Vinci. Formerly Da Vinci's remains had rested in the chapel of the château itself, dedicated to St. Florentin. Often the Chapelle de St. Hubert has been confounded with that described by Scott in "Quentin Durward," but it is manifestly not the same, as that was located in Tours or near there, and his very words describe the architecture as "of the rudest and meanest kind," which this is not. Over the arched doorway of the chapel at Tours there was, however, a "statue of St. Hubert with a bugle-horn around his neck and a leash of greyhounds at his feet," which may have been an early suggestion of the later work which was undertaken at Amboise. All vocations came to have their protecting saints in the middle ages, and, since "_la chasse_" was the great recreation of so many, distinction was bestowed upon Hubert as being one of the most devout. The legend is sufficiently familiar not to need recounting here, and, anyway, the story is plainly told in this sculptured panel over the portal of the chapel at Amboise. In this Chapel of St. Hubert was formerly held "that which was called a hunting-mass. The office was only used before the noble and powerful, who, while assisting at the solemnity, were usually impatient to commence their favourite sport." The ancient Salle des Gardes of the château, with the windows giving on the balcony overlooking the river, became later the Logis du Roi. From this great chamber one passes on to the terrace near the foot of the Grosse Tour, called the Tour des Minimes. It is this tower which contains the "_escalier des voitures_." The entrance is through an elegant portico leading to the upper stories. Above another portico, leading from the terrace to the garden, is to be seen the emblem of Louis XII., the porcupine, so common at Blois. In the fosse, which still remains on the garden side, was the universally installed _jeu-de-paume_, a favourite amusement throughout the courts of Europe in the middle ages. At the base of the château are clustered numerous old houses of the sixteenth century, but on the river-front these have been replaced with pretentious houses, cafés, automobile garages, and other modern buildings. Near the Quai des Violettes are a series of subterranean chambers known as the Greniers de César, dating from the sixteenth century. [Illustration: _Cipher of Anne de Bretagne, Hôtel de Ville, Amboise_] Even at this late day one can almost picture the great characters in the drama of other times who stalked majestically through the apartments, and over the very flagstones of the courts and terraces which one treads to-day; Catherine de Medici with her ruffs and velvets; Henri de Guise with all his wiles; Condé the proud; the second François, youthful but wise; his girl queen, loving and sad; and myriads more of all ranks and of all shades of morality,--all resplendent in the velvets and gold of the costume of their time. Near the château is the Clos Luce, a Gothic habitation in whose oratory died Leonardo da Vinci, on May 2, 1519. Immediately back of the château is the Forêt d'Amboise, the scene of many gay hunting parties when the court was here or at Chenonceaux, which one reaches by traversing the forest route. On the edge of this forest is Chanteloup, remembered by most folk on account of its atrocious Chinese-like pagoda, built of the débris of the Château de la Bourdaisière, by the Duc de Choiseul, in memory of the attentions he received from the nobles and bourgeois of the ville upon the fall of his ministry and his disgrace at the hands of Louis XV. and La Du Barry. It is a curious form to be chosen when one had such beautiful examples of architectural art near by, only equalled, perhaps, in atrociousness by the "Royal Pavilion" of England's George IV. La Bourdaisière, near Amboise, of which only the site remains, if not one of the chief tourist attractions of the château country, has at least a sentimental interest of abounding importance for all who recall the details of the life of "La Belle Gabrielle." Here in Touraine Gabrielle d'Estrées was born in 1565. She was twenty-six years old when Henri IV. first saw her in the château of her father at Coeuvres. So charmed was he with her graces that he made her his _maîtresse_ forthwith, though the old court-life chronicles of the day state that she already possessed something more than the admiration of Sebastian Zamet, the celebrated financier. CHAPTER VIII. CHENONCEAUX "The castle of Chenonceaux is a fine place on the river Cher, in a fine and pleasant country." FRANÇOIS PREMIER. "The castle of Chenonceaux is one of the best and most beautiful of our kingdom." HENRI II. The average visitor will come prepared to worship and admire a château so praised by two luxury-loving Kings of France. Chenonceaux is noted chiefly for its château, but the little village itself is charming. The houses of the village are not very new, nor very old, but the one long street is most attractive throughout its length, and the whole atmosphere of the place, from September to December, is odorous with the perfume of red-purple grapes. The vintage is not the equal of that of the Bordeaux region, perhaps, nor of Chinon, nor Saumur; but the _vin du pays_ of the Cher and the Loire, around Tours, is not to be despised. Most tourists come to Chenonceaux by train from Tours; others drive over from Amboise, and yet others come by bicycle or automobile. They are not as yet so numerous as might be expected, and accordingly here, as elsewhere in Touraine, every facility is given for visiting the château and its park. If you do not hurry off at once to worship at the abode of the fascinating Diane, one of the brightest ornaments of the court of François Premier and his son Henri, you will enjoy your dinner at the Hôtel du Bon Laboureur, though most likely it will be a solitary one, and you will be put to bed in a great chamber overlooking the park, through which peep, in the moonlight, the turrets of the château, and you may hear the purling of the waters of the Cher as it flows below the walls. Jean Jacques Rousseau, like François I., called Chenonceaux a beautiful place, and he was right; it is all of that and more. Here one comes into direct contact with an atmosphere which, if not feudal, or even mediæval, is at least that of several hundred years ago. Chenonceaux is moored like a ship in the middle of the rapidly running Cher, a dozen miles or more above where that stream enters the Loire. As a matter of fact, the château practically bridges the river, which flows under its foundations and beneath its drawbridge on either side, besides filling the moat with water. The general effect is as if the building were set in the midst of the stream and formed a sort of island château. Round about is a gentle meadow and a great park, which give to this turreted architectural gem of Touraine a setting which is equalled by no other château. What the château was in former days we can readily imagine, for nothing is changed as to the general disposition. Boats came to the water-gate, as they still might do if such boats still existed, in true, pictorial legendary fashion. To-day, the present occupant has placed a curiosity on the ornamental waters in the shape of a gondola. It is out of keeping with the grand fabric of the château, and it is a pity that it does not cast itself adrift some night. What has become of the gondolier, who was imported to keep the craft company, nobody seems to know. He is certainly not in evidence, or, if he is, has transformed himself into a groom or a _chauffeur_. The Château of Chenonceaux is not a very ample structure; not so ample as most photographs would make it appear. It is not tiny, but still it has not the magnificent proportions of Blois, of Chambord, or even of Langeais. It was more a habitation than it was a fortress, a _maison de campagne_, as indeed it virtually became when the Connétable de Montmorency took possession of the structure in the name of the king, when its builder, Thomas Bohier, the none too astute minister of finances in Normandy, came to grief in his affairs. François I. came frequently here for "_la chasse_," and his memory is still kept alive by the Chambre François Premier. François held possession till his death, when his son made it over to the "admired of two generations," Diane de Poitiers. Diane's memory will never leave Chenonceaux. To-day it is perpetuated in the Chambre de Diane de Poitiers; but the portrait by Leonardo da Vinci, which was supposed to best show her charms, has now disappeared from the "long gallery" at the château. This portrait was painted at the command of François, before Diane transferred her affections to his son. No one knows when or how Diane de Poitiers first came to fascinate François, or how or why her power waned. At any rate, at the time François pardoned her father, the witless Comte de St. Vallier, for the treacherous part he played in the Bourbon conspiracy, he really believed her to be the "brightest ornament of a beauty-loving court." Certainly, Diane was a powerful factor in the politics of her time, though François himself soon tired of her. Undaunted by this, she forthwith set her cap for his son Henri, the Duc d'Orleans, and won him, too. Of her beauty the present generation is able to judge for itself by reason of the three well-known and excellent portraits of contemporary times. Diane's influence over the young Henri was absolute. At his death her power was, of course, at an end, and Chenonceaux, and all else possible, was taken from her by the orders of Catherine, the long-suffering wife, who had been put aside for the fascinations of the charming huntress. It must have been some satisfaction, however, to Diane, to know that, in his fatal joust with Montgomery, Henri really broke his lance and met his death in her honour, for the records tell that he bore her colours on his lance, besides her initials set in gold and gems on his shield. Catherine's eagerness to drive Diane from the court was so great, that no sooner had her spouse fallen--even though he did not actually die for some days--than she sent word to Diane, "who sat weeping alone," to instantly quit the court; to give up the crown jewels--which Henri had somewhat inconsiderately given her; and to "give up Chenonceaux in Touraine," Catherine's Naboth's vineyard, which she had so long admired and coveted. She had known it as a girl, when she often visited it in company with her father-in-law, the appreciative but dissolute François, and had ever longed to possess it for her own, before even her husband, now dead, had given it to "that old hag Diane de Poitiers, Duchesse de Valentinois." Diane paid no heed to Catherine's command. She simply asked: "Is the king yet dead?" "No, madame," said the messenger, "but his wound is mortal; he cannot live the day." "Tell the queen, then," replied Diane, "that her reign is not yet come; that I am mistress still over her and the kingdom as long as the king breathes the breath of life." Henri was more or less an equivocal character, devoted to Diane, and likewise fondone says it with caution--of his wife. He caused to be fashioned a monogram (seen at Chenonceaux) after this wise: [MONOGRAM DEPICTING TWO CAPITAL LETTERS "D", THE SECOND OF WHICH IS INVERTED; THE LETTERS ARE INTERWOVEN IN THEIR "(" AND ")" PARTS, AND THERE IS A HORIZONTAL BAR CROSSING THEM IN THE MIDDLE] supposedly indicating his attachment for Diane and his wife alike. The various initials of the cipher are in no way involved. Diane returned the compliment by decorating an apartment for the king, at her Château of Anet, with the black and white of the Medici arms. The Château of Chenonceaux, so greatly coveted by Catherine when she first came to France, and when it was in the possession of Diane, still remains in all the regal splendour of its past. It lies in the lovely valley of the Cher, far from the rush and turmoil of cities and even the continuous traffic of great thoroughfares, for it is on the road to nowhere unless one is journeying cross-country from the lower to the upper Loire. This very isolation resulted in its being one of the few monuments spared from the furies of the Revolution, and, "half-palace and half-château," it glistens with the purity of its former glory, as picturesque as ever, with turrets, spires, and roof-tops all mellowed with the ages in a most entrancing manner. Even to-day one enters the precincts of the château proper over a drawbridge which spans an arm of the Loire, or rather, a moat which leads directly from the parent stream. On the opposite side are the bridge piers supporting five arches, the work of Diane when she was the fair chatelaine of the domain. This ingenious thought proved to be a most useful and artistic addition to the château. It formed a flagged promenade, lovely in itself, and led to the southern bank of the Cher, whence one got charming vistas of the turrets and roof-tops of the château through the trees and the leafy avenues which converged upon the structure. [Illustration: CHÂTEAU DE CHENONCEAUX] When Catherine came she did not disdain to make the best use of Diane's innovation that suggested itself to her, which was simply to build the "Long Gallery" over the arches of this lovely bridge, and so make of it a veritable house over the water. A covering was made quite as beautiful as the rest of the structure, and thus the bridge formed a spacious wing of two stories. The first floor--known as the "Long Gallery"--was intended as a banqueting-hall, and possessed four great full-length windows on either side looking up and down stream, from which was seen--and is to-day--an outlook as magnificently idyllic as is possible to conceive. Jean Goujon had designed for the ceiling one of those wonder-works for which he was famous, but if the complete plan was ever carried out, it has disappeared, for only a tiny sketch of the whole scheme remains to-day. [Illustration: _Château of CHENONCEAUX_ (DIAGRAM)] Catherine came in the early summer to take possession of her long-coveted domain. Being a skilful horsewoman, she came on horseback, accompanied by a "_petite bande_" of feminine charmers destined to wheedle political secrets from friends and enemies alike,--a real "_escadron volant de la reine_," as it was called by a contemporary. It was a gallant company that assembled here at this time,--the young King Charles IX., the Duc de Guise, and "two cardinals mounted on mules,"--Lorraine, a true Guise, and D'Este, newly arrived from Italy, and accompanied by the poet Tasso, wearing a "gabardine and a hood of satin." Catherine showed the Italian great favour, as was due a countryman, but there was another poet among them as well, Ronsard, the poet laureate of the time. The Duc de Guise had followed in the wake of Marguerite, unbeknownst to Catherine, who frowned down any possibility of an alliance between the houses of Valois and Lorraine. A great fête and water-masque had been arranged by Catherine to take place on the Cher, with a banquet to follow in the Long Gallery in honour of her arrival at Chenonceaux. When twilight had fallen, torches were ignited and myriads of lights blazed forth from the boats on the river and from the windows of the château. Music and song went forth into the night, and all was as gay and lovely as a Venetian night's entertainment. The hunting-horns echoed through the wooded banks, and through the arches above which the château was built passed great highly coloured barges, including a fleet of gondolas to remind the queen-mother of her Italian days,--the ancestors perhaps of the solitary gondola which to-day floats idly by the river-bank just before the grand entrance to the château. From _parterre_ and _balustrade_, and from the clipped yews of the ornamental garden, fairy lamps burned forth and dwindled away into dim infinity, as the long lines of soft light gradually lost themselves in the forest. It was a grand affair and idyllic in its unworldliness. One may not see its like to-day, for electric lights and "rag-time" music, which mostly comprise the attractions of such _al fresco_ pleasures, will hardly produce the same effect. Among the great fêtes at Chenonceaux will always be recalled that given by the court upon the coming of the youthful François II. and Mary Stuart, after the horrible massacres at Amboise. All the Renaissance skill of the time was employed in the erection of pompous accessories, triumphal arches, columns, obelisks, and altars. There were innumerable tablets also, bearing inscriptions in Latin and Greek,--which nobody read,--and a fountain which bore the following: "Au saint bal des dryades, A Phoebus, ce grand dieu, Aux humides nyades, J'ai consacré ce lieu." Of Chenonceaux and its glories what more can be said than to quote the following lines of the middle ages, which in their quaint old French apply to-day as much as ever they did: "Basti si magnifiquement II est debout, comme un géant, Dedans le lit de la rivière, C'est-à-dire dessus un pont Qui porte cent toises de long." The part of the edifice which Bohier erected in 1515 is that through which the visitor makes his entrance, and is built upon the piers of an old mill which was destroyed at that time. Catherine bequeathed Chenonceaux to the wife of Henri III., Louise de Vaudémont, who died here in 1601. For a hundred years it still belonged to royalty, but in 1730 it was sold to M. Dupin, who, with his wife, enriched and repaired the fabric. They gathered around them a company so famous as to be memorable in the annals of art and literature. This is best shown by the citing of such names as Fontenelle, Montesquieu, Buffon, Bolingbroke, Voltaire, and Rousseau, all of whom were frequenters of the establishment, the latter being charged with the education of the only son of M. and Madame Dupin. Considering Rousseau's once proud position among his contemporaries, and the favour with which he was received by the nobility, it is somewhat surprising that his struggle for life was so hard. The Marquise de Créquy wrote in her "Souvenirs:" "Rousseau left behind him his _Mémoires_, which I think for the sake of his memory and fame ought to be much curtailed." And undoubtedly she was right. Rousseau wrote in his "Confessions:" "In 1747 we went to spend the autumn in Touraine, at the Château of Chenonceaux, a royal residence upon the Cher, built by Henri II. for Diane de Poitiers, whose initials are still to be seen there.... We amused ourselves greatly in this fine spot; the living was of the best, and I became fat as a monk. We made a great deal of music and acted comedies." One might imagine, from a stroll through the magnificent halls and galleries of Chenonceaux, that Rousseau's experiences might be repeated to-day if one were fortunate enough to be asked to sojourn there for a time. The nearest that one can get, however, to becoming personally identified with the château and its life is to sign his name in the great vellum quarto which ultimately will rest in the archives of the château. It is doubtless very wrong to be covetous; but Chenonceaux is such a beautiful place and comes so near the ideal habitation of our imagination that the desire to possess it for one's own is but human. In the "Galerie Louis XIV." were given the first representations of many of Rousseau's pieces. One gathers from these accounts of the happenings in the Long Gallery that it formed no bridge of sighs, and most certainly it did not. Its walls resounded almost continually with music and laughter. Here in these rooms Henri II. danced and made love and intrigued, while Catherine, his queen, was left at Blois with her astrologer and his poisons, to eat out her soul in comparative neglect. Before the time of the dwelling built by Bohier for himself and family on the foundations of the old mill, there was yet a manorhouse belonging to the ancient family of Marques, from whom the Norman financier bought the site. The tower, seen to-day at the right of the entrance to the château proper,--an expressive relic of feudal times,--was a part of the earlier establishment. To-day it is turned into a sort of _kiosque_ for the sale of photographs, post-cards, and an admirable illustrated guide to the château. The interior of the château to-day presents the following remarkable features: The dining-room of to-day, formerly the Salle des Gardes, has a ceiling in which the cipher of Catherine de Medici is interwoven with an arabesque. To the left of this apartment is the entrance to the chapel, which to-day seems a bit incongruously placed, leading as it does from the dining-room. It is but a tiny chapel, but it is as gay and brilliant as if it were still the adjunct of a luxury-loving court, and it has some glass dating from 1521, which, if not remarkable for design or colouring, is quite choice enough to rank as an art treasure of real value. According to Viollet-le-Duc each feudal seigneur had attached to his château a chapel, often served by a private chaplain, and in some instances by an entire chapter of prelates. These chapels were not simple oratories surrounded by the domestic apartments, but were architectural monuments in themselves, and either entirely isolated, as at Amboise, or semi-detached, as at Chenonceaux. Below, in the sub-basement, at Chenonceaux, are the original foundations upon which Bohier laid his first stones. Here, too, are various chambers, known respectively as the prison, the Bains de la Reine, the _boulangerie_, etc. Chenonceaux to-day is no whited sepulchre. It is a real living and livable thing, and, moreover, when one visits it, he observes that the family burn great logs in their fireplaces, have luxurious bouquets of flowers on their dining-table, and use great wax candles instead of the more prosaic oil-lamps, or worse--acetylene gas. Chenonceaux evidently has no thoughts of descending to steam heat and electricity. All this is as it should be, for when one visits a shrine like this he prefers to find it with as much as possible of the old-time atmosphere remaining. Chambord is bare and suggestive of the tomb, in spite of the splendour of its outline and proportions; Pierrefonds, in the north, is more so, and so would be Blois except for its restored or imitation decorations; but here at Chenonceaux all is different, and breathes the spirit of other days as well as that of to-day. It is, perhaps, not exactly as Diane left it, or as Rousseau knew it under the régime of the Dupins, since, after many changings of hands, it became the property of the _Crédit Foncier_, by whom it was sold in 1891 to Mr. Terry, an American. Chenonceaux has two other architectural monuments which are often overlooked under the spell of the more magnificent château. In the village is a small Renaissance church--in which the Renaissance never rose to any very great heights--which is here far more effective and beautiful than usually are Renaissance churches of any magnitude. There is also a sixteenth-century stone house in the same style and even more successful as an expression of the art of the time. It is readily found by inquiry, and is known as the "Maison des Pages de François I." CHAPTER IX. LOCHES Much may be written of Loches, of its storied past, of its present-day quaintness, and of its wealth of architectural monuments. Its church is certainly the most curious religious edifice in all France, judging from a cross-section of the vaults and walls. More than all else, however, Loches is associated in our minds with the memory of Agnes Sorel. Within the walls of the old collegiate church the lovely mistress of Charles VII. was buried in 1450; but later her remains and tomb were removed to one of the towers of the ancient castle of Loches, where they now are. She had amply endowed the church, but they would no longer give shelter to her remains, so her bones were removed five hundred years later. The statue which surmounts her tomb, as seen to-day, represents the "gentille Agnes" in all her loveliness, with folded hands on breast, a kneeling angel at her head and a couchant lamb at her feet,--a reminder of her innocence, said Henry James, but surely he nodded when he said it. Lovely she was, and good in her way, but innocent she was not, as we have come to know the word. [Illustration: _Loches_] It is fitting to recall that Charles VII. was not the only monarch who sang her praises, for it was François I. who, many years later, wrote those lines beginning: "Gentille Agnes, plus de loz tu mérites." Whether one comes to Loches by road or by rail, the first impression is the same; he enters at once into a sleepy, old-world town which has practically nothing of modernity about it except the electric lights. There is but one way to realize the immense wealth of architectural monuments centred at Loches, and that is to see the city for the first time, as, perhaps, François Premier saw it when he journeyed from Amboise, and came upon it from the heights of the forest of Loches. The city has not grown much since that day. Then it had three thousand eight hundred souls, and now it has five thousand. Here, in the Forêt de Loches, Henry II. of England built a monastery,--yet to be seen,--known as the Chartreuse du Liget, in repentance, or, perhaps, as a penance for the murder of Becket. Over the doorway of this monastery was graven: ANGLORUM HENRICUS REX THOMÆ COEDE CRUENTUS, LIGETICOS FUNDAT CARTUSIA MONAKOS. To-day the monastery is the property of a M. de Marsay, and therefore not open to the public; but the Chapelle du Liget, near by, is a fine contemporary church of the thirteenth century, well worth the admiration too infrequently bestowed upon it. The first view of Loches must really be much as it was in François's time, except, perhaps, that the roadway down from the forest has improved, as roads have all over France, and fruit-trees and vineyards planted out, which, however, in no way change the aspect when the town is first seen in the dim haze of an early November morning. It is the sky-line _ensemble_ of the châteaux of the Renaissance period which is their most varied feature. No two are alike, and yet they are all wonderfully similar in that they cut the sky with turret, tower, and chimney in a way which suggests nothing as much as the architecture of fairy-land. The artists who illustrated the old fairy-tale books and drew castles wherein dwelt beautiful maidens could nowhere have found more real inspiration than among the châteaux of the Loire, the Cher, and the Indre. Loches is a veritable mediæval town, and it is even more than that, for its history dates back into the earliest years of feudal times. Loches is one of those _soi-disant_ French towns not great enough to be a metropolis, and yet quite indifferent to the affairs of the outside world. The only false notes are those sounded by the various hawkers and cadgers for the visitor's money, who have hired various old mediæval structures, within the walls, and assure one that in the basement of their establishment there are fragments "recently discovered,"--this in English,--quite worth the price of admission which they charge you to peer about in a gloomy hole of a cellar, littered with empty wine-bottles and rubbish of all sorts. All this is delightful enough to the simon-pure antiquarian; but even he likes to dig things out for himself, and the householders can't all expect to find _cachots_ in their sub-cellars or iron cages in their garrets unless they manufacture them. The old town, in spite of its lack of modernity, is full of surprises and contrasts that must make it very livable to one who cares to spend a winter within its walls. He may walk about on the ramparts on sunny days; may fish in the Indre, below the mill; and, if he is an artist, he will find, within a comparatively small area, much more that is exceedingly "paintable" than is usually found in the fishing-villages of Brittany or on the sand-dunes of the Pas de Calais, "artist's sketching-grounds" which have been pretty well worked of late. [Illustration: _Loches and Its Church_] The history of Loches is so varied and vivid that it is easy to account for the many remains of feudal and Renaissance days now existing. The derivation of its name is in some doubt. Loches was unquestionably the Luccæ of the Romans, but the Armorican Celts had the word _loc'h_, meaning much the same thing,--_un marais_,--which is also wonderfully like the _loch_ known to-day in the place-names of Scotland and the _lough_ of Ireland. Partisans may take their choice. In the fifth century a monastery was founded here by St. Ours, which ultimately gave its name to the collegiate church which exists to-day. A château, or more probably a fortress, appeared in the sixth century. The city was occupied by the Franks in the seventh century, but by 630 it had become united with Aquitaine. Pepin sacked it in 742, and Charles le Chauve made it a seat of a hereditary government which, by alliance, passed to the house of Anjou in 886, to whom it belonged up to 1205. Jean-sans-Terre gave it to France in 1193. Richard Coeur de Lion apparently resented this, for he retook it in the year following. In 1204, Philippe-Auguste besieged Chinon and Loches simultaneously, and took the latter after a year, when he made it a fief, and gave it to Dreux de Mello, Constable of France, who in turn sold it to St. Louis. The château of Loches became first a fortress, guarding the ancient Roman highway from the Blaisois to Aquitaine, then a prison, and then a royal residence, to which Charles VII. frequently repaired with Agnes Sorel, which calls up again the strangely contrasting influences of the two women whose names have gone down in history linked with that of Charles VII. "Louis XI. aggrandized the château," says a French authority, "and perfected the prisons," whatever that may mean. He did, we know, build those terrible dungeons far down below the surface of the ground, where daylight never penetrated. They were perfect enough in all conscience as originally built, at least as perfect as the celebrated iron cage in which he imprisoned Cardinal Balue. The cage is not in its wonted place to-day, and only a ring in the wall indicates where it was once made fast. Charles VIII. added the great round tower; but it was not completed until the reign of Louis XII. François I., in a not too friendly meeting, received Charles Quint here in 1539, just previous to his visit to Amboise. Marie de Medici, on escaping from Blois, stopped at the château at the invitation of the governor, the Duc d'Epernon, who sped her on her way, as joyfully as possible, to Angoulême. The château itself is the chief attraction of interest, just as it is the chief feature of the landscape when viewed from afar. Of course it is understood that, when one speaks of the château at Loches, he refers to the collective châteaux which, in more or less fragmentary form, go to make up the edifice as it is to-day. Whether we admire most the structure of Geoffrey Grise-Gonelle, the elegant edifice of the fifteenth century, or the additions of Charles VII., Louis XI., Charles VIII., Louis XII., or Henri III., we must conclude that to know this conglomerate structure intimately one must actually live with it. Nowhere in France--perhaps in no country--is there a château that suggests so stupendously the story of its past. The chief and most remarkable features are undoubtedly the great rectangular keep or donjon, and the Tour Neuf or Tour Ronde. The first, in its immensity, quite rivals the best examples of the kind elsewhere, if it does not actually excel them in dimensions. It is, moreover, according to De Caumont, the most beautiful of all the donjons of France. As a state prison it confined Jean, Duc d'Alençon, Pierre de Brézé, and Philippe de Savoie. The Tour Ronde is a great cylinder flanked with dependencies which give it a more or less irregular form. It encloses the prison where were formerly kept the famous cages, the invention of Cardinal Balue, who himself became their first victim. The Tour Ronde is reminiscent of two great female figures in the mediæval portrait gallery,--Agnes Sorel and Anne de Bretagne. The tomb of Agnes Sorel is here, and the Duchesse Anne made an oratory in this grim tower, from which she sent up her prayer for the success and unity of the political plans which inspired her marriage into the royal family of France. It is a daintily decorated chamber, with the queen's family device, the ermine with its twisted necklet, prominently displayed. In the passage which conducts to the dungeons of this great round tower, one reads this ironical invitation: "_Entrés, messieurs, ches le Roy Nostre Mestre_" (_O.F._). That portion of the collective châteaux facing to the north is now occupied by the Sous-Préfecture, and is more after the manner of the residential châteaux of the Loire than of a fortress-stronghold or prison. Before this portion stands the famous chestnut-tree, planted, it is said, by François I., "and large enough to shelter the whole population of Loches beneath its foliage," says the same doubtful authority. Under a fifteenth-century structure, called the Martelet, are the true dungeons of Loches. Here one is shown the cell occupied for nine years by the poor Ludovic Sforza, who died in 1510, from the mere joy of being liberated. More deeply hidden still is the famous Prison des Évêques of the era of François I. and the dungeon of Comte de St. Vallier, the father of the fascinating Diane, who herself was the means of securing his liberation by "fascinating the king," as one French writer puts it. This may be so. St. Vallier _was_ liberated, we know, and the susceptible François _was_ fascinated, though he soon tired of Diane and her charms. She had the perspicacity, however, to transfer her affections to his son, and so kept up a sort of family relationship. Like the historic "prisoner of Gisors," the occupants of the dungeons at Loches whiled away their lonely hours by inscribing their sentiments upon the walls. Only one remains to-day, though fragmentary stone-carved letters and characters are to be seen here and there. He who wrote the following was certainly as cheerful as circumstances would allow: "Malgré les ennuis d'une longue souffrance, Et le cruel destin dont je subis la loy, Il est encort des biens pour moy, Le tendre amour et la douce espérance." Most of these formidable dungeons of Loches were prisons of state until well into the sixteenth century. [Illustration: _Sketch Plan of Loches_] Beneath, or rather beside, the very walls of the château is the bizarre collegiate church of St. Ours. One says bizarre, simply because it is curious, and not because it is unchurchly in any sense of the word, for it is not. Its low nave is surmounted by an enormous tower with a stone spire, while there are two other pyramidal erections over the roof of the choir which make the whole look, not like an elephant, as a cynical Frenchman once wrote, but rather like a camel with two humps. This strange architectural anomaly is, in parts, almost pagan; certainly its font, a fragment of an ancient altar on which once burned a sacred fire, _is_ pagan. [Illustration: _St. Ours, Loches_] There is a Romanesque porch of vast dimensions which is the real artistic expression of the fabric, dressed with extraordinary primitive sculptures of saints, demons, stryges, gnomes, and all manner of outré things. All these details, however, are chiselled with a masterly conception. Behind this exterior vestibule the first bays of the nave form another, a sort of an inner vestibule, which carries out still further the unique arrangement of the whole edifice. This portion of the structure dates from a consecration of the year 965, which therefore classes it as of very early date,--indeed, few are earlier. Most of the church, however, is of the twelfth century, including another great pyramid which rises above the nave and the two smaller ones just behind the spire. The side-aisles of the nave were added between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, while only the stalls and the tabernacle are as recent as the sixteenth. The eastern end is triapsed, an unusual feature in France. From this one realizes, quite to the fullest extent possible, the antiquity and individuality of the Église de St. Ours at Loches. The quaint Renaissance Hôtel-de-Ville was built by the architect Jean Beaudoin (1535-1543), from sums raised, under letters patent from François I., by certain _octroi_ taxes. From the fact that through its lower story passes one of the old city entrances, it has come to be known also as the Porte Picoys. In every way it is a worthy example of Renaissance civic architecture. In the Rue de Château is a remarkable Renaissance house, known as the Chancellerie, which dates from the reign of Henri II. It has most curious sculptures on its façade interspersed with the devices of royalty and the inscription: IVSTITIA REGNO, PRUDENTIA NUTRISCO. The Tour St. Antoine serves to-day as the city's belfry. It is all that remains of a church, demolished long since, which was built in 1519-30, in imitation of St. Gatien's of Tours. Doubtless it was base in many of its details, as is its more famous compeer at Tours; but, if the old tower which remains is any indication, it must have been an elaborate and imposing work of the late Gothic and early Renaissance era. As a literary note, lovers of Dumas's romances will be interested in the fact that in the Hôtel de la Couroirie at Loches a body of Protestants captured the celebrated Chicot, the jester of Henri III. and Henri IV. Loches has a near neighbour in Beaulieu, which formerly possessed an ardent hatred for its more progressive and successful contemporary, Loches. Its very name has been perverted by local historians as coming from Bellilocus, "the place of war," and not "_le lieu d'un bel aspect_." The abbey church at Beaulieu was built by the warlike Foulques Nerra (in 1008-12), who usually built fortresses and left church-building to monks and bishops. It is a remarkable Romanesque example, though, since the fifteenth century, it has been mostly in ruins. Foulques Nerra himself, whose countenance had "_la majesté de celui d'un ange_," found his last resting-place within its walls, which also sheltered much rich ornament, to-day greatly defaced, though that of the nave, which is still intact, is an evidence of its former worth. The abbatial residence, still existent, has a curious exterior pulpit built into the wall, examples of which are not too frequent in France. Agnes Sorel, the belle of belles, lived here for a time in a house near the Porte de Guigné, which bears a great stone _panonceau_, from which the armorial bearings have to-day disappeared. It is another notable monument to "the most graceful woman of her times," and without doubt has as much historic value as many another more popular shrine of history. In connection with Agnes Sorel, who was so closely identified with Loches and Beaulieu, it is to be recalled that she was known to the chroniclers of her time as "_la dame de Beauté-sur-Marne_,"--a place which does not appear in the books of the modern geographers. It may be noted, too, that it was the encouragement of the "_belle des belles_" of Charles VII. that, in a way, contributed to that monarch's success in politics and arms, for her sway only began with Jeanne d'Arc's supplication at Gien and Chinon. Tradition has it, indeed, that it was the "gentille Agnes" who put the sword of victory in his hands when he set out on his campaign of reconquest. Thus does the Jeanne d'Arc legend receive a damaging blow. [Illustration: _Tours_] The château of Sausac, an elegant edifice of the sixteenth century, completely restored in later days, is near by. CHAPTER X. TOURS AND ABOUT THERE Tours, above all other of the ancient capitals of the French provinces, remains to-day a _ville de luxe_, the elegant capital of a land balmy and delicious; a land of which Dante sung: "Terra molle, e dolce e dilettosa...." It is not a very grand town as the secondary cities of France go; not like Rouen or Lyons, Bordeaux or Marseilles; but it is as typical a reflection of the surrounding country as any, and therein lies its charm. One never comes within the influence of its luxurious, or, at least, easy and comfortable appointments, its distinctly modern and up-to-date railway station, its truly magnificent modern Hôtel de Ville, its well-appointed hotels and cafés and its luxurious shops, but that he realizes all this to a far greater extent than in any other city of France. And again, referring to the material things of life, everything is most comfortable, and the restaurants and hotels most attractive in their fare. Tours is truly one provincial capital where the _cuisine bourgeoise_ still lives. Touraine, and Tours in particular, besides many other things, is noted for its hotels. Their praises have been sung often and loudly, not forgetting Henry James's praise of the Hôtel de l'Univers, which is all one expects to find it and more. The same may be said of the Hôtel du Croissant, with the added opinion that it serves the most bountiful and excellent _déjeuner_ to be had in all provincial France. It is difficult to say just what actually causes all this excellence and abundance, except that the catering there is an easy and pleasurable occupation. The Rue Nationale--"_toujours et vraiment royale_"--is the great artery of Tours running riverwards. On it circulates all the life of the city. To the right is the Quartier de la Cathédrale, where are assembled the great houses of the nobility--or such of them as are left--and of the old _bourgeoisie tourangelle_. To the left are the streets of the workers, a silk-mill or two, and the printing-offices. Tours is and always has been celebrated for the number and size of its _imprimeries_, with which, in olden times, the name of the great Christopher Plantin, the master printer of Antwerp, was connected. To-day, Tours's greatest establishment is that of Alfred Mame et Fils, known throughout the Roman Catholic world. [Illustration: ARMS OF THE PRINTERS, _AVOCATS_, AND INNKEEPERS, TOURS] The printers and booksellers of the middle ages were favoured persons, and their rank was high. In the days of solemn processions the booksellers led the way, followed by the paper-makers, the parchment-makers, the scribes,--who had not wholly died out,--the binders and the illuminators. In these days the printers were granted an emblazoned arms, which was characteristic and distinguished. The same was true of the _avocats_, who bore upon their escutcheon a gowned figure, with something very like a halo surrounding its head. The innkeepers went one better, and had a bishop with an undeniable halo. This is curious and inexplicable in the light of our modern conception of similar things, but it's better than a shield with quarterings representing half a canal-boat and half a locomotive, which was recently adopted by an enterprising watering-place which shall be nameless. In the same ancient quarter are the old towers of Charlemagne and St. Martin. This part of the town is the nucleus of the old foundation, the site of the _oppidum_ of the _Turones_, the _Cæsarodunum gallo-romain_, and of the life which centred around the old abbey of St. Martin, so venerated and so powerful in the middle ages. To the inviolable refuge of this old abbey came multitudes of Christian pilgrims from the world over; the Merovingians to undergo the penances imposed upon them by the bishops and clerics in expiation of their crimes. Under Charlemagne, the Abbé Alcuin founded great schools of languages, history, astronomy, and music, from which founts of learning went forth innumerable and illustrious religious teachers. All but the two towers of this old religious foundation are gone. The years of the Revolution saw the fall of the abbey; a street was cut through the nave of its church, and the two dismembered parts stand to-day as monuments to the sacrilege of modern times. To-day a banal faubourg has sprung up around the site of the abbey, with here and there old tumble-down houses either of wood and stone, such as one reads of in the pages of Balzac, or sees in the designs of Doré, or with their sides covered with overlapping slates. Amid all these is an occasional treasure of architectural art, such as the graceful Fountain of Beaune, the work of Michel Colombe, and some remains of early Renaissance houses of somewhat more splendid appointments than their fellows, particularly the Maison de Tristan l'Hermite, the Hôtel Xaincoings, and many exquisite fragments now made over into an _auberge_ or a _cabaret_, which make one dream of Rabelais and his Gargantua. It is uncertain whether Michel Colombe, who designed this fountain and also that masterwork, the tomb of the Duc François II. and Marguerite de Foix, at Nantes, was a Tourangeau or a Breton, but Tours claims him for her own, and settles once for all the spelling of his name by producing a "_papier des affaires_" signed plainly "Colombe." The proof lies in this document, signed in a notary's office at Tours, concerning payments which were made to him on behalf of the magnificent sepulchre which he executed for the church of St. Sauveur at La Rochelle. In his time--fifteenth century--Colombe had no rivals in the art of monumental sculpture in France, and with reason he has been called the Michel Ange of France. The cathedral quarter has for its chief attraction that gorgeously florid St. Gatien, whose ornate façade was likened by a certain monarch to a magnificently bejewelled casket. It is an interesting and lovable Gothic-Renaissance church which, if not quite of the first rank among the masterpieces of its kind, is a marvel of splendour, and an example of the "_caprices d'une guipure d'art_," as the French call it. Bordering the Loire at Tours is a series of tree-lined quays and promenades which are the scenes, throughout the spring and summer months, of fêtes and fairs of many sorts. Here, too, at the extremity of the Rue Nationale, are statues of Descartes and Balzac. The Tour de Guise on the river-bank recalls the domination of the Plantagenet kings of England, who were Counts of Anjou since it formed a part of the twelfth-century château built here by Henry II. of England. [Illustration: SCENE IN THE QUARTIER DE LA CATHÉDRALE, TOURS] At the opposite extremity of the city is another other tower, the Tour de Foubert, which protected the feudal domain of the old abbey of St. Martin. The history of days gone by at Tours was more churchly than political. Once only--during the reign of Louis XII.--did the States General meet at Tours (in 1506). Then the deputies of the _bourgeoisie_ met alone for their deliberations, the chief outcome of which was to bestow upon the king the eminently fitting title of "Père du Peuple." One may question the righteousness of Louis XII. in throwing over his wife, Jeanne de France, in order to serve political ends by acquiring the estates of Anne of Brittany for the Crown of France for ever, but there is no doubt but that he did it for the "_good of his people_." The principal literary shrine at Tours is the house, in the Rue Nationale, where was born Honoré de Balzac. One could not do better than to visit Tours during the "_été de St. Martin_," since it was the soldier-priest of Tours who gave his name to that warm, bright prolongation of summer which in France (and in England) is known as "St. Martin's summer," and which finds its counterpart in America's "Indian summer." The legend tells us that somewhere in the dark ages lived a soldier named Martin. He was always of a charitable disposition, and none asked alms of him in vain. One November day, when the wind blew briskly and the snow fell fast, a beggar asked for food and clothing. Martin had but his own cloak, and this he forthwith tore in half and gave one portion to the beggar. Later on the same night there came a knocking at Martin's door; the snow had ceased falling and the stars shone brightly, and one of goodly presence stood with the cloak on his arm, saying, "I was naked and ye clothed me." Martin straightway became a priest of the church, and died an honoured bishop of Tours, and for ever after the anniversary of his conversion is celebrated by sunny skies. We owe a double debt to St. Martin. We have to thank him for the saying, "_All my eye_" and the words "_chapel_" and "_chaplain_." The full form of the phrase, "_All my eye and Betty Martin_," which we all of us have often heard, is an obvious corruption of "_O mihi beate Martine_," the beginning of an invocation to the saint. The cloak he divided with a naked beggar, which, by the way, took place at Amiens, not at Tours, was treasured as a relic by the Frankish kings, borne before them in battle, and brought forth when solemn oaths were to be taken. The guardians of this cloak or cape were known as "_cappellani_," whence "_chaplain_," while its sanctuary or "_cappella_" has become "_chapel_." For their descriptions of Plessis-les-Tours modern English travellers have invariably turned to the pages of Sir Walter Scott. This is all very well in its way, but it is also well to remember that Scott drew his picture from definite information, and it is not merely the product of his imaginary architectural skill. In this respect Scott was certainly far ahead of Carlyle in his estimates of French matters. "Even in those days" (writing of "Quentin Durward"), said Scott, "when the great found themselves obliged to reside in places of fortified strength, it" (Plessis-les-Tours) "was distinguished for the extreme and jealous care with which it was watched and defended." All this is substantiated and corroborated by authorities, and, while it may have been chosen by Scott merely as a suitable accessory for the details of his story, Plessis-les-Tours unquestionably was a royal stronghold of such proportions as to be but meanly suggested by the scanty remains of the present day. Louis XI. dreamed fondly of Plessis-les-Tours (Plessis being from the Latin _Plexitium_, a name borne by many suburban villages of France), and he sought to make it a royal residence where he should be safe from every outward harm. It had four great towers, crenelated and machicolated, after the best Gothic fortresses of the time. At the four angles of the protecting walls were the principal logis, and between the lines of its ramparts or fosses was an advance-guard of buildings presumably intended for the vassals in time of danger. This was the castle as Louis first knew it, when it was the property of the chamberlain of the Duchy of Luynes, from whom the king bought it for five thousand and five hundred _écus d'or_,--the value of fifty thousand francs of to-day. Its former appellation, Montilz-les-Tours, was changed (1463) to Plessis. All the chief features have disappeared, and to-day it is but a scrappy collection of tumble-down buildings devoted to all manner of purposes. A few fragmentary low-roofed vaults are left, and a brick and stone building, flanked by an octagonal tower, containing a stairway; but this is about all of the former edifice, which, if not as splendid as some other royal residences, was quite as effectively defended and as suitable to its purposes as any. [Illustration: _PLESSIS-Les-TOURS. In the time of Louis XI_] It had, too, within its walls a tiny chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Cléry, before whose altar the superstitious Louis made his inconstant devotions. Once a great forest surrounded the château, and was, as Scott says, "rendered dangerous and well-nigh impracticable by snares and traps armed with scythe-blades, which shred off the unwary traveller's limbs ... and calthrops that would pierce your foot through, and pitfalls deep enough to bury you in them for ever." To-day the forest has disappeared, "lost in the night of time," as a French historian has it. The detailed description in "Quentin Durward" is, however, as good as any, and, if one has no reference works in French by him, he may well read the dozen or more pages which Sir Walter devotes to the further description of the castle. Perhaps, after all, it is fitting that a Scot should have written so enthusiastically of it, for the castle itself was guarded by the Scottish archers, "to the number of three hundred gentlemen of the best blood of Scotland." An anonymous poet has written of the ancient glory of this retreat of Louis's as follows: "Un imposant château se présente à la vue, Par des portes de fer l'entrée est défendue; Les murs en sont épais et les fossés profonds; On y voit des créneaux, des tours, des bastions, Et des soldats armés veillent sur ses murailles." Frame this with such details as the surrounding country supplies, the Cher on one side, the Loire on the other, and the fertile hills of St. Cyr, of Ballon, and of Joué, and one has a picture worthy of the greatest painter of any time. Louis XI. died at Plessis, after having lived there many years. Louis XII. made of it a _rendezvous de chasse_, but François II. confided its care to a governor and would never live in it. Louis XIV. gave the governorship as a hereditary perquisite to the widow of the Seigneur de Sausac. In 1778 it was used as a sort of retreat for the indigent, though happily enough Touraine was never overburdened with this class of humanity. Under Louis XV. a Mademoiselle Deneux, a momentary rival of La Pompadour and Du Barry, found a retreat here. Later it became a _maison de correction_, and finally a _dépôt militaire_. At the time of the Revolution it was declared to be national property, and on the _nineteenth Nivoise, Year IV._, Citizen Cormeri, justice of the peace at Tours, fixed its value at one hundred and thirty-one thousand francs. To-day it is as bare and uncouth as a mere barracks or as a disused flour-mill, and its ruins are visited partly because of their former historical glories, as recalled by students of French history, and partly because of the glamour which was shed over it, for English readers, by Scott. Sixty years ago a French writer deplored the fact that, on leaving these scanty remains of a so long gone past, he observed a notice nailed to a pillar of the _porte-cochère_ reading: LA FERME DU PLESSIS O LOUER OU A VENDRE To-day some sort of a division and rearrangement of the property has been made, but the result is no less mournful and sad, and thus a glorious page of the annals of France has become blurred. It is interesting to recall what manner of persons composed the household of Louis XI. when he resided at Plessis-les-Tours. Commines, his historian, has said that habitually it consisted of a chancellor, a _juge de l'hôtel_, a private secretary, and a treasurer, each having under him various employees. In addition there was a master of the pantry, a cupbearer, a _chef de bouche_ and a _chef de cuisine_, a _fruitier_, a master of the horse, a quartermaster or master-at-arms, and, in immediate control of these domestic servants, a _seneschal_ or _grand maître_. In many respects the household was not luxuriously conducted, for the parsimonious Louis lived fully up to the false maxim: "_Qui peu donne, beaucoup recueille._" Louis himself was fond of doing what the modern housewife would call "messing about in the kitchen." He did not dabble at cookery as a pastime, or that sort of thing; but rather he kept an eagle eye on the whole conduct of the affairs of the household. One day, coming to the kitchen _en négligé_, he saw a small boy turning a spit before the fire. "And what might you be called?" said he, patting the lad on the shoulder. "Etienne," replied the _marmiton_. "Thy _pays_, my lad?" "Le Berry." "Thy age?" "Fifteen, come St. Martin's." "Thy wish?" "To be as great as the king" (he had not recognized his royal master). "And what wishes the king?" "His expenses to become less." The reply brought good fortune for the lad, for Louis made him his _valet de chambre_, and took him afterward into his most intimate confidence. Louis was fond of _la chasse_, and Scott does not overlook this fact in "Quentin Durward." When affairs of state did not press, it was the king's greatest pleasure. For the royal hunt no pains or expense were spared. The carriages were without an equal elsewhere in the courts of Europe, and the hunting establishment was equipped with _chiens courants_ from Spain, _levriers_ from Bretagne, _bassets_ from Valence, mules from Sicily, and horses from Naples. The attractions of the environs of Tours are many and interesting: St. Symphorien, Varennes, the Grottoes of Ste. Radegonde, and the site of that most famous abbey of Marmoutier, also a foundation of St. Martin. Here, under the name Martinus Monasterium, grew up an immense and superb establishment. From an old seventeenth-century print one quotes the following couplet: "De quel côté que le vent vente Marmoutier a cens et rente." From this one infers that the abbey's original functions are performed no more. [Illustration: _ENVIRONS OF TOURS_] In the middle ages (thirteenth century) it was one of the most powerful institutions of its class, and its church one of the most beautiful in Touraine. The tower and donjon are the only substantial remains of this early edifice. A curious chapel, called the "Chapelle des Sept Dormants," is here cut in the form of a cross into the rock of the hillside, where are buried the remains of the Seven Sleepers, the disciples of St. Martin, who, as the holy man had predicted, all died on the same day. Beyond Marmoutier, a stairway of 122 steps, cut also in the rock, leads to the plateau on which stands the gaunt and ugly Lanterne de Rochecorbon, a fourteenth-century construction with a crenelated summit, an unlovely companion of that even more enigmatic erection known as "La Pile," a few miles down the Loire at Cinq-Mars. CHAPTER XI. LUYNES AND LANGEAIS Below Tours, and before reaching Saumur, are a succession of panoramic surprises which are only to be likened to those of our imagination, but they are very real nevertheless. As one leaves Tours by the road which skirts the right bank of the Loire, he is once more impressed by the fact that the _cailloux de Loire_ are the river's chief product, though fried fish, of a similar variety to those found in the Seine, are found on the menus of all roadside taverns and restaurants. Still, the effect of the uncovered bed of the Loire, with its variegated pebbles and mirror-like pools, is infinitely more picturesque than if it were mud flats, and its tree-bordered banks are for ever opening great alleyed vistas such as are only known in France. The hills on either bank are not of the stupendous and magnificently scenic order of those of the Seine above and below Rouen; but, such as they are, they are of much the same composition, a soft talcy formation which here serves admirably the purposes of cliff-dwellings for the vineyard and wine-press workers, who form practically the sole population of the Loire villages from Vouvray, just above Tours, to Saumur far below. On the hillsides are the vineyards themselves, growing out of the thin layer of soil in shades of red and brown and golden, which no artist has ever been able to copy, for no one has painted the rich colouring of a vineyard in a manner at all approaching the original. Not far below Tours, on the right bank, rise the towers and turrets of the Château de Luynes, hanging perilously high above the lowland which borders upon the river. An unpleasant tooting tram gives communication a dozen times a day with Tours, but few, apparently, patronize it except peasants with market-baskets, and vineyard workers going into town for a jollification. It is perhaps just as well, for the fine little town of Luynes, which takes its name from the château which has been the residence of a Comte de Luynes since the days of Louis XIII., would be quite spoiled if it were on the beaten track. [Illustration: A VINEYARD OF VOUVRAY] The brusque façade of the Château de Luynes makes a charming interior, judging from the descriptions and drawings which are to be met with in an elaborately prepared volume devoted to its history. The stranger is allowed to enter within the gates of the courtyard, beneath the grim coiffed towers; but he may visit only certain apartments. He will, however, see enough to indicate that the edifice was something more than a mere _maison de campagne_. All the attributes of an important fortress are here, great, round, thickly built towers, with but few exterior windows, and those high up from the ground. There is nothing of luxurious elegance about it, and its aspect is forbidding, though imposing. The château belies its looks somewhat, for it was built only in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when, in most of its neighbours, the more or less florid Renaissance was in vogue. A Renaissance structure in stone and brick forms a part of that which faces on the interior court, and is flanked by a fine octagonal "_tour d'escalier_." From the terrace of the courtyard one gets an impressive view of the Loire, which glides by two or more kilometres away, and of the towers and roof-tops of Tours, and the vine-carpeted hills which stretch away along the river's bank in either direction. The château of Luynes is still in the possession of a Duc de Luynes, through whose courtesy one may visit such of the apartments as his servants are allowed to show. It is not so great an exhibition, nor so good a one, as is to be had at Langeais; but it is satisfactory as far as it goes, and, when it is supplemented by the walks and views which are to be had on the plateau, upon which the grim-towered château sits, the memory of it all becomes most pleasurable. The former Ducs de Luynes were continually appearing in the historic events of the later Renaissance period, but it was only with Louis XIII., he who would have put France under the protection of the Virgin, that the chatelain of Luynes came to a position of real power. Louis made Albert, the Gascon, both Duc de Luynes and Connétable de France, and thereby gave birth to a tyrant whom he hated and feared, as he did his mother, his wife, and his minister, Richelieu. [Illustration: _Mediæval Stairway and the Château de Luynes_] The site occupied by the château of Luynes is truly marvellous, though, as a matter of fact, there is no great magnificence about the proportions of the château itself. It is piled gracefully on the top of a table-land which rises abruptly from the Loire and has a charmingly quaint old town nestled confidingly below it, as if for protection. One reaches the château by any one of a half-dozen methods, by the highroad which bends around in hairpin curves until it reaches the plateau above, by various paths across or around the vineyards of the hillside, or by a quaintly cut mediæval stairway, levelled and terraced in the gravelly soil until it ends just beneath the frowning walls of the château itself. From this point one gets quite the most imposing aspect of the château to be had, its towers and turrets piercing the sky high above the head, and carrying the mind back to the days when civilization meant something more--or less--than it does to-day, with the toot of a steam-tram down below on the river's bank and the midday whistles of the factories of Tours rending one's ears the moment he forgets the past and recalls the present. To-day the Château de Luynes is modern, at least to the extent that it is lived in, and has all the refinements of a modern civilization; but one does not realize all this from an exterior contemplation, and only as one strolls through the apartments publicly shown, and gets glimpses of electrical conveniences and modern arrangements, does he wonder how far different it may have been before all this came to pass. Built in early Renaissance times, the château has all the peculiarities of the feudal period, when window-openings were few and far between, and high up above the level of the pavement. In feudal and warlike times this often proved an admirable feature; but one would have thought that, with the beginning of the Renaissance, a more ample provision would have been made for the admission of sunshine. The _chef-d'oeuvre_ of this really great architectural monument is undoubtedly the façade of the beautiful fifteenth-century courtyard. There is nothing even remotely feudal here, but a purely decorative effect which is as charming in its way as is the exterior façade of Azay-le-Rideau. "A poem," it has been called, "in weather-worn timber and stone," and the simile could hardly be improved upon. The town, too, or such of it as immediately adjoins the château, is likewise charming and quaint, and sleepily indolent as far as any great activity is concerned. Luynes was the seat of a seigneurie until 1619, when it became a possession of the Comte de Maillé. Finally it came to Charles d'Albert, known as "D'Albert de Luynes," a former page to Henri IV., who afterward became the favourite and the Guardian of the Seals of Louis XIV.; and thus the earlier foundation of Maillé became known as Luynes. Except for its old houses of wood and stone, its old wooden market-house, and its tortuous streets of stairs, there are few features here, except the château, which take rank as architectural monuments of worth. The church is a modern structure, built after the Romanesque manner and wholly without warmth and feeling. From the height on which stands the château of Luynes one sees, as his eye follows the course of the Loire to the southwestward, the gaunt, unbeautiful "Pile" of Cinq-Mars. The origin of this singular square tower, looking for all the world like a factory chimney or some great ventilating-shaft, is lost far back in Carlovingian, or perhaps Roman, times. It is a mystery to archæologists and antiquarians, some claiming it to be a military monument, others a beacon by land, and yet others believing it to be of some religious significance. At all events, all the explanations ignore the four _pyramidions_ of its topmost course, and these, be it remarked, are quite the most curious feature of the whole fabric. To many the name of the little town of Cinq-Mars will suggest that of the Marquis de Cinq-Mars, a court favourite of Louis XIII. It was the ambitious but unhappy career at court of this young gallant which ultimately resulted in his death on the scaffold, and in the razing, by Richelieu, of his ancestral residence, the castle of Cinq-Mars, "to the heights of infamy." The expression is a curious one, but history so records it. All that is left to-day to remind one of the stronghold of the D'Effiats of Cinq-Mars are its two crumbling gate-towers with an arch between and a few fragmentary foundation walls which follow the summit of the cliff behind "La Pile." The little town of not more than a couple of thousand inhabitants nestles in a bend of the Loire, where there is so great a breadth that it looks like a long-drawn-out lake. The low hills, so characteristic of these parts, stretch themselves on either bank, unbroken except where some little streamlet forces its way by a gentle ravine through the scrubby undergrowth. Oaks and firs and huge limestone cliffs jut out from the top of the hillside on the right bank and shelter the town which lies below. [Illustration: _Ruins of Cinq-Mars_] Cinq-Mars is a miniature metropolis, though not a very progressive one at first sight; indeed, beyond its long main street and its houses, which cluster about its grim, though beautiful, tenth and twelfth century church, there are few signs of even provincial importance. In reality Cinq-Mars is the centre of a large and important wine industry, where you may hear discussed, at the _table d'hôte_ of its not very readily found little inn, the poor prices which the usually abundant crop always brings. The native even bewails the fact that he is not blessed with a poor season or two and then he would be able to sell his fine vintages for something more than three sous a litre. By the time it reaches Paris this _vin de Touraine_ of commerce has aggrandized itself so that it commands two francs fifty centimes on the Boulevards, and a franc fifty in the University quarter. The fall of Henri Cinq-Mars was most pathetic, though no doubt moralists will claim that because of his covetous ambitions he deserved nothing better. He went up to Paris from Touraine, a boy of twenty, and was presented to the king, who was immediately impressed by his distinguished manners. From infancy Cinq-Mars had been a lover of life in the open. He had hunted the forests of Touraine, and had angled the waters of the Loire, and thus he came to give a new zest to the already sad life of Louis XIII. Honour after honour was piled upon him until he was made Grand Seneschal of France and Master of the King's Horse, at which time he dropped his natal patronymic and became known as "Monsieur le Grand." Cinq-Mars fell madly in love with Marion Delorme and wished to make her "Madame la Grande," but the dowager Marquise de Cinq-Mars would not hear of it: Mlle. Marion Delorme, the Aspasia of her day, would be no honour to the ancestral tree of the Effiats of Cinq-Mars. Headstrong and wilful, one early morning, Monsieur le Grand and his beloved, then only thirty, took coach from her hotel in the Rue des Tournelles at Paris for the old family castle in Touraine, sitting high on the hills above the feudal village which bore the name of Cinq-Mars. In the chapel they were secretly married, and for eight days the proverbial marriage-bell rang true. Their Nemesis appeared on the ninth day in the person of the dowager, and Cinq-Mars told his mother that the whole affair was simply a _passe temps_, and that Mlle. Delorme was still Mlle. Delorme. His mother would not be deceived, however, and she flew for succour to Richelieu, who himself was more than slightly acquainted with the charms of the fair Marion. This was Cinq-Mars's downfall. He advised the king "by fair means or foul, let Richelieu die," and the king listened. A conspiracy was formed, by Cinq-Mars and others, to do away with the cardinal, _and even the king_, at whose death Gaston of Orleans was to be proclaimed regent for his nephew, the infant Louis XIV. The court went to Narbonne, on the Mediterranean, that it might be near aid from Spain; all of which was a subterfuge of Cinq-Mars. The rest moves quickly: Richelieu discovered the plot; Cinq-Mars attempted to flee disguised as a Spaniard, was captured and brought as a prisoner to the castle at Montpellier. Richelieu had proved the more powerful of the two; but he was dying, and this is the reason, perhaps, why he hurried matters. Cinq-Mars, "the amiable criminal," went to the torture-chamber, and afterward to the scaffold. "Then," say the old chronicles, "Richelieu ordered that the feudal castle of Cinq-Mars, in the valley of the Loire, should be blown up, and the towers razed to the height of infamy." From Cinq-Mars to Langeais, whose château is really one of the most appealing sights of the Loire, the characteristics of the country are topographically and economically the same; green hills slope, vine-covered, to the river, with here and there a tiny rivulet flowing into the greater stream. As at Cinq-Mars, the chief commodity of Langeais is wine, rich, red wine and pale amber, too, but all of it wine of a quality and at a price which would make the city-dweller envious indeed. There are two distinct châteaux at Langeais; at least, there is _the_ château, and just beyond the ornamental stone-carpet of its courtyard are the ruins of one of the earliest donjons, or keeps, in all France. It dates from the year 990, and was built by the celebrated Comte d'Anjou, Foulques Nerra, "_un criminel dévoyé des hommes et de Dieu_," whose hobby, evidently, was building châteaux, as his "follies" in stone are said to have encumbered the land in those old days. Taken and retaken, dismantled and in part razed in the fifteenth century, it gave place to the present château by the orders of Louis XI. [Illustration: _Château de Langeais_] The Château de Langeais of to-day is a robust example of its kind; its walls, flanked by great hooded towers, have a surrounding "_guette_," or gallery, which served as a means of communication from one part of the establishment to another and, in warlike times, allowed boiling oil or melted lead, or whatever they may have used for the purpose, to be poured down upon the heads of any besiegers who had the audacity to attack it. There is no glacis or moat, but the machicolations, sixty feet or more up from the ground, must have afforded a well-nigh perfect means of repelling a near attack. Altogether Langeais is a redoubtable little château of the period, and its aspect to-day has changed but very little. "It is the swan-song of expiring feudalism," said the Abbé Bosseboeuf. One gets a thrill of heroic emotion when he views its hardy walls for the first time: "a mountain of stone, a heroic poem of Gothic art," it has with reason been called. Jean Bourré, the minister of Louis XI., built the present château about 1460. The chief events of its history were the drawing up within its walls of the "common law" of Touraine, by the order of Charles VII., and the marriage of Charles VIII. with Anne de Bretagne, on the 16th of December, 1491. The land belonged, in 1276, to Pierre de Brosse, the minister of Philippe-le-Hardi; later, to François d'Orleans, son of the celebrated _Bâtard_; to the Princesse de Conti, daughter of the Duc de Guise; to the families Du Bellay and D'Effiats, Barons of Cinq-Mars; and, finally, to the Duc de Luynes, in whose hands it remained up to the Revolution. Honoré de Balzac, who may well be called one of the historians of Touraine, gave to one of his heroines the name of Langeais. To-day, however, the family of Langeais does not exist, and, indeed, according to the chronicles, never had any connection with either the donjon of Foulques Nerra or the château of the fifteenth century. The present owner is M. Jacques Siegfreid, who has admirably restored and furnished it after the Gothic style of the middle ages. The château of Langeais, like that of Chenonceaux, is occupied, as one learns from a visit to its interior. A lackey of a superior order receives you; you pay a franc for an admission ticket, and the lackey conducts you through nearly, if not quite all, of the apartments. Where the family goes during this process it is hard to say, but doubtless they are willing to inconvenience themselves for the benefit of "touring" humanity. The interior, no less than the exterior, impresses one as being something which has lived in the past, and yet exists to-day in all its original glory, for the present proprietor, with the aid of an admirable adviser, M. Lucien Roy, a Parisian architect, has produced a resemblance of its former furnishings which, so far as it goes, is beyond criticism. There is nothing of bareness about it, nor is there an over-luxuriant interpolation of irrelevant things, such as a curator crowds into a museum. In short, nothing more has been done than to attempt to reconstitute a habitation of the fifteenth century. For seventeen years the work has gone on, and there have been collected many authentic furnishings contemporary with the fabric itself, great oaken beds, tables, chairs, benches, tapestries, and other articles. In addition, the decorations have been carried out after the same manner, copied in many cases from contemporary pictures and prints. To-day, the general aspect is that of a peaceful household, with all recollections of feudal times banished for ever. All is tranquil, respectable, and luxurious, and it would take a chronic faultfinder not to be content with the manner with which these admirable restorations and refurnishings have been carried out. One notes particularly the infinite variety and appropriateness of the tiling which goes to make up the floors of these great salons--modern though it is. The great chimneypieces, however, are ancient, and have not been retouched. Those in the Salle des Gardes and the Salle where was celebrated the marriage of Charles VIII. and Anne de Bretagne, with their ornamentation in the best of Gothic, are especially noteworthy. This latter apartment is the chief attraction of the château and the room of which the present dwellers in this charming monument of history are naturally the most proud. To-day it forms the great dining-hall of the establishment. Mementos of this marriage, so momentous for France, are exceedingly numerous along the lower Loire, but this handsome room quite leads them all. This marriage, and the goods and lands it brought to the Crown, had but one stipulation connected with it, and that was that the Duchesse Anne should be privileged to marry the elderly king's successor, should she survive her royal husband. [Illustration: ARMS OF LOUIS XII. AND ANNE DE BRETAGNE] Louis XII. was not at all opposed to becoming the husband of la Duchesse Anne after Charles VIII. had met his death on the tennis-court, because this second marriage would for ever bind to France that great province ruled by the gentle Anne. In the Salle des Gardes are six valuable tapestries representing such heroic figures as Cæsar and Charlemagne, surrounded by their companions in arms. From the towers, on a clear day, one may see the pyramids of the cathedral at Tours rising on the horizon to the northward. Below is the Château de Villandry, where Philippe-Auguste met Henry II. of England to conclude a memorable peace. To the right is Azay-le-Rideau, and to the extreme right are the ruined towers of Cinq-Mars and its Pile. Nothing could be more delicious on a bright summer's day than the view from the ramparts of Langeais over the roof-tops of the charming little town in the foreground. Some time after the Revolution there was found, in the gardens of the château, the remains of a _chapelle romaine_ which historians, who have searched the annals of antiquity in Touraine, claim to have been the chapel in honour of St. Sauveur which Foulques V., called le Jeune, one of the five Counts of Anjou of that name, constructed upon his return from his voyage to Palestine in the twelfth century. To-day it is overgrown with a trellised grapevine and is practically not visible, still it is another architectural monument of the first rank with which the not very ample domain of the Château de Langeais is endowed. From the courtyard the walls of the château take on a Renaissance aspect; a tiny doorway beside the great gate is manifestly Renaissance; so, too, are the polygonal towers, with their winding stairs, the pignons and gables of the roof, and what carved stone there is in evidence. Three stone stairways which mount by the slender _tourelles_ serve to communicate with the various floors to-day as they did in the times of Charles VIII. The courtyard itself, with its formal carpet design in stone, its shaded walls, its stone seats, and its Roman sarcophagus, is a pleasant retreat, but it has not the seclusion of the larger park, delightful though it is. Just before the drawbridge of the old château, that mediæval gateway by which one enters to-day, one sees the Maison de Rabelais, who is the deity of Langeais and Chinon, as is Balzac that of Tours. It is a fine old-time house of a certain amplitude and grandeur among its less splendid fellows, now given over, on the ground floor, to a bakery and pastry-shop. Enough is left of its original aspect, and the Renaissance decorations of its façade are sufficiently well preserved to stamp it as a worthy abode for the "Curé de Chinon," who lived here for some years. Two other names in literature are connected with Langeais: Ronsard, the poet, who lived here for a time, and César-Alexis-Chichereau, Chevalier de la Barre, who was a poet and a troubadour of repute. The main street of Langeais is still flanked with good Gothic and Renaissance houses, neither pretentious nor mean, but of that order which sets off to great advantage the walls and towers and porches of the château and the church. This street follows the ancient Roman roadway which traversed the valley of the Loire through Gaul. The river is here crossed by one of those too frequent, though useful, suspension-bridges, with which the Loire abounds. The guide-books call it _beau_, but it is not. One has to cross it to reach Azay-le-Rideau, which lies ten kilometres or more away across the Indre. CHAPTER XII. AZAY-LE-RIDEAU, USSÉ, AND CHINON From Langeais, one's obvious route lies towards Chinon, via Azay-le-Rideau and Ussé. These latter are practically within the forest, though the Forêt de Chinon proper does not actually begin until one leaves Azay behind, when for twenty kilometres or more one of the most superb forest roads in France crosses many hills and dales until it finally descends into Chinon itself. Like most forest roads in France, this highway is not flat; it rises and falls with a sheer that is sometimes precipitous, but always with a gravelled surface that gives little dust, and which absorbs water as the sand from the pounce-box of our forefathers dried up ink. This simile calls to mind the fact that in twentieth-century France the pounce-box is still in use, notably at wayside railway stations, where the agent writes you out your ticket and dries it off in a box, not of sand, but of sawdust. To partake of the hospitality of Azay-le-Rideau one must arrive before four in the afternoon, and not earlier than midday. From the photographs and post-cards by which one has become familiar with Azay-le-Rideau, it appears like a great country house sitting by itself far away from any other habitation. In England this is often the case, in France but seldom. Clustered around the walls of the not very great park which surrounds the château are all manner of shops and cafés, not of the tourist order,--for there is very little here to suggest that tourists ever come, though indeed they do, by twos and threes throughout all the year,--but for the accommodation of the population of the little town itself, which must approximate a couple of thousand souls, all of whom appear to be engaged in the culture of the vine and its attendant pursuits, as the wine-presses, the coopers' shops, and other similar establishments plainly show. There is, moreover, the pleasant smell of fermented grape-juice over all, which, like the odour of the hop-fields of Kent, is conducive to sleep; and there lies the charm of Azay-le-Rideau, which seems always half-asleep. The Hôtel du Grand Monarque is a wonderfully comfortable country inn, with a dining-room large enough to accommodate half a hundred persons, but which, most likely, will serve only yourself. One incongruous note is sounded,--convenient though it be,--and that is the electric light which illuminates the hotel and its dependencies, including the stables, which look as though they might once have been a part of a mediæval château themselves. However, since posting days and tallow dips have gone for ever, one might as well content himself with the superior civilization which confronts him, and be comfortable at least. The Château d'Azay-le-Rideau is one of the gems of Touraine's splendid collection of Renaissance art treasures, though by no means is it one of the grandest or most imposing. A tree-lined avenue leads from the village street to the château, which sits in the midst of a tiny park; not a grand expanse as at Chambord or Chenonceaux, but a sort of green frame with a surrounding moat, fed by the waters of the Indre. The main building is square, with a great coiffed round tower at each corner. The Abbé Chevalier, in his "Promenades Pittoresques en Touraine," called it the purest and best of French Renaissance, and such it assuredly is, if one takes a not too extensive domestic establishment of the early years of the sixteenth century as the typical example. Undoubtedly the sylvan surroundings of the château have a great deal to do with the effectiveness of its charms. The great white walls of its façade, with the wonderful sculptures of Jean Goujon, glisten in the brilliant sunlight of Touraine through the sycamores and willows which border the Indre in a genuinely romantic fashion. Somewhere within the walls are the remains of an old tower of the one-time fortress which was burned by the Dauphin Charles in 1418, after, says history, "he had beheaded its governor and taken all of the defenders to the number of three hundred and thirty-four." This act was in revenge for an alleged insult to his sacred person. There are no remains of this former tower visible exteriorly to-day, and no other bloody acts appear to have attached themselves to the present château in all the four hundred years of its existence. [Illustration: _Château d'Azay-le-Rideau_] Gilles Berthelot erected the present structure early in the reign of François I. He was a man close to the king in affairs of state, first _conseiller-secrétaire_, then _trésorier-général des finances_, hence he knew the value of money. Among the succeeding proprietors was Guy de Saint Gelais, one of the most accomplished diplomats of his time. He was followed by Henri de Beringhem, who built the stables and ornamented the great room known as the Chambre du Roi from the fact that Louis XIV. once slept there, with the magnificent paintings which are shown to-day. Everywhere is there a rich, though not gross, display of decoration, beginning with such constructive details as the pointed-roofed _tourelles_, which are themselves exceedingly decorative. The doors, windows, roof-tops, chimneypieces, and the semi-enclosed circular stairways are all elaborately sculptured after the best manner of the time. The entrance portico is a wonder of its kind, with a strong sculptured arcade and arched window-openings and niches filled with bas-reliefs. Sculptured shells, foliage, and mythological symbols combine to form an arabesque, through which are interspersed the favourite ciphers of the region, the ermine and the salamander, which go to prove that François and other royalties must at one time or another have had some connection with the château. History only tells us, however, that Gilles Berthelot was a king's minister and Mayor of Tours. Perhaps he thought of handing it over as a gift some day in exchange for further honours. His device bore the words, "_Ung Seul Desir_," which may or may not have had a special significance. The interior of the edifice is as beautiful as is its exterior, and is furnished with that luxuriance of decorative effect so characteristic of the best era of the Renaissance in France. Until recently the proprietor was the Marquis de Biencourt, who, like his fellow proprietors of châteaux in Touraine, generously gave visitors an opportunity to see his treasure-house for themselves, and, moreover, furnished a guide who was something more than a menial and yet not a supercilious functionary. Within a twelvemonth this "purest joy of the French Renaissance" was put upon the real estate market, with the result that it might have fallen into unappreciative hands, or, what a Touraine antiquarian told the writer would be the worse fate that could possibly befall it, might be bought up by some American millionaire, who through the services of the house-breaker would dismantle it and remove it stone by stone and set it up anew on some asphalted avenue in some western metropolis. This extraordinary fear or rumour, whatever it was, soon passed away and as a "_monument historique_" the château has become the property of the French government. Less original, perhaps, in plan than Chenonceaux, less appealing in its _ensemble_ and less fortunate in its situation, Azay-le-Rideau is nevertheless entitled to the praises which have been heaped upon it. It is but a dozen kilometres from Azay-le-Rideau to Ussé, on the road to Chinon. The Château d'Ussé is indeed a big thing; not so grand as Chambord, nor so winsome as Langeais, but infinitely more characteristic of what one imagines a great residential château to have been like. It belongs to-day to the Comte de Blacas, and once was the property of Vauban, Maréchal of France, under Louis XIV., who built the terrace which lies between it and the river, a branch of the Indre. Perched high above the hemp-lands of the river-bottom, which here are the most prolific in the valley of the Indre, the château with its park of seven hundred or more acres is truly regal in its appointments and surroundings. This park extends to the boundary of the national reservation, the Forêt de Chinon. The Renaissance château of to-day is a reconstruction of the sixteenth century, which preserves, however, the great cylindrical towers of a century earlier. Its architecture is on the whole fantastic, at least as much so as Chambord, but it is none the less hardy and strong. Practically it consists of a series of _pavillons_ bound to the great fifteenth-century donjon by smaller towers and turrets, all slate-capped and pointed, with machicolations surrounding them, and above that a sort of roofed and crenelated battlement which passes like a collar around all the outer wall. The general effect of the exterior walls is that of a great feudal stronghold, while from the courtyard the aspect is simply that of a luxurious Renaissance town house, showing at least how the two styles can be pleasingly combined. Crenelated battlements are as old as Pompeii, so it is doubtful if the feudality of France did much to increase their use or effectiveness. They were originally of such dimensions as to allow a complete shelter for an archer standing behind one of the uprights. The contrast to those of a later day, which, virtually nothing more than a course of decorative stonework, give no impression of utility, is great, though here at Ussé they are more pronounced than in many other similar edifices. [Illustration: _Château d'Ussé_] The interior arrangements here give due prominence to a fine staircase, ornamented with a painting of St. John that is attributed to Michel Ange. The Chambre du Roi is hung with ancient embroideries, and there is a beautiful Renaissance chapel, above the door of which is a sixteenth-century bas-relief of the Apostles. Most of the other great rooms which are shown are resplendent in oak-beamed ceilings and massive chimneypieces, always a distinct feature of Renaissance château-building, and one which makes modern imitations appear mean and ugly. To realize this to the full one has only to recall the dining-room of the pretentious hotel which huddles under the walls of Amboise. In a photograph it looks like a regal banqueting-hall; but in reality it is as tawdry as stage scenery, with its imitation wainscoted walls, its imitation beamed ceiling of three-quarter-inch planks, and its plaster of Paris fireplace. Near Ussé is the Château de Rochecotte which recalls the name of a celebrated chieftain of the Chouans. It belongs to-day, though it is not their paternal home, to the family of Castellane, a name which to many is quite as celebrated and perhaps better known. The château contains a fine collection of Dutch paintings of the seventeenth century, and in its chapel there is a remarkably beautiful copy of the Sistine Madonna. The name of Talleyrand is intimately connected with the occupancy of the château, in pre-revolutionary times, by Rochecotte. On the road to Chinon one passes through, or near, Huismes, which has nothing to stay one's march but a good twelfth-century church, which looks as though its doors were never opened. The Château de la Villaumère, of the fifteenth century, is near by, and of more than passing interest are the ruins of the Château de Bonneventure, built, it is said, by Charles VII. for Agnes Sorel, who, with all her faults, stands high in the esteem of most lovers of French history. At any rate this shrine of "_la belle des belles_" is worthy to rank with that containing her tomb at Loches. As one enters Chinon by road he meets with the usual steep decline into a river-valley, which separates one height from another. Generally this is the topographic formation throughout France, and Chinon, with its silent guardians, the fragments of three non-contemporary castles, all on the same site, is no exception. "We never went to Chinon," says Henry James, in his "Little Tour in France," written thirty or more years ago. "But one cannot do everything," he continues, "and I would rather have missed Chinon than Chenonceaux." A painter would have put it differently. Chenonceaux is all that fact and fancy have painted it, a gem in a perfect setting, and Chinon's three castles are but mere crumbling walls; but their environs form a _petit pays_ which will some day develop into an "artists' sketching-ground," in years to come, beside which Etretat, Moret, Pont Aven, Giverny, and Auvers will cease to be considered. At the base of the escarped rock on which sit the châteaux, or what is left of them, lies the town of Chinon, with its old houses in wood and stone and its great, gaunt, but beautiful churches. Before it flows the Vienne, one of the most romantically beautiful of all the secondary rivers of France. From the _castrum romanum_ of the emperors to the feudal conquest Chinon played its due part in the history of Touraine. There are those who claim that Chinon is a "_cité antédiluvienne_" and that it was founded by Cain, who after his crime fled from the paternal malediction and found a refuge here; and that its name, at first _Caynon_, became Chinon. Like the derivation of most ancient place-names, this claim involves a wide imagination and assuredly sounds unreasonable. _Caino_ may, with more likelihood, have been a Celtic word, meaning an excavation, and came to be adopted because of the subterranean quarries from which the stone was drawn for the building of the town. The annalists of the western empire give it as _Castrum-Caino_, and whether its origin dates from antediluvian times or not, it was a town in the very earliest days of the Christian era. The importance of Chinon's rôle in history and the beauty of its situation have inspired many writers to sing its praises. "... Chinon Petite ville, grand renom Assise sur pierre ancienne Au haute le bois, au bas la Vienne." The disposition of the town is most picturesque. The winding streets and stairways are "foreign;" like Italy, if you will, or some of the steps to be seen in the towns bordering upon the Adriatic. At all events, Chinon is not exactly like any other town in France, either with respect to its layout or its distinct features, and it is not at all like what one commonly supposes to be characteristic of the French. [Illustration: _The Roof-tops of Chinon_] Dungeons of mediæval châteaux are here turned into dwellings and wine-cellars, and have the advantage, for both uses, of being cool in summer and warm in winter. Already, in the year 371, Chinon's population was so considerable that St. Martin, newly elected Bishop of Tours, longed to preach Christianity to its people, who were still idolators. Some years afterward St. Mesme or Maxime, fleeing from the barbarians of the north, came to Chinon, and soon surrounded himself with many adherents of the faith, and in the year 402 consecrated the original foundation of the church which now bears his name. Clovis made Chinon one of the strongest fortresses of his kingdom, and in the tenth century it came into the possession of the Comtes de Touraine. Later, in 1044, Thibaut III. ceded it to Geoffroy Martel. The Plantagenets frequently sojourned at Chinon, becoming its masters in the twelfth century, from which time it was held by the Kings of France up to Louis XI. The most picturesque event of Chinon's history took place in 1428, when Charles VII. here assembled the States General, and Jeanne d'Arc prevailed upon him to march forthwith upon Orleans, then besieged by the English. Memories of Charles VII., of Jeanne d'Arc, and of François Rabelais are inextricably mixed in the guide-book accounts of Chinon; but their respective histories are not so involved as would appear. There is some doubt as to whether the Pantagruelist was actually born at Chinon or in the suburbs, therefore there is no "_maison natale_" before which literary pilgrims may make their devotions. All this is a great pity, for Rabelais excites in the minds of most people a greater curiosity than perhaps any other mediæval man of letters that the world has known. Though one cannot feast his eye upon the spot of Rabelais's birth, historians agree that it took place at Chinon in 1483. Much is known of the "Curé de Chinon;" but, in spite of his rank as the first of the mediæval satirists, his was not a wide-spread popularity, nor can one speak very highly of his appearance as a type of the Tourangeau of his time. His portraits make him appear a most supercilious character, and doubtless he was. He certainly was not an Adonis, nor had he the head of a god or the cleverness of a court gallant. Indeed there has been a tendency of late to represent him as a buffoon, a trait wholly foreign to his real character. [Illustration: RABELAIS] As for Charles VII. and Jeanne d'Arc, Chinon was simply the meeting-place between the inspired maid and her sovereign, when she urged him to put himself at the head of his troops and march upon Orleans. Chinon is of the sunny south; here the grapes ripen early and cling affectionately, not only to the hillsides, but to the very house-walls themselves. Chinon's attractions consist of fragments of three castles, dating from feudal times; of three churches, of more than ordinary interest and picturesqueness; and many old timbered and gabled houses; nor should one forget the Hôtel de France, itself a reminder of other days, with its vine-covered courtyard and tinkling bells hanging beneath its gallery, for all the world like the sort of thing one sees upon the stage. There is not much else about the hotel that is of interest except its very ancient-looking high-posted beds and its waxed tiled floors, worn into smooth ruts by the feet of countless thousands and by countless polishings with wax. It is curious how a waxed tiled floor strikes one as being something altogether superior to one of wood. Though harder in substance, it is infinitely pleasanter to the feet, and warm and mellow, as a floor should be; moreover it seems to have the faculty of unconsciously keeping itself clean. _The Château de Chinon_, as it is commonly called, differs greatly from the usual Loire château; indeed it is quite another variety altogether, and more like what we know elsewhere as a castle; or, rather it is three castles, for each, so far as its remains are concerned, is distinct and separate. The Château de St. Georges is the most ancient and is an enlargement by Henry Plantagenet--whom a Frenchman has called "the King Lear of his race"--of a still more ancient fortress. The Château du Milieu is built upon the ruins of the _castrum romanum_, vestiges of which are yet visible. It dates from the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, and was restored under Charles VI., Charles VII., and Louis XI. One enters through the curious Tour de l'Horloge, to which access is given by a modern bridge, as it was in other days by an ancient drawbridge which covered the old-time moat. The Grand Logis, the royal habitation of the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, is to the right, overlooking the town. Here died Henry II. of England (1189) and here lived Charles VII. and Louis XI. It was in the Grand Salle of this château that Jeanne d'Arc was first presented to her sovereign (March 8, 1429). From the hour of this auspicious meeting until the hour of the departure for Orleans she herself lived in the tower of the Château de Coudray, a little farther beyond, under guard of Guillaume Bélier. The meeting between the king and the "Maid" is described by an old historian of Touraine as follows: "The inhabitants of Chinon received her with enthusiasm, the purpose of her mission having already preceded her.... She appeared at court as '_une pauvre petite bergerette_' and was received in the Grande Salle, lighted by fifty torches and containing three hundred persons." (This statement would seem to point to the fact that it was not the _salle_ which is shown to-day; it certainly could not be made to hold three hundred people unless they stood on each other's shoulders!) "The seigneurs were all clad in magnificent robes, but the king, on the contrary, was dressed most simply. The 'Maid,' endowed with a spirit and sagacity superior to her education, advanced without hesitation. '_Dieu vous donne bonne vie, gentil roi_,' said she...." [Illustration: _Château de Chinon_] The Grand Logis is flanked by a square tower which is separated from the Château de Coudray and the Tour de Boissy by a moat. In the magnificent Tour de Boissy was the ancient Salle des Gardes, while above was a battlemented gallery which gave an outlook over the surrounding country. This watch-tower assured absolute safety from surprise to any monarch who might have wished to study the situation for himself. The Tour du Moulin is another of the defences, more elegant, if possible, than the Tour de Boissy. It is taller and less rotund; the French say it is "svelt," and that describes it as well as anything. It also fits into the landscape in a manner which no other mediæval donjon of France does, unless it be that of Château Gaillard, in Normandy. The primitive Château de Coudray was built by Thibaut-le-Tricheur in 954, and its bastion and sustaining walls are still in evidence. The Vienne, which runs by Chinon to join the Loire above Saumur, is, in many respects, a remarkable river, although just here there is nothing very remarkable about it. It is, however, delightfully picturesque, as it washes the tree-lined quays which form Chinon's river-front for a distance of upward of two kilometres. In general the waterway reminds one of something between a great traffic-bearing river and a mere pleasant stream. The bridge between Chinon and its faubourg is typical of the art of bridge-building, at which, in mediæval times, the French were excelled by no other nation. To-day, in company with the Americans, they build iron and steel abominations which are eyesores which no amount of utility will ever induce one to really admire. Not so the French bridges of mediæval times, of the type of those at Blois on the Loire; at Chinon on the Vienne; at Avignon on the Rhône; or at Cahors on the Lot. If Rabelais had not rendered popular Chinon and the Chinonais the public would have yet to learn of this delightful _pays_, in spite of that famous first meeting between Charles VII. and Jeanne d'Arc. If the modern founders of "garden-cities" would only go as far back as the time of Richelieu they would find a good example to follow in the little Touraine town, the _chef-lieu_ of the Commune, which bears the name of Richelieu. When Armand du Plessis first became the seigneur of this "_little land_" he resolutely set about to make of the property a town which should dignify his name. Accordingly he built, at his own expense, after the plans of Lemercier, "a city, regular, vast, and luxurious." At the same time the cardinal-minister replaced the paternal manor with a château elaborately and prodigally royal. Richelieu was a sort of "petit Versailles," which was to be to Chinon what the real Versailles was to the capital. To-day, as in other days, it is a "_ville vaste, régulière et luxueuse_," but it is unfinished. One great street only has been completed on its original lines, and it is exactly 450 metres long. Originally the town was to have the dimensions of but six hundred by four hundred metres; modest enough in size, but of the greatest luxury. The cardinal had no desire to make it more grand, but even what he had planned was not to be. Its one great street is bordered with imposing buildings, but their tenants to-day have not the least resemblance to the courtiers of the cardinal who formerly occupied them. Richelieu disappeared in the course of time, and work on his hobby stopped, or at least changed radically in its plan. Secondary streets were laid out, of less grandeur, and peopled with houses without character, low in stature, and unimposing. The plan of a _ville seigneuriale_ gave way to a _ville de labeur_. Other habitations grew up until to-day twenty-five hundred souls find their living on the spot where once was intended to be only a life of luxury. Of the monuments with which Richelieu would have ornamented his town there remains a curious market-hall and a church in the pure Jesuitic style of architecture, lacking nothing of pretence and grandeur. Not much can be said for the vast Église Notre Dame de Richelieu, a heavy Italian structure, built from the plans of Lemercier. However satisfying and beautiful the style may be in Italy, it is manifestly, in all great works of church-building in the north, unsuitable and uncouth. There was also a château as well, a great Mansart affair with an overpowering dome. Practically this remains to-day, but, like all else in the town, it is but a promise of greater things which were expected to materialize, but never did. At the bottom of a little valley, in a fertile plain, lies Fontevrault, or what there is left of it, for the old abbey is now nothing more than a matter-of-fact "_maison de détention_" for criminals. The abbey of yesterday is the prison of to-day. Fontevrault is an enigma; it is, furthermore, what the French themselves call a "_triste et maussade bourg_." Its former magnificent abbey was one of the few shrines of its class which was respected by the Revolution, but now it has become a prison which shelters something like a thousand unfortunates. For centuries the old abbey had royal princesses for abbesses and was one of the most celebrated religious houses in all France. It is a sad degeneration that has befallen this famous establishment. In the eleventh century an illustrious man of God, a Breton priest, named Robert d'Arbrissel, outlined the foundation of the abbey and gathered together a community of monks. He died in the midst of his labours, in 1117, and was succeeded by the Abbess Petronille de Chemille. For nearly six hundred years the abbey--which comprised a convent for men and another for women--grew and prospered, directed, not infrequently, by an abbess of the blood royal. It has been claimed that, as a religious establishment for men and women, ruled over by a woman, the abbey of Fontevrault was unique in Christendom. It is an ample structure with a church tower of bistre which forms a most pleasing note of colour in the landscape. The basilica was begun in 1101, and consecrated by Pope Calixtus II. in 1119. Its interior showed a deep vaulting, with graceful and hardy arches supported by massive columns with quaint and curiously sculptured capitals. The twelfth-century cloister was indeed a masterwork among those examples, all too rare, existing to-day. Its arcade is severely elegant and was rebuilt by the Abbess Renée de Bourbon, sister of François I., after the best of decorative Renaissance of that day. The chapter-house, now used by the director of the prison, has in a remarkable manner retained the mural frescoes of a former day. There are depicted a series of groups of mystical and real personages in a most curious fashion. The refectory is still much in its primitive state, though put to other uses to-day. Its tribune, where the lectrice entertained the sisters during their repasts, is, however, still in its place. [Illustration: _Cuisines, Fontevrault_] The curious, bizarre, kilnlike pyramid, known as the Tour d'Evrault, has ever been an enigma to the archæologist and antiquarian. Doubtless it formed the kitchens of the establishment, for it looks like nothing else that might have belonged to a great abbey. It has a counterpart at the Abbey of Marmoutier near Tours, and of St. Trinité at Vendôme; from which fact there would seem to be little doubt as to its real use, although it looks more like a blast furnace or a distillery chimney. This curious pyramidal structure is like the collegiate church of St. Ours at Loches, one of those bizarre edifices which defy any special architectural classification. At Fontevrault the architect played with his art when he let all the light in this curious "_tour_" enter by the roof. At the extreme apex of the cone he placed a lantern from which the light of day filtered down the slope of the vaulting in a weird and tomblike manner. It is a most surprising effect, but one that is wholly lost to-day, since the Tour d'Evrault has been turned into the kitchen for the "_maison de détention_" of which it forms a part. The nave of the church of the old abbey of Fontevrault has been cut in two and a part is now used as the dormitory of the prison, but the choir, the transepts, and the towers remain to suggest the simple and beautiful style of their age. In the transepts, behind an iron grille, are buried Henry II., King of England and Count of Anjou, Éléanore of Guienne, Richard Coeur de Lion, and Isabeau of Angoulême, wife of Jean-sans-Terre. Four polychromatic statues, one in wood, the others in stone, lying at length, represent these four personages so great in English history, and make of Fontevrault a shrine for pilgrims which ought to be far less ignored than it is. The cemetery of kings has been shockingly cared for, and the ludicrous kaleidoscopic decorations of the statues which surmount the royal tombs are nothing less than a sacrilege. It is needless to say they are comparatively modern. At Bourgueil, near Fontevrault, are gathered great crops of _réglisse_, or licorice. It differs somewhat in appearance from the licorice roots of one's childhood, but the same qualities exist in it as in the product of Spain or the Levant, whence indeed most of the commercial licorice does come. It is as profitable an industry in this part of France as is the saffron crop of the Gâtinais, and whoever imported the first roots was a benefactor. At the juncture of the Vienne and the Loire are two tiny towns which are noted for two widely different reasons. These two towns are Montsoreau and Candes, the former noted for the memory of that bloodthirsty woman who gave a plot to Dumas (and some real facts of history besides), and the other noted for its prunes, Candes being the chief centre of the industry which produces the _pruneaux de Tours_. Descending the Vienne from Chinon, one first comes to Candes, which dominates the confluence of the Vienne with the Loire from its imposing position on the top of a hill. Candes was in other times surrounded by a protecting wall, and there are to-day remains of a château which had formerly given shelter to Charles VII. and Louis XI. It has, moreover, a twelfth-century church built upon the site of the cell in which died St. Martin in the fourth century. The native of the surrounding country cares nothing for churches or châteaux, but assumes that the prune industry of Candes is the one thing of interest to the visitor. Be this as it may, it is indeed a matter of considerable importance to all within a dozen kilometres of the little town. All through the region round about Candes one meets with the fruit-pickers, with their great baskets laden with prunes, pears, and apples, to be sent ultimately to the great ovens to be desiccated and dried. Fifty years ago, you will be told, the cultivators attended to the curing process themselves, but now it is in the hands of the middle-man. At Montsoreau much the same economic conditions exist as at Candes, but there is vastly more of historic lore hanging about the town. In the fourteenth century, after a shifting career the fief passed to the Vicomtes de Châteaudun; then, in the century following, to the Chabots and the family of Chambes, of which Jean IV., prominent in the massacre of St. Bartholomew's night, was a member. It was he who assassinated the gallant Bussy d'Amboise at the near-by Château of Coutancière (at Brain-sur-Allonnes), who had made a rendezvous with his wife, since become famous in the pages of Dumas and of history as "La Dame de Montsoreau." To-day the old bourg is practically non-existent, and there is a smugness of prosperity which considerably discounts the former charm that it once must have had. But for all that, there is enough left to enable one to picture what the life here under the Renaissance must have been. The parish church--that of the ancient Paroisse de Retz--still exists, though in ruins, and there are very substantial remains of an old priory, an old-time dependency of the Abbey of St. Florent, now converted into a farm. Beside the highroad is the fifteenth-century château. It has a double façade, one side of which is ornamented with a series of _mâchicoulis_, great high window-openings, and flanking towers; and, in spite of its generally frowning aspect, looks distinctly livable even to-day. The ornamental façade of the courtyard is somewhat crumbled but still elegant, and has incorporated within its walls a most ravishing Renaissance turret, smothered in exquisite _moulures_ and _arabesques_. On the terminal gallery and on the panels which break up the flatness of this inner façade are a series of allegorical bas-reliefs, representing monkeys, surmounted with the inscription, "_Il le Feray_." The interior of this fine edifice is entirely remodelled, and has nothing of its former fitments, furnishings, or decorations. Near Port Boulet, almost opposite Candes, is the great farm of a certain M. Cail. Communication is had with the Orleans railway by means of a traction engine, which draws its own broad-wheeled wagons on the regular highway between the _gare d'hommes_ and the tall-chimneyed manor or château which forms the residence of this enterprising agriculturist. The property consists of nearly two thousand acres, of which at least twelve hundred are under the process of intensive cultivation, and is divided into ten distinct farms, having each an overseer charged directly with the control of his part of the domain. These farms are wonderfully well kept, with sanded roadways like the courtyard of a château. There are no trees in the cultivated parts, and the great grain-fields are as the western prairies. The estate bears the generic name of "La Briche." On one side it is bordered by the railroad for a distance of nearly forty kilometres, and it gives to that same railway an annual freight traffic of two thousand tons of merchandise, which would be considerably more if all the cattle and sheep sent to other markets were transported by rail. As might be expected, this domain of "La Briche" has given to the neighbouring farmers a lesson and an example, and little by little its influence has resulted in an increased activity among the neighbouring landholders, who formerly gave themselves over to "_la chasse_," and left the conduct of their farms to incompetent and more or less ignorant hirelings. CHAPTER XIII. ANJOU AND BRETAGNE As one crosses the borderland from Touraine into Anjou, the whole aspect of things changes. It is as if one went from the era of the Renaissance back again into the days of the Gothic, not only in respect to architecture, but history and many of the conditions of every-day life as well. Most of the characteristics of Anjou are without their like elsewhere, and opulent Anjou of ancient France has to-day a departmental etiquette in many things quite different from that of other sections. A magnificent agricultural province, it has been further enriched by liberal proprietors; a land of aristocracy and the church, it has ever been to the fore in political and ecclesiastical matters; and to-day the spirit of industry and progress are nowhere more manifest than here in the ancient province of Anjou. The Loire itself changes its complexion but little, and its entrance into Saumur, like its entrance into Tours, is made between banks that are tinged with the rainbow colours of the growing vine. What hills there are near by are burrowed, as swallows burrow in a cliff, by the workers of the vineyards, who make in the rock homes similar to those below Saumur, in the Vallée du Vendomois, and at Cinq-Mars near Tours. Anjou has a marked style in architecture, known as Angevin, which few have properly placed in the gamut of architectural styles which run from the Byzantine to the Renaissance. The Romanesque was being supplanted everywhere when the Angevin style came into being, as a compromise between the heavy, flat-roofed style of the south and the pointed sky-piercing gables of the north. All Europe was attempting to shake off the Romanesque influence, which had lasted until the twelfth century. Germany alone clung to the pure style, and, it is generally thought, improved it. The Angevin builders developed a species that was on the borderland between the Romanesque and the Gothic, though not by any means a mere transition type. The chief cities of Anjou are not very great or numerous, Angers itself containing but slightly over fifty thousand souls. Cholet, of thirteen thousand inhabitants, is an important cloth-manufacturing centre, while Saumur carries on a great wine trade and was formerly the capital of a "_petit gouvernement_" of its own, and, like many other cities and towns of this and neighbouring provinces, was the scene of great strife during the wars of the Vendée. In ancient times the _Andecavi_, as the old peoples of the province were known, shared with the _Turonii_ of Touraine the honour of being the foremost peoples of western Gaul, though each had special characteristics peculiarly their own, as indeed they have to-day. After one passes the junction of the Cher, the Indre, and the Vienne, he notices no great change in the conduct of the Loire itself. It still flows in and out among the banks of sand and those little round pebbles known all along its course, nonchalantly and slowly, though now and then one fancies that he notes a greater eddy or current than he had observed before. At Saumur it is still more impressed upon one, while at the Ponts de Cé--a great strategic spot in days gone by--there is evidence that at one time or another the Loire must be a raging torrent; and such it does become periodically, only travellers never seem to see it when it is in this condition. When Candes and Montsoreau are passed and one comes under the frowning walls of Saumur's grim citadel, a sort of provincial Bastille in its awesomeness, he realizes for the first time that there is, somewhere below, an outlet to the sea. He cannot smell the salt-laden breezes at this great distance, but the general appearance of things gives that impression. From Tours to Saumur by the right bank of the Loire--one of the most superb stretches of automobile roadway in the world--lay the road of which Madame de Sévigné wrote in "Lettre CCXXIV." (to her mother), which begins: "_Nous arrivons ici, nous avons quitté Tours ce matin._" It was a good day's journey for those times, whether by _malle-post_ or the private conveyance which, likely enough, Madame de Sévigné used at the time (1630). To-day it is a mere morsel to the hungry road-devouring maw of a twentieth-century automobile. It's almost worth the labour of making the journey on foot to know the charms of this delightful river-bank bordered with historic shrines almost without number, and peopled by a class of peasants as picturesque and gay as the Neapolitan of romance. [Illustration: _Château de Saumur_] "_Saumur est, ma foi! une jolie ville_," said a traveller one day at a _table d'hôte_ at Tours. And so indeed it is. Its quays and its squares lend an air of gaiety to its proud old _hôtel de ville_ and its grim château. Old habitations, commodious modern houses, frowning machicolations, church spires, grand hotels, innumerable cafés, and much military, all combine in a blend of fascinating interest that one usually finds only in a great metropolis. The chief attraction is unquestionably the old château. To-day it stands, as it has always stood, high above the Quai de Limoges, with scarce a scar on its hardy walls and never a crumbling stone on its parapet. The great structure was begun in the eleventh century, replacing an earlier monument known as the Tour du Tronc. It was completed in the century following and rebuilt or remodelled in the sixteenth. Outside of its impressive exterior there is little of interest to remind one of another day. To literary pilgrims Saumur suggests the homestead of the father of Eugenie Grandet, and the _bon-vivant_ reveres it for its soft pleasant wines. Others worship it for its wonders of architecture, and yet others fall in love with it because of its altogether delightful situation. Below Saumur are the cliff-dwellers, who burrow high in the chalk cliff and stow themselves away from light and damp like bottles of old wine. The custom is old and not indigenous to France, but here it is sufficiently in evidence to be remarked by even the traveller by train. Here, too, one sees the most remarkable of all the _coiffes_ which are worn by any of the women along the Loire. This Angevin variety, like Angevin architecture, is like none of its neighbours north, east, south, or west. Students of history will revere Saumur for something more than its artistic aspect or its wines, for it was a favourite residence of the Angevin princes and the English kings, as well as being the capital of the _pape des Huguenots_. While Nantes is the real metropolis of the Loire, and Angers is singularly up-to-date and well laid out, neither of these fine cities have a great thoroughfare to compare with the broad, straight street of Saumur, which leads from the Gare d'Orleans on the left bank and crosses the two bridges which span the branches of the Loire, to say nothing of the island between, and finally merges into the great national highway which runs south into Poitou. Fine houses, many, if not most of them, dating from centuries ago, line the principal streets of the town, which, when one has actually entered its confines, presents the appearance of being too vast and ample for its population. And, in truth, so it really is. Its population barely reaches fifteen thousand souls, whereas it would seem to have the grandeur and appointments of a city of a hundred thousand. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes cut its inhabitants down to the extent of twenty or twenty-five thousand, and it has never recovered from the blow. In the neighbourhood of Saumur, for a considerable distance up and down the Loire, the hills are excavated into dwelling-houses and wine-caves, producing a most curious aspect. One continuous line of these cliff villages--like nothing so much as the habitations of the cliff-dwelling Indians of America--extends from the juncture of the Vienne with the Loire nearly up to the Ponts de Cé. The most curious effect of it all is the multitude of openings of doorways and windows and the uprising of chimney-pots through the chalk and turf which form the roof-tops of these settlements. In many of these caves are prepared the famous _vin mousseux_ of Saumur, of which the greater part is sold as champagne to an unsuspecting and indifferent public, not by the growers or makers, but by unscrupulous middlemen. Saumur, like Angers, is fortunate in its climate, to which is due a great part of the prosperity of the town, for the "Rome of the Huguenots" is more prosperous--and who shall not say more content?--than it ever was in the days of religious or feudal warfare. Near Saumur is one shrine neglected by English pilgrims which might well be included in their itineraries. In the Château de Moraines at Dampierre died Margaret of Anjou and Lancaster, Queen of England, as one reads on a tablet erected at the gateway of this dainty "_petit castel à tour et creneaux_." Manoir de la Vignole-Souzay autrefois Dampierre Asile et dernière demure de l'heroine de la guerre des deux roses Marguerite d'Anjou de Lancastre, reine d'Angleterre La plus malheureuse des reines, des éspouses, et des mères Qui Morut le 25 Aout 1482 Agée de 53 Ans. The Salvus Murus of the ancients became the Saumur of to-day in the year 948, when the monk Absalom built a monastery here and surrounded it with a protecting wall. Up to the thirteenth century the city belonged to the "Angevin kings of Angleterre," as the French historians proudly claim them. The city passed finally to the Kings of France, and to them remained constantly faithful. Under Henri IV. the city was governed by Duplessis-Mornay, the "_pape des Huguenots_," becoming practically the metropolis of Protestantism. Up to this time the chief architectural monument was the château, which was commenced in the eleventh century and which through the next five centuries had been aggrandized and rebuilt into its present shape. The church of Notre Dame de Nantilly dates from the twelfth century and was frequently visited by Louis XI. The oratory formerly made use of by this monarch to-day contains the baptismal fonts. One of the columns of the nave has graven upon it the epitaph composed by King René of Anjou for his foster-mother, Dame Thiephanie. Throughout, the church is beautifully decorated. The Hôtel de Ville may well be called the chief artistic treasure of Saumur, as the châtteau is its chief historical monument. It is a delightful _ensemble_ of the best of late Gothic, dating from the sixteenth century, flanked on its façade by turrets crowned with _mâchicoulis_, and lighted by a series of elegant windows _à croisillons_. Above all is a gracious campanile, in its way as fine as the belfry of Bruges, to which, from a really artistic standpoint, rhapsodists have given rather more than its due. The interior is as elaborate and pleasing as is the outside. In the Salle des Mariages and Salle du Conseil are fine fifteenth-century chimneypieces, such as are only found in their perfection on the Loire. The library, of something over twenty thousand volumes, many of them in manuscript, is formed in great part from the magnificent collection formerly at the abbeys of Fontevrault and St. Florent. Doubtless these old tomes contain a wealth of material from which some future historian will perhaps construct a new theory of the universe. This in truth may not be literally so, but it is a fact that there is a vast amount of contemporary historical information, with regard to the world in general, which is as yet unearthed, as witness the case of Pompeii alone, where the area of the discoveries forms but a small part of the entire buried city. At Saumur numerous prehistoric and _gallo-romain_ remains are continually being added to the museum, which is also in the Hôtel de Ville. A recent acquisition--discovered in a neighbouring vineyard--is a Roman "_trompette_," as it is designated, and a more or less complete outfit of tools, obviously those of a carpenter. The notorious Madame de Montespan--"the illustrious penitent," though the former description answers better--stopped here, in a house adjoining the Church of St. John, to-day a _maison de retrait_, on her way to visit her sister, the abbess, at Fontevrault. From Saumur to Angers the Loire passes an almost continuous series of historical guide-posts, some in ruins, but many more as proudly environed as ever. At Treves-Cunault is a dignified Romanesque church which would add to the fame of a more popular and better known town. It is not a grand structure, but it is perfect of its kind, with its crenelated façade and its sturdy arcaded towers curiously placed midway on the north wall. Here one first becomes acquainted with _menhirs_ and _dolmens_, examples of which are to be found in the neighbourhood, not so remarkable as those of Brittany, but still of the same family. The Ponts de Cé follow next, still in the midst of vine-land, and finally appear the twin spires of Angers's unique Cathedral of St. Maurice. Here one realizes, if not before, that he is in Anjou; no more is the atmosphere transparent as in Touraine, but something of the grime of the commercial struggle for life is over all. Here the Maine joins the Loire, at a little village called La Pointe: "the Charenton of Angers," it was called by a Paris-loving boulevardier who once wandered afield. Much has been written, and much might yet be written, about the famous Ponts de Cé, which span the Loire and its branches for a distance considerably over three kilometres. This ancient bridge or bridges (which, with that at Blois, were at one time, the only bridges across the Loire below Orleans) formerly consisted of 109 arches, but the reconstruction of the mid-nineteenth century reduced these to a bare score. [Illustration: _The Ponts de Cé_] As a vantage-point in warfare the Ponts de Cé were ever in contention, the Gauls, the Romans, the Franks, the Normans, and the English successively taking possession and defending them against their opponents. The Ponts de Cé is a weirdly strange and historic town which has lost none of its importance in a later day, though the famous _ponts_ are now remade, and their antique arches replaced by more solid, if less picturesque piers and piling. They span the shallow flow of the Loire water for three-quarters of a league and produce a homogeneous effect of antiquity, coupled with the city's three churches and its château overlooking the fortified isle in mid-river, which looks as though it had not changed since the days when Marie de Medici looked upon it, as recalled by the great Rubens painting in the Louvre. Since the beginning of the history of these parts, battles almost without number have taken place here, as was natural on a spot so strategically important. There is a tale of the Vendean wars, connected with the "Roche-de-Murs" at the Ponts de Cé, to the effect that a battalion, left here to guard any attack from across the river, was captured by the Vendeans. Many of the "_Bleus_" refused to surrender, and threw themselves into the river beneath their feet. Among these was the wife of an officer, to whom the Vendeans offered life if she surrendered. This was refused, and precipitately, with her child, she threw herself into the flood beneath. On the largest isle, that lying between the Louet and the Loire, is one vast garden or orchard of cherry-trees, which produce a peculiarly juicy cherry from which large quantities of _guignolet_, a sort of "cherry brandy," is made. The Angevins will tell you that this was a well-known refreshment in the middle ages, and was first made by one of those monkish orders who were so successful in concocting the subtle liquors of the commerce of to-day. It is with real regret that one parts from the Ponts de Cé, with La Fontaine's couplet on his lips: "... Ce n'est pas petite gloire Que d'être pont sur la Loire." Some one has said that the provinces find nothing to envy in Paris as far as the transformation of their cities is concerned. This, to a certain extent, is so, not only in respect to the modernizing of such grand cities as Lyons, Marseilles, or Lille, but in respect to such smaller cities as Nantes and Angers, where the improvements, if not on so magnificent a scale, are at least as momentous to their immediate environment. For the most part these second and third class cities are to-day transformed in exceedingly good taste, and, though many a noble monument has in the past been sacrificed, to-day the authorities are proceeding more carefully. Angers, in spite of its overpowering château and its unique cathedral, is of a modernity and luxuriousness in its present-day aspect which is all the more remarkable because of the contrast. Formerly the Angevin capital, from the days of King John up to a much later time Angers had the reputation of being a town "_plus sombre et plus maussade_" than any other in the French provinces. In Shakespeare's "King John" one reads of "black Angers," and so indeed is its aspect to-day, for its roof-tops are of slate, while many of the houses are built of that material entirely. In the olden time many of its streets were cut in the slaty rock, leaving its sombre surface bare to the light of day. One sees evidences of all this in the massive walls of the great black-banded castle of Angers, and, altogether, this magpie colouring is one of the chief characteristics of this grandly historic town. Both the new and the old town sit proudly on a height crowned by the two slim spires of the cathedral. In front, the gentle curves of the river Maine enfold the old houses at the base of the hillside and lap the very walls of the grim fortress-château itself, or did in the days when the Counts of Anjou held sway, though to-day the river has somewhat receded. Beyond the ancient ramparts, up the hill, have been erected the "_quartiers neufs_," with houses all admirably planned and laid out, with gardens forming a veritable girdle, as did the retaining walls of other days which surrounded the old château and its faubourg. To-day Angers shares with Nantes the title of metropolis of the west, and the Loire flows on its ample way between the two in a far more imposing manner than elsewhere in its course from source to sea. Angers does not lie exactly at the juncture of the Maine and Loire, but a little way above, but it has always been considered as one of the chief Loire cities; and probably many of its visitors do not realize that it is not on the Loire itself. The marvellous fairy-book château of Angers, with its fourteen black-striped towers, is just as it was when built by St. Louis, save that its chess-board towers lack, in most cases, their coiffes, and all vestiges have disappeared of the _charpente_ which formerly topped them off. [Illustration: _Château d'Angers_] Beyond the rocky formation of the banks of the Loire, which crop out below the juncture of the Maine and the Loire, below Angers, are Savennières and La Possonière, whence come the most famous vintages of Anjou, which, to the wines of these parts, are what Château Margaux and Château Yquem are to the Bordelais, and the Clos Vougeot is to the Bourguignons. The peninsula formed by the Loire and the Maine at Angers is the richest agricultural region in all France, the nurseries and the kitchen-gardens having made the fortune of this little corner of Anjou. Angers is the headquarters for nursery-garden stock for the open air, as Orleans is for ornamental and woodland trees and shrubs. The trade in living plants and shrubs has grown to very great proportions since 1848, when an agent went out from here on behalf of the leading house in the trade and visited America for the purpose of searching out foreign plants and fruits which could be made to thrive on French soil. Both the soil and climate are very favourable for the cultivation of many hitherto unknown fruits, the neighbourhood of the sea, which, not far distant, is tempered by the Gulf Stream, having given to Anjou a lukewarm humidity and a temperature of a remarkable equality. Some of the nurseries of these parts are enormous establishments, the Maison André Leroy, for example, covering an extent of some six hundred acres. A catalogue of one of these establishments, located in the suburbs of Angers, enumerates over four hundred species of pear-trees, six hundred varieties of apple-trees, one hundred and fifty varieties of plums, four hundred and seventy-five of grapes, fifteen hundred of roses, and two hundred and nineteen of rhododendrons. Each night, or as often as fifty railway wagons are loaded, trains are despatched from the _gare_ at Angers for all parts. When the _choux-fleurs_ are finished, then come the _petits pois_, and then the _artichauts_ and other _légumes_ in favour with the Paris _bon-vivants_. Near Angers is one of those Cæsar's camps which were spread thickly up and down Gaul and Britain alike. One reaches it by road from Angers, and, until it dawns upon one that the vast triangle, one of whose equilateral sides is formed by the Loire, another by the Maine, and the third by a ridge of land stretching between the two, covers about fourteen kilometres square, it seems much like any other neck or peninsula of land lying between two rivers. One hundred thousand of the Roman legion camped here at one time, which is not so very wonderful until it is recalled that they lived for months on the resources of this comparatively restricted area. Before coming to Nantes, Ancenis and Oudon should claim the attention of the traveller, though each is not much more than a typically interesting small town of France, in spite of the memories of the past. Ancenis has an ancient château, remodelled and added to in the nineteenth century, which possesses some remarkably important constructive details, the chief of which are a great tower-flanked doorway and the _corps de logis_, each the work of an Angevin architect, Jean de Lespine, in the sixteenth century. Within the walls of this château François II., Duc de Bretagne, and Louis XI. signed one of the treaties which finally led up to the union of the Duché de Bretagne with the Crown of France. Oudon possesses a fine example of a mediæval donjon, though it has been restored in our day. One does not usually connect Brittany with the Loire except so far as to recollect that Nantes was a former political and social capital. As a matter of fact, however, a very considerable proportion of Brittany belongs to the Loire country. Anjou of the counts and kings and Bretagne of the dukes and duchesses embrace the whole of the Loire valley below Saumur, although the river-bed of the Loire formed no actual boundary. Anjou extended nearly as far to the southward as it did to the north of the vine-clad banks, and Bretagne, too, had possession of a vast tract south of Nantes, known as the Pays de Retz, which bordered upon the Vendée of Poitou. All the world knows, or should know, that Nantes and St. Nazaire form one of the great ports of the world, not by any means so great as New York, London, or Hamburg, nor yet as great as Antwerp, Bordeaux, or Marseilles, but still a magnificent port which plays a most important part with the affairs of France and the outside world. Nantes, la Brette, is tranquil and solid, with the life of the laborious bourgeois always in the foreground. It is of Bretagne, to which province it anciently belonged, only so far as it forms the bridge between the Vendée and the old duchy; literally between two opposing feudal lords and masters, both of whom were hard to please. The memoirs of this corner of the province of Bretagne of other days are strong in such names as the Duchesse Anne, the monk Abelard, the redoubtable Clisson, the infamous Gilles de Retz, the warrior Lanoue, surnamed "Bras de Fer," and many others whose names are prominent in history. "_Ventre Saint Gris! les Ducs de Bretagne n'étaient pas de petits compagnons!_" cried Henri Quatre, as he first gazed upon the Château de Nantes. At that time, in 1598, this fortress was defended by seven curtains, six towers, bastions and caponieres, all protected by a wide and deep moat, into which poured the rising tide twice with each round of the clock. To-day the aspect of this château is no less formidable than of yore, though it has been debased and the moat has disappeared to make room for a roadway and the railroad. It was in the château of Nantes, the same whose grim walls still overlook the road by which one reaches the centre of the town from the inconveniently placed station, that Mazarin had Henri de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz and co-adjutor of the Archbishop of Paris, imprisoned in 1665, because of his offensive partisanship. Fouquet, too, after his splendid downfall, was thrown into the donjon here by Louis XIV. De Gondi recounts in his "Mémoires" how he took advantage of the inattention of his guards and finally evaded them by letting himself over the side of the Bastion de Mercoeur by means of a rope smuggled into him by his friends. The feat does not look a very formidable one to-day, but then, or in any day, it must have been somewhat of an adventure for a portly churchman, and the wonder is that it was performed successfully. At any rate it reads like a real adventure from the pages of Dumas, who himself made a considerable use of Nantes and its château in his historical romances. Landais, the minister and favourite of François II. of Bretagne, was arrested here in 1485, in the very chamber of the prince, who delivered him up with the remark: "_Faites justice, mais souvenez-vous que vous lui êtes redevable de votre charge._" There is no end of historical incident connected with Nantes's old fortress-château of mediæval times, and, in one capacity or another, it has sheltered many names famous in history, from the Kings of France, from Louis XII. onward, to Madame de Sévigné and the Duchesse de Berry. Nantes's Place de la Bouffai (which to lovers of Dumas will already be an old friend) was formerly the site of a château contemporary with that which stands by the waterside. The Château de Bouffai was built in 990 by Conan, first Duc de Bretagne, and served as an official residence to him and many of his successors. In Nantes's great but imperfect and unfinished Cathedral of St. Pierre one comes upon a relic that lives long in the memory of those who have passed before it: the tomb of François II., Duc de Bretagne, and Marguerite de Foix. The cathedral itself is no mean architectural work, in spite of its imperfections, as one may judge from the following inscription graven over the sculptured figure of St. Pierre, its patron: "L'an mil quatre cent trente-quatre, A my-avril sans moult rabattre: An portail de cette église, Fut la première pierre assise." Within, the chief attraction is that masterwork of Michel Colombe, the before-mentioned tomb, which ranks among the world's art-treasures. The beauty of the emblematic figures which flank the tomb proper, the fine chiselling of the recumbent effigies themselves, and the general _ensemble_ is such that the work is bound to appeal, whatever may be one's opinion of Renaissance sculpture in France. The tomb was brought here from the old Église des Carmes, which had been pillaged and burned in the Revolution. The mausoleum was--in its old resting-place--opened in 1727, and a small, heart-shaped, gold box was found, supposed to have contained the heart of the Duchesse Anne. The coffer was surmounted by a royal crown and emblazoned with the order of the Cordelière, but within was found nothing but a scapulary. On the circlet of the crown was written in relief: "Cueur de vertus orné Dignement couronné." And on the box beneath one read: "En ce petit vaisseau, de fin or pur et munde, Repose un plus grand cueur que oncque dame eut au monde. Anne fut le nom d'elle, en France deux fois Royne * * * * * Et ceste parte terrestre en grand deuil nos demure. IX. JANVIER M.V.XIII." In one respect only has Nantes suffered through the march of time. Its magnificent Quai de la Fosse has disappeared, a long façade which a hundred or more years ago was bordered by the palatial dwellings of the great ship-owners of the Nantes of a former generation. The whole, immediately facing the river where formerly swung many ships at anchor, has disappeared entirely to make way for the railway. [Illustration: _ENVIRONS OF NANTES_] * * * * * The islands of the Loire opposite Nantes are an echo of the life of the metropolis itself. The Ile Feydeau is monumental, the Ile Gloriette hustling and nervous with "_affaires_," and Prairie-au-Duc busy with industries of all sorts. Couëron, below Nantes on the right bank, is sombre with gray walls surrounding its numberless factories, and chimney-stacks belching forth clouds of dense smoke. Behind are great walls of chalky-white rock crowned with verdure. Nearly opposite is the little town of Le Pellerin graciously seated on the river's bank and marking the lower limit of the Loire Nantaise. Another hill, belonging to the domain of Bois-Tillac and La Martinière, where was born Fouché, the future Duc d'Otranta, comes to view, and the basin of the Loire enlarges into the estuary, and all at once one finds himself in the true "Loire Maritime." At Martinière is the mouth of the Canal Maritime à la Loire, which, from Paimboeuf to Le Pellerin, is used by all craft ascending the river to Nantes, drawing more than four metres of water. At the entrance of the Acheneau is the Canal de Buzay, which connects that stream with the more ambitious Loire, and makes of the Lac de Grand Lieu a public domain, instead of a private property as claimed by the "marquis" who holds in terror all who would fish or shoot over its waters. All this immediate region formerly belonged to the monks of the ancient Abbey of Buzay, and it was they who originally cut the waterway through to the Loire. About half-way in its length are the ruins of the ancient monastery, clustered about the tower of its old church. It is a most romantically sad monument, and for that very reason its grouping, on the bank of the busy canal, suggests in a most impressive manner the passing of all great works. The prosperity of Nantes as a deep-sea port is of long standing, but recent improvements have increased all this to a hitherto unthought-of extent. Progress has been continuous, and now Nantes has become, like Rouen, a great deep-water port, one of the important seaports of France, the realization of a hope ever latent in the breast of the Nantais since the days and disasters of the Edict and its revocation. Below Nantes, in the actual "Loire Maritime," the aspect of all things changes and the green and luxuriant banks give way to sand-dunes and flat, marshy stretches, as salty as the sea itself. This gives rise to a very considerable development of the salt industry which at Bourg de Batz is the principal, if not the sole, means of livelihood. St. Nazaire, the real deep-water port of Nantes, dates from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when it was known as Port Nazaire. It is a progressive and up-to-date seaport of some thirty-five thousand souls, but it has no appeal for the tourist unless he be a lover of great smoky steamships and all the paraphernalia of longshore life. Pornichet, a "_station de bains de mer très fréquentée_;" Batz, with its salt-works; Le Croisic, with its curious waterside church, and the old walled town of Guérande bring one to the mouth of the Loire. The rest is the billowy western ocean whose ebb and flow brings fresh breezes and tides to the great cities of the estuary and makes possible that prosperity with which they are so amply endowed. CHAPTER XIV. SOUTH OF THE LOIRE The estuary of the Loire belongs both to Brittany and to the Vendée, though, as a matter-of-fact, the southern bank, opposite Nantes, formed a part of the ancient Pays de Retz, one of the old seigneuries of Bretagne. It was Henri de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz, who was the bitter rival of Mazarin. French historians have told us that when the regency under Anne of Austria began, Mazarin, who had been secretary to the terrible Richelieu, was just coming into his power. He was a subtle, insidious Italian, plodding and patient, but false as a spring-time rainbow. Gondi was bold, liberal, and independent, a mover of men and one able to take advantage of any turn of the wind, a statesman, and a great reformer,--or he would have been had he but full power. It was Cromwell who said that De Retz was the only man in Europe who saw through his plans. Gondi had entered the church, but he had no talents for it. His life was free, too free even for the times, it would appear, for, though he was ordained cardinal, it was impossible for him to supplant Mazarin in the good graces of the court. As he himself had said that he preferred to be a great leader of a party rather than a partisan of royalty, he was perhaps not so very greatly disappointed that he was not able to supplant the wily Italian successor of Richelieu in the favour of the queen regent. Gondi was able to control the parliament, however, and, for a time, it was unable to carry through anything against his will. Mazarin rose to power at last, barricaded the streets of Paris, and decided to exile Gondi--as being the too popular hero of the people. Gondi knew of the edict, but stuck out to the last, saying: "To-morrow, I, Henri de Gondi, before midday, will be master of Paris." Noon came, and he _was_ master of Paris, but as he was still Archbishop-Coadjutor of Paris his hands were tied in more ways than one, and the plot for his supremacy over Mazarin, "the plunderer," fell through. The whole neighbouring region south of the Loire opposite Nantes, the ancient Pays de Retz, is unfamiliar to tourists in general, and for that reason it has an unexpected if not a superlative charm. It was the bloodiest of the battle-grounds of the Vendean wars, and, though its monumental remains are not as numerous or as imposingly beautiful as those in many other parts, there is an interest about it all which is as undying as is that of the most ornate or magnificent château or fortress-peopled land that ever existed. Not a corner of this land but has seen bloody warfare in all its grimness and horror, from the days when Clisson was pillaged by the Normans in the ninth century, to the guerilla warfare of the Vendean republicans in the eighteenth century. The advent of the railway has changed much of the aspect of this region and brought a twentieth-century civilization up to the very walls of the ruins of Clisson and Maulévrier, the latter one of the many châteaux of this region which were ruined by the wars of Stofflet, who, at the head of the insurgents, obliged the nobility to follow the peasants in their uprising. Now and then, in these parts, one comes upon a short length of railway line not unlike that at which our forefathers marvelled. The line may be of narrow gauge or it may not, but almost invariably the two or three so-called carriages are constructed in the style (or lack of style) of the old stage-coach, and they roll along in much the same lumbering fashion. The locomotive itself is a thing to be wondered at. It is a pigmy in size, but it makes the commotion of a modern decapod, or one of those great flyers which pull the Southern Express on the main line via Poitiers and Angoulême, not fifty kilometres away. There is a little tract of land lying just south of the Loire below Angers which is known as "le Bocage Vendéen." One leaves the Loire at Chalonnes and, by a series of gentle inclines, reaches the plateau where sits the town of Cholet, the very centre of the region, and a town whose almost only industry is the manufacture of pocket-handkerchiefs. The aspect of the Loire has changed rapidly and given way to a more vigorous and varied topography; but, for all that, Cholet and the surrounding country depend entirely upon the great towns of the Loire for their intercourse with the still greater markets beyond. Like Angers, Cholet and all the neighbouring villages are slate-roofed, with only an occasional red tile to give variety to the otherwise gray and sombre outlook. _En route_ from Chalonnes one passes Chemillé almost the only market-town of any size in the district. It is very curious, with its Romanesque church and its old houses distributed around an amphitheatre, like the _loges_ in an opera-house. This is the very centre of the Bocage, where, in Revolutionary times, the Republican armies so frequently fought with the bands of Vendean fanatics. The houses of Cholet are well built, but always with that grayness and sadness of tone which does not contribute to either brilliancy of aspect or gaiety of disposition. Save the grand street which traverses the town from east to west, the streets are narrow and uncomfortable; but to make up for all this there are hotels and cafés as attractive and as comfortable as any establishments of the kind to be found in any of the smaller cities of provincial France. The handkerchief industry is very considerable, no less than six great establishments devoting themselves to the manufacture. Cholet is one of the greatest cattle markets, if not the greatest, in the land. The farmers of the surrounding country buy _boeufs maigres_ in the southwest and centre of France and transform them into good fat cattle which in every way rival what is known in England as "best English." This is accomplished cheaply and readily by feeding them with cabbage stalks. On Saturdays, on the Champ de Foire, the aspect is most animated, and any painter who is desirous of emulating Rosa Bonheur's "Horse Fair" (painted at the great cattle market of Bernay, in Normandy) cannot find a better vantage-ground than here, for one may see gathered together nearly all the cattle types of Poitou, the Vendée, Anjou, Bas Maine, and of Bretagne Nantaise. In earlier days Cholet was far more sad than it is to-day; but there remain practically no souvenirs of its past. The wars of the Vendée left, it is said, but three houses standing when the riot and bloodshed was over. Two of the greatest battles of this furious struggle were fought here. On the site of the present railroad station Kleber and Moreau fought the royalists, and the heroic Bonchamps received the wound of which he died at St. Florent, just after he had put into execution the order of release for five thousand Republican prisoners. This was on the 17th October, 1793. Five months later Stofflet possessed himself of the town and burned it nearly to the ground. Not much is left to remind one of these eventful times, save the public garden, which was built on the site of the old château. [Illustration: _Donjon of the Château de Clisson_] La Moine, a tiny and most picturesque river, still flows under the antique arches of the old bridge, which was held in turn by the Vendeans and the Republicans. To the west of Cholet runs another line of railway, direct through the heart of the Sèvre-Nantaise, one of those _petits pays_ whose old-time identity is now all but lost, even more celebrated in bloody annals than is that region lying to the eastward. Here was a country entirely sacked and impoverished. Mortagne was completely ruined, though it has yet left substantial remains of its fourteenth and fifteenth century château. Torfou was the scene of a bloody encounter between the Vendean hordes and Kleber's two thousand _héroiques de Mayence_. The able Vendean chiefs who opposed him, Bonchamps, D'Elbée, and Lescure, captured his artillery and massacred all the wounded. At the extremity of this line was the stronghold of Clisson, which itself finally succumbed, but later gave birth to a new town to take the place of that which perished in the Vendean convulsion. Throughout this region, in the valleys of the Moine and the Sèvre-Nantaise, the rocks and the verdure and the admirable, though ill preserved, ruins, all combine to produce as unworldly an atmosphere as it is possible to conceive within a short half-hundred kilometres of the busy world-port of Nantes and the great commercial city of Angers. One continually meets with ruins that recall the frightful struggle of Revolutionary times; hence the impression that one gets from a ramble through or about this region is well-nigh unique in all France. The coast southward, nearly to La Rochelle, is a vast series of shallow gulfs and salt marshes which form weirdly wonderful outlooks for the painter who inclines to vast expanses of sea and sky. Pornic is a remarkably picturesque little seaside village, where the inflowing and outflowing tides of the Bay of Biscay temper the southern sun and make of it--or would make of it if the tide of fashion had but set that way--a watering-place of the first rank. It is an entrancing bit of coast-line which extends for a matter of fifty kilometres south of the juncture of the Loire with the ocean, with an aspect at times severe with a waste of sand, and again gracious with verdure and tree-clad and rocky shores. The great Bay of Bourgneuf and its enfolding peninsula of Noirmoutier form an artist's sketching-ground that is not yet overrun with mere dabblers in paint and pencil, and is accordingly charming. The Bay of Bourgneuf has most of the characteristics of the Morbihan, without that severity and sternness which impress one so deeply when on the shores of the great Breton inland sea. The little town of Bourgneuf-en-Retz, with its little port of Colletis, is by no means a city of any artistic worth; indeed it is nearly bare of most of those things which attract travellers who are lovers of old or historic shrines; but it is a delightful stopping-place for all that, provided one does not want to go farther afield, to the very tip of the Vendean "land's end" at Noirmoutier across the bay. Three times a day a steamer makes the journey to the little island town which is a favourite place of pilgrimage for the Nantais during the summer months. Once it was not even an island, but a peninsula, and not so very long ago either. The alluvial deposits of the Loire made it in the first place, and the sea, backing in from the north, made a strait which just barely separates it to-day from the mainland. On this out-of-the-way little island there are still some remains of prehistoric monuments, the dolmen of Chiron-Tardiveau, the menhirs of Pinaizeaux and Pierre-Levée, and some others. In the speech of the inhabitants the isle is known as Noirmoutier, a contraction of "_Nigrum Monasterium_," a name derived from the monastery founded here in the seventh century by St. Philibert. In the town is an old château, the ancient fortress-refuge of the Abbé of Her. It is a great square structure flanked at the angles with little towers, of which two are roofed, one uncovered, and the fourth surmounted by a heliograph for communicating with the Ile de Yeu and the Pointe de Chenoulin. The view from the heights of these château towers is fascinating beyond compare, particularly at sundown on a summer's evening, when the golden rays of the sinking sun burnish the coast of the Vendée and cast lingering shadows from the roof-tops and walls of the town below. To the northwest one sees the Ilot du Pilier, with its lighthouse and its tiny coast-guard fortress; to the north is clearly seen Pornic and the neighbouring coasts of the Pays de Retz and of Bouin with its encircling dikes,--all reminiscent of a little Holland. To the south is the narrow neck of Fromentin, the jagged Marguerites, which lift their fangs wholly above the surface of the sea only at low water, and the towering cliffs of the Ile de Yeu, which rise above the mists. Just south of the Loire, between Nantes and Bourgneuf, is the Lac de Grand-Lieu, in connection with which one may hear a new rendering of an old legend. At one time, it is said, it was bordered by a city, whose inhabitants, for their vices, brought down the vengeance of heaven upon them, even though they cried out to the powers on high to avert the threatened flood which rose up out of the lake and overflowed the banks and swallowed the city and all evidences of its past. In this last lies the flaw in the legend; but, like the history of Sodom, of the Ville d'Ys in Bretagne, and of Ars in Dauphiné, tradition has kept it alive. This wicked place of the Loire valley was called _Herbauge_ or _Herbadilla_, and, from St. Philibert at the southern extremity of the lake, one looks out to-day on a considerable extent of shallow water, which is as murderous-looking and as uncanny as a swamp of the Everglades. From the central basin flow two tiny rivers, the Ognon and the Boulogne, which are charming enough in their way, as also is the route by highroad from Nantes, but the gray monotonous lake, across which the wind whistles in a veritable tempest for more than six months of the year, is most depressing. There are various hamlets, with some pretence at advanced civilization about them, scattered around the borders of the lake, St. Leger, St. Mars, St. Aignan, St. Lumine, Bouaye, and La Chevrolière; but in the whole number you will not get a daily paper that is less than forty-eight hours old, and nothing but the most stale news of happenings in the outside world ever dribbles through. St. Philibert is the metropolis of these parts, and it has no competitors for the honour. At the entrance of the Ognon is the little village of Passay, built at the foot of a low cliff which dominates all this part of the lake. It is a picturesque little village of low houses and red roofs, with a little sandy beach in the foreground, through which little rivulets of soft water trickle and go to make up the greater body. CHAPTER XV. BERRY AND GEORGE SAND'S COUNTRY Whether one enters Berry through the valley of the Cher or the Indre or through the gateway of Sancerre in the mid-Loire, the impression is much the same. The historic province of Berry resounds again and again with the echoes of its past, and no province adjacent to the Loire is more prolific in the things that interest the curious, and none is so little known as the old province which was purchased for the Crown by Philippe I. in 1101. [Illustration: BERRY (MAP)] With the interior of the province, that portion which lies away from the river valleys, this book has little to do, though the traveller through the region would hardly omit the episcopal city of Bourges, and its great transeptless cathedral, with its glorious front of quintupled portals. With the cathedral may well be coupled that other great architectural monument, the Maison de Jacques Coeur. At Paris one is asked, "_Avez-vous vu le Louvre?_" but at Bourges it is always, "_Êtes-vous allé à Jacques Coeur?_" even before one is asked if he has seen the cathedral. From the hill which overlooks Sancerre, and forms a foundation for the still existing tower of the château belonging to the feudal Counts of Sancerre, one gets one of the most wonderfully wide-spread views in all the Loire valley. The height and its feudal tower stand isolated, like a rock rising from the ocean. From Cosne and beyond, on the north, to La Charité, on the south, is one vast panorama of vineyard, wheat-field, and luxuriant river-bottom. At a lesser distance, on the right bank, is the line of the railroad which threads its way like a serpent around the bends of the river and its banks. Below the hill of Sancerre is a huge overgrown hamlet--and yet not large enough to be called a village--surrounding a most curious church (St. Satur), without either nave or apse. The old Abbey of St. Satur once possessed all the lands in the neighbourhood that were not in the actual possession of the Counts of Sancerre, and was a power in the land, as were most of the abbeys throughout France. The church was begun in 1360-70, on a most elaborate plan, so extensive in fact (almost approaching that great work at La Charité) that it has for ever remained uncompleted. The history of this little churchly suburb of Sancerre has been most interesting. The great Benedictine church was never finished and has since come to be somewhat of a ruin. In 1419 the English sacked the abbey and stole its treasure to the very last precious stone or piece of gold. A dozen flatboats were anchored or moored to the banks of the river facing the abbey, and the monks were transported thither and held for a ransom of a thousand crowns each. As everything had already been taken by their captors, the monks vainly protested that they had no valuables with which to meet the demand, and accordingly they were bound hand and foot and thrown into the river, to the number of fifty-two, eight only escaping with their lives. A bloody memory indeed for a fair land which now blossoms with poppies and roses. Sancerre, in spite of the etymology of its name (which comes down from Roman times--Sacrum Cæsari), is of feudal origin. Its fortress, and the Comté as well, were under the suzerainty of the Counts of Champagne, and it was the stronghold and refuge of many a band of guerilla warriors, adventurers, and marauding thieves. At the end of the twelfth century a certain Comte de Sancerre, at the head of a coterie of bandits called Brabaçons, marched upon Bourges and invaded the city, killing all who crossed their path, and firing all isolated dwellings and many even in the heart of the city. Sancerre was many times besieged, the most memorable event of this nature being the attack of the royalists in 1573 against the Frondeurs who were shut up in the town. The defenders were without artillery, but so habituated were they to the use of the _fronde_ that for eight months they were able to hold the city against the foe. From this the _fronde_ came to be known as the "_arquebuse de Sancerre_." [Illustration: _La Tour, Sancerre_] Sancerre is to-day a ruined town, its streets unequal and tortuous, all up and down hill and blindly rambling off into _culs-de-sac_ which lead nowhere. Above it all is the fine château, built in a modern day after the Renaissance manner, of Mlle. de Crussol, proudly seated on the very crest of the hill. Within the grounds, the only part of the domain which is free to the public, are the ruins of the famous citadel which was bought by St. Louis, in 1226, from the Comte Thibaut. The only portion of this feudal stronghold which remains to-day is known as the "Tour des Fiefs." One may enter the grounds and, in the company of a _concierge_, ascend to the platform of this lone tower, whence a wonderful view of the broad "_ruban lumineux_" of the Loire spreads itself out as if fluttering in the wind, northward and southward, as far as the eye can reach. Beside it one sees another line of blue water, as if it were a strand detached from the broader band. This is the Canal Latéral de la Loire, one of those inland waterways of France which add so much to the prosperity of the land. Above Sancerre is Gien, another gateway to Berry, through which the traveller from Paris through the Orléannais is bound to pass. [Illustration: _Château de Gien_] At a distance of five kilometres or more, coming from the north, one sees the towers of the château of Gien piercing the horizon. The château is a most curious affair, with its chainbuilt blocks of stone, and its red and black--or nearly black--_brique_, crossed and recrossed in quaint geometrical designs. It was built in 1494 for Dame Anne de Beaujeau, who was regent of the kingdom immediately after the death of Charles VIII. This building replaced another of a century before, built by Jean-sans-Peur, where was celebrated the marriage of his daughter with the Comte de Guise. Gien's château, too, may be said to be a landmark on Jeanne d'Arc's route to martyrdom and fame, for here she made her supplication to Charles VII. to march on Reims. In Charlemagnian times this old castle had a predecessor, which, however, was more a fortress than a habitable château; but all remains of this had apparently disappeared before the later structure made its appearance. Louis XIV. and Anne of Austria, regent, held a fugitive, impoverished court in this château, and heard with fear and trembling the cannon-shots of the armies of Turenne and Condé at Bleneau, five leagues distant. At Nevers or at La Charité one does not get the view of the Loire that he would like, for, in one case, the waterway is masked by a row of houses, and in the other by a series of walled gardens; but at Gien, where everything is splendidly theatrical, there is a tree-bordered quay and innumerable examples of those coquettish little houses of brick which are not beautiful, but which set off many a French riverside landscape as nothing else will. In Gien's main street there are a multitude of rare mellowed old houses with sculptured fronts and high gables. This street twists and turns until it reaches the old stone and brick château, with its harmoniously coloured walls, making a veritable symphony of colour. Each turn in this old high-street of Gien gives a new vista of mediævalism quite surprising and eerielike, as fantastic as the weird pictures of Doré. Gien and its neighbour Briare are chiefly noted commercially for their pottery. Gien makes crockery ware, and Briare inundates the entire world with those little porcelain buttons which one buys in every land. Crossing the Sologne and entering Berry from the capital of the Orléannais, or coming out from Tours by the valley of the Cher, one comes upon the little visited and out-of-the-way château of Valençay, in the charming dainty valley of the Nahon. There is some reason for its comparative neglect by the tourist, for it is on a cross-country railway line which demands quite a full day of one's time to get there from Tours and get away again to the next centre of attraction, and if one comes by the way of the Orléannais, he must be prepared to give at least three days to the surrounding region. This is the gateway to George Sand's country, but few English-speaking tourists ever get here, so it may be safely called unknown. It is marvellous how France abounds in these little corners all but unknown to strangers, even though they lie not far off the beaten track. The spirit of exploration and travel in unknown parts, except the Arctic regions, Thibet, and the Australian desert, seems to be dying out. The château of Valençay was formerly inhabited by Talleyrand, after he had quitted the bishopric of Autun for politics. It is seated proudly upon a vast terrace overlooking one of the most charming bits of the valley of the Nahon, and is of a thoroughly typical Renaissance type, built by the great Philibert Delorme for Jacques d'Étampes in 1540, and only acquired by the minister of Napoleon and Louis XVIII. in 1805. The architect, in spite of the imposing situation, is not seen at his best here, for in no way does it compare with his masterwork at Anet, or the Tuileries. The expert recognizes also the hands of two other architects, one of the Blaisois and the other of Anjou, who in some measure transformed the edifice in the reign of François I. The enormous donjon,--if it is a donjon,--with its great, round corner tower with a dome above, which looks like nothing so much as an observatory, is perhaps the outgrowth of an earlier accessory, but on the whole the edifice is fully typical of the Renaissance. The court unites the two widely different terminations in a fashion more or less approaching symmetry, but it is only as a whole that the effect is highly pleasing. Beyond a _balustrade à jour_ is the Jardin de la Duchesse, communicating with the park by a graceful bridge over an ornamental water. In general the apartments are furnished in the style of the First Empire, an epoch memorable in the annals of Valençay. [Illustration: _Château de Valençay_] By the orders of Napoleon many royalties and ambassadors here received hospitality, and in 1808-14 it became a gilded cage--or a "golden prison," as the French have it--for the Prince of the Asturias, afterward Ferdinand VII. of Spain, who consoled himself during his captivity by constructing wolf-traps in the garden and planting cauliflowers in the great urns and vases with which the terrace was set out. There is a great portrait gallery here, where is gathered a collection of portraits in miniature of all the sovereigns who treated with Talleyrand during his ministerial reign, among others one of the Sultan Selim, painted from life, but in secret, since the reproduction of the human form is forbidden by the Koran. In the Maison de Charité, in the town, beneath the pavement of the chapel, is found the tomb of the family of Talleyrand, where are interred the remains of Talleyrand and of Marie Thérèse Poniatowska, sister of the celebrated King of Poland who served in the French army in 1806. In this chapel also is a rare treasure in the form of a chalice enriched with precious stones, originally belonging to Pope Pius VI., the gift of the Princess Poniatowska. The Pavillon de la Garenne,--what in England would be called a "shooting-box,"--a rendezvous for the chase, built by Talleyrand, is some distance from the château on the edge of the delightful little Forêt de Gatine. Varennes, just above Valençay, is thought by the average traveller through the long gallery of charms in the château country to be wholly unworthy of his attention. As a matter of fact, it does not possess much of historical or artistic interest, though its fine old church dates from the twelfth century. Ascending the Cher from its juncture with the Loire, one passes a number of interesting places. St. Aignan, with its magnificent Gothic and Renaissance château; Selles; Romorantin, a dead little spot, dear as much for its sleepiness as anything else; Vierzon, a rich, industrial town where they make locomotives, automobiles, and mechanical hay-rakes, copying the most approved American models; and Mehun-sur-Yevre, all follow in rapid succession. Mehun-sur-Yevre, which to most is only a name and to many not even that, is possessed of two architectural monuments, a grand ruin of a Gothic fortress of the time of Charles VII. and a feudal gateway of two great rounded cone-roofed towers, bound by a ligature through which a port-cullis formerly slid up and down like an act-drop in a theatre. [Illustration: GATEWAY OF MEHUN-SUR-YEVRE] Wonderfully impressive all this, and the more so because these magnificent relics of other days are unspoiled and unrestored. [Illustration: _Le Carrior Dore, Romorantin_] Charles VII. was by no means constant in his devotions, it will be recalled, though he seems to have been seriously enamoured of Agnes Sorel--at any rate while she lived. Afterward he speedily surrounded himself with a galaxy of "_belles demoiselles vêtues comme reines_." They followed him everywhere, and he spent all but his last sou upon them, as did some of his successors. One day Charles VII. took refuge in the strong towers of the château of Mehun-sur-Yevre, which he himself had built and which he had frequently made his residence. Here he died miserable and alone,--it is said by history, of hunger. Thus another dark chapter in the history of kings and queens was brought to a close. If one has the time and so desires, he may follow the Indre, the next confluent of the Loire south of the Cher, from Loches to "George Sand's country," as literary pilgrims will like to think of the pleasant valleys of the ancient province of Berry. The history of the province before and since Philippe I. united it with the Crown of France was vivid enough to make it fairly well known, but on the whole it has been very little travelled. It is essentially a pastoral region, and, remembering George Sand and her works, one has refreshing memories of the idyls of its prairies and the beautiful valleys of the Indre and the Cher, which join their waters with the Loire near Tours. If one would love Berry as one loves a greater and more famous haunt of a famous author, and would prepare in advance for the pleasure to be received from threading its highways and byways, he should read those "_petits chefs-d'oeuvre_ of sentiment and rustic poesy", the romances of George Sand. If he has done this, he will find almost at every turning some long familiar spot or a peasant who seems already an old friend. Châteauroux is the real gateway to the country of George Sand. Nohant is the native place of the great authoress, Madame Dudevant, whom the world best knows as George Sand; a little by-corner of the great busy world, loved by all who know it. Far out in the open country is the little station at which one alights if he comes by rail. Opposite is a "_petite route_" which leads directly to the banks of the Indre, where it joins the highway to La Châtre. Nohant itself, as a dainty old-world village, is divine. Has not George Sand expressed her love of it as fervidly as did Marie Antoinette for the Trianon? The French call it a "_bon et honnête petit village berrichon_." Nude of artifice, it is deliciously unspoiled. A delightful old church, with a curious wooden porch and a parvise as rural as could possibly be, not even a cobblestone detracting from its rustic beauty, is the principal thing which strikes one's eye as he enters the village. Chickens and geese wander about, picking here and there on the very steps of the church, and no one says them nay. The house of George Sand is just to the right of the church, within whose grounds one sees also the pavilion known to her as the "_théâtre des marionettes_." In a corner of the poetic little cemetery at Nohant, one sees among the humble crosses emerging from the midst of the verdure, all weather-beaten and moss-grown, a plain, simple stone, green with mossy dampness, which marks the spot where reposes all that was mortal of George Sand. Here, in the midst of this land which she so loved, she still lives in the memory of all; at the house of the well-lettered for her abounding talent--second only to that of Balzac--and in the homes of the peasants for her generous fellowship. Through her ancestry she could and did claim relationship with Charles X. and Louis XVIII.; but her life among her people had nought of pretence in it. She was born among the roses and to the sound of music, and she lies buried amid all the rusticity and simple charm of what may well be called the greenwood of her native land. CHAPTER XVI. THE UPPER LOIRE The gateway to the upper valley may be said to be through the Nivernais, and the capital city of the old province, at the juncture of the Allier and the Loire. After leaving Gien and Briare, the Loire passes through quite the most truly picturesque landscape of its whole course, the great height of Sancerre dominating the view for thirty miles or more in any direction. Cosne is the first of the towns of note of the Nivernais, and is a gay little bourg of eight or nine thousand souls who live much the same life that their grandfathers lived before them. As a place of residence it might prove dull to the outsider, but as a house of call for the wearied and famished traveller, Cosne, with its charming situation, its tree-bordered quays, and its Hôtel du Grand Cerf, is most attractive. [Illustration: _Église S. Aignan, Cosne_] Pouilly-sur-Loire is next, with three thousand or more inhabitants wholly devoted to wine-growing, Pouilly being to the upper river what Vouvray is to Touraine. It is not a tourist point in any sense, nor is it very picturesque or attractive. Some one has said that the pleasure of contemplation is never so great as when one views a noble monument, a great work of art, or a charming French town for the first time. Never was it more true indeed than of the two dissimilar towns of the upper Loire, Nevers, and La Charité-sur-Loire. The old towers of La Charité rise up in the sunlight and give that touch to the view which marks it at once as of the Nivernais, which all archæologists tell one is Italian and not French, in motive as well as sentiment. It is remarkable, perhaps, that the name La Charité is so seldom met with in the accounts of English travellers in France, for in France it is invariably considered to be one of the most picturesque and famous spots in all mid-France. It is an unprogressive, sleepy old place, with streets mostly unpaved, whose five thousand odd souls, known roundabout as Les Caritates, live apparently in the past. [Illustration: _Pouilly-sur-Loire_] Below, a stone's throw from the windows of your inn, lies the Loire, its broad, blue bosom scarcely ruffled, except where it slowly eddies around the piers of the two-century-old _dos d'ane_ bridge; a lovely old structure, built, it is recorded, by the regiment known as the "Royal Marine" in the early years of the eighteenth century. The town is terraced upon the very edge of the river, with views up and down which are unusually lovely for even these parts. Below, almost within sight, is Nevers, while above are the heights of Sancerre, still visible in the glowing western twilight. Beyond the bridge rises a giant column of blackened stone, festooned by four ranges of arcades, the sole remaining relic of the ancient church standing alone before the present structure which now serves the purposes of the church in La Charité. The walls which surrounded the ancient town have disappeared or have been built into house walls, but the effect is still of a self-contained old burg. In the fourteenth century, during the Hundred Years' War, the town was frequently besieged. In 1429 Jeanne d'Arc, coming from her success at St. Pierre-le-Moutier, here met with practically a defeat, as she was able to sustain the siege for only but a month, when she withdrew. La Charité played an important part in the religious wars of the sixteenth century, and Protestants and Catholics became its occupants in turn. Virtually La Charité-sur-Loire became a Protestant stronghold in spite of its Catholic foundation. In 1577 it bade defiance to the royal arms of the Duc d'Alençon, as is recounted by the following lines: "Ou allez-vous, hélas! furieux insensés Cherchant de Charité la proie et la ruine, Qui sans l'ombre de Foy abbatre la pensez! * * * * * Le canon ne peut rien contre la Charité, Plus tot vous détruira la peste et la famine, Car jamais sans Foy n'aurez la Charité." In spite of this defiance it capitulated, and, on the 15th of May, at the château of Plessis-les-Tours on the Loire, Henri III. celebrated the victory of his brother by a fête "_ultra-galante_," where, in place of the usual pages, there were employed "_des dames vestues en habits d'hommes...._" Surely a fantastic and immodest manner of celebrating a victory against religious opponents; but, like many of the customs of the time, the fête was simply a fanatical debauch. [Illustration: _Porte du Croux, Nevers_] At Nevers one meets the Canal du Nivernais, which recalls Daudet's "La Belle Nivernaise" to all readers of fiction, who may accept it without question as a true and correct guide to the region, its manners, and customs. The chief characteristic of Nevers is that it is Italian in nearly, if not quite all, its aspects; its monuments and its history. Its ancient ducal château, part of which dates from the feudal epoch, was the abode of the Italian dukes who came in the train of Mazarin, the last of whom was the nephew of the cardinal, "who himself was French if his speech was not." Nevers has also a charming Gothic cathedral (St. Cyr) with a double Romanesque apse (in itself a curiosity seldom, if ever, seen out of Germany), and, in addition to the cathedral, can boast of St. Etienne, one of the most precious of all the Romanesque churches of France. The old walls at Nevers are not very complete, but what remain are wonderfully expressive. The Tour Gouguin and the Tour St. Eloi are notable examples, but they are completely overshadowed by the Porte du Croux, which is one of the best examples of the city gates which were so plentiful in the France of another day. Above Nevers, Decize, Bourbon-Lancy, Gilly, and Digoin are mere names which mean nothing to the traveller by rail. They are busy towns of central France, where the bustle of their daily lives is of quite a different variety from that of the Ile de France, of Normandy, or of the Pas de Calais. From Digoin to Roanne the Loire is followed by the Canal Latéral. Roanne is a not very pleasing, overgrown town which has become a veritable _ville des ouvriers_, all of whom are engaged in cloth manufacture. Virtually, then, Roanne is not much more than a guide-post on the route to Le Puy--"the most picturesque place in the world"--and the wonderfully impressive region of the Cevennes and the Vivaris, where shepherds guard their flocks amid the solitudes. Far above Le Puy, in a rocky gorge known as the Gerbier-de-Jonc, near Ste. Eulalie, in the Ardeche, rises the tiny Liger, which is the real source of the mighty Loire, that natural boundary which divides the north from the south and forms what the French geographers call "_la bassin centrale de France_." THE END. INDEX Abbeville, 107. _Abd-el-Kader, Emir_, 165. _Abelard_, 293. _Absalom_, 281. Acheneau, The, 298. _Adams, John_, 124. _Alaric_, 149. _Alcuin, Abbé_, 206. _Alençon, Ducs d'_, 195, 334. _Alençon, Marguerite d'_, 97, 150, 151-152. Allier, The, 330. Amboise and Its Château, 3, 20, 82, 96, 100, 123, 130-131, 137, 140, 148-169, 172, 181, 186, 194, 249. _Amboise, Family of_, 118, 120-122. Amboise, Forêt d', 169. Amiens, 210. Ancenis and Its Château, 11, 21-23, 291. _Andrelini, Fausto_, 66. Anet, Château d', 107, 177, 322. _Ange, Michel_, 208, 249. Angers and Its Château, 7, 10-13, 15, 21-23, 40, 84, 275, 278, 280, 283-284, 286-290, 304, 308. Angoulême, 194, 304. _Angoulême, Isabeau d'_, 267. _Angoulême, Jean d'_, 89. _Angoulême, Louise de Savoie, Duchesse d'_ (See _Savoie, Louise de_). Anjou, 15, 26, 142, 161, 273, 274, 284, 289-290, 292, 306, 322. _Anjou, Counts of_, 150, 193, 208, 232, 239, 267, 288. _Anjou, Foulques Nerra, Comte d'_ (See _Foulques Nerra_). _Anjou, Margaret of_, 280. _Anne of Austria_, 301-302, 319. Aquitaine, 18, 193. _Arbrissel, Robert d'_, 263. _Arc, Jeanne d'_, 202, 254-256, 258-260. _Ardier, Paul_, 115. Arques, Château d', 9. _Aumale, Duc d'_, 165. _Aussigny, Thibaut d'_, 48. Authion, The, 13. Autun, 321. Auvergne, 15. Auvers, 251. Auxerre, 17, 119. Avignon, 51, 260. Azay-le-Rideau and Its Château, 10, 63, 140, 226, 238, 240-247. Bacon, 40. Ballon, 215. _Balue, Cardinal_, 194, 196. _Balzac, Honoré de_, 3, 6, 20, 128-129, 137-138, 143, 207-209, 234, 239, 329. _Bardi, Comte de_, 108. _Barre, De la_, 144, 240. _Barry, Madame du_, 169, 215. _Beaudoin, Jean_, 200. _Beaufort, A._, 138. Beaugency and Its Château, 9, 41, 48-53. _Beaujeau, Anne de_, 319. Beaulieu, 201-202. Beauregard, Château de, 114-116. Beauvron, The, 114. _Becket_, 190. _Bélier, Guillaume_, 258. _Bellanger, Stanislas_, 135. _Bellay Family, Du_, 5, 128, 234. _Belleau, Remy_, 128. _Beringhem, Henri de_, 245. Bernay, 306. _Bernier_, 57. Berry, 7, 15, 56, 123, 313-314, 318, 320, 326-329. _Berry, Counts of_, 150. _Berry, Duchesse de_, 295. _Berthelot, Gilles_, 244, 246. _Berthier, Maréchal_, 108. Beuvron, 87-88. _Biencourt, Marquis de_, 246. _Blacas, Comte de_, 247. Blaisois, The, 52, 54, 56-84, 102, 123-124, 136, 148, 193, 322. Bleneau, 319. Blésois, The (_See_ Blaisois, The). Blois and Its Château, 3, 9, 11, 20, 40, 52-54, 56-84, 88, 94-95, 98, 100, 107, 110-112, 116-117, 119, 123, 125-126, 136, 139, 149, 156, 160, 164, 167, 174, 184, 186, 194, 260, 284. _Blois, Comtes de_, 57-59, 62, 84, 87, 98, 118. Blois, Forêt de, 54. _Blondel_, 99. Bocage, The, 304-305. _Bohier, Thomas_, 174, 182, 184-186. Bois-Tillac, 298. _Bolingbroke_, 42, 183. _Bonchamps_, 306-307. _Bonheur, Rosa_, 306. Bonneventure, Château de, 250. _Bontemps, Pierre_, 105. Bordeaux, 133, 171, 203, 292. _Bordeaux, Duc de_, 108. _Bosseboeuf, Abbé_, 233. Bouaye, 312. Bouin, 311. Boulogne, The, 312. _Bourbon, Cardinal de_, 164. _Bourbon, Renée de_, 264. Bourbon-Lancy, 336. Bourbonnais, 15. Bourdaisière, Château de la, 169. Bourg de Batz, 300. Bourges, 15, 314, 316. Bourgneuf-en-Retz, 309, 311. Bourgogne, 4, 15, 142. Bourgueil, 267. _Bourré, Jean_, 233. _Boyer_, 111. Bracieux, 110. Brain-sur-Allonnes, 269. _Brantôme_, 101, 155, 157, 158. Brenne, 135. Bretagne, 15, 26, 35-36, 57, 192, 218, 284, 291-293, 301. _Bretagne, Anne de_, 63, 97, 120, 168, 196, 209, 234, 236-238, 293, 296. _Bretagne, Conan, Duc de_, 295. _Bretagne, François II., Duc de_, 291, 294-296. _Brézé, Pierre de_, 195. Briare, 320, 330. _Briçonnet, Cardinal_, 42. _Brinvilliers_, 144. Brittany (_See_ Bretagne). _Broglie, Princesse de_, 120. _Brosse, Pierre de_, 234. Bruges, 282. _Brunyer, Abel_, 80, 81. _Buffon_, 61, 183. _Bullion_, 119. _Bussy d'Amboise, De_, 269. Buzay, Abbey of, 299. _Byron_, 138. _Cæsar_, 18, 290. Cahors, 260. _Cail, M._, 270-272. _Cain_, 251. _Calixtus II._, 264. Canal de Brest à Nantes, 24. Canal de Buzay, 298. Canal d'Orleans, 36-37. Canal du Nivernaise, 17, 335. Canal Lateral, 12, 17, 318, 336. Canal Maritime, 298. Candes, 268-270, 276. _Castellane Family_, 250. _Caumont, De_, 195. _Cellini_, 152. Chalonnes, 24, 304. Chambord and Its Château, 2-3, 20, 53, 79, 82, 84, 86, 94-110, 123, 139, 174, 186, 243, 247-248. _Chambord, Comte de_, 109. Chambris, 10. _Champagne, Counts of_, 316. Champeigne, 135. Champtocé, 24. Chanteloup, 154, 169. _Charlemagne_, 206. _Charles I. (the Bald)_, 18, 193. _Charles II. of England_, 82. _Charles V., Emperor_, 130-131, 155, 194. _Charles VI._, 257. _Charles VII._, 150, 188-189, 194-195, 202, 233, 250, 254-256, 257-260, 268, 319, 324, 326. _Charles VIII._, 45, 98, 130, 150, 165, 194-195, 234, 236, 238-239, 319. _Charles IX._, 107, 122, 180. _Charles X._, 329. _Charles Martel_, 5. _Charles the Bold of Burgundy_, 44. Chartres, 22, 133. Chartreuse du Liget, 190. _Châteaubriand, Comtesse de_, 101, 130. Château Chevigné, 22. Château de la Fontaine, 43. Château de la Source, 42-43. Châteaudun and Its Castle, 21-22. _Châteaudun, Vicomtes de_, 269. Château Gaillard, 259. Château l'Epinay, 22. Châteauneuf-sur-Loire, 36, 84. Châteauroux, 327. Château Serrand, 22. Chatillon, 12, 17, 19. _Chatillon, Cardinal de_, 160. _Chatillon, Comtes de_, 61, 68. Chaumont and Its Château, 11, 20, 107, 110, 116-126, 140. _Chaumont, Charles de_, 120. _Chaumont, Donatien Le Ray de_, 123-125. Chemillé, 304-305. _Chemille, Petronille de_, 263. Chenonceaux and Its Château, 10, 63, 107, 118, 140, 148, 165, 169, 171-187, 234, 243, 247, 251. Cher, The, 10, 21, 91, 171-173, 177-178, 180, 183, 191, 215, 275, 313, 320, 324, 326-327. _Chevalier, Abbé_, 243. Cheverny and Its Château, 82, 110-114, 133. _Cheverny, Philippe Hurault, Comte de_, 111. _Chicot_, 201. Chinon and Its Châteaux, 10, 92, 140, 171, 193, 202, 239, 241, 247, 250-261, 268. Chinon, Forêt de, 241, 247. Chiron-Tardiveau, 310. _Choiseul, Duc de_, 164, 169. Cholet, 275, 304-307. _Cholet, Comte de_, 115. Cinq-Mars and Its Ruins, 7, 21, 137, 220, 227-232, 238, 274. _Cinq-Mars, Henri, Marquis de_, 228, 229-231, 234. _Cinq-Mars, Marquise de_, 230, 231. _Claude of France_, 72, 80, 97, 155. _Clément, Jacques_, 78. Clermont-Ferrand, 15. Cléry, 32, 41, 44-46, 214. Clisson and Its Château, 8, 303, 307. _Clisson_, 293. _Clopinel, Jehan_ (See _Jean de Meung_). _Clouet_, 112. _Clovis_, 43, 149, 253. Coeuvres, 170. _Coligny_, 160-161. Colletis, 309. _Colombe, Michel_, 207-208, 295. _Commines, De_, 45. _Condé, Prince de_, 119, 160-161, 168, 319. _Conti, Princesse de_, 234. _Cormeri, Citizen_, 215. Cormery, 133. Cosne, 18, 314, 330. Cosson, The, 2, 97-98, 101. Coteau de Guignes, 52. Couëron, 298. _Coulanges, M. de_, 18. Coulmiers, 40. Cour-Cheverny, 110, 114, 133. _Cousin, Jean_, 105. Coutancière, Château of, 269. _Coxe, Miss_, 125. _Créquy, Marquise de_, 183. Croix de Monteuse, 16. _Cromwell_, 301. _Crussol, Mlle. de_, 318. _Dalahaide_, 77. Dampierre, 280. _Dante_, 203. _Danton_, 144. _Daudet_, 17, 335. Decize, 336. _Delavigne, Casimir_, 34. _Delorme, Marion_, 230-231. _Delorme, Philibert_, 321. _Deneux, Mlle._, 215. _Descartes_, 3, 208. Digoin, 336. Dijon, 15. _Dino, Duc de_, 115. Dive, The, 13. Domfront, Château de, 9. _Doré_, 207, 320. _Duban_, 73. _Ducos, Roger_, 164-165. _Dudevant, Madame_ (See _Sand, George_). _Duguesclin_, 49. _Dumas_, 3, 6, 47, 82, 201, 268-269, 294-295. Dunois, The, 56. _Dupin, M. and Mme._, 183, 187. _Duplessis-Mornay_, 281. _Eckmühl, Prince_, 42. _Effiats Family, D'_ (See _Cinq-Mars_). _Elbée, D'_, 307. _Eleanor of Portugal_, 155. _Éléanore of Guienne_, 267. Embrun, 44, 45. _Epernon, Duc d'_, 194. _Este, Cardinal d'_, 180. _Estrées, Gabrielle d'_, 164, 169-170. _Étampes, Duchesse d'_, 101, 130-131, 155. _Étampes, Jacques d'_, 321. Etretat, 251. Eure et Loir, Department of, 35. Falaise, Château de, 9. _Ferdinand VII. of Spain_, 323. Finistère, 35. _Flaubert_, 6. _Foix, Marguerite de_, 295-296. Folie-Siffait, 26. Fontainebleau, 97. Fontaine des Sables Mouvants, 52. _Fontenelle_, 183. Fontenoy, 107. Fontevrault, Abbey of, 3, 263-267, 282. _Force, Piganiol de la_, 106. Forez, Plain of, 17. _Fouché_, 298. _Foulques Nerra_, 93, 201, 232, 234. _Foulques V._, 238. _Fouquet_, 164, 294. _François I._, 60-64, 69-70, 72-73, 75, 89, 94-99, 101, 104-107, 109, 114, 118, 130, 148, 151-156, 171-172, 174-176, 189-190, 194, 196-197, 200, 244-245, 264, 322. _François II._, 156-162, 168, 181, 215. _Franklin, Benjamin_, 123-124, 125. Freiburg, 22. Fromentin, 311. _Galles, Prince de_, 49. _Gaston of Orleans_, 59-60, 62, 68-70, 79-82. Gatanais, The, 36. Gatine, Forêt de, 324. _George IV._, 169. Gerbier-de-Jonc, 16, 336. Gien and Its Château, 8, 18, 19, 202, 318-320, 330. Gilly, 336. Giverny, 251. _Gondi, Henri de_, 293-294, 301-302. _Goujon, Jean_, 105, 179, 244. _Gregory of Tours_, 57. _Grise-Gonelle, Geoffroy_, 195. Grottoes of Ste. Radegonde, 218. Guérande, 300. _Guise, Henri, Duc de (Le Balafré)_, 67, 69-70, 73-78, 157, 160, 162, 164, 168, 180, 234. Haute Loire, Department of, 11. _Henri II._, 69, 99, 107, 109, 115, 156, 158, 171-172, 174-177, 183-184, 197, 200. _Henri III._, 69-70, 73, 75-78, 182, 195, 201, 334. _Henri IV. (de Navarre)_, 78, 164, 170, 201, 281, 293. _Henry II. of England_, 190, 208, 238, 257-258, 267. _Henry VIII. of England_, 107. _Holbein_, 152. _Hugo, Victor_, 37. Huismes, 250. _Hurault, Philippe_, 111, 112. Ile de Yeu, 310-311. Ile Feydeau, 298. Ile Gloriette, 298. Ile St. Jean, 149. Ilot du Pilier, 310. Indre, The, 10, 21, 191-192, 240, 243-244, 247, 275, 313, 326-327. Indre et Loire, Département d', 142. _Jahel, Miss_, 125. _James V. of Scotland_, 157. _James, Henry_, 14, 189, 204, 251. Jargeau, 36. _Jean de Meung_, 46-47. _Jean-sans-Peur_, 319. _Jean-sans-Terre_, 193, 267. _Jeanne d'Arc_, 33-35, 38, 49, 319, 333. _Jeanne of France_, 209. _John, King_, 287. Joué, 215. _Juvenet_, 34. _Kleber_, 306, 307. La Beauce, 38, 41, 53, 87, 141. "La Briche," 270-272. Lac de Grand Lieu, 298-299, 311-312. Lac d'Issarles, 16. La Chapelle, 43. La Charité, 17-18, 314-315, 319, 332-334. La Châtre, 327. La Chevrolière, 312. _Lafayette, Madame de_, 109. _La Fontaine_, 128, 286. La Martinière, 298. La Motte, 87-88. _Landais_, 294. _Landes, Houdon des_, 137. Langeais and Its Château, 7, 21, 82, 133, 140, 165, 174, 224, 232-241, 247. Languedoc, 15. _Lanoue_, 293. Lanterne de Rochecorbon, 220. La Pointe, 13, 22-23, 284. La Possonière, 289. Larçay, 10. La Rochelle, 208, 308. _Lauzun_, 164. _Lavedan_, 31-32. Layon, The, 13. Le Croisic, 300. Le Havre, 27. _Lemaitre, Jules_, 34. _Lemercier_, 261-262. _Lenoir_, 57. _Lenôtre_, 43. _Lepage_, 35. Le Pellerin, 298. Le Puy, 4-5, 10, 16, 137, 336. _Leray, M._, 120. Les Andelys, Château de, 9. _Lescure_, 307. _Lespine, Jean de_, 291. Liger, The, 336. Lille, 286. _Lille, Abbé de_, 107. "_Limieul, La Demoiselle de_" (See _Tour, Isabelle de la_). Limousin, The, 109. Lisieux, 92. Loches and Its Châteaux, 3, 9-10, 130, 133, 140, 142, 188-202, 250, 266, 326. Loches, Forêt de, 190. Loir, The, 13, 21. Loir et Cher, Department of the, 35, 57. Loire, The, 1, 3-30, 32, 34-38, 40-41, 43, 50-51, 53-54, 56, 58, 64-65, 68, 92, 95-97, 101-102, 110, 116-118, 120-122, 124, 129, 133, 134, 137, 140-142, 148-149, 156, 163, 171, 173, 177-178, 191, 196, 208, 215, 220-223, 225, 227-228, 232, 236, 240, 257, 259-260, 267, 273, 275-276, 278-279, 282-286, 288-290, 292-293, 297-302, 304, 308-309, 311, 313-314, 318-319, 324, 326-327, 330, 332-334, 336. Loiret, The, 41-43. Loiret, Department of the, 35-36. _Lorraine, Cardinal de_, 157, 180. _Lorraine, Marie de_, 157. Lorris, 37. _Lorris, Guillaume de_, 37, 46. Lot, The, 260. Louet, The, 286. _Louis II. (Le Bègue)_, 150. _Louis IX._ (See _St. Louis_). _Louis XI._, 5, 32, 41, 44-46, 48, 69, 130-131, 150, 154, 194, 195, 211-212, 214-218, 232-233, 253, 257-258, 268, 281, 291. _Louis XII._, 60-61, 64, 66, 83, 97, 120, 122, 151, 167, 194-195, 209, 215, 238, 294. _Louis XIII._, 63, 99, 107, 139, 222, 224, 228, 230-231. _Louis XIV._, 32, 82-83, 98-99, 107, 109, 111, 164, 215, 227, 232, 245, 247, 294, 319. _Louis XV._, 54, 84, 107, 164, 169, 215. _Louis XVI._, 32, 123. _Louis XVIII._, 321, 329. _Louis Philippe_, 165. Louvre, The, 130, 285. _Lubin, M._, 126. Luynes and Its Château, 21, 222-227. _Luynes Family_, 222, 224, 227, 234. Lyonnais, 15. Lyons, 16, 203, 286. Lyons, Forêt de, 87. Madon, 126. _Maillé, Comte de_, 227. Maine, The, 12-13, 21-23, 284, 288-290. _Maintenon, Madame de_, 109. _Malines_, 77. _Mame et Fils, Alfred_, 205. _Mansart_ (elder), 62, 79. Marguerites, The, 311. _Marie Antoinette_, 328. _Marigny, De_, 54. Marmoutier, Abbey of, 218-220, 266. _Marques, Family of_, 185. _Marsay, M. de_, 190. Marseilles, 27, 136, 203, 286, 292. _Martel, Geoffroy_, 253. Maulévrier, Château of, 303. Mauves, Plain of, 26. Mayenne, 21. Mayenne, The, 21. _Mazarin_, 6, 293, 301-302, 335. _Medici, Catherine de_, 73-79, 107, 118-119, 122-123, 156-157, 160-162, 168, 175-182, 184-185. _Medici, Marie de_, 194, 285. Mehun-sur-Yevre and Its Château, 324-326. _Mello, Dreux de_, 193. Menars and Its Château, 53-54. Mer, 52-53. Metz, 40. Meung-sur-Loire, 41, 44, 46-48. Micy, Abbaye de, 43. _Mignard_, 112. Moine, The, 307-308. _Molière_, 108. Montbazon, 10. _Montespan, Madame de_, 283. _Montesquieu_, 183. _Montgomery_, 158, 175. Montjean, 24. Montlivault, 53. _Montmorency, Connétable de_, 174. Montpellier, Castle of, 231. _Montpensier, Charles de_, 154-155. Montrichard and its Donjon, 9-10, 91-93. Montsoreau, 268-270, 276. Moraines, Château de (_See_ Dampierre). _Moreau_, 306. Moret, 251. _Morrison_, 81. Mortagne, 307. _Mosnier_, 112. Moulins, 15. Muides, 53. Nahon, The, 320-321. Nantes and Its Château, 3, 7-8, 12-13, 23, 25-28, 40, 59, 84, 133, 207, 278-279, 286, 288, 291-302, 308, 311-312. _Napoleon I._, 83, 138, 164, 321-322. _Napoleon III._, 88. _Napoleon, Louis_, 165. Narbonne, 231. _Navarre, Marguerite of_ (See _Alençon, Marguerite d'_). _Nemours, Duc de_, 157. _Nepveu, Pierre_, 104. Nevers, 4, 6, 11, 15, 17, 137, 319, 332-333, 335-336. _Nini_, 125. Nivernais, The, 15, 330, 332. Nohant, 327-329. Noirmoutier, 309-310. Normandy, 85, 92, 306. Ognon, The, 312. Onzain, 116. Orléannais, The, 4, 10, 15, 19, 23, 30-57, 318, 320-321. Orleans, 7-8, 10-12, 15, 17, 19, 30-35, 37-41, 43, 52, 133, 137, 256, 258, 270, 284, 289. _Orleans Family_, 63, 65-66, 69, 140, 165, 231, 234 (See also _Gaston of Orleans_). Orleans, Forêt d', 39-40. Oudon, 25-26, 291. Paimboeuf, 298. Paris, 13, 30, 33, 42, 79, 119, 124, 136, 139-140, 229-230, 284, 302, 314. _Parme, Duc de_, 108. _Parmentier_, 80. Pas de Calais, 192. Passay, 312. Passy-sur-Seine, 124. Pays de Retz, 292, 301-302, 310. _Penthièvre, Duc de_, 164. _Pepin_, 193. _Philippe I._, 313, 326. _Philippe II. (Auguste)_, 93, 193, 238. _Philippe III. (Le Hardi)_, 234. _Philippe IV. (Le Bel)_, 49. Pierrefonds, Château of, 186. Pierre-Levée, 310. _Pilon, Germain_, 105. Pinaizeaux, 310. _Pius VI._, 323. _Plantagenet, Henry_ (See _Henry II. of England_). _Plantin, Christopher_, 205. _Plessis, Armand du_ (See _Richelieu, Cardinal_). Plessis-les-Tours, 7, 150, 211-218, 334. Pointe de Chenoulin, 310. Poitiers, 304. _Poitiers, Diane de_, 118, 123, 130, 155, 172, 174-178, 183, 187, 197. Poitou, 278, 292, 306. _Pompadour, La_, 215. _Poniatowska, Marie Thérèse_, 323. Pont Aven, 251. Ponts de Cé, 21-22, 275, 279, 284-286. Pornic, 308, 310. Pornichet, 300. Port Boulet, 270. Pouilly, 18, 330-332. Prairie-au-Duc, 298. _Primaticcio_, 152. _Primatice_, 99. Puy-de-Dôme, 16. _Rabelais, François_, 3, 128, 143-144, 239-240, 254-256, 260. Rambouillet, Forêt de, 87. Reims, 319. _Renaudie, Jean Barri de la_, 161. _René, King_, 23, 281. Rennes, 15. _Retz, Cardinal de_ (See _Gondi, Henri de_). _Retz, Gilles de_, 24, 293. Rhine, The, 13, 26. Rhône, The, 13, 23, 260. _Richard Coeur de Lion_, 93, 193, 267. Richelieu, 260-262. _Richelieu, Cardinal_, 224, 228, 231-232, 260-262, 301-302. Roanne, 12, 16-17, 336. _Rochecotte_, 250. Rochecotte, Château de, 249-250. Romorantin and Its Château, 85, 88-89, 324. _Ronsard_, 128, 157, 180, 240. Rouen, 92, 119, 121-122, 203, 221, 299. _Rousseau, Jean Jacques_, 172, 183-184, 187. _Roy, Lucien_, 235. _Royale, Madame_, 109. _Rubens_, 285. _Ruggieri, Cosmo_, 78-79, 122-123. Russy, Forêt de, 114. _Saint Gelais, Guy de_, 245. Sancerre and Its Châteaux, 18, 137, 313-318, 330, 333. _Sancerre, Counts of_, 314-316. _Sand, George_, 7, 321, 326-329. San Juste, Monastery of, 131. Saône, The, 23. _Sardini, Scipion_, 119. Sarthe, The, 13, 21. Saumur and Its Château, 21, 119-120, 142, 171, 221-222, 259, 274-283, 292. Sausac, Château of, 202. _Sausac, Seigneur de_, 215. Savennières, 289. _Savoie, Louise de_, 151. _Savoie, Philippe de_, 195. _Saxe, Maurice de_, 107-108. _Scott, Sir Walter_, 166, 211, 216, 218. Sedan, 40. Seine, The, 4, 13, 25, 36, 121, 221. Selles, 10, 324. _Sertio_, 100. _Sévigné, Madame de_, 18, 276, 295. _Sforza, Ludovic_, 197. _Shenstone_, 106. _Siegfreid, Jacques_, 234. Sologne, The, 38, 52-53, 56, 84-94, 97, 101, 110, 148, 320. _Sorel, Agnes_, 152, 188-189, 194, 196, 201-202, 250, 326. _Staël, Madame de_, 119-120. St. Aignan and Its Château, 10, 312, 324. _Stanislas of Poland, King_, 107-108. St. Ay, 43-44. St. Benoit-sur-Loire, 10, 19. St. Claude, 54. St. Cyr, 215. St. Die, 53. Ste. Eulalie, 336. _Stendahl_, 128. St. Etienne, 5, 16. St. Florent, Abbey of, 282, 306. St. Galmier, 16. St. Georges-sur-Loire, 22. St. Leger, 312. _St. Liphard_, 48. _St. Louis_, 37, 193, 288, 318. St. Lumine, 312. St. Mars, 312. _St. Martin_, 5, 149, 209-211, 218, 220, 253, 268. _St. Mesme_, 253. St. Mesmin, 41, 43. St. Nazaire, 23, 28, 292, 300. _Stofflet_, 303, 306. _St. Ours_, 193. St. Philibert, 311-312. _St. Philibert_, 310. St. Pierre-le-Moutier, 333. St. Rambert, 17. _St. Sauveur_, 238. Strasburg, 22. St. Symphorien, 218. St. Trinité, Abbey of, 266. _Stuart, Mary_, 157-162, 168, 181. _St. Vallier, Comte de_, 175, 197. Suèvres, 53. Sully, 19. _Talleyrand_, 250, 321, 323. _Tasso_, 180. Tavers, 52. _Terry, Mr._, 187. _Texier_, 22. Thézée, 10. _Thibaut-le-Tricheur_, 259. _Thibaut III._, 253. _Thiephanie, Dame_, 281. Thouet, The, 13. _Thoury, Comtesse_, 105. Torfou, 307. Toulouse, 15. _Tour, Isabelle de la_, 119. Touraine, 1-4, 6-9, 15, 19-21, 23, 32, 54, 56, 79, 85, 92, 102, 105, 121, 128-148, 161, 164, 169, 172-173, 176, 183, 204, 215, 220, 229-230, 233-234, 238, 243-244, 246, 251, 260, 273, 275, 284, 332. _Touraine, Comtes de_, 253. Tours, 3, 4, 7, 8, 10-11, 20-21, 40, 57, 84, 116-117, 120, 132-133, 137, 148-149, 166, 171-172, 200, 203-211, 215, 221-222, 224-225, 238-239, 246, 253, 266, 274, 276-277, 320-321, 327. Treves-Cunault, 283-284. _Turenne_, 319. _Turner_, 12. Ussé and Its Château, 241, 247-249. Valençay and Its Château, 320-324. _Valentine de Milan_, 66. _Valentinois, Duchesse de_ (See _Poitiers, Diane de_). Vallée du Vendomois, 274. _Valois, Marguerite de_ (_sister of François I._) (See _Alençon, Marguerite d'_). _Valois, Marguerite de (de Navarre)_, 180. _Van Eyck_, 152. Varennes, 218, 324. Varennes, The, 135. _Vasari_, 153. _Vauban_, 247. _Vaudémont, Louise de_, 182. Vendôme, 22, 266. _Vendôme, César de_, 164. Vendomois, The, 56-57. Veron, 135. Versailles, 43, 60, 86, 98, 139, 261. _Vibraye, Marquis de_, 111. Vienne, The, 10, 21, 251, 259-260, 267-268, 275, 279. Vierzon, 84-85, 324. _Vigny, Alfred de_, 128-129. Villandry, Château de, 238. Villaumère, Château de la, 250. _Villon, François_, 48. _Vinci, Leonardo da_, 59, 72, 100, 152-153, 166, 169, 174. _Viollet-le-Duc_, 185. Vivarais Mountains, 16. _Voltaire_, 42, 142, 183. Vorey, 11, 16. Vouvray, 222, 332. Yonne, The, 17. _Young, Arthur_, 86. _Zamet, Sebastian_, 170. * * * * * Transcriber's Notes 1. Replaced chateau(x) with château(x) throughout the text (title pages and pp. xi, 1, 9, 62, 72, 327). 2. P. 36: added quotes after a verse. 3. P. 67: replaced "três" with "très" ("très beau et très agréable ainsy que tous ses portraits l'ont représenté..."). 4. P. 83: added quotes after the phrase "magasin des subsistances militaires". 5. P. 86: added quotes after a phrase "those brilliant and ambitious gentlemen". 6. P. 94: "potions" are replaced with "portions" ("... moreover, one can drink large portions of it..."). 7. P. 108: "know" is replaced with "known" ("The second floor is known as the..."). 8. All instances of "Francois" are replaced with "François" (pp. 69, 171, 304, 338, 346). 9. P. 187: "Credit Foncier" is replaced by "Crédit Foncier". 10. P. 235: Replaced "irrelevent" with "irrelevant" ("...an over-luxuriant interpolation of irrelevant things..."). 11. P. 290: Replaced "Andre" with "André" ("Maison André Leroy"). 12. P. 296: Added quotes after a verse "Cueur de vertus orné Dignement couronné." 13. P. 314: Replaced "Etes-vous" with "Êtes-vous" ("Êtes-vous allé à..."). 14. P. 322: Replaced "Valencay" with "Valençay" ("Château de Valençay"). 15. Replaced "Eglise" with "Église" (illustration caption: "Église S. Aignan, Cosne"). 16. Innkeepers, manorhouse, sandbar, Bellilocus, seaside, harbourside, headwaters, stairway, and waterways are chosen to be written without a hyphen. 17. Dining-table, wine-shops, and quatre-vingzt are chosen to be written with a hyphen. 18. P. 338: Replaced "Bréze" with "Brézé" (Brézé, Pierre de). 19. P. 269: Replaced "Chateaudun" with "Châteaudun" ("... the fief passed to the Vicomtes de Châteaudun..."). 20. Pp. 12, 17, and 339: Replaced "Canal Lateral" with "Canal Latéral". 21. P. 344: Replaced "Orléans" with "Orleans". 22. P. 286: Quotes after the verse added ("... sur la Loire."). 23. P. 327: The (missing) closing quotes are added ("_petits chefs-d'oeuvre_ of sentiment and rustic poesy"). 24. Added a description of a monogram on p. 177. 25. P. 120: An image description is added. 
37344	----	FOUR YEARS IN FRANCE. * * * * * FOUR YEARS IN FRANCE; OR, NARRATIVE OF AN ENGLISH FAMILY'S RESIDENCE THERE DURING THAT PERIOD; PRECEDED BY SOME ACCOUNT OF THE CONVERSION OF THE AUTHOR TO THE CATHOLIC FAITH. * * * * * Rien n'est beau que LE VRAI. * * * * * LONDON: HENRY COLBURN, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. * * * * * 1826. Printed by A. J. Valpy, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street. CONTENTS. Page SOME ACCOUNT OF THE CONVERSION OF THE AUTHOR TO THE CATHOLIC FAITH, IN 1798. The author's father and grandfather, prebendaries of Lincoln.--The Cathedral service described.--The service in Magdalen College Chapel at Oxford.--The author's mother and his maternal ancestry.--November 5th.--School at which the author studies.--Mrs. Ravenscroft, a Catholic neighbour.--Dr. Geddes.--The author matriculates at Oxford.--The Tale of a Tub, its speciousness.--The Douay Translation of the New Testament.--Advice of a schoolmaster.--Gibbon the Historian.--Defence of the Reformed Church.--Argument derived from the exclusive antiquity of the Roman Catholic Church.--The Kirk of Scotland denies that it can be in the wrong, as strenuously as the Church of England does.--Infallibility.--Richard Paget.--Archbishop Laud.--The author takes the degree of Master of Arts.--In Deacon's orders: he fills a curacy in Lincoln.--Becomes a fellow of his college.--He resides on his fellowship.--His probationary exercise.--His sermon at St. Mary's Church, Oxford.--Its success.--He preaches against non-residence.--Decease of his mother.--The author resigns his fellowship, and removes to Lincoln.--The Bampton lecture.--Dr. Routh.--M. l'Abbé Beaumont, an emigrant priest at Lincoln.--A disputation.--Catholic arguments which impress the author's imagination.--Nicole and Arnaud.--Bossuet.--Ward's errata.--Of the sacraments.--Of purgatory.--Chillingworth.--Of abstinence.--The author convinced, after investigation, of the genuineness of the Roman Catholic doctrines, visits London.--He attends high mass.--His conversation with Dr. Douglas, the R. C. metropolitan bishop.--Rev. Mr. Hodgson appointed to be his priest and confessor.--His conversion completed.--The author baptised.--The author's apology to the Protestants, on account of his having been in holy orders of the Established Church.--He receives confirmation in the chapel of Virginia-street.--The author's idea that the Roman Catholic worship should be by law the established religion in Ireland.--Anecdote of Archdeacon Paley; who declared that he considered such a concession to the Irish nation expedient. 3 CHAP. I. Spirit of adventure of the English.--English fox-hunters.--Money spent abroad.--Migration through France and Switzerland into Italy.--Return.--The English associate together.--In what consist their reasons for foreign residence.--Distrust with respect to Napoleon.--Gallery of the Louvre.--Its dispersion.--Exaggeration of the number of English absentees.--The foreign notions of our motives for travelling.--Reflections on international intercourse.--Nature of the author's observations gleaned during a long residence abroad.--Remarks on the character of the French revolution.--Its effects.--Elevation of Napoleon.--Great results that have accrued from the French revolution in the West Indies, in South America; and that may possibly take place in Africa. 75 CHAP. II. The author repairs with his two sons to Southampton.--They set sail for Havre de Grâce.--Gale of wind.--Fécamp in sight.--Continue their course for Havre.--Land after a long passage.--The routes from London to Paris compared.--Port regulations.--The English Hôtel.--Hôtel de la Ville du Havre.--Damp sheets, how aired.--Strong coffee.--Mass.--Douanier.--Extortion by porters.--Imposition respecting passports.--Ill-breeding of certain parrots.--Commissaire de Police.--Embouchure of the Seine.--Legend and statue of St. Denis.--Inquiring peasant-boy.--French exactness.--The Rogation days.--Insolence of vulgar assistants in travelling abroad.--Commodious diligence.--Normandy.--Norman predilection.--Petition in verse.--The king of Yvetot.--Rouen.--Magny.--Abstinence, variously understood, and how practised.--Road along the banks of the Seine.--Village of St. Clair.--Pontoise.--Arrival at Paris.--Rate of travelling.--Lodge in the Rue de la Chaussée d'Antin. 92 CHAP. III. Description of Paris.--Place Louis XV.--Palais Bourbon.--Triumphal arch of Neuilly.--Champs Elysées.--The Louvre.--Its gallery of paintings, and museum.--Excellent arrangement of the statues.--The Italian school.--Progress of the French school of painting.--The Jardin des Plantes.--Museum of Natural History.--Ménagerie.--Manners of the Bourgeois.--Palais du Luxembourg.--King's library.--New structure at the Place du Carousel.--Pont Neuf.--Église de Notre Dame.--Ste. Geneviève.--Sepulture in that church.--Church of St. Sulpice.--Dome of the _Invalides_.--The Halle aux Bleds.--Pillar of the Place Vendôme.--Young Napoleon.--Duc de Bordeaux.--Preponderance of Russia.--History of the "Victoires et Conquêtes, &c."--Model of the elephant, designed for the Place de la Bastille.--Le Marais.--Agreeableness of the Boulevards.--Great advantage of _quais_.--Hôtel Dieu.--La Morgue.--Manufactory of the Gobelins.--Le Palais Royal. 118 CHAP. IV. Cemetery of Père la Chaise.--Graves there become a property.--Reflections respecting church-yards.--Computation of deaths, and room requisite for graves.--The Catacombs.--Arrival at Paris of the author's family.--Palace of Versailles described.--Royal chapel.--Anecdote of a mandarin.--Orange trees.--The gardens.--The Grand and Petit Trianon.--St. Germains.--Its terrace.--St. Cloud.--Its park.--Remark of George III.--Malmaison.--Marly.--Fine prospect.--Stability of the peace.--Meudon.--The Dauphiness (Duchesse d'Angoulême).--Manufacture of porcelain.--St. Denis.--The abbey of St. Denis.--Sceaux, popular festivities here.--Castle of Vincennes.--Duc d'Enghién.--Ancient oak.--Confluence of the Seine and the Marne.--The author attends mass in the Royal Chapel at the Tuilleries. 141 CHAP. V. Celebrated statues.--Various political opinions detailed.--Bargaining.--Two prices.--English travellers reputed to be very rich.--Parties.--The military.--Spoliation of the clergy.--Ambition of Bonaparte.--Prudence of Louis XVIII.--Increase of Paris.--Explanation of 'à la lanterne.'--Observations on the main streets of Paris.--High rents.--The Fauxbourg St. Germain.--The allied armies evacuate France. 168 CHAP. VI. Inventory of a furnished apartment.--The pane of glass.--The author quits Paris.--Voiturier.--Berline with three horses.--Travelling arrangements.--Agreement for stipulated sums.--Comparison betwixt travelling by a voiture, thus agreed for, and travelling post.--Louis the coachman.--Sup at Essonne. 184 CHAP. VII. The family of Fitz-James, settled at Essonne.--Description of Fontainebleau.--The Forest.--The King's bed.--The garden.--Maréchal de Coigny.--Tomb of a Dauphin at Sens.--Auxerre.--Banks of the Yonne.--Use of the hot-bath.--Cleanliness of the French.--Hilly country.--Vintages injured by the cold of 1816.--The coopers in activity.--The Plain of the Saône.--Coche d'eau.--Tournus.--Image of the Virgin.--Arrival at Lyons.--Fête de St. Louis.--The Cathedral.--Place Bellecour.--Cathedral at Vienne.--The Isere.--Valence.--Memoranda discovered at the 'Grand Monarque' Inn.--Country of the olive.--Flat roofs.--Bad inns.--Triumphal arch at Orange. 193 CHAP. VIII. The entrance into Avignon.--The Place de la Comédie.--Warm baths.--Expense of the journey from Paris to Avignon.--A _négociant_ serves for a banker.--The Duke of Gloucester passes through Avignon.--Imprisonment of the hostess.--M. Moulin.--Visit paid by the author to the Prefect.--Also to the Mayor; an old noble.--His confiscated house repurchased.--The author inspects various houses.--Conditions of tenure.--Description of the house which he takes.--He furnishes it.--Observations on French trades-people. 210 CHAP. IX. Description of Avignon.--The city walls.--Closing of the gates.--Inconvenience of this custom.--Public walk near the Rhone.--Tolls of the bridge.--Building of the bridge over the Rhone.--St. Benezet.--Of miracles.--Inundations.--The Rock of Avignon.--Palace of the Popes.--Cathedral.--The Glacière Tower.--Horrid history relating to it.--Avignon participated in the calamities of the revolution.--Conduct of the vice-legate.--Department of Vaucluse, of what it consists.--View from the summit of the Rock.--Château and town of Villeneuve.--Impressions left by the proscriptions and confiscations.--Rue Calade.--Public Library.--Museum.--Infirmary.--Jesuits' College.--Stone of which the palace and the city walls were built. 219 CHAP. X. English families.--The Pretender.--Further account of the Revolution.--The revolutionary tribunal.--Condemnation of a mother and son.--Present state of society at Avignon.--Fêtes and card parties.--The author's tea-parties and dinners.--Contrast betwixt French and English cookery.--Mode of invitation.--Balls.--_Etiquette_ of the town.--Difficulty of acquiring a thorough knowledge of the French language. 230 CHAP. XI. Education.--Drawing-master.--Other private teachers.--Climate of England and of Avignon compared.--Degree of heat.--The _bise_ or north-wind.--Rent.--Society.--Avignon inhabited by provincial gentry.--Number of French nobility.--Mode of letting farms.--On what tenure and for what consideration.--Excellent wines of the Rhone and of Provence.--On the duties upon French wines in England.--The author sets the example of burning coals at Avignon.--Dearness of fire-wood.--Domestic economy in France.--Comparison of expenses in the two countries.--Amount of savings.--The author's advice on this head is the result of experience. 245 CHAP. XII. Remains of antiquity at Avignon, Nismes, St. Remy, and Arles.--Visit to Vaucluse.--Cavern of the Sources.--Dinner at Lisle.--_Henry Kenelm_, elder son of the author.--His birth.--Educated at Stoneyhurst in Lancashire.--The regulations and course of studies at that college.--He accompanies the author to the continent.--His scruples.--Observations on the study of the learned languages and of French. 263 CHAP. XIII. Excursion to the Pont du Gard.--The author meets with an Irish officer in the French service.--The stately aqueduct described.--Arrival at Nismes.--The Maison Quarrée.--Its surprising beauty.--The amphitheatre of Nismes.--Temple of Diana.--The Tour Magne.--Frejus.--Remarks on the neighbouring coast.--The Protestants of Nismes.--Supper and a political discussion at the inn (_The Louvre_) at Nismes.--Affray between the Catholics and Protestants soon after the restoration. 289 CHAP. XIV. Executions at present uncommon.--Mission preached at Avignon.--An account of the Missionnaires.--An old French officer.--The author makes acquaintance with the grandson of the President de Montesquieu.--Election of a deputy.--Henry Kenelm visits England.--On theatres and comedians.--The author's son returns to Avignon.--His journey detailed.--He copies an Infant Jesus after Raphael.--Fine season.--Ice required at a ball.--Olives.--Artificial grasses.--Haricots.--The French agriculture described.--Vines.--Silk-worms.--Mulberry trees stripped of their leaves.--Threshing-floors.--_Abattoir_ for slaughtering cattle. 301 CHAP. XV. Intended journey to Italy.--Character and studies of _Henry Kenelm_.--He resolves on the military profession.--Fair of Beaucaire.--Visit to Arles.--Ancient buildings.--St. Remy.--Cross the Durance.--Deficiency of gooseberries, strawberries, &c.--Cherries.--Mausoleum.--Triumphal arch.--Bière de Mars.--Maison des Fous.--Return to Avignon. 326 CHAP. XVI. Joûte d'eau on the Rhone.--_Henry Kenelm_ is seized with fever.--The disorder at first is mistaken by the physician, who afterwards perseveres in a wrong treatment although he discovers it to be the typhus fever.--Symptoms.--Delirium.--The author's second son falls sick, and is neglected by Roche the physician. 339 CHAP. XVII. M. Guerard, an old physician, is called in, and countenances M. Roche in his deception.--Guerard's neglect.--The author is farther deceived, and the secret kept from him.--Result of this ill-conduct.--M. Breugne, another medical man. 352 CHAP. XVIII. M. Breugne, on visiting the patients, declares the truth.--He gives hope only of the younger brother.--The sacrament of extreme unction administered to Kenelm.--His piety.--His decease.--Visits of condolence.--The funeral.--His monument.--Resemblance which an antique bust has to the deceased youth.--Consolation.--Affecting vision, luminous, and similar to others on record.--Arguments and doctrine relating thereunto. 365 CHAP. XIX. M. Breugne detains the author in conversation until the funeral has quitted the house.--Zeal of M. Breugne for the recovery of the remaining patient.--Moment of anxiety.--Success of M. Breugne's treatment.--Convalescence.--Care in the administering diet, as well as medicines.--The author engages a voiture for his projected journey.--Passports. 382 CHAP. XX. The author narrates the circumstances of a dream, which coincide with his subsequent history.--St. Clair.--The author's sentiments.--His idea of a rule or mode of living. 394 CHAP. XXI. The author and his family quit Avignon.--Antoine accompanies them.--His history.--Orgon.--Aix.--The baths described.--Arrival at Marseilles.--The Hôtel de Ville.--Curiosities.--Bad inns.--Romantic approach to Toulon.--Description of that fine sea-port.--The Mediterranean.--Hyeres.--Frejus.--The Forêt d'Estrelles.--Danger of being overturned in crossing a river.--Arrival at Cannes. 403 CHAP. XXII. Journey to Nice continued.--Antoine's amusing account of the Rhone.--Spot on which Napoleon landed from Elba.--Antibes.--The river Var is the limit of France on this route.--Douanier.--Passage of the wooden bridge.--Nice.--Quarter of La Croix de Marbre.--The author rents a house.--His landlord is a French general.--Account of this officer.--Carnival. 420 CHAP. XXIII. Description of Nice.--Place Victor.--The Corso and Terrace.--Details of the Carnival.--Franciscan friars.--Devotional exercises.--Stations for their observance during Lent.--The orange tree.--Its blossoms.--Its fruit.--English Protestants build a chapel at Nice.--The port of Nice.--Villefranche.--Galley slaves.--The cathedral.--Marshal Massena.--The author departs for the Col de Tende on his way to Italy. 432 * * * * * SOME ACCOUNT OF THE CONVERSION OF THE AUTHOR TO THE CATHOLIC FAITH, IN 1798. * * * * * SOME ACCOUNT, &c. &c. Eight and twenty years ago, when I became a catholic, I was told that I owed it, both to those whom I had joined, and to those whom I had quitted, to publish something in defence of the step I had taken. I answered, that the former had better apologists, and the latter better instructors than myself. My advisers were protestants, who, having thus defied any arguments I might by possibility adduce against them, were contented with my refusal of the challenge. Even at this day I consider as utterly superfluous a serious refutation of protestantism, or a laboured vindication of the catholic faith, and, by consequence, of my conversion to it. Some account of this change in my opinions is prefixed to the book now offered to the public, in the hope of removing the prejudices with which the book may be read, or, what would be still worse, through which it may not be read at all. It is not my intention to enter into controversy, but merely to state how the thing happened that I _turned papist_ at the moment when the pope was a prisoner at Valence, when Rome was in possession of the French armies, and all around me cried out "Babylon is fallen." I must first ask pardon of the Anglican clergy, for having engaged in the service of their church so lightly and unadvisedly. If I am blamed only by those who have taken, on this matter, better pains than myself to be well informed, I shall not be overwhelmed by the number of my censurers; for the solidity of the ground of the Reformation is usually taken for granted: _popery_ is exploded. Indeed, I have found the clergy of the establishment to be the most tolerant and moderate of my opponents. Some of them expressed their regret, some smiled, but most of them respected my motives, and none were angry. The Bishop, now of Winchester, approved of my acting according to the dictates of my conscience; said that my conduct was evidently disinterested; expressing only his surprise, that a man of sense, as he was pleased to say he understood me to be, should be so convinced. Such was the purport of his lordship's observations, which was, as probably it was intended, repeated to me. His brother, Precentor of Lincoln, continued still to be my very good friend and neighbour. A few years later, the ex-governor of ---- said, in speaking of me,--"I knew his father well; a very worthy man: but this young man, they tell me, has taken an odd turn; but I will return his visit when I get out again." He did not, however, get out again: he had been ill for some days; feeling himself dying, he called for a glass of wine and water, drank it off, returned the glass to his servant, shook the man by the hand, and saying kindly, "Good b'ye, John!" threw himself back in his bed and expired, at the age of more than fourscore years. Here was no _odd turn_; the coolness with which his excellency met the grim king, was generally admired. But I am making a long Preface to a short Work; I must begin with my infancy, for reasons which the story of that infancy will explain. I was born on the 21st October, 1768. My father was prebendary of the cathedral church of Lincoln, as his father had been before him. My grandfather's prebend was a very good, or, as they say, a very fat one; my father's prebend was but a lean one, but he had sense enough to be a doctor in divinity, whereas my grandfather had sense enough not to be a doctor in divinity. They both rest behind the high altar of the cathedral with their wives. So accustomed are we to a married clergy, that we are not at all surprised to see them, during life, with their wives and children; and in death it is perfectly decent that the husband and wife should repose together. All this is natural and in order, to those who are used to it. But the feeling of catholics on this subject is very different. The story of the poor seminarist of Douay, in the 17th century, is an instance: he went to England on a visit to his friends; on his return to the seminary, he was asked "Quid vidisti?" He mentioned what had most excited his astonishment: "Vidi episcopos, et episcopas, et episcopatulos." A French emigrant priest entered my house one day, bursting with laughter: "Why do you laugh, M. l'Abbé?" said I.--"I have just met the Rev. Mr. ---- with the first volume of his theological works in his arms."--"What is there to laugh at in that?"--"He was carrying the eldest of his children,"--"La coutume fait tout," said I: "you see the Rev. Mr. ---- is not ashamed." Marriage is allowed to the priests, though not to the bishops of the Greek church. I think the catholic discipline is the best. The merriment of M. l'Abbé was excited, I am inclined to believe, not so much by a sense of the incongruous and ridiculous in the very natural scene he had just before witnessed, as by his own joke--"le premier tome de ses oeuvres théologiques." My father's house, in which I was born, was so near the cathedral, that my grandmother, good woman! when confined to her chamber by illness, was wont, with her Anglican translation of the Bible, and Book of Common Prayer on the table, before her, to go through the service along with the choir, by the help of the chant and of the organ, which she heard very plainly. From my earliest years, my mother took me regularly every Sunday to the cathedral service, in which there is some degree of pomp and solemnity. The table at the east end of the church is covered with a cloth of red velvet: on it are placed two large candlesticks, the candles in which are lighted at _even-song_ from Martinmas to Candlemas, and the choir is illumined by a sufficient number of wax tapers. The litanies are not said by the minister in his desk, but chanted in the middle of the choir, from what I have since learned to call a _prie-Dieu_. The prebendary in residence walks from his seat, preceded by beadles, and followed by a vicar or minor canon, and proceeds to the altar; the choir, during this sort of processional march, chanting the _Sanctus_. This being finished, and the prebendary arrived at the altar, he reads the first part of the Communion Service, including the Ten Commandments, with the humble responses of the choir; he then intones the Nicene Creed, during the music of which he returns to his seat with the same state as before. Here are _disjectoe membra ecclesioe_: no wonder that the puritans of Charles the First's time called for a "godly, thorough reformation." At _even-song_, instead of the Antiphon to the Blessed Virgin, which is, of course, rejected, though the Magnificat is retained, with its astonishingly-fulfilled prophecy of the carpenter's wife, "all generations shall call me blessed;" at vespers was sung an anthem, generally of the composition of Purcell, Aldrich, Arne, or of some of the composers of the best school of English music. Removed afterwards to St. Mary Magdalen College, Oxford, I found, in a smaller space, the same ceremonial; nay, the president even bowed to the altar on leaving the chapel, without any dread lest the picture of Christ bearing the Cross, by Ludovico Caracci, should convict him of idolatry. Here we all turned towards the altar during the recital of the Creed; at Lincoln this point of etiquette was rather disputed among the congregation: my mother always insisted on my complying with it; I learned to have a great respect for the altar. Whence this tendency of my mother's religious opinions or feelings was derived, is now to be told. She was daughter of Kenelm Digby, Esq. of North Luffenham, in the county of Rutland. A younger brother of this ancient family, in the reign of Edward IV. became the progenitor of this branch, which, illustrated by the names and the fame of Sir Everard and Sir Kenelm Digby, adhered to the religion of our forefathers down to the time of my maternal grandfather: he was the first protestant of his family: he had married a protestant: he died while my mother was very young, but she was able to remember his leading her one day to the private burial vault, which had been, at the Reformation, consecrated for the use of the family in a retired part of the garden, and in which he was soon after deposited himself. His abjuration does not seem to have carried with it that of all his relations, at least not immediately or notoriously; for, on the approach of Prince Charles Edward, in 1745, when my mother was about twelve years old, the horses and arms of the family were provisionally taken from them, as being suspected papists: a precaution not unreasonable if their wishes were considered; for the children, as my mother told me, ran about the house, singing Jacobite songs, among which the following may vie, in poetical merit, though not in political effect, with the memorable Lilleburlero: As I was a walking through James's Park, I met an old man in a turnip cart; I took up a turnip, and knocked him down, And bid him surrender King James's crown. It is eighty years since: twenty years since the publication of Waverly. The cultivation of turnips, by which our agriculture has been so much improved, was introduced from Hanover. I am much inclined to doubt the fact of my grandfather's having renounced the _errors of popery_: his interment in the sepulchre of his ancestors, the suspicion attached to his family, as above stated, the advantage from the supposition of the fact to those who wished to educate his children in protestantism,--these are my reasons for doubting its truth. However this be, many catholic families fell away from their religion after the battle of Culloden: at this time the whole Digby family was decidedly protestant, excepting three respectable virgins, aunts of my grandfather; and my mother, under the care of an uncle, became, at the age of twenty-two, the meet and willing bride of a young Anglican divine. Nevertheless, some "rags of popery" hung about her; she was very devout, and made long prayers: she had not her breviary indeed, but the psalms and chapters of the day served equally well: she doubted whether the gunpowder treason was a popish or a ministerial plot: the R. R. Dr. Milner had not yet written the dissertation, in his "Letters to a Prebendary," which proves that it was the latter. For want of this well-argued and convincing statement, I was called on to read, on the 5th of November, while squibs and crackers sounded in my ears, and Guy Faux, suspended over the Castle Hill, was waiting his fate,--to read, I say, the life of Sir Everard Digby in the Biographia Britannica, where his character is treated with some kindness and respect. Sir Kenelm Digby is, of course, the next article in the "Biography:" all this while I was detained from the dangerous explosions of the fire-works, which was in part my mother's purpose, though she had, no doubt, her gratification in the lecture. The youth of the present day are quite indifferent to the celebration of the 5th of November; they have not the grace to thank God for delivering them from "the hellish malice of popish conspirators;" few of them even know that this delicate phrase is to be found in their Book of Common Prayer. But five and forty or fifty years ago, before the repeal of the penal laws against catholics, when not a chapel was permitted to them, but by connivance, those of catholic ambassadors alone excepted; before the French Revolution had driven a catholic priest into almost every town in England,--the case was widely different: let the riots of 1780 bespeak the popular feeling of the people towards the religion of their forefathers. Here then, while they sung, O then the wicked papishes ungodly did conspire To blow up king and parliament with gun-pow-dire,-- I was taking a febrifuge draught, prepared by maternal caution and family pride. I went every day to learn Greek and Latin at the school founded for the use of the city out of the spoils of some monastery abolished at the time of Henry the Eighth's schism. The sons of citizens are here taught gratis; others give a small honorarium to the master. The school was held in the very chapel of the old religious house; the windows looked into a place called the Friars or Freres, and over the east window stood, and still stands, the _cross_, "la trionfante croie." But this was not all. Opposite to the door of the school-yard lived three elderly ladies, catholics, of small fortunes, who had united their incomes and dwelt here, not far from their chapel, in peace and piety. One of these ladies was Miss, or, as she chose to call herself, Mrs. Ravenscroft. Now my great grandfather, James Digby had married a lady of that family: it followed therefore that my mother and Mrs. Ravenscroft were cousins. My father's house was about a third of a mile from the school: Mrs. Ravenscroft obtained leave for me, whenever it should rain between nine and ten in the morning, the hour at which the school-boys went to breakfast, that I might call and take my bread and milk at her house. Some condition, I suppose, was made, that I should not be allowed to have tea: but they put sugar in my milk, and all the old ladies and their servants were very kind, and, as I observed, very cheerful; so that I was well pleased when it rained at nine o'clock. One day it chanced to rain all the morning, an occurrence so common in England, that I wonder it only happened once. I staid to dine with Mrs. Ravenscroft and the other ladies. It was a day of abstinence. My father, to do him justice as a true protestant, "an honest man who eat no fish," had not accustomed me to days of abstinence; but, as I had had no play all the morning, I found the boiled eggs and hot cockles very satisfactory, as well as amusing by their novelty. The priest came in after dinner, and Mrs. Ravenscroft telling him that I was her little cousin, Master ----, he spoke to me with great civility. At that time catholic priests did not dare to risk making themselves known as such, by wearing black coats. Mr. Knight was dressed in a grave suit of snuff-colour, with a close neat wig of dark brown hair, a cocked hat, almost an equilateral triangle, worsted stockings, and little silver buckles. By this detail may be inferred the impression that was made on my mind and fancy. I believe I was the only protestant lad in England, of my age, at that time, who had made an abstinence dinner, and shaken hands with a jesuit. When the rain gave over, I returned home, and related to my father all the history of the day. This I did with so much apparent pleasure, that he said, in great good-nature, "These old women will make a papist of you, Harry." He sent them occasionally presents of game in return for their attentions to me. The wife of the Earl of Traquair was also of the family of Ravenscroft, and Lord and Lady Traquair, in coming from or returning to Scotland, passed part of a day with my father and mother. Dr. Geddes, since so well known, accompanied his patron. I remember going with the party to see the ruins of the bishop's palace. Dr. Geddes's conversation was lively and pleasing. He was sure, he said, that my sister, some years older than myself, was a judge of poetry, since she read it so well: and he requested her acceptance of a copy of a satire of Horace which he had lately translated and printed. I know not if he ever pursued this work. Catholic gentry, every now and then, made visits to my mother; I suppose, for the sake of "auld lang-syne." Amongst these, Mr. and Mrs. Arundel, afterwards Lord and Lady Arundel, called on her so soon after the death of my father, that she could not go with them to the cathedral where he had been but lately interred. I accompanied them, and, on entering the south door, pointed out the pedestal on which, and the canopy under which stood, in catholic times, an image of the Blessed Virgin, under whose invocation the church is dedicated. Comparing the behaviour of these gentry to my mother with the conduct of all of the same class, with three or four exceptions only, towards me,--I infer that the best way to be treated by them with common civility is, to be, not a convert, but a renegado. My father died while I was yet in the fourteenth year of my age: in less than three years after this event, when I was not quite sixteen years and a half old, I became a commoner of University College, Oxford; and, having kept there three terms, was nominated, at the election held immediately after the feast of the Patroness Saint; a Demy of St. Mary Magdalen College. I passed the long or summer vacations at my mother's house. During the second of these vacations, when rummaging among my father's books, I found, thrown aside among waste papers in a neglected closet, an old copy of the Rheims or Douay translation of the New Testament. The preface to this work is admirable, and might be read by managers of Bible Societies, if not to their advantage, at least to their confusion. By what chance the book came there, how long it had lain there, whether my father had even ever known of its existence, I cannot tell. The notes are equal in bulk to the text: they attracted my attention, and I read them greedily. It will be observed, from the account given of my infancy, that I had been from the first familiarized with popery; that I had been brought up without any horror of it. This was much: but this was all. I knew nothing of the doctrines of the catholic church, but what I had learned from the lies in Guthrie's Geographical Grammar, and from the witticisms in the "Tale of a Tub,"--a book, the whole argument of which may be refuted by a few dates added in the margin. My English reading had filled my head with the usual prejudices on these topics. Of popes I had conceived an idea that they were a succession of ferocious, insolent, and ambitious despots, always foaming with rage, and bellowing forth anathemas. I now perceived that there was some ground in Scripture for believing that St. Peter was superior to the other apostles, ("Simon Peter, lovest thou me more than these?" "A greater charge required a greater love," argues one of the Fathers;) and that, by the consent of all antiquity, the Bishops of Rome were the successors of St. Peter. Of other doctrines I found rational, and what appeared to me plausible explanations. Transubstantiation was still a stumbling-block. I talked without reserve to my mother of my book, and of the impression it had made on me. She had no theological knowledge, but she had a great deal of religious feeling, and this feeling was all on the side of catholicism. Had she consulted an able catholic priest, perhaps had she consulted no one, I had at this time become a catholic: she would have been well pleased with my conversion, and her own would have followed. For her sake, as well as for many other reasons, I most sincerely regret that it did not at this time take place. Not that I doubt of the mercy of God towards innocent, involuntary error, but because, when we want to go to a place, it is better to be in the right road. She consulted my old schoolmaster, a wise and prudent man, as well acquainted with the question as the Anglican clergy in general are. As my mother was perfectly free from poperyphobia, she proposed the matter at once: "Henry has been reading this book, and has a great mind to be a catholic: you know all my family were catholics." My counsellor, without looking even at the outside of the book, put on a grave face,--a tremendously grave face: "I had rather give five hundred pounds than that such a thing should come to pass." I well knew the value he set on five hundred pounds, and conceived an analogous idea of his repugnance. Nevertheless, I pressed the book on his notice. "All this has been said a thousand times over;" meaning, and I so understood him, that it ought to have no more weight with me than with others; though the argument proved nothing but the usual obstinacy of those to whom arguments are addressed. My old master was too wise a man to argue even with a woman and a boy. "What would the world think of such a step? What would your father say if he could come to life again? What will become of your education and future prospects?" My mother was alarmed at her own responsibility in the passive encouragement she had given. I was but seventeen years old. I did not, however, quite give up the point. "These people have a great deal to say for themselves."--"You think so? There's Christianity enough in the church of England." A few years later I found he thought there was too much. I had subsequent conversations with him: I indirectly consulted others: I still read my book; but a book of notes has not the effect of a dissertation, well followed up, and leading to a conclusion. I found some insurmountable difficulties, and for the rest I said, "Le roi s'avisera." I had no other catholic work, and no catholic adviser. I went back to my college, where other studies occupied me; yet I may say, I never lost sight of the subject. Gibbon, who was a gentleman-commoner of Magdalen College, a few years before my time, declared himself a catholic before his twentieth year. He was still remembered in college as a young man who seldom or never associated with other young men, who always dressed in black, and always came into the hall or refectory too late at dinner time. He found catholics to help him in the work of his conversion. His father put him _en pension_ with a Calvinist minister, to be re-made a protestant, no matter of what sort. He saw, and throughout his great work shows that he continued to see, that the truth of the Christian religion rests on the authority of the catholic church. "The predictions of the catholics are accomplished: the web of mystery has been unravelled by Arminians, Arians, and Socinians, whose numbers must be no longer counted from their separate congregations; and the pillars of revelation are shaken by men who profess the name without the substance of religion, who assume the licence without the temper of philosophy." Pity that such a man should have been led away by the spirit of the age, so as not to perceive that true philosophy is the good and natural ally of the catholic faith. If any grave doctor of the Anglican church had, at this time, attempted to lay the foundations of my belief in his own form of religion, he would probably have failed in his work; partly, because the respect due to such a personage from a youth like me would have hindered that freedom of question, reply, and rejoinder, by which satisfactory conviction is at length produced; partly, because I should have considered him as bound in honour and interest to maintain his own opinions, and require implicit submission; and because also I should probably have found, as I have since found, the arguments, which such an one would have adduced, to proceed on misrepresentation, and to be logically absurd. There are two methods of defending the reformed church of England; one is, by asserting the right of private judgment; but this method is inconsistent with the authority of Scripture, and with the truth of the promises of Christ;--with the authority of Scripture, because it is absurd to allow to any body of men the right or power to say, "this book is Scripture, and this book is not Scripture," and to refuse to the same body the right of deciding on its sense in case of dispute. Had this body the privilege of infallibility while deciding on the canon, and were they immediately deprived of it? Infallibility--I dispute not about words: were they providentially preserved from error during this important operation, and ever afterwards abandoned to error? Common sense and the rules of criticism may enable us to decide on the historical credit due to any work laid before us; but _Scripture_, _the word of God_,--something more is necessary to men who are thus to arbitrate between mankind and their faith; and it is absurd to suppose that this _something more_ was taken from them when called on to determine matters of faith, by the help of this same Scripture, united to the tradition of the church. I might make my argument stronger, by remarking on the length of time which elapsed before the canon of Scripture was settled: was the church infallible during all that time, or only at intervals, by fits and starts? I will quote the words of St. Augustin, a Father often cited by the Anglican church: "Thou believest Scripture; thou doest well: ego vero Scripturæ non crederem nisi me ecclesiæ catholicæ urgeret auctoritas." Indeed, so difficult is it to reconcile the more than human authority of the Bible with the right of private judgment, that I believe the historical Christians, as they may be called, to be very numerous, and daily increasing in number. This right of private judgment is also inconsistent with the truth of the promises of Christ. He sent his apostles to teach all nations, promising to be with them,--it must be presumed, in their teaching,--to the consummation of the age. In the exercise then of that private judgment, which the reformers of the sixteenth century asserted, all the Christian world fell into error: yes, all of them; for Luther says, "in principio solus eram." The clergy, it may be said, pretended to authority, and even persecuted to the death those who differed from them. Persecution is no theological argument, though it is one which Calvin and Cranmer and other reformers did not object to resort to. But the clergy merely pretended to authority: by the supposed case, each man's particular opinion is his rule of faith, and therefore the Church of England is justified in its reformation. But, by following this rule, all the Christian world, according to the reformers, had fallen into error. Jesus Christ therefore, though he promised to be with his disciples to the end of the world, was unable or unwilling to keep his promise. The other method of defending the reformation of the Church of England, is by admitting, that the Church of Rome, as the Anglicans call it, has been, and is, a true church, teaching with authority all doctrines necessary to salvation; that the Church of England, having purified itself from errors and abuses, is also a true church, an integral portion of the catholic or universal church, with all the authority to such a body ecclesiastical, of due right, appertaining. This statement compels the Church of England to assert for itself something like infallibility; for, as Voltaire expresses it, "L'église catholique est infaillible, et l'église Anglicane n'a jamais tort." This must be so; for the authority of a church which may be in the wrong, must be always questioned. This statement also deprives the Church of England of all advantage in arms (theological arms I mean,) against the dissenters and other reformers: they turn upon her, and ask how she is more infallible, or even more in the right, than the Church of Rome. The Kirk of Scotland will no more allow itself to be in the wrong than the Church of England. Thus disputes are endless; appeals to remote antiquity, instead of uninterrupted tradition, involve the matter in hopeless intricacy; and the private judgment of nations has no more weight than the private judgment of individuals. Such are the two modes of defending England's reformation adopted by the low and the high church parties, which once declaredly and still insensibly divide its clergy. I have explained both methods, as they are better understood by being contrasted: I have noted the vice of each, that I may give in part my reasons for rejecting both in due time. Till this due time arrived, I was induced to embrace, and, for the time, conscientiously embraced, the opinions of a high churchman; and I was induced to this by the arguments and example of my friend Richard Paget. At the time when I became a member of Magdalen College, he had just taken the degree of Bachelor of Arts. A young under-graduate cannot help regarding with some deference one already in possession of the first of those academical honours to which himself aspires. Paget was besides three or four years older than me. This advantage of degree and age was not so great as to cause any subjection on my part; I looked up to him, but, if the pun may be allowed, did not suspect him. He, on his part, treated me with the greatest kindness and familiarity. He was, as he said, the second son of a second son of a second son of a younger branch of a noble family. He had not much given himself to classical studies, but he was well skilled in antiquities, including heraldry; witness the exactitude of his own pedigree: he was well read in English history, particularly that of the time of Charles I. with every personage of which he might be said to be intimately acquainted. He had a great love and good taste for the fine arts and for music. His conversation was, in the highest degree, pleasing; it was lively, allusive, full of anecdote: his manner of expressing himself was at once forcible and easy; his judgment was discriminating, his temper gentle and equal. I never think of him without regretting his loss; and he is often recalled to my memory by the benefit and instruction which I have derived from his friendship. We used to sit together hour after hour, cozing: I believe I must thus spell the word we have derived from the French _causer_; no other word has the same meaning. He would take up scraps of paper, and draw admirable caricature likenesses of the members of the college, not sparing the person before him; then a stroll round the walks; and then, as we passed by the door of my rooms on our return, "come in again," and so, another hour's coze. Soon after the commencement of our acquaintance, he began the studies which he thought requisite as a preparation for being ordained a minister of the Church of England. I had the result of these studies, which he pursued according to his own taste, for there is or was no rule in this matter: great admiration of the character of Archbishop Laud; lamentation of the want of splendor and ceremonial in the Anglican service; blame of those clergy who allowed church authority to slip from their hands, lowering themselves into teachers of mere morality. He gave himself very little trouble about the opinions of the dissenters, condemning them all in a lump by a sort of ecclesiastical and political anathema; but he took great pains to convince himself that the Church of England was in the right in its polemical dispute with the Church of Rome. He was willing to allow to the bishop of that city a préséance above all other bishops, not merely on account of the former imperial dignity of the city, but also on account of his succession to St. Peter, who had the same precedence among the apostles, though the privileges of the apostles were equal, as those of bishops ought to be. He saved the indefectibility of the church, by declaring that the Church of Rome was a true church, though not a pure church; that papists might be saved, since what they believed amiss did not destroy the effect of what they believed aright. He affirmed, that the separation of the Church of England from the Church of Rome was the pope's fault; that England had not separated from Rome, but had exercised its right of reforming errors in faith, and abuses in discipline, and approached nearer to the primitive model; that the pope, in excommunicating England for having done thus, had in fact, excommunicated himself. On several points he showed the practice of Rome to be right; on others, to regard things indifferent. Many other matters relating to this subject were discussed in our conversations, occasionally resumed during the continuance of my friend's residence in college. He was ordained deacon, and some two years after died. In the year 1791 I took my Master of Arts' degree in Act term, that is, in the beginning of summer, and went to Lincoln to pass some time with my mother, before I should put into execution a project which I had long meditated of a journey to France and Italy. Between my Bachelor's and Master's degrees, as I had no excuse for non-residence in college, I had been obliged to reside: indeed I was sufficiently fond of the literary leisure which this mode of life secured to me. I had always considered myself as destined to Anglican orders; it was the profession which my father had chosen for me, and I had, in some sort, prepared for it: I had confirmed myself in high church principles, and read a little Hebrew; but I had also studied the French and Italian languages for the use and service of my foreign travels, as also because it was rather my wish and ambition to enter on the diplomatic career, if I should find occasion and protection. But how could any one propose to himself to pass any length of time on the continent, agitated, as it now was, by the beginnings of the French revolution? Many ventured to go abroad; but I was alarmed: the unsuccessful attempt of the king and queen of France to escape to Montmedi had thrown France into confusion: it was evident that a crisis was at hand. I waited. During this time a violent inflammation in my eyes (a complaint to which I had been often subject, and which will, I fear, in its consequences, finally deprive me of sight,) confined me to the house, and prevented me from reading for some weeks. Deprived of the use of books, at all times my chief employment and consolation, and compelled to occupy myself with my own thoughts, I passed in review the topics by which men are usually induced to devote themselves to the more immediate service of God. My education, whatever may have been its influence on my virtue, had been regular, monkish even, if any one please to call it so: the feeling of piety had never been entirely renounced by me; and I now easily brought myself to entertain the hope that, by entering into the ecclesiastical state, I might be of some use to the cause of religion. The first day that my eye-sight was restored to me, I wrote to the president of Magdalen College, then bishop of Norwich, requesting to be admitted as a candidate for deacon's orders at the next ordination in September. The same motives which influenced me to this step, induced me also, three months afterwards, to take the curacy of a large parish in Lincoln; to engage, that is, to do the duties of him _qui curat_, as far as my inferior degree of deacon permitted. The stipend, about one fifth of the wages of an able mechanic, was known to be no object with me: I had an income more than sufficient for my wants as a single man, and, besides, lived in the house of my mother. As usual, in similar cases, some applauded my zeal, while others laughed at it. Within a few months, a fellowship became vacant on my county. I went up to college to pronounce my probationary oration. In this discourse, enumerating the former worthies of the house, I commended our predecessors at the time of the Reformation for having been of the number of those who did not wish that reformation to be excessive--_nimia_ was the word; and of those who did not think, "the further from Rome, the nearer to truth." The orator, on this occasion, is introduced between the first and second course of the grand dinner of the 22d of July; his voice may be clear as his stomach is empty: his task completed, he is placed at the right hand of him who presides at the "strangers' table," ranged down the middle of the hall, and is served with the first slice of the haunch of venison. I took the place reserved for me; and not perceiving that my high church sentiments had displeased any of my auditors, found the second course of a public dinner, under such glorious and hopeful circumstances, an ample amends for being excluded from the first. I was so much pleased with a college life, that I determined to return to my abode in college, on my admission as _actual_ fellow. I thought I had done enough to testify my devotion to the church by one year's volunteer service of the parish of St. Martin; for volunteer it was in the spirit, and almost in the letter. "Let all those who look for high preferment in the church, do as much," said I. My mother, who seemed quite to have forgotten the Rheims Translation of the New Testament, of which I was too besotted to remind her, received my promise to pass two or three months of every year with her. I soon found myself settled in a handsome apartment of the new building of Magdalen College. It is the usage to require of every one, to be admitted actual fellow of Magdalen College, what is called a probationary exercise. On this occasion I composed a treatise, bearing for title, "The Christian Religion briefly defended against the Republicans and Levellers of France." There was no especial reason for levelling this treatise against the French levellers; but the French republic was, at this time, in England, the _black dog_ upon every occasion: my work was a defence of general Christianity, upon a plan suggested by the _pensées de Pascal_. I had, however, my quarrel with the French legislators for making marriage a municipal ceremony and permitting divorce. I had not a sense of justice clear enough to blame the English law, for insisting that the marriages of catholics and dissenters shall be celebrated according to the rite of the English church. I did not bring forward the remark, that divorce is permitted in England; nor did I observe, that by the French law on the subject, no yoke was imposed on the conscience, since no married persons were required to divorce themselves, but only allowed to do so. I am entirely of opinion that such a law is highly to be reprobated in a civil point of view; but in what concerns religion, let each man's conscience take care of itself. But my main grief against the French legislators was the plunder and degradation of their church. In treating this matter, I as much forgot, as if I had never heard or read, that, not much more than two centuries before this period, all the bishops of England, (excepting only him of Llandaff,) and about ten thousand clergy, were deprived of their benefices, and sent to beg their bread all over Europe; and this, not because they would not accept a civil constitution, but because they would not accede to a new religion; and this, not in a time of civil tumult, and under the pressure of foreign invasion; but at the bidding of a young woman of five and twenty. But "tua res agitur paries cum proximus ardet," was a sentiment pretty generally felt at this time in England: to this sentiment, more than to any love of their religion, the French clergy may attribute the hospitable reception they met with in England. The deed was benevolent whatever its motive, and in the deed I had more than my share. In writing this essay, I struggled, and, as Longinus says, lashed my sides through two or three pages of introduction, and immediately afterwards found my composition to flow from me with tolerable ease: I wrote with less difficulty than I now experience, and am surprised that I so soon acquired a style by no means faulty. I do not say this for my _petite gloriole_, but because it seems a part of my story to give the reader a measure of my juvenile ability. I consulted two friends on the question of publication: they advised against it, told me I could do better, and pointed to the first part. Richard Paget also desired me to write the introduction over again, but did not, as my other better-judging friends had done, counsel the suppression. I went to London to find a printer: it was impossible here to sit down to correct; and I made a book of it as it was. Valenciennes was, at that time, besieged by the Duke of York, and it was generally supposed that the allied armies were a better bulwark of Christianity than a shilling pamphlet. The printer told me that Christianity was a very good thing, and that nobody doubted it. In November following I preached before the university, at St. Mary's church, a sermon on the text, "Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained." I asserted, that the power of absolving sin neither had been, nor could have been, abandoned by our reformers; defended the power against all impugners and repugners; and indicated the evil consequences resulting from allowing it to lie in abeyance. After some declamation respecting the horrors then perpetrated in a neighbouring nation, and some fears respecting the removal of our candlestick,--I concluded by trusting, that all whom it might concern would acquit themselves as faithful stewards of the mysteries of God. The leading members of the university were prodigal in praise of this discourse. One of them, afterwards a bishop, preached the Sunday following at St. Mary's, to assure the university that I was in the right; a confirmation which, considering my youth and inexperience, he justly deemed by no means superfluous. Another, whom I should be proud to name were there no indiscretion in doing so, bought the sermon when published; a compliment which, my printer told me, he had not paid to any of those published for many years past. He might do this, it may be said, as finding the sermon supremely ridiculous; but this supposition is negatived by the gracious manner in which, from this time, though I had not yet the honour of his acquaintance, he always saluted me in passing; his high station and character permitted to him this mode of signifying his approbation to one unknown, and rendered it peculiarly gratifying to me. Some, however, cried out "flat popery;" but the words in which the priest is directed to give absolution in the "Order for the Visitation of the Sick," are so precise; the assertion of the right in all cases is here so formal; (for it is not supposed that a physician is to be sent for to determine whether the penitent patient is sick enough to be absolved) the practice, in respect to penance, of those early ages to which the church of England appeals, is so well known;--that the cry of "flat popery" could not be sustained. Indeed, the sermon bears on the face of it some very outrageous abuse of the Romish church; but this abuse is so much a matter of course, that it would hardly have served as a justification, had one been wanted. I professed myself contented to be as popish as the church of England. One of the heads of the university said to me: "The doctrine of your excellent discourse is clearly the doctrine of the church of England: she asserts the right of absolution to be inherent in her clergy, but the people will not submit to the exercise of the power." This is true; it is true also, that the clergy very prudently abstain, in general, from sounding the inclinations of the people on the subject. My attempt must rather be considered, from the place in which the discourse was delivered, as a sort of _concio ad clerum_. I have heard of one clergyman who made the attempt; he preached to his people of the power belonging to him, as a priest, of absolving them from their sins, and of the benefit which they would derive, if truly penitent, from confession and absolution; concluding by fixing a time, at which he would be at home, to hear all those who should have any communications to make to him with such intention. This discourse caused a mighty hubbub in the parish; people did not know what to make of it; some doubted if their clergyman could seriously mean what he had said: one old woman did not hesitate to declare "she would be d----d if she would tell him all she knew." The confusion ceased in due time; but the people neglected to avail themselves of the offer of their pastor. Some time before, a book had been recommended to me, which I found great difficulty in procuring; at last I found it in the very centre of the fashionable world. I went into Faulder's shop, in Bond Street. "Have you _Pluralities Indefensible_, by Dr. Newton, founder of Hertford College?"--"It is a book which I always take care to have by me, for the best of all possible reasons,--I am always sure of selling it."--"I should not have supposed that. Who buy it? Any clergymen?"--"Yes."--"What use do they make of it?" Mr. Faulder understood my question. I have forgotten his answer, but it was discreet. Non-residence on benefices with cure of souls, was one of those abuses in catholic discipline, which, more than any other, tended to bring on the Reformation; it is an abuse which that Reformation has not yet reformed. I read my book on Pluralities, and was convinced that they were indefensible. Having not yet learned,--perhaps having yet to learn, that "the better part of valour is discretion,"--soon after my sermon on absolution, I preached in the same church as before, to a congregation composed as before, a discourse, in which I detailed the evils of pluralities, as necessitating non-residence, and the appointment of "hired substitutes, improperly called curates," to perform those duties, which the principal has engaged to perform, and which, unless disabled, he is in conscience bound to perform personally. This discourse was not heard with the same approbation as the former. "Religious persuasion" is a phrase bandied about by men who have no very accurate notion of the sense in which they employ the words. One cannot be persuaded of a truth: he may believe that to be true which is not so; but then he judges it to be true,--he is not persuaded; one cannot even be persuaded of a fact; the judgment and the senses are not to be persuaded. In religion, a man either believes, or doubts, or rejects: if he believe, his belief, on account of the supernatural authority to which he submits himself, is called faith. But, if in religion there be sects and parties, he may be persuaded by circumstances to choose one party rather than another; but this is a persuasion that respects the accessaries to religion, not the religion itself. If he adopt or profess the religion, without believing it, he is a hypocrite. I have laid down these principles by which to try my own conduct during my stay in Magdalen College. If I were conscious of any insincerity in my adherence to the church of England, during this period, I would now declare it; I hold myself bound to tell the truth, and not intentionally to lead the reader into any misapprehension. I had certainly committed a great fault in not prosecuting the inquiry begun by the reading of the Rheims Translation of the New Testament: it was the fault of my boyhood,--a fault of which, on human grounds even, I have but too much cause to repent. By not bringing this inquiry, at that time, to the point to which I afterwards brought it, I lost twelve years of my life, dating from seventeen years old,--a time which might have been employed in diverting my education to other purposes, in adopting and following another profession, and in forming other connexions and friendships, than those which I have, of course, forfeited by my conversion. But, during these twelve years, excepting the last year only, passed in doubt and research, I firmly believed that "the church of Rome had erred, not only in matters of discipline, but also in matters of faith." Transubstantiation was the great stumbling-block; and a church which had erred in so grave a matter was not a teacher to be implicitly confided in. I thought catholics were, not intentionally, but in fact, guilty of idolatry; and I thought the sin pardonable in them on account of the intention. Having once set myself at liberty to reject the authority of the church in communion with the bishop of Rome, I followed, among the various interpretations of which Scripture is capable, that given by the church of England, judging it to be most reasonable. Not sufficiently instructed in the distinction between matters of faith and questions of discipline, I believed the differences and points in dispute between these two portions of the catholic church, to be more numerous than they really are. Archimedes said, "Give me where to stand, and I will move the earth." At Oxford I was on the peculiar ground, the _terra firma_, if firm it be, of the church of England: there I could not move or weigh it, or see it at a due distance, to judge of its form or proportion. Indifference was hardly to be obtained amidst so many sympathies. An event however occurred, which removed me to a distance from this scene, leaving my mind free for an investigation which, with the opinions and feelings which my friend, Richard Paget, had taught and infused, and Oxford had confirmed, was soon brought to a fair conclusion. On the 10th of April, 1797, I received, by an express at ten o'clock in the evening, a letter from a physician at Lincoln, acquainting me with the dangerous state of my mother's health, informing me, that it was hardly probable that on my arrival at her house, I should find her living. In an hour's time I was in a post chaise, and hastened by the shortest road through Northamptonshire. Though obliged to wait at every inn during the night time for fresh horses, and delayed two hours by being overturned, I got to Lincoln, a distance of a hundred and thirty miles, by seven the next evening. My mother had died at the hour at which the express had reached Oxford. The estate which devolved to me by her death being freehold, my fellowship was not tenable with it. I quitted Magdalen College within three months, sent my books to Lincoln, and established myself there in a mode of life very much according with my former collegiate habits. Before I left Oxford, I acquainted the president of my college with my wish to be appointed to preach the Bampton lecture; he acquiesced, and desired me to write him word when I should be prepared, that he might propose me to the heads of houses, with whom rests the nomination of the lecturer. This institution is so well known, that no account of it here is necessary. The subject of my lecture, as I mentioned to the president, was to be, Christianity proved against the objections of the Jews. Dr. Routh, with that amenity of manners, which distinguishes him as much as his great learning, gave me the titles of several books that might be useful to me. While meditating the conversion of the Jews, I received one day at dinner a French emigrant priest and an Anglican clergyman. The _esprit de son état_ in the former, and the total absence of it in the latter, were equally remarkable. However, we talked _about_ religion. My Anglican attacked the catholic on account of certain practices which this one easily proved to be common to both communions, the only difference being that the church of England does not observe its own ordinances. The clergyman would not take refuge in the "slow and silent reformation," by which such deviations are usually excused: he knew he should not have me for an auxiliary; he retreated to transubstantiation. Here the Frenchman, who talked English well but not currently, was soon overpowered by two opponents; and the Anglican, his retreat thus covered by me, carried off with him the honour of the day. The emigrant was M. l'Abbé Beaumont, who had formerly been rector of the university of Caën, and appointed canon of the cathedral of Rouen: he was about to take possession of his stall, when the order was issued, on account of the approach of the Duke of Brunswick, that every priest who should still refuse to take the oath prescribed by the civil constitution of the clergy, should be banished from France within fifteen days. He had been brought to Lincoln by a gentleman of the neighbourhood, who had retained him for some time in his family to teach French to his children. On the death of Mr. Knight, whom I have mentioned above, he was appointed to the care of the little catholic congregation of Lincoln. When visiting at my mother's house, I had formerly known him; and, on this occasion, renewed my acquaintance with him. After the Anglican had taken his leave, he talked for some time on indifferent topics, but at length renewed the former conversation with an air, as if he had recollected something, though I rather suspect he had prepared himself. "Pray, at what time did the change take place from your doctrine, respecting the Eucharist, to that professed by all Christians three hundred years ago?" I begged of him to put his question more clearly. "If your doctrine on this point be the true one, it was taught by the apostles, and received by the first Christians; then, our interpretation must have been introduced at some subsequent period: I ask you to fix that period." There were better reasons than I at the time supposed for my inability to give a precise answer. "It was introduced gradually during the dark ages."--"In the first place, _gradually_--that is impossible: the question is, whether the body of Christ is really or figuratively present: the people must have known in which sense they believed it to be present, and would have resisted innovation. Do you think it would be easy at this day to make the people of England believe in the real presence?"--"No; because they have already rejected it."--"I admit the difference; but at any time it must have been impossible to change the faith of the people without their perceiving it; and the controversy, which the attempt must have excited, would have come down to our days in works written on both sides: the memory of the Arian controversy is not lost." I was struck by the argument and the parallel. He pressed me. "What do you call the dark ages?"--"The tenth century is called by Cave, a learned English divine, _seculum tenebrosum_."--"Berenger of Angers, in the eleventh century, who first taught the figurative sense, found all the world in the belief of the real presence."--"First? you forget the apostles."--"It is for you to prove that they taught the figurative sense. St. John Chrysostom, who lived in the fourth age, preached on this subject like a catholic doctor of the present day."--"Really? I have his works; I will refer to the passages."--"Will you give me leave to send you a treatise on this subject, entitled _La perpétuité de la foi de l'église touchant l'eucharistie_?" As I was going to convert the Jews by a Bampton lecture, I said I did not wish to engage in reading a great work in old French: I inferred that it was old French from the word _touchant_. Mr. Beaumont assured me that it was written in very good French of the present time, as also in a very agreeable style: he told me, that at any rate I should have time to read the tract of Nicole, of a few pages only, stating the argument; that if I did not approve of it, I need not read the _Perpétuité_ by Arnaud, which was the development of Nicole's text. I assented, and he wished me a good evening. I immediately referred to my edition of Chrysostom, by Sir Henry Savile, in eight volumes folio,--a master-piece of Greek typography, which I had bought for three shillings a volume. I had read at hazard some of the homilies. As these are in the form of a running commentary on the gospels and epistles, it was easy for me to turn to the texts in which the institution of the Lord's Supper is narrated, and to the Epistle to the Corinthians in which it is spoken of. I have no means at present of making quotations; those who are so inclined may refer as I did. I showed these passages afterwards to two protestant friends, who affirmed, "they must be figurative, because they were so strong for the literal meaning." Sacramentarians are obliged to treat in this way the words of Christ himself: this mode of begging the question (for it is nothing else) showed me the advantage of another sort of argument, which I found in Nicole and Arnaud. They take it for granted that if it were certain Christ meant the words, "this is my body," in the literal sense, protestants would give up the cause. In the time of these writers it might be so: I would not be too sure of that in the present day: I think many would reject, perhaps have already rejected, the divinity of Christ, and his authority to teach such a doctrine, rather than admit the doctrine itself. I, however, was not thus daring: I was prepared to admit the conclusion, if the premises were proved. Unbelievers and catholics are consistent: protestants are philosophers by halves. The apostles then, according to Nicole, understood in what sense Christ spoke the words, "this is my body," &c. and taught that sense to the first Christians, and the same sense was delivered to succeeding ages. But, if this were the figurative sense, all the Christian world must, at some time, have gone to sleep in the belief of the figurative sense, and awaked in the belief of the literal. The change, if there was one, was effected without the least disturbance, nobody knows how; and this, not in a question of abstract doctrine, but in one which included the adoration of _latria_, or the divine honour paid to the consecrated elements, in which worship every individual Christian was interested. Arnaud, in the _Perpétuité_, proves, century by century, that the real presence and transubstantiation were believed, not only by the catholic church, but by the Greeks, after their schism as well as before, and by other communions separated from Catholic unity. At this distance of time I cannot do justice, nor could I at any time have done justice, by any summary of mine, to the force and ability with which these two authors conduct the argument. To them I must refer the well-disposed, the impartial, the disinterested, the honest inquirer. The French theologians justly hold the first rank amongst all those of the Christian world. I was now to become acquainted with him who may take his place among the Fathers of the church,--the great Bossuet. The church now re-entered on that claim to infallibility which it had lost with me by the supposed mistake touching the Eucharist. The book of "Les Variations des Églises Protestantes" showed that the protestants, by their own admission, had no claim to this privilege, since they were continually changing and contradicting themselves; asserting, however, the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the enunciation of dogmas and formulas, which subsequent inspirations correct and amend. "La réforme n'a jamais raison la première fois." How sharp, how cutting, how penetrating, how conclusive is this sarcasm! That book or section of the "Variations" which treats of "the church," ought to be published as a separate tract. I recommend a translation of it to the pious and zealous catholic clergy of England; it would be a _good work_: no men know better than they in what sense I use the words. "Quærimus ecclesiam ubi sit," says St. Augustin; and from the words "The gospel shall be preached in all nations, beginning at Jerusalem," he infers, that the church is that body which began to teach at Jerusalem. Of the four marks of the church, set down in the Nicene creed, "one, holy, catholic, apostolic,"--the first mark is exclusive and indisputable. Any church may say of itself that it is holy, and every good Christian will wish that it may be so. The church of England calls itself apostolic, because, as it affirms, its doctrine is apostolical; it also calls itself catholic, or a portion of the catholic church: but then it is apostolical in one sense, and catholic in another; apostolical by doctrine, and catholic by unity: then has the catholic church failed, since its doctrine was lost for so many ages: then may there be union without communion. It is curious to observe with what facility the English church can distinguish between itself and the catholic in a question of persecution or civil exclusion, and how readily its portion of catholicity, when pressed by the argument of unity, is re-asserted and resumed. A protestant Anglican friend said to me, one day, "We are all catholics; you are a Roman catholic, and I am--." He hesitated. "What?" said I; "an English catholic?" No Christian community, separated from the church, can claim to be the church; the date of its separation precludes the claim. "Prior venio," says Tertullian. Neither can it be a portion of the church; community in things sacred being essential to unity. A mark is also given by Christ himself, by which his one church may be known: "Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my church." All antiquity has recognised the pope of Rome as successor of Peter. Having obtained this view of the subject, from reading several works of the Fathers, I gave up the absurd notion of a true church teaching a false doctrine, and only wondered how I could have retained it so long. A church is essentially a teaching society, and, if it teach falsely, it has failed in the very end and purpose of its existence. There is another mode by which it is attempted to save the indefectibility of the church, namely, by supposing that, as there were seven thousand in Israel, known only to God, who had not bowed the knee to Baal, so there always existed somewhere some protestants. This fancy I had never adopted. The church is a city on a hill, not a candle under a bushel. Having recognised the church by these marks, which are found united in it alone, I admired that Providence which supplied to the unlearned Christian or convert sufficient motives for submitting his judgment to the doctrine of the church, instead of laying him under the necessity of judging of the church by the doctrine: which, enabling him to verify the credentials of the ambassador, makes him confidently and joyfully receive the embassy of grace and peace. In this disposition of mind not much road remained for me to travel, and I followed henceforward the guidance of the church; studying for instruction, not for dispute; to remove prejudices, and correct misapprehension. Communion under one kind, as at present practised in the catholic church, is ridiculed by Swift, who tells how my lord Peter locked up his cellars. Swift might have added to his buffoonery, by telling how the same lord Peter, many hundred years before John or Martin were born or thought of, served no mutton to his wine. In the early ages, it was the use to give the blessed Eucharist, under the species of wine only, to sick persons and to children. While inquiring on this subject, an ingenious mistake of the Anglican translation of the Bible was pointed out to me: the Apostle says, "he that eateth this bread _or_ drinketh this cup of the Lord unworthily, is guilty of the body and blood of the Lord:" _or_ being altered into _and_, this text can no longer be quoted to justify communion under one kind: it still remains, however, a strong argument for the real presence, since it would be impossible to be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord, if they were there only in figure. He who stabs the portrait of the prince commits an insolent outrage, but the prince is safe. Ward's "Errata to the Protestant Translation of the Bible" is a book that will set many matters right in the minds of those who are not averse from conviction. The author was obliged to fly his country on the publication of his work; as was Bishop Challoner, on account of "Memoirs of Missionary Priests." Of the seven sacraments, two are retained under that name by the Anglican church: I had already proclaimed myself the advocate of what is, to all intents and purposes, the sacrament of penance. Confirmation is administered by a bishop, as among catholics. The form of giving benediction by the imposition of hands is as ancient as the patriarch Jacob, who thus blessed his grandsons, the sons of Joseph. Does any spiritual grace follow the blessing of the bishop? If so, it is a sacrament. The ordering of priests, in the church of England, is evidently sacramental; for the bishop, laying his hands on the person to be ordained, bids him "receive the Holy Ghost." Matrimony is called by the apostle "a great mystery;" mystery is the Greek word for sacrament: grace is required to sanctify so important a contract. The church of England celebrates it as a religious rite. Thus far the dispute about the number of the sacraments seems to be a "question of words and names." Extreme unction is totally rejected by the church of England, because miraculous effects no longer follow the administration of it. It is not very clear that restoration to bodily health is promised by the apostle, St. James, c. 5. v. 14.; but "the prayer of faith shall save the sick man, and the Lord shall raise him up," may mean this, or may mean spiritual help; doubtless, however, the promise, "if he be in sins they shall be forgiven him," authorises the continuance of this rite. I have also heard it observed, that it fails in that condition annexed to the definition of a sacrament in the Anglican catechism; it is not "ordained by Christ himself." But, if it was attended with miraculous effects, it is satisfactorily proved that the apostle was sufficiently authorised in its institution. If the church of England will believe purgatory to be "a fond thing," far from recommending the book of the Macchabees as good for an example of life, it ought not to allow it to be read in churches at all; for there it is related that, after a victory, part of the spoil was sent to Jerusalem that prayer might be offered for the dead, "seeing it is a good and wholesome thing to pray for the dead." This was a downright popish practice, justified by a popish reason. Thus All Souls College was founded to pray for the souls of those slain at the battle of Agincourt. Of this ancient, this almost universal, this consolatory practice of praying for the dead, I shall say no more, than that it may be inferred from the words of Christ, that sins are forgiven after death; since he says, "all sins and blasphemies shall be forgiven to man," that is, are pardonable on repentance; "but the sin against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven, neither in this world, nor in that which is to come." There are then sins that are forgiven in the world to come: but when? immediately on the entrance of the soul into its future state of existence? This would be equivalent to forgiveness in this world. After a delay then? this delay is itself a purgatory. On this head, the catholic church has defined simply that there is a purgatory, and that souls, therein detained, receive help from the suffrages of the faithful: that this belief may be abused, does not prove it to be unfounded, or vain, or "fond." Men abuse every thing, even the goodness and long-suffering of God. They rely on a death-bed repentance: they rely on purgatory. It is to be feared that many, by the hope of heaven after purgatory, have been betrayed into a state of final reprobation. On a death-bed repentance St. Austin remarks, that there is but one instance of its assured success,--that of the penitent thief; and he adds, very beautifully, "unus erat, ne desperes; unus tantum, ne præsumas." The Reverend Father O'Leary replied to an Irish bishop of the establishment, who said to him, "Mr. O'Leary, I do not like your doctrine of purgatory,"--"My lord, you may go further, and fare worse." Amongst its thirty-nine articles, the Anglican church has one against works of supererogation, for the purpose of casting a censure on certain popish practices. The article bears a plausible show both of argument and humility; but the humility, taken as argument, proves too much, since it proves that our good works are useless to ourselves as well as to others. I will give the reader an instance of a work of supererogation, in which he will at least be at a loss to discover any "impiety." My mother wrote to me at Oxford,--"I went into a shop the other day to order some Gloucester cheese; a poor man was there, buying a cheese for his family; I paid for it for him: for this, I hope, God will bless _you_." My mother was no theologian, and suspected no more harm in giving an alms for me than in praying for me. Every protestant, who thinks much about the matter, dresses up a certain bugbear in his own imagination, calls it popery, and holds it in horror. I had done thus, although my high-church principles had hindered me from surcharging the phantom with the usual quantity of deformity. "The Exposition of the Catholic Faith," by Bossuet, is well adapted to show the religion of our forefathers in its due proportions and real lineaments. I will own I was somewhat shocked at first to hear him talk of "Messieurs de la prétendue réforme:" I had not been used to be treated so unceremoniously: but he could not help it; the reform was either pretended or real. The council of Trent,--those decrees of the council of Trent which relate to matters of faith, and which are very few in number, at least comprised in few words; together with the catechism of the council of Trent, composed under the auspices of our countryman cardinal Pole,--are also excellent works for setting such matters in a right point of view. I know many protestants who, if they would read these books, would be astonished at their own ignorance, which they have as yet neither discovered nor exposed, because they have talked only with each other, and have read books calculated rather to excite their passions than dispel their ignorance. Such a book is Chillingworth's. I had formerly been scandalized by the non-observance of the days of fasting and abstinence appointed by the church of England: I once got myself laughed at for talking about it. Example and roast beef are powerful persuasives, and I continued to do as others did. While M. Beaumont was carrying on with me conversations tending to my conversion, he called one morning at a house where, the breakfast not being removed, he was civilly invited to eat something. He excused himself because it was the season of Lent. The lady of the house said, "We have no superstitious way of keeping Lent."--"You keep it in your book, Madam." When M. Beaumont reported this to me, I observed, "That pun would not do in French." He agreed, adding, "They do not know what is fast; they know what is breakfast." Another superstitious practice is the use of images: to set the people against this practice, and against those who practise it, the word "image" is lugged in at the beginning of the second commandment: in the original, the word is the participle passive of the verb, and ought to have been translated "graven thing," or "any thing graven;" but "image" was good for the iconoclasti. But I cannot pursue any further the railing and raillery continually poured forth in England against the religion which all England professed for eight centuries; which those who converted our Saxon ancestors found to be the same as that professed by the ancient Britons in all points, except the time of the celebration of Easter; a conformity, which proves the faith of the church to have been, through the early ages, perpetual, not in respect to the Eucharist only, but in the whole body of its doctrine. Let this argument be well weighed; it weighed much with me; and I think I shall be allowed to have made out a case, though I say nothing of indulgences, or celibacy, the invocation of the blessed Virgin and other saints, relics, or monastic vows, pilgrimages, ceremonies, or holy water. I told M. Beaumont that, as he was subjected to the alien act, I would not draw on him the responsibility of receiving my abjuration; that I would go to town for the purpose of making it. Subsequent machinations against him proved my apprehensions to have been well-founded. He asked what I meant by my abjuration: "You will abjure nothing; you will continue to believe all that you believe at present: but you can go to London, if you think right, and the bishop will appoint a priest to reconcile you to the church." On the 17th of May, 1798, I was present at high mass in St. Patrick's chapel: it was the feast of the Ascension. My emotion betrayed itself in tears which, in a man of my age, might be regarded as rather a violent symptom; but it called forth no indecorous signs of surprise or curiosity in those near me. I forgot to inquire at the sacristy the address of the bishop, and next morning found myself walking in Hyde Park, alarmed at the step I was about to take, and almost undecided. A friend, who was in my confidence, met me by chance, and, out of regard for my tranquillity, though a protestant, encouraged me to persevere. We turned into Grosvenor Square, and up Duke Street: old Mr. Keating informed us that the bishop lived at No. 4, Castle Street, Holborn. "We please ourselves by calling it the Castle." I parted from my friend, and proceeded to the Castle alone. An elderly, rather pompous, duenna-looking woman, opened the door of the house, for such it was; not the gate of a castle: his lordship was engaged, but I was desired to walk into the dining-room, which, no doubt, served as an anti-room for want of any other. While I waited here, a French priest came in, who, evidently alarmed at his approaching interview with the bishop, from whom probably he had "something to ask or something to fear," inquired of me, "Faut-il faire une génuflexion à Monseigneur?"[1] I answered, that I was unacquainted with the ceremonial expected by Monseigneur; but that he, M. l'Abbé, had better do as he would on being presented to his own bishop. He took me for a countryman, but "my speech betrayed me." He was called for before me; this I thought unjust; but in a few minutes after the bishop came in, and addressed me with, "Qu'est-ce que vous demandez, Monsieur?"[2] Again, thought I, my country is about to be lost to me; but let us hope for a better. I told Dr. Douglass the purport of my visit: he, seeing the affair was one not quickly to be dispatched, requested me to walk up stairs. We seated ourselves on each side of the fire in an old-fashioned wainscotted room with corresponding furniture, the floor half covered by a well-worn Turkey carpet. On the walls, yellow with smoke, hung portraits, which, through the soot that incrusted them, I hardly discerned to be ecclesiastical worthies; Cardinal Allen, perhaps, founder of the college of Douay; a Campion, or Arrowsmith, or other martyrs of the Reformation. A crucifix was set in a conspicuous place: over the chimney a little engraving of Pius VI, then a prisoner. The bishop was a tall thin man, between sixty and seventy, of a healthy look, with a lively and good-natured countenance: he wore a suit of black, not very fresh, with a little, close, white wig. Martinus Scriblerus was proud of being able to form an abstract idea of a Lord Mayor without his gold chain, or red gown, or any other _accidents_. I had no difficulty in detecting the bishop in the plain man before me; for, being in his own house, he showed without reserve his pectoral cross, and I saw on his finger a ring in which was set an amethyst. "This is a very important step, sir; no doubt you have given it due consideration." I gave a succinct account of my studies and motives. "May I ask, have you consulted your family and friends?"--"My parents are not living: I am their only surviving child. For my friends, I know beforehand what they would say."--"Are you aware of all the _civil_ consequences? The penal laws are repealed; but you will lose your _état civil_." I bowed my head. "As you are in orders of the church of England, your conversion will excite more than ordinary surprise, and (I say it only to warn you,) ill-will against you."--"I trust not; people are sufficiently indifferent about such matters."--"Perhaps you will lose some ecclesiastical benefice?"--"I have proceeded no further than deacon's orders, and therefore have no preferment."--"But your expectations?"--"I must live without them." After a little more probing of this sort, and a short pause,--"There is a business which is very distressing to those who are not used to it, as it is very consoling to those who are; I mean confession: we all go to confession; I, who am bishop,--the pope himself. You know, I presume, that you must begin by that?"--"I come to beg of your lordship to appoint me a priest." After a little consideration, "Would you wish your priest to be an old man or a young one?"--"My lord, you know your subjects better than I do: I leave the choice to you: his age is to me a matter of indifference."--"Many people think otherwise: however, if you will be pleased to call here to-morrow at this hour, I will introduce him to you." I took my leave without a genuflexion, but with a strong sentiment of respect and kindness for this worthy, amiable, old man. The next day I found, in Castle Street, the Reverend Mr. Hodgson, one of the priests of the chapel in St. George's Fields. Of him, as I do not know but that he is still living, I shall only say, that I had every reason to be pleased and satisfied with his conduct and his counsels, and that I think of him with gratitude. I passed with him a part of every morning of the following week, except Sunday and Thursday, at his house near the chapel; and in this chapel of St. George, on the 26th of May, the feast of St. Augustin, apostle of England, was admitted into the one fold, under the protection, as I humbly hope, of the one Shepherd. Before Mr. Hodgson took me to the altar, where I was to read, for this purpose, the creed of Pope Pius V, he inquired how baptism was administered in the Church of England. I told him, by aspersion. He said, "We have reason to believe that baptism is given with you sometimes very carelessly, and it is a rule to baptise conditionally every convert under fifty years of age."--"How do _you_ administer it?"--"By affusion; and the rule is, that there be so much water ut gutta guttam sequatur."--"That was very probably not the case in my baptism."--"There are other ceremonies, not of the essence of the sacrament, which I shall omit." He added, "Do not suppose that I question the validity of your baptism, if it were duly performed. Had you been a Quaker--" Even the grave circumstances in which I found myself did not repress a slight movement of offended pride, at its being supposed possible that I could have been a Quaker. "Had you been a Quaker, I should have been sure that you were not baptized, and should not even have received your confession."--"But you do not allow the orders of the Anglican church?"--"True: but even lay persons are not only permitted, but enjoined to administer baptism, as an act of Christian charity, in case of necessity." Another distraction, as the French call it. Not having been used to belong to a tolerated and despised sect, I had felt my bile rise at the word Quaker; and now memory recalled the interesting scene in the "Gerusalemme Liberata," the helmet, the fountain, Tancred baptizing the dying Clorinda. I kneeled down, however, and the priest poured water on my head, repeating at the same time, "Si non es baptizatus, Henrice, ego te baptizo in nomine," &c. I then made my profession of catholic faith, and was thus reconciled to the church. The next morning I received the blessed Eucharist from the hands of the same priest. It was Whitsunday: Bishop Douglass was to give confirmation in the chapel of Virginia Street. It was plain, for a reason above-stated, that I had not been confirmed. After breakfast, I walked with Mr. Hodgson over London Bridge, towards Ratcliffe Highway. It is usual for the person confirmed, to be addressed by the bishop, either by his name of baptism, or any other at his choice: I took the name of John, in honour of John, surnamed Chrysostom, to whom, as having removed the great obstacle _in limine_, I owed the beginning of my conversion. May the good work be aided by his prayers! I have made my apology to the protestants of England, especially to those with whom I was engaged, whose reform was conducted by the civil power, who are the national church. But, that a church is national is inconclusive in argument: a nation may be in possession of truth, but truth is not national; and civil power enters for nothing into a question of religious truth. But justice is civil truth, the genuine attribute, the appropriate ornament, the best defence of civil power. Let the civil power cease to deprive of their civil rights those who adhere to that religion which the same civil power protected, encouraged, and maintained, from the time of Ethelbert of Kent, down to the reign of the boy king, Edward the Sixth. The religion of the people of Scotland is the established religion of Scotland: a great principle is here recognised: truth is out of the question; for more than one religion cannot be true. Let the principle be applied to Ireland: the people of that country still adhere to the ancient faith; let it be established there for them: to make them good subjects it is only necessary to treat them as such. Men quarrel not about religion; there is nothing about which they are more indifferent, when the state does not quarrel with them about it; and every statesman, every reader of history, knows that, for the uses of the state, the catholic religion is at least as good as any other. Extravagant as this project of establishing the catholic religion in Ireland will seem to those who "like to hear reason when they are determined, because then reason can do no harm;"--ridiculous, and even insolent as it will appear to the maintainers of protestant ascendency,--it is not my project, nor will I take on myself the undivided responsibility of it. It is the proposition of a much wiser man. When I lived at Lincoln, after the death of my mother, the celebrated William Paley was sub-dean of the cathedral: I was in the habit of daily and familiar intercourse with him. One day, before one of those dinners which are given to the residentiary in a course as regular as that of the dinners of the cabinet-ministers, the company was standing in a circle round the fire; I stood next to Paley. He, almost pushing me out of the circle by a certain turn of his shoulder, to signify that what he was about to say would not be said out of complaisance to me as a catholic, while, at the same time he looked over his other shoulder to assure himself that I was listening,--Paley, I say, began to assert the justice, the expediency, and the utility of establishing by law in Ireland the catholic worship, defending the measure by the arguments, and almost in the words set down by me; ending, by declaring himself persuaded that the catholic clergy of Ireland would be well contented when they were well paid, and the catholic population would, in that supposed case, be as good subjects as they are every where else under the same circumstances. The greater part of Poland is subject to a schismatic; Silesia to a Lutheran; the Low Countries, formerly Austrian, to a Calvinist: the sovereigns of those several countries have not yet taken away the ecclesiastical revenues from the catholic clergy, nor their civil rights from the catholic people. Having made out a case, as I express myself above, I mention several topics on which, for brevity's sake, I forbear to enlarge. I beg to be understood as having a due sense of the importance of these objects, of each in its kind, and as entertaining in regard to them the opinion held by the catholic church. I say this the rather, because many protestants, after talking with me on religion, have found me, as they said, so reasonable, that they would not believe that I was really and truly a papist. The unreasonableness of the catholic faith exists only in the imagination of the protestants, who, in general, know nothing about it. One of them asked me why the prayers were translated into Latin: I answered, that the pope had ordered them to be subtracted in this manner from the curiosity of the good people of ----, naming the town nearest the country residence of my interrogator. Another, a little perplexed on the subject of unity, asked, "What is the catholic church?" as an answer, I asked, "What is the church of England?" An Anglican clergyman put the question, "What is the mass?" I told him it was what he had engaged to oppose. He was a worthy, quiet man, and did not want to oppose any thing. In short, it is only from political causes that opposition, alienation, or dispute about this matter arise. Foreigners are astonished that a nation, so wise, so just, so tolerant as the English, should disqualify one-third of its people from serving the state, and perpetuate animosities which are laid at rest in every other country in Europe. The Baron ---- was the only man in France who saw through the whole matter at once: "You have your interests of the Reformation, as we have ours of the revolution." It is a matter in which I have no interest but that of truth. I have given not as a polemic, but as a humble narrator, an account of my motives and reasons for adopting as truth that which has been believed as such by the bulk and great majority of the Christian world in all nations and in all ages, from the foundation of Christianity. I have done this in the hope of removing prepossessions, and to persuade the reader that he may accompany me abroad without any apprehension that I shall enter into controversy. Some extraordinary events are related in my narrative, which a regard for truth has alone induced me to set down, at the risk of being considered as enthusiastic or superstitious. Against such an interpretation, formed on a view of part only of this work, I am not afraid to appeal to the judgment of those who will take the pains to read and consider the whole. _Ad Clari Montem. Clermont, en Auvergne. Clermont-Ferrand, Puy de Dôme. 21st March, 1826._ FOOTNOTES: [1] Is it necessary to bend the knee before his Lordship? [2] What is your pleasure, Sir? * * * * * FOUR YEARS IN FRANCE. * * * * * FOUR YEARS IN FRANCE. CHAP. I. The English are assuredly a most enterprising and restless people: they form establishments at the Antipodes, and plant colonies on the banks of the Loire, in an enemy's country, after a war of twenty years: their merchant-vessels cover the seas, and their opulent and unoccupied gentry inundate the continent of Europe: their hardy mariners search out the north-west passage, and the idle and curious among them strive, with no less difficulty, to discover lakes, mountains, and cascades, unvisited by former adventurers, ------qua nulla priorum orbita.------ English reading-rooms are set up at Tours and in other great towns; English seminaries of education are founded in France, Switzerland, and Italy; and English horse-races are exhibited at Naples. Fox-hunters and fox-hounds penetrate to covers where even the foxes never saw them before; where, coming from their holes, they gaze quietly upon them; where there is no sport, because no pursuit; no pursuit, because no flight; no flight, because no fear; no fear, because no experience of former enmity. The French calculated, with some degree of satisfaction, that, during the occupation of their frontier by the army of observation, the English spent as much money at Paris as was contributed by themselves to the support of that army. At Florence, towards the end of the year 1822, I was informed by good authority, that there were twelve thousand foreigners in the city, of whom seven thousand were English. By a migration, very much resembling the flight of birds of passage, they usually leave their country in the spring, and after a few weeks at Paris, set off to pass the summer in Switzerland, arrive in Italy in the autumn, cross the Apennines before the winter; the beginning of which season they spend at Florence: they go to Rome for the Carnival, to Naples for a month or five weeks of Lent, return to Rome for the holy week, and then, much edified and instructed, they find their way home, during the ensuing summer, through France or Germany. I asked Lady A. at Rome, when she went to Naples: "I don't know;--when the others go:" so much is this route recognised as a matter of course. The route is in truth admirably well traced, and eighteen months might thus be passed to great advantage by a well-prepared and impartial traveller. Rarely however are these English sufficiently acquainted with the languages of the countries through which they pass, to be able to sustain a conversation: they carry with them their insular prejudices, their pride of wealth, their unpliant manners, their attachment to their own customs, amusements, and cookery: though treated with indulgence and even civil attentions by the governments of the continent, they are suffered, rather than received by the inhabitants. For their choice of the objects of curiosity they visit, and the opinion to be formed upon them, they are at the mercy of guides and ciceroni: for society, they are guided by instinct, and reduced by necessity, to herd together. An Italian lady at Florence opened her salon for the reception of a mixed company of Florentines and English: the English occupied, first one corner, and then a whole side, of the salon, their numbers increasing, but the chasm between them and the natives still remaining. The lady, fatigued with doing the honours of her house to two separate companies on the same evenings, and disgusted with these appearances of distrust and resiliency, invented some decent pretext for receiving no more. Observing this propensity in the English to associate with each other, foreigners seem persuaded that Yorick alone did not quit England to seek Englishmen. I was asked if I had been at Tours, because there were so many of my countrymen there. "My countrymen," said I, "choose well; Touraine is said to be the garden of France." My interlocutor recurred to the idea with which he had first proposed the question. "Il y a là tant de vos compatriotes."--"Il y en a encore plus en Angleterre:"[3] and Sterne's argument prevailed. Many persons of small incomes; many who wish to retrench their expenses, but are ashamed of doing so at home; some for the purpose of having wine and fruit at a cheaper rate; and some for the sake of a better climate,--pass several years abroad, fixed at the place of their first choice, or travelling but little, and at great intervals of time. The economical residents abroad seldom proceed further from home than to the towns near the southern shore of the channel, and to those on the banks of the Loire. Some parents take their children abroad to enable them to acquire the use of those living languages, which, though very generally taught, are very rarely learned in England. Excluded from the greater part of the continent of Europe during twenty years of revolution and of war, English travellers had been obliged to waste their activity in voyages to the western isles of Scotland, or in picturesque tours to the Giant's Causeway, or the Lake of Killarney: some cooled their ardour amid the snows of Scandinavia, and others roused their classical enthusiasm by the view of Salamis and Thermopylæ: some measured the Pyramids of Egypt, others performed pilgrimages to the Holy Land. The peace of Amiens opened to them, though but for a few short months, the road to Paris, and the gallery of the Louvre, enriched with the spoils of nations. It is not forgotten how, on the rupture of that peace, they were arrested, throughout the whole extent of the French republic and its dependencies, and detained as prisoners of war, in reprisal of the seizure of French ships and citizens throughout the maritime empire of England: succeeding English travellers, twelve years later, remembered it well: the crowds, again attracted to Paris on the restoration of the king, fled in all directions on the landing of Napoleon from Elba. "Pourquoi me fuient-ils?" said he: "je ne me répète pas."[4] Perhaps the outlawry fulminated against him by the congress of Vienna would have been as good a reason for doing again what he had done before, as the sweeping the seas without declaration of war was alleged to be on the former occasion: perhaps he regretted the failure of a second opportunity of retorting on England, in this way, the hatred and insult with which he had ever been treated by its government. At any rate, the distrust of the English travellers was founded on experience, and the reproach conveyed in this manifestation of it was answered by an ingenious, spirited, and in some sort conciliatory pleasantry. After the battle of Waterloo, the travellers, some of whom had retired no further than to the Low Countries, followed in the train of the victorious, and invading armies: all were impatient to return to Paris; in truth their impatience was not without good cause. All the monuments of the fine arts were now to be dispersed: the _fruits of victory_ deposited at Paris were soon to be restored to their former owners. It was evidently the interest of England, that this superb collection should remain within three days journey of London; but the principle "suum cuique" forbad it. Yet the republic of Genoa had the same right to its ancient constitution as to the far-famed emerald dish, which I saw in the Hotel de Ville at Genoa, with a piece broken out of it. The union of the littoral to the dominion of Sardinia is an advantage to both parties: but then what becomes of the principle which dictated the restitution of the emerald dish? Notwithstanding the necessity thus imposed on our travellers of wandering all over Europe in search of objects once assembled near their own doors,--the nations of the continent are not too much inclined to believe in the _bonhommie_ of English politicians; nor indeed can it be certainly known how far their good will was an ingredient in this, so called, act of justice. Since the second restoration of the King of France, peace, and the visits of the English to the countries to which ingress is no longer prohibited, have continued without interruption: residence abroad has assumed an appearance of stability and design. An outcry has been raised in England against these emigrations, and it has been proposed to tax absentees; a measure which, in its application to those who take a journey for a few months, would be at once vexatious and ridiculous, and in its operation on those who retire abroad on account of contracted income, would be severe and unproductive; and which could, in neither case, be effected without a partial income-tax. The number of travellers and residents abroad, though great, has been much exaggerated: wherever exact inquiry has been made, it has turned out to be less than was reported. I could not hear of more than six or eight English families resident by the year in each of the three great towns of Italy, Florence, Rome, and Naples. The French, persuaded that society can no where else be so well enjoyed as in France, feel little inclination to travel. The Italians, satisfied that all that is best worth beholding both in art and nature is to be found on their side of the Alps, seldom take the trouble of passing that barrier. I speak of the same class of persons, in both nations, as that in which the English traveller is to be found,--the rich and idle; for the poorer French and Italians are more adventurous, and more frequently leave their own country to gain their living abroad, than those of the lower condition of life in our sea-girt isle. I have therefore frequently been called upon to explain the phenomenon of the British spirit of excursion. My friends at Avignon could hardly believe that curiosity, the desire of instruction, the purpose of employing usefully a portion of time which would otherwise be employed in the ordinary routine of life, were motives sufficient for incurring the expense, trouble, and risk of long journeys: the expense, they allowed, might be a consideration of no importance to a people so rich as the English; besides, they travelled cheaper in France than in England; yet it would cost still less to stay at home: the defiance of fatigue and danger were very gravely accounted for by the supposition of something peculiar to the English character, a certain restlessness and locomotive propensity, which dislodged them from the centre of repose, and impelled them to wander in wide and extravagant orbits. The astonishment of the Avignonais was excessive, when a lady, who intended to pass some years in the south of France, coming to visit my family, and changing her purpose, returned to Paris within a fortnight. "Les Anglois font tout ce qu'ils veulent: un voyage de trois cents lieues pour une visite de quinze jours."[5] Like the rustic in the fable, they waited to see the end of this current of travellers; and I could hardly obtain credit when I assured them that, though some extraordinary degree of expansion was to be expected after twenty years compression, yet when the present generation should cease, the succeeding one would still supply the stream. May this stream still hold on in an equal and uninterrupted course; may no wars arrest it; no jealousies divert it; no disgusts dry up its source! The division of mankind into nations is the great calamity of the human race. War, with all its horrors, and all its crimes, (for crimes there must be; since no war can be just on both sides, and may on both sides be unjust,) war, with all its inflictions, is the first great evil arising from this separation of those who ought, as creatures and sons of the same Creator and Father, to be "a band of brothers." From war results that other great evil, seen in the administration of the internal concerns of each country; the government being of necessity entrusted, for the defence of the people, with the power of the sword, the people are governed by the sword of power. Hostile prejudices, the strife of interests ill understood, false judgments, and the jargon of languages mutually unintelligible, fears, suspicions, and precautions perpetuate the evil of disunion when the work of havoc and desolation is suspended. Short and feverish are the periods of suspension: they are put out to inestimable profit when the means are employed of making the several peoples of the earth better known to each other, of softening asperities, removing misunderstandings, and conciliating mutual good-will. Such ought to be, over and above the peculiar advantage and pleasure of each individual traveller, the object of foreign travel. To the furtherance of this object it is hoped that this account of a long residence in France and Italy may in some slight degree contribute: it is written without prepossession, in good-will towards the people I have visited, in the conviction that human nature, though not virtuous, is in all countries capable of, and inclined to virtue. For variety of usages, which makes men appear more alien from each other than they really are,--either it regards things indifferent, or there exists a good reason for it, which observation enables us to discover. To me in truth this difference in European customs appears so slight, that, were it not for the language, I could easily forget that I was abroad. "Omne solum forti patria:" but it requires still more fortitude to have no _patria_ at all, as is the case of an English catholic: for political rights are included in the idea of _patria_. Having lived between three and four months in Paris, and between three and four years in the south of France with my family, I have made observations, which I hope may be useful to those who have the same plan of foreign residence or travel, and not less interesting, both to them, and to those who are content with their English home, than the remarks of a more hasty tourist. The care of a household and of the education of children brings the head of a family to the knowledge of many circumstances and combinations which escape the notice of the single traveller; and intercourse with the society of a place during a sojourn gives some insight into the character, some perception of the manners and opinions of a people. I have also lived three years and a half in Italy, of which country I seem to myself to have much to say; but for reasons that may be conjectured by the reader of this book, I defer my Italian narrative till the present work shall have undergone the judgment of the public. Meantime, this is a separate composition, and independent of any thing I may hereafter write on Italy. I have lived so long in the world, that, although, from motives of charity, I wish to have the good report of all, few remain for whose commendation I am anxious, even as an author. I think it right however, to request the reader's indulgence for a style of writing by no means current or easy,--a fault owing to the habitual, daily use of two, or even three languages: often does the foreign phrase present itself, and then the English one is to be sought for. I have besides, for these last eight years, had but a very sparing intercourse with English literature. For the sake of obviating misconstruction of my occasional remarks on political subjects, I think it right, in this introductory chapter, to make a few general observations on the French revolution. I detest, or obtest, against all revolutions, for two reasons: change of forms and names, and, generally speaking, of persons even, does not always produce a change of principles or of conduct; tyrannical democracies and benevolent despotisms are no new things in the history of the world: secondly, revolutions cannot change the condition of the great bulk of mankind, of persons without property, of the poor: poor they must be; for property is necessary to the existence of society; work they must, because they are poor. A man of this class at Paris, whom I wanted to engage to talk on the late revolution, cut short the matter by saying, "pour nous autres, on ne demande à nous qu'à travailler."[6] That some of them may benefit by a political change, proves nothing against the uselessness of such a change to them, considered as, what they are in effect, the mass of mankind, and in reference to the continued duration of the social state. On the 23d of June, 1789, Louis XVI offered to the states-general a constitution very much resembling the charter since given by Louis XVIII. What has the French nation gained by the refusal of the Etats Généraux, to accede to the project of this _séance royale_? Their church is impoverished; they are endeavouring to form an aristocracy, of which destruction has hardly left them the elements; and the number of electors,--of persons represented,--is now much smaller than it would have been in the Etats Généraux. Since that day, little permanent advantage has been obtained, except the abolition of feudal rights; but of these, exemption from taxation had been abandoned; all that was unjust or grievous besides, would soon have followed. A deficit of fifty millions of francs caused the revolution; and in its consequence it has trebled the taxes: it rejected titles and ribands as unworthy of the dignity of man, and it has produced a second set of nobles, and a new order of knighthood. True liberal principles cannot be disgraced; like religion, they may be the pretext, but are not the cause of excesses and of crimes; but the conduct of the revolution has retarded their spread and influence, by making every wise and prudent man afraid to trust to the professors of them. After the perpetration of horrors, on which the human mind cannot bear to look fixedly, a military despotism is quietly submitted to, as if nothing but, "res novæ," new wealth, new power, had been sought for. ------"Ubi nunc facundus Ulysses?" The leaders of the revolution and of the republic did not recognise the true limit of civil authority: it has nothing to do but to defend the state against foreign enemies, and the citizens against each other: whatever government attempts to do more, only supplies means of vexation to subordinate agents. They tyrannised over the religious and political conscience of the people by the civil constitution of the clergy, who, when their property was taken away, ought to have been let alone; by persecutions which belied the tolerance of philosophy; by oaths of hatred of royalty, which kept up the memory of the cowardly murder of the king,--that aping of the English under circumstances totally different. War, after the promulgation of perpetual peace, seemed interminable; and the offer to assist all nations in the recovery of liberty, was seen to be a scheme for domineering in all nations by means of civil dissension. These things prepared the way for Napoleon Bonaparte, whose elevation was, at first, by no means unpopular in Europe. He must be admired by the present age, and by posterity, as a great man: he offered himself as pacificator, and in a few years subjected a hundred millions of Europeans: such a force as this,--the arts, the knowledge, and by consequence, the power of those whom he commanded taken into the account,--no man ever yet had wielded. "He gave not God the glory:" in this he was not alone; such was, such is, the spirit of the age: his fall was caused by the coming on of the snow and frost in Russia a week or fortnight sooner than usual. History records nothing equal to his elevation and his fall. That fall must be dated at the retreat from Moscow; the rest was but the struggle of the dying lion. The French revolution seems like a bloody tragedy, after the representation of which, the actors put on their every-day clothes, and resume their ordinary occupations: it has disappointed the hopes of the philanthropist, and delayed the effect of the moral revolution, prepared long before, and working in the minds of enlightened men. This sort of revolution is the only one that can be permanent or beneficial to mankind. Christianity itself is, in its influence on civil society, a revolution of this sort, and, in respect to this life only, has done incalculable good. The great results of the French revolution are to be looked for beyond the Atlantic. Owing to the distracted state of Europe, a continent, more abounding than the old world in the means of prosperity and power, is become independent: the slaves of Hayti have broken their chains, and may carry civilization and freedom to the country of their origin. Yet another century, and Europe itself may sink into comparative insignificance. But let the wise and virtuous unite in opinion; and Europe, though no longer the proprietor, may still be the teacher of the new world, and in the old may aid suffering humanity. FOOTNOTES: [3] "There are so many of your countrymen there."--"There are still more of them in England." [4] "Why do they run away from me? I do not do the same thing twice over." [5] "The English do whatever they have a mind to: a journey of three hundred leagues for a visit of a fortnight!" [6] As for us, nothing is required of us but that we should work. CHAP. II. On the 23d of April, which the English now know to be the feast of St. George, though, before the accession of King George IV. who observes that day as his birth-day, few of them knew the name of their patron or the day of his feast; "such honour have the saints" in England;--on that day, in the year 1818, I arrived with my two sons at Southampton, on the shore of that sea, which on the morrow was to separate me from my native country. The son of the captain (for by courtesy he is called captain,) of the Chesterfield packet came to us at the Dolphin Inn, and informed us that the tide would serve at two o'clock the next afternoon. We had hastened through rain and darkness, during the last stage, with a grumbling postilion; for, though we knew the day, we knew not the hour of embarkation. The time we had to spare we might have passed more agreeably at Winchester. Southampton, a very pretty town, is so regularly built, that we had time more than enough to see it, and not enough to go to enjoy the beautiful view from the heights which command the bay, the channel between Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, and the isle itself. All this, however, we saw from the deck of our vessel, more advantageously than in what is called a bird's-eye view, which is only useful when necessary for peeping into the inside of amphitheatres, and the hollows of ravines and craters. Our travelling trunks were sent to the custom-house. A year before, owing to a discussion concerning cotton yarn, which Mr. Brougham may perhaps remember, an old lady, of seventy years of age, had been despoiled of a pound of cotton thread which she was taking with her to amuse herself with knitting: the stockings or garters thus fabricated she would have brought back to England, without the least injury to its manufacturing interests. But, on such important occasions, how can discretionary powers be entrusted to custom-house officers? We, being not knitters of stockings, on this occasion, had the good fortune to excite very little of their curiosity. They did not even wish us a good voyage. A boat conveyed us to the packet: we set sail, if setting sail it might be called, when there was hardly wind to swell the canvass. The air was sultry, the sky was cloudy; and when we had cleared the Isle of Wight, and night was coming on, there was every appearance of an approaching storm: Captain Wood even allowed that there might be "a puff." I admired the self-possession he maintained, notwithstanding the troublesome questions put to him, and expressions of fear and anxiety from the passengers: answering every one with the greatest civility, he yet never turned aside from the conduct of the vessel. "It is silly in us, captain, to disturb you thus: we might trust to you."--"Sir, my son and I are on board: the vessel cost me three thousand pounds." I drew the inference desired, and left him. With every inclination, after the event, to begin my book with a description of a storm at sea, as Virgil begins his Æneid, I forego this attempt at amusing my reader, for two reasons: without the machinery of Juno, Æolus, and Neptune, the storm even of Virgil would hardly be raised in dignity above a common occurrence; and next, because _my storm_ was really a very moderate one, hardly sufficient to excite that degree of terror in me, and of pity in others, which is necessary to sublimity. In sober guise then, I have to relate that it rained, lightened, and thundered; but thunder at sea, I remarked, is not so loud as thunder heard on land, re-echoed by houses and buildings: and lightning in that vast space does not seem so directly aimed at one, as when flashed into one's face through the narrow boundary of a window. The rolling of the sea was not very violent; but the wind drove us out of our course, and we found ourselves, in the morning, to the eastward of Fécamp. We could with the greatest ease have entered the port of Dieppe: I proposed to the captain to do so; but his affairs and his port papers, which this little stress of weather was not a sufficient excuse for contravening, recalled him to Havre. The other passengers also were desirous of landing at Dieppe; but rules and regulations,--a phrase which I translated into English for the benefit of a certain provincial book club, which had thus entitled its by-laws, rules, and _rulations_,--at every step vexatiously and uselessly embarrass the intercourse of mankind. In the present case we had to employ sixteen hours in working our way back again towards Havre. The voyage was, however, pleasant. We were, all the while, almost within a stone's throw of the French coast: we talked with several fishermen: we seemed to be all but landed. The clouds, which had so thickly covered the sky, and poured down so much rain the preceding night, had passed away to the eastward. In the afternoon, a brilliant rainbow was stretched across the channel, and seemed to unite, by an aërial arch, the countries of France and England. Our impatience was put to the proof by a calm, which arrested our progress for two hours: the elements seemed to have conspired to treat us with a specimen of every sort of weather that can be experienced at sea. At last a breeze sprung up; slowly we crept along towards the mouth of the Seine; and a quarter of an hour before midnight entered the port of Havre, after a voyage of thirty-two hours, the latter half of which was useless to my purpose of coming to France, and would have been dangerous had the storm come on again, as we were close on the rocks, and had very little sea-room. The passage by Dover takes the traveller from London to Paris about a hundred miles out of his way. Brighton is the point of the English coast nearest to Paris; but, though the opposite harbour of Dieppe is good, the embarkation and disembarkation at Brighton is exposed to all the violence of the winds and waves. The passage from Southampton may be performed in ten hours, and Havre is very little further than Dieppe from the capital of France. Before we entered the harbour, our steward descended to extinguish a large lamp that burnt in the cabin: he gave us (that is, to me and my sons) our choice of going on deck, or staying below in the dark: we loitered, and were punished afterwards for our delay by breaking our shins against the cabin stairs. The vessel was not allowed to enter the port with a light on board; a lantern is hung out on the prow. The use of the lantern is evident: it is not quite so clear why our lights were to be put out: against an accidental fire this was no sufficient precaution; had we wished to set our vessel in a state of conflagration, and run her amongst the French shipping, nothing was requisite but a tinder-box, or a gallipot of phosphorus. Regulations seem to be made sometimes, in order that those who are in employment may have something to do: work is invented for places, instead of places being created on account of work. We waited some little time for the officer of the port, who was to receive our passports. I stood on the deck, and looked around on the light-house, the shipping, and the lights from the windows; heard the mixture of French and English bandied in talk between us on board and those on shore, and was delighted with these assurances that we were restored to human life and society, and no longer tossed on the sea, where, as Homer says, there are no vintages. I quote this expression, not because I am insensible to the beauty of a poetical amplification, but for three reasons: first, to show my learning,--a motive which I by no means approve, but leave it to be appreciated by other authors: secondly, because this epithet conveys precisely the reason of my dislike of sea voyages: Edie Ochiltre says, "the worst of a prison is, that one can't get out of it;" and I say, the worst of the sea is, that it is not dry land; an objection in both cases essential and fatal: thirdly, I wish to make a remark, which has, I believe, escaped all former commentators,--that Homer had probably no more notion of lands in which there were no grapes, than the African prince of walking on the surface of a river. The tide had raised our deck to the level of the quay: the clock struck twelve; it was now the anniversary of the birth of my younger son, and we set our feet on the soil of France. The other passengers had announced their intention of going, in a mass, to the English inn, where a part of my family, three months later, found, what was to be expected, high charges; and, what was not to be expected, plenty of bugs. Fearing a contest for beds amongst such a number, (for there were ten or twelve of us,) and the delay of getting them ready for so many, I went to the Hôtel de la Ville du Havre, recommended by Captain Wood, who conducted us thither, roused the sleeping family, introduced, and left us! M. and Madame Marre appeared in night-cap and dressing-gown, very much resembling (I say it with all due respect for very worthy persons,) the caricatures of French physiognomy exhibited in our print-shops. Madame Marre told the chamber-maid to show me the beds: I went up stairs, and on my return was asked if I was contented with what the "bonne" had shown me. I have heard of an old lady who was very much offended by being called good woman; and the expression "la bonne" appeared to me a contemptuous one: such a novice was I, that I looked at the girl to see whether she took it as an affront or a compliment; she was quite unmoved. I told the mistress that the three beds were very good, and desired to see the sheets: they were more than damp; they might be said to be wet: to have them aired at one in the morning was out of the question; our resource was to do without them for that night. I know an English family who, arriving early in the evening at an inn in France, and, as a matter of course, ordering the sheets to be aired, were charged, the next morning, five francs for fire-wood. Our sheets were aired, on the next day, without any instructions on our part to that effect, according to the custom of the country, _au soleil_. This sun enabled us to sit at an open window during our breakfast: for this meal we had French rolls, excellent Norman butter, and café au lait. The coffee usually served in England is considered by the French as no better than coffee and water; what was now furnished to us was so strong, that, though mixed with an equal quantity of boiling milk, it had more of the taste of coffee than I have found in what was called very good coffee at those splendid and fatiguing assemblies, which the ladies call routs, at Bath and other towns,--where, in order that four persons may amuse themselves at whist in a creditable way, forty others are crowded together for the same laudable purpose. It was Sunday: we went to mass: the church was crowded to excess: so many churches have been confiscated to the use of the nation, that, in the great towns, not enough of them remain for the use of the people. We went to the port to inquire after our trunks: it was low water; and our packet-boat, which rode so high in the night, was now hardly afloat: we went down into it by a ladder, and found that our goods had been sent to the custom-house: thither we bent our steps: the officer attended, a smart young man in a military dress: he ascertained the nature of the contents of my boxes, and the object of my journey, and gave no unnecessary trouble: he talked much of English commerce, and did not affect to conceal his satisfaction that it was "écrasé par les impôts."[7] I ought therefore to believe in the sincerity of his wishes, that my journey in France might be as agreeable and advantageous as I myself desired. I now had to disengage myself from three out of five stout porters, who stood in readiness to bear away my two hair trunks and writing-desk: I told them, two men could carry the whole: they assured me it was impossible. I then endeavoured to get rid of one at least of the five, by placing the writing-desk on one of the trunks, making a civil leave-taking sign, at the same time, to the man who seemed to consider the desk as his share in this weighty matter: the man answered me by a low reverence, and by taking the desk under his arm; the other four seized each the ring of a trunk, and all set off at full speed to the inn. Nothing remained but to follow, and pay them according to their number. Our passport, granted by the Marquis d'Osmond, the French ambassador at the English court, allowing us to circulate freely within the kingdom of France, had been forwarded to Paris, and we were to receive another for the limited purpose of following our passport. I had not found the Bureau open: this was no inconvenience, as I intended to rest this day at Havre. M. Marre gave us a very good dinner, at three francs a head, and claret at the same price a bottle: he sat down with us, and did the honours, and animated the conversation, "like any other gentleman." Among the company was a priest, who showed at once his gratitude and his discontent, by telling me that the English government, which had taken nothing from him, allowed him, during his emigration, a larger pension than the French government now paid him, though it was in possession of the property of which he had been deprived: he forgot that the spoliators and those who compensated were different parties; that in 1818, nothing was left of the _biens nationaux_ of 1789. We viewed the town and the port, and saw nothing particularly remarkable, but the great number of parrots hung at doors and windows, and crying out--"damn" and "damn your eyes." Their voyage from the tropics had been performed under English auspices. Havre is a great depôt of colonial produce; and this bird may probably be in great demand in a nation, so loquacious as we, in our vulgar prejudices, suppose the French to be. The commerce of the place assumed at this time a great degree of activity in objects of more importance than parrots, however accomplished. But the day was a day of rest. The next morning I went to the Bureau de Police for my passport: the Commissaire, for reasons or from feelings best known to himself, desired me to call again in two hours. I have seen many instances of the hatred of the French towards the English, which the imperial government had excited to the utmost degree of intensity, and which did not begin to subside till the removal of the army of observation. M. le Commissaire, I suspect, indulged in a little ebullition of this unamiable sentiment: in vain I represented that my passport had been in his office the whole of the preceding day, during which I had called there three times: this seemed to increase his triumph; and he coolly, though very civilly, repeated his request that I would call again in two hours. He procured for us a very pleasant walk on the hills, which command a view of the town, the mouth of the Seine, and the channel. The trees, in this land of cyder, were in full blossom; the rye was in ear; all seemed to be a month earlier than in the northern region we had left a week before, when we quitted our home. We entered the church; the parish is called St. Vic: I was surprised to see the exact resemblance of this church to those edifices, the remains of former times, which, in our villages, are opened once a week for divine worship: the altar and images excepted, it was the same sort of interior: there was indeed the holy water pot, but of that the trace at least is to be found in almost all our old churches: but the images; ay, there was St. Denis, with his head, not under his arm, but held between his hands. On this I shall only remark, that he who, on account of the legend of St. Denis, believes the catholic religion to be false, may deceive himself in a matter of the greatest moment; whereas he who believes the legend to be true, may be deceived, but in a matter of no moment at all. A farmer's lad, of about fourteen, came up to us in the church-yard, and entered into a conversation, which he conducted without bashfulness, and with the greatest propriety. He told us, that mass was said every morning at break of day, and that the peasantry attended it before going to their labour. He talked of the principal tombs before us, and of the families in two or three large houses within our view: he asked questions respecting England, where, he supposed, there were no poor, because he had never seen any: undeceived on this point, he inquired after the state of these poor, with marks of fellow-feeling; what wages they gained: and when I, in my turn, was informed of the wages and price of bread in his country, and showed him, that though the Englishman gained more sous, the Frenchman gained more bread, he clearly apprehended the nature of the case, pitying at the same time those who had less bread to eat than he had himself. He took leave of us, and certainly had not the least expectation of a present to make him drink: that we were strangers,--that we talked his language with difficulty,--all that would have repelled an English peasant,--excited his curiosity, and even his good-will. We returned to the town, found a commis who expedited our passport in five minutes, and went to take our places in the Paris diligence. A woman gave me a receipt for my _arrhes_. I told her it would save trouble to include my luggage in the same receipt. "When you shall have sent it, sir," was the answer. A distinguishing character of the French is exactness; in criticism, in style of writing, in calculation, in affairs, they are exact. I give my own opinion, not perhaps that of others. It was the first of the Rogation days, which an Anglican may see, in his book of common-prayer, noted as days of abstinence. M. Marre, profiting by the neighbourhood of the sea, gave us a very fine turbot, part of a good dinner, at which appeared some dishes of meat. I paid my bill, (about fifty francs for three persons during two days,) and took my departure, but was arrested, in my way to the diligence, in a curious manner. I had given a franc to a boy for taking my two trunks in a wheel-barrow a short distance to the coach-office; _Boots_, at an inn in England, would have been contented with a sixpence; but the _porte-faix_ of the _douane_ had admonished me of the high expectations from English wealth and generosity. The father of this boy stopped me in the street; charged me with having robbed his son by paying only one franc instead of three, to which he had a right; threatening to take me before the commissary of police, "who," said he, "will put you in prison." He acted his part very well; he could not have been more angry, had I in reality committed an act of injustice towards so dear a part of his family as this son, dressed, like himself, in a stout jacket of English fustian, and the heir apparent of all his impudence, who took his share in the scene by barring the passage to my elder son, not so stout, though rather taller than himself. I dreaded some act of vivacity on the part of my son, and called out to him at all events to be quiet. The boy of the inn, who carried my writing-desk and great coats, had no need of such a caution. My younger son, now in the first day of his thirteenth year, though alarmed by the hubbub, had the sense to see that the only way to get out of the affray was to pay the man, and begged me to do so. The clock struck five, the hour of the departure of the diligence,--a circumstance which made compliance with this sage counsel no longer a matter of choice, and on which the man had calculated with more reason than on the assistance of the police. After all, the lad was not much better paid than the _porte-faix_ of the _douane_, who had attacked me only with the smell of garlic and tobacco, issuing from their mouths together with bad French. So much for Havre, _ci-devant, de Grâce_. We found the diligence to be a convenient and even handsome public carriage, made to hold six persons within, and three in the cabriolet or covered seat attached to it in front: at first, we had all this space to ourselves. After about an hour's ride, we got out of the coach to walk up a steep hill, and took our last leave of the semblance of English landscape. France and Italy offer no views of luxuriant pastures, with herds and flocks grazing in them, of trees irregularly planted, of enclosures unequally distributed, of fine swelling clouds hanging in the horizon,--themselves a beautiful object, and adding variety of light and shade to the picture. These we were to exchange for vines, like bushes, planted in rows, or trained in festoons from one pollard elm to another; for the pale leaf of the olive, for skies almost always cloudless, for fields abundant in produce, but without any thing living or moving in them. But we were as yet unable to make the comparison. As night came on, we took up other passengers who were going to a short distance: they were Normans; at least such I judged them to be from the great breadth of their bases, which took up a considerable space on the seats of the coach: in manners as well as in form they were different from Frenchmen; they were not indeed reserved, they had no _mauvaise honte_, but they were rude and selfish. The French proverb however says, and it is certainly right, "il y a des honnêtes gens partout, même en Normandie;"[8] a proverb, cited by way of reprisal for a saying reported by a Norman; in contempt of the people of Champagne; "quatre-vingt dix-neuf moutons et un Champenois font cent bonnes bêtes."[9] It is curious to find jokes, like our own on Yorkshire honesty and Gloucestershire ingenuity, repeated in a foreign land. To return to the country through which I am passing; the Normans are said to be very litigious; in proportion to the frequency of the discussion of questions of _meum_ and _tuum_, are the illegal attempts at appropriating what belongs to another; an offence which the law calls theft, and punishes capitally. It seems that, before the Revolution, this capital punishment was administered at the gallows; a machine of which our Norman conqueror brought with him perhaps a model into England,--an excellent subsidiary to the curfew, as lately tried in Ireland; for our Saxon legislators are recorded to have hung offenders on trees, but I am ignorant that any proof exists of their having contrived a gallows. The invention of the guillotine was a still further improvement; but, either from dislike to the shedding of blood, or from attachment to long-established modes, the Normans are said to have prepared for the king, on his restoration, a petition, of which here follows a copy:-- _Pétition adressée par les Normands à S. M. Louis XVIII. à son Retour en France._ Sage Prince! quand tu nous rends Tous nos anciens usages, Accepte les hommages Et comble les voeux des Normands! Que la potence Revive en France, Daigne d'avance Nous donner l'assurance Que sous le règne des vertus Les gibets nous seront rendus; Heureux Normands! nous serons donc pendus! Sous un roi débonnaire, Comme on pendait nos pères!! (bis) Oui, les bons Normands vont ravoir L'antique privilège D'aller en grand cortège Danser à la Croix du Trahair;[10] Nouvelle étude Nous semble rude, De l'attitude Nous avons l'habitude, Avec le sang de père en fils Ce penchant nous était transmis: Venez encore orner notre pays Gibets héréditaires Où l'on pendait nos pères!! I am sorry I cannot give the notes of the music to which this song or petition was set, as that doubtless lent to it additional charms in the ears of His Majesty. We arrived at Yvetot: I heard some talk, amongst my companions, concerning the king of Yvetot, but was unable to obtain from them a satisfactory explanation of its import. I have since been told, that there is a family in this neighbourhood, the head of which, by an immemorial traditionary usage, bore the title of King of Yvetot, with the consent and approbation of the king of France, which consent was regularly asked for, on every demise of the crown of Yvetot, and never refused till the time of Louis XIV: he refused it, however, saying, he was determined to be the only king in France: since this time the king of Yvetot has disappeared from among the sovereigns of Europe, or, according to the form of anathema of republican or imperial France, "has ceased to reign." The family still subsists, and its chief is, no doubt, contented to be a private gentleman. I have forgotten his name. We breakfasted at Rouen, at five in the morning: I much regretted the want of time to visit this great city, so well worthy of the curiosity of strangers. Here our companions left us, and we were again "all alone by ourselves." At Magny they served soup and bouilli as the first part of our dinner, or _déjeuné à la fourchette_: I protested against the use of meat on a Rogation day. "C'est égal,"[11] said the landlady, an elderly woman of dry and quiet comportment. "I thought France was a catholic country," said I. "C'est égal," repeated the imperturbable landlady. She gave us, however, with some symptoms of approbation of our conduct, and of compassion for my young fellow-travellers, plenty of coffee and its accompaniments, with boiled eggs at discretion. I have often been ridiculed, by those who never dine without roast beef or its equivalent, for "taking thought what I should eat," on a day of abstinence; they have told me, that if mortification was my purpose, it would be most effectually accomplished by dining on bread and water. They forgot, or chose not to remember, that fasting or abstinence is a _positive_ duty consequent on a precept, and that it suffices to comply with a precept to the extent of the precept. I find fault with no one for eating meat on whatever day of the year, but for so doing in defiance of a precept, the obligation of which he himself recognizes, while he aggravates his inconsistency by thinking scorn of those who comply with it. An old relation of mine, in Devonshire, told me he went to dine with a catholic family, in that county, who made an excuse for being obliged to give him what he would find a bad dinner: "They set me down," said he, "to eleven dishes of fish, and, d--n 'em, they called that fasting." My relation was gourmand enough to have preferred eleven dishes of meat. Besides, none but those who have made the experiment know how insipid fish is to those who do not eat it, as all men of true taste do eat it, for variety only. So sensible are catholics of this insipidity, that one, at whose house I dined with a large party, called out to us on entering his dining room,--"No fish, gentlemen: we have enough of that on other days." There is another road from Rouen to Paris, called the lower road, following, at a little distance, the course of the Seine, and exhibiting a great variety of fine scenery: that taken by our coach passed over a high plain of land of little fertility, but very well cultivated; it was in a straight line, and bordered by rows of apple trees, which, for some time before the season of gathering the fruit for cyder, are guarded in the night by dogs: during the day, their situation by the side of the road secures them from all but petty pilfering. At intervals were seen farm-houses, which seemed adapted for large farms; and the country bore signs of being occupied on the plan of what is called grand cultivation, except near the towns, where small patches of land, of different crops, marked the minute subdivision of property. We passed through the village of St. Clair. A very particular circumstance, which had occurred five months before, caused me to be much affected, while in sight of this town. My elder son, who sat opposite to me, remarked the change of my countenance, and asked the reason: I eluded his question for the present: I was not aware how much what I then revolved in my mind regarded the fate of this son. St. Clair was an English priest, who, in the eighth century, retired into the pays de Vexin, led there an eremitical life, and occupied himself in the religious instruction of the inhabitants. His name and memory are held in great honour, particularly in the dioceses of Beauvais and Paris. We crossed the bridge of Pontoise without entering that ancient town, in which the Etats Généraux were sometime held. The building of a bridge was formerly so great an exploit, and the possession of one an advantage so uncommon, that the word enters into the composition of many names of towns: we find even Deuxponts, and Bracebridge. The waters of all the rivers which fall into the Seine seem to be of the same colour; all bring with them chalk and clay. The soil of the whole basin, or valley of the Seine, is generally uniform. Paris is hidden, from those who approach it by the road of St. Denis, by the interposition of Montmartre, a bare hill of no pleasing form. No increasing populousness or bustle, or passage of exits and entrances, announces the vicinity of a great town: Paris is all within its own walls. We were stopt at the gate; for every gate is a douane, as all provisions pay a tax on entering the city, except bread, corn, and flour, which receive a premium: even one of my trunks was opened. As the parts of a town, remote from its centre, are, of course, inhabited by the poorer classes, it is unreasonable to expect magnificence on the first entering, even of Paris; but it improved as we proceeded. We crossed the Boulevards, and were set down at the Messageries, the grand establishment of all the public carriages, whence we proceeded to the Hôtel de Conti, at a little distance, and near the Palais Royal. We had performed the whole journey in twenty-five hours, at the rate of about six miles an hour, all stoppages included. During the night, and where the road was bad, we went slowly; but from Rouen to Paris we went more than seven miles and a half an hour, the rate of an English mail coach; the relays of horses always being in readiness at the door of each post-house. The expense for three persons, including breakfast and dinner, was about five pounds. A friend, whom I had hastened to see before his departure from Paris, and who, to my very great satisfaction, prolonged his stay there for four weeks after my arrival, came to us in the evening: we passed the next day with him, and on Thursday, after attending mass, on the feast of the Ascension, at the magnificent Gothic church of St. Eustache, settled ourselves in an apartment in the Rue de la Chaussée d'Autin, called otherwise, while Savoy was a department of France, Rue Mont Blanc, a name not yet entirely forgotten. It is, for length and width, one of the best in Paris, but very noisy. Garçons, however, did not mind noise: I too was a garçon, waiting the arrival of the female part of my family. We had two sitting-rooms with cabinets, and three good beds. The house supplied us with hot water for our tea; we had our mid-day repast of fruit; and, when we did not dine at a café, which we did but rarely, were supplied with our dinner by a neighbouring traiteur. Thus we lived for nearly three months: a French master and drawing-master attended my sons; I superintended their other studies; and we employed our time in the attainment of the object immediately within our reach--in becoming acquainted with Paris and its environs. FOOTNOTES: [7] Overwhelmed by duties. [8] There are honest people every where, even in Normandy. [9] Ninety-nine sheep and one native of Champagne make a hundred good beasts. [10] The Tyburn of Paris. [11] It is all the same. CHAP. III. He, who, on his return to Edinburgh from London, should publish his remarks on the latter city, would not take more superfluous pains, for the instruction of his countrymen, than the Englishman who should publish in England an account of Paris: it is there almost as well known as London itself. Still it is a foreign city: and many, who would scorn to take up a London Guide, may, for the hundredth time, amuse themselves with notices of Paris. "Il n'y a qu'une Paris dans le monde,"[12] say the French, and of that world they consider it as the capital: they are in some measure justified in so considering it, by the universality of their language, by the general imitation of their manners, and, above all, by the liberality with which every thing that a stranger can desire to view is offered to his inspection. There is certainly a greater resort of foreigners to Paris, independently of commerce, than to any other city of Europe. I followed the advice of a former tourist, and went, first of all, to the Place Louis XV. It is almost the only object I have seen in my travels, that I have heard much praised beforehand, which has not disappointed me. Perhaps I was thus well contented, because the feeling of admiration was now, for the first time, excited in the beginning of my tour in foreign parts; and I pleased myself in expecting a frequent renewal of it; and I have since admired less, because I have seen more things to admire. But, to the Place Louis XV. Entering it from the north, you have the Seine, with its bridge, and the Palais Bourbon before you; advancing to the middle of the square, you have public buildings with magnificent colonnades behind you; on the left is the garden of the Tuilleries, at the end of the central allée of which is seen the château; on the right, the Champs Elysées; and, at the end of the grand avenue, the triumphal arch, which shared the fate of the triumphs of its founder, being left incomplete: it has since been finished in honour of his Royal Highness the Duc d'Angoulême on account of his Spanish campaign of 1823. A very good taste dictated to Napoleon the site of this arch; without it the fourth side of this magnificent square was trees and country only; but the arch seems to enclose the Champs Elysées, as the Palace encloses the garden of the Tuilleries; the extent of the _Place_ is increased by making the Champs Elysées appear as a part of it, and the whole is perfected. The daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette avoids this Place with a pious horror, in which every honest heart is disposed to sympathise. The Museum of the Louvre consists of the lower apartments, in which the statues are placed, and of the gallery of paintings; but as it has become usual to call the gallery by the name of the Gallery only, the lower rooms have retained sole possession of the name of Museum. At the door may be bought catalogues of the statues and paintings, which enter, in some cases, into a short detail of their history and merits. The statues are well placed: one may go round them, and see them on every side. Common sense directs, that a statue should be placed thus; yet at Rome, statues, the admiration of the world, are placed in dark cabinets, in niches, close to the wall; as if statues, like paintings, were to be seen only on one side: they are thus robbed of half their glory, nay of all their glory; since, to judge of a statue, it must be contemplated as a whole. "They order these things better in France." It is easy to say, and it has often been said, that the gallery is too long,--too long, that is, for its breadth: but who would wish it to be shorter? and as, on each side, there is sufficient distance to allow a good view of the pictures opposite, it cannot be said to be too narrow for its use. By two arches, thrown across the ceiling, it seems to be divided into three compartments; and thus the length is, in some sort, broken. The paintings of the Italian school have the place of honour, in the compartment at the end furthest from the door; the French school is, however, in a most flourishing state, and boasts great names: it will soon rival, if it does not already rival, the old Italian school; to surpass it, is, I suppose, impossible. This gallery, originally intended as a passage from the Louvre to the Tuilleries, from the town-house to the country-house of the kings of France,--is now, with the rooms on the ground-floor, and some large chambers that have been added, the repository of the finest collection of monuments of the arts, that is to be found out of Italy. Indeed no single Italian collection equals it, saving always the reverence due to certain renowned and incomparable chefs-d'oeuvre. The Museum of Natural History, in the Jardin des Plantes, is said to be the first in the world. That class of society which has but one day in the week of relief from labour is admitted here as well as at the Louvre. Sunday is not the day on which the museums are closed; as the French government has not discovered the wisdom of driving the people into the cabaret by depriving them of all other amusement on that day. I have attended on that day at both museums, and have been equally surprised and pleased in witnessing the behaviour of those who on that day only have leisure to attend in great numbers. They had not the pretensions of savans and connoisseurs; though probably there might be found amongst them their fair proportion of connoisseurs and savans. There was no crowding or jostling,--not so much as I have sometimes observed in assemblies of people more fashionably dressed: there was no noise or clamour; they conducted themselves with the greatest decorum: in the botanical garden, they kept themselves on the walks and allées without ever stepping among the plants; they did not even teaze the poor animals imprisoned in the ménagerie. No apprehension seemed to be entertained by any one that they would injure any object of art or science. This love of mischief is only excited in the people by the jealousy or disdain of their superiors, refusing to share with them pleasures that may, at so cheap a rate, be made common to all. Dr. Willis used to have some of the persons entrusted to his charge as his daily guests at dinner: he was asked how he succeeded in making his patients behave so well at table,--"By treating them as if they were in their senses." The palace of the Luxembourg contains many very fine paintings, the works chiefly of living authors: its beautiful garden is a source of health and enjoyment to the inhabitants of this distant quarter of the city; and this garden, as well as that of the Tuilleries, is open every day to the public. Even the passage from the Place du Carousel to the garden, through the château, or from the front door to the back door of the king's palace, is a public thoroughfare; a practice not very respectful to the king, say some: I say it is a mark of his kindness; and I hope the people, to reward him for it, and show their gratitude, will cry "Vive le Roi" whenever his Majesty appears on the balcony. The library of the king of France is second only to that of the Vatican, and superior to the imperial library at Vienna, and to the Bodleian at Oxford: it is not generally known, even to the English, that this last-named ranks as the fourth library in Europe. The king of France gives the use of his library to the public during four hours every day of the week not a festival, except Thursdays. Persons are in attendance, who, with an air of civility, as if pleased with the service required of them, find and present every book that may be asked for; and although the number of readers is great, the most perfect decorum and silence prevail. There are five or six other great public libraries at Paris, at all of which the same accommodation is afforded. The apartment in which the king's library is kept is handsome, but not sufficiently so, and is in the midst of other buildings: if a fire should happen, a risk is incurred of an irreparable loss. When the building, now in construction, opposite to the Museum of the Louvre, shall be completed, and the Place du Carousel shall form one vast quadrangle, it is to be hoped that this building will contain a gallery, like that of the paintings, in which may be deposited this superb and useful collection of books. With two palaces united by two such galleries, the king of France will be more magnificently lodged than any monarch of ancient or modern time: he need not envy the golden palace of the Cæsars: he may even be contented under the inconvenience consequent on his condescension to the wants of his people,--of having no place where he can take the air, but that very balcony, on which I augur to him the continuance of their felicitations. The Pont Neuf is a fine point of view from which to see the eastern and southern fronts of this edifice, with the garden and Champs Elysées and country beyond. Of the churches of Paris, the cathedral of Notre Dame may rank with the cathedral churches of the second order in England. Ste. Geneviève, sometime the Pantheon, although the inscription, "aux grands hommes la patrie reconnoissante,"[13] was still legible in 1818, is now restored to the use for which it was built. The portico is so extremely beautiful, that the architect was blamed by a pun, not transferable into English, for having turned all his architecture out of doors,--"mis à la porte toute son architecture." A greater and more unequivocal fault than this was committed; it was found necessary to support the dome by a double thickness of wall within. This church is not equal in grandeur to St. Paul's, which the little boy called "the church of England;" but the inside is more beautiful, and would appear larger, (as the pillars do not occupy so much space,) were it not too short in the part beyond the dome; shorter than the due proportion of the cross demands. A traveller, soon after the restoration, having visited the tombs below the pavement of this church, and seen the torch, typical of philosophy, issuing from that of Voltaire,--observed a monument which seemed to him a new one; he inquired whose it was, and was told by the attendant, "that of a member of the ancient Senate."--"But," said the traveller, "I thought this edifice was the place of interment for great men."--"C'est vrai; mais, en attendant, on y enterre des sénateurs."[14] It is not certain whether this was said in simplicity or in _persiflage_. I recommend to the attention of those who visit the church of St. Sulpice an image or statue of the Blessed Virgin, with the infant Saviour in her arms, seated on a globe, and surrounded by angels. The light, from an unseen opening above, falls on the figures in such a manner, as to give to the whole scene an appearance of animation beyond what the sculptor, however great his merit, could have produced. There are other objects in this church worthy of notice. The double portico, or rather two porticos, one above the other, are much to be admired. I cannot be persuaded, however, even by the numerous examples of this practice, that it is not absurd for pillars to support pillars: it seems as if children were playing at architecture, and trying how high they could make their building reach. Yet there is nothing childish in these porticos; they are grand and imposing. The gilded dome of the Church of the Invalids, from whatever point it can be seen, is the ornament of Paris, and it is an ornament because it is gilded. A dome is, on the outside, an ugly and heavy object to the view; and therefore gilding, or what is better, architectural ornament, like that left incomplete at Florence, is well employed on a dome. I know I have Cicero against me, who speaks in high praise of the dome of the Capitol. Cicero and the Capitol are great names; but, much as I venerate that great orator and philosopher, I hope there is no harm in saying, that I have seen more domes than he had an opportunity of seeing. I reserve what I have to say on the interior of domes till I shall arrive at St. Peter's and the Pantheon. The Church of the Invalids is a very handsome one: I attended military mass there: none but those who have proved it can judge of the fine effect produced, on such an occasion, by the military music and ceremonial. The Halle aux Bleds is an object very likely to be overlooked by an elegant traveller. I have heard of a young man of fashion, who, being requested to call at Child's bank, declared he never had been so far in the city in his life. In this Halle is deposited the corn and flour brought for the supply of Paris: it is conveniently situated for the distribution of this supply, being in the most populous quarter of the city; but the streets leading to it are narrow; and it has, unfortunately both for its commercial uses and for the view of it, no open space around it. It is in form and dimensions exactly like the Pantheon at Rome, without the portico: no timber is employed in its construction; it is built entirely of stone and iron; even the doors are of iron. I know not if I saw it on a gloomy day, or if the sky of Italy be clearer than that of France, or if the corn and flour sacks hindered the reflection of the sun; but, though the opening at the top be equally large, it did not seem to admit so much day-light as that of the Pantheon. Napoleon did much, and projected still more, for the embellishment of Paris. The pillar in the Place Vendôme is superior to those of Trajan and Antonine in every thing, but in the veneration due to antiquity and the name of Rome. His son bore the title of King of that ancient capital of the world; and for him,--for the king of Rome,--was projected a palace on the right bank of the Seine opposite the Hôtel des Invalides, that from his infancy the view of these _emeriti_ of French valour might inspire him with an ardour for military exploits, and that these warriors also might find a part of their recompense in being continually under the eye of the heir of so much glory. This project has, of course, been abandoned. Yet why should not the education of the young Henry, the future heir of the French monarchy, be conducted in the same spirit as would have been that of the young Napoleon? There exists, indeed, but too much cause why it should be so conducted, as to form a leader fit to head the armies and direct the energies of France. A million of bayonets threaten Europe from the north, and France only can array itself against them, Russia has already absorbed, within its empire, that great limitrophe nation which might have been a barrier against its further progress: its nearest neighbour has a force not more than a third of that which Russia itself can wield: the first military power of Germany, Prussia,--a camp rather than a kingdom, a state rather than a nation,--must continue the voluntary or involuntary ally of Russia: the rest of Germany is divided into petty sovereignties. Russia has an army, the half of which is sufficient for its own defence; nay, it is secure from attack: what then may it do, What will it do, with the other half? The irruption of the now half-civilised and well-disciplined hordes of the north, directed by one will, which rules from the Aleutian isles to the banks of the Vistula, is an event that may take place before the infant Henry shall have attained the age of manhood: then, instead of the prospect of the Invalides, he may have that of the "tented field;" instead of mimic war and reviews on the Champ de Mars, he may join in real battle for the security of France and the protection of Europe. The building which was to have been a monument dedicated to the grand army, is converted into a church, for which, by its form, it was well adapted. But, instead of this edifice, a monument has been raised to the glory of the French warriors, _ære perennius_;--a work in twenty-six volumes, by a society of military men and men of letters: it is entitled "Victoires et Conquêtes" in very large capitals, "désastres et revers" in very small capitals, of the French armies, from 1792 to 1815. It is composed in the spirit of the liberal party, but with great moderation: it speaks with constant respect of the royal family of France, with unreserved freedom of Bonaparte, and with severe censure of the faults of the republican government: its hatred of England is more than patriotic,--plus quam civilia: it is written in a very respectable style, itself a history, and forming a collection of materials to be embodied into future, general, or partial histories of the revolution. Even "the Great Unknown" himself, than whom no one has a better right to disprove the assertion of Pindar, that fable delights more than truth, since so much of what is delightful in fable is of his own creation, and every one may do what he wills with his own;--even he, who may dispute with Cervantes, Shakspeare, and Ariosto, the title of "the greatest liar that ever lived,"--may have recourse to more than the latter half of these twenty-six volumes, in the composition of that story, in which every thing shall be true, yet every thing shall be astonishing. It is superfluous to wish him success: of that he is assured, both by his subject, and by the novel manner in which it will be handled; but I wish he would take the trouble of once revising his manuscript before impression, to correct the blunders of rapid composition. I saw the model in plaister of the statue in marble, of an elephant, which statue was to have been raised upon a high pedestal in the Place de la Bastille: a staircase, beginning within one of the fore-legs of the elephant, was to have led to the top of a tower on his back, from which would have been seen all Paris and its environs: from his proboscis was to have issued a fountain. The model, I am told, is now broken in pieces. Perhaps this is fortunate: the elephant might in future times have answered the purpose, if not of the Bastille, of the bull of Phalaris: after the pleasant jests we have heard of _la petite fenêtre nationale_,[15] and the _baptême republicain_[16],--who knows whether the sovereign people, calling to mind the bull of Phalaris oh the site of the Bastille, and justifying, according to custom, its own tyranny by that of others,--might not have amused itself with the bellowing of an elephant? Despots, of one or many heads, resemble each other: ----facies non omnibus una, Nee diversa tamen. Still it is a pity that the elephant is not to be erected: he would have been at once a curious and majestic figure; and his absence will not deprive cruelty, if the disposition to it should unhappily again exist, of the means of inflicting vengeance. It is always an easy matter, says the English proverb, to find a stick to beat a dog; and when one portion of society become dogs to the other and more powerful portion, of course the dogs must be beaten. The model of the elephant drew me into the neighbourhood of the Marais: this quarter of Paris was once the court end of the town, and Vincennes was what St. Cloud has since become. The streets of the Marais are much wider and cleaner, and better built than the other ancient streets of Paris; and this quarter, with the Place Royale, is well worth visiting, though seldom visited: it is inhabited by an old-fashioned set of gentry, who prefer Paris, as a residence, to any country town, but take no part in its amusements; who go to church, and do not go to the opera; who persist obstinately in the more ancient mode of dining at one o'clock; who gave no assistance or encouragement to the revolution, it may be, because it brought in so many innovations. I am assured that, during the most tumultuous scenes of that period, the Marais was always tranquil. Strangers who mean to spend some time in Paris, and who have a carriage, or can do without one, would do well to establish themselves in the Marais: they would indeed be at a great distance from their astonished friends and from the places of amusement, but the line of the Boulevards would lead them any where. The Boulevards are a great, and precious, and a peculiar advantage, which the city of Paris enjoys above all cities that I have seen or heard of. This ancient enclosure of the town is now at about half-way from the Seine to the walls; so much have the Fauxbourgs increased; for all beyond the Boulevards is called Fauxbourg. Thus, in the midst of Paris, for the whole of the distance from the bridge of the Jardin des Plantes to the Place Louis XV. in a line running at first from south to north, then westward, and then inclining to the south, is found a wide street, with a broad walk on each side, shaded by two rows of trees. Here you may walk in safety, without fear of the cabriolets or one-horse chairs, which, in all the streets of Paris, even on the trottoirs, endanger life and limb. Here you may see exposed to sale, on tables niched in between the trees on one side, and between the trees and houses on the other, all kinds of wares; millinery and bon-bons, literature and jou-jous, maps, prints, and cutlery. "Voilà," says a boy, flashing in your eyes his string of steel watch-chains, "voilà des chaines superbes."--"Voilà le règne de Napoléon," says a moralist, out of time and place. Here you may find petits gâteaux and eau de groseille, to allay both hunger and thirst; and chairs, for a sous a-piece, to repose while you refresh yourself. The houses are lofty, and many have balconies: the shops are well supplied; at every step are theatres, and spectacles, and cafés, and public gardens and diversions of every sort: an infinite variety of physiognomy, character, and occupation is continually flitting before you. It is the most amusing morning scene of this amusing metropolis. Napoleon gave to Paris the bridges of Austerlitz and Jena: the names have been changed to those of "du Jardin du Roi," and "des Invalides;" but the benefit remains: thus the extension of the city, at both extremities, was encouraged, and the value of property increased. Along the Seine, on both banks, from the one to the other of these bridges, is a space of the width of a very broad street between the houses and the river. This too, as well as the Boulevards, is an advantage peculiar to Paris. In London, to get a view, or a peep at the Thames, you must go to the ends of the streets at right angles with it: the projected terrace, when accomplished, will, I hope, form a magnificent answer to this reproach. At Florence, the _lungarnata_ extends for about one third only of the course of the Arno through that beautiful city. The Hotel-Dieu is in a central situation, more convenient, both for the patients and their medical attendants, than the sites now often chosen for such institutions in the precincts of cities. The course of the Seine supplies it with air and water. An admirable cleanliness is observed in the wards: even the beds of the patients are free from all offensive odour. This infirmary is a school of medicine: young surgical practitioners flock to Paris for instruction. The French have unhappily had of late so many opportunities of perfecting themselves in this science, that they are well qualified to give lessons. If honour hath no skill in surgery, he is obliged to lead in his train many who have. The Hotel-Dieu is a credit to the country. It is very easy to find your way in Paris: between the Seine and the Boulevards you may always arrive quickly at a point where you may know whereabouts you are. This is facilitated too by a trifling, but ingenious arrangement: the streets parallel to the river are distinguished from those at right angles with it, by inscribing the names of the one set in black letters on a light ground, and of the other set in white letters on a black ground. The Morgue is an excellently well-contrived establishment. It is a little building, on the bank of the river, where are deposited the bodies of persons found drowned or otherwise accidentally slain. These bodies are laid on an inclined plane, in a space partitioned off by glass doors and windows, stript of part of their clothes, which are hung up over their heads. By this simple method, the members of a family, of whom one is lost or missing, have the means of finding and reclaiming their own, if there, without inquiry,--without exposing to public remark a mischance which may be only temporary. Calling here one day, I was witness to a scene on which the genius of Sterne would have lived and revelled most sentimentally. The body of a middle-aged man, who, by the clothes suspended above, appeared to have been a sailor, was laid in its place to be recognised. After gazing on this sight for some little time, I was retiring, when I met, at the outer door, an elderly woman accompanied by a lad of about fourteen years old. Their steps were hurried: their countenances full of anxiety and terror. "They have lost," said I, "a son and a father." I waited the event. They advanced to the window, with what I will call, if the phrase may be allowed, a precipitate irresolution,--dreading to find what they sought. They returned consoled, but still dejected: the expression of their faces said plainly,--"It is not he; but then, where is he?" He was not found there, yet still he was lost. There are several manufactures at Paris worthy of attention. Old renown led me to the Gobelins: it was not in a state of great activity at this time, but I saw some works both finished and carrying on, worthy of that old renown. The process of making this tapestry is exceedingly tedious. I observed that the workmen, like clock-makers, and printers, and other _men of letters_, were almost all short-sighted. The Palais Royal, as a centre of wealth and dissipation, deserves all the celebrity it has acquired: it is besides a very handsome quadrangle, as I once was used to call the interior of buildings of this form: it is not a square; it would be pedantic to call it a parallelogram, and not according to usage to call it an oblong. The arches are not wide enough; and the arcade (the space, I mean, between the arches and the shops,) is not broad enough. Here is more splendour, but less of variety to be seen, than on the Boulevards. The shop-keepers are not dearer here than in other quarters of Paris: the greater number of their transactions pays their higher rents, though their profits may be only equal to those of their brethren in trade. I took ice at the Café de Mille Colonnes, and found that, counting shadows or reflections in the mirrors with which the rooms are lined, the number, though indefinite, may not be exaggerated. The garden is enclosed by iron palisades between the arches: it is closed in the night, the arcade being still left as a thoroughfare. I found no reason to avoid passing through it with my elder son, a youth of seventeen, though I should have been most unwilling to lead him in the evening into any street in London. When will the police of the capital of the British empire take shame to themselves? The colonnade of the Louvre, which the Gascon said was very much like the _back_ front of his father's stables, is justly admired. The court I thought to be too much ornamented, and the ornaments too much subdivided, and the height of the building within too great for its extent of area. It is, however, an exceedingly handsome building: I was glad to see it completed, at least as to the exterior. I was told it had been nearly two centuries in building. He who had Versailles wanted no other dwelling. I shall be well pleased to have excited the reader's attention to my remarks also on the curiosities of Paris: at any rate I have not detained him long. I hope he will not be disinclined to accompany me to the environs. FOOTNOTES: [12] There is but one Paris in the world. [13] To great men their grateful country. [14] That is true; but, in the mean time, they bury senators. [15] The little national window--the hole of the guillotine that receives the neck. [16] Republican baptism--drowning people by boatsfull. CHAP. IV. The cemetery of Père la Chaise is on a height commanding a view of Paris and of the whole extent of country from Vincennes to St. Cloud. Le Père la Chaise was confessor to Louis XIV. and sometime proprietor of this large field, now the burying-ground of a great proportion of the population of Paris. It is laid out, with due regard to the irregularity of the ground, in walks and allées; and the care of adorning and planting is left to the relations and friends of the deceased here interred. It is adorned with tombs and monuments, some of which display more taste than is usually brought to such designs: around these tombs are planted poplars and cypresses, roses and jasmines; and thus the quarter where the rich are buried, (for even here "the people of quality flock all together,") has the air of a pretty shrubbery. The price of so much land as may suffice for one corpse is now three hundred francs, and the ground, with whatever may be erected upon it, becomes the property of "heirs and assigns for ever." The money so raised is, I believe, applied to the maintenance of infirmaries or other public charities. That part of the cemetery where the poor, or those who do not buy their graves, are buried, is dug very deep on the occasion of each interment: the ground is taken up regularly; and it is supposed that the bodies first buried will be reduced to earth before it shall be necessary to dig over the same ground a second time. Such is, by law, the mode of sepulture throughout France: no one can be buried in a church, nor even in his own garden or field, unless at a certain distance from all habitation; and cemeteries, regulated like that of Père la Chaise, are every where provided. These burying-grounds are to be restored to cultivation, wholly or in part, as the case may require, during the time necessary for the complete rotting of the bodies beneath; a space of fourteen years, says Hamlet's grave-digger, for "all but your tanner:" this however must depend more on the nature of the soil than on the former occupation of the persons deceased; but Shakspeare is allowed to jest on every subject. I will own that the view of the great cemetery of the capital of France displeased, and even disgusted me; and that the law in regard to this matter appeared to me a scheme of irreligious legislators for putting out of sight all that might remind them of death, and for desecrating church-yards, and for rooting out of the minds of the people their veneration for ancient usages and consecrated places. An enclosure, destined to the uses of a church-yard, turned into a flower-garden,--or a flower-garden, still retaining its finery, turned into a church-yard;--monuments surmounted, not by the symbol of salvation, but by vases in which no ashes were contained, and which are absurd in a place where bodies are not burned, but buried;--inscriptions, which spoke not of eternity, but were such as if the person beneath had died without hope or fear,--all this offended me. The provisions of the law of burial, which does not allow families to repose together even in death, since each corpse must take its place in the row or line,--this law, which destroys all sepulchral memorials of families or individuals,--(for if the land be restored to cultivation the sepulchres cannot well be preserved,) all this shocked my habitual notions and ancient prejudices. Yet what can be more dangerous to the health of a great city, than that, in every populous part of it, there should be a small enclosure, containing, at a little depth under ground, dead bodies in every stage of putrefaction,--a dunghill of most noxious exhalation, slightly covered with mould? How much is this danger increased by the contagious, (I was going to say pestilential, but it is now doubted whether pestilence be contagious or not,) by the contagious nature of many diseases! What can be more indecent, and at the same time dangerous, than that, at the digging of a grave, bodies should be disturbed before they are assimilated to the dust to which they are committed, and that skulls and other bones should be thrown out for play-things to thoughtless children? Such things I have seen, and so has every man who has been present at the digging of a grave in any town in England; such things are even represented on the stage, to the disgrace of our national character, for the sake of the grave-diggers' puns, and an ingenious moralizing on the skull of Yorick. Custom reconciles us to things in themselves most shocking. Medea might have slain her children _coram populo_, if the people had been used to it. They _were_ used to gladiators. Yet custom will not prevent infection: we ought, in spite of custom, to be sensible of the indecency of our mode of interment, and of the risk we run by heaping our dead on each other in a narrow boundary, yearly encroached upon by the altar-tombs of the wealthy, and rendered still narrower by a predilection, foolish as it may seem, for the sunny side of the church-yard. How then are the dead to be disposed of? a question to my mind more difficult to answer than "how are the dead raised up?" In populous cities,--a situation unfavourable to human life,--of thirty persons, one dies yearly: each individual requires for his grave two square yards of earth; grown persons rather more, as every grave ought to be separated from that nearest to it; and children will require less than two square yards; but upon an average, a population of seventy-two thousand six hundred souls, or more properly on this occasion, bodies, will cover with their dead, in the space of one year, an acre of land. The dead of the city of Paris in fourteen years,--Shakspeare's period for entire decomposition,--would take up a hundred and forty acres. If cemeteries are not restored to cultivation, the dead, after a few generations, will starve the living; at least it must be borne in mind that cemeteries, near great towns, must be allotted in situations where land is most valuable. Unwillingly I abandon all my prepossessions in favour of holy ground and other "circumstance" of christian burial. The dead ought not to be carried into the church before interment: that practice is still allowed in France, but ought, for obvious reasons, to be suppressed: the coffin ought to have no lid or cover; thus the compression of the ascending vapour will be more complete, and the assimilation of the body to the surrounding mould will not be retarded: if the horrible accident of burying any one alive should unhappily occur, at the least, that which most aggravates the horror of such a misfortune,--the lingering torments of the interred,--are prevented: portions of land ought to be appropriated, in the neighbourhood of great cities, to the uses of sepulture and cultivation successively: lastly, the rich ought to be contented with cenotaphs and inscriptions to their memory on the walls and pavements of churches, while masses and other commemorations may be celebrated in the presence of catafalques. The catacombs are, or is, (for I have forgotten my English grammar,) one of the _lions_ of the environs of Paris; and such a _lion_! Let the word "lumen" mean "life," and call it "monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum." When the Cimetière du Père la Chaise was substituted for church-yards, out of these latter, now to be applied to secular uses, were dug the human bones that were found in laying the foundations of buildings: these bones were carried to certain stone quarries, now no longer worked, a little to the south of Paris. So far, so good: but it came into the heads of the managers of this affair to make a pretty thing of it: on the sides of the passages of the quarry, and in the wider spaces, they ranged these bones in squares and circles, and wheels and stars; a skull in the middle, and rays of thighbones, brachia, and lacerti; of the ossa, ilium, ischium, and coccygis,--there was no os _sacrum_,--they made obelisks and pyramids; and this "region of horror,"--these "doleful shades,"--under the abused name of the catacombs, attract the idle and curious traveller to see by what fantastic devices that which is most respectable and venerable to humanity and to faith can be tricked out into raree-show. This place cannot be visited without inconvenience: it were to be wished, as in the case of the opera tune, that, instead of difficulty, there might be impossibility: it is excessively damp; moisture issues from above, though on the sides it is hidden by the choice tapestry with which they are decorated; but the ground is slippery; each person gropes along with a wax taper in his hand, sometimes obliged to curve himself. It is some consolation, at length, to find here an altar, on which, once in the year, on All Souls' Day, a _missa pro defunctis_ is said. I trust in the good taste, if not in the piety of the French people, so far, as to hope that this altar will be set up in a chapel above-ground, and that the catacombs will be filled with earth, and closed till the consummation of all things. The cimetière and the catacombs are, strictly speaking, in the environs of Paris, being without the walls. I made however with my sons several excursions to places in the neighbourhood, setting out in the morning, passing the day at the place of our visit, and returning in the cool of the evening. Mrs. ----, and my daughters, who had remained in England for the purpose of spending some time with her relations before quitting the country, arrived at Paris, under the conduct of one of her brothers, towards the middle of July,--in fact, as it happened, on the memorable fourteenth. I took an apartment for a month in the Rue Neuve des Mathurins, and during that month also we made excursions. I shall make a few observations on what I saw; and "first with the first," the pride of Louis XIV and of France, the deserted palace or château of Versailles. It is rather a handsome and extensive building, than a monument to the glory of a great king and a great nation. The front toward Paris, composed in part of some corps-de-logis of the ancient hunting-seat of Louis XIII. is irregular, and this grande cour, (and a grand court it certainly is,) does not form a whole. The approach to the garden front is through a passage, and to take a view of this front one must first go away from it. At the edge of the terrace one does not see the wings, which recede, and form a line with the back of this part of the palace: below the steps of the terrace, the lower part of the building is hidden by the intervening ground. This inversion of the wings has not the effect of breaking the too great length of the building: it is said to have been the project of Napoleon to erect a magnificent colonnade or portico in front of that part which stands forward on the terrace; thus the wings, if such they may be called, would be thrown into the back ground: for this they are indeed too handsome; but in the back ground they have been placed by the plan of Louis XIV. One would suppose that they retire to form, on the other side, a part of the eastern front; but they are not even seen from the grand court. The architectural ornaments of the garden façade are not many; slight Corinthian pilasters only; the entrance, even, is what may be called a garden door, hardly distinguishable from the other windows of the ground floor. The staircase is handsome, but not sufficiently so for that to which it leads. I shall not pretend to describe the suite of state apartments. One wonders that men of five feet and some inches high should build, for their own use, rooms so disproportionate to their stature. The chamber in which Louis XIV. died is amongst the largest of these rooms: from its windows are seen the three avenues, called _la patte de corbeau_, or of some other bird: the ends of these avenues are not near enough to the palace; a defect easily to be supplied. This chamber, the central one of the grande cour, remained unoccupied, in token of respect for the memory of that great monarch, who rendered null the efforts of a powerful coalition against him, put his grandson in quiet possession of Spain and the Indies, carried the frontier of France to the Rhine, made all Europe begin to learn French, and exemplified the truth of William of Wykeham's motto,--"manners maketh man." When I saw the palace of Versailles, it was unfurnished; they were renewing the gilding, and repairing the damages of revolution and neglect. The celebrated gallery runs the whole length of the central part of the garden front. The side opposite the windows is panelled with mirrors in a manner exactly resembling the old wainscot which I remember in my youth, and which has now given place to stucco, silk, and paper. What splendid scenes have these mirrors reflected! and all that was then so glorious is now as unsubstantial as the shadowed form. The chapel is such an one as may be expected in such a palace. The seat of the royal family is in what is called the tribune, which is entered from the state apartments, and is at the height of half the chapel from the pavement, looking down on the altar at the opposite end. In all the royal chapels, the place of the king is thus situated, thus elevated above the altar. Of this I cannot approve: let me quote a story which will explain my meaning. King George III. sent, as a present to the Emperor of China, a handsome town-built chariot. On board the vessel which conveyed it, (it was packed up in separate pieces) a mandarin attended, to see it mounted and put together, that he might inform himself of the uses of the several parts.--He readily understood all the rest; but the two seats, the one within, and the coachman's seat, covered, of course, with a superb hammer-cloth, perplexed him. "For whom is that seat?" said he, pointing to the inside of the carriage. He was told that it was for the Emperor. "And that?" pointing to the coach-box. "For the man who guides the horses." "Do you think," said he, with a sudden burst of indignation, "that our glorious sovereign, the son of the sun, &c. &c. will allow any one to be placed higher than himself?" From the southern end of the terrace is seen the orangery below, sheltered from the north by the terrace, and the southern end of the central part of the palace; and from the east by that wing in which are the _petits appartements_. Oranges, in this climate, endure the open air during five months in the year: those of the Tuilleries had already taken their station in the garden when I arrived at Paris, in the end of April. It is said that Louis XIV. received a Turkish ambassador at a first audience in this orangery. This envoy having learned at Paris that Versailles was a most magnificent palace, and at the Sublime Porte that flattery was a most important part of his trade, began to offer to the king his prepared compliments. The king quietly allowed him to proceed and finish; and then taking him on the terrace, and into the state rooms, enjoyed his surprise, mingled, as may be supposed, with some confusion, at having repeated his lesson rather too soon. The formal arrangement and straight lines of the garden have, of course, been blamed by those who, according to the present English taste, wish every thing in this kind to be tortured into irregularity. I do not desire that the trees should be clipt, but sympathize rather with the old duchess, who said it made her melancholy to see so many millions of leaves, not one of which was permitted to grow as it pleased. But a garden near a house ought to partake of the regularity of the building; and the house ought not to look, according to the ingenious expression of the author of Waverly, as if it had walked out of the town, and found its place in the fields by chance. The grand central walk leads down to the water-works, which are, doubtless, very fine, when the water spouts forth from the shells of tritons and the mouths of dolphins. On each side of this allée, are bowers and bosquets, statues and fountains, vases and beds of flowers. Turning to the right, through avenues of well-grown, unclipt trees, one arrives at the Grand and Petit Trianon,--two very pretty country-seats, at which grandeur was pleased to escape from itself. In the Jardin Anglois, the good taste of Marie Antoinette has shown itself superior to rules for avoiding rule, and planned all according to the advantages of the site. The view of the country from Versailles is pleasing: but how was it possible for him, who had the choice of this spot or of St. Germains for his purpose, to choose the former? I will not believe the reason that from the latter are seen the towers of St. Denis: his piety, or, if not his piety, that force by which most men are unhappily but too well enabled to shut their eyes on death, and all that may remind them of it, would have surmounted this objection. A superbly-elevated natural terrace, with a wide and varied prospect; the Seine, here a lordly stream; an extensive forest abounding with game; a proud height, from which his palace would have shown majestically to the country around;--all these advantages, not one of which is possessed by Versailles, ought to have induced Louis XIV. to prefer St. Germains. The only unpleasing feature in the view from the terrace is the aqueduct, made to carry to Versailles the water of the Seine raised by the machine of Marly. Certainly he who can command money can command labour; and labour can erect a series of arches on the side of a high hill. Let this fault be redeemed by the canal of Languedoc. The handsome tower-like château of St. Germains, when I saw it, was used as a caserne: the chapel was filled with military stores. We entered the apartment in which our James II. lived and died an exile, chased from his house and home by his son-in-law. History records many deeds more atrocious, but none more disgraceful, than this violation of family confidence,--of the pledge of good faith given and received. But, what is more disgraceful still, the English nation, besotted by prejudices, sees nothing disgraceful in the transaction. The palace of St. Cloud is an agreeable, and, according to the favourite English phrase, a comfortable habitation, splendidly, but not too richly furnished. The salle-à-manger particularly attracted my notice, being the first good specimen I had seen of a French dining-room. It is a room large enough for about forty persons to dine in it conveniently. A round table of mahogany, or coloured like mahogany, one fauteuil, and half a dozen chairs, seemingly not belonging to this room, but brought from another, standing round the table on a mat which went underneath it; a chandelier, or lustre, hanging over the tables;--such, with a few articles for the use of the attendants, was the furniture of the room. Instead of a sideboard, a painted shelf went round the room at about four feet from the floor. On one of the panes of the window, a thermometer, with the scale marked on glass, was fixed on the outside: thus the temperature of the outer air might be known without opening the casement. An English family of moderate fortune lives very much in the dining-room: a French family would as soon think of sitting in the kitchen as in the salle-à-manger at any other than eating hours. The English think it marvellous that a French lady should receive visits in her bed-room; but to this bed-room is annexed a cabinet; which conceals all objects that ought to be put out of sight: the bed is either hidden by the drapery, or covered by a handsome counterpane, with a _traversin_ or bolster at each end, which, as it is placed lengthways against the wall, the two ends resembling each other in the woodwork also, gives it, during the day-time, the appearance of a couch. The park of St. Cloud is not a park in the English sense of the word; it is a pretty pleasure-ground, with great variety of surface. If King George III. had been as much accustomed to the continental notion of a park as the king his grandfather probably was, he would not have expressed so much surprise, when, on his visit to Magdalen College, Oxford, he was asked if he would be pleased to see the park. "Park! what, have you got a park?"--"We call it a park, sir, because there are deer in it."--"Deer! How big is it?"--"Nine acres, an it please your Majesty."--"Well, well, I must go and see a park of nine acres: let us go and see a park of nine acres." From the elevated ground of the park of St. Cloud, where the lantern rears its head, Paris is seen over an extent of flat and marshy ground, over which the Seine winds with as many evolutions and curvatures as a serpent. The fable of the sun and the wind contending which of them could first induce a traveller to quit his cloak, might be paralleled by one invented on the sinuosity of rivers in plain countries. Let nature oppose rocks and mountains, the river holds on its way by torrent and by cataract: arrived at a level country, it seems to amuse itself by delay. If it were told, at an English gaming club, that the mountain and the plain had engaged in a contest, which of them should most effectually divert the course of a river from its direct line to the ocean, the odds would, most likely, be in favour of the mountain. But the result is otherwise. The road from Paris to St. Germains en Laye is the most varied and agreeable of any in the environs. From the avenue and bridge of Neuilly it passes by Mont Valerien, a finely-wooded hill; through Nanterre, the birth-place of Ste. Geneviève, patroness of Paris; near Malmaison, the last abode of Napoleon in France; by Marly, where all is beautiful except the aqueduct. There is a steam-engine to raise the water, and pipes to conduct it, which workmen were repairing. We clambered up by the side of the pipes, at every step induced to mount higher by the beauties of the prospect, the same as that from the terrace of St. Germains. It reminded me of the view from Richmond Hill, but it is bolder and more romantic; and the Seine, being nearer to the hill than the Thames at Richmond, appears an equally important feature in the landscape. One of the roads to St. Cloud passes through the Bois de Boulogne: this wood was much injured while the allied armies remained in the neighbourhood of Paris: young trees had been planted, and appeared thriving. Let us hope that a long, a very long peace, may obliterate all traces of a war which desolated all Europe, and more than Europe, for a quarter of a century. Indeed, I cannot help agreeing in the wish expressed by one of the common people, in answer to another who congratulated him on the good news of the peace of Amiens:--"Ay," said the first, "I wish we may never have such good news again." A third cried out, "D--n your jacobin eyes, what do you mean by that?" The congratulator explained, "Why, doesn't see, that, for us to have good news of peace again, we must first have war again? and he wishes we may never have another war." The wish, it seems, was then a symptom of jacobinism; but in the present day, it must be considered as laudable to join in it, as I do most cordially, since it is the end proposed by the Holy Alliance. At Meudon, is a very pretty palace, from the terrace of which the eye looks down on a beautiful ravine, and then traverses the plain which is seen from the park of St. Cloud. While my sons and I were loitering on the bridge of this latter place, the daughter of Louis XVI. passed by on horseback. She returned our salute by an inclination of the body, while the principal person in attendance (a general officer he seemed to be,) took off his hat, as Dr. ---- said, determinately. Three years only after the restoration, to see this princess for the first time was an interesting occurrence; and I certainly regarded her with a very different feeling from that of the Parisian, who, on her entrance into the capital, after five and twenty years of suffering and exile, showed what he was _not_ thinking of, by exclaiming, "Comme son chapeau est petit!"[17] We returned to the restaurateur's to dine; and, passing the bridge in the evening, saw the water works play in honour of the arrival of the king; a sheet of water thrown down artificial rocks; a pretty play-thing enough. We saw at Sévre a most splendid collection of china, for the greatest part ornamental. Every one has seen some of this china, but it is well worth while to see it _en masse_ in a great quantity at this repository. The working part of the manufacture was not opened to us; as I had not been aware that, for this purpose, it was necessary to be fortified, _muni_, with a permission of the director. If I translate _muni_ by _fortified_, it is in the sense of the Englishman, who being invited to be present at a mass, "assister à une messe,"--asked what it was expected of him to _do_ there. We went to St. Ouen, celebrated by Madame de Stäel as the birth-place of the revolution and of the _charte_; and thence, along the bank of the Seine, to the port of St. Denis,--the point, that is on the river, towards which one of the streets of the town extends itself. It is a small _bourg_; but the seat of a sous-prefecture. On the abolition of royalty, the ashes of the kings of France, who for many ages had been interred in the church of St. Denis, were dug up and thrown to the winds: they were punished for the crime of having been kings, as Cromwell was punished for having been an usurper. Royalty was called an usurpation on the sovereign people. The roof of the church was stripped of its lead to be melted into bullets for the use of the armies, and the windows were broken for no use at all. The building was thus left exposed to all the injuries of the seasons, till that great counter-revolutionist Napoleon undertook to repair it as a burial-place for the monarchs of "the fourth dynasty,"--a phrase by which he ingeniously reminded the French that, as the race of Capet was not the first, it had no imprescriptible right to be the last race of their sovereigns. The force of this argument prevailed, while maintained by the argument of force. The audacious _roturier_ who had seized on the sceptre of royalty, like the daring mortal who stole fire from heaven, was chained on a barren rock, with vultures,--their prey a fallen great man,--to gnaw his entrails: on this rock he found his grave. The reparations of the church of St. Denis, continued by order of the king, were, at this time, nearly completed. Some remains of the bodies of Louis XVI. and his queen, rescued from the unseemly sepulture to which infuriated republicanism had consigned them, had been here honourably deposited. We had seen the mortal spoil of the brave Prince de Condé lying in state at the Palais Bourbon; it had here also found its place. The church resembles that of Notre Dame; it is not so large, but proportionably loftier; and the pillars, with the whole of the architecture, are lighter. Sceaux is a small town, six miles to the south of Paris, situated on a ridge commanding a fine view to the south and north. It is, as well as St. Denis, the seat of a sous-prefecture. Hither the Parisians resort during summer on Sundays to dance under arbours in gardens, and enjoy other sports, with the zest of those who have been "long in populous cities pent." James I. issued an ordinance in favour of Sunday sports: Charles I. renewed it: the spirit of those who observe no festival but Sunday, and who keep Sunday like a fast, prevails in England. Such persons will hardly think it a sufficient set-off against the enormities of the amusements of Sceaux, that, during four months residence at Paris, I did not see one drunken man, not even on a Sunday. The château of Vincennes is an ancient feudal castle with modern additions: it has a chace before it, an extensive open space left for military exercises and sports of chivalry, and to prevent surprise from an enemy, who might, under the shadow of a wood, have approached too near without being discovered. In the moat, surrounding the castle, the Duc d'Enghién was put to death. Every one must lament the early fate of this prince, and the extinction of an illustrious house. The duke perished for having done or attempted to do what he thought to be his duty, and Bonaparte, in causing him to suffer death, regarded himself as acting according to his own. He is said to have declared at St. Helena that, were the deed to be done again, he would do it. The "greenest usurpation," to use a phrase of Burke's, has never scrupled to inflict capital punishment on those who endeavoured its overthrow. In the beginning of the reign of William III. a man was guilty of intending the death of the king; and having nothing to plead in his defence except the defect, according to his reasoning, of the king's title, and that "murderare" was bad Latin,--both which pleas were considered as equally valid by the court,--received the sentence of a traitor. But some time must elapse ere the conduct of Bonaparte be judged by principles applied to that of other men. Seventeen years ago, I entertained the design of writing the history of the French revolution, which then appeared to be terminated by the assumption of the imperial title by Bonaparte: a counter-revolution was in reality effected; all was reversed that had been done during the revolution; republican principles,--the very name of republic,--was extinguished, and, as a Frenchman well expressed himself, "à la chute de Bonaparte les Bourbons n'avoient qu' à monter le trône tout dressé."[18] I was told it was too soon to write the history of so stormy a period. Yet Thucydides, Tacitus, Davila, Clarendon, were contemporary with the times of which they wrote. It was not too soon, at the time of Bonaparte's elevation, to write with impartiality, as I was disposed to do, the history of the preceding events, but it was too soon for readers to judge without passion. In the château is a small room, hung with black, with an altar, on which, by the care of the family of Condé, masses are said for the repose of the soul of their unfortunate relative; and some military accoutrements, said to have been his, are shown to strangers whom sympathy may render credulous. He desired to have the assistance of a priest before the execution of the sentence of the commission. "Veux-tu mourir en capucin?"[19] is said to have been the answer. I pass over all other obvious reflections on this circumstance, to remark that it implied an eulogy on the Capucins, which, from all that I have seen and know of them, they well deserve. Brutus and Cassius were called the last of Romans; the Capucins may perhaps be the last of Christians. The bottom of the fosse is flat, about twelve feet broad: a wall, of the height of a man, supports the earth of the outer side: the spot, where the execution took place, was pointed out to us. The sign of the cross fortified him in the absence of that other spiritual succour which had been refused to him. In front of the castle is shown an oak under which Saint Louis was wont to sit. The title of saint was given to this king _honoris causâ_: in his time it was honourable; at the present day, the recollection of his valour, probity, piety, disinterestedness, and great talents is necessary to rescue Louis IX. from the ridicule of having been a saint and a crusader. The fashion of this world passeth away: religion would have passed away with it, had it depended on the fashion of this world. Veritas Domini manet in æternum. Let those, who now wish to maintain it, remember that it is not truth because useful, but useful because truth. Forty years ago, who could return into the country, after having made the visit of a countryman to London, without having seen Bedlam? I was contented with the view of the two admirable statues of furious and melancholy madness at the entrance of the court. I went to Charenton without seeing the Maison des Fous. Such an asylum ought not to be an object of passing curiosity: there may be among the patients some who are amused by visits, but there are others who are very much afflicted by them. Besides, my sons were with me: it requires long experience and observation of the miseries of human life to harden the mind to the endurance of such a scene as a mad-house presents. Terror and pity have sometimes too strong an influence on young imaginations, when excited by theatric exhibition of fictitious woe; how much more when called forth by the sight of real misery such as this,--of man in his lowest state of degradation and wretchedness! We made our remarks on the confluence of the Seine and Marne: the latter is by far the more rapid river of the two, and, though not quite so broad, seems to bear along a greater quantity of water. It flows, for some distance, in the same bed with the river in which its independent existence is merged, and its name lost, without mingling with it, as if resenting the injustice of its own lot. This appearance I afterwards looked for in vain at the junction of the Rhone and Saöne, though it is recorded, if I mistake not, by classical authority. The Saöne has no pretension to an equality with the Rhone, and ought quietly to submit to its fate. On the day of my departure from Paris, I attended mass in the chapel of the Palace of the Tuilleries. This is one of the sights that the English go to gaze at, it being new to them not only in deed, but in thought; and even "Augusto mense," there was great resort of them. To me it appeared nothing wonderful that the Most Christian King should assist at mass; that, supported by his attendants on account of his great bulk, he should place himself on his knees, and his guards present arms, at the moment of the elevation of the host. Monsieur, now Charles X. and other members of the royal family, passed through the room in which we were, in their way to the tribune of the king. Before I leave Paris, I must indulge in a few remarks on the spirit of the times, and the state of the public mind at this epoch. FOOTNOTES: [17] What a little hat! [18] At the fall of Bonaparte the Bourbons had only to mount the throne that had been set up again. [19] Dost thou want to die like a capucin? CHAP. V. O Fortunatos nimium! O too fortunate those who visited Paris in the year 1814! They knew not however their own advantage, as they foresaw not the events of the following year, and all the changes consequent on those events. The pictures and statues of the Louvre were sent back in 1815 to the countries which had produced them, where, says an enthusiast for Italy, it is more natural to see them: just as a whig chancellor of the exchequer said that ten per cent was the natural limit of the income tax. Venus and the Graces fled to climes resembling those of Paphos and Cythera; Apollo and Laocöon went to be shut up in dark closets at Rome; the horses of St. Mark galloped off to Venice, leaving the beautiful arch, constructed by Napoleon as a pedestal for this trophy of his victories, to be a misplaced entrance to an iron palisade. But this was not all, nor the worst: it even served the English as an excuse, though a superfluous one, for travelling further from home: the spirit of the French people was changed, both in regard to foreigners, and towards each other. In 1818, I found it to be pretty generally believed in France, that the English government contrived and connived at the return of Napoleon from Elba, as an expedient for dividing, weakening, humbling, and despoiling a rival nation. It was in vain that I argued, that the experiment was too hazardous a one to have been ventured upon; that the imperial government was implacably hostile to England, while the royal government was, for the present at least, friendly, and likely to continue so; that the English people were overwhelmed by a load of debt and taxation, and needed repose after so long a war; that, had the battle of Waterloo been lost, they were very ill disposed for the struggle that must have ensued. I was answered point by point; that, happen what might as to the success or discomfiture of Napoleon, England was secure, fearing no invasion so long as France had no marine; that it was the rival of France under whatever government; that, spite of its debt, it would find means to hire the troops of the continent; that, had the Prussians not come up in time to gain the battle of Mont St. Jean, the Austrians and Russians would have arrived shortly after, and the whole force of Europe would have been set in array. Before the "hundred days," all that had happened from 1789 was considered as the result of a concatenation of circumstances neither to be foreseen nor controlled;--as a visitation of Providence, a fatality, a delirium. This explanation had been given and received between the restored government and individuals, and by individuals amongst each other: all things proceeded towards union and amnesty. But during the "cent jours," the medal was reversed: many were compelled or persuaded, or joyfully availed themselves of the occasion to manifest opinions and engage in acts contrary to royalty: jacobinism or republicanism, which Napoleon in the vigour of his sway had stifled, began again to take breath during his short and fleeting apparition; so that the second restoration of the king found the people in every town, in every society, divided and discordant. After the battle, which it was unkind and unjust to refuse to call by the name of "La Belle Alliance;"--after this battle, in which so many thousand human beings lost their lives,--the French submitted to sacrifices, galling to every man of every party among them; for in France it is permitted to every man to be a patriot. Their frontier-line was remeasured in a manner unfavourable to them, in a sense contrary to that in which it had been marked out the year before: then all that was enclavé was ceded to them; now, whatever stretched out into the neighbouring territory was taken from them; some fortresses were abandoned; others were to be temporarily occupied by allied forces, for whose sustenance the French paid what they regarded as enormous sums: "the spoils of victory," and such they really were, at the Louvre, were yielded up. Let any Englishman suppose what would be his own feelings were such treatment dealt out to England by a hostile country; and how much the soreness of his mind would be irritated, if he imagined, (whether truly or falsely imports not,) that these evils were the result of the machinations of the government of that country. He would think the display of a little ill-humour towards individuals of that country to be very natural at least, if not very reasonable. I was therefore not much surprised nor offended by the "civil god-dems," with which we were occasionally saluted at Paris. At Auxerre, I overheard a god-dem which rather amused me. My younger son had placed a table on the balcony, and was drawing a view of the church. "Voilà un petit god-dem qui dessine,"[20] said they: this might even have been good-naturedly meant. At Chalons-sur-Sâone, as we walked in the evening by the side of the river, we were greeted by hisses, low and suppressed, but still audible hisses. At Lyons, some soldiers, contrary to the rule of military discipline, (for they were marching in their ranks,) and contrary to the gallantry of the military profession, cried out "à bas les Anglois." From several instances of resiliency, coldness, and alienation, inconsistent with the genius of the people, and their well-known politeness, it was evident that the spirit of enmity was not yet subsided. The practice of barter is not so well understood in France as in England. A French shop-keeper, (many of them at least, though the number of such is, I believe, daily diminishing,) proposes to himself to gain, not a certain profit on each article, but as much as he can obtain, the wealth, ignorance, and other circumstances of the customer taken into consideration. A French gentleman, or, rather let us put the case, a French lady, after beating down the price of an object for half an hour, will, as a last effort, leave the shop; and, if this valedictory demonstration does not succeed, will return in the course of the morning to complete her purchase, in a renewed treaty, of which the basis is the price last named: if, by these manoeuvres, a few francs are saved, the morning has been well employed. If the French thus bargain amongst themselves, it may easily be imagined how they would treat, in money matters, with the English, supposed to be indefinitely rich, coming from a country where prices were, during the currency of paper money, higher than in France, ignorant of French prices, and affording an occasion of political revenge. I really believe that, in many instances, the gratification of this passion was an incitement to overcharging, stronger even than private interest. At any rate, during the first years of peace, the English are said to have thrown their money out of the window: I knew one of them at Avignon who did so literally. They paid English prices and gave English gratifications; sometimes they paid more than was demanded, as they said, for the honour of old England: having deposited a certain sum with a banker, if the sum was spent sooner than they expected, they had only to return home so much the sooner; like the young Oxonian, who being asked how long he should stay in town, answered "twenty pounds." The French, who had any thing to dispose of for money naturally wished to profit by this disposition of the English, which they flatteringly termed generosity; and to have the advantage of the highest prices which these latter were willing to give: but, at this time, these prices were unknown and unsettled, and every affair of bargain and sale rose into a contest. "Quel est _votre_ prix, Monsieur?"[21] said one, of whom I was buying a parasol. The Parisian shop-keepers, when they saw an Englishman, nodded, and cried, "Speculation." "On ne dit plus god-dem, on dit speculation,"[22] said my informant. "As you are an Englishman, you ought to pay double," said one, whose opinion was asked on occasion of an over-charge. My voiturier, who, for a certain sum, paid my expenses on the road, told me that he would do this for a German family for half the money. "The inn-keepers set no bounds to their charges," said he, "when they know you to be English;" muttering besides some words, from which I inferred the hostile mind above-mentioned. _La jeunesse Française_ (so the young men of an age for military service affected to call themselves, as if they were a corps apart,) seemed still to breathe war and defiance, and to endeavour by fierceness of look to make up for the want of cockades and epaulettes. An especial ordinance was required to prevent all who were not officers in the army from wearing moustaches. These symptoms of a warlike temper were not pleasing to a peaceful visitant. The whole French nation was, at this time, discontented; and it was evident that some years must pass away before it could resume that amenity of manners which rendered it heretofore the delight of strangers. All parties were discontented. The prudent and conciliatory conduct of the king displeased the royalists. The emigrants said, that the restoration was to them no restoration, since they had lost their estates; and they complained bitterly of that provision by which the purchasers of the national domains were confirmed in their possessions: had nothing been said on this matter,--had silence been observed on a subject on which themselves only had a right to speak,--a great part of the lands confiscated during the revolution would have been restored unconditionally, or on terms of easy compromise, to the ancient titulars. The clause by which, as the emigrants said, their estates were thus a second time given away without their consent or avowal, was reported to have been of ecclesiastical suggestion. It would be unfair to suppose any man, least of all an ecclesiastic, capable of deriving an uncharitable consolation from having companions in misfortune; but it is remarkable, that no mention was ever made of the restitution of ecclesiastical property. It "died and made no sign." The French clergy endured this spoliation with the patience of Christians and the good humour of Frenchmen, as every one can witness who knew them in their emigration: but, on their return home, they found their appointments inadequate to their services and to the augmented price of the necessaries of life. That Napoleon should descend from the throne when he could no longer maintain himself upon it,--that France should re-enter within her former limits,--that what was gained by victory should be lost by defeat;--all this was in order. But military glory had consoled many for the loss of liberty and republican forms,--synonymes in their vocabulary: though they needed not to go very far back in history to discover that they did not always subsist together. Of military glory Napoleon had obtained for the French more, beyond all comparison, than was ever gained by any people within an equal number of years. Possessed of absolute power over a great empire, he had used the means, at his disposal, of drawing to himself many adherents,--of founding the fortunes of many. Frequent suicides took place, after his fall, of persons whose hopes were ruined by that event. Some of these chose, in preference to any other mode of self-destruction, to throw themselves from the top of the column erected by Napoleon in the Place Vendôme: insomuch that, when I was in Paris, an order was still in force that no one should be allowed to ascend the column without a permission, that it might be ascertained that they had no motive but curiosity. Such were the discontents of the Bonapartists. Had Bonaparte contented himself with being the first magistrate of the republic,--had he allowed its name and forms to subsist,--he would have identified himself with the cause and party of the revolution. But he had put down the revolution; and in 1814 the question was no longer between a monarchical and democratic government, but between the ancient claimant and the recent possessor. One of the evils, (and they were many,) resulting to Napoleon from the assumption of the imperial purple, was that he himself became personally the object of hostilities. Of this no one was more sensible than himself: he said to his friends, "They will crush, first me, then you, then France." France was not crushed: the king returned, and the charter was given. The republicans could not complain that a monarchy, a government by _one_, was imposed upon them; they had themselves submitted to it. But an argument drawn from a former defeat was not suited to make them quite pleased with a second. They reposed; but it was the repose of lassitude, not of contented acquiescence. The prudence of Louis XVIII. succeeded in uniting all parties, though blamed by all; in obliterating, if not the memory, at least many of the sensible traces of what France had endured. Both Royalists and Napoleonists complained that whatever the court had to dispose of was given to the other party. Just before I left England, I was advised by a friend, lately returned from Paris, by no means to venture into France. "If the king dies," said he, "and his health is very bad, there will certainly be a kick-up." My counsellor saw a very little way into futurity: he himself, being about the age of Louis XVIII. died within two years after. Five years later the king terminated in peace an anxious but successful reign: the demise of the crown caused not the least disturbance; its quiet devolution on his successor seems rather to have strengthened the ancient notion of hereditary right. Paris, since the time to which my account of it refers, has been improved and increased. It is the lot of all old cities in a state of great prosperity to have a new town built near them: of this London, Edinburgh, Marseilles, Lyons, Bath, and Liverpool are examples. "Mend _you_?" said the chairman to Mr. Pope, in reply to his accustomed exclamation,--"God mend me," "Mend _you_? it would not be half the trouble to make another." Old Paris is, however, worth mending: the case is by no means so desperate as that of a deformed man like Pope. They have begun to make trottoirs. When I was in Paris, the trottoirs being paved like the middle of the street, persons on foot had no inducement to walk on them in preference to the middle of the street; people exposed merchandises there, roasted coffee, blacked shoes, or played at cards: the cabriolets ran along them where there was a vacant space, sometimes where there was no vacant space at all. When the trottoirs shall be such as carriages cannot drive on, the foot passengers will occupy them, and the encumbrances, above-mentioned, will be removed of course. I went up to a man who was cleaning a lantern in the Rue Neuve des Mathurins, and made him understand that I wished to be instructed in what manner the popular sentence of condemnation "à la lanterne" was executed in the beginning of the revolution. I had remarked, that he was old enough to have remembered such scenes; when near him, I saw a face that testified that he had in all probability been an agent in them: he told me drily, "On ôte la lanterne, et on monte l'homme à sa place."[23] He spoke in the present tense, be it observed: the recollection of such achievements was fresh in his mind, and he showed no symptom that it was unpleasant to him. These lanterns have a cumbrous and heavy appearance in the day time; and hanging over the middle of the street, they stop all passing while they are cleaned or lighted. They have begun to light the streets of Paris with gas: the pipes, I am informed, are not air-tight; but, once undertaken, this enterprise will no doubt be soon brought to perfection, as well as others already in contemplation. Paris, in the old parts of it, is, as the French express it, _mal percée_. The way to remedy this evil is obvious. I will venture to suggest one improvement,--that the Rue St. Honoré be continued, no matter whether in a straight or curved line, through the streets of St. Denis and St. Martin, by piercing these two streets, to the line of streets which lead to the Place de l'Elephant and the Rue du Fauxbourg St. Antoine. I will also take the liberty of hinting that a populous city can well afford to keep its streets clean: the streets themselves pay this expense; and the greater the quantity of dirt, the better they defray it. I have sometimes passed into the most thickly-inhabited parts of the city of London, and have been surprised to observe the streets to be cleaner than in Mary-la-bonne and at the west end of the town, where the population is less condensed. The reason is plain: it oftener becomes worth while to carry away the material of the dung-heap from the streets of the city, than from the quarter where they are wider in proportion to the population. But every parish of the English capital receives a sum towards its poor-rate, in exchange for the privilege of cleaning its streets. At Paris nothing is wanting but a réglement de police. Paris is extending itself, towards the west and the north especially: in time, the Boulevard without the walls may become a second interior Boulevard. While I doubted whether I should continue in Paris, or go to live in a provincial town, I looked at several hotels, houses with a _porte cochére_,[24] in the Fauxbourg St. Germain: the rent demanded for these was three or four thousand francs: at present they are let for ten thousand francs a year. The speculators in building, of course, find their profit in what they undertake so largely. I congratulated those who had visited Paris in 1814. Many highly estimable works of art of the French school begin however now to supply the place of those taken away by their old owners. English travellers in France, and those with whom they have to do, understand each other better than at the time when I began my journey; and more accommodations to the English taste are provided. The rivalry between France and England will subsist as long as the geographical position of the two countries: but no people are more willing than the French, in ordinary cases, and when not stimulated by strong incitements, to distinguish between the nation and the individual. Thus far we may all be cosmopolites; though nations be divided, let men be united. Indeed, I observed a sensible difference in the behaviour of my neighbours at Avignon, from the day which Louis XVIII. wisely declared to be the happiest of his life,--when no banner but that of France floated within its territory. FOOTNOTES: [20] Look at that little god-dem who is drawing. [21] What is _your_ price, Sir? [22] They do not say, "god-dem" any longer; they say "speculation." [23] They take down the lamp, and mount the man up in its place. [24] Gate at which a coach can enter. CHAP. VI. On the sixteenth of August, at one in the afternoon, the carriage came to the door which was to convey us from Paris. We took a light and hasty lunch, or nuncheon, or noonshine, or meridian repast, while the trunks were tying on; and at two, were ready to depart; when up steps the mistress of the house, requesting me to verify the inventory. "Why did you not come sooner?"--"We were unwilling to disturb you while you were dining."--"Why did not you propose this business to me this morning when I paid my rent?"--"We did not know you were going away." It is very improbable that I should not have made them understand that it was because I was going away that I paid my rent; but it is one disadvantage of being a foreigner, that all, who find it their interest, may choose to misunderstand. I had taken lodgings for short periods in London, and at what are called watering-places in England, where no inventory was made, consequently none was verified: but here confidence was not so well established, or there were other reasons. It was the usage of the country; it was necessary to submit. The apartment was furnished with an abundance of mirrors, some handsome pieces of mahogany, a rare wood in France; sofas, and fauteuils, and a most plentiful lack of almost every necessary article. My cook had hardly wherewithal to prepare our meals, and was obliged to sleep in the kitchen: a chamber had been promised; but the key of this chamber was not to be found when the lodging was taken, and the door was never opened afterwards. Kitchen utensils had been promised, and, during the first fortnight, frequently demanded: at last the silence of despair succeeded to hopeless importunity, as a fine writer might perhaps express himself. But, to the inventory. The grand articles were quickly dispatched: luckily my children had broken no looking-glasses, though surrounded by them. But when we came to the china and the crockery,--ay, then was the question: after the bona fide broken had been disposed of, about which there could be no dispute, except that some were broken only because they were already cracked,--then was the question whether such or such articles were damaged by us, or before we came to the house. An ornamental china vase had been supplied, and its fellow promised: this fellow jar was now found to have but one ear, whereas its mate had two. The edges of the fracture were rounded by use, and dirt was seen in the interstices. But I paid what was required, for the carriage was at the door. I have heard of a travelling Englishman, of whom was demanded, on his leaving his apartment, the price of a cracked pane of glass: his conscience acquitted him of the deed: after having for some time fruitlessly pleaded his innocence, he quietly raised his cane, and broke in pieces the cause of the altercation. "This pane shall be paid for no more," said he, patriotically mindful of the interests of his successors. At length we were seated in our coach. It was a roomy, handsome berline, holding conveniently six persons: on the outside was a covered seat or cabriolet: the place of the voiturier, conductor, or coachman was between the fore-wheels: the carriage was drawn by three horses. When three horses were proposed to me by the master voiturier, I started with amazement. "Why not four?"--"That would be too many."--"Why not two?"--"That would be too few." He gravely assured me that such was the practice, and he spoke truth. English travellers and readers of travels are, by this time, well acquainted with voitures drawn by three horses; but in 1818, I believe many of my compatriots shared my surprise at so _odd_ a number. I engaged this voiture to convey me to Avignon for eight hundred francs. For forty-eight francs a day, the coachman was to pay my expenses at the inns: the price was rather extravagant, as four of my six children might, as the master himself calculated, be rated as two grown persons: but I insisted on coffee in the morning before we should set off, my family being not yet accustomed to travel till ten or eleven o'clock in the morning without any breakfast, though such is the usual practice on the continent. Besides, this part of the agreement was revocable at my pleasure. I was also at liberty to quit my carriage at Chalons-sur-Saône, paying a proportionate share of the price. I had seen, at the master's stables, three very good horses which I engaged for my journey. The day before my departure, he told me these horses were gone in another direction, but that I should have three others equally good. As I saw no reason why he should prefer another customer to me, I assented. He supplied me with two stout horses and a very weakly one. Louis, my coachman, told me, afterwards, that his master had found an opportunity of selling the three horses I had first seen, and to make up my number had been obliged to buy one from a fiacre the very day of my departure. It is impossible to be aware of all the oblique means and motives of men of the character of this voiturier. All the defence that can be prepared against them is, to see every thing, write down every thing, and, above all, to have time at command. This mode of travelling by the voiturier is now generally adopted by travellers of the first respectability, and where the whole voiture is engaged, differs in no respect from travelling in a private carriage, except that the right of property in the horses and carriage is but temporary, and the coachman does not wear a livery. I am acquainted with persons, who would not choose to be considered otherwise than as persons of distinction, who have travelled in this way. I have seen attestations of the good conduct of the coachman or voiturier signed with names, some of which were known to me, and sealed with armorial bearings, according to the English use abroad. I dwell on this point, because voituriers are unknown in England, and the mode of travelling is in low repute abroad, where, from the way in which it is practised, it is impossible it should be creditable. In France and Italy there are but few stage-coaches, and no good ones but between the towns on the channel and Paris. The post-houses furnish no carriages, but horses only. In every great town there are persons whose trade is to keep carriages ready for those who want to take journeys, but have no carriage of their own. Two or three places being engaged, the voiturier, now afloat, makes up his cargo as he can: rather than have any vacant space in his carriage, he will sell it at a low rate to such as can afford to pay but low prices; he then makes up with dead lumber what is wanting in weight of live stock; and the good people, thus assembled, thus encumbered, proceed as they can under the auspices of the conductor, who presides at their meals. All this accounts very well for some English making a difficulty in avowing their having travelled by the voiturier, and for the French aubergistes and others confounding, at first, all inmates of carriages of the same denomination. I do not suppose that any respectable English family has travelled in the manner above described. I do not know that any single persons have done so. It is evident that a voiture, engaged for the sole use and service of him who hires it, is "quite another thing." I would have purchased a berline at Paris, and travelled post,--a plan not more expensive, as I could have gone twice as far in the day as with the same horses it was possible to do,--but the regulations of the post not only require six horses for six persons, but make no provision for any number more than six in the same carriage,--a case as little contemplated as parricide among the ancient Romans. I must therefore have had two carriages, or disputed the question at every post-house. Add to this, that a travelling carriage is not well-suited for a town, nor a town carriage for travelling. The places in the cabriolet were a perpetual subject of contest among my children, and I had enough to do to arbitrate who should ride outside. Louis, the coachman, was very good-natured to them, and never complained of the frequent interruptions and trouble which they caused him. This was the more laudable in him, as he was a Breton; and the Bretons, like those from whom they derive their origin,--the ancient Britons of Wales,--are said to have _la tête chaude_:[25] Louis, on several occasions, was hot-headed enough. He had served, as had almost every man at this time in France, and had been a sous-officier; and, while my eldest son and I walked by his side in mounting the hills, regaled us with accounts of his military exploits, amongst which he seemed to consider his duels as giving the most indisputable proof of personal and individual courage. He said that there had been a great deal of _coquinerie_[26] in the revolution,--an opinion in which he was by no means singular; and that, if it should break out again, there would be more assassination than ever. Neither was he singular in his apprehension of new troubles: a priest, whom I met at Paris, told me, "la révolution ne fait que commencer."[27] His wish assuredly was not "father to that thought." All this was pleasant hearing to a man who had embarked his family in an expedition like mine. The event proves the wisdom of the king, whom his party declared not to be a royalist. The horse, that had passed the morning in the streets of Paris in his quality of hackney-coach horse, was in no condition for a journey. Louis said he was tired with waiting so long in the street: he seemed to allude to the time employed in verifying the inventory; he explained afterwards how and why the expression was equivocal. I had made, on this subject, useless because tardy reproaches to the master. The horse had, however, time to recover his strength, as I would not quit Paris till the afternoon of the first day of my journey, it being Sunday, and had planned to pass the evening of the second, and morning of the third day, at Fontainebleau. We arrived by the light of the full moon at Essonne, where a good supper, with a fine dessert of fruit, and the air of the country, gave us high expectations of the pleasures of a journey to the south of France. FOOTNOTES: [25] To be hot-headed. [26] Roguery. [27] The revolution is only just beginning. CHAP. VII. The son of the aubergiste at Essonne was, as almost every Frenchman is, a conversable man: he talked to me, while I waited to set off in the morning, of the English who lived or had lived near Essonne; among others, of the Duc de Fitzjames, who, if I understood him right, had a country house in the neighbourhood. "Why do you call him English?" said I. "The name is English."--"The family has been French for more than a century." He wished for an explanation. "It is descended from James II. of England, whom we chased away because he was an honest man, as you put to death Louis XVI. because he was Bienfaisant." He answered, with much discretion, "On s'oublie quelquefois."[28] The fine old oaks and the green rocks of the forest of Fontainebleau pleased us much: at intervals and openings of the wood we caught very agreeable views of the distant country. We descended into the town, by no means a handsome one; but our business was to see the palace. It is in a low situation, surrounded by hills, not bold or romantic, but of pleasing forms; at a sufficient distance, so that it is sheltered without being straitly enclosed. It is a convenient and very large house, with ample space for the display of all the pomp of royalty, The chapel is equal in size, though not in ornament, to that of Versailles. There is a handsome gallery which Napoleon furnished with busts of great men, whose pretensions to the title of "great" are so different, that they certainly would never have met except as busts in a gallery. There is a theatre, a banquetting room, and several suites of fine apartments. One apartment, or set of rooms, had been inhabited successively by the Comte d'Artois, now King Charles X. by the Pope Pius VII. and by his grace the Duke of Wellington. The Indian fable says, that a palace is a caravansera; but such a succession of guests surpasses fable in strangeness. In the chamber of the king was a state bed of suitable magnificence: passing into a second chamber, in which was a very low bed, I remarked to our conductor that this bed would be more convenient for his majesty; and the conductor, after a little hesitation, allowed that, as I suspected, the king did, in effect, sleep on this bed. George III. inhabited the Queen's palace in London, and the lodge near the castle at Windsor: he was said to live always next door to himself. The king of France, at Fontainebleau, sleeps in the next room to his own; at least, Louis XVIII. did so. A small, ordinary, round table was pointed out as a curiosity: it was that on which Napoleon signed the act of his abdication in favour of Napoleon II. The cession was enforced; the condition was of course neglected. Napoleon retired to Elba, an emperor without empire, a father of a family deprived of the company of his wife and son; too weak to be safe, yet too great not to be feared: disgusted with the anomalies, of his situation, he made an effort that, in its consequences, plunged him into one, in which there were, at least, no inconsistencies to be complained of: all was plain and intelligible: the high blood of Europe avenged itself on the Avocat's son, who, if he had been _Monsieur le Comte de Bonaparte_, would have been treated with more consideration. The garden of Fontainebleau is handsomely laid out in straight walks, square pieces of water, and abundance of shade, at this season very desirable. As we left the garden, my younger son ran off in pursuit of a water rat, and we followed, in pursuit of him, the course of one of those beautiful fountains from which the place derives its name. As I looked round for him, I observed an elderly man, decorated with one or more orders, who accosted me with much politeness, and asked what I was looking for. Wishing to obtain information respecting any further object of curiosity, I began:--"Monsieur, je suis étranger, et--" He interrupted: "Je le vois bien, Monsieur, et c'est pourquoi je veux vous être utile."[29] He asked if we had seen the château; and, on my replying in the affirmative, expressed his regret that he had not met with us sooner. I learned afterwards that he was the Maréchal Duc de Coigny, at that time gouverneur du château de Fontainebleau. He directed me to a treillis which ran the whole length of a garden wall exposed to the south. The situation was even too favourable for the vines that covered the treillis; as, though very fine and healthy, they had pushed out many large branches without fruit. Grapes however, there were in abundance; and, had they been ripe, no doubt M. le Gouverneur would have invited us to eat of them. At any rate, the fox's reasoning had here no place. The next day we arrived at Sens. In the cathedral of this place is a very fine piece of sculpture, the tomb of the Dauphin son of Louis XV. It will hardly be believed that, during the revolutionary fury, the populace were only restrained by force from breaking in pieces the statues of this tomb, out of hatred to royalty. I observed to the sacristan:--"Le bon peuple de Sens n'est pas apparemment un peuple de bon sens."[30] In a chapel, under the invocation of St. Thomas of Canterbury, is a painting representing his interview with the pope at this place, to which he retired during his unjust exile. The memory of Thomas a Becket has been unmercifully slandered by our philosophical and protestant historians. It is their way. At Auxerre we found an inn very pleasantly situated on the banks of the Yonne with the vine-covered hills of Burgundy in full view. It was fortunate that the inn was agreeable, and the people of the house very good-humoured, the chances being very much against both the one and the other; for here we were detained one day by the illness of Mrs. ----. A physician attended, who, on his second visit, recommended the use of the hot bath, which removed the cause of the complaint, and all was well again. Hot baths are to be found in every great town in France, at a very moderate price,--a circumstance which proves that they are much in use, as it is the number of customers only that renders the article cheap. The French are in general cleanly in their persons, whatever their streets may be: they are also cleanly in their houses, though they have not the fastidious and troublesome neatness of the English, nor the perpetual scrubbings and polishings of the Dutch. Household linen, both for bed and table, is plentiful amongst them. I began at Auxerre the use of the hot bath, which I have continued every summer that I have not passed on the sea coast. In winter it is too cold,--not to go into hot water, but to come out of it. As we travelled neither with great speed, nor far in one day, nor in the heat of the day, the physician, on calling to take leave, said we might continue our journey without any risk of inconvenience to his patient. We ascended therefore that range of hills among which are found the sources of those rivers which flow into the ocean by the Seine and the Meuse, and of those which, however slowly they glide at first, are precipitated into the Mediterranean by the Rhone. This tract of country continued for two days, and is a very interesting one. Let those who fancy all riches to be derived from commerce only, compare this broad ridge with the plain on each side of it, and they will perceive that a fertile soil ought to enter for something into the computation of the wealth of nations. This mountainous region, in the part where we crossed it, and, by parity of reasoning, in every part of it, is cultivated with the greatest care and industry: it produces wine that ranks in the highest estimation both at home and in foreign countries: yet the inhabitants seem poor, the towns are large villages, the villages are collections of ruinous huts. Yet had this poverty not found its way into the inns, it would have been a most pleasing country to travel through. The summits of the hills were covered with wood, wherever there was a sufficient depth of earth to admit a tree to be planted; the sides were overspread with vines ranged in order, well pruned, and glowing with fruit now nearly ripe. At the lowest declivities of the hills were corn fields; in the valleys, through almost every one of which ran a stream of the purest water, were pastures; and here was seen, what is so much wanted in southern landscape,--verdure and cattle. It may be remembered that, in the year 1816, large masses of ice detached themselves from the coasts of the Arctic regions, where they had been accumulating for centuries, and that huge mountains of ice were met with at a very low latitude in the Atlantic, where it finally thawed, and mingled with the waters of the ocean, but not without having spread cold and moisture over almost every country of the west of Europe. I grew my own corn at this time; but was obliged this year to buy corn of the preceding harvest, as, of my own, could be made nothing better than an unwholesome paste instead of bread. The three vintages before this season of fusion of icebergs, and diffusion of humidity, had been but indifferently good: perhaps the god Mars has been more worshipped than the god Bacchus, and thence, notwithstanding the well-known confidence of Napoleon in the principle of population, hands were wanting to prune and hoe the vines. The vintages of 1816, and of the following year, had almost entirely failed. France was now absolutely threatened with a dearth of wine: the stock in hand was nearly exhausted. But the promise of the present vintage put every one in high spirits: I was assured by the delighted Burgundians that it would equal in produce, and far surpass in quality, those of the five preceding years. In effect, the wine of 1818 was afterwards compared with that of the year of the comet, still cited at this time in advertisements of sales of wine. At every step, we met with long cars laden with barrels or staves of barrels; the coopers were all in full activity at the doors of their shops; all the world was in high expectation; and our sympathy with their pleasure was heightened by the cool refreshing air, bringing with it cheerfulness, health, and elasticity. Something in very deed was required to put or keep us in good humour, for the inns were bad enough to try the patience of that old patriarchal exemplar of patience more frequently cited than imitated. Of eatables indeed there was enough, and the beds were not bad; but the wine was sour; the peaches as hard as those found on the chimney-piece of a lady's boudoir; and the grapes, though very pretty to look at, wanted a month's longer exposure to the sun: the apples even were not ripe. When any thing was asked for beyond objects of the first and most obvious necessity, the answer, was, "il n'y en a point."[31] I asked for an extinguisher. "Il n'y en a point."--"How do they put out candles in this country?"--"Ma foi, Monsieur, mais on les souffle."[32]--"Not always," said I, pointing to black and greasy spots on the wall. Of the seven ways of putting out a candle which Dean Swift has taught, I prefer, in cases of necessity, that by which the light and the odour are extinguished at once; and here the floor was the better for it. To account for the poverty of a country, in which is found, in abundance, so rich a product as wine, it must be recollected how small a proportion the land covered with vines bears to the whole tract. This reasoning may be usefully applied to other countries similarly circumstanced. On the third day after leaving Auxerre, we arrived, by a very steep descent, on the plain of the Saône;--a plain at some time covered with water, which, depositing a loamy and fertile sediment, retired gradually into beds of rivers. The surface of the earth clearly indicates that it has once been sea without shore; the rivers that are still supplied by perennial sources in the higher elevations, hold on their course; many are dried up, leaving valleys to be watered by the dews and the clouds of heaven. The plain of the Saône continues below Macon: its products are such as may be expected on strong land in such a climate; among others, bled de Turquie, as the French call maize or Indian corn. Arthur Young, in his admirable Tour, divides France into four agricultural regions: in the first the vine is not; in the second maize is not; in the third the olive is not; in the fourth, Minerva, Ceres, Bacchus, Pomona, all conspire and dispense their united gifts. I was pleased to hear some French speak highly of Young's Tour: they said it had told them many things they did not know before, and had been of great service to them. It is thus that, while nation wars against nation, man may communicate good to man. The coche d'eau, as it is whimsically called, is a passage-boat which plies between Châlons and Lyons: places are reserved in it for those who may arrive by the diligence from Paris. It is roomy enough, but I found it very dirty: to remain under the deck, at this season of the year, would have been stifling, and on the deck there was no tent or awning. I determined to proceed in my berline. We made our noon-tide repast at Tournus, where I walked into the church; for in France the churches are open every day, and all day long; and there I saw an image of the Blessed Virgin in the dress of a lady of the court of Louis XIV. I talked afterwards with a well-meaning Catholic on the absurdity of this costume: he observed, that if the Blessed Virgin were exhibited in the dress of a carpenter's wife, the people would not respect her. The people are not so silly: they, at least, are "not ashamed of the cross of Christ," whatever the great may be: why should the poor be ashamed of the poverty of the mother of the Redeemer? Macon, where we slept, is a flourishing town: we left it at sun-rise, as we were to pass a steep and lofty hill in our road to Lyons. From this height we descried the mountains of Switzerland and Savoy, amongst which Mont Blanc was seen with his snow-topped summit. The view was indistinct, but imagination supplied the defects of the "visual nerve." The Alps are in the domain of history and poetry. We alighted, or descended as the French say, at Lyons, at the Hôtel du Parc. It was the fête de St. Louis; the city was illuminated: of these splendors we had a good view, as the Hôtel de Ville was opposite our windows. The people danced in the Place Terreaux all night, and all night we listened to the sound of their rejoicings, for the bugs hindered us from sleeping. In the morning I complained of them to the femme de chambre, who positively denied that there were any in the house. I showed her five that lay slain on the sheet: she still positively denied that there were any in the house. A modest assurance is certainly very becoming. I laughed in anger, which, though not quite so poetical as laughing in tears, is equally natural, when unqualified anger avails nothing. I complained to the mistress of the house: she admitted the fact without requiring ocular demonstration,--a superfluous motive of credibility; and promised other beds: but, as probably no change could be made for the better, we changed not. The cathedral church of Lyons is worthy of the metropolitan see of France; it is in the style of the florid or latest Gothic, and highly ornamented: it is very _large_; a word that may be here taken in its French sense of _broad_; for it is in breadth that it exceeds other churches equally long. It had been much injured during the revolution; but what is most beautiful in it could not be destroyed without the destruction of the building itself. The chapel of St. Louis is superbly decorated. Place Bellecour, or Place Louis XIV. or Place Bonaparte, by the pertinacity of prescription, retains its first name, and is indeed a square which great men might be ambitious of having named after them. It is almost too vast: that is, the distance of the sides from each other destroys its unity: its extent, however, makes it an agreeable promenade; on the south side are rows of trees. The streets in the neighbourhood of this square are handsome and well built: the rest of the town is what an old manufacturing populous city may be supposed to be: the quay on the majestic Rhone is a striking sight. Following the course of the river along a raised road or dike, we arrive at the piece of ground recovered from the river by means of this dike; which ground was given by the municipal authorities to Napoleon, who intended to build a palace on this spot, at the junction of the Saône and Rhone. I talked with a labourer who had been employed in levelling the land: further than this, the work was not proceeded in. The situation is admirable: a lofty edifice,--and can one suppose that the palace of Napoleon would have been any other than a lofty edifice?--would have commanded a view of Lyons and of the surrounding hills and country: besides all this, the river presents here the appearance of a large and beautiful lake, its stream being hidden, at a little distance from the point of confluence, by intervening ground. Whether Paris, Lyons, or Constantinople was destined to be the capital of the French empire is a doubt, for the solution of which we must now interrogate the grave. The cathedral of Vienne is a very fine church, and the loftiest within of any I have ever seen, and I have seen all the cathedrals in England. In the earliest age of Christianity, at Vienne, Lyons, and Tournus, those whom the church honours under the common name of the martyrs of Vienne, sealed their faith with their blood. We passed the Isere by a ferry; the bridge, destroyed four years before, during the war, not having been yet rebuilt; and this on the high road from Paris to Marseilles. Valence was the last prison of Pope Pius VI. for here he died. Philosophers and protestants flattered themselves that he was the last of the popes: they forgot the reasoning of Gamaliel. At an indifferent inn where we rested at mid-day, at the sign of the Grand Monarque, among other scribblings on the wall of our apartment, I observed a note to the following effect:--"Englishmen, beware of the Grand Monarque! I paid five francs for my bed,--a bed in this chamber!!! I paid seven francs for my supper." The writer states of what dishes his moderate supper consisted, complains of the wine, and concludes with some indignant and patriotic effusions. We were now in the country of the olive, and the flat roofs indicated that we were to pass a winter very different from any that we had hitherto experienced; a winter without snow. The whole road from Lyons to Avignon may be considered as beautiful: we rarely quitted the banks of the Rhone, and always with regret: on each side of the river are fine hills, surmounted with châteaus, many of which had the picturesque advantage of being in ruins. The heat did not incommode us, except in the beginning of the afternoon of two days out of the five employed in this journey from Lyons, where, as an Avignonais observed, the north begins, and where, of course, the south began to us. Madame de Staël says--"Le vrai midi commence à Naples."[33] Ask where's the north? The badness of the inns would have been, at this season of the year, but a trifling inconvenience, but for the bugs; at the last inn at which we slept on the road they were in swarms. I complained to the innkeeper: he said there might, perchance, be one or two, "mais cela doit être une espèce de miracle."[34] Almost every one has poor relations or friends of whom he is ashamed, but of whom he cannot get rid without adopting the ingenious expedient of the Vicar of Wakefield,--an expedient unfortunately not applicable to bugs, "non missura cutem nisi plena cruoris;" although their hosts and entertainers are sufficiently unwilling to acknowledge their presence. At Orange we passed under a triumphal arch, called of Caius Marius, much finer and better preserved than any edifice of the same kind at Rome. Here are also the remains of an amphitheatre encumbered with buildings. Here we saw the process of winding the silk from the worm: the cocon or egg is thrown into boiling water to dissolve the gum. At Skegness, on the Lincolnshire coast, I have seen panier-fulls of living shrimps treated in the same manner. FOOTNOTES: [28] People forget themselves sometimes. [29] "Sir, I am a stranger."--"So I perceive, Sir, and for that reason I wish to be of service to you." [30] The good people of Sens are, apparently, not a people of good sense. [31] There is none. [32] Faith, Sir, they blow them out. [33] The true south begins at Naples. [34] That must be a sort of miracle. CHAP. VIII. The entrance into Avignon prepossesses a stranger in its favour: he passes through a gate of modern construction into a square in which are several well-grown trees; in front is the theatre, on each side a large inn and other houses: this is called the _Place de la Comédie_. We were set down at the Palais Royal, where we found good chambers and beds. Hot baths, _à l'instar de Paris_, as the sign expressed it, were opposite our inn, and the next morning some of the family took advantage of them. I paid Louis, my coachman, the balance of his account, for I had advanced him money on the road; and gave him such a generous bonne main, that he was, I saw, ashamed of having once or twice made us fare ill on the road. The sum of the expenses of my journey from Paris, not including the bonne main, was a little more than sixteen hundred francs. A banker, or dealer in money only, is not to be found, except in the largest commercial towns of France, and provincial notes are unknown. The Parisian banker had referred me to a _négociant_ and manufacturer of silk, who, during my stay at Avignon, supplied the absence of a regular priest of Plutus; loading me, at my pleasure, with heavy five-franc pieces, for which he required only good bills on Paris, or on London, where also he had a correspondence. I am obliged to call him a _négociant_, as _marchand_ means a shop-keeper; nay, a dealer in the pettiest wares is called a merchant: a seller of milk is a _marchand de lait_. As for shops, they have disappeared: every shop is a _magasin_, so that France is not a _nation boutiquière_, whatever England may be. I called on my banker this morning, and consulted him on my establishment. We retired to rest early in the evening, but were soon after disturbed by the noise of loud voices below: it ceased after a short hubbub. On inquiring the cause next day, the waiter told us that the English prince had descended at the Palais Royal, but that the authorities had presented themselves, and had engaged him to pass to the Hôtel d'Europe, where they had prepared for his reception; and that the noise was caused by the passage of the prince and his suite, attended by the authorities. This was a very prudent, but rather an imperfect statement: it was the truth, but not the whole truth. The fact was that the Duke of Gloucester, in his tour through France, arrived at Avignon: he had sent forward a courier, who had given orders for his reception at our inn, where he was set down; but, while he was taking tea, the prefect of the department and the mayor of the city waited on him to request that he would accept of the hospitality of the town, and representing that preparations had been made accordingly at the Hôtel d'Europe. His Royal Highness thought proper to accede to this polite invitation. Madame Moulin, the mistress of our inn, enraged at the loss of the honour and profit of the prince's company, and transported beyond the bounds of discretion, broke out into violent invectives against M. le Préfet and M. le Maire, who, to punish an insult offered to them in the presence of the English prince, committed Madame Moulin to prison. Moulin told me this story, adding, "Ma femme est très sensible."[35] If her sensibility provoked her to make all the clamour we heard at ten o'clock the evening before, she certainly merited, and was probably benefited by, the restraint imposed on her, which, by the intercession of the prince, lasted only twenty hours. Moulin has as much the appearance of a _bon vivant_ as if he were an English landlord, but with a cast of French manners. A very pretty young English lady (so she was described to me,) admired his great Newfoundland dog, but said, "M. Moulin, I am afraid of him: will he bite me?"--"Non, Mademoiselle; mon chien ne vous mordera pas: fût il un tigre, il lêcheroit une si belle main."[36] I called on the Préfet, who received me with much politeness; and, when I announced my intention of settling at Avignon, felicitated the city on the acquisition it was about to make. It is regulated that no one shall be prefect of a department of which he is a native, or to which his family belongs. This rule proceeds on the principle, recognised amongst us by the circuits of the twelve judges, which supposes that justice will be more impartially administered by strangers than by those who may be liable to the influence of local connexions. The prefect of Vaucluse was of the department of the Rhone, and member of the chamber of Deputies for that department. I called on the Mayor, and was much surprised to find, invested with that office, not a man resembling an English alderman or a good bourgeois, but a meagre, old noble, adorned with the croix de St. Louis, and with the manners of his caste. In the American war he had been captain of a ship of the line; he had emigrated, and been despoiled of his property during the revolution; had passed three years of his emigration in London, where he had learned to admire tea and _tost_. On his return, he had married a rich wife who had just left him a widower; he showed me the weepers on his coat sleeves as an excuse for not returning my visit. He had recovered some of the wrecks of his fortune, and had repurchased his house; part of which had been pulled down by him who had bought it as national property, that, when compelled to restitution, as was expected, on the return of the king, he might secure at least the price of the materials. M. le Maire had built a house for himself on the ruins of the part pulled down: of the part left standing he had already made a detached house, which he offered to me. I promised to look at it. And now began my search for a house, which I conducted according to my English notions and prepossessions. In the south of France, or in Italy, a man of twenty thousand francs a year lives in a larger house than a man of an income of as many pounds sterling inhabits in London. In England, a nine months winter, an enormous tax on windows, a duty on bricks, timber, and glass, reduce us to content ourselves with small houses; but in these countries, large rooms, lofty ceilings, wide staircases, are required by the climate, and by no means astonish the minds of those who are used to them. Things on this scale of vastness I had frequently seen in England, particularly in country-houses, but had not been, as yet, familiarized with them. I visited an hotel in which Charles IV. of Spain had been lodged on his journey from Paris to Rome, after his abdication at Bayonne. I was desired, by the man of affairs, to determine what apartments I should want, and then the rent might be fixed. The house was an agreeable one, but appeared in too grand a style for me: I told the man of business it might do very well for a prince, or, par occasion, for a king of Spain, and declined all further treaty. I have no doubt, I might have been as cheaply lodged here as I was in the house I afterwards rented. There occurred besides another English prejudice: I was to have but a part of the house: who might they be who should inhabit the other part? An Englishman likes to have his house to himself; it is his castle: a privilege, by the by, which the present chancellor of the exchequer has restored to him, by taking off the tax on internal windows. Another apartment I visited; but here the proprietor, who lived on the rez-de-chaussée, or ground floor, had, as well as myself, a family of young children: besides, he refused me the privilege of walking in his garden. From this refusal, and from the intercourse of the children, I anticipated future misunderstandings. The use of a garden in this climate is, that, in the shade, or after sunset, it serves as an additional room, loftier than any in the house. In winter, a town garden, surrounded by high walls, or houses, is absolutely useless. At length I took the house of M. le Maire. It consisted of a vestibule, a small dining-room, servants hall, kitchen, and offices: on the first floor was a salon, twenty-four feet square; on one side of this salon was a space partitioned off, about six feet wide: at half the height of this room, a floor had been laid, and thus two cabinets were procured: there was a second salon twenty-one feet by fifteen; there were three chambers with two cabinets, three servants rooms, and on the second floor two chambers for my sons. I had besides a small stable, and coach-house for a cabriolet, but no garden. The house was built on three sides of a small court. My lease was for four years, at a thousand francs a year, determinable by me at the end of each year on two months notice, determinable also on payment of a quarter's rent in case of war, or any event of a public nature that might affect my personal security. This last clause I copied from a lease I had seen at Paris; a prudent, and, at that time, no one could say, a superfluous caution. I paid no taxes. This house I furnished, as one furnishes a house which he is to quit in three or four years. It was curious to observe how, from want of money or of confidence, some of the tradesmen followed their goods to my house, and required payment on delivery. I had even a sort of _run_ upon me one morning, performed by some one who had not taken the above-mentioned precaution. The run was probably caused by some silly report. I have known a run on a country bank to originate with a farmer's declaration that such run existed; the question then being only who should run fastest. I dissipated the alarm by giving, with great tranquillity, _bons_ on my banker: yet some tradesmen were careful to give a receipt, not for the amount of the bill, but for the _bon_: this, indeed, I suggested. Seven years later, I have found the merchants of a provincial town, in which I am utterly unknown, ready to give me credit for my orders without the least symptom of suspicion or anxiety. In seven years I believe the wealth of France to have increased by one half; in seven years, the funds have risen from sixty-five to ninety-five: money might have been invested in land, seven years ago, at four and a half per cent; now, not more than three, or three and a half, can be obtained: but I am going beyond the limits of my four years residence. FOOTNOTES: [35] My wife has a great deal of sensibility. [36] No, Miss, my dog will not bite you; if he were a tiger, he would lick such a beautiful hand. CHAP. IX. Avignon is surrounded by walls, as are most of the cities of France, and of the countries of the continent: a very great evil and inconvenience. These walls hinder the influx of fresh air from the country, and thus make the cities more unhealthy; give to those who want to enter or go out of the town the trouble of going first to a gate; and crowd and embarrass the inlets and outlets, by diminishing their number. Indeed, after sunset, this number, in order to save porters, is reduced to two; the two principal gates only, at opposite sides of the town, being attended by their guardians to watch and ward during the night. Often have I been obliged, at Avignon and at Florence, to shorten my evening walk, for the sake of arriving at the nearest gate before the Ave Maria of the evening. If I still continued without the walls, I was obliged to perform a circuit, first along a dusty road to a distant gate; and then, accompanied, it may be, by the females of my family, through the main street to my own habitation, more distant from this gate than from that by which I had gone out. All this mischief, all this restraint, is endured, because, instead of a tax on the houses in which food is consumed, a duty is levied, at the gates, on the food itself; a duty, partial, because not paid by the inhabitants of the country; vexatious, because descending to so many and so minute objects; and expensive in its collection, because requiring perpetual superintendence. It is to be hoped the Chamber of Deputies of France will take some lessons, on the art of taxing, from the House of Commons, by whom that art has been so long and so successfully practised. Part of these tolls defray municipal expenses. The walls of Avignon are about three miles in circumference. A good road, bordered by trees, goes round the town; and, on the western side, is a public walk near the Rhone. The river is here divided into two branches by a long, narrow island: over each branch is carried a bridge on wooden piers, with a causeway across the island, uniting the two bridges into one road from bank to bank. The tolls, on this bridge, are let, by the city, at about fifty thousand francs a year; a large sum, and indicating an active intercourse in the direction of Bordeaux and Toulouse. There is a barrier at each end of the bridge, and the passengers pay on setting foot upon it, but go off from it scot-free. Why there are two receivers of one toll I know not, except that one may be a check on the other; but, as every "receiver is as bad as a thief," this expedient amounts only to "setting a thief to watch a thief." That in the twelfth century,--an age of Cimmerian darkness, according to the Protestants,--a poor shepherd should have conceived the project of building a bridge over the Rhone; that he should have been prompted to this undertaking by motives of Christian charity, on observing how many were drowned in attempting the passage by boats; that he should have devoted his life to the collection of alms for his purpose;--all this might procure for St. Benezet more favour than he will ever meet with in our _dis_-enlightened country. I leave it to my reader to judge of my reasons for not saying _un_-enlightened. The mischief is, they made the poor man a saint, instead of knighting him, like Sir Richard Arkwright. A punster might have entitled him Pontifex Maximus; but this would have been still worse for his reputation. The Reverend Alban Butler, in his learned, discreet, and pious work, "The Lives of the Saints," relates, that the building of this bridge was attended by many miracles. Part of these may have been contrived to encourage those to the enterprise who would not have been moved by the single consideration of its utility; as the liberation of the Holy Sepulchre, and "Deus vult," roused those who would never have made a common effort to defend Christendom against the Saracen. In part also, these miracles may have been real, notwithstanding the bold assertion that miracles have ceased. This assertion may be easily made, while every fact proving the contrary is rejected with supercilious incredulity; but it is an assertion in its own nature incapable of proof: the denial of the possibility of miracles would be inconsequent in the mouths of those who, by affirming them to have ceased, admit them to have existed. These men are not Deo a secretis. Butler tells us also that, on occasion of part of the bridge falling down by the impetuosity of the waters, in 1669, nearly five hundred years after the death of St. Benezet, his body, which had been buried in a little chapel on the bridge, was taken up, and found entire, without the least sign of corruption: even the bowels were sound, and the colour of the eyes lively and sprightly, though the bars of iron around the coffin were much corroded by rust, on account of the dampness of the situation. Butler did not know that animal muscle is changed by moisture into a substance resembling spermaceti, as proved by the experiments of Lavoisier, and Sir George Gibbes. The substance is called by the French chymists _adipocire_. The philosopher will, I hope, allow his obligation to me for having attempted to account for one miracle in a natural manner. Let him say, "The man is reasonable, _quand même_."[37] The remains of the bridge of St. Benezet still bestride the eastern branch of the Rhone, and are an object of great picturesque beauty. The arches are very lofty: under the first of them, the great public road is now carried; a circumstance which seems to show that the river has formed for itself a narrower, it may be, a deeper bed. Inundations however are not unfrequent, particularly in the beginning of summer, on the melting of the snows of the Alps; and I am told at this time, December 1825, that there has lately been five feet depth of water in the town of Avignon. I have seen the water wash the walls of the city. The Rock, as it is called, of Avignon, has every appearance of having been separated by the Rhone from the hills on the other side of the river. How or when this separation was effected, is a question that might puzzle a writer of theories on the formation of the earth. If we can believe, what philosophers would readily enough believe were not the fact asserted in the Bible,--that the earth was at one time covered with water, even the tops of the mountains,--and if we can suppose also that currents existed in this deluge;--then, on the subsiding of the waters, these currents might meet with the summits and ridges of hills, and work and wear for themselves a passage, the waters of the deluge gradually retiring, but, in the mean time, sustaining the currents at the requisite height. But humility in Scriptural interpretation is recommended by the remark, that the very first word of Scripture, "In the beginning," is incomprehensible and inexplicable. On the southern slope of this rock is built the Palace of the Popes; as its roof is continued in one horizontal line, the height of the building at the southern extremity is enormous: its principal front is towards the west, overlooking a part of the city and the hills of Languedoc: it is now in a ruined and neglected state, as far as a building can be so which is still in use: part of it serves for a prison: another part is a caserne, of which the pope's chapel is the dormitory. Close upon the northern end of the palace is the cathedral; a church which, at the beginning of the revolution, was plundered of an immense quantity of silver and some gold plate, which was sent off to the national crucible at Paris; amongst other treasures was a silver bell of no very diminutive size. The tombs even were ransacked; a skull was brought to my house by my children's drawing-master, from which my younger son designed an admirable and edifying death's head. The model, I was assured, had been the cranium of a pope. They were beginning to repair this church, with the purpose of restoring it to its former destination. On one side of it is a little chapel with a dome, which served as the model for the dome of Ste. Geneviève. The copy is sufficiently exact. Behind the palace, on the east, rises a tower, which, from having been used as an ice-house, was called the _glacière_; and the glacière of Avignon is a name ever memorable in the annals of horror. From the top of this tower five hundred, according to those who exaggerate; thirty, according to those who extenuate,--of the principal inhabitants of the city, after receiving a stunning blow on the head, were thrown down on the ice within, and their bodies immediately covered with quick lime. Such was the vengeance of the people on those who, without trial, from the notoriety of the fact, were convicted of the crime of aristocracy. The Revolution had been quietly accomplished: the people declared that it was their will to unite themselves to France; sent a deputation to the national assembly; and cried "Vive le Roi." The vice-legate, who governed the city for the pope, addressed the people from his balcony; told them he had no force to oppose this their movement, that they had his prayers for their happiness, and that he would retire. This was all on his part. The national assembly accorded to the Avignonais their wish; and formed of this papal territory and that of Orange, (formerly a patrimony of the princes of that house,) the department of Vaucluse. The summit of the rock commands a very beautiful view. The eye traverses a fertile plain, bounded by the hills of the Venaissin, among which are distinguished those of the vallis clausa, where the far-famed fountain has its source: between the trees are caught glimpses of the Durance, which throws itself into the Rhone two miles below; almost under your feet, are seen the windings of the Rhone with its islands: on the opposite bank rises the château and little town of Villeneuve, surmounted by hills covered with the vine and the olive: immediately beneath, to the south, and west, lies Avignon, with its population of five and twenty thousand souls, which number still remained to it after massacres, confiscations, and proscriptions. By these revolutionary measures, it had suffered more perhaps than any other city in France except Lyons, the "ville affranchie" of the Convention. "How would you have us be gay?" said a noble to me: "we see every day, we live in the midst of the assassins of our relations, and the possessors of our property." Virgil describes his Jove as viewing, from Olympus' height, the earth, "hominumque labores:" the rock of Avignon is but one of many elevated spots from which we look down on the bounty of Providence and on the misery of man. The city contains a great many handsome hotels or family houses, but is not generally well-built; the streets, all but one,--the Rue Calade,--are narrow: the pavement is of small sharp-pointed pebbles. Here is a public library, formed out of the libraries of the suppressed convents; a Museum, in which, among other objects, a valuable collection of coins deserves particular mention, as containing some very rare specimens of the coins of the Greek cities anciently founded in this part of France. There is also annexed to the Museum a small botanical garden. Here is a good infirmary or hospital for the sick. A large convent has been turned into a _succursal_ or subsidiary house to the invalids at Paris, insufficient to receive the increased number of disabled soldiers. The seven parishes of Avignon have been revolutionized into four, with churches not large enough for the congregations. I entered a fine Pantheon-like building, and found it to be a church, with vast Ionic columns supporting large galleries; the whole capable of containing two thousand people: it was used as a manufactory of saltpetre. The Jesuits' college is become a _collège royal_: thus it retains its destination as a place of instruction; but its handsome church has been spoiled by laying a floor across it at mid-height: for this there was no reason, but that an administrator thought, as my informant said, that it was a clever thing to cheat the Almighty of a church, _escamoter une église au bon Dieu_. The walls of the town are particularly well-built and handsome, if walls can ever be handsome: they are of the same sort of stone as the palace, and it is said that each contains precisely the same quantity of stone. They both date from the fourteenth century, when the popes sat, as the phrase is, at Avignon. FOOTNOTES: [37] Notwithstanding. CHAP. X. Thirty English families, it was calculated, were settled, before the Revolution, in Avignon and its territory. The grandson of James II. had lived here for some time. I used to enter, with some little feeling of Jacobitical enthusiasm, the house of the Marquise D. which he had inhabited. The Pretender was accompanied by some who "thought his pretensions well-founded:" others were attracted by the sort of court, held here by the vice legate, and by the attentions which it was then the usage of the court of Rome to pay to foreigners, particularly to the English. It was convenient also that a war between England and France did not affect a subject of the former country at Avignon. The intercourse betwixt this city and Italy had caused more attention to be paid to literature and the fine arts than is usual in provincial towns: that these flourished here, the names of Vernet, Flechier, Poole, and others bear honourable testimony. Avignon was now become French, and as such, on a par with other French towns. I chose it as a place in which to live for a few years, and superintend the education of my children: it was in my way to Italy, my ulterior object. I determined on the south of France on account of the health of Mrs. ----, who, though subject to violent coughs, which had more than once threatened her life, has not suffered from them since we have been to the southward of Lyons. But the wounds inflicted by the Revolution, and during the reign of terror, were hardly stanched; the recollection of the evils they had endured was still recent,--still afflicted the spirits of those who formed the first class of society at Avignon. I have already mentioned the feeling with which one of them expressed himself on this subject. The most fortunate amongst them,--at least he told me he so considered himself,--was the Marquis ----, who, after being obliged to fly and absent himself for fifteen years, recovered his estate with the loss only of the rents during those years. Almost every lady, at that time old enough to have been an object of persecution, had been put in prison, and there, with her companions, had discussed the question whether the guillotine was an easy mode of death. One of them said to me, "You see us _tristes_; but sometimes we forget ourselves, and then _le caractère national perce_."[38] In 1795, almost every large house in Avignon bore on its walls a notice,--"Propriété nationale à vendre;"[39] and even houses not confiscated, as well as other property, were sold to relieve the immediate distress of their owners. A house, which I considered as the best in the town, which had been but lately built at an expense of two hundred thousand francs, was sold for thirty thousand to the father of my banker: its noble proprietor gave as a reason for acceding to so disproportionate a bargain, that his wife and daughter had nothing to eat. Great wealth was a crime as well as royalism or nobility. Two persons, in authority at Avignon during the reign of terror, were making out a list of emigrants: a third was present, who, having nothing else to do, was holding the candle to the two municipal revolutionists. "Shall we set _him_ down in the list?" whispered one of them to the other, meaning the third, the candle-holder.--"Ce seroit un peu trop fort, puisqu'il est présent."[40]--"Qu' importe? il n'osera pas réclamer, et il est riche."[41] Danton, who by the by, was minister of _justice_, said "La révolution est une mine qu'il faut exploiter."[42] A revolutionary tribunal held its permanent sitting at Orange, and every day carts full of victims were sent off thither from Avignon. My friend the Marquise ---- was then a child of six years old; a plan was laid to take her in the cart and throw her into the Rhone by the way: she could not be convicted of _incivisme_, but she was an heiress. The plot was defeated by her _bonne_ or nurse-maid, who took care that the child should be out of the way at the time of the departure of the cart. The trials at Orange were the pleasantest scenes imaginable. "Tu n'es pas royaliste? Tu n' as pas conspiré contre l'état?"[43] or some such questions, in an ironical tone, decided the fate of the prisoner. "Voilà des hommes qui tranchent sur tout,"[44] said I to my narrator. He forgave the pun. An elderly woman,--her understanding childish through age, and who was deaf withal,--was put in accusation with her son. "Tu as pleuré la mort du roi,"[45] said the judges to the mother, charging her also with having put on mourning on the occasion. "O yes," said the old woman, "I was very sorry for the king, poor, dear, good man; and I put on a black silk apron and a black ribbon round my cap." The judges, seeing the people inclined by this simplicity to a sentiment of compassion, advanced to something more serious. "Tu as conspiré contre l'état."[46] Here the son put himself forward: "Messieurs, do what you will with me; but my mother--you see her imbecillity; she is deaf: how can she have conspired against the state?" "Elle est sourde?" said the judge: "écris, greffier, qu'elle a conspiré sourdement contre l'état."[47] This pun is not to be forgiven. Arrived at the place of execution, the mother, seeing the assembled crowd, asked her son the meaning of it; whether it was a fair, or some _fête_. He obtained as a favour from the executioner, that his mother might be the first to suffer death. A noble had a conversation with a man who, though known as one of the chief assassins of that æra, lived quietly at Avignon. "I should imagine that, since you have failed of your purpose, you must feel some regret at having uselessly shed so much blood."--"Au contraire, our regret is that we did not shed more: mais ce sera pour une autre fois."[48] In expectation of this _autre fois_, some of the few nobles to whom any wealth was left were making up a purse in readiness for a second emigration:--let it be remembered this was in the year 1818. Others of them lived economically, indifferent as to the consideration in which they might be held after so many mortifications; or disgusted with the law of equal partition of inheritance, which reduced all their children to mediocrity of wealth,--an evil they wished to remedy by their savings. I recollect, in passing, that I was well acquainted with a noble, an aristocrat, who detested every act of the constituent assembly, but thought this law of _partage_ perfectly just and reasonable: he was a younger brother. From all that has preceded, it will be inferred that the public mind at Avignon was not in a state to abandon itself unreservedly to the pleasures of society. Yet fêtes were occasionally given; balls, with, now and then, a petit souper, were not uncommon during carnival; and every evening might be passed in company, in the salon of some lady who had taken her day of the week for receiving. At these parties cards were supplied, but paid for by those who used them, at a price which, though moderate, covered the expense both of cards and wax candles. This practice, pretty well established in England, was defended by the example of the court, where it is permitted. We could not do better than follow the practice of the court. Ordinarily no refreshments were given: one conscientious lady, however, told her friends that her surplus card-money enabled her to treat them with ices and petits gâteaux. No invitation was sent after the first notice, which was considered as good so long as the weekly reception should continue. Besides these reunions, to which all the acquaintance of the mistress of the house were of course admitted, there were sometimes parties by invitation, when the refreshments were sufficient and decorous. I endeavoured to set the fashion of tea, and gave a _thé_, as much in conformity, as to the mode of it, with the notions of the country, as my imagination could make it out. A large table, covered with a cloth as at dinner time, bore upon it not only the tea equipage, with its usual accompaniments of tartines and toast, but also fruits, and cakes, and an immense round flat tart, showing preserve through a gridiron of pastry, with wine and syrups for those whom tea would deprive of sleep. The Marquise ---- followed my example, and gave a _thé_, of which she condescended to ask my opinion: I told her, that in order that the tea should be good, it was indispensable that the water should be not only hot, but boiling; excusing at the same time the boldness of my counsel, on the ground that it was not obtruded, but demanded. She tried again, and succeeded to admiration. Tea is now in pretty general use at evening parties in the north of France. While my elder children even were yet too young to bear their part in soirées, I contented myself with entertaining, now and then, a few Messieurs at dinner, after consulting a friend on the enterprise, with a declaration that I could not invite ladies, as their taste would require more research and delicacy of preparation than I could hope to arrive at. He admitted the difficulty would be lessened by this restriction however ungallant, and proceeded to tell me, that a dinner invariably begins by soup and bouilli: as this latter however must be insipid if the the soup is good, it is well to accompany it by a sausage, or some high-tasted meat: then come the entremets, then the rôti with its salad: after which, said he, "tout naturellement on fait monter le poisson."[49] Nothing could appear to me more unnatural than fish after meat; but I was in such a complaisant disposition, that I agreed to every thing. The douceurs terminate the repast, succeeded by the dessert. So many English travel in France, and so many write their travels, that these matters are well known: the repetition may be endured as a part of a family history; I speak of them with a due sense of their importance: ----------qualia vincant Pythagoram, Anytique reum, doctumque Platona. Having discovered what might be considered as a good French dinner, en province, I set to work, not neglecting the improvements suggested by an English education, by no means so useless, on this head, as the French imagine. It will be seen, that the arbitrary parts of a French dinner are the made dishes and the sweets: the bouilli and rôti are obligatory; the former because you are hungry, the latter, lest you should still be so. I approve of the order in which the fish appears, having seen many persons choke themselves in England by eating of it with an appetite as yet unsatiated. Even to the fried fish I ventured, contrary to usage, to add a sauce, (in a sauce-boat be it well understood,) which those who partook of it admitted to be an improvement. A stuffed turkey, with sausage balls, was allowed to be better than a dry rôti: a hare, with a pudding and currant jelly, was declared to be delicious. I obtained permission to serve the cheese, as a thing of mauvaise odeur, by itself, recalling only the salad, instead of making it a part of the dessert. By these means, and by the help of stuffed loins of mutton, roasted tongues, or boiled, with but little flavour of salt, new college puddings, and other unknown luxuries too tedious to mention, (a phrase I ought to have employed long ago,) I have the patriotic consolation of thinking that I gave a favourable idea of the English kitchen, which, in defiance of popular opinion, I affirm to be better than the French, though their artists in this line are superior. The chief differences are, that the French make prepared and high-seasoned dishes of their vegetables, and think it barbarous to eat them, au naturel, along with their meat; and that they will not believe that their meat contains any juice, or gravy, or flavour, till they have extracted it by culinary process, and laid it beside the meat in the dish. Indeed their climate, which provides for them so many excellent things, refuses them pasture to fatten beef; but they have fine artificial grasses and hay: of every other object of gourmandise, except fat beef, they have all that the most voracious, or the most delicate appetite can demand. An invitation to dinner is always taken au pied de la lettre; it never trenches on the evening parties;--all retire immediately after coffee. Nothing can be more easy than the entrance into society in a provincial town in France: you have only to send billets of invitation, taking care first to make a general visit to all whom you invite; which visit is returned by those who mean to accept that or any future invitation. In the second winter of my residence, we took an evening for weekly reception, beginning by an invitation to a ball. Dancing was, for this time, prevented by the arrival of the news of the death of King George III. On occasion of another ball, I observed that those who, from whatever reason, had been prevented from assisting at the ball, took particular care to present themselves at the following weekly soirée, when, as on other soirées, no refreshments were given, as we thought it right to conform to the usage of the place. Indeed this mode of visiting has its advantages: the visited is thus the obliged party; insomuch that those, who themselves do not receive, make no scruple of repeating their visits. Those who do thus receive, expect of course to be visited in their turn. It is perhaps in consequence of this mode of receiving, that the custom is established, that the newly-arrived shall make the first _call_. However agreeable it might be to a stranger to be invited to cards and conversation only, the inhabitants of a town cannot know that it would be agreeable, till they are, by implication, told so. One exception to the rule confirms my opinion of its origin. The Duc--, who, in my first winter, gave a ball every week, called on me to invite my family. The rule was, nevertheless, so far observed, that the Duchesse did not call till after we had accepted the invitation. The practice, from whatever it may arise, is very embarrassing to the mauvaise honte of an Englishman: this may easily be surmounted, when it is perceived that the first visit is always considered as a polite attention. But the only serious _social_ embarrassment I experienced, arose from my imperfect use of the language: I had learned French when a boy; when I left England I had long read it, almost as easily as English; arrived in France, I found I had two studies to perform, two difficulties to encounter; to make myself understood, and to understand: the first I could do indifferently well; but I passed a twelvemonth in France before I could understand what was said by the men, and two years before I could understand what was said by the ladies. I found that not to understand was more disadvantageous than not to be understood; since those who endured my bad French with patience were, very naturally, displeased on discovering that they had been throwing away their words on one who could not fully comprehend their meaning. I seriously advise every Englishman who purposes to establish his family for some years in France, if he is not competent to follow a conversation in the language of that country, to go thither first himself alone, and establish himself for a few months in French society: he will thus make more progress in a month, than afterwards, with his family, in a year: for the frequent use of an old language indisposes the organs of speech to the acquisition of a new one. The ears too require their lesson. I will also repeat the counsel given to me by a friend, a _détenu_, whose son, at the age of seventeen, spoke English like a foreigner; it was, constantly to talk English in the family. Notwithstanding my exact compliance with this advice, my youngest child, from having learned three languages before entering her tenth year, speaks English less perfectly than the others: she left England when but three years old, and, a year after, said, somewhat boastingly, "J'ai oublié mon Anglois." In truth, seven or eight years absence has produced in all the family some little forgetfulness of our native tongue; nay, I fear that my reader may find some Gallicisms in the writing of one, who did not quit his native land till far advanced in the fiftieth year of his age. No parent will be content that his children should forget their native language: whether it may be necessary, in order to avoid this inconvenience, to enjoin the use of it within the family, will depend on circumstances, on the age of the children, on the length of the intended stay or residence abroad. The means will, so far forth, hinder and delay the attainment of the language of the country, without which both improvement and amusement are utterly hopeless, as social intercourse is impossible. The French are not the less impatient of bad French, on account of the imperturbable politeness with which they hear it. FOOTNOTES: [38] The national character pierces through. [39] National property to be sold. [40] That would be a little too bad since he is here present. [41] What does it signify? he will not dare to appeal, and he is rich. [42] The revolution is a mine that must be worked. [43] Thou art not a royalist? Thou hast not conspired against the state? [44] See the men who cut through every thing. [45] Thou hast wept for the death of the king. [46] Thou hast conspired against the state. [47] She is deaf?--write, clerk, that she has conspired in a secret way against the state. [48] But that will be for another time. [49] The fish is served quite naturally. CHAP. XI. I found a very good drawing-master at Avignon, an élève of David, one who had studied in Italy, an intelligent man; his conversation pleased and instructed me. I had much difficulty to meet with a master of the French language: no one here wanted to learn French; they were contented with such as they talked: there was no demand for institutors in this branch of education. At last I found a professor of the royal college, an ingenious man, but utterly unpractised in the art of teaching French, which he might suppose "came by nature;" and being besides unacquainted with English, he was unable to explain to his scholars of my family, any rules of grammar, whether general or particular. That I may dismiss him with honour in this my mention of him, I will recite an epigram of his composition at the beginning of the Revolution: O liberté chérie! en vain je te poursuis: Par tout je vois ton arbre, et nulle part tes fruits.[50] Of dancing-masters and music-masters I need not speak; their art is at the end of their fingers or of their toes. I had some trouble in managing the temper of the professor of the first of these arts, who was a Gascon; and the natural pride of the professor of music, who was a noble: but, by the help of some tact united with good-will, I obtained my end, which was, that they should depart contented. The climate did not permit dancing lessons to be taken, except in the winter. I do not advise any one, habituated to the climate of England, and in good health, to come abroad for the sake of climate. Charles II. was certainly right when he said, one may in England be out of doors more days in the year, and more hours in the day, than in any other country. I quoted this saying to a friend, who replied, "Mais c'est toujours en souffrant;"[51] and, being accustomed to heat, he reckoned all suffering from that cause as nothing: he had been in England, and recollected how his nose was bitten, and his fingers benumbed by the frost. A friend at Avignon called on me in the middle of the day, having crept along the shady side of the streets. It is there the custom in summer to keep the windows shut during the heat of the day. I complained to my visitant of this practice, as depriving one of air when gasping for it. "Mais que voulez-vous? l'air est en feu."[52] I put the thermometer out at a north window, and it rose two degrees. During the greatest heat of the hot summer of 1820, I observed the thermometer pretty regularly at midnight, and found it to stand at 80 Fahrenheit. One may rise early, and enjoy the coolness of the morning: true; but for this end it is necessary to go to bed early, and be deprived of the coolness of the evening. I knew, however, one man who had the good-sense and resolution to dispose of his day during summer in the following manner: he went to bed at midnight, rose at four in the morning, took his exercise, transacted his affairs, eat his déjeuné à la fourchette, as may be supposed, with a good appetite, and went to bed again at mid-day: at four p. m. he rose again, made his toilette, eat his dinner, and went into society, till the end of the second of the two days which he thus contrived to form out of twenty-four hours. I have been told that such is the practice of the English in the East Indies. The plague of bugs may be avoided by care and cleanliness: the defence against gnats is a gause net surrounding the bed; but wo be to those who find one or more gnats enclosed within the net itself, as happens not unfrequently from the carelessness of the femme de chambre: the hum of the insect, and the dread of his attack, deprive you of sleep: there is no remedy but to wait till he settles upon the face; and then, while he is busy with his first bite, with an expectant and prepared hand to crush him. Flies are also very troublesome in these envied regions of the south; but flies are not like those Cassiuses, the gnats;--"they sleep o'nights." The _bise_ or north wind, coming from the frozen Alps, following the course of the Rhone, and spreading wide to right and left, is very delightful and refreshing during the summer at Avignon: but, in the winter, it penetrates even to the marrow of the bones, and sometimes, for several days together, blows with such violence, that people are afraid to walk the streets, lest they should be knocked on the head by falling tiles or chimneys. This _bise_ is supposed to render the climate healthy: the Avignonais have a proverb:--"Avenio ventosa; si ventosa, fastidiosa; si non ventosa, venenosa." How far it is "venenosa," I have but too much reason to know. The Rhone is sometimes frozen over at Avignon: I have seen people walk across it on the ice. The cold during part of the winter is sometimes greater than that of Paris; and I have seen the cold of the _hyver moyen_[53] of Paris marked, on a French thermometer, as two degrees of Reaumur lower, that is stronger, than the cold of the _hyver moyen_ of London. All the world knows that in summer it is much hotter at Paris than at London: the vine bears witness to it; but both heat and cold are tempered to England by passing over the sea. To sum up all that I have to say at present on the subject of climate, I believe lat. 45, half way between the pole and the equator, to be, all other circumstances being equal, the best of the climes that are "mortalibus ægris Munere concessæ Divôm." Habit reconciles both to cold and heat. One consideration may not be unimportant to families that wish to economize: cold is costly. Returning into France from Italy, I find the difference between the rent of a house in Naples and that of a house in a country town, to be filled up by the expense of firing; and, at the beginning of my first winter, am almost ruined in manteaus, great coats, pelisses, blankets, and other flannels. A country town in France is better supplied with society than a country town in England, inasmuch as the French country gentry do not disdain to live in a country town. All of them have an hotel, an apartment, or at least a _pied à terre_, as they called it, in the largest country town in their neighbourhood, and resort thither during the winter. From the time of the wheat harvest, which in the south is towards the end of June, till the time for planting is ended, they not only live, but are very busy in the country. The practice of letting land for the half of the produce compels them to be on the spot to take charge of their own share: but, in bad weather, and during the long evenings, they seek shelter in the town. Here the members of the ancient noblesse, now without fortune, without privilege, still viewed by the many with sentiments of political dislike,--maintain their superiority over men, their equals in moral honesty, more wealthy and better instructed than themselves. And how do they maintain it? By manners. It is admirable to see with what grace and ease, without arrogating any thing to themselves or derogating from others, without art or design,--they assert their dignity, and contrive that it be recognised by those with whom they have to do. Some of those who have not the advantage, if such it may be called, of noble birth, endeavour to imitate, while others affect to despise, these manners, which throw such a charm over society; but it is impossible to despise, and very difficult to imitate them: they seem to result from an early, an almost perpetual consciousness of self-importance, corrected by a constant intercourse with others entitled to equal respect and deference. The manners of military men, more frank, and open, and manly than those of the noblesse, want the polish attained by the latter: for military men, while they derive confidence from the glory of their profession, are chiefly conversant with those whom they command or obey. "The depôt of good manners is to be found with the nobles of ancient families," said one of them to me. Before the revolution there were in France twenty-seven thousand families of the noblesse. By the charte the nobles of imperial creation preserve their titles, the ancient nobles resume theirs. Of titles, however, very little use is made in conversation; the little particle _de_ answers all demands of noble self-love; and even a Duc or Duchesse is contented to be addressed, in familiar parlance, as Monsieur de ---- or Madame de ----. This little particle _de_ multiplies itself with astonishing rapidity, like the English addition Esq.; and the act by which it is assumed is no more contested in France, than that which, with us, niches a man of merit between knight and gentleman. Three or four _de_ were brought into the world at Avignon, during my stay there. What shows the practice of unauthorised assumption of the _de_ to be by no means so novel as its censurers pretended, is, that I found the _de_ sometimes to precede names which signified trades: of these there are many in all countries; whereas the _de_ ought only to indicate the _terre_, or estate, like the d'Igby of my maternal ancestors, and can with propriety be used for no other purpose. But the ambition of nominal distinction was not always thus cheaply to be gratified, if I may believe the feeling lament of an old noble, that is a noble of old family, "Such an one fancies, some fine morning, that he is a count or marquis: he calls himself so: the world laughs."--"But the title passes current?" A shrug of the shoulders gave me to understand that the subject was too distressing to be further pursued. O chivalry, thou act fallen on grievous,--on money-loving times! The title of Baronet is insignificant, having its origin too in a paltry sum of money paid to a needy king. The list (for it is not an order,) contains names that do honour to it: yet I heard in my youth a young man of one of the first families in Ireland, afterwards Marquess of ----, talk peevishly of "a parcel of d----d baronets." In endeavouring to be superior to their equals, or equal to their superiors, they undertake a task which must make them unacceptable to both parties. The ancient noblesse of France has neither feudal rights nor political power; but it has its origin in what may be called the heroic ages of Europe: the peerage of France must look up to the nobles with respect; and the people, that it may honour them, asks only to rank them among its friends. It is a pity that the nobles should be generally reproached with want of instruction: many of them plead in excuse that they are _enfans de la revolution_, born at a time when their education was of necessity neglected. I mentioned this excuse to an avocat. "Bah! they well know that their fathers were as ignorant as themselves." The avocat's argument was not conclusive; the nobles of the present day might, but for the unsettled time of their youth, have partaken of the gradual improvement in knowledge which pervades all classes; and the remark, "je suis meilleur gentilhomme que mon père, parceque j'ai une génération de plus,"[54] might have applied to other advantages than that of counting one generation more. The French nobles have now no longer that which, according to Juvenal, makes ignorance tolerable: let us hope they will avail themselves of their diminished wealth to acquire that learning, which, according to the proverb, though I do not believe it, is better than house and land. The practice of letting farms to a _métayer_, who retains a share of the produce, and pays his rent with the remainder, is resorted to and continued from necessity. The farmer has not capital enough to stock a farm. If the proprietor, after having made the necessary advances for the occupation of the land, were to let the whole for a money rent, the farmer would soon be in arrears, and would end by running away. _Métairie_ I suppose to be derived from the Italian _metá_, which signifies _half_. The landlord's share is however not always in this proportion: on fertile soils, and on account of rich products, he receives more than where more labour is required to reap an equal or less benefit. I believe the half to be the minimum. After having passed through nearly the whole length of Europe, with a taste prepared by a youth passed, as Gibbon says, "in port and prejudice;" and in the same college too, I venture to assert, that wine is good in proportion as the country in which it is produced is near the all-enlivening sun. The wine of Champagne, which cannot remain for a minute and a half in the glass without growing flat; that of Burgundy, which is hardly ever found but in an acid state; that of Bordeaux, "claret for boys;"--not any one of these wines is to be compared (not for strength only, but for flavour also,) to the wines of the Rhone and of Provence. Such is my opinion: experto credat who will. It may amuse my reader to learn that he may perhaps have been drinking French wine, when he little suspected that it lay concealed in "humble port." A trade, which in its first stage is not contraband, whatever it may be in its second, is carried on between the French shores of the Mediterranean and Portugal: wines are shipped off to Oporto, which, by the help of brandy and other manipulation, become good port wine for the London market. I was told by a négociant, an intelligent man, not a wine-merchant, that it was the wish of the wine-growers of France, that wine imported into England should pay a duty _ad valorem_, on the price, not on the quantity. He did not expect that the English government should be content to receive a less amount of duty on the same quantity of wine, the mean quality supposed the same: but he asserted that wines of inferior quality, which could not be imported in the face of the duty per gallon, would then find their way; that the consumption of wine would be much increased; and the English government, as well as the French wine-dealer and proprietor of vineyards, would both be benefited. As fiscal regulations have spoiled our malt liquor, it would be but fair to allow to those who are now ruining their health with rum and water, the pleasure of drinking sometimes a bottle of small French wine. What? A bottle of Burgundy at a farmer's ordinary? Gentlemen travellers drinking claret? So much are men the slaves of habit, that the supposition appears extravagant; and, after a twelvemonth, the thing itself would be no more astonishing than it is now in France. The French, who have seen the atmosphere of smoke in which London is enveloped, and the sea-coal pouring its volumes of smoke up the chimney, have disseminated throughout France a certain horror of coal fires. There are, near Lyons, mines of coal of a quality superior to any I have yet seen, like the Wednesbury, but better. I had some difficulty in making the blacksmith comprehend what ought to be the form of such machines as grate, poker, fender. "Things by their name I call;" though to my blacksmith I was obliged to use every sort of periphrasis. _My_ poker was made with a hook at the end of it; the fender had a handle to it; the bars of the grate were too small and too near each other. The hook of the poker was soon straightened in the fire: of the fender handle I was contented to declare, "il n'y a pas de mal à cela:"[55] as the bars of my grate, though near, were not thick; they did not intercept more heat than usual. Taking the precaution to have a wood fire in my second salon, I ventured to invite my friends to see my fire de charbon de terre. They were much surprised and pleased. "Il n'y a pas de mauvaise odeur: ce feu se fait respecter: quelle chaleur!"[56] The combined advantages of greater heat and less cost, (for the coal fire was maintained at about half the expense of a wood fire,) procured imitators. The general commanding the department had a grate set up: the smith made it after his own faulty model, declaring, no doubt, that it was _à l'Anglaise_: the general was, however, well satisfied, telling me that the coal fire warmed the three rooms of his apartment as well as a wood fire in each and every one of them. The woods have been especially ravaged during an æra of insecure possession; and fire-wood, always an expensive article, is generally, throughout France, become dearer than formerly, except in the neighbourhood of great forests. I will endeavour to enable any one to judge how far it may be worth his while to come to reside in France from motives of economy. With his motives for being economical I have nothing to do: any one may be economical at home who pleases; but it does not please some people to be economical at home: others wish to have more for the same money. The French are sometimes puzzled to make out why the English come abroad; perhaps the English are sometimes equally puzzled themselves: but, with reference to economy, sometimes the English seem to them to be travelling for the sake of spending money; sometimes to be staying in France for the purpose of saving it: the riches as well as the high prices of England are exaggerated; the latter to a degree that would make the riches to be merely nominal: then, the difference between French and English prices is supposed to be so great, that the saving, by living in France, must be enormous. Many English have, at first, no clearer notions than the French on these subjects. The price of almost every article, the produce of agricultural or manufacturing industry, has been increased one-third, some say two-fifths, in France since the beginning of the Revolution: the taxes have been trebled. We know that, within the last thirty years, prices and taxes have been augmented in England at about the same rates; so that, on both sides of the water, the proportion has been preserved: but the English knew very little of France during the war; whereas the French knew England by their emigrants, who reported truly the high prices then prevalent: thus some unsettled or erroneous opinions on domestic economy may be accounted for. I left England while paper currency was still in _force_, and before prices were lowered as since they have been: my estimate must be corrected accordingly. The result of between three and four years experience is, that about one-sixth is saved by living, not in Paris, but in a provincial town in France, or that a franc will go as far as a shilling. Set against this saving the expenses of the journey, and the saving will not be great to those who do not retrench in their mode of life, but live in France in the same style as at home. The exchange on bills drawn on England may be favourable; but some little money sticks in every hand through which money passes, which balances this advantage. House-rent is higher in France than in England; fuel much dearer: some manufactured articles, as woollen cloth for coats, and linen or cotton for shirts, are equally dear: colonial produce, as sugar and coffee, is of a variable price, but not much cheaper: tea is cheaper, as the Americans supply it, or England with a remission of the duty. But there are no assessed taxes, no poor-rates: provisions I found to be cheaper by about one-third than I had left them in England; and my younger children, instead of small beer, with half a glass of wine each after dinner, now drank wine, with discretion indeed, but at discretion. The more numerous my family, the greater was the advantage to me of this diminution of the daily expense of food. Yet I calculate that at the end of forty-two months, including what the journey to Avignon cost me, and the difference between the price at which my furniture was bought, and that at which it was sold,--I had spent, within one twentieth, as much as it would have cost me to live in my county town in England with the the same establishment and in the same manner. The smaller the income annually expended, the greater in proportion will be the saving; because it is chiefly on the necessary articles of living, that expense is spared; but a man of large, or even of moderate fortune, will hardly think it worth his while to dwell many years in a foreign country merely for the sake of saving five pounds in a hundred. The less the distance to which he travels, and the longer his stay; the more he becomes acquainted with the mode of dealing, and learns what are just prices;--the greater proportionably will be the savings of the economizing resident. A saving of five per cent is at least not a loss. Wise men should not entertain extravagant expectations, and prudent men should know what they are about to undertake. Those who are neither wise nor prudent had better stay at home: I do not write for such; but to give to family men such advice as I found no one capable of giving me; but which, through much toil and cost and peril, I had obtained the faculty of offering to others. FOOTNOTES: [50] O cherished liberty! in vain I follow after thee: I see thy _tree_ every where, and thy fruits no where. [51] But it is in suffering continually. [52] But what would you have? the air is on fire. [53] A mean or medium winter. [54] I am a better gentleman than my father, because I have one generation more. [55] There is no harm in that. [56] There is no bad smell. This fire makes itself respected. What a heat! CHAP. XII. Excepting only Rome and its immediate neighbourhood, no part of Italy can exhibit so many remains of Roman antiquity as are to be found within a short distance of Avignon. The Romans seem to have united Provence to Italy, as the French have since united Piedmont to France. Our English travellers, who, according to the plan mentioned in the first chapter, pass one summer in going to Italy and another in returning from it, will do well to make Avignon their head quarters for some time, and visit the curiosities around. There is Nismes with the Pont du Gard, Arles, St. Remy, Orange, already mentioned, and other places. There is also the far-famed fountain of Vaucluse. A commission of antiquarian research is established within the department; at Nismes also much attention is paid to these objects, and with good reason; for no town in Europe, Rome excepted, possesses such precious remains. In the beginning of the month of September of my second year, I hired a coach with three horses again, (for no god of them all is so fond of an uneven number as these coach-masters,) and, with part of my family, took the road to Vaucluse. It passes first over a fertile alluvial plain, formed, in remote ages, by the Rhone and Durance when they overflowed their banks, as the Oby and Tobol do now. Then we traversed a country of corn, wine, and oil, and descended to Lisle, a little town on the Sorgues, the river of Vaucluse, from whose fountain it is distant about four miles. For three of these four miles as far as the village, we were able to proceed in our carriage; but, from this point, the Naiad requires to be reverentially approached on foot. We ascended a gentle steep, the Sorgues on our right-hand,--a stream, which, even here, so near its head, has force to turn several mills that harmonise well with the landscape. Above the mills it began to assume more and more a torrent-like appearance; the rocks approached nearer on each side, and confined us within a still closer valley. Whither has the nymph of the stream retired? At length the termination of the valley appeared before us; a lofty curtain of rock, at half the height of which was seen a wide and dusky arch, overshadowed by a fig-tree growing out of the precipice above. Over a shelving rock, at the foot of this arch, the water throws itself. But there was at this time no cascade; the fountain was more than ordinarily low; streams gushed through fissures at the foot and sides of the rock below the arch, and indicated their source. The shelf or lip, at the mouth of the cavern, forms a natural bridge over these streams: we ascended to this shelf, and went down into the cavern a considerable depth before we arrived at the water: here, a rock projecting into the water prevented us from going into a second cavern; but we could see, (for the opening above afforded sufficient light,) that this second cavern was the last. I thought it very fortunate that the fountain was so low: had it been full, we should have seen a water-fall; but I had now seen the Helicon of Petrarch,--had penetrated to the source of his inspiration, ------atque sacri libamina palleo fontis, as was written by a young man of genius at Oxford, in my time, whose name I do not remember, though I have not forgotten this striking and beautiful expression. In sober sadness, I think it an advantage to understand the nature and situation of the fountain better than I should have done had I seen only a picturesque cascade. I do not believe the immediate source of the fountain to be within the cavern, but that its waters are supplied in subterranean courses by the surrounding country: this is proved, I think, by their quantity being so much affected by rain or drought. St. Winifred's well at Holywell, in Flintshire,--a fountain as copious as that of the Sorgues,--is not at all increased or diminished by any change of the seasons. We loitered for two hours on the bank of the tumbling torrent, sat under the shade of walnut trees, and eat of their fallen fruit; drank water from the fountain, talked about Petrarch and Laura, and refused, from incredulity, and on account of the heat of the sun, to mount a hill to a house which, we were assured, had been inhabited by the bard. At the village of Vaucluse, we took into our carriage some delicious grapes, and returned to Lisle, where we dined on eels and trout, the boasted fare of the place, prepared in three several ways. As the landlord at Lisle is said sometimes to over-charge, I will do his reputation the justice to observe that, for a déjeuné à la fourchette, and dinner for five persons, with good vin du pays, he demanded twenty-five francs,--perhaps ten sous a head too much. We got into our coach as the sun set and the moon rose, and our three horses took us back to Avignon in two hours. In the very heart and centre of the romantic scenery of the Vallis Clausa, a little to the right of the cavern out of which issues the fountain, on the ledge over which it falls, is stuck a mean ugly pillar, put there by somebody to commemorate something. I mention this pillar only in the hope that good taste will command its demolition. Even if it were fine and rare, it would be there misplaced: "fortasse cupressum scis simulare," but what has that to do with a shipwreck? My younger son had accompanied to Vaucluse the lady whose visit of fifteen days had so much astonished the Avignonais a few months before. Our excursion thither was made under the conduct of my elder son, and was rendered more agreeable by his frank manners and cheerful attentions. As the fate of this young man, now in his nineteenth year, is the occurrence the most important to me, and, I am persuaded, the subject most interesting to my readers in the contents of this narrative,--I will give some account of the infancy of this son, that he may be introduced to their acquaintance, and the last scene of his life in some sort prepared for. Alas! within two years, on the anniversary of our journey to Vaucluse, the delirium of his fever deprived me for the remainder of my life of the comfort of his society, excepting only one short and consoling conversation immediately before his death. I trust, in the divine mercy, to rejoin him in the abodes of the just. His birth was announced to me at three o'clock in the morning of the 5th of May 1801. In anxious expectation of this news I had forborn to retire to rest. It was still necessary for me to wait some little time before I could be admitted to see my first-born. I then lived at Bath, in the west wing of Lansdown Crescent: behind each house of this building is a long strip of garden, of the breadth of the house. In the tumult of new affections I went out into my garden: the twilight of the morning was visible: I offered to God this child, who, by the ancient law, would have been consecrated to him, to serve at the altar, if such were the divine will; praying that, in whatever state, he might so live as to secure his own salvation, and contribute to the edification of others: that if he were not to fulfil this only worthy purpose of existence, he might now die in infancy; but that rather his days might be prolonged, if that were to the glory of God, and the increase of his own merit and reward. My prayer was heard: I returned into the house, and gave a father's blessing to the stranger. He received in baptism the names Henry Kenelm; the former adopted in his family for the last four generations, the latter derived from my maternal grandfather. His sponsors were Sir Thomas Fletewood, the last of an ancient and pious family of Cheshire; and his lady, afterwards married to the Count St. Martin de Front, Sardinian ambassador at London. To her it is no doubt a source of Christian consolation to know, even in this life, that her godson fulfilled the engagement contracted in his name. They who have attentively observed the early years of children must be convinced that each and every one of them is born with a distinct and individual character. Two men of fifty, "stained with the variation of each soil," will differ from each other in manners and opinions more than two children of the same family: but two children of the same family will, in character, differ from each other as much as two men of fifty. Pascal suggests a doubt whether, as custom is called a second nature, nature itself may not be a former custom. This profound thought leads to the question whether human souls have existed previously to their imprisonment in this "body of our humiliation." That they have so existed I think extremely probable for many very cogent reasons: it is an opinion which I could defend, merely as an opinion, by many powerful arguments. I am contented "not to be wise beyond what is written." Yet it is written that, when the disciples asked our Lord, "Did this man sin or his parents, that he was born blind?" our Lord, without reproving the supposition that the man might have sinned before his birth, simply answered, "Neither did this man sin, nor his parents." Henry Kenelm manifested, as early as the natural character can be manifested, a proud, impetuous, obstinate, angry temper: that he wanted any thing was, with him, a reason why he should have it; that any other child was younger or weaker than himself, entitled him, as he thought, to domineer. He had also the good qualities usually opposed to these faults in the same character; he was generous, grateful, confiding, compassionate. As no one, in so short a life, ever more completely subdued than he did the faults of his natural temper, I record them for the sake of doing homage to that religion by the aid of which he was enabled to correct them. His understanding was quick and lively, and he learned readily and with pleasure. A cause of hindrance and delay that occurred to him in learning to read shall here be mentioned as a caution to parents, institutors, and governesses. To play at learning to read is regarded as a great improvement on the "Reading-made-easy," of less enlightened times. A lady made him a present of a cylindrical ivory box containing counters, on which were inscribed the letters of the alphabet. He trundled the box on the carpet, he threw the letters on the carpet, and viewed them in all directions, sometimes sideways, sometimes topsy-turvy; so that he no longer knew them again when he saw them upright in a book: b and q and d and p more especially puzzled him: besides, the place of letters in words is of great use towards learning their power, and this help his counters did not afford him. To impose on him the task of arranging the letters in _verbal_ order, would have included all the restraint of a formal lesson. The conclusion is, that if children play, they do not learn; and while they learn, they must not play: there is a time for all things: their lessons must be short on account of the softness of the brain, but attention must be insisted on; they cannot be cheated as to the nature of the occupation, but they have sense enough to find pleasure in the consciousness of improvement. When Kenelm was little more than five years and a half old, his elder sister died: she was thirteen months younger than himself. Never was child more lovely in death than this little girl. I gazed on her with the feeling, since portrayed in the inimitable lines of the Giaour, beginning He who hath bent him o'er the dead. These lines I read fourteen years afterwards at Avignon; they thrilled and electrified me: the touch of genius recalled the scene I had witnessed. Yet it should seem that associations supplied by reason and experience are requisite to the contemplation of such an object with the sentiments described by Lord Byron. I led Kenelm to see his sister two hours after her death: terror was his predominant emotion; the immobility of what still so much resembled life appalled him. He burst into tears. "If I had thought she would have looked _so_, I would not have come to see her;" nor could he for some time pass the door of that chamber without shuddering. When he was twelve years old, I placed him at Stoneyhurst college in Lancashire. This society of English Jesuits, the dreadful Jesuits of St. Omers, of the Popish plot, had, within half a century, suffered three removes or _déménagemens_, which both the French and English proverb says are worse than a fire. They had been expelled from St. Omers by the French government, had been obliged by Joseph II. to quit Bruges, and had been driven from Liege by the approach of the French armies. They had now been established for some years in a country-seat of the family of Lulworth castle. Mr. Weld had given them a beneficial lease of the house and domain of Stoneyhurst, for which they expressed much gratitude. It is good to be grateful: gratitude is a Christian virtue, and well-becoming those who by their missions, their literary labours, and their institutions for education, have acquired so much glory to themselves, and rendered such signal services to the Christian world. Let them always be grateful. An account of their plan of education may not be unacceptable, and may furnish some hints to the heads of our great schools. I am inclined to think that the Jesuits, though as much spoken against, are very little more known in England than at the time when I left it. The whole number of boys, about two hundred and fifty, is divided into six schools or classes, to each of which a master is appointed, who, in the course of six years, conducts his set of boys, from the elements of grammar in the French, Latin, and Greek languages, to rhetoric, or the reading of the best classical authors. The fifth year, or that before rhetoric, is set apart for the study of the poets only. After this course of six years, lectures are given by the professors of moral and natural philosophy. The masters have no intercourse with their scholars except during the holding the class or saying the lesson: prefects are appointed to superintend them at all other times. They study in a large room destined to this use only: a prefect, in a lofty tribune, enforces application: a prefect attends them while at play to prevent violence, quarrelling, or indecorous language: a prefect sleeps in a little room with a glass door at the end of the dormitory. The play-ground is divided into two equal portions, one of which is allotted to the boys of the three higher, the other to the boys of the three lower schools, and no one is allowed to cross the bisecting line. Thus the tyranny of the great boys over the little ones, and the requisition of petty, irregular, or mischievous services is prevented: thus also the years and strength of those who play together are generally more equal. No master or other superior, who conceives that a boy has deserved punishment, is allowed to inflict that punishment himself, but is obliged to send such boy to the prefect appointed for the time administrator of the ferula: the boys, either from custom or the point of honour, or the fear of worse, always ask for the number of strokes of the ferula which they may be ordered by the superior to receive. A whimsical result of subordination, that a lad of seventeen shall go to a man of five and twenty, and say, "Please, Sir, to give me nine ferulas." Horace talks of the ferula; he does not say that he petitioned for it himself; and I saw, by an al fresco at Portici, that boys were flogged, two thousand years ago, just as they now are in our country schools. The dormitory is a lofty room, in which each boy has his bed-place to himself, separated from his neighbours by a wainscot partition six feet high; a curtain, with a number upon it, is drawn at the foot of the bed-place, which is open at the top. During the day-time the dormitory is locked, and none but the servants of the house are, on any account, permitted to go into it. The élèves of Stoneyhurst wear an uniform: this regulation, I am persuaded, has a better moral influence on their minds than ferulas and disciplines: "their feet are accommodated," as a fine writer once expressed it, with very thick shoes; "and their heads are protected" by a leathern cap: this cap is made to shade the face or to be turned up at pleasure; it is trimmed with fur, and, while fresh, looks very smart: but it is soon _degraded_, as the French phrase is, by the various uses to which caprice or convenience induces the boys to apply it: they sit upon it; they kneel upon it; they blow, or rather fan the fire with it; they use it for a bag, and perhaps sometimes, when unseen by the prefect, they give each other slaps on the face with it;--a trait d'écolier for the which its form, when folded, is admirably well adapted. A blue jacket and red waistcoat of coarse cloth, dark velveteen pantalon, and worsted stockings, a black velvet stock round the collar of a very coarse shirt, complete the habiliments of the Stoneyhurst collegian. "Forsan et hæc olim," &c. The boys rise at half past five in the morning and go to bed at half past eight in the evening. Prayers in the chapel begin and end every day, and they assist at mass daily. Those who are of sufficient age confess and communicate once a fortnight. Such are, in the main, the regulations of this Jesuits' college. During their unsettled state, the society had admitted but few new members; in consequence, the education of their youth was, at this time, conducted chiefly by old men without activity, and young men without experience. The course of a few years has remedied this evil. When Kenelm arrived at Stoneyhurst, his heart bounded within him at the sight of the spacious buildings, and of between two and three hundred playfellows: he immediately procured a cap and black collar, and was as vain of them as a young ensign of his cockade and sword. The superior led me over the college; Kenelm followed and considered all as provided for his use and convenience. I tried to persuade him that his visits to the library, the academy-room, the strangers' apartment, and the garden of the superiors, would not hereafter be very frequent; that his repasts in the refectory, though sufficient and wholesome, would not be luxurious. I was unable to moderate his transport: hardly could I prevail on him to show some signs of regret at parting from me. I appealed to "Philip when sober." The next summer, I found him sober enough: he had discovered that he was only one of a crowd; he felt the want of domestic affections, and of those comforts which home only can supply. I consoled him however, and left him, after three days spent at Whalley, in a disposition to endure all that his duty and the destined course of his studies might require. "O Athenians," said Themistocles, "how much do I suffer to gain your applause!" Children have but too much reason to exclaim, "O Themistocles, how much do we suffer to be able to read your history!" The next summer, I sent for him to Park Gate, where he rejoined his brother and sisters after two years absence. To the number of his sisters was added one, whose infancy, unsuited for travelling, delayed my journey to France. At this time he was gay and cheerful: he did not know the world, and was not afraid of it; yet his behaviour was directed by an ever sure sense of propriety. I was pleased and satisfied with him:--he passed five weeks with us. I had given him the meeting at Liverpool, whither he had been conducted by a prefect: I now took him back to the same town, where we found a prefect with whom he returned to his college. In the month of July of the following year, 1816, I received a letter from one of the superiors of the college, informing me that my son, with thirty-six other boys, had fallen ill of the measles; that my son had recovered, but, having been allowed to go out too soon, had again fallen ill. The letter was couched in terms so ambiguous, and implying so much doubt of the event, that it caused great alarm. I set off immediately: no other letter was written, and Kenelm's mother was kept in a state of fearful anxiety, till I wrote to her from Stoneyhurst that her son was recovered from the relapse. He was however so much weakened, that I thought it advisable to take him to the sea-coast. I passed ten days with him alone, and had an opportunity of appreciating his character, of observing his unaffected good sense, his gentle and amiable manners, his watchfulness over his conscience, his dutiful affection to his father, his piety towards God. We returned to college to be present at the academy-day, and the distribution of the prizes. Kenelm had been assured that, but for his illness, one of these prizes would have fallen to his share. I comforted him as well as I could, quoting--"satis est potuisse videri." In the spring of the following year, I took my younger son to Stoneyhurst, in the hope that the brothers would find present pleasure in each others' company, and hereafter talk over together the scenes of their boyhood. I observed that Kenelm's spirits appeared depressed: I questioned him; he assured me he had nothing to complain of: I interrogated the master: he spoke of Kenelm with great regard, and knew not that any cause of uneasiness existed for him. I passed three days with my sons, during which time Kenelm's cheerfulness returned, or seemed to return; and I left them together. Towards the end of this year, I finally resolved to put in execution my long-projected, long-delayed, continental plan. I advised the brothers of my purpose, who were, of course, delighted with the news. A kind and much-esteemed friend, who wished to see Stoneyhurst college, brought them back with him into Lincolnshire at the end of March following. In the month that intervened between the return of my sons and our arrival in Paris, the expectation of the journey, the preparation for the journey, and the journey itself, so far occupied the mind of Kenelm, that I had not remarked in him any extraordinary want of gaiety: I perceived only that he was more serious, that his manner was less frank, and even his carriage less easy than heretofore. At Paris, the first discovery I made respecting him was that he was become short-sighted. As we were viewing the statues of the Louvre, he exclaimed, "I see nothing but blocks of marble;" and he went off immediately to Chevalier's, the optician, to buy himself a lorgnette. I sympathized with him, knowing by experience that a short sight deprives us of a great part of the pleasure of existence, besides being an incalculable disadvantage in society. He imputed his short-sightedness to his having imprudently given himself up to study, before his health was fully re-established after the measles, in the hope of gaining, at the next academy-day, the medal which he had lost by his illness; that he had read a great deal by the flaring gas lights with which the college is illuminated. Something remained behind, a reserve, a sadness even, which I entreated him to account for. He gave me his full confidence; and I learned, with very great sorrow, that, for the last eighteen months of his stay in college, his mind had been a prey to scruples. This "pious awe, and fear to have offended," carried to excess through inexperience and a want of due apprehension that it is by the will only that we offend,--had destroyed his gaiety, retarded his improvement, and doubtlessly much injured his health. I asked him, "What advice did your director give you?"--"None."--"Any other superior?"--"None." Yet his state was sufficiently evident: he joined in no play; he did not seek the company of his brother. Alone, or with one or two companions, he employed the time allowed for play in walking up and down, indulging the workings of his own mind. I regretted that I had not taken him home when he requested, after his illness: I regretted that, instead of taking his brother to college,--a measure so inefficient for his consolation,--I had not come to France a twelvemonth sooner: I regretted the time lost, and the time that was still to be lost in regaining it. But Kenelm's mind was now at ease; feelings, originating probably in a weak state of health, and continued only through want of good counsel and sympathy, were at an end, when he found himself with those whom he loved, by whom he was beloved: his understanding was too clear for him to persevere either in inadequate notions of the divine goodness, or in false judgments respecting duty. Scruples are, by no means, of the nature of religious melancholy; they are not inconsistent with the Christian grace of hope: they suppose innocence; for the sinner may be hardened, may be penitent, may be wavering, but cannot properly be said to be scrupulous: scruples not only preserve from sin, but have also the good effect (the gift of divine mercy,) of purging the heart from all affection to sin, as was manifested in the future life of Kenelm. Yet this fear, "the beginning of wisdom," acting on an ill-informed conscience, is hurtful, as it indisposes to a cheerful energetic performance of duty. I said to Kenelm, "If there are beings, (and we are told that such there are,) who are interested that man should do ill, they could by no other means so effectually obtain their purpose as by fixing our attention on that by which we may offend." A priest, whom I had known in England during his emigration, and whom I had the advantage of meeting again at Paris; a man whose sanctity inspired Kenelm with respect and confidence,--said to him, "Unless you shall be as sure that you have offended God in the way in which you apprehend, as you would be sure of having committed murder, I forbid you to mention it even to me in confession." I will own that the vigour and prudence united in this counsel struck me with awe. The saints are men of great minds: philosophers are mistaken in thinking them fools. A kind and discreet priest, at Avignon, talked to Kenelm in the same sense, reminding him of the saying of St. Francis of Sales, "that scruples are the worst things in the world except sin." Kenelm's mind recovered its wonted cheerfulness and activity: family affections, change of scene, and new occupations soon completed what good advice had begun. He was yet too young to enter into society: he laboured to perfect himself in the French language; he was delighted with drawing, declaring that, were it consistent with duty, he could pass the whole day in that amusement. He continued his classical studies from the point at which they had been interrupted by his leaving college, where he was in his fifth or poetical year. I read with him Homer and Virgil. Of the Iliad he said, that, a few well-known sublime passages excepted, the rest, was vulgar: and when I mouthed forth the Greek, in order to impose on him the conviction that it was very fine,--"I grant you that Homer has the advantage of a sonorous language and the hexameter line; but there is very little grace in the expression, nor is the thought deserving of it." He admired the delicacy of sentiment in the Æneid: he discovered in it traces of more advanced civilization and more improved knowledge than are to be found in Homer, as well as a more correct and refined taste. I recommended the Odyssey to him, not only on account of its varied fable and "specious wonders," but for the justness with which human character and natural feeling are there rendered. We also read together that Machiavel of historians, Tacitus, who, as I endeavoured to persuade Kenelm, has treated the fame of Tiberius with great injustice, by representing him, on every occasion, as a cunning and cruel tyrant; whereas he was always wise, habitually just, and often beneficent. Let any one fairly and impartially analyse the actions of this sovereign and the comments of the historian, and he will perhaps be inclined to allow that my opinion is not altogether unreasonable. Concerning the personal vices of Tiberius there is here no question. I was delighted with one of the results of my continental plan,--that my children were now all of them under my own care. To what purpose subject boys to all the privations, restraints, and severities,--all the consequences of the ignorances and negligences of the managers of great schools,--that they may acquire a very moderate knowledge of two dead languages, which they generally neglect during the rest of their lives; and this for six years or more? Who doubts but that he could learn to read French in six months? And why should he not be equally capable of learning Latin in the same space of time? And in six months more he may learn to read Greek, which is rather the easier language of the two: he may thus obtain admission to the treasures of wisdom and good taste contained in those languages, in one-sixth of the time now usually thrown away in a vain attempt to that purpose; for, I repeat it, boys are compelled to employ the time of their education in _not_ learning what is of no use to them. Latin is no longer the language of literary composition, diplomatic intercourse, or epistolary correspondence. It is sufficient that a few men, in every generation, write Latin, like Bishop Louth, or Dr. Martin Joseph Routh. The principal nations of Europe have their classics, formed indeed upon the ancient classical model; and these, therefore, will be better understood and more enjoyed by those who cultivate an acquaintance with that model. Still, however, such previous acquaintance is not indispensable: its advantage consists chiefly in being able to note allusions and institute comparisons. Let me not be understood to express a wish that the Greek and Latin authors were less read than they are at present; on the contrary, I hope that they will always be considered as an essential part of the studies of a literary man. That the Greek especially should be so little known as now it is, is to me a cause of regret. This language has the singular privilege of having been, during twelve centuries, the language of the most ingenious and enlightened people of all that existed during that long æra. We have their authors from Hesiod to Photius, and still lower down; a library superior to that of any modern nation; for the trash has been swept away. Far, very far from me, be the desire, that it should be said of such a people in any sense, literary or political, 'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more. I have been led into this train of reflection, on recording the contentment with which I saw my children under my own superintendence at Avignon. How far it may be reasonable to continue to inflict on our sons all the suffering which they endure, when banished from the paternal roof, and consigned to the coarse, undiscriminating care of strangers for the sake of the instruction acquired by this plan, I leave every one to determine for himself. CHAP. XIII. Three days after our excursion to Vaucluse, I went with my sons to the Pont du Gard and Nismes. Our coach stopt, for three hours, at Foix; we took our déjeuné, at which we had delicious grapes and execrable wine: one instance amongst a thousand of the ingenuity of man in spoiling the gifts of Providence, and its agent, Nature. We walked to the Pont du Gard, about a mile from our inn. As it is at an equal distance from Avignon and from Nismes, parties, from each of these towns, make it a point of rendezvous, establish a pic-nic, and pass the day together. When we arrived near the Pont, we saw a large company from Nismes, regaling themselves in a spacious, dry cavern, well situated for their purpose, and affording a most agreeable shade. We passed them to go nearer to the bridge: one of them followed us; his accent announced him to be an Irishman, and his uniform to be an officer in the French service. He conversed with us a few minutes, and promised to call on me at Nismes. At the side of the lower part of the Pont du Gard and forming part of it, is a bridge over the Gardon: this bridge has been widened in modern times, but the ancient wheel-track is still seen on the side nearest to the aqueduct. Above the bridge rise three tiers of arches, each tier diminishing in the size, and increasing in the number, of its arches. Along the top is the canal, through which flowed the water for the supply of Nematia at the distance of seventeen miles. The whole has the appearance of a magnificent screen of arcades, thrown across the narrow and rocky valley through which the Gardon forces its way. Both the sides of this screen are beautiful, but the lower side is most to be admired. The ground falls away before it, and gives it the appearance of being loftier: it is in a quite secluded scene, in which no road or bridge appears. This precious remain of antiquity is sufficiently ruined and touched by time to harmonize well with the landscape, but yet so fresh and entire as to call up no idea of decay or desolation. The aqueducts of Frejus and of Rome are curious, but they possess no beauty in themselves, and derive none from the surrounding scenery. Suppose the Pont du Gard in a plain, it would still be beautiful as a piece of architecture: see it, where it is, enclosed by the sides of a deep valley and bestriding a rapid river, you will admit it to be an object at once grand and picturesque. We arrived at Nismes at three in the afternoon, tired and overpowered by the heat and dust. We gave up three hours to rest and cool ourselves, and at six set down to dinner; we then walked out by the moon-light of a southern clime. We passed several handsome buildings; at length I beheld one which immediately arrested my attention: "that _shall_ be the Maison Quarrée," exclaimed I. Never had I seen, nor have I since seen any thing in architecture so graceful: it seemed by the "uncertain moon-light" rather to be descending from the skies than standing on the earth. We returned the next morning. The portico, from its having been in the shade the preceding evening, we had then been hardly able to distinguish: this, with the interior and every part of this exquisitely beautiful building, and all its fine proportions and finished ornaments, filled us with delight and wonder. The amphitheatre is close by the Maison Quarrée: the site of the larger building may very fairly be indicated by that of the smaller, when the smaller edifice is the more interesting of the two. Milton, without any such excuse, talks of "the earth close by the moon;" though his critic Bentley has indeed corrected the punctuation, "the earth, close by, the moon." This is what may be called punctilious. Had I not since seen the Coliseum, I should consider the amphitheatre of Nismes as indestructible: luckily no builders of palaces have tried the experiment. It is composed of enormous stones, large in all the three dimensions, length, breadth, and thickness, which must have required powers of mechanism, known to the Romans, but now lost, to raise them to the height at which they now are seen. This amphitheatre is said to be rather less in size and rather more ruined than that of Verona: it is entire, however, all but the lower ranges of seats: the arena is occasionally used for a spectacle somewhat resembling bullfights. In the gardens are found remains of ancient baths, many pieces of mosaic pavement, and the ruins of the temple of Diana, in which are shown other objects found in digging in the neighbourhood. They were blowing up rock on the side of the hill near the garden, to improve and extend it still further, and to facilitate the approach to the Tour Magne, or great tower of Roman construction. To this tower we ascended; the tower itself we could not ascend: it is a hollow cylinder, without staircase, or roof, or platform; the view, however, even at the bottom of the tower is sufficiently extensive all around. Southward, it reaches to the Mediterranean; and though I do not believe that the sea reached to Nismes, though such is the popular notion;--yet its shores have much receded on this coast. Aigues Mortes, where St. Louis embarked for the crusades, is now three leagues from the sea. Frejus, Forum Julii, is no longer a port: it is probable, then, that the Tour Magne was once a light-house or a land-mark. Nismes, like almost every other ancient town, is ill-built, ill-paved, and ill-pierced; but then, in compensation, it has a Boulevard all around, or broad road lined with trees; and houses and buildings are continued all along with very few intervals of interruption. The city being in the centre, here, on these Boulevards, are united the accommodations of a town with the fresh air and promenades of the country: indeed, of fresh air there is rather too much; it often amounts to wind, and then the dust becomes inconvenient; but the gardens are delightful. In this town are thirteen thousand protestants. I know not that English protestants can choose a better town than Nismes for a retreat in the South of France: they will find places of public worship, the want of which many of them regret when abroad: there are also schools kept by protestants. The protestantism is Genevan; but _n'im__porte_; all protestantism is, to a protestant, equally true: we have seen a Calvinist and a Lutheran King become good members of the Church of England at the end of the seventeenth, and beginning of the eighteenth century. In the evening we rambled among the vineyards on the slopes, and reached the summits of the hills at the foot of which Nismes is situated at the edge of a vast plain. A locality like this seems favourable to a great town. It draws its supply of wood, wine, and water, from the one sort of country, and its corn, meat, and forage, from the other. We supped in the salon of our inn, the Louvre: there were several tables. At one of these was seated a party of Spaniards, who vociferated and gesticulated in a manner which they meant perhaps to impose on us for dignity, but which I thought inconsistent with Castilian gravity. At the time, it did not occur to either party that our opinion of each other was perfectly insignificant to both. At our table, besides other persons, we met a gentleman with whom I was acquainted at Avignon; and another who, after supper, (for he economized his time for eating,) began a political tirade, which, though addressed to the French, derived its chief zest from the presence of the English. He asserted that the Duke of Wellington was surprised by the approach of Napoleon to Brussels, quitted the ball-room in silk stockings, and went to lose the battle of Waterloo, which battle was gained by the Prussians. As a sort of appeal was made to me to defend the military reputation of my Irish countryman, I objected the improbability of a surprise, as two battles had just been fought in the neighbourhood. He reverted to the conclusion to be drawn from the silk stockings: I replied "Puisqu'il y a des improbabilités des deux côtés, il faut demander au Duc lui-même."[57] _En attendant_, (for the answer, though, no doubt, it would have been satisfactory, could not be quickly obtained,) the politician began a discussion on the wealth of England, the existence of which he questioned on account of its debt and paper currency. Again appealed to, I admitted that the taxes raised for the payment of the interest of the debt made every individual by so much the poorer, but that the national wealth was not diminished, as the taxes passed into the hands of the fund-holders. He then went off to paper money, on which he talked with great good sense: "Reste à savoir si l'Angleterre est véritablement riche; pour moi je crois que la chose représentée n'équivaut pas ce qui la représente."[58] I quote the purport of his words, and the words as nearly as I can remember them. He hit, I think, upon the cause of late and present commercial embarrassments: wealth is over-represented. The quantity of paper in circulation at any given time is not a sufficient criterion whether this be or be not the case. Every re-issue or new issue of a bank note is in fact a new coinage: in this, as well as in the facility of their creation, bank notes differ from metallic currency, and this difference is, to the state, the more important of the two. Representation is continually "pressing on the limits" of real wealth, and is from time to time regorged. "Pay your bank notes in money," said Napoleon in answer to some boasting statement of the wealth of England. This too is the only security against bankruptcies. Our politician was evidently seeking a quarrel. In this purpose he was by no means encouraged by the rest of the company, who, every now and then, threw in some qualifying, temperate remark. At the pressing instance of Kenelm, who, not having sufficient experience to be impartial, felt his choler rising, we retired to rest. The next day, after a farewell view of the Maison Quarrée, we returned to Avignon, which we reached in six hours. A protestant friend, being at Avignon, wished to see the Maison Quarrée, and inquired of me if it was safe to go to Nismes. "Will not the papists murder me?" The cause of this dread is curious; the explication of it may amuse the impartial, that is, almost nobody; but I will venture. The protestants of Nismes had all been favourable to the Revolution. The ancient royal government of France had not indeed, like the queen and parliament of England, insisted on every man's changing his faith, but it had resisted the introduction of a new religion: these two cases are very different, though perpetually confounded both by the tolerant and intolerant amongst us. However, the protestants of Nismes very naturally threw their weight into that balance, the preponderance of which promised them the assurance of their civil rights and political consideration. The catholics on the contrary, not having these motives, and carrying into politics that love of stability, the principle of which they find in their religion, disliked political change, and were well pleased with the return of the king. "C'est là le beau côté de la religion catholique; elle n'approuve pas les révolutions,"[59] said a protestant minister of a protestant king. He regarded the matter like a statesman, and no further. During the republican and imperial governments the protestants were the stronger party at Nismes, and had made the catholics feel that they were so. On the restoration, a scuffle took place between the parties, in which some half dozen protestants were killed. Of this unlucky affray great advantage was taken in England: committees were appointed and subscriptions raised for the purpose of succouring "our distressed brethren, the protestants of the south of France." The "no popery" cry being once well set up, it was thought right to inquire into the extent of the mischief. A letter was returned from France, reporting nearly what has been stated above; this letter the noble person to whom it was addressed kept in his pocket some days before he sent it to the committee, that the "no popery" cry might not go down too soon. The fear entertained by my friend of being murdered by the papists at Nismes need not now be wondered at: it was only three or four years since such things had happened; and it is well known, that what has happened once, may happen again. Hatred of popery is, in England, an amiable sentiment originating in a love of religious truth and confirmed by political wisdom. In such a sentiment, so pure in its source, so wise in its direction, heroes of all sorts may glory. In them it is distinguishable from poperyphobia: they are not afraid of popery: popery is afraid of them. Shakspeare's Hotspur cries out, "A plague o' this quiet life: I want work." For myself, being no hero, I love a quiet life; but I cannot refuse to heroes the tribute of admiration that is due to them and their laurels. For the catholics of Nismes, I believe them to be more devout and more decorous than those of the rest of France. The circumstances in which they are placed render this probable. The catholics of England are the most zealous and the most decent of all Christendom: an Italian nobleman, who knew them well, said to me, in speaking of them, "ce sont des saints:"[60] a papal nuncio to the Brazils, thrown by a sort of shipwreck on the English coast, and going to chapel in London, was delighted to find what he called "so precious a portion of the church of Christ." I went into some of the churches of Nismes, and found, on the inner door of one of them, an _écriteau_ requesting the faithful not to allow their dogs to follow them to church. At Avignon the dogs made love, or war, and barked in the churches at pleasure. Reluctant to approach to the catastrophe of my residence in France, I loiter on my way, and turn aside into by-paths. Yet a little more of detail, I hope neither tedious nor uninstructive,--yet a few more notices respecting the principal personage in this drama of woe;--and I will proceed to fix the reader's admiration of the character of that person, to call forth his compassion for my sufferings, and his indignation at the conduct of those medical men, whom, though I have described their conduct as it deserves, I endeavour to pity and to pardon. FOOTNOTES: [57] Since there are improbabilities on both sides, it is necessary to ask the duke himself. [58] It remains to be known if England be really rich; for me, I believe that the thing represented is not equal in value to that which represents it. [59] That is the fair side of the catholic religion; it does not approve of revolutions. [60] They are saints. CHAP. XIV. During the forty months that I resided at Avignon two capital executions only took place; one at Avignon, which I did not witness, and one at Carpentras, at which town, on account of its being in the centre of the department, the tribunals or assizes are held. During the last year that I passed in Lincolnshire four criminals were hanged. Lincolnshire is smaller and much less populous than the department of Vaucluse. The disproportion is enormous. This subject has frequently been brought before the public, and before the public I leave it. In the second year of my sojourn, a mission was preached at Avignon. On the expediency or prudence of these missions, concerning which so much difference of opinion prevailed among the French themselves, a stranger is hardly competent to decide. Many were offended that catholic France should be treated like a country that had never heard of the gospel; but this view of the matter was formed rather on a strict and somewhat captious interpretation of the word _mission_, than from any thing in the scheme itself justifying such an interpretation. The gospel was not preached by the missionaries as new, but as having been neglected. Yet this supposition of neglect threw a blame somewhere; and these extraordinary means taken to repair it excited animosity. Six thousand parishes throughout France were said, at this time, to want pastors; and it was regretted that funds should be diverted from the maintenance of the seminaries or their more effectual support, to supply the expense of desultory efforts, of evanescent enthusiasm. On the other hand it was argued that, for a quarter of a century, religion had been discouraged; for one year of that time it had been proscribed, and the churches closed; during all that time Christian education had been notoriously neglected; so many clergy had been banished, that the remainder had been insufficient to the various functions required of them; that to recover from such a state, extraordinary remedies were called for. After all, there was nothing so very extraordinary in these missions: from three to six priests, men of some talent, zeal, and eloquence, arrived in a town, stayed there a greater or less number of days according to the population, or, it may be, the spiritual wants of the place, preached, and heard confessions. Yet let any one suppose what would be the effect of the presence of half a dozen methodist teachers in any town in England, and he will be able to form an idea of the state of Avignon, pending the mission which lasted, as well as I can remember, about a fortnight. The churches were crowded; those who wished to have seats to hear the sermon at six in the evening, were obliged to take their places at mid-day; these were chiefly women: men, who could bear the fatigue of standing during the sermon, occupied every space large enough for a pair of feet. The _lessive_, so the washing is called from the wood ashes employed in it, was neglected; dirty shirts and sheets were too common to be complained of: the men were obliged to cook their own dinners; children were grouped together by scores under the care of some one contented or paid to stay at home. Then came the general confessions, which occupied some days; then one day for the communion of the male and another for that of the female penitents; lastly, the procession of the cross, which was to be set up as a perpetual memorial of the mission, and a mean of recalling to every one the good resolutions he had then made. An ill-carved crucifix, larger than life, borne on the shoulders of the devout, was followed by the missionaries and people singing cantiques, and was finally placed on the terrace near the great door of the cathedral, to which it gives the appearance of a place of public execution. I venerate the images of Christ and his saints; they are, as St. Austin calls them, the books of the illiterate, and they speak to the heart even of those who can read. But they should be so made and so placed as to inspire, not terror, but sentiments of peace, hope, and gratitude. The missionaries turned many from the evil of their ways: some sums of money were deposited in their hands to be by them restored to those who had been robbed or defrauded of them; these sums, so unexpectedly recovered, were in general given to the poor. I have read an account of the conduct of these missionaries to the galériens at Toulon, which was very interesting and edifying. On leaving Avignon they were accompanied for several miles by the people, who, by way of taking leave, tore the cassock off the back of the chief missionary and divided it into shreds, that all or as many as possible of their zealous admirers might have a relic. In this _procédé_ there was a little too much of the _fougue du midi_,[61] and the missionary by no means liked the process of popular canonization. How long the good effects of the mission may last is doubtful. It seems as if it were necessary that some strong excitement should exist in order that religion should be present to the mind. Holy men create this excitement to themselves by the aid of divine grace, and by prayer, a powerful mode of self-persuasion: for the multitude, this excitement must be created for them. I was assured by a very worthy and experienced curé, who remained in France during the whole of the revolution, that, in the reign of terror, when the churches were shut up, many followed the clergy into caverns and hiding-places, who afterwards could not be persuaded to go to church. I formed an acquaintance with an old gentleman of eighty-five years of age, who had served in the seven years war: he had been present at the affair of St. Cas. Two brothers, of a Lincolnshire family, every member of which I have always esteemed as a friend, were officers in the regiments landed on this occasion. I remember when a boy to have heard one of them relate how his brother called to him, when they were both driven back into the sea, to share a bottle of wine which chance had supplied. They were waiting for the boat to take them to their ship: there was no cork-screw; he broke off the neck of the bottle with his sword. It was pleasant to me, at such a distance of time and place, to meet with one whom this trifling anecdote could amuse. He spoke with respect, as does all the world, of English valour, but said, no one could conceive why they disembarked their troops on the coast, as it was utterly impossible for them to penetrate ten miles into the country: in this he was in accord with the English public at that time. He is dead; the brothers are dead: very few survive, who fought in the war concluded by the peace of Paris, in 1763. I was also acquainted with two young men of celebrated names, officers of a regiment in garrison at Avignon. One of them was grand nephew of that archbishop of Marseilles, whose conduct, when the plague raged in that city, in the year 1720, has ever been spoken of with justly-merited eulogium; the other was grandson of the author of the "Esprit des Lois." This latter made me much ashamed, not _of_ my country, she is too great for that; but _for_ my country. Talking of military discipline, he said, "Vos soldats sont des braves gens,[62] but you vippe dem; you vippe dem." I was, as I have said, ashamed, and knew not what to answer, but that such punishments were not so frequent since certain debates in the Parliament. "Den you vippe dem," and forgetting the word _sometimes_, "quelquefois," twirling his hand as if brandishing a cat-o-nine tails; then added with a serious look, "quelquefois; c'est trop."[63] Sir Francis Burdett's endeavour to place the representation of the people in the Commons House on a rational basis, will meet with the fate of my proposal to establish the Catholic religion in Ireland; but his efforts to rescue the soldier from a cruel and degrading punishment deserve the thanks of every friend of mankind. He has relieved human nature from more suffering than a legislator who should abolish the _question_; for there are, or were, more soldiers flogged than, in any equal time, state-prisoners tortured. If the sentiment of reproach and contempt with which young Montesquieu spoke of our military punishments,--a sentiment in which he is joined by every man of sense and honour throughout Europe,--may contribute to abolish the odious practice, he too may share in the praise of the "législateur du genre humain."[64] The great object of all legislation is to prevent evil, injustice, and misery. Alas! Alas! How much does it itself inflict! An election of a deputy to the chamber was held while I was at Avignon. Of this election I can give but a negative account. There was no ringing of bells; no flags displayed; no parading the streets by day-light or torch-light; no canvassing; no kissing the women; no rioting; no drunkenness. The town was as quiet as if no election had been going on. The number of electors for the department was about six hundred. What influenced their votes I cannot say; certainly not those glorious concomitants of an English election in all towns large enough to enjoy them,--festive noise and indecent tumult. In the spring of the year 1820, my elder son set off for England, which was to him an unknown land, as he had been immured in college from his thirteenth year, and with which he was anxious to become acquainted. At his departure, he asked and received on his bended knee the blessing of his parents. This may seem strange to some; yet Sir Thomas More, when Chancellor of England, began the day by kneeling at the bed-side of his aged father, to implore, through him, the blessing of God, and then went and served at mass in his own chapel. Sir Thomas More was a wise and amiable man, whose life and death are beyond all praise. The act of submission above-mentioned might, however, for reasons that may easily be divined, be more laudable in a young man of nineteen, than in a Lord High Chancellor of England. Besides other considerations, the one acted in conformity, the other in contradiction, to the spirit of his age. From Lyons, where he passed two days, Kenelm took the road to Paris by Moulins, in order to see a different country from that by which he had come to Avignon. He passed five days in Paris, three of which he dedicated to the Museum of the Louvre, which he now saw with advantage, derived from the progress he had made in drawing. He spent ten days in London. A friend who had known him two years before in Paris, good-naturedly bore testimony to the improvement which two years had produced: "You were then a great boy; you are now a fine young fellow." He passed also ten days, at Bath, at the house of his mother's sister. I know not whether it may have been remarked that, in my chapter of Paris, I have said not a word of the theatres. The fact is, we never once were present at any of them. The opinion of Catholics as to the lawfulness of attending the theatrical representations of the present day, is by no means uniform. The English Catholic clergy in general advise to abstain from them: the pious and excellent priest at Paris, to whose counsels Kenelm owed so much, gave the same injunction. Our kind and prudent director at Avignon rather requested than required us to abstain from attending the theatre at that place. "It is no great loss, considering the merit of the performance: when you shall be in Italy, I give you up to my successor." Kenelm, on this journey, made some stay in Paris, London, and Bath, without going to a theatre. This must be considered as no slight sacrifice for a young man of nineteen; master, for the time, of his own actions; solicited by his curiosity and by the invitations of friends, who regarded the stage as a source of innocent amusement, and even of instruction. Following the lights, such as they were, of my own common sense, I had occasionally, even after becoming a Catholic, assisted at theatrical representations both in Bath and London, when the inducement was in accord with good taste and good morals. I could see no harm in allowing those "purifiers of the affections," terror and pity, to be administered by those masters of the scenic art, Kemble and Siddons. There were others, second to these, but of great merit, whom I saw with pleasure: amongst them Cooke, when he was sober; Elliston, at all times. Arrived in France, I refrained from going to the theatre as the safer line of conduct, seeing I was now no longer alone. Besides, I was told that comedians, so they call all actors, were in a state of excommunication; that they could not accomplish the sacrament of penance without promising to renounce their profession; and that if they died comedians, their right to Christian burial was at least disputable. I cited the example of the capital of the Christian world. "In Rome itself there are theatres." "The holy Father is under the necessity of permitting, as sovereign, what, as head of the church, he condemns." This reminded me of Sir Jonathan Trelawney, sometime Bishop of Winchester, who was much given, according to the custom of his time, to profane cursing and swearing--a custom which he adopted perhaps to show that he was no puritan, as men neglected days of fasting and abstinence to prove that they were no papists. This reverend prelate being reproved for this mal-practice, declared that he swore as Sir Jonathan Trelawney, not as Bishop of Winchester. He was asked how he would _hereafter_ make a distinction in his personal identity, or divide what Sir Kenelm Digby calls "a man's numerical self;"--a phrase which my friend Sir ---- was so good as to translate for me into "number one." In fact, the argument drawn from the double character of the Pope to justify the permission of what was bad in itself, excited my indignation. "The Pope," said I, "is no hypocrite." "True: the Pope is no hypocrite; but sovereigns are in some cases obliged to permit evils which they palliate and diminish by superintendence and regulation." I understood the allusion, but felt a strong repugnance to class actors, many of them persons of exemplary morals, and none of them necessarily otherwise, with those unfortunate outcasts, so well watched in France and Italy, and so piously allowed to roam at large in London: neither could I be all at once persuaded that stage-plays were of the nature of a violation of one of the ten commandments. I alleged the example of all, or almost all the Catholic sovereigns of Europe, who assisted at them without scruple. I was answered, that the example of sovereigns could not justify what was wrong in itself. The great Bossuet was quoted, who replied to Louis XIV., by whom his opinion was asked on the lawfulness of stage plays which the monarch himself frequented, "Sire, il y a de grands exemples pour, et de grandes autorités contre."[65] "Reste à savoir," said I to myself, with the disputant at Nismes. The question did not press: we abstained from plays in France. I resolved, if possible, to reconcile these contradictions in Italy. In Italy I was instructed, that there exists no excommunication of actors by the universal church, but only by the decrees of some particular dioceses, in remote ages, when the scenic art was reputed infamous on account of the representations, then almost always contrary to good morals: that they who exercise the profession of actors are guilty of great sin, if they exhibit on the stage any thing shameful or obscene, but not otherwise: that there exist indeed sentences of the holy see and of general councils against scenic representations, but that they refer always to such as may be indecent and contrary to sound morality: that the Fathers condemn the theatres of their time, not only because of the indecencies there represented, but also because, as the pagans acted plays in honour of their false gods, the Christians could not assist at them without the stain of idolatry: that a decent play cannot be called _absolutely_ a proximate occasion of sin, but may become such _relatively_ to certain individuals on account of their personal fragility; and that such, admonished by their own experience, are bound to fly a danger which, though it may be _remote_ to others, is to them _proximate_: finally, that there cannot be any positive judgment nor any fixed or constant rule respecting theatres; since the lawfulness or unlawfulness of them may vary at every moment, according as scenic representations are agreeable or repugnant to good morals. Priests go to plays in Italy, generally retiring before the ballet. I have seen a cardinal at a private theatre: that it was a private theatre, was a circumstance of some importance in point of decorum, but of none in point of morality, concerning which it is fair to presume that his eminence entertained no doubt or scruple. Kenelm, however, abstained all his life from going to the theatre: in this he acted according to the information which his conscience had received. Conscience is not the rule of action: the rule is THE LAW divine or human; conscience is the measure which each individual applies, first to the rule, then to his own actions. He who does a bad action, thinking it a good one, is not excused; it is his duty to inform his conscience: he who abstains from that which is innocent because he thinks it wrong, has merit in conforming his actions to his sense of duty, as well as he who, from a motive of duty, performs an action in itself indifferent. Kenelm proceeded from Bath to the country-house of his mother's father in Somersetshire, where he passed three or four months, making short excursions and visits in the neighbourhood. Towards the end of September he returned to Bath, his native place, visited Bristol and the shores of the Severn. He then went through the midland counties into Lincolnshire, where his family, originally from Yorkshire, had been settled for four generations. Here visits and business detained him some time: he returned to London: the theatres were again opened; but not for him. During his former stay in London he had received the sacrament of confirmation on the feast of Pentecost: he wrote to me, that that day had been the happiest of his life. On this occasion he took the name of Aloysius or St. Lewis of Gonzaga, whom a conformity of character seems to have induced him to regard with peculiar sympathy. Is it fanaticism or imbecility to hope and believe, as I sincerely believe, that these two happy souls, after their short trial, now enjoy the society and converse of each other in a state of unchangeable felicity? After a short visit in the neighbourhood of Southampton, Kenelm once more embarked at that port and returned to France. He was desirous of following a route, not unusual with English tourists, by Orleans, Bordeaux, and the line of the Garonne, to Avignon; but the season was too late: in truth he complained that he suffered from cold in his journey from Paris. His family had the satisfaction of receiving him again on the eleventh of November. The judgment formed of him by those who became acquainted with him during his stay in England, may be known by the following extract from a letter written by his mother within a short time after his death, that is, within a twelvemonth after his return to France. "Your son was perfect, as far as human nature can be so: so much self-denial, tenderness to the feelings of others, such strict attention to his religious duties, whatever pleasures might be offered him, I never met with in any character; and in so young a man, at a distance from all who had a right to control him, it was most extraordinary, and bespoke a mind whose every feeling was governed by religion. Could you have heard the general regret for his loss, and the remarks made on his conduct and manners by all who knew him, you would have been gratified; but you have a higher source of comfort," &c. I will cite another testimony; that of the priest who was his director during his visit to his native land:--"I was much affected by the news of the death of the amiable Henry Kenelm; and yet I cannot but regard it as a great mercy in Almighty God to snatch him in his innocence from the horrid corruptions and impieties of the world. Now he is gone, it is not unlawful for me to say that I thought him one of the most innocent, watchful, and mortified souls I had ever met with of his age." On the morrow of his return he began a drawing of an infant Jesus from an engraving of a picture by Raphael in the Palazzo Pitti: it was to be finished in the French style, with much exactness and labour. He said, "the infant shall be ready for his birth-day;" and in effect he concluded his work on Christmas eve. I saw the features of this infant Jesus with an astonishment, the motive of which I explained to Kenelm; it is not yet time to reveal it to the reader. This winter Kenelm took lessons in fencing, and, after having acquired some skill in the noble science of defence, he engaged a sous-officier to come daily to the house to teach him the manual exercise. He had learned dancing in his college, where masters attended for that purpose. During his first winter at Avignon he refused to take dancing lessons, from scruples suggested to him by a devout person, who also endeavoured to engage me to forbid my children to learn to dance, supporting his opinion of its unlawfulness by the usual topics. I replied, "I should be ashamed for my children, if I thought they could not dance without finding in it a proximate occasion of sin: the thing is innocent in itself; let those who find it, or make it otherwise, avoid it." In his second winter Kenelm surmounted the scruples of our devout friend, and resumed his dancing lessons, and now continued them, not so much out of a desire to perfect himself, as for the sake of joining in the amusement of the family party. The summer which Kenelm passed in England had been excessively hot in the south of France. I was in the habit of observing my thermometer at midnight, and, during July and August, usually found it, at that hour, at 84 Fahrenheit. The autumn was very mild: we were to give a ball on new year's day, and there was no ice in the town, as the master of the café, who was to furnish ice creams, announced to me in a tone of due despondency. He proposed to send a cart to Mont Ventoo, a lofty and remarkable mountain fifteen miles off, where there was ice at all times; this carriage would cost thirty francs. I asked him if he would bear a part of the expense, as the ice would be of use to him for his other customers. He said, if it should freeze, his share of the load would become useless; moreover that, if there should be ice of the thickness of a ten-sous piece, that would be enough for my purpose. That very night, the last of the year 1820, a frost set in, so severe, that almost all the olive-trees of Provence and of the east of Languedoc were destroyed to the root. The preceding open weather had sustained the sap; so that this sudden and violent check was fatal. It was a great calamity: the government came in aid of the more indigent of the sufferers; but four years must pass ere the olive-trees could be in full bearing as before. Besides the "fatness" of the olive, they reckon in this country four other _récoltes_ or harvests: the hay of the artificial grasses, of which lucerne is the chief; with this hay they fatten cattle and make a great deal of manure: indeed I saw at Avignon a symptom of covetousness of dung, much to the credit of their agricultural management; those who sweep the streets bring straw, cut into little bits about three inches long, which they throw into the kennels and dirty puddles to suck up the fertilizing moisture. Manure must be in great demand, and an article of the first necessity in a country, where, besides extensive gardens, they intercule, after the wheat, reaped usually at the end of June, a crop of haricots or French beans,--a standing dish, during the winter, at all tables. I remembered at how high a price I had formerly bought a few of these beans for seed, that I might have this vegetable, young and green, as a side-dish or in pickle: yet these _haricots secs_, or the dried grain of the French bean, is the cheapest food at Avignon, cheaper even than bread; and it was without cause that I was alarmed at my own extravagance, when I saw them spread in such abundance on the table in my kitchen. _Gar__rence_, or madder, is another _récolte_, and a source of great wealth. Add to these harvests, their wine, which, by the help of the climate and good manipulation, is, in my opinion, the best in the world, except perhaps that of Xeres and Madeira. Melons and _pastecs_, or water-melons, are here delicious, and the food of the common people. Bread is excellent, light, white, and nutritious; many degrees whiter than that which I made of my own wheat in England, though not so white nor so quickly dry and tasteless as the adulterated bread of London. I consider French agriculture, as far as I was able to observe it in the south, to be in a flourishing condition. They have not the grand cultivation: the subdivision of property and the nature of the products forbid it. They have no "expensive plans For deluging their dripping-pans." They would regard almost as thrown away, a rich plot of land given up to the fattening sheep and bullocks. In the southern moiety of France, indeed, they have no choice: there are water meadows, where irrigation is possible, but no pastures. Their cattle are fed on the mountains and hills and poorest lands, during summer, and brought home in winter. The end of agriculture is to obtain the greatest value of produce from land at the least expense, and that for ever; and in this end the French, the spirit of calculation coming in aid of their soil and climate, succeed in a great degree. The chattels (the word is French), the stock, both live and dead, belongs to the proprietor; he superintends; the land is not worse managed on that account. Indeed, as Pythagoras or Plato said, that states would never be well governed, till philosophers were kings or kings were philosophers; so it may be said, that land will never be well cultivated, till proprietors shall be farmers or farmers shall be proprietors: their interests are opposite, and not to be reconciled by leases or conditions of obligation; one desires immediate, the other continued, profit: but the interest that a French proprietor has in his share of the produce, is not great enough to induce him to diminish his capital by deteriorating the land, which the tenant always will do if he can: even the _matériel_ of the farm, no unimportant part of its value, is better cared for by the landlord than by a tenant. In short, France, in the southern part of it, is rapidly advancing towards garden culture, the perfection of all cultivation; since the more a farm is cultivated like a garden, the more will the management of it be applauded, and the greater will be its produce in proportion to its extent. The spade and hoe are very much used in fields, especially where, as is often the case, these fields are traversed by rows of mulberry or other trees; and the vines trimmed into the form of bushes, and the _garence_, and _haricots_, and lucerne in rows and drills, and the slight fences, occupying the least possible space, and set rather as limits than as guards, give, to a rich tract, as much of the appearance as it really has of the nature of a garden. The silk-worm, though silk is a most valuable _récolte_ of this country, has no connexion with agriculture, except that this worm feeds on the leaves of the mulberry tree. These leaves are plucked as soon as they have attained their full spread, and before they are at all dried or even hardened by the sun. While nature is preparing the food of the silk-worm, art is forcing into existence the worm itself. The eggs are hatched by artificial warmth, and, from the time that the worm can eat till it becomes a cocon, this savoury food is administered. The mulberry is of the white sort; but the _fruit_ is hardly known to the Avignonais; it is of course destroyed by plucking off the leaves. I surprised my friends by telling them I had eaten excellent black mulberries in England, and, as is usual in such cases, they gave no credence to my word. These trees look very miserable without leaves under so fine a sky: by the end of summer a second crop of leaves is plucked off, and given to cattle. It was pleasing to me, as carrying memory back into former ages, to see the threshing-floors of the Avignonais: they are on the outside of the building that serves for the granary: the sheaves are laid in a circle, in the centre of which stands a man who drives two or more horses round, over the ears of corn: another man stands without the circle to correct any irregularities in the work. The moral meaning of the command, not to muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn, is evident; and it is to be hoped that, in practice, it was interpreted according to its moral meaning: otherwise the work would not have proceeded very quickly, and would soon have been stopped altogether by the strangulation of the beast. They built, while I was at Avignon, a very good _abattoir_ near one of the gates of the town. I saw here the process of skinning an ox: air is thrown in under the skin by a pair of bellows, which air is then forced forward by beating the inflated hide with clubs. A beast, whose turn it was to be killed next, was standing by with his nose fastened to a ring in the floor. How far did his intelligence enable him to presage the fate that awaited him? French agriculture has made rapid strides within twenty years: they procure and disperse improved machinery: in the breed of their sheep they pay attention to the quality of the fleece. They call the English their masters in the science of agriculture, but entertain confidence, I hope well-founded, of soon equalling those masters. FOOTNOTES: [61] The impetuosity of the south. [62] Your soldiers are brave people, but you whip them. [63] Sometimes--that is too much. [64] Legislator of the human race. [65] Sire, there are great examples _for_, and great authorities _against_. CHAP. XV. There was a very great difference in the ages of my elder and younger children; it was impossible for me to suit my plan to them all: for the sake of the younger it would have been advisable to stay some time longer in France; but for the advantage of the elder I thought it right to hasten my journey to Italy. I fixed the time of my departure from Avignon for the month of October following, 1821. No master of the Italian language was here to be found. Kenelm soon acquired the use of it, as far as books, without conversation, could teach him; and, in the evenings of the spring and summer, after our promenade, gave lessons to his sisters and brother, whom he required to prepare themselves in the morning: he also gave them lectures in geography. In this employment he gratified his kind affections, and derived pleasure from the performance of what he imposed on himself as a duty. In truth his whole life seemed to be regulated by a sense of duty: he endeavoured to please others from a principle of benevolence: in speaking of others he was careful to avoid all censure or rash judgment, all contemptuous or angry expressions; he followed after that charity, which "beareth all things, hopeth all things;" it was evident that, without excluding the innocent and laudable motives of action, he endeavoured to sanctify all he did by referring it to the glory of the Author of all good. His mind had been cultivated as far as his years and opportunities had allowed. The love of God had supplied to him the principle of true sensibility, and his judgment of moral objects was correct and delicate. His reading had been chiefly of French literature and of history. In England he had passed much of his time in society and other engagements, and he had not had leisure for reading: he regretted that he could not stay another twelvemonth there for the purpose of going through a course of English literature. I had always encouraged him to discuss with me whatever questions arose, to enter into argument and try the ground of his opinions: in criticism, in politics, in religion even, he had followed this method. I held it useful thus to call forth and exercise his powers; I wished to establish his judgment on a surer basis than that which can be laid by authority alone; a basis so liable to be shaken, so likely to be removed by an intercourse with the world, which surprises, enchants, and often fatally deceives those who are unprepared for it. I was conversing one day with him and his brother on the subject of the massacre at Thessalonica, in the reign of the emperor Theodosius,--and of the father who, being arrested with his two sons going out of the amphitheatre, entreated the soldiers, who were about to put them both to death, at least to spare him one of them; the soldiers consented, leaving the choice to the father: he, in an agony of grief, ran from one son to the other, unable to resign either of them: the soldiers, becoming impatient, at length slew them both. Kenelm's remark was, "the father was more happy afterwards than he would have been had he decided. If he had saved one son, he would have continually reproached himself, during the rest of his life, with the death of the other." Within a few short months I was myself to witness the death of one son, and to pass some weeks in dreadful suspense as to the fate of the son that remained to me. The Father of Mercies inflicted not on me the horrible necessity of choosing between them. He spared one, to alleviate and repair the loss of him whom he took to himself. If I seem to any to have dwelt too long on the praise of Kenelm, let this be allowed to the remembrance of his kind, confiding, and grateful affection to me, his gentle and amiable manners towards the rest of his family, the well-grounded hope of virtuous and meritorious conduct in his passage through life. All this is now only in remembrance; but "the remembrance is sweet." I had said to Kenelm on his return from England, "You have behaved in such a manner during the time that you have been your own master, that I may now trust that your character and principles are fixed and established: you have acquired an entire right to my confidence." The trial of the ground of this confidence was short, and, towards the end, most painful; but it was conclusive and satisfactory. In the spring of 1821, arrived the news of the beginning and end of what was called for a time the revolution of Piedmont, and of the insurrection of the garrison of Alexandria. The difficulty of obtaining protection or employment in diplomacy, the career to which, in his own purpose, he had destined himself, and to which he had in some degree directed his studies, offered itself at this time so forcibly to the mind of Kenelm, that he inclined to enter into the military profession. He said, "The King of Sardinia must, at this time, want soldiers. I will go to him at Nice: I shall see you all again in your way to Italy." He added, "I cannot choose the French service, as I should run the risk of being employed against my own country: a great variety of circumstances shows that the English service must be at least _unpleasant_ to a catholic: there remain only Austria and Sardinia." On inquiry, however, we found that no commission was granted in the army of this latter power, unless to those who had been educated in the military academy, or who had served four years in the ranks as private soldiers. Kenelm retained the purpose of making inquiries concerning the Austrian service when he should arrive in Italy. Austria, though now removed to a distance from England by the cession of the Low Countries, had been for more than a century its almost constant ally. I was not sorry that inquiries, and any measures to be adopted in consequence, were delayed for some time, and advised that the interval should be employed in reflecting how far the military profession might suit a character of great vivacity indeed, but thoughtful and given to literary pursuits. I could account for this sudden ebullition of Kenelm's warlike ardour, only by the delight which he took in reading the "Victoires et Conquêtes," which publication began about this time; and by his intercourse with some of the officers in garrison. He asserted too that the trade of a soldier is the most independent of any, and brought in defence of his assertion some very specious arguments. His ardour, though restrained, was by no means extinguished: he was steady to his purpose, and never relinquished it. In the month of July a fair is held at Beaucaire, on the Rhone, a small town twelve miles from Avignon, opposite Tarrascon. This is one of the few fairs in Europe that are still the scene of great commercial operations; commis, travellers, and the post office are rapidly causing the disparition of less convenient institutions. To Beaucaire, however, as yet, resort merchants from Germany, Italy, and Spain; and to Beaucaire also resort the idle and curious of the district for many leagues around. The Avignonais wondered that we could pass two summers without visiting it; and, as I could now no longer say "I will go next year," I was obliged to avow that my real reason for absenting myself from a scene which they thought so interesting, was my unwillingness to subject any of the females of my family to the inconvenience of finding, or, what would have been worse, not finding beds in so crowded a town; and to stay all night was indispensable, as the finest sight of all was the illumination of the streets of booths erected as a supplement to the insufficient buildings of the town. One friend proposed to me his example. He had left Avignon, with ladies in company of course, three hours before sunset; arrived at Beaucaire in time to lead his ladies about, both by owls-light and lamp-light; supped in a room which, he allowed, had not the recommendation of being either retired, or cleanly, or free from the fumes of tobacco; and brought his ladies home again at three in the morning. Men are but children of a larger growth, said some one without suspecting that he was launching any thing but a sarcasm: it is however a profound reflection. Children must be amused because they cannot know any thing of the world into which they are about to enter; and men must be amused on account of their unwillingness to think of a future state of existence. The childish mortal is however less silly than the manly mortal immortal. I recommended to my sons to visit Arles, taking Beaucaire in their way at the time of the fair, at which they might stay as long as they pleased, and no longer. They got into a boat early in the morning, and descended the Rhone as far as Tarrascon; passed four hours, including repast and repose, at the fair; then again took to their boat, which conveyed them to the ancient and once important city of Arles. From Avignon to Tarrascon they found the banks of the Rhone varied and picturesque: lower down, the river displays a great spread of water, but its shores are flat. They slept at Arles, viewed its ancient monuments, obelisk, amphitheatre, sarcophagi, and walked to St. Remy. In the evening of the next day they returned home, and regaled us with a pleasant account of their "voyage par mer et par terre."[66] They were particularly pleased with St. Remy, and we resolved on a family party to that place: the excursion was, however, deferred for a month, on account of a visit to a friend's campagne or country house. St. Remy is four leagues from Avignon: at the end of the second mile, we crossed by a ferry the Durance, a mighty Alpine torrent. I had before observed that its waters are colder and more turbid than those of the Rhone at the point of their confluence. The Rhone deposits in the Leman Lake a part of the soil it brings with it in its course through the Valais. The Durance is so impetuous, that its bridge on the road to Marseilles is almost always insecure. A company of Dutchmen undertook to confine this river to a certain bed by embanking, on condition of receiving all the land they should recover: but though they could, no doubt, deal very well with placid and stagnant canals, they found the Durance so impatient of dykes, as the Araxes was indignant at a bridge, that they abandoned the enterprise. My sons, who were our stewards and ciceroni, had ordered a basket of provisions to be brought by the carriage, that we might dine _au frais_ near the monuments, the objects of our visit. We took café au lait, however, on arriving at the village, supplying the place of milk by beating the yolks of fresh eggs into a liquid foam here called _lait de poule_, and well known as a substitute for an article, the want of which is not much felt by those who are used to be without it. We had no butter: beurre frais de Lyon is sent down the Rhone to Avignon, and sometimes contains maggots. I paid ten sous a day for a small quantity of beurre du jour made on purpose for our family breakfast,--the only demand for it in all the town. The want of butter, and the scarcity of our four pleasant early fruits, gooseberries, currants, raspberries, and strawberries, a rare and short-lived luxury in the south of France,--are great privations; and this must be added to the inconveniences of a hot climate. Even cherries quickly become uneatable, breeding worms within them as soon as ripe. We walked to the Mausoleum and triumphal arch at half a league's distance. They are situate near the side of the road now leading from Nismes to Marseilles, which probably, at the time even of the erection of these monuments, led from one to the other of these ancient cities. We had risen by a very slight ascent to a great height, and now enjoyed a fine prospect all around, except that, for about one fourth of the horizon, the view was bounded by a range of rocks of most curious and fantastic forms. Not far from the foot of this range, and very near to each other, are placed the arch and Mausoleum. The arch itself and all below it, is still perfect; but all above it has been pulled down and carried away: the vault of the arch is highly ornamented. The Mausoleum is a most elegant structure. If I say that it resembles a detached campanile of a church of Grecian architecture, it is more for the sake of indicating its form, than from having seen any thing in that kind resembling or equal to it. On a lofty basement rises a square building surmounted by a circular colonnade, of the Corinthian order, supporting a dome or cupola. At the four corners of the square building are Corinthian pillars; on each side, the wall is pierced by an arch, and, on the frieze above, is the inscription Sex. M. Julii C. F. parentibus suis. In the centre under the cupola stand two statues: there is no door or opening below. My sons amused themselves with taking drawings of the objects before them. The air, notwithstanding the season of the year, was cool and fresh at the elevation at which we were placed; and we took our dinner under the arch, having brought from the café of St. Remy some beer, which, in the spirit of contradiction, is much liked in this country of the vine. I thought it vile stuff, and preferred our wine from Avignon: those of my children who had not tasted or forgotten the taste of home-brewed, thought it a luxury: it is rather dearer than wine, being, very justly, equally taxed. It is called _bière de Mars_;--a proof that the right season is known for "corrupting barley into a certain similitude of wine." Cæsar's word _corruptum_ ought to be translated "fermented," but it is happily ambiguous. My servant told me that while he was waiting with the basket of provisions for our coming from the village, a gentleman, whom he took for English, followed by his groom, came up to the monuments, walked his horse once quietly round them, looked at him, Antoine, without saying a word, and then rode away. There is not a single house near these edifices except a Maison des Fous, an extensive establishment, and celebrated for good management. I visited a house of this sort at Avignon, where the patients seemed to have every comfort their situation permitted. Several of them were amusing themselves in the large court: we passed by them in going out. One of them addressed himself to the gentleman who accompanied me: "Sir, I entreat you to interest yourself for me; it is horrible for me to live amongst these unhappy mad people. You see I am not mad; I am placed here by my relations that they may keep possession of a little estate that belongs to me." My friend asked, "Why do you not speak to the administrators?"--"I have done so often, but all to no purpose; _ce sont des ours_."[67] I do not know the end of the affair. We returned in the cool of the evening. On repassing the ferry, I did not get into the carriage again, but walked with my sons to the town. The carriage had some difficulty in passing the gate, owing to a piece of cheese and some other remains of our dinner, which the gate-keeper perceived at the bottom of the basket. Antoine laughed at him: "C'est mon souper:[68]" but it was no laughing matter; it was a question of the droits réunis. The coachman explained that the provisions had been taken out of the town in the morning, and the carriage passed on. We were much pleased with our excursion, and I promised my family to take them to Nismes before we should set off for Italy; but we had found the day, 18th of August, too hot, and determined to wait till the weather should be somewhat cooler. FOOTNOTES: [66] Voyage by sea and land. [67] They are bears. [68] It is my supper. CHAP. XVI. Saturday, the twenty-fifth of August, the fête of the king was celebrated with sports and rejoicings. A joûte d'eau was held on the Rhone; that is to say--two boats row as fast as possible in opposite directions bearing each of them a man, standing on the prow, armed with a long pole. At the moment that the boats pass by each other, each of the two men strives to push the other with his pole into the water. If both parties fail, the assistants are, for that time, disappointed; if one of the two tumbles in, they laugh and are delighted. Sometimes it happens, from the unsteadiness of their position and the effort which each makes to overturn the other, that both fall in, and, in that case, the joy of the standers and sitters-by is increased, as Malthus would say, not in an arithmetical, but in a geometrical proportion: it is not merely doubled; it is augmented a hundred-fold. Flags, and bells, and music, and the presence of the authorities and of a vast concourse of spectators, leave not the least doubt in the mind of any one but that he has been well amused. In the evening there was a ball at the prefecture. Being somewhat indisposed, I did not stir out on this day. Kenelm had for some time past complained of languor and want of appetite, which he attributed to the heat of the summer. At St. Remy he had been in excellent spirits, passing on before us to hinder us from seeing the monuments till arrived at the right point of view; and, on the fête of St. Louis, he had been gay with the gay. No symptom of illness appeared till the following evening at the house of the general commanding the department; he then complained to me of a sensation of cold. I desired him to remove from the open window; he soon felt himself better, and joined in the dance with which the party concluded. This visit is to be remarked as the last he made. During the three following days he was tolerably well, and, on the alternate days, took his bath in the Rhone, as it had been his custom to do during the summer, in a retired place at a small distance from the town. While bathing the last time, he cried out to his brother, "My pulse is gone." A sensation of cold had induced him to feel his pulse, and he was somewhat alarmed at this symptom of its intermission. He appeared to wish to make light of it when he came home, but it must be supposed that his own feelings made him apprehensive of illness. Afterwards it became evident that the predisposition to the fever, of which the chilliness three evenings before had been a symptom, had again manifested itself by this intermission of the pulse. He now reposed in me a confidence, the purport of which ought perhaps to be numbered among the symptoms of the coming malady, though I was as yet unable to account for it in this way. He said his scruples, such as he had combated and surmounted three years before, had returned and had distressed him of late, beginning from a time to which he referred; since which time, and, as he believed, from the efforts he had made, he had suffered from a head-ache and pains in his chest and limbs. Not aware that an illness was at hand which would account for the sensations of which he complained without reference to any mental uneasiness, I endeavoured by reproaches and praises to restore his tranquillity. "You are indebted for your head-ache and other pains to allowing your mind to dwell on useless and groundless apprehensions. Cheerfulness, hope, and gaiety are the best things in the world to make the blood circulate and distribute equally the animal heat. Enough has been said to you on the subject of scruples, and you have admitted the reasonableness of what has been said: I had hoped they were gone for ever. You are a great comfort and blessing to me: be satisfied with yourself. You were at confession and communion five days ago: has any thing occurred since, on which you would consult your director?" He replied, "No, nothing." This we afterwards remembered with great comfort. In the evening we went to the promenade, and walked till it was dark. I then asked if he would go home and play a game at chess: he said playfully, "Yes, if you will let me rest my head on my hands, and stick up my shoulders." This posture he had been used to take sometimes in the study-room in college, where it was permitted, being neither a mortal sin nor false grammar: of course he had since avoided and corrected the habit. The next day the annual distribution of prizes took place at the Royal College. This scene had some attraction for Kenelm as reminding him of Stoneyhurst. He did not stay to the end of the ceremony, complaining of a sense of fatigue. In the evening he walked out again for the last time: we stopt to listen to some music on the walk, when I observed that he was excessively chill. He said to his mother, "I hope my father will be satisfied with my obedience; I have dragged myself along, cold and tired." I had urged him to walk, in the hope of diverting him. We went home; there was no question of chess; he retired early to rest. The day following, the last of the month of August, he appeared to be well, and recovered from all sense of fatigue: he announced his intention of bathing in the Rhone as usual. I requested him to give it up, till it should be seen whether the chilliness, that seemed to renew its attacks like the fits of an ague, should again come upon him. To this he assented. He took his lesson of drawing without complaint; but, almost immediately after the departure of the master, was seized with a violent shivering: he put on a great coat; then wrapped himself in blankets, lying on the sofa. The sense of cold still continuing, he took soup, and afterwards tea. Towards evening he desired to have his bed brought down from his chamber, and placed in the inner salon: this was done. He soon broke out into a violent perspiration. Nothing more was apprehended, than that he had taken cold at his last bathing in the Rhone. His malady was however the dreadful typhus, so fatal in crowded hospitals, in camps and prisons. To an insulated patient, well taken care of, the danger is much diminished; and, but for error, and worse than error, of the medical men who attended, my elder son had probably not fallen a victim to it, and the younger would have been kept out of the way of contagion. In the first spring that I had passed at Avignon, my children, owing to the change of climate, all of them, beginning with the youngest, at short intervals from each other, fell ill of the scarlet fever. At that time I had sent for a physician, who treated them with much care, and, as I judged from the event, with sufficient skill. In the course of three years he had occasionally attended when his advice was wanted. His practice was among the best families of the town; he was a middle-aged man, married, and father of a family. He was entrusted by the municipality with the place of physician to the hospital, in which quality he gave lectures on anatomy, at which, so long as the dissected subject was fresh, I had allowed my sons to attend. The typhus is an universal prostration of the forces of the body; it is no wonder then that Kenelm felt no inclination to leave his bed. For two days he remained there without seeming to himself to have any illness to complain of. M. le Docteur Roche was sent for: he pronounced the disorder to be a catarrhal fever; the symptoms nothing unfavourable; the perspiration beneficial, but excessive; and ordered the removal of some of the bed-clothes. He prescribed at this time no medicine. As this man was considered as devout, and had frequently conversed with us on religious subjects, Kenelm, on account of the effect which he supposed his scruples to have had on his health, and assured that they would not be a subject of ridicule to a pious man, thought it right to confide them to him. The doctor coincided entirely with the reasoning of his patient: he said, "For some time past you have been forming unwholesome chyle: the bowels must be relieved; perspiration, so as not to weaken you, but to carry off the fever, probably caused by the cold bath, must be sustained: all will soon be well again." Kenelm had talked of his scruples in so edifying a manner, as to inspire the devout doctor with great respect for his piety and humility: returning into the first salon, he said to the mother: "Madame, votre fils est un ange:" she replied, "Pas encore."[69] This is one of those prophetic expressions launched at hazard, of which so many examples are on record. On the fourth day of the malady, the delirium commenced. Roche was one of those physicians who never find out that they are in the wrong: he added the epithet "nervous," to his former definition of the fever, and ordered a calming draught at night. He called three times a day: he felt the pulse of his patient: if the delirium had failed to alarm him, the pulse might have indicated the typhus, by the "subsaltus tendonis," a weak tremulous motion in the wrist, close by the pulse. From this fourth day of his illness, I began to watch every night by the bed-side of Kenelm till two o'clock in the morning: for several years past I had been accustomed not to retire to rest till after midnight; to sit up an hour or two longer was therefore no great fatigue. Antoine, who was directed to go to bed at eight in the evening, then relieved me for the rest of the night. We adopted this arrangement, not foreseeing how long the illness would last, though the period of the typhus is well known to be thirty days. Kenelm's brother and sisters attended and served him during the day, without fear of contagion, the existence of which was positively denied by Roche, and which indeed was not to be apprehended in a case of "nervous catarrhal fever." The care of his mother extended to every moment of the day and night: her chamber was the next room to the salon in which her son lay: on the least noise she was at his bed-side. What she endured of toil, seemingly beyond human strength, and how her maternal feelings were tortured, will appear in the sequel. One of the symptoms of the malady was the induration of the belly: it became hard and tight like a drum or inflated bladder; this proceeded from the meteorized state of the bowels; and the vapour or fumes, ascending thence to the brain, as in the case of drunkenness, caused delirium. It was attempted to relieve this induration by emollient fomentations. Kenelm's delirium was not so entire, but that his attention might be directed by those around him to any object that might require it: he spoke French or English, according to the nation of the person whom he addressed; and it was remarkable, that he talked French without hesitating or correcting his phrases, as he was wont to do in health: the delirium in this also resembling drunkenness, which, in its earlier stage, gives a firm and ready elocution. This mental alienation continued till within a few hours of his death: it was the touchstone of his character: he talked much, even when alone, or when, as in the watches of the night, by the faint light of a lamp, he thought himself alone; and his talking was thinking aloud; so that, had his mind or disposition concealed any thing inconsistent with piety, purity, or charity, it must have been then revealed: if his self-love had been excessive, it would have burst forth in vain-glorious expressions: if he had entertained inordinate desires of any kind, they would then have betrayed themselves. But there was nothing of all this. He recited frequently and for a length of time together the prayers of the church, or those used in the family: he uttered sentiments of piety and devotion: "O my God, I love thee with my whole heart and soul, and I beg rather to die than offend thee by any mortal sin;" with many other aspirations of holy fervour. So little fear existed of his saying any thing unfit for chaste or virgin ears to hear, that, not till after his death, did it offer itself to my mind that this danger had actually been incurred. It is worthy of remark, that he never said any thing on the subject of those scruples which had given him uneasiness during his health; a presumption that they were unfounded, and had their source in timidity and inexperience. The charity "which thinketh no evil," did not now forsake him; he spoke of the several persons of his acquaintance, but not in dispraise of any. Of one who, as I knew, had lately given him offence, he said, "M. de ---- is a very good, a very pious man." It may be conjectured that he made an effort to say something in this person's favour, as the sort of eulogy by no means suited the character of him to whom it was given. His patience was admirable. On the twelfth of September, sinapism was applied to the soles of his feet: it produced no good effect, being taken off four hours after it was put on; but, during those four hours, it caused excessive torture: he said, "it is a fire that burns without consuming." Two days after the removal of the sinapism, Roche ordered blisters on the legs, and insisted, in token of his good-will, on putting them on himself: he put them on as one unaccustomed to the work: the patient, unconscious of what he was doing, tore them off in the night, and spread the blistering drug on different parts of his body. The surgeon who attended to dress the blisters, advised that these slight excoriations should be let alone, fearing to draw them by any healing plaster, and hoping that they might heal of themselves. The restlessness of the patient prevented this: plasters were then applied, but four or five of these wounds situated on the parts on which he rested in bed, continued till his death. By these wounds Kenelm was urged to exclaim, "O why do I suffer so much?" but immediately corrected himself: "I am very wrong--very impatient." He refused to take any thing to remove the nauseous taste of the medicines: he once asked for a piece of an orange for this purpose, and then rejected it. On some few occasions he complained, as one suffering indeed, but not as without resignation, or unwilling to suffer: he seemed at all times sensible of the duty of bearing his illness in the spirit of penance: even his delirium did not destroy the virtuous habits of his mind. About this time my younger son began to be ill; the predisposition to the typhus manifested itself in listlessness and languor. Roche said, "Il est triste à cause de son frère: il faut l'amuser; il faut le promener."[70] He was still able, for some days longer, to amuse himself with his pencil or at chess with me, and to walk out with the servant or some of the family; but the malady gained upon him. After the event, I can blame myself, and may be blamed by others, for allowing my confidence in Roche to continue so long. After the event, I received hints, and more than hints, that he was not of skill enough for a serious case; while he was still retained, no one spoke against him. Besides, he had served me well in the serious case of the scarlet fever. I did not place more reliance on him on account of his devotion, knowing that devotion is but too often another mode of self-deceit: but I thought him incapable of acting like a villain. The patient showed an appearance of great strength, and Roche's daily promises of his speedy recovery did not as yet bear the semblance of improbability. The silence of the surgeon, who came every morning and evening to dress and keep open the blisters, also tended to deceive me. He might have been the means of saving a valuable life, of rescuing the family from the danger of contagion, all except the younger son, who had already taken the infection; and for him might have procured timely aid: but he prudently held his tongue, except to assure us that there was no danger. At length came the grand conspirator, he who set his seal to the deceit, rendered the discovery of Roche's error impracticable, and assured its result. FOOTNOTES: [69] "Your son is an angel."--"Not yet." [70] He is melancholy on account of his brother; he must be amused; he must be taken out. CHAP. XVII. On the seventeenth of September, I proposed to Roche to call in another physician, naming M. Guerard, a man of acknowledged ability, but old and deaf. On account of these natural defects of Guerard, and out of friendship for Roche, I did not discharge this latter. Roche said, "I will call myself on M. Guerard, and bring him to the house." I saw nothing in this proposal, but an act of civility towards Guerard. I have since understood that this man sheltered himself, under the character of _consulting_ physician, from the reproach of a treacherous abuse of my confidence in him. It is possible that Roche called him in as such, from unwillingness to seem to be superseded. But on his second visit, when he came alone, on his observing, "M. Roche est votre médecin," I replied, "vous l'êtes aussi,"[71] and explained to him, that I expected from him the service of a physician just as much as if Roche was not in attendance; adding that, if I had been perfectly satisfied with Roche, I should not have called in another. Besides he received his fee; a circumstance which, if I understand aright, technically nullifies a technical defence of a conduct too atrocious for me to suspect at the time, and including too much cruelty to be justified by any considerations. He came, accompanied by Roche. He said, "M. Roche has explained to me in detail your son's illness and the treatment of it: we will go and see him." He examined his patient with great attention. On leaving the room he said, "this is a very serious malady, but I see no immediate danger." He prescribed musk and bark: these medicines being proper for the typhus, prove what indeed has never been questioned, that he knew, from the first, the nature of the complaint. The languid state of my younger son was mentioned to him; he smiled on him good-naturedly, took his hand, but made no remark, giving at the same time a significant look at Roche. The servant met them descending the stairs; Guerard wringing his hands, and Roche looking, as the man expressed himself, like a scolded child, "un enfant grondé." By some fatality, Antoine did not speak of this till some days after the death of Kenelm: had it been mentioned at the time, it might have changed the whole state of things. The next morning, Antoine asked Roche on his first visit, "Is M. Kenelm worse, Sir? M. Guerard seemed much disturbed yesterday." Roche said, "O no: all is going on well: he is better." Guerard did not even order Roche's treatment, though contrary to the malady, to be discontinued; and Roche went on with his barley-water and calming potion conjointly with Guerard's prescribed medicines. After visiting four days, Guerard fell ill of the gout and was confined to his house: it was then agreed that Roche should report to him daily the state of the patient, and consult with him on the treatment. My eldest daughter, subsequently to Guerard's first visit, was ill of a sore throat: had she taken the infection of the typhus, would these medical men still have persevered in their silence? A good providence was merciful. She recovered; we were less alarmed, as unaware of the extent of the danger; and it is not proved that the medical men were willing to assassinate more than two of the family. Kenelm appeared to be somewhat benefited by Guerard's medicines; and the external application of camphor, now prescribed by Roche, mitigated the delirium, though it did not remove the cause. His brother said one day, "Let us try how far his mind is free:" and, taking the drawing before-mentioned of the infant Jesus, which had been framed and hung up in the first salon, he placed it at the foot of his brother's bed. Kenelm looked at it for a short time with seeming pleasure, and then said, "Perhaps that may hereafter do me some little honour." Other indications he gave, that he thought his end to be near: he said to me, with a pensive and composed look,--"Monument? what monument shall I have?" He heard the bell of the church of St. Agricol, and cried, "Why do they ring that bell? I am not dead yet." On the twenty-fourth of September he said to his mother, "I dreamed last night that Mr. Roche took me into a church, and left me there, promising to bring me every day bread and water. He did so for some time; but one day he failed of coming, and I died. I thought in my dream that I made a very happy death: I am certain it is a very easy thing to make a happy death." This dream evidently tranquillized and spoke peace to his soul: it was a merciful dispensation, when other means of spiritual comfort were rendered impossible by the delirium, which however left to his pious thoughts their direction and energy. He had been, for some days before, a little better. The delirium was somewhat abated, and he seemed to have more strength; but on the twenty-fifth these favourable symptoms disappeared; this lightening before death vanished. On the evening of that day, the surgeon took upon himself to apply healing plasters to the blisters, without asking the opinion of Roche, who was present, and who, though unasked, to keep himself in countenance, gave his assent, saying, "C'est très bien fait de M. Busquet."[72] Roche had evidently now lost all presence of mind: he knew not what to do; and no confidence could longer be placed in one who ceased even to affect to have any in himself. The next morning I sent him his discharge: he wrote me a letter full of respect and sensibility, complaining of this measure, and returning the fee. The custom of France is, that the physician is not paid till the termination of the malady: had Roche retained the fee, he would have acceded to his own dismissal, which he earnestly wished to be recalled, foreseeing that all must inevitably be known on the arrival of another physician. Guerard too, who was still confined by the gout, made strong objections to the calling in another physician, whom I named to him, and who had studied with credit at Paris. He requested me to be contented that the surgeon, an able man, should make his report as Roche had done, and promised to call the next day in a "chaise à porteurs"--sedan-chair. I had taken with me my younger son, intending to consult Guerard about him. In my confusion and anxiety, I forgot to do so; but Guerard, who knew the nature of the malady, and that I had been kept in the dark concerning it;--who knew that my younger son, ten days before, had been ill for some days--must have apprehended his state, even from his looks, and to this state consigned him. Roche, during his latter visits, had sedulously avoided paying attention to the younger son; and so slow at first was the advance of the illness, that we had neglected to call his attention that way. Roche too knew all. Had he continued his visits, I cannot tell what he would have done: perhaps he could not tell himself. He could hardly have talked of a second "catarrhal nervous fever;" nor could Guerard have borne him out in it. The next morning, the 27th, I called again on Guerard. On seeing me, he cried out, "Sir, I should have come to your house yesterday, but for the difficulty of mounting the stairs."--"You might have been carried up in an armchair by the porters."--"That shall be done to-morrow, if I am not strong enough to mount by myself: at any rate I will come to-morrow." He now, by my desire, felt my younger son's pulse. "He has some fever: he must be taken care of: I will come to-morrow." He well knew, though I did not, how urgent the case was: though regularly called upon to prescribe for my younger son, he thus evaded his duty. He added, referring to the elder son,--"M. Busquet is a clever man: he has my method, and will treat your son according to it. Another physician will, very likely, wish to try experiments." If I admitted with such credulous facility the delays of this cold-hearted man and the fear of empiricism, which he artfully threw in, it was because I foresaw not the calamities that awaited me: could I even have foreseen them, I should not have suspected any one capable of thus trifling with a father of a family, who, in that quality, had thrown himself on his good faith, and, in his quality of stranger, in some sort on the good faith of his nation. I acted even worse on the morrow. Guerard failed to come; I waited for him the whole day, and then did not even send to inquire after him. I do not pretend to excuse a conduct so inconsistent with my principles and feelings; yet be it remembered, sorrow and perturbation of mind are bad counsellors. Desponding and sick at heart, overcome by lassitude--I speak not of corporeal fatigue, for a messenger would have ascertained the failure of Guerard, and brought a physician in his stead--but overborne by the disappointment of the efforts I had made, and, later in the day, becoming sensible of the danger of Kenelm, I felt as if, like the father of Thessalonica, I could not help one son without abandoning the other. I acted wrong: it is some consolation to reflect that, whereas, on the following day, I found the physician who saved the life of my younger son; had I this day sent for one, that one might not have had the same success. For Kenelm, the delay imported not; his days were numbered. It may also be a palliation that, when his mother asked the surgeon what news she might send to her friends in England, he replied,--"You may tell them, Madam, that there is no danger." In the evening of the same day, this same man said to me, "Your son is worse: your younger son also requires attention: I will go immediately to M. Guerard, and tell him it is absolutely necessary that a physician should visit them." He said also, "It would be better that the young ladies should not stay in their brother's chamber." I said, "We have been assured that there is no danger of contagion."--"There is always some danger." He spoke of the sisters who were present, and whose presence had always seemed to give pleasure to Kenelm. His brother was so weakened by the now rapid progress of his own malady, that, for two days, he had hardly passed into this room, and had gone early to bed. It was now with him, as was known afterwards, the twelfth day of the fever. He himself, from his own feelings asserted that his disorder was the same as his brother's. The medical diagnosis was the same; yet to me, who could judge by appearances only, it seemed a perfectly different illness; the prostration of all the strength of the body was the only visible symptom, and this had come on gradually and quietly, had brought with it loss of spirits and of appetite, had even affected the eye-sight, but without any occasional excitement, without delirium. Towards midnight I took my station to watch by the bed-side of Kenelm with a presentiment, very naturally to be accounted for, that it was for the last time. He passed the night in tolerable tranquillity, but, at day-break, he began to disturb and alarm us by loud and continued talking. At the same time his understanding seemed to be returning, as, amidst the extravagancies he uttered, he spoke of an occurrence in the life-time of his eldest sister, (little Mary he called her,) "but that was a long time ago; she has been dead fifteen years:" this was exact. He said also, "I would give the world to be able to hold my tongue, but I seem to have something within me that forces me to talk." He talked in fact incessantly for six hours, till his voice even became hoarse. This was the last effort of the victorious typhus: the gangrene of the bowels was now in operation; sickness came on. Guerard had not rendered himself to the summons of the surgeon the evening before, nor to the repeated summons of the same messenger this morning. I hastened to his house: at eleven o'clock he was sitting in his arm chair: he had not even sent word that he could not come. I addressed him in a hurried manner:--"Is my son to take the bark, since he is vomiting?" Guerard, being deaf, and supposing my question to be a reiterated invitation, or complaint of his absence, declared his utter inability to visit me, concluding his excuses, with "Voici le médecin que je vous recommande,"[73] pointing to a person sitting near him, whom I had before met with, but did not recognise. Suspecting that Guerard's recommendation might proceed from jealousy of the other physician whom I had once named to him, I requested the stranger to give me his address, which he did; M. Breugne. I then repeated my question to Guerard, who, not hearing to the end, advised that the bark should be continued. M. Breugne said, "Puisqu'il vomit?"[74] Guerard then said the bark must be suspended. I asked him what opinion he had formed on the report of the surgeon: to this a vague answer was given. M. Breugne said, that a physician could not judge of a patient's case by report: he gave some reasons for this opinion, concluding, "the pulse cannot be described." I took leave hastily and without explaining my intentions as to the successor to Roche and Guerard. This latter had no claim to know them. I wished to inform myself respecting M. Breugne. The physician whom I had in my mind, had a high reputation, but was young, and consequently as yet had but little practice. I went up to my younger son's chamber, "Who is this M. Breugne?" said I. "He is the physician of the family of M. de R. of whom they all speak so highly." Had the question been proposed to him an hour later, he would have been incapable of answering it, for then the stupor of the fever was fully come upon him. Had the stupor come upon him twelve hours later, he must have known of the death of his brother; and the effect of that knowledge, in his weak state, would most probably have been fatal to him. I now recollected, concerning M. Breugne, what was amply sufficient to decide me in his favour. By way of making amends for my reserve, I went to his house myself. He promised to come in ten minutes: that space of time I employed in helping my younger son to dress, and come down stairs: the fatigue of these operations was to him excessive; arrived at the door of the first salon, he looked at the sofa, as if he wished it to come to meet him, made a few hasty and tottering steps, and threw himself upon it, quite exhausted. He desired that it might be turned with its back to the windows, as the light importuned him: this was done, and the large round table was pushed from the centre of the salon towards one side, that there might be space between it and the sofa. This trifling circumstance is not mentioned idly; it will be seen hereafter to have its meaning. Who can deny the existence of a superintending, a particular Providence, when he observes, that the mental faculties of my younger son were continued to him, as if on purpose that he might assist me in determining on the choice of the physician who rescued him from death, and that they were then temporarily suspended precisely at the time when it became necessary that he should be kept in ignorance of what, if known, would have retarded or prevented his restoration to health? Is it presumption in me to think, that even my negligence of the former day, when I waited so long for Guerard without taking any steps to replace him, may have been regulated, that the merciful dispensations of a good Providence might have their way? I advance this conjecture in all humility, and corrected by a sense of my own unworthiness. FOOTNOTES: [71] "M. Roche is your physician."--"_You_ are my physician also." [72] It is very well done of M. Busquet. [73] Here is the physician whom I recommend to you. [74] Since he is vomiting? CHAP. XVIII. M. Breugne, entering the room and seeing his younger patient stretched on the sofa, went first to him: after a short examination, he said: "Il a la fièvre typhus, et, à en juger par la gravité des symptômes, il l'a eu depuis huit à dix jours: il doit l'avoir gagnée de M. son frère aîné, que je n'ai pas encore vu."[75] I led him into the inner salon. He felt the pulse of the elder son; his mother was standing by the bed-side: he looked at what Kenelm had thrown from his stomach: the mother asked if it was the bark; "Non, Madam, ce n'est pas cela;" and, with a look of dreadful import, he led me out of the room, and, with a hurried under voice, said, "C'en est fait de lui: sauvons l'autre: qu'il soit monté au second; que ses soeurs ne mettent pas même le pied sur l'escalier."[76] All was now at once revealed. Breugne, overcome by the impetuosity of his own feelings, did not give himself time to reflect with how little preparation or management he made known to me the certain death of one son, the uncertain fate of the other, and the danger of all the family. I was stunned, but not surprised. He prescribed for the two brothers; "With respect to the elder, we will do our duty; but it is useless, and may torment him; he has not two days to live; indeed I fear he will not pass the night: for the younger, I can assure you of nothing; I have hope: I have followed, as physician, the armies of Italy, and have attended, it may be, a thousand persons under this disorder; I have lost but two or three, and then only through some fault of the patient; but here, in the case of your younger son, this fault exists,--he has been ten days without treatment, without medical aid." He returned at five o'clock in the afternoon, and gave more particular directions concerning him, confirming his opinion, that Kenelm could not live over the night. Two hours later, the surgeon called as usual, but proposed not to dress the blisters till next morning. How we cling to the possession of a beloved object! Notwithstanding what she had heard and what she saw before her, the mother was alarmed, and cried out, "You think he will not live till morning?" Not less grieved, but more resolute, I touched the sole of Kenelm's foot, and said to the surgeon, "He is already cold here:" the surgeon, touching the upper part of the foot, said, "There is warmth here:" "Yes," said I, "the natural heat is retiring." The surgeon made no reply. To calm the mother's fears, he seemed to dress the blisters; and so the work of these medical men was ended. Our director had called in the course of the morning: he pitied the affliction of the family, and conversed with the excellent youth now approaching to the close of a virtuous life. Kenelm wished to make a general confession; the priest knowing this to be, in his case, superfluous, and doubting if his mind or bodily strength were sufficient to such a purpose, consoled him, and persuaded him to defer it. In the evening he called again, and proposed to me the administration of the sacrament of extreme unction; undertaking to prepare the curé of St. Agricol, the parish-church. The viaticum was, of necessity, to be omitted on account of the vomiting. Kenelm, though exhausted by this discharge, yet on account of the movement which it occasioned, and from painful and uneasy sensations, was unable to sleep: he called aloud several times the name of his brother, recollecting perhaps that he had not seen him during the day, adding, "He is playing alone in the field." His three younger sisters had retired to their chambers, just before the arrival of the priest with the holy oils. I said to him, "You will be glad to see M. l'Abbé:" he assented. The priest, addressing him, said, "You see this is the crucifix?" he answered, changing his language immediately into that of the priest, "Oui, Monsieur;" and devoutly kissed the sign of salvation. The expression of his countenance, during the extreme unction, was that of joy mingled with surprise; as of one delighted with the approach of death, and understanding now, for the first time, that it was near. No doubt was entertained but that he knew what was going forward, and, in hope, set the seal to his faith. The priest and his attendant retired. Kenelm's mother approached the bed: "Will you pray for me------" she had not force to add, as she wished, "when you are in heaven?" He said, "Yes, I will, if you will not cry: why do you cry?"--"To see you so ill."--"That is the reason; yes, I am very ill:" he expressed a wish to repose himself, but could not sleep; the fermentation of the gangrene was consuming his bowels. I sent for M. Breugne again at ten o'clock. "I am giving you an useless trouble; but can any thing be done to relieve him?" Breugne looked at him attentively, and turning away, said, "He has not two hours to live." My eldest daughter, in a movement of grief and despair, cried out, "Sir, you abandon him; you have not even felt his pulse." Breugne, in a compassionate and placid manner, said, "If it will be a satisfaction to you, Mademoiselle,--" and felt the wrist: "he has no pulse that can be counted." I went up with Breugne into my younger son's chamber: "Il dort; laissons-le; je viendrai demain de bonne heure."[77] Notwithstanding Kenelm's satisfactory behaviour during the religious ceremony of which he had been the subject, I wished for more positive assurance that his reason was restored to him, and that he was aware of his state: I wished, as far as I might, to comfort him, and prepare him for his end. The task was most difficult: thirty days before, youth and the expectation of a long life were his: a month had been passed in a dream from which he was now awakened but to die. In his weak state, how enter on such a topic? I endeavoured to lead to it. "Do you love me, my dear son?"--"Yes, I love you; as I ought; you have great virtues."--"And great faults."--"It is not for me to judge of that."--"Do you forgive me the faults I may have committed in regard to you?"--"Assuredly I do." He signified that he should be obliged to vomit, and I withdrew; nor could I afterwards excite him to speak, though I frequently drew near the bed for that purpose, and, at times, gently called him by his name. His last words were words of charity, of pardon, and of peace. His father and mother took one of his hands in theirs; it was cold, colder than afterwards in death: he seemed unwilling to be thus disturbed; they laid the hand down, and, with their eldest daughter, awaited the end in painful and trembling anxiety: he appeared to suffer, but to be so oppressed as to be unable to give expression to the sense of what he suffered. The hour of midnight sounded: his last agony came on; and, within ten minutes, he expired on Sunday morning, the thirtieth of September, aged twenty years, four months, and twenty-five days. The affliction of his parents and sister, who were fully sensible of the value of what they had lost, needs not to be described. The exclamation of Antoine Leturgé, the domestic, the other witness of this scene of woe, was simple and expressive: "Il est mort, lui, qui étoit si bon!"[78] As they gazed on the awful object before them, the sister said, "His eyes ought to be closed;" the mother, without due recollection at the moment, made a sign to the servant: he, with right feeling, gently said, "C'est au père à faire cela:"[79] and the father did it. After attending to the due arrangement of the chamber, and of the precious remains, I went up stairs: the doors of the chambers of my two sons were close to each other; I was strangely struck by the sight of the open door of the untenanted chamber, and stopt a moment to recover force to enter into the other. I saw the flushed face of my only surviving son through the gauze that surrounded the bed; I heard his breathing, too full, but tranquil and equal. I withdrew, and took a few hours troubled sleep on the couch on which both my sons had commenced their dreadful malady. In the morning, a table was placed, according to the usage of the country, at the door of the court of the house, with paper and pens for those who wished to signify their condolence with the family, to write their names. The list of names was numerous: among them some one wrote, "Tous les honnêtes gens de la ville d'Avignon."[80] It was never known who paid this tribute to the virtues of the deceased. I cannot forbear to mention, that the man who had given him lessons in fencing, a hardy soldier who had seen much military service, was so shocked by the news of his death, that he fainted in the street, and was led home in a weak state: this man was not advanced in years, but of the middle age, stout, and of high spirit. Before mid-day, the body in its coffin was taken to a room on the ground floor: a shirt and sheet served, according to the custom of France, the purpose of the woollen shroud: the head was raised on a pillow: the hands were fixed, as we still see them on some ancient tombs, in the posture of prayer: a small crucifix, the same which he had pressed to his lips the evening before, was placed on the breast: wax tapers and incense were burnt; the latter in more than ordinary quantity as a preservative from infection. The lid of the coffin is not, at any time, fastened in the south of France, not even at the time of interment: it is then laid evenly upon it; till then it is placed obliquely, so that the upper part of the body and the feet are seen. The face of the deceased now bore no sign of suffering; the features were composed, and seemed to indicate a tranquil state. Owing to the excessive cold which, before death, had gradually spread itself over the body, the muscles had become instantly rigid, and it had been impossible to close completely the eyes and mouth: so that the separated eye-lashes, and a fine set of teeth, white and regular, added to the illusion produced by what seemed an expression of thoughtfulness. Death looked like sleep: it required an effort of reflection to be convinced of the mournful reality. On the morning of the first of October, the clergy of the cathedral came to the house to convey the body to the church: they were requested not to begin their chant of the office for the dead, till at such a distance as not to be heard by the surviving brother. The church was filled by a crowd whom divine charity, or the best feelings of humanity, brought to assist at the solemn rite, and to witness a scene which the early youth, the well-known virtues, the afflicted state of the family of him who lay before them, conspired to render interesting. High mass was celebrated: the body was then carried to the cemetery to the north of the city, and interred towards the middle of the wall enclosing the cemetery on the north; the head resting near the wall, the feet turned towards Avignon. Eighteen masses, without chant, were said for the repose of the soul of the defunct. On Friday following, high mass was again sung, when, according to custom, the friends of the family were invited to be present: a great concourse again attended to join their prayers to the powerful intercession of the spotless victim, and testify their sympathy and compassion. On a tablet of white marble, inserted in a sepulchral stone from the quarries of Barbentanne, is inscribed, in the Latin language, his name, his country, his religion, his age, and the date of the day and year of his death. Henry Kenelm was tall, more than five feet ten inches in height, strong and well-made, but not large-limbed; with light hair, dark blue eyes, and dark eye-lashes, and a fair complexion. The expression of his countenance was, like his mind, benevolent, frank, cheerful, and intelligent. When we were at Florence, a year after his death, a cast, from a statue in the public gallery, was sent to our lodging as a model for drawing. All of us were struck by the resemblance of this bust to him whom we regretted, whose features were still so fresh in our recollection. Antoine was called; the bust was shown to him; nothing was said: "It is like M. Kenelm," said he. My son took two copies of this bust: the original is an _athleta_, as it is called, bearing and looking down upon an urn: it is the third or fourth statue from the entrance of the gallery on the left hand. We showed the bust to a friend: "It is like the son whom we have lost."--"Your son was a very fine young man." The face of the statue is certainly handsome: that of Kenelm had more animation. His manners were those of good society, wanting nothing but that ease and confidence which time and experience would have given. The friends who endeavoured to console me, employed, among other topics, that of the danger of the world to youth. The argument proves too much. A father is not reconciled, by the apprehension of a danger, uncertain, and (in this case it may not be presumption to say) improbable, to the loss of a son whom he has reared with careful and anxious thought, to whose future life he looks forward with pleasing hope. The Greek proverb indeed says, "He, whom God loves, dies young;" but we trust that many who do not die young are beloved by God. More effectually did the priest at Avignon console me: he knew, as confessor, the interior and the conscience of Kenelm: "Je vous reponds de son salut; c'étoit un fruit mûr pour le ciel: Dieu l'a cueilli, et l'a mis dans son grenier."[81] The Almighty Father of all, whose wise providence sends afflictions, who knows when those whom he is pleased to call to himself have well finished their course,--he can give assured comfort, and this assured comfort he was graciously pleased to impart to the parents of Henry Kenelm. Mean time let me hope that this example of faith and piety, of filial submission and fraternal love, of application to study, of patience, mortification, chastity, will not be lost; that some will be reclaimed, and many edified. To my children especially, I recommend this memorial, written with tears of mingled joy and grief: they have lost a brother, but they possess the remembrance of his virtues, the knowledge of his felicity, the benefit of his intercession. May they ever bear in mind that "every good, every perfect gift cometh from above;" that to "Him alone is glory," who "in crowning our merits crowneth his own work." [Greek: Dôron toi kai ego, teknon phile, touto didômi.] I will now relate an occurrence, on which I request the reader to exercise his judgment temperately. He will readily believe that I have not invented it: this is not an age in which credit is given to visions or honor to visionaries. In the night between the 30th and 31st of October, thirty entire days after the death of Kenelm, his parents retired late to rest; in fact, at one o'clock of the morning of the 31st. As they were composing themselves to sleep, they heard a noise as of the breaking of a small stick. To me this noise seemed to proceed from the cabinet or dressing-room behind the bed; my wife heard it as from the commode or drawers opposite the foot of the bed. We asked each other what the noise might be, and compared what we had heard. Within a minute, my wife, who had raised herself in her bed, asked me, "What light is that?" I saw no light, and asked, "Where?"--"On the drawers, brighter than any candle." She proceeded to describe what she saw: "Now it rises and grows larger. How beautifully bright! brighter than the most brilliant star. What can it mean? it is very strange you don't see it." I thought so too; but, to encourage her, said, "Compose yourself; it can mean no harm." She went on: "It still rises and grows larger: now it turns towards the window--it takes the form of a dove with the wings spread but--it has a bright glory all around it--it looks steadily at me--it speaks to my heart, and tells me that my dear Henry is happy--it fixes a piercing look on me, as if it would make me feel what it means. Now I know he is happy, and shall lament no more for him. There--now it has disappeared." Though I had not seen the light, I could see the face of my wife while she was looking at it, and the tears glittering as if a bright light passed through them while they fell down her cheeks. The French word would be _ébrillantées_. There still remained a suffused light in the room, particularly on the wall above the drawers, as of the reflection of a nearly extinguished fire. This was observed by both of us. It lasted about five minutes, growing gradually fainter, and at length failing entirely. While looking at this suffused and darkish red light, and reasoning with myself how or why the bright light had not been seen by me, I remarked, on the floor, by the open door of the cabinet, the reflection of a veilleuse, or small night-lamp. These lights are made of a single thread of cotton half an inch long, steeped in melted wax, and, when dry, inserted in little flat pieces of cork, which are floated, while the cotton is burning, in a small quantity of oil. This night-lamp was placed in the remotest corner of the dressing room, which went the whole length of the bed-room. I saw its reflection on the floor only, and only so far as the open door permitted it to be seen. "This" said I, "cannot be the cause of the suffused light; still less can it have been the cause of the bright one." While I was looking, first at the suffused light, then at the reflection of the lamp, the former disappeared; it was plain, therefore, that it had not been caused by the latter. In the morning we visited the tomb of our departed son, and returned thanks to God. During the whole of the scene which I have described, which lasted about half a quarter of an hour, my wife's behaviour was sufficiently composed and recollected, was consistent and rational, free from affectation or enthusiasm. A sudden and transient apparition of an illuminated dove with a glory might be considered as the work of fancy; but here this appearance was prepared for and followed by circumstances, in which the imagination could have no part. The attention of her who was to see the vision was directed, by the noise preceding it, to the place where it first appeared; while I was roused by the same noise, but heard by me in a different part of the chamber, as if I were to be, as in the main I was, a witness only. I repeat, the suffused light was seen by us _both_ for four or five minutes. Besides the form which the bright light assumed to the eyes of my wife, the circumstance of its being seen by one of the parties only, without weakening the force of her testimony, is conclusive against its being either a natural or artificial light; and her testimony, aided by mine, as to the concomitant circumstances, proves it to have been a supernatural one. The house looked into a court; there was no house opposite from which lamp or candle could be seen; the moon, whatever witty people may be inclined to say of the influence of the moon in this case, was but four days old: besides, the window shutters were closed, and excluded all lights, artificial or natural. To use the words of a learned, rational, and respectable old man, the curé of St. Agricol, to whom I related the matter, "Ce qu'on voit, on voit." True,--what one sees, one sees; but the scripture, with that intimate knowledge of human nature evident in its every page, speaks of some who "will not be persuaded even though one rose from the dead." The term of thirty days has been observed in the catholic church as that at the end of which revelations have sometimes been made of the happiness of departed souls. I will now proceed in order with my narrative, but will first, to conclude this subject, transcribe the affecting prayer for the dead in the canon of the mass, which, not having found its way into "The Book of Common Prayer," will be new to many of my readers:-- "Memento, Domine, famulorum famularumque tuarum N. et N. qui nos præecesserunt cum signo fidei, et dormiunt in somno pacis: ipsis, Domine, et omnibus in Christo quiescentibus, locum refrigerii, lucis, et pacis, ut indulgeas, deprecamur; per eundem Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen." FOOTNOTES: [75] He has the typhus fever; and, to judge by the gravity of the symptoms, he has had it for eight or ten days: he must have taken it from his elder brother, whom I have not yet seen. [76] It is all over with _him_: let us save the other; let him be taken up to the second story, and let his sisters not even set a foot on the staircase. [77] He sleeps: we will leave him alone: I will come again early to-morrow. [78] He is dead; he that was so good! [79] It is for the father to do that. [80] All the worthy people of the city of Avignon. [81] I answer to you for his salvation; it was a fruit ripe for heaven: God has gathered it, and placed it in his granary. CHAP. XIX. On the morning of the funeral, M. Breugne called a little before ten o'clock, the time appointed to the clergy, led me up into my son's chamber, made there a long visit, gave me to understand the hour to be earlier than it really was, returned into the salon, and kept me there for some time in conversation. When he had retired, I went down to the room where the body of Kenelm had lain: it was gone. I stood some time lamenting the disappointment of my purposed farewell; blaming the well-meant and successful efforts of Breugne to deprive me of this sorrowful satisfaction, and renewing the impression of the view I had taken the preceding evening of that which I was to behold no more. The crucifix lay on the table; I took it up; and, before leaving the room, was preparing to extinguish the tapers which were, by chance as I thought, left burning. The femme-de-chambre called out to me, "Monsieur, il ne faut pas faire cela: les cierges lient la famille à ce qui se fait dans l'église."[82] It is easy to call this arrangement superstitious: there was good sense, and a sense of decorum in thus declaring, by external signs, our participation in the office in which we had so dear a concern. Whatever man loves or esteems highly, he endeavours to represent to himself by symbols. Friends set a great value on those tokens of friendship which they may have received as presents; even to become accidentally possessed of any object, however trifling, that belonged to a friend, is a cause of pleasure. Portraits are precious, not merely as works of art, but as reminding us of those whom we delight to remember; and none refuse to venerate the images of saints, but those who make no account of the saints themselves. In Italy, in the salons of ambassadors, I have seen the thrones of their several sovereigns, to connect by these emblems the representatives with the represented,--ceremonial so necessary to the maintenance of authority, that the Spanish minister told his king, "Your Majesty's self is nothing but a ceremonial;"--etiquette so essential to the good order of society, that not even the most unpolished réunion subsists without it: these are but modes of expressing meaning by signs. In war, in politics, in civil contracts, in common life, men universally thus express themselves; and why not in religion? Those who quarrel with the shadow are angry with the substance that throws it. I said to M. Breugne, "Have compassion on me. It is not my fault that I did not know you sooner, but a great misfortune it has proved to me: you might have saved my elder son. You would not have allowed the younger to perish under your eyes." Breugne said, "What you have suffered is horrible. On the second day of my visit to your younger son, I met at the door the coffin of the elder. Do not let us despair as long as your dear boy has life. I will not deceive you; you shall know of his state all I know myself." He gave me to understand that he wished me to determine the number of his visits each day, being unwilling, as I supposed, to appear desirous of making up by their frequency for the smallness of the fee usually given to French physicians. I said, "Save my son; spare no pains that may be necessary to that end: come as often as your visits may be of use to him." He said, "From the first I have fixed on a plan in regard to him, which I shall not have occasion to change: that plan will succeed, or nothing will. So many days have been lost, that he must have as much both of nourishment and medicine as he can take with advantage; but I must watch him very attentively to find out the quantity of both, that he may be able in his weak state to bear and to profit by." Never was greater zeal, activity, and judgment exerted than by this worthy man: all was not more than enough; for never had human being such a struggle for life as had this youth. His delirium inclined to stupor. Fomentations of aromatic herbs were applied to the head; sinapism was applied to the soles of the feet and kept on for eight and forty hours; blisters were laid on the back and on the legs; yet it was with difficulty that he could be awakened or excited to take nourishment or medicines. In truth they were, for the most part, especially towards the conclusion of his illness, poured into his mouth and swallowed instinctively, without an effort of the will. In this manner he took, by dessert-spoonfuls, more than a bottle of Malaga wine a day, and this for several days following. On the last three days of his illness, the quantity of musk administered was, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five grains. I mention these particulars for the purpose of showing how perilous was his state. I have not medical knowledge enough to do justice to M. Breugne's treatment by any detail I could give of it. During these last three days the anxiety of Breugne was extreme. "I suspect by her uncertain answers to my questions, that the old garde malade sleeps in the night: let Antoine sit up and watch the nurse. We do not know precisely when the fever began, but it must soon end: the least negligence may be fatal." At his first visits, early in the morning, he used to ask the servants, "Où en sommes nous?"[83] before he would enter the chamber of the patient. Every thing portended his death. His mother afterwards said to me, "I had taken out the sheet to bury him in; it was as well for it to be ready." Breugne, though he could neither feel nor give hope, would not despair, nor relax his efforts. An unfavourable symptom occurred,--the breaking out of red spots on the skin. "It is all over," said I to Breugne; "the little girl, whom I lost fifteen years ago, had the same appearance the day before she died."--"Il ne mourra pas pour cela;"[84] and he did not die. On the sixteenth of October, in the evening, the fever left him. At this time, Breugne, after a careful examination, said, "Il n'a rien--there is nothing the matter with him: but wait till to-morrow morning; it is too soon yet for me to assure you of his safety." On the morrow, Breugne pronounced him out of danger. It was pleasant to see with what delight, with what affectionate exaltation, he contemplated his patient, standing by his bed-side, taking snuff, and hardly refraining from tears. The patient, who had been too weak to say any thing the evening before, had now recovered a little strength and a little spirit of fun. "Why does he not go away? He has made his visit." This was said to me in English. Breugne asked the meaning: I told him, and then said in French, "Let Mr. Breugne enjoy the view of the good he has done." He did enjoy it most cordially and disinterestedly. Now came the difficulty to conceal from my restored and surviving son the death of his brother. Our mourning dress was accounted for, by telling him that an aunt of his mother's had died and left her a large legacy; and he was amused by discussing and settling how the legacy should be spent in Italy. Often has his mother turned aside to hide her tears while answering his inquiries after his brother, and while entering into details to make her accounts more credible. Such traits of heroism have been admired in a Roman matron: but heroism is more common than is usually supposed. I said to him, "Really we are very much obliged to you; but for our waiting for your recovery, we should now be on our road to Italy."--"And my brother? is he well enough for the journey?" I was stupified, and unable so far to recover myself as to tell a falsehood. "He will be no hindrance." A new alarm succeeded. Convalescence after such a malady, uncured for during more than the first third of its period, was no easy matter. "He will die after all," said Breugne, "of what the English physicians call _phthisis in toto corpore_. I order for him exactly the quantity of food that may nourish him; for it is not by what we eat, but by what we can turn into nutriment, that the body is supported. The nurse has given him more than enough, and the organs of nutrition cannot do their office with what surcharges them. We must have him down stairs: that old witch must not be left alone with him." He had in fact asked _Goody Grope_, as he called her, to give him to eat; and she, after discharging her conscience by refusing, ended by complying. Breugne made me observe that his pulse intermitted. I counted thirty-nine pulsations; the fortieth failed. "If he were descending into a malady,"--I cannot well translate his French, as he hesitated in the choice of his words,--"I should call the symptom fatal; but as he is rising from one, it may not be of such evil omen--mauvais augure." An inference may hence be drawn of no small import in the conduct of life. How pernicious it must be, even in health, to eat too much; since, a case of debility supposed, a little quantity more than enough hindered the nutritive effect of the food, and in truth very nearly proved fatal! My son was now about to become again one of the family. Two days before this took place, I told him that his brother was gone into the country, for change of air, to the house of a friend whom I named. I anticipated by two days, lest the story should seem invented for the occasion. On the first of November, he was carried down stairs on a mattress, and laid on a sofa, while his bed was prepared in the cabinet by the side of the salon. "I will have him again put into bed as soon as possible," said Breugne; "le lit est la force du malade."[85] His sisters were shocked at his appearance; terror overcame their joy; they seemed to doubt whether he too had not died and come forth again from the grave: for myself, I wondered where his muscles, veins, and arteries had retired, so complete seemed the adhesion of the skin to the bones. Three days afterwards, asses milk was ordered and found to agree with him; and Breugne cried out exultingly, "J'ai cinq sur sept pour moi."[86] This was, however, but little more than two to one in his favour. Many awkward circumstances might have led him to suspect the death of his brother. The secret was now to be kept by six or seven persons whose looks betrayed it, although their tongues were silent: nay, silence was itself of all circumstances the most suspicious. I dictated a message to Antoine as from the Marquis de ----, with whom Kenelm was supposed to be living in the country. This message was to convey a favourable account of his health, and Antoine was ordered to deliver it in the salon. He had not courage to speak loud enough, and I made a sign to him to talk so as to be heard by _him_ in the cabinet: this gave him the air of one acting a part. The Marquis and Marquise entered soon after. This was unlucky: they could not have sent a message from their country-house while they were in the town. They approached the door of the cabinet. I said, "Madame, you bring us good news from your campagne?" Through pity or astonishment at my resolution, she had not the force to give any answer. I said to M. Breugne, "What am I to do? He suspects his brother's death: he asked me yesterday, 'Why does he not write? is he not well enough to write?' The suspicion will irritate his feelings, and do him more harm than the certainty." Breugne said, "I will not take on myself the responsibility of advising you; you must judge for yourself: you know his character better than I do." On the tenth of November I said to him, "You have had the same illness as your brother, and have recovered from it. Your present illness is excessive weakness owing to your having been so long neglected; there is no reason to fear the same--" Incautiously in my perturbation I had gone further than I had intended to do at first. This was enough: the secret was revealed, and we were relieved from this cruel embarrassment. Four weeks after the fever had left him, he was able to walk a few steps. A month is sufficient for complete convalescence after the typhus in ordinary cases. On the twelfth of December he went out in a carriage. On the twentieth I left my house for the purpose of selling my furniture by auction, and went to the Hôtel d'Europe for better air, and to be near the promenade. At this inn we staid ten days, till the strength of the convalescent should be sufficiently restored to enable us to set out on our long-delayed journey. At length I engaged a voiture, having most happily found one, as if made on purpose for my service, new, well-built and warm, with stout horses, and a respectable coachman. To obtain a passport to quit France is a matter, not of difficulty, but of many formalities. The demandant must first make his application to the municipality, stating his reasons for leaving the kingdom, the country to which he is going, and the point at which he means to quit France. The municipality notifies these particulars to the prefect, who addresses himself to the minister for foreign affairs, who, after due perquisition at the legation of the country of the demandant, if a foreigner, (for the same formalities, this inquiry excepted only, are observed in regard to the French themselves,) authorizes the prefect to grant the passport required. I stated that I was going to Nice to restore the health of my son and of my afflicted family. All that family had made frequent visits to the tomb of Henry Kenelm, except his brother, whose visit was to be one of farewell on the day before our departure from Avignon, which was now fixed for the last of the year. On the 30th of December, a funeral was to take place at two in the afternoon: the hour suited, and we were willing, as requested, to take that opportunity of finding the gate of the cemetery open. We went to the cemetery at the appointed hour; the funeral was delayed till after sunset: it would have been dangerous, for one whose health was so imperfectly established, to wait longer, and expose himself to the cold of the evening; and he quitted this city of death without being able to pay his last duties at the tomb of a beloved brother. FOOTNOTES: [82] Sir, you must not do that: the tapers connect the family with what is doing in the church. [83] Whereabouts are we? [84] He will not die for that. [85] Bed is the strength of a sick person. [86] I have five to seven for me. CHAP. XX. I have mentioned the strong emotion which I felt in passing through the village of St. Clair betwixt Rouen and Pontoise, as also the surprise excited by the view of the features of an infant Jesus drawn by my departed son immediately after his return from England. It is now the proper time to explain to what I then referred. In saying that I alluded to a _dream_, I know that I expose myself to ridicule: to pay regard to dreams is justly considered as a sign of imbecillity of mind, and generally condemned as superstitious: how far I may be exempted from these censures by the prophetic nature of my dream, I leave to be determined by those who shall compare it with the events lately narrated, which seem to me to form a striking and full interpretation of it. I no more affect the character of a dreamer, than that of a visionary: but I am not deterred, by the fear of being laughed at, from believing, in the case of the _vision_, the evidence of my senses, and that a dream, portraying things future, ought to be distinguished from the ordinary phenomena of that inexplicable faculty, (if that which is involuntarily exercised may be called a faculty,) of our fearful and wonderful nature. On Thursday, the 27th of November, 1817, being then at Lincoln, I dreamed that I was in a large, lofty room, which was entirely unknown to me. In the month of October, 1818, I hired a house at Avignon in which was a salon, exactly resembling that of the dream; the situation of the doors, windows, and chimney, and the appearance of them just the same. A person came out of the cabinet by the side of this salon, with whom I was unacquainted, but whom I supposed to be an English catholic priest: he wore a black coat, and had boots on: I did not observe that he had with him any hat: he was of rather less than the middle age of life. This person resembled in features and expression of countenance the infant Jesus drawn, three years afterwards, by my elder son: my recollection did not serve me to recognise the likeness till after I had seen my son's _drawing_ from the _engraving_: in the cabinet, before-mentioned, was usually hung a small crucifix. This priest approached me in a serious, but civil and friendly manner: two chairs were near us, not far from one of the windows: I invited him to be seated. The chairs were like those I had at Avignon; they were placed near the window: had this scene been represented as in the winter season, they would have been near the fire: it was in the summer season that the events occurred, which I suppose to have been now presignified. As it was I who invited the other to sit down, it seems that I thought myself to be in my own house. The priest then said to me, in a slow and distinct voice, "You are to found a new order in the church, to be called 'The Society of the Penitents of St. Clair;' you know under what rule; but not _sub peccato_;" he repeated "not _sub peccato_," and, rising from his seat, took out his watch, an ordinary silver watch with small seals, looked at it, and returned it to its place: then taking leave of me, he passed, not through the door of the stairs, but into the second salon. When the priest said, "You know the rule," I understood to what he referred, without further explanation oh his part. When much younger than I was at this epoch, I had thought of a rule of life, on the observance of which it might be useful and desirable to form a society: but I never had the presumption to conceive the idea of founding a new order in the church. I will confess, so little were my dispositions at this time penitential, that when the word "penitents" was pronounced, it was to me displeasing and repulsive. I had regarded the rule which the priest said, "you know," with a view to bodily health and temporal convenience, not with any reference to religious mortification. I had not thought of the rule for many years past, and had always considered the formation of a society on the rule as an impracticable project. St. Clair's name was unknown to me till I referred to "Butler's Lives of the Saints." I had read of Sta. Clara, but was perfectly sure it was not she that was intended. When the priest had left the room, I saw, seated and eating at a large round table, placed, not in the centre, but towards one side of the room, a young man, whom I went up to, and conversed with: he talked to me of his sins, and his penitential dispositions, and wept much: I asked him if he would observe the rule of the society, not telling him what it was, but supposing him to know it: he answered in the affirmative, but hesitatingly, as if he knew he should be prevented. His dress perplexed me; it was white, loose over his shoulders and before him; without coat, vest, or waistcoat; he seemed to have nothing on but this shapeless white mantle, and his shirt. He rose suddenly from the table at which he had continued to sit while talking with me: his long white robe flowed behind him: he gathered it up round his knees as he went away, and passed through the door, and hastily down stairs. I had no such table in England as this here described, but I had such an one at Avignon. I have remarked in my narrative, that, on the day of my son's death, this table was pushed aside to make room for the sofa turned from the light by desire of my younger son. I have spoken of the scruples of my elder son, and of the distress and uneasiness they caused both to him and to me. The dress of the young man with whom I conversed in my dream, was, in truth, (though then I knew it not, and had been accustomed to see another sort of mortuary clothing,) the habiliments of the dead in France. I followed this young man to the top of the stairs: my family, or persons whom I considered as such, were behind me: the staircase was winding in such a manner that we could not see to the bottom of the stairs; where we stood was a staircase to the second floor on the left hand; a window to the right: all this as at Avignon. As I stood looking down the stairs, my younger son said to me, "I'll go after him:" accordingly he went quickly down the stairs. At this interval, looking through the window, I saw a most beautiful garden, with fruit-trees, and a light as of the reflection of the brightest sunshine: it was reflected sunshine; the window is to the north. My younger son came up stairs again, and standing by me, but turning to look down stairs, and then turning to look at me, said, "He is gone." I have related that, on the day of the death of my elder son, the younger took to his bed, ill of the same typhus fever; and that, during his illness, that supernatural light was seen which assured us of the happy state of the elder. The face of my younger, when he spoke to me in the dream, was nearly on a level with mine: at the age at which he was at the time of the dream in 1817, he was not higher than my shoulder; soon after his illness, he grew to be taller than me, but in 1821 his stature was such as it appeared in my dream. We returned into the room: those who had followed me to the top of the stairs were in deep mourning, and it was understood we were about to undertake a long journey. We set off for Italy at the end of the year, the eventful year 1821. I awoke, and found it was near eight o'clock in the morning. The scenes exhibited in this dream, and the events prefigured by it, according to my interpretation, are here set in juxtaposition: the impression it made on my apprehension was lively and distinct as reality itself. I relate it, because it is immediately connected with the subject of my narrative. In the rule referred to by my imaginary interlocutor there is nothing that I desire to keep secret, but to explain it at this time might be foreign to my purpose: besides, quicquid recipitur, recipitur ad modum recipientis; and I should be loth to intrude on any what they may not be willing to read. Dr. Johnson said, "There is often more in the title than in all the rest of the book;" but it may be unfair to put into a book what cannot in any wise be augured from the title. Yet, as the rule was enjoined in a dream which had relation to my story, as the knowledge of the rule may help to form an opinion of the nature and character of the dream itself, and as moreover it may be told in very few words, I will here declare it. The three great enemies of youth and of mankind,--the three chief sources of moral evil, of intellectual debility and derangement, and of corporal sufferance--are, sins against chastity, drunkenness, and gaming. Early in life, I made this observation; let any one, who doubts the truth of it, cast his eyes on the world. Dr. Cheyne's works "on health" and "on regimen," had persuaded me that animal food was pernicious to health and to all the faculties and dispositions which depend on health: it excites and gratifies the appetite to such a degree, that few, very few, feed upon it without gluttony. Let any one then observe chastity--abstain from animal food, and from wine and vinous spirits, renounce all play for money, or engaging stakes on hazard, and he will conform to the rule "of the penitents of St. Clair." When the priest said, and repeated, "not sub peccato," I of course understood him to mean, not that chastity was not of precept and obligatory on all as a Christian and moral virtue, but that sins against it should not be aggravated by being an infraction of the rule. The other parts of the rule regard things in themselves indifferent: among the several persons whom I have known that abstained from animal food, some there were who did so as believing it unlawful to take away life: I admired their practice, but disapproved their reasoning; the Author of Life has himself permitted it: on that ground it is justifiable; though it might be an amusing question, whence they who disbelieve all revelation derive authority to put to death these creatures except in case of self-defence, as when attacked by a bear or a tiger. The moderate use of alcohol is lawful, medicinal even; to interest and amuse ourselves by engaging a moderate stake on hazard is perfectly innocent; but he who renounces vinous spirits and gaming, strikes at the root of many mischiefs and many perturbations. What I have related, I have related as it happened: the dream and the reference in the dream to my opinions, could neither be sought for, nor procured, nor prepared by any act of mine: my opinions here recorded have this merit, that, according to our Lincolnshire phraseology, "they won't do nobody no harm," and this is merit enough; merit, not negative, but positive; for the phrase always implies the expectation of a great benefit. In the hope that they may do somebody some good, I leave the matter to favourable or unfavourable acceptation; and prepare to narrate my journey to Nice,--that delicious climate, where is, ----ver perpetuum atque alienis mensibus æstas. CHAP. XXI. We drove out of the western gate of Avignon, and immediately turned to the left hand. I said mentally, "Adieu, my dear son! may I and all this family be reunited to thee in a better world." During the last six weeks we had in some degree recovered from the terror and affliction of the preceding period; but a final separation from him we so tenderly and deservedly loved struck us with a feeling of depression, which we endeavoured to surmount and disguise from each other lest the grief of one should be the grief of all. "Are you well seated? do you feel any cold?" and soon after, "How far is it to the bridge of the Durance?" by such questions we tried in vain to conceal what the looks of all betrayed. It was a relief to us to arrive at a country we had not yet seen. Antoine accompanied us: in the year 1813, the year following the campaign of Moscow, being then of the age for military service, he had been summoned to leave his native plains of Picardy to fight under the banners of Napoleon in the campaign of Dresden. "Vous l'avez vu, l'Empereur?" he was asked. "Oui."--"Où donc?"--"Sur le champ de bataille sans doute."[87] Antoine was one of those raw recruits, who, as Napoleon declared, fought more bravely than any men he had ever seen to fight during seventeen years, that he had commanded the armies of France. After the battles of Lutzen and Bautzen, Antoine was taken prisoner by the Austrians in an affair near Dresden, and sent into the interior of their country. "Into what part of their country?" I inquired of him. "I do not know." I, in my quality of inquisitive traveller, expressed surprise at his want of curiosity, and asked the names of the principal towns he had past through. "Obliged to climb great hills, loaded like a mule, huddled with my comrades at night, into a grenier, I had something else to do than to amuse myself with inquiring the names of towns: I do, however, remember that one town we were taken to was called Pest." It may be inferred that the hills he climbed were the Carpathian mountains. If the English public should find that they are overwhelmed by "Tours," and "Travels," and "France," and "Italy," they have nothing to do but to send us all abroad with knapsacks on our backs. Fiat experimentum. Antoine was headstrong and full of jests, but faithful, honest, and attached. I think I pay him a great compliment when I say he resembled in character a Milesian Irishman. On account of our invalid, we were to travel by easy journeys: Aix was too far off for one day. We slept at Orgon, the half-way house, an ill-built inn, where we found good fires, good cooking, and good beds. The next morning the frost had set in: I hurried the invalid into the coach, and we turned our backs on the bise. Where we stopt at mid-day my children began to show some little expansion of good spirits: it was New-year's-day, and this calculation seemed to make the day different from those that had gone before. Their attempts at renewed hilarity manifested themselves in fantastical disputes about their repast. We had taken tea and coffee in the morning: I required a repetition of it: some disliked the same thing over again; some wanted fruit and their usual mid-day dessert; others "would have a déjeuné à la fourchette." It ended by ordering all that was asked for by all. At Orgon we passed through a room of the inn, of which the windows were broken. The door of our room could neither be shut nor opened without trouble and loss of time: such are "the miseries of human life" in a fine climate: in England these inconveniences would not be endured for an hour in the winter: the glazier would be sent for in case of a broken pane as surely as water would be called for if the house were on fire. I have been assured that, if one could be contented to pass the winter without stirring out of doors, he would feel less cold at St. Petersburgh than any where else in Europe. Where nature does least for man, man does most for himself. Ananas or pine-apples are reared at Archangel: I saw none in the south of France or Tuscany. Our anomalous repast detained us too long, and it was almost dark when we arrived, at five o'clock, at a handsome, palace-like-looking inn, on the Corso at Aix. It is a pleasant, airy, well-built town, so surrounded by hills, that, in our walks next morning, we felt no cold. I expected to find hot baths here, but was somewhat surprised to see a great basin of hot water in the Corso, at which, as well as at other fountains in different parts of the town, the washer-women ply their trade without the expense of fuel: clean linen may here be called, by a perverted application of Burke's phrase, "the unbought grace of life." The public baths are not so convenient nor on so large a scale as I expected. We took a cursory view of Roman remains of Aquæ Sextiæ. To the cathedral, a fine old structure, is annexed a curious and perfect ancient temple which serves as the baptistery. In the afternoon of this day we proceeded to Marseilles. I drove to the Hôtel Beauveau: they showed me two handsome salons, one of them with two beds in it: I wanted more beds in the other salon, which they promised to put up: I doubted what sort of beds these might be, and, in an unlucky moment of distrust, went away to the Hôtel des Empereurs. Every thing at the Hôtel Beauveau bespoke civility and good management; at the Hôtel des Empereurs every thing was quite the reverse. I had intended to pass a week at Marseilles: the badness of this inn determined me to stay but one whole day. That day was excessively cold; the bise had followed us, and had established itself in full force: I trembled for my invalid; he was in high spirits, and would not stay within doors; he was in the right, for it would have been impossible to make the atmosphere within doors warmer than it was without, unless we had made fires of all the fine pieces of mahogany furniture which garnished our apartment. I endeavour to make my accounts of towns and objects of curiosity ample enough for those who are not acquainted with them, and not too long for those who are: I may fail of both the ends proposed; a common result of _mean_ measures: but I proceed, though I well know that a writer more frequently meets with censure than indulgence: if self-love prompts him to write, woe be to the poor author. My motive for writing may perhaps by this time be guessed at, and will form an item of additional reproach. Marseilles, except that it is built of stone, (a circumstance hardly necessary to be particularized in a country where bricks are almost unknown,) is very like Liverpool, a _nucleus_ of trade and dirt, surrounded by handsome, airy, well-built streets: it is more populous than Liverpool, but does not cover so much ground. The port is admirably secure: a few days before our arrival, a tremendous storm had committed very great ravages along the whole coast from Spain to the gulf of Spezia. The shipping in the harbour of Marseilles had continued perfectly sheltered and unhurt, while, on the Genoese coast, vessels had been driven from their anchors, and stranded. On one side of the port are lofty warehouses; on the other, rich and splendid shops. The Hôtel de Ville is a very handsome building, with a magnificent marble staircase, too grand indeed for the rooms to which it leads. The celebrated picture of the plague seems to have derived its fame from the interest excited by its subject: it is well executed, but without perspective; the people are dying all up the wall of canvass; the archbishop, M. de Belzunce, is, of course, a prominent object. His nephew, chief of the department for provisioning Paris, was, at the beginning of the revolution, the first victim of the fury of the Parisian mob, and "Belzuncer quelqu'un," was for some little time a favourite form of menace, or of boast; but the name was soon lost in a crowd of followers. They showed us, what they thought it would give us great amusement to see, the room in which is performed the civil contract of marriage before the municipality: what pleasure they expected us to derive from the sight I cannot tell. In another room is a portrait of Louis XIV at full length, in armour, with a fine flowing wig: this costume did not then appear so absurd as now it does; besides his wig was, to Louis XIV, essential and individual; he never was seen without it; at night he gave it to his page, in the morning he received it from his page, through the curtains of his bed. An academy of painting and sculpture had lately been instituted, which seemed prosperous; as much so as such an institution is likely to be in any other town than the capital. More attention seems to be paid in France to the fine arts than to literature. The members of the five hundred book-clubs of England will be surprised to learn that, as far as my information reaches, no similar establishment exists in France. We were told, as usual in such cases, of other objects of curiosity; but some were too distant. Of those which we had visited, some had not been worth the pains, and we feared that others might disappoint us equally. We had put off hunger by eating some excellent confectionary, but our dinner was ordered to be ready as soon as it should be dark, and the mistress of the Empereurs,--there is no scandal in the title; she was not such for her beauty. In plain English, our landlady, had promised us a good dinner to make amends for the bad one of the day before, for which she had offered an excuse, which I had rejected as unworthy of a great inn in a great city,--that she was not prepared. We now hoped to benefit by her preparations. The fish was excellent, thanks to the sea at hand: the meat, had it made part of our hesternal meal, would not have advanced so near to putridity: besides, it was raw. Say what you will, you cannot persuade a foreign cook but that the English like raw meat; so that we were obliged to accept it as a mark of deference to our national taste. The fowls--this day there had been time to search the market for the worst. A dish of douceur followed, which made me regret the batter pudding and Lincolnshire dip, composed of coarse sugar, melted butter, and vinegar, which I had enjoyed when a school-boy. The wine was sour; they told me it was _vin ordinaire_; I asked for some _extraordinaire_; it was extraordinarily bad: it is good logic in this case, as well as in others, to argue from universals to particulars. Indeed, it is as rare to meet with good wine at an inn in France, as at an inn in England; in which latter country, as a Frenchman told me, they got drunk with "vins étrangers."[88] On this occasion, I _blinked_ the question of English ebriety, by saying that if they got drunk with wine, they must do so with "vin étranger," as they had none of their own: but foreign wine is as much a luxury in France as if that country was not under the patronage of the jolly god. At the Hôtel des Empereurs,--for, notwithstanding this digression, I am, to my sorrow, still there,--I asked in the evening for pen and ink: they brought me a pen and some ink in a little phial, with an intimation that it cost three sous. My reader will, I hope, do me the justice to observe that I have arrived at the shores of the Mediterranean without having made any complaint in detail of grievances endured at any inn. I flatter myself that I am in this respect a singular instance of patience and moderation. I have been desirous of giving one example of my talent in this way, and promise henceforward to forbear. Cuges was our next sleeping place, Toulon, like Aix, being too far for a day's journey. Cuges is a little town with a tolerable inn. Here the weather changed to rain; the air became mild, and, for this season, we took leave of winter on the third of January. We were now on the road to Toulon. I have travelled over the Highlands of Scotland, over the hills of Derbyshire, and those which separate Lancashire from the counties to the eastward of it; countries well worth visiting by those who seek for the wonders of nature further from home; but in this day's journey, all that I had before seen in the same kind was exceeded. The picturesque rises into the romantic, and the romantic into the savage. We passed through gullies, where the torrent-river that ran by the side of the road seemed not merely to have formed, but to have scooped out for itself a passage under rocks which, at a great height above, overhung the road and the torrent, and threatened to fall in and fill up the narrow space below. Day-light descended to us through an irregular ragged fissure, which seemed as if broken through expressly for the purpose, so nearly did this defile resemble an under-ground passage. At last we emerged from clefts and chasms into an open space, and had a view of Toulon before us. As we entered the town, we saw, in some sheltered spots, orange-trees, in full bearing, in the open earth: in the open air they are seen in Paris; planted in boxes, they bear fruit at Avignon; here they are children of the soil. We were pleased with Toulon, and loitered here two whole days. The town, though a fortress, is a pretty and a cheerful-looking place. The streams of water conducted through the streets, give it an air of healthiness and cleanliness. In the evening we braved on the promenade the cannon of the fortifications, and, our love of science being equal to our courage, visited the botanical garden, very wisely provided here by the government: it is much smaller than that of Paris; but, by the help of the climate, surpasses it in the possession of rare exotics. Some traveller (I think Eustace,) says that palm-trees are not to be found in the open air any where to the north of Rome, and that at Rome there are but two, remarkably placed on a hill visible to the whole city: these two I saw not, and I saw palm-trees in the botanical garden at Toulon. The next day was Sunday: it was passed in viewing the town and its immediate environs, and in pour-parleys about a visit to the arsenal: a ticket for this purpose was offered on condition that we should pass ourselves for French. Besides the disagreeable consequences that might justly have followed the discovery of such an imposition, the trick itself appeared to me dishonourable. The next morning my convalescent, now rapidly recovering health and strength, mounted the heights above Toulon, and, placing himself under the shelter of a ruined building, sketched the scene before him. The elevation gave us almost a bird's-eye view of Toulon and its ports: islands or promontories that, on account of the winding of the shore, looked like islands, were seen at a distance. Nothing ever called up to my imagination and memory such a crowd of ideas and recollections, as did the view of this great inland sea which washes the shores of Greece, into which the waters of the Nile discharge themselves, and which reposes at the foot of Lebanon and Carmel. We were at this time Fill'd with ideas of fair Italy, and it lay but a little on our left-hand. In a few months we shall be there. I had purposed to visit Hyeres, about six miles distant, but was deterred by what was told me of the badness of the road: it is a winter colony planted by the English, a sort of succursal to Nice. It has not the advantage of being near the sea, but is at three miles from it. I have met with those who have wintered there with much satisfaction. Many lodging-houses had lately been _run up_ for visitants. In the afternoon of the third day we left Toulon. The next day brought us to the point where the cross-road from Toulon joins that which leads directly from Aix to Nice. The inns were better, but the roads were still bad. "It is not for want of money," said they; "government supplies that in plenty; mais l'ingénieur donne à manger à l'inspecteur, et tout est fini."[89] At Frejus I wished to take a hasty dinner, as we had to pass the forêt d'Estrelles: they kept me waiting for it two hours and a half; in this time I might have examined the aqueducts and other antiquities, which I saw only in passing. The aqueducts seemed more ruined than those of Rome, but in other respects as like as one arch is to another arch of the same span. The forêt d'Estrelles exhibits all the grandeur of the Alps united with all the beauty of cultivation, every variety of prospect, hill and dale, and wood, and rock, and the distant sea. So much did we enjoy the scene before and around us, that we thought but little of the danger that awaited us. A river was to be crossed before we could reach Cannes; we had received some intimation that it was probable the bridge was broken down by the swell occasioned by the late rains: our coachman was well aware that the bridges of this country were usually insecure; "When they tumble down," said he, "they build them up again." On descending the forêt d'Estrelles, which it had taken us three hours to mount and to pass, certain information was given us, that the bridge had been carried away; "but, if your horses are stout, there will be no danger in fording the river." We had lost time at Frejus, as always happens when time is wanted, or as is always then observed to happen, and were too late by half an hour. It was so nearly dark when we arrived at the river, that the coachman, following the road, hardly perceived when he reached the place where the bridge had been; the horses stopped however of themselves. We got out of the carriage, while it was turned off the road, towards the ford. At this moment Antoine launched some jest or other, which provoked me to say, "Vous plaisantez tout à votre aise: vous êtes seul."--"Moi seul? Ai-je mérité cela?"[90] He felt the reproach as unjust, and so did I, and made my excuses; he admitted that his pleasantry was unseasonable; and we proceeded to cross the ford, having got some peasants to help us. My eldest daughter and I were in the cabriolet, the rest of the family in the coach, Antoine on the coachman's seat. The bank by which we went down into the river was not steep; but, in ascending the opposite bank, I felt the carriage to be balanced in such a way that I fully expected it to fall sideways before it could get clear out of the water; it required all the force of Antoine and the peasants, pulling at a rope tied to the carriage, to prevent this, and keep it on all its wheels. It was a fearful moment. It was not likely that any lives would be lost, so much help was at hand; but what evil might be the consequence of an overthrow in the water,--especially to one who had but just recovered from three months' illness! When we had got on solid ground and reached the road again, we found large blocks of stone, for the reparation of the bridge, lying in the way: we were again obliged to dismount and thread our way through the midst of these as well as we could, while the carriage went over uneven ground by the side of the road. The moon rose as we reached the inn at Cannes, thankful to that good Providence which had delivered us from danger. This danger was not in crossing the stream, for the waters had abated since they had carried away the bridge, and did not come up to the bottom of the coach: the bed of the river too was good road; a cart came across just before we went in; but in climbing the steep bank, had not Antoine, who had leaped from his seat over the horses' backs, and the peasants who had waded through the river, held the rope very steadily in the direction opposite to that to which the coach inclined, it must inevitably have fallen. When the fore-wheels got on the bank, I was so satisfied, though still alarmed, that I would almost have compounded for an overturn on dry land; the coachman, however, who conducted himself perfectly well, "as a man and a minister," had the pleasure of saving from scaith and harm both his fare and equipage. The sea dashed on the shore close under the windows of our apartment at Cannes; we saw the reflection of the moon-light on the rippling waves; the climate seemed still to improve; after mutual congratulation, and a cheerful meal, we retired contentedly to rest. FOOTNOTES: [87] "Have you seen the Emperor?"--"Yes."--"Where?"--"On the field of battle, of course." [88] Foreign wines. [89] But the engineer gives a dinner to the inspector, and all is ended. [90] "You are joking very composedly; you are alone."--"Me alone? have I deserved that?" CHAP. XXII. It had been my plan to make this journey resemble as much as possible an excursion of pleasure and curiosity, in the hope of doing away the melancholy impression of our sufferings and prison at Avignon. I said to my family at Cannes, "It is ten leagues to Nice, but we will not make a toil of it; we will divide the rest of our journey into two days, taking an airing of fifteen miles each day before dinner." My agreement with my coachman admitted of this arrangement; I was to pay him thirty francs a day for each day of journey; eighteen francs for a day of rest; and twenty-five francs a day for the six days required for his own return, by the direct road to Avignon. He agreed to consider the two days to be employed in going ten leagues, as one day of advance and one of repose. After breakfast we basked on the sunny sandbank that rises from the shore, and gathered sea-shells. By the by, Scipio and Lælius must have had very bad sport in this way; for the Mediterranean, having no tide, brings up very few of these pretty baubles; no wonder that they took to ducks and drakes, as a supplementary recreation. We went to the little town of Cannes, and saw a rope tied to the bell in the tower of the church, and, most commodiously for the priest, conducted into his house close by: "With that," said Antoine, "M. le Curé sonne les sourds."[91] I met a very old man who asked for alms; I was in a disposition, not only to grant his request, but to enter into conversation with him, and inquired of him how old he was: "Quel âge avez-vous?"[92] The words were perfectly unintelligible to him. A lad of twelve years old, who had heard the question, volunteered as interpreter: "Quanti anni ai?" said he to the old man; and yet we were not in Italy. I have had frequent occasion to remark that the language of France, as that country draws near to Germany, Italy, or Spain, is shadowed off into the dialect of those three great limitrophe nations: on the frontiers of every continental nation, the same gradual melting of the languages of neighbouring people into each other must necessarily take place. In England, I believe the _patois_ of the several districts to have been derived from the divisions of the Saxon Heptarchy; the midland counties, or kingdom of Mercia, have nearly the same dialect; but the language of Oxfordshire begins to resemble that of the west; while that of Lincolnshire, (a proof of my skill in which I have already given,) is like that of Yorkshire, except in the pronunciation of the vowels. We set off at mid-day. Our road lay on a low cliff near the sea. Antoine, who had crossed the Rhine, the Elbe, the Danube, and the Rhone, had never seen the sea till he came on this journey: he persisted in calling it the Rhone, and "this Rhone," said he, "goes to England." "Yes," said I, "and to the other side of France: you may embark on this Rhone, and land at Calais in Picardy, your own country." He called it the Rhone, by the name of the last great river he had seen; as I have read somewhere that the dispersed tribes after the Deluge called every great river they came to, "Phraat," "Euphrates." I know not what idea was working in Antoine's mind: perhaps it is natural to man to regard the sea as a river: it is to be presumed that Homer so considered it, since, after mentioning the names of a few of the great rivers known in his limited geography, he adds, [Greek: Oude bathurreitao mega sthenos ôkeanoio.]. I remember mentioning this opinion of Homer to Archdeacon Paley. "Why," said he, "that is the modern theory of the tides; that the ocean is nothing else but a great river, and that the tides are the current of this river, which, having no where else to flow, flows into and upon itself."--"Strange," said I, "that the extremes of ignorance and science should thus meet!" I made an objection to the theory on account of the increase and decrease of the tides according to the age of the moon: I forget his reply: he had not proposed the notion as his own, and had no need to defend it as such. After proceeding about two miles, we perceived a large stone reared upright on the beach: this rude pillar marked the landing-place of Napoleon from Elba. I care nothing about politics: I am of the opinion of Plato, that mankind are not worthy that a wise man, (meaning himself or me,) should meddle with their affairs: the history of the last war I read with the same temper as I should read that of the three Punic or the Peloponnesian: I will remark only that, if Napoleon was not to be trusted, it was very silly to leave him at Elba; and, if he was to be trusted, he should have been treated as trust-worthy, and every vestige of resentment against him effaced, and nothing done that would make him feel as if relegated into a little island, or give him reason to dread further restraint: that the importance of leaving to him the title of Emperor was not duly weighed; as it ought to have been evident, that, if not honestly recognised by his enemies, this title would serve as a sign of rallying to his friends. This Emperor on landing summoned the fortress of Antibes: the officer commanding the garrison for the time, in the absence of his superior, returned an answer that he had received no orders. I was personally acquainted with this officer; he was the general commanding the department of Vaucluse during the former part of my residence at Avignon. Failing in this attempt on Antibes, Napoleon immediately struck into the country over the hills covered with olive trees, the high land that rises above the beach. We proceeded to Antibes, which opened its gate to us without any difficulty. We found a good inn, walked on the fortifications and about the town till sunset, and, after an English breakfast the next morning, (for we carried tea with us,) on the thirteenth day after our departure from Avignon, set off for Nice: we passed through a pleasant country, and soon arrived at the right bank of the Var, the political, but not the natural limit of France. I had some thoughts of making an apology for calling my book a narrative of four years residence in France, when four months of that time were to be passed out of that kingdom; but any one who will give himself the trouble of coming to the banks of the Var, will see that all explanation on this head is superfluous: or, if he does not like so much personal fatigue, let him place himself there in imagination: he will see the stony bed of a torrent half a mile broad, not a twentieth part of which bed is covered with water. At two thirds of the distance from the right bank he will see a stream large enough to be called a river, of no great depth, but of great force and violence. Immediately beyond the left bank he will see a fertile country resembling that he has just past, and uniting with it but for the expanse of white stones. Let him then cast his eyes on the awful, frowning barrier of Italy,--those Alps with their rugged sides and lofty snow-covered tops, a barrier to all appearance impervious to any thing but the flight of an eagle; he will allow that it would be as easy to bring the Alps themselves to the left bank of the Var, which, though they are but six miles off, would be an enterprise of toil, as to imagine that he had left France on entering the county of Nice. We had time given to us to enjoy this magnificent spectacle, and to feast our minds with the expectation of what we should see beyond those "perpetual hills," those "everlasting mountains," which we already wished to pass. We waited for the douanier, the custom-house officer, a civil and intelligent man, who had nothing to do with us but to countersign our passport: the more we took out of France, the better for its manufacturers. It would not be difficult to prove,--Adam Smith has proved it,--that it would be as wise to permit unrestricted, I do not say untaxed, importation as exportation, nor to show that the prohibition of it is an act of injustice towards the community at large; but governments are balloted about by contending interests, and compelled to interfere in things out of their province, alien from those objects for which they are constituted. While the French were in possession of the Department des Alpes Maritimes, they began a stone bridge over the Var. The wall from which the first arch was to spring is seen on their bank, and bears testimony to their zeal for improvement. We went on the wooden bridge, and passed a pallisade guarded by French sentinels. We were now in the dominions of the King of Sardinia. The first man I met was an intendant or surveyor of the carpenters, whom I saw in great numbers at work on the bridge. He accosted me: "Monsieur, il faut descendre de voiture, décharger la voiture, faire porter les malles et mener les chevaux, et traverser à pied le pont; il est en l'air, suspendu par des cordes."[93] The invitation, though very civilly given, and with due regard to our safety as well as that of the bridge, was somewhat alarming. The fact was that the storm of the twenty-seventh of December had come in time to make us regret that the bridge of stone, undertaken by the French had been left incomplete. This storm had broken the wooden bridge, the parts of which were now tied together by cords while undergoing reparation; so that it was necessary to divide and lighten as much as possible the weight of our carriage. This was done; and, with this measure of precaution, each portion of our load got well over: yet I cannot help, in defiance of the proverb, speaking ill of the bridge. The Var is not a military barrier: why do not the two governments revive the abandoned enterprise of a stone bridge with a tête de pont and toll at each end? The approach to Nice on this side is through a quarter consisting almost entirely of villas or country-houses let to visitants. The quarter is called "de la Croix de Marbre," from a large marble crucifix placed at the side of the road about a mile from Nice: it is situated lower, and is, in consequence, warmer than the town; but the ground floors of the houses are sometimes flooded by rains. Here we began to see all the pride, pomp, and circumstance of an English watering-place;--carriages open and close; ladies riding on donkies; parties on foot and on horseback; footmen lounging at the doors of the houses; and grooms dressing horses at the doors of the stables. We saw also orange trees laden with fruit. We arrived at a bridge over another white and stony bed of a torrent, in which we could hardly perceive any water; there was a stream however over which people on foot were crossing by stepping-stones. We were set down at the Hôtel des Etrangers,--an excellent inn. The next day I went to the police to take my carte de sureté, or séjour, and was informed that there were at this time at Nice seventy foreign families, of which forty families were English. I left my card at the commandant's: he returned his card with a note, containing an invitation to a weekly ball at the Hôtel du Gouvernement. A certain sum is allowed by the king for frais de réception. The acts of the government are in the Italian language; but French is universally spoken, not only in society, but in the shops and in the streets. In truth, I did not hear a word of Italian spoken while I was at Nice, except by my children's Italian master. The people have a patois, not quite such pure Italian as I heard at Cannes. Not liking the quarter of the Croix de Marbre on account of its distance from the town, I took a house in an airy situation, looking towards the sea, and into the great square, at one time called Place Napoleon, but now Place Victor. The usual price for a house or lodging for a large family for the whole of the season, from the first of November to the first of May, is a hundred louis. I agreed to pay for mine twelve hundred francs from the sixteenth of January to the end of the season. Its proprietor was a French general, who had served with great reputation in Italy and Egypt, had lost an arm, and had been appointed commandant of Nice, where, second only to the préfet of the department, he had given fêtes and balls in this house, which he now found it convenient to let, and live in a small one by the side of it. When the French troops evacuated Nice, a party of them wanted to pillage the town; he had prevented this evil, and, as a reward for the service thus rendered, the King of Sardinia had permitted him to live in the city, when other French officers were, of course, obliged to leave it. He told me, "I am not ashamed to say, that all that I have gained, I have gained on the field of battle." That all was not much,--his half-pay as general, and the appointment annexed to the cross of the legion of honour. When colonel, he had received a sabre d'honneur, to which a pension of six thousand francs was attached; but the pension had been withdrawn. He still was able to show the sabre; it was an ordinary arm, with an inscription on it. He was an Alsatian by birth, and talked with the accent of his country, saying of his former commander, whom he enthusiastically admired, "Ponaparte étoit un crant shénéral." His conversation and anecdotes were amusing. It was now the beginning of Carnival. Our recent loss left us no disposition, and our mourning dress made it unsuitable for us, to appear in large societies. I used to go, without any of my family, and stay for about an hour at those parties to which we were invited, that I might not be wanting to attentions thus paid us. Promenades in the delightful environs of Nice, lessons in music and Italian, and small companies in the evening, occupied and amused us till the beginning of Lent. Balls were then succeeded by concerts: even the gay were serious, and sadness might partake of the sober diversions then going forwards. The daily improving health and increasing strength of our convalescent gave us continual satisfaction; and, though our abode at Nice was as dull as a sojourn under such a sky can be supposed to be, yet we were contented to perceive that we did not fail of the main purpose for which we had fled the rough blasts of the north, and sought the soft breezes of this sheltered situation and genial climate. FOOTNOTES: [91] With that M. le Curé calls the deaf. [92] How old are you? [93] Sir, you must all leave the carriage, unload it, and go over on foot; your trunks must be carried over after you; and the horses will be led gently across: the bridge is suspended in the air by cords. CHAP. XXIII. The town of Nice is in the form of a triangle, of which the base rests on the sea; one of its sides is a rampart or raised road against the Paion, the other is a road from Place Victor to the Port. One side of Place Victor forms part of the line of the third side of this triangle; but the Place itself is an excrescence from it: it is a large handsome square with arcades. Within this triangle, to the south-east corner, is a high rocky hill, fortified and commanding the port and town; commanding also, what interested me more than its artillery, most superb points of view. Here my landlord, the general, had a garden to which he climbed daily; and I used to see him coming down the steep with lettuces in his only remaining hand, and his cane suspended to the button of his coat. Many improvements were at this time carrying on at Nice: a new bridge was building over the Paion, the torrent river, which, though I never saw it fuller of water than I have at first described, bears with it the "horned flood" on the melting of the snows and the descending of the rain from the Alps. The galley slaves were employed in blowing up the bottom of the rock on its east and south sides to obtain space for continuing the line of houses from Place Victor to the port, and from the port to the Corso. This Corso is a short, dark, damp promenade, from which the view and the air of the sea are excluded by the terrace. The terrace is nothing more than a flat roof of a line of shops and stables, on which you may walk, at the height of about fifteen or twenty feet from the ground, exposed to the heat of the sun, which, even in winter, is too powerful to be agreeable, and blinded by the reflection of its rays from the sea. In the evenings of winter it is too cold to walk on this terrace: in the evenings of summer, that is, in April, it is pleasant, but not so pleasant as would be a gravel walk on the beach, which will, I hope, in due time replace it. By taking away the terrace, the value of the houses on the Corso would be doubled: en attendant, you have the choice of walking on the Corso without sea air, or on the terrace without shade. I have spoken at some length on the subject of this terrace, because I know it to be much admired. I am always most happy to be of the same opinion as the "enlightened public," when I think this public to be in the right, and in this, as in other cases, hold myself bound to give my reasons for differing from it. The centre of Nice consists of very narrow streets and very lofty houses. The square of St. Dominique however is large and handsome, and there are some good, well-built streets in its neighbourhood. From the side or from the end of very many of the best houses of Nice jut forth little square buildings at the height of the several stories: these buildings would seem as if suspended in the air, but that the fourth side of each is formed by that of the house itself; and in this fourth side, that is, in the wall of the house, there is, no doubt, a door of communication with these cabinets: from the bottom of each of these closets proceeds a tunnel or pipe, which is attached to the side or inserted into the wall of the house, and so conducted to a reservoir below. These reservoirs are small, and, by consequence, must be frequently opened: their contents form an article of precious and of tasteful commerce to the gardeners of Nice. The word "tasteful" is not to be understood in a metaphorical sense; as I was assured by an eye-witness of the fact that he had seen a gardener put his finger first into the article offered for sale, and then into his mouth, that a third of his five senses might bear witness to its strength, in addition to the testimony of his eyes and nose. The gardeners of Nice, to their credit be it spoken, are so profuse in the dispersion of this fertilizing substance, that some sensitive English, who remained there during the summer, complained of the odour as an intolerable nuisance. The Nissard plan for having these conveniences at once within and without the house, and for giving to each story or flat, as it is called in Edinburgh,--a city to which one's thoughts cannot but revert while engaged on this subject,--the Nissard plan, is ingenious enough: there is nothing against it but the look of the thing: and qu'est ce que cela fait?[94] All the world knows, both in France and England, that such things must be; the only difference is, that in England nobody allows it, while in France nobody denies it. The French seem to me in this respect to be the nicer people of the two. An English friend told me that, being at Toulon, after breakfast he inquired of the femme de chambre, (for in France no one scruples mentioning such things to a female,) the way to No. 100. She told him there was none in the house; "Mais dans la rue là, vis-à-vis, près du port il y a une commodité: cela vous coûtera un sous: mais si vous resterez ici quelque tems, on peut s'abonner."[95] Strange that none of the great cities of civilized Europe have yet adopted the plan of Pekin, which probably is also that of other cities of China! One cannot wonder that the proportion of mortality between the town and the country is as seven to six; the wonder is that it is not greater: for every twentieth inhabitant of a great town, the calculation is moderate; a reservoir, perpetually to be supplied, must be provided. Fifty thousand for London! At Pekin the treasures of each day are carried away early in the morning of the day following, by carts that come from the country for that purpose; and the valet-de-chambre of the Mandarin and the Mandariness's lady's-maid quarrel for the perquisite, while the skill of the Chinese artisan is taxed to the utmost to make close stools, nay, very close stools. I hope it will be granted that I have acquitted myself in this delicate investigation with all possible decorum, and that Dean Swift himself could not have done better. His affected naiveté and matter-of-fact simplicity, in telling of the labour of the Lilliputians, in carrying away the ordure of Quinbus Flestrin, and numberless passages of his works, show how little he prized "the drapery furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns and the understanding ratifies as necessary to cover the nakedness of our weak shivering nature, and raise it to dignity in its own estimation." I am well aware, as well as any one who may reproach me therewith, that my book contains many things _disparate_; but such is the real history of human life: by this reality I am justified: and, in discussing this last subject, I have endeavoured to preserve decency, while avoiding fastidiousness. The English have a notion that the Carnival in catholic countries is instituted to make amends, by anticipation, for the austerities of Lent: it is no institution; it is merely that season of the year in which society can most conveniently be reunited; and, as this season is interrupted and curtailed by Lent, parties, and balls, and fêtes come more nearly on each other than they need do in countries where Lent is but little observed. In France, the Carnival makes very little difference in the amusements of the common people: at Nice they parade the streets in masks, with music, and dance, and play fools' tricks. I was looking at a party of these: an Anglican clergyman stood near me, and took occasion to observe, "This does no great honour to the catholic religion." I replied, "It has no more to do with the catholic religion, than with the discovery of the longitude." These people were all sober, and each one was diverting himself innocently, for the same cause that induced Lady A. to go to Naples at a certain season; that is, because others did so at that time. Here first I saw Franciscans and other religious, walking about in their proper habits. I had seen but one in France, a Carthusian or Trappist, at the house of the bishop of Avignon: he was taking leave as I entered. The bishop, an old man of fourscore and four years old, said to him pleasantly, "Je vous souhaite beaucoup de richesses."--"Monseigneur vous souhaite," said I, "ce que vous ne souhaitez pas pour vous-même."--"Ah, non,"[96] said he, with an air of placid and unaffected content. I judged him to be full of pious resignation to the austerities of his state. Devotional exercises are appointed on each of the five Sundays of Lent, at different churches, within a short distance from Nice, which are called, for the occasion, stations: people of all ranks resort thither in crowds: fruit, wine, and provisions, are exposed to sale, and the scene has the appearance of what would be called in England a pleasure fair: but the church of the station is filled during the whole time by a succession of those whom one of our tourists would assuredly represent as mere revellers. I know that it is not superfluous to observe, that the Sundays of Lent are not reckoned in the forty days of that season. One of these stations is at the Croix de Marbre, to the great entertainment of the residents in that quarter. Another, is at the convent of Simia: no description can give an idea of the varied beauties of the site of this convent, and of the view which it commands. Another station is held at a convent four miles from Nice, situated on a fine and lofty elevation. A Nissard of our acquaintance had a villa or country-house a little above the convent: we called on him to take refreshments, and afterwards walked in his garden. The very handsome façade of this villa looks to the south; the garden is laid out in terraces lined with orange trees, bearing, at this time, both blossom and fruit. The blossom of the orange is a valuable part of the produce of the tree; it is sold to those who make of it orange-flower water. The blossoms, according to the usual prodigality of nature, are in such profusion, that, were all to be allowed to become oranges, the tree would be unable to support them. Another thinning takes place of the oranges themselves: if all were to be allowed to ripen, the tree would be exhausted: most of them are cropped at different stages of maturity, and made into conserves: this is the case indeed even with those oranges that are suffered to stay on the tree till fully ripe: they are not good enough to be exported in their natural state: even in the market of their own country they find rivals in the oranges of Naples and Majorca, sweeter, heavier, and thinner of skin. The protestant English at Nice, with the permission of the government, had caused to be erected for themselves a chapel, or, as it was here called, a temple; but, as they had been unable to settle among themselves what mode of faith should be admitted as orthodox, and preached in this place of worship,--it was supposed that the undertaking would of necessity be abandoned, and that the banker who had advanced the funds on the security of the ground and building, would be obliged to foreclose the mortgage, to save himself from the loss of his principal and interest. According to some interpreters, the Tower of Babel was abandoned for the same reason; the settlers of Sennaar had fallen into the worship of the material agents of nature; their "tops to the heavens," were to have been a temple or temples to the host of heaven; and the confusion of tongues was nothing else but a dispute concerning their confession of faith. The port of Nice has a handsome and strong pier, but is small and shallow. On the other side of a promontory, about two miles distant by land, is Villefranche, a commodious harbour, in which large vessels remain, and send goods in boats to Nice. A party, in which my family was included, took a pleasure-boat with a tent or awning to shade us from the sun in March, which, though not engendering agues, as Shakspeare says it does in that month, would have very much annoyed us: we doubled the cape, and landed at Villefranche, saw the galley of the King of Sardinia, and conversed with some of the galériens, one of whom was within eight days of the termination of his ten years of service, and seemed but moderately delighted with his approaching liberation. We then dined on the beach under the shade of olive trees, and enjoyed the vernal breeze, and afterwards, having nothing else to do, returned, having duly complied with all that constitutes a party of pleasure. The cathedral and several other churches of Nice are handsome and spacious; the appearance of the town is, on the whole, rich and busy and cheerful: it might be a good place for sea-bathing in the summer, if accommodations were provided. I described to a person whom such an undertaking might suit, the bathing machines used at Weymouth and Brighton: he said it would be necessary to have the permission of the government;--the permission of the government for two cart wheels to go ten yards into the sea, and out again! No doubt the permission of the government would be granted, but it seemed to me strange that it should be wanted: it is lucky that governments leave us the independent enjoyment of the non-naturals. I had thoughts of spending the summer here, but impatience to see Italy prevailed: the last day of my abode at Nice was the fifth of May, on which day my departed son would have completed his twenty-first year: on the morrow we set off for the Col de Tende. Nice is called, in Italian, _Nizza maritima_, to distinguish it from other towns of the same name: [Greek: nichê], _victory_, was a name of good augury for a city. Massena, the "enfant gaté de la victoire," was born at Nice: I saw the house and shop in which he employed his youth in the useful art of making and retailing vermicelli. FOOTNOTES: [94] What does that signify? [95] But there, in the street opposite, near the port, there is one: it will cost you a sous; but, if you remain here for any length of time, you may subscribe. [96] "I wish you a deal of riches."--"His lordship wishes you what you do not wish for yourself."--"Ah! no." THE END. _Printed by A. J. Valpy, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street._ * * * * * INTERESTING WORKS, Just published by HENRY COLBURN, New Burlington Street. 1. THE HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH of ENGLAND: from the Commencement of the Civil War, to the Restoration of CHARLES THE SECOND. By William Godwin. 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39710	----	Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. Page 46: The phrase "find out if he can any single" seems to be missing a word. Page 384: The phrase starting "swarm _au sixième_" has no closing quotation mark. Preparing for publication, by the same Author, In 3 vols. post 8vo. with 15 Characteristic Engravings. THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF JONATHAN JEFFERSON WHITLAW; OR, SCENES ON THE MISSISSIPPI. PARIS AND THE PARISIANS, IN 1835. VOL. 2. [Illustration: MUSEUM DES CURIOSITES HISTORIQUES LE PUBLIC EST PRIÉ DE NE TOUCHER À AUCUN DE CES OBJETS. Drawn & Etched by A. Hervieu.] LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET, Publisher in Ordinary to His Majesty. 1835. PARIS AND THE PARISIANS IN 1835. BY FRANCES TROLLOPE, AUTHOR OF "DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS," "TREMORDYN CLIFF," &c. "Le pire des états, c'est l'état populaire."--CORNEILLE. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. II. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET, Publisher in Ordinary to His Majesty. 1836. LONDON: PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY, Dorset Street, Fleet Street. CONTENTS TO THE SECOND VOLUME. LETTER XLIII. Peculiar Air of Frenchwomen.--Impossibility that an Englishwoman should not be known for such in Paris.--Small Shops.--Beautiful Flowers, and pretty arrangement of them.--Native Grace.--Disappearance of Rouge.--Grey Hair.--Every article dearer than in London.--All temptations to smuggling removed. Page 1 LETTER XLIV. Exclusive Soirées.--Soirée Doctrinaire.--Duc de Broglie.--Soirée Républicaine.--Soirée Royaliste.--Partie Impériale.--Military Greatness.--Dame de l'Empire. 11 LETTER XLV. L'Abbé Lacordaire.--Various Statements respecting him.--Poetical description of Notre Dame.--The Prophecy of a Roman Catholic.--Les Jeunes Gens de Paris.--Their omnipotence. 22 LETTER XLVI. La Tour de Nesle. 37 LETTER XLVII. Palais Royal.--Variety of Characters.--Party of English.--Restaurant.--Galerie d'Orléans.--Number of Loungers.--Convenient abundance of Idle Men.--Théâtre du Vaudeville. 49 LETTER XLVIII. Literary Conversation.--Modern Novelists.--Vicomte d'Arlincourt.--His Portrait.--Châteaubriand.--Bernardin de Saint Pierre.--Shakspeare.--Sir Walter Scott.--French familiarity with English Authors.--Miss Mitford.--Miss Landon.--Parisian passion for Novelty.--Extent of general Information. 62 LETTER XLIX. Trial by Jury.--Power of the Jury in France.--Comparative insignificance of that vested in the Judge.--Virtual Abolition of Capital Punishments.--Flemish Anecdote. 75 LETTER L. English Pastry-cooks.--French horror of English Pastry.--Unfortunate experiment upon a Muffin.--The Citizen King. 85 LETTER LI. Parisian Women.--Rousseau's failure in attempting to describe them.--Their great influence in Society.--Their grace in Conversation.--Difficulty of growing old.--Do the ladies of France or those of England manage it best? 92 LETTER LII. La Sainte Chapelle.--Palais de Justice.--Traces of the Revolution of 1830.--Unworthy use made of La Sainte Chapelle.--Boileau.--Ancient Records. 105 LETTER LIII. French ideas of England.--Making love.--Precipitate retreat of a young Frenchman.--Different methods of arranging Marriages.--English Divorce.--English Restaurans. 116 LETTER LIV. Mixed Society.--Influence of the English Clergy and their Families.--Importance of their station in Society. 132 LETTER LV. Le Grand Opéra.--Its enormous Expense.--Its Fashion.--Its acknowledged Dulness.--'La Juive.'--Its heavy Music.--Its exceeding Splendour.--Beautiful management of the Scenery.--National Music. 143 LETTER LVI. The Abbé Deguerry.--His eloquence.--Excursion across the water.--Library of Ste. Geneviève.--Copy-book of the Dauphin.--St. Etienne du Mont.--Pantheon. 156 LETTER LVII. Little Suppers.--Great Dinners.--Affectation of Gourmandise.--Evil effects of "dining out."--Evening Parties.--Dinners in private under the name of Luncheons.--Late Hours. 166 LETTER LVIII. Hôpital des Enfans Trouvés.--Its doubtful advantages.--Story of a Child left there. 177 LETTER LIX. Procès Monstre.--Dislike of the Prisoners to the ceremony of Trial.--Société des Droits de l'Homme.--Names given to the Sections.--Kitchen and Nursery Literature.--Anecdote of Lagrange.--Republican Law. 201 LETTER LX. Memoirs of M. Châteaubriand.--The Readings at L'Abbaye-aux-Bois.--Account of these in the French Newspapers and Reviews.--Morning at the Abbaye to hear a portion of these Memoirs.--The Visit to Prague. 212 LETTER LXI. Jardin des Plantes.--Not equal in beauty to our Zoological Gardens.--La Salpêtrière.--Anecdote.--Les Invalides.--Difficulty of finding English Colours there.--The Dome. 232 LETTER LXII. Expedition to Montmorency.--Rendezvous in the Passage Delorme.--St. Denis.--Tomb prepared for Napoleon.--The Hermitage.--Dîner sur l'herbe. 241 LETTER LXIII. George Sand. 258 LETTER LXIV. "Angelo Tyran de Padoue."--Burlesque at the Théâtre du Vaudeville.--Mademoiselle Mars.--Madame Dorval.--Epigram. 270 LETTER LXV. Boulevard des Italiens.--Tortoni's.--Thunder-storm.--Church of the Madeleine.--Mrs. Butler's "Journal." 292 LETTER LXVI. A pleasant Party.--Discussion between an Englishman and a Frenchman.--National Peculiarities. 302 LETTER LXVII. Chamber of Deputies.--Punishment of Journalists.--Institute for the Encouragement of Industry.--Men of Genius. 313 LETTER LXVIII. Walk to the Marché des Innocens.--Escape of a Canary Bird.--A Street Orator.--Burying-place of the Victims of July. 323 LETTER LXIX. A Philosophical Spectator.--Collection of Baron Sylvestre.--Hôtel des Monnaies.--Musée d'Artillerie. 335 LETTER LXX. Concert in the Champs Elysées.--Horticultural Exhibition.--Forced Flowers.--Republican Hats.--Carlist Hats--Juste-Milieu Hats.--Popular Funeral. 347 LETTER LXXI. Minor French Novelists. 360 LETTER LXXII. Breaking-up of the Paris Season.--Soirée at Madame Récamier's.--Recitation.--Storm.--Disappointment. --Atonement.--Farewell. 371 POSTSCRIPT 379 EMBELLISHMENTS TO THE SECOND VOLUME. Soirée Page 20 Le Roi Citoyen 88 Prêtres de la Jeune France 158 Lecture à l'Abbaye-aux-Bois 228 Boulevard des Italiens 294 "V'là les restes de notre Révolution de Juillet" 328 PARIS AND THE PARISIANS IN 1835. LETTER XLIII. Peculiar Air of Frenchwomen.--Impossibility that an Englishwoman should not be known for such in Paris.--Small Shops.--Beautiful Flowers, and pretty arrangement of them.--Native Grace.--Disappearance of Rouge.--Grey Hair.--Every article dearer than in London.--All temptations to smuggling removed. Considering that it is a woman who writes to you, I think you will confess that you have no reason to complain of having been overwhelmed with the fashions of Paris: perhaps, on the contrary, you may feel rather disposed to grumble because all I have hitherto said on the fertile subject of dress has been almost wholly devoted to the historic and fanciful costume of the republicans. Personal appearance, and all that concerns it, is, however, a very important feature in the daily history of this showy city; and although in this respect it has been made the model of the whole world, it nevertheless contrives to retain for itself a general look, air, and effect, which it is quite in vain for any other people to attempt imitating. Go where you will, you see French fashions; but you must go to Paris to see how French people wear them. The dome of the Invalides, the towers of Notre Dame, the column in the Place Vendôme, the windmills of Montmartre, do not come home to the mind as more essentially belonging to Paris, and Paris only, than does the aspect which caps, bonnets, frills, shawls, aprons, belts, buckles, gloves,--and above, though below, all things else--which shoes and stockings assume, when worn by Parisian women in the city of Paris. It is in vain that all the women of the earth come crowding to this mart of elegance, each one with money in her sack sufficient to cover her from head to foot with all that is richest and best;--it is in vain that she calls to her aid all the _tailleuses_, _coiffeuses_, _modistes_, _couturières_, _cordonniers_, _lingères_, and _friseurs_ in the town: all she gets for her pains is, when she has bought, and done, and put on all and everything they have prescribed, that, in the next shop she enters, she hears one _grisette_ behind the counter mutter to another, "Voyez ce que désire cette dame anglaise;"--and that, poor dear lady! before she has spoken a single word to betray herself. Neither is it only the natives who find us out so easily--that might perhaps be owing to some little inexplicable freemasonry among themselves; but the worst of all is, that we know one another in a moment. "There is an Englishman,"--"That is an Englishwoman," is felt at a glance, more rapidly than the tongue can speak it. That manner, gait, and carriage,--that expression of movement, and, if I may so say, of limb, should be at once so remarkable and so impossible to imitate, is very singular. It has nothing to do with the national differences in eyes and complexion, for the effect is felt perhaps more strongly in following than in meeting a person; but it pervades every plait and every pin, every attitude and every gesture. Could I explain to you what it is which produces this effect, I should go far towards removing the impossibility of imitating it: but as this is now, after twenty years of trial, pretty generally allowed to be impossible, you will not expect it of me. All I can do, is to tell you of such matters appertaining to dress as are open and intelligible to all, without attempting to dive into that very occult part of the subject, the effect of it. In milliners' phrase, the ladies dress much _less_ in Paris than in London. I have no idea that any Frenchwoman, after her morning dishabille is thrown aside, would make it a practice, during "the season," to change her dress completely four times in the course of the day, as I have known some ladies do in London. Nor do I believe that the most _précieuses_ in such matters among them would deem it an insufferable breach of good manners to her family, did she sit down to dinner in the same apparel in which they had seen her three hours before it. The only article of female luxury more generally indulged in here than with us, is that of cashmere shawls. One, at the very least, of these dainty wrappers makes a part of every young lady's _trousseau_, and is, I believe, exactly that part of the _présent_ which, as Miss Edgeworth says, often makes a bride forget the _futur_. In other respects, what is necessary for the wardrobe of a French woman of fashion, is necessary also for that of an English one; only jewels and trinkets of all kinds are more frequently worn with us than with them. The dress that a young Englishwoman would wear at a dinner party, is very nearly the same as a Frenchwoman would wear at any ball but a fancy one; whereas the most elegant dinner costume in Paris is exactly the same as would be worn at the French Opera. There are many extremely handsome "_magasins de nouveautés_" in every part of the town, wherein may be found all that the heart of woman can desire in the way of dress; and there are smart _coiffeuses_ and _modistes_ too, who know well how to fabricate and recommend every production of their fascinating art: but there is no Howell and James's wherein to assemble at a given point all the fine ladies of Paris; no reunions of tall footmen are to be seen lounging on benches outside the shops, and performing to the uninitiated the office of signs, by giving notice how many purchasers are at that moment engaged in cheapening the precious wares within. The shops in general are very much smaller than ours,--or when they stretch into great length, they have uniformly the appearance of warehouses. A much less quantity of goods of all kinds is displayed for purposes of show and decoration,--unless it be in china shops, or where or-molu ornaments, protected by glass covers, form the principal objects: here, or indeed wherever the articles sold can be exhibited without any danger of loss from injury, there is very considerable display; but, on the whole, there is much less appearance of large capital exhibited in the shops here than in London. One great source of the gay and pretty appearance of the streets, is the number and elegant arrangement of the flowers exposed for sale. Along all the Boulevards, and in every brilliant Passage (with which latter ornamental invention Paris is now threaded in all directions), you need only shut your eyes in order to fancy yourself in a delicious flower-garden; and even on opening them again, if the delusion vanishes, you have something almost as pretty in its place. Notwithstanding the multitudinous abominations of their streets--the prison-like locks on the doors of their _salons_, and the odious common stair which must be climbed ere one can get to them--there is an elegance of taste and love of the graceful about these people which is certainly to be found nowhere else. It is not confined to the spacious hotels of the rich and great, but may be traced through every order and class of society, down to the very lowest. The manner in which an old barrow-woman will tie up her sous' worth of cherries for her urchin customers might give a lesson to the most skilful decorator of the supper-table. A bunch of wild violets, sold at a price that may come within reach of the worst-paid _soubrette_ in Paris, is arranged with a grace that might make a duchess covet them; and I have seen the paltry stock-in-trade of a florist, whose only pavilion was a tree and the blue heavens, set off with such felicity in the mixture of colours, and the gradations of shape and form, as made me stand to gaze longer and more delightedly than I ever did before Flora's own palace in the King's Road. After all, indeed, I believe that the mystical peculiarity of dress of which I have been speaking wholly arises from this innate and universal instinct of good taste. There is a fitness, a propriety, a sort of harmony in the various articles which constitute female attire, which may be traced as clearly amongst the cotton _toques_, with all their variety of brilliant tints, and the 'kerchief and apron to match, or rather to accord, as amongst the most elegant bonnets at the Tuileries. Their expressive phrase of approbation for a well-dressed woman, "_faite à peindre_," may often be applied with quite as much justice to the peasant as to the princess; for the same unconscious sensibility of taste will regulate them both. It is this national feeling which renders their stage groups, their corps _de ballet_, and all the _tableaux_ business of their theatres, so greatly superior to all others. On these occasions, a single blunder in colour, contrast, or position, destroys the whole harmony, and the whole charm with it: but you see the poor little girls hired to do angels and graces for a few sous a night, fall into the composition of the scene with an instinct as unerring, as that which leads a flight of wild geese to cleave the air in a well-adjusted triangular phalanx, instead of scattering themselves to every point of the compass; as, _par exemple_, our _figurantes_ may be often seen to do, if not kept in order by the ballet-master as carefully as a huntsman whistles in his pack. It is quite a relief to my eyes to find how completely rouge appears to be gone out of fashion here. I will not undertake to say that no bright eyes still look brighter from having a touch of red skilfully applied beneath them: but if this be done, it is so well done as to be invisible, excepting by its favourable effect; which is a prodigious improvement upon the fashion which I well remember here, of larding cheeks both young and old to a degree that was quite frightful. Another improvement which I very greatly admire is, that the majority of old ladies have left off wearing artificial hair, and arrange their own grey locks with all the neatness and care possible. The effect of this upon their general appearance is extremely favourable: Nature always arranges things for us much better than we can do it for ourselves; and the effect of an old face surrounded by a maze of wanton curls, black, brown, or flaxen, is infinitely less agreeable than when it is seen with its own "sable silvered" about it. I have heard it observed, and with great justice, that rouge was only advantageous to those who did not require it: and the same may be said with equal truth of false hair. Some of the towering pinnacles of shining jet that I have seen here, certainly have exceeded in quantity of hair the possible growth of any one head: but when this fabric surmounts a youthful face which seems to have a right to all the flowing honours that the friseur's art can contrive to arrange above it, there is nothing incongruous or disagreeable in the effect; though it is almost a pity, too, to mix anything approaching to deceptive art with the native glories of a young head. For which sentiment _messieurs les fabricans_ of false hair will not thank me;--for having first interdicted the use of borrowed tresses to the old ladies, I now pronounce my disapproval of them for the young. _Au reste_, all I can tell you farther respecting dress is, that our ladies must no longer expect to find bargains here in any article required for the wardrobe; on the contrary, everything of the kind is become greatly dearer than in London: and what is at least equally against making such purchases here is, that the fabrics of various kinds which we used to consider as superior to our own, particularly those of silks and gloves, are now, I think, decidedly inferior; and such as can be purchased at the same price as in England, if they can be found at all, are really too bad to use. The only foreign bargains which I long to bring home with me are in porcelain: but this our custom-house tariff forbids, and very properly; as, without such protection, our Wedgewoods and Mortlakes would sell but few ornamental articles; for not only are their prices higher, but both their material and the fashioning of it are in my opinion extremely inferior. It is really very satisfactory to one's patriotic feelings to be able to say honestly, that excepting in these, and a few other ornamental superfluities, such as or-molu and alabaster clocks, etcætera, there is nothing that we need wish to smuggle into our own abounding land. LETTER XLIV. Exclusive Soirées.--Soirée Doctrinaire.--Duc de Broglie.--Soirée Républicaine.--Soirée Royaliste.--Partie Impériale.--Military Greatness.--Dame de l'Empire. Though the _salons_ of Paris probably show at the present moment the most mixed society that can be found mingled together in the world, one occasionally finds oneself in the midst of a set evidently of one stamp, and indeed proclaiming itself to be so; for wherever this happens, the assembly is considered as peculiarly chosen and select, and as having all the dignity of exclusiveness. The picture of Paris as it is, may perhaps be better caught at a glance at a party collected together without any reference to politics or principles of any kind; but I have been well pleased to find myself on three different occasions admitted to _soirées_ of the exclusive kind. At the first of these, I was told the names of most of the company by a kind friend who sat near me, and thus became aware that I had the honour of being in company with most of King Philippe's present ministry. Three or four of these gentlemen were introduced to me, and I had the advantage of seeing _de près_, during their hours of relaxation, the men who have perhaps at this moment as heavy a weight of responsibility upon their shoulders as any set of ministers ever sustained. Nevertheless, nothing like gloom, preoccupation, or uneasiness, appeared to pervade them; and yet that chiefest subject of anxiety, the _Procès Monstre_, was by no means banished from their discourse. Their manner of treating it, however, was certainly not such as to make one believe that they were at all likely to sink under their load, or that they felt in any degree embarrassed or distressed by it. Some of the extravagances of _les accusés_ were discussed gaily enough, and the general tone was that of men who knew perfectly well what they were about, and who found more to laugh at than to fear in the opposition and abuse they encountered. This light spirit however, which to me seemed fair enough in the hours of recreation, had better not be displayed on graver occasions, as it naturally produces exasperation on the part of the prisoners, which, however little dangerous it may be to the state, is nevertheless a feeling which should not be unnecessarily excited. In that amusing paper or magazine--I know not which may be its title--called the "Chronique de Paris," I read some days ago a letter describing one of the _séances_ of the Chamber of Peers on this _procès_, in which the gaiety manifested by M. de Broglie is thus censured:-- "J'ai fait moi-même partie de ce public privilégié que les accusés ne reconnaissent pas comme un vrai public, et j'ai pu assister jeudi à cette dramatique audience où la voix tonnante d'un accusé lisant une protestation, a couvert la voix du ministère public. J'étais du nombre de ceux qui ont eu la fièvre de cette scène, et je n'ai pu comprendre, au milieu de l'agitation générale, qu'un homme aussi bien élevé que M. de Broglie (je ne dis pas qu'un ministre) trouvât seul qu'il y avait là sujet de rire en lorgnant ce vrai Romain, comparable à ces tribuns qui, dans les derniers temps de la république, faisaient trembler les patriciens sur leurs chaises curules." "_Ce vrai Romain_," however, rather deserved to be scourged than laughed at; for never did any criminal when brought to the bar of his country insult its laws and its rulers more grossly than the prisoner Beaune on this occasion. If indeed the accounts which reach us by the daily papers are not exaggerated, the outrageous conduct of the accused furnishes at every sitting sufficient cause for anger and indignation, however unworthy it may be of inspiring anything approaching to a feeling of alarm: and the calm, dignified, and temperate manner in which the Chamber of Peers has hitherto conducted itself may serve, I think, as an example to many other legislative assemblies. The ministers of Louis-Philippe are very fortunate that the mode of trial decided on by them in this troublesome business is likely to be carried through by the upper house in a manner so little open to reasonable animadversion. The duty, and a most harassing one it is, has been laid upon them, as many think, illegally; but the task has been imposed by an authority which it is their duty to respect, and they have entered upon it in a spirit that does them honour. The second exclusive party to which I was fortunate enough to be admitted, was in all respects quite the reverse of the first. The fair mistress of the mansion herself assured me that there was not a single doctrinaire present. Here, too, the eternal subject of the _Procès Monstre_ was discussed, but in a very different tone, and with feelings as completely as possible in opposition to those which dictated the lively and triumphant sort of persiflage to which I had before listened. Nevertheless, the conversation was anything but _triste_, as the party was in truth particularly agreeable; but, amidst flashes of wit, sinister sounds that foreboded future revolutions grumbled every now and then like distant thunder. Then there was shrugging of shoulders, and shaking of heads, and angry taps upon the snuff-box; and from time to time, amid the prattle of pretty women, and the well-turned _gentillesses_ of those they prattled to, might be heard such phrases as, "Tout n'est pas encore fini".... "Nous verrons ... nous verrons".... "S'ils sont arbitraires!" ... and the like. The third set was as distinct as may be from the two former. This reunion was in the quartier St. Germain; and, if the feeling which I know many would call prejudice does not deceive me, the tone of first-rate good society was greatly more conspicuous here than at either of the others. By all the most brilliant personages who adorned the other two _soirées_ which I have described, I strongly suspect that the most distinguished of this third would be classed as _rococo_; but they were composed of the real stuff that constitutes the true patrician, for all that. Many indeed were quite of the old régime, and many others their noble high-minded descendants: but whether they were old or young,--whether remarkable for having played a distinguished part in the scenes that have been, or for sustaining the chivalric principles of their race, by quietly withdrawing from the scenes that are,--in either case they had that air of inveterate superiority which I believe nothing on earth but gentle blood can give. There is a fourth class still, consisting of the dignitaries of the Empire, which, if they ever assemble in distinct committee, I have yet to become acquainted with. But I suspect that this is not the case: one may perhaps meet them more certainly in some houses than in others; but, unless it be around the dome of the Invalides, I do not believe that they are to be found anywhere as a class apart. Nothing, however, can be less difficult than to trace them: they are as easily discerned as a boiled lobster among a panier full of such as are newly caught. That amusing little vaudeville called, I think, "La Dame de l'Empire," or some such title, contains the best portrait of a whole _clique_, under the features of an individual character, of any comedy I know. None of the stormy billows which have rolled over France during the last forty years have thrown up a race so strongly marked as those produced by the military era of the Empire. The influence of the enormous power which was then in action has assuredly in some directions left most noble vestiges. Wherever science was at work, this power propelled it forward; and ages yet unborn may bless for this the fostering patronage of Napoleon: some midnight of devastation and barbarism must fall upon the world before what he has done of this kind can be obliterated. But the same period, while it brought forth from obscurity talent and enterprise which without its influence would never have been greeted by the light of day, brought forward at the same time legions of men and women to whom this light and their advanced position in society are by no means advantageous in the eyes of a passing looker-on. I have heard that it requires three generations to make a gentleman. Those created by Napoleon have not yet fairly reached a second; and, with all respect for talent, industry, and valour be it spoken, the necessity of this slow process very frequently forces itself upon one's conviction at Paris. It is probable that the great refinement of the post-imperial aristocracy of France may be one reason why the deficiencies of those now often found mixed up with them is so remarkable. It would be difficult to imagine a contrast in manner more striking than that of a lady who would be a fair specimen of the old Bourbon _noblesse_, and a bouncing _maréchale_ of Imperial creation. It seems as if every particle of the whole material of which each is formed gave evidence of the different birth of the spirit that dwells within. The sound of the voice is a contrast; the glance of the eye is a contrast; the smile is a contrast; the step is a contrast. Were every feature of a _dame de l'Empire_ and a _femme noble_ formed precisely in the same mould, I am quite sure that the two would look no more alike than Queen Constance and Nell Gwyn. Nor is there at all less difference in the two races of gentlemen. I speak not of the men of science or of art; their rank is of another kind: but there are still left here and there specimens of decorated greatness which look as if they must have been dragged out of the guard-room by main force; huge moustached militaires, who look at every slight rebuff as if they were ready to exclaim, "Sacré nom de D***! je suis un héros, moi! Vive l'Empereur!" A good deal is sneeringly said respecting the parvenus fashionables of the present day: but station, and place, and court favour, must at any rate give something of reality to the importance of those whom the last movement has brought to the top; and this is vastly less offensive than the empty, vulgar, camp-like reminiscences of Imperial patronage which are occasionally brought forward by those who may thank their sabre for having cut a path for them into the salons of Paris. The really great men of the Empire--and there are certainly many of them--have taken care to have other claims to distinction attached to their names than that of having been dragged out of heaven knows what profound obscurity by Napoleon: I may say of such, in the words of the soldier in Macbeth-- "If I say sooth, I must report they were As cannon overcharged with double cracks." As for the elderly ladies, who, from simple little bourgeoises demoiselles, were in those belligerent days sabred and trumpeted into maréchales and duchesses, I must think that they make infinitely worse figures in a drawing-room, than those who, younger in years and newer in dignity, have all their blushing honours fresh upon them. Besides, in point of fact, the having one Bourbon prince instead of another upon the throne, though greatly to be lamented from the manner in which it was accomplished, can hardly be expected to produce so violent a convulsion among the aristocracy of France, as must of necessity have ensued from the reign of a soldier of fortune, though the mightiest that ever bore arms. Many of the noblest races of France still remain wedded to the soil that has been for ages native to their name. Towards these it is believed that King Louis-Philippe has no very repulsive feelings; and should no farther changes come upon the country--no more immortal days arise to push all men from their stools, it is probable that the number of these will not diminish in the court circles. Meanwhile, the haut-ton born during the last revolution must of course have an undisputed _entrée_ everywhere; and if by any external marks they are particularly brought forward to observation, it is only, I think, by a toilet among the ladies more costly and less simple than that of their high-born neighbours; and among the gentlemen, by a general air of prosperity and satisfaction, with an expression of eye sometimes a little triumphant, often a little patronizing, and always a little busy. It was a duchess, and no less, who decidedly gave me the most perfect idea of an Imperial parvenue that I have ever seen off the stage. When a lady of this class attains so very elevated a rank, the perils of her false position multiply around her. A quiet bourgeoise turned into a noble lady of the third or fourth degree is likely enough to look a little awkward; but if she has the least tact in the world, she may remain tranquil and _sans ridicule_ under the honourable shelter of those above her. But when she becomes a duchess, the chances are terribly against her: "Madame la Duchesse" must be conspicuous; and if in addition to mauvais ton she should par malheur be a bel esprit, adding the pretension of literature to that of station, it is likely that she will be very remarkable indeed. [Illustration: Drawn & Etched by A. Hervieu. SOIREE. London. Published by Richard Bentley. 1835.] My parvenue duchess _is_ very remarkable indeed. She steps out like a corporal carrying a message: her voice is the first, the last, and almost the only thing heard in the salon that she honours with her presence,--except it chance, indeed, that she lower her tone occasionally to favour with a whisper some gallant _décoré_, military, scientific or artistic, of the same standing as herself; and moreover, she promenades her eyes over the company as if she had a right to bring them all to roll-call. Notwithstanding all this, the lady is certainly a person of talent; and had she happily remained in the station in which both herself and her husband were born, she might not perhaps have thought it necessary to speak quite so loud, and her bons mots would have produced infinitely greater effect. But she is so thoroughly out of place in the grade to which she has been unkindly elevated, that it seems as if Napoleon had decided on her fate in a humour as spiteful as that of Monsieur Jourdain, when he said-- "Votre fille sera marquise, en dépit de tout le monde: et si vous me mettez en colère, je la ferai duchesse." LETTER XLV. L'Abbé Lacordaire.--Various Statements respecting him.--Poetical description of Notre Dame.--The prophecy of a Roman Catholic.--Les Jeunes Gens de Paris--Their omnipotence. The great reputation of another preacher induced us on Sunday to endure two hours more of tedious waiting before the mass which preceded the sermon began. It is only thus that a chair can be hoped for when the Abbé Lacordaire mounts the pulpit of Notre Dame. The penalty is really heavy; but having heard this celebrated person described as one who "appeared sent by Heaven to restore France to Christianity"--as "a hypocrite that set Tartuffe immeasurably in the background"--as "a man whose talent surpassed that of any preacher since Bossuet"--and as "a charlatan who ought to harangue from a tub, instead of from the _chaire de Notre Dame de Paris_,"--I determined upon at least seeing and hearing him, however little I might be able to decide on which of the two sides of the prodigious chasm that yawned between his friends and enemies the truth was most likely to be found. There were, however, several circumstances which lessened the tedium of this long interval: I might go farther, and confess that this period was by no means the least profitable portion of the four hours which we passed in the church. On entering, we found the whole of the enormous nave railed in, as it had been on Easter Sunday for the concert (for so in truth should that performance be called); but upon applying at the entrance to this enclosure, we were told that no ladies could be admitted to that part of the church--but that the side aisles were fully furnished with chairs, and afforded excellent places. This arrangement astonished me in many ways:--first, as being so perfectly un-national; for go where you will in France, you find the best places reserved for the women,--at least, this was the first instance in which I ever found it otherwise. Next, it astonished me, because at every church I had entered, the congregations, though always crowded, had been composed of at least twelve women to one man. When, therefore, I looked over the barrier upon the close-packed, well-adjusted rows of seats prepared to receive fifteen hundred persons, I thought that unless all the priests in Paris came in person to do honour to their eloquent confrère, it was very unlikely that this uncivil arrangement should be found necessary. There was no time, however, to waste in conjecture; the crowd already came rushing in at every door, and we hastened to secure the best places that the side aisles afforded. We obtained seats between the pillars immediately opposite to the pulpit, and felt well enough contented, having little doubt that a voice which had made itself heard so well must have power to reach even to the side aisles of Notre Dame. The first consolation which I found for my long waiting, after placing myself in that attitude of little ease which the straight-backed chair allowed, was from the recollection that the interval was to be passed within the venerable walls of Notre Dame. It is a glorious old church, and though not comparable in any way to Westminster Abbey, or to Antwerp, or Strasburg, or Cologne, or indeed to many others which I might name, has enough to occupy the eye very satisfactorily for a considerable time. The three elegant rose-windows, throwing in their coloured light from north, west, and south, are of themselves a very pretty study for half an hour or so; and besides, they brought back, notwithstanding their miniature diameter of forty feet, the remembrance of the magnificent circular western window of Strasburg--the recollection of which was almost enough to while away another long interval. Then I employed myself, not very successfully, in labouring to recollect the quaint old verses which I had fallen upon a few days before, giving the dimensions of the church, and which I will herewith transcribe for your use and amusement, in case you should ever find yourself sitting as I was, _bolt upright_, as we elegantly express ourselves when describing this ecclesiastical-Parisian attitude, while waiting the advent of the Abbé Lacordaire. "Si tu veux savoir comme est ample De Notre Dame le grand temple, Il y a, dans oeuvre, pour le seur, Dix et sept toises de hauteur, Sur la largeur de vingt-quatre, Et soixante-cinq, sans rebattre, A de long; aux tours haut montées Trente-quatre sont comptées; Le tout fondé sur pilotis-- Aussi vrai que je te le dis." While repeating this poetical description, you have only to remember that _une toise_ is the same as a fathom,--that is to say, six feet; and then, as you turn your head in all directions to look about you, you will have the satisfaction of knowing exactly how far you can see in each. I had another source of amusement, and by no means a trifling one, in watching the influx of company. The whole building soon contained as many human beings as could be crammed into it; and the seats, which we thought, as we took them, were very so-so places indeed, became accomodations for which to be most heartily thankful. Not a pillar but supported the backs of as many men as could stand round it; and not a jutting ornament, the balustrade of a side altar, or any other "point of 'vantage," but looked as if a swarm of bees were beginning to hang upon it. But the sight which drew my attention most was that displayed by the exclusive central aisle. When told that it was reserved for gentlemen, I imagined of course that I should see it filled by a collection of staid-looking, middle-aged, Catholic citizens, who were drawn together from all parts of the town, and perhaps the country too, for the purpose of hearing the celebrated preacher: but, to my great astonishment, instead of this I saw pouring in by dozens at a time, gay, gallant, smart-looking young men, such indeed as I had rarely seen in Paris on any other religious occasion. Amongst these was a sprinkling of older men; but the great majority were decidedly under thirty. The meaning of this phenomenon I could by no means understand; but while I was tormenting myself to discover some method of obtaining information respecting it, accident brought relief to my curiosity in the shape of a communicative neighbour. In no place in the world is it so easy, I believe, to enter into conversation with strangers as in Paris. There is a courteous inclination to welcome every attempt at doing so which pervades all ranks, and any one who wishes it may easily find or make opportunities of hearing the opinions of all classes. The present time, too, is peculiarly favourable for this; a careless freedom in uttering opinions of all kinds being, I think, the most remarkable feature in the manners of Paris at the present day. I have heard that it is difficult to get a tame, flat, short, matter-of-fact answer from a genuine Irishman;--from a genuine Frenchman it is impossible: let his reply to a question which seeks information contain as little of it as the dry Anglicism "I don't know," it is never given without a tone or a turn of phrase that not only relieves its inanity, but leaves you with the agreeable persuasion that the speaker would be more satisfactory if he could, and moreover that he would be extremely happy to reply to any further questions you may wish to ask, either on the same, or any other subject whatever. It was in consequence of my moving my chair an inch and a half to accommodate the long limbs of a grey-headed neighbour, that he was induced to follow his "Milles pardons, madame!" with an observation on the inconvenience endured on the present occasion by the appropriation of all the best places to the gentlemen. It was quite contrary, he added, to the usual spirit of Parisian arrangements; and yet, in fact, it was the only means of preventing the ladies suffering from the tremendous rush of _jeunes gens_ who constantly came to hear the Abbé Lacordaire. "I never saw so large a proportion of young men in any congregation," said I, hoping he might explain the mystery to me. What I heard, however, rather startled than enlightened me. "The Catholic religion was never so likely to be spread over the whole earth as it is at present," he replied. "The kingdom of Ireland will speedily become fully reconciled to the see of Rome. Le Sieur O'Connell desires to be canonized. Nothing, in truth, remains for that portion of your country to do, but to follow the example we set during our famous Three Days, and place a prince of its own choosing upon the throne." I am persuaded that he thought we were Irish Roman Catholics: our sitting with such exemplary patience to wait for the preaching of this new apostle was not, I suppose, to be otherwise accounted for. I said nothing to undeceive him, but wishing to bring him back to speak of the congregation before us, I replied, "Paris at least, if we may judge from the vast crowd collected here, is more religious than she has been of late years." "France," replied he with energy, "as you may see by looking at this throng, is no longer the France of 1823, when her priests sang canticles to the tune of "_Ça ira_." France is happily become most deeply and sincerely Catholic. Her priests are once more her orators, her magnates, her highest dignitaries. She may yet give cardinals to Rome--and Rome may again give a minister to France." I knew not what to answer: my silence did not seem to please him, and I believe he began to suspect he had mistaken the party altogether, for after sitting for a few minutes quite silent, he rose from the place into which he had pushed himself with considerable difficulty, and making his way through the crowd behind us, disappeared; but I saw him again, before we left the church, standing on the steps of the pulpit. The chair he left was instantly occupied by another gentleman, who had before found standing-room near it. He had probably remarked our sociable propensities, for he immediately began talking to us. "Did you ever see anything like the fashion which this man has obtained?" said he. "Look at those _jeunes gens_, madame! ... might one not fancy oneself at a première représentation?" "Those must be greatly mistaken," I replied, "who assert that the young men of Paris are not among her _fidèles_." "Do you consider their appearing here a proof that they are religious?" inquired my neighbour with a smile. "Certainly I do, sir," I replied: "how can I interpret it otherwise?" "Perhaps not--perhaps to a stranger it must have this appearance; but to a man who knows Paris...." He smiled again very expressively, and, after a short pause, added--"Depend upon it, that if a man of equal talent and eloquence with this Abbé Lacordaire were to deliver a weekly discourse in favour of atheism, these very identical young men would be present to hear him." "Once they might," said I, "from curiosity: but that they should follow him, as I understand they do, month after month, if what he uttered were at variance with their opinions, seems almost inconceivable." "And yet it is very certainly the fact," he replied: "whoever can contrive to obtain the reputation of talent at Paris, let the nature of it be of what kind it may, is quite sure that _les jeunes gens_ will resort to hear and see him. They believe themselves of indefeasible right the sole arbitrators of intellectual reputation; and let the direction in which it is shown be as foreign as may be to their own pursuits, they come as a matter of prescriptive right to put their seal upon the aspirant's claim, or to refuse it." "Then, at least, they acknowledge that the Abbé's words have power, or they would not grant their suffrage to him." "They assuredly acknowledge that his words have eloquence; but if by power, you mean power of conviction, or conversion, I do assure you that they acknowledge nothing like it. Not only do I believe that these young men are themselves sceptics, but I do not imagine that there is one in ten of them who has the least faith in the Abbé's own orthodoxy." "But what right have they to doubt it?... Surely he would hardly be permitted to preach at Notre Dame, where the archbishop himself sits in judgment on him, were he otherwise than orthodox?" "I was at school with him," he replied: "he was a fine sharp-witted boy, and gave very early demonstrations of a mind not particularly given either to credulity, or subservience to any doctrines that he found puzzling." "I should say that this was the greatest proof of his present sincerity. He doubted as a boy--but as a man he believes." "That is not the way the story goes," said he. "But hark! there is the bell: the mass is about to commence." He was right: the organ pealed, the fine chant of the voices was heard above it, and in a few minutes we saw the archbishop and his splendid train escorting the Host to its ark upon the altar. During the interval between the conclusion of the mass and the arrival of the Abbé Lacordaire in the pulpit, my sceptical neighbour again addressed me. "Are you prepared to be very much enchanted by what you are going to hear?" said he. "I hardly know what to expect," I replied: "I think my idea of the preacher was higher when I came here, than since I have heard you speak of him." "You will find that he has a prodigious flow of words, much vehement gesticulation, and a very impassioned manner. This is quite sufficient to establish his reputation for eloquence among _les jeunes gens_." "But I presume you do not yourself subscribe to the sentence pronounced by these young critics?" "Yes, I do,--as far, at least, as to acknowledge that this man has not attained his reputation without having displayed great ability. But though all the talent of Paris has long consented to receive its crown of laurels from the hands of her young men, it would be hardly reasonable to expect that their judgment should be as profound as their power is great." "Your obedience to this beardless synod is certainly very extraordinary," said I: "I cannot understand it." "I suppose not," said he, laughing; "it is quite a Paris fashion; but we all seem contented that it should be so. If a new play appears, its fate must be decided by _les jeunes gens_; if a picture is exhibited, its rank amidst the works of modern art can only be settled by them: does a dancer, a singer, an actor, or a preacher appear--a new member in the tribune, or a new prince upon the throne,--it is still _les jeunes gens_ who must pass judgment on them all; and this judgment is quoted with a degree of deference utterly inconceivable to a stranger." "Chut! ... chut!" ... was at this moment uttered by more than one voice near us: "le voilà!" I glanced my eye towards the pulpit, but it was still empty; and on looking round me, I perceived that all eyes were turned in the direction of a small door in the north aisle, almost immediately behind us. "Il est entré là!" said a young woman near us, in a tone that seemed to indicate a feeling deeper than respect, and, in truth, not far removed from adoration. Her eyes were still earnestly fixed upon the door, and continued to be so, as well as those of many others, till it reopened and a slight young man in the dress of a priest prepared for the _chaire_ appeared at it. A verger made way for him through the crowd, which, thick and closely wedged as it was, fell back on each side of him, as he proceeded to the pulpit, with much more docility than I ever saw produced by the clearing a passage through the intervention of a troop of horse. Silence the most profound accompanied his progress; I never witnessed more striking demonstrations of respect: and yet it is said that three-fourths of Paris believe this man to be a hypocrite. As soon as he had reached the pulpit, and while preparing himself by silent prayer for the duty he was about to perform, a movement became perceptible at the upper part of the choir; and presently the archbishop and his splendid retinue of clergy were seen moving in a body towards that part of the nave which is immediately in front of the preacher. On arriving at the space reserved for them, each noiselessly dropped into his allotted seat according to his place and dignity, while the whole congregation respectfully stood to watch the ceremony, and seemed to "Admirer un si bel ordre, et reconnaître l'église." It is easier to describe to you everything which preceded the sermon, than the sermon itself. This was such a rush of words, such a burst and pouring out of passionate declamation, that even before I had heard enough to judge of the matter, I felt disposed to prejudge the preacher, and to suspect that his discourse would have more of the flourish and furbelow of human rhetoric than of the simplicity of divine truth in it. His violent action, too, disgusted me exceedingly. The rapid and incessant movement of his hands, sometimes of one, sometimes of both, more resembled that of the wings of a humming-bird than anything else I can remember: but the _hum_ proceeded from the admiring congregation. At every pause he made, and like the claptraps of a bad actor, they were frequent, and evidently faits exprès: a little gentle laudatory murmur ran through the crowd. I remember reading somewhere of a priest nobly born, and so anxious to keep his flock in their proper place, that they might not come "between the wind and his nobility," that his constant address to them when preaching was, "Canaille Chrétienne!" This was bad--very bad, certainly; but I protest, I doubt if the Abbé Lacordaire's manner of addressing his congregation as "Messieurs" was much less unlike the fitting tone of a Christian pastor. This mundane apostrophe was continually repeated throughout the whole discourse, and, I dare say, had its share in producing the disagreeable effect I experienced from his eloquence. I cannot remember having ever heard a preacher I less liked, reverenced, and admired, than this new Parisian saint. He made very pointed allusions to the reviving state of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, and anathematized pretty cordially all such as should oppose it. In describing the two hours' prologue to the mass, I forgot to mention that many young men--not in the reserved places of the centre aisle, but sitting near us, beguiled the tedious interval by reading. Some of the volumes they held had the appearance of novels from a circulating library, and others were evidently collections of songs, probably less spiritual than _spirituels_. The whole exhibition certainly showed me a new page in the history of _Paris as it is_, and I therefore do not regret the four hours it cost me: but once is enough--I certainly will never go to hear the Abbé Lacordaire again. LETTER XLVI. La Tour de Nesle. It is, I believe, nearly two years ago since the very extraordinary drama called "La Tour de Nesle" was sent me to read, as a specimen of the outrageous school of dramatic extravagance which had taken possession of all the theatres in Paris; but I certainly did not expect that it would keep its place as a favourite spectacle with the people of this great and enlightened capital long enough for me to see it, at this distance of time, still played before a very crowded audience. That this is a national disgrace, is most certain: but the fault is less attributable to the want of good taste, than to the lamentable blunder which permits every species of vice and abomination to be enacted before the eyes of the people, without any restraint or check whatever, under the notion that they are thereby permitted to enjoy a desirable privilege and a noble freedom. Yet in this same country it is illegal to sell a deleterious drug! There is no logic in this. It is however an undeniable fact, as I think I have before stated, that the best class of Parisian society protest against this disgusting license, and avoid--upon principle loudly proclaimed and avowed--either reading or seeing acted these detestable compositions. Thus, though the crowded audiences constantly assembled whenever they are brought forward prove but too clearly that such persons form but a small minority, their opinion is nevertheless sufficient, or ought to be so, to save the country from the disgrace of admitting that such things are good. We seem to pique ourselves greatly on the superiority of our taste in these matters; but let us pique ourselves rather on our theatrical censorship. Should the clamours and shoutings of misrule lead to the abolition of this salutary restraint, the consequences would, I fear, be such as very soon to rob us of our present privilege of abusing our neighbours on this point. While things do remain as they are, however, we may, I think, smile a little at such a judgment as Monsieur de Saintfoix passes upon our theatrical compositions, when comparing them to those of France. "Les actions de nos tragédies," says he, "sont pathétiques et terribles; celles des tragédies angloises sont atroces. On y met sous les yeux du spectateur les objets les plus horribles; un mari qui discourt avec sa femme, qui la caresse et l'étrangle." Might one not think that the writer of this passage had just arrived from witnessing the famous scene in the "Monomane," only he had mistaken it for English? But he goes on-- "Une fille toute sanglante...." (Triboulet's daughter Blanche, for instance.)--"Après l'avoir violée...." He then proceeds to reason upon the subject, and justly enough, I think--only we should read England for France, and France for England. "Il n'est pas douteux que les arts agréables ne réussissent chez un peuple qu'autant qu'ils en prennent le génie, et qu'un auteur dramatique ne sauroit espérer de plaire si les objets et les images qu'il présente ne sont pas analogues au caractère, au naturel, et au goût de la nation: on pourroit donc conclure de la différence des deux théâtres, que l'âme d'un ANGLAIS est sombre, féroce, sanguinaire; et que celle d'un FRANÇAIS est vive, impatiente, emportée, mais généreuse même dans sa haine; idolatrant l'honneur"--(just like Buridan in this same drama of the Tour de Nesle--this popular production of _la Jeune France_--_la France régénérée_)--"idolatrant l'honneur, et ne cessant jamais de l'apercevoir, malgré le trouble et toute la violence des passions." Though it is impossible to read this passage without a smile, at a time when it is so easy for the English to turn the tables against this patriotic author, one must sigh too, while reflecting on the lamentable change which has taken place in the moral feeling of revolutionised France since the period at which it was written. What would Saintfoix say to the notion that Victor Hugo had "heaved the ground from beneath the feet of Corneille and Racine"? The question, however, is answered by a short sentence in his "Essais Historiques," where he thus expresses himself:-- "Je croirois que la décadence de notre nation seroit prochaine, si les hommes de quarante ans n'y regardoient pas CORNEILLE comme le plus grand génie qui ait jamais été." If the spirit of the historian were to revisit the earth, and float over the heads of a party of Parisian critics while pronouncing sentence on his favourite author, he might probably return to the shades unharmed, for he would only hear "Rococo! Rococo! Rococo!" uttered as by acclamation; and unskilled to comprehend the new-born eloquence, he would doubtless interpret it as a _refrain_ to express in one pithy word all reverence, admiration, and delight. But to return to "La Tour de Nesle." The story is taken from a passage in Brantôme's history "des Femmes Galantes," where he says, "qu'une reine de France"--whom however he does not name, but who is said to have been Marguérite de Bourgogne, wife of Louis Dix--"se tenoit là (à la Tour de Nesle) d'ordinaire, laquelle fesant le guet aux passans, et ceux qui lui revenoient et agréoient le plus, de quelque sorte de gens que ce fussent, les fesoit appeler et venir à soy, et après ... les fesoit précipiter du haut de la tour en bas, en l'eau, et les fesoit noyer. Je ne veux pas," he continues, "assurer que cela soit vrai, mais le vulgaire, au moins la plupart de Paris, l'affirme, et n'y a si commun qu'en lui montrant la tour seulement, et en l'interrogeant, que de lui-même ne le die." This story one might imagine was horrible and disgusting enough; but MM. Gaillardet et ***** (it is thus the authors announce themselves) thought otherwise, and accordingly they have introduced her majesty's sisters, the ladies Jeanne and Blanche of Burgundy, who were both likewise married to sons of Philippe-le-Bel, the brothers of Louis Dix, to share her nocturnal orgies. These "imaginative and powerful" scenic historians also, according to the fashion of the day among the theatrical writers of France, add incest to increase the interest of the drama. This is enough, and too much, as to the plot; and for the execution of it by the authors, I can only say that it is about equal in literary merit to the translations of an Italian opera handed about at the Haymarket. It is in prose--and, to my judgment, very vulgar prose; yet it is not only constantly acted, but I am assured that the sale of it has been prodigiously great, and still continues to be so. That a fearful and even hateful story, dressed up in all the attractive charm of majestic poetry, and redeemed in some sort by the noble sentiments of the personages brought into the scenes of which it might be the foundation--that a drama so formed might captivate the imagination even while it revolted the feelings, is very possible, very natural, and nowise disgraceful either to the poet, or to those whom his talent may lead captive. The classic tragedies which long served as models to France abound in fables of this description. Alfieri, too, has made use of such, following with a poet's wing the steady onward flight of remorseless destiny, yet still sublime in pathos and in dignity, though appalling in horror. In like manner, the great French dramatists have triumphed by the power of their genius, both over the disgust inspired by these awful classic mysteries, and the unbending strictness of the laws which their antique models enforced for their composition. If we may herein deem the taste to have been faulty, the grace, the majesty, the unswerving dignity of the tragic march throughout the whole action--the lofty sentiments, the bursts of noble passion, and the fine drapery of stately verse in which the whole was clothed, must nevertheless raise our admiration to a degree that may perhaps almost compete with what we feel for the enchanting wildness and unshackled nature of our native dramas. But what can we think of those who, having ransacked the pages of history to discover whatever was most revolting to the human soul, should sit down to arrange it in action, detailed at full length, with every hateful circumstance exaggerated and brought out to view for the purpose of tickling the curiosity of his countrymen and countrywomen, and by that means beguiling them into the contemplation of scenes that Virtue would turn from with loathing, and before which Innocence must perish as she gazes? No gleam of goodness throughout the whole for the heart to cling to,--no thought of remorseful penitence,--no spark of noble feeling; nothing but vice,--low, grovelling, brutal vice,--from the moment the curtain rises to display the obscene spectacle, to that which sees it fall between the fictitious infamy on one side, and the real impurity left on the other! As I looked on upon the hideous scene, and remembered the classic horrors of the Greek tragedians, and of the mighty imitators who have followed them, I could not help thinking that the performance of MM. Gaillardet et ***** was exceedingly like that of a monkey mimicking the operations of a man. He gets hold of the same tools, but turns the edges the wrong way; and instead of raising a majestic fabric in honour of human genius, he rolls the materials in mud, begrimes his own paws in the slimy cement, and then claws hold of every unwary passenger who comes within his reach, and bespatters him with the rubbish he has brought together. Such monkeys should be chained, or they will do much mischief. It is hardly possible that such dramas as the "Tour de Nesle" can be composed with the intention of producing a great tragic effect; which is surely the only reason which can justify bringing sin and misery before the eyes of an audience. There is in almost every human heart a strange love for scenes of terror and of woe. We love to have our sympathies awakened--our deepest feelings roused; we love to study in the magic mirror of the scene what we ourselves might feel did such awful visitations come upon us; and there is an unspeakable interest inspired by looking on, and fancying that were it so with us, we might so act, so feel, so suffer, and so die. But is there in any land a wretch so lost, so vile, as to be capable of feeling sympathy with any sentiment or thought expressed throughout the whole progress of this "Tour de Nesle"? God forbid! I have heard of poets who have written under the inspiration of brandy and laudanum--the exhalations from which are certainly not likely to form themselves into images of distinctness or beauty; but the inspiration that dictated the "Tour de Nesle" must have been something viler still, though not less powerful. It must, I think, have been the cruel calculation of how many dirty francs might be expressed from the pockets of the idle, by a spectacle new from its depth of atrocity, and attractive from its newness. But, setting aside for a moment the sin and the scandal of producing on a public stage such a being as the woman to whom MM. Gaillardet et ***** have chosen to give the name of Marguérite de Bourgogne, it is an object of some curiosity to examine the literary merits of a piece which, both on the stage and in the study, has been received by so many thousands--perhaps millions--of individuals belonging to "_la grande nation_" as a work deserving their patronage and support--or at least as deserving their attention and attendance for years; years, too, of hourly progressive intellect--years during which the march of mind has outdone all former marches of human intelligence--years during which Young France has been labouring to throw off her ancient coat of worn-out rococoism, and to clothe herself in new-fledged brightness. During these years she has laid on one shelf her once-venerated Corneille,--on another, her almost worshipped Racine. Molière is named but as a fine antique; and Voltaire himself, spite of his strong claims upon their revolutionary affections, can hardly be forgiven for having said of the two whom Victor Hugo is declared to have overthrown, that "Ces hommes enseignèrent à la nation, à penser, à sentir, à s'exprimer; leurs auditeurs, instruits par eux seuls, devinrent enfin des juges sévères pour eux mêmes qui les avaient éclairés." Let any one whose reason is not totally overthrown by the fever and delirium of innovation read the "Tour de Nesle," and find out if he can any single scene, speech, or phrase deserving the suffrage which Paris has accorded to it. Has the dialogue either dignity, spirit, or truth of nature to recommend it? Is there a single sentiment throughout the five acts with which an honest man can accord? Is there even an approach to grace or beauty in the _tableaux_? or skill in the arrangement of the scenes? or keeping of character among the demoniacal _dramatis personæ_ which MM. Gaillardet et ***** have brought together? or, in short, any one merit to recommend it--except only its superlative defiance of common decency and common sense? If there be any left among the men of France; I speak not now of her boys, the spoilt grandchildren of the old revolution;--but if there be any left among her men, as I in truth believe there are, who deprecate this eclipse of her literary glory, is it not sad that they should be forced to permit its toleration, for fear they should be sent to Ham for interfering with the liberty of the press? It is impossible to witness the representation of one of these infamous pieces without perceiving, as you glance your eye around the house, who are its patrons and supporters. At no great distance from us, when we saw the "Tour de Nesle," were three young men who had all of them a most thoroughly "_jeunes gens_" and republican cast of countenance, and tournure of person and dress. They tossed their heads and snuffed the theatrical air of "_la Jeune France_," as if they felt that they were, or ought to be, her masters: and it is a positive fact that nothing pre-eminently absurd or offensive was done or said upon the stage, which this trio did not mark with particular admiration and applause. There was, however, such a saucy look of determination to do what they knew was absurd, that I gave them credit for being aware of the nonsense of what they applauded, from the very fact that they did applaud it. It is easy enough sometimes to discover "le vrai au travers du ridicule;" and these silly boys were not, I am persuaded, such utter blockheads as they endeavoured to appear. It is a bad and mischievous tone, however; and the affecting a vice where you have it not, is quite as detestable a sort of hypocrisy as any other. Some thousand years hence perhaps, if any curious collectors of rare copies should contrive among them to preserve specimens of the French dramas of the present day, it may happen that while the times that are gone shall continue to be classed as the Iron, the Golden, the Dark, and the Augustan ages, this day of ours may become familiar in all men's mouths as the Diabolic age,--unless, indeed, some charitable critic shall step forward in our defence, and bestow upon it the gentler appellation of "the Idiot era." LETTER XLVII. Palais Royal.--Variety of Characters.--Party of English.--Restaurant.--Galerie d'Orléans.--Number of Loungers.--Convenient abundance of Idle Men.--Théâtre du Vaudeville. Though, as a lady, you may fancy yourself quite beyond the possibility of ever feeling any interest in the Palais Royal, its restaurans, its trinket-shops, ribbon-shops, toy-shops &c. &c. &c. and all the world of misery, mischief, and good cheer which rises _étage_ after _étage_ above them; I must nevertheless indulge in a little gossip respecting it, because few things in Paris--I might, I believe, say nothing--can show an aspect so completely un-English in all ways as this singular region. The palace itself is stately and imposing, though not externally in the very best taste. Corneille, however, says of it,-- "L'univers entier ne peut voir rien d'égal Au superbe dehors du Palais Cardinal," as it was called from having been built and inhabited by the Cardinal de Richelieu. But it is the use made of the space which was originally the Cardinal's garden, which gives the place its present interest. All the world--men, women and children, gentle and simple, rich and poor,--in short, I suppose every living soul that enters Paris, is taken to look at the Palais Royal. But though many strangers linger there, alas! all too long, there are many others who, according to my notions, do not linger there long enough. The quickest eye cannot catch at one glance, though that glance be in activity during a tour made round the whole enclosure, all the national characteristic, picturesque, and comic groups which float about there incessantly through at least twenty hours of the twenty-four. I know that the Palais Royal is a study which, in its higher walks and profoundest depths, it would be equally difficult, dangerous, and disagreeable to pursue: but with these altitudes and profundities I have nothing to do; there are abundance of objects to be seen there, calculated and intended to meet the eyes of all men, and women too, which may furnish matter for observation, without either diving or climbing in pursuit of knowledge that, after all, would be better lost than found. But one should have the talent of Hogarth to describe the different groups, with all their varied little episodes of peculiarity, which render the Palais Royal so amusing. These groups are, to be sure, made up only of Parisians, and of the wanderers who visit _la belle ville_ in order to see and be seen in every part of it; yet it is in vain that you would seek elsewhere the same odd selection of human beings that are to be found sans faute in every corner of the Palais Royal. How it happens I know not, but so it is, that almost every person you meet here furnishes food for speculation. If it be an elegant well-appointed man of fashion, the fancy instantly tracks him to a _salon de jeu_; and if you are very good-natured, your heart will ache to think how much misery he is likely to carry home with him. If it be a low, skulking, semi-genteel _moustache_, with large, dark, deep-set eyes rolling about to see whom he can devour, you are as certain that he too is making for a salon, as that a man with a rod and line on his shoulder is going to fish. That pretty _soubrette_, with her neat heels and smart silk apron, who has evidently a few francs tied up in the corner of the handkerchief which she holds in her hand--do we not know that she is peering through the window of every trinket-shop to see where she can descry the most tempting gold ear-rings, for the purchase of which a quarter's wages are about to be dis-kerchiefed? We must not overlook, and indeed it would not be easy to do so, that well-defined domestic party of our country-folks who have just turned into the superb Galerie d'Orléans. Father, mother, and daughters--how easy to guess their thoughts, and almost their words! The portly father declares that it would make a capital Exchange: he has not yet seen La Bourse. He looks up to its noble height--then steps forward a pace or two, and measures with his eye the space on all sides--then stops, and perhaps says to the stately lady on his arm, (whose eyes meanwhile are wandering amidst shawls, gloves, Cologne bottles, and Sèvres china, first on one side and then on the other,)--"This is not badly built; it is light and lofty--and the width is very considerable for so slight-looking a roof; but what is it compared to Waterloo-bridge!" Two pretty girls, with bright cheeks, dove-like eyes, and "tresses like the morn," falling in un-numbered ringlets, so as almost to hide their curious yet timid glances, precede the parent pair; but, with pretty well-taught caution, pause when they pause, and step on when they step on. But they can hardly look at anything; for do they not know, though their downcast eyes can hardly be said to see it, that those youths with coal-black hair, favoris and imperials, are spying at them with their lorgnettes? Here too, as at the Tuileries, are little pavilions to supply the insatiable thirst for politics; and here, too, we could distinguish the melancholy champion of the elder branch of the Bourbons, who is at least sure to find the consolation of his faithful "Quotidienne," and the sympathy of "La France." The sour republican stalks up, as usual, to seize upon the "Réformateur;" while the comfortable doctrinaire comes forth from the Café Véry, ruminating on the "Journal des Débats," and the chances of his bargains at Tortoni's or La Bourse. It was in a walk taken round three sides of the square that we marked the figures I have mentioned, and many more too numerous to record, on a day that we had fixed upon to gratify our curiosity by dining--not at Véry's, or any other far-famed artist's, but tout bonnement at a restaurant of quarante sous par tête. Having made our tour, we mounted au second at numéro--I forget what, but it was where we had been especially recommended to make this coup d'essai. The scene we entered upon, as we followed a long string of persons who preceded us, was as amusing as it was new to us all. I will not say that I should like to dine three days in the week at the Palais Royal for quarante sous par tête; but I will say, that I should have been very sorry not to have done it once, and moreover, that I heartily hope I may do it again. The dinner was extremely good, and as varied as our fancy chose to make it, each person having privilege to select three or four plats from a carte that it would take a day to read deliberately. But the dinner was certainly to us the least important part of the business. The novelty of the spectacle, the number of strange-looking people, and the perfect amenity and good-breeding which seemed to reign among them all, made us look about us with a degree of interest and curiosity that almost caused the whole party to forget the ostensible cause of their visit. There were many English, chiefly gentlemen, and several Germans with their wives and daughters; but the majority of the company was French; and from sundry little circumstances respecting taking the places reserved for them, and different words of intelligence between themselves and the waiters, it was evident that many among them were not chance visitors, but in the daily habit of dining there. What a singular mode of existence is this, and how utterly inconceivable to English feelings!... Yet habit, and perhaps prejudice, apart, it is not difficult to perceive that it has its advantages. In the first place, there is no management in the world, not even that of Mrs. Primrose herself, which could enable a man to dine at home, for the sum of two francs, with the same degree of luxury as to what he eats, that he does at one of these restaurans. Five hundred persons are calculated upon as the daily average of company expected; and forty pounds of ready money in Paris, with the skilful aid of French cooks, will furnish forth a dinner for this number, and leave some profit besides. Add to which, the sale of wine is, I believe, considerable. Some part of the receipts, however, must be withdrawn as interest upon the capital employed. The quantity of plate is very abundant, not only in the apparently unlimited supply of forks and spoons, but in furnishing the multitude of grim-looking silver bowls in which the _potage_ is served. On the whole, however, I can better understand the possibility of five hundred dinners being furnished daily for two francs each, by one of these innumerable establishments, than I can the marvel of five hundred people being daily found by each of these to eat them. Hundreds of these houses exist in Paris, and all of them are constantly furnished with guests. But this manner of living, so unnatural to us, seems not only natural, but needful to them. They do it all so well--so pleasantly! Imagine for a moment the sort of tone and style such a dining-room would take in London. I do not mean, if limited to the same price, but set it greatly beyond the proportion: let us imagine an establishment where males and females should dine at five shillings a-head--what din, what unsocial, yet vehement clattering, would inevitably ensue!--not to mention the utter improbability that such a place, really and _bonâ fide_ open to the public, should continue a reputable resort for ladies for a week after its doors were open. But here, everything was as perfectly respectable and well arranged as if each little table had been placed with its separate party in a private room at Mivart's. It is but fair, therefore, that while we hug ourselves, as we are all apt to do, on the refinement which renders the exclusive privacy of our own dining-rooms necessary to our feelings of comfort, we should allow that equal refinement, though of another kind, must exist among those who, when thrown thus promiscuously together, still retain and manifest towards each other the same deference and good-breeding which we require of those whom we admit to our private circle. At this restaurant, as everywhere else in Paris, we found it easy enough to class our _gens_. I feel quite sure that we had around us many of the employés du gouvernement actuel--several anciens militaires of Napoleon's--some specimens of the race distinguished by Louis Dix-huit and Charles Dix--and even, if I do not greatly mistake, a few relics of the Convention, and of the unfortunate monarch who was its victim. But during this hour of rest and enjoyment all differences seem forgotten; and however discordant may be their feelings, two Frenchmen cannot be seated near each other at table, without exchanging numberless civilities, and at last entering into conversation, so well sustained and so animated, that instead of taking them for strangers who had never met before, we, in our stately shyness, would be ready to pronounce that they must be familiar friends. Whether it be this _causant_, social temper which makes them prefer thus living in public, or that thus living in public makes them social, I cannot determine to my own satisfaction; but the one is not more remarkable and more totally unlike our own manners than the other, and I really think that no one who has not dined thus in Paris can have any idea how very wide, in some directions, the line of demarcation is between the two countries. I have on former occasions dined with a party at places of much higher price, where the object was to observe what a very good dinner a very good cook could produce in Paris. But this experiment offered nothing to our observation at all approaching in interest and nationality to the dinner of quarante sous. In the first place, you are much more likely to meet English than French society at these costly repasts; and in the second, if you do encounter at them a genuine native gourmet of la Grande Nation, he will, upon this occasion, be only doing like ourselves,--that is to say, giving himself un repas exquis, instead of regaling himself at home with his family-- "Sur un lièvre flanqué de deux poulets étiques." But at the humble restaurant of two francs, you have again a new page of Paris existence to study,--and one which, while it will probably increase your English relish for your English home, will show you no unprofitable picture of the amiable social qualities of France. I think that if we could find a people composed in equal proportions of the two natures, they would be as near to social perfection as it is possible to imagine. The French are almost too amiable to every one they chance to sit near. The lively smile, the kind empressement, the ready causerie, would be more flattering did we not know that it was all equally at the service of the whole world. Whereas we are more than equally wrong in the other extreme; having the air of suspecting that every human being who happens to be thrown into contact with us, before we know his birth, parentage, and education, is something very dangerous, and to be guarded against with all possible care and precaution. Query--Do not the Germans furnish something very like this juste milieu? Having concluded our unexpensive repast with the prescribed tasse de café noir, we again sallied forth to take the tour of the Palais Royal, in order to occupy the time till the opening of the Théâtre du Vaudeville, with which, as we were so very close to it, we determined to finish the evening. We returned, as we came, through the noble Galerie d'Orléans, which was now crowded with the assembled loungers of all the numerous restaurans. It is a gay and animated scene at any time of the day; but at this particular hour, just before the theatres open, and just after the gay people have all refreshed their animal spirits, Paris itself seems typified by the aspect of the lively, laughing, idle throng assembled there. One reason, I believe, why Paris is so much more amusing to a looker-on than London, is, that it contains so many more people, in proportion to its population, who have nothing in the world to do but to divert themselves and others. There are so many more idle men here, who are contented to live on incomes that with us would be considered as hardly sufficient to supply a lodging; small rentiers, who prefer being masters of their own time and amusing themselves with a little, to working very hard and being very much ennuyés with a great deal of money. I am not quite sure that this plan answers well when youth is past--at least for the individuals themselves: it is probable, I think, that as the strength, and health, and spirits fade away, something of quieter and more substantial comfort must often be wished for, when perhaps it is too late to obtain it; but for others--for all those who form the circle round which the idle man of pleasure skims thus lightly, he is a never-failing resource. What would become of all the parties for amusement which take place morning, noon, and night in Paris, if this race were extinct? Whether they are married or single, they are equally eligible, equally necessary, equally welcome wherever pleasure makes the business of the hour. With us, it is only a small and highly-privileged class who can permit themselves to go wherever and whenever pleasure beckons; but in France, no lady arranging a fête, let it be of what kind it may, has need to think twice and thrice before she can answer the important but tormenting question of--"But what men can we get?" The Vaudeville was very full, but we contrived to get a good box au second, from whence we saw, greatly to our delectation and amusement, three pretty little pieces,--"Les Gants Jaunes," "Le Premier Amour," and "Elle est Folle;" which last was of the larmoyante school, and much less to my taste than the lively nonsense of the two former; yet it was admirably well played too. But I always go to a vaudeville with the intention of laughing; and if this purpose fail, I am disappointed. LETTER XLVIII. Literary Conversation.--Modern Novelists.--Vicomte d'Arlincourt.--His Portrait.--Châteaubriand.--Bernardin de Saint Pierre.--Shakspeare.--Sir Walter Scott.--French familiarity with English Authors.--Miss Mitford.--Miss Landon.--Parisian passion for Novelty.--Extent of general Information. We were last night at a small party where there was neither dancing, music, cards, nor--(wonderful to say!) politics to amuse or occupy us: nevertheless, it was one of the most agreeable _soirées_ at which I have been present in Paris. The conversation was completely on literary subjects, but totally without the pretension of a literary society. In fact, it was purely the effect of accident; and it was just as likely that we might have passed the evening in talking of pictures, or music, or rocks and rivers, as of books. But Fate decreed that so it should be; and the consequence was, that we had the pleasure of hearing three Frenchmen and two Frenchwomen talk for three hours of the literature of their country. I do not mean to assert that no other person spoke--but the frais de la conversation were certainly furnished by the five natives. One of the gentlemen, and that too the oldest man in company, was more tolerant towards the present race of French novel-writers than any person of his age and class that I have yet conversed with; but nevertheless, his approval went no farther than to declare that he thought the present mode of following human nature with a microscope into all the recesses to which passion, and even vice, could lead it, was calculated to make a better novelist than the fashion which preceded it, of looking at all things through a magnifying medium, and of straining and striving, in consequence, to make that appear great, which was by its nature essentially the reverse. The Vicomte d'Arlincourt was the author he named to establish the truth of his proposition: he would not admit him to be an exaggeration of the school which has passed away, but only the perfection of it. "I remember," said he, "to have seen at the Louvre, many years ago, a full-length portrait of this gentleman, which I thought at the time was as perfect a symbol of what is called in France le style romantique, as it was well possible to conceive. He was standing erect on the rocky point of a precipice, with eye inspired, and tablets in his hand: a foaming torrent rolled its tortured waters at his feet, whilst he, calm and sublime, looked not 'comme une jeune beauté qu'on arrache au sommeil,' but very like a young incroyable snatched from a fashionable salon to meditate upon the wild majesty of nature, with all the inspiring adjuncts of tempest, wildness, and solitude. He appeared dressed in an elegant black coat and waistcoat, black silk stockings, and dancing pumps. It would be lost labour," he continued, "should I attempt to give you a more just idea of his style of writing than the composition of this portrait conveys. It is in vain that M. le Vicomte places himself amidst rocks and cataracts--he is still M. le Vicomte; and his silk stockings and dancing pumps will remain visible, spite of all the froth and foam he labours to raise around him." "It was not D'Arlincourt, however," said M. de C***, "who has either the honour or dishonour of having invented this _style romantique_--but a much greater man: it was Châteaubriand who first broke through all that was left of classic restraint, and permitted his imagination to run wild among everything in heaven and earth." "You cannot, however, accuse him of running this wild race with his imagination en habit bourgeois," said the third gentleman: "his style is extravagant, but never ludicrous; Châteaubriand really has, what D'Arlincourt affected to have, a poetical and abounding fancy, and a fecundity of imagery which has often betrayed him into bad taste from its very richness; but there is nothing strained, forced, and unnatural in his eloquence,--for eloquence it is, though a soberer imagination and a severer judgment might have kept it within more reasonable bounds. After all that can be said against his taste, Châteaubriand is a great man, and his name will live among the literati of France; but God forbid that any true prophet should predict the same of his imitators!" "And God forbid that any true prophet should predict the same of the school that has succeeded them!" said Madame V***--a delightful old woman, who wears her own grey hair, and does not waltz. "I have sometimes laughed and sometimes yawned over the productions of the _école D'Arlincourt_," she added; "but I invariably turn with disgust and indignation from those of the domestic style which has succeeded to it." "Invariably?" ... said the old gentleman interrogatively. "Yes, invariably; because, if I see any symptom of talent, I lament it, and feel alarmed for the possible mischief which may ensue. I can never wish to see high mental power, which is the last and best gift of Heaven, perverted so shamelessly." "Come, come, dear lady," replied the advocate of what Goethe impressively calls 'la littérature du désespoir,' you must not overthrow the whole fabric because some portion of it is faulty. The object of our tale-writers at present is, beyond all doubt, to paint men as they are: if they succeed, their labours cannot fail of being interesting--and I should think they might be very useful too." "Fadaise que tout cela!" exclaimed the old lady eagerly. "Before men can paint human nature profitably, they must see it as it really is, my good friend--and not as it appears to these misérables in their baraques and greniers. We have nothing to do with such scenes as they paint; and they have nothing to do (God help them!) with literary labours. Have you got Bernardin de Saint Pierre, ma chère?" said she, addressing the lady of the house. The little volume was immediately handed to her from a chiffonnière that stood behind us. "Now this," she continued, having found the passage she sought,--"this is what I conceive to be the legitimate object of literature;" and she read aloud the following passage:-- "Les lettres sont un secours du Ciel. Ce sont des rayons de cette sagesse qui gouverne l'univers, que l'homme, inspiré par un art céleste, a appris à fixer sur la terre.... Elles calment les passions; elles répriment les vices; elles excitent les vertus par les exemples augustes des gens de bien qu'elles célèbrent, et dont elles nous présentent les images toujours honorées." "Eh bien! a-t-il raison, ce Bernardin?" said she, laying aside her spectacles and looking round upon us. Every one admired the passage. "Is this the use your French romancers make of letters?" she continued, looking triumphantly at their advocate. "Not exactly," he replied, laughing,--"or at least not always: but I could show you passages in Michel Raymond...." "Bah!" exclaimed the old lady, interrupting him; "I will have nothing to do with his passages. I think it is Chamfort who says, that "un sot qui a un moment d'esprit, étonne et scandalise comme des chevaux de fiacre au galop." I don't like such unexpected jerks of sublimity--they startle more than they please me." The conversation then rambled on to Shakspeare, and to the mischief--such was the word--to the mischief his example, and the passionate admiration expressed for his writings, had done to the classic purity of French literature. This phrase, however, was not only cavilled at, but in true French style was laughed to death by the rest of the party. The word "classic" was declared too rococo for use, and Shakspeare loudly proclaimed to be only defective as a model because too mighty to imitate. I have, however, some faint misgivings as to the perfect sincerity of this verdict,--and this chiefly because there was but one Frenchman present who affected to know anything about him excepting through the medium of translation. Now, notwithstanding that the talent shown by M. Ducis in the translation of some passages is very considerable, we all know that Shakspeare may be very nearly as fairly judged from the Italian "Otello" as the "French Hamlet." The party were however quite sincere, I am sure, in the feeling they expressed of reverence for the unequalled bard, founded upon the rank he held in the estimation of his countrymen; this being, as the clear-headed old lady observed, the only sure criterion, for foreigners, of the station which he ought to hold among the poets of the earth. Then followed some keen enough observations--applicable to any one but Shakspeare--of the danger there might be, that in mixing tragedy and comedy together, farce might unfortunately be the result; or, if the "fusion," as it has been called, of tragedy and comedy into one were very skilfully performed, the sublime and prodigious monster called melodrame might be hoped for, as the happiest product that could be expected. It being thus civilly settled that our Shakspeare might be as wild as he chose, but that it would be advisable for other people to take care how they attempted to follow him, the party next fell into a review, more individual and particular than I was well able to follow, or than I can now repeat, of many writers of verses and of novels that, I was fain to confess, I had never heard of before. One or two of the novel-writers were declared to be very successful imitators of the style and manner of Sir Walter Scott: and when this was stated, I was, to say the truth, by no means sorry to plead total and entire ignorance of their name and productions; for, having, as I fear, manifested a little national warmth on the subject of Shakspeare, I should have been sorry to start off in another tirade concerning Sir Walter Scott, which I might have found it difficult to avoid, had I known exactly what it was which they ventured to compare to him. I do not quite understand how it happens that the Parisians are so much better acquainted with the generality of our light literature, than we are with the generality of theirs. This is the more unaccountable, from the fact so universally known, that for one French person who reads English, there are at least ten English who read French. It is, however, impossible to deny that such is the fact. I am sure I have heard the names of two or three dozen authors, since I have been here, of whose existence, or of that of their works, neither I, nor any of my literary friends, I believe, have had the least knowledge; and yet we have considered ourselves quite _au courant du jour_ in such matters, having never missed any opportunity of reading every French book that came in our way, and moreover of sedulously consulting the Foreign Quarterly. In canvassing this difference between us, one of the party suggested that it might perhaps arise from the fact that no work which was popular in England ever escaped being reprinted on the Continent,--that is to say, either at Paris or Brussels. Though this is done solely as a sort of piratical speculation, for the purpose of inducing all the travelling English to purchase new books for four francs here, instead of giving thirty shillings for them at home, it is nevertheless a natural consequence of this manoeuvre, that the names of English books are familiarly known here even before they have been translated. Many of our lady authors have the honour apparently of being almost as well known at Paris as at home. I had the pleasure of hearing Miss Mitford spoken of with enthusiasm; and one lady told me, that, judging her from her works, she would rather become acquainted with her than with any author living. Miss Landon is also well known and much admired. Madame Tastu told me she had translated many of her compositions, and thought very highly of them. In short, English literature and English literati are at present very hospitably treated in France. I was last night asked innumerable questions about many books, and many people, whose _renommée_ I was surprised to find had crossed the Channel; and having communicated pretty nearly all the information I possessed upon the subject, I began to question in my turn, and heard abundance of anecdotes and criticisms, many of them given with all the sparkling keenness of French satire. Many of les petits ridicules that we are accustomed to hear quizzed at home seem to exist in the same manner, and spite of the same light chastisement, here. The manner, for example, of making a very little wit and wisdom go a great way, by means of short lines and long stops, does not appear to be in any degree peculiar to our island. As a specimen of this, a quotation from a new romance by Madame Girardin (ci-devant Mademoiselle Delphine Gay) was shown me in a newspaper. I will copy it for you as it was printed, and I think you will allow that our neighbours at least equal us in this ingenious department of literary composition. "Pensez-vous Qu'Arthur voulût revoir Mademoiselle de Sommery?" "NON: Au lieu de l'aimer, _Il la détestait_!" "OUI, Il la détestait!" * * * * * I think our passion for novelty is pretty strong; but if the information which I received last night respecting the same imperious besoin here was not exaggerated by the playful spirit of the party who were amusing themselves by describing its influence, we are patient and tame in our endurance of old "by-gones," in comparison to the Parisians. They have, indeed, a saying which in few words paints this craving for novelty, as strongly as I could do, did I torment my memory to repeat to you every word said by my lively friends last night: "Il nous faut du nouveau, n'en fût-il plus au monde." It is delightful to us to get hold of a new book or a new song--a new preacher or a new fiddler: it is delightful to us, but to the Parisians it is indispensable. To meet in society and have nothing new for the _causette_, would be worse than remaining at home. "This fond desire, this longing after" fresh materials for the tongue to work upon, is at least as old as the days of Molière. It was this which made Madelon address herself with such energy to Mascarille, assuring him that she should be "obligée de la dernière obligation" if he would but report to her daily "les choses qu'il faut savoir de nécessité, et qui sont de l'essence d'un bel esprit;" for, as she truly observes, "C'est là ce qui vous fait valoir dans les compagnies, et si l'on ignore ces choses, je ne donnerais pas un clou de tout l'esprit qu'on peut avoir;"--while her cousin Cathos gives her testimony to the same truth by this impressive declaration: "Pour moi, j'aurais toutes les hontes du monde s'il fallait qu'on vînt à me demander si j'aurais vu quelque chose de nouveau que je n'aurais pas vu." I know not how it is that people who appear to pass so few hours of every day out of sight contrive to know so well everything that has been written and everything that has been done in all parts of the world. No one ever appears ignorant on any subject. Is this tact? Or is it knowledge,--real, genuine, substantial information respecting all things? I suspect that it is not wholly either the one or the other; and that many circumstances contribute both to the general diffusion of information, as well as to the rapid manner of receiving and the brilliant style of displaying it. This at least is certain, that whatever they do know is made the very most of; and though some may suspect that so great display of general information indicates rather extent than depth of knowledge, none, I think, can refuse to acknowledge that the manner in which a Frenchman communicates what he has acquired is particularly amiable, graceful, and unpedantic. LETTER XLIX. Trial by Jury.--Power of the Jury in France.--Comparative insignificance of that vested in the Judge.--Virtual Abolition of Capital Punishments.--Flemish Anecdote. Do not be terrified, my dear friend, and fancy that I am going to exchange my idle, ambling pace, and my babil de femme, to join the march of intellect, and indite wisdom. I have no such ambition in my thoughts; and yet I must retail to you part of a conversation with which I have just been favoured by an extremely intelligent friend, on the very manly subject of.... Not political economy;--be tranquil on that point; the same drowsy dread falls upon me when those two portentous words sound in my ears with which they seem to have inspired Coleridge;--not political economy, but _trial by jury_. M. V***, the gentleman in question, gave me credit, I believe, for considerably more savoir than I really possess, as to the actual and precise manner in which this important constitutional right works in England. My ignorance, however, though it prevented my giving much information, did not prevent my receiving it; and I repeat our conversation for the purpose of telling you in what a very singular manner, according to his account, it appears to work in France. I must, however, premise that my friend is a stanch Henri-Quintist; which, though I am sure that in his case it would not produce any exaggeration in the statement of facts, may nevertheless be fairly presumed to influence his feelings, and consequently his manner of stating them. The circumstance which gave rise to this grave discussion was a recent judgment passed here upon a very atrocious case of murder. I am not particularly fond of hanging; nevertheless, I was startled at hearing that this savage and most ferocious slayer of men was condemned to imprisonment and travail forcé, instead of death. "It is very rarely that any one now suffers the extreme penalty of the law in this country," said M. V***, in reply to my remark on this sentence. "Is it since your last revolution," said I, "that the punishment of death has been commuted for that of imprisonment and labour?" "No such commutation has taken place as an act of the legislature," he replied: "it rests solely with the jury whether a murderer be guillotined, or only imprisoned." I fancied that I misunderstood him, and repeated his words,--"With the jury?" "Oui, madame--absolument." This statement appeared to me so singular, that I still supposed I must be blundering, and that the words _le jury_ in France did not mean the same thing as the word jury in England. In this, as it subsequently appeared, I was not much mistaken. Notwithstanding, my informer, who was not only a very intelligent person, but a lawyer to boot, continued to assure me that trial by jury was exactly the same in both countries as to principle, though not as to effect. "But," said I, "our juries have nothing to do with the sentence passed on the criminal: their business is to examine into the evidence brought forward by the witnesses to prove the guilt of the prisoner, and according to the impression which this leaves on their minds, they pronounce him 'guilty,' or 'not guilty;' and here their duty ends." "Yes, yes--I understand that perfectly," replied M. V***; "and it is precisely the same thing with us;--only, it is not in the nature of a Frenchman to pronounce a mere dry, short, unspeculating verdict of 'guilty,' or 'not guilty,' without exercising the powers of his intellect upon the shades of culpability which attach to the acts of each delinquent." This impossibility of giving a verdict without _exercising the power of intellect_ reminded me of an assize story on record in Cornwall, respecting the sentence pronounced by a jury upon a case in which it was very satisfactorily proved that a man had murdered his wife, but where it also appeared from the evidence that the unhappy woman had not conducted herself remarkably well. The jury retired to consult, and upon re-entering their box the foreman addressed the court in these words: "Guilty--but sarved her right, my lord." It was in vain that the learned judge desired them to amend their verdict, as containing matter wholly irrelevant to the duty they had to perform; the intellect of the jurymen was, upon this occasion, in a state of too great activity to permit their returning any other answer than the identical "Guilty--but sarved her right." I could hardly restrain a smile as this anecdote recurred to me; but my friend was too much in earnest in his explanation for me to interrupt him by an ill-timed jest, and he continued-- "This frame of mind, which is certainly essentially French, is one cause, and perhaps the most inveterate one, which makes it impossible that the trial by jury should ever become the same safe and simple process with us that it is in England." "And in what manner does this activity of intellect interfere to impede the course of justice?" said I. "Thus," he replied. "Let us suppose the facts of the case proved to the entire satisfaction of the jury: they make up their minds among themselves to pronounce a verdict of 'guilty;' but their business is by no means finished,--they have still to decide how this verdict shall be delivered to the judge--whether with or without the declaration that there are circumstances calculated to extenuate the crime." "Oh yes! I understand you now," I replied. "You mean, that when there are extenuating circumstances, the jury assume the privilege of recommending the criminal to mercy. Our juries do this likewise." "But not with the same authority," said he, smiling. "With us, the fate of the culprit is wholly in the power of the jury; for not only do they decide upon the question of guilty or not guilty, but, by the use of this word _extenuating_, they can remit by their sole will and pleasure the capital part of the punishment, let the crime be of what nature it may. No judge in this country dare sentence a criminal to capital punishment where the verdict against him has been qualified by this extenuating clause." "It should seem then," said I, "that the duty of judge, which is attended with such awful responsibilities with us, is here little more than the performance of an official ceremony?" "It is very nearly such, I assure you." "And your jurymen, according to a phrase of contempt common among us, are in fact judge and jury both?" "Beyond all contradiction they are so," he replied: "and I conceive that criminal justice is at this time more loosely administered in France than in any other civilised country in the world. In fact, our artisans have become, since the revolution of 1830, not only judge and jury, but legislators also. Different crimes have different punishments assigned to them by our penal code; but it rarely, or I might say never, occurs in our days that the punishment inflicted has any reference to that which is assigned by the law. That guilt may vary even when the deed done does not, is certain; and it is just and righteous therefore that a judge, learned in the law of the land, and chosen by high authority from among his fellows as a man of wisdom and integrity,--it is quite just and righteous that such a one should have the power--and a tremendous power it is--of modifying the extent of the penalty according to his view of the individual case. The charge too of an English judge is considered to be of immense importance to the result of every trial. All this is as it should be; but we have departed most widely from the model we have professed to follow. With us the judge has no such power--at least not practically: with us a set of chance-met artisans, ignorant alike of the law of the land and of the philosophy of punishment, have this tremendous power vested in them. It matters not how clearly the crime has been proved, and still less what penalty the law has adjudged to it; the punishment inflicted is whatever it may please the jury to decide, and none other." "And what is the effect which this strangely assumed power has produced on your administration of justice?" said I. "The virtual abolition of capital punishment," was the reply. "When a jury," continued M. V***, "delivers a verdict to the judge of 'Guilty, but with extenuating circumstances,' the judge dare not condemn the criminal to death, though the law of the land assign that punishment to his offence, and though his own mind is convinced, by all which has come out upon the trial, that instead of _extenuating circumstances_, the commission of the crime has been attended with every possible aggravation of atrocity. Such is the practical effect of the revolution of 1830 on the administration of criminal justice." "Does public opinion sanction this strange abuse of the functions of jurymen?" said I. "Public opinion cannot sanction it," he replied, "any more than it could sanction the committal of the crime itself. The one act is, in fact, as lawless as the other; but the populace have conceived the idea that capital punishment is an undue exercise of power, and therefore our rulers fear to exercise it." This is a strange statement, is it not? The gentleman who made it is, I am sure, too much a man of honour and integrity to falsify facts; but it may perhaps be necessary to allow something for the colouring of party feeling. Whatever the present government does, or permits to be done, contrary to the system established during the period of the restoration, is naturally offensive to the feelings of the legitimatists, and repugnant to their judgments; yet, in this case, the relaxation of necessary power must so inevitably lead to evil, that we must, I think, expect to see the reins gathered up, and the command resumed by the proper functionaries, as soon as the new government feels itself seated with sufficient firmness to permit the needful exertion of strength to be put forth with safety. It is certain that M. V*** supported his statement by reciting so many strong cases in which the most fearful crimes, substantiated by the most unbroken chain of evidence, have been reported by the jury to the judge as having "extenuating circumstances" attached to them, that it is impossible, while things remain as they are, not to feel that such a mode of administering justice must make the habit of perjury as familiar to their jurymen as that of taking their oaths. This conversation brought to my recollection some strange stories which I had heard in Belgium apropos of the trial by jury there. If those stories were correct, they are about as far from comprehending, or at least from acting upon, our noble, equitable, and well-tried institution there, as they appear to be here--but from causes apparently exactly the reverse. There, I am told, it often happens that the jury can neither read nor write; and that when they are placed in their box, they are, as might be expected, quite ignorant of the nature of the duty they are to perform, and often so greatly embarrassed by it, that they are ready and willing--nay, thankful--to pronounce as their verdict whatever is dictated to them. I heard an anecdote of one man--and a thorough honest Fleming he was--who having been duly empannelled, entered the jury-box, and having listened attentively to a trial that was before the court, declared, when called upon for his verdict, that he had not understood a single word from the beginning to the end of it. The court endeavoured to explain the leading points of the question; but still the worthy burgher persisted in declaring that the business was not in his line, and that he could not comprehend it sufficiently to give any opinion at all. The attempt at explanation was repeated, but in vain; and at length the conscientious Fleming paid the fine demanded for the non-performance of the duty, and was permitted to retire. In France, on the contrary, it appears that human intellect has gone on so fast and so far, that no dozen of men can be found simple-minded enough to say 'yes' or 'no' to a question asked, without insisting that they must legislate upon it. In this case, at least, England shows a beautiful specimen of the _juste milieu_. LETTER L. English Pastry-cook's.--French horror of English Pastry.--Unfortunate experiment upon a Muffin.--The Citizen King. We have been on a regular shopping tour this morning; which was finished by our going into an English pastry-cook's to eat buns. While thus engaged, we amused ourselves by watching the proceedings of a French party who entered also for the purpose of making a morning goûter upon cakes. They had all of them more or less the air of having fallen upon a terra incognita, showing many indications of surprise at sight of the ultra-marine compositions which appeared before them;--but there was a young man of the party who, it was evident, had made up his mind to quiz without measure all the foreign dainties that the shop afforded, evidently considering their introduction as a very unjustifiable interference with the native manufacture. "Est-il possible!" said he, with an air of grave and almost indignant astonishment, as he watched a lady of his party preparing to eat an English bun,--"Est-il possible that you can prefer these strange-looking comestibles à la pâtisserie française?" "Mais goûtez-en," said the lady, presenting a specimen of the same kind as that she was herself eating: "ils sont excellens." "No, no! it is enough to look at them!" said her cavalier, almost shuddering. "There is no lightness, no elegance, no grace in any single gâteau here." "Mais goûtez quelque chose," reiterated the lady. "Vous le voulez absolument!" exclaimed the young man; "quelle tyrannie! ... and what a proof of obedience I am about to give you!... Voyons donc!" he continued, approaching a plate on which were piled some truly English muffins--which, as you know, are of a somewhat mysterious manufacture, and about as palatable if eaten untoasted as a slice from a leathern glove. To this _gâteau_, as he supposed it to be, the unfortunate connoisseur in pâtisserie approached, exclaiming with rather a theatrical air, "Voilà donc ce que je vais faire pour vos beaux yeux!" As he spoke, he took up one of the pale, tough things, and, to our extreme amusement, attempted to eat it. Any one might be excused for making a few grimaces on such an occasion,--and a Frenchman's privilege in this line is well known: but this hardy experimentalist outdid this privilege;--he was in a perfect agony, and his spittings and reproachings were so vehement, that friends, strangers, boutiquier, and all, even down to a little befloured urchin who entered at the moment with a tray of patties, burst into uncontrollable laughter, which the unfortunate, to do him justice, bore with extreme good humour, only making his fair countrywoman promise that she would never insist upon his eating English confectionary again. Had this scene continued a minute longer, I should have missed seeing what I should have been sorry not to have seen, for I certainly could not have left the pastry-cook's shop while the young Frenchman's sufferings lasted. Happily, however, we reached the Boulevard des Italiens in time to see King Louis-Philippe, en simple bourgeois, passing on foot just before Les Bains Chinois, but on the opposite side of the way. Excepting a small tri-coloured cockade in his hat, he had nothing whatever in his dress to distinguish him from any other gentleman. He is a well-looking, portly, middle-aged man, with something of dignity in his step which, notwithstanding the unpretending citizen-like style of his promenade, would have drawn attention, and betrayed him as somebody out of the common way, even without the plain-speaking _cocarde tricolore_. There were two gentlemen a few paces behind him, as he passed us, who, I think, stepped up nearer to him afterwards; but there were no other individuals near who could have been in attendance upon him. I observed that he was recognised by many, and some few hats were taken off, particularly by two or three Englishmen who met him; but his appearance excited little emotion. I was amused, however, at the nonchalant air with which a young man at some distance, in full Robespierrian costume, used his lorgnon to peruse the person of the monarch as long as he remained in sight. The last king I saw in the streets of Paris was Charles the Tenth returning from a visit to one of his suburban palaces, escorted and accompanied in kingly state and style. The contrast in the men and in the mode was striking, and calculated to awaken lively recollections of all the events which had occurred to both of them since the last time that I turned my head to look after a sovereign of France. My fancy flew to Prague, and to the three generations of French monarchs stationed there almost as peaceably as if they had taken up their quarters at St. Denis! [Illustration: Drawn & Etched by A. Hervieu. LE ROI CITOYEN. London. Published by Richard Bentley. 1835.] How like a series of conjurer's tricks is their history! Think of this Charles the Tenth in the flower of his youth and comeliness--the gallant, gay, and dissolute Comte d'Artois; recall the noble range of windows belonging to his apartments at Versailles, and imagine him there radiant in youth and joy--the thoughtless, thriftless cadet of his royal race--the brother and the guest of the good king who appeared to reign over a willing people, by every human right, as well as right divine! Louis Seize was king of France; but the gay Comte d'Artois reigned sovereign of all the pleasures of Versailles. What joyous fêtes! ... what brilliant jubilees!... Meanwhile "Malignant Fate sat by and smiled." Had he then been told that he should live to be crowned king of France, and live thus many years afterwards, would he not have thought that a most brilliant destiny was predicted to him? Few men, perhaps, have suffered so much from the ceaseless changes of human events as Charles the Tenth of France. First, in the person of his eldest brother, dethroned and foully murdered; then in his own exile, and that of another royal brother; and again, when Fortune seemed to smile upon his race, and the crown of France was not only placed upon that brother's head, but appeared fixed in assured succession on his own princely sons, one of those sons was murdered: and lastly, having reached the throne himself, and seen this lost son reviving in his hopeful offspring, comes another stroke of Fate, unexpected, unprepared for, overwhelming, which hurls him from his throne, and drives him and his royal race once more to exile and to civil death.... Has he seen the last of the political earthquakes which have so shaken his existence? or has his restless star to rise again? Those who wish most kindly to him cannot wish for this. But when I turned my thoughts from the dethroned and banished king to him who stepped on in unguarded but fearless security before me, and thought too on the vagaries of his destiny, I really felt as if this earth and all the people on it were little better than so many children's toys, changing their style and title to serve the sport of an hour. It seemed to me at that moment as if all men were classed in their due order only to be thrown into greater confusion--knocked down but to be set up again, and so eternally dashed from side to side, so powerless in themselves, so wholly governed by accidents, that I shrunk, humbled, from the contemplation of human helplessness, and turned from gazing on a monarch to meditate on the insignificance of man. How vain are all the efforts he can make to shape the course of his own existence! There is, in truth, nothing but trusting to surer wisdom, and to surer power, which can enable any of us, from the highest to the lowest, to pass on with tranquil nerves through a world subject to such terrible convulsions. LETTER LI. Parisian Women.--Rousseau's failure in attempting to describe them.--Their great influence in Society.--Their grace in Conversation.--Difficulty of growing old.--Do the ladies of France or those of England manage it best? There is perhaps no subject connected with Paris which might give occasion to such curious and inexhaustible observation as the character, position, and influence of its women. But the theme, though copious and full of interest, is not without its difficulties; and it is no small proof of this, that Rousseau, who rarely touched on any subject without persuading his reader that he was fully master of it, has nevertheless almost wholly failed on this. In one of the letters of "La Nouvelle Héloïse," he sketches the characters of a few very commonplace ladies, whom he abuses unmercifully for their bad taste in dress, and concludes his abortive attempt at making us acquainted with the ladies of Paris by acknowledging that they have some goodness of heart. This is but a meagre description of this powerful portion of the human race, and I can hardly imagine a volume that I should read with greater pleasure than one which should fully supply all its deficiencies. Do not imagine, however, that I mean to undertake the task. I am even less capable of it than the sublime misanthrope himself; for though I am of opinion that it should be an unimpassioned spectator, and not a lover, who should attempt to paint all the delicate little atoms of exquisite mosaic-work which constitute _une Parisienne_, I think it should not be a woman. All I can do for you on this subject is to recount the observations I have been myself led to make in the passing glances I have now the opportunity of giving them, supported by what I have chanced to hear from better authority than my own: but I am aware that I can do little more than excite your wish to become better acquainted with them than it is in my power to make you. It is impossible to be admitted into French society without immediately perceiving that the women play a very distinguished part in it. So, assuredly, do the women of England in their own: yet I cannot but think that, setting aside all cases of individual exception, the women of France have more power and more important influence than the women of England. I am aware that this is a very bold proposition, and that you may feel inclined to call me to account for it. But be I right or wrong in this judgment, it is at least sincere, and herein lies its chief value; for I am by no means sure that I shall be able to explain very satisfactorily the grounds on which it is formed. France has been called "the paradise of women;" and if consideration and deference be sufficient to constitute a paradise, I think it may be called so justly. I will not, however, allow that Frenchmen make better husbands than Englishmen; but I suspect they make politer husbands-- "Je ne sais pas, pour moi, si chacun me ressemble, Mais j'entends là-dessous un million de mots:" and, all pleasantry apart, I am of opinion that this more observant tone or style, or whatever it may be termed, is very far from superficial--at least in its effects. I should be greatly surprised to hear from good authority that a French gentleman had ever been heard to speak rudely to his wife. Rousseau says, when he means to be what he himself calls "_souverainement impertinent_," that "il est convenu qu'un homme ne refusera rien à aucune femme, fût-ce même la sienne." But it is not only in refusing her nothing that a French husband shows the superiority which I attribute to him; I know many English husbands who are equally indulgent; but, if I mistake not, the general consideration enjoyed by Frenchwomen has its origin not in the conjugal indulgence they enjoy, but in the domestic respect universally shown them. What foundation there may be for the idea which prevails amongst us, that there is less strictness of morality among married women in France than in England, I will not attempt to decide; but, judging from the testimonies of respect shown them by fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons, I cannot but believe that, spite of travellers' tales, innuendoes, and all the authority of _les contes moraux_ to boot, there must be much of genuine virtue where there is so much genuine esteem. In a recent work on France, to which I have before alluded, a comparison is instituted between the conversational powers of the sex in England and in France; and such a picture is drawn of the frivolous inanity of the author's fair countrywomen, as, were the work considered as one of much authority in France, must leave the impression with our neighbours that the ladies of England are _tant soit peu Agnès_. Now this judgment is, I think, as little founded in truth as that of the traveller who accused us all of being brandy-drinkers. It is indeed impossible to say what effect might have been produced upon the ladies from whom this description was drawn, by the awful consciousness that they were conversing with a person of overwhelming ability. There is such a thing as being "blasted by excess of light;" but where this unpleasant accident does not occur, I believe that those who converse with educated Englishwomen will find them capable of being as intellectual companions as any in the world. Our countrywomen however, particularly the younger part of them, labour under a great disadvantage. The majority of them I believe to be as well, or perhaps better informed than the majority of Frenchwomen; but, unfortunately, it frequently happens that they are terrified at the idea of appearing too much so: the terror of being called learned is in general much more powerful than that of being classed as ignorant. Happily for France, there is no _blue_ badge, no stigma of any kind attached to the female possessors of talent and information. Every Frenchwoman brings forward with equal readiness and grace all she knows, all she thinks, and all she feels on every subject that may be started; whereas with us, the dread of imputed blueism weighs down many a bright spirit, and sallies of wit and fancy are withheld from the fear of betraying either the reading or the genius with which many a fair girl is endued who would rather be thought an idiot than a BLUE. This is, however, a very idle fear; and that it is so, a slight glance upon society would show, if prejudice did not interfere to blind us. It is possible that here and there a sneer or a shrug may follow this opprobrious epithet of "blue;" but as the sneer and the shrug always come from those whose suffrage is of the least importance in society, their coming at all can hardly be a sufficient reason for putting on a masquerade habit of ignorance and frivolity. It is from this cause, if I mistake not, that the conversation of the Parisian women takes a higher tone than that to which English females venture to soar. Even politics, that fearful quicksand which engulfs so many of our social hours, dividing our drawing-rooms into a committee of men and a coterie of women,--even politics may be handled by them without danger; for they fearlessly mix with that untoward subject so much lively persiflage, so much acuteness, and such unerring tact, that many a knotty point which may have made puzzled legislators yawn in the Chamber, has been played with in the salon till it became as intelligible as the light of wit could make it. No one who is familiar with that delightful portion of French literature contained in their letters and memoirs, which paint the manners and the minds of those they treat of with more truth of graphic effect than any other biography in the world,--no one acquainted with the aspect of society as it is painted there, but must be aware that the character of Frenchmen has undergone a great and important change during the last century. It has become perhaps less brilliant, but at the same time less frivolous; and if we are obliged to confess that no star remains above the horizon of the same magnitude as those which composed the constellation that blazed during the age of Louis Quatorze and his successor, we must allow also that it would be difficult to find a minister of state who should now write to his friend as the Cardinal de Retz did to Boisrobert,--"Je me sauve à la nage dans ma chambre, au milieu des parfums." If, however, these same minute records can be wholly trusted, I should say that no proportionate change has taken place among the women. I often fancy I can trace the same "genre d'esprit" amongst them with which Madame du Deffand has made us so well acquainted. Fashions must change--and their fashions have changed, not merely in dress perhaps, but in some things which appear to go deeper into character, or at least into manners; but the essentials are all the same. A petite maîtresse is a petite maîtresse still; and female wit--female French wit--continues to be the same dazzling, playful, and powerful thing that it ever was. I really do not believe that if Madame de Sévigné herself were permitted to revisit the scene of her earthly brightness, and to find herself in the midst of a Paris soirée to-morrow, that she would find any difficulty in joining the conversation of those she would find there, in the same tone and style that she enjoyed so keenly in days of yore with Madame de la Fayette, Mademoiselle Scuderie, or any other sister sparkler of that glorious _via lactea_--provided indeed that she did not talk politics,--on that subject she might not perhaps be well understood. Ladies still write romances, and still write verses. They write memoirs too, and are moreover quite as keen critics as ever they were; and if they had not left off giving _petits soupers_, where they doomed the poets of the day to oblivion or immortality according to their will, I should say, that in no good gifts either of nature or of art had they degenerated from their admired great-grandmothers. It can hardly, I think, be accounted a change in their character, that where they used to converse respecting a new comedy of Molière, they now discuss the project of a new law about to be passed in the Chamber. The reason for this is obvious: there is no longer a Molière, but there is a Chamber; there are no longer any new comedies greatly worth talking about, but there are abundance of new laws instead. In short, though the subjects are changed, they are canvassed in the same spirit; and however much the marquis may be merged in the doctrinaire, the ladies at least have not left off being light, bright, witty, and gay, in order to become advocates for the "positif," in opposition to the "idéal." They still keep faithful to their vocation of charming; and I trust they may contrive so far to combat this growing passion for the "positif" in their countrymen, as to prevent their turning every salon--as they have already turned the Boulevards before Tortoni's--into a little Bourse. I was so much struck by the truth and elegance of "a thought" apropos to this subject, which I found the other day in turning over the leaves of a French lady's album, that I transcribed it:-- "Proscrire les arts agréables, et ne vouloir que ceux qui sont absolument utiles, c'est blâmer la Nature, qui produit les fleurs, les roses, les jasmins, comme elle produit des fruits." This sentiment, however, simple and natural as it is, appears in some danger of being lost sight of while the mind is kept upon such a forced march as it is at present: but the unnatural oblivion cannot fall upon France while her women remain what they are. The graces of life will never be sacrificed by them to the pretended pursuit of science; nor will a purblind examination of political economy be ever accepted in Paris as a beautiful specimen of light reading, and a first-rate effort of female genius. Yet nowhere are the higher efforts of the female mind more honoured than in France. The memory of Madame de Staël seems enshrined in every woman's heart, and the glory she has brought to her country appears to shed its beams upon every female in it. I have heard, too, the name of Mrs. Somerville pronounced with admiration and reverence by many who confessed themselves unable to appreciate, or at least to follow, the efforts of her extraordinary mind. In speaking of the women of Paris, however, I must not confine myself to the higher classes only; for, as we all know but too well, "les dames de la Halle," or, as they are more familiarly styled, "les poissardes," have made themselves important personages in the history of Paris. It is not, however, to the hideous part which they took in the revolution of Ninety-three that I would allude; the doing so would be equally disagreeable and unnecessary, for the deeds of Alexander are hardly better known than their infernal acts;--it is rather to the singular sort of respect paid to them in less stormy times that I would call your attention, because we have nothing analogous to it with us. Upon all great public occasions, such as the accession of a king, his restoration, or the like, these women are permitted to approach the throne by a deputation, and kings and queens have accepted their bouquets and listened to their harangues. The newspapers in recording these ceremonious visitings never name these poissardes by any lesser title than "les dames de la Halle;" a phrase which could only be rendered into English by "the ladies of Billingsgate." These ladies have, too, a literature of their own, and have found troubadours among the beaux-esprits of France to chronicle their bons-mots and give immortality to their adventures in that singular species of composition known by the name of "Chansons Grivoises." When Napoleon returned from Elba, they paid their compliments to him at the Tuileries, and sang "La Carmagnole" in chorus. One hundred days after, they repeated the ceremony of a visit to the palace; but this time the compliment was addressed to Louis Dix-huit, and the _refrain_ of the song with which they favoured him was the famous calembourg so much in fashion at the time-- "Rendez-nous notre _père de Gand_." Not only do these "dames" put themselves forward upon all political occasions, but, if report say true, they have, _parfois_, spite of their revolutionary ferocity, taken upon themselves to act as conservators of public morals. When Madame la Comtesse de N*** and her friend Madame T*** appeared in the garden of the Tuileries with less drapery than they thought decency demanded, les dames de la Halle armed themselves with whips, and repairing in a body to the promenade, actually flogged the audacious beauties till they reached the shelter of their homes. The influence and authority of these women among the men of their own rank is said to be very great; and that through all the connexions of life, as long as his mother lives, whatever be her rank, a Frenchman repays her early care by affection, deference, and even by obedience. "Consolez ma pauvre mère!" has been reported in a thousand instances to have been the last words of French soldiers on the field of battle; and whenever an aged female is found seated in the chimney-corner, it is to her footstool that all coaxing petitions, whether for great or small matters, are always carried. I heard it gravely disputed the other day, whether the old ladies of England or the old ladies of France have the most _bonheur en partage_ amongst them. Every one seemed to agree that it was a very difficult thing for a pretty woman to grow old in any country--that it was terrible to "devenir chenille après avoir _été_ papillon;" and that the only effectual way of avoiding this shocking transition was, while still a few years on the handsome side of forty, to abandon in good earnest all pretensions to beauty, and claiming fame and name by the perennial charm of wit alone, to bid defiance to time and wrinkles. This is certainly the best parachute to which a drooping beauty can trust herself on either side of the Channel: but for one who can avail herself of it, there are a thousand who must submit to sink into eternal oblivion without it; and the question still remains, which nation best understands the art of submitting to this downfall gracefully. There are but two ways of rationally setting about it. The one is, to jump over the Rubicon at once at sight of the first grey hair, and so establish yourself betimes on a sofa, with all the comforts of footstool and elbow-room; the other is, to make a desperate resolution never to grow old at all. Nous autres Anglaises generally understand how to do the first with a respectable degree of resignation; and the French, by means of some invaluable secret which they wisely keep to themselves, are enabled to approach very nearly to equal success in the other. LETTER LII. La Sainte Chapelle.--Palais de Justice.--Traces of the Revolution of 1830.--Unworthy use made of La Sainte Chapelle.--Boileau.--Ancient Records. A week or two ago we made a vain and unprofitable expedition into the City for the purpose of seeing "La Sainte Chapelle;" sainte to all good Catholics from its having been built by Louis Neuf (St. Louis) expressly for the purpose of receiving all the ultra-extra-super-holy relics purchased by St. Louis from Baldwin Emperor of Constantinople, and almost equally sainte to us heretics from having been the scene of Boileau's poem. Great was our disappointment at being assured, by several flitting officials to whom we addressed ourselves in and about Le Palais de Justice, that admission was not to be obtained--that workmen were employed upon it, and I know not what besides; all, however, tending to prove that a long, lingering look at its beautiful exterior was all we had to hope for. In proportion to this disappointment was the pleasure with which I received an offer from a new acquaintance to conduct us over the Palais de Justice, and into the sacred precints of La Sainte Chapelle, which in fact makes a part of it. My accidental introduction to M. J***, who has not only shown us this, but many other things which we should probably never have seen but for his kindness, has been one of the most agreeable circumstances which have occurred to me in Paris. I have seldom met a man so "rempli de toutes sortes d'intelligences" as is this new Parisian acquaintance; and certainly never received from any stranger so much amiable attention, shown in so profitable a manner. I really believe he has a passe-partout for everything that is most interesting and least easy of access in Paris; and as he holds a high judicial situation, the Palais de Justice was of course open to him even to its remotest recesses: and of all the sight-seeing mornings I remember to have passed, the one which showed me this interesting edifice, with the commentary of our deeply-informed and most agreeable companion, was decidedly one of the most pleasant. There is but one drawback to the pleasure of having met such a man--and this is the fear that in losing sight of Paris we may lose sight of him also. The Palais de Justice is from its extent alone a very noble building; but its high antiquity, and its connexion with so many points and periods of history, render it one of the most interesting buildings imaginable. We entered all the courts, some of which appeared to be in full activity. They are in general large and handsome. The portrait of Napoleon was replaced in one of them during the Three Days, and there it still remains: the old chancellor d'Auguesseau hangs opposite to him, being one of the few pictures permitted to retain their places. The vacant spaces, and in some instances the traces of violence with which others have been removed, indicate plainly enough that this venerable edifice was not held very sacred by the patriots of 1830. The capricious fury of the sovereign people during this reign of confusion, if not of terror, has left vestiges in almost every part of the building. The very interesting bas relief which I remember on the pedestal of the fine statue of Malesherbes, the intrepid defender of Louis Seize, has been torn away; and the _brute_ masonry which it has left displayed, is as striking and appropriate a memento of the spoilers, as the graphic group they displaced was of the scene it represented. M. J*** told me the sculpture was not destroyed, and would probably be replaced. I heartily hope, for the honour of Frenchmen, that this may happen: but if it should not, I trust that, for the sake of historic effect, the statue and its mutilated pedestal will remain as they are--both the one and the other mark an epoch in the history of France. But it was in the obscurer parts of the building that I found the most interest. In order to take a short cut to some point to which our kind guide wished to lead us, we were twisted through one of the old--the very old towers of this venerable structure. It had been, I think they said, the kitchen of St. Louis himself; and the walls, as seen by the enormous thickness pierced for the windows, are substantial enough to endure another six hundred years at least. In one of the numerous rooms which we entered, we saw an extremely curious old picture, seized in the time of Louis Quinze from the Jesuits, as containing proof of their treasonable disrespect for kings: and certainly there is not wanting evidence of the fact; very speaking portraits of Henry the Third and Henry the Fourth are to be found most unequivocally on their way to the infernal regions. The whole performance is one of the most interesting specimens of Jesuitical ingenuity extant. Having fully indulged our curiosity in the palace, we proceeded to the chapel. It is exquisitely beautiful, and so perfect in its delicate proportions, that the eye is satisfied, and dwells with full contentment on the whole for many minutes before the judgment is at leisure to examine and criticise the different parts of it. But even when this first effect is over, the perfect elegance of this diminutive structure still rests upon the mind, producing a degree of admiration which seems disproportioned to its tiny dimensions. It was built for a shrine in which to preserve relics; and Pierre de Montreuil, its able architect, appears to have sought rather to render it worthy by its richness and its grace to become the casket for those holy treasures, than to give it the dignity of a church. That beautiful miniature cathedral, St. George's Chapel at Windsor, is an enormous edifice compared to this; but less light, less lofty in its proportions--in short, less enchanting in its general effect, than the lovely bijou of St. Louis. Of all the cruel profanations I have ever witnessed, that of turning this exquisite chef-d'oeuvre into a chest for old records is the most unpardonable: as if Paris could not furnish four walls and a roof for this purpose, without converting this precious _châsse_ to it! It is indeed a pitiful economy; and were I the Archbishop of Paris, I would besiege the Tuileries with petitions that these hideous presses might be removed; and if it might not be restored to the use of the church, that we might at least say of it-- ---- "la Sainte Chapelle Conservait du vieux tems l'oisiveté fidèle." This would at least be better than seeing it converted into a cupboard of ease to the overflowing records of the Palais de Justice. The length of this pretty reliquaire exactly equals its height, which is divided by a gallery into a lower and upper church, resembling in some degree as to its arrangement the much older structure at Aix-la-Chapelle,--the high minster there being represented by the Sainte Couronne here. As we stood in the midst of the floor of the church, M. J*** pointed to a certain spot-- "Et bientôt LE LUTRIN se fait voir à nos yeux." He placed me to stand where that offensive mass of timber stood of yore; and I could not help thinking that if the poor chantre hated the sight of it as much as I did that of the ignoble cases containing the old parchments, he was exceedingly right in doing his utmost to make it disappear. Boileau lies buried here. The spot must have been chosen in consequence of the connexion he had established in the minds of all men between himself and its holy precincts. But it was surely the most lively and light-hearted connexion that ever was hallowed by so solemn a result. One might fairly steal or parody Vanburgh's epitaph for him-- "Rise graceful o'er him, roof! for he Raised many a graceful verse to thee." The preservation of the beautiful painted glass of the windows through the two revolutions which (both of them) were so busy in labours of metamorphosis and destruction in the immediate neighbourhood, not to mention all the ordinary chances against the safety of so frail a treasure during so many years, is little short of miraculous; and, considering the extraordinary sanctity of the place, it is probably so interpreted by _les fidèles_. A remarkable proof of the reverence in which this little shrine was held, in consequence, I presume, of the relics it contained, may be found in the dignified style of its establishment. Kings and popes seem to have felt a holy rivalry as to which should most distinguish it by gifts and privileges. The wealth of its functionaries appears greatly to have exceeded the bounds of Christian moderation; and their pride of place was sustained, notwithstanding the _petitesse_ of their dominions, by titles and prerogatives such as no _chapelains_ ever had before. The chief dignitary of the establishment had the title of archichapelain; and, in 1379, Pope Clement VII. permitted him to wear a mitre, and to pronounce his benediction on the people when they were assembled during any of the processions which took place within the enclosure of the palace. Not only, indeed, did this arch-chaplain take the title of prelate, but in some public acts he is styled "Le Pape de la Sainte Chapelle." In return for all these riches and honours, four out of the seven priests attached to the establishment were obliged to pass the night in the chapel, for the purpose of watching the relics. Nevertheless, it appears that, in the year 1575, a portion of the _vraie croix_ was stolen in the night between the 19th and 20th of May. The thief, however, was strongly suspected to be no less a personage than King Henry III. himself; who, being sorely distressed for money, and knowing from old experience that a traffic in relics was a right royal traffic, bethought him of a means of extracting a little Venetian gold from this true cross, by leaving it in pawn with the Republic of Venice. At any rate, this much-esteemed fragment disappeared from the Sainte Chapelle, and a piece of the holy rood was left _en gage_ with the Venetians by Henry III. I have transcribed, for your satisfaction, the list I find in Dulaure of the most sacred of the articles for the reception of which this chapel was erected:-- Du sang de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ. Les drapeaux dont Notre Sauveur fut enveloppé en son enfance. Du sang qui miraculeusement a distillé d'une image de Notre Seigneur, ayant été frappé d'un infidèle. La chaîne et lien de fer, en manière d'anneau, dont Notre Seigneur fut lié. La sainte touaille, ou nappe, en un tableau. Du lait de la Vierge. Une partie du suaire dont il fut enseveli. La verge de Moïse. Les chefs des Saints Blaise, Clément, et Simon. Is it not wonderful that the Emperor of Constantinople could consent to part with such precious treasures for the lucre of gain? I should like to know what has become of them all. As late as the year 1770, the annual ceremony of turning out devils on Good Friday, from persons pretending to be possessed, was performed in this chapel. The form prescribed was very simple, and always found to answer perfectly. As soon as it was understood that all the demoniacs were assembled, _le grand chantre_ appeared, carrying a cross, which, spite of King Henry's _supercherie_, was declared to enclose in its inmost recesses a morsel of the _vraie croix_, and in an instant all the contortions and convulsions ceased, and the possessed became perfectly calm and tranquil, and relieved from every species of inconvenience. Having seen all that this lovely chapel had to show, and particularly examined the spot where the battle of the books took place, the passe-partout of M. J*** caused a mysterious-looking little door in the Sainte Couronne to open for us; and, after a little climbing, we found ourselves just under the roof of the Palais de Justice. The enormous space of the _grande salle_ below is here divided into three galleries, each having its entire length, and one-third of its width. The manner in which these galleries are constructed is extremely curious and ingenious, and well deserves a careful examination. I certainly never found myself in a spot of greater interest than this. The enormous collection of records which fill these galleries, arranged as they are in the most exquisite order, is one of the most marvellous spectacles I ever beheld. Amidst the archives of so many centuries, any document that may be wished for, however remote or however minute, is brought forward in an instant, with as little difficulty as Dr. Dibdin would find in putting his hand upon the best-known treasure in Lord Spencer's library. Our kind friend obtained for us the sight of the volume containing all the original documents respecting the trial of poor Joan of Arc, that most ill-used of heroines. Vice never braved danger and met death with such steady, unwavering courage as she displayed. We saw, too, the fatal warrant which legalised the savage murder of this brave and innocent fanatic. Several other death-warrants of distinguished persons were also shown to us, some of them of great antiquity; but no royal hand had signed them. This painful duty is performed in France by one of the superior law-officers of the crown, but never by the hand of majesty. Another curious trial that was opened for our satisfaction, was that of the wretched Marquise de Brinvilliers, the famous _empoisonneuse_, who not only destroyed father, brother, husband, at the instigation of her lover, but appears to have used her power of compounding fatal drugs upon many other occasions. The murderous atrocities of this woman seem to surpass everything on record, except those of Marguérite de Bourgogne, the inconceivable heroine of the "Tour de Nesle." I was amused by an anecdote which M. J*** told me of an Englishman to whom he, some years ago, showed these same curious papers--among which is the receipt used by Madame de Brinvilliers for the composition of the poison whose effects plunged Paris in terror. "Will you do me the favour to let me copy this receipt?" said the Englishman. "I think that my privilege does not reach quite so far as that," was the discreet reply; and but for this, our countryman's love for chemical science might by this time have spread the knowledge of the precious secret over the whole earth. LETTER LIII. French ideas of England.--Making love.--Precipitate retreat of a young Frenchman.--Different methods of arranging Marriages.--English Divorce.--English Restaurans. It now and then happens, by a lucky chance, that one finds oneself full gallop in a conversation the most perfectly unreserved, without having had the slightest idea or intention, when it began, of either giving or receiving confidence. This occurred to me a few days ago, while making a morning visit to a lady whom I had never seen but twice before, and then had not exchanged a dozen words with her. But, upon this occasion, we found ourselves very nearly tête-à-tête, and got, I know not how, into a most unrestrained discussion upon the peculiarities of our respective countries. Madame B*** has never been in England, but she assured me that her curiosity to visit our country is quite as strong as the passion for investigation which drew Robinson Crusoe from his home to visit the...." "Savages," said I, finishing the sentence for her. "No! no! no!... To visit all that is most curious in the world." This phrase, "most curious," seemed to me of doubtful meaning, and so I told her; asking whether it referred to the museums, or the natives. She seemed doubtful for a moment whether she should be frank or otherwise; and then, with so pretty and playful a manner as must, I think, have disarmed the angry nationality of the most thin-skinned patriot alive, she answered-- "Well then--the natives." "But we take such good care," I replied, "that you should not want specimens of the race to examine and make experiments upon, that it would hardly be worth your while to cross the Channel for the sake of seeing the natives. We import ourselves in such prodigious quantities, that I can hardly conceive you should have any curiosity left about us." "On the contrary," she replied, "my curiosity is only the more _piquée_: I have seen so many delightful English persons here, that I die to see them at home, in the midst of all those singular customs, which they cannot bring with them, and which we only know by the imperfect accounts of travellers." This sounded, I thought, very much as if she were talking of the good people of Mongo Creek, or Karakoo Bay; but being at least as curious to know what her notions were concerning the English in their remote homes, and in the midst of all their "singular customs," as she could be to become better acquainted with them, I did my best to make her tell me all she had heard about us. "I will tell you," she said, "what I want to see beyond everything else: I want to see the mode of making love _tout-à-fait à l'Anglaise_. You know that you are all so polite as to put on our fashions here in every respect; but a cousin of mine, who was some years ago attached to our Embassy at London, has described the style of managing love affairs as so ... so romantic, that it perfectly enchanted me, and I would give the world to see how it was done (_comment cela se fait_)." "Pray tell me how he described it," said I, "and I promise faithfully to tell you if the picture be correct." "Oh, that is so kind!... Well then," she continued, colouring a little, from the idea, as I suppose, that she was going to say something terribly atrocious, "I will tell you exactly what happened to him. He had a letter of introduction to a gentleman of great estate--a member of the chamber of your parliament, who was living with his family at his chateau in one of the provinces, where my cousin forwarded the letter to him. A most polite reply was immediately returned, containing a pressing invitation to my cousin to come to the chateau without delay, and pass a month with them for the hunting season. Nothing could be more agreeable than this invitation, for it offered the best possible opportunity of studying the manners of the country. Every one can cross from Calais to Dover, and spend half their year's income in walking or driving through the long wide streets of London for six weeks; but there are very few, you know, who obtain an entrée to the chateaux of the noblesse. In short, my cousin was enchanted, and set off immediately. He arrived just in time to arrange his toilet before dinner; and when he entered the salon, he was perfectly dazzled by the exceeding beauty of the three daughters of his host, who were all _décolletées_, and full-dressed, he says, exactly as if they were going to some very elegant _bal paré_. There was no other company, and he felt a little startled at being received in such a ceremonious style. The young ladies all performed on the piano-forte and harp, and my cousin, who is very musical, was in raptures. Had not his admiration been too equally drawn to each, he assures me that before the end of that evening he must inevitably have been the conquest of one. The next morning, the whole family met again at breakfast: the young ladies were as charming as ever, but still he felt in doubt as to which he admired most. Whilst he was exerting himself to be as agreeable as he could, and talking to them all with the timid respect with which demoiselles are always addressed by Frenchmen, the father of the family startled and certainly almost alarmed my cousin by suddenly saying,--"We cannot hunt to-day, mon ami, for I have business which will keep me at home; but you shall ride into the woods with Elizabeth: she will show you my pheasants. Get ready, Elizabeth, to attend Monsieur...!" Madame B*** stopped short, and looked at me as if expecting that I should make some observation. "Well?" said I. "Well!" she repeated, laughing; "then you really find nothing extraordinary in this proceeding--nothing out of the common way?" "In what respect?" said I: "what is it that you suppose was out of the common way?" "That question," said she, clasping her hands in an ecstasy at having made the discovery--"That question puts me more au fait than anything else you could say to me. It is the strongest possible proof that what happened to my cousin was in truth nothing more than what is of every-day occurrence in England." "What did happen to him?" "Have I not told you?... The father of the young ladies whom he so greatly admired, selected one of them and desired my cousin to attend her on an excursion into the woods. My dear madame ... national manners vary so strangely.... I beseech you not to suppose that I imagine that everything may not be exceedingly well arranged notwithstanding. My cousin is a very distinguished young man--excellent character--good name--and will have his father's estate ... only the manner is so different...." "Did your cousin accompany the young lady?" said I. "No, he did not--he returned to London immediately." This was said so gravely--so more than gravely--with an air of so much more meaning than she thought it civil to express, that my gravity and politeness gave way together, and I laughed most heartily. My amiable companion, however, did not take it amiss--she only laughed with me; and when we had recovered our gravity, she said, "So you find my cousin very ridiculous for throwing up the party?--_un peu timide, peut-être?_" "Oh no!" I replied--"only a little hasty." "Hasty!... Mais que voulez-vous? You do not seem to comprehend his embarrassment." "Perhaps not fully; but I assure you his embarrassment would have ceased altogether, had he trusted himself with the young lady and her attendant groom: I doubt not that she would have led the way through one of our beautiful pheasant preserves, which are exceedingly well worth seeing; but most certainly she would have been greatly astonished, and much embarrassed in her turn, had your cousin taken it into his head to make love to her." "You are in earnest?" said she, looking in my face with an air of great interest. "Indeed I am," I replied; "I am very seriously in earnest; and though I know not the persons of whom we have been speaking, I can venture to assure you positively, that it was only because no gentleman so well recommended as your cousin could be suspected of abusing the confidence reposed in him, that this English father permitted him to accompany the young lady in her morning ride." "C'est donc un trait sublime!" she exclaimed: "what noble confidence--what confiding honour! It is enough to remind one of the _paladins_ of old." "I suspect you are quizzing our confiding simplicity," said I; "but, at any rate, do not suspect me of quizzing you--for I have told you nothing more than a very simple and certain fact." "I doubt it not the least in the world," she replied; "but you are indeed, as I observed at first, superiorly romantic." She appeared to meditate for a moment, and then added, "Mais dites moi un peu ... is not this a little inconsistent with the stories we read in the 'novels of fashionable life' respecting the manner in which husbands are acquired for the young ladies of England?... You refuse yourselves, you know, the privilege of disposing of your daughters in marriage according to the mutual interests of the parties; and therefore, as young ladies must be married, it follows that some other means must be resorted to by the parents. All Frenchmen know this, and they may perhaps for that reason be sometimes too easily induced to imagine that it is intended to lead them into marriage by captivating their senses. This is so natural an inference, that you really must forgive it." "I forgive it perfectly," I replied; "but as we have agreed not to _mystify_ each other, it would not be fair to leave you in the belief that it is the custom, in order to 'acquire' husbands for the young ladies, that they should be sent on love-making expeditions into the woods with the premier venu. But what you have said enables me to understand a passage which I was reading the other day in a French story, and which puzzled me most exceedingly. It was on the subject of a young girl who had been forsaken by her lover; and some one, reproaching him for his conduct, uses, I think, these words: 'Après l'avoir compromise autant qu'il est possible de compromettre une jeune miss--ce qui n'est pas une chose absolument facile dans la bienheureuse Albion....' This puzzled me more than I can express; because the fact is, that we consider the compromising the reputation of a young lady as so tremendous a thing, that excepting in novels, where neither national manners nor natural probabilities are permitted to check the necessary accumulation of misery on the head of a heroine, it NEVER occurs; and this, not because nothing can compromise her, but because nothing that can compromise her is ever permitted, or, I might almost say, ever attempted. Among the lower orders, indeed, stories of seduction are but too frequent; but our present examination of national manners refers only to the middle and higher classes of society." Madame B*** listened to me with the most earnest attention; and after I had ceased speaking, she remained silent, as if meditating on what she had heard. At length she said, in a tone of much more seriousness than she had yet used,--"I am quite sure that every word you say is _parfaitement exact_--your manner persuades me that you are speaking neither with exaggeration nor in jest: _cependant_ ... I cannot conceal from you my astonishment at your statement. The received opinion among us is, that private and concealed infidelities among married women are probably less frequent in England than in France--because it seems to be essentially _dans vos moeurs de faire un grand scandale_ whenever such a circumstance occurs; and this, with the penalties annexed to it, undoubtedly acts as a prevention. But, on the other hand, it is universally considered as a fact, that you are as lenient to the indiscretions of unmarried ladies, as severe to those of the married ones. Tell me--is there not some truth in this idea?" "Not the least in the world, I do assure you. On the contrary, I am persuaded that in no country is there any race of women from whom such undeviating purity and propriety of conduct is demanded as from the unmarried women of England. Slander cannot attach to them, because it is as well known as that a Jew is not qualified to sit in parliament, that a single woman suspected of indiscretion immediately dies a civil death--she sinks out of society, and is no more heard of; and it is therefore that I have ventured to say, that a compromised reputation among the unmarried ladies of England NEVER occurs." "Nous nous sommes singulièrement trompés sur tout cela donc, nous autres," said Madame B***. "But the single ladies no longer young?" she continued;--"forgive me ... but is it really supposed that they pass their entire lives without any indiscretion at all?" This question was asked in a tone of such utter incredulity as to the possibility of a reply in the affirmative, that I again lost my gravity, and laughed heartily; but, after a moment, I assured her very seriously that such was most undoubtedly the case. The naïve manner in which she exclaimed in reply, "Est-il possible!" might have made the fortune of a young actress. There was, however, no acting in the case; Madame B*** was most perfectly unaffected in her expression of surprise, and assured me that it would be shared by all Frenchwomen who should be so fortunate as to find occasion, like herself, to receive such information from indisputable authority. "Quant aux hommes," she added, laughing, "je doute fort si vous en trouverez de si croyans." We pursued our conversation much farther; but were I to repeat the whole, you would only find it contained many repetitions of the same fact--namely, that a very strong persuasion exists in France, among those who are not personally well acquainted with English manners, that the mode in which marriages are arranged, rather by the young people themselves than by their relatives, produces an effect upon the conduct of our unmarried females which is not only as far as possible from the truth, but so preposterously so, as never to have entered into any English head to imagine. So few opportunities for anything approaching to intimacy between French and English women arise, that it is not very easy for us to find out exactly what their real opinion is concerning us. Nothing in Madame B***'s manner could lead me to suspect that any feeling of reprobation or contempt mixed itself with her belief respecting the extraordinary license which she supposed was accorded to unmarried woman. Nothing could be more indulgent than her tone of commentary on our _national peculiarities_, as she called them. The only theme which elicited an expression of harshness from her was the manner in which divorces were obtained and paid for: "Se faire payer pour une aventure semblable! ... publier un scandale si ridicule, si offensant pour son amour-propre--si fortement contre les bonnes moeurs, pour en recevoir de l'argent, was," she said, "perfectly incomprehensible in a nation de si braves gens que les Anglais." I did my best to defend our mode of proceeding in such cases upon the principles of justice and morality; but French prejudices on this point are too inveterate to be shaken by any eloquence of mine. We parted, however, the best friends in the world, and mutually grateful for the information we had received. This conversation only furnished one, among several instances, in which I have been astonished to discover the many popular errors which are still current in France respecting England. Can we fairly doubt that, in many cases where we consider ourselves as perfectly well-informed, we may be quite as much in the dark respecting them? It is certain that the habit so general among us of flying over to Paris for a week or two every now and then, must have made a great number of individuals acquainted with the external aspect of France between Calais and Paris, and also with all the most conspicuous objects of the capital itself--its churches and its theatres, its little river and its great coffee-houses: but it is an extremely small proportion of these flying travellers who ever enter into any society beyond what they may encounter in public; and to all such, France can be very little better known than England is to those who content themselves with perusing the descriptions we give of ourselves in our novels and newspapers. Of the small advance made towards obtaining information by such visits as these, I have had many opportunities of judging for myself, both among English and French, but never more satisfactorily than at a dinner-party at the house of an old widow lady, who certainly understands our language perfectly, and appears to me to read more English books, and to be more interested about their authors, than almost any one I ever met with. She has never crossed the Channel, however, and has rather an overweening degree of respect for such of her countrymen as have enjoyed the privilege of looking at us face to face on our own soil. The day I dined with her, one of these travelled gentlemen was led up and presented to me as a person well acquainted with my country. His name was placed on the cover next to the one destined for me at table, and it was evidently intended that we should derive our principal amusement from the conversation of each other. As I never saw him before or since, as I never expect to see him again, and as I do not even remember his name, I think I am guilty of no breach of confidence by repeating to you a few of the ideas upon England which he had acquired on his travels. His first remark after we were placed at table was,--"You do not, I think, use table-napkins in England;--do you not find them rather embarrassing?" The next was,--"I observed during my stay in England that it is not the custom to eat soup: I hope, however, that you do not find it disagreeable to your palate?"... "You have, I think, no national cuisine?" was the third observation; and upon this _singularity in our manners_ he was eloquent. "Yet, after all," said he consolingly, "France is in fact the only country which has one: Spain is too oily--Italy too spicy. We have sent artists into Germany; but this cannot be said to constitute _une cuisine nationale_. Pour dire vrai, however, the rosbif of England is hardly more scientific than the sun-dried meat of the Tartars. A Frenchman would be starved in England did he not light upon one of the imported artists,--and, happily for travellers, this is no longer difficult." "Did you dine much in private society?" said I. "No, I did not: my time was too constantly occupied to permit my doing so." "We have some very good hotels, however, in London." "But no tables d'hôte!" he replied with a shrug. "I did very well, nevertheless; for I never permitted myself to venture anywhere for the purpose of dining excepting to your celebrated Leicester-square. It is the most fashionable part of London, I believe; or, at least, the only fashionable restaurans are to be found there." I ventured very gently to hint that there were other parts of London more à-la-mode, and many hotels which had the reputation of a better cuisine than any which could be found in Leicester-square; but the observation appeared to displease the traveller, and the belle harmonie which it was intended should subsist between us was evidently shaken thereby, for I heard him say in a half-whisper to the person who sat on the other side of him, and who had been attentively listening to our discourse,--"Pas exact...." LETTER LIV. Mixed Society.--Influence of the English Clergy and their Families.--Importance of their station in Society. Though I am still of opinion that French society, properly so called,--that is to say, the society of the educated ladies and gentlemen of France,--is the most graceful, animated, and fascinating in the world; I think, nevertheless, that it is not as perfect as it might be, were a little more exclusiveness permitted in the formation of it. No one can be really well acquainted with good society in this country without being convinced that there are both men and women to be found in it who to the best graces add the best virtues of social life; but it is equally impossible to deny, that admirable as are some individuals of the circle, they all exercise a degree of toleration to persons less estimable, which, when some well-authenticated anecdotes are made known to us, is, to say the least of it, very startling to the feelings of those who are not to this easy manner either born or bred. To look into the hearts of all who form either a Parisian or a London lady's visiting list, in order to discover of what stuff each individual be made, would not perhaps be very wise, and is luckily quite impossible. Nothing at all approaching to such a scrutiny can be reasonably wished or expected from those who open their doors for the reception of company; but where society is perfectly well ordered, no one of either sex, I think, whose outward and visible conduct has brought upon them the eyes of all and the reprobation of the good, should be admitted. That such are admitted much more freely in France than in England, cannot be denied; and though there are many who conscientiously keep aloof from such intercourse, and more who mark plainly enough that there is a distance in spirit even where there is vicinity of person, still I think it is greatly to be regretted that such a leven of disunion should ever be suffered to insinuate itself into meetings which would be so infinitely more agreeable as well as more respectable without it. One reason, I doubt not, why there is less exclusiveness and severity of selection in the forming a circle here is, that there are no individuals, or rather no class of individuals, in the wide circle which constitutes what is called _en grand_ the society of Paris, who could step forward with propriety and say, "_This may not be_." With us, happily, the case is as yet different. The clergy of England, their matronly wives and highly-educated daughters, form a distinct caste, to which there is nothing that answers in the whole range of continental Europe. In this caste, however, are mingled a portion of every other; yet it has a dignity and aristocracy of its own: and in this aristocracy are blended the high blood of the noble, the learning which has in many instances sufficed to raise to a level with it the obscure and needy, and the piety which has given station above either to those whose unspotted lives have marked them out as pre-eminent in the holy profession they have chosen. While such men as these mingle freely in society, as they constantly do in England, and bring with them the females who form their families, there is little danger that notorious vice should choose to obtrude itself. It will hardly be denied, I believe, that many a frail fair one, who would boldly push her way among ermine and coronets where the mitre was not, would shrink from parading her doubtful honours where it was: and it is equally certain, that many a thoughtless, easy, careless giver of fine parties has been prevented from filling up her constellation of beauties because "It is impossible to have Lady This, or Mrs. That, when the bishop and his family are expected." Nor is this wholesome influence confined to the higher ranks alone;--the rector of the parish--nay, even his young curate, with a smooth cheek and almost unrazored chin, will in humbler circles produce the same effect. In short, wherever an English clergyman or an English clergyman's family appears, there decency is in presence, and the canker of known and tolerated vice is not. Whenever we find ourselves weary of this restraint, and anxious to mix (unshackled by the silent rebuke of such a presence) with whatever may be most attractive to the eye or amusing to the spirit, let the stamp of vice be as notorious upon it as it may, whenever we reach this state, it will be the right and proper time to pass the Irish Church Bill. These meditations have been thrust upon me by the reply I received in answer to a question which I addressed to a lady of my acquaintance at a party the other evening. "Who is that very elegant-looking woman?" said I. "It is Madame de C***," was the reply. "Have you never met her before? She is very much in society; one sees her everywhere." I replied, that I had seen her once or twice before, but had never learned her name; adding, that it was not only her name I was anxious to learn, but something about her. She looked like a personage, a heroine, a sybil: in short, it was one of those heads and busts that one seems to have the same right to stare at, as at a fine picture or statue; they appear a part of the decorations, only they excite a little more interest and curiosity. "Can you not tell me something of her character?" said I: "I never saw so picturesque a figure; I could fancy that the spirit of Titian had presided at her toilet." "It was only the spirit of coquetry, I suspect," answered my friend with a smile. "But if you are so anxious to know her, I can give you her character and history in very few words:--she is rich, high-born, intellectual, political, and unchaste." I do not think I started; I should be shocked to believe myself so unfit for a salon as to testify surprise thus openly at anything; but my friend looked at me and laughed. "You are astonished at seeing her here? But I have told you that you may expect to meet her everywhere; except, indeed, chez moi, and at a few exceedingly rococo houses besides." As the lady I was talking to happened to be an Englishwoman, though for many years a resident in Paris, I ventured to hint the surprise I felt that a person known to be what she described Madame de C*** should be so universally received in good society. "It is very true," she replied: "it is surprising, and more so to me perhaps than to you, because I know thoroughly well the irreproachable character and genuine worth of many who receive her. I consider this," she continued, "as one of the most singular traits in Parisian society. If, as many travellers have most falsely insinuated, the women of Paris were generally corrupt and licentious, there would be nothing extraordinary in it: but it is not so. Where neither the husband, the relatives, the servants, nor any one else, has any wish or intention of discovering or exposing the frailty of a wife, it is certainly impossible to say that it may not often exist without being either known or suspected: but with this, general society cannot interfere; and those whose temper or habits of mind lead them to suspect evil wherever it is possible that it may be concealed, may often lose the pleasure of friendship founded on esteem, solely because it is possible that some hidden faults may render their neighbour unworthy of it. That such tempers are not often to be found in France, is certainly no proof of the depravity of national manners; but where notorious irregularity of conduct has brought a woman fairly before the bar of public opinion, it does appear to me very extraordinary that such a person as our hostess, and very many others equally irreproachable, should receive her." "I presume," said I, "that Madame de C*** is not the only person towards whom this remarkable species of tolerance is exercised?" "Certainly not. There are many others whose _liaisons_ are as well known as hers, who are also admitted into the best society. But observe--I know no instance where such are permitted to enter within the narrower circle of intimate domestic friendship. No one in Paris seems to think that they have any right to examine into the private history of all the _élégantes_ who fill its salons; but I believe they take as good care to know the _friends_ whom they admit to the intimacy of their private hours as we do. There, however, this species of decorum ends; and they would no more turn back from entering a room where they saw Madame de C***, than a London lady would drive away from the opera because she saw the carriage of Lady ---- at the door." "There is no parallel, however, between the cases," said I. "No, certainly," she replied; "but it is not the less certain that the Parisians appear to think otherwise." Now it appears evident to me, that all this arises much less from general licentiousness of morals than from general easiness of temper. SANS SOUCI is the darling device of the whole nation: and how can this be adhered to, if they set about the very arduous task of driving out of society all those who do not deserve to be in it? But while feeling sincerely persuaded, as I really do, that this difference in the degree of moral toleration practised by the two countries does not arise from any depravity in the French character, I cannot but think that our mode of proceeding in this respect is infinitely better. It is more conducive, not only to virtue, but to agreeable and unrestrained intercourse; and for this reason, if for no other, it is deeply our interest to uphold with all possible reverence and dignity that class whose presence is of itself sufficient to guarantee at least the reputation of propriety, in every circle in which they appear. Though not very german to Paris and the Parisians, which I promised should make the subjects of my letters as long as I remained among them, I cannot help observing how utterly this most important influence would be destroyed in the higher circles--which will ever form the model of those below them--if the riches, rank, and worldly honours of this class are wrested from them. It is indeed very certain that a clergyman, whether bishop, priest, or deacon, may perform the duty of a minister in the desk, at the altar, or in the pulpit, though he has to walk home afterwards to an humble dwelling and an humble meal: he may perform this duty well, and to the entire satisfaction of the rich and great, though his poverty may prevent him from ever taking his place among them; but he may not--he can not, while such is the station allotted him, produce that effect on society, and exert that influence on the morals of the people, which he would do were his temporal place and power such as to exalt him in the eyes even of the most worldly. Amidst all the varieties of cant to which it is the destiny of the present age to listen, there is none which I endure with so little patience as that which preaches the "_humility of the church_." Were there the shadow of reason or logic in the arguments for the degradation of the clergy drawn from the Scriptures, they must go the length of showing that, in order to follow the example of the great Master, they must all belong to the class of carpenters and fishermen. Could we imagine another revelation of the Divinity accorded to man, it would be natural enough to conceive that the rich gift of direct inspiration should be again given to those who had neither learning, knowledge, pride, nor power of any kind, to combat or resist, to explain or to weaken, the communication which it was their duty simply to record and spread abroad. But the eternal word of God once delivered, does it follow that those who are carefully instructed in all the various learning which can assist in giving strength and authority to the propagation of it should alone, of all the sons of men, be for ever doomed to the lower walks of social life in order to imitate the humility of the Saviour of the world? I know not if there be more nonsense or blasphemy in this. The taking the office of preaching his own blessed will to man was an act of humility in God; but the taking upon themselves to instruct their fellow-men in the law thus solemnly left us, is a great assumption of dignity in men,--and where the offices it imposes are well performed, it becomes one of the first duties of the believers in the doctrine they have made it their calling to expound, to honour them with such honour as mortals can understand and value. If any one be found who does not perform the duties of this high calling in the best manner which his ability enables him to do, let him be degraded as he deserves; but while he holds it, let him not be denied the dignity of state and station to which all his fellow-citizens in their different walks aspire, in order forsooth to _keep him humble_! Humble indeed--yea, humbled to the dust, will our long-venerated church and its insulted ministers be, if its destiny and their fortune be left at the mercy of those who have lately undertaken to legislate for them. I often feel a sort of vapourish, vague uncertainty of disbelief, as I read the records of what has been passing in the House of Commons on this subject. I cannot _realise_ it, as the Americans say, that the majority of the English parliament should consent to be led blind-fold upon such a point as this, by a set of low-born, ignorant, bullying papists. I hope, when I return to England, I shall awake and find that it is not so. And now forgive me for this long digression: I will write to you to-morrow upon something as essentially French as possible, to make up for it. LETTER LV. Le Grand Opéra.--Its enormous Expense.--Its Fashion.--Its acknowledged Dulness.--'La Juive'.--Its heavy Music.--Its exceeding Splendour.--Beautiful management of the Scenery.--National Music. Can I better keep the promise I gave you yesterday than by writing you a letter of and concerning le grand opéra? Is there anything in the world so perfectly French as this? Something like their pretty opéra comique may exist elsewhere; we have our comic opera, and Italy has her buffa; the opéra Italien, too, may be rather more than rivalled at the Haymarket: but where out of Paris are we to look for anything like the Académie Royale de Musique? ... le grand opéra? ... l'opéra par excellence?--I may safely answer, nowhere. It is an institution of which the expenses are so enormous, that though it is more constantly and fully attended perhaps than any other theatre in the world, it could not be sustained without the aid of funds supplied by the government. The extraordinary partiality for this theatre seems to have existed among the higher classes, without any intermission from change of fashion, occasional inferiority of the performances, or any other cause, from the time of Louis Quatorze to the present. That immortal monarch, whose whim was power, and whose word was law, granted a patent privilege to this establishment in favour of the musical Abbé Perrin, but speedily revoked it, to bestow one more ample still on Lulli. In this latter act, it is ordained that "_tous gentilshommes et demoiselles puissent chanter aux dites pièces et représentations de notre dite Académie Royale sans que pour ça ils soient censés déroger au dit titre de noblesse et à leurs priviléges_." This was a droll device to exalt this pet plaything of the fashionable world above all others. Voltaire fell into the mode like the rest of the fine folks, and thus expressed his sensibility to its attractions:-- "Il faut se rendre à ce palais magique, Où les beaux vers, la danse, la musique, L'art de charmer les yeux par les couleurs, L'art plus heureux de séduire les coeurs, De cent plaisirs font un plaisir unique." But the most incomprehensible part of the business is, that with all this enthusiasm, which certainly rather goes on increasing than diminishing, every one declares that he is _ennuyé à la mort_ at le grand opéra. I do not mean that their being ennuyés is incomprehensible--Heaven knows that I understand that perfectly: but why, when this is avowed, they should continue to persecute themselves by going there two or three times in every week, I cannot comprehend. If attendance at the opera were here, as it is with us, a sort of criterion of the love of music and _other fine arts_, it would be much less difficult to understand: but this is far from being the case, as both the Italian and the comic operas have more perfect orchestras. The style and manner of singing, too, are what no genuine lover of music could ever be brought to tolerate. When the remembrance of a German or Italian opera comes across one while listening to the dry, heavy recitative of the Academy, it produces a feeling of impatience difficult to conceive by those who have never experienced it. If, however, instead of being taken in by the name of opera, and expecting the musical treat which that name seems to promise, we go to this magnificent theatre for the purpose of seeing the most superb and the best-fancied decorations in the world, we shall at least not be disappointed, though before the end of the entertainment we may probably become heartily weary of gazing at and admiring the dazzling pageant. I told you just now what Voltaire said of the opera, either when he was particularly enchanted by some reigning star--the adorable Sophie Arnould perhaps--or else when he chose to be particularly à-la-mode: but he seems more soberly in earnest, I think, when he says afterwards, "L'opéra n'est qu'un rendezvous publique, où l'on s'assemble à certains jours, sans trop savoir pourquoi: c'est une maison où tout le monde va, quoiqu'on pense mal du maître, et qu'il soit assez ennuyeux." That little phrase, "où tout le monde va," contains, I suspect after all, the only true solution of the mystery. "Man is a gregarious animal," say the philosophers; and it is therefore only in conformity to this well-known law of his nature that hes and shes flock by thousands to be pent up together, in defiance of most _triste musique_ and a stifling atmosphere, within the walls of this beautiful puppet-show. That it is beautiful, I am at this moment particularly willing to avouch, as we have just been regaling ourselves, or rather our eyes, with as gorgeous a spectacle there as it ever entered into the heart of a carpenter to _étaler_ on the stage of a theatre. This splendid show is known by the name of "La Juive;" but it should rather have been called "Le Cardinal," for a personage of no less dignity is decidedly its hero. M. Halévy is the composer, and M. Scribe the author of the "paroles." M. Scribe stands so high as a dramatic composer, that I suppose he may sport a little with his fame without running much risk of doing it an injury: but as the Académie Royale has the right of drawing upon the Treasury for its necessities, it is to be hoped that the author of "Bertrand et Raton" is well paid for lending his name to the pegs on which ermine and velvet, feathers and flowers, cardinals' hats and emperors' mantles, are hung up to view for the amusement of all who may be curious in such matters. I suspect, however, that the composition of this piece did not cost the poet many sleepless nights: perhaps he remembered that excellent axiom of the Barbier de Seville,--"Ce qui ne vaut pas la peine d'être dit, on le chante;" and under this sentence I think such verses as the following, which strongly remind one of the famous Lilliputian ode in the Bath Guide, may fairly enough be condemned to music. "Fille chère Près d'un père Viens mourir; Et pardonne Quand il donne La couronne Du martyr! Plus de plainte-- Vaine crainte Est éteinte En mon coeur; Saint délire! Dieu m'inspire, Et j'expire Vainqueur." Unhappily, however, the music is at least as worthless as the rhymes. There is one passage, nevertheless, that is singularly impressive and beautiful. This is the chorus at the opening of the second act, where a party of Jews assembled to eat the passover chant a grace in these words:-- "Oh! Dieu de nos pères! Toi qui nous éclaires, Parmi nous descends!" &c. &c. &c. This is very fine, but perhaps it approaches rather too closely to the "Dieu d'Israël" in Méhul's opera of "Joseph" to be greatly vaunted on the score of originality. Yet, with all these "points of 'vantage" at which it may be hostilely attacked, "La Juive" draws thousands to gaze at its splendour every time it is performed. Twice we attempted to get in without having secured places, and were told on both occasions that there was not even standing-room for gentlemen. Among its attractions are two which are alike new to me as belonging to an opera: one is the performance of the "Te Deum laudamus," and the other the entrance of Franconi's troop of horse. But, after all, it was clear enough that, whatever may have been the original object of this institution, with its nursery academies of music and dancing, its royal patronage and legalised extravagance, its present glory rests almost wholly on the talents of the Taglioni family, and with the sundry MM. décorateurs who have imagined and arranged the getting up this extraordinary specimen of scenic magnificence, as well as the many others of the same kind which have preceded it. I have seen many very fine shows of the kind in London, but certainly never anything that could at all be compared with this. Individual scenes--as, for instance, that of the masqued ball in "Gustavus"--may equal, by the effect of the first coup-d'oeil, any scene in "La Juive"; but it is the extraordinary propriety and perfection of all the accessaries which make this part of the performance worthy of a critical study from the beginning to the end of it. I remember reading in some history of Paris, that it was the fashion to be so _précieuse_ as to the correctness of the costumes of the French opera, that the manager could not venture to bring out "Les Trois Sultanes" without sending to Constantinople to obtain the dresses. A very considerable portion of the same spirit has evidently been at work to render the appearance of a large detachment of the court of Rome and the whole court of the Emperor Sigismund _comme il faut_ upon the scene. But, with all a woman's weakness at my heart in favour of velvet, satin, gold tissue, and ermine, I cannot but confess that these things, important as they are, appear but secondary aids in the magical scenic effects of "La Juive." The arrangement and management of the scenery were to me perfectly new. The coulisses have vanished, side scenes are no more,--and, what is more important still, these admirable mechanists have found the way of throwing across the stage those accidental masses of shadow by aid of which Nature produces her most brilliant effects; so that, instead of the aching eyes having to gaze upon a blaze of reflected light, relieved only by an occasional dip of the foot-lights and a sudden paling of gas in order to enact night, they are now enchanted and beguiled by exactly such a mixture of light and shade as an able painter would give to a picture. How this is effected, Heaven knows! There are, I am very sure, more things at present above, about, and underneath the opera stage, than are dreamed of in any philosophy, excepting that of a Parisian carpenter. In the first scene of the "Juive," a very noble-looking church rears its sombre front exactly in the centre of the stage, throwing as fine, rich, deep a shadow on one side of it as Notre Dame herself could do. In another scene, half the stage appears to be sunk below the level of the eye, and is totally lost sight of, a low parapet wall marking the boundary of the seeming river. Our box was excellently situated, and by no means distant from the stage; yet we often found it impossible to determine at what point, in different directions, the boards ended and the scenery began. The arrangement of the groups too, not merely in combinations of grace and beauty, but in such bold, easy, and picturesque variety, that one might fancy Murillo had made the sketches for them, was another source of wonder and admiration; and had all these pretty sights been shown us in the course of two acts instead of five, I am sure we should have gone home quite delighted and in the highest possible good-humour. But five acts of raree-show is too much; and accordingly we yawned, and talked of Grétry, Méhul, Nicolo, and I know not whom beside;--in short, became as splenetic and pedantic as possible. We indulged ourselves occasionally in this unamiable mood by communicating our feelings to each other, in a whisper however which could not go beyond our own box, and with the less restraint because we felt sure that the one stranger gentleman who shared it with us could not understand our language. But herein we egregiously deceived ourselves: though in appearance he was _Français jusqu'aux ongles_, we soon found out that he could speak English as well as any of us; and, with much real politeness, he had the good-nature to let us know this before we had uttered anything too profoundly John Bullish to be forgiven. Fortunately, too, it appeared that our judgments accorded as well as if we had all been born in the same parish. He lamented the decadence of music in this, which ought to be its especial theatre; but spoke with enthusiasm of the Théâtre Italien, and its great superiority in science over every other in Paris. This theatre, to my great vexation, is now closed; but I well remember that such too was my judgment of it some seven years ago. The English and the French are generally classed together as having neither one nor the other any really national music of their own. We have both of us, however, some sweet and perfectly original airs, which will endure as long as the modulations of sound are permitted to enchant our mortal ears. Nevertheless, I am not going to appeal against a sentence too often repeated not to be universally received as truth. But, notwithstanding this absence of any distinct school of national music, it is impossible to doubt that the people of both countries are fondly attached to the science. More sacrifices are made by both to obtain good music than the happy German and Italian people would ever dream of making. Nor would it, I think, be fair to argue, from the present style of the performances at the Académie, that the love of music is on the decline here. The unbounded expense bestowed upon decorations, and the pomp and splendour of effect which results from it, are quite enough to attract and dazzle the eyes of a more "thinking people" than the Parisians; and the unprecedented perfection to which the mechanists have brought the delusion of still-life seems to permit a relaxation in the efforts of the manager to obtain attraction from other sources. But this will not last. The French people really love music, and will have it. It is more than probable that the musical branch of this academic establishment will soon revive; and if in doing so it preserve its present superiority of decoration, it will again become an amusement of unrivalled attraction. I believe the French themselves generally consider us as having less claim to the reputation of musical amateurship than themselves; but, with much respect for their judgment on such subjects, I differ from them wholly in this. When has France ever shown, either in her capital or out of it, such a glorious burst of musical enthusiasm as produced the festivals of Westminster Abbey and of York? It was not for the sake of encouraging an English school of music, certainly, that these extraordinary efforts were made. They were not native strains which rang along the vaulted roofs; but it was English taste, and English feeling, which recently, as well as in days of yore, conceived and executed a scheme of harmony more perfect and sublime than I can remember to have heard of elsewhere. I doubt, too, if in any country a musical institution can be pointed out in purer taste than that of our ancient music concert. The style and manner of this are wholly national, though the compositions performed there are but partially so; and I think no one who truly and deeply loves the science but must feel that there is a character in it which, considering the estimation in which it has for so many years been held, may fairly redeem the whole nation from any deficiency in musical taste. There is one branch of the "gay science," if I may so call it, which I always expect to find in France, but respecting which I have hitherto been always disappointed: this is in the humble class of itinerant musicians. In Germany they abound; and it not seldom happens that their strains arrest the feet and enchant the ear of the most fastidious. But whenever, in France, I have encountered an ambulant troubadour, I confess I have felt no inclination to linger on my way to listen to him. I do not, however, mean to claim much honour for ourselves on the score of our travelling minstrels. If we fail to pause in listening to those of France, we seldom fail to run whenever our ears are overtaken by our own. Yet still we give strong proof of our love of music, in the more than ordinary strains which may be occasionally heard before every coffee-house in London, when the noise and racket of the morning has given place to the hours of enjoyment. I have heard that the bands of wind instruments which nightly parade through the streets of London receive donations which, taken on an average throughout the year, would be sufficient to support a theatre. This can only proceed from a genuine propensity to being "moved by concord of sweet sounds;" for no fashion, as is the case at our costly operas, leads to it. On the contrary, it is most decidedly mauvais ton to be caught listening to this unexclusive harmony; yet it is encouraged in a degree that clearly indicates the popular feeling. Have I then proved to your satisfaction, as completely as I undoubtedly have to my own, that if without a national music, at least we are not without a national taste for it? LETTER LVI. The Abbé Deguerry.--His eloquence.--Excursion across the water.--Library of Ste. Geneviève.--Copy-book of the Dauphin.--St. Etienne du Mont.--Pantheon. The finest sermon I have heard since I have been in Paris--and, I am almost inclined to think, the finest I ever heard anywhere--was preached yesterday by the Abbé Deguerry at St. Roch. It was a discourse calculated to benefit all Christian souls of every sect and denomination whatever--had no shade of doctrinal allusion in it of any kind, and was just such a sermon as one could wish every soi-disant infidel might be forced to listen to while the eyes of a Christian congregation were fixed upon him. It would do one good to see such a being cower and shrink, in the midst of his impotent and petulant arrogance, to feel how a "plain word could put him down." The Abbé Deguerry is a young man, apparently under thirty; but nature seems to have put him at once in possession of a talent which generally requires long years to bring to perfection. He is eloquent in the very best manner; for it is an eloquence intended rather to benefit the hearer than to do honour to the mere human talent of the orator. Beautifully as his periods flowed, I felt certain, as I listened to him, that their harmonious rhythm was the result of no study, but purely the effect, unconsciously displayed, of a fine ear and an almost unbounded command of language. He had studied his matter,--he had studied and deeply weighed his arguments; but, for his style, it was the free gift of Heaven. Extempore preaching has always appeared to me to be a fearfully presumptuous exercise. Thoughts well digested, expressions carefully chosen, and arguments conscientiously examined, are no more than every congregation has a right to expect from one who addresses them with all the authority of place on subjects of most high importance; and rare indeed is the talent which can produce this without cautious and deliberate study. But in listening to the Abbé Deguerry, I perceived it was possible that a great and peculiar talent, joined to early and constant practice, might enable a man to address his fellow-creatures without presumption even though he had not written his sermon;--yet it is probable that I should be more correct were I to say, without reading it to his congregation, for it is hardly possible to believe that such a composition was actually and altogether extempore. His argument, which was to show the helpless insufficiency of man without the assistance of revelation and religious faith, was never lost sight of for an instant. There was no weak wordiness, no repetition, no hacknied ornaments of rhetoric; but it was the voice of truth, speaking in that language of universal eloquence which all nations and all creeds must feel; and it flowed on with unbroken clearness, beauty, and power, to the end. Having recently quitted Flanders, where everything connected with the Roman Catholic worship is sustained in a style of stately magnificence which plainly speaks its Spanish origin, I am continually surprised by the comparatively simple vestments and absence of ostentatious display in the churches of Paris. At the metropolitan church of Notre Dame, indeed, nothing was wanting to render its archiepiscopal dignity conspicuous; but everywhere else, there was a great deal less of pomp and circumstance than I expected. But nowhere is the relaxation of clerical dignity in the clergy of Paris so remarkable as in the appearance of the young priests whom we occasionally meet in the streets. The flowing curls, the simple round hat, the pantaloons, and in some cases the boots also, give them the appearance of a race of men as unlike as possible to their stiff and primitive predecessors. Yet they all look flourishing, and well pleased with themselves and the world about them: but little of mortification or abstinence can be traced on their countenances; and if they do fast for some portion of every week, they may certainly say with Father Philip, that "what they take prospers with them marvellously." [Illustration: Drawn & Etched by A. Hervieu. PRÊTRES DE LA JEUNE FRANCE. London. Published by Richard Bentley. 1835.] We have this morning made an excursion to the other side of the water, which always seems like setting out upon a journey; and yet I know not why it should be so, for as the river is not very wide, the bridges are not very long; but so it is, that for some reason or other, if it were not for the magnetic Abbaye-aux-Bois, we should very rarely find ourselves on the left bank of the Seine. On this occasion, our object was to visit the famous old library of Ste. Geneviève, on the invitation of a gentleman who is one of the librarians. Nothing can be more interesting than an expedition of this sort, with an intelligent and obliging cicisbeo, who knows everything concerning the objects displayed before you, and is kindly willing to communicate as much of his _savoir_ as the time may allow, or as may be necessary to make the different objects examined come forth from that venerable but incomprehensible accumulation of treasures, which form the mass of all the libraries and museums in the world, and which, be he as innocent of curiosity as an angel, every stranger is bound over to visit, under penalty, when honestly reciting his adventures, of hearing exclamations from all the friends he left at home, of--"What! ... did you not see that?... Then you have seen nothing!" I would certainly never expose myself to this cutting reproach, could I always secure as agreeable a companion as the one who tempted us to mount to the elevated repository which contains the hundred thousand volumes of the royal library of Ste. Geneviève. Were I a student there, I should grumble prodigiously at the long and steep ascent to this temple of all sorts of learning: but once reached, the tranquil stillness, and the perfect seclusion from the eternal hum of the great city that surrounds it, are very delightful, and might, I think, act as a sedative upon the most restive and truant imagination that ever beset a student. I was sorry to hear that symptoms of decay in the timbers of the venerable roof make it probable that this fine old room must be given up, and the large collection it has so long sheltered be conveyed elsewhere. The apartment is in the form of a cross, with a dome at the point of intersection, painted by the elder Restout. Though low, and in fact occupying only the roof of the college, formerly the Abbaye of Sainte Geneviève, there is something singularly graceful and pleasing to the eye in this extensive chamber, its ornaments and general arrangement;--something monastic, yet not gloomy; with an air of learned ease, and comfortable exclusion of all annoyance, that is very enviable. The library appears to be kept up in excellent style, and in a manner to give full effect to its liberal regulations, which permit the use of every volume in the collection to all the earth. The wandering scholar at distance from his own learned cell, and the idle reader for mere amusement, may alike indulge their bookish propensities here, with exactly the same facilities that are accorded to the students of the college. The librarians or their deputies are ready to deliver to them any work they ask for, with the light and reasonable condition annexed that the reader shall accompany the person who is to find the volume or volumes required, and assist in conveying them to the spot which he has selected for his place of study. The long table which stretches from the centre under the doom, across the transepts of the cross, was crowded with young men when we were there, who really seemed most perfectly in earnest in their occupation--gazing on the volumes before them "with earnest looks intent," even while a large party swept past them to examine a curious model of Rome placed at the extremity of one of the transepts. A rigorous silence, however, is enjoined in this portion of the apartments; so that even the ladies were obliged to postpone their questions and remarks till they had passed out of it. After looking at splendid editions, rare copies, and so forth, our friend led us to some small rooms, fitted up with cases for the especial protection under lock and key of the manuscripts of the collection. Having admired the spotless vellum of some, and the fair penmanship of others, a thin morocco-bound volume was put into my hands, which looked like a young lady's collection of manuscript waltzes. This was the copy-book of the Dauphin, father of the much-regretted Duke de Bourgogne, and grandfather of Louis Quinze. The characters were evidently written with great care. Each page contained a moral axiom, and all of them more or less especially applicable to a royal pupil. There was one of these which I thought might be particularly useful to all such at the present day: it was entitled, in large letters-- SE MOQUEUR DE LIBELLES --the superfluous U being erased by a dash of the master's pen. Then followed, in extremely clear and firm characters, these lines:-- Si de vos actions la satyre réjoue, Feignez adroitement de ne la pas ouïr: Qui relève une injure, il semble qu'il l'avoue; Qui la scait mépriser, la fait évanouir. L LOUIS LOUIS LOUIS LOUIS In one of these smaller rooms hangs the portrait of a negress in the dress of a nun. It has every appearance of being a very old painting, and our friend M. C*** told us that a legend had been ever attached to it, importing that it was the portrait of a daughter of Mary Queen of Scots, born before she left France for Scotland. What could have originated such a very disagreeable piece of scandal, it is difficult to imagine; but I can testify that all the internal evidence connected with it is strong against its truth, for no human countenance can well be conceived which would show less family likeness to our lovely and unfortunate northern queen than does that of this grim sister. From the library of Ste. Geneviève, we went under the same kind escort to look at the barbaric but graceful vagaries of St. Etienne du Mont. The galleries suspended as if by magic between the pillars of the choir, and the spiral staircases leading to them, out of all order as they are, must nevertheless be acknowledged as among the lightest and most fairy-like constructions in the world. This singular church, capricious in its architecture both within and without, is in some parts of great antiquity, and was originally built as a chapel of ease to the old church of Ste. Geneviève, which stood close beside it, and of which the lofty old tower still remains, making part of the college buildings. As a proof of the entire dependance of this pretty little church upon its mother edifice, it was not permitted to have any separate door of its own, the only access to it being through the great church. This subsidiary chapel, now dignified into a parish church, has at different periods been enlarged and beautified, and has again and again petitioned for leave from its superior to have a door of its own; but again and again it was refused, and it was not till the beginning of the sixteenth century that this modest request was at length granted. The great Pascal lies buried in this church. I was very anxious to give my children a sight of the interior of that beautiful but versatile building called, when I first saw it, the Pantheon--when I last saw it, Ste. Geneviève, and which is now again known to all the world, or at least to that part of it which has been fortunate enough to visit Paris since the immortal days, as the Pantheon. We could not, however, obtain an entrance to it; and it is very likely that before we shall again find ourselves on its simple and severe, but very graceful threshold, it will have again changed its vocation, and be restored to the use of the Christian church.--Ainsi soit-il! LETTER LVII. Little Suppers.--Great Dinners.--Affectation of Gourmandise.--Evil effects of "dining out."--Evening Parties.--Dinners in private under the name of Luncheons.--Late Hours. How I mourn for the departed petits soupers of Paris!... and how far are her pompous dinners from being able to atone for their loss! For those people, and I am afraid there are many of them, who really and literally live to eat, I know that the word "dinner" is the signal and symbol of earth's best, and, perhaps, only bliss. For them the steaming vapour, the tedious long array, the slow and solemn progress of a dîner de quatre services, offers nothing but joy and gladness; but what is it to those who only eat to live? I know no case in which injustice and tyranny are so often practised as at the dinner-table. Perhaps twenty people sit down to dinner, of whom sixteen would give the world to eat just no more than they like and have done with it: but it is known to the Amphitryon that there are four heavy persons present whose souls hover over his ragoûts like harpies over the feast of Phinæus, and they must not be disturbed, or revilings instead of admiration will repay the outlay and the turmoil of the banquet. A tedious, dull play, followed by a long, noisy, and gunpowder-scented pantomime, upon the last scene of which your party is determined to see the curtain fall; a heavy sermon of an hour long, your pew being exactly in front of the preacher; a morning visit from a lady who sends her carriage to fetch her boys from school at Wimbleton, and comes to entertain you with friendly talk about her servants till it comes back;--each of these is hard to bear and difficult to escape; but which of them can compare in suffering to a full-blown, stiff, stately dinner of three hours long, where the talk is of food, and the only relief from this talk is to eat it?... How can you get away? How is it possible to find or invent any device that can save you from enduring to the end? With cheeks burning from steam and vexation, can you plead a sudden faintness? Still less can you dare to tell the real truth, and confess that you are dying of disgust and ennui. The match is so unfair between the different parties at such a meeting as this--the victims so utterly helpless!... And, after all, there is no occasion for it. In London there are the clubs and the Clarendon; in Paris are Périgord's and Véry's, and a score beside, any one of whom could furnish a more perfect dinner than can be found at any private mansion whatever, where sufferings are often inflicted on the wretched lookers-on very nearly approaching to those necessary for the production of the _foie gras_. Think not, however, that I am inclined in the least degree to affect indifference or dislike to an elegant, well-spread table: on the contrary, I am disposed to believe that the hours when mortals meet together, all equally disposed to enjoy themselves by refreshing the spirits, recruiting the strength, and inspiring the wit, with the cates and the cups most pleasing to the palate of each, may be reckoned, without any degradation to human pride, among the happiest hours of life. But this no more resembles the endless crammings of a _repas de quatre services_, than a work in four volumes on political economy to an epigram in four lines upon the author of it. In fact, to give you a valuable hint upon the subject, I am persuaded that some of the most distinguished gourmets of the age have plunged themselves and their disciples into a most lamentable error in this matter. They have overdone the thing altogether. Their object is to excite the appetite as much as possible, in order to satisfy it as largely as possible; and this end is utterly defeated by the means used. But I will not dwell on this; neither you nor I are very particularly interested in the success either of the French or English eaters by profession; we will leave them to study their own business and manage it as well as they can. For the more philosophical enjoyers of the goods the gods provide I feel more interest, and I really lament the weakness which leads so many of them to follow a fashion which must be so contrary to all their ideas of real enjoyment; but, unhappily, it is daily becoming more necessary for every man who sits down at a fashionable table to begin talking like a cook. They surely mistake the thing altogether. This is not the most effectual way of proving the keenness of their gourmandise. In nine cases out of ten, I believe this inordinate passion for good eating is pure affectation; and I suspect that many a man, especially many a young man, both in Paris and London, would often be glad to eat a reasonably good dinner, and then change the air, instead of sitting hour after hour, while dishes are brought to his elbow till his head aches in shaking it as a negative to the offer of them, were it not that it would be so dreadfully bourgeois to confess it. If, however, on the other hand, an incessant and pertinacious "diner-out" should take up the business in good earnest, and console himself for the long sessions he endures by really eating on from soup to ice, what a heavy penalty does he speedily pay for it! I have lived long enough to watch more than one svelte, graceful, elegant young man, the glory of the drawing-room, the pride of the Park, the hero of Almack's, growing every year rounder and redder; the clear, well-opened eye becoming dull and leaden--the brilliant white teeth looking "not what they were, but quite the reverse," till the noble-looking, animated being, that one half the world was ready to love, and the other to envy, sank down into a heavy, clumsy, middle-aged gentleman, before half his youth was fairly past; and this solely for the satisfaction of continuing to eat every day for some hours after he had ceased to be hungry. It is really a pity that every one beginning this career does not set the balance of what he will gain and what he will lose by it fairly before him. If this were done, we should probably have much fewer theoretical cooks and practical crammers, but many more lively, animated table-companions, who might oftener be witty themselves, and less often the cause of wit in others. The fashion for assembling large parties, instead of selecting small ones, is on all occasions a grievous injury to social enjoyment. It began perhaps in vanity: fine ladies wished to show the world that they had "a dear five hundred friends" ready to come at their call. But as everybody complains of it as a bore, from Whitechapel to Belgrave-square, and from the Faubourg St. Antoine to the Faubourg du Roule, vanity would now be likely enough to put a general stop to it, were it not that a most disagreeable species of economy prevents it. "A large party kills such a prodigious number of birds," as I once heard a friend of mine say, when pleading to her husband for permission to overflow her dinner-table first, and then her drawing-rooms, "that it is the most extravagant thing in the world to have a small one." Now this is terrible, because it is true: but, at least, those blest with wealth might enjoy the extreme luxury of having just as many people about them as they liked, and no more; and if they would but be so very obliging as to set the fashion, we all know that it would speedily be followed in some mode or other by all ranks, till it would be considered as positively mauvais ton to have twice as many people in your house as you have chairs for them to sit on. The pleasantest evening parties remaining in Paris, now that such delightful little committees as Molière brings together after the performance of "L'Ecole des Femmes" can meet no more, are those assembled by an announcement made by Madame une Telle to a somewhat select circle, that she shall be at home on a certain evening in every week, fortnight, or month, throughout the season. This done, nothing farther is necessary; and on these evenings a party moderately large drop in without ceremony, and depart without restraint. No preparation is made beyond a few additional lights; and the albums and portfolios in one room, with perhaps a harp or pianoforte in another, give aid, if aid be wanted, to the conversation going on in both. Ices, eau sucrée, syrup of fruits, and gaufres are brought round, and the party rarely remain together after midnight. This is very easy and agreeable,--incomparably better, no doubt, than more crowded and more formal assemblées. Nevertheless, I am so profoundly rococo as to regret heartily the passing away of the petits soupers, which used to be the favourite scene of enjoyment, and the chosen arena for the exhibition of wit, for all the beaux esprits, male and female, of Paris. I was told last spring, in London, that at present it was the parvenus only who had incomes unscathed by the stormy times; and that, consequently, it was rather elegant than otherwise to _chanter misère_ upon all occasions. I moreover heard a distinguished confectioner, when in conversation with a lady on the subject of a ball-supper, declare that "orders were so slack, that he had countermanded a set of new ornaments which he had bespoken from Paris." Such being the case, what an excellent opportunity is the present for a little remuement in the style of giving entertainments! Poverty and the clubs render fine dinners at once dangerous, difficult, and unnecessary; but does it follow that men and women are no more to meet round a banqueting table? "Because we are virtuous, shall there be no more cakes and ale?" I have often dreamed, that were I a great lady, with houses and lands, and money at will, I would see if I could not break through the tyrannous yoke of fashion, often so confessedly galling to the patient wearers of it, and, in the place of heavy, endless dinners, which often make bankrupt the spirit and the purse, endeavour to bring into vogue that prettiest of all inventions for social enjoyment--a real supper-table: not a long board, whereat aching limbs and languid eyes may yawningly wait to receive from the hand of Mr. Gunter what must cost the giver more, and profit the receiver less, than any imaginable entertainment of the kind I propose, and which might be spread by an establishment as simply monté as that of any gentleman in London. Then think of the luxury of sitting down at a table neither steaming with ragoûts, nor having dyspepsia hid under every cover; where neither malignant gout stands by, nor servants swarm and listen to every idle word; where you may renew the memory of the sweet strains you have just listened to at the opera, instead of sitting upon thorns while you know that your favourite overture is in the very act of being played! All should be cool and refreshing, nectarine and ambrosial,--uncrowded, easy, intimate, and as witty as Englishmen and Englishwomen could contrive to make it! Till this experiment has been fairly made and declared to fail, I will never allow that the conversational powers of the women of England have been fully proved and found wanting. The wit of Mercury might be weighed to earth by the endurance of three long, pompous courses; and would it not require spirits lighter and brighter than those of a Peri to sustain a woman gaily through the solemn ceremonies of a fine dinner? In truth, the whole arrangement appears to me strangely defective and ill-contrived. Let English ladies be sworn to obey the laws of fashion as faithfully as they will, they cannot live till eight o'clock in the evening without some refreshment more substantial than the first morning meal. In honest truth and plain English, they all dine in the most unequivocal manner at two or three o'clock; nay, many of those who meet their hungry brethren at dinner-parties have taken coffee or tea before they arrive there. Then what a distasteful, tedious farce does the fine dinner become! Now just utter a "Passe! passe!" and, by a little imaginative legerdemain, turn from this needless dinner to such a petit souper as Madame de Maintenon gave of yore. Let Fancy paint the contrast; and let her take the gayest colours she can find, she cannot make it too striking. You must, however, rouse your courage, and strengthen your nerves, that they may not quail before this fearful word--SUPPER. In truth, the sort of shudder I have seen pass over the countenances of some fashionable men when it is pronounced may have been natural and unaffected enough; for who that has been eating in despite of nature from eight to eleven can find anything _appétissant_ in this word "supper" uttered at twelve. But if we could persuade Messieurs nos Maîtres, instead of injuring their health by the long fast which now precedes their dinner, during which they walk, talk, ride, drive, read, play billiards, yawn--nay, even sleep, to while away the time, and to accumulate, as it were, an appetite of inordinate dimensions;--if, instead of this, they would for one season try the experiment of dining at five o'clock, and condescend afterwards to permit themselves to be agreeable in the drawing-room, they would find their wit sparkle brighter than the champagne at their supper-tables, and moreover their mirrors would pay them the prettiest compliments in the world before they had tried the change for a fortnight. But, alas! all this is very idle speculation; for I am not a great lady, and have no power whatever to turn dull dinners into gay suppers, let me wish it as much as I may. LETTER LVIII. Hôpital des Enfans Trouvés.--Its doubtful advantages.--Story of a Child left there. Like diligent sight-seers, as we are, we have been to visit the hospital for les Enfans Trouvés. I had myself gone over every part of the establishment several years before, but to the rest of my party it was new--and certainly there is enough of strangeness in the spectacle to repay a drive to the Rue d'Enfer. Our kind friend and physician, Dr. Mojon, who by the way is one of the most amiable men and most skilful physicians in Paris, was the person who introduced us; and his acquaintance with the visiting physician, who attended us round the rooms, enabled us to obtain much interesting information. But, alas! it seems as if every question asked on this subject could only elicit a painful answer. The charity itself, noble as it is in extent, and admirable for the excellent order which reigns throughout every department of it, is, I fear, but a very doubtful good. If it tend, as it doubtless must do, to prevent the unnatural crime of infanticide, it leads directly to one hardly less hateful in the perpetration, and perhaps more cruel in its result,--namely, that of abandoning the creature whom nature, unless very fearfully distorted, renders dearer than life. Nor is it the least melancholy part of the speculation to know that one fourth of the innocent creatures, who are deposited at the average rate of above twenty each day, die within the first year of their lives. But this, after all, perhaps is no very just cause of lamentation: one of the sisters of charity who attend at the hospital told me, in reply to an inquiry respecting the education of these immortal but unvalued beings, that the charity extended not its cares beyond preserving their animal life and health--that no education whatever was provided for them, and that, unless some lucky and most rare accident occurred to change their destiny, they generally grew up in very nearly the same state as the animals bred upon the farms which received them. Peasants come on fixed days--two or three times a week, I believe--to receive the children who appear likely to live, as nurslings; and they convey them into the country, sometimes to a great distance from Paris, partly for the sake of a consideration in money which they receive, but chiefly for the value of their labour. It is a singular fact, that during the years which immediately followed the revolution, the number of children deposited at the hospital was greatly diminished; but, among those deposited, the proportion of deaths was still more greatly increased. In 1797, for instance, 3,716 children were received, 3,108 of whom died. I have lately heard a story, of which a child received at this hospital is in some sort the heroine; and as I thought it sufficiently interesting to insert in my note-book, I am tempted to transcribe it for you. The circumstances occurred during the period which immediately followed the first revolution; but the events were merely domestic, and took no colour from the times. M. le Comte de G*** was a nobleman of quiet and retired habits, whom delicate health had early induced to quit the service, the court, and the town. He resided wholly at a paternal chateau in Normandy, where his forefathers had resided before him too usefully and too unostentatiously to have suffered from the devastating effects of the revolution. The neighbours, instead of violating their property, had protected it; and in the year 1799, when my story begins, the count with his wife and one little daughter were as quietly inhabiting the mansion his ancestors had inhabited before him, as if it stood on English soil. It happened, during that year, that the wife of a peasant on his estate, who had twice before made a journey to Paris, to take a nursling from among the enfans trouvés, again lost a new-born baby, and again determined upon supplying its place from the hospital. It seemed that the poor woman was either a bad nurse or a most unlucky one; for not only had she lost three of her own, but her two foster-children also. Of this excursion, however, she prophesied a better result; for the sister of charity, when she placed in her arms the baby now consigned to her care, assured her it was the loveliest and most promising child she had seen deposited during ten years of constant attendance among the enfans trouvés. Nor were her hopes disappointed: the little Alexa (for such was the name pinned on her dress) was at five years old so beautiful, so attractive, so touching, with her large blue eyes and dark chesnut curls, that she was known and talked of for a league round Pont St. Jacques. M. and Madame de G***, with their little girl, never passed the cottage without entering to look at and caress the lovely child. Isabeau de G*** was just three years older than the little foundling; but a most close alliance subsisted between them. The young heiress, with all the pride of a juvenile senior, delighted in nothing so much as in extending her patronage and protection to the pretty Alexa; and the forsaken child gave her in return the _prémices_ of her warm heart's fondness. No Sunday evening ever passed throughout the summer without seeing all the village assembled under an enormous lime-tree, that grew upon a sort of platform in front of the primitive old mansion, with a pepper-box at each corner, dignified with the title of Château Tourelles. The circular bench which surrounded this giant tree afforded a resting-place for the old folks;--the young ones danced on the green before them--and the children rolled on the grass, and made garlands of butter-cups, and rosaries of daisies, to their hearts' content. On these occasions it was of custom immemorial that M. le Comte and Madame la Comtesse, with as many offspring as they were blessed withal, should walk down the strait pebbled walk which led from the chateau to the tree exactly as the clock struck four, there to remain for thirty minutes and no longer, smiling, nodding, and now and then gossiping a little, to all the poor bodies who chose to approach them. Of late years, Mademoiselle Isabeau had established a custom which shortened the time of her personal appearance before the eyes of her future tenants to somewhat less than one-sixth of the allotted time; for five minutes never elapsed after the little lady reached the tree, before she contrived to slip her tiny hand out of her mother's, and pounce upon the little Alexa, who, on her side, had long learned to turn her beautiful eyes towards the chateau the moment she reached the ground, nor removed them till they found Isabeau's bright face to rest upon instead. As soon as she had got possession of her pet, the young lady, who had not perhaps altogether escaped spoiling, ran off with her, without asking leave of any, and enjoyed, either in the aristocratic retirement of her own nursery, or her own play-room or her own garden, the love, admiration, and docile obedience of her little favourite. But if this made a fête for Isabeau, it was something dearer still to Alexa. It was during these Sabbath hours that the poor child learned to be aware that she knew a great many more wonderful things than either Père Gautier or Mère Françoise. She learned to read--she learned to speak as good French as Isabeau or her Parisian governess; she learned to love nothing so well as the books, and the pianoforte, and the pictures, and the flowers of her pretty patroness; and, unhappily, she learned also to dislike nothing so much as the dirty cottage and cross voice of Père Gautier, who, to say truth, did little else but scold the poor forsaken thing through every meal of the week, and all day long on a Sunday. Things went on thus without a shadow of turning till Alexa attained her tenth, and Isabeau her thirteenth year. At this time the summer Sunday evenings began to be often tarnished by the tears of the foundling as she opened her heart to her friend concerning the sufferings she endured at home. Père Gautier scolded more than ever, and Mère Françoise expected her to do the work of a woman;--in short, every day that passed made her more completely, utterly, hopelessly wretched; and at last she threw her arms round the neck of Isabeau, and told her so, adding, in a voice choked with sobs, "that she wished ... that she wished ... she could die!" They were sitting together on a small couch in the young heiress's play-room when this passionate avowal was made. The young lady disengaged herself from the arms of the weeping child, and sat for a few moments in deep meditation. "Sit still in this place, Alexa," she said at length, "till I return to you;" and having thus spoken, with an air of unusual gravity she left the room. Alexa was so accustomed to show implicit obedience to whatever her friend commanded, that she never thought of quitting the place where she was left, though she saw the sun set behind the hills through a window opposite to her, and then watched the bright horizontal beams fading into twilight, and twilight vanishing in darkness. It was strange, she thought, for her to be at the chateau at night; but Mademoiselle Isabeau had bade her sit there, and it must be right. Weary with watching, however, she first dropped her head upon the arm of the sofa, then drew her little feet up to it, and at last fell fast asleep. How long she lay there my story does not tell; but when she awoke, it was suddenly and with a violent start, for she heard the voice of Madame de G*** and felt the blaze of many lights upon her eyes. In another instant, however, they were sheltered from the painful light in the bosom of her friend. Isabeau, her eyes sparkling with even more than their usual brightness, her colour raised, and out of breath with haste and eagerness, pressed her fondly to her heart, and covered her curls with kisses; then, having recovered the power of speaking, she exclaimed, "Look up, my dear Alexa! You are to be my own sister for evermore: papa and mamma have said it. Cross Père Gautier has consented to give you up; and Mère Françoise is to have little Annette Morneau to live with her." How this had all been arranged it is needless to repeat, though the eager supplication of the daughter and the generous concessions of the parents made a very pretty scene as I heard it described; but I must not make my story too long. To avoid this, I will now slide over six years, and bring you to a fine morning in the year 1811, when Isabeau and Alexa, on returning from a ramble in the village, found Madame de G*** with an open letter in her hand, and an air of unusual excitement in her manner. "Isabeau, my dear child," she said, "your father's oldest friend, the Vicomte de C***, is returned from Spain. They are come to pass a month at V----; and this letter is to beg your father and me to bring you to them immediately, for they were in the house when you were born, my child, and they love you as if you were their own. Your father is gone to give orders about horses for to-morrow. Alexa dear, what will you do without us?" "Cannot Alexa go too, mamma?" said Isabeau. "Not this time, my dear: they speak of having their chateau filled with guests." "Oh, dearest Isabeau! do not stand to talk about me; you know I do not love strangers: let me help you to get everything ready." The party set off the next morning, and Alexa, for the first time since she became an inhabitant of Château Tourelles, was left without Isabeau, and with no other companion than their stiff governess; but she rallied her courage, and awaited their return with all the philosophy she could muster. Time and the hour wear through the longest fortnight, and at the end of this term the trio returned again. The meeting of the two friends was almost rapturous: Monsieur and Madame had the air of being _parfaitement contents_, and all things seemed to go on as usual. Important changes, however, had been decided on during this visit. The Vicomte de C. had one son. He is the hero of my story, so believe him at once to be a most charming personage in all ways--and in fact he was so. A marriage between him and Isabeau had been proposed by his father, and cordially agreed to by hers; but it was decided between them that the young people should see something more of each other before this arrangement was announced to them, for both parents felt that the character of their children deserved and demanded rather more deference to their inclinations that was generally thought necessary in family compacts of this nature. The fortnight had passed amidst much gaiety: every evening brought waltzing and music; Isabeau sang _à ravir_; but as there were three married ladies at the chateau who proclaimed themselves to be unwearying waltzers, young Jules, who was constrained to do the honours of his father's house, had never found an opportunity to dance with Isabeau excepting for the last waltz, on the last evening; and then there never were seen two young people waltzing together with more awkward restraint. Madame de G***, however, fancied that he had listened to Isabeau's songs with pleasure, and moreover observed to Monsieur son Mari that it was impossible he should not think her beautiful. Madame was quite right--Jules did think her daughter beautiful: he thought, too, that her voice was that of a syren, and that it would be easy for him to listen to her till he forgot everything else in the world. I would not be so abrupt had I more room; but as it is necessary to hasten over the ground, I must tell you at once that Isabeau, on her side, was much in the same situation. But as a young lady should never give her heart anywhere till she is asked, and in France not before her husband has politely expressed his wish to be loved as he leads her to her carriage from the altar, Isabeau took especial good care that nobody should find out the indiscretion her feelings had committed, and having not only a mind of considerable power, but also great confidence and some pride in her own strength, she felt little fear but that she should be able both to conceal and conquer a passion so every way unauthorised. Now it unfortunately happened that Jules de C. was, unlike the generality of his countrymen, extremely romantic;--but he had passed seven years in Spain, which may in some degree excuse it. His education, too, had been almost wholly domestic: he knew little of life except from books, and he had learned to dread, as the most direful misfortune that could befall him, the becoming enamoured of, and perhaps marrying, a woman who loved him not. Soon after the departure of Isabeau and her parents, the vicomte hinted to his son that he thought politeness required a return of the visit of the de G*** family; and as both himself and his lady were _un peu incommodés_ by some malady, real or supposititious, he conceived that it would be right that he, Jules, should present himself at Château Tourelles to make their excuses. The heart of Jules gave a prodigious leap; but it was not wholly a sensation of pleasure: he felt afraid of Isabeau,--he was afraid of loving her,--he remembered the cold and calm expression of countenance with which she received his farewell--his trembling farewell--at the door of the carriage. Yet still he accepted the commission; and in ten days after the return of the de G*** family, Jules de C. presented himself before them. His reception by the comte and his lady was just what may be imagined,--all kindness and cordiality of welcome. That of Isabeau was constrained and cold. She turned a little pale, but then she blushed again; and the shy Jules saw nothing but the beauty of the blush--was conscious only of the ceremonious curtsy, and the cold "Bonjour, Monsieur Jules." As for Alexa, her only feeling was that of extreme surprise. How could it be that Isabeau had seen a person so very graceful, handsome and elegant, and yet never say one word to her about him!... Isabeau must be blind, insensible, unfeeling, not to appreciate better such a being as that. Such was the effect produced by the appearance of Jules on the mind of Alexa,--the beautiful, the enthusiastic, the impassioned Alexa. From that moment a most cruel game of cross purposes began to be played at Château Tourelles. Alexa commenced by reproaching Isabeau for her coldness, and ended by confessing that she heartily wished herself as cold. Jules ceased not to adore Isabeau, but every day strengthened his conviction that she could never love him; and Isabeau, while every passing hour showed more to love in Jules, only drew from thence more reasons for combating and conquering the flame that inwardly consumed her. There could not be a greater contrast between two girls, both good, than there was both in person and mind between these two young friends. Isabeau was the prettiest little brunette in France--et c'est beaucoup dire: Alexa was, perhaps, the loveliest blonde in the world. Isabeau, with strong feelings, had a command over herself that never failed: in a good cause, she could have perished at the stake without a groan. Alexa could feel, perhaps, almost as strongly as her friend; but to combat those feelings was beyond her power: she might have died to show her love, but not to conceal it; and had some fearful doom awaited her, she would not have lived to endure it. Such being the character and position of the parties, you will easily perceive the result. Jules soon perceived the passion with which he had inspired the young and beautiful Alexa, and his heart, wounded by the uniform reserve of Isabeau, repaid her with a warmth of gratitude, which though not love, was easily mistaken for it by both the innocent rivals. Poor Jules saw that it was, and already felt his honour engaged to ratify hopes which he had never intended to raise. Repeatedly he determined to leave the chateau, and never to see either of its lovely inmates more; but whenever he hinted at such an intention, M. and Madame de G*** opposed it in such a manner that it seemed impossible to persevere in it. They, good souls, were perfectly satisfied with the aspect of affairs: Isabeau was perhaps a little pale, but lovelier than ever; and the eyes of Jules were so often fixed upon her, that there could be no doubt as to his feelings. They were very right,--yet, alas! they were very wrong too: but the situation of Alexa put her so completely out of all question of marriage with a gentleman _d'une haute naissance_, that they never even remembered that she too was constantly with Jules. About three weeks had passed in this mischief-working manner, when Isabeau, who clearly saw traces of suffering on the handsome face of poor Jules, believing firmly that it arose from the probable difficulty of obtaining his high-born father's consent to his marriage with a foundling, determined to put every imaginable means in requisition to assist him. Alexa had upon her breast a mark, evidently produced by gunpowder. Her nurse, and everybody else who had seen it, declared it to be perfectly shapeless, and probably a failure from the awkwardness of some one who had intended to impress a cipher there; but Isabeau had a hundred times examined it, and as often declared it to be a coronet. Hitherto this notion had only been a source of mirth to both of them, but now it became a theme of incessant and most anxious meditation to Isabeau. She remembered to have heard that when a child is deposited at the Foundling Hospital of Paris, everything, whether clothes or token, which is left with it, is preserved and registered, with the name and the date of the reception, in order, if reclamation be made within a certain time, that all assistance possible shall be given for the identification. What space this "certain time" included Isabeau knew not, but she fancied that it could not be less than twenty years; and with this persuasion she determined to set about an inquiry that might at least lead to the knowledge either that some particular tokens had been left with Alexa, or that there were none. With this sort of feverish dream working in her head, Isabeau rose almost before daylight one morning, and escaping the observation of every one, let herself out by the door of a salon which opened on the terrace, and hastened to the abode of Mère Françoise. It was some time before she could make the old woman understand her object; but when she did, she declared herself ready to do all and everything Mademoiselle desired for her "dear baby," as she persisted to call the tall, the graceful, the beautiful Alexa. As Isabeau had a good deal of trouble to make her plans and projects clearly understood to Mère Françoise, it will be better not to relate particularly what passed between them: suffice it to say, that by dint of much repetition and a tolerably heavy purse, Françoise at last agreed to set off for Paris on the following morning, "without telling a living soul what for." Such were the conditions enforced; which were the more easily adhered to, because cross Père Gautier had grumbled himself into his grave some years before. On reaching the hospital, Françoise made her demand, "de la part d'une grande dame," for any token which they possessed relative to a baby taken ... &c. &c. &c. The first answer she received was, that the time of limitation for such inquiries had long expired; and she was on the point of leaving the bureau, all hope of intelligence abandoned, when an old sister of charity who chanced to be there for some message from the superior, and who had listened to her inquiries and all the particulars thus rehearsed, stopped her by saying, that it was odd enough two great ladies should send to the hospital with inquiries for the same child. "But, however," she added, "it can't much matter now to either of them, for the baby died before it was a twelvemonth old." "Died!" screamed Françoise: "why, I saw her but four days ago, and a more beautiful creature the sun never shone upon." An explanation ensued, not very clear in all its parts, for there had evidently been some blunder; but it plainly appeared, that within a year after the child was sent to nurse, inquiries had been made at the hospital for a baby bearing the singular name of Alexa, and stating that various articles were left with her expressly to ensure the power of recognition. An address to a peasant in the country had been given to the persons who had made these inquiries, and application was immediately made to her: but she stated that the baby she had received from the hospital at the time named had died three months after she took it; but what name she had received with it she could not remember, as she called it Marie, after the baby she had lost. It was evident from this statement that a mistake had been made between the two women, who had each taken a female foundling into the country on the same day. It was more easy, however, to hit the blunder than to repair it. Communication was immediately held with some of the _chefs_ of the establishment; who having put in action every imaginable contrivance to discover any traces which might remain of the persons who had before inquired for the babe named Alexa, at length got hold of a man who had often acted as commissionnaire to the establishment, and who said he remembered _about that time_ to have taken letters from the hospital to a fine hôtel near the Elysée Bourbon. This man was immediately conveyed to the Elysée Bourbon, and without hesitation pointed out the mansion to which he had been sent. It was inhabited by an English gentleman blessed with a family of twelve children, and who assured the gentleman entrusted with the inquiry that he had not only never deposited any of his children at the Enfans Trouvés, but that he could not give them the slightest assistance in discovering whether any of his predecessors in that mansion had done so. Discouraged, but not chilled in the ardour of his pursuit, the worthy gentleman proceeded to the proprietor of the hôtel: he had recently purchased it; from him he repaired to the person from whom he had bought it. He was only an agent; but at last, by means of indefatigable exertion during three days, he discovered that the individual who must have inhabited the hôtel when these messages were stated to have been sent thither from the Enfans Trouvés was a Russian nobleman of high rank, who, it was believed, was now residing at St. Petersburg. His name and title, however, were both remembered; and these, with a document stating all that was known of the transaction, were delivered to Mère Françoise, who, hardly knowing if she had succeeded or failed in her mission, returned to her young employer within ten days of the time she left her. Isabeau, generously as her noble heart beat at learning what she could not but consider as a favourable report of her embassy, did feel nevertheless something like a pang when she remembered to what this success would lead. But she mastered it, and, with all the energy of her character, instantly set to work to pursue her enterprise to the end. It was certainly a relief to her when Jules, after passing a month of utter misery in the society of the woman he adored, took his leave. The old people were still perfectly satisfied: it was not the young man's business, they said, to break through the reserve which his parents had enjoined, and a few days would doubtless bring letters from them which would finally settle the business. Alexa saw him depart with an aching heart; but she believed that he was returning home only to ask his father's consent to their union. Isabeau fed her hopes, for she too believed that the young man's heart was given to Alexa. During this time Isabeau concealed her hope of discovering the parents of the foundling from all. Day after day wore away, and brought no tidings from Jules. The hope of Alexa gave way before this cruel silence. The circumstances of her birth, which rankled at her heart more deeply than even her friend imagined, now came before her in a more dreadful shape than ever. Sin, shame, and misery seemed to her the only _dot_ she had to bring in marriage, and her mind brooded over this terrible idea till it overpowered every other; her love seemed to sink before it, and, after a sleepless night of wretched meditation, she determined never to bring disgrace upon a husband--she heroically determined never to marry. As she was opening her heart on this sad subject to Isabeau, and repeating to her with great solemnity the resolution she had taken, a courier covered with dust galloped up to the door of the chateau. Isabeau instantly suspected the truth, but could only say as she kissed the fair forehead of the foundling, "Look up, my Alexa!... You shall be happy at least." Before any explanation of these words could even be asked for, a splendid travelling equipage stopped at the door, and, according to the rule in all such cases, a beautiful lady descended from it, handed out by a gentleman of princely rank: in brief, for I cannot tell you one half his titles and honours, or one quarter of the circumstances which had led to the leaving their only child at the Hôpital des Enfans Trouvés, Alexa was proved to be the sole and most lawful idol and heiress of this noble pair. The wonder and joy, and all that, you must guess: but poor Isabeau!... O! that all this happiness could but have fallen upon them before she had seen Jules de C----! On the following morning, while Alexa, seated between her parents, was telling them all she owed to Isabeau, the door of the apartment opened and the young Jules entered. This was the moment at which the happy girl felt the value of all she had gained with the most full and perfect consciousness of felicity. Her bitter humiliation was changed to triumph; but Jules saw it not--he heard not the pompous titles of her father as she proudly rehearsed them, but, in a voice choking with emotion, he stammered out--"Où donc est Isabeau?" Alexa was too happy, too gloriously happy, to heed his want of politeness, but gaily exclaiming, "Pardon, maman!" she left the room to seek for her friend. Jules was indeed come on no trifling errand. His father, having waited in vain for some expression of his feelings respecting the charming bride he intended for him, at last informed him of his engagement, for the purpose of discovering whether the young man were actually made of ice or no. On this point he was speedily satisfied; for the intelligence robbed the timid lover of all control over his feelings, and the father had the great pleasure of perceiving that his son was as distractedly in love as he could possibly desire. As to his doubts and his fears, the experienced vicomte laughed them to scorn. "Only let her see you as you look now, Jules," said the proud father, "and she will not disobey her parents, I will answer for it. Go to her, my son, and set your heart at ease at once." With a courage almost as desperate as that which leads a man firm and erect to the scaffold, Jules determined to follow this advice, and arrived at Château Tourelles without having once thought of poor Alexa and her tell-tale eyes by the way;--nay, even when he saw her before him, his only sensation was that of impatient agony that the moment which was to decide upon his destiny was still delayed. As Alexa opened the door to seek her friend, she appeared, and they returned together. At the unexpected sight of Jules, Isabeau lost her self-possession, and sank nearly fainting on a chair. In an instant he was at her feet. "Isabeau!" he exclaimed, in a voice at once solemn and impassioned--"Isabeau! I adore you--speak my fate in one word!--Isabeau! can you love me?" The noble strangers had already left the room. They perceived that there was some knotty point to be explained upon which their presence could throw no light. They would have led their daughter with them, but she lingered. "One moment ... and I will follow you," she said. Then turning to her almost fainting friend, she exclaimed, "You love him, Isabeau!--and it is I who have divided you!"... She seized a hand of each, and joining them together, bent her head upon them and kissed them both. "God for ever bless you, perfect friend!... I am still too happy!... Believe me, Jules,--believe me, Isabeau,--I am happy--oh! too happy!" The arms that were thrown round them both, relaxed as she uttered these words, and she fell to the ground. Alexa never spoke again. She breathed faintly for a few hours, and then expired,--the victim of intense feelings, too long and too severely tried. * * * * * This story, almost verbally as I have repeated it to you, was told me by a lady who assured me that she knew all the leading facts to be true; though she confessed that she was obliged to pass rather slightly over some of the details, from not remembering them perfectly. If the catastrophe be indeed true, I think it may be doubted whether the poor Alexa died from sorrow or from joy. LETTER LIX. Procès Monstre.--Dislike of the Prisoners to the ceremony of Trial.--Société des Droits de l'Homme.--Names given to the Sections.--Kitchen and Nursery Literature.--Anecdote of Lagrange.--Republican Law. It is a long time since I have permitted a word to escape me about the trial of trials; but do not therefore imagine that we are as free from it and its daily echo as I have kindly suffered you to be. It really appears to me, after all, that this monster trial is only monstrous because the prisoners do not like to be tried. There may perhaps have been some few legal incongruities in the manner of proceeding, arising very naturally from the difficulty of ascertaining exactly what the law is, in a country so often subjected to revolution as this has been. I own I have not yet made out completely to my own satisfaction, whether these gentry were accused in the first instance of high treason, or whether the whole proceedings rest upon an indictment for a breach of the peace. It is however clear enough, Heaven knows, both from evidence and from their own avowals, that if they were not arraigned for high treason, many of them were unquestionably guilty of it; and as they have all repeatedly proclaimed that it was their wish to stand or fall together, I confess that I see nothing very monstrous in treating them all as traitors. It is only within these few last hours that I have been made to understand what object these simultaneous risings in April 1834 had in view. The document which has been now put into my hands appeared, I believe, in all the papers; but it was to me, at least, one of the thousand things that the eye glances over without taking the trouble of communicating to the mind what it finds. I will not take it for granted, however, that you are as ignorant or unobservant as myself, and therefore I shall not recite to you the evidence I have been just reading to prove that the union calling itself "La Société des Droits de l'Homme" was in fact the mainspring of the whole enterprise; but in case the expressive titles given by the central committee of this association to its different sections should have escaped you, I will transcribe them here,--or rather a part of them, for they are numerous enough to exhaust your patience, and mine too, were I to give them all. Among them, I find as pet and endearing names for their separate bands of employés the following: Section Marat, Section Robespierre, Section Quatre-vingt-treize, Section des Jacobins; Section de Guerre aux Châteaux--Abolition de la Propriété--Mort aux Tyrans--Des Piques--Canon d'Alarme--Tocsin--Barricade St. Méri,--and one which when it was given was only prophetic--Section de l'Insurrection de Lyon. These speak pretty plainly what sort of REFORM these men were preparing for France; and the trying those belonging to them who were taken with arms in their hands in open rebellion against the existing government, as traitors, cannot very justly, I think, be stigmatised as an act of tyranny, or in any other sense as a monstrous act. The most monstrous part of the business is their conceiving (as the most conspicuous among them declare they do) that their refusing to plead, or, as they are pleased to call it, "refusing to take any part in the proceedings," was, or ought to be, reason sufficient for immediately stopping all such proceedings against them. These persons have been caught, with arms in their hands, in the very fact of enticing their fellow-citizens into overt acts of rebellion; but because they do not choose to answer when they are called upon, the court ordained to try them are stigmatised as monsters and assassins for not dismissing them untried! If this is to succeed, we shall find the fashion obtain vogue amongst us, more rapidly than any of Madame Leroy's. Where is the murderer arraigned for his life who would not choose to make essay of so easy a method of escaping from the necessity of answering for his crime? The trick is well imagined, and the degree of grave attention with which its availability is canvassed--out of doors at least--furnishes an excellent specimen of the confusion of intellect likely to ensue from confusion of laws amidst a population greatly given to the study of politics. Never was there a finer opportunity for revolution and anarchy to take a lesson than the present. It is, I think, impossible for a mere looker-on, unbiassed by party or personal feelings of any kind, to deny that the government of Louis-Philippe is acting at this trying juncture with consummate courage, wisdom, and justice: but it is equally impossible not to perceive what revolution and revolt have done towards turning lawful power into tyranny. This is and ever must be inevitable wherever there is a hope existing that the government which follows the convulsion shall be permanent. Fresh convulsions may arise--renewed tumult, destruction of property and risk of life may ensue; but at last it must happen that some strong hand shall seize the helm, and keep the reeling vessel to her stays, without heeding whether the grasp he has got of her be taken in conformity to received tactics or not. Hardly a day passes that I do not hear of some proof of increased vigour on the part of the present government of France; and though I, for one, am certainly very far from approving the public acts which have given the present dynasty its power, I cannot but admire the strength and ability with which it is sustained. The example, however, can avail but little to the legitimate monarchs who still occupy the thrones their forefathers occupied before them. No legitimate sovereign, possessing no power beyond what long-established law and precedent have given him, could dare show equal boldness. A king chosen in a rebellion is alone capable of governing rebels: and happy is it for the hot-headed jeunes gens of France that they have chanced to hit upon a prince who is neither a parvenu nor a mere soldier! The first would have had no lingering kindness at all for the still-remembered glories of the land; and the last, instead of trying them by the Chamber of Peers, would have had them up by fifties to a drum-head court martial, and probably have ordered the most troublesome among them to be picked off by their comrades, as an exercise at sharp-shooting, and as a useful example of military promptitude and decision. The present government has indeed many things in its favour. The absence of every species of weakness and pusillanimity in the advisers of the crown is one; and the outrageous conduct of its enemies is another. It is easy to perceive in the journals, and indeed in all the periodical publications which have been hitherto considered as belonging to the opposition, a gradual giving way before the overwhelming force of expediency. Conciliatory words come dropping in to the steady centre from côté droit and from côté gauche; and the louder the factious rebels roar around them, the firmer does the phalanx in which rests all the real strength of the country knit itself together. The people of France are fully awakened to the feeling which Sheridan so strongly expresses when he says, that "the altar of liberty has been begrimed at once with blood and mire," and they are disposed to look towards other altars for their protection. All the world are sick of politics in England; and all the world are sick of politics in France. It is the same in Spain, the same in Italy, the same in Germany, the same in Russia. The quiet and peaceably-disposed are wearied, worried, tormented, and almost stunned, by the ceaseless jarring produced by the confusion into which bad men have contrived to throw all the elements of social life. Chaos seems come again--a moral chaos, far worse for the poor animal called man than any that a comet's tail could lash the earth into. I assure you I often feel the most unfeigned longing to be out of reach of every sight and sound which must perforce mix up questions of government with all my womanly meditations on lesser things; but the necessity _de parler politique_ seems like an evil spirit that follows whithersoever you go. I often think, that among all the revolutions and rumours of revolutions which have troubled the earth, there is not one so remarkable as that produced on conversation within the last thirty years. I speak not, however, only of that important branch of it--"the polite conversation of sensible women," but of all the talk from garret to cellar throughout the world. Go where you will, it is the same; every living soul seems persuaded that it is his or her particular business to assist in arranging the political condition of Europe. A friend of mine entered her nursery not long ago, and spied among her baby-linen a number of the Westminster Quarterly Review. "What is this, Betty?" said she. "It is only a book, ma'am, that John lent me to read," answered the maid. "Upon my word, Betty," replied her mistress, "I think you would be much better employed in nursing the child than in reading books which you cannot understand." "It does not hinder me from nursing the child at all," rejoined the enlightened young woman, "for I read as the baby lies in my lap; and as for understanding it, I don't fear about that, for John says it is no more than what it is the duty of everybody to understand." So political we are, and political we must be--for John says so. Wherefore I will tell you a little anecdote apropos of the Procès Monstre. An English friend of mine was in the Court of Peers the other day, when the prisoner Lagrange became so noisy and troublesome that it was found necessary to remove him. He had begun to utter in a loud voice, which was evidently intended to overpower the proceedings of the court, a pompous and inflammatory harangue, accompanied with much vehement action. His fellow-prisoners listened, and gazed at him with the most unequivocal marks of wondering admiration, while the court vainly endeavoured to procure order and silence. "Remove the prisoner Lagrange!" was at last spoken by the president--and the guards proceeded to obey. The orator struggled violently, continuing, however, all the time to pour forth his rhapsody. "Yes!" he cried,--"yes, my countrymen! we are here as a sacrifice. Behold our bosoms, tyrants! ... plunge your assassin daggers in our breasts! we are your victims ... ay, doom us all to death, we are ready--five hundred French bosoms are ready to...." Here he came to a dead stop: his struggles, too, suddenly ceased.... He had dropped his cap,--the cap which not only performed the honourable office of sheltering the exterior of his patriotic head, but of bearing within its crown the written product of that head's inspired eloquence! It was in vain that he eagerly looked for it beneath the feet of his guards; the cap had been already kicked by the crowd far beyond his reach, and the bereaved orator permitted himself to be led away as quiet as a lamb. The gentleman who related this circumstance to me added, that he looked into several papers the following day, expecting to see it mentioned; but he could not find it, and expressed his surprise to a friend who had accompanied him into court, and who had also seen and enjoyed the jest, that so laughable a circumstance had not been noticed. "That would not do at all, I assure you," replied his friend, who was a Frenchman, and understood the politics of the free press perfectly; "there is hardly one of them who would not be afraid of making a joke of anything respecting _les prévenus d'Avril_." Before I take my final leave of these precious prévenus, I must give you an extract from a curious volume lent me by my kind friend M. J***, containing a table of the law reports inserted in the Bulletin of the Laws of the Republic. I have found among them ordinances more tyrannical than ever despot passed for the purpose of depriving of all civil rights his fellow-men; but the one I am about to give you is certainly peculiarly applicable to the question of allowing prisoners to choose their counsel from among persons not belonging to the bar,--a question which has been setting all the hot heads of Paris in a flame. "_Loi concernant le Tribunal Révolutionnaire du 22 Prairial, l'an deuxième de la République Française une et indivisible._ "La loi donne pour défenseurs aux patriotes calomniés, (the word 'accused' was too harsh to use in the case of these bloody patriots,)--La loi donne pour défenseurs aux patriotes calomniés, des jurés patriotes. Elle n'en accorde point aux conspirateurs." What would the LIBERALS of Europe have said of King Louis-Philippe, had he acted upon this republican principle? If he had, he might perhaps have said fairly enough-- "Cæsar does never wrong but with just cause," for they have chosen to take their defence into their own hands; but how the pure patriots of l'an deuxième would explain the principle on which they acted, it would require a republican to tell. LETTER LX. Memoirs of M. de Châteaubriand.--The Readings at L'Abbaye-aux-Bois.--Account of these in the French Newspapers and Reviews.--Morning at the Abbaye to hear a portion of these Memoirs.--The Visit to Prague. In several visits which we have lately made to the ever-delightful Abbaye-aux-Bois, the question has been started, as to the possibility or impossibility of my being permitted to be present there "aux lectures des Mémoires de M. de Châteaubriand." The apartment of my agreeable friend and countrywoman, Miss Clarke, also in this same charming Abbaye, was the scene of more than one of these anxious consultations. Against my wishes--for I really was hardly presumptuous enough to have hopes--was the fact that these lectures, so closely private, yet so publicly talked of and envied, were for the present over--nay, even that the gentleman who had been the reader was not in Paris. But what cannot zealous kindness effect? Madame Récamier took my cause in hand, and ... in a word, a day was appointed for me and my daughters to enjoy this greatly-desired indulgence. Before telling you the result of this appointment, I must give you some particulars respecting these Memoirs, not so much apropos of myself and my flattering introduction to them, as from being more interesting in the way of Paris literary intelligence than anything I have met with. The existence of these Memoirs is of course well known in England; but the circumstance of their having been read _chez Madame Récamier_, to a very select number of the noble author's friends, is perhaps not so--at least, not generally; and the extraordinary degree of sensation which this produced in the literary world of Paris was what I am quite sure you can have no idea of. This is the more remarkable from the well-known politics of M. de Châteaubriand not being those of the day. The circumstances connected with the reading of these Memoirs, and the effect produced on the public by the peep got at them through those who were present, have been brought together into a very interesting volume, containing articles from most of the literary periodicals of France, each one giving to its readers the best account it had been able to obtain of these "lectures de l'Abbaye." Among the articles thus brought together, are _morceaux_ from the pens of every political party in France; but there is not one of them that does not render cordial--I might say, fervent homage to the high reputation, both literary and political, of the Vicomte de Châteaubriand. There is a general preface to this volume, from the pen of M. Nisard, full of enthusiasm for the subject, and giving an animated and animating account of all the circumstances attending the readings, and of the different publications respecting them which followed. It appears that the most earnest entreaties have been very generally addressed to M. de Châteaubriand to induce him to publish these Memoirs during his lifetime, but hitherto without effect. There is something in his reasonings on the subject equally touching and true: nevertheless, it is impossible not to lament that one cannot wish for a work so every way full of interest, without wishing at the same time that one of the most amiable men in the world should be removed out of it. All those who are admitted to his circle must, I am very sure, most heartily wish never to see any more of his Memoirs than what he may be pleased himself to show them: but he has found out a way to make the world at large look for his death as for a most agreeable event. Notwithstanding all his reasonings, I think he is wrong. Those who have seen the whole, or nearly the whole of this work, declare it to be both the most important and the most able that he has composed; and embracing as it does the most interesting epoch of the world's history, and coming from the hand of one who has played so varied and distinguished a part in it, we can hardly doubt that it is so. Of all the different articles which compose the volume entitled "Lectures des Mémoires de M. de Châteaubriand," the most interesting perhaps (always excepting some fragments from the Memoirs themselves) are the preface of M. Nisard, and an extract from the Revue du Midi, from the pen of M. de Lavergne. I must indulge you with some short extracts from both. M. Nisard says-- "Depuis de longues années, M. de Châteaubriand travaille à ses Mémoires, avec le dessein de ne les laisser publier qu'après sa mort. Au plus fort des affaires, quand il était ministre, ambassadeur, il oubliait les petites et les grandes tracasseries en écrivant quelques pages de ce livre de prédilection."... "C'est le livre que M. de Châteaubriand aura le plus aimé, et, chose étrange! c'est le livre en qui M. de Châteaubriand ne veut pas être glorifié de son vivant." He then goes on to speak of the manner in which _the readings_ commenced ... and then says,--"Cette lecture fut un triomphe; ceux qui avaient été de la fête nous la racontèrent, à nous qui n'en étions pas, et qui déplorions que le salon de Madame Récamier, cette femme qui s'est fait une gloire de bonté et de grâce, ne fut pas grand comme la plaine de Sunium. La presse littéraire alla demander à l'illustre écrivain quelques lignes, qu'elle encadra dans de chaudes apologies: il y eut un moment où toute la littérature ne fut que l'annonce et la bonne nouvelle d'un ouvrage inédit." M. Nisard, as he says, "n'était pas de la fête;" but he was admitted to a privilege perhaps more desirable still--namely, that of reading some portion of this precious MS. in the deep repose of the author's own study. He gives a very animated picture of this visit. "... J'osai demander à M. de Châteaubriand la grace de me recevoir quelques heures chez lui, et là, pendant qu'il écrirait ou dicterait, de m'abandonner son porte-feuille et de me laisser m'y plonger à discretion ... il y consentit. Au jour fixe, j'allai Rue d'Enfer: le coeur me battait; je suis encore assez jeune pour sentir des mouvemens intérieurs à l'approche d'une telle joie. M. de Châteaubriand fit demander son manuscrit. Il y en a trois grands porte-feuilles: _ceux-là, nul ne les lui disputera_; ni les révolutions, ni les caprices de roi, ne les lui peuvent donner ni reprendre. "Il eut la bonté de me lire les sommaires des chapitres--Lequel choisir, lequel préférer? ... je ne l'arrêtais pas dans la lecture, je ne disais rien ... enfin il en vint au voyage à Prague. Une grosse et sotte interjection me trahit; du fruit défendu c'était la partie la plus défendue. Je demandai donc le voyage à Prague. M. de Châteaubriand sourit, et me tendait le manuscrit.... Je mets quelque vanité à rappeler ces détails, bien que je tienne à ce qu'on sache bien que j'ai été encore plus heureux que vain d'une telle faveur; mais c'est peut-être le meilleur prix que j'ai reçu encore de quelques habitudes de dignité littéraire, et à ce titre il doit m'être pardonné de m'en enorgueillir. "Quand j'eus le précieux manuscrit, je m'accoudai sur la table, et me mis a la lecture avec une avidité recueillie.... Quelquefois, à la fin des chapitres, regardant par-dessus mes feuilles l'illustre écrivain appliqué à son minutieux travail de révision, effaçant, puis, après quelque incertitude, écrivant avec lenteur une phrase en surcharge, et l'effaçant à moitié écrite, je voyais l'imagination et le sens aux prises. Quand, après mes deux heures de délices, amusé, instruit, intéressé, transporté, ayant passé du rire aux larmes, et des larmes au rire, ayant vu tour à tour, dans sa plus grande naïveté de sentimens, le poète, le diplomate, le voyageur, le pèlerin, le philosophe, je me suis jeté sur la main de M. de Châteaubriand, et lui ai bredouillé quelques paroles de gratitude tendre et profonde: ni lui ni moi n'étions gênés, je vous jure;--moi, parce que je donnais cours à un sentiment vrai; lui, parce qu'à ce moment-là il voulait bien mesurer la valeur de mes louanges sur leur sincérité." This is, I think, very well _conté_; and as I have myself been _de la fête_, and heard read precisely this same admirable _morceau_, _le Voyage à Prague_, I can venture to say that the feeling expressed is in no degree exaggerated. "Que puis-je dire maintenant de ces Mémoires?" ... he continues. "Sur le voyage à Prague ma plume est gênée; je ne me crois pas le droit de trahir le secret de M. de Châteaubriand--mais qui est-ce qui l'ayant suivi dans tous les actes de sa glorieuse vie, ne devine pas d'avance, sauf les détails secrets, et les milles beautés de rédaction, quelle peut être la pensée de cette partie des Mémoires! Qui ne sait à merveille qu'on y trouvera la vérité pour tout le monde, douce pour ceux qui ont beaucoup perdu et beaucoup souffert, dure pour les médiocrités importantes, qui se disputent les ministères et les ambassades auprès d'une royauté qui ne peut plus même donner de croix d'honneur? Qui est-ce qui ne s'attend à des lamentations sublimes sur des infortunes inouïes, à des attendrissemens de coeur sur toutes les misères de l'exil; sur le délabrement des palais où gîtent les royautés déchues; sur ces longs corridors éclairés par un quinquet à chaque bout, comme un corps de garde, ou un cloître; sur ces salles des gardes sans gardes; sur ces antichambres sans sièges pour s'asseoir; sur ces serviteurs rares, dont un seul fait l'étiquette qui autrefois en occupait dix; sur les malheurs toujours plus grands que les malheureux, qu'on plaint de loin pour ceux qui les souffrent, et de près pour soi-même?... Et puis après la politique vient la poésie; après les leçons sévères, les descriptions riantes, les observations de voyage, fines, piquantes, comme si le voyageur n'avait pas causé la veille avec un vieux roi d'un royaume perdu...." I have given you this passage because it describes better than I could do myself the admirable narrative which I had the pleasure of hearing. M. Nisard says much more about it, and with equal truth; but I will only add his concluding words--"Voilà le voyage à Prague.... J'y ai été remué au plus profond et au meilleur de mon coeur par les choses touchantes, et j'ai pleuré sur la légitimité tombée, quoique n'ayant jamais compris cet ordre d'idées, et y étant resté, toute ma jeunesse, non seulement étranger, mais hostile." I have transcribed this last observation for the purpose of proving to you that the admiration inspired by this work of M. de Châteaubriand's is not the result of party feeling, but in complete defiance of it. In the "Revue de Paris" for March 1834 is an extremely interesting article from M. Janin, who was present, I presume, at the readings, and who must have been permitted, I think, now and then to peep over the shoulder of the reader, with a pencil in his hand, for he gives many short but brilliant passages from different parts of the work. This gentlemen states, upon what authority he does not say, that English speculators have already purchased the work at the enormous price of 25,000 francs for each volume. It already consists of twelve volumes, which makes the purchase amount to £12,000 sterling,--a very large sum, even if the acquisition could be made immediately available; but as we must hope that many years may elapse before it becomes so, it appears hardly credible that this statement should be correct. Whenever these Memoirs are published, however, there can be no doubt of the eagerness with which they will be read. M. Janin remarks, that "M. de Châteaubriand, en ne croyant écrire que ses mémoires, aura écrit en effet l'histoire de son siècle;" and adds, "D'où l'on peut prédire, que si jamais une époque n'a été plus inabordable pour un historien, jamais aussi une époque n'aura eu une histoire plus complète et plus admirablement écrite que la nôtre. Songez donc, que pendant que M. de Châteaubriand fait ses mémoires, M. de Talleyrand écrit aussi ses mémoires. M. de Châteaubriand et M. de Talleyrand attelés l'un et l'autre à la même époque!--l'un qui en représente le sens poétique et royaliste, l'autre qui en est l'expression politique et utilitaire: l'un l'héritier de Bossuet, le conservateur du principe religieux; l'autre l'héritier de Voltaire, et qui ne s'est jamais prosterné que devant le doute, cette grande certitude de l'histoire: l'un enthousiaste, l'autre ironique; l'un éloquent partout, l'autre éloquent dans son fauteuil, au coin de son feu: l'un homme de génie, et qui le prouve; l'autre qui a bien voulu laisser croire qu'il était un homme d'esprit: celui-ci plein de l'amour de l'humanité, celui-là moins égoïste qu'on ne le croit; celui-ci bon, celui-là moins méchant qu'il ne veut le paraître: celui-ci allant par sauts et par bonds, impétueux comme un tonnerre, ou comme une phrase de l'Ecriture; celui-là qui boite, et qui arrive toujours le premier: celui-ci qui se montre toujours quand l'autre se cache, qui parle quand l'autre se tait; l'autre qui arrive toujours quand il faut arriver, qu'on ne voit guère, qu'on n'entend guère, qui est partout, qui voit tout, qui sait presque tout: l'un qui a des partisans, des enthousiastes, des admirateurs; l'autre qui n'a que des flatteurs, des parens, et des valets: l'un aimé, adoré, chanté; l'autre à peine redouté: l'un toujours jeune, l'autre toujours vieux; l'un toujours battu, l'autre toujours vainqueur; l'un victime des causes perdues, l'autre héros des causes gagnées; l'un qui mourra on ne sait où, l'autre qui mourra prince, et dans sa maison, avec un archevêque à son chevet; l'un grand écrivain à coup sûr, l'autre qui est un grand écrivain sans qu'on s'en doute; l'un qui a écrit ses mémoires pour les lire à ses amis, l'autre qui a écrit ses mémoires pour les cacher à ses amis; l'un qui ne les publie pas par caprice, l'autre qui ne les publie pas, parce qu'ils ne seront terminés que huit jours après sa mort; l'un qui a vu de haut et de loin, l'autre qui a vu d'en bas et de près: l'un qui a été le premier gentilhomme de l'histoire contemporaine, qui l'a vue en habit et toute parée; l'autre qui en a été le valet de chambre, et qui en sait toutes les plaies cachées;--l'un qu'on appelle Châteaubriand, l'autre qu'on appelle le Prince de Bénévent. Tels sont les deux hommes que le dix-neuvième siècle désigne à l'avance comme ses deux juges les plus redoutables, comme ses deux appréciateurs les plus dangereux, comme les deux historiens opposés, sur lesquels la postérité le jugera." This parallel, though rather long perhaps, is very clever, and, à ce qu'on dit, very just. Though my extracts from this very interesting but not widely-circulated volume have already run to a greater length than I intended, I cannot close it without giving you a small portion of M. de Lavergne's animated recital of the scene at the old Abbaye-aux-Bois;--an Abbaye, by the way, still partly inhabited by a society of nuns, and whose garden is sacred to them alone, though a portion of the large building which overlooks it is the property of Madame Récamier. "A une des extrémités de Paris on trouve un monument d'une architecture simple et sévère. La cour d'entrée est fermée par une grille, et sur cette grille s'élève une croix. La paix monastique règne dans les cours, dans les escaliers, dans les corridors; mais sous les saintes voûtes de ce lieu se cachent aussi d'élégans réduits qui s'ouvrent par intervalle aux bruits du monde. Cette habitation se nomme l'Abbaye-aux-Bois,--nom pittoresque d'où s'exhale je ne sais quel parfum d'ombre et de mystère, comme si le couvent et la forêt y confondaient leurs paisibles harmonies. Or, dans un des angles de cet édifice il y a un salon que je veux décrire, moi aussi, car il reparaît bien souvent dans mes rêves. Vous connaissez le tableau de Corinne de Gérard: Corinne est assise au Cap Misène, sur un rocher, sa belle tête levée vers le ciel, son beau bras tombant vers la terre, avec sa lyre détendue; le chant vient de finir, mais l'inspiration illumine encore ses regards divins.... Ce tableau couvre tout un des murs du salon, en face la cheminée avec une glace, des girandoles, et des fleurs.... Des deux autres murs, l'un est percé de deux fenêtres qui laissent voir les tranquilles jardins de l'Abbaye, l'autre disparaît presque tout entier sous des rayons chargés de livres. Des meubles élégans sont épars çà et là, avec un gracieux désordre. Dans un des coins, la porte qui s'entr'ouvre, et dans l'autre une harpe qui attend. "Je vivrais des milliers d'années que je n'oublierais jamais rien de ce que j'ai vu là.... D'autres ont rapporté des courses de leur jeunesse le souvenir d'un site grandiose, ou d'une ruine monumentale; moi, je n'ai vu ni la Grèce ... etc: ... mais il m'a été ouvert ce salon de l'Europe et du siècle, où l'air est en quelque sorte chargé de gloire et de génie.... Là respire encore l'âme enthousiaste de Madame de Staël; là reparaît, à l'imagination qui l'évoque, la figure mélancolique et pâle de Benjamin Constant; là retentit la parole vibrante et libre du grand Foy. Tous ces illustres morts viennent faire cortége à celle qui fut leur amie; car cet appartement est celui d'une femme célèbre dont on a déjà deviné le nom. Malgré cette pudeur de renommée qui la fait ainsi se cacher dans le silence, Madame Récamier appartient à l'histoire; c'est désormais un de ces beaux noms de femme qui brillent dans la couronne des grandes époques ainsi que des perles sur un bandeau. Révélée au monde par sa beauté, elle l'a charmé peut-être plus encore par les graces de son esprit et de son coeur. Mêlée par de hautes amitiés aux plus grands événemens de l'époque, elle en a traversé les vicissitudes sans en connaître les souillures, et, dans sa vie toute d'idéal, le malheur même et l'exil n'ont été pour elle que des charmes de plus. A la voir aujourd'hui si harmonieuse et si sereine, on dirait que les orages de la vie n'ont jamais approché de ses jours; à la voir si simple et si bienveillante, on dirait que sa célébrité n'est qu'un songe, et que les plus superbes fronts de la France moderne n'ont jamais fléchi devant elle. Aimée des poètes, des grands, et du Ciel, c'est à-la-fois Laure, Eléonore et Béatrix, dont Pétrarque, Tasse et le Dante ont immortalisé les noms. "Un jour de Février dernier il y avait dans le salon de Madame Récamier une réunion convoquée pour une lecture. L'assemblée était bien peu nombreuse, et il n'est pas d'homme si haut placé par le rang ou par le génie qui n'eût été fier de s'y trouver. A côté d'un Montmorency, d'un Larochefoucauld, et d'un Noailles, représentans de la vieille noblesse française, s'asseyaient leurs égaux par la noblesse du talent, cet autre hasard de la naissance; Saint-Beuve et Quinet, Gerbet et Dubois, Lenormand et Ampère: vous y étiez aussi, Ballanche!... "Il parut enfin celui dont le nom avait réuni un tel auditoire, et toutes les têtes s'inclinèrent.... Son front avait toute la dignité des cheveux gris, mais ses yeux vifs brillaient de jeunesse. Il portait à la main, comme un pèlerin ou un soldat, un paquet enveloppé dans un mouchoir de soie. Cette simplicité me parut merveilleuse dans un pareil sujet; car ce noble vieillard, c'était l'auteur des Martyrs, du Génie du Christianisme, de René--ce paquet du pèlerin, c'étaient les Mémoires de M. de Châteaubriand.... Mais quelle doloureuse émotion dans les premiers mots--'_Mémoires d'Outre-tombe!... Préface testamentaire!_'... * * * * * "Continuez, Châteaubriand, à filer en paix votre suaire. Aussi bien, il n'y a de calme aujourd'hui que le dernier sommeil, il n'y a de stable que la mort!... Vieux serviteur de la vieille monarchie! vous n'avez pas visité sans tressaillir ces sombres galeries du Hradschin, où se promènent trois larves royales, avec une ombre de couronne sur le front. Vous avez baigné de vos pleurs les mains de ce vieillard qui emporte avec lui toute une société, et la tête de cet enfant dont les graces n'ont pu fléchir l'inexorable destinée qui s'attache aux races antiques.... Filez votre suaire de soie et d'or, Châteaubriand, et enveloppez-vous dans votre gloire; il n'est pas de progrès qui vous puisse ravir votre immortalité." * * * * * I think that by this time you must be fully aware, my dear friend, that this intellectual fête to which we were invited at the Abbaye-aux-Bois was a grace and a favour of which we have very good reason to be proud. I certainly never remember to have been more gratified in every way than I was on this occasion. The thing itself, and the flattering kindness which permitted me to enjoy it, were equally the source of pleasure. I may say with all truth, like M. de Lavergne, "Je vivrais des milliers d'années que je ne l'oublierais jamais." The choice of the _morceau_, too, touched me not a little: "du fruit défendu, cette partie la plus défendue" was most assuredly what I should have eagerly chosen had choice been offered. M. de Châteaubriand's journey to Prague furnishes as interesting an historical scene as can well be imagined; and I do not believe that any author that ever lived, Jean-Jacques and Sir Walter not excepted, could have recounted it better--with more true feeling or more finished grace: simple and unaffected to perfection in its style, yet glowing with all the fervour of a poetical imagination, and all the tenderness of a most feeling heart. It is a gallery of living portraits that he brings before the eye as if by magic. There is no minute painting, however: the powerful, the painfully powerful effect of the groups he describes, is produced by the bold and unerring touch of a master. I fancied I saw the royal race before me, each one individual and distinct; and I could have said, as one does in seeing a clever portrait, "That is a likeness, I'll be sworn for it." Many passages made a profound impression on my fancy and on my memory; and I think I could give a better account of some of the scenes described than I should feel justified in doing as long as the noble author chooses to keep them from the public eye. There were touches which made us weep abundantly; and then he changed the key, and gave us the prettiest, the most gracious, the most smiling picture of the young princess and her brother, that it was possible for pen to trace. She must be a fair and glorious creature, and one that in days of yore might have been likely enough to have seen her colours floating on the helm of all the doughtiest knights in Christendom. But chivalry is not the fashion of the day;--there is nothing _positif_, as the phrase goes, to be gained by it;--and I doubt if "its ineffectual fire" burn very brightly at the present time in any living heart, save that of M. de Châteaubriand himself. [Illustration: Drawn & Etched by A. Hervieu. LECTURE À L'ABBAYE-AUX-BOIS. London. Published by Richard Bentley. 1835.] The party assembled at Madame Récamier's on this occasion did not, I think, exceed seventeen, including Madame Récamier and M. de Châteaubriand. Most of these had been present at the former readings. The Duchesses de Larochefoucauld and Noailles, and one or two other noble ladies, were among them. I felt it was a proof that genius is of no party, when I saw a granddaughter of General Lafayette enter among us. She is married to a gentleman who is said to be of the extreme côté gauche; but I remarked that they both listened with as much deep interest to all the touching details of this mournful visit as the rest of us. Who, indeed, could help it?--This lady sat between me and Madame Récamier on one sofa; M. Ampère the reader, and M. de Châteaubriand himself, on another, immediately at right angles with it,--so that I had the pleasure of watching one of the most expressive countenances I ever looked at, while this beautiful specimen of his head and his heart was displayed to us. On the other side of me was a gentleman whom I was extremely happy to meet--the celebrated Gérard; and before the reading commenced, I had the pleasure of conversing with him: he is one of those whose aspect and whose words do not disappoint the expectations which high reputation always gives birth to. There was no formal circle;--the ladies approached themselves a little towards THE sofa which was placed at the feet of Corinne, and the gentlemen stationed themselves in groups behind them. The sun shone _delicately_ into the room through the white silk curtains--delicious flowers scented the air--the quiet gardens of the Abbaye, stretched to a sufficient distance beneath the windows to guard us from every Parisian sound--and, in short, the whole thing was perfect. Can you wonder that I was delighted? or that I have thought the occurrence worth dwelling upon with some degree of lingering fondness? The effect this delightful morning has had on us is, I assure you, by no means singular: it would be easy to fill a volume with the testimonies of delight and gratitude which have been offered from various quarters in return for this gratification. Madame Tastu, whom I have heard called the Mrs. Hemans of France, was present at one or more of the readings, and has returned thanks in some very pretty lines, which conclude thus fervently:-- "Ma tête S'incline pour saisir jusques aux moindres sons, Et mon genou se ploie à demi, quand je prête, Enchantée et muette, L'oreille à vos leçons!" Apropos of tributary verses on this subject, I am tempted to conclude my unmercifully long epistle by giving you some lines which have as yet, I believe, been scarcely seen by any one but the person to whom they are addressed. They are from the pen of the H. G. who so beautifully translated the twelve first cantos of the "Frithiof Saga," which was so favourably received in England last spring. H. G. is an Englishwoman, but from the age of two to seventeen she resided in the United States of America. Did I not tell you this, you would be at a loss to understand her allusion to the distant dwelling of her youth. This address, as you will perceive, is not as an acknowledgment for having been admitted to the Abbaye, but an earnest prayer that she may be so; and I heartily hope it will prove successful. TO M. LE VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND. In that distant region, the land of the West, Where my childhood and youth glided rapidly by, Ah! why was my bosom with sorrow oppress'd? Why trembled the tear-drop so oft in mine eye? No! 'twas not that pleasures they told me alone Were found in the courts where proud monarchs reside; My knee could not bend at the foot of a throne, My heart could not hallow an emperor's pride. But, oh! 'twas the thought that bright genius there dwelt, And breathed on a few holy spirits its flame, That awaken'd the grief which in childhood I felt, When, Europe! I mutter'd thy magical name. And now that as pilgrim I visit thy shore, I ask not where kings hold their pompous array; But I fain would behold, and all humbly adore, The wreath which thy brows, Châteaubriand! display. My voice may well falter--unknown is my name, But say, must my accents prove therefore in vain? Beyond the Atlantic we boast of thy fame, And repeat that thy footstep has traversed our plain. Great bard!--then reject not the prayer that I speak With trembling emotion, and offer thee now; In thy eloquent page, oh! permit me to seek The joys and the sorrows that genius may know. H. G. LETTER LXI. Jardin des Plantes.--Not equal in beauty to our Zoological Gardens.--La Salpêtrière.--Anecdote.--Les Invalides.--Difficulty of finding English Colours there.--The Dome. Another long morning on the other side of the water has given us abundant amusement, and sent us home in a very good humour with the expedition, because, after very mature and equitable consideration, we were enabled honestly to decide that our Zoological Gardens are in few points inferior, in many equal, and in some greatly superior, to the long and deservedly celebrated Jardin des Plantes. If considered as a museum and nursery for botanists, we certainly cannot presume to compare our comparatively new institution to that of Paris; but, zoologically speaking, it is every way superior. The collection of animals, both birds and beasts, is, I think, better, and certainly in finer condition. I confess that I envy them their beautiful giraffe; but what else have they which we cannot equal? Then as to our superiority, look at the comparative degree of beauty of the two enclosures. "O England!" as I once heard a linen-draper exclaim in the midst of his shop, intending in his march of mind to quote Byron-- "O England! with all thy faults, I can't help loving thee still." And I am quite of the linen-draper's mind: I cannot help loving those smooth-shaven lawns, those untrimmed flowing shrubs, those meandering walks, now seen, now lost amidst a cool green labyrinth of shade, which are so truly English. You have all this at the Zoological Gardens--we have none of it in the Jardin des Plantes; and, therefore, I like the Zoological Gardens best. We must not say a word, my friend, about the lectures, or the free admission to them--that is not our forte; and if the bourgeoisie go on much longer as they do at present, becoming greater and more powerful with every passing day, and learning to know, as their mercantile neighbours have long known, that it is quite necessary both governments and individuals should turn all things to profit;-- "Car dans le siècle où nous sommes, On ne donne rien pour rien;"-- if this happens, as I strongly suspect it will, then we shall have no more lectures gratis even in Paris. From the Jardin des Plantes, we visited that very magnificent hospital, La Salpêtrière. I will spare you, however, all the fine things that might be said about it, and only give you a little anecdote which occurred while we stood looking into the open court where the imbecile and the mad are permitted to take their exercise. By the way, without at all presuming to doubt that there may be reasons which the managers of this establishment conceive to be satisfactory, why these wretched objects, in different stages of their dreadful calamity, should be thus for ever placed before each other's eyes, I cannot but observe, that the effect upon the spectator is painful beyond anything I ever witnessed. With my usual love for the terrible, I remained immovable for above twenty minutes, watching the manner in which they appeared to notice each other. If fancy did not cheat me, those who were least wildly deranged looked with a sort of triumph and the consciousness of superiority on those who were most so: some looked on the mad movements of the others and laughed distractedly;--in short, the scene is terribly full of horror. But to return to my anecdote. A stout girl, who looked more imbecile than mad, was playing tricks, that a woman who appeared to have some authority among them endeavoured to stop. The girl evidently understood her, but with a sort of dogged obstinacy persevered, till the nurse, or matron, or whatever she was, took hold of her arm, and endeavoured to lead her into the house. Upon this the girl resisted; and it was not without some degree of violence that she was at last conquered and led away. "What dreadful cruelty!" exclaimed a woman who like ourselves was indulging her curiosity by watching the patients. An old crone, a very aged and decrepid pensioner of the establishment, was passing by on her crutches as she spoke. She stopped in her hobbling walk, and addressing the stranger in the gentle voice of quiet good sense, and in a tone which made me fancy she had seen better days, said--"_Dreadful cruelty, good woman?_... She is preventing her from doing what ought not to be done. If you had the charge of her, you would think it your duty to do the same, and then it would be right. But 'dreadful cruelty!' is easily said, and sounds good-hearted; and those who know not what it is to govern, generally think it is a sin and a shame to use authority in any way." And so saying, the old woman hobbled on, leaving me convinced that La Salpêtrière did not give its shelter to fools only. From this hospital we took a very long drive to another, going almost from the extremest east to the extremest west of Paris. The Invalides was now our object; and its pleasant, easy, comfortable aspect offered a very agreeable contrast to the scene we had left. We had become taciturn and melancholy at La Salpêtrière; but this interesting and noble edifice revived our spirits completely. Two of the party had never been there before, and the others were eloquent in pointing out all that their former visits had shown them. No place can be better calculated to stimulate conversation; there is so much to be said about our own Greenwich and Queen Elizabeth, versus Louis le Grand and the Invalides. Then we had the statue of a greater than he--even of Napoleon--upon which to gaze and moralise. Some veteran had climbed up to it, despite a wooden leg, or a single arm perhaps, and crowned the still-honoured head with a fresh wreath of bays. While we stood looking at this, the courteous bow and promising countenance of a fine old man arrested the whole party, and he was questioned and chatted to, till he became the hero of his own tale, and we soon knew exactly where he had received his first wound, what were his most glorious campaigns, and, above all, who was the general best deserving the blessing of an old soldier. Those who in listening to such chronicles in France expect to hear any other name than that of Napoleon will be disappointed. We may talk of his terrible conscriptions, of poisonings at Jena or forsakings at Moscow, as we will; the simple fact which answers all is, that he was adored by his soldiers when he was with them, and that his memory is cherished with a tender enthusiasm to which history records no parallel. The mere tone of voice in which the name of "NAPOLEON!" or the title of "L'EMPEREUR!" is uttered by his veterans, is of itself enough to prove what he was to them. They stand taller by an inch when he is named, and throw forward the chest, and snuff the air, like an old war-horse that hears the sound of a trumpet. But still, with all these interesting speculations to amuse us, we did not forget what must ever be the primary object of a stranger's visit to the Invalides--the interior of the dome. But this is only to be seen at particular hours; and we were too late for the early, and too early for the late, opening of the doors for this purpose. Four o'clock was the hour we had to wait for--as yet it was but three. We were invited into the hall and into the kitchen; we were admitted, too, into sundry little enclosures, appropriated to some happy individuals favoured for their skill in garden craft, who, turning their muskets into hoes and spades, enjoy their honourable leisure ten times more than their idle brethren. In three out of four of these miniature domains we found plaister Napoleons of a foot high stuck into a box-tree or a rose-bush: one of these, too, had a wreath of newly-gathered leaves twisted round the cocked-hat, and all three were placed and displayed with as much attention to dignity and effect as the finest statues in the Tuileries. If the spirit of Napoleon is permitted to hover about Paris, to indulge itself in gathering the scattered laurels of his posthumous fame, it is not to the lofty chambers of the Tuileries that it should betake itself;--nor would it be greatly soothed by listening to the peaceful counsels of his once warlike maréchals. No--if his ghost be well inspired, it will just glide swiftly through the gallery of the Louvre, to compare it with his earthly recollections; balance itself for a moment over the statue of the Place Vendôme, and abide, for the rest of the time allotted for this mundane visit, among his faithful invalids. There only would he meet a welcome that would please him. The whole nation, it is true, dearly love to talk of his greatness; but there is little now left in common between them and their sometime emperor. France with a charter, and France without, differs not by many degrees so widely as France military, and France bourgeoise and boursière. Under Napoleon she was the type of successful war; under Louis-Philippe, she will, I think--if the republicans will let her alone--become that of prosperous peace: a sword and a feather might be the emblem of the one--a loom and a long purse of the other. * * * * * But still it was not four o'clock. We were next invited to enter the chapel; and we did so, determined to await the appointed hour reposing ourselves on the very comfortable benches provided for the veterans to whose use it is appropriated. Here, stretched and lounging at our ease, we challenged each other to discover English colours among the multitude of conquered banners which hung suspended above our heads. It is hardly possible that some such should not be there; yet it is a positive fact, that not all our familiar acquaintance with the colours we sought could enable us to discover them. There is indeed one torn and battered relic, that it is just possible might have been hacked and sawed from the desperately firm grasp of an Englishman; but the morsel of rag left is so small, that it was in fact more from the lack of testimony than the presence of it that we at length came to the conclusion that this relic of a stick might once have made part of an English standard. Not in any degree out of humour at our disappointment in this search after our national banner, we followed the guide who summoned us at last to the dome, chatting and laughing as cheerily and as noisily as if we had not been exhausting our spirits for the last four hours by sight-seeing. But what fatigue could not achieve, was the next moment produced by wonder, admiration, and delight. Never did muter silence fall upon a talking group, than the sight of this matchless chapel brought on us. Speech is certainly not the first or most natural resource that the spirit resorts to, when thus roused, yet chastened--enchanted, yet subdued. I have not yet been to Rome, and know not how I shall feel if ever I find myself under the dome of St. Peter's. There, I conceive that it is a sense of vastness which seizes on the mind; here it is wholly a feeling of beauty, harmony, and grace. I know nothing like it anywhere: the Pantheon (ci-devant Ste. Geneviève), with all its nobleness and majesty, is heavy, and almost clumsy, when compared to it. Though possessing no religious solemnity whatever, and in this respect inferior beyond the reach of comparison to the choir of Cologne, or King's College Chapel at Cambridge, it nevertheless produces a stronger effect upon the senses than either of them. This is owing, I suspect, to the circumstance of there being no mixture of objects: the golden tabernacle seems to complete rather than destroy its unity. If I could give myself a fête, it should be, to be placed within the pure, bright, lofty loveliness of this marble sanctuary, while a full and finished orchestra performed the chefs-d'oeuvre of Handel or Mozart in the church. LETTER LXII. Expedition to Montmorency.--Rendezvous in the Passage Delorme.--St. Denis.--Tomb prepared for Napoleon.--The Hermitage.--Dîner sur l'herbe. It is more than a fortnight ago, I think, that we engaged ourselves with a very agreeable party of twenty persons to take a long drive out of Paris and indulge ourselves with a very gay "dîner sur l'herbe." But it is no easy matter to find a day on which twenty people shall all be ready and willing to leave Paris. However, a steadfast will can conquer most things. The whole twenty were quite determined that they would go to Montmorency, and to Montmorency at last we have been. The day was really one of great enjoyment, but yet it did not pass without disasters. One of these which occurred at the moment of starting very nearly overthrew the whole scheme. The place of general rendezvous for us and our hampers was the Galerie Delorme, and thither one of the party who had undertaken that branch of the business had ordered the carriages to come. At ten o'clock precisely, the first detachment of the party was deposited with their belongings at the southern extremity of the gallery; another and another followed till the muster-roll was complete. Baskets were piled on baskets; and the passers-by read our history in these, and in our anxious eyes, which ceased not to turn with ever-increasing anxiety the way the carriages should come. What a _supplice_!... Every minute, every second, brought the rolling of wheels to our ears, but only to mock us: the wheels rolled on--no carriages came for us, and we remained in statu quo to look at each other and our baskets. Then came forth, as always happens on great and trying occasions, the inward character of each. The sturdy and firm-minded set themselves down on the packages, determined to abide the eyes of all rather than shrink from their intent. The timid and more frail of purpose gently whispered proposals that we should all go home again; while others, yet listening to "Hope's enchanting measure, Which still promised coming pleasure," smiled, and looked forth from the gallery, and smiled again--though still no carriage came. It was, as I suspect, these young hopes and smiles which saved us from final disappointment: for the young men belonging to the cortége, suddenly rousing themselves from their state of listless watching, declared with one voice and one spirit, that les demoiselles should not be disappointed; and exchanging _consignes_ which were to regulate the number and species of vehicles each was to seek--and find, too, on peril of his reputation,--they darted forth from the gallery, leaving us with renewed spirits and courage to bear all the curious glances bestowed upon us. Our half-dozen aides-de-camp returned triumphantly in a few minutes, each one in his delta or his citadine; and the Galerie Delorme was soon left far behind us. It is lucky for you that we had not to make a "voyage par mer" and "retour par terre," or my story might be as long--if resembling it in no other way--as the immortal expedition to St. Cloud. I shall not make a volume of it; but I must tell you that we halted at St. Denis. The church is beautiful--a perfect bijou of true Gothic architecture--light, lofty, elegant; and we saw it, too, in a manner peculiarly advantageous, for it had neither organ, altar, nor screen to distract the eye from the great and simple beauty of the original design. The repairs going on here are of a right royal character--on a noble scale and in excellent taste. Several monuments restored from the collection made under the Empire aux Petits Augustins are now again the glory of St. Denis; and some of them have still much remaining which may entitle them to rank as very pure and perfect specimens of highly-antiquated monumental sculpture. But the chiselled treasures of a thousand years' standing cannot be made to travel about like the scenery of strolling players, in conformity to the will and whim of the successive actors who play the part of king, without great injury. In some instances the original nooks in this venerable mausoleum of royal bones have again received the effigies originally carved to repose within them; but the regal image has rarely been replaced without showing itself in some degree way-worn. In other cases, the monumental portrait, venerable and almost hallowed by its high antiquity, is made to recline on a whitened sepulchre as bright as Parisian masonry can make it. Having fully examined the church and its medley of old and new treasures, we called a council as to the possibility of finding time for descending to the crypts: but most of the party agreeing in opinion that we ought not to lose the opportunity of visiting what a wit amongst us happily enough designated "le Palais Royal de la Mort," we ordered the iron gates to be unbarred for us, and proceeded with some solemnity of feeling into the pompous tomb. And here the unfortunate result of that bold spirit of change which holds nothing sacred is still more disagreeably obvious than in the church. All the royal monuments of France that could be collected are assembled in this magnificent vault, but with such incongruity of dates belonging to different parts of the same structure, as almost wholly to destroy the imposing effect of this gorgeous grave. But if the spectator would seek farther than his eye can carry him, and inquire where the mortal relics of each sculptured monarch lie, the answer he will receive must make him believe that the royal dust of France has been scattered to the four winds of heaven. Nothing I have heard has sounded more strangely to me than the naïveté with which our guide informed us that, among all this multitude of regal tombs, there was not one which contained a single vestige of the mortal remains of those they commemorate. For the love of good taste and consistency, these guardians of the royal sepulchre of France should be taught a more poetical lesson. It is inconceivable how, as he spoke, the solemn memorials of the illustrious dead, near which my foot had passed cautiously and my voice been mute, seemed suddenly converted into something little more sacred than the show furnishing of a stone-mason's shop. The bathos was perfect. I could not but remember with a feeling of national pride the contrast to this presented by Westminster Abbey and St. George's Chapel. The monuments of these two royal fanes form a series as interesting in the history of art as of our royal line, and no painful consciousness of desecration mixes itself with the solemn reverence with which we contemplate the honoured tombs. The most interesting object in the crypts of St. Denis, and which comes upon the moral feeling with a force increased rather than diminished by the incongruities which surround it, is the door of the vault prepared by Napoleon for himself. It is inscribed, ICI REPOSENT LES DÉPOUILLES MORTELLES DE This inscription still remains, as well as the massive brazen gates with their triple locks, which were designed to close the tomb. These rich portals are not suspended on hinges, but rest against a wall of solid masonry, over which the above inscription is seen. The imperial vault thus chosen by the living despot as the sanctuary for bones which it was our fortune to dispose of elsewhere is greatly distinguished by its situation, being exactly under the high altar, and in the centre of the crypts, which follow the beautiful curve of the Lady Chapel above. It now contains the bodies of Louis Dix-huit and the Duc de Berri, and is completely bricked up. In another vault, at one end of the circular crypts, and perfectly excluded from the light of day, but made visible by a single feeble lamp, are two coffins enclosing the remains of the two last defunct princes of the blood royal; but I forget their names. When I inquired of our conductor why these two coffins were thus exposed to view, he replied, with the air of a person giving information respecting what was as unchangeable as the laws of the Medes and Persians, "C'est toujours ainsi;" adding, "When another royal corpse is interred, the one of these two which was the first deposited will be removed, to be placed beneath its monument; but two must ever remain thus." "Always" and "ever" are words which can seldom be used discreetly without some reservation; but respecting anything connected with the political state of France, I should think they had better never be used at all. We returned to the carriages and pursued our pretty drive. The latter part of the route is very beautiful, and we all walked up one long steep hill, as much, or more perhaps, to enjoy the glorious view, and the fresh delicious air, as to assist the horses. Arrived at the famous _Cheval Blanc_ at Montmorency, (a sign painted, as the tradition says, by no less a hand than that of Gérard, who, in a youthful pilgrimage with his friend Isabey to this region consecrated to romance, found himself with no other means of defraying their bill than by painting a sign for his host,) we quitted our wearied and wearisome citadines, and began to seek, amidst the multitude of horses and donkeys which stood saddled and bridled around the door of the inn, for twenty well-conditioned beasts, besides a sumpter-mule or two, to carry us and our provender to the forest. And, oh! the tumult and the din that accompanied this selection! Multitudes of old women and ragamuffin boys assailed us on all sides.--"Tenez, madame; voilà mon âne! y a-t-il une autre bête comme la mienne?..." "Non, non, non, belles dames! Ne le croyez pas; c'est la mienne qu'il vous faut..." "Et vous, monsieur--c'est un cheval qui vous manque, n'est-ce pas? en voilà un superbe...." The multitude of hoarse old voices, and shrill young ones, joined to our own noisy mirth, produced a din that brought out half the population of Montmorency to stare at us: but at length we were mounted--and, what was of infinitely more consequence, and infinitely more difficulty also, our hampers and baskets were mounted too. But before we could think of the greenwood tree, and the gay repast to be spread under it, we had a pilgrimage to make to the shrine which has given the region all its fame. Hitherto we had thought only of its beauty,--who does not know the lovely scenery of Montmorency?--even without the name of Rousseau to give a fanciful interest to every path around it, there is enough in its hills and dales, its forest and its fields, to cheer the spirits and enchant the eye. A day stolen from the dissipation, the dust, and the noise of a great city, is always delightful; but when it is enjoyed in the very fullest green perfection of the last days of May, when every new-born leaf and blossom is fully expanded to the delicious breeze, and not one yet fallen before it, the enjoyment is perfect. It is like seeing a new piece while the dresses and decorations are all fresh; and never can the mind be in a state to taste with less of pain, and more of pleasure, the thoughts suggested by such a scene as _the Hermitage_. I have, however, no intention of indulging myself in a burst of tender feeling over the melancholy memory of Rousseau, or of enthusiastic gratitude at the recollection of Grétry, though both are strongly brought before the mind's eye by the various memorials of each so carefully treasured in the little parlour in which they passed so many hours: yet it is impossible to look at the little rude table on which the first and greatest of these gifted men scribbled the "Héloïse," or on the broken and untuneable keys of the spinette with which the eloquent visionary so often soothed his sadness and solitude, without some feeling tant soit peu approaching to the sentimental. Before the window of this small gloomy room, which opens upon the garden, is a rose-tree planted by the hand of Rousseau, which has furnished, as they told us, cuttings enough to produce a forest of roses. The house is as dark and dull as may be; but the garden is pretty, and there is something of fanciful in its arrangement which makes me think it must be as he left it. The records of Grétry would have produced more effect if seen elsewhere,--at least I thought so;--yet the sweet notes of "O Richard! O mon roi!" seemed to be sounding in my ears, too, as I looked at his old spectacles, and several other little domestic relics that were inscribed with his name. But the "Rêveries du Promeneur Solitaire" are worth all the notes that Grétry ever wrote. A marble column stands in a shady corner of the garden, bearing an inscription which states that her highness the Duchesse de Berri had visited the Hermitage, and taken "le coeur de Grétry" under her august protection, which had been unjustly claimed by the Liégeois from his native France. What this means, or where her highness found the great composer's heart, I could not learn. We took the objects of our expedition in most judicious order, fasting and fatigue being decidedly favourable to melancholy; but, even with these aids, I cannot say that I discovered much propensity to the tender vein in the generality of our party. Sentiment is so completely out of fashion, that it would require a bold spirit to confess before twenty gay souls that you felt any touch of it. There was one young Italian, however, of the party whom I missed from the time we entered the precincts of the Hermitage; nor did I see him till some time after we were all mounted again, and in full chase for the well-known chesnut-trees which have thrown their shadow over so many al-fresco repasts. When he again joined us, he had a rose in his button-hole: I felt quite certain that it was plucked from the tree the sad philosopher had planted, and that he, at least, had done homage to his shade, whoever else had failed to do so. Whatever was felt at the Hermitage, however, was now left behind us, and a less larmoyante party never entered the Forest of Montmorency. When we reached the spot on which we had fixed by anticipation for our salle-à-manger, we descended from our various _montures_, which were immediately unsaddled and permitted to refresh themselves, tied together in very picturesque groups, while all the party set to work with that indescribable air of contented confusion and happy disorder which can only be found at a pic-nic. I have heard a great many very sensible remarks, and some of them really very hard to answer, upon the extreme absurdity of leaving every accommodation which is considered needful for the comfort of a Christian-like dinner, for the sole purpose of devouring this needful repast without one of them. What can be said in defence of such an act?... Nothing,--except perhaps that, for some unaccountable reason or other, no dinner throughout the year, however sumptuously served or delicately furnished, ever does appear to produce one half so much light-hearted enjoyment as the cold repast round which the guests crouch like so many gipsies, with the turf for their table and a tree for their canopy. It is very strange--but it is very true; and as long as men and women continue to experience this singular accession of good spirits and good humour from circumstances which might be reasonably expected to destroy both, nothing better can be done than to let them go on performing the same extraordinary feat as long as the fancy lasts. And so we sat upon the grass, caring little for what the wise might say of us, for an hour and a half at the very least. Our attendant old women and boys, seated at convenient distance, were eating as heartily and laughing as merrily as ourselves; whilst our beasts, seen through the openings of the thicket in which they were stabled, and their whimsical housings piled up together at the foot of an old thorn at its entrance, completed the composition of our gipsy festival. At length the signal was given to rise, and the obedient troop were on their feet in an instant. The horses and the asses were saddled forthwith: each one seized his and her own and mounted. A council was then called as to whither we should go. Sundry forest paths stretched away so invitingly in different directions, that it was difficult to decide which we should prefer. "Let us all meet two hours hence at the Cheval Blanc," said some one of brighter wit than all the rest: whereupon we all set off, fancy-led, by twos and by threes, to put this interval of freedom and fresh air to the best account possible. I was strongly tempted to set off directly for Eaubonne. Though I confess that Jean-Jacques' descriptions (tant vantées!) of some of the scenes which occurred there between himself and his good friend Madame d'Houdetot, in which she rewards his tender passion by constant assurances of her own tender passion for Saint-Lambert, have always appeared to me the very reverse of the sublime and beautiful; yet still the place must be redolent of the man whose "Rêveries" have made its whole region classic ground: and go where I will, I always love to bring the genius of the place as near to me as possible. But my wishes were effectually checked by the old lady whose donkey carried me. "Oh! dame--il ne faut pas aller par là ... ce n'est pas là le beau point de vue; laissez-moi faire ... et vous verrez...." And then she enumerated so many charming points of forest scenery that ought to be visited by "tout le monde," that I and my companions decided it would be our best course to permit the _laisser faire_ she asked for; and accordingly we set off in the direction she chose. We had no cause to regret it, for she knew her business well, and, in truth, led us as beautiful a circuit as it was well possible to imagine. If I did not invoke Rousseau in his bosquet d'Eaubonne, or beside the "cascade dont," as he says, "je lui avais donné _l'idée_, et qu'elle avait fait _exécuter_,"--(Rousseau had never seen Niagara, or he would not have talked of his Sophie's having executed his idea of a cascade;)--though we did not seek him there, we certainly met him, at every step of our beautiful forest path, in the flowers and mosses whose study formed his best recreation at Montmorency. "Herboriser" is a word which, I think, with all possible respect for that modern strength of intellect that has fixed its stigma upon _sentiment_, Rousseau has in some sort consecrated. There is something so natural, so genuine, so delightfully true, in his expressions, when he describes the pleasure this occupation has given him, contrasted as it is with his sour and querulous philosophy, and still more perhaps with the eloquent but unrighteous bursts of ill-directed passion, that its impression on my mind is incomparably greater than any he has produced by other topics. "Brillantes fleurs, émail des prés!" ... is an exclamation a thousand times more touching, coming from the poor solitary J.J. at sixty-five, than any of the most passionate exclamations which he makes St. Preux utter; and for this reason the woods of Montmorency are more interesting from their connexion with him than any spot the neighbourhood of Vévay could offer. The view from the Rendezvous de Chasse is glorious. While pausing to enjoy it, our old woman began talking politics to us. She told us that she had lost two sons, who both died fighting beside "_notre grand Empereur_," who was certainly "le plus grand homme de la terre; cependant, it was a great comfort for poor people to have bread for onze sous--and that was what King Louis-Philippe had done for them." After our halt, we turned our heads again towards the town, and were peacefully pursuing our deliciously cool ride under the trees, when a holla! from behind stopped us. It proceeded from one of the boys of our cortége, who, mounted upon a horse that one of the party had used, was galloping and hollaing after us with all his might. The information he brought was extremely disagreeable: one of the gentlemen had been thrown from his horse and taken up for dead; and he had been sent, as he said, to collect the party together, to know what was to be done. The gentleman who was with our detachment immediately accompanied the boy to the spot; but as the unfortunate sufferer was quite a stranger to me, and was already surrounded by many of the party, I and my companion decided upon returning to Montmorency, there to await at Le Cheval Blanc the appearance of the rest. A medical man, we found, had been already sent for. When at length the whole party, with the exception of this unfortunate young man and a friend who remained with him, were assembled, we found, upon comparing notes together, that no less than four of our party had been unhorsed or undonkeyed in the course of the day; but happily three of these were accidents followed by no alarming results. The fourth was much more serious; but the report from the Montmorency surgeon, which we received before we left the town, assured us that no ultimate danger was to be apprehended. One circumstance attending this disagreeable contre-tems was very fortunate. The accident took place at the gates of a chateau, the owners of which, though only returned a few hours before from a tour in Italy, received the sufferer and his friend with the greatest kindness and hospitality. Thus, though only eighteen of us returned to Paris to recount the day's adventures, we had at least the consolation of having a very interesting, and luckily not fatal, episode to narrate, in which a castle and most courteous knights and dames bore a part, while the wounded cavalier on whom their generous cares were bestowed had not only given signs of life, but had been pronounced, to the great joy of all the company, quite out of danger either of life or limb. So ended our day at Montmorency, which, spite of our manifold disasters, was declared upon the whole to have been one of very great enjoyment. LETTER LXIII. George Sand. I have more than once mentioned to you my observations on the reception given in Paris to that terrible school of composition which derives its power from displaying, with strength that exaggerates the vices of our nature, all that is worst and vilest in the human heart. I have repeatedly dwelt upon the subject, because it is one which I have so often heard treated unfairly, or at least ignorantly, in England; and a love of truth and justice has therefore led me to assure you, with reiterated protestations, that neither these mischief-doing works nor their authors meet at all a better reception in Paris than they would in London. It is this same love of truth and justice which prompts me to separate from the pack one whom nature never intended should belong to it. The lady who writes under the signature of George Sand cannot be set aside by the sternest guardian of public morals without a sigh. With great--perhaps, at the present moment, with unequalled power of writing, Madame de D---- perpetually gives indications of a heart and mind which seem to prove that it was intended her place should be in a very different set from that with which she has chosen to mingle. It is impossible that she should write as she has done without possessing some of the finest qualities of human nature; but she is and has been tossed about in that whirlpool of unsettled principles, deformed taste and exaggerated feeling, in which the distempered spirits of the day delight to bathe and disport themselves, and she has been stained and bruised therein. Yet she has nothing in common with their depraved feelings and distorted strength; and there is so much of the divine spirit of real genius within her, that it seems as if she could not sink in the vortex that has engulfed her companions. She floats and rises still; and would she make one bold effort to free herself from this slough, she might yet become one of the brightest ornaments of the age. Not her own country only, but all the world have claims on her; for genius is of no nation, but speaks in a language that can be heard and understood by all. And is it possible that such a mind as hers can be insensible to the glory of enchanting the best and purest spirits in the world?... Can she prefer the paltry plaudits of the obscure herd who scorn at decency, to the universal hymn of love and praise which she must hear rising from the whole earth to do honour to the holy muse of Walter Scott? The powers of this lady are of so high an order as in fact to withdraw her totally, though seemingly against her will, from all literary companionship or competition with the multitude of little authors whose moral theories appear of the same colour as her own; and in the tribute of admiration which justice compels me to pay her, my memory dwells only on such passages as none but herself could write, and which happily all the world may read. It is sad, indeed, to be forced to read almost by stealth volumes which contain such passages, and to turn in silence from the lecture with one's heart glowing with admiration of thoughts that one might so proudly quote and boast of as coming from the pen of a woman! But, alas! her volumes are closed to the young and innocent, and one may not dare to name her among those to whom the memory clings with gratitude as the giver of high mental enjoyment. One strong proof that the native and genuine bent of her genius would carry her far above and quite out of sight of the whole décousu school is, that, with all her magical grace of expression, she is always less herself, less original, a thousand times less animated and inspired, when she sets herself to paint scenes of unchaste love, and of unnatural and hard indifference to decorum, than when she throws the reins upon the neck of her own Pegasus, and starts away into the bright region of unsoiled thoughts and purely intellectual meditation. I should be sorry to quote the titles of any books which ought never to have been written, and which had better not be read, even though there should be buried in them precious gems of thought and expression which produce the effect of a ray of sunshine that has entered by a crevice into a dark chamber; but there are some morsels by George Sand which stand apart from the rest, and which may be cited without mischief. "La Revue des Deux Mondes" has more than once done good service to the public by putting forth in its trustworthy pages some of her shorter works. Amongst these is a little story called "André," which if not quite _faultless_, may yet be fairly quoted to prove of what its author might be capable. The character of Geneviève, the heroine of this simple, natural little tale, is evidence enough that George Sand knows what is good. Yet even here what a strange perversity of purpose and of judgment peeps out! She makes this Geneviève, whose character is conceived in a spirit of purity and delicacy that is really angelic,--she makes this sweet and exquisitely innocent creature fall into indiscretion with her lover before she marries him, though the doing so neither affects the story nor changes the catastrophe in the slightest degree. It is an impropriety _à pure perte_, and is in fact such a deplorable incongruity in the character of Geneviève--so perfectly gratuitous and unnecessary, and so utterly out of keeping with the rest of the picture, that it really looks as if Madame D---- _might not_ publish a volume that was not timbré with the stamp of her clique. It would not, I suppose, pass current among them without it. This story of "André" is still before me; and though it is quite impossible that I should be able to give you any idea of it by extracts, I will transcribe a few lines to show you the tone of thought in which its author loves to indulge. Speaking of the universal power or influence of poetry, which certainly, like M. Jourdain's prose, often exists in the mind sans qu'on en sache rien, she says,-- "Les idées poétiques peuvent s'ajuster à la taille de tous les hommes. L'un porte sa poésie sur son front, un autre dans son coeur; celui-ci la cherche dans une promenade lente et silencieuse au sein des plaines, celui-là la poursuit au galop de son cheval à travers les ravins; un troisième l'arrose sur sa fenêtre, dans un pot de tulipes. Au lieu de demander où elle est, ne devrait-on pas demander où n'est-elle pas? Si ce n'était qu'une langue, elle pourrait se perdre; mais c'est une essence qui se compose de deux choses, la beauté répandue dans la nature extérieure, et le sentiment départi à toute l'intelligence ordinaire." Again she shows the real tone of her mind when, speaking of a future state, she says,-- "Qui sait si, dans un nouveau code de morale, un nouveau catéchisme religieux, le dégoût et la tristesse ne seront pas flétris comme des vices, tandis que l'amour, l'espoir, et l'admiration seront récompensés comme des vertus?" This is a beautiful idea of the _duties_ belonging to a happier state of existence; nay, I think that if we were only as good as we easily might be here, even this life would become rather an act of thanksgiving than what it too often is--a record of sighs. I know not where I should look in order to find thoughts more true, or fanciful ideas more beautifully expressed, than I have met with in this same story, where the occupations and reveries of its heroine are described. Geneviève is by profession a maker of artificial flowers, and the minute study necessary to enable her to imitate skilfully her lovely models has led her to an intimate acquaintance with them, the pleasures of which are described, and her love and admiration of them dwelt upon, in a strain that I am quite persuaded none other but George Sand could utter. It is evident, indeed, throughout all her writings, that the works of nature are the idols she worships. In the "Lettres d'un Voyageur,"--which I trust are only begun, for it is here that the author is perfect, unrivalled, and irreproachable,--she gives a thousand proofs of a heart and imagination which can only be truly at home when far from "the rank city." In writing to a friend in Paris, whom she addresses as a person devoted to the cares and the honours of public life, she says,--"Quand tu vois passer un pauvre oiseau, tu envies son essor, et tu regrettes les cieux." Then she exclaims, "Que ne puis-je t'emmener avec moi sur l'aile des vents inconstans, te faire respirer le grand air des solitudes et t'apprendre le secret des poètes et des Bohémiens!" She has learned that secret, and the use she makes of it places her, in my estimation, wondrously above most of the descriptive poets that France has ever boasted. Yet her descriptions, exquisite as they sometimes are, enchant me less perhaps than the occasional shooting, if I may so express it, of a bold new thought into the regions of philosophy and metaphysics; but it is done so lightly, so playfully, that it should seem she was only jesting when she appears to aim thus wildly at objects so much beyond a woman's ken. "Tous les trônes de la terre ne valent pas pour moi une petite fleur au bord d'un lac des Alpes," she says; and then starts off with this strange query: "Une grande question serait celle de savoir si la Providence a plus d'amour et de respect pour notre charpente osseuse, que pour les pétales embaumés de ses jasmins." She professes herself (of course) to be a republican; but only says of it, "De toutes les causes dont je ne me soucie pas, c'est la plus belle;" and then adds, quite in her own vein, "Du moins, les mots de patrie et de liberté sont harmonieux--tandis que ceux de légitimité et d'obéissance sont grossiers, mal-sonnans, et faits pour des oreilles de gendarmes."... "Aduler une bûche couronnée," is, she declares, "renoncer à sa dignité d'homme, et se faire académicien." However, she quizzes her political friend for being "le martyr des nobles ambitions;" adding, "Gouvernez-moi bien tous ces vilains idiots ... je vais chanter au soleil sur une branche, pendant ce tems-là." In another place, she says that she is "bonne à rien qu'à causer avec l'écho, à regarder lever la lune, et à composer des chants mélancoliques ou moqueurs pour les étudians poètes et les écoliers amoureux." As a specimen of what this writer's powers of description are, I will give you a few lines from a little story called "Mattéa,"--a story, by the way, that is beautiful, one hardly knows why,--just to show you how she can treat a theme worn threadbare before she was born. Is there, in truth, any picture much less new than that of a gondola, with a guitar in it, gliding along the canals of Venice? But see what she makes of it. "La guitare est un instrument qui n'a son existence véritable qu'à Venise, la ville silencieuse et sonore. Quand une gondole rase ce fleuve d'encre phosphorescente, où chaque coup de rame enfonce un éclair, tandis qu'une grêle de petites notes légères, nettes, et folâtres, bondit et rebondit sur les cordes que parcourt une main invisible, on voudrait arrêter et saisir cette mélodie faible mais distincte qui agace l'oreille des passans, et qui fuit le long des grandes ombres des palais, comme pour appeler les belles aux fenêtres, et passer en leur disant--Ce n'est pas pour vous la sérénade; et vous ne saurez ni d'où elle vient, ni où elle va." Could Rousseau himself have chosen apter words? Do they not seem an echo to the sound she describes? The private history of an author ought never to mix itself with a judgment of his works. Of that of George Sand I know but little; but divining it from the only source that the public has any right to examine,--namely, her writings,--I should be disposed to believe that her story is the old one of affection either ill requited, or in some way or other unfortunate; and there is justice in quoting the passages which seem to indicate this, because they are written in a spirit that, let the circumstances be what they will, must do her honour. In the "Lettres d'un Voyageur" already mentioned, the supposed writer of them is clearly identified with George Sand by this passage:--"Meure le petit George quand Dieu voudra, le monde n'en ira pas plus mal pour avoir ignoré sa façon de penser. Que veux-tu que je te dise? Il faut que je te parle encore de moi, et rien n'est plus insipide qu'une individualité qui n'a pas encore trouvé le mot de sa destinée. Je n'ai aucun intérêt à formuler une opinion quelconque. Quelques personnes qui lisent mes livres ont le tort de croire que ma conduite est une profession de foi, et le choix des sujets de mes historiettes une sorte de plaidoyer contre certaines lois: bien loin de là, je reconnais que ma vie est pleine de fautes, et je croirais commettre une lâcheté si je me battais les flancs pour trouver un système d'idées qui en autorisât l'exemple." After this, it is impossible to read, without being touched by it, this sublime phrase used in speaking of one who would retire into the deep solitudes of nature from struggling with the world:-- "_Les astres éternels auront toujours raison_, et l'homme, quelque grand qu'il soit parmi les hommes, sera toujours saisi d'épouvante quand il voudra interroger ce qui est au-dessus de lui. _O silence effrayant, réponse éloquente et terrible de l'éternité!_" In another place, speaking with less lightness of tone than is generally mixed throughout these charming letters with the gravest speculations, George Sand says:-- "J'ai mal vécu, j'ai mal usé des biens qui me sont échus, j'ai négligé les oeuvres de charité; j'ai vécu dans la mollesse, dans l'ennui, dans les larmes vaines, dans les folles amours, dans les vains plaisirs. Je me suis prosterné devant des idoles de chair et de sang, et j'ai laissé leur souffle enivrant effacer les sentences austères que la sagesse des livres avait écrites sur mon front dans ma jeunesse.... J'avais été honnête autrefois, sais-tu bien cela, Everard? C'est de notoriété bourgeoise dans notre pays; mais il y avait peu de mérite,--j'étais jeune, et les funestes amours n'étaient pas éclos dans mon sein. Ils ont étouffé bien des qualités; mais _je sais qu'il en est auxquelles je n'ai pas fait la plus légère tache au milieu des plus grands revers de ma vie, et qu'aucune des autres n'est perdu pour moi sans retour_." I could go on very long quoting with pleasure from these pages; but I cannot, I think, conclude better than with this passage. Who is there but must wish that all the great and good qualities of this gifted woman (for she must have both) should break forth from whatever cloud sorrow or misfortune of any kind may have thrown over her, and that the rest of her days may pass in the tranquil developement of her extraordinary talents, and in such a display of them to the public as shall leave its admiration unmixed? LETTER LXIV. "Angelo Tyran de Padoue."--Burlesque at the Théâtre du Vaudeville.--Mademoiselle Mars.--Madame Dorval.--Epigram. We have seen and enjoyed many very pretty, very gay little pieces at most of the theatres since we have been here; but we never till our last visit to the Théâtre Français enjoyed that uncontrollable movement of merriment which, setting all lady-like nonchalance at defiance, obliged us to yield ourselves up to hearty, genuine laughter; in which, however, we had the consolation of seeing many of those around us join. And what was the piece, can you guess, which produced this effect upon us?... It was "Angelo!" It was the "Tyran de Padoue"--_pas doux_ du tout, as the wits of the parterre aver. But, in truth, I ought not to assent to this verdict, for never tyrant was so _doux_ to me and mine as this, and never was a very long play so heartily laughed at to the end. But must I write to you in sober earnest about this comic tragedy? I suppose I must; for, except the Procès Monstre, nothing has been more talked of in Paris than this new birth of M. Hugo. The cause for this excitement was not that a new play from this sufficiently well-known hand was about to be put upon the scene, but a circumstance which has made me angry and all Paris curious. This tragedy, as you shall see presently, has two heroines who run neck and neck through every act, leaving it quite in doubt which ought to come in prima donna. Mademoiselle Mars was to play the part of one--but who could venture to stand thus close beside her in the other part?--nobody at the Français, as it should seem: and so, wonderful to tell, and almost impossible to believe, a lady, a certain Madame Dorval, well known as a heroine of the Porte St. Martin, I believe, was enlisted into the corps of the Français to run a tilt with--Mars. This extraordinary arrangement was talked of, and asserted, and contradicted, and believed, and disbelieved, till the noise of it filled all Paris. You will hardly wonder, then, that the appearance of this drama has created much sensation, or that the desire to see it should extend beyond the circle of M. Hugo's young admirers. I have been told, that as soon as this arrangement was publicly made known, the application for boxes became very numerous. The author was permitted to examine the list of all those who had applied, and no boxes were positively promised till he had done so. Before the night for the first representation was finally fixed, a large party of friends and admirers assembled at the poet's house, and, amongst them, expunged from this list the names of all such persons as were either known or suspected to be hostile to him or his school. Whatever deficiencies this exclusive system produced in the box-book were supplied by his particular partisans. The result on this first night was a brilliant success. "L'auteur de Cromwell," says the Revue des Deux Mondes, "a proclamé d'une voix dictatoriale la fusion de la comédie et de la tragédie dans le drame." It is for this reason, perhaps, that M. Hugo has made his last tragedy so irresistibly comic. The dagger and the bowl bring on the catastrophe,--therefore, _sans contredire_, it is a tragedy: but his playful spirit has arranged the incidents and constructed the dialogue,--therefore, _sans faute_, it is a comedy. In one of his exquisite prefaces, M. Hugo says, that he would not have any audience quit the theatre without carrying with them "quelque moralité austère et profonde;" and I will now make it my task to point out to you how well he has redeemed this promise in the present instance. In order to shake off all the old-fashioned trammels which might encumber his genius, M. Hugo has composed his "Angelo" in prose,--prose such as old women love--(wicked old women I mean,)--lengthy, mystical, gossiping, and mischievous. I will give you some extracts; and to save the trouble of describing the different characters, I will endeavour so to select these extracts that they shall do it for me. Angelo Tyran de Padoue thus speaks of himself:-- "Oui ... je suis le podesta que Venise met sur Padoue.... Et savez-vous ce que c'est que Venise?... C'est le conseil des dix. Oh! le conseil des dix!... Souvent la nuit je me dresse sur mon séant, j'écoute, et j'entends des pas dans mon mur.... Oui, c'est ainsi, Tyran de Padoue, esclave de Venise. Je suis bien surveillé, allez. Oh! le conseil des dix!" This gentleman has a young, beautiful, and particularly estimable wife, by name Catarina Bragadini, (which part is enacted on the boards of the Théâtre Français by Madame Dorval, from the Théâtre de la Porte St. Martin,) but unfortunately he hates her violently. He could not, however, as he philosophically observes himself, avoid doing so, and he shall again speak for himself to explain this. "ANGELO. "La haine c'est dans notre sang. Il faut toujours qu'un Malipieri haïsse quelqu'un. Moi, c'est cette femme que je hais. Je ne vaux pas mieux qu'elle, c'est possible--mais il faut qu'elle meure. C'est une nécessité--une résolution prise." This necessity for hating does not, however, prevent the Podesta from falling very violently in love with a strolling actress called La Tisbe (personated by Mademoiselle Mars). The Tisbe also is a very remarkably virtuous, amiable, and high-minded woman, who listens to the addresses of the Tyrant pas doux, but hates him as cordially as he hates his lady-wife, bestowing all her tenderness and private caresses upon a travelling gentleman, who is a prince in disguise, but whom she passes off upon the Tyrant for her brother. La Tisbe, too, shall give you her own account of herself. "LA TISBE (_addressing Angelo_). "Vous savez qui je suis? ... rien, une fille du peuple, une comédienne.... Eh bien! si peu que je suis, j'ai eu une mère. Savez-vous ce que c'est que d'avoir une mère? En avez-vous eu une, vous?... Eh bien! j'avais une mère, moi." This appears to be a species of refinement upon the old saying, "It is a wise child that knows its own father." The charming Tisbe evidently piques herself upon her sagacity in being quite certain that she had a mother;--but she has not yet finished her story. "C'était une pauvre femme sans mari qui chantait des chansons dans les places publiques." (The "_delicate_" Esmeralda again.) "Un jour, un sénateur passa. Il regarde, il entendit," (she must have been singing the _Ça ira_ of 1549,) "et dit au capitaine qui le suivait--A la potence cette femme! Ma mère fut saisie sur-le-champ--elle ne dit rien ... a quoi bon? ... m'embrassa avec une grosse larme, prit son crucifix et se laissa garrotter. Je le vois encore ce crucifix en cuivre poli, mon nom Tisbe écrit en bas.... Mais il y avait avec le sénateur une jeune fille.... Elle se jeta aux pieds du sénateur et obtint la grace de ma mère.... Quand ma mère fut déliée, elle prit son crucifix, ma mère, et le donna à la belle enfant, en lui disant, Madame, gardez ce crucifix--il vous portera bonheur." Imagine Mademoiselle Mars uttering this trash!... Oh, it was grievous! And if I do not greatly mistake, she admired her part quite as little as I did, though she exerted all her power to make it endurable,--and there were passages, certainly, in which she succeeded in making one forget everything but herself, her voice, and her action. But to proceed. On this crucifix de cuivre poli, inscribed with the name of Tisbe, hangs all the little plot. Catarina Bragadini, the wife of the Tyrant, and the most ill-used and meritorious of ladies, is introduced to us in the third scene of the second day (new style--acts are out of fashion,) lamenting to her confidential femme de chambre the intolerable long absence of her lover. The maid listens, as in duty bound, with the most respectful sympathy, and then tells her that another of her waiting-maids for whom she had inquired was at prayers. Whereupon we have a morsel of naïveté that is _impayable_. "CATARINA. "Laisse-la prier.--Hélas! ... moi, cela ne me fait rien de prier!" This, I suspect, is what is called "the natural vein," in which consists the peculiar merit of this new style of writing. After this charming burst of natural feeling, the Podesta's virtuous lady goes on with her lament. "CATARINA. "Il y a cinq semaines--cinq semaines éternelles que je ne l'ai vu!... Je suis enfermée, gardée, en prison. Je le voyais une heure de tems en tems: cette heure si étroite, et si vite fermée, c'était le seul _soupirail_[1] par où entrait un peu d'air et de soleil dans ma vie. Maintenant tout est muré.... Oh Rodolpho!... Dafné, nous avons passé, lui et moi, de bien douces heures!... Est-ce que c'est coupable tout ce que je dis là de lui? Non, n'est-ce pas?" * * * * * Now you must know, that this Signor Rodolpho plays the part of gallant to both these ladies, and, though intended by the author for another of his estimable personages, is certainly, by his own showing, as great a rascal as can well be imagined. He loves only the wife, and not the mistress of Angelo; and though he permits her par complaisance to be his mistress too, he addresses her upon one occasion, when she is giving way to a fit of immoderate fondness, with great sincerity. "RODOLPHO. "Prenez garde, Tisbe, ma famille est une famille fatale. Il y a sur nous une prédiction, une destinée qui s'accomplit presque inévitablement de père en fils. Nous tuons qui nous aime." From this passage, and one before quoted, it should seem, I think, that notwithstanding all the innovations of M. Hugo, he has still a lingering reverence for the immutable power of destiny which overhangs the classic drama. How otherwise can he explain these two mystic sentences?--"Ma famille est une famille fatale. Il y a sur nous une destinée qui s'accomplit de père en fils." And this other: "La haine c'est dans notre sang: il faut toujours qu'un Malipieri haïsse quelqu'un." The only other character of importance is a very mysterious one called Homodei; and I think I may best describe him in the words of the excellent burlesque which has already been brought out upon this "Angelo" at the Vaudeville. There they make one of the dramatis personæ, when describing this very incomprehensible Homodei, say of him,-- "C'est le plus grand dormeur de France et de Navarre." In effect, he far out-sleeps the dozing sentinels in the "Critic;" for he goes on scene after scene sleeping apparently as sound as a top, till all on a sudden he starts up wide awake, and gives us to understand that he too is exceedingly in love with Madame la Podesta, but that he has been rejected. He therefore determines to do her as much mischief as possible, observing that "Un Sbire (for such is his humble rank) qui aime est bien petit--un Sbire qui se venge est bien grand." This great but rejected Sbire, however, is not contented with avenging himself on Catarina for her scorn, but is pushed, by his destiny, I presume, to set the whole company together by the ears. He first brings Rodolpho into the bed-room of Catarina, then brings the jealous Tisbe there to look at them, and finally contrives that the Tyrant himself should find out his wife's little innocent love affair--for innocent she declares it is. Fortunately, during this unaccountable reunion in the chamber of Madame, la Tisbe discovers that her mother the ballad-singer's crucifix is in the possession of her rival Catarina; whereupon she not only decides upon resigning her claim upon the heart of Signor Rodolpho in her favour, but determines upon saving her life from the fury of her jealous husband, who has communicated to the Tisbe, as we have seen above, his intention of killing his wife, because "il faut toujours qu'un Malipieri haïsse quelqu'un." Fortunately, again, it happens that the Tisbe has communicated to her lover the Tyrant, in a former conversation, the remarkable fact that another lover still had once upon a time made her a present of two phials--one black, the other white--one containing poison, the other a narcotic. After he has discovered Catarina's innocent weakness for Rodolpho, he informs the Tisbe that the time is come for him to kill his lady, and that he intends to do it by cutting her head off privately. The Tisbe tells him that this is a bad plan, and that poison would do much better. "ANGELO. "Oui! Le poison vaudrait mieux. Mais il faudrait un poison rapide, et, _vous ne me croirez pas_, je n'en ai pas ici. "LA TISBE. "J'en ai, moi. "ANGELO. "Où? "LA TISBE. "Chez moi. "ANGELO. "Quel poison? "LA TISBE. "Le poison Malispine, _vous savez_: cette boîte que m'a envoyée le primicier de Saint Marc." * * * * * After this satisfactory explanation, Angelo accepts her offer, and she trots away home and brings him the phial containing the narcotic. The absurdity of the scene that takes place when Angelo and the Tisbe are endeavouring to persuade Catarina to consent to be killed is such, that nothing but transcribing the whole can give you an idea of it: but it is too long for this. Believe me, we were not the only part of the audience that laughed at this scene _à gorge déployée_. Angelo begins by asking if she is ready. "CATARINA. "Prête à quoi? "ANGELO. "A mourir. "CATARINA. "... Mourir! Non, je ne suis pas prête. Je ne suis pas prête. Je ne suis pas prête _du tout_, monsieur! "ANGELO. "Combien de temps vous faut-il pour vous préparer? "CATARINA. "Oh! je ne sais pas--beaucoup de temps!" Angelo tells her she shall have an hour, and then leaves her alone: upon which she draws aside a curtain and discovers a block and an axe. She is naturally exceedingly shocked at this spectacle; her soliloquy is sublime! "CATARINA (_replacing the curtain_). "Derrière moi! c'est derrière moi. Ah! vous voyez bien que ce n'est pas un rêve, et que c'est bien réel ce qui passe ici, puisque _voilà des choses là derrière le rideau_!" * * * * * Corneille! Racine! Voltaire!--This is tragedy,--tragedy played on the stage of the Théâtre Français--tragedy which it has been declared in the face of day shall "lift the ground from under you!" Such is the march of mind! After this glorious soliloquy, her lover Rodolpho pays Catarina a visit--again in her bed-room, in her guarded palace, surrounded by spies and sentinels. How he gets there, it is impossible to guess: but in the burlesque at the Vaudeville they make this matter much clearer;--for there these unaccountable entrées are managed at one time by the falling down of a wall; at another, by the lover's rising through the floor like a ghost; and at another, by his coming flying down on a wire from an opening in the ceiling like a Cupid. The lovers have a long talk; but she does not tell him a word about the killing, for fear it should bring him into mischief,--though where he got in, it might be easy enough for her to get out. However, she says nothing about "_les choses_" behind the curtain, but gives him a kiss, and sends him away in high glee. No sooner does he disappear, than Angelo and the Tisbe enter, and a conversation ensues between the three on the manner of the doomed lady's death that none but M. Victor Hugo could have written. He would represent nature, and he makes a high-born princess, pleading for her life to a sovereign who is her husband, speak thus: "Parlons simplement. Tenez ... vous êtes infâme ... et puis, comme vous mentez toujours, vous ne me croirez pas. Tenez, vraiment je vous méprise: vous m'avez épousée pour mon argent...." Then she makes a speech to the Tisbe in the same exquisite tone of nature; with now and then a phrase or expression which is quite beyond even the fun of the Vaudeville to travestie; as for instance--"Je suis toujours restée honnête--vous me comprenez, vous--mais je ne puis dire cela à mon mari. _Les hommes ne veulent jamais nous croire_, vous savez; cependant nous leur disons _quelquefois_ des choses bien vraies...." At last the Tyrant gets out of patience. "ANGELO. "C'en est trop! Catarina Bragadina, le crime fait, veut un châtiment; la fosse ouverte, veut un cercueil; le mari outragé, veut une femme morte. _Tu perds toutes les paroles qui sortent de ta bouche_ (montrant le poison). "Voulez vous, madame? "CATARINA. "Non! "ANGELO. "Non?... J'en reviens à ma première idée alors. Les épées! les épées! Troilo! qu'on aille me chercher.... J'y vais!" * * * * * Now we all know that his première idée was not to stab her with one or more swords, but to cut her head off on a block--and that _les choses_ are all hid ready for it behind the curtain. But this "J'y vais" is part of the machinery of the fable; for if the Tyrant did not go away, the Tisbe could have found no opportunity of giving her rival a hint that the poison was not so dangerous as she believed. So when Angelo returns, the Tisbe tells him that "elle se résigne au poison." Catarina drinks the potion, falls into a trance, and is buried. (Victor Hugo is always original, they say.) The Tisbe digs her up again, and lays her upon a bed in her own house, carefully drawing the curtains round her. Then comes the great catastrophe. The lover of the two ladies uses his privilege, and enters the Tisbe's apartment, determined to fulfil his destiny and murder her, because she loves him--as written in the book of fate--and also because she has poisoned his other and his favourite love Catarina. The Signor Rodolpho knows that she brought the phial, because one of the maids told him so: this is another instance of the ingenious and skilful machinery of the fable. Rodolpho tells the poor woman what he is come for; adding, "Vous avez un quart d'heure pour vous préparer à la mort, madame!" There is something in this which shows that M. Hugo, notwithstanding he has some odd décousu notions, is aware of the respect which ought to be paid to married ladies, beyond what is due to those who are not so. When the Podesta announced the same intention to his wife, he says--"Vous avez devant vous une heure, madame." At the Vaudeville, however, they give another turn to this variation in the time allowed under circumstances so similar: they say-- "Catarina eut une heure au moins de son mari: Le tems depuis tantôt est donc bien renchéri." The unfortunate Tisbe, on receiving this communication from her dear Rodolpho, exclaims--"Ah! vous me tuez! Ah! c'est la première idée qui vous vient?" Some farther conversation takes place between them. On one occasion he says--like a prince as he is--"Mentez un peu, voyons!"--and then he assures her that he never cared a farthing for her, repeating very often, because, as he says, it is her _supplice_ to hear it, that he never loved anybody but Catarina. During the whole scene she ceases not, however, to reiterate her passionate protestations of love to him, and at last the dialogue ends by Rodolpho's stabbing her to the heart. I never beheld anything on the stage so utterly disgusting as this scene. That Mademoiselle Mars felt weighed down by the part, I am quite certain;--it was like watching the painful efforts of a beautiful racer pushed beyond its power--distressed, yet showing its noble nature to the last. But even her exquisite acting made the matter worse: to hear the voice of Mars uttering expressions of love, while the ruffian she addresses grows more murderous as she grows more tender, produced an effect at once so hateful and so absurd, that one knows not whether to laugh or storm at it. But, what was the most terrible of all, was to see Mars exerting her matchless powers to draw forth tears, and then to look round the house and see that she was rewarded by--a smile! After Tisbe is stabbed, Catarina of course comes to life; and the whole farce concludes by the dying Tisbe's telling the lovers that she had ordered horses for them; adding tenderly, "Elle est déliée--(how?)--morte pour le podesta, vivante pour toi. Trouves-tu cela bien arrangé ainsi?" Then Rodolpho says to Catarina, "Par qui as-tu été sauvée?" "LA TISBE (_in reply_). "Par moi, pour toi!" M. Hugo, in a note at the end of the piece, apologises for not concluding with these words--"Par moi, pour toi," which he seems to think particularly effective: nevertheless, for some reason which he does not very clearly explain, he concludes thus;-- "LA TISBE. "Madame, permettez-moi de lui dire encore une fois, Mon Rodolpho. Adieu, mon Rodolpho! partez vite à présent. Je meurs. Vivez. Je te bénis!" * * * * * It is impossible in thus running through the piece to give you any adequate idea of the loose, weak, trumpery style in which it is written. It really seems as if the author were determined to try how low he might go before the boys and grisettes who form the chorus of his admirers shall find out that he is quizzing them. One peculiarity in the plot of "this fine tragedy" is, that the hero Angelo never appears, nor is even alluded to, after the scene in which he commissions la Tisbe to administer the poison to Madame. His sudden disappearance is thus commented upon at the Vaudeville. The Tyrant there makes his appearance after it is all over, exclaiming-- "Je veux en être, moi ... l'on osera peut-être Finir un mélodrame en absence du traître? Suis-je un hors-d'oeuvre, un inutile article, Une cinquième roue ajoutée au tricycle?" In the preface to this immortal performance there is this passage:-- "Dans l'état où sont aujourd'hui toutes ces questions profondes qui touchent aux racines même de la société, il semblait depuis long-tems à l'auteur de ce drame qu'il pourrait y avoir utilité et grandeur" (utilité et grandeur!) "à développer sur le théâtre quelque chose de pareil à l'idée que voici...." And then follows what he calls his idea: but this preface must be read from beginning to end, if you wish to see what sort of stuff it is that humbug and impudence can induce the noisiest part of a population to pronounce "fine!" But you must hear one sentence more of this precious preface, for fear "the work" may not fall into your hands. "Le drame, comme l'auteur de cet ouvrage le voudrait faire, doit donner à la foule une philosophie; aux idées, une formule; à la poésie, des muscles, du sang, et de la vie; à ceux qui pense, une explication désintéressée; aux âmes altérées un breuvage, aux plaies secrètes un baume--à chacun un conseil, à tous une loi." (!!!!) He concludes thus:-- "Au siècle où nous vivons, l'horizon de l'art est bien élargi. Autrefois le poète disait, le public; aujourd'hui le poète dit, le peuple." Is it possible to conceive affected sublimity and genuine nonsense carried farther than this? Let us not, however, sit down with the belief that the capital of France is quite in the condition he describes;--let us not receive it quite as gospel that the raptures, the sympathy of this "foule sympathique et éclairée," that he talks of, in his preface to "Angelo," as coming nightly to the theatre to do him honour, exists--or at least that it exists beyond the very narrow limits of his own clique. The men of France do not sympathise with Victor Hugo, whatever the boys may do. He has made himself a name, it is true,--but it is not a good one; and in forming an estimate of the present state of literature in France, we shall greatly err if we assume as a fact that Hugo is an admired writer. I would not be unjustly severe on any one; but here is a gentleman who in early life showed considerable ability;--he produced some light pieces in verse, which are said to be written with good moral feeling, and in a perfectly pure and correct literary taste. We have therefore a right to say that M. Hugo turned his talents thus against his fellow-creatures, not from ignorance--not from simple folly--but upon calculation. For is it possible to believe that any man who has once shown by his writings a good moral feeling and a correct taste, can expose to the public eye such pieces as "Lucrèce Borgia," "Le Roi s'amuse," "Angelo," and the rest--in good faith, believing the doing so to be, as he says, "une tâche sainte?" Is this possible?... and if it be not, what follows?... Why, that the author is making a job of corrupting human hearts and human intellects. He has found out that the mind of man, particularly in youth, eagerly seeks excitement of any kind: he knows that human beings will go to see their fellows hanged or guillotined by way of an amusement, and on this knowledge he speculates. But as the question relates to France, we have not hitherto treated it fairly. I am persuaded that had our stage no censorship, and were dramas such as those of Dumas and Victor Hugo to be produced, they would fill the theatres at least as much as they do here. Their very absurdity--the horror--nay, even the disgust they inspire, is quite enough to produce this effect; but it would be unwise to argue thence that such trash had become the prevailing taste of the people. That the speculation, as such, has been successful, I have no doubt. This play, for instance, has been very generally talked of, and many have gone to see it, not only on its own account, but in order to behold the novel spectacle of Mademoiselle Mars _en lutte_ with an actress from La Porte St. Martin. As for Madame Dorval, I imagine she must be a very effective melodramatic performer when seen in her proper place; but, however it may have flattered her vanity, I do not think it can have added to her fame to bring her into this dangerous competition. As an actress, she is, I think, to Mademoiselle Mars much what Victor Hugo is to Racine,--and perhaps we shall hear that she has "heaved the ground from under her." Among various stories floating about on the subject of the new play and its author, I heard one which came from a gentleman who has long been in habits of intimacy with M. Hugo. He went, as in duty bound, to see the tragedy, and had immediately afterwards to face his friend. The embarrassment of the situation required to be met by presence of mind and a _coup de main_: he showed himself, however, equal to the exigency; he spoke not a word, but rushing towards the author, threw his arms round him, and held him long in a close and silent embrace. Another pleasantry on the same subject reached me in the shape of four verses, which are certainly droll enough; but I suspect that they must have been written in honour, not of "Angelo," but of some one of the tragedies in verse--"Le Roi s'amuse," perhaps, for they mimic the harmony of some of the lines to be found there admirably. "Où, ô Hugo! huchera-t-on ton nom? Justice encore rendu, que ne t'a-t-on? Quand donc au corps qu'académique on nomme, Grimperas-tu de roc en roc, rare homme?" And now farewell to Victor Hugo! I promise to trouble you with him no more; but the consequence which has been given to his name in England, has induced me to speak thus fully of the estimation in which I find him held in France. "RARE HOMME!" FOOTNOTE: [1] Vent-hole. LETTER LXV. Boulevard des Italiens.--Tortoni's.--Thunder-storm.--Church of the Madeleine.--Mrs. Butler's "Journal." All the world has been complaining of the tremendous heat of the weather here. The thermometer stands at.... I forget what, for the scale is not my scale; but I know that the sun has been shining without mercy during the last week, and that all the world declare that they are baked. Of all the cities of the earth to be baked in, surely Paris is the best. I have been reading that beautiful story of George Sand's about nothing at all, called "Lavinia," and chose for my study the deepest shade of the Tuileries Garden. If we could but have sat there all day, we should have felt no inconvenience from the sun, but, on the contrary, only have watched him from hour to hour caressing the flowers, and trying in vain to find entrance for one of his beams into the delightful covert we had chosen: but there were people to be seen, and engagements to be kept; and so here we are at home again, looking forward to a large party for the evening! The Boulevard as we came along was prettier than ever;--stands of delicious flowers tempting one at every step--a rose, and a bud, and two bits of mignonette, and a sprig of myrtle, for five sous; but all arranged so elegantly, that the little bouquet was worth a dozen tied up less tastefully. I never saw so many sitters in a morning; the people seemed as if they were reposing from necessity--as if they sat because they could walk no farther. As we passed Tortoni's, we were amused by a group, consisting of a very pretty woman and a very pretty man, who were seated on two chairs close together, and flirting apparently very much to their own satisfaction; while the third figure in the group, a little Savoyard, who had probably begun by asking charity, seemed spell-bound, with his eyes fixed on the elegant pair as if studying a scene for the _gaie science_, of which, as he carried a mandoline, I presume he was a disciple. We were equally entertained by the pertinacious staring of the little minstrel, and the utter indifference to it manifested by the objects of his admiration. A few steps farther, our eyes were again arrested by an exquisite, who had taken off his hat, and was deliberately combing his coal-black curls as he walked. In a brother beau, I doubt not he would have condemned such a degree of _laisser-aller_; but in himself, it only served to relever the beauty of his forehead and the general grace of his movements. I was glad that no fountain or limpid lake opened beneath his feet,--the fate of Narcissus would have been inevitable. Last night we had intended to make a farewell visit to the Feydeau,--Feydeau no longer, however,--to the Opéra Comique, I should say. But fortunately we had not secured a box, and therefore enjoyed the privilege of changing our minds,--a privilege ever dear, but in such weather as this inestimable. Instead of going to the theatre, we remained at home till it began to grow dark and cool--cooler at least by some degrees, but still most heavily sultry. We then sallied forth to eat ices at Tortoni's. All Paris seemed to be assembled upon the Boulevard to breathe: it was like a very crowded night at Vauxhall, and hundreds of chairs seemed to have sprung up from the ground to meet the exigences of the moment, for double rows of sitters occupied each side of the pavement. [Illustration: Drawn & Etched by A. Hervieu. BOULEVARD DES ITALIENS. London. Published by Richard Bentley. 1835.] Frenchwomen are so very lovely in their evening walking-dress, that I would rather see them thus than when full-dressed at parties. A drawing-room full of elegantly-dressed women, all looking prepared for a bal paré, is no unusual sight for English eyes; but truth obliges me to confess that it would be in vain at any imaginable evening promenade in London to look for such a spectacle as the Italian Boulevard showed us last night. It is the strangest thing in the world that it should be so--for it is certain that neither the bonnets, nor the pretty faces they shelter, are in any way inferior in England to any that can be seen elsewhere; but Frenchwomen have more the habit and the _knack_ of looking elegantly-dressed without being full-dressed. It is impossible to enter into detail in order to explain this--nothing less skilful than a milliner could do this; and I think that even the most skilful of the profession would not find it easy: I can only state the fact, that the general effect of an evening promenade in Paris is more elegant than it is in London. We were fortunate enough to secure the places of a large party that were leaving a window in the upper room at Tortoni's as we entered it: and here again is a scene as totally un-English as that of a restaurant in the Palais Royal. Both the rooms above, as well as those below, were quite full of gay company, each party sitting round their own little marble table, with the large _carafe_ of ice--for so it may well be called, for it only melts as you want it--the very sight of which, even if you venture not to drain a draught from the slowly yielding mass, creates a feeling of delicious coldness. Then the incessant entrées of party-coloured pyramids, with their accompaniment of gaufres,--the brilliant light within, the humming crowd without,--the refreshing coolness of the delicate regale, and the light gaiety which all the world seem to share at this pleasant hour of perfect idleness,--all are incontestably French, and, more incontestably still, not English. While we were still at our window, amused by all within and all without, we were started by some sharp flashes of lightning which began to break through a heavy cloud of most portentous blackness that I had been for some time admiring, as forming a beautiful contrast to the blaze of light on the Boulevard. No rain was as yet falling, and I proposed to my party a walk towards the Madeleine, which I thought would give us some fine effects of light and darkness on such a night as this. The proposal was eagerly accepted, and we wandered on till we left the crowd and the gas behind us. We walked to the end of the Rue Royale, and then turned round slowly and gradually to approach the church. The effect was infinitely finer than anything I had anticipated: the moon was only a few days past the full; and even when hid behind the heavy clouds that were gathering together as it seemed from all parts of the sky, gave light enough for us dimly, yet distinctly, to discern the vast and beautiful proportions of the magnificent portico. It looked like the pale spectre of a Grecian temple. With one accord we all paused at the point where it was most perfectly and most beautifully visible; and I assure you, that with the heavy ominous mass of black clouds above and behind it--with the faint light of the "inconstant moon," now for a moment brightly visible, and now wholly hid behind a driving cloud, reflected from its columns, it was the most beautiful object of art that I ever looked at. It was some time before we could resolve to leave it, quite sure as we were that it never could be our chance to behold it in such perfection again; and while we stayed, the storm advanced rapidly towards us, adding the distant rumbling of its angry voice to enhance the effect of the spectacle. Yet still we lingered; and were rewarded for our courage by seeing the whole of the vast edifice burst upon our sight in such a blaze of sudden brightness, that when it passed away, I thought for an instant that I was struck blind. Another flash followed--another and another. The spectacle was glorious; but the danger of being drenched to the skin became every moment more imminent, and we hastily retreated to the Boulevard. As we emerged from the gloom of the Madeleine Boulevard to the glaring gas-light from the cafés which illuminated the Italian, it seemed as if we had got into another atmosphere and another world. No rain had as yet fallen; and the crowd, thicker than ever, were still sitting and lounging about, apparently unconscious of the watery danger which threatened them. So great is the force of example, that, before we got to the end of the promenade, we seemed unconscious of it too, for we turned with the rest. But we were soon punished for our folly: the dark canopy burst asunder, and let down upon us as pelting a shower as ever drove feathers and flowers, and ribbons and gauze, to every point of the compass in search of shelter. I have sometimes wondered at the short space of time it required to clear a crowded theatre of its guests; but the vanishing of the crowd from the Boulevard was more rapid still. What became of them all, Heaven knows; but they seemed to melt and dissolve away as the rain fell upon them. We took shelter in the Passage de l'Opéra; and after a few minutes the rain ceased, and we got safely home. In the course of our excursion we encountered an English friend, who returned home with us; and though it was eleven o'clock, he looked neither shocked nor surprised when I ordered tea, but even consented to stay and partake of it with us. Our tea-table gossip was concerning a book that all the world--all the English world at least--had been long eagerly looking for, and which we had received two days before. Our English friend had made it his travelling-companion, and having just completed the perusal of it, could talk of nothing else. This book was Mrs. Butler's "Journal." Happily for the tranquillity of our tea-table, we were all perfectly well agreed in opinion respecting it: for, by his account, parties for and against it have been running very strong amongst you. I confess I heard this with astonishment; for it appears to me that all that can be said against the book lies so completely on the surface, that it must be equally visible to all the world, and that nobody can fail to perceive it. But these obvious defects once acknowledged--and they must be acknowledged by all, I should have thought that there was no possibility left for much difference of opinion,--I should have thought the genius of its author would then have carried all before it, leaving no one sufficiently cold-blooded and reasonable to remember that it contained any faults at all. It is certainly possible that my familiarity with the scenes she describes may give her spirited sketches a charm and a value in my eyes that they may not have for those who know not their truth. But this is not all their merit: the glow of feeling, the warm eloquence, the poetic fervour with which she describes all that is beautiful, and gives praise to all that is good, must make its way to every heart, and inspire every imagination with power to appreciate the graphic skill of her descriptions even though they may have no power to judge of their accuracy. I have been one among those who have deeply regretted the loss, the bankruptcy, which the stage has sustained in the tragic branch of its business by the secession of this lady: but her book, in my opinion, demonstrates such extraordinary powers of writing, that I am willing to flatter myself that we shall have gained eventually rather than lost by her having forsaken a profession too fatiguing, too exhausting to the spirits, and necessarily occupying too much time, to have permitted her doing what now we may fairly hope she will do,--namely, devote herself to literature. There are some passages of her hastily-written, and too hastily-published journal, which evidently indicate that her mind was at work upon composition. She appears to judge herself and her own efforts so severely, that, when speaking of the scenes of an unpublished tragedy, she says "they are not bad,"--which is, I think, the phrase she uses: I feel quite persuaded that they are admirable. Then again she says, "Began writing a novel...." I would that she would finish it too!--and as I hold it to be impossible that such a mind as hers can remain inactive, I comfort myself with the belief that we shall soon again receive some token of her English recollections handed to us across the Atlantic. That her next production will be less _faulty_ than her last, none can doubt, because the blemishes are exactly of a nature to be found in the journal of a heedless young traveller, who having caught, in passing, a multitude of unseemly phrases, puts them forth in jest, unmindful--much too unmindful certainly--of the risk she ran that they might be fixed upon her as her own genuine individual style of expression. But we have only to read those passages where she certainly is not jesting--where poetry, feeling, goodness, and piety glow in every line--to know what her language is _when she is in earnest_. On these occasions her power of expression is worthy of the thoughts of which it is the vehicle,--and I can give it no higher praise. LETTER LXVI. A pleasant Party.--Discussion between an Englishman and a Frenchman.--National Peculiarities. I told you yesterday that, notwithstanding the tremendous heat of the weather, we were going to a large party in the evening. We courageously kept the engagement; though, I assure you, I did it in trembling. But, to our equal surprise and satisfaction, the rooms of Mrs. M---- proved to be deliciously cool and agreeable. Her receiving-apartment consists of three rooms. The first was surrounded and decorated in all possible ways with a profusion of the most beautiful flowers, intermixed with so many large glass vases for gold fish, that I am sure the air was much cooled by evaporation from the water they contained. This room was lighted wholly by a large lamp suspended from the ceiling, which was enclosed in a sort of gauze globe, just sufficiently thick to prevent any painful glare of light, but not enough so to injure the beautiful effect always produced by the illumination of flowers. The large croisées were thrown open, with very slight muslin curtains over them; and the whole effect of the room--its cool atmosphere, its delicious fragrance, and its subdued light--was so enchanting, that it was not without difficulty we passed on to pay our compliments to Mrs. M----, who was in a larger but much less fascinating apartment. There were many French persons present, but the majority of the company was English. Having looked about us a little, we retreated to the fishes and the myrtles; and as there was a very handsome man singing buffa songs in one of the other rooms, with a score of very handsome women looking at and listening to him, the multitude assembled there; and we had the extreme felicity of finding fresh air and a sofa _à notre disposition_, with the additional satisfaction of accepting or refusing ices every time the trays paraded before us. You will believe that we were not long left without companions, in a position so every way desirable: and in truth we soon had about us a select committee of superlatively agreeable people; and there we sat till considerably past midnight, with a degree of enjoyment which rarely belongs to hours devoted to a very large party in very hot weather. And what did we talk about?--I think it would be easier to enumerate the subjects we did not touch upon than those we did. Everybody seemed to think that it would be too fatiguing to run any theme far; and so, rather in the style of idle, pampered lap-dogs, than of spirited pointers and setters, we amused ourselves by skittishly pursuing whatever was started, just as it pleased us, and then turned round and reposed till something else darted into view. The whole circle, consisting of seven persons, were English with the exception of one; and that one was--he must excuse me, for I will not name him--that one was a most exceedingly clever and superlatively agreeable young Frenchman. As we had snarled and snapped a little here and there in some of our gambols after the various objects which had passed before us, this young man suggested the possibility of his being _de trop_ in the coterie. "Are you not gênés," said he, "by my being here to listen to all that you and yours may be disposed to say of us and ours?... Shall I have the amiability to depart?" A general and decided negative was put upon this proposition; but one of the party moved an amendment. "Let us," said he, "agree to say everything respecting France and the French with as much unreserve as if you were on the top of Notre Dame; and do you, who have been for three months in England, treat us exactly in the same manner; and see what we shall make of each other. We are all much too languid to suffer our patriotism to mount up to 'spirit-boil,' and so there is no danger whatever that we should quarrel." "I would accept the partie instantly," said the Frenchman, "were it not so unequal. But six to one! ... is not this too hard?" "No! ... not the least in the world, if we take it in the quizzing vein," replied the other; "for it is well known that a Frenchman can out-quiz six Englishmen at any time." "Eh bien!" ... said the complaisant Parisian with a sigh, "I will do my best. Begin, ladies, if you please." "No! no! no!" exclaimed several female voices in a breath; "we will have nothing to do with it; fight it out between yourselves: we will be the judges, and award the honours of the field to him who hits the hardest." "This is worse and worse," cried our laughing enemy: "if this be the arrangement of the combat, the judgment, à coup sûr, will be given against me. How can you expect such blind confidence from me?" We protested against this attack upon our justice, promised to be as impartial as Jove, and desired the champions to enter the lists. "So then," said the Englishman, "I am to enact the part of St. George ... and God defend the right!" "And I, that of St. Denis," replied the Frenchman, his right hand upon his breast and his left gracefully sawing the air. "Mon bras ... non ... 'Ma _langue_ à ma patrie, Mon coeur à mon amie, Mourir gaiement pour la gloire et l'amour, C'est la devise d'un vaillant troubadour.' Allons!... Now tell me, St. George, what say you in defence of the English mode of suffering ladies--the ladies of Britain--the most lovely ladies in the world, n'est-ce pas?--to rise from table, and leave the room, and the gentlemen--alone--with downcast eyes and timid step--without a single preux chevalier to offer them his protection or to bear them company on their melancholy way--banished, turned out--exiled from the banquet-board!--I protest to you that I have suffered martyrdom when this has happened, and I, for my sins, been present to witness it. Croyez-moi, I would have joyfully submitted to make my exit à quatre pattes, so I might but have followed them. Ah! you know not what it is for a Frenchman to remain still, when forced to behold such a spectacle as this!... Alas! I felt as if I had disgraced myself for life; but I was more than spell-bound--I was promise-bound; the friend who accompanied me to the party where I witnessed this horror had previously told me what I should have to endure--I did endure it--but I have not yet forgiven myself for participating in so outrageous a barbarism." "The gentlemen only remain to drink the fair ladies' health," said our St. George very coolly; "and I doubt not all ladies would tell you, did they speak sincerely, that they were heartily glad to get rid of you for half an hour or so. You have no idea, my good fellow, what an agreeable interlude this makes for them: they drink coffee, sprinkle their fans with esprit de rose, refresh their wit, repair their smiles, and are ready to set off again upon a fresh campaign, certain of fresh conquests. But what can St. Denis say in defence of a Frenchman who makes love to three women at once--as I positively declare I saw you do last night at the Opera?" "You mistook the matter altogether, mon cher; I did not make love--I only offered adoration: we are bound to adore the whole sex, and all the petits soins offered in public are but the ceremonies of this our national worship.... We never make love in public, my dear friend--_ce n'est pas dans nos moeurs_. But will you explain to me un peu, why Englishmen indulge themselves in the very extraordinary habit of taking their wives to market with that vilaine corde au cou that it is so dreadful to mention, and there sell them for the mesquine somme de trois francs?... Ah! be very sure that were there a single Frenchman present at your terrible Smithfield when this happened, he would buy them all up, and give them their liberty at once." The St. George laughed--but then replied very gravely, that the custom was a very useful one, as it enabled an Englishman to get rid of a wife as soon as he found that she was not worth keeping. "But will you tell me," he continued, "how it is that you can be so inhuman as to take your innocent young daughters and sisters, and dispose of them as if they were Virginian slaves born on your estates, to the best bidder, without asking the charming little creatures themselves one single word concerning their sentiments on the subject?" "We are too careful of our young daughters and sisters," replied the champion of France, "not to provide them with a suitable alliance and a proper protector before they shall have run the risk of making a less prudent selection for themselves: but, what can put it into the heads of English parents to send out whole ship-loads of young English demoiselles--si belles qu'elles sont!--to the other side of the earth, in order to provide them with husbands?" Our knight paused for a moment before he answered, and I believe we all shook for him; but at length he replied very sententiously-- "When nations spread their conquests to _the other side of the earth_, and send forth their generals and their judges to take and to hold possession for them, it is fitting that their distant honours should be shared by their fair countrywomen. But will you explain to me why it is that the venerable grandmothers of France think it necessary to figure in a contre-danse--nay, even in a waltz, as long as they think that they have strength left to prevent their falling on their noses?" "'Vive la bagatelle!' is the first lesson we learn in our nurses' arms--and Heaven forbid we should any of us live long enough to forget it!" answered the Frenchman. "But if the question be not too indiscreet, will you tell me, most glorious St. George, in what school of philosophy it was that Englishmen learned to seek satisfaction for their wounded honour in the receipt of a sum of money from the lovers of their wives?" "Most puissant St. Denis," replied the knight of England, "I strongly recommend you not to touch upon any theme connected with the marriage state as it exists in England; because I opine that it would take you a longer time to comprehend it than you may have leisure to give. It will not take you so long perhaps to inform me how it happens that so gay a people as the French, whose first lesson, as you say, is 'Vive la bagatelle!' should make so frequent a practice as they do of inviting either a friend or a mistress to enjoy a tête-à-tête over a pan of charcoal, with doors, windows, and vent-holes of all kinds carefully sealed, to prevent the least possible chance that either should survive?" "It has arisen," replied the Frenchman, "from our great intimacy with England--where the month of November is passed by one half of the population in hanging themselves, and by the other half in cutting them down. The charcoal system has been an attempt to improve upon your insular mode of proceeding; and I believe it is, on the whole, considered preferable. But may I ask you in what reign the law was passed which permits every Englishman to beat his wife with a stick as large as his thumb; and also whether the law has made any provision for the case of a man's having the gout in that member to such a degree as to swell it to twice its ordinary size?" "It has been decided by a jury of physicians," said our able advocate, "that in all such cases of gout, the decrease of strength is in exact proportion to the increase of size in the pattern thumb, and therefore no especial law has passed our senate concerning its possible variation. As to the law itself, there is not a woman in England who will not tell you that it is as laudable as it is venerable." "The women of England must be angels!" cried the champion of France, suddenly starting from his chair and clasping his hands together with energy,--"angels! and nothing else, or" (looking round him) "they could never smile as you do now, while tyranny so terrible was discussed before them!" What the St. Denis thus politely called a smile, was in effect a very hearty laugh--which really and bonâ fide seemed to puzzle him, as to the feeling which gave rise to it. "I will tell you of what you all remind me at this moment," said he, reseating himself: "Did you ever see or read 'Le Médecin malgré Lui'?" We answered in the affirmative. "Eh bien! ... do you remember a certain scene in which a certain good man enters a house whence have issued the cries of a woman grievously beaten by her husband?" We all nodded assent. "Eh bien! ... and do you remember how it is that Martine, the beaten wife, receives the intercessor?--'Et je veux qu'il me batte, moi.' Voyez-vous, mesdames, I am that pitying individual--that kind-hearted M. Robert; and you--you are every one of you most perfect Martines." "You are positively getting angry, Sir Champion," said one of the ladies: "and if that happens, we shall incontestably declare you vanquished." "Nay, I am vanquished--I yield--I throw up the partie--I see clearly that I know nothing about the matter. What I conceived to be national barbarisms, you evidently cling to as national privileges. Allons! ... je me rends!" "We have not given any judgment, however," said I. "But perhaps you are more tired than beaten?--you only want a little repose, and you will then be ready to start anew." "Non! absolument non!--but I will willingly change sides, and tell you how greatly I admire England...." The conversation then started off in another direction, and ceased not till the number of parties who passed us in making their exit roused us at length to the necessity of leaving our flowery retreat, and making ours also. LETTER LXVII. Chamber of Deputies.--Punishment of Journalists.--Institute for the Encouragement of Industry.--Men of Genius. Of all the ladies in the world, the English, I believe, are the most anxious to enter a representative chamber. The reason for this is sufficiently obvious,--they are the only ones who are denied this privilege in their own country; though I believe that they are in general rather disposed to consider this exclusion as a compliment, inasmuch as it evidently manifests something like a fear that their conversation might be found sufficiently attractive to draw the Solons and Lycurguses from their duty. But however well they may be disposed to submit to the privation at home, it is a certain fact that Englishwomen dearly love to find themselves in a legislative assembly abroad. There certainly is something more than commonly exciting in the interest inspired by seeing the moral strength of a great people collected together, and in the act of exerting their judgment and their power for the well-being and safety of millions. I suspect, however, that the sublimity of the spectacle would be considerably lessened by a too great familiarity with it; and that if, instead of being occasionally hoisted outside a lantern to catch an uncertain sight and a broken sound of what was passing within the temple, we were in the constant habit of being ushered into so commodious a tribune as we occupied yesterday at the Chamber of Deputies, we might soon cease to experience the sort of reverence with which we looked down from thence upon the collected wisdom of France. Nothing can be more agreeable than the arrangement of this chamber for spectators. The galleries command the whole of it perfectly; and the orator of the hour, if he can be heard by any one, cannot fail of being heard by those who occupy them. Another peculiar advantage for strangers is, that the position of every member is so distinctly marked, that you have the satisfaction of knowing at a glance where to find the brawling republican, the melancholy legitimatist, and the active doctrinaire. The ministers, too, are as much distinguished by their place in the Chamber as in the Red Book, (or whatever may be the distinctive symbol of that important record here,) and by giving a franc at the entrance, for a sort of map that they call a "_Table figurative_" of the Chamber, you know the name and constituency of every member present. This greatly increases the interest felt by a stranger. It is very agreeable to hear a man speak with fervour and eloquence, let him be who he may; but it enhances the pleasure prodigiously to know at the same time who and what he is. If he be a minister, every word has either more or less weight according ... to circumstances; and if he be in opposition, one is also more au fait as to the positive value of his sentiments from being acquainted with the fact. The business before the house when we were there was stirring and interesting enough. It was on the subject of the fines and imprisonment to be imposed on those journalists who had outraged law and decency by their inflammatory publications respecting the trials going on at the Luxembourg.--General Bugeaud made an excellent speech upon the abuse of the freedom of the press; a subject which certainly has given birth to more "cant," properly so called, than any other I know of. To so strange an extent has this been carried, that it really requires a considerable portion of moral courage to face the question fairly and honestly, and boldly to say, that this unrestricted power, which has for years been dwelt upon as the greatest blessing which can be accorded to the people, is in truth a most fearful evil. If this unrestricted power had been advocated only by demagogues and malcontents, the difficulties respecting the question would be slight indeed, compared to what they are at present; but so many good men have pleaded for it, that it is only with the greatest caution, and the strongest conviction from the result of experience, that the law should interfere to restrain it. Nothing, in fact, is so plausible as the sophistry with which a young enthusiast for liberty seeks to show that the unrestrained exercise of intellect must not only be the birthright of every man, but that its exercise must also of necessity be beneficial to the whole human race. How easy is it to talk of the loss which the ever-accumulating mass of human knowledge must sustain from stopping by the strong hand of power the diffusion of speculation and experience! How very easy is it to paint in odious colours the tyranny that would check the divine efforts of the immortal mind!--And yet it is as clear as the bright light of heaven, that not all the sufferings which all the tyrants who ever cursed the earth have brought on man can compare to those which the malign influence of an unchecked press is calculated to inflict upon him. The influence of the press is unquestionably the most awful engine that Providence has permitted the hand of man to wield. If used for good, it has the power of raising us higher in the intellectual scale than Plato ever dreamed; but if employed for evil, the Prince of Darkness may throw down his arms before its unmeasured strength--he has no weapon like it. What are the temptations--the seductions of the world which the zealous preacher deprecates, which the watchful parent dreads, compared to the corruption that may glide like an envenomed snake into the bosom of innocence from this insidious agency? Where is the retreat that can be secured from it? Where is the shelter that can baffle its assaults?--Blasphemy, treason, and debauchery are licensed by the act of the legislature to do their worst upon the morals of every people among whom an unrestricted press is established by law. Surely, but perhaps slowly, will this truth become visible to all men: and if society still hangs together at all, our grandchildren will probably enjoy the blessing without the curse of knowledge. The head of the serpent has been bruised, and therefore we may hope for this,--but it is not yet. The discussions in the Chamber on this important subject, not only yesterday, but on several occasions since the question of these fines has been started, have been very animated and very interesting. Never was the right and the wrong in an argument more ably brought out than by some of the speeches on this business: and, on the other hand, never did effrontery go farther than in some of the defences which have been set up for the accused gérans of the journals in question. For instance, M. Raspail expresses a very grave astonishment that the Chamber of Peers, instead of objecting to the liberties which have been taken with them, do not rather return thanks for the useful lesson they have received. He states too in this same _defence_, as he is pleased to call it, that the conductors of the "Réformateur" have adopted a resolution to publish without restriction or alteration every article addressed to them by the accused parties or their defenders. This _resolution_, then, is to be pleaded as an excuse for whatever their columns may contain! The concluding argument of this defence is put in the form of a declaration, purporting that whoever dooms a fellow-creature to the horrors of imprisonment ought to undergo the same punishment for the term of twenty years as an expiation of the crime. This is logical. There is a tone of vulgar, insolent defiance in all that is recorded of the manner and language adopted by the partisans of these Lyons prisoners, which gives what must, I think, be considered as very satisfactory proof that the party is not one to be greatly feared. After the vote had passed the Chamber of Peers for bringing to account the persons who subscribed the protest against their proceedings, two individuals who were not included in this vote of reprobation sent in a written petition that they might be so. What was the official answer to this piece of bravado, or whether it received any, I know not; but I was told that some one present proposed that a reply should be returned as follows:-- "The court regrets that the request cannot be granted, inasmuch as the sentence has been already passed on those whom it concerned;--but that if the gentlemen wished it, they might perhaps contrive to get themselves included in the next indictment for treason." * * * * * In the evening we went to the Institute for the encouragement of Industry. The meeting was held in the Salle St. Jean, at the Hôtel de Ville. It was extremely full, and was altogether a display extremely interesting to a stranger. The speeches made by several of the members were in excellently good taste and extremely to the purpose: I heard nothing at all approaching to that popular strain of eloquence which has prevailed of late so much in England upon all similar occasions,--nothing that looked like an attempt to bamboozle the respectable citizens of the metropolis into the belief that they were considered by wise men as belonging to the first class in society. The speeches were admirably calculated to excite ingenuity, emulation, and industry; and I really believe that there was not a single word of nonsense spoken on the occasion. Several ingenious improvements and inventions were displayed, and the meeting was considerably égayé by two or three pieces exceedingly well played on a piano-forte of an improved construction. Many prizes were bestowed, and received with that sort of genuine pleasure which it is so agreeable to witness;--but these were all for useful improvements in some branch of practical mechanics, and not, as I saw by the newspapers had recently been the case at a similar meeting in London, for essays! One of the prize compositions was, as I perceived, "The best Essay on Education," from the pen of a young bell-hanger! Next year, perhaps, the best essay on medicine may be produced by a young tinker, or a gold medal be awarded to Betty the housemaid for a digest of the laws of the land. Our long-boasted common sense seems to have emigrated, and taken up its abode here; for, spite of their recent revolution, you hear of no such stuff on this side the water;--mechanics are mechanics still, and though they some of them make themselves exceeding busy in politics, and discuss their different kings with much energy over a bottle of small wine, I have not yet heard of any of the "_operative classes_" throwing aside their files and their hammers to write essays. This queer mixture of occupations reminds me of a conversation I listened to the other day upon the best manner in which a nation could recompense and encourage her literary men. One English gentleman, with no great enthusiasm of manner or expression, quietly observed that he thought a moderate pension, sufficient to prevent the mind from being painfully driven from speculative to practical difficulties, would be the most fitting recompense that the country could offer. "Is it possible you can really think so, my dear sir?" replied another, who is an amateur, and a connoisseur, and a bel esprit, and an antiquary, and a fiddler, and a critic, and a poet. "I own my ideas on the subject are very different. Good God! ... what a reward for a man of genius!... Why, what would you do for an old nurse?" "I would give her a pension too," said the quiet gentleman. "I thought so!" retorted the man of taste. "And do you really feel no repugnance in placing the immortal efforts of genius on a par with rocking a few babies to sleep?--Fie on such philosophy!" "And what is the recompense which you would propose, sir?" inquired the advocate for the pension. "I, sir?--I would give the first offices and the first honours of the state to our men of genius: by so doing, a country ennobles itself in the face of the whole earth." "Yes, sir.... But the first offices of the state are attended with a good deal of troublesome business, which might, I think, interfere with the intellectual labour you wish to encourage. I should really be very sorry to see Dr. Southey made secretary-at-war,--and yet he deserves something of his country too." "A man of genius, sir, deserves everything of his country.... It is not a paltry pension can pay him. He should be put forward in parliament ... he should be..." "I think, sir, he should be put at his ease: depend upon it, this would suit him better than being returned knight of the shire for any county in England." "Good Heaven, sir!"... resumed the enthusiast; but he looked up and his opponent was gone. LETTER LXVIII. Walk to the Marché des Innocens.--Escape of a Canary Bird.--A Street Orator.--Burying-place of the Victims of July. I must give you to-day an account of the adventures I have encountered in a _course à pied_ to the Marché des Innocens. You must know that there is at one of the corners of this said Marché a shop sacred to the ladies, which débits all those unclassable articles that come under the comprehensive term of haberdashery,--a term, by the way, which was once interpreted to me by a celebrated etymologist of my acquaintance to signify "_avoir d'acheter_." My magasin "à la Mère de Famille" in the Marché des Innocens fully deserves this description, for there are few female wants in which it fails to "avoir d'acheter." It was to this compendium of utilities that I was notably proceeding when I saw before me, exactly on a spot that I was obliged to pass, a throng of people that at the first glance I really thought was a prodigious mob; but at the second, I confess that they shrank and dwindled considerably. Nevertheless, it looked ominous; and as I was alone, I felt a much stronger inclination to turn back than to proceed. I paused to decide which I should do; and observing, as I did so, a very respectable-looking woman at the door of a shop very near the tumult, I ventured to address an inquiry to her respecting the cause of this unwonted assembling of the people in so peaceable a part of the town; but, unfortunately, I used a phrase in the inquiry which brought upon me more evident quizzing than one often gets from the civil Parisians. My words, I think, were,--"Pourriez-vous me dire, madame, ce que signifie tout ce monde?... Est-ce qu'il y a quelque mouvement?" This unfortunate word _mouvement_ amused her infinitely; for it is in fact the phrase used in speaking of all the _real_ political hubbubs that have taken place, and was certainly on this occasion as ridiculous as if some one, on seeing forty or fifty people collected together around a pick-pocket or a broken-down carriage in London, were to gravely inquire of his neighbour if the crowd he saw indicated a revolution. "Mouvement!" she repeated with a very speaking smile: "est-ce que madame est effrayée?... Mouvement ... oui, madame, il y a beaucoup de mouvement; mais cependant c'est sans mouvement.... C'est tout bonnement le petit serin de la marchande de modes là bas qui vient de s'envoler. Je puis vous assurer la chose," she added, laughing, "car je l'ai vu partir." "Is that all?" said I. "Is it possible that the escape of a bird can have brought all these people together?" "Oui, madame, rien autre chose.... Mais regardez--voilà les agens de police qui s'approchent pour voir ce que c'est--ils en saisissent un, je crois.... Ah! ils ont une manière si étonnante de reconnaître leur monde!" This last hint quite decided my return, and I thanked the obliging bonnetière for her communications. "Bonjour, madame," she replied with a very mystifying sort of smile,--"bonjour; soyez tranquille--il n'y a pas de danger d'un _mouvement_." I am quite sure she was the wife of a doctrinaire; for nothing affronts the whole party, from the highest to the lowest, so much as to breathe a hint that you think it possible any riot should arise to disturb their dear tranquillity. On this occasion, however, I really had no such matter in my thoughts, and sinned only by a blundering phrase. I returned home to look for an escort; and having enlisted one, set forth again for the Marché des Innocens, which I reached this time without any other adventure than being splashed twice, and nearly run over thrice. Having made my purchases, I was setting my face towards home again, when my companion proposed that we should go across the market to look at the monuments raised over some half-dozen or half-score of revolutionary heroes who fell and were buried on a spot at no great distance from the fountain, on the 29th July 1830. When we reached the little enclosure, we remarked a man, who looked, I thought, very much like a printer's devil, leaning against the rail, and haranguing a girl who stood near him with her eyes wide open as if she were watching for, as well as listening to, every word which should drop from his oracular lips. A little boy, almost equally attentive to his eloquence, occupied the space between them, and completed the group. I felt a strong inclination to hear what he was saying, and stationed myself doucement, doucement at a short distance, looking, I believe, almost as respectfully attentive as the girl for whose particular advantage he was evidently holding forth. He perceived our approach, but appeared nowise annoyed by it; on the contrary, it seemed to me that he was pleased to have an increased audience, for he evidently threw more energy into his manner, waved his right hand with more dignity, and raised his voice higher. I will not attempt to give you his discourse verbatim, for some of his phrases were so extraordinary, or at least so new to me, that I cannot recall them; but the general purport of it made an impression both on me and my companion, from its containing so completely the very soul and essence of the party to which he evidently belonged. The theme was the cruel treatment of the amiable, patriotic, and noble-minded prisoners at the Luxembourg. "What did we fight for?" ... said he, pointing to the tombs within the enclosure: "was it not to make France and Frenchmen free?... And do they call it freedom to be locked up in a prison ... actually locked up?... What! can a slave be worse than that? Slaves have got chains on ... qu'est-ce que cela fait?... If a man is locked up, he cannot go farther than if he was chained--c'est clair ... it is all one, and Frenchmen are again slaves.... This is what we have got by our revolution...." The girl, who continued to stand looking at him with undeviating attention, and, as I presume, with proportionate admiration, turned every now and then a glance our way, to see what effect it produced on us. My attention, at least, was quite as much riveted on the speaker as her own; and I would willingly have remained listening to his reasons, which were quite as "plentiful as blackberries," why no Frenchman in the world, let him do what he would, (except, I suppose, when they obey their king, like the unfortunate victims of popular tyranny at Ham,) should ever be restricted in his freedom--because freedom was what they fought for--and being in prison was not being free--and so on round and round in his logical circle. But as his vehemence increased, so did his audience; and as I did not choose to be present at a second "mouvement" on the same day, or at any rate of running the risk of again seeing the police approaching a throng of which I made one, I walked off. The last words I heard from him, as he pointed piteously to the tombs, were--"V'là les restes de notre révolution de Juillet!" In truth, this fellow talked treason so glibly, that I felt very glad to get quietly away; but I was also glad to have fallen in with such an admirable display of popular eloquence, with so little trouble or inconvenience. We lingered long enough within reach of the tombs, while listening to this man, for me to read and note the inscription on one of them. The name and description of the "victime de Juillet" who lay beneath it was, "Hapel, du département de la Sarthe, tué le 29 Juillet 1830." [Illustration: Drawn & Etched by A. Hervieu. "V'LA LES RESTES DE NOTRE REVOLUTION DE JUILLET". London. Published by Richard Bentley. 1835.] Nothing can be more trumpery than the appearance of this burying-place of "the immortals," with its flags and its foppery of spears and halberds. There is another similar to it in the most eastern court of the Louvre, and, I believe, in several other places. If it be deemed advisable to leave memorials upon these unconsecrated graves, it would be in better taste to make them of such dignity as might excuse their erection in these conspicuous situations; but at present the effect is decidedly ludicrous. If the bodies of those who fell are really deposited within these fantastical enclosures, it would show much more reverence for them and their cause if they were all to receive Christian burial at Père Lachaise, with all such honours, due or undue, as might suit the feelings of the time; and over them it would be well to record, as a matter of historical interest, the time and manner of their death. This would look like the result of national feeling, and have something respectable in it; which certainly cannot be said of the faded flaunting flags and tassels which now wave over them, so much in the style of decorations in the barn of a strolling company of comedians. As we left the spot, my attention was directed to the Rue de la Ferronnerie, which is close to the Marché des Innocens, and in which street Henri Quatre lost his life by the assassin hand of Ravaillac. It struck me as we talked of this event, and of the many others to which the streets of this beautiful but turbulent capital have been witness, that a most interesting--and, if accompanied by good architectural engravings, a most beautiful--work might be compiled on the same plan, or at least following the same idea as Mr. Leigh Hunt has taken in his work on the interesting localities of London. A history of the streets of Paris might contain a mixture of tragedy, comedy, and poetry--of history, biography, and romance, that might furnish volumes of "entertaining knowledge," which being the favourite _genre_ amidst the swelling mass of modern literature, could hardly fail of meeting with success. How pleasantly might an easy writer go on anecdotizing through century after century, as widely and wildly as he pleased, and yet sufficiently tied together to come legitimately under one common title; and how wide a grasp of history might one little spot sometimes contain! Where some scattered traces of the stones may still be seen that were to have been reared into a palace for the King of Rome, once stood the convent of the "Visitation de Sainte Marie," founded by Henriette the beautiful and the good, after the death of her martyred husband, our first Charles; within whose church were enshrined her heart, and those of her daughter, and of James the Second of England. Where English nuns took refuge from English protestantism, is now--most truly English still--a manufactory for spinning cotton. Where stood the most holy altar of Le Verbe Incarné, now stands a caserne. In short, it is almost impossible to take a single step in Paris without discovering, if one does but take the trouble of inquiring a little, some tradition attached to it that might contribute information to such a work. I have often thought that a history of the convents of Paris during that year of barbarous profanation 1790, would make, if the materials were well collected, one of the most interesting books in the world. The number of nuns returned upon the world from the convents of that city alone amounted to many thousands; and when one thinks of all the varieties of feeling which this act must have occasioned, differing probably from the brightest joy for recovered hope and life, to the deepest desolation of wretched helplessness, it seems extraordinary that so little of its history has reached us. Paris is delightful enough, as every one knows, to all who look at it, even with the superficial glance that seeks no farther than its external aspect at the present moment; but it would, I imagine, be interesting beyond all other cities of the modern world if carefully travelled through with a consummate antiquarian who had given enough learned attention to the subject to enable him to do justice to it. There is something so piquant in the contrasts offered by some localities between their present and their past conditions,--such records furnished at every corner, of the enormous greatness of the human animal, and his most _chétif_ want of all stability--traces of such wit and such weakness, such piety and profanation, such bland and soft politeness, and such ferocious barbarism,--that I do not believe any other page of human nature could furnish the like. I am sure, at least, that no British records could furnish pictures of native manners and native acts so dissimilar at different times from each other as may be found to have existed here. The most striking contrast that we can show is between the effects of Oliver Cromwell's rule and that of Charles the Second; but this was unity and concord compared to the changes in character which have repeatedly taken place in France. That this contrast with us was, speaking of the general mass of the population, little more than the mannerism arising from adopting the style of "the court" for the time being, is proved by the wondrously easy transition from one tone to the other which followed the restoration. This was chiefly the affair of courtiers, or of public men, who as necessarily put on the manners of their master as a domestic servant does a livery; but Englishmen were still in all essentials the same. Not so the French when they threw themselves headlong, from one extremity of the country to the other, into all the desperate religious wildness which marks the history of the Ligue; not so the French when from the worship of their monarchs they suddenly turned as at one accord and flew at their throats like bloodhounds. Were they then the same people?--did they testify any single trait of moral affinity to what the world thought to be their national character one short year before? Then again look at them under Napoleon, and look at them under Louis-Philippe. It is a great, a powerful, a magnificent people, let them put on what outward seeming they will; but I doubt if there be any nation in the world that would so completely throw out a theorist who wished to establish the doctrine of distinct races as the French. You will think that I have made a very circuitous ramble from the Marché des Innocens; but I have only given you the results of the family speculation we fell into after returning thence, which arose, I believe, from my narrating how I had passed from the tombeaux of the _victimes de Juillet_ to the place where Henri Quatre received his death. This set us to meditate on the different political objects of the slain; and we all agreed that it was a much easier task to define those of the king than those of the subject. There is every reason in the world to believe that the royal Henri wished the happiness and prosperity of France; but the guessing with any appearance of correctness what might be the especial wish and desire of the Sieur Hapel du département de la Sarthe, is a matter infinitely more difficult to decide. LETTER LXIX. A Philosophical Spectator.--Collection of Baron Sylvestre.--Hôtel des Monnaies.--Musée d'Artillerie. We have been indebted to M. J***, the same obliging and amiable friend of whom I have before spoken, for one or two more very delightful mornings. We saw many things, and we talked of many more. M. J*** is inexhaustible in piquant and original observation, and possesses such extensive knowledge on all those subjects which are the most intimately connected with the internal history of France during the last eventful forty years, as to make every word he utters not only interesting, but really precious. When I converse with him, I feel that I have opened a rich vein of information, which if I had but time and opportunity to derive from it all it could give, would positively leave me ignorant of nothing I wish to know respecting the country. The Memoirs of such a man as M. J*** would be a work of no common value. The military history of the period is as familiar to all the world as the marches of Alexander or the conquests of Cæsar; the political history of the country during the same interval is equally well known; its literary history speaks for itself: but such Memoirs as I am sure M. J*** could write, would furnish a picture that is yet wanting. We are not without full and minute details of all the great events which have made France the principal object for all Europe to stare at for the last half-century; but these details have uniformly proceeded from individuals who have either been personally engaged in or nearly connected with these stirring events; and they are accordingly all tinctured more or less with such strong party feeling, as to give no very impartial colouring to every circumstance they recount. The inevitable consequence of this is, that, with all our extensive reading on the subject, we are still far from having a correct impression of the internal and domestic state of the country throughout this period. We know a great deal about old nobles who have laid down their titles and become men of the people, and about new nobles who have laid down their muskets to become men of the court,--of ministers, ambassadors, and princes who have dropped out of sight, and of parvenus of all sorts who have started into it; but, meanwhile, what do we know of the mass--not of the people--of them also we know quite enough,--but of the gentlemen, who, as each successive change came round, felt called upon by no especial duty to quit their honourable and peaceable professions in order to resist or advance them? Yet of these it is certain there must be hundreds who, on the old principle that "lookers-on see most of the game," are more capable of telling us what effect these momentous changes really produced than any of those who helped to cause them. M. J*** is one of these; and I could not but remark, while listening to him, how completely the tone in which he spoke of all the public events he had witnessed was that of a philosophical spectator. He seemed disposed, beyond any Frenchman I have yet conversed with, to give to each epoch its just character, and to each individual his just value: I never before had the good fortune to hear any citizen of the Great Nation converse freely, calmly, reasonably, without prejudice or partiality, of that most marvellous individual Napoleon. It is not necessary to attempt recalling the precise expressions used respecting him; for the general impression left on my mind is much more deeply engraven than the language which conveyed it: besides, it is possible that my inferences may have been more conclusive and distinct than I had any right to make them, and yet so sincerely the result of the casual observations scattered here and there in a conversation that was anything but _suivie_, that were I to attempt to repeat the words which conveyed them, I might be betrayed into involuntary and unconscious exaggeration. The impression, then, which I received is, that he was a most magnificent tyrant. His projects seem to have been conceived with the vastness and energy of a moral giant, even when they related to the internal regulation only of the vast empire he had seized upon; but the mode in which he brought them into action was uniformly marked by barefaced, unshrinking, uncompromising tyranny. The famous Ordonnances of Charles Dix were no more to be compared, as an act of arbitrary power, to the daily deeds of Napoleon, than the action of a dainty pair of golden sugar-tongs to that of the firmest vice that ever Vulcan forged. But this enormous, this tremendous power, was never wantonly employed; and the country when under his dominion had more frequent cause to exclaim in triumph-- "'Tis excellent to have a giant's strength," than to add in suffering, "But tyrannous to use it like a giant." It was the conviction of this--the firm belief that the GLORY of France was the object of her autocrat, which consecrated and confirmed his power while she bent her proud neck to his yoke, and which has since and will for ever make his name sound in the ears of her children like a pæan to their own glory. What is there which men, and most especially Frenchmen, will not suffer and endure to hear that note? Had Napoleon been granted to them in all his splendour as their emperor for ever, they would for ever have remained his willing slaves. When, however, he was lost to them, there is every reason to believe that France would gladly have knit together the severed thread of her ancient glory with her hopes of future greatness, had the act by which it was to be achieved been her own: but it was the hand of an enemy that did it--the hand of a triumphant enemy; and though a host of powerful, valiant, noble, and loyal-hearted Frenchmen welcomed the son of St. Louis to his lawful throne with as deep and sincere fidelity as ever warmed the heart of man, there was still a national feeling of wounded pride which gnawed the hearts of the multitude, and even in the brightest days of the Restoration prevented their rightful king from being in their eyes what he would have been had they purchased his return by the act of drawing their swords, instead of laying them down. It was a greatness that was thrust upon them--and for that reason, and I truly believe for that reason only, it was distasteful. In days of old, if it happened by accident that a king was unpopular, it mattered very little to the general prosperity of his country, and still less to the general peace of Europe. Even if hatred went so far as to raise the hand of an assassin against him, the tranquillity of the rest of the human race was but little affected thereby. But in these times the effect is very different: disaffection has been taught to display itself in acts that may at one stroke overthrow the prosperity of millions at home, and endanger the precious blessings of peace abroad; and it becomes therefore a matter of importance to the whole of Europe that every throne established within her limits should be sustained not only by its own subjects, but by a system of mutual support that may insure peace and security to all. To do this where a king is rejected by the majority of the people, is, to say the least of it, a very difficult task; and it will probably be found that to support power firmly and legally established, will contribute more to the success of this system of mutual support for the preservation of universal tranquillity, than any crusade that could be undertaken in any part of the world for the purpose of substituting an exiled dynasty for a reigning one. This is the _doctrine_ to which I have now listened so long and so often, that I have ceased all attempts to refute it. I have, however, while stating it, been led to wander a little from those reminiscences respecting fair France which I found so interesting, coming forth as they did, as if by accident, from the rich storehouse of my agreeable friend's memory: but I believe it would be quite in vain were I to go back to the point at which I deviated, for I could do justice neither to the matter nor the manner of the conversations which afforded me so much pleasure;--I believe therefore that I had better spare you any more politics just at present, and tell you something of several things which we had the pleasure of seeing with him. One of these was Baron Gros' magnificent sketch, if I must so call a very finished painting, of his fine picture of the Plague of Jaffa. A week or two before I had seen the picture itself at the Luxembourg, and felt persuaded then that it was by far the finest work of the master; but this first developement of his idea is certainly finer still. It is a beautiful composition, and there are groups in it that would not have lowered the reputation of Michael Angelo. The severe simplicity of the Emperor's figure and position is in the very purest taste. This very admirable work was, when we saw it, in the possession of the Baron de Sylvestre, whose collection, without having the dignity of a gallery, has some beautiful things in it. Our visit to it and its owner was one of great interest to me. I have seldom seen any one with a more genuine and enthusiastic love of art. He has one cabinet,--it is, I believe, his own bed-room,--which almost from floor to ceiling is hung with little gems, so closely set together as to produce at first sight the effect of almost inextricable confusion;--portraits, landscapes, and historic sketches--pencil crayon, water-colour and oil--with frames and without frames, all blended together in utter defiance of all symmetry or order whatever. But it was a rich confusion, and many a collector would have rejoiced at receiving permission to seize upon a chance handful of the heterogeneous mass of which it was composed. Curious, well-authenticated, original drawings of the great masters, though reduced to a mere rag, have always great interest in my eyes,--and the Baron de Sylvestre has many such: but it was his own air of comfortable domestic intimacy with every scrap, however small, on the lofty and thickly-studded walls of this room, which delighted me;--it reminded me of Denon, who many years ago showed me his large and very miscellaneous collection with equal enthusiasm. I dearly love to meet with people who are really and truly in earnest. On the same morning that we made this agreeable acquaintance, we passed an hour or two at the Hôtel des Monnaies, which is situated on the Quai Conti, and, I believe, on the exact spot where the old Hôtel de Conti formerly stood. The building, like all the public establishments in France, is very magnificent, and we amused ourselves very agreeably with our intelligent and amiable cicisbeo in examining an immense collection of coins and medals. This collection was formerly placed at the Louvre, but transferred to this hôtel as soon as its erection was completed. The medals, as usual in all such examinations, occupied the greater part of our time and attention. It is quite a gallery of portraits, and many of them of the highest historical interest: but perhaps our amusement was as much derived from observing how many ignoble heads, who had no more business there than so many turnips, had found place nevertheless, by the outrageous vanity either of themselves or their friends, amidst kings, heroes, poets, and philosophers. It is perfectly astonishing to see how many such as these have sought a bronze or brazen immortality at the Hôtel des Monnaies: every medal struck in France has an impression preserved here, and it is probably the knowledge of this fact which has tempted these little people so preposterously to distinguish themselves. On another occasion we went with the same agreeable escort to visit the national museum of ancient armour. This Musée d'Artillerie is not quite so splendid a spectacle as the same species of exhibition at the Tower; but there are a great many beautiful things there too. Some exquisitely-finished muskets and arquebuses of considerable antiquity, and splendid with a profusion of inlaid ivory, mother-of-pearl, and precious stones, are well arranged for exhibition, as are likewise some complete suits of armour of various dates;--among them is one worn in battle by the unfortunate Maid of Orleans. But this is not only a curious antiquarian exhibition,--it is in truth a national institution wherein military men may study the art of war from almost its first barbarous simplicity up to its present terrible perfection. The models of all manner of slaughtering instruments are beautifully executed, and must be of great interest to all who wish to study the theory of that science which may be proved "par raison démonstrative," as Molière observes, to consist wholly "dans l'art de donner et ne pas recevoir." But I believe the object which most amused me in the exhibition, was a written notice, repeated at intervals along all the racks on which were placed the more modern and ordinary muskets, to this effect:-- "Manquant, au second rang de ce râtelier d'armes, environ quatre-vingt carabines à rouet, _ornées d'incrustation d'ivoire et de nacre, dans le genre de celles du premier rang_. Toutes celles qu'on voit ici ont servi dans les journées de Juillet, et ont été rendues après. Les personnes qui auraient encore celles qui manquent sont priées de les rapporter." There is such a superlative degree of _bonhomie_ in the belief that because all the ordinary muskets which were seized upon by the July patriots were returned, those also adorned with "incrustations d'ivoire et de nacre" would be returned too, that it was quite impossible to restrain a smile at it. Such unwearied confidence and hope deserve a better reward than, I fear, they will meet: the "incrustations d'ivoire et de nacre" are, I doubt not, in very safe keeping, and have been converted, by the patriot hands that seized them, to other purposes, as dear to the hearts they belonged to as that of firing at the Royal Guard over a barricade. Our doctrinaire friend himself confessed that he thought it was time these naïve notices should be removed. It was, I think, in the course of this excursion that our friend gave me an anecdote which I think is curious and characteristic. Upon some occasion which led to a private interview between Charles Dix and himself, some desultory conversation followed the discussion of the business which led to the audience. The name of Malesherbes, the intrepid defender of Louis Seize, was mentioned by our friend. The monarch frowned. "Sire!"--was uttered almost involuntarily. "Il nous a fait beaucoup de mal," said the king in reply to the exclamation--adding with emphasis, "Mais il l'a payé par sa tête!" LETTER LXX. Concert in the Champs Elysées.--Horticultural Exhibition.--Forced Flowers.--Republican Hats.--Carlist Hats.--Juste-Milieu Hats.--Popular Funeral. The advancing season begins to render the atmosphere of the theatres insupportable, and even a crowded soirée is not so agreeable as it has been; so last night we sought our amusement in listening to the concert "en plein air" in the Champs Elysées. I hear that you too have been enjoying this new delight of al-fresco music in London. France and England are exceedingly like the interlocutors of an eclogue, where first one puts forth all his power and poetry to enchant the world, and then the other "takes up the wondrous tale," and does his utmost to exceed and excel, and so go on, each straining every nerve to outdo the other. Thus it is with the two great rivals who perform their various feats à l'envi l'un de l'autre on the opposite sides of the Channel. No sooner does one burst out with some new and bright idea which like a newly-kindled torch makes for awhile all other lights look dim, than the other catches it, finds out some ingenious way of making it his own, and then grows as proud and as fond of it as if it had been truly the offspring of his own brain. But in this strife and this stealing neither party has any right to reproach the other, for the exchange is very nearly at par between them. A very few years ago, half a dozen scraping fiddlers, and now and then a screaming "sirène ambulante," furnished all the music of the Champs Elysées; but now there is the prettiest "salon de concert en plein air" imaginable. By the way, I confess that this phrase "salon de concert en plein air" has something rather paradoxical in it: nevertheless, it is perfectly correct; the concerts of the Champs Elysées are decidedly _en plein air_, and yet they are enclosed within what may very fairly be called a salon. The effect of this fanciful arrangement is really very pretty; and if you have managed your echo of this agreeable fantasia as skilfully, an idle London summer evening has gained much. Shall I tell you how it has been done in Paris? In the lower part of the Champs Elysées, a round space is enclosed by a low rail. Within this, to the extent of about fifteen or twenty feet, are ranged sundry circular rows of chairs that are sheltered by a light awning. Within these, a troop of graceful nymphs, formed of white plaster, but which a spectator if he be amiably disposed may take for white marble, stand each one with a lamp upon her head, forming altogether a delicate halo, which, as daylight fades, throws a faint but sufficient degree of illumination upon the company. In the centre of the enclosure rises a stage, covered by a tent-like canopy and brilliant as lamps can make it. Here the band is stationed, which is sufficiently good and sufficiently full to produce a very delightful effect: it must indeed be very villanous music which, listened to while the cool breeze of a summer's evening refreshes the spirit, should not be agreeable. The whole space between the exterior awning and the centre pavilion appropriated to the band is filled with chairs, which, though so very literally en plein air, were all filled with company, and the effect of the whole thing was quite delightful. The price of entrance to all this prettiness is one franc! This, by the bye, is a part of the arrangement which I suspect is not rivalled in England. Neither will you, I believe, soon learn the easy sort of unpremeditated tone in which it is resorted to. It is ten to one, I think, that no one--no ladies at least--will ever go to your al-fresco concert without arranging a party beforehand; and there will be a question of whether it shall be before tea or after tea, in a carriage or on foot, &c. &c. But here it is enjoyed in the very spirit of sans souci:--you take your evening ramble--the lamps sparkle in the distance, or the sound of the instruments reaches your ears, and this is all the preparation required. And then, as you may always be perfectly sure that everybody you know in Paris is occupied as well as yourself in seeking amusement, the chances are greatly in your favour that you will not reach the little bureau at the gate without encountering some friend or friends whom you may induce to _promener_ their idleness the same way. I often marvel, as I look around me in our walks and drives, where all the sorrow and suffering which we know to be the lot of man contrives to hide itself at Paris. Everywhere else you see people looking anxious and busy at least, if not quite woe-begone and utterly miserable: but here the glance of every eye is a gay one; and even though this may perhaps be only worn in the sunshine and put on just as other people put on their hats and bonnets, the effect is delightfully cheering to the spirits of a wandering stranger. It was we, I think, who set the example of an annual public exhibition by an horticultural society. It has been followed here, but not as yet upon the same splendid scale as in London and its neighbourhood. The Orangery of the Louvre is the scene of this display, which is employed for the purpose as soon as the royal trees that pass their winters in it are taken out to the Gardens of the Tuileries. I never on any occasion remember having been exposed to so oppressive a degree of heat as on the morning that we visited this exhibition. The sun shone with intolerable splendour upon the long range of windows, and the place was so full of company, that it was with the greatest difficulty we crept on an inch at a time from one extremity of the hall to the other. Some of the African plants were very fine; but in general the show was certainly not very magnificent. I suspect that the extreme heat of the apartment had considerably destroyed the beauty of some of the more delicate flowering plants, for there were scarcely any of the frail blossoms of our hothouse treasures in perfection. The collection of geraniums was, compared to those I have seen in England, very poor, and so little either of novelty or splendour about them, that I suspect the cultivation of this lovely race, and the production of a new variety in it, is not a matter of so great interest in France as in England. The climate of France is perhaps more congenial to delicate flowers than our own; and yet it appears to me that, with some few exceptions, such as oranges and the laurier-rose, I have seen nothing in Paris this year equal to the specimens found at the first-rate florists' round London. Even in the decoration of rooms, though flowers are often abundant here, they are certainly less choice than with us; and, excepting in one or two instances, I have observed no plants whatever forced into premature bloom to gratify the pampered taste of the town amateur. I do not, however, mention this as a defect; on the contrary, I perfectly agree in the truth of Rousseau's observation, that such impatient science by no means increases the sum of the year's enjoyment. "Ce n'est pas parer l'hiver," he says,--"c'est déparer le printemps:" and the truth of this is obvious, not only in the indifference with which those who are accustomed to receive this unnatural and precocious produce welcome the abounding treasures of that real spring-time which comes when it pleases Heaven to send it, but also in the worthless weakness of the untimely product itself. I certainly know many who appear to gaze with ecstasy on the pale hectic-looking bloom of a frail rose-tree in the month of February, who can walk unmoved in the spicy evenings of June amidst thousands of rich blossoms all opening their bright bosoms to the breeze in the sweet healthy freshness of unforced nature: yet I will not assert that this proceeds from affectation--indeed, I verily believe that fine ladies do in all sincerity think that roses at Christmas are really much prettier and sweeter things than roses in June; but, at least, I may confess that I think otherwise. Among the numerous company assembled to look at this display of exotics, was a figure perhaps the most remarkably absurd that we have yet seen in the grotesque extremity of his republican costume. We watched him for some time with considerable interest,--and the more so, as we perceived that he was an object of curiosity to many besides ourselves. In truth, his pointed hat and enormous lapels out-Heroded Herod; and I presume the attention he excited was occasioned more by the extravagant excess than the unusual style of his costume. A gentleman who was with us at the Orangery told me an anecdote respecting a part of this sort of symbolic attire, which had become, he said, the foundation of a vaudeville, but which nevertheless was the record of a circumstance which actually occurred at Paris. A young provincial happened to arrive in the capital just at the time that these hieroglyphic habiliments were first brought into use, and having occasion for a new hat, repaired to the magasin of a noted chapelier, where everything of the newest invention was sure to be found. The young man, alike innocent of politics and ignorant of its symbols, selected a hat as high and as pointed as that of the toughest roundhead at the court of Cromwell, and sallied forth, proud of being one of the first in a new fashion, to visit a young relative who was en pension at an establishment rather celebrated for its freely-proclaimed Carlist propensities. His young cousin, he was told, was enjoying the hour of recreation with his schoolfellows in the play-ground behind the mansion. He desired to be led to him; and was accordingly shown the way to the spot, where about fifty young legitimatists were assembled. No sooner, however, had he and his hat obtained the entrée to this enclosure, than the most violent and hideous yell was heard to issue from every part of it. At first the simple-minded provincial smiled, from believing that this uproar, wild as it was, might be intended to express a juvenile welcome; and having descried his young kinsman on the opposite side of the enclosure, he walked boldly forward to reach him. But, before he had proceeded half a dozen steps, he was assailed on all sides by pebbles, tops, flying hoops, and well-directed handfuls of mud. Startled, astounded, and totally unable to comprehend the motives for so violent an assault, he paused for a moment, uncertain whether to advance boldly, or shelter himself by flight from an attack which seemed every moment to increase in violence. Ere he had well decided what course to pursue, his bold-hearted little relative rushed up to him, screaming, as loud as his young voice would allow,--"Sauve-toi, mon cousin! sauve-toi! Ôte ton vilain chapeau!... C'est le chapeau! le méchant chapeau!" The young man again stopped short, in the hope of being able to comprehend the vociferations of his little friend; but the hostile missives rang about his ears with such effect, that he suddenly came to the decision at which Falstaff arrived before him, and feeling that, at least on the present occasion, discretion was the better part of valour, he turned round, and made his escape as speedily as possible, muttering, however, as he went, "Qu'est-ce que c'est donc qu'un chapeau à-la-mode pour en faire ce vacarme de diable?" Having made good his retreat, he repaired without delay to the hatter of whom he had purchased this offensive article, described the scene he had passed through, and requested an explanation of it. "Mais, monsieur," replied the unoffending tradesman, "c'est tout bonnement un chapeau républicain;" adding, that if he had known monsieur's principles were not in accordance with a high crown, he would most certainly have pointed out the possible inconvenience of wearing one. As he spoke, he uncovered and displayed to view one of those delicate light-coloured hats which are known at Paris to speak the loyal principles of the wearer. "This hat," said he, gracefully presenting it, "may be safely worn by monsieur even if he chose to take his seat in the extremest corner of the côté droit." Once more the inexperienced youth walked forth; and this time he directed his steps towards the stupendous plaster elephant on the Place de la Bastile, now and ever the favourite object of country curiosity. He had taken correct instructions for his route, and proceeded securely by the gay succession of Boulevards towards the spot he sought. For some time he pursued his pleasant walk without any adventure or interruption whatever; but as he approached the region of the Porte St. Martin sundry little _sifflemens_ became audible, and ere he had half traversed the Boulevard du Temple he became fully convinced that whatever fate might have awaited his new, new hat at the pensionnat of his little cousin, both he and it ran great risk of being rolled in the mud which stagnated in sullen darkness near the spot where once stood the awful Temple. No sooner did he discover that the covering of his unlucky head was again obnoxious, than he hastened once more to the treacherous hatter, as he now fully believed him to be, and in no measured tone expressed his indignation of a line of conduct which had thus twice exposed the tranquillity--nay, perhaps the life of an unoffending individual to the fury of the mob. The worthy hatter with all possible respect and civility repelled the charge, declaring that his only wish and intention was to accommodate every gentleman who did him the honour to enter his magasin with exactly that species of hat which might best accord with his taste and principles. "If, however," he added with a modest bow, "monsieur really intended to condescend so far as to ask his advice as to which species of hat it was best and safest to wear at the present time in Paris, he should beyond the slightest shadow of doubt respectfully recommend the _juste milieu_." The young provincial followed his advice; and the moral of the story is, that he walked in peace and quietness through the streets of Paris as long as he stayed. * * * * * On our way home this morning we met a most magnificent funeral array: I reckoned twenty carriages, but the _piétons_ were beyond counting. I forget the name of the individual, but it was some one who had made himself very popular among the people. There was not, however, the least appearance of riot or confusion; nor were there any military to _protect the procession_,--a dignity which is always accorded by this thoughtful government to every person whose funeral is likely to be honoured by too great a demonstration of popular affection. Every man as it passed took off his hat; but this they would have done had no cortége accompanied the hearse, for no one ever meets a funeral in France without it. But though everything had so peaceful an air, we still felt disposed to avoid the crowd, and to effect this, turned from the quay down a street that led to the Palais Royal. Here there was no pavement; and the improved cleanliness of Paris, which I had admitted an hour before to a _native_ who had remarked upon it, now appeared so questionable to some of my party, that I was challenged to describe what it had been before this improvement took place. But notwithstanding this want of faith, which was perhaps natural enough in the Rue des Bons Enfans, into which we had blundered, it is nevertheless a positive fact that Paris is greatly improved in this respect; and if the next seven years do as much towards its purification as the last have done, we may reasonably hope that in process of time it will be possible to drive--nay, even walk through its crowded streets without the aid either of aromatic vinegar or eau de Cologne. Much, however, still remains to be done; and done it undoubtedly will be, from one end of the "_belle ville_" to the other, if no barricades arise to interfere with the purifying process. But English noses must still have a little patience. LETTER LXXI. Minor French Novelists. It is not long since, in writing to you of modern French works of imagination, I avowed my great and irresistible admiration for the high talent manifested in some of the writings published under the signature of George Sand; and I remember that the observations I ventured to make respecting them swelled into such length as to prevent my then uttering the protest which all Christian souls are called upon to make against the ordinary productions of the minor French story-tellers of the day. I must therefore now make this amende to the cause of morality and truth, and declare to you with all sincerity, that I believe nothing can be more contemptible, yet at the same time more deeply dangerous to the cause of virtue, than the productions of this unprincipled class of writers. While conversing a short time ago on the subject of these noxious ephemera with a gentleman whose professional occupations of necessity bring him into occasional contact with them, he struck off for my edification a sketch which he assured me might stand as a portrait, with wonderfully little variation, for any individual of the fraternity. It may lose something of its raciness by the processes of recollecting and translating; but I flatter myself that I shall be able to preserve enough of the likeness to justify my giving it to you. "These authors," said their lively historian, "swarm _au sixième_ in every quarter of Paris. For the most part, they are either idle scholars who, having taken an aversion to the vulgar drudgery of education, determine upon finding a short cut to the temple of Fame; or else they are young artisans--journeymen workers at some craft or other, which brings them in just francs enough to sustain an honest decent existence, but wholly insufficient to minister to the sublime necessities of revolutionary ambition. As perfect a sympathy appears to exist in the politics of all these gentry as in their doctrine of morals: they all hold themselves ready for rebellion at the first convenient opportunity--be it against Louis, Charles, Henri, or Philippe, it is all one; rebellion against constituted and recognised authority being, according to their high-minded code, their first duty, as well as their dearest recreation. They must wait, however, till the fitting moment come; and, meanwhile, how may they better the condition in which the tyranny of kings and law-makers has placed them? Shall they listen to the inward whisperings which tell them, that, being utterly unfitted to do their duty in that state of life to which it has pleased God to call them, they must of necessity and by the inevitable nature of things be fitted for some other?... What may it be?... Treason and rapine, of course, if time be ripe for it--but _en attendant_? To trace on an immortal page the burning thoughts that mar their handicraft ... to teach the world what fools the sages who have lived, and spoken, and gone to rest, would make of them ... to cause the voice of passion to be heard high above that of law or of gospel.... Yes ... it is thus they will at once beguile the tedious hours that must precede another revolution, and earn by the noble labours of genius the luxuries denied to grovelling industry. This sublime occupation once decided on, it follows as a necessary result that they must begin by awakening all those tender sympathies of nature, which are to the imagination what oil is to the lamp. A favourite grisette is fixed upon, and invited to share the glory, the cabbage, the inspiration, and the garret of the exalted journeyman or truant scholar. It is said that the whole of this class of authors are supposed to place particular faith in that tinsel sentiment, so prettily and poetically untrue,-- "Love, light as air, at sight of human ties, Spreads his bright wings, and in a moment flies;" and the inspired young man gently insinuates his unfettered ideas on the subject to the chosen fair one, who, if her acquaintance has lain much among these "fully-developed intelligences," is not unfrequently found to be as sublime in her notions of such subjects as himself; so the interesting little ménage is monté on the immortal basis of freedom. Then comes the literary labour, and its monstrous birth--a volume of tales, glowing with love and murder, blasphemy and treason, or downright obscenity, affecting to clothe itself in the playful drapery of wit. It is not difficult to find a publisher who knows where to meet with young customers ever ready to barter their last sous for such commodities, and the bargain is made. At the actual sight and at the actual touch of the unhoped-for sum of three hundred francs, the flood of inspiration rises higher still. More hideous love and bloodier murders, more phrensied blasphemy and deadlier treason, follow; and thus the fair metropolis of France is furnished with intellectual food for the craving appetites of the most useful and productive part of its population. Can we wonder that the Morgue is seldom untenanted?... or that the tender hand of affection is so often seen to pillow its loved victim where the fumes of charcoal shall soon extinguish a life too precious to be prolonged in a world where laws still exist, and where man must live, and woman too, by the sweat of their brows? It was some time after the conversation in which I received this sketch, that I fell into company with an Englishman who enjoys the reputation of high cultivation and considerable talent, and who certainly is not without that species of power in conversation which is produced by the belief that hyperbole is the soul of eloquence, and the stout defence of a paradox the highest proof of intellectual strength. To say I _conversed_ with this gifted individual would hardly be correct; but I listened to him, and gained thereby additional confirmation of a fact which I had repeatedly heard insisted on in Paris, that admiration for the present French school of décousu writing is manifested by critics of a higher class in England than could be found to tolerate it in France. "Have you read the works of the _young men_ of France?" was the comprehensive question by which this gentleman opened the flood-gates of the eloquence which was intended to prove, that without having studied well the bold and sublime compositions which have been put forth by this class, no one had a right to form a judgment of the existing state of human intelligence. For myself, I confess that my reading in this line, though greatly beyond what was agreeable to my taste, has never approached anything that deserved the name of study; and, indeed, I should as soon have thought of forming an estimate of the "existing state of human intelligence" from the height to which the boys of Paris made their kites mount from the top of Montmartre, as from the compositions to which he alluded: but, nevertheless, I listened to him very attentively; and I only wish that my memory would serve me, that I might repeat to you all the fine things he said in praise of a multitude of authors, of whom, however, it is more than probable you never heard, and of works that it is hardly possible you should have ever seen. It would be difficult to give you any just idea of the energy and enthusiasm which he manifested on this subject. His eyes almost started from his head, and the blood rushed over his face and temples, when one of the party hinted that the taste in which most of these works were composed was not of the most classic elegance, nor their apparent object any very high degree of moral utility. It is a well-known fact that people are seldom angry when they are quite in the right; and I believe it is equally rare to see such an extremity of vehemence as this individual displayed in asserting the high intellectual claims of his favourites exhibited on any question where reason and truth are on the side espoused by the speaker. I never saw the veins of the forehead swell in an attempt to prove that "Hamlet" was a fine tragedy, or that "Ivanhoe" was a fine romance; but on this occasion most of the company shrank into silence before the impassioned pleadings of this advocate for ... modern French historiettes. In the course of the discussion many _young_ names were cited; and when a few very palpable hits were made to tell on the literary reputations of some among them, the critic seemed suddenly determined to shake off all slighter skirmishing, and to defend the broad battle-field of the cause under the distinguished banner of M. Balzac himself. And here, I confess, he had most decidedly the advantage of me; for my acquaintance with the writings of this gentleman was exceedingly slight and superficial,--whereas he appeared to have studied every line he has ever written, with a feeling of reverence that seemed almost to bear a character of religious devotion. Among many of his works whose names he cited with enthusiasm, that entitled "La Peau de Chagrin" was the one which evidently raised his spirit to the most exalted pitch. It is difficult to imagine admiration and delight expressed more forcibly; and as I had never read a single line of this "Peau de Chagrin," my preconceived notions of the merit of M. Balzac's compositions really gave way before his enthusiasm; and I not only made a silent resolution to peruse this incomparable work with as little delay as possible, but I do assure you that I really and truly expected to find in it some very striking traits of genius, and a perfection of natural feeling and deep pathos which could not fail to give me pleasure, whatever I might think of the tone of its principles or the correctness of its moral tendency. Early then on the following morning I sent for "La Peau de Chagrin."... I have not the slightest wish or intention of entering into a critical examination of its merits; it would be hardly possible, I think, to occupy time more unprofitably: but as every author makes use of his preface to speak in his own person, whatever one finds written there assuming the form of a literary dictum may be quoted with propriety as furnishing the best and fairest testimony of his opinions, and I will therefore take the liberty of transcribing a few short sentences from the preface of M. Balzac, for the purpose of directing your attention to the theory upon which it is his intention to raise his literary reputation. The preface to "La Peau de Chagrin" appears to be written chiefly for the purpose of excusing the licentiousness of a former work entitled "La Physiologie du Mariage." In speaking of this work he says, frankly enough certainly, that it was written as "une tentative faite pour retourner à la littérature fine, vive, railleuse et gaie du dix-huitième siècle, où les auteurs ne se tenaient pas toujours droits et raides.... L'auteur de ce livre cherche à favoriser la réaction littéraire que préparent certains bons esprits.... Il ne comprend pas la pruderie, l'hypocrisie de nos moeurs, et refuse, du reste, aux gens blasés le droit d'être difficiles." This is telling his readers fairly enough what they have to expect; and if after this they will persist in plunging headlong into the mud which nearly a century of constantly-increasing refinement has gone far to drag us out of ... why they must. As another reason why his pen has done ... what it has done, M. Balzac tells us that it is absolutely necessary to have something in a _genre_ unlike anything that the public has lately been familiar with. He says that the reading world (which is in fact all the world) "est las aujourd'hui" ... of a great many different styles of composition which he enumerates, summing up all with ... "et l'Histoire de France, Walter-Scottée.... Que nous reste-t-il donc?" he continues. "Si le public condamne les efforts des écrivains qui essaient de remettre en honneur la littérature _franche_ de nos ancêtres...." As another specimen of the theories of these new immortals, let me also quote the following sentence:--"Si Polyeucte n'existait pas, plus d'un poète moderne est capable de _refaire_ Corneille." Again, as a reason for going back to the tone of literature which he has chosen, he says,--"Les auteurs ont souvent raison dans leurs impertinences contre le tems présent. Le monde nous demande de belles peintures--où en seraient les types? Vos habits mesquins--vos révolutions manquées--vos bourgeois discoureurs--votre religion morte--vos pouvoirs éteints--vos rois en demi-solde--sont-ils donc si poétiques qu'il faille vous les transfigurer?... Nous ne pouvons aujourd'hui que nous moquer--la raillerie est toute la littérature des sociétés expirantes." M. Balzac concludes this curious essay on modern literature thus:--"Enfin, le tems présent marche si vite--la vie intellectuelle déborde partout avec tant de force, que plusieurs idées ont vieilli pendant que l'auteur imprimait son ouvrage." This last phrase is admirable, and gives the best and clearest idea of the notions of the school on the subject of composition that I have anywhere met with. Imagine Shakspeare and Spenser, Swift and Pope, Voltaire and Rousseau, publishing a work with a similar prefatory apology!... But M. Balzac is quite right. The ideas that are generated to-day will be old to-morrow, and dead and buried the day after. I should indeed be truly sorry to differ from him on this point; for herein lies the only consolation that the wisdom of man can suggest for the heavy calamity of witnessing the unprecedented perversion of the human understanding which marks the present hour. IT WILL NOT LAST: Common Sense will reclaim her rights, and our children will learn to laugh at these spasmodic efforts to be great and original as cordially as Cervantes did at the chronicles of knight-errantry which turned his hero's brain. LETTER LXXII. Breaking-up of the Paris season.--Soirée at Madame Récamier's.--Recitation.--Storm.--Disappointment.--Atonement. --Farewell. My letters from Paris, my dear friend, must now be brought to a close--and perhaps you will say that it is high time it should be so. The summer sun has in truth got so high into the heavens, that its perpendicular beams are beginning to make all the gay folks in Paris fret--or, at any rate, run away. Everybody we see is preparing to be off in some direction or other,--some to the sea, some to philosophise under the shadow of their own vines, and some, happier than all the rest, to visit the enchanting watering-places of lovely Germany. We too have at length fixed the day for our departure, and this is positively the last letter you will receive from me dated from the beauteous capital of the Great Nation. It is lucky for our sensibilities, or for our love of pleasure, or for any other feeling that goes to make up the disagreeable emotion usually produced by saying farewell to scenes where we have been very happy, that the majority of those whose society made them delightful are going to say farewell to them likewise: leaving Paris a month ago would have been a much more dismal business to us than leaving it now. Our last soirée has been passed at the Abbaye-aux-Bois; and often as I have taken you there already, I must describe this last evening, because the manner in which we passed it was more essentially un-English than any other. About ten days before this our farewell visit, we met, at one of Madame Récamier's delightful reception-nights, a M. Lafond, a tragic actor of such distinguished merit, that even in the days of Talma he contrived, as I understand, to obtain a high reputation in Paris, though I do not believe his name is much known to us;--in fact, the fame of Talma so completely overshadowed every other in his own walk, that few actors of his day were remembered in England when the subject of the French drama was on the tapis. On the evening we met this gentleman at the Abbaye-aux-Bois, he was prevailed upon by our charming hostess (to whom I suspect that nobody can be found tough enough to pronounce a refusal of anything she asks) to recite a very spirited address from the pen of Casimir Delavigne to the people of Rouen, which M. Lafond had publicly spoken in the theatre of that city when the statue of Racine, who was native to it, was erected there. The verses are good, full of fervour, spirit and true poetical feeling, and the manner in which they were spoken by M. Lafond gave them their full effect. The whole scene was, indeed, striking and beautiful. A circle of elegant women,--among whom, by the way, was a niece of Napoleon's,--surrounded the performer: the gentlemen were stationed in groups behind them; while the inspired figure of Gérard's Corinne, strongly brought forward from the rest of the picture by a very skilful arrangement of lamps concealed from the eye of the spectator, really looked like the Genius of Poetry standing apart in her own proper atmosphere of golden light to listen to the honours rendered to one of her favourite sons. I was greatly delighted; and Madame Récamier, who perceived the pleasure which this recitation gave me, proposed to me that I should come to her on a future evening to hear M. Lafond read a play of Racine's. No proposition could have been more agreeable to us all. The party was immediately arranged; M. Lafond promised to be punctually there at the hour named, and we returned home well pleased to think that the last soirée we should pass in Paris would be occupied so delightfully. Last night was the time fixed for this engagement. The morning was fair, but there was no movement in the air, and the heat was intense. As the day advanced, thick clouds came to shelter us from the sun while we set forth to make some of our last farewell calls; but they brought no coolness with them, and their gloomy shade afforded little relief from the heavy heat that oppressed us: on the contrary, the sultry weight of the atmosphere seemed to increase every moment, and we were soon driven home by the ominous blackness which appeared to rest on every object, giving very intelligible notice of a violent summer-storm. It was not, however, till late in the evening that the full fury of this threatened deluge fell upon Paris; but about nine o'clock it really seemed as if an ocean had broken through the dark canopy above us, so violent were the torrents of rain which then fell in one vast waterspout upon her roofs. We listened to the rushing sound with very considerable uneasiness, for our anxious thoughts were fixed upon our promised visit to the Abbaye-aux-Bois; and we immediately gave orders that the porter's scout--a sturdy little personage well known to be good at need--should be despatched without a moment's delay for a fiacre: and you never, I am sure, saw a more blank set of faces than those exhibited in our drawing-room when the tidings reached us that not a single voiture could be found! After a moment's consultation, it was decided that the experienced porter himself should be humbly requested to run the risk of being drowned in one direction, while his attendant satellite again dared the same fate in another. This prompt and spirited decision produced at length the desired effect; and after another feverish half-hour of expectation, we had the inexpressible delight of finding ourselves safely enveloped in cloaks, which rendered it highly probable we might be able to step from the vehicle without getting wet to the skin, and deposited in the corners of one of those curiously-contrived swinging machines, whose motion is such that nothing but long practice or the most vigilant care can enable you to endure without losing your balance, and running a very dangerous tilt against the head of your opposite neighbour with your own. I never quitted the shelter of a roof in so unmerciful a night. The rain battered the top of our vehicle as if enraged at the opposition it presented to its impetuous descent upon the earth. The thunder roared loud above the rattling and creaking of all the crazy wheels we met, as well as the ceaseless grinding of those which carried us; and the lightning flashed with such rapidity and brightness, that the very mud we dashed through seemed illuminated. The effect of this storm as we passed the Pont Neuf was really beautiful. One instant our eyes looked out upon the thickest darkness; and the next, the old towers of Notre Dame, the pointed roofs of the Palais de Justice, and the fine bold elevation of St. Jacques, were "instant seen and instant gone." One bright blue flash fell full, as we dashed by it, on the noble figure of Henri Quatre, and the statua gentilissima, horse and all, looked as ghastly and as spectre-like as heart could wish. At length we reached the lofty iron grille of the venerable Abbaye. The ample court was filled with carriages: we felt that we were late, and hastening up the spacious stairs, in a moment found ourselves in a region as different as possible from that we had left. Instead of darkness, we were surrounded by a flood of light; rain and the howling blast were exchanged for smiles and gentle greetings; and the growling thunder of the storm, for the sweet voice of Madame Récamier, which told us however that M. Lafond was not yet arrived. As the party expected was a large one, it was Miss C----'s noble saloon that received us. It was already nearly full, but its stately monastic doors still continued to open from time to time for the reception of new arrivals--yet still M. Lafond came not. At length, when disappointment was beginning to take place of expectation, a note arrived from the tragedian to Madame Récamier, stating that the deluge of rain which had fallen rendered the streets of Paris utterly impassable without a carriage, and the same cause made it absolutely impossible to procure one; ergo, we could have no M. Lafond--no Racine. Such a contre-tems as this, however, is by no means very difficult to bear at the Abbaye-aux-Bois. But Madame Récamier appeared very sorry for it, though nobody else did; and admirable as M. Lafond's reading is known to be, I am persuaded that the idea of her being vexed by his failing to appear caused infinitely more regret to every one present than the loss of a dozen tragedies could have done. And then it was that the spirit of genuine French _amabilité_ shone forth; and in order to chase whatever was disagreeable in this change in the destination of our evening's occupations, one of the gentlemen present most good-humouredly consented to recite some verses of his own, which, both from their own merit, and from the graceful and amiable manner in which they were given, were well calculated to remove every shadow of dissatisfaction from all who heard them. This example was immediately followed in the same delightful spirit by another, who in like manner gave us more than one proof of his own poetic power, as well as of that charming national amenity of manner which knows so well how to round and polish every rough and jutting corner which untoward accidents may and must occasionally throw across the path of life. One of the pieces thus recited was an extremely pretty legend, called, if I mistake not, "Les Soeurs Grises," in which there is a sweet and touching description of a female character made up of softness, goodness, and grace. As this description fell trait by trait from the lips of the poet, many an eye turned involuntarily towards Madame Récamier; and the Duchesse d'Abrantes, near whom I was sitting, making a slight movement of the hand in the same direction, said in a half whisper,-- "C'est bien elle!" * * * * * On the whole, therefore, our disappointment was but lightly felt; and when we rose to quit this delightful Abbaye-aux-Bois for the last time, all the regret of which we were conscious arose from recollecting how doubtful it was whether we should ever find ourselves within its venerable walls again. POSTSCRIPT. The letters which are herewith presented to the public contain nothing beyond passing notices of such objects as chiefly attracted my attention during nine very agreeable weeks passed amidst the care-killing amusements of Paris. I hardly know what they contain; for though I have certainly been desirous of giving my correspondent, as far as I was able, some idea of Paris at the present day, I have been at least equally anxious to avoid everything approaching to so presumptuous an attempt as it would have been to give a detailed history of all that was going on there during the period of our stay. These letters, therefore, have been designedly as unconnected as possible: I have in this been _décousu_ upon principle, and would rather have given a regular journal, after the manner of Lloyd's List, noting all the diligences which have come in and gone out of "la belle ville" during my stay there, than have attempted to analyse and define the many unintelligible incongruities which appeared to me to mark the race and mark the time. But though I felt quite incapable of philosophically examining this copious subject, or, in fact, of going one inch beneath the surface while describing the outward aspect of all around me, I cannot but confess that the very incongruity which I dared not pretend to analyse appeared to me by far the most remarkable feature in the present state of the country. There has, I know, always been something of this kind attributed to the French character. Splendour and poverty--grace and grimace--delicacy and filth--learning and folly--science and frivolity, have often been observed among them in a closeness of juxta-position quite unexampled elsewhere; but of late it has become infinitely more conspicuous,--or rather, perhaps, this want of consistency has seemed to embrace objects of more importance than formerly. Heretofore, though it was often suspected in graver matters, it was openly demonstrated only on points which concerned the externals of society rather than the vital interests of the country; but from the removal of that restraint which old laws, old customs, and old authority imposed upon the public acts of the people, the unsettled temper of mind which in time past showed itself only in what might, comparatively speaking, be called trifles, may in these latter days be traced without much difficulty in affairs of much greater moment. No one of any party will now deny, I believe, that many things which by their very nature appear to be incompatible have been lately seen to exist in Paris, side by side, in a manner which certainly resembled nothing that could be found elsewhere. As instances of this kind pressed upon me, I have sometimes felt as if I had got behind the scenes of a theatre, and that all sorts of materials, for all sorts of performances, were jumbled together around me, that they might be ready at a moment's notice if called for. Here a crown--there a cap of liberty. On this peg, a mantle embroidered with fleurs-de-lis; on that, a tri-coloured flag. In one corner, all the paraphernalia necessary to deck out the pomp and pageantry of the Catholic church; and in another, all the symbols that can be found which might enable them to show respect and honour to Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics. In this department might be seen very noble preparations to support a grand military spectacle; and in that, all the prettiest pageants in the world, to typify eternal peace. I saw all these things, for it was impossible not to see them; but as to the scene-shifters who were to prepare the different tableaux, I in truth knew nothing about them. Their trap-doors, wires, and other machinery were very wisely kept out of sight of such eyes as mine; for had I known anything of the matter, I should most assuredly have told it all, which would greatly tend to mar the effect of the next change of decorations. It was with this feeling, and in this spirit of purely superficial observation, that the foregoing letters were written; but, ere I commit them to the press, I wish to add a few graver thoughts which rest upon my mind as the result of all that I saw and heard while at Paris, connected as they now are with the eventful changes which have occurred in the short interval that has elapsed since I left it. "_The country is in a state of transition_," is a phrase which I have often listened to, and often been disposed to laugh at, as a sort of oracular interpretation of paradoxes which, in truth, no one could understand: but the phrase may now be used without any Delphic obscurity. France was indeed in a state of transition exactly at the period of which I have been writing; but this uncertain state is past, nearly all the puzzling anomalies which so completely defied interpretation have disappeared, and it may now be fairly permitted, to simple-minded travellers who pretend not to any conjuring skill, to guess a little what she is about. I revisited France with that animating sensation of pleasure which arises from the hope of reviving old and agreeable impressions; but this pleasure was nevertheless dashed with such feeling of regret as an _English conservative_ may be supposed to feel for the popular violence which had banished from her throne its legitimate sovereign. As an abstract question of right and wrong, my opinion of this act cannot change; but the deed is done,--France has chosen to set aside the claim of the prince who by the law of hereditary succession has a right to the crown, in favour of another prince of the same royal line, whom in her policy she deems more capable of insuring the prosperity of the country. The deed is done; and the welfare of tens of millions who had, perhaps, no active share in bringing it about now hangs upon the continuance of the tranquillity which has followed the change. However deep therefore may be the respect felt for those who, having sworn fealty to Charles the Tenth, continue steadfastly undeviating in their declaration of his right, and firm in their refusal to recognise that of any other, still a stranger and sojourner in the land may honestly acknowledge the belief that the prosperity of France at the present hour depends upon her allegiance to the king she has chosen, without being accused of advocating the cause of revolution. To judge fairly of France as she actually exists, it is absolutely necessary to throw aside all memory of the purer course she might have pursued five years ago, by the temperate pleading of her chartered rights, to obtain redress of such evils as really existed. The popular clamour which rose and did the work of revolution, though it originated with factious demagogues and idle boys, left the new power it had set in action in the hands of men capable of redeeming the noble country they were called to govern from the state of disjointed weakness in which they found it. The task has been one of almost unequalled difficulty and peril; but every day gives greater confidence to the hope, that after forty years of blundering, blustering policy, and changes so multiplied as to render the very name of revolution ridiculous, this superb kingdom, so long our rival, and now, as we firmly trust, our most assured ally, will establish her government on a basis firm enough to strengthen the cause of social order and happiness throughout all Europe. The days, thank Heaven! are past when Englishmen believed it patriotic to deny their Gallic neighbours every faculty except those of making a bow and of eating a frog, while they were repaid by all the weighty satire comprised in the two impressive words JOHN BULL. We now know each other better--we have had a long fight, and we shake hands across the water with all the mutual good-will and respect which is generated by a hard struggle, bravely sustained on both sides, and finally terminated by a hearty reconciliation. The position, the prospects, the prosperity of France are become a subject of the deepest interest to the English nation; and it is therefore that the observations of any one who has been a recent looker-on there may have some value, even though they are professedly drawn from the surface only. But when did ever the surface of human affairs present an aspect so full of interest? Now that so many of the circumstances which have been alluded to above as puzzling and incongruous have been interpreted by the unexpected events which have lately crowded upon each other, I feel aware that I have indeed been looking on upon the dénouement of one of the most interesting political dramas that ever was enacted. The movements of King Philippe remind one of those by which a bold rider settles himself in the saddle, when he has made up his mind for a rough ride, and is quite determined not to be thrown. When he first mounted, indeed, he took his seat less firmly; one groom held the stirrup, another the reins: he felt doubtful how far he should be likely to go--the weather looked cloudy--he might dismount directly.... But soon the sun burst from behind the cloud that threatened him: Now for it, then! neck or nothing! He orders his girths to be tightened, his curb to be well set, and the reins fairly and horsemanly put into his hands.... Now he is off! and may his ride be prosperous!--for should he fall, it is impossible to guess how the dust which such a catastrophe might raise would settle itself. The interest which his situation excites is sufficiently awakening, and produces a species of romantic feeling, that may be compared to what the spectators experienced in the tournaments of old, when they sat quietly by to watch the result of a combat _à outrance_. But greater, far greater is the interest produced by getting a near view of the wishes and hopes of the great people who have placed their destinies in his hands. Nothing that is going on in Paris--in the Chamber of Deputies, in the Chamber of Peers, or even in the Cabinet of the King--could touch me so much, or give me half so much pleasure to listen to, as the tone in which I have heard some of the most distinguished men in France speak of the repeated changes and revolutions in her government. It is not in one or two instances only that I have remarked this tone,--in fact, I might say that I have met it whenever I was in the society of those whose opinions especially deserved attention. I hardly know, however, how to describe it, for it cannot be done by repeating isolated phrases and observations. I should say, that it marks distinctly a consciousness that such frequent changes are not creditable to any nation--that they feel half ashamed to talk of them gravely, yet more than half vexed to speak of the land they love with anything approaching to lightness or contempt. That the men of whom I speak do love their country with a true, devoted, Romanlike attachment, I am quite sure; and I never remember to have felt the conviction that I was listening to real patriots so strongly as when I have heard them reason on the causes, deplore the effects, and deprecate the recurrence of these direful and devastating convulsions. It is, if I mistake not, this noble feeling of wishing to preserve their country from the disgrace of any farther demonstrations of such frail inconstancy, which will tend to keep Louis-Philippe on his throne as much, or even more perhaps, than that newly-awakened energy in favour of the _boutique_ and the _bourse_ of which we hear so much. It is nowise surprising that this proud but virtuous sentiment should yet exist, notwithstanding all that has happened to check and to chill it. Frenchmen have still much of which they may justly boast. After a greater continuance of external war and internal commotion than perhaps any country was ever exposed to within the same space of time, France is in no degree behind the most favoured nations of Europe in any one of the advantages which have ever been considered as among the especial blessings of peace. Tremendous as have been her efforts and her struggles, the march of science has never faltered: the fine arts have been cherished with unremitting zeal and a most constant care, even while every citizen was a soldier; and now, in this breathing-time that Heaven has granted her, she presents a spectacle of hopeful industry, active improvement, and prosperous energy, which is unequalled, I believe, in any European country except our own. Can we wonder, then, that the nation is disposed to rally round a prince whom Fate seems to have given expressly as an anchor to keep her firm and steady through the heavy swell that the late storms have left? Can we wonder that feelings, and even principles, are found to bend before an influence so salutary and so strong? However irregular the manner in which he ascended the throne, Louis-Philippe had himself little more to do with it than yielding to the voice of the triumphant party who called upon him to mount its troublesome pre-eminence; and at the moment he did so, he might very fairly have exclaimed-- "If chance will have me king, why chance may crown me Without my stir." * * * * * Never certainly did any event brought on by tumult and confusion give such fair promise of producing eventually the reverse, as the accession of King Louis-Philippe to the throne of France. The manner of this unexpected change itself, the scenes which led to it, and even the state of parties and of feelings which came afterwards, all bore a character of unsettled confusion which threatened every species of misery to the country. When we look back upon this period, all the events which occurred during the course of it appear like the rough and ill-assorted fragments of worsted on the reverse of a piece of tapestry. No one could guess, not even the agents in them, what the final result would be. But they were at work upon a design drawn by the all-powerful and unerring hand of Providence; and strange as the medley has appeared to us during the process, the whole when completed seems likely to produce an excellent effect. The incongruous elements, however, of which the chaos was composed from whence this new order of things was to arise, though daily and by slow degrees assuming shape and form, were still in a state of "most admired disorder" during our abode in Paris. It was impossible to guess where-unto all those things tended which were evidently in movement around us; and the signs of the times were in many instances so contrary to each other, that nothing was left for those who came to view the land, but to gaze--to wonder, and pass on, without attempting to reconcile contradictions so totally unintelligible. But, during the few weeks that have elapsed since I left the capital of France, this obscurity has been dispersed like a mist. It was the explosion of an infernal machine that scattered it; but it is the light of heaven that now shines upon the land, making visible to the whole world on what foundation rest its hopes, and by what means they shall be brought to fruition. Never, perhaps, did even a successful attempt upon the life of an individual produce results so important as those likely to ensue from the failure of the atrocious plot against the King of the French and his sons. It has roused the whole nation as a sleeping army is roused by the sound of a trumpet. The indifferent, the doubting--nay, even the adverse, are now bound together by one common feeling: an assassin has raised his daring arm against France, and France in an instant assumes an attitude so firm, so bold, so steady, and so powerful, that all her enemies must quail before it. As for the wretched faction who sent forth this bloody agent to do their work, they stand now before the face of all men in the broad light of truth. High and noble natures may sometimes reason amiss, and may mistake the worse cause for the better; but however deeply this may involve them in error, it will not lead them one inch towards crime. Such men have nothing in common with the republicans of 1835. From their earliest existence as a party, these republicans have avowed themselves the unrelenting enemies of all the powers that be: social order, and all that sustains it, is their abhorrence; and neither honour, conscience, nor humanity has force sufficient to restrain them from the most hideous crimes when its destruction is the object proposed. Honest men of all shades of political opinion must agree in considering this unbridled faction as the common enemies of the human race. In every struggle to sustain the laws which bind society together, their hand is against every man; and the inevitable consequence must and will be, that every man's hand shall be against them. Deplorable therefore as were the consequences of the Fieschi plot in its partial murderous success, it is likely to prove in its ultimate result of the most important and lasting benefit to France. It has given union and strength to her councils, energy and boldness to her acts; and if it be the will of Heaven that anything shall stay the plague of insurrection and revolt which, with infection more fearful than that of the Asiatic pest, has tainted the air of Europe with its poisonous breath, it is from France, where the evil first arose, that the antidote to it is most likely to come. It will be in vain that any republican clamour shall attempt to stigmatise the acts of the French legislature with the odium of an undue and tyrannical use of the power which it has been compelled to assume. The system upon which this legislature has bound itself to act is in its very nature incompatible with individual power and individual ambition: its acts may be absolute--and high time is it that they should be so,--but the absolutism will not be that of an autocrat. The theory of the doctrinaire government is not so well, or at least so generally, understood as it will be; but every day is making it better known to Europe,--and whether the new principles on which it is founded be approved or not, its power will be seen to rest upon them, and not upon the tyrannical will of any man or body of men whatever. It is not uncommon to hear persons declare that they understand no difference between the juste-milieu party and that of the doctrinaires; but they cannot have listened very attentively to the reasonings of either party. The juste-milieu party, if I understand them aright, consists of politicians whose principles are in exact conformity to the expressive title they have chosen. They approve neither of a pure despotism nor of a pure democracy, but plead for a justly-balanced constitutional government with a monarch at its head. The doctrinaires are much less definite in their specification of the form of government which they believe the circumstances of France to require. It might be thought indeed, from some of their speculations, that they were almost indifferent as to what form the government should assume, or by what name it should be known to the world, provided always that it have within itself power and efficacy sufficient to adopt and carry into vigorous effect such measures as its chiefs shall deem most beneficial to the country for the time being. A government formed on these principles can pledge itself by no guarantee to any particular line of politics, and the country must rest contented in the belief that its interests shall be cared for by those who are placed in a situation to control them. Upon these principles, it is evident that the circumstances in which the country is placed, internally and externally, must regulate the policy of her cabinet, and not any abstract theory connected with the name assumed by her government. Thus despotism may be the offspring of a republic; and liberty, the gift of a dynasty which has reigned for ages by right divine. M. de Carné, a political writer of much ability, in his essay on parties and "le mouvement actuel," ridicules in a spirit of keen satire the idea that any order of men in France at the present day should be supposed to interest themselves seriously for any abstract political opinion. "Croit-on bien sérieusement encore," he says, "au mécanisme constitutionnel--à la multiplicité de ses poids et contre-poids--à l'inviolabilité sacrée de la pensée dirigeante, combinée avec la responsabilité d'argent?"... And again he says,--"Est-il beaucoup d'esprits graves qui attachent aujourd'hui une importance de premier ordre pour le bien-être moral et matériel de la race humaine à la substitution d'une présidence américaine, à la royauté de 1830?" It is evident from the tone sustained through the whole of this ingenious essay, that it is the object of M. Carné to convince his readers of the equal and total futility of every political creed founded on any fixed and abstract principle. Who is it, he asks, "qui a établi en France un despotisme dont on ne trouve d'exemple qu'en remontant aux monarchies de l'Asie?--Napoleon--lequel régnait comme les Césars Romains, en vertu de la souveraineté du peuple. Qui a fondé, après tant d'impuissantes tentatives, une liberté sérieuse, et l'a fait entrer dans nos moeurs au point de ne pouvoir plus lui résister?--La maison de Bourbon, qui régnait par le droit divin." In advocating this system of intrusting the right as well as the power of governing a country to the hands of its rulers, without exacting from them a pledge that their measures shall be guided by theoretical instead of practical wisdom, M. Carné naturally refers to his own--that is to say, the doctrinaire party, and expresses himself thus:--"Cette disposition à chercher dans les circonstances et dans la morale privée la seule règle d'action politique, a donné naissance à un parti qui s'est trop hâté de se produire, mais chez lequel il y a assez d'avenir pour résister à ses propres fautes. Il serait difficile d'en formuler le programme, si vaporeux encore, autrement qu'en disant qu'il s'attache à substituer l'étude des lois de la richesse publique aux spéculations constitutionnelles, dont le principal résultat est d'équilibrer sur le papier des forces qui se déplacent inévitablement dans leur action." It is certainly possible that this distaste for pledging themselves to any form or system of government, and the apparent readiness to accommodate their principles to the exigences of the hour, may be as much the result of weariness arising from all the restless experiments they have made, as from conviction that this loose mode of wearing a political colour, ready to drop it, or change it according to circumstances, is in reality the best condition in which a great nation can place itself. It can hardly be doubted that the French people have become as weary of changes and experiments as their neighbours are of watching them. They have tried revolutions of every size and form till they are satiated, and their spirits are worn out and exhausted by the labour of making new projects of laws, new charters, and new kings. It is, in truth, contrary to their nature to be kept so long at work. No people in the world, perhaps, have equal energy in springing forward to answer some sudden call, whether it be to pull down a Bastile with Lafayette, to overturn a throne with Robespierre, to overrun Europe with Napoleon, or to reorganise a monarchy with Louis-Philippe. All these deeds could be done with enthusiasm, and therefore they were natural to Frenchmen. But that the mass of the people should for long years together check their gay spirits, and submit themselves, without the recompense of any striking stage effect, to prose over the thorny theories of untried governments, is quite impossible,--for such a state would be utterly hostile to the strongest propensities of the people. "Chassez le naturel, il revient au galop." It is for this reason that "_la loi bourgeoise_" has been proclaimed; which being interpreted, certainly means the law of being contented to remain as they are, making themselves as rich and as comfortable as they possibly can, under the shelter of a king who has the will and the power to protect them. M. Carné truly says,--"Le plus puissant argument que puisse employer la royauté pour tenir en respect la bourgeoisie, est celui dont usait l'astrologue de Louis Onze pour avoir raison des capricieuses velléités de son maître,--'Je mourrai juste trois jours avant votre majesté.'" This quotation, though it sound not very courtier-like, may be uttered before Louis-Philippe without offence; for it is impossible, let one's previous political bias have been what it will, not to perceive in every act of his government a firm determination to support and sustain in honour and in safety the order of things which it has established, or to perish; and the consequence of this straightforward policy is, that thousands and tens of thousands who at first acknowledged his rule only to escape from anarchy, now cling to it, not only as a present shelter, but as a powerful and sure defence against the return of the miserable vicissitudes to which they have been so long exposed. Among many obvious advantages which the comprehensive principles of the "doctrine" offered to France under the peculiar circumstances in which she was placed at the time it was first propagated, was, that it offered a common resting-place to all who were weary of revolutions, let them be of what party they would. This is well expressed by M. Carné when he says,--"Ce parti semble appelé, par ce qu'il a de vague en lui, à devenir le sympathique lien de ces nombreuses intelligences dévoyées qui ont pénétré le vide de l'idée politique." There cannot, I think, be a happier phrase to describe the host who have bewildered themselves in the interminable mazes of a science so little understood by the multitude, than this of "_intelligences dévoyées qui ont pénétré le vide de l'idée politique_." For these, it is indeed a blessing to have found one common name (vague though it be) under which they may all shelter themselves, and, without the slightest reproach to the consistency of their patriotism, join heart and hand in support of a government which has so ably contrived to "draw golden opinions from all sorts of men." In turning over the pages of Hume's History in pursuit of a particular passage, I accidentally came upon his short and pithy sketch of the character and position of our Henry the Seventh. In many points it approaches very nearly to what might be said of Louis-Philippe. "The personal character of the man was full of vigour, industry, and severity; deliberate in all his projects, steady in every purpose, and attended with caution, as well as good fortune, in each enterprise. He came to the throne after long and bloody civil wars. The nation was tired with discord and intestine convulsions, and willing to submit to usurpations and even injuries rather than plunge themselves anew into like miseries. The fruitless efforts made against him served always, as is usual, to confirm his authority." Such a passage as this, and some others with which I occasionally indulge myself from the records of the days that are gone, have in them a most consoling tendency. We are apt to believe that the scenes we are painfully witnessing contain, amidst the materials of which they are formed, elements of mischief more terrible than ever before threatened the tranquillity of mankind; yet a little recollection, and a little confidence in the Providence so visible in every page of the world's history, may suffice to inspire us with better hopes for the future than some of our doubting spirits have courage to anticipate. "The fruitless efforts made against" King Philippe "have served to confirm his authority," and have done the same good office to him that similar outrages did to our "princely Tudor" in the fourteenth century. The people were sick of "discord and intestine convulsions" in his days: so are they at the present time in France; so will they be again, at no very distant period, in England. While congratulating the country I have so recently left, as I do most heartily, on the very essential improvements which have taken place since my departure, I feel as if I ought to apologise for some statements to be found in the preceding pages of these volumes which if made now might fairly be challenged as untrue. But during the last few months, letters from France should have been both written and read post-haste, or the news they contained would not be of much worth. We left Paris towards the end of June, and before the end of July the whole moral condition of France had received a shock, and undergone a change which, though it does not falsify any of my statements, renders it necessary at least that the tense of many of them should be altered. Thus, when I say that an unbounded license in caricaturing prevails, and that the walls of the capital are scrawled over with grotesque representations of the sovereign, the errata should have--"for _prevails_, read _did prevail_; for _are_, read _were_;" and the like in many other instances. The task of declaring that such statements are no longer correct is, however, infinitely more agreeable than that of making them. The daring profligacy of all kinds which was exposed to the eyes and the understanding at Paris before the establishment of the laws, which have now taken the morals of the people under their protection, was fast sinking the country into the worst and coarsest species of barbarism; and there is a sort of patriotism, not belonging to the kingdom, but to the planet that gave one birth, which must be gratified by seeing a check given to what tended to lower human nature itself. As a matter of hope, and consolation too, under similar evils which beset us at home, there is much satisfaction to be derived from perceiving that, however inveterate the taint may appear which unchecked licentiousness has brought upon a land, there is power enough in the hands of a vigorous and efficient magistracy to stay its progress and wipe out the stain. A "Te Deum" for this cleansing law should be performed in every church in Christendom. * * * * * There is something assuredly of more than common political interest in the present position of France, interesting to all Europe, but most especially interesting to us. The wildest democracy has been advocated by her press, and even in her senate. The highest court of justice in the kingdom has not been held sufficiently sacred to prevent the utterance of opinions within it which, if acted upon, would have taken the sceptre from the hands of the king and placed it in those of the mob. Her journals have poured forth the most unbridled abuse, the most unmitigated execrations against the acts of the government, and almost against the persons of its agents. And what has been the result of all this? Steadily, tranquilly, firmly, and without a shadow of vacillation, has that government proceeded in performing the duties intrusted to it by the country. It has done nothing hastily, nothing rashly, nothing weakly. On first receiving the perilous deposit of a nation's welfare,--at a moment too when a thousand dangers from within and without were threatening,--the most cautious and consummate wisdom was manifested, not only in what it did, but in what it did not do. Like a skilful general standing on the defensive, it remained still a while, till the first headlong rush which was intended to dislodge it from its new position had passed by; and when this was over, it contemplated well the ground, the force, and the resources placed under its command, before it stirred one step towards improving them. When I recollect all the nonsense I listened to in Paris previous to the trial of the Lyons prisoners; the prophecies that the king would not DARE to persevere in it; the assurances from some that the populace would rise to rescue them,--from others, that the peers would refuse to sit in judgment,--and from more still, that if nothing of all this occurred in Paris, a counter-revolution would assuredly break out in the South;--when I remember all this, and compare it to the steady march of daily-increasing power which has marked every act of this singularly vigorous government from that period to the present, I feel it difficult to lament that, at this eventful epoch of the world's history, power should have fallen into hands so capable of using it wisely. Yet, with all this courage and boldness of decision, there has been nothing reckless, nothing like indifference to public opinion, in the acts of the French government. The ministers have uniformly appeared willing to hear and to render reason respecting all the measures they have pursued; and the king himself has never ceased to manifest the same temper of mind which, through all the vicissitudes of his remarkable life, have rendered him so universally popular. But it is quite clear that, whatever were the circumstances which led to his being placed on the throne of France, Louis-Philippe can never become the tool of a faction: I can well conceive him replying, to any accusation brought against him, in the gentle but dignified words of Athalie-- "Ce que j'ai fait, Abner, j'ai cru le devoir faire-- Je ne prends point pour juge un peuple téméraire." And who is there, of all those whom nature, fortune, and education have placed, as it were, in inevitable opposition to him, but must be forced to acknowledge that he is right? None, I truly believe,--save only that unfortunate, bewildered, puzzle-headed set of politicians, the republicans, who seem still to hang together chiefly because no other party will have anything to say to them, and because they alone, of all the host of would-be lawgivers, dare not to seek for standing-room under the ample shelter of _the doctrine_, inasmuch as its motto is "Public Order," and the well-known gathering word of their tribe is "Confusion and Misrule." There are still many persons, I believe, who, though nowise desirous themselves of seeing any farther change in the government of France, yet still anticipate that change must come, because they consider it impossible that this restless party can long remain quiet. I have heard several who wish heartily well to the government of Louis-Philippe express very gloomy forebodings on this subject. They say, that however beneficial the present order of things has been found for France, it is vain to hope it should long endure, contrary to the wish and will of so numerous a faction; especially as the present government is formed on the doctrine, that the protection of arts and industry, and the fostering of all the objects connected with that wealth and prosperity to which the restoration of peace has led, should be its first object: whereas the republicans are ever ready to be up and doing in any cause that promises change and tumult, and will therefore be found, whenever a struggle shall arise, infinitely better prepared to fight it out than the peaceable and well-contented majority, of whom they are the declared enemies. I think, however, that such reasoners are altogether wrong: they leave out of their consideration one broad and palpable fact, which is, however, infinitely more important than any other,--namely, that a republic is a form of government completely at variance with the spirit of the French people. That it has been already tried and found to fail, is only one among many proofs that might easily be brought forward to show this. That love of glory which all the world seems to agree in attributing to France as one of her most remarkable national characteristics, must ever prevent her placing the care of her dignity and her renown in the hands of a mob. It was in a moment of "drunken enthusiasm" that her first degrading revolution was brought about; and deep as was the disgrace of it, no one can fairly say that the nation should be judged by the wild acts then perpetrated. Everything that has since followed goes to establish the conviction, that France cannot exist as a republic. There is a love of public splendour in their nature that seems as much born with them as their black eyes; and they must have, as a centre to that splendour, a king and a court, round which they may move, and to which they may do homage in the face of Europe without fearing that their honour or their dignity can be compromised thereby. It has been said (by an Englishman) that the present is the government of the bourgeoisie, and that Louis-Philippe is "un roi bourgeois." His Bourbon blood, however, saves him from this jest; and if by "the government of the bourgeoisie" is meant a cabinet composed of and sustained by the wealth of the country, as well as its talent and its nobility, there is nothing in the statement to shock either patrician pride or regal dignity. The splendid military pageant in which the French people followed the imperial knight-errant who led them as conquerors over half Europe, might well have sufficient charm to make so warlike a nation forget for a while all the blessings of peace, as well as the more enduring glory which advancing science and well-instructed industry might bring. But even had Napoleon not fallen, the delirium of this military fever could not have been much longer mistaken for national prosperity by such a country as France; and, happily for her, it was not permitted to go on long enough to exhaust her strength so entirely as to prevent her repairing its effects, and starting with fresh vigour in a far nobler course. But even now, with objects and ambition so new and so widely different before their eyes, what is the period to which the memory of the people turns with the greatest complacency?... Is it to the Convention, or to the Directory?--Is it to their mimicry of Roman Consulships? Alas! for the classic young-headed republicans of France!... they may not hope that their cherished vision can ever endure within the realm of St. Louis long enough to have its lictors' and its tribunes' robes definitively decided on. No! it is not to this sort of schoolboy mummery that Gallic fancies best love to return,--but to that portentous interval when the bright blaze of a magnificent meteor shone upon their iron chains, and made them look like gold. If this be true--if it cannot be denied that the affections of the French people cling with more gratitude to the splendid despotism of Napoleon than to any other period of their history, is it to be greatly feared that they should turn from the substantial power and fame that now "Flames in the forehead of the morning sky" before their eyes, accompanied as they are by the brightest promise of individual prosperity and well-being, in order to plunge themselves again into the mingled "blood and mire" with which their republic begrimed its altars? Were there even no other assurance against such a deplorable effort at national self-destruction than that which is furnished by the cutting ridicule so freely and so generally bestowed upon it, this alone, in a country where a laugh is so omnipotent, might suffice to reassure the spirits of the timid and the doubting. It has been said sturdily by a French interpreter of French feelings, that "si le diable sortait de l'enfer pour se battre, il se présenterait un Français pour accepter le défi." I dare say this may be very true, provided said diable does not come to the combat equipped from the armoury of Ridicule,--in which case the French champion would, I think, be as likely to run away as not: and for this reason, if for no other, I truly believe it to be impossible that any support should now be given in France to a party which has not only made itself supremely detestable by its atrocities, but supremely ridiculous by its absurdities. It is needless to recapitulate here observations already made. They have been recorded lightly, however, and their effect upon the reader may not be so serious as that produced upon my own mind by the circumstances which drew them forth; but it is certain that had not the terrible and most ferocious plot against the King's life given a character of horror to the acts of the republican party in France, I should be tempted to conclude my statement of all I have seen and heard of them by saying, that they had mixed too much of weakness and of folly in their literature, in their political acts, and in their general bearing and demeanour, to be ever again considered as a formidable enemy by the government. I was amused the other day by reading in an English newspaper, or rather in an extract from an Irish one, (The Dublin Journal,) a passage in a speech of Mr. Daniel O'Connell's to the "Dublin Trades' Union," the logic of which, allowing perhaps a little for the well-known peculiarities in the eloquence of the "Emerald Isle," reminded me strongly of some of the republican reasonings to which I have lately listened in Paris. "The House of Commons," says Mr. Daniel O'Connell, "will always be a pure and _independent_ body, BECAUSE we are under the lash of our masters, and we will be kicked out if we do not perform the duties imposed on us by the people." * * * * * Trifling as are the foregoing pages, and little as they may seem obnoxious to any very grave criticism, I am quite aware that they expose me to the reproach of having permitted myself to be wrought upon by the "_wind of doctrine_." I will not deny the charge; but I will say in defence of this "shadow of turning," (for it is in truth no more,) that I return with the same steadfast belief which I carried forth, in the necessity of a government for every country which should possess power and courage to resist at all times the voice of a wavering populace, while its cares were steadily directed to the promotion of the general welfare. As well might every voice on board a seventy-four be lifted to advise the captain how to manage her, as the judgment of all the working classes in a state be offered on questions concerning her government. A self-regulating populace is a chimera, and a dire one. The French have discovered this already; the Americans are beginning, as I hear, to feel some glimmerings of this important truth breaking in upon them; and for our England, spite of all the trash upon this point that she has been pleased to speak and to hear, she is not a country likely to submit, if the struggle should come, to be torn to pieces by her own mob. Admirably, however, as this jury-mast of "the doctrine" appears to answer in France, where the whirlwind and the storm had nearly made the brave vessel a wreck, it would be a heavy day for England were she to find herself compelled to have recourse to the same experiment for safety--for the need of it can never arise without being accompanied by a necessity for such increased severity of discipline as would be very distasteful to her. It is true, indeed, that her spars do creak and crack rather ominously just at present: nevertheless, it will require a tougher gale than any she has yet had to encounter, before she will be tempted to throw overboard such a noble piece of heart of oak as her constitution, which does in truth tower above every other, and, "like the tall mast of some proud admiral," looks down upon those around, whether old or new, well-seasoned and durable, or only skilfully erected for the nonce, with a feeling of conscious superiority that she would be very sorry to give up. But whatever the actual position of England may be, it must be advantageous to her, as well as to every other country in Europe, that France should assume the attitude she has now taken. The cause of social order is a common cause throughout the civilised world, and whatever tends to promote it is a common blessing. Obvious as is this truth, its importance is not yet fully understood; but the time must come when it will be,--and then all the nations of the earth will be heard to proclaim in chorus, that "Le pire des états, c'est l'état populaire." THE END. LONDON: PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY, Dorset Street, Fleet Street. 
40306	----	scanned images of public domain material from the Internet Archive. NOOKS AND CORNERS OF OLD PARIS [Illustration: THE RUE DU CHAUME IN 1866 (TO-DAY, THE RUE DES ARCHIVES) SOUBISE MANSION--CLISSON TOWER _Drawing by A. Maignan_] NOOKS & CORNERS OF OLD PARIS _by_ GEORGES CAIN CURATOR OF THE CARNAVALET MUSEUM AND OF THE HISTORIC COLLECTIONS OF THE CITY OF PARIS _With a Preface by_ VICTORIEN SARDOU WITH OVER A HUNDRED ILLUSTRATIONS LONDON E. GRANT RICHARDS 1907 _The Translation has been made by_ FREDERICK LAWTON, M.A. DEDICATED TO A. G. LENÔTRE IN TOKEN OF MOST SINCERE AFFECTION G. C. _December_ 1905. LIST OF ENGRAVINGS 1. The Rue du Chaume in 1866 (to-day, the Rue des Archives) _Frontispiece_ 2. The Place de la Bastille and the Elephant xvii 3. Demolition of the Rue Sainte-Hyacinthe-Saint-Michel, opposite to the Rue Soufflot xxiii 4. The Town Hall in 1838 xxvii 5. The Pont-Neuf about 1850 xxxi 6. The Louvre about 1785 xxxv 7. The Courtyard of the Carrousel and the Museums about 1848 xxxix 8. The Garden of the Palais Royal in 1791 xliii 9. The Place de la Concorde xlvii 10. Patrol Road leading from the Barrier of the Etoile in 1854 (to-day the Avenue de Wagram) liii 11. The Carnavalet Museum lix 12. The Pont-Royal, the Tuileries, and the Louvre (eighteenth century) lxiii 13. View of the Pont-Neuf, taken from an oval window in the Colonnade of the Louvre 67 14. Workshops and Foundations of the City Barracks in 1864-1865 71 15. View of Notre-Dame 75 16. The "Petit-Pont" 79 17. The Old Prefecture of Police (formerly Jerusalem Street) 81 18. The Sainte-Chapelle in 1875 83 19. Opening up of the space in front of the Palais de Justice 85 20. The Cour des Filles in the Conciergerie 89 21. The Triumph of Marat 93 22. The Dauphine Square in 1780 97 23. The Pont Marie in 1886 103 24. The Isle of Saint-Louis 107 25. The College of Louis-le-Grand 111 26. The Inner Courtyard of the École Polytechnique 113 27. The Rue Clovis in 1867 115 28. The Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève in 1866 119 29. The Panthéon, in building 121 30. Procession in front of Sainte-Geneviève 123 31. The Apotheosis of Jean-Jacques Rousseau 127 32. The Luxembourg, about 1790 131 33. Fraternal Suppers in the Sections of Paris 135 34. Fête given at the Luxembourg on the 20th of Frimaire, Anno VII. 139 35. The Rue de l'École de Médecine in 1866 (house where Marat was assassinated) 143 36. The Gallery of the Odéon (Rue Rotrou) 146 37. The Rohan Courtyard in 1901 147 38. The Rohan Courtyard in 1901 (second view) 151 39. The Rue Visconti 155 40. Alfred de Musset at 23 years of age 157 41. The Façade of the Institute 160 42. View from the Louvre Quay 161 43. Paris from the Pointe de la Cité 165 44. The Rue des Prêtres-Saint-Séverin in 1866 169 45. The Passage des Patriarches 173 46. The Rue Mouffetard 176 47. The Rue Galande 177 48. The Place Maubert 179 49. The Old Amphitheatre of Surgery at the corner of the Colbert Mansion 181 50. The Church of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonneret and the Rue Saint-Victor 183 51. The Rue Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre 186 52. The Jardin des Plantes--The Cedar of Lebanon and the Labyrinth 187 53. The Jardin des Plantes in the eighteenth century 191 54. The Jardin des Plantes--Cuvier's House 195 55. The Rue de Bièvre 199 56. The Bièvre Tanneries 203 57. The Bièvre about 1900--The Valence Mill-race 207 58. The Constantine Bridge and Stockade 211 59. The Pont-Royal in 1800 213 60. The Lesdiguières Mansion 215 61. Commemorative Ball on the Ruins of the Bastille 217 62. The Sens Mansion about 1835 221 63. The Provost Hugues Aubryot's Mansion--Charlemagne's Courtyard and Passage in 1867 227 64. The Place Royale about 1651 (now the Vosges Square) 231 65. The Rue Grenier-sur-l'Eau in 1866 235 66. The Saint-Paul Port 237 67. The Barbett Mansion 238 68. The Rue de Venise 243 69. The Rue du Renard-Saint-Merry 247 70. The Rue des Prouvaires and the Rue Saint-Eustache about 1850 250 71. The Central Market foot-pavement, near the Church of Saint-Eustache, in 1867 252 72. The Central Market in 1828 254 73. The Central Market in 1822 255 74. Molière's House in the Rue de la Tonnellerie 257 75. The Tower of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie about 1848 259 76. Alexander's Grand Cafè Royal on the Temple Boulevard 263 77. Fanchon, the Hurdy-Gurdy player 267 78. View of the Ambigu-Comique on the Temple Boulevard 271 79. The Funambules Theatre on the Temple Boulevard 273 80. The Ambigu Theatre and Boulevard about 1830 277 81. The Porte Saint-Martin 281 82. The Rue Saint-Martin in 1866--The Green-Wood Tower 284 83. The Rue de Cléry 285 84. The Poissonnière Boulevard in 1834 289 85. The Gymnase Theatre 292 86. The Variety Theatre about 1810 293 87. The Boulevards, the Hôtel de Salm, and Windmills of Montmartre 297 88. The Rue de la Barre at Montmartre 299 89. A Street in Montmartre 301 90. The Rue des Rosiers 303 91. The Place de la Concorde in 1829 305 92. Ingenuous Benevolence 307 93. The Place de la Concorde (second view) 309 94. The Entrance to the Tuileries, over the Swing Bridge, in 1788 311 95. Corner Pavilion of the Louis XV. Square about 1850 313 96. View in the Tuileries Gardens in 1808 315 97. The Rue Greuze in 1855 318 98. The Madrid Château 319 99. The Bagatelle Pavilion 322 100. A Performance at the Hippodrome under the Second Empire 323 101. The Arc de Triomphe about 1850 325 [Illustration: Drawn by Saffrey] PREFACE _Grandson and son of two rare and justly-renowned artists, P. J. Mène and Auguste Cain, my excellent friend, Georges Cain, has abundantly shown that he is the worthy inheritor of their talent. To-day, he wishes to prove that he knows how "to handle the pen as well as the pencil" as our Ancients used to say, and that the Carnavalet Museum has in him, not only the active and enthusiastic Curator that we constantly see at his task, but also the most enlightened guide possible in matters of Parisian lore; and so he has written this bewitching book which conjures up before me the Paris of my childhood and youth--the Paris of times gone by, which, in the course of centuries, has undergone many transformations, but not one so rapid and so complete as that which I have witnessed. The change, indeed, is such that, in certain quarters, I have difficulty in recognising, in the city of Napoleon III., that of Louis-Philippe. The latter would have been uninhabitable now, owing to the requirements of modern life, but it answered to the needs and customs of its time. People put up then with difficulties and defects that were judged unavoidable, no Capital being without them. And, in fact, in spite of its drawbacks and blemishes, the Paris of that period had its own charms._ [Illustration: THE PLACE DE LA BASTILLE, AND THE ELEPHANT _Lithographed by Ph. Benoist_] _Most of its streets were very narrow and had no sidewalks. Pedestrians were obliged to take refuge, from passing carriages, on shop thresholds, under entrance gates, or else beside posts erected here and there for that purpose. Still, even in the densest traffic, one ran fewer risks walking along the road than one runs at present crossing the boulevards.... On these boulevards, where a single omnibus plied between the Madeleine and the Bastille every quarter of an hour, and where there was practically no danger of being knocked down by a horse, I have seen a crowd watching a fencing-bout on the spot to-day occupied by a refuge-pavement; and, on the Bastille Square, I used to play quietly, trundling my hoop round the Elephant and the July Pillar. There was little else to dread, throughout Paris, save splashes from the gutters, whose waters flowed in the middle of the streets ... when they flowed at all; for, during the hot summer days, there was nothing but stagnant household slops, which lay in the gutters until the next storm of rain. In winter, as the snow was never swept away, and the employment of salt for melting it was unknown, the thaws were something terrible! Every corner--and the houses being hardly ever in line, there were many--was used as a rubbish-heap, or for the committing of nuisances excusable only through lack of modern conveniences. Moreover, the streets, by very reason of their narrowness, were more noisy than ours. The rolling of heavy waggons over big, round paving-stones badly set, with jolts that shook both windows and houses; the constant cries of men and women selling fruit, vegetables, fish and flowers, &c. ... and pushing their handcarts, not to speak of dealers in clothes, umbrellas, and hand-brushes, of glaziers and of chimney-sweeps; the din of watermen blowing into their taps; the calls of water-bearers as they loudly clinked their bucket-handles; the clarionets and tambourines of strolling singers that went from one courtyard to another; all this composed the gaiety of the street. What was less tolerable was the incessant noise of barrel-organs beneath your windows from morning till evenings and inflicting on you a torture that it makes me angry to think of even now._ _To crown all, the lighting of the streets was wretched. In most, it was the ancient lamp whose illumination was an affair that stopped traffic while the operation lasted. On the other hand, however, the city was better guarded at night than it is at present, owing to the rounds of the "grey patrols" which, with their Indian files of cloak-muffled, slow-walking figures, crept along the walls and crossed one another's beats so as to be within helping distance, at the least alarm. Happy time, when, at one o'clock in the morning, in my lonely quarter, I was sure to come across one of them, and when one could stay out late without a revolver in one's pocket. This, it will be said, was because Paris was smaller, less populus, and the task of the police easier. But it is the duty of the police to proportion the protection to the danger, and the numbers of its officers to those of the evil-doers that infest our streets, for whom, formerly, little of the regard was felt that is lavished on them to-day._ _As a set-off to its narrow, badly-paved, badly-kept, and badly-lighted streets, Paris then had an attraction which it no longer possesses--its gardens._ _The idea formed of the old city is, generally, that of a heap of ancient houses with neither light, fresh air, nor verdure. In reality, the houses of the time, whether recent or old, existed only as a border to the street. Behind them, in the whole of the space that extended from one road to another, there were vast enclosures affording the sun, silence and verdure that did not exist in front. Many dwellings had fashioned, out of the grounds of mansions and convents parcelled up during the last century or two, large courtyards and private gardens which, separated merely by low fences, mingled their foliage and shade. This was so everywhere throughout the city, except in the part of it properly so called, and in the central portion near the Town Hall and the markets. A glance at the old plans of Paris will suffice to show that these unbuilt-on spaces comprised, under Louis XVI., the half, and, under Louis-Philippe, a third of the city's present area. In the Marais and Arsenal quarters, in the Saint-Antoine, Temple, and Popincourt faubourgs, in the Courtille, the Chaussée d'Antin, the Porcherons, the Roule quarters, in the Saint-Honoré faubourg, and along all the left bank of the river, which last was privileged in this respect, there were only scattered dwellings amidst orchards, kitchen-gardens, trellis-vineyards, farmyards, groves, and parks planted with century-old trees. The little that remains of this past is being rapidly destroyed; and, from the health and pleasure point of view, it is a great pity._ _From my window in the Rue d'Enfer, Estrapade Square, close to the blind alley of the Feuillantines, I used to cast my eyes, as far as I could see in every direction, over a wealth of foliage. In the Rue Neuve-Saint-Étienne, from the place where Bernardin de Saint-Pierre once lived, I beheld the towers of Notre Dame, beyond avenues of trimmed trees; and I could say, like the good Monsieur Rollin, in the distich engraved on his door a few yards away:_ Ruris et urbis incola, _that I was "an inhabitant both of the town and of the country." Through these gardens, through these silent streets so propitious to quiet labour, and scenting of lilacs and blossoming with pink and white chestnuts, new roads have been cut; the Saint-Germain and Saint-Michel Boulevards, the Rues de Rennes and Gay-Lussac, the Rue Monge which caused the demolition of the rustic cottage where Pascal died in the Rue Saint-Étienne itself; and the Rue Claude-Bernard which did away with the Feuillantines, where Victor Hugo, as a child, used to chase butterflies. Soon, the last of the monastic enclosures of the Saint-Jacques quarter, that of the Ursulines, will disappear to make room for three new streets!_ _The use of such small gardens, belonging mostly to private houses, was keenly appreciated by Parisians of the lower middle-classes who have always been of a stay-at-home disposition. This characteristic of theirs was satirised, during last century, in a well-known pamphlet: "A Journey from Paris to Saint-Cloud by Sea and by Land." Their curiosity with regard to far-off countries was not awakened as it is nowadays by stories of travel, and by engravings, photographs, or coloured advertisements. And getting from one place to another was very expensive. Railways had not yet made it easy for every one to go long distances by means of reduced fares and cheap circular tickets. An ordinary working man, in these modern times, will travel more easily to Biarritz, Switzerland, or Monte-Carlo, than an independent gentleman of the Marais could then have done. During the midsummer heat, Paris was as full as in winter's cold; and the theatres reaped their most abundant harvest, especially popular ones like the Ambigu, the Porte-Saint-Martin, the Gaieti, the Cirque, the Folies-Dramatiques, the Petit Lazary, Madame Saqui's, the Théâtre Historique, &c., which were situated near together about the Temple Boulevard. The fine weather allowed people living at long distances to come on foot to this dramatic fair, saving the price of a carriage both ways, and to make tail at the doors, without having to fear rain or cold; for the good-tempered public of those days, loving a play for its own sake, had no objection to be penned up so, between two barriers, while waiting for the opening of the ticket-offices, which then used to take place between five and six in the evening; it was one of the conditions, one of the stimulants of their pleasure, something to whet their appetite before the performance._ _Even the holidays did not empty Paris very perceptibly, except on the left bank of the Seine. From May to October, the majority of the middle-class--small shopkeepers, functionaries, retired people, as well as employees, clerks, and workers of every kind--contented themselves, like Paul de Kock's heroes, with excursions and picnics in the various Parisian suburbs--Vincennes, Montmorency, Saint-Cloud, Romainville, &c. In Paris, shopkeepers laid the cloth for a meal out in the open air, in the yard or garden, or, failing that, in the street. When I returned from my Sunday walk, at the dinner-hour, between four and five in the afternoon, I used to see, everywhere in the busiest streets, nothing but families at table before their doors, while boys and girls played about the road at shuttlecock, hot cockles, or blindman's buff. Occasionally, I was caught as I passed by some little girl with bandaged eyes, who, in order to recognise me, would feel my face, amid shouts of laughter from all the diners. And if, during the long summer evenings, I went with my companions to play at prisoners' base in the Rues de Vaugirard, or d'Enfer, or on the small Saint-Michel Square, the good folk, enjoying the fresh air on their doorsteps, paid no attention to us boys galloping all over the street._ _In a word, Paris was no different from the country-town!_ [Illustration: DEMOLITION OF THE RUE SAINTE-HYACINTH-SAINT-MICHEL Opposite to the Rue Soufflot _Etching by Martial_] _These_ "bourgeois" _customs, which one might distinguish briefly by saying that they were "eighteen-hundred-and-thirty customs" survived till the 1848 Revolution, and persisted even into the Second Empire, when railway extension, the influx of strangers, great industrial and commercial enterprises, an increasing prosperity, the desire for comfort and luxury, a more active public life, keener competition, and the intenser struggle for life brought into existence our present customs and manners. It was a surprising transformation, one which was no little fostered by the creation of a new Paris on the ruins of the old. How often have I congratulated myself on having, from the time when I was fifteen years of age, devoted my holiday rambles to ferreting out, in the old quarters of the city now cut through, parcelled up and destroyed, the slightest vestiges of the past, as if I had foreseen that, within a brief delay, they would be reduced to dust by the demolisher's pick-axe._ _The Paris of Louis-Philippe was very nearly that of the Great Revolution and the First Empire. Each step in it awoke souvenirs that people thought but little of in my childhood, romanticism being more interested in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and more inquisitive about the massacre of Saint-Barthelemy than about those of September. It looked with tenderness at the old corner turret of the Grève Square, but gave no glance at the sign-post on the same Square, where the unfortunate Foulon was hanged. It deplored the disappearance of the Barbette Gate which marked the site where Charles d'Orléans was murdered, but did not suggest going to see, a few steps further, in the Rue des Ballets, the post where Madame de Lamballe's corpse was beheaded. Artists, novelists, poets, historians disdained these localities still warm from the Revolutionary drama, some episodes of which they claimed to relate. Ary Scheffer purports to show us the arrest of Charlotte Corday; but does not care to consult documents of the greatest exactitude that would have brought her before his eyes and ours with just her face, her attitude, and her dress. He does not even think to go to the Rue des Cordeliers and visit Marat's dwelling, still remaining as it was, including his bell rope. And he offers us a Charlotte of his own invention, cleverly painted, who looks like a chambermaid arrested by the porter, just as she is going off with her mistress's gown on her back!_ _In his_ "Stello," _Alfred de Vigny is quite as indifferent to local colouring as he is to facts. He places André Chénier's scaffold "on the Revolution Square" after taking him thither in a cart laden with more than "eighty victims, among them being some women with children sucking at the breast"!!!_ _It is the same with the rest!_ _Being more careful, I did not disdain the old stones that were humble witnesses of deeds so great; and, thanks to them, I was able to live through the Revolution again on the spot. They were fated to disappear. A new city cannot be built except on the remains of the old; and it is hard to reconcile the requirements of the present with the worship of the past. Indeed most of the old things, even those that might be saved, would have a sorry air amid the splendours of our modern City. What grieves me is to find that they have often been replaced in such a way as to cause one to regret their disappearance._ [Illustration: THE TOWN HALL IN 1838 _Lithographed by Engelmann_] _As for the City, so called, it may be granted that the pulling down of its old buildings, its dark alleys, could only give pain to those whose passion is the picturesque, or to the admirers of the_ Mysteries of Paris. _Yet one must confess that, framed in its old close, Notre-Dame looked nobler than now at the end of a vast, desert space, where it seems to be stupidly posing before a photographer's camera, between the emptiness of the river and the frightful Town Hall, that might be taken for a slaughter-house._ _Nor was it necessary, when displacing the flower-market, to forbid the sellers' continuing the habit of improvising those pretty bowers of foliage and flowers, and to impose on them those zinc roofs that should shelter only artificial blooms,--not at all necessary, simply to complete the charm of the present administrative arbour._ _It might have also been possible to avoid cutting through the Dauphine Square, which I have seen in my time as charming as the Place Royale, with its pink bricks, since all we have in return is the funereal-looking structure forming the entrance of the Palais de Justice and the horrible balustrade of its staircase._ _Since my chance stroll has brought me to the Pont-Neuf I may just as well pursue in this direction my retrospective way._ [Illustration: THE PONT-NEUF ABOUT 1850 _Water-colour by Th. Masson_ (Carnavalet Museum)] _The Pont-Neuf which is newer than ever, may be congratulated on the loss of its high foot-pavements, its shoeblacks, dog shearers, and cat doctors squatting among its pillars, and its haberdashers, stationers, perfumers, fried-potato men and matchsellers, whose stalls, set up in the semi-circular projections of the bridge, have been pulled down, together with the old sentry-boxes that sheltered them, to make room for the benches of the present day. But what vandalism--the whitewashing of the two brick houses that face Henry IV.'s statue! They were built for the site they occupy. They are an integral part of the bridge, and contribute greatly to its adornment. If the owners, who have already whitewashed them, take it into their heads to replace them by so-so sort of constructions, it will mean the spoiling of one of the prettiest sights of Old Paris._ _Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, too, might have been spared the proximity of the tower which pretends to be Gothic, and of the Mairie which believes itself Renaissance. In their company, the church loses all its grace, and the group is ridiculous._ _At least, when turning one's back, one has the satisfaction no longer to see in front of the Colonnade a waste ground surrounded with rotten palings. Only crosses were lacking to give the place the appearance of a cemetery._ _And, as a matter of fact, it was one!_ [Illustration: THE LOUVRE ABOUT 1785 _Drawn by Meunier_ (Carnavalet Museum)] _In the Restoration period, where now the equestrian statue of Velasquez stands, Egyptian mummies had been buried--mummies that had become decomposed, through too long sojourning in the damp ground-floor rooms of the Louvre. In 1830, in the same spot, the corpses of the assailants killed in the attack on the Louvre were hastily cast into a common grave. Ten years later, when it was desired to give these brave fellows a nobler sepulture, patriots and mummies were dug up pell-mell; and now contemporaries of the Pharaohs lie piously buried beneath the column of the Bastille, side by side with the July heroes._ _I knew the courtyard of the Louvre when it had a statue of the Duke of Orléans, put away after 1848, one of Francis I. by Clésinger succeeding it. Some fool or other having nicknamed it the "Sire de Framboisy," the joke was too idiotic not to have the greatest success. And to the nickname is partly due the disappearance of a work of art that deserved a better fate._ _No description can give any idea of what the Carrousel Square was then, in the intermediate state to which it was condemned, after the First Empire, by the joining of the Louvre to the Tuileries, which joining was still unachieved, though always being planned and replanned. It was nothing but a medley of half-destroyed streets, isolated houses half pulled-down and shored up with beams. The unpaved, uneven, broken ground was a veritable bog in rainy weather. The great gallery of the Louvre was flanked with an ugly wooden corridor, for ever ready to flare up! For, as tradition has it, there is always some permanent risk of fire in the vicinity of the Museum! On the same side, the Civil Service had run up temporary buildings which, from the small courtyard of the Sphinx to the gate facing the Saints-Pères bridge, enclosed the ruins of the ancient church of Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre and its dependencies, such as the Priory where Théophile Gautier, Gérard de Nerval, Nanteuil, Arsène Houssaye, and others, had established their "Bohème galante." These buildings, in favour of which extenuating circumstances might be pleaded, were hired out to colour, engraving, picture, and curiosity-dealers of all kinds. I still see a large shop of knick-knacks where, among a most amusing collection of ostriches' eggs, stuffed crocodiles, and Red-Skins' heads of hair, the amateur used to come across wonderful bargains. And what riches also in the cases exposed by engraving-dealers in front of their doors to the curiosity of those interested in such things! Besides the engravings, there were lots of drawings, sketches, red crayon designs, water-colours by Cochin, Moreau, Boucher, Lawrence, Fragonard, Saint-Aubin, Proudhon, Boilly, Isabey, &c. I have passed there delightful hours, looking through such cases, the contents of which, alas! I could only admire, being unable to afford to buy masterpieces which I felt would have a future value, and which were then sold for a mere song, the pedants of David's school despising the French art of the eighteenth century, it being too amiable and witty for their taste. "Sir," said one of these dealers later to me, "I have rolled up before now engravings of Poussin, for which I would not pay two francs to-day, in other engravings of Debucourt that I would not sell to-day for a thousand francs!"_ _All this was swept away by the amalgamation of the two Palaces and the prolonging of the Rue de Rivoli, which has, moreover, endowed us with a very fine Square in front of the Palais Royal, in lieu of the old one, so mean, with its fountain of water, decorative enough but all blackened with dirt and slime._ [Illustration: THE GARDEN OF THE PALAIS ROYAL IN 1791 _"Gouache" by the Chevalier de Lespinasse_ (Carnavalet Museum)] _As for the Palais Royal, which the Duke d'Orléans seemed to have had built, so that it might be the Forum of the Revolution, if it was no longer the rendezvous of politicians, clubmen, gazetteers, open-air orators, and stock-jobbers, the battlefield of 1793 Republicans and fops, of Royalists and half-pay soldiers, the official promenade for the Merveilleuses, and courtesans of all degrees, if it no longer had its wooden galleries, its Tartar camp, its Dutch grotto, its gambling hells, it was still the headquarters of the nymphs of the neighbourhood; and, thanks to its two theatres, its eating-houses, its renowned coffee-houses, its rich shops, especially those of the jewellers, it was still the central point of attraction in Paris for newcomers from the country and abroad. With the least shower, it was impossible to walk about beneath its porticoes; and, in all weathers, especially on Sunday--the day of meeting_ par excellence--_there were crowds in the glass-covered arcade where, quite recently, I found myself alone--absolutely alone!_ [Illustration: THE COURTYARD OF THE CARROUSEL AND THE MUSEUMS ABOUT 1848 _Etching by Martial_] _What shall I say of the Tuileries Palace, except that it once was and is no more? How I regret the magnificent shades of its grand avenue, unrivalled even at Versailles, and its clumps of chestnuts that braved the ardent sun rays! Nature alone is to blame for their disappearance, but they might have been replaced by trees less pitiable than the inevitable plane and acacia, which latter, without its flowers, is really the silliest and ugliest of trees. It promises a fine foliage for the future, if the future of this unfortunate garden is not to be totally suppressed, or at least to be broken up into lots!_ [Illustration: THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE _Original drawing by G. de Saint-Aubin_ (George Cain Collection)] _Time was when I have seen the Place de la Concorde without its fountains and its statues, save the four horses of Marly--those of Coysevox at the gate of the Tuileries, those of Coustou at the entrance to the Champs-Elysées. When I was a boy, the socles of the future towns of France were being restored. Since the days of Louis XV., they had been decked with plaster caps, like saucepan lids, and were despised so much that the one bearing the town of Strasburg was flanked with a base stove-pipe. Anyway, it was the only one that shocked one's eyes. Count those at present that crown the monuments of Gabriel! Round the Square the ditches still remained, which on fête days had already made so many victims through the hindrance they offered to the crowd's getting away. One evenings when some fireworks were being let off on the Concorde bridge in honour of the King's birthday, I had only just time enough to take refuge on one of their balustrades, whence I was nearly thrown down into the moat by those that followed my example._ _The obelisk had just been erected in the centre of the Square, where its only justification was the fact of its having extricated the July Monarchy from an embarrassing position. The authorities did not know where to put it so as to conciliate everybody's opinion. The old stone monument, indifferent to all parties, was a fitting symbol of their Concord._ _The Champs-Elysées are unrecognisable now by any one who saw them under Louis-Philippe! The avenue was not then, like the Boulevard des Italiens, the meeting-place for what was called, in foolish Anglomania, "Fashion." Ices were not drunk there as on Tortoni's steps. Society dames and gentlemen passed along it only on horseback or in a carriage, contemptuously abandoning the side-ways to the more modest walkers, the small folk, who elbowed each other in the dust, to strollers, idlers, strangers, convalescents, scholars, nurses, soldiers, players at ball or prisoners' base on the Marigny Square, and to the innumerable urchins that disputed with each other the goat-carts and shouted for joy in front of the Punch-and-Judy shows!_ _In the way of coffee-houses, there were only three pavilions, all unworthy of the name, little ambulating drinking-stalls on trestles, with decanters of lemonade and barley-water, and the cocoanut-beverage sellers shaking their bell; the only eating-houses were two wretched wine-shops, and the places where Nanterre cakes, gingerbread, and wafers could be bought from dealers that stood and sold their wares while springing their rattle. For concerts, there were the fiddlers, guitarists, and harpists, the singers of popular songs and the man who was a band in himself; in the way of entertainments, before the opening of the Mabille Garden, there were Franconi's summer circus, Colonel Langlois' panorama, the swings, merry-go-rounds, and archery galleries, the Dutch top, and the game from Siam. As illumination, there were a few gas-lamps, the candles used by stall-keepers, and the red lanterns exhibited by orange-women. And with all this, not a bit of lawn, not a clump of trees, not a bed of flowers!--nothing, absolutely nothing, of what to-day constitutes this exquisite promenade._ _Paris ended at the Rond-Point!_ _Beyond, it was only a sort of faubourg, with a fine mansion here and there belonging to the previous century, a large garden, land unbuilt on to be sold, tenant houses, sorry-enough-looking, furniture repositories, coach-houses, riding-schools, and carriage-builders' premises--particularly carriage-builders'! Near the Rue Chaillot, the Avenue was bordered, on the left, with a broad turf embankment. I have seen, in the fine-weather season, diners cutting up their melon and leg-of-mutton on it, with the naïve joy of city folk enjoying the purer field air._ [Illustration: PATROL ROAD LEADING FROM THE BARRIER OF THE ETOILE IN 1854 (To-day the Avenue de Wagram.) _Etching by Martial_] _In the vicinity of the Arc de Triomphe, the Avenue was lonelier and ill-inhabited, and, as soon as one crossed the barrier of the Etoile, it was no longer the faubourg but the suburbs. Instead of the fine avenues of the Bois and of Victor Hugo, only waste grounds were to be seen, market-gardeners' patches, quarries and uncanny-looking, tumble-down buildings. As for the Bois de Boulogne itself, it was so ugly by day and so dangerous by night that the less there is said about it the better._ _On the right, the Roule quarter was more civilised; but beyond, towards Mousseaux, such was not the case. One evening, out of curiosity, I went to see the house that Balzac had just had built in the street bearing his name. Afterwards, by chance, I strolled into this Ternes quarter, which was unknown to me. Night came on and I soon lost my way. On my left, I had a big, rascally wall which seemed endless, and, in the light of the pale gas-lamps, separated by long distances, I saw on my right nothing but stables, workyards, dairy outhouses, exhaling odours of poultry and dung, and red-curtained, low-character eating-houses which reminded me that, at the same hour, a professor whom I knew had been collared by a big blackguard that exclaimed to him: "Your money, you scamp!" My friend was smoking a cigar. Being sly, like the wise Ulysses, he pretended to comply by putting his left hand into his waistcoat pocket, while, with his right, he took the cigar from his mouth, knocked off the ashes with his little finger, and stuck it right in the eye of the footpad, who loosed him with a howl that Polyphemus might have uttered! This souvenir haunted me; and, after traversing a wretched hamlet, in which I was guided only by the slope of the ground, I at last breathed freely again in the neighbourhood of the Pépinière, promising myself that I would never again venture into such a cut-throat locality._ _And yet I live in it now!_ _This cut-throat locality is to-day the Monceau quarter, the Avenue Hoche, the Avenue de Messine, the Courcelles, Malesherbes and Haussmann Boulevards; what was once called "Poland" where General Lagrange used to tell me he had shot partridges in his youth._ _And the conclusion of this chat--for I must conclude--is that I regret the old Paris, but that I am fond of the new._ VICTORIEN SARDOU. INTRODUCTION Paris! What visions this magic word calls up--historic Paris, with its palaces, churches, monuments, streets, and squares; the Paris of literature and its admirable procession of writers, poets, thinkers, dramatists, philosophers, and humourists; the Paris of society, its fêtes, receptions, fashions, elegancies, and snobbism; the Paris of politicians, the Paris of journalists, religious Paris, the Paris of the police, bohemian Paris, industrial Paris. And how many others still! So many passions, events, and interests clash, mingle, and unravel again in it that a study on this admirable and complex city is no sooner finished than it is almost needful to write it over again, the truth of the day before being no longer that of the morrow, the accurate document of yesterday being found incorrect this morning. Our ambition is more modest, and our title indicates a programme--"Nooks and Corners of Paris." Deliberately neglecting that which is too well known, already too much described--having neither the desire nor the pretension to compose a "Guide-book for the Foreigner in Paris"; seeking only the rare, if not the never-yet-brought-to-light--we would simply give to those who, like us, adore our old City a little of the joy we have each day in "strolling" about this incomparable Town. Our object is to continue, by means of walks through what remains to us of the dear old Paris, the series of documents painted, pencilled, or engraved which are contained in the Carnavalet Museum. The house that Madame de Sévigné loved so much has, in fact, become the museum of the historical collections of the French Capital. [Illustration: THE CARNAVALET MUSEUM] It is a delightful nook in which still throbs a little of the old soul of the great City! Our predecessors and we ourselves have striven to gather together the documents of every kind that bear traces of Paris life. Charters, plans, engravings, pictures, autographs, faded placards, and commemorative stones; sign-boards in wrought-iron that guided drinkers of the sixteenth century to the various public-houses; shot-silk costumes worn by pretty Parisian women of the time of Louis XV.; red caps of the age of Terror; girdles that girls adorned themselves with around the funeral car of Voltaire; tricolour-bowed shoes that trod the soil of the Champ de Mars at the moment of the Federation Feast; the light, black tulle kerchief worn by Marie-Antoinette when going to sit for her portrait to Dumont the miniaturist; the woman-citizen's pike or sabre of honour; the commemorative stone of the Bastille; Grisettes' caps of the year 1830 or buskins worn by the Merveilleuses; the warrant for the appearance of "Widow Capet" before the Revolutionary Tribunal; a play-bill of the King's great dancers, and convocations to the sittings of the Convention; the great periods of the Kings, the glorious days of the Revolution, the tragedies of the Terror, the proclamations of the Empire; announcements of victories, requiem masses, joys, griefs, the life in fine of the most impressionable, most nervous, most enthusiastic people that has ever existed--all is found at Carnavalet; and the same case or folio, gathering together, with terrible eclecticism, the lightning succession of events that took place on the same spot, shows us, for a lapse of scarcely twenty years and in the same Tuileries, for instance, the arrival of Louis XVI., the capture of the castle on the 10th of August, the execution of the King, then of the Queen, the Feast of the Supreme Being, Thermidor, Prairial and the invasion of the Convention, the sections annihilated at Saint-Roch by Bonaparte, the Carrousel reviews, the apotheosis of the King of Rome, the departure of the Emperor, the arrival of Louis XVIII., his flight, the return of Napoleon, the coming back of Louis XVIII., &c. That, I fancy, is a serious lesson of history--and of philosophy. Our aim, I repeat, is therefore simply to continue in a few walks, which we will try to render as attractive as possible, the search for documents which, alas! are disappearing more and more every day. We will divide Paris into three great sections--the old City and the Isle of St. Louis; the left bank of the Seine; the right bank of the same river. After the document written or pencilled, the living document, or at least what remains of it. This volume "Nooks and Corners of Paris" is, in great part, the re-edition of a work entitled, "Sketches of Old Paris," printed only in a very small number of copies and published in 1904 with equal elegance and taste by Conard. Since then, the volume has been not only revised and added to, but new illustrations were chosen. An artist of great talent, Monsieur Tony Beltrand--too soon, alas! taken away from us by death--had adorned the "Sketches of Old Paris" with a number of admirable compositions, of which, moreover, he had been the clever engraver. We have been compelled to replace these illustrations by a series of reproductions of pictures, designs, etchings, and lithographs borrowed from private collections, museums, libraries--and our very pleasant duty is to remark on the exceeding good grace with which every one has helped us. May our gratitude be allowed to mention the names of Messieurs Sardou, Claretie, Detaille, Lavedan, Lenôtre, Bouchot, H. Martin, Funck-Brentano, A. Meignan, Massenet, Pigoreau, Ch. Drouet, de Rochegude, Beaurepaire, Ch. Sellier, J. Robiquet, our masters or our friends, not forgetting many, besides, who have lent us most precious aid. Indeed, when Paris is in question, all doors open and all hearts beat. Our task was an easy one, and, if we have not been able to discharge it better, the fault is ours alone. A suitable termination, therefore, to this introduction will be the old formula--more than ever apropos--"Excuse the faults of the author." [Illustration: THE PONT-ROYAL, THE TUILERIES, AND THE LOUVRE (18th CENTURY) (View taken from the Pont-Neuf.) _Noël, pinxit._] [Illustration: _Etching by Martial_] THE OLD CITY Paris was born in the Isle of the Seine, whose shape is that of a cradle, and of which Sauval speaks so picturesquely: "The isle of the City is fashioned like a great ship sunk in the slime and stranded at the surface of the water, in the middle of the Seine." This particularity must certainly have struck the heraldists of every age, and from it comes the vessel that is blazoned on the old escutcheon of Paris. So the City presents itself with its prow to the west and its poop to the east. [Illustration: VIEW OF THE PONT-NEUF, TAKEN FROM AN OVAL WINDOW IN THE COLONNADE OF THE LOUVRE _Water-colour by Nicolle_ (Carnavalet Museum)] The poop is Notre-Dame, and the prow, joined to the two banks by two ropes of stone, is the old Pont-Neuf, raised on the extreme end of what was formerly the islet of the Cow-Ferryman, where, on the 11th of March 1314, were burnt Jacques de Molay, Grand-Master of the Templars, and Guy, Prior of Normandy,--the Pont-Neuf, the foundation of which was laid by Henri III. on the 31st of May 1578, and was decorated with the coats-of-arms of the King, the Queen-Mother, and the Town of Paris. When the first pile emerged from the water, on the side of the Quay of the Augustines, the King betook himself thither from the Louvre in a magnificent barque, accompanied by the Queen-Mother, Catherine de Medici, and by Queen Louise de Vaudemont, his wife. Henri III. looked melancholy; on the same morning, he had interred, in the Church of St. Paul Quélus, the dearest of his favourites, who had died from wounds received, some weeks before, in the famous duel of the Minions. The irreverent Parisians did not hesitate to declare that, out of respect for the Royal sadness, the new bridge ought to be called "the Bridge of Tears." But this opinion did not last; and, as soon as Henri IV. had inaugurated it, in June 1603, "still unsafe" and unachieved, the Pont-Neuf became the gayest place in Paris. Mondor sold his balsam there, and Tabarin spouted his idle talk; there it was that the ape of Brioché amused the passers-by; there that the Mazarinades were hummed; there that duellists unsheathed their swords, and the bands of Cartouche and Mandrin gallantly relieved pedestrians of their purses. On the merry Pont-Neuf all Paris took their airings, enjoyed themselves, made appointments; Loret went there to gather information for the _Rhyming Gazette_:-- "If I this week had been the man To visit the Samaritan, From Jack and Tom I should have heard Everything that has occurred...." From the seventeenth century, it was asserted to be impossible to cross the twelve arches of the popular bridge without meeting a monk, a white horse, and two obliging women. It was the official route for Royal processions proceeding to the Parliament; and, at the Pont-Neuf, rioters assembled when going to burn in effigy, on the Dauphine Square, such Presidents as were suspected of rendering more services than judicial decisions. Here also, in 1789, the people compelled those who were in carriages to stop and bow low to the effigy of good King Henri, whose statue, supported at the four angles by the four figures of slaves that Richelieu had had placed there, stood in the middle of the raised space where, in 1792, were signed the voluntary enlistments, and where the cannon resounded, calling to arms, at tragical moments of the Revolution. The whole history of Paris has to do with the wonderful old Pont-Neuf, celebrated throughout the world, the masterpiece of Androuet du Cerceau and of Germain Pilon--the Pont-Neuf which was the main thoroughfare of ancient Paris. [Illustration: WORKSHOPS AND FOUNDATIONS OF THE CITY BARRACKS IN 1864-1865 _Photographed by Richebourg, 29 Quai de L'Horloge_] It is therefore by the Old City that our walks should commence. We shall come across some rare vestiges of the primitive Lutecia. On several occasions, behind the apse of Notre-Dame, fragments of ramparts have been found, and some of the stones forming these antique defences are discovered to have been taken from the arenas constructed by the Romans. The benches of the circus had contributed to check the Norman invasion; does not the wall of Pericles on the Acropolis contain broken fragments of antique marble statues?... But the glory of the City is Notre-Dame! Let us follow the winding, picturesque Rue Chanoinesse, where the great Balzac lodged Madame de la Chanterie, and, at No. 18, let us climb the tottering staircase of the Dagobert Tower, an old and precious débris of the canonical buildings that once enclosed the Cathedral of Paris. A few dozen worn-down steps will bring us to a narrow platform whence we shall behold an admirable sight. [Illustration: VIEW OF NOTRE-DAME _J. C. Nattes, del._] Notre-Dame, radiantly beautiful, rises, like a large stone flower, from a mass of flat roofs, grey or blue, and the majestic outlines of its towers stand out in their immensity against the horizon. Beneath every caprice of the hour or light, whether the sun gilds this splendour or its carvings are mantled in snow, while a carpet of spotless flakes stretches below, whether the flaming sky frames its violet bulk in melting gold or the storm wraps it in its copper clouds, ever the noble Cathedral appears in its shining beauty and unsurpassed grandeur. The elegant spire that completes it shoots clearly and proudly into the air, and flights of crows whirl, with shrill cawings, round the blossoming roofs of the Paris Basilica. Over there, above a dazzling view of carvings, chimneys, gables, bridges, steeples, and streets, the far-off azures melt into soft tints, and finally mingle, on the horizon, in a vague colouring; the beasts of the Apocalypse, which the talented artists of times gone by poised on the tower balustrades, bend grimacingly and jeeringly over the vast Paris that feverishly lives and moves below! It is one of the noblest sights of the Tower that our enchanted eyes have just gazed upon. On the other side, it is the Seine, a silver streak furrowed with boats and barges; then, further on, the noble outlines of the old Paris, and, marking its profiles on the low clouds, in the foreground, Saint-Gervais and Saint-Protais, an antique and precious sanctuary of the sixteenth century, one of the few remaining that preserve the secret charm of those country churches in which the soul feels itself, within the demi-obscurity of their chapels, more devout, more touched, and closer to the infinite, beneath the painted windows darkened by the dust of centuries and the smoke of incense. In the prolongation of Notre Dame and behind the Hôtel-Dieu, before reaching the Palais de Justice, one formerly came across a labyrinth of winding, narrow, evil-smelling streets--the Rue de la Juiverie, the Rue aux Fèves, the Rue de la Calandre, the Rue des Marmousets; for centuries this quarter had been the haunt of the lowest prostitution; there, too, dyers had established their many-coloured tubs; and blue, red, or green streams flowed down these streets with their old Parisian names. Humble chapels nestled under the eaves of Notre-Dame,--Sainte-Marine, Saint-Pierre-aux-Boeufs, and Saint-Jean-le-Rond, in which last d'Alembert was buried. The Hôtel-Dieu opened on the right of the Cathedral, and formed, with the close of Notre-Dame, a really imposing setting for it. On this site, the Second Empire built the new Hôtel-Dieu and the Prefecture of Police; and these two ugly structures, without taste or originality, seem to be the natural foils of France's national glory, Notre-Dame-de-Paris. In the Rue Massillon, at the back of a stone porch which time has covered with moss, a tiny courtyard opens, at No. 6, over whose damp pavement occasionally passes a Sister of Charity in her white cap; an old, monumental, wooden staircase, dating back to Henri IV., leads there to some poor dwellings in a building up this courtyard. Within this humble, provincial-looking house, half monastic in appearance, who would believe himself in the heart of Paris, a few yards away from the Town Hall and the Prefecture of Police? Gone the "Cloister," whose gardens at the bottom were still in existence seven years ago. A huge, hideous structure, resembling a barracks, to-day hides all the apse of Notre-Dame, and the antique "Motte-aux-Papelards," the ordinary meeting-place for the staff of the Metropolis, is replaced by a square, a sort of open-roofed museum, where the bits of carving are arranged that time, or regrettable though necessary restorations, have detached from the Cathedral. [Illustration: THE "PETIT-PONT" _Etching by Meryon_] Along the Rue de la Colombe passed the Gallo-Roman belt of the City, near the house inhabited by Fulbert, the uncle who employed such cruel arguments with the unfortunate Héloïse, Abelard's friend. In the Rue des Ursins, at No. 19, may still be perceived the remains of a chapel of the twelfth century, by name Saint-Aignan; St. Bernard is said to have preached in it. It was one of the numerous sanctuaries in which, during the Terror, refractory priests, under the most singular disguises--water-carriers, national guards, waggoners, masons--came, as they passed through the town, to say mass almost regularly to the faithful, who were frightened neither by the guillotine, nor Fouquier's trackers, nor the Revolutionary Committees' order-bearers. It is an astonishing thing that not for a single day or hour was religious ministration wanting to those who called for it, not even in the Terror's most terrible period. At this time, the Bishop of Agde, disguised as a costermonger, with a long beard, and carrying the sacrament under his carmagnole, scoured Paris, officiating, and confessing people in lofts, outhouses, and back-shops. In the Rue Neuve-des-Capucins, mass was said in a chamber above the very dwelling occupied by the terrible Conventional Baboeuf. Did not the Abbé Emery, the Superior of Saint-Sulpice, from the depths of his dungeon, where he strengthened the courage of the prisoners ("he prevents them from crying out," said Fouquier-Tinville), organise throughout the Paris prisons a ministry of monks that visited all the sinister gaols, disguised as porters, old clothes-dealers, laundrymen, wine-sellers? Even on the way to the scaffold, the unfortunates that were being led to execution received the aid of religion: as the death-carts passed by, from certain windows indicated beforehand, priests, placed there, wafted to the condemned the absolution pronounced over the dying. Let us go to the other side of the close of Notre-Dame, where the Hôtel-Dieu and its dependencies used to stand. There, once was the Tower of the Foundlings, and the Cagnards, that old den of debauch of which Meryon has left us such powerful etchings, and before which, as a child, we were accustomed to stop with dread, while we watched the huge rats that hid and roamed there, appearing in broad daylight and eating the heaps of offal. [Illustration: THE OLD PREFECTURE OF POLICE (Formerly Jerusalem Street) _Drawn by A. Maignan_] Between Notre-Dame and the Palais de Justice, there once existed a network of small streets round the Sainte-Chapelle and the Prefecture of Police, with gardens that ran nearly down to the water's edge. At the Pont Saint-Michel, some old houses still remain which witnessed the riots of 1793, 1830, and 1848; another is to be found on the Quai des Orfèvres, where the celebrated Sabra worked; he was a popular dentist who modestly called himself the "people's tooth-drawer." To-day it is one of the spots dear to lovers of old books, with its open-air book-stalls, and also to anglers, who, in the sun and out of the way of the river passenger-boats, can practise their tranquil sport. Before describing the Conciergerie, let us cross the Cour du Mai; there it was, in front of the steps leading to the Palais de Justice, on the right, that every day the death-carts came during the Terror, and took, at 4 o'clock, their dismal batch of those doomed to death, while, from his office-window, Fouquier-Tinville coldly counted, as he picked his teeth, the number of the victims who were going over there. From this courtyard of blood, on a foggy day of November 1793, poor Madame Roland, with hair cut and hands tied, started for the scaffold. Her joyous childhood had been spent in a red-and-white brick house which stood at the angle of the Quai de l'Horloge and the platform of the Pont-Neuf, a few yards from the Conciergerie! [Illustration: THE SAINTE-CHAPELLE IN 1875 _Etching by Toussaint_] The charming landscape in which she had dreamed so fondly of glory and liberty, she saw once more as she was being led to the guillotine amid the shouts of infuriated men and women. Sanson had taken his ghastly procession along the usual road--the Pont-au-Change, the Quai de la Mégisserie, the Trois-Marie Square; and so, turning her eyes to the further bank of the Seine, the poor woman, before she died, was able to give a last look at the scenery she had been familiar with in happier years, scenery over which rose the massive walls of the French Panthéon--it was the new name of Sainte-Geneviève's Church which the Convention had just re-baptized and devoted to the worship of our national glories. The Conciergerie was entered by a large arched door, containing a triple wicket as protection, at the further side of a gloomy, narrow courtyard, with mouldy paving-stones, which now is found on the right of the large staircase of the Palais de Justice. The nine steps that put it on a level with the Cour du Mai were mounted by all the condemned victims of the Revolution. The Queen and Charlotte Corday, Madame Elizabeth and Hubért's widow, the virtuous Bailly and Madame du Bailly, Fouquier-Tinville and Monsieur de Malesherbes, Danton, Robespierre, Camille Desmoulins, the Abbess of Montmartre, Madame de Monaco and Anacharsis Clootz: princesses and Conventional, dukes and Hébertists, generals of the Republic and "Fouquiers sheep," the noblest, purest, bravest, the maddest and most miserable crossed this fateful threshold. Sanson, with his death-lists in hand, waited at the top of the staircase, in front of the carts. [Illustration: OPENING UP OF THE SPACE IN FRONT OF THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE _Meunier, pinxit_] The guillotine "tricoteuses" and criers thronged the top-steps of the Palace and leaned forward, with shouts and abuse, and often with hand that cast filth, over the unhappy prisoners. The melancholy toilet of the condemned had been effected in the rotunda where the concierge had his quarters, near the small whitewashed room in which the clerk registered the arrival of the newcomers, and to which Sanson came to give his receipt for the successive deliveries of those that he conveyed to execution. The clerk's arm-chair, and his table laden with registers, took up about half of the narrow room. Sorts of desks placed along the wall sufficed to receive the things which prisoners left behind, their sad relics, the hair that had been cut off. A wooden railing separated the clerk's office, properly so called, from a back portion of it, where these prisoners spent the weary hours that intervened before the fatal summons, so that those entering could talk with them. Fierce dogs came smelling round to recognise a master, mistress, or acquaintance, and friends or relatives could try to obtain from the gaoler's pity bits of news concerning dear ones still shut up in the dark prison. "On the day of my arrival," wrote Beugnot in his Memoirs, "two men were waiting for the coming of the headsman. They were stripped of their garments, and already had their hair thinned out and their neck prepared. Their features were not changed. Either by accident or with design, they held their hands in the position ready to be tied, and were essaying attitudes of firmness and disdain. Mattresses down on the floor revealed that they had spent their night in the place, had already undergone this long punishment. By their side, were seen the remains of the meal they had eaten. Their clothes were flung here and there; and two candles that they had forgotten to extinguish cast back the daylight and seemed to be the sole funereal illumination of the scene." In the hundreds of "Prison Souvenirs" which were published immediately after the fall of Robespierre, one may gain an idea of what sort of existence prisoners led, deprived of every necessity, devoured by vermin, brutally treated by drunken or cruel keepers; and one should see the gloomy courtyard where they came to get a breath of fresh air, a narrow triangular space of ground between the walls of the prison and the women's yard. This arrangement had one compensation; a simple iron railing separated the two enclosures, so that friends could exchange looks and language, and even the last kiss and embrace. [Illustration: THE COUR DES FILLES IN THE CONCIERGERIE _Schaan, pinxit_] This railing still exists, black, rusty, and ill-looking, creaking as of yore; and it is not difficult to conjure up the images of those that bent over it. Madame Elizabeth, Madame Roland, Cécile Renaud, Lucile Desmoulins, Madame de Montmorency, and Charlotte Corday touched it with their dresses; and Du Barry, one of the few women who trembled at the prospect of death--"A minute longer, headsman"--also clung to it! This railing, the so-called chapel of the Girondins, the passage called the "Rue de Paris," the small infirmary, and the Queen's dungeon are, together with the barred cell in which women awaited execution, the sole vestiges of the ancient prison. Farther on, a big wall, newly raised, shuts off the dismal route along which the condemned passed, and closes up the former entrance to the registrar's office in the Conciergerie. Let us take a hasty walk round the Prison, alas! modified and rearranged. Let us pause, however, before the door of the dungeon in which Marie Antoinette was confined during the last thirty-five days of her life. The Restoration, which assumed the task of sweeping away many things, began with this melancholy place. Abominable coloured panes have been put in the more than half-blocked up and carefully barred window from behind which the Queen, whose eyes had suffered from the damp prison and want of care, tried to obtain a little air and light. Only the flooring of this room, three yards by five, is intact. A low screen once divided it off from the chamber where two prison gendarmes were continually on guard. There, the unfortunate woman pined, in lack of everything, a prey to anxiety, without news of her family, reduced to borrow the linen she required from the kindness of Richard, the porter. Her last tire-woman was the humble servant Rosalie Lamorlière, who, "not daring to make her a single curtsey for fear of compromising or afflicting her," threw over her shoulders a white linen handkerchief, an hour before her departure to the scaffold. In striking contrast, this dungeon is separated only by a thin partition from the apothecary's room, whither Robespierre--with fractured, hanging jaw, his stockings down over his ankles on account of his varicose sores, still clad in the fine, blue suit that, a few weeks previously, at the Fête of the Supreme Being, had made so many jealous--was hustled, all over blood and mud, like a hideous bundle. Sinister-looking, silent, showing no signs of life save by the twinges of pain he was suffering, impassible in presence of the insults of the cowards who had acclaimed him the day before, the "Incorruptible one" waited for them to come and tie him, panting, to the top of the cart that should convey him, amid the cries of a whole population, to the foot of the guillotine. Above these dungeons, and connected with them by a narrow, winding staircase, sat the terrible Revolutionary Tribunal in public audience. Strangely enough, there is an almost total lack of documents as to this most interesting corner of the Palace, where such great dramas were played. [Illustration: THE TRIUMPH OF MARAT _Fragment of a picture by Boilly_ (Lille Museum)] A picture by Boilly--_The Triumph of Marat_--which figures in the Lille Museum, shows us, however, the entrance to the Revolutionary Tribunal. The popular tribune, after his acquittal, issues in triumph from the hall, frantically cheered by his habitual escort of criers and adherents! At the back, between two pillars, and underneath a bass-relief representing the Law, a sort of forepart in boards opens, with an inscription on it, "Revolutionary Tribunal!" That is the place. The hall in which the Queen, the Girondins, and Madame Roland were tried, was called _The Hall of Liberty_. In another, called _The Hall of Equality_, appeared Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Westermann, Hubert, and Charlotte Corday. The windows overlooked the Quai de l'Horloge; and tradition relates that the echoes of Danton's powerful voice, when he was on trial, penetrated through the open casements to the anxious crowd massed on the other side of the Seine. The last alterations carried out in this part of the Palais de Justice have, alas! disturbed and changed everything; so that, of the registrar's office, occupied by Richard and de Bault, which ought to have remained sacred for ever, and of the unique exit from the Prison, where such heartrending adieux were witnessed, and of the antechamber of death, whose pavement was trodden by the condemned of all parties, nothing is left to-day! Administrative vandals have turned it into the Palace restaurant; and cold meat, beer, and lemonade are sold in it. A telephone has been installed, and a "coffee filter"! Gaunt spindle-trees struggle in vain to thrive in the sombre, narrow courtyard illustrious for its past scenes of agony! As Paul-Louis Courier used to repeat: _Immane nefas._ [Illustration: THE DAUPHINE SQUARE IN 1780 _Drawing by Duché de Vancy (Exhibition of Painting, Carnavalet Museum)_] At the rear of the Palais de Justice was formerly the delightful Dauphine Square, where the first "Public Exhibitions of Youth" were held, the exhibits being works of artists not belonging to the official Academies. The Carnavalet Museum possesses a most amusing pencil drawing, signed "Duché de Vancy," and dated May 1783, which bears this manuscript inscription: "Picturesque view of the Exhibition of paintings and drawings, on the Dauphine Square, the day of the lesser Corpus Christi feast." As a matter of fact, on the Sunday of the Corpus Christi, "when it did not rain," artists had the authorisation--in the morning--to submit their works to the public; if it did rain--and this was the case in 1783--the fête was adjourned to the following Thursday. The pictures were exposed in the northern corner of the Square, on white hangings fixed by the shopkeepers in front of their shops; and the Exhibition extended on to the bridge as far as opposite the good Henri's statue. Oudry, Restout, de Troy, Grimoud, Boucher, Nattier, Louis Tocqué, and, last of all, Chardin showed their works there. In an excellent study devoted to these Exhibitions of Youth, Monsieur Prosper Dorbec details the works that Chardin took to this ephemeral Salon of the Dauphine Square. In 1728, when he was twenty-nine, he presented there two masterpieces, _The Ray-fish_ and _The Side-board_, which to-day are two of the glories of the French School at the Louvre Museum. Up to the time of the Revolution, this little artistic manifestation roused Parisian enthusiasm; and what a pretty sight must have been offered by the Dauphine Square, and the pink fronts of the two corner houses and the old Pont-Neuf--an exquisite, picturesque setting--with the throng of amateurs, saunterers, critics, fine ladies, artists, amiable models in light-coloured costume, full of mirth and busy talk, eagerly gazing, on a mild May morning, at the freshly-hung canvases of the Minor Exhibitors of the Dauphine Square. [Illustration] THE ISLE OF SAINT-LOUIS The Isle of Saint-Louis is, in some sort, the continuation of the old City. It is a kind of provincial town in Paris. The streets are silent and deserted; there are no shops, no promenaders, no business; a few old aristocratic mansions, with their tall façades, their emblazoned pediments and their severe architecture, alone tell the glorious past of this noble quarter. The finely carved spire of Saint-Louis' Church confers an elegance on the somewhat melancholy whole. The quays of Orléans and Bethune contain vast buildings of grand style. In the Rue Saint-Louis, is the admirable Lambert mansion, that masterpiece of the architect Le Vau, which was lost at the gaming-table in one night by Monsieur Dupin de Chenonceaux, the ungrateful pupil of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Le Brun painted the gallery of the Fêtes in it, and Le Sueur the saloon of the Muses. At that time, it was the rendezvous of all the wits. Madame du Châtelet throned there, Voltaire lived in it, and the Lambert mansion radiated over the length and breadth of dazzled Paris. Then came darker days. The masterpieces of Le Sueur were sold--most of them found their way to the Louvre--and nothing survives of this great painter's work in the Lambert mansion except a grey camaïeu placed under a staircase, and a few panels scattered here and there. Last of all--as if to mark its definitive decadence;--the mansion was occupied by some military-bed purveyors. The fine carvings, sumptuous paintings and gilded arabesques disappeared beneath a thick white dust from cards of wool. In the great gallery, so magnificently decorated by Le Brun and Van Opstaël, mattress-women set up their trestles and seamstresses began to sew sacking. Later, Prince Czartorisky bought this noble dwelling and thus saved it from ruin. Below the Lambert Hotel, along the river, is the Marie Bridge, at the foot of which used to moor the famous water-diligence from whose deck disembarked for the first time in Paris, on the 19th of October 1784, a pale-complexioned youth of resolute brow, with eyes that gazed from their depths on the horizons of the immense town. It was Bonaparte, a pupil from the Brienne School, who had come to continue his studies at the École Militaire; and the first glimpse the future Cæsar had of the great Paris which was ultimately to acclaim him was the apse of Notre-Dame, the old and venerable Notre-Dame in which he was to be crowned, and round which, in preparation for the coronation day, the 2nd of December 1804, eighteen houses were pulled down, so that the pomp of the ceremony might be celebrated without obstacle and in all its magnificence! [Illustration: THE PONT MARIE IN 1886 _From a painting by P. Shaan_] Finally, on the Anjou Quay, we meet with one of the handsomest mansions of old Paris, that bearing the name of Lauzun, which the generous initiative of the Municipal Council has saved from destruction, the Lauzun mansion with its inimitable wainscoting, its ancient gildings, its glorious past, which is destined to become the museum of all belonging to the seventeenth century: a fine frame for a fine project. In this old quarter of the Isle of Saint-Louis, at the confluence of the Seine's two arms, painters, writers and poets have always dwelt: George Sand, Baudelaire, Théophile Gautier, Gérard de Nerval, Méry, Daubigny, Corot, Barye, Daumier, all lived there for a long time. In the Lauzun mansion, were held the sittings of the hashish smokers' club; and the chipped Virgin that looks from her niche at the corner of the Rue Le-Regrattier--formerly known as the street of the Headless Woman--and saw the passage of the whole Romantic Pleiad, will long continue to receive visits from lovers of old Paris. It is from the Bourbon Quay that one of the most beautiful sights imaginable may best be obtained: a sunset over Paris. The violet-tinted mass of Notre-Dame stands out with its superbly imposing silhouette against the purpled gold of the fiery sky. All the town dies away in a pink dust of light, whilst the broad roofs of the Louvre, the spire of the Sainte-Chapelle, the pepper-box turrets of the Conciergerie, the Saint-Jacques Tower, and the campaniles of the Town Hall, all this landscape alive with history glows in the last rays of the sinking sun. The Seine flows with a surface of liquid gold. The spectacle is sublime. [Illustration: THE ISLE OF SAINT-LOUIS] [Illustration: BUILDING OF THE PANTHÉON _Fragment of a water-colour by Saint-Aubin_] THE LEFT BANK OF THE SEINE No less than the old part of the City, the left bank of the river is rich in souvenirs. There the Roman occupation left the deepest traces. We find the arenas of Lutecia, and, above all, the Thermae of Julian, saved from destruction by the taste and initiative of Du Sommerard at the moment when these grandiose ruins, which were being used as coopers' store-rooms, were about to be pulled down, involving in their fall that jewel of the fifteenth century, the marvellous Hôtel de Cluny. Quite recently, remains of Roman substructures have been discovered near the College de France, in the Rue Saint-Jacques and the Saint-Michel Boulevard; but the glory of the left bank of the river was, in particular, the University and the Sorbonne. Little to-day is left of these old walls; but, ten years ago, the hill of Sainte-Geneviève still preserved much of its whilom picturesqueness. [Illustration: THE COLLEGE OF LOUIS-LE-GRAND _H. Saffrey, Sculpt._] There was the Rue Saint-Jacques, with its old book-sellers and seventeenth-century houses, and especially--what dread reminiscences!--the heavy-leaved gate of the Louis-le-Grand Lycée, where Robespierre, Camille Desmoulins, and the future Marshal Brune had studied under the mastership of the good Abbé Berardier. I confess that the Louis-le-Grand of our boyhood was black, and gloomy enough also, with its moss-grown playgrounds, its smoky rooms, its punishment chambers up under the roof, where one was frozen in winter and stifled in summer, its punishment chambers in which tradition relates that Saint-Huruge was confined; quite near to the Saint-Jacques blind alley where Auvergne dealers sold such fine trinkets, and to the little Rue Cujas, noisy with the noise of rowdy students--but which rendered us pensive. There was the Sorbonne, with its paved courtyard, where we used to wait, pale, feverish and anxious, for the posting of the small white notice bearing the names of those candidates for the Baccalaureat that were admitted to the _vivâ voce_; and we were half-dead with fear at the idea of appearing before the terrible Monsieur Bernès, while we blessed the gods to have given us as examiner the witty and indulgent Monsieur Mézières, who, at least for his part, has not grown old. [Illustration: THE INNER COURTYARD OF THE ECOLE POLYTECHNIQUE _Etching by Martial_] Further on, in the rear of Sainte-Barbe, we come to the Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève, alive and teeming with its old mansions converted into dispensaries or business premises, its petty trades, its popular dancing-rooms, and, last but not least, its celebrated École Polytechnique, dear to all Parisians, which adds its note of cheerfulness to this somewhat sombre quarter. [Illustration: THE RUE CLOVIS IN 1867 _Drawn by A. Maignan_] Quite near there is the Rue Clovis, where formerly stood the Abbey of Sainte-Geneviève, whose square tower still remains and makes us regret the part that has disappeared. In this Rue Clovis may be seen, crumbling to decay and half-buried under climbing plants--lichens, ivy, sage and moss--a big side of a primitive-looking wall, a fragment of the fortifications of Philippe-Auguste, the belt of stone and lofty strong towers behind which for centuries were heaped houses, palaces, colleges, churches and abbeys, huddling against one another. The church of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont opens its elegant portal a few yards away from the Rue Clovis. Illustrious dead were buried there: Pascal, Racine, Boileau. A crime was also committed in it. On the 3rd of January 1858, the first day of the novena of Sainte-Geneviève, whose relics repose in one of the side-chapels of the church, dreadful cries were heard: "They have just murdered Monseigneur," and soon a man of haggard looks, clad in black, with blood-red hands, was seen on the Square in the grasp of some policemen who had just arrested him. It was Verger, a half-mad, interdicted priest, who had stabbed to the heart Monseigneur Sibour, Archbishop of Paris! This charming church should be seen in the early days of January. A sort of small religious fair is then held in front of the porch. A veritable liturgical library is there for sale, under umbrellas resembling those that used to shelter the orange-dealers: "Mary's Rose-trees," "Miracles at Lourdes," "Synopses of Novenas," "Acts of Faith," "Acts of Contrition," "Lives of the Saints," "Glorifications of the Blessed." Chaplets are sold, holy images, devotional post-cards, orthodox rituals, medals, scapularies--and unfortunately these objects have less artistic value than sentiment about them. It is a delightful Parisian tableau in one of the prettiest settings of the great town. At the end of the Rue Clovis, is the Rue du Cardinal-Lemoine, where the painter Lebrun possessed a lovely house, still standing at No. 49, over-run with ivy and honeysuckle, two or three yards distant from the Scotch college--at present the "Institution Chevallier,"--converted into a prison during the Terror, like most educational institutions. Saint-Just was conveyed thither, after being outlawed on the 9th of Thermidor; and his friends came there to fetch him at eight o'clock in the evening, as well as his colleague Couthon, who was confined in the Port-Libre (the old religious house of Port-Royal). It is easy to imagine the gendarmes, on the steep slopes of the Rue Saint-Jacques, running round the mechanical seat which the impotent Couthon feverishly worked and propelled with handles levered to the wheels, and which travelled rapidly over the hard stones, amid shouts and frightened "sectionnaires,"--easy to conjure up before one's senses the call to arms, the sound of the tocsin, under the downpour of the storm that dispersed the Robespierrian bands camped about the Town Hall, and enabled the troops of the Convention to invade the "Maison Commune" without resistance. An hour later, Robespierre had his jaw smashed by Merda's bullet; his brother sprang through the window; Le Bas committed suicide; Saint-Just, haughty and impassible, allowed himself to be arrested in silence; Couthon, with his paralysed legs, was flung on to a rubbish heap, and then, bleeding and motionless, was dragged by the feet to the parapet of the quay. He pretended to be dead. "Let us cast him into the water," howled a multitude of fierce voices. "Excuse me, citizens," murmured Couthon, "but I am still alive." So he was reserved for the scaffold. Behind Saint-Etienne-du-Mont, there is a nook almost unknown to Parisians: a little cloister close to the apse of the church, and containing some admirable painted glass windows by Pinaigrier, the great artist, who, in 1568, charged for the "Parable of the Guests," a three-compartment window painting, which masterpiece now adorns the chapel of the Crucifix, "92 livres 10 sols, including the leading and iron trellis." [Illustration: THE RUE DE LA MONTAGNE-SAINTE-GENEVIÈVE IN 1866 _Drawn by A. Maignan_] It is one of the retreats for poetry and devotion so common in Paris, and yet ofttimes so unsuspected amid the city's noise; and one never forgets the impression produced when leaving the Latin Quarter, with its laughter and songs, and plunging suddenly into this deserted cloister full of dream and melancholy, though so close to the sunny, busy square of the Panthéon, where, on the 27th of July 1830, to the shouts of the people and the army, an actor at the Odéon Theatre, Eric Besnard, replaced once more the inscription: "_To her great men the grateful mother country_" on the fine temple built by Soufflot, which the Restoration had consecrated to the worship of Sainte-Geneviève. [Illustration: THE PANTHÉON, IN BUILDING] The Panthéon is certainly the one Parisian building which has been most often baptized and re-baptized. Constructed in consequence of a vow made by Louis XV. when ill at Metz, on the gardens belonging to the original Abbey of Sainte-Geneviève, the money that paid for it was derived from a portion of the funds raised by three lotteries drawn every month in Paris. Soufflot, whose grandiose plans had been accepted, set to work in 1755. Towards 1764, the edifice began to assume shape, and the Parisians in enthusiasm admired the magnificent forms that modified the ancient outlines of their city. But cracks and fissures and sinkings-in occurred; a mad terror succeeded to the wonder: "The building will tumble, and its fall will involve a part of the old quarter of the Sorbonne," people said. Works of shoring up, embanking and strengthening were carried out. Paris breathed again; but poor Soufflot, in despair, could not survive so many tragic emotions. He died in 1781 without finishing his undertaking. In 1791, the constituent Assembly set apart for the "Honouring of Great Men" the church primitively dedicated to Sainte-Geneviève; and Mirabeau's body was conveyed thither in triumph "to the sounds of trombone and gong, whose notes, by the intensity with which they were produced, tore the bowels and harrowed the heart," says a chronicle of the time. [Illustration: PROCESSION IN FRONT OF SAINTE-GENEVIÈVE _Meunier, fecit_ (Carnavalet Museum)] The great tribune was destined to make but a short stay in the Panthéon,--this was the name given to the secularised church--for on the 27th of November 1793, at the instigation of Joseph Chénier, and after study of the documents found in the iron safe, documents that left no doubt as to "the great treason of the Count de Mirabeau," the Convention, "considering that a man cannot be great without virtue, decreed that Mirabeau's ashes should be removed from the Panthéon, and that those of Marat should be buried there." The sentence was carried out by night, and the "virtuous" Marat took the place of Mirabeau; not for long, however, since, some months later, Marat's body, "depantheonised" in its turn, was cast into the common grave of the small graveyard belonging to Saint-Etienne-du-Mont. Voltaire and Rousseau were, in their turn, triumphantly interred. Voltaire's body, after remaining all night in the ruins of the Bastille, had been brought to the Panthéon on a triumphal car, escorted by fifty girls dressed in antique style through David's care, and by the actors and actresses of the Théâtre Français in their stage dresses. The widow and daughters of the unfortunate Calas walked behind, close to the torn flag of the Bastille. In order to make this interment a never-to-be-forgotten fête, its organisers had provided for everything except for the weather. A dreadful storm descended on the heads of those composing the procession: Mérope, Lusignan, the Virgins, Brutus, and the delegates sent in the names of Politics, the Arts, and Agriculture, were wet to the skin; and, covered with mud and in wretched plight, were compelled to huddle into cabs or shelter themselves under umbrellas. And thus it was that, on the 12th of July 1791, Voltaire made his entry into the Panthéon. [Illustration: THE APOTHEOSIS OF JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU His translation to the Panthéon on the 11th of October 1794 _Girardet, inv. et del._] Jean-Jacques Rousseau followed him there on the 11th of October 1794; his body brought back from Ermenonville, beneath a bower of flowering shrubs, to the agreeable sounds of the "Village Seer," had passed the preceding night on the basin of the Tuileries, transformed for the occasion into an "Isle of Poplars." While yet not so popular as that of Voltaire, his triumph was "one of sensitive souls," and "the man of nature" was interred according to the rites he had himself prescribed. Later, Napoleon peopled the Panthéon with the shades of obscure senators and some few artists, admirals, and generals. Subsequently, the Second Republic made a definitive assignment of the edifice to the cult of great men; and there, on a sunny day, the 3rd of May 1885, Victor Hugo's body was brought in the humble hearse of the poor, amid the acclamations of an immense concourse of people, after spending a night of apotheosis under the Arc de Triomphe, which he had so nobly sung. Since then, Baudin, President Carnot, La Tour d'Auvergne have been buried there; and an admirable decoration, the work of our best contemporary artists, covers the vast walls of this necropolis. Puvis de Chavannes, Humbert, Henri-Lévy, Cabanel, Jean-Paul Laurens are finely represented in it; and, last of all, Edouard Detaille, surpassing himself, has, in an admirable soaring of art, created on the canvas--in Homeric proportions--a mad rush of horses and riders, the old cavaliers of the Republic and the Empire, towards the radiant image of the Motherland, with standards conquered from the enemy by their dauntless heroism. Around the Panthéon, there used to be, and still is, a labyrinth of little streets, poor and crowded together, once inhabited by those that attended the schools, so numerous in that quarter of the Sorbonne. The Rue des Carmes remains to us as a perfect specimen of the past, with its houses whose shaking walls support each other, its crumbling façades, its dilapidated staircases; and then, here and there, the relics of a vanished splendour, the entrance to two important colleges, to-day dwindled down into dens of misery, into lodgings of the poor. Narrow and uneven, the Rue des Carmes ascends toilingly between shops whose paint has been streaked by storms, faded by dust and wind; and yet it continues to be full of charm and poetry, this sorry-looking street, crowned at the top by the august proportions of the Panthéon, and framing at the bottom, with its two lines of dingy houses, mean hotels, and dancing-rooms, the delicate and elegant spire of Notre-Dame aloft on the horizon of the clear sky. It was at the corner of this Rue des Carmes and the Rue des Sept-Voies, not far from Sainte-Geneviève's church, that, at seven o'clock in the evening of the 9th of March 1804, George Cadoudal sprang into the cab that was to take him to the fresh hiding-place which his friends had prepared for him in the house of Caron, the royalist perfumer of the Rue du Four-Saint-Germain. George was narrowly watched, all the Paris police being on the alert. He was recognised, and pursued by the Inspectors of the Prefecture, two of whom pounced on him at the corner of the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince and the Rue de l'Observance. The one he killed with a pistol bullet in his forehead, the second he wounded. Meanwhile, the assembled crowd hindered his flight; and a hatter of the neighbourhood seized the outlaw and dragged him to the Police Station. His calmness and dignity and the wit of his replies disconcerted his adversaries. Reproached with having killed a married detective, the father of a family: "Next time have me arrested by bachelors," he retorted. After he had owned to the dagger found upon him, he was asked if the engraving on the handle were not the English hall-mark. "I cannot say," he replied, "but I can assure you that I have not had it[1] hall-marked in France." [Illustration: THE LUXEMBOURG, ABOUT 1790 _Maréchal, del._ (National Library)] Quite near, is the Luxembourg, both palace and prison, the Luxembourg, where Marie de Medici gave such magnificent fêtes, where Gaston d'Orléans yawned so much, and where the Grande Mademoiselle sulked, sighing for the handsome Lauzun; where also the Count de Provence so cleverly prepared, with Monsieur d'Avaray, his escape from France, on the same evening that Louis XVI. and Marie-Antoinette made such bad arrangements for the lugubrious journey that was to lead them to Varennes; the Luxembourg, whose courtyard was used as a promenade by such prisoners as the Terror crowded there; the Luxembourg, whence Camille Desmoulins wrote to his Lucile those heartrending letters that still bear the traces of tears; the Luxembourg whither, a few weeks later, Robespierre was brought as a prisoner, and where, "for want of room," Hally, the porter, refused to receive him; the Luxembourg where, after Thermidor, the artist David painted, from, his dungeon, the shady walk in which he could see his children playing at ball; the Luxembourg of Barras, of Bonaparte, of the Directory fêtes; the Luxembourg, too, of Nodier, of Saint-Beuve, of Murger, of Michelet, of the students, of the workers of Bohemia, of the songs of the worthy Nadaud and Mimi Pinson, near to Bullier's and the Lilac Closerie and also to the Observatory and the ill-omened wall "scored with bullets" where Marshal Ney fell. Everywhere, the same mingling of mirth and sorrow, of laughter and blood. The reason is that each street, each cross-road, almost each house has seen some dark procession pass by or some victorious fête celebrated. [Illustration: FRATERNAL SUPPERS IN THE SECTIONS OF PARIS On the 11th, 12th, and 13th of May 1793, or the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd of Floreal, Anno II. of the Republic. _Drawn by Swebach-Desfontaines_ (Carnavalet Museum)] On all these dingy walls of Paris, hands of women or of artists have contrived to put flowers or bird-cages; and no alley is so dismal that it does not harbour a little poetry and dreaming, some gillyflowers and songs. Not far away is the Carmes prison, in the Rue de Vaugirard, at the corner of the Rue d'Assas; and there all the externals are the same as they were at the moment of the terrible massacre of 1792. At the foot of the staircase one sees still the tiled floor of the small room where, between two corridors, Maillard placed the chair and table that formed the bloody tribunal of the September slaughter; the balcony covered with climbing plants through which issued the unfortunates that were felled, stabbed with pikes, or shot in the large garden; and, at the top of the first story, on the wall bearing even now the red marks of the blood-dripping sabres used by the slayers, may be read the signatures of the fair prisoners who, day after day, in terrified anxiety, waited, each evening, for the fatal order to appear before the Tribunal: Mesdames d'Aiguillon, Terezia Cabarrus-Tallien, Joséphine de Beauharnais. At this date, Tallien, himself suspected and followed by a band of spies, prowled from eve till morn round the sinister prison in which the woman he loved was confined. One day, on his table, 17 Rue de la Perle, he found a poniard that he recognised, a gem of Spain with which Terezia's hands were familiar. It was an imperative order; and on the 7th of Thermidor this note was transmitted to him from "La Force." "The head of the police has just gone from here. He came to tell me that to-morrow I shall ascend to the Tribunal, that is, to the scaffold. It is different from the dream I had in the night: Robespierre dead and the prisons opened.... But, thanks to your signal cowardice, there will soon be no one in France capable of realising it!" As a matter of fact, the fair Terezia, being more especially aimed at by the Committee, had been mysteriously transferred from the Carmes prison to La Force; and it was from this latter place that she sent her will and testament of vengeance and death. Then, Tallien swore to save his country; the mother country for him was the woman he worshipped. Mad with love and rage, rousing against Robespierre every rancour, terror, and hatred, he spent the night and the day of the 8th in preparing the dreadful and tragical sitting of the 9th of Thermidor, which was a merciless duel between the two sides. He appealed to Fouché, to Collot d'Herbois as to Durand-Maillane and Louchet, to Cambon as to Vadier, to Thuriot as to Legendre, to the few remaining Dantonists as to the eternal tremblers of the Marais; then, springing to the rostrum with a dagger in his hand, he threatened Robespierre, who was nervous, uneasy, distraught, from the presentiment that his power was escaping him; and, at length, after a fearful five hours' struggle, obtained the dread decree outlawing and condemning to the guillotine those who themselves for two years had been mowing down the members of the Convention. [Illustration: FÊTE GIVEN AT THE LUXEMBOURG ON THE 20TH OF FRIMAIRE, ANNO VII. Bonaparte hands to the Directory the treaty of Campo-Formio] Opposite the Luxembourg, is the Rue de Tournon, where Théroigne de Méricourt and Mademoiselle Lenormand lived; the Countess d'Houdetot dwelt at No. 12, the appearance of which has hardly changed since. If he were to come back and wander about these parts, Jean-Jacques Rousseau would again find almost intact the home of her he chiefly loved, quite near to the Rue Servandoni, a dark, damp lane lurking beneath the walls of Saint-Sulpice, where Condorcet, during the Terror, succeeded in safely hiding himself at the house of Madame Vernet, No. 15. There he terminated--under what sorry conditions!--his _Tableau of the Progress of the Human Mind_. His wife was living at Auteuil and there painted pastels. No industry prospered under the Terror. "Every one," says Michelet, "was in a hurry to fix on the canvas a shadow of this uncertain life." On the 6th of April, his work being finished, Condorcet dressed himself as a workman, with long beard and cap down over his eyes, a "Horace" in his hand, and in his pocket some poison, for a case of need, prepared him by Cabanis; and escaped from Madame Vernet's. All day, he roamed about the country, in the vicinity of Fontenay-aux-Roses, hoping to find with some friends, Monsieur and Madame Suard, a shelter that they refused him. He spent the night in the woods; then, on the morrow, haggard and starved, he entered a Clamart public-house. There, he made a ravenous meal, while reading his dear Horace. Being questioned and suspected, he was carried off to the district, put on an old horse and thus conducted to the prison at Bourg-la-Reine. At dawn, the gaolers, on going into his cell, stumbled over his corpse. Poison had made an end of this noble life of work, glory, and misery. Aloft in the same quiet quarter, Saint-Sulpice rears its two unequal towers, on which Chappe planted the great arms of his aërial telegraph. It was in the fine vestry of this imposing church, which has preserved its admirable wood-carvings, that Camille Desmoulins signed the marriage register, when, on the 29th of December 1790, he married his adored Lucile Duplessis. The marriage was a veritable romance; and all Paris crowded to the gates of Saint-Sulpice to see the procession go by. The bride and bridegroom were congratulated; and cheers were given for the witnesses, whose names had already become popular; Sillery, Pétion, Mercier, and Robespierre. Then, the wedding party ascended the Rue de Condé to go and breakfast at Camille's home, No. 1 Rue du Théâtre François (to-day, No. 38 Rue de l'Odéon), on the third floor. There, on the 20th of March 1794, the day of his mother's death, he was arrested, bound like a malefactor, and thence was taken to the Luxembourg hard by. On the 5th of April, Camille was executed amid the shouts of the people who had so flattered him. Lucile followed him to the scaffold a week later! They had sworn to love each other in life and death.... The idyll finished in blood. Round about Saint-Sulpice, one comes across the Rue Férou, the Rue Cassette, the Rue Garancière, the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, the Rue Madame, with their ancient names and provincial aspect, devout and silent quarters of monastic and semi-mysterious life, and, for this reason, full of infinite charm. There, on all sides, are heard convent bells and liturgic sounds. The few shops that exist are austere in air and devoted to religious purposes: chasuble makers', holy image dealers', church book and jewellery sellers'. Behind long, sombre walls, shoots of verdure, the plumes of a tree joyously bursting forth remind one of large, unkempt gardens, where all grows wild, full of flowers and birds, inhabited by pious persons and old people who pray as they walk and regretfully dream of the times that are no more. In the huge Paris, noisy and flippant, mad with sound and movement, tramways and underground railways, it is the refuge of the past, the quarter for prayer, silence, and oblivion; there still seem to live "a few dolent voices of yearnings for the past, which ring the curfew," says Chateaubriand in his _Memoirs from beyond the Grave_. Old mansions are numerous. In the Rue de Varenne alone, each portal awakes a remembrance of the most illustrious names of France's nobility: Broglie, Bourbon, Condé, Villeroy, Castries, Rohan-Chabot, Tessé, Béthune-Sully, Montmorency, Rougé, Ségur, Aubeterre, Narbonne-Pelet, &c., and some of the hosts of these aristocratic dwellings were certainly found disguised, dressed up as horse-dealers, drovers, peasants, workmen, in the _Golden Cup_ hostelry at the corner of the Rue de Varenne, which was celebrated in the history of the Chouannerie: the heroes of _Tournebut_, my dear friend Lenôtre's interesting work, put up there, says the author, who, himself filled with enthusiasm, knows how to inspire his reader with the same. It was one of the meeting-places used by the sworn companions of George Cadoudal, who hid there several times; and there, too, the royalist conspirators met to complete, for Vendémiaire, Anno IV., their arrangements relative to the abduction of the Convention. At some little distance, in the Rue Canettes, another rendezvous existed, for emigrants and chouans, in the house of the perfumer, Caron, where a famous hiding-place was used. Hyde de Neuville tells us, in his picturesque memoirs, that one needed only to slip behind the picture, serving as signboard to the perfumery--a picture overhanging the street--then to draw over one the shutter of the neighbouring chamber, for all the police Fouché employed to be tricked, in spite of searching, as they frequently did, the house through and through. Next, we come upon the Odéon--the old Odéon--still standing on its base, in spite of the countless jests levelled at it, with its famous galleries, where, for many a long year, saunterers have gone to have a look at the last productions of contemporary literature. How often have we lingered in front of the old books or new ones, turning over the leaves, or reading between two pages yet uncut? It was in 1873 that, under three arcades of the Odéon galleries, the most amiable of publishers, Ernest Flammarion, installed himself in partnership with Ch. Marpon; both of them indefatigable workers, benevolent and witty, they spent treasures of contrivance to get into too narrow a space all the nice, fine books they loved so well, and understood so well how to make others love. But soon the three arcades were really inadequate; and, progressively, the untiring Flammarion spread round two sides of the big building, before starting out to conquer Paris, and to establish in the city so many bookshops. He had his faithful readers: an old book-lover of narrow purse owned to him that he had read the whole of Darwin's _Origin of Species_ (450 pages) while standing in front of the stall! Other customers less scrupulous have sometimes carried off the volume they had begun; but the good Flammarion is infinitely indulgent to such "absent-minded" individuals. "The desire to instruct themselves is too strong for their feelings," he murmurs by way of excuse, and, philosophically, he smiles and passes these petty larcenies to his profit and loss account. [Illustration: THE RUE DE L'ECOLE DE MÉDECINE IN 1866 House where Marat was assassinated _Drawn by A. Maignan_] Along the Rue de l'École-de-Médecine, passing by the Dupuytren Museum, which was formerly the refectory of the Franciscan monastery, we reach the Boulevard Saint-Germain, the cutting of which did away with so many precious relics; among others, the abode where Marat was assassinated, the Mignon College, and the Saint-Germain Abbey, the front of which opened opposite the row of old, curiously gabled houses which so far have been left alone by architects and builders. These latter heard the cries of the victims that were massacred in the September slaughters. They were lighted by the reflection of eighty-four fire-pots supplied by a certain Bourgain, the candle-maker of the quarter, in order that the families of the slaughterers and the amateurs of fine spectacles might come and contemplate the work; the shopkeepers of the quarter, who were complaisant witnesses, supplied details. These houses also saw Billaud-Varennes congratulate the "workers" and distribute wine tickets to them; and Maillard, surnamed Strike Hard, they saw leave, when his work was done, with his hands crossed behind the skirts of his long grey overcoat, and walk quietly back to his home, like a worthy clerk quitting his office, coughing the while, for he had a delicate chest. [Illustration: THE GALLERY OF THE ODÉON (RUE ROTROU)] Together with the present presbytery, they form the sole extant witnesses of that dreadful butchery. Within a stone's throw, once there was the Passage du Commerce, where resounded the butt-ends of the guns of the sectionaries who, on the 31st of March 1794, came at daybreak to arrest Danton and conduct him to the Luxembourg; and it is easy to fancy what must have been that hour of fright and stupefaction. Arrest Danton! the Titan of the Revolution, him whose formidable eloquence had raised fourteen armies from the soil! the Danton of the 10th of August, Danton till then untouchable! It was only a few days after the arrest of Camille with his cruel wit; the Camille of the Palais-Royal, of the _Lanterne_, the _Revolutions of France and Brabant_, the _Brissot unmasked_; the Camille of the "_Vieux Cordelier_," that masterpiece of wit and courage, in which he dared to speak of clemency to Robespierre and of respect for his fellows to the ignoble Hébert! On the site of Danton's house, the tribune's statue stands to-day; we regret the house. [Illustration: THE ROHAN COURTYARD IN 1901 _Water-colour by D. Bourgoin_] The Rohan courtyard (the word ought to be written _Rouen_, for, in the fifteenth century, the yard depended on the old mansion possessed by the Cardinal de Rouen) joins the Passage du Commerce, a few steps from the bookshop where the philanthropic Doctor Guillotin tried on a sheep the knife of his "beheading machine"; it is picturesque and curious, this Rohan courtyard, where you can still see the well of the house once inhabited by Coictier, the doctor of Louis XI.; where, too, the "mule's step" may be found, that Sorbonne doctors, who frequented this quarter, used in order to get off their steeds, and which preserved a very old wall round a garden planted with lilac and turf--alas! destroyed last year. The wall, like that of the Rue Clovis, was a fragment of Philippe-Auguste's fortification, the base of one of whose towers is still to be made out in the Passage du Commerce, No. 4, at the house of a locksmith, who has set up his forge upon it! [Illustration: THE ROHAN COURTYARD IN 1901 Second view] The houses there are old, dilapidated, and sordid, but perfect in their picturesqueness; the strangest industries flourish in them, and quite recently one might read there this characteristically Parisian advertisement, "Small hands required for flowers and feathers," beside a plate pointing out the address of the newspaper, _Heaven_, on the fourth floor, door to the left! The Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie is on one side; it is the ancient Rue des Fossés-Saint-Germain, where Marat set up his press and printing-machine in a cellar. At No. 14, in the courtyard of an old mansion occupied by a wall-paper merchant, once stood the premises of the Théâtre-Français. The large entrance door, the staircases leading to the actors' private rooms, the slanting pit of the hall, and even the friezes are still in existence. The King's Comedians played there, on April 18th, 1689, _Phèdre_ and the _Médecin malgré lui_, and performed in the same building until 1770. The encyclopædists, d'Alembert, Diderot and his friends, used to meet opposite at the Procope coffee-house, the handsome iron balcony of which is yet subsisting, from where it was so agreeable to hobnob with the balcony of the Comedy. The Procope coffee-house, celebrated in the eighteenth century, was even more so under the Second Empire. In 1867, on the eve of the Baudin trial, Gambetta poured forth in it, to the students of the various University schools, the thunder and lightning bursts of his admirable eloquence. The great orator in 1859 lived at No. 7 Rue de Tournon, in the hotel of the Senate and the Nations, at present to be found there. His small room afforded a fine view over the roofs of Paris, and also remains as it was then. Near the spot, at No. 1 Rue Bourbon-le-Château, on the 23rd of December 1850, two poor women were assassinated. One of them, Mademoiselle Ribault, a designer on the staff of the _Petit Courrier des Dames_, edited by Monsieur Thiéry, had the strength to write on a screen with a finger dipped in her own blood: "The assassin is the clerk of M. Thi...." This clerk, Laforcade, was arrested the next day. How many delightful nooks besides, hardly known by Parisians, are to be met with on the left bank of the river! [Illustration: THE RUE VISCONTI _Water-colour by F. Léon_] Not all have disappeared for ever of those vast melancholy gardens, those hoary mansions buried in streets where the grass grows, and whose noble but gloomy façades would never cause one to suspect the riches they contain. Many are in the vicinity of the Hôtel des Invalides. Others are in the Rue Vanneau, the Rue Bellechasse, the Rue de Varenne, the Rue Saint-Guillaume, the Rue Bonaparte; some also in the Rue Visconti, which dark narrow lane possesses illustrious souvenirs. The famous Champmeslé, Clairon, and Adrienne Lecouvreur lived in the Ranes mansion, built on the site of the Petit-Pré-aux-Clercs, and J. Racine died there in 1697. This house, which bears the number 21, is to-day a girls' boarding-school! And last of all, at No. 17 the great Balzac established the printing-press that ruined him, and that later became the studio of Paul Delaroche. There, was played the sentimental and commercial drama whose poignant phases have been related to us so eloquently by Messieurs Hanoteaux and Vicaire. All these houses, so pregnant with history, are still visible; yet how few Parisians are acquainted with them! [Illustration: ALFRED DE MUSSET AT 23 YEARS OF AGE _Drawn by Lépaulle_ (Pigoreau Collection)] On the Voltaire Quay lived Vivant, Denon, Ingres, Alfred de Musset, Judge Perrault, Chamillard, Gluck, and Voltaire himself who died there, and whose corpse, wrapped in a dressing-gown and held up by straps, like a traveller asleep, started by night in a travelling-coach, on the 30th of May 1778, from the courtyard of Monsieur de Villette's mansion, with its entrance still in the Rue de Beaune, to be buried outside Paris at the Abbey of Scellières in Champagne. The flat in which Voltaire passed away has not been altered, and its decoration has remained almost intact, with its wall mirrors, its painted ceilings, and its small mirrored salons contrived in the thick walls. [Illustration: THE FAÇADE OF THE INSTITUTE _From an original drawing of the Revolutionary period_ (Carnavalet Museum)] The Institute is not far, but for the ancient College of the Four Nations to produce its best impression, it needs a special day--an extraordinary sitting, a sensational reception, when the prettiest costumes of the most elegant Parisian dames contrast with the Academicians' green uniforms. On one side, are beauty, charm, and grace; on the other, some of the noblest intelligences, the most illustrious names in Literature, Art, and Science. It is the great intellectual banquet of France in one of the fairest sights of the Capital. If, however, we wish for something to amuse us, something original, we must mount the endless staircases of the Institute and seek it in the attic portion of the palace, visiting the tiny chambers where formerly it was the custom to put candidates for the Prix de Rome in the competitive music examination. Inside these closets, at which the sumptuously lodged prisoners of Fresnes-les-Rungis would grumble, on these decrepit walls, the finest talents of our modern school have left traces of their whilom presence--bars of music, verses, drawings, writings of varied nature. I confess I should not dare to reproduce, even expurgated, the inscriptions which confinement and absence from Paris streets and acquaintance have suggested to many an admirable composer of to-day. Saint-Saëns would certainly blush, Bizet's great shade would be troubled, our great and witty Massenet would surely refuse to accept the paternity of his vigorous apostrophes, and--I will be discreet; never mind--it's something very enjoyable, very funny, and quite in the character of the language. Between the Mint and the lion-poodle of the Institute (from the shelter of which, if we are to believe his delightful Memoirs, Alexandre Dumas contributed so valiantly to the triumph of the 1830 Revolution) nestles a small, provincial-looking Square; Madame Permon, mother of the future Madame Junot, Duchess of Abrantès, lived there until the Revolution. In a small garret of the same house, at the left corner, on the third floor, Bonaparte used to lodge during his rare holidays from the École Militaire. The fine, carved wainscotings are still round the walls of the drawing-room on the ground floor, overlooking the Seine, which the Cæsar that-was-to-be used to enter and there speak of his hopes, and the marble chimney-piece is in its old place; at it he would come and dry his big patched boots that "smoked again," the talkative Madame d'Abrantès tells us. So, while dreaming, the little sub-lieutenant might, from the window, see opposite him the palace whence, for a number of years, he was to conqueringly dispose of the destinies of the dazzled world. In front of the Institute is the Pont des Arts. There the sight is an enchanting one; the Seine--the gayest, most lively of rivers--crowded with passenger-boats, tugs, barges, and barques. The grey or blue sky is reflected in the water, and the river flows majestically between two verdure-clad quays, surmounted by book-sellers' cases, and inhabited by the most picturesque of populations. What strange trades there are on the river sides!--watermen's barbers, dog shearers, dockmen, and sand-carters, tollmen and mattress-carders, anglers, bathmen, washerwomen; it is a separate population with its own customs, habits, and peculiar language. And what a splendid frame is round this odd little world seen from the Pont des Arts! [Illustration: VIEW FROM THE LOUVRE QUAY _Noël, pinxit_] On the one bank, the Louvre, the green foliage of the Tuileries, and the Champs-Elysées, with the minarets of the Trocadero and the heights of Chaillot on the horizon; on the other, all old Paris, a series of monuments haloed with souvenirs--the Palais de Justice, the Conciergerie, the Sainte-Chapelle, Notre-Dame; the churches of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, Saint-Gervais, Saint-Paul; the Pointe de la Cité. [Illustration: PARIS FROM THE POINTE DE LA CITÉ _Photographed by Richebourg_] At night, these noble, suggestive silhouettes assume a still more imposing majesty--modern blemishes, glaring colourings, shameless advertisements are blotted out. The moon spreads its delicate white light over the old walls, and a silvern Paris rears itself in the darkness. At times, too, underneath a storm-red sky, an entirely sombre town arises, made known only as a tragic vision in successive flashes of lightning. Either we have a Paris of sunny mirth or a Paris bathed in night's gloom. Descending once again towards the Seine, through the picturesque streets that surround the Institute--the Rue Dauphine, the Rue de Nesles, the Rue Mazarine--we discover in the Rue Contrescarpe-Dauphine--at present the Rue Mazet--the remains of the old White Horse Inn. The stables, with their ancient mangers and quaint eaves, still exist. They date back to Louis XIV. In that time, every week the huge inn-yard was filled with travellers going to Orléans and Blois; and the unwieldy coach started in a cloud of dust, amidst crackings of whip, trumpetings, adieus, and shakings of handkerchiefs; horses pranced, women wept, dogs barked, postilions swore. To-day the animation has disappeared, but the scene has remained, age-stricken, impressive, still charming, so much so that Massenet, moved by it, murmured one morning: "It must be here that Manon[2] alighted from the diligence!" The neighbouring house was once the Magny restaurant, at which those celebrated dinners were given that Goncourt speaks of so often in his Memoirs, dinners shared by Renan, Sainte-Beuve, Georges Sand, Flaubert, Théophile Gautier, Gavarni, and many others. Not far away, and connecting the Rue Mazarine--where Molière and his company played--with the Rue de Seine, let us go through the Passage du Pont-Neuf, occupying the site of the ancient entrance to the theatre, and being the scene of Zola's terrible novel _Thérèse Raquin_. It is a typical nook--sordid, dingy, and malodorous, but strangely attractive, with its fried-potato sellers and Italian modellers. The shops in it seem to belong to another century; some months back, one only was frequented by customers, that of a drawing-paper dealer. The artist, Bonnat, told us he had bought his "Ingres paper" there, when he was a pupil at the School of Fine Arts, of which to-day he is the eminent head. The shop had not altered for sixty years, and the saleswoman asserted that the "stomping-rags she sold were exactly similar to those used by Monsieur Flandrin." In front of us is the Institute, and it is impossible to walk along the interminable black-looking wall enclosing it, on the side of the Rue Mazarine, without thinking of the painful paragraph in the preface of the _Fils Naturel_, wherein the younger Dumas, speaking of his childhood, recalls the souvenir of the return from the first performance, at the Odéon, of _Charles VI. chez ses grands vassaux_, on the 20th of October 1831. The evening had been a stormy one, and the success of the play was doubtful. Consequently, a continuation of their poverty was to be expected. Alexandre Dumas had heavy burdens to support--his mother, a household, a child. He had to live himself and to keep his family on the meagre salary his situation under the Duke d'Orléans procured him. It was not of his talents but of his star that he doubted; and the younger Dumas always remembered his father's broad shadow cast by the moon on the dark, gloomy wall of the Institute, and himself timidly guessing at his father's anxieties and endeavouring, with his little eight-year-old legs, to follow and keep up with the studies of the good-natured giant. [Illustration: THE RUE DES PRÊTRES-SAINT-SÉVERIN IN 1866 _Drawn by A. Maignan_] It was in the Rue Guénégaud, in the Hôtel Britannique, that Madame Roland took up her quarters in 1791. There, joyous and confident in the future, she opened her political _salon_. What a pleasure for the little Manon to show to all the Pont-Neuf neighbourhood, where her childhood had been spent, that she had become a lady and received people of mark. Brissot, Buzot, Pétion, Robespierre, Danton himself, were pleased to come, between two sittings, and talk at this amiable woman's house; and I fancy what attracted them was far more the pretty Parisian's qualities than the virtues of the austere husband, who must have been a great bore! On the 26th of March 1792, Dumouriez came to Roland's door and rang to tell him that he was appointed Minister. On the morrow, the little Manon of the Quai des Lunettes settled in triumph at the Calonne mansion. It was the way to the scaffold. Skirting the quays, we reach the Saint-Michel Square, then the Rue Galande. In spite of recent demolitions, this old street still contains some ancient abodes; but it has lost the singular house called the _Red Castle_, or more prosaically, "the Guillotine." In what was, during the seventeenth century, a sumptuous dwelling--the mansion, 'tis said, of Gabrielle d'Estrées--behind the huge, tall front steps at the back of the courtyard, was the dingy, smoky habitation, stinking of wine, dirt, debauch, and vice. One had to step over the bodies of male and female drunkards to get inside the dens where such poor wretches came seeking some sort of lodging and an hour of forgetfulness. It was at once hideous and lugubrious. Amateurs of ugly sights might continue their studies hard by, on the premises of "Gaffer" Lunette, in the Rue des Anglais. The inhabitants were similar; a prison population--"bestiality in all its horror," as Mephistopheles sings in the _Damnation of Faust_. Recent building and sanitary improvements have done away with the "Red Castle." The Rue Saint-Séverin is a picturesque medley of old houses round the ancient Gothic church--"that flora of stone"--one of the most curious perhaps in Paris; one of those that best preserve the traces of a past of art, devotion, and prayer. The sublime artists who, in several centuries, knew how to create the forest of fine carvings with which the apse is adorned, have, alas! left but sorry successors. By the side of old painted glass windows, brought from the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, other cold, modern stained windows of loud colour have taken from Saint-Séverin's the religious, poetical mysteriousness, the inviting half-obscurity that appeal to the soul of the believer; and their crude light renders only too visible the marks of successive mutilations inflicted on this fine church. In the next street, the present clergy-house is built on the old graveyard, where, in 1641--as the erudite Monsieur de Rochegude informs us--the first operation for gravel was publicly performed on a criminal condemned to death, who, happy man, was cured, and pardoned by Louis XI. The whole of the quarter is one of the busiest in Paris. It would seem as if the vagabonds, the lewd and their lemans, the tatterdemalions of bygone centuries, had left there a direct line of descendants. People live in the street, eat scraps in low drink-shops; a smell of spirits floats in the air at the corners of the various cross-roads; bars and petty restaurants are thronged with customers. Part of the money begged or stolen in Paris is spent there. [Illustration: THE PASSAGE DES PATRIARCHES _Etching by Martial_] Saint-Médard's church is quite close, with its small, dusty, quaint Square, and its round tower at the end of the Rue Monge and the corner of the Rue Mouffetard. It is a gloomy, rat-gnawed, poverty-stricken church, looking as if worn-out with age; and is blocked in by old houses covered with gaudy-coloured advertisements. It has left, far behind in the past, the days when the tomb of the Deacon Pâris in it performed its miracles, when the townsfolk and courtfolk crowded in the small graveyard, a door of which still exists, the one perhaps whereon was written the famous couplet:-- "In the King's name, forbid is God To work a wonder on this sod." [Illustration: THE RUE MOUFFETARD _Charcoal Drawing by P. L. Moreau_] The Rue Mouffetard passes in front of the church porch, overflowing with life and activity. A hundred petty trades are exercised in it; the house doors themselves--old eighteenth-century doors--shelter women-sellers of flowers, milk, fried potatoes, cooked mussels; children play about the middle of the road; carriage traffic is rare. Housewives gossip on their doorsteps, people live together--and in the street. The Passage des Patriarches, which opens at No. 99, was famous in days of yore. The Calvinists, who used to preach there, had bloody quarrels with the Catholics of Saint-Médard's. To-day, it is nothing but a dank, dirty, melancholy alley, inhabited by bric-à-brac dealers, old-iron sellers, and petty hucksters; and smells of rags, old lead, and cauliflower! [Illustration: THE RUE GALANDE _Lansyer, pinxit_ (Carnavalet Museum)] Maubert Square is the converging centre of these strange streets. At present, modernised and rearranged--adorned, if I may say so, with a wretched statue of Etienne Dolet, who was burnt there in 1546--the Square only vaguely resembles the "Plac' Maub'," still visible six or seven years ago, ill-famed, narrow, bordered with old steep-roofed houses, a den of vagabonds, full of suspicious lurking-corners where the police might be sure of making good hauls. Near at hand, in the Maubert Blind Alley, Sainte-Croix used to dwell; and it was in the same mysterious retreat that Madame de Brinvilliers, the sorry heroine of the Poisons drama so well told by our witty friend, F. Funck-Brentano, used to meet her accomplice and with him prepare the terrible "succession powder," composed, according to her avowal, of "vitriol, toad's venom, and rarefied arsenic," which she made use of to poison her father, her two brothers, and to try to make away with her sisters and husband. [Illustration: THE PLACE MAUBERT _Lansyer, pinxit_] In 1304, Dante attended, hard by, one of the numerous schools of the Rue du Fouarre; and, at the corner of the Colbert-Mansion Street, the Faculty of Medicine had its amphitheatre. This curious building is still almost intact with its ancient cupola, and would supply an admirable piece of decoration to some retrospective museum of surgery. [Illustration: THE OLD AMPHITHEATRE OF SURGERY At the corner of the Colbert Mansion _Etching by Martial_] Not far from this spot, the Rue Maître-Albert--which up to 1844 was called the Rue Perdue--owes its present name to the Dominican Maître Albert who, in the thirteenth century, taught in the open air in Maubert Square. It contains curious houses, to-day dens for tramps, who spend the night in them. In 1819, an old negro of miserable appearance and strange manners used to go down this dark street every evening, trying his best to escape observation, and used to seek food and shelter in one of its sorry eating-houses. People pointed him out as he went, whispering that he was formerly Dubarry's black servant, Zamore, whom Louis XV. had played with; Zamore who became a power, petted and courted by noble lords, fine ladies, and princes of the Church that emulously strove to gain the favourite's good graces. Later, having been appointed a municipal officer under the Terror, he vilely, ungratefully, and in a cowardly way, betrayed his benefactress, gave her up, and cast her beneath the knife of the guillotine. At length, sinking lower and lower, Zamore came and hid himself at No. 13, on the second courtyard floor of this gloomy Rue Perdue, and died there on the 7th of February 1820. [Illustration: THE CHURCH OF SAINT-NICOLAS-DU-CHARDONNERET, AND THE RUE SAINT-VICTOR _Drawn by Heidbrendk_ (Carnavalet Museum)] The two churches nearest the spot are those of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonneret and Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre. Connected with the former is a dismal little seminary, in which, under the guidance of the Abbé Dupanloup, the eminent philosopher Ernest Renan went through part of his theological studies. Every one should read in the _Souvenirs of my Childhood and Youth_ the admirable pages this marvellous writer has devoted to his stay in this studious home. "The parish, which derived its name from the field of thistles well known of the students at the Paris University in the Middle Ages, was then the centre of a rich quarter inhabited chiefly by the legal profession. The boarding-school _régime_ weighed heavily upon me. My best friend, a young man from Coutances, I think, like myself, full of enthusiasm, and of excellent heart, held himself aloof, refused to reconcile himself, and died. The Savoy students showed themselves still less acclimatisable. One of them, older than I, owned to me that, each evening, he measured with his eye the height of the three-storey dormitory above the pavement of the Rue Saint-Victor. I fell ill; apparently I was doomed. My Breton soul lost itself in an infinite melancholy. The last angelus of evening I had heard resound over our dear hills, and the last sunset I had watched over the tranquil landscape came back to my memory like sharp arrows. In the ordinary course of things I ought to have died. Perhaps it would have been better if I had...." [Illustration: THE RUE SAINT-JULIEN-LE-PAUVRE _Etching by Martial_] The artist Le Brun's mother is buried in the Saint-Charles chapel of the church of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonneret, and also Pierre de Chamousset, the inventor of the petty Postal service. Parisian ladies, bless his memory! The church of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre is set apart for the Greek ritual. Enclosed on its sides and rear by the ancient buildings of the Hôtel-Dieu, this melancholy-looking chapel is falling to ruin; a stopped-up well with meagre weeds growing from its border-stones seems to guard the door, which opens on a dirty, rubbish-strewn courtyard where a few half-starved fowls peck their scanty meal. It is a nook of poverty and suffering. The walls are damp and dingy; in these sombre yards, where a few sickly trees barely exist, all is solitude and abandon. Only three years ago, stretchers or ambulance carriages still stopped from time to time in it, and from them were taken victims of crime, disease, or accident, that had fallen in the street. Through the vast Paris, busy and indifferent, monopolised by its pleasures or its cares, one or another human wreck was brought to the Assistance Publique in this dismal Rue Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre with its suggestive name. [Illustration: THE JARDIN DES PLANTES--THE CEDAR OF LEBANON AND THE LABYRINTH _Water-colour by Hilaire_ (National Library)] To refresh ourselves after so painful a spectacle, let us come back to the lovely Parisian quays, and walk along the fair river, quivering in the daylight or in the moon's nightly rays; let us pass by the beautiful mansions of the Miramionnes, of Nesmond, of Judge Rolland, in front of the wine market--"catacombs of thirst," and pause at the old Jardin des Plantes, dear to Buffon. A touch of the charm of things past, but not entirely vanished, lingers yet! The trees are centuries old, the ornamental hornbeams have not been altered; there are aviaries and goat-pens which are the same as when Daubigny and Charles Jacques sketched them in 1843, to illustrate the handsome work published by Curmer. [Illustration: THE JARDIN DES PLANTES IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY _Water-colour by Hilaire_ (National Library)] The reptiles are better housed than in our childhood; but the hippopotamus wallows in the same basin; the giraffe stretches his neck over the same enclosures, and the elephant holds through the same railings his gluttonous trunk in search of rolls. The bear-pit has not changed; and the crowd of idlers continue to tempt the eternal "Martin" to climb up the same tree. Still to the noisy children the delightful labyrinth offers its capricious meandering; and the cedar of Lebanon (_Cedrus Libani_) [Linnæus], which tradition tells us Monsieur Jussieu brought back in his hat, has not ceased to wave its ample branches over dreamers, loungers, workers, or grisette--the grisette that comes and sits beneath its venerable shade to read the exciting magazine story which fills with sweet emotion her heart athirst for the ideal! And, in fine, is there anything nattier than the tiny rooms of the Louis XVI. buildings? which once formed Buffon's natural history cabinet, and whose delicate grey wood carvings made such a suitable framework for the admirable butterfly collections brought from every country. Within these finely decorated and cosy rooms there was, so to speak, an ideal assemblage of blossoms, a fairy scene of exquisite colours, an enchantment wrought by a brilliant palette. There they were, all of them, beautiful butterflies, with their metallic lustres from India and Brazil, French butterflies of a thousand tints, both the great death's-head sphynx and the little blue creature of the meadows. Perhaps time had powdered and somewhat dimmed the marvellous brightness of their first colouring; but it was better so. Their pristine lustre would have been too great a contrast in the quaint surroundings, and it was an extra charm to see such gems of the air thus lightly decked with the dust of the past! To-day, alas! these rooms, flowering with sculpture, are closed and forsaken; a part of their wainscoting has disappeared.... Where have decorations so pleasing gone?... Why these everlasting, culpable mutilations, which I know are a grief to Monsieur Périer, the eminent Director of the Museum? The collections of butterflies are now transferred to the vast and sumptuous central hall of the new pavilion devoted to natural history. I liked them better in the charming rooms which once contained them and suited them so well! The water-flowers bloom, as of yore, in the same low, stifling hot-houses, near the bizarre-shaped orchids; and it was in the old amphitheatre, where so many illustrious scholars taught, that the noble artist Madame Madeleine Lemaire,--the only "woman professor" that has ever held a post at the Museum,--initiated her attentive, spell-bound audience into the divine beauty of flowers! In all periods, artists have come and installed their light easel or their modelling-stands in front of the lions' cages, or in the Garden itself, on the grass, opposite the antelopes, hinds, walla-birds, or the goats of Thibet. We remember, my brother and I, having, as little boys, accompanied our father, who was modelling from life the tigers and lions in the wild beasts' corridor. The odour was pungently alkaline, the heat sultry; we heard the hissing of polecats in the entrance and exit rotundas; sometimes a terrible roar, a complaint of anger, pain, or ennui, arose and shook the panes. Most of these unfortunate animals, deprived of air and light, shut up in the horrible, narrow, stinking cages, died a lingering death of consumption. Indeed, they quickly grew familiar with those who spent whole weeks studying them; and their huge heads rubbed caressingly against the thick cage-bars, while their eyes became soft and almost tender. Often we went, inquisitive, ferreting school-boys, to the reptiles' menagerie, an old building crumbling with age, and passed long hours peeping at the chameleons, gazing at the boa-constrictors, trying to rouse the sleepy crocodiles, which seemed to be already stuffed! What reminiscences and souvenirs in the dear old Jardin des Plantes, one of the few "Nooks and Corners of Paris" that have remained almost untouched! [Illustration: THE JARDIN DES PLANTES--CUVIER'S HOUSE _Water-colour by Bourgoin_ (Carnavalet Museum)] On the side, the ancient house Cuvier lived in does not look very stable, and perhaps would go to pieces but for the network of plants round it: ivy, birthwort honeysuckle, lianes of all kinds caparisoned it with verdure. They are carpets, cascades of glossy green, shining together: a nosegay of leaves in a garden. Behind the Jardin des Plantes is Salpêtrière with its walls of evil memory, the Salpêtrière of the September massacres, the Salpêtrière whence Madame de Lamotte so easily escaped after her condemnation; with its broad gardens and its ugly covered-yards surrounded by railings, where, as De Goncourt said, "Women madder than their fellows" are confined. The dome, visible from everywhere, commands, like a lighthouse of misery, all this quarter infected by the Bièvre, the poor, sacrificed river, which is now in part walled over; the oily Bièvre, streaked with tannery acids, reddened by skins of sheep recently flayed that steep in it; the Bièvre which flows miserably and sordidly, but yet so picturesquely, amidst starch factories, fellmongers' stores and other works, after traversing the tiny gardens of Gentilly and creating the illusion of a landscape in the quarter of the Fontaine-à-Mulard. Gone is the time when this ill-starred river washed the banks of smiling meadows and reflected the willows in its clear waters. Tamed, domesticated, adapted to tasks of every sort, unceasingly used by tanners, curriers, tawers, dyers, it flows dirty and putrid! To follow it in its windings, the Rue du Moulin-des-Prés must be ascended, and entrance made into the Rue de Tolbiac. There, through a gate, it enters a dark, dismal passage, whence it will issue only to glide in a kind of sinister-looking canal between black, repulsive manufactories. Here and there, along the scanty banks, a few washerwomen have fixed their tubs on a level with the water, and sing as they dolly their linen; elsewhere, wretched urchins endeavour to catch a stray fish that might have lost its way in the mephitic stream. Then the Bièvre disappears once again and this time underground, coming to view afresh in the Rue des Gobelins. At this spot, some rare traces of a glorious past are discovered. The ancient houses have many of them remained. But how often transformed! The owners of works and of shops, after enslaving the river, have taken possession of the houses bordering it. [Illustration: THE RUE DE BIÈVRE _Drawn by Heidbrendk_] Offices, warehouses, leather stores have invaded the noble mansions of the sixteenth century, and the Bièvre winds, as if ashamed, through poor gardens, like it, fallen from their antique splendour. [Illustration: THE BIÈVRE TANNERIES _Etching by Martial_] Further on, there are more works and tanneries, black corners mean and malodorous, where thousands of rabbit-skins, hanging in mid-air, hard and dry, clash together with a noise of wood. To the very end, the unlucky river, harassed and exploited, cleans blood-stained skins, moves heavy wheels, or washes ghastly offal, amidst a smell as of barege. Finally, it runs to earth once more beneath the Hospital Boulevard, within evil-smelling, dark holes. But before the last fall, the Bièvre passes through an astonishingly strange lane, one of the oddest in this odd quarter: the Ruelle des Gobelins. It flows as a stream of red, green, and yellow tints, between patched-up, mouldy, tumble-down houses, in an odour of ammonia. And yet, near these hovels, among the heaps of tan, beside pits in which are macerating skins of flayed animals, a gem of carving rises as it were an appeal of beauty, a vestige of past splendour. It is the sculptured remains of an adorable Louis XV. pavilion of which Monsieur de Julienne had made a hunting-box; and this lovely paradox, this blossom of stone cast among such a mass of ugliness, is not one of the least surprises of the quarter so fertile in matters for astonishment. Moreover, a few yards from this sewer, the artists of the Gobelins Manufactory have laid out their work-and-study-gardens, in which shine the purple, gold and azure of the prettiest flowers in France. These, cleverly distributed, arrange a carpet of exquisite and radiant colours athwart the surrounding district of sombre sadness. On the confines of the town, is the Butte-aux-Cailles, a vast piece of waste land, cheerless and without charm, which, until 1863, was a sort of fresh country spot, with mills and farms on it. To-day, it is a quarter of hard labour, where numbers of rag-pickers classify the refuse of Paris. At the corner of the Ruelle des Peupliers, faggot-dealers have set up their huts; and hovels line strange streets made with the clearings of other streets. [Illustration: THE BIÈVRE ABOUT 1900--THE VALENCE MILL-RACE _Schaan, pinxit_ (Carnavalet Museum)] Once, these spacious grounds were one stretch of flower gardens and market gardens watered by the Bièvre. In a most interesting book, somewhat forgotten now, Alfred Delvau tells us much of the former history, under Louis-Philippe, of the Saint-Marceau faubourg, the Butte-aux-Cailles, the Rue Croulebarde, and also the Rue du Champ-de-l'Alouette, in which last street the "Shepherdess of Ivry" was murdered, the crime by its bizarre character producing a deep impression in the Capital in 1827. It was a public-house waiter, Honoré Ulbach, who had stabbed a girl, Aimée Millot by name; she, as a keeper of goats, was popular at Ivry. Every day, she was to be seen, with a large straw hat on her head and a book in her hand, tending her mistress's goats. The "Shepherdess of Ivry" she was called in the neighbourhood; in 1827, there were still shepherdesses in Paris! The trial that followed excited the whole town; the crime was one of love and jealousy; the victim was nineteen; she was virtuous and a shepherdess; women "cursed the murderer, even while pitying him perhaps," wrote the newspapers of the time; and even the giraffe but recently arrived at the King's Garden was neglected for the Ivry drama. On the 27th of July, Ulbach, who seems to have been half-mad, was condemned to death; and, at four o'clock in the evening on the 10th of September, he was executed on the Grève Square. A Municipal Crèche, in the Rue des Gobelins, occupies, at No. 3, a fine Louis XIII. mansion, once inhabited by the Marquis of Saint-Mesme, a lieutenant-general and the husband of Elizabeth Gobelin, close to a handsome lordly-looking building which in the quarter bears the name of Queen Blanche's Mansion. The legend attaching to the latter is false, affirms Monsieur Beaurepaire, the learned and amiable librarian of the City of Paris. "It was," he says, "simply Catherine d'Hausserville's home, where Charles VI. was nearly burnt alive during the performance of a ballet, his fancy dress having caught fire." The edifice, with its noble appearance, forms a strange contrast in this poor yet picturesque district. Another fine mansion, in the Rue Scipio, is the one built by Scipio Sardini, in the reign of Henri III., with terra-cotta medallions, rare Parisian specimens of the exceedingly pretty decoration that pleases us so much at Florence, Pisa, and Verona. This Scipio Sardini was a peculiar man, and his story deserves to be told. Of Tuscan origin, he came to France after the death of Henri II., just when Catherine de Medici seized the reins of power. Amiable, witty, ingratiating, a great financier, clever in his enterprises, and unscrupulous, he quickly gained a preponderant position in the frivolous, dissolute, mirth-loving Court. He excelled in combining business and pleasure. An illustrious marriage seemed to him essential to people's forgetting his low origin and the rapid rise of his fortunes. He married the "fair Limeuil," one of the most seductive beauties of the Queen's flying squadron--"All of them capable of setting the whole world on fire," said Brantôme. This attractive person had been successively courted by the most noble lords of the Court before effecting the conquest of Condé, by whom she had a child. At Dijon, during one of the Queen's receptions, Mademoiselle de Limeuil was taken ill and was delivered of a boy. "It is inexplicable," writes Mézeray, "that such a prudent woman should have so miscalculated." There was a scandal; the Queen Mother was indignant; the fair Isabella was imprisoned; but Condé who was still amorous, succeeded in effecting her escape. The Protestants, however, were on the watch, and induced their leader to give up his too compromising mistress. Then it was that Scipio Sardini came forward, the richest man of the period, the King's banker, as also the nobles' and clergy's. He managed to get himself accepted; the marriage took place; and he settled in this pretty mansion that we still admire, and that is mentioned by Sauval as one of the most beautiful in Paris, amidst vineyards, orchards, and fields bordering on the Bièvre. There he lived, surrounded by luxury, works of art, books and flowers, and died there about 1609. As early as 1636, the mansion was converted into a hospital, which in 1742 was once more transformed, this time into a bakery. To-day, it is the Bakery of the City of Paris Hospitals. Let us keep along by the Wine Market, and, before crossing to the right bank of the river, respectfully pause on the Stockade Bridge, close to the small monument erected to the famous sculptor Barye by his admirers,--to the great Barye who, misunderstood and mocked, sold up by his creditors, often came in the evening, after leaving his modest studio on the Célestins Quay, to forget his sufferings and muse in this same place before the splendid panorama of Paris crowned by the grand silhouette of the Panthéon. Here, too, is one of the City's best views. * * * * * Nothing is more relative than an impression felt. To certain minds in love with the Past, this or that ruin is much more affecting than the most modern palace; it is the same with streets, houses, and pavements. An exquisite hour to call up the soul of old Paris is at twilight. The colour peculiar to each object has melted into the general shades and tints spread by the day which is departing and the night which comes. Delicate lace-work outlines stand out against the sky, while huge violet, black, and blue masses of atmosphere bathe whole streets in fathomless mystery. Then thought awakens, souvenirs revive and grow clear; scenes are lived through again of which these streets and houses were the silent witnesses. One hears cries of fury or of joy; drums beat, bells ring, groups pass singing 'mid these dream visions that rise again! In order to enjoy such an experience no better spot could be chosen than the Stockade Bridge, which, with its barrier of black beams, as it were shuts off to the east Paris of the olden days. The City slumbers in the calm of evening, the smoke curls lazily up. Afar sound bells; swallows sweep crying in the air embalmed by falling night; noises ascend vague and weird, interpreted according to the fancy of one's musings. All life seems to sleep; the soul of the past awakes. It is the hour desired. [Illustration: THE CONSTANTINE BRIDGE AND STOCKADE _Etching by Martial_] FOOTNOTES: [1] There is a pun here in the French impossible to render in English. [2] Manon Lescaut. [Illustration: THE PONT ROYAL IN 1800 _Boilly, pinxit_ (Carnavalet Museum)] THE RIGHT BANK OF THE RIVER The Arsenal quarter, built over the site of the two Royal Palaces--the Saint-Paul mansion, the Tournelles palace--and the soil of the Louviers Isle, joined to the river bank in 1843, serve as a natural transition from the old to modern Paris. [Illustration: THE LESDIGUIÈRES MANSION] Notwithstanding its warlike name, the Arsenal quarter is one of the most peaceful parts of the Capital. Centuries ago, the palaces disappeared that brought it its wealth, life and movement. On their ruins and their huge gardens, humble, tranquil streets have been made: the Rue de la Cerisaie, where Marshal Villeroy received Peter the Great in the sumptuous Zamet mansion; the Rue Charles V., where once was the elegant home of the Marchioness de Brinvilliers, now at No. 12, premises in which a white-capped sister-of-charity distributes cod-liver oil and woollen socks to poor, suffering children; the Rue des Lions-Saint-Paul; the Rue Beautreillis, where Victorien Sardou was born; near there the great Balzac dwelt. "I was then living," he says in his admirable _Facino Cane_, "in a small street you probably don't know, the Rue de Lesdiguières. It commences at the Rue Saint-Antoine, opposite a fountain near the Place de la Bastille, and issues in the Rue de la Cerisaie. Love of knowledge had driven me into a garret, where I worked during the night, and spent the day in a neighbouring library, that of _Monsieur_. When it was fine, I took rare walks on the Bourdon Boulevard." This modest Rue de Lesdiguières still exists in part; on the site occupied by Nos. 8 and 10, could be seen, a few years ago, one of the containing walls of the Bastille; narrow houses have been stuck against it; and, at No. 10, it is the very wall of the old Parisian fortress which constitutes the back of the porter's lodge! What a destiny for a prison wall! Of what was once the Arsenal only the mansion of the Grand Master is left; it is, at present, the Arsenal Library--formerly called, as Balzac says, the Library of _Monsieur_. It used to be a fine dwelling, the home of Sully, and possesses priceless books and autographs, and most valuable writings. In a coffer, covered with flower-de-luces, may be admired Saint Louis's book of hours, side by side with a fragment of his royal mantle, the blue silk of it, worn with time, being strewn with golden flower-de-luces; the old book bears this venerable inscription: "It is the psalter of Monseigneur Loys, once his mother's;" and was taken from the scattered treasures of the Sainte-Chapelle. Then there is Charles the Fifth's Bible with the King's writing on it: "This book (belongs) to me, the King of France;" and a missal, each leaf of which is framed with an incomparable garland due to the brush of the "master of flowers," a great artist whose name is unknown to us. Besides, there are rare manuscripts, marvellous bindings, unique editions, romances of chivalry, classics, poets of every age, complete in this fine palace; together with Latude's letters, the box that served for his ridiculous attempt against Madame de Pompadour; and, near them, the cross-examination of the Marchioness de Brinvilliers, and the death-certificate of the Man in the Iron Mask; Henri IV.'s love-letters too, with his kisses sent to the Marchioness de Verneuil, and the documents relating to the affair of the Necklace. How many more things in addition...! Let us add that the curators--Henri Martin, so learned and obliging, Funck-Brentano, the exquisite historian of the Bastille, the picturesque relater of all its dramas. Sheffer and Eugène Muller are not only scholars needing no praise but most courteous and genial men--and you will quite understand why the Arsenal is one of the few corners in Paris where it is delightful to go and work or to saunter about. Indeed, it is a tradition of the house. Nodier, good old Nodier, who was one of Monsieur de Bornier's predecessors and a predecessor also of J. M. de Heredia, the master who has so recently gone from us, Nodier, the admirable author of the _Trophées_, had succeeded in making the Arsenal the centre of literary and artistic Paris. Hugo, Lamartine, de Musset, Balzac, Méry, de Vigny, and Fr. Soulié used to meet there; and fine verses were said while regarding the sun glow with red flame behind the towers of Notre Dame. "The towers of Notre Dame his name's great H composed!" wrote Vacquerie. Of the Bastille nothing remains except a few stones which formed the substructure of one of the old towers; and these have been carefully removed to the Célestins Quay, along the Seine, where they are visible to-day. In vain, therefore, would any one now seek for a vestige of the sombre fortress over which so many legends hovered. Latude's great shade itself would hardly locate the spot; and yet how full Paris history is of this traditional Bastille, which the people, amazed with their easy victory, could not tire of visiting after the 15th of July 1789. Such was their curiosity and such their eagerness that Soulès, the governor appointed by the Parisian municipality, was compelled to stop the visits, on the curious ground "that such damage had already been done to the fortress by visitors that more than 200,000 livres would be required to repair it." Repair the Bastille! The souvenir manuscripts of Paré tell us the fury excited by this strange pretension in Danton, sergeant of a section of the National Guard, who, with his company, was turned back by the order. Danton had himself admitted into the presence of the unfortunate Soulès, seized him by the collar and dragged him to the Town Hall; the prohibition was removed; and Citizen Palloy was thenceforth allowed to exploit the celebrated State prison. The stones were "hewn and cut into images of the fortress and dedicated to the various departments and assemblies," or into "commemorative slabs intended to rouse people's courage." Palloy cut up the leads into medals, and made rings with the iron chains; out of the marble he manufactured games of dominoes, and had the delicate thought to offer one of these games to the young Dauphin to inspire him with "the horror of tyranny." [Illustration: COMMEMORATIVE BALL ON THE RUINS OF THE BASTILLE Dancing here _From a coloured engraving of the eighteenth century_] Balls were held on the site of the Bastille. Wine flowed, fiddles were scraped, and printed calicoes of that period show us the ruins of the old Parisian citadel surmounted with this inscription: "Dancing here." The huge space left vacant by the demolition had to be filled up. Napoleon I., whose artistic conceptions were sometimes disconcerting, had constructed there, in 1811, by Alavoine, a strange sort of fountain of bizarre appearance: it was a colossal elephant, twenty-four metres high, which spouted water from its trunk. Built temporarily in plaster and mud, the elephant quickly crumbled away under the action of weather and rain; and soon became a lamentable débris surrounded with disjointed planks. The urchins of the district made it the scene of Homeric struggles; but the real familiars were the rats that had made their home inside the structure, so that, when the demolition began, regular _battues_ had to be organised with men and dogs; and, for months, these dreaded rodents infested the terrorised quarter. In 1840, the present column was erected; since then, the genius of Liberty has poised over Paris his airy foot, and Barye's fine lion watches over the repose of the victims of 1830 that are interred within the crypt of the monument. [Illustration: THE SENS MANSION ABOUT 1835 _From a lithograph by Rouargue_] The Rue Saint-Antoine contains certain handsome mansions: the Cossé mansion, where Quélus died; the Mayenne and Ormesson mansion, built by du Cerceau on the remains of the Saint-Paul mansion and Germain Pilon's studio; the Sully mansion, whose noble front was not long ago mutilated. Hard by, at the corner of the Rue du Figuier and the picturesque Rue de l'Hôtel de Ville, which latter used to be the Rue de la Mortellerie, stands what is left of the Sens mansion, the only specimen, together with the Cluny Museum, of what private architecture was in the fifteenth century. After being inhabited by Princes of the Church, Bishops, Cardinals, and also by Marguerite de Valois (Queen Margot), the Sens mansion fell on evil days. It became the "Diligence Office"; and from its courtyard is said to have started the famous courier whose murder was attributed to Lesurques, the unfortunate Lesurques popularised by the well-known drama performed at the Ambigu, which caused so many tears to flow. In more recent times, the Hôtel de Sens derogated further still. It became a manufactory of sweets! At No. 5 of the Rue du Figuier, we meet with a draw-well, the top of which is finely sculptured; the spot brings back the memory of Rabelais, the admirable Rabelais, who died quite near, in the Rue des Jardins. At No. 15, opened the sixteenth-century door through which the actors of the illustrious theatre established on the ancient site of the Jeu de Paume de la Croix-Noire, proceeded to their private stage-room. It was before this door that Molière was arrested and taken to the Châtelet, because he owed "142 livres to Antoine Fausseur, master-chandler, his purveyor of light." Let us cross the Place de la Bastille and go down the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Antoine. There, at No. 115, in front of an old eighteenth-century house, the Deputy Baudin was killed against a barricade, on the 3rd of December 1851. At No. 303, in the reign of Napoleon I., stood Dr. Dubuisson's private hospital, where General Malet was confined. There he hatched the prodigious plot the disconcerting history of which we intend shortly to relate. Farther on, near the Rue de Montreuil, we pass by the remains of Réveillon's wall-paper stores, pillaged on the 17th of April 1789; it was one of the preludes of the Revolution. Last of all, at No. 70, in the Rue de Charonne, Dr. Belhomme's private hospital stood, which was used as a special prison under the Revolution. Only those were admitted who could pay and pay well. The irrefutable memoirs of Monsieur de Saint-Aulaine reveal to us a Belhomme familiar, cynical, exacting his fees and thouing Duchesses short of money who haggled with him on the question of their life. The most amiable of historians, my excellent friend G. Lenôtre, whom it is always necessary to quote when facts of the Revolutionary epoch are in question, has reconstituted the terrible and surprising story of the Belhomme institution where they laughed, danced, or even flirted under the dread eye of Fouquier-Tinville; and has related, with his habitual documentation, the bizarre liaison of the Duchess of Orléans, widow of Louis-Philippe Egalité, with Rouzet, the Conventional, buried later at Dreux under the name of the "Count de Folmon" in the Orléans family vault. Pursuing our way and passing by the Church of Sainte Marguerite, in which Louis XVIII. was interred ... or his double, we reach the barrier of the Throne (the Throne overthrown, people said in 1793). The scaffold, which had temporarily quitted the Revolution Square, was put up here during the most terrible period of the Terror, and the "great batches" were executed upon it. In six weeks, 1300 victims perished, among them, André Chénier, the Baron de Trenck, the Abbess of Montmorency, Cécile Renaud, Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe, the poet Roucher, and many others. The bodies of these unfortunate people, stripped of their clothing, were loaded each evening on covered waggons, with their severed heads between their legs; and the horrible vehicle, dripping with blood along the road, was tipped into some pit dug at the bottom of the Picpus Convent Gardens, where still exists the cemetery of those that were executed during the Revolution. Retracing our steps, we arrive at No. 9 of the Rue de Reuilly; here was once the Hortensia Tavern, kept in 1789 by the famous Santerre, a major in the National Guard. The house has not much changed; at present, however, it is a girls' boarding-school which occupies the large rooms where the thundering General organised those terrible descents on Paris and launched those dreadful battalions of the faubourg that terrorised even the Convention itself. On the other side of the Place de la Bastille, in the Rue Saint-Antoine, near Saint Paul's Church, is the Charlemagne Passage, most picturesque by reason of the old souvenirs it contains and the strange population it harbours: chair-menders, mattress-carders, milk-women, open-air flower-women gather round the ruin of the charming mansion which, under Charles V., was the sumptuous abode of the provost, Hugues Aubryot. The front, which is still remarkable and fine-looking, is an astonishing contrast to the poor, low houses that huddle round it. Fowls peck at the foot of the fifteenth-century turrets, which enclose a handsome staircase; and patched linen dries on iron wire stretched between the caryatide windows of the seventeenth century, replacing those behind which once mused the Duke d'Orléans and the Duke de Berri, as also, in 1409, Jean de Montaigu, beheaded for sorcery! who were formerly illustrious guests in this elegant dwelling. [Illustration: THE PROVOST HUGUES AUBRYOT'S MANSION CHARLEMAGNE'S COURTYARD AND PASSAGE IN 1867 _Drawn by A. Maignan_] And now, let us stop at the Vosges Square on the other side of the Bastille. It is another rare nook of our old City, which, through the centuries, has preserved its ancient character very nearly intact. The houses there, in Louis XIII. style, have not changed. The scenery has remained the same. The _Précieuses_ could take their favourite walks there; and those punctilious in honour might draw their sword, as in the time of Richelieu and the Edict-malcontents; only the public of spectators would be quite different. The fine ladies of the country hight Tender, the Cydalises and Aramynthas, the lords once living in those noble dwellings, they who, on the 16th of March 1612, were present at the tournament given by the Queen Regent, Marie de Médici, in honour of the peace concluded with Spain, or they who proceeded in grand coaches to the fair Marion de Lorme's or to Madame de Sévigné's, are to-day replaced by petty annuitants, modest shopkeepers retired from business and pensioned-off officers. Humble charwomen work at their tasks in the spots where Mazarin's nieces paused in their sedan-chairs; and the numerous Jews that live in the quarter meet there on Saturdays. It is a curious spectacle to see these men and women of strongly marked type betaking themselves to the Synagogue, which is near a partially subsisting eighteenth-century mansion still bearing delicate decorations, but at present occupied by a butcher, in the Rue du Pas-de-la-Mule. Not a few old men wear the long gaberdine, their hair in corkscrew curls, and earrings in their ears. Velvet-eyed girls coifed with bands, wonderfully handsome and peculiarly dressed, assemble there on certain religious feast-days. It is a strange evocation; 'twould seem that in these peaceful quarters biblical traditions have been preserved in some Jewish families. [Illustration: THE PLACE ROYALE ABOUT 1651 (NOW THE VOSGES SQUARE) _Israël, del._] The old-time animation, however, is an exception. The Vosges Square, once the Place Royale, where Richelieu lived and Fronsac, Chabannes, Marshal de Chaulnes, Rohan-Chabot, Rotrou, Dangeau, Canillac, the Prince de Talmont and Mademoiselle du Châtelet, where Madame de Sévigné was born, where the tragic actress Rachel dwelt, and Théophile Gautier and Victor Hugo, is to-day completely neglected; and this delightful Paris nook, where so much wit was spent, such fine ladies rivalled in grace and elegance and so many exquisites drew their swords, is now nothing but a large, lonely garden, provincial and melancholy, frequented almost exclusively by the pupils of neighbouring boarding-schools, who play there at prisoners' base, and leap-frog, beneath the debonair shadow of Louis XIII.'s statue, with its philosophic frame of a Punch-and-Judy show and a chair-woman's stall. In the ancient Rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine (at present called the Rue de Sévigné) on the site now occupied by No. 11, formerly stood the Marais theatre, built with money provided by Beaumarchais. In 1792, the _Guilty Mother_ was performed there, for the benefit, said the play-bill, "of the first soldier who shall send citizen Beaumarchais an Austrian's ear." The modern building is a modest private-bath establishment, with a small garden in front in which grow some spindle-trees--in boxes, and which is adorned with silvered balls. The huge wall, all grim and grey, backing the slightly-built bath establishment, is the old wall of the Force Prison, where, on a post at the corner of the Rue des Balais, Madame de Lamballe was executed, where also Madame de Tallien was transferred, and Princess de Tarente was confined, the latter, the grandmother of the kind, courteous and learned Duke de la Trémoïlle, who had only to dip into his incomparable family archives to give us the most precious documents of French history, and to whom we are indebted for those picturesque and exciting "Souvenirs of Madame de Tarente," one of the most valuable narrations by an eye-witness of the Revolutionary period. The Carnavalet mansion, Madame de Sévigné's "dear Carnavalette," is close by, as also the ancient Le Peletier-Saint-Fargeau mansion, to-day the City of Paris Library. It is a fine, large building of noble appearance, which contains wonderful books, maps, plans and manuscripts. The written history of Paris is there; and all workers know the pretty, sculpture-ornamented room of Monsieur le Vayer, the erudite, obliging Curator of these fine collections. Messieurs Poète, Beaurepaire, Jacob, Jarach and Wilhem, in the Library; Messieurs Pètre and Stirling in the History room are the wise and welcoming hosts of this admirable Parisian Library. All this Marais quarter, indeed, contains sumptuous mansions, not one of which, alas! has been respected. All are given over to business and manufacturing. The Lamoignon mansion is occupied by glass-polishers and garden-seatmakers; the Albret mansion by a bronze lamp-dealer; those of Tallard, Maulevrier, Sauvigny, Brevannes, Epernon, &c., are still standing, but in what a state! The Rue des Nonnains-d'Hyères offers us its curious bass-relief, in painted stone, representing a knife-grinder in eighteenth-century costume. In 1748, a Madame de Pannelier kept a "wit-office" in this same street; Lalande, Sautereau, Guichard, Leclerc de Merry used to attend meetings there. They were held on Wednesdays, and were preceded by an excellent dinner. The tradition has happily been preserved in Paris. In the Rue François-Miron, one sees a spacious, handsome mansion with circular pediment, escutcheons and garlands. It is the Beauvais mansion, built by Le Pautre in 1658. To look at it now, old and in a dull street, one would hardly think that the coaches of Louis XIV.--King Sun--had passed under the dark vault of the entrance gate and that, from the top of the central pavilion balcony, Queen Anne of Austria, in company with the Queen of England, Cardinal Mazarin, Marshal de Turenne and other illustrious nobles, had watched her son Louis XIV. and her daughter-in-law, the new Queen Marie-Thérèse of Austria, go by as they made, through Saint-Antoine's Gate, their solemn entry into Paris on the 26th of August 1660![3] On account of its picturesque aspect and the fine mansions it contains, the Rue Geoffroy-l'Asnier is one of the most curious in Paris. At No. 26 stands the Châlons-Luxembourg mansion, with its monumental door and wonderful knocker. At the bottom of the courtyard is an exceedingly elegant Louis XIII. pavilion in brick and stone, and of delicate proportions. The mansion was built for the second Constable of Montmorency, and though it is quite lost in this gloomy quarter, it maintains its proud bearing. After the Revolution, this street, whence nearly all the owners of houses had emigrated, if they had not been guillotined, was completely stripped of its former splendour. Petty annuitants, small clerks, and poor people took up their abode in the abandoned buildings. Grass grew in the streets; many of the dwellings had been sold as national property; and the Rue Geoffroy-l'Asnier underwent the common fate; it became democratic. [Illustration: THE RUE GRENIER-SUR-L'EAU IN 1866 _Drawn by A. Maignan_] Between this street and the neighbouring Rue des Barres, one is surprised to see a sort of fissure so narrow that two persons would find it difficult to walk abreast through it, a sort of corridor along which the wind sweeps past dilapidated, leaning houses on either side. It is the Rue Grenier-sur-l'Eau, wretched and dirty enough, but quaint, with the glorious tower of Saint-Gervais-Saint-Protais in the background, rising and standing out against the sky. The proper moment to take a look at the sinister little Rue des Barres is on a stormy night, behind the church of Saint-Gervais. It is then easy to imagine what this quiet quarter must have been like when, on the 9th of Thermidor, about eleven in the evening, 'mid torch-lights, calls to arms, the noise of the tocsin and shouts of the multitude, the dead body of Lebas was brought thither, and, on a chair, Augustin Robespierre, who had broken his thighs in leaping from one of the Town Hall windows. The dead man and the dying man were dragged to the Barres mansion transformed into a Sectional Committee Tribunal. On the morrow Lebas was buried, and Robespierre was carried before the Committee of Public Safety, who sent him to the scaffold. [Illustration: THE SAINT-PAUL PORT _Water-colour by Boggs_ (G. Cain Collection)] The Rue des Barres descends to the Seine, near the old Town Hall Quay, where the big, flat boats laden with apples, stones, or sand take their moorings. Into it opens one of the exits of the charming Church of Saint-Gervais, whose fine painted windows, masterpieces of Pinaigrier and Jean Cousin, were almost totally destroyed twenty years ago by an explosion of dynamite. Against the church walls, in the laicised ruins of an ancient chapel, a sweet manufacturer has installed his alembics and copper pans; and it is a curious sight to see the lighted fires of this strange kitchen beneath these antique Gothic arches, between these blackened pillars still bearing traces of the candles that once burned in front of the holy images, on a ground formerly used for burying and even now concealing bones. The out-offices of the old church still remain, wonderfully picturesque, and open into the Rue François-Miron, No. 2, on the left of the entrance portal of the church, between a laundress's establishment and a furniture-remover's premises! [Illustration: THE BARBETT MANSION The Rue Paradis-des-Francs-Bourgeois and the Rue Vieille-du-Temple in 1866 _Drawn by A. Maignan_] On one side, the little Rue de l'Hôtel-de-Ville brings us to the Rue Vieille-du-Temple, where we can admire, at No. 47, what is left of the quaint mansion of the Dutch Ambassadors, where "Monsieur Caron de Beaumarchais and Madame his spouse," as an almanac of 1787 called them, established in 1784 a Provident Institution for poor nursing mothers. Indeed, it was for the benefit of this undertaking that the fiftieth performance of the _Mariage de Figaro_ was given. Farther on, to the right, at the corner of the Rue des Francs-Bourgeois, stands the pretty turret built about 1500 for Jean Hérouet; and, last of all, the fine Rohan palace, which to-day is the National Printing House. This last is a noble and spacious building which the elegant Cardinal that once lived in it took pleasure in sumptuously decorating. A masterpiece may be seen there, "the Horses of Apollo," in a wonderful bass-relief by Pierre Le Lorrain. The saloon of the Apes, by Huet, is charming, and the private room of Monsieur Christian, the witty and learned Director of the National Printing House, contains a beautiful Caffieri time-piece. Why must, alas! this fine palace be condemned soon to disappear? The Rohan mansion is to be demolished, and the State will commit the sacrilege! May the endeavours of lovers of Paris succeed in preserving for us this precious vestige of a past that each day removes farther from us! A cabman whose astonishment must have been great was a certain George who, on the 22nd of October 1812, at half-past eleven in the evening, amid a driving rain that turned the miry soil of Saint-Peter's pudding-bag (now the Villehardouin blind alley) into a veritable bog, saw get out of his cab, near the Rue Saint-Gilles, a completely naked man, with his uniform under his arm--a soldier whom, twenty minutes before, he had picked up in the Louvre Square. This strange passenger was Corporal Rateau, proceeding to the appointment made with him by General Malet, inside Dr. Dubuisson's private hospital and asylum, 303 Faubourg-Saint-Antoine, where the latter was confined by the authorities. In his haste to put on the fine uniform of an orderly officer, which was ready for him in exchange for his own, Rateau had undressed in the cab; and up the dark staircase of the gloomy house in the gloomy street he rushed with absolutely nothing on. The little house still exists, wretched and dingy-looking, where Malet appointed to meet his accomplices, on the third floor in the abode of the Abbé Cajamanos, an old bewildered Spanish priest who had quitted the Bicêtre asylum. This adventure of General Malet's is both prodigious and disconcerting. For, in 1812, at the moment when Napoleon seemed to be at the summit of his power, Malet, in a sort of dungeon, with the help of five or six obscure assistants, an old priest with hardly any knowledge of French, a half-pay officer, an almost illiterate sergeant and a few other hare-brained people, had been able, even while confined, watched and suspected, to combine everything, prepare everything, so that the report of the Emperor's death might be believed--the Emperor being absent in the icy steppes of Russia, and no news arriving from him. And his calculations were justified. All the Imperial functionaries, from Savary, the head of the police, down to Frochot, the Prefect of the Seine, accepted General Malet's allegations, without testing or discussing them. Especially, all believed his fine promises; and it is hard to say where the hoaxer would have stopped if an officer, simply obeying his orders, had not refused to be gained over with fine words, and asked for proofs. Malet, being taken aback, grew impatient, and replied with a pistol-shot. Major Doucet forthwith arrested him, and the comedy ended in a tragedy. All the more haste was made to get rid of the organisers of this plot, which had so nearly succeeded, as it was necessary to suppress as quickly as possible their awkward testimony to such cowardice, lying, and compromise. The poor dwelling in the Villehardouin blind alley was searched by all the Paris police; papers, uniforms, cocked hats, and swords were fished out of the little well, still existing, into which they had been wildly thrown. In a few hours, Malet, Lahorie, Rateau, and Guidal were tried, condemned, and executed. The replies of the General to the Tribunal that so summarily judged him were home-thrusts. Asked (somewhat late) who were his accomplices: "All of you," he said, "if I had succeeded!" Taken to the wall of evil memory in the plain of Grenelle, he insisted on giving the firing-order to the execution-platoon; and, as if he had been on the drill-ground, made the soldiers repeat the aiming movement, which had not been carried out with military precision. Rateau, who, as a matter of fact, had understood nothing of this strange drama, in which he had been one of the most picturesque confederates, is said to have died in crying: "Long live the Emperor!" Between the Archives and the Rue Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie, there was once a large monastery, which, in 1631, became the property of the Carmelite Billettes,--the name being derived from an ornament worn by these monks on their gowns. The Revolution suppressed the monastery; but the small cloister has come down to us with its charming proportions and its monastic cosiness. To-day, it is a Town School, and the neighbouring church is devoted to Protestant worship. [Illustration: THE RUE DE VENISE _Water-colour by Truffaut_ (Carnavalet Museum)] The Rue de Venise, one of the most ancient Paris streets, is not far away. It is now a low, bad-smelling lane inhabited by vagabonds of both sexes. Women, whose age it is impossible to tell, trail and traipse in front of alleys within which loom greasy, black staircases. Mended linen hangs from the windows; acrid smoke issues from between thick bars protecting old mansions now degenerated into mere dens, defended, however, by heavy doors studded with rusty nails. It is hideous, yet quaint, as indeed all this quarter, which is made up besides of the Rue Pierre-au-Lard, the Rue Brise-Miche, and the Rue Taille-Pain; not forgetting Saint-Merri's cloister, the name being that of the old church whose tocsin so often sounded the alarm during the riots in the reign of Louis-Philippe. At the least popular excitement, this inextricable labyrinth of small streets used to bristle with barricades. At the crossing of the Rue Saint-Martin and the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher was raised the terrible barricade defended by Jeanne and his intrepid companions. Following on the burial of General Lamarque, who died while pressing to his lips the sword offered to him by the Bonapartist officers of the Hundred Days, an immense revolutionary movement had galvanized Paris. The old soldiers of the Empire, the survivors of the Terror and those of 1830, allied in their common hatred of Louis-Philippe's government, had joined the malcontents of all parties and the members of the then numerous secret societies. In the evening of the 5th of June 1832, the centre of Paris was covered with barricades; and both troops and National Guard had been obliged to reconquer, one by one, the positions that had been lost. Slaughter had been going on the whole night. When the dawn of the 6th of June tinged the house-roofs with pink, the large Saint-Merri barricade was seen to be holding out; its defenders, a handful of heroic men, had sworn to bury themselves under its ruins. Already they had repulsed ten furious assaults; now they were awaiting death; and the loud tones of the Saint-Merri tocsin, unceasingly sounding above their heads, seemed to be tolling their funeral knell! Part of the Paris army had to be utilised to vanquish these dauntless insurgents. Firing went on from windows, cellars, the pavement. Round the barricades, dead bodies of National Guards and soldiers, riddled with balls, crushed beneath blocks of stone hurled from roof-tops, testified to the frightful savagery of this intestine struggle. For long afterwards, the ground was red with blood! What numbers of balls and bullets, what quantities of grapeshot all these old house-fronts have received in the haphazard of riots, frequent during the reign of Louis-Philippe. The drums no sooner beat than the citizens armed and hurried to defend order ... or to attack it; anxious women, cowering behind closed shutters, watched for the biers. Things resumed their ordinary course immediately the disorder was over; the insurgent hobnobbed with the honest National Guard whom he had aimed his gun at on the day before. Sometimes, however, grudges remained. [Illustration: THE RUE DU RENARD-SAINT-MERRY _Etching by Martial_] My parents knew an old woman, living in the Rue Saint-Merri, who, for forty years after 1836, never passed without trembling by the door of the tenant underneath her flat. As people were surprised at this persistent apprehension, she said: "If you only knew what happened to me!" and she related that, one evening when there was a riot and her husband had been absent all day firing in the ranks of the National Guard, she was in the house alone, mad with anxiety; suddenly, at the corner of the street, she saw a stretcher appear, covered with sacking, which the bearers deposited at her door. Was it her husband that they were bringing home dead? She rushed out, raised the edge of the cover and recognised in the person lying with smashed jaw, haggard eyes, bleeding from a ball in the cheek, the tenant underneath: "Ah, what a good thing!" she cried; "it's you, Monsieur Vitry!" Since that day Monsieur Vitry had given her the cold shoulder. In the reign of Charles VI., under pretext of purifying the quarter--the pretext and the Vicar of Saint-Merri's complaint being only too well grounded--these "hot streets" were cleared of the majority of low, lewd people who had taken up their domicile in them. But, if morality had its claims, business also had its interests; and the worthy shopkeepers of the neighbourhood, deeming these of more importance than decency, energetically protested against the measure so prejudicial to their petty commerce. They gained the day, and, on the 21st of January 1388, Parliament reversed the Provost's decision, the result being that the merry band returned in triumph to their old haunts, celebrating the event with feasting and banqueting. [Illustration: THE RUE DES PROUVAIRES AND THE RUE SAINT-EUSTACHE ABOUT 1850 _Water-colour by Villeret_ (Carnavalet Museum)] In his _Chronicle of the Streets_, our learned friend, Beaurepaire, librarian of the City of Paris, asserts that the Rue Pirouette, near Saint-Eustace's Church, owes its singular name to the "Market Stocks that stood at this spot. It was an octagonal tower with lofty ogival windows, in the centre of which was an iron wheel pierced with holes for the head and arms of vagabonds, murderers, panders, and blasphemers, who were exposed thus to public derision. On three consecutive market-days, for two hours each day, they were fastened in the stocks and turned every half-hour in a different direction. In other words, they were forced to 'pirouette,' whence the name of the street." After doing penance there, in the olden times, malefactors betake themselves thither to-day to sup. The "Guardian Angel," a thieves' restaurant, exhibits its signboard almost at the corner of the street: in it rogues laugh, drink and sing, and hatch their morrow's exploits. The Staff of the army of vice make it their meeting-place. It is the fashionable resort, a sort of burglars' "Maxim-restaurant," where Paris hooligans deem it elegant to appear. Casque-d'or and his pals reign there, and the scoundrel who has just committed an evil deed is certain to secure good lodging within, and all else he requires. But it is not only knights of the blood-letting industry who inhabit this noble dwelling; other lords come there to eat snails and drink champagne: suspicious-looking young men with plastered hair, who noisily spend their money gained by blackmailing or some other reprehensible action. The place is a disgrace to the Capital. The landlord affirms that there are honest folk among his customers. The thing is possible--anyway, they must find themselves in very bad company. Quite close, almost next door, at No. 5, is the "Helmet Courtyard," which gives us a striking impression of what ancient dwellings were. It was, in fact, once a sumptuous fourteenth-century mansion; to-day, it is only a hand-cart repository, where shafts point up to the old ceilings with their projecting beams, shafts shiny with use, and a fishmonger's warehouse, in which Burgundy snails, and cooked or raw lobsters are sold. The nook is a quaint one, and the quarter also, with its remains of the Rue de la Grande-Truanderie, where, on the 10th of May 1797, one of the ancestors of Communism, Baboeuf, was arrested. [Illustration: THE CENTRAL MARKET FOOT-PAVEMENT, NEAR THE CHURCH OF SAINT-EUSTACHE, IN 1867 _Drawn by A. Maignan_] Not far away used to be the Rue de la Tonnellerie, where Molière lived. This street disappeared when the Rue Turbigo was cut. [Illustration: THE CENTRAL MARKET IN 1828 _Canella, pinxit_] In the Central Market quarter, where every one works, where each shop offers to Paris gourmands the best victuals, the freshest vegetables, the daintiest fruits, where, every night, long files of market gardeners' carts bring in loads of provisions of all sorts, each street has, so to speak, its speciality. Housewives know where to find their poultry, crayfish, cheese, or oranges. All the little streets, skirting the Halles, are full of astonishing shops contrived in door-corners, or cellar-corners, all of which for generations have been kept by worthy husbandmen, petty dealers, hucksters, or basket-hawkers, having their own line, their own customers. In the curious Rue Montorgueil, old abodes that amaze one are still to be found; for instance, between Nos. 64 and 72, the ancient Golden Compass Inn, which was the calling place for so many generations of carriers. Its double entrance, blocked up with small butchers', tripe-dealers', and poulterers' stalls, opens on a huge yard, where fowls peck on heaps of golden dung, where ducks quack, and goats bleat under the eyes of some thirty horses, peaceful tenants of the ground floor, with their inquisitive heads thrust over the half-doors, through the low windows or open air-holes. At the back, beneath the spacious shed, the carriages and carts are put up, 'midst a healthy country smell of verdure and hay; and it really is a curious sight to see such a silent nook, with its farmyard, at the back of the noisy, populous, crowded street, full of workmen, pedlars, and shouts or cries of bubbling life and movement. [Illustration: THE CENTRAL MARKET IN 1822 _Canella, pinxit_] What is left of the Rue Quincampoix, behind the old Tower of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie, emphasises the strangeness of this neighbourhood, in which the exterior, though renewed, has been partly preserved, but which has been more modified and transformed as regards inhabitants and customs than perhaps any other quarter. It was, in fact, in the Rue Quincampoix that the famous Law established his offices of the Mississippi Bank. There, all Paris suffered the fever of speculation. The madness was general. For months nothing but folly and ruin reigned. All gambled--duchess, priest, philosopher and courtier, shopkeeper and ballet-actress, peer and lackey, excise-farmer and his clerk. In order to profit by proximity to the celebrated stock-jobber, each shop, room and cellar even, rented at foolishly high prices, was turned into a gaming establishment; and the case is quoted of a cobbler who hired for a hundred livres a day his stall stinking with wax and old leather; the gold mania had broken down all distinctions. And then the fatal crisis came, the panic, the crash. In the Rue Quincampoix one saw none but despairing faces. Every day there was a series of murders, suicides, attacks of lunacy. On one single occasion, twenty-seven bodies of suicides or murdered people were fished out of the river at the nets of Saint-Cloud. To speculate still, money at any price was needed. Highway robbery was practised, and the footpads were of all classes of society. One of these, the young Count de Horn, a relative of the Regent, and already notorious through his follies, hired two rascals of his own kind, enticed a rich young stock-jobber into an inn of the Rue de Venise, stabbed him and took his money. The scandal was enormous! Both Court and City lost their heads. Would justice at last act and severity be shown? There was a good deal of intriguing and excitement; but, finally, the Lieutenant for criminal affairs, acting on the orders of the Regent, arrested the Count de Horn, on the 22nd of March 1720; and, four days after, the latter was broken on the wheel and executed in the centre of the Grève Square, amidst the applause of all Paris. [Illustration: MOLIÈRE'S HOUSE IN THE RUE DE LA TONNELLERIE _Water-colour by Hervier_] The Rue Quincampoix likewise contains some few old mansions now inhabited by certain "medical specialists," cheese-dealers, eau-de-seltz makers, &c. At Nos. 58, 28, 14, 15, and, notably, at No. 10, are seen remnants of forged iron, broken balconies, chipped grotesque masks of stone.... But the whole is tumbling to pieces, and to ruin, and only by a strong effort of the imagination can one reconstitute, out of these wretched fragments, the life of luxury, fever and stock-jobbing that once filled this old street, now foul with chemical smells and rancid odours of fried potatoes. Collé's prophecy has been fulfilled: "One no longer belongs to Paris when one belongs to the Marais!" Trade has laid hold of the fine mansions of yore; druggists have set up their distilleries in them, toy-makers sell their puppets in them, and the hawker with his Paris article is the monarch that governs them. The population at present is poor, laborious, yet intelligent and active; and the contrast between it and the transformed dwellings wherein it dwells is not without interest and grace. A visit to the Archives, Marais and Saint-Merri quarters is certainly something no one should omit. The picturesque line of central boulevards extends from the Bastille to the Madeleine Church. There Paris life may be studied under the most varied aspects, as well as the most elegant. To speak of there being a general characterisation of the boulevards would be hardly correct, inasmuch as each of them has its special physiognomy. [Illustration: THE TOWER OF SAINT-JACQUES-LA-BOUCHERIE ABOUT 1848 _Lithographed by A. Durand_] The Beaumarchais Boulevard has an atmosphere of middle-class tranquillity about it. Nothing has survived of the fine mansion, surmounted with a feather-shaped weather-cock and flag, which was built there by the author of the _Mariage de Figaro_, nor yet of the famous gardens, once the wonder of Paris, which could only be visited with a special card signed by Beaumarchais himself and given but to few. Yet some one of our own generation has known them, and penetrated into what for a while remained of the gorgeous abode; and that some one is Victorien Sardou. Did he have a presentiment that, in talent and wit, he would one day be the successor of the Beaumarchais whose property he thus intruded on? Anyway, in 1839, Victorien Sardou, aged seven, was living with his parents in the Place de la Bastille. With his little companions he used to play at ball or with hoop round the elephant and the canal banks. At the entrance to the Beaumarchais Boulevard of to-day some long, worm-eaten palisades bordered a piece of waste ground. On the palisades were hung halfpenny pictures of actors, actresses, and soldiers; and no one was fonder of looking at them than the little Sardou. One day, while enjoying his open-air picture-gallery, he caught a glimpse of a huge garden through the interstice between two of the palings. "What was this garden?" "Suppose he entered!" So he and another urchin of his own age wrenched away a paling with the sticks of their hoops, and in a delight of terror slipped into the unknown domain. What an amazement! They found themselves in a Sleeping Beauty's realm. Weeds, lianes, branches, trees had grown over everything. It was a flora and fauna of the virgin forests; rabbits, birds and butterflies were its denizens; and Robinson Crusoe was not more surprised in exploring his island than these two youngsters in wandering about this jungle. Sardou vaguely remembers there being a ruined pavilion and some tumble-down old walls; what he recollects better are the banks, ditches, and slopes where he and his companion had such delightful escapades; and nothing is more interesting than to hear this witty and charming talker relate his stories of the bygone Paris which he regrets so much and remembers so well. The old dwellings have disappeared. A single one still exists at the corner of the Rue Saint-Claude, No. 1. It is the celebrated abode in which the talented charlatan, Cagliostro, installed his furnaces, his crucibles, his alembics, his transformation machines, all the weird utensils that served for his magic sittings. The house has not been much altered. It remains, as always, strange, enigmatical, mysterious, with its staircases constructed in the body of the walls, its secret corridors, its mechanical ceilings, its cellars of many exits. The greatest lords, the noblest dames frequented this abode. Cardinal de Rohan was a familiar guest. The report ran that gold was made there, and that Cagliostro, the great Copht, had discovered the secret of the philosopher's stone! He offered, continued the legend, repasts of thirteen covers at which the guests were enabled to call up the dead, which was why Montesquieu, Choiseul, Voltaire and Diderot had taken part at Cagliostro's last supper. All that made a stir; there were murmurs; the thing was proclaimed a scandal. Louis XVI. shrugged his shoulders and Marie Antoinette forbade any one to "speak to her of this charlatan." But every one tried to obtain entrance into the "divine sorcerer's house," and Lorenza, his wife, was obliged to open a class of magic for the benefit of the ladies of the upper circles. Then came the affair of the necklace. Cagliostro, being compromised with Cardinal de Rohan and Madame de Lamotte, was arrested and thrown into the Bastille; and it was not until ten months later, on the 1st of June 1787, that he was able to return to the house in the Rue Saint-Claude, escorted by a crowd of eight to ten thousand persons, blocking the Boulevard, the courtyard of the house and the staircases. He was cheered, embraced, carried in triumph. This grand day was a climax. A few hours after it, a King's order banished him from France, and the house was shut up. Only in 1805 were its doors reopened for the sale of the furniture; and the sight must have been a curious one! In 1855, the building was repaired; the leaves of the entrance gate were changed; those to-day opening into the Rue Saint-Claude came from the ancient buildings of the Temple; so that the gates of Louis XVI.'s prison give access now to the mansion where Cagliostro once performed his marvels. In the Filles-du-Calvaire Boulevard stands the Winter Circus, still unchanged, with its Icarian Games and its equilibrists, its smiling horse-women who for so many years have leaped through the same paper-filled hoops and made the same pleased bow to the worshipping crowd. But, if the spectacle is not much varied, the public of youngsters is constantly renewed, and the laughs we heard in our childhood still welcome the same clowns' grimaces. Only Monsieur Loyal is no longer there, the admirable, imposing Monsieur Loyal, tight-buttoned in his fine blue coat, who, with such noble gesture and slashing whip, restrained the mocking clown's quips and quirks or the shyings of the mare Rigolette exhibited at liberty. [Illustration: ALEXANDER'S GRAND CAFE ROYAL ON THE TEMPLE BOULEVARD _Water-colour by Arrivet_] Would any one now believe that for more than a century the Temple Boulevard was the centre of Paris gaiety? A charming engraving by Saint-Aubin shows us it joyous, smart, and full of life. Coaches, cabs, and other vehicles pass and repass; grand ladies and fashionably dressed women rival with each other in grace, manners and toilet, the latter of the strangest names; and the draughtsman Briou can write below a fashion engraving of the period: "The provoking Julia reposing on the Boulevard, while awaiting a stroke of good fortune; she is in morning gown with a Diana hat that flying hearts adorn." At Alexander's Cafè Royal, there is supper and dancing; people crowd to listen to Nicolet's patter; and a circle of hearers surround Fanchon, the hurdy-gurdy player. On the same Boulevard, Curtius sets up his luxuriously arranged wax-work saloons; and, later, the parades of Bobèche and Galimafré will be the joy of Paris; for a long time, the fair will continue. [Illustration: FANCHON, THE HURDY-GURDY PLAYER _Original drawing_ (Ch. Drouet Collection)] The Ambigu, the Historic Theatre, the Gaiety, the Funambules, the Olympic Circus, the Little-Lazari, the Délassements Comiques,--ten theatres or so will add to the excitement with their strange, nervous, grandiloquent, noisy companies of actors. The gay apprentices, at all times fond of plays, will cheer as they go by the heroes of all these dramas and melodramas, so numerous that popular slang had nicknamed as Crime Boulevard the thoroughfare where, at twelve each evening, so much blood flowed on the boards of these theatres. There were Madame Dorval, Mademoiselle George, Mademoiselle Déjazet, Messieurs Bocage, Mélingue, Bouffé, Dumaine, Saint-Ernest, Boutin, Colbrun, Lesueur, Deburau--the ideal Pierrot--and also Gobert, so like Napoleon I., as was Taillade, who, thin and nervous, was incarnating Bonaparte. It was the period when the Bonapartist epopee turned people's heads to such an extent that the poor comedian Briand, who, in one of the many Napoleon plays, was acting the ungrateful part of Sir Hudson Lowe, said: "I shall never have a similar success. Yesterday, I was waited for at the theatre door and thrown into the Château-d'Eau canal basin!" [Illustration: VIEW OF THE AMBIGU-COMIQUE ON THE TEMPLE BOULEVARD _Lallemand, del._ (Carnavalet Museum)] All the quarter waxed enthusiastic about its favourite actors, espoused their quarrels, repeated their witticisms or their adventures: Frédéric Lemaitre especially, a tragic, dare-devil, drinking, extravagant yet talented artist, decking himself in private life, as well as on the stage, in the frayed-out plumes of Don Cæsar de Bazan, had his own story. People went into ecstasies over his amours with Clarisse Miroy, interwoven with thrashings and fond tenderness. On the day after one of these noisy quarrels, Frédéric is said to have rung at his lady-love's door, which was opened by Clarisse's mother. The good dame, frightened at the brutal actor's appearance, raised her arm instinctively as if to ward off a blow.... "I beat you, I!" thundered Frédéric in Richard d'Arlington's tones, "I beat you! Why?... Do I love you?" [Illustration: THE FUNAMBULES THEATRE ON THE TEMPLE BOULEVARD _Water-colour by Martial_ (Carnavalet Museum)] The Historic Theatre subsequently became the Lyric Theatre, and the wonderful Madame Miolan-Carvalho, the queen of song, was there to create, with her magnificent art, _Faust_, _Mireille_, _Jeannette's Wedding_, _Queen Topaz_, &c. About 1861, the celebrated composer Massenet, yet a pupil at the Conservatory and on the point of obtaining his Rome prize, discharged in the theatre orchestra the duties of kettle-drummer, for the modest salary of forty-five francs a month. [Illustration: THE AMBIGU THEATRE AND BOULEVARD ABOUT 1830 _Canella, pinxit_] Others to perform there were the Davenport brothers and the conjurer Robin, with their amusing séances of hypnotism and white magic. On this always-to-be-remembered Temple Boulevard were to be met the various fashionable authors: Dennery, Théodore Barrière, Victor Séjour, Paul Féval, Gounod, Berlioz, A. Adam, Clapisson, Saint-Georges, the Cogniard brothers, Clairville; and the great Dumas used to pass in triumph, shaking hands with everybody as he went. The coffee-houses had to turn customers away; orange-sellers made fortunes, while boys sold checks, conveyed nosegays to pretty actresses, and hailed cabs. People called to each other, shouted, disputed, laughed above all, under the indulgent eye of the police and to the noise of liquorice-water-seller's bell: it was the golden age! In 1862, a regrettable decision of Baron Haussmann, the Prefect of the Seine, suppressed this bit of Paris, so lively and gay; and, on the ruins of all these theatres, which brought money and mirth to the quarter, were built Prince Eugène's barracks, the ugly Hôtel Moderne, and the wretched monument of the Republic Square. Of all this fine, artistic past nothing is left except the tiny Déjazet Theatre, at the corner of the Vendôme Passage, and the Turkish Coffee-house; the latter different far from what it was when Bailly depicted it under the Directory. Elegant dames, the Merveilleuses, the Incroyables used to frequent it for the purpose of nibbling an ice or sipping little pots of cream, while listening to cithern concerts. Young Savoyards made their marmots dance in presence of "sensitive souls," and thrifty burgesses of the quarter took their family to get an idea of the high Parisian life which made the Turkish Coffee-house one of its favourite meeting-places. Restaurants were numerous, being souvenirs of coffee-houses formerly renowned, like the Godet and Yon cafés. There one found singing and dancing, and, now and again, plotting. It was at the Burgundy Vintage Restaurant in the Temple faubourg, the ordinary rendezvous of Paris wedding-breakfasts or National Guard love-feasts, that--on the 9th of May 1831, at the end of a banquet given to celebrate the acquittal of Guinard, Cavaignac, and the Garnier brothers, charged with plotting against the State--Évariste Gallois, with a knife in his hand, proposed in three words this threatening toast: "To Louis-Philippe!" The great Flaubert lived on the Temple Boulevard at No. 42. There, on Sundays, he gathered his disciples at noisy lunches--Zola, Goncourt, Daudet, de Maupassant, Huysmans, Céard, George Pouchet--a few yards away from a building of tragic fame. No. 50, in fact, was the wretched house whose third-story Venetian blinds concealed Fieschi and the twenty-five pistol barrels loaded with bullets which constituted his infernal machine. A train of powder passed over twenty-five lights. The discharge of grapeshot to be vomited by this dreadful instrument of death was terrible. The grocer Morey, who had helped to prepare the monstrous crime, had even taken the useful precaution to damage four of the gun-barrels, whose explosion was to suppress Fieschi himself. Pépin, another accomplice, had been careful to walk his horse several times past the fatal window; and from behind the Venetian blinds, Fieschi, who was an excellent shot, had been able at his ease to regulate the aim of his horrible slaughtering-machine. It was intended that Louis-Philippe, who had ten times escaped the assassin's hand, should, on this occasion, be struck by it. The conspirators, however, had not calculated that the King, when reviewing the National Guard, would avoid the middle of the Boulevard, which sloped down towards the sides for draining purposes, and would keep to the lower portions, along which the troops were stationed. The rain of bullets therefore passed over the King's head, touching only the top of his cocked-hat, and mowed down women, children, officers and other spectators that were on the King's left. It was a frightful butchery; the Boulevard streamed with blood. More than forty victims lay on the road, among them being the glorious Marshal Mortier, who expired on one of the marble tables in the Turkish Coffee-house, whither the dead and wounded had been transported. Fieschi, who was wounded, was arrested in the backyard of the next house, while trying to fly through the Rue des Fossés-du-Temple. On the 19th of February 1836, he ascended the scaffold with his accomplices, Pépin and Morey. At the corner of the Temple Boulevard, to the right, in front of the first house in the Voltaire Boulevard, the barricade was raised where Delescluze was killed in May 1871. At this spot, formerly stood the Gaiety Theatre; while the Lyric Theatre opened its doors on the present site of the Metropolitan railway station in the Republic Square. [Illustration: THE PORTE SAINT-MARTIN _Houbron, pinxit_ (G. Cain Collection)] The Saint-Martin Boulevard, where Paul de Kock took up his abode, in order to study from his windows, which were on the first story, near the Porte Saint-Martin, the seething life of the Capital, now has no animation except in the evening. Four theatres--the Folies-Dramatiques, the Ambigu, the Porte Saint-Martin, and the Renaissance--add life and movement to it then; and nothing is more amusing than the hour following the end of the performances. The coffee-houses fill with visitors, cigarettes are lighted, newspaper-vendors shout the latest news; people hustle, and touts run after carriages, in which one sees a rapidly passing vision of pretty women in light-coloured dresses and opera-cloaks. Afterwards issue the actors, with blue chins and turned-up collars, and often looking cross. Last of all, come the handsome actresses, who quickly step into their brougham, inside which may frequently be seen, dimly outlined behind the red point of a cigarette, the form of an expectant friend. [Illustration: THE RUE SAINT MARTIN (1866)--THE GREEN-WOOD TOWER _Drawn by A. Maignan_] Near the Porte Saint-Denis, at the entrance to the narrow Rue de Cléry, there was formerly a rise in the road, which was the scene of a tragic occurrence. There, on the 21st of January 1793, the intrepid De Batz had appointed to meet a few companions. It was determined that a forlorn hope should be led with a view to snatch Louis XVI. from the shame of the guillotine. The plan was to force the line of soldiers, to overpower the escort surrounding the carriage, and to carry off the King. But, already, on the day before, the Committee of Public Safety had been warned "by a well-known private individual," say the police reports, of the mad plot that was in preparation, and every necessary precaution was taken. During the night all the persons denounced in the warning as suspicious were placed under arrest. De Batz, who thought to find a hundred and fifty confederates at the meeting-place, only found seven. Notwithstanding their small number, they did not hesitate, and rushed at the horses' heads. The Guards cut them down. Three were killed. De Batz managed to escape. [Illustration: THE RUE DE CLÉRY _Lansyer, pinxit_] This strange, winding Rue de Cléry, whose thin edge stands out so curiously against the sky, was the scene of another drama. The father of André and Marie-Joseph Chénier lived at No. 97. There, on the 7th of Thermidor, he was anxiously waiting for the liberation of his son André, who for long months had been a prisoner at Saint-Lazare. The poor man had foolishly taken it into his head to appeal to Collot d'Herbois' heart(!) and to ask him to free his son. Collot d'Herbois had once been an actor; and now, on another sort of stage, revenged himself for having been hissed. He had not forgotten the lines in which André Chénier had satirised him in such masterly fashion, but he did not know in what prison his enemy was confined. Marie-Joseph, the brother, himself an object of suspicion, had been able to lengthen out the proceedings and to keep as a secret the place where André was confined. At this supreme hour of the Terror, it was the only possible chance Collot d'Herbois had to satisfy his vengeance; and the information thus unadvisedly but innocently given by the prisoner's father was utilised by the revengeful actor. "To-morrow," Collot assured the unhappy father, "your son shall quit Saint-Lazare." He kept his word; and, on the 7th of Thermidor, just at the hour when the guest was so impatiently expected, André got into the cart to go to the scaffold, erected that day at the barrier of the Throne Square. Round about the picturesque Rue de Cléry, the quarter is an odd medley of little streets, lanes, and alleys: the Rue Notre-Dame-de-Recouvrance, the Rue Sainte-Foy, the Rue des Petits-Carreaux, the Rue de la Lune, in which last Balzac lodged his Lucien de Rubempré watching over Coralie's dead body, and composing libertine songs, in order to gain the money required for his mistress's funeral. In these tortuous, sombre, narrow streets it is easy to reconstitute the physiognomy of the older Paris; ancient dwellings are still numerous enough; but, as in the Marais, are given over to petty trade and industry. After the Egyptian campaign, the Consulate cut a certain number of new streets bearing the names of victories: the Rues de Damiette, d'Aboukir, du Nil. On the site of the Cairo Square, once stood the mansion of the Temple Knights, or Knights Templars. A portion of an old Gothic Chapel, in which were preserved the helmet and armour of Jacques Molay, founder and Grand Master of the Order, was used in 1835 as a meeting-place by surviving adepts of this rite; and Rosa Bonheur's father, who was a Knight Templar, had his daughter baptized there beneath an "arch of steel" made by the crossed swords of the Order, clad in white tunics, with a red cross embroidered on their breasts, booted in deer-skin, and coifed with a white cloth square cap surmounted by three feathers--one yellow, one black, and one white! [Illustration: THE POISSONNIÈRE BOULEVARD IN 1834 _Dagnan, pinxit_ (Carnavalet Museum)] A delightful picture by Dagnan, which is now in the Carnavalet Museum, shows us the Poissonnière Boulevard in 1834. Most of the houses remain to-day; but, alas! the tall, thick-foliaged trees that made the Boulevard a sort of park avenue have long since disappeared. That lover of Paris, Victorien Sardou, who was born in it, and who is cheered, loved, and honoured in it, very well remembers seeing the trees as they used to be, and his long saunterings in front of the Gymnase Theatre. Did he foresee the successes he was to gain with _les Ganaches_, _les Vieux Garçons_, _les Bons Villageois_, _Andréa_, _Féréol_, _Séraphine_, _Fernande_, &c.? [Illustration: THE GYMNASE THEATRE _Etching by Martial_] Further on, we come across the ancient Variety Theatre, whose antique front speaks of a glorious past; Duvert, Lauzanne, Bayard, Scribe, Meilhac, Ludovic Halévy, and, above all, Offenbach, whose haunting music bewitched Paris for twenty years. Ludovic Halévy, who was a charming chronicler of Paris life, has left us an interesting sketch of the Montmartre Boulevard towards 1810: "The Variety actors had been obliged to quit the Montansier hall; their vaudevilles had more success than the tragedies at the Théâtre Français. The Emperor made a decree depriving them of the Palais-Royal premises; but they were allowed to move to new premises on the Montmartre Boulevard!... A frightful quarter for a theatre!... It was almost in the country; not one of the large houses existed which you see there! Nothing but little single-story shops, wretched wooden stalls, and the two small panoramas of Monsieur Boulogne.... No foot-pavements, a road simply of beaten earth between two rows of tall trees.... A few old cabs and carriages passed now and again.... In fine, the country.... It was the country!!.." [Illustration: THE VARIETY THEATRE ABOUT 1810 _From a sepia of the period_ (Carnavalet Museum)] With the Variety Theatre began what was called, without epithet, _The Boulevard_. For idlers, saunterers, wits, clubmen, writers, journalists, under the second Empire, it was a sort of sacred ground. Grammont-Caderousse, the Prince of Orange, Khalil-Bey, Paul Demidoff, Aurélien Scholl, Roqueplan, Aubryet, Jules Lecomte, Auguste Villemot were kings there. The Café Anglais, the Maison Dorée, Tortoni's were frequented by the fashionables of society and literature. The gas flared, champagne corks flew, and one had only to open pianos for them to play automatically the Evohe of _Orpheus in Hades_! An apropos witticism stopped a quarrel. The princes of intelligence held their own with princes of the blood or of money; as, for instance, on the day when, at Tortoni's, the Duke de Grammont-Caderousse flung a packet of goose-quills in the face of Paul Mahalin, who, the day before, in a small newspaper had severely animadverted on the diva S----, she being under the Duke's protection. "From Mademoiselle S----," said the Duke. Making his grandest bow, Mahalin retorted: "I was aware, Monsieur, that Mademoiselle S---- feathered her lovers, but I did not dare hope it was for my benefit." [Illustration: THE BOULEVARDS, THE HOTEL DE SALM, AND WINDMILLS OF MONTMARTRE View taken from the hanging gardens of the Rue Louis-le-Grand _Water-colour of the eighteenth century_ (Carnavalet Museum)] Since the dark days of 1870, the elegant Boulevard has become more democratic. The old dwellings themselves have changed their uses; and electro-plate is sold in the beautiful pavilion built by Marshal de Saxe--after the Hanoverian wars--at the corner of the Boulevard and the Rue Louis-le-Grand. In the eighteenth century, some one took it into his head to decorate with flowers the roofs of the houses in the vicinity of this fine mansion; so that it was possible to dine merrily--under the shade of hornbeams--while watching the windmills of Montmartre turn in the distance. The example has been imitated in our own times--people cried that it was an innovation; this is only another error; there is nothing new under the sun. What is done is merely a modification, and generally the alteration is for the worse! Tortoni's flight of steps has disappeared. Taverns, with their onion soup and their sourcrout and sausage, replace the aristocratic restaurants of yore. The features are different; but still it is a Paris nook, really gay, amusing, and original. A walk in it is delightful, though nothing, alas! can be said to vividly recall the past, since the terrible fire of 1887 destroyed the Comic Opera of our fathers; the Opera of Grétry, Dalayrac, Méhul, Boïeldieu, and Hérold; the Opera whose façade does not open on the boulevard, according to the desire formally expressed in 1782 to Heurtier, the architect, by the King's Comedians refusing to be confused with the "Boulevard Comedians"; the Opéra-Comique where, every evening, in the spacious _foyer_ adorned with busts of dead musical celebrities and composers that had contributed to the theatre's fame, the habitués met whose attendance was a protest against modern music: Auber, Adam, Clapisson, Bazin, Maillard; later, and with another æsthetic doctrine, G. Bizet, Léo Delibes, V. Massé, J. Massenet, Carvalho, Meilhac, Halévy, and old Dupin, the last an astonishing centenarian who, one evening, with rancorous eye looked at Hérold's bust and grumbled: "How that urchin used to rile me!" In presence of the general bewilderment he explained: "I was his school companion, in 1806, at Saint-Louis' College!" we were then in May 1885! This was the obstinately reactionary Dupin who once drew from a contradictor the threatening retort: "We missed you in '93. When the next Revolution comes, we'll take good care not to!" [Illustration: THE RUE DE LA BARRE, AT MONTMARTRE _Houbron, pinxit_] The amiable chats, the agreeable meetings which brought together so many witty people, clever talkers, artists, men of the world, those of the Comic Opera _foyer_, of the Grand Opera, or the Comédie Française are now hardly anything but a memory. Not that the practice itself is abolished. Art gatherings are quite as frequent and as well attended; but they have emigrated,--many of them to Montmartre, to the "Butte Sacrée," the holy mound, "the teat of the world," yelled the astonishing Salis in his _Chat Noir_ patter; and truly the spot is one of the Capital's curiosities. Gay, industrious, cynical, flippant, and yet religious, this composite quarter offers the most singular mingling of poets, painters, sculptors, lemonade-makers and pilgrims. On the Clichy and Batignolles Boulevards, the revolving lights of the Moulin Rouge illuminate a population of rakes, dandies, artists, lemans and bullies. Each wine-shop--and there are many--harbours one or several poets, more or less comic, but always railers and _rosses_,[4] as the witty Fursy says, one of the best performers in these "music-boxes." In these latter the great ones of the earth, politicians, ministers, are unmercifully berhymed, as also the events of the day; a minister's latest speech, Pelletan's elegance, Le Bargy's cravats, Santos-Dumont's ascent, the Pope's latest Encyclical letter, the automobile tax, the divorce of the moment, the King of Spain's recent visit, or that of the Prince of Bulgaria, all put into couplets. [Illustration: A STREET IN MONTMARTRE _Houbron, pinxit_ (Carnavalet Museum)] Montmartre is the Capital's pot-house; it is all good-humoured laughter and chaff. People enjoy themselves at night and work in the day, for it has always been a favourite abode for artists of every kind: Henri Monnier, the Duchess d'Abrantès, Madame Haudebourg-Lescot, Mademoiselle Mars, Horace Vernet, Berlioz, Ch. Jacque, Reyer, Victor Massé, Vollon, Manet, André Gill, Steinlen, Guillemet, Willette, Jules Jouy, Mac-Nab, Xanrof, Maurice Donnay. Their memory there is alive and respected, the legend of their prowess is preserved. It is Montmartre's _Iliad_. [Illustration: THE RUE DES ROSIERS _Etching by Martial_] A few yards from these noisy streets, the "Butte" begins, on which, at the close of the 1871 siege, the Parisians had hoisted the National Guards' cannons. In vain the Government tried to regain possession of them; and the rest is known:--the resistance, the troops disbanded, Generals Clement Thomas and Lecomte arrested, dragged into a small house in the Rue des Rosiers and shot against a garden wall. Part of the wall still stands; and though the house has disappeared in which this tragedy of the 18th of March was played, a little of the garden itself remains, behind the modern buildings of the _Abri Saint-Joseph_, vast sheds used as refectories by the crowds of pilgrims attracted to the basilica of the Sacré-Coeur. Indeed, all this quarter is melancholy-looking, silent, quaint, and monastic. Chaplet, scapulary, candle, missal, and pious picture-dealers have their shops in it. The spot is a sort of religious fair; even the streets have liturgical names: Saint-Eleuthère, Saint-Rustique, near the Rue Girardon, and the Calvary cemetery, overlooked by the awkward outlines of the old Galette Windmill, the ordinary rendezvous for idlers, boulevard inquisitives, artists' models, lemans and bullies of the neighbourhood. The ancient Montmartre, with its picturesqueness, is again met with in the Rue Saint-Vincent, in the Rue des Saules containing the "Lively Rabbit" tavern, and in the Rue de la Fontaine-du-But, sordid streets, bordered with sorry habitations whose windows are hung with linen drying, and which seem at each story to harbour a different poverty; strange streets, running for the most part between a crumbling old house and a hoarding mossy with rain and covered with inscriptions. As a matter of fact, these palisades serve as an outlet for the confidences of the "pals" and their "gals" of the quarter. Amorous effusions may be read side by side with threats, and the great ones of the earth are sometimes severely dealt with. The epithet is always a bitter one. It savours of debauch, vice and crime. [Illustration: THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE IN 1829 _Canella, pinxit_ (Carnavalet Museum)] And yet, in this corner of Paris, which modern embellishments will soon have made unrecognisable, bits of admirable scenery are to be met with, exquisite lanes of verdure, birds, tame pigeons, whistling blackbirds; and one might fancy one's self far away in some peaceful country-place, if, at the end of all these streets, were not seen the huge violet-coloured mass of the Capital, in fairy panorama, an ocean of stone, whence heave, like masts, the bell-towers of palaces, the turrets, belfries and steeples of churches, with domes, roofs and gardens--an incomparable vision of art, grandeur and beauty. The great Balzac informs us that César Birotteau was ruined by speculations he engaged in on the "waste ground round about the Madeleine church." He lost in them the profits realised by his "Eau Carminative" and by the "Double Pâte des Sultanes." His "Rose Queen" perfumery was swallowed up in them.... And, however, César Birotteau was right in his reasoning. To-day, the Madeleine building ground is the highest quoted in Paris. In 1802, the surface was occupied by foundation works and scaffolding, showing the pillars of the church so long since commenced and still in the building. [Illustration: INGENUOUS BENEVOLENCE _Duplessis-Bertaux, inv. et del._] There took place the charming episode depicted by Duplessis-Bertaux, under the pleasing title: "Ingenuous Benevolence" (an historic fact of the 5th Messidor, anno X.). A long notice, beneath the picture, tells us that Pradère, Persuis, Elleviou and "his spouse," walking one evening along the Magdalene Boulevard, met a blind street-singer, who "by the strains of his piano was soliciting public charity." The receipts were wretched; so our kind artists improvised a little open-air concert and remedied the ill-fortune of the poor fellow. After delightfully singing, Madame Elleviou, her husband and Pradère made a collection, and poured the proceeds, thirty-six francs, into the blind man's hands trembling with emotion! [Illustration: THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE (Second View) _From a sepia of the eighteenth century_] Along the Rue Royale, we reach the Champs-Elysées, after stopping for a moment at the "Cité Berryer," a strange alley in which once stood the hotel of the King's Musketeers. It is a sort of poor market lost in this rich quarter. [Illustration: THE ENTRANCE TO THE TUILERIES, OVER THE SWING-BRIDGE, IN 1788 _Original water-colour of the eighteenth century_ (Carnavalet Museum)] Then comes the Place de la Concorde, the finest Square in the world, with its unrivalled perspectives of the Champs Elysées, the Seine, the Tuileries, the Garde-Meuble, the Crillon mansion, and the charming house of Grimod de la Reynière, to-day the Cercle de l'Union artistique, at the corner of the Rue de "la Bonne Morue"--at present the Rue Boissy d'Anglas--in front of which still stood, until the second Empire, one of the corner pavilions erected by Gabriel. What souvenirs! the raising of Louis the Fifteenth's statue; the festivities in honour of the Dauphin's marriage to Marie Antoinette, so tragically terminated by a catastrophe--the crowd that had come to witness the fireworks being crushed in the moat--which was the beginning of the hatred against the "Austrian woman"; the reviews of the Swiss Guards; the military charges of Lambesc; the people's storming of the swing-bridge, the gates forced, the ditches crossed, and then the sinister scaffold, smoking in front of the statue to Liberty, and the Conventionals terrified, stopping before they entered their hall and taking a close look at the death which, each day, hovered over them. "Yesterday, as I was proceeding to the Assembly with Pénières," writes Dulaure in his Memoirs, "we perceived, as we passed through the Revolution Square, preparations being made for an execution. 'Let us pause,' my colleague said to me; 'let us accustom ourselves to the sight. Perhaps we shall soon need to make proof of our courage by calmly ascending this scaffold. Let us familiarise ourselves with the punishment.'" [Illustration: CORNER PAVILION OF THE LOUIS XV. SQUARE At the angle of the Rue de la Bonne-Morue about 1850 (to-day the Rue Boissy-d'Anglas) _Etching by Martial_] Severed heads were exhibited by the executioner at the four corners of the huge Square: Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Hérault de Séchelles, Charlotte Corday, Madame Roland, Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, and Robespierre. A dreadful pell-mell, a disastrous butchery; the ground was red with blood. Then followed the soldiers of the Empire, singing as they defiled, on entering the Tuileries to cheer their triumphant Emperor at his return from some victorious campaign. A white head, big golden epaulets, a blue ribbon: such was the appearance of Louis XVIII., impotent, with paralysed legs, who, in his carriage surrounded with body-guards, galloped through the Square at full speed. It was at the corner of this Place de la Concorde that, on the 28th of February 1848, Louis-Philippe, broken and vanquished, got into the humble cab that proved to be the hearse of the Monarchy. Napoleon III., with his blue dreamy eyes, used to cross it nearly every day, driving his phaeton; and the boy, whom the Parisians of that time called "the little Prince," would show his pretty fair head of hair at the window of the "berline" escorted by the household troops. [Illustration: VIEW IN THE TUILERIES GARDENS IN 1808 _Drawn by Norblin_ (Carnavalet Museum)] The gates of the Tuileries were again to open, on the 4th of September 1870, under the pressure of the invaders; and, during the siege of Paris, artillery were to camp in the vast ruined garden. Finally, the palace of the kings of France was to disappear in a cloud of fire, 'midst the last convulsions of the expiring Commune; and, to-day, a poor fellow, in a shabby sun-faded cloak and wearing an old felt hat, spends his time distributing bread and grain to the Paris pigeons and sparrows, on the very spot where once stood the rostrum of the Convention, some yards from the place where the four hoofs of the Emperor Napoleon's white horse pranced, as his rider reviewed the Guard, before flying his victorious eagles towards Moscow, Madrid, Rome, Vienna, or Berlin! The Champs Elysées are of almost modern creation. A decade ago, the fine avenues surrounding the Arc de l'Etoile--the Avenue Kléber, the Avenue Wagram, the Avenue Niel, the Avenue de l'Alma--offered most picturesque contrasts; beside a sumptuous mansion, subsisted wretched little houses, remains of old hovels that once were scattered all over this luxurious quarter, where now nothing recalls the waste pieces of land, dangerous even to cross, of sixty years ago. Under the Directory, Madame Tallien's cottage (Notre Dame de Thermidor, she was called) to which the Incroyables and the Merveilleuses dared not go without escort, was situated as far up as the Avenue Montaigne. Dancing-gardens and open-air bars occupied the space now filled by restaurants and cafés-concerts. An engraving by Carle Vernet shows us a Cossack encampment round a humble, country-looking inn. Now the Le Doyen restaurant stands there! [Illustration: THE RUE GREUZE IN 1855 _Chauvet, del._] Under Louis-Philippe, the Champs-Elysées were at length altered: side avenues were laid out, the main avenue was widened; and Emile Augier used to relate that, in the hollow of one of the trees numbered for trimming (No. 116, I believe), the ticket porter belonging to the Gymnase Theatre deposited the one intended for Balzac at the time of the rehearsals of _Mercadet_. The great novelist, in order to escape from his numerous creditors, was lodging at this period in the Rue Beaujon, under the name of Madame Dupont, widow. Gozlan, who ultimately discovered his illustrious friend's address, added on the envelopes he sent to him--"née Balzac." [Illustration: THE MADRID CHÂTEAU _L. G. Moreau, pinxit_] The curious Memoirs of the Abbé de Salamon, a Papal internuncio, give us a striking picture of the Bois de Boulogne under the Revolution: a sort of forest, or jungle, in which those took refuge who, being suspected, were tracked by the Committees and the police, and to whom the precious citizens' card had been refused. "I continually remained in the thickest part of the Bois de Boulogne," he says. "It seemed to me that each person I met read on my face that I was outlawed and was hastening to deliver me to the headsman. I took up my abode in the loneliest place of the wood. I lit a fire with a tinder-box and some twigs, and cooked my vegetables; my soup was excellent.... Later I discovered another fairly convenient spot, on the side of the Bagatelle Villa, quite near to the Pyramid and not far from Madrid. [Illustration: THE BAGATELLE PAVILION _L. G. Moreau, pinxit_] "One night, I was wakened in the middle of my dreams by the piercing cries of two women, who drew back terrified on beholding me through the darkness of night. "It was a mother and her daughter, who also were flying from an arrest-warrant. I called to them: 'Keep silence, whoever you are! You have nothing to fear.' They asked me what I was doing in the wood so late: 'The same thing as you no doubt are doing yourselves,' I answered." Subsequently it became the ordinary meeting-place for duellists. Already, in the time of Louis XV., some ladies, the Marchioness de Nesles and the Countess de Polignac, had exchanged pistol shots in it on account of the Duke de Richelieu. Under the Revolution, in 1790, Cazalès and Barnave went there to settle a political quarrel: "I should be sorry to kill you," exclaimed Cazalès; "but you annoy us considerably, and I want to keep you away from the rostrum for a while." "I am more generous," retorted Barnave; "I wish merely to touch you; for you are the only orator on your side, whereas on mine my absence would not even be perceived." Afterwards it was Elleviou and Monsieur de Bieville; General Foy and Monsieur de Corday; Marshal Soult and Colonel Briqueville; Benjamin Constant and Forbin des Essarts; with this peculiarity in the last duel that the two adversaries fought at ten yards' distance, sitting in two armchairs, which were not even grazed! And how many others!... [Illustration: A PERFORMANCE AT THE HIPPODROME ON EYLAU SQUARE UNDER THE SECOND EMPIRE] Under Louis-Philippe, the Duke d'Orléans, the Duke de Nemours, Lord Seymour, the Duke de Fitz-James, Ernest Le Roy--the Jockey Club at its formation--organised races there. The stakes were modest; most often, a few bottles of champagne were gained and lost. Then fashion took hold of the thing. More importance was attached to racing; and, to-day, it is the great Parisian event--in festivities. As early as 1850, the Hippodrome of the Eylau Square revived the souvenir of Antiquity's favourite chariot-races. The Bois de Boulogne became the rendezvous of society. There, was displayed the luxury of the Second Empire. Its trees and avenues formed an exquisite framework to elegance and worldly show. In the _Curèe_, Emile Zola was able to write: "It was four o'clock and the Bois awoke from its afternoon sultriness. Along the Empress' Avenue, clouds of dust were flying; and, afar, lawns of verdure could be seen, with the hills of Saint-Cloud and Suresnes beyond, crowned with the grey of Mont Valerien. The sun, aloft on the horizon, sailed in an effulgence of golden light that filled the depths of the foliage, flamed the top branches, and transformed this ocean of leaves into an ocean of luminousness.... The varnished panels of the carriages, the flashing of the copper and steel mountings, the bright colours of the dresses streamed together with the horses' regular trot, and cast on the background of the Bois a broad, moving band, a beam from the welkin, lengthening as it followed the curves of the road. The waved roundness of the sunshades radiated like metal moons." The sight has not changed. It is the same triumphal defile, which each day gathers within these select surroundings the most elegant women in Paris, fashionable horsemen, vibrating autocars with their _chauffeurs_, clubmen as well as artists and workmen, who come to enjoy the fair spectacle, this feast of the eyes, this unique scenery: the Bois de Boulogne, the Avenue du Bois, the Champs Elysées. [Illustration: THE ARC DE TRIOMPHE ABOUT 1850] From the top of the Arc de Triomphe, 'mid the twilight of May, the vision is a magic one; it is from the terraces of the portico erected to the glory of the Grand Army that a view is obtained of the sumptuous quarters of modern Paris. Some sixty years ago, Balzac showed his hero dreaming on the hill of Père-Lachaise, and contemplating, as it lay in the valley, the Monster he intended to tame. To-day Rastignac would have to mount the Arc de Triomphe, if he wished to threaten Paris. Thence, he might launch his famous defiance: "It is a struggle between us now!" for, if the aspect of things has altered, the impression made by the immense City is still and ever the same: an impression of weight, of imperious conflict, of hard victory. In verity, no one disembarks without a sort of anguish in this great Paris,--Paris, so redoubtable to the valiant that attempt its conquest and so prodigal to the fortunate ones that have known how to win its favour. GEORGES CAIN. FOOTNOTES: [3] Successive landlords have more or less spoilt this fine dwelling. The grand staircase is almost the only part intact, and it is a marvel. The carving is by Martin Desjardins, and the oval courtyard retains some of its ancient grace. [4] A word here meaning ultra-naturalistic, broadly satirical. WORKS QUOTED OR CONSULTED _History of and Researches into the Antiquities of the City of Paris_. By H. SAUVAL (1724). _History of the City and Diocese of Paris_. By the ABBÉ LEBEUF (1883). _Tableau of Paris_. By MERCIER (1782). _History of Paris_. By DULAURE (1825). _Tableau of Paris_. By TEXIER (1850). _Paris Demolished_. By E. FOURNIER (1855). _Enigma of the Streets of Paris_. By E. FOURNIER (1860). _Chronicle of the Streets of Paris_. By E. FOURNIER (1864). _Paris throughout the Ages_. By E. FOURNIER (1875). _My Old Paris_. By E. DRUMONT (1879). _Paris_. By AUGUSTE VITU (1889). _Paris (History of the Twenty Arrondissements or Quarters)_. By LABÉDOLLIÈRE. _Revolutionary Paris_. By LENÔTRE (1895). _Old Papers, Old Houses_. (1900). _The Bièvre and Saint-Séverin_. By HUYSMANS (1898). _The Chronicle of the Streets_. By BEAUREPAIRE (1900). _Paris-Atlas_. By F. BOURNON. _New Itinerary Guide to Paris_. By CH. NORMAND. _Through Old Paris_. By the MARQUIS DE ROCHEGRUDE (1903). _Minutes of the Municipal Commission of Old Paris_ (from 1898). 
26524	----	[Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected, all other inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's spelling has been maintained.] THE HUGUENOTS IN FRANCE By Dr. SAMUEL SMILES Author of "Self Help" LONDON GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS, LIMITED BROADWAY HOUSE, LUDGATE HILL MDCCCCIII LONDON AND COUNTY PRINTING WORKS, BAZAAR BUILDINGS, LONDON, W.C. CONTENTS. THE HUGUENOTS IN FRANCE AFTER THE REVOCATION OF THE EDICT OF NANTES. CHAPTER PAGE I. REVOCATION OF THE EDICT OF NANTES........................... 1 II. EFFECTS OF THE REVOCATION--CHURCH IN THE DESERT............ 12 III. CLAUDE BROUSSON, THE HUGUENOT ADVOCATE..................... 30 IV. CLAUDE BROUSSON, PASTOR AND MARTYR......................... 50 V. OUTBREAK IN LANGUEDOC...................................... 75 VI. INSURRECTION OF THE CAMISARDS.............................. 99 VII. EXPLOITS OF CAVALIER...................................... 130 VIII. END OF THE CAMISARD INSURRECTION.......................... 166 IX. GALLEY-SLAVES FOR THE FAITH............................... 190 X. ANTOINE COURT............................................. 205 XI. REORGANIZATION OF THE CHURCH IN THE DESERT................ 218 XII. THE CHURCH IN THE DESERT--PAUL RABAUT..................... 235 XIII. END OF THE PERSECUTIONS--THE FRENCH REVOLUTION............ 253 MEMOIRS OF DISTINGUISHED HUGUENOT REFUGEES. I. STORY OF SAMUEL DE PÉCHELS................................ 285 II. CAPTAIN RAPIN, AUTHOR OF THE "HISTORY OF ENGLAND"......... 316 III. CAPTAIN RIOU, R.N......................................... 368 A VISIT TO THE COUNTRY OF THE VAUDOIS. I. INTRODUCTORY--EARLY PERSECUTIONS OF THE VAUDOIS........... 383 II. THE VALLEY OF THE ROMANCHE--BRIANÇON...................... 401 III. VAL LOUISE--HISTORY OF FELIX NEFF......................... 420 IV. THE VAUDOIS MOUNTAIN-REFUGE OF DORMILHOUSE................ 437 V. GUILLESTRE AND THE VALLEY OF QUEYRAS...................... 455 VI. THE VALLEY OF THE PELICE -- LA TOUR -- ANGROGNA -- THE PRA DE TOUR............................................... 472 VII. THE GLORIOUS RETURN: AN EPISODE IN THE HISTORY OF THE ITALIAN VAUDOIS........................................... 493 MAPS. PAGE THE COUNTRY OF THE CEVENNES...................................... 98 "THE COUNTRY OF FELIX NEFF" (Dauphiny).......................... 382 THE VALLEY OF LUSERNE........................................... 472 PREFACE. In preparing this edition for the press, I have ventured to add three short memoirs of distinguished Huguenot Refugees and their descendants. Though the greatest number of Huguenots banished from France at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes were merchants and manufacturers, who transferred their skill and arts to England, which was not then a manufacturing country; a large number of nobles and gentry emigrated to this and other countries, leaving their possessions to be confiscated by the French king. The greater number of the nobles entered the armies of the countries in which they took refuge. In Holland, they joined the army of the Prince of Orange, afterwards William III., King of England. After driving the armies of Louis XIV. out of Ireland, they met the French at Ramilies, Blenheim, and Malplacquet, and other battles in the Low Countries. A Huguenot engineer directed the operations at the siege of Namur, which ended in its capture. Another conducted the siege of Lille, which was also taken. But perhaps the greatest number of Huguenot nobles entered the Prussian service. Their descendants revisited France on more than one occasion. They overran the northern and eastern parts of France in 1814 and 1815; and last of all they vanquished the descendants of their former persecutors at Sedan in 1870. Sedan was, prior to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the renowned seat of Protestant learning; while now it is known as the scene of the greatest military catastrophe which has occurred in modern history. The Prime Minister of France, M. Jules Simon, not long ago recorded the fateful effects of Louis XIV.'s religious intolerance. In discussing the perpetual ecclesiastical questions which still disturb France, he recalled the fact that not less than eighty of the German staff in the late war were representatives of Protestant families, driven from France by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The first of the appended memoirs is that of Samuel de Péchels, a noble of Languedoc, who, after enduring great privations, reached England through Jamaica, and served as a lieutenant in Ireland under William III. Many of his descendants have been distinguished soldiers in the service of England. The second is Captain Rapin, who served faithfully in Ireland, and was called away to be tutor to the young Duke of Portland. He afterwards spent his time at Wesel on the Rhine, where he wrote his "History of England." The third is Captain Riou, "the gallant and the good," who was killed at the battle of Copenhagen. These memoirs might be multiplied to any extent; but those given are enough to show the good work which the Huguenots and their descendants have done in the service of England. INTRODUCTION. Six years since, I published a book entitled _The Huguenots: their Settlements, Churches, and Industries, in England and Ireland_. Its object was to give an account of the causes which led to the large migrations of foreign Protestants from Flanders and France into England, and to describe their effects upon English industry as well as English history. It was necessary to give a brief _résumé_ of the history of the Reformation in France down to the dispersion of the Huguenots, and the suppression of the Protestant religion by Louis XIV. under the terms of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Under that Act, the profession of Protestantism was proclaimed to be illegal, and subject to the severest penalties. Hence, many of the French Protestants who refused to be "converted," and had the means of emigrating, were under the necessity of leaving France and endeavouring to find personal freedom and religious liberty elsewhere. The refugees found protection in various countries. The principal portion of the emigrants from Languedoc and the south-eastern provinces of France crossed the frontier into Switzerland, and settled there, or afterwards proceeded into the states of Prussia, Holland, and Denmark, as well as into England and Ireland. The chief number of emigrants from the northern and western seaboard provinces of France, emigrated directly into England, Ireland, America, and the Cape of Good Hope. In my previous work, I endeavoured to give as accurate a description as was possible of the emigrants who settled in England and Ireland, to which, the American editor of the work (the Hon. G. P. Disosway) has added an account of those who settled in the United States of America. But besides the Huguenots who contrived to escape from Franco during the dragonnades which preceded and the persecutions which followed the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, there was still a very large number of Huguenots remaining in France who had not the means wherewith to fly from their country. These were the poorer people, the peasants, the small farmers, the small manufacturers, many of whom were spoiled of their goods for the very purpose of preventing them from emigrating. They were consequently under the necessity of remaining in their native country, whether they changed their religion by force or not. It is to give an account of these people, as a supplement to my former book, that the present work is written. It is impossible to fix precisely the number of the Huguenots who left France to avoid the cruelties of Louis XIV., as well as of those who perforce remained to endure them. It shakes one's faith in history to observe the contradictory statements published with regard to French political or religious facts, even of recent date. A general impression has long prevailed that there was a Massacre of St. Bartholemew in Paris in the year 1572; but even that has recently been denied, or softened down into a mere political squabble. It is not, however, possible to deny the fact that there was a Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, though it has been vindicated as a noble act of legislation, worthy even of the reputation and character of Louis the Great. No two writers agree as to the number of French citizens who were driven from their country by the Revocation. A learned Roman Catholic, Mr. Charles Butler, states that only 50,000 persons "retired" from France; whereas M. Capefigue, equally opposed to the Reformation, who consulted the population tables of the period (although the intendants made their returns as small as possible in order to avoid the reproach of negligence), calculates the emigration at 230,000 souls, namely, 1,580 ministers, 2,300 elders, 15,000 gentlemen, the remainder consisting almost entirely of traders and artisans. These returns, quoted by M. Capefigue, were made only a few years after the Revocation, although the emigration continued without intermission for many years later. M. Charles Coquerel says that whatever horror may be felt for the Massacre of St. Bartholomew of 1572, the persecutions which preceded and followed the Act of Revocation in 1685, "kept France under a perpetual St. Bartholomew for about sixty years." During that time it is believed that more than 1,000,000 Frenchmen either left the kingdom, or were killed, imprisoned, or sent to the galleys in their efforts to escape. The Intendant of Saintonge, a King's officer, not likely to exaggerate the number of emigrants, reported in 1698, long before the emigration had ceased, that his province had lost 100,000 Reformers. Languedoc suffered far more; whilst Boulainvilliers reports that besides the emigrants who succeeded in making their escape, the province lost not fewer than 100,000 persons by premature death, the sword, strangulation, and the wheel. The number of French emigrants who resorted to England may be inferred from the fact that at the beginning of last century there were not fewer than _thirty-five_ French Protestant churches in London alone, at a time when the population of the metropolis was not one-fourth of what it is now; while there were other large French settlements at Canterbury, Norwich, Southampton, Bristol, Exeter, &c., as well as at Dublin, Lisburn, Portarlington, and other towns in Ireland. Then, with respect to the much larger number of Protestants who remained in France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, there is the same difference of opinion. A deputation of Huguenot pastors and elders, who waited upon the Duc de Noailles in 1682 informed him that there were then 1,800,000 Protestant _families_ in France. Thirty years after that date, Louis XIV. proclaimed that there were no Protestants whatever in France; that Protestantism had been entirely suppressed, and that any one found professing that faith must be considered as a "relapsed heretic," and sentenced to imprisonment, the galleys, or the other punishments to which Protestants were then subject. After an interval of about seventy-five years, during which Protestantism (though suppressed by the law) contrived to lead a sort of underground life--the Protestants meeting by night, and sometimes by day, in caves, valleys, moors, woods, old quarries, hollow beds of rivers, or, as they themselves called it, "in the Desert"--they at length contrived to lift their heads into the light of day, and then Rabaut St. Etienne stood up in the Constituent Assembly at Paris, in 1787, and claimed the rights of his Protestant fellow-countrymen--the rights of "2,000,000 useful citizens." Louis XVI. granted them an Edict of Tolerance, about a hundred years after Louis XIV. had revoked the Edict of Nantes; but the measure proved too late for the King, and too late for France, which had already been sacrificed to the intolerance of Louis XIV. and his Jesuit advisers. After all the sufferings of France--after the cruelties to which her people have been subjected by the tyranny of her monarchs and the intolerance of her priests,--it is doubtful whether she has yet learnt wisdom from her experience and trials. France was brought to ruin a century ago by the Jesuits who held the entire education of the country in their hands. They have again recovered their ground, and the Congreganistes are now what the Jesuits were before. The Sans-Culottes of 1793 were the pupils of the priests; so were the Communists of 1871.[1] M. Edgar Quinet has recently said to his countrymen: "The Jesuitical and clerical spirit which has sneaked in among you and all your affairs has ruined you. It has corrupted the spring of life; it has delivered you over to the enemy.... Is this to last for ever? For heaven's sake spare us at least the sight of a Jesuits' Republic as the coronation of our century." [Footnote 1: M. Simiot's speech before the National Assembly, 16th March, 1873.] In the midst of these prophecies of ruin, we have M. Veuillot frankly avowing his Ultramontane policy in the _Univers_. He is quite willing to go back to the old burnings, hangings, and quarterings, to prevent any freedom of opinion about religious matters. "For my part," he says, "I frankly avow my regret not only that John Huss was not burnt sooner, but that Luther was not burnt too. And I regret further that there has not been some prince sufficiently pious and politic to have made a crusade against the Protestants." M. Veuillot is perhaps entitled to some respect for boldly speaking out what he means and thinks. There are many amongst ourselves who mean the same thing, without having the courage to say so--who hate the Reformation quite as much as M. Veuillot does, and would like to see the principles of free examination and individual liberty torn up root and branch. With respect to the proposed crusade against Protestantism, it will be seen from the following work what the "pious and politic" Louis XIV. attempted, and how very inefficient his measures eventually proved in putting down Protestantism, or in extending Catholicism. Louis XIV. found it easier to make martyrs than apostates; and discovered that hanging, banishment, the galleys, and the sword were not amongst the most successful of "converters." The history of the Huguenots during the time of their submergence as an "underground church" is scarcely treated in the general histories of France. Courtly writers blot them out of history as Louis XIV. desired to blot them out of France. Most histories of France published in England contain little notice of them. Those who desire to pursue the subject further, will obtain abundant information, more particularly from the following works:-- ELIE BÉNOÎT: _Histoire de l'Édit de Nantes._ CHARLES COQUEREL: _Histoire des Églises du Désert._ NAPOLEON PEYRAT: _Histoire des Pasteurs du Désert._ ANTOINE COURT: _Histoire des Troubles de Cevennes._ EDMUND HUGHES: _Histoire de la Restauration du Protestantisme en France au xviii. Siècle._ A. BONNEMÈRE: _Histoire des Camisardes._ ADOLPHE MICHEL: _Louvois et Les Protestantes._ ATHANASE COQUEREL FILS; _Les Forçats pour La Foi, &c., &c._ It remains to be added that part of this work--viz., the "Wars of the Camisards," and the "Journey in the Country of the Vaudois"--originally appeared in _Good Words_. S.S. LONDON, _October_, 1873. THE HUGUENOTS IN FRANCE. CHAPTER I. REVOCATION OF THE EDICT OF NANTES. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was signed by Louis XIV. of France, on the 18th of October, 1685, and published four days afterwards. Although the Revocation was the personal act of the King, it was nevertheless a popular measure, approved by the Catholic Church of France, and by the great body of the French people. The King had solemnly sworn, at the beginning of his reign, to maintain, the tolerating Edict of Henry IV.--the Huguenots being amongst the most industrious, enterprising, and loyal of his subjects. But the advocacy of the King's then Catholic mistress, Madame de Maintenon, and of his Jesuit Confessor, Père la Chaise, overcame his scruples, and the deed of Revocation of the Edict was at length signed and published. The aged Chancellor, Le Tellier, was so overjoyed at the measure, that on affixing the great seal of France to the deed, he exclaimed, in the words of Simeon, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen the salvation." Three months later, the great Bossuet, the eagle of Meaux, preached the funeral sermon of Le Tellier; in the course of which he testified to the immense joy of the Church at the Revocation of the Edict. "Let us," said he, "expand our hearts in praises of the piety of Louis. Let our acclamations ascend to heaven, and let us say to this new Constantine, this new Theodosius, this new Marcian, this new Charlemagne, what the thirty-six fathers formerly said in the Council of Chalcedon: 'You have affirmed the faith, you have exterminated the heretics; it is a work worthy of your reign, whose proper character it is. Thanks to you, heresy is no more. God alone can have worked this marvel. King of heaven, preserve the King of earth: it is the prayer of the Church, it is the prayer of the Bishops.'"[2] [Footnote 2: Bossuet, "Oraison Funèbre du Chancelier Letellier."] Madame de Maintenon also received the praises of the Church. "All good people," said the Abbé de Choisy, "the Pope, the bishops, and all the clergy, rejoice at the victory of Madame de Maintenon." Madame enjoyed the surname of Director of the Affairs of the Clergy; and it was said by the ladies of St. Cyr (an institution founded by her), that "the cardinals and the bishops knew no other way of approaching the King save through her." It is generally believed that her price for obtaining the King's consent to the Act of Revocation, was the withdrawal by the clergy of their opposition to her marriage with the King; and that the two were privately united by the Archbishop of Paris at Versailles, a few days after, in the presence of Père la Chaise and two more witnesses. But Louis XIV. never publicly recognised De Maintenon as his wife--never rescued her from the ignominious position in which she originally stood related to him. People at court all spoke with immense praises of the King's intentions with respect to destroying the Huguenots. "Killing them off" was a matter of badinage with the courtiers. Madame de Maintenon wrote to the Duc de Noailles, "The soldiers are killing numbers of the fanatics--they hope soon to free Languedoc of them." That picquante letter-writer, Madame de Sévigné, often referred to the Huguenots. She seems to have classed them with criminals or wild beasts. When residing in Low Brittany during a revolt against the Gabelle, a friend wrote to her, "How dull you must be!" "No," replied Madame de Sévigné, "we are not so dull--hanging is quite a refreshment to me! They have just taken twenty-four or thirty of these men, and are going to throw them off." A few days after the Edict had been revoked, she wrote to her cousin Bussy, at Paris: "You have doubtless seen the Edict by which the King revokes that of Nantes. There is nothing so fine as that which it contains, and never has any King done, or ever will do, a more memorable act." Bussy replied to her: "I immensely admire the conduct of the King in destroying the Huguenots. The wars which have been waged against them, and the St. Bartholomew, have given some reputation to the sect. His Majesty has gradually undermined it; and the edict he has just published, maintained by the dragoons and by Bourdaloue,[3] will soon give them the _coup de grâce_." [Footnote 3: Bourdaloue had just been sent from the Jesuit Church of St. Louis at Paris, to Montpellier, to aid the dragoons in converting the Protestants, and bringing them back to the Church.] In a future letter to Count Bussy, Madame de Sévigné informed him of "a dreadfully fatiguing journey which her son-in-law M. de Grignan had made in the mountains of Dauphiny, to pursue and punish the miserable Huguenots, who issued from their holes, and vanished like ghosts to avoid extermination." De Baville, however, the Lieutenant of Languedoc, kept her in good heart. In one of his letters, he said, "I have this morning condemned seventy-six of these wretches (Huguenots), and sent them to the galleys." All this was very pleasant to Madame de Sévigné. Madame de Scuderi, also, more moderately rejoiced in the Act of Revocation. "The King," she wrote to Bussy, "has worked great marvels against the Huguenots; and the authority which he has employed to unite them to the Church will be most salutary to themselves and to their children, who will be educated in the purity of the faith; all this will bring upon him the benedictions of Heaven." Even the French Academy, though originally founded by a Huguenot, publicly approved the deed of Revocation. In a discourse uttered before it, the Abbé Tallemand exclaimed, when speaking of the Huguenot temple at Charenton, which had just been destroyed by the mob, "Happy ruins, the finest trophy France ever beheld!" La Fontaine described heresy as now "reduced to the last gasp." Thomas Corneille also eulogized the zeal of the King in "throttling the Reformation." Barbier D'Aucourt heedlessly, but truly, compared the emigration of the Protestants "to the departure of the Israelites from Egypt." The Academy afterwards proposed, as the subject of a poem, the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and Fontenelle had the fortune, good or bad, of winning the prize. The philosophic La Bruyère contributed a maxim in praise of the Revocation. Quinault wrote a poem on the subject; and Madame Deshoulières felt inspired to sing "The Destruction of Heresy." The Abbé de Rancé spoke of the whole affair as a prodigy: "The Temple of Charenton destroyed, and no exercise of Protestantism, within the kingdom; it is a kind of miracle, such as we had never hoped to have seen in our day." The Revocation was popular with the lower class, who went about sacking and pulling down the Protestant churches. They also tracked the Huguenots and their pastors, where they found them evading or breaking the Edict of Revocation; thus earning the praises of the Church and the fines offered by the King for their apprehension. The provosts and sheriffs of Paris represented the popular feeling, by erecting a brazen statue of the King who had rooted out heresy; and they struck and distributed medals in honour of the great event. The Revocation was also popular with the dragoons. In order to "convert" the Protestants, the dragoons were unduly billeted upon them. As both officers and soldiers were then very badly paid, they were thereby enabled to live at free quarters. They treated everything in the houses they occupied as if it were their own, and an assignment of billets was little loss than the consignment of the premises to the military, to use for their own purposes, during the time they occupied them.[4] [Footnote 4: Sir John Reresby's Travels and Memoirs.] The Revocation was also approved by those who wished to buy land cheap. As the Huguenots were prevented holding their estates unless they conformed to the Catholic religion, and as many estates were accordingly confiscated and sold, land speculators, as well as grand seigneurs who wished to increase their estates, were constantly on the look-out for good bargains. Even before the Revocation, when the Huguenots were selling their land in order to leave the country, Madame de Maintenon wrote to her nephew, for whom she had obtained from the King a grant of 800,000 francs, "I beg of you carefully to use the money you are about to receive. Estates in Poitou may be got for nothing; the desolation of the Huguenots will drive them to sell more. You may easily acquire extensive possessions in Poitou." The Revocation was especially gratifying to the French Catholic Church. The Pope, of course, approved of it. _Te Deums_ were sung at Rome in thanksgiving for the forced conversion of the Huguenots. Pope Innocent XI. sent a brief to Louis XIV., in which he promised him the unanimous praises of the Church, "Amongst all the proofs," said he, "which your Majesty has given of natural piety, not the least brilliant is the zeal, truly worthy of the most Christian King, which has induced you to revoke all the ordinances issued in favour of the heretics of your kingdom."[5] [Footnote 5: Pope Innocent XI.'s Letter of November 13th, 1685.] The Jesuits were especially elated by the Revocation. It had been brought about by the intrigues of their party, acting on the King's mind through Madame de Maintenon and Père la Chaise. It enabled them to fill their schools and nunneries with the children of Protestants, who were compelled by law to pay for their education by Jesuit priests. To furnish the required accommodation, nearly the whole of the Protestant temples that had not been pulled down were made over to the Jesuits, to be converted into monastic schools and nunneries. Even Bossuet, the "last father of the Church," shared in the spoils of the Huguenots. A few days after the Edict had been revoked, Bossuet applied for the materials of the temples of Nauteuil and Morcerf, situated in his diocese; and his Majesty ordered that they should be granted to him.[6] [Footnote 6: "Louvois et les Protestants," par Adolphe Michel, p. 286.] Now that Protestantism had been put down, and the officers of Louis announced from all parts of the kingdom that the Huguenots were becoming converted by thousands, there was nothing but a clear course before the Jesuits in France. For their religion was now the favoured religion of the State. It is true there were the Jansenists--declared to be heretical by the Popes, and distinguished for their opposition to the doctrines and moral teaching of the Jesuits--who were suffering from a persecution which then drove some of the members of Port Royal into exile, and eventually destroyed them. But even the Jansenists approved the persecution of the Protestants. The great Arnault, their most illustrious interpreter, though in exile in the Low Countries, declared that though the means which Louis XIV. had employed had been "rather violent, they had in nowise been unjust." But Protestantism being declared destroyed, and Jansenism being in disgrace, there was virtually no legal religion in France but one--that of the Roman Catholic Church. Atheism, it is true, was tolerated, but then Atheism was not a religion. The Atheists did not, like the Protestants, set up rival churches, or appoint rival ministers, and seek to draw people to their assemblies. The Atheists, though they tacitly approved the religion of the King, had no opposition to offer to it--only neglect, and perhaps concealed contempt. Hence it followed that the Court and the clergy had far more toleration for Atheism than for either Protestantism or Jansenism. It is authentically related that Louis XIV. on one occasion objected to the appointment of a representative on a foreign mission on account of the person being supposed to be a Jansenist; but on its being discovered that the nominee was only an Atheist, the objection was at once withdrawn.[7] [Footnote 7: _Quarterly Review._] At the time of the Revocation, when the King and the Catholic Church were resolved to tolerate no religion other than itself, the Church had never seemed so powerful in France. It had a strong hold upon the minds of the people. It was powerful in its leaders and its great preachers; in fact, France has never, either before or since, exhibited such an array of preaching genius as Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Fléchier, and Massillon. Yet the uncontrolled and enormously increased power conferred upon the French Church at that time, most probably proved its greatest calamity. Less than a hundred years after the Revocation, the Church had lost its influence over the people, and was despised. The Deists and Atheists, sprung from the Church's bosom, were in the ascendant; and Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, and Mirabeau, were regarded as greater men than either Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Fléchier, or Massillon. Not one of the clergy we have named, powerful orators though they were, ever ventured to call in question the cruelties with which the King sought to compel the Protestants to embrace the dogmas of their Church. There were no doubt many Catholics who deplored the force practised on the Huguenots; but they were greatly in the minority, and had no power to make their opposition felt. Some of them considered it an impious sacrilege to compel the Protestants to take the Catholic sacrament--to force them to accept the host, which Catholics believed to be the veritable body of Christ, but which the Huguenots could only accept as bread, over which some function had been performed by the priests, in whose miraculous power of conversion they did not believe. Fénélon took this view of the forcible course employed by the Jesuits; but he was in disgrace as a Jansenist, and what he wrote on the subject remained for a long time unknown, and was only first published in 1825. The Duc de Saint-Simon, also a Jansenist, took the same view, which he embodied in his "Memoirs;" but these were kept secret by his family, and were not published for nearly a century after his death. Thus the Catholic Church remained triumphant. The Revocation was apparently approved by all, excepting the Huguenots. The King was flattered by the perpetual conversions reported to be going on throughout the country--five thousand persons in one place, ten thousand in another, who had abjured and taken the communion--at once, and sometimes "instantly." "The King," says Saint-Simon, "congratulated himself on his power and his piety. He believed himself to have renewed the days of the preaching of the Apostles, and attributed to himself all the honour. The Bishops wrote panegyrics of him; the Jesuits made the pulpits resound with his praises.... He swallowed their poison in deep draughts."[8] [Footnote 8: "Memoirs of the Duke of Saint-Simon," translated by Bayle St. John, vol. III. p 250.] Louis XIV. lived for thirty years after the Edict of Nantes had been revoked. He had therefore the fullest opportunity of observing the results of the policy he had pursued. He died in the hands of the Jesuits, his body covered with relics of the true cross. Madame de Maintenon, the "famous and fatal witch," as Saint-Simon called her, abandoned him at last; and the King died, lamented by no one. He had banished, or destroyed, during-his reign, about a million of his subjects, and those who remained did not respect him. Many regarded him as a self-conceited tyrant, who sought to save his own soul by inflicting penance on the backs of others. He loaded his kingdom with debt, and overwhelmed his people with taxes. He destroyed the industry of France, which had been mainly supported by the Huguenots. Towards the end of his life he became generally hated; and while his heart was conveyed to the Grand Jesuits, his body, which was buried at St. Denis, was hurried to the grave accompanied by the execrations of the people. Yet the Church remained faithful to him to the last. The great Massillon preached his funeral sermon; though the message was draped in the livery of the Court. "How far," said he, "did Louis XIV. carry his zeal for the Church, that virtue of sovereigns who have received power and the sword only that they may be props of the altar and defenders of its doctrine! Specious reasons of State! In vain did you oppose to Louis the timid views of human wisdom, the body of the monarchy enfeebled by the flight of so many citizens, the course of trade slackened, either by the deprivation of their industry, or by the furtive removal of their wealth! Dangers fortify his zeal. The work of God fears not man. He believes even that he strengthens his throne by overthrowing that of error. The profane temples are destroyed, the pulpits of seduction are cast down. The prophets of falsehood are torn from their flocks. At the first blow dealt to it by Louis, heresy falls, disappears, and is reduced either to hide itself in the obscurity whence it issued, or to cross the seas, and to bear with it into foreign lands its false gods, its bitterness, and its rage."[9] [Footnote 9: Funeral Oration on Louis XIV.] Whatever may have been the temper which the Huguenots displayed when they were driven from France by persecution, they certainly carried with them something far more valuable than rage. They carried with them their virtue, piety, industry, and valour, which proved the source of wealth, spirit, freedom, and character, in all those countries--Holland, Prussia, England, and America--in which these noble exiles took refuge. We shall next see whether the Huguenots had any occasion for entertaining the "rage" which the great Massillon attributed to them. CHAPTER II. EFFECTS OF THE REVOCATION. The Revocation struck with civil death the entire Protestant population of France. All the liberty of conscience which they had enjoyed under the Edict of Nantes, was swept away by the act of the King. They were deprived of every right and privilege; their social life was destroyed; their callings were proscribed; their property was liable to be confiscated at any moment; and they were subjected to mean, detestable, and outrageous cruelties. From the day of the Revocation, the relation of Louis XIV. to his Huguenot subjects was that of the Tyrant and his Victims. The only resource which remained to the latter was that of flying from their native country; and an immense number of persons took the opportunity of escaping from France. The Edict of Revocation proclaimed that the Huguenot subjects of France must thenceforward be of "the King's religion;" and the order was promulgated throughout the kingdom. The Prime Minister, Louvois, wrote to the provincial governors, "His Majesty desires that the severest rigour shall be shown to those who will not conform to His Religion, and those who seek the foolish glory of wishing to be the last, must be pushed to the utmost extremity." The Huguenots were forbidden, under the penalty of death, to worship publicly after their own religious forms. They were also forbidden, under the penalty of being sent to the galleys for life, to worship privately in their own homes. If they were overheard singing their favourite psalms, they were liable to fine, imprisonment, or the galleys. They were compelled to hang out flags from their houses on the days of Catholic processions; but they were forbidden, under a heavy penalty, to look out of their windows when the Corpus Domini was borne along the streets. The Huguenots were rigidly forbidden to instruct their children in their own faith. They were commanded to send them to the priest to be baptized and brought up in the Roman Catholic faith, under the penalty of five hundred livres fine in each case. The boys were educated in Jesuit schools, the girls in nunneries, the parents being compelled to pay the required expenses; and where the parents were too poor to pay, the children were at once transferred to the general hospitals. A decree of the King, published in December, 1685, ordered that every child of _five years_ and upwards was to be taken possession of by the authorities, and removed from its Protestant parents. This decree often proved a sentence of death, not only to the child, but to its parents. The whole of the Protestant temples throughout France were subject to demolition. The expelled pastors were compelled to evacuate the country within fifteen days. If, in the meantime, they were found performing their functions, they were liable to be sent to the galleys for life. If they undertook to marry Protestants, the marriages were declared illegal, and the children bastards. If, after the expiry of the fifteen days, they were found lingering in France, the pastors were then liable to the penalty of death. Protestants could neither be born, nor live, nor die, without state and priestly interference. Protestant _sages-femmes_ were not permitted to exercise their functions; Protestant doctors were prohibited from practising; Protestant surgeons and apothecaries were suppressed; Protestant advocates, notaries, and lawyers were interdicted; Protestants could not teach, and all their schools, public and private, were put down. Protestants were no longer employed by the Government in affairs of finance, as collectors of taxes, or even as labourers on the public roads, or in any other office. Even Protestant grocers were forbidden to exercise their calling. There must be no Protestant librarians, booksellers, or printers. There was, indeed, a general raid upon Protestant literature all over France. All Bibles, Testaments, and books of religious instruction, were collected and publicly burnt. There were bonfires in almost every town. At Metz, it occupied a whole day to burn the Protestant books which had been seized, handed over to the clergy, and condemned to be destroyed. Protestants were even forbidden to hire out horses, and Protestant grooms were forbidden to give riding lessons. Protestant domestics were forbidden to hire themselves as servants, and Protestant mistresses were forbidden to hire them under heavy penalties. If they engaged Protestant servants, they were liable to be sent to the galleys for life. They were even prevented employing "new converts." Artisans were forbidden to work without certificates that their religion was Catholic. Protestant apprenticeships were suppressed. Protestant washerwomen were excluded from their washing-places on the river. In fact, there was scarcely a degradation that could be invented, or an insult that could be perpetrated, that was not practised upon those poor Huguenots who refused to be of "the King's religion." Even when Protestants were about to take refuge in death, their troubles were not over. The priests had the power of forcing their way into the dying man's house, where they presented themselves at his bedside, and offered him conversion and the viaticum. If the dying man refused these, he was liable to be seized after death, dragged from the house, pulled along the streets naked, and buried in a ditch, or thrown upon a dunghill.[10] [Footnote 10: Such was, in fact, the end of a man so distinguished as M. Paul Chenevix, Councillor of the Court of Metz, who died in 1686, the year after the Revocation. Although of the age of eighty, and so illustrious for his learning, his dead body was dragged along the streets on a hurdle and thrown upon a dunghill. See "Huguenot Refugees and their Descendants," under the name _Chenevix_. The present Archbishop of Dublin is descended from his brother Philip Chenevix, who settled in England shortly after the Revocation.] For several years before the Revocation, while the persecutions of the Huguenots had been increasing, many had realised their means, and fled abroad into Switzerland, Germany, Holland, and England. But after the Revocation, emigration from France was strictly forbidden, under penalty of confiscation of the whole goods and property of the emigrant. Any person found attempting to leave the country, was liable to the seizure of all that belonged to him, and to perpetual imprisonment at the galleys; one half the amount realised by the sale of the property being paid to the informers, who thus became the most active agents of the Government. The Act also ordered that all landed proprietors who had left France before the Revocation, should return within four months, under penalty of confiscation of all their property. Amongst those of the King's subjects who were the most ready to obey his orders were some of the old Huguenot noble families, such as the members of the houses of Bouillon, Coligny, Rohan, Tremouille, Sully, and La Force. These great vassals, whom a turbulent feudalism had probably in the first instance induced to embrace Protestantism, were now found ready to change their profession of religion in servile obedience to the monarch. The lesser nobility were more faithful and consistent. Many of them abandoned their estates and fled across the frontier, rather than live a daily lie to God by forswearing the religion of their conscience. Others of this class, on whom religion sat more lightly, as the only means of saving their property from confiscation, pretended to be converted to Roman Catholicism; though, we shall find, that these "new converts," as they were called, were treated with as much suspicion on the one side as they were regarded with contempt on the other. There were also the Huguenot manufacturers, merchants, and employers of labour, of whom a large number closed their workshops and factories, sold off their goods, converted everything into cash, at whatever sacrifice, and fled across the frontier into Switzerland--either settling there, or passing through it on their way to Germany, Holland, or England. It was necessary to stop this emigration, which was rapidly diminishing the population, and steadily impoverishing the country. It was indeed a terrible thing for Frenchmen, to tear themselves away from their country--Frenchmen, who have always clung so close to their soil that they have rarely been able to form colonies of emigration elsewhere--it was breaking so many living fibres to leave France, to quit the homes of their fathers, their firesides, their kin, and their race. Yet, in a multitude of cases, they were compelled to tear themselves by the roots out of the France they so loved. Yet it was so very easy for them to remain. The King merely required them to be "converted." He held that loyalty required them to be of "his religion." On the 19th of October, 1685, the day after he had signed the Act of Revocation, La Reynée, lieutenant of the police of Paris, issued a notice to the Huguenot tradespeople and working-classes, requiring them to be converted instantly. Many of them were terrified, and conformed accordingly. Next day, another notice was issued to the Huguenot bourgeois, requiring them to assemble on the following day for the purpose of publicly making a declaration of their conversion. The result of those measures was to make hypocrites rather than believers, and they took effect upon the weakest and least-principled persons. The strongest, most independent, and high-minded of the Huguenots, who would _not_ be hypocrites, resolved passively to resist them, and if they could not be allowed to exercise freedom of conscience in their own country, they determined to seek it elsewhere. Hence the large increase in the emigration from all parts of France immediately after the Act of Revocation had been proclaimed.[11] All the roads leading to the frontier or the sea-coast streamed with fugitives. They went in various forms and guises--sometimes in bodies of armed men, at other times in solitary parties, travelling at night and sleeping in the woods by day. They went as beggars, travelling merchants, sellers of beads and chaplets, gipsies, soldiers, shepherds, women with their faces dyed and sometimes dressed in men's clothes, and in all manner of disguises. [Footnote 11: It is believed that 400,000 emigrants left France through religious persecution during the twenty years previous to the Revocation, and that 600,000 escaped during the twenty years after that event. M. Charles Coquerel estimates the number of Protestants in France at that time to have been two millions of _men_ ("Églises du Désert," i. 497) The number of Protestant pastors was about one thousand--of whom six hundred went into exile, one hundred were executed or sent to the galleys, and the rest are supposed to have accepted pensions as "new converts."] To prevent this extensive emigration, more violent measures were adopted. Every road out of France was posted with guards. The towns, highways, bridges, and ferries, were all watched; and heavy rewards were promised to those who would stop and bring back the fugitives. Many were taken, loaded with irons, and dispatched by the most public roads through France--as a sight to be seen by other Protestants--to the galleys at Marseilles, Brest, and other ports. As they went along they were subject to every sort of indignity in the towns and villages through which they passed. They were hooted, stoned, spit upon, and loaded with insult. Many others went by sea, in French as well as in foreign ships. Though the sailors of France were prohibited the exercise of the reformed religion, under the penalty of fines, corporal punishment, and seizure of the vessels where the worship was allowed, yet many of the emigrants contrived to get away by the help of French ship captains, masters of sloops, fishing-boats, and coast pilots--who most probably sympathized with the views of those who wished to fly their country rather than become hypocrites and forswear their religion. A large number of emigrants, who went hurriedly off to sea in little boats, must have been drowned, as they were never afterwards heard of. There were also many English ships that appeared off the coast to take the flying Huguenots away by night. They also escaped in foreign ships taking in their cargoes in the western harbours. They got cooped up in casks or wine barraques, with holes for breathing places; others contrived to get surreptitiously into the hold, and stowed themselves away among the goods. When it became known to the Government that many Protestants were escaping in this way, provision was made to meet the case; and a Royal Order was issued that, before any ship was allowed to set sail for a foreign port, the hold should be fumigated with deadly gas, so that any hidden Huguenot who could not otherwise be detected, might thus be suffocated![12] [Footnote 12: We refer to "The Huguenots: their Settlements, Churches, and Industries in England and Ireland," where a great many incidents are given relative to the escape of refugees by land and sea, which need not here be repeated.] In the meantime, however, numerous efforts were being made to convert the Huguenots. The King, his ministers, the dragoons, the bishops, and clergy used all due diligence. "Everybody is now missionary," said the fascinating Madame de Sévigné; "each has his mission--above all the magistrates and governors of provinces, _helped by the dragoons_. It is the grandest and finest thing that has ever been imagined and executed."[13] [Footnote 13: Letter to the President de Moulceau, November 24th, 1685.] The conversions effected by the dragoons were much more sudden than those effected by the priests. Sometimes a hundred or more persons were converted by a single troop within an hour. In this way Murillac converted thousands of persons in a week. The regiment of Ashfeld converted the whole province of Poitou in a month. De Noailles was very successful in his conversions. He converted Nismes in twenty-four hours; the day after he converted Montpellier; and he promised in a few weeks to deliver all Lower Languedoc from the leprosy of heresy. In one of his dispatches soon after the Revocation, he boasted that he had converted 350 nobility and gentry, 54 ministers, and 25,000 individuals of various classes. The quickness of the conversions effected by the dragoons is easily to be accounted for. The principal cause was the free quartering of soldiers in the houses of the Protestants. The soldiers knew what was the object for which they were thus quartered. They lived freely in all ways. They drank, swore, shouted, beat the heretics, insulted their women, and subjected them to every imaginable outrage and insult. One of their methods of making converts was borrowed from the persecutions of the Vaudois. It consisted in forcing the feet of the intended converts into boots full of boiling grease, or they would hang them up by the feet, sometimes forgetting to cut them down until they were dead. They would also force them to drink water perpetually, or make them sit under a slow dripping upon their heads until they died of madness. Sometimes they placed burning coals in their hands, or used an instrument of torture resembling that known in Scotland as the thumbscrews.[14] Many of their attempts at conversion were accompanied by details too hideous to be recorded. [Footnote 14: Thumbscrews were used in the reign of James II. Louis and James borrowed from each other the means of converting heretics; but whether the origin of the thumbscrew be French or Scotch is not known.] Of those who would not be converted, the prisons were kept full. They were kept there without the usual allowance of straw, and almost without food. In winter they had no fire, and at night no lamp. Though ill, they had no doctors. Besides the gaoler, their only visitors were priests and monks, entreating them to make abjuration. Of course many died in prison--feeble women, and aged and infirm men. In the society of obscene criminals, with whom many were imprisoned, they prayed for speedy deliverance by death, and death often came to their help. More agreeable, but still more insulting, methods of conversion were also attempted. Louis tried to bribe the pastors by offering them an increase of annual pay beyond their former stipends. If there were a Protestant judge or advocate, Louvois at once endeavoured to bribe him over. For instance, there was a heretical syndic of Strasbourg, to whom Louvois wrote, "Will you be converted? I will give you 6,000 livres of pension.--Will you not? I will dismiss you." Of course many of the efforts made to convert the Huguenots proved successful. The orders of the Prime Minister, the free quarters afforded to the dragoons, the preachings and threatenings of the clergy, all contributed to terrify the Protestants. The fear of being sent to the galleys for life--the threat of losing the whole of one's goods and property--the alarm of seeing one's household broken up, the children seized by the priests and sent to the nearest monkery or nunnery for maintenance and education--all these considerations doubtless had their effect in increasing the number of conversions. Persecution is not easy to bear. To have all the powers and authorities employed against one's life, interests, and faith, is what few can persistently oppose. And torture, whether it be slow or sudden, is what many persons, by reason of their physical capacity, have not the power to resist. Even the slow torment of dragoons quartered in the houses of the heretics--their noise and shoutings, their drinking and roistering, the insults and outrages they were allowed to practise--was sufficient to compel many at once to declare themselves to be converted. Indeed, pain is, of all things, one of the most terrible of converters. One of the prisoners condemned to the galleys, when he saw the tortures which the victims about him had to endure by night and by day, said that sufferings such as these were "enough to make one conform to Buddhism or Mahommedanism as well as to Popery"; and doubtless it was force and suffering which converted the Huguenots, far more than love of the King or love of the Pope. By all these means--forcible, threatening, insulting, and bribing--employed for the conversion of the Huguenots, the Catholics boasted that in the space of three months they had received an accession of five hundred thousand new converts to the Church of Rome. But the "new converts" did not gain much by their change. They were forced to attend mass, but remained suspected. Even the dragoons who converted them, called them dastards and deniers of their faith. They tried, if they could, to avoid confession, but confess they must. There was the fine, confiscation of goods, and imprisonment at the priest's back. Places were set apart for them in the churches, where they were penned up like lepers. A person was stationed at the door with a roll of their names, to which they were obliged to answer. During the service, the most prominent among them were made to carry the lights, the holy water, the incense, and such things, which to Huguenots were an abomination. They were also required to partake of the Host, which Protestants regarded as an awful mockery of the glorious Godhead. The Duc de Saint-Simon, in his memoirs, after referring to the unmanly cruelties practised by Louis XIV. on the Huguenots, "without the slightest pretext or necessity," characterizes this forced participation in the Eucharist as sacrilegious and blasphemous folly, notwithstanding that nearly all the bishops lent themselves to the practice. "From simulated abjuration," he says, "they [the Huguenots] are dragged to endorse what they do not believe in, and to receive the divine body of the Saint of saints whilst remaining persuaded that they are only eating bread which they ought to abhor. Such is the general abomination born of flattery and cruelty. From torture to abjuration, and from that to the communion, there were only twenty-four hours' distance; and the executioners were the conductors of the converts, and their witnesses. Those who in the end appeared to have become reconciled, when more at leisure did not fail, by their flight or their behaviour, to contradict their pretended conversion."[15] [Footnote 15: "Memoirs of the Duke of Saint-Simon," Bayle St. John's Translation, iii. 259.] Indeed, many of the new converts, finding life in France to be all but intolerable, determined to follow the example of the Huguenots who had already fled, and took the first opportunity of disposing of their goods and leaving the country. One of the first things they did on reaching a foreign soil, was to attend a congregation of their brethren, and make "reconnaisances," or acknowledgment of their repentance for having attended mass and pretended to be converted to the Roman Catholic Church.[16] At one of the sittings of the Threadneedle Street Huguenot Church in London, held in May, 1687--two years after the Revocation--not fewer than 497 members were again received into the Church which, by force, they had pretended to abandon. [Footnote 16: See "The Huguenots: their Settlements, &c., in England and Ireland," chap. xvi.] Not many pastors abjured. A few who yielded in the first instance through terror and stupor, almost invariably returned to their ancient faith. They were offered considerable pensions if they would conform and become Catholics. The King promised to augment their income by one-third, and if they became advocates or doctors in law, to dispense with their three years' study, and with the right of diploma. At length, most of the pastors had left the country. About seven hundred had gone into Switzerland, Holland, Prussia, England, and elsewhere. A few remained going about to meetings of the peasantry, at the daily risk of death; for every pastor taken was hung. A reward of 5,500 livres was promised to whoever should take a pastor, or cause him to be taken. The punishment of death was also pronounced against all persons who should be discovered attending such meetings. Nevertheless, meetings of the Protestants continued to be held, with pastors or without. They were, for the most part, held at night, amidst the ruins of their pulled-down temples. But this exposed them to great danger, for spies were on the alert to inform upon them and have them apprehended. At length they selected more sheltered places in remote quarters, where they met for prayer and praise, often resorting thither from great distances. They were, however, often surprised, cut to pieces by the dragoons, who hung part of the prisoners on the neighbouring trees, and took the others to prison, from whence they were sent to the galleys, or hung on the nearest public gibbet. Fulcran Rey was one of the most celebrated of the early victims. He was a native of Nismes, twenty-four years old. He had just completed his theological studies; but there were neither synods to receive him to pastoral ordination, nor temples for him to preach in. The only reward he could earn by proceeding on his mission was death, yet he determined to preach. The first assemblies he joined were in the neighbourhood of Nismes, where his addresses were interrupted by assaults of the dragoons. The dangers to his co-religionaries were too great in the neighbourhood of this populous town; and he next went to Castres and the Vaunage; after which he accepted an invitation to proceed into the less populous districts of the Cevennes. He felt the presentiment of death upon him in accepting the invitation; but he went, leaving behind him a letter to his father, saying that he was willing, if necessary, to give his life for the cause of truth. "Oh! what happiness it would give me," he said, "if I might be found amongst the number of those whom the Lord has reserved to announce his praise and to die for his cause!" His apostolate was short but glorious. He went from village to village in the Cevennes, collected the old worshippers together, prayed and preached to them, encouraging all to suffer in the name of Christ. He remained at this work for about six weeks, when a spy who accompanied him--one whom he had regarded as sincere a Huguenot as himself--informed against him for the royal reward, and delivered him over to the dragoons. Rey was at first thrown into prison at Anduze, when, after a brief examination by the local judge, he was entrusted to thirty soldiers, to be conveyed to Alais. There he was subjected to further examination, avowing that he had preached wherever he had found faithful people ready to hear him. At Nismes, he was told that he had broken the law, in preaching contrary to the King's will. "I obey the law of the King of kings," he replied; "it is right that I should obey God rather than man. Do with me what you will; I am ready to die." The priests, the judges, and other persons of influence endeavoured to induce him to change his opinions. Promises of great favours were offered him if he would abjure; and when the intendant Baville informed him of the frightful death before him if he refused, he replied, "My life is not of value to me, provided I gain Christ." He remained firm. He was ordered to be put to the torture. He was still unshaken. Then he was delivered over to the executioner. "I am treated," he said, "more mildly than my Saviour." On his way to the place of execution, two monks walked by his side to induce him to relent, and to help him to die. "Let me alone," he said, "you annoy me with your consolations." On coming in sight of the gallows at Beaucaire, he cried, "Courage, courage! the end of my journey is at hand. I see before me the ladder which leads to heaven." The monks wished to mount the ladder with him. "Return," said he, "I have no need of your help. I have assistance enough from God to take the last step of my journey." When he reached the upper platform, he was about, before dying, to make public his confession of faith. But the authorities had arranged beforehand that this should be prevented. When he opened his mouth, a roll of military drums muffled his voice. His radiant look and gestures spoke for him. A few minutes more, and he was dead; and when the paleness of death spread over his face, it still bore the reflex of joy and peace in which he had expired. "There is a veritable martyr," said many even of the Catholics who were witnesses of his death. It was thought that the public hanging of a pastor would put a stop to all further ministrations among the Huguenots. But the sight of the bodies of their brethren hung on the nearest trees, and the heads of their pastors rolling on the scaffold, did not deter them from continuing to hold religious meetings in solitary places, more especially in Languedoc, Viverais, and the provinces in the south-east of France. Between the year 1686, when Fulcran Rey was hanged at Beaucaire, and the year 1698, when Claude Brousson was hanged at Montpellier, not fewer than seventeen pastors were publicly executed; namely, three at Nismes, two at St. Hippolyte and Marsillargues in the Cevennes, and twelve on the Peyrou at Montpellier--the public place on which Protestant Christians in the South of France were then principally executed. There has been some discussion lately as to the massacre of the Huguenots about a century before this period. It has been held that the St. Bartholomew Massacre was only a political squabble, begun by the Huguenots, in which they got the worst of it. The number of persons killed on the occasion has been reduced to a very small number. It has been doubted whether the Pope had anything to do with the medal struck at Rome, bearing the motto _Ugonottorum Strages_ ("Massacre of the Huguenots"), with the Pope's head on one side, and an angel on the other pursuing and slaying a band of flying heretics. Whatever may be said of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, there can be no mistake about the persecutions which preceded and followed the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. They were continued for more than half a century, and had the effect of driving from France about a million of the best, most vigorous, and industrious of Frenchmen. In the single province of Languedoc, not less than a hundred thousand persons (according to Boulainvilliers) were destroyed by premature death, one-tenth of whom perished by fire, strangulation, or the wheel. It could not be said that Louis XIV. and the priests were destroying France and tearing its flesh, and that Frenchmen did not know it. The proclamations, edicts and laws published against the Huguenots were known to all Frenchmen. Bénoît[17] gives a list of three hundred and thirty-three issued by Louis XIV. during the ten years subsequent to the Revocation, and they were continued, as we shall find, during the succeeding reign. [Footnote 17: "Histoire de l'Édit de Nantes," par Elie Bénoît.] "We have," says M. Charles Coquerel, "a horror of St. Bartholomew! Will foreigners believe it, that France observed a code of laws framed in the same infernal spirit, which maintained _a perpetual St. Bartholomew's day in this country for about sixty years_! If they cannot call us the most barbarous of people, their judgment will be well founded in pronouncing us the most inconsistent."[18] [Footnote 18: "Histoire des Églises du Désert," par Charles Coquerel, i. 498.] M. De Félice, however, will not believe that the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was popular in France. He takes a much more patriotic view of the French people. He cannot believe them to have been wilfully guilty of the barbarities which the French Government committed upon the Huguenots. It was the King, the priests, and the courtiers only! But he forgets that these upper barbarians were supported by the soldiers and the people everywhere. He adds, however, that if the Revocation _were_ popular, "it would be the most overwhelming accusation against the Church of Rome, that it had thus educated and fashioned France."[19] There is, however, no doubt whatever that the Jesuits, during the long period that they had the exclusive education of the country in their hands, _did_ thus fashion France; for, in 1793, the people educated by them treated King, Jesuits, priests, and aristocracy, in precisely the same manner that they had treated the Huguenots about a century before. [Footnote 19: De Felice's "History of the Protestants of France," book iii. sect. 17.] CHAPTER III. CLAUDE BROUSSON, THE HUGUENOT ADVOCATE. To give an account in detail of the varieties of cruelty inflicted on the Huguenots, and of the agonies to which they were subjected for many years before and after the passing of the Act of Revocation, would occupy too much space, besides being tedious through the mere repetition of like horrors. But in order to condense such an account, we think it will be more interesting if we endeavour to give a brief history of the state of France at that time, in connection with the biography of one of the most celebrated Huguenots of his period, both in his life, his piety, his trials, and his endurance--that of Claude Brousson, the advocate, the pastor, and the martyr of Languedoc. Claude Brousson was born at Nismes in 1647. He was designed by his parents for the profession of the law, and prosecuted his studies at the college of his native town, where he graduated as Doctor of Laws. He commenced his professional career about the time when Louis XIV. began to issue his oppressive edicts against the Huguenots. Protestant advocates were not yet forbidden to practise, but they already laboured under many disabilities. He continued, however, for some time to exercise his profession, with much ability, at Castres, Castelnaudry, and Toulouse. He was frequently employed in defending Protestant pastors, and in contesting the measures for suppressing their congregations and levelling their churches under existing edicts, some time before the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes had been finally resolved upon. Thus, in 1682, he was engaged in disputing the process instituted against the ministers and elders of the church at Nismes, with the view of obtaining an order for the demolition of the remaining Protestant temple of that city.[20] The pretext for suppressing this church was, that a servant girl from the country, being a Catholic, had attended worship and received the sacrament from the hands of M. Peyrol, one of the ministers. [Footnote 20: John Locke passed through Nismes about this time. "The Protestants at Nismes," he said, "have now but one temple, the other being pulled down by the King's order about four years since. The Protestants had built themselves an hospital for the sick, but that is taken from them; a chamber in it is left for the sick, but never used, because the priests trouble them when there. Notwithstanding these discouragements [this was in 1676, _before_ the Revocation], I do not find many go over; one of them told me, when I asked them the question, that the Papists did nothing but by force or by money."--KING'S _Life of Locke_, i. 100.] Brousson defended the case, observing, at the conclusion of his speech, that the number of Protestants was very great at Nismes; that the ministers could not be personally acquainted with all the people, and especially with occasional visitors and strangers; that the ministers were quite unacquainted with the girl, or that she professed the Roman Catholic religion: "facts which rendered it probable that she was sent to the temple for the purpose of furnishing an occasion for the prosecution." Sentence was for the present suspended. Another process was instituted during the same year for the suppression of the Protestant church at Uzes, and another for the demolition of the large Protestant temple at Montpellier. The pretext for destroying the latter was of a singular character. A Protestant pastor, M. Paulet, had been bribed into embracing the Roman Catholic religion, in reward for which he was appointed counsellor to the Presidial Court of Montpellier. But his wife and one of his daughters refused to apostatize with him. The daughter, though only between ten and eleven years old, was sent to a convent at Teirargues, where, after enduring considerable persecution, she persisted in her steadfastness, and was released after a twelvemonth's confinement. Five years later she was again seized and sent to another convent; but, continuing immovable against the entreaties and threats of the abbess and confessor, she was again set at liberty. An apostate priest, however, who had many years before renounced the Protestant faith, and become director and confessor of the nuns at Teirargues, forged two documents; the one to show that while at the convent, Mdlle. Paulet had consented to embrace the Catholic religion, and the other containing her formal abjuration. It was alleged that her abjuration had been signified to Isaac Dubourdieu, of Montpellier, one of the most distinguished pastors of the French Church; but that, nevertheless, he had admitted her to the sacrament. This, if true, was contrary to law; upon which the Catholic clergy laid information against the pastor and the young lady before the Parliament of Toulouse, when they obtained sentence of imprisonment against the former, and the penance of _amende honorable_ against the latter. The demolition of temples was the usual consequence of convictions like these. The Duc de Noailles, lieutenant-general of the province, entered the city on the 16th of October, 1682, accompanied by a strong military force; and at a sitting of the Assembly of the States which shortly followed, the question of demolishing the Protestant temple at Montpellier was brought under consideration. Four of the Protestant pastors and several of the elders had before waited upon De Noailles to claim a respite until they should have submitted their cause to the King in Council. The request having been refused, one of the deputation protested against the illegality of the proceedings, and had the temerity to ask his excellency whether he was aware that there were eighteen hundred thousand Protestant families in France? Upon which the Duke, turning to the officer of his guard, said, "Whilst we wait to see what will become of these eighteen hundred thousand Protestant families, will you please conduct these gentlemen to the citadel?"[21] [Footnote 21: When released from prison, Gaultier escaped to Berlin and became minister of a large Protestant congregation there. Isaac Dubourdieu escaped to England, and was appointed one of the ministers of the Savoy Church in London.] The great temple of Montpellier was destroyed immediately on receipt of the King's royal mandate. It required the destruction of the place within twenty-four hours; "but you will give me pleasure," added the King, in a letter to De Noailles, "if you accomplish it in two." It was, perhaps, scarcely necessary, after the temple had been destroyed, to make any effort to justify these high-handed proceedings. But Mdlle. Paulet, on whose pretended conversion to Catholicism the proceedings had been instituted, was now requested to admit the authenticity of the documents. She was still imprisoned in Toulouse; and although entreated and threatened by turns to admit their truth, she steadfastly denied their genuineness, and asking for a pen, she wrote under each of them, "I affirm that the above signature was not written by my hand.--Isabeau de Paulet." Of course the documents were forged; but they had answered their purpose. The Protestant temple of Montpellier lay in ruins, and Isabeau de Paulet was recommitted to prison. On hearing of this incident, Brousson remarked, "This is what is called instituting a process against persons _after_ they have been condemned"--a sort of "Jedwood justice." The repetition of these cases of persecution--the demolition of their churches, and the suppression of their worship--led the Protestants of the Cevennes, Viverais, and Dauphiny to combine for the purpose of endeavouring to stem the torrent of injustice. With this object, a meeting of twenty-eight deputies took place in the house of Brousson, at Toulouse, in the month of May, 1683. As the Assembly of the States were about to take steps to demolish the Protestant temple at Montauban and other towns in the south, and as Brousson was the well-known advocate of the persecuted, the deputies were able to meet at his house to conduct their deliberations, without exciting the jealousy of the priests and the vigilance of the police. What the meeting of Protestant deputies recommended to their brethren was embodied in a measure, which was afterwards known as "The Project." The chief objects of the project were to exhort the Protestant people to sincere conversion, and the exhibition of the good life which such conversion implies; constant prayer to the Holy Spirit to enable them to remain steadfast in their profession and in the reading and meditation of the Scriptures; encouragements to them to hold together as congregations for the purpose of united worship; "submitting themselves unto the common instructions and to the yoke of Christ, in all places wheresoever He shall have established the true discipline, although the edicts of earthly magistrates be contrary thereto." At the same time, Brousson drew up a petition to the Sovereign, humbly requesting him to grant permission to the Huguenots to worship God in peace after their consciences, copies of which were sent to Louvois and the other ministers of State. On this and other petitions, Brousson observes, "Surely all the world and posterity will be surprised, that so many respectful petitions, so many complaints of injuries, and so many solid reasons urged for their removal, produced no good result whatever in favour of the Protestants." The members of the churches which had been interdicted, and whose temples had been demolished, were accordingly invited to assemble in private, in the neighbouring fields or woods--not in public places, nor around the ruins of their ancient temples--for the purpose of worshipping God, exciting each other to piety by prayer and singing, receiving instruction, and celebrating the Lord's Supper. Various meetings were accordingly held, in the following month of July, in the Cevennes and Viverais. At St. Hypolite, where the temple of the Protestants had been destroyed, about four thousand persons met in a field near the town, when the minister preached to them from the text--"Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's, and unto God the things which are God's." The meeting was conducted with the utmost solemnity; and a Catholic priest who was present, on giving information to the Bishop of Nismes of the transaction, admitted that the preacher had advanced nothing but what the bishop himself might have spoken. The dragoons were at once sent to St. Hypolite to put an end to these meetings, and to "convert" the Protestants. The town was almost wholly Protestant. The troops were quartered in numbers in every house; and the people soon became "new converts." The losses sustained by the inhabitants of the Cevennes from this forced quartering of the troops upon them--and Anduze, Sauvé, St. Germain, Vigan, and Ganges were as full of them as St. Hypolite--may be inferred from the items charged upon the inhabitants of St. Hypolite alone[22]:-- To the regiment of Montpezat, for a billet for sixty-five days 50,000 livres. To the three companies of Red Dragoons, for ninety-five days 30,000 " To three companies of Villeneuve's Dragoons, for thirty days 6,000 " To three companies of the Blue Dragoons of Languedoc, for three months and nine days 37,000 " To a company of Cravates (troopers) for fourteen days 1,400 " To the transport of three hundred and nine companies of cavalry and infantry 10,000 " To provisions for the troops 60,000 " To damage sustained by the destruction done by the soldiers, of furniture, and losses by the seizure of property, &c. 50,000 " ---------- Total 244,400 [Footnote 22: Claude Brousson, "Apologie du Projet des Réformés."] Meetings of the persecuted were also held, under the terms of "The Project," in Viverais and Dauphiny. These meetings having been repeated for several weeks, the priests of the respective districts called upon their bishops for help to put down this heretical display. The Bishop of Valence (Daniel de Cosmac) accordingly informed them that he had taken the necessary steps, and that he had been apprised that twenty thousand soldiers were now on their march to the South to put down the Protestant movement. On their arrival, the troops were scattered over the country, to watch and suppress any meetings that might be held. The first took place on the 8th of August, at Chateaudouble, a manufacturing village in Drome. The assembly was surprised by a troop of dragoons; but most of the congregation contrived to escape. Those who were taken were hung upon the nearest trees. Another meeting was held about a fortnight later at Bezaudun, which was attended by many persons from Bourdeaux, a village about half a league distant. While the meeting was at prayer, intelligence was brought that the dragoons had entered Bourdeaux, and that it was a scene of general pillage. The Bourdeaux villagers at once set out for the protection of their families. The troopers met them, and suddenly fell upon them. A few of the villagers were armed, but the principal part defended themselves with stones. Of course they were overpowered; many were killed by the sword, and those taken prisoners were immediately hanged. A few, who took to flight, sheltered themselves in a barn, where the soldiers found them, set fire to the place, and murdered them as they endeavoured to escape from the flames. One young man was taken prisoner, David Chamier,[23] son of an advocate, and related to some of the most eminent Protestants in France. He was taken to the neighbouring town of Montelimar, and, after a summary trial, he was condemned to be broken to death upon the wheel. The sentence was executed before his father's door; but the young man bore his frightful tortures with astonishing courage. [Footnote 23: The grandfather of this Chamier drew up for Henry IV. the celebrated Edict of Nantes. The greater number of the Chamiers left France. Several were ministers in London and Maryland, U.S. Captain Chamier is descended from the family.] The contumacious attitude of the Protestants after so many reports had reached Louis XIV. of their entire "conversion," induced him to take more active measures for their suppression. He appointed Marshal Saint-Ruth commander of the district--a man who was a stranger to mercy, who breathed only carnage, and who, because of his ferocity, was known as "The Scourge of the Heretics." Daniel de Cosmac, Bishop of Valence, had now the help of Saint-Ruth and his twenty thousand troops. The instructions Saint-Ruth received from Louvois were these: "Amnesty has no longer any place for the Viverais, who continue in rebellion after having been informed of the King's gracious designs. In one word, you are to cause such a desolation in that country that its example may restrain all other Huguenots, and may teach them how dangerous it is to rebel against the King." This was a work quite congenial to Saint-Ruth[24]--rushing about the country, scourging, slaughtering, laying waste, and suppressing the assemblies--his soldiers rushing upon their victims with cries of "Death or the Mass!" [Footnote 24: Saint-Ruth was afterwards, in 1691, sent to Ireland to take the command of the army fighting for James II. against William III. There, Saint-Ruth had soldiers, many of them Huguenots banished from France, to contend with; and he was accordingly somewhat less successful than in Viverais, where his opponents were mostly peasants and workmen, armed (where armed at all) with stones picked from the roads. Saint-Ruth and his garrison were driven from Athlone, where a Huguenot soldier was the first to mount the breach. The army of William III., though eight thousand fewer in number, followed Saint-Ruth and his Irish army to the field of Aughrim. His host was there drawn up in an almost impregnable position--along the heights of Kilcommeden, with the Castle of Aughrim on his left wing, a deep bog on his right, and another bog of about two miles extending along the front, and apparently completely protecting the Irish encampment. Nevertheless, the English and Huguenot army under Ginckle, bravely attacked it, forced the pass to the camp, and routed the army of Saint-Ruth, who himself was killed by a cannon-ball. The principal share of this victory was attributed to the gallant conduct of the three regiments of Huguenot horse, under the command of the Marquess de Ruvigny (himself a banished Huguenot nobleman) who, in consequence of his services, was raised to the Irish peerage, under the title of Earl of Galway.] Tracking the Protestants in this way was like "a hunt in a great enclosure." When the soldiers found a meeting of the people going on, they shot them down at once, though unarmed. If they were unable to fly, they met death upon their knees. Antoine Court recounts meetings in which as many as between three and four hundred persons, old men, women, and children, were shot dead on the spot. De Cosmac, the bishop, was very active in the midst of these massacres. When he went out to convert the people, he first began by sending out Saint-Ruth with the dragoons. Afterwards he himself followed to give instructions for their "conversion," partly through favours, partly by money. "My efforts," he himself admitted, "were not always without success; yet I must avow that the fear of the dragoons, and of their being quartered in the houses of the heretics, contributed much more to their conversion than anything that I did." The same course was followed throughout the Cevennes. It would be a simple record of cruelty to describe in detail the military proceedings there: the dispersion of meetings; the hanging of persons found attending them; the breaking upon the wheel of the pastors captured, amidst horrible tortures; the destruction of dwellings and of the household goods which they contained. But let us take the single instance of Homel, formerly pastor of the church at Soyon. Homel was taken prisoner, and found guilty of preaching to his flock after his temple had been destroyed. For this offence he was sentenced to be broken to death upon the wheel. To receive this punishment he was conducted to Tournon, in Viverais, where the Jesuits had a college. He first received forty blows of the iron bar, after which he was left to languish with his bones broken, for forty hours, until he died. During his torments, he said: "I count myself happy that I can die in my Master's service. What! did my glorious Redeemer descend from heaven and suffer an ignominious death for my salvation, and shall I, to prolong a miserable life, deny my blessed Saviour and abandon his people?" While his bones were being broken on the wheel, he said to his wife: "Farewell, once more, my beloved spouse! Though you witness my bones broken to shivers, yet is my soul filled with inexpressible joy." After life was finally extinct, his heart was taken to Chalençon to be publicly exhibited, and his body was exposed in like manner at Beauchatel. De Noailles, the governor, when referring in one of his dispatches to the heroism displayed by the tortured prisoners, said: "These wretches go to the wheel with the firm assurance of dying martyrs, and ask no other favour than that of dying quickly. They request pardon of the soldiers, but there is not one of them that will ask pardon of the King." To return to Claude Brousson. After his eloquent defence of the Huguenots of Montauban--the result of which, of course, was that the church was ordered to be demolished--and the institution of processes for the demolition of fourteen more Protestant temples, Brousson at last became aware that the fury of the Catholics and the King was not to be satisfied until they had utterly crushed the religion which he served. Brousson was repeatedly offered the office of counsellor of Parliament, equivalent to the office of judge, if he would prove an apostate; but the conscience of Brousson was not one that could be bought. He also found that his office of defender of the doomed Huguenots could not be maintained without personal danger, whilst (as events proved) his defence was of no avail to them; and he resolved, with much regret, to give up his profession for a time, and retire for safety and rest to his native town of Nismes. He resided there, however, only about four months. Saint-Ruth and De Noailles were now overawing Upper Languedoc with their troops. The Protestants of Nismes had taken no part in "The Project;" their remaining temple was still open. But they got up a respectful petition to the King, imploring his consideration of their case. Roman Catholics and Protestants, they said, had so many interests in common, that the ruin of the one must have the effect of ruining the other,--the flourishing manufactures of the province, which were mostly followed by the Protestants, being now rapidly proceeding to ruin. They, therefore, implored his Majesty to grant them permission to prosecute their employments unmolested on account of their religious profession; and lastly, they conjured the King, by his piety, by his paternal clemency, and by every law of equity, to grant them freedom of religious worship. It was of no use. The hearts of the King, his clergy, and his ministers, were all hardened against them. A copy of the above petition was presented by two ministers of Nismes and several influential gentlemen of Lower Languedoc to the Duke de Noailles, the governor of the province. He treated the deputation with contempt, and their petition with scorn. Writing to Louvois, the King's prime minister, De Noailles said: "Astonished at the effrontery of these wretched persons, I did not hesitate to send them all prisoners to the Citadel of St. Esprit (in the Cevennes), telling them that if there had been _petites maisons_[25] enough in Languedoc I should not have sent them there." [Footnote 25: The prisons of Languedoc were already crowded with Protestants, and hundreds had been sent to the galleys at Marseilles.] Nismes was now placed under the same ban as Vivarais, and denounced as "insurrectionary." To quell the pretended revolt, as well as to capture certain persons who were supposed to have been accessory to the framing of the petition, a detachment of four hundred dragoons was ordered into the place. One of those to be apprehended was Claude Brousson. Hundreds of persons knew of his abode in the city, but notwithstanding the public proclamation (which he himself heard from the window of the house where he was staying), and the reward offered for his apprehension, no one attempted to betray him. After remaining in the city for three days, he adopted a disguised dress, passed out of the Crown Gate, and in the course of a few days found a safe retreat in Switzerland. Peyrol and Icard, two of the Protestant ministers whom the dragoons were ordered to apprehend, also escaped into Switzerland, Peyrol settling at Lausanne, and Icard becoming the minister of a Huguenot church in Holland. But although the ministers had escaped, all the property they had left behind them was confiscated to the Crown. Hideous effigies of them were prepared and hung on gibbets in the market-place of Nismes by the public executioner, the magistrates and dragoons attending the sham proceeding with the usual ceremony. At Lausanne, where Claude Brousson settled for a time, he first attempted to occupy himself as a lawyer; but this he shortly gave up to devote himself to the help of the persecuted Huguenots. Like Jurieu and others in Holland, who flooded Europe with accounts of the hideous cruelties of Louis XIV. and his myrmidons the clergy and dragoons, he composed and published a work, addressed to the Roman Catholic party as well as to the Protestants of all countries, entitled, "The State of the Reformed Church of France." He afterwards composed a series of letters specially addressed to the Roman Catholic clergy of France. But expostulation was of no use. With each succeeding year the persecution became more bitter, until at length, in 1685, the Edict was revoked. In September of that year Brousson learnt that the Protestant church of his native city had been suppressed, and their temple given over to a society of female converters; that the wives and daughters of the Protestants who refused to abjure their faith had been seized and imprisoned in nunneries and religious seminaries; and that three hundred of their husbands and fathers were chained together and sent off in one day for confinement in the galleys at Marseilles. The number of Huguenots resorting to Switzerland being so great,[26] and they often came so destitute, that a committee was formed at Lausanne to assist the emigrants, and facilitate their settlement in the canton, or enable them to proceed elsewhere. Brousson was from the first an energetic member of this committee. Part of their work was to visit the Protestant states of the north, and find out places to which the emigrants might be forwarded, as well as to collect subscriptions for their conveyance. [Footnote 26: Within about three weeks no fewer than seventeen thousand five hundred French emigrants passed into Lausanne. Two hundred Protestant ministers fled to Switzerland, the greater number of whom settled in Lausanne, until they could journey elsewhere.] In November 1685, a month after the Revocation, Brousson and La Porte set out for Berlin with this object. La Porte was one of the ministers of the Cevennes, who had fled before a sentence of death pronounced against him for having been concerned in "The Project." At Berlin they were received very cordially by the Elector of Brandenburg, who had already given great assistance to the Huguenot emigrants, and expressed himself as willing to do all that he could for their protection. Brousson and La Porte here met the Rev. David Ancillon, who had been for thirty-three years pastor at Metz,[27] and was now pastor of the Elector at Berlin; Gaultier, banished from Montpellier; and Abbadie, banished from Saumur--all ministers of the Huguenot Church there; with a large number of banished ministers and emigrant Protestants from all the provinces of France. [Footnote 27: Ancillon was an eminently learned man. His library was one of the choicest that had ever been collected, and on his expulsion from Metz it was pillaged by the Jesuits. Metz, now part of German Lorraine, was probably not so ferociously dragooned as other places. Yet the inhabitants were under the apprehension that the massacre of St. Bartholomew was about to be repeated upon them on Christmas Day, 1685, the soldiers of the garrison having been kept under arms all night. The Protestant churches were all pulled down, the ministers were expelled, and many of their people followed them into Germany. There were numerous Protestant soldiers in the Metz garrison, and the order of the King was that, like the rest of his subjects, they should become converted. Many of the officers resigned and entered the service of William of Orange, and many of the soldiers deserted. The bribe offered for the conversion of privates was as follows: Common soldiers and dragoons, two pistoles per head; troopers, three pistoles per head. The Protestants of Alsace were differently treated. They constituted a majority of the population; Alsace and Strasbourg having only recently been seized by Louis XIV. It was therefore necessary to be cautious in that quarter; for violence would speedily have raised a revolution in the province which would have driven them over to Germany, whose language they spoke. Louvois could therefore only proceed by bribing; and he was successful in buying over some of the most popular and influential men.] The Elector suggested to Brousson that while at Berlin he should compose a summary account of the condition of the French Protestants, such as should excite the interest and evoke the help of the Protestant rulers and people of the northern States. This was done by Brousson, and the volume was published, entitled "Letters of the Protestants of France who have abandoned all for the cause of the Gospel, to other Protestants; with a particular Letter addressed to Protestant Kings, Electors, Rulers, and Magistrates." The Elector circulated this volume, accompanying it with a letter written in his name, to all the princes of the Continent professing the Augsburg Confession; and it was thus mainly owing to the Elector's intercession that the Huguenots obtained the privilege of establishing congregations in several of the states of Germany, as well as in Sweden and Denmark. Brousson remained nearly five months at Berlin, after which he departed for Holland to note the progress of the emigration in that country, and there he met a large number of his countrymen. Nearly two hundred and fifty Huguenot ministers had taken refuge in Holland; there were many merchants and manufacturers who had set up their branches of industry in the country; and there were many soldiers who had entered the service of William of Orange. While in Holland, Brousson resided principally with his brother, a banished Huguenot, who had settled at Amsterdam as a merchant. Having accomplished all that he could for his Huguenot brethren in exile, Brousson returned to Lausanne, where he continued his former labours. He bethought him very much of the Protestants still remaining in France, wandering like sheep without shepherds, deprived of guidance, books, and worship--the prey of ravenous wolves,--and it occurred to him whether the Protestant pastors had done right in leaving their flocks, even though by so doing they had secured the safety of their own lives. Accordingly, in 1686, he wrote and published a "Letter to the Pastors of France at present in Protestant States, concerning the Desolation of their own Churches, and their own Exile." In this letter he says:--"If, instead of retiring before your persecutors, you had remained in the country; if you had taken refuge in forests and caverns; if you had gone from place to place, risking your lives to instruct and rally the people, until the first shock of the enemy was past; and had you even courageously exposed yourselves to martyrdom--as in fact those have done who have endeavoured to perform your duties in your absence--perhaps the examples of constancy, or zeal, or of piety you had discovered, might have animated your flocks, revived their courage, and arrested the fury of your enemies." He accordingly exhorted the Protestant ministers who had left France to return to their flocks at all hazards. This advice, if acted on, was virtually condemning the pastors to death. Brousson was not a pastor. Would _he_ like to return to France at the daily risk of the rack and the gibbet? The Protestant ministers in exile defended themselves. Bénoît, then residing in Germany, replied in a "History and Apology for the Retreat of the Pastors." Another, who did not give his name, treated Brousson's censure as that of a fanatic, who meddled with matters beyond his vocation. "You who condemn the pastors for not returning to France at the risk of their lives," said he, "_why do you not first return to France yourself?_" Brousson was as brave as his words. He was not a pastor, but he might return to the deserted flocks, and encourage and comfort them. He could no longer be happy in his exile at Lausanne. He heard by night the groans of the prisoners in the Tower of Constance, and the noise of the chains borne by the galley slaves at Toulon and Marseilles. He reproached himself as if it were a crime with the repose which he enjoyed. Life became insupportable to him and he fell ill. His health was even despaired of; but one day he suddenly rose up and said to his wife, "I must set out; I will go to console, to relieve, to strengthen my brethren, groaning under their oppressions." His wife threw herself at his feet. "Thou wouldst go to certain death," she said; "think of me and thy little children." She implored him again and again to remain. He loved his wife and children, but he thought a higher duty called him away from them. When his friends told him that he would be taken prisoner and hung, he said, "When God permits his servants to die for the Gospel, they preach louder from the grave than they did during life." He remained unshaken. He would go to the help of the oppressed with the love of a brother, the faith of an apostle, and the courage of a martyr. Brousson knew the danger of the office he was about to undertake. There had, as we have seen, been numerous attempts made to gather the Protestant people together, and to administer consolation to them by public prayers and preaching. The persons who conducted these services were not regular pastors, but only private members of their former churches. Some of them were very young men, and they were nearly all uneducated as regards clerical instruction. One of the most successful was Isaac Vidal, a lame young man, a mechanic of Colognac, near St. Hypolite, in the Cevennes. His self-imposed ministrations were attended by large numbers of people. He preached for only six months and then died--a natural death, for nearly all who followed him were first tortured and then hung. We have already referred to Fulcran Rey, who preached for about nine months, and was then executed. In the same year were executed Meyrueis, by trade a wool-carder, and Rocher, who had been a reader in one of the Protestant churches. Emanuel Dalgues, a respectable inhabitant of Salle, in the Cevennes, also received the crown of martyrdom. Ever since the Revocation of the Edict, he had proclaimed the Gospel o'er hill and dale, in woods and caverns, to assemblies of the people wherever he could collect them. He was executed in 1687. Three other persons--Gransille, Mercier, and Esclopier--who devoted themselves to preaching, were transported as slaves to America; and David Mazel, a boy twelve years of age, who had a wonderful memory, and preached sermons which he had learned by heart, was transported, with his father and other frequenters of the assemblies, to the Carribee Islands. At length Brousson collected about him a number of Huguenots willing to return with him into France, in order to collect the Protestant people together again, to pray with them, and even to preach to them if the opportunity occurred. Brousson's companions were these: Francis Vivens, formerly a schoolmaster in the Cevennes; Anthony Bertezene, a carpenter, brother of a preacher who had recently been condemned to death; and seven other persons named Papus, La Pierre, Serein, Dombres, Poutant, Boisson, and M. de Bruc, an aged minister, who had been formerly pastor of one of the churches in the Cevennes. They prepared to enter France in four distinct companies, in the month of July, 1689. CHAPTER IV. CLAUDE BROUSSON, PASTOR AND MARTYR. Brousson left Lausanne on the 22nd of July, accompanied by his dear friend, the Rev. M. de Bruc. The other members of the party had preceded them, crossing the frontier at different places. They all arrived in safety at their destination, which was in the mountain district of the Cevennes. They resorted to the neighbourhood of the Aigoual, the centre of a very inaccessible region--wild, cold, but full of recesses for hiding and worship. It was also a district surrounded by villages, the inhabitants of which were for the most part Protestant. The party soon became diminished in number. The old pastor, De Bruc, found himself unequal to the fatigue and privations attending the work. He was ill and unable to travel, and was accordingly advised by his companions to quit the service and withdraw from the country. Persecution also destroyed some of them. When it became known that assemblies for religious observances were again on foot, an increased force of soldiers was sent into the district, and a high price was set on the heads of all the preachers that could be apprehended. The soldiers scoured the country, and, helped by the paid spies, they shortly succeeded in apprehending Boisson and Dombres, at St. Paul's, north of Anduze, in the Cevennes. They were both executed at Nismes, being first subjected to torture on the rack, by which their limbs were entirely dislocated. They were then conveyed to the place of execution, praying and singing psalms on the way, and finished their course with courage and joy. When Brousson first went into the Cevennes, he did not undertake to preach to the people. He was too modest to assume the position of a pastor; he merely undertook, as occasion required, to read the Scriptures in Protestant families and in small companies, making his remarks and exhortations thereupon. He also transcribed portions of his own meditations on the Scriptures, and gave them away for distribution from hand to hand amongst the people. When it was found that his instructions were much appreciated, and that numbers of people assembled to hear him read and exhort, he was strongly urged to undertake the office of public instructor amongst them, especially as their ministers were being constantly diminished by execution. He had been about five months in the Cevennes, and was detained by a fall of snow on one of the mountains, where his abode was a sheepcote, when the proposal that he should become a preacher was first made to him. Vivens was one of those who most strongly supported the appeal made to Brousson. He spent many hours in private prayer, seeking the approval of God for the course he was about to undertake. Vivens also prayed in the several assemblies that Brousson might be confirmed, and that God would be pleased to pour upon him his Holy Spirit, and strengthen him so that he might become a faithful and successful labourer in this great calling. Brousson at length consented, believing that duty and conscience alike called upon him to give the best of his help to the oppressed and persecuted Protestants of the mountains. "Brethren," he said to them, when they called upon him to administer to them the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist--"Brethren, I look above you, and hear the most High God calling me through your mouths to this most responsible and sacred office; and I dare not be disobedient to his heavenly call. By the grace of God I will comply with your pious desires; dedicate and devote myself to the work of the ministry, and spend the remainder of my life in unwearied pains and endeavours for promoting God's glory, and the consolation of precious souls." Brousson received his call to the ministry in the Cevennes amidst the sound of musketry and grapeshot which spread death among the ranks of his brethren. He was continuously tracked by the spies of the Jesuits, who sought his apprehension and death; and he was hunted from place to place by the troops of the King, who followed him in his wanderings into the most wild and inaccessible places. The perilous character of his new profession was exhibited only a few days after his ordination, by the apprehension of Olivier Souverain at St. Jean de Gardonenque, for preaching the Gospel to the assemblies. He was at once conducted to Montpellier and executed on the 15th of January, 1690. During the same year, Dumas, another preacher in the Cevennes, was apprehended and fastened by the troopers across a horse in order to be carried to Montpellier. His bowels were so injured and his body so crushed by this horrible method of conveyance, that Dumas died before he was half way to the customary place of martyrdom. Then followed the execution of David Quoite, a wandering and hunted pastor in the Cevennes for several years. He was broken on the wheel at Montpellier, and then hanged. "The punishment," said Louvreleuil, his tormentor, "which broke his bones, did not break his hardened heart: he died in his heresy." After Quoite, M. Bonnemère, a native of the same city, was also tortured and executed in like manner on the Peyrou. All these persons were taken, executed, destroyed, or imprisoned, during the first year that Brousson commenced his perilous ministry in the Cevennes. About the same time three women, who had gone about instructing the families of the destitute Protestants, reading the Scriptures and praying with them, were apprehended by Baville, the King's intendant, and punished. Isabeau Redothière, eighteen years of age, and Marie Lintarde, about a year younger, both the daughters of peasants, were taken before Baville at Nismes. "What! are you one of the preachers, forsooth?" said he to Redothière. "Sir," she replied, "I have exhorted my brethren to be mindful of their duty towards God, and when occasion offered, I have sought God in prayer for them; and, if your lordship calls that preaching, I have been a preacher." "But," said the Intendant, "you know that the King has forbidden this." "Yes, my lord," she replied, "I know it very well, but the King of kings, the God of heaven and earth, He hath commanded it." "You deserve death," replied Baville. But the Intendant awarded her a severer fate. She was condemned to be imprisoned for life in the Tower of Constance, a place echoing with the groans of women, most of whom were in chains, perpetually imprisoned there for worshipping God according to conscience. Lintarde was in like manner condemned to imprisonment for life in the castle of Sommières, and it is believed she died there. Nothing, however, is known of the time when she died. When a woman was taken and imprisoned in one of the King's torture-houses, she was given up by her friends as lost. A third woman, taken at the same time, was more mercifully dealt with. Anne Montjoye was found assisting at one of the secret assemblies. She was solicited in vain to abjure her faith, and being condemned to death, was publicly executed. Shortly after his ordination, Brousson descended from the Upper Cevennes, where the hunt for Protestants was becoming very hot, into the adjacent valleys and plains. There it was necessary for him to be exceedingly cautious. The number of dragoons in Languedoc had been increased so as to enable them regularly to patrol the entire province, and a price had been set upon Brousson's head, which was calculated to quicken their search for the flying pastor. Brousson was usually kept informed by his Huguenot friends of the direction taken by the dragoons in their patrols, and hasty assemblies were summoned in their absence. The meetings were held in some secret place--some cavern or recess in the rocks. Often they were held at night, when a few lanterns were hung on the adjacent trees to give light. Sentinels were set in the neighbourhood, and all the adjoining roads were watched. After the meeting was over the assemblage dispersed in different directions, and Brousson immediately left for another district, travelling mostly by night, so as to avoid detection. In this manner he usually presided at three or four assemblies each week, besides two on the Sabbath day--one early in the morning and another at night. At one of his meetings, held at Boucoiran on the Gardon, about half way between Nismes and Anduze, a Protestant nobleman--a _nouveau convertis_, who had abjured his religion to retain his estates--was present, and stood near the preacher during the service. One of the Government spies was present, and gave information. The name of the Protestant nobleman was not known. But the Intendant, to strike terror into others, seized six of the principal landed proprietors in the neighbourhood--though some of them had never attended any of the assemblies since the Revocation--and sent two of them to the galleys, and the four others to imprisonment for life at Lyons, besides confiscating the estates of the whole to the Crown. Brousson now felt that he was bringing his friends into very great trouble, and, out of consideration for them, he began to think of again leaving France. The dragoons were practising much cruelty on the Protestant population, being quartered in their houses, and at liberty to plunder and extort money to any extent. They were also incessantly on the look out for the assemblies, being often led by mounted priests and spies to places where they had been informed that meetings were about to be held. Their principal object, besides hanging the persons found attending, was to seize the preachers, more especially Brousson and Vivens, believing that the country would be more effectually "converted," provided they could be seized and got out of the way. Brousson, knowing that he might be seized and taken prisoner at any moment, had long considered whether he ought to resist the attempts made to capture him. He had at first carried a sword, but at length ceased to wear it, being resolved entirely to cast himself on Providence; and he also instructed all who resorted to his meetings to come to them unarmed. In this respect Brousson differed from Vivens, who thought it right to resist force by force; and in the event of any attempt being made to capture him, he considered it expedient to be constantly provided with arms. Yet he had only once occasion to use them, and it was the first and last time. The reward of ten thousand livres being now offered for the apprehension of Brousson and Vivens, or five thousand for either, an active search was made throughout the province. At length the Government found themselves on the track of Vivens. One of his known followers, Valderon, having been apprehended and put upon the rack, was driven by torture to reveal his place of concealment. A party of soldiers went in pursuit, and found Vivens with three other persons, concealed in a cave in the neighbourhood of Alais. Vivens was engaged in prayer when the soldiers came upon him. His hand was on his gun in a moment. When asked to surrender he replied with a shot, not knowing the number of his opponents. He followed up with two other shots, killing a man each time, and then exposing himself, he was struck by a volley, and fell dead. The three other persons in the cave being in a position to hold the soldiers at defiance for some time, were promised their lives if they would surrender. They did so, and with the utter want of truth, loyalty, and manliness that characterized the persecutors, the promise was belied, and the three prisoners were hanged, a few days after, at Alais. Vivens' body was taken to the same place. The Intendant sat in judgment upon it, and condemned it to be drawn through the streets upon a hurdle and then burnt to ashes. Brousson was becoming exhausted by the fatigues and privations he had encountered during his two years' wanderings and preachings in the Cevennes; and he not only desired to give the people a relaxation from their persecution, but to give himself some absolutely necessary rest. He accordingly proceeded to Nismes, his birthplace, where many people knew him; and where, if they betrayed him, they might easily have earned five thousand livres. But so much faith was kept by the Protestants amongst one another, that Brousson felt that his life was quite as safe amongst his townspeople as it had been during the last two years amongst the mountaineers of the Cevennes. It soon became known to the priests, and then to the Intendant, that Brousson was resident in concealment at Nismes; and great efforts were accordingly made for his apprehension. During the search, a letter of Brousson's was found in the possession of M. Guion, an aged minister, who had returned from Switzerland to resume his ministry, according as he might find it practicable. The result of this discovery was, that Guion was apprehended, taken before the Intendant, condemned to be executed, and sent to Montpellier, where he gave up his life at seventy years old--the drums beating, as usual, that nobody might hear his last words. The house in which Guion had been taken at Nismes was ordered to be razed to the ground, in punishment of the owner who had given him shelter. After spending about a month at Nismes, Brousson was urged by his friends to quit the city. He accordingly succeeded in passing through the gates, and went to resume his former work. His first assembly was held in a commodious place on the Gardon, between Valence, Brignon, and St. Maurice, about ten miles distant from Nismes. Although he had requested that only the Protestants in the immediate neighbourhood should attend the meeting, so as not to excite the apprehensions of the authorities, yet a multitude of persons came from Uzes and Nismes, augmented by accessions from upwards of thirty villages. The service was commenced about ten o'clock, and was not completed until midnight. The concourse of persons from all quarters had been so great that the soldiers could not fail to be informed of it. Accordingly they rode towards the place of assemblage late at night, but they did not arrive until the meeting had been dissolved. One troop of soldiers took ambush in a wood through which the worshippers would return on their way back to Uzes. The command had been given to "draw blood from the conventicles." On the approach of the people the soldiers fired, and killed and wounded several. About forty others wore taken prisoners. The men were sent to the galleys for life, and the women were thrown into gaol at Carcassone--the Tower of Constance being then too full of prisoners. After this event, the Government became more anxious in their desire to capture Brousson. They published far and wide their renewed offer of reward for his apprehension. They sent six fresh companies of soldiers specially to track him, and examine the woods and search the caves between Uzes and Alais. But Brousson's friends took care to advise him of the approach of danger, and he sped away to take shelter in another quarter. The soldiers were, however, close upon his heels; and one morning, in attempting to enter a village for the purpose of drying himself--having been exposed to the winter's rain and cold all night--he suddenly came upon a detachment of soldiers! He avoided them by taking shelter in a thicket, and while there, he observed another detachment pass in file, close to where he was concealed. The soldiers were divided into four parties, and sent out to search in different directions, one of them proceeding to search every house in the village into which Brousson had just been about to enter. The next assembly was held at Sommières, about eight miles west of Nismes. The soldiers were too late to disperse the meeting, but they watched some of the people on their return. One of these, an old woman, who had been observed to leave the place, was shot on entering her cottage; and the soldier, observing that she was attempting to rise, raised the butt end of his gun and brained her on the spot. The hunted pastors of the Cevennes were falling off one by one. Bernard Saint Paul, a young man, who had for some time exercised the office of preacher, was executed in 1692. One of the brothers Du Plans was executed in the same year, having been offered his life if he would conform to the Catholic religion. In the following year Paul Colognac was executed, after being broken to death on the wheel at Masselargais, near to which he had held his last assembly. His arms, thighs, legs, and feet were severally broken with the iron bar some hours before the _coup de grace_, or deathblow, was inflicted. Colognac endured his sufferings with heroic fortitude. He was only twenty-four. He had commenced to preach at twenty, and laboured at the work for only four years. Brousson's health was fast giving way. Every place that he frequented was closely watched, so that he had often to spend the night under the hollow of a rock, or under the shelter of a wood, exposed to rain and snow,--and sometimes he had even to contend with a wolf for the shelter of a cave. Often he was almost perishing for want of food; and often he found himself nearly ready to die for want of rest. And yet, even in the midst of his greatest perils, his constant thought was of the people committed to him, and for whose eternal happiness he continued to work. As he could not visit all who wished to hear him, he wrote out sermons that might be read to them. His friend Henry Poutant, one of those who originally accompanied him from Switzerland and had not yet been taken prisoner by the soldiers, went about holding meetings for prayer, and reading to the people the sermons prepared for them by Brousson. For the purpose of writing out his sermons, Brousson carried about with him a small board, which he called his "Wilderness Table." With this placed upon his knees, he wrote the sermons, for the most part in woods and caves. He copied out seventeen of these sermons, which he sent to Louis XIV., to show him that what "he preached in the deserts contained nothing but the pure word of God, and that he only exhorted the people to obey God and to give glory to Him." The sermons were afterwards published at Amsterdam, in 1695, under the title of "The Mystic Manna of the Desert." One would have expected that, under the bitter persecutions which Brousson had suffered during so many years, they would have been full of denunciation; on the contrary, they were only full of love. His words were only burning when he censured his hearers for not remaining faithful to their Church and to their God. At length, the fury of Brousson's enemies so increased, and his health was so much impaired, that he again thought of leaving France. His lungs were so much injured by constant exposure to cold, and his voice had become so much impaired, that he could not preach. He also heard that his family, whom he had left at Lausanne, required his assistance. His only son was growing up, and needed education. Perhaps Brousson had too long neglected those of his own household; though he had every confidence in the prudence and thoughtfulness of his wife. Accordingly, about the end of 1693, Brousson made arrangements for leaving the Cevennes. He set out in the beginning of December, and arrived at Lausanne about a fortnight later, having been engaged on his extraordinary mission of duty and peril for four years and five months. He was received like one rescued from the dead. His health was so injured, that his wife could scarcely recognise her husband in that wan, wasted, and weatherbeaten creature who stood before her. In fact, he was a perfect wreck. He remained about fifteen months in Switzerland, during which he preached in the Huguenots' church; wrote out many of his pastoral letters and sermons; and, when his health had become restored, he again proceeded on his travels into foreign countries. He first went into Holland. He had scarcely arrived there, when intelligence reached him from Montpellier of the execution, after barbarous torments, of his friend Papus,--one of those who had accompanied him into the Cevennes to preach the Gospel some six years before. There were now very few of the original company left. On hearing of the martyrdom of Papus, Brousson, in a pastoral letter which he addressed to his followers, said: "He must have died some day; and as he could not have prolonged his life beyond the term appointed, how could his end have been more happy and more glorious? His constancy, his sweetness of temper, his patience, his humility, his faith, his hope, and his piety, affected even his judges and the false pastors who endeavoured to seduce him, as also the soldiers and all that witnessed his execution. He could not have preached better than he did by his martyrdom; and I doubt not that his death, will produce abundance of fruit." While in Holland, Brousson took the opportunity of having his sermons and many of his pastoral letters printed at Amsterdam; after which he proceeded to make a visit to his banished Huguenot friends in England. He also wished to ascertain from personal inquiry the advisability of forwarding an increased number of French emigrants--then resident in Switzerland--for settlement in this country. In London, he met many of his friends from the South of France--for there were settled there as ministers, Graverol of Nismes, Satur of Montauban, four ministers from Montpellier for whom he had pleaded in the courts at Toulouse--the two Dubourdieus and the two Berthaus--fathers and sons. There were also La Coux from Castres, De Joux from Lyons, Roussillon from Montredon, Mestayer from St. Quentin, all settled in London as ministers of Huguenot churches. After staying in England for only about a month, Brousson was suddenly recalled to Holland to assume the office to which he was appointed without solicitation, of preacher to the Walloon church at the Hague. Though his office was easy--for he had several colleagues to assist him in the duties--and the salary was abundant for his purposes, while he was living in the society of his wife and family--Brousson nevertheless very soon began to be ill at ease. He still thought of the abandoned Huguenots "in the Desert"; without teachers, without pastors, without spiritual help of any kind. When he had undertaken the work of the ministry, he had vowed that he would devote his time and talents to the support and help of the afflicted Church; and now he was living at ease in a foreign country, far removed from those to whom he considered his services belonged. These thoughts were constantly recurring and pressing upon his mind; and at length he ceased to have any rest or satisfaction in his new position. Accordingly, after only about four months' connection with the Church at the Hague, Brousson decided to relinquish the charge, and to devote himself to the service of the oppressed and afflicted members of his native Church in France. The Dutch Government, however, having been informed of his perilous and self-sacrificing intention, agreed to continue his salary as a pastor of the Walloon Church, and to pay it to his wife, who henceforth abode at the Hague. Brousson determined to enter France from the north, and to visit districts that were entirely new to him. For this purpose he put himself in charge of a guide. At that time, while the Protestants were flying from France, as they continued to do for many years, there were numerous persons who acted as guides for those not only flying from, but entering the country. Those who guided Protestant pastors on their concealed visits to France, were men of great zeal and courage--known to be faithful and self-denying--and thoroughly acquainted with the country. They knew all the woods, and fords, and caves, and places of natural shelter along the route. They made the itinerary of the mountains and precipices, of the byways and deserts, their study. They also knew of the dwellings of the faithful in the towns and villages where Huguenots might find relief and shelter for the night. They studied the disguises to be assumed, and were prepared with a stock of phrases and answers adapted for every class of inquiries. The guide employed by Brousson was one James Bruman--an old Huguenot merchant, banished at the Revocation, and now employed in escorting Huguenot preachers back to France, and escorting flying Huguenot men, women, and children from it.[28] The pastor and his guide started about the end of August, 1695. They proceeded by way of Liége; and travelling south, they crossed the forest of Ardennes, and entered France near Sedan. [Footnote 28: Many of these extraordinary escapes are given in the author's "Huguenots: their Settlements, Churches, and Industries, in England and Ireland."] Sedan, recently the scene of one of the greatest calamities that has ever befallen France, was, about two centuries ago, a very prosperous place. It was the seat of a great amount of Protestant learning and Protestant industry. One of the four principal Huguenot academies of France was situated in that town. It was suppressed in 1681, shortly before the Revocation, and its professors, Bayle, Abbadie, Basnage, Brazy, and Jurieu, expelled the country. The academy buildings themselves had been given over to the Jesuits--the sworn enemies of the Huguenots. At the same time, Sedan had been the seat of great woollen manufactures, originally founded by Flemish Protestant families, and for the manufacture of arms, implements of husbandry, and all kinds of steel and iron articles.[29] At the Revocation, the Protestants packed up their tools and property, suddenly escaped across the frontier, near which they were, and went and established themselves in the Low Countries, where they might pursue their industries in safety. Sedan was ruined, and remained so until our own day, when it has begun to experience a little prosperity from the tourists desirous of seeing the place where the great French Army surrendered. [Footnote 29: There were from eighty to ninety establishments for the manufacture of broadcloth in Sedan, giving employment to more than two thousand persons. These, together with the iron and steel manufactures, were entirely ruined at the Revocation, when the whole of the Protestant mechanics went into exile, and settled for the most part in Holland and England.] When Brousson visited the place, the remaining Protestants resided chiefly in the suburban villages of Givonne and Daigny. He visited them in their families, and also held several private meetings, after which he was induced to preach in a secluded place near Sedan at night. This assembly, however, was reported to the authorities, who immediately proceeded to make search for the heretic preacher. A party of soldiers, informed by the spies, next morning invested the house in which Brousson slept. They first apprehended Bruman, the guide, and thought that in him they had secured the pastor. They next rummaged the house, in order to find the preacher's books. But Brousson, hearing them coming in, hid himself behind the door, which, being small, hardly concealed his person. After setting a guard all round the house, ransacking every room in it, and turning everything upside down, they left it; but two of the children, seeing Brousson's feet under the door, one of them ran after the officer of the party, and exclaimed to him, pointing back, "Here, sir, here!" But the officer, not understanding what the child meant, went away with his soldiers, and Brousson's life was, for the time, saved. The same evening, Brousson changed his disguise to that of a wool-comber, and carrying a parcel on his shoulder, he set out on the same evening with another guide. He visited many places in which Protestants were to be found--in Champagne, Picardy, Normandy, Nevernois, and Burgundy. He also visited several of his friends in the neighbourhood of Paris. We have not many details of his perils and experiences during his journey. But the following passage is extracted from a letter addressed by him to a friend in Holland: "I assure you that in every place through which I passed, I witnessed the poor people truly repenting their fault (_i.e._ of having gone to Mass), weeping day and night, and imploring the grace and consolations of the Gospel in their distress. Their persecutors daily oppress them, and burden them with taxes and imposts; but the more discerning of the Roman Catholics acknowledge that the cruelties and injustice done towards so many innocent persons, draw down misery and distress upon the kingdom. And truly it is to be apprehended that God will abandon its inhabitants to their wickedness, that he may afterwards pour down his most terrible judgments upon that ungrateful and vaunting country, which has rejected his truth and despised the day of visitation." During the twelve months that Brousson was occupied with his perilous journey through France, two more of his friends in the Cevennes suffered martyrdom--La Porte on the 7th of February, 1696, and Henri Guerin on the 22nd of June following. Both were broken alive on the wheel before receiving the _coup de grace_. Towards the close of the year, Brousson arrived at Basle, from whence he proceeded to visit his friends throughout the cantons of Switzerland, and then he returned to Holland by way of the Rhine, to rejoin his family at the Hague. At that time, the representatives of the Allies were meeting at Ryswick the representatives of Louis XIV., who was desirous of peace. Brousson and the French refugee ministers resident in Holland endeavoured to bring the persecutions of the French Protestants under the notice of the Conference. But Louis XIV. would not brook this interference. He proposed going on dealing with the heretics in his own way. "I do not pretend," he said, "to prescribe to William III. rules about his subjects, and I expect the same liberty as to my own." Finding it impossible to obtain redress for his fellow-countrymen under the treaty of Ryswick, which was shortly after concluded, Brousson at length prepared to make his third journey into France in the month of August 1697. He set out greatly to the regret of his wife, who feared it might be his last journey, as indeed it proved to be. In a letter which he wrote to console her, from some remote place where he was snowed up about the middle of the following December, he said: "I cannot at present enter into the details of the work the Lord has given me grace to labour in; but it is the source of much consolation to a large number of his poor people. It will be expedient that you do not mention where I am, lest I should be traced. It may be that I cannot for some time write to you; but I walk under the conduct of my God, and I repeat that I would not for millions of money that the Lord should refuse me the grace which renders it imperative for me to labour as I now do in His work."[30] [Footnote 30: The following was the portraiture of Brousson, issued to the spies and police: "Brousson is of middle stature, and rather spare, aged forty to forty-two, nose large, complexion dark, hair black, hands well formed."] When the snow had melted sufficiently to enable Brousson to escape from the district of Dauphiny, near the High Alps, where he had been concealed, he made his way across the country to the Viverais, where he laboured for some time. Here he heard of the martyrdom of the third of the brothers Du Plans, broken on the wheel and executed like the others on the Peyrou at Montpellier. During the next nine months, Brousson laboured in the north-eastern provinces of Languedoc (more particularly in the Cevennes and Viverais), Orange, and Dauphiny. He excited so much interest amongst the Protestants, who resorted from a great distance to attend his assemblies, that the spies (who were usually pretended Protestants) soon knew of his presence in the neighbourhood, and information was at once forwarded to the Intendant or his officers. Persecution was growing very bitter about this time. By orders of the bishops the Protestants were led by force to Mass before the dragoons with drawn swords, and the shops of merchants who refused to go to Mass regularly were ordered to be closed. Their houses were also filled with soldiers. "The soldiers or militia," said Brousson to a friend in Holland, "frequently commit horrible ravages, breaking open the cabinets, removing every article that is saleable, which are often purchased by the priests at insignificant prices; the rest they burn and break up, after which the soldiers are removed; and when the sufferers think themselves restored to peace, fresh billets are ordered upon them. Many are consequently induced to go to Mass with weeping and lamentation, but a great number remain inflexible, and others fly the kingdom." When it became known that Brousson, in the course of his journeyings, had arrived, about the end of August, 1698, in the neighbourhood of Nismes, Baville was greatly mortified; and he at once offered a reward of six hundred louis d'or for his head. Brousson nevertheless entered Nismes, and found refuge amongst his friends. He had, however, the imprudence to post there a petition to the King, signed by his own hand, which had the effect of at once setting the spies upon his track. Leaving the city itself, he took refuge in a house not far from it, whither the spies contrived to trace him, and gave the requisite information to the Intendant. The house was soon after surrounded by soldiers, and was itself entered and completely searched. Brousson's host had only had time to make him descend into a well, which had a niche in the bottom in which he could conceal himself. The soldiers looked down the well a dozen times, but could see nothing. Brousson was not in the house; he was not in the chimneys; he was not in the outhouses. He _must_ be in the well! A soldier went down the well to make a personal examination. He was let down close to the surface of the water, and felt all about. There was nothing! Feeling awfully cold, and wishing to be taken out, he called to his friends, "There is nothing here, pull me up." He was pulled up accordingly, and Brousson was again saved. The country about Nismes being beset with spies to track the Protestants and prevent their meetings, Brousson determined to go westward and visit the scattered people in Rouerge, Pays de Foix, and Bigorre, proceeding as far as Bearn, where a remnant of Huguenots still lingered, notwithstanding the repeated dragooning to which the district had been subjected. It was at Oberon that he fell into the hands of a spy, who bore the same name as a Protestant friend to whom his letter was addressed. Information was given to the authorities, and Brousson was arrested. He made no resistance, and answered at once to his name. When the Judas who had betrayed him went to M. Pénon, the intendant of the province, to demand the reward set upon Brousson's head, the Intendant replied with indignation, "Wretch! don't you blush to look upon the man in whose blood you traffic? Begone! I cannot bear your presence!" Brousson was sent to Pau, where he was imprisoned in the castle of Foix, at one time the centre of the Reformation movement in the South of France--where Calvin had preached, where Jeanne d'Albret had lived, and where Henry IV. had been born. From Pau, Brousson was sent to Montpellier, escorted by dragoons. At Toulouse the party took passage by the canal of Languedoc, which had then been shortly open. At Somail, during the night, Brousson saw that all the soldiers were asleep. He had but to step on shore to regain his liberty; but he had promised to the Intendant of Bearn, who had allowed him to go unfettered, that he would not attempt to escape. At Agade there was a detachment of a hundred soldiers, ready to convey the prisoner to Baville, Intendant of Languedoc. He was imprisoned in the citadel of Montpellier, on the 30th October, 1698. Baville, who knew much of the character of Brousson--his peacefulness, his piety, his self-sacrifice, and his noble magnanimity--is said to have observed on one occasion, "I would not for a world have to judge that man." And yet the time had now arrived when Brousson was to be judged and condemned by Baville and the Presidial Court. The trial was a farce, because it had been predetermined that Brousson should die. He was charged with preaching in France contrary to the King's prohibition. This he admitted; but when asked to whom he had administered the Sacrament, he positively refused to disclose, because he was neither a traitor nor informer to accuse his brethren. He was also charged with having conspired to introduce a foreign army into France under the command of Marshal Schomberg. This he declared to be absolutely false, for he had throughout his career been a man of peace, and sought to bring back Christ's followers by peaceful means only. His defence was of no avail. He was condemned to be racked, then to be broken on the wheel, and afterwards to be executed. He received the sentence without a shudder. He was tied on the rack, but when he refused to accuse his brethren he was released from it. Attempts were made by several priests and friars to add him to the number of "new converts," but these were altogether fruitless. All that remained was to execute him finally on the public place of execution--the Peyrou. The Peyrou is the pride of modern Montpellier. It is the favourite promenade of the place, and is one of the finest in Europe. It consists of a broad platform elevated high above the rest of the town, and commanding extensive views of the surrounding country. In clear weather, Mont Ventoux, one of the Alpine summits, may be seen across the broad valley of the Rhône on the east, and the peak of Mont Canizou in the Pyrenees on the west. Northward stretches the mountain range of the Cevennes, the bold Pic de Saint-Loup the advanced sentinel of the group; while in the south the prospect is bounded by the blue line of the Mediterranean. The Peyrou is now pleasantly laid out in terraced walks and shady groves, with gay parterres of flowers--the upper platform being surrounded with a handsome stone balustrade. An equestrian statue of Louis XIV. occupies the centre of the area; and a triumphal arch stands at the entrance to the promenade, erected to commemorate the "glories" of the same monarch, more particularly the Revocation by him of the Edict of Nantes--one of the entablatures of the arch displaying a hideous figure, intended to represent a Huguenot, lying trampled under foot of the "Most Christian King." The Peyrou was thus laid out and ornamented in the reign of his successor, Louis XV., "the Well-beloved," during which the same policy for which Louis XIV. was here glorified by an equestrian statue and a triumphal arch continued to be persevered in--of imprisoning, banishing, hanging, or sending to the galleys such of the citizens of France as were not of "the King's religion." But during the reign of Louis XIV. himself, the Peyrou was anything but a pleasure-ground. It was the infamous place of the city--the _place de Grève_--a desert, barren, blasted table-land, where sometimes half-a-dozen decaying corpses might be seen swinging from the gibbets on which they had been hung. It was specially reserved, because of its infamy, for the execution of heretics against Rome; and here, accordingly, hundreds of Huguenot martyrs--whom power, honour, and wealth failed to bribe or to convert--were called upon to seal their faith with their blood. Brousson was executed at this place on the 4th of November, 1698. It was towards evening, while the sun was slowly sinking behind the western mountains, that an immense multitude assembled on the Peyrou to witness the martyrdom of the devoted pastor. Not fewer than twenty thousand persons were there, including the principal nobility of the city and province, besides many inhabitants of the adjoining mountain district of the Cevennes, some of whom had come from a great distance to be present. In the centre of the plateau, near where the equestrian statue of the great King now stands, was a scaffold, strongly surrounded by troops to keep off the crowd. Two battalions, drawn up in two lines facing each other, formed an avenue of bayonets between the citadel, near at hand, and the place of execution. A commotion stirred the throng; and the object of the breathless interest excited shortly appeared in the person of a middle-sized, middle-aged man, spare, grave, and dignified in appearance, dressed in the ordinary garb of a pastor, who walked slowly towards the scaffold, engaged in earnest prayer, his eyes and hands lifted towards heaven. On mounting the platform, he stood forward to say a few last words to the people, and give to many of his friends, whom he knew to be in the crowd, his parting benediction. But his voice was instantly stifled by the roll of twenty drums, which continued to beat a quick march until the hideous ceremony was over, and the martyr, Claude Brousson, had ceased to live.[31] [Footnote 31: The only favour which Brousson's judges showed him at death was as regarded the manner of carrying his sentence into execution. He was condemned to be broken alive on the wheel, and then strangled; whereas by special favour the sentence was commuted into strangulation first and the breaking of his bones afterwards. So that while Brousson's impassive body remained with his persecutors to be broken, his pure unconquered spirit mounted in triumph towards heaven.] Strange are the vicissitudes of human affairs! Not a hundred years passed after this event, before the great grandson of the monarch, at whose instance Brousson had laid down his life, appeared upon a scaffold in the Place Louis XIV. in Paris, and implored permission to say his few last words to the people. In vain! His voice was drowned by the drums of Santerre! CHAPTER V. OUTBREAK IN LANGUEDOC. Although the arbitrary measures of the King were felt all over France, they nowhere excited more dismay and consternation than in the province of Languedoc. This province had always been inhabited by a spirited and energetic people, born lovers of liberty. They were among the earliest to call in question the despotic authority over mind and conscience claimed by the see of Rome. The country is sown with the ashes of martyrs. Long before the execution of Brousson, the Peyrou at Montpellier had been the Calvary of the South of France. As early as the twelfth century, the Albigenses, who inhabited the district, excited the wrath of the Popes. Simple, sincere believers in the Divine providence, they rejected Rome, and took their stand upon the individual responsibility of man to God. Count de Foix said to the legate of Innocent III.: "As to my religion, the Pope has nothing to do with it. Every man's conscience must be free. My father has always recommended to me this liberty, and I am content to die for it." A crusade was waged against the Albigenses, which lasted for a period of about sixty years. Armies were concentrated upon Languedoc, and after great slaughter the heretics were supposed to be exterminated. But enough of the people survived to perpetuate the love of liberty in their descendants, who continued to exercise a degree of independence in matters of religion and politics almost unknown in other parts of France. Languedoc was the principal stronghold of the Huguenots in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and when, in 1685, Louis XIV. revoked the Edict of Nantes, which interdicted freedom of worship under penalty of confiscation, banishment, and death, it is not surprising that such a policy should have occasioned widespread consternation, if not hostility and open resistance. At the period of the Revocation there were, according to the Intendant of the province, not fewer than 250,000 Protestants in Languedoc, and these formed the most skilled, industrious, enterprising, and wealthy portion of the community. They were the best farmers, vine-dressers, manufacturers, and traders. The valley of Vaunage, lying to the westward of Nismes, was one of the richest and most highly cultivated parts of France. It contained more than sixty temples, its population being almost exclusively Protestant; and it was known as "The Little Canaan," abounding as it did in corn, and wine, and oil. The greater part of the commerce of the South of France was conducted by the Protestant merchants of Nismes, of whom the Intendant wrote to the King in 1699, "If they are still bad Catholics, at any rate they have not ceased to be very good traders." The Marquis d'Aguesseau bore similar testimony to the intelligent industry of the Huguenot population. "By an unfortunate fatality," said he, "in nearly every kind of art the most skilful workmen, as well as the richest merchants, belong to the pretended reformed religion." The Marquis, who governed Languedoc for many years, was further of opinion that the intelligence of the Protestants was in a great measure due to the instructions of their pastors. "It is certain," said he, "that one of the things which holds the Huguenots to their religion is the amount of information which they receive from their instructors, and which it is not thought necessary to give in ours. The Huguenots _will_ be instructed, and it is a general complaint amongst the new converts not to find in our religion the same mental and moral discipline they find in their own." Baville, the intendant, made an observation to a similar effect in a confidential communication which he made to the authorities at Paris in 1697, in which he boasted that the Protestants had now all been converted, and that there were 198,483 new converts in Languedoc. "Generally speaking," he said, "the new converts are much better off, being more laborious and industrious than the old Catholics of the province. The new converts must not be regarded as Catholics; they almost all preserve in their heart their attachment to their former religion. They may confess and communicate as much as you will, because they are menaced and forced to do so by the secular power. But this only leads to sacrilege. To gain them, _their hearts must be won_. It is there that religion resides, and it can only be solely established by effecting that conquest." From the number, as well as the wealth and education, of the Protestants of Languedoc, it is reasonable to suppose that the emigration from this quarter of France should have been very considerable during the persecutions which followed the Revocation. Of course nearly all the pastors fled, death being their punishment if they remained in France. Hence many of the most celebrated French preachers in Holland, Germany, and England were pastors banished from Languedoc. Claude and Saurin both belonged to the province; and among the London preachers were the Dubourdieus, the Bertheaus, Graverol, and Pégorier. It is also interesting to find how many of the distinguished Huguenots who settled in England came from Languedoc. The Romillys and Layards came from Montpellier; the Saurins from Nismes; the Gaussens from Lunel; and the Bosanquets from Caila;[32] besides the Auriols, Arnauds, Péchels, De Beauvoirs, Durands, Portals, Boileaus, D'Albiacs, D'Oliers, Rious, and Vignoles, all of whom belonged to the Huguenot landed gentry of Languedoc, who fled and sacrificed everything rather than conform to the religion of Louis XIV. [Footnote 32: There are still Gaussens at St. Mamert, in the department of Gard; and some of the Bosanquet family must have remained on their estates or returned to Protestantism, as we find a Bosanquet of Caila broken alive at Nismes, because of his religion, on the 7th September, 1702, after which his corpse was publicly exposed on the Montpellier high road.] When Brousson was executed at Montpellier, it was believed that Protestantism was finally dead. At all events, it was supposed that those of the Protestants who remained, without becoming converted, were at length reduced to utter powerlessness. It was not believed that the smouldering ashes contained any sparks that might yet be fanned into flames. The Huguenot landed proprietors, the principal manufacturers, the best of the artisans, had left for other countries. Protestantism was now entirely without leaders. The very existence of Protestantism in any form was denied by the law; and it might perhaps reasonably have been expected that, being thus crushed out of sight, it would die. But there still remained another important and vital element--the common people--the peasants, the small farmers, the artisans, and labouring classes--persons of slender means, for the most part too poor to emigrate, and who remained, as it were, rooted to the soil on which they had been born. This was especially the case in the Cevennes, where, in many of the communes, almost the entire inhabitants were Protestants; in others, they formed a large proportion of the population; while in all the larger towns and villages they were very numerous, as well as widely spread over the whole province. * * * * * The mountainous district of the Cevennes is the most rugged, broken, and elevated region in the South of France. It fills the department of Lozère, as well as the greater part of Gard and Herault. The principal mountain-chain, about a hundred leagues in length, runs from north-east to south-west, and may almost be said to unite the Alps with the Pyrenees. From the centre of France the surface rises with a gradual slope, forming an inclined plane, which reaches its greatest height in the Cevennic chain, several of the summits of which are about five thousand five hundred feet above the sea level. Its connection with the Alpine range is, however, broken abruptly by the deep valley of the Rhône, running nearly due north and south. The whole of this mountain district maybe regarded as a triangular plateau rising gradually from the northwest, and tilted up at its south-eastern angle. It is composed for the most part of granite, overlapped by strata belonging to the Jurassic-system; and in many places, especially in Auvergne, the granitic rocks have been burst through by volcanoes, long since extinct, which rise like enormous protuberances from the higher parts of the platform. Towards the southern border of the district, the limestone strata overlapping the granite assume a remarkable development, exhibiting a series of flat-topped hills bounded by perpendicular cliffs some six or eight hundred feet high. "These plateaux," says Mr. Scrope, in his interesting account of the geology of Central France, "are called 'causses' in the provincial dialect, and they have a singularly dreary and desert aspect from the monotony of their form and their barren and rocky character. The valleys which separate them are rarely of considerable width. Winding, narrow, and all but impassable cliff-like glens predominate, giving to the Cevennes that peculiarly intricate character which enabled its Protestant inhabitants, in the beginning of the last century, to offer so stubborn and gallant a resistance to the atrocious persecutions of Louis XIV." Such being the character of this mountain district--rocky, elevated, and sterile--the people inhabiting it, though exceedingly industrious, are for the most very poor. Sheep-farming is the principal occupation of the people of the hill country; and in the summer season, when the lower districts are parched with drought, tens of thousands of sheep may be seen covering the roads leading to the Upper Cevennes, whither they are driven for pasture. There is a comparatively small breadth of arable land in the district. The mountains in many places contain only soil enough to grow juniper-bushes. There is very little verdure to relieve the eye--few turf-clad slopes or earth-covered ledges to repay the tillage of the farmer. Even the mountains of lower elevation are for the most part stony deserts. Chestnut-trees, it is true, grow luxuriantly in the sheltered places, and occasionally scanty crops of rye on the lower mountain-sides. Mulberry-trees also thrive in the valleys, their leaves being used for the feeding of silkworms, the rearing of which forms one of the principal industries of the district. Even in the immediate neighbourhood of Nismes--a rich and beautiful town, abounding in Roman remains, which exhibit ample evidences of its ancient grandeur--the country is arid, stony, and barren-looking, though here the vine, the olive, and the fig-tree, wherever there is soil enough, grow luxuriantly in the open air. Indeed, the country very much resembles in its character the land of Judea, being rocky, parched, and in many places waste, though in others abounding in corn and wine and oil. In the interior parts of the district the scenery is wild and grand, especially in the valleys lying under the lofty mountain of Lozère. But the rocks and stones are everywhere in the ascendant. A few years ago we visited the district; and while proceeding in the old-fashioned diligence which runs between Alais and Florac--for the district is altogether beyond the reach of railways--a French contractor, accompanying a band of Italian miners, whom he was taking into the mountains to search for minerals, pointing to the sterile rocks, exclaimed to us, "Messieurs, behold the very poorest district in France! It contains nothing but juniper-bushes! As for its agriculture, it produces nothing; manufactures, nothing; commerce, nothing! _Rien, rien, rien!_" The observation of this French _entrepreneur_ reminds us of an anecdote that Telford, the Scotch engineer, used to relate of a countryman with reference to his appreciation of Scotch mountain beauty. An English artist, enraptured by the scenery of Ben MacDhui, was expatiating on its magnificence, and appealed to the native guide for confirmation of his news. "I dinna ken aboot the scenery," replied the man, "but there's plenty o' big rocks and stanes; an' the kintra's awfu' puir." The same observation might doubtless apply to the Cevennes. Yet, though the people may be poor, they are not miserable or destitute, for they are all well-clad and respectable-looking peasants, and there is not a beggar to be seen in the district. But the one country, as the other, grows strong and brave men. These barren mountain districts of the Cevennes have bred a race of heroes; and the men are as simple and kind as they are brave. Hospitality is a characteristic of the people, which never fails to strike the visitor accustomed to the exactions which are so common along the hackneyed tourist routes. As in other parts of France, the peasantry here are laborious almost to excess. Robust and hardy, they are distinguished for their perseverance against the obstacles which nature constantly opposes to them. Out-door industry being suspended in winter, during which they are shut up in their cabins for nearly six months by the ice and snow, they occupy themselves in preparing their wool for manufacture into cloth. The women card, the children spin, the men weave; and each cottage is a little manufactory of drugget and serge, which is taken to market in spring, and sold in the low-country towns. Such was the industry of the Cevennes nearly two hundred years since, and such it remains to the present day. The people are of a contented nature, and bear their poverty with cheerfulness and even dignity. While they partake of the ardour and strong temper which characterize the inhabitants of the South of France, they are probably, on the whole, more grave and staid than Frenchmen generally, and are thought to be more urbane and intelligent; and though they are unmanageable by force, they are remarkably accessible to kindness and moral suasion. Such, in a few words, are the more prominent characteristics of the country and people of the Cevennes. * * * * * When the popular worship of the mountain district of Languedoc--in which the Protestants constituted the majority of the population--was suppressed, great dismay fell upon the people; but they made no signs of resistance to the royal authority. For a time they remained comparatively passive, and it was at first thought they were indifferent. Their astonished enemies derisively spoke of them as displaying "the patience of a Huguenot,"--the words having passed into a proverb. But their persecutors did not know the stuff of which these mountaineers were made. They had seen their temples demolished one after another, and their pastors banished, leaving them "like poor starved sheep looking for the pasture of life." Next they heard that such of their pastors as had been apprehended for venturing to minister to them in "the Desert" had been taken to Nismes and Montpellier and hanged. Then they began to feel excited and indignant. For they could not shake off their own belief and embrace another man's, even though that man was their king. If Louis XIV. had ordered them to believe that two and two make six, they could not possibly believe, though they might pretend to do so, that it made any other number than four. And so it was with the King's order to them to profess a faith which they could not bring their minds to believe in. These poor people entertained the conviction that they possessed certain paramount rights as men. Of these they held the right of conscience to be one of the principal. They were willing to give unto Cæsar the things that were Cæsar's; but they could not give him those which belonged unto God. And if they were forced to make a choice, then they must rather disobey their King than the King of kings. Though deprived of their leaders and pastors, the dispossessed Huguenots emerged by degrees from their obscurity, and began to recognise each other openly. If their temples were destroyed, there remained the woods and fields and mountain pastures, where they might still meet and worship God, even though it were in defiance of the law. Having taken counsel together, they resolved "not to forsake the assembling of themselves together;" and they proceeded, in all the Protestant districts in the South of France--in Viverais, Dauphiny, and the Cevennes--to hold meetings of the people, mostly by night, for worship--in woods, in caves, in rocky gorges, and in hollows of the hills. Then began those famous assemblies of "the Desert," which were the nightmare of Louvois and the horror of Louis XIV. When it came to the knowledge of the authorities that such meetings were being held, large bodies of troops were sent into the southern provinces, with orders to disperse them and apprehend the ringleaders. These orders were carried out with much barbarity. Amongst various assemblies which were discovered and attacked in the Cevennes, were those of Auduze and Vigan, where the soldiers fell upon the defenceless people, put the greater number to the sword, and hanged upon the nearest trees those who did not succeed in making their escape. The authorities waited to see the effect of these "vigorous measures;" but they were egregiously disappointed. The meetings in the Desert went on as before, and even increased in number. Then milder means were tried. Other meetings were attacked in like manner, and the people found attending them taken prisoners. They were then threatened with death unless they became converted, and promised to attend Mass. They declared that they preferred death. A passion for martyrdom even seemed to be spreading amongst the infatuated people! Then the peasantry began secretly to take up arms for their defence. They had thus far been passive in their resistance, and were content to brave death provided they could but worship together. At length they felt themselves driven in their despair to resist force by force--acting, however, in the first place, entirely on the defensive--"leaving the issue," to use the words of one of their solemn declarations, "to the providence of God." They began--these poor labourers, herdsmen, and wool-carders--by instituting a common fund for the purpose of helping their distressed brethren in surrounding districts. They then invited such as were disposed to join them to form themselves into companies, so as to be prepared to come together and give their assistance as occasion required. When meetings in the Desert were held, it became the duty of these enrolled men to post themselves as sentinels on the surrounding heights, and give notice of the approach of their enemies. They also constituted a sort of voluntary police for their respective districts, taking notice of the changes of the royal troops, and dispatching information by trusty emissaries, intimating the direction of their march. The Intendant, Baville, wrote to Louvois, minister of Louis XIV. during the persecutions, expressing his surprise and alarm at the apparent evidences of organization amongst the peasantry. "I have just learned," said he in one letter,[33] "that last Sunday there was an assembly of nearly four hundred men, many of them armed, at the foot of the mountain of Lozère. I had thought," he added, "that the great lesson taught them at Vigan and Anduze would have restored tranquillity to the Cevennes, at least for a time. But, on the contrary, the severity of the measures heretofore adopted seems only to have had the effect of exasperating and hardening them in their iniquitous courses." [Footnote 33: October 20, 1686.] * * * * * As the massacres had failed, the question next arose whether the inhabitants might not be driven into exile, and the country entirely cleared of them. "They pretend," said Louvois, "to meet in 'the Desert;' why not take them at their word, and make the Cevennes _really_ a Desert?" But there were difficulties in the way of executing this plan. In the first place, the Protestants of Languedoc were a quarter of a million in number. And, besides, if they were driven out of it, what would become of the industry and the wealth of this great province--what of the King's taxes? The Duke de Noailles advised that it would be necessary to proceed with some caution in the matter. "If his Majesty," he wrote to Baville, "thinks there is no other remedy than changing the whole people of the Cevennes, it would be better to begin by expelling those who are not engaged in commerce, who inhabit inaccessible mountain districts, where the severity of the climate and the poverty of the soil render them rude and barbarous, as in the case of those people who recently met at the foot of the Lozère. Should the King consent to this course, it will be necessary to send here at least four additional battalions of foot to execute his orders."[34] [Footnote 34: Noailles to Baville, 29th October, 1686.] An attempt was made to carry out this measure of deportation of the people, but totally failed. With the aid of spies, stimulated by high rewards, numerous meetings in the Desert were fallen upon by the troops, and those who were not hanged were transported--some to Italy, some to Switzerland, and some to America. But transportation had no terrors for the people, and the meetings continued to be held as before. Baville then determined to occupy the entire province with troops, and to carry out a general disarmament of the population. Eight regiments of regular infantry were sent into the Cevennes, and fifty regiments of militia were raised throughout the province, forming together an army of some forty thousand men. Strong military posts were established in the mountains, and new forts and barracks were erected at Alais, Anduze, St. Hyppolyte, and Nismes. The mountain-roads being almost impassable, many of them mere mule paths, Baville had more than a hundred new high-roads and branch-roads constructed and made practicable for the passage of troops and transport of cannon. By these means the whole country became strongly occupied, but still the meetings in the Desert went on. The peasantry continued to brave all risks--of exile, the galleys, the rack, and the gibbet--and persevered in their assemblies, until the very ferocity of their persecutors became wearied. The people would not be converted either by the dragoons or the priests who were stationed amongst them. In the dead of the night they would sally forth to their meetings in the hills; though their mountains were not too steep, their valleys not too secluded, their denies not too impenetrable to protect them from pursuit and attack, for they were liable at any moment to be fallen upon and put to the sword. The darkness, the dangers, the awe and mystery attending these midnight meetings invested them with an extraordinary degree of interest and even fascination. It is not surprising that under such circumstances the devotion of these poor people should have run into fanaticism and superstition. Singing the psalms of Marot by night, under the shadow of echoing rocks, they fancied they heard the sounds of heavenly voices filling the air. At other times they would meet amidst the ruins of their fallen sanctuaries, and mysterious sounds of sobbing and wailing and groaning would seem as if to rise from the tombs of their fathers. * * * * * Under these distressing circumstances--in the midst of poverty, suffering, and terror--a sort of religious hysteria suddenly developed itself amongst the people, breaking out and spreading like many other forms of disease, and displaying itself chiefly in the most persecuted quarters of Dauphiny, Viverais, and the Cevennes. The people had lost their pastors; they had not the guidance of sober and intelligent persons; and they were left merely to pray and to suffer. The terrible raid of the priests against the Protestant books had even deprived most of the Huguenots of their Bibles and psalm-books, so that they were in a great measure left to profit by their own light, such as it was. The disease to which we refer, had often before been experienced, under different forms, amongst uneducated people when afflicted by terror and excitement; such, for instance, as the Brotherhood of the Flagellants, which followed the attack of the plague in the Middle Ages; the Dancing Mania, which followed upon the Black Death; the Child's Pilgrimages, the Convulsionaires, the Revival epilepsies and swoons, which have so often accompanied fits of religious devotion worked up into frenzy; these diseases being merely the result of excitement of the senses, which convulse the mind and powerfully affect the whole nervous system. The "prophetic malady," as we may call it, which suddenly broke out amongst the poor Huguenots, began with epileptic convulsions. They fell to the ground senseless, foamed at the mouth, sobbed, and eventually revived so far as to be able to speak and "prophesy," like a mesmerised person in a state of _clairvoyance_. The disease spread rapidly by the influence of morbid sympathy, which, under the peculiar circumstances we have described, exercises an amazing power over human minds. Those who spoke with power were considered "inspired." They prayed and preached ecstatically, the most inspired of the whole being women, boys, and even children. One of the first "prophets" who appeared was Isabel Vincent, a young shepherdess of Crest, in Dauphiny, who could neither read nor write. Her usual speech was the patois of her country, but when she became inspired she spoke perfectly, and, according to Michelet, with great eloquence. "She chanted," he says, "at first the Commandments, then a psalm, in a low and fascinating voice. She meditated a moment, then began the lamentation of the Church, tortured, exiled, at the galleys, in the dungeons: for all those evils she blamed our sins only, and called all to penitence. Then, starting anew, she spoke angelically of the Divine goodness." Boucher, the intendant of the province, had her apprehended and examined. She would not renounce. "You may take my life," she said, "but God will raise up others to speak better things than I have done." She was at last imprisoned at Grenoble, and afterwards in the Tower of Constance. As Isabel Vincent had predicted, many prophets followed in her steps, but they did not prophesy as divinely as she. They denounced "Woe, woe" upon their persecutors. They reviled Babylon as the oppressor of the House of Israel. They preached the most violent declamations against Rome, drawn from the most lugubrious of the prophets, and stirred the minds of their hearers into the most furious indignation. The rapidity with which the contagion of convulsive prophesying spread was extraordinary. The adherents were all of the poorer classes, who read nothing but the Bible, and had it nearly by heart. It spread from Dauphiny to Viverais, and from thence into the Cevennes. "I have seen," said Marshal Villars, "things that I could never have believed if they had not passed under my own eyes--an entire city, in which all the women and girls, without exception, appeared possessed by the devil; they quaked and prophesied publicly in the streets."[35] [Footnote 35: "Vie du Maréchal de Villars," i. 125.] Flottard says there were eight thousand persons in one province who had inspiration. All were not, however, equally inspired. There were four degrees of ecstasy: first, the being called; next, the inspiration; then, the prophesy; and, lastly, the gift, which was the inspiration in the highest degree. All this may appear ludicrous to some. And yet the school of credulity is a very wide one. Even in these enlightened times in which we live, we hear of tables turning, spelling out words, and "prophesying" in their own way. There are even philosophers, men of science, and literati who believe in spiritualists that rise on sofas and float about in the air, who project themselves suddenly out of one window and enter by another, and do many other remarkable things. And though our spiritual table-rapping and floating about may seem to be of no possible use, the "prophesying" of the Camisards was all but essential to the existence of the movement in which they were engaged. The population became intensely excited by the prevalence of this enthusiasm or fanaticism. "When a Huguenot assembly," says Brueys, "was appointed, even before daybreak, from all the hamlets round, the men, women, boys, girls, and even infants, came in crowds, hurrying from their huts, pierced through the woods, leapt over the rocks, and flew to the place of appointment."[36] [Footnote 36: Brueys, "Histoire du Fanaticisme de Notre Temps."] Mere force was of no avail against people who supposed themselves to be under supernatural influences. The meetings in the Desert, accordingly, were attended with increased and increasing fascination, and Baville, who had reported to the King the entire pacification and conversion of Languedoc, to his dismay found the whole province bursting with excitement, which a spark at any moment might fire into frenzy. And that spark was shortly afterwards supplied by the archpriest Chayla, director of missions at Pont-de-Montvert. Although it was known that many of the peasantry attended the meetings armed, there had as yet been no open outbreak against the royal authority in the Cevennes. At Cheilaret, in the Vivarais, there had been an encounter between the troops and the peasantry; but the people were speedily dispersed, leaving three hundred dead and fifty wounded on the field. The Intendant Baville, after thus pacifying the Vivarais, was proceeding on his way back to Montpellier, escorted by some companies of dragoons and militia, passing through the Cevennes by one of the new roads he had caused to be constructed along the valley of the Tarn, by Pont-de-Montvert to Florac. What was his surprise, on passing through the village of Pont-de-Montvert, to hear the roll of a drum, and shortly after to perceive a column of rustics, some three or four hundred in number, advancing as if to give him battle. Baville at once drew up his troops and charged the column, which broke and fled into an adjoining wood. Some were killed and others taken prisoners, who were hanged next day at St. Jean-du-Gard. A reward of five hundred louis d'or was advertised for the leader, who was shortly after tracked to his hiding-place in a cavern situated between Anduze and Alais, and was there shot, but not until after he had killed three soldiers with his fusil. After this event persecution was redoubled throughout the Cevennes. The militia ran night and day after the meetings in the Desert. All persons found attending them, who could be captured, were either killed on the spot or hanged. Two companies of militia were quartered in Pont-de-Montvert at the expense of the inhabitants; and they acted under the direction of the archpriest Du Chayla. This priest, who was a native of the district, had been for some time settled as a missionary in Siam engaged in the conversion of Buddhists, and on his return to France he was appointed to undertake the conversion of the people of the Cevennes to the faith of Rome. * * * * * The village of Pont-de-Montvert is situated in the hollow of a deep valley formed by the mountain of Lozère on the north, and of Bougès on the south, at the point at which two streams, descending from their respective summits, flow into the Tarn. The village is separated by these streams into three little hamlets, which are joined together by the bridge which gives its name to the place. The addition of "Mont Vert," however, is a misnomer; for though seated at the foot of a steep mountain, it is not green, but sterile, rocky, and verdureless. The village is best reached from Florac, from which it is about twenty miles distant. The valley runs east and west, and is traversed by a tolerably good road, which at the lower part follows the windings of the Tarn, and higher up runs in and out along the mountain ledges, at every turn presenting new views of the bold, grand, and picturesque scenery which characterizes the wilder parts of the Cevennes. Along this route the old mule-road is still discernible in some places--a difficult, rugged, mountain path, which must have kept the district sealed up during the greater part of the year, until Baville constructed the new road for the purpose of opening up the country for the easier passage of troops and munitions of war. A few poor hamlets occur at intervals along the road, sometimes perched on apparently inaccessible rocks, and at the lower part of the valley an occasional château is to be seen, as at Miral, picturesquely situated on a height. But the country is too poor by nature--the breadth of land in the bottom of the ravine being too narrow and that on the mountain ledges too stony and sterile--ever to have enabled it to maintain a considerable population. On all sides little is to be seen but rocky mountain sides, stony and precipitous, with bold mountain peaks extending beyond them far away in the distance. Pont-de-Montvert is the centre of a series of hamlets, the inhabitants of which were in former times almost exclusively Protestant, as they are now; and where meetings in the Desert were of the most frequent occurrence. Strong detachments of troops were accordingly stationed there and at Florac for the purpose of preventing the meetings and overawing the population. Besides soldiers, the authorities also established missions throughout the Cevennes, and the principal inspector of these missions was the archpriest Chayla. The house in which he resided at Pont-de-Montvert is still pointed out. It is situated near the north end of the bridge over the Tarn; but though the lower part of the building remains as it was in his time, the upper portion has been for the most part rebuilt. Chayla was a man of great force of character--zealous, laborious, and indefatigable--but pitiless, relentless, and cruel. He had no bowels of compassion. He was deaf to all appeals for mercy. With him the penalty of non-belief in the faith of Rome was imprisonment, torture, death. Eight young priests lived with him, whose labours he directed; and great was his annoyance to find that the people would not attend his ministrations, but continued to flock after their own prophet-preachers in the Desert. Moral means having failed, he next tried physical. He converted the arched cellars of his dwelling into dungeons, where he shut up those guilty of contumacy; and day by day he put them to torture. It seems like a satire on religion to say that, in his attempt to convert souls, this vehement missionary made it one of his principal studies to find out what amount of agony the bodies of those who differed from him would bear short of actual death. He put hot coals into their hands, which they were then made to clench; wrapped round their fingers cotton steeped in oil, which was then set on fire; besides practising upon them the more ordinary and commonplace tortures. No wonder that the archpriest came to be detested by the inhabitants of Pont-de-Montvert. At length, a number of people in the district, in order to get beyond reach of Chayla's cruelty, determined to emigrate from France and take refuge in Geneva. They assembled one morning secretly, a cavalcade of men and women, and set out under the direction of a guide who knew the mountain paths towards the east. When they had travelled a few hours, they fell into an ambuscade of militia, and were marched back to the archpriest's quarters at Pont-de-Montvert. The women were sent to Mende to be immured in convents, and the men were imprisoned in the archpriest's dungeons. The parents of some of the captives ran to throw themselves at his feet, and implored mercy for their sons; but Chayla was inexorable. He declared harshly that the prisoners must suffer according to the law--that the fugitives must go the galleys, and their guide to the gibbet. On the following Sunday, the 23rd of July, 1702, one of the preaching prophets, Pierre Seguier of Magistavols, a hamlet lying to the south of Pont-de-Montvert, preached to an assembly on the neighbouring mountain of Bougès; and there he declared that the Lord had ordered him to take up arms to deliver the captives and exterminate the archpriest of Moloch. Another and another preacher followed in the same strain, the excited assembly encouraging them by their cries, and calling upon them to execute God's vengeance on the persecutors of God's people. That same night Seguier and his companions went round amongst the neighbouring hamlets to summon an assemblage of their sworn followers for the evening of the following day. They met punctually in the Altefage Wood, and under the shadow of three gigantic beech trees, the trunks of which were standing but a few years ago, they solemnly swore to deliver their companions and destroy the archpriest. When night fell, a band of fifty determined men marched down the mountain towards the bridge, led by Seguier. Twenty of them were armed with guns and pistols. The rest carried scythes and hatchets. As they approached the village, they sang Marot's version of the seventy-fourth Psalm. The archpriest heard the unwonted sound as they came marching along. Thinking it was a nocturnal assembly, he cried to his soldiers, "Run and see what this means." But the doors of the house were already invested by the mountaineers, who shouted out for "The prisoners! the prisoners!" "Back, Huguenot canaille!" cried Chayla from the window. But they only shouted the louder for "The prisoners!" The archpriest then directed the militia to fire, and one of the peasants fell dead. Infuriated, they seized the trunk of a tree, and using it as a battering-ram, at once broke in the door. They next proceeded to force the entrance to the dungeon, in which they succeeded, and called upon the prisoners to come forth. But some of them were so crippled by the tortures to which they had been subjected, that they could not stand. At sight of their sufferings the fury of the assailants increased, and, running up the staircase, they called out for the archpriest. "Burn the priest and the satellites of Baal!" cried their leader; and heaping together the soldiers' straw beds, the chairs, and other combustibles, they set the whole on fire. Chayla, in the hope of escaping, jumped from a window into the garden, and in the fall broke his leg. The peasants discovered him by the light of the blazing dwelling. He called for mercy. "No," said Seguier, "only such mercy as you have shown to others;" and he struck him the first blow. The others followed. "This for my father," said the next, "whom you racked to death!" "This for my brother," said another, "whom you sent to the galleys!" "This for my mother, who died of grief!" This for my sister, my relatives, my friends, in exile, in prison, in misery! And thus blow followed blow, fifty-two in all, half of which would probably have been mortal, and the detested Chayla lay a bleeding mass at their feet! [Illustration: Map of the Country of the Cevennes.] CHAPTER VI. INSURRECTION OF THE CAMISARDS. The poor peasants, wool-carders, and neatherds of the Cevennes, formed only a small and insignificant section of the great body of men who were about the same time engaged in different countries of Europe in vindicating the cause of civil and religious liberty. For this cause, a comparative handful of people in the Low Countries, occupying the Dutch United Provinces, had banded themselves together to resist the armies of Spain, then the most powerful monarchy in the world. The struggle had also for some time been in progress in England and Scotland, where it culminated in the Revolution of 1688; and it was still raging in the Vaudois valleys of Piedmont. The object contended for in all these cases was the same. It was the vindication of human freedom against royal and sacerdotal despotism. It could only have been the direst necessity that drove a poor, scattered, unarmed peasantry, such as the people of the Cevennes, to take up arms against so powerful a sovereign as Louis XIV. Their passive resistance had lasted for fifteen long years, during which many of them had seen their kindred racked, hanged, or sent to the galleys; and at length their patience was exhausted, and the inevitable outburst took place. Yet they were at any moment ready to lay down their arms and return to their allegiance, provided only a reasonable degree of liberty of worship were assured to them. This, however, their misguided and bigoted monarch, would not tolerate; for he had sworn that no persons were to be suffered in his dominions save those who were of "the King's religion." The circumstances accompanying the outbreak of the Protestant peasantry in the Cevennes in many respects resembled those which attended the rising of the Scotch Covenanters in 1679. Both were occasioned by the persistent attempts of men in power to enforce a particular form of religion at the point of the sword. The resisters of the policy were in both cases Calvinists;[37] and they were alike indomitable and obstinate in their assertion of the rights of conscience. They held that religion was a matter between man and his God, and not between man and his sovereign or the Pope. The peasantry in both cases persevered in their own form of worship. In Languedoc, the mountaineers of the Cevennes held their assemblies in "The Desert;" and in Scotland, the "hill-folk" of the West held their meetings on the muirs. In the one country as in the other, the monarchy sent out soldiers as their missionaries--Louis XIV. employing the dragoons of Louvois and Baville, and Charles II. those of Claverhouse and Dalzell. These failing, new instruments of torture were invented for their "conversion." But the people, in both cases, continued alike stubborn in their adherence to their own simple and, as some thought, uncouth form of faith. [Footnote 37: Whether it be that Calvinism is eclectic as regards races and individuals, or that it has (as is most probably the case) a powerful formative influence upon individual character, certain it is that the Calvinists of all countries have presented the strongest possible resemblance to each other--the Calvinists of Geneva and Holland, the Huguenots of France, the Covenanters of Scotland, and the Puritans of Old and New England, seeming, as it were, to be but members of the same family. It is curious to speculate on the influence which the religion of Calvin--himself a Frenchman--might have exercised on the history of France, as well as on the individual character of Frenchmen, had the balance of forces carried the nation bodily over to Protestantism (as was very nearly the case) towards the end of the sixteenth century. Heinrich Heine has expressed the opinion that the western races contain a large proportion of men for whom the moral principle of Judaism has a strong elective affinity; and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Old Testament certainly seems to have exercised a much more powerful influence on the minds of religious reformers than the New. "The Jews," says Heine, "were the Germans of the East, and nowadays the Protestants in German countries (England, Scotland, America, Germany, Holland) are nothing more nor less than ancient Oriental Jews."] The French Calvinist peasantry, like the Scotch, were great in their preachers and their prophets. Both devoted themselves with enthusiasm to psalmody, insomuch that "psalm-singers" was their nickname in both countries. The one had their Clement Marot by heart, the other their Sternhold and Hopkins. Huguenot prisoners in chains sang psalms in their dungeons, galley slaves sang them as they plied at the oar, fugitives in the halting-places of their flight, the condemned as they marched to the gallows, and the Camisards as they rushed into battle. It was said of the Covenanters that "they lived praying and preaching, and they died praying and fighting;" and the same might have been said of the Huguenot peasantry of the Cevennes. The immediate cause of the outbreak of the insurrection in both countries was also similar. In the one case, it was the cruelty of the archpriest Chayla, the inventor of a new machine of torture called "the Squeezers,"[38] and in the other the cruelty of Archbishop Sharpe, the inventor of that horrible instrument called "the Iron Boot," that excited the fury of the people; and the murder of the one by Seguier and his band at Pont-de-Montvert, as of the other by Balfour of Burley and his companions on Magus Muir, proved the signal for a general insurrection of the peasantry in both countries. Both acts were of like atrocity; but they corresponded in character with the cruelties which had provoked them. Insurrections, like revolutions, are not made of rose-water. In such cases, action and reaction are equal; the violence of the oppressors usually finding its counterpart in the violence of the oppressed. [Footnote 38: The instrument is thus described by Cavalier, in his "Memoirs of the Wars of the Cevennes," London, 1726: "This inhuman man had invented a rack (more cruel, if it be possible, than that usually made use of) to torment these poor unfortunate gentlemen and ladies; which was a beam he caused to be split in two, with vices at each end. Every morning he would send for these poor people, in order to examine them, and if they refused to confess what he desired, he caused their legs to be put in the slit of the beam, and there squeezed them till the bones cracked," &c., &c. (p. 35).] The insurrection of the French peasantry proved by far the most determined and protracted of the two; arising probably from the more difficult character of the mountain districts which they occupied and the quicker military instincts of the people, as well as because several of their early leaders and organizers were veteran soldiers who had served in many campaigns. The Scotch insurgents were suppressed by the English army under the Duke of Monmouth in less than two months after the original outbreak, though their cause eventually triumphed in the Revolution of 1688; whereas the peasantry of the Cevennes, though deprived of all extraneous help, continued to maintain a heroic struggle for several years, but were under the necessity of at last succumbing to the overpowering military force of Louis XIV., after which the Huguenots of France continued to be stamped out of sight, and apparently out of existence, for nearly a century. * * * * * In the preceding chapter, we left the archpriest Chayla a corpse at the feet of his murderers. Several of the soldiers found in the château were also killed, as well as the cook and house-steward, who had helped to torture the prisoners. But one of the domestics, and a soldier, who had treated them with kindness, were, at their intercession, pardoned and set at liberty. The corpses were brought together in the garden, and Seguier and his companions, kneeling round them--a grim and ghastly sight--sang psalms until daybreak, the uncouth harmony mingling with the crackling of the flames of the dwelling overhead, and the sullen roar of the river rushing under the neighbouring bridge. When the grey of morning appeared, the men rose from their knees, emerged from the garden, crossed the bridge, and marched up the main street of the village. The inhabitants had barricaded themselves in their houses, being in a state of great fear lest they should be implicated in the murder of the archpriest. But Seguier and his followers made no further halt in Pont-de-Montvert, but passed along, still singing psalms, towards the hamlet of Frugères, a little further up the valley of the Tarn. Seguier has been characterised as "the Danton of the Cevennes." This fierce and iron-willed man was of great stature--bony and dark-visaged, without upper teeth, his hair hanging loose over his shoulders--and of a wild and mystic appearance, occasioned probably by the fits of ecstasy to which he was subject, and the wandering life he had for so many years led as a prophet-preacher in the Desert. This terrible man had resolved upon a general massacre of the priests, and he now threw himself upon Frugères for the purpose of carrying out the enterprise begun by him at Pont-de-Montvert. The curé of the hamlet, who had already heard of Chayla's murder, fled from his house at sound of the approaching psalm-singers, and took refuge in an adjoining rye-field. He was speedily tracked thither, and brought down by a musket-ball; and a list of twenty of his parishioners, whom he had denounced to the archpriest, was found under his cassock. From Frugères the prophet and his band marched on to St. Maurice de Ventalong, so called because of the winds which at certain seasons blow so furiously along the narrow valley in which it is situated; but the prior of the convent, having been warned of the outbreak, had already mounted his horse and taken to flight. Here Seguier was informed of the approach of a body of militia who were on his trail; but he avoided them by taking refuge on a neighbouring mountain-side, where he spent the night with his companions in a thicket. Next morning, at daybreak, he descended the mountain, crossed the track of his pursuers, and directed himself upon St. André de Lancèze. The whole country was by this time in a state of alarm; and the curé of the place, being on the outlook, mounted the clock-tower and rang the tocsin. But his parishioners having joined the insurgents, the curé was pursued, captured in the belfry, and thrown from its highest window. The insurgents then proceeded to gut the church, pull down the crosses, and destroy all the emblems of Romanism on which they could lay their hands. Seguier and his band next hurried across the mountains towards the south, having learnt that the curés of the neighbourhood had assembled at St. Germain to assist at the obsequies of the archpriest Chayla, whose body had been brought thither from Pont-de-Montvert on the morning after his murder. When Seguier was informed that the town and country militia were in force in the place, he turned aside and went in another direction. The curés, however, having heard that Seguier was in the neighbourhood, fled panic-stricken, some to the château of Portes, others to St. André, while a number of them did not halt until they had found shelter within the walls of Alais, some twenty miles distant. Thus four days passed. On the fifth night Seguier appeared before the château of Ladevèze, and demanded the arms which had been deposited there at the time of the disarmament of the peasantry. The owner replied by a volley of musketry, which killed and wounded several of the insurgents, at the same time ringing the alarm-bell. Seguier, furious at this resistance, at once burst open the gates, and ordered a general massacre of the household. This accomplished, he ransacked the place of its arms and ammunition, and before leaving set the castle on fire, the flames throwing a lurid glare over the surrounding country. Seguier's band then descended the mountain on which the château is situated, and made for the north in the direction of Cassagnas, arriving at the elevated plateau of Font-Morte a little before daybreak. In the meantime, Baville, the intendant of the province, was hastening to Pont-de-Montvert to put down the insurrection and avenge the death of the archpriest. The whole country was roused. Troops were dispatched in hot haste from Alais; the militia were assembled from all quarters and marched upon the disturbed district. The force was placed under the orders of Captain Poul, an old soldier of fortune, who had distinguished himself in the German wars, and in the recent crusade against the Italian Vaudois. It was because of the individual prowess which Captain Poul had displayed in his last campaign, that, at the peace of Ryswick, Baville requested that he should be attached to the army of Languedoc, and employed in putting down the insurgents of the Cevennes. Captain Poul was hastening with his troops to Florac when, having been informed of the direction in which Seguier and his band had gone, he turned aside at Barre, and after about an hour's march eastward, he came up with them at Font-Morte. They suddenly started up from amongst the broom where they had lain down to sleep, and, firing off their guns upon the advancing host, without offering any further resistance, fled in all directions. Poul and his men spurred after them, cutting down the fugitives. Coming up with Seguier, who was vainly trying to rally his men, Poul took him prisoner with several others, and they were forthwith chained and marched to Florac. As they proceeded along the road, Poul said to Seguier, "Well, wretch! now I have got you, how do you expect to be treated after the crimes you have committed?" "As I would myself have treated you, had I taken you prisoner," was the reply. Seguier stood before his judges calm and fearless. "What is your name?" he was asked. "Pierre Seguier." "Why do they call you Esprit?" "Because the Spirit of God is in me." "Your abode?" "In the Desert, and shortly in heaven." "Ask pardon of the King!" "We have no other King but the Eternal." "Have you no feeling of remorse for your crimes?" "My soul is as a garden full of shady groves and of peaceful fountains." Seguier was condemned to have his hands cut off at the wrist, and he burnt alive at Pont-de-Montvert. Nouvel, another of the prisoners, was broken alive at Ladevèze, and Bonnet, a third, was hanged at St. André. They all suffered without flinching. Seguier's last words, spoken amidst the flames, were, "Brethren, wait, and hope in the Eternal. The desolate Carmel shall yet revive, and the solitary Lebanon shall blossom as the rose!" Thus perished the grim, unflinching prophet of Magistavols, the terrible avenger of the cruelties of Chayla, the earliest leader in the insurrection of the Camisards! It is not exactly known how or when the insurgents were first called Camisards. They called themselves by no other name than "The Children of God" (_Enfants de Dieu_); but their enemies variously nicknamed them "The Barbets," "The Vagabonds," "The Assemblers," "The Psalm-singers," "The Fanatics," and lastly, "The Camisards." This name is said to have been given them because of the common blouse or camisole which they wore--their only uniform. Others say that it arose from their wearing a white shirt, or camise, over their dress, to enable them to distinguish each other in their night attacks; and that this was not the case, is partly countenanced by the fact that in the course of the insurrection a body of peasant royalists took the field, who designated themselves the "_White_ Camisards," in contradistinction from the others. Others say the word is derived from _camis_, signifying a roadrunner. But whatever the origin of the word may be, the Camisards was the name most commonly applied to the insurgents, and by which they continue to be known in local history. * * * * * Captain Poul vigorously followed up the blow delivered at Font-Morte. He apprehended all suspected persons in the Upper Cevennes, and sent them before the judges at Florac. Unable to capture the insurgents who had escaped, he seized their parents, their relations, and families, and these were condemned to various punishments. But what had become of the insurgents themselves? Knowing that they had nothing but death to expect, if taken, they hid themselves in caves known only to the inhabitants of the district, and so secretly that Poul thought they had succeeded in making their escape from France. The Intendant Baville arrived at the same conclusion, and he congratulated himself accordingly on the final suppression of the outbreak. Leaving sundry detachments of troops posted in the principal villages, he returned to Alais, and invited the fugitive priests at once to return to their respective parishes. After remaining in concealment for several days, the surviving insurgents met one night to consult as to the steps they were to take, with a view to their personal safety. They had by this time been joined by several sympathizers, amongst others by three veteran soldiers--Laporte, Espérandieu, and Rastelet--and by young Cavalier, who had just returned from Geneva, where he had been in exile, and was now ready to share in the dangers of his compatriots. The greater number of those present were in favour of bidding a final adieu to France, and escaping across the frontier into Switzerland, considering that the chances of their offering any successful resistance to their oppressors, were altogether hopeless. But against this craven course Laporte raised his voice. "Brethren," said he, "why depart into the land of the stranger? Have we not a country of our own, the country of our fathers? It is, you say, a country of slavery and death! Well! Free it! and deliver your oppressed brethren. Never say, 'What can we do? we are few in number, and without arms!' The God of armies shall be our strength. Let us sing aloud the psalm of battles, and from the Lozère even to the sea Israel will arise! As for arms, have we not our hatchets? These will bring us muskets! Brethren, there is only one course worthy to be pursued. It is to live for our country; and, if need be, to die for it. Better die by the sword than by the rack or the gallows!" From this moment, not another word was said of flight. With one voice, the assembly cried to the speaker, "Be our chief! It is the will of the Eternal!" "The Eternal be the witness of your promises," replied Laporte; "I consent to be your chief!" He assumed forthwith the title of "Colonel of the Children of God," and named his camp "The camp of the Eternal!" Laporte belonged to an old Huguenot family of the village of Massoubeyran, near Anduze. They were respectable peasants, some of whom lived by farming and others by trade. Old John Laporte had four sons, of whom the eldest succeeded his father as a small farmer and cattle-breeder, occupying the family dwelling at Massoubeyran, still known there as the house of "Laporte-Roland." It contains a secret retreat, opening from a corner of the floor, called the "Cachette de Roland," in which the celebrated chief of this name, son of the owner, was accustomed to take refuge; and in this cottage, the old Bible of Roland's father, as well as the halbert of Roland himself, continue to be religiously preserved. Two of Laporte's brothers were Protestant ministers. One of them was the last pastor of Collet-de-Deze in the Cevennes. Banished because of his faith, he fled from France at the Revocation, joined the army of the Prince of Orange in Holland, and came over with him to England as chaplain of one of the French regiments which landed at Torbay in 1688. Another brother, also a pastor, remained in the Cevennes, preaching to the people in the Desert, though at the daily risk of his life, and after about ten years' labour in this vocation, he was apprehended, taken prisoner to Montpellier, and strangled on the Peyrou in the year 1696. The fourth brother was the Laporte whom we have just described in undertaking the leadership of the hunted insurgents remaining in the Upper Cevennes. He had served as a soldier in the King's armies, and at the peace of Ryswick returned to his native village, the year after his elder brother had suffered martyrdom at Montpellier. He settled for a time at Collet-de-Deze, from which his other brother had been expelled, and there he carried on the trade of an ironworker and blacksmith. He was a great, brown, brawny man, of vehement piety, a constant frequenter of the meetings in the Desert, and a mighty psalm-singer--one of those strong, massive, ardent-natured men who so powerfully draw others after them, and in times of revolution exercise a sort of popular royalty amongst the masses. The oppression which had raged so furiously in the district excited his utmost indignation, and when he sought out the despairing insurgents in the mountains, and found that they were contemplating flight, he at once gave utterance to the few burning words we have cited, and fixed their determination to strike at least another blow for the liberty of their country and their religion. The same evening on which Laporte assumed the leadership (about the beginning of August, 1702) he made a descent on three Roman Catholic villages in the neighbourhood of the meeting-place, and obtained possession of a small stock of powder and balls. When it became known that the insurgents were again drawing together, others joined them. Amongst these were Castonet, a forest-ranger of the Aigoal mountain district in the west, who brought with him some twelve recruits from the country near Vebron. Shortly after, there arrived from Vauvert the soldier Catinet, bringing with him twenty more. Next came young Cavalier, from Ribaute, with another band, armed with muskets which they had seized from the prior of St. Martin, with whom they had been deposited. Meanwhile Laporte's nephew, young Roland, was running from village to village in the Vaunage, holding assemblies and rousing the people to come to the help of their distressed brethren in the mountains. Roland was a young man of bright intelligence, gifted with much of the preaching power of his family. His eloquence was of a martial sort, for he had been bred a soldier, and though young, had already fought in many battles. He was everywhere received with open arms in the Vaunage. "My brethren," said he, "the cause of God and the deliverance of Israel is at stake. Follow us to the mountains. No country is better suited for war--we have the hill-tops for camps, gorges for ambuscades, woods to rally in, caves to hide in, and, in case of flight, secret tracts trodden only by the mountain goat. All the people there are your brethren, who will throw open their cabins to you, and share their bread and milk and the flesh of their sheep with you, while the forests will supply you with chestnuts. And then, what is there to fear? Did not God nourish his chosen people with manna in the desert? And does He not renew his miracles day by day? Will not his Spirit descend upon his afflicted children? He consoles us, He strengthens us, He calls us to arms, He will cause his angels to march before us! As for me, I am an old soldier, and will do my duty!"[39] [Footnote 39: Brueys, "Histoire de Fanatisme;" Peyrat, "Histoire des Pasteurs du Désert."] These stirring words evoked an enthusiastic response. Numbers of the people thus addressed by Roland declared themselves ready to follow him at once. But instead of taking with him all who were willing to join the standard of the insurgents, he directed them to enrol and organize themselves, and await his speedy return; selecting for the present only such as were in his opinion likely to make efficient soldiers, and with these he rejoined his uncle in the mountains. The number of the insurgents was thus raised to about a hundred and fifty--a very small body of men, contemptible in point of numbers compared with the overwhelming forces by which they were opposed, but all animated by a determined spirit, and commanded by fearless and indomitable leaders. The band was divided into three brigades of fifty each; Laporte taking the command of the companions of Seguier; the new-comers being divided into two bodies of like number, who elected Roland and Castanet as their respective chiefs. Laporte occupied the last days of August in drilling his troops, and familiarising them with the mountain district which was to be the scene of their operations. While thus engaged, he received an urgent message from the Protestant herdsmen of the hill-country of Vebron, whose cattle, sheep, and goats a band of royalist militia, under Colonel Miral, had captured, and were driving northward towards Florac. Laporte immediately ran to their help, and posted himself to intercept them at the bridge of Tarnon, which they must cross. On the militia coming up, the Camisards fell upon them furiously, on which they took to flight, and the cattle were driven back in triumph to the villages. Laporte then led his victorious troops towards Collet, the village in which his brother had been pastor. The temple in which he ministered was still standing--the only one in the Cevennes that had not been demolished, the Seigneur of the place intending to convert it into a hospital. Collet was at present occupied by a company of fusiliers, commanded by Captain Cabrières. On nearing the place, Laporte wrote to this officer, under an assumed name, intimating that a religious assembly was to be held that night in a certain wood in the neighbourhood. The captain at once marched thither with his men, on which Laporte entered the village, and reopened the temple, which had continued unoccupied since the day on which his brother had gone into exile. All that night Laporte sang psalms, preached, and prayed by turns, solemnly invoking the help of the God of battles in this holy war in which he was engaged for the liberation of his country. Shortly before daybreak, Laporte and his companions retired from the temple, and after setting fire to the Roman Catholic church, and the houses of the consul, the captain, and the curé, he left the village, and proceeded in a northerly direction. That same morning, Captain Poul arrived at the neighbouring valley of St. Germain, for the purpose of superintending the demolition of certain Protestant dwellings, and then he heard of Laporte's midnight expedition. He immediately hastened to Collet, assembled all the troops he could muster, and put himself on the track of the Camisards. After a hot march of about two hours in the direction of Coudouloux, Poul discerned Laporte and his band encamped on a lofty height, from the scarped foot of which a sloping grove of chestnuts descended into the wide grassy plain, known as the "Champ Domergue." The chestnut grove had in ancient times been one of the sacred places of the Druids, who celebrated their mysterious rites in its recesses, while the adjoining mountains were said to have been the honoured haunts of certain of the divinities of ancient Gaul. It was therefore regarded as a sort of sacred place, and this circumstance was probably not without its influence in rendering it one of the most frequent resorts of the hunted Protestants in their midnight assemblies, as well as because it occupied a central position between the villages of St. Frézal, St. Andéol, Dèze, and Violas. Laporte had now come hither with his companions to pray, and they were so engaged when the scouts on the look-out announced the approach of the enemy. Poul halted his men to take breath, while Laporte held a little council of war. What was to be done? Laporte himself was in favour of accepting battle on the spot, while several of his lieutenants advised immediate flight into the mountains. On the other hand, the young and impetuous Cavalier, who was there, supported the opinion of his chief, and urged an immediate attack; and an attack was determined on accordingly. The little band descended from their vantage-ground on the hill, and came down into the chestnut wood, singing the sixty-eighth Psalm--"Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered." The following is the song itself, in the words of Marot. When the Huguenots sang it, each soldier became a lion in courage. "Que Dieu se montre seulement Et l'on verra dans un moment Abandonner la place; Le camp des ennemies épars, Épouvanté de toutes parts, Fuira devant sa face. On verra tout ce camp s'enfuir, Comme l'on voit s'évanouir; Une épaisse fumée; Comme la cire fond au feu, Ainsi des méchants devant Dieu, La force est consumée. L'Éternel est notre recours; Nous obtenons par son secours, Plus d'une déliverance. C'est Lui qui fut notre support, Et qui tient les clefs de la mort, Lui seul en sa puissance. A nous défendre toujours prompt, Il frappe le superbe front De la troupe ennemie; On verra tomber sous ses coups Ceux qui provoquent son courroux Par leur méchante vie." This was the "Marseillaise" of the Camisards, their war-song in many battles, sung by them as a _pas de charge_ to the music of Goudimal. Poul, seeing them approach from under cover of the wood, charged them at once, shouting to his men, "Charge, kill, kill the Barbets!"[40] But "the Barbets," though they were only as one to three of their assailants, bravely held their ground. Those who had muskets kept up a fusillade, whilst a body of scythemen in the centre repulsed Poul, who attacked them with the bayonet. Several of these terrible scythemen were, however, slain, and three were taken prisoners. [Footnote 40: The "Barbets" (or "Water-dogs") was the nickname by which the Vaudois were called, against whom Poul had formerly been employed in the Italian valleys.] Laporte, finding that he could not drive Poul back, retreated slowly into the wood, keeping up a running fire, and reascended the hill, whither Poul durst not follow him. The Royalist leader was satisfied with remaining master of the hard-fought field, on which many of his soldiers lay dead, together with a captain of militia. The Camisard chiefs then separated, Laporte and his band taking a westerly direction. The Royalists, having received considerable reinforcements, hastened from different directions to intercept him, but he slipped through their fingers, and descended to Pont-de-Montvert, from whence he threw himself upon the villages situated near the sources of the western Gardon. At the same time, to distract the attention of the Royalists, the other Camisard leaders descended, the one towards the south, and the other towards the east, disarming the Roman Catholics, carrying off their arms, and spreading consternation wherever they went. Meanwhile, Count Broglie, Captain Poul, Colonel Miral, and the commanders of the soldiers and militia all over the Cevennes, were hunting the Protestants and their families wherever found, pillaging their houses, driving away their cattle, and burning their huts; and it was evident that the war on both sides was fast drifting into one of reprisal and revenge. Brigands, belonging to neither side, organized themselves in bodies, and robbed Protestants and Catholics with equal impartiality. One effect of this state of things was rapidly to increase the numbers of the disaffected. The dwellings of many of the Protestants having been destroyed, such of the homeless fugitives as could bear arms fled into the mountains to join the Camisards, whose numbers were thus augmented, notwithstanding the measures taken for their extermination. Laporte was at last tracked by his indefatigable enemy, Captain Poul, who burned to wipe out the disgrace which he conceived himself to have suffered at Champ-Domergue. Information was conveyed to him that Laporte and his band were in the neighbourhood of Molezon on the western Gardon, and that they intended to hold a field-meeting there on Sunday, the 22nd of October. Poul made his dispositions accordingly. Dividing his force into two bodies, he fell upon the insurgents impetuously from two sides, taking them completely by surprise. They hastily put themselves in order of battle, but their muskets, wet with rain, would not fire, and Laporte hastened with his men to seek the shelter of a cliff near at hand. While in the act of springing from one rock to another, he was seen to stagger and fall. He had been shot dead by a musket bullet, and his career was thus brought to a sudden close. His followers at once fled in all directions. Poul cut off Laporte's head, as well as the heads of the other Camisards who had been killed, and sent them in two baskets to Count Broglie. Next day the heads were exposed on the bridge of Anduze; the day after on the castle wall of St. Hypolite; after which these ghastly trophies of Poul's victory were sent to Montpellier to be permanently exposed on the Peyrou. Such was the end of Laporte, the second leader of the Camisards. Seguier, the first, had been chief for only six days; Laporte, the second, for only about two months. Again Baville supposed the pacification of the Cevennes to be complete. He imagined that Poul, in cutting off Laporte's head, had decapitated the insurrection. But the Camisard ranks had never been so full as now, swelled as they were by the persecutions of the Royalists, who, by demolishing the homes of the peasantry, had in a measure forced them into the arms of the insurgents. Nor were they ever better supplied with leaders, even though Laporte had fallen. No sooner did his death become known, than the "Children of God" held a solemn assembly in the mountains, at which Roland, Castanet, Salomon, Abraham, and young Cavalier were present; and after lamenting the death of their chief, they with one accord elected Laporte's nephew, Roland, as his successor. * * * * * A few words as to the associates of Roland, whose family and origin have already been described. André Castanet of Massavaque, in the Upper Cevennes, had been a goatherd in his youth, after which he worked at his father's trade of a wool-carder. An avowed Huguenot, he was, shortly after the peace of Ryswick, hunted out of the country because of his attending the meetings in the Desert; but in 1700 he returned to preach and to prophesy, acting also as a forest-ranger in the Aigoal Mountains. Of all the chiefs he was the greatest controversialist, and in his capacity of preacher he distinguished himself from his companions by wearing a wig. There must have been something comical in his appearance, for Brueys describes him as a little, squat, bandy-legged man, presenting "the figure of a little bear." But it was an enemy who drew the picture. Next there was Salomon Conderc, also a wool-carder, a native of the hamlet of Mazelrode, south of the mountain of Bougès. For twenty years the Condercs, father and son, had been zealous worshippers in the Desert--Salomon having acted by turns as Bible-reader, precentor, preacher, and prophet. We have already referred to the gift of prophesying. All the leaders of the Camisards were prophets. Elie Marion, in his "Théâtre Sacré de Cevennes," thus describes the influence of the prophets on the Camisard War:-- "We were without strength and without counsel," says he; "but our inspirations were our succour and our support. They elected our leaders, and conducted them; they were our military discipline. It was they who raised us, even weakness itself, to put a strong bridle upon an army of more than twenty thousand picked soldiers. It was they who banished sorrow from our hearts in the midst of the greatest peril, as well as in the deserts and the mountain fastnesses, when cold and famine oppressed us. Our heaviest crosses were but lightsome burdens, for this intimate communion that God allowed us to have with Him bore up and consoled us; it was our safety and our happiness." Many of the Condercs had suffered for their faith. The archpriest Chayla had persecuted them grievously. One of their sisters was seized by the soldiery and carried off to be immured in a convent at Mende, but was rescued on the way by Salomon and his brother Jacques. Of the two, Salomon, though deformed, had the greatest gift in prophesying, and hence the choice of him as a leader. Abraham Mazel belonged to the same hamlet as Conderc. They were both of the same age--about twenty-five--of the same trade, and they were as inseparable as brothers. They had both been engaged with Seguier's band in the midnight attack on Pont-de-Montvert, and were alike committed to the desperate enterprise they had taken in hand. The tribe of Mazel abounds in the Cevennes, and they had already given many martyrs to the cause. Some emigrated to America, some were sent to the galleys; Oliver Mazel, the preacher, was hanged at Montpellier in 1690, Jacques Mazel was a refugee in London in 1701, and in all the combats of the Cevennes there were Mazels leading as well as following. Nicholas Joany, of Genouillac, was an old soldier, who had seen much service, having been for some time quartermaster of the regiment of Orleans. Among other veterans who served with the Camisards, were Espérandieu and Rastelet, two old sub-officers, and Catinat and Ravenel, two thorough soldiers. Of these Catinat achieved the greatest notoriety. His proper name was Mauriel--Abdias Mauriel; but having served as a dragoon under Marshal Catinat in Italy, he conceived such an admiration for that general, and was so constantly eulogizing him, that his comrades gave him the nickname of Catinat, which he continued to bear all through the Camisard war. But the most distinguished of all the Camisard chiefs, next to Roland, was the youthful John Cavalier, peasant boy, baker's apprentice, and eventually insurgent leader, who, after baffling and repeatedly defeating the armies of Louis XIV., ended his remarkable career as governor of Jersey and major-general in the British service. Cavalier was a native of Ribaute, a village on the Gardon, a little below Anduze. His parents were persons in humble circumstances, as may be inferred from the fact that when John was of sufficient age he was sent into the mountains to herd cattle, and when a little older he was placed apprentice to a baker at Anduze. His father, though a Protestant at heart, to avoid persecution, pretended to be converted to Romanism, and attended Mass. But his mother, a fervent Calvinist, refused to conform, and diligently trained her sons in her own views. She was a regular attender of meetings in the Desert, to which she also took her children. Cavalier relates that on one occasion, when a very little fellow, he went with her to an assembly which was conducted by Claude Brousson; and when he afterwards heard that many of the people had been apprehended for attending it, of whom some were hanged and others sent to the galleys, the account so shocked him that he felt he would then have avenged them if he had possessed the power. As the boy grew up, and witnessed the increasing cruelty with which conformity was enforced, he determined to quit the country; and, accompanied by twelve other young men, he succeeded in reaching Geneva after a toilsome journey of eight days. He had not been at Geneva more than two months, when--heart-sore, solitary, his eyes constantly turned towards his dear Cevennes--he accidentally heard that his father and mother had been thrown into prison because of his flight--his father at Carcassone, and his mother in the dreadful tower of Constance, near Aiguesmortes, one of the most notorious prisons of the Huguenots. He at once determined to return, in the hope of being able to get them set at liberty. On his reaching Ribaute, to his surprise he found them already released, on condition of attending Mass. As his presence in his father's house might only serve to bring fresh trouble upon them--he himself having no intention of conforming--he went up for refuge into the mountains of the Cevennes. The young Cavalier was present at the midnight meeting on the Bougès, at which it was determined to slay the archpriest Chayla. He implored leave to accompany the band; but he was declared to be too young for such an enterprise, being a boy of only sixteen, so he was left behind with his friends. Being virtually an outlaw, Cavalier afterwards joined the band of Laporte, under whom he served as lieutenant during his short career. At his death the insurrection assumed larger proportions, and recruits flocked apace to the standard of Roland, Laporte's successor. Harvest-work over, the youths of the Lower Cevennes hastened to join him, armed only with bills and hatchets. The people of the Vaunage more than fulfilled their promise to Roland, and sent him five hundred men. Cavalier also brought with him from Ribaute a further number of recruits, and by the end of autumn the Camisards under arms, such as they were, amounted to over a thousand men. Roland, unable to provide quarters or commissariat for so large a number, divided them into five bodies, and sent them into their respective cantonments (so to speak) for the winter. Roland himself occupied the district known as the Lower Cevennes, comprising the Gardonnenque and the mountain district situated between the rivers Vidourle and the western Gardon. That part of the Upper Cevennes, which extends between the Anduze branch of the Gardon and the river Tarn, was in like manner occupied by a force commanded by Abraham Hazel and Solomon Conderc, while Andrew Castanet led the people of the western Cevennes, comprising the mountain region of the Aigoal and the Esperou, near the sources of the Gardon d'Anduze and the Tarnon. The rugged mountain district of the Lozère, in which the Tarn, the Ceze, and the Alais branch of the Gardon have their origin, was placed under the command of Joany. And, finally, the more open country towards the south, extending from Anduze to the sea-coast, including the districts around Alais, Uzes, Nismes, as well as the populous valley of the Vaunage, was placed under the direction of young Cavalier, though he had scarcely yet completed his seventeenth year. These chiefs were all elected by their followers, who chose them, not because of any military ability they might possess, but entirely because of their "gifts" as preachers and "prophets." Though Roland and Joany had been soldiers, they were also preachers, as were Castanet, Abraham, and Salomon; and young Cavalier had already given remarkable indications of the prophetic gift. Hence, when it became the duty of the band to which he belonged to select a chief, they passed over the old soldiers, Espérandieu, Raslet, Catinat, and Ravenel, and pitched upon the young baker lad of Ribaute, not because he could fight, but because he could preach; and the old soldiers cheerfully submitted themselves to his leadership. The portrait of this remarkable Camisard chief represents him as a little handsome youth, fair and ruddy complexioned, with lively and prominent blue eyes, and a large head, from whence his long fair hair hung floating over his shoulders. His companions recognised in him a supposed striking resemblance to the scriptural portrait of David, the famous shepherd of Israel. The Camisard legions, spread as they now were over the entire Cevennes, and embracing Lower Languedoc as far as the sea, were for the most part occupied during the winter of 1702-3 in organizing themselves, obtaining arms, and increasing their forces. The respective districts which they occupied were so many recruiting-grounds, and by the end of the season they had enrolled nearly three thousand men. They were still, however, very badly armed. Their weapons included fowling-pieces, old matchlocks, muskets taken from the militia, pistols, sabres, scythes, hatchets, billhooks, and even ploughshares. They were very short of powder, and what they had was mostly bought surreptitiously from the King's soldiers, or by messengers sent for the purpose to Nismes and Avignon. But Roland, finding that such sources of supply could not be depended upon, resolved to manufacture his own powder. A commissariat was also established, and the most spacious caves in the most sequestered places were sought out and converted into magazines, hospitals, granaries, cellars, arsenals, and powder factories. Thus Mialet, with its extensive caves, was the head-quarters of Roland; Bouquet and the caves at Euzet, of Cavalier; Cassagnacs and the caves at Magistavols, of Salomon; and so on with the others. Each chief had his respective canton, his granary, his magazine, and his arsenal. To each retreat was attached a special body of tradesmen--millers, bakers, shoemakers, tailors, armourers, and other mechanics; and each had its special guards and sentinels. We have already referred to the peculiar geological features of the Cevennes, and to the limestone strata which embraces the whole granitic platform of the southern border almost like a frame. As is almost invariably the case in such formations, large caves, occasioned by the constant dripping of water, are of frequent occurrence; and those of the Cevennes, which are in many places of great extent, constituted a peculiar feature in the Camisard insurrection. There is one of such caves in the neighbourhood of the Protestant town of Ganges, on the river Herault, which often served as a refuge for the Huguenots, though it is now scarcely penetrable because of the heavy falls of stone from the roof. This cavern has two entrances, one from the river Herault, the other from the Mendesse, and it extends under the entire mountain, which separates the two rivers. It is still known as the "Camisards' Grotto." There are numerous others of a like character all over the district; but as those of Mialet were of special importance--Mialet, "the Metropolis of the Insurrection," being the head-quarters of Roland--it will be sufficient if we briefly describe a visit paid to them in the month of June, 1870. * * * * * The town of Anduze is the little capital of the Gardonnenque, a district which has always been exclusively Protestant. Even at the present day, of the 5,200 inhabitants of Anduze, 4,600 belong to that faith; and these include the principal proprietors, cultivators, and manufacturers of the town and neighbourhood. During the wars of religion, Anduze was one of the Huguenot strongholds. After the death of Henry IV. the district continued to be held by the Duc de Rohan, the ruins of whose castle are still to be seen on the summit of a pyramidal hill on the north of the town. Anduze is jammed in between the precipitous mountain of St. Julien, which rises behind it, and the river Gardon, along which a modern quay-wall extends, forming a pleasant promenade as well as a barrier against the furious torrents which rush down from the mountains in winter. A little above the town, the river passes through a rocky gorge formed by the rugged grey cliffs of Peyremale on the one bank and St. Julien on the other. The bare precipitous rocks rise up on either side like two cyclopean towers, flanking the gateway of the Cevennes. The gorge is so narrow at bottom that there is room only for the river running in its rocky bed below, and a roadway along either bank--that on the eastern side having been partly formed by blasting out the cliff which overhangs it. After crossing the five-arched bridge which spans the Gardon, the road proceeds along the eastern bank, up the valley towards Mialet. It being market-day at Anduze, well-clad peasants were flocking into the town, some in their little pony-carts, others with their baskets or bundles of produce, and each had his "Bon jour, messieurs!" for us as we passed. So long as the road held along the bottom of the valley, passing through the scattered hamlets and villages north of the town, our little springless cart got along cleverly enough. But after we had entered the narrower valley higher up, and the cultivated ground became confined to a little strip along either bank, then the mountain barriers seemed to rise in front of us and on all sides, and the road became winding, steep, and difficult. A few miles up the valley, the little hamlet of Massoubeyran, consisting of a group of peasant cottages--one of which was the birthplace of Roland, the Camisard chief--was seen on a hill-side to the right; and about two miles further on, at a bend of the road, we came in sight of the village of Mialet, with its whitewashed, flat-roofed cottages--forming a little group of peasants' houses lying in the hollow of the hills. The principal building in it is the Protestant temple, which continues to be frequented by the inhabitants; the _Annuaire Protestant_ for 1868-70, stating the Protestant population of the district to be 1,325. Strange to say, the present pastor, M. Seguier, bears the name of the first leader of the Camisard insurrection; and one of the leading members of the consistory, M. Laporte, is a lineal descendant of the second and third leaders. From its secluded and secure position among the hills, as well as because of its proximity to the great Temelac road constructed by Baville, which passed from Anduze by St. Jean-de-Gard into the Upper Cevennes, Mialet was well situated as the head-quarters of the Camisard chief. But it was principally because of the numerous limestone caves abounding in the locality, which afforded a ready hiding-place for the inhabitants in the event of the enemies' approach, as well as because they were capable of being adapted for the purpose of magazines, stores, and hospitals, that Mialet became of so much importance as the citadel of the insurgents. One of such caverns or grottoes is still to be seen about a mile below Mialet, of extraordinary magnitude. It extends under the hill which rises up on the right-hand side of the road, and is entered from behind, nearly at the summit. The entrance is narrow and difficult, but the interior is large and spacious, widening out in some places into dome-shaped chambers, with stalactites hanging from the roof. The whole extent of this cavern cannot be much less than a quarter of a mile, judging from the time it took to explore it and to return from the furthest point in the interior to the entrance. The existence of this place had been forgotten until a few years ago, when it was rediscovered by a man of Anduze, who succeeded in entering it, but, being unable to find his way out, he remained there for three days without food, until the alarm was given and his friends came to his rescue and delivered him. Immediately behind the village of Mialet, under the side of the hill, is another large cavern, with other grottoes branching out of it, capable, on an emergency, of accommodating the whole population. This was used by Roland as his principal magazine. But perhaps the most interesting of these caves is the one used as a hospital for the sick and wounded. It is situated about a mile above Mialet, in a limestone cliff almost overhanging the river. The approach to it is steep and difficult, up a footpath cut in the face of the rock. At length a little platform is reached, about a hundred feet above the level of the river, behind which is a low wall extending across the entrance to the cavern. This wall is pierced with two openings, intended for two culverins, one of which commanded the road leading down the pass, and the other the road up the valley from the direction of the village. The outer vault is large and roomy, and extends back into a lofty dome-shaped cavern about forty feet high, behind which a long tortuous vault extends for several hundred feet. The place is quite dry, and sufficiently spacious to accommodate a large number of persons; and there can be no doubt as to the uses to which it was applied during the wars of the Cevennes. The person who guided us to the cave was an ordinary working man of the village--apparently a blacksmith--a well-informed, intelligent person--who left his smithy, opposite the Protestant temple at which our pony-cart drew up, to show us over the place; and he took pride in relating the traditions which continue to be handed down from father to son relating to the great Camisard war of the Cevennes. CHAPTER VII. EXPLOITS OF CAVALIER. The country round Nismes, which was the scene of so many contests between the Royalists and the Camisard insurgents at the beginning of last century, presents nearly the same aspect as it did then, excepting that it is traversed by railways in several directions. The railway to Montpellier on the west, crosses the fertile valley of the Vaunage, "the little Canaan," still rich in vineyards as of old. That to Alais on the north, proceeds for the most part along the valley of the Gardon, the names of the successive stations reminding the passing traveller of the embittered contests of which they were the scenes in former times: Nozières, Boucoiran, Ners, Vezenobres, and Alais itself, now a considerable manufacturing town, and the centre of an important coal-mining district. The country in the neighbourhood of Nismes is by no means picturesque. Though undulating, it is barren, arid, and stony. The view from the Tour Magne, which is very extensive, is over an apparently skeleton landscape, the bare rocks rising on all sides without any covering of verdure. In summer the grass is parched and brown. There are few trees visible; and these mostly mulberry, which, when, cropped, have a blasted look. Yet, wherever soil exists, in the bottoms, the land is very productive, yielding olives, grapes, and chestnuts in great abundance. As we ascend the valley of the Gardon, the country becomes more undulating and better wooded. The villages and farmhouses have all an old-fashioned look; not a modern villa is to be seen. We alight from the train at the Ners station--Ners, where Cavalier drove Montrevel's army across the river, and near which, at the village of Martinargues, he completely defeated the Royalists under Lajonquière. We went to see the scene of the battle, some three miles to the south-east, passing through a well-tilled country, with the peasants busily at work in the fields. From the high ground behind Ners a fine view is obtained of the valley of the Gardon, overlooking the junction of its two branches descending by Alais and Anduze, the mountains of the Cevennes rising up in the distance. To the left is the fertile valley of Beaurivage, celebrated in the Pastorals of Florian, who was a native of the district. Descending the hill towards Ners, we were overtaken by an aged peasant of the village, with a scythe over his shoulder, returning from his morning's work. There was the usual polite greeting and exchange of salutations--for the French peasant is by nature polite--and a ready opening was afforded for conversation. It turned out that the old man had been a soldier of the first empire, and fought under Soult in the desperate battle of Toulouse in 1814. He was now nearly eighty, but was still able to do a fair day's work in the fields. Inviting us to enter his dwelling and partake of his hospitality, he went down to his cellar and fetched therefrom a jug of light sparkling wine, of which we partook. In answer to an inquiry whether there were any Protestants in the neighbourhood, the old man replied that Ners was "all Protestant." His grandson, however, who was present, qualified this sweeping statement by the remark, _sotto voce_, that many of them were "nothing." The conversation then turned upon the subject of Cavalier and his exploits, when our entertainer launched out into a description of the battle of Martinargues, in which the Royalists had been "toutes abattus." Like most of the Protestant peasantry of the Cevennes, he displayed a very familiar acquaintance with the events of the civil war, and spoke with enthusiasm and honest pride of the achievements of the Camisards. * * * * * We have in previous chapters described the outbreak of the insurrection and its spread throughout the Upper Cevennes; and we have now rapidly to note its growth and progress to its culmination and fall. While the Camisards were secretly organizing their forces under cover of the woods and caves of the mountain districts, the governor of Languedoc was indulging in the hope that the insurrection had expired with the death of Laporte and the dispersion of his band. But, to his immense surprise, the whole country was suddenly covered with insurgents, who seemed as if to spring from the earth in all quarters simultaneously. Messengers brought him intelligence at the same time of risings in the mountains of the Lozère and the Aigoal, in the neighbourhoods of Anduze and Alais, and even in the open country about Nismes and Calvisson, down almost to the sea-coast. Wherever the churches had been used as garrisons and depositories of arms, they were attacked, stormed, and burnt. Cavalier says he never meddled with any church which had not been thus converted into a "den of thieves;" but the other leaders were less scrupulous. Salomon and Abraham destroyed all the establishments and insignia of their enemies on which they could lay hands--crosses, churches, and presbyteries. The curé of Saint-Germain said of Castanet in the Aigoal that he was "like a raging torrent." Roland and Joany ran from village to village ransacking dwellings, châteaux, churches, and collecting arms. Knowing every foot of the country, they rapidly passed by mountain tracks from one village to another; suddenly appearing in the least-expected quarters, while the troops in pursuit of them had passed in other directions. Cavalier had even the hardihood to descend upon the low country, and to ransack the Catholic villages in the neighbourhood of Nismes. By turns he fought, preached, and sacked churches. About the middle of November, 1702, he preached at Aiguevives, a village not far from Calvisson, in the Vaunage. Count Broglie, commander of the royal troops, hastened from Nismes to intercept him. But pursuing Cavalier was like pursuing a shadow; he had already made his escape into the mountains. Broglie assembled the inhabitants of the village in the church, and demanded to be informed who had been present with the Camisard preacher. "All!" was the reply: "we are all guilty." He seized the principal persons of the place and sent them to Baville. Four were hanged, twelve were sent to the galleys, many more were flogged, and a heavy fine was levied on the entire village. Meanwhile, Cavalier had joined Roland near Mialet, and again descended upon the low country, marching through the villages along the valley of the Vidourle, carrying off arms and devastating churches. Broglie sent two strong bodies of troops to intercept them; but the light-footed insurgents had already crossed the Gardon. A few days later (December 5th), they were lying concealed in the forest of Vaquières, in the neighbourhood of Cavalier's head-quarters at Euzet. Their retreat having been discovered, a strong force of soldiers and militia was directed upon them, under the command of the Chevalier Montarnaud (who, being a new convert, wished to show his zeal), and Captain Bimard of the Nismes militia. They took with them a herdsman of the neighbourhood for their guide, not knowing that he was a confederate of the Camisards. Leading the Royalists into the wood, he guided them along a narrow ravine, and hearing no sound of the insurgents, it was supposed that they were lying asleep in their camp. Suddenly three sentinels on the outlook fired off their pieces. At this signal Ravenel posted himself at the outlet of the defile, and Cavalier and Catinat along its two sides. Raising their war-song, the sixty-eighth psalm the Camisards furiously charged the enemy. Captain Bimard fell at the first fire. Montarnaud turned and fled with such of the soldiers and militia as could follow him; and not many of them succeeded in making their escape from the wood. "After which complete victory," says Cavalier, "we returned to the field of battle to give our hearty thanks to Almighty God for his extraordinary assistance, and afterwards stripped the corpses of the enemy, and secured their arms. We found a purse of one hundred pistoles in Captain Bimard's pocket, which was very acceptable, for we stood in great need thereof, and expended part of it in buying hats, shoes, and stockings for those who wanted them, and with the remainder bought six great mule loads of brandy, for our winter's supply, from a merchant who was sending it to be sold at Anduze market."[41] [Footnote 41: "Memoirs of the Wars of the Cevennes," p. 74.] On the Sunday following, Cavalier held an assembly for public worship near Monteze on the Gardon, at which about five hundred persons were present. The governor of Alais, being informed of the meeting, resolved to put it down with a strong hand; and he set out for the purpose at the head of a force of about six hundred horse and foot. A mule accompanied him, laden with ropes with which to bind or hang the rebels. Cavalier had timely information, from scouts posted on the adjoining hills, of the approach of the governor's force, and though the number of fighting men in the Camisard assembly was comparatively small, they resolved to defend themselves. Sending away the women and others not bearing arms, Cavalier posted his little band behind an old entrenchment on the road along which the governor was approaching, and awaited his attack. The horsemen came on at the charge; but the Camisards, firing over the top of the entrenchment, emptied more than a dozen saddles, and then leaping forward, saluted them with a general discharge. At this, the horsemen turned and fled, galloping through the foot coming up behind them, and throwing them into complete disorder. The Camisards pulled off their coats, in order the better to pursue the fugitives. The Royalists were in full flight, when they were met by a reinforcement of two hundred men of Marsilly's regiment of foot. But these, too, were suddenly seized by the panic, and turned and fled with the rest, the Camisards pursuing them for nearly an hour, in the course of which they slew more than a hundred of the enemy. Besides the soldiers' clothes, of which they stripped the dead, the Camisards made prize of two loads of ammunition and a large quantity of arms, which they were very much in need of, and also of the ropes with which the governor had intended to hang them. Emboldened by these successes, Cavalier determined on making an attack on the strong castle of Servas, occupying a steep height on the east of the forest of Bouquet. Cavalier detested the governor and garrison of this place because they too closely watched his movements, and overlooked his head-quarters, which were in the adjoining forest; and they had, besides, distinguished themselves by the ferocity with which they attacked and dispersed recent assemblies in the Desert. Cavalier was, however, without the means of directly assaulting the place, and he waited for an opportunity of entering it, if possible, by stratagem. While passing along the road between Alais and Lussan one day, he met a detachment of about forty men of the royal army, whom he at once attacked, killing a number of them, and putting the rest to flight. Among the slain was the commanding officer of the party, in whose pockets was found an order signed by Count Broglie directing all town-majors and consuls to lodge him and his men along their line of march. Cavalier at once determined on making use of this order as a key to open the gates of the castle of Servas. He had twelve of his men dressed up in the clothes of the soldiers who had fallen, and six others in their ordinary Camisard dress bound with ropes as prisoners of war. Cavalier himself donned the uniform of the fallen officer; and thus disguised and well armed, the party moved up the steep ascent to the castle. On reaching the outer gate Cavalier presented the order of Count Broglie, and requested admittance for the purpose of keeping his pretended Camisard prisoners in safe custody for the night. He was at once admitted with his party. The governor showed him round the ramparts, pointing out the strength of the place, and boasting of the punishments he had inflicted on the rebels. At supper Cavalier's soldiers took care to drop into the room, one by one, apparently for orders, and suddenly, on a signal being given, the governor and his attendants were seized and bound. At the same time the guard outside was attacked and overpowered. The outer gates were opened, the Camisards rushed in, the castle was taken, and the garrison put to the sword. Cavalier and his band carried off with them to their magazine at Bouquet all the arms, ammunition, and provisions they could find, and before leaving they set fire to the castle. There must have been a large store of gunpowder in the vaults of the place besides what the Camisards carried away, for they had scarcely proceeded a mile on their return journey when a tremendous explosion took place, shaking the ground like an earthquake, and turning back, they saw the battlements of the detested Château Servas hurled into the air. Shortly after, Roland repeated at Sauvé, a little fortified town hung along the side of a rocky hill a few miles to the south of Anduze, the stratagem which Cavalier had employed at Servas, and with like success. He disarmed the inhabitants, and carried off the arms and provisions in the place: and though he released the commandant and the soldiers whom he had taken prisoners, he shot a persecuting priest and a Capuchin monk, and destroyed all the insignia of Popery in Sauvé. These terrible measures caused a new stampede of the clergy all over the Cevennes. The nobles and gentry also left their châteaux, the merchants their shops and warehouses, and took refuge in the fortified towns. Even the bishops of Mende, Uzes, and Alais barricaded and fortified their episcopal palaces, and organized a system of defence as if the hordes of Attila had been at their gates. With each fresh success the Camisards increased in daring, and every day the insurrection became more threatening and formidable. It already embraced the whole mountain district of the Cevennes, as well as a considerable extent of the low country between Nismes and Montpellier. The Camisard troops, headed by their chiefs, marched through the villages with drums beating in open day, and were quartered by billet on the inhabitants in like manner as the royal regiments. Roland levied imposts and even tithes throughout his district, and compelled the farmers, at the peril of their lives, to bring their stores of victual to the "Camp of the Eternal." In the midst of all, they held their meetings in the Desert, at which the chiefs preached, baptized, and administered the sacrament to their flocks. The constituted authorities seemed paralyzed by the extent of the insurrection, and the suddenness with which it spread. The governor of the province had so repeatedly reported to his royal master the pacification of Languedoc, that when this last and worst outbreak occurred he was ashamed to announce it. The peace at Ryswick had set at liberty a large force of soldiers, who had now no other occupation than to "convert" the Protestants and force them to attend Mass. About five hundred thousand men were now under arms for this purpose--occupied as a sort of police force, very much to their own degradation as soldiers. A large body of this otherwise unoccupied army had been placed under the direction of Baville for the purpose of suppressing the rebellion--an army of veteran horse and foot, whose valour had been tried in many hard-fought battles. Surely it was not to be said that this immense force could be baffled and defied by a few thousand peasants, cowherds, and wool-carders, fighting for what they ridiculously called their "rights of conscience!" Baville could not believe it; and he accordingly determined again to apply himself more vigorously than ever to the suppression of the insurrection, by means of the ample forces placed at his disposal. Again the troops were launched against the insurgents, and again and again they were baffled in their attempts to overtake and crush them. The soldiers became worn out by forced marches, in running from one place to another to disperse assemblies in the Desert. They were distracted by the number of places in which the rebels made their appearance. Cavalier ran from town to town, making his attacks sometimes late at night, sometimes in the early morning; but before the troops could come up he had done all the mischief he intended, and was perhaps fifty miles distant on another expedition. If the Royalists divided themselves into small bodies, they were in danger of being overpowered; and if they kept together in large bodies, they moved about with difficulty, and could not overtake the insurgents, "by reason," said Cavalier, "we could go further in three hours than they could in a whole day; regular troops not being used to march through woods and mountains as we did." At length the truth could not be concealed any longer. The States of Languedoc were summoned to meet at Montpellier, and there the desperate state of affairs was fully revealed. The bishops of the principal dioceses could with difficulty attend the meeting, and were only enabled to do so by the assistance of strong detachments of soldiers--the Camisards being masters of the principal roads. They filled the assembly with their lamentations, and declared that they had been betrayed by the men in power. At their urgent solicitation, thirty-two more companies of Catholic fusiliers and another regiment of dragoons were ordered to be immediately embodied in the district. The governor also called to his aid an additional regiment of dragoons from Rouergue; a battalion of marines from the ships-of-war lying at Marseilles and Toulon; a body of Miguelets from Roussillon, accustomed to mountain warfare; together with a large body of Irish officers and soldiers, part of the Irish Brigade. * * * * * And how did it happen that the self-exiled Irish patriots were now in the Cevennes, helping the army of Louis XIV. to massacre the Camisards by way of teaching them a better religion? It happened thus: The banishment of the Huguenots from France, and their appearance under William III. in Ireland to fight at the Boyne and Augrhim, contributed to send the Irish Brigade over to France--though it must be confessed that the Irish Brigade fought much better for Louis XIV. than they had ever done for Ireland. After the surrender of Limerick in 1691, the principal number of the Irish followers of James II. declared their intention of abandoning Ireland and serving their sovereign's ally the King of France. The Irish historians allege that the number of the brigade at first amounted to nearly thirty thousand men.[42] Though, they fought bravely for France, and conducted themselves valiantly in many of her great battles, they were unfortunately put forward to do a great deal of dirty work for Louis XIV. One of the first campaigns they were engaged in was in Savoy, under Catinat, in repressing the Vaudois or Barbets. [Footnote 42: O'Callaghan's "History of the Irish Brigades in the service of France," p. 29.] The Vaudois peasantry were for the most part unarmed, and their only crime was their religion. The regiments of Viscount Clare and Viscount Dillon, principally distinguished themselves against the Vaudois. The war was one of extermination, in which many of the Barbets were killed. Mr. O'Connor states that between the number of the Alpine mountaineers cut off, and the extent of devastation and pillage committed amongst them by the Irish, Catinat's commission was executed with terrible fidelity; the memory of which "has rendered their name and nation odious to the Vaudois. Six generations," he remarks, "have since passed, away, but neither time nor subsequent calamities have obliterated the impression made by the waste and desolation of this military incursion."[43] Because of the outrages and destruction committed upon the women and children in the valleys in the absence of their natural defenders, the Vaudois still speak of the Irish as "the foreign assassins." [Footnote 43: Ibid., p. 180.] The Brigade having thus faithfully served Louis XIV. in Piedmont, were now occupied in the same work in the Cevennes. The historian of the Brigade does not particularise the battles in which they were engaged with the Camisards, but merely announces that "on several occasions, the Irish appear to have distinguished themselves, especially their officers." * * * * * When Cavalier heard of the vast additional forces about to be thrown into the Cevennes, he sought to effect a diversion by shifting the theatre of war. Marching down towards the low country with about two hundred men, he went from village to village in the Vaunage, holding assemblies of the people. His whereabouts soon became known to the Royalists, and Captain Bonnafoux, of the Calvisson militia, hearing that Cavalier was preaching one day at the village of St. Comes, hastened to capture him. Bonnafoux had already distinguished himself in the preceding year, by sabring two assemblies surprised by him at Vauvert and Caudiac, and his intention now was to serve Cavalier and his followers in like manner. Galloping up to the place of meeting, the Captain was challenged by the Camisard sentinel; and his answer was to shoot the man dead with his pistol. The report alarmed the meeting, then occupied in prayer; but rising from their knees, they at once formed in line and advanced to meet the foe, who turned and fled at their first discharge. Cavalier next went southward to Caudiac, where he waited for an opportunity of surprising Aimargues, and putting to the sword the militia, who had long been the scourge of the Protestants in that quarter. He entered the latter town on a fair day, and walked about amongst the people; but, finding that his intention was known, and that his enterprise was not likely to succeed, he turned aside and resolved upon another course. But first it was necessary that his troops should be supplied with powder and ammunition, of which they had run short. So, disguising himself as a merchant, and mounted on a horse with capacious saddlebags, he rode off to Nismes, close at hand, to buy gunpowder. He left his men in charge of his two lieutenants, Ravanel and Catinat, who prophesied to him that during his absence they would fight a battle and win a victory. Count Broglie had been promptly informed by the defeated Captain Bonnafoux that the Camisards were in the neighbourhood; and he set out in pursuit of them with a strong body of horse and foot. After several days' search amongst the vineyards near Nismes and the heathery hills about Milhaud, Broglie learnt that the Camisards were to be found at Caudiac. But when he reached that place he found the insurgents had already left, and taken a northerly direction. Broglie followed their track, and on the following day came up with them at a place called Mas de Gaffarel, in the Val de Bane, about three miles west of Nismes, The Royalists consisted of two hundred militia, commanded by the Count and his son, and two troops of dragoons, under Captain la Dourville and the redoubtable Captain Poul. The Camisards had only time to utter a short prayer, and to rise from their knees and advance singing their battle psalm, when Poul and his dragoons were upon them. Their charge was so furious that Ravanel and his men were at first thrown into disorder; but rallying, and bravely fighting, they held their ground. Captain Poul was brought to the ground by a stone hurled from a sling by a young Vauvert miller named Samuelet; Count Broglie himself was wounded by a musket-ball, and many of his dragoons lay stretched on the field. Catinat observing the fall of Poul, rushed forward, cut off his head with a sweep of his sabre, and mounting Poul's horse, almost alone chased the Royalists, now flying in all directions. Broglie did not draw breath until he had reached the secure shelter of the castle of Bernis. While these events were in progress, Cavalier was occupied on his mission of buying gunpowder in Nismes. He was passing along the Esplanade--then, as now, a beautiful promenade--when he observed from the excitement of the people, running about hither and thither, that something alarming had occurred. On making inquiry he was told that "the Barbets" were in the immediate neighbourhood, and it was even feared they would enter and sack the city. Shortly after, a trooper was observed galloping towards them at full speed along the Montpellier Road, without arms or helmet. He was almost out of breath when he came up, and could only exclaim that "All is lost! Count Broglie and Captain Poul are killed, and the Barbets are pursuing the remainder of the royal troops into the city!" The gates were at once ordered to be shut and barricaded; the _générale_ was beaten; the troops and militia were mustered; the priests ran about in the streets crying, "We are undone!" Some of the Roman Catholics even took shelter in the houses of the Protestants, calling upon them to save their lives. But the night passed, and with it their alarm, for the Camisards did not make their appearance. Next morning a message arrived from Count Broglie, shut up in the castle of Bernis, ordering the garrison to come to his relief. In the meantime, Cavalier, with the assistance of his friends in Nismes, had obtained the articles of which he was in need, and prepared to set out on his return journey. The governor and his detachment were issuing from the western gate as he left, and he accompanied them part of the way, still disguised as a merchant, and mounted on his horse, with a large portmanteau behind him, and saddlebags on either side full of gunpowder and ammunition. The Camisard chief mixed with the men, talking with them freely about the Barbets and their doings. When he came to the St. Hypolite road he turned aside; but they warned him that if he went that way he would certainly fall into the hands of the Barbets, and lose not only his horse and his merchandise, but his life. Cavalier thanked them for their advice, but said he was not afraid of the Barbets, and proceeded on his way, shortly rejoining his troop at the appointed rendez-vous. The Camisards crossed the Gardon by the bridge of St. Nicholas, and were proceeding towards their head-quarters at Bouquet, up the left bank of the river, when an attempt was made by the Chevalier de St. Chaptes, at the head of the militia of the district, to cut off their retreat. But Ravanel charged them with such fury as to drive the greater part into the Gardon, then swollen by a flood, and those who did not escape by swimming were either killed or drowned. Thus the insurrection seemed to grow, notwithstanding all the measures taken to repress it. The number of soldiers stationed in the province was from time to time increased; they were scattered in detachments all over the country, and the Camisards took care to give them but few opportunities of exhibiting their force, and then only when at a comparative disadvantage. The Royalists, at their wits' end, considered what was next to be done in order to the pacification of the country. The simple remedy, they knew, was to allow these poor simple people to worship in their own way without molestation. Grant them this privilege, and they were at any moment ready to lay down their arms, and resume their ordinary peaceful pursuits. But this was precisely what the King would not allow. To do so would be an admission of royal fallibility which neither he nor his advisers were prepared to make. To enforce conformity on his subjects, Louis XIV. had already driven some half-a-million of the best of them into exile, besides the thousands who had perished on gibbets, in dungeons, or at the galleys. And was he now to confess, by granting liberty of worship to these neatherds, carders, and peasants, that the rigorous policy of "the Most Christian King" had been an entire mistake? It was resolved, therefore, that no such liberty should be granted, and that these peasants, like the rest of the King's subjects, were to be forced, at the sword's point if necessary, to worship God in _his_ way, and not in theirs. Viewed in this light, the whole proceeding would appear to be a ludicrous absurdity, but for its revolting impiety and the abominable cruelties with which it was accompanied. Yet the Royalists even blamed themselves for the mercy which they had hitherto shown to the Protestant peasantry; and the more virulent amongst them urged that the whole of the remaining population that would not at once conform to the Church of Rome, should forthwith be put to the sword! Brigadier Julien, an apostate Protestant, who had served under William of Orange in Ireland, and afterwards under the Duke of Savoy in Piedmont, disappointed with the slowness of his promotion, had taken service under Louis XIV., and was now employed as a partizan chief in the suppression of his former co-religionists in Languedoc. Like all renegades, he was a bitter and furious persecutor; and in the councils of Baville his voice was always raised for the extremest measures. He would utterly exterminate the insurgents, and, if necessary, reduce the country to a desert. "It is not enough," said he, "merely to kill those bearing arms; the villages which supply the combatants, and which give them shelter and sustenance, ought to be burnt down: thus only can the insurrection be suppressed." In a military point of view Julien was probably right; but the savage advice startled even Baville. "Nothing can be easier," said he, "than to destroy the towns and villages; but this would be to make a desert of one of the finest and most productive districts of Languedoc." Yet Baville himself eventually adopted the very policy which he now condemned. In the first place, however, it was determined to pursue and destroy Cavalier and his band. Eight hundred men, under the Count de Touman, were posted at Uzes; two battalions of the regiment of Hainault, under Julien, at Anduze; while Broglie, with a strong body of dragoons and militia, commanded the passes at St. Ambrose. These troops occupied, as it were, the three sides of a triangle, in the centre of which Cavalier was known to be in hiding in the woods of Bouquet. Converging upon him simultaneously, they hoped to surround and destroy him. But the Camisard chief was well advised of their movements. To draw them away from his magazines, Cavalier marched boldly to the north, and slipping through between the advancing forces, he got into Broglie's rear, and set fire to two villages inhabited by Catholics. The three bodies at once directed themselves upon the burning villages; but when they reached them Cavalier had made his escape, and was nowhere to be heard of. For four days they hunted the country between the Garden and the Ceze, beating the woods and exploring the caves; and then they returned, harassed and vexed, to their respective quarters. While the Royalists were thus occupied, Cavalier fell upon a convoy of provisions which Colonel Marsilly was leading to the castle of Mendajols, scattered and killed the escort, and carried off the mules and their loads to the magazines at Bouquet. During the whole of the month of January, the Camisards, notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather, were constantly on the move, making their appearance in the most unexpected quarters; Roland descending from Mialet on Anduze, and rousing Broglie from his slumbers by a midnight fusillade; Castanet attacking St. André, and making a bonfire of the contents of the church; Joany disarming Genouillac; and Lafleur terrifying the villages of the Lozère almost to the gates of Mende. Although the winters in the South of France, along the shores of the Mediterranean, are comparatively mild and genial, it is very different in the mountain districts of the interior, where the snow lies thick upon the ground, and the rivers are bound up by frost. Cavalier, in his Memoirs, describes the straits to which his followers were reduced in that inclement season, being "destitute of houses or beds, victuals, bread, or money, and left to struggle with hunger, cold, snow, misery, and poverty." "General Broglie," he continues, "believed and hoped that though he had not been able to destroy us with the sword, yet the insufferable miseries of the winter would do him that good office. Yet God Almighty prevented it through his power, and by unexpected means his Providence ordered the thing so well that at the end of the winter we found ourselves in being, and in a better condition than we expected.... As for our retiring places, we were used in the night-time to go into hamlets or sheepfolds built in or near the woods, and thought ourselves happy when we lighted upon a stone or piece of timber to make our pillows withal, and a little straw or dry leaves to lie upon in our clothes. We did in this condition sleep as gently and soundly as if we had lain upon a down bed. The weather being extremely cold, we had a great occasion for fire; but residing mostly in woods, we used to get great quantity of faggots and kindle them, and so sit round about them and warm ourselves. In this manner we spent a quarter of a year, running up and down, sometimes one way and sometimes another, through great forests and upon high mountains, in deep snow and upon ice. And notwithstanding the sharpness of the weather, the small stock of our provisions, and the marches and counter-marches we were continually obliged to make, and which gave us but seldom the opportunity of washing the only shirt we had upon our back, not one amongst us fell sick. One might have perceived in our visage a complexion as fresh as if we had fed upon the most delicious meats, and at the end of the season we found ourselves in a good disposition heartily to commence the following campaign."[44] [Footnote 44: Cavalier's "Memoirs of the Wars of the Cevennes," pp. 111-114.] The campaign of 1703, the third year of the insurrection, began unfavourably for the Camisards. The ill-success of Count Broglie as commander of the royal forces in the Cevennes, determined Louis XIV.--from whom the true state of affairs could no longer be concealed--to supersede him by Marshal Montrevel, one of the ablest of his generals. The army of Languedoc was again reinforced by ten thousand of the best soldiers of France, drawn from the armies of Germany and Italy. It now consisted of three regiments of dragoons and twenty-four battalions of foot--of the Irish Brigade, the Miguelets, and the Languedoc fusiliers--which, with the local militia, constituted an effective force of not less than sixty thousand men! Such was the irresistible army, commanded by a marshal of France, three lieutenant-generals, three major-generals, and three brigadier-generals, now stationed in Languedoc, to crush the peasant insurrection. No wonder that the Camisard chiefs were alarmed when the intelligence reached them of this formidable force having been set in motion for their destruction. The first thing they determined upon was to effect a powerful diversion, and to extend, if possible, the area of the insurrection. For this purpose, Cavalier, at the head of eight hundred men, accompanied by thirty baggage mules, set out in the beginning of February, with the object of raising the Viverais, the north-eastern quarter of Languedoc, where the Camisards had numerous partizans. The snow was lying thick upon the ground when they set out; but the little army pushed northward, through Rochegude and Barjac. At the town of Vagnas they found their way barred by a body of six hundred militia, under the Count de Roure. These they attacked with great fury and speedily put to flight. But behind the Camisarde was a second and much stronger royalist force, eighteen hundred men, under Brigadier Julien, who had hastened up from Lussan upon Cavalier's track, and now hung upon his rear in the forest of Vagnas. Next morning the Camisards accepted battle, fought with their usual bravery, but having been trapped into an ambuscade, they were overpowered by numbers, and at length broke and fled in disorder, leaving behind them their mules, baggage, seven drums, and a quantity of arms, with some two hundred dead and wounded. Cavalier himself escaped with difficulty, and, after having been given up for lost, reached the rendez-vous at Bouquet in a state of complete exhaustion, Ravanel and Catinat having preceded him thither with, the remains of his broken army. Roland and Cavalier now altered their tactics. They resolved to avoid pitched battles such as that at Vagnas, where they were liable to be crushed at a blow, and to divide their forces into small detachments constantly on the move, harassing the enemy, interrupting their communications, and falling upon detached bodies whenever an opportunity for an attack presented itself. To the surprise of Montrevel, who supposed the Camisards finally crushed at Vagnas, the intelligence suddenly reached him of a multitude of attacks on fortified posts, burning of châteaux and churches, captures of convoys, and defeats of detached bodies of Royalists. Joany attacked Genouillac, cut to pieces the militia who defended it, and carried off their arms and ammunition, with other spoils, to the camp at Faux-des-Armes. Shortly after, in one of his incursions, he captured a convoy of forty mules laden with cloth, wine, and provisions for Lent; and, though hotly pursued by a much superior force, he succeeded in making his escape into the mountains. Castanet was not less active in the west--sacking and burning Catholic villages, and putting their inhabitants to the sword by way of reprisal for similar atrocities committed by the Royalists. At the same time, Montrevel pillaged and burned Euzet and St. Jean de Ceirarges, villages inhabited by Protestants; and there was not a hamlet but was liable at any moment to be sacked and destroyed by one or other of the contending parties. Nor was Roland idle. Being greatly in want of arms and ammunition, as well as of shoes and clothes for his men, he collected a considerable force, and made a descent, for the purpose of obtaining them, on the rich and populous towns of the south; more particularly on the manufacturing town of Ganges, where the Camisards had many friends. Although Roland, to divert the attention of Montrevel from Ganges, sent a detachment of his men into the neighbourhood of Nismes to raise the alarm there, it was not long before a large royalist force was directed against him. Hearing that Montrevel was marching upon Ganges, Roland hastily left for the north, but was overtaken near Pompignan by the marshal at the head of an army of regular horse and foot, including several regiments of local militia, Miguelets, marines, and Irish. The Royalists were posted in such a manner as to surround the Camisards, who, though they fought with their usual impetuosity, and succeeded in breaking through the ranks of their enemies, suffered a heavy loss in dead and wounded. Roland himself escaped with difficulty, and with his broken forces fled through Durfort to his stronghold at Mialet. After the battle, Marshal Montrevel returned to Ganges, where he levied a fine of ten thousand livres on the Protestant population, giving up their houses to pillage, and hanging a dozen of those who had been the most prominent in abetting the Camisards during their recent visit. At the game time, he reported to head-quarters at Paris that he had entirely destroyed the rebels, and that Languedoc was now "pacified." Much to his surprise, however, not many weeks elapsed before Cavalier, who had been laid up by the small-pox during Roland's expedition to Ganges, again appeared in the field, attacking convoys, entering the villages and carrying off arms, and spreading terror anew to the very gates of Nismes. He returned northwards by the valley of the Rhône, driving before him flocks and herds for the provisioning of his men, and reached his retreat at Bouquet in safety. Shortly after, he issued from it again, and descended upon Ners, where he destroyed a detachment of troops under Colonel de Jarnaud; next day he crossed the Gardon, and cut up a reinforcement intended for the garrison of Sommières; and the day after he was heard of in another place, attacking a convoy, and carrying off arms, ammunition, and provisions. Montrevel was profoundly annoyed at the failure of his efforts thus far to suppress the insurrection. It even seemed to increase and extend with every new measure taken to crush it. A marshal of France, at the head of sixty thousand men, he feared lest he should lose credit with his friends at court unless he were able at once to root out these miserable cowherds and wool-carders who continued to bid defiance to the royal authority which he represented; and he determined to exert himself with renewed vigour to exterminate them root and branch. In this state of irritation the intelligence was one day brought to the marshal while sitting over his wine after dinner at Nismes, that an assembly of Huguenots was engaged in worship in a mill situated on the canal outside the Port-des-Carmes. He at once ordered out a battalion of foot, marched on the mill, and surrounded it. The soldiers burst open the door, and found from two to three hundred women, children, and old men engaged in prayer; and proceeded to put them to the sword. But the marshal, impatient at the slowness of the butchery, ordered the men to desist and to fire the place. This order was obeyed, and the building, being for the most part of wood, was soon wrapped in flames, from amidst which rose the screams of women and children. All who tried to escape were bayoneted, or driven back into the burning mill. Every soul perished--all excepting a girl, who was rescued by one of Montrevel's servants. But the pitiless marshal ordered both the girl and her deliverer to be put to death. The former was hanged forthwith, but the lackey's life was spared at the intercession of some sisters of mercy accidentally passing the place. In the same savage and relentless spirit, Montrevel proceeded to extirpate the Huguenots wherever found. He caused all suspected persons in twenty-two parishes in the diocese of Nismes to be seized and carried off. The men were transported to North America, and the women and children imprisoned in the fortresses of Roussillon. But the most ruthless measures were those which were adopted in the Upper Cevennes: there nothing short of devastation would satisfy the marshal. Thirty-two parishes were completely laid waste; the cattle, grain, and produce which they contained were seized and carried into the towns of refuge garrisoned by the Royalists--Alais, Anduze, Florac, St. Hypolite, and Nismes--so that nothing should be left calculated to give sustenance to the rebels. Four hundred and sixty-six villages and hamlets were reduced to mere heaps of ashes and blackened ruins, and such of their inhabitants as were not slain by the soldiery fled with their families into the wilderness. All the principal villages inhabited by the Protestants were thus completely destroyed, together with their mills and barns, and every building likely to give them shelter. Mialet was sacked and burnt--Roland, still suffering from his wounds, being unable to strike a blow in defence of his stronghold. St. Julien was also plundered and levelled, and its inhabitants carried captive to Montpellier, where the women and children were imprisoned, and the men sent to the galleys. When Cavalier heard of the determination of Montrevel to make a desert of the country, he sent word to him that for every Huguenot village destroyed he would destroy two inhabited by the Romanists. Thus the sacking and burning on the one side was immediately followed by increased sacking and burning on the other. The war became one of mutual destruction and extermination, and the unfortunate inhabitants on both sides were delivered over to all the horrors of civil war. So far, however, from the Camisards being suppressed, the destruction of the dwellings of the Huguenots only served to swell their numbers, and they descended from their mountains upon the Catholics of the plains in increasing force and redoubled fury. Montlezan was utterly destroyed--all but the church, which was strongly barricaded, and resisted Cavalier's attempts to enter it. Aurillac, also, was in like manner sacked and gutted, and the destroying torrent swept over all the towns and villages of the Cevennes. Cavalier was so ubiquitous, so daring, and often so successful in his attacks, that of all the Camisard leaders he was held to be the most dangerous, and a high price was accordingly set upon his head by the governor. Hence many attempts were made to betray him. He was haunted by spies, some of whom even succeeded in obtaining admission to his ranks. More than once the spies were detected--it was pretended through prophetic influence--and immediately shot. But on one occasion Cavalier and his whole force narrowly escaped destruction through the betrayal of a pretended follower. While the Royalists were carrying destruction through the villages of the Upper Cevennes, Cavalier, Salomon, and Abraham, in order to divert them from their purpose, resolved upon another descent into the low country, now comparatively ungarrisoned. With this object they gathered together some fifteen hundred men, and descended from the mountains by Collet, intending to cross the Gardon at Beaurivage. On Sunday, the 29th of April, they halted in the wood of Malaboissière, a little north of Mialet, for a day's preaching and worship; and after holding three services, which were largely attended, they directed their steps to the Tower of Belliot, a deserted farmhouse on the south of the present high road between Alais and Anduze. The house had been built on the ruins of a feudal castle, and took its name from one of the old towers still standing. It was surrounded by a dry stone wall, forming a court, the entrance to which was closed by hurdles. On their arrival at this place late at night, the Camisards partook of the supper which had been prepared for them by their purveyor on the occasion--a miller of the neighbourhood, named Guignon--whose fidelity was assured not only by his apparent piety, but by the circumstance that two of his sons belonged to Cavalier's band. No sooner, however, had the Camisards lain down to sleep than the miller, possessed by the demon of gold, set out directly for Alais, about three miles distant, and, reaching the quarters of Montrevel, sold the secret of Cavalier's sleeping-place to the marshal for fifty pieces of gold, and together with it the lives of his own sons and their fifteen hundred companions. The marshal forthwith mustered all the available troops in Alais, consisting of eight regiments of foot (of which one was Irish) and two of dragoons, and set out at once for the Tower of Belliot, taking the precaution to set a strict guard upon all the gates, to prevent the possibility of any messenger leaving the place to warn Cavalier of his approach. The Royalists crept towards the tower in three bodies, so as to cut off their retreat in every direction. Meanwhile, the Camisards, unapprehensive of danger, lay wrapped in slumber, filling the tower, the barns, the stables, and outhouses. The night was dark, and favoured the Royalists' approach. Suddenly, one of their divisions came upon the advanced Camisard sentinels. They fired, but were at once cut down. Those behind fled back to the sleeping camp, and raised the cry of alarm. Cavalier started up, calling his men "to arms," and, followed by about four hundred, he precipitated himself on the heads of the advancing columns. Driven back, they rallied again, more troops coming up to their support, and again they advanced to the attack. To his dismay, Cavalier found the enemy in overwhelming force, enveloping his whole position. By great efforts he held them back until some four or five hundred more of his men had joined him, and then he gave way and retired behind a ravine or hollow, probably forming part of the fosse of the ancient château. Having there rallied his followers, he recrossed the ravine to make another desperate effort to relieve the remainder of his troop shut up in the tower. A desperate encounter followed, in the midst of which two of the royalist columns, mistaking each other for enemies in the darkness, fired into each other and increased the confusion and the carnage. The moon rose on this dreadful scene, and revealed to the Royalists the smallness of the force opposed to them. The struggle was renewed again and again; Cavalier still seeking to relieve those shut up in the tower, and the Royalists, now concentrated and in force, to surround and destroy him. At length, after the struggle had lasted for about five hours, Cavalier, in order to save the rest of his men, resolved on retiring before daybreak; and he succeeded in effecting his retreat without being pursued by the enemy. The three hundred Camisards who continued shut up in the tower refused to surrender. They transformed the ruin into a fortress, barricading every entrance, and firing from every loophole. When their ammunition was expended, they hurled stones, joists, and tiles down upon their assailants from the summit of the tower. For four more hours they continued to hold out. Cannon were sent for from Alais, to blow in the doors; but before they arrived all was over. The place had been set on fire by hand grenades, and the imprisoned Camisards, singing psalms amidst the flames to their last breath, perished to a man. This victory cost Montrevel dear. He lost some twelve hundred dead and wounded before the fatal Tower of Belliot; whilst Cavalier's loss was not less than four hundred dead, of whom a hundred and eighteen were found at daybreak along the brink of the ravine. One of these was mistaken for the body of Cavalier; on which Montrevel, with characteristic barbarity, ordered the head to be cut off and sent to _Cavalier's mother_ for identification! From the slight glimpses we obtain of the _man_ Montrevel in the course of these deplorable transactions, there seems to have been something ineffably mean and spiteful in his nature. Thus, on another occasion, in a fit of rage at having been baffled by the young Camisard leader, he dispatched a squadron of dragoons to Ribaute for the express purpose of pulling down the house in which Cavalier had been born! A befitting sequel to this sanguinary struggle at the Tower of Belliot was the fate of Guignon, the miller, who had betrayed the sleeping Camisards to Montrevel. His crime was discovered. The gold was found upon him. He was tried, and condemned to death. The Camisards, under arms, assembled to see the sentence carried out. They knelt round the doomed man, while the prophets by turn prayed for his soul, and implored the clemency of the Sovereign Judge. Guignon professed the utmost contrition, besought the pardon of his brethren, and sought leave to embrace for the last time his two sons--privates in the Camisard ranks. The two young men, however, refused the proffered embrace with a gesture of apparent disgust; and they looked on, the sad and stern spectators of the traitor's punishment. Again Montrevel thought he had succeeded in crushing the insurrection, and that he had cut off its head with that of the Camisard chief. But his supposed discovery of the dead body proved an entire mistake; and not many days elapsed before Cavalier made his appearance before the gates of Alais, and sent in a challenge to the governor to come out and fight him. And it is to be observed that by this time a fiercely combative spirit, of fighting for fighting's sake, began to show itself among the Camisards. Thus, Castanet appeared one day before the gates of Meyreuis, where the regiment of Cordes was stationed, and challenged the colonel to come out and fight him in the open; but the challenge was declined. On another occasion, Cavalier in like manner challenged the commander of Vic to bring out thirty of his soldiers and fight thirty Camisards. The challenge was accepted, and the battle took place; they fought until ten men only remained alive on either side, but the Camisards were masters of the field. Montrevel only redoubled his efforts to exterminate the Camisards. He had no other policy. In the summer of 1703 the Pope (Clement XI.) came to his assistance, issuing a bull against the rebels as being of "the execrable race of the ancient Albigenses," and promising "absolute and general remission of sins" to all such as should join the holy militia of Louis XIV. in "exterminating the cursed heretics and miscreants, enemies alike of God and of Cæsar." A special force was embodied with this object--the Florentines, or "White Camisards"--distinguished by the white cross which they wore in front of their hats. They were for the most part composed of desperadoes and miscreants, and went about pillaging and burning, with so little discrimination between friend and foe, that the Catholics themselves implored the marshal to suppress them. These Florentines were the perpetrators of such barbarities that Roland determined to raise a body of cavalry to hunt them down; and with that object, Catinat, the old dragoon, went down to the Camargues--a sort of island-prairies lying between the mouths of the Rhône--where the Arabs had left a hardy breed of horses; and there he purchased some two hundred steeds wherewith to mount the Camisard horse, to the command of which Catinat was himself appointed. It is unnecessary to particularise the variety of combats, of marchings and countermarchings, which occurred during the progress of the insurrection. Between the contending parties, the country was reduced to a desert. Tillage ceased, for there was no certainty of the cultivator reaping the crop; more likely it would be carried off or burnt by the conflicting armies. Beggars and vagabonds wandered about robbing and plundering without regard to party or religion; and social security was entirely at an end. Meanwhile, Montrevel still called for more troops. Of the twenty battalions already entrusted to him, more than one-third had perished; and still the insurrection was not suppressed. He hoped, however, that the work was now accomplished; and, looking to the wasted condition of the country, that the famine and cold of the winter of 1703-4 would complete the destruction of such of the rebels as still survived. During the winter, however, the Camisard chiefs had not only been able to keep their forces together, but to lay up a considerable store of provisions and ammunition, principally by captures from the enemy; and in the following spring they were in a position to take the field in even greater force than ever. They, indeed, opened the campaign by gaining two important victories over the Royalists; but though they were their greatest, they were also nearly their last. The battle of Martinargues was the Cannæ of the Camisards. It was fought near the village of that name, not far from Ners, early in the spring of 1704. The campaign had been opened by the Florentines, who, now that they had made a desert of the Upper Cevennes, were burning and ravaging the Protestant villages of the plain. Cavalier had put himself on their track, and pursued and punished them so severely, that in their distress they called upon Montrevel to help them, informing him of the whereabouts of the Camisards. A strong royalist force of horse and foot was immediately sent in pursuit, under the command of Brigadier Lajonquière. He first marched upon the Protestant village of Lascours, where Cavalier had passed the previous night. The brigadier severely punished the inhabitants for sheltering the Camisards, putting to death four persons, two of them girls, whom he suspected to be Cavalier's prophetesses. On the people refusing to indicate the direction in which the Camisards had gone, he gave the village up to plunder, and the soldiers passed several hours ransacking the place, in the course of which they broke open and pillaged the wine-cellars. Meanwhile, Cavalier and his men had proceeded in a northerly direction, along the right bank of the little river Droude, one of the affluents of the Gardon. A messenger from Lascours overtook him, telling him of the outrages committed on the inhabitants of the village; and shortly after, the inhabitants of Lascours themselves came up--men, women, and children, who had been driven from their pillaged homes by the royalist soldiery. Cavalier was enraged at the recital of their woes; and though his force was not one-sixth the strength of the enemy, he determined to meet their advance and give them battle. Placing the poor people of Lascours in safety, the Camisard leader took up his position on a rising ground at the head of a little valley close to the village of Martinargues. Cavalier himself occupied the centre, his front being covered by a brook running in the hollow of a ravine. Ravanel and Catinat, with a small body of men, were posted along the two sides of the valley, screened by brushwood. The approaching Royalists, seeing before them only the feeble force of Cavalier, looked upon his capture as certain. "See!" cried Lajonquière, "at last we have hold of the Barbets we have been so long looking for!" With his dragoons in the centre, flanked by the grenadiers and foot, the Royalists advanced with confidence to the charge. At the first volley, the Camisards prostrated themselves, and the bullets went over their heads. Thinking they had fallen before his fusillade, the commander ordered his men to cross the ravine and fall upon the remnant with the bayonet. Instantly, however, Cavalier's men started to their feet, and smote the assailants with a deadly volley, bringing down men and horses. At the same moment, the two wings, until then concealed, fired down upon the Royalists and completed their confusion. The Camisards, then raising their battle-psalm, rushed forward and charged the enemy. The grenadiers resisted stoutly, but after a few minutes the entire body--dragoons, grenadiers, marines, and Irish--fled down the valley towards the Gardon, and the greater number of those who were not killed were drowned, Lajonquière himself escaping with difficulty. In this battle perished a colonel, a major, thirty-three captains and lieutenants, and four hundred and fifty men, while Cavalier's loss was only about twenty killed and wounded. A great booty was picked up on the field, of gold, silver, jewels, ornamented swords, magnificent uniforms, scarfs, and clothing, besides horses, as well as the plunder brought from Lascours. The opening of the Lascours wine-cellars proved the ruin of the Royalists, for many of the men were so drunk that they were unable either to fight or fly. After returning thanks to God on the battle-field, Cavalier conducted the rejoicing people of Lascours back to their village, and proceeded to his head-quarters at Bouquet with his booty and his trophies. Another encounter shortly followed at the Bridge of Salindres, about midway between Auduze and St. Jean du Gard, in which Roland inflicted an equally decisive defeat on a force commanded by Brigadier Lalande. Informed of the approach of the Royalists, Roland posted his little army in the narrow, precipitous, and rocky valley, along the bottom of which runs the river Gardon. Dividing his men into three bodies, he posted one on the bridge, another in ambuscade at the entrance to the defile, and a third on the summit of the precipice overhanging the road. The Royalists had scarcely advanced to the attack of the bridge, when the concealed Camisards rushed out and assailed their rear, while those stationed above hurled down rocks and stones, which threw them into complete disorder. They at once broke and fled, rushing down to the river, into which they threw themselves; and but for Roland's neglect in guarding the steep footpath leading to the ford at the mill, the whole body would have been destroyed. As it was, they suffered heavy loss, the general himself escaping with difficulty, leaving his white-plumed hat behind him in the hands of the Camisards. CHAPTER VIII. END OF THE CAMISARD INSURRECTION. The insurrection in the Cevennes had continued for more than two years, when at length it began to excite serious uneasiness at Versailles. It was felt to be a source of weakness as well as danger to France, then at war with Portugal, England, and Savoy. What increased the alarm of the French Government was the fact that the insurgents were anxiously looking abroad for help, and endeavouring to excite the Protestant governments of the North to strike a blow in their behalf. England and Holland had been especially appealed to. Large numbers of Huguenot soldiers were then serving in the English army; and it was suggested that if they could effect a landing on the coast of Languedoc, and co-operate with the Camisards, it would at the same time help the cause of religious liberty, and operate as a powerful diversion in favour of the confederate armies, then engaged with the armies of France in the Low Countries and on the Rhine. In order to ascertain the feasibility of the proposed landing, and the condition of the Camisard insurgents, the ministry of Queen Anne sent the Marquis de Miremont, a Huguenot refugee in England, on a mission to the Cevennes; and he succeeded in reaching the insurgent camp at St. Felix, where he met Roland and the other leaders, and arranged with them for the descent of a body of Huguenot soldiers on the coast. In the month of September, 1703, the English fleet was descried in the Gulf of Lyons, off Aiguesmortes, making signals, which, however, were not answered. Marshal Montrevel had been warned of the intended invasion; and, summoning troops from all quarters, he so effectually guarded the coast, that a landing was found impracticable. Though Cavalier was near at hand, he was unable at any point to communicate with the English ships; and after lying off for a few days, they spread their sails, and the disheartened Camisards saw their intended liberators disappear in the distance. The ministers of Louis XIV. were greatly alarmed by this event. The invasion had been frustrated for the time, but the English fleet might return, and eventually succeed in effecting a landing. The danger, therefore, had to be provided against, and at once. It became clear, even to Louis XIV. himself, that the system of terror and coercion which had heretofore been exclusively employed against the insurgents, had proved a total failure. It was accordingly determined to employ some other means, if possible, of bringing this dangerous insurrection to an end. In pursuance of this object, Montrevel, to his intense mortification, was recalled, and the celebrated Marshal Villars, the victor of Hochstadt and Friedlingen, was appointed in his stead, with full powers to undertake and carry out the pacification of Languedoc. Villars reached Nismes towards the end of August, 1704; but before his arrival, Montrevel at last succeeded in settling accounts with Cavalier, and wiped out many old scores by inflicting upon him the severest defeat the Camisard arms had yet received. It was his first victory over Cavalier, and his last. Cavalier's recent successes had made him careless. Having so often overcome the royal troops against great odds, he began to think himself invincible, and to despise his enemy. His success at Martinargues had the effect of greatly increasing his troops; and he made a descent upon the low country in the spring of 1704, at the head of about a thousand foot and two hundred horse. Appearing before Bouciran, which he entered without resistance, he demolished the fortifications, and proceeded southwards to St. Géniès, which he attacked and took, carrying away horses, mules, and arms. Next day he marched still southward to Caveirac, only about three miles east of Nismes. Montrevel designedly published his intention of taking leave of his government on a certain day, and proceeding to Montpellier with only a very slender force--pretending to send the remainder to Beaucaire, in the opposite direction, for the purpose of escorting Villars, his successor, into the city. His object in doing this was to deceive the Camisard leader, and to draw him into a trap. The intelligence became known to Cavalier, who now watched the Montpellier road, for the purpose of inflicting a parting blow upon his often-baffled enemy. Instead, however, of Montrevel setting out for Montpellier with a small force, he mustered almost the entire troops belonging to the garrison of Nismes--over six thousand horse and foot--and determined to overwhelm Cavalier, who lay in his way. Montrevel divided his force into several bodies, and so disposed them as completely to surround the comparatively small Camisard force, near Langlade. The first encounter was with the royalist regiment of Firmarcon, which Cavalier completely routed; but while pursuing them too keenly, the Camisards were assailed in flank by a strong body of foot posted in vineyards along the road, and driven back upon the main body. The Camisards now discovered that a still stronger battalion was stationed in their rear; and, indeed, wherever they turned, they saw the Royalists posted in force. There was no alternative but cutting their way through the enemy; and Cavalier, putting himself at the head of his men, led the way, sword in hand. A terrible struggle ensued, and the Camisards at last reached the bridge at Rosni; but there, too, the Royalists were found blocking the road, and crowding the heights on either side. Cavalier, to avoid recognition, threw off his uniform, and assumed the guise of a simple Camisard. Again he sought to force his way through the masses of the enemy. His advance was a series of hand-to-hand fights, extending over some six miles, and the struggle lasted for nearly the entire day. More than a thousand dead strewed the roads, of whom one half were Camisards. The Royalists took five drums, sixty-two horses, and four mules laden with provisions, but not one prisoner. When Villars reached Nismes and heard of this battle, he went to see the field, and expressed his admiration at the skill and valour of the Camisard chief. "Here is a man," said he, "of no education, without any experience in the art of war, who has conducted himself under the most difficult and delicate circumstances as if he had been a great general. Truly, to fight such a battle were worthy of Cæsar!" Indeed, the conduct of Cavalier in this struggle so impressed Marshal Villars, that he determined, if possible, to gain him over, together with his brave followers, to the ranks of the royal army. Villars was no bigot, but a humane and honourable man, and a thorough soldier. He deplored the continuance of this atrocious war, and proceeded to take immediate steps to bring it, if possible, to a satisfactory conclusion. In the meantime, however, the defeat of the Camisards had been followed by other reverses. During the absence of Cavalier in the South, the royalist general Lalande, at the head of five thousand troops, fell upon the joint forces of Roland and Joany at Brenoux, and completely defeated them. The same general lay in wait for the return of Cavalier with his broken forces, to his retreat near Euzet; and on his coming up, the Royalists, in overpowering numbers, fell upon the dispirited Camisards, and inflicted upon them another heavy loss. But a greater calamity, if possible, was the discovery and capture of Cavalier's magazines in the caverns near Euzet. The royalist soldiers, having observed an old woman frequently leaving the village for the adjoining wood with a full basket and returning with an empty one, suspected her of succouring the rebels, arrested her, and took her before the general. When questioned at first she would confess nothing; on which she was ordered forthwith to be hanged. When taken to the gibbet in the market-place, however, the old woman's resolution gave way, and she entreated to be taken back to the general, when she would confess everything. She then acknowledged that she had the care of an hospital in the adjoining wood, and that her daily errands had been thither. She was promised pardon if she led the soldiers at once to the place; and she did so, a battalion following at her heels. Advancing into the wood, the old woman led the soldiers to the mouth of a cavern, into which she pointed, and the men entered. The first sight that met their eyes was a number of sick and wounded Camisards lying upon couches along ledges cut in the rock. They were immediately put to death. Entering further into the cavern, the soldiers were surprised to find in an inner vault an immense magazine of grain, flour, chestnuts, beans, barrels of wine and brandy; farther in, stores of drugs, ointment, dressings, and hospital furnishings; and finally, an arsenal containing a large store of sabres, muskets, pistols, and gunpowder, together with the materials for making it; all of which the Royalists seized and carried off. Lalande, before leaving Euzet, inflicted upon it a terrible punishment. He gave it up to pillage, then burnt it to the ground, and put the inhabitants to the sword--all but the old woman, who was left alone amidst the corpses and ashes of the ruined village. Lalande returned in triumph to Alais, some of his soldiers displaying on the points of their bayonets the ears of the slain Camisards. Other reverses followed in quick succession. Salomon was attacked near Pont-de-Montvert, the birthplace of the insurrection, and lost some eight hundred of his men. His magazines at Magistavols were also discovered and ransacked, containing, amongst other stores, twenty oxen and a hundred sheep. Thus, in four combats, the Camisards lost nearly half their forces, together with a large part of their arms, ammunition, and provisions. The country occupied by them had been ravaged and reduced to a state of desert, and there seemed but little prospect of their again being able to make head against their enemies. The loss of life during the last year of the insurrection had been frightful. Some twenty thousand men had perished--eight thousand soldiers, four thousand of the Roman Catholic population, and from seven to eight thousand Protestants. Villars had no sooner entered upon the functions of his office than he set himself to remedy this dreadful state of things. He was encouraged in his wise intentions by the Baron D'Aigalliers, a Protestant nobleman of high standing and great influence, who had emigrated into England at the Revocation, but had since returned. This nobleman entertained the ardent desire of reconciling the King with his Protestant subjects; and he was encouraged by the French Court to endeavour to bring the rebels of the Cevennes to terms. One of the first things Villars did, was to proceed on a journey through the devastated districts; and he could not fail to be horrified at the sight of the villages in ruins, the wasted vineyards, the untilled fields, and the deserted homesteads which met his eyes on every side. Wherever he went, he gave it out that he was ready to pardon all persons--rebels as well as their chiefs--who should lay down their arms and submit to the royal clemency; but that, if they continued obstinate and refused to submit, he would proceed against them to the last extremity. He even offered to put arms in the hands of such of the Protestant population as would co-operate with him in suppressing the insurrection. In the meantime, the defeated Camisards under Roland were reorganizing their forces, and preparing again to take the field. They were unwilling to submit themselves to the professed clemency of Villars, without some sufficient guarantee that their religious rights--in defence of which they had taken up arms--would be respected. Roland was already establishing new magazines in place of those which had been destroyed; he was again recruiting his brigades from the Protestant communes, and many of those who had recovered from their wounds again rallied under his standard. At this juncture, D'Aigalliers suggested to Villars that a negotiation should be opened directly with the Camisard chiefs to induce them to lay down their arms. Roland refused to listen to any overtures; but Cavalier was more accessible, and expressed himself willing to negotiate for peace provided his religion was respected and recognised. And Cavalier was right. He saw clearly that longer resistance was futile, that it could only end in increased devastation and destruction; and he was wise in endeavouring to secure the best possible terms under the circumstances for his suffering co-religionists. Roland, who refused all such overtures, was the more uncompromising and tenacious of purpose; but Cavalier, notwithstanding his extreme youth, was by far the more practical and politic of the two. There is no doubt also that Cavalier had begun to weary of the struggle. He became depressed and sad, and even after a victory he would kneel down amidst the dead and wounded, and pray to God that He would turn the heart of the King to mercy, and help to re-establish the ancient temples throughout the land. An interview with Cavalier was eventually arranged by Lalande. The brigadier invited him to a conference, guaranteeing him safe conduct, and intimating that if he refused the meeting, he would be regarded as the enemy of peace, and held responsible before God and man for all future bloodshed. Cavalier replied to Lalande's invitation, accepting the interview, indicating the place and the time of meeting. Catinat, the Camisard general of horse, was the bearer of Cavalier's letter, and he rode on to Alais to deliver it, arrayed in magnificent costume. Lalande was at table when Catinat was shown in to him. Observing the strange uniform and fierce look of the intruder, the brigadier asked who he was. "Catinat!" was the reply. "What," cried Lalande, "are you the Catinat who killed so many people in Beaucaire?" "Yes, it is I," said Catinat, "and I only endeavoured to do my duty." "You are hardy, indeed, to dare to show yourself before me." "I have come," said the Camisard, "in good faith, persuaded that you are an honest man, and on the assurance of my brother Cavalier that you would do me no harm. I come to deliver you his letter." And so saying, he handed it to the brigadier. Hastily perusing the letter, Lalande said, "Go back to Cavalier, and tell him that in two hours I shall be at the Bridge of Avène with only ten officers and thirty dragoons." The interview took place at the time appointed, on the bridge over the Avène, a few miles south of Alais. Cavalier arrived, attended by three hundred foot and sixty Camisard dragoons. When the two chiefs recognised each other, they halted their escorts, dismounted, and, followed by some officers, proceeded on foot to meet each other. Lalande had brought with him Cavalier's younger brother, who had been for some time a prisoner, and presented him, saying, "The King gives him to you in token of his merciful intentions." The brothers, who had not met since their mother's death, embraced and wept. Cavalier thanked the general; and then, leaving their officers, the two went on one side, and conferred together alone. "The King," said Lalande, "wishes, in the exercise of his clemency, to terminate this war amongst his subjects; what are your terms and your demands?" "They consist of three things," replied Cavalier: "liberty of worship; the deliverance of our brethren who are in prison and at the galleys; and, if the first condition be refused, then free permission to leave France." "How many persons would wish to leave the kingdom?" asked Lalande. "Ten thousand of various ages and both sexes." "Ten thousand! It is impossible! Leave might possibly be granted for two, but certainly not for ten." "Then," said Cavalier, "if the King will not allow us to leave the kingdom, he will at least re-establish our ancient edicts and privileges?" Lalande promised to report the result of the conference to the marshal, though he expressed a doubt whether he could agree to the terms proposed. The brigadier took leave of Cavalier by expressing the desire to be of service to him at any time; but he made a gross and indelicate mistake in offering his purse to the Camisard chief. "No, no!" said Cavalier, rejecting it with a look of contempt, "I wish for none of your gold, but only for religious liberty, or, if that be refused, for a safe conduct out of the kingdom." Lalande then asked to be taken up to the Camisard troop, who had been watching the proceedings of their leader with great interest. Coming up to them in the ranks, he said, "Here is a purse of a hundred louis with which to drink the King's health." Their reply was like their leader's, "We want no money, but liberty of conscience." "It is not in my power to grant you that," said the general, "but you will do well to submit to the King's will." "We are ready," said they, "to obey his orders, provided he grants our just demands; but if not, we are prepared to die arms in hand." And thus ended this memorable interview, which lasted for about two hours; Lalande and his followers returning to Alais, while Cavalier went with his troop in the direction of Vezenobres. Cavalier's enemies say that in the course of his interview with Lalande he was offered honours, rewards, and promotion, if he would enter the King's service; and it is added that Cavalier was tempted by these offers, and thereby proved false to his cause and followers. But it is more probable that Cavalier was sincere in his desire to come to fair terms with the King, observing the impossibility, under the circumstances, of prolonging the struggle against the royal armies with any reasonable prospect of success. If Cavalier were really bribed by any such promises of promotion, at all events such promises were never fulfilled; nor did the French monarch reward him in any way for his endeavours to bring the Camisard insurrection to an end. It was characteristic of Roland to hold aloof from these negotiations, and refuse to come to any terms whatever with "Baal." As if to separate himself entirely from Cavalier, he withdrew into the Upper Cevennes to resume the war. At the very time that Cavalier was holding the conference with the royalist general at the Bridge of the Avène, Roland and Joany, with a body of horse and foot, waylaid the Count de Tournou at the plateau of Font-morte--the place where Seguier, the first Camisard leader, had been defeated and captured--and suddenly fell upon the Royalists, putting them to flight. A rich booty fell into the hands of the Camisards, part of which consisted of the quarter's rental of the confiscated estate of Salgas, in the possession of the King's collector, Viala, whom the royalist troops were escorting to St. Jean de Gard. The collector, who had made himself notorious for his cruelty, was put to death after frightful torment, and his son and nephew were also shot. So far, therefore, as Roland and his associates were concerned, there appeared to be no intention of surrender or compromise; and Villars was under the necessity of prosecuting the war against them to the last extremity. In the meantime, Cavalier was hailed throughout the low country as the pacificator of Languedoc. The people on both sides had become heartily sick of the war, and were glad to be rid of it on any terms that promised peace and security for the future. At the invitation of Marshal Villars, Cavalier proceeded towards Nismes, and his march from town to town was one continuous ovation. He was eagerly welcomed by the population; and his men were hospitably entertained by the garrisons of the places through which they passed. Every liberty was allowed him; and not a day passed without a religious meeting being held, accompanied with public preaching, praying, and psalm-singing. At length Cavalier and his little army approached the neighbourhood of Nismes, where his arrival was anticipated with extraordinary interest. The beautiful old city had witnessed many strange sights; but probably the entry of the young Camisard chief was one of the most remarkable of all. This herd-boy and baker's apprentice of the Cevennes, after holding at bay the armies of France for nearly three years, had come to negotiate a treaty of peace with its most famous general. Leaving the greater part of his cavalry and the whole of his infantry at St. Césaire, a few miles from Nismes, Cavalier rode towards the town attended by eighteen horsemen commanded by Catinat. On approaching the southern gate, he found an immense multitude waiting his arrival. "He could not have been more royally welcomed," said the priest of St. Germain, "had he been a king." Cavalier rode at the head of his troop gaily attired; for fine dress was one of the weaknesses of the Camisard chiefs. He wore a tight-fitting doeskin coat ornamented with gold lace, scarlet breeches, a muslin cravat, and a large beaver with a white plume; his long fair hair hanging over his shoulders. Catinat rode by his side on a high-mettled charger, attracting all eyes by his fine figure, his martial air, and his magnificent costume. Cavalier's faithful friend, Daniel Billard, rode on his left; and behind followed his little brother in military uniform, between the Baron d'Aigalliers and Lacombe, the agents for peace. The cavalcade advanced through the dense crowd, which could with difficulty be kept back, past the Roman Amphitheatre, and along the Rue St. Antoine, to the Garden of the Récollets, a Franciscan convent, nearly opposite the elegant Roman temple known as the Maison Carrée.[45] Alighting from his horse at the gate, and stationing his guard there under the charge of Catinat, Cavalier entered the garden, and was conducted to Marshal Villars, with whom was Baville, intendant of the province; Baron Sandricourt, governor of Nismes; General Lalande, and other dignitaries. Cavalier looked such a mere boy, that Villars at first could scarcely believe that it was the celebrated Camisard chief who stood before him. The marshal, however, advanced several steps, and addressed some complimentary words to Cavalier, to which he respectfully replied. [Footnote 45: The Nismes Theatre now occupies part of the Jardin des Récollets.] The conference then began and proceeded, though not without frequent interruptions from Baville, who had so long regarded Cavalier as a despicable rebel, that he could scarcely brook the idea of the King's marshal treating with him on anything like equal terms. But the marshal checked the intendant by reminding him that he had no authority to interfere in a matter which the King had solely entrusted to himself. Then turning to Cavalier, he asked him to state his conditions for a treaty of peace. Cavalier has set forth in his memoirs the details of the conditions proposed by him, and which he alleges were afterwards duly agreed to and signed by Villars and Baville, on the 17th of May, 1704, on the part of the King. The first condition was liberty of conscience, with the privilege of holding religious assemblies in country places. This was agreed to, subject to the Protestant temples not being rebuilt. The second--that all Protestants in prison or at the galleys should be set at liberty within six weeks from the date of the treaty--was also agreed to. The third--that all who had left the kingdom on account of their religion should have liberty to return, and be restored to their estates and privileges--was agreed to, subject to their taking the oath of allegiance. The fourth--as to the re-establishment of the parliament of Languedoc on its ancient footing--was promised consideration. The fifth and sixth--that the province should be free from capitation tax for ten years, and that the Protestants should hold Montpellier, Cette, Perpignan, and Aiguesmortes, as cautionary towns--were refused. The seventh--that those inhabitants of the Cevennes whose houses had been burnt during the civil war should pay no imposts for seven years--was granted. And the eighth--that Cavalier should raise a regiment of dragoons to serve the King in Portugal--was also granted. These conditions are said to have been agreed to on the distinct understanding that the insurrection should forthwith cease, and that all persons in arms against the King should lay them down and submit themselves to his majesty's clemency. The terms having been generally agreed to, Cavalier respectfully took his leave of the marshal, and returned to his comrades at the gate. But Catinat and the Camisard guard had disappeared. The conference had lasted two hours, during which Cavalier's general of horse had become tired of waiting, and gone with his companions to refresh himself at the sign of the Golden Cup. On his way thither, he witched the world of Nismes with his noble horsemanship, making his charger bound and prance and curvet, greatly to the delight of the immense crowd that followed him. On the return of the Camisard guard to the Récollets, Cavalier mounted his horse, and, escorted by them, proceeded to the Hôtel de la Poste, where he rested. In the evening, he came out on the Esplanade, and walked freely amidst the crowd, amongst whom were many ladies, eager to see the Camisard hero, and happy if they could but hear him speak, or touch his dress. He then went to visit the mother of Daniel, his favourite prophet, a native of Nismes, whose father and brother were both prisoners because of their religion. Returning to the hotel, Cavalier mustered his guard, and set out for Calvisson, followed by hundreds of people, singing together as they passed through the town gate the 133rd Psalm--"Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!" Cavalier remained with his companions at Calvisson for eight days, during which he enjoyed the most perfect freedom of action. He held public religious services daily, at first amidst the ruins of the demolished Protestant temple, and afterwards, when the space was insufficient, in the open plain outside the town walls. People came from all quarters to attend them--from the Vaunage, from Sommières, from Lunel, from Nismes, and even from Montpellier. As many as forty thousand persons are said to have resorted to the services during Cavalier's sojourn at Calvisson. The plains resounded with preaching and psalmody from morning until evening, sometimes until late at night, by torchlight. These meetings were a great cause of offence to the more bigoted of the Roman Catholics, who saw in them the triumph of their enemies. They muttered audibly against the policy of Villars, who was tolerating if not encouraging heretics--worthy, in their estimation, only of perdition. Fléchier, Bishop of Nismes, was full of lamentations on the subject, and did not scruple to proclaim that war, with all its horrors, was even more tolerable than such a peace as this. Unhappily, the peace proved only of short duration, and Cavalier's anticipations of unity and brotherly love were not destined to be fulfilled. Whether Roland was jealous of the popularity achieved by Cavalier, or suspected treachery on the part of the Royalists, or whether he still believed in the ability of his followers to conquer religious liberty and compel the re-establishment of the ancient edicts by the sword, does not clearly appear. At all events, he refused to be committed in any way by what Cavalier had done; and when the treaty entered into with Villars was submitted to Roland for approval, he refused to sign it. A quarrel had almost occurred between the chiefs, and hot words passed between them. But Cavalier controlled himself, and still hoped to persuade Roland to adopt a practicable course, and bring the unhappy war to a conclusion. It was at length agreed between them that a further effort should be made to induce Villars to grant more liberal terms, particularly with respect to the rebuilding of the Protestant temples; and Cavalier consented that Salomon should accompany him to an interview with the marshal, and endeavour to obtain such a modification of the treaty as should meet Roland's views. Accordingly, another meeting shortly after took place in the Garden of the Récollets at Nismes, Cavalier leaving it to Salomon to be the spokesman on the occasion. But Salomon proved as uncompromising as his chief. He stated his _ultimatum_ bluntly and firmly--re-establishment of the Edict of Nantes, and complete liberty of conscience. On no other terms, he said, would the Camisards lay down their arms. Villars was courtly and polite as usual, but he was as firm as Salomon. He would adhere to the terms that had been agreed to, but could not comply with the conditions proposed. The discussion lasted for two hours, and at length became stormy and threatening on the part of Salomon, on which the marshal turned on his heel and left the apartment. Cavalier's followers had not yet been informed of the conditions of the treaty into which he had entered with Villars, but they had been led to believe that the Edict was to be re-established and liberty of worship restored. Their suspicions had already been roused by the hints thrown out by Ravanel, who was as obdurate as Roland in his refusal to lay down his arms until the Edict had been re-established. While Cavalier was still at Nismes, on his second mission to Villars, accompanied by Salomon, Ravanel, who had been left in charge of the troop at Calvisson, assembled the men, and told them he feared they were being betrayed--that they were to be refused this free exercise of their religion in temples of their own, but were to be required to embark as King's soldiers on shipboard, perhaps to perish at sea. "Brethren," said he, "let us cling by our own native land, and live and die for the Eternal." The men enthusiastically applauded the stern resolve of Ravanel, and awaited with increasing impatience the return of the negotiating chief. On Cavalier's return to his men, he found, to his dismay, that instead of being welcomed back with the usual cordiality, they were drawn up in arms under Ravanel, and received him in silence, with angry and scowling looks. He upbraided Ravanel for such a reception, on which the storm immediately burst. "What is the treaty, then," cried Ravanel, "that thou hast made with this marshal?" Cavalier, embarrassed, evaded the inquiry; but Ravanel, encouraged by his men, proceeded to press for the information. "Well," said Cavalier, "it is arranged that we shall go to serve in Portugal." There was at once a violent outburst from the ranks. "Traitor! coward! then thou hast sold us! But we shall have no peace--no peace without our temples." At sound of the loud commotion and shouting, Vincel, the King's commissioner, who remained at Calvisson pending the negotiations, came running up, and the men in their rage would have torn him to pieces, but Cavalier threw himself in their way, exclaiming, "Back, men! Do him no harm, kill me instead." His voice, his gesture, arrested the Camisards, and Vincel turned and fled for his life. Ravanel then ordered the _générale_ to be beaten. The men drew up in their ranks, and putting himself at their head, Ravanel marched them out of Calvisson by the northern gate. Cavalier, humiliated and downcast, followed the troop--their leader no more. He could not part with them thus--the men he had so often led to victory, and who had followed him so devotedly--but hung upon their rear, hoping they would yet relent and return to him as their chief. Catinat, his general of horse, observing Cavalier following the men, turned upon him. "Whither wouldst thou go, traitor?" cried Catinat. What! Catinat, of all others, to prove unfaithful? Yet it was so! Catinat even, presented his pistol at his former chief, but he did not fire. Cavalier would not yet turn back. He hung upon the skirts of the column, entreating, supplicating, adjuring the men, by all their former love for him, to turn, and follow him. But they sternly marched on, scarcely even deigning to answer him. Ravanel endeavoured to drive him back by reproaches, which at length so irritated Cavalier, that he drew his sword, and they were about to rush at each other, when one of the prophets ran between them and prevented bloodshed. Cavalier did not desist from following them for several miles, until at length, on reaching St. Estève, the men were appealed to as to whom they would follow, and they declared themselves for Ravanel. Cavalier made a last appeal to their allegiance, and called out, "Let those who love me, follow me!" About forty of his old adherents detached themselves from the ranks, and followed Cavalier in the direction of Nismes. But the principal body remained with Ravanel, who, waving his sabre in the air, and shouting, "Vive l'Épée de l'Éternel!" turned his men's faces northward and marched on to rejoin Roland in the Upper Cevennes. Cavalier was completely prostrated by the desertion of his followers. He did not know where next to turn. He could not rejoin the Camisard camp nor enter the villages of the Cevennes, and he was ashamed to approach Villars, lest he should be charged with deceiving him. But he sent a letter to the marshal, informing him of the failure of his negotiations, the continued revolt of the Camisards, and their rejection of him as their chief. Villars, however, was gentle and generous; he was persuaded that Cavalier had acted loyally and in good faith throughout, and he sent a message by the Baron d'Aigalliers, urgently inviting him to return to Nismes and arrange as to the future. Cavalier accordingly set out forthwith, accompanied by his brother and the prophet Daniel, and escorted by the ten horsemen and thirty foot who still remained faithful to his person. It is not necessary further to pursue the history of Cavalier. Suffice it to say that, at the request of Marshal Villars, he proceeded to Paris, where he had an unsatisfactory interview with Louis XIV.; that fearing an intention on the part of the Roman Catholic party to make him a prisoner, he fled across the frontier into Switzerland; that he eventually reached England, and entered the English army, with the rank of Colonel; that he raised a regiment of refugee Frenchmen, consisting principally of his Camisard followers, at the head of whom he fought most valiantly at the battle of Almanza; that he was afterwards appointed governor of Jersey, and died a major-general in the British service in the year 1740, greatly respected by all who knew him. * * * * * Although Cavalier failed in carrying the treaty into effect, so far as he was concerned, his secession at this juncture proved a deathblow to the insurrection. The remaining Camisard leaders endeavoured in vain to incite that enthusiasm amongst their followers which had so often before led them to victory. The men felt that they were fighting without hope, and as it were with halters round their necks. Many of them began to think that Cavalier had been justified in seeking to secure the best terms practicable; and they dropped off, by tens and fifties, to join their former leader, whose head-quarters for some time continued to be at Vallabergue, an island in the Rhône a little above Beaucaire. The insurgents were also in a great measure disarmed by Marshal Villars, who continued to pursue a policy of clemency, and at the same time of severity. He offered a free pardon to all who surrendered themselves, but threatened death to all who continued to resist the royal troops. In sign of his clemency, he ordered the gibbets which had for some years stood _en permanence_ in all the villages of the Cevennes, to be removed; and he went from town to town, urging all well-disposed people, of both religions, to co-operate with him in putting an end to the dreadful civil war that had so long desolated the province. Moved by the marshal's eloquent appeals, the principal towns along the Gardon and the Vidourle appointed deputies to proceed in a body to the camp of Roland, and induce him if possible to accept the proffered amnesty. They waited upon him accordingly at his camp of St. Felix and told him their errand. But his answer was to order them at once to leave the place on pain of death. Villars himself sent messengers to Roland--amongst others the Baron d'Aigalliers--offering to guarantee that no one should be molested on account of his religion, provided he and his men would lay down their arms; but Roland remained inflexible--nothing short of complete religious liberty would induce him to surrender. Roland and Joany were still at the head of about a thousand men in the Upper Cevennes. Pont-de-Montvert was at the time occupied by a body of Miguelets, whom they determined if possible to destroy. Dividing their army into three bodies, they proceeded to assail simultaneously the three quarters of which the village is composed. But the commander of the Miguelets, informed of Roland's intention, was prepared to receive him. One of the Camisard wings was attacked at the same time in front and rear, thrown into confusion and defeated; and the other wings were driven back with heavy loss. This was Roland's last battle. About a month later--in August, 1704--while a body of Camisards occupied the Château of Castelnau, not far from Ners, the place was suddenly surrounded at night by a body of royalist dragoons. The alarm was raised, and Roland, half-dressed, threw himself on horseback and fled. He was pursued, overtaken, and brought to a stand in a wood, where, setting his back to a tree he defended himself bravely for a time against overpowering numbers, but was at last shot through the heart by a dragoon, and the Camisard chief lay dead upon the ground. The insurrection did not long survive the death of Roland. The other chiefs wandered about from place to place with their followers, but they had lost heart and hope, and avoided further encounters with the royal forces. One after another of them surrendered. Castanet and Catinat both laid down their arms, and were allowed to leave France for Switzerland, accompanied by twenty-two of their men. Joany also surrendered with forty-six of his followers. One by one the other chiefs laid down their arms--all excepting Abraham and Ravanel, who preferred liberty and misery at home to peace and exile abroad. They continued for some time to wander about in the Upper Cevennes, hiding in the woods by day and sleeping in caves by night--hunted, deserted, and miserable. And thus at last was Languedoc pacified; and at the beginning of January, 1705, Marshal Villars returned to Versailles to receive the congratulations and honours of the King. Several futile attempts were afterwards made by the banished leaders to rekindle the insurrection from its embers, Catinat and Castanet, wearied of their inaction at Geneva, stole back across the frontier and rejoined Ravanel in the Cevennes; but their rashness cost them their lives. They were all captured and condemned to death. Castanet and Salomon were broken alive on the wheel on the Peyrou at Montpellier, and Catinat, Ravanel, with several others, were burnt alive on the Place de la Beaucaire at Nismes. The last to perish were Abraham and Joany. The one was shot while holding the royal troops at bay, firing upon them from the roof of a cottage at Mas-de-Couteau; the other was captured in the mountains near the source of the Tarn. He was on his way to prison, tied behind a trooper, like Rob Roy in Scott's novel, when, suddenly freeing himself from his bonds while crossing the bridge of Pont-de-Montvert, he slid from the horse, and leapt over the parapet into the Tarn. The soldiers at once opened fire upon the fugitive, and he fell, pierced with many balls, and was carried away in the torrent. And thus Pont-de-Montvert, which had seen the beginning, also saw the end of the insurrection. CHAPTER IX. GALLEY-SLAVES FOR THE FAITH. After the death of the last of the Camisard leaders, there was no further effort at revolt. The Huguenots seemed to be entirely put down, and Protestantism completely destroyed. There was no longer any resistance nor protest. If there were any Huguenots who had not become Catholics, they remained mute. Force had at last succeeded in stifling them. A profound quiet reigned for a time throughout France. The country had become a circle, closely watched by armed men--by dragoons, infantry, archers, and coastguards--beyond which the Huguenots could not escape without running the risk of the prison, the galley, or the gibbet. The intendants throughout the kingdom flattered Louis XIV., and Louis XIV. flattered himself, that the Huguenots had either been converted, extirpated, or expelled the kingdom. The King had medals struck, announcing the "_extinction of heresy_." A proclamation to this effect was also published by the King, dated the 8th of March, 1715, declaring the entire conversion of the French Huguenots, and sentencing those who, after that date, relapsed from Catholicism to Protestantism, to all the penalties of heresy. What, then, had become of the Huguenots? They were for the moment prostrate, but their life had not gone out of them. Many were no doubt "converted." They had not strength to resist the pains and penalties threatened by the State if they refused. They accordingly attended Mass, and assisted in ceremonies which at heart they detested. Though they blushed at their apostasy, they were too much broken down and weary of oppression and suffering to attempt to be free. But though many Huguenots pretended to be "converted," the greater number silently refrained. They held their peace and bided their time. Meanwhile, however, they were subject to all the annoyances of persecution. Persecution had seized them from the day of their birth, and never relaxed its hold until the day of their death. Every new-born child must be taken to the priest to be baptized. When the children had grown into boys and girls, they must go to school and be educated, also by the priest. If their parents refused to send them, the children were forcibly seized, taken away, and brought up in the Jesuit schools and nunneries. And lastly, when grown up into young men and women, they must be married by the priest, or their offspring be declared illegitimate. The Huguenots refused to conform to all this. Nevertheless, it was by no means easy to continue to refuse obeying the priest. The priest was well served with spies, though the principal spy in every parish was himself. There were also numerous other professional spies--besides idlers, mischief-makers, and "good-natured friends." In time of peace, also, soldiers were usually employed in performing the disgraceful duty of acting as spies upon the Huguenots. The Huguenot was ordered to attend Mass under the penalty of fine and imprisonment. Supposing he refused, because he did not believe that the priest had the miraculous power of converting bread and wine into something the very opposite. The priest insisted that he did possess this power, and that he was supported by the State in demanding that the Huguenot _must_ come and worship his transubstantiation of bread into flesh and wine into blood. "I do not believe it," said the Huguenot. "But I _order_ you to come, for Louis XIV. has proclaimed you to be a converted Catholic, and if you refuse you will be at once subject to all the penalties of heresy." It was certainly very difficult to argue with a priest who had the hangman at his back, or with the King who had his hundred thousand dragoons. And so, perhaps, the threatened Huguenot went to Mass, and pretended to believe all that the priest had said about his miraculous powers. But many resolutely continued to refuse, willing to incur the last and heaviest penalties. Then it came to be seen that Protestantism, although, declared defunct by the King's edict, had not in fact expired, but was merely reposing for a time in order to make a fresh start forward. The Huguenots who still remained in France, whether as "new converts" or as "obstinate heretics," at length began to emerge from their obscurity. They met together in caves and solitary places--in deep and rocky gorges--in valleys among the mountains--where they prayed together, sang together their songs of David, and took counsel one with another. At length, from private meetings for prayer, religious assemblies began to be held in the Desert, and preachers made their appearance. The spies spread about the country informed the intendants. The meetings were often surprised by the military. Sometimes the soldiers would come upon them suddenly, and fire into the crowd of men, women, and children. On some occasions a hundred persons or more would be killed upon the spot. Of those taken prisoners, the preachers were hanged or broken on the wheel, the women were sent to prison, and the children, to nunneries, while the men were sent to be galley-slaves for life.[46] [Footnote 46: In the Viverais and elsewhere they sang the song of the persecuted Church:-- "Nos filles dans les monastères, Nos prisonniers dans les cachots. Nos martyrs dont le sang se répand à grands flots, Nos confesseurs sur les galères, Nos malades persécutés, Nos mourants exposés à plus d'une furie, Nos morts traînés à la voierie, Te disent (ô Dieu!) nos calamités."] The persecutions to which Huguenot women and children were exposed caused a sudden enlargement of all the prisons and nunneries in France. Many of the old castles were fitted up as gaols, and even their dungeons were used for the incorrigible heretics. One of the worst of these was the Tour de Constance in the town of Aiguesmortes, which is to this day remembered with horror as the principal dungeon of the Huguenot women. The town of Aiguesmortes is situated in the department of Gard, close to the Mediterranean, whose waters wash into the salt marshes and lagunes by which it is surrounded. It was erected in the thirteenth century for Philip the Bold, and is still interesting as an example of the ancient feudal fortress. The fosse has since been filled up, on account of the malaria produced by the stagnant water which it contained. The place is approached by a long causeway raised above the marsh, and the entrance to the tower is spanned by an ancient gatehouse. In advance of the tower, to the north, in an angle of the wall, is a single, large round tower, which served as a citadel. It is sixty-six feet in diameter and ninety feet high, surmounted by a lighthouse turret of thirty-four feet. It consists of two large vaulted apartments, the staircase from the one to the other being built within the wall itself, which is about eighteen feet thick. The upper chamber is dimly lighted by narrow chinks through the walls. The lowest of the apartments is the dungeon, which is almost without light and air. In the centre of the floor is a hole connected with a reservoir of water below. This Tour de Constance continued to be the principal prison for Huguenot women in France for a period of about a hundred years. It was always horribly unhealthy; and to be condemned to this dungeon was considered almost as certain though a slower death than to be condemned to the gallows. Sixteen Huguenot women confined there in 1686 died within five months. Most of them were the wives of merchants of Nismes, or of men of property in the district. When the prisoners died off, the dungeon was at once filled up again with more victims, and it was rarely, if ever, empty, down to a period within only a few years before the outbreak of the French Revolution. The punishment of the men found attending religious meetings, and taken prisoners by the soldiers, was to be sentenced to the galleys, mostly for life. They were usually collected in large numbers, and sent to the seaports attached together by chains. They were sent openly, sometimes through the entire length of the kingdom, by way of a show. The object was to teach the horrible delinquency of professing Protestantism; for it could not be to show the greater beautifulness and mercifulness of Catholicism. The punishment of the Chain varied in degree. Sometimes it was more cruel than at other times. This depended upon the drivers of the prisoners. Marteilhe describes the punishment during his conveyance from Havre to Marseilles in the winter of 1712.[47] The Chain to which he belonged did not reach Marseilles until the 17th January, 1713. The season was bitterly cold; but that made no difference in the treatment of Huguenot prisoners. [Footnote 47: "Autobiography of a French Protestant condemned to the Galleys because of his Religion." Rotterdam, 1757. (Since reprinted by the Religious Tract Society.)] The Chain consisted of a file of prisoners, chained one to another in various ways. On this occasion, each pair was fastened by the neck with a thick chain three feet long, in the middle of which was a round ring. After being thus chained, the pairs were placed in file, couple behind couple, when another long thick chain was passed through the rings, thus running along the centre of the gang, and the whole were thus doubly-chained together. There were no less than four hundred prisoners in the chain described by Marteilhe. The number had, however, greatly fallen off through deaths by barbarous treatment before it reached Marseilles. It must, however, be added, that the whole gang did not consist of Huguenots, but only a part of it--the Huguenots being distinguished by their red jackets. The rest consisted of murderers, thieves, deserters, and criminals of various sorts. The difficulty which the prisoners had in marching along the roads was very great; the weight of chain which each member had to carry being no less than one hundred and fifty pounds. The lodging they had at night was of the worst description. While at Paris, the galley-slaves were quartered in the Château de la Tournelle, which was under the spiritual direction of the Jesuits. The gaol consisted of a large cellar or dungeon, fitted with huge beams of oak fixed close to the floor. Thick iron collars were attached by iron chains to the beams. The collar being placed round the prisoner's neck, it was closed and riveted upon an anvil with heavy blows of a hammer. Twenty men in pairs were thus chained to each beam. The dungeon was so large that five hundred men could thus be fastened up. They could not sleep lying at full length, nor could they sleep sitting or standing up straight; the beam to which they were chained being too high in the one case and too low in the other. The torture which they endured, therefore, is scarcely to be described. The prisoners were kept there until a sufficient number could be collected to set out in a great chain for Marseilles. When they arrived at the first stage out of Paris, at Charenton, after a heavy day's fatigue, their lodging was no better than before. A stable was found in which they were chained up in such a way that they could with difficulty sit down, and then only on a dung-heap. After they had lain there for a few hours, the prisoners' chains were taken off, and they were turned out into the spacious courtyard of the inn, where they were ordered to strip off their clothes, put them down at their feet, and march over to the other side of the courtyard. The object of this proceeding was to search the pockets of the prisoners, examine their clothes, and find whether they contained any knives, files, or other tools which might be used for cutting the chains. All money and other valuables or necessaries that the clothes contained were at the same time taken away. The night was cold and frosty, with a keen north wind blowing; and after the prisoners had been exposed to it for about half an hour, their bodies became so benumbed that they could scarcely move across the yard to where their clothes were lying. Next morning it was found that eighteen of the unfortunates were happily released by death. It is not necessary to describe the tortures endured by the galley-slaves to the end of their journey. One little circumstance may, however, be mentioned. While marching towards the coast, the exhausted Huguenots, weary and worn out by the heaviness of their chains, were accustomed to stretch out their little wooden cups for a drop of water to the inhabitants of the villages through which they passed. The women, whom they mostly addressed, answered their entreaties with the bitterest spite. "Away, away!" they cried; "you are going where you will have _water enough_!" When the gang or chain reached the port at which the prisoners were to be confined, they were drafted on board the different galleys. These were for the most part stationed at Toulon, but there were also other galleys in which Huguenots were imprisoned--at Marseilles, Dunkirk, Brest, St. Malo, and Bordeaux. Let us briefly describe the galley of those days. The royal galley was about a hundred and fifty feet long and forty feet broad, and was capable of containing about five hundred men. It had fifty benches for rowers, twenty-five on each side. Between these two rows of benches was the raised middle gallery, commonly called the waist of the ship, four feet high and about three or four feet broad. The oars were fifty feet long, of which thirty-seven feet were outside the ship and thirteen within. Six men worked at each oar, all chained to the same bench. They had to row in unison, otherwise they would be heavily struck by the return rowers both before and behind them. They were under the constant command of the _comite_ or galley-slave-driver, who struck all about him with his long whip in urging them to work. To enable his strokes to _tell_, the men sat naked while they rowed.[48] Their dress was always insufficient, summer and winter--the lower part of their bodies being covered with a short red jacket and a sort of apron, for their manacles prevented them wearing any other dress. [Footnote 48: Le comite ou chef de chiourme, aidé de deux _sous-comites_, allait et venait sans cesse sur le coursier, frappant les forçats à coup de nerfs de boeuf, comme un cocher ses chevaux. Pour rendre les coups plus sensible et pour économiser les vêtements, _les galériens étaient nus_ quand ils ramaient.--ATHANASE COQUEREL FILS. _Les Forçats pour la Foi_, 64.] The chain which bound each rower to his bench was fastened to his leg, and was of such a length as to enable his feet to come and go whilst rowing. At night, the galley-slave slept where he sat--on the bench on which he had been rowing all day. There was no room for him to lie down. He never quitted his bench except for the hospital or the grave; yet some of the Huguenot rowers contrived to live upon their benches for thirty or forty years! During all these years they toiled in their chains in a hell of foul and disgusting utterance, for they were mixed up with thieves and the worst of criminals. They ate the bread and drank the waters of bitterness. They seemed to be forsaken by the world. They had no one to love them, for most had left their families behind them at home, or perhaps in convents or prisons. They lived under the constant threats of their keepers, who lashed them to make them row harder, who lashed them to make them sit up, or lashed them to make them lie down. The Chevalier Langeron, captain of _La Palme_, of which Marteilhe was at first a rower, used to call the _comite_ to him and say, "Go and refresh the backs of these Huguenots with a salad of strokes of the whip." For the captain, it seems, "held the most Jesuitical sentiments," and hated his Huguenot prisoners far worse than his thieves or his murderers.[49] [Footnote 49: "The Autobiography of a French Protestant," 68.] And yet, at any moment, a word spoken would have made these Huguenots free. The Catholic priests frequently visited the galleys and entreated them to become converted. If "converted," and the Huguenots would only declare that they believed in the miraculous powers of the clergy, their chains would fall away from their limbs at once; and they would have been restored to the world, to their families, and to liberty! And who would not have declared themselves "converted," rather than endure these horrible punishments? Yet by far the greater number of the Huguenots did not. They could not be hypocrites. They would not lie to God. Rather than do this, they had the heroism--some will call it the obstinacy--to remain galley-slaves for life! Many of the galley-slaves did not survive their torture long. Men of all ages and conditions, accustomed to indoor life, could not bear the exposure to the sun, rain, and snow, which the punishment of the galley-slave involved. The old men and the young soon succumbed and died. Middle-aged men survived the longest. But there was always a change going on. When the numbers of a galley became thinned by death, there were other Huguenots ready to be sent on board--perhaps waiting in some inland prison until another "Great Chain" could be made up for the seaports, to go on board the galley-ships, to be manacled, tortured, and killed off as before. Such was the treatment of the galley-slaves in time of peace. But the galleys were also war-ships. They carried large numbers of armed men on board. Sometimes they scoured the Mediterranean, and protected French merchant-ships against the Sallee rovers. At other times they were engaged in the English channel, attacking Dutch and English ships, sometimes picking up a prize, at other times in actual sea-fight. When the service required, they were compelled to row incessantly night and day, without rest, save in the last extremity; and they were treated as if, on the first opportunity, in sight of the enemy, they would revolt and betray the ship; hence they were constantly watched by the soldiers on board, and if any commotion appeared amongst them, they were shot down without ceremony, and their bodies thrown into the sea. Loaded cannons were also placed at the end of the benches of rowers, so as to shoot them down in case of necessity. Whenever an enemy's ship came up, the galley-slaves were covered over with a linen screen, so as to prevent them giving signals to the enemy. When an action occurred, they were particularly exposed to danger, for the rowers and their oars were the first to be shot at--just as the boiler or screw of a war-steamer would be shot at now--in order to disable the ship. The galley-slaves thus suffered much more from the enemy's shot than the other armed men of the ship. The rowers benches were often filled with dead, before the soldiers and mariners on board had been touched. Marteilhe, while a galley-slave on board _La Palme_, was engaged in an adventure which had nearly cost him his life. Four French galleys, after cruising along the English coast from Dover to the Downs, got sight of a fleet of thirty-five merchant vessels on their way from the Texel to the Thames, under the protection of one small English frigate. The commanders of the galleys, taking counsel together, determined to attack the frigate (which they thought themselves easily able to master), and so capture the entire English fleet. The captain of the frigate, when he saw the galleys approach him, ordered the merchantmen to crowd sail and make for the Thames, the mouth of which they had nearly reached. He then sailed down upon the galleys, determined to sacrifice his ship if necessary for the safety of his charge. The galleys fired into him, but he returned never a shot. The captain of the galley in which Marteilhe was, said, "Oh, he is coming to surrender!" The frigate was so near that the French musqueteers were already firing full upon her. All of a sudden the frigate tacked and veered round as if about to fly from the galleys. The Frenchmen called out that the English were cowards in thus trying to avoid the battle. If they did not surrender at once, they would sink the frigate! The English captain took no notice. The frigate then turned her stern towards the galley, as if to give the Frenchmen an opportunity of boarding her. The French commander ordered the galley at once to run at the enemy's stern, and the crew to board the frigate. The rush was made; the galley-slaves, urged by blows of the whip, rowing with great force. The galley was suddenly nearing the stern of the frigate, when by a clever stroke of the helm the ship moved to one side, and the galley, missing it, rushed past. All the oars on that side were suddenly broken off, and the galley was placed immediately under the broadside of the enemy. Then began the English part of the game. The French galley was seized with grappling irons and hooked on to the English broadside. The men on board the galley were as exposed as if they had been upon a raft or a bridge. The frigate's guns, which were charged with grapeshot, were discharged full upon them, and a frightful carnage ensued. The English also threw hand grenades, which went down amongst the rowers and killed many. They next boarded the galley, and cut to pieces all the armed men they could lay hold of, only sparing the convicts, who could make no attempt at defence. The English captain then threw off the galley, which he had broadsided and disarmed, in order to look after the merchantmen, which some of the other galleys had gone to intercept on their way to the mouth of the Thames. Some of the ships had already been captured; but the commanders of the galleys, seeing their fellow-commodores flying signals of distress, let go their prey, and concentrated their attack upon the frigate. This they surrounded, and after a very hard struggle the frigate was captured, but not until the English captain had ascertained that all the fleet of which he had been in charge had entered the Thames and were safe. In the above encounter with the English frigate Marteilhe had nearly lost his life. The bench on which he was seated, with five other slaves, was opposite one of the loaded guns of the frigate. He saw that it must be discharged directly upon them. His fellows tried to lie down flat, while Marteilhe himself stood up. He saw the gunner with his lighted match approach the touchhole; then he lifted up his heart to God; the next moment he was lying stunned and prostrate in the centre of the galley, as far as the chain would allow him to reach. He was lying across the body of the lieutenant, who was killed. A long time passed, during which the fight was still going on, and then Marteilhe came to himself, towards dark. Most of his fellow-slaves were killed. He himself was bleeding from a large open wound on his shoulder, another on his knee, and a third in his stomach. Of the eighteen men around him he was the only one that escaped, with his three wounds. The dead were all thrown into the sea. The men were about to throw Marteilhe after them, but while attempting to release him from his chain, they touched the wound upon his knee, and he groaned heavily. They let him remain where he lay. Shortly after, he was taken down to the bottom of the hold with the other men, where he long lay amongst the wounded and dying. At length he recovered from his wounds, and was again returned to his bench, to re-enter the horrible life of a galley-slave. There was another mean and unmanly cruelty, connected with this galley-slave service, which was practised only upon the Huguenots. If an assassin or other criminal received a wound in the service of the state while engaged in battle, he was at once restored to his liberty; but if a Huguenot was wounded, he was never released. He was returned to his bench and chained as before; the wounds he had received being only so many additional tortures to be borne by him in the course of his punishment. Marteilhe, as we have already stated, was disembarked when he had sufficiently recovered, and marched through the entire length of France, enchained with other malefactors. On his arrival at Marseilles, he was placed on board the galley _Grand Réale_, where he remained until peace was declared between England and France by the Treaty of Utrecht.[50] [Footnote 50: "Autobiography of a French Protestant," 112-21.] Queen Anne of England, at the instigation of the Marquis de Rochegade, then made an effort to obtain the liberation of Protestants serving at the galleys; and at length, out of seven hundred and forty-two Huguenots who were then enslaved, a hundred and thirty-six were liberated, of whom Marteilhe was one. He was thus enabled to get rid of his inhuman countrymen, and to spend the remainder of his life in Holland and England, where Protestants were free. CHAPTER X. ANTOINE COURT Almost at the very time that Louis XIV. was lying on his death-bed at Versailles, a young man conceived the idea of re-establishing Protestantism in France! Louis XIV. had tried to enter heaven by superstition and cruelty. On his death-bed he began to doubt whether he "had not carried his authority too far."[51] But the Jesuits tried to make death easy for him, covering his body with relics of the true cross. [Footnote 51: Saint-Simon and Dangeau.] Very different was the position of the young man who tried to undo all that Louis XIV., under the influence of his mistress De Maintenon, and his Jesuit confessor, Père la Chase,[52] had been trying all his life to accomplish. He was an intelligent youth, the son of Huguenot parents in Viverais, of comparatively poor and humble condition. He was, however, full of energy, activity, and a zealous disposition for work. Observing the tendency which Protestantism had, while bereft of its pastors, to run into gloomy forms of fanaticism, Antoine Court conceived the idea of reviving the pastorate, and restoring the proscribed Protestant Church of France. It was a bold idea, but the result proved that Antoine Court was justified in entertaining it. [Footnote 52: Amongst the many satires and epigrams with which Louis XIV. was pursued to the grave, the following epitaph may be given:-- "Ci gist le mari de Thérèse De la Montespan le Mignon, L'esclave de la Maintenon, Le valet du père La Chaise." At the death of Louis XIV., Voltaire, an _élève_ of the Jesuits, was appropriately coming into notice. At the age of about twenty he was thrown into the Bastille; for having written a satire on Louis XIV., of which the following is an extract:-- "J'ai vu sous l'habit d'une femme Un démon nous donner la loi; Elle sacrifia son Dieu, sa foi, son âme, Pour séduire l'esprit d'un trop crédule roi. * * * * * J'ai vu l'hypocrite honoré: J'ai vu, c'est dire tout, le jésuite adoré: J'ai vu ces maux sous le règne funeste D'un prince que jadis la colère céleste Accorda, par vengeance, à nos désirs ardens: J'ai vu ces maux, et je n'ai pas vingt ans." Voltaire denied having written this satire.] Louis XIV. died in August, 1715. During that very month, Court summoned together a small number of Huguenots to consider his suggestions. The meeting was held at daybreak, in an empty quarry near Nismes, which has already been mentioned in the course of this history. But it may here be necessary to inform the reader of the early life of this enthusiastic young man. Antoine Court was born at Villeneuve de Berg, in Viverais, in the year 1696. Religious persecution was then at its height; assemblies were vigorously put down; and all pastors taken prisoners were hanged on the Peyrou at Montpellier. Court was only four years old when his father died, and his mother resolved, if the boy lived, to train him up so that he might consecrate himself to the service of God. He was still very young while the Camisard war was in progress, but he heard a great deal about it, and vividly remembered all that he heard. Antoine Court, like many Protestant children, was compelled to attend a Jesuit school in his neighbourhood. Though but a boy he abhorred the Mass. With Protestants the Mass was then the symbol of persecution; it was identified with the Revocation of the Edict--the dragonnades, the galleys, the prisons, the nunneries, the monkeries, and the Jesuits. The Mass was not a matter of knowledge, but of fear, of terror, and of hereditary hatred. At school, the other boys were most bitter against Court, because he was the son of a Huguenot. Every sort of mischief was practised upon him, for little boys are generally among the greatest of persecutors. Court was stoned, worried, railed at, laughed at, spit at. When leaving school, the boys called after him "He, he! the eldest son of Calvin!" They sometimes pursued him with clamour and volleys of stones to the door of his house, collecting in their riotous procession all the other Catholic boys of the place. Sometimes they forced him into church whilst the Mass was being celebrated. In fact, the boy's hatred of the Mass and of Catholicism grew daily more and more vehement. All these persecutions, together with reading some of the books which came under his notice at home, confirmed his aversion to the Jesuitical school to which he had been sent. At the same time he became desirous of attending the secret assemblies, which he knew were being held in the neighbourhood. One day, when his mother set out to attend one of them, the boy set out to follow her. She discovered him, and demanded whither he was going. "I follow you, mother," said he, "and I wish you to permit me to go where you go. I know that you go to pray to God, and will you refuse me the favour of going to do so with you?" She shed tears at his words, told him of the danger of attending the assembly, and strongly exhorted him to secrecy; but she allowed him to accompany her. He was at that time too little and weak to walk the whole way to the meeting; but other worshippers coming up, they took the boy on their shoulders and carried him along with them. At the age of seventeen, Court began to read the Bible at the assemblies. One day, in a moment of sudden excitement, common enough at secret meetings, he undertook to address the assembly. What he said was received with much approval, and he was encouraged to go on preaching. He soon became famous among the mountaineers, and was regarded as a young man capable of accomplishing great things. As he grew older, he at length determined to devote his life to preaching and ministering to the forsaken and afflicted Protestants. It was a noble, self-denying work, the only earthly reward for which was labour, difficulty, and danger. His mother was in great trouble, for Antoine was her only remaining son. She did not, however, press him to change his resolution. Court quoted to her the text, "Whoever loves father and mother more than me, is not worthy of me." After this, she only saw in her son a victim consecrated, like another Abraham, to the Divine service. After arriving at his decision, Court proceeded to visit the Huguenots in Low Languedoc, passing by Uzes to Nismes, and preaching wherever he could draw assemblies of the people together. His success during this rapid excursion induced him to visit Dauphiny. There he met Brunel, another preacher, with knapsack on his back, running from place to place in order to avoid spies, priests, and soldiers. The two were equally full of ardour, and they went together preaching in many places, and duly encouraging each other. From Dauphiny, Court directed his steps to Marseilles, where the royal galleys stationed there contained about three hundred Huguenot galley-slaves. He penetrated these horrible floating prisons, without being detected, and even contrived to organize amongst them a regular system of secret worship. Then he returned to Nismes, and from thence went through the Cevennes and the Viverais, preaching to people who had never met for Protestant worship since the termination of the wars of the Camisards. To elude the spies, who began to make hot search for him, because of the enthusiasm which he excited, Court contrived to be always on the move, and to appear daily in some fresh locality. The constant fatigue which he underwent undermined his health, and he was compelled to remain for a time inactive at the mineral waters of Euzet. This retirement proved useful. He began to think over what might be done to revivify the Protestant religion in France. Remember that he was at that time only nineteen years of age! It might be thought presumptuous in a youth, comparatively uninstructed, even to dream of such a subject. The instruments of earthly power--King, Pope, bishops, priests, soldiers, and spies--were all arrayed against him. He had nothing to oppose to them but truth, uprightness, conscience, and indefatigable zeal for labour. When Court had last met the few Protestant preachers who survived in Languedoc, they were very undecided about taking up his scheme. They had met at Nismes to take the sacrament in the house of a friend. There were Bombonnoux (an old Camisard), Crotte, Corteiz, Brunel, and Court. Without coming to any decision, they separated, some going to Switzerland, and others to the South and West of France. It now rested with Court, during his sickness, to study and endeavour to arrange the method of reorganization of the Church. The Huguenots who remained in France were then divided into three classes--the "new converts," who professed Catholicism while hating it; the lovers of the ancient Protestant faith, who still clung to it; and, lastly, the more ignorant, who still clung to prophesying and inspiration. These last had done the Protestant Church much injury, for the intelligent classes generally regarded them as but mere fanatics. Court found it would be requisite to keep the latter within the leading-strings of spiritual instruction, and to encourage the "new converts" to return to the church of their fathers by the re-establishment of some efficient pastoral service. He therefore urged that religious assemblies must be continued, and that discipline must be established by the appointment of elders, presbyteries, and synods, and also by the training up of a body of young pastors to preach amongst the people, and discipline them according to the rules of the Protestant Church. Nearly thirty years had passed since it had been disorganized by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, so that synods, presbyteries, and the training of preachers had become almost forgotten. The first synod was convened by Court, and held in the abandoned quarry near Nismes, above referred to, in the very same month in which Louis XIV. breathed his last. It was a very small beginning. Two or three laymen and a few preachers[53] were present, the whole meeting numbering only nine persons. The place in which the meeting was held had often before been used as a secret place of worship by the Huguenots. Religious meetings held there had often been dispersed by the dragoons, and there was scarcely a stone in it that had not been splashed by Huguenot blood. And now, after Protestantism had been "finally suppressed," Antoine Court assembled his first synod to re-establish the proscribed religion! [Footnote 53: Edmund Hughes says the preachers were probably Rouviere (or Crotte), Jean Huc, Jean Vesson, Etienne Arnaud, and Durand.] The first meeting took place on the 21st of August, 1715, at daybreak. After prayer, Court, as moderator, explained his method of reorganization, which was approved. The first elders were appointed from amongst those present. A series of rules and regulations was resolved upon and ordered to be spread over the entire province. The preachers were then charged to go forth, to stir up the people and endeavour to bring back the "new converts." They lost no time in carrying out their mission. The first districts in which they were appointed to work were those of Mende, Alais, Viviers, Uzes, Nismes, and Montpellier, in Languedoc--districts which, fifteen years before, had been the scenes of the Camisard war. There, in unknown valleys, on hillsides, on the mountains, in the midst of hostile towns and villages, the missionaries sought out the huts, the farms, and the dwellings of the scattered, concealed, and half-frightened Huguenots. Amidst the open threats of the magistrates and others in office, and the fear of the still more hateful priests and spies, they went from house to house, and prayed, preached, advised, and endeavoured to awaken the zeal of their old allies of the "Religion." The preachers were for the most part poor, and some of them were labouring men. They were mostly natives of Languedoc. Jean Vesson, a cooper by trade, had in his youth been "inspired," and prophesied in his ecstasy. Mazelet, now an elderly man, had formerly been celebrated among the Camisards, and preached with great success before the soldiers of Roland. At forty he was not able to read or write; but having been forced to fly into Switzerland, he picked up some education at Geneva, and had studied divinity under a fellow-exile. Bombonnoux had been a brigadier in the troop of Cavalier. After his chief's defection he resolved to continue the war to the end, by preaching, if not by fighting. He had been taken prisoner and imprisoned at Montpellier, in 1705. Two of his Camisard friends were first put upon the rack, and then, while still living, thrown upon a pile and burnt to death before his eyes. But the horrible character of the punishment did not terrify him. He contrived to escape from prison at Montpellier, and then went about convoking assemblies and preaching to the people as before. Besides these, there were Huc, Corteiz, Durand, Arnaud, Brunel, and Rouviere or Crotte, who all went about from place to place, convoking assemblies and preaching. There were also some local preachers, as they might be called--old men who could not move far from home--who worked at their looms or trades, sometimes tilling the ground by day, and preaching at night. Amongst these were Monteil, Guillot, and Bonnard, all more than sixty years of age. Court, because of his youth and energy, seems to have been among the most active of the preachers. One day, near St. Hypolite, a chief centre of the Huguenot population, he convoked an assembly on a mountain side, the largest that had taken place for many years. The priests of the parish gave information to the authorities; and the governor of Alais offered a reward of fifty pistoles to anyone who would apprehend and deliver up to him the young preacher. Troops were sent into the district; upon which Court descended from the mountains towards the towns of Low Languedoc, and shortly after he arrived at Nismes. At Nismes, Court first met Jacques Roger, who afterwards proved of great assistance to him in his work. Roger had long been an exile in Wurtemburg. He was originally a native of Boissieres, in Languedoc, and when a young man was compelled to quit France with his parents, who were Huguenots. His heart, however, continued to draw him towards his native country, although it had treated himself and his family so cruelly. As Roger grew older, he determined to return to France, with the object of helping his friends of the "Religion." A plan had occurred to him, like that which Antoine Court was now endeavouring to carry into effect. The joy with which Roger encountered Court at Nismes, and learnt his plans, may therefore be conceived. The result was, that Roger undertook to "awaken" the Protestants of Dauphiny, and to endeavour to accomplish there what Court was already gradually effecting in Languedoc. Roger held his first synod in Dauphiny in August, 1716, at which seven preachers and several elders or _anciens_ assisted. In the meantime Antoine Court again set out to visit the churches which had been reconstructed along the banks of the Gardon. He had been suffering from intermittent fever, and started on his journey before he was sufficiently recovered. Having no horse, he walked on foot, mostly by night, along the least known by-paths, stopping here and there upon his way. At length he became so enfeebled and ill as to be unable to walk further. He then induced two men to carry him. By crossing their hands over each other, they took him up between them, and carried him along on this improvised chair. Court found a temporary lodging with a friend. But no sooner had he laid himself down to sleep, than the alarm was raised that he must get up and fly. A spy had been observed watching the house. Court rose, put on his clothes, and though suffering great pain, started afresh. The night was dark and rainy. By turns shivering with cold and in an access of fever, he wandered alone for hours across the country, towards the house of another friend, where he at last found shelter. Such were the common experiences of these wandering, devoted, proscribed, and heroic ministers of the Gospel. Their labours were not carried on without encountering other and greater dangers. Now that the Protestants were becoming organized, it was not so necessary to incite them to public worship. They even required to be restrained, so that they might not too suddenly awaken the suspicion or excite the opposition of the authorities. Thus, at the beginning of 1717, the preacher Vesson held an open assembly near Anduze. It was surprised by the troops; and seventy-two persons made prisoners, of whom the men were sent to the galleys for life, and the women imprisoned in the Tour de Constance. Vesson was on this occasion reprimanded by the synod, for having exposed his brethren to unnecessary danger. While there was the danger of loss of liberty to the people, there was the danger of loss of life to the pastors who were bold enough to minister to their religious necessities. Etienne Arnaud having preached to an assembly near Alais, was taken prisoner by the soldiers. They took him to Montpellier, where he was judged, condemned, and sent back to Alais to be hanged. This brave young man gave up his life with great courage and resignation. His death caused much sorrow amongst the Protestants, but it had no effect in dissuading the preachers and pastors from the work they had taken in hand. There were many to take the place of Arnaud. Young Bètrine offered himself to the synod, and was accepted. Scripture readers were also appointed, to read the Bible at meetings which preachers were not able to attend. There was, however, a great want of Bibles amongst the Protestants. One of the first things done by the young King Louis XV.--the "Well-beloved" of the Jesuits--on his ascending the throne, was to issue a proclamation ordering the seizure of Bibles, Testaments, Psalm-books, and other religious works used by the Protestants. And though so many books had already been seized and burnt in the reign of Louis XIV., immense piles were again collected and given to the flames by the executioners. "Our need of books is very great," wrote Court to a friend abroad; and the same statement was repeated in many of his letters. His principal need was of Bibles and Testaments; for every Huguenot knew the greater part of the Psalms by heart. When a Testament was obtained, it was lent about, and for the most part learnt off. The labour was divided in this way. One person, sometimes a boy or girl, of good memory, would undertake to learn one or more chapters in the Gospels, another a certain number in the Epistles, until at last a large portion of the book was committed to memory, and could be recited at the meetings of the assemblies. And thus also it happened, that the conversation of the people, as well as the sermons of their preachers, gradually assumed a strongly biblical form. Strong appeals were made to foreign Protestants to supply the people with books. The refugees who had settled in Switzerland, Holland, and England sent the Huguenots remaining in France considerable help in this way. They sent many Testaments and Psalm-books, together with catechisms for the young, and many devotional works written by French divines residing in Holland and England--by Drelincourt, Saurin, Claude and others. These were sent safely across the frontier in bales, put into the hands of colporteurs, and circulated amongst the Protestants all over the South of France. The printing press of Geneva was also put in requisition; and Court had many of his sermons printed there and distributed amongst the people. Until this time, Court had merely acted as a preacher; and it was now determined to ordain and consecrate him as a pastor. The ceremony, though, comparatively unceremonious, was very touching. A large number of Protestants in the Vaunage assembled on the night of the 21st November, 1718, and, after prayer, Court rose and spoke for some time of the responsible duties of the ministry, and of the necessity and advantages of preaching. He thanked God for having raised up ministers to serve the Church when so many of her enemies were seeking for her ruin. He finally asked the whole assembly to pray for grace to enable him to fulfil with renewed zeal the duties to which, he was about to be called, together with all the virtues needed for success. At these touching words the assembled hearers shed tears. Then Corteiz, the old pastor, drew near to Court, now upon his knees, and placing a Bible upon his head, in the name of Jesus Christ, and with the authority of the synod, gave him power to exercise all the functions of the ministry. Cries of joy were heard on all sides. Then, after further prayer, the assembly broke up in the darkness of the night. The plague which broke out in 1720 helped the progress of the new Church. The Protestants thought the plague had been sent as a punishment for their backsliding. Piety increased, and assemblies in the Desert were more largely attended than before. The intendants ceased to interfere with them, and the soldiers were kept strictly within their cantonments. More preachers were licensed, and more elders were elected. Many new churches were set up throughout Languedoc; and the department of the Lozère, in the Cevennes, became again almost entirely Protestant. Roger and Villeveyre were almost equally successful in Dauphiny; and Saintonge, Normandy, and Poitou were also beginning to maintain a connection with the Protestant churches of Languedoc. CHAPTER XI. REORGANIZATION OF THE CHURCH IN THE DESERT. The organization of the Church in the Desert is one of the most curious things in history. Secret meetings of the Huguenots had long been held in France. They were began several years before the Act of Revocation was proclaimed, when the dragonnades were on foot, and while the Protestant temples were being demolished by the Government. The Huguenots then arranged to meet and hold their worship in retired places. As the meetings were at first held, for the most part, in Languedoc, and as much of that province, especially in the district of the Cevennes, is really waste and desert land, the meetings were at first called "Assemblies in the Desert," and for nearly a hundred years they retained that name. When Court began to reorganize the Protestant Church in France, shortly after the Camisard war, meetings in the Desert had become almost unknown. There were occasional prayer-meetings, at which chapters of the Bible were read or recited by those who remembered them, and psalms were sung; but there were few or no meetings at which pastors presided. Court, however, resolved not only to revive the meetings of the Church in the Desert, but to reconstitute the congregations, and restore the system of governing them according to the methods of the Huguenot Church. The first thing done in reconstituting a congregation, was to appoint certain well-known religious men, as _anciens_ or elders. These were very important officers. They formed the church in the first instance; for where there were no elders, there was no church. They were members of the _consistoire_ or presbytery. They looked after the flock, visited them in their families, made collections, named the pastors, and maintained peace, order, and discipline amongst the people. Though first nominated by the pastors, they were elected by the congregation; and the reason for their election was their known ability, zeal, and piety. The elder was always present at the assemblies, though the minister was absent. He prevented the members from succumbing to temptation and falling away; he censured scandal; he kept up the flame of religious zeal, and encouraged the failing and helpless; he distributed amongst the poorest the collections made and intrusted to him by the Church. We have said that part of the duty of the elders was to censure scandal amongst the members. If their conduct was not considered becoming the Christian life, they were not visited by the pastors and were not allowed to attend the assemblies, until they had declared their determination to lead a better life. What a punishment for infraction of discipline! to be debarred attending an assembly, for being present at which, the pastor, if detected, might be hanged, and the penitent member sent to the galleys for life![54] [Footnote 54: C. Coquerel, "Église du Désert," i. 105.] The elders summoned the assemblies. They gave the word to a few friends, and these spread the notice about amongst the rest. The news soon became known, and in the course of a day or two, the members of the congregation, though living perhaps in distant villages, would be duly informed of the time and place of the intended meeting. It was usually held at night,--in some secret place--in a cave, a hollow in the woods, a ravine, or an abandoned farmstead. Men, women, and even children were taken thither, after one, two, or sometimes three leagues' walking. The meetings were always full of danger, for spies were lurking about. Catholic priests were constant informers; and soldiers were never far distant. But besides the difficulties of spies and soldiers, the meetings were often dispersed by the rain in summer, or by the snow in winter. After the Camisard war, and before the appearance of Court, these meetings rarely numbered more than a hundred persons. But Court and his fellow-pastors often held meetings at which more than two thousand people were present. On one occasion, not less than four thousand persons attended an assembly in Lower Languedoc. When the meetings were held by day, they were carefully guarded and watched by sentinels on the look-out, especially in those places near which garrisons were stationed. The fleetest of the young men were chosen for this purpose. They watched the garrison exits, and when the soldiers made a sortie, the sentinels communicated by signal from hill to hill, thus giving warning to the meeting to disperse. But the assemblies were mostly held at night; and even then the sentinels were carefully posted about, but not at so great a distance. The chief of the whole organization was the pastor. First, there were the members entitled to church, privileges; next the _anciens_; and lastly the pastors. As in Presbyterianism, so in Huguenot Calvinism, its form of government was republican. The organization was based upon the people who elected their elders; then upon the elders who selected and recommended the pastors; and lastly upon the whole congregation of members, elders, and pastors (represented in synods), who maintained the entire organization of the Church. There were three grades of service in the rank of pastor--first students, next preachers, and lastly pastors. Wonderful that there should have been students of a profession, to follow which was almost equal to a sentence of death! But there were plenty of young enthusiasts ready to brave martyrdom in the service of the proscribed Church. Sometimes it was even necessary to restrain them in their applications. Court once wrote to Pierre Durand, at a time when the latter was restoring order and organization in Viverais: "Sound and examine well the persons offering themselves for your approval, before permitting them to enter on this glorious employment. Secure good, virtuous men, full of zeal for the cause of truth. It is piety only that inspires nobility and greatness of soul. Piety sustains us under the most extreme dangers, and triumphs over the severest obstacles. The good conscience always marches forward with its head erect." When the character of the young applicants was approved, their studies then proceeded, like everything else connected with the proscribed religion, in secret. The students followed the professor and pastor in his wanderings over the country, passing long nights in marching, sometimes hiding in caves by day, or sleeping under the stars by night, passing from meeting to meeting, always with death looming before them. "I have often pitched my professor's chair," said Court, "in a torrent underneath a rock. The sky was our roof, and the leafy branches thrown out from the crevices in the rock overhead, were our canopy. There I and my students would remain for about eight days; it was our hall, our lecture-room, and our study. To make the most of our time, and to practise the students properly, I gave them a text of Scripture to discuss before me--say the first eleven verses of the fifth chapter of Luke. I would afterwards propose to them some point of doctrine, some passage of Scripture, some moral precept, or sometimes I gave them some difficult passages to reconcile. After the whole had stated their views upon the question under discussion, I asked the youngest if he had anything to state against the arguments advanced; then the others were asked in turn; and after they had finished, I stated the views which I considered most just and correct. When the more advanced students were required to preach, they mounted a particular place, where a pole had been set across some rocks in the ravine, and which for the time served for a pulpit. And when they had delivered themselves, the others were requested by turns to express themselves freely upon the subject of the sermon which they had heard." When the _proposant_ or probationer was considered sufficiently able to preach, he was sent on a mission to visit the churches. Sometimes he preached the approved sermons of other pastors; sometimes he preached his own sermons, after they had been examined by persons appointed by the synod. After a time, if approved by the moderator and a committee of the synod, the _proposant_ was licensed to preach. His work then resembled that of a pastor; but he could not yet administer the sacrament. It was only when he had passed the synod, and been appointed by the laying on of hands, that he could exercise the higher pastoral functions. Then, with respect to the maintenance of the pastors and preachers, Court recounts, not without pride, that for the ten years between 1713 and 1723 (excepting the years which he spent at Geneva), he served the Huguenot churches without receiving a farthing. His family and friends saw to the supply of his private wants. With respect to the others, they were supported by collections made at the assemblies; and, as the people were nearly all poor, the amount collected was very small. On one occasion, three assemblies produced a halfpenny and six half-farthings. But a regular system of collecting moneys was framed by the synods (consisting of a meeting of pastors and elders), and out of the common fund so raised, emoluments were assigned, first to those preachers who were married, and afterwards to those who were single. In either case the pay was very small, scarcely sufficient to keep the wolf from the door. The students for the ministry were at first educated by Court and trained to preach, while he was on his dangerous journeys from one assembly in the Desert to another. Nor was the supply of preachers sufficient to visit the congregations already organized. Court had long determined, so soon as the opportunity offered, of starting a school for the special education of preachers and pastors, so that the work he was engaged in might be more efficiently carried on. He at first corresponded with influential French refugees in England and Holland with reference to the subject. He wrote to Basnage and Saurin, but they received his propositions coolly. He wrote to William Wake, then Archbishop of Canterbury, who promised his assistance. At last Court resolved to proceed into Switzerland, to stir up the French refugees disposed to help him in his labours. Arrived at Geneva, Court sought out M. Pictet, to whom he explained the state of affairs in France. It had been rumoured amongst the foreign Protestants that fanaticism and "inspiration" were now in the ascendant among the Protestants of France. Court showed that this was entirely a mistake, and that all which the proscribed Huguenots in France wanted, was a supply of properly educated pastors. The friends of true religion, and the enemies of fanaticism, ought therefore to come to their help and supply them with that of which they stood most in need. If they would find teachers, Court would undertake to supply them with congregations. And Huguenot congregations were rapidly increasing, not only in Languedoc and Dauphiny, but in Normandy, Picardy, Poitou, Saintonge, Bearn, and the other provinces. At length the subject became matured. It was not found desirable to establish the proposed school at Geneva, that city being closely watched by France, and frequently under the censure of its government for giving shelter to refugee Frenchmen. It was eventually determined that the college for the education of preachers should begin at Lausanne. It was accordingly commenced in the year 1726, and established under the superintendence of M. Duplan. A committee of refugees called the "Society of Help for the Afflicted Faithful," was formed at Lausanne to collect subscriptions for the maintenance of the preachers, the pastors, and the seminary. These were in the first place received from Huguenots settled in Switzerland, afterwards increased by subscriptions obtained from refugees settled in Holland, Germany, and England. The King of England subscribed five hundred guineas yearly. Duplan was an indefatigable agent. In fourteen years he collected fourteen thousand pounds. By these efforts the number of students was gradually increased. They came from all parts of France, but chiefly from Languedoc. Between 1726 (the year in which it was started) and 1753, ninety students had passed through the seminary. When the students had passed the range of study appointed by the professors, they returned from Switzerland to France to enter upon the work of their lives. They had passed the school for martyrdom, and were ready to preach to the assemblies--they had paved their way to the scaffold! The preachers always went abroad with their lives in their hands. They travelled mostly by night, shunning the open highways, and selecting abandoned routes, often sheep-paths across the hills, to reach the scene of their next meeting. The trace of their steps is still marked upon the soil of the Cevennes, the people of the country still speaking of the solitary routes taken by their instructors when passing from parish to parish, to preach to their fathers. They were dressed, for disguise, in various ways; sometimes as peasants, as workmen, or as shepherds. On one occasion, Court and Duplan travelled the country disguised as officers! The police heard of it, and ordered their immediate arrest, pointing out the town and the very house where they were to be taken. But the preachers escaped, and assumed a new dress. When living near Nismes, Court was one day seated under a tree composing a sermon, when a party of soldiers, hearing that he was in the neighbourhood, came within sight. Court climbed up into the tree, where he remained concealed among the branches, and thus contrived to escape their search. On another occasion, he was staying with a friend, in whose house he had slept during the previous night. A detachment of troops suddenly surrounded the house, and the officer knocked loudly at the door. Court made his friend go at once to bed pretending to be ill, while he himself cowered down in the narrow space between the bed and the wall. His wife slowly answered the door, which the soldiers were threatening to blow open. They entered, rummaged the house, opened all the chests and closets, sounded the walls, examined the sick man's room, and found nothing! Court himself, as well as the other pastors, worked very hard. On one occasion, Court made a round of visits in Lower Languedoc and in the Cevennes, at first alone, and afterwards accompanied by a young preacher. In the space of two months and a few days he visited thirty-one churches, holding assemblies, preaching, and administering the sacrament, during which he travelled over three hundred miles. The weather did not matter to the pastors--rain nor snow, wind nor storm, never hindered them. They took the road and braved all. Even sickness often failed to stay them. Sickness might weaken but did not overthrow them. The spies and police so abounded throughout the country, and were so active, that they knew all the houses in which the preachers might take refuge. A list of these was prepared and placed in the hands of the intendant of the province.[55] If preachers were found in them, both the shelterers and the sheltered knew what they had to expect. The whole property and goods of the former were confiscated and they were sent to the galleys for life; and the latter were first tortured by the rack, and then hanged. The houses in which preachers were found were almost invariably burnt down. [Footnote 55: It has since been published in the "Bulletin de la Société du Protestantisme Français."] Notwithstanding the great secrecy with which the whole organization proceeded, preachers were frequently apprehended, assemblies were often surprised, and many persons were imprisoned and sent to the galleys for life. Each village had its chief spy--the priest; and beneath the priest there were a number of other spies--spies for money, spies for cruelty, spies for revenge. Was an assembly of Huguenots about to be held? A spy, perhaps a traitor, would make it known. The priest's order was sufficient for the captain of the nearest troop of soldiers to proceed to disperse it. They marched and surrounded the assembly. A sound of volley-firing was heard. The soldiers shot down, hanged, or made prisoners of the unlawful worshippers. Punishments were sudden, and inquiry was never made into them, however brutal. There was the fire for Bibles, Testaments, and psalm-books; galleys for men; prisons and convents for women; and gibbets for preachers. In 1720 a large number of prisoners were captured in the famous old quarry near Nismes, long the seat of secret Protestant worship. But the troops surrounded the meeting suddenly, and the whole were taken. The women were sent for life to the Tour de Constance, and the men, chained in gangs, were sent all through France to La Rochelle, to be imprisoned in the galleys there. The ambassador of England made intercession for the prisoners, and their sentence was commuted into one of perpetual banishment from France. They were accordingly transported to New Orleans on the Mississippi, to populate the rising French colony in that quarter of North America. Thus crimes abounded, and cruelty when practised upon Huguenots was never investigated. The seizure and violation of women was common. Fathers knew the probable consequence when their daughters were seized. The daughter of a Huguenot was seized at Uzes, in 1733, when the father immediately died of grief. Two sisters were seized at the same place to be "converted," and their immediate relations were thrown into gaol in the meantime. This was a common proceeding. The Tour de Constance was always filling, and kept full. The dying were tortured. If they refused the viaticum they were treated as "damned persons." When Jean de Molènes of Cahors died, making a profession of Protestantism, his body was denounced as damned, and it was abandoned without sepulture. A woman who addressed some words of consolation to Joseph Martin when dying was condemned to pay a fine of six thousand livres, and be imprisoned in the castle of Beauregard; and as for Martin, his memory was declared to be damned for ever. Many such outrages to the living and dead were constantly occurring.[56] Gaolers were accustomed to earn money by exhibiting the corpses of Huguenot women at fairs, inviting those who paid for admission, to walk up and "see the corpse of a damned person."[57] [Footnote 56: Edmund Hughes, "Histoire de la Restauration du Protestantisme en France," ii. 94.] [Footnote 57: Bénoît, "Edit de Nantes," v. 987.] Notwithstanding all these cruelties, Protestantism was making considerable progress, both in Languedoc and Dauphiny. In reorganizing the Church, the whole country had been divided into districts, and preachers and pastors endeavoured to visit the whole of their members with as much regularity as possible. Thus Languedoc was divided into seven districts, and to each of those a _proposant_ or probationary preacher was appointed. The presbyteries and synods met regularly and secretly in a cave, or the hollow bed of a river, or among the mountains. They cheered each other up, though their progress was usually over the bodies of their dead friends. For any pastor or preacher to be apprehended, was, of course, certain death. Thus, out of thirteen Huguenots who were found worshipping in a private apartment at Montpellier, in 1723, Vesson, the pastor, and Bonicel and Antoine Comte, his assistants, were at once condemned and hanged on the Peyrou, the other ten persons being imprisoned or sent to the galleys for life. Shortly after, Huc, the aged pastor, was taken prisoner in the Cevennes, brought to Montpellier, and hanged in the same place. A reward of a thousand livres was offered by Bernage, the intendant, for the heads of the remaining preachers, the fatal list comprising the names of Court, Cortez, Durand, Rouviere, Bombonnoux, and others. The names of these "others" were not mentioned, not being yet thought worthy of the gibbet. And yet it was at this time that the Bishop of Alais made an appeal to the government against the toleration shown to the Huguenots! In 1723, he sent a long memorial to Paris, alleging that Catholicism was suffering a serious injury; that not only had the "new converts" withdrawn themselves from the Catholic Church, but that the old Catholics themselves were resorting to the Huguenot assemblies; that sometimes their meetings numbered from three to four thousand persons; that their psalms were sometimes overheard in the surrounding villages; that the churches were becoming deserted, the curés in some parishes not being able to find a single Catholic to serve at Mass; that the Protestants had ceased to send their children to school, and were baptized and married without the intervention of the Church. In consequence of these representations, the then Regent, the Duke of Bourbon, sent down an urgent order to the authorities to carry out the law--to prevent meetings, under penalty of death to preachers, and imprisonment at the galleys to all who attended them, ordering that the people should be _forced_ to go to church and the children to school, and reviving generally the severe laws against Protestantism issued by Louis XIV. The result was that many of the assemblies were shortly after attacked and dispersed, many persons were made prisoners and sent to the galleys, and many more preachers were apprehended, racked, and hanged. Repeated attempts were made to apprehend Antoine Court, as being the soul of the renewed Protestant organization. A heavy reward was offered for his head. The spies and police hunted after him in all directions. Houses where he was supposed to be concealed were surrounded by soldiers at night, and every hole and corner in them ransacked. Three houses were searched in one night. Court sometimes escaped with great difficulty. On one occasion he remained concealed for more than twenty hours under a heap of manure. His friends endeavoured to persuade him to leave the country until the activity of the search for him had passed. Since the year 1722, Court had undertaken new responsibilities. He had become married, and was now the father of three children. He had married a young Huguenot woman of Uzes. He first met her in her father's house, while he was in hiding from the spies. While he was engaged in his pastoral work his wife and family continued to live at Uzes. Court was never seen in her company, but could only visit his family secretly. The woman was known to be of estimable character, but it gave rise to suspicions that she had three children without a known father. The spies were endeavouring to unravel the secret, tempted by the heavy reward offered for Court's head. One day the new commandant of the town, passing before the door of the house where Court's wife lived, stopped, and, pointing to the house, put some questions to the neighbours. Court was informed of this, and immediately supposed that his house had become known, that his wife and family had been discovered and would be apprehended. He at once made arrangements for having them removed to Geneva. They reached that city in safety, in the month of April, 1729. Shortly after, Court, still wandering and preaching about Languedoc, became seriously ill. He feared for his wife, he feared for his family, and conceived the design of joining them in Switzerland. A few months later, exhausted by his labours and continued illness, he left Languedoc and journeyed by slow stages to Geneva. He was still a young man, only thirty-three; but he had worked excessively hard during the last dozen years. Since the age of fourteen, in fact, he had evangelized Languedoc. Shortly before Court left France for Switzerland, the preacher, Alexandre Roussel, was, in the year 1728, added to the number of martyrs. He was only twenty-six years of age. The occasion on which he was made prisoner was while attending an assembly near Vigan. The whole of the people had departed, and Roussel was the last to leave the meeting. He was taken to Montpellier, and imprisoned in the citadel, which had before held so many Huguenot pastors. He was asked to abjure, and offered a handsome bribe if he would become a Catholic. He refused to deny his faith, and was sentenced to die. When Antoine Court went to offer consolation to his mother, she replied, "If my son had given way I should have been greatly distressed; but as he died with constancy, I thank God for strengthening him to perform this last work in his service." Court did not leave his brethren in France without the expostulations of his friends. They alleged that his affection for his wife and family had cooled his zeal for God's service. Duplan and Cortez expostulated with him; and the churches of Languedoc, which he himself had established, called upon him to return to his duties amongst them. But Court did not attend to their request. His determination was for the present unshaken. He had a long arrears of work to do in quiet. He had money to raise for the support of the suffering Church of France, and for the proper maintenance of the college for students, preachers, and pastors. He had to help the refugees, who still continued to leave France for Switzerland, and to write letters and rouse the Protestant kingdoms of the north, as Brousson had done before him some thirty years ago. The city of Berne was very generous in its treatment of Court and the Huguenots generally. The Bernish Government allotted Court a pension of five hundred livres a-year--for he was without the means of supporting his family--all his own and his wife's property having been seized and sequestrated in France. Court preached with great success in the principal towns of Switzerland, more particularly at Berne, and afterwards at Lausanne, where he spent the rest of his days. Though he worked there more peacefully, he laboured as continuously as ever in the service of the Huguenot churches. He composed addresses to them; he educated preachers and pastors for them; and one of his principal works, while at Lausanne, was to compose a history of the Huguenots in France subsequent to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. What he had done for the reorganization of the Huguenot Church in France may be thus briefly stated. Court had begun his work in 1715, at which time there was no settled congregation in the South of France. The Huguenots were only ministered to by occasional wandering pastors. In 1729, the year in which Court finally left France, there were in Lower Languedoc 29 organized, though secretly governed, churches; in Upper Languedoc, 11; in the Cevennes, 18; in the Lozère 12; and in Viverais, 42 churches. There were now over 200,000 recognised Protestants in Languedoc alone. The ancient discipline had been restored; 120 churches had been organized; a seminary for the education of preachers and pastors had been established; and Protestantism was extending in Dauphiny, Bearn, Saintonge,[58] and other quarters. [Footnote 58: In 1726, a deputation from Guyenne, Royergue, and Poitou, appeared before the Languedoc synod, requesting preachers and pastors to be sent to them. The synod agreed to send Maroger as preacher. Bètrine (the first of the Lausanne students) and Grail were afterwards sent to join him. Protestantism was also reawakening in Saintonge and Picardy, and pastors from Languedoc journeyed there to administer the sacrament. Preachers were afterwards sent to join them, to awaken the people, and reorganize the congregations.] Such were, in a great measure, the results of the labours of Antoine Court and his assistants during the previous fifteen years. CHAPTER XII. THE CHURCH IN THE DESERT, 1730-62--PAUL RABAUT. The persecutions of the Huguenots increased at one time and relaxed at another. When France was at war, and the soldiers were fighting in Flanders or on the Rhine, the bishops became furious, and complained bitterly to the government of the toleration shown to the Protestants. The reason was that there were no regiments at liberty to pursue the Huguenots and disperse their meetings in the Desert. When the soldiers returned from the wars, persecution began again. It usually began with the seizing and burning of books. The book-burning days were considered amongst the great days of fête. One day in June, 1730, the Intendant of Languedoc visited Nismes, escorted by four battalions of troops. On arriving, the principal Catholics were selected, and placed as commissaries to watch the houses of the suspected Huguenots. At night, while the inhabitants slept, the troops turned out, and the commissaries pointed out the Huguenot houses to be searched. The inmates were knocked up, the soldiers entered, the houses were rummaged, and all the books that could be found were taken to the Hôtel de Ville. A few days after a great _auto-da-fé_ was held. The entire Catholic population turned out. There were the four battalions of troops, the gendarmes, the Catholic priests, and the chief dignitaries; and in their presence all the Huguenot books were destroyed. They were thrown into a pile on the usual place of execution, and the hangman set fire to this great mass of Bibles, psalm-books, catechisms, and sermons.[59] The officers laughed, the priests sneered, the multitude cheered. These bonfires were of frequent occurrence in all the towns of Languedoc. [Footnote 59: E. Hughes, "Histoire de la Restauration, du Protestantisme en France," ii. 96.] But if the priests hated the printed word, still more did they hate the spoken word. They did not like the Bible, but they hated the preachers. Fines, _auto-da-fés_, condemnation to the galleys, seizures of women and girls, and profanation of the dead, were tolerable punishments, but there was nothing like hanging a preacher. "Nothing," said Saint-Florentin to the commandant of La Devese, "can produce more impression than hanging a preacher; and it is very desirable that you should immediately take steps to arrest one of them." The commandant obeyed orders, and apprehended Pierre Durand. He was on his way to baptize the child of one of his congregation, who lived on a farm in Viverais. An apparent peasant, who seemed to be waiting his approach, offered to conduct him to the farm. Durand followed him. The peasant proved to be a soldier in disguise. He led Durand directly into the midst of his troop. There he was bound and carried off to Montpellier. Durand was executed at the old place--the Peyrou--the soldiers beating their drums to stifle his voice while he prayed. His corpse was laid beside that of Alexandre Roussel, under the rampart of the fortress of Montpellier. Durand was the last of the preachers in France who had attended the synod of 1715. They had all been executed, excepting only Antoine Court, who was safe in Switzerland. The priests were not so successful with Claris, the preacher, who contrived to escape their clutches. Claris had just reached France on his return from the seminary at Lausanne. He had taken shelter for the night with a Protestant friend at Foissac, near Uzes. Scarcely had he fallen asleep, when the soldiers, informed by the spies, entered his chamber, bound him, and marched him off on foot by night, to Alais. He was thrown into gaol, and was afterwards judged and condemned to death. His friends in Alais, however, secretly contrived to get an iron chisel passed to him in prison. He raised the stone of a chamber which communicated with his dungeon, descended to the ground, and silently leapt the wall. He was saved. Pastors and preachers continued to be tracked and hunted with renewed ardour in Saintonge, Poitou, Gascony, and Dauphiny. "The Chase," as it was called, was better organized than it had been for twenty years previously. The Catholic clergy, however, continued to complain. The chase, they said, was not productive enough! The hangings of pastors were too few. The curates of the Cevennes thus addressed the intendants: "You do not perform your duty: you are neither active enough nor pitiless enough;"[60] and they requested the government to adopt more vigorous measures. [Footnote 60: E. Hughes, ii. 99. Coquerel, "L'Église dans le Désert," i. 258.] The intendants, who were thus accused, insisted that they _had_ done their duty. They had hanged all the Huguenot preachers that the priests and their spies had discovered and brought to them. They had also offered increased rewards for the preachers' heads. If Protestantism counted so large a number of adherents, _they_ were surely not to blame for that! Had the priests themselves done _their_ duty? Thus the intendants and the curés reproached each other by turns. And yet the pastors and preachers had not been spared. They had been hanged without mercy. They knew they were in the peril of constant death. "I have slept fifteen days in a meadow," wrote Cortez, the pastor, "and I write this under a tree." Morel, the preacher, when attending an assembly, was fired at by the soldiers and died of his wounds. Pierre Dortial was also taken prisoner when holding an assembly. The host with whom he lived was condemned to the galleys for life; the arrondissement in which the assembly had been held was compelled to pay a fine of three thousand livres; and Dortial himself was sentenced to be hanged. When the aged preacher was informed of his sentence he exclaimed: "What an honour for me, oh my God! to have been chosen from so many others to suffer death because of my constancy to the truth." He was executed at Nismes, and died with courage. In 1742 France was at war, and the Huguenots enjoyed a certain amount of liberty. The edicts against them were by no means revoked; their execution was merely suspended. The provinces were stripped of troops, and the clergy could no longer call upon them to scatter the meetings in the Desert. Hence the assemblies increased. The people began to think that the commandants of the provinces had received orders to shut their eyes, and see nothing of the proceedings of the Huguenots. At a meeting held in a valley between Calvisson and Langlade, in Languedoc, no fewer than ten thousand persons openly met for worship. No troops appeared. There was no alarm nor surprise. Everything passed in perfect quiet. In many other places, public worship was celebrated, the sacrament was administered, children were baptized, and marriages were celebrated in the open day.[61] [Footnote 61: Although marriages by the pastors had long been declared illegal, they nevertheless married and baptized in the Desert. After 1730, the number of Protestant marriages greatly multiplied, though it was known that the issue of such marriages were declared, by the laws of France to be illegal. Many of the Protestants of Dauphiny went across the frontier into Switzerland, principally to Geneva, and were there married.] The Catholics again urgently complained to the government of the increasing number of Huguenot meetings. The Bishop of Poitiers complained that in certain parishes of his diocese there was not now a single Catholic. Low Poitou contained thirty Protestant churches, divided into twelve arrondissements, and each arrondissement contained about seven thousand members. The Procureur-Général of Normandy said, "All this country is full of Huguenots." But the government had at present no troops to spare, and the Catholic bishops and clergy must necessarily wait until the war with the English and the Austrians had come to an end. Antoine Court paid a short visit to Languedoc in 1744, to reconcile a difference which had arisen in the Church through the irregular conduct of Pastor Boyer. Court was received with great enthusiasm, and when Boyer was re-established in his position as pastor, after making his submission to the synod, a convocation of Huguenots was held near Sauzet, at which thousands of people were present. Court remained for about a month in France, preaching almost daily to immense audiences. At Nismes, he preached at the famous place for Huguenot meetings--in the old quarry, about three miles from the town. There were about twenty thousand persons present, ranged, as in an amphitheatre, along the sides of the quarry. It was a most impressive sight. Peasants and gentlemen mixed together. Even the "beau monde" of Nismes was present. Everybody thought that there was now an end of the persecution.[62] [Footnote 62: Of the preachers about this time (1740-4) the best known were Morel, Foriel, Mauvillon, Voulaud, Corteiz, Peyrot, Roux, Gauch, Coste, Dugnière, Blachon, Gabriac, Déjours, Rabaut, Gibert, Mignault, Désubas, Dubesset, Pradel, Morin, Defferre, Loire, Pradon,--with many more. Defferre restored Protestantism in Berne. Loire (a native of St. Omer, and formerly a Catholic), Viala, Préneuf, and Prudon, were the apostles of Normandy, Rouergue, Guyenne, and Poitou.] In the meantime the clergy continued to show signs of increasing irritation. They complained, denounced, and threatened. Various calumnies were invented respecting the Huguenots. The priests of Dauphiny gave out that Roger, the pastor, had read an edict purporting to be signed by Louis XV. granting complete toleration to the Huguenots! The report was entirely without foundation, and Roger indignantly denied that he had read any such edict. But the report reached the ears of the King, then before Ypres with his army; on which he issued a proclamation announcing that the rumour publicly circulated that it was his intention to tolerate the Huguenots was absolutely false. No sooner had the war terminated, and the army returned to France, than the persecutions recommenced as hotly as ever. The citizens of Nismes, for having recently encouraged the Huguenots and attended Court's great meeting, were heavily fined. All the existing laws for the repression and destruction of Protestantism were enforced. Suspected persons were apprehended and imprisoned without trial. A new "hunt" was set on foot for preachers. There were now plenty of soldiers at liberty to suppress the meetings in the Desert, and they were ordered into the infested quarters. In a word, persecution was let loose all over France. Nor was it without the usual results. It was very hot in Dauphiny. There a detachment of horse police, accompanied by regular troops and a hangman, ran through the province early in 1745, spreading terror everywhere. One of their exploits was to seize a sick old Huguenot, drag him from his bed, and force him towards prison. He died upon the road. In February, it was ascertained that the Huguenots met for worship in a certain cavern. The owner of the estate on which the cavern was situated, though unaware of the meetings, was fined a thousand crowns, and imprisoned for a year in the Castle of Cret. Next month, Louis Ranc, a pastor, was seized at Livron while baptizing an infant, taken to Die, and hanged. He had scarcely breathed his last, when the hangman cut the cord, hewed off the head, and made a young Protestant draw the corpse along the streets of Die. In the month of April, 1745, Jacques Roger, the old friend and coadjutor of Court--the apostle of Dauphiny as Court had been of Languedoc--was taken prisoner and conducted to Grenoble. Roger was then eighty years old, worn out with privation and hard work. He was condemned to death. He professed his joy at being still able to seal with his blood the truths he had so often proclaimed. On his way to the scaffold, he sang aloud the fifty-first Psalm. He was executed in the Place du Breuil. After he had hung for twenty-four hours, his body was taken down, dragged along the streets of Grenoble, and thrown into the Isère. At Grenoble also, in the same year, seven persons were condemned to the galleys. A young woman was publicly whipped at the same place for attending a Huguenot meeting. Seven students and pastors who could not be found, were hanged in effigy. Four houses were demolished for having served as asylums for preachers. Fines were levied on all sides, and punishments of various kinds were awarded to many hundred persons. Thus persecution ran riot in Dauphiny in the years 1745 and 1746. In Languedoc it was the same. The prisons and the galleys were always kept full. Dragoons were quartered in the Huguenot villages, and by this means the inhabitants were soon ruined. The soldiers pillaged the houses, destroyed the furniture, tore up the linen, drank all the wine, and, when they were in good humour, followed the cattle, swine, and fowl, and killed them off sword in hand. Montauban, an old Huguenot town, was thus ruined in the course of a very few months. One day, in a Languedoc village, a soldier seized a young girl with a foul intention. She cried aloud, and the villagers came to her rescue. The dragoons turned out in a body, and fired upon the people. An old man was shot dead, a number of the villagers were taken prisoners, and, with their hands tied to the horses' tails, were conducted for punishment to Montauban. All the towns and villages in Upper Languedoc were treated with the same cruelty. Nismes was fined over and over again. Viverais was treated with the usual severity. M. Désubas, the pastor, was taken prisoner there, and conducted to Vernoux. As the soldiers led him through the country to prison, the villagers came out in crowds to see him pass. Many followed the pastor, thinking they might be able to induce the magistrates of Vernoux to liberate him. The villagers were no sooner cooped up in a mass in the chief street of the town, than they were suddenly fired upon by the soldiers. Thirty persons were killed on the spot, more than two hundred were wounded, and many afterwards died of their wounds. Désubas, the pastor, was conducted to Nismes, and from Nismes to Montpellier. While on his way to death at Montpellier, some of his peasant friends, who lived along the road, determined to rescue him. But when Paul Rabaut heard of the proposed attempt, he ran to the place where the people had assembled and held them back. He was opposed to all resistance to the governing power, and thought it possible, by patience and righteousness, to live down all this horrible persecution. Désubas was judged, and, as usual, condemned to death. Though it was winter time, he was led to his punishment almost naked; his legs uncovered, and only in thin linen vest over his body. Arrived at the gallows, his books and papers were burnt before his eyes, and he was then delivered over to the executioner. A Jesuit presented a crucifix for him to kiss, but he turned his head to one side, raised his eyes upwards, and was then hanged. The same persecution prevailed over the greater part of France. In Saintonge, Elie Vivien, the preacher, was taken prisoner, and hanged at La Rochelle. His body remained for twenty-four hours on the gallows. It was then placed upon a forked gibbet, where it hung until the bones were picked clean by the crows and bleached by the wind and the sun.[63] [Footnote 63: E. Hughes, "Histoire de la Restauration," &c., ii. 202.] The same series of persecutions went on from one year to another. It was a miserable monotony of cruelty. There was hanging for the pastors; the galleys for men attending meetings in the Desert; the prisons and convents for women and children. Wherever it was found that persons had been married by the Huguenot pastors, they were haled before the magistrate, fined and imprisoned, and told that they had been merely living in concubinage, and that their children were illegitimate. Sometimes it was thought that the persecutors would relent. France was again engaged in a disastrous war with England and Austria; and it was feared that England would endeavour to stir up a rebellion amongst the Huguenots. But the pastors met in a general synod, and passed resolutions assuring the government of their loyalty to the King,[64] and of their devotion to the laws of France! [Footnote 64: On the 1st of November, 1746, the ministers of Languedoc met in haste, and wrote to the Intendant, Le Nain: "Monseigneur, nous n'avons aucune connaissance de ces gens qu'on appelle émissaires, et qu'on dit être envoyés des pays étrangers pour solliciter les Protestants à la révolte. Nous avons exhorté, et nous nous proposons d'exhorter encore dans toutes les occasions, nos troupeaux à la soumission au souverain et à la patience dans les afflictions, et de nous écarter jamais de la pratique de ce précepte: Craignez Dieu et honorez le roi."] Their "loyalty" proved of no use. The towns of Languedoc were as heavily fined as before, for attending meetings in the Desert.[65] Children were, as usual, taken away from their parents and placed in Jesuit convents. Le Nain apprehended Jean Desjours, and had him hanged at Montpellier, on the ground that he had accompanied the peasants who, as above recited, went into Vernoux after the martyr Désubas. [Footnote 65: Près de Saint-Ambroix (Cevennes) se tint un jour une assemblée. Survint un détachement. Les femmes et les filles furent dépouillées, violées, et quelques hommes furent blessés.--E. HUGHES, _Histoire de la Restauration, &c._, ii. 212.] The Catholics would not even allow Protestant corpses to be buried in peace. At Levaur a well-known Huguenot died. Two of his friends went to dig a grave for him by night; they were observed by spies and informed against. By dint of money and entreaties, however, the friends succeeded in getting the dead man buried. The populace, stirred up by the White Penitents (monks), opened the grave, took out the corpse, sawed the head from the body, and prepared to commit further outrages, when the police interfered, and buried the body again, in consideration of the large sum that had been paid to the authorities for its interment. The populace were always wild for an exhibition of cruelty. In Provence, a Protestant named Montague died, and was secretly interred. The Catholics having discovered the place where he was buried determined to disinter him. The grave was opened, and the corpse taken out. A cord was attached to the neck, and the body was hauled through the village to the music of a tambourine and flageolet. At every step it was kicked or mauled by the crowd who accompanied it. Under the kicks the corpse burst. The furious brutes then took out the entrails and attached them to poles, going through the village crying, "Who wants preachings? Who wants preachings?"[66] [Footnote 66: Antoine Court, "Mémoire Historique," 140.] To such a pitch of brutality had the kings of France and their instigators, the Jesuits--who, since the Revocation of the Edict, had nearly the whole education of the country in their hands--reduced the people; from whom they were themselves, however, to suffer almost an equal amount of indignity. In the midst of these hangings and cruelties, the bishops again complained bitterly of the tolerance granted to the Huguenots. M. de Montclus, Bishop of Alais, urged "that the true cause of all the evils that afflict the country was the relaxation of the laws against heresy by the magistrates, that they gave themselves no trouble to persecute the Protestants, and that their further emigration from the kingdom was no more to be feared than formerly." It was, they alleged, a great danger to the country that there should be in it two millions of men allowed to live without church and outside the law.[67] [Footnote 67: See "Memorial of General Assembly of Clergy to the King," in _Collection des procès-verbaux_, 345.] The afflicted Church at this time had many misfortunes to contend with. In 1748, the noble, self-denying, indefatigable Claris died--one of the few Protestant pastors who died in his bed. In 1750, the eloquent young preacher, François Benezet,[68] was taken and hanged at Montpellier. Meetings in the Desert were more vigorously attacked and dispersed, and when surrounded by the soldiers, most persons were shot; the others were taken prisoners. [Footnote 68: The King granted 480 livres of reward to the spy who detected Benezet and procured his apprehension by the soldiers.] The Huguenot pastors repeatedly addressed Louis XV. and his ministers, appealing to them for protection as loyal subjects. In 1750 they addressed the King in a new memorial, respectfully representing that their meetings for public worship, sacraments, baptisms, and marriages, were matters of conscience. They added: "Your troops pursue us in the deserts as if we were wild beasts; our property is confiscated; our children are torn from us; we are condemned to the galleys; and although our ministers continually exhort us to discharge our duty as good citizens and faithful subjects, a price is set upon their heads, and when they are taken, they are cruelly executed." But Louis XV. and his ministers gave no greater heed to this petition than they had done to those which had preceded it. After occasional relays the Catholic persecutions again broke out. In 1752 there was a considerable emigration in consequence of a new intendant having been appointed to Languedoc. The Catholics called upon him to put in force the powers of the law. New brooms sweep clean. The Intendant proceeded to carry out the law with such ferocity as to excite great terror throughout the province. Meetings were surrounded; prisoners taken and sent to the galleys; and all the gaols and convents were filled with women and children. The emigration began again. Many hundred persons went to Holland; and a still larger number went to settle with their compatriots as silk and poplin weavers in Dublin. The Intendant of Languedoc tried to stop their flight. The roads were again watched as before. All the outlets from the kingdom were closed by the royalist troops. Many of the intending emigrants were made prisoners. They were spoiled of everything, robbed of their money, and thrown into gaol. Nevertheless, another large troop started, passed through Switzerland, and reached Ireland at the end of the year. At the same time, emigration was going on from Normandy and Poitou, where persecution was compelling the people to fly from their own shores and take refuge in England. This religious emigration of 1752 was, however, almost the last which took place from France. Though the persecutions were drawing to an end, they had not yet come to a close. In 1754, the young pastor Tessier (called Lafage), had just returned from Lausanne, where he had been pursuing his studies for three years. He had been tracked by a spy to a certain house, where he had spent the night. Next morning the house was surrounded by soldiers. Tessier tried to escape by getting out of a top window and running along the roofs of the adjoining houses. A soldier saw him escaping and shot at him. He was severely wounded in the arm. He was captured, taken before the Intendant of Languedoc, condemned, and hanged in the course of the same day. Religious meetings also continued to be surrounded, and were treated in the usual brutal manner. For instance, an assembly was held in Lower Languedoc on the 8th of August, 1756, for the purpose of ordaining to the ministry three young men who had arrived from Lausanne, where they had been educated. A number of pastors were present, and as many as from ten to twelve thousand men, women, and children were there from the surrounding country. The congregation was singing a psalm, when a detachment of soldiers approached. The people saw them; the singing ceased; the pastors urging patience and submission. The soldiers fired; every shot told; and the crowd fled in all directions. The meeting was thus dispersed, leaving the murderers--in other words, the gallant soldiers--masters of the field; a long track of blood remaining to mark the site on which the prayer-meeting had been held. It is not necessary to recount further cruelties and tortures. Assemblies surrounded and people shot; preachers seized and hanged; men sent to the galleys; women sent to the Tour de Constance; children carried off to the convents--such was the horrible ministry of torture in France. When Court heard of the re-inflictions of some old form of torture--"Alas," said he, "there is nothing new under the sun. In all times, the storm of persecution has cleansed the threshing-floor of the Lord." And yet, notwithstanding all the bitterness of the persecution, the number of Protestants increased. It is difficult to determine their numbers. Their apologists said they amounted to three millions;[69] their detractors that they did not amount to four hundred thousand. The number of itinerant pastors, however, steadily grew. In 1756 there were 48 pastors at work, with 22 probationary preachers and students. In 1763 there were 62 pastors, 35 preachers, and 15 students. [Footnote 69: Ripert de Monclar, procureur-général, writing in 1755, says: "According to the jurisprudence of this kingdom, there are no French Protestants, and yet, according to the truth of facts, there are three millions. These imaginary beings fill the towns, provinces, and rural districts, and the capital alone contains sixty thousand of them."] Then followed the death of Antoine Court himself in Switzerland--after watching over the education and training of preachers at the Lausanne Seminary. Feeling his powers beginning to fail, he had left Lausanne, and resided at Timonex. There, assisted by his son Court de Gébelin, Professor of Logic at the College, he conducted an immense correspondence with French Protestants at home and abroad. Court's wife died in 1755, to his irreparable loss. His "Rachel," during his many years of peril, had been his constant friend and consoler. Unable, after her death, to live at Timonex, so full of cruel recollections, Court returned to Lausanne. He did not long survive his wife's death. While engaged in writing the history of the Reformed Church of France, he was taken ill. His history of the Camisards was sent to press, and he lived to revise the first proof-sheets. But he did not survive to see the book published. He died on the 15th June, 1760, in the sixty-fourth year of his age. From the time of Court's death--indeed from the time that Court left France to settle at Lausanne--Paul Rabaut continued to be looked upon as the leader and director of the proscribed Huguenot Church. Rabaut originally belonged to Bedarieux in Languedoc. He was a great friend of Pradel's. Rabaut served the Church at Nismes, and Pradel at Uzes. Both spent two years at Lausanne in 1744-5. Court entertained the highest affection for Rabaut, and regarded him as his successor. And indeed he nobly continued the work which Court had begun. Besides being zealous, studious, and pious, Rabaut was firm, active, shrewd, and gentle. He stood strongly upon moral force. Once, when the Huguenots had become more than usually provoked by the persecutions practised on them, they determined to appear armed at the assemblies. Rabaut peremptorily forbade it. If they persevered, he would forsake their meetings. He prevailed, and they came armed only with their Bibles. The directness of Rabaut's character, the nobility of his sentiments, the austerity of his life, and his heroic courage, evidently destined him as the head of the work which Court had begun. Antoine Court! Paul Rabaut! The one restored Protestantism in France, the other rooted and established it. Rabaut's enthusiasm may be gathered from the following extract of a letter which he wrote to a friend at Geneva: "When I fix my attention upon the divine fire with which, I will not say Jesus Christ and the Apostles, but the Reformed and their immediate successors, burned for the salvation of souls, it seems to me that, in comparison with them, we are ice. Their immense works astound me, and at the same time cover me with confusion. What would I not give to resemble them in everything laudable!" Rabaut had the same privations, perils, and difficulties to undergo as the rest of the pastors in the Desert. He had to assume all sorts of names and disguises while he travelled through the country, in order to preach at the appointed places. He went by the names of M. Paul, M. Denis, M. Pastourel, and M. Theophile; and he travelled under the disguises of a common labourer, a trader, a journeyman, and a baker. He was condemned to death, as a pastor who preached in defiance of the law; but his disguises were so well prepared, and the people for whom he ministered were so faithful to him, that the priests and other spies never succeeded in apprehending him. Singularly enough, he was in all other respects in favour of the recognition of legal authority, and strongly urged his brethren never to adopt any means whatever of forcibly resisting the King's orders. Many of the military commanders were becoming disgusted with the despicable and cowardly business which the priests called upon them to do. Thus, on one occasion, a number of Protestants had assembled at the house of Paul Rabaut at Nismes, and, while they were on their knees, the door was suddenly burst open, when a man, muffled up, presented himself, and throwing open his cloak, discovered the military commandant of the town. "My friends," he said, "you have Paul Rabaut with you; in a quarter of an hour I shall be here with my soldiers, accompanied by Father ----, who has just laid the information against you." When the soldiers arrived, headed by the commandant and the father, of course no Paul Rabaut was to be found. "For more than thirty years," says one of Paul Rabaut's biographers, "caverns and huts, whence he was unearthed like a wild animal, were his only habitation. For a long time he dwelt in a safe hiding-place that one of his faithful guides had provided for him, under a pile of stones and thorn-bushes. It was discovered at length by a shepherd, and such was the wretchedness of his condition, that, when he was forced to abandon the place, he still regretted this retreat, which was more fit for savage beasts than men." Yet this hut of piled stones was for some time the centre of Protestant affairs in France. All the faithful instinctively turned to Rabaut when assailed by fresh difficulties and persecutions, and acted on his advice. He obtained the respect even of the Catholics themselves, because it was known that he was a friend of peace, and opposed to all risings and rebellions amongst his people. Once he had the courage to present a petition to the Marquis de Paulmy, Minister of War, when changing horses at a post-house between Nismes and Montpellier. Rabaut introduced himself by name, and the Marquis knew that it was the proscribed pastor who stood before him. He might have arrested and hanged Rabaut on the spot; but, impressed by the noble bearing of the pastor, he accepted the petition, and promised to lay it before the king. CHAPTER XIII END OF THE PERSECUTIONS--THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. In the year 1762, the execution of an unknown Protestant at Toulouse made an extraordinary noise in Europe. Protestant pastors had so often been executed, that the punishment had ceased to be a novelty. Sometimes they were simply hanged; at other times they were racked, and then hanged; and lastly, they were racked, had their larger bones broken, and were then hanged. Yet none of the various tortures practised on the Protestant pastors had up to that time excited any particular sensation in France itself, and still less in Europe. Cruelty against French Huguenots was so common a thing in those days, that few persons who were of any other religion, or of no religion at all, cured anything about it. The Protestants were altogether outside the law. When a Protestant meeting was discovered and surrounded, and men, women, and children were at once shot down, no one could call the murderers in question, because the meetings were illegal. The persons taken prisoners at the meetings were brought before the magistrates and sentenced to punishments even worse than death. They might be sent to the galleys, to spend the remainder of their lives amongst thieves, murderers, and assassins. Women and children found at such meetings might also be sentenced to be imprisoned in the Tour de Constance. There were even cases of boys of twelve years old having been sent to the galleys for life, because of having accompanied their parents to "the Preaching."[70] [Footnote 70: Athanase Coquerel, "Les Forçats pour la Foi," 91.] The same cruelties were at that time practised upon the common people generally, whether they were Huguenots or not. The poor creatures, whose only pleasure consisted in sometimes hunting a Protestant, were so badly off in some districts of France that they even fed upon grass. The most distressed districts in France were those in which the bishops and clergy were the principal owners of land. They were the last to abandon slavery, which continued upon their estates until after the Revolution. All these abominations had grown up in France, because the people had begun to lose the sense of individual liberty. Louis XIV. had in his time prohibited the people from being of any religion different from his own. "His Majesty," said his Prime Minister Louvois, "will not suffer any person to remain in his kingdom who shall not be of his religion." And Louis XV. continued the delusion. The whole of the tyrannical edicts and ordinances of Louis XIV. continued to be maintained. It was not that Louis XIV. and Louis XV. were kings of any virtue or religion. Both were men of exceedingly immoral habits. We have elsewhere described Louis XIV., but Louis XV., the Well-beloved, was perhaps the greatest profligate of the two. Madame de Pompadour, when she ceased to be his mistress, became his procuress. This infamous woman had the command of the state purse, and she contrived to build for the sovereign a harem, called the Parc-aux-Cerfs, in the park of Versailles, which cost the country at least a hundred millions of francs.[71] The number of young girls taken from Paris to this place excited great public discontent; and though morals generally were not very high at that time, the debauchery and intemperance of the King (for he was almost constantly drunk)[72] contributed to alienate the nation, and to foster those feelings of hatred which broke forth without restraint in the ensuing reign. [Footnote 71: "Madame de Pompadour découvrit que Louis XV. pourrait lui-même s'amuser à faire l'éducation de ces jeunes malheureuses. De petites filles de neuf à douze ans, lorsqu'elles avaient attiré les regards de la police par leur beauté, étaient enlevées à leurs mères par plusieurs artifices, conduites à Versailles, et retenues dans les parties les plus élevées et les plus inaccessibles des petits appartements du roi.... Le nombre des malheureuses qui passèrent successivement à Parc-aux-Cerfs est immense; à leur sortie elles étaient mariées à des hommes vils ou crédules auxquels elles apportaient une bonne dot. Quelques unes conservaient un traitement fort considerable." "Les dépenses du Parc-aux-Cerfs, dit Lacratelle, se payaient avec des acquits du comptant. Il est difficile de les évaluer; mais il ne peut y avoir aucune exagération à affirmer qu'elles coûtèrent plus de 100 millions à l'État. Dans quelques libelles on les porte jusqu'à un milliard."--SISMONDI, _Histoire de Française_, Brussels, 1844, xx. 153-4. The account given by Sismondi of the debauches of this persecutor of the Huguenots is very full. It is _not_ given in the "Old Court Life of France," recently written by a lady.] [Footnote 72: Sismondi, xx. 157.] In the midst of all this public disregard for virtue, a spirit of ribaldry and disregard for the sanctions of religion had long been making its appearance in the literature of the time. The highest speculations which can occupy the attention of man were touched with a recklessness and power, a brilliancy of touch and a bitterness of satire, which forced the sceptical productions of the day upon the notice of all who studied, read, or delighted in literature;--for those were the days of Voltaire, Rousseau, Condorcet, and the great men of "The Encyclopædia." While the King indulged in his vicious pleasures, and went reeking from his debaucheries to obtain absolution from his confessors, the persecution of the Protestants went on as before. Nor was it until public opinion (such as it was) was brought to bear upon the hideous incongruity that religious persecutions were at once brought summarily to an end. The last executions of Huguenots in France because of their Protestantism occurred in 1762. Francis Rochette, a young pastor, twenty-six years old, was laid up by sickness at Montauban. He recovered sufficiently to proceed to the waters of St. Antonin for the recovery of his health, when he was seized, together with his two guides or bearers, by the burgess guard of the town of Caussade. The three brothers Grenier endeavoured to intercede for them; but the mayor of Caussade, proud of his capture, sent the whole of the prisoners to gaol. They were tried by the judges of Toulouse on the 18th of February. Rochette was condemned to be hung in his shirt, his head and feet uncovered, with a paper pinned on his shirt before and behind, with the words written thereon--"_Ministre de la religion prétendue réformée._" The three brothers Grenier, who interfered on behalf of Rochette, were ordered to have their heads taken off for resisting the secular power; and the two guides, who were bearing the sick Rochette to St. Antonin for the benefit of the waters, were sent to the galleys for life. Barbarous punishments such as these were so common when Protestants were the offenders, that the decision, of the judges did not excite any particular sensation. It was only when Jean Calas was shortly after executed at Toulouse that an extraordinary sensation was produced--and that not because Calas was a Protestant, but because his punishment came under the notice of Voltaire, who exposed the inhuman cruelty to France, Europe, and the world at large. The reason why Protestant executions terminated with the death of Calas was as follows:--The family of Jean Calas resided at Toulouse, then one of the most bigoted cities in France. Toulouse swarmed with priests and monks, more Spanish than French in their leanings. They were great in relics, processions, and confraternities. While "mealy-mouthed" Catholics in other quarters were becoming somewhat ashamed of the murders perpetrated during the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, and were even disposed to deny them, the more outspoken Catholics of Toulouse were even proud of the feat, and publicly celebrated the great southern Massacre of St. Bartholomew which took place in 1572. The procession then held was one of the finest church commemorations in the south; it was followed by bishops, clergy, and the people of the neighbourhood, in immense numbers. Calas was an old man of sixty-four, and reduced to great weakness by a paralytic complaint. He and his family were all Protestants excepting one son, who had become a Catholic. Another of the sons, however, a man of ill-regulated life, dissolute, and involved in pecuniary difficulties, committed suicide by hanging himself in an outhouse. On this, the brotherhood of White Penitents stirred up a great fury against the Protestant family in the minds of the populace. The monks alleged that Jean Calas had murdered his son because he wished to become a Catholic. They gave out that it was a practice of the Protestants to keep an executioner to murder their children who wished to abjure the reformed faith, and that one of the objects of the meetings which they held in the Desert, was to elect this executioner. The White Penitents celebrated mass for the suicide's soul; they exhibited his figure with a palm branch in his hand, and treated him as a martyr. The public mind became inflamed. A fanatical judge, called David, took up the case, and ordered Calas and his whole family to be sent to prison. Calas was tried by the court of Toulouse. They tortured the whole family to compel them to confess the murder;[73] but they did not confess. The court wished to burn the mother, but they ended by condemning the paralytic father to be broken alive on the wheel.[74] The parliament of Toulouse confirmed the atrocious sentence, and the old man perished in torments, declaring to the last his entire innocence. The rest of the family were discharged, although if there had been any truth in the charge for which Jean Calas was racked to death, they must necessarily have been his accomplices, and equally liable to punishment. [Footnote 73: Sismondi, xx. 328.] [Footnote 74: To be broken alive on the wheel was one of the most horrible of tortures, a bequest from ages of violence and barbarism. It was preserved in France mainly for the punishment of Protestants. The prisoner was extended on a St. Andrew's cross, with eight notches cut on it--one below each arm between the elbow and wrist, another between each elbow and the shoulders, one under each thigh, and one under each leg. The executioner, armed with a heavy triangular bar of iron, gave a heavy blow on each of these eight places, and broke the bone. Another blow was given in the pit of the stomach. The mangled victim was lifted from the cross and stretched on a small wheel placed vertically at one of the ends of the cross, his back on the upper part of the wheel, his head and feet hanging down. There the tortured creature hung until he died. Some lingered five or six hours, others much longer. This horrible method of torture was only abolished at the French Revolution in 1790.] The ruined family left Toulouse and made for Geneva, then the head-quarters of Protestants from the South of France. And here it was that the murder of Jean Calas and the misfortunes of the Calas family came under the notice of Voltaire, then living at Ferney, near Geneva. In the midst of the persecutions of the Protestants a great many changes had been going on in France. Although the clergy had for more than a century the sole control of the religious education of the people, the people had not become religious. They had become very ignorant and very fanatical. The upper classes were anything but religious; they were given up for the most part to frivolity and libertinage. The examples of their kings had been freely followed. Though ready to do honour to the court religion, the higher classes did not believe in it. The press was very free for the publication of licentious and immoral books, but not for Protestant Bibles. A great work was, however, in course of publication, under the editorship of D'Alembert and Diderot, to which Voltaire, Rousseau, and others contributed, entitled "The Encyclopædia." It was a description of the entire circle of human knowledge; but the dominant idea which pervaded it was the utter subversion of religion. The abuses of the Church, its tyranny and cruelty, the ignorance and helplessness in which it kept the people, the frivolity and unbelief of the clergy themselves, had already condemned it in the minds of the nation. The writers in "The Encyclopædia" merely gave expression to their views, and the publication of its successive numbers was received with rapture. In the midst of the free publication of obscene books, there had also appeared, before the execution of Calas, the Marquis de Mirabeau's "Ami des Hommes," Rousseau's "Émile," the "Contrat Social," with other works, denying religion of all kinds, and pointing to the general downfall, which was now fast approaching. When the Calas family took refuge in Geneva, Voltaire soon heard of their story. It was communicated to him by M. de Végobre, a French refugee. After he had related it, Voltaire said, "This is a horrible story. What has become of the family?" "They arrived in Geneva only three days ago." "In Geneva!" said Voltaire; "then let me see them at once." Madame Calas soon arrived, told him the whole facts of the case, and convinced Voltaire of the entire innocence of the family. Voltaire was no friend of the Huguenots. He believed the Huguenot spirit to be a republican spirit. In his "Siècle de Louis XIV.," when treating of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he affirmed that the Reformed were the enemies of the State; and though he depicted feelingly the cruelties they had suffered, he also stated clearly that he thought they had deserved them. Voltaire probably owed his hatred of the Protestants to the Jesuits, by whom he was educated. He was brought up at the Jesuit College of Louis le Grand, the chief persecutor of the Huguenots. Voltaire also owed much of the looseness of his principles to his godfather, the Abbé Chateauneuf, grand-prior of Vendôme, the Abbé de Chalieu, and others, who educated him in an utter contempt for the doctrines they were appointed and paid to teach. It was when but a mere youth that Father Lejay, one of Voltaire's instructors, predicted that he would yet be the Coryphæus of Deism in France. Nor was Voltaire better pleased with the Swiss Calvinists. He encountered some of the most pedantic of them while residing at Lausanne and Geneva.[75] At the latter place, he covered with sarcasm the "twenty-four periwigs"--the Protestant council of the city. They would not allow him to set up a theatre in Geneva, so he determined to set up one himself at La Chatelaine, about a mile off, but beyond the Genevese frontier. His object, he professed, was "to corrupt the pedantic city." The theatre is still standing, though it is now used only as a hayloft. The box is preserved from which Voltaire cheered the performance of his own and other plays. [Footnote 75: While Voltaire lived at Lausanne, one of the baillies (the chief magistrates of the city) said to him: "Monsieur de Voltaire, they say that you have written against the good God: it is very wrong, but I hope He will pardon you.... But, Monsieur de Voltaire, take very good care not to write against their excellencies of Berne, our sovereign lords, for be assured that they will _never_ forgive you."] But though Voltaire hated Protestantism like every other religion, he also hated injustice. It was because of this that he took up the case of the Calas family, so soon as he had become satisfied of their innocence. But what a difficulty he had to encounter in endeavouring to upset the decision of the judges, and the condemnation of Calas by the parliament of Toulouse. Moreover, he had to reverse their decision against a dead man, and that man a detested Huguenot. Nevertheless Voltaire took up the case. He wrote letters to his friends in all parts of France. He wrote to the sovereigns of Europe. He published letters in the newspapers. He addressed the Duke de Choiseul, the King's Secretary of State. He appealed to philosophers, to men of letters, to ladies of the court, and even to priests and bishops, denouncing the sentence pronounced against Calas,--the most iniquitous, he said, that any court professing to act in the name of justice had ever pronounced. Ferney was visited by many foreigners, from Germany, America, England, and Russia; as well as by numerous persons of influence in France. To all these he spoke vehemently of Calas and his sentence. He gave himself no rest until he had inflamed the minds of all men against the horrible injustice. At length, the case of Calas became known all over France, and in fact all over Europe. The press of Paris rang with it. In the boudoirs and salons, Calas was the subject of conversation. In the streets, men meeting each other would ask, "Have you heard of Calas?" The dead man had already become a hero and a martyr! An important point was next reached. It was decided that the case of Calas should be remitted to a special court of judges appointed to consider the whole matter. Voltaire himself proceeded to get up the case. He prepared and revised the memorials, he revised all the pleadings of the advocates, transforming them into brief, conclusive arguments, sparkling with wit, reason, and eloquence. The revision of the process commenced. The people held their breaths while it proceeded. At length, in the spring of 1766--four years after Calas had been broken to death on the wheel--four years after Voltaire had undertaken to have the unjust decision of the Toulouse magistrates and parliament reversed, the court of judges, after going completely over the evidence, pronounced the judgment to have been entirely unfounded! The decree was accordingly reversed. Jean Calas was declared to have been innocent. The man was, however, dead. But in order to compensate his family, the ministry granted 36,000 francs to Calas's widow, on the express recommendation of the court which reversed the abominable sentence.[76] [Footnote 76: It may be added that, after the reversal of the sentence, David, the judge who had first condemned Calas, went insane, and died in a madhouse.] The French people never forgot Voltaire's efforts in this cause. Notwithstanding all his offences against morals and religion, Voltaire on this occasion acted on his best impulses. Many years after, in 1778, he visited Paris, where he was received with immense enthusiasm. He was followed in the streets wherever he went. One day when passing along the Pont Royal, some person asked, "Who is that man the crowd is following?" "Ne savez vous pas," answered a common woman, "que c'est le sauveur de Calas!" Voltaire was more touched with this simple tribute to his fame than with all the adoration of the Parisians. It was soon found, however, that there were many persons still suffering in France from the cruelty of priests and judges; and one of these occurred shortly after the death of Calas. One of the ordinary practices of the Catholics was to seize the children of Protestants and carry them off to some nunnery to be educated at the expense of their parents. The priests of Toulouse had obtained a _lettre de cachet_ to take away the daughter of a Protestant named Sirven, to compel her to change her religion. She was accordingly seized and carried off to a nunnery. She manifested such reluctance to embrace Catholicism, and she was treated with such cruelty, that she fled from the convent in the night, and fell into a well, where she was found drowned. The prejudices of the Catholic bigots being very much excited about this time by the case of Calas, blamed the family of Sirven (in the same manner as they had done that of Calas) with murdering their daughter. Foreseeing that they would be apprehended if they remained, the whole family left the city, and set out for Geneva. After they left, Sirven was in fact sentenced to death _par contumace_. It was about the middle of winter when they set out, and Sirven's wife died of cold on the way, amidst the snows of the Jura. On his arrival at Geneva, Sirven stated his case to Voltaire, who took it up as he had done that of Calas. He exerted himself as before. Advocates of the highest rank offered to conduct Sirven's case; for public opinion had already made considerable progress. Sirven was advised to return to Toulouse, and offer himself as a prisoner. He did so. The case was tried with the same results as before; the advocates, acting under Voltaire's instructions and with his help, succeeded in obtaining the judges' unanimous decision that Sirven was innocent of the crime for which he had already been sentenced to death. After this, there were no further executions of Protestants in France. But what became of the Huguenots at the galleys, who still continued to endure a punishment from day to day, even worse than death itself?[77] Although, they were often cut off by fever, starvation, and exposure, many of them contrived to live on to a considerable age. After the trials of Calas and Sirven, the punishment of the galleys was evidently drawing to an end. Only two persons were sent to the galleys during the year in which Pastor Rochette was hanged. But a circumstance came to light respecting one of the galley-slaves who had been liberated in that very year (1762), which had the effect of eventually putting an end to the cruelty. [Footnote 77: The Huguenots sometimes owed their release from the galleys to money payments made by Protestants (but this was done secretly), the price of a galley-slave being about a thousand crowns; sometimes they owed it to the influence of Protestant princes; but never to the voluntary mercy of the Catholics. In 1742, while France was at war with England, and Prussia was quietly looking on, Antoine Court made an appeal to Frederick the Great, and at his intervention with Louis XV. thirty galley-slaves were liberated. The Margrave of Bayreuth, Culmbach and his wife, the sister of the Great Frederick, afterwards visited the galleys at Toulon, and succeeded in obtaining the liberation of several galley-slaves.] The punishment was not, however, abolished by Christian feeling, or by greater humanity on the part of the Catholics; nor was it abolished through the ministers of justice, and still less by the order of the King. It was put an end to by the Stage! As Voltaire, the Deist, terminated the hanging of Protestants, so did Fenouillot, the player, put an end to their serving as galley-slaves. The termination of this latter punishment has a curious history attached to it. It happened that a Huguenot meeting for worship was held in the neighbourhood of Nismes, on the first day of January, 1756. The place of meeting was called the Lecque,[78] situated immediately north of the Tour Magne, from which the greater part of the city has been built. It was a favourable place for holding meetings; but it was not so favourable for those who wished to escape. The assembly had scarcely been constituted by prayer, when the alarm was given that the soldiers were upon them! The people fled on all sides. The youngest and most agile made their escape by climbing the surrounding rocks. [Footnote 78: This secret meeting-place of the Huguenots is well known from the engraved picture of Boze.] Amongst these, Jean Fabre, a young silk merchant of Nismes, was already beyond reach of danger, when he heard that his father had been made a prisoner. The old man, who was seventy-eight, could not climb as the others had done, and the soldiers had taken him and were leading him away. The son, who knew that his father would be sentenced to the galleys for life, immediately determined, if possible, to rescue him from this horrible fate. He returned to the group of soldiers who had his father in charge, and asked them to take him prisoner in his place. On their refusal, he seized his father and drew him from their grasp, insisting upon them taking himself instead. The sergeant in command at first refused to adopt this strange substitution; but, conquered at last by the tears and prayers of the son, he liberated the aged man and accepted Jean Fabre as his prisoner. Jean Fabre was first imprisoned at Nismes, where he was prevented seeing any of his friends, including a certain young lady to whom he was about shortly to be married. He was then transferred to Montpellier to be judged; where, of course, he was condemned, as he expected, to be sent to the galleys for life. With this dreadful prospect before him, of separation from all that he loved--from his father, for whom he was about to suffer so much; from his betrothed, who gave up all hope of ever seeing him again--and having no prospect of being relieved from his horrible destiny, his spirits failed, and he became seriously ill. But his youth and Christian resignation came to his aid, and he finally recovered. The Protestants of Nismes, and indeed of all Languedoc, were greatly moved by the fate of Jean Fabre. The heroism of his devotion to his parent soon became known, and the name of the volunteer convict was in every mouth. The Duc de Mirepoix, then governor of the province, endeavoured to turn the popular feeling to some account. He offered pardon to Fabre and Turgis (who had been taken prisoner with him) provided Paul Rabaut, the chief pastor of the Desert, a hard-working and indefatigable man, would leave France and reside abroad. But neither Fabre, nor Rabaut, nor the Huguenots generally, had any confidence in the mercy of the Catholics, and the proposal was coldly declined. Fabre was next sent to Toulon under a strong escort of cavalry. He was there registered in the class of convicts; his hair was cut close; he was clothed in the ignominious dress of the galley-slave, and placed in a galley among murderers and criminals, where he was chained to one of the worst. The dinner consisted of a porridge of cooked beans and black bread. At first he could not touch it, and preferred to suffer hunger. A friend of Fabre, who was informed of his starvation, sent him some food more savoury and digestible; but his stomach was in such a state that he could not eat even that. At length he became accustomed to the situation, though the place was a sort of hell, in which he was surrounded by criminals in rags, dirt, and vermin, and, worst of all, distinguished for their abominable vileness of speech. He was shortly after seized with a serious illness, when he was sent to the hospital, where he found many Huguenot convicts imprisoned, like himself, because of their religion.[79] [Footnote 79: Letter of Jean Fabre, in Athanase Coquerel's "Forçats pour la Foi," 201-3.] Repeated applications were made to Saint-Florentin, the Secretary of State, by Fabre's relatives, friends, and fellow Protestants for his liberation, but without result. After he had been imprisoned for some years, a circumstance happened which more than anything else exasperated his sufferings. The young lady to whom he was engaged had an offer of marriage made to her by a desirable person, which her friends were anxious that she should accept. Her father had been struck by paralysis, and was poor and unable to maintain himself as well as his daughter. He urged that she should give up Fabre, now hopelessly imprisoned for life, and accept her new lover. Fabre himself was consulted on the subject; his conscience was appealed to, and how did he decide? It was only after the bitterest struggle, that he determined on liberating his betrothed. He saw no prospect of his release, and why should he sacrifice her? Let her no longer be bound up with his fearful fate, but be happy with another if she could. The young lady yielded, though not without great misgivings. The day for her marriage with her new lover was fixed; but, at the last moment, she relented. Her faithfulness and love for the heroic galley-slave had never been shaken, and she resolved to remain constant to him, to remain unmarried if need be, or to wait for his liberation until death! It is probable that her noble decision determined Fabre and Fabre's friends to make a renewed effort for his liberation. At last, after having been more than six years a galley-slave, he bethought him of a method of obtaining at least a temporary liberty. He proposed--without appealing to Saint-Florentin, who was the bitter enemy of the Protestants--to get his case made known to the Duc de Choiseul, Minister of Marine. This nobleman was a just man, and it had been in a great measure through his influence that the judgment of Calas had been reconsidered and reversed. Fabre, while on the rowers' bench, had often met with a M. Johannot, a French Protestant, settled at Frankfort-on-Maine, to whom he stated his case. It may be mentioned that Huguenot refugees, on their visits to France, often visited the Protestant prisoners at the galleys, relieved their wants, and made intercession for them with the outside world. It may also be incidentally mentioned that this M. Johannot was the ancestor of two well-known painters and designers, Alfred and Tony, who have been the illustrators of some of our finest artistic works. Johannot made the case of Fabre known to some French officers whom he met at Frankfort, interested them greatly in his noble character and self-sacrifice, and the result was that before long Fabre obtained, directly from the Duc de Choiseul, leave of absence from the position of galley-slave. The annoyance of Saint-Florentin, Minister of State, was so well-known, that Fabre, on his liberation, was induced to conceal himself. Nor could he yet marry his promised wife, as he had not been discharged, but was only on leave of absence; and Saint-Florentin obstinately refused to reverse the sentence that had been pronounced against him. In the meantime, Fabre's name was becoming celebrated. He had no idea, while privately settled at Ganges as a silk stocking maker, that great people in France were interesting themselves about his fate. The Duchesse de Grammont, sister of the Duc de Choiseul, had heard about him from her brother; and the Prince de Beauvau, governor of Languedoc, the Duchesse de Villeroy, and many other distinguished personages, were celebrating his heroism. Inquiry was made of the sergeant who had originally apprehended Fabre, upon his offering himself in exchange for his father (long since dead), and the sergeant confirmed the truth of the noble and generous act. At the same time, M. Alison, first consul at Nismes, confirmed the statement by three witnesses, in presence of the secretary of the Prince de Beauvau. The result was, that Jean Fabre was completely exonerated from the charge on account of which he had been sent to the galleys. He was now a free man, and at last married the young lady who had loved him so long and so devotedly. One day, to his extreme surprise, Fabre received from the Duc de Choiseul a packet containing a drama, in which he found his own history related in verse, by Fenouillot de Falbaire. It was entitled "The Honest Criminal." Fabre had never been a criminal, except in worshipping God according to his conscience, though that had for nearly a hundred years been pronounced a crime by the law of France. The piece, which was of no great merit as a tragedy, was at first played before the Duchesse de Villeroy and her friends, with great applause, Mdlle. Clairon playing the principal female part. Saint-Florentin prohibited the playing of the piece in public, protesting to the last against the work and the author. Voltaire played it at Ferney, and Queen Marie Antoinette had it played in her presence at Versailles. It was not until 1789 that the piece was played in the theatres of Paris, when it had a considerable success. We do not find that any Protestants were sent to be galley-slaves after 1762, the year that Calas was executed. A reaction against this barbarous method of treating men for differences of opinion seems to have set in; or, perhaps, it was because most men were ceasing to believe in the miraculous powers of the priests, for which the Protestants had so long been hanged and made galley-slaves. After the liberation of Fabre in 1762, other galley-slaves were liberated from time to time. Thus, in the same year, Jean Albiges and Jean Barran were liberated after eight years of convict life. They had been condemned for assisting at Protestant assemblies. Next year, Maurice was liberated; he had been condemned for life for the same reason. While Voltaire had been engaged in the case of Calas he asked the Duc de Choiseul for the liberation of a galley-slave. The man for whom he interceded, had been a convict twenty years for attending a Protestant meeting. Of course, Voltaire cared nothing for his religion, believing Catholicism and Protestantism to be only two forms of the same superstition. The name of this galley-slave was Claude Chaumont. Like nearly all the other convicts he was a working man--a little dark-faced shoemaker. Some Protestant friends he had at Geneva interceded with Voltaire for his liberation. On Chaumont's release in 1764, he waited upon his deliverer to thank him. "What!" said Voltaire, on first seeing him, "my poor little bit of a man, have they put _you_ in the galleys? What could they have done with you? The idea of sending a little creature to the galley-chain, for no other crime than that of praying to God in bad French!"[80] Voltaire ended by handing the impoverished fellow a sum of money to set him up in the world again, when he left the house the happiest of men. [Footnote 80: "Voltaire et les Genevois," par J. Gaberel, 74-5.] We may briefly mention a few of the last of the galley-slaves. Daniel Bic and Jean Cabdié, liberated in 1764, for attending religious meetings. Both were condemned for life, and had been at the galley-chain for ten years. Jean Pierre Espinas, an attorney, of St. Felix de Châteauneuf, in Viverais, who had been condemned for life for having given shelter to a pastor, was released in 1765, at the age of sixty-seven, after being chained at the galleys for twenty-five years. Jean Raymond, of Fangères, the father of six children, who had been a galley-slave for thirteen years, was liberated in 1767. Alexandre Chambon, a labourer, more than eighty years old, condemned for life in 1741, for attending a religious meeting, was released in 1769, on the entreaty of Voltaire, after being a galley-slave for twenty-eight years. His friends had forgotten him, and on his release he was utterly destitute and miserable.[81] [Footnote 81: "Lettres inédites des Voltaire," publiées par Athanase Coquerel fils, 247.] In 1772, three galley-slaves were liberated from their chains. André Guisard, a labourer, aged eighty-two, Jean Roque, and Louis Tregon, of the same class, all condemned for life for attending religious meetings. They had all been confined at the chain for twenty years. The two last galley-slaves were liberated in 1775, during the first year of the reign of Louis XVI., and close upon the outbreak of the French Revolution. They had been quite forgotten, until Court de Gébelin, son of Antoine Court, discovered them. When he applied for their release to M. de Boyne, Minister of Marine, he answered that there were no more Protestant convicts at the galleys; at least, he believed so. Shortly after, Turgot succeeded Boyne, and application was made to him. He answered that there was no need to recommend such objects to him for liberation, as they were liberated already. On the two old men being told they were released, they burst into tears; but were almost afraid of returning to the world which no longer knew them. One of them was Antoine Rialle, a tailor of Aoste, in Dauphiny, who had been condemned by the parliament of Grenoble to the galleys for life "for contravening the edicts of the King concerning religion." He was seventy-eight years old, and had been a galley-slave for thirty years. The other, Paul Achard, had been a shoemaker of Châtillon, also in Dauphiny. He was condemned to be a galley-slave for life by the parliament of Grenoble, for having given shelter to a pastor. Achard had also been confined at the galleys for thirty years. It is not known when the last Huguenot women were liberated from the Tour de Constance, at Aiguesmortes. It would probably be about the time when the last Huguenots were liberated from the galleys. An affecting picture has been left by an officer who visited the prison at the release of the last prisoners. "I accompanied," he says, "the Prince de Beauvau (the intendant of Languedoc under Louis XVI.) in a survey which he made of the coast. Arriving at Aiguesmortes, at the gate of the Tour de Constance, we found at the entrance the principal keeper, who conducted us by dark steps through a great gate, which opened with an ominous noise, and over which was inscribed a motto from Dante--'Lasciate ogni speranza voi che'ntrate.' "Words fail me to describe the horror with which we regarded a scene to which we were so unaccustomed--a frightful and affecting picture, in which the interest was heightened by disgust. We beheld a large circular apartment, deprived of air and of light, in which fourteen females still languished in misery. It was with difficulty that the Prince smothered his emotion; and doubtless it was the first time that these unfortunate creatures had there witnessed compassion depicted upon a human countenance; I still seem to behold the affecting apparition. They fell at our feet, bathed in tears, and speechless, until, emboldened by our expressions of sympathy, they recounted to us their sufferings. Alas! all their crime consisted in having been attached to the same religion as Henry IV. The youngest of these martyrs was more than fifty years old. She was but _eight_ when first imprisoned for having accompanied her mother to hear a religious service, and her punishment had continued until now!"[82] [Footnote 82: Froissard, "Nismes et ses Environs," ii. 217.] After the liberation of the last of the galley-slaves there were no further apprehensions nor punishments of Protestants. The priests had lost their power; and the secular authority no longer obeyed their behests. The nation had ceased to believe in them; in some places they were laughed at; in others they were detested. They owed this partly to their cruelty and intolerance, partly to their luxury and self-indulgence amidst the poverty of the people, and partly to the sarcasms of the philosophers, who had become more powerful in France than themselves. "It is not enough," said Voltaire, "that we prove intolerance to be horrible; we must also prove to the French that it is ridiculous." In looking back at the sufferings of the Huguenots remaining in France since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes; at the purity, self-denial, honesty, and industry of their lives; at the devotion with which they adhered to religious duty and the worship of God; we cannot fail to regard them--labourers and peasants though they were--as amongst the truest, greatest, and worthiest heroes of their age. When society in France was falling to pieces; when its men and women were ceasing to believe in themselves and in each other; when the religion of the State had become a mass of abuse, consistent only in its cruelty; when the debauchery of its kings[83] had descended through the aristocracy to the people, until the whole mass was becoming thoroughly corrupt; these poor Huguenots seem to have been the only constant and true men, the only men holding to a great idea, for which they were willing to die--for they were always ready for martyrdom by the rack, the gibbet, or the galleys, rather than forsake the worship of God freely and according to conscience. [Footnote 83: Such was the dissoluteness of the manners of the court, that no less than 500,000,000 francs of the public debt, or £20,000,000 sterling, had been incurred for expenses too ignominious to bear the light, or even to be named in the public accounts. It appears from an authentic document, quoted in Soulavie's history, that in the sixteen months immediately preceding the death of Louis XV., Madame du Barry (originally a courtesan,) had drawn from the royal treasury no less than 2,450,000 francs, or equal to about £200,000 of our present money. ["Histoire de la Décadence de la Monarchie Française," par Soulavie l'Aîné, iii. 330.] "La corruption," says Lacretelle, "entrait dans les plus paisibles ménages, dans les familles les plus obscures. Elle [Madame du Barri] était savamment et longtemps combinée par ceux qui servaient les débauches de Louis. Des émissaires étaient employées à séduire des filles qui n'étaient point encore nubiles, à combattre dans de jeunes femmes des principes de pudeur et de fidélité. Amant de grade, il livrait à la prostitution publique celles de ses sujettes qu'il avait prématurement corrompues. Il souffrait que les enfans de ses infâmes plaisirs partageassent la destinée obscure et dangereuse de ceux qu'un père n'avoue point." LACRETELLE, _Histoire de France pendant le xviii Siècle_, iii. 171-173.] But their persecution was now in a great measure at an end. It is true the Protestants were not recognised, but they nevertheless held their worship openly, and were not interfered with. When Louis XVI. succeeded to the throne in 1774, on the administration of the oath for the extermination of heretics denounced by the Church, the Archbishop of Toulouse said to him: "It is reserved for you to strike the final blow against Calvinism in your dominions. Command the dispersion of the schismatic assemblies of the Protestants, exclude the sectarians, without distinction, from all offices of the public administration, and you will insure among your subjects the unity of the true Christian religion." No attention was paid to this and similar appeals for the restoration of intolerance. On the contrary, an Edict of Toleration was issued by Louis XVI. in 1787, which, though granting a legal existence to the Protestants, nevertheless set forth that "The Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion alone shall continue to enjoy the right of public worship in our realm." Opinion, however, moved very fast in those days. The Declaration of Rights of 1789 overthrew the barriers which debarred the admission of Protestants to public offices. On the question of tolerance, Rabaut Saint-Etienne, son of Paul Rabaut, who sat in the National Assembly for Nismes, insisted on the freedom of the Protestants to worship God after their accustomed forms. He said he represented a constituency of 360,000, of whom 120,000 were Protestants. The penal laws against the worship of the Reformed, he said, had never been formally abolished. He claimed the rights of Frenchmen for two millions of useful citizens. It was not toleration he asked for, _it was liberty_. "Toleration!" he exclaimed; "sufferance! pardon! clemency! ideas supremely unjust towards the Protestants, so long as it is true that difference of religion, that difference of opinion, is not a crime! Toleration! I demand that toleration should be proscribed in its turn, and deemed an iniquitous word, dealing with us as citizens worthy of pity, as criminals to whom pardon is to be granted!"[84] [Footnote 84: "History of the Protestants of France," by G. de Félice, book v. sect. i.] The motion before the House was adopted with a modification, and all Frenchmen, without distinction of religious opinions, were declared admissible to all offices and employments. Four months later, on the 15th March, 1790, Rabaut Saint-Etienne himself, son of the long proscribed pastor of the Desert, was nominated President of the Constituent Assembly, succeeding to the chair of the Abbé Montesquieu. He did not, however, occupy the position long. In the struggles of the Convention he took part with the Girondists, and refused to vote for the death of Louis XVI. He maintained an obstinate struggle against the violence of the Mountain. His arrest was decreed; he was dragged before the revolutionary tribunal, and condemned to be executed within twenty-four hours. The horrors of the French Revolution hide the doings of Protestantism and Catholicism alike for several years, until Buonaparte came into power. He recognised Catholicism as the established religion, and paid for the maintenance of the bishops and priests. He also protected Protestantism, the members of which were entitled to all the benefits secured to the other Christian communions, "with the exception of pecuniary subvention." The comparative liberty which the Protestants of France had enjoyed under the Republic and the Empire seemed to be in some peril at the restoration of the Bourbons. The more bigoted Roman Catholics of the South hailed their return as the precursors of renewed persecution: and they raised the cry of "Un Dieu, un Roi, une Foi." The Protestant mayor of Nismes was publicly insulted, and compelled to resign his office. The mob assembled in the streets and sang ferocious songs, threatening to "make black puddings of the blood of the Calvinists' children."[85] Another St. Bartholomew was even threatened; the Protestants began to conceal themselves, and many fled for refuge to the Upper Cevennes. Houses were sacked, their inmates outraged, and in many cases murdered. [Footnote 85: See the Rev. Mark Wilks's "History of the Persecutions endured by the Protestants of the South of France, 1814, 1815, 1816." Longmans, 1821.] The same scenes occurred in most of the towns and villages of the department of Gard; and the authorities seemed to be powerless to prevent them. The Protestants at length began to take up arms for their defence; the peasantry of the Cevennes brought from their secret places the rusty arms which their fathers had wielded more than a century before; and another Camisard war seemed imminent. In the meantime, the subject of the renewed Protestant persecutions in the South of France was, in May, 1816, brought under the notice of the British House of Commons by Sir Samuel Romilly--himself the descendant of a Languedoc Huguenot--in a powerful speech; and although the motion was opposed by the Government, there can be little doubt that the discussion produced its due effect; for the Bourbon Government, itself becoming alarmed, shortly after adopted vigorous measures, and the persecution was brought to an end. Since that time the Protestants of France have remained comparatively unmolested. Evidences have not been wanting to show that the persecuting spirit of the priest-party has not become extinct. While the author was in France in 1870, to visit the scenes of the wars of the Camisards, he observed from the papers that a French deputy had recently brought a case before the Assembly, in which a Catholic curé of Ville-d'Avray refused burial in the public cemetery to the corpse of a young English lady, because she was a Protestant, and remitted it to the place allotted for criminals and suicides. The body accordingly lay for eighteen days in the cabin of the gravedigger, until it could be transported to the cemetery of Sèvres, where it was finally interred. But the people of France, as well as the government, have become too indifferent about religion generally, to persecute any one on its account. The nation is probably even now suffering for its indifference, and the spectacle is a sad one. It is only the old, old story. The sins of the fathers are being visited on the children. Louis XIV. and the French nation of his time sowed the wind, and their descendants at the Revolution reaped the whirlwind. And who knows how much of the sufferings of France during the last few years may have been due to the ferocious intolerance, the abandonment to vicious pleasures, the thirst for dominion, and the hunger for "glory," which above all others characterized the reign of that monarch who is in history miscalled "the Great?" It will have been noted that the chief scenes of the revival of Protestantism described in the preceding pages occurred in Languedoc and the South of France, where the chief strength of the Huguenots always lay. The Camisard civil war which happened there, was not without its influence. The resolute spirit which it had evoked survived. The people were purified by suffering, and though they did not conquer civil liberty, they continued to live strong, hardy, virtuous lives. When Protestantism was at length able to lift up its head after so long a period of persecution, it was found that, during its long submergence, it had lost neither in numbers, in moral or intellectual vigour, nor in industrial power. To this day the Protestants of Languedoc cherish the memory of their wanderings and worshippings in the Desert; and they still occasionally hold their meetings in the old frequented places. Not far from Nismes are several of these ancient meeting-places of the persecuted, to which we have above referred. One of them is about two miles from the city, in the bed of a mountain torrent. The worshippers arranged themselves along the slopes of the narrow valley, the pastor preaching to them from the grassy level in the hollow, while sentinels posted on the adjoining heights gave warning of the approach of the enemy. Another favourite place of meeting was the hollow of an ancient quarry called the Echo, from which the Romans had excavated much of the stone used in the building of the city. The congregation seated themselves around the craggy sides, the preacher's pulpit being placed in the narrow pass leading into the quarry. Notwithstanding all the vigilance of the sentinels, many persons of both sexes and various ages were often dragged from the Echo to imprisonment or death. Even after the persecutions had ceased, these meeting-places continued to be frequented by the Protestants of Nismes, and they were sometimes attended by five or six thousand persons, and on sacrament days by even double that number. Although the Protestants of Languedoc for the most part belong to the National Reformed Church, the independent character of the people has led them to embrace Protestantism in other forms. Thus, the Evangelical Church is especially strong in the South, whilst the Evangelical Methodists number more congregations and worshippers in Languedoc than in all the rest of France. There are also in the Cevennes several congregations of Moravian Brethren. But perhaps one of the most curious and interesting issues of the Camisard war is the branch of the Society of Friends still existing in Languedoc--the only representatives of that body in France, or indeed on the European continent. When the Protestant peasants of the Cevennes took up arms and determined to resist force by force, there were several influential men amongst them who kept back and refused to join them. They held that the Gospel they professed did not warrant them in taking up arms and fighting, even against the enemies who plundered and persecuted them. And when they saw the excesses into which the Camisards were led by the war of retaliation on which they had entered, they were the more confirmed in their view that the attitude which the rebels had assumed, was inconsistent with the Christian religion. After the war had ceased, these people continued to associate together, maintaining a faithful testimony against war, refusing to take oaths, and recognising silent worship, without dependence on human acquirements. They were not aware of the existence of a similar body in England and America until the period of the French Revolution, when some intercourse began to take place between them. In 1807, Stephen Grellet, an American Friend, of French origin, visited Languedoc, and held many religious meetings in the towns and villages of the Lower Cevennes, which were not only attended by the Friends of Congenies, St. Hypolite, Granges, St. Grilles, Fontane's, Vauvert, Quissac, and other places in the neighbourhood of Nismes, but by the inhabitants at large, Roman Catholics as well as Protestants. At that time, as now, Congenies was regarded as the centre of the district principally inhabited by the Friends, and there they possess a large and commodious meeting-house, built for the purpose of worship. At the time of Stephen Grellet's visit, he especially mentioned Louis Majolier as "a father and a pillar" amongst the little flock.[86] And it may not be unworthy to note that the daughter of the same Louis Majolier is at the present time one of the most acceptable female preachers of the Society of Friends in England. [Footnote 86: "Life of Stephen Grellet," third edition. London, 1870.] It may also be mentioned, in passing, that there still exist amongst the Vosges mountains the remnants of an ancient sect--the Anabaptists of Munster--who hold views in many respects similar to those of the Friends. Amongst other things, they testify against war as unchristian, and refuse under any circumstances to carry arms. Rather than do so, they have at different times suffered imprisonment, persecution, and even death. The republic of 1793 respected their scruples, and did not require the Anabaptists to fight in the ranks, but employed them as pioneers and drivers, while Napoleon made them look after the wounded on the field of battle, and attend to the waggon train and ambulances.[87] And we understand that they continue to be similarly employed down to the present time. [Footnote 87: Michel, "Les Anabaptistes des Vosges." Paris, 1862.] * * * * * It forms no part of our subject to discuss the present state of the French Protestant Church. It has lost no part of its activity during the recent political changes. Although its clergy had for some time been supported by the State, they had not met in public synod until June, 1872, after an interval of more than two hundred years. During that period many things had become changed. Rationalism had invaded Evangelicalism. Without a synod, or a settled faith, the Protestant churches were only so many separate congregations, often representing merely individual interests. In fact, the old Huguenot Church required reorganization; and great results are expected from the proceedings adopted at the recently held synod of the French Protestant Church.[88] [Footnote 88: The best account of the proceedings at this synod is given in _Blackwood's Magazine_ for January, 1873.] With respect to the French Catholic Church, its relative position to the Protestants remains the same as before. But it has no longer the power to persecute. The Gallican Church has been replaced by the Ultramontane Church, but its impulses are no kindlier, though it has become "Infallible." The principal movement of the Catholic priests of late years has been to get up appearances of the Virgin. The Virgin appears, usually, to a child or two, and pilgrimages are immediately got up to the scene of her visit. By getting up religious movements of this kind, the priests and their followers believe that France will yet be helped towards the _Revanche_, which she is said to long for. But pilgrimages will not make men; and if France wishes to be free, she will have to adopt some other methods. Bismarck will never be put down by pilgrimages. It was a sad saying of Father Hyacinthe at Geneva, that "France is bound to two influences--Superstition and Irreligion." MEMOIRS OF DISTINGUISHED HUGUENOT REFUGEES. I. STORY OF SAMUEL DE PÉCHELS. When Louis XIV. revoked the Edict of Nantes, he issued a number of decrees or edicts for the purpose of stamping out Protestantism in France. Each decree had the effect of an Act of Parliament. Louis combined in himself the entire powers of the State. The King's word was law. "_L'état c'est Moi_" was his maxim. The Decrees which Louis issued were tyrannical, brutal, and cowardly. Some were even ludicrous in their inhumanity. Thus Protestant grooms were forbidden to give riding-lessons; Protestant barbers were forbidden to cut hair; Protestant washerwomen were forbidden to wash clothes; Protestant servants were forbidden to serve either Roman Catholic or Protestant mistresses. They must all be "converted." A profession of the Roman Catholic faith was required from simple artisans--from shoemakers, tailors, masons, carpenters, and such-like--before they were permitted to labour at their respective callings. The cruelty went further. Protestants were forbidden to be employed as librarians and printers. They could not even be employed as labourers upon the King's highway. They could not serve in any public office whatever. They were excluded from the collection of the taxes, and from all government departments. Protestant apothecaries must shut up their shops. Protestant advocates were forbidden to plead before the courts. Protestant doctors were forbidden to practise medicine and surgery. The _sages-femmes_ must necessarily be of the Roman Catholic religion. The cruelty was extended to the family. Protestant parents were forbidden to instruct their children in their own faith. They were enjoined, under a heavy penalty, to have their children baptized by the Roman Catholic priest, and brought up in the Roman Catholic religion. When the law was disobeyed, the priests were empowered to seize and carry off the children, and educate them, at the expense of the parents, in monasteries and nunneries. Then, as regards the profession of the Protestant religion:--It was decreed by the King, that all the Protestant temples in France should be demolished, or converted to other uses. Protestant pastors were ordered to quit the country within fifteen days after the date of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. If found in the country after that period, they were condemned to death. A reward of five thousand five hundred livres was offered for the apprehension of any Protestant pastor. When apprehended he was hung. Protestant worship was altogether prohibited. If any Protestants were found singing psalms, or engaged in prayer, in their own houses, they were liable to have their entire property confiscated, and to be sent to the galleys for life. These monstrous decrees were carried into effect--at a time when France reigned supreme in the domain of intellect, poetry, and the arts--in the days of Racine, Corneille, Molière--of Bossuet, Bourdaloue, and Fénélon. Louis XIV. had the soldier, the hangman, and the priest at his command; but they all failed him. They could imprison, they could torture, they could kill, they could make the Protestants galley-slaves; they could burn their Bibles, and deprive them of everything that they valued; but the impregnable rights of conscience defied them. The only thing left for the Protestants was to fly from France in all directions. They took refuge in Switzerland, Germany, Holland, and England. The flight from France had begun before the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, but after that act the flight rapidly increased. Not less than a million of persons are supposed to have escaped from France in consequence of the Revocation. Steps were, however, taken by the King to stop the emigration. He issued a decree ordering that the property and goods of all those Protestants who had already escaped should be confiscated to the Crown, unless they returned within three months from the date of the Revocation. Then, with respect to the Protestants who remained in France, he decreed that all French_men_ found attempting to escape were to be sent to the galleys for life; and that all French_women_ found attempting to escape were to be imprisoned for life. The spies who denounced the fugitive Protestants were rewarded by the apportionment of half their goods. This decree was not, however, considered sufficiently severe, and it was shortly after followed by another, proclaiming that any captured fugitives, as well as any person found acting as their guide, should be condemned to death. Another royal decree was issued respecting those fugitives who attempted to escape by sea. It was to the effect, that before any ship was allowed to set sail for a foreign port, the hold should be fumigated with a deadly gas, so that any hidden Huguenot who could not otherwise be detected, might be suffocated to death. These measures, however, did not seem to have the effect of "converting" the French Protestants. The Dragonnades were next resorted to. Louis XIV. was pleased to call the dragoons his Booted Missionaries, _ses missionnaires bottés_. The dragonnades are said to have been the invention of Michel de Marillac, whose name will doubtless descend to infamous notoriety, like those of Catherine de Médicis, the Guises, and the authors of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Yet there was not much genius displayed in the invention of the Dragonnades. It merely consisted in this: whenever it was found that a town abounded with Huguenots, the dragoons, hussars, and troops of various kinds were poured into it, and quartered on the inhabitants. Twenty, thirty, or forty were quartered together, according to the size of the house. They occupied every room; they beat their drums and blew their trumpets; they smoked, drank, and swore, without any regard to the infirm, the sick, or the dying, until the inmates were "converted." The whole army of France was let loose upon the Huguenots. They had been beaten out of Holland by the Dutch Calvinists; and they could now fearlessly take their revenge out of their unarmed Huguenot fellow-countrymen. Whenever they quartered themselves in a dwelling, it was, for the time being, their own. They rummaged the cellars, drank the wines, ordered the best of everything, pillaged the house, and treated everybody who belonged to it as a slave. The Huguenots were not only compelled to provide for the entertainment of their guests, but to pay them their wages. The superior officers were paid fifteen francs a day, the lieutenants nine francs, and the common soldiers three francs. If the money was not paid, the household furniture, the horses and cows, and all the other articles that could be seized, were publicly sold. No wonder that so many Huguenots were "converted" by the dragoons. Forty thousand persons were converted in Poitou. The regiment of Asfeld was the instrument of their conversion. A company and a half of dragoons occupied the house of a single lady at Poitiers until she was converted to the Roman Catholic faith. What bravery! The Huguenots of Languedoc were amongst the most obstinate of all. They refused to be converted by the priests; and then Louis XIV. determined to dragonnade them. About sixty thousand troops were concentrated on the province. Noailles, the governor, shortly after wrote to the King that he had converted the city of Nismes in twenty-four hours. Twenty thousand converts had been made in Montauban; and he promised that by the end of the month there would be no more Huguenots left in Languedoc. Many persons were doubtless converted by force, or by the fear of being dragonnaded; but there were also many more who were ready to run all risks rather than abjure their faith. Of those who abjured, the greater number took the first opportunity of flying from France, by land or by sea, and taking refuge in Switzerland, Germany, Holland, or England. Many instances might be given of the heroic fortitude with which the Huguenots bore the brutality of their enemies; but, for the present, it may be sufficient to mention the case of the De Péchels of Montauban. The citizens of Montauban had been terribly treated before and after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The town had been one of the principal Huguenot places of refuge in France. Hence its population was principally Protestant. Its university had been shut up. Its churches had been levelled to the ground. Its professors and pastors had been banished from France. And now it was to be dragonnaded. The town was filled with troops, who were quartered on the Protestants. One of the burgesses called upon the Intendant, threw himself at his feet, and prayed to be delivered from the dragoons. "On one condition only!" replied Dubois, "that you become a Catholic." "I cannot," said the townsman, "because, if the Sultan quartered twenty janissaries on me, I might, for the same reason, be forced to become a Turk." Although many of the townsmen pretended to be converted, the Protestant chiefs held firm to their convictions, and resisted all persuasions, promises, and threats, to induce them to abjure their religion. Amongst them were Samuel de Péchels de la Boissonade and the Marquise de Sabonnières, his wife, who, in the midst of many trials and sorrows, preferred to do their duty to every other consideration. The family of De Péchels had long been settled at Montauban. Being regarded as among the heads of the Protestant party in Montauban, they were marked out by the King's ministers for the most vigorous treatment. When the troops entered the town on the 20th of August, 1685, they treated the inhabitants as if the town had been taken by assault. The officers and soldiers vied with each other in committing acts of violence. They were sanctioned by the magistrate, who authorised their excesses, in conformity with the King's will. Tumult and disorder prevailed everywhere. Houses were broken into. Persons of the reformed religion, without regard to age, sex, or condition, were treated with indignity. They were sworn at, threatened, and beaten. Their families were turned out of doors. Every room in the house was entered and ransacked of its plate, silk, linen, and clothes. When the furniture was too heavy to be carried away, it was demolished. The mirrors were slashed with swords, or shot at with pistols. In short, so far as regarded their household possessions, the greater number of the Protestants were completely ruined. Samuel de Péchels de la Boissonade had no fewer than thirty-eight dragoons and fusiliers quartered upon him. It was intended at first to quarter these troopers on Roupeiroux, the King's adjutant; but having promptly changed his religion to avoid the horrors of the dragonnade, they were removed to the house of De Péchels, and he was ordered by Chevalier Duc, their commander, to pay down the money which he had failed to get from Roupeiroux, during the days that the troopers should have occupied his house. De Péchels has himself told the story of his sufferings, and we proceed to quote his own words:-- "Soon after," he says, "my house was filled with officers, troopers, and their horses, who took possession of every room with such unfeeling harshness that I could not reserve a single one for the use of my family; nor could I make these unfeeling wretches listen to my declaration that I was ready to give up all that I possessed without resistance. Doors were broken open, boxes and cupboards forced. They liked better to carry off what belonged to me in this violent manner than to take the keys which my wife and I, standing on either side, continued to offer. The granaries served for the reception of their horses among the grain and meal, which the wretches, with the greatest barbarity, made them trample underfoot. The very bread destined for my little children, like the rest, was contemptuously trodden down by the horses. "Nothing could stop the brutality of these madmen. I was thrust out into the street with my wife, now very near her confinement, and four very young children, taking nothing with me but a little cradle and a small supply of linen, for the babe whose birth was almost momentarily expected. The street being full of people, diverted at seeing us thus exposed, we were delayed some moments near the door, during which we were pitilessly drenched by the troopers, who amused themselves at the windows with emptying upon our heads pitchers of water, to add to their enjoyment of our sad condition. "From this moment I gave up both house and goods to be plundered, without having in view any place of refuge but the street, ill suited, it must be owned, for such a purpose, and especially so to a woman expecting her confinement hourly, and to little children of too tender an age to make their own way--some of them, indeed, being unable to walk or speak--and having no hope but in the mercy of God and His gracious protection." De Péchels proceeded to the house of Marshal Boufflers, commander of the district, thinking it probable that a man of honour, such as he was supposed to be, would discourage such barbarities, and place the dragoons under some sort of military control. But no! The Marshal could not be found. He carefully kept out of the way of all Protestant complainants. De Péchels, however, met Chevalier Duc, who commanded the soldiers that had turned him out of his house. In answer to the expostulations of De Péchels, the Chevalier gave him to understand that the same treatment would be continued unless he "changed his religion." "Then," answered De Péchels, "by God's help I never will." At length, when De Péchels' house had been thoroughly stripped, and the dragoons had decamped elsewhere, he received an order to return, in order to entertain another detachment of soldiers. The criminal judge, who had possession of the keys, entered the house, and found it in extreme disorder. "I was obliged to remain in it," says De Péchels, "amidst dirt and vermin, in obedience to the Intendant's orders, reiterated in the strictest manner by the criminal judge, that I should await the arrival of a fresh party of lodgers, who accordingly came on the day following." The new party consisted of six soldiers of the regiment of fusiliers, who called themselves simply "missionaries," as distinct from the "booted missionaries" who had just left. They were savage at not finding anything to plunder, their predecessors having removed everything in the shape of booty. The fusiliers were shortly followed by six soldiers of Dampier's regiment, who were still more ferocious. They gave De Péchels and his wife no peace day or night; they kept the house in a constant uproar; swore and sang obscene songs, and carried their insolence to the utmost pitch. At length De Péchels was forced to quit the house, on account of his wife, who was near the time of her confinement. These are his own words:-- "For a long time we were wandering through the streets, no one daring to offer us an asylum, as the ordinance of the Intendant imposed a fine of four or five hundred livres[89] upon any one who should receive Protestants into their houses. My mother's house had long been filled with soldiers, as well as that of my sister De Darassus; and not knowing where to go, I suffered great agony of mind for fear my poor wife should give birth to her infant in the street. In this lamentable plight, the good providence of God led us to the house of Mdlle. de Guarrison, my wife's sister, from whence, most fortunately, a large number of soldiers, with their officers, were issuing. They had occupied it for some time, and had allowed the family no rest. Now they were changing their quarters, to continue their lawless mission in some country town. The stillness of the house after their departure induced us to enter it at once, and hardly had my wife accepted the bed Mdlle. de Guarrison offered her, than she was happily delivered of a daughter, blessed be God, who never leaves Himself without a witness to those who fear His name. [Footnote 89: The French livre was worth three francs, or about two shillings and sixpence English money.] "That same evening a great number of soldiers arrived, and took up their quarters in M. de Guarrison's house, and two days after, this burden was augmented by the addition of a colonel, a captain, and two lieutenants, with a large company of soldiers and several servants, all of whom conducted themselves with a degree of violence scarcely to be described. They had no regard for the owners of the house, but robbed them with impunity. They had no pity for my poor wife, weak and ill as she was; nor for the helpless children, who suffered much under these miserable conditions. "Officers, soldiers, and servants pillaged the house with odious rivalry, took possession of all the rooms, drove out the owners, and obliged the poor sick woman (by their continual threats and abominable conduct) to get up and try to retire to some other place. She crept into the courtyard, where, with her infant, she was detained in the cold for a long time by the soldiers, who would not allow her to quit the premises. At length, however, my poor wife got into the street, still, however, guarded by soldiers, who would not allow her to go out of their sight, or to speak with any one. She complained to the Intendant of their cruel ways, but instead of procuring her any relief, he aggravated her affliction, ordering the soldiers to keep strict watch over her, never to leave her, and to inform him with what persons she found a refuge, that he might make them pay the penalty." De Péchels' wife was thus under the necessity of sleeping, with her babe and her children, in the street. After all was quiet, they sought for a door-step, and lay down for the night under the stars. Madame de Péchels at length found temporary shelter. Mademoiselle de Delada, a friend of the Intendant, touched by the poor woman's sad condition, implored the magistrate's permission to give her refuge; and being a well-known Roman Catholic, she was at length permitted to take Madame de Péchels and her babe into her house, but on condition that four soldiers should still keep her in view. She remained there for a short time, until she was able to leave her bed, when she was privily removed to a country house belonging to Mademoiselle de Delada, not far from the town of Montauban. To return to Samuel de Péchels. His house was still overflowing with soldiers. They proceeded to wreck what was left of his household effects; they carried off and sold his papers and his library, which was considerable. Some of the soldiers of Dampier's regiment carried off in a sack a pair of brass chimney dogs, the shovel and tongs, a grate, and some iron spits, the wretched remains of his household furniture. They proceeded to lay waste his farms and carry off his cattle, selling the latter by public auction in the square. They next pulled down his house, and sold the materials. After this, ten soldiers were quartered in a neighbouring tavern, at De Péchels' expense. Not being able to pay the expenses, the Intendant sent some archers to him to say that he would be carried off to prison unless he changed his religion. To that proposal he answered, as before, that "by the help of God he would never make that change, and that he was quite prepared to go to any place to which his merciful Saviour might lead him." He was accordingly taken, into custody, and placed, for a time, in the Royal Château. On the same day, his sister De Darassus was committed to prison. Still holding steadfast by his faith, De Péchels was, after a month's imprisonment at Montauban, removed to the prison of Cahors, where he was put into the lowest dungeon. "By the grace of my Saviour," said he, "I strengthened myself more in my determination to die rather than renounce the truth." After lying for more than three months in the dampest mould of the lowest dungeon in the prison of Cahors, and being still found immovable in his faith, De Péchels was ordered to be taken to the citadel of Montpellier, to wait there until he could be transported to America. His wife, the Marquise de Sabonnières, having heard of his condemnation (though he was never tried), determined to see him before he left France for ever. The road from Cahors to Montpellier did not pass through Montauban, but a few miles to the east of it. Having spent the night in prayer to God, that He might endow her with firmness to sustain the trials of a scene, which was as heroic in her as it was touching to those who witnessed it, she went forth in the morning to wait along the roadside for the arrival of the illustrious body of prisoners, who were on their way, some to the galleys, some to banishment, some to imprisonment, and some to death. At length the glorious band arrived. They were chained two and two. They were for the most part ladies and gentlemen who had refused to abjure their religion. Among them were M. Desparvés, a gentleman from the neighbourhood of Laitoure, old and blind, led by his wife; M. de la Rességuerie, of Montauban, and many more. Madame de Péchels implored leave of the guard who conducted the prisoners to have an interview with her husband. It was granted. She had been supplied with the fortitude for which she had so ardently and piously prayed to God during the whole of the past night. It seemed as if some supernatural power had prompted the discourse with her husband, which softened the hearts of those who, up to that time, had appeared inaccessible to the sentiments of humanity. The superintendent allowed the noble couple to pray together; after which they were separated without the least weakness betraying itself on the part of Madame de Péchels, who remained unmoved, whilst all the bystanders were melted into tears. The procession of guards and prisoners then went on its way. The trials of Madame de Péchels were not yet ended. Though she had parted with her husband, who was now on his way to banishment, she had still the children with her; and, cruellest torture of all! these were now to be torn from her. One evening a devoted friend came to inform her that a body of men were to arrive next morning and take her children, even the baby from her breast, and immure them in a convent. She was also informed that she herself was to be seized and imprisoned. The intelligence fell like a thunderbolt upon the tender mother. What was she to do? Was she to abjure her religion? She prayed for help from God. Part of the night was thus spent before she could make up her mind to part from her innocent children, who were to be brought up in a religion at variance with her own. In any case, a separation was necessary. Could she not fly, like so many other Protestant women, and live in hopes of better days to come? It was better to fly from France than encounter the horrors of a French prison. Before she parted with her children she embraced them while they slept; she withdrew a few steps to tear herself from them, and again she came back to bid them a last farewell! At length, urged by the person who was about to give her a refuge in his house, she consented to follow him. The man was a weaver by trade, and all day long he carried on his work in the only room which he possessed. Madame de Péchels passed the day in a recess, concealed by the bed of her entertainers, and in the evening she came out, and the good people supplied her with what was necessary. She passed six months in this retreat, without any one knowing what had become of her. It was thought that she had taken refuge in some foreign country. Numbers of ladies had already been able to make their escape. The frontier was strictly guarded by troops, police, and armed peasantry. The high-roads as well as the byways were patrolled day and night, and all the bridges were strongly guarded. But the fugitives avoided the frequented routes. They travelled at night, and hid themselves during the day. There were Protestant guides who knew every pathway leading out of France, through forests, wastes, or mountain paths, where no patrols were on the watch; and they thus succeeded in leading thousands of refugee Protestants across the frontier. And thus it was that Madame de Péchels was at length enabled, with the help of a guide, to reach Geneva, one of the great refuges of the Huguenots. On arrival there she felt the loss of her children more than ever. She offered to the guide who had conducted her all the money that she possessed to bring her one or other of her children. The eldest girl, then nine or ten years old, was communicated with, but having already tasted the pleasure of being her own mistress, she refused the proposal to fly into Switzerland to join her mother. Her son Jacob was next communicated with. He was seven years old. He was greatly moved at the name of his mother, and he earnestly entreated to be taken to where she was. The guide at once proceeded to fulfil his engagement. The boy fled with him from France, passing for his son. The way was long--some five hundred miles. The journey occupied them about three weeks. They rested during the day, and travelled at night. They avoided every danger, and at length the faithful guide was able to place the loving son in the arms of his noble and affectionate mother. Samuel de Péchels was condemned to banishment without the shadow of a trial. He could not be dragooned into denying his faith, and he was therefore imprisoned, preparatory to his expulsion from France. "I was told," he said, "by the Sieur Raoul, Roqueton (or chief archer) to the Intendant of Montauban, that if I would not change my religion, he had orders from the King and the Intendant to convey me to the citadel of Montpellier, from thence to be immediately shipped for America. My reply was, that I was ready to go forthwith whithersoever it was God's pleasure to lead me, and that assuredly, by God's help, I would make no change in my religion." After five months' imprisonment at Cahors, he was taken out and marched, as already related, to the citadel of Montpellier. The citadel adjoins the Peyrou, a lofty platform of rock, which commands a splendid panoramic view of the surrounding country. It is now laid out as a pleasure-ground, though it was then the principal hanging-place of the Languedoc Protestants. Brousson, and many other faithful pastors of the "Church in the Desert," laid down their lives there. Half-a-dozen decaying corpses might sometimes be seen swinging from the gibbets on which the ministers had been hung. A more bitter fate was, however, reserved for De Péchels. After about a month's imprisonment in the citadel, he was removed to Aiguesmortes, under the charge of several mounted archers and foot soldiers. He was accompanied by fourteen Protestant ladies and gentlemen, on their way to perpetual imprisonment, to the galleys, or to banishment. Aiguesmortes was the principal fortified dungeon in the south of France, used for the imprisonment of Huguenots who refused to be converted. It is situated close to the Mediterranean, and is surrounded by lagunes and salt marshes. It is a most unhealthy place; and imprisonment at Aiguesmortes was considered a slower but not a less certain death than hanging. Sixteen Huguenot women were confined there in 1686, and the whole of them died within five months. When the prisoners died off, the place was at once filled again. The castle of Aiguesmortes was thus used as a prison for nearly a hundred years. De Péchels gives the following account of his journey from Montpellier to Aiguesmortes:--"Mounted on asses, harnessed in the meanest manner, without stirrups, and with wretched ropes for halters, we entered Aiguesmortes, and were there locked up in the Tower of Constance, with thirty other male prisoners and twenty women and girls, who had also been brought hither, tied two and two. The men were placed in an upper apartment of the tower, and the women and girls below, so that we could hear each other pray to God and sing His praises with a loud voice." De Péchels did not long remain a prisoner at Aiguesmortes. He was shortly after put on board a king's ship bound for Marseilles. He was very ill during the voyage, suffering from seasickness and continual fainting fits. On reaching Marseilles he was confined in the hospital prison used for common felons and galley-slaves. It was called the Chamber of Darkness, because of its want of light. The single apartment contained two hundred and thirty prisoners. Some of them were chained together, two and two; others, three and three. The miserable palliasses on which they slept had been much worn by the galley-slaves, who had used them during their illnesses. The women were separated from the men by a linen cloth attached to the ceiling, which was drawn across every evening, and formed the only partition between them. As may easily be supposed, the condition of the prisoners was frightful. The swearing of the common felons was mixed with the prayers of the Huguenots. The guards walked about all night to keep watch and ward over them. They fell upon any who assembled and knelt together, separating them and swearing at them, and mercilessly ill-treating them, men and women alike. "But all their strictness and rage," says De Péchels, "could not prevent one from seeing always, in different parts of the dungeon, little groups upon their knees, imploring the mercy of God and singing His praises, whilst others kept near the guards so as to hinder them from interfering with the little bands of worshippers." At length the time arrived for the embarkation of the Huguenots for America. On the 18th of September, 1687, De Péchels, with fifty-eight men and twenty-one women, was put on board a _flûte_ called the _Mary_--the French _flûte_ consisting of a heavy narrow-sterned vessel, called in England a "pink." De Péchels was carefully separated from all with whom he had formed habits of intimacy, and whose presence near him would doubtless have helped him to bear the bitterness of his fate. On the same day, ninety prisoners of both sexes were embarked in another ship, named the _Concord_, bound for the same destination. The two vessels set sail in the first place for Toulon, in order to obtain an escort of two ships-of-war. The voyage was very disastrous. Three hours after the squadron had left Toulon, the _Mary_ was nearly dashed against a rock, owing to the roughness of the weather. Three days after, a frightful storm arose, and dashed the prisoners against each other. All were sick; indeed, De Péchels' malady lasted during the entire voyage. The squadron first cast anchor amongst the Formentera Islands, off the coast of Spain, where they took in water. On the next day they anchored in the Straits of Gibraltar for the same purpose. They next sailed for Cadiz, but a strong west wind having set in, the ship was forced back to the road of Gibraltar. After waiting there for three days they again started, under the shelter of a Dutch fleet of eighteen sail, "which," says De Péchels, "providentially saved us from falling into the hands of the Algerine corsairs, some of whom had appeared in sight, and from whose hands God, in His great mercy, delivered us." As if the Algerine corsairs would have treated the Huguenots worse than their own king was now treating them. The Algerine corsairs would have sold them into slavery; whilst the French king was transporting them to America for the same purpose. At length the squadron reached Cadiz roads. Many ships were there--English as well as Dutch. When the foreigners heard of the state and misfortunes of the Huguenots on board the French ships, they came to visit them in their anchoring ground, and were profuse in their charity to the prisoners for conscience' sake confined in the two French vessels. "God, who never leaves Himself without witness, brought us consolation and relief from this town, where superstition and bigotry reign in their fullest force." As it was in De Péchels' day, so it is now. At length the French squadron set sail for America. The voyage was tedious and miserable. There were about a hundred and thirty prisoners on board. Seventy of them were sick felons, chained with heavy irons. Being useless for the French galleys, they were now being transported to America, to be sold as slaves. The imprisoned Huguenots--men and women--were fifty-nine in number. They were crammed into a part of the ship that could scarcely hold them. They could not stand upright; nor could they lie down. They had to lie upon each other. The den was moreover very dark, the only light that entered it being through the narrow hatchway; and even this was often closed. The wonder is that they were not suffocated outright. The burning heat of the sun shining on the deck above them, the never-ceasing fire of the kitchen, which was situated alongside their place of confinement, created such a stifling heat, that the prisoners had to take off their shirts to relieve their agony. The horrid stench arising from so many persons being crowded together, and the entire want of the means of cleanliness, caused the inmates to become covered with vermin. They were also tormented by the intolerable thirst which no means were taken to allay. Their feeding was horrible; for they must be kept alive in some way, in order that the intentions of their gracious sovereign might be carried into effect. One day they had stinking salt beef; the next, cod fish half boiled; then peas as hard as when they were put into the pot; and at other times, dried cod fish, or rank cheese. These things, together with the violent motion of the sea, occasioned severe sickness, from which many of the sufferers were relieved by death. This deplorable voyage extended over five months. Here is De Péchels' account of the sufferings of the prisoners, written in his own words:-- "The intense and suffocating heat, the horrible odour, the maddening swarm of vermin that devoured us, the incessant thirst and wretched fare, sufficed not to satisfy our overseers. They sometimes struck us rudely, and very often threw down sea-water upon us, when they saw us engaged in prayer and praise to God. The common talk of these enemies of the truth was how they would hang, when they came to America, every man who would not go to mass, and how they would deliver the women to the natives. But far from being frightened at these threats, or even moved by all the barbarities of which we were the victims, many of us felt a secret joy that we were chosen to suffer for the holy name of Jesus, who strengthened us with a willingness to die for His sake. For myself, these menaces had been so often repeated during my imprisonments, that they had become familiar; insomuch that, far from being shaken by them any more than by the sufferings to which it had pleased my Saviour to call me, I considered them as transient things, not worthy to be weighed against the glory to come, and such as would procure me a weight of glory supremely excellent. 'Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.'" On the 2nd of January, 1688, the island of San Domingo came in sight. It was for the most part inhabited by savages. The French had a settlement on the west coast of the island, and the Spaniards occupied the eastern part. Dense forests separated the two settlements. The _Mary_ coasted along the island, and afterwards made sail for Guadaloupe, another colony belonging to the French. The ship seemed as yet to have had no proper destination, for, four days later, the _Mary_ weighed her anchor, and sailed to St. Christopher, another island partly belonging to the French. "It was well situated," says De Péchels, "as may readily be believed, when I add that it possessed a colony of Jesuits--an order which never selects a bad situation. The Jesuits here are very rich and in high repute. Two of the fraternity, having come on board, were received by the crew with every demonstration of respect; and on their retirement, three guns were fired as a mark of honour to the distinguished visitors." The Huguenots were still under hatches,--weary, longing, wretched, and miserable. They were most anxious to be put on shore--anywhere, even among savages. But the _Mary_ had not yet arrived at her destination. She again set sail, and passed St. Kitts, St. Eustace, St. Croix, Porto Rico, and at length again reached San Domingo. The ship dropped anchor before Port au Prince, the residence of the governor. The galley-slaves were disembarked and sold. Some of the Huguenots were also sold for slaves, though De Péchels was not among them. The rest were transferred to the _Maria_, a king's ship, commanded by M. de Beauguay, who treated the prisoners with much humanity. The ship then set sail for Léogane, another part of the colony, where the remaining Huguenots were disembarked. They were quartered on the inhabitants at the pleasure of the governor. De Péchels says that he passed his time at this place in tranquillity, waiting till it might please God to afford him an opportunity of escaping from his troubles. He visited the inhabitants, especially those of his own religious persuasion--a circumstance which gave much umbrage to the Dominican monks. They ordered some of the bigots among their parishioners to lodge a complaint against him with the governor, to the effect that he was hindering his fellow-prisoners from becoming Roman Catholics, and preventing those who had become so from going to mass. He accordingly received a verbal command from M. Dumas, the King's lieutenant, to repair immediately to Avache (probably La Vache), an island about a hundred leagues distant from Léogane. He was accordingly despatched by ship to Avache, which he reached on the 8th of June. He was put in charge of Captain Laurans, a renowned freebooter, and was specially lodged under his roof. The captain was ordered never to lose sight of his prisoner. De Péchels suffered much at this place in consequence of the intense heat, and the insects, mosquitoes, and horrible flies by which he was surrounded. "And yet," he says, "God in His great mercy willed that in this very place I should find the means of escaping from my exile, and making my way to the English island of Jamaica. On the 13th of August a little shallop of that generous nation, in its course from the island of St. Thomas to Jamaica, stopped at Avache to water and take provisions. Two months already had I watched for such an opportunity, and now that God had presented me with this, I thought it should not be neglected. So fully was I persuaded of this, that without reflecting upon the smallness of the shallop, I put myself on board with victuals for four days, although assured that the passage would only occupy three. But instead of performing the passage in three days, as we had thought, it was ten days before we made the island, during the whole of which time I was constantly unwell from bad weather and consequent seasickness. During the last three days I suffered also from hunger, my provisions being spent, with the exception of some little wretched food, salt and smoky, which the sailors eat to keep themselves from starving. God, in His great compassion, preserved me from all dangers, and brought me happily to Jamaica, where, however, I thought to leave my bones." The voyage was followed by a serious illness. De Péchels was obliged to take to his bed, where he lay for fifteen days prostrated by fever, accompanied by incessant pains in his head. After the fever had left him, he could neither walk nor stand. By slow degrees his strength returned. He was at length able to walk; and he then began to make arrangements for setting out for England. On the 1st of October he embarked on board an English vessel bound for London. During his voyage north he suffered from cold, as much as he had before suffered from heat. At length the coast of England was sighted. Two days after, the ship reached the Downs; and on the 22nd of December it was borne up the Thames by the tide, to within about seven miles from London Bridge. There the ship stopped to discharge part of her cargo; and De Péchels, having taken his place on board a small sloop for the great city, arrived there at ten o'clock the same night. On arrival in London, De Péchels proceeded to make inquiry amongst his Huguenot friends--who had by that time reached England in great numbers--for his wife, his children, his mother, and his sisters. Alas! what disappointment! He found no wife, no child, nor any relation ready to welcome him. His wife, however, was living at Geneva, with their only son; for the youngest had died at Montauban during De Péchels' exile. His daughters were still at Montauban--the eldest in a convent. His mother and youngest sister were both in prison--the one at Moissac, the other at Auvillard. A message was, however, sent to Madame de Péchels, that her husband was now in England, and longing to meet her. It was long before the message reached Madame de Péchels; and still longer before she could join her husband in London. While at Geneva, she had maintained herself and her son by the work of her hands. On receiving the message she immediately set out, but her voyage could not fail to be one of hardship to a person in her reduced circumstances. We are not informed how she and her son contrived to travel the long distance of eight hundred miles (by way of the Rhine and Holland) from Geneva to London; but at length she reached the English capital, when she had the mortification to find that her husband was not there, but had left London for Ireland only four days before. During the absence of her husband, Madame de Péchels, whose courage never abandoned her, chose rather to stoop to the most toilsome labours than to have recourse to the charity of the government, of which many, less self-helping, or perhaps more necessitous, did not scruple to take advantage. We must now revert to the circumstances under which De Péchels left London for Ireland. At the time when he arrived in England, the country was in the throes of a Revolution. Only a month before, William of Orange had landed at Torbay, with a large body of troops, a considerable proportion of which consisted of Huguenot officers and soldiers. There were three strong regiments of Huguenot infantry, and a complete squadron of Huguenot cavalry. Marshal Schomberg, next in command to William of Orange, was a banished Huguenot; and many of his principal officers were French. James II. had so distinctly shown his disposition to carry back the nation to the Roman Catholic religion, that the Prince of Orange, on his landing at Torbay, was hailed as the deliverer of England. His troops advanced direct upon London. He was daily joined by fresh adherents; by the gentry, officers, and soldiers. There was scarcely a show of resistance; and when he entered London, James was getting on board a smack in the Thames, and slinking ignominiously out of his kingdom. Towards the end of June, 1689, William and Mary were proclaimed King and Queen of Great Britain; and they were solemnly crowned at Westminster about three months after. But James II. had not yet been got rid of. In the spring of 1689 he landed at Kinsale, in Ireland, with substantial help obtained from the French king. Before many weeks had elapsed, forty thousand Irish stood in arms to support his cause. It was clear that William III. must fight for his throne, and that Ireland was to be the battle-field. He accordingly called his forces together again--for the greater part had been disbanded--when he prepared to take the field in person. Four Huguenot regiments were at once raised, three infantry regiments, and one cavalry regiment. The cavalry regiment was raised by Marshal Schomberg, its colonel. It was composed of French gentlemen, privates as well as officers. De Péchels was offered a commission in the regiment, which he cheerfully accepted. He assumed the name of his barony, La Boissonade, as was common in those days; and he acted as lieutenant in the company of La Fontain. The regiment, when completed, was at once despatched to the north of Ireland to join the little army of about ten thousand Protestants, who had already laid siege to and taken the fortified town of Carrickfergus. Schomberg's regiment embarked from Chester, on Monday, the 25th of August, 1689; and on the following Saturday the squadron arrived in Belfast Lough. The troopers were landed a little to the west of Carrickfergus, and marched along the road towards Belfast, which is still known as "Troopers' Lane." Next day the Duke moved on in pursuit of the enemy. The regiment passed through Belfast, which was then a very small place. It consisted of a few streets of thatched cottages, grouped around what is now known as the High Street of Belfast. Schomberg's regiment joined the infantry and the Enniskilleners, who were encamped in a wood on the west of the town. Next morning the little army started in pursuit of the enemy, who, though in much greater numbers, fled before them, laying waste the country. At night Schomberg's troops encamped at Lisburn; on the following day at Dromore; on the third at Brickclay (this must be Loughbrickland); and then on to Newry. All the villages they passed were either burnt or burning. At length they heard that James's Irish army was at Newry, and that the Duke of Berwick (James's natural son) was in possession of the town with a strong body of horse. But before Schomberg could reach the place the Duke of Berwick had evacuated it, leaving the town in flames. The Duke had fled with such haste that he had left some of his baggage behind him, and thrown his cannon into the river. Schomberg ordered his cavalry to advance rapidly upon Dundalk, in order to prevent the town from sharing the same fate as Newry. This forced march took the enemy by surprise. They suddenly abandoned Dundalk, without burning it, and never paused until they had reached the entrenched camp of King James. The weather had now become cold, dreary, and rainy. Provisions were scarcely to be had. The people of Dundalk were themselves starving. Strong bodies of cavalry foraged the country, but were able to find next to nothing in the shape of food for themselves, or corn for their horses. The ships from England, laden with provisions which ought to have arrived at Belfast, were forced back by contrary winds. Thus the army was becoming rapidly famished. Disease soon made its appearance, and carried off the men by hundreds. Schomberg's camp, outside Dundalk, was situated by the side of a marsh--a most unwholesome position; but the marsh protected him from the enemy, who were not far off. The rain and snow continued; the men and the horses were perpetually drenched; and scouring winds blew across the camp. Ague, dysentery, and fever everywhere prevailed. Dalrymple has recorded that of fifteen thousand men who belonged to Schomberg's army, not less than eight thousand perished. Under these circumstances, the greatly reduced force broke up from their cantonments and went into winter quarters. Schomberg's cavalry regiment was stationed at Lurgan, then a small village, which happily had not been burnt. De Péchels was one of those who had been sick in camp, and was disabled from pursuing the campaign further. After remaining for some weeks at Lurgan, he obtained leave from the Duke of Schomberg to return to London. And there, after the lapse of four years, he found and embraced his beloved and noble wife. De Péchels continued invalided, and was unable to rejoin the army of King William. "After some stay in London," he says, in the memoir from which the above extracts are made, "it was the King's pleasure to exempt from further service certain officers specified by name, and to assign them a pension. Through a kind Providence I was included in the number. When I had lived in London on the pension which it had pleased the king to allow those officers who were no longer in a position to serve him, until the 1st of August, 1692, I then left that city, in company with my wife and son, to remove into Ireland, whither my pension was transferred." De Péchels accordingly arrived in Dublin, where he spent the rest of his days in peace and quiet. He lived to experience the truth of the promise "that every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life." De Péchels died in 1732, at a ripe old age, in his eighty-seventh year, and was interred in the Huguenot cemetery in the neighbourhood of Dublin. And what of the children left by De Péchels at Montauban? The two daughters who were torn from their mother's care, and immured in a convent, were brought up in the Roman Catholic faith. The little boy, who was also taken from her, died shortly after. The daughters accordingly secured the possession of the family estates. The eldest married M. de Cahuzac, and the youngest, who was taken as a babe from her mother's breast, married M. de St. Sardos; and the descendants of the latter still possess La Boissonade, which exists as an old château near Montauban. It was left for Jacob de Péchels, the only son of Samuel de Péchels and his wife, the Marquise de Sabonnières, to build up the family fortunes in England. Following the military instincts of the French, he entered the English army at an early age. His name was entered "Pechell" in his War Office commission. Probably this change of name originated in the disposition of the naturalised Huguenots to adopt names of an English sound rather than to retain their French names. Numerous instances of this have already been given.[90] Jacob Pechell was a gallant officer. He rose in the army, step by step. He fought through the wars in the Low Countries, under Marlborough and Ligonier, the latter being a Huguenot like himself. He rose through the various grades of ensign, lieutenant, captain, and major, until he attained the rank of colonel of the 16th regiment. Colonel Pechell married an Irish heiress, Jane Elizabeth Boyd, descended from the Earls of Kilmarnock. By her he had three sons and a daughter. Samuel, the eldest, studied law, and became a Master in Chancery. George and Paul obedient to their military instincts, entered the army, and became distinguished officers. George was killed at Carthagena, and it was left for Paul to maintain the fortunes of the family. [Footnote 90: In "The Huguenots in England and Ireland," 319, 323, last edition.] In those days the exiled Huguenots and their descendants lived very much together. They married into each other's families. The richer helped the poorer. There were distinguished French social circles, where, though their country was forbidden them, they delighted to speak in their own language. Like many others, the Pechells intermarried with Huguenot families. Thus Samuel Pechell married the daughter of François Gaultier, Esq., and his sister Mary married Brigadier-General Cailland, of Aston Rowant. Among the distinguished French nobles in London was the Marquis de Montandre, descended from the De la Rochefoucaulds, one of the greatest families in France. De Montandre was a field-marshal in the English army, having rendered important services in the Spanish war. His wife was daughter of Baron de Spanheim, Ambassador Extraordinary for the King of Prussia, and descended from another Protestant refugee. The field-marshal left his fortune to his wife, and when she died, she left Samuel Pechell, Master in Chancery, her sole executor and residuary legatee. The sum of money to which he became entitled on her decease amounted to upwards of £40,000. But Mr. Pechell, from a highly sensitive conscience--such as is rarely equalled--did not feel himself perfectly justified in acquiring so large a fortune until he knew that there were no relations of the testatrix in existence, whose claim to inherit the property might be greater than his own. He therefore collected all her effects, and put them into Chancery, in order that those who could make good their claims by kindred to the Marchioness might do so before the Chancellor. Accordingly, one family from Berlin and another from Geneva appeared, and claimed, and obtained the inheritance. These relations, in acknowledgment of the kindness and honesty of Mr. Pechell, resolved on presenting him with a set of Sèvres china, which was at that time beyond all price in value. It could only be had as a great favour from the manufactory at Sèvres, and was only purchased by, or presented to, crowned heads.[91] [Footnote 91: This china is now at Castle Goring, and, with the whole of the family documents, is in the possession of the Dowager Lady Burrell.] Paul Pechell, who had entered the army, became a distinguished officer, and rose to the rank of general. In 1797 he was created a baronet, and married Mary, the only daughter and heiress of Thomas Brooke, Esq., of Pagglesham, Essex. His eldest son, Sir Thomas, was a major-general in the army, and was for some time M.P. for Downton. The second son, Augustus, was appointed Receiver-General of the Post Office in 1785, and of the Customs in 1790. Many of his descendants still survive, and the baronetcy reverted to his second son. He was succeeded by his two sons, one of whom became rear-admiral, and the other vice-admiral. The latter, Sir George Richard Brooke Pechell, entered the Royal Navy in 1803, and served with distinction in several engagements. After the peace, he represented the important borough of Brighton in Parliament for twenty-four years. He married the daughter and coheir of Cecil, Lord Zouche, and added Castle Goring to part of the ancient possessions of the Bisshopp family, which she inherited at her father's death. William Cecil Pechell, the only son of Sir George, again following the military instincts of his race, entered the army, and became captain of the 77th regiment, with which he served during the Crimean war. He fell leading on his men to repel an attack made by the Russians on the advanced trenches before Sebastopol, on the 3rd of September, 1855. He was beloved and deeply lamented by all who knew him; and sorrow at his loss was expressed by the Queen, by the Commander-in-Chief, by the whole of the light division, and by the mayor and principal inhabitants of Brighton. A statue of Captain Pechell, by Noble, was erected by public subscription, and now stands in the Pavilion at Brighton. II. CAPTAIN RAPIN, AUTHOR OF THE "HISTORY OF ENGLAND." When Louis XIV. revoked the Edict of Nantes, he expelled from France nearly all his subjects who would not conform to the Roman Catholic religion. He drove out the manufacturers, who were for the most part Protestants, and thus destroyed the manufacturing supremacy of France. He expelled Protestants of every class--advocates, judges, doctors, artists, scientists, teachers, and professors. And, last of all, he expelled the Protestant soldiers and sailors. According to Vauban, 12,000 tried soldiers, 9,000 sailors, and 600 officers left France, and entered into foreign service. Some went to England, some to Holland, and some to Prussia. Those who took refuge in Holland entered the service of William, Prince of Orange. Most of them accompanied him to Torbay in 1688. They fought against the armies of Louis XIV. at the Boyne, at Athlone, and at Aughrim, and finally drove the French out of Ireland. The sailors also did good service under the flags of England and Holland. They distinguished themselves at the sea-fight off La Hogue, where the English and Dutch fleets annihilated the expedition prepared by Louis XIV. for a descent upon England. The expatriated French soldiers occasionally revisited the country of their birth, not as friends, but as enemies. They encountered the armies of Louis XIV. in all the battles of the Low Countries. They fought at Ramilies, Blenheim, and Malplacquet. A Huguenot engineer directed the operations at the siege of Namur, which ended in the capture of the fortress. Another Huguenot engineer conducted the operations at Lisle, which was also taken by the allied forces. While there, a flying party, consisting chiefly of French Huguenots, penetrated as far as the neighbourhood of Paris, when they nearly succeeded in carrying off the Dauphin. The Huguenot officers who took refuge in Prussia entered the service of Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg. Some were raised to the highest offices in his army. Marshal Schomberg was one of the number. But when he found that William of Orange was assembling a large force in Holland for the purpose of making a descent upon England, he requested leave to join him; and his friend Prince Frederick William, though with great regret, at length granted him permission to leave the Prussian service. The subject of the following narrative was a French refugee, who entered the service of William of Orange. To find the beginning of his ancestry, we must reach far back into history. The Rapins were supposed to have been driven from the Campagna of Rome during the persecutions of Nero. They took refuge in one of the wildest and most picturesque valleys of the Alps. In 1250 we find the Rapins established near Saint-Jean de la Maurienne, in Savoy, close upon the French frontier. Saint-Jean de la Maurienne was so called because of the supposed relic of the bones of St. John the Baptist, which had been deposited there by a female pilgrim, Sainte Thècle, who was, it is supposed, a Rapin by birth. The fief of Chaudane en Valloires was the patrimony of the Rapins, which they long continued to hold. In 1692 the descendants of the family endeavoured to prove, from the numerous titles which they possessed, that they had been nobles for eight or nine hundred years. The home of the Rapins was situated in the country of the Vaudois. In 1375 the Vaudois descended from their mountains and preached the gospel in the valleys of Savoy. The Pope appealed to the King of France, who sent an army into the district. The Vaudois were crushed. Those who remained fled back to the mountains. Nevertheless the Reformed religion spread in the district. An Italian priest, Raphaël Bordeille, even preached the gospel in the cathedral of Saint-Jean de Maurienne. But he was suddenly arrested. He was seized, tried for the crime of heresy, and burnt in front of the cathedral on Holy Thursday, in Passion Week, 1550. Though the Rapin family held many high offices in Church and State, several of them attached themselves to the Reformed religion. Three brothers at length left their home in Savoy, and established themselves in France during the reign of Francis I. Without entering into their history during the long-continued religious wars which devastated the south of France, it may be sufficient to state that two of the brothers took an active part under Condé. Antoine de Rapin held important commands at Toulouse, at Montauban, at Castres and Montpellier. Philibert de Rapin, his younger brother, was one of the most valiant and trusted officers of the Reformed party. He was selected by the Prince of Condé to carry into Languedoc the treaty of peace signed at Longjumeaux on the 20th March, 1568. Feeling safe under the royal commission, he presented to the Parliament at Toulouse the edict with which he was intrusted. He then retired to his country house at Grenade, on the outskirts of Toulouse. He was there seized like a criminal, brought before the judges, and sentenced to be beheaded in three days. The treaty was thus annulled. War went on as before. Two years after, the army of Coligny appeared before Toulouse. The houses and châteaux of the councillors of Parliament were burnt, and on their smoking ruins were affixed the significant words, "_Vengeance de Rapin_." Philibert de Rapin's son Pierre embraced the career of arms almost from his boyhood. He served under the Prince of Navarre. He was almost as poor as the Prince. One day he asked him for some pistoles to replace a horse which had been killed under him in action. The Prince replied, "I should like to give you them, but do you see I have only three shirts!" Pierre at length became Seigneur and Baron of Manvers, though his château was destroyed and burnt during his absence with the army. Destructions of the same kind were constantly taking place throughout the whole of France. But, to the honour of humanity, it must be told that when his château was last destroyed, the Catholic gentlemen of the neighbourhood brought their labourers to the place, and tilled and sowed his abandoned fields. When Rapin arrived eight months later, he was surprised and gratified to find his estate in perfect order. This was a touching proof of the esteem with which this Protestant gentleman was held by his Catholic neighbours. Pierre de Rapin died in 1647 at the age of eighty-nine. He left twenty-two children by his second wife. His eldest son Jean succeeded to the estate of Manvers and to the title of baron. Like his father, he was a soldier. He first served under the Prince of Orange, who was then a French prince, head of the principality of Orange. He served under the King of France in the war with Spain. He was a frank and loyal soldier, yet firmly attached to the faith of his fathers. He belonged to the old Huguenot phalanx, who, as the Duke de Mayenne said, "were always ready for death, from father to son." After the wars were over, he gave up the sword for the plough. His château was in ruins, and he had to live in a very humble way until his fortunes were restored. He used to say that his riches consisted in his four sons, who were all worthy of the name they bore. Jacques de Rapin, Seigneur de Thoyras, was the second son of Pierre de Rapin. Thoyras was a little hamlet near Grenade, adjacent to the baronial estate of Manvers. Jacques studied the law. He became an advocate, and practised with success, for about fifty years, at Castres and other cities and towns in the south of France. When the Edict of Nantes was revoked, the Protestants were no longer permitted to practise the law, and he was compelled to resign his profession. He died shortly after, but the authorities would not even allow his corpse to be buried in the family vault. They demolished his place of interment, and threw his body into a ditch by the side of the road. In the meantime Paul de Rapin, son of Jean, Baron de Manvers, had married the eldest daughter of Jacques, Seigneur de Thoyras. Paul, like many of his ancestors, entered the army. He served with distinction under the Duke of Luxembourg in Holland, Flanders, and Italy, yet he never rose above the rank of captain. On his death in 1685, his widow and two daughters (being Protestants) were apprehended in their château at Manvers, and incarcerated in convents at Montpellier and Toulouse. Her sons were also taken away, and placed in other convents. They were only liberated after five years' confinement. Madame de Rapin then resolved to quit France entirely. She contrived to reach Holland, and established her family at Utrecht. Her brother-in-law, Daniel de Rapin, had already escaped from France, and achieved the position of colonel in the Dutch service. Raoul de Cazenove, the author of "Rapin-Thoyras, sa Famille, sa Vie, et ses OEuvres," says, "The women of the house of Rapin distinguished themselves more than once by like courage. Strengthened and fortified by persecutions, the Reformed were willing to die in exile, far from their beloved children who had been violently snatched from them, but leaving with them a holy heritage of example and of firmness in their faith. The pious lessons of their mothers, profoundly engraved on the hearts of their daughters, sufficed more than once to save them from apostasy, which was rendered all the more easy by the feebleness of their youth and the perfidious suggestions by which they were surrounded." We return to Paul de Rapin-Thoyras, second son of Madame de Rapin. He was born at Castres in 1661. He received his first lessons at home. He learnt the Latin rudiments, but his progress was not such as to please his father. He was then sent to the academy at Puylaurens, where the Protestant noblesse of the south of France were still permitted to send their sons. The celebrated Bayle was educated there. But in 1685 the academy of Puylaurens was suppressed, as that of Montauban had been a few years before; and then young Rapin was sent to Saumur, one of the few remaining schools in France where Protestants were allowed to be educated. Rapin finished his studies and returned home. He wished to enter the army, but his father was so much opposed to it, that he at length acceded to his desires and commenced the study of the law. He was already prepared for being received to the office of advocate, when the royal edict was passed which prevented Protestants from practising before the courts; and, indeed, prevented them from following any profession whatever. Immediately after the death of his father, Paul de Rapin, accompanied by his younger brother Solomon, emigrated from France and proceeded into England. It was not without a profound feeling of sadness that Rapin-Thoyras left his native country. He left his widowed mother in profound grief, arising from the recent death of her husband. She was now exposed to persecutions which were bitterer by far than the perils of exile. It was at her express wish that Rapin left his native country and emigrated to England. And yet it was for France that his fathers had shed their blood and laid down their lives. But France now repelled the descendants of her noblest sons from her bosom. Shortly after his arrival in London, Rapin made the acquaintance of the Abbé of Denbeck, nephew of the Bishop of Tournay. The Abbé was an intimate friend of Rapin's uncle, Pélisson, a man notorious in those times for buying up consciences with money. Louis XIV. consecrated to this traffic one-third of the benefices which fell to the Crown during their vacancy. They were left vacant for the purpose of paying for the abjurations of the heretics. Pélisson had the administration of the fund. He had been born a Protestant, but he abjured his religion, and from a convert he became a converter. Voltaire says of him, in his "Siècle de Louis XIV.," "Much more a courtier than a philosopher, Pélisson changed his religion and made a fortune." Pélisson wrote to his friend the Abbé of Denbeck, then in London at the court of James II., to look after his nephew Rapin-Thoyras, and endeavour to bring him over to the true faith. It is even said that Pélisson offered Rapin the priory of Saint-Orens d'Auch if he would change his religion. The Abbé did his best. He introduced Rapin to M. de Barillon, then ambassador at the English court. James II. was then the pensioner of France, and accordingly had many intimate transactions with the French ambassador. M. de Barillon received the young refugee with great kindness, and, at the recommendation of the Abbé and Pélisson, offered to present him to the King. Their object was to get Rapin appointed to some public office, and thereby help his conversion. But Rapin fled from the temptation. Though no great theologian, he felt it to be wrong to be thus entrapped into a faith which was not his own; and without much reasoning about his belief, but merely acting from a sense of duty, he left London at once and embarked for Holland. At Utrecht he joined his uncle, Daniel de Rapin, who was in command of a company of cadets wholly composed of Huguenot gentlemen and nobles. Daniel had left the service of France on the 25th of October, 1685, three days after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He was then captain of a French regiment in Picardy, but he could no longer, without denying his God, serve his country and his King. In fact, he was compelled, like all other Protestant officers, to leave France unless he would at once conform to the King's faith. Rapin was admitted to the company of refugee cadets commanded by his uncle. He was now twenty-seven years old. His first instincts had been military, and now he was about to pursue the profession of arms in his adopted country. His first prospects were not brilliant. He was put under a course of discipline, his pay amounting to only sixpence a day. Indeed, the States-General of Holland were at first unwilling to take so large a number of refugee Frenchmen into their service; but on the Prince of Orange publicly declaring that he would himself pay the expenses of maintaining the military refugees, they hesitated no longer, but voted money enough to enrol them in their service. The Prince of Orange had now a large body of troops at his command. No one knew for what purpose they were enrolled. Some thought they were intended for an attack upon France in revenge for Louis' devastation of Holland a few years before. James II. never dreamt that they were intended for a descent upon the coasts of England. Yet he was rapidly alienating the loyalty of his subjects by hypocrisy, by infidelity to the laws of England, and by unmitigated persecution of those who differed from him in religious belief. In this state of affairs England looked to the Prince of Orange for help. William III. was doubly related to the royal family of England. He was nephew of Charles I. and son-in-law of James II. His wife was the heiress-presumptive to the British throne. Above all, he was a Protestant, while James II. was a Roman Catholic. "Here," said the Archbishop of Rheims of the latter, "is a good sort of man who has lost his three kingdoms for a mass!" William was at length ready with his troops. Louis XIV. suddenly withdrew his army from Flanders and poured them into Germany. William seized the opportunity. A fleet of more than six hundred vessels, including fifty men-of-war, assembled at Helvoetsluys, near the mouth of the Maas. The troops were embarked with great celerity. William hoisted his flag with the words emblazoned on it, "The Protestant Religion and Liberties of England," and underneath the motto of the House of Nassau, _Je maintiendra_--"I will maintain." The fleet set sail on the 19th October, the English Admiral Herbert leading the van, the Prince of Orange commanding the main body of the fleet, and the Dutch Vice-Admiral Evertzen bringing up the rear. The wind was fair. It was the "Protestant wind" that the people of England had so long been looking for. In a few hours the strong eastern breeze had driven the fleet half across the sea that divides the Dutch and English coasts. Then the wind changed. It began to blow from the west. The wind increased until it blew a violent tempest. The fleet seemed to be in the midst of a cyclone. The ships were blown hither and thither, so that in less than two hours the fleet was completely dispersed. At daybreak next morning scarce two ships could be seen together. The several ships returned to their rendez-vous at Goeree, in the Maas. They returned in a miserable condition--some with their sails blown away, some without their bulwarks, some without their masts. Many ships were still missing. The horses had suffered severely. They had been stowed away in the holds and driven against each other during the storm. Many had been suffocated, others had their legs broken, and had to be killed when the vessels reached the shore. The banks at Goeree were covered with dead horses taken from the ships. Four hundred had been lost. Rapin de Thoyras and M. de Chavernay, commanding two companies of French Huguenots, were on board one of the missing ships. The frightful tempest had separated them from the fleet. They had been driven before the wind as far as the coast of Norway. They thought that each moment might be their last. But the sailors were brave, and the ship was manageable. After enduring a week's storm the wind at last abated. The ship was tacked, and winged its way towards the south. At length, after about eight days' absence, they rejoined the fleet, which had again assembled in the Maas. There were now only two vessels missing, containing four companies of the Holstein regiment, and about sixty French Huguenot officers. In the meantime the Prince of Orange had caused all the damages in the combined fleet to be repaired. New horses were embarked, new men were added to the army, and new ships were hired for the purpose of accommodating them. The men-of-war were also increased. After eleven days the fleet was prepared to put to sea again. On the 1st of November, 1688, the armament started on its second voyage for the English coast. The fleet at first steered northward, and it was thought to be the Prince's intention to land at the mouth of the Humber. But a violent east wind having begun to blow during the night, the fleet steered towards the south-eastern coast of England; after which the ships shortened sail for fear of accidents. The same wind that blew the English and Dutch fleet towards the Channel, had the effect of keeping King James's fleet in the Thames, where they remained anchored at Gunfleet, sixty-one men-of-war, under command of Admiral Lord Dartmouth. On the 3rd of November, the fleet under the Prince of Orange entered the English Channel, and lay between Calais and Dover to wait for the ships that were behind. "It is easy," says Rapin Thoyras, "to imagine what a glorious show the fleet made. Five or six hundred ships in so narrow a channel, and both the English and French shores covered with numberless spectators, are no common sight. For my part, who was then on board the fleet, I own it struck me extremely." Sunday, the 4th of November, was the Prince's birthday, and it was dedicated to devotion. The fleet was then off the Isle of Wight. Sail was slackened during the performance of divine service. The fleet then sped on its way down-channel, in order that the troops might be landed at Dartmouth or Torbay; but during the night the wind freshened, and the fleet was carried beyond the desired ports. Soon after, however, the wind changed to the south, when the fleet tacked in splendid order, and made for the shore in Torbay. The landing was effected with such diligence and tranquillity that the whole army was on shore before night. There was no opposition to the landing. King James's army greatly outnumbered that of the Prince of Orange. It amounted to about forty thousand troops, exclusive of the militia. But the King's forces had been sent northward to resist the anticipated landing of the delivering army at the mouth of the Humber, so that the south-west of England was nearly stripped of troops. Nor could the King depend upon his forces. The King had already outraged and insulted the gallant noblemen and gentlemen who had heretofore been the bulwark of his throne. He had imprisoned the bishops, dismissed Protestant clergymen from their livings, refused to summon a Parliament, and caused terror and dismay throughout England and Scotland. He had created discontent throughout the army by his dismissal of Protestant officers, and the King now began to fear that the common soldiers themselves would fail to serve him in his time of need. His fears proved prophetic. When the army of the Prince of Orange advanced from Brixton (where it had landed) to Exeter, and afterwards to Salisbury and London, it was joined by noblemen, gentlemen, officers, and soldiers. Lord Churchill, afterwards Duke of Marlborough, Lord Cornbury, with four regiments of dragoons, passed over to the Prince of Orange. The Prince of Denmark, the King's son-in-law, deserted him. His councillors abandoned him. His mistresses left him. The country was up against him. At length the King saw no remedy before him but a precipitate flight. The account given by Rapin of James's departure from England is somewhat ludicrous. The Queen went first. On the night between the 9th and 10th of December she crossed the Thames in disguise. She waited under the walls of a church at Lambeth until a coach could be got ready for her at the nearest inn. She went from thence to Gravesend, where she embarked with the Prince of Wales on a small vessel, which conveyed them safely to France. The King set out on the following night. He entered a small boat at Whitehall, dressed in a plain suit and a bob wig, accompanied by a few friends. He threw the Great Seal into the water, from whence it was afterwards dragged up by a fisherman's net. Before he left, he gave the Earl of Feversham orders to disband the army without pay, in order, probably, to create anarchy after his flight. James reached the south shore of the Thames. He travelled, with relays of horses, to Emley Ferry, near the Island of Sheppey. He went on board the little vessel that was to convey him to a French frigate lying in the mouth of the Thames ready to transport him to France. The wind blew strong, and the vessel was unable to sail. The fishermen of the neighbourhood boarded the vessel in which the King was. They took him for the chaplain of Sir Edward Hales, one of his attendants. They searched the King, and found upon him four hundred guineas and several valuable seals and jewels, which they seized. A constable was present who knew the King, and he ordered restitution of the valuables which had been taken from him. The King wished to be gone, but the people by a sort of violence conducted him to a public inn in the town of Feversham. He then sent for the Earl of Winchelsea, Lord-Lieutenant of the county, who prevailed upon him not to leave the kingdom, but to return to London. And to London he went. The Prince of Orange was by this time at Windsor. On the King's arrival in London he was received with acclamations, as if he had returned from victory. He resumed possession of his palace. He published a proclamation, announcing that having been given to understand that divers outrages had been committed in various parts of the kingdom, by burning, pulling down, and defacing of houses, he commanded all lord-lieutenants, &c., to prevent such outrages for the future, and suppress all riotous assemblies. This was his last public act. He was without an army. He had few friends. The Dutch Guards arrived in London, and took possession of St. James's and Whitehall. The Prince of Orange sent three lords to the King to desire his Majesty's departure for Ham--a house belonging to the Duchess of Lauderdale; but the King desired them to tell the Prince that he wished rather to go to Rochester. The Prince gave his consent. Next morning the King entered his barge, accompanied by four earls, six of the Yeomen of his Guard, and about a hundred of the Dutch Guard, commanded by a colonel of the regiment. They arrived at Gravesend, where the King entered his coach, and proceeded across the country to Rochester. In the meantime, Barillon, the French ambassador, was requested to leave England. St. Ledger, a French refugee, was requested to attend him and see him embark. While they were on the road St. Ledger could not forbear saying to the ambassador, "Sir, had any one told you a year ago that a French refugee should be commissioned to see you out of England, would you have believed it?" To which the ambassador answered, "Sir, cross over with me to Calais, and I will give you an answer." Shortly after, James embarked in a small French ship, which landed him safely at Ambleteuse, a few miles north of Boulogne; while the army of William marched into London amidst loud congratulations, and William himself took possession of the Palace of St. James's, which the recreant King had left for his occupation. James II. fled from England at the end of December, 1688. Louis XIV. received him courteously, and entertained him and his family at St. Germain and Versailles. But he could scarcely entertain much regard for the abdicated monarch. James had left his kingdom in an ignominious manner. Though he was at the head of a great fleet and army, he had not struck a single blow in defence of his kingly rights And now he had come to the court of Louis XIV. to beg for the assistance of a French fleet and army to recover his throne. Though England had rejected James, Ireland was still in his favour. The Lord-Deputy Tyrconnel was devoted to him; and the Irish people, excepting those of the north, were ready to fight for him. About a hundred thousand Irishmen were in arms. Half were soldiers; the rest were undrilled Rapparees. James was urged by messengers from Ireland to take advantage of this state of affairs. He accordingly begged Louis XIV. to send a French army with him into Ireland to help him to recover his kingdom. But the French monarch, who saw before him the prospect of a continental war, was unwilling to send a large body of troops out of his kingdom. But he did what he could. He ordered the Brest fleet to be ready. He put on board arms and ammunition for ten thousand men. He selected four hundred French officers for the purpose of disciplining the Irish levies. Count Rosen, a veteran warrior, was placed in command. Over a hundred thousand pounds of money was also put on board. When the fleet was ready to sail, James took leave of his patron, Louis XIV. "The best thing that I can wish you," said the French king, "is that I may never see you again in this world." The fleet sailed from Brest on the 7th of March, 1689, and reached Kinsale, in the south of Ireland, four days later. James II. was received with the greatest rejoicing. Next day he went on to Cork; he was received by the Earl of Tyrconnel, who caused one of the magistrates to be executed because he had declared for the Prince of Orange. The news went abroad that the King had landed. He entered Dublin on the 24th of March, and was received in a triumphant manner. All Roman Catholic Ireland was at his feet. The Protestants in the south were disarmed. There was some show of resistance in the north; but no doubt was entertained that Enniskillen and Derry, where the Protestants had taken refuge, would soon be captured and Protestantism crushed. The Prince of Orange, who had now been proclaimed King at Westminster, found that he must fight for his throne, and that Ireland was to be the battle-field. Londonderry was crowded with Protestants, who held out for William III. James believed that the place would fall without a blow. Count Rosen was of the same opinion. The Irish army proceeded northwards without resistance. The country, as far as the walls of Derry, was found abandoned by the population. Everything valuable had been destroyed by bands of Rapparees. There was great want of food for the army. Nevertheless, James proceeded as far as Derry. Confident of success, he approached within a hundred yards of the southern gate, when he was received with a shout of "No surrender!" The cannon were fired from the nearest bastion. One of James's officers was killed by his side. Then he fled. A few days later he was on his way to Dublin, accompanied by Count Rosen. Londonderry, after an heroic contest, was at length relieved. A fleet from England, laden with food, broke the boom which had been thrown by the Irish army across the entrance to the harbour. The ships reached the quay at ten o'clock at night. The whole population were there to receive them. The food was unloaded, and the famished people were at length fed. Three days after, the Irish army burnt their huts, and left the long-beleaguered city. They retreated along the left bunk of the Boyne to Strabane. While the Irish forces were lying there, the news of another disaster reached them. The Duke of Berwick lay with a strong detachment of Irish troops before Enniskillen. He had already gained some advantage over the Protestant colonists, and the command reached him from Dublin that he was immediately to attack them. The Irish were five thousand in number; the Enniskilleners under three thousand. An engagement took place at Newton Butler. The Enniskillen horse swept the Irish troops before them. Fifteen hundred were put to the sword, and four hundred prisoners were taken. Seven pieces of cannon, fourteen barrels of powder, and all the drums and colours were left in the hands of the victors. The Irish army were then at Strabane, on their retreat from Londonderry. They at once struck their tents, threw their military stores into the river, and set out in full retreat for the south. In the meantime a French fleet had landed at Bantry Bay, with three thousand men on board, and a large convoy of ammunition and provisions. William III., on his part, determined, with the consent of the English Parliament, to send a force into Ireland to encounter the French and Irish forces under King James. William's troops consisted of English, Scotch, Dutch, and Danes, with a large admixture of French Huguenots. There were a regiment of Huguenot horse, of eight companies, commanded by the Duke of Schomberg, and three regiments of Huguenot foot, commanded by La Mellonière, Du Cambon, and La Caillemotte. Schomberg, the old Huguenot chief, was put in command of the entire force. Rapin accompanied the expedition as a cadet. The army assembled at Highlake, about sixteen miles from Chester. About ninety vessels of all sorts were assembled near the mouth of the Dee. Part of the army was embarked on the 12th of August, and set sail for Ireland. About ten thousand men, horse and foot, were landed at Bangor, near the southern entrance to Belfast Lough. Parties were sent out to scour the adjacent country, and to feel for the enemy. This done, the army set out for Belfast. James's forces had abandoned the place, and retired to Carrickfergus, some ten miles from Belfast, on the north coast of the Lough. Carrickfergus was a fortified town. The castle occupies a strong position on a rock overlooking the Lough. The place formed a depôt for James's troops, and Schomberg therefore determined to besiege the fortress. Rapin has written an account of William's campaigns in England and Ireland; but with becoming modesty he says nothing about his own achievements. We must therefore supply the deficiency. Before the siege of Carrickfergus, he had been appointed ensign in Lord Kingston's regiment. He was helped to this office by his uncle Daniel, who accompanied the expedition. Several regiments of Schomberg's army were detached from Belfast to Carrickfergus, to commence the siege. Among these was Lord Kingston's regiment. On their approach, the enemy beat a parley. They desired to march out with arms and baggage. Schomberg refused, and the siege began. The trenches were opened, the batteries were raised, and the cannon thundered against the walls of the old town. Several breaches were made. The attacks were pursued with great vigour for four days, when a general assault was made. The besieged hoisted the white flag. After a parley, it was arranged that the Irish should surrender the place, and march out with their arms, and as much baggage as they could carry on their backs. Carrickfergus was not taken without considerable loss to the besiegers. Lieutenant Briset, of the Flemish Guards, was killed by the first shot fired from the castle. The Marquis de Venours was also killed while leading the Huguenot regiments to the breach. Rapin distinguished himself so much during the siege that he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant. He was at the same time transferred to another regiment, and served under Lieutenant-General Douglas during the rest of the campaign. More troops having arrived from England, Schomberg marched with his augmented army to Lisburn, Drummore, and Loughbrickland. Here the Enniskillen Horse joined them, and offered to be the advanced guard of the army. The Enniskilleners were a body of irregular horsemen, of singularly wild and uncouth appearance. They rode together in a confused body, each man being attended by a mounted servant, bearing his baggage. The horsemen were each mounted and accoutred after their own fashion, without any regular dress, or arms, or mode of attack. They only assumed a hasty and confused line when about to rush into action. They fell on pell-mell. Yet they were the bravest of the brave, and were never deterred from attacking by inequality of numbers. They were attended by their favourite preachers, who urged them on to deeds of valour, and encouraged them "to purge the land of idolatry." Thus reinforced, Schomberg pushed on to Newry. The Irish were in force there, under command of the Duke of Berwick. But although it was a very strong place, the Irish abandoned the town, first setting fire to it. This news having been brought to Schomberg, he sent a trumpet to the Duke of Berwick, acquainting him that if they went on to burn towns in that barbarous manner, he would give no quarter. This notice seems to have had a good effect, for on quitting Dundalk the retreating army did no harm to the town. Schomberg encamped about a mile north of Dundalk, in a low, moist ground, where he entrenched his army. Count Rosen was then at Drogheda with about twenty thousand men, far outnumbering the forces under Schomberg. About the end of September, King James's army approached the lines of Dundalk. They drew up in order of battle. The English officers were for attacking the enemy, but Schomberg advised them to refrain. A large party of horse appeared within cannon shot, but they made no further attempt. In a day or two after James drew off his army to Ardee, Count Rosen indignantly exclaiming, "If your Majesty had ten kingdoms, you would lose them all." In the meantime, Schomberg remained entrenched in his camp. The Enniskilleners nevertheless made various excursions, and routed a body of James's troops marching towards Sligo. Great distress fell upon Schomberg's army. The marshy land on which they were encamped, the wet and drizzly weather, the scarcity and badness of the food, caused a raging sickness to break out. Great numbers were swept away by disease. Among the officers who died were Sir Edward Deering, of Kent; Colonel Wharton, son of Lord Wharton; Sir Thomas Gower and Colonel Hungerford, two young gentlemen of distinguished merit. Two thousand soldiers died in the camp. Many afterwards perished from cold and hunger. Schomberg at length left the camp at Dundalk, and the remains of his army went into winter quarters. Rapin shared all the suffering of the campaign. When the army retreated northward, Rapin was sent with a party of soldiers to occupy a fortified place between Stranorlar and Donegal. It commanded the Pass of Barnes Gap. This is perhaps the most magnificent defile in Ireland. It is about four miles long. Huge mountains rise on either side. The fortalice occupied by Rapin is now in ruins. It stands on a height overlooking the northern end of the pass. It is now called Barrack Hill. The Rapparees who lived at the lower end of the Gap were accustomed to come down upon the farming population of the lowland country on the banks of the rivers Finn and Mourne, and carry off all the cattle that they could seize; Rapin was accordingly sent with a body of troops to defend the lowland farmers from the Rapparees. Besides, it was found necessary to defend the pass against the forces of King James, who then occupied Sligo and the neighbouring towns, under the command of General Sarsfield. Schomberg was very much blamed by the English Parliament for having effected nothing decisive in Ireland. But what could he do? He had to oppose an army more than three times stronger in numbers than his own. King William, Rapin says, wrote twice to him, "pressing him to put somewhat to the venture." But his army was wasted by disease, and had he volunteered an encounter and been defeated, his whole army, and consequently all Ireland, would have been lost, for he could not have made a regular retreat. "His sure way," says Rapin, "was to preserve his army, and that would save Ulster and keep matters entire for another year. And therefore, though this conduct of his was blamed by some, yet better judges thought that the managing of this campaign as he did was one of the greatest parts of his life." Winter passed. Nothing decisive had been accomplished on either side. Part of Ulster was in the hands of William; the remainder of Ireland was in the hands of James. Schomberg's army was wasted by famine and disease. James made no use of his opportunity to convert his athletic peasants into good soldiers. On the contrary, Schomberg recruited his old regiments, drilled them constantly, and was ready to take the field at the approach of spring. His first achievement was the capture of Charlemont, midway between Armagh and Dungannon. It was one of the strongest forts in the north of Ireland. It overlooked the Blackwater, and commanded an important pass. It was surrounded by a morass, and approachable only by two narrow causeways. When Teague O'Regan, who commanded the fort, was summoned to surrender, he replied, "Schomberg is an old rogue, and shall not have this castle!" But Caillemotte, with his Huguenot regiments, sat down before the fortress, and starved the garrison into submission. Captain Francis Rapin, cousin of our hero, was killed during the siege. The armies on both sides were now receiving reinforcements. Louis XIV. sent seven thousand two hundred and ninety men of all ranks to the help of James, under the command of Count Lauzun. They landed at Cork in March, 1689, and marched at once to Dublin. Lauzun described the country as a chaos such as he had read of in the Book of Genesis. On his arrival at Dublin, Lauzun was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Irish army, and took up his residence in the castle. On the other hand, Schomberg's forces were recruited by seven thousand Danes, under a treaty which William III. had entered into with the King of Denmark. New detachments of English and Scotch, of Huguenots, Dutch, Flemings, and Brandenburgers, were also added to the allied army. William landed at Carrickfergus on the 14th of June. He passed on to Belfast, where he met Schomberg, the Prince of Wurtemberg, Major-General Kirk, and other general officers. He then pushed on to Lisburn, the head-quarters of his army. He there declared that he would not let the grass grow under his feet, but would pursue the war with the utmost vigour. He ordered the whole army to assemble at Loughbrickland. He found them to consist of sixty-two squadrons of cavalry and fifty-two battalions of infantry--in all, thirty-six thousand English, Dutch, French, Danes, and Germans, well appointed in every respect. Lieutenant-General Douglas commanded the advance-guard--to which Rapin belonged--and William III., Schomberg, and St. Gravenmore commanded the main body. William III. had no hesitation in entering at once on the campaign. He had been kept too long in London by parliamentary turmoil, by intrigues between Whigs and Tories, and sometimes by treachery on both sides. But now that he was in the field his spirits returned, and he determined to lose not a day in measuring swords with his enemy. He had very little time to spare. He must lose or win his crown; though his determination was to win. Accordingly he marched southward without delay. William had been in Ireland six days before James knew of his arrival. The passes between Newry and Dundalk had been left unguarded--passes where a small body of well-disciplined troops might easily have checked the advance of William's army. Dundalk was abandoned. Ardee was abandoned. The Irish army were drawn up in a strong position on the south of the Boyne to arrest the progress of the invading army. James had all the advantages that nature could give him. He had a deep river in front, a morass on his left, and the narrow bridge of Slane on his right. Behind was a rising ground stretching along the whole of the field. In the rear lay the church and village of Donore, and the Pass of Duleek. Drogheda lay towards the mouth of the river, where the green and white flags of Ireland and France were flying, emblazoned with the harp and the lilies. William never halted until he reached the summit of a rising ground overlooking the beautiful valley of the Boyne. It is about the most fertile ground in Ireland. As he looked from east to west, William said to one of his staff, "Behold a land worth fighting for!" Rapin was there, and has told the story of the crossing of the Boyne. He says that the forces of King James, lying on the other side of the river, amounted to about the same number as those under King William. They included more than seven thousand veteran French soldiers. There was a splendid body of Irish horse, and about twenty thousand Irish foot. James's officers were opposed to a battle; they wished to wait for the large fleet and the additional forces promised by Louis XIV. But James resolved to maintain his position, and thought that he might have one fair battle for his crown. "But," says Rapin, "notwithstanding all his advantages--the deep river in front, the morass on his right, and the rising ground behind him--he ordered a ship to be prepared for him at Waterford, that in case of a defeat he might secure his retreat to France." On the morning of the 30th of June, William ordered his whole army to move by break of day by three lines towards the river, about three miles distant. The King marched in front. By nine o'clock they were within two miles of Drogheda. Observing a hill east of the enemy, the King rode up to view the enemy's camp. He found it to lie all along the river in two lines. Here he had a long consultation with his leading officers. He then rode to the pass at Old Bridge, within musket-shot of the ford; next he rode westward, so as to take a full view of the enemy's camp. He fixed the place where his batteries were to be planted, and decided upon the spot where his army was to cross the river on the following day. The Irish on the other side of the river had not been unobservant of the King's movements. They could see him riding up and down the banks, for they were not sixty yards apart. The Duke of Berwick, the Viceroy Tyrconnel, General Sarsfield, and other officers were carefully watching his movements. While the army was marching up the river-side, William dismounted and sat down upon a rising ground to partake of some refreshments, for he had been on horseback since early dawn. During this time a party of Irish horse on the other side brought forward two field-pieces through a ploughed field, and planted them behind a hedge. They took their sight and fired. The first shot killed a man and two horses close by the King. William immediately mounted his horse. The second gun was not so well aimed. The shot struck the water, but rising _en ricochet_, it slanted on the King's right shoulder, took a piece out of his coat, and tore the skin and the flesh. William rode away stooping in his saddle. The Earl of Coningsby put a handkerchief over the wound, but William said "there was no necessity, the bullet should have come nearer." The enemy, seeing the discomfiture of the King's party, and that he rode away wounded, spread abroad the news that he was killed. "They immediately," says Rapin, "set up a shout all over their camp, and drew down several squadrons of their horse upon a plain towards the river, as if they meant to pass and pursue the English army. Nay, the report of the King's death flew presently to Dublin, and from thence spread as far as Paris, where the people were encouraged to express their joy by bonfires and illuminations." In the meantime William returned to his tent, where he had his wound dressed, and again mounted and showed himself to the whole army, in order to dissipate their apprehensions. He remained on horseback until nine at night, though he had been up since one o'clock in the morning. William then called a council of war, and declared his resolution of forcing the river next day. Schomberg opposed this, but finding the King determined, he urged that a strong body of horse and foot should be sent to Slane bridge that night, so as to be able to cross the bridge and get between the enemy and the Pass of Duleek, which lay behind King James's army. This advice, if followed, might perhaps have ended the war in one campaign. Such is Rapin's opinion. The proposal was, however, rejected; and it was determined to cross the river in force on the following morning. William inspected the troops at midnight. He rode along the whole army by torchlight, and after giving out the password "Westminster," he returned to his tent for a few hours' sleep. The shades of night lay still over that sleeping host. The stars looked down in peace on these sixty thousand brethren of the same human family, ready to rise with the sun and imbrue their hands in each other's blood. Tyrannical factions and warring creeds had set them at enmity with each other, and turned the sweetness and joy of their nature into gall and bitterness. The night was quiet. The murmur of the river fell faintly on the ear. A few trembling lights gleamed through the dark from the distant watchtowers of Drogheda. The only sounds that rose from the vast host that lay encamped in the valley of the Boyne were the challenges of the sentinels to each other as they paced their midnight rounds. The sun rose clear and beautiful. It was the first day of July--a day for ever memorable in the history of Ireland as well as England. The _générale_ was beat in the camp of William before daybreak, and as soon as the sun was up the battle began. Lieutenant-General Douglas marched towards the right with six battalions of foot, accompanied by Count Schomberg (son of the Marshal) with twenty-four squadrons of horse. They crossed the river below the bridge of Slane, and though opposed by the Irish, they drove them back and pressed them on towards Duleek. When it was supposed that the left wing had crossed the Boyne, the Dutch Blue Guards, beating a march till they reached the river's edge, went in eight or ten abreast, the water reaching above their girdles. When they had gained the centre of the stream they were saluted with a tremendous fire from the Irish foot, protected by the breastworks, lanes, and hedges on the farther side of the river. Nevertheless they pushed on, formed in two lines, and drove the Irish before them. Several Irish battalions were brought to bear upon them, but without effect. Then a body of Irish cavalry assailed them, but still they held their ground. William, seeing his troops hardly pressed, sent across two Huguenot regiments and one English regiment to their assistance. But a regiment of Irish dragoons, at the moment of their reaching the shore, fell upon their flank, broke their ranks, and put many of them to the sword. Colonel Caillemotte, leader of the Huguenots, received a mortal wound. He was laid on a litter and carried to the rear. As he met his men coming up to the help of their comrades, he called out, "A la gloire, mes enfants! à la gloire!" A squadron of Danish horse forded the river, but the Irish dragoons, in one of their dashing charges, broke and defeated them, and drove them across the river in great confusion. Duke Schomberg, who was in command of the centre, seeing that the day was going against King William, and that the French Huguenots were fighting without their leader, crossed the river and put himself at their head. Pointing to the Frenchmen in James's ranks, he cried out to his men, "Allons, messieurs, voilà vos persécuteurs!" The words were scarcely out of his mouth when a troop of James's guards, returning full speed to their main body, fell furiously upon the Duke and inflicted two sword cuts upon his head. The regiment of Cambon began at once to fire upon the enemy, but by a miss shot they hit the Duke. "They shot the Duke," says Rapin, "through the neck, of which he instantly died, and M. Foubert, alighting to receive him, was shot in the arm." The critical moment had arrived. The centre of William's army was in confusion. Their leaders, Schomberg and Caillemotte, were killed. The men were waiting for orders. They were exposed to the galling fire of the Irish infantry and cavalry. King James was in the rear on the hill of Dunmore surrounded by his French body-guard. He was looking down upon the field of battle, viewing now here, now there. It is even said that when he saw the Irish dragoons routing the cavalry and riding down the broken infantry of William, he exclaimed, "Spare! oh, spare my English subjects!" The firing had now lasted uninterruptedly for more than an hour, when William seized the opportunity of turning the tide of battle against his spiritless adversary. Putting himself at the head of the left wing, he crossed the Boyne by a dangerous and difficult ford a little lower down the river; his cavalry for the most part swimming across the tide. The ford had been left unguarded, and the whole soon reached the opposite bank in safety. But even there the horse which William rode sank in a bog, and he was forced to alight until the horse was got out. He was helped to remount, for the wound in his shoulder was very painful. So soon as the troops were got into sufficient order, William drew his sword, though his wound made it uneasy for him to wield it. He then marched on towards the enemy. When the Irish saw themselves menaced by William's left wing, they halted, and retired towards Dunmore. But gaining courage, they faced about and fell upon the English horse. They gave way. The King then rode up to the Enniskilleners, and asked, "What they would do for him?" Not knowing him, the men were about to shoot him, thinking him to be one of the enemy. But when their chief officer told them that it was the King who wanted their help, they at once declared their intention of following him. They marched forward and received the enemy's fire. The Dutch troops came up, at the head of whom William placed himself. "In this place," says Rapin, "Duke Schomberg's regiment of horse, composed of French Protestants, and strengthened by an unusual number of officers, behaved with undaunted resolution, like men who fought for a nation amongst whom themselves and their friends had found shelter against the persecution of France." Ginckel's troops now arrived on the scene; but they were overpowered by the Irish horse, and forced to give way. Sir Albert Cunningham's and Colonel Levison's dragoons then came up, and enabled Ginckel's troops to rally; and the Irish were driven up the hill, after an hour's hard fighting. James's lieutenant-general, Hamilton, was taken prisoner and brought before the King. He was asked "Whether the Irish would fight any more?" "Yes," he answered; "upon my honour I believe they will." The Irish slowly gave way, their dragoons charging again and again, to cover the retreat of the foot. At Dunmore they made a gallant stand, driving back the troops of William several times. The farmstead of Sheephouse was taken and retaken again and again. At last the Irish troops slowly retreated up the hill. The French troops had scarcely been engaged. Sarsfield implored James to put himself at their head, and make a last fight for his crown. Six thousand fresh men coming into action, when the army of William was exhausted by fatigue, might have changed the fortune of the day. But James would not face the enemy. He put himself at the head of the French troops and Sarsfield's regiment--the first occasion on which he had led during the day--and set out for Dublin, leaving the rest of his army to shift for themselves. The Irish army now poured through the Pass of Duleek. They were pursued by Count Schomberg at the head of the left wing of William's army. The pursuit lasted several miles beyond the village of Duleek, when the Count was recalled by express orders of the King. The Irish army retreated in good order, and they reached Dublin in safety. James was the first to carry thither the news of his defeat. On reaching Dublin Castle, he was received by Lady Tyrconnel, the wife of the Viceroy. "Madam," said he, "your countrymen can run well." "Not quite so well as your Majesty," was her retort, "for I see that you have won the race." The opinion of the Irish soldiers may be understood from their saying, after their defeat, "Change generals, and we will fight the battle over again." "James had no royal quality about him," says an able Catholic historian; "nature had made him a coward, a monk, and a gourmand; and, in spite of the freak of fortune that had placed him on a throne, and seemed inclined to keep him there, she vindicated her authority, and dropped him ultimately in the niche that suited him-- 'The meanest slave of France's despot lord.'" William halted on the field that James had occupied in the morning. The troops remained under arms all night. The loss of life was not so great as was expected. On William's side not more than four hundred men were killed; but amongst them were Duke Schomberg, Colonel Caillemotte, and Dr. George Walker, the defender of Derry. "King James's whole loss in this battle," says Rapin, "was generally computed at fifteen hundred men, amongst whom were the Lord Dungan, the Lord Carlingford, Sir Neil O'Neil, Colonel Fitzgerald, the Marquis d'Hocquincourt, and several prisoners, the chief of whom was Lieutenant-General Hamilton, who, to do him justice, behaved with great courage, and kept the victory doubtful, until he was taken prisoner." On the following day Drogheda surrendered without resistance. The garrison laid down their arms, and departed for Athlone. James stayed at Dublin for a night, and on the following morning he started for Waterford, causing the bridges to be broken down behind him, for fear of being pursued by the allied forces. He then embarked on a ship-of-war, and was again conveyed to France. William's army proceeded slowly to Dublin. The Duke of Ormond entered the city two days after the battle of the Boyne, at the head of nine troops of horse. On the next day the King, with his whole army, marched to Finglas, in the neighbourhood of Dublin; and on the 6th of July he entered the city, and proceeded to St. Patrick's Church, to return thanks for his victory. The whole of the Irish army proceeded towards Athlone and Limerick, intending to carry on the war behind the Shannon. William sent a body of his troops, under Lieutenant-General Douglas, to Athlone, while he himself proceeded to reduce and occupy the towns of the South. Rapin followed his leader, and hence his next appearance at the siege of Athlone. Rapin conducted himself throughout the Irish campaign as a true soldier. He was attentive, accurate, skilful, and brave. He did the work he had to do without any fuss; but he _did_ it. Lieutenant-General Douglas, under whom he served, soon ascertained his merits, saw through his character, and became much attached to him. He promoted him to the rank of aide-de-camp, so that he might have this able Frenchman continually about his person. Douglas proceeded westward, with six regiments of horse and ten of foot, to reduce Athlone. But the place was by far too strong for so small a force to besiege, and still less to take it. Athlone had always been a stronghold. For centuries the bridge and castle had formed the great highway into Connaught. The Irish town is defended on the eastern side by the Shannon, a deep and wide river, almost impossible to pass in the face of a hostile army. Douglas summoned the Irish garrison to surrender. Colonel Richard Grace, the gallant old governor, returned a passionate defiance. "These are my terms," he said, discharging a pistol at the messenger: "when my provisions are consumed, I will defend my trust until I have eaten my boots." Abandoning as indefensible the English part of the town, situated on the east side of the Shannon, Grace set fire to it, and retired with all his forces to the western side, blowing up an arch of the bridge behind him. The English then brought up the few cannon they had with them, and commenced battering the walls. The Irish had more cannon, and defended themselves with vigour. The besiegers made a breach in the castle, but it was too high and too small for an assault. "Notwithstanding this," says Rapin, "the firing continued very brisk on both sides; but the besiegers having lost Mr. Neilson, their best gunner, and the cavalry suffering very much for want of forage; and at the same time it being reported that Sarsfield was advancing with fifteen thousand men to relieve the place, Douglas held a council of war, wherein it was thought fit to raise the siege, which he accordingly did on the 25th, having lost near four hundred men before the town, the greatest part of whom died of sickness." Thus, after a week's ineffectual siege, Douglas left Athlone, and made all haste to rejoin the army of William, which had already reduced the most important towns in the south of Ireland. On the 7th of August he rejoined William at Cahirconlish, a few miles west of Limerick. The flower of the Irish army was assembled at Limerick. The Duke of Berwick and General Sarsfield occupied the city with their forces. The French general, Boileau, commanded the garrison. The besieged were almost as numerous as the besiegers. William, by garrisoning the towns of which he took possession, had reduced his forces to about twenty thousand men. Limerick was fortified by walls, batteries, and ramparts. It was also defended by a castle and citadel. It had always been a place of great strength. The chivalry of the Anglo-Norman monarch, the Ironsides of Cromwell, had been defeated under its walls; and now the victorious army of William III. was destined to meet with a similar repulse. Limerick is situated in an extensive plain, watered by the noble Shannon. The river surrounds the town on three sides. Like Athlone, the city is divided into the English and Irish towns, connected together by a bridge. The English town was much the strongest. It was built upon an island, surrounded by morasses, which could at any time be flooded on the approach of an enemy. The town was well supplied with provisions--all Clare and Galway being open to it, from whence it could draw supplies. Notwithstanding the strength of the fortress, William resolved to besiege it. He was ill supplied with cannon, having left his heavy artillery at Dublin. He had only a field train with him, which was quite insufficient for his purpose. William's advance-guards drove the Irish outposts before them; the pioneers cutting down the hedges and filling up the ditches, until they came to a narrow pass between two bogs, where a considerable body of Irish horse and foot were assembled to dispute the pass. Two field-pieces were brought up, which played with such effect upon the Irish horse that they soon quitted their post. At the same time Colonel Earle, at the head of the English foot, attacked the Irish who were firing through the hedges, so that they also retired after two hours' fighting. The Irish were driven to the town walls, and William's forces took possession of two important positions, Cromwell's fort and the old Chapel. The Danes also occupied an old Danish fort, built by their ancestors, of which they were not a little proud. The army being thus posted, a trumpeter was sent, on the 9th of August, to summon the garrison to surrender. General Boileau answered, that he intended to make a vigorous defence of the town with which his Majesty had intrusted him. In the meantime, William had ordered up his train of artillery from Dublin. They were on their way to join him, when a spy from William's camp went over to the enemy, and informed them of the route, the motions, and the strength of the convoy. Sarsfield at once set out with a strong body of horse. He passed the Shannon in the night, nine miles above Limerick, lurked all day in the mountains near Ballyneety, and waited for the approach of the convoy. The men of William's artillery, seeing no enemy, turned out their horses to graze, and went to sleep in the full sense of security. Sarsfield's body of horse came down upon them, slew or dispersed the convoy, and took possession of the cannon. Sarsfield could not, however, take the prizes into Limerick. He therefore endeavoured to destroy them. Cramming the guns with powder up to their muzzles, and burying their mouths deep in the earth, then piling the stores, waggons, carriages, and baggage over them, he laid a train and fired it, just as Sir John Lanier, with a body of cavalry, was arriving to rescue the convoy. The explosion was tremendous, and was heard at the camp of William, more than seven miles off. Sarsfield's troops returned to Limerick in triumph. Notwithstanding these grievous discouragements, William resolved to persevere. He recovered two of the guns, which remained uninjured. He obtained others from Waterford. The trenches were opened on the 17th of August. A battery was raised below the fort to the right of the trenches. Firing went on on both sides. Several redoubts were taken. By the 25th, the trenches were advanced to within thirty paces of the ditch near St. John's Gate, and a breach was made in the walls about twelve yards wide. The assault was ordered to take place on the 27th. The English grenadiers took the lead, supported by a hundred French officers and volunteers. The enemy were dislodged from the covered way and the two forts which guarded the breach on each side. The assailants entered the breach, but they were not sufficiently supported. The Irish rallied. They returned to the charge, helped by the women, who pelted the besiegers with stones, broken bottles, and such other missiles as came readily to hand. A Brandenburg regiment having assailed and taken the Black Battery, it was blown up by an explosion, which killed many of the men. In fine, the assault was vigorously repulsed; and William's troops retreated to the main body, with a loss of six hundred men killed on the spot and as many mortally wounded. Rapin was severely wounded. A musket shot hit him in the shoulder, and completely disabled him. His brother Solomon was also wounded. His younger brother fell dead by his side. They belonged to the "forlorn hope," and were volunteers in the assault on the breach. Rapin was raised to the rank of captain. The siege of Limerick was at once raised. The heavy baggage and cannon were sent away on the 30th of August, and the next day the army decamped and marched towards Clonmel. The King intrusted the command of his army to Lieutenant-General Ginckel, and set sail for England from Duncannon Fort, near Waterford, on the 5th of September. The campaign was not yet over. The Earl of Marlborough landed near Cork with four thousand men. Reinforced by four thousand Danes and French Huguenots, he shortly succeeded in taking the fortified towns of Cork and Kinsale. After garrisoning these places the Earl returned to England. General Ginckel went into winter quarters at Mullingar, in Westmeath. The French troops, under command of Count Lauzun, went into Galway. Lauzun shortly after returned to France, and St. Ruth was sent over to take command of the French and Irish army. But they hung about Galway doing nothing. In the meantime Ginckel was carefully preparing for the renewal of the campaign. He was reinforced by an excellent body of troops from Scotland, commanded by General Mackay. He was also well supplied, through the vigilance of William, with all the necessaries of war. Rapin's friend, Colonel Lord Douglas, pressed him to accompany him to Flanders as his aide-de-camp; but the wound in his shoulder still caused him great pain, and he was forced to decline the appointment. Strange to say, his uncle Pélisson--the converter, or rather the buyer, of so many Romish converts in France--sent him a present of fifty pistoles through his cousin M. de la Bastide, which consoled him greatly during his recovery. General Ginckel broke up his camp at Mullingar at the beginning of June, and marched towards Athlone. The Irish had assembled a considerable army at Ballymore, about midway between Mullingar and Athlone. They had also built a fort there, and intended to dispute the passage of Ginckel's army. A sharp engagement took place when his forces came up. The Irish were defeated, with the loss of over a thousand prisoners and all their baggage. Ginckel then appeared before Athlone, but the second resistance of the besieged was much less successful than the first. St. Ruth, the French general, treated the Irish officers and soldiers under his command with supercilious contempt. He admitted none of their officers into his councils. He was as ignorant of the army which he commanded as of the country which he occupied. Nor was he a great general. He had been principally occupied in France in hunting and hanging the poor Protestants of Dauphiny and the Cevennes. He had never fought a pitched battle; and his incapacity led to the defeat of the Irish at Athlone, and afterwards at Aughrim. St. Ruth treated his English adversaries with as much contempt as he did his Irish followers. When he heard that the English were about to cross the Shannon, he said "it was impossible for them to take the town, and be so near with an army to succour it." He added that he would give a thousand louis if they _durst_ attempt it. To which Sarsfield retorted, "Spare your money and mind your business; for I know that no enterprise is too difficult for British courage to attempt." Ginckel took possession of the English town after some resistance, when the Irish army retreated to the other side of the Shannon. Batteries were planted, pontoons were brought up, and the siege began with vigour. Ginckel attempted to get possession of the bridge. One of the arches was broken down, on the Connaught side of the river. Under cover of a heavy fire, a party of Ginckel's men succeeded in raising a plank-work for the purpose of spanning the broken arch. The work was nearly completed, when a sergeant and ten bold Scots belonging to Maxwell's Brigade on the Irish side, pushed on to the bridge; but they were all slain. A second brave party was more successful than the first. They succeeded in throwing all the planks and beams into the river, only two men escaping with their lives. Ginckel then attempted to repair the broken arch by carrying a close gallery on the bridge, in order to fill up the gap with heavy planks. All was ready, and an assault was ordered for next day. It was resolved to cross the Shannon in three places--one body to cross by the narrow ford below the bridge, another by the pontoons above it, while the main body was to force the bridge itself. On the morning of the intended crossing, the Irish sent a volley of grenades among the wooden work of the bridge, when some of the fascines took fire, and the whole fabric was soon in a blaze. The smoke blew into the faces of the English, and it was found impossible to cross the river that day. A council of war was held, to debate whether it was advisable to renew the attack or to raise the siege and retreat. The cannonade had now continued for eight days, and nothing had been gained. Some of the officers were for withdrawing, but the majority were in favour of making a general assault on the following day--seeing more danger in retreating than in advancing. The Duke of Wurtemberg, Major-Generals Mackay, Talmash, Ruvigny, Tetleau, and Colonel Cambon urged "that no brave action could be performed without hazard; and that the attempt was like to be attended with success." Moreover, they proffered themselves to be the first to pass the river and attack the enemy. The assault was therefore agreed upon. The river was then at the lowest state at which it had been for years. Next morning, at six o'clock--the usual hour for relieving guards--the detachments were led down to the river. Captain Sands led the first party of sixty grenadiers. They were supported by another strong detachment of grenadiers and six battalions of foot. They went into the water twenty abreast, clad in armour, and pushed across the ford a little below the bridge. The stream was very rapid, and the passage difficult, by reason of the great stones which lay at the bottom of the river. The guns played over them from the batteries and covered their passage. The grenadiers reached the other side amidst the fire and smoke of their enemies. They held their ground and made for the bridge. Some of them laid planks over the broken arch, and others helped at preparing the pontoons. Thus the whole of the English army were able to cross to the Irish side of the river. In less than half an hour they were masters of the town. The Irish were entirely surprised. They fled in all directions, and lost many men. The besiegers did not lose above fifty. St. Ruth, the Irish commander-in-chief, seemed completely idle during the assault. It is true he ordered several detachments to drive the English from the town after it had been taken; but, remembering that the fortifications of Athlone, nearest to his camp, had not been razed, and that they were now in possession of the enemy, he recalled his troops, and decamped from before Athlone that very night. In a few days Ginckel followed him, and inflicted on his army a terrible defeat at the battle of Aughrim. With that, however, we have nothing to do at present, but proceed to follow the fortunes of Rapin. Rapin entered Athlone with his regiment, and conducted himself with his usual valour. Ginckel remained only a few days in the place, in order to repair the fortifications. That done, he set out in pursuit of the enemy. He left two regiments in the castle, one of which was that to which Rapin belonged. The soldiers, who belonged to different nationalities, had many contentions with each other. The officers stood upon their order of precedence. The men were disposed to quarrel. Aided by a friend, a captain like himself, Rapin endeavoured to pacify the men, and to bring the officers to reason. By his kind, gentle, and conciliatory manner, he soon succeeded in restoring quiet and mutual confidence; and during his stay at Athlone no further disturbance occurred among the garrison. Rapin was ordered to Kilkenny, where he had a similar opportunity of displaying his qualities of conciliation. A quarrel had sprung up between the chief magistrate of the town and the officers of the garrison. Rapin interceded, and by his firmness and moderation he reconciled all differences; and, at the same time, he gained the respect and admiration of both the disputing parties. By this time the second siege of Limerick had occurred. Ginckel surrounded the city, and battered the walls and fortresses for six weeks. The French and Irish armies at length surrendered. Fourteen thousand Irish marched out with the honours of war. A large proportion of them joined the army of Louis XIV., and were long after known as "The Irish Brigade." Although they fought valiantly and honourably in many well-known battles, they were first employed in Louis' persecution of the Protestants in the Vaudois and Cevennes mountains. Their first encounter was with the Camisards, under Cavalier, their peasant leader. They gained no glory in that campaign, but a good deal of discredit. In the meantime Ireland had been restored to peace. After the surrender of Limerick no further resistance was offered to the arms of William III. A considerable body of English troops remained in Ireland to garrison the fortresses. Rapin's regiment was stationed at Kinsale, and there he rejoined it in 1693. He made the intimate friendship of Sir James Waller, the governor of the town. Sir James was a man of much intelligence, a keen observer, and an ardent student. By his knowledge of political history, he inspired Rapin with a like taste, and determined him at a later period in his life to undertake what was a real want at the time, an intelligent and readable history of England. Rapin was suddenly recalled to England. He was required to leave his regiment and report himself to King William. No reason was given; but with his usual obedience to orders he at once set out. He did not leave Ireland without regret. He was attached to his numerous Huguenot comrades, and he hoped yet to rise to higher guides in the King's service. By special favour he was allowed to hand over his company to his brother Solomon, who had been wounded at the first siege of Limerick. His brother received the promotion which he himself had deserved, and afterwards became lieutenant-colonel of dragoons. Rapin's fortune led him in quite another direction. It turned out that, by the recommendation of the Earl of Galway (formerly the Marquis de Ruvigny, another French Huguenot), he had been recalled to London for the purpose of being appointed governor and tutor to Lord Woodstock, son of Bentinck, Earl of Portland, one of King William's most devoted servants. Lord Galway was consulted by the King as to the best tutor for the son of his friend. He knew of Rapin's valour and courage during his campaigns in Ireland; he also knew of his discretion, his firmness, and his conciliatory manners, in reconciling the men under his charge at Athlone and Kilkenny; and he was also satisfied about his thoughtfulness, his delicacy of spirit, his grace and his nobleness--for he had been bred a noble, though he had first served as a common soldier in the army of William. The King immediately approved the recommendation of Lord Galway. He knew of Rapin's courage at the battle of the Boyne; and he remembered--as every true captain does remember--the serious wound he had received while accompanying the forlorn hope at the first siege of Limerick. Hence the sudden recall of Rapin from Ireland. On his arrival in London he was presented to the King, and immediately after he entered upon his new function of conducting the education of the future Duke of Portland. Henry, Lord Woodstock, was then about fifteen. Being of delicate health, he had hitherto been the object of his father's tender care, and it was not without considerable regret that Lord Portland yielded to the request of the King and handed over his son to the government of M. Rapin. Though of considerable intelligence, the powers of his heart were greater than those of his head. Thus Rapin had no difficulty in acquiring the esteem and affection of his pupil. Portland House was then the resort of the most eminent men of the Whig party, through whose patriotic assistance the constitution of England was placed in the position which it now occupies. Rapin was introduced by Lord Woodstock to his friends. Having already mastered the English language, he had no difficulty in understanding the conflicting opinions of the times. He saw history developing itself before his eyes. He heard with his ears the discussions which eventuated in Acts of Parliament, confirming the liberties of the English people, the liberty of speech, the liberty of writing, the liberty of doing, within the limits of the common law. All this was of great importance to Rapin. It prepared him for writing his afterwards famous works, his "History of England," and his Dissertation on the Whigs and Tories. Rapin was not only a man of great accomplishments, but he had a remarkable aptitude for languages. He knew French and English, as well as Italian, Spanish, and German. He had an extraordinary memory, and a continuous application and perseverance, which enabled him to suck the contents of many volumes, and to bring out the facts in future years during the preparation of his works. His memory seems to have been of the same order as that of Lord Macaulay, who afterwards made use of his works, and complimented his predecessor as to their value. According to the custom of those days, the time arrived when Rapin was required to make "the grand tour" with his pupil and friend, Lord Woodstock. This was considered the complement of English education amongst the highest classes. It was thought necessary that young noblemen should come in contact with foreigners, and observe the manners and customs of other countries besides their own; and that thus they might acquire a sort of cosmopolitan education. Archbishop Leighton even considered a journey of this sort as a condition of moral perfection. He quoted the words of the Latin poet: "Homo sum, et nihil hominem à me alienum puto." No one could be better fitted than Rapin to accompany the young lord on his foreign travels. They went to Holland, Germany, France, Spain, and Italy. Rapin diligently improved himself, while instructing his friend. He taught him the languages of the countries through which they passed; he rendered him familiar with Greek and Latin; he rendered him familiar with the principles of mathematics. He also studied with him the destinies of peoples and of kings, and pointed out to him the Divine will accomplishing itself amidst the destruction of empires. Withal he sought to penetrate the young soul of the friend committed to his charge with that firmness of belief and piety of sentiment which pervaded his own. It was while in Italy that the Earl of Portland, at the instigation of Rapin, requested copies to be made for him of the rarest and most precious medals in point of historic interest; and also to purchase for him objects of ancient workmanship. Hence Rapin was able to secure for him the _Portland Vase_, now in the British Museum, one of the most exquisite products of Roman and Etruscan ceramic art. In 1699, the Earl of Portland was sent by William III. as ambassador to the court of Louis XIV., in connection with the negotiations as to the Spanish succession. Lord Woodstock attended the embassy, and Rapin accompanied him. They were entertained at Versailles. Persecution was still going on in France, although about eight hundred thousand persons had already left the country. Rapin at one time thought of leaving Lord Woodstock for a few days, and making a rapid journey south to visit his friends near Toulouse. But the thought of being made a prisoner and sent to the galleys for life stayed him, and he remained at Versailles until the return of the embassy. Rapin remained with Lord Woodstock for thirteen years. In the meantime he had married, at the Hague, Marie Anne Testart, a refugee from Saint-Quentin. Jean Rou describes her as a true helpmeet for him, young, beautiful, rich, and withal virtuous, and of the most pleasing and gentle temper in the world. Her riches, however, were not great. She had merely, like Rapin, rescued some portion of her heritage from the devouring claws of her persecutors. Rapin accumulated very little capital during his tutorship of Lord Woodstock; but to compensate him, the King granted him a pension of £100 a year, payable by the States of Holland, until he could secure some better income. Rapin lived for some time at the Hague. While there he joined a society of learned French refugees. Among them were Rotolf de la Denèse, Basnage de Beauval, and Jean Rou, secretary to the States-General. One of the objects of the little academy was to translate the Psalms anew into French verse; but before the version was completed, Rapin was under the necessity of leaving the Hague. William III., his patron, died in 1701, when his pension was stopped. He was promised some remunerative employment, but he was forgotten amidst the press of applicants. At length he removed to the little town of Wesel, on the Lower Rhine, in the beginning of May, 1707. He had a wife and four children to maintain, and living was much more reasonable at Wesel than at the Hague. His wife's modest fortune enabled him to live there to the end of his days. Wesel was also a resort of the French refugees--persons of learning and taste, though of small means. It was at his modest retreat at Wesel that Rapin began to arrange the immense mass of documents which he had been accumulating during so many years, relating to the history of England. The first work which he published was "A Dissertation on the Origin and Nature of the English Constitution." It met with great success, and went through many editions, besides being translated into nearly all the continental languages. He next proceeded with his great work, "The History of England." During his residence in Ireland and England, he had read with great interest all books relating to the early history of the Government of England. He began with, the history of England after the Norman Conquest; but he found that he must begin at the beginning. He studied the history of the Anglo-Saxons, but found it "like a vast forest, where the traveller, with great difficulty, finds a few narrow paths to guide his wandering steps. It was this, however, that inspired him with the design of clearing this part of the English history, by removing the rubbish, and carrying on the thread so as to give, at least, a general knowledge of the earlier history." Then he went back to Julius Cæsar's account of his invasion of Britain, for the purpose of showing how the Saxons came to send troops into this country, and now the conquest which had cost them so much was at last abandoned by the Romans. He then proceeded, during his residence in England, with his work of reading and writing; but when he came to the reign of Henry II. he was about to relinquish his undertaking, when an unexpected assistance not only induced him to continue it, but to project a much larger history of England than he had at first intended. This unexpected assistance was the publication of Rymer's "Foedera," at the expense of the British Government. The volumes as they came out were sent to Rapin by Le Clerc (another refugee), a friend of Lord Halifax, who was one of the principal promoters of the publication. This book was of infinite value to Rapin in enabling him to proceed with his history. He prepared abstracts of seventeen volumes (now in the Cottonian collection), to show the relation of the acts narrated in Rymer's "Foedera" to the history of England. He was also able to compare the facts stated by English historians with, those of the neighbouring states, whether they were written in Latin, French, Italian, or Spanish. The work was accomplished with great labour. It occupied seventeen years of Rapin's life. The work was published at intervals. The first two volumes appeared in November, 1723. During the following year six more volumes were published. The ninth and tenth volumes were left in manuscript ready for the press. They ended with the coronation of William and Mary at Westminster. Besides, he left a large number of MSS., which were made use of by the editor of the continuation of Rapin's history. Rapin died at Wesel in 1725, at the age of sixty-four. His work, the cause of his fatal illness, was almost his only pleasure. He was worn out by hard study and sedentary confinement, and at last death came to his rescue. He had struggled all his life against persecution; against the difficulties of exile; against the enemy; and though he did not die on the field of battle, he died on the breach pen in hand, in work and duty, striving to commemorate the independence through which a noble people had worked their way to ultimate freedom and liberty. The following epitaph was inscribed over his grave:-- "Ici le casque et la science, L'esprit vif, la solidité, La politesse et la sincérité Ont fait une heureuse alliance, Dont le public a profité." The first edition of Rapin's history, consisting of ten volumes, was published at the Hague by Rogessart. The Rev. David Durand added two more volumes to the second edition, principally compiled from the memoranda left by Rapin at his death. The twelfth volume concluded the reign of William III. The fourth edition appeared in 1733. Being originally composed and published in French, the work was translated into English by Mr. N. Tindal, who added numerous notes. Two editions wore published simultaneously in London, and a third translation was published some sixty years later. The book was attacked by the Jacobite authors, who defended the Stuart party against the statements of the author. In those fanatical times impartiality was nothing to them. A man must be emphatically for the Stuarts, or against them. Yet the work of Rapin held its ground, and it long continued to be regarded as the best history that had up to that time been written. The Rapin family are now scattered over the world. Some remain in Holland, some have settled in Switzerland, some have returned to France, but the greater number are Prussian subjects. James, the only son of Rapin, studied at Cleves, then at Antwerp, and at thirty-one he was appointed to the important office of Director of the French Colonies at Stettin and Stargardt. Charles, Rapin's eldest brother, was a captain of infantry in the service of Prussia. Two sons of Louis de Rapin were killed in the battles of Smolensko and Leipsic. Many of the Rapins attained high positions in the military service of Prussia. Colonel Philip de Rapin-Thoyras was the head of the family in Prussia. He was with the Allied Army in their war of deliverance against France in the years 1813, 1814, and 1815. He was consequently decorated with the Cross and the Military Medal for his long and valued services to the country of his adoption. The handsome volume by Raoul de Cazenove, entitled "Rapin-Thoyras, sa Famille, sa Vie, et ses OEuvres," to which we are indebted for much of the above information, is dedicated to this distinguished military chief. III. CAPTAIN RIOU, R.N. "Brave hearts! to Britain's pride Once so faithful and so true, On the deck of fame that died, With the gallant good Riou: Soft sigh the winds of heaven o'er their grave!" CAMPBELL'S _Battle of the Baltic_. The words in which Campbell describes Captain Riou in his noble ode are nearly identical with those used by Lord Nelson himself when alluding to his death in the famous despatch relative to the battle of Copenhagen. These few but pregnant words, "the gallant and the good," constitute nearly all the record that exists of the character of this distinguished officer, though it is no slight glory to have them embalmed in the poetry of Campbell and the despatches of Nelson. Having had the good fortune, in the course of recent inquiries as to the descendants of illustrious Huguenots in England, to become acquainted with the principal events in Captain Riou's life, drawn from family papers, I now propose to supplement Lord Nelson's brief epitome of his character by the following memoir of this distinguished seaman. Captain Riou was descended from the ancient Riou family of Vernoux, in Languedoc, of whom early mention is made in French history, several members of it having specially distinguished themselves as generals in the wars in Spain. Like many other noble families of Languedoc in the seventeenth century, the Rious were staunch Huguenots; and when, in 1685, Louis XIV. determined to stamp out Protestantism in France, and revoked the Edict of Nantes, the principal members of the family, refusing to conform, left the country, and their estates were confiscated by the Crown. Estienne Riou, heir to the estate at Vernoux, was born after the death of his father, who was a man of eminent repute in his neighbourhood; and he did not leave France until his eleventh year, when he fled with his paternal uncle, Matthew Labrune, across the frontier, and took refuge with him at Berne, in Switzerland. There the uncle engaged in business as a merchant, while the nephew, when of sufficient age, desirous of following the usual career of his family, went into Piedmont to join the little Huguenot army from England, then engaged in assisting the Duke of Savoy against the armies of the French king. Estienne was admitted a cadet in Lord Galway's regiment, then engaged in the siege of Casale; and he remained with it for two years, when, on the army returning to England, he received an honourable discharge, and went back to reside for a time with his bachelor uncle at Berne. In 1698 both uncle and nephew left Switzerland to settle in London as merchants, bringing with them a considerable capital. They exported English manufactured goods to the East Indies, Holland, Germany, and Italy; and imported large quantities of raw silk, principally from Spain and Italy, carrying on their business with uniform probity and credit. In course of time Estienne married Magdalen Baudoin, the daughter of a refugee gentleman from Touraine,--the members of refugee families usually intermarrying for several generations after their settlement in England. The issue of this marriage was an only son, Stephen Riou, who, like his ancestors, embraced the profession of arms, rising to be captain in the Horse Grenadier Guards. He afterwards attended the Confederate forces in Flanders as an engineer, and on the conclusion of peace, he travelled for nearly four years through the principal countries of Europe, accompanying Sir P. Ker Porter on his embassy to Constantinople. He afterwards settled, married, and had two sons,--Philip, the elder, who entered the Royal Artillery, and died senior colonel at Woolwich in 1817; and Edward, the second son, who entered the navy--the subject of the present memoir. Edward Riou was born at Mount Ephraim, near Faversham, on the 20th November, 1762. The family afterwards removed to London, where Edward received his education, partly at the Marylebone Grammar School and partly at home, where his father superintended his instruction in fortification, and navigation. Though of peculiarly sweet and amiable disposition, young Riou displayed remarkable firmness and even fearlessness as a boy. He rejoiced at all deeds of noble daring, and it was perhaps his love of adventure that early determined his choice of a profession; for, even when a very little fellow, he was usually styled by the servants and by his playmates, "the noble captain." Accordingly, when only twelve years old, he went to sea as midshipman on board Admiral Pye's ship, the _Harfleur_; from whence, in the following year, he was removed to the _Romney_, Captain Keith Elphinstone, on the Newfoundland station; and on the return of the ship to England in 1776, he had the good fortune to be appointed midshipman on board the _Discovery_, Captain Charles Clarke, which accompanied Captain Cook in the _Resolution_ in his last voyage round the world. Nothing could have been more to the mind of our sailor-boy than this voyage of adventure and discovery, in company with the greatest navigator of the age. The _Discovery_ sailed from the Downs on the 18th of June, but had no sooner entered the Channel than a storm arose which did considerable damage to the ship, which was driven into Portland Roads. At Plymouth, the _Discovery_ was joined by the _Resolution_; but as the former had to go into harbour for repairs, Captain Cook set sail for the Cape alone, leaving orders for Captain Clarke to follow him there. The _Discovery_ at length put to sea, and after a stormy voyage joined Captain Cook in Table Bay on the 11th of August. Before setting sail on the longer voyage, Riou had the felicity of being transferred to the _Resolution_, under the command of Captain Cook himself. It is not necessary that we should describe this celebrated voyage, with which every boy is familiar--its storms and hurricanes; the landings on islands where the white man's face had never been seen before; the visits to the simple natives of Huahine and Otaheite, then a little Eden; the perilous coasting along the North American seaboard to Behring's Straits, in search of the North-Western passage; and finally, the wintering of the ships at Owyhee, where Captain Cook met his cruel death, of which young Riou was a horror-struck spectator from the deck of the _Resolution_, on the morning of the 14th of February, 1779. After about four years' absence on this voyage, so full of adventure and peril, Riou returned to England with the _Resolution_, and was shortly after appointed lieutenant of the sloop _Scourge_, Captain Knatchbull, Commander, which took part, under Lord Rodney, in the bombardment and capture of St. Eustatia. Here Riou was so severely wounded in the eye by a splinter that he lost his sight for many months. In March, 1782, he was removed to the _Mediator_, forty-four guns, commanded by Captain Luttrell, and shared in the glory which attached to the officers and crew of that ship through its almost unparalleled achievement of the 12th of December of that year. It was at daybreak that the _Mediator_ sighted five sail of the enemy, consisting of the _Ménagère_, thirty-six guns _en flûte_; the _Eugène_, thirty-six; and the _Dauphin Royal_, twenty-eight (French); in company with the _Alexander_, twenty-eight guns, and another brig, fourteen (American), formed in line of battle to receive the _Mediator_, which singly bore down upon them. The skilful seamanship and dashing gallantry of the English disconcerted the combinations of the enemy, and after several hours' fighting two of their vessels fell out of the line, and went away, badly crippled, to leeward. About an hour later the _Alexander_ was cut off, the _Mediator_ wearing between her and her consorts, and in ten minutes she struck. A chase then ensued after the larger vessels, and late in the evening the _Ménagère_, being raked within pistol shot, hailed for quarter. The rest of the squadron escaped, and the gallant _Mediator_, having taken possession of her two prizes, set sail with them for England, arriving in Cawsand Bay on the 17th of December. In the year following, Captain Luttrell, having been appointed to the _Ganges_, took with him Mr. Riou as second lieutenant. He served in this ship until the following summer, when he retired for a time on half-pay, devoting himself to study and continental travel until March, 1786, when we find him serving under Admiral Elliot as second lieutenant of the _Salisbury_. It was about this time that he submitted to the Admiralty a plan, doubtless suggested by his voyage with Captain Cook, "for the discovery and preservation of a passage through the continent of North America, and for the increase of commerce to this kingdom." The plan was very favourably received, but as war seemed imminent, no steps were then taken to carry it into effect. The young officer had, however, by this time recommended himself for promotion by his admirable conduct and his good service; and in the spring of 1789 he was appointed to the command of the _Guardian_, forty-four guns, armed _en flûte_, which was under orders to take out stores and convicts to New South Wales. In a chatty, affectionate letter written to his widowed mother, from on shipboard at the Cape while on the voyage out, he says,--"I have no expectation, after the promotion that took place before I left England, of finding myself master and commander on my return." After speculating as to what might happen in the meantime while he was so far from home, and expressing an anxiety which was but natural on the part of an enterprising young officer eager for advancement in his profession, he proceeded,--"Politics must take a great turn, I think, by the time of my return. War will likely be begun; in that case we may bring a prize in with us. But our foresight is short--and mine particularly so. I hardly ever look forward to beyond three months. 'Tis in vain to be otherwise, for Providence, which directs all things, is inscrutable." And he concluded his letter thus,--"Now for Port Jackson. I shall sail to-night if the wind is fair. God for ever bless you." But neither Riou nor the ill-fated _Guardian_ ever reached Port Jackson! A fortnight after setting sail from the Cape, while the ship was driving through a thick fog (in lat. 44·5, long. 41) a severe shock suddenly called Riou to the deck, where an appalling spectacle presented itself. The ship had struck upon an iceberg. A body of floating ice twice as high as the masthead was on the lee beam, and the ship appeared to be entering a sort of cavern in its side. In a few minutes the rudder was torn away, a severe leak was sprung, and all hands worked for bare life at the pumps. The ship became comparatively unmanageable, and masses of overhanging ice threatened every moment to overwhelm her. At length, by dint of incessant efforts, the ship was extricated from the ice, but the leak gained fearfully, and stores, cattle, guns, booms, everything that could be cut away, was thrown overboard. It was all in vain. The ship seemed to be sinking; and despair sat on every countenance save that of the young commander. He continued to hope even against hope. At length, after forty-eight hours of incessant pumping, a cry arose for "the boats," as presenting the only chance of safety. Riou pleaded with the men to persevere, and they went on bravely again at the pumps. But the dawn of another day revealed so fearful a position of affairs that the inevitable foundering of the ship seemed to be a matter of minutes rather than of hours. The boats were hoisted out, discipline being preserved to the last. Riou's servant hastened to him to ask what boat he would select to go in, that he himself might take a place beside him. His answer was that "he would stay by the ship, save her if he could, and if needs be sink with her, but that the people were at liberty to consult their own safety." He then sat down and wrote the following letter to the Admiralty, giving it in charge to Mr. Clements, the master, whose boat was the only one that ever reached land:-- "Her Majesty's Ship _Guardian_, "_December, 1789._ "If any part of the officers or crew of the _Guardian_ should ever survive to reach home, I have only to say that their conduct, after the fatal stroke against an island of ice, was admirable and wonderful in everything that relates to their duties, considered either as private men or in his Majesty's service. As there seems no possibility of my remaining many hours in this world, I beg leave to recommend to the consideration of the Admiralty a sister, to whom, if my conduct or services should be found deserving any memory, favour might be shown, together with a widowed mother. "I am, sir, with great respect, "Your ever obedient servant, "EDWARD RIOU. "PHILIP STEPHENS, ESQ., "Admiralty." About half the crew remained with Riou, some because they determined to stand by their commander, and others because they could not get away in the boats, which, to avoid being overcrowded, had put off in haste, for the most part insufficiently stored and provided. The sea, still high, continued to make breaches over the ship, and many were drowned in their attempts to reach the boats. Those who remained were exhausted by fatigue; and, without the most distant hope of life, some were mad with despair. A party of these last contrived to break open the spirit-room, and found a temporary oblivion in intoxication. "It is hardly a time to be a disciplinarian," wrote Riou in his log, which continues a valued treasury in his family, "when only a few more hours of life seem to present themselves; but this behaviour greatly hurts me." This log gives a detailed account, day by day, of the eight weeks' heroic fortitude and scientific seamanship which preserved the _Guardian_ afloat until she got into the track of ships, and was finally towed by Dutch whalers into Table Bay, Cape of Good Hope. The master's boat, in which were also the purser and chaplain, had by a miracle been picked up, and those officers, on their return to England, reported to the Admiralty "the total loss of the _Guardian_". They also at the same time spoke of Riou's noble conduct in terms of such enthusiasm as to awaken general admiration, and occasion the greatest regret at his loss. Accordingly, when the Admiralty received from his own hand the unexpected intelligence of his safety, his widowed mother and only sister had the affectionate sympathy of all England. Lord Hood himself, before unknown to the family, hastened to their house with the news, calling to the servants as he ran up the stairs to "throw off their mourning!" The following was Riou's brief letter to his mother, which he found time to scrawl and send off by a ship just leaving Table Bay for England as the poor helpless _Guardian_ was being towed in:-- "Cape of Good Hope, "_February, 22, 1790_. "DEAREST,--God has been merciful. I hope you have no fatal accounts of the _Guardian_. I am safe; I am well, notwithstanding you may hear otherwise. Join with me in prayer to that blessed Saviour who hath hung over my ship for two months, and kept thy dear son safe, to be, I hope, thankful for almost a miracle. I can say no more because I am hurried, and the ship sails for England this afternoon. "Yours ever and ever, "EDWARD RIOU." Riou remained many months at the Cape trying to patch up the _Guardian_, and repair it so as to bring it back to port; but all his exertions were fruitless, and in October the Admiralty despatched the _Sphinx_ ship-of-war to bring him and the survivors of his crew to England, where they landed shortly after. There was, of course, the usual court-martial held upon him for the loss of his ship, but it was merely a matter of form. At its conclusion he was complimented by the Court in the warmest terms; and "as a mark of the high consideration in which the magnanimity of his conduct was held, in remaining by his ship from an exalted sense of duty when all reasonable prospects of saving her were at an end," he received the special thanks of the Admiralty, was made commander, and at the same time promoted to the rank of post captain. No record exists of the services of Captain Riou from the date of his promotion until 1794, when we find him in command of his Majesty's ship _Rose_, assisting in the reduction of Martinique. He was then transferred to the _Beaulieu_, and remained cruising in the West Indian seas till his health became so injured by the climate that he found himself compelled to solicit his recall, and he consequently returned to England in the _Theseus_ in the following year. Shortly after, in recognition of his distinguished services, he was appointed to the command of the royal yacht, the _Princess Augusta_, in which he remained until the spring of 1790. So soon as his health was sufficiently re-established, he earnestly solicited active employment, and he was accordingly appointed to the command of the fine frigate, the _Amazon_, thirty-eight guns, whose name afterwards figured so prominently in Nelson's famous battle before Copenhagen. After cruising about in her on various stations, and picking up a few prizes, the _Amazon_, early in 1801, was attached to Sir Hyde Parker's fleet, destined for the Baltic. The last letter which Riou wrote home to his mother was dated Sunday, the 29th March, "at the entrance to the Sound;" and in it he said:--"It yet remains in doubt whether we are to fight the Danes, or whether they will be our friends." Already, however, Nelson was arranging his plan of attack, and on the following day, the 30th, the Admiral and all the artillery officers were on board the _Amazon_, which proceeded to examine the northern channel outside Copenhagen Harbour. It was on this occasion that Riou first became known to Nelson, who was struck with admiration at the superior discipline and seamanship which were observable on board the frigate during the proceedings of that day. Early in the evening of the 1st of April the signal to prepare for action was made; and Lord Nelson, with Riou and Foley, on board the _Elephant_--all the other officers having returned to their respective ships--arranged the order of battle on the following day. What remains to be told of Riou is matter of history. The science and skill in navigation which made Nelson intrust to him the last soundings, and place under his command the fire-ships which were to lead the way on the following morning,--the gallantry with which the captain of the _Amazon_ throw himself, _impar congressus_, under the fearful fire of the Trekroner battery, to redeem the failure threatened by the grounding of the ships of the line,--have all been told with a skilful pen, and forms a picture of a great sailor's last hours, which is cherished with equal pride in the affections of his family and the annals of his country. Sir Hyde Parker's signal to "leave off action," which Nelson, putting his telescope to his blind eye, refused to see, was seen, by Riou and reluctantly obeyed. Indeed, nothing but that signal for retreat saved the _Amazon_ from destruction, though it did not save its heroic commander. As he unwillingly drew off from the destructive fire of the battery he mournfully exclaimed, "What will Nelson think of us!" His clerk had been killed by his side. He himself had been wounded in the head by a splinter, but continued to sit on a gun encouraging his men, who were falling in numbers around him. "Come then, my boys," he cried, "let us all die together." Scarcely had he uttered the words, when a raking shot cut him in two. And thus, in an instant, perished the "gallant good Riou," at the early age of thirty-nine. Riou was a man of the truest and tenderest feelings, yet the bravest of the brave. His private correspondence revealed the most endearing qualities of mind and heart, while the nobility of his actions was heightened by lofty Christian sentiment, and a firm reliance on the power and mercy of God. His chivalrous devotion to duty in the face of difficulty and danger heightened the affectionate admiration with which he was regarded, and his death before Copenhagen was mourned almost as a national bereavement. The monument erected to his memory in St. Paul's Cathedral represented, however inadequately, the widely felt sorrow which pervaded all classes at the early death of this heroic officer. "Except it had been Nelson himself," says Southey, "the British navy could not have suffered a severer loss." Captain Riou's only sister married Colonel Lyde Browne, who closed his honourable career of twenty-three years' active service in Dublin, on July 23rd, 1803. Within two years of her bitter mourning for the death of her brother, she had also to mourn for the loss of her husband. He was colonel of the 21st Fusiliers. He was hastening to the assistance of Lord Kilwarden on the fatal night of Emmett's rebellion, when he was basely assassinated. He was buried in the churchyard of St. Paul's, Dublin, where his brother officers erected a marble tablet to his memory. He left an only daughter, who was married, in 1826, to M. G. Benson, Esq., of Lulwyche Hall, Salop. It is through this lady that we have been permitted to inspect the family papers relating to the life and death of Captain Riou. A VISIT TO THE COUNTRY OF THE VAUDOIS. [Illustration: "The country of Felix Neff." (Dauphiny.)] CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. Dauphiny is one of the least visited of all the provinces of France. It occupies a remote corner of the empire, lying completely out of the track of ordinary tourists. No great road passes through it into Italy, the Piedmontese frontier of which it adjoins; and the annual streams of English and American travellers accordingly enter that kingdom by other routes. Even to Frenchmen, who travel little in their own country and still less in others, Dauphiny is very little known; and M. Joanne, who has written an excellent Itinerary of the South of France, almost takes the credit of having discovered it. Yet Dauphiny is a province full of interest. Its scenery almost vies with that of Switzerland in grandeur, beauty, and wildness. The great mountain masses of the Alps do not end in Savoy, but extend through the south-eastern parts of France, almost to the mouths of the Rhône. Packed closer together than in most parts of Switzerland, the mountains of Dauphiny are furrowed by deep valleys, each with its rapid stream or torrent at bottom, in some places overhung by precipitous rocks, in others hemmed in by green hills, over which are seen the distant snowy peaks and glaciers of the loftier mountain ranges. Of these, Mont Pelvoux--whose double pyramid can be seen from Lyons on a clear day, a hundred miles off--and the Aiguille du Midi, are among the larger masses, rising to a height little short of Mont Blanc itself. From the ramparts of Grenoble the panoramic view is of wonderful beauty and grandeur, extending along the valleys of the Isère and the Drac, and across that of the Romanche. The massive heads of the Grand Chartreuse mountains bound the prospect to the north; and the summits of the snow-clad Dauphiny Alps on the south and east present a combination of bold valley and mountain scenery, the like of which is not to be seen in France, if in Europe. But it is not the scenery, or the geology, or the flora of the province, however marvellous these may be, that constitutes the chief interest for the traveller through these Dauphiny valleys, so much as the human endurance, suffering, and faithfulness of the people who have lived in them in past times, and of which so many interesting remnants still survive. For Dauphiny forms a principal part of the country of the ancient Vaudois or Waldenses--literally, the people inhabiting the _Vaux_, or valleys--who for nearly seven hundred years bore the heavy brunt of Papal persecution, and are now, after all their sufferings, free to worship God according to the dictates of their conscience. The country of the Vaudois is not confined, as is generally supposed, to the valleys of Piedmont, but extends over the greater part of Dauphiny and Provence. From the main ridge of the Cottian Alps, which, divide France from Italy, great mountain spurs are thrown out, which run westward as well as eastward, and enclose narrow strips of pasturage, cultivable land, and green shelves on the mountain sides, where a poor, virtuous, and hard-working race have long contrived to earn a scanty subsistence, amidst trials and difficulties of no ordinary kind,--the greatest of which, strange to say, have arisen from the pure and simple character of the religion they professed. The tradition which exists among them is, that the early Christian missionaries, when travelling from Italy into Gaul by the Roman road passing over Mont Genèvre, taught the Gospel in its primitive form to the people of the adjoining districts. It is even surmised that St. Paul journeyed from Rome into Spain by that route, and may himself have imparted to the people of the valleys their first Christian instruction. The Italian and Gallic provinces in that quarter were certainly Christianized in the second century at the latest, and it is known that the early missionaries were in the habit of making frequent journeys from the provinces to Rome. Wherefore it is reasonable to suppose that the people of the valleys would receive occasional visits from the wayfaring teachers who travelled by the mountain passes in the immediate neighbourhood of their dwellings. As years rolled on, and the Church at Rome became rich and allied itself with the secular power, it gradually departed more and more from its primitive condition,[92] until at length it was scarcely to be recognised from the Paganism which it had superseded. The heathen gods were replaced by canonised mortals; Venus and Cupid by the Virgin and Child; Lares and Penates by images and crucifixes; while incense, flowers, tapers, and showy dresses came to be regarded as essential parts of the ceremonial of the new religion as they had been of the old. Madonnas winked and bled again, as the statues of Juno and Pompey had done before; and stones and relics worked miracles as in the time of the Augurs. [Footnote 92: The ancient Vaudois had a saying, known in other countries--"Religion brought forth wealth, and the daughter devoured the mother;" and another of like meaning, but less known--"When the bishops' croziers became golden, the bishops themselves became Wooden."] Attempts were made by some of the early bishops to stem this tide of innovation. Thus, in the fourth, century, Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, and Philastrius, Bishop of Brescia, acknowledging no authority on earth as superior to that of the Bible, protested against the introduction of images in churches, which they held to be a return to Paganism. Four centuries later, Claude, Bishop of Turin, advanced like views, and opposed with energy the worship of images, which he regarded as absolute idolatry. In the meanwhile, the simple Vaudois, shut up in their almost inaccessible valleys, and knowing nothing of these innovations, continued to adhere to their original primitive form of worship; and it clearly appears, from a passage in the writings of St. Ambrose, that, in his time, the superstitions which prevailed elsewhere had not at all extended into the mountainous regions of his diocese. The Vaudois Church was never, in the ordinary sense of the word, a "Reformed" Church, simply because it had not become corrupted, and did not stand in need of "reformation." It was not the Vaudois who left the Church, but the Roman Church that left them in search of idols. Adhering to their primitive faith, they never recognised the paramount authority of the Pope; they never worshipped images, nor used incense, nor observed Mass; and when, in the course of time, these corruptions became known to them, and they found that the Western Church had ceased to be Catholic, and become merely Roman; they openly separated from it, as being no longer in conformity with the principles of the Gospel as inculcated in the Bible and delivered to them by their fathers. Their ancient manuscripts, still extant, attest to the purity of their doctrines. They are written, like the Nobla Leyçon, in the Romance or Provençal--the earliest of the modern classical languages, the language of the troubadours--though now only spoken as a _patois_ in Dauphiny, Piedmont, Sardinia, the north of Spain, and the Balearic Isles.[93] [Footnote 93: Sismondi, "Littérature du Midi de l'Europe," i. 159.] If the age counts for anything, the Vaudois are justified in their claim to be considered one of the oldest churches in Europe. Long before the conquest of England by the Normans, before the time of Wallace and Bruce in Scotland, before England had planted its foot in Ireland, the Vaudois Church existed. Their remoteness, their poverty, and their comparative unimportance as a people, for a long time protected them from interference; and for centuries they remained unnoticed by Rome. But as the Western Church extended its power, it became insatiable for uniformity. It would not tolerate the independence which characterized the early churches, but aimed at subjecting them to the exclusive authority of Rome. The Vaudois, however, persisted in repudiating the doctrines and formularies of the Pope. When argument failed, the Church called the secular arm to its aid, and then began a series of persecutions, extending over several centuries, which, for brutality and ferocity, are probably unexampled in history. To crush this unoffending but faithful people, Rome employed her most irrefragable arguments--the curses of Lucius and the horrible cruelties of Innocent--and the "Vicar of Christ" bathed the banner of the Cross in a carnage from which the wolves of Romulus and the eagles of Cæsar would have turned with loathing. Long before the period of the Reformation, the Vaudois valleys were ravaged by fire and sword because of the alleged heresy of the people. Luther was not born until 1483; whereas nearly four centuries before, the Vaudois were stigmatized as heretics by Rome. As early as 1096, we find Pope Urban II. describing Val Louise, one of the Dauphiny valleys--then called Vallis Gyrontana, from the torrent of Gyr, which flows through it--as "infested with heresy." In 1179, hot persecution raged all over Dauphiny, extending to the Albigeois of the South of France, as far as Lyons and Toulouse; one of the first martyrs being Pierre Waldo, or Waldensis,[94] of Lyons, who was executed for heresy by the Archbishop of Lyons in 1180. [Footnote 94: It has been surmised by some writers that the Waldenses derived their name from this martyr; but being known as "heretics" long before his time, it is more probable that they gave the name to him than that he did to them.] Of one of the early persecutions, an ancient writer says: "In the year 1243, Pope Innocent II. ordered the Bishop of Metz rigorously to prosecute the Vaudois, especially because they read the sacred books in the vulgar tongue."[95] From time to time, new persecutions were ordered, and conducted with ever-increasing ferocity--the scourge, the brand, and the sword being employed by turns. In 1486, while Luther was still in his cradle, Pope Innocent VIII. issued a bull of extermination against the Vaudois, summoning all true Catholics to the holy crusade, promising free pardon to all manner of criminals who should take part in it, and concluding with the promise of the remission of sins to every one who should slay a heretic.[96] The consequence was, the assemblage of an immense horde of brigands, who were let loose on the valleys of Dauphiny and Piedmont, which they ravaged and pillaged, in company with eighteen thousand regular troops, jointly furnished by the French king and the Duke of Savoy. [Footnote 95: Jean Leger, "Histoire Générale des Églises Évangéliques des Vallées de Piedmont, ou Vaudoises." Leyde, 1669. Part ii. 330.] [Footnote 96: Leger, ii. 8-20.] Sometimes the valleys were under the authority of the kings of France, sometimes under that of the dukes of Savoy, whose armies alternately overran them; but change of masters and change of popes made little difference to the Vaudois. It sometimes, however, happened, that the persecution waxed hotter on one side of the Cottian Alps, while it temporarily relaxed on the other; and on such occasions the French and Italian Vaudois were accustomed to cross the mountain passes, and take refuge in each others' valleys. But when, as in the above case, the kings, soldiers, and brigands, on both sides, simultaneously plied the brand and the sword, the times were very troublous indeed for these poor hunted people. They had then no alternative but to climb up the mountains into the least accessible places, or hide themselves away in dens and caverns with their families, until their enemies had departed. But they were often, tracked to their hiding-places by their persecutors, and suffocated, strangled, or shot--men, women, and children. Hence there is scarcely a hiding-place along the mountain-sides of Dauphiny but has some tradition connected with it relating to those dreadful times. In one, so many women and children were suffocated; in another, so many perished of cold and hunger; in a third, so many were ruthlessly put to the sword. If these caves of Dauphiny had voices, what deeds of horror they could tell! * * * * * What is known as the Easter massacre of 1655 made an unusual sensation in Europe, but especially in England, principally through the attitude which Oliver Cromwell assumed in the matter. Persecution had followed persecution for nearly four hundred years, and still the Vaudois were neither converted nor extirpated. The dukes of Savoy during all that time pursued a uniform course of treachery and cruelty towards this portion of their subjects. Sometimes the Vaudois, pressed by their persecutors, turned upon them, and drove them ignominiously out of their valleys. Then the reigning dukes would refrain for a time; and, probably needing their help in one or other of the wars in which they were constantly engaged, would promise them protection and privileges. But such promises were invariably broken; and at some moment when the Vaudois were thrown off their guard by his pretended graciousness, the duke for the time being would suddenly pounce upon them and carry fire and sword through their valleys. Indeed, the dukes of Savoy seem to have been about the most wrong-headed line of despots that ever cursed a people by their rule. Their mania was soldiering, though they were oftener beaten than victorious. They were thrashed out of Dauphiny by France, thrashed out of Geneva by the citizens, thrashed out of the valleys by their own peasantry; and still they went on raising armies, making war, and massacring their Vaudois subjects. Being devoted servants of the Pope, in 1655 they concurred with him in the establishment of a branch of the society _De Propaganda Fide_ at Turin, which extended over the whole of Piedmont, for the avowed purpose of extirpating the heretics. On Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week, the society commenced active proceedings. The army of Savoy advanced suddenly upon La Tour, and were let loose upon the people. A general massacre began, accompanied with shocking brutalities, and continued for more than a week. In many hamlets not a cottage was left standing, and such of the people as had not been able to fly into the upper valleys were indiscriminately put to the sword. And thus was Easter celebrated. The noise of this dreadful deed rang through Europe, and excited a general feeling of horror, especially in England. Cromwell, then at the height of his power, offered the fugitive Vaudois an asylum in Ireland; but the distance which lay between was too great, and the Vaudois asked him to help them in some other way. Forthwith, he addressed letters, written by his secretary, John Milton,[97] to the principal European powers, calling upon them to join him in putting a stop to these horrid barbarities committed upon an unoffending people. Cromwell did more. He sent the exiles £2,000 out of his own purse; appointed a day of humiliation and a general collection all over England, by which some £38,000 were raised; and dispatched Sir Samuel Morland as his plenipotentiary to expostulate in person with the Duke of Savoy. Moreover, a treaty was on the eve of being signed with France; and Cromwell refused to complete it until Cardinal Mazarin had undertaken to assist him in getting right done to the people of the valleys. [Footnote 97: It was at this time that Milton wrote his noble sonnet, beginning-- "Avenge, O Lord, Thy slaughter'd saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold," &c.] These energetic measures had their effect. The Vaudois who survived the massacre were permitted to return to their devastated homes, under the terms of the treaty known as the "Patents of Grace," which was only observed, however, so long as Cromwell lived. At the Restoration, Charles II. seized the public fund collected for the relief of the Vaudois, and refused to remit the annuity arising from the interest thereon which Cromwell had assigned to them, declaring that he would not pay the debts of a usurper! After that time, the interest felt in the Vaudois was very much of a traditional character. Little was known as to their actual condition, or whether the descendants of the primitive Vaudois Church continued to exist or not. Though English travellers--amongst others, Addison, Smollett, and Sterne--passed through the country in the course of last century, they took no note of the people of the valleys. And this state of general ignorance as to the district continued down to within about the last fifty years, when quite a new interest was imparted to the subject through the labours and researches of the late Dr. Gilly, Prebendary of Durham. It happened that that gentleman was present at a meeting of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, in the year 1820, when a very touching letter was read to the board, signed "Frederick Peyrani, minister of Pramol," requesting the assistance of the society in supplying books to the Vaudois churches of Piedmont, who were described as maintaining a very hard struggle with poverty and oppression. Dr. Gilly was greatly interested by the reading of this letter. Indeed, the subject of it so strongly arrested his attention, that he says it "took complete possession of him." He proceeded to make search for information about the Vaudois, but could find very little that was definite or satisfactory respecting them. Then it was that he formed the determination of visiting the valleys and ascertaining the actual condition of the people in person. His visit was made in 1823, and in the course of the following year Dr. Gilly published the result in his "Narrative of an Excursion to the Mountains of Piedmont." The book excited much interest, not only in England, but in other countries; and a movement was shortly after set on foot for the relief and assistance of the Vaudois. A committee was formed, and a fund was raised--to which the Emperor of Russia and the Kings of Prussia and Holland contributed--with the object, in the first place, of erecting a hospital for the sick and infirm Vaudois at La Tour, in the valley of Luzern. It turned out that the money raised was not only sufficient for this purpose, but also to provide schools and a college for the education of pastors, which were shortly after erected at the same place. In 1829, Dr. Gilly made a second visit to the Piedmontese valleys, partly in order to ascertain how far the aid thus rendered to the poor Vaudois had proved effectual, and also to judge in what way certain further sums placed at his disposal might best be employed for their benefit.[98] It was in the course of his second visit that Dr. Gilly became aware of the fact that the Vaudois were not confined to the valleys of Piedmont, but that numerous traces of them were also to be found on the French side of the Alps, in Dauphiny and Provence. He accordingly extended his journey across the Col de la Croix into France, and cursorily visited the old Vaudois district of Val Fressinières and Val Queyras, of which an account will be given in the following chapters. It was while on this journey that Dr. Gilly became acquainted with the self-denying labours of the good Felix Neff among those poor outlying Christians, with whose life and character he was so fascinated that he afterwards wrote and published the memoir of Neff, so well known to English readers. [Footnote 98: Dr. Gilly's narrative of his second visit to the valleys was published in 1831, under the title of "Waldensian Researches."] Since that time occasional efforts have been made in aid of the French Vaudois, though those on the Italian side have heretofore commanded by far the larger share of interest. There have been several reasons for this. In the first place, the French valleys are much less accessible; the roads through some of the most interesting valleys are so bad that they can only be travelled on foot, being scarcely practicable even for mules. There is no good hotel accommodation in the district, only _auberges_, and these of an indifferent character. The people are also more scattered, and even poorer than they are on the Italian side of the Alps. Then the climate is much more severe, from the greater elevation of the sites of most of the Vaudois villages; so that when pastors were induced to settle there, the cold, and sterility, and want of domestic accommodation, soon drove them away. It was to the rigour of the climate that Felix Neff was eventually compelled to succumb. Yet much has been done of late years for the amelioration of the French Vaudois; and among the most zealous workers in their behalf have been the Rev. Mr. Freemantle, rector of Claydon, Bucks, and Mr. Edward Milsom, the well-known merchant of Lyons. It was in the year 1851 that the Rev. Mr. Freemantle first visited the Vaudois of Dauphiny. His attention was drawn to the subject while editing the memoir of a young English clergyman, the Rev. Spencer Thornton, who had taken Felix Neff for his model; and he was thereby induced to visit the scene of Neff's labours, and to institute a movement on behalf of the people of the French valleys, which has issued in the erection of schools, churches, and pastors' dwellings in several of the most destitute places. It is curious and interesting to trace the influence of personal example on human life and action. As the example of Oberlin in the Ban de la Roche inspired Felix Neff to action, so the life of Felix Neff inspired that of Spencer Thornton, and eventually led Mr. Freemantle to enter upon the work of extending evangelization among the Vaudois. In like manner, a young French pastor, M. Bost, also influenced by the life and labours of Neff, visited the valleys some years since, and wrote a book on the subject, the perusal of which induced Mr. Milsom to lend a hand to the work which the young Genevese missionary had begun. And thus good example goes on ever propagating itself; and though the tombstone may record "Hic jacet" over the crumbling dust of the departed, his spirit still lives and works through other minds--stimulates them to action, and inspires them with hope--"allures to brighter worlds, and leads the way." * * * * * A few words as to the origin of these fragmentary papers. In chalking out a summer holiday trip, one likes to get quite away from the ordinary round of daily life and business. Half the benefits of such a trip consists in getting out of the old ruts, and breathing fresh air amidst new surroundings. But this is very difficult if you follow the ordinary tourist's track. London goes with you and elbows you on your way, accompanied by swarms of commissionaires, guides, and beggars. You encounter London people on the Righi, on the Wengern Alp, and especially at Chamouni. Think of being asked, as I once was on entering the Pavilion at Montanvert, after crossing the Mer de Glace from the Mauvais Pas, "Pray, can you tell me what was the price of Brighton stock when you left town?" There is no risk of such rencontres in Dauphiny, whose valleys remain in almost as primitive a state as they were hundreds of years ago. Accordingly, when my friend Mr. Milsom, above mentioned, invited me to accompany him in one of his periodical visits to the country of the Vaudois, I embraced the opportunity with pleasure. I was cautioned beforehand as to the inferior accommodation provided for travellers through the district. Tourists being unknown there, the route is not padded and cushioned as it is on all the beaten continental rounds. English is not spoken; Bass's pale ale has not yet penetrated into Dauphiny; nor do you encounter London tourists carrying their tin baths about with them as you do in Switzerland. Only an occasional negotiant comes up from Gap or Grenoble, seeking orders in the villages, for whom the ordinary auberges suffice. Where the roads are practicable, an old-fashioned diligence may occasionally be seen plodding along, freighted with villagers bound for some local market; but the roads are, for the most part, as silent as the desert. Such being the case, the traveller in the valleys must be prepared to "rough it" a little. I was directed to bring with me only a light knapsack, a pair of stout hob-nailed shoes, a large stock of patience, and a small parcel of insect powder. The knapsack and the shoes I found exceedingly useful, indeed indispensable; but I had very little occasion to draw upon either my stock of patience or insect powder. The French are a tidy people, and though their beds, stuffed with maize chaff, may be hard, they are tolerably clean. The food provided in the auberges is doubtless very different from what one is accustomed to at home; but with the help of cheerfulness and a good digestion that difficulty too may be got over. Indeed, among the things that most strikes a traveller through France, as characteristic of the people, is the skill with which persons of even the poorest classes prepare and serve up food. The French women are careful economists and excellent cooks. Nothing is wasted. The _pot au feu_ is always kept simmering on the hob, and, with the help of a hunch of bread, a good meal may at any time be made from it. Even in the humblest auberge, in the least frequented district, the dinner served up is of a quality such as can very rarely be had in any English public-house, or even in most of our country inns. Cooking seems to be one of the lost arts of England, if indeed it ever possessed it; and our people are in the habit, through want of knowledge, of probably _wasting_ more food than would sustain many another nation. But in the great system of National Education that is to be, no one dreams of including as a branch of it skill in the preparation and economy in the use of human food. There is another thing that the traveller through France may always depend upon, and that is civility. The politeness of even the French poor to each other is charming. They respect themselves, and they respect each other. I have seen in France what I have not yet seen in England--young working men walking out their aged mothers arm in arm in the evening, to hear the band play in the "Place," or to take a turn on the public promenade. But the French are equally polite to strangers. A stranger lady may travel all through the rural districts of France, and never encounter a rude look; a stranger gentleman, and never receive a rude word. That the French are a self-respecting people is also evinced by the fact that they are a sober people. Drunkenness is scarcely known in France; and one may travel all through it and never witness the degrading sight of a drunken man. The French are also honest and thrifty, and exceedingly hard-working. The industry of the people is unceasing. Indeed it is excessive; for they work Sunday and Saturday. Sunday has long ceased to be a Sabbath in France. There is no day of rest there. Before the Revolution, the saints' days which the Church ordered to be observed so encroached upon the hours required for labour, that in course of time Sunday became an ordinary working day. And when the Revolution abolished saints' days and Sabbath days alike, Sunday work became an established practice. What the so-called friends of the working classes are aiming at in England, has already been effected in France. The public museums and picture-galleries are open on Sunday. But you look for the working people there in vain. They are at work in the factories, whose chimneys are smoking as usual; or building houses, or working in the fields, or they are engaged in the various departments of labour. The government works all go on as usual on Sundays. The railway trains run precisely as on week days. In short, the Sunday is secularised, or regarded but as a partial holiday.[99] [Footnote 99: I find the following under the signature of "An Operative Bricklayer," in the _Times_ of the 30th July, 1867: "I found there were a great number of men in Paris that worked on the buildings who were not residents of the city. The bricklayers are called _limousins_; they come from the old province Le Limousin, where they keep their home, and many of them are landowners. They work in Paris in the summer time; they come up in large numbers, hire a place in Paris, and live together, and by so doing they live cheap. In the winter time, when they cannot work on the buildings, they go back home again and take their savings, and stop there until the spring, which is far better than it is in London; when the men cannot work they are hanging about the streets. It was with regret that I saw so many working on the Sunday desecrating the Sabbath. I inquired why they worked on Sunday; they told me it was to make up the time they lose through wet and other causes. I saw some working with only their trousers and shoes on, with a belt round their waist to keep their trousers up. Their naked back was exposed to the sun, and was as brown as if it had been dyed, and shone as if it had been varnished. I asked if they had any hard-working hearty old men. They answered me "No; the men were completely worn out by the time they reached forty years." That was a clear proof that they work against the laws of nature. I thought to myself--Glory be to you, O Englishmen, you know the Fourth Commandment; you know the value of the seventh day, the day of rest!"] As you pass through the country on Sundays, as on week-days, you see the people toiling in the fields. And as dusk draws on, the dark figures may be seen moving about so long as there is light to see by. It is the peasants working the land, and it is _their own_. Such is the "magical influence of property," said Arthur Young, when he observed the same thing. It is to be feared, however, that the French peasantry are afflicted with the disease which Sir Walter Scott called the "earth-hunger;" and there is danger of the gravel getting into their souls. Anyhow, their continuous devotion to bodily labour, without a seventh day's rest, cannot fail to exercise a deteriorating effect upon their physical as well as their moral condition; and this we believe it is which gives to the men, and especially to the women of the country, the look of a prematurely old and overworked race. CHAPTER II. THE VALLEY OF THE ROMANCHE--BRIANÇON. The route from Grenoble to the frontier fortress of Briançon lies for the most part up the valley of the Romanche, which presents a variety of wild and beautiful scenery. In summer the river is confined within comparatively narrow limits; but in autumn and spring it is often a furious torrent, flooding the low-lying lands, and forcing for itself new channels. The mountain heights which bound it, being composed for the most part of schist, mica slate, and talcose slate, large masses become detached in winter--split off by the freezing of the water behind them--when they descend, on the coming of thaw, in terrible avalanches of stone and mud. Sometimes the masses are such as to dam up the river and form temporary lakes, until the accumulation of force behind bursts the barrier, and a furious flood rushes down the valley. By one of such floods, which occurred a few centuries since, through the bursting of the hike of St. Laurent in the valley of the Romanche, a large part of Grenoble was swept away, and many of the inhabitants were drowned. The valley of the Romanche is no sooner entered, a few miles above Grenoble, than the mountains begin to close, the scenery becomes wilder, and the fury of the torrent is evinced by the masses of débris strewed along its bed. Shortly after passing the picturesque defile called L'Étroit, where the river rushes through a deep cleft in the rocks, the valley opens out again, and we shortly come in sight of the ancient town of Vizille--the most prominent building in which is the château of the famous Duc de Lesdiguières, governor of the province in the reign of Henry IV., and Constable of France in that of Louis XIII. * * * * * Wherever you go in Dauphiny, you come upon the footmarks of this great soldier. At Grenoble there is the Constable's palace, now the Prefecture; and the beautiful grounds adjoining it, laid out by himself, are now the public gardens of the town. Between Grenoble and Vizille there is the old road constructed by him, still known as "Le chemin du Connétable." At St. Bonnet, in the valley of the Drac, formerly an almost exclusively Protestant town, known as "the Geneva of the High Alps," you are shown the house in which the Constable was born; and a little lower down the same valley, in the commune of Glaizil, on a hill overlooking the Drac, stand the ruins of the family castle; where the Constable was buried. The people of the commune were in the practice of carrying away the bones from the family vault, believing them to possess some virtue as relics, until the prefect of the High Alps ordered it to be walled up to prevent the entire removal of the skeletons. In the early part of his career, Lesdiguières was one of the most trusted chiefs of Henry of Navarre, often leading his Huguenot soldiers to victory; capturing town after town, and eventually securing possession of the entire province of Dauphiny, of which Henry appointed him governor. In that capacity he carried out many important public works--made roads, built bridges, erected fourteen fortresses, and enlarged and beautified his palace at Grenoble and his château at Vizille. He enjoyed great popularity during his life, and was known throughout his province as "King of the Mountains." But he did not continue staunch either to his party or his faith. As in the case of many of the aristocratic leaders of those times, Lesdiguières' religion was only skin deep. It was but a party emblem--a flag to fight under, not a faith to live by. So, when ambition tempted him, and the Constable's baton dangled before his eyes, it cost the old soldier but little compunction to abandon the cause which he had so brilliantly served in his youth. To secure the prize which he so coveted, he made public abjuration of his faith in the church, of St. Andrew's at Grenoble in 1622, in the presence of the Marquis de Crequi, the minister of Louis XIII., who, immediately after Lesdiguières' first mass, presented him with the Constable's baton. But the Lesdiguières family has long since passed away, and left no traces. At the Revolution, the Constable's tomb was burst open, and his coffin torn up. His monument was afterwards removed to Gap, which, when a Huguenot, he had stormed and ravaged. His château at Vizille passed through different hands, until in 1775 it came into the possession of the Périer family, to which the celebrated Casimir Périer belonged. The great Gothic hall of the château has witnessed many strange scenes. In 1623, shortly after his investment as Constable, Lesdiguières entertained Louis XIII. and his court there, while on his journey into Italy, in the course of which he so grievously ravaged the Vaudois villages. In 1788, the Estates of Dauphiny met there, and prepared the first bold remonstrance against aristocratic privileges, and in favour of popular representation, which, in a measure, proved the commencement of the great Revolution. And there too, in 1822, Felix Neff preached to large congregations, who were so anxious and attentive that he always after spoke of the place as his "dear Vizille;" and now, to wind up the vicissitudes of the great hall, it is used as a place for the printing of Bandana handkerchiefs! * * * * * When Neff made his flying visits to Vizille, he was temporarily stationed at Mens, which was the scene of his first labours in Dauphiny. The place lies not far from Vizille, away among the mountains towards the south. During the wars of religion, and more especially after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Mens became a place of refuge for the Protestants, who still form about one-half of its population. Although, during the long dark period of religious persecution which followed the Revocation, the Protestants of Mens and the neighbouring villages did not dare to show themselves, and worshipped, if at all, only in their dwellings, in secret, or in "the Desert," no sooner did the Revolution set them at liberty than they formed themselves again into churches, and appointed pastors; and it was to serve them temporarily in that capacity that Felix Neff first went amongst them, and laboured there and at Vizille with such good effect. * * * * * Not far from Mens is a place which has made much more noise in the world--no other than La Salette, the scene of the latest Roman "miracle." La Salette is one of the side-valleys of the large valley of the Drac, which joins the Romanche a few miles above Grenoble. There is no village of La Salette, but a commune, which is somewhat appropriately called La Salette-Fallavaux, the latter word being from _fallax vallis_, or "the lying valley." About twenty-seven years ago, on the 19th of September, 1846, two children belonging to the hamlet of Abladens--the one a girl of fourteen, the other a boy of twelve years old--came down from the lofty pasturage of Mont Gargas, where they had been herding cattle, and told the following strange story. They had seen the Virgin Mary descend from heaven with a crucifix suspended from her neck by a gold chain, and a hammer and pincers suspended from the chain, but without any visible support. The figure sat down upon a large stone, and wept so piteously as shortly to fill a large pool with her tears. When the story was noised abroad, people came from all quarters, and went up the mountain to see where the Virgin had sat. The stone was soon broken off in chips and carried away as relics, but the fountain filled with the tears is still there, tasting very much, like ordinary spring water. Two priests of Grenoble, disgusted at what they believed to be an imposition, accused a young person of the neighbourhood, one Mdlle. de Lamerlière, as being the real author of the pretended miracle, on which she commenced an action against them for defamation of character. She brought the celebrated advocate Jules Favre from Paris to plead her cause, but the verdict was given in favour of the two priests. The "miracle" was an imposture! Notwithstanding this circumstance, the miracle came to be generally believed in the neighbourhood. The number of persons who resorted to the place with money in their pockets steadily increased. The question was then taken up by the local priests, who vouched for the authenticity of the miracle seen by the two children. The miracle was next accepted by Rome.[100] A church was built on the spot by means of the contributions of the visitors--L'Église de la Salette--and thither pilgrims annually resort in great numbers, the more devout climbing the hill, from station to station, on their knees. As many as four thousand persons of both sexes, and of various ages, have been known to climb the hill in one day--on the anniversary of the appearance of the apparition--notwithstanding the extreme steepness and difficulties of the ascent. [Footnote 100: An authorised account was prepared by Cardinal Wiseman for English readers, entitled "Manual of the Association of our Lady of Reconciliation of La Salette," and published as a tract by Burns, 17, Portman Street, in 1853. Since I passed through the country in 1869, the Germans have invaded France, the surrender has occurred at Sedan, the Commune has been defeated at Paris, but Our Lady of La Salette is greater than ever. A temple of enormous dimensions has risen in her honour; the pilgrims number over 100,000 yearly, and the sale of the water from the Holy Well, said to have sprung from the Virgin's tears, realises more than £12,000. Since the success of La Salette, the Virgin has been making repeated appearances in France. Her last appearance was in a part of Alsace which is strictly Catholic. The Virgin appeared, as usual, to a boy of the mature age of six, "dressed in black, floating in the air, her hands bound with chains,"--a pretty strong religio-political hint. When a party of the 5th Bavarian Cavalry was posted in Bettweiler, the Virgin ceased to make her appearance.] * * * * * As a pendant to this story, another may be given of an entirely different character, relating to the inhabitants of another commune in the same valley, about midway between La Salette and Grenoble. In 1860, while the discussion about the miracle at La Salette was still in progress, the inhabitants of Notre-Dame-de-Comiers, dissatisfied with the conduct of their curé, invited M. Fermaud, pastor of the Protestant church at Grenoble, to come over and preach to them, as they were desirous of embracing Protestantism. The pastor, supposing that they were influenced by merely temporary irritation against their curé, cautioned the deputation that waited upon him as to the gravity of their decision in such a matter, and asked them to reflect further upon it. For several years M. Fermaud continued to maintain the same attitude, until, in 1865, a formal petition was delivered to him by the mayor of the place, signed by forty-three heads of families, and by nine out of the ten members of the council of the commune, urging him to send them over a minister of the evangelical religion. Even then he hesitated, and recommended the memorialists to appeal to the bishop of the diocese for redress of the wrongs of which he knew they complained, but in vain, until at length, in the beginning of 1868, with the sanction of the consistory of Grenoble a minister was sent over to Comiers to perform the first acts of Protestant worship, including baptism and marriage; and it was not until October in the same year that Pastor Fermaud himself went thither to administer the sacrament to the new church. The service was conducted in the public hall of the commune, and was attended by a large number of persons belonging to the town and neighbourhood. The local clergy tried in vain to check the movement. Quite recently, when the curé entered one of the schools to inscribe the names of the children who were to attend their first mass, out of fifteen of the proper age eleven answered to the interrogatory of the priest, "Monsieur, nous sommes Protestantes." The movement has also extended into the neighbouring communes, helped by the zeal of the new converts, one of whom is known in the neighbourhood as "Père la Bible," and it is possible that before long it may even extend to La Salette itself. * * * * * The route from Vizille up the valley of the Romanche continues hemmed in by rugged mountains, in some places almost overhanging the river. At Séchilienne it opens out sufficiently to afford space for a terraced garden, amidst which stands a handsome château, flanked by two massive towers, commanding a beautiful prospect down the valley. The abundant water which rushes down from the mountain behind is partly collected in a reservoir, and employed to feed a _jet d'eau_ which rises in a lofty column under the castle windows. Further up, the valley again contracts, until the Gorge de Loiret is passed. The road then crosses to the left bank, and used to be continued along it, but the terrible torrent of 1868 washed it away for miles, and it has not yet been reconstructed. Temporary bridges enable the route to be pursued by the old road on the right bank, and after passing through several hamlets of little interest, we arrive at length at the cultivated plain hemmed in by lofty mountains, in the midst of which Bourg d'Oisans lies seated. This little plain was formerly occupied by the lake of St. Laurent, formed by the barrier of rocks and débris which had tumbled down from the flank of the Petite Voudène, a precipitous mountain escarpment overhanging the river. At this place, the strata are laid completely bare, and may be read like a book. For some distance along the valley they exhibit the most extraordinary contortions and dislocations, impressing the mind with the enormous natural forces that must have been at work to occasion such tremendous upheavings and disruptions. Elie de Beaumont, the French geologist, who has carefully examined the district, says that at the Montagne d'Oisans he found the granite in some places resting upon the limestone, cutting through the Calcareous beds, rising like a wall and lapping over them. On arriving at Bourg d'Oisans, we put up at the Hôtel de Milan close by the bridge; but though dignified with the name of hotel, it is only a common roadside inn. Still, it is tolerably clean, and in summer the want of carpets is not missed. The people were civil and attentive, their bread wholesome, their pottage and bouilli good--being such fare as the people of the locality contrive to live and thrive upon. The accommodation of the place is, indeed, quite equal to the demand; for very few travellers accustomed to a better style of living pass that way. When the landlady was asked if many tourists had passed this year, she replied, "Tourists! We rarely see such travellers here. You are the first this season, and perhaps you may be the last." Yet these valleys are well worthy of a visit, and an influx of tourists would doubtless have the same effect that it has already had in Switzerland and elsewhere, of greatly improving the hotel accommodation throughout the district. There are many domestic arrangements, costing very little money, but greatly ministering to cleanliness and comfort, which might very readily be provided. But the people themselves are indifferent to them, and they need the requisite stimulus of "pressure from without." One of the most prominent defects--common to all the inns of Dauphiny--having been brought under the notice of the landlady, she replied, "C'est vrai, monsieur; mais--il laisse quelque chose à desirer!" How neatly evaded! The very defect was itself an advantage! What would life be--what would hotels be--if there were not "something left to be desired!" The view from the inn at the bridge is really charming. The little river which runs down the valley, and becomes lost in the distance, is finally fringed with trees--alder, birch, and chestnut. Ridge upon ridge of mountain rises up behind on the right hand and the left, the lower clothed with patches of green larch, and the upper with dark pine. Above all are ranges of jagged and grey rocks, shooting up in many places into lofty peaks. The setting sun, shining across the face of the mountain opposite, brings out the prominent masses in bold relief, while the valley beneath hovers between light and shadow, changing almost from one second to another as the sun goes down. In the cool of the evening, we walked through the fields across the plain, to see the torrent, visible from the village, which rushes from the rocky gorge on the mountain-side to join its waters to the Romanche. All along the valleys, water abounds--sometimes bounding from the heights, in jets, in rivulets, in masses, leaping from rock to rock, and reaching the ground only in white clouds of spray, or, as in the case of the little river which flows alongside the inn at the bridge, bursting directly from the ground in a continuous spring; these waterfalls, and streams, and springs being fed all the year through by the immense glaciers that fill the hollows of the mountains on either side the valley. Though the scenery of Bourg d'Oisans is not, as its eulogists allege, equal to that of Switzerland, it will at least stand a comparison with that of Savoy. Its mountains are more precipitous and abrupt, its peaks more jagged, and its aspect more savage and wild. The scenery of Mont Pelvoux, which is best approached from Bourg d'Oisans, is especially grand and sublime, though of a wild and desolate character. The road from Bourg d'Oisans to Briançon also presents some magnificent scenery; and there is one part of it that is not perhaps surpassed even by the famous Via Mala leading up to the Splügen. It is about three miles above Bourg d'Oisans, from which we started early next morning. There the road leaves the plain and enters the wild gorge of Freney, climbing by a steep road up the Rampe des Commières. The view from the height when gained is really superb, commanding an extremely bold and picturesque valley, hemmed in by mountains. The ledges on the hillsides spread out in some places so as to afford sufficient breadths for cultivation; occasional hamlets appear amidst the fields and pine-woods; and far up, between you and the sky, an occasional church spire peeps up, indicating still loftier settlements, though how the people contrive to climb up to those heights is a wonder to the spectator who views them from below. The route follows the profile of the mountain, winding in and out along its rugged face, scarped and blasted so as to form the road. At one place it passes along a gallery about six hundred feet in length, cut through a precipitous rock overhanging the river, which dashes, roaring and foaming, more than a thousand feet below, through the rocky abyss of the Gorge de l'Infernet. Perhaps there is nothing to be seen in Switzerland finer of its kind than the succession of charming landscapes which meet the eye in descending this pass. Beyond the village of Freney we enter another defile, so narrow that in places there is room only for the river and the road; and in winter the river sometimes plays sad havoc with the engineer's constructions. Above this gorge, the Romanche is joined by the Ferrand, an impetuous torrent which comes down from the glaciers of the Grand Rousses. Immediately over their point of confluence, seated on a lofty promontory, is the village of Mizoën--a place which, because of the outlook it commands, as well as because of its natural strength, was one of the places in which the Vaudois were accustomed to take refuge in the times of the persecutions. Further on, we pass through another gallery in the rock, then across the little green valley of Chambon to Le Dauphin, after which the scenery becomes wilder, the valley--here called the Combe de Malaval (the "Cursed Valley")--rocky and sterile, the only feature to enliven it being the Cascade de la Pisse, which falls from a height of over six hundred feet, first in one jet, then becomes split by a projecting rock into two, and finally reaches the ground in a shower of spray. Shortly after we pass another cascade, that of the Riftort, which also joins the Romanche, and marks the boundary between the department of the Isère and that of the Hautes Alpes, which we now enter. More waterfalls--the Sau de la Pucelle, which falls from a height of some two hundred and fifty feet, resembling the Staubbach--besides rivulets without number, running down the mountain-sides like silver threads; until we arrive at La Grave, a village about five thousand feet above the sea-level, directly opposite the grand glaciers of Tabuchet, Pacave, and Vallon, which almost overhang the Romanche, descending from the steep slopes of the gigantic Aiguille du Midi, the highest mountain in the French Alps,--being over 13,200 feet above the level of the sea. After resting some two hours at La Grave, we proceeded by the two tunnels under the hamlet of Ventelong--one of which is 650 and the other 1,800 feet long--to the village of Villard d'Arene, which, though some five thousand feet above the level of the sea, is so surrounded by lofty mountains that for months together the sun never shines on it. From thence a gradual ascent leads up to the summit of the Col de Lauteret, which divides the valley of the Romanche from that of the Guisanne. The pastures along the mountain-side are of the richest verdure; and so many rare and beautiful plants are found growing there that M. Rousillon has described it as a "very botanical Eden." Here Jean Jacques Rousseau delighted to herborize, and here the celebrated botanist Mathonnet, originally a customs officer, born at the haggard village of Villard d'Arene, which we have just passed, cultivated his taste for natural history, and laid the foundations of his European reputation. The variety of temperature which exists along the mountain-side, from the bottom to the summit, its exposure to the full rays of the sun in some places, and its sheltered aspect in others, facilitate the growth of an extraordinary variety of beautiful plants and wild flowers. In the low grounds meridional plants flourish; on the middle slopes those of genial climates; while on the summit are found specimens of the flora of Lapland and Greenland. Thus almost every variety of flowers is represented in this brilliant natural garden--orchids, cruciferæ, leguminæ, rosaceæ, caryophyllæ, lilies of various kinds, saxifrages, anemones, ranunculuses, swertia, primula, varieties of the sedum, some of which are peculiar to this mountain, and are elsewhere unknown. After passing the Hospice near the summit of the Col, the valley of the Guisanne comes in sight, showing a line of bare and rugged mountains on the right hand and on the left, with a narrow strip of land in the bottom, in many parts strewn with stones carried down by the avalanches from the cliffs above. Shortly we come in sight of the distant ramparts of Briançon, apparently closing in the valley, the snow-clad peak of Monte Viso rising in the distance. Halfway between the Col and Briançon we pass through the village of Monestier, where, being a saint's day, the bulk of the population are in the street, holding festival. The place was originally a Roman station, and the people still give indications of their origin, being extremely swarthy, black-haired, and large-eyed, evidently much more Italian than French. But though the villagers of Monestier were taking holiday, no one can reproach them with idleness. Never was there a more hard-working people than the peasantry of these valleys. Every little patch of ground that the plough or spade can be got into is turned to account. The piles of stone and rock collected by the sides of the fields testify to the industry of the people in clearing the soil for culture. And their farming is carried on in the face of difficulties and discouragements of no ordinary character, for sometimes the soil of many of the little farms will be swept away in a night by an avalanche of snow in winter or of stones in spring. The wrecks of fields are visible all along the valley, especially at its upper part. Lower down it widens, and affords greater room for culture; the sides of the mountains become better wooded; and, as we approach the fortress of Briançon, with its battlements seemingly piled one over the other up the mountain-sides, the landscape becomes exceedingly bold and picturesque. When passing the village of Villeneuve la Salle, a few miles from Briançon, we were pointed to a spot on the opposite mountain-side, over the pathway leading to the Col de l'Echuada, where a cavern was discovered a few years since, which, upon examination, was found to contain a considerable quantity of human bones. It was one of the caves in which the hunted Vaudois were accustomed to take refuge during the persecutions; and it continued to be called by the peasantry "La Roche armée"--the name being thus perpetuated, though the circumstances in which it originated had been forgotten. The fortress of Briançon, which we entered by a narrow winding roadway round the western rampart, is the frontier fortress which guards the pass from Italy into France by the road over Mont Genèvre. It must always have been a strong place by nature, overlooking as it does the valley of the Durance on the one hand, and the mountain road from Italy on the other, while the river Clairée, running in a deep defile, cuts it off from the high ground to the south and east. The highest part of the town is the citadel, or Fort du Château, built upon a peak of rock on the site of the ancient castle. It was doubtless the nucleus round which the early town became clustered, until it filled the lower plateau to the verge of the walls and battlements. There being no room for the town to expand, the houses are closely packed together and squeezed up, as it were, so as to occupy the smallest possible space. The streets are narrow, dark, gloomy, and steep, being altogether impassable for carriages. The liveliest sight in the place is a stream of pure water, that rushes down an open conduit in the middle of the principal street, which is exceedingly steep and narrow. The town is sacrificed to the fortifications, which dominate everywhere. With the increasing range and power of cannon, they have been extended in all directions, until they occupy the flanks of the adjoining mountains and many of their summits, so that the original castle now forms but a comparatively insignificant part of the fortress. The most important part of the population is the soldiery--the red-trousered missionaries of "civilisation," according to the gospel of Louis Napoleon, published a short time before our visit. Other missionaries, are, however, at work in the town and neighbourhood; and both at Briançon and Villeneuve Protestant stations have been recently established, under the auspices of the Protestant Society of Lyons. In former times, the population of Briançon included a large number of Protestants. In the year 1575, three years after the massacre of St. Bartholomew, they were so numerous and wealthy as to be able to build a handsome temple, almost alongside the cathedral, and it still stands there in the street called Rue du Temple, with the motto over the entrance, in old French, "Cerches et vos troveres." But at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the temple was seized by the King and converted into a granary, and the Protestants of the place were either executed, banished, or forced to conform to the Papal religion. Since then the voice of Protestantism has been mute in Briançon until within the last few years, during which a mission has been in operation. Some of the leading persons in the town have embraced the Reform faith, amongst others the professor of literature in the public college; but he had no sooner acknowledged to the authorities the fact of his conversion, than he was dismissed from his office, though he has since been appointed to a more important profession at Nice. The number of members is, however, as yet very small, and the mission has to contend with limited means, and to carry on its operations in the face of many obstructions and difficulties. * * * * * What are the prospects of the extension of Protestantism in France? Various answers have been given to the question. Some think that the prevailing dissensions among French Protestants interpose a serious barrier in the way of progress. Others, more hopeful, think, that these divisions are only the indications of renewed life and vigour, of the friction of mind with mind, which evinces earnestness, and cannot fail to lead to increased activity and effort. The observations of a young Protestant pastor on this point are worth repeating. "Protestantism," said he, "is based on individualism: it recognises the free action of the human mind; and so long as the mind acts freely there will be controversy. The end of controversy is death. True, there is much incredulity abroad; but the incredulity is occasioned by the incredibilities of Popery. Let the ground once be cleared by free inquiry, and our Church will rise up amidst the ruins of superstition and unbelief, for man _must_ have religion; only it must be consistent with reason on the one hand, and with Divine revelation on the other. I for one do not fear the fullest and freest inquiry, having the most perfect confidence in the triumph of the truth." It is alleged by others that the bald form in which Protestantism is for the most part presented abroad, is not conformable with the "genius" of the men of Celtic and Latin race. However this may be, it is too generally the case that where Frenchmen, like Italians and Spaniards, throw off Roman Catholicism, they do not stop at rejecting its superstitions, but reject religion itself. They find no intermediate standpoint in Protestantism, but fly off into the void of utter unbelief. The same tendency characterizes them in politics. They seem to oscillate between Cæsarism and Red Republicanism; aiming not at reform so much as revolution. They are averse to any _via media_. When they have tried constitutionalism, they have broken down. So it has been with Protestantism, the constitutionalism of Christianity. The Huguenots at one time constituted a great power in France; but despotism in politics and religion proved too strong for them, and they were persecuted, banished, and stamped for a time out of existence, or at least out of sight. Protestantism was more successful in Germany. Was it because it was more conformable to the "genius" of its people? When the Germans "protested" against the prevailing corruptions in the Church, they did not seek to destroy it, but to reform it. They "stood upon the old ways," and sought to make them broader, straighter, and purer. They have pursued the same course in politics. Cooler and less impulsive than their Gallican neighbours, they have avoided revolutions, but are constantly seeking reforms. Of this course England itself furnishes a notable example. It is certainly a remarkable fact, that the stronghold of Protestantism in France was recently to be found among the population of Germanic origin seated along the valley of the Rhine; whereas in the western districts Protestantism is split up by the two irreconcilable parties of Evangelicals and Rationalists. At the same time it should be borne in mind that Alsace did not become part of France until the year 1715, and that the Lutherans of that province were never exposed to the ferocious persecutions to which the Evangelical Protestants of Old France were subjected, before as well as after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In Languedoc, in Dauphiny, and in the southern provinces generally, men and women who professed Protestantism were liable to be hanged or sent to the galleys, down to nearly the end of the last century. A Protestant pastor who exercised his vocation did so at the daily peril of his life. Nothing in the shape of a Protestant congregation was permitted to exist, and if Protestants worshipped together, it was in secret, in caves, in woods, among the hills, or in the "Desert." Yet Protestantism nevertheless contrived to exist through this long dark period of persecution, and even to increase. And when at length it became tolerated, towards the close of the last century, the numbers of its adherents appeared surprising to those who had imagined it to be altogether extinct. Indeed, looking at the persistent efforts made by Louis XIV. to exterminate the Huguenots, and to the fact that many hundred thousand of the best of them emigrated into foreign countries, while an equal number are supposed to have perished in prison, on the scaffold, at the galleys, and in their attempts to escape, it may almost be regarded as matter of wonder that the Église Reformée--the Church of the old Huguenots--should at the present day number about a thousand congregations, besides the five hundred Lutheran congregations of Alsatia, and that the Protestants of France should amount, in the whole, to about two millions of souls. CHAPTER III. VAL LOUISE--HISTORY OF FELIX NEFF. Some eight miles south of Briançon, on the road to Fort Dauphin, a little river called the Gyronde comes down from the glaciers of Mont Pelvoux, and falls into the Durance nearly opposite the village of La Bessie. This river flows through Val Louise, the entrance into which can be discerned towards the northwest. Near the junction of the rivers, the ruins of an embattled wall, with entrenchments, are observed extending across the valley of the Durance, a little below the narrow pass called the "Pertuis-Rostan," evidently designed to close it against an army advancing from the south. The country people still call those ruins the "Walls of the Vaudois;"[101] and according to tradition a great Vaudois battle was fought there; but of any such battle history makes no mention. [Footnote 101: A gap in the mountain-wall to the left, nearly over La Bessie, is still known as "La Porte de Hannibal," through which, it is conjectured, that general led his army. But opinion, which is much divided as to the route he took, is more generally in favour of his marching up the Isère, and passing into Italy by the Little St. Bernard.] Indeed, so far as can be ascertained, the Vaudois of Dauphiny rarely if ever fought battles. They were too few in number, too much scattered among the mountains, and too poor and ill-armed, to be able to contend against the masses of disciplined soldiery that were occasionally sent into the valleys. All that they did was to watch, from their mountain look-outs, their enemies' approach, and hide themselves in caves; or flee up to the foot of the glaciers till they had passed by. The attitude of the French Vaudois was thus for the most part passive; and they very rarely, like the Italian Vaudois, offered any determined or organized resistance to persecution. Hence they have no such heroic story to tell of battles and sieges and victories. Their heroism was displayed in patience, steadfastness, and long-suffering, rather than in resisting force by force; and they were usually ready to endure death in its most frightful forms rather than prove false to their faith. The ancient people of these valleys formed part of the flock of the Archbishop of Embrun. But history exhibits him as a very cruel shepherd. Thus, in 1335, there appears this remarkable entry in the accounts current of the bailli of Embrun: "Item, for persecuting the Vaudois, eight sols and thirty deniers of gold," as if the persecution of the Vaudois had become a regular department of the public service. What was done with the Vaudois when they were seized and tried at Embrun further appears from the records of the diocese. In 1348, twelve of the inhabitants of Val Louise were strangled at Embrun by the public executioner; and in 1393, a hundred and fifty inhabitants of the same valley were burned alive at the same place by order of the Inquisitor Borelli. But the most fatal of all the events that befell the inhabitants of Val Louise was that which occurred about a century later, in 1488, when nearly the whole of the remaining population of the valley were destroyed in a cavern near the foot of Mont Pelvoux. This dreadful massacre was perpetrated by a French army, under the direction of Albert Catanée, the papal legate. The army had been sent into Piedmont with the object of subjugating or destroying the Vaudois on the Italian side of the Alps, but had returned discomfited to Briançon, unable to effect their object. The legate then determined to take his revenge by an assault upon the helpless and unarmed French Vaudois, and suddenly directed his soldiers upon the valleys of Fressinières and Louise. The inhabitants of the latter valley, surprised, and unable to resist an army of some twenty thousand men, abandoned their dwellings, and made for the mountains with all haste, accompanied by their families, and driving their flocks before them. On the slope of Mont Pelvoux, about a third of the way up, there was formerly a great cavern, on the combe of Capescure, called La Balme-Chapelle--though now nearly worn away by the disintegration of the mountain-side--in which the poor hunted people contrived to find shelter. They built up the approaches to the cavern, filled the entrance with rocks, and considered themselves to be safe. But their confidence proved fatal to them. The Count La Palud, who was in command of the troops, seeing that it was impossible to force the entrance, sent his men up the mountain provided with ropes; and fixing them so that they should hang over the mouth of the cavern, a number of the soldiers slid down in full equipment, landing on the ledge right in front of the concealed Vaudois. Seized with a sudden panic, and being unarmed, many of them precipitated themselves over the rocks and were killed. The soldiers slaughtered all whom they could reach, after which they proceeded to heap up wood at the cavern mouth which they set on fire, and thus suffocated the remainder. Perrin says four hundred children were afterwards found in the cavern, stifled, in the arms of their dead mothers, and that not fewer than three thousand persons were thus ruthlessly destroyed. The little property of the slaughtered peasants was ordered by the Pope's legate to be divided amongst the vagabonds who had carried out his savage orders. The population having been thus exterminated, the district was settled anew some years later, in the reign of Louis XII., who gave his name to the valley; and a number of "good and true Catholics," including many goitres and idiots,[102] occupied the dwellings and possessed the lands of the slaughtered Vaudois. There is an old saying that "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church," but assuredly it does not apply to Val Louise, where the primitive Christian Church has been completely extinguished. [Footnote 102: It has been noted that these unfortunates abound most in the villages occupied by the new settlers. Thus, of the population of the village of St. Crepin, in the valley of the Durance, not fewer than one-tenth are deaf and dumb, with a large proportion of idiots.] There were other valleys in the same neighbourhood, whither we are now wending, where the persecution, though equally ferocious, proved less destructive; the inhabitants succeeding in making their escape into comparatively inaccessible places in the mountains before they could be put to the sword. For instance, in Val Fressinières--also opening into the valley of the Durance a little lower down than Val Louise--the Vaudois Church has never ceased to exist, and to this day the majority of the inhabitants belong to it. From the earliest times the people of the valley were distinguished for their "heresy;" and as early as the fourteenth century eighty persons of Fressinières and the neighbouring valley of Argentières,--willing to be martyrs rather than apostates,--were burnt at Embrun because of their religion. In the following century (1483) we find ninety-nine informations laid before John Lord Archbishop of Embrun against supposed heretics of Val Fressinières. The suspected were ordered to wear a cross upon their dress, before and behind, and not to appear at church without displaying such crosses. But it further appears from the records, that, instead of wearing the crosses, most of the persons so informed against fled into the mountains and hid themselves away in caves for the space of five years. The nest steps taken by the Archbishop are described in a Latin manuscript,[103] of which the following is a translation:-- "Also, that in consequence of the above, the monk Francis Splireti, of the order of Mendicants, Professor in Theology, was deputed in the quality of Inquisitor of the said valleys; and that in the year 1489, on the 1st of January, knowing that those of Freyssinier had relapsed into infamous heresy, and had not obeyed their orders, nor carried the cross on their dress, but on the contrary had received their excommunicated and banished brethren without delivering them over to the Church, sent to them new citation, to which not having appeared, an adjournment of their condemnation as hardened heretics, when their goods would be confiscated, and themselves handed over the secular power, was made to the 28th of June; but they remaining more obstinate than ever, so much so that no hope remains of bringing them back, all persons were forbidden to hold any communication whatsoever with them without permission of the Church, and it was ordered by the Procureur Fiscal that the aforesaid Inquisitor do proceed, without further notice, to the execution of his office." [Footnote 103: This was one of the MSS deposited by Samuel Morland (Oliver Cromwell's ambassador to Piedmont) at Cambridge in 1658, and is quoted by Jean Leger in his History of the Vaudois Churches.] What the execution of the Inquisitor's office meant, is, alas! but too well known. Bonds and imprisonment, scourgings and burnings at Embrun. The poor people appealed to the King of France for help against their persecutors, but in vain. In 1498 the inhabitants of Fressinières appeared by a procurator at Paris, on the occasion of the new sovereign, Louis XII., ascending the throne. But as the King was then seeking the favour of a divorce from his wife, Anne of Brittany, from Pope Alexander VI., he turned a deaf ear to their petition for mercy. On the contrary, Louis confirmed all the decisions of the clergy, and in return for the divorce which he obtained, he granted to the Pope's son, the infamous Cæsar Borgia, that very part of Dauphiny inhabited by the Vaudois, together with the title of Duke of Valentinois. They had appealed, as it were, to the tiger for mercy, and they were referred to the vulture. The persecution of the people of the valleys thus suffered no relaxation, and all that remained for them was flight into the mountains, to places where they were most likely to remain unmolested. Hence they fled up to the very edge of the glaciers, and formed their settlements at almost the farthest limits of vegetation. There the barrenness of the soil, the inhospitality of the climate, and the comparative inaccessibility of their villages, proved their security. Of them it might be truly said, that they "wandered about in sheepskins and goat-skins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented (of whom the world was not worthy); they wandered in deserts and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth." Yet the character of these poor peasants was altogether irreproachable. Even Louis XII. said of them, "Would to God that I were as good a Christian as the worst of these people!" The wonder is that, in the face of their long-continued persecutions, extending over so many centuries, any remnant of the original population of the valleys should have been preserved. Long after the time of Louis XII. and Cæsar Borgia, the French historian, De Thou (writing in 1556), thus describes the people of Val Fressinières: "Notwithstanding their squalidness, it is surprising that they are very far from being uncultivated in their morals. They almost all understand Latin; and are able to write fairly enough. They understand also as much of French as will enable them to read the Bible and to sing psalms; nor would you easily find a boy among them who, if he were questioned as to the religious opinions which they hold in common with the Waldenses, would not be able to give from memory a reasonable account of them."[104] [Footnote 104: De Thou's History, book xxvii.] After the promulgation of the Edict of Nantes, the Vaudois enjoyed a brief respite from their sufferings. They then erected temples, appointed ministers, and worshipped openly. This, however, only lasted for a short time, and when the Edict was revoked, and persecution began again, in the reign of Louis XIV., their worship was suppressed wherever practicable. But though the Vaudois temples were pulled down and their ministers banished, the Roman Catholics failed to obtain a footing in the valley. Some of the pastors continued to brave the fury of the persecutors, and wandered about from place to place among the scattered flocks, ministering to them at the peril of their lives. Rewards were offered for their apprehension, and a sort of "Hue and Cry" was issued by the police, describing their age, and height, and features, as if they had been veritable criminals. And when they were apprehended they were invariably hanged. As late as 1767 the parliament of Grenoble condemned their pastor Berenger to death for continuing to preach to congregations in the "Desert." This religious destitution of the Vaudois continued to exist until a comparatively recent period. The people were without either pastors or teachers, and religion had become a tradition with them rather than an active living faith. Still, though poor and destitute, they held to their traditional belief, and refused to conform to the dominant religion. And so they continued until within the last forty years, when the fact of the existence of these remnants of the ancient Vaudois in the valleys of the High Alps came to the knowledge of Felix Neff, and he determined to go to their help and devote himself to their service. * * * * * One would scarcely expect to find the apostle of the High Alps in the person of a young Swiss soldier of artillery. Yet so it was. In his boyhood, Neff read Plutarch, which filled his mind with admiration of the deeds of the great men of old. While passing through the soldier phase of his career the "Memoirs of Oberlin" accidentally came under his notice, the perusal of which gave quite a new direction to his life. Becoming impressed by religion, his ambition now was to be a missionary. Leaving the army, in which he had reached the rank of sergeant at nineteen, he proceeded to prepare himself for the ministry, and after studying for a time, and passing his preliminary examinations, he was, in conformity with the custom of the Geneva Church, employed on probation as a lay helper in parochial work. In this capacity Neff first went to Mens, in the department of Isère, where he officiated in the absence of the regular pastor, as well as occasionally at Vizille, for a period of about two years. It was while residing at Mens that the young missionary first heard of the existence of the scattered communities of primitive Christians on the High Alps, descendants of the ancient Vaudois; and his mind became inflamed with the desire of doing for them what Oberlin had done for the poor Protestants of the Ban de la Roche. "I am always dreaming of the High Alps," he wrote to a friend, "and I would rather be stationed there than under the beautiful sky of Languedoc." But it was first necessary that he should receive ordination for the ministry; and accordingly in 1823, when in his twenty-fifth year, he left Mens with that object. He did not, however, seek ordination by the National Church of Geneva, which, in his opinion, had in a great measure ceased to hold Evangelical truth; but he came over to London, at the invitation of Mr. Cook and Mr. Wilks, two Congregational ministers, by whom he was duly ordained a minister in the Independent Chapel, Poultry. Shortly after his return to France, Neff, much to his own satisfaction, was invited as pastor to the very district in which he so much desired to minister--the most destitute in the High Alps. Before setting out he wrote in his journal, "To-morrow, with the blessing of God, I mean to push for the Alps by the sombre and picturesque valley of L'Oisan." After a few days, the young pastor was in the scene of his future labours; and he proceeded to explore hamlet after hamlet in search of the widely-scattered flock committed to his charge, and to arrange his plans for the working of his extensive parish. But it was more than a parish, for it embraced several of the most extensive, rugged, and mountainous arrondissements of the High Alps. Though the whole number of people in his charge did not amount to more than six or seven hundred, they lived at great distances from each other, the churches to which he ministered being in some cases as much as eighty miles apart, separated by gorges and mountain-passes, for the most part impassable in winter. Neff's district extended in one direction from Vars to Briançon, and in another from Champsaur in the valley of the Drac to San Veran on the slope of Monte Viso, close to the Italian frontier. His residence was fixed at La Chalp, above Queyras, but as he rarely slept more than three nights in one place, he very seldom enjoyed its seclusion. The labour which Neff imposed upon himself was immense; and it was especially in the poorest and most destitute districts that he worked the hardest. He disregarded alike the summer's heat and the winter's cold. His first visit to Dormilhouse, in Val Fressinières, was made in January, when the mountain-paths were blocked with ice and snow; but, assembling the young men of the village, he went out with them armed with hatchets, and cut steps in the ice to enable the worshippers from the lower hamlets to climb up to service in the village church. The people who first came to hear him preach at Violens brought wisps of straw with them, which they lighted to guide them through the snow, while others, who had a greater distance to walk, brought pine torches. Nothing daunted, the valiant soldier, furnished with a stout staff and shod with heavy-nailed shoes, covered with linen socks to prevent slipping on the snow, would set out with his wallet on his back across the Col d'Orcières in winter, in the track of the lynx and the chamois, with the snow and sleet beating against his face, to visit his people on the other side of the mountain. His patience, his perseverance, his sweetness of temper, were unfailing. "Ah!" said one unbelieving Thomas of Val Fressinières in his mountain patois, "you have come among us like a woman who attempts to kindle a fire with green wood; she exhausts her breath in blowing it to keep the little flame alive, but the moment she quits it, it is instantly extinguished." Neff nevertheless laboured on with hope, and neither discouragement nor obstruction slackened his efforts. And such labours could not fail of their effect. He succeeded in inspiring the simple mountaineers with his own zeal, he evoked their love, and excited their enthusiastic admiration. When he returned to Dormilhouse after a brief absence, the whole village would turn out and come down the mountain to meet and embrace him. "The rocks, the cascades, nay, the very glaciers," he wrote to a friend, "all seemed animated, and presented a smiling aspect; the savage country became agreeable and dear to me from the moment its inhabitants were my brethren." Unresting and indefatigable, Neff was always at work. He exhorted the people in hovels, held schools in barns in which he taught the children, and catechised them in stables. His hand was in every good work. He taught the people to sing, he taught them to read, he taught them to pray. To be able to speak to them familiarly, he learnt their native patois, and laboured at it like a schoolboy. He worked as a missionary among savages. The poor mountaineers had been so long destitute of instruction, that everything had as it were to be begun with them from the beginning. Sharing in their hovels and stables, with their squalor and smoke, he taught them how to improve them by adding chimneys and windows, and showed how warmth might be obtained more healthfully than by huddling together in winter-time with the cattle. He taught them manners, and especially greater respect for women, inculcating the lesson by his own gentleness and tender deference. Out of doors, he showed how they might till the ground to greater advantage, and introduced an improved culture of the potato, which more than doubled the production. Observing how the pastures of Dormilhouse were scorched by the summer sun, he urged the adoption of a system of irrigation. The villagers were at first most obstinate in their opposition to his plans; but he persevered, laid out a canal, and succeeded at last in enlisting a body of workmen, whom he led out, pickaxe in hand, himself taking a foremost part in the work; and at last the waters were let into the canal amidst joy and triumph. At Violens he helped to build and finish the chapel, himself doing mason-work, smith-work, and carpenter-work by turns. At Dormilhouse a school was needed, and he showed the villagers how to build one; preparing the design, and taking part in the erection, until it was finished and ready for use. In short, he turned his hand to everything--nothing was too high or too low for this noble citizen of two worlds. At length, a serious accident almost entirely disabled him. While on one of his mountain journeys, he was making a détour amongst a mass of rocky débris, to avoid the dangers of an avalanche, when he had the misfortune to fall and severely sprain his knee. He became laid up for a time, and when able to move, he set out for his mother's home at Geneva, in the hope of recovering health and strength; for his digestive powers were also by this time seriously injured. When he went away, the people of the valleys felt as if they should never see him more; and their sorrow at his departure was heart-rending. After trying the baths of Plombiéres without effect, he proceeded onwards to Geneva, which he reached only to die; and thus this good and noble soldier--one of the bravest of earth's heroes--passed away to his eternal reward at the early age of thirty-one. * * * * * The valley of Fressinières--the principle scene of Neff's labours--joins the valley of the Durance nearly opposite the little hamlet of La Roche. There we leave the high road from Briançon to Fort Dauphin, and crossing the river by a timber bridge, ascend the steep mountain-side by a mule path, in order to reach the entrance to the valley of Fressinières, the level of which is high above that of the Durance. Not many years since, the higher valley could only be approached from this point by a very difficult mountain-path amidst rocks and stones, called the Ladder, or Pas de l'Échelle. It was dangerous at all times, and quite impassable in winter. The mule-path which has lately been made, though steep, is comparatively easy. What the old path was, and what were the discomforts of travelling through this district in Neff's time, may be appreciated on a perusal of the narrative of the young pastor Bost, who in 1840 determined to make a sort of pilgrimage to the scenes of his friend's labours some seventeen years before. M. Bost, however, rather exaggerates the difficulties and discomforts of the valleys than otherwise. He saw no beauty nor grandeur in the scenery, only "horrible mountains in a state of dissolution" and constantly ready to fall upon the heads of massing travellers. He had no eyes for the picturesque though gloomy lake of La Roche, but saw only the miserable hamlet itself. He slept in the dismal little inn, as doubtless Neff had often done before, and was horrified by the multitudinous companions that shared his bed; and, tumbling out, he spent the rest of the night on the floor. The food was still worse--cold _café noir_, and bread eighteen months old, soaked in water before it could be eaten. His breakfast that morning made him ill for a week. Then his mounting up the Pas de l'Échelle, which he did not climb "without profound emotion," was a great trouble to him. Of all this we find not a word in the journals or letters of Neff, whose early life as a soldier had perhaps better inured him to "roughing it" than the more tender bringing-up of Pastor Bost. As we rounded the shoulder of the hill, almost directly overlooking the ancient Roman town of Rama in the valley of the Durance underneath, we shortly came in sight of the little hamlet of Palons, a group of "peasants' nests," overhung by rocks, with the one good house in it, the comfortable parsonage of the Protestant pastor, situated at the very entrance to the valley. Although the peasants' houses which constitute the hamlet of Palons are still very poor and miserable, the place has been greatly improved since Neff's time, by the erection of the parsonage. It was found that the pastors who were successively appointed to minister to the poor congregations in the valley very soon became unfitted for their work by the hardships to which they were exposed; and being without any suitable domestic accommodation, one after another of them resigned their charge. To remedy this defect, a movement was begun in 1852 by the Rev. Mr. Freemantle, rector of Claydon, Bucks, assisted by the Foreign Aid Society and a few private friends, with the object of providing pastors' dwellings, as well as chapels when required, in the more destitute places. The movement has already been attended with considerable success; and among its first results was the erection in 1857 of the comfortable parsonage of Palons, the large lower room of which also serves the purpose of a chapel. The present incumbent is M. Charpiot, of venerable and patriarchal aspect, whose white hairs are a crown of glory--a man beloved by his extensive flock, for his parish embraces the whole valley, about twelve miles in extent, including the four villages of Ribes, Violens, Minsals, and Dormilhouse; other pastors having been appointed of late years to the more distant stations included in the original widely-scattered charge of Felix Neff. The situation of the parsonage and adjoining grounds at Palons is charmingly picturesque. It stands at the entrance to the defile which leads into Val Fressinières, having a background of bold rocks enclosing a mountain plateau known as the "Camp of Catinat," a notorious persecutor of the Vaudois. In front of the parsonage extends a green field planted with walnut and other trees, part of which is walled off as the burying-ground of the hamlet. Alongside, in a deep rocky gully, runs the torrent of the Biasse, leaping from rock to rock on its way to the valley of the Durance, far below. This fall, or cataract, is not inappropriately named the "Gouffouran," or roaring gulf; and its sullen roar is heard all through the night in the adjoining parsonage. The whole height of the fall, as it tumbles from rock to rock, is about four hundred and fifty feet; and about halfway down, the water shoots into a deep, dark cavern, where it becomes completely lost to sight. The inhabitants of the hamlet are a poor hard-working people, pursuing their industry after very primitive methods. Part of the Biasse, as it issues from the defile, is turned aside here and there to drive little fulling-mills of the rudest construction, where the people "waulk" the cloth of their own making. In the adjoining narrow fields overhanging the Gouffouran, where the ploughs are at work, the oxen are yoked to them in the old Roman fashion, the pull being by a bar fixed across the animals' foreheads. In the neighbourhood of Palons, as at various other places in the valley, there are numerous caverns which served by turns in early times as hiding-places and as churches, and which were not unfrequently consecrated by the Vaudois with their blood. One of these is still known as the "Glesia," or "Église." Its opening is on the crest of a frightful precipice, but its diameter has of late years been considerably reduced by the disintegration of the adjoining rock. Neff once took Captain Cotton up to see it, and chanted the _Te Deum_ in the rude temple with great emotion. Palons is, perhaps, the most genial and fertile spot in the valley; it looks like a little oasis in the desert. Indeed, Neff thought the soil of the place too rich for the growth of piety. "Palons," said he in his journal, "is more fertile than the rest of the valley, and even produces wine: the consequence is, that there is less piety here." Neff even entertained the theory that the poorer the people the greater was their humility and fervour, and the less their selfishness and spiritual pride. Thus, he considered "the fertility of the commune of Champsaur, and its proximity to the high road and to Gap, great stumbling-blocks." The loftiest, coldest, and most barren spots--such as San Veran and Dormilhouse--were, in his opinion, by far the most promising. Of the former he said, "It is the highest, and consequently the most pious, village in the valley of Queyras;" and of the inhabitants of the latter he said, "From the first moment of my arrival I took them to my heart, and I ardently desired to be unto them even as another Oberlin." CHAPTER IV. THE VAUDOIS MOUNTAIN-REFUGE OF DORMILHOUSE. The valley of Fressinières could never have maintained a large population. Though about twelve miles in extent, it contains a very small proportion of arable land--only a narrow strip, of varying width, lying in the bottom, with occasional little patches of cultivated ground along the mountain-sides, where the soil has settled on the ledges, the fields seeming in many cases to hang over precipices. At the upper end of the valley, the mountains come down so close to the river Biasse that no space is left for cultivation, and the slopes are so rocky and abrupt as to be unavailable even for pasturage, excepting of goats. Yet the valley seems never to have been without a population, more or less numerous according to the rigour of the religious persecutions which prevailed in the neighbourhood. Its comparative inaccessibility, its inhospitable climate, and its sterility, combined to render it one of the most secure refuges of the Vaudois in the Middle Ages. It could neither be easily entered by an armed force, nor permanently occupied by them. The scouts on the hills overlooking the Durance could always see their enemies approach, and the inhabitants were enabled to take refuge in caves in the mountain-sides, or flee to the upper parts of the valley, before the soldiers could clamber up the steep Pas de l'Échelle, and reach the barricaded defile through which the Biasse rushes down the rocky gorge of the Gouffouran. When the invaders succeeded in penetrating this barrier, they usually found the hamlets deserted and the people fled. They could then only wreak their vengeance on the fields, which they laid waste, and on the dwellings, which they burned; and when the "brigands" had at length done their worst and departed, the poor people crept back to their ruined homes to pray, amidst their ashes, for strength to enable them to bear the heavy afflictions which they were thus called upon to suffer for conscience' sake. The villages in the lower part of the valley were thus repeatedly ravaged and destroyed. But far up, at its extremest point, a difficult footpath led, across the face almost of a precipice, which the persecutors never ventured to scale, to the hamlet of Dormilhouse, seated on a few ledges of rock on a lofty mountain-side, five thousand feet above the level of the sea; and this place, which was for centuries a mountain fastness of the persecuted, remains a Vaudois settlement to this day. An excursion to this interesting mountain hamlet having been arranged, our little party of five persons set out for the place on the morning of the 1st of July, under the guidance of Pastor Charpiot. Though the morning was fine and warm, yet, as the place of our destination was situated well up amongst the clouds, we were warned to provide ourselves with umbrellas and waterproofs, nor did the provision prove in vain. We were also warned that there was an utter want of accommodation for visitors at Dormilhouse, for which we must be prepared. The words scratched on the window of the Norwegian inn might indeed apply to it: "Here the stranger may find very good entertainment--_provided he bring it with him_!" We accordingly carried our entertainment with us, in the form of a store of blankets, bread, chocolate, and other articles, which, with the traveller's knapsacks, were slung across the back of a donkey. After entering the defile, an open part of the valley was passed, amidst which the little river, at present occupying very narrow limits, meandered; but it was obvious from the width of the channel and the débris widely strewn about, that in winter it is a roaring torrent. A little way up we met an old man coming down driving a loaded donkey, with whom one of our party, recognising him as an old acquaintance, entered into conversation. In answer to an inquiry made as to the progress of the good cause in the valley, the old man replied very despondingly. "There was," he said, "a great lack of faith, of zeal, of earnestness, amongst the rising generation. They were too fond of pleasures, too apt to be led away by the fleeting vanities of this world." It was only the old story--the complaint of the aged against the young. When this old peasant was a boy, his elders doubtless thought and said the same of him. The generation growing old always think the generation still young in a state of degeneracy. So it was forty years since, when Felix Neff was amongst them, and so it will be forty years hence. One day Neff met an old man near Mens, who recounted to him the story of the persecutions which his parents and himself had endured, and he added: "In those times there was more zeal than there is now; my father and mother used to cross mountains and forests by night, in the worst weather, at the risk of their lives, to be present at divine service performed in secret; but now we are grown lazy: religious freedom is the deathblow to piety." An hour's walking brought us to the principal hamlet of the commune, formerly called Fressinières, but now known as Les Ribes, occupying a wooded height on the left bank of the river. The population is partly Roman Catholic and partly Protestant. The Roman Catholics have a church here, the last in the valley, the two other places of worship higher up being Protestant. The principal person of Les Ribes is M. Baridon, son of the Joseph Baridon, receiver of the commune, so often mentioned with such affection in the journal of Neff. He is the only person in the valley whose position and education give him a claim to the title of "Monsieur;" and his house contains the only decent apartment in the Val Fressinières where pastors and visitors could be lodged previous to the erection, by Mr. Freemantle, of the pleasant little parsonage at Palons. This apartment in the Baridons' house Neff used to call the "Prophet's Chamber." Half an hour higher up the valley we reached the hamlet of Violens, where all the inhabitants are Protestants. It was at this place that Neff helped to build and finish the church, for which he designed the seats and pulpit, and which he opened and dedicated on the 29th of August, 1824, the year before he finally left the neighbourhood. Violens is a poor hamlet situated at the bottom of a deep glen, or rocky abyss, called La Combe; the narrow valleys of Dauphiny, like those of Devon, being usually called combes, doubtless from the same original Celtic word _cwm_, signifying a hollow or dingle. A little above Violens the valley contracts almost to a ravine, until we reach the miserable hamlet of Minsals, so shut in by steep crags that for nine months of the year it never sees the sun, and during several months in winter it lies buried in snow. The hamlet consists for the most part of hovels of mud and stone, without windows or chimneys, being little better than stables; indeed, in winter time, for the sake of warmth, the poor people share them with their cattle. How they contrive to scrape a living out of the patches of soil rescued from the rocks, or hung upon the precipices on the mountain-side, is a wonder. One of the horrors of this valley consists in the constant state of disintegration of the adjoining rocks, which, being of a slaty formation, frequently break away in large masses, and are hurled into the lower grounds. This, together with the fall of avalanches in winter, makes the valley a most perilous place to live in. A little above Minsals, only a few years since, a tremendous fall of rock and mud swept over nearly the whole of the cultivated ground, since which many of the peasantry have had to remove elsewhere. What before was a well-tilled meadow, is now only a desolate waste, covered with rocks and débris. Another of the horrors of the place is its liability to floods, which come rushing down, from the mountains, and often work sad havoc. Sometimes a fall of rocks from the cliffs above dams up the bed of the river, when a lake accumulates behind the barrier until it bursts, and the torrent swoops down the valley, washing away fields, and bridges, and mills, and hovels. Even the stouter-built dwelling of M. Baridon at Les Ribes was nearly carried away by one of such inundations twelve years ago. It stands about a hundred yards from the mountain-stream which comes down from the Pic de la Séa. One day in summer a storm burst over the mountain, and the stream at once became swollen to a torrent. The inmates of the dwelling thought the house must eventually be washed away, and gave themselves up to prayer. The flood, bearing with it rolling rocks, came nearer and nearer, until it reached a few old walnut trees on a line with the torrent. A rock of some thirty feet square tumbled against one of the trees, which staggered and bent, but held fast and stopped the rock. The débris at once rolled upon it into a bank, the course of the torrent was turned, and the dwelling and its inmates were saved. Another incident, illustrative of the perils of daily life in Val Fressinières, was related to me by Mr. Milsom while passing the scene of one of the mud and rock avalanches so common in the valley. Etienne Baridon, a member of the same Les Ribes family, an intelligent young man, disabled for ordinary work by lameness and deformity, occupied himself in teaching the children in the Protestant school at Violens, whither he walked daily, accompanied by the pupils from Les Ribes. One day, a heavy thunderstorm burst over the valley, and sent down an avalanche of mud, débris, and boulders, which rolled quite across the valley and extended to the river. The news of the circumstance reached Etienne when in school at Violens; the road to Les Ribes was closed; and he was accordingly urged to stay over the night with the children. But thinking of the anxiety of their parents, he determined to guide them back over the fall of rocks if possible. Arrived at the place, he found the mass still on the move, rolling slowly down in a ridge of from ten to twenty feet high, towards the river. Supported by a stout staff; the lame Baridon took first one child and then another upon his hump-back; and contrived to carry them across in safety; but while making his last journey with the last child, his foot slipped and his leg got badly crushed among the still-rolling stones. He was, however, able to extricate himself, and reached Les Ribes in safety with all the children. "This Etienne," concluded Mr. Milsom, "was really a noble fellow, and his poor deformed body covered the soul of a hero." At length, after a journey of about ten miles up this valley of the shadow of death, along which the poor persecuted Vaudois were so often hunted, we reached an apparent _cul-de-sac_ amongst the mountains, beyond which further progress seemed impracticable. Precipitous rocks, with their slopes of débris at foot, closed in the valley all round, excepting only the narrow gullet by which we had come; but, following the footpath, a way up the mountain-side gradually disclosed itself--a zigzag up the face of what seemed to be a sheer precipice--and this we were told was the road to Dormilhouse. The zigzag path is known as the Tourniquet. The ascent is long, steep, and fatiguing. As we passed up, we observed that the precipice contained many narrow ledges upon which soil has settled, or to which it has been carried. Some of these are very narrow, only a few yards in extent, but wherever there is room for a spade to turn, the little patches bear marks of cultivation; and these are the fields of the people of Dormilhouse! Far up the mountain, the footpath crosses in front of a lofty cascade--La Pisse du Dormilhouse--which leaps from the summit of the precipice, and sometimes dashes over the roadway itself. Looking down into the valley from this point, we see the Biasse meandering like a thread in the hollow of the mountains, becoming lost to sight in the ravine near Minsals. We have now ascended to a great height, and the air feels cold and raw. When we left Palons, the sun was shining brightly, and its heat was almost oppressive, but now the temperature feels wintry. On our way up, rain began to fall; as we ascended the Tourniquet the rain became changed to sleet; and at length, on reaching the summit of the rising ground from which we first discerned the hamlet of Dormilhouse, on the first day of July, the snow was falling heavily, and all the neighbouring mountains were clothed in the garb of winter. This, then, is the famous mountain fastness of the Vaudois--their last and loftiest and least accessible retreat when hunted from their settlements in the lower valleys hundreds of years ago. Driven from rock to rock, from Alp to Alp, they clambered up on to this lofty mountain-ledge, five thousand feet high, and made good their settlement, though at the daily peril of their lives. It was a place of refuge, a fortress and citadel of the faithful, where they continued to worship God according to conscience during the long dark ages of persecution and tyranny. The dangers and terrors of the situation are indeed so great, that it never could have been chosen even for a hiding-place, much less for a permanent abode, but from the direst necessity. What the poor people suffered while establishing themselves on these barren mountain heights no one can tell, but they contrived at length to make the place their home, and to become inured to their hard life, until it became almost a second nature to them. The hamlet of Dormilhouse is said to have existed for nearly six hundred years, during which the religion of its inhabitants has remained the same. It has been alleged that the people are the descendants of a colony of refugee Lombards; but M. Muston, and others well able to judge, after careful inquiry on the spot, have come to the conclusion that they bear all the marks of being genuine descendants of the ancient Vaudois. In features, dress, habits, names, language, and religious doctrine, they have an almost perfect identity with the Vaudois of Piedmont at the present day. Dormilhouse consists of about forty cottages, inhabited by some two hundred persons. The cottages are perched "like eagles' nests," one tier ranging over another on the rocky ledges of a steep mountain-side. There is very little soil capable of cultivation in the neighbourhood, but the villagers seek out little patches in the valley below and on the mountain shelves, from which they contrive to grow a little grain for home use. The place is so elevated and so exposed, that in some seasons even rye will not ripen at Dormilhouse, while the pasturages are in many places inaccessible to cattle, and scarcely safe for sheep. The principal food of the people is goats' milk and unsifted rye, which they bake into cakes in the autumn, and these cakes last them the whole year--the grain, if left unbaked, being apt to grow mouldy and spoil in so damp an atmosphere. Besides, fuel is so scarce that it is necessary to exercise the greatest economy in its use, every stick burnt in the village having to be brought from a distance of some twelve miles, on the backs of donkeys, by the steep mountain-path leading up to the hamlet. Hence, also, the unsavoury means which they are under the necessity of adopting to economize warmth in the winter, by stabling the cattle with themselves in the cottages. The huts are for the most part wretched constructions of stone and mud, from which fresh air, comfort, and cleanliness seem to be entirely excluded. Excepting that the people are for the most part comfortably dressed, in clothing of coarse wool, which they dress and weave themselves, their domestic accommodation and manner of living are centuries behind the age; and were a stranger suddenly to be set down in the village, he could with difficulty be made to believe that he was in the land of civilised Frenchmen. The place is dreary, stern, and desolate-looking even in summer. Thus, we entered it with the snow falling on the 1st of July! Few of the balmy airs of the sweet South of France breathe here. In the hollow of the mountains the heat may be like that of an oven; but here, far up on the heights, though the air may be fresh and invigorating at times, when the wind blows it often rises to a hurricane. Here the summer comes late and departs early. While flowers are blooming in the valleys, not a bud or blade of corn is to be seen at Dormilhouse. At the season when vegetation is elsewhere at its richest, the dominant features of the landscape are barrenness and desolation. The very shapes of the mountains are rugged, harsh, and repulsive. Right over against the hamlet, separated from it by a deep gully, rises up the grim, bare Gramusac, as black as a wall, but along the ledges of which, the hunters of Dormilhouse, who are very daring and skilful, do not fear to stalk the chamois. But if the place is thus stern and even appalling in summer, what must it be in winter? There is scarcely a habitation in the village that is not exposed to the danger of being carried away by avalanches or falling rocks. The approach to the mountain is closed by ice and snow, while the rocks are all tapestried with icicles. The _tourmente_, or snow whirlwind, occasionally swoops up the valley, tears the roofs from the huts, and scatters them in destruction. Here is a passage from Neff's journal, vividly descriptive of winter life at Dormilhouse:-- "The weather has been rigorous in the extreme; the falls of snow are very frequent, and when it becomes a little milder, a general thaw takes place, and our hymns are often sung amid the roar of the avalanches, which, gliding along the smooth face of the glacier, hurl themselves from precipice to precipice, like vast cataracts of silver." Writing in January, he says:-- "We have been buried in four feet of snow since of 1st of November. At this very moment a terrible blast is whirling the snow in thick blinding clouds. Travelling is exceedingly difficult and even dangerous among these valleys, particularly in the neighbourhood of Dormilhouse, by reason of the numerous avalanches falling everywhere.... One Sunday evening our scholars and many of the Dormilhouse people, when returning home after the sermon at Violens, narrowly escaped an avalanche. It rolled through a narrow defile between two groups of persons: a few seconds sooner or later, and it would have plunged the flower of our youth into the depths of an unfathomable gorge.... In fact, there are very few habitations in these parts which are not liable to be swept away, for there is not a spot in the narrow corner of the valley which can be considered absolutely safe. But terrible as their situation is, they owe to it their religion, and perhaps their physical existence. If their country had been more secure and more accessible, they would have been exterminated like the inhabitants of Val Louise." Such is the interesting though desolate mountain hamlet to the service of whose hardy inhabitants the brave Felix Neff devoted himself during the greater part of his brief missionary career. It was characteristic of him to prefer to serve them because their destitution was greater than that which existed in any other quarter of his extensive parish; and he turned from the grand mountain scenery of Arvieux and his comfortable cottage at La Chalp, to spend his winters in the dismal hovels and amidst the barren wastes of Dormilhouse. When Neff first went amongst them, the people were in a state of almost total spiritual destitution. They had not had any pastor stationed amongst them for nearly a hundred and fifty years. During all that time they had been without schools of any kind, and generation after generation had grown up and passed away in ignorance. Yet with all the inborn tenacity of their race, they had throughout refused to conform to the dominant religion. They belonged to the Vaudois Church, and repudiated Romanism. There was probably a Protestant church existing at Dormilhouse previous to the Revocation, as is shown by the existence of an ancient Vaudois church-bell, which was hid away until of late years, when it was dug up and hung in the belfry of the present church. In 1745, the Roman Catholics endeavoured to effect a settlement in the place, and then erected the existing church, with a residence for the curé. But the people, though they were on the best of terms with the curé, refused to enter his church. During the twenty years that he ministered there, it is said the sole congregation consisted of his domestic servant, who assisted him at mass. The story is still told of the curé bringing up from Les Ribes a large bag of apples--an impossible crop at Dormilhouse--by way of tempting the children to come to him and receive instruction. But they went only so long as the apples lasted, and when they were gone the children disappeared. The curé complained that during the whole time he had been in the place he had not been able to get a single person to cross himself. So, finding he was not likely to be of any use there, he petitioned his bishop to be allowed to leave; on which, his request being complied with, the church was closed. This continued until the period of the French Revolution, when religious toleration became recognised. The Dormilhouse people then took possession of the church. They found in it several dusty images, the basin for the holy water, the altar candlesticks, and other furniture, just as the curé had left them many years before; and they are still preserved as curiosities. The new occupants of the church whitewashed the pictures, took down the crosses, dug up the old Vaudois bell and hung it up in the belfry, and rang the villagers together to celebrate the old worship again. But they were still in want of a regular minister until the period when Felix Neff settled amongst them. A zealous young preacher, Henry Laget, had before then paid them a few visits, and been warmly welcomed; and when, in his last address, he told them they would see his face no more, "it seemed," said a peasant who related the incident to Neff, "as if a gust of wind had extinguished the torch which was to light us in our passage by night across the precipice." And even Neff's ministry, as we have above seen, only lasted for the short space of about three years. Some years after the death of Neff, another attempt was made by the Roman Catholics to establish a mission at Dormilhouse. A priest went up from Les Ribes accompanied by a sister of mercy from Gap--"the pearl of the diocese," she was called--who hired a room for the purpose of commencing a school. To give _éclat_ to their enterprise, the Archbishop of Embrun himself went up, clothed in a purple dress, riding a white horse, and accompanied by a party of men bearing a great red cross, which he caused to be set up at the entrance to the village. But when the archbishop appeared, not a single inhabitant went out to meet him; they had all assembled in the church to hold a prayer-meeting, and it lasted during the whole period of his visit. All that he accomplished was to set up the great red cross, after which he went down the Tourniquet again; and shortly after, the priest and the sister of mercy, finding they could not obtain a footing, also left the village. Somehow or other, the red cross which had been set up mysteriously disappeared, but how it had been disposed of no one would ever reveal. It was lately proposed to commemorate the event of the archbishop's visit by the erection of an obelisk on the spot where he had set up the red cross; and a tablet, with a suitable inscription, was provided for it by the Rev. Mr. Freemantle, of Claydon. But when he was told that the site was exposed to the full force of the avalanches descending from the upper part of the mountain in winter, and would speedily be swept away, the project of the memorial pillar was abandoned, and the tablet was inserted, instead, in the front wall of the village church, where it reads as follows:-- À LA GLOIRE DE DIEU DONT DE LES TEMPS ANCIENS ET À TRAVERS LE MARTYR DE LEURS PÈRES A MAINTENU À DORMILHOUSE LA FOI DONNE AUX SAINTS ET LA CONNAISSANCE DE LA PAROLE LES HABITANTS ONT ÉLEVÉ CETTE PIERRE MDCCCLXIV. Having thus described the village and its history, a few words remain to be added as to the visit of our little party of travellers from Palons. On reaching the elevated point at which the archbishop had set up the red cross, the whole of the huts lay before us, and a little way down the mountain-side we discerned the village church, distinguished by its little belfry. Leaving on our right the Swiss-looking châlet with overhanging roof, in which Neff used to lodge with the Baridon-Verdure family while at Dormilhouse, and now known as "Felix Neff's house," we made our way down a steep and stony footpath towards the school-house adjoining the church, in front of which we found the large ash trees, shading both church and school, which Neff himself had planted. Arrived at the school-house, we there found shelter and accommodation for the night. The schoolroom, fitted with its forms and desks, was our parlour, and our bedrooms, furnished with the blankets we had brought with us, were in the little chambers adjoining. At eight in the evening the church bell rang for service--the summoning bell. The people had been expecting the visit, and turned out in full force, so that at nine o'clock, when the last bell rang, the church was found filled to the door. Every seat was occupied--by men on one side, and by women on the other. The service was conducted by Mr. Milsom, the missionary visitor from Lyons, who opened with prayer, then gave out the twenty-third Psalm, which was sung to an accompaniment on the harmonium; then another prayer, followed by the reading of a chapter in the New Testament, was wound up by an address, in which the speaker urged the people to their continuance in well-doing. In the course of his remarks he said: "Be not discouraged because the results of your Labours may appear but small. Work on and faint not, and God will give the spiritual increase. Pastors, teachers, and colporteurs are too often ready to despond, because the fruit does not seem to ripen while they are watching it. But the best fruit grows slowly. Think how the Apostles laboured. They were all poor men, but men of brave hearts; and they passed away to their rest long before the seed which they planted grew up and ripened to perfection. Work on then in patience and hope, and be assured that God will at length help you." Mr. Milsom's address was followed by another from the pastor, and then by a final prayer and hymn, after which the service was concluded, and the villagers dispersed to their respective homes a little after ten o'clock. The snow had ceased falling, but the sky was still overcast, and the night felt cold and raw, like February rather than July. The wonder is, that this community of Dormilhouse should cling to their mountain eyrie so long after the necessity for their living above the clouds has ceased; but it is their home, and they have come to love it, and are satisfied to live and die there. Rather than live elsewhere, they will walk, as some of them do, twelve miles in the early morning, to their work down in the valley of the Durance, and twelve miles home again, in the evenings, to their perch on the rocks at Dormilhouse. They are even proud of their mountain home, and would not change it for the most smiling vineyard of the plains. They are like a little mountain clan--all Baridons, or Michels, or Orcieres, or Bertholons, or Arnouds--proud of their descent from the ancient Vaudois. It is their boast that a Roman Catholic does not live among them. Once, when a young shepherd came up from the valley to pasture his flock in the mountains, he fell in love with a maiden of the village, and proposed to marry her. "Yes," was the answer, with this condition, that he joined the Vaudois Church. And he assented, married the girl, and settled for life at Dormilhouse.[105] [Footnote 105: Since the date of our visit, we learn that a sad accident--strikingly illustrative of the perils of village life at Dormilhouse--has befallen this young shepherd, by name Jean Joseph Lagier. One day in October, 1869, while engaged in gathering wood near the brink of the precipice overhanging Minsals, he accidently fell over and was killed on the spot, leaving behind him a widow and a large family. He was a person of such excellent character and conduct, that he had been selected as colporteur for the neighbourhood.] * * * * * The next morning broke clear and bright overhead. The sun shone along the rugged face of the Gramusac right over against the hamlet, bringing out its bolder prominences. Far below, the fleecy clouds were still rolling themselves up the mountain-sides, or gradually dispersing as the sun caught them on their emerging from the valley below. The view was bold and striking, displaying the grandeur of the scenery of Dormilhouse in one of its best aspects. Setting out on the return journey to Palons, we descended the face of the mountain on which Dormilhouse stands, by a steep footpath right in front of it, down towards the falls of the Biasse. Looking back, the whole village appeared above us, cottage over cottage, and ledge over ledge, with its stern background of rocky mountain. Immediately under the village, in a hollow between two shoulders of rock, the cascade of the Biasse leaps down into the valley. The highest leap falls in a jet of about a hundred feet, and the lower, divided into two by a projecting ledge, breaks into a shower of spray which falls about a hundred and fifty feet more into the abyss below. Even in Switzerland this fall would be considered a fine object; but in this out-of-the-way place, it is rarely seen except by the villagers, who have water and cascades more than enough. We were told on the spot, that some eighty years since an avalanche shot down the mountain immediately on to the plateau on which we stood, carrying with it nearly half the village of Dormilhouse; and every year the avalanches shoot down at the same place, which is strewn with the boulders and débris that extend far down into the valley. At the bottom of the Tourniquet we joined M. Charpiot, accompanying the donkey laden with the blankets and knapsacks, and proceeded with him on our way down the valley towards his hospitable parsonage at Palons. CHAPTER V. GUILLESTRE AND THE VALLEY OF QUEYRAS. We left Palons on a sharp, bright morning in July, with the prospect of a fine day before us, though there had been a fall of snow in the night, which whitened the tops of the neighbouring hills. Following the road along the heights on the right bank of the Biasse, and passing the hamlet of Chancellas, another favourite station of Neff's, a rapid descent led us down into the valley of the Durance, which we crossed a little above the village of St. Crepin, with the strong fortress of Mont Dauphin before us a few miles lower down the valley. This remote corner in the mountains was the scene of much fighting in early times between the Roman Catholics and the Huguenots, and afterwards between the French and the Piedmontese. It was in this neighbourhood that Lesdiguières first gave evidence of his skill and valour as a soldier. The massacre of St. Bartholomew at Paris in 1572 had been followed by like massacres in various parts of France, especially in the south. The Roman Catholics of Dauphiny, deeming the opportunity favourable for the extirpation of the heretical Vaudois, dispatched the military commandant of Embrun against the inhabitants of Val Fressinières at the head of an army of twelve hundred men. Lesdiguières, then scarce twenty-four years old, being informed of their march, hastily assembled a Huguenot force in the valley of the Drac, and, crossing the Col d'Orcières from Champsaur into the valley of the Durance, he suddenly fell upon the enemy at St. Crepin, routed them, and drove them down the valley to Embrun. Twelve years later, during the wars of the League, Lesdiguières distinguished himself in the same neighbourhood, capturing Embrun, Guillestre, and Château Queyras, in the valley of the Guil, thereby securing the entire province for his royal master, Henry of Navarre. The strong fortress of Mont Dauphin, at the junction of the Guil with the Durance, was not constructed until a century later. Victor-Amadeus II., when invading the province with a Piedmontese army, at sight of the plateau commanding the entrance of both valleys, exclaimed, "There is a pass to fortify." The hint was not neglected by the French general, Catinat, under whose directions the great engineer, Vauban, traced the plan of the present fortifications. It is a very strong place, completely commanding the valley of the Durance, while it is regarded as the key of the passage into Italy by the Guil and the Col de la Croix. Guillestre is a small old-fashioned town, situated on the lowest slope of the pine-clad mountain, the Tête de Quigoulet, at the junction of the Rioubel and the Chagne, rivulets in summer but torrents in winter, which join the Guil a little below the town. Guillestre was in ancient times a strong place, and had for its lords the Archbishops of Embrun, the ancient persecutors of the Vaudois. The castle of the archbishop, flanked by six towers, occupied a commanding site immediately overlooking the town; but at the French Revolution of 1789, the first thing which the archbishop's flock did was to pull his castle in pieces, leaving not one stone upon another; and, strange to say, the only walled enclosure now within its precincts is the little burying-ground of the Guillestre Protestants. One memorable stone has, however, been preserved, the stone trough in which the peasants were required to measure the tribute of grain payable by them to their reverend seigneurs. It is still to be seen laid against a wall in an open space in front of the church. It happened that the fair of Guillestre, which is held every two months, was afoot at the time of our visit. It is frequented by the people of the adjoining valleys, of which Guillestre is the centre, as well as by Piedmontese from beyond the Italian frontier. On the principal day of the fair we found the streets filled with peasants buying and selling beasts. They were apparently of many races. Amongst them were many well-grown men, some with rings in their ears--horse-dealers from Piedmont, we were told; but the greater number were little, dark, thin, and poorly-fed peasants. Some of them, dark-eyed and tawny-skinned, looked like Arabs, possibly descendants of the Saracens who once occupied the province. There were one or two groups of gipsies, differing from all else; but the district is too poor to be much frequented by people of that race. The animals brought for sale showed the limited resources of the neighbourhood. One hill-woman came along dragging two goats in milk; another led a sheep and a goat; a third a donkey in foal; a fourth a cow in milk; and so on. The largest lot consisted of about forty lambs, of various sizes and breeds, which had been driven down from the cool air of the mountains, and, gasping with heat, were cooling their heads against the shady side of a stone wall. There were several lots of pigs, of a bad but probably hardy sort--mostly black, round-backed, long-legged, and long-eared. In selling the animals, there was the usual chaffering, in shrill patois, at the top of the voice--the seller of some poor scraggy beast extolling its merits, the intending buyer running it down as a "misérable bossu," &c., and disputing every point raised in its behalf, until the contest of words rose to such a height--men, women, and even children, on both sides, taking part in it--that the bystander would have thought it impossible they could separate without a fight. But matters always came to a peaceable conclusion, for the French are by no means a quarrelsome people. There were also various other sorts of produce offered for sale--wool, undressed sheepskins, sticks for firewood, onions and vegetable produce, and considerable quantities of honeycomb; while the sellers of scythes, whetstones, caps, and articles of dress, seemed to meet with a ready sale for their wares, arranged on stalls in the open space in front of the church. Altogether, the queer collection of beasts and their drivers, who were to be seen drinking together greedily and promiscuously from the fountains in the market-place; the steep streets, crowded with lean goats and cows and pigs, and their buyers and sellers; the braying of donkeys and the shrieking of chafferers, with here and there a goitred dwarf of hideous aspect, presented a picture of an Alpine mountain fair, which, once seen, is not readily forgotten. There is a similar fair held at the village of La Bessie, before mentioned, a little higher up the Durance, on the road to Briançon; but it is held only once a year, at the end of October, when the inhabitants of Dormilhouse come down in a body to lay in their stock of necessaries for the winter. "There then arrives," says M. Albert, "a caravan of about the most singular character that can be imagined. It consists of nearly the whole population of the mountain hamlet, who resort thither to supply themselves with the articles required for family use during the winter, such as leather, lint, salt, and oil. These poor mountaineers are provided with very little money, and, to procure the necessary commodities, they have recourse to barter, the most ancient and primitive method of conducting trade. Hence they bring with them rye, barley, pigs, lambs, chamois skins and horns, and the produce of their knitting during the past year, to exchange for the required articles, with which they set out homeward, laden as they had come." * * * * * The same circumstances which have concurred in making Guillestre the seat of the principal fair of the valleys, led Felix Neff to regard it as an important centre of missionary operations amongst the Vaudois. In nearly all the mountain villages in its neighbourhood descendants of the ancient Vaudois are to be found, sometimes in the most remote and inaccessible places, whither they had fled in the times of the persecutions. Thus at Vars, a mountain hamlet up the torrent Rioubel, about nine miles from Guillestre, there is a little Christian community, which, though under the necessity of long concealing their faith, never ceased to be Vaudois in spirit.[106] Then, up the valley of the Guil, and in the lateral valleys which join it, there are, in some places close to the mountain barrier which divides France from Italy, other villages and hamlets, such as Arvieux, San Veran, Fongilarde, &c., the inhabitants of which, though they concealed their faith subsequent to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, never conformed to Roman Catholicism, but took the earliest opportunity of declaring themselves openly so soon as the dark period of persecution had passed by. [Footnote 106: The well-known Alpine missionary, J. L. Rostan, of whom an interesting biography has recently been published by the Rev. A. J. French, for the Wesleyan Conference, was a native of Vars. He was one of the favourite pupils of Felix Neff, with whom he resided at Dormilhouse in 1825-7; Neff saying of him: "Among the best of my pupils, as regards spiritual things and secular too, is Jean Rostan, of Vars: he is probably destined for the ministry; such at least is my hope." Neff bequeathed to him the charge of his parish during his temporary absence, but he never returned; and shortly after, Rostan left, to pursue his studies at Montauban. He joined the Methodist Church, settled and ministered for a time in La Vaunage and the Cevennes, afterwards labouring as a missionary in the High Alps, and eventually settled as minister of the church at Lisieux, Jersey, in charge of which he died, July, 1859.] The people of these scattered and distant hamlets were, however, too poor to supply themselves with religious instructors, and they long remained in a state of spiritual destitution. Felix Neff's labours were too short, and scattered over too extensive a field, to produce much permanent effect. Besides, they were principally confined to the village of Dormilhouse, which, as being the most destitute, had, he thought, the greatest claim upon his help; and at his death comparatively little had been done or attempted in the Guillestre district. But he left behind him what was worth more than any endowment of money, a noble example, which still lives, and inspires the labourers who have come after him. It was not until within the last twenty years that a few Vaudois families of Guillestre began to meet together for religious purposes, which they did at first in the upper chamber of an inn. There the Rev. Mr. Freemantle found them when paying his first visit to the valleys in 1851. He was rejoiced to see the zeal of the people, holding to their faith in the face of considerable opposition and opprobrium; and he exerted himself to raise the requisite funds amongst his friends in England to provide the Guillestre Vaudois with a place of worship of their own. His efforts were attended with success; and in 1854 a comfortable parsonage, with a commodious room for public worship, was purchased for their use. A fund was also provided for the maintenance of a settled ministry; a pastor was appointed; and in 1857 a congregation of from forty to seventy persons attended worship every Sunday. Mr. Freemantle, in a communication with which he has favoured us, says: "Our object has not been to make an aggression upon the Roman Catholics, but to strengthen the hands and establish the faith of the Vaudois. And in so doing we have found, not unfrequently, that when an interest has been excited among the Roman Catholic population of the district, there has been some family or hereditary connection with ancestors who were independent of the see of Rome, and such have again joined themselves to the faith of their fathers." The new movement was not, however, allowed to proceed without great opposition. The "Momiers," or mummers--the modern nickname of the Vaudois--were denounced by the curé of the place, and the people were cautioned, as they valued their souls' safety, against giving any countenance to their proceedings. The curé was doubtless seriously impressed by the gravity of the situation; and to protect the parish against the assaults of the evil one, he had a large number of crosses erected upon the heights overlooking the town. On one occasion he had a bad dream, in which he beheld the valley filled with a vast assembly come to be judged; and on the site of the judgment-seat which he saw in his dream, he set up, on the summit of the Come Chauve, a large tin cross hearted with wood. We were standing in the garden in front of the parsonage at Guillestre late in the evening, when M. Schell, the pastor, pointing up to the height, said, "There you see it now; that is the curé's erection." The valley below lay in deep shadow, while the cross upon the summit brightly reflected the last rays of the setting sun. The curé, finding that the "Momiers" did not cease to exist, next adopted the expedient of preaching them down. On the occasion of the Fête Napoleon, 1862, when the Rev. Mr. Freemantle visited Guillestre for the purpose of being present at the Vaudois services on Sunday, the 10th of August, the curé preached a special sermon to his congregation at early morning mass, telling them that an Englishman had come into the town with millions of francs to buy up the souls of Guillestre, and warning them to abstain from such men. The people were immediately filled with curiosity to know what it was that this stranger had come all the way from England to do, backed by "millions of francs." Many of them did not as yet know that there was such a thing as a Vaudois church in Guillestre; but now that they did know, they were desirous of ascertaining something about the doctrines taught there. The consequence was, that a crowd of people--amongst whom were some of the highest authorities in the town, the registrar, the douaniers, the chief of a neighbouring commune, and persons of all classes--assembled at noon to hear M. de Faye, the Protestant pastor, who preached to them an excellent sermon under the trees of the parsonage orchard, while a still larger number attended in the afternoon. When the curé heard of the conduct of his flock he was greatly annoyed. "What did you hear from the heretics?" he asked of one of the delinquents. "I heard _your_ sermon in the morning, and a sermon _upon charity_ in the afternoon," was the reply. Great were the surprise and excitement in Guillestre when it became known that the principal sergeant of gendarmerie--the very embodiment of law and order in the place--had gone over and joined the "Momiers" with his wife and family. M. Laugier was quite a model gendarme. He was a man of excellent character, steady, sensible, and patient, a diligent self-improver, a reader of books, a botanist, and a bit of a geologist. He knew all the rare mountain plants, and had a collection of those that would bear transplantation, in his garden at the back of the town. No man was more respected in Guillestre than the sergeant. His long and faithful service entitled him to the _médaille militaire_, and it would have been awarded to him, but for the circumstance which came to light, and which he did not seek to conceal, that he had joined the Protestant connexion. Not only was the medal withheld, but influence was used to get him sent away from the place; and he was packed off to a station in the mountains at Château Queyras. Though this banishment from Guillestre was intended as a punishment, it only served to bring out the sterling qualities of the sergeant, and to ensure his eventual reward. It so happened that the station at Château Queyras commanded the approaches into an extensive range of mountain pasturage. Although not required specially to attend to their safety, our sergeant had nevertheless carefully noted the flocks and herds as they went up the valleys in the spring. When winter approached, they were all brought down again from the mountains for safety. The winter of that year set in early and severely. The sergeant, making his observations on the flocks as they passed down the valley, noted that one large flock of about three thousand sheep had not yet made its appearance. The mountains were now covered with snow, and he apprehended that the sheep and their shepherds had been storm-stayed. Summoning to his assistance a body of men, he set out at their head in search of the lost flock. After a long, laborious, and dangerous journey--for the snow by this time lay deep in the hollows of the hills--he succeeded in discovering the shepherds and the sheep, almost reduced to their last gasp--the sheep, for want of food, actually gnawing each other's tails. With great difficulty the whole were extricated from their perilous position, and brought down the mountains in safety. No representation was made to head-quarters by the authorities of Guillestre of the conduct of the Protestant sergeant in the matter; but when the shepherds got down to Gap, they were so full of the sergeant's praises, and of his bravery in rescuing them and their flock from certain death, that a paragraph descriptive of the affair was inserted in the local papers, and was eventually copied into the Parisian journals. Then it was that an inquiry was made into his conduct, and the result was so satisfactory that the sergeant was at once decorated not only with the _médaille militaire_, but with the _médaille de sauvetage_--a still higher honour; and, shortly after, he was allowed to retire from the service on full pay. He then returned to his home and family at Guillestre, where he now officiates as _Regent_ of the Vaudois church, reading the prayers and conducting the service in the absence of the stated minister. * * * * * We spent a Sunday in the comfortable parsonage at Guillestre. There was divine service in the temple at half-past ten A.M., conducted by the regular pastor, M. Schell, and instruction and catechizing of the children in the afternoon. The pastor's regular work consists of two services at Guillestre and Vars on alternate Sundays, with Sunday-school and singing lesson; and on week days he gives religious instruction in the Guillestre school. The missionary's wife is a true "helpmeet," and having been trained as a deaconess at Strasbourg, she regularly visits the poor, occasionally assisting them with medical advice. Another important part of the work at Guillestre is the girls' school, for which suitable premises have been taken; and it is conducted by an excellent female teacher. Here not only the usual branches of education are taught, but domestic industry of different kinds. Through the instrumentality of Mr. Milsom, glove-sewing has been taught to the girls, and it is hoped that by this and similar efforts this branch of home manufacture may become introduced in the High Alps, and furnish profitable employment to many poor persons during their long and dreary winter. By the aid of a special fund, a few girl boarders, belonging to scattered Protestant families who have no other means for the education of their children, are also received at the school. The girls seem to be extremely well taken care of, and the house, which we went over, is a very pattern of cleanliness and comfort. * * * * * The route from Guillestre into Italy lies up the valley of the Guil, through one of the wildest and deepest gorges, or rather chasms, to be found in Europe. Brockedon says it is "one of the finest in the Alps." M. Bost compares it to the Moutier-Grand-Val, in the canton of Berne, but says it is much wilder. He even calls it frightful, which it is not, except in rainy weather, when the rocks occasionally fall from overhead. At such times people avoid travelling through the gorge. M. Bost also likens it to the Via Mala, though here the road, at the narrowest and most precipitous parts, runs in the _bottom_ of the gorge, in a ledge cut in the rock, there being room only for the river and the road. It is only of late years that the road has been completed, and it is often partly washed away in winter, or covered with rock and stones brought down by the torrent. When Neff travelled the gorge, it was passable only on foot, or on mule-back. Yet light-footed armies have passed into Italy by this route. Lesdiguières clambered over the mountains and along the Guil to reach Château Queyras, which he assaulted and took. Louis XIII. once accompanied a French army about a league up the gorge, but he turned back, afraid to go farther; and the hamlet at which his progress was arrested is still called Maison du Roi. About three leagues higher up, after crossing the Guil from bank to bank several times, in order to make use of such ledges of the rock as are suitable for the road, the gorge opens into the Combe du Queyras, and very shortly the picturesque-looking Castle of Queyras comes in sight, occupying the summit of a lofty conical rock in the middle of the valley. As we approached Château Queyras the ruins of a building were pointed out by Mr. Milsom in the bottom of the valley, close by the river-side. "That," said he, "was once the Protestant temple of the place. It was burnt to the ground at the Revocation. You see that old elm-tree growing near it. That tree was at the same time burnt to a black stump. It became a saying in the valley that Protestantism was as dead as that stump, and that it would only reappear when that dead stump came to life! And, strange to say, since Felix Neff has been here, the stump _has_ come to life--you see how green it is--and again Protestantism is like the elm-tree, sending out its vigorous offshoots, in the valley." Château Queyras stands in the centre of the valley of the Guil, which is joined near this point by two other valleys, the Combe of Arvieux joining it on the right bank, and that of San Veran on the left. The heads of the streams which traverse these valleys have their origin in the snowy range of the Cottian Alps, which form the boundary between France and Italy. As in the case of the descendants of the ancient Vaudois at Dormilhouse, they are here also found at the farthest limit of vegetation, penetrating almost to the edge of the glacier, where they were least likely to be molested. The inhabitants of Arvieux were formerly almost entirely Protestant, and had a temple there, which was pulled down at the Revocation. From that time down to the Revolution they worshipped only in secret, occasionally ministered to by Vaudois pastors, who made precarious visits to them from the Italian valleys at the risk of their lives. Above Arvieux is the hamlet of La Chalp, containing a considerable number of Protestants, and where Neff had his home--a small, low cottage undistinguishable from the others save by its whitewashed front. Its situation is cheerful, facing the south, and commanding a pleasant mountain prospect, contrasting strongly with the barren outlook and dismal hovels of Dormilhouse. But Neff never could regard the place as his home. "The inhabitants," he observed in his journal, "have more traffic, and the mildness of the climate appears somehow or other not favourable to the growth of piety. They are zealous Protestants, and show me a thousand attentions, but they are at present absolutely impenetrable." The members of the congregation at Arvieux, indeed, complained of his spending so little of his time among them; but the comfort of his cottage at La Chalp, and the comparative mildness of the climate of Arvieux, were insufficient to attract him from the barren crags but warm hearts of Dormilhouse. The village of San Veran, which lies up among the mountains some twelve miles to the east of Arvieux, on the opposite side of the Val Queyras, was another of the refuges of the ancient Vaudois. It is at the foot of the snowy ridge which divides France from Italy. Dr. Gilly says, "There is nothing fit for mortal to take refuge in between San Veran and the eternal snows which mantle the pinnacles of Monte Viso." The village is 6,692 feet above the level of the sea, and there is a provincial saying that San Veran is the highest spot in Europe where bread is eaten. Felix Neff said, "It is the highest, and consequently the most pious, in the valley of Queyras." Dr. Gilly was the second Englishman who had ever found his way to the place, and he was accompanied on the occasion by Mrs. Gilly. "The sight of a female," he says, "dressed entirely in linen, was a phenomenon so new to those simple peasants, whose garments are never anything but woollen, that Pizarro and his mail-clad companions were not greater objects of curiosity to the Peruvians than we were to these mountaineers." Not far distant from San Veran are the mountain hamlets of Pierre Grosse and Fongillarde, also ancient retreats of the persecuted Vaudois, and now for the most part inhabited by Protestants. The remoteness and comparative inaccessibility of these mountain hamlets may be inferred from the fact that in 1786, when the Protestants of France were for the first time since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes permitted to worship in public without molestation, four years elapsed before the intelligence reached San Veran. We have now reached almost the extreme limits of France; Italy lying on the other side of the snowy peaks which shut in the upper valleys of the Alps. In Neff's time the parish of which he had charge extended from San Veran, on the frontier, to Champsaur, in the valley of the Drac, a distance of nearly eighty miles. His charge consisted of the scattered population of many mountain hamlets, to visit which in succession involved his travelling a total distance of not less than one hundred and eighty miles. It was, of course, impossible that any single man, no matter how inspired by zeal and devotion, could do justice to a charge so extensive. The difficulties of passing through a country so wild and rugged were also very great, especially in winter. Neff records that on one occasion he took six hours to make the journey, in the midst of a snow-storm which completely hid the footpath, from his cottage at La Chalp to San Veran, a distance of only twelve miles. The pastors who succeeded Neff had the same difficulties to encounter, and there were few to be found who could brave them. The want of proper domestic accommodation for the pastors was also felt to be a great hindrance. Accordingly, one of the first things to which the Rev. Mr. Freemantle directed his attention, when he entered upon his noble work of supplying the spiritual destitution of the French Vaudois, was to take steps not only to supply the poor people with more commodious temples, but also to provide dwelling-houses for the pastors. And in the course of a few years, helped by friends in England, he has been enabled really to accomplish a very great deal. The extensive parish of Neff is now divided into five sub-parishes--that of Fressinières, which includes Palons, Violins, and Dormilhouse, provided with three temples, a parsonage, and schools; Arvieux, with the hamlets of Brunissard (where worship was formerly conducted in a stable) and La Chalp, provided with two temples, a parsonage, and schools; San Veran, with Fongillarde and Pierre Grosse, provided with three temples, a parsonage, and a school; St. Laurent du Cros and Champsaur, in the valley of the Drac, provided with a temple, school, &c., principally through the liberality of Lord Monson; and Guillestre and Vars, provided with two temples, a parsonage, and a girls' school. A temple, with a residence for a pastor, has also of late years been provided at Briançon, with a meeting-place also at the village of Villeneuve. Such are the agencies now at work in the district of the High Alps, helped on by a few zealous workers in England and abroad. While the object of the pastors, in the words of Mr. Freemantle, is "not to regard themselves as missionaries to proselytize Roman Catholics, but as ministers residing among their own people, whose faith, and love, and holiness they have to promote," they also endeavour to institute measures with the object of improving the social and domestic condition of the Vaudois. Thus, in one district--that of St. Laurent du Cros--a _banque de prévoyance_, or savings-bank, has been established; and though it was at first regarded with suspicion, it has gradually made its way and proved of great value, being made use of by the indigent Roman Catholics as well as Protestant families of the district. Such efforts and such agencies as these cannot fail to be followed by blessings, and to be greatly instrumental for good. Our last night in France was spent in the miserable little town of Abries, situated immediately at the foot of the Alpine ridge which separates France from Italy. On reaching the principal hotel, or rather auberge, we found every bed taken; but a peep into the dark and dirty kitchen, which forms the entrance-hall of the place, made us almost glad that there was no room for us in that inn. We turned out into the wet streets to find a better; but though we succeeded in finding beds in a poor house in a back lane, little can be said in their praise. We were, however, supplied with a tolerable dinner, and contrived to pass the night in rest, and to start refreshed early on the following morning on our way to the Vaudois valleys of Piedmont. [Illustration: Valley of Luserne.] CHAPTER VI. THE VALLEY OF THE PELICE--LA TOUR--ANGROGNA--THE PRA DU TOUR. The village of Abries is situated close to the Alpine ridge, the summit of which marks the boundary between France and Italy. On the other side lie the valleys of Piedmont, in which the French Vaudois were accustomed to take refuge when persecution ravaged their own valleys, passing by the mountain-road we were now about to travel, as far as La Tour, in the valley of the Pelice. Although there are occasional villages along the route, there is no good resting-place for travellers short of La Tour, some twenty-six miles distant from Abries; and as it was necessary that we should walk the distance, the greater part of the road being merely a track, scarcely practicable for mules, we were up betimes in the morning, and on our way. The sun had scarcely risen above the horizon. The mist was still hanging along the mountain-sides, and the stillness of the scene was only broken by the murmur of the Guil running in its rocky bed below. Passing through the hamlet of Monta, where the French douane has its last frontier station, we began the ascent; and soon, as the sun rose and the mists cleared away, we saw the profile of the mountain up which we were climbing cast boldly upon the range behind us on the further side of the valley. A little beyond the ravine of the Combe de la Croix, along the summit of which the road winds, we reached the last house within the French frontier--a hospice, not very inviting in appearance, for the accommodation of travellers. A little further is the Col, and passing a stone block carved with the fleur-de-lis and cross of Savoy, we crossed the frontier of France and entered Italy. On turning a shoulder of the mountain, we looked down upon the head of the valley of the Pelice, a grand and savage scene. The majestic, snow-capped Monte Viso towers up on the right, at the head of the valley, amidst an assemblage of other great mountain masses. From its foot seems to steal the river Pelice, now a quiet rivulet, though in winter a raging torrent. Right in front, lower down the valley, is the rocky defile of Mirabouc, a singularly savage gorge, seemingly rent asunder by some tremendous convulsion of nature; beyond and over which extends the valley of the Pelice, expanding into that of the Po, and in the remote distance the plains of Piedmont; while immediately beneath our feet, as it were, but far below, lies a considerable breadth of green pasture, the Bergerie of Pra, enclosed on all sides by the mountains over which we look. The descent from the Col down into the Pra is very difficult, in some places almost precipitous--far more abrupt than on the French side, where the incline up to the summit is comparatively easy. The zigzag descends from one rock to another, along the face of a shelving slope, by a succession of notches (from which the footpath is not inappropriately termed _La Coche_) affording a very insecure footing for the few mules which occasionally cross the pass. Dr. Gilly crossed here from La Tour with Mrs. Gilly in 1829, when about to visit the French valleys; but he found the path so difficult and dangerous, that the lady had to walk nearly the whole way. As we descended the mountain almost by a succession of leaps, we overtook M. Gariod, deputy judge of Gap, engaged in botanizing among the rocks; and he informed us that among the rarer specimens he had collected in the course of his journey on the summit were the _Polygonum alpinum_ and _Silene vallesia_, above Monta; the _Leucanthemum alpinum_, near the Hospice; the _Linaria alpina_ and _Cirsium spinosissimus_ on the Col; while the _Lloydia serotina_, _Arabis alpina_, _Phyteuma hemisphericum_, and _Rhododendrum ferrugineum_, were found all over the face of the rocky descent to the Pra. At the foot of the _Coche_ we arrived at the first house in Italy, the little auberge of the Pra, a great resort of sportsmen, who come to hunt the chamois in the adjoining mountains during the season. Here is also the usual customs station, with a few officers of the Italian douane, to watch the passage of merchandise across the frontier. The road from hence to la Tour is along the river Pelice, which is kept in sight nearly the whole way. A little below the Pra, where it enters the defile of Mirabouc, the path merely follows what is the bed of the torrent in winter. The descent is down ledges and notches, from rock to rock, with rugged precipices overhanging the ravine for nearly a mile. At its narrowest part stand the ruins of the ancient fort of Mirabouc, built against the steep escarpments of the mountain, which, in ancient times, completely commanded and closed the defile against the passage of an enemy from that quarter. And difficult though the Col de la Croix is for the passage of an army, it has on more than one occasion been passed by French detachments in their invasion of Italy. It is not until we reach Bobi, or Bobbio, several miles lower down the Pelice, that we at last feel we are in Italy. Here the valley opens out, the scenery is soft and inviting, the fields are well tilled, the vegetation is rich, and the clusters of chestnut-trees in magnificent foliage. We now begin to see the striking difference between the French and the Italian valleys. The former are precipitous and sterile, constant falls of slaty rock blocking up the defiles; while here the mountains lay aside their savage aspects, and are softened down into picturesquely wooded hills, green pastures, and fertile fields stretching along the river-sides, yielding a rich territory for the plough. Yet, beautiful and peaceful though this valley of the Pelice now appears, there is scarcely a spot in it but has been consecrated by the blood of martyrs to the cause of liberty and religion. In the rugged defile of the Mirabouc, which we have just passed, is the site of a battle fought between the Piedmontese troops and the Vaudois peasants, at a place called the Pian-del-Mort, where the persecuted, turning upon the persecutors, drove them back, and made good their retreat to their mountain fastnesses. Bobi itself was the scene of many deadly struggles. A little above the village, on a rocky plateau, are the remains of an ancient fort, near the hamlet of Sibaud, where the Vaudois performed one of their bravest exploits under Henri Arnaud, after their "Glorious Return" from exile,--near which, on a stone still pointed out, they swore fidelity to each other, and that they would die to the last man rather than abandon their country and their religion. Near Bobi is still to be seen a remarkable illustration of English interest long ago felt in the people of these valleys. This is the long embankment or breakwater, built by a grant from Oliver Cromwell, for the purpose of protecting the village against the inundations of the Pelice, by one of which it was nearly destroyed in the time of the Protectorate. It seems strange indeed that England should then have stretched out its hand so far, to help a people so poor and uninfluential as the Vaudois; but their sufferings had excited the sympathies of all Europe, and of Protestant England in particular, which not only sent them sympathy, but substantial succour. Cromwell also, through the influence of Cardinal Mazarin, compelled the Duke of Savoy to suspend for a time the persecution of his subjects,--though shortly after the Protector's death it waxed hotter than ever. All down the valley of the Pelice, we come upon village after village--La Piante, Villar, and Cabriol--which have been the scenes sometimes of heroic combats, and sometimes of treacherous massacres. Yet all the cruelty of Grand Dukes and Popes during centuries did not avail in turning the people of the valley from their faith. For they continue to worship after the same primitive forms as they did a thousand years ago; and in the principal villages and hamlets, though Romanism has long been supported by the power of the State and the patronage of the Church, the Protestant Vaudois continue to constitute the majority of the population. Rising up on the left of the road, between Villar and La Tour, are seen the bold and almost perpendicular rocks of Castelluzzo, terminating in the tower-like summit which has given to them their name. On the face of these rocks is one of the caverns in which the Vaudois were accustomed to hide their women and children when they themselves were forced to take the field. When Dr. Gilly first endeavoured to discover this famous cavern in 1829, he could not find any one who could guide him to it. Tradition said it was half way down the perpendicular face of the rock, and it was known to be very difficult to reach; but the doctor could not find any traces of it. Determined, however, not to be baffled, he made a second attempt a month later, and succeeded. He had to descend some fifty feet from the top of the cliff by a rope ladder, until a platform of rock was reached, from which the cavern was entered. It was found to consist of an irregular, rugged, sloping gallery in the face of the rock, of considerable extent, roofed in by a projecting crag. It is quite open to the south, but on all other sides it is secure; and it can only be entered from above. Such were the places to which the people of the valleys were driven for shelter in the dark days so happily passed away. One of the best indications of the improved _régime_ that now prevails, shortly presented itself in the handsome Vaudois church, situated at the western entrance of the town of La Tour, near to which is the college for the education of Vaudois pastors, together with residences for the clergy and professors. The founding of this establishment, as well as of the hospital for the poor and infirm Vaudois, is in a great measure due to the energetic zeal of the Dr. Gilly so often quoted above, whose writings on behalf of the faithful but destitute Protestants of the Piedmontese valleys, about forty years since, awakened an interest in their behalf in England, as well as in foreign countries, which has not yet subsided. More enthusiastic, if possible, even than Dr. Gilly, was the late General Beckwith, who followed up, with extraordinary energy, the work which the other had so well begun. The general was an old Peninsular veteran, who had followed the late Duke of Wellington through most of his campaigns, and lost a leg while serving under him at the battle of Waterloo. Hence the designation of him by a Roman Catholic bishop in an article published by him in one of the Italian journals, as "the adventurer with the wooden leg." The general's attention was first attracted to the subject of the Vaudois in the following curiously accidental way. Being a regular visitor at Apsley House, he called on the Duke one morning, and, finding him engaged, he strolled into the library to spend an idle half-hour among the books. The first he took up was Dr. Gilly's "Narrative," and what he read excited so lively an interest in his mind that he went direct to his bookseller and ordered all the publications relative to the Vaudois Church that could be procured. The general's zeal being thus fired, he set out shortly after on a visit to the Piedmontese valleys. He returned to them again and again, and at length settled at La Tour, where he devoted the remainder of his life and a large portion of his fortune to the service of the Vaudois Church and people. He organized a movement for the erection of schools, of which not fewer than one hundred and twenty were provided mainly through his instrumentality in different parts of the valleys, besides restoring and enlarging the college at La Tour, erecting the present commodious dwellings for the professors, providing a superior school for the education of pastors' daughters, and contributing towards the erection of churches wherever churches were needed. The general was so zealous a missionary, so eager for the propagation of the Gospel, that some of his friends asked him why he did not preach to the people. "No," said he; "men have their special gifts, and mine is _a brick-and-mortar gift_." The general was satisfied to go on as he had begun, helping to build schools, colleges, and churches for the Vaudois, wherever most needed. His crowning work was the erection of the grand block of buildings on the Viale del Ré at Turin, which not only includes a handsome and commodious Vaudois church, but an English church, and a Vaudois hospital and schools, erected at a cost of about fourteen thousand pounds, principally at the cost of the general himself, generously aided by Mr. Brewin and other English contributors. Nor were the people ungrateful to their benefactor. "Let the name of General Beckwith be blessed by all who pass this way," says an inscription placed upon one of the many schools opened through his efforts and generosity; and the whole country responds to the sentiment. To return to La Tour. The style of the buildings at its western end--the church, college, residences, and adjoining cottages, with their pretty gardens in front, designed, as they have been, by English architects--give one the idea of the best part of an English town. But this disappears as you enter the town itself, and proceed through the principal street, which is long, narrow, and thoroughly Italian. The situation of the town is exceedingly fine, at the foot of the Vandalin Mountain, near the confluence of the river Angrogna with the Pelice. The surrounding scenery is charming; and from the high grounds, north and south of the town, extensive views may be had in all directions--especially up the valley of the Pelice, and eastward over the plains of Piedmont--the whole country being, as it were, embroidered with vineyards, corn-fields, and meadows, here and there shaded with groves and thickets, spread over a surface varied by hills, and knolls, and undulating slopes. The size, importance, industry, and central situation of La Tour have always caused it to be regarded as the capital of the valleys. One-half of the Vaudois population occupies the valley of the Pelice and the lateral valley of Angrogna; the remainder, more widely scattered, occupying the valleys of Pérouse and Pragela, and the lateral valley of St. Martin--the entire number of the Protestant population in the several valleys amounting to about twenty thousand. Although, as we have already said, there is scarcely a hamlet in the valleys but has been made famous by the resistance of its inhabitants in past times to the combined tyranny of the Popes of Rome and the Dukes of Savoy, perhaps the most interesting events of all have occurred in the neighbourhood of La Tour, but more especially in the valley of Angrogna, at whose entrance it stands. The wonder is, that a scattered community of half-armed peasantry, without resources, without magazines, without fortresses, should have been able for any length of time to resist large bodies of regular troops--Italian, French, Spanish, and even Irish!--led by the most experienced commanders of the day, and abundantly supplied with arms, cannon, ammunition, and stores of all kinds. All that the people had on their side--and it compensated for much--was a good cause, great bravery, and a perfect knowledge of the country in which, and for which, they fought. Though the Vaudois had no walled towns, their district was a natural fortress, every foot of which was known to them--every pass, every defile, every barricade, and every defensible position. Resistance in the open country, they knew, would be fatal to them. Accordingly, whenever assailed by their persecutors, they fled to their mountain strongholds, and there waited the attack of the enemy. One of the strongest of such places--the Thermopylæ of the Vaudois--was the valley of Angrogna, up which the inhabitants of La Tour were accustomed to retreat on any sudden invasion by the army of Savoy. The valley is one of exquisite beauty, presenting a combination of mingled picturesqueness and sublimity, the like of which is rarely to be seen. It is hemmed in by mountains, in some places rounded and majestic, in others jagged and abrupt. The sides of the valley are in many places finely wooded, while in others well-tilled fields, pastures, and vineyards slope down to the river-side. Orchards are succeeded by pine-woods, and these again by farms and gardens. Sometimes a little cascade leaps from a rock on its way to the valley below; and little is heard around, save the rippling of water, and the occasional lowing of cattle in the pastures, mingled with the music of their bells. Shortly after entering the valley, we passed the scene of several terrible struggles between the Vaudois and their persecutors. One of the most famous spots is the plateau of Rochemalan, where the heights of St. John abut upon the mountains of Angrogna. It was shortly after the fulmination of a bull of extermination against the Vaudois by Pope Innocent VIII., in 1486, that an army of eighteen thousand regular French and Piedmontese troops, accompanied by a horde of brigands to whom the remission of sins was promised on condition of their helping to slay the heretics, encircled the valleys and proceeded to assail the Vaudois in their fastnesses. The Papal legate, Albert Catanée, Archdeacon of Cremona, had his head-quarters at Pignerol, from whence he superintended the execution of the Pope's orders. First, he sent preaching monks up the valleys to attempt the conversion of the Vaudois before attacking them with arms. But the peasantry refused to be converted, and fled to their strongholds in the mountains. Then Catanée took the field at the head of his army, advancing upon Angrogna. He extended his lines so as to enclose the entire body of heretics, with the object of cutting them off to a man. The Vaudois, however, defended themselves resolutely, though armed only with pikes, swords, and bows and arrows, and everywhere beat back the assailants. The severest struggle occurred at Rochemalan, which the crusaders attacked with great courage. But the Vaudois had the advantage of the higher ground, and, encouraged by the cries and prayers of the women, children, and old men whom they were defending, they impetuously rushed forward and drove the Papal troops downhill in disorder, pursuing them into the very plain. The next day the Papalini renewed the attack, ascending by the bottom of the valley, instead of by the plateau on which they had been defeated. But one of those dense mists, so common in the Alps, having settled down upon the valley, the troops became confused, broken up, and entangled in difficult paths; and in this state, marching apprehensively, they were fallen upon by the Vaudois and again completely defeated. Many of the soldiers slid over the rocks and were drowned in the torrent,--the chasm into which the captain of the detachment (Saquet de Planghère) fell, being still known as _Toumpi de Saquet_, or Saquet's Hole. The resistance of the mountaineers at other points, in the valleys of Pragela and St. Martin, having been almost equally successful, Catanée withdrew the Papal army in disgust, and marched it back into France, to wreak his vengeance on the defenceless Vaudois of the Val Louise, in the manner described in a preceding chapter. Less than a century later, a like attempt was made to force the entrance to the valley of Angrogna, by an army of Italians and Spaniards, under the command of the Count de la Trinité. A proclamation had been published, and put up in the villages of Angrogna, to the effect that all would be destroyed by fire and sword who did not forthwith return to the Church of Rome. And as the peasantry did not return, on the 2nd November, 1560, the Count advanced at the head of his army to extirpate the heretics. The Vaudois were provided with the rudest sort of weapons; many of them had only slings and cross-bows. But they felt strong in the goodness of their cause, and prepared to defend themselves to the death. As the Count's army advanced, the Vaudois retired until they reached the high ground near Rochemalan, where they took their stand. The enemy followed, and halted in the valley beneath, lighting their bivouac fires, and intending to pass the night there. Before darkness fell, however, an accidental circumstance led to an engagement. A Vaudois boy, who had got hold of a drum, began beating it in a ravine close by. The soldiers, thinking a hostile troop had arrived, sprang up in disorder and seized their arms. The Vaudois, on their part, seeing the movement, and imagining that an attack was about to be made on them, rushed forward to repel it. The soldiers, surprised and confused, for the most part threw away their arms, and fled down the valley. Irritated by this disgraceful retreat of some twelve hundred soldiers before two hundred peasants, the Count advanced a second time, and was again, repulsed by the little band of heroes, who charged his troops with loud shouts of "Viva Jesu Christo!" driving the invaders in confusion down the valley. It may be mentioned that the object of the Savoy general, in making this attack, was to force the valley, and capture the strong position of the Pra du Tour, the celebrated stronghold of the Vaudois, from whence we shall afterwards find them, again driven back, baffled and defeated. A hundred years passed, and still the Vaudois remained unconverted and unexterminated. The Marquis of Pianesse now advanced upon Angrogna--always with the same object, "ad extirpandos hereticos," in obedience to the order of the Propaganda. On this occasion not only Italian and Spanish but Irish troops were engaged in a combined effort to exterminate the Vaudois. The Irish were known as "the assassins" by the people of the valleys, because of their almost exceptional ferocity; and the hatred they excited by their outrages on women and children was so great, that on the assault and capture of St. Legont by the Vaudois peasantry, an Irish regiment surprised in barracks was completely destroyed. A combined attack was made on Angrogna on the 15th of June, 1655. On that day four separate bodies of troops advanced up the heights from different directions, thereby enclosing the little Vaudois army of three hundred men assembled there, and led by the heroic Javanel. This leader first threw himself upon the head of the column which advanced from Rocheplate, and drove it downhill. Then he drew off his little body towards Rochemalan, when he suddenly found himself opposed by the two bodies which had come up from St. John and La Tour. Retiring before them, he next found himself face to face with the fourth detachment, which had come up from Pramol. With the quick instinct of military genius, Javanel threw himself upon it before the beaten Rocheplate detachment were able to rally and assail him in flank; and he succeeded in cutting the Pramol force in two and passing through it, rushing up to the summit of the hill, on which he posted himself. And there he stood at bay. This hill is precipitous on one side, but of comparatively easy ascent on the side up which the little band of heroes had ascended. At the foot of the slope the four detachments, three thousand against three hundred, drew up and attacked him; but firing from a distance, their aim was not very deadly. For five hours Javanel resisted them as he best could, and then, seeing signs of impatience and hesitation in the enemy's ranks, he called out to his men, "Forward, my friends!" and they rushed downhill like an avalanche. The three thousand men recoiled, broke, and fled before the three hundred; and Javanel returned victorious to his entrenchments before Angrogna. Yet, again, some eight years later, in 1663, was this neighbourhood the scene of another contest, and again was Javanel the hero. On this occasion, the Marquis de Fleury led the troops of the Duke of Savoy, whose object, as before, was to advance up the valley, and assail the Vaudois stronghold of Pra du Tour; and again the peasantry resisted them successfully, and drove them back into the plains. Javanel then went to rejoin a party of the men whom he had posted at the "Gates of Angrogna" to defend the pass up the valley; and again he fell upon the enemy engaged in attempting to force a passage there, and defeated them with heavy loss. Such are among the exciting events which have occurred in this one locality in connection with the Vaudois struggle for country and liberty. Let us now proceed up the valley of Angrogna, towards the famous stronghold of the Pra du Tour, the object of those repeated attacks of the enemy in the neighbourhood of Rochemalan. As we advance, the mountains gradually close in upon the valley, leaving a comparatively small width of pasture land by the river-side. At the hamlet of Serre the carriage road ends; and from thence the valley grows narrower, the mountains which enclose it become more rugged and abrupt, until there is room enough only for a footpath along a rocky ledge, and the torrent running in its deep bed alongside. This continues for a considerable distance, the path in some places being overhung by precipices, or encroached upon by rocks and boulders fallen from the heights, until at length we emerge from the defile, and find ourselves in a comparatively open space, the famous Pra du Tour; the defile we have passed, alongside the torrent and overhung by the rocks, being known as the Barricade. The Pra du Tour, or Meadow of the Tower, is a little amphitheatre surrounded by rugged and almost inaccessible mountains, situated at the head of the valley of Angrogna. The steep slopes bring down into this deep dell the headwaters of the torrent, which escape among the rocks down the defile we have just ascended. The path up the defile forms the only approach to the Pra from the valley, but it is so narrow, tortuous, and difficult, that the labours of only a few men in blocking up the pathway with rocks and stones that lie ready at hand, might at any time so barricade the approach as to render it impracticable. The extremely secluded position of the place, its natural strength and inaccessibility, and its proximity to the principal Vaudois towns and villages, caused it to be regarded from the earliest times as their principal refuge. It was their fastness, their fortress, and often their home. It was more--it was their school and college; for in the depths of the Pra du Tour the pastors, or _barbas_,[107] educated young men for the ministry, and provided for the religious instruction of the Vaudois population. [Footnote 107: _Barba_--a title of respect; in the Vaudois dialect literally signifying an _uncle_.] It was the importance of the Pra du Tour as a stronghold that rendered it so often the object of attack through the valley of Angrogna. When the hostile troops of Savoy advanced upon La Tour, the inhabitants of the neighbouring valleys at once fled to the Pra, into which they drove their cattle, and carried what provisions they could; there constructing mills, ovens, houses, and all that was requisite for subsistence, as in a fort. The men capable of bearing arms stood on their guard to defend the passes of the Vachére and Roussine, at the extreme heads of the valley, as well as the defile of the Barricade, while other bodies, stationed lower down, below the Barricade, prepared to resist the troops seeking to force an entrance up the valley; and hence the repeated battles in the neighbourhood of Rochemalan above described. On the occasion of the defeat of the Count de la Trinité by the little Vaudois band near the village of Angrogna, in November, 1560, the general drew off, and waited the arrival of reinforcements. A large body of Spanish veterans having joined him, in the course of the following spring he again proceeded up the valley, determined, if possible, to force the Barricade--the royal forces now numbering some seven thousand men, all disciplined troops. The peasants, finding their first position no longer tenable in the face of such numbers, abandoned Angrogna and the lower villages, and retired, with the whole population, to the Pra du Tour. The Count followed them with his main army, at the same time directing two other bodies of troops to advance upon the place round by the mountains, one by the heights of the Vachére, and another by Les Fourests. The defenders of the Pra would thus be assailed from three sides at once, their forces divided, and victory rendered certain. But the Count did not calculate upon the desperate bravery of the defenders. All three bodies were beaten back in succession. For four days the Count made every effort to force the defile, and failed. Two colonels, eight captains, and four hundred men fell in these desperate assaults, without gaining an inch of ground. On the fifth day a combined attack was made with the reserve, composed of Spanish companies, but this, too, failed; and the troops, when ordered to return to the charge, refused to obey. The Count, who commanded, is said to have wept as he sat on a rock and looked upon so many of his dead--the soldiers themselves exclaiming, "God fights for these people, and we do them wrong!" About a hundred years later, the Marquis de Pianesse, who, like the Count de la Trinité, had been defeated at Rochemalan, made a similar attempt to surprise the Vaudois stronghold, with a like result. The peasants were commanded on this occasion by John Leger, the pastor and historian. Those who were unarmed hurled rocks and stones on the assailants from the heights; and the troops being thus thrown into confusion, the Vaudois rushed from behind their ramparts, and drove them in a state of total rout down the valley. On entering the Pra du Tour, one of the most prominent objects that meets the eye is the Roman Catholic chapel recently erected there, though the few inhabitants of the district are still almost entirely Protestant. The Roman Catholic Church has, however, now done what the Roman Catholic armies failed to do--established itself in the midst of the Vaudois stronghold, though by no means in the hearts of the people. Desirous of ascertaining, if possible, the site of the ancient college, we proceeded up the Pra, and hailed a young woman whom we observed crossing the rustic bridge over the Pêle, one of the mountain rivulets running into the torrent of Angrogna. Inquiring of her as to the site of the college, she told us we had already passed it, and led us back to the place--up the rocky side of the hill leading to the Vachére--past the cottage where she herself lived, and pointed to the site: "There," she said, "is where the ancient college of the Vaudois stood." The old building has, however, long since been removed, the present structure being merely part of a small farmsteading. Higher up the steep hill-side, on successive ledges of rock, are the ruins of various buildings, some of which may have been dwellings, and one, larger than the rest, on a broader plateau, with an elder-tree growing in the centre, may possibly have been the temple. From the higher shelves on this mountain-side the view is extremely wild and grand. The acclivities which surround the head of the Pra seem as if battlemented walls; the mountain opposite throws its sombre shadow over the ravine in which the torrent runs; whilst, down the valley, rock seems piled on rock, and mountain on mountain. All is perfectly still, and the silence is only audible by the occasional tinkling of a sheep-bell, or the humming of a bee in search of flowers on the mountain-side. So peaceful and quiet is the place, that it is difficult to believe it could ever have been the scene of such deadly strife, and rung with the shouts of men thirsting for each other's blood. After lingering about the place until the sun was far on his way towards the horizon, we returned, by the road we had come, the valley seeming more beautiful than ever under the glow of evening, and arrived at our destination about dusk, to find the fireflies darting about the streets of La Tour. The next day saw us at Turin, and our summer excursion at an end. Mr. Milsom, who had so pleasantly accompanied me through the valleys, had been summoned to attend the death-bed of a friend at Antibes, and he set out on the journey forthwith. While still there, he received a telegram intimating the death of his daughter at Allevard, near Grenoble, and he arrived only in time to attend her funeral. Two months later, he lost another dear daughter; shortly after, his mother-in-law died; and in the following December he himself died suddenly of heart disease, and followed them to the grave. One could not but conceive a hearty liking for Edward Milsom--he was such a thoroughly good man. He was a native of London, but spent the greater part of his life at Lyons, in France, where he long since settled and married. He there carried on a large business as a silk merchant, but was always ready to give a portion of his time and money to help forward any good work. He was an "ancien," or elder, of the Evangelical church at Lyons, originally founded by Adolphe Monod, to whom he was also related by marriage. Some years since he was very much interested by the perusal of Pastor Bost's account of his visit to the scene of Felix Neff's labours in the High Alps. He felt touched by the simple, faithful character of the people, and keenly sympathised with their destitute condition. "Here," said he, "is a field in which I may possibly be of some use." And he at once went to their help. He visited the district of Fressinières, including the hamlet of Dormilhouse, as well as the more distant villages of Arvieux and Sans Veran, up the vale of Queyras; and nearly every year thereafter he devoted a certain portion of his time in visiting the poorer congregations of the district, giving them such help and succour as lay in his power. His repeated visits made him well known to the people of the valleys, who valued him as a friend, if they did not even love him as a brother. His visits were also greatly esteemed by the pastors, who stood much in need of encouragement and help. He cheered the wavering, strengthened the feeble-hearted, and stimulated all to renewed life and action. Wherever he went, a light seemed to shine in his path; and when he departed, he was followed by many blessings. In one place he would arrange for the opening of a new place of worship; in another, for the opening of a boys' school; in a third, for the industrial employment of girls; and wherever there was any little heartburning or jealousy to be allayed, he would set himself to remove it. His admirable tact, his unfailing temper, and excellent good sense, rendered him a wise counsellor and a most successful conciliator. The last time Mr. Milsom visited England, towards the end of 1869, he was occupied, as usual, in collecting subscriptions for the poor Vaudois of the High Alps. Now that the good "merchant missionary" has rested from his labours, they will indeed feel the loss of their friend. Who is to assume his mantle? CHAPTER VII THE GLORIOUS RETURN: AN EPISODE IN THE HISTORY OF THE ITALIAN VAUDOIS. What is known as The Glorious Return, or re-entry of the exiled Vaudois in 1689 to resume possession of the valleys from which they had been banished, will always stand out as one of the most remarkable events in history. If ever a people fairly established their right to live in their own country, and to worship God after their own methods, the Vaudois had surely done so. They had held conscientiously and consistently to their religion for nearly five hundred years, during which they laboured under many disabilities and suffered much persecution. But the successive Dukes of Savoy were no better satisfied with them as subjects than before. They could not brook that any part of their people should be of a different form of religion from that professed by themselves; and they continued, at the instance of successive popes, to let slip the dogs of war upon the valleys, in the hopes of eventually compelling the Vaudois to "come in" and make their peace with the Church. The result of these invasions was almost uniform. At the first sudden inroad of the troops, the people, taken by surprise, usually took to flight; on which their dwellings were burnt and their fields laid waste. But when they had time to rally and collect their forces, the almost invariable result was that the Piedmontese were driven out of the valleys again with ignominy and loss. The Duke's invasion of 1655 was, however, attended with greater success than usual. His armies occupied the greater part of the valleys, though the Vaudois still held out, and made occasional successful sallies from their mountain fastnesses. At length, the Protestants of the Swiss Confederation, taking compassion on their co-religionists in Piedmont, sent ambassadors to the Duke of Savoy at Turin to intercede for their relief; and the result was the amnesty granted to them in that year under the title of the "Patents of Grace." The terms were very hard, but they were agreed to. The Vaudois were to be permitted to re-occupy their valleys, conditional on their rebuilding all the Catholic churches which had been destroyed, paying to the Duke an indemnity of fifty thousand francs, and ceding to him the richest lands in the valley of Luzerna--the last relics of their fortunes being thus taken from them to remunerate the barbarity of their persecutors. It was also stipulated by this treaty, that the pastors of the Vaudois churches were to be natives of the district only, and that they were to be at liberty to administer religious instruction in their own manner in all the Vaudois parishes, excepting that of St. John, near La Tour, where their worship was interdicted. The only persons excepted from the terms of the amnesty were Javanel, the heroic old captain, and Jean Leger, the pastor-historian, the most prominent leaders of the Vaudois in the recent war, both of whom were declared to be banished the ducal dominions. Under this treaty the Vaudois enjoyed peace for about thirty years, during which they restored the cultivation of the valleys, rebuilt the villages, and were acknowledged to be among the most loyal, peaceable, and industrious of the subjects of Savoy. There were, however, certain parts of the valleys to which the amnesty granted by the Duke did not apply. Thus, it did not apply to the valleys of Pérouse and Pragela, which did not then form part of the dominions of Savoy, but were included within the French frontier. It was out of this circumstance that a difficulty arose with the French monarch, which issued in the revival of the persecution in the valleys, the banishment of the Vaudois into Switzerland, and their eventual "Glorious Return" in the manner we are about briefly to narrate. When Louis XIV. of France revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685, and interdicted all Protestant worship throughout his dominions, the law of course applied to the valleys of Pérouse and Pragela as to the other parts of France. The Vaudois pastors were banished, and the people were forbidden to profess any other religion than that prescribed by the King, under penalty of confiscation of their goods, imprisonment, or banishment. The Vaudois who desired to avoid these penalties while they still remained staunch to their faith, did what so many Frenchmen then did--they fled across the frontier and took refuge in foreign lands. Some of the inhabitants of the French valleys went northward into Switzerland, while others passed across the mountains towards the south, and took refuge in the valley of the Pelice, where the Vaudois religion continued to be tolerated under the terms of the amnesty above referred to, which had been granted by the Duke of Savoy. The French king, when he found his Huguenot subjects flying in all directions rather than remain in France and be "converted" to Roman Catholicism, next tried to block up the various avenues of escape, and to prevent the rulers of the adjoining countries from giving the fugitives asylum. Great was his displeasure when he heard of the flight of the Vaudois of Pérouse and Pragela into the adjoining valleys. He directed the French ambassador at Turin to call upon the Duke of Savoy, and require him to prevent their settlement within his dominions. At the same time, he called upon the Duke to take steps to compel the conversion of his people from the pretended reformed faith, and offered the aid of his troops to enforce their submission, "at whatever cost." The Duke was irritated at the manner in which he was approached. Louis XIV. was treating him as a vassal of France rather than as an independent sovereign. But he felt himself to be weak, and comparatively powerless to resent the insult. So he first temporised, then vacillated, and being again pressed by the French king, he eventually yielded. The amnesty was declared to be at an end, and the Vaudois were ordered forthwith to become members of the Church of Rome. An edict was issued on the 31st of January, 1686, forbidding the exercise by the Vaudois of their religion, abolishing their ancient privileges, and ordering the demolition of all their places of worship. Pastors and schoolmasters who refused to be converted were ordered to quit the country within fifteen days, on pain of death and confiscation of their goods. All refugee Protestants from France were ordered to leave under the same penalty. All children born of Protestant parents were to be compulsorily educated as Roman Catholics. This barbarous measure was merely a repetition by the Duke of Savoy in Piedmont of what his master Louis XIV. had already done in France. The Vaudois expostulated with their sovereign, but in vain. They petitioned, but there was no reply. They requested the interposition of the Swiss Government as before, but the Duke took no notice of their memorial. The question of resistance was then discussed; but the people were without leaders. Javanel was living in banishment at Geneva--old and worn out, and unable to lead them. Besides, the Vaudois, before taking up arms, wished to exhaust every means of conciliation. Ambassadors next came from Switzerland, who urged them to submit to the clemency of the Duke, and suggested that they should petition him for permission to leave the country! The Vaudois were stupefied by the proposal. They were thus asked, without a contest, to submit to all the ignominy and punishment of defeat, and to terminate their very existence as a people! The ambassadors represented that resistance to the combined armies of Savoy, France, and Spain, without leaders, and with less than three thousand combatants, was little short of madness. Nevertheless, a number of the Vaudois determined not to leave their valleys without an attempt to hold them, as they had so often successfully done before. The united armies of France and Savoy then advanced upon the valleys, and arrangements were made for a general attack upon the Vaudois position on Easter Monday, 1686, at break of day,--the Duke of Savoy assailing the valley of Luzerna, while Catinat, commander of the French troops, advanced on St. Martin. Catinat made the first attack on the village of St. Germain, and was beaten back with heavy loss after six hours' fighting. Henry Arnaud, the Huguenot pastor from Die in Dauphiny, of which he was a native, particularly distinguished himself by his bravery in this affair, and from that time began to be regarded as one of the most promising of the Vaudois leaders. Catinat renewed the attack on the following day with the assistance of fresh troops; and he eventually succeeded in overcoming the resistance of the handful of men who opposed him, and sweeping the valley of St. Martin. Men, women, and children were indiscriminately put to the sword. In some of the parishes no resistance was offered, the inhabitants submitting to the Duke's proclamation; but whether they submitted or not, made no difference in their treatment, which was barbarous in all cases. Meanwhile, the Duke of Savoy's army advanced from the vale of Luzerna upon the celebrated heights of Angrogna, and assailed the Vaudois assembled there at all points. The resistance lasted for an entire day, and when night fell, both forces slept on the ground upon which they had fought, kindling their bivouac fires on both sides. On the following day the attack was renewed, and again the battle raged until night. Then Don Gabriel of Savoy, who was in command, resolved to employ the means which Catinat had found so successful: he sent forward messengers to inform the Vaudois that their brethren of the Val St. Martin had laid down their arms and been pardoned, inviting them to follow their example. The result of further parley was, that on the express promise of his Royal Highness that they should receive pardon, and that neither their persons nor those of their wives or children should be touched, the credulous Vaudois, still hoping for fair treatment, laid down their arms, and permitted the ducal troops to take possession of their entrenchments! The same treacherous strategy proved equally successful against the defenders of the Pra du Tour. After beating back their assailants and firmly holding their ground for an entire day, they were told of the surrender of their compatriots, promised a full pardon, and assured of life and liberty, on condition of immediately ceasing further hostilities. They accordingly consented to lay down their arms, and the impregnable fastness of the Pra du Tour, which had never been taken by force, thus fell before falsehood and perfidy. "The defenders of this ancient sanctuary of the Church," says Dr. Huston, "were loaded with irons; their children were carried off and scattered through the Roman Catholic districts; their wives and daughters were violated, massacred, or made captives. As for those that still remained, all whom the enemy could seize became a prey devoted to carnage, spoliation, fire, excesses which cannot be told, and outrages which it would be impossible to describe."[108] [Footnote 108: Huston's "Israel of the Alps," translated by Montgomery; Glasgow, 1857; vol. i. p. 446.] "All the valleys are now exterminated," wrote a French officer to his friends; "the people are all killed, hanged, or massacred." The Duke, Victor Amadeus, issued a decree, declaring the Vaudois to be guilty of high treason, and confiscating all their property. Arnaud says as many as eleven thousand persons were killed, or perished in prison, or died of want, in consequence of this horrible Easter festival of blood. Six thousand were taken prisoners, and the greater number of these died in gaol of hunger and disease. When the prisons were opened, and the wretched survivors were ordered to quit the country, forbidden to return to it on pain of death, only about two thousand six hundred contrived to struggle across the frontier into Switzerland. And thus at last the Vaudois Church seemed utterly uprooted and destroyed. What the Dukes of Savoy had so often attempted in vain was now accomplished. A second St. Bartholomew had been achieved, and Rome rang with _Te Deums_ in praise of the final dispersion of the Vaudois. The Pope sent to Victor Amadeus II. a special brief, congratulating him on the extirpation of heresy in his dominions; and Piedmontese and Savoyards, good Catholics, were presented with the lands from which the Vaudois had been driven. Those of them who remained in the country "unconverted" were as so many scattered fugitives in the mountains--sheep wandering about without a shepherd. Some of the Vaudois, for the sake of their families and homes, pretended conversion; but these are admitted to have been comparatively few in number. In short, the "Israel of the Alps" seemed to be no more, and its people utterly and for ever dispersed. Pierre Allix, the Huguenot refugee pastor in England, in his "History of the Ancient Churches of Piedmont," dedicated to William III., regarded the Vaudois Church as obliterated--"their present desolation seeming so universal, that the world looks upon them no otherwise than as irrecoverably lost, and finally destroyed." Three years passed. The expelled Vaudois reached Switzerland in greatly reduced numbers, many women and children having perished on their mountain journey. The inhabitants of Geneva received them with great hospitality, clothing and feeding them until they were able to proceed on their way northward. Some went into Brandenburg, some into Holland, while others settled to various branches of industry in different parts of Switzerland. Many of them, however, experienced great difficulty in obtaining a settlement. Those who had entered the Palatinate were driven thence by war, and those who had entered Wurtemburg were expelled by the Grand Duke, who feared incurring the ire of Louis XIV. by giving them shelter and protection. Hence many little bands of the Vaudois refugees long continued to wander along the valley of the Rhine, unable to find rest for their weary feet. There were others trying to earn, a precarious living in Geneva and Lausanne, and along the shores of Lake Leman. Some of these were men who had fought under Javanel in his heroic combats with the Piedmontese; and they thought with bitter grief of the manner in which they had fallen into the trap of Catinat and the Duke of Savoy, and abandoned their country almost without a struggle. Then it was that the thought occurred to them whether they might not yet strike a blow for the recovery of their valleys! The idea seemed chimerical in the extreme. A few hundred destitute men, however valiant, to think of recovering a country defended by the combined armies of France and Savoy! Javanel, the old Vaudois hero, disabled by age and wounds, was still alive--an exile at Geneva--and he was consulted on the subject. Javanel embraced the project with, enthusiasm; and the invasion of the valleys was resolved upon! A more daring, and apparently more desperate enterprise, was never planned. Who was to be their leader? Javanel himself was disabled. Though his mind was clear, and his patriotic ardour unquenched, his body was weak; and all that he could do was to encourage and advise. But he found a noble substitute in Henry Arnaud, the Huguenot refugee, who had already distinguished himself in his resistance to the troops of Savoy. And Arnaud was now ready to offer up his life for the recovery of the valleys. The enterprise was kept as secret as possible, yet not so close as to prevent the authorities of Berne obtaining some inkling of their intentions. Three confidential messengers were first dispatched to the valleys to ascertain the disposition of the population, and more particularly to examine the best route by which an invasion might be made. On their return with the necessary information, the plan was settled by Javanel, as it was to be carried out by Arnaud. In the meantime, the magistrates of Geneva, having obtained information as to the intended movement, desirous of averting the hostility of France and Savoy, required Javanel to leave their city, and he at once retired to Ouchy, a little farther up the lake. The greatest difficulty experienced by the Vaudois in carrying out their enterprise was the want of means. They were poor, destitute refugees, without arms, ammunition, or money to buy them. To obtain the requisite means, Arnaud made a journey into Holland, for the purpose of communicating the intended project to William of Orange. William entered cordially into the proposed plan, recommended Arnaud to several Huguenot officers, who afterwards took part in the expedition, supplied him with assistance in money, and encouraged him to carry out the design. Several private persons in Holland--amongst others the post-master-general at Leyden--also largely contributed to the enterprise. At length all was ready. The men who intended to take part in the expedition came together from various quarters. Some came from Brandenburg, others from Bavaria and distant parts of Switzerland; and among those who joined them was a body of French Huguenots, willing to share in their dangers and their glory. One of their number, Captain Turrel, like Arnaud, a native of Die in Dauphiny, was even elected as the general of the expedition. Their rendez-vous was in the forest of Prangins, near Nyon, on the north bank of the Lake of Geneva; and there, on the night of the 16th of August, 1689, they met in the hollow recesses of the wood. Fifteen boats had been got together, and lay off the shore. After a fervent prayer by the pastor-general Arnaud, imploring a blessing upon the enterprise, as many of the men as could embark got into the boats. As the lake is there at its narrowest, they soon rowed across to the other side, near the town of Yvoire, and disembarked on the shore of Savoy. Arnaud had posted sentinels in all directions, and the little body waited the arrival of the remainder of their comrades from the opposite shore. They had all crossed the lake by two o'clock in the morning; and about eight hundred men, divided into nineteen companies,[109] each provided with its captain, were now ready to march. [Footnote 109: Of the nineteen companies three were composed of the Vaudois of Angrogna; those of Bobi and St. John furnished two each; and those of La Tour, Villar, Prarustin, Prali, Macel, St. Germain, and Pramol, furnished one each. The remaining six companies were composed of French Huguenot refugees from Dauphiny and Languedoc under their respective officers. Besides these, there were different smaller parties who constituted a volunteer company. The entire force of about eight hundred men was marshalled in three divisions--vanguard, main body, and rearguard--and this arrangement was strictly observed in the order of march.] At the very commencement, however, they met with a misfortune. One of the pastors, having gone to seek a guide in the village near at hand, was seized as a prisoner by the local authorities, and carried off. On this, the Vaudois, seeing that they were treated as enemies, sent a party to summon Yvoire to open its gates, and it obeyed. The lord of the manor and the receiver of taxes were taken as hostages, and made to accompany the troop until they reached the next commune, when they were set at liberty, and replaced by other hostages. When it became known that the little army of Vaudois had set out on their march, troops were dispatched from all quarters to intercept them and cut them off; and it was believed that their destruction was inevitable. "What possible chance is there," asked the _Historic Mercury_ of the day, "of this small body of men penetrating to their native country through the masses of French and Piedmontese troops accumulating from all sides, without being crushed and exterminated?" "It is impossible," wrote the _Leyden Gazette_, "notwithstanding whatever precautions they may take, that the Vaudois can extricate themselves without certain death, and the Court of Savoy may therefore regard itself safe so far as they are concerned." No sooner had the boats left the shore at Nyon for the further side of the lake than the young seigneur of Prangins, who had been watching their movements, rode off at full speed to inform the French resident at Geneva of the departure of the Vaudois; and orders were at once dispatched to Lyons for a strong body of cavalry to march immediately towards Savoy to cut them off. But the Vaudois had well matured their plans, and took care to keep out of reach of the advancing enemy. Their route at first lay up the valleys towards the mountains, whose crests they followed, from glacier to glacier, in places almost inaccessible to regular troops, and thus they eluded the combined forces of France and Savoy, which, vainly endeavoured to bar their passage. The first day's march led them into the valley of the Arve, by the Col de Voirons, from which they took their last view of the peaceful Lake of Geneva; thence they proceeded by the pyramidal mountain called the Mole to the little town of Viu, where they rested for two hours, starting again by moonlight, and passing through St. Joire, where the magistrates brought out a great cask of wine, and placed it in the middle of the street for their refreshment. The little army, however, did not halt there, but marched on to the bare hill of Carman, where, after solemn prayer, they encamped about midnight, sleeping on the bare ground. Next day found them in front of the small walled town of Cluse, in the rocky gorge of the Arve. The authorities shut the gates, on which the Vaudois threatened to storm the place, when the gates were opened, and they marched through the town, the inhabitants standing under arms along both sides of the street. Here the Vaudois purchased a store of food and wine, which they duly paid for. They then proceeded on to Sallanches, where resistance was threatened. They found a body of men posted on the wooden bridge which there separated the village of St. Martin from Sallanches; but rushing forward, the defenders of the bridge fled, and the little army passed over and proceeded to range themselves in order of battle over against the town, which was defended by six hundred troops. The Vaudois having threatened to burn the town, and kill the hostages whom they had taken on the slightest show of resistance, the threat had its effect, and they were permitted to pass without further opposition, encamping for the night at a little village about a league further on. And thus closed the second day's march. The third day they passed over the mountains of Lez Pras and Haute Luce, seven thousand feet above the sea-level, a long and fatiguing march. At one place the guide lost his way, and rain fell heavily, soaking the men to the skin. They spent a wretched night in some empty stables at the hamlet of St. Nicholas de Verose; and started earlier than usual on the following morning, addressing themselves to the formidable work of climbing the Col Bonhomme, which they passed with the snow up to their knees. They were now upon the crest of the Alps, looking down upon the valley of the Isère, into which they next descended. They traversed the valley without resistance, passing through St. Germain and Scez, turning aside at the last-mentioned place up the valley of Tignes, thereby avoiding the French troops lying in wait for them in the neighbourhood of Moutiers, lower down the valley of the Isère. Later in the evening they reached Laval, at the foot of Mont Iseran; and here Arnaud, for the first time during eight days, snatched a few hours' sleep on a bed in the village. The sixth day saw the little army climbing the steep slopes of Mont Iseran, where the shepherds gave them milk and wished them God-speed; but they warned them that a body of troops lay in their way at Mont Cenis. On they went--over the mountain, and along the crest of the chain, until they saw Bonneval in the valley beneath them, and there they descended, passing on to Bessant in the valley of the Arc, where they encamped for the night. Next day they marched on Mont Cenis, which they ascended. As they were crossing the mountain a strange incident occurred. The Vaudois saw before them a large convoy of mules loaded with baggage. And shortly after there came up the carriage and equipage of some grand personage. It proved to be Cardinal Ranuzzi, on his way to Rome to take part in the election of Pope Alexander VIII. The Vaudois seized the mules carrying the baggage, which contained important documents compromising Louis XIV. with Victor Amadeus; and it is said that in consequence of their loss, the Cardinal, who himself aspired to the tiara, afterwards died of chagrin, crying in his last moments, "My papers! oh, my papers!" The passage of the Great and Little Cenis was effected with great difficulty. The snow lay thick on the ground, though it was the month of August, and the travellers descended the mountain of Tourliers by a precipice rather than a road. When night fell, they were still scattered on the mountain, and lay down to snatch a brief sleep, overcome with hunger and fatigue. Next morning they gathered together again, and descended into the sterile valley of the Gaillon, and shortly after proceeded to ascend the mountain opposite. They were now close upon the large towns. Susa lay a little to the east, and Exilles was directly in their way. The garrison of the latter place came out to meet them, and from the crest of the mountain rolled large stones and flung grenades down upon the invaders. Here the Vaudois lost some men and prisoners, and finding the further ascent impracticable, they retreated into the valley from which they had come, and again ascended the steep slope of Tourliers in order to turn the heights on which the French troops were posted. At last, after great fatigue and peril, unable to proceed further, they gained the crest of the mountain, and sounded their clarions to summon the scattered body. After a halt of two hours they proceeded along the ridge, and perceived through the mist a body of soldiers marching along with drums beating; it was the garrison of Exilles. The Vaudois were recognised and followed by the soldiers at a distance. Proceeding a little further, they came in sight of the long valley of the Doire, and looking down into it, not far from the bridge of Salabertrans, they discerned some thirty-six bivouac fires burning on the plain, indicating the presence of a large force. These were their enemies--a well-appointed army of some two thousand five hundred men--whom they were at last to meet in battle. Nothing discouraged, they descended into the valley, and the advanced guard shortly came in contact with the enemy's outposts. Firing between them went on for an hour and a half, and then night fell. The Vaudois leaders held a council to determine what they should do; and the result was, that an immediate attack was resolved upon, in three bodies. The principal attack was made on the bridge, the passage of which was defended by a strong body of French soldiers, under the command of Colonel de Larrey. On the advance of the Vaudois in the darkness, they were summoned to stand, but continued to advance, when the enemy fired a volley on them, killing three men. Then the Vaudois brigade rushed to the bridge, but seeing a strong body on the other side preparing to fire again, Arnaud called upon his men to lie down, and the volley went over their heads. Then Turrel, the Vaudois captain, calling out "Forward! the bridge is won!" the Vaudois jumped to their feet and rushed on. The two wings at the same time concentrated their fire on the defenders, who broke and retired, and the bridge was won. But at the further side, where the French were in overpowering numbers, they refused to give way, and poured down their fire on their assailants. The Vaudois boldly pressed on. They burst through the French, force, cutting it in two; and fresh men pouring over, the battle was soon won. The French, commander was especially chagrined at having been beaten by a parcel of cowherds. "Is it possible," he exclaimed, "that I have lost both the battle and my honour?" The rising moon showed the ground strewed with about seven hundred dead; the Vaudois having lost only twenty-two killed and eight wounded. The victors filled their pouches with ammunition picked up on the field, took possession of as many arms and as much provisions as they could carry, and placing the remainder in a heap over some barrels of powder, they affixed a lighted match and withdrew. A tremendous explosion shook the mountains, and echoed along the valley, and the remains of the French camp were blown to atoms. The Vaudois then proceeded at once to climb the mountain of Sci, which had to be crossed in order to enter the valley of Pragelas. It was early on a Sabbath morning, the ninth day of their march, that the Vaudois reached the crest of the mountain overlooking Fenestrelles, and saw spread out before them the beloved country which they had come to win. They halted for the stragglers, and when these had come up, Arnaud made them kneel down and thank God for permitting them again to see their native land; himself offering up an eloquent prayer, which cheered and strengthened them for further effort. And then they descended into the valley of Pragelas, passing the river Clusone, and halting to rest at the little village of La Traverse. They were now close to the Vaudois strongholds, and in a country every foot of which was familiar to most of them. But their danger was by no means over; for the valleys were swarming with dragoons and foot-soldiers; and when they had shaken off those of France, they had still to encounter the troops of Savoy. Late in the afternoon the little army again set out for the valley of St. Martin, passing the night in the mountain hamlet of Jussand, the highest on the Col du Pis. Next day they descended the Col near Seras, and first came in contact with the troops of Savoy; but these having taken to flight, no collision occurred; and on the following day the Vaudois arrived, without further molestation, at the famous Balsille. This celebrated stronghold is situated in front of the narrow defile of Macel, which leads into the valley of St. Martin. It is a rampart of rock, standing at the entrance to the pass, and is of such natural strength, that but little art was needed to make it secure against any force that could be brought against it. There is only one approach to it from the valley of St. Martin, which is very difficult; a portion of the way being in a deep wooded gorge, where a few men could easily arrest the progress of an army. The rock itself consists of three natural stages or terraces, the highest part rising steep as a wall, being surmounted by a natural platform. The mountain was well supplied with water, which gushed forth in several places. Caverns had been hollowed out in the sides of the rocks, which served as hiding-places during the persecutions which so often ravaged the valleys; and these were now available for storehouses and barracks. The place was, indeed, so intimately identified with the past sufferings and triumphs of the Vaudois, and it was, besides, so centrally situated, and so secure, that they came to regard its possession as essential to the success of their enterprise. The aged Javanel, who drew up the plan of the invasion before the eight hundred set out on their march, attached the greatest importance to its early occupation. "Spare no labour nor pains," he said, in the memorandum of directions which he drew up, "in fortifying this post, which will be your most secure fortress. Do not quit it unless in the utmost extremity.... You will, of course, be told that you cannot hold it always, and that rather than not succeed in their object, all France and Italy will gather together against you.... But were it the whole world, and only yourselves against all, fear ye the Almighty alone, who is your protection." On the arrival of the Vaudois at the Balsille, they discerned a small body of troops advancing towards them by the Col du Pis, higher up the valley. They proved to be Piedmontese, forty-six in number, sent to occupy the pass. They were surrounded, disarmed, and put to death, and their arms were hid away amongst the rocks. No quarter was given on either side during this war; the Vaudois had no prisons in which to place their captives; and they themselves, when taken, were treated not as soldiers, but as bandits, being instantly hung on the nearest trees. The Vaudois did not, however, yet take up their permanent position at the Balsille, being desirous of rousing the valleys towards the south. The day following, accordingly, they marched to Pralis, in the valley of the Germanasca, when, for the first time since their exile, they celebrated Divine worship in one of the temples of their ancestors. They were now on their way towards the valley of the Pelice, to reach which it was necessary that they should pass over the Col Julian. An army of three thousand Piedmontese barred their way, but nothing daunted by the great disparity of force, the Vaudois, divided into three bodies, as at Salabertrans, mounted to the assault. As they advanced, the Piedmontese cried, "Come on, ye devil's Barbets, there are more than three thousand of us, and we occupy all the posts!" In less than half an hour the whole of the posts were carried, the pass was cleared, and the Piedmontese fled down the further side of the mountain, leaving all their stores behind them. On the following day the Vaudois reached Bobi, drove out the new settlers, and resumed possession of the lands of the commune. Thus, after the lapse of only fourteen days, this little band of heroes had marched from the shores of the Lake of Geneva, by difficult mountain-passes, through bands of hostile troops, which they had defeated in two severe fights, and at length reached the very centre of the Vaudois valleys, and entered into possession of the "Promised Land." They resolved to celebrate their return to the country of their fathers by an act of solemn worship on the Sabbath following. The whole body assembled on the hill of Silaoud, commanding an extensive prospect of the valley, and with their arms piled, and resting under the shade of the chestnut-trees which crown the hill, they listened to an eloquent sermon from the pastor Montoux, who preached to them standing on a platform, consisting of a door resting upon two rocks, after which they chanted the 74th Psalm, to the clash of arms. They then proceeded to enter into a solemn covenant with each other, renewing the ancient oath of union of the valleys, and swearing never to rest from their enterprise, even if they should be reduced to only three or four in number, until they had "re-established in the valleys the kingdom of the Gospel." Shortly after, they proceeded to divide themselves into two bodies, for the purpose of occupying simultaneously, as recommended by Javanel, the two valleys of the Pelice and St. Martin. But the trials and sufferings they had already endured were as nothing compared with those they were now about to experience. Armies concentrated on them from all points. They were pressed by the French on the north and west, and by the Piedmontese on the south and east. Encouraged by their success at Bobi, the Vaudois rashly attacked Villar, lower down the valley, and were repulsed with loss. From thence they retired up the valley of Rora, and laid it waste; the enemy, in like manner, destroying the town of Bobi and laying waste the neighbourhood. The war now became one of reprisals and mutual devastation, the two parties seeking to deprive each other of shelter and the means of subsistence. The Vaudois could only obtain food by capturing the enemy's convoys, levying contributions from the plains, and making incursions into Dauphiny. The enterprise on which they had entered seemed to become more hopeless from day to day. This handful of men, half famished and clothed in rags, had now arrayed against them twenty-two thousand French and Sardinians, provided with all the munitions of war. That they should have been able to stand against them for two whole months, now fighting in one place, and perhaps the next day some twenty miles across the mountains in another, with almost invariable success, seems little short of a miracle. But flesh and blood could not endure such toil and privations much longer. No wonder that the faint-hearted began to despair. Turrel, the military commander, seeing no chance of a prosperous issue, withdrew across the French frontier, followed by the greater number of the Vaudois from Dauphiny;[110] and there remained only the Italian Vaudois, still unconquered in spirit, under the leadership of their pastor-general Arnaud, who never appeared greater than in times of difficulty and danger. [Footnote 110: The greater number of them, including Turrel, were taken prisoners and shot, or sent to the galleys, where they died. This last was the fate of Turrel.] With his diminished forces, and the increasing numbers of the enemy, Arnaud found it impossible to hold both the valleys, as intended; besides, winter was approaching, and the men must think of shelter and provisions during that season, if resistance was to be prolonged. It was accordingly determined to concentrate their little force upon the Balsille, and all haste was made to reach that stronghold without further delay. Their knowledge of the mountain heights and passes enabled them to evade their enemies, who were watching for them along the valleys, and they passed from the heights of Rodoret to the summit of the Balsille by night, before it was known that they were in the neighbourhood. They immediately set to work to throw up entrenchments and erect barricades, so as to render the place as secure as possible. Foraging parties were sent out for provisions, to lay in for the winter, and they returned laden with corn from the valley of Pragelas. At the little hamlet of Balsille they repaired the mill, and set it a-going, the rivulet which flowed down from the mountain supplying abundance of water-power. It was at the end of October that the little band of heroes took possession of the Balsille, and they held it firmly all through the winter. For more than six months they beat back every force that was sent against them. The first attack was made by the Marquis d'Ombrailles at the head of a French detachment; but though the enemy reached the village of Balsille, they were compelled to retire, partly by the bullets of the defenders, and partly by the snow, which was falling heavily. The Marquis de Parelles next advanced, and summoned the Vaudois to surrender; but in vain. "Our storms are still louder than your cannon," replied Arnaud, "and yet our rocks are not shaken." Winter having set in, the besiegers refrained for a time from further attacks, but strictly guarded all the passes leading to the fortress; while the garrison, availing themselves of their knowledge of the locality, made frequent sorties into the adjoining valleys, as well as into those of Dauphiny, for the purpose of collecting provisions, in which they were usually successful. When the fine weather arrived, suitable for a mountain campaign, the French general, Catinat, assembled a strong force, and marched into the valley, determined to make short work of this little nest of bandits on the Balsille. On Sunday morning, the 30th of April, 1690, while Arnaud was preaching to his flock, the sentinels on the look-out discovered the enemy's forces swarming up the valley. Soon other bodies were seen approaching by the Col du Pis and the Col du Clapier, while a French regiment, supported by the Savoyard militia, climbed Mont Guinevert, and cut off all retreat in that quarter. In short, the Balsille was completely invested. A general assault was made on the position on the 2nd of May, under the direction of General Catinat in person. Three French regiments, supported by a regiment of dragoons, opened the attack in front; Colonel de Parat, who commanded the leading regiment, saying to his soldiers as they advanced, "My friends, we must sleep to-night in that barrack," pointing to the rude Vaudois fort on the summit of the Balsille. They advanced with great bravery; but the barricade could not be surmounted, while they were assailed by a perfect storm of bullets from the defenders, securely posted above. Catinat next ordered the troops stationed on the Guinevert to advance from that direction, so as to carry the position from behind. But the assailants found unexpected intrenchments in their way, from behind which the Vaudois maintained a heavy fire, that eventually drove them back, their retreat being accelerated by a shower of stones and a blinding fall of snow and hail. In the meantime, the attack on the bastion in front continued, and the Vaudois, seeing the French troops falling back in disorder, made a vigorous sortie, and destroyed the whole remaining force, excepting fifteen men, who fled, bare-headed and without arms, and carried to the camp the news of their total defeat. A Savoyard officer thus briefly described the issue of the disastrous affair in a letter to a friend: "I have only time to tell you that the French have failed in their attack on the Balsille, and they have been obliged to retire after having lost one hundred and fifty soldiers, three captains, besides subalterns and wounded, including a colonel and a lieutenant-colonel who have been made prisoners, with the two sergeants who remained behind to help them. The lieutenant-colonel was surprised at finding in the fort some nineteen or twenty officers in gold and silver lace, who treated him as a prisoner of war and very humanely, even allowing him to go in search of the surgeon-major of his regiment for the purpose of bringing him into the place, and doing all that was necessary." Catinat did not choose again to renew the attack in person, or to endanger his reputation by a further defeat at the hands of men whom he had described as a nest of paltry bandits, but entrusted the direction of further operations to the Marquis de Féuquières, who had his laurels still to win, while Catinat had his to lose. The Balsille was again completely invested by the 12th of May, according to the scheme of operations prepared by Catinat, and the Marquis received by anticipation the title of "Conqueror of the Barbets." The entire mountain was surrounded, all the passes were strongly guarded, guns were planted in positions which commanded the Vaudois fort, more particularly on the Guinevert; and the capture or extermination of the Vaudois was now regarded as a matter of certainty. The attacking army was divided into five corps. Each soldier was accompanied by a pioneer carrying a fascine, in order to form a cover against the Vaudois bullets as they advanced. Several days elapsed before all the preliminaries for the grand attack were completed, and then the Marquis ordered a white flag to be hoisted, and a messenger was sent forward, inviting a parley with the defenders of the Balsille. The envoy was asked what he wanted. "Your immediate surrender!" was the reply. "You shall each of you receive five hundred louis d'or, and good passports for your retirement to a foreign country; but if you resist, you will be infallibly destroyed." "That is as the Lord shall will," replied the Vaudois messenger. The defenders refused to capitulate on any terms. The Marquis himself then wrote to the Vaudois, offering them terms on the above basis, but threatening, in case of refusal, that every man of them would be hung. Arnaud's reply was heroic. "We are not subjects," he said, "of the King of France; and that monarch not being master of this country, we can enter into no treaty with his servants. We are in the heritage which our fathers have left to us, and we hope, with the help of the God of armies, to live and die in it, even though there may remain only ten of us to defend it." That same night the Vaudois made a vigorous sortie, and killed a number of the besiegers: this was their final answer to the summons to surrender. On the 14th of May the battery on Mont Guinevert was opened, and the enemy's cannon began to play upon the little fort and bastions, which, being only of dry stones, were soon dismantled. The assault was then made simultaneously on three sides; and after a stout resistance, the Vaudois retired from their lower intrenchments, and retreated to those on the higher ledges of the mountain. They continued their resistance until night, and then, taking counsel together, and feeling that the place was no longer defensible in the face of so overpowering a force, commanded, as it was, at the same time by the cannon on the adjoining heights, they determined to evacuate the Balsille, after holding it for a period of nearly seven months. A thick mist having risen up from the valley, the Vaudois set out, late at night, under the guidance of Captain Poulat, a native of the district, who well knew the paths in the mountains. They climbed up on to the heights above, over icy slopes, passing across gaping crevices and along almost perpendicular rocks, admitting of their passage only in single file, sometimes dragging themselves along on their bellies, clinging to the rocks or to the tufts of grass, occasionally resting and praying, but never despairing. At length they succeeded, after a long détour of the mountain crests, in gaining the northern slope of Guinevert. Here they came upon and surprised the enemy's outpost, which fled towards the main body; and the Vaudois passed on, panting and half dead with fatigue. When the morning broke, and the French proceeded to penetrate the last redoubt on the Balsille, lo, it was empty! The defenders had abandoned it, and they could scarcely believe their eyes when they saw the dangerous mountain escarpment by which they had escaped in the night. Looking across the valley, far off, they saw the fugitives, thrown into relief by the snow amidst which they marched, like a line of ants, apparently making for the mass of the central Alps. For three days they wandered from place to place, gradually moving southwards, their object now being to take up their position at the Pra du Tour, the ancient fortress of the Barbas in the valley of Angrogna. Before, however, they could reach this stronghold, and while they were still at Pramol in the valley of Perosa, news of the most unexpected kind reached them, which opened up the prospect of their deliverance. The news was no other than this--Savoy had declared war against France! A rupture between the two powers had for some time been imminent. Louis XIV. had become more and more exacting in his demands on the Duke of Savoy, until the latter felt himself in a position of oppressive vassalage. Louis had even intimated his intention of occupying Verrua and the citadel of Turin; and the Duke, having previously ascertained through his cousin, Prince Eugène, the willingness of the Emperor of Austria, pressed by William of Orange, to assist him in opposing the pretensions of France, he at length took up his stand and declared war against Louis. The Vaudois were now a power in the state, and both parties alike appealed to them for help, promising them great favours. But the Vaudois, notwithstanding the treachery and cruelty of successive Dukes of Savoy, were true to their native prince. They pledged themselves to hold the valleys and defend the mountain passes against France. In the first engagements which took place between the French and the Piedmontese, the latter were overpowered, and the Duke became a fugitive. Where did he find refuge? In the valleys of the Vaudois, in a secluded spot in the village of Rora, behind the Pelice, he found a safe asylum amidst the people whose fathers he had hunted, proscribed, and condemned to death. But the tide of war turned, and the French were eventually driven out of Piedmont. Many of the Vaudois, who had settled in Brandenburg, Holland, and Switzerland, returned and settled in the valleys; and though the Dukes of Savoy, with their accustomed treachery, more than once allowed persecution to recommence, their descendants continue to enjoy the land, and to worship after the manner of their fathers down to the present day. The Vaudois long laboured under disabilities, and continued to be deprived of many social and civil rights. But they patiently bided their time; and the time at length arrived. In 1848 their emancipation was one of the great questions of North Italy. It was taken up and advocated by the most advanced minds of Piedmont. The petition to Charles Albert in their favour was in a few days covered with the names of its greatest patriots, including those of Balbo, Cavour, and D'Azeglio. Their emancipation was at length granted, and the Vaudois now enjoy the same rights and liberties as the other subjects of Victor Emanuel. Nor is the Vaudois Church any longer confined to the valleys, but it has become extended of late years all over Italy--to Milan, Florence, Brescia, Verona, Genoa, Leghorn, Naples, Palermo, Cataneo, Venice, and even to Rome itself. In most of these places there are day-schools and Sunday-schools, besides churches. The new church at Venice, held in the Cavagnis palace, seems to have proved especially successful, the Sunday services being regularly attended by from three to four hundred persons; while the day-schools in connection with the churches at Turin, Leghorn, Naples, and Cataneo have proved very successful. Thus, in the course of a few years, thirty-three Vaudois churches and stations, with about an equal number of schools, have been established in various parts of Italy. The missionaries report that the greatest difficulties they have to encounter arise from the incredulity and indifference which are the natural heritage of the Romish Church; but that, nevertheless, the work makes satisfactory progress--the good seed is being planted, and will yet bring forth its increase in God's due time. Finally, it cannot but be acknowledged that the people of the valleys, in so tenaciously and conscientiously adhering to their faith, through good and through evil, during so many hundred years, have set a glorious example to Piedmont, and have possibly been in no small degree instrumental in establishing the reign of right and of liberty in Italy. INDEX. Aiguesmortes, Huguenot prison at, 193, 273, 300. Albigenses, 75. Anabaptists of Munster, 282-3. Anduze, visit to, 125. Angrogna, valley of, 481; fighting in, 481-86, 498. Arnaud, Henry, 215, 512; leads back the Vaudois, 503-15; defends the Balsille, 515-19. Athlone, siege of, 349-50, 355-8. Balsille, the, 510; defence of, 515-19; given up, 519. Baridon, Etienne, 442-3. Barillon, M. de, 323, 330-1. Baville on the Protestants of Languedoc, 77, 86; occupies the Cevennes, 87; at Pont-de-Montvert, 92. Beauval, Basnage de, 364. Beauvau, Prince de, 273-4. Beckwith, General, 478. Berwick, Duke of, 310-11, 333, 351. Bibles, destruction and scarcity of, 215-16. Boileau, General, 351-2. Bonnafoux repulsed by Camisards, 142. Book-burning, 215, 235-6. Bordeille, Raphaël, 318. Bourg d'Oisans, 409-10. Boyne, battle of the, 341-7. Briançon, 414-16. Briset, Lieut., death of, 335. Broglie, Count, 143-4, 148; superseded, 149. Brousson, Claude, 30; advocate for Protestant church at Nismes, 31; meeting in house of, 34; petition by, 35; escape from Nismes, 42; at Lausanne, 43, 46; at Berlin, 44; in the Cevennes, 50-2, 54; reward offered for, 56; at Nismes, 57; preaching of, 58-9; to Lausanne, England, and Holland, 61-2; at Sedan, 64; through France, 66-7; portraiture of, 68 (note); to Nismes again, 69; taken, tried, and executed, 70-3. Browne, Col. Lyde, 380. Brueys on fanaticism in Languedoc, 91. Bull of Clement XI. against Camisards, 160. Caillemotte, Col., 339; death of, 345, 348. Calas, Jean, 257; executed, 258; case taken up by Voltaire, 259-62; reversal of judgment on, 262-3. Calvinism and race, 100 (note). Calvinists, French and Scotch, compared, 100. Cambon, Col., 357. Camisards, the origin of name, 107; led by Laporte, 109; organization of, 112-13; encounter troops, 113-14, 117; war-song of, 115; organized by Roland, 123-4; successes of, 134-40, 142, 146-50; spread of insurrection of, 138-9; measures against, 139, 146-7; defeat of, at Vagnas, 150; defeat of, near Pompignan, 152; success of, at Martinargues, 162-4; bull against, 160; success at Salindres, 164-5; defeated near Nismes, 168-9; reverses of, 170-1; success at Font-morte, 176-7; defeated at Pont-de-Montvert, and end of insurrection, 187-9. Camisards, White, 160-1. Carrickfergus, siege of, 335. Castanet, André, 111, 113, 118, 123, 189. Cavalier, John, joins insurgents, 108, 111; family of, 121; to Geneva, 121; to the Cevennes, 122; portrait of, 124; in Lower Languedoc, 133; defeats Royalists, 134-5; takes Château Servas, 136-7; repulses Bonnafoux, 142; at Nismes, 144-5; successes of, 148; winter campaign, 148-9; at Vagnas, 150-1, 153; betrayed at Tower of Belliot, 156-8; at Martinargues, 162-4; at Rosni, 169; his cave magazines, 170-1; his interview with Lalande, 173-6; attempts peace, 177; his interviews with Villars, 177-83; deserted by followers, 183-5; to England, and subsequent career, 186. Caves in the Cevennes, 125, 127-9; at La Tour, 477. Cazenove, Raoul de, 321, 367. Cevennes, the, persecutions in, 39, 52-3, 85; secret meetings in, 54, 84-8; executions in, 59, 67-8; description of, 79-82; arming of the people, 85-6; occupied by troops, 88; prophetic mania in, 88; encounter at Pont-de-Montvert, 92; outbreak against Du Chayla, 96-7; map of, 98; Protestants of, compared with Covenanters, 100-1; organization in, 123-5; caves in, 125, 127-9; visit to, 125-9; present inhabitants of, 129, 131-2; devastation of, 154-5. Champ Domergue, battle at, 114. Charlemont, capture of, 339. Château Queyras, 467. Chaumont, 271. Chayla, Du, 93-4, 97. Chenevix, 15 (note). Choiseul, Duc de, 268. Claris, 237. Colognac, execution of, 59. Comiers, 407. Conderc, Salomon, 119, 123. "Conversions," rapid, 289. Converts, 19-23, 38-9. Cook, Captain, last voyage round the world, 371; cruel death, 371. Court profligacy, 275 (note). Court, Antoine, 206-17; organizes school for preachers, 224; marriage of, 231; retires to Switzerland, 232; results of his work, 233-4; in Languedoc, 239. Covenanters compared with Protestants of the Cevennes, 100-2. Cromwell, 391-2, 476. D'Aguesseau's opinion of Protestants of Languedoc, 76-7. Dauphiny, map of, 382; aspect of, 383-4. Delada, Mdlle. de, 295. Denbeck, Abbé of, 322-3. Denèse, Rotolf de la, 364. Desert, assemblies in the, 83-8, 218-23. Desparvés, M., 297. Dormilhouse, 438, 443-54. Dortial, 238. Douglas, Lieut.-General, 349-51, 355. Dragonnades, 36-7, 42, 54-5, 288; horrors of, 291. Drogheda, surrender of, 349. Dumas, death of, 52. Dundalk, Schomberg's army at, 337-8. Durand, Pierre, 236. Easter massacre of the Vaudois, 390-92. England attempts to assist the Camisards, 166-7. Enniskilleners, the, 336. Evertzen, Vice-Admiral, 325. Execution of Pastors, 27. Fabre, Jean, 265; sent to galleys, 266-9; obtains leave of absence, 269; exonerated, 270; life dramatized, and result, 270. Fermaud, Pastor, 407. Freemantle, Rev. Mr., visits of, to the Vaudois, 395, 450, 462. French labouring classes, present condition of, 397-400. Freney, gorge of, 411. Fusiliers, missionary, 293. Galley, description of, 197-8; use in war, 200-4. Galley-slaves, treatment of, 194-204; liberation of Protestants, 204, 264 (note), 271-3. Galway, Earl of, 360. Gilly, Dr., visit to the Vaudois, 393-4, 468, 477. Ginckel, Lieut.-General, 347, 354 _et seq._ Glorious Return of the Vaudois, 493-5. Grace, Col. Richard, 351. Guarrison, Mdlle. de, 294. Guerin, death of, 67. Guignon betrays Cavalier, 156; executed, 159. Guil, valley of the, 466. Guillestre, 456-66. Guion executed, 57. Herbert, Admiral, 325. Homel, tortures and death of, 40. Hood, Lord, 376. Huguenots, the (see _Camisards_); emigrations of, 43, 76-8, 83, 287, 316; persecution of, after Camisard insurrection, 190-204; as galley-slaves, 194-204; brought together by Court, 210-17; reorganization of, 218-228; outrages on, 228; great assemblies of, 239-40; last of the executions, 258; last of the galley-slaves, 265-273; character of, 274-5; later history of, 276-283; decrees against, 286-6; in England, 309; foreign services of, 316-17. Ireland and James II., 331 _et seq._ Irish Brigade, 140-2, 359. Iron Boot, the, 102. James II., flight of, 309, 329; lands with an army in Ireland, 309, 332; campaign against William III., 309 _et seq._, 333 _et seq._; deserted, 328; taken prisoner, 329; his last proclamation, 330; at the French court, 331; cowardice, 337, 347-8; Catholic estimate of his character, 348. Joany, Nicholas, insurgent leader, 120, 123, 151. Johannot, 269. Julien, Brigadier, 147, 150-1. Lagier, Jean, 452, 453 (note). Lajonquière defeated at Martinargues, 162-4. Lalande, his interview with Cavalier, 173-6. Languedoc (see _Cevennes_), early liberty in, 75; Albigenses in, 75; Protestants of, 76-7; industry of, 76; emigration from, after Revocation, 78, 289; arming of people of, 85-6; outbreak of fanaticism in, 88-92; present inhabitants of, 280-3. Laporte, leader of Camisards, 109-10; organizes insurgents, 112; at Collet, 113; at Champ Domergue, 114; killed at Molezon, 117. La Salette, 404; miracle of, 405-6. La Tour, 476-80. Laugier at Guillestre, 463; at Château Queyras, 464. Lausanne, school for preachers at, 224; Society of Help at, 224-5. Lauteret, Col de, 413. Lauzun, Count, 339, 358. Lesdiguières, Duc de, 402-3, 455. Limerick, siege of, 351-4, 359. Lintarde, Marie, imprisonment of, 54. Locke, John, on Protestants of Nismes, 31 (note). Londonderry, siege of, 333. Louis XIV., 2, 10, 146, 205. Louis XV., 275. Louis XVI., 276; maxim of, 285; his decrees against Protestants, 285-6; his mode of stopping the emigration of Huguenots, 287-8; expulsion of Protestants, 316; assists James II., 332. Luttrell, Capt., brilliant naval achievement of, 372. Mackay, Major-General, 355, 357. Marillac, Michel de, inventor of the dragonnades, 288. Marion on influence of Camisard prophets, 119. Marlborough, Earl of, 354. Marteilhe, autobiography of, 195, 201-4. Martinargues, battle at, 162-4. Massillon on Louis XIV., 10. Mazel, Abraham, 120, 123. Mialet, visit to, 127-8. Milsom, Edward, 395, 451, 490-92. Missionaries, booted, 288. Montandre, Marquis de, 314. Montauban, persecutions at, 289-90. Montpellier, Protestant Church at, 32-3; the Peyron at, 72; execution of Brousson at, 73, 300. Montrevel, Marshal, in Languedoc, 149; at Pompignan, 152; adopts extermination, 153; at Tower of Belliot, 156-8; character of, 159; recalled, 167; defeats Cavalier, 168-9. Nantes, Revocation of Edict of, and its results, 1-19, 24, 44-5, 78; contemporary opinion upon, 1-10; enactments of Edict of Revocation, 12-15, 285-6. Neff, Felix, 427-32; life of, 394, 404; his account of winter at Dormilhouse, 447; his charge, 469. Nelson, Lord, eulogium on Capt. Riou, 368; at the battle of Copenhagen, 378-9. Ners, visit to, 131. Newton Butler, engagement at, 333. Nismes, Protestant Church at, 31; petition from, 41; Brousson at, 57, 69; Guion at, 57; country about, 81, 130-2; success of Camisards near, 143; Cavalier at, 144-5, 177-83; treaty of, 179-80; Huguenot meetings at, 265. Ormond, Duke of, 349. Palons, 433-6. Paulet, Mdlle., forgeries in name of, 32-4. Pechell, Augustus, 315. Pechell, Capt. William Cecil, 315. Pechell, Col. Jacob, 313. Pechell, Paul, 314. Pechell, Samuel, extraordinary probity of, 314. Pechell, Sir G. R. Brooke, 315. Pechell, Sir Thomas, 315. Péchels de la Boissonade, Samuel de, narrative of his persecutions, 291 _et seq._; imprisonment, 296, 299-301; meeting with his wife, 297; condemned to banishment, 299; embarkation, 302; sails for America, 303; sufferings, 304-5; reaches the West Indies, 305; illness and arrival in London, 307; accepts a commission in the English army, 309; campaign in Ireland, 310; return to London, 311; removal with his wife and son to Dublin, 312; death of, 312; his descendants, 313. Péchels, family of, 290. Péchels, Madame de, inhumanity towards, 294-5; touching interview with her husband, 297; further trials, 297; escape to Geneva, 298; in London, 308; reunited to her husband, 311. Pelice, Valley of the, 472. Pélisson, 323. Pont-de-Montvert, outbreak at, 92-7; description of, 93-4; end of Camisard insurrection at, 187-9. Portland, Earl of, 361, 363. Portland Vase, 363. Poul, Captain, in Upper Cevennes, 108; at Champ Domergue, 114-16; takes Laporte at Molezon, 117; defeated and killed near Nismes, 143-4. Pra du Tour, 486-90, 499. Preachers, education of, 221-4; hardships of, 225-9, 236-8. Project, the, 34. "Protestant wind," the, 325. Protestantism in France, present chances of, 417. Quoite, execution of, 53. Rapin, Capt. Paul, birth and education, 321-2; emigrates to England, 322; embarks for Holland, 323; a cadet in the Dutch army, 324; sails for England, 325; encounters a storm, 326; with the army of William III., 335 _et seq._; aide-de-camp, 350; wounded and promoted, 354; conciliatory spirit, 358-9; at Kinsale, 359; tutor to Lord Woodstock, 360; presented to the King, 371; makes the "grand tour" with his pupil, 362-3; secures the Portland Vase, 363; marriage, 363; at the Hague and Wesel, 364; his "Dissertation on the Origin and Nature of the English Constitution," 364; "History of England," 364-7; death of, 366. Rapin, Daniel de, 324. Rapin family, 317-21, 367. Rapin, Solomon, 354, 360. Ravanel, insurgent leader, defeats Royalists near Nismes, 143; near Bouquet, 145; supplants Cavalier, 182-5; death of, 189. Redothière, Isabeau, 53. Rességuerie, M. de la, 297. Rey, Fulcran, his preaching and death, 25-7. Riou, Capt., R.N., Lord Nelson's opinion of, 368; ancestry, 368-70; birth and education, 370; becomes a midshipman, 370; accompanies Capt. Cook in his last voyage, 371; witnesses the murder of the captain, 371; return to England and appointed lieutenant, 372; a sharer in the glory of Capt. Luttrell's brilliant achievement, 372; appointed to the command of the _Guardian_, 373; letters to his mother, 373, 377; his ship strikes upon an iceberg, 374; remains with the vessel, 375; letter to the Admiralty, 375; extract from his log, 376; rescued by Dutch whalers, and return to England, 376; receives the special thanks of the Admiralty, 377; commander of the royal yacht _Princess Augusta_, 378; at the battle of Copenhagen, 378-9; death of, 379; his character, 379-80; monument in St. Paul's Cathedral, 380. Rochemalan, Vaudois struggles at, 482-6. Roger, Jacques, 213. Roland, nephew of Laporte, 111; insurgent leader, 113; succeeds Laporte, 118; in Lower Cevennes, 122; organizes Camisards, 123-5; takes Sauvé, 137; at Pompignan, 152; at Salindres, 164-5; at Font-Morte, 176-7; at Pont-de-Montvert, 187; death of, 188. Romanche, Valley of the, 401, 408. Rosen, Count, 332; indignation against King James, 337. Rostan, Alpine missionary, 460 (note). Rou, Jean, 363-4. Roussel, Alexandre, 232. Ruvigny, Major-General, 357. St. Bartholomew, doubt thrown upon massacre of, 27. Saint-Etienne, Rabout, 276-7. St. Hypolite, meeting at, 35. Saint-Ruth, Marshal, 38; in Ireland, 38 (note), 354 _et seq._ Saint-Simon on the treatment of converts, 23. Sands, Captain, 357. San Veran, 468. Sarsfield, General, 351-3, 356. Savoy and France, war declared, 520. Savoy, Duke of, takes refuge with the Vaudois, 520. Schomberg, Marshal, 309 _et seq._, 317, 344 _et seq._; death of, 345. Schomberg, Count, 348. Sedan, prosperity of, before Revocation, 64-5; Brousson at, 65-6. Seguier, Pierre, insurgent leader, 96, 103; at Frugères, 104; at Font-Morte, 106; taken, tried, and executed, 106-7. Sirven, 263; case of, taken up by Voltaire, 264. Society of Friends in Languedoc, 281-2. Souverain executed, 52. Squeezers, the, 101 (note). Synod of French Protestant Church, 283. Talmash, Major-General, 357. Telford, anecdote of, 82. Testart, Marie Anne, 363. Tetleau, Major-General, 357. Toleration, Edict of, 276. "Troopers' Lane," 310. Tyrconnel, Earl of, 331-2. Tyrconnel, Lady, retort to King James, 348. Val Fressinières, 423-5, 432-43. Val Louise, 420; massacre at, 422. Vaudois, the country of, 385; early Christianity of, 386-6; early persecutions of, 388; Easter massacre of, 390-1; visits of Dr. Gilly to, 393-4, 468, 477; passiveness of, 420-1; massacre of, at Val Louise, 422; persecutions of, 424-6, 455, 481, 495-500, 513-20; refuges of, 459, 467, 475, 477, 481; struggles of, at Rochemalan, 482-6; flight at the Revocation, 495; apparently exterminated, 500; in Switzerland, 501; prepare to return, 502; Arnaud appointed leader, 502; assisted by William of Orange, 503; The Glorious Return of, 504-13; struggles of, at the Balsille, 515; assist Duke of Savoy, 520; emancipation of, 521-2. Venours, Marquis de, death of, 335. Vesson, 212, 214. Vidal, Isaac, preacher, 48. Villars, Marshal, on prophetic mania in Languedoc, 90; appointed to command in Languedoc, 167; at Nismes, 169; clemency of, 172-86; treats with Cavalier, 177, 185; suppresses insurrection of Camisards, 188. Vincent, Isabel, prophetess, 89, 90. Vivens, death of, 56. Voltaire, takes up case of Calas, 259-63; takes up case of Sirven, 264; case of Chaumont, 271. Waldenses, the, 384. Walker, Dr. George, death of, 348. Waller, Sir James, 359. Wheel, punishment of the, 258 (note). William of Orange lands in England, 308; proclaimed King, 309; campaign against James II., 309 _et seq._, 340 _et seq._; his fleet, 325-7; wounded, 342; death of, 364. Woodstock, Lord, 360-3. Wurtemberg, Duke of, 340, 357. PRINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO., LIMITED, CITY ROAD, LONDON. 
42954	----	Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=). BRITTANY * * * * * OTHER VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES BY MORTIMER MENPES EACH =20s.= NET WITH ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR JAPAN WORLD PICTURES VENICE INDIA CHINA PRICE =5s.= NET PUBLISHED BY ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W. * * * * * [Illustration: MARIE JEANNE] BRITTANY by MORTIMER MENPES Text by DOROTHY MENPES Published by Adam & Charles Black Soho Square London · W · MCMXII. Published July, 1905 Reprinted 1912 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. DOUARNÉNEZ 3 II. ROCHEFORT-EN-TERRE 15 III. VITRÉ 29 IV. VANNES 51 V. QUIMPER 77 VI. ST. BRIEUC 89 VII. PAIMPOL 99 VIII. GUINGAMP 107 IX. HUELGOAT 115 X. CONCARNEAU 123 XI. MORLAIX 129 XII. PONT-AVEN 137 XIII. QUIMPERLÉ 165 XIV. AURAY 175 XV. BELLE ISLE 183 XVI. ST. ANNE D'AURAY 197 XVII. ST. MALO 203 XVIII. MONT ST. MICHEL 211 XIX. CHÂTEAU DES ROCHERS 225 XX. CARNAC 235 XXI. A ROMANTIC LAND 241 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1. Marie Jeanne _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE 2. Homeward Bound 4 3. Grandmère 6 4. Meditation 10 5. Minding the Babies 12 6. A Cottage in Rochefort-en-Terre 14 7. At Rochefort-en-Terre 18 8. Mid-day Rest 20 9. A Cottage Home 24 10. Mediæval Houses, Vitré 28 11. Preparing the Mid-day Meal 32 12. In Church 34 13. Père Louis 36 14. Idle Hours 40 15. La Vieille Mère Perot 44 16. A Vieillard 48 17. Place Henri Quatre, Vannes 52 18. Gossips 56 19. A Cattle Market 60 20. Bread Stalls 64 21. In a Breton Kitchen 68 22. A Rainy Day at the Fair 72 23. In the Porch of the Cathedral, Quimper 76 24. The Vegetable Market, Quimper 80 25. Outside the Cathedral, Quimper 84 26. By the Side of a Farm 88 27. On the Road to Bannalec 92 28. Débit de Boissons 94 29. Church of St. Mody 96 30. Reflections 100 31. A Sabot-Stall 104 32. La Vieillesse 108 33. A Beggar 112 34. A Wayside Shrine, Huelgoat 116 35. Fishing Boats, Concarneau 120 36. At the Fountain, Concarneau 122 37. Concarneau Harbour 124 38. The Sardine Fleet, Concarneau 126 39. Watching for the Fishing-fleet, Concarneau 128 40. Mediæval House at Morlaix 132 41. Outside the Smithy, Pont-Aven 136 42. In an Auberge, Pont-Aven 140 43. A Sand-Cart on the Quay, Pont-Aven 144 44. Playing on the 'Place,' Pont-Aven 148 45. On the Quay at Pont-Aven 152 46. On the Steps of the Mill House, Pont-Aven 154 47. The Bridge, Pont-Aven 158 48. The Village Forge, Pont-Aven 160 49. The Village Cobbler 164 50. The Blind Piper 168 51. At the Foire 174 52. Mid-day 176 53. A Little Mother 180 54. Curiosity 184 55. A Solitary Meal 188 56. In the Bois d'Amour 192 57. A Breton Farmer 198 58. In the Eye of the Sun 204 59. Sunday 206 60. The Cradle 210 61. Soupe Maigre 212 62. Déjeuner 216 63. A Farmhouse Kitchen 218 64. Marie 222 65. A Farm Labourer 224 66. A Little Water-Carrier 226 67. Weary 230 68. The Master of the House 232 69. In the Ingle Nook 234 70. A Blind Beggar 236 71. La Petite Marie 240 72. The Little Housewife 242 73. An Old Woman 246 74. A Pig-Market 248 75. Household Duties 252 CHAPTER I DOUARNÉNEZ The gray and somewhat uninteresting village of Douarnénez undergoes a change when the fishing-boats come home. Even with your eyes shut, you would soon know of the advent of the fishermen by the downward clatter of myriads of sabots through the badly-paved steep streets, gathering in volume and rapidity with each succeeding minute. The village has been thoroughly wakened up. Douarnénez is the headquarters of the sardine fishery, and the home-coming of the sardine boats is a matter of no little importance. The 9,000 inhabitants of the place are all given up to this industry. Prosperity, or adversity, depends upon the faithfulness, or the fickleness, of the little silver fish in visiting their shores. Not long ago the sardines forsook Douarnénez, and great was the desolation and despair which settled upon the people. However, the season this year is good, and the people are prosperous. As one descends the tortuous street leading to the sea, when the tide is in, everything and everyone you encounter seem to be in one way or another connected with sardines. The white-faced houses are festooned and hung with fine filmy fishing-nets of a pale cornflower hue, edged with rows of deep russet-brown corks. Occasionally they are stretched from house to house across the street, and one passes beneath triumphal arches of really glorious gray-blue fishing-nets. This same little street, which barely an hour ago was practically empty and deserted, now swarms with big bronzed fishermen coming up straight from the sea, laden with their dripping cargo of round brown baskets half filled with glistening fish. They live differently from the sleepy villagers--these strapping giants of the sea, with their deep-toned faces, their hair made tawny by exposure, their blue eyes, which somehow or other seem so very blue against the dark red-brown of their complexion, their reckless, rollicking, yet graceful, sailor's gait. A sailor always reminds me of a cat amongst a roomful of crockery: he looks as if he will knock over something or trip over something every moment as he swings along in his careless fashion; yet he never does. [Illustration: HOMEWARD BOUND] What a contrast they are, these stalwart fishers of the deep, to the somewhat pallid, dapper-looking, half-French hotel and shop keepers, who are the only men to be seen in the village during the daytime--these fishermen, with their russet-brown clothing faded by the salt air into indescribably rich wallflower tones of gold and orange and red! What pranks Mistress Sea plays with the simple homespun garments of these men, staining and bleaching them into glorious and unheard-of combinations of colour, such as would give a clever London or Parisian dressmaker inspiration for a dozen gowns, which, if properly adapted, would take the whole of the fashionable world by storm! You see blue woollen jerseys faded into greens and yellows, red _bérets_ wondrously shaded in tones of vermilion and salmon. From almost every window tarpaulin and yellow oilskin trousers hang drying; every woman in the place is busily employed. Many a fascinating glimpse one catches at the doorways when passing, subjects worthy of Peter de Hooch--a young girl in the white-winged cap and red crossway shawl of Douarnénez cutting up squares of cork against the rich dark background of her home, in which glistening brass, polished oak, blue-and-white china, and a redly burning fire can be faintly discerned. A soft buzzing noise, as of many people singing, occasionally broken by a shrill treble, and a group of loafing men, peering in at a doorway, attract your attention. You gaze inquisitively within. It is a large shed or barn filled with hundreds of young girls and women, with bare feet and skirts tucked up to their knees, salting and sifting and drying and cooking sardines, singing together the while as with one voice some Breton folk-song in a minor key, as they busy themselves about their work. It is impossible to describe one's feelings when, after descending the steep cobbled street, one first catches sight of the sea at Douarnénez. One can only stand stock-still for a moment and draw in a deep breath of astonishment and fulfilment of hopes. Before you lies a broad expanse of gray-blue. I can liken it to nothing but the hue of faded cornflowers. Whether it is the time of day or not I cannot tell, but sea and sky alike are flooded with this same strange cornflower hue; the hills in the distance are of a deeper cornflower; and clustered about the quay are many fishing-barques, showing purply-black against the blue delicacy of the background. [Illustration: GRANDMÈRE] Over the gray-blue sea are scudding myriads of brown, double-winged boats, all making for the little harbour--some in twos, some in threes, others in flocks, like so many swallows. Close to the dark cornflower hills is a patch of brilliant verdant green--so yellow-green that it almost sets your teeth on edge. Set down in mere words, this description can convey no impression of the Bay of Douarnénez as I saw it that balmy autumn afternoon. My pen is clogged; it refuses to interpret my thoughts. It was a scene that I shall never forget. As the fishing-boats neared the shore the gorgeously flaming brown-and-gold and vermilion sails were hauled down, and in their places appeared the filmy gray-blue nets hung with rows of brown corks. The rapidity with which these brown-sailed workaday boats changed to gossamer, cornflower-decked, fairy-like crafts was extraordinary. It was as if a flight of moths had by the stroke of a fairy's wand been suddenly transformed to blue-winged butterflies. In and about their boats the sailors are working, busy with their day's haul, picturesque figures standing against the luminous blue in their sea-toned garments. On the quay the women are standing in groups, talking and knitting, and keeping a sharp look-out for their own particular 'men.' Trim, neat little figures these women, with their short dark-blue or red skirts, their gaily-coloured shawls drawn down to a peak at the back, their light-yellow sabots and their tightly-fitting lace caps, made to show the brilliant black hair beneath and the pretty rounded shape of their heads. Many a time when the cornflower-blue sea has turned to sullen black, and the balmy air is alive with flying foam and roaring winds, such women must wait in vain on the quay at Douarnénez for their men-folk. The sailor's life is a hard one in Brittany, exposed as he is in his small boat to the fearful storms of the Atlantic. But danger and trouble are far distant on this balmy autumn afternoon: the haul has been an exceptional one, the little fishing-craft are filled high with silver fish, fishermen fill the streets with laden baskets, and the soft murmur of many women's voices singing at their work is wafted through the open doorways of the sorting and counting-houses. Every moment the boats on the horizon become more and more numerous, the men being anxious to land their cargo before nightfall; the sea, in fact, is dark with little brown craft racing in as if for a wager. At one point the fleet splits up, and the greater portion enter an inlet other than that at which we are standing. Anxious to watch their incoming, we hurry round the cliffs, past quiet bays. The black rocks against the blue sea, allspice-coloured sand, and overhanging autumn-tinted trees almost reaching to the water's edge, would afford many a fascinating subject for the painter of seascapes. In descending a hill, the haven towards which the fishing-boats are scudding is before us--a large bay with a breakwater. On the near side of it are massed rows upon rows of fishing-boats, now arrayed in their gossamer robes of blue. Everyone is busy. You are reminded of a scene in a play--a comic opera at the Gaiety. Boats are entering by the dozen every moment, and arranging themselves in rows in the little harbour, like a pack of orderly school-children, shuffling and fidgeting for a moment in their places before dropping anchor and remaining stationary. Others are scudding rapidly over the smooth blue sea, ruffling it up in white foam at their bows. Scores of men in rich brown wallflower-hued clothes and dark-blue _bérets_ are as busy as bees among the sails and cordage; others are walking rapidly to and fro, with round brown baskets, full of silver fish, slung over the arms. But before even the sardines are unloaded the nets are taken down, bundles of blue net and brown corks, and promptly carried off home to be dried. This is the sailors' first consideration, for on the frail blue nets depends prosperity or poverty. Such nets are most expensive: only one set can be bought in a man's lifetime, and even then they must be paid for in instalments. Above the quay, leaning over the stone parapet, are scores of girls, come from their homes just as they were, some with their work and some with their _goûté_ (bread and chocolate or an apple). They have come to watch the entrance of the fishing fleet: comely, fresh-complexioned women, in shawls and aprons of every colour--some blue, some maroon, some checked--all with spotless white caps. The wives are distinguished from the maids by the material of which their caps are made: the wives' are of book-muslin and the maids' of fillet lace. Some have brought their knitting, and work away busily, their hair stuck full of bright steel knitting-needles. I was standing in what seemed to be a "boulevard des jeunes filles." They were mostly quite young girls; and handsome creatures they were too, all leaning over the parapet and smiling down upon the men as they toiled up the slope with their baskets full, and ran down again at a jog-trot with the empties. The stalwart young men of the village were too much preoccupied to find time for tender or friendly glances: it was only later, when the bustle had subsided somewhat, and the coming and going was not so active, that they condescended to pay any attention to the fair. [Illustration: MEDITATION] The matrons were mostly engaged in haggling for cheap fish. The men, tired after their day's work, generally gave way without much ado. It was amusing to watch the triumph in which the old ladies carried off their fish, washed and cleaned them in the sea, threaded them on cords, and, slinging them on their shoulders, set off for home. It seemed as if the busy scene would never end. Always fresh boats were arriving, and still the horizon was black with fishing craft. Reluctantly we left the scene--a forest of masts against the evening sky, a jumble of blues and browns, rich wallflower shades and palest cornflower, brown corks, and the white caps of the women. Next morning the romantic and picturesque aspect of the town had disappeared. Gone were the fishermen, and gone their dainty craft. The only men remaining were loafers and good-for-nothings, besides the tradesmen and inn-keepers. Two by two the children were tramping through the steep gray streets on their way to school--small dirty-faced cherubs, under tangled mops of fair hair (one sees the loveliest red-gold and yellow-gold hair in Douarnénez), busily munching their breakfasts of bread and apples, many of them just able to toddle. 'Donne la main a ta soeur, George,' I heard a shrill voice exclaim from a doorway to two little creatures in blue-checked pinafores wending their weary way schoolwards. Who would have known that one of them was a boy? They seemed exactly alike. Handsome young girls in neat short skirts, pink worsted stockings, and yellow sabots, were busy sweeping out the gutters. Little children's dresses and pinafores had taken the place of nets and seamen's oilskins, now hanging from the windows to be dried. The quay was silent and desolate; the harbour empty of boats, save for a few battered hulks. All the colour and romance had gone out to sea with the fishermen. Only the smell of the sardines had been left behind. [Illustration: MINDING THE BABIES] [Illustration: A COTTAGE IN ROCHEFORT-EN-TERRE] CHAPTER II ROCHEFORT-EN-TERRE During our month's tour in Brittany we had not met one English or American traveller; but at Rochefort-en-Terre there was said to be a colony of artists. On arriving at the little railway-station, we found that the only conveyance available was a diligence which would not start until the next train, an hour thence, had come in. There was nothing for it, therefore, but to sit in the stuffy little diligence or to pace up and down the broad country road in the moonlight. There is something strangely weird and eerie about arriving at a place, the very name of which is unfamiliar, by moonlight. After a long hour's wait, the diligence, with its full complement of passengers, a party of young girls returned from a day's shopping in a neighbouring town, started. It was a long, cold drive, and the air seemed to be growing clearer and sharper as we ascended. At length Rochefort-en-Terre was reached, and, after paying the modest sum of fifty centimes for the two of us, we were set down at the door of the hotel. We were greeted with great kindness and hospitality by two maiden ladies in the costume of the country, joint proprietors of the hotel, who made us exceedingly comfortable. To our surprise, we discovered that the colony of painters had been reduced to one lady artist; but it was evident, from the pictures on the panels of the _salle-à-manger_, that many artists had stayed in the hotel during the summer. Rochefort by morning light was quite a surprise. The hotel, with a few surrounding houses, was evidently situated on a high hill; the rest of the village lay below, wreathed, for the time being, in a white mist. It was a balmy autumn morning; the sunlight was clear and radiant; and I was filled with impatience to be out and at work. The market-place was just outside our hotel, and the streets were alive with people. A strange smell pervaded the place--something between cider apples and burning wood--and whenever I think of Rochefort that smell comes back to me, bringing with it vivid memories of the quaint little town as I saw it that day. There is nothing modern about Rochefort. The very air is suggestive of antiquity. Few villages in Brittany have retained their old simplicity of character; but Rochefort is one of them. Untouched and unspoilt by the march of modernity, she has stood still while most of her neighbours have been whirled into the vortex of civilization. Rochefort, like the Sleeping Beauty's palace, has lain as it was and unrepaired for years. Moss has sprung up between the cobble-stones of her streets; ferns and lichen grow on the broken-down walls; Nature and men's handiwork have been allowed their own sweet way--and a very sweet way they have in Rochefort. To enter the village one must descend a flight of stone steps between two high walls, green and dark with ivy and small green ferns growing in the niches. Very old walls they are, with here and there ancient carved doorways breaking the straight monotony. On one side is a garden, and over the time-worn stone-work tomato-coloured asters nod and wistaria throws her thick festoons of green, for the flowering season is past. Everything is dark and damp and moss-grown, and very silent. An old woman, with a terra-cotta pitcher full of water poised on her head, is toiling up the steps, the shortest way to the town, which, save for the singing of the birds in the old château garden, the bleating of lambs on the hillside, and the chopping of a wood-cutter, is absolutely silent. One descends into a valley shut in by rugged blue-gray mountains, for all the world like a little Alpine village, or, rather, a Breton village in an Alpine setting. The mountains in parts are rocky and rugged, purple in aspect, and in parts overgrown with gray-green pines. There are stretches of wooded land, of golden-brown and russet trees, and great slopes of grass, the greenest I have ever seen. It is quite a little Swiss pastoral picture, such as one finds in children's story-books. On the mountain-side a woman, taking advantage of the sun, is busy drying her day's washing, and a little girl is driving some fat black-and-white cows into a field; while a sparkling river runs tumbling in white foam over boulders and fallen trees at the base. But Rochefort is a typically Breton village. Nowhere in Switzerland does one see such ancient walls, such gnarled old apple-trees, laden and bowed down to the earth with their weight of golden red fruit. Nowhere in Switzerland, I am sure, do you see such fine relics of architecture. Nearly every house in the village has something noble or beautiful in its construction. Renovation has not laid her desecrating hands on Rochefort. Here you see a house that was once a lordly dwelling; for there are remains of some fine sculpture round about the windows, remnants of magnificent mouldings over the door, a griffin's head jutting from the gray walls. There you see a double flight of rounded stone steps, with a balustrade leading up to a massive oak door. On the ancient steps chickens perch now, and over the doorway hang a bunch of withered mistletoe and the words 'Debit de Boisson.' [Illustration: AT ROCHEFORT-EN-TERRE] The village is full of surprises. Everywhere you may go in that little place you will see all about you pictures such as would drive most artists wild with joy. Everything in Rochefort seems to be more or less overgrown. Even in this late October you will see flowers and vines and all kinds of greenery growing rampant everywhere. You will see a white house almost covered with red rambling roses and yellowing vines, oleanders and cactus plants standing in tubs on either side of the door. There is not a wall over which masses of greenery do not pour, and not a window that does not hold its pot of red and pink geraniums. Two cats are licking their paws in two different windows. The sun has come out from the mists which enveloped it, and shines in all its glory, hot and strong on your back, as it would in August. It is market day, and everyone is light-hearted and happy. The men whistle gaily on their way; the women's tongues wag briskly over their purchases; even the birds, forgetful of the coming winter, are bursting their throats with song. In the château garden the birds sing loudest of all, and the flowers bloom their best. It is a beautiful old place, the château of Rochefort. Very little of the ruin is left standing; but the grounds occupy an immense area, and are enclosed by great high walls. Where the old kitchen once stood an American has built a house out of the old bricks, using many of the ornamentations and stone gargoyles found about the place. It is an ingeniously designed building; yet one cannot but feel that a modern house is somewhat incongruous amid such historic surroundings. The old avenue leading to the front door still exists; also there are some apple-trees and ancient farm-buildings. The château has been built in the most beautiful situation possible, high above the town, on a kind of tableland, from which one can look down to the valley and the encircling hills. [Illustration: MID-DAY REST] Set up in a prominent position in the village, where two roads meet, is a gaudy crucifix, very large and newly painted. It is a realistic presentation of our Saviour on the cross, with the blood flowing redly from His side, the piercing of every thorn plainly demonstrated, and the drawn lines of agony in His face and limbs very much accentuated. Every market woman as she passes shifts her basket to the other arm, that she may make the sign of the cross and murmur her prayers; every man, woman, child, stops before the cross to make obeisance, some kneeling down in the dust for a few moments before passing on their way. Who is to say that the image of that patient, suffering Saviour is not an influence for good in the village? Who is to say that the adoration, no matter how fleeting, does not soften, does not help, does not control, those humble peasant folk who bow before Him? Religion has an immense hold over the peasants of Brittany. It is the one thing of which they stand in dread. These images, you say, are dolls; but they are very realistic dolls. They teach the people their Bible history in a thorough, splendid way. They stand ever before them as something tangible to cling to, to believe in. And the images in the churches--do you mean to say that they have no influence for good on the people? St. Stanislaus, the monk, for example, with cowl and shaven head--what an influence such a statue must have on the hearts of children! There is in his face a world of tender fatherly feeling for the little child in the white robe and golden girdle who is resting his head so wearily on the saint's shoulder, clasping a branch of faded lilies in his hand. Children look at this statue, and they picture St. Stanislaus in their minds always thus: they know what the saint looked like, what he did. He is not only a misty, dim, uncertain figure in the history of the Bible, but a tangible, living, vibrating reality, taking active part in their daily lives. For older children, boys especially, there is St. Antoine to admire and imitate--St. Antoine the hermit, with his staff and his book, the man with the strong, good face. Françoise d'Amboise, a pure, sweet saint in the habit of a nun, her arms full of lilies, appeals to the hearts and imaginations of all young girls. I believe in the efficacy of these figures and pictures. The peasants' brains are not of a sufficiently fine calibre to believe in a vague Christ, a vague Virgin, vague saints interpreted to them by the priests. If it were not for the images, men and women would not come to church, as they do at all hours of the day, bringing their market baskets and their tools with them. They would not come in this way, spontaneously, joyfully, two or three times a day, to an empty church with only an altar. Church-going would then become a bare duty, forced and unreal, to be gradually dropped and discontinued. These people are able to see the sufferings of our Saviour on the cross, and everything that He had to undergo for us; also, there is something infinitely comforting in the Divine Figure, surrounded by myriads of candles and white flowers, with hands outstretched, bidding all who are weary and heavy-laden to come unto Him. The peasants contribute their few sous' worth of candles, and light them, and feel somehow or other that they have indeed rid themselves of sins and troubles. The country round Rochefort is truly beautiful. The village lies in a hollow; but it is delightful to take one of the mountain-paths, and go up the rocky way into the pines and gorse and heather. As one sits on the hillside, looking down upon the village, it is absolutely still save for the cawing of some birds. You are out of the world up here. The quaint little gray hamlet lies far below. Between it and you is the fertile valley, with green fields and groves of bushy trees. The country is quite cultivated for Brittany, where cabbage-fields and pasture-lands are rare. The mountains encircling the valley are of gray slate; growing here and there amongst the slate are yellow gorse and purple heather. It is a gray, dull day; not a breath stirs the air, which is heavy and ominous. Evening is drawing on as one walks down the mountain-path towards home, and a haze is settling on the village; the sun has been feebly trying to shine all day through the thick clouds that cover it. The green pines, with their purple stems, are very beautiful against the deeper purple of the mountains; pretty, too, the homesteads on the hills, with their fields of cabbages and little plantations of flowers. There is a sweet smell of gorse and pine-needles and decaying bracken, and always one hears the caw of rooks. In such a country as this, on such a day, amid such sights and sounds, you feel glad to be alive. You swing down the mountain-side quickly, and the beauty of it all enters into your soul, filling you with a nameless longing and yearning for you know not what, as Nature in her grandest moods always does. What rich colouring there is round about everywhere on this autumn afternoon! The mountain-path leads, let us say, through a pine-wood. The leaves are far above your head; you seem to be walking in a forest of stems--long, slim, silver stems, purple in the shadows. On the ground is a carpet of salmon and brown leaves, with here and there a bracken-leaf which is absolutely the colour of pure gold. [Illustration: A COTTAGE HOME] There is no sound in the forest but your own footsteps and the rustle of the dry leaves as your dress brushes them. You emerge from the pine-forest on to a bare piece of mountain land, grayish purple, with patches of black. Then you dive into a chestnut-grove, where the leaves are green and brown and gold, and the earth is a rich brown. And so down the path into the village wrapped in a blue haze. The women in their cottages are bending busily over copper pots and pans on great open fireplaces of blazing logs. Little coloured bowls have been laid out on long polished tables for the evening meal, and the bright pewter plates have been brought down from the dresser. Lulu has been sent out to bring home bread for supper. 'Va, ma petite Lulu,' says her mother, 'dépêche toi.' And the small fat bundle in the check pinafore toddles hastily down the stone steps on chubby legs. On the stone settles outside almost every house in the village families are sitting--the mothers and withered old grandmothers knitting or peeling potatoes, and the children munching apples and hunches of bread-and-butter. An old woman is washing her fresh green lettuce at the pump. As we mount the hill leading to the hotel and look back, night is fast descending on the village. The mountains have taken on a deeper purple; blue smoke rises from every cottage; the gray sky is changing to a faint citron yellow; the few slim pine-trees on the hills stand out against it jet-black, like sentinels. [Illustration: MEDIÆVAL HOUSES, VITRÉ] CHAPTER III VITRÉ For the etcher, the painter, the archæologist, and the sculptor, Vitré is an ideal town. To the archæologist it is an ever-open page from the Middle Ages, an almost complete relic of that period, taking one back with a strange force and realism three hundred years and more. Time has dealt tenderly with Vitré. The slanting, irregular houses, leaning one against the other, as if for mutual support, stand as by a miracle. Wandering through Vitré, one seems to be visiting a wonderful and perfect museum, such as must needs please even the exacting, the blasé, and the indifferent. You are met at every turn by the works of the ancients in all their naïve purity and simplicity, many of the houses having been built in the first half of the seventeenth century. One can have no conception of the energy of these early builders, fighting heroically against difficulties such as we of the present day do not experience. They overcame problems of balance and expressed their own imaginations. Common masons with stone and brick and wood accomplished marvellous and audacious examples of architecture. They sought symmetry as well as the beautifying of their homes, covering them with ornamentations and sculpture in wood and stone. Without architects, without plans or designs, these men simply followed their own initiative, and the result has been absolute marvels of carpentry and stone-work, such as have withstood the onslaught of time and held their own. When you first arrive at Vitré, at the crowded, bustling station, surrounded by the most modern of houses and hotels, and faced by the newest of fountains, disappointment is acute. If you were to leave Vitré next morning, never having penetrated into the town, you would carry away a very feeble and uninteresting impression; but, having entered the town, and discovered those grand old streets--the Baudrarie, the Poterie, and the Nôtre Dame, among many others--poet, painter, sculptor, man of business or of letters, whoever you may be, you cannot fail to be astonished, overwhelmed, and delighted. A quiet old-world air pervades the streets; no clatter and rattle of horses' hoofs disturbs their serenity; no busy people, hurrying to and fro, fill the pathways. Handcarts are the only vehicles, and the inhabitants take life quietly. Often for the space of a whole minute you will find yourself quite alone in a street, save for a hen and chickens that are picking up scraps from the gutter. In these little old blackened streets, ever so narrow, into which the sun rarely penetrates except to touch the upper stories with golden rays, there are houses of every conceivable shape--there are houses of three stories, each story projecting over the other; houses so old that paint and plaster will stay on them no longer; houses with pointed roofs; houses with square roofs thrust forward into the street, spotted by yellow moss; houses the façades of which are covered with scaly gray tiles, glistening in the sun like a knight's armour. These are placed in various patterns according to the taste and fantasy of the architect: sometimes they are cut round, sometimes square, and sometimes they are placed like the scales of a fish. There are houses, whose upper stories, advancing into the middle of the street, are kept up by granite pillars, forming an arcade underneath, and looking like hunchbacked men; there are the houses of the humble artisans and the houses of the proud noblemen; houses plain and simple in architecture; houses smothered with carvings in wood and stone of angels and saints and two-headed monsters--houses of every shape and kind imaginable. In a certain zigzag, tortuous street the buildings are one mass of angles and sloping lines, one house leaning against another,--noble ruins of the ages. The plaster is falling from the walls; the slates are slipping from the roofs; and the wood is becoming worm-eaten. It is four o'clock on a warm autumn afternoon; the sun is shining on one side of this narrow street, burnishing gray roofs to silver, resting lovingly on the little balconies, with their pendent washing and red pots of geranium. The men are returning from their work and the children from their schools; the workaday hours are ended, and the houses teem with life. A woman is standing in a square sculptured doorway trying to teach her little white-faced fluffy-haired baby to say 'Ma! ma!' This he positively refuses to do; but he gurgles and chuckles at intervals, at which his mother shakes him and calls him 'petit gamin.' [Illustration: PREPARING THE MID-DAY MEAL] All Bretons love the sun; they are like little children in their simple joy of it. A workman passing says to a girl leaning out of a low latticed window: 'C'est bon le soleil?' 'Mais oui: c'est pour cela que j'y suis,' she answers. One house has an outside staircase of chocolate-coloured wood, spirally built, with carved balustrades. On one of the landings an old woman is sitting. She has brought out a chair and placed it in the sunniest corner. She is very old, and wears the snowiest of white caps on her gray hair; her wrinkled pink hands, with their red worsted cuffs, are working busily at her knitting; and every now and then she glances curiously through the banisters into the street below, like a little bright bird. There are white houses striped with brown crossbars, each with its little shallow balcony. Above, the white plaster has nearly all fallen away, revealing the beautiful old original primrose-yellow. Curiosity shops are abundant everywhere, dim and rich in colour with the reds and deep tones of old polished wood, the blue of china, and the glistening yellow of brass. Ancient houses there are, with scarcely any windows: the few that one does see are heavily furnished with massive iron-nailed shutters or grated with rusty red iron; the doorways are of heaviest oak, crowned with coats of arms sculptured in stone. Large families of dirty children now live in these lordly domains. One longs in Vitré, above all other places, to paint, or, rather, to etch. Vitré is made for the etcher; endless and wondrous are the subjects for his needle. Here, in a markedly time-worn street, are a dozen or more pictures awaiting him--a doorway aged and blackened alternately by the action of the sun and by that of the rain, and carved in figures and symbols sculptured in stone, through which one catches glimpses of a courtyard wherein two men are shoeing a horse; then, again, there is an obscure shop, so calm and tranquil that one asks one's self if business can ever be carried on there. As you peer into the darkness, packets of candles, rope, and sugar are faintly discernible, also dried fish and bladders of lard suspended from the ceiling; in a far corner is an old woman in a white cap--all this in deepest shadow. Above, the clear yellow autumn sunlight shines in a perfect blaze upon the primrose-coloured walls, crossed with beams of blackest wood, making the slates on the pointed roofs scintillate, and touching the windows here and there with a golden light. [Illustration: IN CHURCH] Side by side with this wonderful old house, the glories of which it is impossible to describe in mere words, a new one has been built--not in a modern style, but striving to imitate the fine old structures in this very ancient street. The contrast, did it not grate on one's senses, would be laughable. Stucco is pressed into the service to represent the original old stone, and varnished deal takes the place of oak beams with their purple bloom gathered through the ages. The blocks of stone round the doors and windows have been laboriously hewn, now large, now small, and placed artistically and carelessly zigzag, pointed with new black cement. This terrible house is interesting if only to illustrate what age can do to beautify and modernity to destroy. Madonnas, crucifixes, pictures of saints in glass cases, and statuettes of the Virgin, meet you at every turn in Vitré, for the inhabitants are proverbially a religious people. A superstitious yet guilty conscience would have a trying time in Vitré. In entering a shop, St. Joseph peers down upon you from a niche above the portal; at every street corner, in every market, and in all kinds of quaint and unexpected places, saints and angels look out at you. The beautiful old cathedral, Nôtre Dame de Vitré, is one of the purest remaining productions of the decadent Gothic art in Brittany, and one of the finest. Several times the grand old edifice has been enlarged and altered, and the changes in art can be traced through different additions as in the pages of a book. It is a comparatively low building, the roof of which is covered by a forest of points or spires, and at the apex of each point is a stone cross. In fact, the characteristics of this building are its points: the windows are shaped in carved points, and so are the ornamentations on the projecting buttresses. The western door, very finely carved and led up to by a flight of rounded steps, is of the Renaissance period. In colouring, the cathedral is gray, blackened here and there, but not much stained by damp or lichen, except the tower, which seems to be of an earlier date. The stained-glass windows, seen from the outside, are of a dim, rich colouring; and on one of the outside walls has been built an exterior stone pulpit, ornamented with graceful points, approached from the church by a slit in the wall. It was constructed to combat the Calvinistic party, so powerful in Vitré at one time. One can easily imagine the seething crowd in the square below--the sea of pale, passionate, upturned faces. It must have presented much the same picture then as it does now, this cathedral square in Vitré--save for the people;--for there are still standing, facing the pulpit, and not a hundred paces from it, a row of ancient houses that existed in those very riotous times. Every line of those once stately domains slants at a different angle now, albeit they were originally built in a solid style--square-fronted and with pointed roofs, the upper stories projecting over the pavement, with arcades beneath. Some are painted white, with gray woodwork; others yellow, with brown wood supports. Outside one of the houses, once a butcher's shop, hangs a boar's head, facing the stone pulpit. What scenes that old animal must have witnessed in his time, gazing so passively with those glassy brown eyes! If only it could speak! [Illustration: PÈRE LOUIS] Convent-bred girls in a long line are filing into church through the western door--meek-faced little people in black pinafores and shiny black hats. All wear their hair in pigtails, and above their boots an inch or so of coloured woollen stockings is visible. Each carries a large Prayer-Book under her arm. A reverend Mother, in snowy white cap and flowing black veil, heads the procession, and another brings up the rear. The main door facing the square is flung wide open; and the contrast between the brilliant sunlit square, with its noisy laughing children returning from school, dogs barking, and handcarts rattling over the cobble stones, and this dim, sombre interior, bathed in richest gloom, is almost overwhelming. A stained-glass window at the opposite end of the church, with the light at the back of it, forms the only patch of positive colour, with its brilliant reds and purples and blues. All else is dim and rich and gloomy, save here and there where the glint of brass, the gold of the picture-frames, the white of the altar-cloth, or the ruby of an ever-burning light, can be faintly discerned in the obscurity. The deep, full notes of the organ reach you as you stand at the cathedral steps, and you detect the faint odour of incense. The figure of a woman kneeling with clasped hands and bent head is dimly discernible in the heavy gloom. One glance into such an interior, after coming from the glare and glamour of the outside world, cannot but bring peace and rest and a soothing influence to even the most unquiet soul. The château of Vitré is an even older building than the cathedral. It has lived bravely through the ages, suffering little from the march of time: a noble edifice, huge and massive, with its high towers, its châtelet, and its slate roofs. Just out of the dark, narrow, cramped old streets, you are astonished to emerge suddenly on a large open space, and to be confronted by this massive château, well preserved and looking almost new. As a matter of fact, its foundation dates back as far as the eleventh century, although four hundred years ago it was almost entirely reconstructed. Parts of the château are crumbling to decay; but the principal mass, consisting of the towers and châtelet, is marvellously preserved. It still keeps a brave front, though the walls and many of the castle keeps and fortresses are tottering to ruin. Many a shock and many a siege has the old château withstood; but now its fighting days are over. The frogs sing no longer in the moat through the beautiful summer nights; the sentinel's box is empty; and in the courtyards, instead of clanking swords and spurred heels, the peaceful step of the tourist alone resounds. The château has rendered a long and loyal service, and to-day as a reward enjoys a glorious repose. To visit the castle, you pass over a draw-bridge giving entrance to the châtelet, and no sooner have you set foot on it than the concierge emerges from a little room in the tower dedicated to the service of the lodge-holder. She is a very up-to-date chatelaine, trim and neat, holding a great bunch of keys in her hand. She takes you into a huge grass-grown courtyard in the interior, whence you look up at the twin towers, capped with pointed gray turrets, and see them in all their immensity. The height and strength and thickness of the walls are almost terrifying. She shows you a huge nail-studded door, behind which is a stone spiral staircase leading to an underground passage eight miles long. This door conjures up to the imaginative mind all kinds of romantic and adventurous stories. We are taken into the Salle des Guardes, an octagonal stone room on an immense scale, with bay windows, the panes of which are of stained glass, and a gigantic chimneypiece. One can well imagine the revels that must have gone on round that solid oak table among the waiting guards. The chatelaine leads us up a steep spiral staircase built of solid granite, from which many rooms branch, all built in very much the same style--octagonal and lofty, with low doorways. One must stoop to enter. On the stairway, at intervals of every five or six steps, there are windows with deep embrasures, in which one can stand and gain a commanding view of the whole country. These, it is needless to say, were used in the olden days for military purposes. [Illustration: IDLE HOURS] As the chatelaine moves on, ever above us, with her clanking keys, one can take one's self back to the Middle Ages, and imagine the warrior's castle as it was then, when the chatelaine, young, sweet, and pretty, wending her way about the dark and gloomy castle, was the only humane and gentle spirit there. Easier still is it to lose yourself in the dim romantic past when you are shown into a room which, though no fire burns on the hearth, is still quite warm, redolent of tapestry and antiquity. This room is now used as a kind of museum. It is filled with fine examples of old china, sufficient to drive a collector crazy, enamels, old armour, rubies, ornaments, sculpture, medals, firearms, and instruments of torture. Sitting in a deep window-seat, surrounded by the riches of ancient days, with the old-world folk peering out from the tapestried walls, one can easily close one's eyes and lose one's self for a moment in the gray past, mystic and beautiful. It is delightful to summon to your mind the poetical and pathetic figure of (let us say) a knight imprisoned in the tower on account of his prominent and all-devouring love for some unapproachable fair one; or of that other who, pinning a knot of ribbon on his coat,--his lady's colour--set out to fight and conquer. But, alas! no chronicle has been left of the deeds of the castle prisoners. Any romantic stories that one may conjure to one's mind in the atmosphere of the château can be but the airiest fabrics of a dream. At the top of the spiral staircase is a rounded gallery, with loopholes open to the day, through which one can gain a magnificent, though somewhat dizzy, view over town and country. It was from this that the archers shot their arrows upon the enemy; and very deadly their aim must have been, for nothing could be more commanding as regards position than the château of Vitré. Also, in the floor of the gallery, round the outer edge, are large holes, down which the besieged threw great blocks of stone, boiling tar, and projectiles of all kinds, which must have fallen with tremendous violence on the assailants. Wherever one goes in Vitré one sees the fine old château, forming a magnificent background to every picture, with its grand ivy-mantled towers and its huge battlemented walls, belittling everything round it. Unlike most French châteaus, more or less showy and toy-like in design, the castle of Vitré is built on solid rock, and lifted high above the town in a noble, irresistible style, with walls of immense thickness, and lofty beyond compare. All that is grandest and most beautiful in Nature seems to group itself round about the fine old castle, as if Nature herself felt compelled to pay tribute of her best to what was noblest in the works of man. In the daytime grand and sweeping white clouds on a sky of eggshell blue group themselves about the great gray building. At twilight, when the hoary old castle appears a colossal purple mass, every tower and every turret strongly outlined against the sunset sky, Nature comes forward with her brilliant palette and paints in a background of glorious prismatic hues: great rolling orange and pink clouds on a sky of blue--combination sufficient to send a colourist wild with joy. Every inch of the castle walls has been utilized in one way or another to economize material. Houses have been built hanging on to and clustering about the walls, sometimes perched on the top of them, like limpets on a rock. Often one sees a fine battlemented wall, fifty or sixty feet in height, made of great rough stone, brown and golden and purple with age--a wall which, one knows, must have withstood many a siege--with modern iron balconies jutting out from it, balconies of atrocious pattern, painted green or gray, with gaudy Venetian blinds. It is absolute desecration to see leaning from these balconies, against such a background, untidy, fat, dirty women, with black, lank hair, and peasants knitting worsted socks, where once fair damsels of ancient times waved their adieux to departing knights. Then, again, how terrible it is to see glaring advertisements of _Le Petit Journal_, Benedictine Liqueur, Singer's Sewing Machines, and Byrrh, plastered over a fine old sculptured doorway! [Illustration: LA VIEILLE MÈRE PEROT] There are in certain parts of the town remains of the ancient moat. Sometimes it is a mere brook, black as night, flowing with difficulty among thick herbage which has grown up round it; sometimes a prosperous, though always dirty, stream. You come across it in unexpected places here and there. In one part, just under the walls of the castle, where the water is very dirty indeed, wash-houses have been erected; there the women kneel on flat stones by the banks. The houses clustering round about the moat are damp and evil-smelling; their slates, green with mould, are continually slipping off the roofs; and the buildings themselves slant at such an angle that their entry into the water seems imminent. At the base of the castle walls the streets mount steeply. This is a very poor quarter indeed. The houses are old, blackened, decayed, much-patched and renovated. Yet the place is extremely picturesque; in fact, I know no part of Vitré that is not. At any moment, in any street, you can stop and frame within your hands a picture which will be almost sure to compose well--which in colouring and drawing will be the delight of painters and etchers. In these particular streets of which I speak antiquity reigns supreme. Here no traffic ever comes; only slatternly women, with their wretched dogs and cats of all breeds, fill the streets. Many of the houses are half built out of solid slate, and the steps leading to them are hewn from the rock. One sees no relics of bygone glory here. This must ever have been a poor quarter; for the windows are built low to the ground, and there are homely stone settles outside each door. Pigs and chickens walk in and out of the houses with as much familiarity as the men and women. On every shutter strings of drying fish are hung; and every window in every house, no matter how poor, has its rows of pink and red geraniums and its pots of hanging fern. Birds also are abundant; in fact, from the first I dubbed this street 'the street of the birds,' for I never before saw so many caged birds gathered together--canaries, bullfinches, jackdaws, and birds of bright plumage. By the sound one might fancy one's self for the moment in an African jungle rather than in a Breton village. The streets of Vitré are remarkable for their flowers. Wherever you may look you will see pots of flowers and trailing greenery, relieving with their bright fresh colouring the time-worn houses of blackened woodwork and sombre stone. Not only do moss and creepers abound, but also there are gardens everywhere, over the walls of which trail vines and clematis, and on every window-ledge are pots of geranium and convolvulus. It is impossible in mere words to convey any real impression of the fine old town of Vitré: only the etcher and the painter can adequately depict it. The grand old town will soon be of the past. Every day, every hour, its walls are decaying, crumbling; and before long Vitré will be no more than a memory. [Illustration: A VIEILLARD] CHAPTER IV VANNES A dear old-world, typically Breton town is Vannes. We arrived at night, and gazed expectantly from our window on the moonlit square. We plied with questions the man who carried up our boxes. His only answer was that we should see everything on the morrow. That was market-day, and the town was unusually busy. Steering for what we thought the oldest part of Vannes, we took a turning which led past ancient and crazy-looking houses. Very old houses indeed they were, with projecting upper stories, beams, and scaly roofs slanting at all angles. At Morlaix some of the streets are ancient; but I have never seen such eccentric broken lines as at Vannes. At one corner the houses leant forward across the street, and literally rested one on the top of the other. These were only the upper stories; below were up-to-date jewellers and _pâtisseries_, with newly-painted signs in black and gold. In the middle of these houses, cramped and crowded and hustled by them, stood the cathedral. Inside it was a dim, lofty edifice, with faintly burning lamps. Hither the market-women come with their baskets, stuffed to the full with fresh green salad and apples, laying them down on the floor that they may kneel on praying-chairs, cross their arms, and raise their eyes to the high-altar, pouring out trouble or joy to God. It was delightful to see rough men with their clean market-day blue linen blouses kneeling on the stone floor, hats in hand and heads bowed, repeating their morning prayers. The people were heavily laden on this bright autumn morning, either with baskets or with sacks or dead fowls, all clattering through the cobbled streets on their way to market. Following the crowd, we emerged on a triangular-shaped market-place, wherein a most dramatic-looking _mairie_ or town-hall figured prominently, a large building with two flights of steps leading up to it, culminating in a nail-studded door, with the arms of Morbihan inscribed above it. [Illustration: PLACE HENRI QUATRE, VANNES] One can well imagine such a market-place, let us say, in the days of the Revolution: how some orator would stand on these steps, with his back to that door, haranguing the crowd, holding them all enthralled by the force of rhetoric. Now nothing so histrionic happens. There is merely a buzzing throng of white-capped women, haggling and bargaining as though their lives depended on it, with eyes and hearts and minds for nothing but their business. Here and there we saw knots of blue-bloused men, with whips hung over their shoulders and straws in their mouths, more or less loafing and watching their womenfolk. The square was filled with little wooden stalls, where meat was sold--stringy-looking meat, and slabs of purple-hued beef. How these peasant women bargained! I saw one old lady arguing for quite a quarter of an hour over a piece of beef not longer than your finger. Chestnuts were for sale in large quantities, and housewives were buying their stocks for the winter. The men of the family had been pressed into the service to carry up sack after sack of fine brown glossy nuts, which were especially plentiful. No one seemed over-anxious to sell; no one cried his wares: it was the purchasers who appeared to do most of the talking and haggling. There were more Frenchwomen here than I have seen in any other town; but they were not fine ladies by any means. They did not detract from the picturesqueness of the scene. They went round with their great baskets, getting them filled with apples or chestnuts, or other things. Most of the saleswomen were wrinkled old bodies; but one woman, selling chestnuts and baskets of pears, was pretty and quite young, with a mauve apron and a black cross-over shawl, and a mouth like iron. I watched her with amusement. I had never seen so young and comely a person so stern and businesslike. Not a single centime would she budge from her stated price. She was pestered by women of all kinds--old and young, peasants and modern French ladies, all attracted by the beauty of her pears and the glossiness of her chestnuts. Hers were the finest wares in the market, and she was fully conscious of it, pricing her pears and chestnuts a sou more a sieveful than anyone else. The customers haggled with her, upbraided her, tried every feminine tactic. They sneered at her chestnuts and railed at her pears; they scoffed one with the other. Eventually they gave up a centime themselves; but the hard mouth did not relax, and the pretty head in the snow-white coif was shaken vigorously. At this, with snorts of disgust, her customers turned up their noses and left. Ere long a smartly-dressed woman came along, and all unsuspectingly bought a sieveful of chestnuts, emptying them into her basket. When she came to pay for them, she discovered they were a sou more than she had expected, and emptied them promptly back into the market-woman's sack. I began to be afraid that my pretty peasant would have to dismount from her high horse or go home penniless; but this was not the case. Several women gathered round and began to talk among themselves, nudging one another and pointing. At last one capitulated, hoisted the white flag, and bought a few pears. Instantly all the other women laid down their bags and baskets and began to buy her pears and chestnuts. Very soon this stall became the most popular in the market-place, and the young woman and her assistant were kept busy the whole day. The hard-mouthed girl had conquered! 'Sept sous la demi-douzaine! Sept sous la demi-douzaine!' cried a shrill-voiced vendor. It was a man from Paris with a great boxful of shiny tablespoons, wrapped in blue tissue-paper in bundles of six, which he was offering for the ridiculous sum of seven sous--that is, threepence halfpenny. Naturally, with such bargains to offer, he was selling rapidly. Directly he cried his 'Sept sous la demi-douzaine--six pour sept sous!' he was literally surrounded. Men and women came up one after the other; men's hands flew to their pockets under their blouses, and women's to their capacious leather purses. It was amusing to watch these people--they were so guileless, so childlike, so much pleased with their bargains. Still, it would break my heart if these spoons doubled up and cracked or proved worthless, for seven sous is a great deal of money to the Breton peasants. I never saw merchandise disappear so quickly. 'Solide, solide, solide!' cried the merchant, until you would think he must grow hoarse. 'This is the chance of a lifetime,' he declared: 'a beautiful half-dozen like this. C'est tout ce qu'il y a de plus joli et solide. Voyez la beauté et la qualité de cette merchandise. C'est une occasion que vous ne verrez pas tous les jours.' The people became more and more excited; the man was much pressed, and selling the spoons like wildfire. Then, there were umbrellas over which the women lost their heads--glossy umbrellas with fanciful handles and flowers and birds round the edge. First the merchant took up an umbrella and twisted it round, then the spoons, and clattered them invitingly, until people grew rash and bought both umbrellas and spoons. [Illustration: GOSSIPS] There is nothing more amusing than to spend a morning thus, wandering through the market-place, watching the peasants transact their little business, which, though apparently trivial, is serious to them. I never knew any people quite so thrifty as these Bretons. You see them selling and buying, not only old clothes, but also bits of old clothes--a sleeve from a soldier's coat, a leg from a pair of trousers; and even then the stuff will be patched. In this market-place you see stalls of odds and ends, such as even the poorest of the poor in England would not hesitate to throw on the rubbish heap--old iron, leaking bottles, legs of chairs and tables. A wonderful sight is the market on a morning such as this. The sun shines full on myriads of white-capped women thronging through the streets, and on lines of brown-faced vegetable vendors sitting close to the ground among their broad open baskets of carrots and apples and cabbages. There are stalls of all kinds--butchers' stalls, forming notes of colour with their vivid red meat; haberdashery stalls, offering everything from a toothbrush or a boot-lace to the most excruciatingly brilliant woollen socks; stalls where clothes are sold--such as children's checked pinafores and babies' caps fit for dolls. Most brilliant of all are the material booths, where every kind of material is sold--from calico to velvet. They congregate especially in a certain corner of the market-square, and even the houses round about are draped with lengths of material stretching from the windows down to the ground--glorious sweeps of checks and stripes and flowered patterns, and pink and blue flannelette. It is amusing to watch a Breton woman buying a length of cloth. She will pull it, and drag it, and smell it, and almost eat it; she will ask her husband's advice, and the advice of her husband's relations, and the advice of her own relations. In this market I was much amused to watch two men selling. I perceived what a great deal more there is in the individuality of the man who sells and in the manner of his selling than in the actual quality of the merchandise. One man, a dull, foolish fellow, with bales and bales of material, never had occasion to unwrap one: he never sold a thing. Another man, a born salesman, with the same wares to offer, talked volubly in a high-pitched voice. He called the people to him; he called them by name--whether it was the right one or not did not matter: it was sufficient to arrest their attention. 'Dépêchons nous. Here, Lucien; here, Jeanne; here, Babette; here, my pigeon. Dépêchons nous, dépêchons nous!' he cried. 'Que est ce qu'il y a? personne en veux plus? Mais c'est épatant. Je suis honteux de vous en dire le prix. Flannel! the very thing for your head, madam,--nothing softer, nothing finer. How many yards?--one, two, three? There we are!' and, with a flash of the scissors and a toss of the stuff, the flannel is cut off, wrapped up and under the woman's arm, before the gaping salesman opposite has time to close his mouth. The stall was arranged in a kind of semicircle, and very soon this extraordinary person had gathered a crowd of people, all eager to buy; and the way in which he appeared to attend to everyone at once was simply marvellous. 'What for you, madam?' he would ask, turning to a young Breton woman. 'Pink flannel? Here you are--a superb article, the very thing for nightgowns.' Then to a man: 'Trousering, my lord? Certainly. Touchez moi ça. Isn't that marvellous? Isn't that quality if you like? Ah! but I am ashamed to tell you the price. You will be indeed beautiful in this to-morrow.' As business became slack for the moment, he would take up some cheap print and slap it on his knee, crying: 'One sou--one sou the yard! Figure yourself dancing with an apron like that at one sou the yard!' And so the man would continue throughout the day, shouting, screaming, always inventing new jokes, selling his wares very quickly, and always gathering more and more people round him. Once he looked across at his unfortunate rival, who was listening to his nonsense with a sneering expression. 'Yes: you may sneer, my friend; but I am selling, and you are not,' he retorted. Endless--absolutely endless--are the peeps of human nature one gains on a market-day such as this in an old-world Breton town. I spent the time wandering among the people, and not once did I weary. At every turn I saw something to marvel at, something to admire. We had chanced on a particularly interesting day, when the whole town was turned into a great market. Wherever we went there was a market of some sort--a pig market, or a horse market, or an old-clothes market; almost every street was lined with booths and barrows. [Illustration: A CATTLE-MARKET] Outside almost every drinking-house, or Café Breton, lay a fat pig sleeping contentedly on the pavement, and tied to a string in the wall, built there for that purpose. He would be waiting while his master drank--for often men come in to Vannes from miles away, and walk back with their purchases. I saw an old woman who had just bought a pig trying to take it home. She had the most terrible time with that animal. First he raced along the road with her at great speed, almost pulling her arms out of the sockets, and making the old lady run as doubtless she had never run before; then he walked at a sedate pace, persistently between her feet, so that either she must ride him straddle-legs or not get on at all; lastly, the pig wound himself and the string round and round her until neither could move a step. A drunken man reeled along, and, seeing the hopeless muddle of the old lady and the pig, stopped in front of them and tried to be of some assistance. He took off his hat and scratched his head; then he poked the pig with his cane, and moved round the woman and pig, giving advice; finally, he flew into a violent rage because he could not solve the mystery, and the old lady waved him aside with an impatient gesture. The air was filled with grunts and groans and blood-curdling squeaks. Everyone seemed to possess a pig: either he or she had just bought one or had one for sale. You saw bunches of the great fat pink animals tied to railings while the old women gossiped; you saw pigs, attached to carts, comfortably sleeping in the mud; you saw them being led along the streets like dogs by neatly-dressed dames, holding them by their tails, and giving them a twist every time they were rebellious. Vannes is the most beautiful old town imaginable. Everywhere one goes one sees fine old archways of gray stone, ancient and lofty--relics of a bygone age--with the arms of Brittany below and a saint with arms extended in blessing above. When once you reach the outskirts of the town you realize that at one time Vannes must have been enclosed by walls: there are gateways remaining still, and little bits of broken-down brickwork, old and blackened, and half-overgrown with moss and grasses. There is a moat running all round--it is inky black and dank now--on the banks of which a series of sloping slate sheds and washhouses have been built, where the women wash their clothes, kneeling on the square flat stones. How anything could emerge clean and white from such pitch-black water is a marvel. Seen from outside the gates, this town is very beautiful--the black water of the moat, the huddled figures of the women, with their white caps and snowy piles of linen, and beyond that green grass and apple-trees and flowers, and at the back the old grayish-pink walls, with carved buttresses. There is hardly a town in the whole of Brittany so ancient as Vannes. These walls speak for themselves. They speak of the time when Vannes was the capital of the rude Venetes who made great Cæsar hesitate, and retarded him in his conquest of the Gauls. They speak of the twenty-one emigrants, escaped from the Battle of Quiberon, who were shot on the promenade of the Garenne, under the great trees where the children play to-day. What marvellous walls these are! With what care they have been built--so stout, so thick, so colossal! It must have taken men of great strength to build such walls as these--men who resented all newcomers with a bitter hatred, and built as if for their very lives, determined to erect something which should be impregnable. Still they stand, gray and battered, with here and there remains of their former grandeur in carved parapets, projecting turrets, and massive sculptured doorways. At one time the town must have been well within the walls; but now it has encroached. The white and pink and yellow-faced tall houses perch on the top of, lean against and cluster round, the old gray walls. It seems strange to live in a town where the custom of _couvre-feu_ is still observed by the inhabitants--in a town where no sooner does the clock strike nine than all lights are out, all shutters closed, and all shops shut. This is the custom in Vannes. It is characteristic of the people. The Vanntais take a pride in being faithful to old usages. They are a sturdy, grave, pensive race, hiding indomitable energy and hearts of fire under the calmest demeanour. The women are fine creatures. I shall never forget seeing an old woman chopping wood. All day long she worked steadily in the open place, wielding an immensely heavy hatchet, and chopping great branches of trees into bundles of sticks. There she stood in her red-and-black checked petticoat, her dress tucked up, swinging her hatchet, and holding the branches with her feet. She seemed an Amazon. [Illustration: BREAD STALLS] In Vannes, as in any part of Brittany, one always knows when there is anything of importance happening, by the clatter of the sabots on the cobble stones. On the afternoon when we were there the noise was deafening. We heard it through the closed windows while we were at luncheon--big sabots, little sabots, men's nail-studded sabots, women's light ones, little children's persistent clump, clump, clump, all moving in the same direction. It was the Foire des Oignons, observed the waiter. I had imagined that there had been a _foire_ of everything conceivable that day; but onions scarcely entered into my calculations. I should not have thought them worthy of a _foire_ all to themselves. The waiter spoiled my meal completely. I could no longer be interested in the very attractive menu. Onions were my one and only thought. I lived and had my being but for onions. Mother and I sacrificed ourselves immediately on the altar of onions. We rushed from the room, much to the astonishment of several rotund French officers, who were eating, as usual, more than was good for them. Everybody was concerned with onions. We drew up in the rear of a large onion-seeking crowd. It was interesting to watch the back views of these peasants as they mounted the hill. There were all kinds of backs--fat backs, thin backs, glossy black backs, and faded green ones; backs of men with floating ribbons and velveteen coats; plump backs of girls with neat pointed shawls--some mauve, some purple, some pink, some saffron. At the top of the hill was the market-square--a busy scene. The square was packed, and everyone was talking volubly in the roughest Breton dialect. Now and then a country cart painted blue, the horse hung round the neck with shaggy black fur and harnessed with the rough wooden gear so general in Brittany, would push through the crowd of busily-talking men and women. Everything conceivable was for sale. At certain stalls there were sweets of all colours, yet all tasting the same and made of the worst sugar. I saw the same man still selling his spoons and umbrellas; but he was fat and comfortable now. He had had his _déjeuner_, and was not nearly so excited and amusing. Fried sardines were sold with long rolls of bread; also sausages. They cook the sardines on iron grills, and a mixed smell of sausages, sardines, and chestnuts filled the air. Everyone was a little excited and a little drunk. Long tables had been brought out into the place where the men sat in their blue blouses and black velvet hats,--their whips over their shoulders, drinking cider and wine out of cups,--discussing cows and horses. There was a cattle market there that day. This was soon manifest, for men in charge of cows and pigs pushed their way among the crowd. On feeling a weight at your back now and then, you discovered a cow or a pig leaning against you for support. A great many more animals were assembled on a large square--pigs and cows and calves and horses. One could stay for days and watch a cattle market: it is intensely interesting. The way the people bargain is very strange. I saw a man and a woman buying a cow from a young Breton. The man opened its eyelids wide with his finger and thumb; he gazed in the gentle brown eyes; he stroked her soft gray neck; he felt her ribs, and poked his fingers in her side; he lifted one foot after the other; he punched and probed her for quite a quarter of an hour; and the cow stood there patiently. The woman looked on with a hard, knowing expression, applauding at every poke, and talking volubly the while. She drew into the discussion a friend passing by, and asked her opinion constantly, yet never took it. All the while the owner stood stroking his cow's back, without uttering a word. He was a handsome young man, as Bretons often are--tall and slim, with a face like an antique bronze, dark and classic;--he wore a short black coat trimmed with shabby velvet, tightly-fitting trousers, and a black hat with velvet streamers. The stateliness of the youth struck me: he held himself like an emperor. These Bretons look like kings, with their fine brown classic features; they hold themselves so haughtily, they remind one of figure-heads on old Roman coins. They seem men born to command; yet they command nothing, and live like pigs with the cows and hogs. The Breton peasant is full of dirt and dignity, living on coarse food, and rarely changing his clothes; yet nowhere will you meet with such fine bearing, charm of manner, and nobility of feature as among the peasants of Brittany. On entering the poorest cottage, you are received with old-world courtesy by the man of the house, who comes forward to meet you in his working garments, with dirt thick upon his hands, but with dignity and stateliness, begging that you will honour his humble dwelling with your presence. He sets the best he has in the house before you. It may be only black bread and cider; but he bids you partake of it with a regal wave of his hand which transforms the humble fare. [Illustration: IN A BRETON KITCHEN] These peasants remind me very much of Sir Henry Irving. Some of the finest types are curiously like him in feature: they have the same magnificent profile and well-shaped head. It is quite startling to come across Sir Henry in black gaiters, broad-brimmed hat, and long hair streaming in the wind, ploughing in the dark-brown fields, or chasing a pig, or, dressed in gorgeous holiday attire, perspiring manfully through a village gavotte. Surely none but a Breton could chase a pig without losing self-respect, or count the teeth in a cow's mouth and look dignified at the same time. No one else could dance up and down in the broiling sunshine for an hour and preserve a composed demeanour. The Breton peasant is a person quite apart from the rest of the world. One feels, whether at a pig market or a wayside shrine, that these people are dreamers living in a romantic past. Unchanged and unpolished by the outside world, they cling to their own traditions; every stone in their beloved country is invested by them with poetic and heroic associations. Brittany looks as if it must have always been as it is now, even in the days of the Phoenicians; and it seems impossible to imagine the country inhabited by any but medieval people. There were many fine figures of men in this cattle market, all busy at the game of buying and selling. A Frenchman and his wife were strolling round the square, intent on buying a pony. The man evidently knew nothing about horses--very few Frenchmen do;--and it was ridiculous to watch the way in which he felt the animal's legs and stroked its mane, with a wise expression, while his wife looked on admiringly. Bretons take a long time over their bargains: sometimes they will spend a whole day arguing over two sous, and then end by not buying the pig or the cow, whatever it is, at all. The horses looked tired and bored with the endless bargains, as they leant their heads against one another. Now and then one was taken out and trotted up and down the square; then two men clasped hands once, and went off to a café to drink. If they clasp hands a third time the bargain will be closed. Market-day in Vannes is an excuse for frivolity. We came upon a great crowd round two men under a red umbrella, telling fortunes. One man's eyes were blindfolded. He was the medium. The people were listening to his words with guileless attention and seriousness. Then a man and a woman, both drunk, were singing songs about the Japanese and Russian War, dragging in 'France' and 'la gloire,' and selling the words, forcing young Frenchmen and soldiers to buy sheets of nonsense for which they had no use. There were stalls of imitation flowers--roses and poppies and chrysanthemums of most impossible colours--gazed at with covetous eyes by the more well-to-do housewives. Hats were sold in great numbers at the Foire des Oignons. It seemed to be fashionable to buy a black felt hat on that day. The fair is held only once a year, and farmers and their families flock to it from miles round. It is the custom, when a good bargain is made, to buy new hats for the entire family. Probably there will be no opportunity of seeing a shop again during the rest of the year. The trade in hats is very lively. Women from Auray, in three-cornered shawls and wide white-winged caps, sit all day long sewing broad bands of velvet ribbon on black beaver hats, stretching it round the crown and leaving it to fall in two long streamers at the back. They sew quickly, for they have more work than they can possibly accomplish during the day. It is amusing to watch the customers. I sat on the stone balustrade which runs round the open square of the Hôtel de Ville, whither all the townswomen come as to a circus, bringing their families, and eating their meals in the open air, that they may watch the strangers coming and going about their business, either on foot or in carts. It was as good as a play. A young man, accompanied by another man, an old lady, and three young girls, had come shyly up to the stall. It was obvious that he was coming quite against his will and at the instigation of his companions. He hummed and hawed, fidgeted, blushed, and looked as wretched and awkward as a young man could. One hat after another was tried on his head; but none of them would fit. He was the object of all eyes. The townswomen hooted at him, and his own friends laughed. He could stand it no longer. He dashed down his money, picked up the hat nearest to him, and went off in a rage. I often thought of that young man afterwards--of his chagrin during the rest of the year, when every Sunday and high day and holiday he would have to wear that ill-fitting hat as a penalty for his bad temper. These great strapping Breton men are very childish, and dislike above all things to be made to appear foolish. Towards evening, when three-quarters drunk, they are easily gulled and cheated by the gentle-faced needle-women. Without their own womenfolk they are completely at sea, and are made to buy whatever is offered. They look so foolish, pawing one another and trying on hats at rakish angles. It is ridiculous to see an intoxicated man trying to look at his own reflection in a hand-glass. He follows it round and round, looking very serious; holds it now up and now down; and eventually buys something he does not want, paying for it out of a great purse which he solemnly draws from under his blouse. [Illustration: A RAINY DAY AT THE FAIR] I saw a man and a child come to buy a hat. The boy was the very image of his father--black hat, blue blouse, tight trousers and all--only that the hat was very shabby and brown and old, and had evidently seen many a ducking in the river and held many a load of nuts and cherries. His father was in the act of buying him a new one. The little pale lad smiled and looked faintly interested as hat after hat was tried on his head; but he was not overjoyed, for he knew quite well that, once home and in his mother's careful hands, that hat would be seen only on rare occasions. Another boy who came with his father to buy a hat quite won my heart. He was a straight-limbed, fair-haired, thoroughly English-looking boy. A black felt hat was not for him--only a red tam-o'-shanter;--and he stood beaming with pride as cap after cap was slapped on his head and as quickly whisked off again. Women came to purchase bonnets for their babies; but, alas! instead of buying the tight-lace caps threaded with pink and blue ribbons characteristic of the country, they bought hard, round, blue-and-white sailor affairs, with mangy-looking ostrich feathers in them--atrocities enough to make the most beautiful child appear hideous. The sun was fading fast. Horses and cows and pigs, drunken men and empty cider barrels, women with heavy baskets and dragging tired children, their pockets full of hot chestnuts--all were starting on their long walk home. When the moon rose, the square was empty. [Illustration: IN THE PORCH OF THE CATHEDRAL, QUIMPER] CHAPTER V QUIMPER 'C'était à la campagne Près d'un certain canton de la basse Bretagne Appelé Quimper Corentin. On sait assez que le Destin Adresse là les gens quand il veut qu'on enrage. Dieu nous préserve du voyage.' So says La Fontaine. The capital of Cornouailles is a strange mixture of the old world and the new. There the ancient spirit and the modern meet. The Odet runs through the town. On one side is a mass of rock 70 metres high, covered by a forest so dark and dense and silent that in it one might fancy one's self miles away from any town. As one wanders among the chestnuts, pines, poplars, and other trees, a sadness falls, as if from the quiet foliage in the dim obscurity. On the other side of the narrow river is a multitude of roofs, encircled by high walls and dominated by the two lofty spires of the cathedral. Gray and full of shadows is the quiet little town, with its jumble of slanting roofs and its broken lines. Quimper seems to have changed but little within the last six years. We arrived as the sun was setting. A warm light gilded the most ordinary objects, transforming them into things of beauty. We flashed by in the hotel omnibus, past a river resembling a canal, the Odet. The river was spanned by innumerable iron-railed bridges. The sky was of a fresh eggshell blue, with clouds of vivid orange vermilion paling in the distance to rose-pink, and shedding pink and golden reflections on the clear gray water, while a red-sailed fishing-boat floated gently at anchor. A wonderful golden light bathed the town. You felt that you could not take it all in at once, this glorious colouring--that you must rush from place to place before the light faded, and see the whole of the fine old town under these exceptional circumstances, which would most probably never occur again. You wanted to see the water, with its golden reflections, and the warm light shining on the lichen-covered walls, on the gardens sloping down to the river, on the wrought-iron gateways and low walls over which ivy and convolvulus creep, on the red-rusted bridges. You wanted to see the cathedral--a purple-gray mass, with the sun gilding one-half of the tower to a brilliant vermilion, and leaving the other half grayer and a deeper purple than ever. You wanted to see the whole place at once, for very soon the light fades into the gray and purple of night. My first thought on waking next morning in the 'city of fables and gables,' as Quimper is called, was to see my old convent--the dear old convent where as a child I spent such a happy year. Only twelve more months, and the nuns will be ousted from their home--those dear women whom, as the hotel proprietress said with tears in her eyes, 'fassent que du bien.' How bitterly that cruel Act rankles, and ever will rankle, in the hearts of the Breton people! 'On dit que la France est un pays libre,' said my hostess; 'c'est une drôle de liberté!' The inhabitants of Quimper were more bitter, more rebellious, than those of any other town, for they greeted the officers with stones and gibes. And no wonder. The nuns had ever been good and generous and helpful to the people of Quimper. I remember well in the old days what a large amount of food and clothing went forth into the town from those hospitable doors, for the Retraite du Sacré Coeur was a rich Order. It was with a beating heart and eager anticipation that I knocked at the convent door that morning, feeling like a little child come home after the holidays. I heard the sound of bolts slipped back, and two bright eyes peeped through the grille before the door was opened by a Sister in the white habit of the Order. I knew her face in an instant, yet could not place it. Directly she spoke I remembered it was the Sister who changed our shoes and stockings whenever we returned from a walk. I asked for the Mother Superior. She had gone to England. I asked for one of the English nuns. She also had gone. Names that had faded out of my mind returned in the atmosphere of the convent. Yes: three of the nuns I had named were still at the convent. What was my name? the Sister asked. Who was I? I gave my name, and instantly her face lit up. 'Why, it is Mademoiselle Dorothé!' she exclaimed, raising her hands above her head in astonishment. 'Entréz, mademoiselle et madame, entréz!' [Illustration: THE VEGETABLE MARKET, QUIMPER] Through all these years, among all the girls who must have passed through the convent, she remembered me and bade me welcome. In the quiet convent so little happens that every incident is remembered and magnified and thought over. We were taken upstairs and shown into a bare room with straight-backed chairs--a room which in my childish imagination had been a charmed and magic place, for it was here that I came always to see my mother on visiting days. We had not long to wait before, with a rustle and clinking of her cross and rosary, Mère B. appeared, a sweet woman in the black dress and pointed white coif that I knew so well. She had always been beautiful in my eyes, and she was so still, with the loveliness of a pure and saintly life shining through her large brown eyes. Her cheeks were as soft and pink as ever, and her hands, which I used to watch in admiration by the hour, were stretched out with joy to greet me. 'O la petite Dorothé!' she cried,'quel bonheur de vous revoir! Est-ce vraiment la petite Dorothé?' As I sat watching her while she talked to my mother, all the old thoughts and feelings came back to me with a rush. I was in some awe of her: I could not treat her as if she were an ordinary person. All the old respectful tricks and turns of speech came back to me, though I imagined I had forgotten them. My mother was telling Mère B. of how busy I had been since I had left the convent--of the books I had written and all about them;--but I felt as small and insignificant as the child of ten, and could only answer in monosyllables--'Oui, ma mère,' or 'Non, ma mère.' At our request, we were shown over the convent. Many memories it brought back--some pleasant, some painful; for a child's life never runs on one smooth level--it is ever a series of ups and downs. We were taken into the refectory. There was my place at the corner of the table, where at the first meal I sat and cried because, when asked if I would like a _tartine_ instead of pudding, I was given a piece of bread-and-butter. Naturally, I had thought that _tartine_ meant a tart. And there was the very same Sister laying the table, the Sister who used to look sharply at my plate to see that I ate all my fat and pieces of gristle. She remembered me perfectly. Many were the tussles, poor woman, she had had with me. Mère B. showed us the chapel, where we used to assemble at half-past six every morning, cold and half-asleep, to say our prayers before going into the big church. Many were the beautiful addresses the Mother Superior had read to us; many were the vows I had made to be really very good; many were the resolves I had formed to be gentle and forbearing during the day--vows and resolves only to be broken soon. We wandered through the garden between the beds of thyme and mint and late roses, and Mère B. spoke with tears in her eyes of the time when they would have to leave their happy convent home and migrate to some more hospitable land. 'It is not for ourselves that we grieve,' she said: 'it is for our poor country--for the people who will be left without religion. Personally, we are as happy in one country as in another.' I picked a sprig of sweet-smelling thyme as I passed, and laid it tenderly between the pages of my pocket-book. If the garden were to be desecrated and used by strangers, I must have something to remember it by. What memories the dear old convent garden brought back to me! There was the gravelled square where we children skipped and played and sang Breton _chansons_ all in a ring. There was the avenue of scanty poplars--not so scanty now--down which I often paced in rebellious mood, gazing at the walls rising high above me, longing to gain the farther side and be in the world. Outside the convent gates was always called 'the world.' There was the little rocky shrine of the Virgin--a sweet-faced woman in a robe of blue and gold, nursing a Baby with an aureole about His head. Many a time I had thrown myself on the bench in front of that shrine in a fit of temper, and had been slowly calmed and soothed by that gentle presence, coming away a better child, with what my mother always called 'the little black monkey' gone from my back. Very soon the convent atmosphere wraps itself about you and lulls you to rest. You feel its influence directly you enter the building. You are seized by a vague longing to stay here, just where you are, and leave the world, with its ceaseless strivings and turmoils and unrest, behind you. Yet how soon the worldly element in you would come to the fore, teasing you, tormenting you back into the toils once more! It was with a feeling of sorrow and a sensation that something was being wrenched from me that I bade good-bye to sweet Mère B. at the garden gate, with many embraces and parting injunctions not to forget the convent and my old friends. [Illustration: OUTSIDE THE CATHEDRAL, QUIMPERLE] Wherever one goes in Quimper one sees the stately cathedral, that wondrous building which, with its two excellent pyramids and gigantic portal, is said to be the most beautiful in all Brittany. It would take one days and days to realize its beauty. The doorway itself is as rich in detail as a volume of history. There are lines of sculptured angels joining hands over the porch, Breton coats of arms, and the device of Jean X.--'Malo au riche duc.' There are two windows above the doorway, crowned by a gallery, with an equestrian statue of the King of Grallon. According to tradition the cathedral must have been built on the site of the royal palace. There are many legends about the church of St. Corentin. One is that of a man who, going on a pilgrimage, left his money with a neighbour for safety. On returning, the neighbour declared that he had never had the money, and proposed to swear to the same before the crucifix of St. Corentin. They met there, and the man swore. Instantly three drops of blood fell from the crucifix to the altar, which, the legend runs, are preserved to this day. It is also said that there is in the fountain of Quimper a miraculous fish, which, in spite of the fact that St. Corentin cuts off half of it every day for his dinner, remains whole. A quaint ceremony is held at the cathedral on the Feast of St. Cecile. At two o'clock the clergyman, accompanied by musicians and choir-boys, mounts a platform between the great towers, and a joyous hymn is sung there, on the nearest point to the sky in all Quimper. It is a strange sight. Scores of beggars gather round the porch of the cathedral--the halt, the lame, the blind, and the diseased--all with outstretched hats and cups. [Illustration: BY THE SIDE OF A FARM] CHAPTER VI ST. BRIEUC St. Brieuc, although it has lost character somewhat during the last half-century, is still typically Breton. Its streets are narrow and cobbled, and many of its houses date from the Middle Ages. It was market-day when we arrived, and crowds of women, almost all of whom wore different caps--some of lace with wide wings, others goffered with long strings--were hurrying, baskets over their arms, in the direction of the market-place. Suddenly, while walking in these narrow, tortuous streets of St. Brieuc, I saw stretched before me, or rather below, many feet below, a green and fertile valley. It resembled a picturesque scene magically picked out of Switzerland and placed in a Breton setting. Through the valley ran a small glistening stream, a mere ribbon of water, threading its way among rocks and boulders and vivid stretches of green grass. On either side were steep hills covered with verdure, gardens, and plots of vegetables. On the heights a railway was being cut into the solid rock--a gigantic engineering work, rather spoiling the aspect of this wooded valley full of flowers and perfumes and the sun. We were told that there was nothing further to be seen in St. Brieuc, but that we must go to Binic, which is described in a certain guide-book as 'a very picturesque little fishing village.' This sounded inviting, and, although we had not much time to spare, we set off in a diligence with about eighteen windows, each of which rattled as we sped along at a terrific pace over the cobbles of St. Brieuc. On we went, faster and faster, rattling--out into the country, past the valley again, the beautiful valley, and many other valleys like it. Craggy purple mountains half-covered with green flew by us; and here and there was an orchard with gnarled and spreading apple-trees weighted with heavy burdens of red and golden fruit--the very soil was carpeted with red and gold. What a fertile country it is! Here, where a river flows between two mountains, how vividly green the grass! Peasant women by its banks are washing linen on the flat stones, and hanging it, all white and blue and daintily fresh, on yellow gorse bushes and dark blackberry thorns. I have never seen blackberries such as those on the road to Binic. Tall and thick grew the bushes, absolutely black with berries, so large that they resembled bunches of grapes. Not a single Breton in all the length and breadth of Brittany will pick this ripe and delicious fruit--not a schoolboy, not a starving beggar on the wayside--for does not the bush bear the accursed thorns which pierced the Saviour's forehead? It is only when English and American children invade Brittany that the blackberries are harvested. A diligence causes excitement in a small Breton town. It carries the mails between the villages. Whenever the inhabitants hear the horn, out they rush from their homes with letters and parcels to be given into the hands of the courier. The courier's duties, by the way, are many. Not only are the mails given into his safe keeping: he is entrusted with commissions, errands, and messages of all kinds. A housewife will ask him to buy her a bar of soap; a girl will entrust him with the matching of a ribbon; a hotel-keeper will order through him a cask of beer; and so on. The courier is busy throughout the day executing his various commissions, now in one shop, now in another; and on the return journey his cart, hung all over with bulky packages and small,--here a chair, there a broom, here a tin of biscuits--resembles a Christmas-tree. The courier's memory must needs be good and his hand steady, for it is the custom to give him at each house as much as he likes to drink. His passengers are kept for hours shivering in the cold, becoming late for their appointments and missing their trains; but the courier cares not. He drinks wherever he stops, and at each fresh start becomes more brilliant in his driving. At one of the villages, during the tedious wait while the driver was imbibing, I was much interested in watching a man, a little child, and a dog. The man was a loafer, but neatly and even smartly dressed, wearing a white peaked yachting cap. The child was small and sickly, with long brown hair curling round a deathly-white and rather dirty face, weak blue eyes with red rims, and an ominously scarlet mouth. Long blue-stockinged legs came from beneath a black pinafore, so thin and small that it seemed impossible that they could bear the weight of those heavy black wooden sabots. I thought that the child was a girl until the pinafore was raised, revealing tiny blue knickers and a woollen jersey. The boy seemed devoted to his father, and would hold his hand unnoticed for a long while, gazing into the unresponsive eyes. Now and then he would jump up feverishly and excitedly, pulling his father's coat to attract attention, and prattling all the while. The man took not the slightest notice of the child. He was glancing sharply about him. By-and-by he bent down towards his son, and I heard him whisper, 'Allez à ses messieurs la.' Without a word the boy trotted off towards the men, his hands in his pockets, and began talking to them, the father watching attentively. He returned, but was immediately sent off again with a frown and a push. Then he came back with several sous, clasped in his fist, which he held up proudly to his father. Over and over again he was sent off, and every time he came back with a few sous. Had the child appealed to me I could not have resisted him. There was something about the pathetic pale face that tugged at the heart-strings. One felt that the boy was not long for this world. His father was absolutely callous. He did not reward the lad by word or smile, although the child pulled at his coat and clamoured for attention. At last the boy gave up in despair, and, sitting down on the pavement, drew the old black poodle towards him, hiding his face in the tangled wool, while the animal's eyes, brown and sad, seemed to say that he at least understood. [Illustration: ON THE ROAD TO BANNALEC] At length we arrived in Binic, cold, windy, composed of a few slate-gray, solid houses, a stone pier, and some large sailing vessels, with nothing picturesque about them. The courier's cart set us down, and went rattling on its way. We were in a bleak, unsympathetic place. I felt an impulse to run after the diligence and beg the driver to take us away. This was 'the picturesque little fishing village'! We dived into the most respectable-looking _débit de boissons_ we could find, and asked for tea. An old lady sitting before the fire dropped her knitting, and her spectacles flew off. The sudden appearance of strangers in Binic, combined with the request for tea, of all beverages, seemed trying to her nervous system. It was quite five minutes before she was in a fit condition to ask us what we really required. With much trepidation, she made our tea, holding it almost at arm's length, as if it were poisonous. The tea itself she had discovered on the top of a shelf in a fancy box covered with dust and cobwebs; she had measured it out very carefully. When poured into our cups the fluid was of a pale canary colour, and was flavourless. We lengthened out the meal until the carrier's cart arrived, with a full complement of passengers. It had begun to rain and hail, and the driver cheerfully assured us his was the last diligence that day. The proprietress of the _débit_ had begun to rub her hands with glee at the thought of having us as customers; but I was determined that, even if I had to sit on the top of the cart, we should not stay in the terrible place an hour longer. To the surprise of the courier, and the disgust of the passengers, whose view we completely blocked, we climbed to the driver's seat and sat there. The driver, a good natured man, with consideration for his purse, shrugged his shoulders at the proprietress, and we started on our way. I have never heard such language as that which issued from the back of the cart. Many and terrible were the epithets hurled at the heads of 'ses affreuses Anglaises.' [Illustration: DÉBIT DE BOISSONS] [Illustration: CHURCH OF ST. MODY] CHAPTER VII PAIMPOL Wherever one travels one cannot but be impressed by the friendliness and sympathy of the people. On the day we were starting for Paimpol we found, on arriving at the station, that we had an hour to wait for our train. We happened to be feeling rather depressed that day, and at this intimation I was on the verge of tears. The porter who took our tickets cheered us up to the best of his ability. He flung open the door of the _salle d'attente_ as if it had been a lordly reception-room, flourished round with his duster over mantelpiece and table and straight-backed chairs, and motioned us to be seated. 'Voilà tout ce qu'il y a de plus joli et confortable,' he said, with a smile. Perceiving that we were not impressed, he drew aside the curtains and pointed with a dirty forefinger. 'Voilà un joli petit jardin,' he exclaimed triumphantly. There, he added, we might sit if we chose. Also, he said there was a buffet close at hand. As this did not produce enthusiasm, he observed that there was a mirror in the room, that he himself would call us in time to catch our train, and that we were altogether to consider ourselves _chez nous_. Then he bowed himself out of the room. The scenery along the railway from Guingamp to Paimpol was beautiful. I hung my head out of the window the whole way, so anxious was I not to miss a single minute of that glorious colouring. There were hills of craggy rocks, blue and purple, with pines of brilliant fresh green growing thickly up their sides. On the summit, standing dark against the sky, were older pines of a deeper green. Between the clumps of pines grew masses of mustard-yellow gorse and purple heather, in parts faded to a rich pinky-brown. Now and then there were clefts in the hills, or valleys, where the colouring was richer and deeper still, and bracken grew in abundance, pinky-brown and russet. Paimpol itself is a fishing village, much frequented by artists, attracted by the fishing-boats with their vermilion sails, who never tire of depicting the gray stone quay, with its jumble of masts and riggings. In the _salle à manger_ of the little hotel where we had luncheon the walls were literally panelled with pictures of fishing-boats moored to the quay. Every man sitting at that long table was an artist. This was a pleasant change from the commercial travellers who hitherto had fallen to our lot at meal-times. There was no Englishman among the artists. [Illustration: REFLECTIONS] The English at this time of the year in Brittany are few, though they swarm in every town and village during summer. These were Frenchmen--impressionists of the new school. It was well to know this. Otherwise one might have taken them for wild men of the woods. Such ruffianly-looking people I had never seen before. Some of them wore corduroy suits, shabby and paint-besmeared, with slovenly top-boots and large felt hats set at the back of their heads. Others affected dandyism, and parted their hair at the back, combing it towards their ears, in the latest Latin Quarter fashion. Their neckties were of the flaming tones of sunset, very large and spreading; their trousers excessively baggy. The entrance of my mother and myself caused some confusion among them, for women are very rare in Paimpol at this season. Hats flew off and neckties were straightened, while each one did his best to attend to our wants. Frenchmen are nothing if not polite. The young man sitting next to me suffered from shyness, and blushed every time he spoke. On one occasion, airing his English, he said, 'Vill you pass ze vutter?' I passed him the butter; but he had meant water. The poor youth rivalled the peony as he descended to French and explained his mistake. The people of Paimpol are supposed to be much addicted to smuggling. My mother and I once imagined that we had detected a flagrant act. One afternoon, walking on a narrow path above the sea, we saw three boys crouching behind a rock. They were talking very earnestly, and pointing, apparently making signals, to a little red-sailed boat. The boat changed her course, and steered straight for a small cove beneath our feet. We held our breath, expecting to witness the hiding of the loot. Suddenly, just as the little craft drew to within a yard or so of the shore, we saw from behind a rock a red and white cockade appear. There stood a gendarme! Instantly the boat went on her way once more, and the boys fell to whispering again behind the rock. After a while, to our great disgust, the gendarme walked at leisure down the path and chatted in a friendly way with the conspirators. He had been out for an afternoon stroll. Nothing really dramatic or interesting in the smuggling line seems to happen outside books. The Paimpolais are a vigorous people. Fathers and sons dedicate their lives to the sea. With all their roughness, the people are strictly religious. The bay of Paimpol is under the protection of the Virgin, and St. Anne is patron saint. All prayers for those at sea are directed to these two saints, whose statues stand prominently in the village. At the end of every winter, before starting their dangerous life anew, the fishermen are blessed before the statues. The patron saint of the mariners gazes down with lifeless eyes on generation after generation of men--on those whose luck will be good and lives happy; on those who are destined never to return. At the opening of the fishing season there is a ceremonial procession, attended by the fathers, mothers, sisters, and _fiancées_ of the fisher folk. Each man as he embarks is blessed by the priest and given a few last words of advice. Then the boats move away, a big flotilla of red-sailed fishing craft, the men singing in loud vibrating voices, as they busy themselves about their boats, the canticles of Mary, star of the sea. [Illustration: A SABOT STALL] CHAPTER VIII GUINGAMP On the way to Guingamp we travelled second-class. In the first-class carriages one sits in solitary state, with never a chance of studying the people of the country. Half-way on our journey the train stopped, and I was amused by the excitement and perturbation of the passengers. They flew to the windows, and heaped imprecations on the guard, the engine-driver, and the railway company. As the train remained stationary for several minutes, their remarks became facetious. They inquired if _un peu de charbon_ would be useful. Should they provide the porter with a blade of straw wherewith to light the engines? They even offered their services in pushing the train. One fat, red-faced commercial traveller, who, by way of being witty, declared that he was something of an engineer himself, descended the steep steps of the carriage in order to assist the officials. The French are born comedians--there is no doubt about it. They manage to make themselves extremely ridiculous. This man's behaviour was like that of a clown in the circus. In attempting to unlock a carriage he got in the way of everyone. The wait was long and tedious. 'Il faut coucher sur la montagne ce soir, mademoiselle,' said an old Breton who was puffing contentedly at a clay pipe in the corner of the carriage. He was very fat, and smothered up to his chin in a loose blue blouse; but he had a classic head. It was like that of some Roman Emperor carved in bronze. His eyes were of cerulean blue. His was the head of a man born to command. There was something almost imperial in the pose and set of it. Nevertheless, this peasant lived, no doubt, in the depth of the country, probably in some hovel of a cottage, with a slovenly yellow-faced wife (women in the wilds of Brittany grow old and plain very early), dirty children, and a few pigs and cows. He had been attending a market, and he spoke with great importance of his purchases there. He descended at a minute station on the line, and I watched him as he started on his fifteen-mile drive in a ramshackle wooden cart. [Illustration: LA VIEILLESSE] We were cold and sleepy when we arrived at Guingamp, so much so that we forgot to be nervous as we crossed the line with our many bags and bandboxes. When you arrive at a station in Brittany, you are met by a bevy of men in gold-lace caps, who instantly set up a noisy chatter. You assume that they must be advertising various hotels; but it is quite impossible to distinguish. Travellers, especially the English, are rarities at this season. As a rule I carefully chose the omnibus which was cleanest, and the driver who was most respectful, in spite of many persuasions to the contrary; but on this occasion I was so limp and tired that I allowed my traps to be snatched from my hands and followed our guide meekly. It might have been the dirtiest hovel of an inn towards which we were going rapidly over the cobbled stones of the town--it was all one to me. By great good luck we happened to chance on the Hôtel de France, where we were greeted by the _maîtresse d'hôtel_, a kindly woman, and without further delay, although it sounds somewhat _gourmande_ to say so, sat down to one of the best dinners it has ever been my lot to eat. The kitchen was exactly opposite the _salle à manger_, the door of which was open for all to see within. There we could observe the chef, rotund and rosy-cheeked, in spotless white cap and apron, busy among multitudinous pots and pans which shone like gold. His assistants, boys in butcher-blue cotton, flew hither and thither at his command, busily chopping this and whipping up that. The various dishes I do not remember distinctly; I only know that each one (I once heard an epicure speak thus) was a 'poem.' Of all that glorious menu, only the _escalopes de veau_ stands out clearly, laurel-wreathed, in my memory. At the table there were the usual commercial travellers. Also there were several glum, hard-featured Englishwomen and one man. How is it that one dislikes one's own countrymen abroad so much? It is unpatriotic to say so, but I really think that the Continental travelling portion of Britishers must be a race apart, a different species; for a more unpleasant, impolite, plain, and badly-dressed set of people it has never been my lot to meet elsewhere. The word 'English' at this rate will soon become an epithet. All the women resemble the worst type of schoolmistress, and all the men retired tradesmen. Guingamp, by the light of day, is a pretty town, with nothing particularly imposing or attractive, although at one time it was an important city of the Duchy of Penthièvre. Its only remnant of ancient glory consists in the church of Nôtre Dame de Bon Secours, a bizarre and irregular monument, dating from the fifteenth century. In the cool of the evening the environs of Guingamp are very beautiful. It is delightful to lean over some bridge spanning the dark river. Only the sound of washerwomen beating their linen, and the splash of clothes rinsed in the water, disturb the quiet. The scenery is soft and silvery in tone, like the landscape of a Corot. Slim, bare silver birches overhang the blackened water, and on either side of the river grow long grasses, waving backwards and forwards in the wind, now purple, now gray. Down a broad yellow road troops of black and red cows are being driven, and horses with their blue wooden harness are drawing a cart laden with trunks of trees, led by a man in a blue blouse, with many an encouraging deep-voiced 'Hoop loo!' Everyone is bringing home cows, or wood, or cider apples. The sky is broad and gray, with faint purple clouds. Three dear little girls, pictures every one of them, are walking along the road, taking up the whole breadth of it, and carrying carefully between them two large round baskets full to overflowing with red and green apples. Each little maid wears on her baby head a tight white lace cap through which the glossy black hair shines, a bunchy broad cloth skirt, a scarlet cross-over shawl, and heavy sabots. They are miniatures of their mothers. They look like old women cut short, as they come toddling leisurely along the road, a large heavy basket suspended between them, singing a pretty Breton ballad in shrill trebles: 'J'ai mangé des cerises avec mon petit cousin, J'ai mangé des cerises, des cerises du voisin.' I caught the words as they passed, and remembered the melody. I had as a child known the ballad in my old convent. When they were past they tried to look back at the _demoiselle Anglaise_, and, unheeding, tripped over a large heap of stones in the roadway. Down tumbled children, baskets, and all. What a busy quarter of an hour we all spent, on our knees in the dust, rubbing up and replacing the apples, lest mother should guess they had been dropped! Finally, we journeyed on into Guingamp in company. [Illustration: A BEGGAR] CHAPTER IX HUELGOAT To reach Huelgoat one must take the hotel omnibus from the railway-station, and wind up and up for about an hour. Then you reach the village. The scenery is mountainous, and quite grand for Brittany. The aspect of this country is extraordinarily varied. On the way to Huelgoat one passes little ribbon-like rivers with bridges and miniature waterfalls, and hills covered by bracken and heather. The air is bracing. At the top of one of the hills the carriage was stopped, and a chubby boy in a red beré and sabots presented himself at the door, with the request that we should descend and see the 'goffre.' Not knowing what the 'goffre' might be, we followed our imperious guide down a precipitous path, all mud and slippery rocks, with scarcely sufficient foothold. At length we found ourselves in a dark wood, with mysterious sounds of rushing water all about us. When our eyes became accustomed to the darkness we discovered that this proceeded from a body of water which rushed, dark-brown and angry-looking, down the rocks, and fell foaming, amber-coloured, into a great black hole. Plucking at our skirts, the child drew us to the edge, whispering mysteriously, as he pointed downwards, 'C'est la maison du diable.' A few planks had been lightly placed across the yawning abyss, and over the rude bridge the peasants passed cheerfully on their way to work or from it--woodcutters with great boughs of trees on their shoulders, and millers with sacks of flour. One shuddered to think what might happen if a sack or a bough were to fall and a man were to lose his balance. Even the child admitted that the place was _un peu dangereux_, and led us rapidly up the muddy path to the road. There we found to our astonishment that the carriage had gone on to the hotel. As my mother is not a good walker and dislikes insecure places and climbing of any kind, we felt rather hopeless; but the child assured us that the distance was not great. He seemed rather disgusted at our feebleness and hesitation. Without another word, he crossed the road and dived into a forest, leaving us to follow as best we might. Soon we were in one of the most beautiful woods imaginable, among long, slim pines, of which you could see only the silver stems, unless you gazed upwards, when the vivid green of the leaves against the sky was almost too crude in its brilliancy. The path was covered with yellow pine-needles, which, in parts where the sun lit upon them through the trees, shone as pure gold. On either side grew bracken, salmon, and red, and tawny-yellow; here and there were spots of still more vivid colour, formed by toadstools which had been changed by the sun to brightest vermilion and orange. I have never seen anything more beautiful than this combination--the forest of slim purple stems, the bracken, the golden path, and, looking up, the vivid green of the trees and the blue of the sky. The child led us on through the wood, never deigning to address a word to us, his hands in his pockets, and his beré pulled over his eyes. Sometimes the path descended steeply; sometimes it was a hard pull uphill, and we were forced to stop for breath. Always the merciless child went on, until my mother almost sobbed and declared that this was not the right way to the hotel. Now and then we emerged into a more open space, where there were huge rocks and boulders half-covered with moss and ivy, some as much as twenty feet high, like playthings of giants thrown hither and thither carelessly one on the top of the other. Over some of these, slippery and worn almost smooth, we had to cross for miles until we reached the hotel, tired. [Illustration: A WAYSIDE SHRINE, HUELGOAT] Luncheon was a strange meal. No one spoke: there was silence all the time. About thirty people were seated at a long table, all lodgers in the hotel; but they were mute. Two young persons of the bourgeois class, out for their yearly holiday, came in rather late, and stopped on the threshold dumbfounded at sight of the silent crowd, for French people habitually make a great deal of noise and clatter at their meals. They sat opposite to us, and spent an embarrassed time. When you visit Huelgoat you are told that the great and only thing to do is to take an excursion to St. Herbot. This all the up-to-date guide-books will tell you with _empressement_. But my advice to you is--'Don't!' Following the instructions of Messrs. Cook, we took a carriage to St. Herbot. It was a very long and uninteresting drive through sombre scenery, and when we arrived there was only a very mediocre small church to be seen. The peasants begged us to visit the grand cascade; our driver almost went down on his bended knees to implore us to view the cascade. We would have no cascades. Cascades such as one sees in Brittany, small and insignificant affairs, bored us; we had visited them by the score. The driver was terribly disappointed; tears stood in his eyes. He had expected time for a drink. The peasants had anticipated liberal tips for showing us the view. They all swore in the Breton tongue. Our charioteer drove us home, at break-neck speed, over the most uneven and worst places he could discover on the road. [Illustration: FISHING-BOATS, CONCARNEAU] [Illustration: AT THE FOUNTAIN, CONCARNEAU] CHAPTER X CONCARNEAU This little town, with its high gray walls, is very important. In olden days its possession was disputed by many a valiant captain. The fortress called the 'Ville Close' has been sacrificed since then to military usage. The walls of granite, which are very thick, are pierced by three gates, doubled by bastions and flanked by machicolated towers. At each high tide the sea surrounds the fortress. Tradition tells us that on one occasion at the Fête Dieu the floods retired to make way for a religious procession of children and clergy, with golden banners and crosses, in order that they might make the complete tour of the ramparts. This fortress, a little city in itself, is joined to Concarneau by a bridge, and it is on the farther side that industry and animation are to be found. There is a fair-sized port, where hundreds of sardine-boats are moored, their red and gray nets hanging on their masts. The activity of the port is due to the sardines, and its prosperity is dependent on the abundance of the fish. Towards the month of June the sardines arrive in great shoals on the coast of Brittany. For some time no one knew whence they came or whither they went. An approximate idea of their journeyings has now been gained. Their route, it seems, is invariable. During March and April the sardines appear on the coasts of the Adriatic and the Mediterranean; they pass through the Straits of Gibraltar, skirting Spain and Portugal; they reach France in May. In June they are to be found on the coast of Morbihan and Concarneau, in August in the Bay of Douarnénez, in September by the Isle de Batz, and later in England or in Scotland. [Illustration: CONCARNEAU HARBOUR] It is to be hoped that the fish will always abound about the coast of Concarneau. The women population is engaged in industries connected with sardines. The making and mending of the nets and the preparation and packing of the fish are in themselves a labour employing many women. When the sardines have been unloaded from the ships, they are brought to the large warehouses on the quay and submitted to the various processes of cleaning and drying. Rows of women sit at long deal tables cutting off the heads of the fish, and singing at their work. The fish are then cleaned of the salt which the fishermen threw on them, and dried in the open air on iron grills. During this time other workmen are employed in boiling oil in iron basins. The sardines, once dried, are plunged into the oil for about two minutes, sufficient to cook them, and are afterwards dried in the sun. They are then placed in small tin boxes, half-filled with oil, which are taken to be soldered. The solderers, armed with irons at white heat, hermetically close the boxes, which are then ready to be delivered to the trade. This simple process is quite modern; it was instituted at the end of the last century. The nets, which cost the fishermen thirty francs, take thirty days to make. The machine-made nets are less expensive; but it is said that they are not sufficiently elastic, and the meshes enlarged by the weight of fish do not readily close up again. Each sardine-boat is manned by four or five men armed with an assortment of nets. The bait consists of the intestines of a certain kind of fish. The fishermen plunge their arms up to the elbow in the loathsome mixture, seizing handfuls to throw into the water. If the sardines take to the bait, one soon sees the water on either side of the vessel white and gray with the scales of the fish. Then the men begin to draw in the nets. Two of them seize the ends and pull horizontally through the water; the others unfasten the heads of the fish caught in the meshes. The sardines are tumbled into the bottom of the boat, and sprinkled with salt. The sardines, delicate creatures, die in the air in a few seconds. In dying they make a noise very like the cry of a mouse. After the first haul the fishermen have some idea of the dimensions of the fish, and adjust the mesh of their nets,--for the sardines vary in size from one day to another according to the shoals on which the fishermen chance. [Illustration: THE SARDINE FLEET, CONCARNEAU] [Illustration: WATCHING FOR THE FISHING FLEET, CONCARNEAU] CHAPTER XI MORLAIX 'S'ils tu te mordent, mords les,' is the proud device of the town of Morlaix, and the glorious pages of her chronicles justify the motto. Morlaix has from all time been dear to the hearts of the Dukes of Brittany for her faithfulness, which neither reverse nor failure has ever altered. Even during the Wars of the Succession, after the most terrible calamities, she still maintained a stout heart and a bold front. She espoused the cause of Charles of Blois, which cost her the lives of fifty of her finest men, whom the Duc de Monfort hanged under false pretences. Morlaix is a quaint little town--all gables, pointed roofs, and projecting windows. There are streets so narrow that in perspective the roofs appear to meet overhead. They are of wonderful colours. You will see white houses with chocolate woodwork, and yellow houses, stained by time, with projecting windows. In some cases there are small shops on the ground-floor. The town seems to be built in terraces, to which one mounts by steps with iron railings. You are for ever climbing, either up or down, in Morlaix; and the only footgear that seems to be at all appropriate to its roughly cobbled streets is the thick wooden nail-studded sabot of the Breton. Most of the houses on the outskirts have gardens on the tops of the roofs; it is odd, when looking up a street, to see scarlet geraniums nodding over the gray stonework, and, sometimes, vines meeting in a green tracery above your head. There are in Morlaix whole streets in which every house has a pointed roof, where all the slates are gray and scaly, and each story projects over another, the last one projecting farthest, with, on the ground-floor, either a clothier's shop or a _quincaillerie_ bright with gleaming pots and pans and blue enamelled buckets. This lowest story has always large wooden painted shutters flung back. The houses are unlike those of any other town I have seen in Brittany. There are always about five solid square rafters under each story, and each rafter is carved at the end into some grotesque little image or flower. There is much painted woodwork about the windows, and criss-cross beams sometimes run down the whole length of the house. There are still many strange old blackened edifices, sculptured from top to bottom, which have remained intact during four centuries with a sombre obstinacy. At the angles you often see grotesque figures of biniou-players, arabesques, and leaves, varied in the most bizarre manner, and so delicately and beautifully executed that they would form material for six 'Musées de Cluny.' These vast high houses are very dirty, crumbling like old cheeses, and almost as multitudinously alive. Each story is separated by massive beams, carved in a profusion of ornaments; each window has small leaded panes. The rest of the façade is carved with lozenge-shaped slates. Morlaix, of course, has her Maison de la Reine Anne, of which she is proud. It is a characteristic house, with straight powerful lines. The door, greenish-black, is of fluted wood. The whole building is covered with an infinity of detail--ludicrous faces, statuettes, and carved figures of saints. Inside it has almost no decoration. The white walls rise to the top of the house plain and unadorned, save for a very elaborate staircase of rich chestnut-coloured wood very beautifully carved, with bridges, branching off from right to left, leading to the various apartments. At the top is a sculptured figure--either of the patron saint of the house or of some saint especially beloved in Brittany. The town is a mixture of antiquity and modernity. Though her houses and streets are old, Morlaix possesses the most modern of viaducts, 284 metres long, giving an extraordinary aspect to the place. When you arrive at night you see the town glistening with myriads of lights, so far below that it seems incredible. You do not realize that the railway is built upon a viaduct: it seems as if you were suspended in mid-air. When we arrived at Morlaix, a man with a carriage and four horses offered to drive us to Huelgoat for a very modest sum; but I vowed that all the king's horses and all the king's men would not tear me away that day. There was much to be seen. One never wearies of wandering through the streets of this fine old town, gazing up at the houses, and losing one's way among the ancient and dark by-ways. Morlaix is in a remarkable state of preservation. The houses generally do not suggest ruin or decay. The town seems to have everlasting youth. This is principally owing to the great love of the people for art and the picturesque, which has led them to renovate and rebuild constantly. For this reason, some of the structures are of great archæological value. [Illustration: MEDIÆVAL HOUSE AT MORLAIX] The religious edifices are few. Indeed, I saw only the little church of St. Milaine, its belfry dwarfed by the prodigious height of the viaduct. It is a gem of architecture. The stonework is carved to resemble lace, and both inside and out the building is in the pure Gothic style. Storms are very sudden in Morlaix. Sometimes on a sunny day, when all the world is out of doors, the wind will rise, knocking down the tailors' dummies and scattering the tam-o'-shanters hanging outside the clothiers'. Then comes rain in torrents. How the peasants scuttle! What a clatter of wooden-shod feet over the cobbles as they run for shelter! Umbrellas appear like mushrooms on a midsummer-night. Once I saw some old women in the open square with baskets of lace and crotchet-work and bundles of clothes stretched out for sale. When the rain began they fell into a great fright, and strove to cover their wares with old sacks, baskets, umbrellas--anything that was ready to hand. I felt inclined to run out of the hotel and help. As suddenly as the storm had risen, the sun came out, clear and radiant. I never knew the air to be so invigorating and bright anywhere in Brittany as it is in Morlaix. [Illustration: OUTSIDE THE SMITHY, PONT-AVEN] CHAPTER XII PONT-AVEN Pont-Aven is associated with agreeable memories. This village in the South of Finistère draws men and women from all over Europe, summer after summer. Many of them stay there throughout the winter, content to be shut off from the world, allowing the sweet and gentle lassitude of the place to lull their cares and troubles. Is it climatic--this soothing influence--or is it the outcome of a spell woven over beautiful Pont-Aven by some good-natured fairy long ago? I have often wondered. Certain it is that intelligent men, many of them painters, have been content to spend years in Pont-Aven. Some time ago Mother and Father, touring in Brittany, came to this delightful spot, and determined to spend three weeks there. They stayed three years. All my life I have heard stories of this wonderful place, and of their first visit. It was when my father had only just begun his career as a painter. The experience, he says, was a great education. There he found himself in an amazing nest of French and American painters, all the newer lights of the French school. He was free to work at whatever he liked, yet with unlimited chances of widening, by daily argument, his knowledge of technical problems. For the three years that he remained on this battlefield of creeds conflicts of opinion raged constantly. Everyone was frantically devoted to one or another of the dominating principles of the moderns. There was a bevy of schools there. One, called the Stripists, painted in stripes, with vivid colour as nearly prismatic as possible, all the scenery around. Then, there were the Dottists, who painted in a series of dots. There were also the Spottists--a sect of the Dottists, whose differentiation was too subtle to be understood. Men there were who had a theory that you must ruin your digestion before you could paint a masterpiece. No physically healthy person, they declared, could hope to do fine work. They used to try to bring about indigestion. One man, celebrated for his painting of pure saints with blue dresses, over which Paris would go crazy, never attempted to paint a saint until he had drunk three glasses of absinthe and bathed his face in ether. Another decided that he was going to have, in Paris, an exhibition of merry-go-rounds which should startle France. He had a theory that the only way to get at the soul of a thing was to paint when drunk. He maintained that the merry-go-rounds whirled faster then. One day my father went to his studio. He was dazed. He did not know whether he was standing on his head or his heels. It was impossible to see 'Black Bess' or any of the pet horses he knew so well. The pictures were one giddy whirl. Then, there was the Bitumen school, a group of artists who never painted anything but white sunlit houses with bitumen shadows. A year or two afterwards a terrible thing invariably happened. Without any warning whatsoever, the pictures would suddenly slide from off their canvases to the floor. The bitumen had melted. The Primitives afforded joy. Their distinctive mark was a walking-stick, carved by a New Zealand Maori, which they carried about with them. It gave them inspiration. So powerful was the influence of these sticks that even the head of a Breton peasant assumed the rugged aspect of the primitive carvings in their paintings. The most enthusiastic disciple of the sect was a youth who was continually receiving marvellous inspirations. Once, after having shut himself up for three days, he appeared looking haggard and ravenous. Without a word, he sat down heavily near a table, called for absinthe, and, groaning, dropped his head in his hands, and murmured, 'Ah, me! Ah, me!' All beholders were in a fever to know what the mystery was. After some minutes of dead silence the young man rose majestically from his chair, stretched forth one arm, and, with a far-away look in his eyes, said, 'Friends, last night, when you were all asleep, a beautiful creature came to me in spirit form, and taught me the secret of drawing; and I drew this.' Then he brought out a picture. It was far above his usual style, and the more credulous envied his good fortune. Some weeks afterwards, however, it was discovered by a painter with detective instincts that the marvellous vision was in reality a _chambre au clair_--that is to say, a prism through which objects are reflected on paper, enabling one to trace them with great facility. [Illustration: IN AN AUBERGE, PONT-AVEN] Such are the extraordinary people among whom Mother and Father found themselves on their first visit to Pont-Aven--geniuses some of them, mere daubers others, all of them strange and rough and weird. More like wild beasts they looked than human beings, Mother told me; for very few women came to Pont-Aven in the early days, and those were Bohemians. The artists allowed their hair and beards to grow long. Day after day they wore the same old paint-stained suits of corduroys, battered wide-brimmed hats, loose flannel shirts, and coarse wooden sabots stuffed with straw. Mother, who was very young at the time, has often told me that she will never forget their arrival at the little Hôtel Gleanec. They were shown into a _salle à manger_, where rough men sat on either side of a long table, serving themselves out of a common dish, and dipping great slices of bread into their plates. Mother was received with great courtesy by them. She found it very amusing to watch the gradual change in their appearance day by day--the donning of linen collars and cuffs and the general smartening up. Many of the men who were then struggling with the alphabet of art have reached the highest rungs of the ladder of fame, and their names have become almost household words; others have sunk into oblivion, and are still amateurs. The chief hotel in the village was the Hôtel des Voyageurs, to which Mother and Father soon migrated. It was kept by a wonderful woman, called Julia. Originally a peasant girl, she had by untiring energy become the proprietress of the great establishment. Her fame as hostess and manager was bruited all over France. Everyone seemed to know of Julia, and year after year artists and their families came back regularly to stay with her. She is a woman with a strong individuality. She gathered a large custom among artists, who flocked to the Hôtel des Voyageurs as much because of the charm of Mdlle. Julia, and the comfort of her house, as for the beauty of the scenery. There was a delightful intimacy among the guests, most of whom were very intelligent. Mdlle. Julia took a sincere interest in the career of each. All went to her with their troubles and their joys, certain of sympathy and encouragement. Many are the young struggling painters she has helped substantially, often allowing them to live on in the hotel for next to nothing. Many are the unpaid bills of long standing on the books of this generous woman. I fear that she has never made the hotel pay very well, for the elaborate menu and good accommodation are out of all proportion to her charges. A strong woman is Mdlle. Julia. She has been known to lift a full-grown man and carry him out of doors, landing him ignominiously in the mud. There was one man, a retired military officer, whom no one else could manage. He had come to stay in Pont-Aven because he could live there for a few francs a day and drink the rest. He suffered from hallucinations, and took great pleasure in chasing timid artists over the countryside, challenging them to duels, and insulting them in every way possible. He was the terror of the village. He had a house on the quay, and early one morning when the snow was thick upon the ground, just because a small vessel came into the river and began blowing a trumpet, or making a noise of some kind, he sprang out of bed in a towering rage, rushed in his nightshirt into the street, and began sharpening his sword on a rock, shouting to the ship's captain to come out and be killed if he dared. The captain did not dare. The only person of whom this extraordinary person stood in awe was Mdlle. Julia. Her he would obey without a murmur. No one knew why. Perhaps there had been some contest between them. At any rate, they understood each other. The friends of Mdlle. Julia ranged from the Mayor of the town to Batiste, the butcher, who sat outside his door all day and watched her every movement. 'If I want to remember where I have been, and what I did at a certain hour, I have only to ask Batiste,' she was wont to say. All the artists worshipped the ground she trod upon; and well they might, for they would never have a better friend than she. Her _salle à manger_ and _grand salon_ were panelled with pictures, some of which are very valuable to-day. Tender-hearted she was, and strong-minded, with no respect for persons. Mother told me that once when my brother and sister, babies of three and four years old, were posing for Father on the beach with only their linen sunbonnets on, their limbs were somewhat sunburnt and blistered. When they returned to the hotel, Mdlle. Julia applied sweet oil and cold cream to the tender skin, and rated my parents soundly between her tears of compassion for the little ones. It was of no use explaining that it was in the cause of art. She bade them in unmeasured terms to send art to the Devil, and scolded them as if they were children. I doubt not she would have reprimanded the King of England with as little compunction. [Illustration: A SAND-CART ON THE QUAY, PONT-AVEN] Mdlle. Julia made the reputation of Pont-Aven by her own overpowering individuality. If she went to Paris or elsewhither for a few days, everyone in the village felt her absence. Things were not the same. Pont-Aven seemed momentarily to have lost its charm. The meals were badly cooked and worse served; the _bonnes_ were neglectful. All missed the ringing laugh and cheery presence of Julia. How soon one knew when she had returned! What a flutter there was among the _bonnes_! What a commotion! How everyone flew hither and thither at her command! She seemed to fill the hotel with her presence. I went to Pont-Aven when I was ten years old, and I remember well how Mdlle. Julia came to meet us, driving twenty miles through the deep snow. What happy days those were in the dear little village! We lived as wild things, and enjoyed life to the full. M. Grenier, the schoolmaster, acted as tutor to us. He was lenient. We spent our time mainly in rambling over the countryside, making chocolate in Mdlle. Julia's wood, bird-nesting, and apple-stealing. M. Grenier taught us to row, and we learnt all the various intricate currents and dangerous sandbanks so thoroughly that after a time we could almost have steered through that complicated river blindfold. We learnt how to make boats out of wood, and how to carve our names in a professional manner on trees. We became acquainted with a large selection of Breton ballads and a good deal of rough botany. More advanced lessons have faded from my mind. Of actual book-learning we accomplished very little. Many a time M. Grenier pulled himself together, brought us new copybooks, fine pens, his French grammar and readers, and settled us down in the salon to work; but gradually the task would pall on both master and scholars, and before the morning was half over we would be out in the fields and woods again, 'just for a breath of fresh air.' Children have the power of making themselves at home in a foreign country. Within a week my brother and I knew everyone in the village. We became acquainted with all their family affairs and troubles. In many households we were welcome at any time of the day. There was the sabot-maker, whom we never tired of watching as he cleverly and rapidly transformed a square block of wood into a rounded, shapely sabot. He was always busy, and sometimes turned out a dozen pairs in a day. To my great joy, he presented me with a beautiful little pair, which I wore painfully, but with much pride. Although when you become accustomed to them sabots are comfortable and sensible gear, at first they are extremely awkward. Of course, you can kick them off before you enter a house, and run about in the soft woollen _chausson_ with a leather sole which is always worn underneath. Round the hotel doorway there is always a collection of sabots awaiting their owners. In a country such as Brittany, where it rains a good deal, and the roads are often deep in mud, they are the only possible wear. The sabot is a product of evolution. In that respect it is like the hansom cab which is a thing of beauty simply because it has been thought out with regard to its usefulness and comfort alone. Batiste, the butcher, was a great friend of ours. With morbid fascination we witnessed his slaughter of pigs and cows. Then, soon we knew where to get the best _crêpes_. These are pancakes of a kind, so thin that you can see through them, made on a round piece of metal over a blazing fire. Eaten hot, with plenty of butter and sugar, they are equal to anything in our English cookery. There was one particular old lady living down by the bridge who made _crêpes_. We saw her mixing the ingredients, mostly flour and water, and spreading the dough over the round piece of metal. It became hard in an instant, and curled up brown and crisp, as thin as a lace handkerchief. Likewise, we knew where to buy bowls of milk thick with cream for one sou. We had to tramp over several fields and to scale several fences before we found ourselves in the kitchen of a large farm, where the housewife was busy pouring milk into large copper vessels. Seated at the polished mahogany table, we drank from dainty blue bowls. I went back to Pont-Aven recently, and found it very little changed. We travelled by diligence from Concarneau; but, as the conveyance left only once a day, we had several hours to while away. The Concarneau and Pont-Aven diligence is quaint and primitive, devoid of springs, and fitted with extremely narrow and hard seats. We passed through villages in which every house seemed to be either a _buvette_ or a _débit de boisson_. At these our driver--a man in a blue blouse and a black felt hat--had to deliver endless parcels, for which he dived continually under the seat on which we were sitting. For discharging each commission he received several glasses of cider and wine. He stopped at every place to drink and talk with the host, quite oblivious of his passengers. With every mile he became more uproarious. [Illustration: PLAYING ON THE 'PLACE,' PONT-AVEN] Our only travelling companion was an old woman in the costume of the country, with a yellow and wrinkled face. On her arm she carried a large basket and a loaf of bread two yards long. Ruthlessly she trod on our toes with her thick black sabots in getting in. Although I helped her with her basket and her bread, she never volunteered a word of thanks, but merely snatched them from my hands. Many Bretons are scarcely of higher intelligence than the livestock of the farms. They live in the depths of the country with their animals, sleeping in the same room with them, rarely leaving their own few acres of ground. The women work as hard as the men, digging in the fields and toiling in the forests from early morning until night. At one of the villages where the diligence stopped, a blacksmith, a young giant, handsome, dark, came out from the smithy with his dog, which he was sending to some gentleman with hunting proclivities in Pont-Aven. The animal--what is called a _chien de la chasse_--was attached by a long chain to the step, and the diligence started off. The blacksmith stood in the door of his smithy, and watched the dog disappear with wistful eyes. The Bretons have a soft spot in their hearts for animals. The dog itself was the picture of misery. His moans and howls wrung one's heart. I never saw an animal more wily. He tried every conceivable method of slipping his collar. He pulled at the chain, and wriggled from one side to another. Once he contrived to work his ear under the collar, and my fingers itched to help him. Had the truant escaped, I could not have informed the driver. Strange that one's sympathies are always with the weakest! In novels, an escaping convict, no matter how terrible his guilt, always has my sympathy, and I am hostile to the pursuing warder. As we drew near to Pont-Aven the scenery became more and more beautiful. On either side of the road stretched miles and miles of brilliant mustard-yellow gorse, mingled with patches of dried reddish bracken, and bordered by rows of blue-green pines. Here and there one saw great rocks half-covered with the velvet-green of mosses thrown hither and thither in happy disorder. Sometimes ivy takes root in the crevices of the rocks where a little earth has gathered, and creeps closely round about them, as if anxious to convey life and warmth to the cold stone. The sun, like a red ball, was setting behind the hills, leaving the sky flecked with clouds of the palest mauves and pinks, resembling the fine piece of marbling one sometimes sees inside the covers of modern well-bound books. Now and then we passed a little ruined chapel--consecrated, no doubt, to some very ancient saint (it was impossible to make out the name), a saint whose cult was evidently lost, for the little shrine was tumbling to ruins. We saw by the wayside little niches sheltering sacred fountains, the waters of which cure certain diseases; and passed peasants on the roadside, sometimes on horseback, sometimes walking--large, well-proportioned, fine-featured men of proud bearing. In Brittany the poorest peasant is a free and independent man. He salutes you out of politeness and good nature; but he does not cringe as if recognising himself to be lower in the social scale. The Breton, howsoever poor, is no less dignified under his blue blouse than his ancestors were under their steel armour. A long straight road leads from Concarneau to Pont-Aven, and at the end of it lies the pretty village among hills of woods and of rocks bathed in a light mist. One could almost imagine that it was a Swiss village in miniature. By the time we arrived it was night. We could only discern clean white houses on either side, and water rushing under a bridge over which we passed. The Hôtel des Voyageurs looked much the same as ever, except that over the way a large building had been added to the _annexe_. To our great disappointment, we discovered that Mdlle. Julia had gone to Paris; but we recognised several of the _bonnes_ and a hoary veteran called Joseph, who had been in Julia's service for over twenty years. Gladly I rushed out next morning. There is nothing more delightful than to visit a place where one has been happy for years as a child, especially such a place as Pont-Aven, which changes little. My first thought was to see the Bois d'Amour. I found it quite unchanged. To be sure, I had some difficulty in finding the old pathway which led to the wood, so many strange houses and roadways had been built since we were there; but at length we found it--that old steep path with the high walls on either side, on which the blackberries grew in profusion. There are two paths in the forest--one, low down, which leads by the stream, and the other above, carpeted with silver leaves. A wonderful wood it is--a joyous harmony in green and gold. Giant chestnuts fill the air with their perfumed leaves, forming an inextricable lattice-work overhead, one branch entwining with the other, the golden rays of the sun filtering through. The ground is carpeted with silver and salmon leaves left from last autumn; the pines shed thousands of brown cones, and streams of resin flow down their trunks. It is well-named the Bois d'Amour. Below runs a little stream. Now it foams and bounds, beating itself against a series of obstacles; now it flows calmly, as if taking breath, clear, silver, and limpid, past little green islands covered with flowers, and into bays dark with the black mud beneath. Low-growing trees and bushes flourish on the banks, some throwing themselves across the stream as barricades, over which the laughing water bounds and leaps unheedingly, scattering diamonds and topaz in the sunlight. Everything in the Bois d'Amour seems to join in the joyous song of Nature. The little stream sings; the trees murmur and rustle in the wind; and the big black mill-wheel, glistening with crystal drops, makes music with the water. [Illustration: ON THE QUAY AT PONT-AVEN] By the riverside, women are washing their clothes on square slabs of stone, which stretch across the water. It was on these stepping-stones, I remember, that my brother and I lost our shoes and stockings. At one place the stream is hidden from sight by thick bushes, and you find yourself in a narrow green lane, a green alley, walled on either side and roofed overhead by masses of trees and bushes, through which the sun filters occasionally in golden patches. Whenever I walk down that lane, I think of the song that my bonne Marie taught me there one day; it comes back as freshly now as if it had been but yesterday. The refrain begins, 'Et mon coeur vol, vol et vol, et vol, vers les cieux.' One meets the river constantly during this walk, and every mile or so you come across a little black mill. The mills in Pont-Aven are endless, and this saying is an old one: 'Pont-Aven ville de renom, quatorze moulins, quinze maisons.' Picturesque little mills they are. The jet-black wheels form a delightful contrast to the vivid green round about; and small bridges of stones, loosely put together and moss-grown here and there, cross the river at intervals. [Illustration: ON THE STEPS OF THE MILL HOUSE, PONT-AVEN] I love this rough, wild country. How variable it is! You may sit in a wood with the stream at your feet, and all about you will be great hills half-covered with gorse and bracken, and here and there huge blocks of granite, which seem ready to fall any moment. The Bois d'Amour is a happy hunting-ground of artists. This particular view of the mill at which I gazed so long has been a stock-subject with painters for many years. You never pass without seeing at least one or two men with canvases spread and easels erected, vainly trying to reproduce the beautiful scene. Artists are plentiful in this country. Wherever you may wander within a radius of fifteen miles, you cannot stop at some attractive prospect without hearing an impatient cough behind you, and, turning, find yourself obstructing the view of a person in corduroys and flannel shirt, with a large felt hat, working, pipe aglow, at an enormous canvas. The artists, who are mostly English, are thought very little of by the people about. I once heard a commercial traveller talking of Pont-Aven. 'Pshaw!' he said, 'they are all English and Americans there. Everything is done for the English. At the Hôtel des Voyageurs even the cuisine is English. It is unbearable! At the table the men wear clothes of inconceivable colour and cut. They talk without gestures, very quickly and loudly, and they eat enormously. The young _mecs_ are flat-faced, with long chins, white eye-lashes, and fair hair. Many are taciturn, morose, and dreamy. Occasionally they make jokes, but without energy. They mostly eat without interruption.' This is the French view, and it is natural. Pont-Aven does not have the right atmosphere for the Frenchman: the Bretons and the English are supreme. Nothing is more delightful than to spend a summer there. You find yourself in a colony of intelligent men, many of them very clever, as well as pretty young English and American girls, and University students on 'cramming' tours. Picnics and river-parties are organized by the inimitable Mdlle. Julia every day during the summer, and in the evening there is always dancing in the big salon. The hotel is full to overflowing from garret to cellar. Within the last few years Mdlle. Julia has opened another hotel at Porte Manec, by the sea, to which the visitors may transfer themselves whenever they choose, going either by river or by Mdlle. Julia's own omnibus. It is built on the same lines as Mme. Bernhardt's house at Belle Isle, and is situated on a breezy promontory. The river lies between Pont-Aven and Porte Manec, which is at the mouth of the sea. How beautiful this river is--the dear old browny-gray, moleskin-coloured river, edged with great rocks on which the seaweed clings! On the banks are stretches of gray-green grass bordered by holly-bushes. The scenery changes constantly. Sometimes it is rugged and rocky, now sloping up, now down, now covered with green gorse or a sprinkling of bushes, now with a wilderness of trees. Here and there you will see a cleft in the mountain-side, a little leafy dell which one might fancy the abode of fairies. Silver streams trickle musically over the bare brown rocks, and large red toadstools grow in profusion, the silver cobwebs sparkling with dew in the gorse. It is delightful in the marvellous autumn weather to take the narrow river-path winding in and out of the very twisty Aven, and wander onwards to your heart's content, with the steep hillside at the back of you and the river running at your feet. You feel as if you could walk on for ever over this mountainous ground, where the heather grows in great purple bunches among huge granite rocks, which, they say, were placed there by the Druids. Down below flows the river--a mere silver ribbon now, in wastes of pinky-purple mud, for it is ebb tide; and now and then you see the battered hulk of a boat lying on its side in the mud. On the hill are lines of fir-trees standing black and straight against the horizon. Night falls in a bluish haze on the hills and on the river, confusing the outline of things. At the foot of the mountains it is almost dark. Through the open windows and doors of the cottages as one passes one can see groups round the tables under the yellow light of candles. One smells the good soup which is cooking; the noise of spoons and plates mingles with the voices of the people. Pewter and brass gleam from the walls. It is a picture worthy of Rembrandt. The end of the room is hidden in smoky shadow, now and then lit up by a flame escaping from the fireplace, showing an old woman knitting in the ingle-nook, and an old white-haired peasant drinking cider out of a blue mug. It is strange to think of these people living in their humble homes year after year--a happy little people who have no history. [Illustration: THE BRIDGE, PONT-AVEN] Not far from Pont-Aven is the ruined château of Rustephan. One approaches it through a wood of silver birches, under great old trees; cherry-trees and apple-trees remain in what must once have been a flourishing orchard. The castle itself has fallen to decay. The wall which joined the two towers has broken down, and the steps of the grand spiral staircase, up which we used to climb, have crumbled; only the main column, built of granite sparkling with silver particles, which will not fall for many a day, stands stout and sturdy. One of the stately old doorways remains; but it is only that which leads to the castle keep--the main entrance must have fallen with the walls centuries ago. Bits of the old dining-hall are still to be seen--a huge fireplace, arch-shaped, and a little shrine-like stone erection in the wall, worn smooth in parts; one can imagine that it was once a sink for washing dishes in. It is a drowsy morning; the sun shines hotly on the back of the neck; and as one sits on a mound of earth in the middle of what was once the dining-hall, one cannot resist dreaming of the romantic history of Geneviève de Rustephan, the beautiful lady who lived here long ago. Up in one of the great rounded towers spotted with orange lichen and encircled with ivy is a room which must have been her bedchamber. An ancient chimney-stack rears itself tall and stately, and where once gray smoke curled and wreathed, proceeding from the well-regulated kitchen, long feathery grasses grow. All round the castle, in what must have been the pleasure-gardens, the smooth lawns and the bowling-green, my lady's rose-garden, etc., are now mounds of earth, covered with straggling grass, bracken, and blackberry-bushes, and loose typical Breton stone walls enclosing fields. Horrible to relate, in the lordly dining-hall, where once the dainty Geneviève sat, is a fat pig, nozzling in the earth. Naturally, Rustephan is haunted. If anyone were brave enough to penetrate the large hall towards midnight (so the peasants say), a terrible spectacle would be met--a bier covered with a white cloth carried by priests bearing lighted tapers. On clear moonlight nights, say the ancients, on the crumbling old terrace, a beautiful girl is to be seen, pale-faced, and dressed in green satin flowered with gold, singing sad songs, sobbing and crying. On one occasion the peasants were dancing on the green turf in front of the towers, and in the middle of the most animated part of the feast there appeared behind the crossbars of a window an old priest with shaven head and eyes as brilliant as diamonds. Terrified, the men and the girls fled, and never again danced in these haunted regions. [Illustration: THE VILLAGE FORGE, PONT-AVEN] One feels miserable on leaving Pont-Aven. It seems as if you had been in a quiet and beautiful backwater for a time, and were suddenly going out into the glare and the noise and the flaunting airs of a fashionable regatta. I can describe the sensation in no other way. There is something in the air of Pont-Aven that makes it like no other place in the world. [Illustration: THE VILLAGE COBBLER] CHAPTER XIII QUIMPERLÉ Quimperlé is known as the Arcadia of Basse Bretagne, and certainly the name is well deserved. I have never seen a town so full of trees and trailing plants and gardens. Every wall is green with moss and gay with masses of convolvulus and nasturtium. Flowers grow rampant in Quimperlé, and overrun their boundaries. Every window-sill has its row of pink ivy-leafed geraniums, climbing down and over the gray stone wall beneath; every wall has its wreaths of trailing flowers. There are flights of steps everywhere--favourite caprices of the primitive architects--divided in the middle by iron railings. Up these steps all the housewives must go to reach the market. On either side the houses crowd, one above the other, with their steep garden walls, sometimes intercepted by iron gateways, and sometimes covered by blood-red leaves and yellowing vines. Some are houses of the Middle Ages, and some of the Renaissance period, with sculptured porches and panes of bottle-glass; a few have terraces at the end of the gardens, over which clematis climbs. Here and there the sun lights up a corner of a façade, or shines on the emerald leaves, making them scintillate. Down the steps a girl in white-winged cap and snowy apron, with pink ribbon at her neck, carrying a large black two-handled basket, is coming on her way from market. Having scaled this long flight of steps, you find yourself face to face with the old Gothic church of St. Michael, a grayish-pink building with one great square tower and four turrets. The porch is sculptured in a rich profusion of graceful details. Here and there yellow moss grows, and there are clusters of fern in the niches. Inside, the church was suffused with a purple light shed by the sun through the stained-glass windows; the ceiling was of infinite blue. Everything was transformed by the strange purple light. The beautiful carving round the walls, the host of straight-backed praying-chairs, and even the green curtain of the confessional boxes, were changed to royal purple. Only the altar, with its snowy-white cloths and red and gold ornaments, retained its colour. Jutting forth from the church of St. Michael are arms or branches connecting it with the village, as if it were some mother bird protecting the young ones beneath her wings. Under these wings the houses of the village cluster. It is five o'clock in the afternoon, the sociable hour, when people sit outside their cottage doors, knitting, gossiping, watching the children play, and eating the evening meal. Most of the children, who are many, are very nearly of the same age. Clusters of fair curly heads are seen in the road. The youngest, the baby, is generally held by some old woman, probably the grandmother, who has a shrivelled yellow face--a very tender guardian. Over the doorways of the shops hang branches of withered mistletoe. Through the long low windows, which have broad sills, you catch a glimpse of rows and rows of bottles. These are wine-shops--no rarities in a Breton village. Another shop evidently belonged to the church at one time. It still possesses a rounded ecclesiastical doorway, built of solid blocks of stone, and the walls, which were white originally, are stained green with age. The windows, as high as your waist from the ground, have broad stone sills, on which are arranged carrots and onions, coloured sweets in bottles, and packets of tobacco. This shop evidently supplies everything that a human being can desire. Above it you read: 'Café on sert a boire et a manger.' While we were in Quimperlé there were two musicians making a round of the town. One, with a swarthy face, was blind, and sang a weird song in a minor key, beating a triangle. The other, who looked an Italian, was raggedly dressed in an old fur coat and a faded felt hat. His musical performance was a veritable gymnastic feat. In his hands he held a large concertina, which he played most cleverly; at his back was a drum with automatic sticks and clappers, which he worked with his feet. It was the kind of music one hears at fairs. Wherever we went we heard it, sometimes so near that we could catch the tune, sometimes at a distance, when only the dull boom of the drum was distinguishable. Whenever I think of Quimperlé this strange music and the spectacle of those two picturesque figures come back to memory. The men are well known in Brittany. They spend their lives travelling from place to place, earning a hard livelihood. When I was at school in Quimper I used to hear the same tune played by the same men outside the convent walls. [Illustration: THE BLIND PIPER] Quimperlé is a sleepy place, changing very little with the years. In spite of the up-to-date railway-station, moss still grows between the pavings of the streets. The houses have still their picturesque wooden gables; the gardens are laden with fruit-trees; the hills are rich in colour. Flowers that love the damp grow luxuriantly. It is an arcadian country. The place is hostile to work. In this tranquil town, almost voluptuous in its richness of colour and balminess of atmosphere, you lose yourself in laziness. There is not a discordant note, nothing to shock the eye or grate on the senses. Far from the noise of Paris, the stuffy air of the boulevards, the never-ending rattle of the fiacres, and the rasping cries of the camelot, you forget the seething world outside. In the Rue du Château, the aristocratic quarter, are many spacious domains with doorways surmounted by coats of arms and coronets. Most of them have closed shutters, their masters having disappeared, alienated for ever by the Revolution; but a few great families have returned to their homes. One sees many women about the church, grave and sad and prayerful, who still wear black, clinging to God, the saints, and the priests, as to the only living souvenirs of better times. In no other place in Finistère was the Revolution so sudden and so terrible as in this little town, and nowhere were the nobility so many and powerful. This old Rue du Château must have rung with furious cries on the day when the federators returned from the fête of the Champs de Mars after the abolition of all titles and the people took the law into their own hands. The Bretons are slow to anger; but when roused they are extremely violent. They not only attacked the living--the nobles in their seignorial hotels--but also they went to the tombs and mutilated the dead with sabre cuts. In Quimperlé the painter finds pictures at every turn. For example, there are clear sinuous streams crossed by many bridges, not unlike by-canals in Venice. As you look up the river the bank is a jumble of sloping roofs, protruding balconies, single-arched bridges, trees, and clumps of greenery. The houses on either side, gray and turreted, bathe their foundations in the stream. Some have steep garden walls, velvety with green and yellow moss and lichen; others have terraces and jutting stone balconies, almost smothered by trailing vines and clematis, drooping over the gray water. The stream is very shallow, showing clearly the brown and golden bed; and on low stone benches at the edge girls in little close white caps and blue aprons are busily washing with bare round arms. A pretty little maid with jet-black hair is cleaning some pink stuff on a great slab of stone, against a background of gray wall over which convolvulus and nasturtium are trailing; a string of white linen is suspended above her head. This is a delightful picture. It is a gray day, sunless; but the gray is luminous, and the reflections in the water are clear. [Illustration: AT THE FOIRE] CHAPTER XIV AURAY When we arrived in Auray it was market-day, and chatter filled the streets. There were avenues of women ranged along the pavement, their round wicker baskets full of lettuce, cabbages, carrots, turnips, chestnuts, pears, and what not--women in white flimsy caps, coloured cross-over shawls, and sombre black dresses. Their aprons were of many colours--reds, mauves, blues, maroons, and greens--and the wares also were of various hues. All the women knit between the intervals of selling, and even during the discussion of a bargain, for a purchase in Brittany is no small matter in the opinion of housewives, and engenders a great deal of conversation. All the feminine world of Auray seemed to have sallied forth that morning. Processions of them passed down the avenue of market women, most of them peasants in the cap of Auray, with snuff-coloured, large-bibbed aprons, carrying bulky black baskets with double handles. Now and then one saw a Frenchwoman walking through the avenue of vegetables, just as good at bargaining, just as keen-eyed and sharp-tongued, as her humbler sisters. Sometimes she was pretty, walking with an easy swinging gait, her baby on one arm, her basket on the other, in a short trim skirt and altogether neatly dressed. More often she was dressed in unbecoming colours, her hair untidily arranged, her skirt trailing in the mud--a striking contrast to the well-to-do young Breton matron, with neatly braided black hair and clean rosy face, her white-winged lawn cap floating in the breeze, her red shawl neatly crossed over her lace-trimmed corsage. In her black velvet-braided skirt and wooden sabots the Breton is a dainty little figure, her only lapse into frivolity consisting of a gold chain at her neck and gold earrings. Vegetables do not engender much conversation in a Breton market: they are served out and paid for very calmly. It is over the skeins of coloured wool, silks, and laces, that there is much bargaining. Round these stalls you will see girls and old hags face to face, and almost nose to nose, their arms crossed, speaking rapidly in shrill voices. [Illustration: MID-DAY] Just after walking past rows of very ordinary houses, suddenly you will come across a really fine old mansion, dating from the seventeenth century, white-faced, with ancient black beams, gables, and diamond panes. Then, just as you think that you have exhausted the resources of the town, and turn down a moss-grown alley homewards, you find yourself face to face with another town, typically Breton, white-faced and gray-roofed, clustering round a church and surrounded by old moss-grown walls. This little town is situated far down in a valley, into which you descend by a sloping green path. We sat on a stone bench above, and watched the people as they passed before us. There were bare-legged school-children in their black pinafores and red berés, hurrying home to _déjeuner_, swinging their satchels; and beggars, ragged and dirty, holding towards us tin cups and greasy caps, with many groans and whines. One man held a baby on his arm, and in the other hand a loaf of bread. The baby's face was dirty and covered with sores; but its hair was golden and curly, and the sight of that fair sweet head nodding over the father's shoulder as they went down the hill made one's heart ache. It was terrible to think that an innocent child could be so put out of touch with decent humanity. To reach this little town one had to cross a sluggish river by a pretty gray stone bridge. Some of the houses were quaint and picturesque, mostly with two stories, one projecting over the other, and low windows with broad sills, bricked down to the ground, on which were arranged pots of fuchsias, pink and white geraniums, and red-brown begonias. Nearly every house had its broad stone stoop, or settle, on which the various families sat in the warm afternoon drinking bowls of soup and eating _tartines de beurre_. It is a notably provincial little town, full of flowers and green trees, and dark, narrow streets, across which hang audaciously strings of drying linen. All the children of the community appeared to be out and about--some skipping, others playing at peg-tops, and others merely sucking their fingers and their pinafores in the way that children have. One sweet child in a red pinafore, her hair plaited into four little tails tied with red ribbon, clasped a slice of bread-and-butter (butter side inwards, of course) to her chest, and was carelessly peeling an apple with a long knife at the same time, in such a way as to make my heart leap. A happy wedding-party were swinging gaily along the quay arm in arm, singing some rollicking Breton chanson, and all rather affected by their visits to the various _débits de boissons_. There were two men and two women--the men fair and bearded, wearing peaked caps; the women in their best lace coifs and smartest aprons. As they passed everyone turned and pointed and laughed. It was probably a three days' wedding. A mite of a girl walking gingerly along the street carried a bottle of ink ever so carefully, biting her lips in her anxiety to hold it steadily. Round her neck, on a sky-blue ribbon, hung a gorgeous silver cross, testifying to good behaviour during the week. Alack! a tragedy was in store. The steps leading to the doorway of her home were steep, and the small person's legs were short and fat. She tripped and fell, and the ink was spilled--a large, indelible, angry black spot on the clean white step. Fearfully and pale-faced, the little maid looked anxiously about her, and strove to put the ink back again by means of a dry stick, staining fingers and pinafore the more. It was of no avail. Her mother had seen her. Out she rushed, a pleasant-faced woman in a white lace cap, now wearing a ferocious expression. 'Monster that thou art!' she cried, lifting the tearful, ink-bespattered child by the armpits, and throwing her roughly indoors, whence piteous sounds of sobbing and wailing ensued. The child's heart was broken; the silver cross had lost its charm; and the sun had left the heavens. The mother, busily bending over her sewing-machine, looked up at us through the window, and smiled understandingly. [Illustration: A LITTLE MOTHER] CHAPTER XV BELLE ISLE As a rule, a country becomes more interesting as one draws near to the sea; the colouring is more beautiful and the people are more picturesque. It is strange that the salt air should have such a mellowing effect upon a town and its inhabitants; but there is no doubt that it has. This seemed especially remarkable to us, coming straight from Carnac, that flat, gray, treeless country where the people are sad and stolid, and one's only interest is in the dolmens and menhirs scattered over the landscape--strange blocks of stone about which one knows little, but imagines much. When you come from a country such as this, you cannot but be struck by the warmth and wealth of colouring which the sea imparts to everything in its vicinity. Even the men and women grouped in knots on the pier were more picturesque, with their sun-bleached, tawny, red-gold hair, and their blue eyes, than the people of Carnac. The men were handsome fellows--some in brown and orange clothing, toned and stained by the sea; others in deep-blue much bepatched coats and yellow oilskin trousers. Their complexions had a healthy reddish tinge--a warmth of hue such as one rarely sees in Brittany. The colouring of the Bay of Quiberon on this particular afternoon was a tender pale mother-of-pearl. The sky was for the most part a broad, fair expanse of gray, with, just where the sun was setting, intervals of eggshell blue and palest lemon-yellows breaking through the drab; the sands were silvery; the low-lying ground was a dim gold; the water was gray, with purple and lemon-yellow reflections. The whole scene was broad and fair. The people on the pier and the boats on the water formed notes of luscious colour. The fishing-boats at anchor were of a brilliant green, with vermilion and orange sails and nets a gauzy blue. Ahead, on the brown rocks, although it was the calmest and best of weather, white waves were breaking and sending foam and spray high into the air. There was everywhere a fresh smell of salt. [Illustration: CURIOSITY] We were anxious to go across to Belle Isle that night, and took tickets for a small, evil-smelling boat, the cargo of which was mostly soldiers. It was rather a rough crossing, and we lay in the stuffy cabin longing to go on deck to see the sunset, which, by glimpses through the portholes, we could tell to be painting sea and sky in tones of flame. At last the spirit conquered the flesh, and, worried with the constant opening and shutting of doors by the noisy steward, we went on deck. A fine sight awaited us. From pearly grays and tender tones we had emerged into the fiery glories of a sunset sky. Behind us lay the dark gray-blue sea and the darker sky, flecked by pale pink clouds. Before us, the sun was shooting forth broad streaks of orange and vermilion on a ground of Venetian blue. Towards the horizon the colouring paled to tender pinks and lemon-yellows. As the little steamer ploughed on, Belle Isle rose into sight, a dark purple streak with tracts of lemon-gold and rosy clouds. The nearer we drew the lower sank the sun, until at last it set redly behind the island, picking out every point and promontory and every pine standing stiff against the sky. Each moment the island loomed larger and darker, orange light shining out here and there in the mass. We were astonished by its size, for I had always imagined Belle Isle as being a miniature place belonging entirely to Mme. Bernhardt. The entrance to the bay was narrow, and lay between two piers, with lights on either end; and it was a strange sensation leaving the grays and blues and purples, the silvery moonlight, and the tall-masted boats behind us, and emerging into this warmth and wealth of colouring. A wonderful orange and red light shone behind the dark mass of the island, turning the water of the bay to molten gold and glorifying the red-sailed fishing-boats at anchor. As we drew near the shore, piercing shrieks came from the funnel. There appeared to be some difficulty about landing. Many directions were shouted by the captain and repeated by a shrill-voiced boy before we were allowed to step on shore over a precarious plank. Once landed, we were met by a brown-faced, sturdy woman, who picked up our trunks and shouldered them as if they were feather-weights for a distance of half a mile or so. She led the way to the hotel. Next morning was dismal; but, as we had only twenty-four hours to spend in Belle Isle, we hired a carriage to take us to the home of Mme. Bernhardt, and faced the weather. The sky was gray; the country flat and bare, though interesting in a melancholy fashion. The scenery consisted of mounds of brown overturned earth laid in regular rows in the fields, scrubby ground half-overgrown by gorse, clusters of dark pines, and a dreary windmill here and there. Now and then, by way of incident, we passed a group of white houses, surrounded by sad-coloured haystacks, and a few darkly-clad figures hurrying over the fields with umbrellas up, on their way to church. The Breton peasants are so pious that, no matter how far away from a town or village they may live, they attend Mass at least once on Sunday. A small procession passed us on the road--young men in their best black broadcloth suits, and girls in bright shawls and velvet-bound petticoats. This was a christening procession--at least, we imagined it to be so; for one of the girls carried a long white bundle under an umbrella. Bretons are christened within twenty-four hours of birth. The home of Mme. Bernhardt is a square fortress-like building, shut up during the autumn, with a beautifully-designed terrace garden. It is situated on a breezy promontory, and the great actress is in sole possession of a little bay wherein the sea flows smoothly and greenly on the yellow sands, and the massive purple rocks loom threateningly on either side with many a craggy peak. Her dogs, large Danish boarhounds, rushed out, barking furiously, at our approach; her sheep and some small ponies were grazing on the scanty grass. Our driver was taciturn. He seemed to be tuned into accord with the desolate day, and would vouchsafe no more than a grudging 'Oui' or 'Non' to our many questions, refusing point-blank to tell us to what places he intended driving us. At length he stopped the carriage on a cliff almost at the edge of a precipice. Thoughts that he was perhaps insane ran through my mind, and I stepped out hurriedly; but his intention was only to show us some cavern below. Mother preferred to remain above-ground; but, led by the driver, I went down some steps cut in the solid rock, rather slippery and steep, with on one side a sheer wall of rock, and the ocean on the other. The rock was dark green and flaky, with here and there veins of glistening pink and white mica. Lower and lower we descended, until it seemed as if we were stepping straight into the sea, which foamed against the great rocks, barring the entrance to the cavern. [Illustration: A SOLITARY MEAL] The cavern itself was like a colossal railway-arch towering hundreds of feet overhead; and against this and the rocks at the entrance the sea beat with much noise and splash, falling again with a groan in a mass of spray. Inside the cavern the tumult was deafening; but never have I seen anything more beautiful than those waves creaming and foaming over the green rocks, the blood-red walls of the cave rising sheer above, flecked with glistening mica. It was a contrast with the tame, flat, sad scenery over which we had been driving all the morning. This was Nature at her biggest and best, belittling everything one had ever seen or was likely to see, making one feel small and insignificant. By-and-by we drove to a village away down in a hollow, a typical Breton fishing-village with yellow and white-faced _auberges_, and rows of boats moored to the quay, their nets and sails hauled down on this great day of the week, the Sabbath. As there was no hotel in the place, we entered a clean-looking _auberge_ and asked for luncheon. The kitchen led out of the little _salle à manger_, and, as the door was left wide open, we could watch the preparation of our food. We were to have a very good soup; we saw the master of the house bringing in freshly-caught fish, which were grilled at the open fireplace, and fresh sardines; and we heard our chicken frizzling on the spit. We saw the coffee-beans being roasted, and we were given the most exquisite pears and apples. Small matter that our room was shared by noisy soldiers, and that Adolphus (as we had named our driver) entered and drank before our very eyes more cognac than was good for him or reasonable on our bill. Sunday afternoon in Belle Isle is a fashionable time. Between three and four people go down to the quay, clattering over the cobble stones in their best black sabots, to watch the steamers come in from Quiberon. You see girls in fresh white caps and neat black dresses, spruce soldiers, ladies _à la mode_ in extravagant headgear and loud plaid or check dresses. On the quay they buy hot chestnuts. From our hotel we could watch the people as they passed, and the shopkeepers sitting and gossiping outside their doors. Opposite us was a souvenir shop, on the steps of which sat the proprietor with his boy. Very proud he was of the child--quite an ordinary spoiled child, much dressed up. The father followed the boy with his eyes wherever he went. He pretended to scold him for not getting out of the way when people passed, to attract their attention to the child. He greeted every remark with peals of laughter, and repeated the witticisms to his friend the butcher next door, who did not seem to appreciate them. Every now and then he would glance over to see if the butcher were amused. French people, especially Bretons, are devoted to their children. I was much amused in watching the little _bonne_ at the hotel who carried our luggage the night before. She was quaint, compact, sturdy. She would carry a huge valise on her shoulder, or sometimes one in either hand. She ordered her husband about. She dressed her child in a shining black hat, cleaned its face with her pocket-handkerchief, straightened its pinafore, and sent it _en promenade_ with papa, while she herself stumped off to carry more luggage. There was apparently no end to her strength. On her way indoors she paused on the step and cast a loving glance over her shoulder at the back view of her husband in his neatly-patched blue blouse and the little child in the black _sarrau_ walking sedately down the road. She seemed so proud of the pair that we could not resist asking the woman if the child were hers, just to see the glad smile which lit up her face as she answered, 'Oui, mesdames!' I have often noticed how lenient Breton women are to their children. They will speak in a big voice and frown, and a child imagines that Mother is in a towering rage; but you will see her turn round the next moment and smile at the bystander. If children only knew their power, how little influence parents would have over them! The French differ from the British in the matter of emotion. On the steamer from Belle Isle to Quiberon there were some soldiers, about to travel with us, who were being seen off by four or five others standing on the quay. Slouching, unmilitary figures they looked, with baggy red trousers tied up at the bottoms, faded blue coats, and postmen-shaped hats, yellow, red, or blue pom-pom on top. One of the men on shore was a special friend of a soldier who was leaving. I was on tenter-hooks lest he should embrace him; he almost did so. He squeezed his hand; he picked fluff off his clothes; he straightened his hat. He repeatedly begged that his 'cher ami' would come over on the following Sunday to Belle Isle. Tears were very near his eyes; he was forced to bite his handkerchief to keep them back. When the boat moved away, and they could join hands no longer, the soldiers blew kisses over the water to one another. They opened their arms wide, shouted affectionate messages, and called one another by endearing terms. Altogether, they carried on as if they were neurotic girls rather than soldiers who had their way to make and their country to think of. [Illustration: IN THE BOIS D'AMOUR] There was one man superior to his fellows. He held the same rank, and wore the same uniform; but he kept his buttons and his brass belt bright; he wore silk socks, and carried a gold watch under his military coat; his face was intelligent. CHAPTER XVI ST. ANNE D'AURAY Not far from the little town of Auray is the magnificent cathedral of St. Anne D'Auray, to which so many thousands from all over Brittany come annually to worship at the shrine of St. Anne. From all parts of the country they arrive--some on foot, others on horseback, or in strange country carts: marquises in their carriages; peasants plodding many a weary mile in their wooden sabots. Even old men and women will walk all through the day and night in order to be in time for the pardon of St. Anne. The Breton people firmly believe that their household cannot prosper, that their cattle and their crops cannot thrive, that their ships are not safe at sea, unless they have been at least once a year to burn candles at the shrine. The wealthy bourgeois's daughter, in her new dress, smart apron, and Paris shoes, kneels side by side with a ragged beggar; the peasant farmer, with long gray hair, white jacket, breeches and leather belt, mingles his supplications with those of a nobleman's son. All are equal here; all have come in the same humble, repentant spirit; for the time being class distinctions are swept away. Noble and peasant crave their special boons; each confesses his sins of the past year; all stand bareheaded in the sunshine, humble petitioners to St. Anne. At the time of the pardon, July 25, the ordinarily quiet town is filled to overflowing. There is a magnificent procession, all green and gold and crimson, headed by the Bishop of Vannes. A medley of people come from all parts to pray in the cathedral, and to bathe in the miraculous well, the water of which will cure any ailment. It is said that in the seventh century St. Anne appeared to one Nicolazic, a farmer, and commanded him to dig in a field near by for her image. This having been found, she bade him erect a chapel on the spot to her memory. Several chapels were afterwards built, each in its turn grander and more important, until at last the magnificent church now standing was erected. On the open place in front is a circle of small covered-in stalls, where chaplets, statuettes, tall wax candles, rings, and sacred ornaments of all kinds, are sold. [Illustration: A BRETON FARMER] Directly you appear within that circle, long doleful cries are set up from every vendor, announcing the various wares that he or she has for sale. You are offered rosaries for sixpence, and for four sous extra you can have them blessed. A statue of the Virgin can be procured for fourpence; likewise the image of St. Anne. Wherever you may go in the circle, you are pestered by these noisy traders. There is something incongruous in such sacred things being hawked about the streets, and their various merits shrieked at you as you pass. We went to a shop near by, where we could look at the objects quietly and at leisure. The church, built of light-gray stone, is full of the richest treasures you can imagine--gold, jewels, precious marbles, and priceless pictures. One feels almost surfeited by so much magnificence. Every square inch of the walls is covered with slabs of costly marble, on which are inscribed, in letters of gold, thanks to St. Anne for benefits bestowed and petitions for blessings. Although one cannot but be touched by the worship of St. Anne and the simple belief of the people in her power to cure all, to accomplish all, one is a little upset by these costly offerings. Nevertheless, it is a marvellous faith, this Roman Catholic religion: the more you travel in a country like Brittany, the more you realize it. There must be a great power in a religion that draws people hundreds of miles on foot, and enables them, after hours of weary tramping, to spend a day praying on the hard stones before the statue of a saint. CHAPTER XVII ST. MALO When you are nearing the coast of France all you can see is a long narrow line, without relief, apparently without design, without character, just a sombre strip of horizon; but St. Malo is always visible. A fine needle-point breaks the uninteresting line: it is the belfry of St. Malo. To left and right of the town is a cluster of islands, dark masses of rock over which the waves foam whitely. St. Malo is magnificently fortified. It is literally crowned with military defences. It is a mass of formidable fortresses, rigid angles, and severe gray walls. It speaks of the seventeenth century, telling of a time when deeds of prowess were familiar. The sea, which is flowing, beats furiously against the walls of defence, protected by the trunks of great trees planted in the sand. These gigantic battalions stop the inrush of the water, and would make landing more arduous to an enemy. They have a bizarre effect when seen from the distance. The town defied all the efforts of the English to capture her. On one occasion they laid mines as far as the Porte of St. Malo; but the Virgin, enshrined above the gate, and ever watching over the people, disclosed the plot by unfolding her arms and pointing with one hand to the ground beneath her. The Bretons dug where she pointed, and discovered their imminent peril. Thus was the city saved. To-day the shrine receives the highest honours, and is adorned with the finest and sweetest flowers. For one reason at least St. Malo is unique. It is a town of some thousand inhabitants; yet it is still surrounded by mediæval walls. Of all the towns in Brittany, St. Malo is the only one which still remains narrowly enclosed within walls. It is surrounded by the sea except for a narrow neck of land joining the city to the mainland. This is guarded at low tide by a large and fierce bulldog, the image of which has been added to St. Malo's coat of arms. Enclosed within a narrow circle of walls, and being unable to expand, the town is peculiar. The houses are higher than usual, and the streets narrower. There is no waste ground in St. Malo. Every available inch is built upon. The sombre streets run uphill and downhill. There is no town like St. Malo. Its quaint, tortuous streets, of corkscrew form, culminate in the cathedral, which, as you draw near, does not seem to be a cathedral at all, but a strong fort. So narrow are the streets, and so closely are they gathered round the cathedral, that it is only when you draw away to some distance that you can see the beautifully-sculptured stone tower of many points. [Illustration: IN THE EYE OF THE SUN] Up and down the steep street the people clatter in their thick-soled sabots. It is afternoon, and most of the townspeople have turned out for a walk, to gaze in the shop windows with their little ones. The people are rather French; and the children, instead of being clad in the Breton costume, wear smart kilted skirts, white socks, and shiny black sailor hats. Still, there is a subtle difference between these people and the French. You notice this directly you arrive. There is something solid, something pleasant and unartificial, about them. The women of the middle classes are much better-looking, and they dress better; the men are of stronger physique, with straight, clean-cut features and a powerful look. Very attractive are these narrow hilly streets, with their throngs of people and their gay little shops where the wares are always hung outside--worsted shawls, scarlet and blue berés, Breton china (decorated by stubby figures of men and women and heraldic devices), chaplets, shrines to the Virgin Mary, many-coloured cards, religious and otherwise. [Illustration: SUNDAY] There are a few houses which perpetuate the past. You are shown the house of Queen Anne, the good Duchess Anne, a house with Gothic windows, flanked by a tower, blackened and strangely buffeted by the blows of time. Queen Anne was a marvellous woman, and has left her mark. Her memory is kept green by the lasting good that she achieved. From town to town she travelled during the whole of her reign, for she felt that to rule well and wisely she must be ever in close touch with her people. No woman was more beloved by the populace. Everywhere she went she was fêted and adored. She ruled her province with a rod of iron; yet she showed herself to be in many ways wonderfully feminine. Nothing could have been finer than the act of uniting Brittany with France by giving up her crown to France and remaining only the Duchess Anne. In almost every town in Brittany there is a Queen Anne House, a house which the good Queen either built herself or stayed in. Everywhere she went she constructed something--a church, a chapel, an oratory, a _calvaire_, a house, a tomb--by which she was to be remembered. There is, for example, the famous tower which she built, in spite of all malcontents, not so much in order to add to the defences of St. Malo as to rebuke the people for their turbulence and rebellion. Her words concerning it ring through the ages, and will never be forgotten: 'Quic en groigneir Ainsy ser C'est mon playsir.' Ever since the tower has gone by the name of 'Quiquengroigne.' There are three names, three figures, of which St. Malo is proud; the birthplaces are pointed out to the stranger fondly. One is that of the Duchess Anne; another that of Duguay-Trouin; last, but not least, we have Chateaubriand. Of the three, perhaps the picturesque figure of Duguay-Trouin charms one most. From my earliest days I have loved stories of the gallant sailor, whose adventures and mishaps are as fascinating as those of Sinbad. I have always pictured him as a heroic figure on the bridge of a vessel, wearing a powdered wig, a lace scarf, and the dress of the period, winning victory after victory, and shattering fleets. It is disappointing to realize that this hero lived in the Rue Jean de Chatillon, in a three-storied, time-worn house with projecting windows, lozenge-paned. Of Chateaubriand I know little; but his birthplace is in St. Malo, for all who come to see. What a revelation it is, after winding up the narrow, steep streets of St. Malo, suddenly to behold, framed in an archway of the old mediæval walls, the sea! There is a greeny-blue haze so vast that it is difficult to trace where the sea ends and the sky begins. The beach is of a pale yellow-brown where the waves have left it, and pink as it meets the water. At a little distance is an island of russet-brown rocks, half-covered with seaweed; at the base is a circle of tawny sand, and at the summit yellow-green grass is growing. [Illustration: THE CRADLE] CHAPTER XVIII MONT ST. MICHEL The road to Mont St. Michel is colourless and dreary. On either side are flat gray marshes, with little patches of scrubby grass. Here and there a few sheep are grazing. How the poor beasts can find anything to eat at all on such barren land is a marvel. Gradually the scenery becomes drearier, until at last you are driving on a narrow causeway, with a river on one side and a wilderness of treacherous sand on the other. Suddenly, on turning a corner, you come within view of Mont St. Michel. No matter how well prepared you may be for the apparition, no matter what descriptions you may have read or heard beforehand, when you see that three-cornered mass of stone rising from out the vast wilderness of sand, you cannot but be astonished and overwhelmed. You are tempted to attribute this bizarre achievement to the hand of the magician. It is uncanny. Just now it is low tide, and the Mount lies in the midst of an immense moving plain, on which three rivers twist, like narrow threads intersecting it--Le Conesnon, La Sée, and La Seline. Several dark islands lie here and there uncovered, and groups of small boats are left high and dry. It is fascinating to watch the sea coming up, appearing like a circle on the horizon, and slipping gently over the sands, the circle ever narrowing, until the islands are covered once more, the boats float at anchor, and the waves precipitate themselves with a loud booming sound, heard for miles round, against the double walls that protect the sacred Mount. Many are the praises that have been sung of Mont St. Michel by poets and artists, by historians and architects. She has been called 'A poem in stone,' 'Le palais des angles,' 'An inspiration of the Divine,' 'La cité des livres,' 'Le boulevard de la France,' 'The sacred mount,' etc. Normandy and Brittany dispute her. She is in the possession of either, as you will. [Illustration: SOUPE MAIGRE] Mont St. Michel is not unlike Gibraltar. As you come suddenly upon the place, rising from out the misty grayish-yellow, low-lying marshes, it appears to be a dark three-cornered mass, surrounded by stout brownish battlemented walls, flanked by rounded turrets, against a background of blue sky. At the base of the Mount lies the city, the houses built steeply one above the other, some with brownish lichen-covered roofs, others of modern slate. Above the city is the monastery--brown walls, angry and formidable, rising steeply, with many windows and huge buttresses. Beyond, on the topmost point, is the grand basilica consecrated to the archangel, the greenish light of whose windows you can see clearly. Above all rises a tall gray spire culminating in a golden figure. There is only one entrance to Mont St. Michel--over a footbridge and beneath a solid stone archway, from which the figure of the Virgin in a niche looks down. You find yourself in a narrow, steep street, black and dark with age, and crowded with shops and bazaars and cafés. The town appears to be given up to the amusement and entertainment of visitors; and, as St. Michael is the guardian saint of all strangers and pilgrims, I suppose this is appropriate. Tourists fill the streets and overflow the hotels and cafés; the town seems to live, thrive, and have its being entirely for the tourists. Outside every house hangs a sign advertising coffee or china or curios, as the case may be, and so narrow is the street that the signs on either side meet. Your first thought on arriving is about getting something to eat. The journey from St. Malo is long, and, although the sun is shining and the sky is azure blue, the air is biting. Of course, everyone who comes to the Mount has heard of Mme. Poulard. She is as distinctly an institution as the very walls and fortresses. All know of her famous coffee and delicious omelettes; all have heard of her charm. It is quite an open question whether the people flock there in hundreds on a Sunday morning for the sake of Mme. Poulard's luncheon or for the attractions of Mont St. Michel itself. There she stands in the doorway of her hotel, smiling, gracious, affable, handsome. No one has ever seen Mme. Poulard ruffled or put out. However many unexpected visitors may arrive, she greets them all with a smile and words of welcome. We were amid a very large stream of guests; yet she showed us into her great roomy kitchen, and seated us before the huge fireplace, where a brace of chickens, steaming on a spit, were being continually basted with butter by stout, gray-haired M. Poulard. She found time to inquire about our journey and our programme for the day, and directed us to the various show-places of the Mount. There is only one street of any importance in Mont St. Michel, dark and dim, very narrow, no wider than a yard and a half; a drain runs down the middle. Here you find yourself in an absolute wilderness of Poulard. You are puzzled by the variety and the relations of the Poulards. Poulard greets you everywhere, written in large black letters on a white ground. If you mount some steps and turn a corner suddenly, Poulard _frère_ greets you; if you go for a harmless walk on the ramparts, the renowned coffee of Poulard _veuve_ hits you in the face. Each one strives to be the right and only Poulard. You struggle to detach yourselves from these Poulards. You go through a fine mediæval archway, past shops where valueless, foolish curios are for sale; you scramble up picturesque steps, only to be told once more in glaring letters that POULARD spells Poulard. A very picturesque street is the main thoroughfare of Mont St. Michel, mounting higher and higher, with tall gray-stone and wooden houses on either side, the roofs of which often meet overhead. Each window has its pots of geraniums and its show of curios and useless baubles. Fish-baskets hang on either side of the doors. Some of the houses have terrace gardens, small bits of level places cut into the rock, where roses grow and trailing clematis. Ivy mainly runs riot over every stone and rock and available wall. The houses are built into the solid rock one above another, and many of them retain their air of the fourteenth or the fifteenth century. You pass a church of Jeanne d'Arc. A bronze statue of the saint stands outside the door. One always goes upwards in Mont St. Michel, seeing the dark purplish-pink mass of the grand old church above you, with its many spires of sculptured stone. Stone steps lead to the ramparts. Here you can lean over the balustrade and look down upon the waste of sand surrounding Mont St. Michel. All is absolutely calm and noiseless. Immediately below is the town, its clusters of new gray-slate roofs mingling with those covered in yellow lichen and green moss; also the church of the village, looking like a child's plaything perched on the mountain-side. Beyond and all around lies a sad, monotonous stretch of pearl-gray sand, with only a darkish, narrow strip of land between it and the leaden sky--the coast of Normandy. Sea-birds passing over the country give forth a doleful wail. The only signs of humanity at all in the immensity of this great plain are some little black specks--men and women searching for shellfish, delving in the sand and trying to earn a livelihood in the forbidding waste. [Illustration: DÉJEUNER] The melancholy of the place is terrible. I have seen people of the gayest-hearted natures lean over that parapet and gaze ahead for hours. This great gray plain has a strange attraction. It draws out all that is sad and serious from the very depths of you, forcing you to think deeply, moodily. Joyous thoughts are impossible. At first you imagine that the scenery is colourless; but as you stand and watch for some time, you discover that it is full of colour. There are pearly greens and yellows and mauves, and a kind of phosphorescent slime left by the tide, glistening with all the hues of the rainbow. Terribly dangerous are these shifting sands. In attempting to cross them you need an experienced guide. The sea mounts very quickly, and mists overtake you unexpectedly. Many assailants of the rock have been swallowed in the treacherous sands. Being on this great height reminded me of a legend I had heard of the sculptor Gautier, a man of genius, who was shut up in the Abbey of Mont St. Michel and carved stones to keep himself from going mad--you can see these in the abbey to this day. For some slight reason François I. threw the unfortunate sculptor into the black cachot of the Mount, and there he was left in solitude, to die by degrees. His hair became quite white, and hung long over his shoulders; his cheeks were haggard; he grew to look like a ghost. His youth could no longer fight against the despair overhanging him; his miseries were too great for him to bear; he became almost insane. One day, by a miracle, Mass was held, not in the little dark chapel under the crypts, but in the church on high, on the topmost pinnacle of the Mount. It was a Sunday, a fête-day. The sun shone, not feebly, as I saw it that day, but radiantly, the windows of the church glistening. It was blindingly beautiful. The joy of life surrounded him; the sweetness and freshness of the spring was in the air. The irony of men and things was too great for his poor sorrow-laden brain. He cleared the parapet, and was dashed to atoms below. Poor Gautier! It was his only chance of escape. One realized that as one looked up at those immense prison walls, black and frowning, sheer and unscaleable, every window grated and barred. What chance would a prisoner have? If it were possible for him to escape from the prison itself, there would be the town below to pass through. Only one narrow causeway joins the island to the mainland, and all round there is nothing but sea and sandy wastes. [Illustration: A FARMHOUSE KITCHEN] I was disturbed in my reverie by a loud nasal voice shouting, 'Par ici, messieurs et dames, s'il vous plaît.' It was the guide, and willy-nilly we must go and make the rounds of the abbey among a crowd of other sightseers. An old blind woman on the abbey steps, evidently knowing that we were English by our tread, moistened her lips and drew in her breath in preparation for a begging whine as we approached. We passed through a huge red door of a glorious colour, up a noble flight of wide steps, with hundreds of feet of wall on either side, into a lofty chapel, falling to decay, and being renovated in parts. It was of a ghostly greenish stone, with fluted pillars of colossal height, ending in stained-glass windows and a vaulted roof, about which black-winged bats were flying. Room after room we passed through, the guide making endless and monotonous explanations and observations in a parrot-like voice, until we reached the cloister. This is the pearl of Mont St. Michel, the wonder of wonders. It is a huge square court. In the middle of the quadrangle it is open to the sky, and the sun shines through in a golden blaze. All round are cool dim walks roofed overhead by gray arches supported by small, graceful, rose-coloured pillars in pairs. This is continued round the whole length of the court. Let into the wall are long benches of stone, to which, in olden days, the monks came to meditate and pray. The ancient atmosphere has been well preserved; yet the building is so little touched by time, owing to the careful renovations of a clever architect, that one almost expects at any moment to see a brown-robed monk disturbed in his meditations. From the quiet courtyard we are taken down into the very heart of the coliseum--into the mysterious cells where the damp of the rock penetrates the solid stone. How gloomy it was down in these crypts! Even the names of them made one tremble--'Galerie de l'Aquilon,' 'Petit Exil,' and 'Grand Exil.' You think of Du Bourg, tightly fettered hand and foot, being eaten alive by rats; of the Comte Grilles, condemned to die of starvation, being fed by a peasant, who bravely climbed to his window; of a hundred gruesome tales. There is the chapel where the last offices of the dead were performed--a cell in which the light struggled painfully through the narrow windows, feebly combating with the dark night of the chamber; and there is the narrow stairway, in the thickness of the wall, by which the bodies of the prisoners were taken. We were shown the cachot and the oubliette where the living body of the prisoner was attacked by rats. That, however, was a simple torture compared with the strait-jacket and the iron cage. In the oubliette the miserable men could clasp helpless hands, curse or pray, as the case might be; but in the iron cage the death agony was prolonged. Even now, although the poor souls took wings long ago, the cachot and the oubliette fill you with disgust. You feel stifled there. The atmosphere is vitiated. Even though centuries have passed since those terrible times, the walls seem to be still charged with iniquity, with all the sighs exhaled, with all the smothered cries, with all the tears, with all the curses of impatient sufferers, with all the prayers of saints. It seems impossible to believe, down in the heart of this world of stone, in the impenetrable darkness, that the architect that designed this thick and cruel masonry constructed those airy belfries, those balustrades of lace, those graceful arches, those towers and minarets. It is as if he had wished to shut up the sorrow and the maniacal cries of the men who had lost their reason in a fair exterior, attracting the eyes of the world to that which was beautiful, and making it forget the misery beneath. [Illustration: MARIE] [Illustration: A FARM LABOURER] CHAPTER XIX CHÂTEAU DES ROCHERS The name of Mme. Sévigné rings through the ages. Vitré is full of it. Inhabitants will point out, close to the ruined ramparts, the winter palace where the _spirituelle Marquise_ received the Breton nobility and sometimes the Kings of Brittany. To the south they will show you the Château des Rochers, the princely country residence maintained by this famous woman. She was a Breton of the Bretons, building and planting, often working in the fields with her farm hands. She loved her Château des Rochers. It was a joy to leave the town and the gaieties of Court for the freshness of the fields and the woods. She especially liked to be there for the 'Triomphe du mois de Mai'--to hear the nightingale and the cuckoo saluting spring with song. With Lafontaine, she found inspiration in the fields; but, as she preserved a solid fund of Gaelic humour, she laughed also, and the country did not often make her melancholy. She felt the sadness of autumn in her woods; but she never became morose. She never wearied of her garden. She had always some new idea with regard to it--some new plan to lure her from a letter begun or a book opened. Before reading the memoirs of Mme. Sévigné it is almost impossible to realize this side of her nature. Who would have imagined that this woman of the salons, fêted in Paris, and known everywhere, would be always longing for her country home? It is only when you visit the famous Château des Rochers that you realize to the full that she was a lover of nature and country habits. Wandering through the old-world garden, you find individual touches which bring back the dainty Marquise vividly to mind. There are the venerable trees, under which you may wander and imagine yourself back in the time of Louis XIV. There are the deep and shady avenues planted by Mme. Sévigné, and beautiful to this day. The names come back to you as you walk--'La Solitaire,' 'L'Infini,' 'L'honneur de ma fille'--avenues in which madame sat to see the sun setting behind the trees. Very quiet is this garden, with its broad shady paths, its wide spaces of green, its huge cedars growing in the grass, and its stiff flower-beds. There is Mme. Sévigné's sundial, on which she inscribed with her own hand a Latin verse. There are the stiff rows of poplars, like Noah's Ark trees, symmetrical, interlacing one with the other, unnatural but dainty in design. There is her rose garden, a rounded and terraced walk planted with roses. There, too, are the sunny 'Place Madame,' the 'Place Coulanges,' and 'L'Écho,' where two people, standing on stones placed a certain distance apart, can hear the echo plainly. This garden, with its stiff little rows of trees, its sunny open squares surrounded by low walls, and its stone vases overgrown with flowers, brings back the past so vividly that one asks one's self whether indeed Mme. Sévigné is there no longer, and glances involuntarily down the avenues and the by-ways, half expecting to distinguish the rapid passage of a majestic skirt. What a splendid life this woman of the seventeenth century led! She knew well how to regulate mind and body. The routine of the day at Les Rochers was never varied, and was designed so perfectly that there was rarely a jar or a hitch. She rose at eight, and enjoyed the freshness of the woods until the hour for matins struck. After that there were the 'Good-mornings' to be said to everyone on her estate. She must pick flowers for the table, and read and work. When her son was no longer with her she read aloud to broaden the mind of his wife. At five o'clock her time became her own; and on fine days, a lacquey following, she wandered down the pleasant avenues, dreaming visions of the future, of God and of His providence, sometimes reading a book of devotions, sometimes a book of history. On days of storm, when the trees dripped and the slates fell from the roof,--on days so wet and gray and wild that you would not turn a dog out of doors--you would suppose the Marquise to become morbid and miserable. Not at all. She realized that she must kill time, and she did so by a hundred ingenious devices. She deplored the weather which kept her indoors, but fixed her thoughts on the morrow. Ladies and gentlemen often invaded her; all the nobility came to present their compliments. They assailed her from all sides. When she resisted them, and strove to shut herself away from the world, the Duke would come and carry her away in his carriage. [Illustration: A LITTLE WATER-CARRIER] She always longed to return to her solitude--to her dear Rochers, where her good priest waited, at once her administrator, her man of affairs, her architect, and her friend. Her pride of property was great, and she was constantly beautifying and embellishing her country home. Each year saw some new change. On one occasion six years passed without her visiting Les Rochers. All her trees had become big and beautiful; some of them were forty or fifty feet high. Her joy when she beheld them gives one an insight into her youthfulness. How young she was in some things! She often asked herself whence came this exuberance. She drew caricatures of the affectations of her neighbours, and the anxious inquiries of her friends as to her happiness during her voluntary exile amused her immensely. In a letter written to her daughter she said: 'I laugh sometimes at what they call "spending the winter in the woods." Mme. de C---- said to me the other day, "Leave your damp Rochers." I answered her, "Damp yourself--it is your country that is damp; but we are on a height." It is as though I said, Your damp Montmartre. These woods are at present penetrated by the sun whenever it shines. On the Place Madame when the sun is at its height, and at the end of the great avenue when the sun is setting, it is marvellous. When it rains there is a good room with my people here, who do not trouble me. I do what I want, and when there is no one here we are still better off, for we read with a pleasure which we prefer above everything.' The prospect of spending a winter at Les Rochers did not frighten her in the least. She wrote to her daughter, saying, 'My purpose to spend the winter at Les Rochers frightens you. Alas! my daughter, it is the sweetest thing in the world.' Mme. Sévigné was always thinking of her daughter, and of Provence, where she lived. Her heart went out to her daughter. Everything about Les Rochers helped her to remember her beloved child. Even the country itself seemed to bring back memories, for the nights of July were so perfumed with orange-blossoms that one might imagine one's self to be really in Provence. Mme. Sévigné wrote in a letter to one of her friends: 'I have established a home in the most beautiful place in the world, where no one keeps me company, because they would die of cold. The abbé goes backwards and forwards over his affairs. I am there thinking of Provence, for that thought never leaves me.' [Illustration: WEARY] The château in which this wonderful woman lived, whence started so many couriers to Provence, is an important building, gray, a little heavy with towers, with high turrets of slate and great windows. Resembling most houses built in the Louis XIV. style, it is rather sad in design. At the side is a chapel surmounted by a cross, a rotund hexagonal building constructed in 1671 by the Abbot of Coulanges. Inside it is gorgeous with old rose and gold. One can imagine the gentle Marquise kneeling here at her devotions. Visitors are shown the bedroom of Mme. Sévigné, now transformed into a historical little sanctuary. The furniture consists of a large four-post bed, with a covering of gold and blue, embroidered, it is said, by the Countess of Grignan. Under a glass case have been treasured all the accessories of her toilet--an arsenal of feminine coquetry: brushes, powder-boxes, patch-boxes, autograph letters, account-books, her own ink-stand, books written in the clear, delicate, legible handwriting of the Marquise herself. The walls are hung with pictures of the family and intimate friends, some of which are very remarkable. This room was called by Mme. Sévigné the 'green room.' It still has a dainty atmosphere. Here Mme. Sévigné passed a great part of her life. Under a large window is a marble table where she is supposed to have written those letters which one knows almost as well as the fables of Lafontaine. Mme. Sévigné coloured the somewhat cold though pure language of the seventeenth century, but not artificially. She animated it, conveyed warmth into it, by putting into her writings much that was feminine, never descending to the 'precious' or to be a blue-stocking. The books that she loved, and her correspondence, did not take up so much of her time that she had to overlook the details of her domain. Sometimes she had a little fracas with her cook; often she would be called away to listen to the complaints of Pilois, her gardener, a philosopher. She knew how to feel strongly among people who could feel only their own misfortunes and disgraces. She had a true and thoughtful soul. This one can tell by her letters from Les Rochers, which come to us in all their freshness, as if they had been written yesterday. [Illustration: THE MASTER OF THE HOUSE] [Illustration: IN THE INGLENOOK] CHAPTER XX CARNAC The country round Carnac is solemn and mysterious, full of strange Druidical monuments, menhirs and dolmens of fabulous antiquity, ancient stone crosses, _calvaires_, and carvings. Everything is grand, solemn, and gigantic. One finds intimate traces of the Middle Ages. The land is still half-cultivated and divided into small holdings; the fields are strewn with ancient stones. The Lines of Carnac are impressive. You visit them in the first place purely as a duty, as something which has to be seen; but you are amply repaid. On a flat plain of heather or gorse they lie, small and gray and ghost-like in the distance, but looming larger as you draw near. You come across several in a farmyard; but on scaling a small loosely-built stone wall you find yourself in the midst of them--lines of colossal stones planted point-downwards, some as high as twenty feet, and stretching away to the horizon, on a space of several miles, like a gigantic army of phantoms. Originally the Lines of Carnac were composed of six thousand stones; but to-day there remain only several hundreds. They have been destroyed bit by bit, and used by the peasants as fences along the fields and in the construction of houses. We sat on a rock and gazed at these strange things, longing to know their origin. What enigmas they were, wrapped in mournful silence, solemn and still, sphinx-like! I endeavoured to become an amateur Sherlock Holmes. I examined the stones all over. I noticed that at the extremity of one line they were placed in a semicircle. This did not seem to lead me on the road to discovery. Of what avail is it to attempt to read the mystery of these silent Celtic giants? Historians and archæologists have sought in vain to find a solution to the problem. Some say that the stones planted in the fields are temples dedicated to the cult of the serpent; others maintain that this is a sort of cemetery, where the dead of Carnac and of Erderen were interred after a terrible battle. They are variously taken to be sacred monuments, symbols of divinity, funeral piles, trophies of victory, testimonies to the passing of a race, the remains of a Roman encampment. Innumerable are the surmises. [Illustration: A BLIND BEGGAR] The country people have their own versions of the origin of these stones. The peasants round about Carnac firmly believe that these menhirs are inhabited by a terrible race of little black men who, if they can but catch you alone at midnight, will make you dance, leaping round you in circles by the light of the moon with great shouts of laughter and piercing cries, until you die of fatigue, making the neighbouring villagers shiver in their beds. Some say that these stones have been brought here by the Virgin Mary in her apron; others that they are Roman soldiers, petrified as was the wife of Lot, and changed into rocks by some good apostle; others, again, that they were thrown from the moon by Beelzebub to kill some amiable fairy. A boy was sitting on a stone near us. He had followed us, and had sat leaning his head on his hand and gazing backwards and forwards from us to the stones. Out of curiosity to hear what his ideas might be, I asked the child what he imagined the menhirs were. Without a moment's hesitation he said, 'Soldats de St. Cornely!' Afterwards I discovered that St. Cornely is in this country one of the most honoured saints. It is he that protects the beasts of the field. His _pardon_ used to be much attended by peasants, who took with them their flocks of sheep and cows. St. Cornely had occasion to fly before a regiment of soldiers sent in pursuit by an idolatrous king. In the moment of his fear--for even saints experience fear--he went towards the sea, and soon saw that all retreat was cut off thereby. The oxen fell on their knees, their eyes full of dread. The situation was terrible. The saint appealed to Heaven, where lay his only hope, and, stretching his arm towards the soldiers, changed them suddenly into stone. Here, it is said, the soldiers of St. Cornely have remained ever since, fixed and rigid. [Illustration: LA PETITE MARIE] CHAPTER XXI A ROMANTIC LAND Brittany is essentially a romantic country. It is full of mysteries and legends and superstitions. Romance plays a great part in the life of the meanest peasant. Every stock and stone and wayside shrine in his beloved country is invested with poetical superstition and romance. A nurse that we children once had, nineteen years of age, possessed an enormous stock of legends, which she had been brought up to look upon as absolute truth. Some of the songs which she sang to the baby at bedtime in a low minor key were beautiful in composition--'Marie ta fille,' 'Le Biniou,' amongst others. The village schoolmaster, who was our tutor, during our long afternoon rambles would often make the woods ring as he sang ballads in his rich, full voice. The theme changed according to his humour. Now the song was a canticle, relating the legend of some saint, or a pious chronicle; at another time it was of love he sang, generally ending sadly. Then, there was the historical song, recounting some sombre, or touching, or stirring event, when the little man worked himself up to a high pitch of excitement, carrying us children open-mouthed to gory battlefields and the palaces of sumptuous Kings. One quite forgot the insignificant schoolmaster in the rush and swing of the music. There are many Breton ballads. The lives of the people are reflected truthfully in these compositions, which have as their themes human weakness, or heartache, or happiness. The Breton bards are still a large class. In almost every village there is someone who composes and sings. Each one holds in his or her hand a small stick of white wood, carved with notches and strange signs, which help towards remembering the different verses. The Gauls called this stick, the use of which is very ancient, the alphabet of the bards. [Illustration: THE LITTLE HOUSEWIFE] Mendicity is protected in Brittany. One meets beggars at all the fairs, and often on the high-roads. They earn their living by songs and ballads. They attend family fêtes, and, above all, marriage ceremonies, composing songs in celebration. No Breton will refuse a bard the best of his hospitality. Bards are honoured guests. 'Dieu vous bénisse, gens de cette maison,' says one, announcing himself. He is installed in the ingle-nook, the cosiest corner of a Breton kitchen; and after having refreshed the inner man he rewards his host with song after song, often giving him the last ballad of his composition. When he takes his leave, a large bundle of food is slung over his shoulder. Unless you live for years in the same village, as I have done, sharing in the joys and sorrows of the people, you can gain very little knowledge of the tales and songs and legends. The Breton is reticent on the advent of the stranger: he fears ridicule. Then, again, a child can always wriggle itself into the hearts and homes of people. Setting aside all racial prejudices and difficulties of language, a child will instal itself in a household, and become familiar with the little foibles of each inmate in a single day, whereas a grown-up person may strive in vain for years. I, as a child, had a Breton _bonne_, and used to spend most of my days at her home, a farm some distance from the village, playing on the cottage floor with her little brothers and sisters, helping to milk the cows, and poking the fat pigs. This, I think, Mother could scarcely have been aware of; for she had forbidden Marie to allow me to associate with dirty children, and these were certainly not too clean. One day I was playing at dolls with a village girl under the balcony of Mother's room. Suddenly, on looking up, I found her gazing at me reproachfully. 'O Mother,' I hastened to explain, pulling the child forward by the pinafore, 'she are clean.' We children were familiar with everyone in the village, even bosom friends with all, from stout Batiste, the butcher, to Lucia the little seamstress, and Leontine her sister, who lived by the bridge. If a child died we attended the funeral, all dressed in white, holding lighted tapers in our hands, and feeling important and impressive. If one was born, we graciously condescended to be present at the baptismal service and receive the boxes of dragées always presented to guests on such occasions. At all village processions we figured prominently. When I returned to Brittany, at the age of ten, I found things very little changed. My friends were a trifle older; but they remembered me and welcomed me, receiving me into their midst as before. My sister and I took part in all the _pardons_ of the surrounding villages. We learnt the quaint Breton dances, and would pace up and down the dusty roads in the full glare of the summer sun hour after hour, dressed in the beautiful costume of the country--black broadcloth skirts, white winged caps, and sabots. Often we would go with our _bonne_ and our respective partners into some neighbouring _débits de boissons_ and drink _syrops_ in true Breton fashion. At one _pardon_ we won the _ruban d'honneur_--a broad bright-blue ribbon with silver tassels worn across the shoulder, and presented to the best dancer. The Breton gavotte is a strange dance of religious origin. The dancers hold hands in a long line, advancing and retiring rhythmically to long-drawn-out music. Underneath an awning sit the two professional biniou-players, blowing with all their might into their instruments and beating time with their feet to the measure. The _sonneur de biniou_ is blind, and quite wrapped up in his art; he lives, as it were, in a world apart. The _joueur de biniou_, the principal figure, reminding one of a Highland piper, presses his elbow on the large leather air-bag, playing the air, with its many variations, clear and sweet, on the reed pipe. Brittany is the land of _pardons_. During the summer these local festivities are taking place daily in one village or another. The _pardon_ is a thing apart; it resembles neither the Flemish _kermesse_ nor the Parisian _foire_. Unlike the _foires_ of Paris, created for the gay world, for the men and women who delight in turning night into day, the _pardon_ has inspiration from high sources: it is the fête of the soul. The people gather together from far and near, not only to amuse themselves, but also to pray. They pass long hours before the images of the saints; they make the tour of the 'Chemin de la Croix,' kneeling on the granite floor. Still, it is a joyous festival. The air is filled with shouts and laughter. For example, in Quimper, at the Feast of the Assumption, the Place St. Corentin is crowded. People have come from the surrounding towns, all dressed in the characteristic costume of their vicinities. Pont-Aven, Pont L'Abbé, Concarmeau, Fouesnant, Quimperlé--all are represented. You see the tight lace wide-winged cap of the Douarnénez women, hats bound with coloured chenile of the men of Carhaix, white flannel coats bordered with black velvet of the peasants of Guéméné, the flowered waistcoats of Pleavé; the women of Quimper have pyramidical coifs of transparent lace, showing the pink or blue ribbon beneath, with two long floating ends. [Illustration: AN OLD WOMAN] The great square in front of the cathedral is a jumble of gold and silver, embroidery, ribbons, muslin, and lace--a joyous feast of colour in the sun. The crowd moves slowly, forming into groups by the porch and round the stalls, with much gossip. The square and the neighbouring streets are bordered by stalls trading in fabrics and faiences, gingerbread, sweets, lotteries, cider, and fancy-work of all kinds. Young men and girls stop in couples to buy mirrors or coloured pins, surmounted with gold, that jingle, to fasten in their caps or in their bodices. Others gather round the lotteries, and watch with anxious eyes the wheel with the rod of metal that clicks all the way round on its spokes, and stops at a certain number. 'C'est vingt-deux qui gagne!' cries the proprietor. A pretty little peasant woman has won. She hesitates, wavering between a ball of golden glass and a vase painted with attractive flowers. The peasants laugh loudly. There are all kinds of attractions and festivities at the _pardons_--hurdy-gurdies, swing-boats, voyages to the moon, on which you get your full and terrible money's worth of bumps and alarms; for not only are you jerked up hill and down dale in a car, but also, when you reach the moon, you are whirled round and round at a tremendous rate and return backwards. There are side-shows in which are exhibited fat women, headless men, and bodiless girls, distorted thus by mirrors, the deception of which even we children saw through plainly. There are jugglers and snake-charmers. A cobra was fed on rabbits. We children haunted that tent at feeding-times, and used to watch with fascination the little dead bunnies disappearing, fur and all, afterwards noticing with glee the strange bumps they formed in the animal's smooth and shiny coils. How bloodthirsty children are at heart! It is not always in large towns like Quimperlé that _pardons_ are held. More often they are to be witnessed in the country, perhaps miles away from any town, whence the people flock on foot. There you see no grand cathedral, no magnificent basilicas and superb architecture, but some simple little gray church with moss-grown walls and trees growing thickly about it. The rustic charm of the _pardons_ it is impossible to describe. Round you are immense woods and flowered prairies; in the woods the birds are singing; a mystic vapour of incense fills the air. Peasants gather round this modest house of prayer, which possesses nothing to attract the casual passer-by. The saints that they have come to venerate have no speciality: they heal all troubles, assuage all griefs: they are infallible and all-powerful. Inside the church it is very dim and dark. Not a single candle is alight on the altar; only the lamp of the sanctuary shines out with red gleam like an ever-seeing eye. In the gray darkness of the choir the silent priests cross themselves. They look like ghosts of the faithful. The bells ring out in noisy peals, filling the air with vibrations. Over the fields the people hurry--girls in their smartest clothes, accompanied by their gallants; children brought by their mothers in their beautiful new suits to attend service and to have their faces bathed in the fountain, which cures them of all diseases, and makes them beautiful for ever; old men come to contemplate the joy of the young people, to be peaceful, and to ask forgiveness before leaving this world and the short life over which their own particular saint has watched. The bells peal so loudly that one is afraid they will crack under the efforts of the ringers. Still the people swarm over the fields and into the church, until at last the little edifice is full, and men and women and children are compelled to kneel outside on the hard earth; but the doors are opened, and those outside follow the service with great attention. [Illustration: A PIG-MARKET] One must be a Breton born and cradled in the country in order to realize the important place that the _pardon_ of his parish occupies in the peasant's mind. It is a religious festival of great significance: it is the day above all others on which he confesses his sins to God and receives absolution. Throughout his life his dearest and sweetest thoughts cling round this house of prayer and pardon. Here it is generally that he betroths himself. He and the girl stroll home together when the sun has set, walking side by side over the fields, holding each other by the little finger, as is the Breton custom. A sweet serenity envelops the countryside; darkness falls; the stars appear. The man is shy; but the girl is at ease. When nearing home, to announce their arrival at the farm, they begin to sing a song that they have heard from the bards during the day. Other couples in the distance, hearing them, take up the refrain; and soon from all parts of the country swells up into the night air a kind of alternate song, in which the high trebles and the deep basses mingle harmoniously. As the darkness deepens the figures disappear and the sounds die away in the distance. The Saturday before the first Sunday in July is a fête-day in most towns. Pilgrims fill the towns, which are packed with stalls for the fair. There are sellers of cider and cakes, amulets, and rosaries. A statue of the Madonna surrounded by archangels against a background of blue is situated at the church door to receive the homage of faithful pilgrims. When night falls the door of the porch is flung open, and a long procession of girls, like an army of phantoms, advances, each penitent holding in her hand a lighted torch, slowly swinging her rosary and repeating a Latin prayer. The statue of the Virgin is solemnly carried out on the open square, where bonfires are lit and young folk dance to the accompaniment of the biniou. In some places the dances are prolonged for three or four days. The Bretons like songs and dances and representations; they like the heavy pomp of pilgrimages; they believe in prayer, and never lose their respect for the Cross. They are a fine people, especially the men who live by the sea, sailors and fishermen--well-made, high-strung men, their faces bronzed and stained like sculptures out of old chestnut, with eyes of clear blue, full of the sadness of the sea. They have an air of robustness and vitality; but under their fierce exterior they hide a great sweetness of nature. They are kind hosts; they are frank, brave, and chaste. They have, it is true, a weakness: on fair days--market-days especially--they abuse the terrible and brutalizing _vin du feu_. Then, the Bretons are not a very clean people. The interiors of the cottages are dignified, with great beds made of dark chestnut and long, narrow tables, stretching the whole length of the rooms, polished and beeswaxed until you can see your face mirrored on the surface; but pigs will repose on the stone floor, which waves up and down with indentations and deep holes. The more well-to-do Bretons have their clothes washed only once in six months. The soiled linen is kept above in an attic protected from the rats by a rope with broken bottles strung on it, on which the rats, as they come to gnaw the clothes, commit involuntary suicide. The poorer families have better habits. They wash their few possessions regularly and out of doors in large pools constructed for the purpose, where hundreds of women congregate, kneeling on the flagstones around the pond, beating their linen energetically on boards, with a flat wooden tool, to economize soap. This I consider a far cleaner method than that of our British cottagers, who wash their clothes in their one living-room, inhaling impure steam. [Illustration: HOUSEHOLD DUTIES] In spite of the winds and the tempests which desolate it, the Bretons love their country. They live in liberty; they are their own masters. The past holds profound and tenacious root in the hearts of these men of granite, and the attachment to old beliefs is strong. The people still believe in miracles, in sorcery, and in the evil eye. The land, rich with memories of many kinds,--with its menhirs, its old cathedrals, its pilgrimages, its _pardons_--sleeps peacefully in this century of innovations. In Brittany everything seems to have been designed long ago. Wherever one goes one comes across a strange and ancient Druidical monument, menhirs, and dolmens of fabulous antiquity, an exquisite legend, a ruined château, ancient stone crosses, _calvaires_, and carvings. It is a country full of signs and meanings. The poetical superstitions and legends have been left intact in their primitive simplicity. Nowhere do you see finer peasantry; nowhere more dignity and nobility in the features of the men and women who work in the fields; nowhere such quaint houses and costumes; hardly anywhere more magnificent scenery. You have verdant islands, ancient forests, villages nestling in the mountains, country as wild and beautiful as the moors of Scotland, fields and pasture-lands as highly cultivated as those of Lincolnshire. Brittany is especially inspiring to the painter. You find villages in which the people still wear the national dress. Perhaps, however, the time is not far distant when new customs will arise and the old beliefs will be only a remembrance. Little by little the influence of modern times begins to show itself upon the language, the costume, and the poetic superstitions. The iron and undecorative hand of the twentieth century is closing down upon the country. BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD * * * * * Transcriber's note: Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. 
43209	----	available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original 92 illustrations. See 43209-h.htm or 43209-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/43209/43209-h/43209-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/43209/43209-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/intrackofrlsteve00hammuoft Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). IN THE TRACK OF R. L. STEVENSON AND ELSEWHERE IN OLD FRANCE [Illustration: THE SCHELDT AT ANTWERP "We made a great stir in Antwerp Docks. In a stroke or two the canoes were away out in the middle of the Scheldt."--R. L. S.] All rights reserved IN THE TRACK OF R. L. STEVENSON AND ELSEWHERE IN OLD FRANCE by J. A. HAMMERTON Author of "Stevensoniana" With 92 Illustrations Bristol J. W. Arrowsmith, 11 Quay Street London Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Company Limited First published in 1907 CONTENTS _Page_ THROUGH THE CEVENNES 1 ALONG THE ROUTE OF "AN INLAND VOYAGE" 71 "THE MOST PICTURESQUE TOWN IN EUROPE" 121 THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 137 THE WONDERLAND OF FRANCE 155 THE TOWN OF "TARTARIN" 173 "LA FÊTE DIEU" 195 "M'SIEU MEELIN OF DUNDAE" 207 ROUND ABOUT A FRENCH FAIR 219 THE PALACE OF THE ANGELS 237 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS THE SCHELDT AT ANTWERP _Frontispiece_ _Face Page_ LE MONASTIER 1 LE MONASTIER 4 CHÂTEAU NEUF, NEAR LE MONASTIER 8 GOUDET 8 CHÂTEAU BEAUFORT AT GOUDET 13 SPIRE OF OUR LADY OF PRADELLES 13 THE INN AT GOUDET 16 OLD BRIDGE AT LANGOGNE 20 THE LOIRE NEAR GOUDET 20 VILLAGE AND CASTLE OF LUC 24 LA BASTIDE 24 ROAD TO OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 29 THE MONASTERY 29 OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 33 MAIN STREET, LE BLEYMARD 36 RUINS OF THE HÔTEL DU LOT 36 ON THE LOZÈRE 40 ON THE LOZÈRE 45 VILLAGE OF COCURÈS 48 BRIDGE OVER THE TARN 48 WATERFALL ON THE LOZÈRE 53 IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN 53 "CLARISSE" 56 THE TARN VALLEY AT LA VERNÈDE 60 IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN 65 NEAR FLORAC 65 FLORAC 68 BOOM ON THE RUPEL 72 VILLEVORDE ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL 72 THE ALLÉE VERTE AT LAEKEN 77 THE SAMBRE AT MAUBEUGE 77 THE GRAND CERF, MAUBEUGE 80 THE CHURCH AT QUARTES 84 THE SAMBRE FROM THE BRIDGE AT PONT 84 ON THE SAMBRE AT QUARTES 88 SCENE AT PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 88 THE SAMBRE CANAL AT LANDRECIES 93 THE FOREST OF MORMAL FROM THE SAMBRE 93 THE INN AT MOY 97 THE VILLAGE STREET, MOY 97 VEUVE BAZIN 100 THE BAZINS' INN AT LA FÈRE 100 THE TOWN HALL NOYON 104 HÔTEL DU NORD, NOYON 104 NOYON CATHEDRAL FROM THE EAST 109 NOYON CATHEDRAL: WEST FRONT 112 COMPIÈGNE TOWN HALL 116 THE OISE AT PONTOISE 120 GENERAL VIEW OF LE PUY 121 LE PUY: CATHEDRAL AND ROCHER DE CORNEILLE FROM PLACE DU BREUIL 125 LACEMAKERS AT LE PUY 128 MARKET DAY AT LE PUY, SHOWING TYPES OF THE AUVERNGATS 129 LE PUY 132 THE CHURCH OF ST. MICHAEL, LE PUY 136 HOUSE OF DU CHAYLA, AT PONT DE MONTVERT 137 TWO VIEWS IN THE VILLAGE OF LA CAVALERIE 141 LA CAVALERIE, WITHIN THE CAMISARD WALL 144 ST. VERNAN, IN THE VALLEY OF THE DOURBIE 145 THE WAY OVER THE LARZAC 148 MILLAU, WITH VIEW OF THE CAUSSE NOIR 152 ON THE CAUSSE DU LARZAC 152 ON THE TARN 157 A ROCKY DEFILE ON THE TARN 160 IN THE GORGE OF THE TARN 161 THE CHÂTEAU DE LA CAZE ON THE TARN 164 PEYRELAU, IN THE VALLEY OF THE JONTE 169 BEAUCAIRE: SHOWING CASTLE AND BRIDGE ACROSS THE RHONE TO TARASCON 173 TARASCON: THE PUBLIC MARKET 176 THE TARASQUE 177 THE CASTLE OF TARASCON 177 TARASCON: THE MAIRIE 180 A WOMAN OF TARASCON 184 TARASCON: "THE BIT OF A SQUARE" 189 TARASCON: THE PROCESSION OF THE TARASQUE 193 PROCESSION OF LA FÊTE DIEU 196 A WOMAN OF SAINTE ENIMIE 205 THE FAMOUS DRUIDICAL REMAINS AT CARNAC 208 THE MERCHANTS' TABLE 213 WOMEN OF THE CEVENNES 220 GENERAL VIEW OF MONT ST. MICHEL 244 MONT ST. MICHEL 253 Note The travel-sketches that go to the making of this little book have appeared, in part only, in certain literary magazines, here and in America; but the greater part of the work is now printed for the first time. Perhaps the author should anticipate a criticism that might arise from the sequence of the first two papers. Had he gone to work on a set plan, he would naturally have undertaken his pilgrimage along the route of _An Inland Voyage_ before visiting the scenes of _Travels with a Donkey_, as the one book preceded the other in order of publication, _An Inland Voyage_, which appeared originally in 1878, being properly Stevenson's first book. _Travels with a Donkey_ was published in 1879. But he has preferred to give precedence to "Through the Cevennes," as it was the first of his Stevenson travel-sketches to be written. Moreover, these little journeys were as much, indeed more affairs of personal pleasure than of copy-hunting, and when the author went forth on them he had no intention of making a book about his experiences--at least, not one deriving its chief interest from association with the memory of R. L. S. He has been counselled, however, to bring together these chapters and their accompanying photographs in this form, on the plea that the interest in Stevenson's French travels is still so considerable that any straightforward account of later journeys over the same ground cannot fail to have some attraction for the admirers of that great master of English prose. The book is but a very little sheaf from the occasional writings of its author on his wayfarings in old France, where in the last ten years he has travelled many thousands of miles by road and rail between Maubeuge and Marseilles, from Belfort to Bordeaux, and always with undiminished interest among a people who are eminently lovable and amid scenes of infinite variety and charm. [Illustration: "In a little place called Le Monastier, in a pleasant Highland valley about fifteen miles from Le Puy, I spent a month of fine days."--R. L. S.] [Illustration: _The Public Well_ LE MONASTIER] Through the Cevennes I. Someone has accounted for the charm of story-telling by the suggestion that the natural man imagines himself the hero of the tale he is reading, and squares this action or that with what he would suspect himself of doing in similar circumstances. The romancer who can best beguile his reader into this conceit of mind is likely to be the most popular. It seems to me that with books of travel this mental make-believe must also take place if the reader is to derive the full measure of entertainment from the narrative. With myself, at all events, it is so, and Hazlitt may be authority of sufficient weight to justify the thought that my own experience is not likely to be singular. To me the chief charm in reading a book of travel is this fanciful assumption of the rôle of the traveller; and so far does it condition my reading, that my readiest appetite is for a story of wayfaring in some quarter of the world where I may hope, not unreasonably, to look upon the scenes that have first engaged my mind's eye. Thus the adventures of a Mr. Savage Landor in Thibet, or a Sir Henry Stanley in innermost Africa, have less attraction for me than the narrative of a journey such as Elihu Burritt undertook in his famous walk from London to John o' Groats, or R. L. Stevenson's _Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes_. I will grant you that the delicious literary style of Stevenson's book is its potent charm, but I am persuaded that others than myself have had their pleasure in the reading of it sensibly increased by the thought that some day they might witness Nature's originals of the landscapes which the master painter has depicted so deftly. It had long been a dream of mine to track his path through that romantic region of old France; not in the impudently emulative spirit of the throaty tenor who, hearing Mr. Edward Lloyd sing a new song, hastens to the music-seller's, resolved to practise it for his next "musical evening;" not, forsooth, to do again badly what had once been done well; but to travel the ground in the true pilgrim spirit of love for him who "Here passed one day, nor came again-- A prince among the tribes of men." Well did I know that many of the places with which I was familiar romantically through Stevenson's witchery of words were drab and dull enough in reality: enough for me that here in his pilgrim way that "blithe and rare spirit" had rested for a little while. II. The mountainous district of France to which, somewhat loosely, Stevenson applies the name Cevennes, lies along the western confines of Provence, and overlaps on several departments, chief of which are Ardèche, Lozère, Gard, and Herault. In many parts the villages and the people have far less in common with France and the French than Normandy and the Normans have with provincial England. Here in these mountain fastnesses and sheltered valleys the course of life has flowed along almost changeless for centuries, and here, too, we shall find much that is best in the romantic history and natural grandeur of France. Remote from Paris, and happily without the area of the "cheap trip" organisers, it is likely to remain for ever "off the beaten track." In order to visit the Cevennes proper, the beautiful town of Mende would be the best starting-place. But since my purpose was to strike the trail of R. L. S., after some wanderings awheel northward of Clermont Ferrand, I approached the district from Le Puy, a town which so excellent a judge as Mr. Joseph Pennell has voted the most picturesque in Europe. Besides, Stevenson himself had often wandered through its quaint, unusual streets, while preparing for his memorable journey with immortal Modestine. "I decided on a sleeping sack," he says; "and after repeated visits to Le Puy, and a deal of high living for myself and my advisers, a sleeping sack was designed, constructed, and triumphantly brought home." At that time the wanderer's "home" was in the mountain town of Le Monastier, some fifteen miles south-east of Le Puy, and there in the autumn of 1877 he spent "about a month of fine days," variously occupied in completing his _New Arabian Nights_ and _Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh_, and conducting, with no little personal and general entertainment, the preliminaries of his projected journey through the Cevennes. [Illustration: _Where R. L. S. bought Modestine_ "Our first interview (with Father Adam) was in the Monastier market place."--R. L. S. "The bell of Monastier was just striking nine, as I descended the hill through the common."--R. L. S. LE MONASTIER] III. Together with a friend I had spent some rainy but memorable days at Le Puy in the summer of 1903, waiting for fair weather to advance on this little highland town, which lies secure away from railways and can only be reached by road. A bright morning in June saw us gliding on our wheels along the excellent _route nationale_ that carries us thither on a long, easy gradient. The town seen at a distance is a mere huddle of grey houses stuck on the side of a bleak, treeless upland, and at close quarters it presents few allurements to the traveller. But it is typical of the mountain villages of France, and rich in the rugged, unspoilt character of its inhabitants. Stevenson tells us that it is "notable for the making of lace, for drunkenness, for freedom of language, and for unparalleled political dissension." As regards the last of these features, the claim to distinction may readily be admitted, but for the rest they apply equally to scores of similar villages of the Cevennes. Certainly it is not notable for the variety or comfort of its hostelries, but I shall not regret our brief sojourn at the Hôtel de Chabrier. Mine host was a worthy who will always have a corner in my memory. Like his establishment, his person was much the worse for wear. Lame of a leg, his feet shod with the tattered fragments of slippers such as the Scots describe with their untranslatable "bauchle," a pair of unclean heels peeping out through his stockings, he was the living advertisement of his frowsy inn, the ground floor of which, still bearing the legend _Café_, had been turned into a stable for oxen and lay open to the highway, a doubtful shelter for our bicycles. But withal, turning a shut eye to the kitchen as we passed, the cooking was excellent, and M. Chabrier assured us that he was renowned for game patties, which he sent to "all parts of Europe." The frank satisfaction with himself and his hotel he betrayed at every turn would have rejoiced the heart of so shrewd a student of character as R. L. S., and the chances are considerable that in that month of fine days, six-and-twenty years before, Stevenson may have gossiped with my friend of the greasy cap, for M. Chabrier was then, as now, making his guests welcome and baking his inimitable patties. Did he know Stevenson? "_Oui, oui, oui, M'sieu!_" Stevenson was a writer of books who had spent some time there years ago. "_Oui, oui, parfaitement, M'sieu Stevenzong._" What a memory the man had, and how blithely he recalled the distant past! "Then, of course, you must have known the noted village character Father Adam, who sold his donkey to this Scottish traveller?" "_Père Adam--oui, oui, oui--ah, non, non, je ne le connais pas_," thus shuffling when I asked for some further details. Mine host, who read the duty of an innkeeper to be the humouring of his patrons, could clearly supply me with the most surprising details of him whose footsteps I was tracing; but wishful not to lead him into temptation, I tested his evidence early in our talk by asking how many years had passed since he of whom we spoke had rested at Le Monastier, and whether he had patronised the Hôtel de Chabrier. He sagely scratched his head and racked his memory for a moment, with the result that this Scotsman--oh, he was sure he was a Scotsman--had stayed in that very hotel, and occupied bedroom number three, just four years back! Obviously he was mistaken--not to put too fine a point upon it--and his cheerful avowal, in discussing another subject, that he was "a partisan of no religion," did not increase my faith in him. There were few Protestants in Le Monastier, he told me; but as I happened to know from my good friend the pasteur at Le Puy that the postmaster here, at least, stood by the reformed faith, and by that token might be supposed a man of some reading, I hoped there to find some knowledge of Stevenson, whose works and travels were familiar to the pasteur. Alas, "_J' n' sais pas_" was the burden of the postmaster's song. To wander about the evil-smelling by-ways of Le Monastier, and observe the ancient crones busy at almost every door with their lace-making pillows, the bent and grizzled wood-choppers at work in open spaces, is to understand that, despite the lapse of more than a quarter of a century, there must be still alive hundreds of the village folk among whom Stevenson moved. But to find any who could recall him were the most hopeless of tasks; to identify the _auberge_, in the billiard-room of which "at the witching hour of dawn" he concluded the purchase of the donkey and administered brandy to its disconsolate seller, were equally impossible, and it was only left to the pilgrims to visit the market-place where Father Adam and his donkey were first encountered. So with the stink of the church, whose interior seemed to enclose the common sewer of the town, still lingering in our nostrils, we resumed our journey southward across the little river Gazeille, and headed uphill in the direction of St. Martin de Frugères, noting as we mounted on the other side of the valley the straggling lane down which Modestine, loaded with that wonderful sleeping sack and the paraphernalia of the most original of travellers, "tripped along upon her four small hoofs with a sober daintiness of gait" to the ford across the river, giving as yet no hint of the troubles she had in store for "the green donkey driver." [Illustration: CHÂTEAU NEUF, NEAR LE MONASTIER A drawing of this castle by Stevenson has been published.] [Illustration: GOUDET "I came down the hill to where Goudet stands in a green end of a valley."--R. L. S.] IV. Along our road were several picturesque patches formed of rock and pine, and notably the romantic ruins of Château Neuf, with the little village clustered at their roots, which furnished subjects for Stevenson's block and pencil. Among his efforts as a limner there has also been published a sketch of his that gives with striking effect the far-reaching panorama of the volcanic mountain masses ranging westward from Le Monastier, a scene of wild and austere aspect. A little beyond Château Neuf we were wheeling on the same road where he urged with sinking heart the unwilling ass, and while still within sight of his starting-place, showing now like a scar on the far hillside, we passed by the filthy village of St. Victor, the neighbourhood where the greenness of the donkey driver was diminished by the advice of a peasant, who advocated thrashing and the use of the magic word "Proot." The road grew wilder as we advanced towards St. Martin de Frugères, to which village the sentimental traveller came upon a Sabbath, and wrote of the "home feeling" the scene at the church brought over him--a sentiment difficult to appreciate as we wandered the filth-sodden streets and inspected the ugly little church, whitewashed within and stuffed with cheap symbols of a religion that is anathema to descendants of the Covenanters. The silvery Loire far below in the valley to our right, we sat at our ease astride our wiry steeds and sped cheerfully down the winding road to Goudet, feeling that if our mode of progress was less romantic than Stevenson's, it had compensations, for there was nothing that tempted us to tarry on our way. "Goudet stands in a green end of a valley, with Château Beaufort opposite upon a rocky steep, and the stream, as clear as crystal, lying in a deep pool between them." The scene was indeed one of singular beauty, the fertile fields and shaggy woods being in pleasant contrast to the barren country through which we had been moving. While still a mile away from the place, we foregathered with two peasants trudging uphill to St. Martin. I was glad to talk with them, as I desired to know which of the inns was the oldest. There were three, I was told, and the Café Rivet boasted the greatest age, the others being of recent birth, and none were good, my informant added, supposing that we intended to lodge for the night. To the inn of M. Rivet we repaired, this being the only _auberge_ that Goudet possessed at the time of Stevenson's visit. We found it one of the usual small plastered buildings, destitute of any quaintness, but cleaner than most, and sporting a large wooden tobacco pipe, crudely fashioned, by way of a sign. The old people who kept it were good Cevennol types, the woman wearing the curious headgear of the peasant folk, that resembles the tiny burlesque hats worn by musical clowns, and the man in every trait of dress and feature capable of passing for a country Scot. The couple were engagingly ignorant, and had never heard of Scotland, so it was no surprise to learn that they knew nothing of the famous son of that country who had once "hurried over his midday meal" in the dining-room where we were endeavouring to instruct Madame Rivet in the occult art of brewing tea. The Rivets had been four years in possession of the inn at the time of Stevenson's visit, and I should judge that the place had changed in no essential feature, though I missed the portrait of the host's nephew, Regis Senac, "Professor of Fencing and Champion of the Two Americas," that had entertained R. L. S. In return for our hints on tea-making, Madame Rivet charged us somewhat in excess of the usual tariff, and showed herself a veritable _grippe-sous_ before giving change, by carefully reckoning the pieces of fly-blown sugar we had used, a little circumstance the cynic may claim as indicating a knowledge of the spirit if not the letter of Scotland. V. It was late in the afternoon when we continued our journey from Goudet, intent on reaching that evening the lake of Bouchet, which Stevenson had selected as the camping-place for the first night of his travels. The highway to Ussel is one of the most beautiful on the whole route, lying through a wide and deep glen, similar to many that exist in the Scottish Highlands, but again unlike all the latter in its numerous terraces, that bear eloquent witness to the industry of the country-folk. Every glen in this region of France is remarkable for this handiwork of the toilers, and the time was, before the advent of the sporting nawbobs, when in some parts of the Scottish Highlands similar rude stonework was common in the glens. [Illustration: CHÂTEAU BEAUFORT AT GOUDET] [Illustration: SPIRE OF OUR LADY OF PRADELLES] To those who have not seen this work of the poor hill-folk it is not easy to convey a proper idea of its effect on the landscape. In these bleak mountain regions the sheltered valleys and ravines are best suited for growing the produce of the field, but as the soil is scant and the ground too often takes the shape of a very attenuated V, it is impossible to cultivate the slopes of the valley in their natural condition; so, with infinite labour and the patience of their stolid oxen, the Cevennols begin by building near the banks of the stream a loose stone wall, and filling in the space between that and the upward slope with a level bedding of earth. Thus step by step the hillside is brought into cultivation, and the terraces will be found wherever it is possible to rear a wall and carry up soil; indeed, they are to be seen in many places where it would have been thought impossible to prepare them, and out of reason to grow crops upon them. Often they are not so large as an ordinary bedroom in area, and such a space one may see under wheat. A hillside so terraced looks like a flight of giant steps, and it is a unique spectacle to children of the plains to descry, perhaps on the twentieth story, so to say, a team of oxen ploughing one of these eerie fields. Along this road, where on our right the terraces climbed upward to the naked basalt, and on the other side of the valley, now flooded with a pale yellow sunset that picked out vividly children at play tending a scanty herd of cattle on the hillside, our donkey driver of old had some of his bitterest experiences with that thrawn jade Modestine. We, fortunate in our more docile mounts, made excellent progress to Ussel, after walking a good two miles on foot. The road beyond that town was lively with bullock wagons, heavily freighted with timber, and carts, mostly drawn by oxen, filled with women returning from the market at Costaros, a little town on the highway between Le Puy and Pradelles; bullocks and people--the former to our embarrassment--being greatly interested in the wheel-travellers of these seldom cycled roads. When we arrived at Costaros, a town that is drab and dismal beyond words, the evening was wearing out under a leaden sky, promising the stragglers from the market good use for their bulky umbrellas, and we had still eight kilometres of rough country roads between us and the lake. Stevenson, in his heart-breaking struggles with the wayward ass, must have crossed the highway in the dark some little distance south of Costaros to have arrived at the village of Bouchet St. Nicolas, two miles beyond the lake; and as we urged forward in the rain, which now fell pitilessly and turned the darkling mountains into phantom masses smoking with mist, we could appreciate to the full the satisfaction with which he abandoned his quest of the lake and spent his first night snug at the inn of Bouchet. As we wheeled through the mud into the large village of Cayres no straggler appeared in the streets, that steamed like the back of a perspiring horse; but a carpenter at work in a windy shed assured us that the chalet on the shore of the lake had opened for the season, and in our dripping state we pressed thither uphill, feeling that two miles more in the rain could not worsen our condition. It was a weird and moving experience--the ghostly woods on the hillside, the tuneless tinkle of bells on unseen sheep, the hissing noise of our wheels on the moist earth--and our delight was great when we heard the lapse of water on our left. For nearly a mile the latter part of the road lay through a pine forest, where the ground had scarcely suffered from the rain, but the way was dark as in a tunnel, and glimpses of the lake between the trees showed the water almost vivid as steel by contrast. VI. "I had been told," says R. L. S., "that the neighbourhood of the lake was uninhabited except by trout." He travelled in the days before the _Syndicat d'Initiative du Velay_, which I shall ever bless for its chalet by the Lac du Bouchet, whose lighted windows two weary pilgrims descried that night with joy unspeakable. Our arrival was the cause of no small commotion to the good folk who kept this two-storied wooden hostel. We were their first visitors of the season, and it was clear they hailed us with delight, despite the lateness of our arrival. Candles were soon alight in the dining-room upstairs, a fire of pine logs crackling in the open hearth, the housemaid briskly laying the table, the mistress bustling in the kitchen, doors banging cheerily in the dark night as the master went and came between outhouses, fetching food and firing for which our coming had suddenly raised the need. Our bedrooms opened off the dining-room, and were well if plainly furnished, the floors being sanded, and we had soon made shift to change our sodden garments as well as the limited resources of wheelmen's baggage would allow. Above all was the ceaseless noise of the lake, that seemed to lend a keener edge to the chilly air. [Illustration: THE INN AT GOUDET _Where Stevenson was entertained by the old man and woman who still conduct it_] We could scarcely believe it was the middle of June in the sunny south of France as we sat there shivering before the spluttering logs in a room "suitable for bandits or noblemen in disguise." But a deep sense of comfort was supplied by the savoury smells that issued from the lower regions of the house. Our blessings on the head of the landlady and the whole French nation of cooks were sincere, as we regaled ourselves with an excellent meal of perch, omelet, mutton chops, raisins, almonds, cheese, lemonade and coffee. Imagine yourself arriving after nine o'clock at night at a lonely inn anywhere in the British Isles and faring thus! Moreover, the tenants of the chalet--the two women especially--were the most welcome of gossips, and the elder had a gift of dry humour that must have served her well in so wet a season. For three weeks it had rained steadily, she said, and she feared it was nothing short of the end of the world. When we told her that we had come from Le Monastier by way of St. Martin and Goudet, she was highly amused, and the younger, a rosy-faced wench, laughed heartily at the thought of anybody visiting such places. The lake of Bouchet--ah, that was another matter! Lakes were few in France, and this one well worth seeing. There were many lakes in Scotland! This was news to them, and they wondered why we had come so far to see this of Bouchet,--as we did ourselves when next morning we surveyed a tiny sheet of water almost circular, no more than two miles in circumference and quite featureless. It is simply the crater of an ancient volcano, and receives its water from some underground springs, there being no obvious source of supply. The lake, at an altitude of 4,000 feet, is higher than the surrounding country. VII. When we awoke in the morning and made ready for our departure the room was filled with the smoke of burning faggots, as though a censer had been swung in it by some early-rising acolyte; and the fire was again a welcome evidence of the landlady's thoughtfulness, for the outlook was grey and the early morning air bit shrewdly as the tooth of winter. Had the day promised better, we should have struck south from the lake to Bouchet St. Nicolas, at whose inn Stevenson uncorked a bottle of Beaujolais, inviting his host to join him in drinking it; and the innkeeper would take little, saying, "I am an amateur of such wine, do you see?--and I am capable of leaving you not enough." But the way thither is no better than a bullock-track, and several miles of similar road lie between Bouchet and the highway; so with a lowering sky ominous of more rain, and the knowledge that for three weeks the country had been soaking, we determined not to risk the bullock-track, and retraced our path to Costaros, passing on the way numerous ox wagons laden with timber. The whole countryside was sweet with the morning incense of the faggot fires burning on many a cottage hearth. We overtook several young people driving cattle out to the pasture lands, and noting that without exception they carried umbrellas, our hopes of a good day were not high. But by the time we had reached the Gendarmerie, that stands at the crest of the hill on the high road out of Costaros, and were chatting with one of the officers whom we found idling at the door, the wind was rising and heaped masses of sombre clouds were being driven before it across the sky, though in their passage they disclosed no cheering hints of the blue behind. The gendarme admitted that the rising wind might be a good sign, but he was not very hopeful, and seemed to be more interested in meeting two travellers from a country he had never heard of than in discussing the weather. There are parts of France, especially Normandy and Brittany, where, to confess oneself a Scotsman is to be assured of a heartier welcome than would be accorded to one who came from England; but Stevenson's boast that "the happiest lot on earth is to be born a Scotsman" counts for little in these highlands of the south, where few of the village-folk have ever heard of Scotland. The road south of Costaros even on a bright summer day must appear bleak and cheerless, and that morning our chief desire was to move along it as quickly as we could. Yet, as we advanced, the scene was not without elements of beauty, and the mists that veiled the distant mountains gradually lifting, produced a transformation entirely pleasing, while ere long there were great and welcome rifts in the grey above, and patches of blue sky heartened us on our way. By the time we had reached the hamlet of La Sauvetat the sun was peeping out fitfully, and on our right it suddenly flooded with amber light a meadow, yellow with marigolds, where cows were pasturing, attended by a small girl who was playing at skipping-rope. VIII. We had again joined the track of R. L. S., where, now armed with a goad, he drove his donkey. "The perverse little devil, since she would not be taken with kindness, must even go with pricking." We had but to sit in our saddles, and wheel rapidly down the long and exhilarating descent to Pradelles, a very tumbledown village with a great shabby square lying at an angle of almost forty-five degrees. The town occupies a little corrie on the hillside, and the ground slopes quickly on the west to the river Allier, beyond which the country rises again in mighty undulations as far as the eye can reach. For all its slanternness--perhaps, in some degree, because of that--Pradelles is a place of interest, perched here at an altitude of 3,800 feet above sea-level. [Illustration: OLD BRIDGE AT LANGOGNE "Just at the bridge at Langogne a lassie of some seven or eight addressed me in the sacramental phrase, '_D'où 'st-ce-que vous venez?_'"--R. L. S.] [Illustration: THE LOIRE NEAR GOUDET "An amiable stripling of a river, which it seems absurd to call the Loire."--R. L. S.] More than any other place we saw in our journey, this old mountain town wears an unmistakable "foreign" appearance, and one walks its streets with the feeling that one is moving cautiously along the sloping roof of a house. Among its tumbledown buildings it still possesses fragments of considerable historic value, such as its ancient hospice, and a gateway from the top of which a village heroine killed some Huguenot heroes by throwing a stone at them while they were leading an assault against its walls. In the church of Nôtre Dame this episode in the history of the town is commemorated by a mural painting in vivid colours, the stone which the devout Catholic maiden is hurling at the devoted heads of the besiegers being large enough to warrant the assistance of a steam crane. The interior of the church is very quaint and unusual, and I am sorry that Stevenson did not yield to the urging of the landlady of the inn to visit Our Lady of Pradelles, "who performed many miracles, although she was of wood," for his impressions of the church could not have failed to be peculiarly piquant. The miraculous image of the virgin is a wooden doll, dressed in lace and set on the high altar. Pilgrims come in large numbers to its shrine every fifteenth of August; and one of the spirited paintings on the wall depicts the rescue of the idol from a burning of the church which, I should guess, took place about the time of the Revolution. Evidently the rescuers of Our Lady were not prepared to submit her to the crucial test a sister image at Le Puy survived--"burning for thirty-six hours without being consumed." Many and unfamiliar saints look down at us from the walls, and at the west end there is a loft such as might be seen in some of the very old Scottish churches, occupied at the time of our visit by a group of women, members no doubt of some pious confraternity. R. L. S. has some picturesque notes on "The Beast of Gévaudan," whose trail he first struck at Pradelles; for we were now in the wild and uncultivated country of Gévaudan, "but recently disforested from terror of the wolves," whose grizzly exploits in the way of eating women and children seem to have engaged the imagination of our traveller. If the wolves have gone, they have left in their stead a flourishing progeny of wolf-like curs, who infest the highways and byways in extraordinary numbers, to the embarrassment of the wheelman. IX. From Pradelles to Langogne is a long and deep descent, and while walking our machines down an unrideable path, a young woman on a terrace near the road came forward to greet us, tripping unexpectedly over the tether of a goat, and landing softly and naturally on the ground, where after her moment's surprise she smilingly asked, "_Où allez vous promener?_" more usually our bucolic greeting than "_D'où 'st-ce-que vous venez?_" the latter "sacramental phrase," on which Stevenson remarks, being possibly suggested in his case by the odd appearance of the traveller and his beast of burden. The bridge across the Allier at Langogne, where Stevenson met the "lassie of some seven or eight" who demanded whence he came, is now a crazy ruin, and a serviceable modern structure spans the river some little distance to the west of it. Near this place he camped for the night. He furnishes no information about his stay at Langogne, where, I should judge, he slept at one of the inns. The town must have altered greatly since he rested there, as it is now on the railway line to Villefort, and a considerable trade in coal seems to be carried on. It is also a popular summer resort, though one is at a loss to account for its attractions to holiday makers. Its church dates from the tenth century, and contains in a little chapel on the right, below the level of the nave, the image of Nôtre Dame de Tout-Pouvoir, which our landlady at the Cheval Blanc assured us was _très vénérée_, and the housemaid who conducted us thither took advantage of the occasion to tell her beads before the statue, keeping a roving eye on us as we wandered about the church. X. Stevenson's track now lay somewhat to the west of the course of the Allier, as he made for the little village of Cheylard l'Evêque, on the borders of the Forest of Mercoire, and in this stage of his journey he was more than usually faithful to his ideal of travel: "For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilisation, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints." There was no need for his quitting the highway, since his further objective lay due south through the pleasant valley of the Allier. But his diversion among the by-ways was rich in adventure, and furnished him with material for perhaps his best chapter, "A Camp in the Dark." He had the good fortune to lose his way after nightfall, and to be forced to camp in a wood of pines in happy ignorance of his whereabouts. When next morning he did reach Cheylard he was fain to confess that "it seemed little worthy of all this searching." With a less keen appetite for losing ourselves in a maze of muddy bullock-tracks, we pressed forward through the fresh green valley to Luc, and here rejoined the path of our adventurer once more. We had the road almost to ourselves, and among the few wayfarers I recall was a travelling knife-grinder, whom we passed near Luc engaged in the agreeable task of preparing his dinner, the first course of which, _potage au pain_, was simmering in a sooty pot over a fire of twigs. A nation of gourmets, verily, when the humblest among them can thus maintain the national art in the hedges. [Illustration: VILLAGE AND CASTLE OF LUC "Why anyone should desire to visit Luc is more than my much-inventing spirit can suppose."--R. L. S.] [Illustration: LA BASTIDE "At a place called La Bastide I was directed to leave the river." --R. L. S.] "Why anyone should desire to visit either Luc or Cheylard is more than my much inventing spirit can suppose." Thus our vagabond. But journeying at a more genial season of the year, we found the neighbourhood of Luc not devoid of beauty. The valley of the Allier is here broken into wide and picturesque gorges, and in many ways the scenery is reminiscent of Glen Coe, where Alan Breck and David Balfour dodged the redcoats. But late in September it would bear a very different aspect, and Stevenson tells us that "a more unsightly prospect at this season of the year it would be hard to fancy. Shelving hills rose round it on all sides, here dabbled with wood and fields, there rising to peaks alternately naked and hairy with pines. The colour throughout was black or ashen, and came to a point in the ruins of the castle of Luc, which pricked up impudently from below my feet, carrying on a pinnacle a tall white statue of Our Lady." There is now a railway station at Luc, the line running near the road all the way to La Bastide and as we continued southward that sunny June day, it was only the shrill noise of the crickets and the unusual quilt work of the diligently husbanded hillsides that told us we were not looking on a Perthshire landscape. In a sweet corner of the valley lies La Bastide, a drowsy little town despite its long connection with the railway, which existed even at the time of Stevenson's visit. Here, he tells us, "I was directed to leave the river, and follow a road that mounted on the left among the hills of Vivarais, the modern Ardèche; for I was now come within a little way of my strange destination, the Trappist monastery of Our Lady of the Snows." Thither we shall follow his steps, more closely than usual, as the road is too steep to admit of our cycling. For some distance the route lies through a great forest of pines, but when the crest of the hill is gained a far-reaching prospect greets the eye. "The sun came out as I left the shelter of a pine wood," writes R. L. S., "and I beheld suddenly a fine wild landscape to the south. High rocky hills, as blue as sapphire, closed the view, and between these lay ridge upon ridge, heathery, craggy, the sun glittering in veins of rock, the underwood clambering in the hollows, as rude as God made them at the first. There was not a sign of man's hand in all the prospect; and, indeed, not a trace of his passage, save where generation after generation had walked in twisted footpaths in and out among the beeches and up and down upon the channelled slopes." Only when the snow comes down and mantles these abundant hills would this description not apply. It is a perfect picture of what we saw. Presently we noted with no small satisfaction the white statue of the Virgin, which, standing by the highway at a point where a side road strikes northward through the pines, "directed the traveller to Our Lady of the Snows." He describes the pine wood as "a young plantation," but in the intervening years the trees have grown into a mighty forest, dark and mysterious, and the statue of Our Lady was so overshadowed by branches rich with cones, that it was impossible to get a satisfactory photograph of it. "Here, then," he continues, "I struck leftward, and pursued my way, driving my secular donkey before me, and creaking in my secular boots and gaiters, towards the asylum of silence." On our equally secular cycles we followed the same track, the roadway being dotted on each side with bundles of faggots gathered by the silent monks, probably for the use of the poor. XI. "I have rarely approached anything with more unaffected terror than the monastery of Our Lady of the Snows. This it is to have had a Protestant education," says Stevenson, as he recalls the feeling produced within him by the clanging of a bell at the monastery while he was not yet in sight of it. No bells clanged as we descended the road which Father Apollinaris was still in the act of making when Stevenson encountered him. We emerged at length from the shelter of the trees into a wide hollow of land, from which on every side the hills rose up, and where on our right were the outer walls of the monastery, plain plastered buildings, with little barred windows on the ground floor and a row without bars on the second story. On our left was a large saw-mill, where steam saws were giving shrill advertisement of their use. Several monks were among the workers at the mill, and a brown-coated figure was walking along the road that opened on our left beyond the timber sheds to some large white buildings which, as we afterwards learned, comprised the farm belonging to the monastery. The first impression was not exactly to touch one's feeling for romance. Trappists in the timber trade suggests a heading for a "snippet" periodical, and if the monks were silent, here at least were noises that smote unpleasantly on the ear. [Illustration: ROAD TO OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS Made by Father Apollinaris "with his own two hands in the space of a year."] [Illustration: THE MONASTERY "Modestine was led away by a layman to the stables, and I and my pack were received into Our Lady of the Snows."--R. L. S.] The buildings of Our Lady of the Snows are quite devoid of any architectural beauty. They are set four-square in the hollow, and the hills trend gently upward on every side richly clad with trees, for the monks have reforested much of the surrounding land, which is the property of the fraternity. The south side is occupied by a long, two-storied building, which contains the main entrance--a plain, whitewashed, barn-like structure--and buildings of a similar type adjoin it east and west, while the north side of the quadrangle is filled by the more pretentious masonry of the church, the chapter-house, and other religious offices, though even here the essential note of the architecture is austerity, the clock-tower being devoid of decoration and purely utilitarian. When endeavouring to photograph the buildings while the sun shone, an old man with a very red face, a very white beard and a very dirty white blouse came along, leaning feebly on his stick. He was delighted on being asked to become part of the picture, and begged me to wait a moment while he fixed on his left arm his _plaque_, whereon I read in brazen letters, "Gardien de la Propriété." This aged and infirm defender of the monastic estates was as proud of his _plaque_ as if it had been a medal won in war. There must be few attacks upon the property of the monastery, which he informed me extended as far as we could see in this windswept hollow of the hills, if our friend of the snowy beard and ruddy face stood for its defence! We were cheered to learn from him that there would be no difficulty in visiting the monastery, and if we wished we might be able to pass the night there. This we desired most heartily for various reasons, but chiefly because it was now close on six in the evening, and days are short in these latitudes. XII. We were told to go round to the chief gateway, and there to summon the Brother Porter by ringing the bell. This we did, with something of that "quaking heart" to which Stevenson confesses in the same act, for the clamour of a bell that one rings in a great silent building seems fraught with news of an offence for which one stands to receive the penalty. Nor do your spirits rise when a little shutter in the door is opened, and a grizzly-whiskered face in a brown hood peers through demanding your business. All was well, however. The Brother Porter admitted us to the courtyard, and went to summon one of the novitiates who, as Guest Father, would do us the honours of the monastery. He was, as I should judge, a young man of five-and-twenty, who came to us through a door on the right of the entrance that admitted to the hospice. Wearing the white flannel habit of the monks, with a black scapular hanging loose and bulky below the neck, he was of medium stature, his shaven face pleasant and comely, and his dark eyes of that unusual brilliance which Stevenson noted as "the only morbid sign" he could detect in the appearance of the monks. Our host bowed ceremoniously in shaking hands with us, and immediately escorted us across the trim garden to the monastic buildings at the other side of the quadrangle. During their period of novitiate, which lasts for three years, the monks have still the liberty to talk with strangers or with the lay brethren, but when their final vows are taken they are supposed to be inarticulate, except in performing the religious offices of each day. The Guest Father would in two years more be qualified for the silent life; meanwhile, he exercised his power of speech with so much grace that one felt truly sorry so excellent a talker should contemplate with cheerfulness the voluntary and useless atrophy of his divine gift. Very reverently he led us into the church, which is a plain but elegant building with a vaulted roof, the walls being whitewashed, and the woodwork, of which there is not too much, chastely carved. A number of good pictures are hung on the walls, and there is a series of statues of the saints on brackets, executed with some taste, and entirely free from the usual tawdry colouring of similar objects in French Catholic churches. The altar also is in welcome contrast to the common doll-show of the ordinary church, and although the oft-repeated references to the simplicity of the whole with which our excellent friend pointed out the various features of the place approached almost to affectation, one must bear ready witness to the apparent sincerity of these poor monks in their efforts towards a simpler circumstance of worship than the Roman Catholic Church in general practises. [Illustration: _Trappist Monks gathering roots for distilling_] [Illustration: _A Peep into the Library_ OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS] The chapter-house is in keeping with the church in point of restraint in decoration, its beautifully panelled walls giving the apartment a genial touch of warmth by contrast with the cold white of its groined roof. The library, which occupies a spacious room on the upper story of the north wing, is stocked with some twenty thousand volumes, chiefly in Latin and French, but including an excellent collection of works in Greek, religion and history being naturally the chief subjects represented. When we remember that many of the monks are men of no intellectual gifts and of small learning, being drawn largely from the peasant class and the military, we may doubt if the treasures of the library are in great request. The librarian, at least, must be a man of bookish tastes, since the collection is arranged in perfect order. Our guide assured us that the monastery possesses a copy of _Travels with a Donkey_, but he did not discover it for us. The refectory is a large and bare chamber occupying the lower story of the east wing. Long narrow tables of plain wood stand around the room, and on these are laid the simple utensils of the meal. The monks sit on a rude bench, and for the greater part of the year they take but one meal in twenty-four hours; but during the summer months, when one might suppose their needs to be less, they, by special indulgence, go so far towards temporising with the flesh as to eat twice in one day. R. L. S. was moved to a little disquisition on the subject of over-eating when he contemplated the dietetic restraint of the Trappist brethren. "Their meals are scanty, but even of these they eat sparingly," he writes; "and though each is allowed a small carafe of wine, many refrain from this indulgence. Without doubt, the most of mankind grossly overeat themselves; our meals serve not only for support, but as a hearty and natural diversion from the labour of life. Yet, though excess may be hurtful, I should have thought this Trappist regimen defective. And I am astonished, as I look back, at the freshness of face and the cheerfulness of manner of all whom I beheld. A happier nor a healthier company I should scarce suppose that I have ever seen. As a matter of fact, on this bleak upland, and with the incessant occupation of the monks, life is of an uncertain tenure, and death no infrequent visitor, at Our Lady of the Snows. This, at least, was what was told me. But if they die easily, they must live healthily in the meantime, for they seemed all firm of flesh and high in colour, and the only morbid sign that I could observe--an unusual brilliancy of the eye--was one that rather served to increase the general impression of vivacity and strength." On the topmost floor of the east wing we were shown the dormitory, a long and, as I recall it, a somewhat low-roofed room, divided into numerous little cubicles, each enclosed on three sides, and screened from the passage by a curtain of red cloth. The couch consisted of a single mattress laid on boards, with the scantiest supply of bedclothes. Each of these little compartments bore in painted letters the monastic name of its occupant, and here every night, after the toils and vigils of the day, the brethren lay themselves down at eight o'clock in their ordinary habit of dress, being in this respect less fanatical than other fraternities of the same order, who sleep in their coffins, and even in unduly ready graves. "By two in the morning," says R. L. S., "the clapper goes upon the bell, and so on, hour by hour, and sometimes quarter by quarter, till eight, the hour of rest; so infinitesimally is the day divided among different occupations. The man who keeps rabbits, for example, hurries from his hutches to the chapel, the chapter-room, or the refectory all day long: every hour he has an office to sing, a duty to perform; from two, when he rises in the dark, till eight, when he returns to receive the comfortable gift of sleep, he is upon his feet, and occupied with manifold and changing business. I know many persons, worth several thousands in the year, who are not so fortunate in the disposal of their lives. Into how many houses would not the note of the monastery bell, dividing the day into manageable portions, bring peace of mind and healthful activity of body. We speak of hardships, but the true hardship is to be a dull fool, and permitted to mismanage life in our own dull and foolish manner." XIII. On our way back to the hospice we learned with regret that Father Apollinaris, "so good and so simple," had been dead five years, and the right of the monastery to the title of Our Lady of the Snows was clearly established by the information that in the winter months it is buried for weeks on end, and our young friend of the shiny eyes shivered as he spoke of the _neige énorme_, which he is doomed to see every winter that he lives. [Illustration: MAIN STREET, LE BLEYMARD "From Bleymard I set out to scale a portion of the Lozère."--R. L. S.] [Illustration: RUINS OF THE HÔTEL DU LOT _On the Villefort-Mende road, at La Remise, near Le Bleymard_] In the hospice the apartments for the use of visitors and _retraitants_ are situated. To the right of the gateway on the ground level are the kitchens and storerooms, and a door opening at the foot of the stair admits one into a small and barely furnished room, where supper had been prepared for us. A small table covered with American cloth, with chairs set about it to accommodate perhaps eight or ten guests, were the chief items of furniture. There were a few prints of a religious character hung upon the walls, and to the right of the fireplace stood a little bookcase, containing, however, no works of interest. The meal served to us was well cooked and savoury, and as an excellent omelet formed its _pièce de résistance_, with soup, potato salad, walnuts, figs and cheese included, it needed none of the profuse apologies for poverty of fare with which it was set before us. We were afterwards shown our bedroom on the floor above, a fairly commodious room containing two iron bedsteads, with a more liberal supply of bedclothes than we saw in the dormitory of the monks, a small table and two chairs. A crucifix stood on the mantlepiece, and, as in some hotels, a printed sheet of regulations was fixed on the wall near the door. One may suppose it to have been a copy of that which Stevenson noted, for it wound up with an admonition to occupy one's spare time by examining one's conscience, confessing one's sins, and making good resolutions. "To make good resolutions, indeed!" comments R. L. S. "You might talk as fruitfully of making the hair grow on your head." So far as we could judge, the south wing at the time of our visit sheltered no other strangers than ourselves; nor did it appear there were any weary, world-worn laymen living here in retreat. At the time of Stevenson's sojourn among the monks there was quite a little company in the hospice, an English boarder, a parish priest, and an old soldier being some of the acquaintances he made in the little room where we had supped. But there is a constant and increasing number of visitors to the monastery, and immediately below our bedroom there was a large and well-stocked apartment that gave evidence of this. Here we found a varied supply of crucifixes and rosaries to suit all purses, samples of the different liqueurs distilled by the monks, and picture post cards in abundance. The Brother Porter, a simple boorish fellow, in vain spread his bottles in the sight of two who were not patrons of the stuff; but we reduced his stock of post cards and his rosaries. He took the money like a post office girl selling stamps. XIV. When we took our places in the little gallery that extends across the west side of the chapel to hear the monks chanting the last service of the day, _Compline_ and _Salve Regina_, we found that there was at least another visitor, in the person of a stout and blue-chinned _curé_. The white-robed monks were seated in their chairs in the choir, books upon their knees; while the organist in an elevated position on a level with the gallery played, unseen by us, "those majestic old Gregorian chants that, wherever you may hear them (in Meredith's fine phrase) seem to build up cathedral walls about you." Paraffin lamps shed a dim, uncertain light, and the rich full voices of the singers resounded weirdly through the white-walled chapel, the door opening now and again as some of the lay brothers entered and, crossing themselves, bowed wearily towards the altar, moving to their places below the gallery. After the elevation of the Host, and when the service was almost ended, the organist came down, and we noticed that in making his way out of the chapel he hung back a little in passing the choir screen, that he might not meet on his way to the door any of the brethren who were now slowly leaving. Of a similar service Stevenson writes: "There were none of those circumstances which strike the Protestant as childish or as tawdry in the public offices of Rome. A stern simplicity, heightened by the romance of the surroundings, spoke directly to the heart. I recall the whitewashed chapel, the hooded figures in the choir, the lights alternately occluded and revealed the strong manly singing, the silence that ensued, the sight of cowled heads bowed in prayer, and then the clear trenchant beating of the bell, breaking in to show that the last office was over, and the hour of sleep had come; and when I remember, I am not surprised that I made my escape into the court with somewhat whirling fancies, and stood like a man bewildered in the windy starry night." The effect of it all on the sentimental traveller was summed up in these fervent words: "And I blessed God that I was free to wander, free to hope, and free to love." This, indeed, must be the impression all robust and unfettered minds will receive from a visit to Our Lady of the Snows. It is true that in their busy saw-mill which stands to the west of the monastery, and where the timber from the hills is turned to commercial use by the monks and their lay assistants, in their well-managed farm some distance westward, in the surrounding fields, in their many workshops--in these they have varied occupations, and of a manly character, but the terrible uselessness of it all is ever present to the mind of one coming from the stress and struggle of the zestful world. Poor men! in their sullen way they may believe they have chosen the better part; but, simple and devout as they may be, they are the real cowards of life, the shirkers of the battle we are meant to fight. [Illustration: _Malavieille, a mountain sheiling_] [Illustration: _Scene of "A Night among the Pines"_ "Buckled into my sack, and smoking alone in the pine woods, between four and five thousand feet towards the stars."--R. L. S. ON THE LOZÈRE] We slept the sleep of tired men in our room upstairs, and heard none of those hourly bells Stevenson records. Our young friend, whose monastic name I foolishly omitted to ask, called us before eight in the morning, and after providing a capital breakfast, bade us a ceremonious good-bye, watching us from the door until the pine woods enclosed us. XV. We made a swift descent to La Bastide, and by way of Chasseradès, where Stevenson slept in the common bedroom of the inn, reached Le Bleymard late in the afternoon, passing through a country of bare hills and poor villages clustered in gusty hollows or hanging like swallows' nests on craggy slopes. The valley of the Lot, rich and beautiful westward to Mende, possesses no elements of charm in the neighbourhood of Bleymard, and we found that town so mean and featureless, that we had no wish to pass the evening there. The inn we wanted was, so a crippled girl told us, at La Remise, on the high road, and we must have passed it. We remounted our cycles and retraced our path across the river, a distance of perhaps three furlongs, and lo! there stood the charred remains of the Hôtel du Lot, where we had hoped to rest ourselves. We had passed the place without noticing it, and the view of its gaunt and smoky walls, now that they had acquired so personal an interest, chilled our hearts, for the need to rest and refresh ourselves was pressing. It was after sundown, and there lay between us and Pont de Montvert a mountain higher than Ben Nevis. Opposite the unlucky Hôtel du Lot stood a small _auberge_, kept by one Teissier. Two men were drinking absinth at a table by the doorway. One was a thick-set fellow, wearing eyeglasses, and clothed not unlike a foreman mechanic in England. The other was the familiar dark French type, thin of features, eyes bright as those of a consumptive, his beard ample and of a jet black, against which his ripe red lips showed noticeably. He was dressed like a clerk or _commerçant_. They made us welcome at their table, and we fell at once to discussing the situation, from which it was evident we could not hope to cross the Lozère that night. Some tourists had experienced a bad time traversing the mountain the previous Sunday, and as we could not hope to do more than reach the Baraque de Secours by nightfall, it would be madness to attempt the descent into the valley of the Tarn after dark, the road lying in many places along the lip of a precipice. Besides, this wayside inn was very well managed, said the absinth drinkers; they had lived there since being burned out across the way, a statement that cheered us not a little, as every other feature of the place was extremely uninviting. The landlady, who had shown no interest in us whatever, I found busy at a large cooking-range in a tiny kitchen, which opened off the common sitting-room, and served also for the living-room of the servants and familiar loungers. She was a woman of austere countenance, displaying like so many middle-aged Frenchwomen a considerable moustache; but I noticed that her teeth were white. Yes, she would be glad to supply dinner if we were to stay overnight. We were, I confessed without enthusiasm; whereupon she specified glibly the resources of her kitchen. We could have soup, trout, jugged hare, chicken, fillet of beef, potatoes, pastries, cheese, and other things, and by naming one dish and connecting it to the next with _et puis_, an aldermanic banquet seemed about to be conjured up from the dirty little room and its greasy stove. The common room of the inn had a sanded floor, and was furnished with a plain deal table, round which some country bumpkins were sitting on rush-bottomed chairs drinking beer and spitting freely in the sand. A few cheap oleographs nailed on the dingy walls were the only efforts at decoration. Two drab and unattractive girls gossiping with the customers appeared to be the staff of the hotel. I returned to the Frenchmen outside, and found that my companion, anxious not to enter the place until the last moment, was playing at a game resembling bowls with some village urchins, though understanding not one word of their speech. But he came up in a little while to learn the results of my inquiries within, and soon we were all engaged in a very entertaining discussion. It appeared that the Frenchmen were concerned in the zinc mines near Bleymard, him of the oily clothes being chief engineer, the other business manager. I suppose they would be the two best conditioned residents in the district, and here they were lodging at an hotel which, apart from cooking, was below the standard of comfort to be found in a crimp's den in the region of Ratcliffe Highway. The Frenchman is a wonderfully adaptable creature: give him a table to drink at, a chair to sit upon, and a bed anywhere under a roof, and he can contrive to be happy. [Illustration: _The Baraque de Secours_] [Illustration: "The Lozère lies nearly east and west; its highest point, this Pic de Finiels, on which I was then standing, rises upwards of 5,600 feet above the sea."--R. L. S. ON THE LOZÈRE] M. l'Ingénieur, although he spoke no English, had seen something of the world, and had even been to Klondyke. He could not understand why anyone should have wandered to such a hole as this--for pleasure! But he expected that next year's guide-books would describe Bleymard as notable for the ruins of the Hôtel du Lot. A wag, obviously. If we wanted to see places worth looking at, there was Nice and Nîmes, said his friend M. Barbenoire. Together they extolled, with a rare gush of adjectives, the beauty of these places, and promised to show us picture postcards that would lure us into visiting them. Tourists did come sometimes to climb the Lozère, from the top of which in clear weather one might see the Alps. The engineer laughed merrily at this, and said the story was as much legend as the exploits of the beast of Gévaudan. He discussed in a very practical mind the question of miners' wages, and thought that the Bleymard zinc workers were better off with four francs a day than English miners with five or six shillings. Sooner than we had expected dinner was declared ready, and we went inside with no great avidity; but to our surprise we found the meal laid in a little room at the other end of the drinking den, tolerably clean though dingy and tasteless in its appointments. There we were joined by the wife of M. Barbenoire and two immense dogs of unfamiliar breed. The maid who served us was engagingly free from the usual formalities of the table, and between the courses would sit coyly on the knee of the engineer, munching a piece of bread; but for the rest, ours was no Barmecide feast. The aldermanic banquet appeared in all essentials save the serving, and we fared so well that we began to hope our bedroom would even be comfortable. When, later in the evening, we took our courage in both hands and penetrated to the upper story by way of a spiral iron staircase through the kitchen roof and along a dark lobby of loose boards, we were heartened not a little to find in our room two good beds, clean and curtained. Sleep was thus assured, though the smell from the stable through the wall was redolent of rats. It was "a wonderful clear night of stars" when we looked out of our window before retiring, and we went to bed determined upon an early start. The bellowing of the oxen in the stable and the shouts of the _buveurs_ below did not come long between us and the drowsy god. XVI. Alas! at dawn next day we looked forth on a blank wall of mist backing the ruins across the road. Not a hill was visible. We sought our beds again, and by nine o'clock the outlook was only slightly improved, the nearest hills, now resonant with sheep-bells, being in sight. The engineer comforted us with the assurance that this was the common weather in June, the best time of the year being from July to October, but he thought the mists might clear before noon. Presently it began to rain, and during the whole day there was not half an hour of clear weather. At times the atmosphere would thin a little, only to show us heavy clouds condensing on the higher hills. Thus prisoned in our room, we contrived to be comfortable, and I believe that another day would have left us wondering why we had dreaded staying at the inn, so soon does the human mind adapt itself to circumstances. The rain-sodden streets actually provided entertainment. We watched with interest the coming and going of shepherds and their flocks, the former armed with commodious umbrellas and their sheep shorn in a way that left a lump of wool upon their backs making them comically like little camels. Many bullock wagons loaded with shale passed by, and we noticed that the slightest touch with the driver's wand served to direct the team, whose heads were, to quote our hero, "fixed to the yoke like those of caryatides below a ponderous cornice." Children played out and in the stables and among the ruins, and an old man, wearing the usual dress of the peasant, with pink socks showing above his sabots, his hands thrust deep in his pockets, and a stick under his arm, wandered aimlessly to and fro in the rain most of the day. The stage-coach from Villefort to Mende rested for a time at the inn, causing a flicker of excitement, and in the evening again the mine officials were there to bear us company. The engineer proved himself a thorough-paced sceptic of the modern French sort. His opinion of the country-folk was low--hypocrites, fools, money-grubbers all! Holding up a five-franc piece, he averred that for this they would sell mother, daughter, sister; and then similarly elevating a bundle of paper-money, he exclaimed: "_Voilà, le Grand Dieu._" "This is a Catholic countryside?" I said. "Yes," he replied, "but that makes no difference." "There is one Protestant in Bleymard," put in Barbenoire,--"myself!" "And he isn't up to much," added the cynic. [Illustration: "A cluster of black roofs, the village of Cocurès sitting among vineyards."--R. L. S.] [Illustration: _Bridge over the Tarn at "Pont de Montvert of bloody memory," and view of the Hôtel des Cevennes where Stevenson stayed._] XVII. "We shall set out at five in the morning," I said to the landlady before going upstairs, and the engineer signalled to us as we left the room the outstretched fingers of his right hand twice; wherein he proved something of a prophet, for it was nearer ten o'clock than five before we determined to risk the mountain journey, the sky being clear in parts and the rain clouds scudding before a high wind, that promised a comparatively dry day. On the bridge across the Lot at Bleymard we were hailed by a man in labouring clothes, who smiled broadly and said, "Me speak Engleesh." As we had not met a single Frenchman between Orleans and this spot who pretended to have any knowledge of our native tongue, we tarried to have speech with this cheery-faced fellow, whose white teeth shone through a reedy black moustache. But his lingual claims did not bear inspection. Beyond saying that he had visited London and Liverpool, and knew what "shake hands" meant, and that English tobacco was better worth smoking than the French trash--a hint which I accepted by presenting my pouch--he could not go in our island speech; and so we had to continue our chat in French that was bad on both sides, his accent resembling a Yorkshireman's English, and mine--let us say an Englishman's French. He was certain we should have no more rain, as the wind was in the north, and if it kept dry to twelve o'clock we could depend on a good day. The weather prophet is the same in all lands, and we had not left him half an hour when we were sheltering from a sudden downpour. For some miles we had to plod upward on foot in a wild and rocky gorge, with the merest trickle of water below. Yet every corner where a few square feet of clover could be coaxed into life had been cultivated by the dogged peasants, and patches were growing at heights where one would have thought it difficult to climb without the ropes of an Alpinist. Many of these mountain plots were miles away from any dwelling, a fact that conveys some idea of the barren nature of the country. The tiny hamlet of Malavieille, about half-way up the mountain side, is the highest point permanently inhabited. It is a mere handful of dark-grey houses, covered on slates and walls with a vivid yellow fungus. Here the upland fields were densely spread with violets, narcissi and hyacinths, and a few dun cows were browsing contentedly on this fragrant fare, while a boy who attended them stood on his head kicking his heels merrily in the sunshine. He came up as we passed, staring at us stolidly; and when we asked if the snakes, of which we had just encountered two about three feet long, were dangerous, he answered, "_Pas bien_," and more than that we could not get him to say, though he walked beside us for a time eyeing curiously our bicycles. XVIII. When we had come within sight of the Baraque de Secours, we had reached a sort of table-land reaching east and west for some miles. Eastward lay the pine woods where our vagabond spent one of his most tranquil nights as described in his chapter, "A Night Among the Pines." It was there that, awaking in the morning, he beheld the daybreak along the mountain-tops of Vivarais--"a solemn glee possessed my mind at this gradual and lovely coming in of day." And it was there, too, that out of thankfulness for his night's rest he laid on the turf as he went along pieces of money, "until I had left enough for my night's lodging." Some of it may be there to this day, for there is small human commerce at this altitude, a shepherd or two being the only folk we saw until we arrived at the shelter which we had seen for more than half an hour while we cycled arduously toward it. The baraque is a plain two-storied building, with a rough stone wall and porch enclosing a muddy yard. It stands at a height of over five thousand feet, being thus fully five hundred feet higher than Ben Nevis. To the west the Lozère swells upward, a great treeless waste, to its highest point, the Pic de Finiels, 5,600 feet above sea-level; while a splendid mass of volcanic origin uprears its craggy head some little distance to the south-east. "The view, back upon the northern Gévaudan," says Stevenson, writing of what he saw as he passed near this point, "extended with every step; scarce a tree, scarce a house, appeared upon the fields of wild hill that ran north, east, and west, all blue and gold in the haze and sunlight of the morning." And then in a little, when he began the descent towards the valley of the Tarn, he says: "A step that seemed no way more decisive than many other steps that had preceded it--and, 'like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes he stared on the Pacific,' I took possession, in my own name, of a new quarter of the world. For behold, instead of the gross turf rampart I had been mounting for so long, a view into the hazy air of heaven, and a land of intricate blue hills below my feet." As he makes no mention of the baraque, I venture to suppose that it had not then been built, for one so eager of new experience would not have missed the opportunity of resting on his way at this high-set hostel. A dead sheep--one of several we had seen on the mountain--lay on the road by the gate, and propping our bicycles near it, we picked our way through the mud and knocked at the door. [Illustration: _Waterfall on the Lozère, on Stevenson's route between Finiels and Pont de Montvert_] [Illustration: _In the valley of the Tarn: Scene of Stevenson's camp under the chestnuts on the hillside_] A gruff voice bade us enter. We stepped into a smoky room, with an earthern floor, containing a rough wooden table and two rude benches, and in a corner a small round table, a few chairs and a plain wooden dresser. The mouth that had emitted a very gutteral "_Ongtray_" belonged to a man of small stature but brigandish appearance, who was seated at the smaller table eating industriously. We asked for lemonade and biscuits, but the fellow stared at the words and spoke in a patois that was Greek to me. But when I explained more sententiously that we desired something to eat and drink, he disappeared up a wooden stair, and we knew that a bottle of atrocious red wine, which we would welcome as so much vinegar, would be forthcoming. Meanwhile, the man's wife--a fair-haired little woman with cheeks like red apples, dressed in the universal black of the French country-wife--came in, leading a youngster by the hand. I repeated to her our wants, which she immediately proceeded to meet by breaking four eggs into a pan, the shells being dropped on the floor, and lo! an omelet was well on the way by the time her husband in his sabots came clattering down the stairs with the undesired wine, a few drops of which we used to colour the clear cold water we took in our tumblers from a pipe that ran ceaselessly into a basin set in the wall of the room that backed to the rising land. There is one respect in which the Cevennols have progressed since Stevenson went among them. He writes: "In these Hedge-inns the traveller is expected to eat with his own knife; unless he ask, no other will be supplied: with a glass, a whang of bread, and an iron fork, the table is completely laid." Not so had we found it in any of the inns we visited, all had risen to the dignity of knives and forks; but here at this house in the wilds our table was laid precisely as Stevenson describes, and the bread being hard, it was a temptation to break it across the knee like a piece of wood. We had almost finished our meal when, after some whisperings between the man and woman, the fellow dived into his pockets and produced a great clasp knife, which he opened and handed to us. While we sat and carried on a somewhat faltering conversation--for both man and woman spoke the dialect of Languedoc and were superbly ignorant--two men entered of the same brigandish type as the landlord, and, speaking better French, proffered their services as guides if we desired to scale the Pic de Finiels. This we had no desire to do, especially when they were frank enough to state that the view from the top was of very little interest. But they urged us to see the magnificent view over the entire range of the Cevennes from the more westerly peak, the Signal des Laubies. This, however, would have taken us some two hours, and we had a long way to travel that day. We were curious to know whether the baraque was tenanted in winter, and one of the guides told us that during the winter the whole of the uplands around us lay deep in snow, the roads being quite impassable. This shelter was only open from the beginning of June to the end of September, when its keepers retired downhill again to Malavieille. R. L. S. crossed the mountain on the second last day in September, so that the snows would soon be lying on his track. When we resumed our journey again we were once or twice beguiled into thinking that we saw some of the snows of yester year lying among the grey and lichened rocks, but a nearer approach turned the drifts into flocks of sheep, which the sombre background rendered snowy white by contrast. XIX. We went forward into the country of the Camisards along a well-made road which gangs of labourers were leisurely repairing. So good are these mountain roads, and so diligently tended, that one is inclined to think they are used chiefly for the transit of stones to keep them in repair. That on which we travelled has been made since Modestine and her driver footed it through this same valley. In less than a mile from the baraque it begins to sweep swiftly downward. Stevenson thus describes his descent: "A sort of track appeared and began to go down a breakneck slope, turning like a corkscrew as it went. It led into a valley through falling hills, stubbly with rocks like a reaped field of corn, and floored farther down with green meadows. I followed the track with precipitation; the steepness of the slope, the continual agile turning of the line of descent, and the old unwearied hope of finding something new in a new country, all conspired to lend me wings. Yet a little lower and a stream began, collecting itself together out of many fountains, and soon making a glad noise among the hills. Sometimes it would cross the track in a bit of waterfall, with a pool, in which Modestine refreshed her feet. The whole descent is like a dream to me, so rapidly was it accomplished. I had scarcely left the summit ere the valley closed round my path, and the sun beat upon me, walking in a stagnant lowland atmosphere." [Illustration: "CLARISSE" _The Waitress at the Hôtel des Cevennes, from a photograph supplied by the Pasteur at Pont de Montvert_ "The features, although fleshy, were of an original and accurate design; her mouth had a curl; her nostril spoke of dainty pride." --R. L. S.] If his descent was thus, how much more so ours on our whirling wheels? We encountered numerous cattle-drovers, whose herds spread themselves across the path and rendered our progress somewhat perilous, as neither hedge nor stone stood between us and the abyss. There is but little population in the valley, and that centred in two small hamlets, though we observed a number of deserted cabins which Stevenson also notes. The river, too, as it nears the larger Tarn was all his magic pen had pictured; here it "foamed awhile in desperate rapids, and there lay in pools of the most enchanting sea-green shot with watery browns. As far as I have gone, I have never seen a river of so changeful and delicate a hue: crystal was not more clear, the meadows were not by half so green." Our road brought us at length to Pont de Montvert "of bloody memory," which lies in a green and rocky hollow among the hills. To Stevenson "the place, with its houses, its lanes, its glaring river-bed, wore an indescribable air of the south." Why so, he was unable to say; as he justly observes, it would be difficult to tell in what particulars it differed from Monastier or Langogne or even Bleymard. One of the first buildings that the traveller encounters is the little Protestant temple perched on the rocky bank of the river, and perhaps it was again the Protestant education of R. L. S. that led him to note a higher degree of intelligence among the inhabitants than he had found in the purely Catholic villages. For my part, with the best will to mark the difference, I found little to choose between the Catholic and Camisard townships, unless it were a more obvious effort after cleanliness in some of the latter. XX. Pont de Montvert is memorable as the place where the Covenanters of France struck the first blow against their Romish persecutors; here they "slew their Archbishop Sharpe." The Protestant pastor, a fresh-faced man about sixty, with a short white beard, and wearing no outward symbol of office, but dressed in an ordinary jacket suit and cloth cap, we found in his home in a building by the river-side near the bridge. Directly across the rock-strewn course was the Hôtel des Cevennes, where Stevenson sat at the "roaring table d'hôte," and was pleased to find three of the women passably good-looking, that being more than an average for any town in the Highlands of France. Our pastor--his wife and golden-haired daughter also--was more interested in discussing Stevenson's travels than the religious condition of his district, a subject on which my companion, pastor from "the Celtic fringe," was athirst for information. To my various questions regarding the position of the Reformed Church I received the barest answers; there was no glowing enthusiasm _chez le pasteur_ for the Camisards who a stone's-throw from where we sat stabbed with many superfluous thrusts the Archpriest Du Chayla, their most brutal persecutor. But Stevenson and his donkey--ah, that was another matter! He knew all about them to the year, the day, the hour of their quaint and curious visit; he was himself only two years established in his charge at the time. And Clarisse! We knew, of course, what Stevenson had said of her? Would we care to see her photograph? She was now married, and settled in another town with a considerable family growing around her. One felt that after a quarter of a century, and with a family thrown in, Stevenson would have resolutely refused to look on the counterfeit presentment of Clarisse. But, less scrupulous, we chose to see her portrait, and the pastor was good enough to present me with a copy, as he possessed several which he had procured three years before when ordering one for an Englishman who had gone over the trail of R. L. S. The _carte_ shows the table-maid of the hotel as still possessing some of the featural charms so minutely and faithfully noted by our author. "What shall I say of Clarisse?" he writes. "She waited the table with a heavy placable nonchalance, like a performing cow; her great grey eyes were steeped in amorous langour; her features, although fleshy, were of an original and accurate design; her mouth had a curl; her nostrils spoke of dainty pride; her cheek fell into strange and interesting lines. It was a face capable of strong emotion, and with training it offered the promise of delicate sentiment.... Before I left I assured Clarisse of my hearty admiration. She took it like milk, without embarrassment or wonder, merely looking at me steadily with her great eyes; and I own the result upon myself was some confusion. If Clarisse could read English, I should not dare to add that her figure was unworthy of her face. Hers was a case for stays; but that may perhaps grow better as she gets up in years." When I look again at the photograph, I fear that even this hope for her who was "left to country admirers and a country way of thought," has not been fulfilled. [Illustration: THE TARN VALLEY AT LA VERNÈDE "It was but a humble place, called La Vernède, with less than a dozen houses and a Protestant chapel on a knoll. There, at the inn, I ordered breakfast."--R. L. S.] The pastor came with us to point out Du Chayla's house, which stands on the river side westward of his own, the spire of the modern Catholic church showing above the roof. Perhaps it was only natural that he should look upon so familiar an object without any show of emotion, though my fellow-traveller set it down to the cold Christless teaching of the _Eglise libérale_, to which section of the French Reformed Church Pont de Montvert is attached. In that three-storied house, with its underground dungeons and stout-walled garden trending down to the river, the Archpriest carried on "the Propagation of the Faith" by such ungentle methods as plucking out the hairs of the beard, enclosing the hands of his Protestant prisoners upon live coal, "to convince them," as R. L. S. quaintly observes, "that they were deceived in their opinions." On the 24th July, 1702, led by their "prophet" Séguier, a band of some fifty Camisards attacked the house of the Archpriest, to which they at length set fire, and thus forced Du Chayla and his military guard to attempt escape. The Archpriest, in lowering himself from an upper window by means of knotted sheets, fell and broke his leg, and there in the garden, where a woman was to-day hanging out shabby clothes to dry, the Covenanters had their vengeance of stabs. "'This,' they said, 'is for my father broken on the wheel. This for my brother in the galleys. That for my mother or my sister imprisoned in your cursed convents.' Each gave his blow and his reason; and then all kneeled and sang psalms around the body till the dawn." Save for a new roof, the building remains much as it was two hundred years ago. XXI. The road, for close on two miles out of Pont de Montvert, goes uphill past the Catholic church--the town being now about equally divided in the matter of religion--and then it is a long and gentle descent to Florac. In no respect has the road changed since Stevenson wrote of it, nor is there any likelihood that it will be altered ere the crack of doom. "A smooth sandy ledge, it runs about half-way between the summit of the cliffs and the river in the bottom of the valley; and I went in and out, as I followed it, from bays of shadow into promontories of afternoon sun. This was a pass like that of Killiecrankie; a deep turning gully in the hills, with the Tarn making a wonderful hoarse uproar far below, and craggy summits standing in the sunshine far above." The slopes of the valley have been terraced almost to the sky-line, not for baby-fields of wheat, but to furnish ground for chestnut trees, that clothe the hills with rich and sombre foliage, and give forth "a faint, sweet perfume," which tinctures the air with balsamic breath. R. L. S. goes into raptures over these chestnuts;--"I wish I could convey a notion of the growth of these noble trees; of how they strike out boughs like the oak, and trail sprays of drooping foliage like the willow; of how they stand on upright fluted columns like the pillars of a church; or, like the olive, from the most shattered bole can put out smooth and useful shoots, and begin a new life upon the ruins of the old.... And to look down upon a level filled with these knolls of foliage, or to see a clan of old, unconquerable chestnuts clustered 'like herded elephants' upon the spur of a mountain, is to rise to higher thoughts of the powers that are in Nature." It was on a terrace and under one of these trees that he camped for the night, having to scramble up some sixty feet above the place he had selected for himself, which was as high as that from the road, before he could find another terrace with space enough for his donkey. He was awakened in the morning by peasants coming to prune the trees, and after going down to the river for his morning toilet--"To wash in one of God's rivers in the open air seems to me a sort of cheerful solemnity or semi-pagan act of worship"--he went on his way "with a light and peaceful heart, and sang psalms to the spiritual ear as I advanced." Some little way from where he had slept he foregathered with an old man in a brown nightcap, "clear-eyed, weather-beaten, with a faint, excited smile," who said to him after a while, "_Connaissez-vous le Seigneur?_" The old fellow was delighted when the donkey-driver answered, "Yes, I know Him; He is the best of acquaintances," and together they journeyed on, discussing the spiritual condition of the country-folk. "Thus, talking like Christian and Faithful by the way, he and I came upon a hamlet by the Tarn. It was but a humble place, called La Vernède, with less than a dozen houses, and a Protestant chapel on a knoll. Here he dwelt, and here at the inn I ordered my breakfast. The inn was kept by an agreeable young man, a stonebreaker on the road, and his sister, a pretty and engaging girl." We found this little hamlet even smaller than we expected, some half-dozen houses and a tiny place of worship, the whole lying below the level of the main road, so that one could have thrown a stone on their roofs, well-tilled fields and meadows stretching down to the river. A _cantonnier_ who was busy breaking stones by the roadway helped us to identify the place, and was proud to confess himself a Protestant, in common with the little handful of his fellow-villagers. The country grows richer and more fruitful as we approach Florac, passing on our way the old castle of Miral and a picturesque church compounded of an ancient battlemented monastery and some modern buildings with a tall tower. [Illustration: IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN "The road led me past the old Castle of Miral on a steep."--R. L. S.] [Illustration: NEAR FLORAC "Past a battlemented monastery long since broken up and turned into a church and parsonage."--R. L. S.] The influence of a country on its people suggested to R. L. S. an interesting comparison as he journeyed through "this landscape, smiling although wild." "Those who took to the hills for conscience sake in Scotland had all gloomy and bedevilled thoughts," he writes; "for once that they received God's comfort, they would be twice engaged with Satan; but the Camisards had only bright and supporting visions.... With a light conscience, they pursued their life in these rough times and circumstances. The soul of Séguier, let us not forget, was like a garden. They knew they were on God's side, with a knowledge that has no parallel among the Scots; for the Scots, although they might be certain of the cause, could never rest confident of the person." A singularly inapposite comparison. It was not in pleasant valleys such as these, or in cosy little towns like Pont de Montvert, that the Camisards fought out their war with "His Most Christian Majesty Louis, King of France and Brittany," but on the bare and rocky plateaus westward of the Cevennes, and on such mountain-tops as the Lozère. Stevenson had never seen the Causse Méjan or the Causse du Larzac, to the southward of the region through which he travelled, or he would have realised that their conditions were even less likely to foster "bright and supporting visions" in the Camisards than those of the mountain-hunted Scots, though much better from a strategic point of view. XXII. Florac is a small town of white houses, cuddled between the eastern front of the Causse Méjan and the western foothills of the Cevennes, with the river Tarnon, joined by the Mimente to the south, running northward on its outskirts. There are only two thousand inhabitants, but the number and excellence of Florac's hotels are accounted for by its being an important centre for tourists visiting the gorges of the Tarn, which, totally unknown to the outer world at the time of Stevenson's journey, are now admitted to possess the finest scenery in Europe. Our French guide-book frankly stated that Florac is a place "of few attractions," but R. L. S. makes the most of these in a sentence or two, describing the town as possessing "an old castle, an alley of planes, many quaint street-corners, and a live fountain welling from the hill." The old castle is quite without interest, and is indeed the local prison, while the alley of planes, called the Esplanade, is a dusty open space, with many cafés lining it, and the grey, featureless Protestant Temple at its southern end. "It is notable, besides," he adds, "for handsome women, and as one of two capitals, Alais being the other, of the country of the Camisards." I do not recall having noticed an unusual number of handsome women, though the wife of the Free Church minister was quite the prettiest French woman we saw in the Cevennes, and the Established Church pastor's wife perhaps the most cultured. R. L. S. found the townsfolk anxious to talk of the part played by Florac in the days of the Camisards, and was delighted to see Catholic and Protestant living together in peace and amity. But it may be that the conspicuous absence of all windows from the lower parts of the Protestant churches is a memorial of times when the adherents of the reformed religion were subjected to the prying eyes and perchance the more dangerous attentions of the Catholics without. Most of the public officials were named to us as Protestants, and the religious differences are as strongly marked between the two sects of the latter as between them and their townsmen of the Roman communion. The larger and State-supported church is Rationalistic, corresponding to our Unitarian, and the smaller a Free Church, with a symbol of the open Bible above its doorway. In what we might call the Free Manse, really an extension of the church for the housing of the minister, a door communicating between the place of worship and the domestic apartments, we found M. Illaire and his wife at play with their children--homely folk, who gave us a cordial welcome, the heartier for the fact that Mme. Illaire had stayed for a year in that "quaint, grey-castled city, where the bells clash of a Sunday, and the wind squalls, and the salt showers fly and beat"--Stevenson's own romantic birth-town. She could thus speak our native tongue, and my companion, for once in a way, needed none of my interpreting. M. Illaire, an essential Frenchman, swarthy of features, slight of build, voluble and gesticulative, discoursed with shining eyes of Protestantism, but was something of a pessimist, and seemed to think that at best a cold, bloodless Dieism would rule the intellectual France of the future. I gathered that, as in the old days of enmity between the Established and Free kirks of Scotland, there was no traffic between the two Protestant churches in Florac, for Mme. Illaire confessed that she had never seen the inside of the Temple, which we had thoroughly inspected earlier in the afternoon, receiving the key from the pastor's wife, whose husband unfortunately was absent on a visit to Montpellier. [Illustration: FLORAC "On a branch of the Tarn stands Florac. It is notable as one of the two capitals, Alais being the other, of the country of the Camisards."--R. L. S.] XXIII. The route of R. L. S. now lay along the valley of the Mimente, which branches eastward a little south of Florac, and penetrates a country very similar to that traversed between the Lozère and this point. It was only a few miles from Florac that he spent his last night _à la belle étoile_ in the valley of this little river, noting in one of his finest sentences the coming of night: "A grey pearly evening shadow filled the glen; objects at a little distance grew indistinct and melted bafflingly into each other; and the darkness was rising steadily like an exhalation." At Cassagnas he was in the very heart of the Camisard country, where there is little to engage one but the historic associations of the district. At St. Germain de Calberte, six miles to the south-west, reached by a rough and difficult road more suitable for the foot than the wheel, he slept at the inn, and the next afternoon (Thursday, 3rd October) he accomplished the eight remaining miles through the waterless valley of the Gardon to St. Jean du Gard--"fifteen miles and a stiff hill in little beyond six hours." There came the parting with the companion of his travels, Modestine finding a ready purchaser at much below prime cost. "For twelve days we had been fast companions," he writes on his last page: "we had travelled upwards of a hundred and twenty miles, crossed several respectable ridges, and jogged along with our six legs by many a rocky and many a boggy by-road. After the first day, although sometimes I was hurt and distant in manner, I still kept my patience; and as for her, poor soul! she had come to regard me as a god. She loved to eat out of my hand. She was patient, elegant in form, the colour of an ideal mouse, and inimitably small. Her faults were those of her race and sex; her virtues were her own. Farewell! and if for ever---- Father Adam wept when he sold her to me; after I had sold her in my turn, I was tempted to follow his example; and being alone with the stage driver and four or five agreeable young men, I did not hesitate to yield to my emotion." We are to imagine R. L. S. thus tearfully occupied in the stage-coach bearing him east to Alais, an important industrial town on the main line northward through Le Puy, whither there is no call to follow him. We have the romantic regions of the Causses and the Tarn gorges still to explore. Our way, no longer a pilgrim's path, lies westward. Along the Route of "An Inland Voyage" "Now, to be properly enjoyed, a walking tour should be gone upon alone. If you go in company, or even in pairs, it is no longer a walking tour in anything but name. It is something else, and more in the nature of a picnic. A walking tour should be gone upon alone, because freedom is of the essence; because you should be able to stop and go on, and follow this way or that as the freak takes you, and because you must have your own pace, and neither tramp alongside a champion walker, nor mince in time with a girl. And then you must be open to all impressions, and let yourself take colour from what you see. You should be as a pipe for any wind to play upon." I. Thus wrote Stevenson in one of his essays, but I doubt if he ever put into practice this engaging theory of his. He came nearest to being alone when he undertook his famous tour through the Cevennes; yet a donkey, and one of so much character as his Modestine, is company of a sort. When he made the first of his little journeys with a literary end in view, he had a companion after his own heart in the late Sir Walter Simpson, to whom the first of his books, _An Inland Voyage_, is dedicated. That was, however, an enterprise of some adventure, and it was well that the author had a companion, for had he fared forth alone in his frail canoe, as did his great exemplar John MacGregor, in the _Rob Roy_, it is doubtful if _An Inland Voyage_--not to say all that came after it--had ever been written. In a letter sent from Compiègne during the voyage, he gives a very cheerless picture of the business: "We have had deplorable weather, quite steady ever since the start; not one day without heavy showers, and generally much wind and cold wind forby.... Indeed, I do not know if I would have stuck to it as I have done if it had not been for professional purposes." I suspect that no less potent an influence than "professional purposes" in raising his courage to the height of the occasion, was the companionship of "My dear Cigarette," as he addresses Sir Walter, whose canoe had been named _Cigarette_, that of Stevenson sporting the classic title _Arethusa_. Fortunately for the reading world, the voyage, despite its discomforts, had happy issue in one of the most charming books that came from the pen of the essayist, and although hints are not lacking of the shadows through which the canoeists passed, the sunshine of a gay and bright spirit is radiant on every page. [Illustration: BOOM ON THE RUPEL "Boom is not a nice place."--R. L. S.] [Illustration: VILLEVORDE ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL "The rest of the journey to Villevorde, we still spread our canvas to the unfavouring air."--R. L. S.] As it had been my pleasant fortune in the summer of 1903, together with a friend, to follow the footsteps of Stevenson in his travels among the Cevennes, and the pilgrimage having proved plentiful of literary interest, it seemed to me that one might find in a journey by road along the route of "An Inland Voyage" as much of interest, and certainly some measure of personal pleasure. Moreover, with the disciple's daring, often greater than the master's, I desired to test the plan of going alone. But it was more by happy chance than any planning of mine that I betook myself, with my bicycle, to Antwerp at precisely the same season that, eight-and-twenty years before, Stevenson and his companion set out upon their canoe voyage by river and canal, from that ancient port to the town of Pontoise, near the junction of the Seine and Oise, and within hail of Paris. In the preface to the first edition of _An Inland Voyage_, its author expresses the fear that he "might not only be the first to read these pages, but the last as well," and that he "might have pioneered this very smiling tract of country all in vain, and found not a soul to follow in my steps." That others have been before me in my late pilgrimage is more than probable, although I have found no trace of them; but perhaps I have not searched with care, for I would fain flatter myself that here, as in the Cevennes, I found a field of interest where there had been no passing of many feet. II. Antwerp seems a town so antique that no change of modern handiwork can alter in any vital way its grey old features. Yet in my own acquaintance with it, on its outward quarters at least, it has taken on surprisingly the veneer of modern Brussels, though by the river-side it remains much as it was when, in the later days of August, 1876, the _Cigarette_ and the _Arethusa_, with their adventurous occupants, were launched into the Scheldt to the no small excitement of the loungers about the docks. There must have been some excitement, too, in the breasts of the voyagers, but, like the true Scots they were, we can well believe they gave no show of it. Stevenson had never been in a canoe under sail before, and to tie his sheet in so frail a craft in the middle of a wide and busy river called for no contemptible degree of courage. But he tied his sheet. "I own I was a little struck by this circumstance myself," he writes. "Of course, in company with the rest of my fellow-men, I had always tied the sheet in a sailing-boat; but in so little and crank a concern as a canoe, and with these charging squalls, I was not prepared to find myself follow the same principle, and it inspired me with some contemptuous views of our regard for life. It is certainly easier to smoke with the sheet fastened; but I had never before weighed a comfortable pipe of tobacco against an obvious risk, and gravely elected for the comfortable pipe. It is a common-place that we cannot answer for ourselves before we have been tried. But it is not so common a reflection, and surely more consoling, that we usually find ourselves a great deal braver and better than we thought." There is but little of interest up the river, which waters a level, unpicturesque country to Rupelmonde, where the canoeists would bid good-bye to the Scheldt and steer to the south-east up the Rupel, a broad and smooth-flowing stream that joins the greater water at this point. Against the current they would urge their tiny prows until they arrived after a journey of a few miles at the town of Boom, whence the canal extends to Brussels in an almost straight line: As I made my way that grey autumn morning through the little villages and along the tree-lined highway, the brown leaves flickering down in the cold wind that stirred among the branches, it pleased me to fancy how Stevenson, had his youth fallen in the days of the bicycle, would have enjoyed the privilege of riding on the Belgian footpath, which to us who live in a land where no cyclist dare mount his machine except on the highway affords a delightful sensation of lawlessness. It is well to observe, however, that but for this right of the footpath there would be no cyclist in all Flanders or Northern France, since highways and by-ways there are made of the most indiscriminate cobbles, and in the remote country places a cart on the lonely road moves with as great a clatter as one on the stony streets of Edinburgh. III. I was no great way from Boom when I saw advancing a high and narrow structure, drawn by a horse, that progressed to the weird and irregular clangor of a heavy bell, reminding me curiously of Stevenson's moving description of the leper bell in _The Black Arrow_. When I came up with the horse and its burden, I found the latter to consist of a large circular tank, set on four wheels, with a tall box in front for the driver, above whose head a large bell was suspended. The word "Petrol," painted on the tank, indicated its contents. Here, surely, was something that made the days of the canoe voyage seem remote indeed; the peddling vendor of petrol belongs emphatically to the new century. [Illustration: THE ALLEE VERTE AT LAEKEN The head-quarters of the "Royal Sport Nautique" is hidden among the trees on the left of the picture.] [Illustration: THE SAMBRE AT MAUBEUGE It was at this point, "on the Sambre canalised," that the canoe voyage began in earnest.] "Boom is not a nice place, and is only remarkable for one thing: that the majority of the habitants have a private opinion that they can speak English, which is not justified by fact." I can heartily endorse our canoeist's opinion of the town, but this linguistic pride of its inhabitants is surely a vanity of the past. I found none--and I spoke to several--who had any delusions as to their knowledge of English, and, indeed, few of them had more than a smattering of French. A pleasant fellow on a cycle, who had insisted on riding close to me through the outlying districts of the town, which are entirely taken up by extensive brickworks, where I noticed the labourers all went bare-footed, I found capable of understanding a few words of broad Scots, and when I said, "Boom, is't richt on?" or "Watter, richt on?" he nodded brightly, and replied in Flemish, which was comically like the Scots. The Hôtel de la Navigation, where the paddlers put up for the night, and of which Stevenson gives so bad an account, I found no trace of, nor did I tarry any length of time in Boom, since its attractions were so meagre. The "great church with a clock, and a wooden bridge over the river," remain the outstanding features of the town, and viewed from the south side of the river, it makes by no means an unpleasing picture. IV. The canal was simply packed with barges and great ungainly scows in the vicinity of the town, awaiting their turn to slip through the locks into the freer water of the Rupel, and heigh! for Antwerp, or even the coastwise towns of Holland. It was good to feel as one proceeded along the tow-path that here, in this world of change, was a stream of life flowing onward through the generations serene and changeless. "Every now and then we met or overtook a long string of boats with great green tillers; high sterns with a window on either side of the rudder, and perhaps a jug or flowerpot in one of the windows; a dinghy following behind; a woman busied about the day's dinner, and a handful of children." Every day since R. L. S. paddled in this same stretch of water the canal has presented the same picture of life, and thirty years hence, it is safe to prophesy, the wayfarer will find no change, as these canals remain the great highways of Belgium and France for the transport of goods that are in no haste; and when we come to think of it, a great proportion of the commodities of life may be carried from place to place in no gasping hurry for prompt delivery. Stevenson has many profitable reflections on the life of the canal-folk, with which in the course of his journey he was to become so familiar. "Of all the creatures of commercial enterprise," he writes, "a canal barge is by far the most delightful to consider. It may spread its sails, and then you see it sailing high above the tree-tops and the windmill, sailing on the aqueduct, sailing through the green corn-lands, the most picturesque of things amphibious. Or the horse plods along at a foot-pace, as if there were no such thing as business in the world; and the man dreaming at the tiller sees the same spire on the horizon all day long.... There should be many contented spirits on board, for such a life is both to travel and to stay at home.... I am sure I would rather be a bargee than occupy any position under heaven that required attendance at an office. There are few callings, I should say, where a man gives up less of his liberty in return for regular meals." But our philosopher, when he goes on to enhance his comfortable picture of a bargee's life, is scarcely correct in saying that "he can never be kept beating off a lee shore a whole frosty night when the sheets are as hard as iron." For these great clumsy craft know well the scent of the brine, and there are times when the snug outlook on the towing-path, and the slow business of passing through innumerable locks are changed for floundering in heavy seas and a straining look-out for a safe harbour. Not all their days are smooth and placid, and sometimes, we may imagine, the dainty pots of geraniums, that look so gay against the windows as we pass, must be removed to safer places, while the family washing, drying on deck to-day, has to be stowed elsewhere, and the tow-haired children, now playing around the dog-kennel on the top of the hatches, have to be sent below when salt waves break over the squat prow of the vessel. The journey along the canal bank was to me a very pleasant one, and I had hopes of being more fortunate than the canoeists in reaching Brussels with a dry skin. They had to paddle in an almost continual drizzle, and even made shift to lunch in a ditch, with the rain pattering on their waterproofs. But when I got as far as Villevorde, where gangs of men were labouring on the extensive works in connection with the railway and the new water supply, the rain began, and I was wet to the skin long before I had reached the royal suburb of Laeken, where, for evidence of Belgium's industrial progress, witness the splendid improvement on the canal at this point, soon to become a system of docks and water-ways resembling in extent a great railway junction. [Illustration: THE GRAND CERF MAUBEUGE Where R. L. S. and his companion stayed for some days awaiting the arrival of the canoes by rail from Brussels.] V. One of the most amusing episodes in "An Inland Voyage" was the encounter of the canoeists with the young boatmen of the "Royal Sport Nautique," who in their enthusiasm for rowing gave a warm welcome to the strangers, and by assuming the latter to be mighty men of the paddle, led them into the most unwarranted boasting about the sport. "We are all employed in commerce during the day," said the Belgians, "but in the evening, _voyez-vous, nous sommes sérieux_." An admirable opening for a characteristic bit of Stevensonian philosophy: "For will anyone dare to tell me that business is more entertaining than fooling among boats?" Whether or not the newer generation of Brussels boatmen are as serious as the youths of thirty years ago I cannot say. The next afternoon, being Sunday, I came out again from Brussels to make enquiries concerning the "Royal Sport Nautique," and found a commodious brick building occupying the site of the boathouse wherein Stevenson had been entertained, but no signs of nautical life about it. There was the slip where the _Cigarette_ and the _Arethusa_ were drawn up out of the canal, and on the roadway opposite stood this new boathouse and clubroom, with the dates 1865--94 indicating, as the only member whom I found on the premises explained, that the club had been founded in the former year, and the building erected in the latter. But he was a churlish fellow, this coxcomb in his Sunday dress, and barely answered my questions. If I too, had paddled my own canoe, perhaps it might have been otherwise! The day was fine, and the canal was busy with little excursion steamers that were well patronised by holiday-makers, and were covered almost to the water-line with flaring advertisements of Scotch whiskies and English soaps, only one out of a dozen advertisements being of local origin: a circumstance that would, we may be sure, have drawn from Stevenson some pages of gay philosophy. VI. Following the example of the original travellers, I took train from Brussels to the French frontier town of Maubeuge, where in real earnest their canoe voyage began. To the traveller who has wandered the highways of France south and west of Paris, such a town as this presents some uncommon features, and I cannot but think that R. L. S. gives a wrong impression of it. "There was nothing to do, nothing to see," he tells us, and his only joy seems to have been that he got excellent meals at the "Grand Cerf," where he encountered the dissatisfied driver of the hotel omnibus, who said to him: "Here I am. I drive to the station. Well! Then I drive back again to the hotel. And so on every day and all the week round. My God! is that life?" And you remember Stevenson's comment: "Better a thousand times that he should be a tramp, and mend pots and pans by the wayside, and sleep under the trees, and see the dawn and the sunset every day above a new horizon." Here spoke the lover of romance; but the facts are quite otherwise. Maubeuge I found a bright little town, surrounded by mighty ramparts with spacious gates and bridges over the fosse. It is picturesquely situated on the river Sambre, on whose banks stand large warehouses and manufactories, while the shops bear evidence of prosperity. Even _l'art nouveau_ has reached out from Paris and affected the business architecture of the town. There is a bustling market-place, a handsome little square with a spirited monument to the sons of the country-side who have fallen for France, a grey old church, and a pleasure-ground with a band-stand and elaborate arrangements for illumination on gala nights. Indeed, I can imagine life to be very tolerable in Maubeuge, which is really the residential centre of an immense industrial district resembling more closely than any other part of France our own Black Country. Stevenson makes no mention of having visited the church, which is interesting in one respect at least. Beneath the stucco casts of the stations of the cross some _curé_ of an evangelical turn of mind has ventured on a series of little homilies unusual in my experience of French churches. Thus, under the representation of Christ falling while bearing His cross we read: "Who is it that causes Jesus to fall a second time? You, unhappy person, who are for ever falling in your faults, because you lack resolution. Ask, therefore, of God that you may henceforth become more faithful unto Him." [Illustration: THE CHURCH AT QUARTES "A miry lane led us up from Quartes with its church and bickering windmill."--R. L. S.] [Illustration: THE SAMBRE FROM THE BRIDGE AT PONT Where "the landlady stood upon the bridge, probably lamenting she had charged so little," when the canoeists arrived back by river from Quartes after having been treated like pedlars at Pont.] Only in the most insignificant way can Maubeuge have changed since Sir Walter Simpson was nearly arrested for drawing the fortifications, "a feat of which he was hopelessly incapable," so that I suspect something of misplaced sentiment in Stevenson's impressions of the place. For my part, I should find it difficult to mention a town of the same size in England or Scotland to compare with Maubeuge as a place to pass one's days in. That omnibus driver with the soul of a Raleigh may have been in some measure a creature of the romancer's fancy. At all events, it is likely enough that he has travelled far since 1876, as I take him to have been a man of middle age then. The hotel omnibus with its two horses still makes its journey to and from the station, but the driver is a stout young fellow of florid face, who, I am sure, is perfectly contented with his lot, and enjoys his meals. "_C'est toujours la même ici_," said Veuve Bonnaire, the landlady of the "Grand Cerf," when I chatted with her in the bureau after luncheon. Yet not always the same, for where was M. Bonnaire? And I fear that our canoeists, if they could visit the hostelry again would scarce recognise in this lady of gross body their hostess of thirty years ago. The building itself is quite unchanged, I was assured, and I ate my food in the same room and in just such company as the voyagers dined--military officers all absurdly alike in sharp features, small moustache and tuft on chin, and ungallant baldness of head; and three or four commercial travellers, each with a tendency to "a full habit of body." VII. The whole establishment of the "Grand Cerf" accompanied the canoeists to the water's edge when they were ready to take their leave. Madame Bonnaire, however, has quite forgotten that exciting episode of her middle life; but there, we have Stevenson's word for it, and the good woman must accept the fame. The day was a dismal one, we are told--wind and rain, and "a stretch of blighted country" to pass through. I heartily wished for a speedy end to that same stretch. For six or seven miles the road is lined with factories and dirty cottages, while dirty electric cars rattle along, well-laden with passengers, for here France is at work and grimy; here is the France of which the tourist along the beaten tracks has no notion. A stout gentleman with whom I conversed by the wayside was very proud of the varied industries of the district. "Look you; we have glass works, pottery works, iron foundries, engine works, copper, and many other industries in the neighbourhood." Still, I was glad when, a mile or two beyond Hautmont, I found myself outside this region of smoke and growling factories and advancing into a pleasant pastoral country, the river only a little way from the road. Stevenson's word picture of the scene is photographic in its accuracy, but his art environs it with that ethereal touch the old engravers could give to a landscape, an art that has been lost to us by the vogue of cheap modern "processes." "After Hautmont," he writes, "the sun came forth again and the wind went down; and a little paddling took us beyond the ironworks and through a delectable land. The river wound among low hills, so that sometimes the sun was at our backs, and sometimes it stood right ahead, and the river before us was one sheet of intolerable glory. On either hand, meadows and orchards bordered, with a margin of sedge and water-flowers, upon the river. The hedges were of a great height, woven about the trunks of hedgerow elms; and the fields, as they were often small, looked like a series of bowers along the stream. There was never any prospect; sometimes a hill-top with its trees would look over the nearest hedgerow, just to make a middle distance for the sky; but that was all. The heaven was bare of clouds.... The river doubled among the hillocks, a shining strip of mirror glass; and the dip of the paddles set the flowers shaking along the brink." In this land of many waters every male creature seems to be a disciple of Sir Isaak Walton. A prodigious number of anglers will be encountered; I must have seen hundreds. Every day and all day they are dotted along the canals and rivers as patient as posts, and apparently as profitably employed. It was a continual wonder to me how they could spare the time; and a pleasure also, for it is cheering to know that so many fellow-creatures can afford to take life so leisurely, and that the factory may whistle and the surburban train shriek laden to the town without causing them to turn a hair. "They seem stupefied with contentment," says R. L. S. in a fine passage, "and when we induced them to exchange a few words with us about the weather, their voices sounded quiet and far away." VIII. At the little hamlet of Quartes, "with its church and bickering windmill"--the latter gone these many years--the canoeists went in search of a lodging for the night, but had to trudge with their packs to the neighbouring village of Pont sur Sambre for accommodation. They would have fared better at Quartes to-day, as there is now a clean little _auberge_ hard by the bridge, kept by a jovial fellow, who told me that his son had taken up photography, with deplorable results. "He takes my photograph, I assure you, M'sieu, and makes me look like a corpse in the Morgue"--and the landlord would laugh and show two rows of dusky teeth beneath his wiry moustache--"and when I say I'm not so awful as that, he will say that now I see myself as I really am, for, look you, the camera must tell the truth." He laughs again, and rising, says: "But come with me here," throwing open the door of a private room. "Now there's a portrait I had done in Brussels, and I'm really a decent-looking chap in that. So I say to my son, whenever he makes a new and worse picture of me: 'There's your papa to the life, done by a real photographer.'" [Illustration: ON THE SAMBRE AT QUARTES] [Illustration: SCENE AT PONT-SUR-SAMBRE "Away on the left, a gaunt tower stood in the middle of the street."--R. L. S.] I am sure they are a happy family at the inn at Quartes, and they enjoy life, the score or two of barges and boats that pass their door every day keeping them in touch with the outer world of towns. The landlord informed me that he had several times been as far as Paris by the rivers and canals, and that there are excursions all that distance--nearly 200 miles by water--every summer. IX. Pont sur Sambre is a long thin village, a mile or so from Quartes, and different from other villages only in the possession of a strange lone tower that stands in the middle of the wide street. Stevenson makes note of it, and says: "What it had been in past ages I know not; probably a hold in time of war; but nowadays it bore an illegible dial-plate in its upper parts, and near the bottom an iron letter-box." As I was preparing to take a photograph of this landmark, a buxom woman came up and begged that I might photograph her. I protested my inability to do so with any satisfaction, having no stand for my camera. "But you have a camera; isn't that enough? And I am so anxious for a photograph." What would you in such a case? Especially as she said she could wait a month or more for me to send a print from England. So the widow Cerisier poses in the foreground of my picture of the strange tower at Pont--a tower which, she told me, has weird underground passages leading away into regions of mystery. It was at a little ale-house within sight of the tower that Stevenson and his friend passed the night, the landlady treating them as pedlars, and they enjoying the experience. Here, too, they fell in with a real pedlar, Monsieur Hector Gaillard of Maubeuge, who travelled in grand style with a tilt-cart drawn by a donkey, and was accompanied by his wife and his young son. Pedlars' fortunes seem to have improved since those days, as I found a travelling cheap-jack at Pont, with a very commodious wagon, which must have required two horses to move it about, cunningly contrived to open into a veritable bazaar, around which housewives and children clustered like bees. Another packman was showing his wares hard by on a lorry equally commodious, where he displayed to advantage an immense assortment of second-hand clothes and remnants of cloth, while his wife was inducing the thrifty women of Pont to buy. The Sambre at Pont looks very alluring, especially when the sun shines and projects the green shadows of the waving willows across its sluggish waters. Barges pass under the bridge at a snail's pace, and away among the winding avenue of poplars and willows that marks the river's zigzag course through the rich and restful meadow-land we see the masts of other boats moving with consummate slowness. R. L. S. illustrates the erratic course of the river by stating that while they could walk from Quartes to Pont in about ten minutes, the distance by river was six kilometres, or close on four miles. The folk at the ale-house were amazed when their guests, after walking to Quartes next morning, arrived by river an hour or so later as the owners of two dainty canoes. "They began to perceive that they had entertained angels unawares. The landlady stood upon the bridge, probably lamenting she had charged so little; the son ran to and fro, and called out the neighbours to enjoy the sight; and we paddled away from quite a crowd of wrapt observers. These gentlemen pedlars indeed! Now you see their quality too late." X. The country between Pont and Landrecies wears many signs of quiet prosperity; houses are numerous, orchards well-stocked, the people--and never is the highway utterly deserted--smiling and contented, to all appearance. The river at a point about six miles from Landrecies skirts a part of the forest of Mormal, and our sentimental traveller turns the occasion to profit thus: [Illustration: THE SAMBRE CANAL AT LANDRECIES As it was at the time of "An Inland Voyage."] [Illustration: THE FOREST OF MORMAL FROM THE SAMBRE "We were skirting the Forest of Mormal, a sinister name to the ear, but a place most gratifying to sight and smell."--R. L. S.] "There is nothing so much alive, and yet so quiet, as a woodland; and a pair of people, swinging past in canoes, feel very small and bustling by comparison. And surely of all smells in the world, the smell of many trees is the sweetest and most fortifying. The sea has a rude, pistolling sort of odour, that takes you in the nostrils like snuff, and carries with it a fine sentiment of open water and tall ships; but the smell of a forest, which comes nearest to this in tonic quality, surpasses it by many degrees in the quality of softness. Again, the smell of the sea has little variety, but the smell of a forest is infinitely changeful; it varies with the hour of the day, not in strength merely, but in character; and the different sorts of trees, as you go from one zone of the wood to another, seem to live among different kinds of atmosphere. Usually the resin of the fir predominates. But some woods are more coquettish in their habits; and the breath of the forest of Mormal, as it came aboard upon us that showery afternoon, was perfumed with nothing less delicate than sweetbriar." Further on he says: "Alas! the forest of Mormal is only a little bit of a wood, and it was but for a little way that we skirted by its boundaries." So it may have seemed to the canoeists, who saw only a scrap of the great forest, that thrusts southward to the river at a place called Hachette. But it was not without some misgiving that I found myself suddenly plunged into the woodland, and discovered that I had six miles of it to penetrate and roads to ride which a little boy in a cart described eloquently by stretching his arm to its limit and then sweeping it down to the cart, and up and down half a dozen times! The forest has indeed, as R. L. S. observes, "a sinister name to the ear," and I felt--if I must speak the truth--a little quickening of the pulse when I had ridden about half an hour through its lonely rough roads, with rabbits and other wild creatures of the undergrowth making strange rustlings among the leaves by the wayside. The sun had been going down as I came into the forest, but the air among the trees was chilling and wintry after the warm high-road, not a slanting ray of sunshine penetrating the dense growth of trees. The only pedestrians whom I met were a party of rough sportsmen, who eyed me as a curious bird when, in answer to their questions, I said I had come from London. I had wandered from the direct road through the forest, it appeared, and one of the men, having a map, was able to work out a route for me; but it was another half-hour--which seemed like half a day--before I caught a welcome glimpse of the clear evening sky among the lower branches, and presently emerged on the main road into Landrecies, at a place suggestively named Bout du Monde. XI. If there is another town so dead as Landrecies in all the department of Le Nord, I have a great wish not to pass a night within its walls. It is changed times there since the passage of R. L. S., although it was _triste_ enough when "Arethusa" and "Cigarette" spent two days at the roomy old Hôtel de la Tête d'Or. "Within the ramparts," he says, "a few blocks of houses, a long row of barracks and a church, figure, with what countenance they may, as the town. There seems to be no trade; and a shopkeeper, from whom I bought a sixpenny flint-and-steel, was so much affected that he filled my pockets with spare flints into the bargain. The only public buildings that had any interest for us were the hotel and the café. But we visited the church. There lies Marshal Clarke; but as neither of us had heard of that military hero, we bore the associations of the spot with fortitude." Marshal Clarke, whose tomb looks as new as though it had been set up yesterday, was one of Napoleon's generals, and, as his epitaph reminds us, sometime minister of war. Had he hailed from Scotland instead of Ireland he might have been more interesting to R. L. S. If Landrecies was so dull thirty years ago, picture it to-day, with its barracks almost empty, its ramparts demolished, and its less than 4,000 inhabitants in bed by nine o'clock! "It was just the place to hear the round going by at night in the darkness, with the solid tramp of men marching, and the startling reverberations of the drum. It reminded you, that even this place was a point in the great warfaring system of Europe, and might on some future day be ringed about with cannon smoke and thunder, and make itself a name among strong towns." Alas! the barking of a melancholy dog and the clock of the Hôtel de Ville ringing out the lazy hours were the only sounds I heard that night, though just before dusk a wandering camelot selling in the street a sheet of "all the latest Paris songs" made a welcome diversion. I sampled his stock, and found it to consist of doggerel rhymes about the Russo-Japanese War, mingled with some amorous ditties, and a piece of a devotional kind! "_C'est une ville morte_," said a dumpy lady with a scorbutic face, who drank her after-dinner coffee in the dining-room with me. "Think of Paris, and then--this!" she sighed. I wondered what had brought her there, and doubtless she thought I was some cycling fellow who had lost his way. But if the military glory of Landrecies is departed, it makes a brave effort to recall the past with an elegant column near the site of the north gate, whereon are recorded the sieges which Landrecies withstood, the last being in the Franco-German War. Also erected since Stevenson's time is a striking monument to the great Joseph François Dupleix, whose gallant effort to found an Indian empire for France was frustrated by Clive, and who, born in Landrecies, spent his substance for his fatherland, only to die in poverty and neglect. [Illustration: THE INN AT MOY "Sweet was our rest in the 'Golden Sheep' at Moy."--R. L. S.] [Illustration: THE VILLAGE STREET, MOY "Moy was a pleasant little village."--R. L. S.] The landlord of the hotel assured me that he remembered the visit of my heroes, even mentioning the hour of their arrival and departure. He was a young man then; but to-day his hair is streaked with grey. The _Juge de Paix_, who entertained the travellers, is still to the fore: a bachelor then, he is a widower now. I noticed an odd feature of the hotel: its meat safe was the roof of the passage to the courtyard. Here, hanging from hooks fixed in the roof, were joints of beef, legs of mutton, hares, rabbits, and so forth--an abundant display; and when the cook was in need of an item, she came out with a long pole and reached down the piece she wanted. XII. The canoeists left Landrecies on a rainy morning, the judge under an umbrella seeing them off. My lot was pleasanter, for the morning was fine and the landlord's son, a bright lad, with those babyish socks which French boys wear, escorted me some way out of the town on his bicycle, chatting merrily about the state of the roads, and evincing great surprise when he heard that we would be fined for cycling on the footpath in England. My route lay along the highway to Guise for a time and close to the canal, passing through a gentle undulating country with far views of thickly-wooded fields and little hills. The hamlets by the way were surrounded by hop fields, the great poles with their fantastic coverings of the vine being the most noticeable feature of the wayside, just as R. L. S. had observed them when the hop-growers of to-day were _bien jeune_, as the old gentleman at the play in Paris described Stevenson himself. Etreux, where the canal journey ended, I found a thriving and agreeable little town, the rattle of the loom being heard from many an open door, and the thud, thud of flails in the farm-steadings on the outskirts. At Etreux the canoes were placed on a light country cart one morning, and the travellers walked to Vadencourt by way of Tupigny, a village where I was served with a make-shift lunch at a little inn, the landlady doing the cooking and laying the table with a baby held in her left arm! Vadencourt is full of weavers, and here close by the old bridge over the river the _Arethusa_ and _Cigarette_ were launched in the fast-flowing water of the River Oise. XIII. The canoeists were now in the full swing of perhaps the most enjoyable part of their journey. Let a canal be never so beautiful, it is still a canal, and no adventure need be looked for there; but a river that runs wild and free is a possible highway to the enchanted kingdom of Romance. We have the avowal of R. L. S. that on this sedgy stream, wriggling its devious ways by field and woodland, he had some of the happiest moments of his life. "We could have shouted aloud," he says in a glowing passage. "If this lively and beautiful river were, indeed, a thing of death's contrivance, the old ashen rogue had famously outwitted himself with us. I was living three to the minute. I was scoring points against him every stroke of my paddle, every turn of the stream. I have rarely had better profit of my life. For I think we may look upon our little private war with death somewhat in this light. If a man knows he will sooner or later be robbed upon a journey, he will have a bottle of the best in every inn, and look upon all his extravagances as so much gained upon the thieves. And above all, where, instead of simply spending, he makes a profitable investment for some of his money, when it will be out of risk of loss. So every bit of brisk living, and above all when it is healthful, is just so much gained upon the wholesale filcher, death. We shall have the less in our pockets, the more in our stomach, when he cries, 'Stand and deliver.' A swift stream is a favourite artifice of his, and one that brings him in a comfortable thing per annum; but when he and I come to settle our accounts, I shall whistle in his face for these hours upon the upper Oise." Indeed, he came near to settling accounts with old Death more readily than he could have cared; for not many miles from Vadencourt, in attempting to shoot below the over-hanging trunk of a fallen tree, the lively "Arethusa" was caught in its branches, while his canoe went spinning down stream relieved of its paddler. He succeeded in scrambling on to the tree-trunk, though he "seemed, by the weight, to have all the water of the Oise in my trouser-pockets." But through all, he still held to his paddle. "On my tomb, if ever I have one, I mean to get these words inscribed: 'He clung to his paddle.'" Brave heart, this is in truth but a humorous phrasing of the stately requiem on the stone upon Vaea Top. It was a dripping "Arethusa" that got into Origny Sainte-Benoîte that night, and but for the ready and resourceful "Cigarette" the adventure might have ended less happily. Although Origny is a dusty little village, as dull as any in all Picardy, the canoeists rested there a day, and had good profit of the people they met at the inn, as Stevenson's pages witness. The landlord was a shouting, noisy fellow, a red Republican. "'I'm a proletarian, you see.' Indeed, we saw it very well. God forbid that I should find him handling a gun in Paris streets! That will not be a good moment for the general public." [Illustration: VEUVE BAZIN Hastily and unnecessarily "tidying herself" while being photographed at her door.] [Illustration: THE BAZINS' INN AT LA FÈRE "Little did the Bazins know how much they served us."--R. L. S.] XIV. An accident to my bicycle in the neighbourhood of Origny made it necessary for me to go on to Moy by train, on a quaint little railway worked chiefly by women, who act as station-mistresses, ticket-clerks, restaurant-keepers, and guards of the level crossings. The carriages were filled chiefly with anglers, and every little station had a gang of them armed with a prodigious number of rods and lines, and each carrying a pail with a brass lid. I gathered that the pails were empty almost without exception, as sport had been extremely bad, though numerous patient creatures with rod and line were still to be seen in the drizzling rain along the river, which is here broken into many backwaters, lying in flat land among scraggy pine woods and good green meadows. One sturdy fellow who, like his companions, bore his ill-fortune with a smiling face, averred that though he'd fished all day and caught nothing, he had bagged fifteen _broche_ the previous day between one o'clock and half-past two, and between three and five he had caught an unbelievable number of trout. Anglers are the same in all lands, I suspect. "Moy (pronounced Moy) was a pleasant little village, gathered round a château in a moat," as our author records. "The air was perfumed with hemp from neighbouring fields. At the 'Golden Sheep' we found excellent entertainment." I asked for the "Golden Sheep," and was directed to an establishment that was named the Hôtel de la Poste. I passed on and asked another villager, but he sent me back, as I found on following his instructions, to the same hotel. The postman put me right at length by explaining that the landlord had rechristened his house three months before in honour of the new post office across the way, a shoddy little building where I bought stamps from a middle-aged woman next morning. The landlady of the hotel, who might pass in every particular, save the myopia, for the "stout, plain, short-sighted, motherly body, with something not far short of a genius for cookery," described by R. L. S., agreed with me that her husband had made a sad mistake in dropping the old sign of the "Collier d'Or," "but he would have his own way, and there you are!" If I could have got the fellow--a fat, jolly mortal--to understand that to have the name of his hotel in a book by R. L. S. was an honour worth living up to, perhaps the old sign would have been fished out, regilded and placed in its old position. But he had not been the _patron_ thirty years ago, and he did not care a straw for anything so remote, though his wife had a gleam of pleasure when I quoted to her Stevenson's note: "Sweet was our rest in the 'Golden Sheep' at Moy." It is a progressive place, although it seems to go to bed at eight o'clock, for there is a good supply of electric light--furnished by water power, of course--in the hotel and other establishments; but not a solitary street lamp to pierce the blue-black of an autumn night. I must tell you that I was the only guest at the inn, yet a splendid dinner was prepared for me. Soup, fish with mayonaise, fillet of beef with mushrooms, green haricots _au beurre_, cold chicken, and a delicious salad of white herbs with a suspicion of garlic, a sweet omelet, pears, grapes, cheese, bread and butter, and, if I had cared, a whole bottle of red wine. An excellent _café noir_ followed, in the _estaminet_, where my hostess apologised for lighting only one electric lamp "_pour l'economie, vous savez_." My bedroom was commodious and well-appointed, and I had a good French _petit dejeuner_ next morning. The bill? Three shillings and ninepence, I declare! _Pour l'economie!_ Madame, I sympathise, and some day I must return to make a visit more profitable to you. XV. From Moy to La Fère is a very short journey even by the river, but the canoeists had lingered till late afternoon before leaving the former place, which "invited to repose," and it was dark when they got to La Fère in their chronic state of dampness. "It was a fine night to be within doors over dinner, and hear the rain upon the windows." They had heard that the principal inn at the place was a particularly good one, and cheery pictures of their comfortable state there arose in their minds as they stowed their canoes and set forth into the town, which lies chiefly eastward of the river, and is enclosed by two great lines of fortification. But they reckoned without their hostess! The lady of the inn mistook them for pedlars, and rushed them back into the dismal night. "Out with you--out of the door!" she screeched. "_Sortez! Sortez! Sortez par la porte!_" Stevenson's picture of the incident is full of sly humour, but the feelings of the travellers must indeed have been poignant. "We have been taken for pedlars again," said the baronet, "Good God, what it must be to be a pedlar in reality!" says his companion of the pen. "Timon was a philanthropist alongside of him." He prayed that he might never be uncivil to a pedlar. But after all, it was for the best. That cosy inn would not have afforded the essayist such interesting matter for reflection as he found at "la Croix de Malte," a little working-class _auberge_ at the other end of the town, where the Porte Notre-Dame gives exit to the straggling suburbs. [Illustration: THE TOWN HALL, NOYON] [Illustration: HÔTEL DU NORD, NOYON _Where the travellers stayed_ "The Hotel du Nord lights its secular tapers within a stone-cast of the church."--R. L. S.] XVI. There is no passage in the whole of _An Inland Voyage_ so moving, so simple in its intense humanity, as that wherein its author sets down in his own inimitable way his impressions of the humble folk who kept this inn. Scarcely hoping that I might be so fortunate as to find either of the Bazins alive, I asked at one of the numerous cafés opposite the great barracks, whence crashed forth the indescribable noise of a brass band practising for the first time together, if there was an inn in the town kept by one Bazin. To my delight I was told there was, and you may be sure I made haste to be there. I found the place precisely as Stevenson pictures it, noting by the way a tiny new Protestant chapel with the legend "Culte Evangélique" over its door, a cheering sight to Protestant eyes in so Catholic a country as the north of France. "Bazin, Restaurateur Loge à pied,"--there was the altered sign on the cream-coloured walls of the house. In the common room of the little inn, which was full of noisy reservists that memorable night when the canoeists sought shelter there, I found two or three rough but honest-looking fellows drinking, while a grey-haired woman, pleasant and homely of appearance, sat at lunch with a young woman and a youth, the latter wearing glasses and being in that curious condition of downy beard which we never see in England. I stood on the sandy floor by the little semi-circular bar, with its shining ranks of glasses, waiting the attention of a young woman who was serving the customers with something from an inner room, when the old lady, looking up at me through her spectacles, asked what I wanted. "To speak with the _patron_," I replied. "Well?" she said. "Have I the pleasure of addressing Madame Bazin?" I asked, and on her answering with a slight show of uneasiness, I proceeded to explain that I had come to see the inn out of interest in a celebrated English author, who had once stayed there and had written so charmingly about Madame and Monsieur Bazin. In an instant the old lady and the younger folk were agitated with pleasure, and, to my surprise, they knew all about the long-ago visit of R. L. S. and his friend. "Perhaps he was your papa," Madame suggested as the likeliest reason for my having come so far on a matter so sentimental. And the good soul's eyes brimmed with tears when she told me that her husband had been dead these three years. Stevenson had sent them a copy of his book, and they had got the passage touching the voyagers' stay at the inn translated by a young friend at college, so that worthy old Bazin had not been suffered to pass away without knowing how he and his good wife had ministered to the heart of one of the best beloved writers of his generation. You will remember Stevenson's beautiful reference to these worthy people. But let me quote it, for it may be read many times with increase of profit: "Bazin was a tall man, running to fat; soft spoken, with a delicate, gentle face. We asked him to share our wine; but he excused himself, having pledged reservists all day long. This was a very different type of the workman-innkeeper from the bawling, disputatious fellow at Origny. He also loved Paris, where he had worked as a decorative painter in his youth. He had delighted in the museums in his youth, 'One sees there little miracles of work,' he said; 'that is what makes a good workman; it kindles a spark.' We asked him how he managed in La Fère. 'I am married,' he said, 'I have my pretty children. But, frankly, it is no life at all. From morning to night I pledge a pack of good enough fellows who know nothing,' ... Madame Bazin came out after a while; she was tired with her day's work, I suppose; and she nestled up to her husband, and laid her head upon his breast. He had his arm about her, and kept gently patting her on the shoulder. I think Bazin was right, and he was really married. Of how few people can the same be said! "Little did the Bazins know how much they served us. We were charged for candles, for food and drink, and for the beds we slept in. But there was nothing in the bill for the husband's pleasant talk, nor for the pretty spectacle of their married life. And there was yet another item uncharged. For these people's politeness really set us up again in our own esteem. We had a thirst for consideration; the sense of insult was still hot in our spirits, and civil usage seemed to restore us to our position in the world. "How little we pay our way in life! Although we have our purses continually in our hand, the better part of service goes still unrewarded. But I like to fancy that a grateful spirit gives as good as it gets. Perhaps the Bazins knew how much I liked them? Perhaps they also were healed of some slights by the thanks that I gave them in my manner?" [Illustration: NOYON CATHEDRAL FROM THE EAST "We had the superb east end before our eyes all morning from the window of our bedroom."--R. L. S.] Is that not a lovely monument to have? Many of us who have made a greater clatter in the world than old Bazin will be less fortunate than he in this respect. And you see that although he had little affection for La Fère, he lived five-and-twenty quiet years there after Stevenson came his way. Yet not, in one sense, quiet, as the bugles are for ever braying, and even the street boys whistle barrack calls instead of music-hall ditties. As Madame told me, the town exists solely for the military, and we may be sure that it is none the sweeter on that account. But her little inn struck me as a wholesome and entirely innocent establishment. Those "pretty children" are men and women now, and the young man with the nascent whiskers, whom I took to be a clerk in the town, was a grandson of the old folk. Not a feature of the _auberge_ has changed, except that the Maltese Cross, having served its day, has been taken down. Stevenson--who has lighted a little lamp of fame on this humble shrine--and Sir Walter Simpson and old Bazin have all passed away, while children's children sit in the old seats; truly the meanest works of man's hands are more enduring than man himself. Madame Bazin, to my regret, made a quick effort to throw aside her apron, and needlessly to tidy her bodice, when I asked her to face the camera. She was caught in the act by the instantaneous plate. Even here, you see, the apron signifies servitude, and must not appear in pictures; yet it and the cap, which latter I have seldom seen north of Paris, are the only redeeming features of the country Frenchwoman's dress. The women of rural France give one the impression of being in permanent mourning, and consequently, when they do go into real mourning, they have to emphasise the fact with ridiculous yards of flowing crape. Madame Bazin had never heard of Stevenson's death, and I felt curiously guilty of an ill deed in telling her about that grave in far Samoa. XVII. The Oise runs through a stretch of pastoral country south of La Fère, known as "the Golden Valley," but a strath rather than a valley in character. It was a grey day on which I journeyed, and little that was golden did I see. But the quaint old town of Noyon, as grey and hoar as any in France, is rich in the gold of history; "a haunt of ancient peace." It stands on a gentle hill, about a mile away from the river, and is one of the cleanest of the old French towns that I have visited, reminding me somewhat of Lichfield; in atmosphere, I imagine, rather than in any outward resemblance, since I would be at a loss to point to the likeness if I were asked. R. L. S. had no more agreeable resting-place on all his voyage than at Noyon. The travellers put up at a very prosperous-looking hostelry, the Hôtel du Nord, which stands withdrawn a little way from the east end of the grand old cathedral--the glory of Noyon, and one of the gems of early French Gothic, though perhaps the least known to English tourists. Seldom in France do we find the cathedral so regally free of surrounding buildings. No shabby structures lean unworthy heads against its old grey walls, and where, on the north side, the canons' library, with its crumbling timbers of the fifteenth century, nestles under the wing of the church, the effect is entirely pleasing. At the west front, too, where there is a spacious close, with well-cared-for houses and picturesque gateways, one has a feeling of reverence which the surroundings of French cathedrals so often fail to inspire. There is a pleasant touch of humour in Stevenson's description of the exterior of the beautiful apse: "I have seldom looked on the east end of a church with more complete sympathy. As it flanges out in three wide terraces, and settles down broadly on the earth, it looks like the poop of some great old battleship. Hollow-backed buttresses carry vases which figure for the stern lanterns. There is a roll in the ground, and the towers just appear above the pitch of the roof, as though the good ship were bowing lazily over an Atlantic swell. At any moment it might be a hundred feet away from you, climbing the next billow. At any moment a window might open, and some old admiral thrust forth a cocked hat, and proceed to take an observation. The old admirals sail the sea no longer ... but this, that was a church before ever they were thought upon, is still a church, and makes as brave an appearance by the Oise. The cathedral and the river are probably the two oldest things for miles around and certainly they have both a grand old age." Inside the cathedral he found much to engage his mind, and the somewhat perfunctory performances of certain priests jarred with the noble serenity of the building. "I could never fathom how a man dares to lift up his voice to preach in a cathedral. What is he to say that will not be an anti-climax?" But, on the whole, he "was greatly solemnised," and he goes on to say: "In the little pictorial map of our whole Inland Voyage, which my fancy still preserves and sometimes unrolls for the amusement of odd moments, Noyon Cathedral figures on a most preposterous scale, and must be nearly as large as a department. I can still see the faces of the priests as if they were at my elbow, and hear '_Ave Maria, ora pro nobis_,' sounding through the church. All Noyon is blotted out for me by these superior memories, and I do not care to say more about the place. It was but a stack of brown roofs at the best, where I believe people live very reputably in a quiet way; but the shadow of the church falls upon it when the sun is low, and the five bells are heard in all quarters telling that the organ has begun. If ever I join the Church of Rome, I shall stipulate to be Bishop of Noyon on the Oise." [Illustration: NOYON CATHEDRAL: WEST FRONT "The Sacristan took us to the top of one of the towers, and showed us the five bells hanging in their loft."--R. L. S.] This pretty fancy of his need lose none of its prettiness when we know that Noyon has not had a bishop since the Revolution, when the cathedral became a dependency of the Bishop of Beauvais, though it had been a bishopric so long ago as the year 531. But I am sorry R. L. S. was evidently not aware that when at Noyon he was in the town where John Calvin was born in 1709, his father being procurator-fiscal and secretary of the diocese; for surely here was an opening for some real Stevensonian _obiter scripta_? The beautiful old Town House, of Gothic and Renaissance architecture, dates back to the end of the fifteenth century, but all the ancient buildings of Noyon fall long centuries short of its history in age, as King Pippin was crowned here in 752, and his infant son Carloman was at the same time created King of Noyon, while in 771 the town saw the coronation of Pippin's eldest son, the mighty Charlemagne, no less. XVIII. The last wet day of the voyagers was that on which they set out from Noyon. "These gentlemen travel for pleasure?" asked the landlady of the little inn at Pimprez. "It was too much. The scales fell from our eyes. Another wet day, it was determined, and we put the boats into the train." Happily, "the weather took the hint," and they paddled and sailed the rest of the voyage under clear skies. At Compiègne they "put up at a big, bustling hotel, where nobody observed our presence." My impression of the famous town scarcely justified this, as in the day that I lingered there I seemed to meet everybody a dozen times over, and the company at a little café chantant in the evening was like a gathering of old friends, so many of the faces were familiar. Yet the town is populous, having some 17,000 inhabitants (about 2,000 of whom are English residents), and I was prepared for busier streets than I found. There can be few towns in France more agreeable to live in. It is pleasantly situated on the river Oise, here wide and lively with barge-traffic, and spanned by an elegant bridge. The older town lies south of the river in a sort of amphitheatre; its streets are narrow and tortuous, but with bright shops and cafés in the neighbourhood of the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, while the fashionable suburbs extend, in splendid quiet avenues, eastward and south from the centre of the town, by the historic palace built in Louis XV.'s reign and the Petit Parc, which is really very large. While a great many of the English residents have chosen the town for the same reason that my hostess at Moy put on one electric light--_pour l'economie, vous savez_--together with its healthy and beautiful surroundings in the great forest of Compiègne, many more are there for the employment afforded by the important felt hat factory of Messrs. Moore, Johnson & Co., whose commodious works stand near the station on the north of the river. Despite its shops, its business prosperity, its red-legged soldiers, its visitors, Compiègne is dull enough of an evening, and the brightly lighted but almost empty cafés leave one wondering how the business pays. "My great delight in Compiègne," says inland voyager, "was the town-hall. I doted upon the town-hall. It is a monument of Gothic insecurity, all turreted and gargoyled, and slashed and bedizened with half a score of architectural fancies. Some of the niches are gilt and painted, and in a great square panel in the centre, in black relief on a gilt ground, Louis XII. rides upon a pacing horse, with hand on hip and head thrown back. There is royal arrogance in every line of him; the stirruped foot projects insolently from the frame; the eye is hard and proud; the very horse seems to be treading with gratification over prostrate serfs, and to have the breath of the trumpet in his nostrils. So rides for ever, on the front of the town-hall, the good king Louis XII., the father of his people. "Over the king's head, in the tall centre turret, appears the dial of a clock; and high above that, three little mechanical figures, each one with a hammer in his hand, whose business it is to chime out the hours and halves and quarters for the burgesses of Compiègne. The centre figure has a gilt breast-plate; the two others wear gilt trunk-hose; and they all three have elegant, flapping hats like cavaliers. As the quarter approaches, they turn their heads and look knowingly one to the other; and then, _kling_ go the three hammers on the three little bells below. The hour follows, deep and sonorous, from the interior of the tower; and the gilded gentlemen rest from their labours with contentment. "I had a great deal of healthy pleasure from their manoeuvres, and took care to miss as few performances as possible; and I found that even the 'Cigarette,' while he pretended to despise my enthusiasm, was more or less a devotee himself. There is something highly absurd in the exposition of such toys to the outrages of winter on a housetop. They would be more in keeping in a glass case before a Nürnberg clock. Above all, at night, when the children are abed, and even grown people are snoring under quilts, does it not seem impertinent to leave these ginger-bread figures winking and tinkling to the stars and the rolling moon? The gargoyles may, fitly enough, twist their ape-like heads; fitly enough may the potentate bestride his charger, like a centurion in an old German print of the _Via Dolorosa_; but the toys should be put away in a box among some cotton, until the sun rises, and the children are abroad again to be amused." [Illustration: COMPIÈGNE TOWN HALL "My great delight in Compiègne was the Town Hall."--R. L. S.] XIX. There is but little interest in the remaining stages of Stevenson's journey; not because the towns through which the canoeists now passed are less worthy of note than any already described, but for the ample reason that R. L. S. had, in some measure, lost his earlier delight in the voyage. He pretends that on the broading bosom of the Oise the canoes were now so far away from the life along the riverside, that they had slipped out of touch with rural folk and rural ways. But this is not strictly true, when we know that the river, as far as Pontoise, is seldom greatly wider than the canals on which the _Arethusa_ and the _Cigarette_ had set out with high hopes of adventure a fortnight before. The towns are quaint and sleepy. The voyagers were nearing the end, the river ran smooth, the sky was bright, and a packet of letters at Compiègne had set them dreaming of home. Here was the secret; the spell was broken; their appetite for adventure had been slaked; every mile of easy-flowing water was taking them not away to unknown things, but homeward to familiar ones. Pont Sainte Maxence, the end of their first stage below Compiègne, is a featureless little town, the Oise making a brave show through the centre of it, and I do not suspect its church of any stirring history. R. L. S. found its interior "positively arctic to the eye." It was here he noticed the withered old woman making her orisons before all the shrines; "like a prudent capitalist with a somewhat cynical view of the commercial prospect, she desired to place her supplications in a great variety of heavenly securities." I passed through Creil and Précy in the afternoon, following close to the river, which now skirts a country of gentle hills on the east, but westward fringes a vast level plain, with nothing but groves of poplar to break the line of the distant horizon. XX. In the gloaming I arrived at Pontoise, where I was told a fête was in progress; but the only signs of hilarity were two booths for the sale of pastries and sweet stuffs on the square in front of the station, and one small boy investing two sous in a greasy-looking puff. The rues of Pontoise have high-sounding names, but they are dull beyond words, though only eighteen miles away the "great sinful streets" of Paris are gleaming with their myriad lights. Pontoise in the daylight might have been different; but seen in the dusk, I decided upon the eight o'clock train to Paris, and so ended my pilgrimage. Nor did I feel any lowering enthusiasm at the end, for Stevenson has nothing to tell us of the place beyond saying, "And so a letter at Pontoise decided us, and we drew up our keels for the last time out of that river of Oise that had faithfully piloted them, through rain and sunshine, for so long." He has not a word for the twelfth-century church of St. Maclou, his "brither Scot," or the tomb of St. Gautier at Nôtre Dame de Pontoise. [Illustration: THE OISE AT PONTOISE [Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF LE PUY] "At Pontoise we drew up our keels for the last time out of that river of Oise that had faithfully piloted them through rain and sunshine so long."--R. L. S.] "You may paddle all day long," he concludes; "but it is when you come back at nightfall, and look in at the familiar room, that you find Love or Death awaiting you beside the stove; and the most beautiful adventures are not those we go to seek." Yet he was ever an adventurer in search of beauty, and who shall say his quest was vain? "The Most Picturesque Town in Europe" "After repeated visits to Le Puy, and a deal of high living for myself and my advisers, a sleeping sack was designed, constructed, and triumphantly brought home."--R. L. STEVENSON. I. There will, of course, be differences of opinion as to which is the town most worthy of this description; but there is surely no better judge than Mr. Joseph Pennell, who has seen every place of any historic or natural attraction on the Continent, and whose taste for the picturesque none will call in question. He is the author of the phrase that heads this chapter, as applied to the little-known town of Le Puy, "chief place" of the Department of Haute Loire in the south of France. It is one of the few towns that have more than justified the mental pictures I had formed of them before seeing the real thing. But Le Puy is not only the most conceivably picturesque of towns; it is deeply interesting in its character and history, no less than in its appearance. With the exception of Mr. Pennell, and among a circle of people who have travelled much in France, I have met none who have ever visited Le Puy. A young English governess to whom I spoke at a little Protestant temple in the town had been staying there for close upon a year, and had not met a single English visitor; so it would appear one has an opportunity here to write of a place that is still untrampled by the tourist hordes that devastate fair Normandy. There are many and excellent reasons why few English or American tourists make their way to this quaint and beautiful town of the French highlands. It lies 352 miles by rail from Paris, and can only be reached by a fatiguing journey in trains that seem to be playing at railways, and have no serious intention of arriving anywhere. A good idea of the roundabout railway service will be gathered from the fact that the actual distance of the town from Paris is nearly 100 miles less than the length of the railway journey. It can be reached by leaving the Mediterranean line at Lyons and continuing for the best part of a day on tiresome local trains; or via Orleans and Clermont Ferrand, which would surely require the best part of two days. It was by the latter route, and in easy stages, that I first arrived there in the early evening of a grey June day four years ago. Between Clermont Ferrand and Le Puy the railway traverses some of the most beautiful scenery in Europe, but nothing that one sees on the way prepares one for the sensation of the first glimpse of this wonderful mountain-town. The train has been steadily puffing its slow way by green valleys and pine-clad hills, across gorges as deep as the deepest in Switzerland, and past little red-roofed hamlets for hours, when suddenly, as it seems, a great peak thrusts itself heavenward, carrying on its back a mass of tiny buildings, and on the top of all an immense statue of the Virgin. Then another seems to spring up from the valley, holding a church upon its head, and the whole country now, as far as eye can reach, is studded with great conical hills thrown up in some far-off and awful boiling of earth. Curiously, the train seems turning tail on this wonderful scene, and one by one the different objects that had suddenly attracted our attention are lost to view, while we pursue a circuitous route, which in a quarter of an hour brings them all into view again, and presently we have arrived at the station of Le Puy, by the side of the little river Dolezon, between which and the broader Borne extends the hill whereon the town is built. II. The modern part of the town lies close to the railway in the level of the valley, and as there is a population of more than 20,000 people, the life of the streets is brisk enough to suggest a town of five times that size in England. Along the Avenue de la Gare, the Boulevard St. Jean, and the Rue St. Haon we go, wary of the electric trams, to our hotel opposite the spacious Place du Breuil, where spouts a handsome fountain to the memory of a local metal-worker who furnished the town with its beautiful Musée Crozatier, and where the elegant architecture of the Municipal Theatre, the Palais de Justice and the Préfecture supply a touch of modern dignity that contrasts not unpleasantly with the ancient and natural grandeur of the town. [Illustration: LE PUY: CATHEDRAL AND ROCHER DE CORNEILLE FROM PLACE DU BREUIL] I have stayed in many a strange hotel, but that of the "Ambassadeurs," whither we repaired, is perhaps the most uncommon in my experience. It was reached from the main street through a long, dark tunnel, opening at the end into a badly-lighted court, whence a flight of stairs gave entrance to the hotel building, which inside was like an old and partially-furnished barracks, with wide stone stairs and gloomy passages eminently adapted for garrotting. But the bedroom was commodious, and its windows gave on another market-place, where had been the original frontage of the hotel. For all its cheerless appearance, the "Ambassadeurs" was by no means uncomfortable, and, needless to say, the cooking was excellent. There are some towns that ask of you only to wander their streets, and others that challenge you to closer acquaintance with their sights. Paris or Brussels, for example, pours its bright life through boulevard and park, and you are charmed to walk about with no urgent call to any place in particular; but who can linger in Princes Street of Edinburgh with the grey old castle inviting him to climb up to it, or the Calton Hill boldly advertising itself with its mock Roman remains? Le Puy has both the charm of the quaintest kinds of street life and the challenge of its rare and curious monuments. One has a restless feeling, a sense of things that "must be done," when one catches a glimpse of the stately old cathedral standing high on the hill, and the massive Rock of Corneille with the great figure of Notre Dame de France on top, or the church of St. Michel pricking up so confidently on its isolated rock. The natural curiosity of man is such that he cannot be content until he has clambered to these and other high places in and around Le Puy. One makes first for the cathedral, and a bewildering labyrinth of ancient and evil-smelling lanes has to be wandered through before the building is reached. These little streets are all paved with cobbles of black lava, and many of the houses are built in part of the same material. Their dirtiness is unqualified, and yet the people seem to live long amid their squalor, for at every other door we note women of old years busy with their needles and pillows making the lace, which is one of the chief industries of the town. III. The nearer we come to the cathedral the more difficult is it to observe its general proportions, and, indeed, it can only be seen to advantage from one or other of the neighbouring heights. But it is a building that, in almost any position, would still be remarkable, as it is a striking example of Romanesque architecture. The great porch is reached by a splendid flight of steps, sixty in number, where in the second week of August each year pilgrims come in their thousands to kneel and worship the Black Virgin, the chief glory of the town in the eyes of its inhabitants. The builders of the cathedral have striven to combine dignity and austerity, and the impression which the outside of the building makes upon the visitor is strangely at variance with the flummery that surrounds the worship of the Black Virgin within. One feels that the men who back in the twelfth century reared these massive walls and built this beautiful cloister had not their lives dominated by a cheap and ugly wooden doll such as their fellows of to-day bow down before. We found the sacristan a young man of most amiable disposition; so friendly indeed that on one of our subsequent visits, and during the office of High Mass, when he was attending upon the celebrant, he nodded familiarly to us on recognising us among the congregation. If the truth must be told, we were more interested in the contents of the sacristy than in the cathedral itself. Here were stored many rare and beautiful examples of ancient wood-carving, picture frames, missals, altar vessels, and, above all, a manuscript Bible of the ninth century. This last-mentioned we were shown only on condition that we would tell no one in the town. Then opening a great oaken cupboard, he produced first a brass monstrance, similar to the usual receptacle for the consecrated wafer of the Eucharist, but containing instead behind the little glass disc a tiny morsel of white feather sewn to a bit of cloth. "This," said he, "is a piece of the wing of the angel who visited Joan of Arc." "Indeed," I remarked, with every evidence of surprise, "and who got hold of the feather first?" "The mother of Joan," he replied, as though he were giving the name of his tailor; and he proceeded to describe with much circumstance and detail the wonderful things that had been done by this bit of feather. "It is, M'sieu, an object of the greatest veneration, and has attracted pilgrims from far parts of France. It has cured the most terrible diseases; it has brought riches to those who were poor; it has brought children to barren women,"--and many other wonders I have forgotten. [Illustration: MARKET DAY AT LE PUY, SHOWING TYPES OF THE AUVERNGATS] [Illustration: LACEMAKERS AT LE PUY] In a very similar setting he showed us a tiny thorn. "This, M'sieu, is a thorn from the crown that Jesus wore on the Cross," and while we were still gazing upon the sacred relic he produced a small box sealed with red wax and having a glass lid, behind which was preserved a good six inches of "the true Cross." I thought of a Frenchman whom I had met at an hotel recently--an unbelieving fellow--who said that there was as much wood of "the true Cross" preserved in the churches of France as would make a veritable ladder into heaven. Most wonderful of all, the sacristan dived his hand into a sort of cotton bag, and produced a Turkish slipper, worn and battered, but probably no more than fifty years old. The good man handled the thing as if it had been a cheap American shoe he was offering for sale. Then looking us boldly in the face, he said, "_Voici, le soulier de la Sainte Vierge_." The shoe of the holy Virgin! One did one's best to be overcome with emotion, but I claim no success in that effort. The ecclesiastical showman drew our attention to the pure Oriental character of the workmanship of the sacred slipper, but I declare frankly that it was not until the Protestant pastor of the town mentioned the fact next day that I realised that the shoe was "a No. 9!" Among the other contents of the sacristy we noted two maces, one of elaborate design richly ornamented in silver, and the other of plain wood only slightly carved. We were told they were carried in funeral processions, "the ornamental one for people of good family and the plain one for common folk." Oh, land of liberty, equality, fraternity! After exhibiting to us the costly vestments of the bishops, canons, and other dignitaries of the church, the sacristan came with us to point out the far-famed Black Virgin of the cathedral, which a first inspection of the interior had failed to reveal to us. We now found it to be a small and ugly image fixed above the high altar. It was hardly bigger than a child's doll, and was dressed in a little coat of rich brocade. From the middle of the idol a smaller head, presumably that of the Holy Child, projected through the cloth, and this, like the head of the larger figure, wore a heavy crown of bright gilt. I do not pretend to remember one tithe of the miracles attributed to this most venerated object by our good friend, but I know at least that he assured me it had burned for thirty-six hours during the Revolution without being consumed, and had thrice been thrown by sacrilegious hands into the river Borne, only to reappear mysteriously in its place over the altar. This story does not run on all fours with the curt description of the image given by M. Paul Joanne in his guide to the Cevennes--"an imitation of the old Madonna destroyed in the Revolution." It is eminently a case in which "you pays your money and you takes your choice." I reckoned the entertainment provided by the sacristan cheap at a franc. IV. Enough, perhaps, has been indicated to give some idea of the superstitious character of the people of Le Puy. Nowhere in France have I found so many evidences of mediæval superstition; the Black Virgin is throned supreme in the minds of the people, and, unlike most French communities--if we except the priest-ridden peasantry of Brittany--the men-folk of Le Puy seem to be as devoted as their women to the church. The black coats of the clergy swarm in street and alley. In the town itself there are many institutions packed with young priests, and some little way out, on the banks of the Borne, there is a training school as large as a military barracks, with the pale faces of black-gowned youths peeping from many windows. Almost every conceivable type of priest is to be encountered here, from the gaunt, ascetic enthusiast to the fat and ruby-nosed Friar Tuck. The people of the southern highlands, like the old-fashioned folk of Scotland, have had for generations a passion to see at least one of their family in the priesthood, apart very often from any consideration of fitness, moral or intellectual. Here, as I should judge, is the reason for one's seeing so many coarse and ignorant faces among the priests of Le Puy. The gigantic figure of the Virgin crowning the rock of Corneille, behind the cathedral, is reached by a long and toilsome pathway, but the view from the top--for the statue is hollow, and contains a stairway inside with numerous peep-holes--is perhaps unequalled in the whole of France. For mile upon mile the country stretches away in great billowy masses of dark mountain and green plain, and the little white houses with their red roofs are sprinkled everywhere around Le Puy, suggesting a sweet and wholesome country life that is hard to reconcile with the dark superstition of the town. This monument, however, is of little interest--a vulgar modern affair cast from 213 guns taken at Sebastopol. More to our taste is the quaint little building called the Baptistry of St. John, which, standing near the cathedral, takes us back to the fourth century, and earlier still, for it is built on the foundation of an ancient Roman temple. You see, Le Puy was a flourishing Roman town when our forefathers in England were living in wattle huts. We have made some progress in England since those far-off days, but here, though changes rude and great have taken place, one may reasonably doubt whether there is much to choose between the present condition of Le Puy and that vanished past. [Illustration: _Image of the Black Virgin in the Cathedral_] [Illustration: _Remains of Roman Temple, Le Puy, with a fountain to Virgin, a Calvary, and the Mairie_ LE PUY] V. Threading our way downhill among the filthy _ruelles_, we pass into the wide and modern Boulevard Carnot, where the Sunday market is being held and everything may be bought, from a tin-opener to a donkey, from a rosary to a cow. A spirited statue of the great La Fayette, who was born not far away, at the castle of Chavagnac, stands at the top of this street, where the new Boulevard Gambetta strikes westward with its clanging electric trams. Down near the river-side, where the market comes to an end, we visit the old church of the Dominicans, dedicated to St. Laurence, and in a dark and musty corner we are shown a tomb with a recumbent figure carved upon it. Here reposes, we are told, the dust of the greatest of the heroes of old France--none other than that mighty warrior Du Guesclin, memories of whom the wanderer in French by-ways meets with as often as the tourist in England comes upon a house that sheltered Charles II. after the battle of Worcester. There is every reason for believing that the valorous but ugly Du Guesclin--he was an "object of aversion" to his own parents--was buried at St. Denis, but my excellent M. Joanne assures me that this statue is an authentic likeness of the hero; and the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ (which in another place mentions St. Denis as the place of burial) says that the church of St. Laurence "contains the remains of Du Guesclin." What will you? The electric tram lands us at the suburb of Espaly, and from the high road we could almost throw a stone to the massive rock, with its castle-like walls enclosing on the top a little garden of trees. But it is another matter to pick our way, ankle-deep in mire, to the entrance-gate, through the hovels that surround it. Clustering to the rock we pass are buildings from which priests and "sisters" come and go with a surprising mingling of the sexes, and when we have climbed to the top a dark-eyed sister shows us for half a franc a collection of the most extraordinary Romish trash we have ever looked upon. The chapel is free to us, and within its incense-laden interior we find several comfortable priests poring over books or sitting with insensate stare at the candles burning on a particularly tawdry altar. The place is in a way unique, as the chapel is not a building at all, but is hewn out of the volcanic rock, being thus an artificial grotto consecrated to worship. Its rough walls are hung with votive tablets and studded with crude stuccos of many saints, giving it the appearance of a toy bazaar. Only recently the large bronze statue of St. Joseph that crowned the rock of Espaly, above the grotto-chapel, was blown down, and visitors are invited to contribute towards the cost of replacing it. A little distance away is the higher and more remarkable volcanic mass known as the Pic d'Aiguille, with a handsome and well-proportioned church upon its summit. One has to climb a long and winding footpath and then close on three hundred steps to reach the building, which we found quite deserted, some village lads doing the "cake-walk" around an angelic form with a box of donations to St. Michael, the patron saint of the deserted sanctuary. These _gamins_ also seemed to derive much pleasure from ringing the bell still hanging in the ancient tower. It was a matter of speculation why the priests should continue to use the stuffy and unwholesome grotto of St. Joseph, with this airy, noble building lying vacant. We can only suppose that the toil of climbing the higher rock is greater than their zeal. Near by the base of the Pic d'Aiguille one notices a curious conjunction of old paganism and modern mariolatry--an ancient temple of Diana flanked by a massive crucifix on the one hand and a modern Gothic fountain and shrine to the Virgin on the other. VI. After all, and somewhat unwillingly, I find that I have written rather of the religious side of this interesting town than of its picturesqueness. But sensational as the first impression of its unique and beautiful outlines undoubtedly is, it is not that, nor yet the quaint and entertaining habits of the people, that comes uppermost in the mind after some days' acquaintance with the place. One leaves Le Puy convinced, almost at a glance, of its claim to be considered the most picturesque town in Europe, but depressed with the abounding evidence that its people, despite their electric trams and their fine modern buildings, are still largely the thralls of darkest superstition. For the difference between the religion that here passes for Roman Catholicism and that we know by the same name in England is greater than the difference between the latter and the most Calvanistic Protestantism. To me, at least, Le Puy will be ever the city of the Black Virgin. [Illustration: THE CHURCH OF ST. MICHAEL, LE PUY] [Illustration: HOUSE OF DU CHAYLA, AT PONT DE MONTVERT "Du Chayla's house still stands, with a new roof, beside one of the bridges of the town; and if you are curious you may see the terrace-garden into which he dropped."--R. L. S.] The Country of the Camisards "These are the Cevennes with an emphasis: the Cevennes of the Cevennes."--R. L. STEVENSON. I. The word Camisard in the south of France, like Covenanter in Scotland, recalls "Old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago." Both describe people who had much in common, for the Camisards were the Covenanters of France. The origin of the term need not detain us more than a moment. It is variously attributed to the "Children of God" having worn a _camise_, or linen shirt, as a sort of uniform; to _camisade_, which means a night attack, that having been a feature of their warfare; while some historians have derived it from _camis_, a road runner. Enough that it stands for a race of people whose devotion to the Reformed Faith, whose fearless stand for religious liberty, entitles them to rank among the heroes of Protestantism. As one may suppose that the general reader, however well informed, is likely to be somewhat hazy in his knowledge of the Camisards--unless, indeed, he has had the good fortune to read one of the later, as it is one of the best, of Mr. S. R. Crockett's romances, _Flower-o'-the-Corn_, which gives a vivid and moving picture of the Protestant rebellion in the Cevennes--it may be well that I set down at once a brief outline of the events which, two centuries ago, made these highlands of the South one of the historic regions in storied France. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in 1685, was a transforming episode in the history of Europe. It represented the triumphant issue of the sinister policy of the Jesuits, who had long been scheming to undo the work of the Huguenot wars, whereby the rights of Protestants to hold public worship and to take part in the government of the country had been recognised as a sort of political compromise. The atrocities inflicted by the Roman Catholics on their fellow-citizens of the Protestant faith during the reign of terror, which began in October of 1685, need not be recalled; they are among the blackest pages in the annals of Romish tyranny. But we must know that in the mountainous regions of the south of France, where the work of the Reformation had been fruitful, and blessed in inverse ratio to the poverty of the people and the barrenness of their country, these hardy hill folk were too poor to quit their villages, and too devoted to their religious faith to submit meekly to the new order. Like all peoples whose lot it is to scrape a scanty living from a grudging soil, the inhabitants of the Cevennes resemble in many ways the Highlanders of Scotland and Wales. We find in them the same qualities of sturdy independence, patience, endurance; the same strain of gravity, associated with a deep fervour for the things that are eternal. Thus isolated in their mountain fastnesses, hemmed in by the ravening hordes of Catholicism and constituted authority, they determined to fight for the faith they valued more than life. In this hour of awful trial it was not surprising that, out of the frenzy of despair, strange things were born, and an era of religious hysteria began, simple women, poor ignorant men, children even, in great numbers, being thought to come under the direct inspiration of God, arising as "prophets" to urge the rude mountaineers into a holy war with "His Most Christian Majesty, Louis, King of France and Brittany." But although there had been many encounters of an irregular kind between the Camisards and the leagued officials of Pope and King in the closing years of the seventeenth century, it was not until that weird figure, Spirit Séguier, who has been called the "Danton of the Cevennes," planned the murder of the Archpriest du Chayla at the little town of Pont de Montvert, on the 23rd of July, 1702, that the first blow in the Protestant rebellion may be said to have been struck. Of this tragic event R. L. Stevenson writes: "A persecution, unsurpassed in violence, had lasted near a score of years, and this was the result upon the persecuted: hanging, burning, breaking on the wheel, had been in vain; the dragoons had left their hoof-marks over all the country side; there were men rowing in the galleys, and women pining in the prisons of the Church; and not a thought was changed in the heart of any upright Protestant." On the 12th of August, nineteen days after the murder of the Archpriest, the right hand of Séguier was stricken from his body, and he was burned alive at the spot where he had driven home the first knife into the oppressor of his people. [Illustration: TWO VIEWS IN THE VILLAGE OF LA CAVALERIE Scene of Mr. Crockett's romance "Flower-o'-the-Corn."] II. So began the war of the Camisards, for the faggots that burned the prophet only added to the fire he lighted when he struck at Du Chayla. Presently his place, as leader of the revolt, was taken by an old soldier named Laporte, who gave the rising a touch of military discipline, and soon the Camisards had many captains, all men who believed themselves endowed with the gift of prophecy. The Protestants of the Cevennes, thorough in every habit of life, took up their arms and set about the making of entrenchments and works of defence with the determination of men prepared to fight to a finish. It is easy for us in these peaceful days to deprecate their vengeful deeds, but let us remember, in charity, that if they met blood-thirstiness with the same, they were maddened by a system of oppression so brutal as to be almost beyond our belief. Their leader, Roland, issued a dispatch which for callous suggestion has seldom been equalled in the annals of war: "We, Count and Lord Roland, Generalissimo of the Protestants of France, we decree that you have to make away with, in three days, all the priests and missionaries who are among you, under pain of being burned alive, yourselves as well as they." But the most picturesque figure among the Camisards was introduced when Jean Cavalier, a baker's apprentice at Geneva, returned to his native mountains, and by sheer force of a military genius to which history offers few parallels became the chief leader of the Camisards while still in his teens. The story of his life is romantic beyond the invention of any novelist. Not only did he succeed over a period of three years in defending many important parts of the Cevennes from organised attacks, but in the course of that time he met and defeated successively Count de Broglie and three Marshals of France--Montrevel, Berwick, and Villars--although at one time there was a force of 60,000 soldiers in the field against him. At Nages, a little village in the southern Cevennes, he encountered Montrevel, and, outnumbered by five to one, he succeeded, after a desperate conflict, in effecting a successful retreat with more than two thirds of his thousand men. Not even the blessings of the Pope on the royalist troops, and on the "holy militia," raised among the Catholic population, brought the submission of the Camisards one day nearer. Commander after commander retired baffled, and Montrevel's policy of extermination--during which four hundred and sixty-six villages in the Upper Cevennes were burned, and most of the population put to the sword--left Cavalier, still a mere lad, master of the southward mountains, threatening even to attack the great city of Nimes. Marshal Villars, a renowned soldier, recognised the hopelessness of continuing the methods of barbarism pursued by his predecessors, and succeeded in concluding an honourable peace with Cavalier in the summer of 1704, whereby the Camisards were granted certain important rights affecting the liberty of conscience and of person. But Roland and the more fanatical section of the Protestant army held out until January of 1705, their battle-cry being, "No peace until we have our churches," Cavalier's treaty having recognised the right to assemble outside walled towns, but not in churches. It is this extraordinary baker's apprentice--who at twenty-four had concluded a long and desperate war, in which he played a part entitling him to be remembered with national heroes such as William Tell and Sir William Wallace--that Mr. S. R. Crockett has made the chief figure in his brilliant romance of the Cevennes, _Flower-o'-the-Corn_. III. The little-known region of the Causses is "the Cevennes of the Cevennes," but Stevenson in his travels did not visit the innermost Cevennes, and was during most of his journey only on the outskirts of the real country of the Camisards. The chief of these great plateaux is the Causse de Sauveterre, which extends south-west from the town of Mende for upwards of forty miles, and is in parts at least twenty miles wide. It is divided from the Causse Méjan on the south by the splendid gorges of the river Tarn, and due south of the Méjan, with the beautiful valley of the Jonte between, lies the Causse Noir, some twenty miles east and west, and ten from the Jonte on its north to the no less beautiful glen on its south, where flows the river Dourbie. Still southward, and with only this waterway dividing, extends the splendid mass of the Causse du Larzac, some thirty miles in length, from the neighbourhood of Millau to the ancient Roman town of Lodève, which boasted a continuous bishopric from the year 323 to the Revolution, and is now a bright and populous industrial centre. These are the more notable of the Causses, and all, no doubt, formed one mighty plateau in prehistoric times; but numerous swift flowing rivers have through the ages worn them asunder, producing a series of magnificent ravines that contain some of the finest scenery in France, and on whose sides we can trace the slow and steady work of the streams wearing down to their present courses through the limestone, the local name for which is _cau_, whence _causse_. [Illustration: LA CAVALERIE, WITHIN THE CAMISARD WALL (_From a photograph by_ Mr. S. R. CROCKETT)] [Illustration: ST. VERNAN, IN THE VALLEY OF THE DOURBIE] To describe the character of the Camisard country, and to convey some idea of it to English readers, is no easy matter, since there is nothing in the British Islands, and little elsewhere in Europe, to which it may be readily compared. Yet the effort must be made, since the peculiar nature of the country is of first importance to the understanding of its people and their historic resistance of all the might of France two centuries ago. Conceive, then, a vast expanse of rugged and rock-strewn land, covering it may be an area of two or three hundred square miles, and terminating abruptly on every side in mighty ravines, or ending in precipitous cliffs, that look down on wide and fertile valleys, frown on smiling plains. This is what the word Causse stands for, and the wonder is that folk should be content to live in dreary little villages high up on these stony fields, when a thousand feet and more in the plains and valleys below rich and fruitful soil invites the husbandman. But so it is, and in this region of France we have the strange circumstance of two peoples, differing in many essentials of character, living within a day's walk of each other, and mingling but little in the intercourse of life. As you thread your way through the valleys of the Tarn, the Dourbie, or any of the other streams that follow the rifts between the Causses, you realise that up there among the clouds live people who have small commerce with their fellows in the valleys, and in such a town as Millau, whose inhabitants must look each day of their lives at the giant walls of the Causse Noir and the Larzac, upreared to the immediate east of their own paved streets, there are thousands who have never scaled these heights. Mr. Crockett gives us this graphic word-picture of the Larzac: "The surface of the Causse--once Yvette had attained to the higher levels--spread out before her, plain as the palm of a hand, save for those curiously characteristic rocks, which, apparently without connection with the underlying limestone, stand out like icebergs out of the sea, irregular, pinnacled, the debris of temples destroyed or ever foot of man trod there--spires, gargoyles, hideous monsters, all dejected in some unutterable catastrophe, and become more horrible in the moonlight, or, on the other hand, modified to the divine calm of the Bhudda himself, by some effect of illumination or trick of cloud umbration.... "A wonderful land, this of the Causses, where the rain never comes to stay. Indeed, it might as well rain on a vast dry sponge, thirty miles across and four or five thousand feet in height. The sheep up there never drink. They only eat the sparse tender grass when the dew is upon it. Yet from their milk the curious cheese called Roquefort is made, which, being kept long in cool limestone cellars--the cellules of the stony sponge--puts on something of the flavour of the rock plants--thyme, juniper, dwarf birch, honeysweet heath--from which it was distilled." IV. A country better adapted to the exigencies of defence against an attacking army from the plains could not be imagined, for, as the novelist says in another passage, "It seemed impossible for any living thing to descend those frowning precipices. Even in broad daylight the task appeared more suited to goats than to men." The roads which now connect these great uplands with the lower country are marvels of engineering, and you can count as many as twenty or thirty "elbows" in the track, from the point at which it leaves the valley until it disappears over the edge of the table-land, the entire length of it being in view at one stroke of the eye. The task of ascending is laborious in the extreme, and much sitting at cafés, which is the habit of the townsfolk, does not equip them for the undertaking. Few wayfarers are encountered, and when the summit of the Causse is gained the signs of life are still meagre. The roads, now flat and dusty, lie like bright ribbons on a dull and melancholy stretch of earth. Here and there a lonely shepherd is seen tending a flock of shabby-looking sheep, that crop the sparse herbage in fields where stones are more plentiful than grass. Miss M. Betham-Edwards is one of the few writers who have visited this little-known corner of France, and in the following passage she refers to what is perhaps its most curious feature: [Illustration: THE WAY OVER THE LARZAC (_From a Photograph by_ Mr. S. R. CROCKETT)] "Another striking feature of the arid, waterless upper region is the _aven_, or yawning chasm, subject of superstitious awe and terror among the country people. Wherever you go you find the _aven_; in the midst of a field--for parts of this sterile soil have been laid under cultivation--on the side of a vertical cliff, of divers shapes and sizes: these mysterious openings are locally known as 'Trous d'enfer' (mouths of hell). Alike, fact and legend have increased the popular dread. It was known that many an unfortunate sheep or goat had fallen into some abyss, never, of course, to be heard of after. It was said that a jealous seigneur of these regions had been seen thus to get rid of his young wife--one tradition out of many. According to the country-folk of Padirac, the devil, hurrying away with a captured soul, was overtaken by St. Martin on horseback. A struggle, amid savage scenery, ensued for possession of the soul. 'Accursed saint,' cried Satan, 'thou wilt hardly leap my ditch'--with a tap of his heel opening the rock before them, splitting it in two--the enormous chasm, as he thought, making pursuit impossible. But St. Martin's steed leaped it at a bound, the soul was rescued, and the prince of darkness, instead of the saint, sent below." Many of the _avens_ have been explored by M. E. A. Martel, and his adventures in these underground tunnels and caves have rarely been equalled in modern exploration. V. The scene of _Flower-o'-the-Corn_, so far as it is laid in the Cevennes, occupies but a small part of that splendid chain of mountains, but it is perhaps the most picturesque part. Much of the action is centred in the little Camisard town of La Cavalerie, situate at an altitude of nearly 2,500 feet on the lonely plateau of the Larzac, some ten miles along the main road from Millau, a beautiful and important cathedral town in the valley of the Tarn. To-day, as in the past, the innkeeper is usually the man of most importance in these mountain towns, but I have visited no _auberge_ that would compare, in romantic situation, with that so graphically described by Mr. Crockett under the style of "le Bon Chrétien" at La Cavalerie: "To those unacquainted with the plan of such southern houses, it might have been remarkable how quickly the remembrance of the strange entrance-hall beneath was blotted out. At the first turn of the staircase the ammoniacal stable smell was suddenly left behind. At the second, there, in front of the ascending guest, was a fringed mat lying on the little landing. At the third Maurice found himself in a wide hall, lighted from the front, with an outlook upon an inner courtyard in which was a Judas-tree in full leaf, with seats of wicker and rustic branches set out. Here and there in the shade stood small round tables, pleasantly retired, all evidencing a degree of refinement to which Maurice had been a stranger ever since he left those inns upon the post-roads of England, which were justly held to be the wonder of the world." One fears that the "good old times" have disappeared from the Causses, as most of the inns, built, like many of the houses, in sunk positions by the roadside, so that one enters on the top flat, sometimes by way of a crazy wooden bridge, are sad advertisements of poverty. The houses are often like that in which Mr. Crockett's heroine lodged in the little Camisard town of St. Vernan, in the valley of the Dourbie, "built out like a swallow's nest over the abyss." For it is noteworthy that most of these highland villages cluster along the river courses, as though the hill-folk were fain to have the sound of the glad waters in their ears. In the valley of the Jonte I marvelled often at these "swallows' nests." Many of the cottages have a scrap of garden, surrounded by a wall not higher than three feet, from the base of which the cliff sweeps down at an acute angle to the river bed, six hundred feet below. Children play in these tiny eeries with as little concern as youngsters in a city court. Not all the surface of these great table-lands lies flat and stone-strewn; one will often come on dark forests of pines, and sometimes the woodman has a better return for his labour than the shepherd. But on every hand the conditions of life are primitive beyond anything in our own land. Here, more frequently than in his native Normandy, may we find the sullen clod depicted by Millet in the "Man with the Hoe." "Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox," as Markham has described him in his powerful poem. It is, indeed, difficult to realise that among these crumbling villages and beggarly fields we are in the heart of fair France. VI. There is little to choose between the Catholic and Protestant villages; all are more or less in a state of dilapidation, all have poverty written on their walls; but to mingle with the people and discuss affairs with them, quite apart from all questions of religion, is a sure and ready way to discover how great is the difference between the two classes. The one is usually a sullen and unintelligent mortal, tied neck and crop to the stony soil on which he has been born; the other bright, receptive of ideas, quick with life and hope, and, if he be old, happy in the knowledge that his sons have gone forth from this bare land equipped by the liberal training of the Protestant schools to take dignified part in the great life of the Republic. For you will find that even in the veritable strongholds of a debased and superstitious Catholicism all the important officials are Protestants. [Illustration: MILLAU, WITH VIEW OF THE CAUSSE NOIR] [Illustration: ON THE CAUSSE DU LARZAC] The Protestants of to-day are no unworthy descendants of the men whom Cavalier led against the forces of civil and religious tyranny, and though these lonely mountains shelter also many who are still willing slaves of the yoke which the sturdy "Sons of God" endeavoured to shake off for ever, the Camisards of two centuries ago did not fight and die in vain; their children's children are to-day the little leaven that may yet "leaven the whole lump." The Wonderland of France I. "Whatever you do, you must not miss the valley of the Tarn--the finest scenery in Europe." Thus wrote a celebrated novelist and traveller to me when sending some hints on my projected tour in the Cevennes, a district which to Mr. S. R. Crockett is almost as familiar as his own romantic Galloway. I have good reason to be grateful for his advice, as the river Tarn is the waterway through what I shall venture to call the Wonderland of France. A clever writer has observed that "there are landscapes which are insane," and truly in this little-known corner of southern France nature has performed some of her maddest, most fantastic freaks. Here she is seen in a mood more sensational than the weird imaginings of a Gustave Doré; there is no scenery that I have looked upon or read about in any other part of Europe comparable with this of the Tarn. In the old world at least it is unique, and we have to go for comparison to the renowned cañons of the Colorado. Not the least curious feature of the story of the Tarn, its awesome gorges and wondrous caverns, is the fact that less than thirty years ago the region was "discovered" to France by M. E. A. Martel, the celebrated grottologist, with as much éclat as it had been an island in an unknown sea. Of course, the whole district, like every other part of France, had long ago taken its place in history and romance; but although many a generation of peasant folk and monkish fraternities had lived out their lives in these southern fastnesses, the Tarn country-side had not before been explored by one in search of the picturesque or the wonders of Nature. Thus, in every sense of the word, M. Martel is to be reckoned a discoverer, and the surprise is that, despite a somewhat tiresome journey, there are so few English tourists who find their way to this enchanted land. The journey is no more fatiguing than that to Geneva or Lucerne, which in the summer months swarm with English visitors, and, for all their beauties, possess nothing to equal the natural glories of the Tarn. [Illustration: ON THE TARN "One sits as in a cockle shell on the Enchanted Sea, gliding along magically amid scenes of unequalled splendour."] There are several ways of reaching this little-known corner of France, but the best is undoubtedly by way of Mende, a fine town 434 miles south of Paris, "chief place" of the Department of the Lozère. Mende, although one of the cleanest and brightest of the French towns, with a population of less than 10,000, and pleasantly situated in a wide green valley, with low and sparsely-timbered hills billowing on every side under a sky so blue and in atmosphere so clear that the eye seems to acquire an unusual power of vision, would scarcely be worth the journey for itself alone. But it is the real starting-place for the descent of the Tarn gorges, and it possesses many excellent hotels and an ample service of coaches for the journey across the great plateau of the Causse de Sauveterre to Ste. Enimie, a distance of about eighteen miles. This would be the most convenient route for the traveller who depended upon the train and coach for his locomotion, but those who, like the writer, make use of the bicycle, would be well advised to make Florac their starting-point, as not the least beautiful part of the river scenery lies between that pretty little town and Ste. Enimie. II. It fitted well with my plans one summer to explore a much longer reach of the Tarn than most visitors are in the habit of following, and I should have been sorry indeed to have missed any part of the journey. In company with another friend of the wheel, I struck eastward from Mende along the lovely valley of the Lot, and crossing the great mountain range that gives its name to the Department of the Lozère we first came upon the Tarn at Pont de Montvert, some fourteen miles north-east of Florac, at which point R. L. Stevenson began his acquaintance with the river. From this sleepy old town the river runs through a deep and narrow valley, the slopes thick with mighty chestnut trees, and the scenery in parts somewhat reminiscent of our Scottish Highlands, and totally unlike those reaches which, in its south-westerly course, render it unique among the rivers of Europe. For a few miles beyond Florac the aspect of the country is somewhat similar in kind, but on a more massive scale, the valley wider and more pastoral; but when one has reached the little town of Ispagnac, which sits snugly amid its fruitful orchards, the real character of the Tarn begins to reveal itself. It was after sunset when we had come thus far on our journey to Ste. Enimie, a distance of about seven miles from Florac, and never am I likely to forget the weird and thrilling impression of our passage from Ispagnac to Ste. Enimie, a matter of fifteen miles. The night comes quickly in that latitude, and as we advanced along the well-made road that follows the sinuous course of the river, at first mounting steadily until the noise of the water is heard but faintly far below, and then for mile upon mile gradually tending downward, the gloaming deepened into dark, and the gorge of the river, at all times awe-inspiring, took on in many a strange and mysterious shadow of the night a moving touch of Dantesque grandeur. We had left behind us all the tree-bearing slopes, and the river now ran in a great chasm of volcanic cliffs, shooting their fantastic pinnacles a thousand feet into the darkling sky, and presenting many an outline that might have been mistaken for the towers and bastions of some eerie stronghold. Not a soul was passed on all the miles of road, no sound was heard but the varying noise of the water, nothing moved in our path except an occasional bat, that zigzagged its noiseless flight across the road. One sat on the saddle with a tight hold on the handle bars, and kept as close as possible to the uprising rock, for towards the river was a sheer drop of some 500 feet, and only a low coping stood between us and disaster. So tortuous was the road, that, being at one time some little distance in advance of my companion, I awaited his approach, and could see the light of his lamp shoot out like a will-o'-the-wisp into the middle of an abyss, and then disappear in a hollow of the rocks, only to emerge again and flash upon an uncanny bridge across some gaping gully. For a considerable time we gazed enraptured on Venus, which is here seen with a radiance seldom witnessed in England, and seemed to lie like a glittering gem on the very brow of a mighty cliff. Presently summer lightning began to play along the riven lips of the valley, and continued at thrilling intervals to add a touch of dramatic intensity to a scene already sensational enough. The only place of habitation through which we passed was the little village of Prades, where the lighted window of a café with noise of merriment within, and the solemn gruntling of oxen in an open stable, gave one a little human encouragement though the street lay void and black. As you may suppose, it was with no small satisfaction that we at length wheeled into Ste. Enimie at half-past nine o'clock, and found mine host of the Hôtel de Paris delighted to welcome two belated voyagers. III. Ste. Enimie, which has a population of 1,000, is the chief town of its canton, and is cosily tucked away close by the river side in a great amphitheatre of hills and cliffs, the meeting-place of three important highways: that by which we had come, and the road across the Sauveterre from La Canourgue, and that across the other mighty plateau, the Causse Méjan. The town is of great antiquity, and is said to owe its origin to a certain princess named Enimie, daughter of Clotaire II., who, being tainted with leprosy, was cured by some waters at this place, and founded a monastery here at the close of the sixth century. This religious house became one of the richest in all Gévaudan, but was suppressed, like so many of its kind, at the time of the great Revolution. The remains of the building are still an interesting feature of the place, and high on the cliff above is the hermitage of the saint, a little chapel built about the cave in which she is supposed to have slept. The river is here crossed by a splendid bridge, which the builders were busy improving at the time of our visit. [Illustration: A ROCKY DEFILE ON THE TARN _Showing the mass of the Causse Méjan rising on the left_] [Illustration: IN THE GORGE OF THE TARN "The river roars between precipices, that rise sheer and stupendous from its brink."] While the mistress of the hotel was preparing what we later pronounced a most excellent meal, mine host was telling me surprising things in the dining-room, to which one gained access through a fine old-fashioned kitchen. With one of Taride's large scale maps before me, whereon was shown a "national road" right through the gorges of the Tarn to Millau, I asked for some particulars of the route, and was smilingly informed that it did not yet exist. "But it is here, shown by a thick red line, on this map." "Quite so, m'sieu; many cyclists come here with a map like that and think they can cycle all the way. But there is no road as yet, though in five years or six there will be one. The only way to descend the Tarn from here to Le Rozier is in a barque." Now, experience has made me doubtful of anything a hotel-keeper in a tourist resort will tell you about boats and coaches, for you never know to what extent he is financially interested in the matter, and he of the Hôtel de Paris was avowedly the agent of the company to whom belong the boats used for the descent of the river. Although his hotel had a modern and well-appointed annexe--token of the growing popularity of the place where hotels are rapidly increasing--in person he resembled a brigand grown stout with easeful days, and one naturally grew more suspicious when he protested that it would not make the difference of a sou to him whether we went by boat or toiled ourselves to death across the mountains. A good friend at Florac--none other than the Free Church minister--had also assured us there was no road beyond Ste. Enimie, but that the boat charges were not dear. "Nor are they," said the hotel-keeper; "it is only thirty-six francs (thirty shillings) all the way, which is very cheap." We were unable to see eye to eye with him then, but subsequently came round to his opinion when we knew how much labour and skill could be purchased for this modest outlay. IV. You must know that the Tarn and its ways are not to be measured by the ordinary experiences of holiday travel. At seven o'clock in the morning you wake and breakfast without loss of time, in order to set out without delay and reach Le Rozier, thirty miles to the south, in time for six o'clock dinner. On the beach, close by the hotel, lie a number of flat-bottomed barques, rudely constructed affairs, exactly similar to fishing-punts used in shallow English waters. A plank of wood with a back to it, and covered with a loose cushion, is laid athwart the primitive craft, and here you take your seat. It is possible, I believe, for six passengers to be carried, but personally I should be loath to trust myself in such a boat with more than four, for two boatmen are necessary to each punt. The charge is for the boat irrespective of numbers, so that we might have had two more in ours without adding to the cost, but our bicycles helped us to square matters. Our boatmen were rough, half-shaven fellows, and he who took his place at the stern seemed to have been drinking unnecessarily early in the morning. But both knew their business thoroughly, and were alive to every current and whirlpool in the river. Their system of navigation is at once simple and effective, the only possible method of using the water-way. Armed with a strong pole, they stand, the one in front and the other behind, and allow the barque to glide down the swift current of the river, which runs, as I should judge, at six or eight miles an hour. Its course is broken up by innumerable gravel beds and rocky snags, and while we seem to be on the very instant of dashing into a seething whirlpool one of the boatmen will, with admirable precision, jab his pole into a hidden gravel bank and thrust the boat once more into the main current. Beautiful was it to watch how skilfully the men made use of this current, and that, guiding the frail craft straight into what seemed a perilous swirl of breakers, only that they might avail themselves of a different current resulting therefrom, and pilot us into a quiet pool by the beach on the very lip of a thundering weir. [Illustration: THE CHATEAU DE LA CAZE ON THE TARN "One of the most beautiful and romantic pictures is supplied by the ancient Castle of La Caze, which occupies a sheltered corner in a bend of the river."] It is indeed difficult to convey any adequate idea of the sensation of such a journey, where the water itself is at once the element and the cause of the progress. One sits as in a cockle shell on the enchanted sea, gliding along magically amid scenes of unequalled splendour; but, alas! the bronzed youth at the prow and the hairy wine-bibber at the stern are no creatures of fairyland, but the very serviceable mortals without whose aid the wonders of the Tarn would have remained to this day as distant as the realms of faëry. The panorama, which seems to pass us slowly on both sides of the river--for the absence of mechanical propulsion gives one the illusion of sitting still while the cliffs on each hand move past the boat--is of ceaseless change. For a time the hills reach up, green and carefully cultivated, to the higher basaltic cliffs, that rise perpendicular to the edge of the plateau, a thousand feet or more above our level, and then as they suddenly narrow, with never a foothold for the tiniest of creatures, the river roars between precipices that soar sheer and stupendous from its water, or in some cases lean forward so that at a little distance both sides seem to meet and form an arch across the stream. And the whole is rich in colour, the prevailing grey of the rocks being varied by great masses in which warm reds and browns occur, while every crevice is picked out with greenery, and wherever the foot of venturesome man can scramble there have been those bold enough to terrace patches of the slopes where vines and even tiny crops of wheat contrive to grow. One of the most beautiful and romantic pictures is supplied by the ancient castle of La Caze, which occupies a sheltered corner in a bend of the river, where above it the cliffs uprear with great hollows and rotundities, illustrating how in the unknown ages the water has eaten its way down from the upper level to its present bed. The Château de La Caze is set about by many tall and leafy trees, and one could imagine no holiday more enjoyable than a few days passed here, for--Oh, ye romantic and practical Frenchmen!--the castle has been transformed into an hotel, where all the appointments and even the costumes of the servants recall the Middle Ages in which it was built. As we approached, one of our boatmen took up a large conch and, blowing into it, set the gorge echoing as from a foghorn; but we had decided not to visit the château, as it was our purpose to lunch farther down at La Malene, and the sounding of the conch was meant only to attract the attention of some of the servants, to whom our boatmen shouted that we had thrown on the river-bank about a quarter of a mile above the castle a sack of loaves for its inmates. V. Between Ste. Enimie and La Malène there are four or five points at which we have to change our barque, where the river leaps over dangerous weirs, and several changes are necessary on the lower beach. It is due to this manoeuvring and to a wait of nearly two hours at La Malène, while the bateliers lunch and gossip boisterously at one of the hotels--the voyageurs also being not unmindful of refreshment--that Le Rozier is not reached until six o'clock, despite the rapid course of the river. La Malène is one of the three places south of Ste. Enimie, and still in the real cañon of the Tarn, where the river is crossed by bridges; all splendid structures, designed to withstand the spring floods when the current carries with it many a mighty block of ice and all sorts of debris from the hills. The first and newest of the bridges is passed at St. Chely, a small and dirty, but extremely picturesque, hamlet half-way between Ste. Enimie and La Malène, where we explored a wonderful series of ancient cave dwellings, and where, by the way, an enterprising photographer has joined the modern to the prehistoric by painting an advertisement of his wares on the face of the cliff overlooking the former haunts of the Troglodites. La Malène is, to my thinking, one of the most beautiful points on the route. The little town sits in the mouth of a great ravine that reaches far into the Causse de Sauveterre, and on the opposite side the majestic mass of the Causse Méjan climbs to well-nigh 1,800 feet above the river, the mountain road wriggling upward from the bridge in a series of wonderful twists and turns, "exactly like an apple paring thrown over the shoulder of the engineer," as Mr. Crockett has said of another highway in the farther south. It takes a man, walking at his best, more than an hour to climb that same road, as I can testify, and never for a moment during the ascent is the little town at the foot out of view. This will convey some idea of the barrenness of the mountain-side, where cattle and sheep crop a scanty herbage on fields that slope like the roof of a house and are thickly strewn with stones and boulders. At La Malène also there is a mediæval castle, which, like La Caze, is the property of that great tourist agency, "La France Pittoresque," and now serves as a hotel; but we were more interested in the old church of Romanesque design, where we saw the common grave of the thirty-nine villagers who were slain by the Republican troops during the Terror, and are remembered throughout the Cevennes as "the Martyrs of La Malène." It is striking proof of the terrible thoroughness of that bloody regime that even to this remote and sequestered nook the gory hand of the Terror stretched out. [Illustration: PEYRELAU, IN THE VALLEY OF THE JONTE] The French are the best of all road-makers; more than any of the Latin peoples they have retained and fostered this gift of their Roman forebears. The highway they are now constructing along the Tarn was almost completed between St. Enimie and La Malène, at the time of our passing, and a splendid road it promised to be, here running like a gallery along the face of a cliff and there tunnelling some mighty bluff that juts out into the cañon. But the river will always remain the real highway, as the scenery can only be viewed to full advantage from a seat in a barque, and the bateliers need not fear the competition of the road that is in the making. VI. If one were innocent enough to believe the boatmen who live by the tourist traffic, it would be difficult to know which part of the Tarn is the most beautiful. At St. Enimie you would be assured, in the event of your being undecided as to the whole trip, that the stretch between that town and La Malène was by far the best; while at La Malène you would find the local boatmen emphatic as to the unrivalled beauty of the cañon between that point and Les Vignes, where the third bridge stands; and as surely when you arrived there you would be told the Tarn was only beginning to be worth seeing from there to Le Rozier! Naturally, it is impossible for two boatmen to take you a voyage which, occupying twelve hours, requires more than double that time and many times more energy, to bring the empty boats back to the starting-places. Thus the bateliers are prejudiced in favour of their own particular part of the journey, and the only way is to make the entire trip; but indeed that is for all who do not cycle imperative, as the expense of reaching a railway station from any of the places mentioned before Le Rozier would be prohibitive, and one must continue the journey from the last-named place to Millau by coach and train, for which only a small charge is made. My own impression, if one can distinguish among scenes so differently beautiful, is that the cañon between La Malène and Les Vignes presents its most surprising aspect. At Les Detroits the giant walls lean forward in a bold and menacing way, and further on, at the Cirque des Baumes and Les Baumes Basses, we see some of Nature's most picturesque effects, while the Pas de Soucy is a wild and thrilling part of the journey, where the great basaltic masses are scattered about as if an awful earthquake had but recently shaken them into their fantastic positions. But really there seems to be no end to the beauty of the Tarn, and when one has arrived at Le Rozier fresh wonders await the eye, and scenes rivalling anything we have witnessed are still to behold, if we will make a short detour into the valley of the Jonte, where the ancient town of Peyreleau sits like a queen enthroned among enfolding hills. If one can go a little farther along this tributary of the Tarn and visit the famous grotto of Dargilan, discovered by M. Martel in 1884, a strange and beautiful underworld, before which the most extravagant fantasies of the Arabian Nights pale into insignificance, will be revealed. There, by the light of torches, we can wander through gigantic caverns of stalactite greater and more awe-inspiring than any cathedral, and journey by canoe on underground rivers, in what--those practical Frenchmen once again!--is "the property of the Society 'La France Pittoresque.'" Even that part of the Tarn between Le Rozier and Millau, no longer a gorge, but broadening into a smiling and fruitful valley, with the great impregnable wall of the Causse Noir frowning along its eastern length, is full of beautiful vistas; but the wild and rugged grandeur of the cañon has given place to scenes of pleasant pastoral life, and we cycle along a highway fringed with cherry trees in fruit, passing many a populous little town before we enter the leafy boulevards of the historic and prosperous city of Millau. [Illustration: BEAUCAIRE: SHOWING CASTLE AND BRIDGE ACROSS THE RHONE TO TARASCON] The Town of "Tartarin" I. The custom observed by English authors of giving fictitious names to places described in works of romance--as for example, Mr. Hardy's "Casterbridge" (Dorchester) and Mr. Barrie's "Thrums" (Kirriemuir)--has so brought their readers to accept the most faithful realism for romance, that when they take up a French novel they are apt to think the places mentioned therein are treated in the same way. But those who have any acquaintance with French fiction will know that the novelists across the Channel follow a method entirely opposed to ours. An English reader who may have enjoyed to the full the famous trilogy of "Tartarin" books may well be excused if he supposes that the town of Tarascon is largely a creation of their author, Alphonse Daudet. It is true that if he has ever travelled from Paris to Marseilles by way of Lyons and Avignon he will have passed through Tarascon, with its wide and open station perched high on a viaduct, and the porter bawling in his rich, southern tongue, "Tarascon, stop five minutes. Change for Nîmes, Montpellier, Cette." And if he has--as he cannot fail to have--delightful memories of the incomparable Tartarin, his feet will itch to be out and wander the dusty streets in the hope of looking upon the scenes of the hero's happy days; to peep perchance at his tiny white-washed villa on the Avignon Road with its green Venetian shutters, where the little bootblacks used to play about the door and hail the great man as his portly figure stepped forth, bound for the Alpine Club "down town." There would certainly be small other reasons for tarrying at this ancient town of France; it owes such interest as it possesses chiefly to the genius of Daudet, whose inimitable humour has vivified and touched it with immortality. I had been wandering a-wheel over many a league of these fair southern roads one summer before I found myself at the ancient Roman city of Nîmes, the rarest treasure of France, and it was a visit to Daudet's birthplace there that suggested the idea of going on to Tarascon a desire intensified by the ardour of a gentleman from that town whom I met at a hotel, and who perspired with indignation as he denounced "that Daudet" for libelling the good folk of Tarascon. "Tartarin! The whole thing's a farce. There never was such a man!" But he asserted that the town was well worth seeing, if I could only forget Daudet's ribald nonsense. It went well with my plans for reaching the main route back to Paris to make a little journey through the fragrant olive groves along the high road to Remoulins in order to visit the world-famous Roman aqueduct known as the Pont du Gard, near to which a gipsy told Tartarin he would one day be a king, and thence by the banks of the river Gardon to Beaucaire and Tarascon. Not often have I made a literary pilgrimage of so pleasant or profitable a nature. II. You must know, of course, what a rare fellow this Tartarin was--_Coquin de bon sort_! I am not sure that I should speak of him in the past tense; although his creator eventually gathered him to his fathers, Tartarin was built for immortality, and at most his passing was a translation; he is for all time the archetype of southern character, and Tarascon is alive with him to-day. Of medium height, stout of body, scant of hair on his head, but bushy-whiskered and jovial-faced, you will see his like sipping absinth at any café on the promenade of the sleepy old town, or playing a game of billiards with the grand manner of a Napoleon figuring out a campaign. Tartarin, blessed with all the imagination of the generous south, was indeed an ineffectual Bonaparte, in the body of a good-natured provincial. "We are both of the south," he observed to his devoted admirer Pascalon, when that faithful henchman, at a crisis in his hero's career, pointed out the similarity between him of Corsica and him of Tarascon. Daudet makes him, in a bright flash of self-knowledge, describe himself as "Don Quixote in the skin of Sancho Panza," and Mr. Henry James has in this wise elaborated the point with his usual deftness: "There are two men in Tartarin, and there are two men in all of us; only, of course, to make a fine case, M. Daudet has zigzagged the line of their respective oddities. As he says so amusingly in _Tartarin of Tarascon_, in his comparison of the very different promptings of these inner voices, when the Don Quixote sounds the appeal, 'Cover yourself with glory!' the Sancho Panza murmurs the qualification, 'Cover yourself with flannel!' The glory is everything the imagination regales itself with as a luxury of reputation--the _regardelle_ so prettily described in the last pages of _Port Tarascon_; the flannel is everything that life demands as a tribute to reality--a gage of self-preservation. The glory reduced to a tangible texture too often turns out to be mere prudent underclothing." [Illustration: TARASCON: THE PUBLIC MARKET] [Illustration: THE TARASQUE] [Illustration: THE CASTLE OF TARASCON] It is true that a good deal of the humour that attaches to Tartarin is of the unconscious sort. He and his brethren of Provence stand in relation to their fellow-countrymen much as the Irish to the English in the matter of humour, but in that only. They are often the butt of northern witticisms, and are said to be experts in drawing the long bow. Tarascon in this respect no more than many a score of little towns in the Midi; but it suited the author's purpose admirably to locate the home of his hero there, as the place possesses many quaint little peculiarities of its own which fitted in admirably with the scheme of Tartarin's remarkable career. III. Since I visited the town the Tarasconians have proved worthy of their reputation, as a picture post card has been put in circulation bearing a photograph of "_La Maison de Tartarin_." It shows a square and comfortable white house, flat-roofed, with a series of loop-hole windows that give it a murderous look. In front is a large garden, where an old baobab stretches forth its branches and innumerable exotics mingle their strange leaves in the beautiful disorder of the primeval forest. So, at least, I gather from a French journal. Yet, while pointing out the mendacity of the picture post card, the journal in question publishes with every evidence of sincerity an equally apocryphal account of the real Tartarin, who we are told, was a person named originally Jean Pittalouga, a native of the south of Sardinia, not a Frenchman at all. He was bought out of slavery by the Brotherhood of the Trinity, and came to Tarascon to manage the property of the fraternity in that town. As Sidi-Mouley-Abdallah was the superior of Morocco and that country was part of Barbary, Pittalouga became known in Tarascon, because of his romantic experience among the Moors, first as _Sidi-Barbari_, and then as _Barbarin_. The time came when the Trinity fraternity had to clear out, and with them Barbarin, who now rented a neighbouring farm on the outskirts of the town--the veritable "_Maison de Tartarin_" of the post card. But he did not die there. He went away with the Trinity fathers into Africa, and is believed to have been devoured entirely by some terrible wild beast, with whom he had disputed the sovereignty of the desert. To all of which, as Daudet remarks of the member of the Jockey Club travelling _avec sa nièce_, "Hum! hum!" One may note here that the author did first write of his comic hero as Barbarin; but as the French law affords the fullest measure of protection to living people whose names may be introduced in works of fiction, and as there lived in Tarascon a certain M. Barbarin, who wrote to Daudet a letter worthy of his hero, wherein he threatened the utmost rigour of the law unless the novelist ceased to make sport of "what was dearer to him than life itself, the unspotted name of his ancestors," Daudet altered the name to Tartarin, and was inclined to think in after years, when the fame of his creation had travelled around the globe, that his hero would never have been so popular under his original name. It may have been a case of "apt alliteration's artful aid"; but one may suppose that Tartarin would have been equally popular by any other name. He embodies the extravagant, and not the least lovable, side of French character, as truly as Uriah Heep and Mr. Pecksniff represent English humbug and hypocrisy; he has many points of similarity with Mr. Pickwick, but the last-mentioned can hardly be compared with him as reality seen through the eye of kindly caricature. IV. Tartarin was, in a word, an epitomy of innocent vanities; large-hearted, generous, he had the Cæsarian ambition to be the first man in his town; he was imbued with the national hunger for "_la Gloire_," and many were the amusing ways in which he sought to demonstrate his prowess. To impress his townsmen, the dear old humbug surrounded himself with all sorts of foreign curiosities. His garden was stuffed with exotics from every clime, most notable of all the wonderful baobab, which he grew in a flower-pot, although that is the unmatched giant of the tree kingdom! His study was decked with the weapons of many strange and savage people, and, like a miniature museum, his possessions were ticketed thus: "Poisoned arrows! Do not touch!" "Weapons loaded! Have a care!" His earliest exploits were as chief of the "cap-hunters," for, you see, in those days the good folk of Tarascon were great sports, and the whole country-side having been denuded of game, they were reduced to the device of going forth in hunting-parties, and after a jolly picnic they would throw up their caps in the air and shoot at them as they fell! "The man whose hat bears the greatest number of shot marks is hailed as champion of the chase, and in the evening, with his riddled cap stuck on the end of his rifle, he makes a triumphal entry into Tarascon, midst the barking of dogs and fanfares of trumpets." [Illustration: TARASCON: THE MAIRIE] Tartarin, however, determined to cover himself with glory--as well as flannel--by making an expedition into Algeria and Morocco, there to try his prowess on the lions of the Atlas. His ludicrous adventures on this great enterprise--how he shot a donkey and a blind lion, and returned to Tarascon pursued by his devoted camel--form the theme of the first of Daudet's three charming stories. The years pass with Tartarin lording it at Baobab House, and at the club every evening spinning his untruthful yarns, beginning: "Picture to yourself a certain evening in the open Sahara." Then comes the further adventures of "Tartarin in the Alps," and I confess that when, a good many years ago, I first clambered up a portion of Mont Blanc it was of Tartarin's famous ascent I thought rather than of Jacques Balmat's; the fiction was more vivid in my mind than the fact; and again at the Castle of Chillon--I say it fairly--the comic figure of Tartarin imprisoned there was more engaging to the imagination than that of Bonnivard; and, by the bye, in the famous dungeon one can see scratched on the wall the signatures of both Lord Byron and Alphonse Daudet. The last, and in some respects the best, of all the Tartarin books--like Mulvaney, the mighty Tarasconian has his fame "dishpersed most notoriously in sev'ril volumes"--is _Port Tarascon_, wherein are detailed the mirthful misadventures of the great man, and many of his townsmen who, under his direction, set sail to found a colony in Polynesia, an undertaking that proved fatal to his fame, and ended eventually in his self-exile across the river to Beaucaire, where he died soon after; of sheer melancholy we may suppose. V. It was into the busy little town of Beaucaire, which lies around its ancient castle of Bellicardo, on the west bank of the broad Rhone, glaring across at Tarascon, that I wheeled one bright day in June. Beaucaire, for all its canal, wharves, and signs of prosperous industry, is as tidy a town as I have seen, and the fine old castle, ruined by Richelieu, where in the golden age of Languedoc's poesy the troubadors sang their ballads at the Court of Love, is beautifully situated on a little hill by the river-side, quite near to the magnificent suspension bridge which figures so humorously in _Port Tarascon_. The rivalry between the two towns, their mutual jealousies, furnished Daudet with many an opportunity to poke fun at them. "Separated by the whole breadth of the Rhone, the two cities regard each other across the river as irreconcilable enemies. The bridge that has been thrown between them has not brought them any nearer. This bridge is never crossed--in the first place, because it's very dangerous. The people of Beaucaire no more go to Tarascon than those of Tarascon go to Beaucaire." As the gentleman I met at Nîmes would have said, "Zut! It is not true." But that is neither here nor there. Tartarin, up to his forty-ninth year, had never spent a night away from his own home. "The very limit of his travels was Beaucaire, and yet Beaucaire is not far from Tarascon, as there is only the bridge to cross. Unhappily that beastly bridge had been so often swept away by the storms; it is so long, so rickety, and the Rhone so broad there that--zounds, you understand!... Tartarin preferred to have a firm grip of the ground." But this must have referred to the old bridge that made way for the present magnificent structure, which crosses the river in four spans and is 1,456 feet in length. However, it was this suspension bridge, and no other, across which the hero's cronie Bompard came with such bravery to witness for his friend, when Tartarin, fallen from his high estate, was on trial at the court of Tarascon for having been party to a gigantic swindle in the great colonising fraud of Port Tarascon, a charge from which, as we know, he was rightly acquitted. Bompard at the time of the trial was in hiding at Beaucaire, where he had become conservator of the Castle and warden of the Fair Grounds--Beaucaire's annual fair is famed all over France--"but when I saw that Tartarin was really dragged into the dock between the myrmidons of the law, then I could hold out no longer; I let myself go--I crossed the bridge! I crossed it this morning in a terrible tempest. I was obliged to go down on all fours the same way as when I went up Mont Blanc.... When I tell you that the bridge was swinging like a pendulum, you'll believe I had to be brave. I was, in fact, heroic." VI. The view from the bridge as one crosses to Tarascon is as pleasant a picture as may be seen in any part of old France. The noble stream, broken by sedgy inlands, sweeps on between its low banks, and rising sheer from the water's edge on a firm rock-base, almost opposite the picturesque mass of Bellicardo, are the massive walls of the ancient castle of Tarascon, founded by Count Louis II. in the fourteenth century and finished by King Réné of Anjou in the fifteenth, and at one time tenanted by Pope Urbain II., but now, like many another palace of kings, fallen to the condition of a common prison. Within these grim walls Tartarin passed some of his inglorious days, but days not lacking romance, for was not Bompard from the opposite height signalling o' nights to him by means of mysterious lights? [Illustration: A WOMAN OF TARASCON (_Summer costume_)] If one has never seen photographs of Tarascon it will be a surprise, as it is surely a pleasure, to note how faithfully the artists who illustrated Daudet's books have reproduced in their charming little vignettes the chief features of the actual town. There to the south of the bridge is the tiny quay from which we are to suppose the _Tootoopumpum_ sailed away with the flower of Tarascon's aristocracy on that ill-starred expedition to the South Seas. Daudet is careful to preserve some slight respect for the truth by explaining that the vessel was of shallow draft; but, even so, the Rhone is here not navigable to ocean-going steamers. Proceeding straight into the town, we arrive in a minute or so at the Promenade, with its long rows of plane trees, as in most French towns, only in Tarascon the trees seem to grow higher and leafier than anywhere else. It opens out a short distance from the riverside, and although it cannot be strictly called the "Walk Round" for the reason which the author gives--that it encircles the town--it certainly traverses a goodly portion of Tarascon, and takes in _en route_ that "bit of a square" to which he makes so many sly allusions. Almost the first thing one notices after crossing the bridge is the "Hotel of the Emperors," close by the Hospice at the opening of the Promenade. This title is worthy of Daudet himself! Along the south side of the Promenade stand the chief cafés and shops; as one sits by a table at a door watching the passers-by, the scene is entirely agreeable. Everybody seems to have walked out of Daudet's page. The men are of two types chiefly--those of the stout and bearded figure, such as Tartarin himself possessed, and the thin and sharp-featured fellows of Italian caste, like Bezuquet and Costecalde, with their bright, black eyes and fierce moustachios. Most of them, this sunny day, are abroad in their shirt sleeves, and almost to a man they wear the soft black felt hats such as our English curates affect. VII. There is a musical jingle of spurs, as some baggy-trousered soldiers pass on their way to the fine cavalry barracks which the town possesses. There go a pair of comfortable-looking priests in their long black gowns, their good fat fingers twined behind them; but nowhere do we see the white habit of the friars, whose monastery of Pampérigouste the gallant Tartarin and his crusaders defended from the Government troops so long ago! The women-folk whom one sees about are nearly all hatless, but they wear a dainty substitute in the shape of a little cap of white muslin and lace, and a pelerine of the same material over their shoulders and breast. Small, plump, swarthy, they are true daughters of the south, and by that token better to look upon than their sisters of the north. Here and there one may see a woman touched with something of the Paris fashion, members of that local aristocracy to which belonged the charming Clorinda of Pascalon's hopeless passion. There is a constant toot-toot or tinkle of bells as cyclists go by, for the wheel has come into great popularity here as elsewhere since Tartarin made his tragic exit across the bridge. Perhaps the most unmistakable evidences of provincialism are supplied by the antiquated types of vehicles with their fat-faced drivers and their unshorn horses, many of the latter being harnessed with the most extravagant kinds of collars and saddles that project a couple of feet or more above the level of the animals' backs. The whole scene is one of peaceful and happy life, and it is good to look upon people who are in no hurry to do business and seem to take things easily. Across the way, there, the chemist is standing at his door, with those great glasses of coloured water, that seem to have gone out of fashion in England, shining in his window, while he rolls a cigarette for the white-legged postman who has stopped to give him a letter, and chats with him in the passing. He might be Bezuquet himself, did we not know of the misfortune that befell the latter, when he was tatooed out of recognition by the South Sea Islanders, and had to wear a mask when he came home! [Illustration: TARASCON: "THE BIT OF A SQUARE"] Going down a street that leads northward from the Promenade, we pass the Mairie, a quaint old building from whose balcony floats, not the Tarasque, but the tricolor, and by whose doorway are posted notices of coming bull-fights, for Tarascon is still keen on its ancient sport despite the restrictive legislation. Near by is the public market, and the whole district swarms with dogs of every breed. We peep into the church of St. Martha, which is no bad example of the Pointed Gothic and occupies the site of an old Roman Temple. One of the kings of Provence is buried here, but more interesting is the tomb of the saint to whom the church is dedicated. VIII. St. Martha and the Tarasque are the peculiar glories of the Tarasconians, who, you must know, would almost strike you if you breathed the word "Tartarin" to them, and have never forgotten Daudet for his satires on the town. We cannot do better than go to Daudet for the legend of St. Martha and the beast. "This Tarasque, in very ancient days, was nothing less than a terrible monster, a most alarming dragon, which laid waste the country at the mouth of the Rhone. St. Martha, who had come into Provence after the death of our Lord, went forth and caught the beast in the deep marshes, and binding its neck with a sky-blue ribbon, brought it into the city captive, tamed by the innocence and piety of the saint. Ever since then, in remembrance of the service rendered by the holy Martha, the Tarasconians have kept a holiday, which they celebrate every ten years by a procession through the city. This procession forms the escort of a sort of ferocious, bloody monster, made of wood and painted pasteboard, who is a cross between the serpent and the crocodile, and represents, in gross and ridiculous effigy, the dragon of ancient days. The thing is not a mere masquerade, for the Tarasque is really held in veneration; she is a regular idol, inspiring a sort of superstitious, affectionate fear. She is called in the country the Old Grannie. The creature has herself stalled in a shed especially hired for her by the town council." Daudet's light sketch of the Tarasque may be supplemented by a more circumstantial account of the strange ceremony from a writer on old customs (William S. Walsh), who informs us that "the famous Miracle Play of 'Sainte Marthe et la Tarasque,' instituted, it was said, by King Réné in 1400, was one of the last Provençal _coronlas_ to disappear, as in its day it was one of the most popular. Even after the Mystery Play was itself abandoned, a remnant of it lingered on until the middle of the nineteenth century in the annual procession of La Tarasque, celebrated on July 29th, not only at Tarascon, but also at Beaucaire. The main feature was the huge figure of a dragon, made of wood and canvas, eight feet long, three feet high, and four feet broad in the middle. The head was small, there was no neck, the body, which was covered with scales, was shaped like an enormous egg, and at the nether extremity was a heavy beam of wood for a tail. Sixteen mummers, gaily caparisoned and known as the Knights of la Tarasque were among its attendants. Eight of the knights concealed themselves within the body to represent those who had been devoured, and furnished the motive power, besides lashing the tail to right and left, at imminent risk to the legs of the spectators. The other eight formed the escort, and were followed by drummers and fifers and a long procession of clergy and laity. The dragon was conducted by a girl in white and blue, the leading string being her girdle of blue silk. When the dragon was especially unruly and frolicsome she dashed holy water over it. A continuous rattle of torpedoes and musketry was kept up by those who followed in the dragon's train." The celebration of the Tarasque has taken place several times, I believe, since the prohibition, while the procession of St. Martha is held annually; but as my visit did not synchronise with either, I had to be content with securing photographs from a local photographer, who was more inclined to discuss the weather and smoke his cigarette than sell his wares, and left his wife--at the time of my call, in a state of partial undress between changing her visiting costume for an indoor dress--to do the business of hunting up prints for me. It will be remembered by those who have read _Port Tarascon_ that Tartarin foresaw his own downfall from the day on which, under the impression that he was shooting at a whale, he planted a bullet in the gross carcase of the Tarasque, which had been taken with the emigrants to the South Seas and was swept overboard to become a waif of the waves. IX. One of the peculiarities of Tarascon is its railway station on the outskirts of the town. It is situated some thirty feet above the level of the street, and you gain the platform by climbing several long flights of stairs, up which it is no light task to carry a heavily-burdened bicycle. During most of the day there is little evidence of life in or around the station, and a clerk will cheerfully devote a quarter of an hour to explain to you the absurdities of the railway time table; but five or six times a day the place wakes up on the arrival of a train from or to the capital, for all the trains in France seem to have a connection, however tardy and remote, with the octopus of Paris. Then there is much ringing of bells and blowing of trumpets, and you almost expect to see the quaint and portly form of Tartarin himself returning from his great adventure in the Sahara or his ascent of Mont Blanc. But you reflect that these and many other of his doings were much too good to be true, and take your place in the corner of the carriage, making yourself comfortable for the long and dreary journey to Paris. [Illustration: TARASCON: THE PROCESSION OF THE TARASQUE _The little girl leading the monster represents Saint Martha_] The last thing you see as the train steams away is the white stretch of the Avignon Road lying between the railway and the river, its little white houses and modern villas close-shuttered and growing indistinct in the soft southern twilight. "La Fête Dieu" I. For centuries the 19th of June has been to the people of France a day of high festival. No one who has happened to be travelling in Normandy or Brittany--or indeed in almost any of the French provinces--about this time of the year can have failed to notice the celebration of the Fête Dieu, and many may have wondered what it was all about. It has existed so long as one of the national customs, varying in its observance in different parts of the country, and having passed through many periods of change, that a few years ago he would have been accounted a rash and uninspired prophet who would have foretold that the Republican Government might have the temerity to lay its embargo on this sacred institution. But, behold the day when the secular hand of M. Combes had stretched out into the remotest parts of fair France, and following hard upon the upsetting of monastic peace, came the prohibition of religious processions in public. The effect of this order was to limit the fête in many places to a mere perambulation of the exterior of the church, and in others the procession was confined entirely to the interior, though here and there, it would seem, the function took place just as it did generations before M. Combes and the anti-clericals arose into power. The festival is clearly of pagan origin, like so many of the ceremonies of the Christian church; it corresponds with the Corpus Feast in Spain, the exhibition of the holy sacrament having been grafted on to the heathenish rights very early in the Christian era. There seems to be evidences of the ceremony having been observed in some form or other centuries before 673, as in that year an ecclesiastical council, held at Braga in Spain, spoke of "the ancient and traditional custom of solemnly carrying the Host on the shoulders." It was Pope Urbain IV., who vainly endeavoured to stir up a new crusade on behalf of his former diocese of Jerusalem, that officially recognised and instituted as regular offices of the church in 1264 the ceremonies connected with the Fête Dieu. But, despite this papal ordinance, the festival did not become one of general observance until, some generations later, there had grown around the purely religious part of it a mass of painfully secular tomfoolery, which turned the fête into a great saturnalia. In the days of that merry monarch, King Réné, it had assumed such proportions that an entire week was devoted to the celebration, "courts of love," tournaments, jousts, mystery plays, and many other amusements being associated with the solemn procession of the sacred sacrament. Flourishing more or less, the fête continued annually, without interruption until the great Revolution, which gave short shrift to the old taste for processions; but under Louis XVIII. it was re-established, and the State even furnished troops as escorts for those taking part in the processions. Times are changed indeed when we find _Le Pèlerin_, an illustrated weekly newspaper devoted entirely to the interests of pilgrimages, publishing cartoons which show the police dispersing the pious participants in the procession of the Fête Dieu, while rowdy socialists are permitted to wave their red rags in the highway. [Illustration: PROCESSION OF LA FÊTE DIEU _Photographed at Morlaix, in Brittany_] II. The festival, which has thus fallen upon evil times, might possibly have gone more steadily downhill to the limbo of old customs if the Government had left it alone, as of recent years it has not been gaining in popularity, and, practically speaking, only women and children have shown active interest in it under the direction of the priests and lay officials. Throughout Normandy it was a rare thing to see men taking part; but in Brittany, and especially at the quaint old town of Morlaix, which is famed for its high railway bridge and its Fête Dieu, and holds an extremely jolly kermesse, with dancing and the selling of cheap rubbish, immediately after the holy sacrament has been carried through the streets, a larger proportion of men were to be seen engaging in the ceremony; while in the far south, among the peasants of Provence and Aveyron, the men have long been as attached to this and similar fêtes of the church as the women, taking part with a comic gravity of demeanour absurdly out of keeping with their usually gay and careless behaviour. Generally speaking, the Fête Dieu, as celebrated during modern years, has been a picturesque, but brief and inoffensive ceremonial, that did not greatly disturb anybody, and seemed to please the women and children. In the course of time it might have died out as a public institution, though it must always survive, in some manner, as a religious festival; but the Government, in its crusade against the enemies of the Republic--for such undoubtedly are the Catholic priests--may find that it has, by its very prohibition, reawakened interest in this ancient and decrepid institution of the church. As for the familiar procession of the Fête Dieu, there is not very much to describe: a brief notice of one may be taken as typical of all. The first indication that the visitor would have of something unusual toward was the strewing of the principal streets with rushes. Almost every shopkeeper would be seen with an armful of the green blades, laying them down to fullest advantage in the middle of the road. This done, the next thing was to bring out long sheets of white linen, which were tacked a little way below the windows of the first story, and hung downward to within a foot or so of the ground, the entire route being thus lined with a continuous stretch of white, whereon busy hands had pinned roses and other flowers, sometimes attempting designs such as a heart or a cross, or the monogram "I H S." Each shopkeeper seemed to vie with his or her neighbour to produce a more elaborate evidence of pious interest in the coming procession; but I have noticed frequently that many performed their part in the most perfunctory manner, only rushing up their white linen and sticking on a flower or two when the head of the procession was actually in sight, and whipping off the sheets as soon as it had passed by. III. In many parts of the town, often in the front garden of a private house, in some outside corner of a church or in a market-place, elaborate shrines, made of wood, covered with cloth, and decorated with rushes and flowers, would be erected. In one small town I have counted upwards of a dozen such erections, enclosing gaudy statues of the saints, especially well disposed towards those who supplied the money for the shrines. But here again I have noticed the proverbial economy of the French nation asserting itself, the attendant at such a gorgeous shrine lighting the numerous candles only on the approach of the procession, and blowing them out the instant it had passed, when also the dismantling of the shrine would begin! I recall a particularly gorgeous shrine which I saw many years ago in the town of Falaise. At a considerable distance the numerous candles seemed to be burning so brilliantly, that I was not altogether surprised on going up and examining them to find the supposed candles were actually incandescent electric lamps. Thus the preliminary arrangements of the populace for the coming of the procession. The route was, as a rule, one that had been followed for years, but the erection of a particularly elaborate shrine by some person blessed with pelf and piety, in a street not within the usual itinerary, would be regarded as sufficient to justify a detour. I have never witnessed the procession without being refreshed by its suggestion of old-world ease. "Build your houses as if you meant them to last for ever," was Ruskin's advice. "Proceed as if your procession had started at the Flood and was going on till Doomsday," would seem to be the motto that inspires the demonstrators in the Fête Dieu. In the distance the sound of music is heard, and after a time at the far end of the road the head of the procession is seen moving towards us at a pace as much slower than a funeral as that is slower than a horse race. First comes the beadle, or church officer attached to the cathedral, whose blue or red uniform, with cocked hat, knee breeches, white hose and buckled shoes, remind one of the dress of our soldiers in the seventeenth century, a get-up very similar to that of the Swiss Guard at the Vatican, these beadles being, indeed, generally known as the "Swiss," though they are loutish and ignorant fellows, with as much regard for religion as the chucker-out at a roaring London tavern. But for all that, the Swiss makes a mighty picturesque figure at the head of the procession, his sword hanging at his hip, and a long mace carried in his hand as he steps out slowly and endeavours to combine dignity with scowls at the children who follow him, the little girls in their white muslin dresses, made for their first communion, and the little boys in the sort of midshipman's suit universally worn by French lads at the time of their confirmation, a white armlet being donned on this occasion and a rosary tied around it. Following the children, who carry banners with various religious devices, come bands of music and different groups of men and women, who also march under certain banners that indicate their membership of some brotherhood or sisterhood. IV. There are brotherhoods of the Holy Sacrament in many parts of France whose credentials date back to the Middle Ages, and who seem to exist solely for the purpose of being privileged to walk in religious processions, with a ludicrous gown lavishly trimmed, and having on the front, after the manner of a herald's tabard, a picture of Christ. The brethren of the various "charities," which in France correspond in some degree to our friendly societies, also wear uniforms, and, in some parts of the country assist in the procession. In the past many unseemly disturbances arose out of the rivalry of these brotherhoods as to their respective privileges in the Fête Dieu, and the sacred function was often marred by the most disgraceful scenes of rowdyism as the rivals fought for precedence, and especially for the right of bearing the canopy under which the Holy Sacrament is carried through the streets. The approach of the Host is heralded by the acolytes in their scarlet gowns with lace tunicles, who come singing, and precede the white-robed members of the choir, lay brethren and priests, who are either diligently reading from books, or mumbling unintelligently the orisons provided for the occasion. Succeeding these come more acolytes, swinging censers, and others who, walking backwards, bear large baskets of rose leaves, and scatter their fragrant burdens in handfuls on the road in front of the bishop. The latter, arrayed in his most gorgeous vestments, advances slowly, holding aloft, with well-assumed solemnity, to impress beholders with the awful sacredness of his charge, the elaborate brass monstrance or cabinet which encloses the consecrated wafer. The bishop, who thus displays before the just and the unjust the Holy Sacrament, walks under a canopy of richly embroidered cloth, carried on four posts by specially chosen members of some of the brotherhoods, or perhaps by some unusually devout laymen, whose purses have not been altogether closed when the clerical hat has gone round. Previously to the approach of the dais covering the bishop and his holy burden, the spectators in the street have been laughing and joking with and about the demonstrators, and some of the children in the procession have shown lamentable forgetfulness of the solemn nature of the function by putting out their tongues at us, and turning back to say derisively, "les Anglais!"--for this was before the days of the _Entente_. But the moment the bishop and the Host come up, down flop the spectators on their knees, crossing themselves, the men removing their hats, though I confess with pleasure that many a time I have seen groups of men showing as much reverence to the sacred wafer as Cockney crowds do to the Lord Mayor's coachman on show day. [Illustration: A WOMAN OF SAINTE ENIMIE] The procession is now at an end so far as our particular standpoint is concerned, and already the white sheets are disappearing all along the road, shopkeepers turning their attention to business again. But it is winding its way through other streets, pausing to make special obeisance before the temporary shrines, and to rehearse prayers cunningly adapted to the peculiar requirements of the saints to whom the shrines are dedicated. And so after, it may be, two or three hours perambulation, the demonstrators return to the cathedral, where High Mass is celebrated; this over, they are free to make merry to their heart's desire. And they do. "M'sieu Meelin of Dundae" I. Please do not consider it an affectation of superior knowledge if I begin by saying it is improbable that one out of a hundred of my readers has ever heard of Morbihan and the wonderful druidical remains in the Commune of Carnac. To be quite frank, I had never heard of them myself until one dusty summer day when I cycled into the little village of Carnac away on the south coast of Brittany, and within sight of the historic bay of Quiberon. The village of Carnac, whose population numbers only some six hundred souls, is one of the most interesting in Brittany, where almost every hamlet has some historic touch to engage the attention of the visitor. It consists practically of a little square of houses surrounding the ancient parish church, dedicated to Saint Corneille. This saint is the patron of cattle, and in September the town is the centre of a series of most picturesque celebrations, the peasants journeying hither from all parts of the surrounding country, accompanied by their cattle, horses, and even their pigs, for the pig is as notable a feature of rural life in Brittany as it is in Ireland. Saint Corneille, for a reason which will be explained further on, is supposed to take a very personal interest in the welfare of the Breton's cattle, and to see the simple peasants on their pilgrimage to his shrine, and later in the ceremonies of parading their beasts around the church and kneeling before his statue on the west front of the tower, kneeling again and sometimes even fighting for a dip in the water from his fountain, is to realise how sincere is their belief in his powers. But this is only by the way; my present intention is not to spend any more time in describing the quaint ceremonies that have long made Carnac a centre of pilgrimage, and have been the theme of many a story and poem by French writers. [Illustration: THE FAMOUS DRUIDICAL REMAINS AT CARNAC (_The second view is a continuation of the first_)] Leaving the little square and striking eastward along the main road, I noticed a small, plain building, almost the last of the few straggling houses in that direction, bearing in bold letters the legend "Musée Miln." The name had a pleasant suggestion of my ain countree, and in a trice I was knocking at the door, curious to know what lay behind. A tall, well-knit, clean-shaven Breton of about forty years of age opened and bade me welcome. He was carelessly dressed like any village shopkeeper in his shirt sleeves, and wearing a pair of carpet slippers; certainly presenting no aspect of the antiquary or the scholar, although it was not long before I found that he was a man of remarkable attainments in archæology. As far as I remember, the charge for admission was one franc, and although at first it seemed a large price to pay for looking at a roomful of things in glass cases, I left with the conviction that I had made an excellent bargain. The museum I found to consist of an extremely valuable assortment of relics of the Stone and Bronze Ages. Admirably arranged and catalogued were hundreds of flint arrowheads and axes, some of the latter being of that earliest type before man had the sense to pierce the axe-head for the handle, but stuck the wedge-like head of the axe through a hole in the shaft. There were also many examples of rude instruments belonging to the Bronze Age, some Roman swords and a skeleton in a prehistoric stone coffin. The interest of these curiosities lay not only in their intrinsic value to the antiquary, but in the fact that they had all been dug up from the tumuli in the Commune of Carnac. But to me they assumed at once a far more vivid interest, when the custodian explained that the antiquary who had discovered most of them, and whose money had founded the museum, was "M'sieu Meelin of Dundae." When I explained that I was a countryman of this Mr. Miln, the curator launched into a warm description of that worthy's abounding good qualities, and recalled with the fervour of the French his own personal association with Mr. Miln in the work of excavation. He pointed with pride to a very ordinary oil painting of his old friend and master, which disclosed him as a fresh-complexioned, white-haired gentleman of unmistakable Scottish type, and assured me that he was "_un homme très interessant et très aimable_." I could readily believe the eulogy, as it was a kindly old Scotch face that looked out of the canvas at me. II. I wonder if the memory of Mr. Miln is treasured in Dundee. The chances are that what I have to tell of him may be news to his fellow-townsmen of to-day. A reference to that excellent work, _Chambers's Biographical Dictionary_, discloses the fact that he is remembered there to the extent of exactly two lines: "Miln, James (1819-81), a Scotch antiquary made excavations at Carnac in Brittany, 1872-80." That is all, but behind these two lines lie the long story of a romantic life in a foreign land and a little measure of fame among an alien people. In this respect the life of James Miln resembles curiously the lives of so many of his fellow-countrymen, who have wandered to the ends of the earth in the pursuit of their avocations, and left traces of their work everywhere except in the place of their birth. My knowledge of the life of this notable Scotsman and his work is gleaned from the scholarly little brochure written by M. Zacharie le Rouzic, the slippered custodian of the "Musée Miln." It appears that James Miln was born at Woodhill in 1819, and while still young travelled in India, China, and spent some years in other parts of the far east. On his return to Scotland he threw himself with enthusiasm into antiquarian research and scientific studies. He succeeded to the estate of Murie in Perthshire on the death of his father, James Yeanan Miln, of Murie and Woodhill, and later to that of Woodhill in Forfarshire at the death of his brother, to whom that property had descended. His particular line of study for nearly forty years of his life would seem to have been the origin and development of portable firearms, and for a man of such peaceful pursuits it is strange to be told that he was especially ardent in encouraging every experiment for the perfection of rifles. Another of his hobbies was concerned with the improvement of the telescope; but all kinds of scientific instruments seem to have been objects of his study and inventive genius. In the experimental days of photography he speedily achieved success with the camera, and made a large collection of photographs of ancient sculptures in the east of Scotland. An accomplished linguist and something of an artist, he illustrated with his own pencil all his works on archæology, which M. Le Rouzic assures us was always his favourite study. It was during the summer of 1873 that Miln first visited Carnac, where he encountered his friend, Admiral Tremlett, of Tunbridge Wells, who was interested in the wonderful neolithic remains in the neighbourhood, and became his guide in a series of explorations. Miln's enthusiasm was immediately aflame when he contemplated this rich and sparsely-explored field of research awaiting the excavator. His first idea was to purchase the ground on which some of the most interesting remains were standing, but finding this impossible, he approached the farmers on whose land the unbroken mounds, which represented burial-places of prehistoric people, were situated, and obtained leave from them to commence the work of excavation, to which he immediately resolved to devote himself during 1875 and 1876. The result was a series of important discoveries. Perhaps the most important of the remains unearthed were those of a Roman villa, consisting of eleven chambers, and surrounded by several other buildings, among which were baths and a small temple, that were believed to date back to the first half of the fourth century. Numerous examples of Roman pottery, glass, jewellery, money, a bronze statue of a bull, and many other curiosities were dug up. Within sight of the museum, and only a few minutes' walk away, is a tumulus surmounted by a little chapel to Saint Michael, and here in 1876 Miln made many notable discoveries, including the remains of an eleventh-century monastery. [Illustration: THE MERCHANTS' TABLE _One of the great dolmens near Carnac_] III. The results of these excavations were described in a large work written and illustrated by himself, and issued in Edinburgh and Paris. By January of 1877 he was busily prosecuting his explorations at Kermaric, a gunshot distant from Carnac, and the work went steadily on with the most fruitful results in many other parts of the district until the end of 1880, when Miln returned to Edinburgh in order to produce another book describing his researches. Unhappily, in the midst of his literary labour, he was seized with a brief illness, which at the end of six days resulted in his death on Friday, 28th January, 1881, at twelve minutes to eleven, as the faithful M. le Rouzic records. James Miln was a member of the Scottish Society of Antiquaries, la Société royale des Antiquaries du Nord, the Academy of Copenhagen, and several learned societies in England and the Continent. "_C'est avec une douloureuse émotion que l'on apprit, à Carnac, la nouvelle de sa mort_," to quote again his faithful henchman. The museum with its precious contents was secured to Carnac through the efforts of Mr. Robert Miln, the son of the antiquary, and his friend Admiral Tremlett, and was opened on the 22nd May, 1882, since when it has remained a centre of great interest and importance to all antiquarian students, and an enduring monument to "M'sieu Meelin of Dondae." This is a brief outline of the life of a little-known Scotsman, which is worth recalling as an example of the quiet, unostentatious way in which the Scot will carry on any enterprise that lies near to his heart, with no eye to personal advertisement, but out of sheer pleasure in the work his hand has found to do. Thus it is that one meets with traces of our countrymen in the remote and unfrequented corners of earth, and at the ring of an old name the mind of the wanderer is carried back across "the waste of seas" to the land whose sons, by some strange irony of fate, are prone to find their life-work far from home. IV. But my story must not end here, although we take our leave of James Miln and his museum. It is almost impossible to describe in any adequate way the historic value of this part of Brittany. Stonehenge, in England, is a national monument which we zealously treasure, yet its value, compared with the neolithic remains of Morbihan, is as a drop in a bucket of water. In the region to the east and north of Carnac druidical remains are as plentiful as blackberries in an autumn hedge. The sight of what are known as "_les alignements de Carnac_" is one never to be forgotten. Standing on the little mound by the chapel of Saint Michael already mentioned, and looking northward across the plain, we see an enormous range of menhirs or druidical stones standing like an army at attention. There are no fewer than 2,813 of these massive stones to be seen from this point, and the imagination is busy at once striving to picture the strange rites practised here by unknown people before the dawn of history. Dotted all over the vast plains are dolmens and cromlechs of varying size. One of the largest dolmens that I visited is known as the Merchants' Table. It stands near Locmariaquer, and consists of an enormous stone laid flat on the top of a series of smaller stones. Originally the supporting stones would be only slightly imbedded in the earth, but in the ages that have passed the soil has accumulated until they are now sunk six or eight feet deep, but still project above the ground to the height of four or five feet. The roof-stone must weigh some hundred tons, and one of the mysteries is how a people, whose instruments were of the most primitive kind, could place such a mammoth block in so elevated a position. The dolmens, of which the Merchants' Table is one of the finest examples, were probably places of burial, and are always approached by a smaller chamber of the same rude construction. The interior of the one in question bears many strange carvings, that remain an enigma even to the most erudite. Some authorities believe these structures may have been used as houses; others suppose them to have been altars, so that it will be seen their purpose has not yet been decided upon by their most learned students. The cromlechs, which are a series of stones standing in a circle, were most probably sanctuaries, and there is reason to believe that it was here the Druid priests practised their unknown rites. They are generally to be found at the end of an "alignment," and are oriented, so that the likelihood is the worshippers stood within the long rows of stones, which would correspond to the choir of a cathedral, and the priests were in the cromlech looking toward the rising of the sun. To return for the last time to the great army of menhirs, or single stones, seen from St. Michael's chapel near Carnac, the legend popular in the district is that when St. Corneille, a Pope of Rome, was being pursued by an army of pagan soldiers, he had with him two oxen, which carried his belongings and sometimes himself when he was fatigued. One evening, when he had arrived near a village where he would have rested the night, he determined to press on beyond it because he had heard a young girl insult her mother! He saw soon afterwards that the soldiers, who had been following him, were arranged in line of battle, and he was between them and the sea. So he stopped, and transformed the entire army into stones. This is at least a picturesque way for accounting for those marvellous remains that have baffled the minds of men to explain. Round About a French Fair I. The rambler in old France can seldom undertake a little journey during the summer without coming upon some town where a fair is in progress. At least, that has been my own experience, and in the course of wide wanderings through the highways and by-ways of the most delightful land in Europe I have witnessed many fairs in towns so far apart as Morlaix and Montluçon, Orleans and Beaucaire, Rennes and Lisieux. Nowhere does the distinctive character of a people show itself more strongly than in its public fairs and rejoicings. Thus, if one desired to get at a glance a glimpse into the different natures of the Briton and the Gaul, a visit to Glasgow Fair or Nottingham's famous Goose Fair, followed by a look round the great fair of Rennes or Orleans, would do more for one's education in this regard than a great deal of book learning. An extensive and peculiar knowledge of Scottish and English holiday-making, which the vagrant life of journalism has enabled me to acquire, goes far to justify in my mind, when I think of the Frenchman and his merry-making, the charge directed against us by our friends across the Channel--that we take our pleasures sadly. There is very little to choose between an English and Scottish festival of the common people, though that little of brightness and genuine high spirits is in favour of the former. A more vulgar, tasteless, saddening spectacle than a Scottish saturnalia it is difficult to conceive. For ill manners, foul speech, stupid and low diversions, I have seen nothing so lacking in all the elements of joy as an Ayrshire country fair; it has made me blush for my countrymen. But when such a melancholy festival has awakened memory's contrasts of sights seen in merry France, I have been glad to believe that, speaking generally, while a fair in Scotland or in England stirs up the less worthy elements in the people's character, such an occasion in France, on the contrary, calls forth some of the better traits of the people. [Illustration: _Familiar types_ _A Lacemaker at Le Monastier_ WOMEN OF THE CEVENNES] In our own time, and due in some measure to the growth of refinement arising out of our improved education, the institution of the public fair in this country has been steadily declining in popularity; but in France it still flourishes. There are other reasons for this, though the chief is--again accepting a French criticism--that we are essentially a nation of shopkeepers. The origin of the fair was, of course, the bringing together of people with goods to sell or barter, and a touch of pleasure was given to the business by the association of amusements therewith. Time was when Nottingham Goose Fair was an event of the highest importance in the commercial life of the district, and continued over a period of a month; but with the rise of the shopkeeper, who has ever a jealous eye on the huckster, this, like many another of our fairs, has been gradually curtailed, on the plea of its interfering with regular business, until it is now limited to a week, and is threatened with reduction to three days. In France, however, many of the fairs still last for a month, although the most celebrated of all, that of Beaucaire, which is almost continental in its importance and is less a festival than a commercial institution, is held for one week only. At Orleans one of the finest fairs in France takes place annually in June, and continues for a whole month. It may be taken as typical of these provincial carnivals, and in endeavouring to give my readers some idea of its leading features, I shall be describing to them the character of French fairs in general. II. Most of the towns in France are peculiarly adapted for the holding of festivals, with their wide main street and "bit of a square"; but Orleans is especially fortunate in this respect. Although it is a town of not more than seventy thousand inhabitants, it possesses a series of spacious boulevards and public squares which would be thought remarkable in an English city of three or four times that population. The chief part of Orleans lies on the north bank of the wide and swiftly-flowing Loire, and the boulevards, following roughly the outline of an arc, compass the town with the river for base. The great width of these highways--at a moderate estimate six times that of the Strand--makes it possible for an immense number of booths and stalls to be ranged along them without in any degree obstructing the regular road traffic. Thus, if you arrive at the railway station during the fair month, you will find the entire stretch of the northern thoroughfares--close on a mile and a half as I should estimate--occupied by the show people, who have created a boulevard within a boulevard, as the fair-ground is one long avenue of booths, with a wide promenade between and roadways as roomy as an English turnpike still remaining free to ordinary traffic on the outer edges. If it were the first affair of its kind you had seen in France, you would be immediately impressed by the remarkable cleanliness of the shows and of the attendants at the numerous stalls, where every variety of goods are on sale. What may be described as the business part of the fair is distinct from that devoted to amusements, and the high-class character of the stalls and their keepers is explained when we know that the tradesmen of the town have become hucksters for the nonce, most of these temporary structures being fitted up and conducted by local shopkeepers. The appointments of some of them are elaborate to a surprising degree, but never defaced by such crude and tasteless displays as we find at English fairs. III. To mention the varieties of business represented by these stalls would be to enumerate every trade in the town, and a few more. Bakers and pastrycooks are there in abundance; the stalls at which a bewildering choice of sweetmeats is displayed are marvels of neatness, and their name is legion. As many as five or six smartly-dressed young women with white oversleeves will be busy at one counter supplying the customers, who are endeavouring to increase the purchasing value of their coppers by speculating at the roulette table kept by the proprietor, for at such time the Frenchman introduces the gambling element into every transaction where it can be applied. At the miscellaneous stalls, where all sorts of fancy goods are on sale, the "wheel of fortune" is practically the only method of exchange. Many of the places are run on the principle of "all one price," and thrifty housewives may be seen deliberating on the respective merits of knives and forks, cruet-stands, butter-dishes, and scores of minor household utensils, each to be had at the price of half a franc (fivepence). It is clear that the women-folk regard the occasion as an opportunity for getting unusual value for their money. Peasants may purchase an entire suit of clothes at some of the stalls, and if they are wishful of a crucifix or an image of the sacred heart, here they are in abundance, with rosaries, bambinoes, and all the brightly-coloured symbols of Catholic worship. But the real interest of the fair, and, of course, its most picturesque part, lies in the great Boulevard Alexandré Martin, which stretches eastward from the railway station. Here are congregated most of the places of entertainment. These, no less than the temporary shops of the tradesmen, present a striking contrast to anything one may see at an English fair. The Frenchman's instinctive feeling for art is everywhere noticeable, and the exterior decoration of the shows exhibits a lightness and daintiness of touch quite unknown in the same connection in England. The gilded horror of the ghost-show exterior, so familiar a feature of our own fairs, has no counterpart in France, but the booths wherein are exhibited "freaks of Nature" are curiously similar in both countries, the crude pictures on the canvas fronts being preposterous exaggerations of the objects to be seen within. IV. What strikes one particularly in wandering through the fair-ground at Orleans is that while all is different from an English festival, the difference is one of degree and not of kind. Here, for example, are several circuses, where performances very similar to those given by any travelling circus in our own land are "about to commence." On the outside platform two clowns are shouting to the crowd to walk up; the gorgeous ring-master with his whip joins in the general advertisement; a girl and a boy are dancing to the music of a small but noisy orchestra. There is this difference, however, between a French circus and an English one: the whole enterprise wears a more noticeable appearance of success, is better housed, the place being brilliantly lighted by electricity generated by an excellent portable plant, the performers better dressed. But curiously enough, the finest travelling circus I have ever seen in any land was Anderson's "Cirque Féerique," which I came upon during a flying visit to the industrial town of Vierzon, some hundred and twenty-five miles south of Paris. The proprietor was a Scotsman! "Mother Goose" was the chief item of the performance, and the coloured posters of the old lady and her goose had been printed in England! Pitched close to such a circus stands a large wooden opera-house, capable of holding from six to eight hundred people, the seats being arranged on an inclined plane, the higher priced ones as substantial and comfortable as the stalls of one of our provincial theatres. The stage is commodious, and the performers as accomplished as any touring company that visits the second-class English towns. Indeed, their performance of "Les Cloches de Corneville" was given with a _verve_ and a finish not seldom lacking in more ambitious opera companies one has seen at home. Instead of an orchestra, a very clever and good-looking young lady pianist played the accompaniments throughout the entire performance. The travelling theatres, too, force comparison with the regular playhouses in the smaller English towns, rather than with the wretched "tuppenny" shows that represent the drama at an English fair. Like the opera-house just described, they are fitted up substantially, and in good taste, the charges for admission ranging from half a franc to three or four francs. Many notable French actors have graduated from these portable theatres, and, indeed, those who perform in them are of a class considerably above the mummers who exhibit in our "fit-ups"; they are the best type of "strolling-players." One of the most detestable features of an English fair is the appalling noise created by mechanical organs. This is happily absent from the French fête, and of the few contrivances of the kind which I remember at Orleans there was only one designed solely for the sake of noise. Perhaps the most remarkable of these orchestrions was a real triumph of musical machinery, around which, and contained within an immense and brilliantly lighted wooden building, whirled an endless chain of fairy coaches, hobby horses, swan boats, and other fantastic vehicles, eminently contrived for the purpose of producing giddiness. This was truly the _pièce de résistance_ of the Orleans Fair, and it would be impossible to conceive a more striking contrast than that between this really magnificent construction and the familiar English merry-go-round. Externally the building would have borne favourable comparison with a "Palace of Electricity" at some of our international exhibitions. The façade was of Byzantine style, and myriads of beautifully-coloured electric lamps picked out the design, two huge peacocks with outspread tails, also composed of coloured lights, being introduced with most artistic effect on each side of the glittering archway. Inside, the decorations were gorgeous "to the _n_th degree," as Mr. W. E. Henley might have said, but the scheme of colours was in perfect harmony, the whole making up a veritable feast of light that must dazzle and fascinate the simple country-folk wherever this wonderful merry-go-round is set up. At a moderate estimate, I should name £10,000 as the cost of this single show, and perhaps that will indicate the lavish way in which the French are catered for by their travelling showmen. Cinematographs there were in profusion, most of them exhibiting scenes of a kind which would speedily be suppressed on this side the Channel; shooting galleries galore, exactly like our own; peep-shows, marionette theatres, panoramas; a booth with a two-headed bull and other monsters, a Breton bagpiper playing his instrument outside being worthy of inclusion in the list; but one saw no "fat women"--possibly because they are such common objects of French life! A large switchback railway seemed to be very popular, and, like all the rival attractions, its proprietors claimed for it the distinction of having come "direct from the Paris Exhibition," where it had been awarded first prize. The smallest side-shows, consisting of perhaps a few distorting mirrors, had all been "exhibited at Paris," and the two-headed bull was advertised by a huge painting showing all the crowned heads of Europe and President Loubet examining the beast, which, on inspection, turned out to be only a little removed from the normal by having a head slightly broader than usual, with the incipient formation of a third eye in its forehead, and a muzzle remotely suggestive of two joined together. V. A performance which I enjoyed not a little was given by a quack doctor. An enormous carriage, resembling in outline an old stage-coach, but decorated with much carved moulding and thickly covered with gilt and crimson, which produced a most bizarre effect, stood in an open space. Seated on the roof was a boy, who turned a machine which emitted the only hideous noise to be heard at the fair. In the open fore-part, richly cushioned, a man stood dressed in a dazzling suit of brass armour, his glittering helmet lying in front of him, and in his hand a small bottle of clear liquid. He was of the southern type, swarthy, wonderfully fluent of speech. He assured a gaping crowd that his medicine could cure any disease from toothache to tetanus, and he invited any sufferer to step up. Immediately one did so, the boy ground out the hideous din above, and the doctor sat for a few noisy seconds while his patient told him his trouble! Then the racket was stopped with a wave of the quack's hand, and he explained for five minutes, in vivid words, the terrible nature of the patient's disease, and invited the poor wretch to pick any bottle from the stock in front of him. This done, he had to open his waistcoat and shirt--for it was a severe pain in the left side from which he suffered--and the quack in armour struck the bottom of the bottle on his knee, thus causing the cork to pop out. He now shook the bottle vigorously with his forefinger on the neck, and the fluid changed into green, brown, and finally black, whereat the simpletons around marvelled, as they were meant to do. The comic practitioner next thrust the bottle into the open shirt-front of his patient, and shook the contents of it against the victim's skin, pressing his hand for a few moments on the part. Then he asked the fellow to step down as cured, and go among the crowd "telling his experience." A dozen cases were treated in less than half an hour--people with neuralgia, sprained wrists and ankles--and always the same formula as to consultation, explanation, application! A handful of liquid applied to a man's cheek evaporated mysteriously and worked wonders. Intending patients were told that the doctor could be consulted at the hotel near by during certain hours each day, and many must have gone to him there, for the fluent humbug had every appearance of driving a prosperous practice. VI. But the feature of this fair which, more than any other, distinguished it sharply from anything to be seen in our country, was "The Grand Theatre of the Walkyries and of the Passion of N. S. J. C." The mysterious initials stand for the French of "Our Lord Jesus Christ." A gentleman with a shaggy head of hair, dressed in a well-fitting frock-coat, and possessed of an excellent voice, stood on the platform outside, surrounded by oil paintings of sacred pictures and a dozen or more performers in the costumes of Roman soldiers, apostles and other Biblical characters. Judas was readily distinguished by his red hair, Mary by her nunlike garb. The showman announced that the performance was "about to commence," and urged us to walk up and witness the most pleasing spectacle of the fair. A hand-bill distributed among the crowd described the entertainment as a "mimodrame biblique" of the Passion, played, sung, enterpreted and mimicked by forty persons! "This spectacle, unique in France, will leave in the minds of the inhabitants of this town an unforgettable memory. It is not to be confounded with anything else you may have seen; it is no mere series of living pictures. At each performance M. Chaumont, the originator, will present twenty-one tableaux, three hundred costumes will be used, and three apotheoses will be shown. The establishment is comfortable, lighted by electricity from a plant of thirty-horse power. It is a spectacle of the best taste, pleasing to everyone, and families may come here with the fullest confidence. Balloons will be distributed to the children every Thursday." So ran the circular, which also contained the information (mendacious, I doubt not) that the entertainment was the property of a limited company with a capital of £20,000. When the signal to begin was given the place was not more than half filled, and the audience seemed in no reverential mood. A pianist began to play on a very metallic piano, and outside the voice of the manager was still heard urging the crowd to "walk up" and "be in time." The drop-curtain was rolled up, and the manager stepped inside the building as a number of characters in the sacred drama filed on to the stage. He explained, in a rapid torrent of words, what they were supposed to be doing, but Judas jingled the filthy lucre so lustfully that the pantomime was very obvious in its purport. The curtain fell again, and the manager stepped outside to harangue the crowd while the second tableau was being prepared; but the ringing of a bell brought him in again, and so on through the whole series. It must be confessed that the performance was carried out with no small dramatic ability, and M. Chaumont gave a wonderfully realistic interpretation of the rôle of Christ, some of the tableaux being strikingly conceived, as, for examples, the kiss of Judas and Christ before Pilate, the latter character being admirably represented by a performer who looked a veritable Roman proconsul, and washed his hands with traditional dignity. The Crucifixion, too, was represented with vivid reality; but the audience was disposed to laugh at the writhing of the malefactors on their crosses, and did indeed giggle when the soldier held up the sponge of vinegar to the dying Saviour. It was obvious that the whole performance, although really discharged by the actors with remarkable fidelity to tradition, and a commendable assumption of reverence, was more amusing than impressive to the spectators, who, though moved to laughter when St. Veronica pressed her handkerchief to the face of Christ and, turning to the audience, displayed the miraculous impression of His features, applauded the more dramatic scenes liberally. What interested me personally was M. Chaumont's idea of a miracle. Save that of St. Veronica, I have forgotten the others enacted; they were quite unfamiliar to me, but in the instant of each miracle a limelight was flashed for two or three seconds from "the flies," and this was supposed to betoken the super-natural character of the affair. VII. Of course, such a spectacle as I have described would be quite impossible in our country to-day, although time was in our history, when miracle plays were a recognised feature of the church in England. It was in no sense comparable with any of the passion plays still performed periodically in some continental towns, and while the incongruous surroundings of "The Grand Theatre of the Passion of N.S.J.C." were not calculated to induce a spirit of reverence in the spectators, it was a saddening spectacle to find an audience of Catholic people taking so lightly the representation of scenes which, however wrong in the light of history, should have been to them sacred subjects of faith. It was characteristically French that immediately opposite the theatre wherein this Biblical pantomime was presented stood a large exhibition containing an enormous collection of pathological models and curiosities. This was, without doubt, the foulest display of unspeakable horrors to be seen in any civilised country in our time, for under the hypocritical plea of illustrating, by wax models and otherwise, the obstetrics of human life and the diseases of the body, its proprietor--a woman, if you will believe me--had gathered together a collection of incredible horrors which men and women, and even young people, were allowed to inspect on the payment of one franc. The same exhibition, which is probably not over-valued at £20,000, was actually brought to London some few years ago, but the police speedily cleared it out of our country. These blots, however, are the only blemishes on the Orleans Fair, and for brightness, gaiety, and general good taste, I must conclude as I began, by saying that a French carnival is in every sense a more pleasing spectacle than any of our English or Scottish fairs present. The Palace of the Angels I. It was in Evreux, while cycling through Normandy one summer, that my wife and I met three "new women," who were also touring the country a-wheel. Their route was for the most part the reverse of ours, but not so extended, and in discussing the country with them I asked how long they had spent at Mont St. Michel. "Oh, we have not gone there," was the reply; "we were told it wasn't interesting, and so we have kept away from it." We were saddened to find that three English women, especially of the "advanced type," could know so little of the monuments of France as to accept the irresponsible opinion of some one-eyed tourist, who in his or her idle babble had said Mont St. Michel was not worth visiting. Not interesting, indeed! There is not in the whole of Normandy, in all France, in historic England even, an example of so much interest concentrated in so small a space. An enthusiastic Frenchman has described it as the eighth wonder of the world. Victor Hugo has said that Mont St. Michel is to France what the Pyramids are to Egypt. Large and deeply interesting volumes have been written about it. It will form a theme for writers for generations to come, and artists will employ their pencils here so long as a vestige of the wonderful buildings remains. There is a strong temptation in writing of Mont St. Michel to fall into the style of the junior reporter, who will blandly tell you that a thing is indescribable, and immediately proceed to describe it. One is persuaded that this marvellous monument of the Middle Ages cannot be adequately described in plain prose, however apt the pen, yet one is equally desirous of making the attempt. But I shall promise my readers on this occasion to make no effort at an elaborate description, which, indeed, the space of a single chapter renders impossible, and to attempt no more than a general sketch of the most noteworthy features of the Mount. II. To begin with, I take it for granted that the reader, if he or she has not already visited Mont St. Michel, is at least aware that it is situated in the bay of the same name, near the point where the coasts of Normandy and Brittany merge, and thus some forty-three miles south-east of Jersey. The story of Mont St. Michel, even had the hand of man never reared upon the rock one of the most remarkable structures the human mind has conceived, could scarcely have failed to be interesting. During the Roman occupation of France, or Gaul as it was then called, the great stretch of sea that lies to-day between the Mount and Jersey was then a vast forest, through which some fourteen miles of Roman military road were constructed. But in the third century the invasion of the sea compelled the Romans to alter the course of their road, and in the next century both the Mount and the small island of Tombelaine, which lies scarcely two miles away, were isolated at high tide. So on from century to century the sea has gradually eaten away this part of Normandy, until now some hundred and ninety square miles of land are entirely submerged at high tide. This alone is sufficient to invest the Mount with a peculiar interest, for one can stand upon it to-day and, gazing far away to sea, contemplate the absolute mastery of Neptune, whose ravages have left of all the great forest of Scissy nothing more than a handful of trees growing sturdily among the rocks on the north side of the Mount. But it is the human interest attaching to Mont St. Michel that outweighs everything else. The rock is steeped in religious lore, and in the annals of war there is no place in France more historic. Originally a monastery, it became in time an impregnable fortress as well; the rough warrior lived side by side upon it with the studious monk, and there the clash of battle was as regular an occurrence for years on end as the mass and vespers. In its old age it became a prison, one of the most dreaded in a land of terrible prisons, and just as it had been absolutely impregnable to attack (the English without success besieging it for eleven years in the fifteenth century), so was it an inviolable prison, only one man ever having been able to effect his escape, and even in his case escape would have been impossible but for the facilities unconsciously placed in his hands by his gaolers. III. The first thought that comes to the visitor as he views the Mount from the shore is, What could have induced anyone to choose so difficult a site for the foundation of a monastery? But here legend conveniently steps in and explains all. In the eighth century Aubert, the Bishop of Avranches, one of the most pious in an age of piety, was in the habit of retiring to the Mount for rest and meditation, and during one of his visits there the Archangel Saint Michael, the Prince of the Armies of the Lord, appeared to him and told him to build on the top of the Mount a sanctuary in his honour. From which it will be seen that even angels in those days were not above self-advertisement. But Aubert, though a bishop, was "even as you and I," and when he awoke in the morning he had some doubt as to whether he had been dreaming or had really entertained the Archangel; so he prolonged his stay in the hope of receiving another visit; nor was he disappointed. A few days later Saint Michael appeared to him once more, and rather sharply repeated his command. But even now Aubert was not convinced, and he determined to give Saint Michael a third chance, which the Saint was nothing loath to accept, repeating his instructions in a most peremptory manner. He also touched the bishop's head, leaving a hole in the skull "for a sign." We have heard of a surgical operation to introduce a joke, but this is the only case on record where a saint has found it necessary to perform a surgical operation for the introduction of a command into the head of a bishop, and Aubert, like a sensible man, concluding that one hole in his skull was sufficient, immediately set about the building of "the Palace of the Angels." Aubert's skull is still preserved in the Church of Saint Gervais at Avranches, and the startling effect of Saint Michael's touch may be seen to this day! This is only one of the innumerable legends relating to the origin of the Abbey. Another is worthy of mention, illustrating, as it does, the advantages of co-operation with an angel when one is performing so difficult a task as Aubert took up. On the top of the Mount were two large rocks which interfered seriously with building, and could be moved by no human efforts. Saint Michael, therefore, appeared to a devout peasant who lived on the coast and bore the familiar name of Bain, telling him to take his sons to the Mount and move the rocks. Despite the Caledonian flavour of his name, Bain did not wait to have his skull perforated by the Archangel, but went forthwith together with eleven of his children and tried to move the rocks. They could not stir them one hair's-breadth, however; whereupon Aubert asked Bain if he had brought all his children, and the good man explained that they were all there except the baby, which was with its mother. The Bishop then instructed him to go at once and fetch the infant, "for God often chooses the weak to confound the strong." The child was brought, and at a touch of his little foot the rocks went tumbling down the Mount, in proof of which one of them may be seen to this day with a little chapel to Saint Aubert built on the top of it. One more of the many miracles associated with the beginning of the great work should not be left unmentioned. Saint Aubert was naturally much exercised as to where he should rear his sanctuary, the pinnacle of a lonely rock being an unusual place to build on even in those unusual days, but here again the Archangel, who had manifested so much personal interest in the work, came to his rescue, and caused a heavy dew to fall on the Mount, leaving a dry space on the top. Upon this dry space was the church to be built. In 709 Saint Aubert had practically completed the structure, and the church was dedicated to Saint Michael after two precious relics (namely, a piece of a scarlet veil, which the Archangel had left on the occasion of his famous appearance at Monte Gargano in Naples, together with a piece of the marble on which he had stood) had been placed in a casket on the altar. Not a vestige of the oratory built by Saint Aubert, nor of the church erected in 963 by Richard, remains. The oldest part of the buildings now existing represents a church founded in 1020 by Richard, second Duke of Normandy, and constructed under the direction of the Abbot Hildebert II. The transepts, the greater part of the nave, and the crypts date back to this period. IV. The whole scheme of the wonderful memorial that fascinates the eye of the latter-day tourist owed its conception to this eleventh-century abbot, and surely no heaven-born architect ever conceived a more audacious plan. His project was not merely to occupy the limited space on the summit of the Mount with his religious buildings, but to start far down the sides of the rock, and, by utilising the Mount just as the sculptor makes use of a skeleton frame whereon to plaster the clay in which he models his statue, so to rear upward gigantic walls and buttresses which at the top would carry a huge platform to hold the superstructures, creating thus a collection of vast buildings with the live rock thrust up in the centre for foundation. It is to the glory of Saint Michael that for no less than five centuries this colossal scheme of Hildebert's was carried out with absolute unity of purpose by his successors, an achievement only possible among religious workers. The result was that this lonely Mount gradually became clothed with a series of most beautiful buildings, which to the eye of the beholder seem to have grown by some natural process out of the rock itself. [Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF MONT ST. MICHEL] To the student of architecture it would be impossible to mention any monument more worthy of study than this. Not only do we find within its innumerable cloisters, crypts, and halls, specimens of the purest Gothic that exists, but at every turn we are presented with structures that conform to the very highest ideals of art, in being at once useful and beautiful. There is not a single buttress, not a window, not an arch, not a pillar, that does not discharge some duty, and the removal of which would not weaken in some degree a part of the scheme. V. The best way to secure an intelligible notion of the work of these monkish builders is to walk around the Mount at low tide and study the buildings from the outside. The feature that will most impress one in following this course is the wonderful north side of the Mount, known as the Merveille, which rears its massive walls sheer from the rock face, supported along its entire length by enormous buttresses, that spring with a fine suggestion of strength and permanency from their rocky base. The principal buildings, apart from the church, are contained within these massive walls. To the west we have, in three stories, the Cellar, the Salle des Chevaliers, and above the latter the open Cloister, the most perfect example of its kind in the world. The eastern part begins with the Almonry, above which is the Salle des Hôtes, and on the top of that the Refectory. The whole effect of the Merveille is superb, yet what is it more than a great wall, held up by mighty buttresses, pierced in different ways to light the chambers within and to make each suitable for its particular office? The most perfect economy has been observed throughout, the buttresses are terminated the moment their services are not required, and the Refectory, which carries a light wooden roof, is lighted by means of long narrow lancets which give to the wall far more strength than would have been possible had it been pierced by wide windows; still, the lighting within is perfect. In brief, the Merveille, apart from the numerous other buildings that went to form the monastic and military establishment, is enough to send an architect into raptures, and might, if he knew not the dangers of the incoming tide, which has to cover nine miles of land at the rate of a race-horse, induce him to tarry over long in feasting his eyes on this marvellous achievement. It is beautiful beyond description, and yet we may be certain that its builders never thought of mere beauty in its construction, but built purely to meet the exigencies of the situation, and to provide the best possible accommodation for the inhabitants of the monastery and their dependants. As one writer has put it, "the beauty just happened." It is only when we find builders striving after effect that we are face to face with decadent art. Continuing our walk round the rock on those sands that have been the scene of many a bitter battle, we pass under the ramparts, beginning with the Tour du Nord at the eastern end of the Merveille. Here, again, the beautiful union of art and Nature is observed, this magnificent tower seeming to be but the natural growth of the shelving rocks at its base. It is no surprise to know that through the ages which knew not the Maxim or the 100-ton gun, the splendid fortifications successfully resisted every attack of the envious English, the Bretons, and the Huguenots. The modern town is huddled picturesquely between the ramparts and the Abbey to the east and south. VI. Having completed the tour around the Mount, the visitor should proceed along the ramparts, and reach the entrance to the Abbey by the staircase known as the Grand Degré, which leads into the Barbican, and through the massive and beautiful Châtelet into the more ancient entrance of the Abbey, known as Belle-Chaise, where are situated the Guard Room and the Government Room. Here the guide will take us in hand, and march us from point to point of interest in the interior. But it is impossible, in the space of a short chapter, to attempt a description of this, that would follow in any detail the stipulated round of the apartments at present shown to the public. Suffice it to say that you will first be taken to the Church, which is now, and likely to be for many years, in the hands of the restorers. Only four bays of the seven that went to the making of the great Norman nave remain, and these have had to be much restored; but here it is a pleasure to record that the restoration has been carried out with perfect taste, so that the latter-day visitor has an excellent idea of the appearance of the Abbey and its dependent buildings as these were in the heyday of Mont St. Michel's prosperity. From the Church we shall enter the Cloister, already mentioned as being the topmost of the three western stories of the Merveille. Here was the recreation ground of the monks, and nothing could be more exquisite than the elegant proportions of the slender pillars that support the vaulted roofs of the double arcade. From the Cloister we visit the Refectory, where many a strange gathering of monks has taken place in days of old, for it is one of the interesting things in the history of Mont St. Michel that, while in its earlier ages it was a centre of learning and genuine religion, it became corrupt and scandalous under the commendatory abbots, who were men neither of morals nor religion, and who allowed all sorts of abuses within these sacred walls. At one time, indeed, the Abbot of Mont St. Michel was the five-year-old son of Louis the Just. In the south-west corner of the Refectory is the pit that formerly contained a lift whereby provisions could be hauled up from the bottom story, and the leavings of the monks sent down to the Almonry for distribution among the poor. The Salle des Chevaliers, which will next be visited, is described by a learned writer as "perhaps the finest Gothic chamber in the world," and is believed to have been built as a great workroom for the monks, but received its present name either from the fact that the first investitures of the Order of St. Michael were made herein, or that it was the lodging of the 190 knights who came to the Mount to defend it against the English. In this beautiful apartment, lighted and ventilated in a way that is a model to present-day builders, the monks wrote and illuminated the manuscripts which earned for the abbey the title of "The City of Books." Reached from this room is the Salle des Hôtes, wherein the grand visitors were entertained by the abbot in a style befitting their rank, as under the rule of St. Benedict it was forbidden for laymen to enter the apartments reserved for the monks. Like all the other buildings, however, it has served many another purpose than that for which it was originally designed, and at one time was actually used as a _Plomberie_ where the lead was worked for roofing and other purposes connected with the Abbey. The Cellar is, in its way, as beautiful as any of the other apartments, although nothing was attempted by its builders but to provide a capacious storeroom for the inhabitants of the Mount, and to secure, in its strong pillars, strength to support the buildings rising above it. The provisions were hauled up from the sands by means of a great wheel and a rope, the latter being carried out on a little drawbridge to enable it to drop clear of the rocks. This arrangement, by the way, is associated with one of the most audacious attempts to secure the Abbey during the wars of the Huguenots. A traitor within arranged with two Huguenot leaders that on the day of St. Michael, in September, at eight o'clock in the evening, in the year 1591, he would haul up their men by means of this rope, and introduce them to the Cellar, while the monks were engaged in devotions, so placing the Mount at their mercy. But he proved a double traitor, for after seventy-eight men had been so hauled up, and, with one exception, quietly killed by the soldiers of the garrison as they arrived, the leaders below became suspicious of a trap, and asked that a monk should be thrown down as evidence that the plot was successful. The Governor immediately had one of the murdered Huguenots dressed in the gown of a monk and thrown down, but the Sieur Montgomery was not satisfied with this, and he called up that one of his men should come out on the drawbridge and assure them below that all was well. So the Governor sent the one man he had spared and instructed him to answer down that the Huguenots were masters of the Abbey. He was faithful to death, however, and called down that they were betrayed. Instead of being immediately killed, the Governor was so impressed with his courage, that he spared him, and the Huguenots hastily rode away. The Almonry is the last of the great apartments which are contained in the Merveille, and it is from this that visitors make their exit into the courtyard of the Abbey; but many other interesting chambers are shown, such as the Crypte de l'Aquilon, the Charnier, the Promenoir or ancient cloister, and the famous Crypte des Gros-Piliers, which is also known as l'Eglise Basse, its pillars, of enormous girth, being designed to support the heavy masonry of the Abbey above. The Cachots, or prisons, are also an important feature of the sights described by the guide, and many harrowing tales are told of famous prisoners who went mad during their incarceration in these dread dungeons. But it is a pity that this part is shown at all, as the recollection of these hideous holes is likely to confuse many visitors' impressions of the place. VII. Here, then, is a very brief and a sadly-imperfect sketch of this rare legacy which the Middle Ages have left to lucky France. It need only be added that not one visit, nor two, is sufficient to an adequate appreciation of the beauties of Mont St. Michel; several days, instead of several hours, as is too often the custom of the breathless tourist, should be spent on the Mount. There is accommodation in plenty, for the three hotels, all kept by members of the same family (and each at daggers drawn with the others), give splendid entertainment at moderate rates; and practically all the houses are annexes to one or other of these establishments, so that except during August and September accommodation is never difficult to obtain. Nor are the buildings of the Abbey and the Merveille the only things of interest on the Mount to-day, for though it is a strangely-different scene from that in the olden days of pilgrimage, it is, perhaps, as interesting if we choose to regard as pilgrims the countless tourists who swarm here from all the ends of the earth, and we shall find among them even more material for study than was afforded to the monks in ages past. Then if rain should keep us prisoner for an hour or two at times, we need not weary sitting at our window, watching the carriages and bicycles arriving at the entrance to the Cour de l'Avancée, where they are immediately besieged by representatives of each of the hotels, and probably a simple Briton, innocent of French or the ways of this curious community, will find himself divided into three, his luggage being captured by the representative of Poulard _aîné_, his bicycle being taken by the tout for Poulard _jeune_, and he himself led captive by the buxom female who canvasses for _veuve_ Poulard. [Illustration: _The Merveille_ _Interior of the Abbey_ MONT ST. MICHEL] We remember one occasion when, at a high tide, which necessitated the use of a boat for debarking visitors, a solitary English female, of the type so properly satirised by French caricaturists, arrived by the diligence, and was rowed in lonely state through the entrance to the outer court. As the boat grounded she stood up, an angular vision in drab, with dark blue spectacles and a straw hat. In answer to the inquiring shouts of the hotel representatives, she innocently replied in the one word she knew, "Poulard," and there was a rush for her, in which the elder Poulard, thanks to exceptional height and strength, was able to dispose of his rivals, and lift this representative of British womanhood bodily into the kitchen of his hotel. She would probably be as much surprised as most of us are on visiting the place for the first time, to discover that after leaving this kitchen and ascending two stairs in the hope of arriving immediately at our bedroom, the maid calmly opens a door, and we find ourselves in another street, that rises step after step for one hundred yards or so, and brings us to one of the dependencies of the hotel, where probably we may have two or three stories to climb. You have a feeling all the time you are on the Mount that, somehow, you are living on the top of slates, as the houses look down upon each other, and in many cases you can walk from the top flat out on to a street at the back. In a word, Mont St. Michel is unique. A stay here is an experience unlike any to be had elsewhere in Europe. "Not worth visiting" forsooth! PRINTING OFFICE OF THE PUBLISHER * * * * * * Transcriber's note: Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. 
44776	----	Transcriber's Note This version of the text is unable to reproduce certain typographic features. Italics are delimited with the '_' character as _italic_. The 'oe' ligature is rendered as separate characters. Words printed using "small capitals" are shifted to all upper-case. The 'oe' ligature is given here as separate characters. There are various fonts employed. These are indicated, usually, simply by indenting those passages. Some compound words appeared both with and without a hyphen. They are given as printed. Where a word is hyphenated on a line break, the hyphen is retained if the preponderance of other appearances indicate it was intended. Illustrations cannot be reproduced here, but the approximate position of each is indicated as: [Illustration: <caption>]. The few footnotes are repositioned at the end of the paragraph or quotation where they are referenced. They have been numbered consecutively (1-13). Please consult the note at the end of this text for details of any corrections made. CATLIN'S NOTES OF EIGHT YEARS' TRAVELS AND RESIDENCE IN EUROPE, WITH HIS NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN COLLECTION. VOLUME I. [Illustration] ADVENTURES OF THE OJIBBEWAY AND IOWAY INDIANS IN ENGLAND, FRANCE, AND BELGIUM; BEING NOTES OF EIGHT YEARS' TRAVELS AND RESIDENCE IN EUROPE WITH HIS NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN COLLECTION, BY GEO. CATLIN. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. With numerous Engravings. _THIRD EDITION._ LONDON: PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR, AT HIS INDIAN COLLECTION, NO. 6, WATERLOO PLACE. 1852. PREFACE. The reader of this book, being supposed to have read my former work, in two volumes, and to have got some account from them, of the eight years of my life spent amongst the wild Indians of the "_Far West_," in the forests of America, knows enough of me by this time to begin familiarly upon the subject before us, and to accompany me through a brief summary of the scenes of eight years spent amidst the civilization and refinements of the "_Far East_." After having made an exhibition of my Indian Collection for a short time, in the cities of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, in the United States, I crossed the Atlantic with it--not with the fear of losing my scalp, which I sometimes entertained when entering the Indian wilderness--and entirely without the expectation of meeting with excitements or novelties enough to induce me to commit the sin of writing another book; and the thought of doing it would never have entered my head, had not another of those untoward accidents, which have directed nearly all the important moves of my life, placed in my possession the materials for the following pages, which I have thought too curious to be withheld from the world. After I had been more than four years in England, making an exhibition of my collection, and endeavouring, by my lectures in various parts of the kingdom, to inform the English people of the true character and condition of the North American Indians, and to awaken a proper sympathy for them, three different parties of Indians made their appearance, at different dates, in England, for the purpose of exhibiting themselves and their native modes to the enlightened world, their conductors and themselves stimulated by the hope of gain by their exertions. These parties successively, on their arrival, (knowing my history and views, which I had made known to most of the American tribes,) repaired to my Indian Collection, in which they felt themselves at home, surrounded as they were by the portraits of their own chiefs and braves, and those of their enemies, whom they easily recognised upon the walls. They at once chose the middle of my Exhibition Hall as the appropriate place for their operations, and myself as the expounder of their mysteries and amusements; and, the public seeming so well pleased with the fitness of these mutual illustrations, I undertook the management of their exhibitions, and conducted the three different parties through the countries and scenes described in the following pages. In justice to _me_, it should here be known to the reader, that I did not bring either of these parties to Europe; but, meeting them in the country, where they had come avowedly for the purpose of making money, (an enterprise as lawful and as unobjectionable, for aught that I can see, at least, as that of an actor upon the boards of a foreign stage,) I considered my countenance and aid as calculated to promote their views; and I therefore justified myself in the undertaking, as some return to them for the hospitality and kindness I had received at the hands of the various tribes of Indians I had visited in the wildernesses of America. In putting forth these notes, I sincerely hope that I may give no offence to any one, by endeavouring to afford amusement to the reader, and to impart useful instruction to those who are curious to learn the true character of the Indians, from a literal description of their interviews with the fashionable world, and their views and opinions of the modes of civilized life. These scenes have afforded me the most happy opportunity of seeing the _rest_ of Indian character (after a residence of eight years amongst them in their native countries), and of enabling me to give to the world what I was not able to do in my former work, for the want of an opportunity of witnessing the effects which the exhibition of all the ingenious works of civilized art, and the free intercourse and exchange of opinions with the most refined and enlightened society, would have upon their untutored minds. The reader will therefore see, that I am offering this as _another Indian book_, and intending it mostly for those who have read my former work, and who, I believe, will admit, that in it I have advanced much further towards the completion of a full delineation of their native character. I shall doubtless be pardoned for the unavoidable want of system and arrangement that sometimes appears in minuting down the incidents of these interviews--for recording many of the most trivial opinions and criticisms of the Indians upon civilized modes, and also the odd and amusing (as well as grave) notions of the civilized world, upon Indian manners and appearance, which have got into my note-book, and which I consider it would be a pity to withhold. I have occasionally stepped a little out of the way, also, to advance my own opinion upon passing scenes and events; drawing occasional deductions, by contrasting savage with civilized life (the modes of the "Far West" with those of the "Far East"); and, as what I have written, I offer as matter of history, without intending to injure any one, I do not see why I should ask pardon for any possible offence that may be given to the reader, who can only be offended by imagining what never was meant. During the series of lectures which I had been giving in various parts of England, and in my own country, wherein I had been contending for the moral and religious elevation of the Indian character, many of my hearers have believed that I had probably been led to over-estimate it, from the fact that I had beheld it in the wilderness, where there was nothing better to contrast it with. But I venture to say, that hundreds and thousands who read this book, and who became familiar with these wild people whilst in the enlightened world, and in the centre of fashion, where white man was shaking the poor Indian by the hand, and watching for his embarrassment while he was drawing scintillations from him, as the flint draws fire from the steel, will agree with me that the North American Indian rises highest in the estimation of his fellow-men, when he is by the side of those who have the advantage of him by their education, and nothing else. Contemplated or seen, roaming in his native wilds, with his rude weapons, lurking after game or his enemy, he is looked upon by most of the world as a sort of wild beast; but when, with all his rudeness and wildness, he stands amongst his fellow-men to be scanned in the brilliant blaze of the Levée into which he has been suddenly thrown, the dignified, the undaunted (and even courteous) gentleman, he there gains his strongest admirers, and the most fastidious are willing to assign him a high place in the scale of human beings. Into many such positions were these three parties of the denizens of the American forest thrown, during their visits to the capitals and provincial towns of England, Scotland, Ireland, France, and Belgium; and as I was by their side, their interpreter, at the hospitable boards, the Soirées and Levées to which they were invited by the gentry, the nobility, and crowned heads of the three kingdoms, I consider it due to them, and no injustice to the world, to record the scenes and anecdotes I have witnessed in those hospitable and friendly efforts of enlightened and religious people, to elicit the true native feelings of, and to commune with, their benighted fellow-men. THE AUTHOR. CONTENTS OF VOL. 1. CHAPTER I. The Author embarks at New York, with his Indian Collection, and cage with two grizly bears, for England, in the fall of 1839--Packet-ship Roscius, Captain Collins--Gale in the middle of the ocean--A ship dismasted and in distress--The Captain and twenty-eight men taken off and saved--The shipwrecked Captain and his faithful dog--"My man Daniel"--Sailor's nose taken off by grizly bear--Dr. Madden--Terrible gale--Sea-sickness of the grizly bears--Alarm on deck--"Bears out of their cage"--Passengers rush below and close the hatches--A _supposed_ bear enters the cabin!--Great excitement--The explanation--The gale subsides--Amusing mistake--The Author in the steerage--Two eccentric characters--Arrival in Liverpool Page 1 CHAPTER II. Howling of the grizly Bears--Alarm and excitement about the docks--Scuffle for luggage--Scene at the Grecian Hotel--Landing the grizly bears--Author's journey to London--Ibbotson's Hotel--First sally into the streets--First impressions of London--Adventure in the fog and mud--Amusing occurrence in the street--Beggars at the crossings of the streets--Ingenious mode of begging--Rich shops--No pigs in the streets--Soot and smoke of London--Author returns to Liverpool--Daniel's trouble with the bears--Passing the Indian Collection and grizly bears through the Customs--Arrival in London with Collection and bears--Daniel in difficulty--Howling of bears passing through the Tunnel--The "King of New York," and "King Jefferson" 12 CHAPTER III. Letters of introduction--Driving a friend's horse and chaise--Amusing accidents--English driving--"Turn to the _right_, as the law directs"--A turn to the _left_--A fresh difficulty--Egyptian Hall--Lease for three years--Arrangement of Collection--Bears sold and removed to Regent's Park Zoological Gardens--Their fates 28 CHAPTER IV. Indian Collection arranged for exhibition--Description of it--The Hon. Charles Augustus Murray--Collection opened to private view--Kindness of the Hon. Mr. Murray--Distinguished visitors--Mr. Murray's explanations--Kind reception by the Public and the Press--Kind friends--Fatigue of explaining and answering questions--Curious remedy proposed by a friend--Pleasures and pains of a friendly and fashionable dinner 34 CHAPTER V. Author's illness from overtalking in his Collection--Daniel's illness from the same cause--Character of Daniel--His labour-saving plan for answering one hundred questions--His disappointment--Daniel travels to Ireland for his health--Author prepares to publish his Notes of Travel amongst the Indians--John Murray (publisher)--His reasons for not publishing the Author's work--His friendly advice--Author's book published by himself at the Egyptian Hall--Illustrious subscribers--Thomas Moore--Critical notices in London papers 45 CHAPTER VI. The Author's wife and two children arrive in the British Queen, from New York--First appreciation of London--Sight-seeing--Author lectures in the Royal Institution--Suggests a _Museum of Mankind_--Great applause--Vote of thanks by members of the Royal Institution--The "_Museum of History_"--Author lectures in the other literary and scientific institutions of London--Author dines with the Royal Geographical Society, and with the Royal Geological Society--Mrs. Catlin's travels in the "Far West"--Her welcome, and kind friends in London 60 CHAPTER VII. The Author dines with the Royal Highland Society--The Duke of Richmond presides--His Grace's compliment to the Author and his country--Sir David Wilkie--His compliment to the Author--Charles Augustus Murray and the Author at the Caledonian Ball (Almack's) in Indian costumes--Their rehearsal--Dressing and painting--Entering the ball--Alarm of ladies--Mr. Murray's infinite amusement (_incognito_) amongst his friends--War-dance and war-whoops--Great applause--Bouquets of flowers--Scalp-dance--Brooches and bracelets presented to the chiefs--Trinkets returned--Perspiration carries off the paint, and Mr. Murray recognised--Amusement of his friends--The "Indians" return to Egyptian Hall at seven in the morning--Their amusing appearance 66 CHAPTER VIII. Their Royal Highnesses the Duke of Coburg and Prince Ernest visit the Collection--His Royal Highness the (little) Duc de Brabant visits the Collection with the Hon. Mr. Murray--The Author presents him an Indian pipe and pair of mocassins--Visit of His Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex to the Collection--His noble sympathy for the Indians--He smokes an Indian pipe under the wigwam--The Author takes breakfast with the Duke of Sussex in Kensington Palace--The Duke's dress and appearance--John Hunter, the Indian traveller--The Duke's inquiries about him--Monsieur Duponceau--Visit to the Bank of England--To Buckingham Palace--To Windsor Castle--Author visits the Polish Ball with several friends in Indian costumes 79 CHAPTER IX. Consequent troubles for Daniel in the exhibition-rooms--Daniel's difficulty with an artist making copies--Takes his sketch-book from him--Tableaux vivans commenced--List of the groups--Hon. Mr. Murray attends, with His Royal Highness the Due de Brabant--The Author presented to Her Majesty and His Royal Highness Prince Albert, by the Hon. Mr. Murray--Indian Collection removed to Liverpool--Biennial exhibition of Mechanics' Institution--22,000 children admitted free to the Indian Collection in one week--The Indian tableaux vivans in the provincial towns for six months--Collection opened in Sheffield--In Manchester--Nine Ojibbeway Indians arrive, in charge of Mr. Rankin--His proposal to the Author 90 CHAPTER X. Difficulty of procuring lodgings for the Indians--The Author pays them a visit--Is recognised by them--Arrangement with Mr. Rankin--Crowds around their hotel--First visit of the Ojibbeways to the Author's Collection--Their surprise--Council held under the wigwam--Indians agree to drink no spirituous liquors--The old Chiefs speech to the Author--Names of the Indians--Their portraits--Description of each--Cadotte, the interpreter 103 CHAPTER XI. Ojibbeways visit the Mayor in Town-hall--They refuse wine--Distress of the kind and accommodating landlord--Indians' first _drive_ about the town of Manchester--Their curious remarks--Saw some white people drunk--Many women holding on to men's arms and apparently not sick--Saw much smoke--Vast many poor people--Indians commence dancing in the Author's Collection--Effects of the war-dance and war-whoop upon the audience--Various amusements of the evening--A rich present to the old Boy-Chief--And his speech--Numerous presents made--Immense crowd and excitement--Indians visit a great woollen-factory--Casts made from their heads by a phrenologist--Visit to Orrell's cotton-mill at Stockport--Their opinions of it--The party kindly entertained by Mr. Hollins and lady 111 CHAPTER XII. Indians on the housetops--Great alarm--Curious excitement--People proposing to "take them" with ropes--Railway to London--The "Iron-horse"--"The Iron-horse (locomotive) stops to drink"--Arrive in London--Alarm of the landlady--Visit from the Hon. Mr. Murray--Interview with His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge--Old Chief's speech--War-dance--The Duke gives them ten sovereigns and ten pounds of tobacco--Indians ride about the city in an "omnibus and four"--Remarks on what they saw--The smoke--"Prairies on fire"--Lascars sweeping the streets--Visit from the Reverend Mr. S.--Impatience to see the Queen--Great medicine-feast to gain Her Majesty's consent--Curious ceremony--Hon. Mr. Murray's letter comes in--The Queen's appointment to see them--Great rejoicing 123 CHAPTER XIII. Preparations for visiting the Queen--Amusing interview with Sykes, the porter--Mistaken by the old Chief for Prince Albert--Meet the Hon. Mr. Murray--The waiting-room--The Author conducts the party before Her Majesty and the Prince in the Waterloo Gallery--Their reception--Introductions and conversations--Indians give the war-dance--A smoke--The old Chief's speech to the Queen--Pipe-dance--Her Majesty and the Prince retire--Indians at a feast in the waiting-room--Drinking the Queen's health in Champagne--Indians call it "_Chickabobboo_"--Story of _Chickabobboo_, and great amusement--Indians return to London--Evening-gossip about the Queen and her _Chickabobboo_--First evening of the Indians in Egyptian Hall--Great excitement--Alarm--Tremendous applause--Old Chiefs speech--Hon. Mr. Murray's letter to the old Chief, enclosing £20 from the Queen and other presents--Speech of the War-chief--Pipe-dance--Shaking hands--Curious questions by the audience--Ale allowed to the Indians at dinner and after supper--Their rejoicing--They call it _Chickabobboo_ 134 CHAPTER XIV. Rev. Mr. S---- and friend visit the Indians again--A day appointed for a _talk_ about religion--Indians go to the Thames Tunnel--Give the medicine-dance (wabeno) under it--Kind treatment there, and _Chickabobboo_--The exhibition--Egyptian Hall--Debate about the propriety of the Indians dancing to make money--Great crowd--Woman screaming and lifted on to the platform by Cadotte (afterwards called the "_jolly fat_ dame")--She gives Cadotte a beautiful bracelet--Her admiration of Cadotte--Evening gossip after their exhibition--The amusements of the evening and sights of the day--A clergyman asks an interview with the Indians and gets offended--Exhibition rooms at night--Great crowd--The "jolly fat dame" in full dress--She talks with Cadotte--Indians meet the Rev. Mr. S---- and friend by appointment--Old Chief's speech to them--Gish-ee-gosh-e-ghee's speech--Reverend gentlemen thank them and take leave 150 CHAPTER XV. Exhibition rooms--Great crowd--The "jolly fat dame"--Her interview with Cadotte--She gives presents to all the Indians--Excitement in the crowd--Women kissing the Indians--Red paint on their faces and dresses--Old Chief's dream and feast of thanksgiving--An annual ceremony--Curious forms observed--Indians invited to the St. George's archery-ground--They shoot for a gold medal--They dine with the members of the club--The "jolly fat dame" and Cadotte--She takes him to his lodgings in her carriage--Cadotte (or the "Strong-wind") gets sick--Is in love with another!--Daniel unfolds the secret to her--Her distress--She goes to the country--The "jolly fat dame" returns--Cadotte's engagement to marry--Rankin promotes the marriage--The Author disapproves of it 167 CHAPTER XVI. Mr. Rankin resolves to take the Indians to the provincial towns--Exhibition advertised to close--the wedding in St. Martin's church--Great excitement--Its object--Grand parade through the streets in omnibuses--Rankin advertises "the beautiful and interesting bride" to appear on the platform at the Indians' exhibitions--Public disgust and indignation--Condemned by the Press--Rankin begins his exhibition--Denies Cadotte admission to the Indians' rooms, and dismisses him from his service--Rankin leaves London with the Indians---Author getting out his large work--The Indian portfolio--The "jolly fat dame" makes a visit to Daniel in the exhibition rooms--A long dialogue--Illustrious subscribers to the Author's large work--Emperor of Russia and Duke of Wellington review 10,000 troops at Windsor--The Emperor presents the Author a gold box--Author takes out a patent for "disengaging and floating quarter-decks, to save lives on vessels sinking or burning at sea" 185 APPENDIX. APPENDIX--A. Opinions of the Press Page 205 APPENDIX--B. Museum of History 246 A Descriptive Catalogue of Catlin's Indian Collection 248 CATLIN'S NOTES IN EUROPE, _&c. &c._ CHAPTER I. The Author embarks at New York, with his Indian Collection, and cage with two grizly Bears, for England, in the fall of 1839--Packet-ship Roscius, Captain Collins--Gale in the middle of the ocean--A ship dismasted and in distress--The Captain and twenty-eight men taken off and saved--The shipwrecked Captain and his faithful dog--"My man Daniel"--Sailor's nose taken off by grizly bear--Dr. Madden--Terrible gale--Sea-sickness of the grizly bears--Alarm on deck--"Bears out of their cage"--Passengers rush below and close the hatches--A _supposed_ Bear enters the cabin!--Great excitement--The explanation--The gale subsides--Amusing mistake--The Author in the steerage--Two eccentric characters--Arrival in Liverpool. In the fall of the year 1839 I embarked at New York on board of the packet-ship Roscius, Captain Collins, for Liverpool, with my Indian collection; having received a very friendly letter of advice from the Hon. C. A. Murray, master of Her Majesty's household, who had formerly been a fellow-traveller with me on the Mississippi and other rivers in America; and who, on his return to London, had kindly made a conditional arrangement for my collection in the Egyptian Hall, in Piccadilly. Mr. George Adlard, an Englishman, residing in the city of New York, had also exerted a friendly influence for me in procuring an order from the Lords of Her Majesty's Treasury for passing my collection into the kingdom free from the customary duties; and under these auspices I was launched upon the wide ocean, with eight tons freight, consisting of 600 portraits and other paintings which I had made in my sojourn of eight years in the prairies and Rocky Mountains of America--several thousands of Indian articles, costumes, weapons, &c., with all of which I intended to convey to the English people an accurate account of the appearance and condition of the North American tribes of Indians.[1] On board also, as a part of my heavy collection, and as a further illustration of the rude inhabitants of the "_Far West_" I had, in a huge iron cage, two _grizly bears_, from the Rocky Mountains; forming not only the heaviest and most awkward part of my freight, but altogether the most troublesome, as will be seen hereafter. The wind was kind to us, and soon drove us across the Atlantic, without more than an incident or two worth recording, which I had minuted down as follows:--About the middle of the ocean, and in the midst of a four or five days' heavy gale, we came suddenly upon a ship, partly dismasted, with signals of distress flying, and water-logged, rolling about at the mercy of the merciless waves. We rounded-to with great danger to our own craft, and, during the early part of the night, succeeded, with much difficulty, in taking off the captain and crew of twenty-eight men, just before she went down. This was a common occurrence, however, and needs no further notice, other than of a feature or two which struck me as new. When the poor, jaded, and water-soaked fellows were all safely landed on the deck of our vessel, they laid down upon their faces and devoutly thanked God for their deliverance; and last of all that was lifted on board from their jolly-boat was their keg of rum, the only thing which they had brought with them when they deserted the ship. "This," good Captain Collins said, "you will not want now, my boys," and he cast it into the sea. [1] If the reader has forgotten to read the Preface, it will take him but a moment to run his eye over it, and by turning back to it he will find it an useful key to what follows.--_Author._ Captain James, a bland and good-natured Scotsman, commander of the Scotia, the unfortunate vessel, was invited by Captain Collins to the cabin of the Roscius, and into his state-room, where he was soon put into a suit of dry and warm clothes, and afterwards seated at the table; where, suddenly, a sullen resistance to food, and contemplative tears rolling over his cheeks, showed his rough shell to contain a heart that was worthy of the fondest affections of a dear wife and sweet little ones--none of which was he blessed with, if I recollect aright. But when his grief found utterance, he exclaimed, "My God! I have left my poor dog tied to the mast of my old craft. There he is, poor fellow! When we took to the jolly-boat I never thought of my poor Pompey!" The briny tears seemed to burn this veteran's hardened features as they ran over his cheeks; and hunger and fatigue, and all gave way to them and grief, until sleep had dried them up, and taken the edge from his anguished mind. The next morning, his recital of the affectionate deeds of the life of his faithful dog, "who had made eighteen voyages across the Atlantic with him, and who would always indicate land a-head by his nose sooner than the sailors could discern it from the mast-head--whom he had, in kindness, lashed to the mast for his safety, and in carelessness abandoned to his unavoidable fate," brought tears of pity in my own eyes. Poor man! he often wept for his faithful dog--and I as often wept for him, on our way from the middle of the ocean to Liverpool. We were, at this time, still in the midst of the terrible gale, which was increasing in its fury, and had already become quite too much for the tastes and the stomachs of the _grizlies_--a few words more of whom must go into this chapter. These two awkward voyageurs from the base of the Rocky Mountains, which I had reared from cubs, and fed for more than four years--for whose roughness in clawing and "chawing" I had paid for half a dozen cages which they had demolished and escaped from, and the prices of as many dogs "used up" in retaking them, had now grown to the enormous size of eight or ten hundred pounds each; requiring a cage of iron so large that it could not be packed amongst the ship's cargo below, but must needs occupy a considerable space on the deck, in the form and size somewhat of a small house. The front of this cage was formed of huge iron bars, kindly indulging the bruins to amuse themselves with a peep at what was progressing on deck, whilst it afforded the sailors and steerage passengers the amusement of looking and commenting upon the physiognomy and man[oe]uvres of these rude specimens from the wilderness of America. This huge cage, with its inmates, had ridden into and partly through the gale with us, when the bears became subjects of more violent interest and excitement than we had as yet anticipated or could have wished. What had taken (and was taking) place amongst the sick and frightened group of passengers during this roaring, whistling, thrashing, and dashing gale, was common-place, and has been a thousand times described; but the sea-sickness, and rage, and fury of these two grizly denizens of the deep ravines and rocky crags of the Rocky Mountains, were subjects as fresh as they were frightful and appalling to the terrified crew and passengers who were about them, and therefore deserve a passing comment. The immediate guardian of these animals was a faithful man by the name of Daniel Kavanagh, who had for several years been in my employment as curator of my collection, and designed to accompany me in my tour through England. This man has occupied a conspicuous place in my affairs in Europe, and much will be said of him in the following pages, and the familiar and brief cognomen of "Daniel" or "Dan" applied to him. On embarking with this man and his troublesome pets at New York, I had fully explained to Captain Collins their ferocious, and deceitful, and intractable nature, who had consequently issued his orders to all of his crew and to the steerage passengers not to venture within their reach, or to trifle with them. Notwithstanding all this precaution, curiosity, that beautiful trait of human nature, which often becomes irresistible in long voyages, and able to turn the claws of the Devil himself into the soft and tapering fingers of a Venus or a Daphne, got the better of the idle hours of the sailors, who were amusing themselves and the passengers, in front of the iron bars, by believing that they were wearing off by a sort of charm the rough asperities of their grizly and grim passengers by shaking their paws, and squaring and fending off the awkward sweeps occasionally made at them by the huge paw of the _she_ bear, which she could effectually make by lying down and running her right arm quite out between the iron bars. On one of these (now grown to be amusing) occasions, one of the sailors was "squared off" before the cage, inviting her grizly majesty to a sort of set-to, when she (seemingly aware of the nature of the challenge) gradually extended her arm and her huge paw a little and a little further out of her cage, with her eyes capriciously closed until it was out to its fullest extent, when she made a side-lick at his head, and an exceedingly awkward one for the sailor to parry. It was lucky for him, poor fellow, that he partly dodged it; though as her paw passed in front of his face, one of her claws carried away entirely his nose, leaving it fallen down and hanging over his mouth, suspended merely by a small piece of skin or gristle, by which alone he could claim it. Here was a sudden check to the familiarity with the bears; the results of which were, a renewal of the orders of non-intercourse from Captain Collins, and a marked coolness between the sailors and steerage passengers and the grizlies during the remainder of the voyage. The sailor was committed to the care of Dr. Madden, in the cabin, the distinguished traveller in Africa and the West Indies, and now one of our esteemed fellow-passengers, who skilfully replaced and arranged his nose with stitches and splints, and attended to it during the voyage. The poor fellow continued to swear vengeance on the bears when they should reach the land; but I believe that when they were landed in Liverpool, his nose was not sufficiently secure to favour his design. This unlucky affair had happened some days previous to the gale which I have begun to describe; and with the unsociable and cold reserve with which they were subsequently treated by all on board (visited only at stated periods by their old, but not yet confiding friend Daniel, who brought them their daily allowance), they had, as I have mentioned, become partakers and sufferers with us in the pangs and fears of the hurricane that was sweeping over the vessel and the sea about us. The third day of the gale became the most alarming, and the night of that day closing in upon us, seemed like the gloomy shroud amidst the hurrying winds and the cracking spars, that was to cover us in death. Until this day, though swinging (and now and then jumping) from mountains to mountains of waves, the ship and the elements mingled our fears with amusement. When, however, this day's light was gone, curiosity's feast was finished, and fear was no longer chained under our feet--we had reached the climax of danger, and terror seemed to have seized and reigned through every part of the ship. The bears, in contemplative or other vein, had been mute; but at this gloomy hour, seeming to have lost all patience, added, at first their piteous howlings, and then their horrid growls, to the whistling of the winds; and next, the gnashing of their teeth, and their furious lurches, and bolts, and blows against the sides of their cage, to the cracking of spars and roaring of the tempest! Curiosity again, in desperate minds, was resuscitated, and taking in its insatiable draughts even in the midst of this jarring and discordant medley of darkness--of dashing foam, of cracking masts, and of howlings and growlings and raging of grizly bears; for when the lightnings flashed, men (and even women) were seen crawling and hanging about the deck, as if to see if they could discover the death that was ready with his weapons drawn to destroy them. The captain had twenty times ordered all below, but to no purpose, until in the indiscriminate confusion of his crew and the passengers, in the jet blackness of the gale, when his ship was in danger, and our lives, his trumpet announced that "the bears were on deck!" "Good God!" was exclaimed and echoed from one end of the ship's deck to the other; "the grizly bears are out! down with the hatches--down the hatches!" The scrambling that here took place to reach the cabins below can only be justly known to each actor who performed his part in his own way; and of these there were many. Some descended headlong, some sidewise, and others rolled down; and every one with a ghastly glance back upon the one behind him, as a grizly bear, of course, that was to begin his "chawing" the next moment. When the scrambling was all over, and the hatches all safe, all in the cabin were obliged to smile for a moment, even in the midst of the alarm, at the queer position and man[oe]uvres of a plump little Irish woman who had slipped down the wrong hatchway by accident, and left her "other half" to spend a night of celibacy, and of awful forebodings, in the steerage, where she would have gone, but to which her own discretion as well as the united voices of the cabin passengers decided her not to attempt to make her way over the deck during the night. The passengers, both fore and aft, were now all snugly housed for the rest of the night, and the captain's smothered voice through his trumpet, to his hands aloft, and the stamping of the men on deck, while handling the ropes and shifting the sails, were all caught by our open ears, and at once construed into assaults and dreadful conflicts with the grizly bears on deck. In the midst of these conjectures some one of the passengers screamed and sprang from near the stairway entering the cabin, when it was discovered, to the thrilling amazement of all, that one of the bears had pawed open the hatchway, and was descending into the cabin! The ladies' salon, beyond the cabin, was the refuge to which the instant rush was making, when the always good and musical sound of the captain's voice was recognized. "Why! you don't think I'm a grizly bear, do you?" The good fellow! he didn't intend to frighten anybody. He had just raised the hatch and came down to get a little breath and a "drop to drink." He is as unlike to a grizly bear as any one else in the world, both in looks and in disposition; but he happened to have on for the occasion a black oil-cloth hood or cap, which was tied under the chin; and a jacket covered with long fur on the outside, making his figure (which was of goodly size, and which just filled the gangway), with a little of the lively imagination belonging to such moments, look the counterpart of a grizly bear. "Where's Catlin?" said he; "damn the bears!" "Are they out?" cried the passengers all together. "Out?--yes; they have eaten one man already, and another was knocked overboard with a handspike; he was mistaken for one of the bears. We are all in a mess on deck--it's so dark we can't see each other--the men are all aloft in the rigging. Steward! give me a glass of brandy-and-water--the ship must be managed, and I must go on deck. Keep close below here, and keep the hatches down, for the bruins are sick of the scene, and pawing about for a burrow in the ground, and will have the hatches up in a moment if you don't look to them. Where's Catlin?" "We don't know," was the reply from many mouths; "he is not in the cabin." "Will, here, Misther Captain, yer honour, I'll till ye," said a poor fellow, who in the general fright and flight had tumbled himself by accident into the cabin, and observed sullen silence until the present moment; "I'll jist till ye--I saw Misther Cathlin (I sippose he's the jintleman that owns the bastes) and his mon Dan (for I've known Dan for these many a long year in ould Amiriky, and I now he has chargin o' the bears on board); I saw the two, God bliss them, when the bastes was about gettin their hinder parts out of the cage, stannin on the side jisth before 'em, Misther Cathlin with his double-barrel gun, and his mon Dan pointin at 'em in the face, with a pistol in each hand; and this was jist whin I heard they were outh, and I jimped down here jist in the wrong place, as I am after observin when it is too late, and I hope there is no offence to your honour." "Catlin's gone then," said the captain; "he is swallowed!" The captain was at his post again, the hatches closed, and in the midst of dozing, and praying, and singing (and occasionally the hideous howlings of the grizlies whenever a wave made a breach over the deck of the vessel) was passed away that night of alarm and despair, until the rays of the morning's sun having chased away the mist and assuaged the fury of the storm, had brought all hands together on the deck, and in the midst of them the cheerful face of our good captain; and in their huge cage, which had been driven from one side of the deck to the other, but now adjusted, sitting upon their haunches, with the most jaded and humiliating looks imaginable, as they gazed between their iron bars, their two grizly majesties, who had hurt nobody during the night, nor in all probability had meditated anything worse or more sinful than an escape, if possible, from the imprisonment and danger they considered themselves unfortunately in. In the general alarm and scramble on deck in the forepart of the night, the total darkness having been such that it was impossible to tell whether the bears were out of their cage or not, and quite impossible to make one's way to the quarter-deck, unaccustomed to the shapes of things to be passed over, "Misther Cathlin" had dropped himself into the steerage as the nearest refuge, just before the hatch was fastened down for the night. Any place, and anything under deck at that time, was acceptable; and even at so perilous a moment, and amidst such alarming apprehensions, I drew a fund of amusement from the scenes and conversations around me. The circumstance of sixty passengers, men, women, and children, being stowed into so small a compass, and to so familiar an acquaintance, would have been alone, and under different circumstances, a subject of curious interest for a stranger so suddenly to be introduced to; but to be dropped into the midst of such a group in the middle of the night, in the thickest of a raging tempest, and the hour of danger, when some were in bed--some upon their knees at their prayers--others making the most of the few remaining drops of brandy they had brought with them, and others were playing at cards and enjoying their jokes, and all together just rescued from the jaws and the claws of the bears over their heads, was one of no common occurrence, and worthy at least of a few passing remarks. The wailings of the poor fellow whose wife had got into the cabin were incessant, and not much inferior to the howlings of the grizlies on deck. She had been put into my berth, and I had had the privilege of "turning in" with her disconsolate husband, if I had seen fit to have done so, or if his writhings and contortions had not taken up full twice the space allotted to him. It was known and told to him by some of his comrades, that they saw his wife go into the cabin, and that she was safe. "Yis," said he, "but I'm unasy, I'm not asy about her, d'ye see; I don't fale asy as she's there, God knows where, along with those jintlemen." Amongst the passengers in this part of the vessel I at once found myself alongside of at least two very eccentric characters. The one, I afterwards learned, was familiarly called by the passengers "the little Irishman in black," and the other "the half-Englishman, or broken-down swell." The first of these two eccentrics was a squatty little gentleman of about four feet nine inches elevation, and between two and three feet breadth of beam, with a wrinkled face and excessively sharp features. To be all in black he showed no signs of a shirt, though he was decently clad, but in black from head to foot, being in mourning, as he said, for "his son who had emigratin to Amiriky fifteen years sin, and livin there jist long enough to become a _native_, had died and leaven of a fortin, which he had been over to sittle up and receivin, with which he was recrossin the ocean to his native country." He said he wished to be rispectable and dacent, havin received 12,000 dollars; and as he thought the dacent thing was in "payin," now-a-days, he had paid for a berth in the cabin, but preferred to ride in the steerage. He made and found much amusement in that part of the vessel with his congenial spirits, and seemed peculiarly happy in the close communication with the other oddity of the steerage, whom I have said the passengers called the half-Englishman, or broken-down swell, who, I learned from my man Daniel, had laid in three barrels of old English porter, in bottles, when leaving the city of New York, and the last of which they were now opening and making the whole company merry with, as a sort of thanksgiving on their lucky escape from the grizly bears, who they firmly believed held possession of everything on the vessel outside of the hatchway. This eccentric and droll, but good-natured gentleman, with the aid of porter made much amusement in the steerage, even in the hour of alarm; and though I did not at that time know his calibre, or exactly what to make of him, I afterwards learned that he was an English cockney who had been on a tour through the States, and was now on his way back to his fatherland. He had many amusing notions and anecdotes to relate of the Yankees, and in his good-natured mellowness told a very good one of himself, much to the amusement of the Yankees on board, and the little Irishman in black, and my man Daniel. He said that "the greatest luxury he found in New York were the hoisters, and much as he liked them he had eaten them for two years before he had learned whether they were spelled with a haitch or a ho." Much valuable time would be lost to the reader if I were to chain him down to the rest of the incidents that happened between the middle of the ocean and Liverpool; and I meet him there at the beginning of my next chapter. CHAPTER II. Howling of the grizly Bears--Alarm and excitement about the docks--Scuffle for luggage--Scene at the Grecian Hotel--Landing the grizly Bears--Author's journey to London--Ibbotson's Hotel--First sally into the streets--First impressions of London--Adventure in the fog and mud--Amusing occurrence in the street--Beggars at the crossings of the streets--Ingenious mode of begging--Rich shops--No pigs in the streets--Soot and smoke of London--Author returns to Liverpool--Daniel's trouble with the Bears--Passing the Indian Collection and grizly Bears through the Customs--Arrival in London with Collection and Bears--Daniel in difficulty--Howling of Bears passing through the Tunnel--The "King of New York," and "King Jefferson." On nearing the docks at Liverpool, not only all the passengers of the ship, but all the inhabitants of the hills and dales about, and the shores, were apprised of our approach to the harbour by the bellowing and howling of the grizlies, who were undoubtedly excited to this sort of _Te Deum_ for their safe deliverance and approach to _terra firma_, which they had got a sight (and probably a smell) of. The arrival of the Roscius on that occasion was of course a conspicuous one, and well announced; and we entered the dock amidst an unusual uproar and crowd of spectators. After the usual manner, the passengers were soon ashore, and our luggage examined, leaving freight and grizly bears on board, to be removed the next morning. From the moment of landing on the wharf to the Custom-house, and from that to the hotel where I took lodgings, I was obliged to "fend off," almost with foot and with fist, the ragamuffins who beset me on every side; and in front, in the rear, and on the right and the left, assailed me with importunities to be allowed to carry my luggage. In the medley of voices and confusion I could scarcely tell myself to which of these poor fellows I had committed my boxes; and no doubt this (to them) delightful confusion and uncertainty encouraged a number of them to keep close company with my luggage until it arrived at the Grecian Hotel. When it was all safely landed in the hall, I asked the lad who stood foremost and had brought my luggage in his cart, how much was to pay for bringing it up? "Ho, Sir, hi leaves it to your generosity, Sir, has you are a gentleman, Sir; hit's been a werry eavy load, Sir." I was somewhat amused with the simple fellow's careless and easy manner, and handed him eighteen pence, thinking it a reasonable compensation for bringing two small trunks and a carpet-bag; but he instantly assumed a different aspect, and refused to take the money, saying that no gentleman would think of giving him less than half-a-crown for such a load as he had brought. I soon settled with and dismissed him by giving him two shillings; and as he departed, and I was about entering the coffee-room, another of his ragged fraternity touched my elbow, when I asked him what he wanted. "Wo, Sir, your luggage there--" "But I have paid for my luggage--I paid the man you see going out there." "Yes, Sir; but then you sees, hi elped im put it hon; hand I elped im along with it, hand it's werry ard, Sir, hif Ise not to be paid has well as im." I paid the poor fellow a sixpence for his ingenuity; and as he left, a third one stepped up, of whom I inquired, "What do _you_ want?" "Why, Sir, your luggage, you know, there--I am very sorry, Sir, to see you pay that worthless rascal what's just going out there--I am indeed sorry, Sir--he did nothing, but was hol the time hin our way--hit urts me, Sir, to see a gentleman throw is money away upon sich vagabonds, for it's hundoubtedly ard earned, like the few shillings we poor fellows get." "Well, my good fellow, what do you want of me?" "Ho, Sir, hit's honly for the cart, Sir--you will settle with me for the cart, Sir, hif you please--that first chap you paid ad my cart, hand I'll be bound you ave paid im twice has much has you hought." "Well, to make short," said I, "here, take this sixpence for your cart, and be off." I was thus brief, for I saw two or three others edging and siding up in the passage towards me, whom I recollected to have seen escorting my luggage, and I retreated into the coffee-room as suddenly as possible, and stated the case to one of the waiters, who promised to manage the rest of the affair. I was thus very comfortable for the night, having no further annoyance or real excitement until the next morning after breakfast, when it became necessary to disembark the grizly bears. My other heavy freight had gone to Her Majesty's Custom-house, and all the passengers from the cabin and steerage had gone to comfortable quarters, leaving the two deck passengers, the grizlies, in great impatience, and as yet undisposed of. My man Daniel had been on the move at an early hour, and had fortunately made an arrangement with a simple and unsuspecting old lady in the absence of her "good man," to allow the cage to be placed in a small yard adjoining her house, and within the same inclosure, which had a substantial pavement of round stones. This arrangement for a few days promised to be an advantageous one for each party. Daniel was to have free access and egress for the purpose of giving them their food, and the price proposed to the good woman was met as a liberal reward for the reception of any living beings that she could imagine, however large, that could come within her idea of the dimensions of a cage. Daniel had told her that they were two huge bears; and in his reply to inquiries, assured her that they were not harmless by any means, but that the enormous strength of their cage prevented them from doing any mischief. The kind old lady agreed, for so much per day, to allow the cage to stand in her yard, by the side of her house, at least until her husband returned. With much excitement and some growling about the docks and the wharf, they were swung off from the vessel, and, being placed on a "float," were conveyed to, and quietly lodged and fed in, the retired yard of the good woman, when the gate was shut, and they fell into a long and profound sleep. The grizly bears being thus comfortably and safely quartered in the immediate charge of my man Daniel, who had taken an apartment near them, and my collection being lodged in the Custom-house, I started by the railway for London to effect the necessary arrangements for their next move. I had rested in and left Liverpool in the midst of rain, and fog, and mud, and seen little else of it; and on my way to London I saw little or nothing of the beautiful country I was passing through, travelling the whole distance in the night. The luxurious carriage in which I was seated, however, braced up and embraced on all sides by deep cushions; the grandeur of the immense stations I was occasionally passing under; the elegance and comfort of the cafés and restaurants I was stumbling into with half-sealed eyes, with hundreds of others in the middle of the night, with the fat, and rotund, and ruddy appearance of the night-capped fellow-travellers around me, impressed me at once with the conviction that I was in the midst of a world of comforts and luxuries that had been long studied and refined upon. I opened my eyes at daylight at the terminus in the City of London, but could see little of it, as I was driven to Ibbotson's Hotel, in Vere-street, through one of the dense fogs peculiar to the metropolis and to the season of the year in which I had entered it. To a foreigner entering London at that season, the first striking impression is the blackness and gloom that everywhere shrouds all that is about him. It is in his hotel--in his bed-chamber--his dining-room, and if he sallies out into the street it is there even worse; and added to it dampness, and fog, and mud, all of which, together, are strong inducements for him to return to his lodgings, and adopt them as comfortable, and as a luxury. I am speaking now of the elements which the Almighty alone can control, and which only we strangers first see, as the surface of things, when we enter a foreign land, and before our letters of introduction, or the kind invitations of strangers, have led us into the participation of the hospitable and refined comforts prepared and enjoyed by the ingenuity of enlightened man, within. These I soon found were all around me, in the midst of this gloom; and a deep sense of gratitude will often induce me to allude to them again in the future pages of this work. My breakfast and a clean face were the first necessary things accomplished at my hotel, and next to them was my first sally into the streets of the great metropolis, to inhale the pleasure of first impressions, and in my rambles to get a glance at the outer walls and the position of the famous Egyptian Hall, which I have already said my kind friend the Hon. C. A. Murray had conditionally secured, as the locale of my future operations. It is quite unnecessary, and quite impossible also, for me to describe the route I pursued through the mud and the fog in search of the Hall. Its direction had been pointed out to me at my start, and something like the distance explained, which, to an accustomed woodsman like myself, seemed a better guarantee of success than the names of a dozen streets and turnings, &c.; and I had "leaned off" on the point of compass, as I thought, without any light of the sun to keep me to my bearings, until I thought myself near its vicinity, and at a proper position to make some inquiry for its whereabouts. I ran against a young man at the moment (or, rather, he ran against me, as he darted across the street to the pavement, with a black bag under his arm), whom I felt fully at liberty to accost; and to my inquiry for the Egyptian Hall, he very civilly and kindly directed me in the following manner, with his hand pointing down the street in the opposite direction to the one in which I was travelling:--"Go to the _bottom_, d'ye see, sir, and you are at the _top_, of Piccadilly; you then pass the third turning to the left, and you will see the hexibition of the uge hox; that hox is in the Hegyptian All, and ee _his_ a wapper, sure enough!" By this kind fellow's graphic direction I was soon in the Hall, got a glance of it and "the fat ox," and then commenced my first peregrination, amidst the mazes of fog and mud, through the Strand, Fleet-street, and Cheapside; the names of which had rung in my ears from my early boyhood, and which the sort of charm they had wrought there had created an impatient desire to see. I succeeded quite well in wending my way down the Haymarket, the Strand, and Fleet-street, slipping and sliding through the mud, until I was in front or in the rear (I could not tell which) of the noble St. Paul's, whose black and gloomy walls, at the apparent risk of breaking my neck, I could follow up with my eye, until they were lost in the murky cloud of fog that floated around them. I walked quite round it, by which I became duly impressed with its magnitude below, necessarily leaving my conjectures as to its elevation, for future observations through a clearer atmosphere. I then commenced to retrace my steps, when a slight tap upon my shoulder brought me around to look upon a droll and quizzical-looking fellow, who very obsequiously proceeded (as he pointed to the collar of my cloak, the lining of which, it seems, had got a little exposed), "The lining of your cloak, sir; hit don't look very well for a gentleman, sir; hexcuse me, hif you please, sir." "Certainly," said I; "I am much obliged to you," as I adjusted it and passed on. In my jogging along for some distance after this rencontre, and while my eyes were intent upon the mud, where I was selecting the places for my footsteps, I observed a figure that was keeping me close company by my side, and, on taking a fairer look at him, found the same droll character still at my elbow, when I turned around and inquired of him, "What now?" "Ho, sir, your cloak, you know, sir; hit didn't look well, for a gentleman like you, sir. Your pardon, sir; ha sixpence, hif you please, sir." I stopped and gave the poor fellow a sixpence for his ingenuity, and jogged on. The sagacity of this stratager in rags had detected the foreigner or stranger in me at first sight, as I learned in a few moments, in the following amusing way. I had proceeded but a few rods from the place where I had given him his sixpence and parted company with him, when, crossing an intersecting street, I was met by a pitiable object hobbling on one leg, and the other twisted around his hip, in an unnatural way, with a broom in one hand, and the other extended towards me in the most beseeching manner, and his face drawn into a triangular shape, as he was bitterly weeping. I saw the poor fellow's occupation was that of sweeping the crossing under my feet, and a sixpence that I slipped into his hand so relaxed the muscles of his face, by this time, that I at once recognised in him the adjuster of the lining of my cloak; but I had no remedy, and no other emotion, at the instant, than that of amusement, with some admiration of his adroitness, and again passed on. Casting my eyes before me I observed another poor fellow, at the crossing of another street, plying his broom to the mud very nimbly (or rather passing it over, just above the top of the mud), whilst his eye was fixed intently upon me, whom he had no doubt seen patronizing the lad whom I had passed. I dodged this poor fellow by crossing the street to the right, and as I approached the opposite pavement I fell into the hands of a young woman in rags, who placed herself before me in the most beseeching attitude, holding on her arm a half-clad and sickly babe, which she was pinching on one of its legs to make it cry, whilst she supplicated me for aid. I listened to her pitiable lamentations a moment, and in reproaching her for her cruelty in exposing the life of her little infant for the purpose of extorting alms, I asked her why she did not make her husband take care of her and her child? "Oh, my kind sir," said she, "I give you my honour I've got no husband; I have no good opinion of those husbands." "Then I am glad you have informed me," said I; "you belong to a class of women whom I will not give to." "Oh, but, kind sir, you mistake me; I am not a bad woman--I am _not_ a bad woman--I assure you! I am a decent woman, and God knows it: the child is not mine; it is only one that I hires, and I's obliged to pay eighteen pence a day for it; which is as true as God's holy writ; that's what it is." "Then," said I, "you are a wretch, to keep that innocent little thing here in the cold; and, instead of alms, you deserve to be handed over to the police." She gave me many hard names as I was stepping into a cab which I had beckoned up and directed to drive me to Ibbotson's Hotel, in Vere-street. "Where, sir?" asked the cab-driver as he mounted his seat. "Vy, sir, didn't you ear the gentleman?" said a man with a large bronze medal hanging on his breast, who had one hand on the door; "drive im to Hibbotson's Otel, Were-street, Hoxford-street." "Who are you?" said I, as we were moving off, and he held the door open with one hand and his hat raised with the other; "what do you want?" "I'm the vaterman, sir; you'll recollect the vaterman?" "Yes, I'll not forget you in a long time." So I shut the door without giving the poor man his ha'penny, not knowing the usual custom yet, and too much pressed for time to learn it at that moment. I observed, in passing several equestrian and other statues in the streets, that they were all black; which seemed curious; and also, in every street, I saw what was new to me, and not to be seen in the streets of the American cities--meat-shops and fishmongers indiscriminately mingled along the same side-walks with dry goods--hosiers, china, and hardware--and fancy shops; and also performed the whole route, outward and homeward, without having seen a solitary pig ploughing the gutters, as we too familiarly meet them in many of the American cities, though the gutters, much of the way, would seem to have offered a tolerably rich field for their geological researches. I met with evidences enough, however, that I was not out of the land of pigs, though they were not seen promenading or ploughing the streets. I passed several shops, all open in front, where poor piggies were displayed in a much less independent way--hanging by their hind legs at full length, and the blood dripping from their noses upon the sills of the shops and pavements, to amuse the eyes of the silken and dazzling throng that was squeezing and brushing along by them; and whilst I easily decided which was the most cruel to the poor brutes, I was much at a loss to decide which mode was calculated to be the most shocking to the nerves that would be weak enough to be offended by either. I was thus at the end of my first day's rambles in London, without at present recollecting any other occurrences worthy of note, excepting a little annoyance I had felt by discovering with my left eye, while walking in the street, something like a small black spot on the side of my nose, which, by endeavouring many times to remove by the brush of my hand across it, I had evidently greatly enlarged, and which, when I returned, I examined and found to have been at first, in all probability, a speck of soot which had alighted there, and by passing my hand over it had, as in other instances, on other parts of my face, mashed it down and given it somewhat the shape and tail of a comet, or the train of a falling star, though differing materially in brilliancy and colour. I used the rest of this gloomy day in obtaining from the Lords of the Treasury the proper order for passing my collection through the Customs, which has been before mentioned, arranging my letters of credit, &c., and returned by the evening's train to Liverpool, to join my collection again, and Daniel and the grizly bears. On my return to that city I found poor Daniel in a sad dilemma with the old lady about the bears, and the whole neighbourhood under a high excitement, and in great alarm for their safety. The bears had been landed in the briefest manner possible; exempted from the usual course that almost everything else takes through the Queen's warehouse; and, though relieved from the taxes of the customs, I soon found that I had duties of a different character accumulating that required my attention in another quarter. The agreement made by the old lady with Daniel to keep them in her yard for so much per day, and for as long a time as he required, had been based upon the express and very judicious condition that they were to do no harm. From the moment of their landing they had kept up an almost incessant howling, so Rocky-Mountain-ish and so totally unlike any attempts at music ever heard in the country before, that it attracted a crowd night and day about the old lady's door, that almost defeated all attempts at ingress and egress. A little vanity, however, which she still possessed, enabled her to put up with the inconvenience, which she was turning to good account, and counting good luck, until it was ascertained, to her great amazement as well as alarm, that the bears were passing their huge paws out of the cage, between the iron bars, and lifting up the round stones of her pavement for the pleasure of once more getting their nails into the dirt, their favourite element, and which they had for a long time lost sight of. In their unceasing pursuit of this amusement, by night and by day, they had made a sad metamorphosis of the old lady's pavement, as, with the strength of their united paws, they had drawn the cage around to different parts of the yard, totally unpaving as they went along. At the time of the poor old lady's bitterest and most vehement complaint, they were making their move in the direction of her humble tenement, the walls of which were exceedingly slight; and her alarm became insupportable. The ignorant crowd outside of the inclosure, who could get but a partial view of their operations now and then, had formed the most marvellous ideas of these monsters, from the report current amongst them that they were eating the paving-stones; and had taken the most decided and well-founded alarm from the fact that the bears had actually hurled some of the paving-stones quite over the wall amongst their heads, which were calling back an increased shower of stones and other missiles, adding fresh rage and fears to the growling of the bears, which altogether was threatening results of a more disastrous kind. In this state of affairs I was very justly appealed to by the old lady for redress and a remedy, for it was quite evident that the condition of her agreement with Daniel had been broken, as the bears were now decidedly doing much harm to her premises; destroying all her rest, and (as she said) "her appetite and her right mind;" and I agreed that it was my duty, as soon as possible, to comply with her urgent request that they should be removed. She insisted on its being done that day, as "it was quite impossible to pass another night in her own bed, when there was such howling and groaning and grunting in her yard, by the side of her house." Daniel took my directions and immediately went through the town in search of other quarters for them, and was to attend to their moving whilst I was to spend the day in the Custom-house, attending to the examination of my collection of 600 paintings and many thousand Indian costumes, weapons and other curiosities, which were to be closely inspected and inventoried, for duties. Immersed in this mystery of difficulties and vexations at the customs during the day, I had lost sight of Daniel and his pets until I was free at night, when I was assailed with a more doleful tale than ever about the bears. Troubles were gathering on all sides. Poor Daniel had positively arranged in several places for them, but when "their characters were asked from their last places," he met defeat in every case, and was obliged to meet, at last, the increased plaints of his old landlady, whose rage and ranting were now quite beyond control. She had made complaint to the police, of whom a _posse_ had been sent to see to their removal. Daniel in the mean time had dodged them, and was smiling amidst the crowd at the amusing idea of their laying hold of them, or of even going into the yard to them. The police reported on the utter impossibility of removing them to any other part of the town, their "character" having been so thoroughly published already to all parts; and it was advised, to the utter discomfiture of the old lady, that it would be best for them to remain there until they should be removed to London, and that I should pay for all damages. The poor old lady afterwards had a final interview with Daniel in the crowd, when she very judiciously resolved that if the bears did not move, _she must_--which she did that night, and placed Daniel in her bed, as the guardian of her property and of his pets, until the third or fourth day afterwards, when they were moved to the railway, and by it (night and day, catching what glimpses they could of the country they were serenading with their howls and growls as they passed through it under their tarpaulin) they were conveyed to the great metropolis. Owing to the multiplicity of articles to be examined and inventoried in the customs, and the great embarrassment of the clerics in writing down their Indian names, my labours were protracted there to much tediousness; but when all was brought to a close by their proposing, most judiciously, to count the number of curiosities instead of wasting paper and time and paralysing my jaws by pronouncing half a dozen times over, and syllable by syllable, their Indian names, my collection of eight tons weight was all on the road and soon at the Euston station in London, where we again recognised the mournful cries of the grizlies, who had arrived the night before. On arriving at the station, I found Daniel at a small inn in the vicinity, where he seemed highly excited by some unpleasant altercation he had had with the landlord and inmates of the house, growing out of national and political prejudices, which had most probably been too strongly advanced on both sides. Daniel had suddenly raised a great excitement in the neighbourhood by his arrival with the grizly bears, whose occasional howlings had attracted crowds of people, curious to know the nature of the strange arrival; and all inquirers about the station being referred to their keeper, who was at the inn, brought Daniel and his patience into notoriety at once. Daniel (_Plate No. 2_) is an Irishman, who emigrated to the United States some twenty years since, and, by dint of his industry and hard labour, had met with success in acquiring an humble independence, and had formed the most undoubted attachment to the Government and its institutions; and, from his reading, and conversation with the world, had informed himself tolerably well in political matters, which he was always ready to discuss; and being rather of a hasty and irascible temperament, he often got into debates of that nature, that led him into danger of unpleasant results. It was in the midst of one of these that I found him at the inn, surrounded by at least a hundred labouring men and idlers from the streets, who had been drawn around him at first, as I have said, to get some information of the bears, but who had changed their theme, and were now besieging him on all sides, to combat him on some political dogma he had advanced relative to his favourite and adopted country, the United States; or to taunt him with slaunts at his native country, all of which, with his native wit, he was ready to meet with ability, until, as he afterwards told me, "they were showered upon him so rapidly, and from so many quarters at once, that it became quite impossible to answer them, and that the stupid ignorance and impertinence of some of them had worn out all his patience, and irritated him to that degree, that I must excuse him for the excitement I had found him under when I arrived." With much difficulty I rescued him from the crowd that had enclosed him, and, retiring to a private room, after matters of business had been arranged, he gave me the following account of the difficulties he had just been in, and of the incidents of his journey from Liverpool to London with the bears. [Illustration: N^o. 2.] At Liverpool he had had great difficulty in getting permission to travel by the luggage train, to keep company with the bears, the necessity of which he urged in vain, until he represented that, unless he was with them to feed them, their howlings and other terrific noises and ravings would frighten their hands all out of the stations, and even add probabilities to their breaking loose from the cage in which they were confined, to feed upon the human flesh around them, and of which they were peculiarly fond. Upon these representations, he was allowed the privilege of a narrow space, to stand or to sit, in the corner of one of the luggage-trains, and thus bore the bears company all the way. When they entered the first tunnel on their way, they raised a hideous howl, which they continued until they were through it, which might have been from a feeling of pleasure, recognizing in it something of the character of the delightful gloominess of their own subterranean abodes; or their outcries might have been from a feeling of dread or fear from those narrow and damp caverns, too much for their delicate tastes and constitutions. This, however, is matter for the bears to decide. At Birmingham, where they rested on the truck for the greater part of a day, their notification to the town had called vast crowds of spectators around them; and though their tarpaulin prevented them from being seen, many, very many, drew marvellous accounts of them from one another, and from the flying reports which had reached them several days before from Liverpool, of "two huge monsters imported from the Rocky Mountains, that had scales like alligators, with long spears of real flint at the ends of their tails; that they made nothing of eating paving-stones when they were hungry, and that in Liverpool they had escaped, and were travelling to the north, and demolishing all the inhabitants of Lancashire as they went along," &c. Their occasional howls and growls, with, once in a while, a momentary display of one of their huge paws, exhibited from under the tarpaulin, riveted the conviction of the gaping multitude as to the terror and danger of these animals, while it put at rest all apprehensions as to their being at large and overrunning the country. Poor Daniel had to stand between the crowd and his pets, to save them from the peltings and insults of the crowd, and at the same time, to muster every talent he had at natural history, to answer the strange queries and theories that were raised about them. He was assailed on every side with questions as to the appearance and habits of the animals, and at last, about "the other animals," as they called them, "running on two legs, in America;" for many of them, from his representations, had come fresh from the coal-pits and factories, with ideas that Americans were a sort of savages, and that savages, they had understood, were "a sort of wild beastises, and living on raw meat." These conjectures and queries were answered amusingly for them, by Daniel; and, after he had a little enlightened them by the information he gave them, their conversation took a sort of political turn, which, I have before said, he was prone to run into; and thus, luckily, the time was whiled away, without any _set-to_ to bother the bears and himself, which he had seen evidently preparing, until the whistle announced them and him on their way again for the metropolis. The next morning he found himself and the bears safe landed at the terminus in London, where I have already said that I found him and released him from a medley of difficulties he had worked himself into. The keeper of the inn had himself been the first to provoke poor Daniel, but when he found it for his interest, and advised a different course, he endeavoured to turn his criticisms into good nature, and had taken sides with him. Daniel, very amusingly however, describes his remarks as so excessively ignorant, that they excited his mirth more than anger, and he repeated several of them in the following manner:--He first provoked Daniel by inquiring "who his master was, and where he was at that time." Daniel replied to him, somewhat to his surprise, "I have no master, Sir; I live in a country, thank God, where we are our own masters. My 'boss' (if you will have it that way) is a Mr. Catlin, who I expect here in a few hours." Finding that Daniel and the bears were from America, of which country he had heard some vague accounts, he very innocently enquired who was the King in America at that time, apologizing, that by the treacherousness of his memory he had lost the run of them. Daniel told him that they had no king in America. He then said "he well recollected when the old fellow died, but he had equally forgotten the name of the Queen; he recollected to have read of the King of New York." Daniel soon put his recollection right, and in doing so had given umbrage to the poor man, which led to the long and excited political debate with which I found Daniel so much exasperated when I arrived. Daniel had, in the beginning of this affair, explained to the bystanders around him the difference between a King and a President, and then had provoked his landlord by amusingly and pleasantly repeating the anecdote of "King Jefferson" (which is current in America) in reply to his questions about the "King of New York;" and in the following manner:-- "During the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, who lived in the city of Washington, two poor emigrants from the county of Cork, in my own country, made their way to America in a vessel which landed them in Philadelphia; they got ashore, and as they were taking their first stroll through the streets in the 'land of liberty and equality,' without a shilling in their pockets, they began to 'sing out' 'Huzza for King George!' This of course excited too much opposition to last long in the streets of a republican city, and a gentleman very kindly stopped the poor fellows, and to their great surprise informed them that he feared they would get into difficulty if they continued to huzza for the king, as King George was not the king of the country they were now in. He informed them that Mr. Jefferson was the great man in America--that he was President of the United States, and that it would not do for them to huzza for King George. They thanked him, and as they proceeded on they increased the volume of their voices in huzzas for 'King Jefferson!--huzza for King Jefferson!' This soon excited the attention of the police, who silenced their bawling by 'putting them in the jug!'" CHAPTER III. Letters of introduction--Driving a friend's horse and chaise--Amusing accidents--English driving--"Turn to the _right_, as the law directs"--A turn to the _left_--A fresh difficulty--Egyptian Hall--Lease for three years--Arrangement of collection--Bears sold and removed to Regent's Park Zoological Gardens--Their fates. Having landed all my effects safely at the terminus in London, the next thing was the final _locale_; and to decide on this, my letters of introduction, or a part of them at least, should be delivered; and for this and other dodgings about through the city for a few days, the first gentleman to whom I delivered a letter had the kindness to insist on my using his horse and chaise during certain portions of the day, when he did not use them himself. This was the kindest thing that he could have done for me, and I shall never forget the obligation he laid me under by doing so. His footman, who accompanied me, relieved me from all anxiety about the horse, which was a noble animal; and my long errands through the mud were most delightfully abridged. As the fatalities of life seem to bring us more or less trouble in every step we take in it, I had mine, even in this new and independent arrangement. In my first dash through the streets with all the confidence and tact I had acquired from my boyhood in driving a similar vehicle in my own country, I was suddenly in the midst of fresh misfortune by "turning to the right, as the law directs" (the regulation and custom of the United States), which brought my horse into the most frightful collision with a pair that were driven by a gentleman, and who had reined in the same direction under the English custom of "turn to the left." This affair was not only one of imminent danger of harm, which we had all luckily escaped, but one of exceeding mortification to me from the circumstances which immediately followed. The extreme care and skill in driving, with the fine training of horses in England (of which we have little idea in the United States), render accidents in the streets of London so exceedingly rare, that when they do occur they immediately attract an immense crowd, and into the midst of such an one was I thrown by the unfortunate accident which my ignorance rather than carelessness had just been the cause of. By the violence of the concussion I had been landed in the street, and the gentleman, to whose harness I had done some injury, was suddenly in front of me with his whip in his hand; and in the hearing of the crowd that was hovering around, in the most excited manner, demanding of me what I meant by driving against him in that awkward manner, and threatening to hold me responsible for damages done by not turning the right way, whilst I felt every disposition to answer his questions respectfully, as I saw the injury was all on his side. I still felt that a little tenacity was allowable on my side; and I almost as peremptorily demanded of him why he did not rein to the right, as the law requires:--"Rein to the right!" said he, "who the devil ever heard of such a thing as turning to the right? Where are you from, I should like to know?" "I am from a country, sir, where the law directs all vehicles to 'turn to the right.'" "What country is that, I should like to know?" "North America, sir." "Ha! just about what I should have thought, sir:--I suppose I shall get pay for my coupling-lines about the time the States pay interest." "Most likely," said I, as we were mutually taking our seats, amidst the sullen remarks that I heard in various parts of the crowd as I was driving off--"There's a Yankee for you!--ee's a rum-looking fellow, ha?--There's a Repudiator for you"--"I'll be bound--" &c., &c., &c. I drove off from this scene with some satisfaction that I had learned so important a fact at so little expense, and steered my way very safely amidst the thousands of vehicles of various sorts that I was passing and meeting, in which time I was very pleasantly receiving a brief lecture on the subject from my good-natured and very civil footman, who was behind me; in which (having silently learned in the disaster we had just witnessed that I was from a foreign country) he took especial pains to explain to me that "in Hengland it's holays the abit to turn to the left." Just at that moment I found myself in a fresh difficulty, and some danger also, by one wheel of my chaise grinding against the curbstone, and a huge omnibus in full press against us, and driving us on to the pavement, where it had at that moment stopped and fastened us, whilst discharging a passenger. I demanded of the driver, a sullen-looking fellow, half covered with an apron or boot which protected him from the weather in front, and something like a feather-bed and bolsters tied around his neck and chin, and half concealing his bloated face, what he meant by reining in upon me in that way, and crowding me upon the pavement? to which he grumly replied as he snapped his whip, "I should like to know what business you have in there?" "Never mind," said I, "I shall go ahead." "No you woan't--ain't you old enough to know which side of a carriage to pass?" At that moment the conductor of the omnibus cried out "All right!" which was echoed by a policeman who had taken my horse by the bit. I was somewhat relieved, though a little surprised, at the verdict given by the conductor and the policeman at the same instant, that "all" (or both), as I at that moment understood it, "were right." I sat still of course till the omnibus had left us, nearly crushed, but luckily not damaged, when I said to my footman, "Why, what does this mean?--what do you call the 'left side' in this country, I should like to know?" To this he very distinctly as well as amusingly explained, that the invariable custom in England is when _meeting_ a vehicle, to turn to the _left_, and when _passing_, to turn to the _right_. But why did the policeman and the conductor say we were both right or "all right?" "Why, sir, you know wen the homnibus olds up to land a gent or a lady, or to take em hin, it would be wery hawkard to drive off wen the lady ad one leg hin the bus and the other hout; so wen they are both hout or both hin, and all right, the conductor ollows out 'Holl right!' and the bus goes hon, d'ye see, sir?" "Ah, yes, I thank you, Jerry, I understand it now." I was then growing wiser every moment amongst the incidents that were occasionally taking place in my drives with the goodnatured footman and his fine horse, which I used for several days, much to my satisfaction and amusement, without other accident or incident worth the reader's valuable time. I called upon my kind friend the Hon. C. A. Murray, at his office in Buckingham Palace, where I was received with all that frankness and sincerity peculiar to him; and, with his kind aid, and that of Charles D. Archibald, Esq., of York Terrace, to whom I am also much indebted, the arrangements were soon made for my collection in the Egyptian Hall, which I took on a lease, for three years, at a rent of 550_l._ per annum. My collection was soon in it, and preparing for its exhibition, while the grizly bears were still howling at the Euston station, impatient for a more congenial place for their future residence. It was quite impossible to give them any portion of the premises I had contracted for in the Egyptian Hall, and the quarters ultimately procured for them being expensive, and the anxieties and responsibilities for them daily increasing upon me as they were growing stronger and more vicious in their dispositions, it was decided that they should be offered for sale, and disposed of as soon as possible. For this purpose I addressed letters to the proprietors of zoological gardens in Liverpool, in Dublin, and Edinburgh, and several other towns, and received, in reply from most of them, the answer that they already had them in their gardens, and that they were so complete a drug in England that they were of little value. One proprietor assured me that he had recently been obliged to shoot two that he had in his gardens, in consequence of mischief they were doing to people visiting the grounds, and to the animals in the gardens. My reply to several of these gentlemen was, that since the death of the famous old grizly bear, that had died a few months before in Regent's-park, it was quite certain that there had not been one in the kingdom until the arrival of these, "and that if either of those gentlemen would produce me another living grizly bear, at that time, in the kingdom, I would freely give him my pair." This seemed, however, to have little weight with the proprietors of wild beasts; but I at length disposed of them for about the same price that I had given for them four years before, when they were not much larger than my foot (for the sum of 125_l._); and they went to the Zoological Gardens, Regent's Park. A word or two more of them and the reader will have done with the grizlies, who had been much obliged to me, no doubt, for four years' maintenance, and for a sight of the beauties of the ocean, and as much of the land of comforts and refinements as they were allowed to see through the bars of their cage, while they were travelling from the rude wilds of the Rocky Mountains to the great metropolis, the seat and centre of civilization and refinement. As in their new abode they were allowed more scope and better attendance, it was reasonable to suppose that their lives would have been prolonged, and their comfort promoted; but such did not prove to be the case. From the continual crowds about them, to which they had the greatest repugnance, they seemed daily to pine, until one of them died of exceeding disgust (unless a better cause can be assigned), and the other with similar symptoms, added to loneliness perhaps, and despair, in a few months afterwards. Thus ended the career of the grizly bears, and I really believe there were no tears shed for them, unless they were tears of joy, for they seemed to extend their acquaintance only to add to the list of their enemies, wherever they went. CHAPTER IV. Indian Collection arranged for exhibition--Description of it--The Hon. Charles Augustus Murray--Collection opened to private view--Kindness of the Hon. Mr. Murray--Distinguished visitors--Mr. Murray's explanations--Kind reception by the Public and the Press--Kind friends--Fatigue of explaining and answering questions--Curious remedy proposed by a friend--Pleasures and pains of a friendly and fashionable dinner. My business now, and all my energies, were concentrated at the Egyptian Hall, where my collection was arranged upon the walls. The main hall was of immense length, and contained upon its walls 600 portraits and other paintings which I had made during eight years' travels amongst forty-eight of the remotest and wildest tribes of Indians in America, and also many thousands of articles of their manufacture, consisting of costumes, weapons, &c. &c., forming together a pictorial history of those tribes, which I had been ambitious to preserve as a record of them, to be perpetuated long after their extinction. In the middle of the room I had erected also a wigwam (or lodge) brought from the country of the Crows, at the base of the Rocky Mountains, made of some twenty or more buffalo skins, beautifully dressed and curiously ornamented and embroidered with porcupine quills. My friend the Honourable C. A. Murray, with several others, had now announced my collection open to their numerous friends and such others as they chose to invite during the three first days when it was submitted to their private view, and by whom it was most of the time filled; and being kindly presented to most of them, my unsentimental and unintellectual life in the atmosphere of railroads and grizly bears was suddenly changed to a cheering flood of soul and intellect which greeted me in every part of my room, and soon showed me the way to the recessed world of luxury, refinements, and comforts of London, which not even the imagination of those who merely stroll through the streets can by any possibility reach. During this private view I found entered in my book the names of very many of the nobility, and others of the most distinguished people of the kingdom. My friend Mr. Murray was constantly present, and introduced me to very many of them, who had the kindness to leave their addresses and invite me to their noble mansions, where I soon appreciated the elegance, the true hospitality and refinement of English life. Amongst the most conspicuous of those who visited my rooms on this occasion were H. R. H. the Duke of Cambridge, the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland, the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, Duke of Devonshire, Duke of Wellington, the Bishop of London, the Bishop of Norwich, Sir Robert and Lady Peel, Lord Grosvenor, Lord Lennox, Duke of Richmond, Duke of Rutland, Duke of Buckingham, Countess-Dowager of Dunmore, Countess-Dowager of Ashburnham, Earl of Falmouth, Earl of Dunmore, Lord Monteagle, Lord Ashley, Earl of Burlington, Sir James and Lady Clark, Sir Augustus d'Este, Sir Francis Head, and many others of the nobility, with most of the editors of the press, and many private literary and scientific gentlemen, of whose kindness to me while in London I shall have occasion to speak in other parts of this work. The kindness of my friend Mr. Murray on this occasion can never be forgotten by me. He pointed out to my illustrious visitors the principal chiefs and warriors of the various tribes, with many of whom he was personally acquainted; explaining their costumes, weapons, &c., with all of which his rambles in the Indian countries beyond the Mississippi and Missouri had made him quite familiar. He led Duchesses, Countesses, and Ladies in succession upon his arm, into the wigwam of buffalo-hides, where he descanted, to the great satisfaction and amusement of his friends, upon the curious modes of Indian life into which he had been initiated, and which he had long shared with these simple people, whilst he resided with them under roofs of buffalo-hides (like the one now over their heads) on the vast plains and prairies of the wilds of America. This was evidently an opportunity affording him great satisfaction, of illustrating to his friends the styles of primitive life which he had witnessed in America, whilst his explanations and descriptions were exceedingly entertaining and amusing to them, and at the same time the strongest corroboration of the fidelity with which I had made them, and therefore the best recommendation of them and me to the consideration of the English community. He was fully employed, as he led alternately the Duchess of Sutherland (with her lovely daughters by her side), and the Duchess of Buccleuch on his arm, and a numerous group around him, while he commented upon the features and disposition of his old friend _Wee-ta-ra-sha-ro_, who had taken him under his immediate protection and saved his life from the designs of some young men who had laid their plans to destroy him when in the country of the Pawnees. He explained to them and the Bishops of London and Norwich, who were following in the wake of the ladies and giving ear, the religious ceremony of the Indians, their modes of warfare, of hunting, and throwing the lasso in catching the wild horse. He showed them the Indian cradles in which the squaws carry their pappooses, slung on their backs. He took in his hands the lasso, and illustrated the mode of throwing it, with which he was familiar. He took also in his hands their war-clubs, their tomahawks and scalping knives, and then the scalps from the heads of enemies slain in battle, and ably explained them all. With these he made lasting and thrilling impressions; but with more satisfaction to himself, and to the fair and tender Graces, whose sylph-like gracefulness formed a halo of loveliness around him, he pointed to my paintings of the ever verdant and enamelled prairies--to the very copses and lawns through which, with his unerring rifle, he had stalked the timid antelope or the stately elk and shaggy bison, and, after quieting his raving stomach with their broiled delicacies, he had straightened his wearied limbs upon his spread buffalo robe, and, with the long, waving grass and bowing lilies stooping over his head, he had reflected upon London, upon Palaces and friends, as he had glided into that sweet forgetfulness that belongs peculiarly to the wearied huntsman, whose rifle has catered for his stomach, and whose quiet conscience starts him not at the rustling of the sweetened winds that are gently breezing over him. _I_ was also constantly engaged with surrounding groups, who were anxious to know the meaning and moral of this strange and unintelligible collection, while my man Daniel, with his rod in his hand, was enlightening another party at the end of the room, by pointing out the leading personages of the various tribes, explaining their costumes, weapons, &c., and answering the thousand questions which were put to him, and which several years of familiarity with the subject had abundantly qualified him to do. Thus passed my first interview with the English aristocracy. I was in the midst and the best of it; and by it, on all sides, was met with the kindliest feelings and condescension, while I received compliments from all (in the most undoubted sincerity) for the successful efforts I had thus made to perpetuate the records of an abused and dying race of human beings. The reception that myself and my works met on these days, amongst the highest critics, the most refined and elevated of the world, was beyond description pleasurable to me, as I had arrived a stranger in a foreign land, where I had risked everything upon the value that should be set upon my labours; and that, where I had been told that national prejudices would labour to defeat me. My life had been a tissue of risks and chances, and I resolved to hazard again; and I am now pleased (and bound) to acknowledge that I was frankly met with the most unprejudiced and congenial feelings; and, even more than that, with a settled and genuine sympathy for the benighted people whom my works were representing, and a disposition to reward my labours by kind and unexpected invitations to the hospitable boards of those who fill the highest and most enviable stations in life. To this general feeling it affords me pleasure to respond in general terms, in this place; and I shall have occasion, in other parts of this work, to return my personal thanks for such spontaneous kindness, which my lasting gratitude will make it my duty to allude to. The editors of the leading literary and scientific journals of London, and of the daily newspapers, were chiefly there, and with their very friendly and complimentary notices of my collection, with the usual announcements by advertisements, I opened it for the inspection of the public on the first day of February, 1840.[2] [2] The reader, by referring to Appendix A of this volume, will see the comments of the Press on this Collection, in _England_, _France_, and the _United States_. Its commencement was flattering, from the numbers and high respectability of my visitors, and I was pleased, from day to day, to meet the faces and friendly greetings of those whom I had seen there at the private view. I was pleased also with the freedom which is granted to exhibitions in London, leaving them entirely independent of tithing or taxation, as well as of licences to be obtained from the police, as is the case in France and some other countries. Under such auspices I very pleasantly commenced, with a rent of 550_l._ per annum, and continued it with reasonable success for the space of four years. The vicissitudes and incidents of that time it is not the object of this work to detail; but I shall connect the links of my narrative better, and, I trust, do no injustice to my readers, by reciting a few of the incidents that transpired in that time: and, while I am doing so, endeavouring to do the justice which gratitude prompts, to those persons whose kindness has laid me under peculiar obligations. Amongst those kind friends I must be allowed at present to mention the names of the Hon. C. A. Murray, Sir Augustus d'Este, Charles D. Archibald, Esq., Sir James Clark, Sir Thomas Phillips, Mr. Petty Vaughan, Dr. Hodgkin, Capt. Shippard, Sir Francis Head, Lord Monteagle, John Murray, A. M. Perkins, and Sir David Wilkie; and there were many others with these who were very frequently at my rooms; and for their friendly and constant efforts to promote my interest they have my sincerest thanks. Several of these gentlemen, and others, whose visits were so frequent to my rooms, having formed an acquaintance with the Indians in their own country, or, from feelings of sympathy for them, taken so deep an interest in the subject, relieved me much of my time from the fatiguing task which I had adopted of explaining around the rooms such subjects as I considered most curious and instructive, and of answering the thousands of questions which were naturally put in every part of the room for information on so novel and exciting a theme. I had entered upon this, at first, not as a task but an amusement, from which I drew great pleasure whilst I was entertaining my visitors and cultivating their pleasing acquaintance. From an over desire and effort on my part to explain the peculiar and curious modes of those wild people, and from a determination on the part of my visitors to get these explanations from my own lips (although I had my man Daniel and several others constantly in the rooms for the same purpose), I was held in my exhibition rooms almost daily from morning until night. My men were able to explain the meaning of everything in the collection, but this did not satisfy the public whilst I was present. All inquired for me: "Where's Mr. Catlin? he's the Lion; his collection is wonderful; but I would give more to see him than all the rest." "He is yonder, Madam, at the farther end of the room, where you see a crowd of people around him." I was generally in the midst of a crowd, who were densely packed around me; moving about the rooms whilst, with a rod in my hand to point with, I was lecturing or answering the numerous questions which were naturally put relative to these strange people and their modes. To lecture or to explain all day, following the current of one's thoughts, would have been a thing feasible, though fatiguing; but to stand upon one's feet and all day long to answer to interrogations, and many of those fifty times over, to different parties who were successively taking me in tow, I soon found was far more fatiguing than my travels and labours in the Indian wilderness; and I at length (at a much later period than my friends and my physician advised) gradually withdrew from the scene and this suicidal course, just before it might have been too late to have saved anything useful of me. I followed the advice of my physician by going to my rooms at stated hours, but soon departed from it by failing to leave them with punctuality, and take recreation in the open air. The partial change I had adopted, however, was of advantage to me--talking part of the day and breaking off and leaving my men to do the talking for the other half. Like most adventurers in wilderness life I was fond of describing what I had seen; and, having the works of several years around me, in their crude and unfinished condition, spread before the criticising world, and difficult to be appreciated, I was doubly stimulated to be in the collection, and with all the breath I could spare, to add to the information which the visitors to my rooms were seeking for. Under these conflicting feelings I struggled to keep away from my rooms, and did so for a part of the day, and that, as I soon found, only to meet a more numerous and impatient group when I re-entered. All of the above-mentioned kind friends, and many others, repeatedly called to impress upon me the necessity of leaving my exhibition to my men, "to save my lungs--to save my life," as they said. Some snatched me away from the crowd, and in the purest kindness hurled me through the streets in their carriages, still _yelling_ answers to their numerous questions as we were passing over the noisy pavements; and then at their kind and festive boards, to which I had been brought as places of refuge and repose, I was, for an instance, presented as--"My dear, this is Mr. Catlin! (_Plate No. 3, next page._)--Mother, you have heard of Mr. Catlin?--Cousins Lucy and Fanny, here's the celebrated Mr. Catlin you have heard me speak of so often. Poor fellow! I have dragged him away from his exhibition, where they are talking him to death--he _must_ have _repose_--and here we can entertain and amuse him. Here, my little chicks--come here all of you--here's Mr. Catlin!--here's the man who has been so long among the wild Indians! he will tell you a great many curious stories about them. Where's sister Ellen, and Betty?" "Oh, they are in the garden with Mr. S. and his son, who has just returned from New Zealand." "Good, good; run for them, run for them, quick! Send the carriage for aunt W----n as swift as possible, and don't let her fail to stop on the way and bring Lady R----e: you know how fond she is of the Indian character--she was three years, you know, in Canada--and the poem she is now writing on the Indians! What a treat this will be to her! Won't it be delightful to see her and Mr. Catlin come together? She told me the other day she had a thousand questions she wished to put to Mr. Catlin--how interesting! Have the dinner up at _six_--no, say at _seven_; it will give us the more time for conversation, and for Professor D., the phrenologist, to get here, and whom I have invited--he's always behind the time--and this treat will be so rich to him--I would not miss him for anything in the world." My lecturing lungs and stomach being under a running engagement for dinner at three o'clock, the sound of "_six_"--then, "no, _seven_," with the words "Indian poem," "phrenologist," &c., produced a most rebellious and faltering sensation in my chest; the one entirely exhausted from its customary exertions until three o'clock, and the other, at that moment, completely in a state of collapse. The difficult trials I had lived through with the latter, however, in my wild adventures in the Indian wilderness, and the more recent proofs in the Egyptian Hall, of the elasticity of the other, inspired me with courage to enter upon the ordeal that was before me, and (even in distress) justly to appreciate what was so kindly preparing for me. I here instantly forgot my troubles as the party entered from the gardens, when I was thus presented by my good friend:--"Ellen, my dear, and Betty, here's Mr. Catlin; and, Mr. S----n, I have the extreme pleasure of presenting to your acquaintance the famous Mr. Catlin, whose name and whose works are familiar to you: and now, Catlin, my dear fellow, I introduce you to Mr. J. S., the son of the gentleman with whom I have just made you acquainted. Mr. J. S. has just returned from amongst the natives of New Zealand, where he has spent three or four years; and your descriptions of all the modes and customs of the North American Indians, compared with his accounts of the New Zealanders, will be so rich a treat to us!----But, Catlin, you look pale! Are you not well? You look so fagged!" "Yes, yes; I am well." "Oh, that plagued exhibition of yours--it will be the death of you! You must keep away from it, or you will talk yourself to death there! My good friends, come, take seats! Catlin, my dear fellow, come, join us in a glass of good old sherry--it will give you an appetite for your dinner--Is it to your liking?" "I thank you, it is very fine." "Will you take another?" "No, I am much obliged to you." "My dear, look at the clock--what time is it?" "Quarter past five." "Ah, well, I didn't think it was so late--be sure to have the dinner up at seven--do you hear?" [Illustration: N^o. 3.] Oh, Time and Paper! I will not tax you with the pains of kindness I was at that moment entering upon--I, who had been for eight years eating at the simple Indians' hospitable boards, where eating and talking are seldom done together; or taking my solitary meals, cooked by my own hand; where I had no one to talk with--but will leave it to Imagination's exhaustless colours, which, for a harmless pastime, will paint the pleasures, perhaps, of the dragging hours of my lifetime that I sighed through from that until twelve o'clock at night (the last half-hour of which I had stood upon my feet, with my hat in my hand, taking affectionate leave, with, "My dear, charming Sir, you can't tell how happy we have all been--your accounts have been so interesting! You _must_ come another evening and dine with us, and we will have Mr. G. and Mr. and Mrs. L----n; they will be so impatient to hear you tell all you have told us. Good night!--_good_ night!--we shall all be in a party at your exhibition to-morrow at an early hour, at ten o'clock--mind, don't forget the hour--and it will be so delightful to hear you explain everything in your collection, which my dear husband has seen so often, and says are so curious and interesting. Poor fellow! he is quite knocked up--he has been up all day, and constantly talking, and was so completely worn out that he went off to bed an hour ago--you will know how to excuse him. We ladies can often entertain our friends long after _his_ powers of conversation are fagged out. Good night--good night, my dear Sir--farewell!" Thus and at that hour I took leave, when the busses and cabs were all still, and I had, from necessity, a solitary walk of three miles to my lodgings; and before I laid my head on my pillow, from an equal necessity, to feed my poor stomach with some substitute for _dinner_, which had been in abundance before my eyes, but which the constant exercise of my lungs had prevented me from eating. Such a rendezvous as had been appointed for ten o'clock the next day, and by so fair and so kind a lady, even the rough politeness of a savage would have held sacred. At twelve o'clock on the following morning, and when I had nearly finished my descriptions of Indian modes to the ladies, my kind friend who had taken me to his house the day before, and having a little overslept himself on that morning had taken a late breakfast at eleven, entered the rooms with three or four of his friends, and quite rapidly addressed his wife in the following manner:--"Come now, my dear, you and your party have kept poor Catlin talking and answering questions quite long enough; you will kill him if you don't let him rest once in a while. See how pale the poor man is. Go off and get home as quick as possible. See all this crowd waiting around to talk him to death when you are done with him. I have brought Mr. C., the famous mineralogist, and the two Mr. N.'s, the geologists, to whom I want him to explain the mineralogy and geology of those boundless regions, of the Missouri and Rocky Mountains, and I was to have had the famous botanist, Mr. D. S--, but he may come by and by; and after we have done here, I am going to take him, that he may have a little relaxation and repose, to the British Museum, which he has not seen yet, and to the Geological Society's rooms; and after that, I have got for him an invitation to dine with the Reverend Mr. O., who will have several reverend gentlemen, and the famous Miss E. and Mrs. W., who you know are all so anxious to learn about the Indians' religion and modes of worship." I was then introduced to my friend's three or four companions, but a few moments after was reminded, by one of my men, of an engagement which took me off for the remainder of that day. CHAPTER V. Author's illness from overtalking in his collection--Daniel's illness from the same cause--Character of Daniel--His labour-saving plan for answering one hundred questions--His disappointment--Daniel travels to Ireland for his health--Author prepares to publish his Notes of Travel amongst the Indians--John Murray (publisher)--His reasons for not publishing the Author's work--His friendly advice--Author's book published by himself at the Egyptian Hall--Illustrious subscribers--Thomas Moore--Critical notices in London papers. In this manner passed the time from day to day, from week to week, and from month to month; and as I was daily growing richer, I was daily growing poorer--_i. e._ I was day by day losing my flesh, not from the usual cause, the want of enough to eat, but from derangement of the lungs and the stomach, both often overworked, with a constant excitement and anxiety of the mind, the seat of which was not far distant. I endeavoured, however, and gradually succeeded in dividing my time and my thoughts, giving a proper proportion to the public in my rooms, a portion to my friends, and (as it was then becoming a matter of necessity for the preparation of my notes of eight years' travel, which were soon to be published) decidedly the greater part to myself, leaving my exhibition mostly to the management of my men, of whom I had several, and all familiar enough with the meaning of everything in the collection to give a lucid description of its contents. As I was gradually receding from the exhibition, the arduous duties began to thicken more strongly upon my man Daniel, of whom I have before often spoken. He had been longest associated with me and my collection, and having it more by heart than the rest, was the foremost man in illustrating it, of which he had been curator for seven or eight years. I have before mentioned that he was of a quick and irascible disposition, exceedingly tenacious of national feelings, and those national prejudices mostly in favour of the country I said he had some twenty years since adopted--the United States. Though he was quick-tempered and violent in his prejudices, there was always the redeeming trait at the end, that his anger was soon over, and there was good nature and civility at the bottom. Though I had often complaints made to me of the want of politeness or of the rudeness of my man Daniel, I generally found that they were instances where he had been provoked to it by some unnecessary allusions to the vices of his own country, or by some objections to his political opinions relative to the institutions of the United States, upon which subjects he holds himself exceedingly punctilious and very well prepared for debate. With whatever foibles he has, I have found him invariably and strictly an honest man; and many of his highest offences alleged to have been given to the public in my rooms, were given strictly in obedience to my orders for the support of the regulations of my exhibition, or for the protection of my property and the advancement of my interest. To those who entered my rooms respectfully for information, he was civil and communicative, and all such drew valuable information from him, and many became attached to him. His lungs were now labouring for me, while mine were getting a little rest; and from morning to night of every day he was conducting individuals and parties around the rooms, pointing out and explaining the leading peculiarities of the museum, and answering the thousand questions that were asked by all classes of society relative to the looks, the modes, and habits of the Indians--the countries they lived in--and also of Mr. Catlin, the proprietor and collector of the museum, whom all were anxious to see, and many of whom had been led to believe was himself an Indian. In my own answering of these questions, many of which were natural to be raised on so new and exciting a subject, I was often amused, and as often surprised at the novelty and ignorance of many of them, even amongst a polite and well-clad and apparently well-educated class of people. Many of the questions, which only excited a smile with me, elicited broad laughter from Daniel, which he could not help, and having laughed, could not well avoid expressing his surprise at, and his detection of, which gave umbrage, and sometimes was another cause of difficulties that he occasionally though seldom got into. I observed, after a while, that the same causes which had affected me were emaciating him, and he finally told me that he was talking his lungs out--and that he could not bear it much longer at the rate he was going on. The questions which were constantly put to him in the room were so much of a sort, or class, that there was little variety or novelty in them to please or excite him; almost every person putting the same; much the greater part of them being general, and therefore irksome to him, as they were often asked a hundred or more times in the day and as often answered. He came to me one evening, seemingly much relieved from the painful prospect he had been suffering under, and which was still before him, by the hope that I would adopt a plan he had hit upon for obviating much of the difficulty, and of saving his lungs for the explanations of questions which might be casual, and not exactly reduced to rule. He said he had ascertained that there were about 100 questions which were commonplace--were put (and in the same way precisely) by the greater part of people who came in, and had time to ask them; and that 50 of those, at least, were asked 100 times per day, the answering of which took the greater part of his time and the best part of his strength, which he thought might be reserved for giving more useful information, while these 100 questions, the most of which were extremely simple or silly, and of little importance to be known, might be disposed of by a printed table of answers placed around the rooms for every one to read as they walked, without the loss of time and fatigue consequent upon the usual mode of asking and answering questions. Though I could not consent to adopt his mode, yet I was amused at its ingenuity; and I give here but a small part of his list, which commenced and ran thus:-- "The Indians have _no beards at all_, only may be one in twenty or so." "The Indians _don't_ shave--they pull it out, when they have any beard." "Virtuous?--Yes. I should say they are quite as much so as the whites, if the whites would keep away from them and let them alone." "Ah, as amorous?--No. Mr. Catlin says they have not the spices of life and the imaginations to set them on, or I'll venture they would be quite as bad as the whites." "The Indians in _America are not_ cannibals. Mr. Catlin says there is no such thing." "No, there are no tribes that go entirely naked; they are all very decent." "The Indians _don't_ eat raw meat, they cook it more than the whites do." "Mr. Catlin was amongst the Indians eight years, and was never killed during that time." "The scalp is a patch of the skin and hair taken from the top of the head by a warrior when he kills his enemy in battle." "No, they don't scalp the living--it is not a scalp to count if the man is alive." "They _sometimes_ eat a great deal, to be sure, but generally not so much as white people." "They _do_ get drunk sometimes, but white people sell them rum and make them so, therefore I don't think we ought to call them drunkards exactly." "The Indians all get married--some have a number of wives." "Yes, they seem as fond of their wives as any people I ever saw." "The Indians never injured Mr. Catlin in any way." "Mr. Catlin _didn't_ live on 'raw meat;' he was one time eighteen months with nothing but meat to eat, but it was well cooked." "The Indians know _nothing about salt_--they don't use it at all." "Reason! yes; why, do you think they are wild beasts? to be sure they reason as well as we do." "They _are_ thieves, sometimes; but I don't think they thieve so often as white people do." "The Indians _do_ lend their wives sometimes to white men, but it is only their old superannuated ones, who are put aside to hard labour, so it is a sort of kindness all around, and I don't see that there is much harm in it." "The Indians all have their religion, they all worship the Great Spirit." "They are _treacherous_, to be sure, towards their enemies only, and I'll be whipped if the white people an't just as bad." "The Indians _are cruel_, there's no mistake about that; but it is only to their enemies." "Sale? there _won't be_ any sale; Mr. Catlin don't intend to sell his collection in this country." "Mr. Catlin _is not_ an Indian." "No, he has _no_ Indian blood in him." "Mr. Catlin speaks the English language very well." "The Indians _don't raise_ tea." "They _never eat_ the scalps." "The Indians that Mr. Catlin saw are not _near_ Chusan, they are 3,000 miles from there, they are in America." "You _can't come overland_ from America." "A scalping-knife is _any_ large knife that an Indian takes a scalp with." "A prairie is a meadow." "The Indians speak _their own_ language." "A pappoose is an Indian baby while it is carried in the cradle." "A prairie bluff is a hill that is covered with grass." "The Rocky Mountains are in _America_, between New York and the Pacific Ocean, and _not_ in the _Indies_ at all." "A snag is a large tree that is lying in the river, its roots fast in the mud at the bottom, and its trunk at the top, pointing down the stream." "Sawyers _are not_ alligators." "An alligator is a sort of crocodile." "The Chesapeake didn't take the Shannon, it was the Shannon that took the Chesapeake." "The Americans are _white_, the same colour exactly as the English, and speak the same language, only they speak it a great deal better, in general." "A stump is the but-end and roots of a tree standing in the ground after the tree is chopped down." "It _is_ true that all Indian women stay away from their husbands the seven days of their illness, and I think they are the decentest people of the two for doing it." "A squaw is an _Indian woman_ who is married." "The _Calumet_ is a pipe of peace." "Horns on a chief's head-dress have _no bad_ meaning." "Mr. Catlin _is not_ a repudiator," &c., &c. And thus went on poor Daniel's list to the number of about 100 commonplace questions which he had hoped to have disposed of by a sort of steam operation; but finding that they must all continue to be "done by hand," as before, he returned to his post, which, from his disappointment in his unrealized hopes, seemed to drag more heavily than ever upon him, and so rapidly to wear him down that he was obliged to plan a tour to his own native land of Erin, where he went for some weeks, to restore his lungs and his strength. His labour-saving suggestion might have been a very convenient one for me in his absence, but it was dispensed with, and he was soon back at his post, recruited and assuming the command again, whilst I was busy in advancing the material for my forthcoming work. The Notes of my Eight Years' Travels amongst Forty-eight different Tribes of Indians in America, to be illustrated with more than 300 steel plate illustrations, were nearly ready to be put to press; and I called on my good friend John Murray, in Albemarle Street, believing that he would be glad to publish them for me. To my surprise he objected to them (but without seeing my manuscript), for two reasons which he at once alleged: first, because he was afraid of the great number of illustrations to be embodied in the work, and secondly for (certainly) the most unfashionable reason, that "he loved me too much!" I had brought a letter of introduction to him from his old friend Washington Irving; and from the deep interest Mr. Murray had taken in my collection and the history and prospects of the poor Indians, my rooms (which were near his dwelling-house) were his almost daily resort, and I a weekly guest at his hospitable board, where I always met gentlemen of eminence connected with literature and art. Good and generous old man! he therefore "loved me too much" to share with me the profits of a work which he said should all belong to me for my hard labour and the risks of my life I had run in procuring it; and as the means of enlarging those profits he advised me to publish it myself. "I would advise you," said he, "as one of your best friends, to publish your own book; and I am sure you will make a handsome profit by it. Being an artist yourself, and able to make the drawings for your 300 illustrations, which for me would require a very great outlay to artists to produce them, and having in your exhibition-room the opportunity of receiving subscriptions for your work, which I could not do, it will be quite an easy thing for you to take names enough to cover all the expenses of getting it up, which at once will place you on safe ground; and if the work should be well received by Mr. Dilke and others of the critical world, it will insure you a handsome reward for your labours, and exceedingly please your sincere friend, John Murray." This disinterested frankness endeared me to that good man to his last days, and his advice, which I followed, resulted, as he had predicted, to my benefit. My subscription list my kind friend the Hon. C. A. Murray had in a few days commenced, with the subscriptions of HER MOST GRACIOUS MAJESTY THE QUEEN, H. R. H. PRINCE ALBERT, HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN DOWAGER, H. R. H. THE DUCHESS OF KENT, HIS MAJESTY THE KING OF THE BELGIANS, H. M. THE QUEEN OF THE BELGIANS, HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE DUKE OF SUSSEX, H. R. H. LEOPOLD DUC DE BRABANT, After which soon followed a complimentary list of the nobility and gentry, together with the leading institutions of the kingdom. My work was published by myself, at the Egyptian Hall, and the only fears which my good friend John Murray had expressed for me were all dispersed by the favourable announcements by Mr. Dilke, of the Athenæum, and the editors of other literary journals, from which it will be seen that the subjoined notices are but very brief extracts. It may not be improper also here to remark, that for all the Royal copies subscribed for above, the Hon. C. A. Murray was ordered to remit me double the amount of the price of the work; and that, on a subsequent occasion, when my dear wife and myself were guests at the dinner table of John Murray, he said to his old friend Thomas Moore, who was by our side, "That wild man by the side of you there, Mr. Catlin, who has spent enough of his life amongst the wild Indians (sleeping on the ground and eating raw buffalo meat) to make you and I as grey as badgers, and who has not yet a grey hair in his head, applied to me about a year ago to publish his Notes. I was then--for the first time in my life--too honest for my own interest, as well as that of an author; and I advised him to publish it himself, as the surest way of making something out of it. My wife here will tell you that I have read every word of it through, heavy as it is, and she knows it is the only book that I have read quite through in the last five years. And I tell Mr. Catlin now, in your presence, that I shall regret as long as I live that I did not publish that work for him; for as sincerely as I advised him, I could have promoted his interest by so doing, and would have done so, had I known what was in the work when he proposed it to me." The reader will pardon me for inserting here the critical notices which follow:-- EDINBURGH REVIEW. _Fifteen pages._ "Living with them as one of themselves; having no trading purposes to serve; exciting no enmity by the well-meant but suspicious preaching of a new religion, Mr. Catlin went on with his rifle and his pencil, sketching and noting whatever he saw worthy of record; and wisely abandoning all search for the ancient history of a people who knew no writing, he confined his labours to the depicting exactly what he saw, and that only. Notes and sketches were transmitted, as occasion served, to New York, and the collected results now appear, partly in a gallery which has been for some time exhibited in London, containing some five hundred pictures of Indian personages and scenes, drawn upon the spot, with specimens of their dress and manufactures, their arts and arms; and partly, as just stated, of the volumes under our hands, which display engravings of most of those specimens and pictures, accompanied by a narrative, written in a very pleasant, homely style, of his walks and wanderings in the '_Far West_.' "The reader will find a compensation in the vigour of the narrative, which, like a diary, conveys the vivid impressions of the moment, instead of being chilled and tamed down into a more studied composition. Such as the work is, we strongly recommend it to the perusal of all who wish to make themselves acquainted with a singular race of men and system of manners, fast disappearing from the face of the earth; and which have nowhere else been so fully, curiously, and graphically described." ----*---- WESTMINSTER REVIEW. _Twelve pages._ "This is a remarkable book, written by an extraordinary man. A work valuable in the highest degree for its novel and curious information about one of the most neglected and least understood branches of the human family. Mr. Catlin, without any pretension to talent in authorship, has yet produced a book which will live as a record when the efforts of men of much higher genius have been forgotten. Every one in London has seen Mr. Catlin's unique gallery, and his attractive exhibition of living models at the Egyptian Hall; we cannot too strongly recommend them to our country friends. And here we take our leave of a work over which we have lingered with much pleasure, strongly recommending it to the reader, and hoping its extensive sale will amply repay Mr. Catlin for the great outlay he must have incurred." ----*---- DUBLIN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE. _Fifteen pages._ "Mr. Catlin's book is one of the most interesting which we have perused on the subject of the Indians. His pencil has preserved the features of races which in a few years will have disappeared; and his faithful and accurate observations may be considered as the storehouse from whence future writers on such topics will extract their most authentic statements." ----*---- TAIT'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. _Two Notices, Twenty-two pages._ "This is altogether an _unique_ work. It may be considered as a _Catalogue Raisonnée_ of the numerous objects of art and curiosity which Mr. Catlin has collected in the course of his wanderings, and arranged in his Indian Gallery. The narrative of Mr. Catlin's personal adventures during the wandering years in which he was thus engaged, forms a work as unique in literature, as his collection of original portraits and curiosities is rare in art. "Many curious traits of character and pictures of manners are exhibited in these large and closely-printed volumes, which will remain an interesting record of the Homeric age and race of North America, when, save a few wild traditions and scattered relics, and a few of the musical and sonorous Indian names of lakes, rivers, and hunting grounds, every other trace of the red man will have perished on that vast continent." ----*---- LITERARY GAZETTE, _London_. _Three Notices, Twenty-five Columns._ "_Catlin's Book on the North American Indians._--An _unique_ work! A work of extraordinary interest and value. Mr. Catlin is _the_ Historian of the Red Races of mankind; of a past world, or at least of a world fast passing away, and leaving hardly a trace or wreck behind. We need not recommend it to the world, for it recommends itself, beyond our praise." ----*---- ATHENÆUM, _London_. _Four Notices, Thirty-one Columns._ "The public have fully confirmed the opinion we formerly pronounced on Catlin's Indian gallery, as the most interesting exhibition which, in our recollection, had been opened in London. The production of the _work_ will, therefore, be most acceptable to those who have seen the exhibition, as serving to refresh their memories; to those who have not, as helping to explain that of which they have heard so much; to all as a pleasant narrative of adventure, and a circumstantial and detailed history of the manners and customs of an interesting people, whose fate is sealed, whose days are numbered, whose extinction is certain. The Americans should make much of Mr. Catlin for the sake of by-gone days, which his books, portraits, and collections will present to their grandchildren." ----*---- ART UNION, _London_. "We have rarely examined a work at once so interesting and so useful as this; the publication of which is, in truth, a benefit conferred upon the world; for it is a record of things rapidly passing away, and the accurate traces of which are likely to be lost within a brief time after they have been discovered. As a contribution to the history of mankind, these volumes will be of rare value long after the last of the persecuted races are with 'the Great Spirit,' and they may even have some _present_ effect; for they cannot fail to enlist the best sympathies of humanity on the side of a most singular people. The book is exceedingly simple in its style; it is the production of a man of benevolent mind, kindly affections, and sensitive heart, as well as of keen perceptions and sound judgment. If we attempted to do justice to its merits, we should fill a _number_ of our work instead of a _column_ of it; we must content ourselves with recommending its perusal to all who covet knowledge or desire amusement;--no library in the kingdom should be without a copy." ----*---- TIMES, _London_. _One Notice, Three Columns._ "The reflection is almost insupportable to a humane mind, that the indigenous races of America, comprising numerous distinct nations, the original proprietors of that vast continent, are probably doomed to entire extermination--a fate which has already befallen a large portion of the red tribes. It is still more painful to think that this should be the effect of the spread of the civilized races, who thus become the agents of a wholesale destruction of their fellow-men. If these melancholy truths were capable of aggravation, it may be found in the dreadful fact that the process of destruction is not left to the slow operation of invisible and insensible causes, but is hastened by expedients devised for that express end by civilized men, the tribes being stimulated or compelled to the destruction of each other, or provided with the means of destroying themselves. "Mr. Catlin, the author of the work which has suggested these observations, has had better opportunities for studying the character of the North American Indians than most travellers since the early French writers. "Mr. Catlin is an American, a native of Wyoming, and the publisher of his own work, at the Egyptian Hall." ----*---- MORNING CHRONICLE, _London_. "As a work intended merely for general amusement, and independently of the higher object to which it is devoted, Mr. Catlin's book will be found exceedingly interesting. The salient or rugged points of its style have not been smoothed down by any literary journeyman. Mr. Catlin ventures alone and unaided before the public. What he has seen in the prairie, and noted down in its solitude, he sends forth, with all the wildness and freshness of nature about it. This, together with his free and easy conversational style, plentifully sprinkled with Americanisms, gives a peculiar charm to his descriptions, which are not merely animated or life-like, but _life_ itself. The reader is made to believe himself in the desert, or lying among friendly Indians in the wigwam, or hurried along in the excitement of the chase. He is constantly surrounded by the figures of the red man, and hears the rustle of their feathers, or the dash of their half-tamed steeds as they bound by him. "The work is ornamented with hundreds of engravings, taken from original pictures drawn by Mr. Catlin, of the persons, manners, customs, and scenes that he met with in his wanderings. They give an additional value to those volumes which are published, as the title-page informs us, by Mr. Catlin himself, at the Egyptian Hall. We wish him all the success to which his candour no less than his talents fully entitle him." ----*---- MORNING HERALD, _London_. "In the two ample volumes just published, and illustrated with more than 300 plates, Mr. Catlin has given to the world a lasting and invaluable memorial of the doomed race of the Red Man, which, after having from immemorial time held the unmolested tenancy of an entire continent, is now but too obviously hurried on to utter extinction. Mr. Catlin's literary matter resembles his drawings; it has all the freshness of the sketch from nature. Through both he brings us into companionship with the red man, as if careering with him over the boundless plains, the primeval forests of his hunting grounds in the far West, or in the vicinity of his temporary village settlements, witnessing his athletic games, his strange, fantastic dances, and his spontaneous endurance of those revolting tortures by which he evinces his unflinching stoicism." ----*---- MORNING POST, _London_. "Upwards of three hundred very well executed etchings from the paintings, drawn by Mr. Catlin, adorn these volumes, and offer to the eye one of the most complete museums of an almost unknown people that ever was given to the public. The style of the narrative is diffuse, inartificial, and abounding in Yankeeisms; but it is earnest, honest, and unpretending; and contains most undoubted and varied information relative to the red savage of America, fresh from the wilds, and unembittered by border hostility or unfounded prejudice. These volumes are handsomely printed, and 'brought out,' in all respects, with much care and taste." ----*---- SPECTATOR, _London_. _Five Columns._ "The illustrative plates of these volumes are numbering upwards of three hundred subjects--landscapes, hunting scenes, Indian ceremonies, and portraits form a remarkable feature, and possess a permanent interest as graphic records. They are outline etchings from the author's paintings, and are admirable for the distinct and lively manner in which the characteristics of the scenes and persons are portrayed: what is called a _style of art_ would have been impertinent, and might have tended to falsify. Mr. Catlin, in his homely, but spirited manner, seizes upon the most distinguishing points of his subjects by dint of understanding their value, and every touch has significance and force: hence the number of details and the extent of view embraced in these small and slight sketches, hence their animation and reality." ----*---- ATLAS, _London_. _Three Notices, Twelve Columns._ "This publication may be regarded as the most valuable accession to the history of the fast perishing races of the aboriginal world that has ever been collected by a single individual. The descriptions it contains are minute and full, and possess the advantage of being wonderfully tested by the long experience of the writer, and verified by the concurrent testimonials of many individuals intimately acquainted with the scenes and races delineated. The engravings, which are liberal to an unprecedented extent, cannot be too highly praised for their utility as illustrations. To the readers who have never had an opportunity of visiting Mr. Catlin's gallery, these engravings will form for them quite a museum of Indian curiosities in themselves; while to those already familiar with the actual specimens, they will serve as useful and agreeable souvenirs. But we chiefly approve and recommend this work to universal circulation for the sake of the pure and noble philanthropy by which it is everywhere inspired. As the advocate of the oppressed Indian, now vanishing before the white man on the soil of his fathers, Mr. Catlin deserves the unmixed thanks of the Christian world. His volumes are full of stimulants to benevolent exertion, and bear the strongest testimony to the character of the races for whose preservation he pleads." #/ ----*---- UNITED SERVICE GAZETTE, _London_. "Mr. Catlin is one of the most remarkable men of the age. Every one who has visited his singularly interesting gallery at the Egyptian Hall, must have been struck by his remarkable intelligence on every subject connected with the North American Indians; but of its extent, as well as of his extraordinary enthusiasm and thirst for adventure, we had formed no idea until we had perused these volumes. In the present _blazé_ condition of English literature, in which hardly any work is published that is not founded more or less on other volumes which have preceded it, until authorship has dwindled to little more than the art of emptying one vessel into another, it is refreshing to come across a book which, like the one before us, is equally novel in subject, manner, and execution, and which may be pronounced, without hyperbole, one of the most original productions which have issued from the press for many years. It is wholly impossible, in the compass of a newspaper notice, either to analyze or afford even a tolerable idea of the contents of such a book; and for the present, at least, we must limit ourselves altogether to the first volume." ----*---- CALEDONIAN MERCURY, _Edinburgh_. "_Mr. Catlin's Lectures on the North-American Indians._--We have much pleasure in publishing the following testimonial from a gentleman well qualified to pronounce an opinion, on the remarkable fidelity and effect of Mr. Catlin's interesting and instructive exhibition:-- 'Cottage, Haddington, 15th April, 1843. 'Dear Sir,--I have enjoyed much pleasure in attending your lectures at the Waterloo-rooms in Edinburgh. Your delineations of the Indian character, the display of beautiful costumes, and the native Indian manners, true to the life, realised to my mind and view scenes I had so often witnessed in the parts of the Indian countries where I had been; and for twenty years' peregrinations in those parts, from Montreal to the Great Slave River, north, and from the shores of the Atlantic, crossing the Rocky Mountains, to the mouth of the Columbia River, on the Pacific Ocean, west, I had opportunities of seeing much. Your lectures and exhibition have afforded me great pleasure and satisfaction, and I shall wish you all that success which you so eminently deserve, for the rich treat which you have afforded in our enlightened, literary, and scientific metropolis. 'I remain, dear Sir, yours very truly, 'JOHN HALDANE. '_To George Catlin, Esq._' "The following is an extract of a letter received some days since by a gentleman in Edinburgh, from Mr. James Hargrave, of the Hudson's Bay Company, dated York Factory, Hudson's Bay, 10th December, 1842:-- #/ 'Should you happen to fall in with Catlin's Letters on the North American Indians, I would strongly recommend a perusal of them for the purpose of acquiring a knowledge of the habits and customs of those tribes among whom he was placed. Catlin's sketches are true to life, and are powerfully descriptive of their appearance and character.'" ----*---- THE WORLD OF FASHION, _London_. "We venture to affirm of Mr. Catlin's book, which can be said of very few others, that it is impossible to open it at any page, and not continue its perusal with unmingled satisfaction. It has too the rare quality of being written by a man who says nothing but that which he knows, who describes nothing but that which he has seen. We feel while reading the book as in the society of a man of extraordinary observation, of great talent, of wonderful accomplishments; and most cordially and earnestly do we recommend this invaluable book to the patronage of the public generally, and to the perusal of our readers in particular." ----*---- WEEKLY DISPATCH, _London_. "A person might well be startled and frightened at the appearance of two such large volumes as these on only the manners, customs, and condition of the North American Indians, a race of savages now almost extinct. With all this complaint against the immense bulk of a book, moreover, on such a subject, we are bound to confess that not only is it the least wearisome of large books that we have for a long time seen, but that it is at least one of the most amusing and animating amongst even the condensed publications that for a considerable period have been submitted to our perusal and judgment, and we can confidently recommend it to our readers." ----*---- CHAMBERS'S EDINBURGH JOURNAL. _Two Notices, Four Columns._ "Of all the works yet published on the subject of the aboriginal inhabitants of North America, no one, it seems to us, can be compared in point of accuracy and extent of research with that of Mr. Catlin. In the course of eight years he traversed North America almost from end to end, saw and mixed with forty-eight Indian tribes, composing a large portion of the two millions of red people yet in existence, examined personally into all their peculiarities, and, finally, accumulated a noble gallery of portraits, and a rich museum of curiosities, calculated to form at once a lasting monument to himself and an invaluable record of Indian persons, manners, and habiliments. "Mr. Catlin, combining all the qualities of the traveller, artist, and historian, merits no sparing notice. His two volumes, large octavo, and closely printed, are full of most interesting matter, and contain, besides, upwards of three hundred beautiful illustrations, engraved from the original paintings." ----*---- "Légation des Etats-Unis, Paris, Dec. 8th, 1841. "Dear Sir,--No man can appreciate better than myself the admirable fidelity of your drawings and book, which I have lately received. They are equally spirited and accurate; they are true to nature. Things that _are_, are not sacrificed, as they too often are by the painter, to things as in his judgment they should be. "During eighteen years of my life I was superintendent of Indian affairs in the north-western territory of the United States; and during more than five I was Secretary of War, to which department belongs the general control of Indian concerns. I know the Indians thoroughly; I have spent many a month in their camps, council-houses, villages, and hunting grounds; I have fought with them and against them; and I have negotiated seventeen treaties of peace or of cession with them. I mention these circumstances to show you that I have a good right to speak confidently upon the subject of your drawings; among them I recognize many of my old acquaintances, and everywhere I am struck with the vivid representations of them and their customs, of their peculiar features and of their costumes. Unfortunately they are receding before the advancing tide of our population, and are probably destined, at no distant day, wholly to disappear; but your collection will preserve them, as far as human art can do, and will form the most perfect monument of an extinguished race that the world has ever seen. "LEWIS CASS. "_To Geo. Catlin._" CHAPTER VI. The Author's wife and two children arrive in the British Queen, from New York--First appreciation of London--Sight-seeing--Author lectures in the Royal Institution--Suggests a _Museum of Mankind_--Great applause--Vote of thanks by members of the Royal Institution--The "_Museum of History_"--Author lectures in the other literary and scientific institutions of London--Author dines with the Royal Geographical Society, and with the Royal Geological Society--Mrs. Catlin's travels in the "Far West"--Her welcome, and kind friends in London. My work being published under the flattering auspices explained in the foregoing pages, and now in the hands of the reading public, attracted additional numbers of visitors to my Rooms, greatly increasing the labours of poor Daniel, and calling also for more of my time and attention, which I could now better devote to it. My old friends were calling to congratulate me on the success of my book, and strangers to form an acquaintance with me and offer me the civilities of their houses. Though every part of these calls upon my time, either in the labours of my exhibition or in the society of friends, was pleasing and gratifying to me, yet it became necessary for my health to evade a part of these excitements on either hand, and I subsequently endeavoured, by a limited indulgence in the pleasures of society, and a moderate endurance of the excitements and fatigue of my Rooms, to save my life; throwing the cares and labours of the exhibition, as much as possible, upon the broader shoulders and stronger lungs of Daniel and his assistants. I felt now as if I had a sort of citizenship in London, and began to think of seeing its "sights;" and from this time may date the commencement of my real appreciation of the elegances and comforts of London, its hospitalities, and the genuine English character. It was an opportune moment, also, for the arrival of my dear wife and her two infant children, for whom I had written to New York, and who were just landing from the British Queen, in London, to share the kind attentions and compliments that were being paid to me, and also for seeing with me the sights and curiosities of the metropolis. About this time I was highly complimented by an invitation to deliver a lecture in the Royal Institution, Albemarle-street. The venerable members of that institution were nearly all present, and every seat was filled. I had, on the occasion, several living figures, dressed in Indian costumes, with weapons in hand, as well as many of my paintings exhibited on my easel, as illustrations; and I was highly gratified with the attention and repeated applause, convincing me that the subject and myself were kindly received. I endeavoured, in the compass of an evening's lecture, to give as comprehensive a view as I could of the motives which had led me into the Indian countries--of the time I had spent in them--of the extent and nature of the collection I had made--of the condition and numbers of the various tribes, and of their personal appearance and habits of life, which I illustrated by my numerous paintings, and by the curious manufactures of their own hands. I endeavoured also to delineate their true native character, as I had found it in its most primitive condition--and to explain the principal causes that have been, and still are, leading to their rapid declension. I took advantage of this occasion likewise to introduce a subject which had been for many years my favourite theme, which had constantly stimulated me through my toils in the Indian country, and which, as I was the first to propose in my own country, I believe I was the first to suggest on this side of the Atlantic--a MUSEUM of MANKIND. A shout of enthusiastic applause burst from every part of the Hall when the subject was named, and rounds of applause followed every sentence when I proceeded to say, that in the toils and dangers of my remotest travels in the wilderness I had been strengthened and nerved by the hope and the belief, that if I lived to finish my studies and to return with my collection, I should be able to show to the world the plan upon which a Museum could be formed, to contain and perpetuate the looks and manners and history of all the declining and vanishing races of man, and that my collection would ultimately form the basis of such an institution. I agreed with all the world as to the great interest and value of their noble collections of beasts, and birds, and reptiles, of fossils, of minerals, of fishes, of insects, and of plants, all of which can be gathered hundreds of years hence as well as at the present time; and I believed that all of the reasoning world who would give the subject a moment's thought, would agree with _me_, that there was one museum yet to be made, far transcending in interest and value all others yet designed, and which must needs be made soon, or it will be for ever lost--a museum containing the familiar looks, the manufactures, history, and records of all the remnants of the declining races of our fellow-men. It occurred to me, and I said it then, that Great Britain has more than thirty colonies in different quarters of the globe, in which the numbers of civilized men are increasing, and the native tribes are wasting away--that the march of civilization is everywhere, as it is in America, a war of extermination, and that of our own species. For the occupation of a new country, the first enemy that must fall is _man_, and his like cannot be transplanted from any other quarter of the globe. Our war is not with beasts or with birds: the grizly bear, the lion, and the tiger are allowed to live. Our weapons are not employed against them: we do not give them whiskey, and rum, and the small pox, nor the bayonet; they are allowed to live and thrive upon our soil, and yet their skins are of great value in our museums; but to complete a title, man, our fellow-man, the noblest work of God, with thoughts, with sentiments and sympathies like our own, must be extinguished; and he dies on his own soil, unchronicled and unknown (save to the ruthless hands that have slain him, and would bury his history with his body in oblivion), when not even his _skin_ has a place assigned it amongst those of the beasts and birds of his country. From England, from France, and the United States, government vessels, in this age of colonization, are floating to every part of the globe, and in them, artists and men of science could easily be conveyed to every race, and their collections returned free of expense, were there an institution formed and ready to receive and perpetuate the results of their labours. I believed that the time had arrived for the creation of such an institution, and that well-directed efforts to bring it into existence would have the admiration and countenance of all the philanthropic world. There was but one expression of feeling from every part of the hall at the close of these remarks, and every voice seemed to say "Yes--the noble philanthropy of this Christian and enlightened and enlightening age calls for it, and it must be done before it is too late."[3] [3] The noble and unaided efforts of my best of friends, Captain Shippard, to bring into existence such an institution, are, I believe, too well known and appreciated by the English public to require more of me here, than barely to refer to his beautifully illustrated lectures on the "_Arabians_" and the "_Ruined Cities of America_;" and whilst wishing all success to his noble enterprise, I beg to refer the reader to Appendix B for a synopsis of his design. A few days after my lecture was delivered, I received with much satisfaction from the secretary of the institution the following communication, which the reader will allow me the vanity of inserting here:-- "Sir,--I have the honour to return you the thanks of the members of the _Royal Institution of Great Britain_ for your interesting account of your residence and adventures among the native tribes of North American Indians, with notices of their social condition, customs, mysteries, and modes of warfare--communicated at the weekly meeting of the members on Friday, the 14th February. "I am, Sir, your very obedient Servant, "EDWARD R. DANIELL, _Secretary_. "_To Geo. Catlin, Esq._" * * * * * Invitations from the other literary and scientific institutions of London afforded me the opportunity of repeating my lectures in most of their halls, where I was uniformly received with applause, which was also a source of much gratification to me. These interviews suddenly and delightfully led me into the society of literary and scientific men, and also into the noble collections and libraries under their superintendence. I was here at once ushered, as it were, into a new world--a new atmosphere--and in it was met and welcomed every where with the utmost cordiality and kindness; libraries, museums, laboratories, and lectures were free to me; and not only the private tables of the advocates of science, but their public tables in their banqueting halls, prepared a seat for me. Thus were my labours being requited; and I was happy in the conviction that the claims of the poor Indians were being heard in the right tribunal, and that I was their advocate at the true source from which emanated most of the great and moral influences that govern and improve the world. I was invited to the annual dinners of the Royal Geographical, Geological, and Historical Societies; and in responding to the compliments paid me at all of them, in proposing my health and the prosperity of my country, I was delighted to find that my advocacy of the rights of the poor Indian, and my scheme for a _Museum_ of _Mankind_, were met and sanctioned with rounds of enthusiastic applause. I have mentioned that my dear wife with her two children had arrived from New York, and the pleasures and endearments of my own little fireside, now transplanted into a foreign land, were stealing away their part of my time, which, with the necessary attention to the kind civilities being paid us, our sight-seeing, our dinings-out, our drives, and my attendance in my rooms and lectures at night, was curiously divided and engrossed. The advent of my dear Clara, with her two babes, was like the coming of the warm and gentle breezes of spring--she who, though delicate and tender, had been, during the three last years of my rambles in the Indian wilds, my indefatigable companion--She who had traced and retraced with me the winding mazes of the mighty Mississippi, the Missouri, the Ohio, and the Arkansas--and with the lightness of the bounding antelopes that dwell upon their shores, had darted over their grassy banks and their green carpeted and enamelled slopes, and plucked their loveliest flowers--she who had also traced with me the shores of the great lakes of the north, and inhaled the glowing sweetness of Florida's lovely coast--and had kept her journal of thirteen thousand miles of wild rambles with her husband, and since her return to the land of her birth had blessed him in the richness of gift with two children, was now by his side (as I have said, like the coming of spring), to cheer him with the familiar sweet smiles and sounds in which he never knew guile.[4] [4] The reader will pardon these expressions, and others of a similar nature that may occasionally occur, for they apply to one who now rests with the silent dead, as will be explained in future pages of this work. Thanks to the kind friends who took her fair hand and bade her welcome--for they were many, and ready to contribute to her happiness, which filled (at that moment at least) the cup of our mutual enjoyment. CHAPTER VII. The Author dines with the Royal Highland Society--The Duke of Richmond presides--His Grace's compliment to the Author and his country--Sir David Wilkie--His compliment to the Author--Charles Augustus Murray and the Author at the Caledonian Ball (Almack's) in Indian costumes--Their rehearsal--Dressing and painting--Entering the ball--Alarm of ladies--Mr. Murray's infinite amusement (_incognito_) amongst his friends--War-dance and war-whoops--Great applause--Bouquets of flowers--Scalp-dance--Brooches and bracelets presented to the chiefs-Trinkets returned--Perspiration carries off the paint, and Mr. Murray recognised--Amusement of his friends--The "Indians" return to Egyptian Hall at seven in the morning--Their amusing appearance. Among the many very friendly invitations extended to me about this time, there was one which I cannot omit to notice in this place.--I was invited to take a seat at the _Royal Highland Society's_ annual dinner, at which his Grace the Duke of Richmond presided. The name of this society explains its character, and most of the guests at the table were in full highland dress, with their kilts, and with the badges and plaids of their peculiar clans. The scene was altogether a very picturesque one, and I observed that their chiefs wore the eagle's quills for the same purpose and in the same manner that the Indians do; but I did not see any of them painted red, as the Indians paint them, to adorn their heads as symbols of war when they are going to battle. The banqueting hall was beautifully arranged, and two of Her Majesty's pipers from the Palace, in the most gorgeous Highland dress, were perambulating the table "in full blast" whilst we were eating. The Duke of Richmond, who is an easy, affable, and entirely unostentatious man, and the best president at a convivial table that I ever saw, offered the customary healths, of--the Queen--the Prince--the Duke, &c., which were drunk with the usual enthusiasm, and after that proceeded to pay his ingenious and judicious compliments to individuals at the table, by alluding, in the most concise and amusing manner, to their exploits or other merits, and then proposed their healths. After we had all joined in the uproar of--Hip, hip, hips,--with one foot on our chairs and the other on the table, in a number of such cases, he arose and said-- "Gentlemen, I now rise quite confident of your approbation of the sentiment I am to propose, and the sentiments I am to offer. The nations of the earth, like the individuals in the different branches of a great family, stand in certain degrees of relationship towards each other; and as those degrees of consanguinity are more or less remote, so are the friendships and attachments of those nations for each other. Now, gentlemen, as an individual component part of one of the great nations of that great national family, I feel proud to say, that there are two of that family so closely related, not only in commercial interests, but by blood, as almost to identify them in an unity of existence.--The relationship that I speak of, gentlemen (and which I believe will be familiar to many of you, as married men), is that of parent and child." At this period commenced a tremendous cheering, and all eyes seemed to be in a rotary motion, endeavouring to fix upon the representative of that nearly related country on whom the next responsibility was to fall. His Grace proceeded:-- "Gentlemen, the term parent and child I have used to express the endearments of one stage of domestic relations; but there is another which lessens not the tie, but carries with it the respect that children do not win--I would call it father and son (_immense cheering_). I perceive, gentlemen, that you all understand me, and are preparing for the sentiment I am to offer; but I would remark, that when a distinguished individual from one of those nearly related countries pays a visit to the other, common courtesy demands that he should be treated with kindness and respect. If that individual, gentlemen, be one who, by the force and energy of his own mind, has struck out and accomplished any great undertaking for the advancement of science, or the benefit of mankind, he is a philanthropist, a public benefactor, and entitled to our highest admiration (_cheering_). "Gentlemen, I have the satisfaction of informing you that there is at our table an individual whose name when I mention it will be familiar to most of you; who, contemplating several millions of human beings in his own country sinking into oblivion before the destructive influences of civilization, had the energy of character, the courage and philanthropy, to throw himself, unprotected and unaided, into the midst of them, with his brushes and his pen, endeavouring to preserve for future ages their familiar looks, and all that appertained to their native modes and history. In this noble enterprise, gentlemen, this individual laboured eight years of his life; and having with incessant toil and hazard visited most of the native tribes of North America, he has brought home and to our city a collection (which I trust you have all seen) of vast interest and value, which does great honour to his name, and entitles him to our highest admiration and esteem. I now propose, gentlemen, the health of Mr. Catlin, and success to the great country that gave him birth!" Whilst these compliments were applying to my country only, I was fully confident there was some one of my countrymen present better able than myself to respond to them; but when they became personal, and all eyes were fixed upon me, I saw there was no alternative, and that I must reply, as well as I could, to the unexpected compliment thus paid me and answered to with a bumper and many rounds of applause, every guest at the table, as before, with one foot on his chair and the other on the edge of the table. An awful pause for a moment, while my name was echoed from every part of the room, brought me upon my feet, and I replied: but I never shall recollect exactly how. I believe, however, that I explained the views with which I had visited the Indian tribes, and what I had done; and put in a few words, as well as I could, for my country. His Grace next rose, and, after the most chaste and eloquent eulogium upon his works and his character, proposed the health of Sir David Wilkie, who, to my great surprise and unspeakable satisfaction, I found was sitting by my side and the next to my elbow. His health was drunk with great enthusiasm, and after he had responded to the compliment he begged to be allowed to express to his Grace and the gentlemen present the very great satisfaction he had felt in being able to join in the expression of thanks to so distinguished a gentleman as Mr. Catlin, and whom it afforded him great pleasure to find was by his side. He stated that he had been many times in my exhibition rooms, but without the good luck to have met me there. He commented at great length upon the importance and value of the collection; and, while he was according to me great credit for the boldness and originality of the design, he took especial pains to compliment me for the execution of my paintings, many of which, he said, as works of art, justly entitled me to the hands of artists in this country, and he was proud to begin by offering me his, in good fellowship, which he did, and raised me from my seat as he said it. This was sanctioned by a round of applause, and as he resumed his seat I was left upon my feet, and bound again to reply, which I did as well as I could. The reader can more easily imagine than I can describe, how gratifying to me was such a mode of acquaintance with so distinguished and so worthy a man as Sir David Wilkie, at whose elbow I was now placed, and, for the most part of the evening, in familiar conversation. The pipers played, the wine flowed, many good songs were sung; a Highland dance was spiritedly flung by M'Ian, M'Donald, and several others, in Highland costume. An Indian song and the war-whoop were called for, and given--and with other good fellowship and fun this splendid affair was finished. I was at this time devoting certain hours of the day to visitors in my Rooms, and I found my kind friend C. A. Murray almost daily bringing ladies of rank and fashion upon his arm, to take a peep into the mysteries of savage life, which he was so well prepared to explain to them, and to illustrate by my numerous paintings and works of Indian manufacture. I met him here one day, however, on my entering, where he had been for some time waiting without acting the beau, for any one, which was quite an unusual thing. He called me aside, and told me there was a chance for us to make _a sensation_ if I felt disposed to join him in it, and to make a great deal of amusement for others as well as a dish of fun for ourselves--this was, to assume the Indian costume and throw ourselves into the Caledonian ball, which was to be given at Almack's that evening, and for which he had procured the tickets. For the information of those who never have seen one of those annual balls, I will briefly say that they are decidedly the most brilliant and splendid affairs that can be seen in London--presenting the most gorgeous display of costumes and diamonds that the world can exhibit, short of royalty itself. It was but for Mr. Murray to propose--the finest costumes were taken from the Walls of my Room--weapons, head-dresses, scalping-knives, scalps, &c.--and placed in one of the chambers of the Egyptian Hall: and three o'clock was the hour appointed for Mr. Murray to meet me again, to fit us with our respective dresses, and go through a sort of rehearsal in our songs, dances, &c., which we might be called upon to enact during the evening, and in which it would be a great pity for us Indian knowing ones to make any mistake. Mr. Murray was punctual at the hour of three; and having proposed that my nephew, Burr Catlin, a young man of 21 years and then living with me, should be of the party, we entered the dressing-room, and were soon suited with our respective dresses and took our weapons in hand. My nephew, Burr, being six feet two inches, with a bold and Indian outline of face, was arrayed in a Sioux dress; and it was instantly agreed that he should be put forward as the Big Sioux--the Great Chief Wan-ne-ton. He happened to wear the identical head-dress of that distinguished chief, which was made of war-eagle's quills and ermine skins. He was to hold himself entirely mute upon his dignity, according to the customs of the country. I was dressed as a warrior of the _Sac_ tribe, with head ornaments of red and white quills of the war-eagle, denoting, according to the custom of the country, my readiness for war or for peace. Mr. Murray had chosen a dress less rich, and more light and easy to act in, and a head-dress that was made much like a wig of long black hair spreading over his shoulders and falling down nearly to the calves of his legs, surmounted by a solitary eagle's quill--giving himself more the appearance of a "Bois Brûlé," as they are termed on the Indian frontiers of America--a race of half-castes, who are generally used as interpreters, speaking a little French and some "Americaine" (as they call the English language). These curious personages are generally the spokesmen for all parties of Indians travelling abroad or delegations to neighbouring tribes. This character exactly suited Mr. Murray, as he spoke the French and the German, and also a little of two or three Indian tongues; and, in the position of an interpreter for the party, he would be the vehicle of communication between the two chiefs and his numerous friends and relations, both ladies and gentlemen, whom he was to meet in every part of the Rooms. The least discerning will easily see that he was most ingeniously laying his plans for a great deal of amusement; and if my readers could have seen the manner in which he was dressed out and metamorphosed for the occasion, they would have insured him, at a low premium, fun enough on that evening to have lasted him for a week. Having arrayed our persons in the respective costumes we had agreed upon, and arranged the different characters which we were to sustain, I took the Indian drum or tambour in my hand, and to the music of that and the chief's rattle, and our combined voices in concert in an Indian song, we practised the war-dance and scalp-dance of the Sioux, until we agreed that we could "do them" beyond (at least) the reach of civilized criticisms, in case we should be called upon to dance, which it was agreed should be at first met as a condescension that the chiefs could not submit to, but which it was understood we should yield to if the measure was to be very strenuously urged. Matters being thus arranged, we adjourned until nine o'clock, when we were to meet again, and make our final preparations for our début in the ballroom. At nine we were drawing on our buckskin leggings, and mocassins fringed with scalp-locks and ornamented with porcupine quills of various dyes; our shirts or tuniques were also of deerskins richly ornamented, and their sleeves fringed, like the leggings, with locks of the hair of Indian victims slain in battle. We painted our faces and hands of a copper colour, in close imitation of the colour of the Indian, and over and across that, to make the illusion more complete, gave occasional bold daubs of vermilion and green or black paint, so that, with our heavy and richly garnished robes of the buffalo, thrown over our shoulders and trailing on the floor as we walked, with tomahawks and scalping knives in our belts, our shields of buffalo hides on our arms, with our quivers slung and our bows and arrows clenched in our hands, we were prepared for the sensation we were in a few minutes to make. We stood and smiled at each others' faces a few moments in curious anticipation, practising over each other's names, which we had almost forgotten to take. And having decided that the great chief was _Wan-ne-ton_, that the warrior's name was _Na-see-us-kuk_, and that of the interpreter _Pah-ti-coo-chee_, we seated ourselves in a carriage, and in three minutes were being ushered through the crowded halls leading to the splendid and brilliant array, into the midst of which a long Indian step or two more placed us! There was a little cruelty in the suddenness of our approach, and a simultaneous yell which we gave, innocently mistaking the effect it might have upon the nerves of ladies standing near us, several of whom, on catching the sound and then the sight of us, gave sudden shrieks far more piercing and startling than the savage war-whoop that had been sounded over their shoulders. By this time we formed the centre of attraction in the room, and we stood in so dense a crowd to be gazed at, that nothing could be scanned of us lower down than our chins and shoulders. The big Sioux chief, however, who was a head taller than the crowd around him, flourishing his enormous head-dress of eagle's quills, was quietly rolling his eagle eyes around over the multitude, who were getting so satisfactory a view of him that it eased us a little from the rush that otherwise would have been upon us. We had made our entry into this world of fashion and splendour entirely unexpected by any one, and of course unknown to all. Here was truly a splendid field for my friend Mr. Murray, and the time for his operations had now arrived. All questions (and there were many, and in various languages) put to the big chief or the warrior were, by the understanding, answered only by frowns; and the interrogations referred to _Pah-ti-coo-chee_, the interpreter. This brought him at once into great demand, and he replied at first in Indian, and then strained a few distorted words of French and German into his replies, by which he made himself partially understood. Lords and ladies, dukes and duchesses, and princes and princesses of his acquaintance were in the room, and now gazing at his copper colour, bedaubed with red and black paint, and patiently listening to and endeavouring to translate his garbled French and German and Indian for some description of the grand personages he had in tow, without dreaming of the honourable gentleman upon whose visage they were actually looking. From a custom of the Prairie country, which he had wisely thought of, he carried a rifle-bullet in his mouth whilst he was talking, and his voice was thus as much a stranger as his face. Amongst the gazers on, and those who questioned him, were many of his most familiar friends; and even his own brother, the Earl of Dunmore, drew some marvellous tales from him before he made himself known, which he did at last to him and a few others of his friends, that he might the better crack the good jokes he had come to enjoy. The crowd, by this time, had completely wedged us in, so that there was no apparent possibility of moving from our position, yet it was not a crowd that was insupportable: it was, at least for a while, a pleasure to be thus invested, as we were, by silks and satins, by necklaces of diamonds and necks as fair as alabaster, by gold lace, and golden epaulettes, chapeaux and small swords; but the weight of our bison robes at length brought us to the expedient that our ingenious interpreter put forth, which gained us temporary relief, and gave us locomotive powers by which we could show ourselves at full length, and occasionally escape investigations when they became too close for our good friend or ourselves. It was a lucky thought of our interpreter, which he divulged to some of his confidential friends much to our advantage, that the paints which the Indians used were indelible colours, and he regretted to learn that some of the ladies had injured their costly dresses by being in too close contact with us. And again he feared that some of the scalp-locks on the dresses of the chief and the warrior were not quite dry, as they were fresh from the country where they had just been at war with the Sacs and Foxes. This had a delightful effect, and we were not again in danger of suffocation, though the space we had to move in was limited enough during the rest of the night for our warm dresses and our enormous buffalo robes. The introductions I had on that night, to lords and ladies, and to dukes and duchesses, as _Na-see-us-huk_, a famous warrior of the Sacs, and my nephew, as _Wan-ne-ton_, the great Sioux Chief, were honours certainly that he or I could never have aspired to under any other names; and our misfortune was, that their duration was necessarily as brief as the names and titles we had assumed. In the midst of this truly magnificent scene, where our interpreter was introducing us as two dignified personages from the base of the Rocky Mountains, and enjoying his own fun with his friends as he moved around, and after a set of quadrilles had finished, it was announced through the rooms that the Indians were going to give the War Dance! This of course raised a new excitement, and the crowd thickened, until at length a red rope or cord was passed around us three about as high as our waists. The bystanders were desired to take hold of this and walk back, which they did in all directions until a large space was opened for us, and we were left standing in the centre. We found ourselves there in full display in front of the ladies patronesses of the ball, who were seated upon a platform, elevated several feet above the level of the floor, and who, it was stated to us, had expressed a desire to see the Indians dance. Alas! poor Murray, he had then an off-hand use to make of his mongrel dialect, which seemed to embarrass him very much, and which he had found he got along with much better in the crowd. We were also pledged to hesitate about our dignity in case we were asked to dance, which here made a dialogue in Indian language indispensable, giving our interpreter fresh alarm; nevertheless, with enough of the same determination and firmness left that used to decide him to dash through the turbid rivers of the prairie, or to face the menacing savages that he met in the wilderness, he resolved to go through with it, and the Indian dialogue that he opened with me was never doubted, I believe, for it was never criticised. The objections raised by the chief and his warrior were translated in tolerable French (with the bullet accent), to their ladyships and the audience around us. The dignity of a Sioux Chief could not be lowered by such a condescension, and the dance could not be made without him. "Good Mr. _Pah-ti-coo-chee_," said her Grace the Duchess of ---- (who was the presiding patroness on the occasion), in excellent French, "do, I beg of you, do prevail on that fine old fellow to gratify us with a dance--don't let him look so distressed about it--tell him that he has just been looking on to see some of the greatest chiefs in our country dance, and he must not think it degrading to show us the mode in which the Indians dance; I dare say it is very fine. Oh, dear, what shall we do? they are fine-looking men--I wish I could speak to them--I dare say they know Charles A. Murray,--he was in their country--I have read his book. Where's Murray? he ought to be here to-night; I am sure he knows them. Do you know Murray, my good fellows? Ah, no, they don't understand French, though." Our interpreter smiled, and the Sioux chief and the Sac warrior came very near the misfortune also. The arguments of the duchess were translated to the chief and the warrior with great difficulty, when, after a few moments of silence, they began to put off their robes, which were very deliberately folded up and laid aside, to the great gratification of the ladies patronesses and the rest of the crowd. By three dancers the war dance of the Sioux is given with considerable effect, and we were now ready to "go into it." The drum, which until this moment had been slung on Mr. Murray's back, was taken into my hands, the chief took his rattle in one hand and his war-club in the other, while the interpreter's shield skilfully manoeuvred over his left shoulder and his tomahawk brandished in his right hand, which, with the shrill sounds of the war-song and the war-whoop, altogether suddenly opened a new era in the musical and dancing sphere of Almack's. When it was done, the whole house rung with applause; bouquets of flowers were showered upon us, and many compliments were paid us by the most bewitching young ladies, but which, unfortunately for us, we could not understand. The crowd now thickened around us to shake hands with us and lavish their praises upon us; and among them a lovely little creature, whose neck seemed forged from a bouquet of white lilies, who was supported on the arm of an officer, with her languishing soft blue eyes, and breath sweeter than that of the antelope that jostles the first dew-drops of the morning from the violets of the prairie, was beseeching me to allow her to adjust on my wrist a magnificent bracelet which she had taken from her own lovely arm, and for which she wished only, as she made me understand by signs, a small scalp-lock from the seams of my leggings. To play our parts well it was necessary, for the time being, to do as an Indian warrior would do--I tore off the scalp-lock and gave it to her, and when her fair hands had adjusted the precious trinket on my wrist, I raised the leathern shirt a little higher on my arm and showed her the colour of my skin. This unfolded a secret to her which compelled me to speak, and I said to her and her guardian, "Pray don't expose us; let us have our fun. Your precious trinket I will restore to you in a little time." This was answered with the sweetest of smiles, and, as my joke was thus ended, I turned round and found the ring prepared again for another dance. Fair hands had been lavish upon the other two Indians, who were already decorated with several keepsakes of beautiful and precious workmanship. The scalp-dance now commenced, and as I had brought with me a real scalp, according to the custom of a warrior, we gave it the full effect and fury of such scenes as they are acted in the wilderness. We entered upon this unfortunate affair with our prizes displayed in the fullest exultation, and no doubt might have gained many more but for the unforeseen misfortune which our over exertions to please and astonish had innocently brought upon us. The warmth of the rooms at this hour had become almost insupportable, and, in the midst of it, our violent exertions, under the heat of our Indian dresses, had produced a flow of perspiration which had carried away the paint in streaks from our foreheads to our chins, making us simple studies for the ethnologist, if any there were present, and easy of solution. Poor Murray! he had supplied himself with a red handkerchief, which he had often pressed upon his face, the consequence of which was--and it was funny enough--that his nose and his chin, and the other prominent points of his face, had all become white, long before he had finished his fun or been willing to acknowledge our true character and caste. However, he had much merriment in receiving the cheerful congratulations of his friends (who now recognised him once more as the Honourable C. A. Murray), and in introducing my nephew and myself in our real names to many of his friends, we distributed scalp-locks and feathers to all the fair hands whose trinkets we held and restored; and after partaking of the good things that were in store for us, and looking and laughing at our white-washed faces in the mirrors, we made our way to the front door as the first step towards a retreat to the Egyptian Hall. We waited in vain full half an hour for a vehicle, such was the rush of carriages at the door. The only alternative seemed to be to take to our legs, and once resolved, we dashed out into the street, and made our way in the best manner we could. It was now past sunrise and raining in torrents, as it had been during the whole night. We wended our way as fast as possible through the mud, with our white and beautiful mocassins, and painted robes; and the reader must excuse me here, and imagine, if he can, how we three looked when we arrived at the door of the Egyptian Hall, with the gang of boys and ragamuffins assembled around us, which the cry of "Indians, Indians!" had collected as we passed through the streets. The poor porter, who had waited up for us all night, happened _luckily to be_ ready for our ring; and thus, fortunately, we were soon safely withdrawn from the crowd assembling, to gaze and grin at each other, and deliberately and leisurely to scour ourselves back again to our original characters. CHAPTER VIII. Their Royal Highnesses the Duke of Coburg and Prince Ernest visit the Collection--His Royal Highness the (little) Duc de Brabant visits the Collection with the Hon. Mr. Murray--The Author presents him an Indian pipe and pair of mocassins--Visit of His Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex to the Collection--His noble sympathy for the Indians--He smokes an Indian pipe under the wigwam--The Author takes breakfast with the Duke of Sussex in Kensington Palace--The Duke's dress and appearance--John Hunter, the Indian traveller--The Duke's inquiries about him--Monsieur Duponceau--Visit to the Bank of England--To Buckingham Palace--To Windsor Castle--Author visits the Polish Ball with several friends in Indian costumes. Among the distinguished visitors to my rooms about this time were their Royal Highnesses the Duke of Coburg, and Prince Ernest, the father and brother of Prince Albert, at that time on a visit to the Queen and the Prince. They were accompanied by Mr. Murray, who took great pains to explain the collection to the Duke, who took me by the hand when he left the room, and told me I deserved the friendship of all countries for what I had done, and pronounced it "a noble collection." His second visit was made to it a few days after, when he was also accompanied by Mr. Murray, and remained in the rooms until it was quite dark. His Royal Highness the Duc de Brabant, the infant son of the King of the Belgians, on a visit to the Queen, was also brought in by Mr. Murray. He was an intelligent lad, nine or ten years of age, and was pleased with a miniature Indian pipe which I presented to him, and also a small pair of Indian mocassins suitable for his age. His Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex, though in feeble health, paid my collection his first visit. It was his wish, from the state that he was in, to meet me alone "in an Indian Council," as he called it. My first interview with him lasted for an hour or more, when he told me that if his strength would have permitted it, he could have been amused the whole day. To this fine old venerable man my highest admiration clung: he expressed the deepest sympathy for the Indians, and seemed to have formed a more general and correct idea of them and their condition than any person I had met in the kingdom. When he left my rooms he took me by both hands and thanked me for the rich treat I had afforded him, and assured me that for the benefits I was rendering to society, and the justice I was doing to the poor Indians, I should be sure to meet my reward in the world to come, and that he hoped I would also be recompensed in this. The Duke of Sussex was a great amateur of pipes and good smoking, and took much interest in the hundreds of different designs and shapes of the carved pipes in my exhibition. He was curious to know what the Indians smoked, and I showed him their tobacco, a quantity of which I had brought with me. The Indians prepare it from the inner bark of the red willow, and when dried and ready for smoking, call it "k'nick-k'neck." I prepared and lit a pipe of it for His Royal Highness to smoke, with which he took a seat under the middle of the Indian wigwam, where our conversation was held at the moment; and as he drew the delicious fumes through the long and garnished stem which passed between his knees, with its polished bowl, carved in the red pipe stone, resting on the floor, he presented for a few moments the finished personification of beatitude and enjoyment. He pronounced the flavour delicious, wanting only a little more strength, which he thought the addition of tobacco would give it. I told him that the Indians were always in the habit of mingling tobacco with it when they could afford to buy it: "Good fellows (said he), they know what is good--their tastes are as good as ours are." After he had finished his pipe, and we were moving towards the front door, the moment before taking leave of me as I have mentioned above, he asked me if I ever knew _John Hunter_, who wrote a work on the Indians of America, to which I replied in the affirmative. He seemed much pleased in learning this fact, and said to me, "You see what a feeble wreck I am at present; my strength is gone, and I must leave you; but you will take your breakfast with me at Kensington Palace to-morrow morning: I am all alone. I am too ill to see the world; they cannot find the way to me: but I will see _you_, and take great pleasure in your society. Your name will be made known to the servants at the back entrance to the palace." The next morning, at the hour named, found me at the door of the palace, where my name was recognised, and I at once was ushered into the apartment of the Duke, where I found him in his arm-chair, wrapped in his morning gown of white flannel, and his head covered with a cap of black velvet richly embroidered with gold. He rose and took me by the hand in the most cordial manner, and instantly led me to another part of the room, in front of a portrait hanging on the wall.--"There," said he, "do you know that face?" "Very well," said I; "that is the portrait of John Hunter; it is an admirable likeness, and looks to me like a picture by one of our American artists. If I had met it anywhere else but in this country I should have said it was by Harding, one of our most valued portrait painters." "Well," said he, "you know _that_ portrait too, do you?" "Very well--that is his Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex." "Well," said the Duke, "now I will tell you, they were both painted by Mr. Harding. Harding is a great favourite of mine, and a very clever artist." I at this moment presented to the Duke the Indian pipe, through which he had smoked the day before, and also an Indian tobacco-pouch, filled with the k'nick-k'neck (or Indian tobacco) with which he had been so much pleased. He thanked me for the present, which he assured me delighted him very much; and, after showing me a great variety of curious and most ingenious pipes from various countries, we took our seats alone at the breakfast table. In the course of our conversation, which ran upon pipes--upon Indians and Indian countries, his Royal Highness said he had reasons for asking me if I had known Hunter, and should feel most happy if he found in me a person who had been acquainted with his history. He said he had known Hunter familiarly while he was in London, and had entertained him in his palace, and thought a great deal of him. He had thought his life a most extraordinary one, well entitling him to the attentions that were paid to him here--that he had been entertained and amused by his narrations of Indian life, and that he had made him several presents, amongst which was a very valuable watch, and had had his portrait painted, which he highly valued. He said he had learned, with deep regret, since Hunter had left here, that a learned French gentleman in Philadelphia, M. Duponceau, and some others, had held him up to the public, through the journals, as an impostor, and his narrations as fabulous. "This to me," said the Duke, "you can easily see, has been a subject of much pain (as I took more pains to introduce him and his works in this country than any one else), and it explains to you the cause of my anxiety to learn something more of his true history." I replied to his Royal Highness that I had been equally pained by hearing such reports in circulation in my own country, and that my acquaintance with Hunter had not been familiar enough to enable me wholly to refute them, I stated that I had been introduced to Mr. Hunter in New Orleans, where he was well known to many, and that I had met him in two or three other parts of the United States, and since reading his work I had visited many of the Indian villages, in which he lived, and had conversed with chiefs and others named in his work, who spoke familiarly of him. I felt assured, therefore, that he had spent the Indian life that he describes in his work; and yet that he might have had the indiscretion to have made some misrepresentations attributed to him, I was not able positively to deny. His work, as far as it treats on the manners and customs of the American Indians, and which could not have been written or dictated by any other than a person who had lived that familiar life with them, is decidedly the most descriptive and best work yet published on their every-day domestic habits and superstitions; and, of itself, goes a great way, in my opinion, to establish the fact that his early life was identified with that of the Indians. I stated that I believed his character had been cruelly and unjustly libelled, and that I had the peculiar satisfaction of believing that I had justly defended it, and given the merited rebuke at the fountain of all his misfortunes, which I described as follows:-- "On my return from an eight years' residence amongst the remotest tribes of Indians in America, and paying a visit to my old friends in the city of Philadelphia, M. Duponceau, of whom your Royal Highness has spoken, an old and very learned gentleman, and deeply skilled in the various languages of America, and who was then preparing a very elaborate work on the subject, invited me to meet several of his friends at his table to breakfast; which I did. He was at this time nearly blind and very deaf, and still eagerly grasping at every traveller and trapper from the Indian country, for some new leaf to his book, or some new word to his vocabularies, instead of going himself to the Indian fireside, the true (and in fact the only) school in which to learn and write their language. "After our breakfast was finished and our coffee-cups removed, this learned M. Duponceau opened his note-book upon the table and began in this way,--'My dear Sir (addressing himself to me), I am so delighted with such an opportunity--I am told that you have visited some forty or fifty tribes of Indians, and many of them speaking different languages. You have undoubtedly in eight years learned to speak fluently; and I shall draw from you such a valuable addition to my great work--what a treat this will be, gentlemen, ha? Now you see I have written out some two or three hundred words, for which you will give me the Blackfoot, the Mandan, the Pawnee Pict, &c. You have been amongst all these tribes?' 'Yes.' The old gentleman here took a pinch of snuff and then said, 'In this identical place, and on this very table, it was, gentlemen, that I detected the imposture of that rascal Hunter! Do you know that fellow, Mr. Catlin?' 'Yes, I have seen him.' 'Well,' said he, 'I was the first to detect him;--I published him to the world and put a stop to his impostures. I invited him to take breakfast with me as I have invited you, and in this same book wrote down the Indian translation of a list of words and sentences that I had prepared, as he gave them to me; and the next day when I invited him again, he gave me for one-third at least of those words a different translation. I asked for the translation of a number of words in languages that were familiar to me, and which he told me he understood, and he gave them in words of other tribes. I now discovered his ignorance, and at once pronounced him an impostor, and closed my book.' "'And now,' said I, 'M. Duponceau, lest you should make yourself and me a great deal of trouble, and call _me_ an impostor also, I will feel much obliged if you will close your book again; for I am quite sure I should prove myself under your examination just as ignorant as Mr. Hunter, and subject myself to the same reproach which is following him through the world, emanating from so high an authority. Mr. Hunter and myself did not go into the Indian countries to study the Indian languages, nor do we come into the civilized world to publish them, and to be made responsible for errors in writing them. I can well understand how Mr. Hunter gave you, to a certain extent, a different version on different days; he, like myself, having learned a little of fifteen or twenty different languages, would necessarily be at a loss, with many of his Indian words, to know what tribe they belong to; and our partial knowledge of so many tongues involves us at once in a difficulty not unlike the confusion at Babel, and disqualifies his responses or mine, as authority for such works as I hope you are preparing for the world. With these views (though I profess to be the property of the world, and ready and pleased to communicate anything that I have distinctly learned of the Indians and their modes), I must beg to decline giving you the translation of a single word; and at the same time to express a hope that you may verbally, or in the valuable works which you are soon to bequeath to posterity, leave a repentant word at least, to remove the censure which you say you were the first to cast upon Hunter, and which is calculated to follow him to the grave.'" His Royal Highness was much interested and somewhat amused by this narrative, and agreed with me, that such men as M. Duponceau, and others, to whom the world is to look for a full and correct account of the Indian languages of America, should go themselves to the wigwams of the Indians, and there, in their respective tribes, open the books in which to record their various vocabularies, rather than sit at home and trust to the ignorant jargon that can be caught from the trapper and the trader and the casual tourists who make flying visits through the Indian countries. He related to me many curious anecdotes of poor Hunter, and as I left him enjoying his k'nick-k'neck through his Indian pipe, he said to me, "Your name, sir, will be familiar at my door, and I shall be delighted to see you again at the same hour, whenever you feel disposed to come." Amidst the many avocations that were now demanding and engrossing the most of my time, I was still able, by an effort, to allot certain portions of the day to the pleasures that are found in the domestic circles of wives and little ones, and nowhere else; and with them spent the happiest moments of my life, notwithstanding the attentions of the world and the efforts to make my enjoyment complete. With my dear Clara I took my strolls and my rides to see what was amusing or instructive in the great metropolis, and we saw much that amused and still more that astonished us. Through the kindness of our untiring friend Mr. Murray, we got access to the palaces of St. James and Buckingham, and to the public and private rooms of Windsor Castle; we saw the "five tons' weight of gold plate" that are said to enrich that noble palace, and which but few eyes are allowed to gaze upon. We visited the Royal Mint, the Tower, the noble mansions of the Dukes of Sutherland and Devonshire, and the Bank of England. I was surprised that we were allowed to pass through every part of this wonderful sanctuary of gold and silver, and still more so that a guide should stand ready to conduct us through all its numerous ramifications, and as he passed along from room to room, from office to office, and from vault to vault, to hear him lecture upon everything we passed, as if they feared we might not appreciate it in all its parts. It has been many times described and needs no further comment here, except an occurrence in one of the vaults which deserves a current notice. The Honourable Charles Fenton Mercer, of Virginia, was among our companions on the occasion, and as we were shown into this apartment, which I think was called a vault, though it was a large square room with the light of a dome over it, the gentleman having charge of it within received us in the most courteous manner, and as if it were a public exhibition which we had paid our shilling to see, he led us around the room and with his keys opened the iron safes which were all sunk in the walls, with double doors of iron, and showed us the amount of gold and notes contained in them, and on opening one that was filled with packages of Bank of England notes, he took a bundle of them some ten or twelve inches in diameter, and smilingly placing it in the hands of my wife, asked her if she had any idea how much money she was holding. Her rough guess was a very moderate one: she was so much excited and so recently from New York, that she had forgotten pounds sterling, and replied "Perhaps a thousand _dollars_;" when he turned it the other side up and referred us to the label upon it--"two millions of pounds!" He then took out another parcel of equal size, and placing that on the top of it said to her, "Now, madam, you have four millions." Poor thing! she looked pale as she handed it back, saying, "Ah, well, I am glad it is not mine." The kind and gentlemanly attention shown to us, and the pains taken to explain everything as we passed along, were unexpected, and even a mystery in politeness which was beyond my comprehension. We were conducted from this room to the arched vaults, where we traced for a long distance the narrow aisles to the right and the left and to the north and the south, through phalanxes of wheelbarrows loaded with bars of silver and of gold, and all with their heads one way, seemed ready for a subterraneous crusade in case of necessity. We returned from this half-day's work, fatigued, and almost sorry that we had seen so much of the "shining dust" which our hands are labouring so hard through life to earn a pittance of. There were several Americans with us on this day's expedition, and all agreed that we drew more pleasure from the gentlemanly politeness we met in the Bank of England than we did from its wonderful system (which was all explained to us), and from its golden riches which were all laid open to our view. Our fatigue, when we got home, seemed enough for one day; but as it happened on that day, our sight-seeing was only begun; for it had been arranged that we were to go to the Polish ball at the Mansion House on that evening, and what was to make it a double task, it was arranged that we should all go, some five or six of us, in Indian costumes. My Indian wardrobe was therefore laid under heavy contributions for that night. My nephew Burr and myself were dressed as chiefs, and two or three more of my friends were arrayed as warriors. My dear little _Christian_ Clara, whose sphere it was not, and who never wore an Indian dress or painted her fair face before, becoming inspired with a wish to see the splendour of the scene, proposed to assume the dress of an Indian woman and follow me through the mazes of that night as an Indian squaw follows her lord on such occasions. I selected for her one of the prettiest and most beautifully ornamented women's dresses, which was made of the fine white skin of the mountain sheep; and with her hair spread over her back, and her face and her arms painted to the colour of a squaw, and her neck and ears loaded with the usual profusion of beads and other ornaments, and her fan of the eagle's tail in her hand, she sidled along with us amidst the glare and splendour, and buzz and din of the happy throng we were soon in the midst of, and dragging our awkward shields and quivers and heavy buffalo robes through, as well as we could. We took good care not to dance on that occasion, so we kept the paint on our faces, and by understanding no questions, answered none, and passed off with everybody as _real Indians_. We went resolved to gratify our eyes, but to give no gratification to others besides what they could take to themselves by looking at us. Our interpreter was true to his promise: he made out his own descriptions for us, and assured all who inquired, that we could not speak a word of English. French, German, Russian, and Italian were all tried in vain upon us; and as they turned away, one after another, from us, they exclaimed, "What a pity! how unfortunate the poor things can't speak English! how interesting it would be to talk with them! that's a noble-looking fellow, that big chief; egad, he is six feet and a half. I'll be bound that fellow has taken many a scalp. That's a nice-looking little squaw: upon my word, if she had a white skin she would be rather pretty!" and a thousand such remarks, as the reader can imagine, while we were wending our tedious way through the bewildering mazes of this endless throng. The task for my poor Clara soon became more than she had anticipated before entering the room, and was growing too much for her delicate frame to bear: she had not thought of the constant gaze of thousands she was to stand in every moment of the evening; and another discipline (which she knew must be strictly adhered to, to act out the character she was supporting, and which had not occurred to her before she had commenced upon the toils of the evening) made her part a difficult one to act--that was the necessity of following in the wake of all the party of men when we were in motion, the place assigned to Indian women on the march rather than by the side or on the arms of their husbands. This, in the street or in the wilderness or anywhere else would have been tolerable, she said, but in her present condition was insupportable. The idea was so ridiculous to her, to be the last of a party of Indians (who always walk in single file) so far behind her husband, and then the crowd closing in upon her and in danger of crushing her to death. We soon however were so lucky as to find a flight of several broad steps which led to a side room, but now closed, which furnished us comfortable seats above the crowd, which we took good care to hold until our curiosity was all gratified, and we were ready to return home. Our interpreter, in answer to all inquiries as to the locale of these strange foreigners, mentioned the Egyptian Hall; and for weeks after, Daniel testified to the increase of our receipts, and bore sad evidence too of the trouble he had in explaining the difficulty of showing to his visiters the "real Indians." After having satiated our curiosity, and several of the youngest of the party having received some very pretty trinkets and other presents that had been forced upon them, we made our way home in good season to enjoy the joke, and part of a good night's rest. CHAPTER IX. Consequent troubles for Daniel in the exhibition-rooms--Daniel's difficulty with an artist making copies--Takes his sketch-book from him--Tableaux vivans commenced--List of the groups--Hon. Mr. Murray attends, with His Royal Highness the Duc de Brabant--The Author presented to Her Majesty and His Royal Highness Prince Albert, by the Hon. Mr. Murray--Indian Collection removed to Liverpool--Biennial exhibition of Mechanics' Institution--22,000 children admitted free to the Indian Collection in one week--The Indian tableaux vivans in the provincial towns for six months--Collection opened in Sheffield--In Manchester--Nine Ojibbeway Indians arrive, in charge of Mr. Rankin--His proposal to the author. Poor Daniel in the exhibition-rooms! I mentioned in the preceding chapter that our appearance at the Polish ball had greatly increased the number of shillings, but, at the same time, it was, as he said, doing great injury to the Collection, as people paid their shillings expecting to see the real Indians, and then, finding their error, revenged themselves upon poor Daniel by calling him and the whole concern hard names, and in various ways provoking him. Politics--Caste--Slavery--Truck-system--Poor-houses--Repeal--Oregon--and Repudiation were the exciting topics--all of which he was able and ready to discuss; and the kind of visitors I just now mentioned, under their disappointment at the rooms, were prepared to annoy him on these topics, and irritate him to such a degree that it made his duties doubly hard to him and their visits less pleasant to themselves than they would otherwise have been. He had other things that annoyed him, amongst which were the constant efforts by artists and amateurs to make copies in the room for paintings and designs, which they somehow seemed to fancy. After having risked my life and spent my little fortune in the wilderness to procure such exciting and such original studies, and bring them to England, I did not consider it fair that these gentlemen should step into my rooms just when they had an hour of leisure, and industry enough to use it, and copy whatever they could most easily convert into cash. So many of these attempts had been made, that I was obliged to post a printed notice around the walls, that "_No copying was allowed in the rooms._" This had the desired effect with many, but there were some to whom the temptation was so great, that Daniel was obliged to refer them to the printed regulations; and one or two others for whom this was not enough, and who seemed to think that, in my absence, Daniel's authority was rather in imagination than any thing else; and when he had requested them to desist, they had given him the finish to their provocations by replying to him, that he was of no account--that if his _master_ ordered them to stop they would do so, but not for him. One of these customers had troubled him very much for several days, and it was evidently affecting his spirits, and even his health, for he was growing pale and ghastly under the excitement. He said he had repeatedly taken the printed regulation and placed it before him, and he was at last told to "Go to the devil with it." He told me this man had some object in view, for he came every night, and sketched very rapidly, and made very exact copies; and he said to me, "If you don't see fit to come in and turn him out of the room to-night, I shall lay hold of him, for your own interest. I hate to do it, for he looks like a gentleman, though he don't act like one, and that's enough; and if you don't stop him, Mr. Catlin, I will." "That's right," said I, "Daniel. You have charge of the rooms, and your regulations, and of course it is your duty to stop him; and I am responsible for any damage you may do in putting an end to it." I was at that time occupying apartments opposite to the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, and on that night observing the lamps burning at a much later hour than usual, was induced to step in to learn the cause. As I was passing through the Hall, and about to enter the exhibition-room, I heard a few half-stifled and hasty words, and then something like a struggle; and next, I heard distinctly Daniel's voice, in rather a stifled mood:--"No you won't. If you get that leg through, the deil a bit o' good will it do ye; for I'll be shot if you ever pass your neck any farther through this door until you give it up!" "Let go of my collar, then!" "No, I'll be blathered if I do that! I've got a good hold now, and I might not get it again. Lay down the book and I'll let you go, and not before." "What business is it of yours? come, I should like to know; you are only a door-keeper." "That's what I am, you've got it right; and I'll show you, my boy, that I can _keep_ a door, too." I stood back during this conversation, easily understanding what the difficulty was, as I had a partial view of them, but was unobserved, as I was standing in the dark. It seems that Daniel's friend the copyist had been as usual at work most of the evening, making sketches, and Daniel had allowed him to work, resolving to appropriate all his sketches at a haul, as he should be leaving the room. The gentleman had been intensely engaged, and not having been interrupted as usual, had kept at his work for half an hour or so after all visitors had left the room, and a full blaze of gas was burning at my expense and for his benefit. All these circumstances ripened Daniel's taste for laying an embargo on him; and when he had closed his book, and was about to take leave, he found Daniel standing with his back towards the door, which was open. On endeavouring to pass, Daniel civilly stopped him, and told him he should expect him on that evening to leave his sketch-book with him before he passed out. The gentleman seemed dreadfully insulted by such a suggestion, saying that he had paid for his admission and had the same right to be in the room or to go out that _he_ had; to which Daniel at once assented, saying he had not the slightest objection to his going out; "but," said he, "if that book goes out, it will be because you are a stronger man than I am." At this crisis the artist had made a rush for the door, and Daniel had fastened his left hand into his cravat and shirt collar, whilst he had a similar grip upon Daniel with one hand, and his sketch-book in the other, when I discovered them on my approach to the rooms. How long they had been in this amusing predicament I was not yet able to ascertain; but as Daniel, who is of a quick and rather violent temper, was speaking quite cool and deliberate, I presumed they must have stood there at least long enough for his first excitement to have cooled off, which could not possibly have been effected in a few moments. Immediately after their last dialogue that I had heard when approaching them, there commenced another scene of grunting, and sighing, and shoving about, that lasted for some minutes, when all was still again. The gentleman, however, broke silence at length, but in a very low and placid voice: "Why, you are a very curious fellow; I don't see why this thing should make you so wrathy. The pictures are not yours--come, don't clinch me so tight there, if you please." "I don't hurt you--I told you I didn't wish to hurt you; if you talk about my bein 'wrathy,' you don't know what you are talkin about--and the pictures I know are not mine; but my employer expects me to guard his property, and you may be sure I'll do it. If you had taken my advice two or three days ago it would have saved you all this fuss, and half an hour's time that we have been standing in the door." Another scuffle and struggle ensued here, and after much grunting, the gentleman exclaimed, "You have the advantage of me, for you have both hands to work with and I have only one! If it were not for the book I could upset you, damned quick!" Upon which Daniel made a grand lunge at the book, which he snatched from his hand, and exultingly exclaimed, "There! I'll take the book, and let you try with both hands--and now, if you touch a finger to me again, I'll lather you within an inch of your life. If your cloth be ever so much better than mine, you have behaved like anything but a gentleman; and as I told you in the beginning, if ever you carry this book out at that door you will do it over my dead body." At that instant he turned off the gas, giving the gentleman a good opportunity to depart in total silence, and for me to dodge him, as he passed by, and to withdraw myself, to enjoy Daniel's account of the affair, which was amusingly given, as he handed me the sketch-book the next morning. Daniel's health and spirits improved very sensibly after this affair, and his duties were somewhat lightened about this time, though I added much to my own labours, by closing the exhibition at night, and giving my lectures on three evenings of the week in an adjoining hall, illustrating them with _tableaux vivans_, produced by twenty living figures in Indian costumes, forming groups of their ceremonies, domestic scenes, and warfare. These were got up and presented with much labour to myself, and gave great satisfaction; as by them I furnished so vivid and life-like an illustration of Indian life as I had seen it in the wilderness. For these tableaux I had chosen my men for some striking Indian character in their faces or figures, or action, and my women were personated by round-faced boys, who, when the women's dresses were on them, and long wigs of horses' hair spreading over their shoulders, and the faces and hands of all painted to the Indian colour, made the most complete illusion that could be conceived. I had furnished each with his little toilet of colours, &c., and instructions how to paint the face before a mirror, and how to arrange their dresses; and then, with almost infinite labour, had drilled them through the Indian mode of walking with their "toes in," of using their weapons of war and the chase, and of giving their various dances, songs, and the war-whoop; and I have no hesitation in saying, that when I had brought this difficult mode to its greatest perfection, I had succeeded in presenting the most faithful and general representation of Indian life that was ever brought before the civilized world. Many of these scenes were enlivened by action, and by the various instruments of music used by the Indians, added to their songs, and the war-whoop, giving a thrilling spirit to them, whilst they furnished scenes for the painter, of the most picturesque character, as will be easily imagined from the subjoined programme of them as announced at the time. CATLIN'S LECTURES WITH _TABLEAUX VIVANS_ ON THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS, AT THE EGYPTIAN HALL, PICCADILLY, LONDON. PROGRAMME FOR THE FIRST EVENING. WAR SCENES. No. 1.--_Group of Warriors and Braves, in Full Dress_, reclining around a fire, regaling themselves with the pipe and a dish of _pemican_. In the midst of their banquet the chief enters in full dress; the pipe is lighted for him--he smokes it in sadness, and breaks up the party by announcing that an enemy is at hand--that a number of their men have been scalped whilst hunting the buffalo, and they must prepare for war. No. 2.--_Warriors Enlisting_, by "smoking through the reddened stem." The chief sends "_runners_" (or _criers_) through the tribe with a pipe, the stem of which is painted red; the crier solicits for recruits, and every young man who consents to smoke through the reddened stem which is extended to him, is considered a volunteer to go to war. No. 3.--_War Dance._ The ceremony of "_swearing in_" the warriors, who take the most solemn oath by dancing to, and striking the "reddened post" with their war-clubs. No. 4.--_Foot War-Party on the March_, ("Indian file,") armed with shields, bows, quivers, and lances--the chief of the party, as is generally the case, going to war in full dress. No. 5.--_War-Party encamped at Night_, asleep under their buffalo robes, with sentinels on the watch. The _alarm in camp_ is given, and the warriors roused to arms. No. 6.--_War-Party in Council_, consulting with their chief as to the best and most effective way of attacking their enemies, who are close at hand. No. 7.--_Skulking_, or advancing cautiously upon the enemy to take them by surprise--a common mode and merit in war among the North American Indians. No. 8.--_Battle and Scalping_; showing the frightful appearance of Indian warfare, and the mode of taking the scalp. No. 9.--_Scalp Dance_, in celebration of a victory; the women, in the centre of the group, holding up the scalps on little sticks, and the warriors dancing around them, brandishing their weapons, and yelling in the most frightful manner. No. 10.--_Treaty of Peace._ The chiefs and warriors of the two hostile tribes in the act of solemnizing the treaty of peace, by smoking mutually through the calumet, or pipe of peace, which is ornamented with eagles' quills; the calumet resting in front of the group. No. 11.--_Pipe-of-Peace Dance_, by the warriors, with the pipes of peace, or calumets, in their hands, after the treaty has been concluded. This picturesque scene will be represented by the warriors all joining in the dance, uniting their voices with the beat of the Indian drum, and sounding the frightful war-whoop. PROGRAMME FOR THE SECOND EVENING. DOMESTIC SCENES. No. 1.--_The Blackfoot Doctor, or Mystery-man_, endeavouring to cure his dying patient by the operation of his mysteries and songs of incantation. No. 2.--_Mr. Catlin at his Easel, in the Mandan Village_, painting the portrait of _Mah-to-toh-pa_, a celebrated Mandan chief. The costumes of the chief and the painter the same that were worn on the occasion. No. 3.--_An Indian Wedding._ The chief, who is father of the girl, is seated in the middle of the group, receiving the presents which are laid at his feet by the young man, who (when the presents accumulate to what the father deems an equivalent) receives the consent of the parent, and the hand of the girl, whom he leads off; and as she is the daughter of a chief, and admired by the young men, they are bestowing on her many presents. No. 4.--_Pocahontas rescuing Captain John Smith, an English Officer._ "It had been decided in council, over which _Pow-ha-tan_ presided, that Captain John Smith should be put to death, by having his head placed on a large stone, and his brains beaten out by two warriors armed with huge painted clubs. His executioners were standing with their clubs raised over him, and in the very instant for giving the fatal blow, when _Pocahontas_, the chief's favourite daughter, then about thirteen years old, threw herself with folded arms over the head of the captain, who was instantly ordered by the chief to be released." No. 5.--_Wrestling._ A favourite amusement among many of the tribes. For these scenes, several distinguished young men are selected on each side, and the goods bet being placed in the care of the stakeholders, the wrestling commences at a signal given, and the stakes go to the party who count the greatest number of men remaining on their feet. No. 6.--_Ball Play._ The most beautiful and exciting of all Indian games. This game is often played by several hundreds on a side. The group represents the players leaping into the air, and struggling to catch the ball as it is descending, in their ball-sticks. No. 7.--_Game of Tchung-kee._ The favourite play of the Mandans, and used by them as their principal gambling game. No. 8.--_The Night Dance of the Seminolees._ A ceremony peculiar to this tribe, in which the young men assemble and dance round the fire after the chiefs have retired to rest, gradually stamping it out with their feet, and singing a song of thanksgiving to the Great Spirit; after which they wrap themselves in their robes and retire to rest. One will easily see that this opened a new field of amusement and excitement for my old friends, who were now nightly present, with their companions, and approving with rounds of applause. Amongst these was my untiring friend Mr. Murray, who, among the distinguished personages whom he introduced, made a second visit with the little Leopold, Duc de Brabant, whom he brought in his arms from his carriage. His Royal Highness, as the curtain rose and I stepped forward to give a brief lecture, seemed not a little disappointed, by the speech that he suddenly made--"Why, that is not an Indian, that is Mr. Catlin, who gave me the Indian pipe and the mocassins." However, a few moments more brought forth red faces, and songs and yelps that seemed more sensibly to affect his Royal Highness's nerves, and at which Mr. Murray removed with him to a more distant part of the room, from which point he looked on with apparent delight. About this time an incident of my Transatlantic life occurred, to which I shall ever recur with great satisfaction:--there was, standing in my exhibition-room, an elaborate model of the _Falls of Niagara_, which I had made from an accurate survey of that grand scene some thirteen years before; and, in compliment for the accuracy and execution of which, a handsome silver medal had been struck, and presented to me by the American Institute in New York, at one of its annual exhibitions, where it had been exposed to public view. The Hon. Mr. Murray, whose familiarity with that sublime scene had enabled him to judge of the fidelity of the model, upon which he was often looking, with his friends, with intense interest, by his representations to Her Majesty and the Prince had excited in them a desire to see it; and he called upon me one morning to inform me that Her Majesty would be pleased to have me bring it to Windsor Castle the next day at one o'clock, at which hour I should be received. The reader may imagine what pleasure this unexpected and unmerited honour gave me, and also to my dear Clara, who was in the habit of sharing with me the pleasures of many compliments, in the forms of which she could not join me. I was at Windsor the next morning, with the model, and having placed and arranged it in Her Majesty's drawing-room, I took Mr. Murray's arm at the appointed hour of one o'clock, and, as we entered the drawing-room, we observed Her Majesty and His Royal Highness entering at the opposite door. We met by the side of the model--where I was presented, and received in the most gracious and kind manner. Her Majesty expressed a wish that I should point out and explain the principal features of the scene; which, with the vivid descriptions which Mr. Murray also gave, of going under the Horse-Shoe Fall, &c., seemed to convey a very satisfactory idea to Her Majesty and the Prince; they asked many questions about the characters and effects of this sublime scene, and also of the Indians, for whose rights they said they well knew I was the advocate, and retired, thanking me for the amusement and instruction I had afforded them. Several months after this passed on in the usual routine of my business and amusements (my collection open during the days and my lectures and tableaux given at night) without incidents worth reciting, when I received an invitation from the Mechanics' Institute at Liverpool to unite my Indian collection to their biennial fair or exhibition, which was to be on a scale of great magnificence. They very liberally proposed to extend the dimensions of their buildings for the occasion, and I consented to join them with my whole collection for two months. My lease had expired at the Egyptian Hall, and my collection was soon on its way to Liverpool. I was received with great kindness in that town, and my collection for the two months gained me great applause and some pecuniary benefit. During its stay there I kept several men in Indian costumes constantly in it, and twice a day gave a short lecture in the room, explaining the costumes and many of the leading traits of the Indian character, sung an Indian song, and gave the frightful war-whoop. There were here, as in London, many pleasing incidents and events for which I cannot venture a leaf in this book, with the exception of one, which I cannot forbear to mention. During the last week of their noble exhibition, the children from all the charitable and other schools were admitted free, and in battalions and phalanxes they were passed through my room, as many hundreds at a time as could stand upon the floor, to hear the lectures (shaped to suit their infant minds), and then the deafening war-whoop raised by my men in Indian paint and Indian arms, which drove many of the little creatures with alarm under the tables and benches, from which they were pulled out by their feet; and the list that we kept showed us the number of 22,000 of these little urchins, who, free of expense, saw my collection, and having heard me lecture, went home, sounding the war-whoop in various parts of the town. At the close of this exhibition I selected the necessary collection of costumes, weapons, &c. for my lectures and tableaux, and calling together my old disciplined troop from the City of London, I commenced a tour to the provincial towns of the kingdom, leaving my collection of paintings behind. My career was then rapid, and its changes sudden, and all my industry and energies were called into action--with twenty men on my hands, and an average expense of twelve pounds per day. This scheme I pushed with all the energy I could, and in the space of six months visited, with varied success, the towns of _Chester_, _Manchester_, _Leamington_, _Rugby_, _Stratford-on-Avon_, _Cheltenham_, _Sheffield_, _Leeds_, _York_, _Hull_, _Edinburgh_, _Glasgow_, _Paisley_, _Greenock_, _Belfast_, and _Dublin_. In all these towns I was received with kindness, and formed many attachments which I shall endeavour to cherish all my days. The incidents of such a tour can easily be imagined to have been varied and curious, and very many of them were exceedingly entertaining, but must be omitted in this place. On my return I was strongly urged by several friends in Manchester to open my whole collection of paintings, &c. in that town a while before leaving for the United States, for which I was then on the eve of embarking. I consented to this invitation, and, a hall being prepared for its reception, I removed it and my family there for a stay of two or three months. The collection was soon arranged and on exhibition, and I found myself and my dear wife in the atmosphere (though of smoke) of kind friends who used their best endeavours to make our stay comfortable and pleasant. The strangers who sought our acquaintance and offered us their genuine hospitality were many, and will have our grateful thanks while we live. My exhibition had been tolerably successful, and, strange and unexpected, like most of the turning points in my life, during the very week that I had advertised it as "positively the last in the kingdom, previous to embarking for New York," an event suddenly occurred which brought me back to the metropolis, to the chief towns of the kingdom, to France and to Belgium; and eventually led me through the accidents and incidents which are to form the rest and the most curious part of this work, upon which the reader will now enter with me. The first intimation of the cause which was to change the shape of my affairs was suggested to me in the following letter:-- "Sir,--Though a stranger to you, I take the liberty of addressing this letter to you, believing that its contents will show you a way of promoting your own interest, or at least be the means of my obtaining some useful advice from you. "I have a party of nine Ojibbeway Indians, on the way, and about at this time to be landed at Liverpool, that I am bringing over on speculation; and, having been in London some weeks without having made any suitable arrangements for them, I have thought best to propose some arrangement with you that may promote our mutual interests. If you think of anything you could do in that way, or any advice you can give me, I shall be most happy to hear from you by return of post. "Several persons in London conducting exhibitions have told me that they will do nothing unless they are under your management. "I remain, yours, very truly, "ARTHUR RANKIN. "_To Geo. Catlin, Esq._" To this letter I answered as follows:-- "Sir,--I received your letter of the 4th, this morning, and hasten to reply. It will be directly opposite to my present arrangements if I enter into any new engagements such as you propose, as all my preparations are now made to embark for New York in the course of a fortnight from this time. I have always been opposed to the plan of bringing Indians abroad on speculation; but as they are in the country, I shall, as the friend of the Indians under all circumstances, feel an anxiety to promote their views and success in any way I can. I could not, at all events, undertake to make any arrangement with you until I see what kind of a party they are; and at all events, as you will have to meet them at Liverpool, you had better call on me in Manchester, when we can better understand each other's views. "I remain, yours, &c. "GEO. CATLIN. "_To A. Rankin, Esq._" On the third day after the posting of this letter Mr. Rankin arrived in Manchester, and called upon me in my exhibition-rooms. After a little conversation with him, and without entering into any agreement, I advised him to lose no time in proceeding to Liverpool to receive them when they landed; and he took leave with the understanding that he would bring them to Manchester as soon as they arrived. The next evening, just after it was dark, my door-keeper, who was not yet in the secret, came running in and announced that there was a "homnibus at the door quite full of orrible looking folks, and ee really believed they were hindians!" At that moment Daniel whispered to me--"The Ojibbeways are here, and they are a pretty black-looking set of fellows: I think they will do." I saw them a moment in the bus, and sent Daniel with them to aid Mr. Rankin in procuring them suitable lodgings. A crowd followed the bus as it passed off, and the cry of--"Indians! real Indians!" was started in Manchester, which soon rung through the kingdom, as will be related. CHAPTER X. Difficulty of procuring lodgings for the Indians--The Author pays them a visit--Is recognised by them--Arrangement with Mr. Rankin--Crowds around their hotel--First visit of the Ojibbeways to the Author's Collection--Their surprise--Council held under the wigwam--Indians agree to drink no spirituous liquors--The old Chief's speech to the Author--Names of the Indians--Their portraits--Description of each--Cadotte, the interpreter. At the beginning of this chapter the reader turns a new leaf, or, opens a new book. He learns here the causes that begat this book, and I hope will find fresh excitement enough, just at the right time, to encourage him to go through it with me. He finds me turning here upon a pivot--my character changed and my occupation; travelling over old ground, and looking up old friends, of whom I had taken final leave, and who had thought me, ere this, safely landed on my own native shores. The Ojibbeways were here; a party of nine wild Indians, from the back-woods of America. "Real Indians!" the "Ob-jub-be-ways," or "Hob-jub-be-ways," as the name was first echoed through Manchester--and had gone into lodgings for the night, which Daniel had procured with some difficulty. He drove to the door of an hotel, and inquired of the landlord if he could entertain a party of nine Indians for the night and perhaps for a few days. "O yes, certainly; bring them in. Porter, see to their luggage." They were in his hall in a moment, having thoughtlessly sounded a yell of exultation as they landed on the pavement, and being wrapped in their robes, with their bows and arrows and tomahawks in their hands--as Indians are sure to be seen when entering a strange place--the landlord, taking a glance at them as he passed out, called out to Daniel, "What the devil is all this? I can't take in these folks; you must load them up again. You told me they were Indians." "Well! they are," said Daniel. "No, they're not; they're wild men, and they look more like the devil than anything else. Every lodger would leave my house before morning. They've frightened the cook and my women folks already into fits.--Load them up as quick as you please." Daniel got them "on board" again, and drove to another hotel, which was just being opened to the public, and with a new landlord, with whom he had a slight acquaintance. Here he was more successful, and, advising the Indians to keep quiet, had got them in comfortably and without much excitement. This very good and accommodating man, whose name I am sorry I have forgotten, being anxious to get his house and his name a little notoriety, seemed delighted at the thought of his house being the rendezvous of the Indians; and, upon Daniel's representations that they were a civil and harmless set of people, his family and himself all did the most they could to accommodate and entertain them. Daniel told him that they would make a great noise in Manchester, and as they would be the "lions" of the day, and visited by the greatest people in town, the clergy and all, it would be a feather in his cap, and make his hotel more known in three days than it would otherwise be in three years. This had pleased the new landlord exceedingly, and he made Daniel agree that Mr. Catlin, in announcing their arrival in the papers, should say that they had taken lodgings at his house, which he thought would do him great service. The good man's wish was complied with the next morning, but there was scarcely any need of it, for the crowd that was already gathered and gathering around his new hotel, were certain to publish it to every part of the town in a very little time. After they had been landed a while, and just when they were all seated around a long table and devouring the beef-steaks prepared for them, I made my way with great difficulty through the crowds that were jammed about the door and climbing to look into the windows, and entered the room, to take the first look at them. As I stepped into the room I uttered their customary ejaculation of "_How! how! how!_"--to which they all responded; and rising from their seats, shook hands with me, knowing from my manner of addressing them who I was, or at least that I was familiar with Indians. I requested them to finish their suppers: and whilst conversing with Mr. Rankin I learned, from giving ear to their conversation, that one of the young men of the party had seen me whilst I was painting the portraits of chiefs at a Grand Council held at Mackinaw a few years before, and was coming forward to claim acquaintance with me. He finished his meal a little sooner than the rest, and made a dart across the room and offered me his hand, with a "_How! how! how! ketch-e-wah!_" and then telling me, with the aid of the interpreter, that he knew me--that he was at Mackinaw at the Great Council, when I painted the portraits of Gitch-e-gaw-ga-osh, and On-daig, and Ga-zaw-que-dung, and others; and I recollected his face very well, which seemed excessively pleasing to him. The poor fellows were exceedingly fatigued and jaded; and after a few minutes' conversation I left them, advising them to lie quiet for two or three days until they were rested and recruited after the fatigues of their long and boisterous voyage. Mr. Rankin, with the aid of my man Daniel, settled all the arrangements for this, and the next morning I met Mr. Rankin with a view to some arrangement for their exhibition in my collection, which was then open in the Exchange Rooms. He seemed alarmed about the prospects of their exhibition, from what had been told him in London, and proposed that I should take them off his hands by paying him 100_l._ per month. I instantly stated my objections to such an arrangement, that by doing so I should be assuming all the responsibilities for them while abroad; and as I had always been opposed to bringing Indians abroad on that account, as well as from other reasons, I should be unwilling to use them in any way that should release him from the responsibilities he had assumed in bringing them to this country. And I then said, "I will propose what I feel quite sure will be more for your pecuniary interest, and more satisfactory to my own feelings, and it is the only way in which I will be interested in their exhibition; for under such an arrangement both the Indians and the exhibition will be sure of having our mutual and united efforts, which they will stand in need of to ensure the success that I hope they may meet. I will agree to make my Indian collection the place for their exhibition (the appropriateness of which will do away all the objections that would in many places be raised to their dancing), and to conduct their exhibition in the best way I can, giving my lectures on them and their modes, sharing equally with you all expenses and all receipts from this day to the time they shall leave the kingdom, expecting you to give your whole attention to the travelling and care of the Indians while they are not in the exhibition-rooms." To this proposition, which never was more than a verbal one, he at once agreed, and our arrangements were accordingly being made for the commencement of their dances, &c., in my exhibition-rooms. During the few days of interval between their arrival and the commencement of their exhibition, several editors of the leading journals, with other distinguished visitors to them, had examined them, and, being much pleased with their appearance, excited the public curiosity to see them, to an impatient degree; and the streets in the vicinity of their hotel became so completely besieged, that a strong party of police was necessary to keep back the crowds, who could only now and then get a glimpse of an eye and a nose of the Indians peeping out between the curtains of their windows. Their first airing in Manchester was a drive in an omnibus, to my exhibition-rooms, which they had long wished to see. The mayor of the city, with the editors of the _Guardian_ and several other gentlemen, had been invited there to see the first effect it would have upon them. It proved to be a very curious scene. As they entered the hall, the portraits of several hundreds of the chiefs and warriors of their own tribe and of their enemies were hanging on the walls and staring at them from all directions, and wigwams, and costumes and weapons of all constructions around them: they set up the most frightful yells and made the whole neighbourhood ring with their howlings; they advanced to the portraits of their friends and offered them their hands; and at their enemies, whom they occasionally recognised, they brandished their tomahawks or drew their bows as they sounded the war-whoop. This scene was truly exciting, and after our distinguished visitors had left the rooms, I spread some robes upon the floor, upon which we sat, and lighting an Indian pipe, opened our first council by saying:-- "My Friends, I am glad to see you, and to offer you my hand in friendship. You see by the paintings around you, of your friends and of your enemies, that I am no stranger to Indians--and that I am their friend. I am very happy to see you in my room, and all well after crossing the great ocean. Your friend here, Mr. Rankin, tells me you have come to this country to give your dances, &c.; and he has proposed that I should manage your exhibition, and have your dances all given in my rooms. This I have agreed to do, provided it meets your approbation." To which they all instantly ejaculated "_How, how, how!_" which is always an affirmative, literally meaning yes. When meeting a friend, it is the first salutation, meaning "How goes it?" or "How do you do?" and pronounced at the ends of sentences, when any one is speaking, implies assent, or approbation, as "hear, hear!" is used in the English language. "My good Friends, I have agreed to this on two conditions: the first, that it shall please you; and the second, that you will pledge your words to me that you will keep yourselves all the time sober, and drink no spirituous liquors while you are in the country. I make this condition because I know that the Indians are generally fond of strong drink, which wicked white men carry into their country and teach them to use. I know that the Indians often drink it to excess, not knowing in their country the sin of doing so. I know that the people in England detest drunkards, and they have an idea that all Indians are drunkards; and that if you drink and get drunk in this country, it will ruin all your prospects, and you will go home poor and despised. ('_How, how, how!_') You are a good-looking and well-behaved set of men, and I have no fears of any difficulties if you will keep sober. The English people are the friends of the Indians, and you will make many friends if you take and keep my advice. "I will ask but one solemn promise of you, and that is, that you will drink no spirituous liquors while you are in this country, and your friend Mr. Rankin will perfectly justify me in this. ('_How, how, how!_') "If you will keep sober, you shall have plenty of good tobacco to smoke and roast beef to eat, and there is no doubt that I will get you permission to see the Queen." To this the old chief (Ah-quee-we-zaints, the boy chief) arose and replied:-- "My Friend, I give you my hand. The Great Spirit has been kind to us in keeping his eye upon us all in crossing the salt lake, and we are thanking Him that we are all here safe and in good health. We had heard much of you when in our own country, where all the Indians know you, and we are now happy to meet you. ('_How, how!_') "My Friend, we are here like children in this strange country, and we shall feel happy and not afraid if you will be our father--the Great Spirit has put good counsel into your mouth, and we will follow it. ('_How, how, how!_') "We all know the dangers of fire-water; we have all been fond of it, and have been taught to drink it. We have been told that the Great Spirit sent it to us because he loved us--but we have learned that this is not true. "We have learned that the English people do not drink it--they are wise; and we will all pledge our words to you in this council that we will not drink it while we are in this country, and we are ready to put our names on a paper. ('_How, how, how!_')" "My Friends," said I, "I don't require your names on a paper; I am satisfied; if you were white men, perhaps I might--but no Indian who ever gave me his word has deceived me. I will take your names on paper, however, for another purpose, that I may know how to call you, how to introduce you, and to have your arrival properly announced in the newspapers." ('_How, how, how!_') [Illustration: N^o. 4.] Their names were then taken as follows, and the business of our first council being finished, it broke up. (_See Plate No. 4._) 1. Ah-quee-we-zaints (the Boy Chief). 2. Pat-au-a-quot-a-wee-be (the Driving Cloud), war-chief. 3. Wee-nish-ka-wee-be (the Flying Gull). 4. Sah-mah (Tobacco). 5. Gish-ee-gosh-e-gee (Moonlight Night). 6. Not-een-a-akm (Strong Wind), interpreter. 7. Wos-see-ab-e-neuh-qua, woman. 8. Nib-nab-ee-qua, girl. 9. Ne-bet-neuh-qua, woman. After a stroll of an hour or so about my rooms, where they were inexpressibly amused with my numerous paintings, &c., they were driven awhile about the town, and landed at their hotel, where the crowd had become so general and so dense, that it was almost impossible to approach it. The partial glance that the public got of their red faces and wild dresses on this day, as they were moving through the streets, and passing to and from the carriage, increased the cry of "Ob-jubbeways!" in every part of the city, and established the fact as certain, that "_real Indians_" had made their appearance in Manchester. It should be known to the reader by this time that this party were from the northern shore of Lake Huron, in Canada; therefore her Majesty's subjects, and part of one of the most numerous tribes in North America, inhabiting the shores of Lake Superior, Lake of the Woods, and Lake Huron, numbering some 15,000 or 20,000, and usually (in civilized parlance) called Chippeways, a mere _refinement_ upon their native name, O-jib-be-way. The appearance of these wild folks so suddenly in the streets of Manchester was well calculated to raise an excitement and the most intense curiosity. They were all clad in skins of their own dressing, their head-dresses of eagles' quills and wild turkeys' feathers; their faces daubed and streaked with vermilion and black and green paint. They were armed with their war-clubs, bows and quivers, and tomahawks and scalping knives, just as they roam through the woods in their country; and their yells and war-whoops, which were occasionally sounded in the streets at some sudden occurrence that attracted their attention, gave a new excitement amid the smoke and din of Manchester. The leading man of this party, _Ah-quee-we-zaints_ (the boy chief), was an excellent old man, of seventy-five years, with an intelligent and benignant countenance, and had been somewhat distinguished as a warrior in his younger days. The next of consequence (_Pat-au-a-quot-a-wee-be_, the driving cloud), and called the war-chief (though I believe, not a chief), was a remarkably fine man of thirty-five years of age, and had distinguished himself as a warrior in several battles in the war of 1812, having been engaged in the British lines, and in those engagements had been several times severely wounded, and of which he still carried and exhibited the most frightful scars. _Sah-mah_ (tobacco) and _Gish-ee-gosh-e-gee_ (moonlight night) were two fine young men, denoted warriors, having their wives with them; _Wee-nish-ka-wee-be_ (the flying gull) was a sort of doctor or necromancer to the party, and a young fellow of much drollery and wit. The Strong Wind, the interpreter, whose familiar name was _Cadotte_, was a half-caste, a young man of fine personal appearance and address, and the son of a Frenchman of that name who had long been an interpreter for the English factories in those regions. By the patient and accommodating disposition of this young man, any conversation was easily held with these people; and through him, the interchange of feelings between the civilized world and these rude and curious people, which will appear in the subsequent chapters of this book, was principally effected. CHAPTER XI. Ojibbeways visit the Mayor in Town-hall--They refuse wine--Distress of the kind and accommodating landlord--Indians' first _drive_ about the town of Manchester--Their curious remarks--Saw some white people drunk--Many women holding on to men's arms and apparently not sick--Saw much smoke--Vast many poor people--Indians commence dancing in the Author's Collection--Effects of the war-dance and war-whoop upon the audience--Various amusements of the evening--A rich present to the old Boy-Chief--And his speech--Numerous presents made--Immense crowd and excitement--Indians visit a great woollen-factory--Casts made from their heads by a phrenologist--Visit to Orrell's cotton-mill at Stockport--Their opinions of it--The party kindly entertained by Mr. Hollins and lady. The Indians having had a few days' rest, having made their first visit to my rooms, and settled all the preliminaries for their future operations, were now ready to step forth amongst the strange sights that were open and ready for their inspection in the new world that they had entered, all of which was yet before them. The world's civilities towards them commenced in an invitation from the Mayor of Manchester to visit the Town-Hall, and they dressed and painted and armed for the occasion, not asking who the mayor was, or how near he might be in rank to the Queen herself, whom it was their greatest ambition to see; but upon the supposition, of course, that they were going to see a "great chief," as they called him. They were moved through the streets in an omnibus, accompanied by Mr. Rankin, and I met them at the door of the hall, and conducted them to the presence of the mayor, whom they recognised, and were not a little surprised to find was one of the gentlemen to whom they had been introduced the day before. They were then presented by the mayor to his lady, and a select party of ladies and gentlemen who had been invited to see them. By these they were received with much kindness, and after having been shown the various rooms, &c., were led into the mayor's court, then in session, where they stood a few minutes, and finding that all proceedings were stopped, and all eyes upon them while there, I beckoned to them to retire. Various refreshments were prepared for them, to which they returned, and whilst the lady mayoress and ladies and gentlemen were proposing their health in wine which was poured out for them, they were surprised to receive smiles and thanks from the Indians as they refused to partake of it. To the inquiries raised for the cause of their refusing to drink, Mr. Rankin explained that they were under a solemn pledge not to drink spirituous liquors while in England, which was applauded by all present, and they received many presents in consequence of this information, which was the beginning of encouragement to keep their promise of sobriety and total abstinence. After leaving the town-hall, Mr. Rankin got into the omnibus with them, and during a drive of half an hour or so, giving them a passing glance at the principal streets of Manchester and its suburbs, they returned to their hotel. This excursion was calculated, of course, to bring around their hotel its thousands and even tens of thousands of the excitable and excited idlers that an extraordinary "turn out" had at that time thrown into the streets; and in endeavouring to pay them my customary visit that night, I was obliged to follow in the wake of a number of police, who had the greatest difficulty in making their way through the mass. The object of my visit to them was to talk, as usual, upon the events of the day, and of our future operations. The first "_talk_" I had, however, was with the kind and good-natured landlord, who said that he had now got notoriety enough--he didn't think his house would be forgotten; and was exceedingly obliged to me, and was pleased with the Indians, who gave him no trouble; alleging that they were ten times more civil and well-behaved than the people night and day crowded around his house. "It seemed to him as if the _savages_ were all outside of his house and the gentlemen inside. His house, which was fresh painted but a few days, and not dry, was 'all done up,' as high as they could reach and climb, and must be done over again; and his windows were broken and window-shutters torn from their hinges; and it was impossible for him to keep them any longer without great damage to his interest, and he hoped I would provide some other place for them as soon as possible." It happened much to my satisfaction that I had already prepared an apartment for them in the Exchange Buildings, adjoining to the exhibition-rooms, which were elevated high above the gaze of the crowd, and to which they were to be removed the next morning. This gave the good man much relief, and he said he could manage to live through that night. The conversation of the Indians that evening, while they were passing their pipe round and making their comments upon what they had seen, was exceedingly curious, and deserves to be recorded. They expressed great satisfaction at the kind manner in which they had been entertained by the mayor, understanding that he was the head man of the town of Manchester--"chief of that village," as they called him; "they saw him and his squaw, and many other beautiful squaws, all drinking; and they saw many people through the windows, and in the doors, as they passed along the streets, who were drinking; and they saw several persons in the streets who were quite drunk, and two or three lying down in the streets, like pigs; and they thought the people of Manchester loved much to drink liquor. They saw a great deal of smoke, and thought the prairies were on fire; they saw many fine-looking squaws walking in the streets, and some of them holding on to men's arms, and didn't look sick neither. They saw a great many large houses, which it seemed as if nobody lived in. They saw a great many people in the streets, who appeared very poor, and looked as if they had nothing to eat. They had seen many thousands, and almost all looked so poor that they thought it would do no good for us to stay in Manchester." I explained to them the extraordinary cause that had recently thrown so many thousands of poor people into the streets; that Manchester was one of the richest towns in the world; that the immense houses they had seen, and apparently shut up, were the great factories in which these thousands of poor people worked, but were now stopped, and their working people were running about the streets in vast numbers; that the immense crowd gathered around their hotel, from day to day, were of that class; that the wealthy people were very many, but that their dwellings were mostly a little out of town; and that their business men were principally shut up in their offices and factories, attending to their business whilst the idle people were running about the streets. Such was a little of the gossip after their first visit and drive about the town--and the next morning, at an early hour, they were removed to their new lodgings in the Exchange Buildings, and the kind landlord effectually, though very gradually, relieved from the nuisance he had had around his house for some days past. On the same evening, by our announcements, they were to make their first appearance in my exhibition, and at an early hour the Rooms were filled, and we were obliged to close the doors. I had erected a strong platform in the middle of my room, on which the Indians were to give their dances, and having removed all seats from the room, every part of the floor was covered as densely as it was possible for men and women to be grouped together. Into the midst of this mass the party dashed in Indian file, with shield and bow and quiver slung--with war-clubs and tomahawks in hand, as they sounded the frightful war-whoop and were endeavouring to reach the platform. The frightened crowd, with screams and yells as frightful nearly as those of the Indians, gave way, and they soon had a free passage to the platform, upon which they leaped, without looking for the flight of steps prepared for them, and were at full length before the staring, gaping multitude. Mr. Rankin was by their side, and in a moment I was there also, to commence upon the new duties devolving on me under our recent arrangement. They were in a moment seated, and were passing their pipe around, while I was, by a brief lecture, introducing them, and the modes they were to illustrate, to the audience. I described the country and the tribe they belonged to, and the objects for which they had crossed the Atlantic; and also expressed to the audience the happy opportunity it was affording me of corroborating the many assertions I had been heretofore making relative to the looks and modes of those people, many of which I was fully aware were difficult of comprehension. Having done this, I should leave the Indians to entertain the audience with such of their dances and other amusements as they might decide upon, and endeavour to stand by and explain each amusement as they gave it, feeling abundantly able to do so from a residence of eight years amongst the various tribes in America. There was a shout of applause at the close of my remarks, and the most impatient anxiety evinced on all sides to see the commencement of the curious tricks which were just ready to be introduced. At this moment, with a sudden yell, the men all sprung upon their feet; their weapons brandished and their buffalo robes thrown back, while the women and children seated themselves at the end of the platform. Another shrill yell of the war-whoop, with the flourish of their weapons, and the Medicine-man or Doctor commenced with tambour (or drum), and his voice, upon the war-song; and they were all off in the dance.[5] At the first rest, when they suddenly stopped, there was but one mingled roar of applause, which showed to the poor fellows that they had made "a hit," and were to be received with great kindness and interest. This stimulated them to finish it with spirit; and when it was done, and they were seated a few moments to rest, hundreds were ambitious to crowd up to them and offer them their hands. It was with great difficulty that I could get the audience quiet enough to hear my explanations of the war-dance--its meaning, and the objects and character of the war-whoop which they had just heard. I gained the patience of the crowd by promising them a number of dances and other amusements, all of which I would render instructive by my explanations, and afford all, in the remotest parts of the room, an opportunity to shake hands with the Indians when their amusements were finished. [5] All American Indians are poor in musical instruments, the principal of which, and the "heel inspiring" one, is the drum or tambour. This is rudely, but ingeniously made, by straining a piece of raw hide over a hoop or over the head of a sort of keg, generally made by excavating the inner part of a log of wood, leaving a thin rim around its side. In the bottom of this they always have a quantity of water, which sends out a remarkably rich and liquid tone. Besides this, they use several kinds of rattles and whistles--some of which are for mystery purposes, and others merely for the pleasing and exciting effects they produce in their dances. After my explanations and their pipe were finished, they arose and gave the _Wa-be-no_ dance, as they call it. _Wa-be-no_, in the Ojibbeway language, means mystery, and their mystery-dance is one of their choicest dances, only given at some occasion of their mystery-feasts, or for the accomplishment of some mysterious design. This dance is amusing and grotesque, and made much merriment amongst the audience. I explained the meaning of this also, and they afterwards gave some surprising illustrations of the mode of catching and throwing the ball in their favourite game of ball-play, with their ball-sticks in their hands. The astonishing quickness and certainty with which they throw and catch the ball in their rackets elicited immense applause; and after this they gave the "_scalp-dance_," which is given when a party returns from war, having brought home scalps taken from their enemies' heads, and preserved as trophies by the victors. In this dance the women, occupying the centre, hold up the scalps, attached to the tops of little poles, while men who have come from war dance around in a circle, brandishing their weapons, gnashing their teeth, and yelling the war-whoop at the highest key of their voices. At the close of this terrifying dance, which seemed to come just up to the anxiety of the excited audience, there was a tremendous roar of applause, and, in the midst of the uproar, an old gentleman took from his pocket a beautifully chased silver tobacco-box, and handing it to me, desired me to give it to the old chief, and tell him to carry his tobacco in it. I handed it to the old man, and, as he had seen the hand that gave it, he sprang upon his feet, as if he were but a boy, and reaching out his hand, grasped, over the heads of the audience, the hand of the venerable old gentleman, who told him "he was happy to see him, and to make him a little present to recollect him by." The old chief straightened up and squared himself upon the platform, throwing his buffalo robe over his left shoulder and passing it forward under his right arm and into his left hand; and with the most benignant smile (as he turned his box a moment under his eye, and passed it into his left hand) commenced--"My friends, though I am old I thank the Great Spirit for giving me strength to say a few words to you. He has allowed me to live many years, and I believe it is because I thank him for all his gifts. His eye was upon us when we were on the great salt lake, and he has brought us here safe, for which we all are thankful. He has directed you all to come here this night and to be so kind to us, for we had done nothing to make you come. We have long heard of the _Sag-a-noshes_,[6] and we have been anxious to come and see them. We have fought for them and with them, and our fathers and brothers have bled for them. There are many of the _Sag-a-noshes_ amongst us, and we love them. The Great Spirit has smiled upon our undertaking, and he has guided the hand of my brother to make me this present. My friends, my heart is warm and I am thankful. We have now done our dancing and singing, and we offer you our hands in friendship." At this there was a rush towards the platform from every part of the room to shake the hands of the Indians, who had seated themselves on the front of the platform for the purpose. [6] Englishmen. These greetings for half an hour or so were exceedingly warm; and to make them more impressive, several persons deposited in their hands valuable trinkets and money, which they received with thanks. Thus ended the first night's exhibition of the amusements of the Ojibbeways; and it was quite impossible to bring it entirely to a close (such was the avidity with which the visitors were seeking to handle and examine every part of their costumes, their tomahawks, and scalping-knives, &c.) until the Indians took leave and retired to their private room. And even then there was almost an equal difficulty while I was in the exhibition-room, for crowds were gathering around me to know what they ate--whether they ate their meat raw--whether they were cannibals--what I brought them over for--whether they were easy to manage, &c.--until I gradually edged along towards the door, through which I suddenly slipped, when I had got completely out of breath, leaving the group to fall upon poor Daniel, who was lecturing in another part of the room. Our first night's labour had taken us until eleven o'clock; and as I was wending my way home to my lodgings, I could hear the war-whoop squeaking and echoing in the streets in every part of the town. On the following morning, at the very friendly invitation of the proprietor of an extensive woollen-factory in the vicinity of Bury, and who had sent a carriage with four horses for them, the whole party paid a visit to his extensive mills and to his mansion, where they partook of breakfast with him, and returned in great glee and spirits, each one bearing a magnificent blanket of various colours, presented to them by his generous hand. The second night of their exhibition went off much like the first: the room was filled long before they made their appearance; and in the roar and confusion of applause at the end of their amusements, there was a cry from the end of the room, "Let some of them come this way--we can't get near them--we can't tell whether they are in their own skins or in fleshings." And another hallooed out "Let that handsome little fellow come here (alluding to _Samah_, who was a very fine-looking young man); here is a lady who wants to kiss him!" This being interpreted to him, he leaped into and through the crowd (as he would dash into the river that he was to ford), and had his naked arms around her neck and kissed her before there was any time for an explanation. The excitement and screaming and laughing amongst the women in that part of the room made kissing fashionable, and every one who laid her hand upon his arm or his naked shoulders (and those not a few) got a kiss, gave a scream, and presented him a brooch, a ring, or some other keepsake, and went home with a streak of red paint on her face, and perhaps with one or two of black or green upon her dress. The gallant little fellow squeezed himself through this dense crowd, kissing old and young as he went, and returned to the platform, from which he held up and displayed his trophies with much satisfaction. I felt it my duty to reprimand him for his rudeness, and told him it was not fashionable in such crowds to kiss the ladies; to which he replied, that "he knew what he was about--the white ladies are very pretty and very sweet, and I gave my kisses only where they were asked for." The response all over the house was that "he had done right; good little fellow, he has done no harm."--A voice, "No, no harm, indeed; I'll kiss him again if he will come down, charming little fellow!"--He was in the act of leaping off, when Cadotte, the interpreter, seized him by the arm and turned him back. The hour was come for closing, and the Indians moved off to their lodgings. The events of that day and evening furnished the Indians with rich materials for gossip, and I retired to their chambers to smoke a pipe of k'nick-k'neck with them, and join in the pleasures of their conversation. They had many fine presents to display, and some of these valuable, being taken from arms and necks and fingers, in the moments of enthusiasm, and given to the Indians. The little gallant _Samah_ had been the most successful in this way, and also had received all the kisses of the pretty women. I have already mentioned that he had his wife with him. They were joking her about this affair, and she coolly said she did not care about it; "for the more kisses he gets from pretty women, the more presents I get, for he loves me enough to give them all to me." There was much commenting also on the great factory they had been to see in the morning, and on the gentleman's kindness in presenting the blankets, which they had now paraded and were examining and showing. They were exulting much in their happiness and success, and were still expressing fears that, by jumping and yelling, and making so much noise in Manchester, they might give dissatisfaction to the Queen, who would not feel so well disposed to see them. They asked for my opinion on the subject; I told them to have no fears, the Queen would certainly be glad to see them. I was waited on about this time by Mr. Bally, a gentleman of great eminence and skill in the science of phrenology, and who has one of the richest collections of casts from nature, in the world. Mr. Bally is one of the most rapid and skilful men in the operation of casting from the living face, and was extremely anxious to procure casts from the Ojibbeways; and, to a gentleman of so much worth to science, as well as for his amiable and gentle disposition, I felt bound to lend my best efforts in gaining for him the privilege. I had much difficulty to overcome their superstitions; but, by assuring them that they were to be done as a present to me, and by their seeing the operation performed on one of my men, I succeeded in gaining their consent, and they were all taken with great success. They were a present to my collection; and a copy of them in the noble collection of Mr. Bally will, I hope, continue to be subjects of interest and value. Kindnesses and attentions were now showering upon the Ojibbeways from all directions in Manchester; and amongst them many kind invitations, which it was impossible for them to comply with. They were invited to visit the mills of various kinds; and, amongst those that they went to, I must record a few words of the one they were most pleased with, and which they will talk the longest about. I had received an invitation to bring them to Stockport, to examine the cotton-mill of Mr. Orrell, which is probably one of the finest in the kingdom, and availed myself of his kindness, by making a visit to it with them. With his customary politeness, he showed us through it, and explained it in all its parts, so that the Indians, as well as myself, were able to appreciate its magnitude and its ingenious construction. Upon this giant machine the Indians looked in perfect amazement; though it is a studied part of their earliest education not to exhibit surprise or emotion at anything, however mysterious or incomprehensible it may be. There was enough, however, in the symmetry of this wonderful construction, when in full operation, to overcome the rules of any education that would subdue the natural impulses of astonishment and admiration. They made no remarks, nor did they ask any questions, but listened closely to all the explanations; and, in their conversations for weeks afterwards, admitted their bewildering astonishment at so wonderful a work of human invention. After viewing, in all its parts, this stupendous work, we were shown through the not less ingenious bleaching-mills of Mr. Hollins; and then, in the kindest manner, conducted under his hospitable roof, where his charming lady and lovely little ones united in their efforts to make us welcome and happy. The cloth was spread, and the luxuries of their house all heaped upon the table,--the substantials of life, and then its spices. It seemed cruel to see these poor fellows devouring the one, and rejecting the other--denying and denied the luxuries that _we_ could not refuse, when our friends proposed to drink to our healths and our happiness. They were happy, however, and, good fellows, enjoyed what they partook, and we returned, wishing our kind-hearted friends, Mr. Hollins and his lady, many, many happy days. CHAPTER XII. Indians on the housetops--Great alarm--Curious excitement--People proposing to "take them" with ropes--Railway to London--The "Iron-horse"--"The Iron-horse (locomotive) stops to drink"--Arrive in London--Alarm of the landlady--Visit from the Hon. Mr. Murray--Interview with His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge--Old Chief's speech--War-dance--The Duke gives them ten sovereigns and ten pounds of tobacco--Indians ride about the city in an "omnibus and four"--Remarks on what they saw--The smoke--"Prairies on fire"--Lascars sweeping the streets--Visit from the Reverend Mr. S.--Impatience to see the Queen--Great medicine-feast to gain Her Majesty's consent--Curious ceremony--Hon. Mr. Murray's letter comes in--The Queen's appointment to see them--Great rejoicing. On our return from Stockport we found two reverend gentlemen, who had been waiting nearly all day for an interview with the Indians (which had been appointed, but forgotten), to talk upon the subject of religion. They had come several miles, and seemed somewhat vexed, as night was near approaching, and the old chief told them that they were going to London in a few days, and should be very busy in the meantime; and again, that they were expecting to see the Queen, and would rather wait until after they had seen her Majesty. They had learned, also, that London was the _great city_ of England, and thought that anything of that kind had better be deferred until they were in London, and the subject was therefore postponed. The exhibitions at night were progressing much as I have above described--the hall invariably full, and the Indians, as well as the public, had their own amusement in the room, and also amusing themes for conversation after retiring to their own quarters. In the midst of our success and of their amusement and enjoyment, an occurrence took place that was near getting us into difficulty, as it raised a great excitement in the neighbourhood and no little alarm to many old women and little children. As I was leaving my exhibition-rooms one morning, I met, to my great surprise, an immense crowd of people assembled in front, and the streets almost completely barricaded with the numbers that were rapidly gathering, and all eyes elevated towards the roof of my building. I asked the first person I met what was the matter?--supposing that the house was on fire--to which he replied, "I believes, sir, that the Hob-jib-be-ways has got loose; I knows that some on em is hout, for I seed one on em runnin hover the tops of the ouses, and they'l ave a ard matter to catch em, hin my hopinion, sir." It seems that the poor fellows had found a passage leading from their rooms out upon the roof of the house, and that, while several of them had been strolling out there for fresh air, and taking a look over the town, a crowd had gathered in the street to look at them, and amongst the most ignorant of that crowd the rumour had become current that they "had broke loose, and people were engaged in endeavouring to take them." I started back to my room as fast as I could, and to the top of the house, to call them down, and stop the gathering that was in rapid progress in the streets. When I got on the roof, I was as much surprised at the numbers of people assembled on the tops of the adjoining houses, as I had been at the numbers assembled in the streets. The report was there also current, and general, that they had "broke out," and great preparations were being made on the adjoining roofs, with ropes and poles, &c., to "take them," if possible, before any harm could be done. About the time I had got amongst them, and was inviting them down, several of the police made their appearance by my side, and ordered them immediately into their room, and told me that in the excited state of the town, with their mills all out, such a thing was endangering the peace; for it brought a mob of many thousands together, which would be sure not to disperse without doing some mischief. I was ordered by the police to keep them thereafter in the rooms, and not to allow them to show themselves at the windows, so great were their fears of a riot in the streets, if there was the least thing to set it in motion. As an evidence of the necessity of such rigour, this affair of about fifteen minutes' standing had already brought ten or fifteen thousand people together, and a large body of the police had been ordered on to the ground, having the greatest difficulty during the day to get rid of the crowd. Mr. Rankin, about this time, was getting alarming apprehensions that our delay in Manchester was calculated to affect our prospect of going before the Queen, and at his urgent request I announced our last night in Manchester, after an exhibition of ten days. On the last night, as on each of the preceding ones, the room was quite full, and even so many were necessarily forbidden entrance, that they began a most ruinous warfare on the door from the outside, and to such a degree, that I was obliged to put the entrance to my premises in charge of the police, for protection. We were now prepared to move off to the metropolis, and I showed to Mr. Rankin, by his share of the profits of ten days, that he had already received more than he would have got in two months by the plan he had proposed, to hire the party to me for 100_l._ per month. This seemed to please him very much, and we moved off pleasantly on our way to London, leaving the ungratified curiosity that remained in Manchester until a future occasion, when we might return again. For our passage to London we had chartered a second-class carriage to ourselves, and in it had a great deal of amusement and merriment on the way. The novelty of the mode of travelling and the rapidity at which we were going raised the spirits of the Indians to a high degree, and they sang their favourite songs, and even gave their dances, as they passed along. Their curiosity had been excited to know how the train was propelled or drawn, and at the first station I stepped out with them, and forward to the locomotive, where I explained the power which pulled us along. They at once instituted for the engine, the appellation of the "Iron-horse;" and, at our next stopping-place, which was one where the engine was taking in water, they all leaped out "_to see the Iron-horse drink_." Their songs and yells set at least a thousand dogs barking and howling on the way, and as we came under the station at Birmingham, called up a fat old gentleman, who opened our door and very knowingly exclaimed, "What the devil have you got here? some more of them damned grisly bears, have you?" He was soon merged in the crowd that gathered around us, and, with doors closed, the Indians sat out patiently the interval, until we were under weigh again. Arrived at the Euston station, in London, an omnibus conveyed them suddenly to apartments in George-street, which had been prepared for them. They were highly excited when they entered their rooms, talking about the Queen, whom they believed had just passed in her carriage, from seeing two footmen with gold-laced hats and red breeches and white stockings, standing up and riding on a carriage behind, with large gold-headed canes in their hands: it proved, however, to have been the carriage of Lady S----n, familiarly known in that neighbourhood; and the poor fellows seemed wofully disappointed at this information. The good landlady, who took a glance of them as they came in, was becoming alarmed at the bargain she had made for the rooms, and came to Mr. Rankin, expressing her fears that the arrangement would never answer for her, as "she did not expect such wild, black-looking savages from the Indies." Mr. Rankin assured her that they were quite harmless, and much more of gentlemen than many white men she might get in her house, and he would be responsible for all damage that they would ever do to her property, even if she left the whole of it unsecured by lock and key. So she said she would venture to try them for a week, and see how they behaved. They were now in the midst of the great city of London, which they had been so anxious to see; and, upon putting their heads out of the windows to take a first peep, the smoke was so dense that they could see but a few rods, when they declared that the "prairies must be on fire again." Daniel was, at this time, remaining in Manchester to take down and bring on my collection, which it was agreed should be re-opened in London. I was busy effecting a new arrangement for the Egyptian Hall, which I took for six months, and in a few days my collection was being replaced upon its walls. The first visitor who came to see the party, and to wish them success in London, was my excellent friend the Hon. C. A. Murray, who was much pleased with them, and learning their desire to gain an audience of Her Majesty, he proposed, as the surest way to bring it about, that his Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge should have an interview with them first, and then it would be easy to get Her Majesty to see them. This plan was agreed to, and the next day Mr. Murray addressed me a note, saying that the Duke would meet them the next morning in the Queen's drawing-room, Hanover-square Concert-rooms. I immediately made the arrangement with the proprietor of the rooms, and at the appointed hour the next morning was there with them, and met His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge, with the Hon. Mr. Murray and Baron Knesebeck, in attendance. The Duke met them in the most familiar and cordial manner, offering them his hand, and smoking the Indian pipe with them. He conversed a great deal with them through their interpreter, Cadotte; and, after closely examining their costumes, weapons, &c., took a seat to see them dance. They amused him with the war-dance and the _Wa-be-no_ dance, giving several songs and the war-whoop; after which they seated themselves on the floor, and after a few minutes' rest, having passed the pipe around, the old chief arose and said-- "Father, we are glad to see you and to take your hand; we know that you are uncle to our _great mother_ the Queen, and we are happy to see you. ('_How, how, how!_') We thank the Great Spirit for this; he has kept us in good health and safe over the great salt lake, and His eye is on us now, we know, or we should not see our great father this day. We are poor, ignorant children, and yet we hope the Queen, your niece, will be willing to see us, when our hearts will be happy. ('_How, how, how!_') "Father, my years, you see, are nearly spent. I have carried my weapons and hunted for your enemies many years, and my warriors here have many wounds they received in fighting for the Sag-a-noshes. ('_How, how, how!_') "I have no more words to say at present. ('_How, how, how!_')" His Royal Highness graciously received the old Chief's speech, and then examined the wounds pointed out on the body of the War Chief; after which he replied to the old man-- "My friends, I meet you here to-day with great pleasure, and I thank the Great Spirit also, that He has guarded you and kept you safe over the ocean. I hope your visit to England may be pleasant and profitable to you, and that you may all get back safe to your children. ('_How, how, how!_') "My friends, I will make known your wishes to the Queen, and I think you will see her. ('_How, how, how!_')" The Duke most kindly took leave of them, presenting to the old chief ten sovereigns, which he divided equally among the number, and sent them on the following day ten pounds of the choicest smoking tobacco. On leaving the Rooms he also thanked me for the treat I had afforded him, and said, "Oh, the good fellows! yes, the Queen will see them." The announcement of the arrival of the Ojibbeways which had been made in the public papers, and the notice also of their interview with the Duke of Cambridge, were now gaining them a notoriety with the public; and amongst my personal friends, was announcing that I had returned to London, which altogether brought me a flood of applicants for private interviews with them. We had resolved not to make any exhibition of their modes to the public, until after they had seen the Queen, and the month that we remained idle, and waiting for her Majesty's command, was rendered tedious and troublesome from the above causes. We were daily and hourly importuned for permissions to see them, which were in part granted, until it became quite necessary that I should absent myself from them, leaving instructions at the door that no communication could be had with them at present. Mr. Rankin during this time stayed constantly with them, and I occasionally spent an evening of gossip and smoked a pipe with them. We made use of most of the time in endeavouring to show them as much of the great city as possible, driving them out in a bus during the day, and several times taking them into the country to spend a day running over the fields for the benefit of their health. After one of their first drives about the City, when they had been passed through Regent Street, the Strand, Cheapside, Oxford Street and Holborn, I spent the evening in a talk with them in their rooms, and was exceedingly amused with the shrewdness of their remarks upon what they had seen. They had considered the "prairies still on fire," from the quantity of smoke they met; one of the women had undertaken to count the number of carriages they passed, but was obliged to give it up; "saw a great many fine houses, but nobody in the windows: saw many men with a large board on the back, and another on the breast, walking in the street--supposed it was some kind of punishment; saw men carrying bags of coal, their hats on wrong side before; saw fine ladies and gentlemen riding in the middle of the streets in carriages, but a great many poor and ragged people on the sides of the roads; saw a great many men and women drinking in shops where they saw great barrels and hogsheads; saw several drunk in the streets. They had passed two _Indians_ in the street with brooms, sweeping away the mud; they saw them hold out their hands to people going by, as if they were begging for money: they saw many other poor people begging, some with brooms in their hands and others with little babies in their arms, who looked as if they were hungry for food to eat." They had much to say about the two Indians they had passed. "It could not be that white people would dress and paint themselves like Indians in order to beg money, and they could not see how Indians would consent to stand in the streets and sweep the mud away in order to beg for money." They appealed to me to know whether they were really Indians, and I said "Yes; they are natives from the East Indies, called Lascars. They are naturally, most probably like yourselves, too proud to work or to beg; but they have been left by some cruel fate, to earn their living in the streets of London, or to starve to death, and, poor fellows, they have preferred begging to starvation." The Indians seemed much affected by the degradation that these poor fellows were driven to, and resolved that they would carry some money with them when they went out, to throw to them. I had about this time several communications from the Reverend Mr. S----, who was desirous, if possible, to have an interview with the Indians for the purpose of learning from them what notions they had of religion, if any; and to endeavour to open their minds to a knowledge of the Christian religion, which it was the wish of himself and many others of his friends to teach to them for their eternal welfare. I at once wrote to those reverend gentlemen and assured them that their kind endeavours would be aided in every possible way by Mr. Rankin and myself; and I appointed an hour at once, when they could converse with the Indians on the subject. Their visit was made at the hour appointed, and the conversation was held in my presence. The reverend gentlemen most kindly and humanely greeted the Indians on their safe arrival in this country, where they were glad to meet them as brothers. They called upon them not in any way to interfere with their amusements or objects for which they had come to England, but to wish them all success, and at the same time to learn from them whether as poor children of the forests they had been kept in the dark, and out of the light of the true Christian religion, which it was their desire to make known to their minds. The old chief had lit his pipe in the meantime, and having taken a few moments to smoke it out, after the reverend gentleman had stopped, said (without rising up to speak) that he was much pleased to see them, and shake hands with them, for he knew their views were good and friendly. He said that they had heard something about the white man's religion in the wilderness where he lived, but they had thought it too difficult for them to understand. He said he was much obliged to them for offering to explain it at this time, but that they would take a little time to think of it first; and as they had not yet seen the Queen, they thought it best to do no more about it at present. Poor fellows, they were daily asking for reports from the Palace, becoming impatient for the permission to see her Majesty. They had waited so long that they were beginning to think that their application had failed, and they were becoming dispirited and desponding. I said to them one morning, "Now, my good fellows, don't despair--you have not tried what you can do yourselves yet; in your own country, if you wish it to rain, you have _Rain-makers_ who can make it rain; if you wish it to stop raining, you have _Rain-stoppers_, who cook up a grand medicine feast and cause it to stop raining. If buffalos are scarce, your medicine-men can make them come: why not 'put on the Big Kettle,' and see what you can do in the present dilemma?--You have your _Medicine-man_ with you, and your _Medicine-drum_ and your _Shi-she-quoi_ (mystery rattle); you are all prepared; go to work--you will certainly do no harm, and I fully believe you will bring it about." As I was leaving the room their interpreter overtook me, and said that the medicine man wanted the money to buy five fat ducks--that they had resolved on having a _medicine feast_ that afternoon, and that they would expect me to be of the party to partake of it. I came in at the hour appointed, and found them all with their faces painted black on one side and red on the other (their mode of ornamenting when they supplicate the Great or other Spirit for any gift or favour), and prepared to take their seats at the feast, which was then smoking, on the floor in the adjoining room. Buffalo robes were spread upon the floor, on which we were seated, when the following dialogue took place between their kind (and now no longer terrified) landlady and the interpreter Cadotte:--"Why," said she (as she was completing the last arrangement for our feast upon the floor), "you have left no room for the women, poor things." "Women!" said Cadotte, "why, do you suppose that women can eat at a _medicine feast_?" "Why not?" said the landlady, "are they not as good as the men? They are a nice set of women, and that little girl is a dear little creature. I cooked the ducks as much for them as I did for you, and I think it would be cruel not to invite them to eat with you; you are no better now than you were this morning; they ate with you then. If I had known this, I would have kept one of the ducks for them." "Devil a bit!" said Cadotte, "do you know what _medicine_ is?" "No, I don't suppose I do; but there are the three women all crying now in the other room, poor creatures." "And there they are _obliged_ to cry while we are in a _medicine feast_, or we have no luck." "Oh, dear me, what a strange set of beings!" said the old lady, as she returned to the kitchen, "I won't interfere with them; they must take their own way." With closed doors we went through all the peculiar solemnities of this feast; and, having devoured all the ducks, leaving "none for the poor women," the medicine man took about a quarter of an hour to recite a sort of prayer or thanks to the Great Spirit, which, from the extreme rapidity with which he repeated it, I supposed to be some established form peculiar to such occasions. After this, and while the last pipe was passing around, my man Daniel (in pursuance of my previous instructions) entered the room, and delivered to me a large letter, which he said he thought was from Mr. Murray, as it had the household stamp upon it. The most impatient excitement prevailed until I broke the seal and read as follows:-- "Buckingham Palace, Thursday morning. "Dear Sir,--I have great pleasure in informing you that Her Majesty has expressed a desire to see the party of Ojibbeway Indians; and has appointed Thursday next, at two o'clock, as the hour when she will receive you with the party, in the Waterloo Gallery, Windsor Castle. I pray that you will be punctual at the hour, and I will meet you at the threshold, rendering all the facilities that may be in my power. "Yours, sincerely, "C. A. MURRAY, "_Master of H. M. Household._ "_To Geo. Catlin, Esq._" The reader can readily imagine what was the _pleasure_ of these poor people when they heard this letter read; but it would be difficult to know what were their feelings of _surprise_, that the efficacy of their _medicine_ should have brought it in at that opportune moment. The reader will also suppose, what their superstition prevented them from ever imagining, that this letter was in my pocket several hours before the ducks were bought, and therefore cost me about twenty shillings. A pipe was here lit by the old chief, and passed around, and smoked to the kind _Spirit_ they had successfully invoked, and with it all the anxieties of this day passed away. CHAPTER XIII. Preparations for visiting the Queen--Amusing interview with Sykes, the porter--Mistaken by the old Chief for Prince Albert--Meet the Hon. Mr. Murray--The waiting-room--The Author conducts the party before Her Majesty and the Prince in the Waterloo Gallery--Their reception--Introductions and conversations--Indians give the war-dance--A smoke--The old Chief's speech to the Queen--Pipe-dance--Her Majesty and the Prince retire--Indians at a feast in the waiting-room--Drinking the Queen's health in Champagne--Indians call it "_Chickabobboo_"--Story of _Chickabobboo_, and great amusement--Indians return to London--Evening-gossip about the Queen and her _Chickabobboo_--First evening of the Indians in Egyptian Hall--Great excitement--Alarm--Tremendous applause--Old Chief's speech--Hon. Mr. Murray's letter to the old Chief, enclosing £20 from the Queen and other presents--Speech of the War-chief--Pipe-dance--Shaking hands--Curious questions by the audience--Ale allowed to the Indians at dinner and after supper--Their rejoicing--They call it _Chickabobboo_. A new chapter commenced here with the Indians, as it commences with my book. All "omnibus drives" were postponed for the present; all communications with the world entirely interdicted; and all was bustle and preparation for the grand event which was to "cap the climax" of their highest ambition--the point to which they had looked ever since they had started, and beyond which, it is not probable, their contemplations had as yet visibly painted anything. Colours, and ribbons, and beads, of the richest hues, were called for, and procured from various parts of the city; and both night and day, all, men and women, were constantly engaged in adding brilliancy and richness of colour to their costumes. The old chief was painting the stem of his pipe of peace (or calumet) sky-blue, emblematical of the feelings they carried in their breasts; and decorating it also with blue and red ribbons, as a suitable gift to royalty. The little girl, _Nib-nab-e-qua_, was crying, as she embroidered with red and white porcupine-quills, fearing that her new mocassins would not look so brilliant as she had sometimes made them. Her mother was arranging black mourning plumes in the cradle in which her infant had died, and which, by the custom of the country, she was obliged yet to carry on her back. The War-chief was repainting his shield, and arranging his scalps on a little hoop, to give proper effect to the scalp-dance. The _Medicine-man_ was preparing his _wa-be-no_ drum. _Gish-ee-gosh-ee-gee_ was stringing beads with his wife; and _Sah-mah_ was brightening his tomahawk and his scalping-knife for a glittering effect in the war-dance. Cadotte, during this time, was parading before the mirror, examining, arranging, and rearranging the ostrich-plumes in his cap, and the fit of a laced frock he had just had made; and (I had almost forgotten myself) I was anxiously awaiting the arrival of a new coat I had ordered at my tailor's for the occasion. On the morning appointed, all were satisfactorily prepared, and, being seated in an omnibus posted with four horses, we were on our way, and soon after that arrived at the gates of Windsor Castle. Descending from the carriage, the poor old chief, whose eyes were getting a little dim with age, was completely nonplused at beholding the magnificent figure (in scarlet and gold lace and powdered wig) of (his apparent Majesty) Sykes, the well-known porter of the palace, who had him by the elbow, and was conducting him and his heavy paraphernalia towards the door. The good old chief turned round and gave him his hand, not knowing as yet what to say, as they had none of them contemplated anything so brilliant and dazzling, short of Majesty itself. He was at this moment, however, saved from committing himself or bestowing his pipe of peace by the sudden approach of several others of the household in liveries equally splendid, who conducted us into the hall, at which moment we met our friend the Honourable Mr. Murray, whom we followed to the waiting-room adjoining to the Waterloo Gallery, in which our reception was to take place. Here we were seated, and awaited the anxious moment when it was to be announced that her Majesty was ready to see us. The Indians were here parading before the large and splendid mirrors and adjusting their feathers and ornaments, and suggesting many surmises about the long table which was dressed out in the room where we were, and which they supposed was the place where the Queen and all her officers about her took their dinners. This, as the sequel will show, was a very great error, as it was preparing for another and entirely different purpose. After waiting half an hour or so, an officer in full dress came into the room and informed us that the Queen was in the adjoining room, and ready to receive us, and showed us the way. There was a moment of jingling and rattling of trinkets as the Indians were throwing on their robes and gathering up their weapons; and when they responded to my question "if they were all ready?"--by their "_how! how! how!_" I led the way, and they followed into the Waterloo Gallery. They were now all at full length before her Majesty and the Prince, who most graciously received them. (_Plate No. 5._) The Queen arose from a sofa in the middle of the room, having her Majesty the Queen Dowager and H. R. H. the Duchess of Kent by her side; and advancing towards the Indians, was joined by H. R. H. Prince Albert and the Hon. Mr. Murray. Her Majesty desired that the interpreter and myself should advance nearer to her, and at her request I introduced each individually by their appropriate names, explaining their costumes, weapons, &c. Her Majesty beckoned the little girl up to her, and held her some time by both hands, evidently much pleased with her appearance, and also the woman with the cradle on her back, in whom she seemed to take much interest. She asked many questions, as well as the Prince, relative to their costumes, modes, &c., and they then took their seats on the sofa to witness the dances which the Indians had come prepared to give. [Illustration: N^o. 5.] The Indians were at this time seated in a circle on the floor, when the _Medicine-man_ gradually commenced tapping on his drum and singing in a low tone. In a few moments the house jarred with the leap of the War-chief, who was upon his feet, and after him all the party, in the din of the war-dance. (_Plate No. 6._) This dance finished, they were again seated on the floor, when the old chief, seventy-five years of age, having lighted his pipe and passed it around, arose and made the following address to her Majesty:--[7] "Great Mother--I have been very sorrowful since I left my home, but the Great Spirit has brought us all safe over the great waters, and my heart will now be glad that we can see your face. We are now happy. "These are all the words I have to say. My words are few, for I am not very well to-day. The other chief will tell you what I intended to say." [7] The poor old chief met with a sudden embarrassment at this moment that he had not thought of, and was not prepared consequently to know how to proceed. He had, according to the custom of his country, prepared and brought with him a beautiful calumet or pipe of peace to present, and on rising to make his speech (the moment when it is customary to present it) it for the first time occurred to him that he was about to present it to a woman, the impropriety of which was evident to him. He thought of the Prince, but as the pipe of peace can only be given to the highest in power, he had another misgiving; and, unlike to orators in the Indian countries, continued to hold it in his hand while he was speaking, and brought it away with him. The War-chief then rose, and in a very energetic manner made the following speech, which was also literally interpreted to her Majesty:-- "Great Mother--The Great Spirit has been kind to us, your children, in protecting us on our long journey here. And we are now happy that we are allowed to see your face. It makes our hearts glad to see the faces of so many Saganoshes (English) in this country, and all wearing such pleasant looks. We think the people here must be very happy. "Mother--We have been often told that there was a great fire in this country--that its light shone across the great water; and we see now where this great light arises. We believe that it shines from this great wigwam to all the world. "Mother--We have seen many strange things since we came to this country. We see that your wigwams are large, and the light that is in them is bright. Our wigwams are small, and our light is not strong. We are not rich, but yet we have plenty of food to eat. "Mother--Myself and my friends here are your friends--your children. We have used our weapons against your enemies. And for many years we have received liberal presents from this country, which have made us quite happy and comfortable in our wigwams. "Mother--The chief who has just spoken, and myself, have fought and bled by the side of the greatest warrior who ever lived--Tecumseh. "Mother--Our hearts are glad at what we have this day seen--that we have been allowed to see your face. And when we get home our words will be listened to in the councils of our nation. "This is all I have to say." After his speech the War-chief resumed his seat upon the floor; and as her Majesty could not be supposed to reply to his speech, she called upon the Prince, who thanked them for the amusement they had afforded her Majesty, who felt a deep interest in their welfare, and thankful to the old chief for the noble and religious sentiments expressed in his remarks. After this the Indians rose and gave their favourite, the PIPE DANCE, which seemed to afford much amusement to the Royal party. The Queen and the Prince then graciously bowed and took leave, thanking them, through the interpreter, for the amusement they had afforded them. The Indians at the same moment shouldered their robes and retired, sounding their war-whoop to the amusement of the servants of the household, who had assembled to the amount of some hundreds in the galleries of the hall. [Illustration: N^o. 6.] They were now in the waiting-room again, where, to their surprise (and no little satisfaction), they found that the table they had seen so splendidly arranged was intended for their own entertainment, and was now ready for the "set-to." Mr. Murray announced it as ready, and we all went to work. Mr. Rankin, who had been seated in the gallery during the presentation, having joined the party, had now taken his seat with them at the table. With his usual kindness, Mr. Murray insisted on carving the roast-beef and helping them around, and next in drinking the Queen's health, which is customary at all public dinners. For this the first bottle of champagne was opened; and when the cork flew and the wine was pouring into glasses, the Indians pronounced the word "_Chick-a-bob-boo!_" and had a great laugh. A foaming glass of it was set before each Indian; and when it was proposed to drink to Her Majesty's health, they all refused. I explained to Mr. Murray the promise they were under to drink no spirituous liquor while in the kingdom. Mr. Murray applauded their noble resolution, but said at the same time that this was not _spirituous liquor_--it was a light wine, and could not hurt them; and it would be the only time they could ever drink to Her Majesty so properly, and Her Majesty's health could not be refused by Her Majesty's subjects. When again urged they still refused, saying "We no drink--can't drink." They seemed however to be referring it to me, as all eyes were alternately upon me and upon their glasses, when I said to them--"Yes, my good fellows, drink; it will not hurt you. The promise you have made to Mr. Rankin and myself will not be broken--it did not contemplate a case like this, where it is necessary to drink the Queen's health. And again, this is _champagne_, and not _spirituous liquor_, which you have solemnly promised to avoid."--"_How! how! how!_" they all responded, and with great delight all joined in "health to the Queen!" And as each glass was emptied to the bottom, they smacked their lips, again pronouncing the word "_Chick-a-bob-boo! Chick-a-bob-boo!_" with a roar of laughter among themselves. Mr. Murray and I becoming anxious to know the meaning of _chick-a-bob-boo_, it was agreed that the War-chief (who had a dry but amusing way of relating an anecdote) should give us the etymology of the word _chick-a-bob-boo_, which they said was manufactured but a few years since in their country. The old Boy-chief, who was not a stranger to _chick-a-bob-boo_, nor to good jokes, said that the "War-chief couldn't tell a story well unless his lips were kept moist;" and he proposed that we should drink Mr. Murray's health before he commenced. So the champagne was poured again, and, the Hon. Mr. Murray's health being drank, the War-chief proceeded by saying--that "Only a few years since, when the white men were bringing so much rum and whiskey into the little village where he lives, that it was making them all sick, and killing a great many, the chiefs decided in council that they would tomahawk every keg of whiskey the white men should bring in; and it had the effect of keeping them away, and their people, who had been drunk and sick, were getting well. "Not long after that," continued he, "a little old man with red hair, who used to bring us bags of apples, got in the way of bringing in one end of his bag a great many bottles filled with something that looked much like whiskey, but which, when we smelled it, and tasted it, we found was not _fire-water_, and it was much liked by the chiefs and all; for they found, he said, it was good, and would not make Indians drunk. He sold much of this to the Indians, and came very often; and when he had carried it a great way on his horse, and in the sun, it sometimes became very impatient to get out of the bottles; and it was very amusing to see the little old man turn a crooked wire into the bottle to pull out the stopper, when one was holding a cup ready to catch it. As he would twist the wire in, it would go _chee--e--_; and when he poured it out, it would say, _pop-poo, pop-poo_.[8] This amused the women and children very much, and they called it at first _chee-pop-poo_, and since, _chick-a-bob-boo_. And this the old man with red hair told us at last was nothing but the juice of apples, though we found it very good; and yet it has made some very drunk." [8] This word must be _whispered_, as the War-chief gave it, and not _spoken_, to be appreciated--after the mode of Indians in their imitations, or exclamations of surprise. This story of the War-chief amused Mr. Murray very much, and he ordered one of the waiters to "twist the crooked wire" into the neck of another bottle or two of the _chick-a-bob-boo_ and "pull out the little stoppers," for he was going to propose that we all drink to the health of Prince Albert, who could never be neglected when her Majesty's health was drunk. This was done with enthusiasm; and the old chief soon proposed to drink Mr. Rankin's health, and my health, which were attended to; and he at length thought of the fat porter in scarlet and gold lace, whom he had passed at the door, and who at this moment, with several others in gold lace and powdered hair, were gathering around the table to take a glass or two of _chick-a-bob-boo_ with them. This happened at a good time, and Mr. Rankin commenced the anecdote of the old chief having mistaken the porter Sykes for Prince Albert just as Mr. Murray and I withdrew from the room to proceed to town. I visited the Indians in their rooms that evening, and found them in good spirits, having been well pleased by her Majesty's kind reception, and also delighted with the _chick-a-bob-boo_, and the liberal construction that had been put upon their sacred engagement "not to drink spirituous liquors." Mr. Rankin gave me an amusing account of the old chief's second interview with the porter Sykes, and their manner of taking leave when they were parting to meet no more. "Their pipes," he said, "were lit when they took their omnibus to return, and their joyful songs and choruses made it a _travelling music-box_ the whole way to town." I had come upon them at the moment when they were taking their coffee--a habit they had got into as one of the last things before going to bed. When they finished their coffee they lit the pipe, and there were many comments from different parts of the room upon what they had seen during the day. The Queen was of course the engrossing theme for their thoughts and their remarks; and though so well pleased with her kindness to them, they were evidently disappointed in her personal appearance and dress. Her Majesty was attired in a simple and unadorned dress of black, and wore apparently no ornaments whatever at the time of their presentation, affording the poor fellows nothing either in her stature or costume to answer to the fancied figure of majesty which they had naturally formed in their minds, and were convinced they were going to see. They had, on first entering the room, taken the Duchess of Kent for the Queen, and said they were not apprised of their error until they heard me address the Queen as "Her Majesty." They were advancing many curious ideas (over the pipe) as to the government of the greatest and richest country in the world being in the hands of a woman, and she no larger than many of the Indian girls at the age of twelve or thirteen years. I explained to them the manner in which she was entitled to the crown, and also how little a king or queen has actually to do in the government of such a country; that it is chiefly done by her ministers, who are always about her, and men of the greatest talents, and able to advise her. And the old chief, who had been listening attentively to me, as he was puffing away at his pipe, said, he was inclined to think it was the best thing for the country. "I am not sure," said he, "but it is the safest way; for if this country had a king instead of a queen, he might be ambitious as a great warrior, and lead the country into war with other nations: now, under her government there is peace, and the country is happy." Many jokes were passed upon the old chief for having mistaken the porter Sykes for Prince Albert, and for having brought his pipe of peace back, having been afraid to present it. They had many remarks to make also upon the little girl whom her Majesty took by the hand; they told her she turned pale, and they were afraid she would grow up a white woman. They now, for the first time, thought of the Queen's little children, and wondered they had not seen them: they thought they ought, at least, to have seen the Prince of Wales. Daniel, they said, had long since told them how old he was, and that he was to be the next king of England. He had also read to them his long names, which had pleased them very much, which they never could recollect, but would have written down. The conversation again, and for some time, ran upon the deliciousness of her Majesty's chickabobboo, and also upon the presents which they had imagined would have been made to them, and which I assured them they might feel quite easy about, as they would come in due time according to the custom. So were they whiling away the evening of this memorable day, and I left them. The grand point having been made, their visit to the Queen, the Indians seemed in good spirits to meet the greetings of the public, amongst whom the daily paragraphs in the papers, and their occasional drives through the streets, had excited the most intense curiosity. The place for their operations was prepared for them in the Egyptian Hall; and in the midst of my Indian collection, as in Manchester, a platform was erected on which their dances and other amusements were to be given. Having been without any exciting occupation for more than a month, in daily anticipation of their visit to the Queen, the Indians had become, as well as the public, impatient for the opening of their exhibition, which seemed requisite for their amusement as well as necessary for their accustomed bodily exercise. Their first evening's amusements being announced, the large room of the Egyptian Hall was filled at an early hour, and the Indians received with a roar of applause as they entered and advanced upon the platform. I came on by their side, and after they had seated themselves upon the platform, entered upon my duty, that of explaining to the audience who these people were, whence they came, and what were their objects in visiting this country. I also introduced each one personally by his name, to the audience, and briefly described their costumes, weapons, &c., and they were then left to commence as they chose, with their dances and other amusements. Indian looks and Indian costumes, &c., were supposed to have been pretty well understood before this, by most of the audience, who had studied them at their leisure in my rooms on former occasions; but Indian dances and Indian yells, and the war-whoop, had been from necessity postponed and unappreciated until the present moment, when the sudden yell and scream of the whole party (as they sprang upon their feet) announced the war-dance as having commenced. The drum was beating, rattles were shaking, war-clubs and tomahawks and spears were brandishing over their heads, and all their voices were shouting (in time with the beat of the drum and the stamps of their feet) the frightful war-song! With the exception of some two or three women (whose nerves were not quite firm enough for these excitements, and who screamed quite as loud as the Indians did, as they were making a rush for the door) the audience stood amazed and delighted with the wildness and newness of the scene that was passing before them; and, at the close of the dance, united in a round of applause, which seemed to please the Indians as much as seeing the Queen. Like all actors, they were vain of their appearance, and proud of applause, and (rather luckily for them, and unlike the painful excitements that fall to the lot of most actors' lives) they were sure of the applause which sympathy brings, and exempt from that censure which often falls heavily upon those whose acting the audience is able to criticise. According to their custom, after the war-dance was finished, the Indians seated themselves upon the platform and lit their long pipe, which they were almost constantly smoking. This pipe was filled with their own native tobacco (k'nick-k'neck), and passed around from one to the other for a few whiffs, according to the usage of all the American tribes. I took this opportunity of explaining to the audience the meaning of the war-dance, the war-whoop, &c., and whilst I was up, was so overwhelmed with questions (all of which I felt disposed to answer) that I found it exceedingly difficult to sit down again. These questions were put for the purpose of gaining information which it was my wish to give; and having patiently answered a number of them, I stated to the audience that I believed the explanations I should throw out in the course of the evening in my own way, would answer nearly every question that they would be disposed to put, and I begged they would allow me as much time and opportunity to give them as possible. This was responded to by acclamation all around the room, and the exhibition proceeded by the Indians wishing me to announce that they were to give the _wa-be-no_ (or mystery) dance. This eccentric and droll dance caused much merriment among the audience, and gained them hearty applause again; after which, they being seated as usual, with the pipe passing around, I proceeded with my explanation, which done, I was requested by the interpreter to announce that the old chief had something which he wished to say to the audience, and was going to make a speech. There was a great expression of satisfaction at this, evinced among the crowd, which seemed to give fire to the eye, and youth to the visage of the old man as he rose and said,-- "My friends--It makes our hearts glad when we hear your feet stamp upon the floor, for we know then that you are pleased, and not angry." (Great applause.) The old man then straightened himself up in the attitude of an orator, and, throwing his buffalo robe over his shoulder, and extending his right arm over the heads of his audience, he proceeded:-- "My friends and brothers--These young men and women and myself have come a great way to see you, and to see our GREAT MOTHER THE QUEEN. The Great Spirit has been kind to us, for we are all well, and we have seen her face. ('_How, how, how!_') "My friends--We know that the Saganoshes in our country all come from this place; they are our friends there, and we think they will not be our enemies here. ('_How, how, how!_' and immense applause, with 'Hear, hear, hear,' from the audience.) "My friends--You see I am old, and my words are few; some of my younger men may talk longer than I can. I hope our noise is not too great. ('No, no,' from every part of the room: 'The more noise the better, my good fellows.') "Brothers--My young men will finish their dances in a little while, when we will be glad to give you our hands." ("_How, how, how!_" great applause, and "Hear, hear.") The venerable old man then resumed his seat; and at that moment, as the pipe was preparing, Daniel was making his way through the crowd, with one hand raised above the heads of the audience, conveying a large square letter, which he was endeavouring to hand to me. On opening the letter and reading, I found it was from the Honourable Mr. Murray, and, with permission of the audience, I read thus:-- "Dear Sir,--I have great pleasure to inform you that I am instructed by Her Majesty to transmit to you the enclosed 20_l._ note to be given to the Ojibbeway chiefs; and also to say that Her Majesty has instructed me to order to be made, as soon as possible, an entire piece of plaid, of Her Majesty's colours, which is also to be presented to them in her name, as an evidence of Her Majesty's friendship for them, and solicitude for their welfare. I have transmitted the order for the plaid, and as soon as it can be prepared I shall send it to them. "I have the honour to be, dear Sir, yours, &c. &c. "CHAS. AUG. MURRAY, "_Master of Her Majesty's Household, Buckingham Palace._ "_To Geo. Catlin, Esq._" */ The reading of this letter called forth a round of applause, which the Indians did not seem to understand until its contents were interpreted to them by Cadotte, when they received the bank-note with a yell or two, and then gathered around it to examine it, and to make out, if they could, how it could be a present of 20_l._, or (in American currency, which they were a little more familiar with) 100 dollars. That they might better appreciate it, however, I sent Daniel to the door with it, who in a few moments brought back twenty sovereigns, which were placed in the chief's hand, and, being better understood, were soon divided equally, and put into the pouches which were attached to their belts. The War-chief (who was not much of an orator, and always seemed embarrassed when he spoke) then rose, and advanced to the front of the platform to offer his acknowledgments. He held his long pipe to his lips, and, drawing several deep breaths of smoke to his lungs, and pouring it out through his nostrils, at length began:-- "My friends--I can't speak--I never speak. (Great applause, and he smoked again.) "My friends--My heart and my tongue were never made to live together. (Roar of applause, and '_How, how, how!_') Our chief is old, and his words few: he has told you that the Great Spirit has been kind to us, and that we have seen the face of our Great Mother the Queen. We have all thanked the Great Spirit for this, and we all wish to thank our Great Mother now for the presents she has sent us. She is not here, and we can't thank her; but we see these presents pass through your hands, and we wish to thank you. ('_How, how, how!_' and 'Hear.') "Brothers--I have no more to say, but I shall be glad in a little time to offer you my hand." ("_How, how, how!_" and applause.) The audience were now prepared, and the Indians also, for the _pipe-dance_, one of the most spirited and picturesque of their dances, and which they gave with great effect. It was then announced that the Indians would seat themselves on the front of the platform, where all the visitors who desired it might have an opportunity to advance and shake hands with them. This afforded the visitors a gratifying opportunity of getting nearer to them, and disposed many to be liberal to them, who gave them money and trinkets to a considerable amount. Thus passed their first night of exhibition in London. The audience gradually drew off, and the Indians, at length seeing a space through which they could pass, gathered up their weapons, &c., and retired to their private rooms, leaving Daniel to answer to, and explain, all the curious surmises and questions that had been raised in the minds of the audience during the evening, and not explained; amongst whom (he told me the next day) there were at least a dozen who wished to know "in what way the Indians were _taken_--whether with a lasso or in a sort of pit," as they had heard of their taking wild oxen, &c. Half a dozen inquired what part of the Indies they were from; twenty or more "whether Cooper's descriptions of the Red Indians were true;" several "whether they eat the scalps;" and one desired to be informed "if it was actually necessary to cross the ocean to get to America, or whether it was not attached to the mainland." Several ladies were waiting to inquire "whether the Indians actually had no beards;" and a great number of women after these, some of whom lingered patiently until all other questions had been answered, begged to know "whether the interpreter and the handsome little fellow _Sah-mah_ were married." Mr. Rankin and myself, as usual, went into the Indians' apartments to smoke a pipe with them after the fatigues of the evening were over, and we found the poor fellows in an unusually pleasant humour, counting over and showing the money and trinkets which they had received from the visitors, and also the money sent by the Queen, which, to be divided more exactly _per capita_ (their mode of dividing presents), they had got changed into silver. Their high excitement and exhilaration convinced us that it was the very sort of life they required to lead to secure their health; and their remarks upon the incidents that had transpired in the room, as well as things they discovered in the crowd, were exceedingly amusing and caused them a great deal of merriment whilst they were repeating them over. In the midst of all this they often uttered the exciting word _Chickabobboo_; and it occurred to Mr. Rankin and myself as a suitable occasion to explain to them that we had no objection to their having each a glass of ale at their dinner, and also after the exceeding fatigues of their dances at night. We told them "that, in binding them in the promise they had made, and so far kept, it never entered our heads that they were not to be allowed an occasional glass of wine or ale--luxuries of which nearly all the good people of England, ladies as well as gentlemen, and even divines, partook in a moderate way. We believed that they would use as much discretion in taking those things as English fashionable people did, and felt quite sure they would keep their promise with us. I told them that this ale which I had just mentioned was a very fine drink, and we thought that, though it was not quite as good as the Queen's _chickabobboo_, yet they would like it, and that a glass of it at dinner, and also after their night's fatigues, would give them strength and be of service to them. I told them also that we had just sent for a jug of it (at that moment coming in), that they might try it, and see whether they liked it." "_How, how, how!_" resounded through the whole house; and each, as he emptied his glass, shouted "_Chickabobboo! chickabobboo! ne-she-sheen! ne-she-sheen!_" (good, good). So we agreed that, if on the next morning they should pronounce its effects to be pleasing, they should be allowed a similar quantity every day at dinner, and also at night, instead of the strong coffee they were accustomed to drink before going to bed. We then left them; and thus finished our first day's labours and excitements at the Egyptian Hall. CHAPTER XIV. Rev. Mr. S---- and friend visit the Indians again--A day appointed for a _talk_ about religion--Indians go to the Thames Tunnel--Give the medicine-dance (wabeno) under it--Kind treatment there, and _Chickabobboo_--The exhibition--Egyptian Hall--Debate about the propriety of the Indians dancing to make money--Great crowd--Woman screaming and lifted on to the platform by Cadotte (afterwards called the "_jolly fat_ dame")--She gives Cadotte a beautiful bracelet--Her admiration of Cadotte--Evening gossip after their exhibition--The amusements of the evening and sights of the day--A clergyman asks an interview with the Indians and gets offended--Exhibition rooms at night--Great crowd--The "jolly fat dame" in full dress--She talks with Cadotte--Indians meet the Rev. Mr. S---- and friend by appointment--Old Chief's speech to them--Gish-ee-gosh-e-ghee's speech--Reverend gentlemen thank them and take leave. The morning after their first interview with the public at the Egyptian Hall having been deemed a proper time for a visit to them, the Rev. Mr. S---- and a friend called on me with a view to a further conversation with them on the subject of religion, which had been postponed at their request until after they had seen the Queen, which honour they had now had. I spoke to the chiefs about it, and they said, "It is very difficult now, for we have not time. Mr. Rankin has gone for the carriage, and we are just going out to ride, but you can bring them in." The old chief received them very kindly, and gave them seats, when the Rev. Mr. S---- addressed them through the interpreter in the most kind and winning manner. "My friends, I have been delighted to see by the papers that your Great Mother the Queen has graciously received you and made you some valuable presents; and I hope the time is come now when your minds are at ease, and we can have some conversation on that great and important subject that I proposed the other day." The old man was at that moment painting his face with vermilion and bear's grease, as he sat on the floor with a small looking-glass between his knees, and the palms of both hands covered with his red paint, which he was plastering over his face, and impressing on his naked arms and shoulders. He was not in a condition or mood to make a speech, or to hold a long talk; but he replied in a few words: "You see, my friends, that it is impossible to talk long now, for my young men, like myself, are all dressing and painting to take our ride, which we take every morning at ten. We are going now to the show of wild beasts, and we can't wait long; if we do, we may not see them." The reverend gentleman very pleasantly and patiently said to him, that he did not wish to take up any of their time when they had amusements or exercise to attend to; but he hoped they would keep the subject in mind, and give them some leisure hour when they could listen to him; and proposed the next day at twelve o'clock. The old man said, "No; at twelve they were to give their exhibition, which was, after that day, to be given in the day and evening also."--"Well, at two?"--"At two we dine."--"Well, what do you do after dinner?"--"Sleep."--"Not all the afternoon?"--"Pretty much."--"Well, in the morning, at eight?"--"_In bed_ at eight."--"What time do you breakfast?"--"About nine."--"Well, then, say ten?"--"Well, ten."--"To-morrow?"--"No, next day." The reverend gentleman then said, "Well, my good friends, we will come and see you the day after to-morrow, at ten; and we hope you will think of this important subject in the mean time." The chief said, "He would be glad to see them, as he had promised; but they had so much to see and to think of, that it was not probable they could have much time to think about it; and as the Queen didn't say anything to them about it, they hadn't given it any thought since they last met." The Indians took their customary omnibus drive-- not on this morning, as the old chief anticipated, to the menagerie, but to the Thames Tunnel and London Bridge. To these they were accompanied by Mr. Rankin, and looked upon them both as the wondrous works of white men's hands, which they could not comprehend. When they entered the Tunnel, and were told that they were under the middle of the Thames, and that the great ships were riding over their heads, they stood in utter astonishment, with their hands over their mouths (denoting silence), and said nothing until they came out. They called it the "_Great Medicine Cave_," and gave the medicine (or _wa-be-no_) dance at the entrance of it. Mr. Rankin made a speech here to the thousands assembled, which I believe was never recorded. They were met with much kindness at that place, where they received some fine presents, and were treated, they said, to some very good _chickabobboo_. The scene at the Egyptian Hall on this evening was again very exciting, the Hall being as full as it could pack, and the Indians in great glee, which insured much amusement. I accompanied the Indians on to the platform as before, and, as usual, introduced them to the audience, and explained the objects for which they had come to this country, &c.: they then proceeded with their amusements by giving a dance, accompanied by their customary yells and the war-whoop, which was followed by thundering applause. They then seated themselves and smoked their pipes, while I explained the nature and object of the dance they had just given. While I was thus engaged, some decided opposition to the nature of the exhibition manifested itself, which might well exist in the minds of persons unacquainted with the relative position in which these Indians and myself stood; and which objections I felt quite willing to meet at that moment. The first interruption that I met with was from a man who had taken his position in front of me, and whom I had seen several times endeavouring to obtain a hearing. He at length took an opportunity when he could be distinctly heard, and addressed me thus:--"Do you think it right, Sir, to bring those poor ignorant people here to dance for money?" There was a cry of "Put him out! put him out!" but as soon as I could restore silence I said, "No, my friends, don't put him out; I wish to answer such questions." At that moment another rose in an opposite part of the room, and said-- "I think it is degrading to those poor people to be brought here, Sir, to be shown like wild beasts, for the purpose of making money; and I think, more than that,--that it is degrading to _you_, Sir, to bring them here for such a purpose; and the sooner it is stopped the better." The audience, at my request, had held silence until this speech was finished, when there was a general cry of "Turn him out! turn him out! Shame! shame!" &c. I waited as patiently as I could until silence was restored, when I was enabled to get every ear in the house to listen to me; and I then said-- "My friends, I beg that there may be no more disposition to turn any one out, for, if I can be heard a few moments, I will save all further trouble, and, I venture to say, make those two gentlemen as good friends to the Indians, and to myself, as any in the room. The questions which they have naturally put are perfectly fair questions, and such as I am anxious everywhere to answer to. The position in which I stand at present is not, I grant, ostensibly, the one in which my former professions would place me. I have been several years known to the British public, from my labours and my professions, as an advocate for the character and the rights of American Indians. This position I have taken, and still claim, from a residence of eight years amongst the various tribes where I have travelled, at great expense, and hazard to my life, acquainting myself with their true native dispositions, whilst I was collecting the memorials of these abused and dying people, which you see at this time hanging around us. In the eight years of my life which I have devoted to this subject, I have preserved more historical evidences of these people, and done more justice to their character, than any man living; and on these grounds I demand at least the presumption that I am acting a friendly part towards them, who have in their own country treated me with genuine hospitality. (Hear, hear! and immense applause.) "My friends, we come now to the facts, which it is my duty to mention, and which I presume those two gentlemen are not acquainted with. In the first place, I did not bring these people to this country, but have always been opposed to such parties going to a foreign country for such an object.[9] These Indians are men, with reasoning faculties and shrewdness like to our own, and they have deliberately entered into a written agreement with the person who has the charge of them, and who is now in the room, to come to this country, stimulated by the ambition of seeing Her Majesty the Queen, whose lawful subjects they are, and make, if possible, by their humble and honest exertions, a little money to carry home to their children. (Immense applause.) "These people are the avowed friends of the English in their own country, and several of them are here to show the frightful wounds they received in fighting Her Majesty's battles in the war of 1812. (Applause, and Hear!) "When they arrived, their first object was to see my collection, which is known (at least by report) to almost every Indian to the Pacific coast; and when they were in it, they decided that there was the appropriate place for their dances, &c., and insisted upon my conducting their exhibitions. By this it is seen that I met these persons in this country; and in the belief that my countenance and aid would render them subjects of greater interest, and therefore promote their views, I have undertaken to stand by them as their friend and advocate--not as wild beasts, but as men (though perhaps 'degraded,' as civilized actors degrade themselves on foreign boards) labouring in an honest vocation, amid a world of strangers, wiser and shrewder than themselves, for the means of feeding their wives and little children. (Hear, hear, hear.) "These people are here at an enormous expense, and the gentleman to whom they have intrusted themselves has a tremendous responsibility on his hands, for he must return them safe home, at his own expense, after sharing the receipts of the expedition with them. They are free men, and not slaves; and in a free country like this, who will have the cruelty to say to them, 'Stop your vocation, and go to the streets, like the poor Lascars, with brooms in your hands;' or the kindness to say, 'Quit your dancing, and we will pay your expenses to the shores of Lake Huron, and give you money to buy blankets and food for your wives and little children'? (Hear, hear! and applause.) "As for 'degradation,' I only hope, my friends, that I may always live as free from it as I consider myself whilst by my exertions I am promoting the honest views of these simple and unoffending people; and for the name and honour of civilization I only wish that the thousands of the enlightened world who are led into the Indian countries by the passion to make money, would make it in as honest a way, and as free from degradation, as the one in which these poor fellows are labouring here to make a little." (Cheers and immense applause, and cries of "No reply, no reply!") [9] On a subject of so much importance to me, I deem proof admissible and necessary, and therefore offer to the reader the following letter from the former Secretary at War, Mr. Poinsett, to whom I had written on the subject of an expedition, fitting out in the United States, for such a purpose, several years since:-- My dear Sir, Washington City, October 19th, 1839. I received your letter of the 11th instant, and am much obliged to you for the information of the contemplated speculations with Indians in foreign countries. I have taken precautions to defeat all such enterprises, and will prosecute the speculators, and saddle them with heavy costs, instead of gains, if I can detect them. I consider such proceedings are calculated to degrade the Red Man, and certainly not to exalt the whites engaged in them. With great regard, Yours very truly, _To Geo. Catlin, Esq._ J. R. POINSETT, Sec. at War. A few days after I received the above letter an order was issued from the department of war to all the surveyors of Atlantic ports, prohibiting Indians from being shipped to England, or other foreign countries, for the purposes of exhibitions, without the consent of the Government of the country. My two opponents by this time had lowered their heads and were lost sight of amidst the crowd, and no other objections were heard from them; and the poor Indians, who had enjoyed a good pipe in the mean time, without knowing the nature of our debate, were rested and prepared for their next dance. The audience at this time were all standing, and wedged together, as it were, in every part of the room; and amongst such a crowd, so closely packed, there were many occurrences in the course of the evening which afforded much amusement to the Indians, who were overlooking the whole of it from their platform. The screams of one woman, who announced that "she should faint unless she could get out," stopped all proceedings for a few moments. It was decided on all hands to be impossible for her to reach the door; and, being near the platform, she was at length lifted on to it by the joint aid of the Indians and those below, and she then took a conspicuous seat, as she supposed, for the rest of the evening. Another now hallooed for help and fresh air, and, not being so near the platform, was told that it was entirely impossible to get out, unless she was lifted over the heads of the crowd. "Never mind," said she, "I must go!" So she was raised by many hands, amidst a roar of laughter and fun, every one over whose head she was passed, being quite willing and ready to lend a hand, with a "Lay hold here! pass her along," &c. The "jolly fat dame" (as she was afterwards called), who had escaped from the surges and squeezes of the mass below, now comfortably seated on the edge of the platform, and briskly plying her pocket-handkerchief by way of fan, began to imagine her condition in no way improved, inasmuch as her back was towards her friends the Indians, and her jolly red face, of necessity, under the intense glare of the chandelier, and exposed to the gaze of the audience, who she imagined were passing their criticisms on her "good looks." (_Plate_ No. 7.) More and more annoyed every moment at the idea that her ruddy face was growing redder and redder as it was just in the focus of all eyes in the room, and at the instant thought also that (considering she was only coming into a crowd) her stays had been left off, and her new poplin dress, with lace frill in front, not prudent to wear, she had silently and unadvisedly resolved upon resuming her old position, and with that view unceremoniously launched herself, feet foremost, amongst the crowd of gentlemen below. Owing to several circumstances--the density of the crowd, her rotund and unwedge-like form, &c.,--there was an insurmountable difficulty (which she probably had not anticipated) in bringing down with her feet to the floor, or anywhere in that direction, the voluminous paraphernalia with which she was circumvested. This state of semi-suspension (her toes merely occasionally feeling the floor) became instantly alarming to her, as well as conspicuous and amusing to the Indians and the audience; and whilst she was imploring one party in the name of Heaven to lift, and the other to pull, the strong and muscular arms of the interpreter, Cadotte, gracefully raised her out of the abyss below, and, leading her across to the back part of the platform, gave her a comfortable seat, squatted behind, and in the shadow of the Indian group, amongst shields and war-clubs, and other implements used by the Indians in their various amusements. [Illustration: N^o. 7.] All was mirth and amusement during the remainder of the evening; and the last position of the "jolly fat dame" (who it would seem had strolled in on the occasion alone) proved exceedingly gratifying to her, as it afforded her an opportunity of a few words of conversation now and then with Cadotte, and of bestowing upon him a very splendid bracelet which she took from her own arm, saying, as she gave it, "Look here; you will always know me in a crowd, for on my left arm I have the fellow to it, and I will always wear it for your sake, that you may not lose sight of me." This gush of kindness had suffused the uninvaded soul of this simple and fresh-grown young man, and, when the exhibition had closed, gained her the kindness of his strong grip again in easing her down upon the floor. His backwoods gallantry could not allow her to wander about alone and uninstructed, and he glided down from the platform on his soft mocassined feet, and, with his eagle and ostrich plumes waving six feet and a half from the floor, was strolling around by her side as the audience were withdrawing from the room, and enlightening her by his descriptions of the paintings and Indian curiosities covering the walls of the Hall. The Indians in the mean time had shaken hands with the audience, and received many fine presents, and having gathered their robes and their weapons, and Mr. Rankin having announced to Cadotte that "the carriage was ready," the poor fellow turned upon his heel and said, "I am obliged to go." "I am so sorry," she exclaimed; "but look ye, can you read?" "Yes, ma'am." "But can you read writing?" "Yes, a little." "Oh, well, never mind, I'm going to be here every night--oh! it is so charming to me! Good night, good night!" The Indians were now off to their lodgings, and the greater part of the audience also, leaving poor Daniel, as usual, in the midst of some dozen or two of the most inquisitive and knowledge seeking and devouring, to answer the accustomed routine of inquiries reserved for this (to them) most profitable part of the exhibition. He was assuring the crowd around him that "these people were _not_ taken with a lasso, nor were they taken in a pit (as some had conjectured), but that they had _come in_ of their own accord," &c. He was also showing the _real lasso_, and explaining that it was only a cord with a noose at the end of it, which the Indians throw over the wild horses' necks to catch them, and not "a _net_ or a _hammock_," to both of which he pointed, and which it seems many had mistook for lassoes. He had also commented upon several _real scalps_ which he had taken down and was holding in his hand, saying, "Gentlemen, what nonsense to talk about Indians eating the scalps! You see the scalp is nothing but a small piece of the skin from the top of the head, with the hair on it, and dried as hard as a bit of sole-leather: there couldn't be any pleasure in eating a thing of that sort." About this time the "jolly fat dame," having edged up in his vicinity, touched Daniel on the shoulder, and at her nod and wink he followed her to the other side of the room, when she said, "Well, you know _me_, don't you, Daniel?" "Yes, madam, I recollect you very well; you used to come here, some months ago, very often, to see the collection and the tableaux." "Well, now," said she, "look here: those shoats there will worry you to death; I'd let them alone; they'll go in a minute. Ah, what a delightful scene this has been to-night! The _real Indians_ after all! what I never expected to see. I never was so happy and so much delighted before--oh, dear me! they are _such fine_ fellows! I shall be here every night. I can't keep away. How happy they seem! they are clever--ah, that they are! I venture to say they are very clever men. That Interpreter!--what's his name? for I have forgotten." "His name is Cadotte, madam." "Ah, yes; stop a moment till I write it down, lest I should forget. I don't like to forget things--I can't say that I like to forget. How do you say? Cado--with two t's, or one?" "I believe it is spelt with two t's, madam." "Yes, I dare say--_Cadotte!_--now I have it! Well, it is wonderful! What a fine-looking fellow that Cadotte is--ha!--what a tremendous powerful man! Oh, law me! he made nothing of taking me up there. I suppose you saw him?" "No, madam, I was 'tending door; but I heard of it." "Why, bless me! I was no more than a pocket-handkerchief to him as he lifted me on to the platform; and you see I'm not a thing for the wind to blow away--oh dear!--and what a tremendous hand he has! I never saw the like. When he took hold of my arm it seemed as if he could have crushed it in a moment. I am sure he is six feet and a half high." "No, not quite that, madam, but pretty near it." "Well, really he is a giant, almost; and yet I am sure he is young--not over 20 I am quite sure!" "No, madam, he is but just turned 18 I believe." "Oh, charming! and how wonderful! But you are jesting, Daniel?" "No, madam, I may be mistaken, but I believe I am right." "He can't be married yet?" "Oh, no, you may be sure of that--I don't suppose he ever thought of a woman yet." "Bless me!--ah, well!--did you see the present I made him, Daniel?" "No, madam, I have not." "Look there! I gave him the fellow to that. He'll recollect me, won't he? I took it off, and tried to buckle it on his wrist myself; but, law me, what a tremendous arm he has got! it wouldn't go much more than half way around! I thought _I_ had a pretty lusty arm, Daniel?--feel it--clasp it round--take hold higher up--up there--I never wear sleeves!--that's lusty, is'nt it?" "Yes, by jolly!" said Daniel, as he was making a careful estimate of it; "that's a stout arm, madam." "Well, mine is a baby's arm to that 'boy's,' as you call him. Ah, well, Daniel, I am taking up your time, and I must go. I shall be here every night, I assure you; and you will always let me in early? You see I am not half dressed to-night. I want to get as near that corner of the platform as possible when I come." "I understand." "Good night!" "Good night! madam." At this moment, or a moment after, Daniel closed the door upon the last remaining visitors, and I stepped out from behind a green curtain at one end of the platform, forming a little retreat into which I was in the habit of withdrawing myself to avoid the crowd at the close of the exhibition. Owing to this little accident, therefore, the reader is in possession of the above ejaculatory conversation between the "jolly fat lady" and Daniel; for as, in taking him to the "other side of the room," she had most fortunately placed her back within a few inches of the screen that was before me, bringing poor Daniel's eye to mine directly over her shoulder, I was enabled to record, _verbatim et literatim_ (which it might have puzzled poor Daniel to have done from recollection, after the excitement of her jolly fat arm), precisely all that was said and done on the occasion, as above related. "Why," said I, "Daniel, that lady seems to be quite 'taken' with Cadotte." "Taken! she's more than that--she's dead _in love_ with him. I'll be shot if ever I saw the like in my life--the woman is perfectly mad after him--and she's the same lady that used to come to the _tableaux_ so often when you gave them in the Egyptian Hall, and was repeatedly asking (as you'll recollect I told you) whether you were actually married; and when I told her you were, she wouldn't believe it. She's the same identical woman. I knew her in a moment, for I have talked hours with her in the exhibition rooms; and didn't you hear her call me Daniel when she spoke to me to-night? She appears to be quite a lady. She used to come in quite a respectable carriage; and I'll venture to say it has been standing at the door all the evening, and I'll be shot but it will be there every night for a fortnight to come." "Well, it is quite a curious case; but let us treat her respectfully, and with politeness, on all occasions." "Oh, yes, certainly; she is very civil and polite, and you may be sure, Mr. Catlin, that she will receive no other treatment from me." Under an agreement with Mr. Rankin and the Indians to meet them at their lodgings after the exhibition, I repaired to their rooms, and found them just finishing their beefsteaks and their jug of _chickabobboo_. They were all in a merry humour, talking over the curious scenes they had witnessed in the crowd. They said they thought the Englishwomen loved to be squeezed in a crowd, for there were a great many there, and they seemed to be very happy and goodnatured. They were sure that they saw several persons quite drunk in the room, and also believed that many of the ladies there must have been drinking _chickabobboo_. They had several hearty laughs about the poor woman who was passed over the people's heads; and also about the "jolly fat dame," who was lifted on to the platform by Cadotte; and they teazed him a long time with their jokes about her, and the beautiful present he had received from her, and which they had seen her a long time trying to fasten on to his arm. Their jokes, which they were thus innocently enjoying, and their _chickabobbo_, seemed to make them cheerful and happy; and I returned home, myself pleased, and went to bed. My desk was now becoming loaded with communications relative to the Ojibbeway Indians, with more inquiries about their domestic habits and warfare than I could possibly find time to answer, and more invitations to dinners and parties than they could attend to; and on the next day, amongst numerous applications for private interviews, were two notes from reverend gentlemen, wishing opportunities to converse with them. To them I answered that I should feel much satisfaction in affording them every opportunity and every facility in my power, and I recommended that they should come the next day at ten o'clock, when the Indians were, by appointment, to meet several clergymen to converse upon the subject of religion. One of those reverend gentlemen replied to my note, saying, that "he should prefer a different audience from that which I had named, and should feel as if I had acted entirely up to the professions of my first note if I would use my endeavours to obtain it;" to which I answered that "my only reason for recommending that occasion was, that, as they had already had several short interviews with clergymen, and had fixed upon that morning for a final interview, I thought it probable it would be the only opportunity he could have of hearing them state their religious belief." I never received any further communication from this reverend gentleman, nor did he attend the meeting named; and if I gave him any offence, it was done while I was giving him what I thought to be the most friendly advice. The next night of their exhibition at the Egyptian Hall passed off much like the preceding one; the Hall was crowded, and in the midst of the crowd, at the end of the platform (as she had desired it), appeared the "_jolly fat dame_" in _full_ dress, and fully equipped and prepared for any emergency. She was in her "_stays_" and her _poplin_ and _lace_, and loaded with trinkets; and although it was now the middle of winter, that she might not suffer quite so much as she had done the night before, she had brought a large fan, which the heat of the room and its excitements made it necessary to keep constantly in motion. Daniel had placed her where she could get some support by leaning on the platform, and once in a while whisper a word to Cadotte, whose beautifully embroidered mocassins were near to her nose when he leant forward to listen to her, with the eagle plumes and ostrich feathers of his cap falling gracefully down over her shoulders. She looked altogether more lovely and "killing" that night than on the first; and, while she kept more cool and considerate, was not lessening the progress which her fascinations were making upon the heart of poor Cadotte, nor curtailing the draughts of admiration which she was taking in at every breath she inhaled, and at every glance that she had of his manly and herculean figure as it moved before her. What transpired in the bosom and the brain of this fair dame during the evening, none but herself can exactly know; but, from the lustre of her eyes, and the pleasure beaming from every part of her jolly face, it was evident that peace and happiness, for the time, reigned within. The dances and other amusements of the evening pleased all of the audience well, and the "jolly fat dame" _supremely_. The Indians returned to their apartments, and delighted themselves by counting over their money and trinkets, with which they were well pleased, and drinking their _chickabobboo_. The next morning at ten o'clock, the hour appointed, the Rev. Mr. S---- and friend called, and were conducted by me to the Indians' apartments. They were met with cordiality by the Indians and by Mr. Rankin; and when the kind and reverend gentleman reminded them of the promise made him for that morning, they all responded "_How, how, how!_" They then, at the order of the chief, all spread their robes upon the floor, upon which they took their seats, and at once were in _council_. The reverend gentleman then, in a tone and a manner the most winning, and calculated to impress upon them the sincerity of his views, told them "he was aware that they were religious, that they all worshipped the Great Spirit, but that he did not exactly know in what way; that he did not come here to tell them anything to give them offence, but with the hope of learning something more of their belief and modes of worship, of which he confessed he was ignorant, and also of explaining to them what he and the other divines in the civilized world believed to be the best, if not the only true religion." (Here the old chief lighted his pipe, which he commenced smoking.) The reverend gentleman then explained, in the briefest manner possible, and in the mode the best calculated for their understanding (and which was literally interpreted them), the system of the Christian religion and the mode of redemption. When the reverend gentleman had finished his remarks, the old chief filled his pipe again, and, sitting with his eyes cast down until he had smoked it partly out, he handed it to the War-chief, and (instead of rising, as an Indian does to speak on any other subject) the old man rested his elbows on his knees and answered as follows:--[10] "My friends--We feel thankful for the information and advice which you come to give us, for we know that you are good men and sincere, and that we are like children, and stand in need of advice. "We have listened to your words, and have no fault to find with them. We have heard the same words in our own country, where there have been many white people to speak them, and our ears have never been shut against them. "We have tried to understand white man's religion, but we cannot--it is _medicine_ to us, and we think we have no need of it. _Our_ religion is simple, and the Great Spirit who gave it to us has taught us all how to understand it. We believe that the Great Spirit made our religion for us, and white man's religion for white men. Their sins we believe are much greater than ours, and perhaps the Great Spirit has thought it best therefore to give them a different religion. "Some white men have come to our country, and told us that if we did not take up white man's religion, and give up our own, we should all be lost. Now we don't believe that; and we think those are bad or blind men. "My friends--We know that the Great Spirit made the red men to dwell in the forests, and white men to live in green fields and in fine houses; and we believe that we shall live separate in the world to come. The best that we expect or want in a future state is a clear sky and beautiful hunting-grounds, where we expect to meet the friends whom we loved; and we believe that if we speak the truth we shall go there. This we think might not suit white people, and therefore we believe that their religion is best for them. "If we follow the religion of our fathers we shall meet them again: if we follow a different religion we are not sure of it. "My friends--We are here but a few, and we are a great way from our homes, and we shall have but little time to waste in talking on this subject. When a few white men come into our country to make money, we don't ask them to take up our religion. We are here away from our wives and children to try to get some money for them, and there are many things we can take home to them of much more use than white man's religion. Give us guns and ammunition, that we can kill food for them, and protect them from our enemies, and keep whisky and rum sellers out of our country. "My friends--We love you, and give you our hands; but we wish to follow the religion of our fathers, and would rather not talk any more on the subject." (_'How, how, how!'_) [10] The numerous conversations held on the subjects of religion and education with the three different parties of Indians, in various parts of England, as well as on the continent, I consider form one of the most interesting features of this work; and as I have been present at them all, I have taken down all the Indians' remarks on those occasions, and I have inserted them in all cases in this book as I wrote them from their lips, and not in any case from recollection.--AUTHOR. When the old man had thus closed his remarks, _Gish-ee-gosh-ee-gee_ took the pipe and puffed away a few minutes as hard as he could, when he spoke as follows:-- "My friends--The words of our chief, which you have just heard, are good--they are the words of nearly all of our nation. Some of the Ojibbeways say that the words of the white people are the best; but we believe that they have two tongues. "My friends--A few years ago a _black-coat_ came amongst us in the town where I live, and told us the same words as you have spoken this morning. He said that the religion of the white men was the only good religion; and some began to believe him, and after a while a great many believed him; and then he wanted us to help build him a house; and we did so. We lifted very hard at the logs to put up his house, and when it was done many sent their children to him to learn to read, and some girls got so as to read the 'good book,' and their fathers were very proud of it; and at last one of these girls had a baby, and not long after it another had a baby, and the _black-coat_ then ran away, and we have never seen him since. My friends, we don't think this right. I believe there is another _black-coat_ now in the same house. Some of the Indians send their boys there to learn to read, but they dare not let their girls go. "My friends, this is all I have to say." (_'How, how, how!'_) The reverend gentlemen kindly thanked the Indians for their patience, and, telling me that it would be cruel and useless, under their present circumstances, to question them longer, thanked Mr. Rankin and myself for the kind assistance we had rendered them, and retired, leaving with them as a present several very handsome Bibles. As I was leaving the room I heard the old chief complaining that talking made his lips very dry, and Mr. Rankin ordered for them a jug of _chickabobboo_.[11] [11] The minds of the Indians had been so much engrossed for several days with the subject of religion, that the inventive powers of the little _Sah-mah_ (Tobacco) had been at work; and when I called on them the next morning one of them handed me his ideas, as he had put them on paper with a lead pencil, and I give them to the reader (Plate No. 8) as near as my own hand could copy them from his original sketch now in my portfolio. If the reader can understand the lines, he will learn from it something of the state of the arts in the Indian country, as well as their native propensity to burlesque. [Illustration: N^o. 8.] CHAPTER XV. Exhibition rooms--Great crowd--The "jolly fat dame"--Her interview with Cadotte--She gives presents to all the Indians--Excitement in the crowd--Women kissing the Indians--Red paint on their faces and dresses--Old Chief's dream and feast of thanksgiving--An annual ceremony--Curious forms observed--Indians invited to the St. George's archery-ground--They shoot for a gold medal--They dine with the members of the club--The "jolly fat dame" and Cadotte--She takes him to his lodgings in her carriage--Cadotte (or the "Strong-wind") gets sick--Is in love with another!--Daniel unfolds the secret to her--Her distress--She goes to the country--The "jolly fat dame" returns--Cadotte's engagement to marry--Rankin promotes the marriage--The Author disapproves of it. The reader will easily imagine the position of the Indians at this time to have been a very pleasant and satisfactory one to themselves--all in good health; having seen and pleased the Queen; having met the public several times in the great city of London, where their Hall was crowded every night, and was likely to continue so; where everybody applauded, and many bestowed on them presents in trinkets and money; with plenty of roast beef, and withal indulged in their _chickabobboo_. The old chief had finished his talks on religion, and Cadotte was in the delightful state of incubation under the genial warmth of the wing of the jolly fat dame. The Hall on this evening was as overflowing as on the previous nights. The "jolly fat dame" had been the first one at the door, and, by the power of her smiles upon Daniel's gallantry, she had passed in before the hour for admitting the public. This had most luckily (and _bewitchingly_, as she did not expect it) allowed her a delightful _tête-à-tête_ of a few minutes with Cadotte, who happened to be sauntering about in the half-lighted hall of the exhibition, while the Indians were in an ante-chamber, putting on their streaks of paint, and arranging their locks of hair and ornaments for the evening. Lucky, lucky hour! What passed there in these few minutes nobody knows. _One thing_, however, we may presume, _did pass_ in that short time. Upon Daniel's authority she had a letter in her hand when she entered, and which was never identified on her person afterwards, though a similar one poor Cadotte was seen poring over for several subsequent days, at odd spells, like a child at its task in its spelling-book. As she was first in, she took her old position, which had afforded her so much pleasure the evening before. As her heart was more smitten, her hand became more liberal: she had come this night loaded with presents, and dealt them out without stint to the whole party. As each one received his brooch, or his pin, or his guard-chain, he held it up and gave a yell, which made the good lady's kindnesses subjects of notoriety; and we believed, and _feared_ also, that her vanity was such, that, to make the most of the occasion, she drew upon some of the most costly of the ornaments that adorned her own ample person. During the excitement thus produced by the distribution of her trinkets, some female in the midst of the crowd held up and displayed a beautiful bracelet "for the first one who should get to it." Three or four of the young fellows, with their naked shoulders and arms, leaped with the rapidity almost of lightning into the screaming mass. The little _Sah-mah_, who was the _beau-ideal_ of Indian beauty among them, bore off the prize. As there was not the same inducement for retracing their steps, and they were in the midst of strong inducements to stay in the crowd, it became exceedingly difficult to get them back, and to resume the amusements of the evening. Many ladies were offering them their hands and trinkets: some were kissing them, and every kiss called forth the war-whoop (as they called it, "a _scalp_"). The women commenced it as _Sah-mah_ had dashed into the crowd; and as he was wending his way back, finding it had pleased so well, he took every lady's hand that was laid upon his naked arm or his shoulder as a challenge, and he said that he kissed every woman that he passed. This may or may not be true; but one thing is certain, that many there were in the room that evening who went home to their husbands and mothers with streaks of red and black paint upon their cheeks, which nothing short of soap and water could remove. And, curious to relate, when the amusements were finished, and the audience nearly withdrawn, and the "jolly fat dame" was strolling about the room, she met her two maids, to whom she had given their shillings, and told them to "go and see the Indians." These two buxom young girls had been in the midst of the crowd, and, both of them having met with the accident I have mentioned above, the good-natured fat lady glowed into a roar of laughter as she vociferated, "Why, girls, you husseys, you have been kissing those Indians! Bless me, what a pretty figure you cut! why, your faces are all covered with red paint!" "And _your_ face, mistress! Look here! all one side of your face, and on your neck! Oh, look at your beautiful new lace!" And _it was even so_; but _how_ it happened, or where, or in what part of the excitement, or by whom, is yet to be learned. Leaving these excitements for a while, which were now become of nightly occurrence, we come to one of a different character and of curious interest. It is impossible for me to recollect the day, but it was about this time, the old chief related to Mr. Rankin a dream which he had had the night before, which made it incumbent upon them to make a feast, and of course necessary for Mr. Rankin and myself to furnish all the requisite materials for it. In his dream (or "vision," as he seemed disposed to call it) he said the Great Spirit appeared to him, and told him that he had kept his eye upon them, and guarded and protected them across the great ocean, according to their prayers, which he had heard; that he had watched them so far in this country; that they had been successful in seeing their Great Mother the Queen, and that they were now all happy and doing well. But in order to insure a continuance of these blessings, and to make their voyage back across the ocean pleasant and safe, it now became necessary that they should show their thankfulness to the Great Spirit in giving their great annual Feast of Thanksgiving, which is customary in their country at the season when their maize is gathered and their dried meat is laid in and secured for their winter's food. This injunction, he said, was laid upon him thus, and he could not from any cause whatever neglect to attend to it; if he did, he should feel assured of meeting the displeasure of the Great Spirit, and they should all feel at once distressed about the uncertainty of their lives on their way back. This Feast of Thanksgiving must be given the next day, and they should wish us to procure for them a whole goat, or a sheep, and said that it must be a _male_, and that they would require a place large enough to cook it without breaking a bone in its body, according to the custom of their country. The request of this good old man was of course granted with great pleasure; and Mr. Rankin, in a short time, returned from the market with the sheep, which, on close inspection, seemed to please them; and a large chamber in the Egyptian Hall, which Mr. Clark, the curator of the building, had placed at their service, was decided on as the place where the feast should be prepared and partaken of. Mr. Clark and his wife, who are kind and Christian people, afforded them all the facilities for cooking, and rendered them every aid they could in preparing their feast; and the next day, at the hour appointed, it was announced to Mr. Rankin and myself that the "feast was ready, and that we were expected to partake of it with them." When we entered the room we found the feast arranged on the floor, in the centre of the large hall, and smoking, and the men all seated around it on buffalo robes; and the only two guests besides ourselves, my man Daniel and Mr. Clark, who were also seated. Two robes were placed for Mr. Rankin and myself, and we took our seats upon them. The three women of the party came in after we were all arranged, and, spreading their robes, seated themselves in another group at a little distance from us. A short time before the feast was ready, they sent Cadotte to me to request that I would buy for them a small cup of whisky, which was to be partaken of, "not as _drink_ for the _belly_, but as drink for the _spirit_," which by the custom of their country was absolutely necessary to the holding of their Feast of Thanksgiving. In this they were also, of course, indulged; and when we were seated, we found the whisky standing in front of the medicine-man in a small pewter mug. Everything now being in readiness, the pipe was lit by the war-chief, who rose up with it, and, presenting its stem towards the _north_ and the _south_, the _east_ and the _west_, and then upwards to the Great Spirit, and then to the earth, smoked through it himself a few breaths, and then, walking around, held it to the lips of each one of the party (the women excepted), who smoked a whiff or two through it; after which he made a short and apparently vehement appeal to the Great Spirit to _bless_ the food we were then to partake of. When he had taken his seat, the medicine-man took his _wa-be-no_ (_medicine-drum_) and commenced beating on it as he accompanied its taps with a _medicine_ song to the Great Spirit. When the song was finished he arose, and, shaking a rattle (_she-shee-quoin_) in his left hand, and singing at the same time, he handed the cup of whisky around to the lips of each guest, all of whom tasted of it; it was then passed to the women, who also tasted it, and returned it to its former position but partially emptied. The War-chief then rose upon his feet, and, drawing his large knife from his belt, plunged the thumb and fore finger of his left hand into the sockets of the sheep's eyes, by which he raised the head as he severed it from the body with his knife, and held it as high as he could reach. At this moment he returned his knife to its scabbard, and, seizing the _she-shee-quoin_ (or rattle) in his right hand, he commenced to sing a most eccentric song as he shook his rattle in one hand and brandished the sheep's head in the other, and danced quite round the circle between the feast and the guests, going so slow as to require some eight or ten minutes to get round. Having got round to his seat, he gave a frightful yell, and, raising the sheep's head to his mouth, bit off a piece of it, and again danced until he had swallowed it. He then laid the head and the rattle at the feet of another, who sprang upon his feet, and, taking the sheep's head and the rattle, performed the same manoeuvre, and so did a second and a third, and so on until each male of the party had performed his part. After this, the flesh was carved from the bones by the War-chief, and placed before us, of which we all partook. Parts of it were also carried to the women, and after a little time the greater part of the flesh of the carcase had disappeared. It is worthy of remark, also, that at this strange feast there was nothing offered but the flesh of the sheep; but which was cooked in a manner that would have pleased the taste of an epicure. When the eating was done, the war-chief took the rattle in his hand, and, lightly shaking it as a sort of accompaniment, took at least a quarter of an hour to repeat a long prayer, or return of thanks, to the Great Spirit, which was spoken (or rather _sung_ than _spoken_) in a very remarkable and rapid manner. After this the pipe was lit, and, having been some three or four times passed around, the feast was finished, and we took leave. I leave this strange affair (having described it as nearly as I possibly could) for the comments of the curious, who may have more time than I can justly devote to it at this moment, barely observing that the old chief, after this, seemed quite contented and happy that he had acted in conformity to the sacred injunction of the Great Spirit, and strictly adhered, though in a foreign country, to one of the established and indispensable customs of his race; for which, and for another cogent reason (that "his lips were getting very dry after eating so much"), he thought we would be willing (as of course we were) to let Daniel go for a jug of _chickabobboo_. The whole party now seemed to be completely happy, and in the midst of enjoyment. They were excited and amused every night in their exhibitions, which afforded them wholesome exercise; and during the days they took their drives through the city and into the country, and beheld the sights of the great metropolis, or reclined around their rooms on their buffalo robes, enjoying their pipes and counting their money, of which they had received some thirty or forty pounds, presented to them in the room at various times, independent of that received from her Majesty, and their wages, and trinkets, and other presents. Of their drives, one of the most exciting and interesting that they had or could have in London was about this time, when her Majesty rode in state to the opening of Parliament. They were driven through the immense concourse of people assembled on the line and along Parliament-street, and conducted to a position reserved for them on the roof of St. Mary's chapel, near Westminster Abbey. From this elevated position they had a splendid bird's-eye view of the crowd below, and the progress of the Queen's state carriage, as it rolled along on its massive wheels of gold, and drawn by eight cream-coloured horses. So grand a pageant filled their rude, uncultivated minds with the strangest conjectures, which were subjects for several evenings' curious gossip. And what seemed to please them most of all the incidents of the day was, as they said, "that her Majesty and the Prince both most certainly looked up from their golden carriage to see them on the top of the church." They were also most kindly invited by the members of the St. George's Archery Club to witness their bow-and-arrow shooting on one of their prize-days. This was calculated to engage their closest attention; and at night they returned home in great glee. They had been treated with the greatest kindness by the gentlemen of that club. They had put up a gold medal for the Indians to shoot for, which was won by _Sah-mah_ (Tobacco), and other prizes were taken by others of the party.[12] The first shot made by the young man who bore off the golden prize was said to have been one of the most extraordinary ever made on their grounds; but in their subsequent shooting they fell a great way short of it, and also of that of the young gentlemen belonging to the club. After the shooting of the Indians, and also of the members of the club, contending for their valuable prizes, the Indians were invited to their table, where a sumptuous dinner was partaken of. Many toasts were drunk, and many speeches made; and, to their agreeable surprise, as they said, they had plenty of the _Queen's chickabobboo_! [12] It was stated in some of the papers of the day that the Indian won the golden prize from the members of the club, which was not the case. It was put up, most liberally, by the young men of the society for the Indians to shoot for among themselves, and won in this way, not from the members of the club. There are no Indians in North America who can equal the shooting of these young gentlemen, who practise much this beautiful and manly exercise. I have often, at their kind invitations, visited their grounds, and I have had the opportunity of seeing the shooting amongst most of the American tribes. The Indian tribes who use the bow and arrow at the present time are mostly the Prairie tribes, who are mounted, and, from their horses' backs, at full speed, throw their arrows but a very few paces, and use a short bow of two feet or two feet and a half in length, and therefore never practise at the target at the distance of one or two hundred yards. Their skill and power, however, in that mode of using the bow is almost inconceivable, and might puzzle the best archers in England or in the world to equal. They continued their amusements nightly, much in the same way as I have above described, with full houses and similar excitements, all of which and their effects we will imagine, as I pass over a week or two of them without other notice than merely to say that the "jolly fat dame" still continued to visit them, as she had promised, and nightly to strengthen the spell she seemed to be working upon the heart of poor Cadotte. She was elegant, but rather fat. She rode in a good carriage. She bestowed her presents liberally, and on all; and insisted the whole time that "it was the most interesting exhibition she ever saw," and that "Cadotte was almost a giant!" "She could not keep away, nor could she keep the Indians out of her mind." All were inquiring who she could be, and nobody could tell. She had delivered three or four letters into Cadotte's hand in the time; and, though "her carriage could put him down at his door quite easy," she had driven him home but one night, and then he was landed quite quick and quite safe. The Indians talked and joked much about her, but Cadotte said little. He was young, and his youth had had a giant growth in the timid shade of the woods. He was strong; but he knew not the strength that was in him, for he had not tried it. He was like a mountain torrent--dammed up but to burst its barriers and overflow. The glow of this fair dame upon him was a sunshine that he had never felt, and, like the snow under a summer's sun, he was about to have melted away. In the simplicity of his native ambition, he had never aspired to anything brighter than his own colour; and few were dreaming till just now that the warrior Cupid was throwing his fatal arrows across the line. Nor did those who suspected them (or even _saw_ them), from the source that has been named, know more than half of the shafts that were launched at the _"Strong-wind"_ at this time, nor appreciate more than half the perplexities that were wearing away his body and his mind. _He_ knew them, poor fellow, and had _felt_ them for some time; but the world saw no symptom of them until his treatment of this fair dame on one night set them inquiring, when they found that she, with her little _archer_, was not alone in the field. Reader, we are now entering upon a drama that requires an abler pen than mine, which has been used only to record the dry realities of Indian life, stripped of the delicious admixture which is sometimes presented when Cupid and civilization open their way into it. I regret exceedingly that I cannot do justice to the subject that is now before us; but, knowing the facts, I will simply give them, and not aspire to the _picture_, which the reader's imagination will better paint than my black lead can possibly draw. On the unlucky evening above alluded to the "jolly fat dame" had made her appearance at the rooms half an hour before the doors were to open; and, with Daniel's usual indulgence, she passed into the room, in the hope, as she said, to have a few words with the Indians, and shake hands with them all, and bid the good fellows good by, as she was going into the country for a few days. She loitered around the room until it began to fill with its visitors for the evening, without the good luck to meet the "_Strong-wind_," as she had been in the habit of doing, before the chandelier was in full blaze, and while the Indians were in their adjoining room, putting on their paint and ornaments. This disappointment, for reasons that she probably understood better than we can, seemed to embarrass her very much, and most likely, even at that early stage, carried forebodings of troubles that were "brewing." In the embarrassment of these painful moments, not being able to spend the evening in the exhibition, as usual, but under the necessity of returning to pack her things and complete her preparations for her journey, she was retreating towards the door as fast as the audience filled in in front, determined to hold a position in the passage where she could shake hands with the Indians as they passed in, and drop a little billet into the hands of the "_Strong-wind_," which, if received, was intended only to stop a sort of palpitation there would be in the side of her breast, in case she should have gone off to the country without informing the "_Strong-wind_" of it, and that she was to return again in a very few days. Unlucky device! The Indians all passed by, excepting the "_Strong Wind_," and, as each one shook her hand, he saluted her with a yelp and a smile. All this was gratifying to her, but added to the evident fever that was now coming on her. She paced the hall forward and back for some time, living yet (and thriving) upon the hope at that moment raised in her mind, that he ("noble fellow!") was hanging back in order to have a moment of bliss alone with her in the hall, after the gazing visitors had all passed by. This hope sustained her a while, and she many times more walked the length of the passage, but in vain. At this moment the sound of the drum and the echoing of the war-whoop through the hall announced their exhibition as commenced; and the liberal dame, advancing to the door, and standing on tiptoe, that she might take a peep once more at the good fellows over the heads of the audience, beheld, to her great astonishment, the noble figure of the "_Strong-wind_," swinging his tomahawk, as he was leading the dance! Unhappy dame! the room was closely stowed, and not the possibility left of her getting half way to her old stand by the end of the platform, if she tried. This dilemma was most awful. The thought of actually "going off to the country, as she had promised, for several days, without the chance to say even good bye, or to shake hands, was too bad,--it was cruel!" She went to the door to see Daniel, and said, "Well, this is very curious; I wanted to have seen Cadotte for a moment before I went away, and I can't stay to-night. I shook hands with all the rest as they went in, but I did not see Cadotte. I don't understand it." "Why," said Daniel, "the poor fellow is not here to-night; he's getting sick: he was here when you first came in, but he _shot out_ a few moments afterwards, and told me to tell you, if you came, that he was too unwell to be here to-night. He is looking very pale and losing flesh very fast, and his appetite is going. He has only danced once or twice in the last week." "Poor fellow! I am sorry. What a pity if he should get sick! I don't see what they would do without him; he is worth more than the whole party besides. He's a fine young man. What an immense fellow he is! Did you examine his hand? What a grip he has got--ha! I _may_ not go to-morrow, but if I _do_, it will only be for a few days. I have _promised_ to go, and you know it is wrong to break promises, Daniel. If anything should prevent me from going to-morrow I shall certainly be here again to-morrow night. Poor fellow! I _hope_ he won't get sick: I think a little ride in the country would do him good. Mr. Catlin ought to send him into the country for a while. That's what he should do, shouldn't he? I won't stand here too long, Daniel; it's rather a cold place: so good night." It _was_ a _fact_ that the "_Strong Wind_" was getting sick; and a fact also that Daniel thought he had gone home, as he told the good lady; and two other facts followed the next day--the one was, that the journey to the country was not made that morning; and the other, that the "jolly fat dame" was at the Hall at an early hour of the evening as usual. Her visit was carefully timed, so as to allow her a little time for gossip with Daniel at the door, and to subject her to the delightful possibility of accidentally meeting the "_Strong Wind_" as she had sometimes done, in the half-lighted hall. "You see, Daniel, that I didn't get off this morning; and when I am in London I cannot keep away from those curious fellows, the Indians. They are here, I suppose, before this?" "Yes, madam, they have just come in in their bus." "Well, how is Cadotte? he is _my_ favourite, you know." "Well," said Daniel, "I don't think he's any better: I believe there is but one thing that will cure him." "Bless me, you don't say so! What do you think is the matter with him?" "Why, I think he is in love, madam; and I don't believe there is anything under heaven else that ails him." "Oh! now, but you _don't think_ so, do you, really?" "I do, indeed, madam; and I don't wonder at it, for there are charms that are lavished upon him that are enough to----" "Oh! come, come, now, Daniel, don't give us any of your dry compliments. He's a fine man, certainly--that I _know_, and I should be sorry if he should get sick. He will be in the exhibition, I suppose, to-night?" "No, madam, I saw him a few minutes since, and he had lain down on his buffalo robe on the floor, and I heard him tell Mr. Rankin that he should not go into the room to-night; that he did not feel well enough." "So, you cruel man, you think the poor fellow is in love, do you?" "I am _sure_ of it, madam: in the next house to where the Indians lodge there is one of the most beautiful black-eyed little girls that I have seen since I have been in London, and, by putting her head out of the back window to look at the Indians, and by playing in the back yard, she long since showed to everybody who saw her that she was fascinated with Cadotte. She used to kiss her hand to him, and throw him bouquets of flowers, and, at last, letters." "Pshaw!" "It's true! And, finally, she and her sisters got in the habit of coming in to see the Indians, and, at last, the father, and mother, and brother; and they all became attached to Cadotte, and invited him to their house to take tea with them and spend the evenings; and he has at last become so perfectly smitten with the girl that he is getting sick: that is the reason why he is not at the Hall more than three evenings in the week; he spends his evenings with her, and often don't get home before twelve and one o'clock." "Oh, but you shock me, you _shock_ me, Daniel--but I don't _believe_ it--I _can't believe_ it--he _couldn't_ be _led away_ in that silly manner--I _don't believe a word of it_. You say he is in the dressing-room?" "Yes, madam, I know he is there." "You don't think he'll come into the exhibition-room to-night?" "No, I know he will not." "You don't think he would come out a minute? I can't stay to-night, and I shall certainly go in the morning. I _must_ go--you _don't think_ he would come out?" "I don't know, madam; I will ask him if you wish." "Well, _do_, Daniel; come, that's a good fellow--or, stop!--look here--just hand him this note; it is merely to say good bye: give it to him, and only tell him I am here, will you, and going out of town to-morrow morning?" Daniel took in the note to the "_Strong Wind_," who was lying on his robe, and in a minute returned with the note and this awful message:--"Tell her she _may_ go out of town--I don't wish to see her." This was as much of his ungallant message as Daniel could venture to bear to the good lady, though the "_Strong Wind_" continued to say, "Take the note back to her: she is making too free with me, and all the people see it. She wants a husband too bad, and I hope she will soon get one." Daniel returned the note, and apologized for being the bearer of such a message to her; but he said, as he had carried her message to Cadotte, he felt bound to bring his message back. "Certainly, certainly," said she; "I can't blame you, Daniel; but this is strange--all this is strange to me; it's quite incomprehensible, I assure you. The crowd is coming in, I see, Daniel; and I can't possibly be here through the evening, I'll be here as soon as I come back. Good night." One can easily imagine how the peace of the bosom of this good-natured unoffending lady was broken up by the abrupt way of the "_Strong Wind_," and how unhappy might have been the few days she was to spend in the country, and which she could not then fail to do, as she had made a promise to friends, that she could not break. By her absence from the exhibition-room for a week or more, it was evident that she was accomplishing her visit to the country; and, though her little _archer_ was unemployed in her absence, it would seem as if the very show of so many bows and arrows in the great city of London had suddenly called into existence, or into service, a reinforcement of those little marksmen, who were concentrating their forces about this time, and seemed to be all aiming their shafts at the breast of the "_Strong Wind_." There were several fair damsels who nightly paid their shillings, and took their positions near the platform, in a less conspicuous way, though not less known to the "_Strong Wind_," than our friend who had "gone for a while to the country." From the fair hands of these he had received, unobserved, many precious and sly gifts, and amongst them several little billets of the most sentimental nature, containing enclosures of beautiful little stanzas, and cards of address, &c. Among this jealous group of inveterate gazers and admirers was always, though most coy and least noticed, the sweet little "black-eyed maiden" of whom I have said Daniel gave some account to the good lady who has gone to the country, as having "kissed her hand and thrown bouquets of flowers" to the "_Strong Wind_" from the back windows of her father's house in George-street. The whole soul of the "_Strong Wind_," which, until now, had been unchained and as free as the mountain breeze, was completely enveloped in the soft and silken web which the languishing black eyes, the cherry and pulpy lips, and rosy cheeks of this devouring little maid had spun and entwined about it. He trembled when he straightened his tall and elegant figure above the platform, not that he was before the gazing world, but because _her_ soft black eyes were upon him. His voice faltered and his throat was not clear when he brandished his glistening tomahawk and sounded the shrill war-whoop. This was not that the ears of hundreds, but that the ears of ONE, were open to catch the sound. His heart was now free, for a few days at least, from the dangers of the first siege, the guns of which for the time were all silent. The glances of his eyes and his occasional smiles were less scrupulously watched; and now and then they could be welcomed by sweet returns. He had now but one _real_ enemy in the field, and _his_ shafts, though they went to his inmost soul, were every one of them welcome messengers of peace and love. Thus besieged, thus pierced and transfixed, the "_Strong Wind_" did as much as he could to continue his natural existence, to eat his accustomed meals, and to act his customary parts in the dance; but efforts all seemed in vain. The sweet and balmy-sleep that had been the pleasure of his untaught youth had fled; roast beef and plum-puddings, his favourite bits, had ceased to please him; sighs and long breaths had taken all the place of peaceful and equal respiration; the paleness of his face showed there was trouble within; his noble frame and giant strength were giving way; and save the devouring pleasure that was consuming him, nothing was acceptable to him but seclusion and his occasional mugs of _chickabobboo_. All things at the Egyptian Hall went on as usual for several days, the Indians giving their nightly entertainments, but without the aid of the "_Strong Wind_," and consequently without the presence of the "languishing little black eyes" that used to be seen peeping over the corner of the platform. The reader (who has heard already that the "_Strong Wind_" loved to ride home with this sweet little creature--that he took his dishes of tea in her father's house, which was next door--and that he often stayed there until twelve and one o'clock at night) can easily understand how the time now passed with the "_Strong Wind_," and how hopeless were to be the chances of the good dame who had "gone to the country but for a few days, where she had promised to go, but from which she was soon to return." The reader who is old enough will easily understand also why the "_Strong Wind_" grew pale; how it was that everything ceased to taste good--beautiful things to look pretty; and why I had to translate, as well as I could, the speeches of the Indians, who now had no better interpreter. The exhibition-room continued to be filled night after night without the presence of the "_Strong Wind_;" and at length, on one of these occasions, the "jolly fat dame," who had gone to the country for a few days, presented herself at the door as usual before the audience had assembled. She was admitted by Daniel's kindness; and as she got into the passage, the party of Indians came in from their omnibus, and, passing her, gave her their hands, and as they passed on each one gave a hideous yell. She seemed delighted at this, and, turning to Daniel, said, "Oh, did you hear the poor fellows rejoicing? they are delighted to see me back again." "Why, madam," said Daniel, "that was the _war-whoop_; and when that is given, the tomahawk always follows." She seemed a little startled at this; "But," said she, "the good fellows, I have lots of fine presents here for them to-night; I can make it all right with them I think. But I don't see Cadotte--I hope he's not sick--he's a splendid fellow--I have not seen a man like him in all my travels in the country, and I have been a great way. I have a nice present for him, d'ye see?--is'nt that a fine brooch? I know he'll like it." "But I fear you are too late, madam--I believe it is all over with him." "What! you don't mean to say that he is dead?" "No, he's not dead, but he's nearly as bad--he don't come here at all--he don't eat or drink--he's pining away for that pretty little girl I told you of. It's been all her doing: the foolish girl fell in love with him, and is determined to have him, and I believe he will marry her." "Oh, pshaw! fie on it! I don't believe a word of it;--they will get over it all in a day or two." The kind lady after this took her position in the Hall as usual, and during the exhibition smiled on all the group, and dealt out her presents to them, and went home as usual well pleased. Most curiously, all this affair of Cadotte's and the sweet-mouthed, black-eyed little girl, had passed unnoticed by me, and I had of course entirely mistaken his malady, having sent my physician to attend him. His symptoms and the nature of his disease were consequently fully understood by examinations of the patient and others who had watched closely all the appearances from the commencement of his attack. Getting thus a full report of the case, I held a conversation with Mr. Rankin, who at once told me that it had been well understood by him for some time, and that Cadotte had asked for his consent to marry the young lady, and that he had frankly given it to him. I told him I thought such a step should be taken with great caution, for the young lady was an exceedingly pretty and interesting girl, and, I had learned, of a respectable family, and certainly no step whatever should be taken in the affair by him or me without the strictest respect to their feelings and wishes. He replied that the mother and sisters were in favour of the marriage, and had been the promoters of it from the beginning; that the father was opposed to it, but he thought that all together would bring him over. I told him that I did not know either the father or the mother, but that, as long as there was an objection to it on the part of the father, I thought it would be cruel to do anything to promote it; and that, much as I thought of Cadotte, I did not feel authorized to countenance an union of that kind, which would result in his spending his life in London, where his caste and colour would always be against him, and defeat the happiness of his life; or she must follow him to the wilderness of America, to be totally lost to the society of her family, and to lead a life of semi-barbarism, which would in all probability be filled with excitements enough for a while, but must result in her distress and misery at last. To these remarks his replies were very short, evidently having made up his mind to let them raise an excitement in London if they wished, and (as I afterwards learned) if he could possibly bring it about. CHAPTER XVI. Mr. Rankin resolves to take the Indians to the provincial towns--Exhibition advertised to close--The wedding in St. Martin's church--Great excitement--Its object--Grand parade through the streets in omnibuses--Rankin advertises "the beautiful and interesting bride" to appear on the platform at the Indians' exhibitions--Public disgust and indignation--Condemned by the Press--Rankin begins his exhibition--Denies Cadotte admission to the Indians' rooms, and dismisses him from his service--Rankin leaves London with the Indians--Author getting out his large work--The Indian portfolio--The "jolly fat dame" makes a visit to Daniel in the exhibition rooms--A long dialogue--Illustrious subscribers to the Author's large work--Emperor of Russia and Duke of Wellington review 10,000 troops at Windsor--The Emperor presents the Author a gold box--Author takes out a patent for "disengaging and floating quarter-decks, to save lives on vessels sinking or burning at sea." At the commencement of this chapter we find the Indians still proceeding with their amusements at the Egyptian Hall, riding out during the day for fresh air and to see the city, and enjoying their roast beef and _chickabobboo_; the interpreter laid up, as described, and Mr. Rankin labouring to promote, and preparing for, an event that was to give greater notoriety to himself and his party, and ensure more splendid success through the kingdom, as the sequel will show. My opposition to his views in promoting the marriage of this love-sick pair afforded him the suitable occasion of calling on me one morning and advising me of a course which "he had been, he said, recommended by many of his friends to pursue, which was, that (as he had now heard me lecture on the modes of the Indians until the subject had become sufficiently familiar to him to enable him to give the lectures well enough himself) he could promote his own interest much better by taking the Indians to the provincial towns, meeting all the expenses, and taking all the receipts, instead of sharing with a second person, which his friends thought was a great pity he should any longer do." He represented that by such a course he could afford to do better by the Indians, and he thought it would be decidedly for the interest of both, and he had resolved to do it. I said to him that it was, to be sure, a resolve which he could easily make, as we were under no other than a verbal agreement, and entirely confidential, so that, if his interest urged it sufficiently strong, there was no doubt that he could do as he pleased, and that, under any circumstances, I should have but one anxiety, and that would be for the welfare of the Indians under his charge. I had so far done all I could to introduce them and him properly. I had added my collection to their exhibition, to give it additional interest. I had devoted my best efforts in lecturing on them and their customs, and had succeeded (after lying still with them for a month in London) in getting for them an audience of the Queen. By these means I had rendered him and them a service, for which I wanted no other return than the assurance that, wherever he went with them, he should take good care of and protect them. He said he had made up his mind to take them on his own hands in that manner after an exhibition for ten days longer in the Egyptian Hall, when he was to leave London on a tour to the provincial towns; and he wished me to advertise these exhibitions positively to close on a certain day. I then informed him that I should do so, and should freely yield to his proposition to sever in the manner he had proposed, on account of the accomplishment of the marriage, which he had assured me was just at hand, and in the responsibility of which I was determined to take no part. This I told him was an argument sufficiently strong, without further comment, to incline me to meet his proposition without the slightest objection. I therefore advertised, as he had suggested, that the Indians could only be seen in London that number of days; and from night to night announced the same thing from the platform when giving my lecture; and to the last day, at his request, stated that the Indians were positively to leave London at that time. The next morning after we had made this final close, and I had announced it as such to the audience, advertisements appeared in the papers that "he had rented the adjoining room to Mr. Catlin's, and on the same floor, for two months--a much finer room, where ladies and others would be much better accommodated; where the lectures in future would be given by Mr. Rankin, _himself_, who had _lived all his life among the Indians_." And in his advertisements, a few days after, he had the imprudence to state that "_hereafter the beautiful and interesting bride of the 'Strong Wind,' the interpreter, will make her appearance on the platform with the Indians, and preside at the piano_." This extraordinary advertisement, which of course was after the consummation of the marriage, was inserted in all the London daily journals, and was at once a key to all the absurd and disgusting efforts that had been used to create an excitement on the occasion of the wedding. It had been carefully announced that the wedding was to take place at a certain hour in the day in St. Martin's church, that ten thousand people might be waiting there for a chance to see the novel spectacle of a beautiful London girl married to an Indian from the wilds of America, and then to trumpet it through the city and through the land where they were going, that the shillings might the more abundantly pour in for a sight of the extraordinary pair that were united in St. Martin's church in London, and the "beautiful and interesting bride who was to preside at the piano" while the Indians danced. To make this affair more exciting, and its disgusting humbug more complete, several omnibuses and coaches, drawn by four-in-hand, were employed to convey the "beautiful and interesting bride" and bridegroom, and Mr. Rankin and his attendants, through the streets to and from the church where the ceremony took place. Each of these splendid affairs was decorated with evergreens, ribands, &c.; and on their tops, bands of music playing through the streets, and other attendants, covered with belts and ribands, waving flags of various and brilliant colours. These carriages were directed to be driven through the principal thoroughfares of London, that the excitement and hubbub might be the more complete, and that the greater number of shillings might be turned into the exhibition-room. The scheme, as a business one, was not without some ingenuity, but, most unluckily for its projector, it did not exactly succeed. There was too much sagacity in the London people and the London press not to detect the object of the scheme, and too much good taste to countenance and patronise it. The result was, and deservedly so, that it was condemned by the press, and the project and its projectors held up to public view in the light that they deserved. The next day after his advertisement that "the beautiful and interesting bride was to appear and preside at the piano," he put forth another advertisement, stating that the bride _would not_ appear, as announced the day before, owing to objections raised by some of her friends, &c. These friends were nearly all the press in London, as well as her father and her husband, who had never been consulted on the subject, who were indignant at the step he had taken, and ordered him to countermand his advertisement. He then commenced his exhibition of the Indians in his new quarters, and under the new auspices, necessarily without the additional attraction of the new and beautiful bride, and also without the aid of his interpreter Cadotte, whom he had turned out of his employment, and to whom he had refused admission to the house to see his fellow Indians or to hold any communication with them. Cadotte was thus driven to his father-in-law's house, where he took up his residence, and Mr. Rankin proceeded with his exhibitions, himself lecturing on their customs and _interpreting_ their speeches to the audience, and all the various communications of the audiences and the public to them, wherever they went, without knowing five words of their language. The extraordinary announcement which he had put in the papers of the appearance of the "beautiful and interesting bride upon the platform" had drawn a great crowd together at his first exhibition under the new arrangement, and, from the odd mixture of people it had brought together, begat some very amusing incidents worth recording. On ascending the platform for his first lecture, amidst a room densely packed, chiefly with working men and working women, whose application to their tasks during the day had prevented them from getting a glimpse of the beautiful bride of the "_Strong Wind_," and had now handed in their hard-earned shillings, he soon found himself in the midst of difficulties which it would seem that he had not anticipated. In such a city as London there are always enough who do not read the _contradictions_ of announcements (with those who won't believe them if they do read them) to fill a room; and of such was his room chiefly filled on this occasion--all impatient to see the beautiful bride of the Indian, and full of expectation, though his second advertisement had announced that "she would not appear." One can easily imagine the difficulties with which he was surrounded, and the perplexing materials with which he was about to contend in presenting himself as the expounder of Indian modes, and that in the absence of the "beautiful bride." Curiosity to hear him give his first lecture on the customs of the Indians, "who had spent all his life amongst them," led me into the crowd, where I caught the following amusing incidents, which are given as nearly as I could hear them amidst the confusion that soon took place. Mr. Rankin had proceeded but a few sentences in his elucidations when a voice from a distant part of the room called out, "Rankin! Mr. Rankin!" "Well," inquired the lecturer, "what's wanted of Mr. Rankin?" "Why, Sir, Mr. Rankin is advertised to lecture, and we expect to hear him." "My name is Rankin--I am Mr. Rankin, Sir." "No, you are not Mr. Rankin neither: why do you tell us that nonsense? Come now, _Arthur_; you know me, old fellow: don't set yourself up for Mr. Rankin here; you'll get yourself into trouble if you do." (Uproar, and cries of "Turn him out, turn him out.") The voice continues, "Mr. Rankin! Mr. Rankin! what has lived all his life with the Indians!" (Uproar.) "I am Mr. Rankin, Sir: what do you want?" "You are _not_ Mr. Rankin; are Mr. Arthur Jones, or was so when I knew you in New York." (Cries of "Turn him out--shame, shame! the bride, the bride!" and hisses.) The lecturer here advanced to the front of the platform and endeavoured to frown the crowd into silence, but got nothing in return but "The bride, the bride!" and hisses from various quarters. One of the men in his employment unluckily at that moment seized hold of a little square-shouldered working-man, standing just before me, who was hissing, and was hauling him towards the door. The little man gathered himself up, and brought his antagonist to a halt before he was half way to the door. While grasping each other by the collar, the little man, who was nearly lost sight of in the crowd, demanded the cause of this violence on his person. "Why, Sir, you was hissing the lecturer, and I was ordered to put you out of the room--that was all." "So I did iss im, Sir, hand I'll iss again, hif I choose----ands hoff! hif you please!" "You must go out, Sir." "Hout, Sir! [in a tremendous voice.] I'll hax this haudience hif I am to go hout, or whether they would prefer to ear the hobservations I hintend to make." There was a general uproar here for a few moments, and the friends of the little man seemed to predominate as they were gathering around him, and the cry of "Hands off!" freed him from the difficulties with which he had been beset, and encouraged him to demand an audience for a moment, which was carried by acclamation all around the room. By stepping on to the end of a bench near by, he become conspicuous above the heads of the audience, and continued:-- "Ladies hand Gentlemen, I opes I ave your haprobation?" (Shouts of approbation from all parts of the room; the Indians seated on the platform, and Mr. Rankin allowing the little working gentleman to proceed.) "My friends, I am a poor and to speak, and I did not hanticipate an event hov this sort. I came ere, like the rest of you, an ard-working man, to spend my shilling, hand for wot? To be umbugged, gentlemen? (Great applause.) To be oaxed, gentlemen? I calls it an impudent oax! I olds in my and the adwertisement of that gentleman haxing us to pay our shillings to see the bride of the Hindian wot was married yesterday; and we are now told that she is not to be ere, and that this is ol nothink.--I say it is _somethink_, gentlemen. (Great applause.) Wen it was said that this couldn't be elped, I issed im, and ee _hought_ to be issed, for I saw we was oaxed: I was then dragged by the andkerchief in a wiolent manner, but I hescaped unurt, and I am thankful that my woice can now be eard. "Hif this gentleman is really Mr. Rankin, or hif ee is not, its hol the same--wot's the hods? he as inwited us ere, to inale the ot hatmosphere of the Hegyptian All, to see the 'beautiful bride,' oom ee as been hinstrumental in leading up to the halter of Ymen, after making a great ubbub about it; and I esitate not to pronounce it an underanded business, that umbles a man in my hestimation, and I think it would ave been better for im to ave ushed up the wole think holtogether. (Applause.) "Gentlemen, I am appy to see that I ave your haprobation. Wen I look around me, I see that you are all working men like myself, and able to hunderstand me. You all know it's werry ard to be oaxed out of our shillings--wen prowisions is igh--wen work is scarce--wen we ave little to heat, and hobliged to lie hidle." (Applause, and Hear, hear.) A voice. "Mr. Rankin! Mr. Rankin!" A hundred voices! "The bride! the bride!--Turn him out!--Bagh!--The Indians! the Indians!--The workee! hear him out!--Mr. Rankin!--The Indians! the Indians! Police! the police!--Turn him out!--The bride! the bride! the bride! the bride!" &c. &c. In the midst of all the din and confusion which it seemed now impossible to suppress, the sudden expedient of Mr. Rankin succeeded, and was probably the only one that could have done it. He thought of his Indians, who were quietly seated on the platform, and prepared for the war-dance; and the signal given, and "Sound trumpets, sound!" they all sprang upon their feet and soon drowned the din and confusion in the screams and yells of the war-dance. By the time the brandishing of tomahawks and spears and war-clubs and scalping-knives of this noisy affair was done, the attention of the visitors had become so much engrossed with the spirit and novelty of the scene, that they seemed generally disposed to dispense peaceably with the expected treat of seeing the beautiful bride, and were quiet. The little pugnacious working-man, however, arose again, as soon as silence was restored, to resume his speech; and, asking "if he should go hon," the response from every part of the house was, "No! no!" to which he pertinaciously replied, "Well, then, I'll go ome, and see if I can hearn hanother shilling in the place hov the one I ave given to see those ill-looking wild hanimals, the Hindians." The reader can easily understand why Mr. Rankin's stay with the Indians in London after this was very short. Of his career and theirs in the provincial towns, other historians will probably give some account, and I refer the reader to them, being unable to give more than a very imperfect account of it myself. This sudden break-up of our establishment at the Egyptian Hall, just at the commencement of the fashionable season, when considerable outlay had been made, and the receipts daily increasing, was disastrous to all parties, and particularly so to me, who had the Hall, at a heavy rent, for three months longer, left on my hands. The excitement of the exhibition being thus removed, my Indian collection, which had already been three years in the same building, scarcely drew visitors enough to meet its expenses, and I left its management entirely to my faithful man Daniel, while I devoted my time, in an adjoining room, to getting out my second book, shortly after published at the Egyptian Hall--a large illustrated work, entitled '_Catlin's Hunting Scenes and Amusements of the North American Indians_.' Several months being necessary for the completion of this work, I resolved to hold my collection in the Hall, as it was, until the expiration of my lease, and then pack it up and return to the United States. I was then, for a while, free again from the yells and stamps of the Indians, and the excitements and anxieties attending their exhibitions; and my exhibition room became a quiet and pleasant salon in which to meet my friends, who frequently called, and I found were glad to see me, even though I had no Indians with me. My work was advancing fast, and I devoted my whole time to it, excepting when old friends or persons of distinction called, when I endeavoured to be with them, leaving the management of the room and entertainment of visitors mostly to Daniel, who by this time was a perfect key to everything in the room, provided he was turned the right way. He had all sorts of visitors however--those who came for useful information, and others merely to hear the war-whoop, and see the war-dance, supposing the Indians to be still there. These, feeling provoked at their disappointment, often took revenge on poor Daniel, by torturing him with questions about the Yankees, repeal, &c., which would lead at last to most exciting discussions on slavery, poor-laws and poorhouses, United States Bank, national debt, annexation, wars in Afghanistan, the Oregon question, the income-tax, and repudiation. As I have before said, Daniel, with a strong mind, and well fortified with the facts and dates relative to these subjects, was quite able to surprise his assailants with his information on all these points, and of course to provoke them in return. The consequence was that these debates often ran too high, and, as soon as they arrived at a pitch of indiscretion, I generally heard something of them in the adjoining room, and, leaving my work, showed myself in the exhibition, which brought them to an amicable issue. There were others, again, who came to talk and learn more about the Indians, whom they knew had gone away. Among such was one day the "jolly fat dame," who stepped in merely to have a little chat with Daniel; and, as will be seen, she was lucky in finding him alone, and just in the humour to talk with her. There happened to be no cart or carriage passing at the moment, to prevent me from healing her melodious voice, as she entered, and rolled along, with her parasol swinging in her hand.--"Well, Daniel" (who happened to be at the farther end of the room), "I am so lucky to find you all alone for once, for you always have such a possee around you! Daniel, you know you and I have always agreed very well." "Yes, madam, I don't know why you and I should have a falling-out." "Ah, well, we'll drop that, Daniel--I believe I'll take a chair, I am so fatigued with those plaguy stairs. Well, oh, but what a wonderful collection this is--Ha? what a curiosity that man is--Mr. Catlin, I mean--what a life he _has_ led, to be sure! Don't you think he has been married to some of those little squaws? I'll be bound he has." "No, madam, I should doubt whether he has. I think Mr. Catlin went into the Indian country, determined to make this collection and to immortalize himself; and I have many a time heard him say that he resolved never to get into any difficulty with them about their women; and I think it was one reason why he succeeded, and was everywhere treated with friendship." "Ah, well! may be so. But, look ye, Daniel; that's been a sad affair with poor Cadotte, has it not? what a foolish man, ha!" "Why, I don't see that it was so foolish on his part as on that of the girl." "Oh, tush! but she's a silly little thing. She's pretty enough; but what's that to such a man as Cadotte? She's no substance. He's a giant, almost--what a grip!--I never felt the like in my life! Ah, well, I am sorry--I felt quite an interest in Cadotte." "I feel more sorry for the foolish girl," said Daniel, "for falling in love with him--it was all her doing--she would have him, and wouldn't take 'No' for an answer. I never saw the like in my life. She seemed crazy for him; and they both cried like children about it for weeks, and he was good for nothing else. She has got him now; and, as I said before, I pity her, for she don't know what country she is going to, nor what society she will have instead of that of her parents, and sisters, and friends in London. The girl don't know what she will come to, and therefore I pity her." "Well, _I_ don't pity her a bit. Ah, yes, I am sorry she has been so silly; but I pity _him_ the most. I care nothing about her; or--that is--she ought to know better; but she's, as I told you, a silly little thing. Ah, well, I have only been one night to see them since they left Mr. Catlin. What a foolish thing that was! It will be the ruin of them all. I am afraid they will come to want, poor things! I have only been there one night! Cadotte was not there." "No, madam, he won't join them any more. Rankin has turned him out of the house, and out of his employ, because he wouldn't let his wife appear in the exhibition and play the piano, as he had advertised." "Noble fellow! I like him for that. Isn't that a fine spirit? I knew he had it. But that little silly thing, she can't play. What do the public care about a foolish girl's playing upon the piano?--Ridiculous! Well, they have all gone, I suppose?" "All but Cadotte and his wife, madam; they have not gone." "What! you don't say so? Cadotte has not gone?" "No; they are living together with the girl's father. Rankin has left him, without anything but his wife, to get home to his own country in the best way he can." "Well, there's a brute for you; is'nt he--that Rankin? I always hated his looks, d'ye see. Not gone, ha? What is he to do here? Will he stay in London? Can't Mr. Catlin do something for him? He'd be just a good hand now, to help you here, Daniel--to explain: you can't always be here--there should be two of you. He comes here occasionally?" "Oh, yes, he's here every day." "Well, look ye, Daniel, I'll call again and see Mr. Catlin about it. Something should be done. Mr. Catlin is a good fellow I know. I want a long talk with him; he shall know my whole mind on this affair. I can't stay now--I must go; but what a pity--ha, Daniel! Good day." "Good day." She was very near discovering me as she turned round and passed my door; but Daniel smiled after she had gone out, and said he was quite sure she had not seen me, as he had kept her conversation directed to him, so that she should not turn her face round suddenly on me. I was sorry that I had overheard this dialogue; but, as it had fallen thus into my possession, I resolved to make the most prudent use of it, believing it to contain the sum total of all she wished to say in her "long talk" with me; and I directed Daniel, when she should call to see me, to announce me "out of town," and himself to engross all that she had to say, saving me from entering again upon an unpleasant subject, which I considered now at an end. Thus continued my labours and Daniel's, each one in his department, for three months or more after the Indians had left, by which time my large work was ready for publication (like the first one, "to be published by the Author, at the Egyptian Hall, price five guineas in printed tints, and eight guineas coloured), with a subscription-list headed by the illustrious names of-- HER GRACIOUS MAJESTY THE QUEEN, LOUIS PHILIPPE, KING OF THE FRENCH, THE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA, THE KING OF THE BELGIANS, H.R.H. THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE, AND MANY OF THE NOBILITY OF ENGLAND. The Emperor of Russia was at this time paying his visit to the Queen of England; and my dear wife and myself took the occasion of the grand pageant when the Emperor, with Prince Albert and the Duke of Wellington, reviewed 10,000 troops at Windsor, to obtain a view of his Imperial Majesty, which we did during the review, and, still more to our satisfaction, after it was over, from behind the post of the gate opening into the great park, where we had stationed ourselves, and where his Imperial Majesty passed within reach of us. When the Emperor and suite had passed by, I suddenly perceived in the passing throng J. W. Webb, Esq., editor of the 'New York Inquirer,' and endeavoured, but unsuccessfully, to overtake him. A few days after this, the Honourable Mr. Murray was kind enough to deliver to the Emperor the copy of my work subscribed for by his Majesty; and, in a few weeks after that, sent me the following very flattering communication:-- "Buckingham Palace, June 14th, 1844. "Dear Sir, "The Emperor of Russia, having inspected your PORTFOLIO OF INDIAN HUNTING AND OTHER SCENES, was so much pleased with their spirit and execution, that he desired Count Orloff to send me a gold snuff-box, to be presented to you as a mark of his Majesty's gratification derived from the efforts of your pencil. "I acquit myself of this agreeable commission by sending you herewith a Russian box of gold and blue enamel, set in pearls, which will, I trust, prove to you a gratifying reminiscence of the Emperor's visit to England. "I am, my dear Sir, "Very faithfully yours, "C. A. MURRAY. "_To Geo. Catlin, Esq._" This most gratifying testimony of the Emperor's satisfaction with my work was unexpected by me; and future pages will show that I received evidences equally flattering from their Majesties the King of the French and the King of the Belgians. My large work being now published in London, and, like my former one, kindly noticed and highly approved by the press, I felt as if my labours in England were coming near to a close; and, having a little leisure, I was drawing my little children (of whom I now had four) nearer to me than ever, and with my dear Clara was endeavouring to see the remainder of the sights of London before our departure for our native land. This desired event was yet to be delayed a little, however, by a circumstance that I must here narrate, not to leave the reader in the dark as to the curious incidents and impulses of this transatlantic part of my chequered life. About this period occurred an unparalleled destruction of life at sea: the "Solway" and other noble vessels striking on sunken rocks, and going down in smooth water in sight of land, and hundreds of human beings sinking with them to eternity. Human invention, roused by human sympathy, was everywhere labouring to devise means for the preservation of life in such cases; and my brain, like the brains of hundreds of others, was busy in the same cause, when a plan suddenly suggested itself, which appeared more practicable the more I contemplated it. I deliberated on it much, and threw in my own way all the arguments I could possibly raise against it; and amongst them, as the strongest, the blind and deaf enthusiasm, which leads too many inventors to ruin. No objections that I then raised or can yet raise, however, have created in my mind a doubt of the feasibility of my plan, or of its immense and never-ending importance to the human race. And, as the sequel will show, I give the following information concerning it to the world, not on my own account, but for those who may possibly be benefited by it, or whom it may in any way concern. On mature deliberation I decided, like other inventors, to avail myself of a patent for my discovery; and, with that view, called upon a patent-agent, who had been recommended to me by the highest authority. On stating to him the object of my visit, I was invited to a private room, where he stated that it was necessary that he should hear a distinct description of my invention before he could tell whether it was new, and whether it was a fitting subject of a patent. I replied as follows:--"I believe, Sir, that there is but one effectual way of saving the lives of the greater number of persons on board steamers and other vessels sinking or burning at sea, and that an invention applicable, for such a purpose, to all vessels (as there is never to be an end to the increase of vessels and exposure of life on the ocean) would be of the greatest importance to mankind, and would most richly repay the inventor. A plan has suggested itself to me which I think will have this effect; and if, after hearing it explained, you should decide that it is new and of sufficient consideration, I beg you to procure me a patent for it as soon as it can be obtained." I then proceeded--"The patent I should ask for would be for '_disengaging and floating quarter-decks of steamers and other vessels for the purpose of saving human lives at sea_.' These I would propose to build of solid timber or other material, resting upon and answering all the purposes of quarter-decks; and, in case of the sinking of a vessel, to be disengaged by means which I would set forth in the specification, and capable of floating, as rafts, with all the passengers and crew upon them. These rafts might easily be made of sufficient strength to resist the force of the most violent sea; and their shape being such as to prevent them from capsizing, there would be little difficulty in preserving life for many days upon them. They might be made to contain within them waterproof cases of sheet iron or tin, to carry provisions and liquors, and also rockets for signals, valuable papers, money, &c.; and, when driven on shore, would float safely over a reef, where vessels and life-boats go to pieces and the greatest loss of life generally takes place. In case of a vessel on fire at sea, when it should be found that all exertions to extinguish the flames were unavailing, all hands might retreat to the quarter-deck, and the vessel be scuttled and sunk by slinging a gun and firing a shot through her bottom, or by other means; and as she goes down the flames of course are extinguished, and her passengers and crew, and valuables, might be saved on the raft, as I have described." When I had thus explained the nature of my invention, I asked the agent whether he considered it new, and fit to be patented, to which he at once replied, "You may rely on it, Sir, it is entirely new: nothing of the kind has been patented; and it is a subject for which I think I can get you what we call a 'clean patent.'" Upon this I at once authorized him to proceed and procure the patent in the quickest manner possible, saying that the money required for it should be ready as fast as he should call for it. After this, and in further conversation about it, he said, "I think remarkably well of the invention, and, though I am not in the habit of giving encouragement to my employers, I say to you, frankly, that I believe that when we have obtained the patent, the Admiralty will buy it out of your hands and give it for the benefit of the world at large." Being thus authorized, he proceeded, and the patent was obtained in the space of two months, and for which I paid him the sum of 130_l._ After I had received my patent, I met a friend, Mr. R----, to whom I explained the nature of my invention; and, when I had got through, he asked me who had been my agent in the business, and I told him; to which he replied that it was very strange, as he believed that a friend of his, a Captain Oldmixon, had procured a patent, in London, for a similar thing, some five or six years before. He said he was quite confident that it was the same thing, for he had heard him say a great deal about it, and recollected his having advertised and performed an experiment on a vessel in the river below the city; and advised me to call on my agent and put the question to him. I did so, and he referred to the published lists of patents for ten or twelve years back, and assured me that no such name was on the list of patentees, and that I might rest satisfied that no such patent had ever been taken out. I then returned to my friend Mr. R----, and informed him of this, telling him that he _must_ be mistaken. To which he replied, "No; since you have been absent I have recollected more. I have found the address of Captain Oldmixon's attorney who procured the patent for him, which I give you; and I wish you would call on him, and he will correct me if I am wrong." I took the address and called on the attorney, whom I found in his office. I asked him if he had taken out a patent for Captain Oldmixon five or six years ago, and he replied that he had. I asked him if he would be kind enough to tell me the nature of it, and he instantly replied that it was for "disengaging and floating quarter-decks for saving life." I then asked him if he had completed his patent by putting in his specification, and he replied that he had, and that if I would ask for it in a registry of patents in Chancery-lane I could see it. I then inquired if it had been published in the manner that the law requires, and he assured me it had. He further stated that he had been for several years, and still was, engaged with it for Captain Oldmixon before the Committee on Shipwrecks, with a prospect of getting the Admiralty to take it up. With this information I returned immediately to my agent, and, having explained it to him, he accompanied me to the registry in Chancery-lane, where, on being asked if they had the specification of a patent in the name of Captain Oldmixon, one of the clerks instantly replied "Yes," and unrolled it upon the counter. I read it over, and, finding it almost word for word like my own, and the invention exactly the same, I said to my agent, "I have nothing more to say or to do, but to go home and attend to my business." Nor have I ever taken further pains about it. My agent, at a subsequent period, wrote me a letter, expressing his regret that such a thing should have happened, and enclosing a 10_l._ note, the amount, he said, of his fees; stating that the rest had all been paid into different offices, for which there was no remedy. I have mentioned the above circumstance, as forming one of the many instances of ill luck that have been curiously mixed with the incidents of my life; and also to show the world how much circumspection and caution are necessary in guarding one's interest, even amidst the well-regulated rules and formalities of this great and glorious country. Captain Oldmixon has my hearty wishes for the success of his invention; and I hope that my allusion to it in the above manner will do him no injury, but may be the cause of turning the attention of the world towards it as a means of benefiting the human race. I have informed the reader already that, just before completing the above adventure, the Ojibbeways having left London, and my large work being published to the world, I was turning my eyes to my native country again, where, with my little ones and my collection, I was preparing to go; but even this _was not to be_ as we had designed it, for it was announced, just then, that another party of fourteen Indians had arrived in Liverpool, and were on their way to the metropolis! Life has its chapters, like the chapters of a book; and our days are like the leaves we turn in reading it. We peruse one page ignorant of what is contained in the next; and, as the chapters of life are often suddenly cut short, so this chapter of my book must end here; and the reader will start with me afresh, in a second volume, which commences with a new enterprise. APPENDIX. APPENDIX.--(A.) OPINIONS OF THE PRESS ON CATLIN'S NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN MUSEUM. The following are a few of the very numerous eulogiums which the Press has passed upon the merits of this Collection, in England, France, and the United States, where it has been exhibited. LONDON PRESS. THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. Mr. Catlin's object in visiting England with his Indian Gallery, it would seem, is to sell his collection to our Government, and we most sincerely hope that his reliance on the magnanimity of the British people will not be disappointed. As a man of science, of enterprise, and of true philanthropy, he is justly entitled to be considered as a citizen of the world; and, although he reflects especial honour upon the intelligent nation to which he is so proud to declare that he owes his birth, yet, for that very reason, we are confident, a generous feeling will universally exist to receive him with liberality here. But, leaving the worthy artist's own interests completely out of the question, and in the cause of science casting aside all party feeling, we submit to Lord Melbourne, to Sir Robert Peel, to Lord Lansdowne, to Sir R. Inglis, and to all who are deservedly distinguished among us as the liberal patrons of the fine arts, that Mr. Catlin's Indian collection is worthy to be retained in this country as the record of a race of our fellow-creatures whom we shall very shortly have swept from the face of the globe. Before that catastrophe shall have arrived, it is true, a few of our countrymen may occasionally travel among them; but it cannot be expected that any artist of note should again voluntarily reside among them for seven years, as competent as Mr. Catlin, whose slight, active, sinewy frame has peculiarly fitted him for the physical difficulties attendant upon such an exertion. Considering the melancholy fate which has befallen the Indian race, and which overhangs the remnant of these victims to our power, it would surely be discreditable that the civilized world should, with heartless apathy, decline to preserve and to transmit to posterity Mr. Catlin's graphic delineation of them; and if any nation on earth should evince a desire to preserve such a lasting monument, there can be no doubt that there exists none better entitled to do so than the British people; for with feelings of melancholy satisfaction, we do not hesitate to assert that throughout our possessions on the continent of America, we have, from the first moment of our acquaintance with them to the present hour, invariably maintained their rights, and at a very great expense have honestly continued to pay them their annual presents, for which we have received from them, in times of war as well as of peace, the most unequivocal marks of their indelible gratitude. Their respect for our flag is unsullied by a reproach--their attachment to our sovereign is second only in their breasts to the veneration with which they regard their "Great Spirit"--while the names of Lord Dalhousie, of Sir Peregrine Maitland, and of Sir John Colborne, who for many years respectively acted towards them as their father and as their friend, will be affectionately repeated by them in our colonies until the Indian heart has ceased to beat there, and until the Red Man's language has ceased to vibrate in the British "wilderness of this world." Although European diseases, and the introduction of ardent spirits, have produced the lamentable effects we have described, and although as a nation we are not faultless, yet we may fairly assert and proudly feel that the English government has at least made every possible exertion to do its duty towards the Indians; and that there has existed no colonial secretary of state who has not evinced that anxiety to befriend them which, it is our duty to say, particularly characterized the administration of the amiable and humane Lord Glenelg. ----*---- THE LITERARY GAZETTE. _Catlin's Indian Gallery, Egyptian Hall._--We have now to announce the opening of this exhibition, from visits to which every class of the community, old as well as young, will reap much instruction and gratification. Having recently described, from an American journal, Mr. Catlin's seven or eight years' sojourn among the red races of North America, we need now only say that his representation of them, their country, their costumes, their sports, their religious ceremonies, and in short their manners and customs, so as to enable us to form a complete idea of them, is deserving of the utmost praise. There are above 500 subjects in these spacious rooms, from a wigwam to a child's rattle; and everything belonging to the various Indian tribes are before the spectator in their actual condition and integrity. There are, besides, a multitude of portraits of the leading warriors, &c. &c., and other pictures of dances, ball-play, ambuscading, fighting; and the whole supplying by far the most ample and accurate history of them that has ever been published to the world. No book of travels can approach these realities; and after all we had read of the red men, we confess we are astonished at the many new and important points connected with them which this Gallery impressed upon us. We saw more distinctly the links of resemblance between them and other early and distant people; and we had comparisons suggested of a multitude of matters affecting the progress of mankind all over the earth, and alike illustrated by similitudes and dissimilitudes. Indeed the philosophical inquirer will be delighted with this exhibition, whilst the curious child of seven years of age will enjoy it with present amusement and lasting instruction. ----*---- THE ATHENÆUM. _The Indian Gallery._--This is the collection mentioned heretofore by our American correspondent (No. 609), and a most interesting one it is. It contains more than 300 portraits of distinguished Indians, men and women of different tribes, all painted from life; and in many instances the identical dress, weapons, &c. are exhibited which they wore when their portraits were taken; and 200 other paintings, representing Indian customs, games, hunting-scenes, religious ceremonies, dances, villages, and said to contain above 3000 figures: in brief, it is a pictorial history of this interesting and fast-perishing race. It includes, too, a series of views of the Indian country; and we have seen nothing more curious than some of the scenes on the Upper Missouri and Mississippi, the general accuracy of which is beyond question. Mr. Catlin has spent seven years in wandering among the various tribes, for the sole purpose of perfecting this collection. As he observes, "it has been gathered, and every painting has been made from nature, by my own hand; and that, too, when I have been paddling my canoe or leading my packhorse over and through trackless wilds, at the hazard of life. The world will surely be kind and indulgent enough to receive and estimate them as they have been intended, as true and fac-simile traces of individual and historical facts, and forgive me for their present unfinished and unstudied condition as works of art." The value of this collection is increased by the fact that the red men are fast perishing, and will probably, before many years have passed, be an extinct race. If proof of this were wanting, we have it in the facts recorded in the catalogue, of the devastation which the smallpox has lately spread among them. Of one tribe, the hospitable and friendly Mandans, as Mr. Catlin calls them, 2000 in number when he visited them and painted their pictures, living in two permanent villages on the Missouri, 1800 miles above its junction with the Mississippi, not one now exists! In 1837 the smallpox broke out among them, and only thirty-five were left alive; these were subsequently destroyed by a hostile tribe, which took possession of their villages: and thus, within a few months, the race became extinct--not a human being is believed to have escaped. ----*---- THE ART-UNION. _Mr. Catlin's Indian Gallery._--Circumstances have hitherto prevented our noticing this most admirable exhibition; but we have examined it in all its parts with very minute attention, and have been highly gratified, as well as much informed, by doing so. Mr. Catlin's collection is by no means to be classed among the ephemeral amusements of the day; it is a work of deep and permanent interest. Perceiving that the rapid destruction of the aboriginal tribes by war, disease, and the baneful influence of spirituous liquors, would soon cause all traces of the red men to be lost, Mr. Catlin determined on proceeding through their still untrodden wildernesses, for the purpose of gaining an intimate acquaintance with their manners and customs, and of procuring an exact delineation of their persons, features, ceremonies, &c., all which he has faithfully and perfectly accomplished at no small hazard of life and limb. It was not a common mind that could have conceived so bold a project, nor is he a common man who has so thoroughly accomplished it. The arms, dresses, domestic implements, &c. &c. collected by the industry of this most energetic of explorers are precisely as they have been manufactured and used by their Indian owners, and form a collection which every succeeding year will render more and more valuable. The portraits of distinguished warriors, &c., the representations of religious ceremonies, war-dances, buffalo-hunts, &c. &c., are depicted by Mr. Catlin himself, and that with a force and evident truth that bring the whole detail of Indian life in eloquent reality before the eyes of the spectator. We have no hesitation in saying that this gallery supplies the most effective and valuable means for acquiring an exact acquaintance with the great American continent that has ever been offered to the hunger and thirst after knowledge, go prevailing a characteristic of the age. Mr. Catlin is about to publish the details of his eight years' sojourn among the interesting people with whom his portraitures have made us so familiar; and we have no doubt that this work will render the stores of information he has opened to us in his gallery entire and complete. As works of art their merit depends chiefly on their accuracy, of which no doubt can be entertained. ----*---- LA BELLE ASSEMBLÉE. _Mr. Catlin's Gallery of North American Indians._--Of all the exhibitions that have been brought forward for the amusement of the public, we must give this of Mr. Catlin the preference in every point of view; it possesses not only present but future interest, for perhaps not many generations may flourish and fade before nearly the whole of the aboriginal tribes will be wholly extirpated. Wherever the imprint of the white man's foot has flattened the grass of the prairie, it may be looked upon as an ominous token to the unsuspecting native. The broad lands of the owners of the soil are daily passing into the hands of the stranger, and desolation comes where lowly comfort dwelt. As historical records, these pictures, from the faithful pencil of Mr. Catlin, are invaluable, inasmuch as they may be considered, in all probability, the last and almost the only authentic remains of ancient tribes, that are slowly but surely leaving nothing but a name behind. ----*---- THE TIMES. _Mr. Catlin's North American Indian Gallery._--A very curious exhibition is opened in the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly. It consists of above 500 portraits, landscapes, views of combats, religious ceremonies, costumes, and many other things illustrative of the manners and customs, and modes of living and of battle, &c. of the different tribes of North American Indians. Some of these pictures are exceedingly interesting, and form a vast field for the researches of the antiquary, the naturalist, and the philosopher. The numerous portraits are full of character; they exhibit an almost endless variety of feature, though all bearing a generical resemblance to each other. The views of combats are very full of spirit, and exhibit modes of warfare and destruction horribly illustrative of savage life. The method of attacking buffaloes and other monsters of the plains and forests are all interesting; the puny process of a fox-chace sinks into insignificance when compared with the tremendous excitement occasioned by the grappling of a bear or the butting of a bison. These scenes are all accurately depicted, not in the finished style of modern art, but with a vigour and fidelity of outline, which arises from the painter having actually beheld what he transmits to canvas. The most curious portion of this exhibition is, however, the representations of the horrible religious ceremonies of several of the Indian tribes, and the probationary trials of those who aspire to be the leaders amongst them. These representations disclose the most abhorrent and execrable cruelties. They show to what atrocities human nature can arrive where the presence of religious knowledge is not interposed to prevent its career. The exhibition also contains tents, weapons, dresses, &c. of the various tribes visited by Mr. Catlin. These are curious, but of secondary importance. The catalogue, which is to be had at the exhibition-room, is a very interesting _brochure_, and will afford a great deal of novel but important information. ----*---- MORNING CHRONICLE. _The Aboriginal Tribes of North America._--A pictorial exhibition of a singularly interesting description has just been opened in the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly. It consists of portraits, landscapes, costumes, and other representations of the persons, manners, and customs of the North American Indians, painted by Mr. Catlin, an American artist, during eight years' travel amongst their various tribes. On Monday a numerous assemblage, comprising many distinguished members of the fashionable as well as the literary world, visited this extraordinary collection, and listened with the utmost curiosity and interest to the details and explanations given by Mr. Catlin in illustration of some of its most remarkable objects. Mr. Catlin modestly apologizes for the unfinished character of his pictures, considered as works of art. They are sketches rapidly and roughly executed, as might be expected from the circumstances under which they were made: but they are freely drawn with a strong tone of colour; and being drawn and coloured immediately from nature, there is a graphic truthfulness about them which places, as it were, the very objects themselves before the eye of the spectator, and fills the imagination with images of these ancient lords of the western continent, now reduced to scattered remnants and fast disappearing from the earth, a thousand times more distinct and vivid than could be produced by volumes of description. ----*---- THE MORNING POST. _Catlin's Indian Gallery._--This is a very extraordinary collection, consisting of an immense number of portraits, landscapes, costumes, and representations of the manners and customs of the North American Indians, among whom the artist-collector travelled for eight years, extending his researches through forty-eight tribes, the majority of whom speak different languages. The long room on the groundfloor of the Egyptian Hall is covered from the roof to the floor, and nearly the floor itself, by some thousands of specimens, real as well as pictorial, of these interesting races, many of whom are now, alas! nearly extinguished, under the civilizing influences of fire-water, smallpox, and the exterminating policy of the government of the United States, in which treachery has recently played a counterpart to the most gratuitous despotism. "I have seen them in their own villages," says Mr. Catlin, "have carried my canvas and colours the whole way, and painted my portraits, &c. from the life, as they now stand and are seen in the gallery." The collection contains 310 portraits of distinguished men and women of the different tribes in the British, United States, and Mexican territories; and 200 other paintings descriptive of river, mountain, forest, and prairie scenes; the village games, festivals, and peculiar customs and superstitions of the natives, exhibiting in all above 3000 figures; all, Mr. Catlin assures us, were taken from nature, and all by his own hand! a truly Herculean undertaking, and evidently sustained by an enthusiastic spirit, as well as a share of unconquerable perseverance, such as falls to the lot of few artists in any country to boast of. ----*---- THE MORNING POST. _Catlin's Indian Gallery._--This valuable collection of portraits, landscapes, scenes from savage life, weapons, costumes, and an endless variety of illustrations of Indian life, real as well as pictorial, continues to attract crowds of spectators. We are happy to find our prediction fully borne out by fact, that the exhibition only required to be fully made known to the public to be properly appreciated. The most pleasing attention is paid by Mr. Catlin and his assistants to gratify the curiosity of visitors, to point out to notice the peculiarities of the various subjects through which they wander, and to explain everything which strikes the eye and attracts the observer to inquire into its use or meaning. During our visit on Saturday the company were startled by a yell, and shortly afterwards by the appearance of a stately chief of the Crow Indians stalking silently through the room, armed to the teeth and painted to the temples, wrapped up in a buffalo robe, on which all his battles were depicted, and wearing a tasteful coronet of war-eagle's quills. This personation was volunteered by the nephew of Mr. Catlin, who has seen the red man in his native wilds, and presents the most proud and picturesque similitude that can be conceived of the savage warrior. His war-whoop, his warlike appearance and dignified movements seem to impress the assemblage more strikingly with a feeling of the character of the North American Indian than all the other evidences which crowded the walls. Subsequently he appeared in another splendid costume, worn by the braves of the Mandan tribe, also remarkable for its costly and magnificent head-dress, in which we see "the horns of power" assume a conspicuous place. The crowds that gathered around him on each occasion were so dense that Mr. Catlin could scarcely find space to explain the particulars of the costumes; but we are glad to find he is preparing a central stage where all may enjoy a full and fair sight of "the Red Man" as he issues from his wigwam, clad in the peculiar robe and ornaments of his tribe, to fight, hunt, smoke, or join in the dances, festivals, and amusements peculiar to each nation. ----*---- THE GLOBE AND TRAVELLER. _Indian Knowledge of English Affairs._--Mr. Catlin, in one of his lectures on the manners and customs of the North American Indians, during the last week, related a very curious occurrence, which excited a great deal of surprise and some considerable mirth amongst his highly respectable and numerous audience. Whilst speaking of the great and warlike tribe of Sioux or Dahcotas, of 40,000 or 50,000, he stated that many of this tribe, as well as of several others, although living entirely in the territory of the United States, and several hundred miles south of her Majesty's possessions, were found cherishing a lasting friendship for the English, whom they denominate Saganosh. And in very many instances they are to be seen wearing about their necks large silver medals, with the portrait of George III. in bold relief upon them. These medals were given to them as badges of merit during the last war with the United States, when these warriors were employed in the British service. The lecturer said that whenever the word Saganosh was used, it seemed to rouse them at once; that on several occasions when Englishmen had been in his company as fellow-travellers, they had marked attentions paid them by these Indians as Saganoshes. And on one occasion, in one of his last rambles in that country, where he had painted several portraits in a small village of Dahcotas, the chief of the band positively refused to sit, alleging as his objection that the Pale-faces, who were not to be trusted, might do some injury to his portrait, and his health or his life might be affected by it. The painter, as he was about to saddle his horse for his departure, told the Indian that he was a Saganosh, and was going across the Big Salt Lake, and was very sorry that he could not carry the picture of so distinguished a man. At this intelligence the Indian advanced, and after a hearty grip of the hand, very carefully and deliberately withdrew from his bosom, and next to his naked breast, a large silver medal, and turning his face to the painter, pronounced with great vehemence and emphasis the word Sag-a-nosh! The artist, supposing that he had thus gained his point with the Indian Sagamore, was making preparation to proceed with his work, when the Indian still firmly denied him the privilege--holding up the face of his Majesty (which had got a superlative brightness by having been worn for years against his naked breast), he made this singular and significant speech:--"When you cross the Big Salt Lake, tell my Great Father that you saw his face, and it was bright!" To this the painter replied, "I can never see your Great Father, he is dead!" The poor Indian recoiled in silence, and returning his medal to his bosom, entered his wigwam, at a few paces distant, where he seated himself amidst his family around his fire, and deliberately lighting his pipe, passed it around in silence. When it was smoked out he told them the news he had heard, and in a few moments returned to the traveller again, who was preparing with his party to mount their horses, and inquired whether the Saganoshes had no chief. The artist replied in the affirmative, saying that the present chief of the Saganoshes is a young and very beautiful woman. The Sagamore expressed great surprise and some incredulity at this unaccountable information; and being fully assured by the companions of the artist that his assertion was true, the Indian returned again quite hastily to his wigwam, called his own and the neighbouring families into his presence, lit and smoked another pipe, and then communicated the intelligence to them, to their great surprise and amusement; after which he walked out to the party about to start off, and advancing to the painter (or Great Medicine, as they called him) with a sarcastic smile on his face, in due form, and with much grace and effect, he carefully withdrew again from his bosom the polished silver medal, and turning the face of it to the painter, said, "Tell my Great Mother that you saw our Great Father, and that we keep his face bright!" ----*---- THE GLOBE AND TRAVELLER. _North American Indians._--An exhibition has been opened consisting of portraits, landscapes, costumes, implements of war, articles of commerce, and a variety of curiosities, illustrating the manners, habits, and customs of forty-eight different tribes of the North American Indians. The collection, which must prove highly interesting to all who take an interest in the various modes of life existing among our fellow-creatures in the different states and stages of savage life, or comparative civilization, consists of 310 portraits of distinguished men and women of the different Indian tribes, and 200 other paintings descriptive of Indian countries, villages, sports, and pastimes; the whole of which were painted by Mr. Catlin during a residence of eight years among the different tribes. An additional interest is given to the paintings by the various implements used by the natives, such as bows, arrows, tomahawks, and scalping knives. There are even human scalps, which illustrate one of the paintings representing the scalp dance, in which the victors of one tribe exhibit, in one of their war dances, the scalps of another whom they have vanquished. Among the most spirited of the paintings, as works of art, may be enumerated those of the voluntarily inflicted torments to which some of the tribes subject themselves as proofs of their courage; those of the buffalo hunts, buffalo fights, and of the prairies, which are all highly characteristic productions. In speaking of the different items of interest in this exhibition, Mr. Catlin and the cicerone should not be forgotten, as they amuse the visitors with many of those interesting personal anecdotes which travellers always abound in. ----*---- THE SPECTATOR. Catlin's Indian Gallery, at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, is a museum of the various tribes of North American Indians. Mr. Catlin is an enterprising American artist, who has devoted eight years to the delineation of scenes and persons, and the collection of objects to form a permanent record of the characteristic features and customs of the different tribes of Indians in North America, now fast becoming extinct by the combined operation of smallpox, spirit-drinking, and war. The walls of a room 106 feet in length are entirely covered with portraits of Indian men, women, and children, in their respective costumes, some small whole-lengths, others busts the life-size, to the number of 310; and 200 views of landscape scenery, native villages, games, customs, and hunting-scenes, all painted on the spot. Besides the pictures, the dresses worn by several tribes, and a numerous collection of weapons, pipes, ornaments, &c., are arranged round the room; and in the centre is set up a wigwam of the "Crow" tribe, a conical tent twenty-five feet high, made of buffalo-skins, dressed and painted, supported by thirty poles meeting at the top, and capable of sheltering eighty persons. To attempt anything like a detailed description of the contents of such a museum would require a volume; to characterize it generally in our limited space is difficult. It would require hours of attentive study to become fully acquainted with the multifarious articles. The several tribes are distinguished in the catalogue: the dresses are all so fantastic, and the physiognomies so varied, that it would be difficult to class them. The dances and other amusements appear anything but gamesome; and the religious ceremonies of the Mandans, of which there are four scenes, are horrible in the extreme. It is their annual custom to assemble the young men in the "Medicine" or "Mystery" Lodge--the medicine-men are a sort of mixture of the doctor, priest, and sorcerer--and after being starved for four days and nights, they are tortured in the most cruel manner to test their powers of endurance. The animal character, sharpened and sometimes ennobled by the influence of moral qualities, is strongly expressed in all the heads. The scenery on the Missouri and Mississippi is remarkable for the mixture of beauty and desolation, and an appearance of cultivation in the wildest parts. Mr. Catlin's views bear the impress of fidelity that belongs to pictures painted on the spot; and their freshness and characteristic spirit more than atone for any defects of execution. The scenes of buffalo-hunting are full of movement and energy; and the groups of Indians are sketched with so much life and action, that the scene appears to pass before you. Numerous certificates attest the accuracy of the portraits and views. The robes and the tent covering exhibit come curious specimens of the pictorial skill of the Indians, which reminds one of the Egyptian and Mexican paintings; the outline being strongly defined, and with attention to the characteristic points. The dresses are very tastefully decorated with beads, feathers, and skins; and the pipes, war-clubs, lances, bows, quivers, and shields are profusely ornamented: the cradles are really beautiful. Mr. Catlin is about to publish an account of his expedition, in which the various objects in his museum will be more fully explained than in the catalogue; previously to which he intends giving a sort of lecture in the room descriptive of the people. In the mean time, a visit to this "Indian gallery" will give a more lively and distinct idea of the aborigines of North America, than a whole course of reading. ----*---- THE CONSERVATIVE JOURNAL. _Catlin's Indian Gallery._--This is, we believe, the first time that the British public have had a fair opportunity, upon an extensive scale, of making themselves acquainted with the personal appearance of the various tribes of North American Indians, once constituting the noblest race of savages that are mentioned in history, but of late years sinking into all the depravity which the wicked race of white traders has inflicted on them. These manly natives of the woods and prairies of America, "the red men," as they are properly denominated, are sinking fast in character, and gradually fading from human existence, through the sordid and base traffic of the "pale-faces," who drive an infamous trade by bartering the execrable "fire-waters" (rum and whisky) amongst these children of the wood, for the furs and other produce of their hunting expeditions. Once these vile poisons are swallowed by the aborigines, they lose all their manly and martial energies, become sottish, feeble, and enervated in mind and body, and appear as if conscious of their self-debasement. With respect to the subjects of exhibition, they are chiefly portraits of the most noted chiefs of the various tribes that formerly roamed at large over the vast territory of which they were the natural proprietors. There are also some of the females of note and others in early life, who display attractions of feature and expression which would not discredit the most civilized people. Amongst the chiefs of greatest notoriety here is the celebrated chief "Black Hawk," on whose keen eye and determined brow "no compromise" is plainly written by the hand of nature. The eldest and second sons of this chief are here also, and are worthy of the sire from whom they sprung. There are also several other distinguished warriors of this tribe, which is denominated the Sacs (Sauskies). There also are distinguished chiefs and warriors of the following nations: the Konzas, Osages, Camanchees, Pawneepicts, Sioux, Missouries, Mandans, Black Feet, A's-sin-ne-boins, Delawares, Choctaws, Cherokees, &c., amounting to some hundred portraits; besides views of fine scenery, buffalo-hunting, war and other dances; a variety of weapons, dresses, some scalps, a wigwam, &c. We hope soon to give a few interesting details. ----*---- ATLAS. _Catlin's Indian Gallery, Egyptian Hall._--A room 106 feet in length and of proportionate breadth and height, is occupied exclusively with this most interesting exhibition. Its pictorial portion consists of a vast series of portraits of the chiefs, the braves, the medicine-men, and squaws of the numerous tribes and nations of Indians--the aborigines of North America. Another lengthened series consists of landscape views of scenery, the rivers, mountains, and prairies--the homes and hunting-grounds of the Red Men. Illustrations of manners and customs, including some of the most curious and valuable portions of the gallery, form a third series of pictures, and these efforts of the pencil extend to upwards of 500. They are not offered as specimens of the art, although in that light they are by no means unworthy of attention, but as a pictorial history of nations about to be swept by the tide of civilization from the surface of the earth. As these bold sketches were executed in the wigwam, in the tent, in the steam-boat, in the forest, in the canoe, in storm and sunshine, amid strife and smoke, and every possible variety of interruption and annoyance, their existence is a miracle, and the artist may be proud of the fire and spirit, the truth and energy, yes, and the freedom and power with which he has, under such circumstances conveyed to canvas the vivid impress of the ancient nobles of the forest and the prairie. In eight years Mr. Catlin visited 48 tribes, including 300,000 Indians; has painted 310 portraits from life, and all the scenic accounts we have noticed. For the sake of the pictures, of the exhibition itself, which is intensely interesting, and yet more for the important lesson it teaches, we earnestly recommend the Indian Gallery to the attention of the reader. ----*---- THE BRITANNIA. _Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly._--The suite of apartments composing this unique building has been opened for the exhibition of Catlin's Gallery of North American Indians, which comprises a museum of the various articles used in domestic life and in war by the aborigines who inhabit the Texas and adjoining country. Besides the articles of dress and ornament, the instruments of chace and warfare, the walls of the apartment are hung with a collection of 500 paintings, which represent the figures of living Indian chiefs, their battles, festivities, and domestic habits, as well as the scenery of the country in the "far west," and the animals which inhabit it, being a faithful representation of those distant regions. At the farther end of the room is a wigwam of buffalo-hide, pitched in the manner in which the natives arrange it; namely, in the form of a tent, but somewhat more conical. The owner of this interesting exhibition, Mr. Catlin, spent several years among the Pawnee, Sioux, Crow, and other tribes, for the purpose of taking accurate delineations of the noble races of Indians who still wander through the extensive prairies in all their primary freedom and independence. The exhibition will amuse the mere lounger as much as it will interest the curious and reflecting. ----*---- EAST INDIA CHRONICLE. _North American Indians._--Of late years Cooper's American novels, and various works of travels; and, more recently, the Hon. Mr. Murray's and Captain Marryat's attractive volumes, have deeply interested us respecting the Red Indians of North America, their derivation, manners, customs, &c. Mr. Catlin, however, who has devoted eight years of his life to these miscalled savage people, who are now rapidly fading away from the face of the earth, sad victims of oppression, European vice and European disease, is enlightening us still further upon the subject. He has opened an exhibition at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, in which are assembled (all of his own painting) about 500 portraits of Indian chiefs, warriors, squaws, &c.; landscapes and other scenes, illustrating their warlike and religious ceremonies, their customs, dances, buffalo hunts, &c. The portraits, many of them valuable even as works of art, excite a strong and vivid interest from the almost exhaustless variety and force of character which they display. Many of the heads are bold and highly intellectual, and remarkable for their phrenological developments. Several of the young squaws, too, have considerable pretensions to beauty, with abundance of archness, vivacity, and good humour. Then again there is an immense collection of their weapons, pipes, musical instruments, dresses, &c.; amongst them a child's cradle, or whatever it may be termed, in which the women carry their children at their backs. It is impossible for persons of any age to find themselves otherwise than instructed and gratified by this exhibition. Besides what we have mentioned, Mr. Catlin lectures thrice a week in the evening, with the assistance of living figures for additional illustrations. ----*---- THE JOHN BULL. _Catlin's Indian Gallery._--Mr. Catlin is an American artist, who, after eight years' toilsome travel, during which he visited forty-eight tribes of the aborigines of his native land, and traversed many thousands of miles, appearing to have crossed in nearly every direction the vast plains which lie between the semi-civilized border and the Rocky Mountains, has succeeded in forming a collection which he truly terms "unique," and which ought to be so secured by the purchase of some Government or other, as to be rendered what he fondly calls it, "imperishable." He thus explains the motives which induced him to undertake this labour:--"Having some years since become fully convinced of the rapid decline and certain extinction of the numerous tribes of the North American Indians, and seeing also the vast importance and value which a full pictorial history of these interesting but dying people might be to future ages, I set out alone, unaided and unadvised, resolved (if my life should be spared), by the aid of my brush and my pen, to rescue from oblivion so much of their primitive looks and customs as the industry and ardent enthusiasm of one lifetime could accomplish, and set them up in a gallery, unique and imperishable, for the use and benefit of future ages." A proof of the utility of his undertaking is the fact that one of the most singularly interesting tribes which he visited, the Mandans, who numbered 2000 souls in 1834, have been since wholly destroyed, not a remnant of their race left--name, and line, and language utterly extinct. Of the other tribes, too, many thousands have perished since the period of his visit by the smallpox, which deadly disease sweeps them off by wholesale; by the ardent spirits, still deadlier, introduced among them by the traders, and by war. The red man seems doomed to inevitable destruction; and despite the philanthropist, no long period of time, it is to be feared, will elapse before he will exist only by the aid of the "brush and pen." Mr. Catlin has made 310 portraits of distinguished individuals of the various tribes, and 200 other paintings illustrative of their manners, games, religious and other customs, as well as portraying some of the most remarkable scenery of the prairies and wilderness. They are roughly executed, but are the more valuable as being evidently faithful transcripts from the life. They occupy the entire of the large room of the Egyptian Hall, covering the walls on either side, whilst in the centre a long table is covered with Indian habiliments and weapons, which likewise hang with bears' and other skins in profusion from the ceiling, whilst the whole is crowned by a wigwam, a veritable wigwam, brought from the foot of the Rocky Mountains. Will or can any one with a spark of curiosity, not to name enthusiasm, in his composition, begrudge a shilling for the sight? ----*---- THE COURT JOURNAL. _Catlin's Indian Gallery._--We must confess that, after the many failures of exhibitions analogous to this, we did not go to it prepared either to be pleased or to glean from it any novelty of information; but we were most agreeably disappointed, and can assure our readers that a more attractive exercise for the mind could not well have been devised. We may, without hesitation, describe this immense collection of portraits, landscapes, costumes, and representations of manners and customs, as embracing a view of all the North American Indian tribes (resident in the British and Mexican territories, and those of the United States) now unexterminated! Out of the entire nations swept away by whiskey, smallpox, and the aggressions of the whites, about 300,000 souls remain; and of these the numbers become every year more and more reduced, so that ultimately we may calculate with certainty that they will "Leave not a wreck behind." Under this impression Mr. Catlin has done well and wisely to "devote more than eight years of his life to the accomplishment of so great a design" as that of creating their pictorial history. Mr. Catlin states that every painting has been made from nature, and by his own hand, many of them in the intervals of paddling a canoe, or leading a packhorse through trackless wilds, at the hazard of his life; that he has visited these people in their own villages, and painted their portraits (certificated by the United States authorities) on the spot. The room in which this exhibition takes place is on the ground-floor of the Egyptian Hall, and is 106 feet in length. In the centre is a very handsome "Crow lodge or wigwam," brought from the foot of the Rocky Mountains. It is made of buffalo-skins garnished and painted. The pine-poles are thirty in number, and the interior will hold eighty persons. On a table near this tent are lances, calumets, tomahawks, scalping-knives, and scalps; and above, men's and women's dresses, bows, spears, shields, moccasins, war-clubs, drums, &c. Around are hung the numerous paintings in oil, comprising portraits, landscapes, ceremonies, games, manual occupations, hunting excursions, councils, and feasts. The portraits are very characteristic, the men being for the most part tidy, with one or two striking exceptions, and the young women remarkably handsome. The landscapes are clearly painted, and the ceremonies are very amusing in some instances and very horrible in others. Those which please us most are the hunting and travelling sketches, and one or two of "the fury of the fight!" For instance, No. 486, "Bogard, Batiste, and I, chasing a herd of buffalo in high grass, on a Missouri bottom," is one of the most spirited things that can be imagined; and so also is No. 471, "A Camanchee warrior lancing an Osage at full speed." The great merit of these oil sketches is their manifest correctness, not to a line or the mere making out of a horse's head or some portion of dress, but to the action and the scene. Not only the portraits, but the landscapes and groups, have a certificate of identity. We recommend to all the "Descriptive Catalogue," which is very amusing, and is necessary to the elucidation of customs and localities. At the private view to which we were invited on Tuesday there was a very numerous assemblage of persons of distinction. ----*---- NEW COURT GAZETTE. _Catlin's Indian Gallery._--This interesting exhibition consists chiefly of portraits of the most distinguished warriors and chiefs of the various tribes, besides views of fine scenery, buffalo hunting, war and other dances; a vast variety of weapons, dresses, some scalps, a wigwam, &c. The collection also contains some of the females of note, who display attractions of feature and expression which would not discredit the most civilized people. Amongst the chiefs of greatest notoriety here is the celebrated chief "Black Hawk." The eldest and second sons of this chief are here also, and are worthy of the sire from whom they sprung. There are several other distinguished warriors of this tribe and others, amounting to some hundred portraits. We can strongly recommend our readers to attend; they will then, for the first time, become acquainted with the real manners and customs of these "before-misrepresented people," who are fast sinking from the face of the earth. ----*---- LONDON SATURDAY JOURNAL. _Mr. Catlin's Indian Gallery._--In visiting it, indeed, the town-bred admirer of the freedom and grandeur of "savage life" might find somewhat, at first sight, to feed his sentimental fancies. Round the room, on the walls, are portraits of Indians, remarkable specimens of the true animal man; arrayed in their holiday dresses, tricked out in all the variety of savage fancy, and many of them as evidently and consciously "sitting for their portraits," as the most pedantic and affected superficialist of civilization. With these we have many glimpses of the scenery and state of existence connected with "life in the wilds." The far stretching prairie; the noble river and its "reaches," and "bluffs," and waterfloods; the shaggy bison, whose tremendous aspect makes him fearful, even in the stillness of a picture; the more terrible grisly bear; the Indian "at home," and the the Indian "abroad," with stirring hunting scenes, enough to rouse one's blood, and to make an unfledged adventurer long to dash away, and try one's skill and courage in an encounter with horned monsters, or even that "ugly creature" before whom the "strongest bull goes down." ----*---- KIDD'S LONDON JOURNAL. _Catlin's Indian Gallery, Egyptian Hall._--By a visit to this exhibition, every class of the community, old as well as young, will derive much instruction and gratification. Mr. Catlin's representation of the red races of North America, their country, their costumes, their sports, their religious ceremonies, and, in short, their manners and customs, so as to enable us to form a complete idea of them, is deserving of the utmost praise. There are above 500 subjects in these spacious rooms, from a wigwam to a child's rattle; and everything belonging to the various Indian tribes are before the spectator in their actual condition and integrity. There are, besides, a multitude of portraits of the leading warriors, &c., &c., and other pictures of dances, ball-play, ambuscading, fighting; the whole supplying by far the most ample and accurate history of them that has ever been published to the world. No book of travels can approach these realities; and after all we had read of the red men, we confess we are astonished at the many new and important points connected with them which this gallery impressed upon us. We saw more distinctly the links of resemblance between them and other early and distant people; and we had comparisons suggested of a multitude of matters affecting the progress of mankind all over the earth, alike illustrated by similitudes and dissimilitudes. ----*---- SCOTSMAN--EDINBURGH. _Mr. Catlin's Lectures on the North American Indians._--Numbers of fashionable persons still continue to attend the Rotunda to inspect the varied curiosities belonging to this interesting tribe. We have much pleasure in publishing the following testimonial from a gentleman well qualified to pronounce an opinion, on the remarkable fidelity and effect of Mr. Catlin's interesting and instructive exhibition:-- "Cottage, Haddington, 15th April, 1843. "DEAR SIR,--I have enjoyed much pleasure in attending your lectures at the Waterloo Rooms in Edinburgh. Your delineations of the Indian character, the display of beautiful costumes, and the native Indian manners, true to the life, realised to my mind and view, scenes I had so often witnessed in the parts of the Indian countries where I had been; and for twenty years' peregrinations in those parts, from Montreal to the Great Slave River north, and from the shores of the Atlantic, crossing the Rocky Mountains, to the mouth of the Columbia River, on the Pacific Ocean, west, I had opportunities of seeing much. Your lectures and exhibition have afforded me great pleasure and satisfaction, and I shall wish you all that success which you so eminently deserve, for the rich treat which you have afforded in our enlightened, literary, and scientific metropolis. "I remain, dear Sir, yours very truly, "JOHN HALDANE." "To George Catlin, Esq." The following is an extract of a letter received some days since by a gentleman in Edinburgh, from Mr. James Hargrave, of the Hudson's Bay Company, dated New York Factory, Hudson's Bay, 10th December, 1842:-- "Should you happen to fall in with 'Catlin's Letters on the North American Indians,' I would strongly recommend a perusal of them for the purpose of acquiring a knowledge of the habits and customs of those tribes among whom he was placed. Catlin's sketches are true to life, and are powerfully descriptive of their appearance and character." UNITED STATES PRESS. THE UNITED STATES GAZETTE. _Catlin's Indian Gallery._--The conception and plan of this gallery are in a high degree ingenious and philosophical. While it seems to the careless victor to be only a very animated representation of some of the most striking incidents in Indian life, it is in fact so contrived as to contain an intelligent and profound exposition of all that characterizes the savage in mind, in memory, and in manners; a revelation of the form and qualities of his understanding, of the shape and temper of his passions, of his religious impressions and the traditions which have given them their hue, and of the mingled ferocity and fun, barbarity and _bonhomie_, which streak his character. These are the matters that are brought out by a study of these pictures; and they show, on the part of the originator of this museum, a comprehension and reach of understanding which of themselves merit the name of genius. The execution is as happy as the purpose is judicious. No artist in this country possesses a readier or more graphic pencil; perhaps no one, since Hogarth, has had in so high a degree the faculty of seizing at a moment the true impression of a scene before his eyes, and transferring it to the canvas. And as a refined and finished portrait-painter, his large picture of Osceola alone sets him on a level with the most accomplished professors in any part of the States, and shows what eminence and what emolument might have been achieved by him had he devoted himself to that narrower branch of his art. The great and unshared merit of these sketches lies in the circumstance that there is nothing either in the grouping or the detail in anywise imaginary, but that every scene which his collection contains was copied by him from life, while the original was before him. Of the tribes thus represented, some have already, in the interval since these drawings, been entirely swept away from the earth, and it is plain that others, who escape that fate, will, as they are more nearly approached by the whites, lose much that is distinctive in their character and habits, and in a few, probably a very few years, the only memorial of the bravery, the sufferings, the toils, sports, customs, dresses, and decorations of the Indians, will be Catlin's Gallery. We feel great pride in stating that Mr. Catlin is a native of Pennsylvania. His birthplace, we are informed, is the valley of the Wyoming. There, probably, he acquired that fondness for the free wild life of the huntsman and forester that has led him so far from the tame continuance of cities, and has made the privations of that remote existence tolerable. There, too, he must have imbibed in early youth that love of the chace, and that sympathy with its noble excitements, which has made him out of sight the best exhibitor of the sports of the West that ever yet employed pen or pencil in illustration of the magnificent diversions that gave a dash of sublimity to the occupation of those dwellers by the sources of the Father of Waters. We, too, have seen something of that stirring Western life, and have had a taste of its delights and dangers, though we pretend not to a tithe of the lore here brought out. We know, perhaps, enough to judge of what is well done in this department, and we can testify strongly to the prodigious superiority of Mr. Catlin in the conception of the hunting-scenes, in the appreciation and selection of its strongest points and most interesting moments, and in the vigour and power with which the whole is presented, over Mr. Irving. Mr. Irving's style is, at all times, nicer and more fastidious than suits our taste; certainly it is too dainty to be capable of expressing the roughness and energy of those exhibitions. It may be that we ought not to have Indian life at all, but if we are to have it, let us have something of the heartiness and strength which make it what it is, and let there be some harmony between the subject and the manner. In Irving's dialect there are no terms for the utterance of what is most peculiar on those occasions; the harp-like gentleness of his tones and regularity of his pauses cannot present the hurry, helter-skelter dash and drive of those impetuous onsets and those breathless contests. His descriptions of the buffalo-hunt remind us of Finden's engraving of a ragged peasant, wherein the ravelled coat seems fringed with lace, and the cap seems tasselled with flakes of the ermine. Catlin brings forward the scene in all the rudeness and the raciness of reality. Upon the whole, Mr. Catlin has accomplished a work which will for ever associate his name in the highest rank of honour, with a subject that will interest the civilized world every year more and more through all coming time. We have learned with great regret that he will certainly take his museum to England in the course of a few weeks. We know too well how it will be valued there, to imagine that it will ever be permitted to come back. ----*---- THE PHILADELPHIA GAZETTE. _Catlin's Indian Gallery._--We cannot notice this collection too often. It is one of those productions which illustrate, in an eminent degree, the observation of Playfair, that when the proper time has arrived for some great work to be performed, some individual is raised up by Providence whose position and character and capacity precisely fit him for accomplishing the design. For reasons that will be appreciated by the philosopher, the philanthropist, and the theologian, as well as considerations that address themselves to the curiosity of the man of general knowledge, it was particularly desirable that a full and authentic record should be given to the world of the national characteristics of a race whose history is so peculiar, whose condition is so curious, and whose speedy extinguishment is so certain, as those of the North American Indians. Accordingly, when it is plain that the moment has arrived beyond which the portraiture of their state cannot any longer be delayed, if it would be known that they are in that native predicament which has been in nowise modified by European intercourse, a man appears whose birth in a spot of which the traditions are so strongly interfused with the memory of the Indian (the Wyoming Valley), has caused his imagination to be deeply impressed, even from his earliest youth, by the character and actions of this people; who is endowed by nature with the hand and eye of a painter, and who passes through a professional education which advances his talent to the skill of an accomplished artist, and who has inherited a fortitude of spirit, an elevation of purpose, and a vigour of limb, which render him competent to encounter the dangers, the discouragements, and the difficulties which of necessity lie along the path to the object in question. The man is willing to devote the best years of his life to the task of working out a great picture of those tribes of savages which are separated by 2000 miles from the farthest settlement of his nation. One of the most remarkable tribes which has yet been found on this continent was that of the Mandans. They were more advanced in the knowledge of domestic comforts, and were distinguished for more intelligence and a higher sense of honour than any of their brethren. They possessed certain very extraordinary and interesting annual religious celebrations, which were in part a commemoration of the Deluge, and contained, amongst other things, an allusion to the twig which the dove brought back from Noah to the earth. Mr. Catlin was the first white man who was ever admitted to inspect these ceremonies in the sacred hall in which they were performed for four days. He made several large and very copious paintings of the scenes which were presented to him; and he sketched almost all that was striking in the character of this tribe. The next year the whole of this nation was swept away by the smallpox; not an individual man, woman, or child survives; and the world possesses no other knowledge of this people or their traditions than is contained in these pictures in the gallery of Catlin. Fortunately they present us with as full and satisfactory a representation as could be desired. We believe that all who have visited this collection have formed but one opinion as to its interest and excellence. We would remind our readers that this gallery will remain open for their inspection but a short time longer before its final removal to England. * * * * * _Mr. Catlin's Gallery of Indian Paintings._--We congratulate our citizens on the opportunity they have now presented to them of witnessing the results of Mr. Catlin's labours and travels among the tribes of Aborigines inhabiting the Rocky Mountains and the prairies of "the far West." Mr. Catlin spent many years among these tribes, at the imminent risk of his life, and at an incalculable cost of comfort, solely with the view of taking likenesses and sketches from life and nature, and of representing these "children of the forest" in their own peculiar costumes, and as he found them in their own native wilds. Of the accuracy of his likenesses we have the most undoubted testimony; and of the sketches of scenery, dances, hunting parties, &c., we may venture to say they are graphic, bold, and free. We know of nothing from which one who has never seen the Indian in his untamed character can derive so accurate a knowledge of these fast-disappearing natives of the soil as from this gallery. We would throw in a word in favour of the young--let them by all means see this gallery. ----*---- THE PHILADELPHIA WEEKLY MESSENGER. _Catlin's Indian Gallery._--Mr. Catlin's gallery of Indian pictures and curiosities has recently been opened at the Arcade for the inspection of the citizens of Philadelphia. In common with other lovers of amusement, we have visited this collection, and have found that it fully justifies whatever has been said by those who visited it in Boston and New York, and described it as the most surprising, entertaining, and instructive exhibition which the efforts of American genius have ever brought before the country.... In this stage of human knowledge Catlin resolved to devote the labours of his life to exploring the condition, customs, character, and conduct of this people, and to bring home a record of their being, which should be to the world a possession for ever. He has fulfilled this purpose. He has lifted the veil on which was written "ignorance," and he has shown to his countrymen the peculiarities of a life which is competent to instruct philosophy with conclusions that it has never dreamt of, and entertain curiosity beyond the compass of the wildest fables. ----*---- THE PHILADELPHIA EVENING POST. The subjects of Mr. Catlin's pencil, his histories and delineations, are of a noble race. The Camanchees, the Mandans, the Pawnees, the Blackfeet, Sioux, Crows, Assiniboins, Omahaws, &c. &c., who have not yet sunk beneath the withering associations of white people, who on their native prairies stalk with noble pride and independence, who manufacture their own dresses from the skins of the mountain sheep and buffalo, and use their spears, bows and arrows, in preference to fire-arms, and with courtly pride and hospitality welcomed the artist, and honoured him for his talents of delineation, as a nobleman of nature, infinitely superior to the mercenary race of traders and Indian agents, who plunder and cheat them when opportunity offers. The Indian is truly fortunate in having so faithful and industrious a champion, historian, and painter as Mr. Catlin, who will no doubt rescue their name from the mass of trading libellers that have so long corrupted and then slandered them. With a remarkable assiduity and perseverance he has devoted many years of his life, and much pecuniary means, in preparing a magnificent collection of their dresses, instruments, ornaments, portraits, &c. For ourselves, we anticipate one of the most original and curious works that has been issued from the press for many years, for Mr. Catlin has struck out a new path to fame and fortune, and while he leaves a memorial of the true Indian uncorrupted native character, he makes a lasting name for himself. ----*---- THE NEW YORK EVENING STAR. _Catlin's Indian Gallery._--We would remind those who have not yet visited this extraordinary collection, that it will be closed after the lapse of a single week, and that it will never again be exhibited in America. There will never be presented to our citizens an opportunity of inspecting one of the most remarkable and entertaining works that the genius and labour of an individual has created in this age and country; and those who neglect this occasion of examining this most curious monument of talent and enterprise will have missed for ever one of the noblest spectacles at which patriotism can refresh its pride, or reason can inform its curiosity. Mr. Catlin has received permission from the English Chancellor of the Exchequer to import his museum into England free from duty, a saving to him of about two thousand dollars. He will sail for that country in the course of the summer, and the indifference of America will have surrendered to her rival what the labour of an American had created for herself. In our opinion nothing could redound more to the patriotism, national pride, and honour of our country, than the purchase by Congress of this rare collection of aboriginal curiosities, to enrich a national museum at Washington. Such an object is by no means unworthy the attention of the nation; and as in the lapse of a few more years all traces of this interesting people will have passed away, or but a small remnant of them remain in their wilderness asylum almost beyond the ken of civilized man, such a depository of the relics peculiar to this wonderful people would possess an interest which would be immeasurably enhanced when their existence as a nation was for ever blotted out, as from present indications it inevitably must be. Located at the capital, members of Congress and public-spirited citizens of the far West could from time to time contribute to the common stock, until, in the course of a few years, a national museum of Indian curiosities would be formed to perpetuate their manners, customs, and costumes, that would be a monument to the taste and public spirit of the nation to the latest generation. The facilities possessed by the Government for the successful prosecution of so noble a design commends it forcibly to the consideration of Congress. And as it is not yet too late, we trust, to secure the co-operation of Mr. Catlin in furtherance of an object so congenial with his views, and which would at the same time ensure him a just reward for his enthusiastic devotion to this noble enterprise, without being compelled to seek it in a foreign land, we would fain hope that his stay among us would be prolonged until measures were taken to call the attention of Congress to the subject. Should this suggestion be favourably received, and it be found that the engagements of Mr. Catlin do not preclude its being carried out, we trust the project will enlist warmly the interest of our public-spirited and patriotic citizens at an early day. We have already spoken once or twice at some length of the value and interest of this exhibition. It addresses itself to the feelings of the rudest observer, and engages the imagination of the idlest visitor, by revealing, with amazing copiousness, the whole interior life and customs of a people singular and striking beyond the speculations of romance, and so separated by position, by distrust, and enmity, that no one has ever before seen what this man has sketched. To the philosopher, the philanthropist, the moralist, and the man of science, it presents matter equally attractive and important, in those higher regards with which they are conversant, with that which amuses the fancy of the rude. By all it will be found a storehouse of wonders, which will surprise the mind in present observation, and gratify the thoughts in all future recollection. ----*---- THE UNITED STATES GAZETTE. _Catlin's Indian Gallery._--I am grieved to see that this noble product of American genius is in a few days to leave its native soil, without any effective efforts having been made to ensure its permanent return. I did hope that individual disposition would be matured into common action, and that at any price a treasure so honourably, so peculiarly American, would be kept from passing into European hands. Is it _yet_ too late to avert such a result? Cannot we yet prevent such a spot upon our city's bright escutcheon? With what feelings will our descendants enter some department of the British Museum, or some _Palais_ or _Musée_ in the city of Bourbons, to see a treasure thus surrendered by their fathers? Can they boast of Catlin's _powers_ as a national glory? Others can point to the possession of the _fruits_ of them as our national disgrace. Whether in justice or in wrong, our treatment of the Indian nations has been a reproach to us through the world. Let it not be in a stranger's power to show how noble and how elevated a race we are thus accused of having injured. Let it not be said that while America has extirpated them from existence, France or England has preserved the only memorial of what they were. It is at all events yet in the power of each to _visit_ the collection in his own country. Let no man who bears the honoured name of an American fail to do so. He has no idea of what the rude forefathers of his forests were. He has never had Indian existence in its varied forms presented to him in such life-like reality, never before so much relating to this people so systematically brought together. In the labours of Catlin's hand and in the achievements of his pencil, we and our descendants must now look for the history of our national ancestry. ----*---- THE AMERICAN SENTINEL. _Catlin's Gallery._--Mr. Catlin's extraordinary exhibition of Indian curiosities and paintings will be closed, as we learn from his advertisement, in the course of a few days. This is the last exhibition that will be made of this wonderful collection in the United States, as it will be taken to England at once and there be disposed of. We trust that every one who has a spark of rational curiosity or national pride will visit a work which, above every other that we are acquainted with, is fitted to gratify both. We do not think that, all the circumstances being taken together, there has been produced in this age any work more wonderful or more valuable. The hardy enterprise of the forest-born adventurer must unite with the tact and skill a very accomplished diplomatist to carry a man through the scenes which Catlin has visited; and the observation of a philosophical genius must be joined to the ready skill of a thoroughly furnished artist, to bring back from those scenes of savage life such illustrations as Catlin now presents. This age will send forth no such man; and should such appear at any future period, he will be too late for the performance of this task. This museum possesses in itself more to amaze and delight than any work to which we can point. The very spirit of savage existence is unsphered before us as we contemplate these graphic sketches. We feel the freedom and enthusiasm which mark the life of the hunter and the warrior of the west, fascinating above all the attractions of civilized being. We are pleased, astonished, charmed by the variety and strangeness of the spectacles brought before us. No parent should suffer himself to feel that he has done justice to his children until he has taken them to view this gallery, which will never again be open to their inspection. No citizen should suffer it to leave the country until he has fully possessed himself of all that it reveals respecting the aborigines of his country. ----*---- THE UNITED STATES GAZETTE. _Mr. Catlin's Views of the Far West._--There can be no mistake or exaggeration in pronouncing the exhibition of these views of the scenery and natural history of the western country the most important and interesting object for public attention which has ever been offered to the eastern division of the United States. It has been with a fascinating degree of feeling and adventure that Mr. Catlin has gone over the immense plains of the west, and employed himself with pallet and pencil among all the scenes he could select of landscape and natural history, and with the western natives, and to sketch people, views, and objects which have formed so much of its distinctive character, by which he may rescue and retain the almost incredible appearances and habits of a race of men and animals now fast disappearing in the march of civilization, upon the remembrance and record of history. The collection of Portraits, made of upwards of 300 persons, forms a representation from forty-eight Indian nations, chiefly between the settled part of our country and the Rocky Mountains, among which are the Sacs, Osage, Pawnee, Camanchee, Sioux, Mandans, Blackfeet, Shawnee, Cher-o-kee, Seneca, and Seminoles; and of these, the portraits of Osceola, Micanopeah, Keokuk, Black Hawk, Io-way, Red Jacket, Co-ee-ha-jo, King Philip, John Ross, with several of their wives and children, will always be prominent in the references of American history. In addition to these important objects of personal consideration, the peculiar and correct representations and appearances of the general western country are prominent, and are all of a highly novel and beautiful character. The views of rivers, towns, settlements, mountains, prairies, and waterfalls, and animals, are generally those which have never been before presented to us. They have been taken in upwards of 200 oil paintings coloured to nature, and consist of the most important localities reaching to the Rocky Mountains, finished on the spot with a fidelity of delineation and picturesque effect which would be creditable to an artist of very high attainments with all the "appliances and means" afforded by the best accommodation and leisure. ----*---- THE PHILADELPHIA SATURDAY COURIER. _Catlin's Indian Gallery._--In a late number we took notice of the vast and wonderful assemblage of pictures and curiosities by which Mr. Catlin has contrived to bring before our eyes the fullness of the life of the Western Indians. We would again urge upon our citizens, as Americans, and as valuing curious information and refined pleasure, to give this gallery a visit. There is not in our land, nor in any part of Europe which we have visited, anything of the kind more extraordinary or more interesting. The galleries illustrative of national character and antiquities which are to be found in London, Paris, Florence, and other cities, have been collected by the power of great kings; and the outlay of immense treasure, and the apparatus of negotiations, and special ministers, and resident consuls, and agents innumerable, have been requisite to their completion. This is the work of a single individual, a man without fortune and without patronage, who created it with his own mind and hand, without aid and even against countenance; and who sustained the lonely toils of eight years in a region fearful and forbidding beyond the conceptions of civilized life, in order to present his countrymen with a work which he knew they would one day value as the most remarkable thing they owned, and which he was assured that no spirit and no skill but his own could accomplish. He may point to his magnificent collection, which now receives the admiration of every eye, and may say with honest pride, "Alone I did it!" But without the abatement of a reference to the circumstances of the case and without any qualification of any sort, we declare that if this museum is less gorgeous and less stately than those imperial galleries which give fame even to the capitals of England and France, it is not less instructive or entertaining than the greatest of them. Of the enterprise, the free genius, the noble self-dependence, the stern endurance, and indomitable perseverance which our republican system glories in inspiring and cherishing, there is no nobler, and there will be no more abiding monument, than Catlin's Indian Gallery. ----*---- PHILADELPHIA SATURDAY NEWS. _Catlin's Indian Gallery._--We have visited it repeatedly, and have studied its contents with close attention, as the best exposition of savage character and life that has ever been given to the world; and the result of our impressions is, that whether we regard the historical and philosophic value of this museum, its strangeness and interest as matter of entertainment, or the wonderful toil and difficulty that must have attended its formation, there is not in our country a work more honourable to its author, or more deserving of the esteem and admiration of the community. The hardships of Indian existence are brought before us with a bold effect; the few refinements by which it is comforted are impressively presented; the labours by which it is sustained are shown; and the romance which makes it charming is brilliantly and copiously exhibited. The gallery is a complete and fascinating panorama of savage life; and all who have the smallest interest in the wild and stirring existence of the Indian hunter should hasten to contemplate this splendid picture. No man has tasted these scenes of daring and peril with half the sympathy and understanding of Mr. Catlin; and neither in the delicate touches of Irving, nor the more vigorous drawings of Hoffman, is there anything like the intelligence and interest of these animated sketches. Whoever would know to what sounds of glee and exultation the northern forests, even at this hour, are echoing, or with what spectacles of merriment or toil the flatness of the prairie is enlivened, must view and ponder over this collection. Mr. Catlin intends to remove this museum to England very soon, and from that country it will probably never return. This, therefore, is the last opportunity which Americans will have of ever inspecting this most curious assemblage. We exhort every one who is a lover either of rare entertainment or strange knowledge to lose no time in visiting this gallery. ----*---- THE AMERICAN DAILY ADVERTISER. _Catlin's Indian Gallery._--The collection embraces a wonderful extent and variety of national history, likewise an exact and discriminating range throughout the different tribes. They are all classed with the method and arrangement of a philosopher, developed and associated with the vivacity of a dramatist, and personated, defined, and coloured with the eye and hand of a painter. Rarely, indeed, would one man be found who could do all this; still more rarely a man, who to these various offices and talents would add the courage, the patience, and the taste to become an eye-witness of his subjects, and above all, would possess the industry and the veracity to represent them to others, and thus to command credibility and admiration. I hope my fellow-citizens will give this exhibition their repeated attention. They will find in it much more than has ever been combined before. It will greatly abridge their labours in reading, nay, it will tell them what books do not teach; and it will impress upon their senses and upon their memories the living portraits of a race, distinguished by inextinguishable ardour, unbounded ingenuity, and indomitable determination--a race now fast eluding the projects of the politician, the researches of the curious, and soon to cease from demanding even the sympathies of the humane and conscientious. We learn that Mr. Catlin is soon to embark for England, where encouragement is offered to his remarkable talents and energy, and we sincerely wish him the rewards due to native genius, exemplary diligence, and moral integrity and refinement. ----*---- PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER. _Catlin's Gallery._--We called the attention of our readers some days ago to Catlin's Indian Gallery, now exhibiting in this city. This collection is in every respect so remarkable and interesting, that we again bring it before the notice of the community. Mr. Catlin visited nearly fifty different tribes of Indians, and resided familiarly among them for several years. He made their habits and character his exclusive study. With the eye of a poet, the judgment of a man of rare sagacity, and the hand of an accomplished artist, he saw and scrutinized, and sketched the forms, the feats, the entire style of life of the varied nations with whom he had made his home. The general features of this strange and most interesting people are presented to us in this collection with a copiousness and variety which could only be attained by one who had devoted the enthusiasm of years to a task, to which he had, in the first instance, brought extraordinary talents. Whatever met his watchful glance that was striking or peculiar in the religious ceremonies, the warlike demonstrations, the festive celebrations of peace and leisure, the separate acts and social habits of the wanderers of the distant wilds of the west, was instantly transferred to his canvas, and fixed in living colours on the very spot where the scene was shown. Accordingly we have here illustrations of the mode in which almost every thing, which is common or curious, usual or occasional, among the tribes is performed. The chace, which there has no meaner object than the "stately buffalo," is before us in full and numerous portraiture; the rousing of the herd in the centre of some endless prairie, the reckless vehemence of the pursuit by the wild horse and the wilder hunter, the mad dashing of the fearless sportsman into the midst of the monstrous throng, with nothing but bow and knife; the unhorsing of some, who roll trampled under foot, and of others who are tossed high into the air; the final capture and death of the huge victim of the sport, all these are presented to us in the freshness and freedom of the very scenes themselves of this magnificent excitement. Then there are dances of an art and an intricacy that might instruct Almack's itself; the bear dance, in which, clothed in skins, they imitate the postures and movements of that animal; the buffalo dance, in which they are masked in the skulls which they have taken in the hunt; the eagle dance, which mimics the attitude of that bird; the dance on the snow in peculiar shoes; and the numerous dances of war. Then we have bold and admirable sketches of the scenery of the prairies and the hills 2000 miles above St. Louis, presenting a richness and brilliance of verdure of which the Atlantic resident has never formed a conception. In short, it would be difficult to point out a single particular in which the sketches of this ardent and able painter do not furnish the fullest and most valuable information about the western continent and its inhabitants. There are portraits, likewise, of all the remarkable persons whom the artist encountered in his rambles, painted on the spot, in their actual dresses and natural positions, certified as rigidly accurate, in every instance, by officers of the United States, who were present at the time. But sketches are not all that this unique collection consists of. There is a large number of the dresses of the chiefs and women, rich and curious to a very great degree, implements of war and of social life--articles by which friendship is promoted and leisure is amused. ----*---- PHILADELPHIA HERALD AND SENTINEL. _Catlin's Indian Gallery_ is one of the most curious and interesting collections ever brought before the public. The portraits of the chiefs and warriors constitute perhaps the least striking portion of the gallery; although the natural freedom and boldness of the attitudes, and the life-like variety and expression of the countenances, caught with a rare felicity by the accomplished artist, render them immeasurably superior in attraction and value to anything of that kind ever before presented to the community. They were all sketched on the spots of their residence, and in the characteristic attire of their tribes; and the certificates of different United States officers, attached to the back of each picture, testify to the accuracy and completeness of each individual portraiture. The largest and by far the most engaging and peculiar part of the collection, consists of sketches of groups occupied in the various games, sports, and diversions, by which the monotony of savage life is amused. Mr. Catlin visited forty-eight different tribes, and was domesticated amongst them for eight years; and whenever any spectacle of merriment, or business, or religion was got up, the painter drew apart from the company, and producing the canvas which was always in readiness, seized with an Hogarthian quickness and spirit the outlines and the impression of the scene before him, and has perpetuated for the gratification of posterity the faithful and vivid likenesses of some of the most extraordinary acts and incidents which the history of man can exhibit. Sketched with a distinctness and a particularity which indicate an uncommon degree of talent and skill on the part of the artist, we find among these paintings almost everything that is characteristic in the life and conduct of the Indian: the energetic dance, marked by a science and a significance, unknown to the amusements of more cultivated nations,--the hunt of the buffalo, with its impressive incidents of danger and daring--the religious rite--the military council--the game--the fight--the voluntary torture by which the "Stoic of the woods" displays his hardihood of nerve and spirit--and the grotesque gaiety which marks the occasional mirthfulness of a nature usually so much restrained. All these are brought before us with a fidelity of delineation attested by the certificates of the most competent and reputable witnesses, and animation and interest acknowledged by all who have approached them. This collection is not only unique, as it concerns the particular people whose state and character it illustrates; but, as throwing light upon a grade and condition of the human race of which little has ever been known, it possesses an importance novel and unparticipated: for it has never happened, in the history of the world, that a savage people has been approached and depicted with this intelligent completeness. He who would learn what are the dispositions and the faculties which belong to the mind and heart of man, in the mere rudeness of his natural state, will find more satisfactory sources of information in this Indian gallery than in the fullest descriptions of travellers or the astutest schemes of metaphysicians. ----*---- THE PHILADELPHIA GAZETTE. _Catlin's Indian Gallery._--It is a remarkable circumstance, and one very characteristic of the energy of this age, that the same year and almost the same month should have witnessed the completion of three independent collections, each of which, after its way, gives us a complete portraiture of the nation to which it refers. What Mr. Dunn's figures have accomplished for China, and Mr. Wilkinson's drawings have done for Egypt, Mr. Catlin's paintings have performed for the Indian tribes. The first of these has excited the admiration of America, the second has won the applause of Europe; if the last is less brilliant than the one, it is more lively than the other, and it is not less complete than either. It is not merely a minute and thorough description of a nation whose situation and history render everything that relates to it in the highest degree curious and personal to Americans, but it addresses itself to the admiration and instruction of every philosophic mind as an encyclopædia picture of the savage state. While no histories present us with such copious information of the characteristics of those particular tribes, which are intimately and eternally connected with our annals, no speculative treatises contain anything like the knowledge here garnered of the qualities and attributes of that condition which is called the state of nature. The eye of childhood and the mind of age are alike astonished and informed by the spectacles here strikingly presented by this unrivalled work. Mr. Catlin is a native of Pennsylvania, and has therefore peculiar claims upon the attention of Philadelphians. We know and are persuaded that when this Museum, after the very few days allotted to its continuance here, is closed and removed for ever from our land, it will be a matter of deep and permanent regret to all who now fail to visit it, that they have lost the sight. ----*---- THE PHILADELPHIA EVENING STAR. _Catlin's Indian Gallery._--This interesting museum of curiosities, collected by Mr. Catlin, during a residence of more than eight years among forty tribes of Indians, and of sketches painted by him, illustrative of their habits and customs, is now exhibited at the Arcade in this city. It is an eloquent and illustrious witness of the genius, disinterestedness, and toil of the person who brought it together. Those productions of Mr. Catlin's pencil, which were given to the world many years since, evinced his ability to rank, at some day, with the first artists of this country; but instead of devoting himself to those lucrative branches of his profession, which would have gained him a sure return of wealth, he resolved, at the bidding of an enthusiasm, perhaps inspired by the legends of his native valley of Wyoming, to dedicate his life to the great and generous purpose of presenting to his countrymen a satisfactory portraiture of a nation which had so interesting a connexion with their own history, and whose condition has always produced so strong an impression upon the imagination of Americans. Alone and unsupported, save by a dauntless spirit, he turned towards the western forests to seek the Indian in his boundless home. "The general garden, where all steps may roam, Whose nature owns a nation for her child, Exulting in the enjoyment of the wild." The perils of more than a Ulyssean voyage were encountered before the artist could feel that his object was accomplished, and before he would permit himself to return to his family and friends. We have devoted much time and a close attention to the sketches which Mr. Catlin has brought back; and we are convinced that, severe as were the labours and privations to which he was subject, they were less than the value of this collection. Whoever will study the numerous and varied representations here given of savage life, and will reflect how complete a picture is presented of a most peculiar and unknown race, will be persuaded, we think, that no greater accession has been made to the sum of human knowledge and human entertainment, in this age and country, than is produced by this Museum. The philosophy of Indian character is revealed with curious distinctness by one portion of the paintings, while another class presents the picturesque of that existence with singular spirit. Many striking suggestions for the history of civility, and many valuable metaphysical considerations, are prompted by a survey of these illustrations of the intelligence and the instincts of this people; and any man who would taste the poetry of this wild life, will find enough to satisfy him in the animated exhibitions of the hunt, the march, and the fight, which are here brought before his eyes. In Mr. Irving's very graphic descriptions of the amusements of the prairie, there is nothing half so bold and stirring as the noble pictures which here bring the adventures of the buffalo-hunt before us, or the terrors of the fight with the grisly bear. ----*---- THE PENNSYLVANIAN. _Catlin's Indian Gallery._--We alluded briefly a few days since to Catlin's Indian Gallery, now open in the saloon at the Arcade, and we again call attention to it as one of the most gratifying exhibitions of the day, to all who feel the slightest interest in the aborigines of our country, or desire to become acquainted with the topographical features of the great western wild. This collection is the result of years of toil and privation, sustained by a rare and commendable enthusiasm. Mr. Catlin, who is an artist of much ability, and is likewise in other respects well fitted for the task which he voluntarily assumed, devoted himself to a study of the Indian character, and steadily followed out his great object for a considerable length of time. He has visited many of the tribes who yet roam in their native wildness, and he became as it were domesticated among them to study their habits and dispositions, encountering all the perils and privations which necessarily attend an enterprise of this nature. In the course of his rambles, he made paintings of every thing calculated to give a vivid impression to others of the persons, events, and scenes which fell under his notice, and the result is a magnificent collection of portraits and views of the most interesting character, made still more attractive by an immense variety of Indian dresses, arms, and utensils of many kinds, which, with the illustrative scenes, give a clear idea of aboriginal characteristics, and form a pleasing evidence of the results which can be achieved by the untiring perseverance of a single man. Mr. Catlin has in this way made a contribution to American history which must gain for him an enduring fame. It should form the nucleus of a national museum, that posterity may have some relics of a people doomed to speedy destruction, as much by their own inflexible nature as by the rolling tide of civilization. ----*---- THE PHILADELPHIA GAZETTE. _Catlin's Indian Gallery._--We could scarcely recommend a more pleasing and instructive collection than this to the notice of the community. It is what only a Catlin, with his enthusiasm and perseverance, could have accomplished. To him the study of nature is most appropriate in her great hall or cathedral:-- "That vast cathedral, boundless as our wonder, Whose quenchless lamps the sun and moon supply; Its choir the winds and waves; its organ thunder; Its dome the sky." The boundless woods have been his home, and dwellers of the wilderness the sitters for his art. So far as Indian life is concerned, the reader will find a little of every thing in Catlin's gallery; not of faces merely, but of grand western life and scene. ----*---- THE WORLD. _Catlin's Indian Gallery._--I visited this collection with expectations very highly excited by the strong and renewed expressions of admiration which it had received from the press in New York and Boston; but my anticipations had fallen below the reality in degree as much as they had differed from it in kind. I had supposed that it was merely an assemblage of the portraits of distinguished Indian chieftains, instead of being, as we find that it is, a very complete and curious tableau of the life and habits of the strange and interesting races which once inhabited the soil we now possess. Mr. Catlin's advertisement does no justice to the character of his collection. He does not state himself. He is a person of lofty genius and disinterested ambition, and he has abhorred to tarnish the purity of his self-respect by even claiming his own. Mr. Catlin spent eight years in the most intimate intercourse with the tribes which occupy the territory lying 2000 miles above St. Louis. His only purpose in visiting these remote and secluded nations was to transfer to his canvas faithful representations of those scenes of conduct which were most characteristic of that people, and those personal traits which would best transmit the memory of the savage to times which would no longer witness his existence. This design he fulfilled by copying on the spot pictures of the sports, fights, business, and religious ceremonies which passed before his sight; and the gallery which he now opens to the community, revives before the gaze of refinement, the whole condition and qualities of the wild and far-roaming occupants of the prairies and forests. An attentive examination of his museum has led us to the opinion that this is one of the most striking triumphs that the pencil has ever achieved; for while the brush of Lawrence preserves the likeness of an individual, that of Catlin has perpetuated the portraits of a nation. Let every American visit this exhibition; let every one who would be informed or entertained give it his protracted study. The more it is examined the more it will gratify. FRENCH PRESS. ----*---- CONSTITUTIONNEL du 22 Juin. Le musée Catlin est une des collections les plus curieuses qu'on ait vues à Paris, tant à cause du caractère naïf de la peinture, qu'à cause de l'originalité des sujets qu'elle représente. M. Catlin a donc rapporté de son voyage aux Montagnes Rocheuses quatre à cinq cents toiles, portraits ou paysages, tous peints d'après nature. Parmi ces portraits, il y a des figures d'une beauté, d'une élégance superbes. Il y a des profils, le croirait-on, qui rappellent le type grec ou l'Antinoüs. Bien plus, dans les scènes de danse ou de combat, dans les fêtes ou les assemblées de tribus, on remarque tres souvent des personnages dont la pose, l'attitude, le geste, ressemblent tout-à-fait à l'antique. Cela n'est pas, d'ailleurs, si surprenant pour qui veut réflechir au caractère de la beauté antique. Qu'est-ce donc qui distingue l'art grec entre tous les arts? n'est-ce pas la simplicité et le naturel? Les artistes grecs avaient le bonheur de trouver d'abord autour d'eux toutes les conditions premières de race, de climat, de civilisation, qui favorisent le développement de la beauté; et secondement, ils laissaient faire la nature et ne torturaient jamais le mouvement de leur modèle. Il n'y a dans toute la statuaire grecque que cinq ou six poses peut-être qui sont le type de tous les autres mouvemens. Les hommes rapprochés de la nature ne se tortillent pas comme les civilisés. Le calme est d'ordre naturel; et c'est là un des premiers élémens de la beauté antique qu'on retrouve dans la _beauté sauvage_. Les paysagistes pourraient bien aussi étudier avec profit la peinture facile et vraie de M. Catlin qui n'est pourtant initié à aucun des procédés scabreux de l'art civilisé. M. Catlin peint tranquillement du premier coup, en mettant un ton juste et franc à côté d'un autre, et il ne paraît pas qu'il revienne jamais ni par glacis ni par empâtement. Mais son sentiment est si vif et en quelque sorte si sincère, son exécution si naïve et si spontanée, que l'effet, vu juste, est rendu juste. Il a fait ainsi des ciels d'une transparence et d'une lumière bien difficile à obtenir, même pour les praticiens les plus habiles des lointains d'une finesse rare et bien balancés entre la terre et le ciel. En présence de cette nature toute nouvelle, de ces formes singulières du pays, de cette couleur du ciel et des arbres, si originale, un peintre de profession se serait bien tourmenté pour exprimer toutes ces belles choses, et il y aurait sans doute mis beaucoup trop de ses préjugés et de sa personnalité civilisée. Il est très heureux que M. Catlin ait été seulement assez peintre pour faire tout bonnement sur la toile ce qu'il voyait, sans parti pris d'avance et sans convention européenne. Nous avons ainsi des steppes dont nous ne nous faisions pas une image, des buffles prodigieux, des chasses fantastiques, et une foule d'aspects et de scènes plus intéressantes l'une que l'autre. Ici, c'est un marais vert tendre, entouré d'arbres sveltes et légers. Là, c'est la plaine infinie avec ses grandes herbes mouvantes comme les vagues d'une mer sans repos, et l'on aperçoit une course diabolique de quelques animaux dont on a peine à distinguer la forme et qui fendent l'immensité. C'est un buffle poursuivi par un cavalier penché sur la crinière de son cheval sauvage; mais au-dessus des herbes profondes, on ne voit que les épaules bossues du buffle et les oreilles dressées du cheval. Quel drame! Où vont-ils? où s'arrêteront-ils? Quelques autres tableaux présentent les aventures de la navigation et de la guerre, des chasses où les hommes, couverts de peaux de loup, s'avancent à quatre pattes pour surprendre les buffles, où les chevaux sauvages sont enveloppés de lacets perfides, des cérémonies religieuses où de volontaires martyrs se font pendre et torturer en l'honneur du Grand Esprit. ----*---- LE CHARIVARI, Paris, 1845. Il y avait là une magnifique collection, un musée rare, que dis-je? unique et précieux, amassé à grands frais, à grand' peine, par un artiste passionné et patient, par M. Catlin, voyageur aussi intrépide que peintre naïf et que sincère historien. Ce musée est à la fois une collection d'objets d'art et un recueil de notes scientifiques sur une classe d'hommes qui diminue de jour en jour devant les empiètemens de la civilisation, et qui dans cinquante ans aura complètement disparu du globe. C'est le portrait aussi fidèle que possible, le daguerréotype d'un monde qu'on ne retrouvera plus, et le gouvernement l'a laissé partir, l'a laissé perdre; il n'a pas même senti la nécessité de l'acquérir. Il n'a fait ni une offre ni un prix à l'artiste qu'il eût récompensé ainsi qu'il devait l'être de dix ans d'études et d'efforts. Tout le monde y aurait gagné: le peintre qui craint devoir éparpiller un jour le résultat de tant de peines et de travaux, eût été heureux de le voir conservé, concentré, consacré à jamais, en lieu sûr, à la science et à l'art. ----*---- L'OBSERVATEUR, Oct. 9, 1845. _Le Musée-Indien de M. Catlin._--Lorsque la civilisation recule partout les bornes de son horison et resserre dans un étroit espace les peuplades nomades et sauvages qui se refusent au joug de la domination européenne, ce n'est pas sans un certain intérêt qu'on visite le Musée Indien de M. Catlin. En voyant la collection du célèbre touriste, l'esprit se refuse à croire que ce soit là l'oeuvre d'un seul homme. Et cependant, rien n'est plus vrai. Explorateur hardi, M. Catlin a passé huit années de sa vie à parcourir les Montagnes Rocheuses et les parties les plus reculées de l'Amérique septentrionale; artiste enthousiaste, il a bravé les dangers, supporté les fatigues et les privations de toutes sortes pour mener à bonne fin son audacieuse entreprise. Il a visité les Indiens dans leurs wig-wams; il les a suivis dans leurs chasses; il a étudié leurs moeurs, leurs coutumes, ne se laissant arrêter par aucun obstacle, tenant quelquefois son pinceau d'une main, tandis qu'il conduisait son canot de l'autre. Aussi, ne nous montrerons nous pas d'une grande sévérité à l'égard de ses tableaux; ce n'est, pour la plupart, que des esquisses faites à grands traits et dont le mérite consiste dans la vérité des costumes et des sites et dans la ressemblance parfaite des portraits, ainsi que l'attestent les certificats les plus flatteurs délivrés au hardi voyageur, sur les lieux mêmes, par des personnes dont la véracité et la compétence ne sauraient être mises en doute. La collection que M. Catlin a rapportée de ses excursions est d'autant plus curieuse qu'elle est unique en son genre. Elle se compose de plus de cinq cents tableaux représentant des portraits, des paysages, et des scènes de moeurs qui sont comme une histoire descriptive de ces races primitives, que la guerre et la chasse déciment chaque jour, et qui disparaîtront sans doute bientôt de la surface du globe. Quant à M. Catlin, nous devrons à ses explorations et à sa collection de ne pas voir tomber dans l'oubli les moeurs, les costumes, et la physionomie de ces races, qui dans quelques siècles n'existeront peut-être plus qu'à l'état de souvenir. ----*---- MONITEUR DE L'ARMÉE. M. Catlin, c'est le nom de cet artiste plein de résolution et de persévérance, a passé huit années au milieu des villages Indiens et sur la prairie; il a connu tous les chefs des tribus et les guerriers les plus renommés; il a assisté aux chasses dangereuses, aux jeux aminés et quelquefois sanglans des sauvages; il a observé leurs coutumes et leurs superstitions; il a recueilli leurs traditions orales, et tout ce qu'il a vu, sous les yeux des Indiens, ses hôtes, et souvent au péril de sa vie, il l'a représenté sur la toile, écrivant ainsi d'après nature toute l'histoire de populations que la guerre, et surtout les liqueurs fortes et la petite vérole, font décroitre d'année en année dans une progression si rapide, que l'on peut prévoir que d'ici à cinquante ans, la civilisation les pressant d'ailleurs et les refoulant vers les montagnes, il ne restera peut-être plus d'elles que de très petits groupes ou des individus isolés destinés à disparaître bientôt de la terre. Les peaux ronges ne pouvant laisser aucune trace durable de leur passage sur le globe,--car si quelques tribus out des cabanes de terre, aucune n'a élevé de monumens qui puissent témoigner de leur existence auprès des générations à venir--les résultats que M. Catlin a si heureusement obtenus dans une entreprise si hasardeuse ne sauraient être trop appréciés par les amis de la science, les ethnographes et les artistes. ----*---- QUOTIDIENNE, Paris. M. Catlin est un peintre plein de conscience et de talent, et un voyageur aussi intrépide qu'intelligent, qui a passé huit ans de sa vie à explorer les tribus sauvages du nord de l'Amérique et les rives du Missouri. Les efforts et les travaux de cet Américain méritent qu'on les examine avec attention, et qu'on les recommande à l'appréciation des artistes et des savans. ----*---- GALIGNANI, 1845. _The Catlin Museum._--The utter strangeness of this remarkable exhibition--displaying, it may be said, a living _tableau_ of the customs and habitudes of a race who, while the march of time has been effecting the most extraordinary changes in the great family of mankind, still remain in a primitive state of nature--at first misunderstood by the Parisian public, has now become an object of general and intense curiosity. Mr. Catlin's collection of the arms and utensils of the various tribes, with their wigwams, the identical habitations which have ere now sheltered them from the tempest in the depths of some North American forest, they carry back the mind, as it were, to the infancy of the human species, "when wild in woods the noble savage ran." The illusion, for it nearly amounts to that, is wonderfully aided by an examination of Catlin's sketches, taken upon the spot, and often in the midst of the dangers he has depicted with spirited fidelity. These paintings, boldly and rapidly thrown off, are illustrative of every phase of savage existence. We have to thank Mr. Catlin for an insight into the lives and history of this most interesting race, which has all the charms of the wildest romance, but which books can never supply. ----*---- GAZETTE DE FRANCE. Grace à M. Catlin, l'anéantissement de ces intéressantes peuplades n'est plus possible: leurs moeurs, leurs coutumes, leurs usages, seront sans doute de sa part l'objet d'un travail consciencieux et approfondi, en même temps que ces pinceaux conserveront les traits et la physionomie de ces Peaux Rouges, que déjà le célèbre romancier Américain nous avait fait connaître. Non content d'avoir transporté en Europe les armes, les costumes, les tentes, et tous les instrumens qui servent à l'usage des Indiens, et qui forment un singulier contraste avec notre civilisation, M. Catlin a voulu que des monumens plus durables conservassent le souvenir de ces sauvages de l'Amérique du Nord; il a dessiné lui-même les portraits des Indiens les plus remarquables, leurs danses, leur manière de fare la chasse, et leurs expéditions guerrières. On ne peut assez admirer comment un homme a pu tracer tant de figures et de paysages, pris sur les lieux mêmes, dans des courses souvent très longues et très fatigantes. C'est là un prodige de la science. Assis au milieu des sauvages, M. Catlin employait son temps à retracer sur la toile tout ce qu'il voyait. Aussi peut-on être assuré d'avoir sous les yeux la représentation exacte des costumes des sauvages du Nouveau-Monde. Si quelques-uns de ces portraits ne sont pas des oeuvres d'art, du moins les savans leur doivent-ils l'histoire d'une tribu sauvage, détruite entièrement par les ravages de la petite-vérole. Sans M. Catlin, on ne saurait plus maintenant si elle a existé, et son pinceau l'a sauvée de l'oubli. ----*---- L'ILLUSTRATION. La présence à Paris des Indiens Y-o-Ways donne de l'àpropos au compte rendu suivant d'un voyage chez les Indiens de l'Amérique du Nord, voyage dû à M. Geo. Catlin, auquel un séjour de huit années parmi ces diverses peuplades a permis de s'initier d'une manière complète a leurs moeurs et à leurs habitudes. Dans un livre plein d'intérêt, de faits curieux, de révélations si extraordinaires qu'on croit rêver en les lisant, il a consigné les résultats de ses investigations et des observations qu'il a recueillies sur une race d'hommes qui va s'éteignant de jour en jour, et dont, sur l'affirmation de l'auteur, il ne restera plus vestiges d'ici à peu d'années. Au charme de ces récits, M. Geo. Catlin a ajouté des dessins d'une scrupuleuse exactitude, des portraits des principaux chefs de tribus, dans leurs riches costumes que nous aurons occasion de décrire, des paysages d'un effet saisissant, des esquisses de jeux, de chasses, de cérémonies religieuses, de combats, etc., etc. On peut donc dire que le livre de M. Catlin est écrit aussi bien pour les hommes sérieux que pour les grands enfants qui aiment tent les images, comme nous avouons les aimer, et qui s'amuseront de la bizarrerie des costumes de tous ces bons sauvages. ----*---- REVUE DE PARIS. _Galerie Indienne de M. Catlin._--La salle Valentino, transformée en une sorte de Musée Indien, au moyen des cinq à six cents peintures et esquisses, exécutées toutes, d'après nature, par M. Catlin, cet énergique et courageux voyageur, durant une pérégrination de huit années, à travers l'immense territoire qui s'étend des Montagnes Rocheuses aux derniers établissemens Américains ou Mexicains,--cette salle offrait déjà un spectacle fort intéressant. M. Catlin a visité, en bravant mille obstacles et souvent au péril de sa vie, quarante-huit des tribus qui résident dans la prairie, où elles vivent dans un état de guerre perpétuel. Installé sous le wigwam de l'Indien Corbeau ou du Mandan, dans la cabane du Chérokee ou de l'Ariccara, il a exécuté chacun des tableaux de cette immense collection ayant la nature sous les yeux; aussi les présente-t-il au public plutôt comme des _fac-similes_ identiques de la vie Indienne que comme des oeuvres d'art. Ces _fac-similes_ sont on ne peut plus expressifs et curieux. La collection des peintures de M. Catlin se compose de trois cent dix portraits de chefs Indiens et de personnages de distinction, hommes ou femmes de différentes tribus, et de deux cents esquisses représentant les sites les plus remarquables des contrées qu'il a visitées, les danses et les cérémonies des peuplades qui les habitent, et des scènes de guerre et de chasse. C'est donc à la fois une représentation fidèle de la physionomie du pays et des moeurs et coutumes de ses habitans, représentation d'autant plus précieuse qu'elle a pour objet une race qui s'éteint (_dying people_), et qui s'éteint avec une rapidité qui tient du prodige. ----*---- MONITEUR INDUSTRIEL, Nov. 16, 1845. Parmi tous les voyageurs qui ont exploré l'Amérique du Nord, aucun ne s'est occupé des races Indiennes autant que M. Catlin. Presque seul dans un canot d'écorce, il a suivi tout le cours du Missouri, et pendant huit années il en a parcouru en tous sens l'immense bassin, s'en allant de tribu en tribu, comme autrefois Hérodote, le père de l'histoire, s'en allait de ville en ville, de région en région, s'enquérant des moeurs, des traditions et des idées des populations lointaines. M. Catlin est encore dans la force de l'âge, mais ses traits pâlis portent l'empreinte d'une vie déjà longuement et péniblement éprouvée. Son abord est froidement poli, son visage sévère et pensif, comme celui d'un homme qui a vu beaucoup de choses. Toute sa personne révèle une indomptable énergie. En public, il parle l'Anglais avec une remarquable puissance; il y a dans son accentuation quelque chose du magnifique enthousiasme d'un poète. Le grand ouvrage de M. Catlin est un beau monument élevé à la science; il faut espérer qu'on songera à en donner une traduction Française. Chemin fesant, M. Catlin a dessiné et peint une étrange collection de vues, de scènes naturelles, de portraits d'indigènes et de scènes de moeurs. Cette nombreuse collection de toiles doit nécessairement se sentir de la rapidité forcée du travail, et des circonstances difficiles d'exécution où s'est trouvé l'artiste dans un voyage à travers les déserts de l'Ouest. On demeure, au contraire, étonné que le courageux explorateur ait pu mettre dans de telles peintures autant de mouvement et de vérité. Ici, c'est un troupeau de bisons surpris par des chasseurs qui se traînent en rampant, couverts de peaux trompeuses; là, c'est un guerrier à cheval, poursuivant son ennemi dans une course, sans hyperbole, vraiment échevelée; plus loin, c'est une danse frénétique, excitation à la volupté ou au carnage; ou bien des scènes de tortures qui semblent copiées dans l'enfer. ----*---- INDEPENDANCE, BRUSSELS, JAN. 4, 1846. _Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians_, by G. Catlin (Lettres et Notes sur les Moeurs, les Coutumes, et l'Etat Social des Indiens du Nord de l'Amérique, par George Catlin). 2 vol. ornés de plusieurs centaines de planches. Fils d'un homme de loi, élevé lui-même pour figurer au barreau, devenu enfin avocat, M. Catlin aimait trop le grand air et les voyages pour se laisser claquemurer dans l'antre de la chicane. Deux passions d'ailleurs se partageaient sa vie: la pêche et la peinture. Quand il n'était pas au bord d'une rivière, il était devant une toile, et vice-versâ. Il apprit la peinture sans maître, y devint habile après trois ou quatre ans d'études, et se demandait à quel but il dévouerait son existence, et l'esprit un peu enthousiaste qui l'animait, lorsqu'arrivèrent à Washington, des pays bien loin à l'Ouest, une douzaine d'Indiens au port noble et majestueux, accoutrés de leurs vêtements bizarres, mais pittoresques, la tête ornée de leur casque, le bras chargé de leur bouclier, le corps ceint de la tunique de peau d'antilope, les épaules couvertes du manteau de buffle. Ces braves gens firent l'admiration des gamins et du beau monde de Washington et donnèrent beaucoup à réfléchir à notre peintre. Il se dit que les vêtements de la civilisation ne servaient pas seulement à voiler, mais à gâter la grâce et la beauté naturelles, que l'homme non garrotté dans les liens de l'art, devait offrir à l'artiste le plus magnifique modèle, et que l'histoire et les coutumes des peuplades sauvages étaient des sujets dignes d'occuper la vie d'un homme. Ces réflexions étaient à peine achevées que M. Catlin prit son parti. Il consulta bien pour la forme quelques amis qui essayèrent de le détourner de son projet; ils lui représentèrent les dangers auxquels il allait s'exposer, les fatigues inouïes qu'il aurait à supporter et bien d'autres arguments auxquels il fut insensible. M. Catlin fit ses paquets qui n'étaient pas lourds, et qui se composaient de toiles roulées, de brosses, de couleurs, de papier et de crayons; il mit sa carabine en bandouliere; et le bâton blanc à la main il partit pour l'Ouest en quête d'aventures, de Peaux-Rouges, de buffles et de prairies. Mais au train dont marchent les Yankees, il avait long à aller avant d'atteindre les vastes solitudes où sont encore disséminées les peuplades sauvages. La civilisation le poursuivait partout; là où il espérait voyager en canot, il était forcé de prendre le bateau à vapeur; là où il se croyait au milieu des sauvages, il se trouvait avec des compatriotes; l'Ouest, but de son voyage, semblait le fuir à mesure qu'il en approchait. Il maudissait les pionniers qui avec leur bêche et leur marteau ont implanté la civilisation dans les parties les plus reculées de l'Amérique, et il désespérait de rencontrer les Peaux-Rouges qui devenaient un mythe pour lui, lorsqu'il tomba au milieu d'un village Mandan. Sa joie fut un peu calmée en apercevant que la civilisation avait encore passé par là sous la forme d'un agent de la compagnie des fourrures du Missouri. Mais il restait assez de sauvagerie dans la localité pour le satisfaire provisoirement. Quand il eut bien vu et bien observé, quand il eut bien fumé le calumet de paix; bien vécu sur un quartier de buffle braisé, bien dormi sous le wigwam hospitalier, et "pourtraicté" le chef Mandan, revêtu de son grand costume de guerre, depuis les cornes de buffle dont il s'orne le front jusqu'à ses mocassins brodés de paille, y compris la longue bande de plumes d'aigle qui descend depuis le derrière de la tête jusqu'aux talons, M. Catlin reprit sa course vers les regions inconnues, en s'arrêtant en route chaque fois qu'un site ou quelques aventures ou des figures d'Indiens fournissaient des sujets à son pinceau. M. Catlin est resté huit ans en voyage; il a visité quarante-huit tribus dont la population totale s'élevaient à plusieurs centaines de mille individus. Il a rapporté chez lui 350 portraits à l'huile d'Indiens, 200 tableaux représentant des vues de leurs villages, leurs wigwams, leurs jeux, et leurs cérémonies religieuses, leurs danses, leurs chasses, des paysages admirables, et enfin une nombreuse et très-curieuse collection de leurs costumes et vêtements, et d'autres objets de leur fabrique, depuis une de leurs maisons jusqu'à de petits riens qui leur servent de jouets. Toute cette collection avec les portraits et les tableaux figurent au Louvre où le Roi Louis-Philippe leur a fait donner une place. La galerie Indienne de l'Amérique du Nord, de M. Catlin, est bien connue et montre le résultat auquel peut arriver un homme entreprenant, patient et ferme qu'inspirent le goût de l'art et une certaine dose d'enthousiasme. C'est l'histoire de cet intéressant voyage que M. Catlin a écrite dans une série de lettres au nombre de 58, et accompagnées de 310 gravures au trait et de cartes géographiques. Ces lettres étaient écrites sur les lieux et envoyées par des Indiens jusqu'aux bureaus de postes placés par cette maudite civilisation jusqu'aux frontières les plus reculées de l'Ouest. Peu de livres ont plus d'intérêt que celui de M. Catlin. On lit cet ouvrage avec le plaisir que l'on prendrait à la lecture d'un bon roman, s'il y avait encore de bons romans pour servir de point de comparaison. On suit M. Catlin dans ses courses vagabondes, on aime avec lui ces Indiens qu'il a toujours trouvés francs et hospitaliers, généreux et dignes. Ces Indiens si méconnus ont, quoique sauvages, toutes les qualités qui distinguent l'épicier le plus civilisé de la rue Saint-Denis, caporal de la garde nationale; comme celui-ci, ils sont bons pères, bons époux, amis dévoués; la seule différence entr'eux, c'est qu'ils ne payent pas très-exactement leurs contributions par la raison qu'on ne leur en demande pas, et qu'ils ne montent pas assidument leur garde, par l'autre raison qu'on ne connaît pas les guérites dans ce pays. Une Odyssée de huit ans a fait apprécier à M. Catlin les mérites et les vertus des sauvages; et, après avoir lu son livre, j'ai fini par croire avec Jean-Jacques Rousseau que l'homme, tel que nous avons le malheur de le connaître, est un animal dépravé par la civilisation. Rien de plus touchant que l'apologie des Indiens faite par M. Catlin, dans sa neuvième lettre; partout où il peut mettre en saillie la noblesse de leur caractère, M. Catlin le fait avec bonheur; il se souvient du bon temps passé au milieu d'eux, des marques d'affection qu'ils lui out données, et il les venge du mépris que les civilisés déversent sur ces pauvres et braves gens, contents de leur sort, sans regret du passé, sans souci de l'avenir, sans autres lois que celles de l'honneur qui est tout puissant chez eux. Tous ceux qui ont lu les admirables romans de Cooper retrouvent dans l'ouvrage de M. Catlin les scènes, mais cette fois vraies, animées, vivantes, décrites avec tant de talent par le fécond romancier Américain. M. Catlin a décrit aussi l'embrâsement des prairies, et pouvait dire: _Quorum pars magna fui_; car il ne dut qu'à la vitesse de son "pony" Indien d'échapper à la flamme immense qui courait sur lui avec plus de rapidité qu'une locomotive lancée à fond de train. J'étais en sûreté, dit-il, que je tremblais encore. Une autre fois, plus de 2000 buffles se jettent à l'eau pour atteindre le canot dans lequel il nageait, et c'est à grand'peine qu'il se sauve et que le canot ne chavire pas, soulevé par le dos d'un de ces animaux; une autre fois encore, il se rencontre nez à nez avec une ourse grise accompagnée de ses deux petits, bête énorme de la taille d'un rhinocéros et qui vous dépèce un homme en un tour de main, à l'aide de ses ongles longs d'un décimètre et larges à la base de cinq centimètres pour finir par la pointe la plus aiguë. Un des plus agréables épisodes de ce voyage, c'est la rencontre que fait M. Catlin, dans un immense désert et au détour d'un bois, d'un trappeur Canadien qui sifflait entre ses lèvres un vaudeville Français du temps de Louis XIV. et se mit à entrer en conversation avec M. Catlin, moyennant un langage dans lequel le Français, l'Anglais et l'Indien entraient chacun pour un tiers. L'honnête Baptiste, descendant d'un de ces hommes que les racoleurs allaient _presser_ sur le quai de la Ferraille pour en faire des colons _volontaires_ destinés à peupler le Canada, devint le compagnon de voyage de M. Catlin, le Vendredi dévoué de ce nouveau Robinson de terre ferme, et n'est pas le personnage le moins intéressant de la relation. M. Catlin, indépendamment de son mérite d'écrivain et de dessinateur, aura celui d'avoir donné l'histoire la plus complète des moeurs de ces peuplades que la civilisation balaye devant elle et qu'elle tue avec de l'eau-de-vie et la variole. Ces peuplades, autrefois maîtresses du grand continent du nord de l'Amérique, s'éteignent rapidement; leur mémoire s'éteindrait même si de hardis voyageurs n'allaient pas recueillir parmi elles les renseignements qui peuvent la préserver de l'oubli. Au nombre de ces voyageurs il faut citer au premier rang l'honorable M. Catlin, qui a rectifié bien des idées erronnées et fait connaître bien des faits jusqu'ici ignorés. APPENDIX--(B). MUSEUM OF HISTORY. _Established 1844._ This institution is intended to illustrate the History of Man by means of popular Lectures, aided and enforced by scenery, maps, and national costumes, adding every scenic attraction to the higher views of instruction, and combining art, history, philology, and geography; the audience, as it were, being thus transported to the sites themselves. It is also in contemplation to add _gradually_, as funds shall accumulate-- 1. Models and coloured portraits of the races of man. 2. A gallery of architectural models. 3. A cabinet of coins and inscriptions. 4. Collection of views and drawings. 5. Collection of objects illustrative of the arts, sciences, navigation, commerce, agriculture, amusements, and domestic economy of ancient and modern nations. 6. Specimens of manufactures. 7. A library and reading-room, to contain the principal British and foreign periodicals and newspapers, and without distinction of party; as also the latest publications on subjects connected with the objects of the institution. The transactions of the institution will be published. Illustrated lectures will be given on ancient and modern history, as also on New Zealand and Australia, embracing the modern settlements, and their capabilities for the colonist or emigrant. Amongst the illustrated lectures to be given will be the following:-- On the Grecians. On the Byzantines. On the Modern Greeks. On the Egyptians. On the Arabians. On the Romans. On Russia and Siberia. On New Zealand. On Japan. On the Ruined Cities of America. With the aid of transparent maps (on a scale never before attempted) the spectator can follow the historian or traveller step by step, and with the advantages and beauties of scenery combined, is enabled to locate, classify, define, and retain the knowledge thus acquired. The scenery and machinery have been so constructed, that whilst one series is used in London, others may be speedily sent to Edinburgh and elsewhere, where branch societies will be formed. The management of the institution to be vested in a council elected by the subscribers, two of whom to retire annually, who may however be eligible for re-election. TERMS. For permanently reserved places at the lectures, five guineas per annum. Ordinary subscribers, two guineas per annum. Authors, artists, ladies, members of learned societies, and foreigners, one guinea per annum. Ambassadors, foreign ministers, consuls, and secretaries of learned societies _only_ can become honorary members. Admission to the public, two shillings for reserved places at the lectures; one shilling for ordinary visitors. Subscribers to possess the right to be present at all lectures. Subscribers to meet annually. Trustees and auditors to be chosen by the subscribers. * * * * * All communications may be addressed to W. H. SHIPPARD, Esq., Turnham Green. _Museum of History, 28th April, 1845._ A DESCRIPTIVE CATALOGUE OF CATLIN'S INDIAN COLLECTION; CONTAINING PORTRAITS, LANDSCAPES, COSTUMES, ETC., AND REPRESENTATIONS OF THE MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. COLLECTED AND PAINTED ENTIRELY BY MR. CATLIN, DURING EIGHT YEARS' TRAVEL AMONGST FORTY-EIGHT TRIBES, MOSTLY SPEAKING DIFFERENT LANGUAGES. _Exhibited three years, with great success, in the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, London._ I wish to inform the visitors to my Collection that, having some years since become fully convinced of the rapid decline and certain extinction of the numerous tribes of the North American Indians; and seeing also the vast importance and value which a full _pictorial history_ of these interesting but dying people might be to future ages--I sat out alone, unaided and unadvised, resolved (if my life should be spared), by the aid of my brush and my pen, to rescue from oblivion so much of their primitive looks and customs as the industry and ardent enthusiasm of one lifetime could accomplish, and set them up in a _Gallery unique and imperishable_, for the use and benefit of future ages. I devoted eight years of my life exclusively to the accomplishment of my design, and that with more than expected success. I visited with great difficulty, and some hazard to life, forty-eight tribes (residing within the United States, British, and Mexican Territories), containing about half a million of souls. I have seen them in their own villages, have carried my canvas and colours the whole way, and painted my portraits, &c., from the life, as they now stand and are seen in the Gallery. The collection contains (besides an immense number of costumes and other manufactures) near six hundred paintings, 350 of which are _Portraits_ of distinguished men and women of the different tribes, and 250 _other Paintings_, descriptive of _Indian Countries_, their _Villages_, _Games_, and _Customs_; containing in all above 3000 figures. As this immense collection has been gathered, and _every painting has been made from nature_, BY MY OWN HAND--and that too when I have been paddling my canoe, or leading my pack-horse over and through trackless wilds, at the hazard of my life--the world will surely be kind and indulgent enough to receive and estimate them, as they have been intended, as _true and fac-simile traces of individual life and historical facts_, and forgive me for their present unfinished and unstudied condition as works of art. GEO. CATLIN. INDIAN PORTRAITS. CERTIFICATES. ----*---- I hereby certify that the persons whose signatures are affixed to the certificates used below, by Mr. Catlin, are officers in the service of the United States, as herein set forth: and that their opinions of the accuracy of the likenesses, and correctness of the views, &c., exhibited by him in his "Indian Gallery," are entitled to full credit, J. E. POINSETT, Secretary of War, Washington. ----*---- With regard to the gentlemen whose names are affixed to certificates below, I am fully warranted in saying, that no individuals have had better opportunities of acquiring a knowledge of the persons, habits, costumes, and sports of the Indian tribes, or possess stronger claims upon the public confidence in the statements they make respecting the correctness of delineations, &c., of Mr. Catlin's "Indian Gallery;" and I may add my own testimony, with regard to many of those Indians whom I have seen, and whose likenesses are in the collection, and sketched with fidelity and correctness. C. A. HARRIS, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Washington. ----*---- I have seen Mr. Catlin's collection of Portraits of Indians, many of which were familiar to me, and painted in my presence; and, as far as they have included Indians of my acquaintance, the _likenesses_ are easily recognised, bearing the most striking resemblance to the originals, as well as faithful representations of their costumes. W. CLARK, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, St. Louis. ----*---- I have examined Mr. Catlin's collection of the Upper Missouri Indians to the Rocky Mountains, all of which I am acquainted with, and indeed most of them were painted when I was present, and I do not hesitate to pronounce them correct likenesses, and readily to be recognised. And I consider the _costumes_, as painted by him, to be the _only correct representations_ I have ever seen. JOHN F. A. SANFORD, U. SS. Indian Agent for Mandans, Rickarees, Minatarees, Crows, Knisteneaux, Assinneboins, Blackfeet, &c. ----*---- Having examined Mr. Catlin's collection of Portraits of Indians of the Missouri and Rocky Mountains, I have no hesitation in pronouncing them, so far as I am acquainted with the individuals, to be the best I have ever seen, both as regards the expression of countenance and the exact and complete manner in which the costume has been painted by him. J. L. BEAN, S. Agent for Indian Affairs. ----*---- I have been for many years past in familiar acquaintance with the Indian tribes of the Upper Missouri and the Rocky Mountains, and also with the landscape and other scenes represented in Mr. Catlin's collection, and it gives me great pleasure to assure the world that, on looking them over, I found the likenesses of my old friends easily to be recognised, and his sketches of Manners and Customs to be portrayed with singular truth and correctness. J. PILCHER, Agent for Upper Missouri Indians. ----*---- It gives me great pleasure in being enabled to add my name to the list of those who have spontaneously expressed their approbation of Mr. Catlin's collection of Indian Paintings. His collection of materials places it in his power to throw much light on the Indian character; and his portraits, so far as I have seen them, are drawn with great fidelity as to character and likeness. H. SCHOOLCRAFT, Indian Agent for Wisconsin Territory. ----*---- Having lived and dealt with the Black feet Indians for five years past, I was enabled to recognise _every one_ of the portraits of those people, and of the Crows also, which Mr. Catlin has in his collection, from the faithful likenesses they bore to the originals. _St. Louis_, 1835. J. E. BRAZEAU. ----*---- Having spent sixteen years in the continual acquaintance with the Indians of the several tribes of the Missouri represented in Mr. Catlin's Gallery of Indian Paintings, I was enabled to judge of the correctness of the likenesses, and I _instantly recognised every one of them_, when I looked them over, from the striking resemblance they bore to the originals; so also of the landscapes on the Missouri. HONORE PICOTTE. ----*---- The portraits in the possession of Mr. Catlin of Pawnee Picts, Kioways, Camanches, Wecos, and Osages, were painted by him _from life_, when on a tour to their country with the United States Dragoons. The _likenesses_ are good, very easily to be recognised, and the _costumes_ faithfully represented. HENRY DODGE, Col. of Drag. R. H. MASON, Major of ditto. D. HUNTER, Capt. of ditto. D. PERKINS, Capt. of Drag. M. DUNCAN, ditto. T. B. WHEELOCK, Lieut, ditto. ----*---- We have seen Mr. Catlin's Portraits of Indians east of the Rocky Mountains, many of which are familiar to us: the likenesses are easily recognised, bearing a strong resemblance to the originals, as well as a faithful representation of their costumes. J. DOUGHERTY, Indian Agent. J. GANTT. _November 27th, 1837._ ----*---- We hereby certify that the portraits of the Grand Pawnees, Republican Pawnees, Pawnee Loups, Tappage Pawnees, Otoes, Omahaws, and Missouries, which are in Mr. Catlin's Indian Gallery, were painted from life by Mr. George Catlin, and that the individuals sat to him in the costumes precisely in which they are painted. J. DOUGHERTY, I. A. for Pawnees, Omahaws, and Otoes. J. GANTT. _New York, 1837._ ----*---- I have seen Mr. Catlin's collection of Indian Portraits, many of which were familiar to me, and painted in my presence at their own villages. I have spent the greater part of my life amongst the tribes and individuals he has represented, and I do not hesitate to pronounce them correct likenesses, and easily recognised; also his sketches of their _manners_ and _customs_, I think, are excellent; and the _landscape views_ on the Missouri and Mississippi are correct representations. K. M'KENZIE, of the Am. Fur Co., Mouth of Yellow Stone. ----*---- We hereby certify that the portraits of Seminoles and Euchees, named in this catalogue, were painted by George Catlin, from the life, at Fort Moultrie; that the Indians sat or stood in the costumes precisely in which they are painted, and that the likenesses are remarkably good. P. MORRISON, Capt. 4th Inft. J. S. HATHAWAY, 2nd Lieut. 1st Art. H. WHARTON, 2nd Lieut. 6th Inft. F. WEEDON, Assistant-Surgeon. _Fort Moultrie, Jan. 26, 1838._ ----*---- In addition to the above certificates, nearly every portrait has inseparably attached to its back an _individual_ certificate, signed by Indian agents, officers of the army, or other persons, who were present when the picture was painted. The form of these certificates is as follows:-- No. 131, BLACKFOOT, PE-TOH-PE-KISS (THE EAGLE-RIBS). I hereby certify that this portrait was painted from the life, at Fort Union, mouth of Yellow Stone, in the year 1832, by George Catlin, and that the Indian sat in the costume in which it is painted. JOHN F. A. SANFORD, United States Indian Agent. _Légation des Etats Unis, Paris, Dec. 8, 1841._ DEAR SIR, No man can appreciate better than myself the admirable fidelity of your drawings and book which I have lately received. They are equally spirited and accurate--they are true to nature. Things that _are_ are not sacrificed, as they too often are by the painter, to things as in his judgment they should be. During eighteen years of my life I was Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the north-western territory of the United States; and during more than five I was Secretary of War, to which department belongs the general control of Indian concerns. I know the Indians thoroughly--I have spent many a month in their camps, council-houses, villages, and hunting-grounds--I have fought with them and against them--and I have negotiated seventeen treaties of peace or of cession with them. I mention these circumstances to show you that I have a good right to speak confidently upon the subject of your drawings. Among them I recognise many of my old acquaintances, and everywhere I am struck with the vivid representations of them and their customs, of their peculiar features, and of their costumes. Unfortunately they are receding before the advancing tide of our population, and are probably destined, at no distant day, wholly to disappear; but your collection will preserve them, as far as human art can do, and will form the most perfect monument of an extinguished race that the world has ever seen. LEWIS CASS. _To George Catlin._ ----*---- _Cottage, Haddington, 15th April, 1843._ DEAR SIR, I have enjoyed much pleasure in attending your lectures at the Waterloo Rooms in Edinburgh. Your delineations of the Indian character, the display of beautiful costumes, and the native Indian manners, true to the life, realised to my mind and view scenes I had so often witnessed in the parts of the Indian countries where I had been; and for twenty years' peregrinations in those parts, from Montreal to the Great Slave River north, and from the shores of the Atlantic, crossing the Rocky Mountains, to the mouth of the Columbia River, on the Pacific Ocean, west, I had opportunities of seeing much. Your lectures and exhibition have afforded me great pleasure and satisfaction, and I shall wish you all that success which you so eminently deserve for the rich treat which you have afforded in our enlightened, literary, and scientific metropolis. I remain, dear Sir, yours very truly, JOHN HALDANE. _To George Catlin, Esq._ The following is an extract of a letter received some days since by a gentleman in Edinburgh, from Mr. James Hargrave, of the Hudson's Bay Company, dated York Factory, Hudson's Bay, 10th December, 1842:-- "Should you happen to fall in with Catlin's Letters on the North American Indians, I would strongly recommend a perusal of them for the purpose of acquiring a knowledge of the habits and customs of those tribes among whom he was placed. Catlin's sketches are true to life, and are powerfully descriptive of their appearance and character." CATLIN'S INDIAN COLLECTION INDIAN PORTRAITS. SACS (SÁU-KIES). A Tribe of Indians residing on the Upper Mississippi and Desmoines rivers. Present number (in 1840) about 5000. The smallpox carried off half their population a few years since; and a considerable number were destroyed in the "Black Hawk War" in 1832-3. This tribe shave the head, leaving only a small tuft of hair on the top, which is called the "scalplock." [The _acute accent_ is used in the spelling of the Indian names merely to denote the emphasis.] 1. _Kee-o-kúk_, the Running Fox; present Chief of the Tribe. Shield on his arm and staff of office (sceptre) in his hand; necklace of grisly bear's claws, over the skin of a white wolf, on his neck. This man, during the Black Hawk War, kept two-thirds of the warriors of the tribe neutral, and was therefore appointed chief by General Scott, in treaty, with the consent of the nation. 2. _Múk-a-tah-mish-o-káh-kaik_, the Black Hawk; in his war dress and paint. Strings of wampum in his ears and on his neck, and his _medicine-bag_ (the skin of the black hawk) on his arm. This is the man famed as the conductor of the Black Hawk War. Painted at the close of the war, while he was a prisoner at Jefferson Barracks, in 1832. 3. _Náh-se-ús-kuk_, the Whirling Thunder; eldest son of Black Hawk. A very handsome man. He distinguished himself in the Black Hawk War. 4. _Wa-sáw-me-saw_, the Roaring Thunder; youngest son of Black Hawk. Painted while a prisoner of war. 5. ( ), wife of Kee-o-kúk (No. 1); in a dress of civilized manufacture, ornamented with silver brooches. This woman is the eldest of seven wives whom I saw in his lodge, and, being the mother of his favourite son, the most valued one. To her alone would he allow the distinguished honour of being painted and hung up with the chiefs. 6. _Me-sóu-wahk_, the Deer's Hair; the favourite son of Kee-o-kúk, and by him designated to be his successor. 7. _Wah-pe-kée-suck_, White Cloud, called the "Prophet;" one of Black Hawk's principal warriors and advisers. Was a prisoner of war with Black Hawk, and travelled with him through the Eastern States. 8. _Náh-pope_, the Soup; another of Black Hawk's principal advisers; and travelled with him, when he was a prisoner of war, to the Eastern cities. He desired to be painted with a white flag in his hand. 9. _Ah-móu-a_, the Whale, one of Kee-o-kúk's principal braves; holding a handsome war-club in his hand. 10. _Wa-quóth-e-qua_, the Buck's Wife, or Female Deer; the wife of Ah-móu-a. 11. _Pash-ee-pa-hó_, the Little Stabbing Chief; holding his staff of office in his hand, shield and pipe. A very venerable old man, who has been for many years the first civil chief of the Sacs and Foxes. 12. _I-o-wáy_, the Ioway; one of Black Hawk's principal warriors; his body curiously ornamented with his "war-paint." 13. _Pam-a-hó_, the Swimmer; one of Black Hawk's warriors. Very distinguished. 14. _No-kúk-qua_, the Bear's Fat. 15. _Pash-ee-pa-hó_, the Little Stabbing Chief (the younger); one of Black Hawk's braves. 16. _Wáh-pa-ko-lás-kuk_, the Bear's Track. FOXES. On the Desmoines River; present number (in 1840), 1500. 17. _Aíh-no-wa_, the Fire; a doctor or _"medicine" man_; one half of his body painted red, and the other yellow. 18. _Wée-sheet_, the Sturgeon's Head; one of Black Hawk's principal warriors; his body most singularly ornamented with his _war-paint_. This man held a spear in his hand, with which, he assured me, he killed four white men during the war. 19, 20, 21. Three in a group; names not known. KON-ZAS. A tribe of 1560 souls, residing on the Konza river, sixty or eighty miles west of the Missouri. Uncivilized remains of a powerful and warlike tribe. One-half died with the smallpox a few years since. This tribe shave the head like the Osages, Sacs, and Foxes. 22. _Shó-me-kós-see_, the Wolf; one of the Chiefs; his head curiously ornamented, and numerous strings of wampum on his neck. 23. _Jee-hé-o-hó-shah_, He who cannot be thrown down; a warrior. 24. _Wá-hón-ga-shee_, No Fool; a very great fop. Used half the day in painting his face, preparing to sit for his picture. 25. _Meach-o-shín-gaw_, Little White Bear; a spirited and distinguished brave, with a scalping-knife grasped in his hand. 26. _O-rón-gás-see_, the Bear-catcher; a celebrated warrior. 27. _Chésh-oo-hong-ha_, the Man of Good Sense; a handsome young warrior; style of his head-dress like the Grecian helmet. 28. _Hón-je-a-pút-o_, a woman; wife of O-rón-gás-see. O-SÁGE, OR WA-SÁW-SEE. A tribe in their primitive state, inhabiting the head-waters of the Arkansas and Neosho or Grand Rivers, 700 miles west of the Mississippi. Present number of the tribe, 5200; residing in three villages; wigwams built of barks and flags, or reeds. The Osages are the tallest men on the continent, the most of them being over six feet in stature, and many of them seven. This tribe shave the head, leaving a small tuft on the top, called the "scalp-lock." 29. _Cler-mónt_, ----; first Chief of the tribe; with his war-club in his hand, and his leggins fringed with scalp-locks taken from his enemies' heads. This man is the son of an old and celebrated chief of that name, who died a few years since. 30. _Wáh-chee-te_, ----; woman and child; wife of Cler-mónt. 31. _Tchong-tas-sáb-bee_, the Black Dog; second Chief of the Osages; with his pipe in one hand and tomahawk in the other; head shaved, and ornamented with a crest made of the deer's tail, coloured red. This is the largest man in the Osage nation, and blind in his left eye. 32. _Tál-lee_,----; an Osage warrior of distinction; with his shield, bow, and quiver. 33. _Wa-ho-béck-ee_,----; a brave; said to be the handsomest man in the nation; with a profusion of wampum on his neck, and a fan in his hand made of the eagle's tail. 34. _Mun-ne-pús-kee_, He who is not afraid. } } 35. _Ko-ha-túnk-a_, the Big Crow. } group. } 36. _Nah-cóm-ee-shee_, Man of the Bed. } Three distinguished young warriors, who desired to be painted on one canvas. 37. _Moi-eén-e-shee_, the Constant Walker. 38. _Wa-másh-ee-sheek_, He who takes away. } } 39. _Wa-chésh-uk_, War. } group. } 40. _Mink-chésk_,----. } Three distinguished young men, full length. 41. _Tcha-tó-ga_, Mad Buffalo; bow and quiver on his back. This man was tried and convicted for the murder of two white men, under Mr. Adams's administration, and was afterwards pardoned, but is held in disgrace in his tribe since. 42. _Wash-ím-pe-shee_, the Madman; a distinguished warrior; full length. 43. _Pa-hú-sha_, White Hair; the younger; with lance and quiver. Chief of a band, and rival of Cler-mónt. 44. _Shin-ga-wás-sa_, the Handsome Bird; a splendid-looking fellow, six feet eight inches high; with war-club and quiver. 45. _Cáh-he-ga-shín-ga_, the Little Chief; full-length, with bow and quiver. CA-MÁN-CHEES. One of the most powerful and hostile tribes in North America, inhabiting the western parts of Texas and the Mexican provinces, and the south-western part of the territory of the United States near the Rocky Mountains; entirely wild and predatory in their habits; the most expert and effective lancers and horsemen on the continent. Numbering some 25,000 or 30,000; living in skin lodges or wigwams; well mounted on wild horses; continually at war with the Mexicans, Texians, and Indian tribes of the north-west. 46. _Eé-shah-kó-nee_, the Bow and Quiver; first Chief of the tribe. Boar's tusk on his breast, and rich shells in his ears. 47. _Ta-wáh-que-nah_, the Mountain of Rocks; second Chief of the tribe, and largest man in the nation. This man received the United States Regiment of Dragoons with great kindness at his village, which was beautifully situated at the base of a huge spur of the Rocky Mountains: he has decidedly African features, and a beard of two inches in length on his chin. 48. _Ish-a-ró-yeh_, He who carries a Wolf; a distinguished brave; so called from the circumstance of his carrying a _medicine-bag_ made of the skin of a wolf: he holds a whip in his hand. This man piloted the dragoons to the Camanchee village, and received a handsome rifle from Colonel Dodge for so doing. 49. _Kots-o-kó-ro-kó_, the Hair of the Bull's Neck; third grade Chief; shield on his arm and gun in his hand. 50. _Is-sa-wáh-tám-ah_, the Wolf tied with Hair; a Chief, third rate: pipe in his hand. 51. _His-oo-sán-chees_, the Little Spaniard; a brave of the highest order in his tribe; armed as a warrior, with shield, bow and quiver, lance fourteen feet long, and war-knife. This was the first of the Camanchees who daringly left his own war-party and came to the regiment of dragoons, and spoke with our interpreter, inviting us to go to their village. A man of low stature, but of the most remarkable strength and daring courage.--See him approaching the dragoons on horseback, No. 489. 52. _Háh-nee_, the Beaver; a warrior of terrible aspect. 53-54. Two Camanchee Girls (sisters), showing the wigwam of the Chief, his dogs, and his five children. PAW-NEE PÍCTS (['T]OW-EE-AHGE). A wild and hostile tribe, numbering about 6000, adjoining the Camanchees on the north. This tribe and the Camanchees are in league with each other, joining in war and in the chase. 55. _Wee-tá-ra-shá-ro_,----; head Chief; an old and very venerable man. This man embraced Colonel Dodge, and others of the dragoon officers in council, in his village, and otherwise treated them with great kindness, theirs being the first visit ever made to them by white people. 56. _Sky-se-ró-ka_,----; second Chief of the tribe. A fine-looking and remarkably shrewd and intelligent man. 57. _Kid-á-day_,----; a brave of distinction. 58. _Káh-kée-tsee_, the Thighs. } } 59. _Shé-de-ah_, Wild Sage. } Both of these women were prisoners amongst the Osages; they were purchased by the Indian Commissioner, and sent home to the nation by the dragoons. 60. _A[h´]-sho-cole_, Rotten Foot; a noted warrior. 61. _A[h´]-re-ka[h´]-na-có-chee_, the Mad Elk; a great warrior. KÍ-O-WA. Also a wild and predatory tribe of 5000 or 6000, living on the west of the Pawnee Picts and Camanchees, and also in alliance with those warlike and powerful tribes. They inhabit the base of, and extend their wars and hunts through a great extent of the Rocky Mountains: and, like the Camanchees, are expert and wonderful horsemen. 62. _Téh-tóot-sah_,----, first Chief. This man treated the dragoons with great kindness in his country, and came in with us to Fort Gibson; his hair was very long, extending down as low as his knees, and put up in clubs, and ornamented with silver brooches. 63. _Kotz-a-tó-ah_, the Smoked Shield; a distinguished warrior; full-length. 64. _Bón-són-gee_, New Fire; Chief of a band; boar's tusk and war-whistle on his breast. 65. _Quáy-hám-kay_, the Stone Shell; a brave, and a good specimen of the wild untutored savage. 66. _Túnk-aht-óh-ye_ the Thunderer (boy). 67. _Wun-pán-to-mee_, the White Weasel (girl). This boy and girl, who had been for several years prisoners amongst the Osages, were purchased by the Indian Commissioner; the girl was sent home to her nation by the dragoons, and the boy was killed by a ram the day before we started. They were brother and sister. WÉE-CO. A small tribe, living near to, and under the protection of, the Pawnee Picts, speaking an unknown language; probably the remnant of a tribe conquered and enslaved by the Pawnee Picts. 68. _U'sh-ee-kitz_, He who fights with a Feather. Chief of the tribe. This man came into Fort Gibson with the dragoons; he was famous for a custom he observed after all his speeches, of _embracing_ the officers and chiefs in council. SIÓUX (DAH-CÓ-TA). This is one of the most numerous and powerful tribes at present existing on the continent, numbering, undoubtedly, some 40,000, occupying a vast tract of country on the upper waters of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, and extending quite to the base of the Rocky Mountains. They live in skin lodges, and move them about the prairies, without any permanent residence. This tribe lost about 8000 by smallpox a few years since. 69. _Ha-wón-je-tah_, the One Horn; first Chief of the tribe; _Mee-ne-cow-e-gee_ band, Upper Missouri; hair tied on his head in form of a turban, and filled with glue and red earth, or vermilion. The Sioux have forty-one bands; every band has a chief, and this man was head of all: he has been recently killed by a buffalo-bull. #/ 70. _Wá-nah-de-túnk-ah_, the Big Eagle, or Black Dog; at the Falls of St. Anthony. Chief of the _O-hah-has-ka-toh-y-an-te_, or _Long Avenue_ band. 71. _Tchán-dee_, Tobacco; second Chief of the nation, of the _O-gla-la_ band, Upper Missouri. 72. _Wán-ee-ton_, ----; Chief of the _Sus-se-ton_ band, Upper Missouri; full-length, in a splendid dress; head-dress of war-eagle's quills and ermine, and painted robe. One of the most noted and dignified, as well as graceful chiefs of the Sioux tribe. 73. _Tóh-to-wah-kón-da-pee_, the Blue Medicine; a noted "medicine-man," or doctor, at the St. Peter's, of the _Ting-ta-to-ah_ band; with his _medicine_ or mystery drum and rattle in his hands, his looking-glass on his breast, his rattle of antelope's hoofs, and drum of deer-skins. These "_medicine-men_" are conjurers as well as physicians, paying their dernier visits to the sick, with their _mysteries_, endeavouring and pretending to cure by a charm. 74. _Ah-nó-je-nahge_, He who stands on both Sides; and 75. _We-chúsh-ta-dóo-ta_, the Red Man; the two most distinguished ball-players of the Sioux tribe, in their ball-play dress, with their ball-sticks in their hands. In this beautiful and favourite game, each player is adorned with an embroidered belt, and a tail of beautiful quills or horse-hair; the arms, legs, and feet are always naked, and curiously painted. (See two paintings of ball-plays, and further description of the game, under _Amusements_, Nos. 428, 429, 430, and the ball-sticks among the manufactures.) 76. _Ka-pés-ka-da_, the Shell; a brave of the _O-gla-la_ band. 77. _Táh-zee-keh-dá-cha_, the Torn Belly; a very distinguished brave of the _Yank-ton_ band, Upper Missouri. 78. _Wúk-mi-ser_, Corn; a warrior of distinction, of the _Ne-caw-ee-gee_ band. 79. _Chá-tee-wah-née-che_, No Heart; a very noted Indian. Chief of the _Wah-ne-watch-to-nee-nah_ band. 80. _Ee-áh-sá-pa_, the Black Rock; Chief of the _Nee-caw-wee-gee_ band; a very dignified chief, in a beautiful dress, full length, head-dress of eagles' quills and ermine, and horns of the buffalo; lance in his hand, and battles of his life emblazoned on his robe. 81. _Wi-lóoh-tah-eeh-tcháh-ta-máh-nee_, the Red Thing that touches in Marching; a young girl; and the daughter of _Black Rock_ (No. 80), by her side--her dress of deer-skin, and ornamented with brass buttons and beads. 82. _Toh-kí-e-to_, the Stone with Horns. Chief of the Yank-ton band, and principal orator of the nation; his body curiously tattooed. 83. _Mah-tó-rah-rísh-nee-eéh-ée-rah_, the Grisly Bear that runs without Regard; a brave of the _Onc-pah-pa_ band. 84. _Mah-tó-che-ga_, the Little Bear; a distinguished brave. 85. _Shón-ka_, the Dog; Chief of the _Bad Arrow Points_ band. 86. _Táh-téck-a-da-háir_, the Steep Wind; a Brave of the _Ca-za-zhee-ta_ (or Bad Arrow Points) band. These three distinguished men were all killed in a private quarrel (while I was in the country), occasioned by my painting only _one half_ of the face of the first (No. 84); ridicule followed, and resort to fire-arms, in which that side of the face which I had left out was blown off in a few moments after I had finished the portrait; and sudden and violent revenge for the offence soon laid the other two in the dust, and imminently endangered my own life. (For a full account of this strange transaction, see Catlin's 'Letters and Notes on North American Indians.') 87. _Heh-háh-ra-pah_, the Elk's Head; Chief of the _Ee-ta-sip-shov_ band, Upper Missouri. 88. _Máh-to-een-náh-pa_, the White Bear that goes out; Chief of the _Black Foot Sioux_ band. 89. _Tchón-su-móns-ka_, the Sand Bar; woman of the _Te-ton_ band, with a beautiful head of hair; her dress almost literally covered with brass buttons, which are highly valued by the women, to adorn their dresses. 90. _Wá-be-shaw_, the Leaf; Upper Mississippi, Chief of a band, blind in one eye; a very distinguished man, since dead. 91. _Shón-ga-tón-ga-chésh-en-day_, the Horse-dung; Chief of a band; a great conjurer and magician. 92. _Tah-tón-ga-mó-nee_, the Walking Buffalo; Red Wing's son. 93. _Múz-za_, the Iron; St. Peters; a brave of distinction, and a very handsome fellow. 94. _Te-o-kún-ko_, the Swift. An ill-visaged and ill-natured fellow, though reputed a desperate warrior. #/ PÚN-CAH. A small tribe residing on the west bank of the Missouri River, 900 in number, reduced one-half by the smallpox in 1824-5. 95. _Shoo-de-gá-cha_, the Smoke; Chief of the Tribe. A very philosophical and dignified man. 96. _Hee-láh-dee_, the Pure Fountain; wife of Shoo-de-gá-cha (No. 95). 97. _Hongs-káy-dee_, the Great Chief; son of the Chief. This young fellow, about 18 years of age, glowing red with vermilion, signalised himself by marrying _four wives in one day_, whilst I was in his village! He took them all at once to his wigwam, where I saw them, and painted one of them. 98. _Mong-shóng-sha_, the Bending Willow; one of the four wives of Hongs-káy-dee (No. 97), about 13 years old, and wrapped in a buffalo robe, prettily garnished. PÁW-NEES,--OF THE PLATTE. A wild and very warlike tribe of 12,000, occupying the country watered by the river Platte, from the Missouri to the Rocky Mountains. This once very powerful tribe lost one-half of their numbers by the small-pox in 1823: they are entirely distinct from the Pawnee Picts, both in language and customs, and live 1000 miles from them. This tribe shave the head like the Sacs and Foxes. FIRST BAND.--GRAND PA´WNEES. 99. _Shón-ka-ki-he-ga_, the Horse Chief; head Chief of the tribe. This chief, and a number of his braves, visited Washington in 1837. 100. _La-dóo-ke-a_, the Buffalo Bull; his _medicine_ or _totem_ (the head of a buffalo bull) painted on his face and breast, his bow and arrow in his hands. 101. _Ah-sháw-wah-róoks-te_, the Medicine Horse; a brave, or soldier. SECOND BAND.--TAP-PA´HGE PA´WNEES. 102. _La-kée-too-wi-rá-sha_, the Little Chief; a great warrior. 103. _Loo-rá-wée-re-coo_, the Bird that goes to War. THIRD BAND.--REPUBLICAN PA´WNEES. 104. _A´h-sha-la-cóots-ah_, the Mole in the Forehead; Chief of his band; a very distinguished warrior. 105. _Lá-shah-le-stáw-hix_, the Man Chief. 106. _La-wée-re-coo-re-shaw-wee_, the War Chief. 107. _Te-ah´-ke-ra-lée-re-coo_, the Chayenne; a fine-looking fellow, with a pipe in one hand and his whip in the other. FOURTH BAND.--WOLF PA´WNEES. 108. _Le-sháw-loo-láh-le-hoo_, the Big Elk; Chief of the band. 109. _Lo-lóch-to-hóo-lah_, the Big Chief; a very celebrated man. 110. _La-wáh-he-coots-la-sháw-no_, the Brave Chief; impressions of hands painted on his breast. 111. _L'har-e-tar-rúshe_, the Ill-natured Man; a great warrior. O-MÁ-HAS. The remains of a numerous tribe, nearly destroyed by the small-pox in 1823, now living under the protection of the Pawnees: their numbers, about 1500. 112. _Man-sha-qúi-ta_, the Little Soldier; a brave. 113. _Ki-hó-ga-waw-shú-shee_, the Brave Chief; Chief of the tribe. 114. _Om-pah-tón-ga_, the Big Elk; a famous warrior, his tomahawk in his hand, and face painted black, for war. 115. _Sháw-da-mon-nee_, There he goes; a brave. 116. _Nóm-ba-mon-nee_, the Double Walker; a brave. OTE-TOES. These are also the remains of a large tribe, two-thirds of which were destroyed by small-pox in 1823: they are neighbours and friends of the Pawnees, numbering about 600. 117. _Wah-ro-née-sah_, the Surrounder; Chief of the tribe, quite an old man; his shirt made of the skin of a grisly bear, with the claws on. 118. _Nón-je-ning-a_, No Heart; a distinguished brave. 119. _No-wáy-ke-súg-gah_, He who Strikes Two at Once. Sketch quite unfinished; beautiful dress, trimmed with a profusion of scalp-locks and eagles' quills; pipe in his hand, and necklace of grisly bears' claws. 120. _Ráw-no-way-wóh-krah_, the Loose Pipe-stem; a brave (full length); eagle head-dress, shirt of grisly bear's skin. 121. _Wée-ke-rú-law_, He who Exchanges; beautiful pipe in his hand. MIS-SÓU-RIES. Once a very numerous and powerful nation, occupying the States of Illinois and Indiana. Reduced in wars with Sacs and Foxes, and lastly by the small-pox in 1823; now merged into the Pawnee tribe. Numbers at present, 400; twenty years ago, 18,000. 122. _Háw-che-he-súg-ga_, He who kills the Osages; Chief of the tribe; an old man, necklace of grisly bears' claws, and a handsome carved pipe in his hand. RÍC-CA-EEES. A small but very hostile tribe of 2500, on the west bank of the Missouri, 1600 miles above its junction with the Mississippi; living in one village of earth-covered lodges. 123. _Stán-au-pat_, the Bloody Hand; Chief of the tribe. His face painted red with vermilion, scalping-knife in his hand; wearing a beautiful dress. 124. _Kah-béck-a_, the Twin; wife of the Chief (No. 123). 125. _Pshán-shaw_, the Sweet-scented Grass; a girl of twelve years old, daughter of the Chief (No. 123), full length, in a beautiful dress of the mountain-sheep skin, neatly garnished, and robe of the young buffalo. 126. _Páh-too-cá-ra_, He who Strikes; a distinguished brave. MAN-DANS, (SEE-PO'HS-KA-NU-MA'H-KA'-KEE,) PEOPLE OF THE PHEASANTS. A small tribe of 2000 souls, living in two permanent villages on the Missouri, 1800 miles above its junction with the Mississippi. Earth-covered lodges; villages fortified by strong piquets, eighteen feet high, and a ditch. [_This friendly and interesting tribe all perished by the small-pox and suicide in 1837 (three years after I lived amongst them), excepting about forty, who have since been destroyed by their enemy, rendering the tribe entirely extinct, and their language lost, in the short space of a few months!_ The disease was carried amongst them by the traders, which destroyed in six months, of different tribes, 25,000!] 127. _Ha-na-tá-nu-maúk_, the Wolf Chief; head of the tribe, in a splendid dress, head-dress of raven-quills, and two _calumets_ or pipes of peace in his hand. 128. _Máh-to-toh-pa_, the Four Bears; second Chief, but the favourite and popular man of the nation; costume splendid, head-dress of war-eagles' quills and ermine, extending quite to the ground, surmounted by the horns of the buffalo and skin of the magpie. 129. _Mah-tó-he-ha_, the Old Bear; a very distinguished brave; but here represented in the character of a _Medicine Man_ or Doctor, with his _medicine_ or _mystery_ pipes in his hands, and foxes' tails tied to his heels, prepared to make his last visit to his patient, to cure him, if possible, by _hocus pocus_ and magic. 130. _Mah-táhp-ta-a_, He who rushes through the Middle; a brave, son of the former Chief, called "the Four Men." Necklace of bears' claws. 131. _Máh-to-tóh-pa_, the Four Bears; in _undress_, being in mourning, with a few locks of his hair cut off. His hair put up in plaits or slabs, with glue and red paint, a custom of the tribe. The scars on his breast, arms, and legs, show that he has several times in his life submitted to the propitiatory tortures represented in four paintings, Nos. 505, 506, 507, 508. 132. _Seehk-hée-da_, the Mouse-coloured Feather, or "_White Eyebrows_;" a very noted brave, with a beautiful pipe in his hand; his hair quite yellow. This man was killed by the Sioux, and scalped, two years after I painted his portrait: his scalp lies on the table, No. 10. 133. _Mi-néek-ee-súnk-te-ka_, the Mink; a beautiful Mandan girl, in mountain-sheep skin dress, ornamented with porcupine-quills, beads, and elk's teeth. 134. _Sha-kó-ka_, Mint. A very pretty and modest girl, twelve years of age, with _grey hair! peculiar to the Mandans_. This unaccountable peculiarity belongs to the Mandans alone, and about one in twelve, of both sexes and of all ages, have the hair of a bright silvery grey, and exceedingly coarse and harsh, somewhat like a horse's mane. 135. _[U']n-ka-hah-hón-shee-kow_, the Long Finger-nails; a brave. 136. _Máh-ta[h']p-ta-hah_, the One who rushes through the Middle. 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142. _San-ja-ka-kó-koh_, the Deceiving Wolf; and five others, in a group; names not preserved. SHI-ENNE. A small but very valiant tribe of 3000, neighbours of the Sioux, on the west, between the Black Hills and the Rocky Mountains: a very tall race of men, second in stature to the Osages. 143. _Né-hee-ó-ee-wóo-tis_, the Wolf on the Hill; Chief of the tribe; a noble and fine-looking fellow: this man has been known to own 100 horses at one time. 144. _Tis-se-wóo-na-tís_, She who bathes her Knees; Wife of the Chief (No. 143); her hair in braid. FLAT HEADS, or NEZ PERCÉS. On the head-waters of the Columbia, west of the Rocky Mountains. 145. _Hee-oh'ks-te-kin_, the Rabbit's Skin Leggins; a brave, in a very beautiful dress. 146. _H'co-a-h'co-a-h'cotes-min_, No Horns on his Head; a brave, a very handsome man, in a beautiful dress. 147. ( ) Woman and Child; showing the manner in which the heads of the children are flattened. CHIN-OOK. On the lower parts of the Columbia, near the Pacific Ocean. 148. _Hee-doh'ge-ats_, ----; a young man, eighteen years of age. BLACK FEET. A very warlike and hostile tribe of 50,000, including the _Peagans Cotonnés_ and _Gros-ventres de Prairies_, occupying the head-waters of the Missouri, extending a great way into the British territory on the north, and into the Rocky Mountains on the west. Rather low in stature, broad chested, square shouldered, richly clad, and well armed, living in skin lodges. 12,000 of them destroyed by smallpox within the year 1838! 149. _Stu-mick-o-súcks_, the Buffalo's Black Fat; Chief of the tribe, in a splendid costume, richly garnished with porcupine-quills, and fringed with scalp-locks. 150. _Eeh-nís-kim_, the Crystal Stone; wife of the Chief (No. 149). 151. _In-ne-ó-cose_, the Buffalo's Child; a warrior, full-length, with _medicine-bag_ of otter-skin. 152. _Peh-tó-pe-kiss_, the Eagle's Ribs; Chief of the "_Blood Band_," full-length, in splendid dress; head-dress of horns of the buffalo and ermines' tails; lance in his hand and two _medicine-bags_. 153. _Mix-ke-móte-skin-na_, the Iron Horn; warrior, in a splendid dress. 154. _Pek-no-máh-kan_, He who runs down the Hill. 155. _Ah'-kay-ee-píx-en_, the Woman who Strikes Many; full-length; dress of mountain-sheep skin. 156. _Méh-tóom_, the Hill. 157. _Tcha-dés-sa-ko-máh-pee_, the Bear's Child, with war-club. 158. _Wún-nes-tou_, the White Buffalo; a _medicine-man_ or _doctor_, with his _medicine_ or _mystery_ shield. 159. _Tcha-aés-ka-ding_, ----; boy, four years old, wearing his robe made of the skin of a racoon: this boy is grandson of the Chief, and is expected to be his successor. 160. _Peh-tó-pe-kiss_, the Eagle's Ribs; Chief of the Blood Band; splendid dress. This man boasted to me that he had killed eight white men (trappers) in his country; he said that they had repeatedly told the traders that they should not catch the beaver in their country, and if they continued to do it they would kill them. 161. ( ) ----, a _medicine-man_, or _doctor_, performing his _medicines_ or _mysteries_ over a dying man, with the skin of a yellow bear and other curious articles of dress thrown over him; with his mystery rattle and mystery spear, which, he supposes, possess a supernatural power in the art of healing and curing the sick. CROWS (BEL-ANT-SE-A.) A tribe of 7000, on the head-waters of the Yellow Stone River, extending their hunts and their wars into the Rocky Mountains--inveterate enemies of the Black Feet; tall, fine-limbed men, graceful and gentlemanly in deportment, and the most richly and tastefully clad of any Indians on the continent. Skin lodges, many of which are tastefully ornamented and painted like the one standing in the room. 162. _Cháh-ee-chópes_, the Four Wolves; a Chief, a fine-looking fellow; his hair reaching the ground; his _medicine_ (mystery) _bag_ of the skin of the ermine. This man was in mourning, having some of his locks cut off. 163. _Eé-hée-a-duck-cée-a_, He who ties his Hair before; a man of six feet stature, whose natural hair drags on the ground as he walks. 164. _Pa-rís-ka-róo-pa_, the Two Crows; Chief of a band; his hair sweeps the ground; his head-dress made of the eagle's skin entire; he holds in his hand his lance and two _medicine_-bags, the one of his own instituting, the other taken from his enemy, whom he had killed in battle. 165. _Hó-ra-tó-a_, ----; a brave, wrapped in his robe, and his hair reaching to the ground; his spear in his hand, and bow and quiver slung. 166. _Oó-je-en-á-he-a_, the Woman who lives in the Bear's Den; her hair cut off, she being in mourning. 167. _Duhk-gits-o-ó-see_, the Red Bear. 168. _Pa-ris-ka-róo-pa_, the Two Crows (the younger), called the "Philosopher." A young man distinguished as an orator and wise man, though the character of his face and head would almost appear like a deformity. 169. _Bi-éets-ee-cure_, the Very Sweet Man. 170. _Ba-da-ah-chón-du_, He who jumps over Every One; on a wild horse, with war-eagle head-dress on his horse's and his own head; with shield, bow, quiver, and lance; his long hair floating in the wind. GROS-VENTRES (MIN-A-TAR-REES), PEOPLE OF THE WILLOWS. A small tribe, near neighbours and friends of the Mandans, speaking the Crow language, and probably have, at a former period, strayed away from them; numbering about 1100. 171. _Eh-toh'k-pah-she-pée-shah_, the Black Mocassin; Chief; over a hundred years old; sits in his lodge, smoking a handsome pipe; his arms and ornaments hanging on a post by the side of his bed. (Since dead.) 172. _E'e-a-chín-che-a_, the Red Thunder; the son of the Black Mocassin (No. 171), represented in the costume of a warrior. 173. _Pa-ris-ka-róo-pa_, the Two Crows; with a handsome shirt, ornamented with ermine, and necklace of grisly bears' claws. This man is now the head Chief of the tribe. 174. ( ), ----; woman, the wife of the Two Crows (No. 173). 175. _Seet-sé-be-a_, the Mid-day Sun; a pretty girl, in mountain-sheep skin dress, and fan of the eagle's tail in her hand. CREES (KNIS-TE-NEUX). A small tribe of 4000, in _Her Majesty's dominions_, neighbours of the Black Feet, and always at war with them; desperate warriors; small and light in stature. Half of them have recently died of the smallpox since I was amongst them. 176. _Eeh-tow-wées-ka-zeet_, He who has Eyes behind him; one of the foremost braves of the tribe, in a handsome dress. This man visited Washington with the Indian agent, Major Sanford, a few years since. 177. _Tsee-moúnt_, a Great Wonder; woman carrying her Infant in her robe. 178. _Tow-ée-ka-wet_, ----; woman. AS-SIN-NE-BOINS (STONE BOILERS). A tribe of 8000, occupying the country from the mouth of the Yellow Stone River to Lake Winnepeg, in her _British Majesty's dominions_, speaking the Sioux or Dahcota language, ranging about, like them, in skin lodges, and no doubt a severed band of that great nation. 4000 of these people destroyed by the smallpox in 1838, since I was amongst them. 179. _Wi-jún-jon_, the Pigeon's Egg Head; one of the most distinguished young warriors of the tribe. He was taken to Washington in 1832 by Major Sanford, the Indian agent; after he went home he was condemned as a liar, and killed, in consequence of the _incredible stories_ which he told of the whites.--(See him on _his way to, and returning from_, Washington, No. 475.) 180. _Chin-cha-pee_, the Fire Bug that creeps; wife of Wi-jún-jon (No. 179); her face painted red, and in her hand a stick, used by the women in those regions for digging the "pomme blanche," or prairie turnip. 181. ( ); woman and child, in beautiful skin dresses. CHIP-PE-WAYS (OJIBBEWAYS). A very numerous tribe, of some 15,000 or 20,000, inhabiting a vast tract of country on the southern shores of Lake Superior, Lake of the Woods, and the Athabasca, extending a great way into the British territory; residing in skin and bark lodges. 182. _Sha-có-pay_, the Six; Chief of the Ojibbeways living north of the mouth of Yellow Stone River; in a rich dress, with his battles emblazoned on it. 183. _Kay-a-gís-gis_, ----; a beautiful young woman pulling her hair out of braid. 184. _Háh-je-day-ah'-shee_, the Meeting Birds; a brave, with his war-club in his hand. 185. _Kay-ée-qua-da-kúm-ee-gísh-kum_, He who tries the Ground with his Foot. 186. _Jú-ah-kís-gaw_, ----; woman, with her child in a cradle or "crib." 187. _Cáh-be-múb-bee_, He who sits everywhere; a brave. 188. _O-tá-wah_, the Ottaway; a distinguished warrior. 189. _Ka-bés-hunk_, He who travels everywhere; a desperate warrior; his war-club in his left hand and a handsome pipe in his right; strikes with his left hand; eight quills in his head stand for eight scalps he had taken from the heads of the Sioux, his enemies. 190. _Ohj-ká-tchee-kum_, He who walks on the Sea. 191. _Gitch-ee-gáw-ga-osh_, the Point that remains for ever; a very old and respectable Chief. (Since dead.) 192. _Gaw-záw que-dung_, He who halloos. Civilized. 193. _O'n-daig_, the Crow; a beau or dandy in full array, called by the Ojibbeways, _sha-wiz-zee-shah-go-tay-a_, a _harmless man_. 194. _I-an-be-w'ah-dick_, the Male Carabou; a brave, with a war-club in his hand. 195. ( ), ----; woman. I-RO-QUOIS. A small remnant of a tribe who were once very numerous and warlike, inhabiting the northern part of New York; only a few scattered individuals now living, who are merged in the neighbouring tribes. 196. _Nót-to-way_, a Chief, a temperate and excellent man, with a beautiful head-dress on. 197. _Chée-ah-ká-tchée_, ----; woman, wife of Nót-to-way (No. 196). ÓT-TA-WAS. A subdued and half-civilized tribe of 5500, speaking the Ojibbeway language, on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. Agricultural and dissipated. 198. _Shin-gós-se-moon_, the Big Sail; a Chief, blind in one eye. The effects of whisky and civilization are plainly discernible in this instance. WIN-NE-BÁ-GOES. A very fierce and warlike tribe, on the western shores of Lake Michigan, greatly reduced of late years by repeated attacks of the smallpox and the dissipated vices of civilized neighbours; number at this time 4400. 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206. _Du-cór-re-a_, ----; Chief of the tribe, and his family; a group of eight. 207. _Wah-chee-háhs-ka_, the Man who puts all out of Doors, called the "Boxer;" the largest man of the Winnebagoes; war-club in his hand, and rattle-snake skins on his arms. 208. _Won-de-tów-a_, the Wonder. 209. _Náw-káw_, Wood; formerly the head Chief, with his war-club on his arm. (Dead.) 210. _Káw-kaw-ne-chóo-a_, ----; a brave. 211. _Wa-kon-chásh-kaw_, He who comes on the Thunder. 212. _Naw-naw-páy-ee_, the Soldier. 213. _Wah-kón-ze-kaw_, the Snake. 214. _Span-e-o-née-kaw_, the Spaniard. 215. _Hoo-w'a-ne-kaw_, the Little Elk. 216. _No-ak-chóo-she-kaw_, He who breaks the Bushes. 217. _Naugh-háigh-hee-kaw_, He who moistens the Wood. ME-NÓM-O-NIES. Like the Winnebagoes, mostly destroyed by whisky and smallpox, and now numbering about 3500, and in a miserable state of dependence; on the western side of Lake Michigan. 218. _Mah-kée-mee-teuv_, the Grisly Bear; Chief of the nation, and chief of a delegation to Washington city in 1829 (since dead); handsome pipe in his hand, and wampum on his neck. 219. _Mee-chéet-e-neuh_, the Wounded Bear's Shoulder; wife of the Chief (No. 218). 220. _Chee-me-náh-na-quet_, the Great Cloud; son of the Chief (No. 218), a great rascal. 221. _Ko-mán-i-kin-o-haw_, the Little Whale; a brave, with his _medicine-wand_, his looking-glass, and scissors. 222. _Sha-wá-no_, the South; a noted warrior. 223. _Másh-kee-wet_, ----; a great beau, or dandy. 224. _Pah-shee-náu-shaw_, ----; a warrior. 225. _Tcha-káuks-o-ko-máugh_, the Great Chief (boy). 226. _Aú nah-kwet-to-hau-páy-o_, the One sitting in the Clouds; a fine boy. 227. _Aúh-ka-nah-paw-wáh_, Earth Standing; an old and very valiant warrior. 228. _Ko-mán-i-kin_, the Big Wave, called the "Philosopher;" a very old and distinguished Chief. 229. _O-ho-páh-sha_, the Small Whoop; a hard-visaged warrior, of most remarkable distinction. 230. _Ah-yaw-ne-tah-cár-ron_, ----; a warrior. 231. _Au-wáh-shew-kew_, the Female Bear; wife of the above (No. 230). 232. _Coo-coo-coo_, the Owl; a very old and emaciated Chief; sits smoking a handsome pipe. 233. _Wáh-chees_, ----; a brave. 234. _Chésh-ko-tong_, He who sings the War-Song. 235, 236. Two in a group, names not known; one with his war-club, and the other with his lute at his mouth. POT-O-WÁT-O-MIE. Once a numerous tribe, now numbering about 2700, reduced by smallpox and whisky--recently removed from the state of Indiana to the western shores of the Missouri: semi-civilized. 237. _On-sáw-kie_, the Sac; in the act of praying; his prayer written in characters on a maple stick. 238. _Na-pów-sa_, the Bear Travelling in the Night; one of the most influential Chiefs of the tribe. 239. _Kée-se_, ----; a woman. KÍCK-A-POO. On the frontier settlements; semi-civilized; number about 600; greatly reduced by smallpox and whisky. 240. _Kee-án-ne-kuk_, the Foremost Man, called the "_Prophet_." Chief of the tribe, in the attitude of prayer. This very shrewd fellow engraved on a maple stick, in characters, a prayer which was taught him by a Methodist Missionary; and by introducing it into the hands of every one of his tribe, who are enjoined to read it over every morning and evening as service, has acquired great celebrity and respect in his tribe, as well as a good store of their worldly goods, as he manufactures them all, and gets well paid for them. #/ 241. _Ah-tón-we-tuck_, the Cock Turkey; repeating his prayer from the stick in his hand, described above. 242. _Ma-shée-na_, the Elk's Horns; a Sub-Chief, in the act of prayer, as above described. 243. _Ke-chím-qua_, the Big Bear; wampum on his neck, and red flag in his hand, the symbol of war or "blood." 244. _A'h-tee-wát-o-mee_, ----; woman, with wampum and silver brooches in profusion on her neck. 245. _Shee-náh-wee_, ----. KAS-KAS-KIA. Once famed, numerous, and warlike, on the frontier, but now reduced to a few individuals by smallpox and whisky. 246. _Kee-món-saw_, the Little Chief; Chief; Semi-civilized. 247. _Wah-pe-séh-see_, ----; a very aged woman, mother of the above. WÉE-AH. Remnant of a tribe on the frontier; semi-civilized; reduced by whisky and disease; present number 200. 248. _Go-to-ków-páh-ah_, He who Stands by Himself; a brave of distinction, with his hatchet in his hand. 249. _Wah-pón-jee-a_, the Swan; a warrior; fine-looking fellow, with an European countenance. 250. _Wáh-pe-say_, the White. PE-O-RI-A. Also a small remnant of a tribe on the frontier, reduced by the same causes as above; present number about 200. 251. _Pah-mee-ców-ee-tah_, the Man who tracks; a Chief; remarkably fine head. This man would never drink whisky. 252. _Wap-sha-ka-náh_, ----; a brave. 253. _Kee-mo-rá-nia_, No English; a beau; his face curiously painted, and looking-glass in his hand. PI-AN-KE-SHAW. A frontier tribe, reduced, as _above_; present number 170. 254. _Ni-a-có-mo_, to Fix with the Foot; a brave. 255. _Men-són-se-ah_, the Left Hand; a fierce-looking warrior, with a stone hatchet in his hand. Í-O-WAY. A small tribe on the frontier, reduced by smallpox and their enemies; living on the Missouri; number about 1400. Uncivilized fine-looking men. 256. _Notch-ee-níng-a_, No Heart, called "White Cloud;" Chief of the tribe; necklace of grisly bears' claws, and shield, bow and arrows in his hand. 257. _Pah-ta-cóo-chee_, the Shooting Cedar; a brave, with war-club on his arm. 258. _No-o-mún-nee_, He who walks in the Rain; warrior, with his pipe and tobacco-pouch in his hand. 259. _W'y-ee-yogh_, the Man of Sense; a brave, with a handsome pipe in his hand, and bears' claw necklace on his neck. 260. _Wos-cóm-mun_, the Busy Man; a brave. 262. _Mún-ne-o-ye_, ----; woman. SEN-E-CAS. Near Lake Erie, State of New York. 1200, semi-civilized and agricultural. One of the tribes composing the great compact called the "Six Nations." 263. _Red Jacket_, Head Chief of the tribe; full-length, life size, standing on the "Table Rock," Niagara Falls. This man was chief for many years, and so remained until his death, in 1831. Perhaps no Indian Sachem has ever lived on our frontier whose name and history are better known, or whose talents have been more generally admitted, than those of Red Jacket: he was, as a savage, very great in _council_ and in _war_. 264. ( ), Deep Lake; an old Chief. 265. ( ), Round Island; warrior, half-blood. A very handsome fellow. 266. ( ), Hard Hickory; a very ferocious-looking, but a mild and amiable man. 267. ( ), Good Hunter; a warrior. 268. ( ), ---- String; a warrior, renowned. 269. ( ), Seneca Steele; a great libertine. Hatchet in his hand. O-NEI-DA. Remnant of a tribe, State of New York, one of the "Six Nations;" present number, 600. 270. ( ), Bread; the Chief, half-blood, civilized. A fine-looking and an excellent man. TUS-KA-RÓ-RA. New York, remnant of a numerous tribe, one of the confederacy of the "Six Nations;" present number, 500; semi-civilized. 271. _Cú-sick_, ----; son of the Chief. Civilized and Christianized. This man is a Baptist preacher, and quite an eloquent man. MO-HEE-CON-NEU, or "MO-HE-GAN," THE GOOD CANOEMEN. Now living near Green Bay; numbers, 400 or 500; formerly of Massachusetts; a band of the famous tribe of Pequots; now semi-civilized. 272. _Ee-tów-o-kaum_, Both Sides of the River; Chief of the tribe, with a psalm-book in one hand, and a cane in the other. _Christianized._ 273. _Waun-naw-con_, the Dish (John W. Quinney); missionary preacher. _Civilized._ DEL-A-WARES. Remains of a bold, daring, and numerous tribe, formerly of the States of Pennsylvania and Delaware, and the terror of all the eastern tribes. Gradually wasted away by wars, removals, small-pox, and whisky; now living on the western borders of Missouri, and number only 824; lost by small-pox, at different times, 10,000. 274. _Bód-a-sin_, ----; the Chief; a distinguished man. 275. _Ni-có-man_, the Answer; the second Chief, with bow and arrows in his hand. 276. _Non-on-dá-gon_, ----; a Chief, with a ring in his nose. #/ SHA-WÁ-NO (SHAW-NEE). Remains of a numerous tribe, formerly inhabiting part of Pennsylvania, afterwards Ohio, and recently removed west of the Mississippi River. Number at present about 1200; lost one-half by small-pox at different times. Semi-civilized; intemperate. 277. _Lay-láw-she-kaw_, He who goes up the River; a very aged man, Chief of the tribe; his ears slit and elongated by wearing weights in them, according to the custom of the tribe, and his hair whitened with age. 278. _Ká-te-quaw_, the Female Eagle; a fine-looking girl, daughter of the above Chief. 279. _Tea-sqúat-a-way_, the Open Door; called the "Shawnee Prophet," brother of Tecumsch; blind in one eye, holding his _medicine_ or mystery fire in one hand, and his "_sacred string of beans_" in the other; a great _mystery-man_. 280. _Pah-te-cóo-saw_, the Straight Man. Semi-civilized. 281. _Lay-lóo-ah-pee-ái-shee-kaw_, Grass, Bush, and Blossom. Half civil, and _more than half_ drunk. 282. _Cóo-ps-saw-qúay-te_, ----; woman (the Indescribable). CHER-O-KEES. Formerly of the State of Georgia, recently removed west of the Mississippi to the head-waters of the Arkansas. This tribe are mostly civilized and agriculturists; number, 22,000. 283. _John Ross_, a civilized and well-educated man, head Chief of the nation. 284. _Túch-ee_, called "Dutch;" first War-chief of the Cherokees; a fine-looking fellow, with a turbaned head. I travelled and hunted with this man some months, when he guided the regiment of dragoons to the Camanchee and Pawnee villages: he is a great warrior and a remarkable hunter. 285. _Cól-lee_, ----; Chief of a band of the Cherokees. (Since dead.) 286. _Téh-ke-néh-kee_, the Black Coat; a Chief, also of considerable standing. 287. _Ah-hee-te-wáh-chee_, ----; a very pretty woman, in civilized dress, her hair falling over her shoulders. MUS-KÓ-GEE (CREEK). Recently removed from Georgia and Alabama to the Arkansas, 700 miles west of the Mississippi. Present number, 21,000; semi-civilized and agricultural. 288. _Steeh-tcha-kó-me-co_, the Great King, called, "Ben Perryman;" one of the Chiefs of the tribe. 289. _Hól-te-mál-te-téz-te-néek-ee_, ----, "Sam Perryman;" brother of the Chief above, and a jolly companionable man. 290. _Wat-ál-le-go_, ----, a brave. 291. _Hose-put-o-káw-gee_, ----; a brave. 292. _Tchow-ee-pút-o-kaw_, ----; woman. 293. _Tel-maz-há-za_, ----; a warrior of great distinction. CHOC-TAW. Recently removed by Government from the States of Georgia and Alabama to the Arkansas, 700 miles west of the Mississippi. Present number, 15,000; semi-civilized. 294. _Mó-sho-la-túb-bee_, He who puts out and kills; first Chief of the tribe. A gentlemanly-looking man (died recently of small-pox). 295. _Kút-tee-o-túb-bee_, How did he kill? A noted brave. 296. _Há-tchoo-túc-knee_, the Snapping Turtle; half-bred and well-educated man. 297. ----, woman; hair in braid; remarkable expression. 298. _Tul-lock-chísh-ko_, He who drinks the Juice of the Stone. 299. _Tul-lock-chísh-ko_, Full-length, in the dress and attitude of a ball-player, with ball-sticks in his hand, and tail, made of white horse-hair, attached to his belt. SEM-I-NÓ-LEE (RUNAWAY); 3000. Occupying the peninsula of Florida; semi-civilized, partly agricultural. The Government have succeeded in removing about one-half of them to the Arkansas, during the last four years, at the expense of 32,000,000 dollars, the lives of 28 or 30 officers, and 600 soldiers. 300. _Mick-e-no-páh_, ----; first Chief of the tribe; full-length, sitting cross-legged. This man owned 100 negroes when the war broke out, and was raising large and valuable crops of corn and cotton. #/ 301. _Os-ce-o-lá_, the Black Drink; a warrior of very great distinction. Painted only five days before his death, while he was a prisoner of war at Fort Moultrie. This remarkable man, though not a chief, took the lead in the war, and was evidently (at the time he was captured) followed by the chiefs, and looked upon as the _master-spirit_ of the war. 302. _Ee-mat-lá_, King Philip; an old man, second Chief. Like Osceola, he died while a prisoner, soon after I painted him. 303. _Ye-hów-lo-gee_, the Cloud; a Chief who distinguished himself in the war. 304. _Co-ee-há-jo_, ----; a Chief, very conspicuous in the present war. 305. _Láh-shee_, the Licker; a half-breed warrior, called "Creek Billey." 306. _How-ee-dá-hee_; ----. a Seminolee woman. 307. ( ) ----; a Seminolee woman. 308. _Os-ce-o-lá_, the Black Drink. Full-length, with his rifle in his hand, calico dress, and trinkets, exactly as he was dressed and stood to be painted five days before his death. EU-CHEE. Remnant of a powerful tribe who once occupied the southern part of the peninsula of Florida, were overrun by the Creeks and Seminolees, the remnant of them merging into the Seminolee tribe, and living with them now as a part of their nation. Present number, 150. 309. _Etch-ée-fix-e-co_, the Deer without a Heart, called "_Euchee Jack_;" a Chief of considerable renown. 310. _Chee-a-ex-e-co_, ----; quite a modest and pretty girl, daughter of the above Chief. LANDSCAPES, SPORTING SCENES, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS. ----*---- CERTIFICATES. The Landscapes, Buffalo-hunting Scenes, &c., above mentioned, I have seen, and, although it has been thirty years since I travelled over that country, yet a considerable number of them I recognised as faithful representations, and the remainder of them are so much in the peculiar character of that country as to seem entirely familiar to me. WM. CLARK, Superintendent of Indian Affairs. The Landscape Views on the Missouri, Buffalo Hunts, and other scenes, taken by my friend Mr. Catlin, are correct delineations of the scenes they profess to represent, as I am perfectly well acquainted with the country, having passed through it more than a dozen times. And further I know that they were taken on the spot, from nature, as I was present when Mr. Catlin visited that country. JOHN F. A. SANFORD, U. SS. Indian Agent. ----*---- It gives me great pleasure to be able to pronounce the Landscape Views, Views of Hunting, and other scenes taken on the Upper Missouri, by Mr. Catlin, to be correct delineations of the scenery they profess to represent; and although I was not present when they were taken in the field, I was able to identify almost every one between St. Louis and the grand bend of the Missouri. J. L. BEAN, S. Agent of Indian Affairs. ----*---- I have seen Mr. Catlin's collection of _Indian Portraits_, many of which were familiar to me, and painted in my presence in their villages. I have spent the greater part of my life amongst the tribes and individuals he has represented, and I do not hesitate to pronounce them correct likenesses and easily recognised; also the sketches of their _Manners_ and _Customs_ I think are excellent, and the _Landscape Views_ on the _Missouri_ and _Mississippi_ are correct representations. K. M'KENZIE, of the Am. Fur Company, Mouth of Yellow Stone. ----*---- I have examined a series of paintings by Mr. Catlin, representing _Indian Buffalo Hunts, Landscapes, &c._; and from an acquaintance of twenty-seven years with such scenes as are represented, I feel qualified to judge them, and do unhesitatingly pronounce them good and unexaggerated representations. JNO. DOUGHERTY, Indian Agent for Pawnees, Omahas, and Otoes. LANDSCAPES. 311. St. Louis (from the river below, in 1836), a town on the Mississippi, with 25,000 inhabitants. 312. View on Upper Mississippi, beautiful prairie bluffs, everywhere covered with a green turf. 313. "Bad Axe" battle-ground, where Black Hawk was defeated by General Atkinson, above Prairie du Chien. Indians making defence and swimming the river. 314. Chippeways gathering wild rice near the source of St. Peter's; shelling their rice into their bark canoes, by bending it over, and whipping it with sticks. 315. View near "Prairie la Crosse," beautiful prairie bluffs, above Prairie du Chien, Upper Mississippi. 316. "Cap o'lail" (garlic cape), a bold and picturesque promontory on Upper Mississippi. 317. Picturesque Bluffs above Prairie du Chien, Upper Mississippi. 318. "Pike's Tent," the highest bluff on the river, Upper Mississippi. 319. View of the "Cornice Rocks," and "Pike's Tent," in distance, 750 miles above St. Louis, on Upper Mississippi. 320. "Lover's Leap," on Lake Pepin, Upper Mississippi, a rock 500 feet high, where an Indian girl threw herself off a few years since, to avoid marrying the man to whom she was given by her father. 321. Falls of St. Anthony, 900 miles above St. Louis; perpendicular fall eighteen feel: Upper Mississippi. 322. Madame Ferrebault's Prairie from the river above; the author and his companion descending the river in a bark canoe, above Prairie du Chien, Upper Mississippi; beautiful grass-covered bluffs. 323. "Little Falls," near the Falls of St. Anthony, on a small stream. 324. "La Montaigne que tremps l'Eau," Mississippi, above Prairie du Chien. 325. Cassville, below Prairie du Chien, Upper Mississippi; a small village just commenced, in 1835. 326. Dubuque, a town in the lead-mining country. 327. Galena, a small town on Upper Mississippi, in the lead-mining district. 328. Rock Island, United States Garrison, Upper Mississippi. 329. Beautiful Prairie Bluffs, ditto. 330. Dubuque's Grave, ditto. Dubuque was the first miner in the lead-mines under the Spanish grant. He built his own sepulchre, and raised a cross over it, on a beautiful bluff, overlooking the river, forty years ago, where it now stands. 331. River Bluffs, magnificent view, Upper Mississippi. 332. Fort Snelling, at the mouth of St. Peter's, U. S. Garrison, seven miles below the Falls of St. Anthony, Upper Mississippi. 333. Prairie du Chien, 500 miles above St. Louis, Upper Mississippi, United States Garrison. 334. Chippeway Village and Dog Feast at the Falls of St. Anthony; lodges built with birch-bark: Upper Mississippi. 335. Sioux Village, Lake Calhoun, near Fort Snelling; lodges built with poles. 336. "Coteau des Prairies," head-waters of St. Peter's. My companion, Indian guide, and myself encamping at sunset, cooking by our fire, made of buffalo-dung. 337. "Pipestone Quarry," on the Coteau des Prairies, 300 miles N. W. from the Falls of St. Anthony, on the divide between the St. Peter's and Missouri. The place where the Indians get the stone for all their red pipes. The mineral, _red steatite_, variety differing from any other known locality--wall of solid, compact quartz, grey and rose colour, highly polished as if vitrified; the wall is two miles in length and thirty feet high, with a beautiful cascade leaping from its top into a basin. On the prairie, at the base of the wall, the pipeclay (steatite) is dug up at two and three feet depth. There are seen five immense granite boulders, under which there are two squaws, according to their tradition, who eternally dwell there--the guardian spirits of the place--and must be consulted before the pipestone can be dug up. 338. Sault de St. Mary's--Indians catching white fish in the rapids at the outlet of Lake Superior, by dipping their scoop nets. 339. Sault de St. Mary's from the Canadian Shore, Lake Superior, showing the United States Garrison in the distance. 340. View on the St. Peter's River, twenty miles above Fort Snelling. 341. View on the St. Peter's--Sioux Indians pursuing a Stag in their canoes. 342. Salt Meadows on the Upper Missouri, and great herds of buffalo--incrustation of salt, which looks like snow. Salt water flows over the prairie in the spring, and, evaporating during the summer, leaves the ground covered with muriate as white as snow. 343. Pawnee Village in Texas, at the base of a spur of the Rocky Mountains--lodges thatched with prairie-grass. 344. View on the Canadian, in Texas. 345. View of the junction of Red River with the False Washitta, in Texas. 346. Camanchee Village, in Texas, showing a spur of the Rocky Mountains in the distance--lodges made of buffalo-skins. Women dressing robes and drying meat. 347. View on the Wisconsin--Winnebagoes shooting ducks, in bark canoe. 348. Lac du Cygne (Swan Lake), near the Coteau des Prairies. A famous place, where myriads of white swans lay their eggs and hatch their young. #/ 349. Beautiful Savannah in the pine-woods of Florida. One of thousands of small lakes which have been gradually filled in with vegetation. 350. View on Lake St. Croix, Upper Mississippi. 351. View on the Canadian--Dragoons crossing, 1834. 352. Ta-wa-que-nah, or Rocky Mountain, near the Camanchee Village, Texas. 353. Camanchee Village, and Dragoons approaching it, showing the hospitable manner in which they were received by the Camanchees. Camanchee warriors all riding out and forming in a line, with a white flag, to receive the Dragoons. 354. White Sand Bluffs, on Santa Rosa Island; and Seminoles drying fish, near Pensacola, on the Gulf of Florida. 355. View of the "Stone Man Medicine," Coteau des Prairies. A human figure of some rods in length, made on the top of a high bluff, by laying flat stones on the grass. A great _mystery_ or _medicine_ place of the Sioux. 356. Fort Winnebago, on the head of Fox River, an United States outpost. 357. Fort Howard, Green Bay, an U. S. outpost. 358. Fort Gibson, Arkansas, an U. S. outpost, 700 miles west of Mississippi river. 359. The "Short Tower," Wisconsin. 360. Passing the "Grand Chute" with bark canoe, Fox River. 361. View of Mackinaw, Lake Michigan, an U. S. outpost. 362. View in the "Cross Timbers," where General Leavenworth died on the Mexican borders. 363. View on Lower Missouri--alluvial banks falling in, with their huge cotton-woods, forming raft and snags, 600 miles above St. Louis. 364. View on Upper Missouri--the "Blackbird's Grave." Where "Blackbird," Chief of the Omahas, was buried on his favourite war-horse, which was alive; 1100 miles above St. Louis. 365. View on Upper Missouri--"Blackbird's Grave," a back view; prairies enamelled with wild flowers. 366. View on Upper Missouri--"Brick Kilns," volcanic remains, clay bluffs, 200 feet, supporting large masses of red pumice, 1900 miles above St. Louis. 367. View on Upper Missouri--Foot war-party on the march, beautiful prairie--spies and scouts in advance. 368. View on Upper Missouri--Prairie Bluffs at sunrising, near mouth of Yellow Stone. 369. View on Upper Missouri--Mouth of the Platte; its junction with the Missouri, 900 miles above St. Louis. 370. View on Upper Missouri--Magnificent Clay Bluffs, 1800 miles above St. Louis; stupendous domes and ramparts, resembling some ancient ruins; streak of coal near the water's edge; and my little canoe, with myself and two men, Bogard and Bàtiste, descending the river. 371. View on Upper Missouri--Cabane's trading-house; Fur Company's establishment: 930 miles above St. Louis, showing a great avalanche of the bluffs. 372. View on Upper Missouri--View in the Grand Détour, 1900 miles above St. Louis. Magnificent clay bluffs, with red pumice-stone resting on their tops, and a party of Indians approaching buffalo. 373. View on Upper Missouri--Beautiful Grassy Bluffs, 110 miles above St Louis. 374. View on Upper Missouri--Prairie Meadows burning, and a party of Indians running from it in grass eight or ten feet high. These scenes are terrific and hazardous in the extreme when the wind is blowing a gale. 375. View on Upper Missouri--Prairie Bluffs burning. 376. View on Upper Missouri--"Floyd's Grave," where Lewis and Clarke buried Serjeant Floyd thirty-three years since; a cedar post and sign over the grave. 377. View on Upper Missouri--Sioux encamped, dressing buffalo-meat, and robes. 378. View on Upper Missouri--"The Tower," 1100 miles above St. Louis. 379. View on upper Missouri--Distant view of the Mandan Village, 1800 miles above St. Louis. 380. View on Upper Missouri--Picturesque Clay Bluff, 1700 miles above St. Louis. 381. View on Upper Missouri--"Belle Vue"--Indian Agency of Major Dougherty, 870 miles above St. Louis. 382. View on Upper Missouri--Beautiful Clay Bluffs, 1900 miles above St. Louis. 383. View on Upper Missouri--Minatarree Village, earth-covered lodges, on Knife River, 1810 miles above St. Louis. Bàtiste, Bogard, and myself ferried across the river by an Indian woman, in a skin canoe, and Indians bathing in the stream. 384. View on Upper Missouri--Fort Pierre, Mouth of Teton River--Fur Company's trading-post, 1200 miles above St. Louis, with 600 lodges of Sioux Indians encamped about it, in skin lodges. 385. View on Upper Missouri--Nishnabottana Bluffs, 1070 miles above St. Louis. 386. View on Upper Missouri--Riccaree Village, with earth-covered lodges, 1600 miles above St. Louis. 387. View on Upper Missouri--South side of "Buffalo Island," showing the beautiful buffalo-bush, with its blue leaves, and bending down with fruit. 388. View on Upper Missouri--Mouth of Yellow Stone--Fur Company's Fort, their principal post, 2000 miles above St. Louis, and a large party of Knisteneux encamped about it. 389. View on Upper Missouri--the "Iron Bluff," 1200 miles above St. Louis, a beautiful subject for a landscape. 390. View on Upper Missouri--View in the "Big Bend," 1900 miles above St. Louis; showing the manner in which the conical bluffs on that river are formed; table-lands in distance, rising several hundred feet above the summit level of the prairie. 391. View on Upper Missouri--View in the "Big Bend"--magnificent clay bluffs, with high table-land in the distance. 392. View on Upper Missouri--Back view of the Mandan Village, showing their mode of depositing their dead, on scaffolds, enveloped in skins, and of preserving and feeding the skulls; 1800 miles above St. Louis. Women feeding the skulls of their relatives with dishes of meat. 393. View on Upper Missouri--Prairie Buffs, 1100 miles above St. Louis. 394. View on Upper Missouri--"The Three Domes," 15 miles above Mandans. A singular group of clay bluffs, like immense domes, with skylights. 395. View on Upper Missouri--the "Square Hills," 1200 miles above St. Louis. 396. View on Upper Missouri--River Bluffs and White Wolves in the foreground. 397. View on Upper Missouri--Beautiful Prairie Bluffs, above the Puncahs, 1050 miles above St. Louis. 398. View on Upper Missouri--Look from Floyd's Grave. 1300 miles above St. Louis. 399. View on Upper Missouri--River Bluffs, 1320 miles above St. Louis. 400. View on Upper Missouri--Buffalo herds crossing the river. Bàtiste, Bogard, and I, passing them in our bark canoe, with some danger to our lives. A buffalo scene in their _running season_. 401. View on Upper Missouri--Clay Bluffs, 20 miles above the Mandans. 402. View on Upper Missouri--Nishnabottana Bluffs. 403. View on Upper Missouri--Indians encamping at sunset. SPORTING SCENES. 404. Buffalo Bull, grazing on the prairie in his native state. 405. Buffalo Cow, grazing on the prairie in her native state. 406. Wounded Buffalo, strewing his blood over the prairies. 407. Dying Buffalo, shot with an arrow, sinking down on his haunches. 408. Buffalo Chase--single death; an Indian just drawing his arrow to its head. 409. Buffalo Chase--surround; where I saw 300 killed in a few minutes by the Minatarrees, with arrows and lances only. 410. Buffalo Chase--numerous group; chasing with bows and lances. 411. Buffalo Chase--numerous group; chasing with bows and lances. 412. Buffalo Chase--Cow and Calf; the bull protecting by attacking the assailants. 413. Buffalo Chase--Bulls making battle with men and horses. 414. Buffalo Hunt under the wolf-skin mask. 415. Buffalo Chase, Mouth of Yellow Stone; animals dying on the ground passed over; and my man Bàtiste swamped in crossing a creek. 416. Buffalo Chase in snow drift, with snow shoes. 417. Buffalo Chase in snow drift, with snow shoes; killing them for their robes, in great numbers. 418. Attack of the Bear (Grisly); Indians attacking with lances on horseback. 419. Antelope Shooting--decoyed up. 420. Sioux taking Musk-rats, near the St. Peter's; killing them with spears. Women and dogs encamped. 421. Bàtiste and I, running Buffalo; Mouth of Yellow Stone; a frog's leap. 422. "My turn now;" Bàtiste and I, and a Buffalo Bull, Upper Missouri. 423. Dying Bull in a snow drift. 424. Buffalo Bulls fighting, in _running season_, Upper Missouri. 425. Buffalo Bulls in their "_wallow_;" origin of the "_fairie circles_" on the prairie. 426. Grouse shooting--on the Missouri prairies. AMUSEMENTS AND CUSTOMS. 427. Ball-play Dance, Choctaw.--Men and women dance around their respective stakes, at intervals, during the night preceding the play--four conjurors sit all night and smoke to the Great Spirit, at the point where the ball is to be started--and stakeholders guard the goods staked. 428. Ball-play of the Choctaws--_ball up_--one party painted white; each has two sticks with a web at their ends, in which they catch the ball and throw it--they all have tails of horse-hair or quills attached to their girdles or belts. Each party has a limit or bye, beyond which it is their object to force the ball, which, if done, counts them one for game. 429. Ball-play--same as 428, excepting that the ball is _down_, which changes the scene. 430. Ball-play of the women, Prairie du Chien.--Calicoes and other presents are placed on a pole by the men--the women choose sides and play for them, to the great amusement of the men. In this play there are two balls attached to the ends of a string eighteen inches in length: the women have a stick in each hand, on which they catch the string and throw it. #/ 431. Game of "_Tchung-kee_" of the Mandans, the principal and most valued game of that tribe. A beautiful athletic exercise, and one on which they often bet and risk all their personal goods and chattels. 432. Horse-Racing, Mandan, on a Race-Course back of the Village, in use on every fair-day. 433. Foot-Race, Mandans, on the same ground, and as often run. 434. Canoe-Race--Chippeways in Bark Canoes, near the Sault de St. Mary's; an Indian _Regatta_, a thrilling scene. 435. Archery of the Mandans. The strife is to prove who can get the greatest number of arrows flying in the air at a time, before the first one reaches the ground. The most of these are _portraits_ closely studied from nature. I have seen some of them get eight arrows in the air at one time. 436. Dance of the Chiefs, Sioux. A very unusual thing, as the dancing is generally left to the young men; given to me expressly as a compliment by the chiefs, that I might make a painting of it. 437. Dog Dance, Sioux. The dog's liver and heart are taken raw and bleeding, and placed upon a crotch; and, being cut into slips, each man dances up to it, bites off and swallows a piece of it, boasting, at the same time, that he has thus swallowed a piece of the heart of his enemy, whom he has slain in battle. 438. Scalp Dance, Sioux--Women in the centre, holding the scalps on poles, and warriors dancing around, brandishing their war-weapons in the most frightful manner, and yelping as loud as they can scream. 439. Begging Dance, Sacs and Foxes, danced for the purpose of getting presents from the spectators. 440. Buffalo Dance, Mandans, with the mask of the buffalo on. Danced to make buffalo come, when they are like to starve for want of food. Song to the Great Spirit, imploring him to send them buffalo, and they will cook the best of it for him. 441. Ball-play Dance, Choctaws. 442. Dance to the Berdash, Sac and Fox. An unaccountable and ludicrous custom amongst the Sacs and Foxes, which admits not of an entire explanation. 443. Beggars' Dance, (Sioux,) for presents. 444. Dance to the Medicine Bag of the Brave, Sacs and Foxes. Warriors returned from battle, with scalps, dance in front of the widow's lodge, whose husband has been killed. They sing to his medicine-bag, which is hung on a bush, and throw presents to the widow. 445. Braves' Dance, Boasting, &c., Sioux. 446. Green Corn Dance, Minnatarree--Sacrificing the first kettle to the Great Spirit. #/ Four medicine men, whose bodies are painted with white clay, dance around the kettle until the corn is well boiled; and they then burn it to cinders, as an offering to the Great Spirit. The fire is then destroyed, and _new fire_ created by rubbing two sticks together, with which the corn for their own feast is cooked. 447. Bear Dance, Sioux--Preparing for a Bear Hunt--Song to the Great Spirit, praying for success. 448. Discovery Dance, Sacs and Foxes--A Pantomime; pretending to discover game, or an enemy. A very picturesque and pleasing dance. 449. Eagle Dance, Choctaw--Holding the eagle's tail in the hand, and bodies painted white. Given in honour of that valiant bird. 450. Slave Dance, Sacs and Foxes. A society of young men, who volunteer to be slaves for two years, and elect their chief or master; they are then exempt from slavish duties during the remainder of their lives, and are allowed to go on war-parties. 451. Snow-shoe Dance, Ojibbeway--danced at the first fall of snow, with snow shoes on the feet. Song of thanks to the Great Spirit. 452. Brave's Dance, Ojibbeway--bragging and boasting. 453. Pipe Dance, Assineboins. Each dancer is "_smoked_" by the chief, who sits smoking his pipe, and then _pulled_ up into the dance. 454. Straw Dance, Sioux. Children made to dance with burning straws tied to their bodies, to make them tough and brave. 455. Sham Fight, Mandan Boys--School of practice every morning at sunrise, back of the village--instructed in it by the chiefs and braves. 456. Sham Scalp Dance, by the Mandan Boys--danced in the village when they come in, in honour of a sham victory. 457. War Dance of the Sioux. Each warrior, in turn, jumps through the fire, and then advances shouting and boasting, and taking his oath, as he "strikes the _reddened post_." 458. Foot War Party in Council, Mandan. Stopping to rest and take a smoke; chief with a war-eagle head-dress on; their shields and weapons lying on the ground behind them. 459. Camanchee War Party--the Chief discovering the enemy and urging on his men, at sunrise. 460. Religious Ceremony; a Sioux, with splints through his flesh, and his body hanging to a pole, with his medicine-bag in his hand, looks at the sun from its rising to its setting. #/ A voluntary cruel self-torture, which entitles him to great respect for the remainder of his life, as a _medicine_ or _mystery_ man. 461. Dragoons on the March, and a band of Buffalo breaking through their ranks, in Texas, 1835. 462. Prairie Dog Village. Myriads of these curious little animals sometimes are found in one village, which will extend several miles. The animals are about twice the size of a rat, and not unlike it in appearance and many of their habits. They dig holes in the ground, and the dirt which is thrown up makes a little mound, on which they sit and bark when danger approaches. They feed upon the grass, which is their only food. 463. "Smoking Horses," a curious custom of the Sacs and Foxes. Foxes, going to war, come to the Sacs, to beg for horses; they sit in a circle and smoke, and the young men ride around them, and cut their shoulders with their whips until the blood runs, then dismount and present a horse. 464. Mandans attacking a party of Riccarees, whom they had driven into a ravine, near the Mandan village, where they killed the whole number. 465. Chippeways making the portage around the Falls of St. Anthony, with two hundred bark canoes, in 1835. 466. Camanchees moving, and Dog Fight--dogs as well as horses drag the lodge-poles with packs upon them. These fights generally begin with the dogs, and end in desperate battle; amongst the squaws, to the great amusement of the men. 467. White Wolves attacking a Buffalo Bull. 468. Ditto, ditto--a parley. 469. _My horse "Charley" and I_, at sunrise, near the Neosho, on an extensive prairie, encamping on the grass; my saddle for a pillow, two buffalo-skins for my bed, my gun in my arms; a coffee-pot and tin cup, a fire made of buffalo-dung, and Charley (a Camanchee clay-bank mustang) picketed near me. With him alone I crossed the prairie from Fort Gibson, on the Arkansas, to St. Louis, 550 miles. 470. _Sioux worshipping at the Red Boulders._ A large boulder and two small ones, bearing some resemblance to a buffalo cow and two calves, painted red by the Indians, and regarded by them with superstitious reverence, near the "Coteau des Prairies." 471. _Camanchee Warrior lancing an Osage_, at full speed. 472. _Camanchees giving the Arrows to the Medicine Rock._ A curious superstition of the Camanchees: going to war, they have no faith in their success, unless they pass a celebrated painted rock, where they appease the spirit of war (who resides there), by riding by it at full gallop, and sacrificing their best arrow by throwing it against the side of the ledge. 473. _"Bàtiste, Bogard, and I" approaching Buffalo_, on the Missouri. 474. _Wi-jun-jon (an Assinneboin Chief), going to and returning from Washington._ This man was taken to that city in 1832, in a beautiful Indian dress, by Major Sanford, the Indian agent, and returned to his country the next spring, in a Colonel's uniform. He lectured a while to his people on the customs of the whites, when he was denounced by them for telling lies, which he had learned of the whites, and was, by his own people, put to death at the mouth of the Yellow Stone. 475. "_Butte de Mort_," Upper Missouri, a great burial-place of the Sioux, called by the French "_Butte de Mort_," Hill of Death. Regarded by the Indians with great dread and superstition. There are several thousand buffalo and human skulls, perfectly bleached and curiously arranged about it. 476. "_Rain-making_," amongst the Mandans, a very curious custom. Medicine-men performing their mysteries inside of the lodge, and young men volunteer to stand upon the lodge from sunrise until sundown, in turn, commanding it to rain. Each one has to hazard the disgrace which attaches (when he descends at sundown) to a fruitless attempt; and he who succeeds acquires a lasting reputation as a _Mystery or Medicine man_. _They never fail to make it rain!_ as this ceremony continues from day to day until rain comes. 477. "Smoking the Shield." A young warrior, making his shield, invites his friends to a carouse and a feast, who dance around his shield as it is smoking and hardening over a fire built in the ground. 478. "_The Thunder's Nest_" (Nid du Tonnerre), and a party of Indians cautiously approaching it, Coteau des Prairies. Tradition of the Sioux is that in this little bunch of bushes the thunders are hatched out by quite a small bird, about as large (say their _Medicine-men_, who profess to have seen it) as the end of a man's thumb. She sits on her eggs, and they hatch out in claps of thunder. No one approaches within several rods of the place. 479. _Sac and Fox Indians sailing in canoes_, by holding up their blankets. 480. _Grand Tournament of the Camanchees_, and a Sham Fight in a large encampment, on the borders of Texas. 481. _Bogard, Bàtiste, and I, travelling_ through a Missouri bottom, grass ten feet high. 482. _Band of Sioux_, moving. 483. _Bogard, Bàtiste, and I_, descending the Missouri River. 484. _Bogard, Bàtiste, and I_, eating our breakfast on a pile of drift wood, Upper Missouri. 485. _Medicine Buffalo_ of the Sioux, the figure of a buffalo cut out of the turf on the prairie, and visited by the Indians going on a buffalo-hunt. 486. _Bogard, Bàtiste, and I_, chasing a herd of buffalo in high grass, on a Missouri bottom. 487. Feats of Horsemanship. Camanchees throwing themselves on the side of their horses, while at full speed, to evade their enemies' arrows--a most wonderful feat. 488. Camanchee War Party meeting the Dragoons; and one of their bravest men advancing to shake hands with Colonel Dodge, with a piece of white buffalo-skin on the point of his lance. On the Mexican frontier, 1835. 489. An Indian Wedding, Assinneboin--young man making presents to the father of the girl. 490. Crow at his Toilette, oiling his long hair with bear's grease. 491. Crow Lodge, of twenty-five buffalo-skins, beautifully ornamented. This splendid lodge, with all its poles and furniture, was brought from the foot of the Rocky Mountains. 492. Pawnee Lodge, thatched with prairie grass, in form of a straw beehive. 493. Camanchee Lodge, of buffalo-skins. 494. Dog Feast, Sioux; a religious feast. Given to Mr. Sanford (Indian agent), Mr. Chouteau, Mr. M'Kenzie, and myself, in a Sioux village, 1400 miles above St. Louis, 1833. The only food was dog's meat, and this is the highest honour they can confer on a stranger. 495. An Indian Council, Sioux--Chiefs in profound deliberation. 496. Camanchee War Party, mounted on wild horses, armed with shields, bows, and lances. 497. Scalping, Sioux; showing the mode of taking the scalp. 498. Scalping, Mandans--"Conqueror conquered." From a story of the Mandans--took place in front of the Mandan village. 499. Wild Horses at Play, Texas, of all colours, like a kennel of hounds. 500. Throwing the Laso, with a noose, which falls over the horse's neck. 501. Breaking down the Wild Horse, with hobbles on his fore feet, and the laso around his under jaw. 502. _A Bird's-Eye View_ of the _Mandan_ Village, 1800 miles above St. Louis, on the west bank of the Missouri River. The lodges are covered with earth, and so compactly fixed by long use, that men, women, and children recline and play upon their tops in pleasant weather. These lodges vary in size from forty to fifty feet in diameter, and are all of a circular form. The village is protected in front by the river, with a bank forty feet high, and on the back part by a piquet of timber set firmly in the ground. Back of the village, on the prairie, are seen the scaffolds on which their dead bodies are laid to decay, being wrapped in several skins of buffalo, and tightly bandaged. In the middle of the village is an open area of 150 feet in diameter, in which their public games and festivals are held. In the centre of that is their "Big Canoe," a curb made of planks, which is an object of religious veneration. Over the Medicine (or mystery) Lodge are seen hanging on the tops of poles several sacrifices to the Great Spirit of blue and black cloth, which have been bought at great prices, and there left to hang and decay. 503. The _Interior of a Mandan Lodge_, showing the manner in which it is constructed of poles, and covered with dirt. The Chief is seen smoking his pipe, and his family grouped around him. At the head of each warrior's bed is seen a post with his ornaments hanging on it, and also his _buffalo-mask_, which every man _keeps to dance_ the buffalo-dance. Some of these lodges contain thirty or forty persons, and the beds are seen extending around the side of the lodge, all with _sacking bottoms_, made of a buffalo-skin, and the frames of the bed covered with dressed skins. *** Reader, the hospitable and friendly Mandans, who were about 2000 in number when I was amongst them and painted these pictures, have recently been destroyed by the small-pox. It is a melancholy fact, that only thirty-one were left of the number, and these have been destroyed by their enemy, so that their tribe is extinct, and they hold nowhere an existence on earth. Nearly twenty of their portraits can be seen on the walls, and several other paintings of their games and amusements. MANDAN RELIGIOUS CEREMONIES. CERTIFICATE. We hereby certify that we witnessed, in company with Mr. Catlin, in the Mandan village, the ceremonies represented in the four paintings to which this certificate refers, and that he has therein faithfully represented those scenes as we saw them transacted, without any addition or exaggeration. J. KIP, Agent Amer. Fur Company. L. CRAWFORD, Clerk. ABRAHAM BOGARD. _Mandan Village, July 20th, 1833._ 504. Interior View of the _Medicine_ (or _Mystery_) Lodge of Mandans, during the first three days of an _Annual Ceremony_. This ceremony continues four days and nights in succession, in commemoration of the subsiding of the _flood_; and also for the purpose of conducting all the young men, as they arrive at manhood, through an ordeal of _voluntary torture_, which, when endured, entitles them to the respect of the chiefs, and also to the privileges of going on war-parties, and gaining reputation in war. The floor and sides of the lodge are ornamented with green willow-boughs. The young men who are to do penance, by being tortured, are seen lying around the sides of the lodge, their bodies covered with clay of different colours, and their respective shields and weapons hanging over their heads. In the middle of the lodge lies the old _Medicine-man_, who has charge of the lodge: he cries to the Great Spirit all the time, and watches these young men, who are here to fast and thirst for four days and nights, preparatory to the torture. Behind him, on the floor, is seen a scalping-knife and a bunch of splints, which are to be passed through the flesh; and over their heads are seen also the cords let down from the top of the lodge, with which they are to be hung up by the flesh. On the ground, and in front of the picture, are four sacks (containing several gallons each of water), made of the skin of the buffalo's neck, in form of a large tortoise, lying on its back. These are objects of veneration, and have the appearance of great antiquity. By the side of them are two _she-she-quoi_, or rattles, which are used, as well as the others, as a part of the music for the dance in the next picture. 505. This picture, which is a continuation of the ceremonies, is a representation of the Buffalo Dance, which they call _Bel-lohck-nah-pick_ (the Bull Dance). To the strict observance of which they attribute the coming of Buffalo to supply them with food during the season. This scene is exceedingly grotesque, and takes place several times in each day outside the lodge, and around the curb, or "Big Canoe," whilst the young men still remain in the lodge, as seen in the other picture. For this dance, however, the four sacks of water are brought out and beat upon, and the old _medicine-man_ comes out and leans against the "Big Canoe" with his medicine-pipe in his hand, and cries. The principal actors in this scene are eight men dancing the Buffalo Dance, with the skins of buffalo on them, and a bunch of green willows on their backs. There are many other figures, whose offices are very curious and interesting, but which must be left for my _Lectures_ or _Notes_ to describe. The black figure on the left they call _O-kee-hee de_ (the Evil Spirit), who enters the village from the prairie, alarming the women, who cry for assistance, and are relieved by the old _medicine-man_; and the Evil Spirit is at length disarmed of his lance, which is broken by the women, and he is driven by them in disgrace out of the village. The whole nation are present on this occasion as spectators and actors in these strange scenes. 506. Represents what they call Pohk-hong (the Cutting Scene). It shows the inside of the Medicine Lodge, the same as is seen in the first picture (505). This is on the fourth day of the ceremonies, in the afternoon. A number of the young men are seen reclining and fasting, as in the first picture; others of them have been operated upon by the torturers, and taken out of the lodge; and others yet are seen in the midst of those horrid cruelties. One is seen smiling whilst the knife and the splints are passing through his flesh. One is seen hanging by the splints run through the flesh on his shoulders, and drawn up by men on the top of the lodge. Another is seen hung up by the pectoral muscles, with four buffalo-skulls attached to splints through the flesh on his arms and legs; and each is turned round by another, with a pole, until he faints, and then he is let down. One is seen as he is lowered to the ground; and another, who has been let down and got strength enough to crawl to the front part of the lodge, where he is offering to the Great Spirit the little finger of the left hand, by laying it on a buffalo-skull, where another chops it off with a hatchet. In the right of the picture are all the chiefs and dignitaries of the tribe looking on. 507. Represents what they call the "Last Race." After they have all been tortured in the lodge in the above manner, they are led out of it with the weights, buffalo-skulls, &c. hanging to their flesh. Around the "Big Canoe" is a circle of young men formed, who hold a wreath of willow-boughs between them, and run round with all possible violence, yelling as loud as they can. The young fellows who have been tortured are then led forward, and each one has two athletic and fresh young men (their bodies singularly painted), who step up to him, one on each side, and take him by a leathern strap, tied round the wrist, and run round, outside of the other circle, with all possible speed, forcing him forward till he faints, and then drag him with his face in the dirt until the weights are all disengaged from him, by tearing the flesh out, when they drop him, and he lies (to all appearance a _corpse_) until the Great Spirit gives him strength to rise and walk home to his lodge. In this scene also the _medicine-man_ leans against the "Big Canoe" and cries, and all the nation are spectators. Many pages would be required to give to the world a just description of these strange scenes; and they require to be described minutely in all their parts in order to be fully appreciated and understood. (A full account of these in my _Notes and Letters_.) * * * * * NINE OJIBBEWAYS, WHO VISITED LONDON IN 1845. 508. _Ah-quee-we-zaints_, the Boy Chief; a venerable man of 72 years. 509. _Pat-au-a-quot-a-wee-be_, the Driving-Cloud; a war-chief. 510. _Wee-nish-ka-wee-be_, the Flying Gull; a medicine-man. 511. _Sah-mah_, Tobacco. 512. _Gish-ee-gosh-e-gee_, the Moonlight Night. 513. _Not-een-a-akm_, the Strong Wind. 514. _Wos-see-ab-e-neuh-qua_; a woman. 515. _Nib-nab-ee-qua_; a young girl. 516. _Ne-bet-neuh-quat_; a woman. FOURTEEN IOWAYS, WHO VISITED LONDON AND PARIS IN 1845 AND 1846. 517. _Mew-hew-she-kaw_, the White Cloud; first Chief of the nation. 518. _Neu-mon-ya_, the Walking Rain; War-chief. 519. _Se-non-ti-yah_, the Blistered Feet; a medicine-man. 520. _Wash-ka-mon-ya_, the Fast Dancer; a warrior. 521. _Shon-ta-yi-ga_, the Little Wolf; a famous warrior. 522. _No-ho-mun-ya_, One who gives no Attention. 523. _Wa-ton-ye_, the Foremost Man. 524. _Wa-ta-wee-buck-a-na_, the Commanding General. WOMEN. 525. _Ru-ton-ye-wee-ma_, the Strutting Pigeon; wife of White Cloud. 526. _Ru-ton-wee-me_, Pigeon on the Wing. 527. _O-kee-wee-me_, Female Bear that walks on the Back of another. 528. _Koon-za-ya-me_, Female War Eagle. 529. _Ta-pa-ta~me_, Wisdom; girl. 530. _Corsair_; a pappoose. TWELVE OJIBBEWAYS, WHO VISITED LONDON AND PARIS IN 1845 AND 1846. 531. _Maun-gua-daus_, a Great Hero; Chief, 41 years old. 532. _Say-say-gon_, the Hail Storm; 31 years old. 533. _Kee-che-us-sin_, the Strong Rock; 27 years old. 534. _Mush-ee-mong_, King of the Loons; 25 years old. 535. _Au-nim-muck-kwa-um_, the Tempest Bird; 20 years old. 536. _A-wun-ne-wa-be_, the Bird of Thunder; 19 years old. 537. _Wa-bud-dick_, the Elk; 18 years old. 538. _Ud-je-jock_, the Pelican; 10 years old. 539. _Noo-din-no-kay_, the Furious Storm; 4 years old. 540. _Min-nis-sin-noo_, a Brave Warrior; 3 years old. 541. _Uh-wus-sig-gee-zigh-gook-kway_, the Woman of the Upper World; 38 years old. 542. Pappoose, born in Salle Valentino, Paris. * * * * * 543. _Death of the White Buffalo._ A feat of the Mandan Chiefs. 544. _A Sioux War Council._ The Chief Waneton speaking, and asking of the head Chief a war-party to go against the Sacs and Foxes. 545. _Battle between the Sioux and Sacs and Foxes._ The Sioux Chief killed and scalped on his horse's back. An historical fact. 546. _The Death of Ha-wan-je-tah_, the One Horn; head Chief of the Sioux. Having been the accidental cause of the death of his only son, he threw himself in the way of a buffalo-bull. (See Catlin's _Notes_, vol. ii., for a full account.) 547. _The Long Speech._ It is an invariable rule amongst Indians, that while any one speaks in council no one can rise. _See-non-ty-a_ (the Blistered Feet), a great _medicine-man_, made his favourite boast, that when he once rose in an Ioway council of war it happened unfortunately for the council that "he began to speak just as it began to snow." 548. _Battle of the Buffalo Bulls._ 549. _Buffaloes crossing a Ravine in a snow-drift._ 550. _Buffaloes crossing the Missouri on the ice._ 551. _Grisly Bears attacking a Buffalo Bull._ 552. _Indians spearing Salmon at Night by Torchlight._ 553. _Deer-hunting by Moonlight._ 554. _Deer-hunting by Torchlight, in bark canoes._ 555. _War Party attacked in their Camp at Night._ INDIAN CURIOSITIES AND MANUFACTURES. Amongst this most extensive and valuable collection of them in existence, a few of the most remarkable are A CROW LODGE, OR WIGWAM. A very splendid thing, brought from the foot of the Rocky Mountains, twenty-five feet in height, made of buffalo-skins, garnished and painted. The poles (thirty in number) of pine, cut in the Rocky Mountains, have been long in use, were purchased with the lodge, and brought the whole distance. This _wigwam_ stands in the middle of the gallery, and will shelter eighty or more persons. _Indian Cradles_, for carrying their pappooses. _Lances_, _Calumets_ or _Pipes of Peace_, _Ordinary Pipes_, _Tomahawks_, _Scalping Knives_, and _Scalps_. A very full and valuable collection of _Men and Women's Dresses_ from the different tribes, garnished and fringed with scalp-locks from their enemies' heads, _Bows_, _Quivers_, _Spears_, _Shields_, _War-Eagle and Raven Head-dresses_, _Necklaces_, _Mocassins_, _Belts_, _Pouches_, _War-Clubs_, _Robes_, _Mantles_, _Tobacco-Sacks_, _Wampums_, _Whistles_, _Rattles_, _Drums_, _Indian Saddles_, _Masks for their Mystery Dances_, _&c. &c._ Amongst the immense collection of Indian curiosities, &c., too numerous to be described in the catalogue, there are Skulls from different tribes, of very great interest; and particularly several from the _Flat-heads_, showing perfectly the character of this unaccountable custom, and also the Flat-head cradles, illustrating the process by which these artificial distortions are produced. _Indian Cloths_, _Robes_, &c., manufactured by the Indians from the mountain sheep's wool, and from wild dogs' hair, beautifully spun, coloured, and woven. END OF VOL. I. Transcriber's Notes Hyphenation of compound words follows the text. If a hyphenation occurred on a line or page break, the most common variant was followed. Suspect spellings are noted, but are retained. The modern word 'grizzly' is spelled as 'grizly' or 'grisly'. On p. 273, the numbered list of prints is missing #261. On p. 291, the asterism (three asterisks forming a triangle) is represented simply three asterisks. The following table describes how a variety of textual issues, and resolution. Where variants were most likely printer's errors, they have been corrected, otherwise merely noted. p. 89 visit[e]rs _sic._ p. 135 nonplused _sic._ p. 161 _chickababbo_ _sic._ p. 185 [t/T]he wedding in St. Martin's church Corrected. p. 195 "Oh, yes, he's here every day[,/.]" Corrected. p. 196 The Emperor of Russ[s]ia, Removed. p. 213 tribes of the North American Indians[.] Added. p. 217 land[s]capes and other scenes Removed. p. 219 presented to us[.] Added. p. 252 opportunit[it]ies Removed. p. 255 Mississip[p]i Added. leggins _sic._ p. 276 made of whi[l/t]e horse-hair Corrected. p. 278 delineatio[u/n]s Inverted. lik[e]nesses Added. p. 279 [5/3]28. Rock Island Corrected. p. 283 the ["]Big Bend["] Added for consistency. p. 284 Miss[i]ouri Removed. p. 290 sp[l]endid Added. 
45076	----	Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed. Words printed in italics are noted with underscores: _italics_. The cover of this ebook was created by the transcriber and is hereby placed in the public domain. PEREGRINE IN FRANCE. A Lounger's Journal, IN FAMILIAR LETTERS TO HIS FRIEND. "And in his brain, Which is as dry as the remainder biscuit After a voyage, he hath strange places cramm'd With observation--the which he vents In _mangled forms_." AS YOU LIKE IT. _LONDON:_ _Printed by Thomas Davison, Whitefriars_, FOR JAMES HARPER AND CO., 46, FLEET-STREET. 1816. PREFACE. The friend who has ventured to send these letters to the press feels it necessary to state, in apology for the insufficiency of such a trifle to meet the public eye, that they are actually published without the knowledge of Peregrine (who is still abroad) and chiefly with the view of giving copies to the numerous friends by whom he is so justly regarded. The editor, therefore, relying on the indulgence of those friends, humbly also deprecates the stranger critic's censure, both for poor Peregrine and himself. LETTER I. Paris, December 14, 1815. MY DEAR FRIEND, Arrived safely at this interesting metropolis, I take the earliest opportunity of relieving the affectionate anxiety you expressed over our parting glass, by the assurance that I have happily escaped all the evils prognosticated by some of our acquaintance from a journey at this inclement season. Those indeed of the inquisitive family of John Bull, who look only for luxury and convenience in travelling, will do well never to leave the comforts of their own happy island from motives of expected pleasure, as they will be sure to be fretted by a series of petty disappointments and vexations which fall to the lot of every traveller. A little forethought may occasionally be necessary, but I am convinced that he alone will truly enjoy a continental trip who knows how at once to reconcile himself to the chances of the moment, derive from them all the good he can, thank God for it,--and be satisfied. Without more prosing I will endeavour to comply with Mrs. ----'s request, and, trying to overcome my propensity to lounging indolence, send you, from time to time, such crude observations as may suggest themselves in my peregrinations through some of the towns and provinces of France, and during my short stay in the capital; although I fear all novelty on this subject has already met your eye, from the abler pens of more accomplished tourists. At Dover I repaired immediately to the York Hotel, where the host and hostess justified all you had told me of their attention and civility. I found that the mail packet would attempt to get out of harbour on Saturday afternoon; the captain had in vain endeavoured to put to sea that morning: however, we succeeded on a second trial, and held one course to Boulogne, which we reached in about four hours. The vessel was very much crowded, having the mails of four days on board, and the accumulation of four days' passengers. It was very cold, and I was, as usual, sea-sick. I went on shore about eleven o'clock that night, and was conducted to an hotel in the upper town, all those of the lower town, which are the best, being full. I took under my protection an English lady proceeding to her husband at Havre-de-Grace. We knocked up the host, hostess, and drowsy servants, who, however, soon cooked us some broiled whitings and lean mutton-chops (_coutelets de mouton_); and after having taken a little _eau de vie_ and warm Burgundy, I was conducted to my bed-room, having first seen my fellow traveller safely lodged in hers. The waiter, "_garçon_," was an Englishman, with all the obliging willingness of the French. I was surprised to find my dormitory so comfortable, having supped in a dirty _un_comfortable apartment, in which I believe slept mine host and his wife, whom we had routed out of their snug quarters from an alcove at one corner of it. My said bed-chamber was large, and on the ground floor; at one end was a good wood fire blazing on the hearth, and at the other a comfortable bed in a recess, with clean sheets, &c.; over the fire-place a very fine chimney-glass, and upon a large clumsy deal table stood a basin and ewer of thick French earthenware and of peculiar form, the basin having that of an English salad-bowl with a flat bottom,--of course it is inconvenient for its purpose. Soap is only brought when you ask for it, and is an extra charge. All the bed-chambers I have yet seen answer this description, which perhaps you will think tedious; but every thing at the moment, with the warm colouring of first impressions in a foreign country, was interesting to me. On going to the custom-house next morning, I found all my baggage, except my drawing table, camera, and apparatus; I hope to regain them, as I gave directions to Mrs. Parker, an Englishwoman, who keeps the Hotel d'Angleterre, to forward them to me at Paris in case they were left on board the packet; but there are so many porters (women principally) who attend upon the landing of a boat, and, like as many harpies, seize upon your packages, _malgré vous_, that it is more than probable I shall never see them again; in which case you must not expect very accurate sketching. _À propos_, talking of female porters, let me inform you that, in spite of the boasted gallantry of the French nation, some of the most laborious part of the work, agricultural as well as commercial, is performed by women. This may, however, be in a degree owing to the exhaustion of male population, occasioned by the continued wars in which unhappy France has been so long involved by the insatiate ambition of her late ruler. After managing, as well as I could, the affair of my missing drawing utensils, I took a cursory view of the town and environs, attended by a gay, obsequious droll, of the old French school, who hung about me with such an assiduous importunity it was not possible to shake him off; he stuck to me like a _burr_, and would fain have accompanied "_Mi-lord Anglois_" to Paris, or any where else: he brought Sterne's La Fleur so strongly to my mind, and amused me so exceedingly by his singing, and skipping about at all calls with such unaffected sprightliness, that I own I parted with him very reluctantly: but a poor philosophic lounger, likely soon to be on half pay, had little occasion for a valet of his qualifications. An accident afforded me a proof of this good-humoured fellow's honesty, which I cannot deny myself the pleasure of relating. I had a considerable quantity of silver pieces in a bag, which, coming untied, the contents rolled on the bed and floor; I thought I had picked up the whole, but on returning to my chamber he presented me with several which had fallen into a fold of the blankets, and which I had overlooked. I afterwards also recovered a five franc piece from the _fille de chambre_. I believe, indeed, that the lower orders in France are generally honest, as well as sober and obliging; and that, although they make no scruple of outwitting, they will not actually rob John Bull. Boulogne sur Mer is divided into an higher and lower town; the intermediate street, in which the church is situated, and which ascends gradually to the former, is wide and cheerful, and looking from the top of it, towards the opposite southern hills, an interesting view presented itself,--the remains of the hut encampments of Bonaparte's army of England. On the heights, to the northward of the town, are also the ruins of long streets of soldiers' huts, mess-houses, &c. Near this encampment Napoleon had begun to build a noble column, of a species of marble found in a neighbouring quarry: we saw a very beautiful model of it; the base and part of the shaft, already built, are about fifty feet from the ground, but the scaffolding around it runs to the projected height of the capital, viz. 150 feet, and is strongly bolted with iron. This column, intended as a trophy of imperial grandeur, would have been, when finished, a handsome object on the coast, and probably useful to the coasting mariner as a land-mark; it is now a striking monument of disappointed ambition, and may afford a salutary moral lesson both to princes and their subjects! There are some striking views about Boulogne, which English travellers hurrying to and from the capital rarely stop to look at. The heights were every where bristled with cannon and mortars during the war, and the forts are very strong by art and nature: the approach to the harbour was therefore truly formidable when the republican flag waved on this iron-bound coast. This port is very ancient: it was here the Romans are said to have embarked for Britain, and the remains of a tower, built by them in the reign of Caligula, are still shewn. The harbour is also interesting from having been the rendezvous for the flotilla, which idly threatened to pour the imperial legions on our happy shores. Of this vaunted flotilla, consisting once of 2000 vessels, scarcely a wreck remains! Our gallant tars always heartily despised this Lilliputian armada, unsupported by ships of force, which Boulogne and the ports near it are incapable of admitting. The harbour here being almost dry at low water, the French, in one tide, could only have got about 100 of their puny vessels into the outer roads, where, while waiting for the rest, they would have been equally exposed to destruction by our vigilant cruisers, or by a gale at N.W. Nevertheless our enterprising government, in the spring of 1804, was induced to send over, at no small cost, an expedition of several vessels, having each in their interior an immense mass of large stones clamped and cemented together, which _artificial rocks_ (the wooden exterior being set on fire) were intended to be sunk at the mouth of the harbour and channels near it, and thus to block up the poor republican gun-boats for ever. The attempt, however, to carry this scheme into execution met with several obstacles unforeseen by the projector (a civilian and a foreigner unskilled in nautical affairs), and after various fruitless efforts, the expedition was wisely abandoned on the representation of its utter inexpediency, made to the lords of the admiralty by the navy employed on the service. The stone-ships were in consequence withdrawn, but I never heard what became of them or their projector afterwards. In viewing the sands and neighbouring beach, I was forcibly struck with the want of enterprise in the French. Such a town possessing similar advantages in England, would shortly rival Ramsgate or Brighton, and become, in the season, the resort of fashion. Here, with every natural capability for a bathing-place, they have neither machines for bathing, nor lodgings for visitants. Embellishments, or even repairs, are rarely thought of in the provincial towns of France; the houses are large, old, and gloomy, and descend "unaltered, unimproved," "from sire to son," without any of the cheerful _agrémens_ which render our smallest houses in England so delightful. The fishing-boats of Boulogne appeared to me clumsy and ill appointed--ours are yachts in comparison of them. Bidding now adieu to the coast, where I have kept you too long, I took my departure for Paris with a young French gentleman of Calais and the English lady mentioned before, in a cabriolet. I shall now _whisk_ you speedily to the capital. We slept that night at Vernai, a small village on the other side of Abbeville, having made a slight repast at Montreuil, where I inquired of a soldier about your friend S---- ----, whose regiment, the Inniskillen Dragoons, with the Scots Greys and Royals, was there. Montreuil is situated on a very steep hill. Here my passport was asked for; but I shewed the hilt of my sword instead of it, which was sufficient. We left Vernai next morning, and breakfasted upon excellent coffee and mutton chops, for which, with delicious bread and butter, they charged three francs each. Abbeville contains 18,000 inhabitants: it is situated in a pleasant valley, where the river Somme divides into several branches, and separates the town into two parts. The view, as I approached it, was very striking; something like Salisbury from Harnam Hill. Two very fine churches are the most conspicuous objects. On the road we met the Highland Brigade; and in the town was one regiment halted, and four others about to be billeted off. I parted from my agreeable fellow-travellers at Amiens, and proceeded alone in the Diligence. I am interrupted by the postman, but shall shortly renew my narrative, and shall not therefore expect to hear from you till I write again. Adieu! LETTER II. Creil, a dirty little town between Clermont and Chantilly. Jan. 14, 1816. MY DEAR FRIEND, I take the opportunity of the return of a brother officer to England, to send you a brief continuation of my journal, knowing that you will make every reasonable allowance for its imperfection. In my last, which I wrote to you soon after my arrival at Paris, I believe I conducted you with me as far as Amiens, a large city, possessing a beautiful cathedral, which however I had not then an opportunity of seeing. Here, for the first time, I got into a French Diligence, the machinery and necessary, or rather _un_necessary appendages of which I shall not attempt to describe, but shall merely say, that within they are sufficiently easy, large, and commodious. On my journey to the capital, I was amused by a warm political conversation between a Bonapartist and a Royalist, who, I think, was more strenuous in the cause of Louis than he otherwise would have been, had he not been honoured with a cross, the ribband of which he wore in one of the button-holes of his coat. We dined at Clermont: the first dish brought was vermicelli soup--then came the meat of which it had been made, but of which, judging that I had taken its essence in the soup, I declined to partake. Afterwards came some partridges baked, in a kind of pudding, to rags. Their flavour had been so abstracted by their covering, I suppose, that I asked what birds they were. Next entered, swimming in oiled butter, a fish with a livid-purple head, the name of which I was also obliged to enquire, and found that it was a barbel. I was soon, however, able to turn my eyes to a less novel, but more pleasing object, a fowl roasted and garnished with water cresses, but without liver, gizzard, or gravy. An omelette, with salad, pears, and walnuts, completed our dinner, my first regular one in France, and of which, consequently, I took more notice than usual on such occasions. The wine put down to us was small, but not badly flavoured: small as it is, however, the French always mix it with water. This repast, for which we paid each three francs, would have been better relished by me if some of my messmates had possessed cleaner hands, and tooth-picks more convenient than a French table-knife, which is an instrument quite rude enough for its _intended_ purpose. I arrived in Paris late on the evening of the 12th of December; and finding that I could be accommodated with a bed at the hotel where the diligence stopped, after eating some cold fowl, and drinking half a bottle of wine, I requested to be shewn to my chamber, the ascent to which was by a miserable dirty staircase. The room had a tiled floor, and felt very cold and comfortless; the bed was, however, good, and furnished with a clean pair of sheets. Next morning, after being obliged to perform my ablutions without the use of soap, an article, as I said before, never found in the bedchambers of France without special requisition, I descended the common staircase, almost as dirty as any you ever saw in Edinburgh, and found at breakfast, in the coffee-room, an old gentleman of Boston, in America. He made me acquainted with the customs of the house, and introduced me, at dinner, to a gentleman from the Havannah, and another from a small town near Valenciennes, both of whom could talk English fluently, and were very sensible, well informed men, whose society has been very useful to me. That day being rainy, (and, by the by, _all_ Paris is more dirty than the dirtiest part of London,) I contented myself with studying the map of the city; and next morning repaired, brimful of anxious curiosity, to see the Louvre and its gallery. Elated as I was, as almost every one must be who goes upon a similar occasion, and consequently apt for disappointment, I was confounded by its grandeur. No wonder--the court of the Louvre, which has been lately restored to its pristine magnificence, is, I am told by my Flemish friend, who has travelled all over Europe, the most superb thing of its kind existing. I found my way into the interior by means of an English officer, who, having conducted me through the gallery of statues on the ground floor, directed me up stairs to that containing the pictures. The collection of statues has been much less encroached on by the hands of the austere justice, which has lately spoiled this famous assemblage of the finest works of art, than that of pictures. Of these, for one remaining, eight or nine have been removed; and many that are left are not, I think, worthy of having been in company with those returned to their former habitations. There are some very fine statues which remain, and among these the Gladiator Pugnans; but the niches, which were so highly adorned by the celebrated Venus and Apollo, now yawn upon the mournful spectator with a melancholy vacancy. The galleries themselves, however, are so grand, that the sight of them alone may be esteemed a sufficient inducement for a visit to the Louvre; and indeed they seem to rejoice that their more attractive inmates have departed. The picture gallery is badly lighted. It is the longest room I ever saw. Children, and persons of almost all ranks, were promenading through it the day I was there, which, I believe, was one on which it is open to the public at large, under the careful supervision, however, of some keepers, who wear the livery of the king's household. In the evening I went to the Theatre Français, and saw Talma in Ulysse. I shall speak of this very excellent actor afterwards, when I describe the performance of the French Hamlet. This Theatre, where the legitimate French drama is represented, is very large, but of a very inconvenient form. The house is dirty now; but the decorations of the auditory were not, when new, so splendid as those of our London playhouses. It is lighted, as are all the theatres of Paris, by an immense chandelier suspended from the centre of the roof, without the aid of lamps or candles in front of the boxes. The orchestra, which is numerous and good, played, at the command of the audience, the national airs Vive Henri IV. and Channante Gabrielle. The costume and scenery are very good--the former is superb, and correctly appropriate; the latter shifted only at the conclusion of each act. To each tier of boxes the price of admission is different--becoming less and less as you ascend, a regulation which ought to be adopted in our London theatres, where it is unreasonable to take the same price for the upper tier, as for those of the lower and dress circles. "They certainly manage these things better in France."--No females are permitted to enter the pit: there are, however, two seats in front, and four or five at the back, to which they may go; and the price of such seats is greater than that of the proper pit. The house was very full, for Talma always fills it; but I went late, and was badly situated. The afterpiece was adapted from the Sultan of Marmontel, which we have also on our English stage. Next day, the 15th, having occasion to enter a hosier's shop, I had an opportunity of observing how necessary it is to beware of giving a French shopkeeper the full price which he will first ask for his goods, as he invariably demands more than they are worth, expecting, like the Jews in England, to be beat down considerably. His shop was on the Boulevards du Temple. The Boulevards is a wide street or highway, with a separate foot-path on each side, and having between the footway and the coach road a row of trees, planted at regular distances, in the same way as the Mall in St. James's Park. The houses on each side are principally private ones, and large hotels, the residences of the nobility of France. There are also many small shops and stalls, and a great number of coffee-houses, and it is one of the principal promenades at Paris. It serves too as a boundary between the city and its suburbs, and on it are placed the gates of the city, of which the principal are Porte St. Denys and Porte St. Martin. They were both erected to perpetuate the remembrance of the glorious wars of Louis XIV., and are very noble, being sixty or seventy feet high, and embellished with well executed bas reliefs. They, like the Temple Bar at London, have each three ways through them; but they are much loftier than those of Temple Bar. It was by the Porte St. Martin, which opens into one of the principal streets of that part of Paris, that the allied sovereigns made their entry; the Porte St. Denys being the gate by which the kings of France usually entered. In the evening I went to the Académie Royale de Musique, or the Opera House. The performances were Gluck's celebrated opera of Alceste, and a new ballet, called Flore et Zephyr. The orchestra is very numerous and ably directed; but the words of the opera are in the French language, which, in my opinion, is not so fit for musical expression as the Italian. The scenery and dresses were good, and, what you do not often find at an opera house, the acting was excellent. The vocal part of the performance is, however, much inferior to that in London, as Madame Catalani now sings at the Theatre des Italiens, of which her husband has lately become the proprietor. The music of the ballet, which is delightful, is by Venua, whom I have heard play in concert on the violin in London. The story is prettily told, and the dancing, of course, the best in Europe. The house itself, like the Theatre Français, is dirty, and of an inconvenient form. It is very large, being capable of holding 3000 spectators. It does not appear, however, so large as the King's Theatre, Haymarket, nor was it ever so handsomely decorated. It is not the custom in Paris, as in London, to go full dressed into the boxes of a theatre. On the contrary, nothing is more common than to see gentlemen with their great-coats of half a dozen capes, and ladies with their high walking bonnets, in the principal boxes in the house. Next morning, 16th, on my way to St. Cloud, in order to report my arrival to the commanding officer, I passed through the court of the Palais des Tuileries, and saw the beautiful triumphal arch from which the Corinthian horses were lately taken. It is built almost entirely of the finest marbles, and is adorned with appropriate statues and bas-reliefs, which cover it in every part. But it is not, I think, well placed. It is a gate in form, but unlike a gate, it is not flanked by a fence; on the contrary, it stands alone, at a little distance from the superb iron rails, with golden tops, which inclose the court of the palace. It would be an improvement to bring forward the rail in a line with it, and so make a proper gate of it. The car at top remains, and the figures of Victory and Peace which conducted the removed horses; the latter are to be replaced by their models, now under the hands of the artist. Upon the Quai des Tuileries I got into one of the many cabriolets which there ply for passengers to the towns in the neighbourhood. I passed the Champs Elysées, which appeared in a most forlorn state. They are planted with trees in every direction, in the trim formality of the ancient style, having alleys through all parts of them. But I saw no open lawns, or plots of grass, only one large grove of ugly trees, like some of the groves in Kensington Gardens, and the paths through them almost impassable. In the villages of Plassy and Auteuil there are some large country-houses belonging to the rich merchants of Paris, but externally they shew nothing of the snug neatness and apparent comfort within of the country boxes about London. The Bois de Boulogne, situated between Auteuil and a large village, at which I found my regiment, and from which the wood takes its name, is, I dare say, pretty enough in summer; but it has been much injured by the _bivouac_ of the English and Hanoverians. In general the small boughs and tops of the trees have only been cut off; but in one part, which had been only planted a few years, the young trees have been cut to the ground. This spoliation of one of their principal places of recreation has naturally caused much discontent among the Parisians, and I have often, as an Englishman, been obliged to bear my portion of their complaints concerning it. I found Colonel ---- occupying the best bed-room of an excellent house belonging to a rich cambric merchant of Paris. The room was elegantly furnished, having the bed in a recess, the back of which was covered by an immense looking glass, the curtains (which are luxuries not always met with in the best French houses) being suspended from the top of the aperture of the recess. I was received with great cordiality, and pleading indisposition and want of military equipments, got leave to return to Paris for a few days. I again mounted into my cabriolet, the day being very stormy, and proceeded back to Paris as fast as the miserable horse could draw me. On my way, which, for the greater part, lay along the banks of the Seine, I had an opportunity of admiring the bridge of Jena, which Blucher was about to destroy: I am glad he was prevented. It is of five arches, of a chastely elegant architecture; and the road over it is plane, as will be that over the Strand bridge at London. The piers, unlike those of the older bridges here, are very small, but sufficiently strong to resist the great rapidity of the river, which occasionally takes place after heavy rains have fallen in the country from which it flows. On Sunday the 17th I accompanied my Flemish friend (he having a ticket of admission for the chapelle royale) to the Tuileries. After waiting some time for the breaking up of the council, we were permitted to pass up a very fine marble staircase to the Salon des Marechaux, the guard-room of the king's body guard. It is a handsome lofty apartment, hung round with pictures of the French marshals, and having a slight rail erected across it, in order to prevent the intrusion of those who have been admitted, upon the passage crossing it from the council chamber and hall of presentations, to the chapel. In a gallery, which goes round it, there are a few sets of old armour, and on the ceiling, which is divided into small compartments, the letter N still remains in each corner. The uniform of the guard is very superb; they wear long blue coats with a silver epaulette on the left shoulder and an aiguillette upon the right, white kerseymere pantaloons, and long cavalry boots and spurs: their large helmets, of the Grecian form, are almost covered with silver embossed ornaments, and the white feathers in them are of a prodigious length. They are armed with a long straight cut and thrust sword, and a well finished fuzee or light musquet. Their cartouch-box belts are made of a broad silver lace, and were it not for their dirty gloves, they would be the most magnificently appointed corps I ever saw. They are all fine young men, and, I suppose, are excellently mounted. I understand that they are principally men of family, and that before they can obtain admission to serve in this corps, their friends are called on to make over to them an allowance of 600 francs per annum; no great sum, considering that they thereby become equals in rank to the subalterns of the French army; their captains of companies being no less than marshals of France. They have, however, too much blood ever to behave with the requisite steadiness of a private soldier, if I may judge from the irregularity of the movements which I saw them put through by the officer who commanded them. After waiting a considerable time, during which many officers and gentlemen of the court passed and repassed, the royal cavalcade approached. I saw Monsieur, and the Duke de Berri, and his majesty, the grand Monarque. He appeared in good health and in good humour. Many petitions were presented to him as he passed, all of which he very graciously received, and put into the hat of a gentleman on his left hand; I stood next to a poor woman who presented one. His majesty wore all his stars and crosses, and his blue ribband. The royal dukes had also their ribbands about them, and as each passed they were loudly acclaimed. One person behind me distinguished himself by adding forcibly the epithet _bon_ to his Vive le Roi! His majesty was followed by the Duchess of Angouleme, attended by three or four ladies of the court, who, as usual, were no beauties. His majesty was preceded by his marshals, who, for the most part, are middle-aged men; they were superbly dressed in richly embroidered velvet coats and pantaloons, but I did not see one whose physiognomy betokened much of the great man. In the chamber of presentations, into which I could not be admitted because I was not in a court dress or uniform, there were a great number of officers: it is a most magnificent room, and has in it some of the most beautiful chandeliers I ever saw. Finding that the chapel was quite full, and my friend being desirous, like a good catholic, of attending mass somewhere, we hastened to the cathedral of Nôtre Dame. This was the first edifice which did not answer my expectations: it is not so spacious as many of our large religious buildings in England, nor is its style of architecture so appropriately solemn. The nave was filled with groups of people, each upon a common rush-bottomed wooden chair, (some at a very great distance from the priest officiating) and they seemed to pay little attention to their religious duties, except in tumbling on their knees whenever they heard the bell ring. The choir, however, though small, is very grand: it is paved with marble, the stalls are of finely carved wood-work, and its sculptured altar-piece, representing the descent from the cross, is excellent. There are eight large and very good paintings placed over the stalls, of which the archiepiscopal one is beautiful: but the painted windows of this cathedral are more adapted to a green-house than a place of holy worship, being made up of large square panes of differently coloured glass. It has two square towers at its west end, which are not so high as those of Westminster Abbey; they are, however, very richly ornamented externally, and the sculptured work about the grand entrance is very elaborate, but it is so much blackened and defaced by time as to have become almost unintelligible. The great hospital, the Hôtel Dieu, is situated very near to the cathedral, but of the interior of this I cannot yet give you an account; its exterior has nothing worthy of notice. Of the Théâtre de l'Odeon I can only speak of the exterior, which is sufficiently handsome; it is a modern building in a large square, and approached by a new street which has the great convenience of a raised curbed footway; this, you must know, is a very great rarity in Paris, where, for the want of such a convenience, you are every minute exposed to the danger of being run over by the carriages and horsemen, who tear along the streets without any regard for pedestrians. After a long walk in which I passed the Luxembourg palace, but could not get admission that day, I found myself in the Boulevards of the southern quarter of Paris. This quarter is much duller than that to the north of the river, consisting principally of large houses standing alone, and surrounded with high-walled gardens. Proceeding along the Boulevard, I at length arrived at the Hôtel des Invalides, the Chelsea hospital of Paris; it is a noble building, and one of the most conspicuous in the city, owing to its high and splendid dome, half covered with gilt copper: this dome is very similar in form to those at Greenwich. I went into the chapel, which differs from all the churches I have seen here, in having convenient benches for the congregation. The architecture of that part of the building supporting the dome is very fine, but that of the other parts of this edifice is plain; I am told that in one of its galleries there is a collection of models of all the fortified towns of France, but it requires a special order to obtain admission into it. This building affords a comfortable asylum for 7000 officers and soldiers, who are clothed in an old-fashioned military dress, like our Chelsea pensioners, and who do the military duty of the place. Not far from the Hôpital des Invalides is the Palais Bourbon, an extensive building but very low. A new front has been added to it on the side of the river, at the end of one of the bridges. This, the most elegant thing I know, is one vast portico, and is the entrance to the chamber of deputies composing the corps legislatif. It must be, I think, an imitation of one of the celebrated temples of Greece or Rome, its architecture is so classical and chaste. Upon four low pedestals at the foot of the steps, by which you ascend to the doors, are four colossal figures sitting, representing Sully and Colbert with two other celebrated statesmen, dressed in the habiliments of their respective offices. In the evening I again went to the opera, and was much pleased with the excellent acting in the Vestal and in Nina. Old Vestris still keeps his pre-eminent station among the dancers in the ballet: they say that he is more than sixty years of age. The illustrious commander of the forces was there in his box, with some of his staff. All this on Sunday evening, recollect! Next day, the 18th, I rode to Boulogne, and found myself, by chance of war, billeted at a boarding-school, in a very good apartment, and thought myself in high luck. I dined with Colonels ---- and ---- who requested me to form one of their mess, which honour I of course accepted. On Tuesday, the 19th, I attended the battalion inspection of Lieutenant General Sir H. Clinton, the general officer commanding the 2d division: they were formed for this purpose, with the 91st regiment, in one of the great walks in the garden of St. Cloud. The bridge, over which we passed, is a very long one: it was blown up by the French on the advance of the allies to Paris this last time, and is now repaired only in a temporary manner. The country about St. Cloud is very picturesque; the river winds luxuriantly through a valley, enclosed by hills planted with vineyards, and there are an immense number of country seats to be seen in all directions. On the top of a hill in the neighbourhood is Mount Calvary, on which a superb edifice has been commenced for the education of the children of deceased soldiers, but I believe it has not been proceeded with since the return of Louis XVIII.; the revenues of the state, I suppose, not being sufficient to enable the government to spend much on charitable purposes; and charity, no doubt, in France, as elsewhere, begins at home. In the afternoon I returned to Paris, at a very slow pace, in a miserable cabriolet. On Wednesday, Dec. 20, I went with my American acquaintance, to whom I had become a Ciceroni, to shew him the Corn Hall. This is a new, immense, circular building of brick and stone, having an enormous dome, which is constructed wholly of metal; the rafters are of iron; the inside of it is of tinned iron, and the outside of sheet copper. It is lighted by a large skylight in the centre. Its whole area beneath, into which you enter by a dozen or more gates, is paved, and completely covered by piles of flour and different grain in sacks. On the outside there has been placed an old doric pillar of a great height, on which there is a curiously constructed sun-dial, which points out every moment of the day: the column, I suppose, is nearly an hundred feet high; at its bottom there is a small fountain. The Emperor of Russia, it is said, expressed greater admiration at the sight of the Corn Hall than of all the other public buildings in Paris. The church of St. Eustache, close to the Corn Hall, is a very fine gothic edifice with a new Grecian front, surmounted by two square towers. Spires, as in London, are not seen in Paris, all the churches having either domes or towers. The interior of St. Eustache is decorated with some good pictures, and there is a charming statue of the Virgin and child. Its chapels are elegantly fitted up, particularly one, on the door of which there is a label, informing you that it contains the relics of some celebrated saint, whose name I have forgotten. Next morning, the 21st, I accompanied Mr. G---- to the Lycée d'Henri IV., where the famous young American calculator, Zerah Colburn, was placed for the purpose of being educated. Mr. G. is acquainted with the father of this lad, and I believe is one of the committee, at the head of which is the worthy Alderman Brydges, of London. The boy is there learning Latin, but it is very evident that he has no genius for that expressive poetical language. He is, except on one subject, a very dull boy, and expresses himself so badly that it is difficult to understand his meaning. I put a simple arithmetical question to him, which he quickly answered, and correctly, as I afterwards found. He appears to be losing the talent which has acquired him the patronage of the scientific world, without gaining any thing but habits of indifference to his improvement; in my opinion, it is a loss of time and expense to endeavour to enlarge this boy's understanding by giving him a knowledge of the dead languages. Send him to Leslie or Bonnycastle, and perhaps his extraordinary talent may be improved, but the air of France is too refined for the genius of a plodder. On our way to the Lycée d'Henri IV. we went into the new church of St. Genevieve, or the Pantheon; this is not yet, I believe, completed within, but from what I saw will be very handsome. It is not, at present, at all fitted up like a church, but is more like the parts of St. Paul's cathedral at London not occupied by the choir. Below the building is the burying place of the great men of France, but into this we did not enter, the day being wet and cold. Its exterior is very grand, and its dome, after that of the Hôtel des Invalides, the finest in Paris. On the pediment, which is adorned with appropriate sculpture, is this inscription, "Aux grands hommes, la patrie reconnoissante." We now entered the church of St. Etienne, in which there is an old pulpit of carved wood, supported by a crouching human figure, with one knee on the belly of a lion, which seems crushed by the superincumbent weight, all formed of some hard wood in excellent preservation. There are a few fine paintings also, and some tapestry, among which I discovered, inappropriate enough in a church, a representation of the siege of Tournay. We next steered for the celebrated tapestry manufactory, but found that we applied for admission on a wrong day. On our return we passed by the Hôpital de la Pieté, which is very large, in order to see the Halle aux Vins, where may be conveniently stowed not less than 200,000 casks. It is a warehouse for brandies and vinegar as well as for wines. There are four immense buildings, of a great many roofs, something like the large tobacco bonded warehouse at the London Docks. It is quite a new building, and not yet completed. We then looked into the calf market, which is also sufficiently convenient for its purpose, the sale of cows and calves, whence they are taken to be butchered at the public slaughter-houses in the suburbs. In the evening I visited one of the minor theatres, le Théâtre de la Porte St. Martin, of which the music and decorations are very respectable. The next day, the 22d, I repaired to the Musée des Monumens Français, a very interesting collection of the monuments which have been rescued from the ruins of the churches destroyed during the revolution. There are an immense number from St. Denys, the burial-place of the French kings. They are arranged in different apartments, according to their relative antiquity, from the time of king Clovis to the present. Some are worthy of attention for their excellent workmanship, and others for their ancient date. Among the former the monuments of Francis I. and the Cardinal de Richelieu interested me; and among the latter the tomb and monument of Abelard and Eloisa, in which are actually contained the real ashes of these far-famed lovers. Here are also specimens of painted glass of different ages, and some curious heathen idols, supposed to have been worshipped by the ancient Gauls. Many of the larger monuments are placed in a garden, suitably planted with willows, cypresses, &c. In fact, this museum is the Westminster Abbey of Paris, and well deserving of being visited by every traveller, who will find there two conductors equally civil and intelligent. I afterwards went to the celebrated National Institute, and found my way into the library, which, though not so large as some others in Paris, is convenient; and its books, which are all very handsomely bound, are well arranged. A member, perceiving me to be a stranger, very politely shewed me the Salle des Séances, where their papers and communications are read. It is a comfortable warm room, and fitted up with desks and chairs in a very handsome style, much superior to the room in which our Royal Society hold their sittings. This gentleman, upon my telling him that I had the honour of a degree in medicine, said he should be very happy to introduce me to the president, and invited me to assist at their next sitting. I was then conducted by an under librarian through three or four small apartments, lined with books, (in one of which he pointed out a curious piece of antiquity from Egypt, a kind of shirt, 4000 years old,) to the hall where the public sittings of the Institute are held every quarter. This hall is plain, but neat and convenient. Its antechambers, however, are magnificent. There are ten or twelve of the most beautiful statues I ever saw of their kind, representing the most celebrated philosophers and poets of France, all in sitting attitudes, and clothed according to the costume of the times in which they flourished. There is another library under the same roof, which is a public one, and of course larger than that of the Institute. I believe it is called the Mazarine Library. There is in it a large terrestrial globe, of seven or eight feet diameter, having the boundaries of the land marked by a small silver fillet neatly inlaid. The globe is of metal, and the water is painted blue. It is so placed as to be easily referred to. Round this library there are some fine busts. Behind the institute are placed the schools of painting and architecture. I obtained admission into the gallery of models, belonging to the school of architecture, and was much pleased by a collection of models of the most celebrated buildings of Greece, Palmyra, and Rome, executed in cork and plaster, in the same way as Du Bourg's in London. Here, for the first time, the man who shewed them to me asked for something _à boire_; and conceiving that his gallery was not usually open to the public, he got it. The following morning, the 23d, I went to the Royal Library, which contains not less than 400,000 volumes, all in one gallery of the shape of the Greek letter [Pi]. This is open to the public for reference and amusement. The books are in general well bound. Here are the famous globes of Coronelli, of nearly forty feet in circumference. They are seen from the gallery, but they stand in a room below it, and enter the gallery by a large aperture in the floor. They have no merit but their size, which, however, does not prevent them from being easily turned upon their axes. They have been made fifty or sixty years; and of course the geographical discoveries which have taken place since are not depicted. Upon every country there is a representation of the dress and manners of its inhabitants; and on the various seas of the different kinds of ships made use of on them. There is also a model of the pyramids of Egypt, and a small group of bronze statues, representing the great French writers, on the top of Parnassus, a truly French idea! Over the library of printed books, in two small rooms, there is a very complete collection of prints, bound and arranged according to their different schools. Here I saw several students copying from them. In another part of the building is the library of manuscripts, where I also saw some bibles superbly bound in velvet, and ornamented with chased gold and precious stones. There are likewise exposed in glass cases, original letters of Henry IV. to la belle Gabrielle, and the Telemachus of Fenelon, in the hand-writing of that beautiful author. Many valuable manuscripts, brought here from the Vatican and other Italian libraries, should, in justice, have been restored with the pictures and statues of that country; but, I suppose, not being of such interest to the general mass of the people there, they have been overlooked. There is also a valuable cabinet of Greek and Roman medals, and other antiquities; but not knowing this circumstance when I paid my visit there, I did not see them. The exterior of this large building has nothing worthy of notice. From the Royal Library I went to the Museum of Natural History, at the Jardin des Plantes; and this is certainly a most complete collection of every created being that could be procured. There are three noble lions, as many lionesses, and four or five fine bears, one of which, some years ago, devoured a man who had descended by a ladder into his den, (a large open place inclosed in high walls,) for the purpose of getting a piece of money which he had dropt. The animals, natives of tropical climates, are inclosed in a large circular building, kept comfortably warm by means of stoves. I was interested by some camels, which have bred here, as well as by a fine sagacious elephant. Every thing is perfectly clean, and well secured. The collection of voracious birds is complete; and as you walk through the garden, you are surrounded by fowls and ducks, sheep, goats, deer, and other tame animals, of different kinds. The Cabinet of Comparative Anatomy is not better than that of the British Museum: but I saw some beautifully executed wax-work representations of the progress of the chick in ovo; and a skeleton of an amazing camelopard. Among the human skeletons is that of the assassin of General Kleber, who was tortured in Egypt, with a view of extorting from him the name of the person who had instigated him to the rash act. The mode of torture used was the application of fire to his hands, which he endured with surprising fortitude, without uttering a word of confession. The effects of the fire upon the bones of the hand are very visible. The mineralogical collection, and that of serpents, small fishes, and stuffed birds, I have not seen. The botanical garden does not appear so good as that of Edinburgh. There is a convenient anatomical theatre, for the prosecution of comparative anatomy; and from one part of the garden, near a fine cedar, planted by Jussieu, a good view of the city of Paris and its neighbourhood presented itself. In the evening I saw the celebrated Talma in the character of Hamlet. It was but seldom that I could trace much resemblance between the Hamlet of the Théâtre Français and that of our immortal Shakspeare. From its very close similarity, however, in some parts, it must be an adaptation from the English. But it has been necessarily very much altered in order to suit it to the genius of the French stage, which requires pieces of more regular construction, than those of the wildly energetic Shakspeare, and that they should have the three unities, as they are called. In vain I expected the fine opening scene upon the platform. No ghost appeared during the whole performance; and I could find nothing like the original till the soliloquy--"To be, or not to be"--almost literally rendered. The acting of M. Talma, however, is superior to any thing I have seen in England; and although the ghost is not introduced, yet it is very evident, from M. T.'s gestures, that he is not far off. The piece concludes with the chamber scene, in which Hamlet endeavours to point out to his mother the ghost of her murdered husband--"look where he goes, out of the very portal"--also literally rendered. But there is no Laertes, no Ophelia. The king is deposed. The queen, by the artful and exquisitely acted insinuations and questions of Hamlet, is almost made to confess her guilt, of which her suicide is a proof; and Hamlet ascends the throne of his father. The lady who played the queen is an excellent performer: I believe her name is Duchesnois. She is not young, and is of low stature. Talma is not tall. Next morning, the 24th, after enjoying the luxury of one of the warm baths, with which Paris abounds, and for which you pay but one franc and a quarter, with something to the attendant for towels, &c., I paid my bill at the hotel, where I had lodged since my arrival, and went with bag and baggage in a cabriolet to my quarters at Boulogne, in order to unbend my mind a while from the fatigue of ever searching after novelties. And here, my dear friend, I must conclude this long epistle. It can of course give you but little information. I have endeavoured to describe what I saw faithfully; and generally under the impulse of the ideas which they at first, _prima facie_, created. I must, therefore, necessarily have committed some errors, but none, I think, of much magnitude; these, if you will excuse, and think me not intrusive, at another opportunity I shall continue my narration. Yours ever. LETTER III. From my thatched mud apartment at Tinques, a miserable village between St. Pol and Arras. May 26, 1816. MY DEAR FRIEND, In compliance with your request, I continue my little journal, and shall be glad if it afford you half the entertainment which you have been pleased to say the former part has done; for I fear that the most interesting of my adventures have already been recounted. Having learnt, soon after my arrival at my quarters, that the whole division of Lieutenant-General Clinton was under orders to march on the 27th Dec., towards the frontiers of Belgium, I determined to pass the 25th and 26th in seeing the royal palaces and gardens in the vicinity. Accordingly, on the 25th, Christmas-day, after having attended the celebration of a high mass at the parish-church, which was assisted by the rude but solemn music of two immense serpents; and having witnessed something like a Roman Catholic religious procession, I went to see the park and waterworks of St. Cloud. This park, as it is called, is very different to our English parks, being destitute of the fine open plains and lawns which are so common to them, and which, indeed, with an Englishman, are as essential to the existence of a park as its waving woods and sheets of water, or its animated groups of sheep and deer. It is nothing but an extensive grove of tall slender trees, like those of the groves in Kensington Gardens, with narrow avenues cut through it in several directions. There is, however, one very handsome mall, bordered by lofty stately trees, of a sufficient width to hold fifty men abreast, and having on one side a long row of little shops, like those on the public walk at Tunbridge Wells, which are filled with toys and trinkets during the three weeks' fair held here every September; and, on the other side, (at the bottom of a wall which forms this promenade into a kind of terrace,) flows the river Seine, which is here much wider than at Paris. This promenade is entered near the bridge of St. Cloud, by a handsome iron rail-fence, and leads to the cascades and basins of the water-works. The boasted cascade, as I saw it, is not superior to that at Bramham Park in Yorkshire; and I dare say, to some others in England. Its frogs, and toads, and crocodiles of lead, which swarm in and about it, although, no doubt, they were esteemed vastly appropriate to the aquatic scene by M. le Nôtre, are so many hideous colossuses, which excite the disgust of the spectator, and his contempt of the false taste which created them for any place but the borders of the river Styx. There is, however, a most superb _jet d'eau_, which, as to its height, nearly 100 feet, must give, I suppose, to the Icelandic traveller, an idea of the celebrated geysers of that island. I had no opportunity that day of seeing the interior of the palace; but, from all accounts, I have not thereby lost much, most of its furniture and paintings having been lately removed. It is situated above the park, on a steep eminence, and must have a most beautiful prospect of the meanderings of the river, and of Paris in the distance. The next day I went to see another royal chateau at Meudon, near Sevres. Like that at St. Cloud, it stands upon a hill, and possesses almost the same view. This was the nursery of the little king of Rome, but appears to be now quite deserted, and much out of repair, the park having been lately occupied by the Prussian artillery. Its terraces, however, are in good order. They are very extensive; and under them are hot-houses and green-houses of every description. The hills in its neighbourhood are thickly planted with wood. On my return I rode through the desolate courts of a large palace, near that of Meudon, formerly inhabited by a princess of the blood-royal, but now completely in ruins. The face of the country hereabouts consists of rocky hills, the sides of which are in general covered with vines or underwood. A sharp skirmish took place on these heights when the allies advanced to Paris, on which occasion the bridges at Sevres and St. Cloud were both blown up by the French, and are now only repaired in a temporary manner. The next day, the 27th, after seeing major-general O'Callaghan's brigade, consisting of the 3d, or buffs, the 39th, and the 91st, march off for Chantilly and its neighbourhood, and having procured leave to join them after their arrival there, I returned with my friend Colonel ---- to Paris, who did me the honour to dine with me at my hotel, after having been shopping together all the morning. On my way to the Hôtel de Ville next day, I traversed many of the quays and ports by the river side; of which the largest is the Port au Blé, where the corn and flour brought by water to the Paris markets is landed. But, unlike the quays of London, these are quite large enough for the little traffic which appears to be carried on upon them. They have no warehouses; but here and there are wooden huts, which are the counting-houses of the merchants; and on the quays, almost close to the water's edge, you see immense stacks of hay, of straw, and of wood, and long rows of casks of wines and cider. The hay, thus exposed, often becomes wet; and I have more than once, in fine weather, seen the process of hay-making carried on upon these paved quays, but with what advantage to it I leave you to judge. The Hôtel de Ville, or Town Hall, is an old-fashioned and apparently inconvenient building, of a quadrangular form, with a large court in the middle; but as Paris cannot boast of the tumultuous livery-meetings of London, it may perhaps be sufficiently large for its principal purpose, the transacting of the judicial business of the department. It forms one side of the Place de Grève, a spacious square in which the public executions are carried into effect. On my return I looked into the church of St. Louis St. Paul, formerly belonging to the Jesuits. It appeared to me unusually plain, containing but two or three paintings; but it was enriched, prior to the revolution, by two most superb monuments, and several excellent pictures. The figures of these monuments, I understand, were of silver, having their draperies of the same precious metal gilt. They represented four angels of the human size, holding two gold hearts, containing the hearts of Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. The exterior of the building is very highly finished, but possesses no leading feature of much interest. On the 29th I walked to one of the extremities of the town to see the large military hospital at the Val de Grâce. It was originally built, I believe, for a monastery, and has been a very noble edifice, but it is now apparently out of repair. The chapel has been turned into a military storehouse, and the dormitories and other parts now form a sufficiently convenient military infirmary. In the evening I went to the Opera: the performances were "Iphigènie en Aulide," and "Flore et Zephyr." The music of the former is by Gluck, and consequently learned and elegant, while that of the ballet, of which I think I gave you an account in my last, is enchantingly delicious. Having seen the ballet before, I devoted my whole attention to the music, by shutting my eyes and reclining on a vacant bench in the box, and I certainly never experienced more gratification of the kind, being now and then completely intoxicated by it. No doubt, you have sometimes felt the same effect in a degree, and can therefore well conceive the power which has been attributed to music by the ancient medical writers, upon the human mind, when it was less civilized, but consequently more susceptible of external impressions; indeed I almost literally believe what we hear of Orpheus upon this subject. The next morning I went to the Hôtel des Monnaies, where I saw the collection of medals, which have been struck from time to time, in order to commemorate the great events France has experienced since the accession of Francis the first: they are of copper, and in general well executed. They may, however, be procured either of gold or silver, as I was informed by an English countess, who came there to make inquiries for some which she had ordered to be made for her. That evening I could not resist the inclination once more to hear Madame Catalani, at the Théâtre des Italiens. The opera was "Il Fanatico per la Musica," by Mayer, which has been often played in London. Catalina's singing is infinitely preferable to any other which I have heard in Paris, and, if I may judge from the manner in which the theatre was filled, her talents are duly estimated by the French. The house is not large, but newly and tastily decorated, and I dare say she is making money there; although her income, as proprietor of the theatre, is less sure than when in London she was performing at an enormous salary. No ballet is played at this theatre. On Sunday the 31st I repaired to the celebrated gallery of the Palais de Luxembourg, in order to see the series of paintings, by Rubens, descriptive of the principal events in the life of Marie de Medicis, the queen of Henri IV. They are about twenty in number, all of a very large size, and in excellent preservation. They have been called Rubens' poem, and certainly with so much justice, that if an accurate description of them were made in verse, it could not fail of becoming in every particular an epic poem of the first order. He has employed, with excellent judgment, a good deal of celestial machinery, as it is called, and so intelligibly, that any one the least versed in mythology can at once discover his meaning. I shall always quote this fine collection as a forcible proof of the very intimate alliance of painting to poetry; they are not merely sisters, they are _twin_ sisters; and I now doubt whether Rubens, in the enjoyment of the former, had not a richer prize than even Milton in the possession of the latter. There is another collection of smaller pictures here by Lesueur, which is also much talked of, but certainly very much inferior to that just noticed: it describes the life of St. Bruno, the founder of the order of Carthusians; but unlike Rubens' divine poem, this is a mere insipid matter-of-fact representation of the adventures of an individual, much less interesting, to the generality of spectators, than Dr. Syntax or Johnny Newcome. In another wing of the palace there is a fine assemblage of views of the sea-ports of France, exquisitely painted by Vernet, and by Hue a living artist. In the view of Boulogne, by the latter, there existed a few months ago a very good likeness of Bonaparte at the head of his staff, ascending the heights on a review day: he was represented in the act of giving charity to a crippled soldier; but lately, his imperial countenance has been "_transmogrified_" to the ugly mug of Marshal Any-body. There are also a few good modern statues, among which the Baigneuse, by Julien, is lovely, being almost equal, in my opinion, to the far-famed Venus de Medicis: the French are very proud of this statue; and indeed it must appear to every one, as it struck me, a first-rate production of human art. The fine marble staircase and the ceilings must also be noticed as very grand and striking. The exterior of this palace, which is now the House of Peers, has nothing very remarkable. It is a large regular building of a pure style of architecture: but its gardens are almost as fine as those of the Tuileries; they are, however, in bad condition, owing to the encampment of the Prussians, which has only of late been broken up: they were in small wooden huts, built in the principal walks and avenues of the garden. By the by, I must not omit to mention that in Rubens' gallery there was a carpenter at work, mending the inlaid floor, although Sunday; a pretty example of attention to the fourth commandment. The church of St. Sulpice, of which I shall next take notice, is one of the finest structures of its kind in Paris. Its architecture is very chaste and beautiful, especially that of the interior, which has more the air of our great religious edifices than French churches usually have. It possesses many fine chapels, but the chapel of the Virgin is the most venerable looking spot I have ever seen. Indeed I was completely awe-struck by it, and almost instinctively returned, to experience again the pleasing calm which its first appearance had excited in me. Upon examining the outer wall of the building, I found that this effect was produced by the ingenious manner in which its altar piece, which is a _chef d'oeuvre_ in sculpture, received its light: it is a statue of the Virgin and child, with a surrounding representation of clouds and little cherubs, placed in a niche, which is lighted by a small window over the head of the statue. The window is not discernible, but I suppose it is formed of ground glass, or something like it; at all events, the effect is almost magical, and although no catholic, I see no impropriety, in such a vortex of vice as Paris, in endeavouring by any means, even by an image or a painting, to abstract the human mind, for one short moment, to ideas above it. This church, which is not old, I understand was one of Bonaparte's favourite churches, and to shew it to more advantage, he pulled down its surrounding houses, in order to form a large square before it, in the centre of which he erected a very handsome fountain. Near this square is the École de Médecine, a large and noble building, enclosing an open court, from which you enter to the different lecture rooms. Its style of architecture is pure and manly, and its interior, as far as I could judge by looking through some of the windows, is conveniently arranged. I went thither intending to have heard one of Vauquelin's lectures on chemistry, but, it being holiday-time, there was no admission. The fountain near it is also worthy of notice, from its massive Grecian architecture, and its being a reservoir of the waters from the celebrated aqueduct at Arcueil, which, on account of their petrifying qualities, are brought to Paris, only, I suppose, to be used medicinally. In the evening I accompanied two friends to the parterre of the Opera House. The performances were Les Badayeres and the ballet of Psyche: the music of the opera, by Catel, was but indifferent, and poor Psyche was too much bedeviled. After the opera we resolved to end the year at the Café de France, in the Palais Royal, where we supped, _à la mode Anglaise_, on oysters, bread and butter, and beer, to the apparent astonishment and amusement of not less than seventy or eighty Frenchmen. On Monday, 1st January, I went a second time to the Jardin des Plantes, in order to see that part of the Museum of Natural History which I had not time to inspect on my former visit. But I found that the porter had gone holiday-making so I contented myself by observing the various live foreign animals which may be seen in various parts of the garden, enclosed in proper fences, and by ascending a prospect-mount, erected for the purpose of overlooking Paris and its environs, of which, the day being clear, I had a very fine view. Returning, I crossed the Pont du Jardin, formerly called the Pont d'Austerlitz, a noble bridge of iron upon stone abutments; this and the other iron bridge at Paris, the Pont des Arts, leading to the National Institute, are the only two where they demand toll from passengers. I then walked all along the Boulevards to the Porte St. Denys, passing the beautiful fountain on the Boulevard de Bondi. This is very large and circular, and embellished with several well executed figures of lions couchants, whose mouths serve for the passage of the water. On my way I passed many groups of people all dressed in their best clothes, amusing themselves by looking at the drolleries of mountebanks and puppet shows, with which the Boulevards were swarming; others were playing at games of skill and hazard, while some were exercising in swings and round-abouts; indeed it was almost like an English fair, and it appeared to me that all Paris was merry-making, on account of the arrival of the new year. In the evening I went to the Théâtre de la Gaieté, one of the minor playhouses, but it was so filled by holiday folks that the only vacant place was the stage box. This house is small and dirty, but the music and dresses were good. A great many people in the boxes were eating little holiday sweetmeats. On my return home I witnessed, for the first time, a slight disturbance in one of the streets, and some national guards about to break their way into a house. The next day I repaired to the gallery of the Louvre, in order to see a collection of the celebrated porcelain exposed for sale there, from the manufactory at Sevres; and although I found that others were only admitted upon shewing an order from a certain duke, to whom I was referred, yet upon my telling the porter that I was a foreigner about to leave Paris the next day, he very civilly permitted me to walk up, without further trouble to his grace or myself. They shewed me several most superb vases of very large dimensions, and a portrait of Louis XVIII. as large as life, painted upon porcelain. I saw also a very beautiful desert service of landscapes and sea views, and an immense variety of inkstands, &c.; but as I am no great admirer of nick-nackery, I passed by them without observing further than that though the composition of this celebrated manufacture may be of a finer texture than ours made at Worcester and elsewhere, yet that they do not exceed us in the painting and gilding of it. In the evening I went to witness one of the most abominable scenes which human nature can possibly present,--a gambling table--but not without having previously fortified myself against any attack which might induce me to partake of its horrible iniquity. I first entered into a large anteroom, in which were stationed two gens-d'armes, (for strange to say, these sinks of vice are licensed and protected by the French government,) and three or four men, one of whom asked me for my hat and stick, which he hung upon a peg at the top of the room by means of a long pole; near the peg was a number painted on the wall, and he gave me a small wooden ticket with the same number marked on it. I suppose there were at least 500 numbers, so extensive was this den. I then entered a large room, in which was a table surrounded by the wretches who confide in its dishonourable and ruinous traffic, upon some of whose countenances might easily be traced the inward distraction of their souls, while others, callous no doubt by use to its variable fortune, sat round it with a sottish kind of indifference. Each person had a short wooden hoe, with which he placed his stake upon the red or black, as he thought proper, and with which he brought his adversary's counters to him if he proved successful. At each table, the men who presided, (the proprietors, I believe, of the table,) called the bankers, were well dressed, and near them lay long _rouleaux_ of dollars and louis. There were three tables in three different rooms, for the convenience, it appeared to me, of the different classes of gamesters; of those whose customary stake was but a franc or two, as well as those who risked at each throw their ten or twenty louis. The greatest apparent discipline was observed, nor was there any noise or squabbling; and, from what a casual looker-on, like myself, could see, the chances of the game were nearly equal. This, however, cannot be the real case, or otherwise the proprietors of these places could not afford to pay the immense sums which they do to government for their licenses, which afford a very considerable revenue, there being a great number of them established in the Palais Royal. The rooms were very much crowded and very hot, and I was soon glad to quit for ever such a scene, into which nothing but a natural, although perhaps not a laudable, curiosity had induced me to enter. Repassing the entrance chamber, upon shewing my ticket and paying three or four sous to the Cerberus of this hell, I regained my hat and cane, and escaped a better man, I trust, than when I was admitted, inasmuch as I there received a lesson which will ever prevent me from resorting, under any circumstances, to a place where loss is ruin, and success dishonour. I then went to the celebrated Café des Mille Colonnes, but was disappointed in not seeing the beautiful _Limonnadière_, who, I understand, was formerly a _chere amie_ of Murat, and by whom she was enabled to become the proprietress of this expensive coffee-house. In her room, however, sat, like a wax figure, to be stared at by every one, a young woman of a tolerable degree of beauty, very superbly set off by trinkets of all descriptions, transferred to her, I believe, for the mere purpose of attraction, by her more beautiful predecessor. The coffee-room is very large, and fitted up with nothing but looking-glasses and imitations of marble. Near the centre is a copy of the Venus de Medicis, which, with its twenty or thirty columns and pilasters, is reflected in every direction; but it would be difficult to count, in any one part, its 1000 columns, or even 200 of them. The next morning, 3d Jan. I started to join my regiment at Creil, but again returned to Paris upon duty, not having tasted any thing that day, from five in the morning until eleven at night, but a crust of bread and a glass or two of brandy; a slight privation, which rendered a cold fowl, a bottle of Burgundy, and a comfortable bed, the more cheering and acceptable. Having accomplished the business which caused my return, I next day promenaded two or three hours in the gardens of the Tuileries, the St. James's Park of Paris. They are the boasted _chef d'oevre_ of Le Nôtre, and in summer, no doubt, are very pretty. There are many fine statues, most of them copied after the most celebrated antiques, and four or five fountains, but which only play on holidays. I do not recollect to have seen any benches, which are so common on our promenades, but in their stead there are persons who let out chairs, by the hour, for two of which, I believe, you pay a penny. Returning by the Boulevards, I saw, for the first time, some French cuirassiers, or heavy dragoons in armour: the cuirass is made of iron, and does not appear to be very inconvenient to the wearer, although I am told that the front and back pieces weigh together 24 pounds; but it would be a great improvement in the martial appearance of the men, if their large loose woollen breeches were concealed by something like the Highland kilt. The same day I saw reviewed two battalions of the newly organized Garde Royale, formed principally from the old imperial guard, who _distinguished_ themselves at the battle of Fleurus, as the French call our Waterloo; but I did not think much of their appearance. Their martial music was too noisy, the sound of their clarionets being overwhelmed by that of their drums and cymbals, which are too large and too often introduced. In the evening I went to the house of a person styling himself the Abbé Faria, a professor of animal magnetism, in order to see its effects upon those persons susceptible of its influence. The Abbé is a stout muscular man, of a mulatto complexion, and of a countenance which has more of the knave than the fool in it. The room was filled with the best of company of all ages, among whom I met Mr. L. and his friend Count B. Previous to the Abbé's lecture and the exhibition of his powers, L. and myself were anxious to know if we were susceptible. He accordingly requested me to shut my eyes, and applied his finger to my forehead and temples; but he said I was too robust for his purpose, but that poor L., who I suppose was trembling as much as if Old Nick himself had put his claws upon his forehead, was susceptible. The Count, who, _entre nous_, appears to be a sound sterling man, was also deemed of too robust a habit. After a short lecture, in which he affected to treat the subject in a rational philosophical point of view, and to talk very finely of the influence of the soul upon the body, and so forth, he called from the company a lad about sixteen years of age, who placed himself in a large easy chair in the centre of the room, and retiring himself three or four paces from him, asked if he wished to sleep,--_Oui_ was the answer; accordingly the lad threw himself back upon the squab-lining of the chair, and in a few minutes after, fetching two or three deep sighs, was apparently in a sound sleep. He was asked if he slept tranquilly--he answered _non_, with the drawling tone of a person sleeping. The Abbé then advanced to the chair, and moving his hand with an air of command, said, "_Calmez, calmez_," loud enough to have awakened all the people in the room, even had they been sleeping as you and I sleep. After a short time, having answered _Oui_ to the question _Dormez vous profondément?_ the Abbé asked him how he felt,--whether his complaint in the chest was alleviated? to which he replied in the affirmative. He was next asked what must be done for a person afflicted with rheumatism, to which question he answered with the apparent judgment of Hippocrates; for you must know that a person when thus under the influence of somnambulism, as the Abbé chose to designate it, has the power of seeing the diseases, and of stating the proper remedies for them to any one of the company whom he may be desired to fix his attention upon. The chair was now taken by a young lady, who did not fall asleep so soon as her predecessor, owing, as the Abbé said, to her too great agitation of mind. Two or three "_Calmezs_," however, tranquillized her, and she became a second Galen, answering to many questions upon the improving state of health of a young man who had been apparently dying of consumption, but restored by the wonderful operations of this fair enchantress and the black magician. A French colonel then sat down, but his scepticism was at first too great to permit him to be influenced, for you must know that it requires implicit faith and great tranquillity of mind in order to be made susceptible. He got up in a profuse state of perspiration, without having had a glimpse even of this new light. A very stout gentleman next sat down, but professing himself an unbeliever of course arose again no wiser than at first. The French colonel now mustering all his faith, again disposed himself to be acted on, and consequently was so. He slept, however, uncomfortably, and the Abbé asked him if he would drink any thing to refresh him. He answered, Yes. The Abbé then gave him some plain water, which he told him was weak spirit and water with sugar, and asked him if he did not taste them. He said he tasted the spirit but not the sugar. He was asked if he saw his own heart--Yes. Is it in good order?--Yes. How are your lungs?--Bad. Do you wish to know what remedies are applicable for them?--Yes. Come to me again to-morrow at two o'clock--I cannot; I have an appointment at that hour. Come to me on Sunday--Very well; at two o'clock. The Abbé then awakened him "_secundum artem_," and asked him if he recollected any part of the conversation with him, to which, to the evident confusion of the Abbé, he replied that he was to come to him again on Sunday, but that he recollected nothing else. A little girl of five or six years old was afterwards placed in the chair, but the Abbé could not affect her. By the by, I have forgotten to state that he professed to have the power of paralyzing any part of the body merely by forcibly exclaiming _Paralysez_, as he did when the young lady was the subject of his skill; and that this magnetic sleep is so far from refreshing, that the young man who was under its influence not more than ten minutes, awoke yawning and quite exhausted by it. So much for animal magnetism, and its somnifying qualities, which, although many of the first class of Parisians have implicit faith in it, I have no doubt you will consider with me mere charlatanism. The next morning, after lounging away two or three hours in the garden of the Tuileries and on the Boulevards, studying men and manners as they are exhibited in Paris, I went into one of the Panoramas, where I saw a view of Naples, represented under a hazy Mediterranean noon. The effect was good; but although I made due allowance for its having been painted seven years, it appeared much inferior as to execution and finishing to those we have seen in London. The comparison made me more than ever sensible of the merit of our ingenious countryman Barker. On the 6th I ascended Mont Martre, and discovered the spot from which the panoramic view of Paris was taken which was exhibited in London two years ago; but the weather was so unfavourable, that I did not recognize its similarity to the scene before me so precisely as no doubt I otherwise should have done. Returning, I went to see the foundation of a most superb religious edifice, which Bonaparte was about to complete, as a kind of military chapel, under the name of the Temple of Glory. It appears at present very like one of the celebrated ruins of Palmyra, being nothing more than a collection of the bases and lower parts of the shafts of its intended columns. But these are so justly proportioned, and so classically placed, that it is easy to conceive what would be its magnificent effect if ever finished. It is also most advantageously situated, being at the end of one of the streets passing from the Place Vendôme, in the centre of which stands the celebrated triumphal column, erected to the glory of the French armies, and formed in great part of the cannon taken by them in Germany. This pillar of vain glory is not so high as the Monument of London, nor so well terminated at the top. Like the ancient Roman columns, built for similar purposes, it is surrounded by a belt, encircling the shaft in a spiral direction, on which are represented the various actions of the campaign, that terminated with the battle of Austerlitz, and the occupation of Vienna. These bas-reliefs, however, although no doubt extremely flattering to French vanity, spoil altogether the architectural beauty of the column, and would certainly have been seen to more advantage on the interior of the walls of the Temple of Glory, or some such building. The Théâtre des Italiens, where Catalani performs, is a building deserving notice, as a fine piece of architecture; and, like the Théâtre de l'Odeon, forms one side of a small square, which renders the approach to it safe and easy; for in this respect the Opera House and Théâtre Français are as inconveniently situated as our Drury-lane or Covent-garden. Speaking of the external appearance of the French theatres, the Théâtre de l'Opera Comique ought not to be passed by without observing the well-sculptured _caryatides_ which embellish its front. The next day, Sunday, the 7th of January, I visited the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers. This is an establishment in the old priory of St. Martin, for the deposition of all patent machines, which are here exhibited to the public for their improvement and amusement. Specimens also of the various manufactures of France in cotton, silk, wool, and leather, are here deposited, with the tools, utensils, and machines employed in making them. One long gallery is filled with models of different manufactories, such as powder-mills, of which you see the graining-room, and drying-room, with the different implements so arranged as if the mill were actually at work. There are also brick and lime-kilns, iron-founderies, sawing-mills, splitting-mills, porcelain manufactories, and potteries, oil of vitriol works, and every kind of public manufactory, all made after a certain scale, and with such apparent precision, that they give perhaps to a spectator a more complete idea of their several uses than if he were in the very manufactories which they represent. I was amused by an immense collection of little windmills and watermills, both under-shot and over-shot, with their sieves, &c. They exhibit also a great variety of lamps, oil being usually burnt in France, and many different kinds of locks, one of which, a door-lock, had an ingenious piece of mechanism attached to it, for the purpose of seizing any one by the hand who should attempt to pick it. But, in general, the show of locks, as well as every article of hardware and cutlery, was much inferior to the hard and sharp ware of English make. The old church of the priory is filled with agricultural implements and fire-engines. The former, as far as I am a judge, are much ruder than ours; but different kinds of land must certainly require different kinds of ploughs and harrows, &c. The fire-engines are numerous, among which I observed one of Bramah's. I saw too a very clever kind of fire-escape, consisting of a series of ladders, of different widths, which are placed upright on a small truck running on four low wheels, and which, when brought to the required situation, are worked up one above another to any height, by the means of a windlass. Among a variety of very beautiful time-pieces, one is remarkable for the complicated structure of its pendulum. This is made upon the old English principle, of two self-correcting metals, which you know thus keep it of the same length in all temperatures and climates; but the different pieces of metal are joined together in a curious manner, the use of which I do not understand. The ball of this pendulum is a little chronometer, keeping, they say, exact time with the large one, which _itself_ preserves in motion. To another time-piece, made by a German, there is attached on the top a very pretty little orrery, inclosed in a glass sphere, on which are engraved, with fluoric acid, the different, constellations, &c. Here is also the car in which was performed the first aërial voyage ever undertaken; but it is a clumsy, heavy thing, of the size and shape of a large slipper-bath. On Monday, the 8th of January, I left Paris with regret, but with the hope of again visiting it, and joined my regiment at Creil, a poor dirty town, near Chantilly, where I was obliged to content myself with a nasty unfloored apartment in a miserable auberge. During the first fortnight I scarcely stirred from the house, the surrounding country being all under water. On the 28th of January, having received orders to march for the frontiers, I left Creil, after sojourning there three weeks, during which nothing occurred to me worthy of notice, but a trip to Chantilly, the former residence of the Prince de Condé. But little now remains of that which was undoubtedly the finest chateau in France, excepting the stables, and their necessary accompaniments, then occupied by a detachment of our waggon train, being large enough for the accommodation of 300 horses. They are at some distance from the high road, from which they look like the chateau itself. A book is published, with twenty descriptive plates, giving an account of the chateau and grounds as they formerly existed, a copy of which I purchased on the spot. At Amiens, where I had leave to halt for a few days, I by good luck got myself billeted on the house of a young gentleman with whom I travelled from Boulogne sur Mer on my first arrival in this country. I found his father a sensible, well-educated man, but low and desponding on account of the general distressed state of his commercial connexions, and his mother an active domestic woman, although of a rich and superior family. Being received with great cordiality, I of course found myself very comfortable. With this family I might have boarded for four Napoleons per month, including every thing,--about 40_l._ per annum[1]. [1] And I saw also an excellent lodging, fit for any gentleman's family, at 6_l._ per month. Amiens is a fine old town, they say of 60,000 inhabitants; but unless they are closely packed, I should think of not more than 40,000. It is clean, but dull; and there is only one public building worthy of notice, the cathedral. This is certainly very fine, but wants a lofty spire or a handsome tower to make it what it ought to be. It was built by the English, when the good Henry VI. was King of France, and in many parts resembles the edifices in England erected during the same period, especially in its nave, which the French speak of proverbially, and which I think is the only part of English fabrication. It is in the form of a cross, as usual, and has two low square towers at the west end; these have an awkward appearance, and are badly proportioned to the rest of the building, the one being lower considerably than the other, but why I do not know, the necessity of this deviation from architectural uniformity not being sufficiently evident to pass with me as faultless. The grand entrance is highly ornamented by an immense number of sculptured busts and animals, with full-length figures. The interior of the nave is very chaste and elegant, and the wood-work of the stalls in the choir is the best finished thing of the kind I ever saw. There are a few good paintings and statues in the chapels, among which the statue of the Enfant Pleurant is well worthy of admiration. It is placed behind the high altar, and was erected to the memory of some former prior of the cathedral, but it is unfortunately damaged a little. The stained glass windows are also good and appropriate. Amiens has been a regularly fortified town; but nothing now remains of its works except an old defenceless citadel, and its ruined ramparts. Strangers are however denied access to the citadel, as is generally the case in the fortified towns of France, although it merely serves at present for a barrack to the legion of the department. The ramparts, or boulevards, have been planted, and are a pretty promenade. Amiens is situated on the Somme, the stream of which, although small here, is very rapid, and turns several mills in the city and vicinity. It intersects the town in many parts, and affords more opportunities of cleanliness than the inhabitants take advantage of. I went twice to the theatre-once to the parterre for a franc; and another night took the gentleman on whom I was billeted to the boxes, paying two francs for each. The company is very good, and the house convenient and tastily decorated. Here also is a place like our Exeter 'Change; but the goods there exposed are very far inferior to ours in every respect. The corn market is the only other building of note, besides an old hospital, the Hôtel Dieu. After a week's residence at Amiens, I came on to St. Pol, and found my regiment quartered in its neighbourhood, in the most miserable dirty villages I suppose you ever knew; at one of which, from whence I now write, I took up my abode, with the requisite resignation to my lot, content with a good wood fire, a mattress or two, and a sound thatched roof. On the 18th of March I set out for Cambray, through Arras and Douay, the two principal cities in this neighbourhood. Arras contains about 20,000 inhabitants, but is irregularly built, and badly paved. It possessed formerly a very handsome cathedral, which, I believe, with all its churches, except one, were demolished by the frenzy of the revolutionists, during the reign of terror, as it is now and then called. A new one in its place has been commenced, but has not been proceeded with for many years. When completed, it will be a very superb edifice, of Grecian architecture. The library, which belonged to the clergy of the late cathedral, is still in good preservation, and in a very handsome building which formed part of the accompanying Abbey of St. Wast. Most of the books are theological; but there are also some good collections of prints and manuscripts. At one end there is a paltry museum of subjects in natural history, "an alligator stuffed," a comb which formerly formed part of the toilette of King Dagobert, one of the first race of French monarchs, and with which I arranged my dishevelled locks, an old queen's shoe, and a few other paltry antiquities not worthy notice. The theatre at Arras is dirty, and the company bad; but there are occasionally very good concerts, at one of which I was much diverted with the attempt of an amateur to amuse the audience by his singing, which undoubtedly he did, but not in the manner his egregious vanity led him to suppose. A Mademoiselle Noyen was the principal singer, and certainly of no mean talents. She was living at the same hotel where I chanced to be, and I had frequent opportunities of listening to her as she was practising her lesson for the evening. Arras is one of the towns on which Marshal Vauban exercised his uncommon talents as an engineer. It is one of the largest fortresses in France, but, with the exception of the citadel, might easily be taken by the present mode of warfare. I was at least an hour walking round its ramparts, which are still kept in pretty good condition. In consequence of being formerly thought impregnable, one of the gates long bore this inscription: "Quand les Français prendront Arras, Les souris mangeront les chats." It was, however, taken by Louis XIII.; and this distich was then modified by removing the _p_ from the word _prendront_, thus making it _rendront_. Arras formerly belonged to the Spaniards, who built a very large square, surrounded by piazzas and shops, or _magazins_. There is also a smaller square, at one end of which is the Hôtel de Ville, a very fine old structure, with an immensely high tower, surmounted with a large sculptured crown of excellent workmanship. The barracks are spoken of as the best in France, but they are apparently much less convenient than those of the fortified towns in England. On the 20th I set out in the diligence for Douai, at six o'clock in the morning; and although its distance from Arras is not more than six leagues and a half, I was five hours on the road. Douai is a large city, of 15,000 souls, but capable of containing many more, being in a great measure deserted. It is strongly fortified, but the works are rapidly hastening to decay. Here is a large handsome square, the streets also are well paved, and have the rare convenience of a raised foot-pavement in many of them. But the weather was so rainy, that I proceeded as quickly as possible to Cambray in a returning cabriolet, which luckily I found at the hotel. The Danish contingent of 5000 men, commanded by the Prince of Hesse, was in the neighbourhood. They appeared very well liked by the inhabitants on whom they were billeted, who styled them _braves gens_. Like the English, they wear a red uniform, and are very well appointed; but their knowledge of the modern art of war, like Michael Cassio's, can be "but from bookish theory." I reached Cambray about five o'clock, but found it so full of English, it being the head-quarters of the army, that I went to two inns, and could not find house-room. I then applied for a billet on some inhabitant from the British commandant, but he was a little sulky at being intruded upon after office-hours, so I determined upon trying for admission at some other inn, and found a good table d'hôte and clean bed-room at the Petit Canard, with tolerable company, and reasonable charges[2]. [2] Some of our officers here board with the people on whom they are quartered for the trifling sum of two francs per diem, 1_s._ 8_d._ English, dining at their own hour, and in very handsome style; but then they drink beer instead of wine, which is reckoned very dear in this part, two or three francs per bottle. Cambray is not a handsome town: the large _Place_ is irregularly built; and there is not one public building of any beauty. The cathedral has been destroyed, nothing of it having escaped but an old long building, which is now a kind of picture-gallery, where there are a few small good scriptural pieces, the coffin containing the ashes of the immortal Fenelon, and a monument to the memory of some former bishop. There is a plain marble bust of Fenelon at the foot of his coffin, which is placed upon a stand at one end of the room. The coffin is quite plain, of oak, bound round here and there with red tape, and sealed with the seal of the bishoprick. The frail old tenement, in which the remains of this beautiful writer are deposited, I believe is inclosed in this outer one, which I kissed with a literary veneration. The abbey church of St. Sepulchre is worthy of notice on account of some very excellent paintings, executed to represent marble bas-reliefs attached to the walls; the deception is the most complete I ever witnessed, one more especially in the sacristy. The barracks were occupied by the guards, who astonish the natives by the prodigal use of their money; but they were, nevertheless, not in much estimation by the gentry of Cambray and its neighbourhood, being, I suppose, too high to submit to the suppleness of French manners, which require a _bon jour_ and a _doff_ of the hat at every rencontre. Cambray is one of the strongest places in our possession. I walked round the citadel, and examined that part of the wall where the British escaladed, under the command of Sir William Douglass, upon the last march of the allies to Paris. The storming party _bivouaced_ the night previous to the assault in a burying-ground, just without the Valenciennes gate, to which many a poor fellow returned next night to _bivouac_ eternally! I went in the evening to an instrumental concert at the Hôtel de Ville, where the apparent gentility and beauty of the audience vied with the precision and execution of the orchestra. Cambray is well supplied with fish and vegetables, at a very low rate. Next day I returned by another road on foot to Arras, in company with a fellow-pedestrian, whom I overtook on my road, not displeased with my little excursion. On the 27th of April I proceeded to Bethune from Arras on foot, preferring this mode of travelling to that by the diligence, in which you are almost completely prevented from seeing any part of the country through which you are travelling; the glass window, which just serves for the admission of a little light, not being above eight or ten inches square. The day was fine, the road good, and the prospect from it beautiful, looking over an immense extent of a fine corn country, thickly studded with towns and villages, and their surrounding woods, bounded by lovely blue hills, which I contemplated with my telescope in perfect rapture. "Heavens! what a goodly prospect spreads around!" The colouring was just like that of Teniers; and here I first felt the real value of his productions. Bethune is a small but very strong town, containing nothing remarkable but its chime of bells and old brick church. The former play every quarter of an hour; and the hour is twice sounded, once at the proper time, and once, by way of warning, half an hour before. I returned next day, taking in my way the ruined abbey at Mont St. Eloy, near Arras, another mournful victim of the revolution. I here close my little narration, and shall soon set out in search of more novelty, but in what direction I have not yet determined. Hoping this, however, may not prove uninteresting, I remain always, Your affectionate friend. Hesdin, between St. Pol and Montreuil, 6th of June, 1816. P.S. The foregoing letter has been hitherto unavoidably detained, but I have now an opportunity of sending it to you from this place, where I am on an excursion to see the fields of Cressy and Agincourt, so interesting to an Englishman. The rain has fallen in torrents ever since I came here: not having therefore a _fair_ opportunity to judge of this town, I can tell you no more, than that it is said to contain 4,000 inhabitants, and that it is fortified. Indeed in this part of the country, you cannot journey five leagues in any direction, without finding yourself stopped at the gates of some fortified place, for the revision of your passports. Pointing to the hilt of the sword will not now suffice as before. Once more adieu, my dear friend! Believe me ever Most truly yours, THE END. _The following Works are published by_ JAMES HARPER & Co., 46, FLEET-STREET. Dr. SHAW's GENERAL ZOOLOGY, a New Volume, being the Ninth, in two Parts. Small Paper, Price 2l. 12s. 6d. 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DAVISON, Lombard-street, Whitefriars, London. _This Day is Published, Price £1 1s. boards_, A COMPENDIOUS AND COMPREHENSIVE LAW DICTIONARY; ELUCIDATING _THE TERMS_ AND General Principles OF LAW AND EQUITY. BY THOMAS WALTER WILLIAMS, ESQ. _Of the Inner Temple, London, Barrister at Law_. _LONDON_: Printed by W. Flint, St. Sepulchre's, FOR JAMES HARPER AND CO. 46, FLEET STREET. 1816. 
43844	----	CLARET AND OLIVES, FROM THE GARONNE TO THE RHONE; OR, NOTES, SOCIAL, PICTURESQUE, AND LEGENDARY, BY THE WAY. BY ANGUS B. REACH, AUTHOR OF "THE STORY OF A BUCCANEER," ETC. [Illustration] LONDON: DAVID BOGUE, FLEET STREET. MDCCCLII. LONDON: HENRY VIZETELLY, PRINTER AND ENGRAVER, GOUGH SQUARE, FLEET STREET. TO CHARLES MACKAY, ESQ., LL. D., MY EARLIEST AND KINDEST LITERARY FRIEND, These Pages ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE The Diligence--French Country Places--The English in Guienne--Bordeaux--Old Bordeaux--A Bordeaux Landlord--A Suburban Vintaging--The Vintage Dinner 1-20 CHAPTER II. Claret _v._ Port--The Claret Soil--The Claret Vine--Popular Appetite for Grapes--Variable qualities of the Claret Soil--French Veterans--The "Authorities" in France 21-38 CHAPTER III. The Claret Vintage--The Treading of the Grape--The Last Drops of the Grape--Wanderings amongst the Vineyards--Wandering Vintagers--The Vintage Dinner--The Vintagers' Bedroom--The Claret Chateaux--The Chateau Margaux 39-57 CHAPTER IV. The Landes--The Bordeaux and Teste Railway--M. Tetard and his Imitator--Start for the Landes--The Language of the Landes--A Railway Station in the Landes--The Scenery of the Landes--The Stilt-walkers of the Landes--A Glimpse of Green 58-76 CHAPTER V. The Clear Water of Arcachon--Legend of the Baron of Chatel-morant--The Resin Harvest--The Witches of the Landes--The Surf of the Bay of Biscay--French Priests--Do the Landes Cows give Milk?--The _Amour Patriæ_ of the Landes 77-101 CHAPTER VI. Dawn on the Garonne--The Landscape of the Garonne--The Freaks of the Old Wars in Guienne--Agen--Jasmin, the Last of the Troubadours--Southern Cookery and Garlic--The Black Prince in a New Light--Cross-country Travelling in France 102-126 CHAPTER VII. Pau--The English in Pau--English and Russians--The View of the Pyrenees--The Castle--The Statue of Henri Quatre--His Birth--A Vision of his Life--Rochelle--St. Bartholomew--Ivry--Henri and Sully--Henri and Gabrielle--Henri and Henriette d'Entragues--Ravaillac 127-136 CHAPTER VIII. The Val d'Ossau--The Vin de Jurancon--Pyrenean Cottages--The Bernais Peasants--The Devil learning Basque--The Wolves of the Pyrenees--The Bears of the Pyrenees--The Dogs of the Pyrenees--An Auberge in the Pyrenees--Omens and Superstitions in the Pyrenees--The Songs of the Pyrenees 137-155 CHAPTER IX. Wet Weather in the Pyrenees--Eaux Chaudes out of Season, and in the Rain--Plucking the Indian Corn at the Auberge at Laruns--The Legend of the Wehrwolf, and the Baron who was changed into a Bear 156-166 CHAPTER X. The Solitary Big Hotel--The Knitters of the Pyrenees--The Weavers of the Pyrenees--Pigeon-catching in the Pyrenees--The Giant of the Pyrenean Dogs--Murray and _Commis Voyageurs_--The Eastern Pyrenees--The Legend of Orthon 167-186 CHAPTER XI. Languedoc--The "Austere South"--Beziers and the Albigenses--The Fountain of the Greve--The Bishop and his Flock--The Canal du Midi--The Mistral--Rural Billiard-playing 187-199 CHAPTER XII. Travelling by the Canal du Midi--Travelling French People--The Salt Harvest--Equestrian Thrashing Machines--Cette--The Mediterranean--The "Made" Wines--The Priest on Wines--_La Cuisine Française_ 200-218 CHAPTER XIII. The Olive-gathering--A Night with the Mosquitoes--Aigues-Mortes--The Fever in Aigues-Mortes--My _Cicerone_ in Aigues-Mortes--The Pickled Burgundians--Reboul's Poetry--The Lighthouse of Aigues-Mortes 219-235 CHAPTER XIV. Fen Landscape--Tavern Allegories--Roman Remains--Roman Architecture--Roman Theatricals--The Maison Carrée--Greek Architecture--Catholic and Protestant--The Weaver's _Cabane_--Protestant and Catholic 236-255 CHAPTER THE LAST. Backward French Agriculture--French Rural Society--The Small Property System--French "Encumbered Estates" 256-264 [Illustration] CLARET AND OLIVES. CHAPTER I. THE DILIGENCE--OLD GUIENNE AND THE ENGLISH IN FRANCE--BORDEAUX AND A SUBURBAN VINTAGING. "_Voila la voila! La ville de Bordeaux!_" The conductor's voice roused me from the dreamy state of dose in which I lay, luxuriously stretched back amid cloaks and old English railway-wrappers, in the roomy banquette of one of the biggest diligences which ever rumbled out of Caillard and Lafitte's yard. "_Voila! la Voila!_" The bloused peasant who drove the six stout nags therewith stirred in his place; his long whip whistled and cracked; the horses flung up their heads as they broke into a canter, and their bells rang like a joy peal; while Niniche, the conductor's white poodle, which maintained a perilous footing in the leathern hood of the banquette, pattered and scratched above our heads, and barked in recognition of his master's voice. I rubbed my eyes and looked. We were on the ridge of a wooded hill. Below us lay a flat green plain, carpetted with vines. Right across it ran the broad, white, chalky highway, powdering with dust the double avenue of chestnuts which lined it. Beyond the plain glittered a great river, crowded with shipping, and beyond the river rose stretching, apparently for miles, a magnificent façade of high white buildings, broken here and there by the foliage of public gardens, and the dark embouchures of streets; while, behind the range of quays, and golden in the sunrise, rose high into the clear morning air, a goodly array of towering Gothic steeples, fretted and pinnacled up to the glancing weather-cocks. It was, indeed, Bordeaux. The long journey from Paris was all but over, yet though I had been tired enough of the way, I felt as if I could brave it again, rather than make the exertion of encountering octroi officers, and plunging into strange hotels. For after all, comfortable Diligence travelling makes a man lazy. It is slow, but you get accustomed to the slowness; in the banquette, too, you are never cramped; there is luxurious roominess behind, and you plunge your legs in straw up to the knees. Then leaning supinely back, you indulge a serene passiveness, rolling lazily on with the rumbling mountain of a vehicle. The thunder of the heavy wheels, and the low monotonous clash, clash, clash, of the hundred grelots, form a soothing atmosphere of sound about you, and musingly, and dreamingly you watch the action of the team--these half dozen little but stout tough work-a-day horses, trotting manfully in their rough harness, while the driver--oh, how different from our old coaching dandies!--a clumsy peasant, in sabots, and a stable-smelling blouse, sits slouched, and round-shouldered like a sack before you, incessantly flourishing that whistling whip, and shouting in the uncouth jargon of his province, to the jingling team below. And next you watch the country or the road. A French road, like a mathematical line, on, and on, and on, straight, straight, mournfully, dismally, straight, running like a tape laid across the bleak bare country, till it fades, and fades, and seems to tip over the horizon; or if you are in an undulating wooded district, you catch sections of it as it climbs each successive ridge; and you know that in the valleys it is just the same as on the hill tops. You see your dinner before you, as Englishmen say over roast mutton. You see your journey before you, as Frenchmen may say, over the slow trotting team. And how drear and deserted the country looks--open, desolate, and bare. Here and there a distant mite of a peasant or two bending over the sun-burnt clods. No cottages, but ever and anon a congregation of barns--the _bourgs_ in which the small land-owners collect; now a witch of an old woman herding a cow; anon a solitary shepherd all in rags, knitting coarse stockings, and followed by a handful of sheep, long in the legs, low in the flesh, with thin dirty fleeces as ragged as their guardian's coat. Upon the road travellers are scanty. The bronzed Cantonier stares as you pass, his brass-lettered hat glittering in the glare. There go a couple of soldiers on furlough, tramping the dreary way to their native village, footsore, weary and slow, their hairy knapsacks galling their shoulders, and their tin canteens evidently empty. Another diligence, white with dust, meeting us. The conductors shout to each other, and the passengers crane their heads out of window. Then we overtake a whole caravan of _roulage_, or carriers, the well-loaded carts poised upon one pair of huge wheels, the horses, with their clumsy harness and high peaked collars, making a scant two miles an hour. Not an equipage of any pretension to be seen. No graceful phaeton, no slangy dog-cart, no cosey family carriage--only now and then a crawling local diligence, or M. le Curé on a shocking bad horse, or an indescribably dilapidated anomalous jingling appearance of a vague shandry-dan. And so on from dawn till sunset, through narrow streeted towns, with lanterns swinging above our heads, and open squares with scrubby lime trees, and white-washed cafés all around; and by a shabby municipality with gilded heads to the front railings, a dilapidated tricolor, and a short-legged, red-legged sentinel, not so tall as his firelock, keeping watch over it; and then, out into the open, fenceless, hedgeless country, and on upon the straight unflinching road, and through the long, long tunnels of eternal poplar trees, and by the cantonnier, and the melancholy _bourgs_, and the wandering soldiers, and the dusty carriers' carts as before. One thing strikes you forcibly in these little country towns--the marvellously small degree of distinction of rank amid the people. No neighbouring magnate rattles through the lonely streets in the well-known carriage of the Hall or the Grange, graciously receiving the ready homage of the townspeople. No retired man of business, or bustling land-agent, trots his smart gig and cob--no half-pay officer goes gossipping from house to house, or from shop to shop. There is no banker's lady to lead the local fashions--no doctor, setting off upon his well-worked nag for long country rounds--no assemblage, if it be market day, of stout full-fed farmers, lounging, booted and spurred, round the Red Lion or the Plough. Working men in blouses, women of the same rank in the peasant head-dress of the country, and here and there a nondescript personage in a cap and shooting jacket, who generally turns up at the scantily-attended table d'hôte at dinner time--such are the items which make up the mass of the visible population. You hardly see an individual who does not appear to have been born and bred upon the spot, and to have no ideas and no desires beyond it. Left entirely to themselves, the people have vegetated in these dull streets from generation to generation, and, though clustered together in a quasi town--perhaps with octroi and mairie, a withered tree of liberty, and billiard tables by the half-dozen--the population is as essentially rural as though scattered in lone farms, unvisited, except on rent-day, by either landlord or agent. It often happens that a large landed proprietor has not even a house upon his ground. He lets the land, receives his rent, and spends it in Paris or one of the large towns, leaving his tenants to go on cultivating the ground in the jog-trot style of their fathers and their grandfathers before them. The French, in fact, have no notion of what we understand by the life of a country gentleman. A proprietor may pay a sporting visit to his land when partridge and quail are to be shot; but as to taking up his abode _au fond de ses terres_, mingling in what we would call county business, looking after the proceedings of his tenants, becoming learned, in an amateur way, in things bucolic, in all the varieties of stock and all the qualities of scientific manures--a life, a character, and a social position of this sort, would be in vain sought for in the rural districts of France. There are not, in fact, two more differing meanings in the world than those attached to our "Country Life," and the French _Vie de Chateau_. The French proprietor is a Parisian out of Paris. He takes the rents, shoots the quails, and the clowns do the rest. An Englishman ought to feel at home in the south-west of France. That fair town, rising beyond the yellow Garonne, was for three hundred years and more an English capital. Who built these gloriously fretted Gothic towers, rising high into the air, and sentinelled by so many minor steeples? Why Englishmen! These towers rise above the Cathedral of St. Andrew, and in the Abbey of St. Andrew the Black Prince held high court, and there, after Poitiers, the captive King of France revelled with his conqueror, with the best face he might. There our Richard the Second was born. There the doughty Earl of Derby, long the English seneschal of Bordeaux, with his retinue, "amused themselves," as gloriously gossipping old Froissart tells, "with the citizens and their wives;" and from thence Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, went forth, being eighty-six years of age, mounted upon a little palfrey, to encounter the Duke of Anjou, in those latter days when our continental dominions were shrinking, as we deserved that they should shrink, after the brutal murder of the glorious Maid of Domrémy. It is true that we are at this moment in the department of the Dordogne, and that when we cross the river we shall be in that of the Gironde. But we Englishmen love the ancient provinces better than the modern departments, which we are generally as bad at recognising, as we are in finding out dates by Thermidors and Brumaires. No, no, departments may do for Frenchmen, but to an Englishman the rich land we are crossing will ever be Guienne, the "Fair Dutchy," and part and parcel of old Aquitane, the dowry of Eleanor, when she wedded our second Henry. Is it not strange to think of those old times, in which the English were loved in the Bourdelois--fine old name--and the French were hated, in which the Gascon feudal chiefs around protested that they were the "natural born subjects of England, which was so kind to them?" Let us turn to Froissart:--The Duke of Anjou having captured four Gascon knights, forced them, _nolens volens_, to take the oath of allegiance to the King of France, and then turned them about their business. The knights went straight to Bordeaux, and presented themselves before the seneschal of the Landes, and the mayor of the city, saying, "Gentlemen, we will truly tell you that before we took the oath, we reserved in our hearts our faith to our natural lord, the king of England, and for anything we have said or done, we never will become Frenchmen." Our gallant forefathers appear on the whole, to have led a joyous life in Guienne. In truth, their days and nights were devoted very much to feasting themselves, and plundering their neighbours: two pursuits into which their Gascon friends entered with heart and soul. It is quite delightful to read in Froissart, or Enguerrand de Monstrelet, how "twelve knights went forth in search of adventures," an announcement which may be fairly translated, into how a dozen of gentlemen with indistinct notions of _meum_ and _tuum_, went forth to lay their chivalrous hands upon anything they could come across. Of course these trips were made into the French territory, and really they appear to have been conducted with no small degree of politeness on either side, when the English "harried" Limousin, or the French rode a foray into Guienne. The chivalrous feeling was strong on both sides, and we often read how such-and-such a French and English knight or squire did courteous battle with each other; the fight being held in honour of the fair ladies of the respective champions. Thus, not in Guienne, but in Touraine, when the English and the Gascons beleaguered a French town, heralds came forth upon the walls and made this proclamation:--"Is there any among you gentlemen, who for love of his lady is willing to try some feat of arms? If there be any such, here is Gauvin Micaille, a squire of the Beauce, quite ready to sally forth, completely armed and mounted, to tilt three courses with the lance, give three blows with the battle-axe, and three strokes with the dagger. Now look you, English, if there be none among you in love." The challenge was duly accepted. Each combatant wounded the other, and the Earl of Shrewsbury sent to the squire of Beauce his compliments, and a hundred francs. This last present takes somewhat away from the Amadis de Gaul, and Palmerin of England vein; but the student of the old chroniclers, particularly of the English in France, will be astonished to find how long the chivalric feeling and ceremonials co-existed with constant habits of plundering and unprovoked forays. Another curious trait of our forefathers in Guienne is the early development of the English _brusquerie_, and haughtiness of manner to the Continentals. The Gascons put up, however, with many a slight, inasmuch as their over sea friends were such valiant plunderers, and they, of course, shared the spoils. Listen to the frank declaration of a Gascon gentleman who had deserted from the English to the French side. Some one asking him how he did, he answers: "Thank God, my health is very good; but I had more money at command when I made war for the king of England, for then we seldom failed to meet some rich merchants of Toulouse, Condom, La Reole, or Bergerac, whom we squeezed, which made us gay and _debonnair_; but that is at an end." The questioner replies: "Of a truth, that is the life Gascons love. They willingly hurt their neighbour." Not even all the plunder they got, however, could silence the grumblings of the native knights at the haughty reserve of the English warriors. "I," says the canon of Chimay, "was at Bordeaux when the Prince of Wales marched to Spain, and witnessed the great haughtiness of the English, who are affable to no other nation than their own. Neither could any of the gentlemen of Gascogny or Acquitaine obtain office or appointment in their own country, for the English said they were neither on a level with them, nor worthy of their society." So early and so strongly did the proud island blood boil up; while many an Englishman, to this good day, by his reserved and saturnine bearing among an outspoken and merry-hearted people, perpetuates the old reproach, and keeps up the old grievance. All sensible readers will be gratified when I state that I have not the remotest intention of describing the archæology of Bordeaux, or any other town whatever. Whoever wants to know the height of a steeple, the length of an aisle, or the number of arches in a bridge, must betake themselves to Murray and his compeers. I will neither be picturesquely profound upon ogives, triforia, clerestorys, screens, or mouldings; nor magniloquently great upon the arched, the early pointed, the florid, or the flamboyant schools. I will go into raptures neither about Virgins nor Holy Families, nor Oriel windows, in the fine old cut-and-dry school of the traveller of taste, which means, of course, every traveller who ever packed a shirt into a carpet bag; but, leaving the mere archæology and carved stones alone in their glory, I will try to sketch living, and now and then historical, France--to move gossippingly along in the by-ways rather than the highways--always more prone to give a good legend of a grey old castle, than a correct measurement of the height of the towers; and always seeking to bring up, as well as I can, a varying, shifting picture, well thronged with humanity, before the reader's eye. [Illustration: BORDEAUX.] When I got to Bordeaux, the vintage time had just commenced, and having ever had a special notion that vintages were very beautiful and poetic affairs, and a still more confirmed taste and reverence for claret, it was my object to see as much of the vintage as I could--to see the juice rush from the grape, which makes so good a figure in the bottle. Letters of introduction I had none. But there is a knack of making one's own way--of making one's own friends as you go--in which I have tolerable confidence, and which did not fail me in the present conjuncture. First, to settle and make up my notions, I strolled vaguely about the city, buying local maps and little local guide-books. Bordeaux is emphatically what the French call a _riant_ town, with plenty of air, and such pure, soft, bright, sunny air. In the centre of a broad grand _Place_,--dotted with very respectable trees for French specimens, emblazoned with gay parterres, sprinkled with orange shrubs in bloom, and holed with no end of round stone basins, in which dolphins and Neptunes spout from their bronze mouths the live-long day, and urns, and pillars, and Dianas, and Apollos stand all around--there rises upon his massive pedestal the graven image of a fat comfortable gentleman in the ample cloak and doublet of Louis Quatorze, knots of carven ribbons decorating his shoulders, and flowing locks descending from under his broad-brimmed, looped-up hat. This is the statue of a M. de Tournay, an ancient intendant of the province, who was almost the creator of modern Bordeaux. Under his auspices the whole tribe of dolphins and heathen gods and goddesses were invoked to decorate the city. He reared great sweeps of pillared and porticoed buildings, and laid out broad streets and squares, on that enormous scale so characteristic of the _grand monarque_. He made Bordeaux, indeed, at once vast, prim, and massively magnificent. The mercantile town got quite a courtly air; and when the tricolor no longer floated in St. Domingo, and the commerce of the Gironde declined, so that not much was left over and above the wine trade, which, as all the world knows, is the genteelest of all the traffics, Bordeaux became what it is--a sort of retired city, having declined business--quiet, and clean, and prim, and aristocratic. Such, at least, is the new town. With old Bordeaux, M. de Tournay meddled not; and when you plunge into its streets you leap at once from eighteenth century terraces into fourteenth century lanes and tortuous by-ways. Below you, rough, ill-paved, unclean, narrow thoroughfares; above, the hanging old houses of five ages ago, peaked gables, and long projecting eaves, and hanging balconies; quaint carvings in blackened wood and mouldering stone;--the true middle-age tenements, dreadfully ricketty, but gloriously picturesque--charming to look at, but woful to live in; deep black ravines of courts plunging down into the masses of piled up, jammed together dwellings; squalid, slatternly people buzzing about like bees; bad smells permeating every street, lane, and alley; and now and then the agglomeration of darksome dwellings clustering round a great old church, with its vast Gothic portals, and, high up, its carven pinnacles and grinning _goutieres_, catching the sunshine far above the highest of these high-peaked roofs. This is the Bordeaux of the English and the Gascons--the Bordeaux which has rung to the clash of armour--the Bordeaux which was governed by a seneschal--the Bordeaux through whose streets defiled, "With many a cross-bearer before, And many a spear behind," the christening procession of King Richard the Second. We shall step into one church, and only one, that of the Feuillans. There, upon a dark and massive pedestal, lies stretched the effigy of an armed man. His hands are clasped, his vizor up shows his peaked beard, and he is clad _cap-à-pied_ in steel. Who was the doughty warrior, thus resting in his mail? Strange to say, no warrior at all; but the quietest and most peaceable of God's beings. He had an odd, pedantic father, who brought him up in strange Paganwise. The boy was never addressed but in Latin. He never had a mother-tongue. He was surrounded with a blockade of Latin speakers to keep afar off the profanation of French; he was mentally fed upon the philosophers and the poets of old Rome, and taught to weep for Seneca in the tub, as the nearest catastrophe which could touch his sympathies. Furthermore, his father, out of respect for his nerves, had him awakened every morning by the sound of soft music. Happily, even this sublimity of pedantry and pedagoguism was insufficient to ruin the native genius of Michael, Seigneur of Montaigne, whose "essays ought to lie in every cottage window." I have said that I was in search of some one to introduce me to the vineyards and the vintagers. In a day or two I had pitched upon my landlord as my protector. His hotel was a very modest one, where never before, I do believe, had Englishmen come to make everything dear and disagreeable. The red boards of the aristocratic Murray were unknown in his _salle à manger_. He hadn't an ounce of tea in his house, and very probably, if he had, he would have fried it with butter, and served it _à la_ something or other. When I say he, however, I mean madame, not monsieur. The latter would have made a capital English innkeeper, but he was a very bad French one. My gentleman, who was more than six feet high, and a stately personage, was cut out for a "mine host." He would have presided in a bar--which means drinking a continued succession of glasses of ale--with uncommon effect, for his temperament was convivial and gossippy; but he had no vocation for the kitchen, which is the common sphere of a French innkeeper not of the first class, and where, under the proud denomination of the _chef_, and clad in white like a grimly ghost, he bustles among pipkins and stew-pans and skillets, and lifts little trap-doors in his smoky range, and peers down them at blue charcoal furnaces--over which the _plats_ are simmering. Now my good landlord never troubled himself about these domestic matters; but he was very clever at standing on the outer steps of his door, smoking cigars; and, indeed, would stay very willingly there all day--at least, until he heard his wife's voice, upon which he would make a precipitate retreat to a neighbouring café, where he would drink _eau sucreé_ and rattle dominoes on a marble table till dinner-time. With this worthy I formed a personal acquaintance, by buying from him, at the reasonable rate of six sous a-piece, a number of quaint brass-set flat stones, very like red and grey cornelians, and just as pretty, which it was the fashion in the days of the Directory to mount in watch-keys, and wear two at a time, one dangling from each fob. These stones are picked up in great quantities from the light shingly soil, whereon ripens the grape, which is pressed into claret wine; and handsome and lustrous in themselves, they thus become a species of mementos of chateau Margaux and chateau Lafitte. To the landlord, then, I stated that I wished to see some vine-gathering. "Could anything be more lucky? His particular friend M. So-and-so was beginning his harvesting that very day, and was going to give a dinner that very night on the occasion. I should go--he should go. A friend of his was M. So-and-so's friend; in fact, we were all friends together." The truth I suspect to be, that my ally was dreadfully in want of an excuse to go to the dinner, and he welcomed my application as the Israelites did manna in the desert. It was meat and drink and amusement to him, and off we went. As I shall presently describe the real claret vintage upon a large scale, I shall pass the more quickly over my first initiation into the plucking of the grapes. But I passed a merry day, and eke a busy one. There are no idle spectators at a vintage--all the world must work; and so I speedily found myself, after being most cordially welcomed by a fat old gentleman, hoarse with bawling, in a pair of very dirty shirt-sleeves and a pouring perspiration--with a huge pair of scissors in my hand cutting off the bunches, in the midst of an uproarious troop of young men, young women, and children--threading the avenues between the plants--stripping, with wonderful dexterity, the clustered branches--their hands, indeed, gliding like dirty yellow serpents among the broad green leaves--and sometimes shouting out merry badinage, sometimes singing bits of strongly rhythmed melody in chorus, and all the time, as far as the feat could be effected, eating the grapes by handfuls. The whole thing was very jolly; I never heard more laughing about nothing in particular, more open and unblushing love-making, and more resolute quizzing of the good man, whose grapes were going partly into the baskets, tubs, pots, and pans, carried every few moments by the children and old people out of the green alleys to the pressing-tub, and partly into the capacious stomachs of the gatherers. At first I was dainty in my selection of the grapes to be chosen, eschewing the under-ripe and the over-ripe. A damsel beside me observed this. From her woolly hair and very dark but merry face, I imagined her to have a touch of Guadeloupe or Martinique blood. "Cut away," she said; "every grape makes wine." "Yes--but the caterpillars--" "They give it a body." "Yes--but the snails--" "O, save the snails, please do, for me!" said a little girl, holding out her apron, full of painted shells. "What do you do with them?" I inquired. "Boil them and eat them," said my juvenile friend. I looked askance. "You cant think how nice they are with vinegar!" said the mulatto girl. I remembered our own appetite for periwinkles, and said nothing; but added my mite of snail-flesh to the collection. I was talking to the lord of the vineyard, when some one--there was petticoats in the case--dashed at him from behind, and instantly a couple of hands clasped his neck, and one of them squashed a huge bunch of grapes over his mouth and nose, rubbing in the burst and bleeding fruit as vigorously as if it were a healing ointment, while streams of juice squirted from between the fingers of the fair assailant, and streamed down the patron's equivocal shirt. After being half burked, the good man shook his fist at the girl as she flew, laughing, down the alley; and then resuming his talk with me, he said: "We call that, _Faire des moustaches_. We all do it at vintage time." And ten minutes thereafter I saw the jolly old boy go chasing an ancient crone of a pail-bearer, a bunch of very ripe grapes in his hand, amid the delighted hurrahs of all assembled. Dinner was late, for it behoves vintagers to make the best of the daylight. The ordinary hired labourers dined, indeed, soon after noon; but I am talking of the feast of honour. It was served in a thinly-furnished, stone-paved, damp and dismal _salle à manger_. A few additional ladies with their beaux, grand provincial dandies, all of whom tried to outstrip each other in the magnificence of their waistcoats, had arrived from Bordeaux. It had been very hot, close weather for a day or two past, and everybody was imprecating curses on the heads of the mosquitos. The ladies, to prove the impeachment, stripped their sleeves, and showed each other the bites on their brown necks; and the gentlemen swore that the scamps were biting harder and harder. Then came the host, in a magnificently ill-cut coat--all the agricultural interest could not have furnished a worse--and his wife, very red in the face, for she had cooked dinner for the vintagers and for us; and then our host's father, a reverend old man in a black velvet scull cap, and long silver hair. The dinner was copious, and, as may be conceived, by no means served in the style of the _café de Paris_. But _soupe_, _bouilli_, _roti_, the stewed and the fried, speedily went the way of all flesh. Everybody _trinque-ed_ with everybody: the jingle of the meeting glasses rose even over the clatter of the knives and forks; the jolly host's heart grew warmer at every glass, and he issued imperious mandates for older and older wine. His comfortable wife, whose appetite had been affected by the cooking, made up for the catastrophe at the dessert. The old grandfather garulously narrated tales of wondrous vintages long ago. The waistcoats had all the scandal of Bordeaux at their finger ends; and the young ladies with the mosquito bites took to "making moustaches" on their male friends, with pancakes instead of grapes--a process by which the worthy host was, as usual, an especial sufferer. As may be conceived, my respected landlord was far more in his element than at home with his wife. He eat more, drank more, talked more, and laughed more than any two men present. Afterwards he grew tender and sentimental, and professed himself to be an ardent lover of his kind--a proposition which I suspect he afterwards narrowed specially in favour of a most mosquito-ridden lady next him--to the high wrath of a waistcoat opposite, who said sarcastic and cutting things, which nobody paid any attention to; and the landlord, being really a good-looking and plausible fellow, went on conquering and to conquer, and drinking and being drunk to; until, under a glorious outburst of moonlight which paled the blinking candles on the table, the merry company broke up; and mine host of Bordeaux, after certain rather unsteady walking, suddenly stopped on the centre of the bridge, and refused to go further until he had told me a secret. This was said with vast solemnity and aplomb, so we paused together on the granite pavement, and, after looking mysteriously at the Garonne, the moon, and the dusky heights of Floriac, my companion informed me in a hoarse whisper that he should leave France, his native and beloved land, where he felt sure that he was not appreciated, and pitch his tent, "_la bas, en Angleterre, parceque les Anglais etaient si bons enfants!_" "So ho!" thought I; "a strange reminiscence of the old Gascons." But on the morrow, my respectable entertainer had a bad headache, a yellow visage, and an entire forgetfulness of how he had got home at all. [Illustration: MOUSTACHE AT THE VINTAGE] CHAPTER II. CLARET--AND THE CLARET COUNTRY. That our worthy forefathers in Guienne loved good wine, is a thing not to be doubted--even by a teetotaller. When the Earl of Derby halted his detachments, he always had a pipe set on broach for the good of the company; and it is to be presumed that he knew their tastes. The wines of the Garonne were also, as might be expected, freely imported into England: "Whit wyn of Oseye, and of Gascoyne, Of the Ruele, and of the Rochel wyn." As far down, indeed, as Henry VIII.'s time you might get Gascony and Guienne wine for eightpence a gallon, and the comfortable word "claret" was well known early in the seventeenth century. One of its admirers, however, about that time gave odd reasons for liking it, to wit--"Claret is a noble wine, for it is the same complexion that noblemen's coats be of." This gentleman must have been a strenuous admirer of the aristocracy. The old Gascon growth was, however, in all probability, what we should now call coarse, rough wine. The district which is blessed by the growth of Chateau Margaux and Chateau Lafitte, was a stony desert. An old French local book gives an account of the "savage and solitary country of Medoc;" and the wines of the Bordelais, there is every reason to believe, were grown in the strong, loamy soil bordering the river. By the time that the magic spots had been discovered, blessed with the mystic properties which produce the Queen of Wine we had been saddled with--our tastes perverted, and our stomachs destroyed--by the woful Methuen treaty--heavy may it sit on the souls of Queen Anne, and all her wigged and powdered ministers--if, indeed, men who preferred port wine to claret can be conceived to have had any souls at all, worth speaking about--and thenceforth John Bull burnt the coat of his stomach, muddled the working of his brain, made himself bilious, dyspeptic, headachy, and nationally stupid, by imbibing a mixture of strong, coarse, wines, with a taste but no flavour, and bedevilled with every alcoholic and chemical adulteration, which could make its natural qualities worse than they were. See how our literature fell off. The Elizabethans quaffed sack, or "Gascoyne, or Rochel wyn;" and we had the giants of those days. The Charles II. comedy writers worked on claret. Port came into fashion--port sapped our brains--and, instead of Wycherly's _Country Wife_, and Vanbrugh's _Relapse_, we had Mr. Morton's _Wild Oats_, and Mr. Cherry's _Soldier's Daughter_. It is really much to the credit of Scotland, that she stood staunchly by her old ally, France, and would have nothing to do with that dirty little slice of the worst part of Spain--Portugal, or her brandified potations. In the old Scotch houses a cask of claret stood in the hall, nobly on the tap. In the humblest Scotch country tavern, the pewter _tappit hen_, holding some three quarts--think of that, Master Slender,--"reamed," _Anglice_ mantled, with claret just drawn from the cask, and you quaffed it, snapping your fingers at custom-houses. At length, in an evil hour Scotland fell: "Bold and erect the Caledonian stood, Firm was his mutton, and his claret good; 'Let him drink port!' the English statesman cried. He drank the poison, and his spirit died!" But enough of this painful subject. As Quin used to say, "Anybody drink port? No! I thought so: Waiter, take away the black strap, and throw it out." Upon the principle, I suppose, of the nearer the church, the further from God, Bordeaux is by no means a good place for good ordinary wine; on the contrary, the stuff they give you for every-day tipple is positively poor, and very flavourless. In southern Burgundy, the most ordinary of the wines is capital. At Macon, for a quarter of a handful of sous they give you nectar; at the little town of Tain, where the Rhone sweeps gloriously round the great Hermitage rock, they give you something better than nectar for less. But the ordinary Bordeaux wine is very ordinary indeed; not quite so red-inky, perhaps, as the _Vin de Surenne_, which, Brillat Savarin says, requires three men to swallow a glassful--the man who drinks, and the friends who uphold him on either side, and coax, and encourage him; but still meagre and starveling, as if it had been strained through something which took the virtue out of it. Of course, the best of wine can be had by the simple process of paying for it, but I am talking of the ordinary work-a-day tipple of the place. A few days' lounging in Bordeaux over, and hearing that the vintage was in full operation, I put myself into a respectable little omnibus, and started for the true claret country. In a couple of hours I was put down at the door of the only auberge in the tiny village of Margaux, and to any traveller who may hereafter wish to visit the famous wine district, I cordially commend "The Rising Sun," kept by the worthy "Mere Cadillac." There you will have a bedroom clean and bright as a Dutch parlour; a grand old four-poster of the ancient regime, something between a bed and a cathedral; a profusion of linen deliciously white and sweet smelling; and _la Mere_ will toss you up a nice little potage, and a cotelette done to a turn, and an omelette which is perfection; and she will ask you, in the matter of wine, whether you prefer _ordinaire_ or _vieux_? and when you reply, _Vieux et du meilleur_, she will presently bustle in with a glorious long-necked, cobwebby flask, the first glass of which will induce you to lean back in a tranquil state of general happiness, and contemplate with satisfaction even the naughty doings of the wicked Marguerite of Burgundy, and her sisters Blanche and Henriette, with Buridan and Gaulnay, in the _Tour de Nesle_--illustrations of which popular tragedy deck the walls on every side. While thus agreeably employed, then, I may enlighten you with a few topographical words about the claret district. Look at the map, and you will observe a long tract of country, dotted with very few towns or villages, called the Landes, stretching along the sea coast from the Pyrenees to the mouth of the Gironde. At one place the Landes are almost sixty miles broad, but to the north they fine gradually away, the great river Garonne shouldering them, as it were, into the sea. Now these Landes (into which we will travel presently) are, for the most part, a weary wilderness of pine-wood, morasses, sand-deserts, and barren shingle. On the other hand, the low banks of the Garonne are generally of a fat, loamy, and black soil, called, locally, _Palus_. Well, between the Palus and the Landes, there is a longish strip of country from two to five miles broad, a low ridge or backbone, which may be said to be the neutral and blending point of the sterile Landes and the fat and fertile Palus. And truth to tell, the earth seems as if the influence of the latter had much to do to bear up against the former. A Norfolk farmer would turn with a contemptuous laugh from the poor-looking stony soil. "Why," says he, "it's all sand, and gravel, and shingle, and scorched with the sun. You would not get a blade of chickweed to grow there." The proprietors of Medoc would be very glad if this latter assertion were correct, for the weeding of the vineyards form no inconsiderable item in the expense of cultivation; but this much may be safely predicted of this strange soil, that it would not afford the nourishment to a patch of oats, which that modest grain manages to extract from the bare hill-side of some cold, bleak, Highland croft, and yet that it furnishes the influence which produces grapes yielding the most truly generous and consummately flavoured wine ever drank by man since Noah planted the first vine slip. You have now finished the bottle of Vieux. Up, and let us out among the vineyards. A few paces clears us of the little hamlet of Margaux, with its constant rattle of busy coopers, and we are fairly in the country. Try to catch the general _coup d'oeil_. We are in an unpretending pleasant-looking region, neither flat nor hilly--the vines stretching away around in gentle undulations, broken here and there by intervening jungles of coppice-wood, by strips of black firs, or by the stately avenues and ornamental woods of a first-class chateau. Gazing from the bottoms of the shallow valleys, you seem standing amid a perfect sea of vines, which form a monotonous horizon of unvaried green. Attaining the height beyond, distant village spires rise into the air--the flattened roofs and white walls of scattered hamlets gleam cheerfully forth from embowering woods of walnut trees--and the expanse of the vineyards is broken by hedged patches of meadow land, affording the crops of coarse natural hay, upon which are fed the slowly-moving, raw-boned oxen which you see dragging lumbering wains along the winding dusty way. And now look particularly at the vines. Nothing romantic in their appearance, no trellis work, none of the embowering, or the clustering, which the poets are so fond of. Here, in two words, is the aspect of some of the most famous vineyards in the world. [Illustration] Fancy open and unfenced expanses of stunted-looking, scrubby bushes, seldom rising two feet above the surface, planted in rows upon the summit of deep furrow ridges, and fastened with great care to low, fence-like lines of espaliers, which run in unbroken ranks from one end of the huge fields to the other. These espaliers or lathes are cuttings of the walnut-trees around, and the tendrils of the vine are attached to the horizontally running stakes with withes, or thongs of bark. It is curious to observe the vigilant pains and attention with which every twig has been supported without being strained, and how things are arranged so as to give every cluster as fair a chance as possible of a goodly allowance of sun. Such, then, is the general appearance of matters; but it is by no means perfectly uniform. Now and then you find a patch of vines unsupported, drooping, and straggling, and sprawling, and intertwisting their branches like beds of snakes; and again, you come into the district of a new species of bush, a thicker, stouter affair, a grenadier vine, growing to at least six feet, and supported by a corresponding stake. But the low, two-feet dwarfs are invariably the great wine givers. If ever you want to see a homily, not read, but grown by nature, against trusting to appearances, go to Medoc and study the vines. Walk and gaze, until you come to the most shabby, stunted, weazened, scrubby, dwarfish, expanse of snobbish bushes, ignominiously bound neck and crop to the espaliers like a man on the rack--these utterly poor, starved, and meagre-looking growths, allowing, as they do, the gravelly soil to show in bald patches of grey shingle through the straggling branches--these contemptible-looking shrubs, like paralysed and withered raspberries, it is which produce the most priceless, and the most inimitably flavoured wines. Such are the vines which grow Chateau Margaux at half a sovereign the bottle. The grapes themselves are equally unpromising. If you saw a bunch in Covent Garden you would turn from them with the notion that the fruiterer was trying to do his customer, with over-ripe black currants. Lance's soul would take no joy in them, and no sculptor in his senses would place such meagre bunches in the hands and over the open mouths of his Nymphs, his Bacchantes, or his Fauns. Take heed, then, by the lesson, and beware of judging of the nature of either men or grapes by their looks. Meantime, let us continue our survey of the country. No fences or ditches you see--the ground is too precious to be lost in such vanities--only, you observe from time to time a rudely carved stake stuck in the ground, and indicating the limits of properties. Along either side of the road the vines extend, utterly unprotected. No raspers, no ha-ha's, no fierce denunciations of trespassers, no polite notices of spring guns and steel traps constantly in a state of high go-offism--only, when the grapes are ripening, the people lay prickly branches along the way-side to keep the dogs, foraging for partridges among the espaliers, from taking a refreshing mouthful from the clusters as they pass; for it seems to be a fact that everybody, every beast, and every bird, whatever may be his, her, or its nature in other parts of the world, when brought among grapes, eats grapes. As for the peasants, their appetite for grapes is perfectly preposterous. Unlike the surfeit-sickened grocer's boys, who, after the first week loathe figs, and turn poorly when sugar-candy is hinted at, the love of grapes appears literally to grow by what it feeds on. Every garden is full of table vines. The people eat grapes with breakfast, lunch, dinner, and supper, and between breakfast, lunch, dinner, and supper. The labourer plods along the road munching a cluster. The child in its mother's arms is tugging away with its toothless gums at a bleeding bunch; while as for the vintagers, male and female, in the less important plantations, Heaven only knows where the masses of grapes go to, which they devour, labouring incessantly at the _metier_, as they do, from dawn till sunset. A strange feature in the wine country is the wondrously capricious and fitful nature of the soil. A forenoon's walk will show you the earth altering in its surface qualities almost like the shifting hues of shot silk--gravel of a light colour fading into gravel of a dark--sand blending with the mould, and bringing it now to a dusky yellow, now to an ashen grey--strata of chalky clay every now and then struggling into light only to melt away into beds of mere shingle--or bright semi-transparent pebbles, indebted to the action of water for shape and hue. At two principal points these blending and shifting qualities of soil put forth their utmost powers--in the favoured grounds of Margaux, and again, at a distance of about fifteen miles further to the north, in the vineyards of Lafitte, Latour, and between these latter, in the sunny slopes of St. Jullien. And the strangest thing of all is, that the quality--the magic--of the ground changes, without, in all cases, a corresponding change in the surface strata. If a fanciful and wilful fairy had flown over Medoc, flinging down here a blessing and there a curse upon the shifting shingle, the effect could not have been more oddly various. You can almost jump from a spot unknown to fame to another clustered with the most precious vintage of Europe. Half-a-dozen furrows often make all the difference between vines producing a beverage which will be drunk in the halls and palaces of England and Russia, and vines yielding a harvest which will be consumed in the cabarets and estaminets of the neighbourhood. It is to be observed, however, that the first-class wines belong almost entirely to the large proprietors. Amid a labyrinth of little patches, the property of the labouring peasants around, will be a spot appertaining to, and bearing the name of, some of the famous growths; while, conversely, inserted, as if by an accident, in the centre of a district of great name, and producing wine of great price, will be a perverse patch, yielding the most commonplace tipple, and worth not so many sous per yard as the surrounding earth is worth crowns. How comes this? The peasants will tell you that it doesn't come at all. That it is all cant and _blague_ and puff on the part of the big proprietors, and that their wine is only more thought of because they have more capital to get it bragged about. Near Chateau Lafitte, on a burning afternoon, I took refuge beneath the emblematic bush; for the emblem which good wine is said not to require, is still, in the mid and southern districts of France, in universal use; in other words, I entered a village public-house. Two old men, very much of the general type of the people of the country--that is, tall and spare, with intelligent and mildly-expressive faces and fine black eyes, were discussing together a sober bottle. One of them had lost an arm, and the other a leg. As I glanced at this peculiarity, the one-legged man caught my eye. "Ah!" he said, "looking at our misfortunes; I left my leg on Waterloo." "And I," chimed in his companion, "left my arm at Trafalgar." "_Sacré!_" said the veteran of the land. "One of the cursed English bullets took me in the knee, and spoiled as tight a lancer as they had in the gallant 10th." "And I," rejoined the other, "was at the fourth main-deck gun of the Pluton when I was struck with the splinter while we were engaging the Mars. But we had our revenge. The Pluton shot the Mars' captain's head off!"--a fact which I afterwards verified. Captain Duff, the officer alluded to, was thus killed upon his quarter-deck, and the same ball shattered two seamen almost to pieces. "_Sacré!_" said the _ci-devant_ lancer, "I'd like to have a rap at the English again--I would--the English--_nom de tonnerre_--tell me--didn't they murder the emperor?" A rising smile, which I could not help, stopped him. I had spoken so few words, that the fact that a son of _perfide Albion_ was before them was only manifested by the expression of my face. "_Tiens!_" continued the Waterloo man, "_You_ are an Englishman." The old sailor, who was evidently by no means so keen a hand as his comrade, nudged him; a hint, I suppose, in common phrase, to draw it mild; but the ex-lancer of the 10th was not to be put down. "Well, and if you are, what then, eh? I say I would like to have another brush with you." "No, no! We have had enough of brushes!" said the far more pacific man of the sea. "I think--_mon voisin_--that you and I have had quite enough of fighting." "But they killed the emperor. _Sacré nom de tous les diables_--they killed the emperor." My modest exculpation on behalf of Great Britain and Ireland was listened to with great impatience by the maimed lancer, and great attention by the maimed sailor, who kept up a running commentary: "_Eh! eh! entendez cela._ Now, that's quite different (to his friend) from what you tell us. Come--that's another story altogether; and what I say is, that's reasonable." But the lancer was not to be convinced--"_Sacré bleu!_--they killed the emperor." All this, it is to be observed, passed without the slightest feeling of personal animosity. The lancer, who, I suspect, had passed the forenoon in the cabaret, every now and then shook hands with me magnanimously, as to show that his wrath was national--not individual; and when I proposed a bottle of rather better wine than they had been drinking, neither soldier nor sailor had a word to say in objection. The wine was brought, and very good it was, though not, of course, first-class claret. "What do you think of that?" said the sailor. "I wish I had as good every day in England," I replied. "And why haven't you?" said the fierce lancer. "You might, if you chose. But you drink none of our wines." I demurred to this proposition; but the Waterloo man was down on me in no time. "Yes, yes; the wines of the great houses--the great proprietors. _Sacré!_--the _farceurs_--the _blageurs_--who puff their wines, and get them puffed, and great prices for them, when they're not better than ours--the peasant's wines--when they're grown in the same ground--ripened by the same sun! _Mille diables!_ Look at that bottle!--taste it! My son-in-law grew it. My son-in-law sells it; I know all about it. You shall have that bottle for ten sous, and the Lafitte people and the Larose people would charge you ten francs for it; and it is as good for ten sous as theirs for ten francs. I tell you it grew side by side with their vines; but they have capital--they have power. They crack off their wines, and we--the poor people!--we, who trim and dig and work our little patches--no one knows anything about us. Our wine--bah!--what is it? It has no name--no fame! Who will give us francs? No, no; sous for the poor man--francs for the rich. Copper for the little landlord; silver--silver and gold for the big landlord! As our curé said last Sunday: 'Unto him who has much, more shall be given.' _Sacré Dieu de dieux!_--Even the Bible goes against the poor!" All this time, the old sailor was tugging his comrade's jacket, and uttering sundry deprecatory ejaculations against such unnecessary vehemence. The Trafalgar man was clearly a take-it-easy personage; not troubled by too much thinking, and by no means a professional grievance-monger. So he interposed to bring back the topic to a more soothing subject, and said that what he would like, would be to see lots of English ships coming up the Gironde with the good cottons and woollens and hardwares we made in England, and taking back in exchange their cheap and wholesome wines--not only the great vintages (_crus_) for the great folk, but the common vintages for the common folk. "Indeed, I think," he concluded, "that sitting here drinking this good ten sous' wine with this English gentleman--who's going to pay for it--is far better than fighting him and hacking him up, or his hacking us up, with swords and balls and so forth." To this most sensible opinion we had all the pains in the world to get the doughty lancer to incline. He couldn't see it at all. He would like to have another brush. He wasn't half done for yet. It was all very well; but war was grand, and glory was grand. "_Vive la guerre!_" and "_Vive la gloire!_" "But," said the sailor, "there is death in glory!" "_Eh bien!_" shouted the warrior, with as perfect French sentiment as ever I heard, "_Vive la mort!_" In the end, however, he was pleased to admit that, if we took the peasant wines, something might be made of us. The case was not utterly hopeless; and when I rose to go, he proposed a stirrup-cup--a _coup de l'étrier_--to the washing down of all unkindness; but, in the very act of swallowing it, he didn't exactly stop, but made a motion as if he would, and then slowly letting the last drop run over his lips, he put down the glass, and said, bitterly and coldly, "_Mais pourtant, vous avez tué l'Empereur!_" I have introduced this episode principally for the purpose of showing the notions entertained by the small proprietary as to the boasted superiority of the large vineyards; but the plain truth is, that the great growers are perfectly in the right. I have stated that the quality of the soil throughout the grape country varies almost magically. Well, the good spots have been more or less known since Medoc was Medoc; and the larger and richer residents have got them, by inheritance, by marriage, and by purchase, almost entirely into their own hands. Next they greatly improved both the soil and the breed of plants. They studied and experimentalized until they found the most proper manures and the most promising cultures. They grafted and crossed the vine plants till they got the most admirably bearing bushes, and then, generation after generation, devoting all their attention to the quality of the wine, without regard to the quantity--scrupulously taking care that not a grape which is unripe or over-ripe finds its way to the tub--that the whole process shall be scrupulously clean, and that every stage of fermentation be assiduously attended to--the results of all this has been the perfectly-perfumed and high-class clarets, which fetch an enormous price; while the peasant proprietors, careless in cultivation, using old vine plants, anxious, at the vintage, only for quantity, and confined to the worst spots in the district, succeed in producing wines which, good as they are, have not the slightest pretence to enter into competition with the liquid harvests of their richer and more enlightened neighbours. But it is high time to sketch, and with more elaboration than I have hitherto attempted, the claret vintage and the claret vintagers. Yet still, for a moment, I must pause upon the threshold. Will it be believed--whether it will or not it is, nevertheless, true--that the commencement of the vintage in France is settled, not by the opinion or the convenience of the proprietors, but by the _autorités_ of each _arrondissement_? As September wanes and the grape ripens, the rural mayor assembles what he calls a jury of _experts_; which jury proceed, from day to day, through the vineyards, inspecting and tasting the grapes and cross-questioning the growers; after which, they report to the mayor a special day on which, having regard to all the vineyards, they think that the vintage ought to commence. One proprietor, in a very sunny situation and a hot soil, may have been ready to begin a fortnight before; another, in a converse locality, may not be ready to commence for a fortnight afterwards. _N'importe_--the French have a great notion of uniform symmetry and symmetrical uniformity, and so the whole district starts together--the mayor issuing, _par autorité_, a highly-official-looking document, which is duly posted by yellow-breeched _gens-d'armes_, and, before the appearance of which, not a vine-grower can gather, for wine purposes, a single grape. Now, what must be the common sense of a country which permits, for one instant, the continuance of this wretched little tyrannical humbug? Only think of a trumpery little mayor and a couple of beadles proclaiming to the farmers of England that now they might begin to cut their wheat! The mayor's mace would be forced down the beadle's throat, and the beadle's staff down the mayor's. But they manage these things--not exactly--better in France. What would France be without _les autorités_? Could the sun rise without a prefect? Certainly not. Could it set without a sub-prefect? Certainly not. Could the planets shine on France unless they were furnished with passports for the firmament? Clearly not. Could the rain on France unless each drop came armed with the _visé_ of some wonderful bureau or other? Decidedly not. Well, then, how could the vintage begin until the people, who know nothing about the vintage, command it? It is quite clear, that if you have any doubt about these particulars, you know very little of the privileges, the rights, the functions, and the powers, of the "authorities" in France. [Illustration] [Illustration: THE VINTAGE.] CHAPTER III. THE VINTAGE AND THE VINTAGERS. So much, then, for preliminary information. Let us now proceed to the joyous ingathering of the fruits of the earth--the great yearly festival and jubilee of the property and the labour of Medoc. October, the "wine month," is approaching. For weeks, every cloud in the sky has been watched--every cold night breeze felt with nervous apprehension. Upon the last bright weeks in summer, the savour and the bouquet of the wine depend. Warmed by the blaze of an unclouded sun, fanned by the mild breezes of the west, and moistened by morning and evening dews, the grapes by slow degrees attain their perfect ripeness and their culminating point of flavour. Then the vintage implements begin to be sought out, cleaned, repaired, and scoured and sweetened with hot brandy. Coopers work as if their lives depended upon their industry; and all the anomalous tribe of lookers-out for chance jobs in town and country pack up their bag and baggage, and from scores of miles around pour in ragged regiments into Medoc. There have long existed pleasing, and in some sort poetical, associations connected with the task of securing for human use the fruits of the earth; and to no species of crop do these picturesque associations apply with greater force than to the ingathering of the ancient harvest of the vine. From time immemorial, the season has typified epochs of plenty and mirthful-heartedness--of good fare and of good-will. The ancient types and figures descriptive of the vintage are still literally true. The march of agricultural improvement seems never to have set foot amid the vines. As it was with the patriarchs in the East, so it is with the modern children of men. The goaded ox still bears home the high-pressed grape-tub, and the feet of the treader are still red in the purple juice which maketh glad the heart of man. The scene is at once full of beauty, and of tender and even sacred associations. The songs of the vintagers, frequently chorussed from one part of the field to the other, ring blithely into the bright summer air, pealing out above the rough jokes and hearty peals of laughter shouted hither and thither. All the green jungle is alive with the moving figures of men and women, stooping among the vines or bearing pails and basketfuls of grapes out to the grass-grown crossroads, along which the labouring oxen drag the rough vintage carts, groaning and cracking as they stagger along beneath their weight of purple tubs heaped high with the tumbling masses of luscious fruit. The congregation of every age and both sexes, and the careless variety of costume, add additional features of picturesqueness to the scene. The white-haired old man labours with shaking hands to fill the basket which his black-eyed imp of a grandchild carries rejoicingly away. Quaint broad-brimmed straw and felt hats--handkerchiefs twisted like turbans over straggling elf locks--swarthy skins tanned to an olive-brown--black flashing eyes--and hands and feet stained in the abounding juices of the precious fruit--all these southern peculiarities of costume and appearance supply the vintage with its pleasant characteristics. The clatter of tongues is incessant. A fire of jokes and jeers, of saucy questions, and more saucy retorts--of what, in fact, in the humble and unpoetic but expressive vernacular, is called "chaff,"--is kept up with a vigour which seldom flags, except now and then, when the butt-end of a song, or the twanging close of a chorus strikes the general fancy, and procures for the _morceau_ a lusty _encore_. Meantime, the master wine-grower moves observingly from rank to rank. No neglected bunch of fruit escapes his watchful eye. No careless vintager shakes the precious berries rudely upon the soil, but he is promptly reminded of his slovenly work. Sometimes the tubs attract the careful superintendent. He turns up the clusters to ascertain that no leaves nor useless length of tendril are entombed in the juicy masses, and anon directs his steps to the pressing-trough, anxious to find that the lusty treaders are persevering manfully in their long-continued dance. Thither we will follow. The wine-press, or _cuvier de pressoir_, consists, in the majority of cases, of a massive shallow tub, varying in size from four square feet to as many square yards. It is placed either upon wooden trestles or on a regularly-built platform of mason-work under the huge rafters of a substantial outhouse. Close to it stands a range of great butts, their number more or less, according to the size of the vineyard. The grapes are flung by tub and caskfuls into the cuvier. The treaders stamp diligently amid the masses, and the expressed juice pours plentifully out of a hole level with the bottom of the trough into a sieve of iron or wickerwork, which stops the passage of the skins, and from thence drains into tubs below. Suppose, at the moment of our arrival, the cuvier for a brief space empty. The treaders--big, perspiring men, in shirts and tucked-up trowsers--spattered to the eyes with splatches of purple juice, lean upon their wooden spades, and wipe their foreheads. But their respite is short. The creak of another cart-load of tubs is heard, and immediately the waggon is backed up to the broad open window, or rather hole in the wall, above the trough. A minute suffices to wrench out tub after tub, and to tilt their already half-mashed clusters splash into the reeking _pressoir_. Then to work again. Jumping with a sort of spiteful eagerness into the mountain of yielding quivering fruit, the treaders sink almost to the knees, stamping and jumping and rioting in the masses of grapes, as fountains of juice spurt about their feet, and rush bubbling and gurgling away. Presently, having, as it were, drawn the first sweet blood of the new cargo, the eager trampling subsides into a sort of quiet, measured dance, which the treaders continue, while, with their wooden spades, they turn the pulpy remnants of the fruit hither and thither, so as to expose the half-squeezed berries in every possible way to the muscular action of the incessantly moving feet. All this time, the juice is flowing in a continuous stream into the tubs beneath. When the jet begins to slacken, the heap is well tumbled with the wooden spades, and, as though a new force had been applied, the juice-jet immediately breaks out afresh. It takes, perhaps, half or three-quarters of an hour thoroughly to squeeze the contents of a good-sized cuvier, sufficiently manned. When at length, however, no further exertion appears to be attended with corresponding results, the tubfuls of expressed juice are carried by means of ladders to the edges of the vats, and their contents tilted in; while the men in the trough, setting-to with their spades, fling the masses of dripping grape-skins in along with the juice. The vats sufficiently full, the fermentation is allowed to commence. In the great cellars in which the juice is stored, the listener at the door--he cannot brave the carbonic acid gas to enter further--may hear, solemnly echoing in the cool shade of the great darkened hall, the bubblings and seethings of the working liquid--the inarticulate accents and indistinct rumblings which proclaim that a great metempsychosis is taking place--that a natural substance is rising higher in the eternal scale of things, and that the contents of these great giants of vats are becoming changed from floods of mere mawkish, sweetish fluid to noble wine--to a liquid honoured and esteemed in all ages--to a medicine exercising a strange and potent effect upon body and soul--great for good and evil. Is there not something fanciful and poetic in the notion of this change taking place mysteriously in the darkness, when all the doors are locked and barred--for the atmosphere about the vats is death--as if Nature would suffer no idle prying into her mystic operations, and as if the grand transmutation and projection from juice to wine had in it something of a secret and solemn and awful nature--fenced round, as it were, and protected from vulgar curiosity by the invisible halo of stifling gas? I saw the vats in the Chateau Margaux cellars the day after the grape-juice had been flung in. Fermentation had not as yet properly commenced, so access to the place was possible; still, however, there was a strong vinous smell loading the atmosphere, sharp and subtle in its influence on the nostrils; while, putting my ear, on the recommendation of my conductor, to the vats, I heard, deep down, perhaps eight feet down in the juice, a seething, gushing sound, as if currents and eddies were beginning to flow, in obedience to the influence of the working Spirit, and now and then a hiss and a low bubbling throb, as though of a pot about to boil. Within twenty-four hours, the cellar would be unapproachable. Of course, it is quite foreign to my plan to enter upon anything like a detailed account of wine-making. I may only add, that the refuse-skins, stalks, and so forth, which settle into the bottom of the fermentation vats, are taken out again after the wine has been drawn off and subjected to a new squeezing--in a press, however, and not by the foot--the products being a small quantity of fiery, ill-flavoured wine, full of the bitter taste of the seeds and stalks of the grape, and possessing no aroma or bouquet. The Bordeaux press for this purpose is rather ingeniously constructed. It consists of a sort of a skeleton of a cask, strips of daylight shining through from top to bottom between the staves. In the centre works a strong perpendicular iron screw. The _rape_, as the refuse of the treading is called, is piled beneath it; the screw is manned capstan fashion, and the unhappy seeds, skins, and stalks, undergo a most dismal squeezing. Nor do their trials end there. The wine-makers are terrible hands for getting at the very last get-at-able drop. To this end, somewhat on the principle of rinsing an exhausted spirit bottle, so as, as it were, to catch the very flavour still clinging to the glass, they plunge the doubly-squeezed _rape_ into water, let it lie there for a short time, and then attack it with the press again. The result is a horrible stuff called _piquette_, which, in a wine country, bears the same resemblance to wine as the very dirtiest, most wishy-washy, and most contemptible of swipes bears to honest porter or ale. Piquette, in fact, may be defined as the ghost of wine!--wine minus its bones, its flesh, and its soul!--a liquid shadow!--a fluid nothing!--an utter negation of all comfortable things and associations! Nevertheless, however, the peasants swill it down in astounding quantities, and apparently with sufficient satisfaction. And now a word as to wine-treading. The process is universal in France, with the exception of the cases of the sparkling wines of the Rhone and Champagne, the grapes for which are squeezed by mechanical means, not by the human foot. Now, very venerable and decidedly picturesque as is the process of wine-treading, it is unquestionably rather a filthy one; and the spectacle of great brown horny feet, not a whit too clean, splashing and sprawling in the bubbling juice, conveys at first sight a qualmy species of feeling, which, however, seems only to be entertained by those to whom the sight is new. I looked dreadfully askance at the operation when I first came across it; and when I was invited--by a lady, too--to taste the juice, of which she caught up a glassful, a certain uncomfortable feeling of the inward man warred terribly against politeness. But nobody around seemed to be in the least squeamish. Often and often did I see one of the heroes of the tub walk quietly over a dunghill, and then jump--barefooted, of course, as he was--into the juice; and even a vigilant proprietor, who was particularly careful that no bad grapes went into the tub, made no objection. When I asked why a press was not used, as more handy, cleaner, and more convenient, I was everywhere assured that all efforts had failed to construct a wine-press capable of performing the work with the perfection attained by the action of the human foot. No mechanical squeezing, I was informed, would so nicely express that peculiar proportion of the whole moisture of the grape which forms the highest flavoured wine. The manner in which the fruit was tossed about was pointed out to me, and I was asked to observe that the grapes were, as it were, squeezed in every possible fashion and from every possible side, worked and churned and mashed hither and thither by the ever-moving toes and muscles of the foot. As far as any impurity went, the argument was, that the fermentation flung, as scum to the surface, every atom of foreign matter held in suspension in the wine, and that the liquid ultimately obtained was as exquisitely pure as if human flesh had never touched it. In the collection of these and such like particulars, I sauntered for days among the vineyards around; and, utterly unknown and unfriended as I was, I met everywhere the most cordial and pleasant receptions. I would lounge, for example, to the door of a wine-treading shed, to watch the movements of the people. Presently the proprietor, most likely attired in a broad-brimmed straw hat, a strange faded outer garment, half shooting-coat half dressing gown, would come up courteously to the stranger, and, learning that I was an English visitor to the vintage, would busy himself with the most graceful kindness, to make intelligible the _rationale_ of all the operations. Often I was invited into the chateau or farm-house, as the case might be; a bottle of an old vintage produced and comfortably discussed in the coolness of the darkened, thinly-furnished room, with its old-fashioned walnut-tree escrutoires, and beauffets, its quaintly-pannelled walls, and its polished floors, gleaming like mirrors and slippery as ice. On these occasions, the conversation would often turn upon the general rejection, by England, of French wines--a sore point with the growers of all save the first-class vintages, and in which I had, as may be conceived, very little to say in defence either of our taste or our policy. In the evenings, which were getting chill and cold, I occasionally abandoned my room with illustrations from the _Tour de Nesle_ for the general kitchen and parlour of Madame Cadillac, and, ensconcing myself in the chimney corner--a fine old-fashioned ingle, crackling and blazing with hard wood logs--listened to the chat of the people of the village; they were nearly all coopers and vine-dressers, who resorted there after the day's work was over to enjoy an exceedingly modest modicum of very thin wine. I never benefitted very much, however, by these listenings. It was my bad luck to hear recounted neither tale nor legend--to pick up, at the hands of my _compotatores_, neither local trait nor anecdote. The conversation was as small as the wine. The gossip of the place--the prospects of the vintage--elaborate comparisons of it with other vintages--births, marriages, and deaths--a minute list of scandal, more or less intelligible when conveyed in hints and allusions--were the staple topics, mixed up, however, once or twice with general denunciations of the niggardly conduct of certain neighbouring proprietors to their vintagers--giving them for breakfast nothing but coarse bread, lard, and not even piquette to wash it down with, and for dinner not much more tempting dishes. In Medoc, there are two classes of vintagers--the fixed and the floating population; and the latter, which makes an annual inroad into the district just as the Irish harvesters do into England and Scotland, comprising a goodly proportion of very dubious and suspicious-looking characters. The _gen-d'armerie_ have a busy time of it when these gentry are collected in numbers in the district. Poultry disappear with the most miraculous promptitude; small linen articles hung out to dry have no more chance than if Falstaff's regiment were marching by; and garden-fruit and vegetables, of course, share the results produced by a rigid application of the maxim that _la propriété c'est le vol_. Where these people come from is a puzzle. There will be vagrants and strollers among them from all parts of France--from the Pyrenees and the Alps--from the pine-woods of the Landes and the moors of Brittany. They unite in bands of a dozen or a score men and women, appointing a chief, who bargains with the vine-proprietor for the services of the company, and keeps up some degree of order and subordination, principally by means of the unconstitutional application of a good thick stick. I frequently encountered these bands, making their way from one district to another, and better samples of "the dangerous classes" were never collected. They looked vicious and abandoned, as well as miserably poor. The women, in particular, were as brazen-faced a set of slatterns as could be conceived; and the majority of the men--tattered, strapping-looking fellows, with torn slouched hats, and tremendous cudgels--were exactly the sort of persons a nervous gentleman would have scruples about meeting at dusk in a long lane. It is when thus on the tramp that the petty pilfering and picking and stealing to which I have alluded to goes on. When actually at work, they have no time for picking up unconsidered trifles. Sometimes these people pass the night--all together, of course--in out-houses or barns, when the _chef_ can strike a good bargain; at other times they bivouac on the lee-side of a wood or wall, in genuine gipsy fashion. You may often see their watchfires glimmering in the night; and be sure that where you do, there are twisted necks and vacant nests in many a neighbouring hen-roost. One evening I was sauntering along the beach at Paulliac--a little town on the river's bank, about a dozen of miles from the mouth of the Gironde, and holding precisely the same relation to Bordeaux as Gravesend does to London--when a band of vintagers, men, women, and children, came up. They were bound to some village on the opposite side of the Gironde, and wanted to get ferried across. A long parley accordingly ensued between the chief and a group of boatmen. The commander of the vintage forces offered four sous per head as the passage-money. The bargemen would hear of nothing under five; and after a tremendous verbal battle, the vintagers announced that they were not going to be cheated, and that if they could not cross the water, they could stay where they were. Accordingly, a bivouac was soon formed. Creeping under the lee of a row of casks, on the shingle of the bare beach, the women were placed leaning against the somewhat hard and large pillows in question; the children were nestled at their feet and in their laps; and the men formed the outermost ranks. A supply of loaves was sent for and obtained. The chief tore the bread up into huge hunks, which he distributed to his dependents; and upon this supper the whole party went coolly to sleep--more coolly, indeed, than agreeably; for a keen north wind was whistling along the sedgy banks of the river, and the red blaze of high-piled faggots was streaming from the houses across the black, cold, turbid waters. At length, however, some arrangement was come to; for, on visiting the spot a couple of hours afterwards, I found the party rather more comfortably ensconced under the ample sails of the barge which was to bear them the next morning to their destination. The dinner-party formed every day, when the process of stripping the vines is going on, is, particularly in the cases in which the people are treated well by the proprietor, frequently a very pretty and very picturesque spectacle. It always takes place in the open air, amongst the bushes, or under some neighbouring walnut-tree. Sometimes long tables are spread upon tressles; but in general no such formality is deemed requisite. The guests fling themselves in groups upon the ground--men and women picturesquely huddled together--the former bloused and bearded personages--the latter showy, in their bright short petticoats of home-spun and dyed cloth, with glaring handkerchiefs twisted like turbans round their heads--each man and woman with a deep plate in his or her lap. Then the people of the house bustle about, distributing huge brown loaves, which are torn asunder, and the fragments chucked from hand to hand. Next a vast cauldron of soup, smoking like a volcano, is painfully lifted out from the kitchen, and dealt about in mighty ladlefuls; while the founder of the feast takes care that the tough, thready _bouilli_--like lumps of boiled-down hemp--shall be fairly apportioned among his guests. _Piquette_ is the general beverage. A barrel is set abroach, and every species of mug, glass, cup, and jug about the establishment is called in to aid in its consumption. A short rest, devoted to chatting, or very often sleeping in the shade, over, the signal is given, and the work recommences. "You have seen our _salle à manger_," said one of my courteous entertainers--he of the broad-brimmed straw hat; "and now you shall see our _chambre à coucher_." Accordingly, he led me to a barn close to his wine-cellars. The place was littered deep with clean, fresh straw. Here and there rolled-up blankets were laid against the wall; while all round, from nails stuck in between the bare bricks, hung by straps and strings the little bundles, knapsacks, and other baggage of the labourers. On one side, two or three swarthy young women were playfully pushing each other aside, so as to get at a morsel of cracked mirror stuck against the wall--their long hair hanging down in black elf-locks, in the preliminary stage of its arrangement. "That is the ladies' side," said my _cicerone_, pointing to the girls; "and that"--extending his other hand--"is the gentlemen's side." "And so they all sleep here together?" "Every night. I find shelter and straw; any other accommodation they must procure for themselves." "Rather unruly, I should suppose?" "Not a bit. They are too tired to do anything but sleep. They go off, sir, like dormice." "_Oh, sil plait à Mossieu!_" put in one of the damsels. "The chief of the band does the police." (_Fait la gen-d'armerie._) "Certainly--certainly," said the proprietor; "the gentlemen lie here, with their heads to the wall; the ladies there; and the _chef de la bande_ stretches himself all along between them." "A sort of living frontier?" "Truly; and he allows no nonsense." "_Il est meme éxcessivement severe_," interpolated the same young lady. "He need be," replied her employer. "He allows no loud speaking--no joking; and as there are no candles, no light, why, they can do nothing better than go quietly to sleep, if it were only in self-defence." One word more about the vintage. The reader will easily conceive that it is on the smaller properties, where the wine is intended, not so much for commerce as for household use, that the vintage partakes most of the festival nature. In the large and first-class vineyards the process goes on under rigid superintendence, and is as much as possible made a cold matter of business. He who wishes to see the vintages of books and poems--the laughing, joking, singing festivals amid the vines, which we are accustomed to consider the harvests of the grape--must betake him to the multitudinous patches of peasant property, in which neighbour helps neighbour to gather in the crop, and upon which whole families labour merrily together, as much for the amusement of the thing, and from good neighbourly feeling, as in consideration of francs and sous. Here, of course, there is no tight discipline observed, nor is there any absolute necessity for that continuous, close scrutiny into the state of the grapes--all of them hard or rotten, going slap-dash into the _cuvier_--which, in the case of the more precious vintages, forms no small check upon a general state of careless jollity. Every one eats as much fruit as he pleases, and rests when he is tired. On such occasions it is that you hear to the best advantage the joyous songs and choruses of the vintage--many of these last being very pretty bits of melody, generally sung by the women and girls, in shrill treble unison, and caught up and continued from one part of the field to another. [Illustration: RETURNING FROM THE VINTAGE.] Yet, discipline and control it as you will, the vintage will ever be beautiful, picturesque, and full of association. The rude wains, creaking beneath the reeking tubs--the patient faces of the yoked oxen--the half-naked, stalwart men, who toil to help the cart along the ruts and furrows of the way--the handkerchief-turbaned women, their gay, red-and-blue dresses peeping from out the greenery of the leaves--the children dashing about as if the whole thing were a frolic, and the grey-headed old men tottering cheerfully adown the lines of vines, with baskets and pails of gathered grapes to fill the yawning tubs--the whole picture is at once classic, venerable, and picturesque, not more by association than actuality. And now, Reader, luxuriating amid the gorgeously carven and emblazoned fittings of a Palais Royal or Boulevard restorateur, Vefours, the Freres, or the Café de Paris; or perhaps ensconced in our quieter and more sober rooms--dim and dull after garish Paris, but ten times more comfortable in their ample sofas and carpets, into which you sink as into quagmires, but with more agreeable results,--snugly, Reader, ensconced in either one or the other locality, after the waiter has, in obedience to your summons, produced the _carte de vins_, and your eye wanders down the long list of tempting nectars, Spanish and Portuguese, and better, far better, German and French--have you ever wondered as you read, "ST. JULLIEN, LEOVILLE, CHATEAU LA LAFITTE, CHATEAU LA ROSE, and CHATEAU MARGAUX, what these actual vineyards, the produce of which you know so well--what those actual chateaux, which christen such glorious growths, resemble?" If so, listen, and I will tell you. As you traverse the high road from Bordeaux to Pauillac, some one will probably point out to you a dozen tiny sugar-loaf turrets, each surmounted by a long lightning-conductor, rising from a group of noble trees. This is the chateau St. Jullien. A little on, on the right side of the way, rises, from the top of a tiny hill overlooking the Gironde, a new building, with all the old crinkum-crankum ornaments of the ancient fifteenth century country house. That is the chateau Latour. Presently you observe that the entrance to a wide expanse of vines, covering a series of hills and dales, tumbling down to the water's edge, is marked by a sort of triumphal arch or ornamented gate, adorned with a lion couchant, and a legend, setting forth that the vines behind produce the noted wine of Leoville. The chateau Lafitte rises amid stately groves of oak and walnut-trees, from amid the terraced walks of an Italian garden--its white spreading wings gleaming through the trees, and its round-roofed, slated towers rising above them. One chateau, the most noted of all, remains. Passing along a narrow, sandy road, amid a waste of scrubby-looking bushes, you pass beneath the branches of a clump of noble oaks and elms, and perceive a great white structure glimmering garishly before you. Take such a country house as you may still find in your grandmothers' samplers, decorated with a due allowance of doors and windows--clap before it a misplaced Grecian portico, whitewash the whole to a state of the most glaring and dazzling brightness, carefully close all outside shutters, painted white likewise--and you have chateau Margaux rising before you like a wan, ghastly spectre of a house, amid stately terraced gardens, and trimmed, clipped, and tortured trees. But, as I have already insisted, nothing, in any land of vines, must be judged by appearances. The first time I saw at a distance Johannesberg, rising from its grape-clustered domains, I thought it looked very much like a union workhouse, erected in the midst of a field of potatoes. [Illustration] [Illustration: LANDES SHEPHERDS.] CHAPTER IV. THE LANDES--THE BORDEAUX AND TESTE RAILWAY--NINICHE--THE LANDSCAPE OF THE LANDES--THE PEOPLE OF THE LANDES--HOW THEY WALK ON STILTS, AND GAMBLE. Turn to the map of France--to that portion of it which would be traversed by a straight line drawn from Bordeaux to Bayonne--and you will observe that such a line would run through a vast extent of bare-looking country--of that sort, indeed, where "Geographers on pathless downs Place elephants, for want of towns." Roads, you will observe, are few and far between; the names of far-scattered towns will be unfamiliar to you; and, indeed, nine-tenths of this part of the map consists of white paper. The district you are looking at is the Landes, forming now a department by itself, and anciently constituting a portion of Gascony and Guienne. These Landes form one of the strangest and wildest parts of France. Excepting here and there small patches of poor, ill-cultivated land, the whole country is a solitary desert--black with pine-wood, or white with vast plains of drifting sand. By these two great features of the district, occasionally diversified by sweeps of green morass, intersected by canals and lanes of stagnant and often brackish water, the Landes take a goodly slice out of La Belle France. Their sea-line bounds the French side of the Bay of Biscay, stretching from Bayonne to the mouth of the Gironde; and at their point of greatest breadth they run some sixty miles back into the country; thence gradually receding away towards the sea, as though pushed back by the course of the Garonne, until, towards the mouth of the river, they fade away altogether. So much for the _physique_ of the Landes. The inhabitants are every whit as rugged, strange, and uncultivated. As the Landes were four centuries ago, in all essential points, so they are now; as the people were four centuries ago, in all essential points, so they are now. What should the tide of progress or of improvement do in these deserts of pine and sand? The people live on French soil, but cannot be called Frenchmen. They speak a language as unintelligible to a Frenchman as an Englishman; they have none of the national characteristics--little, perhaps, of the national blood. They are saturnine, gloomy, hypochondriac, dismally passing dismal lives in the depths of their black forests, their dreary swamps, and their far-spreading deserts of white, fine sand. Such an odd nook of the world was not to be passed unvisited; besides, I wanted to see the Biscay surf; and accordingly I left Bordeaux for the Landes--not in some miserable cross-country vehicle--not knight-errantwise, on a Bordelais Rosinante--not pilgrim-wise, with a staff and scrip--but in a comfortable railway-carriage. Yes, sir, a comfortable railway-carriage; and the railway in question--the Bordeaux and Teste line--is the sole enterprise of the kind undertaken and achieved in the south-west of France. "Railways!" said the conductor of the Paris and Bordeaux diligence to me, with that magnificent condescension with which a Frenchman explains to a Briton all about _Perfide Albion!_--"Railways, monsieur," he said, "as all the world knows, have achieved the ruin of the Old England, and presently they will do as much for France. _Tenez_; they are cursed inventions--particularly the Paris and Bordeaux Railway." But if the ruin of France is to be consummated by railways, France, like bankrupt linendrapers, will take a long time to ruin. The Bordeaux line crawls but slowly on. In 1850, we left the rails and took to the road at Tours; and, barring the bits of line leading down from some of the Mediterranean towns to Marseilles, the Bordeaux and Teste fragment was the sole morsel of railway then in operation south of Lyons. The question comes, then, to be, What earthly inducement caused the construction of this wilderness line, and how it happens that the only locomotives in fair Guienne whistle through the almost uninhabited Landes? The fact seems to be, that, once upon a time, the good folks of Bordeaux were taken with an inappeasable desire to have a railway. One would have thought that the natural course of such an undertaking would have been northward, through the vines and thickly-peopled country of Medoc to the comparatively-important towns of Paulliac and Lesparre. The enterprising Bordelais, however, had another scheme. Some forty miles to the west of the city, the sands, pines, and morasses of the Landes are broken by a vast shallow basin, its edges scolloped with innumerable creeks, bays, and winding friths, into which, through a breach in the coast line of sand-hills, flow the waters of the Atlantic. On the southern side of this estuary lie two or three scattered groups of hovels, inhabited by fishermen and shepherds--the most important of the hamlets being known as Teste, or Teste-la-buch. Between Teste and Bordeaux, the only line of communication was a rutty road, half sand and half morass, and the only traffic was the occasional pilgrimage to the salt water of some patient sent thither at all risks by the Bordeaux doctors, or now and then the transit towards the city of the Garonne of the products of a day's lucky fishing, borne in panniers on the backs of a string of donkeys. Folks, however, were sanguine. The speculation "came out," shares got up, knowing people sold out, simple people held on, and the line was actually constructed. No doubt it was cheaply got up. Ground could be had in the Landes almost for the asking, and from terminus to terminus there is not an inch of tunnel-cutting or embankment. The line, moreover, is single, and the stations are knocked up in the roughest and most primitive style. The result, however, astonished no one, save the shareholders. The traffic does not half pay the working expenses. Notwithstanding that some increase in the amount of communication certainly did take place, consequent upon the facility with which Teste can now be reached--a facility which has gone some way to render it a summer place of sea-side resort--the two trains which _per diem_ seldom convey more than a dozen or so of third-class passengers, and the shareholders at length flung themselves into the hands of the Government; and, insisting upon the advantages which would accrue to the State as soon as the Paris and Bordeaux line was finished, by a direct means of communication between the metropolis and a harbour in the Bay of Biscay, they succeeded in hypothecating their line to the Government for a small annual subvention. Such is the present agreeable position of the single railway in the south-west of France. I was somewhat late, as I feared, for the train, and, calling a _citadine_, got the man to urge his horse to a gallop, so that we pulled up at the terminus with the animal in a lather. A porter approached, and grinned. "Monsieur has made haste, but the winter season begins to-day, and the train does not go for an hour and a half." There was no help for it, and I sauntered into the nearest _café_ to read long disquisitions on what was then all the vogue in the political world--the "situation." I found the little marble slabs deserted--even the billiard-table abandoned, and all the guests collected round the white Fayence stove. Joining them, I perceived the attraction. On one of the velvet stools sat an old gentleman of particularly grave and reverend aspect--a most philosophic and sage-like old gentleman--and between his legs was a white poodle, standing erect with his master's cane in his paws. All the company were in raptures with Niniche, who was going through his performances. "Niniche," said the patriarch, "what does Monsieur Tetard do when he comes home late?" The dog immediately began to stagger about on its hind legs, sometimes losing its balance and then getting up again, looking all the time with a sort of stupid blinking stare at its master. It was clear that M. Tetard, when he came home late, did not come home sober. "_Tiens! c'est admirable!_" shouted the spectators--burly fellows, with black beards, and honest tradesman-looking people, with glasses of _eau sucreé_ in their hands. "And now," said the old gentleman, the poodle's proprietor and instructor, "what does Madame Tetard do when Monsieur Tetard comes home late?" The dog straightway began to utter, with wonderful volubility, a series of loud, shrill, yelping snaps, jerking itself up and down on its haunches, and flinging its paws about as if it had the hydrophobia. The spectators were enraptured. "It is actually her voice," said one. "Only the dog is too good-looking for her," said another. "_Voilà petite!_" vociferated a third, holding a huge piece of bluish-tinted beetroot sugar to the performer, when suddenly the group was broken by a fussy, fat old gentleman with a white baggy cravat, very snuffy, and a pair of heavy gold spectacles. "_Je dis--moi!_" shouted the new comer, in violent wrath; "_que c'est abominable ce que vous faites là Père Grignon._" A murmur of suppressed laughter went through the group. Père Grignon looked considerably taken aback, and the speaker aimed a hearty kick at Niniche, who dodged away round the stove. It was evident that he was no other than the injured and maligned Tetard himself. Instantly he broke into loud objurgations. He knew how that atrocious old _Père Grignon_ had taught his dog to malign him, the _bête misérable_! But as for it, he would poison it--shoot it--drown it; and as for Père Grignon, who ought to have more sense, all the quartier knew what he was--an _imbécille_, who was always running about carrying tales, and making mischief. But he would appeal to the authorities; he would lay his complaint before the commisary of the quartier; he would--he would--. At this moment the excited orator caught sight of the offending poodle slipping to the door, and instantly sprung vigorously after him:-- "_Tenez-tenez_; don't touch Niniche--it's not his fault!" exclaimed the poodle's proprietor. But the dog had bolted, with Tetard in hot chase of his imitator, and vowing that he should be _écraséd_ and _abiméd_ as soon as caught. There was, of course, great laughter at the whole proceeding; and then the group betook themselves to the marble slabs and dominoes--the instructor of the offending quadruped coolly lighting his pipe, as he muttered that old Tetard was, after all, a _bon enfant_, and that over a _petit verre_ he would always listen to reason. At length the tedious hour and a half wore away, and I entered the terminus--a roughly built wooden shed. The train consisted of a first, second, and third-class carriage; but there were no first-class passengers, only one solitary second-class, and about a dozen third-classes, with whom I cast my lot. Miserable as the freight was, the locomotive whistled as loud and panted as vehemently as if it were yoked to a Great Western express; and off we went through the broad belt of nursery gardens, which encircles every French town, and where the very best examples of the working of the small proprietary system are to be seen. A rapid run through the once greatly famed and still esteemed vineyards of Hautbrion, and we found ourselves scurrying along over a negative sort of country--here a bit of heath, there a bit of vineyard--now a bald spot of sand, anon a plot of irregularly-cut stubble; while a black horizon of pine-wood rose gradually on the right and left. On flew the train, and drearier grew the landscape; the heath was bleaker--the pines began to appear in clumps--the sand-stretches grew wider--every thing green, and fertile, and _riant_ disappeared. He, indeed, who enters the Landes, appears to have crossed a French frontier, and left the merry land behind. No more bright vineyards--no more rich fields of waving corn--no more clustered villages--no more chateau-turrets--no more tapering spires. You look up to heaven to see whether the sky has not changed, as well as the land. No; all there is blue and serene as before, and the keen, hot sun glares intensely down upon undulating wastes of marsh, fir, and sand, among which you may travel for leagues without seeing a man, hearing a dog bark, or a bird sing. At last we were fairly among the woods, shooting down what seemed an eternal straight tunnel, cleft by lightning through the pines. The trees stood up stark and stiff, like cast-iron; the fir is at once a solemn and a rigid tree--the Puritan of the forest; and down the side of each Puritan I noticed a straight, yellowish gash, running perpendicularly from the spread of the branches almost to the earth, and turned for explanation to an intelligent-looking man, evidently a citizen of Bordeaux, opposite me. "Ah!" he said, "you are new to our Landes." I admitted it. "And these gashes down the trees--these, monsieur, give us the harvest of the Landes." "The harvest! What harvest?" "What harvest? Resin, to be sure." "Ay, resin," said an old fellow with a blouse and a quick eye; "resin, monsieur; the only harvest that man can grow in sand." "_Tenez_," said my first interlocutor; "the peasants cut that gash in the tree; and at the root they scoop a little hollow in the ground. The resin perspires out of the wood, flows slowly and glutinously down the gash, and in a month or so, according to the heat of the weather, the hole is full, and the man who rents the trees takes up the sticky stuff, like soup, with a ladle." "That's a very good description," said the old bloused gentleman. "And then, sir" (addressing me), "we barrel our crop of the Landes. Yes, indeed, we barrel it, as well as they do the crop of the Medoc." "Only you wouldn't like to drink it so well," said the Bordeaux man. Presently we pulled up at a station--a mere shed, with a clearing around it, as there might have been in Texas or Maine. I observed the name--TOHUA-COHOA, and remarked that it did not look like a French one. "French one!" said he of Bordeaux; "you don't expect to find French in this chaos? No, no; it is some of the gibberish the savages hereabout speak." "No such gibberish, and no such savages either," said the little keen-eyed man. "_Moi, je suis de Landes_; and the Landes language is a far finer language than French. French! phoo, phoo!" And he took a pinch of snuff indignantly and triumphantly. The Bordeaux gentleman winked blandly at me, as if the keen-eyed man was a character to be humoured, and then looked doubtful and unconvinced. "Tohua-Cohoa," he said; "it has a _sacré tonnerre_ of a barbarous sound; has it any meaning?" "Meaning!" exclaimed the man of the Landes; "I should think so. Tohua-Cohoa means, in French, _Allez doucement_; and the place was so called because there was there a dangerous swamp, in which many a donkey coming up from Teste with fish to you of Bordeaux was smothered; and so it got to be quite proverbial among the drivers of the donkeys, and they used to shout to each other, 'Tohua-Cohoa!' whenever they came near the slough; meaning to look out, and go gently, and take care of the soft places." The man with the blouse, who was clearly the champion of the Landes, then turned indignantly from the Bordeaux man and addressed himself to me. "The language which the poor people here speak, monsieur, is a fine and expressive language, and liker the Spanish than the French. The people are poor, and very ignorant. They believe, monsieur, in ghosts, and witches, and sorceries, just as all France did two or three hundred years ago. Very few of them can read, monsieur, and they have bad food and no wine. But nevertheless, monsieur, they are _bons enfants--braves gens_, monsieur. They love their pine-woods and their sands as much as other people do their corn-fields and their vines, monsieur. They would die, monsieur, if you took them away from the sand and the trees. They are not like the Auvergnats, who go in troops to Paris to carry water from the fountains, and who are _betes--betes--bien betes_! They stay at home, monsieur. They wear their sheep-skins and walk upon their stilts, like their forefathers before them, monsieur; and if you are coming here to see the Landes, and if you lose yourself in the woods, and see a light glimmering through the trees, and rap at the cottage door, monsieur, you will be welcomed, monsieur, and have the best they can offer to eat, and the softest they can offer to sleep on. _Tenez, tenez; nous sommes pauvres et ignorants mais nous sommes, loyals et bons!_" The tears fairly stood in the keen black eyes of the Landes man as he concluded his harangue, of which I have only reported the main points; for, truth to tell, the poor fellow's vehemence was so great, and his utterance so rapid, that I lost nearly as much as I caught. The Bordeaux gentleman hammered the floor with his umbrella in satirical approbation, the rest of the passengers looked curiously on, and, the engine whistling, we pulled up again at a station similar to the first--a shed--a clearing, and black pine all around. There were just three persons on the rough platform--the station-master in a blouse, and two yellow-breeched _gens-d'armes_. What could they find to occupy them among these drear pine-woods? What thief, who had not made a vow of voluntary starvation, or who had not a morbid taste for living upon resin, would ever have ventured among them? But the authorities! Catch a bit of France without an "authority!" As they certainly are omnipotent, and profess to be omniscient, it is only to be supposed that they should be omnipresent. One man left the train at the station in question--a slouching, stupid, swarthy peasant, the authorities pounced upon him, evidently in prodigious glee at catching somebody to be _autoritised_ over, and we left them, spelling and squabbling over the greasy-looking "papers" presented by the profoundly respectful Jacques or Pierre. And now, before proceeding further, I may be allowed to describe, with some minuteness, the landscape which will greet the traveller in the Landes. Its mere surface-aspect I have already sketched; but general terms go but a small way towards indicating the dreary grandeurs of that solemn wilderness. Over all its gloom and barrenness--over all its "blasted heaths" and monotonous pine-woods, and sodden morasses, and glaring heaps of shifting sand--there is a strong and pervading sense of loneliness, a grandeur and intensity of desolation, which, as it were, clothes the land with a sad, solemn poetry peculiar to itself. Emerging from black forests of fir, the wanderer may find himself upon a plain, flat as a billiard-table, and apparently boundless as the ocean, clad in one unvaried, unbroken robe of dusky heath. Sometimes stripes and ridges, or great ragged patches of sand, glisten in the fervid sunshine; sometimes belts of scraggy young fir-trees appear rising from the horizon on the left, and fading into the horizon on the right. Occasionally a brighter shade of green, with jungles of willows and coarse water-weeds, giant rushes, and marish-mosses, and tangled masses of dank vegetation, will tell of the unfathomable swamp beneath. Dark veins of muddy water will traverse the flat oozy land, sometimes, perhaps, losing themselves in broad shallow lakes, bordered again by the endless sand-banks and stretches of shadowy pine. The dwellings which dot this dreary, yet, in its way, solemnly poetic landscape, are generally mere isolated huts, separated sometimes by many miles, often by many leagues. Round them the wanderer will descry a miserable field or two, planted with a stunted crop of rye, millet, or maize. The cottages are mouldering heaps of sod and unhewn and unmortared stones, clustered round with ragged sheds composed of masses of tangled bushes, pine stakes, and broadleaved reeds, beneath which cluster, when not seeking their miserable forage in the woods, two or three cows, mere skin and bone, and a score or two of the most abject-looking sheep which ever browsed. Proceeding through the Landes towards the coast, a long chain of lakes and water-courses, running parallel to the ocean, breaks their uniformity. The country becomes a waste of shallow pools, and of land which is parched in summer and submerged in winter. Running in devious arms and windings through moss and moor and pine, these "lakes of the dismal swamp" form labyrinths of gulfs and morasses which only the most experienced shepherds can safely thread. Here and there a village, or rather bourg, will be seen upon their banks, half hidden in the pine-woods; and a roughly-built fishing-punt or two will be observed floating like the canoe of a savage in the woodland lakes. Sometimes, as in the case of the basin of Arcachon, which will be presently described, these waters are arms of the sea; and the retreating tide leaves scores of square miles of putrid swamp. Sometimes they are mere collections of surface-drainage, accumulating without any means of escape to the ocean, and perilous in the extreme to the dwellers on their shores. For, forming the extreme line of coast, there runs, for near two hundred miles, from the Adour to the Garonne, a range of vast hills of white sand, as fine as though it had been sifted for an hour-glass. Every gale changes the shape of these rolling mountains. A strong wind from the land flings millions of tons of sand per hour into the sea, to be washed up again by the surf, flung on the beach, and in the first Biscay gale blown in whirlwinds inland. A winter hurricane again from the west has filled up with sand square miles of shallow lake, driving the displaced waters inland, dispersing them in gleaming lakes among the pine-woods, flooding, and frequently destroying the scattered hamlets of the people, and burying for ever their fields of millet and rye. I shall presently have occasion to touch upon some disasters of this sort. Meantime, having made the aspect of the Landes familiar to the reader, I pursue the thread of my journey. The novelty of a population upon stilts--men, women, and children, spurning the ground, and living habitually four or five feet higher than the rest of mankind--irresistibly takes the imagination, and I leant anxiously from the carriage to catch the first glimpse of a Landean in his native style. I looked long in vain. We passed hut after hut, but they seemed deserted, except that the lean swine burrowing round the turf walls gave evidence that the pork had proprietors somewhere. At last I was gratified; as the train passed not very quickly along a jungle of bushes and coppice-wood, a black, shaggy figure rose above it, as if he were standing upon the ends of the twigs. The effect was quite eldritch. We saw him but as a vision, but the high conical hat with broad brims, like Mother Red-cap's, the swarthy, bearded face, and the rough, dirty sheep-skin, which hung fleecily from the shoulders of the apparition, haunted me. He was come and gone, and that was all. Presently, however, the natives began to heave in sight in sufficient profusion. There were three gigantic-looking figures stalking together across an expanse of dusky heath. I thought them men, and rather tall ones; but my companions, more accustomed to the sight, said they were boys on comparatively short stilts, herding the sheep, which were scattered like little greyish stones all over the waste. Anon, near a cottage, we saw a woman, in dark, coarse clothes, with shortish petticoats, sauntering almost four feet from the ground, and next beheld at a distance, and on the summit of a sand-ridge, relieved against the sky, three figures, each leaning back, and supported, as it seemed, not only by two daddy long-legs' limbs, but by a third, which appeared to grow out of the small of their backs. The phenomenon was promptly explained by my bloused _cicerone_, who seemed to feel especial pleasure at my interest in the matter. The third leg was a pole or staff the people carry, with a new moon-shaped crutch at the top, which, applied to the back, serves as a capital prop. With his legs spread out, and his back-stay firmly pitched, the shepherd of the Landes feels as much at home as you would in the easiest of easy chairs. "He will remain so for hours, without stirring, and without being wearied," said my fellow-passenger. "It is a way of sitting down in the Landes. Why, a shepherd, could stand so, long enough to knit a pair of stockings, ay, and not have an ache in his back. Sometimes they play cards, so, without once coming off their stilts." "Ay, and cheat! _Mon Dieu!_ how they cheat!" said the Bordeaux gentleman. The native of the Landes reluctantly admitted that was the truth, and the other went on:-- "These fellows here on the stilts are the most confounded gamblers in Europe. Men and women, it's all the same--play, play, play; they would stake their bodies first, and their souls after. _Tenez_; I once heard of a lot of the fellows playing in a wood till they were all but starved. In the day they played by daylight, and when night came, they kindled a bonfire and played in the glare. They played on and on, in spite of hunger and thirst. They staked their money--not that they had much of that--and their crops--not that they were of great value either--and their pigs, and their sheep, and their Landes ponies, and then their furniture, and then their clothes, and, last of all, their stilts--for a Landes man thinks his stilts the principal part of his wardrobe; and, _sacré!_ monsieur, three of the fellows were ruined out and out, and had to give up their hats, and sheep-skins, and sabots, while the man who was the greatest winner walked home on his own stilts, with the stilts of all his comrades tucked under his arm." "Gaming is their fault--their great fault," meekly acknowledged the blouse. "Not at all!" said his antagonist. "Cheating is their great fault. A Landes shepherd would cheat the devil with a greasy pack of cards." "The fact is," replied the apologist, "that they count cheating part of the game. Their motto is, win anyhow; so it is no worse for one than the other. Cards is chance; but cheating needs skill, and _voila tout_." We were fast approaching Teste, and had passed two or three clusters of poor huts, and a party of women up to their waists in a sluggish stream washing fleeces, while yellow patches of ripening maize began to recur quicker and quicker, showing that we had reached a comparatively thickly-peopled district, when all at once there burst upon my eyes a glorious-looking prairie of gently undulating land, of the brightest green I ever looked upon. The green of the greenest lawns of England, the green of the softest bogs of Ireland, the green even of the most intensely green patches of the Curragh of Kildare, were brown, and fuzzy, and rusty, compared to this wonderful hue. The land looked like one huge emerald, sparkling in the sun. The brightness, the freshness, the radiance of the tint, was almost supernatural, and the eye, nursed for it, as it were, after our journey over the brown moors and black pines, caught the bright fresh beauty of the colour with rapture. "Come," I thought, "there are, at least, oases in the Landes. Never was turf so glorious; never was sward so bewitching." And then, gazing far and wide upon the prairie, I saw it dotted with human figures labouring at the soil, and great wains and carts drawn by oxen, looking like black specks upon a great, fresh, green leaf. But, in a moment, I saw something more. Could I believe my eyes? A ship! Yes, verily, a ship, fast aground, high and dry upon the turf! and not only one, but two, three, four, good-sized schooners and _chasse marées_, with peasants digging about them, and country carts high heaped with green rural-looking burdens. The Landes man saw my bewilderment. "The green-looking land," he said, "is the flat bottom of part of the bay of Arcachon. It is now dead low-water, and the country people have come down with their carts to fill them with that green slimy seaweed, which makes capital manure; and some of them, perhaps, have brought casks of resin for those ships which principally belong to Bordeaux, Rochelle, and Nantes, and come here and into other bays along the coast for the harvest of the Landes." The engine whistled. We were at Teste--a shabby, ancient little village, with a deep stream flowing sluggishly around it, and dividing itself into a many-forked delta along the level sand; fishermen's hovels scattered on the beach, brown boats drawn up beneath them, nets drying, a considerable fishy smell pervading the atmosphere, with, beyond again, the black, unvarying mantle of pine-woods. There is a very good hotel at Teste; thanks to its being one of the Bordeaux watering-places; and there, for dinner, was provided red mullets, which would have made the red mullet-loving Duke of Devonshire crazy, as he noted the difference between the fish from the bay of Arcachon and their brethren from the coast of Weymouth. CHAPTER V. THE LANDES--THE BAY OF ARCACHON AND ITS FISHERS--THE LEGEND OF CHATEL-MORANT--THE PINE-WOODS--THE RESIN-GATHERER--THE WILD HORSES--THE SURF OF THE BAY OF BISCAY--THE WITCHES OF THE LANDES--POPULAR BELIEFS, AND POPULAR CUSTOMS. The sun was low in the heavens next morning when I was afoot and down to the beach, the glorious bay now brimming full, and the schooners and _chasse marées_, like the swan on St. Mary's Loch, floating double, ships and shadows. The scene was very strange. The green meadow had disappeared, and where it had been, a gleaming lake stretched brilliant in the sunshine, set in the pine-woods like a mirror in an ebony frame, cutting slices of sweeping bay out of their dusky margins, and piercing their depths with silent, weedy water-veins. [Illustration] Where the villages lie, there have been clearings made in the wood, precisely as one would expect to see in a New Zealand or Australian bay. Close to high-water mark, rows of rounded huts serve as storehouses for nets, and spars, and sails. Before them straggling jetties run on piles far to seaward; behind, huddled amid scanty vineyards and patches of broadleaved Indian corn, groups of houses--their roofs nearly flat, and their walls not above six feet, in some places not four feet, high--seem cowering away from observation. For every cottage built of stone, there are half-a-dozen out-houses, sheds, pig-sties, and so forth, piled up with old oars, broken masts, furze, pine-cuttings, and Irish-looking sod. I made my way to what seemed the principal landing-place--a bleached jetty. A dozen or so of boats floated round it, roughly built, very narrow, and very light, lying upon the very top of the water, and just, in fact, as like canoes as the scene about resembled some still savage country. Three boats were starting for the oyster fishery, manned each by four as buxom, blithe, and debonnaire wenches as you would wish to see. They had short petticoats--your Nereides of all shores have--and straw hats, shaped like a man's. In the stern-sheets of each boat a venerable, ancient mariner held the tiller; and as I approached, the damsels, who were getting their clumsy oars inserted between the thole-pins, clamoured out in a torrent of vociferous gabble, offering me a day's oyster-fishing, if I would go with them. They were evidently quite _au fait_ to ridding the Bordeaux loungers of their spare francs, in the shape of passage-money, for a frolic on the oyster-banks; but I had determined to pass the day in another fashion. I wanted a sail on the bright, still bay, a walk in the pine-woods, and a glance at the surf tumbling in from the Bay of Biscay; so I scrutinized the faces of two or three lounging boatmen, with as much reference to Lavater's principles as I might, and selecting the most intelligent-looking of the lot--a mild, grey-eyed man, who spoke gently and slowly--we soon made a bargain, and were speedily afloat in the bean-cod looking canoe of which he was the skipper. I was gazing doubtfully at the heavy oars, and the expanse of water, when a flying cat's-paw made just a pretence of ruffling it. "_Merci, le bon vent!_" said the fisherman. Up went a mast; up went a light patch of thin white canvass, and straightway the bubbles flew fast and faster by the gunwale, and there arose a sweet gurgle from the cleaving bow. "You can see how fast we're going by the bottom," said the boatman. I leant over the gunwale, and looked down. Oh, the marvellous brightness of that shining sea! I gazed from the boat upon the sand through the water, almost as you might through the air upon the earth from a balloon. Ghost-like fish gleamed in the depths, and their shadows followed them below upon the ribbed sea-sand. Long flowing weeds, like rich green ribbons, waved and streamed in the gently running tidal current. You could see the white pebbles and shells--here a ridge of rocks, there a dark bed of seaweed; and now and then a great flat-fish, for all the world like a burnished pot-lid set in motion--went gleaming along the bottom. "Once," said the boatman, "all the bottom of this great bay that you are looking at was dry land, and there were cottages upon it, and an ancient chateau. That was the chateau of Armand de Chatel-morant, an old baron of these parts, a wicked man and a great magician, who had a familiar spirit, which came when he blew a horn, and who was able, by his sorceries, to rule the winds that blow. Only, once he raised a storm he could not quell; and it was that storm which made the Bay of Arcachon; for the wind blew the sand of the sea-shore up the country, like a snow-storm, and the sand-hills rolled before it; and what the wind began, the _coup de mer_ finished, and the ocean came bursting through the breach it had battered in the sand-ridges of the coast, and swallowed up the chateau and drowned the magician, and there was an end of him." "Well," said I, "so be it; he deserved his fate." "For many a year after the flood the baron had made," the boatman continued, "you could see, out of a boat, the pointed tops of the towers of the chateau below you, with the weather-cocks still pointing to the west, and the green seaweed hanging to them, like pennons from a ship's vanes." "But I fear it is not to be seen now." "Oh! no. Ages and ages ago it rotted and rotted away; but the old men of the village have heard from their fathers that the fishermen only ventured there in calm summer weather and in good daylight; for, in the dark, look you, and when a Biscay wind was blowing, they said they heard the sounding of Chatel-morant's magic horn, and they saw his imp flying above them and wailing like a hurt seabird." Of course, I was on thorns to hear all the story; and so my boatman recounted a rude, disjointed tale, which I have hitched, legendwise, into the following narrative:-- The Baron Armand de Chatel-morant sat in his dim studio high up in the most seaward tower of the chateau of Chatel-morant. His hair and his beard were white, but his eyes were keen, and his cheeks as ruddy as the eyes and the cheeks of a young man. He had a furnace beside him, with implements of projection, crucibles, and powders. On the table were astrological instruments, and the magic crystal, which his Familiar had given him, and in which--only, however, when the Familiar pleased--the baron could read the future; but, for every reading of the future, the baron was a year older--the Familiar had a year of his life. The baron was clothed in a long furred robe, and he wore red shoes, with peaked toes, as long again as his feet. His face was moody, and clouds went driving along his brow. He took up his instruments, and laid them down, and opened a big book, full of spells and cantrips, and shut it; then he walked about the room; and then he stopped and blew a silver whistle. Very prompt at the sound came an old man--reverent and sorrowful looking--with a white wand; for he was the seneschal of the chateau of Chatel-morant. "Your niece," said the baron, "who comes hither from the town of Bordeaux to visit you, and whom I saw but yester even,--has she returned?" "She went this morning, monseigneur," said the seneschal; "she has preparations to make; for, God save the pretty child! she is to be married on the day of Blessed St. John." The baron frowned; for he was not an admirer of the saints, being quite, indeed, on the other side of the hedge. "Say the number of the day, and the name of the month," he replied, angrily; "and do not torment me with that shaveling jargon which they talk in the monastery of Andrew, whom they call St. Andrew at Bordeaux." The seneschal, who was accustomed to be bullied, particularly upon religious subjects, crossed himself behind his back; for he was a prudent man, and, owing to the absence of mind of the baron, who was always experimentalizing in the black art, managed, one way or other, to pick up so much as to make his place a tolerably profitable one. "Married!" said the baron; "and to whom?" "Just to honest and brave Jacques Fort--the stoutest mariner who sails out of the Garonne. He has got a ship of his own, now--the _Sainte Vierge_; and to-day he sails upon his first voyage, as far as Bayonne." "He sails to-day--so; and the maiden's name--your niece's name--what is that?" "Toinette, so please you, sir." "You may go." And go the seneschal did, wondering very much at the uncommon interest his master seemed to be taking in vulgar, sublunary things. Then Baron Armand de Chatel-morant paced the room a long time in gloomy meditation. At length he sat down again, and said aloud: "There is no doubt of it--I am in love. That face haunts me; Toinette's face is ever floating opposite to me. 'Tis an odd feeling; I was never so before. But, since it is so, I must even have the maiden--she will cheer me--I love her face. I will send to-morrow to Bordeaux, as from her uncle; and when she comes here, by the star of Aldeboran, she stays here, Jacques Fort to the contrary notwithstanding!" "Wrong--quite wrong!" said a voice. The baron turned coolly round, and saw, sitting upon the arm of the chair close to him, the figure of a very thin dwarf, with a long, unearthly face, and fingers like hawks' claws. This was the imp--the baron's Familiar. "How, Klosso!" said Armand; "you come without being called?" "Yes; but you would have called me soon." "You know what I am thinking of--of Toinette. I love her--I must have her." "You will not have her." "Why so?" "Because it is so decreed." "Klosso," said the baron, "I don't believe you. You know the future; but you lie about it when you speak." "Will you, then," answered the demon, "look into the crystal: that can't lie. Come--it's only another year--give yourself a treat--come!" "I have given you many years already," said the baron, musing; "look how grey my hair is!" "Dye it," said the imp, who, if he was a Familiar, certainly behaved as such. But the baron took no notice of his impertinence. He was dreadfully smitten by Toinette, and said he'd have a twelvemonths' worth of knowledge of futurity for her sake. The thin dwarf grinned, and then made a motion of relief, as one who saw before him the speedy end of a long, long watch. So he took the crystal, uttered, as may be supposed, some magic words; and the baron looked upon the clear surface. "Malediction!" he exclaimed, as he saw in the crystal a huge hearth, with pots on the fire, and poultry roasting before it, and Toinette tending the cookery, and a stalwart fellow helping her clumsily. "That is Toinette!" cried the baron; "but who is the rascal with her?" "Her husband, Jacques Fort." "Curses on him!" Here the baron saw Jacques fling his arm round Toinette's waist, and kiss her so naturally, that he ground his teeth. "Domestic felicity," said the imp; "a charming picture, baron--they're cooking the christening feast for young Jacques." The baron flung the crystal down. "Pay me," said the imp; and he passed the bird-like hand over the baron's face, and each of his fingers drew a wrinkle. A shudder went over the sorcerer's frame, and then he breathed heavily, and looked wistfully at the imp. He was a year older. "Klosso!" shouted Armand, leaping to his feet, "I will fight fate!" "Better not," said Klosso. "Curse the future!" exclaimed the baron; "I will alter the future, and give the lie to the crystal, as to you!" "If you try," replied the imp, coolly, "you will belong to me before the morning." "Silence, slave!" cried Armand, who was not a man to be put out of his way; "you rule the winds--I rule you. Make the west wind blow." The imp raised its hand, and they heard the whistling of a strong, gusty wind, and the creaking of the weather-cocks, as they all turned towards the sea. "Stronger--stronger--stronger!" shouted the baron; and the whistle became a roar, and the roar a howl; and the castle shook and swayed in the blast. "Good--good!" laughed the baron; "something more than a puff there--ha! ha!--as Jacques Fort has found by this time on the deck of his new ship in the Bay of Biscay." The Familiar gently remarked that the weather was roughish, when the seneschal rushed into the room in a dreadful state of terror at the storm. "My lord--my lord!" he said, "we shall all be blown away; the air is full of sand; you would be suffocated outside. The wind is tearing up the pines; and oh, poor Jacques Fort is at sea, and drowned--drowned, by this time, to a certainty!" "Yes," said Armand, "I should rather think so. Toinette must take up with somebody else.--Stronger!" The last injunction was addressed to the imp, and instantly complied with. The tempest roared like the up-bursting of a volcano, and screeched and screamed through the sugar-loaf turrets and the lattices, which it had burst in, and the loop-holes, like a hundred thousand devils' whistles. The seneschal fell on his knees. "Stronger still!" said the baron. And meantime what was Jaques Fort doing in his new ship? With every rag of canvass torn out of the bolt-ropes, the _Sainte Vierge_ was flying on the very top, as it seemed, of the driving spray, on to the breakers. Jacques was the only man left on deck--every one of the rest had been washed overboard, and were already sleeping in the sea; and he knew that in a moment he would follow them. The staggering ship rose on the back of a mighty breaker; and the captain knew that with its fall upon the beach his vessel would be ground to powder. "Oh, Toinette!" he murmured, as the ship was hove forward like a bolt from a bow, and then fell shooting into a creaming current of rushing water, while the sand-hills appeared right and left for a moment, and then were left astern. The last grand wave had burst the barrier, and the frail ship and the kneeling mariner were borne onward on the ridge of the advancing flood, which formed the lake of Arcachon. Jacques Fort saw a light, and steered towards it: it was the light in the baron's chamber at the chateau of Chatel-morant. There, by the burst-in lattice, stood the baron, his grey hair flying above his head, and ever shouting to the imp, "Stronger, Klosso--stronger!" And every time he used the words, the hurricane burst louder and louder upon the rocking turrets. And still Armand clung to the stone-work of the burst-in lattice, through which the flying sand drove in, and clustered in his robes and hair. And now the terrified domestics began to rush up to the chamber of the baron. "My lord, such a storm was never heard of!" "My lord, the devil is loose, and riding on the wind!" "My lord, the end of the world is at hand!" "Klosso!" shouted the baron, "stronger!" As he spoke, the wind burst like a thunder-clap over them, and they heard the crash of a falling tower. The serving men and women grovelled in terror on the floor; the baron clung by the window; the imp, visible only to him, sat on the back of the arm-chair, as he had sat since his appearance. But hush! Another sound, mingling with the roar of the wind, and deeper and more awful still. It rapidly increased, and the baron found his face besprinkled with driving drops of water--they were salt. "My lord--my lord!" screamed the seneschal, sinking, as he spoke, at the baron's knees; "my lord--the sea!" A cry was heard without; the lights of the hamlet beneath disappeared; and then a shock from below made the chateau swing and rock, and white waves were all around them. "The sea, my lord," said the seneschal, "has burst the sand-banks; the castle stands on low ground. We are all dead men--the sea--the sea!" The Baron Armand turned to Klosso: "Does he speak truth?" "The worthy gentleman," said the imp, "is perfectly in the right; you are all dead men; and, Monseigneur le Baron, when you gave me last a year of your life, you gave me the last you had to give." Up rose the water, and higher dashed the waves. Up, foot by foot, and yard by yard; and still the baron stood erect amid the raving of the elements--his face as white as his hair, but his eyes as bright and keen as ever. "Klosso," he said, "I am yours; and the future is the future." He looked at the iron lamp swinging above his head. "It will soon be out," said Klosso. Jacques Fort still steered to the light. It came nearer and nearer; and he saw, even through the gloom and the driving spray, that it shone from a castle-turret, and he seized the tiller to change the course of the vessel; but as he did so, the grand, triumphant, finishing blast of the hurricane fell upon the seething flood like iron--heaved up one bristling, foaming sea, which caught the _Sainte Vierge_ upon its crest, and flung the ship almost into the air. The light gleamed for a moment almost beneath him; and Jacques, rushing to the bow, saw below it, as in a prison, a fierce convulsed face, and staring eyes, and flying white hair; and the eyes saw him. As Jacques recognised the sorcerer Armand of Chatel-morant, so did Armand recognise the face and form he had seen helping Toinette to cook the christening feast. The next instant the _Sainte Vierge_ was borne over and over the highest turret of the chateau, her keel a fathom good above the loftiest and the gaudiest of all the gilt weather-cocks. The event foreshadowed in the crystal duly took place on the anniversary of the day which saw the chateau de Chatel-morant swallowed in the Bay of Arcachon. The legend of the submerged chateau, with which I plead guilty to having taken a few liberties, but "only with a view" (as the magistrate said when he put his neighbour into the stocks)--"only with a view towards improvement," occupied us during the greater part of our smooth and pleasant sail. Dismissing matters legendary, we talked of the fishermen of the bay, and their neighbours, the shepherds on stilts. The man of the sea held the men of the land cheap. The peasants were never out of the forests and the sand, he said; the fishermen often went to Bordeaux, and sometimes to Rochelle, and sometimes even to Nantes. They (the boatmen) never used stilts; but as soon as the peasant's children were able to toddle, they were clapped upon a pair of sticks, and many a tumble, and many a broken face they caught, before they could use them easily. "They are a good set of people, but very ignorant, and they believe whatever you tell them. They are frightened out of their wits if you speak of witches or sorcerers; but we know that all these old tales are nothing but nonsense. We go to Bordeaux very often as pilots, and to Rochelle, and even to Nantes." I was further informed, that in the winter time the fishermen pursued their occupation in the bay in such boats as that in which I was sailing; and that in summer they went out into the Atlantic; but never ventured more than a few miles to sea, and never, if they could help it, stayed out a night. This kind of conversation brought us tolerably well to the narrow passage, all fenced with intricate sand-banks, which leads to the open sea. A white, graceful lighthouse rose above the sand-banks on our right, into which the pine-woods were stretching in long, finger-like projections; and the boat, beginning to rise and fall upon the slow, majestic heave which the swell without communicated to the shallow water within the bar, assured me that if we went further, the surf would prevent our landing at all. We ran the boat upon the beach, and drawing her up high and dry, plunged into, not the greenwood, but the black-wood tree. It was hard walking. The pines grew out of fine bright sand, bound here and there together by carpets of long bent grass, and the air was sickly with the peculiar resinous smell of the rich sap of the tree fermenting and distilling down the gashes. In our ramble, we encountered two of the peasants, whose dreary work it is to hack the pines and ladle up the flowing proceeds. We heard the blows of the axe echoing in the hot silence of the mid-day, and made our way to whence the sound proceeded, speedily descrying the workman, perched upon a slight bending ladder, gashing the tree. This man, and, indeed, all his brethren whom I saw, were miserable-looking creatures--their features sunken and animal-like--their hair matted in masses over their brows--their feet bare, and their clothing painfully wretched. Their calling is as laborious as it is monotonous. Starting with the dawn, they plunge--a ladder in one hand, and an adze in the other--into the recesses of the pine-wood, repeating the same process to every tree. The ladder in question is very peculiar, consisting of a single strip of elastic wood, about ten feet long, dotted with knobs cut plain upon one side for the foot to rest upon, and thus serving instead of rounds or steps. This primitive ladder is sliced away towards the top, so as to rest more commodiously upon the tree. When in use, it is placed almost perpendicularly, and the workman ascends it like a monkey, never touching the tree, but keeping the ladder in its position by the action of his legs, which, from the knee downward, seem to cling round and round the bending wood, and keep it in its place, even when the top, laid perhaps against the rounded side of the trunk, appears to be slipping off every moment. "Well," said my guide, the Teste boatman, "I would rather reef topsails in a gale of wind than go up there, at any rate." The ladder, its proprietor told me, could not be used except with naked feet. The instrument with which he cut the tree was as sharp as a razor, and required long practice to acquire the knack of using it. I wondered that the gashing did not kill the trees, as some of the largest were marked with half-a-dozen cuts from the ground to the fork. Here and there, indeed, you found one which had succumbed to the process, rotted, and fallen; but the majority seemed in very good case, nevertheless. "Look at that tree," said a resin-gatherer. More than half the bark had certainly gone in these perpendicular stripes, and yet it looked strong and stately "That tree is more than a hundred years old; and that is not a bad age for either a man or a fir." Leaving the peasant behind, we pushed steadily towards the sea. The ground, thanks to the debris of the pines, was as slippery as ice, except where we plunged into fine hot sand, half way to the knees. Every now and then we crossed what I cannot describe better than by calling it a perfectly bald spot in the woods--a circular patch of pure white sand--in certain lights, you might have taken it for snow. All around were the black pines; but not a blade or a twig broke the drifted fineness of the bald white patch. You could find neither stone nor shell--nothing but subtle, powdery sand--every particle as minute and as uniform as those in an hour-glass. "That," said my guide, when we came in view of the first of these singular little saharas--"that is a devil's garden." "And what does he grow there?" I asked. The man lowered his voice: "It is in these spots of fine white sand that all the sorcerers and witches, and warlocks in France--ay, and I have heard, in the whole world--meet to sing, and dance, and frolic; and the devil sits in the middle. So, at least," he added, after a pause, and in a more sprightly tone--"so the peasants say." "And do you say it?" "Well, I do not know. There's witches, for certain, in the Landes,--old women--but whether they come flying out here to dance round the devil or no--the peasants say so for certain--but I don't think I believe it." "I should hope you didn't." "They enchant people, though; there's no doubt of that. They can give you the fever so bad that no doctor can set you to rights again; and they can curse a place, and keep the grass from growing on it; but I don't believe they fly on broomsticks, or dance round the devil." "Are there any young women witches?" "Well, I do hear of one or two. _Mais elles ne sont pas bien fortes._ It is only the old ones make good witches, and the uglier they are the better." "Well, now, did they ever do any harm to you?" The man paused, and looked at me with a puzzled expression. "Our little Marie," he said, "has fits; and my wife does say--" Here he stopped. "No, monsieur," he said, "I do not believe in witches." But he did, as firmly as King Jamie; only now and then, in the bright sunlight, and with an incredulous person, he thought he did not. On, however, we went mile after mile, over the slippery ground, and in the shadow of the pines, ere we saw gleaming ahead, the region of fine sand, and heard--although the little breeze which blew was off the shore--the low thunder of the "coup de mer"--the breaking surf of the ocean. Presently, passing through a zone of stunted furze, and dry thin-bladed grass, we emerged into the most fearful desert I ever looked upon--a sea of heights and hollows, dells and ridges, long slopes and precipitous ravines--all of them composed of pure white, hot, drifting sand. The labour of walking was excessive. I longed for the stilts I had seen the day before. Every puff of breeze sent the sand, like dry pungent powder, into our faces, and sometimes we could see it reft from the peaks of the ridges, and blown like clouds of dust far out into the air. All at once my guide touched my arm, "_Voila! donc, voila! des chevaux sauvages!_" It certainly only required a breed of wild horses to make the country an exact counterpart of Arabia; and I eagerly turned to see the steeds of the desert, just succeeding in catching a glimpse of a ruck of lean, brown, shaggy ponies, disappearing round a hill, in a whirlwind of sand. There is, undoubtedly, something romantic and Mazeppaish in the notion of wild horses of the desert; but stern truth compels me to add, that a more stunted, ragged lot of worthless brutes, not bigger than donkeys, than were the troop of desert steeds of the Landes which I had the fortune to see, could be nowhere met with. My fisherman told me that, when caught and tamed, they were useful in carrying sacks and panniers along the sandy ways; but that there were not more vicious, stubborn brutes in nature than Landes ponies. A doubly fatiguing trudge, unbroken by any further episodical visions of desert steeds, but enlivened by the fast increasing thunder of the surf, at length brought us to its foam. Winding through a succession of sand valleys, we climbed a steepish bank, sinking to our knees at every step, and from this last ridge beheld a long, gentle slope, as perfectly smooth as though the sand had been smoothed by a ruler--fining away down to the white creaming sheets of water which swept, with the loud peculiar hiss of the agitated sea, far up and down the level banks. The full force of the great heaving swells was expended in breakers, roaring half a mile from the land; and from their uttermost verge to the tangled heaps of seaweed washed high and dry upon the beach, was a vast belt of foaming water, extending away on either hand in a perfectly straight line as far as the eye could reach, and dividing the shipless expanse of water from the houseless expanse of land. The scene was very solemn. There was not even a seabird overhead--not an insect crawling or humming along the ungrateful sand. Only the grand organ of the surf made its incessant music, and the sharp thin rustle of the moving sand came fitfully upon the ear. I sat down and listened to it, and as I sat, the continually shifting sand gradually rose around me, as the waters rose round the chateau of Chatel-morant. Had I stayed there long enough, only my head would have been visible, like the head of the sphinx. I dined that day at the hotel, _tete-à-tete_ with a young priest, who was returning to Bordeaux from a visit to his brother, one of the officers of the Preventitive Service, whose lonely barracks are almost the only human habitations which break the weary wilderness stretching from the Adour to the Gironde. One would have thought that there could be but little smuggling on such a coast; but the Duaniers are always _autorités_, and the waves of the Gulf of Gascony could not, of course, break on French ground without _autorités_ to help them. With respect to the priest, however, he had one of the finest heads and the most perfectly chiselled features I ever saw. The pale high brow--the keen bright eyes, with remarkably long eye-lashes--the tenuity of the cartilage of the nose, and the perfect delicacy of the mouth--all told of intellect in no common development; while the meek sweetness of the noble face had something in it perfectly heavenly. Fling in imagination an aureole round that head, and you had the head of a youthful martyr, or a saint canonized for early virtues. There was devotion and aspiration in every line of the countenance--a meek, mild gentleness, beautifully in keeping with every word he uttered, and every movement he made. I was the more struck with all this, inasmuch as there is not an uglier, meaner, nor, I will add, dirtier, set of worthy folks in all the world, than the priests of France. Nine times out of ten, they are big-jowled, coarse, animal-looking men, with mottled faces, and skins which do not take kindly to the razor. The arrangements about the neck show a decided scarcity of linen, and a still greater lack of soap and water. They are seldom or never gentlemen, their figures are ungainly, their motions uncouth, and--barring, of course, their scholastic and theological knowledge--I found the majority with whom I conversed stupid, illiterate, and unintelligent. Now, the young priest at Teste was the reverse of all this. With manners as polished as those of any courtly _abbé_ of the courtly old _regime_, there was a perfect atmosphere of frankness and quiet good-humour about my companion, and his conversation was delightfully easy, animated, and graceful. I do not know if my friend belonged to the College of Jesus; but, if he did, he was cut out for the performance of its highest and subtlest diplomacy. We talked of the strange part of the world I was visiting, and I found he knew the people and the country well. I mentioned the submerged chateau and its legend, and he replied that it was an undoubted fact, that both chateaux and villages had been overwhelmed--both by the inbursting of the sea, and by great gales blowing vast hills of sand down into the existing lakes, and so forcing them out of their ancient beds. The sand, indeed, he said, was more dangerous than the water. Often and often the coast-guard stations had to be dug out after a gale; and he believed that, on one occasion, a small church near the mouth of the Gironde had been overwhelmed to such a height that only a few feet of the spire and the weathercock were left apparent. The story put me forcibly in mind of the remarkably heavy fall of snow experienced by my old friend, Baron Munchausen; but, for all that, I see no reason why it should not be literally correct. The pines, the priest informed me, were the saving of the country, by fixing the unstable soil, and the Government had engineers busily engaged in laying out plantations all along the coast--the object being to get the trees down to high-water mark. I mentioned the superstitions of the people. "Alas!" said the priest, "What you have heard is perfectly true. We are improving a little, perhaps. The boys and girls we get to come to school are taught to laugh at the notion of their old grandmothers being witches, and in another generation or two there will be a great change." "And how do your witches work?" I asked. "As ours in England used to do--by spell and charm?" "Precisely. They are said to make clay figures of their victims, and to stick pins in them, or bake them in a fire; and then they have rhymes and cabalistical incantations, and are greatly skilled in the magic power of herbs. The worst of it is, that a year seldom passes without an outrage on some poor old woman. A lout, who thinks himself bewitched by such a person, will attack her and beat her; and occasionally a bullet has been fired at night through the cottage-window." "The Landes people have, or had, other queer notions, as well as the witch ones?" "Oh, yes! They long held out against potatoes, which, they said, gave them apoplexy, and they have only lately begun to milk their cows." "Why so? As a pastoral people, they ought to be great in butter and cheese." "On the contrary, they dislike them, and use lard or goose-grease instead. Indeed, for centuries and centuries, they religiously believed that Landes cows gave no milk." "But was not the experiment ever tried?" "Scores of times. An anxious reformer would go to a Landes farmer, and urge him to milk his cows. 'Landes cows give no milk,' would be the answer. 'Will you let me try?' would, perhaps, be replied. The Landes man would have no objection; and the cow would be brought and milked before him." "Well, seeing that would convince him." "Ah, you don't know the Landes people--not in the least; why, the farmer would say, 'Ay, there are a few drops, perhaps; but it's not worth the trouble of taking. Our fathers never milked their cows, and they were as wise as we are. And next day he would have relapsed into the old creed, that Landes cows never gave milk at all." I inquired about the rate at which the stilt-walkers progressed--whether they could, as one sometimes hears, keep up with a horse at the gallop; and found, as I expected, that six or seven miles an hour was as much as they ever managed to achieve. The priest went on succinctly to sketch the costume and life of the people. When in regular herding dress, the shepherd of the Landes appears one uncouth mass of dirty wool. On his body he wears a fleece, cut in the fashion of a rude paletot, and sometimes flung over one shoulder, like a hussar's jacket. His thighs and legs are defended on the outside by cuisses and greaves of the same material. On his feet he wears sabots and coarse worsted socks, covering only the heels and the instep. His remaining clothing generally consists of frayed and tattered home-spun cloth; and altogether the appearance of the man savours very strongly of that of a fantastically costumed scarecrow. So attired, then, with a gourd containing some wretched _piquette_ hung across his shoulders, and provided with a store of rye-bread, baked, perhaps, three weeks before, a few dry sardines, and as many onions or cloves of garlic, the Landes shepherd sallies forth into the wilderness. He reckons himself a rich man, if his employer allows him, over and above his food, sixty francs a-year. From the rising to the setting of the sun, he never touches the ground, shuffling backwards and forwards on his stilts, or leaning against a pine, plying the never-pausing knitting-needle. Sometimes he drives his flock home at eventide; sometimes he bivouacs in the wild. Unbuckling his stilts, and producing his flint and steel, he has soon a rousing fire of fir-branches, when, gathering his sheep-skins round him, he makes himself comfortable for the night, his only annoyances being the mosquitoes and the dread of the cantrips of some unchancy old lady, who may peradventure catch a glimpse of him in the moonlight, as she rides buxomly on her besom to a festal dance in a devil's garden. "Yet still," continued the young priest, "they are a good, honest-hearted, open-handed people. For their wild, solitary life they have a passionate love. The Landes peasant, taken from his dreary plains, and put down in the richest landscape of France, would pine for his heath, and sand, and woods, like a Swiss for his hills. But they seldom leave their home here in the forests. They live and die in the district where they were born, ignorant and careless of all that happens beyond their own lonely bounds. France may vibrate with revolution and change--the shepherds of the Landes feel no shock, take no heed, but pursue the daily life of their ancestors, perfectly happy and contented in their ignorance, driving their sheep, or notching their trees in the wilderness." CHAPTER VI. UP THE GARONNE--THE OLD WARS ON ITS BANKS--ITS BOATS AND ITS SCENERY--AGEN--JASMIN, THE LAST OF THE TROUBADOURS--SOUTHERN COOKERY AND GARLIC--THE BLACK PRINCE IN A NEW LIGHT--A DREARY PILGRIMAGE TO PAU. A solemn imprecation is on record, uttered against the memory of the man who invented getting up by candle-light; to which some honest gentleman, fond of long lying, has appended a fellow curse, fulminated against the man who invented getting up at all. Whatever we may think of the latter commination, I suppose we shall all agree in the propriety of the former. At all events, no one ever execrated with more sincere good will the memory of the ingenious originator of candle-light turnings-out than I did, when a red ray shone through the keyhole of my bedroom, and the knuckles of--one would call him boots at home--rattled at the door, while his hoarse voice proclaimed, "_Trois heures et demi_,"--a most unseasonable and absurd hour certainly; but the Agen steamer, having the strong stream of the Garonne to face, makes the day as long as possible; and starts from the bridge--and a splendid bridge it is--of Bordeaux, crack at half-past four. There was no help for it; and so, leaving my parting compliments for my worthy host, I soon found myself following the truck which conveyed my small baggage, modestly stuck into the interstices of an Alp-like pile of ricketty boxes and faded valises, the property of an ancient _commis voyageur_, my fellow-lodger; and pacing, for the last time, the stately quays of the city of the Black Prince. Early as it was, and pitch-dark, the steam-boat pier was crowded and bustling enough. Men with lanterns and luggage were rushing breathlessly about--and gentlemen with brushy black beards were kissing each other with true French _éffusion_--while a crowd of humble vintagers were being stowed away in the fore part of the boat. On the pier I observed a tent, and looking in, found myself in a genuine early breakfast shop, where I was soon accommodated with a seat by a pan of glowing charcoal. The morning was bitter cold; and a magnificent bowl of smoking coffee, bread hot from the oven, and just a nip of cognac, at the kind suggestion of the jolly motherly-looking old lady in no end of shawls, who presided over the establishment, and who pronounced it "_Bon pour l'estomac, du monsieur le voyageur_." Then aboard; and after the due amount of squabbling, bell-ringing, and contradictory orders, we launched forth upon the black, rushing river. A dreary time it is waiting for the daylight of an autumnal morning, watching the pale negative lighting of the east--then the spreading of the dim approaching day--stars going out, and the outlines of hills coming in--and houses and trees, faint and comfortless, looming amid the grey, cold mist. The Garonne gradually turned from black to yellow--the genuine pea-souppy hue--and bit by bit the whole landscape came clearly into stark-staring view--but still cold and dreary-looking--until the cheering fire stood upon the hill-tops, and announced the rising sun. In half an hour the valley of the Garonne was a blaze of warmth and cheerfulness, and nothing could be more picturesquely beautiful, seen under such auspices, than the fleet of market-boats through which we threaded our way, and which were floating quietly down to Bordeaux. I dismiss the mere vegetable crafts; but the fruit-boats would have made Mr. Lance leap and sing for joy. They were piled--clustered--heaped over--with mountains of grapes bigger than big gooseberries--peaches and apricots, like thousands of ladies' cheeks--plums like pulpy, juicy cannon-balls--and melons big as the head of Gog or Magog. I could not understand how the superincumbent fruit did not crush that below; but I suppose there is a knack in piling. At all events, the boats were loaded to the gunwales with the luscious, shiny, downy, gushing-looking globules, purple and yellow, and both colours mellowed and softened by the grateful green of the clustering leaves. These boats looked like floating cornucopias. Amongst them sometimes appeared a wine-boat--one man at the head, one at the stern, and a Pyrenees of wine casks between them--while here and there we would pass a huge Noah's ark of a barge, towed by a string of labouring oxen, and steered from a platform amidships by a tiller a great deal longer, thicker, and heavier than the mast. And now for a bit of the landscape. We have Gascony to our right, and Guienne to our left. Here and there, then, particularly in Guienne, the Garonne is not unlike the tamer portions of the Rhine. The green vine-clothed banks rise into precipitous ridges, whitened by streaks of limestone cliff, cottages nestling in the crevices and ravines, and an occasional feudal tower crowning the topmost peak. The villages passed near the water's edge are doleful-looking places, ruinous and death-like; whitish, crumbling houses, with outside shutters invariably closed; empty and lonesome streets, and dilapidated piers, the stakes worn and washed away by the constant action of the river. Take Langon and Castres as specimens of these places: two drearier towns--more like sepulchres than towns--never nurtured owls and bats. They seem to be still lamenting the old English rule, and longing for the jolly times when stout English barons led the Gascon knights and men-at-arms on profitable forays into Limousin and Angoumais. Occasionally, however, we have a more promising and pleasing looking town. These, for the most part, are tolerably high up the river, and possess some curious and characteristic features. You will descry them, for instance, towering up from a mass of perpendicular cliffs; the open-galleried and bartizaned red houses, reared upon arches and pillars, rising from the rock; flights of stairs from the water's edge disappearing among the buildings, and strips of terraced gardens laid out on the narrow shelves and ledges of the precipice. The ruins of old feudal castles are numerous on both sides of the river; and if the red mossy stone could speak, many a tale of desperate siege and assault it could, no doubt, tell--for these strongholds were perpetually changing masters in the wars between the French and the English and Gascons; and often, when peace subsisted between the crowns, were they attacked and harried by moss-trooping expeditions led by French Watts Fire-the-Braes, or by English Christies of the Clinthill. While, then, the steamer is slowly plodding her way up stream, turning reach after reach, and showing us another and yet another pile of feudal ruins, let us sit down here with Froissart beneath the awning, and try to gain some inkling into the warlike customs of the times when these thick-walled towers--no doubt built, as honest King James remarked, by gentlemen who were thieves in their hearts--alternately displayed the Lion Rampant and the Fleur-de-Lis. In all the fighting of the period--I refer generally to the age of the Black Prince--there would appear to have been a great deal of chivalric courtesy and forbearance shown on either side. It was but seldom that a place was defended _à outrance_. If the besiegers appeared in very formidable force, the besieged usually submitted with a very good grace, marched honourably out, and had their turn next time. I cannot find that there was anything in the nature of personal animosity between the combatants, but there was great wantonness of life; and though few men were killed in downright cold blood, a man was frequently made the victim of a sort of murderous frolicsomeness, the manner of his death being suggested, by the circumstances of the moment. For instance, on one occasion, an English and Gascon garrison was besieged in Auberoche--the French having "brought from Toulouse four large machines, which cast stones into the fortress night and day, which stones demolished all the roofs of the towers, so that none within the walls dared to venture out of the vaulted rooms on the ground-floor." In this strait, a "varlet" undertook to carry letters, requesting succour, to the Earl of Derby, at Bordeaux. He was unsuccessful in getting through the French lines, and being arrested, the letters were found upon him, hung round his neck, and the poor wretch bound hand and foot, inserted in one of the stone-throwing machines. His cries for mercy all unheeded, the engine made two or three of its terrific swings, and then launched the screaming "varlet" into the air, right over the battlements of Auberoche, "so that he fell quite dead amid the other varlets, who were much terrified at it;" and presently, the French knights, riding up to the walls, shouted to the defenders: "Gentlemen, inquire of your messenger where he found the Earl of Derby, seeing that he has returned to you so speedily." But the Earl of Derby did come, and took signal vengeance. The battle, which Froissart tells in his best manner, resulted in the capture by the English of nine French viscounts, and "so many barons, squires, and knights, that there was not a man-at-arms among the English that had not for his share two or three." The captains of the pillaging bands, who preyed both upon the English and the French, and the hired auxiliaries, who transferred their services from one side to the other, were, however, miserable assassins, thirsting for blood. These men were frequently Bretons; and, says Froissart, "the most cruel of all Bretons was Geoffrey Tete-Noire." With this Geoffrey Tete-Noire, continues the old chronicler, "there was a certain captain, who performed many excellent deeds of arms, namely, Aimerigot Marcel, a Limousin squire, attached to the side of the English." One of the "deeds of arms" performed under this worthy's auspices is narrated as follows:-- "Aimerigot made one day an excursion, with only twelve companions, to seek adventures. They took the road towards Aloise, near St. Fleur, which has a handsome castle in the bishopric of Clermont. They knew the castle was only guarded by the porter. As they were riding silently towards Aloise, Aimerigot spied the porter sitting upon the branch of a tree without side of the castle. The Breton, who shot extraordinary well with a cross-bow, says to him, 'Would you like to have that porter killed at a shot?'--'Yea,' replied Aimerigot; 'and I hope you will do so.' The cross-bow man shoots a bolt, which he drives into the porter's head, and knocks him down. The porter, feeling himself mortally wounded, regains the gate, which he attempts to shut, but cannot, and falls down dead." This delectable anecdote, Froissart--probably as kind-hearted a man by nature as any of his age--tells as the merest matter of course, and without a word of compunction or reproof. The fact is, that the gay and lettered canon of Chimay cared and thought no more of the spilling of blood which was not gentle, than he would of the scotching of a rat or a snake. Lingeringly and wofully does he record the deaths of dukes, and viscounts, and even simple knights and squires, who have done their _devoirs_ gallantly; but as to the life-blood of the varlets--the vilains--the kernes--the villagios--the Jacques Bonhommes--foh! the red puddle--let it flow; blood is only blood when it gushes from the veins of a gentleman! [Illustration: JASMIN.] The evening was closing, and the mist stealing over the Garonne, when we came alongside the pier at Agen. A troop of diligence _conducteurs_ and canal touters immediately leaped on board, to secure the passengers for Toulouse, either by road or water. Being, fortunately, not of the number who were thus taken prisoners, I walked up through the sultry evening--for we are now getting into the true south--to the very comfortable hotel looking upon the principal square of the town. One of my objects in stopping at Agen was, to pay a literary visit to a very remarkable man--JASMIN, the peasant-poet of Provence and Languedoc--the "Last of the Troubadours," as, with more truth than is generally to be found in _ad captandum_ designations, he terms himself, and is termed by the wide circle of his admirers; for Jasmin's songs and rural epics are written in the _patois_ of the people, and that _patois_ is the still almost unaltered _Langue d'Oc_--the tongue of the chivalric minstrelsy of yore. But Jasmin is a Troubadour in another sense than that of merely availing himself of the tongue of the _ménestrels_. He publishes, certainly--conforming so far to the usages of our degenerate modern times; but his great triumphs are his popular recitations of his poems. Standing bravely up before an expectant assembly of perhaps a couple of thousand persons--the hot-blooded and quick-brained children of the South--the modern Troubadour plunges over head and ears into his lays, working both himself and his applauding audience into fits of enthusiasm and excitement, which, whatever may be the excellence of the poetry, an Englishman finds it difficult to conceive or account for. The raptures of the New Yorkers and Bostonians with Jenny Lind are weak and cold compared with the ovations which Jasmin has received. At a recitation given shortly before my visit at Auch, the ladies present actually tore the flowers and feathers out of their bonnets, wove them into extempore garlands, and flung them in showers upon the panting minstrel; while the editors of the local papers next morning assured him, in floods of flattering epigrams, that, humble as he was now, future ages would acknowledge the "divinity" of a Jasmin! There is a feature, however, about these recitations, which is still more extraordinary than the uncontrollable fits of popular enthusiasm which they produce. His last entertainment before I saw him was given in one of the Pyrenean cities (I forget which), and produced 2000 francs. Every sous of this went to the public charities; Jasmin will not accept a stiver of money so earned. With a species of perhaps overstrained, but certainly exalted, chivalric feeling, he declines to appear before an audience to exhibit for money the gifts with which nature has endowed him. After, perhaps, a brilliant tour through the South of France, delighting vast audiences in every city, and flinging many thousands of francs into every poor-box which he passes, the poet contentedly returns to his humble occupation, and to the little shop where he earns his daily bread by his daily toil, as a barber and hairdresser. It will be generally admitted, that the man capable of self-denial of so truly heroic a nature as this, is no ordinary poetaster. One would be puzzled to find a similar instance of perfect and absolute disinterestedness in the roll of minstrels, from Homer downwards; and, to tell the truth, there does seem a spice of Quixotism mingling with and tinging the pure fervour of the enthusiast. Certain it is, that the Troubadours of yore, upon whose model Jasmin professes to found his poetry, were by no means so scrupulous. "Largesse" was a very prominent word in their vocabulary; and it really seems difficult to assign any satisfactory reason for a man refusing to live upon the exercise of the finer gifts of his intellect, and throwing himself for his bread upon the daily performance of mere mechanical drudgery. [Illustration: A POET'S HOUSE.] Jasmin, as may be imagined, is well known in Agen. I was speedily directed to his abode, near the open _Place_ of the town, and within earshot of the rush of the Garonne; and in a few moments I found myself pausing before the lintel of the modest shop inscribed, _Jasmin, Perruquier, Coiffeur de jeunes Gens_. A little brass basin dangled above the threshold; and, looking through the glass, I saw the master of the establishment shaving a fat-faced neighbour. Now, I had come to see and pay my compliments to a poet; and there did appear to me to be something strangely awkward and irresistibly ludicrous in having to address, to some extent in a literary and complimentary vein, an individual actually engaged in so excessively prosaic and unelevated a species of performance. I retreated, uncertain what to do, and waited outside until the shop was clear. Three words explained the nature of my visit; and Jasmin received me with a species of warm courtesy, which was very peculiar and very charming--dashing at once, with the most clattering volubility and fiery speed of tongue, into a sort of rhapsodical discourse upon poetry in general, and his own in particular--upon the French language in general, and the _patois_ of it spoken in Languedoc, Provence, and Gascony in particular. Jasmin is a well-built and strongly limbed man, of about fifty, with a large, massive head, and a broad pile of forehead, overhanging two piercingly bright black eyes, and features which would be heavy were they allowed a moment's repose from the continual play of the facial muscles, which were continually sending a series of varying expressions across the swarthy visage. Two sentences of his conversation were quite sufficient to stamp his individuality. The first thing which struck me was the utter absence of all the mock-modesty, and the pretended self-underrating, conventionally assumed by persons expecting to be complimented upon their sayings or doings. Jasmin seemed thoroughly to despise all such flimsy hypocrisy. "God only made four Frenchmen poets!" he burst out with; "and their names are Corneille, Lafontaine, Beranger, and Jasmin!" Talking with the most impassioned vehemence, and the most redundant energy of gesture, he went on to declaim against the influences of civilization upon language and manners as being fatal to all real poetry. If the true inspiration yet existed upon earth, it burned in the hearts and brains of men far removed from cities, _salons_, and the clash and din of social influences. Your only true poets were the unlettered peasants, who poured forth their hearts in song, not because they wished to make poetry, but because they were joyous and true. Colleges, academies, schools of learning, schools of literature, and all such institutions, Jasmin denounced as the curse and the bane of true poetry. They had spoiled, he said, the very French language. You could no more write poetry in French now, than you could in arithmetical figures. The language had been licked, and kneaded, and tricked out, and plumed, and dandified, and scented, and minced, and ruled square, and chipped--(I am trying to give an idea of the strange flood of epithets he used)--and pranked out, and polished, and muscadined, until, for all honest purposes of true high poetry, it was mere unavailable and contemptible jargon. It might do for cheating _agents de change_ on the Bourse--for squabbling politicians in the Chambers--for mincing dandies in the _salons_--for the sarcasm of Scribeish comedies, or the coarse drolleries of Palais Royal farces; but for poetry the French language was extinct. All modern poets who used it were mere _faiseurs de phrase_--thinking about words, and not feelings. "No, no," my Troubadour continued; "to write poetry, you must get the language of a rural people--a language talked among fields, and trees, and by rivers and mountains--a language never minced or disfigured by academies, and dictionary-makers, and journalists; you must have a language like that which your own Burns (whom I read of in Chateaubriand) used; or like the brave old mellow tongue--unchanged for centuries--stuffed with the strangest, quaintest, richest, raciest idioms, and odd, solemn words, full of shifting meanings and associations, at once pathetic and familiar, homely and graceful--the language which I write in, and which has never yet been defiled by calculating men of science or jack-a-dandy _litterateurs_." The above sentences may be taken as a specimen of the ideas with which Jasmin seemed to be actually overflowing at every pore in his body, so rapid, vehement, and loud was his enunciation of them. Warming more and more as he went on, he began to sketch the outlines of his favourite pieces, every now and then plunging into recitation, jumping from French to _patois_, and from _patois_ to French, and sometimes spluttering them out, mixed up pell-mell together. Hardly pausing to take breath, he rushed about the shop as he discoursed, lugging out, from old chests and drawers, piles of old newspapers and reviews, pointing me out a passage here in which the estimate of the writer pleased him, a passage there which showed how perfectly the critic had mistaken the scope of his poetic philosophy, and exclaiming, with the most perfect _naivete_, how mortifying it was for men of original and profound genius to be misconceived and misrepresented by pigmy whipper-snapper scamps of journalists. There was one review of his works, published in a London "_Recueil_," as he called it, to which Jasmin referred with great pleasure. A portion of it had been translated, he said, in the preface to a French edition of his works; and he had most of the highly complimentary phrases by heart. The English critic, he said, wrote in the _Tintinum_; and he looked dubiously at me when I confessed that I had never heard of the organ in question. "_Pourtant_," he said, "_je vous le ferai voir_:" and I soon perceived that Jasmin's _Tintinum_ was no other than the _Athenæum_. In the little back drawing-room behind the shop, to which the poet speedily introduced me, his sister, a meek, smiling woman, whose eyes never left her brother, following him as he moved with a beautiful expression of love and pride in his glory, received me with simple cordiality. The walls were covered with testimonials, presentations, and trophies, awarded by cities and distinguished persons, literary and political, to the modern Troubadour. Not a few of these are of a nature to make any man most legitimately proud. Jasmin possesses gold and silver vases, laurel branches, snuff-boxes, medals of honour, and a whole museum of similar gifts, inscribed with such characteristic and laconic legends as--"_Au Poete, Les Jeunes filles de Toulouse reconnaissantes_----." The number of garlands of _immortelles_, wreaths of ivy-jasmin (punning upon the name), laurel, and so forth, utterly astonished me. Jasmin preserved a perfect shrubbery of such tokens; and each symbol had, of course, its pleasant associative remembrance. One was given by the ladies of such a town; another was the gift of the prefect's wife of such a department. A handsome full-length portrait had been presented to the poet by the municipal authorities of Agen; and a letter from M. Lamartine, framed, above the chimney-piece, avowed the writer's belief that the Troubadour of the Garonne was the Homer of the modern world. M. Jasmin wears the ribbon of the Legion of Honour, and has several valuable presents which were made to him by the late ex-king and different members of the Orleans family. I have been somewhat minute in giving an account of my interview with M. Jasmin, because he is really the popular poet--the peasant poet of the south of France--the Burns of Limousin, Provence, and Languedoc. His songs are in the mouths of all who sing in the fields and by the cottage firesides. Their subjects are always rural, _naive_, and full of rustic pathos and rustic drollery. To use his words to me, he sings what the hearts of the people say, and he can no more help it than can the birds in the trees. Translations into French of his main poems have appeared; and compositions more full of natural and thoroughly unsophisticated pathos and humour it would be difficult to find. Jasmin writes from a teeming brain and a beaming heart; and there is a warmth and a glow, and a strong, happy, triumphant march of song about his poems, which carry you away in the perusal as they carried away the author in the writing. I speak of course from the French translations, and I can well conceive that they give but a comparatively faint transcript of the pith and power of the original. The _patois_ in which these poems are written is the common peasant language of the south-west. It varies in some slight degree in different districts, but not more than the broad Scotch of Forfarshire differs from that of Ayrshire. As for the dialect itself, it seems in the main to be a species of cross between old French and Spanish--holding, however, I am assured, rather to the latter tongue than the former, and constituting a bold, copious, and vigorous speech, very rich in its colouring, full of quaint words and expressive phrases, and especially strong in all that relates to the language of the passions and affections. I hardly know how long my interview with Jasmin might have lasted, for he seemed by no means likely to tire of talking, and his talk was too good and too curious not to be listened to with interest; but the sister, who had left us for a moment, coming back with the intelligence that there was quite a gathering of customers in the shop, I hastily took my leave, the poet squeezing my hand like a vice, and immediately thereafter dashing into all that appertains to curling-irons, scissors, razors, and lather, with just as much apparent energy and enthusiasm as he flung into his rhapsodical discourse on poetry and language. Hereabouts you begin to become sensible of a change in the cookery at the _table-d'hôtes_; and in the gradually increasing predominance of oil and garlic, you recognise the kitchen influences of the sweet south. Garlic is a word of fear--of absolute horror to a great proportion of our countrymen, whose prejudices will permit them to learn no better. I admit that the first whiff of the odorous root coming upon inexperienced nostrils is far from pleasant; indeed, I well remember being once driven from the table in a small _gasthoff_ at Strasbourg by the fumes of a particularly strong sausage. Now, however, I think I should know better. A relish for garlic, in fact, is one of those many acquired tastes which grew upon us with curious rapidity. You turn from the first garlicky dish with dismay; the second does not appear quite so bad; you muster up courage, and taste the third. A strange flavour certainly--nasty, too--but still--not irredeemably bad--there is a lurking merit in the sensation--and you try the experiment again and again--speedily coming to Sir Walter Scott's evident opinions touching the _petit point d'ail_, "which Gascons love and Scotsmen do not despise." Indeed, your friends will probably think it well if you content yourself with the _petit point_, and do not give yourself up to a height of seasoning such as that which I saw in the _salle à manger_ at Agen, drive two English ladies headlong from the room. Every body in the South eats garlic, and you will find it for your interest, if but in self-defence, to do the same; while the oil eating is equally infectious: you enter Provence, able just to stand a sprinkling upon your salad--you depart from it, thinking nothing of devouring a dish of cabbage, chopped up, and swimming in the viscous fluid. The peasants all through the South eat and drink oil like so many Russians. Wandering through the dark and narrow streets of Agen--for we have now reached the point where the eaves of the roofs are made to project so far as to cast a perpetual shade upon the thoroughfare beneath--I came upon a group of tiny urchins, clustered round a grocer's shop, in great admiration of a row of clear oil-flasks displayed in the window. "_Tiens_," said one. "_C'est de l'huile ça--de l'huile claire--ça doit etre bon su' le pain--ça!_" The little gourmand looked upon oil just as an English urchin would upon treacle. It was from the heights above Agen--studded with the plum-trees which produce the famous _prunes d'Agen_--that I caught my first glimpse of the Pyrenees. I was sitting watching the calm uprising of the light smoke from the leaf-covered town beneath, and marking the grand panorama around me--the masses of luxuriant vines climbing up the plum and fig-trees, and the earth frequently yellow with the bursting beds of huge melons and pumpkins--when, extending my gaze over the vast expanse of champagne country, watered by the winding reaches of the Garonne, I saw--shadowy as the phantoms of airy clouds, rising into the far bright air--faintly, very faintly traced, but still visible, a blue vision of sierrated and jagged mountain peaks, stretching along the horizon from east to west, forming the central portion of the great chain of peaks running from Perpignan to Bayonne, and certainly, at least, one hundred and twenty miles distant from me as the crow flies. There they stood,--Louis Quatorze to the contrary, notwithstanding--one of the great landmarks of the world; a natural boundary for ever; dividing a people from a people, a tongue from a tongue, and a power from a power! Below me, at the back of the town, once rose the ancient castle of Agen. Its ruins were demolished, with those of a cathedral, at the time of the Revolution; but its memory recalls a very curious story, developing the true character of the Black Prince, and shewing that, chivalrous and daring as he was, his tongue had in it an occasional smack of the braggart, and that the Foremost Knight of all the World could occasionally do uncommonly sneaking things. Thus it fell out:--In the year 1368, the Lord of Aquitaine announced that he would raise a hearth-tax throughout Guienne. The measure was, of course, unpopular, and the Gascon lords appealed to the King of France, as Feudal Superior of the Prince; and the King sent, by two commissioners--a lawyer and a knight--a summons to Edward, to appear and answer before the Parliament of Paris. The emissaries were introduced in High Court, at Bordeaux, told their tale, and exhibited their missives. The Black Prince heard in silence, and then, after a long pause, he sternly and solemnly replied: "Willing shall we be to attend on the appointed day at Paris, since the King of France sends for us; but it will be with the helmet on our head, and sixty thousand men behind us." The envoys fell on their knees, and bowed their heads to the ground. After the Prince had retired, they were assured that they would get no better answer; and so, after dinner, they set forth on the road to Toulouse, where the Duke of Anjou lay, to convey to him the defiance of the Englishman. Meantime, however, Edward began rather to repent the unconditional style of his reply, and to wish the ambassadors back again. Perhaps, after all, he had been a little too hasty, and had gone a little too far; so he called together the chief of his barons, and opened his mind to them. "He did not wish," he said, "the envoys to bear his cartel to the King of France." In the opinion of the straightforward practitioners whom he consulted, the means of prevention were easy: what more practicable and natural than to send out a handful of men-at-arms--catch the knight and the lawyer, and then and there cut their throats? But Edward refused to commit unnecessary slaughter; and possibly exclaiming, as gentlemen in a drama and a dilemma always do--"I have it"--he gave some private instructions to Sir William le Moine, the High Steward of Agenois, who immediately set forth at the head of a plump of spears. Meantime, the envoys were quietly jogging along, when, what was their horror and surprise at being suddenly pounced upon by the Lord Steward, and arrested, upon the charge of having stolen a horse from their last baiting place. It was in vain that the unfortunate pair offered to bring any evidence of the falsity of the charge; Sir William had as many witnesses as he commanded men-at-arms, and the victims were hurried to the castle of Agen, and left to their own reflections in the securest of its dungeons. When they got out again, or whether they ever got out at all, Froissart does not condescend to inform us; but surely the story shews the Black Prince in a new and not exactly favourable light. We would hardly have expected to find the "Lion whelp of England" stooping to trump up a false accusation against innocent men, in order to shuffle out of the consequences of his own brag. I found it no easy matter to get comfortably from Agen to Pau: cross-country diligences are most untrustworthy conveyances. The pace at which they crawl puts it out of the question that they should ever see a snail which they did not meet; while the terribly long stages to which the horses are doomed, keeps one in a constant state of moral discomfort. However, I managed to get rattled and jangled on to Auch, on the great Toulouse road, one of those towns which you wonder has been built where it chances to lie, rather than anywhere else; and boasting a grand old Gothic cathedral church, which Louis Quatorze, in the kindest manner, enriched with a hugely clumsy Grecian portico, supported on fat, dropsical pillars. The question was now, how to get on to Pau. The Toulouse diligence passed every day, but was nearly always full; I might have to wait a week for a place. A _voiturier_, however, was to start in the evening, and he faithfully promised to set me down at Tarbes, whence locomotion to Pau is easy, in time for a late supper; and so with this worthy I struck a bargain. He shewed me a fair looking vehicle, and we were to start at six. Punctually to the time, I was upon the ground, but no conveyance appeared. The place was the front of a carrier's shed, with an army of _roulage_ carts drawn up before it. I kicked my heels there in vain, for not a bit could I see of _voiture_ or _voiturier_. Seven struck--half-past seven--the north wind was bitterly cold, and a sleety rain began to fall. Had I absolute powers for ten minutes, like Abou Hassan, sorrowful would have been the fate of that _voiturier_. As it was, the wind got colder and colder; the streets became deserted, and the rain and sleet lashed the rough pavement with a loud, shrieking rattle, when a wilder gust than common came thundering up the narrow street. At length, sick of cursing the scoundrel, I turned, for warmth, into a vast, broad-eaved _auberge_, the house of call, I supposed, for the carriers; and entering the great shadowy kitchen, almost as big and massive looking a room as an old baronial hall, a voice I knew--the voice of the rascally _voiturier_ himself--struck my ear, exclaiming with the most warm-hearted affability, "_Entrez, monsieur; entrez._ We were waiting for you." Waiting for me! Surrounded by a group of men in blouses, and two or three fat women, who were to be my fellow-passengers, there was the villain, discussing a capital dinner--the bare-armed wenches of the place rushing between the vast fireplace and the table, with no end of the savouriest and the most garlicky of dishes, and the whole party in the highest state of feather and enjoyment. The cool impertinence of the greeting, however, tickled me amazingly; and room being immediately made, I was entreated to join the company, and exhorted to eat, as it would be a good many hours before I had another chance. This looked ominous; and besides, the whole meal, full of nicely browned stews, was so appetising, that I fear I committed the enormity of making a very tolerable second dinner; and so about half-past eight we at last got under weigh. But not in the vehicle which I had been shown. There was some cock-and-bull story of that having been damaged; and we were squeezed--six of us, including the fat ladies--into a dreadful square box, with our twelve legs jammed together like the sticks of a faggot, in the centre. Oh, the woes of that dreary night!--the gruntings and the groanings of the fat ladies--the squabbles about "making legs," and, notwithstanding our crowded condition, the intensity of the pinching cold--one window was broken, another wouldn't pull up, and the whole vehicle was full of cracks and crevices. Outside, the gale had increased to a hurricane; the rain and sleet lashed the ground, so that you could hardly hear the driver shouting at the full pitch of his voice to the poor jades, who drearily dragged us through the mire. After an hour or two's riding, the water began to trickle in on all sides. The fat ladies said they could not possibly survive the night; and a poor thin slip of a soldier next me accepted half a railway wrapper with the most vehement "_Merci-bien merci!_" I ever heard in my life. About one in the morning we pulled up at a lone public-house, in the kitchen of which the passengers refreshed themselves with coffee, and I myself, to their great surprise, with a liberal application of cognac and hot water. But the French have no notion of the mellow beauties of toddy. The rest of the night wore slowly and wretchedly on. I believe we had the same horses all the way. Day was grey around us when we heard the voices of the market people flocking in to Tarbes; and looking forth, after a short, nightmareish dose, I beheld around me a wide champaign country, as white with snow as Nova Zembla at Christmas. And this was the boasted South of France, and the date was the twentieth of October! [Illustration: CASTLE OF PAU.] CHAPTER VII. PAU--THE ENGLISH IN PAU--ENGLISH AND RUSSIANS--THE VIEW OF THE PYRENEES--THE CASTLE--THE STATUE OF HENRI QUATRE--HIS BIRTH--A VISION OF HIS LIFE--ROCHELLE--ST. BARTHOLEMEW--IVRY--HENRI AND SULLY--HENRI AND GABRIELLE--HENRI AND HENRIETTE D'ENTRAGUES--RAVAILLAC. Excepting, perhaps, the famous city of Boulogne-sur-Mer, Pau is the most Anglicised town in France. There are a good many of our countrymen congregated under the old steeples of Tours which every British man should love, were it only for Quentin Durward; but they do not leaven the mass; while in Pau, particularly during the winter time, the main street and the _Place Royale_ look, so far as the passengers go, like slices cut out from Weymouth, Bath, or Cheltenham. You see in an instant the insular cut of the groups, who go laughing and talking the familiar vernacular along the rough _pavé_. There is a tall, muscular hoble-de-hoy, with red hair, high shirt collar, and a lady on each arm--fresh-looking damsels, with flounces, which smack unmistakeably of England. It is a young gentleman with his sisters. Next come a couple of wonderfully well-shaved, well buttoned-up, fat, elderly, half-pay English officers, talking "by Jove, sir," of "Wilkins of ours;" and "by George, sir," of what the "old Duke had said to Galpins of the 9th. at the United Service." An old fat half-pay officer is always a major. I do not know how it happens, but so it is; and when you meet them settled abroad, ten to one they have been dragged there by their wives and daughters. "By Jove, sir!" said one of these veterans to me at Pau--he was very confidential over a glass of brandy and water at the _café_ on the _Place_--"By Jove, sir, for myself, I'd never like to go further from Pall Mall than just down Whitehall, to set my watch by the Horse Guards' clock; but the women, you know, sir, have a confounded hankering for these confounded foreign places; and, by Jove, sir, what is an old fellow who wants a quiet life to do, sir?" The colony of our country folks at Pau keep, as usual, very much together, and try to live in the most English fashion they may; ask each other mutually to cut mutton; display joints instead of _plats_, and import their own sherry; pass half their time studying _Galignani_, and reading to each other long epistles of news and chat from England--the majors and other old boys clustering together like corks in a tub of water; the young people getting up all manner of merry pic-nics and dances, and any body who at all wishes to be in the set, going decorously to the weekly English service. "_Tenez_," said a Pau shopkeeper to me; "your countrymen enjoy here all the luxuries of England. They have even an episcopal chapel and a pack of fox-hounds." Of course, the prosperity of Pau mainly depends upon its English residents, who are generally well-to-do people, spending their money freely. Shortly before my visit, however, a Russian prince, who had established himself in a neighbouring chateau, had quite thrown the English reputation for wealth into the shade. His equipages, his parties, the countess's diamonds, had overblazed the grandeur of the English all put together; and the way in which he spent money enraptured the good folks of the old capital of Bearne. The Russians, indeed, wherever they go on the continent, deprive us of our _prestige_ as the richest people in the world--an achievement for which they deserve the thanks of all Englishmen with heads longer than their purses. "_Ah, monsieur!_" I was once told, "_la pluie de guineés, c'est bonne; mais le pluie de roubles, c'est une averse--un deluge!_" Gaston Phoebus, Count de Foix, was a sad Bluebeard of a fellow, but he showed his taste in pitching upon a site for the castle of Pau. He reared its towers on the edge of a rocky hill. Far beneath sparkle the happy waters of the Gave--appearing and disappearing in the broken country--a tumbling maze of wooded hill, green meadow, straggling coppice, corn-fields, vineyards, and gardens--verily a land flowing with milk and honey. Further on, sluggish round-backed hills heave up their green masses, clustered all over with box-wood; and then come--cutting with many a pointed peak and jagged sierra--the bright blue sky--the glorious screen of the Pyrenees. From the end of the _Place_, which runs to the ridge of the bank on which stands the town, you may gaze at it for hours--the hills towering in peak and pinnacle, sharp, ridgy, saw-like--either deeply, beautifully blue, or clad in one unvarying garb of white; and beyond that, Spain. The same view from the castle is even still finer, as you are more elevated; and the sheer sink of the wall and rock below you, makes, as it were, a vast gulf, across which the mind leaps, even over the green stumbling landscape of the foreground to the blue or white peaks beyond. [Illustration: STATUE OF HENRI QUATRE.] But the feature--the characteristic--the essence--the very soul of Pau--is neither the fair landscape, nor the rushing Gave, nor the stedfast Pyrenees. It is the memory of the good King Henri Quatre, which envelopes castle and town--which makes haunted holy stones of these grim grey towers--which gives all its renown and glory to the little capital of Bearne. Look up at the "Good King" in his bronze effigy in the _Place_. These features are more familiar to you than those of any foreign potentate. You know them of old--you know them by heart--a goodly, honest, well-favoured, burly face--a face with mind and matter in it--a face not of an abstract transcendental hero, but emphatically of a MAN. Passion and impulse are there, as in the jaw of Henry VIII.; energy and strong thought, as in the brow of Cromwell; a calm, and courtly, and meditative smile over all, as in the face of Charles I. The stubbly beard grizzling round the firm and close-set lips, and worn by the helmet, speaks the soldier--the conqueror of Ivry; the high, broad forehead and the quick eye tell of the statesman--he who proclaimed the edict of Nantes; the frank, gallant, and blithsome expression of the whole face--what does it tell of--of the gallant, whose mingled sagacity and debonnair courage won La Reine Margot from the intrigues of Catherine; whose impulsive heart and fiery passions cast him at the feet of Gabrielle d'Estrees; and whose weakness--manly while unmanly--made him for a time the slave of Henriette d'Entragues. There is an encyclopædia of meaning in the face, and even in the figure, of Henri. He had a grand mind, with turbulent passions; he was deeply wise, yet frantically reckless; he had many faults, but few vices. If he gave up a religion for a throne, he never claimed to be a martyr or a saint. Indeed, he was the last man in the world deliberately to run his head against a wall. He thought that he could do more for the Huguenots by turning Catholic and King, than by remaining Protestant and Pretender; and he did it. Yet for all--for the men of Rome and the men of Geneva--he had a broad, genial, hearty sympathy. Were they not all French?--all the children of a king of France? Henri had not one morsel of bigotry in his soul: his mind was too clear, and his heart too big. And yet, with the pithiest sagacity--with the sternest will--with the most exalted powers of calm comprehension--and the most honest wish to make his good people happy--he could be recklessly vehement--Quixotically generous--he could fling himself over to his passions--do foolish things, rash things--insult the kingdom for which he laboured, and which he loved--and thunder out his wrath at the grey head of the venerable counsellor who stood by him in field and hall, and whose practical wisdom it was which trimmed and shaped Henri's grand visions of majestic politics and astounding plans for national combinations. In the face, then, and in the figure of the Good King, you can trace, I think, some such mixture of qualities. Neither are beau ideals. You are not looking at an angel or an Apollo--but a bold, passionate, burly, good-humoured man, big in the bone, and firm in muscle, with plenty of human flesh and its frailties, yet with plenty of mind to shine through, and elevate them all. Let us enter the castle of his birth. Thanks to Louis Philippe, it has been rescued from the rats and the owls, and re-fitted as exactly as possible in its ancient style. Mounting the grand staircase, we see everywhere around, on walls and vaulted ceiling, the gilt cyphers, "H. M."--not, however, meaning Henri and Margot, but the grandfather of the King of France--the stern, old Henri D'Albret, King of Navarre, and Margaret his wife--_La Marguerite des Marguerites_, the Pearl of Pearls. Pass through a series of noble state-apartments, vaulted, oak-pannelled, with rich wooden carved work adorning cornice and ceiling, and we stand in the room in which Henri saw the light. Jeanne D'Albret's bed, a huge structure, massive and carven, and with ponderous silken curtains, still stands as it did at the birth of the king. And what a strange coming into the world that was. The Princess of Navarre had travelled a few days previously nearly across France, that the hoped-for son and heir might be a Bearnais born. Old Henri, her father, was waiting and praying in mortal anxiety for the event. "My daughter," said the patriarch, "in the hour of your trial you must neither cry nor moan, but sing a song in the dear Bearnais tongue; and so shall the child be welcomed to the world with music, and neither weep nor make wry faces." The princess promised this, and she kept her word; so that the first mortal sound which struck Henri Quatre's ear was his mother's voice feebly chanting an old pastoral song of the shepherds of Bearne. "Thanks be to God!--a man-child hath come into the world, and cried not," said the old man. He took the infant in his arms, and, after the ancient fashion of the land, rubbed its lips with a clove of garlic, and poured into its mouth, from a golden cup, a few drops of Jurancon wine. And so was born Henri Quatre. Stand for a moment in the shadow of these tapestried curtains, and call up in the gloom a vision of the grandly eventful life which followed. An army is drawn up near Rochelle, and a lady leads a child between the lines. Coligni and the Condé head the group of generals who, bonnet in hand, surround the lady and the child; and then Jeanne D'Albret, lifting up her clear woman's voice, dedicates the little Henri to the Protestant cause in France; and with loud acclamations is the gift received, and the leader accepted by the stern Huguenot array.--The next picture. An antique room in the Louvre. The bell of St. Germain l'Auxerrois is pealing a loud alarm; arquebus shots ring through the streets, and cries and clamour of distress come maddening through the air. Pale, but firmly resolute, stands Henri, beside a young man richly, but negligently, dressed, who, after speaking wildly and passionately to him, snatches up an arquebus--stands for a moment as though about to level it at his unshrinking companion, and then exclaiming like a maniac, "_Il faut que je tue quelq'un_," flings open the lattice, and fires without. Henri and Charles IX. on the night of the St. Bartholemew.--Another vision. A battle-field: Henri surrounded by his eager troops--the famous white plume of Ivry rising above his helmet: "And if my standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he may, For never saw I promise yet of a more bloody fray; Charge where you see this white plume shine amid the ranks of war, And be your oriflamme to day, the helmet of Navarre." --Solemn organ music floating through cathedral aisles must introduce the next scene. The child who was dedicated to the cause of Protestantism kneels before a mitred priest. "Who are you?" is the question put. "I am the king." "And what is your request?" "To be admitted into the pale of the Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church."--Again a change. Henri the King of France, and Rosny, Duke de Sully, labouring amid papers, calculations, and despatches, to elevate and make prosperous the great kingdom of France. "I would," said the king, "that every subject of mine might have a fat fowl in his pot every Sunday."--Take another: a gay and courtly scene. A glittering mob of courtiers surround a plain ferryman, who, in answer to the laughing questions of the monarch, whom the boatman does not know, admits that "the king is a good sort of fellow enough, but that he has a jade of a mistress, who is continually wanting fine gowns and trumpery trinkets, which the people have to pay for;--not, indeed, that it would signify so much if she were but constant to her lover; but they did say that----." Here a lady, with burning cheeks, and flashing eyes, exclaims: "Sire, that fellow must be hanged forthwith!" "Sire!"--the boatman gazes in astonishment on his questioner. "Tut, tut," is the reply; "the poor fellow shall no longer pay _corvée_ or _gabelle_, and so will he sing for the rest of his days, Vive Henri--Vive Gabrielle!"--Another scene: in the library and working room of the great king, and his great minister. The monarch shews a paper, signed with his name, to his counsellor. It is a promise of marriage to Henriette d'Entragues. Sully looks for a moment at his master, then tears up the instrument, and flings the fragments on the earth. "Are you mad, duke?" shouts Henri. "If I am," was the reply, "I should not be the only madman in France." The king takes his hand, and does him justice.--Yet one last closing sketch. In a huge gilded coach in the midst of a group of splendidly dressed courtiers, sits the king. There is an obstruction in the street. The _cortège_ stops; the lackeys leave it to clear the way; when a moody-browed fanatic, with flaming eyes, and red hair all on end, bounds into the carriage--a poniard gleaming above his head--and in a moment the Good King, stabbed with three mortal wounds, has gone home to his fathers. All is over: Henri Quatre is historical! CHAPTER VIII. THE VAL D'OSSAU--THE VIN DE JURANCON--THE OLD BEARNE COSTUME--THE DEVIL AND THE BASQUE LANGUAGE--PYRENEAN SCENERY--THE WOLF--THE BEAR--A PYRENEAN AUBERGE--THE FOUNTAIN OF LARUNS, AND THE EVENING SONG. The valley of Ossau, one of the finest and most varied of the clefts running deep into the Pyrenees, opens up behind Pau, and penetrates some thirty miles into the mountains, ending in two narrow horns, both forming _cul de sacs_ for all, save active pedestrians and bold muleteers, the bathing establishment of Eaux Bonnes being situated in one, and that of Eaux Chaudes in the other. I was meditating as to my best course for seeing some of the mountain scenery, as I hung over the parapet of the bridge beneath the castle, and watched the pure, foaming waters of the Gave bursting over their rocky bed beneath, when a little man, with a merry red face, and a wonderfully long mouth, continually on the grin, dressed in a species of imitation of English sporting costume--in an old cut-away coat, and what is properly called a bird's-eye choker--the effect of which, however, was greatly taken off by sabots--addressed me, half in French, half in what he called English:--Did I wish to go to the baths, or anywhere else in the hills? The diligences had stopped running for the season; but what of that? he had plenty of horses and vehicles: he would mount me for the fox-hounds, if I wished. Oh, he was well known to, and highly respected by, Messieurs les Anglais; and it was therefore a fortunate thing for me to have fallen in with him. The upshot of a long conversation was, that he engaged to drive me up the glen with his own worshipful hands, business being slack at the time, and that he was to be as communicative as he might touching the country, the people, their customs, and all about them. The little man was delighted with this last stipulation, and observed it so faithfully, that for the next two days his tongue never lay; and as he was a merry, sensible little fellow enough, and thoroughly good-natured, I did not in the least repent my bargain. Off we went, then, in a lumbering old nondescript vehicle, drawn by a raw-boned white horse, who, however, went through his work like a Trojan. My driver's name was M. Martin; and the first thing he did was to pull up at the first public-house outside of Pau. "Look up there!" he said, pointing to a high-wooded ridge to the right; "there are the Jurancon vineyards--the best in the Pyrenees; and here we shall have a _coup-d'étrier_ of genuine old Jurancon wine." Remembering Henri Quatre's first beverage, I had no objection. The wine, which is white, tastes a good deal like a rough _chablis_, and is very deceptive, and very heady: I would advise new-comers to the Pyrenees to use it but gingerly. The garrison of Pau was changed while I was there, and the new soldiers were going rolling about the streets--some of them madly drunk, from the effects of this fireily intoxicating, yet mildly tasting wine. Our road lay along the Gave--a flashing, sparkling mountain-stream, running amid groups of trees, luxuriant coppice-wood, and small fields of yellow Indian corn. Many were the cottages and clusters of huts, half-hidden amid the vines, which are trailed in screens and tunnels from stake to stake, and tree to tree; and, on each side of the way, hedges of box-wood, growing in luxuriant thickets, which would delight the heart of an English gardener--gave note of one of the characteristic natural harvests of the Pyrenees. The soil and the climate are, indeed, such, that the place which, in more northern mountain regions, would be occupied by furze and heather, is hereabouts taken up by perfect thickets and jungles of thriving box-wood; while the laurel and rhododendron grow in bushy luxuriance. Charming, however, as is the landscape, and thoroughly poetic the first aspect of the cottages, they are in reality wretched, ricketty, and unwholesome hovels. In fact, poor huts, and a mountain country, go almost invariably together. In German Switzerland, the cottages are miserable; and every body knows what an unwindowed stye is a Highland turf-built bothy. So of the Pyrenean cottages: many of them--mere hovels of wood and clay, so rickety-looking, that one wonders that the first squall from the hills does not carry them bodily away--are composed of one large, irregular room, having an earthen floor, with black, smoky beams stretching across beneath the thatch. Two or three beds are made up in the darkest corners; festoons of Indian corn, onions, and heads of garlic are suspended from the rafters; and opposite the huge open fireplace is generally placed the principal piece of furniture of the apartment--a lumbering pile of a dresser, garnished with the crockery of the household. In a very great proportion of cases, the windows of these dwellings are utterly unglazed; and when the rough, unpainted outside shutters are closed, the whole interior is in darkness. The people, however, seem better fed and better clothed than the German Switzers. In the vicinity of Pau, the women wear the brightest silk handkerchiefs on their heads, are perfectly dissipated in the matter of gaudy ribbons, and cut their petticoats of good, fleecy, home-spun stuff, so short as to display a fair modicum of thick rig-and-furrow worsted stockings. The men, except that they wear a blue bonnet--flat, like that called Tam O'Shanter in Scotland--are decently clad in the ordinary blouse. It is as you leave behind the influence of the town, that you come upon the ancient dresses of the land. Every glen in Bearne has its distinguishing peculiarities of costume; but cross its boundary to the eastward, and you relapse at once into the ordinary peasant habiliments of France--clumsy, home-cut coats only being occasionally substituted for the blouse. The old Bernais costume is graceful and picturesque; and as we made our way up into the hills, we soon began to see specimens; and hardly one of these but was borne by a fine-looking, well-developed man, or a black-eyed and stately stepping woman. The peasantry of Ossau are indeed remarkable, notwithstanding their hard work and frequent privations, for personal beauty. They have little or no real French blood in their veins; indeed, I believe the stock to be Spanish, just as the beauties of Arles, out of all sight the finest women in France, are in their origin partly Italian, partly Saracen. The women of Ossau are as swarthy as Moors, and have the true eastern dignity of motion, owing it, indeed, to the same cause as the Orientals--the habit of carrying water-vases on their heads. Their faces are in general clearly and classically cut--the nose thin and aquiline--the eye magnificently black, lustrous, and slightly almond-shaped--another eastern characteristic. The dress, as I have said, is graceful, and the colours thoroughly harmonious. A tight-fitting black jacket is worn over a red vest, more or less gaudily ornamented with rough embroidery, and fastening by small belts across the bosom. On the head, a sort of capote or hood of dark cloth, corresponding to that of the jacket and petticoat, is arranged. In good weather, and when a heavy burden is to be carried, this hood is plaited in square folds across the crown of the head, forming a protection also from the heat of the sun. In cold and rainy days, it is allowed to fall down over the shoulders, mingling with the folds of the drapery beneath. Both men and women wear peculiarly shaped stockings, so made as to bulge over the edges of the sabot, into which the naked foot is thrust. The dress of the men is of a correspondingly quaint character. On their heads they invariably wear the flat, brown bonnet, called the _beret_, and from beneath it the hair flows in long, straight locks, soft and silky, and floating over their shoulders. A round jacket, something like that worn by the women, knee-breeches of blue velvet--upon high days and holidays--and, like the rest of the costume, of coarse home-spun woollen upon ordinary occasions, complete the dress. The capa, or hood, is worn only in rough weather. In the glens more to the westward, low sandals of untanned leather are frequently used, the sole of the foot only being protected. Sandals have certain classic associations connected with them, and look very well in pictures, but they are fearfully uncomfortable in reality. I saw half-a-dozen peasants tramping in this species of _chaussure_ through the wet streets of Pau amid a storm of snow and rain, and a spectacle full of more intensely rheumatic associations could no where be witnessed. As we jogged along behind the grey horse, the facetious M. Martin had a joke to crack with every man, woman, and child we encountered; and the black eyes lighted up famously, and the classic faces grinned in high delight, at the witticisms. "I suppose you are speaking Bearne?" I said. "The fine old language of the hills, sir. French!--no more to be compared with it than skimmed milk with clotted cream." "And you speak Spanish, too?" "Well, if a gentleman contrabanda, who takes walks over the hills in the long dark nights, with a string of mules before him, wished to do a small stroke of business with me, I daresay we could manage to understand each other." And therewith M. Martin winked first with one eye, and then with the other. "And Basque," said I, "you speak that also?" M. Martin recoiled: "No man who ever did live, or will live, could learn a word of that infernal jargon, if he were not a born Basque. Learn Basque, indeed!--_Mon Dieu, monsieur!_ Don't you know that the Devil once tried, and was obliged to give it up for a bad job? I don't know why he wanted to learn Basque, unless it were to talk to the fellows who went to him from that part of the country; and he might have known that it was very little worth the hearing they could tell him. But, however, he spread his wings, and flew and flew till he alighted on the top of one of the Basque mountains, where he summoned all the best Basque scholars in the country, and there he was for seven years, working away with a grammar in his hand, and saying his lessons like a good little boy. But 'twas all no use; he never could keep a page in his head. So one fine morning he gave a kick to the books with one foot, and a kick to the masters with the other, and flew off--only able to say 'yes' and 'no' in Basque, and that with such a bad pronunciation that the Basques couldn't understand him." This authentic anecdote brought us to that portion of the valley in which we enter really into the Pyrenean hills. Up to this point we have been traversing a gloriously wooded, and beautifully broken, country. Ridges of forests, vineyard slopes, patches of bright-green meadow land, steep, tumbling hills, wreathed with thickest box-wood, have been rising and falling all around. Lateral glens, each with its foaming torrent and woodland vista opening up, have been passed in close succession. Scores of villages, ricketty and poverty-struck, even in this land of fertility, have been traversed, until, gaining the height of a ridge which seems to block the way, we saw before us what appears to be another valley of a totally different character--stern, solitary, wild--a broad, flat space, lying between the hills, yellow with maize-fields, the river shining in the midst, and on either side the mountain-slopes--no mere hills this time, but vast and stately Alps, heaving up into the regions of the mist, rising in long, uniform slopes, stretching away and away, and up and up--the vast sweeps green with a richness of herbage unknown in the Alps, and faintly traced with ancient mountain-paths, leading from chalet to chalet; here and there a gully or wide ravine breaking the Titanic embankment; silver threads of waterfalls appearing and disappearing in the black jaws; and over the topmost clefts, glimpses of the snowy peaks, to which these stretching braes lead upwards. The mist lies in long, thin wreaths upon the bosom of the hills immediately around you, and you see their bluff summits now rising above it, and then gradually disappearing in the rising vapour. The general atmosphere is brighter and clearer than in the Alps, and you imagine a peak a long day's march from you within an easy climb; cottages, and even hamlets, appear perched at most impracticable heights; and every now and then, a white gash in the far-up hill-side announces a marble-quarry, and you see dark dots of carts toiling up to it by winding ways. These hills are but partially wooded. The sombre pine here begins to make its appearance, sometimes scattered, sometimes growing thickly--for all the world like the wire-jags set round the barrel of a musical snuff-box. The lateral valleys are, however, frequently masses of forest, and it is high up in these little frequented passes, that Bruin, who still haunts the Pyrenees, most often makes his appearance. "But he is going," said M. Martin--"going with the wild cats and the wolves. The Pyrenees are degenerating, monsieur; you never hear of a man being hugged to death now. Poor Bruin! For, after all, monsieur, he is a gentlemanly beast; he never kills the sheep wantonly. He always chooses the best, which is but natural, and walks off with it. But the wolf--_sacré nom du diable!_--the wolf--a _coquin_--a brigand--a _Basque tonnere_--he will slaughter a flock in a night. _Mon Dieu!_ he laps blood till he gets drunk on it. A _voleur_--a _mauvais sujet_--a _cochon_--a dam beast!" "But do the Pyrenean wolves ever attack men?" "_Sacré! Monsieur; tenez._ There was Jacques Blitz--an honest man, a farmer in the hills; he came down to Pau, when the snow was deep, and the winter hard. I saw him in Pau. Well, in the afternoon he started to go home again. It looked threatening, and people advised him to stay; but no; and off he went. Monsieur, that night in his cottage they heard, hour by hour, the howling of the wolves, and often went out, but could see nothing. Poor Jacques did not return, and at sunrise they were all off in search; and sure enough they found a skeleton, clean picked, and the bones all shining in the snow. Only, monsieur, the feet were still whole in the sabots: the wolves had gnawed the wood, but could not break it. 'Take off the sabots!' screamed the wife. And they did so: and she gave a shuddering gasp, and said, 'They are Jacques' feet!' and tumbled down into the snow. _Sacré peste_, the cannibals! Curse the wolves--here's to their extirpation!" And M. Martin took a goodly pull at a bottle of Jurancon we had laid in at the last stage. He went on to tell me that sometimes a particular wolf is known to haunt a district, perhaps for years, before he gets his _quietus_; most probably a grey-haired, wily veteran, perfectly up to all the devices of the hunter, who can seldom get a shot at him. Bears flourish in the same fashion, and come to be so well known, as to be honoured with regular names, by which they are spoken of in the country. One old bear, of great size, and of the species in question, had taken up his head-quarters upon a range of hills forming the side of a ravine opening up from the valley of Ossau. He was called Dominique--probably after his fellow Bruin, who long went by the same appellation in the Jardin des Plantes, and was known by it to every Parisian. The Pyrenean Dominique was a wily monster, who had long baffled all the address of his numerous pursuers; and as his depredations were ordinarily confined to the occasional abstraction of a sheep or a goat, and as he never actually committed murder, he long escaped the institution of a regular battue--the ordinary ending of a bear or wolf who manages to make himself particularly conspicuous. At length the people of the district got absolutely proud of Dominique. Like the Eagle in Professor Wilson's fine tale, he was "the pride and the pest of the parish," and might have been so yet, were it not that on one unlucky day he was casually espied by the _garde forestiere_. This is a functionary whose duty it is to patrol the hills, taking note that the sheep are confined to their proper bounds on the pastures. The man had sat down to his dinner on a ledge of rock, when, looking over it, whom should he see but the famous Dominique sunning himself upon the bank below. The _garde_ had a gun, and it was not in the heart of man to resist the temptation. He fired, Dominique got up on his hind legs, roaring grimly, when the contents of the second barrel stretched him on the earth. So great, however, was the _garde's_ opinion of the prowess of his victim, that he kept loading and firing long after poor Dominique had quitted this mortal scene. The carcase was too heavy to be moved by a single man, but next day it was carried to the nearest village by a funeral party of peasants, not exactly certain as to whether they ought to be glad or sorry at the catastrophe. As we were now well on in October, and as the weather had greatly broken up, much of the pleasure of my Pyrenean rambles being indeed marred by lowering skies and frequent and heavy rains--which were snow upon the hills--the flocks were fast descending from the upland pastures to their winter quarters in the valley and the plain. Every couple of miles or so, in our upward route, we encountered a flock of small, long-eared, long and soft woolled sheep, either trotting along the road or resting and grazing in the adjacent fields. The shepherds stalked along at the head of the procession, or, when it was stationary, stood statue-like in the fields. They were great, gaunt, sinewy men, wearing the Ossau costume, but one and all enveloped in a long, whitish cloak, with a peaked hood, flowing to the earth, which gave them a ghastly, winding-sheet sort of appearance. When a passing shower came rattling down upon the wind, the herdsmen, stalking slowly across the fields, enveloped from head to foot in these long, grey, shapeless robes, looked like so many Ossianic ghosts flitting among the mountains. Each man carried, slung round him, a little ornamented pouch, full of salt, a handful of which is used to entice within reach any sheep which he wishes to get hold of. One and all, like their brethren of the Landes, they were busy at the manufacture of worsted stockings, and kept slowly stalking through the meadows where their flocks pastured, with the lounging gait of men thoroughly broken in to a solitary, monotonous routine of sluggish life. Many of these shepherds were accompanied by their children--the boys dressed in exact miniature imitation of their fathers. Indeed, the prevalence of this style of juvenile costume in the Pyrenees makes the boys and girls look exactly like odd, quaint little men and women. The shepherds are assisted by a breed of noble dogs, one or two of which I saw. They are not, however, generally taken down to the low grounds, as they are frequently fierce and vicious in the half-savage state in which it is of importance to keep them, in respect to their avocations amid the bears and wolves. Among themselves, I was told that they fought desperately, occasionally even killing each other. The dogs I saw were magnificent looking fellows, of great size and power, their chests of vast breadth and depth, and their limbs perfect lumps of muscle. They appeared to me to be of a breed which might have been originated by a judicious crossing of first-rate Newfoundlands, St. Bernard mastiffs, and thorough old English bulldogs; and I could easily believe that one wrench from their enormous square jaws is perfectly sufficient to crash through the neck vertebræ of the largest wolf. As we neared Laruns, the mountain-slopes grew steeper and higher, and more barren and rugged; the precipices became more fearful; the mountain gorges more black and deep; and at length we appeared to be entering the deep pit of an amphitheatre dug in the centre of a group of stormy and precipitous mountains. Down in this nest lies the little mountain-town of Laruns; the steep slope of the heathy hill rising on one side of the single street from the very backs of the houses. M. Martin, on the Irish principle of reserving the trot for the avenue, whipped up the good old grey, and we rattled at a canter through the miriest street I ever traversed, driving throngs of lean, long-legged pigs right and left, and dispersing groups of cloaked, lounging men, with military shakos, and sabres--in whose uniform, indeed, I recognised that of my old friends, the _Douaniers_ of Boulogne and Calais; for true we were approaching, not indeed an ocean, but a mountain frontier, and Spanish ground was not so distant as Shakspeare's Cliff from Cape Grinez. We stopped in the little Place opposite a pretty marble fountain, and at the door of a particularly modest-looking auberge. As I was getting out, M. Martin stopped me: "Wait," he said, "and we will drive into the house--don't you see how big the door is?" As he spoke, it opened upon its portals. The old grey needed no invitation, and in a moment we found ourselves in a huge, dark vault, half coach-house, half stable. Two or three loaded carts were lying about, and lanterns gleamed from the gloomiest corners, and horses and mules stamped and neighed as they were rubbed down, or received their provender. "But where is the inn?" "The inn! up-stairs, of course." And then I beheld a rough, wooden staircase, or, rather, a railed ladder, down which came tripping a couple of blooming girls to carry up-stairs our small amount of luggage. Following their invitation, I soon found myself in a vast parlour and kitchen and all--a great shadowy room, with a baronnial-looking fireplace, and a couple of old women sitting in the ingle-nook, plying the distaff. The fireplace and the kitchen department of the room were in the shadow at the back. Nearer the row of lozenge-pane windows, rose a dais--with a long dining-table set out--and smaller tables were scattered around. Above your head were mighty rafters, capitally garnished with bacon and hung-meat of various kinds. The floor rose and fell in small mountains and valleys beneath your feet; but, notwithstanding this evidence of rickettyness, every thing appeared of massive strength, and the warmth of the place, and the savour of the _cuisine_--for a French kitchen is always in a chronic state of cookery--made the room at once comfortable and appetising--ten times better than the dreary _salle_ of a barrack-like hotel. [Illustration: A PYRENEES PARLOUR.] In a few minutes, Martin, having attended to the grey, joined me, rubbing his hands. "This was the place to stop at," he said. "No use of going further. The mountains beyond were just like the mountains here; but the people here were far more unsophisticated than the people beyond. They hav'nt learned to cheat here, yet," he whispered. "And, besides, you see a good Pyrenean auberge, and at the Wells you would only see a bad French hotel, which, I daresay, would be no novelty; while, as for price--pooh! you will get a capital dinner here for what they would charge you for speaking to the waiter there." And so it proved. Pending, the preparation of this dinner, however, I strolled about Laruns. It is a drearily-poor place, with the single recommendation of being built of stone, which can be had all round for the carrying. The arrangement of turning the ground-floor into a stable is universal in the houses of any size, and as these stables also serve for pig-styes, sheep-folds, and poultry-yards, and as cleaning-day is made to come round as seldom as possible, it may be imagined that the town of Laruns is a highly scented one. Through some of the streets, brooks of sparkling water flow, working the hammers of feeble fulling mills. Webs of the coarse cloth produced are hung to dry from window to window, and roof to roof, and beneath them congregate groups of old distaff-plying women, lounging _duaniers_, and no end of geese standing half asleep on one foot, until a headlong charge of pigs being driven afield, or driven home, comes trampling through the mire, and clears the way in a moment. The auberge dinner was worthy of M. Martin's anticipations. Delicately-flavoured soup, and trout of the genuine mountain-stream breed--the skin gaily speckled, and the flesh a deep red, were followed by a roasted _jigot_ of mutton, flavoured as only mutton can be flavoured which has fed upon the aromatic herbage of the high hills--the whole finished off with a capital omelette, tossed jauntily up by the neat-handed Phillis who waited upon us, and joked, and laughed, and was kept in one perpetual blush by M. Martin all through dinner-time. At length, through all this giggling, a plate was broken. "There's bad luck, Jeanne," said Martin. "You know nothing about it," replied Jeanne, pertly. "Any child knows that to break a plate is good luck: it is to smash a dish which brings bad luck." "They have all sorts of omens here in the hills," said my companion. "If a hare cross the path, it is a bad omen; and if a cow kick over the milking-pail, it is a bad omen. And they are always fancying themselves bewitched----" "No, that we are not," interrupted Jeanne; "so long as we keep a sprig of _vervene_ over the fire, we know very well that there's not a _sorciere_ in all the Pyrenees can harm us." I thought of the old couplet-- "Sprigs of vervain, and of dill, Which hinder witches of their will." As the evening closed, the little Place became quite thronged with girls, come to wash their pails and draw water from the fountain. Each damsel came statelily along, bearing a huge bucket, made of alternate horizontal stripes of brass and tin, upon her head, and polished like a mirror. A half-hour, or so, of gossipping ensued, frequently broken by a pleasant chorus, sung in unison by the fresh, pure voices of the whole assembly. The effect, when they first broke out into a low, wailing song, echoing amongst the high houses and the hill behind, was quite electrifying. Then they set to work, scrubbing their pails as if they had been the utensils of a model dairy, and at length marched away, each with the heavy bucket, full to the brim, poised upon her head--and with a carriage so steady and gracefully unswerving that, to look at the pails, you would suppose them borne in a boat, rather than carried by a person walking. At night, after I had turned into as snug a bed, with as crisp, and white, and fresh linen as man could wish for, I was long kept awake by the vocal performances of a party of shepherds, who had just arrived from the hills, and who paraded the Place singing in chorus, long after the cracked bell in the little church had tolled midnight. Nine-tenths of these people have capital voices. Their lungs and throats are well-developed, by holding communication from hill to hill; and they jodle or jerk the voice from octave to octave, just as they do in the Alps. This said jodling appears, indeed, to be a natural accomplishment in many mountain countries. The songs of the shepherds at Laruns had jodling chorusses, but the airs were almost all plaintive minors, with long quavering phrases, clinging, as it were, to the pitch of the key-note, and only extending to about a third above or below it. The music was always performed in unison, the words sometimes French, and sometimes Bearnais. The single phrase in the former language, which I could distinguish, and which formed the burden of one of the ditties, was, "_Ma chere maitresse_." This "_chere maitresse_" song, indeed, appeared the favourite. Over and over again was it sung, and there was a wild, melancholy beauty which grew more and more upon you, as the mellow cadence died away again and again in the long drawn out notes of "_Ma chere maitresse_." CHAPTER IX. RAINY WEATHER IN THE PYRENEES--EAUX CHAUDES OUT OF SEASON, AND IN THE RAIN--PLUCKING THE INDIAN CORN AT THE AUBERGE AT LARUNS--THE LEGEND OF THE WEHRWOLF, AND THE BARON WHO WAS CHANGED INTO A BEAR. I wakened next morning to a mournful _reveillé_--the pattering of the rain; and, looking out, found the Place one puddle of melting sleet. The fog lay heavy and low upon the hills, and the sky was as dismal as a London firmament in the dreariest day of November. Still, M. Martin was sanguine that it would clear up after breakfast. Such weather was absurd--nonsensical; he presumed it was intended for a joke; but if so, the joke was a bad one. However, it must be fine speedily--that was a settled point--that he insisted on. Breakfast came and went, however, and the rain was steady. "Monsieur," said Jeanne, "has lost the season of the Pyrenees." "Is there not the summer of St. John to come yet?" demanded Martin. "Yes; but it will rain at least a week before then." What was one to do? There clearly was no speedy chance of the clouds relenting; and what was sleet with us, was dry snow further up the pass. The Peak du Midi, with visions of which I had been flattering myself, was as inaccessible as Chimbarozo, Spain, of which I had hoped to catch at least a Pisgah peep--for I did want to see at least a barber and a priest--was equally out of the question. During the morning a string of mules had returned to Laruns, with the news that the road was blocked up; and truly I found that, had it not been so, my first step towards going to Spain must needs have been in the direction of Bayonne, to have my passports _visèd_--those dreary passports, which hang like clogs to a traveller's feet. And so then passed the dull morning tide away, every body sulky and savage. Peasants, with dripping capas, stumbled up stairs, and sat in groups smoking over the fire; the two old women scolded; Jeanne grew quite snappish; and M. Martin ran out every moment to look at the weather, and came back to repeat that it was no lighter yet, but that it soon must clear up, positively. At length my companion and I determined upon a sally, at all events--a bold push. Let the weather do what it pleased, we would do what we pleased, and never mind the weather. So old grey was harnessed in the stable; we blockaded ourselves with wraps, and started bravely forth, a forlorn hope against the elements. We took the way to Eaux Chaudes; and the further we went, the heavier fell the rain--cats and dogs became a mild expression for the deluge. The mist got lower and lower; the sleet got colder and colder; old grey snorted and steamed; we gathered ourselves up under the multitudinous wrappers; the rain was oozing through them--it was trickling down our necks--suddenly making itself felt in small rills in unexpected and aggravating places, which made sitting unpleasant--collecting in handsome lakes at our feet, and pervading with one vast, clammy, chilly, freezing dampness body and soul. The whole of creation seemed resolved into a chaos of fog, mire, and rain. We had passed into what would be called in a pantomime "the Rainy Realms, or the Dreary Domains of Desolation;" and what comfort was it--soaked, sodden, shivering, teeth chattering--to hear Martin proclaim, about once in five minutes, that the weather would clear up at the next turn of the road? The dreary day remains, cold and clammy, a fog-bank looming in my memory ever since. I believe I saw the _établissment_ of Eaux Chaudes; at least, there were big drenched houses, with shutters up, like dead-lights, and closed doors, and mud around them, like water round the ark. They looked like dismal county hospitals, with all the patients dead except the madmen, who might be enjoying the weather and the situation; or like gaols, with all the prisoners hung, and the turnkeys starved at the cell doors for lack of fees. I remember hearing a doleful voice, like that of Priam's curtain drawer, asking me if I wouldn't get out of the vehicle; but to move was hideous discomfort, bringing new wet surfaces into contact with the skin; so I croaked out, "No, no; back--back to the fire at Laruns." And so honest grey, all in a steam, splashed round through the mud; and back we went as we had come--rain, rain, rain, pitiless, hopeless rain--the fog hanging like a grey winding sheet above us--the zenith like a pall above that, leaden and drear, as on a Boothia Felix Christmas Day. There was nothing for it but the fireside. The very _douaniers_ had abandoned the street--the pigs had retreated--the donkeys brayed at intervals from their ground-floor parlours; and only the maniac geese sat on one leg, croaking, to be rained on, and the marble fountain, so pretty yester-evening in a gleam of sunshine, spouted away, bringing "coals to Newcastle," with an insane perseverance which it made me sad to contemplate. Dinner was ordered as soon as it could be got ready; we felt it was the last resource. I fortunately had a change of clothes. Martin had not; but he retired for awhile, and reappeared in a home-spun coat and trowsers, six inches too long for him, which he was fain to hold up, to the enormous triumph and delight of Jeanne. At length, then, that neat-handed Phillis announced dinner. "Stay a moment!" exclaimed Martin; "I am just going to see whether it is likely to clear up." Out he went into the mud, and returned with the announcement that it would be summer weather in five minutes; he knew, by some particular movement of the mist. But poor Martin's weather predictions had ceased to command any credit; and the peasants around the fire shrugged their shoulders and laughed. The dinner passed off like a funeral feast. I looked upon the Place--still a puddle, and every moment getting deeper. No songs--no jodling choruses to-night, maidens of Laruns! Sitting gloomily over the Jurancon wine, and looking at the fire, I saw a huge cauldron put on, and presently the steam of soup began to steal into the room. Martin and Jeanne were holding confidential intercourse, which ended in my squire's coming to me, and announcing that there was to be held a grand _épeluche_ of the Indian corn, and that the soup was to form the supper of the work-people. Presently, sure enough, a vast pile of maize in the husk was brought up, and heaped upon the floor; and as the dusk gathered, massive iron candlesticks with tapers which were rather rushlights than otherwise, were set in due order around the grain. Then in laughing parties, drenched but merry, the neighbours poured in--men, women, and children--and vast was the clatter of tongues in Bernais, as they squatted themselves down on stools and on the floor, and began to strip off the husks of the yellow heads of corn, flinging the peeled grain into coarse baskets set for the purpose. The old people deposited themselves on settles in the vast chimney-nook; and amongst them there was led to a seat a tall blind man, with grizzly grey hair, and a mild smiling face. "Ask that man to tell you a story about any of the old castles or towns hereabouts," whispered Martin; "he knows them all--all the traditions, and legends, and superstitions of Bearne." This council was good. So, as soon as the whole roomful were at work--stripping and peeling--and moistening their labours by draughts of the valley vine--I proceeded to be introduced to the patriarch, but, ere I had made my way to him: "Pere Bruniqul," said a good-humoured looking matron; "you know you always give us one of your tales to ease our work, and so now start off, and here is the wine-flask to wet your lips." All this, and the story which followed, was spoken in Bernais, so that to M. Martin I am indebted for the outlines of the tale, which I treat as I did that of the Baron of the Chateau de Chatel-morant:-- * * * * * "Sir Roger d'Espaigne," said the lady of the knight she addressed--holding in her hand the hand of their daughter Adele, a girl of six or seven years of age--"where do you hunt to day?" "Marry," replied her husband, "in the domains of the Dame of Clargues. There are more bears there than anywhere in the country." "But you know that the Dame of Clargues loves her bears, and would not that they should be hurt; and besides, she is a sorceress, and can turn men into animals, if she will. Oh, she practices cunning magic; and she is also a wehr-wolf; and once, when Leopold of Tarbes struck a wolf with an arblast bolt, and broke its right fore-leg, the Dame of Clargues appeared with her right-arm in bandages, and Leopold of Tarbes died within the year." But Sir Roger was not to be talked to. He said the Dame of Clargues was no more a witch than her neighbours; and poising his hunting-spear, away he rode with all his train--the horses caracolling, and the great wolf and bear-hounds leaping and barking before them. They passed the castle of the Dame of Clargues, and plunged into the forests, where the wolves lay--the prickers beating the bushes, and the knights and gentlemen ready, if any game rushed out, to start in pursuit with their long, light spears. For more than half the day they hunted, but had no success; when, at last, a huge wolf leaped out of a thicket, and passed under the very feet of the horses, which reared and plunged, and the riders, darting their spears in the confusion, only wounded each other and their beasts, while three or four of the best dogs were trampled on, and the wolf made off at a long gallop down the wood. But Sir Roger had never lost sight of her, and now followed close upon her haunches, standing up in his stirrups, and couching his lance. Never ran wolf so hard and well, and had not Sir Roger's horse been a Spanish barb, he had been left far behind. As it was, he had not a single companion; when, coming close over the flying beast, he aimed a blow at her head. The spear glanced off, but blood followed the stroke, and at the same moment the barb swerved in her stride, and suddenly stopping, fell a trembling, and laid her ears back, while Sir Roger descried a lady close by, her robes rustling among the forest-herbs. Instantly, he leaped off his horse, and advanced to meet and protect the stranger from the wolf; but the wolf was gone, and, instead, he saw the Dame of Clargues with a wound in her left temple, from which the blood was still flowing. "Sir Roger d'Espaigne," she said, "thou hast seen me a wolf--be thou a bear!" And even as she spoke, the knight disappeared, and a huge, brown bear stood before her. "And now," she cried, "begone, and seek thy kindred in the forest-beasts--only hearken: thou shalt kill him who killest thee, and killing him, thou shalt end thine own line, and thy blood shall be no more upon the earth." When the chase came up, they found the Spanish barb all trembling, and the knight's spear upon the ground; but Sir Roger was never after seen. So years went by, and the little girl, who had beheld her father go forth to hunt in the Dame of Clargues' domain, grew up, and being very fair, was wooed and wedded by a knight of Foix, who was called Sir Peter of Bearne. They had been married some months, and there was already a prospect of an heir, when Sir Peter of Bearne went forth to hunt, and his wife accompanied him to the castle-gate, even as her mother had convoyed her father when he went on his last hunting party to the woods of the Dame of Clargues. "Sir Peter," said the lady, "hast thou heard of a great bear in the forest, which, when he is hunted, the hunters hear a doleful voice, saying, 'Hurt me not, for I never did thee any harm?'" "Balaam, of whom the clerk tells us, ought to have that bear to keep company with his ass," said the knight, gaily, and away he rode. He had hunted with good success most of the day, and had killed both boars and wolves, when he descried, couched in a thicket, a most monstrous bear, with hair of a grizzly grey--for he seemed very old, but his eyes shone bright, and there was something in his presence which cowed the dogs, for, instead of baying, they crouched and whined; and even the knights and squires held off, and looked dubiously at the beast, and called to Sir Peter to be cautious, for never had such a monstrous bear been seen in the Pyrenees; and one old huntsman shouted out aloud, "My lord, my lord--draw back, for that is the bear which, when he is hunted, the hunters hear a doleful voice, saying, 'Hurt me not, for I never did thee any harm!'" Nevertheless, the knight advanced, and drawing his sword of good Bordeaux steel, fell upon the beast. The dogs then took courage, and flew at him; but the four fiercest of the pack he killed with as many blows of his paws, and the rest again stood aloof; so that Sir Peter of Bearne was left face to face with the great beast, and the fight was long and uncertain; but at last the knight prevailed, and the bear gave up the ghost. Then all the hunt rushed in, and made a litter, and with songs and acclamations carried the dead bear to the castle, the knight, still faint from the combat, following. They found the Lady Adele at the castle-gate; but as soon as she saw the bear, she gave a lamentable scream, and said, "Oh! what see I?" and fainted. When she was recovered, she passed off her fainting fit upon terror at the sight of such a monster; but still, she demanded that it should be buried, and not, as was the custom, cut up, and parts eaten. "Holy Mary!" said the knight, "you could not be more tender of the bear if he were your father." Upon which, Adele grew very pale; but, nevertheless, she had her will, and the beast was buried. That night Sir Peter de Bearne suddenly rose in his sleep, and, catching up arms which hung near him, began to fight about the room, as he had fought with the bear. His lady was terrified, and the varlets and esquires came running in, and found him with the sweat pouring down his face, and fighting violently--but they could not see with what. None could approach him, he was so savage, and he fought till dawn, and returned, quite over-wearied, to his bed. Next morning he knew nothing of it; but the next night he rose again; and the next, and the next--and fought as before. Then they took away his weapons, but he ranged the castle through, till he found them, and then fought more furiously than ever, till, at length, he was accustomed to fall on his knees with weakness and fatigue. Before a month had passed, you would not have known Sir Peter: he seemed twenty years older; he could hardly drag one foot after the other; and he fell melancholy and pined--for at last he knew that the curse of the bear was upon him, and that he was not long for this world. Many then advised to send for the Dame of Clargues, who was still alive, but old, and who was more skilful in such matters than any priest or exorcist on this side of Paris: and at last she was sent for, and arrived. The scar upon her forehead was still to be seen; her grey hair did not cover it. "Lady," said she to the Lady of Bearne, "did you ever see your father?" "Yes, truly; the very day he went forth a-hunting and never returned, I saw him, and I yet can fancy the face before me." "Thou wilt see it to-night." "Then my foreboding--that strange feeling--was true. Oh! my father--my husband." Midnight came, and, worn and haggard, Sir Peter de Bearne rose again to renew his nightly combat. He staggered and groaned, and his strength was spent, and those who stood round sang hymns and prayed aloud. At length the knight shrieked out with a fearful voice--the first time he had spoken in all his dreary sleep-fighting--"Beast, thou hast conquered!" and fell back upon the floor, his limbs twisting like the limbs of a man who is being strangled; and Adele screamed aloud. "Look, minion, look!" exclaimed the Dame of Clargues to the lady--passing at the same time her hand over the lady's eyes. "O God!" cried Adele--"my father kills my husband;" and she fell upon the floor, and she and the unborn babe died together, and Sir Peter de Bearne was likewise lifted lifeless from the spot. [Illustration] CHAPTER X. TARBES--BAGNERRE DE BIGORRE--PIGEON-CATCHING--FRENCH COMMIS VOYAGEURS--THE KING OF THE PYRENEAN DOGS--THE LEGEND OF ORTHON, WHO HAUNTED THE BARON OF CORASSE. The next day by noon--still raining--I was at Pau; and having bidden adieu to M. Martin, started for Bagnerre de Bigorre by Tarbes, the great centre of Pyrenean locomotion. Here, as at Bordeaux, you are on ancient English ground. The rich plain all around you is the old County of Bigorre, which was given up to England as portion of the ransom of King John of France; and here to Tarbes came, with a gallant train, the Black Prince, to visit the Count of Argmanac--the celebrated Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix--leaving his strong Castle of Orthon, to be present at the solemnity. The life and soul of Tarbes now consist of the scores of small cross-country diligences, which start in every direction from it as a common centre. The main feature of the town is a huge square, nine-tenths of the houses being glaring white-washed hotels, with _messageries_ on the groundfloors. Diligences by the score lie scattered around; and every now and then the dogs'-meat old horses who draw them go stalking solemnly across the square beneath the stunted lime-trees. There is an adult population of conductors, with silver ear-rings, and their hands in their pockets, always lounging about; and a juvenile population of shoe-blacks, who swarm out upon you, and take your legs by storm. Tarbes is the best place--excepting, perhaps, Arles--for getting your boots blacked, I ever visited. If you were a centipede, and had fifty pairs of Wellingtons, they would all be shining like mirrors in a trice. How these boys live, I cannot make out, unless, indeed, upon the theory that they black their shoes mutually, and keep continually paying each other. Bagnerre is about sixteen miles distant; and a mountain of a diligence, not so much laden with luggage as freighted with a cargo, conveyed me there in not much under four hours; and I repaired--it was dusk, and, of course, raining--to the Hotel de France--one of the huge caravansaries common at watering-places. A buxom lass opened the wicket in the Porte Cochere. "I can have a room?" "Oh, plenty!" And we stepped into the open court-yard. The great hotel rose on two sides, and a small _corps de logis_ on the two others. "Wait," said the girl, "until I get the key." And off she tripped. The key! Was the house shut up? Even so. I was to have a place as big as a hospital to myself. The door opened; all was darkness and a fusty smell. The last family had been gone a fortnight. Our footsteps echoed like Marianne's. It was decidedly a foreign edition, uncarpeted and waxy-smelling, of the "Moated Grange." I was ushered into a really splendid suite of rooms--of a decidedly grander nature than I ever occupied before, or ever occupied since. "The price is the price of an ordinary bedroom. Monsieur may choose whatever room he pleases; and the _table-d'hôte_ bell rings at six." This, at all events, was reassuring. Then my conductress retreated; the doors banged behind her, and I felt like a man shut up in St. Peter's. The silence in the house was dreadful. I was fool enough to go and listen at the door: dead, solemn silence--a vault could not be stiller. I would have given something handsome for a cat, or even a mouse; a parrot would have been invaluable--it would have shouted and screamed. But no; the hush of the place was like the Egyptian darkness--it was a thick silence, which could be felt. At length the _table-d'hôte_ bell rang. The _salle à manger_ was in the building across the yard. Thither I repaired, and found a room, or rather a long corridor, big enough to dine a Freemason's or London Tavern party, with a miraculously long table, tapering away into the distance. Upon a few square feet of this table was a patch of white cloth; and upon the patch of cloth one plate, one knife and fork, and one glass. This was the _table-d'hôte_, and, like Handel, "I was de kombany." Next day the weather was no better; but I was desperate, and sallied out in utter defiance of the rain; but such a dreary little city as Bagnerre, in that wintry day, was never witnessed. I never was at Herne Bay in November, nor have I ever passed a Christmas at Margate; but Bagnerre gave me a lively notion of the probable delights of the dead season at either of these favourite watering-places. The town seemed defunct, and lying there passively to be rained on. Half the houses are lodging-places and hotels; and they were all shut up--ponderous green outside shutters dotting the dirty white of the walls. Hardly a soul was stirring; but ducks quacked manfully in the kennels, and two or three wretched donkeys--dreary relics of the season--stood with their heads together under the lime-trees in the Place. I retreated into a _café_. If there were nobody in France but the last man, you would find him in a _café_, making his own coffee, and playing billiards with himself. Here the room was tolerably crowded; and I got into conversation with a group of townspeople round the white Fayence stove. I abused the weather--never had seen such weather--might live a century in England, and not have such a dreary spell of rain--and so forth. The anxiety of the good people to defend the reputation of their climate was excessive. They were positively frightened at the prospect of a word being breathed in England against the skies of the Pyrenees in general, and those of Bagnerre in particular. The oldest inhabitant was appealed to, as never having remembered such weather at Bagnerre. As for the summer, it had been more than heavenly. All the springs were delightful; the autumns were invariably charming; and the winters, if possible, the best of the four. The present rain was extraordinary--exceptional--a sort of phenomenon, like a comet or a calf with two heads. One of these worthies, understanding that however strong my objections were to fog and drizzle, I was not by any means afraid of being melted, recommended me to make my way to the Palombiere, and see them catch wild pigeons, after a fashion only practised there and at one other place in the Pyrenees. Not appalled, then, by the prospect of a three-mile pull up-hill, I made my way through the narrow suburban streets, and across the foaming Adour, here a glorious mountain-stream, but already made useful to turn numerous flour-mills, and to drive the saws and knives by which the beautiful marble of the Pyrenees is cut and polished. Hereabouts, in the straggling suburbs, the whole female and juvenile population were clustered, just within the shelter of the open doors, knitting those woollen jackets, scarfs, and so forth, which are so much in vogue amongst the visitors in the season. There was one graceful group of pretty girls, the eldest not more than four years of age, pursuing the work in a shed open to the street, seated round a loom, at which a good-natured-looking fellow was operating. "That is a beautiful scarf," I said to the girl next me; "how much will they give you for making it?" The weaver paused in his work at this question. "Tell the gentleman, my dear, how much Messieurs So-and-so give for knitting that scarf." "Two liards," said the little girl. Two liards, or half a solitary sous! This was worse than the shirt-makers at home. "It is a bad trade now," said the weaver. "She is a child; but the best hands can't make more than big sous where they once made francs; but all the trades of the poor are going to the devil. I don't think there will be any poor left in twenty years--they will be all starved before then." This led to a long talk with my new friend, who was a poor, mild, meek sort of man--a thinker, after his fashion, totally uninstructed--he could neither read nor write--and a curious specimen of the odd twists which unregulated and unintelligent ponderings sometimes give a man's mind. His grand notion seemed to be, that whatever might be the isolated crimes and horrors now and then committed upon the earth, the most terrible and malignant species of perverted human ingenuity was--the employment of running streams to work looms. "Was water made to weave cloth?" he asked. "Did the power that formed the Adour intend its streams to be made use of to deprive an honest man of his daily bread? He would uncommonly like to find the orator who would make that clear to his mind. It was terrible to see how men perverted the gifts of Nature! How could I, or any one else, prove to him that the water beside us was intended to take the place of men's arms and fingers, and to be used, as if it were vital blood, to manufacture the garments of those who lived upon its banks?" I ventured to hint, that running water might occasionally be put to analogous, yet by no means so objectionable uses; and I instanced the flour and maize mill, which was working merrily within a score of paces of us. For a moment, but for a moment only, my antagonist was staggered. Then recovering himself, he inquired triumphantly whether I meant to say that the process of grinding corn was like the process of weaving cloth? It was curious to observe the confusion in the man's mind between _analogy_ and _resemblance_. As I could not but admit that the two operations were conducted quite in a different fashion, my gratified opponent, not to be too hard upon me, warily changed the immediate subject of conversation. I was not a native of this part of France? Not a native of France at all? Then I came from some place far away? Perhaps from across the sea? From England! Ah! well, indeed, there was an English lady married, about five miles off--Madame----. Of course I knew her? No? Well, that was odd. He would have thought that, coming from the same place, I ought to know her. However--were there many handloom weavers like himself in England? No, very few indeed. What! did they weave by water-power there, too? were the folks as bad as some of the people in his country? I explained that, not being so much favoured in the way of water-privilege, the people of England had resorted to steam. The poor weaver was quite overcome at this crowning proof of human malignity. It was more horrible even than the water-atrocities of the Pyrenees. "Steam!"--he repeated the word a dozen times over, shaking his head mournfully at each iteration,--"Steam! Ah, well, what is this poor unhappy world coming to?" Then rousing himself, and sending the shuttle rattling backwards and forwards through the web, he added heartily: "After all, their moving iron and wood will never make the good, substantial, well-wearing cloth woven by honest, industrious flesh and blood." Who would have the heart to prescribe cold political economy in such a case? I left the good man busily pursuing his avocation, and lamenting over the perversity of making broad-cloth by the aid of boiling water. Stretching manfully up hill, by a path like the bed of a muddy torrent, I was rewarded by a sudden watery blink of sunshine. Then the wind began to blow, and vast rolling masses of mist to move before it. From a high ridge, with vast green slopes, all dotted with sheep, spreading away beneath until they blended with the corn-land on the plain, Bagnerre appeared, the great white hotels peeping from the trees, and the whole town lying as it were at the bottom of a bowl. It must be fearfully hot in summer, when the sun shines right down into the amphitheatre, and the high hills about, deaden every breeze. At present, however, the wind was rising to a gale, and blowing the heavy clouds right over the Pyrenees. Attaining a still greater height, the scene was very grand. On one side was a confused sea of mountain-peaks and ridges, over which floated masses of wreathing fog, flying like chased phantoms before the northern wind. Now a mountain-top would be submerged in the mist, to re-appear again in a moment. Anon I would get a glimpse of a long vista of valley, which next minute would be a mass of grey nonentity. The mist-wreaths rose and rolled beneath me and above me. Sometimes I would be enveloped as in a dense white smoke; then the fog-bank would flee away, ascending the broad breast of the hill before me, and wrapping trees, and rocks, and pastures in its shroud. All this time the wind blew a gale, and roared among the wrestling pines. Sometimes the sun looked out, and lit with fiery splendour the rolling masses of the fog, with some partial patch of landscape; and, altogether, the effect, the constant movement of the mist, the wild, hilly landscape appearing and disappearing, the glimpses occasionally vouchsafed of the distant plain of Gascony, sometimes dimly seen through the driving vapours, sometimes golden bright in a partial blaze of sunshine,--all this was very striking and fine. At length, however, I reached the Palombiere, situated upon the ridge of the hill--which cost a good hour and a half's climb. Here grow a long row of fine old trees, and on the northern side rise two or three very high, mast-like trees of liberty, notched so as to allow a boy as supple and as sure-footed as a monkey to climb to the top, and ensconce himself in a sort of cage, like the "crow's nest" which whalers carry at their mast-heads, for the look-out. I found the fowlers gathered in a hovel at the foot of a tree; they said the wind was too high for the pigeons to be abroad; but for a couple of francs they offered to make believe that a flock was coming, and shew me the process of catching. The bargain made, away went one of the urchins up the bending pole, into the crow's-nest--a feat which I have a great notion the smartest topman in all Her Majesty's navy would have shirked, considering that there were neither foot-ropes or man-ropes to hold on by. Then, on certain cords being pulled, a whole screen of net rose from tree to tree, so that all passage through the row was blocked. "Now," said the chief pigeon-catcher, "the birds at this season come flying from the north to go to Spain, and they keep near the tops of the hills. Well, suppose a flock coming now; they see the trees, and will fly over them--if it wasn't for the _pigeonier_." "The _pigeonier_! what is that?" "We're going to show you." And he shouted to the boy in the crow's nest, "Now Jacques!" Up immediately sprang the urchin, shouting like a possessed person--waving his arms, and at length launching into the air a missile which made an odd series of eccentric flights, like a bird in a fit. "That is the pigeonier," said the fowler; "it breaks the flight of the birds, and they swoop down and dash between the trees--so." He gave a tug to a short cord, and immediately the wall of nets, which was balanced with great stones, fell in a mass to the ground. "Monsieur will be good enough to imagine that the birds are struggling and fluttering in the meshes." [Illustration: MARBLE WORKS AT BAGNERRE.] At Bagnerre there is a marble work--that of M. Géruset--which I recommend every body to visit, not to see marble cut, although that is interesting, but to pay their respects to, I believe, the grandest dog in all the world--a giant even among the canine giants of the Pyrenees. I have seen many a calf smaller than that magnificent fellow, who, as you enter the yard, will rise from his haunches, like a king from his throne, and, walking up to you with a solemn magnificence of step which is perfect, will wag his huge tail, and lead you--you cannot misunderstand the invitation--to the counting-house door. For vastness of brow and jaw--enormous breadth and depth of chest, and girth of limb, I never saw this creature equalled. The biggest St. Bernard I ever came across was almost a puppy to him. A tall man may lay his hand on the dog's back without the least degree of stoop; and the animal could not certainly stand erect under an ordinary table. "I suppose," I said to the clerk who showed me the works, "you have had many offers for that dog?" "My employer," he replied, "has refused one hundred pounds for him. But, even if we wished, we could not dispose of him: he is fond of the place and the people here; so that, though we might sell him, he wouldn't go with his new master; and I would like to see any four men in Bagnerre try to force him." That evening I fortunately did not include the whole company at the _table-d'hôte_. There was a young gentleman very much jewelled, and an elderly lady also very strongly got up in the way of brooches and bracelets, to whom the young gentleman was paying very assiduous but very forced attention. The lady was sulky, and sent _plat_ after _plat_ untasted away; and when her companion, as I thought, whispered a remonstrance, she snubbed him in great style; at which he bit his lip, turned all manner of colours, and then got moodily silent. I suspected that the young gentleman had married the old lady for her money, and was leading just as comfortable a life as he deserved. But, besides them, we had a couple of the gentlemen who are to be more or less found in every hotel in France--_commis voyageurs_, or commercial travellers. By the way, the aristocratic Murray lays his hand, or rather his "Hand-book," heavily about the ears of these gentlemen--castigating them a good deal in the Croker style, and with more ferocity than justice: "A more selfish, depraved, and vulgar, if not brutal set, does not exist;" "English gentlemen will take good care to keep at a distance from them," and "English ladies will be cautious of presenting themselves at a French _table-d'hôte_, except"--in certain cases specified. Now, I agree with Mr. Murray, that commercial travellers, French and English, are not distinguished by much polish of manner, or elegance of address; on the contrary, the style of their proceedings at table is frequently slovenly and coarse, and their talk is almost invariably "shop." In a word, they are not educated people, or gentlemen. But when we come to such expressions as "selfish, brutal, and depraved," I think most English travellers in France will agree with me, that the aristocratic hand-book maker is going more than a little too far. I have met scores of clever and intelligent _commis voyageurs_--hundreds of affable, good-humoured ones--thousands of decent, inoffensive ones. In company with a lady, I have dined at every species of _table-d'hôte_, in every species of hotel, from the Channel to the Mediterranean, and the Bay of Biscay to the Alps, and I cannot call to mind one instance of rudeness, or voluntary want of civility, from one end of our journey to the other; while scores and scores of instances of attention and kindness--more particularly when it was ascertained that my companion was in weak health--come thronging on me. I know that the French _commis voyageur_ looks after his own interest at table pretty sharply, and also that he is quite deficient in all the elegant little courtesies of society; but to say that he is brutal or depraved, because he is not a _petit maître_ and an _elegant_, is neither true nor courteous. If there be any set of Frenchmen to whose conduct at _table-d'hôtes_ strong expressions may be fairly applied, it is French officers, who sprung from a rank often inferior to that of the bagman, and, with all the coarseness of the barracks clinging to them, frequently cluster together in groups of half-a-dozen--scramble for all that is good upon the table--eat with their caps on, which the _commis voyageur_ only does in winter, when the bare and empty _salle_ is miserably cold--and in general behave with a coarse rudeness, and a tumultuous vulgarity, which I never saw private soldiers guilty of, either here or in France. But I must hurry my Pyrenean sketches to an end. The true South--I mean the Mediterranean-washed provinces--still lie before me; and I must perforce leap almost at a bound over a long and interesting journey through the little-known towns of the eastern Pyrenees--quiet, sluggish, tumble-down places, as St. Gaudens, St. Girons, and St. Foix, possessed neither of pump-rooms, nor warm-springs, but vegetating on, lazily and dreamily, in their glorious climate--for, after all, it does sometimes stop raining, and that for a few blazing months at a time, too. I would like to sketch St. Gaudens, with its broad-eaved, booth-like shops, and the snug town-hall, with pictures of old prefects and wigged _fermiers generaux_, into which they introduced me, and where they set all their municipal documents before me, when I applied for some information as to the landholding of the district. I would like to sketch at length a curious walled village on the head waters of the Garonne--a dead-and-gone sort of place, of which I asked an old man the name. "A poor place, sir," he said; "a poor place. Not worth your while looking at. All poor people here, sir--poor people; not worth your while speaking to. And the name--oh, a poor name, sir--not worth your while knowing; but, if you insist--why, then, it's Valentine." I would like to sketch the merry population in the hills round that dead-and-gone village--half farmers, half weavers, like the Saddleworth peasants, in Yorkshire--a jolly set--all sporting men, too, who give up their looms, and go into the woods after bears as boldly as Sir Peter de Bearne. And I would like, too, to try to bring before my reader's eye the viney valley of the Ariege, and the deep ravines through which the stream goes foaming, spanned by narrow bridges, each with a tower in the centre, where the warder kept his guard, and opened and shut the huge, iron-bound doors, and dropped and raised the portcullis at pleasure. And these old feudal memorials bring me to the castles and ruined towers so thickly peopling the land where lived the bands of adventurers, as Froissart calls them, by whom the fat citizens of the towns were wont to be "_guerroyés et harriés_," and most of which have still their legends of desperate sieges, and, too often, of foul murders done within their dreary walls. Pass, as I perforce must, however, and gain Provence--there is yet one legendary tale I cannot help telling. It is one of the best things in Froissart, and a little twisting would give it a famous satiric significance against a class of bores of our own day and generation. It relates to the lord of a castle not far from Tarbes, and was told to Froissart by a squire, "in a corner of the chapel of Orthez," during the visit paid by the canon to Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix--who, I am sorry to say, has been puffed, and most snobbishly exalted by the great chronicler into the ranks of the most noble chivalry, in return for splendid entertainment bestowed; whereas, in fact, Gaston Phoebus was a reckless murderer, possessed of neither faith nor honour. But, alas, the Canon of Chimay sometimes descended into the lowest depths of penny-a-lining, and "coloured" the cases just as a bribed police reporter does when a "respectable" gentleman gets into trouble. Gaston stabbed his son to death, in a dungeon; and the bold Froissart has actually the coolness to assert that the death of the heir took place, inasmuch as his father, in a rage, because he would not eat the dainties placed before him, struck him with his clenched fist, holding therein a knife with which he had been picking his nails, but the blade of which, says the lame apologist, only protruded a "groat's breadth" from his fingers,--the result being that the steel unfortunately happened to cut a vein in young Gaston's throat. The simple truth of the matter is, that the count was jealous of his son's being a favourite of the boy's mother, from whom he (the count) was separated--that he dreaded lest the wrongs of his wife might be avenged by her brother, the King of Navarre--and that he determined to starve the boy in a dungeon; but the child not dying so soon as was expected, his father went very coolly in to him, and cut his throat. "To speak briefly and truly," says Froissart, "the Count de Foix was perfect in body and mind, and no contemporary prince could be compared to him for sense, honour, and liberality." "To speak briefly and truly, Sir John Froissart," I reply, "you have written a charming and chivalrous chronicle; but you could take a bribe with any man of your time, and having done so, you could attempt to deceive posterity, and write down what you knew to be a lie, with as gallant a grace and easy swagger as the great Mr. Jonathan Wild himself." However, there are black spots in the sun--to the legend which I promised. The Lord of Corasse--a castle, by the way, in which Henri Quatre passed some portion of his boyish days--the Lord of Corasse had a quarrel touching tithes with a neighbouring priest, who being unable to obtain his dues by ordinary legal or illegal remedies, sent a spirit to haunt the castle of Corasse. This spirit proceeded to perform his mission by making a dreadful hallabuloo all night long, and breaking the crockery--so that very soon the Lord and Lady of Corasse had to dine without platters. At length, however, the Baron managed to come to speaking terms with the demon, who was invisible, and found out that his name was Orthon, and that the priest had sent him. "But Orthon, my good fellow," said the sly Lord of Corasse, "this priest is a poor devil, and will never be able to pay you handsomely. Throw him overboard at once, therefore, and come and take service with me." Orthon must have been the most fickle of all the devils, for he not only acceded to the proposition with astonishing readiness, but took such an affection to his new lord, that he could not be got out of his bedroom at night, to the sore discomfiture of the baroness, "who was so much frightened that the hairs of her head stood on end, and she always hid herself under the bed-clothes;" while the too familiar demon, never seen, but only heard, insisted on keeping his friend, the baron, chatting all night. But the charms of Orthon's conversation at length palled, particularly as they kept the baron night after night from his natural rest; so he took to despatching the demon all over Europe, collecting information for him of all that was going on in the courts and councils of princes, and at the scene of war where there happened to be fighting. Still, as Orthon moved as fast as a message by electric telegraph, the baron found him nearly as troublesome as ever. He was eternally coming in with intelligence which he insisted upon telling, until the Lord of Corasse's head was fairly turned by the amount of news he was obliged to listen to. Never had there been so indefatigable an agent. He would have been invaluable to a newspaper--but he was boring the Lord of Corasse to death. A loud thunder at the door at midnight. The baron would groan, for he knew well who was the claimant for admission. "Let me in, Let me in. I have news for thee from Hungary or England," as the case might be; and the baron, groaning in soul and body, would get up and let the demon in; while the latter would immediately commence his recitation: "Let me sleep. Let me sleep, for Heaven's sake!" the victim would exclaim. "I have not told thee half the news," would be Orthon's reply; "I will not let thee sleep until I have told thee the news;" and he would go on with his budget of foreign intelligence till the day scared him, and left the baron and the baronness to broken and unrefreshing slumbers. Froissart narrates that at length the demon consented to appear in a visible form to the baron; that he took the shape of a lean sow, upon which the Lord of Corasse ordered the dogs to be let loose upon the animal, which straightway disappeared, and Orthon was never seen after. I suspect, however, that Sir John was hoaxed in this respect. He clearly did not see the fun of the story, which is very capable of being resolved into an allegory--the fact being that the demon was some gentleman of the priest's acquaintance, with supernatural powers of boring whom he let loose upon the recalcitrant tithe-payer, until the arrears were at length paid up. The sow which disappeared was clearly no other than a tithe-pig. CHAPTER XI. LANGUEDOC--THE "AUSTERE SOUTH"--BEZIERS AND THE ALBIGENSES--THE FOUNTAIN OF THE GREVE AND PIERRE PAUL RIQUET--ANTICIPATIONS OF THE MEDITERRANEAN--THE MISTRAL--THE OLIVE COUNTRY ABOUT BEZIERS--THE PEASANTS OF THE SOUTH--RURAL BILLIARD-PLAYING. Again in the banquette of the diligence, which, rolling on the great highway from Toulouse to Marseilles, has taken me up at Carcassone, and will deposit me for the present at Beziers. We have entered in Languedoc, the most early civilised of the provinces which now make up France--the land where chivalry was first wedded to literature--the land whose tongue laid the foundations of the greater part of modern poetry--the land where the people first rebelled against the tyranny of Rome--the land of the Menestrals and the Albigenses. People are apt to think of this favoured tract of Europe as a sort of terrestrial paradise--one great glowing odorous garden--where, in the shade of the orange and the olive-tree, queens of love and beauty, crowned the heads of wandering Troubadours. The literary and historic associations have not unnaturally operated upon our common notions of the country; and for the "South of France," we are very apt to conjure up a brave, fictitious landscape. Yet this country is no Eden. It has been admirably described, in a single phrase, the "Austere South of France." It _is_ austere--grim--sombre. It never smiles: it is scathed and parched. There is no freshness or rurality in it. It does not seem the country, but a vast yard--shadeless, glaring, drear, and dry. Let us glance from our elevated perch over the district we are traversing. A vast, rolling wilderness of clodded earth, browned and baked by the sun; here and there masses of red rock heaving themselves above the soil like protruding ribs of the earth, and a vast coating of drowthy dust, lying like snow upon the ground. To the left, a long ridge of iron-like mountains--on all sides rolling hills, stern and kneaded, looking as though frozen. On the slopes and in the plains, endless rows of scrubby, ugly trees, powdered with the universal dust, and looking exactly like mopsticks. Sprawling and straggling over the soil beneath them, jungles of burnt-up, leafless bushes, tangled, and apparently neglected. The trees are olives and mulberries--the bushes, vines. Glance again across the country. It seems a solitude. Perhaps one or two distant figures, grey with dust, are labouring to break the clods with wooden hammers; but that is all. No cottages--no farmhouses--no hedges--all one rolling sweep of iron-like, burnt-up, glaring land. In the distance, you may espy a village. It looks like a fortification--all blank, high stone walls, and no windows, but mere loop-holes. A square church tower gloomily and heavily overtops the houses, or the dungeon of an ancient fortress rears its massive pile of mouldering stone. Where have you seen such a landscape before? Stern and forbidding, it has yet a familiar look. These scrubby, mop-headed trees--these formal square lines of huge edifices--these banks and braes, varying in hue from the grey of the dust to the red of the rock--why, they are precisely the back-grounds of the pictures of the renaissance painters of France and Italy. I was miserably disappointed with the olive. It is one of the romantic trees, full of association. It is a biblical tree, and one of the most favoured of the old eastern emblems. But what claim has it to beauty? The trunk, a weazened, sapless-looking piece of timber, the branches spreading out from it like the top of a mushroom, and the colour, when you can see it for dust, a cold, sombre, greyish green. One olive is as like another as one mopstick is like another. The tree has no picturesqueness--no variety. It is not high enough to be grand, and not irregular enough to be graceful. Put it beside the birch, the beech, the elm, or the oak, and you will see the poetry of the forest and its poorest and most meagre prose. So also, to a great extent, of the mulberry. I had a vague sort of respect for the latter tree, because one of the Champions of Christendom--St. James of Spain, I think--delivered out of the trunk of a mulberry an enchanted princess; but the enforced lodgings of the captive form just as shabby and priggish-looking a tree as the olive. The general shape--that of a mop--is the same, and a mutual want of variety and picturesqueness, afflict, with the curse of hopeless ugliness, both silk and oil-trees. The fig, in another way, is just as bad. It is a sneaking tree, which appears as if it were growing on the sly, while its soft, buttery-looking branches--bending and twisting, swollen and unwholesome-looking--put you somehow in mind of diseased limbs, which the quack doctors call "bad legs." In fact, it seems as if the climate and soil of Provence and Languedoc were utterly unfavourable to the production of forest scenery. One of our noble clumps of oak, beech, birch, and elm, at home, is worth, for splendid picturesqueness and rich luxuriance of greenery, every fig-tree which ever grew since fig-leaves were in vogue; every olive which ever grew since the dove from the ark plucked off a branch; and every mulberry which ever grew since St. James of Spain cut out the imprisoned princess. The menestrals of Languedoc no doubt gave our early bards many a poetic lesson; but I can imagine the hopeless stare of the Southern when the Northern rhymer, in return, would chant him a jolly Friar of Copmanhurst sort of stave about the "merry greenwood," and the joys of the "greenwood tree." As we roll along the dusty highway, intersecting the dusty fields, the dusty olives, and the dusty vines, I pray the reader to glance to the right, towards the summit of a chain of jagged, naked hills. These go by the name of the Black Mountains--a good "Mysteries of Udolpho" sort of title--and they form part of a range which separates the basin of the streams which descend to the north, and form the head waters of the Garonne, and those which descend to the south, and form the head waters of the Aude. Somewhere about 1670, the scattered shepherds who dwelt in these hills frequently observed a stranger, richly dressed, attended by two labouring-looking men, who paid him great reverence. The little party toiled up and down in the hills, and frequently erected and gathered round magical-looking instruments. "Holy Mary!" said the peasants, "they are sorcerers, and they are come to bewitch us all!" For years and years did the richly dressed man and the two labourers haunt the Black Mountains, wandering uneasily up and down, climbing ridges, and plunging into valleys, and always seeming to seek something which they could not find. At length, upon a glaring hot summer day, they came suddenly upon a young peasant, who was quenching his thirst at a fountain. The cavalier glanced at the spring, and caught the shepherd by his home-spun jacket. The boy thought he was going to be murdered, and screamed out; but a Louis-d'or quieted him in a moment. Then the cavalier, trembling with anxiety, exclaimed: "What fountain is this?" "The fountain of the Greve," said the boy. "And it runs both ways along the ridge of the hill?" "Ay; any fool may see that half of the water goes north, and half goes south--any fool knows that." "And I only discovered it now. Thank God!" We shall see who the cavalier, the discoverer of the fountain of the Greve, was, when we arrive at Beziers. Meantime the reader may be astonished that, after the cold frost and snow of the Pyrenees, a week or two later in the season brought me into a region of dry parched land, the sky blue and speckless from dawn to twilight--the sun glaringly hot, and the flying dust penetrating into the very pores of the skin. But we have left the mist-gathering and rain-attracting mountains, and we have entered the "austere South," where the sky for months and months is cloudless as in Arabia--where, at the season I traversed it, the sun being hot by day does not prevent the frost from being keen at night; and where the mistral, or north wind, nips your skin as with knives; while in every sheltered spot the noon-day heat bakes and scorches it. But such is Languedoc. As the evening closed in, we saw, duskily crowning a hill before us, a clustered old city, with grand cathedral towers, and many minor church steeples, cutting the darkening air. This is Beziers, where took place the crowning massacre of the Albigenses--the most learned, intellectual, and philosophic of the early revolters from the Church of Rome, and whom it is a perfect mistake to consider in the light of mere peasant fanatics, like the Camisards or the Vaudois. In this ancient city, beneath the shadow of these dim towers, more than twenty thousand men, women, and children, were slaughtered by the troops of orthodox France and Rome, led on and incited to the work by the Bishop of Beziers, one of the most black-souled bigots who ever deformed God's earth. When the soldiers could hardly distinguish in the darkness the heretics from the orthodox--although, indeed, they might have solved the problem by cutting down every intelligent man they saw--the loving pastor of souls roared out, "_Coedite omnes, coedite; noverit enim Dominus qui sunt ejus!_" It is to be fervently hoped, that, for the sake of the Bishop of Beziers, a certain other personage has long ago proved himself equally perspicuous and discriminating. We pulled up at Hotel du Nord, at Beziers, just as the _table-d'hôte_ bell was ringing; and I speedily found myself sitting down in a most gaily lighted _salon_, to a capital dinner, in the midst of a merry company. For the last ten miles of the way, I had been amusing myself by catching glimpses of a distant lighthouse; for I knew that it shone from a headland jutting into the Mediterranean. And the first glance at the Mediterranean was now my grand object of interest, as the first glance at the Pyrenees had been; and as, I remember, long ago, the first glance of France, of the Rhine, and the Alps, had each their turn. When, therefore, a dish of soles (stewed in oil, as the Jews cook them here--and the Jews are the only people in England who can cook soles,) was placed before me, I asked the waiter where the fish came from? "_Mais, monsieur_, where should they come from, but from the sea?" "You mean the Mediterranean?" "_Mais certainment, monsieur_; there is no sea but the Mediterranean sea." An observation which, coinciding with my own mental view for the moment, I quietly agreed in. In the market-place of Beziers stands the statue of a thoughtful and handsome man, dressed in the costume of the early period of Louis Quatorze, with flowing love-locks and peaked beard. His cloak has fallen unheeded from his shoulders, as he eagerly gazes on the ground--one hand holding a compass, the other a pencil. This is the statue of Pierre Paul Riquet, feudal seigneur of Bonrepos, and the cavalier who discovered the fountain of the Greve. That fountain solved a mighty problem--the possibility of connecting, by means of water communication, the Atlantic and the Mediterranean--the Garonne flowing into the one, with the Aude flowing into the other; and the formation of the Canal du Midi, doubled at a stroke the value of the Mediterranean provinces of France. Francis I., although our James called him a "mere fechting fule," dreamt of this. Henri and Sully projected the scheme; but it was only under Louis and Colbert that it was executed; and the bold and resolute engineer--he lived three quarters of a century before Brindley--was Pierre Paul Riquet. This man was one of those chivalric enthusiasts for a scheme--one of those gallant soldiers of an idea--who give up their lives to the task of making a thought a fact. He had laboured at least a dozen of weary years ere the court took up the plan. He had demonstrated the thing again and again to commissioners of notabilities, ere the first stone of the first loch was laid. The work went on; twelve thousand "navvies" laboured at the task; Riquet had sunk his entire fortune in it. In thirteen years, the toil was all but accomplished. In the coming summer the Canal du Midi would be opened--when Riquet died--the great cup of his life's ambition brimming untasted at his lips. Six months thereafter, a gay company of king's commissioners, gracefully headed by Riquet's two sons, rode through the channel of the water-courses from Beziers to Toulouse, and returned the next week by water, leading a jubilant procession of twenty-three great barges, proceeding from the west with cargoes for the annual fair held on the Rhone, at Beaucaire. Since Riquet's days, all his plans have been, one by one, carried out. His canal now runs to Agen, where it joins the Garonne; while at the other end, it is led through the chain of marshes and lagoons which extend along the Mediterranean, from Perpignan to the delta of the Rhone, joining the "swift and arrowy" river at Beaucaire. I have mentioned the mistral. I had heard a great deal previously about this wind, and while at Beziers, had the pleasure of making its personal acquaintance. This mistral is the plague and the curse of the Mediterranean provinces of France. The ancient historians mention it as sweeping gravel and stones up into the air. St. Paul talks of the south wind, which blew softly until there arose against it a fierce wind, called Euroclydon--certainly the mistral. Madame de Sevigne paints it as "_le tourbillon, l'ouregan, tous les diables dechainés qui veulent bien emporter votre chateau_;" and my amazement is, that the hurricane does not sometimes carry bodily off, if not a chateau, at least the ricketty villages of the peasants. I had but a taste of this wild, gusty, and most abominably drying and cutting wind; for the gale which blew for a couple of days over Beziers formed, I was told, only a very modified version of the true mistral; but it was quite enough to give a notion of the wind in the full height of its evil powers. The whole country was literally one moving cloud of dust. The roads, so to speak, smoked. From an eminence, you could trace their line for miles by the columns of white powdered earth driven into the air. As for the paths you actually traversed, the ground-down gravel was blown from the ruts, leaving the way scarred, as it were, with ridgy seams, and often worn down to the level of the subsidiary stratum of rock. The streaky, russet-brown of the fields was speedily converted into one uniform grey. Never had I seen anything more intensely or dismally parched up. As for any tree or vegetable but vines and olives--whose very sustenance and support is dust and gravel, thriving under the liability to such visitations--the thing was impossible. Nor was the dust by any means the only evil. The wind seemed poisonous; it made the eyes--mine, at all events--smart and water; cracked the lips, as a sudden alternation from heat to cold will do; caused a little accidentally inflicted scratch to ache and shoot; and finally, dried, hardened, and roughened the skin, until one felt in an absolute fever. The cold in the shade, let it be noted, was intense--a pinching, nipping cold, in noways frosty or kindly; while in sheltered corners the heat was as unpleasant, the blaze of an unclouded sun darting right down upon the parched and gleaming earth. All this, however, I was told, formed but a modified attack of mistral. The true wind mingles with the flying dust a greyish or yellowish haze, through which the sun shines hot, yet cheerless. I had, however, a specimen of the wind, which quite satisfied me, and which certainly enables me to affirm, that the coldest, harshest, and most rheumatic easterly gale which ever whistled the fogs from Essex marshes over the dripping and shivering streets of London, is a genial, balmy, and ambrosial zephyr, compared with the mistral of the ridiculously bepuffed climate of the South of France. Wandering about Beziers, so as to get the features of the olive country thoroughly into my head, I had a good deal of conversation with the scattered peasantry--a fierce, wild-looking set of people, dressed in the common blouse, but a perfectly different race from the quiet, mild, central and northern agriculturists. Their black, flashing eyes, so brimful of devilry--their wild, straight, black hair, shooting in straggling masses over their shoulders, and the fierce vehemence of gesticulation--the loud, passionate tone of their habitual speech--all mark the fiery and hot-blooded South. Go into a cabaret, into the high, darkened room, set round with tables and benches, and you will think the whole company are in a frantic state of quarrel. Not at all--it is simply their way of conversing. But if a dispute does break out, they leap, and scream, and glare into each other's eyes like demons, and the ready knife is but too often seen gleaming in the air. Here in the South you will note the change in the style of construction of the farmhouses, which are clustered in bourgs. Everything is on a great scale, to give air, the grand object being to let the breeze in, and keep the heat out. Shade is the universal desideratum. Every auberge has its huge _remise_--a vast, gloomy shed, into which carts and diligences drive, where the mangers of the horses stand, and where you will often see the carriers stretched out asleep. In large, messagerie hotels, these _remises_, ponderously built of vast blocks of stone, look like enormous catacombs, or vaults; and the stamping and neighing of the horses, and the rumbling of entering and departing vehicles, roll along the roof in thunder. Near Beziers, I came upon a good specimen of the South of France bourg, or agricultural village. Seen from a little distance, it had quite an imposing appearance--the white, commodious-looking mansions gleaming cheerily out through the dusky olive-grounds. A closer inspection, however, showed the real nakedness of the land. The high, white mansions became great clumsy barns--the lower stories occupied as living places, the windows above bursting with loads of hay and straw. The crooked, devious streets were paved with filthy heaps of litter and dung. Dilapidated ploughs and harrows--their wooden teeth worn down to the stumps--lay hither and thither round the great gaunt, unpainted doorways. The window-shutters of every occupied room were shut as closely as port-holes in a gale of wind, and here and there a wandering pig or donkey, or a slatternly woman sifting corn upon a piece of sacking stretched before her door, or a purblind old crone knitting in the sun, formed the only moving objects which gave life to the dreary picture. In this village, however, dreary as it was, I found a _café_ and a billiard-table. Where, indeed, in France will you not? Except in the merest jumble of hovels, you can hardly traverse a hamlet without seeing the crossed cues and balls figuring on a gaily painted house. You may not be able to purchase the most ordinary articles a traveller requires, but you can always have a game at pool. I have frequently found billiard-rooms in filthy little hamlets, inhabited entirely by persons of the rank of English agricultural labourers. At home, we associate the game with great towns, and, perhaps, with the more dissipated portion of the life of great towns. Here, even with the thoroughly rustic portion of the population, the game seems a necessary of life. And there are, too--contrary to what might have been expected--few or no make-shift-looking, trumpery tables. The _cafés_ in the Palais Royal, or in the fashionable Boulevards, contain no pieces of furniture of this description more massive or more elaborately carved and adorned than many I have met with in places hardly aspiring to the rank of villages. It has often struck me, that the billiard-table must have cost at least as much as the house in which it was erected; but the thing seemed indispensable, and there it was in busy use all day long. A correct return of the number of billiard-tables in France would give some very significant statistics relative to the social customs and lives of our merry neighbours. It would be an odd indication of the habits of the people, should there be found to be five times as many billiard-tables in France as there are mangles; and I for one firmly believe that such would be the result of an impartial perquisition. Besides the _billard_ and the newspapers--little provincial rags, with which an English grocer would scorn to wrap up an ounce of pigtail--there are, of course, cards and dominoes for the frequenters; and they are in as great requisition all day as the balls and cues. I like--no man likes better--to see the toilers of the world released from their labours, and enjoying themselves; but after all there is something, to English ways of thinking, desperately idle in the scene of a couple of big, burly working men, sitting in the glare of the sunlight the best part of the day, wrangling over a greasy pack of cards, or rattling dominoes upon the little marble tables. I once remarked this to an old French gentleman. "True--too true," he replied; "it was Bonaparte did the mischief. He made--you know how great a proportion of the country youth of France--soldiers. When they returned--those who did return--they had garrison tastes and barrack habits; and those tastes and habits it was which have brought matters to the pass, that you can hardly travel a league, even in rural France, without hearing the click of the billiard balls." CHAPTER XII. THE TRACK-BOAT ON THE CANAL DU MIDI--APPROACH TO THE MEDITERRANEAN--SALT-MARSHES AND SALT-WORKS--A CIRCUS THRASHING-MACHINE--THE MEDITERRANEAN AND ITS CRAFT--CETTE AND ITS MANUFACTURED WINES, WITH A PRIEST'S VIEWS ON GOURMANDISE. I left Beziers for the Mediterranean, by Pierre Paul Riquet's canal. The track-boat passes once a-day, taking upwards of thirty-five hours to make the passage from Toulouse to Cette. The Beziers station is about a mile from the town; and on approaching it early in the morning, I found a crowd of people collected on the banks, looking at men dragging the canal with huge hooks at the end of poles. They were searching for the body of a poor fellow from Beziers, who had drowned himself under very remarkable circumstances; and just as the packet-boat came up, the corpse was raised, stark and stiff, almost from beneath it. The deceased was a _decrotteur_, or boot-cleaner, and a light porter at Beziers--a quiet, inoffensive man, who, by dint of untiring industry, and great self-denial, had scraped together upwards of two hundred and fifty francs, all of which he lent another _decrotteur_, without taking legal security for the money. After the stipulated term for the loan had elapsed, the poor lender naturally pressed for his cash. He was put off from month to month with excuses; and when, at length, he became urgent for repayment, the debtor laughed in his face, told him to do his best and his worst, and get his money how he could. The _decrotteur_ went away in a state of frenzy, and procured and charged a pistol, with which he returned to the rascal borrower. "Will you pay me?--ay or no?" he said. "No," replied the other; "go about your business." The creditor instantly levelled his pistol and fired. Down went his antagonist, doubled up in a heap on the road, and away went the assassin as hard as his legs could carry him, to a bridge leading over the canal, from the parapet of which he leaped into the water; while, as he disappeared, the _quasi_ murdered man got up again, with no other damage than a face blackened by the explosion of the pistol. He had fallen through terror, for he was absolutely unscathed. The travelling by the Canal du Midi is a sleepy and monotonous business enough. Mile after mile, and league after league, the boat is gliding along between grassy or rushy banks, and rows of poplar, and sometimes of acacia trees, the monotonous tramp of the team upon the bank mingling with the endless gurgle of the waters beneath. The towing paths are generally very lifeless. Now and then a solitary peasant, with his heavy sharp-pointed hoe--an implement, in fact, half hoe and half pick-axe--upon his shoulder, saunters up to see the boat go by; or a shepherd, whistling to his flock, paces slowly at their head, wandering to and fro in search of the greenest bits of pasture; or a handful of jabbering women, from some neighbouring bourg, will be squatted along the water's edge, certainly not obeying Napoleon's injunction to wash their _linge sale en famille_, but pounding away at sheets and shirts with heavy stones or wooden mallets--the counterparts of the instruments used in Scotland to "get up" fine linen, and there called "beetles." The bridges are shot cleverly. At a shout from the steersman, the postillion, who rides one of the hindmost horses of the team, jumps off, casts loose the tow-line, runs with the end of it to the centre of the bridge, drops it aboard as the boat comes beneath, catches it up again on the opposite side, flies back after his horses which have trotted very tranquilly ahead, hooks on the rope again, jumps into his saddle, cracks his long whip, and the boat is off again in full career long ere she has lost her former headway. Little of the country can be seen from the deck, but along the southern and eastern half of the canal you seldom lose sight of the dusty tops of the formal olive groves, varied now and then by a stony slope covered with ugly, sprawling vines, and as you approach the sea, dotted with white, little country houses--of which more hereafter--the glimpses of the changing picture being continually set in a brown frame of sterile hills. The boats are long and narrow; the cabins like corridors, but comfortably cushioned and stuffed, so that you can sleep in them, even if the boat be tolerably crowded, as well as in a diligence. If there be few passengers, you will have full-length room. The _restaurant_ on board is excellent--as good as that on the Garonne boats, and very cheap. Let all English travellers, however, beware of the steward's department on the Loire and Rhone steamers, in both of which I have been thoroughly swindled. The style of people who seemingly use the track-boat on the Canal du Midi, are the _rotonde_ class of diligence passengers. Going down to Cette, there were two or three families, almost entirely composed of females, aboard; the elder ladies--horrid, snuffy old women, who were always having exclusive cups of chocolate or coffee, or little basins of soup, and who never appeared to move from the spots on which they were deposited since the voyage began. Two of these families had canaries in cages, a very common practice in France, where the people continually try, even in travelling, to keep their household gods about them. Look at the baggage of your Frenchman _en voyage_. All the old clothes of the last dozen of years are sure to be lugged about in it. There is, perhaps, a pormanteau, exclusively devoted to old boots, and half-a-dozen pasteboard hat-boxes, with half-a-dozen hats, utterly beyond wearing. The plague of all this baggage is dreadful; but the proprietor would go through any amount of inconvenience rather than lose one stitch of his innumerable old _hardes_. After passing the headland and dull old town of Agde, the former crowned by the lighthouse I had seen from the road to Beziers, we fairly entered into the great zone of salt swamps which here line the Mediterranean. It was a desolate and dreary prospect. The land on either side stretched away in a dead flat; now dry and parched, again traversed by green streaks of swamp, and anon broken by clear, shallow pools of water. Sometimes, again, you entered a perfect jungle of huge bulrushes, stretching away as far as the eye could follow, and evidently teeming with wild ducks, which rose in vast coveys, and flew landward or seaward in their usual wedge-shaped order of flight. The sea, to which we were approaching at a sharp angle, was still invisible, but you felt the refreshing savour of the brine in the air, and now and then you caught, sparkling for a moment in the bright, hot sunshine, a distant jet of feathery spray, as a heavier wave than common came thundering along the beach. Presently, the brown waste through which we were passing became streaked with whitish belts and patches--the salt left by the evaporation of the brine, which now begins to soak and well through the spongy soil, and presently to expand into lakes and shallow belts of water. Across these, long rows of stakes for nets, stretched away in endless column, and here and there a rude, light boat floated, or a fisherman slowly waded from point to point. Great herons and cranes stood like sentinels in the shallow water, and flocks of sandpipers and plovers ran along the white salt-powdered sand. Then came on the left, or landward side, a series of tumuli of pyramidical form, some of them white, others of a dark brown, scattered over a space of scores of square miles. I wondered who were the inhabitants of this lake of the dismal swamp, and accordingly pointed out the houses, as I conceived them, to the captain. "Houses, monsieur!" he said; "these are all salt heaps. Salt is the harvest of this country, and they stack it in these piles, just as the people inland do their corn. When the heap is not expected to be wanted soon, they thatch it with reeds and grass; but if they expect to get a quick sale, they don't take the trouble. So you see that some of the heaps are dark, and the others like snow-balls." "But if there come rain?" "Not much fear of that in this part of the world. There may be a shower, but the salt is so hard and compacted, that it will do little more than wash the dirt off." [Illustration: THRASHING CORN.] Presently we came to the salt-making basins--great shallow lakes, divided by dykes into squares somewhat in the style of a chess-board; and here the solitude of the expanse was broken by the figures of the workmen clambering along the narrow dykes to watch and superintend the progress of evaporation. By the side of these lakes, rows of ugly rectangular cottages were erected, and slight carts drawn by two horses, one ahead of the other, moved the loads of salt from the pans, or pools, to the heaps in which it was stored. Here and there, where the ground rose a little, a thin crop of maize, or barley, appeared to have been cultivated; and it was probably some such harvest that I saw being thrashed by the peculiar process in use all through Provence and southern Languedoc. There are very few thrashing mills, even in the best cultivated parts of France. Over the vast proportion of the kingdom, the orthodox old flail bears undisturbed sway; but the farmer of the far South chooses rather to employ horse than human muscles in the work. He lays down, therefore, in a handy spot, a circular pavement, generally of brick, a little larger than the ring at Astley's. All along the swampy shores of the Mediterranean, traversed by the delta of the Rhone, and stretching westward towards Spain, there feed upon the scanty herbage great herds of semi-wild horses, said to have been originally of Arabian descent. These creatures are caught, when needed, much in the style of the Landes desert steeds, and every farmer has a right to a certain number corresponding with the size of his farm. When, then, the harvest has been cut, and the thrashing time comes on, you may see, approaching the steeding, an unruly flock of lean, lanky, leggy horses, most of them grey, driven by three or four mounted peasants--capital cavaliers--each with a long lance like a trident held erect, and a lasso coiled at the saddle-bow. Then work commences: the wild steeds are tolerably docile, although shy and skittish. A heavy bit is forced into the mouth of each, with a long bridle attached. The creatures are arranged in a circle on the edge of the brick flooring, exactly as when Mr. Widdicombe or M. Franconi prepare for an unrivalled feat of horsemanship upon eight bare-backed steeds by the "Whirlwind Rider," surnamed the "Pet of the Ring," or the famous artiste, "Herr Bridleinski, the Hungarian Tamer of the Flying Steeds." The sheaves of corn are placed just where the active grooms at Astley's rake the sawdust thickest; and then, in answer to the thundering exhortations of Mr. Widdicombe and his coadjutors in the centre of the ring, and the cracking of the whips, the horses, held by their long bridles, go plunging and rearing round the arena, and, after more or less obstreperousness, settle into a shambling trot, treading out the corn as they go, and preserving the pace for a wonderful length of time. At night, the creatures are released, and left to shift for themselves. They seldom stray far from the farm, and are easily recaptured and brought back to work next day. The four-legged thrashers, I am sorry to say, are rather scurvily treated, for they get nothing in return for their labour better than straw--a poor diet for a day's trot. The first time I saw this equestrian thrashing-machine in motion, the effect was very odd. I could not dissociate it from the equestrian performance of some wandering company of high-bred steeds and "star riders." The only thing that seemed strange was, that there should be no spectators; and, after a little time, that there should be no human performers. Round and round, at a long, irregular trot, went the lanky brutes--sometimes breaking out--plunging, and taking it into their heads, as their Rochester cousin, hired by Mr. Winkle, did, to go sideways, but always reduced to obedience by a few smacking persuaders from the whip. But where was the illustrious Whirlwind Rider, who should have stood on all their necks at once, or the famous Bridleinski, who should have stood on all their haunches? No shrill clown's voice echoed from the circus. The stolid, bloused, straw-hatted master of the ring was a perfect disgrace and reproach to Mr. Widdicombe, who, if he had been on board the boat, would infallibly have taken refuge in the run, rather than contemplated such a melancholy mockery of his mission and his functions. At length there gleamed before us a noble sheet of water, ruffled by a steady breeze, before which one of the Lateen-rigged craft of the Mediterranean was bowling merrily, driving a rolling wave of foam on either side of her bluff bows. This was the Lagoon, or Etang, of Thau, a salt-water lake about a dozen of miles long, and opening up by a narrow channel--on both banks of which rises the flourishing town of Cette--into the Mediterranean. For the greater part of its length, only a strip of sand and shingle interposes between the lake and the sea, and as the steamer to which we were transferred, at the end of the canal, paddled its way to Cette, we could see every moment the surf of the open ocean rising beyond the barrier. The passage along the Etang is pretty and characteristic. On the left lie, in a long, blue chain, the hills of the Cevennes--distance hiding their barren bleakness from the eye--while along the inland edge of the water, village after village, the houses sparklingly white, are mirrored in the lake, with a little fleet of lateen-rigged fishing boats, the sails usually very ragged, pursuing their occupation before each hamlet. Now and then we were passed by huge feluccas, rolling away before the wind, and bound for the Canal du Midi, with great cargoes of hay and straw, heaped up half as high as the mast--the lateen-sail having to be half furled in consequence, and the captain shouting his orders to the steersman as from the top of a stack in a barnyard. The scene reminded me greatly of the hay-barges of the Thames bringing up to London the crops of Kent and Essex. At length we were landed among groups of Mediterranean sailors, with Phrygian caps--otherwise conical red night-caps--and ugly-looking knives in their belts. The women had the usual Naiad peculiarity of short petticoats, and wore them, too, of a showy, striped stuff, which reminded me of the Newhaven fish-wives, near Edinburgh. This Phrygian cap, by the way, is the prototype of the ordinary cap of liberty, which our good neighbours are so fond of sticking on the stumps of what they call "trees of liberty"--of painting, of carving, of apostrophising, of waving, of exalting--which, in short, they are so fond of doing everything with--but wearing. The effect, as a head-dress, on the Cette fishermen, was not unpleasant. The long, conical top, and tassel, give a degree of drapery to the figure, and the cap itself seems luxuriously comfortable to the head. A well-appointed little omnibus rattled me through busier streets than I had seen for many a day, by open counting-houses, and under the great lateen yards of feluccas lying in rows, with their bows to the quays, and across a light, wooden swing-bridge, haunted by just such tarry mortals as you see about St. Katherine's docks; and at length I was set down at the wide portal of the Hotel de Poste--a straggling, airy hostelry, such as befits the hot and glaring South. Still, I had not seen the Mediterranean. The great _coup_ was yet unachieved: so, getting five words of instruction from a waiter, I hurried through some narrow streets, crossed two or three more swing-bridges, skirted half-a-dozen boat-building yards, very like similar establishments in Wapping, and then suddenly emerged upon the open beach, with sand-hills, and long bent, or seagrass, rustling in the soft southern wind, with the blue of the great inland sea stretching away, deep and lovely, before me; and with the hissing water and foam-laced inner wavelets of the surf creaming to my feet. A sensation, it will be admitted, is a pleasant thing in these _blasé_ days, and the Mediterranean afforded one. There came on me a vague, crowded, and indistinct vision, at once, of schoolboy recollections and many a subsequent day-dream--of Roman galleys, _triremes_ and _quadremes_, with brazen beaks and hundred oars, moving like the legs of a centipede; of all the picturesque craft of the middle-ages; of the fleets of Venice; the argosies and tall merchant-barks which carried on the rich commerce of northern Italy; of the Algerine corsairs, which so often bore down upon the Lion of St. Marks; of the quick-pulling piratical craft; the rovers who pillaged from the mouths of the Nile to the Pillars of Hercules; and of the whole tribe of modern Mediterranean vessels, which thousands and thousands of pictures have made classic, with their high peaked sails, and striped gaudy canvass; the whole tribe of feluccas and polacres, whereof, as I gazed, I could see here and there the scattered sails, gleaming like bird-wings upon the sea. The Mediterranean is, after all, the sea of the world: we associate it with everything classic and beautiful, either in art or climate; and although we know well that its lazy, saint-ridden seamen, and its picturesque, but dirty and ill-sailed, vessels would fly before a breeze which a North-sea fisherman or a Channel boatman would consider a mere puff,--still there is something racily and specially picturesque about the black-eyed, swarthy, copper ear-ringed rascals, and something dearly familiar about the high, graceful peaks of the sails around which they cluster. From the beach I went to the harbour, which was crowded almost to its entrance, but, for reasons to be presently alluded to, I was not sorry to recognise not one union-jack among the Stars and Stripes--Dutch and Brazilian ensigns, which were flying from every mast-head. Few Mediterranean harbours are savoury places. It will be remembered that "there shrinks no ebb in that tideless sea;" and accordingly, when the drainage of a town or a district is led into the harbours, there it stays. Marseilles enjoys a most unenviable notoriety in this respect. The horrible fluid beneath you becomes, in the summer time, despite its salt, absolutely putrid; and I was told that there had been instances in which it bred noisome and abhorrent insects and reptiles--that, literally and absolutely, "slimy things did crawl, with legs, upon the slimy sea." As for the stench, the richness of the steam of fat gases perpetually rising, must be smelt to be appreciated. The Marseillaise, however, have sturdy noses, which do not yield to trifles. They say the dirt preserves the ships, and besides, adds Dumas--a great favourer of the ancient colony of the Greeks--"what a fool a man must be, who, under such a glorious sky, turns his eyes down to gaze on mud and water!" The harbour of Cette is not quite so bad, but it has no particular transparency of water to recommend it. Brave its foulness, however, and go and visit the quays for the fishing-boats, as they are returning from their night's toil. Mark the Catalan craft--you will perhaps remember that the redoubted Monte Christo's first love was a Catalan girl, of a Catalan village near Marseilles:--did you ever see more exquisitely-formed boats afloat on the water? They swim apparently on the very surface--the curve of the gunwale rising to a gondola peak at stem and stern; but yet they are most buoyant sea-boats, and I suspect their speed, particularly in light winds, would put even that of the Yankee pilot-boats to a severe test. Look, too, at their cargoes, as the slippery masses are being shovelled up in glancing, gleaming spadefuls, to the quays. Did you ever see such odd fish? Respectable haddocks, decent and well-to-do cods, and unpretending soles, would never be seen in such strange, eccentric company--among fellows with heads bigger than bodies, and eyes in their backs, and tails absurdly misplaced, and feelers or legs where no fish with well-regulated minds would dream of having such appendages--never was there seen such a strange _omnium gatherum_ of piscatory eccentricities as the fishes of the Mediterranean. I said that it was good--good for our stomachs--to see no English bunting at Cette. The reason is, that Cette is a great manufacturing place, and that what they manufacture there is neither cotton nor wool, Perigord pies, nor Rheims biscuits,--but wine. "_Ici_," will a Cette industrial write with the greatest coolness over his Porte Cochere--"_Ici on fabrique des vins._" All the wines in the world, indeed, are made in Cette. You have only to give an order for Johannisberg, or Tokay--nay, for all I know, for the Falernian of the Romans, or the Nectar of the gods--and the Cette manufacturers will promptly supply you. They are great chemists, these gentlemen, and have brought the noble art of adulteration to a perfection which would make our own mere logwood and sloe-juice practitioners pale and wan with envy. But the great trade of the place is not so much adulterating as concocting wine. Cette is well-situated for this notable manufacture. The wines of southern Spain are brought by coasters from Barcelona and Valencia. The inferior Bordeaux growths come pouring from the Garonne by the Canal du Midi; and the hot and fiery Rhone wines are floated along the chain of etangs and canals from Beaucaire. With all these raw materials, and, of course, a chemical laboratory to boot, it would be hard if the clever folks of Cette could not turn out a very good imitation of any wine in demand. They will doctor you up bad Bordeaux with violet powders and rough cider--colour it with cochineal and turnsole, and outswear creation that it is precious Chateau Margaux--vintage of '25. Champagne, of course, they make by hogsheads. Do you wish sweet liqueur wines from Italy and the Levant? The Cette people will mingle old Rhone wines with boiled sweet wines from the neighbourhood of Lunel, and charge you any price per bottle. Do you wish to make new Claret old? A Cette manufacturer will place it in his oven, and, after twenty-fours' regulated application of heat, return it to you nine years in bottle. Port, Sherry, and Madeira, of course, are fabricated in abundance with any sort of bad, cheap wine and brandy, for a stock, and with half the concoctions in a druggist's shop for seasoning. Cette, in fact, is the very capital and emporium of the tricks and rascalities of the wine-trade; and it supplies almost all the Brazils, and a great proportion of the northern European nations with their after-dinner drinks. To the grateful Yankees it sends out thousands of tons of Ay and Moet, besides no end of Johannisberg, Hermitage, and Chateau Margaux, the fine qualities and dainty aroma of which are highly prized by the transatlantic amateurs. The Dutch flag fluttered plentifully in the harbour, so that I presume Mynheer is a customer to the Cette industrials--or, at all events, he helps in the distribution of their wares. The old French West Indian colonies also patronise their ingenious countrymen of Cette; and Russian magnates get drunk on Chambertin and Romanee Conti, made of low Rhone, and low Burgundy brewages, eked out by the contents of the graduated phial. I fear, however, that we do come in--in the matter of "fine golden Sherries, at 22_s._ 9-1/2_d._ a dozen," or "peculiar old-crusted Port, at 1_s._ 9_d._"--for a share of the Cette manufactures; and it is very probable that after the wine is fabricated upon the shores of the Mediterranean, it is still further improved upon the banks of the Thames. At dinner-time, I found myself placed by the side of a benevolent-looking old priest, with white hair, but cheeks and gills of the most approved rubicund hue, who first eyed the dishes through a pair of vast golden spectacles, and meditated profoundly ere he made a choice--waving away the eternal _bouilli_ with an expression which showed that he was not the man to spoil a good appetite with mere boiled beef. This worthy, hearing me making interest with the waiter for a peculiar bottle of wine, not of native manufacture, smiled paternally, and with an approving countenance: "I would recommend," he said, softly, and in a fat voice, "you to try Masdeu; and, if you please, I will join you. I know Gilliaume (the waiter) of old. _C'est un bon enfant._" And then, in a severe voice, "_The_ Masdeu, William." The priest was clearly at home; and presently the wine came. It had the brightly deep glow of Burgundy, a bouquet not unlike Claret, and tasted like the lightest and purest Port glorified and etherealised; in fact, it was a rare good wine. "Ah!" said the priest, pouring out a second glass; "the vineyard where this was grown once belonged to the Church. The Knights of the Temple once drank this wine, and the Knights of St. John after them. It is a good wine." "The Church understood the grape," I remarked. "I have drunk Hermitage where the recluse fathers tended the vines, and have always looked upon Rhone wine as one of the reasons why the Holy Father at Avignon was long so loath to be the Holy Father at Rome." "Wine," replied my compotator, "is not forbidden, either by the laws of God or the Church; and never was. Only the Vulgate denounces mixed wines." "By the mixed wines prohibited in Holy Writ," said I, "I presume you understand adulterated, not watered liquors. If so, we are in a sad city of sinners." The priest smiled, but changed the topic. "Masdeu," he said, "is Catalan; you know the wine is grown not far from Perpignan, where the people are half Spanish. Do you know the meaning of Masdeu? It is a very old name for the vineyard, and it signifies 'God's field.'" I thought of the difference of national character between the French and the Germans--"God's field" in France, a vineyard; "God's field" in Germany, a churchyard. "The ancient Romans," continued my friend, "liked the wines, the sweet wines of this country, better than any other growths in Gaul." "The Romans," I said, "had a most swinish taste in wines, and dishes too. The Falernian was boiled syrup, cooked up with drugs, and tempered with salt water. Only think of mixing brine with your tipple; or of placing it in a _fumarium_, to imbibe the flavour of the smoke! The Romans were mere liqueur drinkers. Aniseed, or maraschino, or parfait amour, or any trash of that kind, would have suited them better than genuine, fine-flavoured wine." "_Pourtant_;" said my friend; "you go too far; maraschino and parfait amour are not trash. Although I agree with you, that the palate which eternally appeals for sweets is in a morbid condition. But the Romans, after all, must have had tongues of peculiar nicety for some savours. A Roman epicure could tell, by the relative tenderness, the leg upon which a partridge had been in the habit of sitting at night, and whether a carp had been caught above or below a certain bridge." "Or was it not," I asked, with hazy reminiscences of Juvenal floating about me,--"was it not a certain sewer--the Cloaca Maxima, perhaps?" "Only," argued the priest in continuation, "I could never understand their fondness for lampreys." "Perhaps," said I, "it is because you never tasted them after they had been fattened on slaves." "Perhaps it is," replied the good man, musing. By this time dinner was over, and the guests gone. We had the remains of the dessert, the pick-tooths, and another bottle of the Catalan wine to ourselves. "You French," I ventured, "hardly seem worthy of your fine wines. You never appear to care about them; you seldom sit a moment after dinner to enjoy them; and if you relish anything more than another, it is Champagne, which, after all, is but a baby taste. All your very best wine goes to England; most of your second-class growths to Russia; and your lower sorts to the northern nations on the Baltic. I don't think there is anything like a generally cultivated taste for good wine in France, and yet you are supreme in the _cuisine_." "It was the _fermiers generaux_, and the _financiers_," replied the priest, "who made French cookery what it is. They tried to outshine the old noblesse at table; they revived truffles, and they had the first dishes of green pease, at eight hundred francs a _plat_. Next to the financiers were the chevaliers and the abbés. _Oh, mon Dieu! qu'ils étaient gourmands ces chers amis_; the chevaliers all swagger and dash; the sword right up and down--shoulder-knot flaunting--a bold bearing and a keen eye. The abbés, in velvet and silk--as fat as carps, as sleek as moles, and as soft-footed as cats--little and sly--perfect enjoyers of the gourmandise. Oh, there was nothing more snug than an _abbé commanditaire_! He had consideration, position, money; no one to please, and nothing to do." "These were the good old times," I said. "_Ma foi!_" replied the clerical dignitary; "they were bad times for France in general; but they were rare times for the few who lived upon it. There were Frenchmen, at any rate, then, who understood wine; at least, they drunk enough of it to understand the science, from the alpha to the omega." We parted, after a proper degree of hand-shaking; and a quarter of an hour afterwards I was rattling along the Montpellier and Cette railway, with a ticket for Lunel in my pocket. CHAPTER XIII. MORE ABOUT THE OLIVE-TREE--THE GATHERING OF THE OLIVES--LUNEL--A NIGHT WITH A SCORE OF MOSQUITOES--AIGUES-MORTES--THE DEAD LANDSCAPE--THE MARSH FEVER--A STRANGE CICERONE--THE LAST CRUSADING KING--THE SALTED BURGUNDIANS--THE POISONED CAMISARDS--THE MEDITERRANEAN. Passing, for the present, Montpellier, where people with consumptions used to be sent to swallow dust, as likely to be soothing to the lungs, and to breathe the balmy zephyrs of the whispering mistral, I made straight for Lunel, in order to get from thence to one of the strangest old towns in France--Aigues-Mortes. All around us, as we hurried on, were vines and olives--a true land of wine and oil. The olive-tree did not improve on acquaintance--it got uglier and uglier--more formal, and more cast-iron looking, the more you saw of it. And then it was invariably planted in rows, at regular intervals, so as to give the notion of a prim old garden--never of a wood. Like all fruit-trees in France, the olive is most carefully trimmed, and clipped, and tortured, and twisted into the most approved or fashionable shape. The man who can make his _oliviers_ look most like umbrellas is the great cultivator; and the services of the peasants who have got a reputation for olive dressing are better paid than those of any agricultural labourers in France. They are eternally snipping and slashing, and turning and twisting the tree, until the unfortunate specimens have had any small degree of natural ease and harmony which they possessed assiduously wrenched out of them. And yet there are people in the South of France who are enthusiastic on the hidden beauty of the olive. There are technical terms for all the particular spreads and contortions given to the branches; and the olive amateur will hold forth to you by the hour upon the subtle charms of each. A gentleman from beyond Marseilles has dilated with rapture to me on his delight, after a residence in Normandy, in returning again to the hot South, and revisiting the dear olives, so prim, and orderly, and symmetrical--not like the huge, straggling, sprawling oaks and elms of the North, growing up in utter defiance of all rule and system. The olives of France, this gentleman informed me, are very inferior to the trees of a couple of generations ago. Towards the close of the last century, there was a winter night of intense frost; and when the morning broke, the trees were nearly smitten to the core. That year there was not an olive gathered in Provence or Languedoc. The next season, some of the stronger and younger trees partially revived, and slips were planted from those to which the axe had been applied; but the entire species of the tree, he assured me, had fallen off--had dwindled, and pined, and become stunted; and the profits of olive cultivation had faded with it. The gentleman spoke on the subject with a degree of unction which would have suited the fall, not of the olive, but of man. It was a catastrophe which coloured his whole life. He was himself an olive proprietor; and very likely his fortunes fell on the fatal night as many points as the thermometer. On our way to Lunel we saw the olive-gathering just beginning; but, alas! it had none of the gaiety and bright associations of the vintage. On the contrary, it was as business-like and unexciting as weeding onions, or digging potatoes. A set of ragged peasants--the country people hereabouts are poorly dressed--were clambering barefoot in the trees, each man with a basket tied before him, and lazily plucking the dull oily fruit. Occasionally, the olive-gatherers had spread a white cloth beneath the tree, and were shaking the very ripe fruit down; but there was neither jollity nor romance about the process. The olive is a tree of association, but that is all. Its culture, its manuring, and clipping, and trimming, and grafting--the gathering of its fruits, and their squeezing in the mill, when the ponderous stone goes round and round in the glutinous trough, crushing the very essence out of the oily pulps--while the fat, oleaginous stream pours lazily into the greasy vessels set to receive it;--all this is as prosaic and uninteresting as if the whole Royal Agricultural Society were presiding in spirit over the operations. And, after all, what could be expected? "Grapes," said a clever Frenchman, "are wine-pills"--the notion of conviviality and mirth is ever attached to them; and the vintagers, when stripping the loaded branches, have their minds involuntarily carried forward to the joyous ultimate results of their labours. But who--our friends the Russians, and their cousins the Esquimaux excepted--could possibly be jolly over the idea of oil? It may act balsamically and soothingly; and the idea of the olive saucer, green amongst the bright decanters, does approach, in some respect, towards the production of a pleasant association of ideas; but still the elevated and poetic feelings connected with the tree are remote and dim. It was Minerva's tree. When the gods assembled to decide the dispute between Pallas and Neptune, as to which should baptize the rising Athens, it was determined that the honour should belong to whichever of the twain presented the greatest gift to man. Neptune struck the earth, and a horse sprung to day. Minerva waved her hand, and the olive-tree grew up before the conclave. The goddess won the day, inasmuch as the sapient assemblage decided that the olive, as an emblem of peace, was better than the horse, as an emblem of war. Now, I would put this question to Olympus:--How could the olive or the horse be emblems before they were created? And, even if they were emblems, was not the point at issue the best gift--not the best allegorical symbol? I beg, therefore, to assure Neptune that I consider him to have been an ill-used individual, and to express a hope that, if he should ever again come into power, he will not forget my having paid my respects to him in his adversity. I do not know if I have anything particular to record respecting Lunel, which is a quiet, stupid, shadowy place, but that I passed the night engaged in mortal combat with a predatory band of mosquitoes. I was warned, before going to bed, to take care how I managed the operation, and to whip myself through the gauze curtains so as to allow nothing to enter _en suite_. The bed--I don't know why--had been placed in the middle of the room, and the filmy net curtains, like fairy drapery, were snugly tucked in beneath the bedding. Looking at them more particularly, I distinguished a little card, accidentally left adhering to the net, which informed me that it was the fabrication of those wondrous lace-machines of Nottingham; and I trusted that as Britannia rules the waves, she would also baffle the mosquitoes. Perhaps it was my own fault that she did not. I remembered Captain Basil Hall's admirable description of doing the wretched insects in question by leaping suddenly into bed, like harlequin through a clock-dial, and frantically closing up the momentary opening, and I performed the feat in question with as much agility as I could. But what has befallen the gallant captain, also on that night befell me. Mosquitoes shoot into a bed like the Whigs into office--through the most infinitesimal crevices--but with the entrance the resemblance ceases--once in office, with the country sleeping tolerably comfortably, the Whigs do nothing. Not so, the mosquitoes. Their policy is perfectly different, and their energies vastly greater. For a true sketch of the style of mosquito administration, I must again refer to Hall. His picture is true--true to a bite, to a scratch, to a hum. I might paint it again, but any one can see the original. So I content myself with simply stating that from eleven o'clock, P.M., till an unknown hour next morning, I was leaping up and down the bed, striking myself furious blows all over, but never, apparently, hitting my blood-thirsty enemies, and only now and then occasionally sinking into a momentary doze to be roused by that loud, clear trumpet of war--the very music of spite and pique and greediness of blood, circling round and round in the darkness, and ever coming nearer and nearer, till at last it ceased, and then came--the bite, as regularly as the applause after the cavatina of a prima donna. I made my appearance next morning, looking exactly as if I had been attacked in the night by measles, the mumps, swollen face, and erysipelas. Between Aigues-Mortes and Lunel, there is no public vehicle, because there is no travelling public; and so I hired a ricketty, shandry-dan looking affair, to take me on; and away we started, under a perfect blaze of hot, sickly sunshine. The road ran due south, through the vineyards and olives, but they gradually faded away as the soil got more and more spongy, and presently we saw before us a waste of the same sort as that which I have described on approaching the sea by the Canal du Midi. Shallow pools, salt marshes, and bulrush jungles, lay flat and silent, glaring in the sunshine--the watchful crane, the sole living creature to be seen amid these desolate swamps. It struck me that John Bunyan, had he ever seen a landscape like this strange, stagnant expanse of dreariness, would have made grand use of it in that great prose poem of his. Perhaps he would have called it "Dead Corpse Land," or the Slough--not of Despond, but of Despair. Presently we found the road running upon a raised embankment, with two great lakes, spotted with rushy islands on either hand, and before us a grim, grey tower, with an ancient gateway--the gates or portcullis long since removed, but a Gothic arch still spanning the roughly-paved causeway. As we rattled beneath it, two or three lounging _douaniers_ came forth, and looked lazily at us; and presently we saw the grey walls of Aigues-Mortes rising, massive and square, above the level lines of the marshes, fronted by one lone minaret, called the "Tower of Constance"--a gloomy steeple-prison, where, in the time of the Camisards, a crowd of women were confined--the wives and daughters of the brave Protestants of the Cevennes, who fought their country inch by inch against the dragoons of Louis Quatorze, and who--the prisoners, I mean--were forced to swallow poison by the agents of that right royal and religious king, the pious hero and Champion of the Faith, as it is in the Vatican. Outside the town looks like a mere fortification--you see nothing but the sweep of the massive walls reflected in the stagnant waters which lie dead around them. Not a house-top appears above the ramparts. It is only by the thin swirlings of the wood-fire smoke that you know that human life exists behind that blank and dreary veil of stone. We entered by a deep Gothic arch, and found ourselves in narrow, gloomy, silent streets, the houses grey and ghastly, and many ruinous and deserted. The rotten remnants of the green _jalousies_ were mouldering week by week away, and moss and lichens were creeping up the walls; many roofs had fallen, and of some houses only fragments of wall remained. The next moment we were traversing an open space, strewn with rubbish of stone, brick, and rotten wood, with patches of dismal garden-ground interspersed, and all round the dim, grey, silent houses, dismal and dead. Aigues-Mortes could, and once did, hold about ten thousand people. It was a city built in whim by a king, the last of the royal crusaders, Louis IX. of France. By him and his immediate descendants, it was esteemed a holy place--the crusading port. The walls built round it, and which still remain--as the empty armour, after the knight who once filled it is dead and gone--were erected in imitation of those of the Egyptian town of Damietta, and all sorts of privileges were granted to the inhabitants. But one privilege the old kings of France could not grant: they could not, by any amount of letters patent, or any seize of seals, confer immunity from fever; and Aigues-Mortes has been dying of ague ever since it was founded. In its early times, the influence of royal favour struggled long and well against disease: one man down, another came on. What loyal Frenchman would refuse to go from hot fits to cold fits of fever, for a certain number of months, and then to his long home, if it were to pleasure a descendant of St. Louis? But the time and the influences of the Holy Wars went by, and the kings of France withdrew their smiles from Aigues-Mortes; so that their royal brother, King Death, had it all his own way. Funerals far outnumbered births or weddings, and gradually the life faded and faded from the stone-girt town, as the ebbing tide leaves a pier. Cette gave it the finishing stroke. A crowd of the inhabitants emigrated _en masse_ to Riquet's city; and here now is Aigues-Mortes--coffin-like Aigues-Mortes--with about a couple of thousand pallid, shaking mortals, striving their best against the marsh fever, among the ruined houses and within the smouldering walls of this ancient Gothic city. In a solemn, shady street, I found a decentish hotel, not much above the rank of an auberge, and where I was about as lonely as in the vast caravansary at Bagnerre. The landlord himself--a staid, decent man--waited at my solitary dinner. "Monsieur," he said, "is an artist, or a poet?" "What made him think so?" "Because nobody else ever came to Aigues-Mortes--no traveller ever turned aside across the marshes, to visit their poor old decayed town. There was no trade, no _commis voyageurs_. The people of Nismes and Montpellier were afraid of the fever; and even if they were not, why should they come there? It was no place for pleasure on a holiday--a man would as soon think of amusing himself in a hospital or a morgue, as in Aigues-Mortes." I inquired more particularly about the fever, for I felt it difficult to conceive how people could continue to remain in a place cursed by nature with a perpetual chronic plague. My host informed me that those who lived well and copiously, were well clothed, well lodged, and under no necessity to be out early and late among the marshes, fared tolerably. They might have an ague-fit now and then, but when once well-seasoned they did pretty well. It was the poorer class who suffered, particularly in spring and autumn, when vegetation was forming and withering, and the steaming mists came out thickest over the fens. People seldom died with the first attack; but the subtle disease hung about them, and returned again and again, and wore, and tugged, and exhausted their energies--kept nibbling, in fact, at body and soul, till, in too many cases, the disease-besieged man surrendered, and his soul marched out. I asked again, then, how the poor people remained in such a hot-bed of pestilence? "_Que voulez vous_," was the reply--"the greater part can't help it; they were born here, and they have a place here;--at Nismes, or Marseilles, or Montpellier, they would have no place. Besides, they are accustomed to it; they look upon fevers as one of the conditions of their lives, like eating and drinking; and, besides, they have no energy for a change. The stuff has been taken out of them; you will see what a sallow, worn-out people we have at Aigues-Mortes. They can get a living here, but they would be overwhelmed anywhere else." The landlord had previously recommended a _cicerone_ to me, assuring me that I would not find him an ordinary man, that he was a sort of half-gentleman, and a scholar, and that he knew everything about Aigues-Mortes better than anybody else in it. Accordingly, I was presently introduced to M. Auguste Saint Jean, an old, very thin man, dressed in rusty black, and wearing--hear it, ye degenerate days!--powdered hair and a queue. M. Saint Jean looked like a broken-down schoolmaster, some touches of pedantry still giving formality to the humble sliding gait, and bent, bowing form. His face was nearly as wrinkled as Voltaire's, but he had black eyes which gleamed like a ferret's when you show him a rabbit. In company with this old gentleman I passed a wandering day in and round Aigues-Mortes, rambling from gate to gate, scrambling up broken stairs to the battlements, and threading our way amid dim lanes, half choked up with rubbish, from one ghastly old tower to another. All this while my guide's tongue was eloquent. He gesticulated like the most fiercely fidgetty member of young France, and the ferret's eye gleamed as though upon a whole warren of rabbits. Aigues-Mortes seemed his one great subject, his one passion, his own idea. Aigues-Mortes was the bride of his enthusiasm, the soul of his body. He had been born in Aigues-Mortes; he had lived in it; he had the fever in it; and he hoped to die in it, and be buried among the stilly marshes. How well he knew every crumbling stone, every little Gothic bartizan, every relic of an ancient chapel, every gloomy tower haunted by traditions, as it might be by ghosts. His mind flew back every moment to the days of the splendid founding of Aigues-Mortes--to the crusading host, whose glory crowded it with armour, and banners, and cloth of gold, assembled round their king, St. Louis, and bound for Palestine. On the seaward side of the walls, Auguste shewed me rings sunk in the stone, and to these rings, he said, the galleys and caravels of the king had been fastened. The sea is about two miles and a half distant, but the traces of the canal which led to it are still visible amid the marsh and sand, so that, right beneath the walls, upon the smooth, unmoving _aguæ mortes_--whence, of course, Aigues-Mortes--floated the fleet of the Crusade, made fast to the ramparts of the fortress of the Crusade. And so Saint Louis sailed with a thousand ships, standing proudly upon the poop, while the bishops round him raised loud Latin chants, and the warriors clashed their harness. The king wore the pilgrim's scrip and the pilgrim's shell. Long and earnestly did my _cicerone_ dilate upon the evil fortunes of the Crusade--how, indeed, in the beginning it seemed to prosper, and how Damietta was stormed;--but the Saracens had their turn, and the King of France, and many of his best paladins were soon prisoners in the Paynim tents. Question of their ransom being raised, "A king of France," said Louis, "is not bought or sold with money. Take a city--a city for a king of France." The sentence and the sentiment are picturesque; but, after all, there is not much in one or the other. However, the followers of Mahound agreed. Louis was restored to France, and Damietta to its former owners; the rest of the European prisoners being thrown into the bargain for eight thousand gold bezants. Saint Louis, however, was too holy and too restless a personage to remain long at home, so that Aigues-Mortes soon saw him again; and this time he departed waving above his head the crown of thorns. The infidels had laid hands on him the first time, but a fiercer enemy now grappled with the king--the plague clutched him; and though a monarch of France could not be bought or sold for any number of gold bezants, the plague had him cheap--in fact, for an old song. "He died," says that bold writer, M. Alexandre Dumas, who spins you off the most interesting history, all out of his own head--"he died on a bed of ashes, on the very spot where the messenger of Rome found Marius sitting on the ruins of Carthage"--an interesting topographical fact, seeing that nobody, now-a-days, knows where Carthage stood at all--always saving and excepting M. Alexandre Dumas. We stood before a grey, massive tower--a Gothic finger of mouldering stone. "Louis de Malagne," said my old _cicerone_, "a traitorous Frenchman, delivered these holy walls to our enemies of Burgundy, and a garrison of the Duke's held possession of the sacred city of Aigues-Mortes. But the sacrilege was fearfully avenged. The oriflamme was spread by the forces of the king, and the townspeople rose within the walls, and, step by step, the foreign garrison were driven back till they fought in a ring round this old tower. They fought well, and died hard, but they did die--every man--always round this old tower. So, when the question came to be, where to fling the corpses, a citizen said, 'This is a town of salt; salt is the harvest of Aigues-Mortes--let us salt the Burgundians.' And another said, 'Truly, there is a cask ready for the meat;' and he pointed to the tower. Then they laid the dead men stark and stiff, as though to floor the tower. Then they heaped salt on them, a layer two feet thick; then they put on another stratum of Burgundian flesh, and another stratum of salt--till the tower was as a cask--choke-full--bursting-full of pickled Burgundians." Much more he told me of the early fortunes of the Place--how here Francis I. met his enemy, Charles V., in solemn conference, each monarch utterly disbelieving every sacred word uttered by the other; and how the celebrated Algerine pirate, Barbarossa, who was the very patriarch of buccaneers--the Abraham of the Mansveldts, and Morgans, and Dampiers, and who invented, and emblazoned upon his flags the famous motto, "The Friend of the Sea, and the Enemy of All who sail upon it"--how this red-bearded rover once cast anchor off the port, and by way of notifying to France that their ally against the Spaniard had arrived, set fire to a wood of Italian pine on the margin of the marshes, and lighted up the whole country by the lurid blaze. Of the Camisards, of whom I was more anxious to hear--of the poisoning in the tower of St. Constance, and of the band of braves who descended from the summit upon tattered strips of blankets--he knew comparatively little. His mind was mediæval. Aigues-Mortes in the day of Louis Quatorze, was a declining place. The glory had gone out of it, and the unappeasable fever was slowly, but surely, claiming its own. Indeed, for a century it had been master. Aigues-Mortes will probably vanish like Gatton and Old Sarum. A pile of ruins, girdled in by crumbling walls, will slowly be invaded by the sleeping waters of the marsh; and the heron, and the duck, and the meek-eyed gull wandering from the sea, will alone flit restlessly over the city built by Louis the Saint, walled by Philip the Bold, and blessed by one of the wisest and the holiest of the Popes. Reboul, the Nismes poet--I called upon him, but he was from home--is a baker, and lives by selling rolls, as Jasmin is a barber, and lives by scraping chins. Reboul is, like M. Auguste Saint Jean, an enthusiastic lover of the poor, dying, fever-struck Gothic town. Let me translate, as well as I may, half-a-dozen couplets in which he characterises the dear city of the Crusades. The poetry is not unlike Victor Hugo's--stern, rich, fanciful, and coloured, like an old cathedral window. "See, from the stilly waters, and above the sleepy swamp, Where, steaming up, the fever-fog rolls grim, and grey, and damp: How the holy, royal city--Aigues-Mortes, that silent town, Looms like the ghost of Greatness, and of Pride that's been pulled down. See how its twenty silent towers, with nothing to defend, Stand up like ancient coffins, all grimly set on end; With ruins all around them, for, sleeping and at rest, Lies the life of that old city, like a dead owl in its nest-- Like the shrunken, sodden body, so ghastly and so pale, Of a warrior who has died, and who has rotted in his mail-- Like the grimly-twisted corpse of a nun within her pall, Whom they bound, and gagged, and built, all living, in a wall." From the town, we partially floated, in a boat, and partially toiled through swamp and sand to the sea--Auguste constantly preaching on the antiquarian topography of the place, upon old canals, and middle-aged canals--one obliterating the other; on the route which the galleys of St. Louis followed from the walls to the ocean; on a dreary spot between sand-hills, which he called _les Tombeaux_, and where, by his account, the Crusaders who died before the starting of the expedition lie buried in their armour of proof. Then we toiled to a little harbour--a mere fisherman's creek--where it is supposed the ancient canal of St. Louis joined the sea, and which still bears the name of the _Grau Louis_, or the _Grau de Roi_--"grau" being understood to be a corruption of _gradus_. At this spot, rising in the midst of a group of clustered huts, the dwellings of fishermen and aged _douaniers_, one or two of whom were lazily angling off the piers--their chief occupation--there stands a lighthouse, about forty feet high. "Let us climb to the lantern," said Auguste, "and you will then see our silent land, and our poor dear old fading town lying at our feet." Accordingly up we went; only poor Auguste stopped every three steps to cough; and before we had got half way, the perspiration came streaming down his yellow face, proving what might have been a matter of dispute before--that he had some moisture somewhere in his body. From the top we both gazed earnestly, and I curiously, around. On one side, the sea, blue--purple blue; on the other side, something which was neither sea nor land--water and swamp--pond and marsh--bulrush thickets, and tamarisk jungles, shooting in peninsular capes, points, and headlands, into the salt sea lakes; in the centre of them--like the ark grounding after the deluge--the grey walls of Aigues-Mortes. Between the great _mare internum_ and the lagoons, rolling sand-hills--the barrier-line of the coast--and upon them, but afar off, moving specks--the semi-wild cattle of the country; white dots--the Arab-blooded horses which are used for flails; black dots--the wild bulls and cows, which the mounted herdsmen drive with couched lance and flying lasso. "Is it not beautiful?" murmured Auguste; "I think it so. I was born here. I love this landscape--it is so grand in its flatness; the shore is as grand as the sea. Look, there are distant hills"--pointing to the shadowy outline of the Cevennes--"but the hills are not so glorious as the plain." "But neither have they the fever of the plain." "It is God's will. But, fever or no fever, I love this land--so quiet, and still, and solemn--ay, monsieur, as solemn as the deserts of the Arabs, or as a cathedral at midnight--as solemn, and as strange, and as awful, as the early world, fresh from the making, with the birds flying, and the fish swimming, on the evening of the fifth day, before the Lord created Adam." CHAPTER XIV. FLAT MARSH SCENERY, TREATED BY POETS AND PAINTERS--TAVERN ALLEGORIES--NISMES--THE AMPHITHEATRE AND THE MAISON CARRÉE--PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC--THE OLD RELIGIOUS WARS ALIVE STILL--THE SILK WEAVER OF NISMES AND THE DRAGONNÆDES. As Launcelot Gobbo had an infection to serve Bassanio, so I somehow took ill with an infection to walk, instead of ride, back to Lunel. I suppose that Auguste had innoculated me, in some measure, with his mysterious love for the boundless swamps and primeval jungles of bulrush around; so that I felt a sort of pang in leaving them, and would willingly depart lingeringly and alone. Sending on my small baggage, then, by _roulage_, I strode forth out of the dead city, and was soon pacing alone the echoing causeway, like an Arab steering by the sun in the desert. There is one dead and one living English poet who would have made glorious use of this fen landscape, so repulsive to many, but which did, after all, possess a strange, undefinable attraction for me. The dead poet is Shelley, who had the true eye for sublimity in waste. Take the following picture-touch:-- "An uninhabited sea-side, Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried, Abandons; and no other object breaks The waste, but one dwarf tree, and some few stakes, Broken and unrepaired; and the tide makes A narrow space of level sand thereon." This is the sort of landscape, too, which, in another department of art, Collins delighted in representing. But Shelley's picture of the luxuriant rush and water-plant vegetation would have been magnificent. Listen how he handles a theme of the kind: "And plants, at whose names the verse feels loath, Filled the place with a monstrous undergrowth-- Prickly and pulpous, and blistering and blue, Livid and starred with a lurid dew; Spawn-weeds, and filth, and leporous scum, Made the running rivulet thick and dumb; And at its outlet, flags huge as stakes Dammed it up with roots knotted like water-snakes." Tennyson is the living poet who would picture with equal effect the region of swamp, and rush, and pool. Brought up in a fen district, his eye and feeling for marsh scenery and vegetation are perfect. Remember the marish mosses in the rotting fosse which encircled the "Moated Grange." Musing thus of the Poet Laureate, I would assign to this landscape embodiment of King Death, I passed the half-way tower, where three _douaniers_, seated in chairs, were fishing and looking as glum and silent as their prey, and began to discern the gravelly, shingly land of vines and olives again before me. The clear air of the South cheats us northerns like a mirage. You see objects as near you as in England they would be brought by a very fair spy-glass, and the effect, before you began to make allowances for the atmospheric spectacles, is to put you dreadfully out of humour at the length of the way, before you actually came up with the too distinct goal. So was it strongly with me in pedestrianising towards Lunel. Lunel seemed retreating back and back, so that my consolation became that it would be surely stopped by the Cevennes, even if the worst came to the worst; and go where it would, I was determined to come up with it somehow. Entering the region of the vine, the moppy olive, and the dust which was flying about in clouds, I halted at a roadside auberge to wash the latter article out of my throat, and reaped my reward in the sight of a splendid cartoon suspended over the great fireplace, which represented, in a severe allegory, "The Death of Credit killed by bad Payers." The scene was a handsome street, with a great open _café_ behind, at the _comptoir_ of which sat Madam Commerce aghast at the atrocity being committed before her. In a corner are seen a group of _gardes de commerce_--in the vernacular, bailiffs--lamenting over their ruined occupation. I came to know the profession of these gentlemen, from the fact that their style and titles were legibly imprinted across their waistcoats. In the foreground, the main catastrophe of the composition was proceeding. Credit, represented by a fat, good-natured-looking, elderly gentleman in a blue greatcoat, was stretched supine upon the stones, while his three murderers brandished their weapons above him. The delineation of the culprits was anything but flattering to the three classes of society which I took them to represent. The "first murderer," as they say in _Macbeth_, was a soldier. His sabre was deep in poor Credit's side. The second criminal must have been a musician, for he has just hit Credit a superhuman blow on the head with a fiddle--not a very deadly weapon one would suppose; while the third assassin, armed with a billiard cue, seemed to typify the idler portion of the community in general. Between them, however, there could be no doubt that Credit had been fairly done to death--the grim intimation was there to stare all topers in the face. The fact is, indeed, that all over rural France, in the places of public entertainment, poor M. Credit is in exceedingly bad odour. I have seen dozens of pictorial hints, conveying with more or less delicacy the melancholy moral of that just described. Sometimes, however, the landlord distrusts the pencil, puts no faith in allegory, and stern and prosaic--with a propensity to political economy--and giving rise to dark suspicions of a tendency to the Manchester school, writes up in sturdy letters, grim and hopeless-- "ARGENT COMPTANT." At other times, cast in a more genial mould, he deviates into what may be called didactic verse--containing, like the "Penny Magazine"--useful knowledge for the people, and hints poetically to his customers, the rule of the establishment--taking care, however, to intimate to their susceptible feelings that generous social impulses, rather than sombre commercial necessity, are at the bottom of the regulation. Thus it is not uncommon to read the following pithy and not particularly rhythmical distich:-- "Pour mieux conserver ses amis, Ici on ne fait pas de credit." At last Lunel was fairly caught, and an hour of the rail brought me to Nismes and to the Hotel de Luxembourg, running out at the windows with swarms of _commis voyageurs_, the greater number connected with the silk trade. One of these worthies beside whom I was placed at dinner, told me that he intended to go to London to the Exhibition, and that he had a very snug plan for securing a competent guide, who would poke up all the lions; this guide to be a "_Marin du port de Londres; car tenez ils sont des galliards futés, les marins du port de Londres_." I had all the difficulty in the world in making the intending excursionist aware of the probable effects of hiring, as a west-end guide, the first sailor or waterman he picked up at Wapping. The great features of Nismes are, as every body knows, the features which the Romans left behind them. Provence and Languedoc were the regions of Gaul which the great masters of the world liked best, probably because they were nearest home; and obscure as was the Roman Nismes--for I believe that Nimauses lays claim to no historic dignity whatever--it must still have been a populous and important place: the unmouldering masonry of the Roman builders proves it. I had never seen any Roman remains to speak of, and, to tell the truth, had never been able to work up any great enthusiasm about the fragments of the ancient people which I had come across. I had bathed in all the Roman baths wherewith London abounds, but found no inspiration in the waters--I had stood on grassy mounds of earth, believed to have been Roman camps; traced like the Antiquary, the _Ager_, with its corresponding _fossa_--marked the _porta sinistra_ and the _porta dextra_--and stood where some hook-nosed general had reclined in the _Pretorium_; but I again confess that my imagination did not fly impulsively back, and bury itself among _patres conscripti_, togas, vestal virgins, lictors, patricians, equites, and plebeians. And, in fact, such mere vague traces and memorials as baths, bits of pavement, and dusty holes, with smouldering brick-basements, which people call "Roman villas,"--are not at all fitted, whatever would-be classicists may pretend, to stir up the strong tide of enthusiastic association. These are but miserable odds and ends of fragments, from which you can no more leap to the dignity and the grandeur of the Romans, than you could argue, never having seen a man, from finding a cast-away tooth-pick, up to the appearance and nature of the invisible owner. But let us see a great specimen of a great Roman work, and then we are in the right track. Any builder could have made you a bath--any sapper and miner could have traced you out a camp--any of the small architects with whom we are infested could have knocked you up a villa--but give us a characteristic bit of the great people who are dead and gone, and then we can, or, at all events, we will try, to take their measure. The amphitheatre or arena at Nismes rose on me like a stupendous spectre, and frowned me down. I was smote with the sight. The size appalled me: mightiness--vastness--massiveness were there together--a trinity of stone, rising up, as it were, in the middle of my little preconceived and pet notions, and shivering and dispersing them, as the English three-decker in the _Pilot_ came bowling into view, driving away the fog in wreaths before her and around her. First I walked about the great stone skeleton; but though the symmetrical glory of the architecture, its massive regularity, and what I would call soldier-like precision of uniformity, kept urging my mind to look and admire; still the impression of vastness was predominant, and all but drove out other thoughts. And yet it was not until I had entered, that impression reached its profoundest depth. [Illustration: AMPHITHEATRE AT NISMES.] As I emerged from the vaulted and cavern-like corridor, through which a garrulous old woman led me, into the blaze of keen sunshine, that fell upon a mighty wilderness of stone; and as instinctively I laid my hand upon the nearest ponderous block, the full and perfect idea of size and power closed on me. _Roma!--Antiqua Roma!_--had me in her grasp; and as I felt, I remembered that Eothen had described a similar sensation, as produced by the bigness of the stones of the great pyramid. My old woman having, happily, left me, I was alone within that enormous gulf--that crater of regularly rising stone. Round and round, in ridges where Titans might have sat and seen, megatheria combat mastadons, mounted up the mighty steps of grey, dead stone--sometimes entire for the whole round--sometimes splintered and riven, but never worn, until your eye--now stumbling, as it were, over rubbish-heaps--now striding from stone ledge to stone ledge--rested upon the broken and jagged rim, with a hoary beard of plants and long dry weeds standing rigidly up between you and the blue. I turned again to the details of the building--to the vastness of the blocks of stone, and to the perfect manipulation which had placed them. If the Romans were great soldiers, they were as great masons. They conquered the world in all pursuits in which enormous energy and iron muscularity of mind could conquer. The universe of earth, and stone, and water was theirs. But they were not cloud compellers. They had none of the great power over the essences of the brain. Beauty was too subtle for them; and they only got it, incidentally, as an element--not a principle. The arena in which I stood was sternly beautiful; but it was the beauty of a legion drawn up for battle--iron to the backbone--iron to the teeth--the beauty of that rigid symmetric inflexibility which sat upon the bronze faces which, when Hannibal, encamped on Roman ground set up for sale, and grimly and unmovedly saw bought, at the common market rate, the patch of earth on which the Carthaginian lay entrenched. I remained in the amphitheatre for hours--now descending to the arena, where the men and beasts fought and tore each other--now scrambling to the highest ridge, and watching, with a calmness which soothed and lulled the mind, the vast bowl which lay beneath--so massive, so silent, and so grey. You can still trace the two posts of honour--the royal boxes, as it were--low down in the ring, and marked out by stone barriers from the general sweep. Each of them has an exclusive corridor sunk in the massive stone; and behind each are vaulted cells, which you will be told were used as guard-houses by the escort of soldiers or lictors. Tradition assigns one of these boxes to the proconsul--the other to the vestal virgins; but the latter, if I remember my Roman antiquities aright, could have no business out of Rome. There were no subsidiary sacred fire-branch establishments, like provincial banks, to promulgate the credit of the "central office,"--kindled in the remote part of the empire. The holy flame burnt only before the mystic palladium, which answered for the security of Rome. Whoever occupied the boxes in question, however, were no doubt what one of Captain Marryatt's characters describes the Smith family to be in London--"quite the topping people of the place;" and up to them, no doubt, after the gladiator had received the steel of his antagonist, and the thundering shout of "Habet!" had died away, the poor Scythian, or Roman, as the case might be, turned a sadly inquiring eye--intent upon the hands of the great personages on whom his doom depended--on the upturned or the downturned thumb. A very interesting portion of the arena is the labyrinth of corridors, passages, and stairs, which honeycomb its massive masonry, and into which, in the event of a shower, the whole body of spectators could at once retreat, leaving the great circles of stone as deserted as at midnight. So admirable, too, are the arrangements, that there could have been very little crowding. The vomitories get wider and wider as they approach the entrance, where the people would emerge on every side, like the drops of water flung off by the rotatory motion of a mop. There was an odd resemblance to the general disposition of the opera corridors and staircases, which struck me in the arrangement of the lobbies and passages behind. One could fancy the young Roman men about Nemauses, in their scented tunics, clasped with glittering stones and their broad purple girdles--the Tyrian hue, as the poets say--gathering in knots, and discussing a blow which had split a fellow-creature's head open, as our own opera elegants might Grisi's celebrated holding-note in _Norma_, or Duprez' famous _ut du poitrine_. The execution of a _débutant_ with the sword might be praised, as the execution now-a-days of a _prima donna_. Rumours might be discussed of a new net-and-trident man picked up in some obscure arena, as the _cognoscenti_ now whisper the reported merits of a tenor discovered in Barcelona or Palermo; and the _habitués_ would delight to inform each other that the spirited and enterprising management had secured the services of the celebrated Berbix, whose career at Massilia, for instance, had excited such admiration--the _artiste_ having killed fifteen antagonists in less than a fortnight. And then, after the pleasant and critical chat between the acts, the trumpets would again sound, and all the world would turn out upon the vast stone benches--the nobles and wealthy nearest the ring, as in the stalls with us, and the lower and slave population high up on the further benches, like the humble folks and the footmen in the gallery--and then would recommence that exhibition of which the Romans could never have enough, and of which they never tired--the excitement of the shedding of blood. From the arena I walked slowly on to the Maison Carrée. All the great Roman remains lie upon the open Boulevard, on the edge of the stacked and crowded old town, while without the circle rise the spacious streets of new _quartiers_ for the rich, and many a long straggling suburb, where, in mean garrets and unwholesome cellars, the poor handloom weavers produce webs of gorgeous silk which rival the choicest products of Lyons. Presently, to the left, appeared a horribly clumsy theatre; and, to the right, the wondrous Maison Carrée. The day of which I am writing was certainly my day of architectural sensation. First, Rome, with her hugeness and her symmetric strength, gripped me; and now, Greece, with her pure and etherial beauty, which is essentially of the spirit, enthralled me. The Maison Carrée was, no doubt, built by Roman hands, but entirely after Greek models. It is wholly of Athens: not at all of Rome--a Corinthian temple of the purest taste and divinest beauty--small, slight, without an atom of the ponderous majesty of the arena--reigning by love and smiles, like Venus; not by frowns and thunder, like Jove. Cardinal Alberoni said that the Maison Carrée was a gem which ought to be set in gold; and the two great Jupiters of France--Louis Quatorze and Napoleon--had both of them schemes for lifting the temple bodily out of the ground and carrying it to Paris. The building is perfectly simple--merely an oblong square, with a portico, and fluted Corinthian pillars--yet the loveliness of it is like enchantment. The essence of its power over the senses appears to me to consist in an exquisite subtlety of proportion, which amounts to the very highest grace and the very purest and truest beauty. How many _quasi_ Grecian buildings had I seen--all porticoed and caryatided--without a sensation, save that the pile before me was cold and perhaps correct--a sort of stone formulary. I had begun to fear that Greek beauty was too subtle for me, or that Greek beauty was cant, when the Maison Carrée in a moment utterly undeceived me. The puzzle was solved: I had never seen Grecian architecture before. The things which our domestic Pecksniffs call Grecian--their St. Martin's porticoes, and St. Pancras churches--bear about the same relation to the divine original, as the old statue of George IV. at King's Cross to the Apollo Belvidere. Of course, these gentry--of whom we assuredly know none whose powers qualify them to grapple with, a higher task than a dock-warehouse or a railway tavern--have picked all manner of faults in the divine proportions of this wondrous edifice. There is some bricklaying cant about a departure from the proportions of Vitruvius, which, I presume, are faithfully observed in the National Gallery, and some modification of them, no doubt, in the Pavilion at Brighton--which variations are gravely censured in the Maison Carrée; while, in order, doubtless, to shew our modern superiority, the French hodmen have erected a theatre just opposite the Corinthian temple, with a portico--heavens and earth! such a portico--a mass of mathematical clumsiness, with pillars like the legs of aldermen suffering from dropsy. Anything more intensely ugly is not to be found in Christendom. It actually beats the worst monstrosity of London; and this dreadful caricature of the deathless work of the glorious Greeks is erected right opposite to, perhaps, the most perfect piece of building and stone-carving in the world. I believe that it requires neither art-training nor classic knowledge to enjoy the unearthly beauty of the Corinthian temple. Give me a healthy-minded youth, who has never heard of Alcibiades, Themistocles, Socrates, or Æschylus, but who has the natural appreciation of beauty--who can admire the droop of a lily, the spring of a deer, the flight of an eagle--set him opposite the Maison Carrée, and the sensation of divine, transcendant beauty, will rush into his heart and brain, as when contemplating the flower, or beast or bird. The big man in the parish at home will point you out the graces of the new church of St. Kold Without, designed after the antique manner, by the celebrated Mr. Jones Smith, and because you hesitate to acknowledge them, will read you a benignant lecture on the impossibility of making people, with uneducated taste, fully appreciate what he will be sure to call the "severity" of Greek architecture; the worthy man himself having been dinned with the apocryphal loveliness in question until he has come actually to believe in it. Never mind the grave sermons preached about educating and training taste. An educated and trained taste will, no doubt, admire with even more fond appreciation and far higher enjoyment; but he who cannot, at the first glance, see and feel the perfect grace of pure Grecian art, must be insensible to the blue of the sky, to the beauty of running water, to the song of the birds and the silver radiance of moonlight. I never revisited the amphitheatre while I remained in Nismes, but I haunted the temple. The grandeur, and the massiveness of the Roman work, was like the north wind. It rudely buffeted the wayfarer, but he clung to his cloak. The Grecian trophy shone out like the gentle sun, and the traveller doffed mantle and cap to pay it adoration. Nismes, as most people know, is one of the points of France where Protestantism and Catholicism still glare upon each other with hostile and threatening eyes. The old Catholic and Huguenot hatred has descended lineally from the remote times of the Albigenses, and at this moment broods as bitterly over the olive city as when Raymond of Toulouse proclaimed a crusade against the Paulician heretics, and twenty thousand people were slaughtered under the pastoral care of the Bishop of Beziers. That the animosity, however, has not died out centuries ago, we have to thank the pious precautions of Louis XIV., Madame de Maintenon, and the priest, who waged as bitter war upon the Huguenots of the Cevennes as ever their fathers of these same mountains had been exposed to. The dragoonades are still fiercely remembered in the South. The old-world stories in Scotland of the cruelties of Claverhouse and his life-guards, have well-nigh ceased to excite anything like personal bitterness; but in portions of Languedoc, the animosity between neighbour and neighbour--Catholic and Protestant--is still deepened and widened by the oft-told legends of those wretched religious wars. Nismes is the head quarters of the sectarianism--Catholics and Protestants are drawn up in two compacted hostile bodies, living, for the most part, in separate _quartiers_; marrying each party within itself; scandalising each party the other whenever it has a chance; and carrying, indeed, the party spirit so far as absolutely to have established Protestant _cafés_ and Catholic _cafés_, the _habitués_ of which will no more enter the rival establishments than they would enter the opposition churches. The day after my arrival, I had a singular opportunity of becoming acquainted with the spirit of the place. North from Nismes rises a species of chaos of steep hills and deep valleys, or rather ravines, composed almost entirely of shingle and rock, covered over, however, with olive-groves and vines, and dotted with little white summer-houses, to which almost the entire middle and working class population retire upon Sundays to pass the day, partly in cultivating their patches of land--there is hardly a family without an allotment--and partly to amuse themselves after the toils of the week. Rambling among these rugged hills and dales, I chanced to ask my way of a person I met descending towards Nismes. He was a tall, ungainly, raw-boned man--pallid and worn, as if with sedentary labour; but he seemed intelligent, and was very polite--pointing out a number of localities around. Presently, he told me that he had been up to his _cabane_, or summer-house; that he was a silkweaver in Nismes; that his wages were so poor, that he had a hard struggle to live; but that he still managed to give up an hour's work or so a-day to go and feed his rabbits at the _cabane_. As we talked, he inquired whether I were not a foreigner--an Englishman--and, with some hesitation, but with great eagerness--a Protestant? My affirmative answer to the last interrogatory produced a magical effect. The man's face actually gleamed. He jumped off the ground, let fall his apronful of melons and fresh figs, while he clutched both of my hands in his, and exclaimed, "A Protestant! _Dieu merci! Dieu merci!_ an English Protestant! Oh, how glad I am to see an English Protestant! Listen, monsieur. We are here. We of the religion (the old phrase--as old as Rosny and Coligni), we are here fifteen thousand strong--fifteen thousand, monsieur. Don't believe those who say only ten. Fifteen thousand, monsieur--good men and true. All ready--all standing by one another--all _braves_--all on the _qui vive_--all prepared, if the hour should come. We know each other--we love each other, and we hate"--a pause; then, with a significant grin--"_les autres_. You will tell that, in England, monsieur, to our brothers. Fifteen thousand, monsieur; and every man, woman, and child, true to the cause and the faith." The whole tone of the orator did not appear to me to be so much a matter of religious bitterness, as it marked a hatred of race. The two contending parties at Nismes were evidently of different blood: their religious animosities had gradually divided them into two distinct and hostile peoples. "See!" said the weaver; "this is the Protestant side of the valley,--all Protestants here. Not a Catholic _cabane_--no, no! they must go elsewhere,--we have nothing to do with them,--we shake off the dust of our feet upon them and theirs. You and I are one, upon our own ground--Protestant ground--staunch and true;" and he stamped with his foot upon the pebbles. "Monsieur must absolutely go with me to my _cabane_, and drink a glass of wine to the good cause; and see my rabbits--Protestant rabbits." Who could resist this last attraction? We turned and toiled up the flinty paths together; my acquaintance informing me, with great pride, that M. Guizot was a good Protestant of Nismes, as his father, who had fallen, _dans le terreur_, was before him. He understood that M. Guizot was then in England, and he was sure that he would be delighted at seeing such a fine Protestant country, and such a staunch Protestant people. Stopping at length at an unpainted door, in the rough, unmortared wall, my friend opened it, and we stepped into a little patch of garden, planted with olives and straggling vine-bushes. "They are much better cultivated, and give better oil and better wine," he said, "than the Catholic grounds;" and I am sure he believed the asseveration. Having duly inspected the "Protestant rabbits," we entered the _cabane_, a bare, rough, white-washed room, with a table, a few chairs, and unglazed lattices. Unless when the mistral blows, the open air is seldom or never unpleasant; and then wooden shutters are applied to the windward side of the houses. On this occasion, however, there was not a breath stirring amid the silvery grey leaves of the olives. The grasshoppers--fellows of a size which would astound Sir Thomas Gresham--chirped and leaped in the grass at the foot of the wall; scores and scores of lithe, yellow lizards, with the blackest of eyes, flashed up and down over the rough stones, and shot in and out of the crevices; but, excepting these sights and sounds, all around was hushed and motionless; and the sun, wintry though it was, flooded all the still, brown valley with a deluge of pure, hot light. The weaver filled a very comfortable couple of glasses with a small, but not ill-tasted, wine. "Here's to----;" he uttered a sentiment not complimentary to the Catholic Church, and, indeed, consigning it to the warmest of quarters, and took off his liquor with undeniable unction. I need not say whether I drunk the toast: anyhow, I drunk the wine. "And now look there," continued my host, pointing with his empty glass through the open window, to the north. The bare, blue hills of the Cevennes lay--a long ridge of mountain scenery, stretching from the valley of the Rhone as far and farther than the eye could follow them--towards that of the Garonne. "There it was," he said, "that were fought the fiercest battles, in those cruel times, between the people of the religion and the troops of the king. Can you see a valley or a ravine just over the olive there? My eyes are too much worn to see it; but we look at it every Sunday--my wife and my children. That was the valley, monsieur, where my family lived for ages and ages, weaving the rough cloth that they made in those days, and tending their flocks upon the hill. Early in the troubles, their cottage was beset by the dragoons of the king. The mother of the family was suckling her child. They bound her to the bed-post, and put the child just beyond her reach, and told her that not a drop more should pass its lips till she cried _Ave Maria_ and made the sign of the cross. They took the father and hung him by the feet, head downward, from the roof-tree, and he died hanging. The children they ranged round the mother, and tied matches between their fingers; and, when the first match burned down to the flesh, the mother cried _Ave Maria_ and made the sign of the cross. Then they released her, and held an orgie in the cottage all night long, and the widow and the children served them. Next morning, the woman was mad, and she wandered away into the woods with her baby at her breast, and no one heard of her more. The children were scattered over the country; and, whether they lived or died, I know not; but one of them, monsieur, the eldest girl, whose name was Nicole, became a famous prophetess. Yes, monsieur, she was inspired, and taught the people among the rocks and the wild gorges of the hills. First, she had _l'avertissement_--that is, the warning, or first degree of inspiration; and then the _souffle_, or the breath of the Lord, came on her, and she spoke; at last, she was endowed with _la prophetie_, and told what would come to pass. Yes, monsieur; and many of her prophecies are yet preserved, and they came true; for, in times like these, God acts by extraordinary means. The people, monsieur, loved her, and honoured her, and kept her so well, and hid her so closely, that the persecutors could never seize her; and she survived the troubles; and I, monsieur, a poor weaver of Nismes, have the honour to be her descendant." That night I walked late along the Boulevards. Protestant _cafés_ and Catholic _cafés_ were full and busy, and, no doubt, resounding with the polemics of the warring creeds. Outside all, the by turns straggling and crowded town lay, bathed in the most glorious flood of moonlight, poured down, happily, alike upon Papist and Protestant, lighting up the grey cathedral with its Gothic arches, and the heathen temple with its fluted columns, and surely preaching by the universal-blessing ray that sermon--so continuous in its delivery, yet so little heeded by the congregation of the world--the sermon which enjoins charity and forbearance, and love and peace, among all men. CHAPTER THE LAST. AGRICULTURE IN FRANCE--ITS BACKWARD STATE--CENTRALISING TENDENCY--SUBDIVISION OF PROPERTY--ITS EFFECTS--FRENCH "ENCUMBERED ESTATES." In the foregoing pages I have sketched, with as much regard to a readable liveliness, and to vivid local colouring as I could command, the features and incidents of part--the most interesting one--of an extended journey through France. My primary purpose in undertaking the latter was, to prepare a view of the social and agricultural condition of the peasantry, for publication in the columns of the _Morning Chronicle_; and accordingly a series of letters, devoted to that important subject, duly appeared. These communications, however, were necessarily confined to statements of agricultural progress, and the investigation of solid social subjects, to the exclusion of those matters of personal incident and artistic, literary, and legendary significance, which naturally occur in the prosecution of a desultory and inquiring journey. To this latter field--that of the tourist rather than the commissioner--then, I have devoted the foregoing chapters; but I am unwilling to send them forth without appending to them--extracted from my concluding Letter in the _Morning Chronicle_--a summary of my impressions of the social condition of the French agricultural population, and the effects of the system of the infinitesimal division of the land. These impressions are founded upon a five months' journey through France, keeping mainly in the country places, being constantly in communication with the people themselves, and hearing also the opinions of the priests and men of business engaged in rural affairs, as well as reading authors upon all sides of the question. My conclusions I have summed up carefully, and with great deliberation; and I offer them as an honest, and not ill-founded estimate of the present state and future prospects of rural France. The French are undoubtedly at least a century behind us in agricultural science and skill. This remark applies alike to breeding cattle and to raising crops. Agriculture in France is rather a handicraft than what it ought to be--a science. As a general rule, the farmers of France are about on a level with the ploughmen of England. When I say this, I mean that the immense majority of the cultivators are unlettered peasants--hinds--who till the land in the unvarying, mechanical routine handed down to them from their forefathers. Of agriculture, in any other sense than the rule-of-thumb practice of ploughing, sowing, reaping, and threshing, they know literally nothing. Of the _rationale_ of the management of land--of the reasons why so and so should be done--they think no more than honest La Balafrè, whose only notion of a final cause was the command of his superior officer. Thus they are bound down in the most abject submission to every custom, for no other reason than that it is a custom: their fathers did so and so, and therefore, and for no other reason, the sons do the same. I could see no struggling upwards, no longing for a better condition, no discontent, even with the vegetable food upon which they lived. All over the land there brooded one almost unvaried mist of dull, unenlightened, passive content--I do not mean social--but industrial content. There are two causes principally chargeable with this. In the first place, strange as it may seem in a country in which two-thirds of the population are agriculturists, agriculture is a very unhonoured occupation. Develop, in the slightest degree, a Frenchman's mental faculties, and he flies to a town as surely as steel filings fly to a loadstone. He has no rural tastes--no delight in rural habits. A French amateur farmer would, indeed, be a sight to see. Again, this national tendency is directly encouraged by the centralizing system of government--by the multitude of officials, and by the payment of all functionaries. From all parts of France, men of great energy and resource struggle up and fling themselves on the world of Paris. There they try to become great functionaries. Through every department of the eighty-four, men of less energy and resource struggle up to the _chef-lieu_--the provincial capital. There they try to become little functionaries. Go still lower--deal with a still smaller scale--and the result will be the same. As is the department to France, so is the arrondissement to the department, and the commune to the arrondissement. Nine-tenths of those who have, or think they have, heads on their shoulders, struggle into towns to fight for office. Nine-tenths of those who are, or are deemed by themselves or others, too stupid for anything else, are left at home to till the fields, and breed the cattle, and prune the vines, as their ancestors did for generations before them. Thus there is singularly little intelligence left in the country. The whole energy, and knowledge, and resource of the land are barrelled up in the towns. You leave one city, and, in many cases, you will not meet an educated or cultivated individual until you arrive at another--all between is utter intellectual barrenness. The English country gentleman, we all know, is not a faultless character, but his useful qualities far prevail over his defects; and it is only when traversing a land all but destitute of any such order that the fatal effects of the blank are fully realized. Were there more country gentlemen in France, there would be more animal food and more wheaten bread in the country. The very idea of a great proprietor living upon his estates implies the fact of an educated person--an individual more or less rubbed and polished and enlightened by society--taking his place amongst a class who must naturally look up to him, and whose mass he must necessarily, to a greater or less degree, leaven. It is easy to joke about English country gentlemen--about their foibles, and prejudices, and absurd points; but to the jokers I would seriously say, "Go to France; examine its agriculture, and the structure and calibre of its rural society, and see the result of the utter absence of a class of men--certainly not Solomons, and as certainly not Chesterfields, but, for all that, most useful personages--individuals with capital, with, at all events, a certain degree of enlightenment--taking an active interest in farming--often amateur farmers themselves--the patrons of district clubs, and ploughing matches, and cattle-shows--and, above all, living daily among their tenantry, and having an active and direct interest in that tenantry's prosperity." I do not mean to say that here and there, all over France, there may not be found active and intelligent resident landlords, nor that, in the north of France, there may not be discovered intelligent and clear-headed tenant-farmers; but the rule is as I have stated. Utterly ignorant boors are allowed to plod on from generation to generation, wrapped in the most dismal mists of agricultural superstition; while what in America would be called the "smart" part of the population, are intriguing, and constructing and undoing _complots_, in the towns. To all present appearance, a score of dynasties may succeed each other in France before La Vendée takes its place beside Norfolk, or before Limousin rivals the Lothians. A word as to the subdivision of property. I know the extreme difficulties of the subject, and the moral considerations which, in connection with it, are often placed in opposition to admitted physical and economical disadvantages. I shall, therefore, without discussing the question at any length, mention two or three personally ascertained facts:-- The tendency of landed properties, under the system in question, is to continual diminution of seize. This tendency does _not_ stop with the interests of the parties concerned--it goes on in spite of them. And the only practical check is nothing but a new evil. When a man finds that his patch of land is insufficient to support his family, he borrows money and buys more land. In nine cases out of ten, the interest to be paid to the lender is greater than the profit which the borrower can extract from the land--and bankruptcy, and reduction to the condition of a day-labourer, is sooner or later the inevitable result. The infinitesimal patches of land are cultivated in the most rude and uneconomical fashion. Not a franc of capital, further than that sunk in the purchase of spades, picks, and hoes, is expended on them. They are undrained, ill-manured, expensively worked, and they would often produce no profit whatever, were it not that the proprietor is the labourer, and that he looks for little or nothing save a recompense for his toil in a bare subsistence. It is easy to see how the consumer must fare if the producer possess little or no surplus after his own necessities are satisfied. It is not to be supposed from the above remarks, that I conceive that in no circumstances, and under no conditions, can the soil be advantageously divided into minute properties. The rule which strikes me as applying to the matter is this:--where spade-husbandry, can be legitimately adopted, then the extreme subdivision of land loses much, if not all, of its evils. The reason is plain: spade-husbandry, while it pays the proprietor fair wages, also, in certain cases, develops in an economical manner the resources of the soil. The instance of market-gardens near a populous town is a case in point. But in a remote district, removed from markets, ill provided with the means of locomotion--where cereals, not vegetables, must be raised--spade-labour is so far mere toil flung away. Near Nismes I found a man digging a field which ought to have been ploughed. He told me that the spade produced more than the plough. Then why did not the farmers use spade-husbandry? "Because, although spade-husbandry was very productive, it was still more expensive. It paid a small proprietor who could do the work himself, but not a large proprietor, who had to remunerate his labourers." Herein, then, lies the fallacy. Truly considered, a mode of cultivation unprofitable for the great proprietor, must be unprofitable, in the long run, for the small proprietor also. The former, by spade-husbandry, loses his profit by paying extravagantly for labour; the latter must pay for labour as well, but he pays himself, and is therefore unconscious of the outlay--an outlay which is, nevertheless, not the less real. If the plough, at an expense of 5_s._, can produce 20_s._ worth of produce--and if the spade, at an expense of 20_s._, can produce 30_s._ worth of produce--the difference between the proportionate outlays is so much deducted from the resources of the country in which the transaction takes place; and this because that difference of labour, or of money representing labour, if otherwise applied--as by the agency of the plough it would be free to be applied--might, profitably to its proprietor, still raise the sum total of the production to the stated amount of 30_s._ Are small properties, then, in cases in which spade-husbandry cannot be economically applied, injurious to the social and industrial interests of the community in which they exist? The following propositions appear to me to sum up what may be said on either side of the question: Small landed holdings undoubtedly tend to produce an industrious population. A man always works hardest for himself. Small landed holdings tend to breed a spirit of independence, and wholesome moral self-appreciation and reliance. On the other hand-- Small landed holdings, by breeding a poor and ignorant race of proprietors, keep back agriculture, and injure the whole community of consumers; and-- Small landed holdings tend to grow smaller than it is the interest of their owners that they should become. Capital, borrowed at usurious rates of interest, is then had recourse to for the purpose of enlarging individual properties--and the result is the production of a race of involved, mortgaged, and frequently bankrupt proprietors. At this present moment, I believe the proprietorship of France to be as bankrupt as that of the south-west of Ireland. The number of "Encumbered Estates" across the Channel would stagger the stoutest calculator. The capitalists, notaries, land-agents, and others in the towns, and not the peasantry, are the real owners of the mortgaged soil. The nominal proprietors are sinking deeper and deeper at every struggle, and they see no hope before them--save one--Socialism. French Socialism is simply the result of French poverty. A ruined labourer has no resource but casual charity. No law stands between him and starvation. He has no right to his life unless he can support himself; and as the ponderous machine of the law gradually grinds down his property to an extent too small for him to exist on, and as the increasing interest swallows up the comparatively diminishing products, he sees nothing for it but a scramble. There is property--there is food--and it will go hard but he shall have a share of them. Herein is the whole problem of the dreaded Socialism. I cannot put the matter better than in the words of the old song-- "Moll in the wad and I fell out, And this is what it was all about, She had money, and I had none, And that was the way the row begun." Whether a Poor-law, and a change in the law of heritage might not check the evil, I am not, of course, going to inquire; but the present state of rural France--all political considerations left aside--appears to me to point to the possibility, if not the probability, of the world seeing a greater and bloodier _Jacquerie_ yet than it ever saw before. THE END. HENRY VIZETELLY, PRINTER AND ENGRAVER, GOUGH SQUARE, FLEET STREET, LONDON. 
45790	----	[Illustration: TOMB OF AGNES SOREL AT LOCHES By permission of Mansell & Co.] WINGED WHEELS IN FRANCE BY MICHAEL MYERS SHOEMAKER Author of "Islands of Southern Seas," "The Great Siberian Railway," "The Heart of the Orient," "Prisons and Palaces of Mary, Queen of Scots," Etc. ILLUSTRATED G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK AND LONDON The Knickerbocker Press 1906 _Copyrighted 1906 by Michael Myers Shoemaker_ TO MY DEAR FRIEND MRS. W. P. HULBERT OF CINCINNATI PREFACE This is not a love story. These wings are wings of motion, not of Cupid, yet there is much of romance and story in these pages,--for who can travel the _plaisant pays de France_ and not dip deeply into both? When I entered my red machine at Nice no route had been laid out,--to me there is small pleasure in travel when that is done,--so I told Jean to start and left the direction to him. Being French he naturally turned towards his own country, and knowing whither the superb highways and enchanting byways could lead one, I tacitly agreed, and we glided away by the level sea and on into the olive-crowned hill of Provence, to where Aix--the home of politeness--dreams the years away and the air seems still to echo to King René's music. Arles, Narbonne, fantastic Carcassonne, Lourdes, and Pau followed in rapid succession, and then we rested awhile at Biarritz with short journeys into Spain. Turning northward we rolled off into Central France, pausing daily in some ancient city or quaint village, climbing mountains to long forgotten castles, or rolling into valleys in search of deserted abbeys. So we wandered through Auvergne, through courtly Touraine, sad Anjou, and stormy Brittany, until Normandy and Picardy smiled into our faces and Paris received us within her gates. Exploring the surroundings of that great city as one can do only in an auto, we finally glided off through the forest of Fontainebleau and Côte-d'Or to the mountains of the Vosges and thence over the Schlucht to the Rhine Valley to Freiburg, and up to Baden-Baden. There the spirits of the woods seized upon us and we promptly got lost in the Black Forest, and so rolled on into Switzerland to Geneva and finally to Aix-les-Bains, where the journey ended and I bade goodbye to my staunch car which had carried me without mishap or delay for near five thousand miles. To its winged wheels the highest mountains of France were no barrier. If all this pleases you, read these pages--if not, drop the book. M. S. M. Union Club, N. Y. June, 1906. CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I. MONTE CARLO 1 CHAPTER II. OUR DEPARTURE FROM NICE--THE ROAD TO AIX--THE CITY OF KING RENÉ 8 CHAPTER III. THE ROAD TO ARLES--THE CAMARGUE--RUINS OF ARLES--THE "ALISCAMPS" 17 CHAPTER IV. THE ROUTE TO TARASCON--CASTLE OF KING RENÉ--BEAUCAIRE--NÎMES--MONTPELLIER--AN ACCIDENT--NARBONNE, ANCIENT AND MODERN 22 CHAPTER V. THE APPROACH TO CARCASSONNE--ITS PICTURESQUENESS--ITS RESTORATION AND HISTORY 29 CHAPTER VI. THE ROUTE TO TOULOUSE--GREAT MACHINES ON THE ROADS OF FRANCE--DELIGHTS OF AN AUTO--TOULOUSE--ITS UNIVERSITY--THE CHÂTEAU DE ST. ELIX 36 CHAPTER VII. THE DEATH OF A DOG--ENCOUNTERS ON THE HIGHWAY--TRAVELLERS BY THE WAY--PEOPLE OF THE PROVINCES--LOURDES--HER SUPERSTITION AND HER VISIONS 43 CHAPTER VIII. PAU AND THE LIFE THERE--DELIGHTFUL ROADS--ANCIENT ORTHEZ--MADAME AND HER HOTEL--THE CHÂTEAU OF BIDACHE AND ITS HISTORY 49 CHAPTER IX. THE ROUTE TO BIARRITZ--BIARRITZ--THE HÔTEL DU PALAIS 58 CHAPTER X. THE ROAD TO THE MOUNTAINS--ST. JEAN-PIED-DE-PORT--ST. JEAN-DE-LUZ--MARRIAGE OF LOUIS XIV--ISLAND OF PHEASANTS--THE ROADS IN SPAIN--THE SOLDIERS OF SPAIN--SAN SEBASTIAN 62 CHAPTER XI. DEPARTURES FOR THE NORTH--CRAZY CHICKENS--GRAND ROADS--DAX--RIDES THROUGH THE FORESTS--FRENCH SCENERY AND PEOPLE--MARMANDE--AUTOMOBILE CLUB OF FRANCE AND ITS WORK 69 CHAPTER XII. RAPID MOTION--BEAUMONT--RACES AND DASHES--CADOUIN AND ITS CLOISTERS--THE ROUTE TO TULLE 76 CHAPTER XIII. THE GREAT COURSE OF BELMONT--DIFFICULT STEERING--THE "CUP GORDON BENNETT"--THE MOUNTAINS TO CLERMONT-FERRAND 82 CHAPTER XIV. CLIMBING A MOUNTAIN IN AN AUTO--THE CHÂTEAU OF TOURNOËL--ITS HISTORY--DESCENT OF THE MOUNTAIN 86 CHAPTER XV. ANCIENT TOWN OF RIOM--THE ROUTE TO VICHY--CHÂTEAU DE BOURBON-BUSSET--VICHY--THE LIFE THERE--DANGER OF SPEEDING--ARRIVAL AT BOURGES 95 CHAPTER XVI. ANCIENT BOURGES--ITS CATHEDRAL--HOUSE OF JACQUES COEUR--LOUIS XI. AND THE HÔTEL LALLEMENT--THE HÔTEL CUJAS--THE RIDE TO MEILLANT--ITS SUPERB CHÂTEAU--ITS LEGEND 102 CHAPTER XVII. DEPARTURES FROM BOURGES--THE CHÂTEAU OF MEHUN--THE DEATH OF CHARLES VII--THE VALLEYS OF TOURAINE--ROADS BY THE LOIRE--ENTRANCE TO TOURS 113 CHAPTER XVIII. RIDE TO LOCHES--AN ACCIDENT--THE CASTLE OF LOCHES--ITS HISTORY--THE CAGES OF LOUIS XI.--THEIR COST TO THE KING--AGNES SOREL--THE MISTRESSES OF FRENCH KINGS VERSUS THEIR QUEENS 116 CHAPTER XIX. AUTOMOBILES IN TOURS--DEPARTURE FROM THE CITY--THE ROAD TO CHINON--ROMANCE AND HISTORY OF CHINON--THE ABBEY OF FONTEVRAULT--RICHARD COEUR DE LION AND HIS TOMB--THE DEAD KING HENRY II 130 CHAPTER XX. THE ROAD TO ANGERS--CATHEDRAL AND TOMB OF KING RENÉ--CASTLE OF BLACK ANGERS--CRADLE OF THE PLANTAGENETS--HISTORY--TO CHATEAUBRIANT IN A STORM--A FRENCH INN--RENNES AND THE TRIAL OF DREYFUS--THE ROADS IN BRITTANY--ARRIVAL AT ST.-MALO--THE RIDE TO MONT ST.-MICHEL--INN OF THE POULARD ÂINÉ--THE CATHEDRAL AND CASTLE--THEIR HISTORY 138 CHAPTER XXI. ARRIVAL AT CAEN--WILLIAM THE NORMAN AND CHARLOTTE CORDAY--CHURCH OF ST. ÉTIENNE--PEOPLE AND RAILROADS OF NORMANDY--ROUEN AND ITS CHURCHES--THE MAID OF ORLEANS, HISTORY OR LEGEND?--CASTLE OF PHILIPPE LE BEL--DEPARTURE FROM ROUEN 149 CHAPTER XXII. THE RACE THROUGH PICARDY--AMIENS CATHEDRAL--ITS VASTNESS--THE ROAD TO BOULOGNE 161 CHAPTER XXIII. THE RIDE TO BEAUVAIS--DEAD DOGS--GREAT CHURCHES--BEAUVAIS BY NIGHT--VAST WEALTH OF THE CHURCHES OF FRANCE--WONDERFUL TAPESTRIES 166 CHAPTER XXIV. THE ROUTE TO SAINT-GERMAIN-EN-LAYE--THE PEOPLE--THE CASTLE AND TERRACE--THEIR PICTURESQUE HISTORY--FIRST VIEW OF PARIS 174 CHAPTER XXV. PARIS AND HER SO-CALLED REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT--NECESSITY FOR AN AUTOMOBILE--THE RIDE TO CHARTRES--CATHEDRAL NOTRE DAME--THE AQUEDUCT AT MAINTENON AND ITS BURDEN OF SORROW--THE CASTLE OF MAINTENON--MADAME AND LOUIS XIV.--ST. CYR AND HER DEATH--RETURN TO PARIS 180 CHAPTER XXVI. MY CHAUFFEUR SUMMONED BY THE GOVERNMENT--THE NEW MAN--YAMA'S OPINION OF PARIS--SPEED OF AUTOS IN PARIS 194 CHAPTER XXVII. DEPARTURE FROM PARIS--THE CEMETERY OF THE PICPUS--RIDE THROUGH THE FOREST OF FONTAINEBLEAU TO SENS--THE CATHEDRAL--TOMB OF THE DAUPHINS--THE GREAT ROUTE TO GENEVA--STONED BY BOYS--TONNERRE 198 CHAPTER XXVIII. DIJON--THE FRENCH AND FRESH WATER--THE ANTIQUITIES OF DIJON--RIDE THROUGH THE CÔTE D'OR--ARRIVAL AT BESANÇON 208 CHAPTER XXIX. THE FORTRESS OF BESANÇON--AUTOS IN HEAVY RAINS--DREAMS--BELFORT--ENTRANCE INTO THE VOSGES--THE RISE TO BALLON D'ALSACE--SUPERB RIDE TO GÉRARDMER 215 CHAPTER XXX. GÉRARDMER AND THE MOUNTAINS--A WEDDING--FRENCH COURTSHIP--EXCURSION TO ST. DIÉ--OVER THE COL DE LA SCHLUCHT--GERMAN CUSTOM HOUSE--"ALWAYS A GERMAN"--COLMAR--RHINE VALLEY--ARRIVAL AT FREIBURG 222 CHAPTER XXXI. FREIBURG--FANTASTIC CITY--THE YOUTHS OF GERMANY--MUSIC AND LEGENDS OF THE OLD TOWN--CATHEDRAL BY MOONLIGHT 227 CHAPTER XXXII. FROM FREIBURG TO BADEN-BADEN--THROUGH THE WOODS TO GERNSBACH--SUPERB ROADS--PEOPLE OF THE BLACK FOREST--CROSSING THE DANUBE--CUSTOMS REGULATIONS AS TO AUTOS--AN OLD SWISS MANSION--THE RIDE TO GENEVA AND AIX-LES-BAINS 232 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE TOMB OF AGNES SOREL AT LOCHES _Frontispiece._ By permission of Mansell & Co. INTERIOR OF THE CASINO AT MONTE CARLO 2 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein CLOISTERS OF THE CATHEDRAL AT AIX 14 From a photograph THE PORTAL OF THE CATHEDRAL OF SAINT TROPHIMUS, ARLES 16 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein EXTERIOR OF THE AMPHITHEATRE AT ARLES 18 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE ALISCAMPS AT ARLES 20 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein GENERAL VIEW OF THE CHÂTEAU OF KING RENÉ AT TARASCON 24 From a photograph THE FORTIFICATIONS AT THE OLD TOWN OF CARCASSONNE 30 From a photograph THE GROTTO AT LOURDES 46 By permission of Messrs. Lévy THE BRIDGE OVER THE GAVE AT ORTHEZ 52 By permission of Messrs. Lévy CHÂTEAU OF BIDACHE 54 From a photograph MAISON DE L'INFANTE AT SAINT-JEAN-DE-LUZ 64 From a photograph INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH OF SAINT JOHN AT SAINT-JEAN-DE-LUZ 66 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE HOME OF MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ AT VICHY 96 By permission of Jules Hautecoeur RUE DE L'ÉTABLISSEMENT AT VICHY 100 From a print THE SOUTH PORTAL OF THE CATHEDRAL AT BOURGES 102 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE PALACE OF JACQUES COEUR AT BOURGES 104 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein HÔTEL LALLEMENT AT BOURGES 106 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein CHÂTEAU OF MEHUN NEAR BOURGES 108 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE CHÂTEAU AT MEILLANT 110 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE GRAND SALON OF THE CHÂTEAU OF MEILLANT 112 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE CHÂTEAU OF LOCHES 116 From a photograph THE ENTRANCE TO THE CHÂTEAU OF LOCHES 118 From a photograph THE CAGE IN WHICH JEAN DE LA BALUE WAS IMPRISONED FOR ELEVEN YEARS 122 LOUIS XI 126 From the engraving by Hoopwood GENERAL VIEW OF CHINON 132 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein PAVILION DE L'HORLOGE AT CHINON 134 From a photograph THE COURT OF THE CLOISTERS, ABBEY OF FONTEVRAULT 136 By permission of J. Kuhn TOMBS OF RICHARD I. AND ELEONORE OF GUINNE AT FONTEVRAULT 138 From a photograph THE STATUE OF KING RENÉ AND THE CHÂTEAU AT ANGERS 142 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein MONT SAINT-MICHEL, FROM THE SOUTH 144 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE CLOISTERS OF THE ABBEY OF MONT SAINT-MICHEL 146 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE CRYPT DE L'AQUILON IN THE ABBEY OF MONT SAINT-MICHEL 148 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein LA TRINITÉ, ABBEY OF WOMEN, AT CAEN 150 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE ABBEY OF MEN AT CAEN 152 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein CHARLOTTE CORDAY 154 After the painting by Raffet MONUMENT OF CARDINAL D'AMBOISE IN ROUEN CATHEDRAL 156 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE TOMB OF LOUIS DE BRÉZÉ IN THE CATHEDRAL OF ROUEN 158 From a photograph THE CATHEDRAL AT ROUEN 160 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein A HOUSE OF THE 15TH CENTURY AT ROUEN 162 From a photograph THE GREAT CLOCK OF ROUEN 164 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE TOWER OF JEANNE D'ARC AT ROUEN 168 From an old print THE CATHEDRAL AT AMIENS 170 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE GRAND PORTAL OF THE CATHEDRAL OF BEAUVAIS 172 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein OLD HOUSES ON THE RUE DE LA MANUFACTURE, BEAUVAIS 174 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE TERRACE AT SAINT-GERMAIN 176 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE CHÂTEAU OF SAINT-GERMAIN, FROM THE NORTH 180 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE NORTH PORTAL OF THE CATHEDRAL AT CHARTRES 182 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE SOUTH PORTAL OF THE CATHEDRAL AT CHARTRES 184 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE CATHEDRAL AT CHARTRES 186 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein STONE CARVINGS SURROUNDING THE CHOIR OF THE CATHEDRAL AT CHARTRES 188 From a photograph THE VIERGE DU PILIER IN THE CATHEDRAL OF CHARTRES 190 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE VIADUCT OF MAINTENON, NEAR CHARTRES 192 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE CHÂTEAU OF MAINTENON, FROM THE NORTH 196 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE TOMB OF LAFAYETTE IN THE PICPUS CEMETERY, PARIS 200 From a photograph THE CEMETERY OF THE PICPUS. LAFAYETTE'S TOMB ON THE RIGHT, TABLET TO ANDRÉ CHÉNIER ON THE LEFT 202 From a photograph by the author THE CATHEDRAL AT SENS 204 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE TOMB OF JEAN SANS PEUR AT DIJON 210 From a photograph THE WELL OF MOSES IN THE ABBEY OF CHARTREUX AT DIJON 212 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE TOWER OF STATE, PALACE OF THE DUKES OF BOURGOGNE, AT DIJON 216 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein LA SCHLUCHT. THE TUNNEL ON THE ROAD TO MÜNSTER 224 By permission of Messrs. Neurdein THE CATHEDRAL OF FREIBURG, BADEN 228 By permission of F. Firth & Co. A CORNER IN THE BLACK FOREST 236 From a photograph THE MANOR HOUSE AT WÜLFLINGEN, NEAR WINTERTHUR 238 From a photograph INTERIOR OF THE MANOR HOUSE AT WÜLFLINGEN, NEAR WINTERTHUR 240 From an old woodcut WINGED WHEELS IN FRANCE CHAPTER I MONTE CARLO "Monsieur smiles." To begin a journey with the greeting of a little child should be a happy omen. I am leaning over the terrace at Monte Carlo, watching the sparkle of the shifting sea. Away to the eastward glisten the villas on Cape Martan, to the west rises the ancient city of Monaco, behind me towers the Casino, the scene of more misery than almost any other spot on earth. Beyond and above it, rise the hills tier on tier, dotted with hotels and villas, while far in the blue dome of sky soar the eternal snows. A scene of beauty, yet one so familiar that I scarcely note it; neither are my thoughts of the nearby misery in the Casino when the little voice murmurs "Monsieur," and I see at my feet, seated on the marble of the terrace with masses of rhododendrons all around her, a mite of a girl, with sunny hair and blue eyes, who laughingly holds up for my acceptance a pink rose. It evidently is not considered proper for a young lady of her age to be talking to a strange man and she is accordingly hustled away, her wondering and rebellious eyes gazing back at me as she waves a farewell. Bless her little heart, it must be almost the only innocent thing in this sink of iniquity. With her disappearance, I have the place all to myself, the town gives up no sounds of life and soon even the sea has murmured itself to sleep, while yonder building, from the outside, is silent as a tomb now; yet as I enter I find every table in all the vast rooms so hemmed in by a struggling humanity, that I must wait my turn almost before throwing away good money if such is my desire. All the nations of the earth come here, and to manage and keep them in check, hundreds of detectives in plain clothes are always present. Yonder a man has dropped a pocket-book, which is at once pounced upon, and he is hustled through some door in the wall which has escaped your notice. Probably he is a thief, and will not return. If you end your life at the suicides' table--the last on the right on your way out--your body will be hustled off in a like manner, and the crowd without turning to look after you will close in again, leaving no sign that you have ever been. It is said that there is a carriage belonging to this establishment especially arranged so that a dead man may be driven away seated erect as though alive without shocking the senses of those who are here for pleasure. These people would rather you did not kill yourself and will give you a ticket home if you will go, but if you must pass to the great beyond, there will be no high mass said over your silent face and no further attention paid to your stiff fingers which have ceased to pour gold on the green tables. This world has no use for one whose pockets are empty--his day is done and he might as well be dead. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE CASINO AT MONTE CARLO By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] You will not be impressed with the misery of Monte Carlo unless you walk this terrace after dark and note the dejected figures huddled up on the benches beneath the rhododendrons. The sea does not seem to receive many of them, yet it is a better mode of exit than to throw one's self beneath the wheels of the trains rushing east and west just beneath here. Yesterday a man was literally swept off the wheels of a locomotive--there was nothing to pick up. Inside these halls everything is done quietly and in order. There is never any confusion or noise, and you must check hat, overcoat, and stick before you enter. Save for the orchestra in the outer hall there is nothing to be heard but the subdued call of the croupier, the click of the rakes against the heaps of gold on the tables, and the whir of the wheels. The game does not interest me, as I always lose, but the circles of silent, intent faces form a study I never tire of until the perfume-laden air drives me out of doors. To-night there are some windows opened, the air is purer and as yet the crush is not too great; so let us watch for a time this world of Monte Carlo. As I wander through the over-decorated and gorgeous rooms there is space to move about, the people are not so absorbed in play and occasionally raise their eyes from the "green carpet," affording one a glimpse of the souls behind them--gay, desperate, indifferent--sodden with misery or drunk with the love of gambling; they are all here, the only impassive face is that of the man at the wheel who in both garb and countenance strongly resembles a funeral director, and his long rake generally buries your hopes as effectually as the spade of the grave-digger. What queer figures are hereabouts. Look at that old, old man intent only on the whirling of the wheel. His daughter stands behind him stowing his gains away. It is pure business with both of them. Beyond stands a woman who has not been young for years and who was never beautiful, though she may perhaps have possessed the fascination of the devil, with that red hair and those green eyes; but to-night at least, there is nothing about her which will make clear to you why a Russian Grand Duke should have gone crazy for her. She is gowned in soft sea green and trailing mosses, as though she had risen from the unsounded sea gleaming in the moonlight yonder, while upon neck, arms, and head is one of the most wonderful displays of diamonds I have ever seen. Both in size and brilliancy, they rival any of the crown jewels of Europe, and were, so it is said, all given her by that Grand Duke. She is under the constant watch and ward of two armed detectives. She has the face of a vampire, and that word probably describes her character. The Grand Duke is not here and has probably gone the way of all men of his kind long since. Near her, and most intent upon the game, is a young American, who is called the easiest victim that has come to Monte Carlo in many a day. He has a face which most American mothers would be apt to trust, a smiling countenance, with dark eyes and hair, while his slender figure tells of his youth. It is said that he has dropped one hundred thousand dollars on these green tables within a short time. To-night he is certainly dead to all around him save that whirling ball. Poor fool! Near me moves a smartly gowned, chic, French, auburn-haired woman, delicate in form and features, and wedded to that man near her, a huge edition of Louis XVI. Cupid's mind was preoccupied when he made that match. She is the author of several novels which have made some stir in the world, especially in English high life which she handles without gloves. A woman behind me, evidently an American, is telling of her desertion by an American and of her destitute state. She will not fool the man who is with her now, as I discover by a glance. But what fools we mortals be, especially we men mortals! The other day in London I was dining at Prince's. The dinner was well advanced when I became conscious of a voice behind me, evidently an American and as evidently young. He was pouring out his life story to the woman, oblivious of all around him. To please his mother he had married a woman he could never love; in fact, he never had known what love was until he met his present companion. "How old are you," he asked. "How old do you think?" "Twenty-eight." "Not yet twenty-four," came the reply. I managed by much manoeuvering to catch a glimpse of her face; the usual thing, painted and dyed, certainly forty if a day. As I passed out, I asked the head waiter who she was. "Bless your soul, sir, one of the most notorious women of London; used to live at the Savoy; has ruined more men than she can count; age, well forty-five if a day; why she was old when I first saw her and that was long ago." As he was talking, the couple passed me, the poor fool of a boy flushed with wine, the woman such a palpable fraud that it was of no interest to follow. In the glare of the street lamps she gave him a look and me a look, which fully told her story. While one may excuse such infatuation in a young man, one cannot do so in a man of middle life, for he surely knows that, while it is possible for him to attract the respect and even love of a good woman, a bad woman will have use for him only so long as his money holds out and he is a fool if he does not understand this. There are many such fools and homes are constantly being wrecked, lives destroyed by them. There are many such women in these rooms at Monte Carlo, and the ruin they strew broadcast is only a shade less in degree than that of the spinning wheels. As I pass outside, the air is full of the balmy odor of the orange and lemon; the sky, deep blue, is spangled with myriads of stars and a new moon gleams over Monaco; while the waters of the sea lap a lullaby, and the world seems full of peace. The scene is beautiful past description and I linger a while on one of the many benches facing the Casino, linger until I discover that its other occupant is huddled up in the far corner with a face full of staring misery, and then as I pass onward I realize that almost every bench holds one or more such hopeless wretches. But enough of Monte Carlo with its glitter and misery. Let us pass to Nice, stretching away on the shores of the sea with its pale yellow and green houses glowing in the sunshine and its promenade full of everything that can move. CHAPTER II OUR DEPARTURE FROM NICE--THE ROAD TO AIX--THE CITY OF KING RENÉ I had greatly desired to make a long auto tour, but being alone save for Yama, my Jap servant, I had scarce the courage to start, so I decided to go by train to Paris, and was in fact booked by that of Saturday week. As I stand on the porch of the Hôtel des Anglais gazing with regret at the flashing machines as they glide by, an old acquaintance comes out and asks me to "take a spin in his," which I gladly do, with the result that before I return to the hotel I have engaged that same machine and driver by the month. So it is settled. I offer the owner some payment in advance, but he waves it aside, "Any friend of Mr. E. is all right." However, we shall see what we shall see. I secure, as is wise, a written agreement to the effect that I am to have the auto at the rate of six hundred dollars per month, everything included except the board, lodging, and _pourboire_ of the driver, also that I am in no way to be held responsible for any sort of accident or breakage. This is necessary as otherwise one would certainly be charged with every scratch. So it is settled that we start two days hence and I have some consultations with the chauffeur. Everything is arranged for an extended tour through Southern France or wherever I will, and then "Jean," the driver, says that the owner would like "half a month's pay in advance." I thought that smile of the other day meant something. He reminded me of Monsieur Blandois in _Little Dorrit_ whose "nose came down over his mustache and whose mustache went up under his nose," but a pleasant man withal. Having disposed of my railway tickets and forwarded my heavy luggage to Paris, and all being ready, we start, stopping a moment to pay Monsieur half a month in advance. That is of course as it should be. Off at last. Away over the beautiful Promenade des Anglais we roll with all Nice glittering and gleaming a goodbye at us, while the sea joins in in a soothing monotone. Our route leads over the long Corniche road, "Autos de course" thunder by us at an appalling speed, would we plod on at a modest gait of forty-five miles per hour. A moment's pause at Cannes to say goodbye to a friend, and we are en route once more. Cannes is beautiful, but agreeable only if one owns a villa and knows the people. Hotel life there is desolate. It is the Newport of this coast. Gorgeous yachts lie in its harbor, splendid villas gleam amidst the olive trees, and the people are mostly English. Here we leave the coast and sail,--that seems the best way to describe our motion,--up into the hills of Provence until the olives vanish and we are surrounded by the peaceful mountains, while the air is laden with the balsam from the pines. We do not sight the sea again, but the ride is glorious. The racing machines are now few and far between, so one does not hold on for dear life and is not choked in dust,--one's own dust never bothers. The roads are simply superb, hard as a floor and magnificently made. They appear to have been sprinkled with petroleum. Towards evening as we are gliding into the peaceful land of Provence, high on an adjacent peak stands a Madonna (which forces from Jean the confession that he has not been a good Catholic). The setting sun turns her crown into glittering gold and the sad green of the olive trees into silver. The peasants' horses are plodding peacefully homeward, with their tired masters sleeping soundly in the rumbling vans. It has always been a desire of mine to visit Aix, but it seemed a sacrilege, almost, to enter it in a train of cars. To-day, however, sailing onward, soundless and with no sense of motion save that of gliding, it is almost as though we are borne on wings until the first paving stone of the city jostles us down to earth once more. But even so we are spared the usual porters and omnibus and all the paraphernalia of an hotel in the twentieth century, and moving up to the portals of the quaint hôtel Nègre Coste, are welcomed by Madame in a black gown and a white cap. Here my first day in an auto comes to an end, and rising, I shake myself, and, rubbing my eyes, step out, and instantly the auto, Jean, and Yama vanish, and I stand,--almost wondering whether they have ever been--gazing up at the statue of King René who died four hundred years ago, and who seems to smile and hold out his bunch of grapes as he welcomes me to Aix in his fair kingdom of Provence. The voice of Madame recalls me from the royal presence, asking, "Is it Monsieur's wish to have a chamber for himself and one for each of his domestics?" "Yes." (Jean might go to a cheap hotel, has even so suggested, but my life is in his hands and I want good service, such as can come only from good nature. Therefore Jean will stop in the house with me.) This hôtel Nègre Coste has made no changes since before the great Revolution, and I doubt not but that members of the Committee of Public Safety or Revolutionary tribunals have entered this same door, nay, slept in that same bed where I shall presently forget all about them. It is my day now, theirs is done, and most of them have not even graves alone, but rest in the public fosses. From my window I look down upon the Cours Mirabeau, though it bore no such name in his day. In this city King René lived and reigned in peace, the centre of all the music and romance of this section and apparently unaware of that werewolf Louis XI, awaiting just outside for his death in order to seize the kingdom. The "Cours" is long and narrow, with a promenade in its centre, the whole being sheltered by double rows of plane trees cut square over the tops, and forming beneath a long tunnel where the sunlight filters through the green gloom of the leaves, as thick here as in Vallambrosa. At the head of the Cours the statue of the king gazes downward upon the two old moss-grown fountains, where all form and shape has long since been lost in the passing years and plashing waters. To the music of one just outside my window in the quaint little hotel, I sink to sleep and dreams of King René and Margaret of Anjou intermingle with those of wild rushes over long highways. The morning sunlight shines brightly, and Jean would like to move on, but Jean has not that sort of a man to deal with. The twentieth century and the automobile must wait while I spend some hours in exploring this quaint town, a decision of which Madame, mine hostess, approves, as she smiles from a seat near the door where she sits knitting and watching her hotel. Madame is old and knows many things, amongst them, that "Monsieur would visit the Cathedral, it is ancient and very curious, and is to be found far up by the first turn to the left." Modern Aix holds some thirty thousand people, and to the great outer world is but little known. One hears much of Aix-la-Chapelle and of Aix-les-Bains, but little of Aix in Provence, yet to my thinking it is more interesting than either of the others, certainly than Aix-les-Bains, though the German city with its memories of Charlemagne holds its own for interest intense and abiding. [Illustration: CLOISTERS OF THE CATHEDRAL AT AIX From a photograph] The Cours Mirabeau divides the modern city from its ancient fellow, and as I leave the hotel, I plunge at once into the dark and narrow streets of the latter where in René's day the poets, troubadours, and gallants held high revels. Aix was the home of politeness, the theatre of the courts of love, which in the valley of the Rhone can never be platonic--and there were held fêtes and tournaments, and life was all a song. It is not always the well-known objects which attract one most in these old mediæval towns but the quaint bits and corners, fountains and monuments unnoted in any guide-book. Yonder stately façade was surely the dwelling of some one of importance in the old days. To-day it is occupied by many of a far different order. An arched portal gives entrance to a courtyard with an old fountain. A stately façade beautifully carved rises beyond; and through a distant archway one catches a glimpse of a deserted garden where the trees form a wild tangle around broken statues, and there is the murmur of water, but the soul of the house has long since passed away. Perhaps in the days of the terror those doors resounded to thunderous knocking while the silence of the night and the peace of the house vanished forever at the dread summons, "Open in the name of the nation," a sure bidding, in those times, to the guillotine; and I doubt not that, with the courage of their class, Monsieur le Marquis and Madame la Marquise went forth to their doom calmly and with great dignity. One could stand and dream forever in this town of old Provence, but the boys are gathering in curiosity as to why I gaze at a spot that has never attracted a passing interest in their minds. "No one save Jacques the huckster lives there, why should he excite any attention?" The faded gilding in the ceilings of the great salon visible through the dusty window tells no tale of bygone splendour to the boys, no picture of Watteau figures in high heels dancing around that broken god Pan in the garden pass before their mental visions. To-day one shaft of that old cart rests upon his flute and a blossoming plum tree casts its white shower over his head, but his music is silent for ever. [Illustration: CLOISTERS OF THE CATHEDRAL AT AIX From a photograph] In the square beyond stands the Hôtel de Ville which shelters in its courtyard an excellent statue of Mirabeau, and just outside rises one of the old towers of the city, now dedicated by a tablet to the souls of those who have lost their lives for their country. A young woman under its shadow tells me that I shall find the Cathedral just beyond, and in company with the archiepiscopal palace and the little university, there it stands in a square by itself. The Cathedral of St. Sauveur is very ancient. As I enter, the whole interior rests in silence save for the droning voice of some priest. Candles twinkle before the many altars, and the sunlight filters through the trees outside and the painted windows, casting wavering shadows down upon the empty aisles and many tombs. In the nave one may see the portraits of King René and his second wife Jeanne de Laval, and as you gaze upon them, the picture of his life unrolls itself across your mental vision. Born in the grim castle of Angers in 1409, René was married when but twelve years of age and his eldest child came on earth when the father was but eighteen. Eventually René, Duke of Bar and Lorraine, became Duke of Anjou, Count of Provence, and King of the two Sicilies. Though he held the last-named honour but eight years he never surrendered the title. He was a friend of Agnes Sorel and of Joan of Arc, women much more to his liking than his fierce daughter Margaret. René gave all his love to this land of Provence where his palace stood intact--here in Aix--until destroyed most wantonly in 1786. His progress thither was by state barges up and down the rivers--on the Loire to Roanne and thence over land to the Rhone at Lyons and so to Tarascon. Music and flowers, sunshine and happiness seem to have been his portion, yet there was one shadow--that of Louis XI. then the dauphin, whom he met for the first time in the Castle of Tarascon. At Tarascon he instituted the Order of the Crescent and held a fête which is remembered to this day. To his credit it is recorded that he gave protection to Jacques Coeur, fleeing from the ingratitude and treachery of Charles VII., and enabled him to escape into Italy. Having already said farewell to France and Anjou, René plainly saw the absorption of his beloved Provence by King Louis. His picture--some say painted by himself--here in the Cathedral does not impress one strongly. He was too old when it was done and while interesting and beautiful in detail one does not linger long in its contemplation. This cathedral was four hundred years old when René was born and portions of it date far before that, being of Roman origin. Especially is this the case in the baptistery whose superb columns came from the temple of Apollo. The cloisters are quaint and most interesting, and the temptation to linger is strong upon me, but time presses and so I pass outward and down the queer streets to where Jean solemnly seated in the Red Machine awaits my pleasure. Yama has the luggage already packed in the auto when I reach the hotel and we are shortly off, jumping instantly back, or rather forward, from the fourteenth to the twentieth century. Madame smiles an adieu from her seat by the door and keeps on knitting, as those women of France have ever done through sunshine and sorrow, days of happiness and days of blood. As we speed away, Jean catches sight of the Madonna high up on the mountain and heaves a great sigh, regret I suppose at the recollection of all those neglected confessions. CHAPTER III THE ROAD TO ARLES--THE CAMARGUE--RUINS OF ARLES--THE "ALISCAMPS" Leaving Aix down in her bowl in the hills with the silvery olive and flowering almond and plum trees framing her quaint old face, we roll on over the finest stretches of highway I have ever imagined. This is the level land of the mouth of the Rhone and in the next two hours we have three bits of road of ten miles each, and all as straight as a string drawn taut. What speed we seem to make; how the wind sings, and how exhilarating! The machine, a ---- of some twenty-four horse-power, makes now about forty-five miles an hour; yet we feel when one of ninety horse-power passes as though we were at a stand-still. During the morning hours our route lies through many old towns; each of which has its memories. This one of Salon holds the castle of the astrologist Nostradamus and in her church of St. Laurent he lies buried. From Salon our way leads directly west and we skim along for twenty miles through the flat land but see nothing of the Rhone until we reach and pass through Arles. Then we bring up suddenly upon its very brink with its yellow floods rolling southward at our feet. On our right are the gateways of the famous old city of Arles, but my eyes are drawn off and away across the river and out over the fantastic land of the Camargue, a land more akin to Africa than to Europe,--that great "Field of Reeds" between the two branches of the Rhone, only a few feet above the level of the sea, where the ibis, Egyptian vulture, and the flamingo are to be found. The whole is so low and so covered with salt that it glistens and glitters under the morning's sunlight, while the air quivers and shifts above it, and is full of the mirage, taking on strange forms and fantastic shapes as the eye wanders over it. [Illustration: THE PORTAL OF THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. TROPHIMUS, ARLES By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] The people out there are as wild as the cattle which roam its plains, and their manners and customs as oriental as those of the Arabs who invaded the land centuries ago, while its one town, Les Saintes-Maries, has all the characteristics of an African town of the desert, and there Mary Magdalene, Mary of Salome, and Mary the mother of James, landed to escape persecution. We cannot go further into the Camargue now and so turn to where, on our right, the entrance to the ancient city of Arles is guarded by two great low round towers, beyond which stretches a vista of narrow shadowy streets full of attractions and inviting exploration. The main features of the old Roman town are too well known to justify description, but every street holds some relic of the past worth inspection, and on our way to the very comfortable inn, where we dine in plenty, my eyes are constantly on the alert and yet much is missed. There are two inns in this city of Arles situated at right angles to each other in the same corner of the public square and it would appear that whichever the traveller selects he will be subjected to the pitying glances of the proprietor of the rival establishment watching from the door of his own house; however, I find nothing to complain of either in the house I enter or in the dinner service. The day is one of blinding sunshine as we draw up before the amphitheatre. Its great arches glitter against the blue sky and the white city all around us is as silent as a tomb. There are two pictures which must arise to the thoughts here: one, that of the place in the voluptuous splendour of its Roman days. The vast crowds thronging every space; the silver netting to protect them from the beasts in the arena; the fountains in these arches casting up scented waters; the sunlight filtering through awnings of gorgeous silks; the heat; the smell of perfumes and of fresh blood; the roar of the beasts and the murmur of the multitudes,--all these made Rome what she then was and kept the people from thinking. The other picture is so widely different that it is difficult to believe it can be of this same structure, choked from the summit to far underground with the hovels of the poor, every archway closed up, the whole centre a veritable rabbit warren--thousands of outcasts found their homes in this spot. To enter it was scarcely possible save to the initiated, to leave it also was well nigh impossible. A murderer from the town had but to disappear here and all trace of him vanished. If any ventured to pursue him they never returned to tell of what they had seen. Upon this mass of vileness the plague descended in 1640--It came many more times to Arles--none were allowed to come out and the dead and living crowded the place to its utmost hidden recesses. Finally they were summoned forth to quarters beyond the town and only the dying and the dead were left to occupy this amphitheatre of Arles. We have the scene of those horrors and of former gorgeousness to ourselves to-day and we wander in and out at pleasure. [Illustration: EXTERIOR OF THE AMPHITHEATRE AT ARLES By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] All the world knows of the Greek theatre here of which there is much left, but of the quaint Cathedral of the middle ages less is spoken though it is of interest, especially the cloisters, where you may spend a pleasant half hour back in the myths of the past. You are told again that Martha and Mary came here from the Holy Land for there are their figures carved in stone, and also here that Mary conquered the dragon by a piece of the true Cross. The portal of the Cathedral is simple, yet so beautiful that I venture to reproduce it that you may judge for yourself. Enter, and you will find a very lofty, very plain, but very dignified nave of the twelfth century. As I leave the sanctuary, I am greeted by the priest in a dignified solemn salutation,--he does not raise his eyes, and I am evidently completely forgotten before he has turned away. A lot of boys, shut up in school in one of the chapels for some hours back, stop to stare at me for an instant and then go whooping away down the quiet streets of the old city. Arles is truly a Roman town--aside from the Cathedral,--all Roman; her amphitheatre impresses you with its majesty, her theatre charms more in its ruins than it could have done two thousand years ago in its prime, and you will linger long in that beautiful avenue of the dead, "Aliscamps," (avenue of death) just outside the gates where stately lines of cypresses march away on either side, shading in a sad sort of fashion rows of ancient sarcophagi, ruined and empty. The place is vast in extent and in the days of its splendour, the dead were brought here even from Lyons. It is mentioned by Dante in his _Inferno_. Pagans and Christians sleep here side by side until the day breaks and the shadows flee away. [Illustration: THE ALISCAMPS AT ARLES By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] The weather has all to do with one's impressions of a country. I always associate France with a golden sunlight, for so many times I have left London, stifling under its black fogs, and literally sailed into the sunshine on the coast of France. So especially does sunshine form a part and parcel of Southern France, somewhat too strong and blinding in summer, but in the spring with its blossoms of fruit trees and in the autumn with its splendour of color and the dreamy odor of over-ripened fruits, the sunlight of France is,--well, just the sunlight of France, and those who have seen it will remember it always. To-day in the high tide of spring all nature rejoices. These ruins gleam white and pure, the city, like an ancient dame of high degree, bears a gracious aspect, the river dances and sparkles, and the long highways stretch off and off until lost in the midst of olive groves and blossoming fruit trees. CHAPTER IV THE ROUTE TO TARASCON--CASTLE OF KING RENÉ--BEAUCAIRE--NÎMES--MONTPELLIER--AN ACCIDENT--NARBONNE, ANCIENT AND MODERN Leaving Arles we speed northward to Tarascon and so drop downward a thousand years in history as Tarascon belongs to the Middle Ages. To me these mediæval cities and fortresses are far more charming, far more interesting than the Roman remains with which this land abounds. The latter seem cold and the lives led in them so far different from our own, that with it and them we can have but little sympathy, but this does not hold with the France of the middle ages. There, all is warmth and color and distant music. So it is to-day at Tarascon; I can almost fancy that King René and his troop of minstrels yet hold high revels in yonder castle and I should not be greatly astonished to see its portals open and give egress to Margaret of Anjou on her departure for England. How, by the way, came such a woman, as history paints her, to be daughter of a king who cared only for music and grapes, and the joy of laughter? This castle of Tarascon was King René's palace of pleasure to which he came from Aix and held high revel; here you may still see his chapel and there are many apartments of his time, amongst them his private rooms all of which I did not see, for the fat jailer would under no circumstances permit my entrance. My inclination for a fight in order to secure an entrance was strong, but then it occurred to me that the quarters to which I would be consigned might not be those of King René and my sojourn therein might be protracted. It is shameful that such a place should be used for such a purpose and our intentions to effect a change are great as we roll off to inspect the town. I must confess that in Tarascon it is not so much King René as Daudet's "Tartarin" who occupies my thoughts. On the whole, the place is very lonely or the people all asleep. Certainly it does not seem a spot to offer much adventure, but then, who can tell? As we repass the portals of René's fortress, the jailer sits sound asleep and his prisoners might escape without difficulty. The river is not very wide awake. I feel sleepy myself, and Jean and the auto are in like condition. Here, here, now! Wake up there, get your winged wheels and let's off and away! So we spin past the frowning towers and crossing the Rhone by a fine bridge, pass through Beaucaire, where high above the river are the ruins of another castle once belonging to the Count of Toulouse. Wars and time have left nothing save its tower and the arches of a chapel, where Saint Louis prayed on his way to the Crusade. The Castle's last tenant was Duke François de Montmorency, the last of his line and a victim of Richelieu's. Our ride to Nîmes is hot and dusty and under a glaring sun. Nîmes is another spot too well known to need mention, and, like most of the places well known and greatly talked about, it is not so interesting as one of which one has heard but little. Certainly Nîmes, a bustling, prosperous city cannot approach Aix or Arles in interest of story and romance, and she has aside from her Roman remains nothing to detain us. I find that I am not alone in my opinion of these Roman remains. James in his _Little Tour in France_ speaks of them as monotonous and brutal, and not at all exquisite. He referred especially to the amphitheatres at Nîmes and Arles. They are cold and cheerless even under a brilliant sunlight; perhaps the memory of their wild beasts and all the blood and slaughter have much to do with this. Certainly here at Nîmes, while one must admire the splendid arches and sweeping lines of the whole, one does not linger with any such pleasure as, for instance, in Heidelberg or among the ruined abbeys of England. The Maison Carrée is beautiful to look upon and you feel glad that there is such a gem, yet it is cold and you soon leave it with no regret. It stands on the busy street of a too large town, and trams rattle and rush by its door. You cannot picture men in togas and sandals on those steps to-day. The rest of Nîmes, while probably a comfortable city in which to live, will not hold your interest for a moment and I roll off and away with no desire ever to return. How different our feelings at Avignon! Leaving Nîmes we roll southward for some hours until Montpellier is reached at half past five. The roads have been fine but the ride not so pleasant as that of yesterday. Montpellier is simply a place to spend the night with nothing to see, a busy place of some sixty thousand people. The streets and sidewalks bubble and sparkle until a late hour with the life that is so dear to these people,--open cafés and tables all over the sidewalks, much wine but never a case of intoxication. No matter in what part of the world you find this nation, they will arrange some portion of their abiding place to resemble their beloved Paris. It is so here, it is so in Saigon, and would be so on a desert island. This afternoon, during an enforced stoppage of fifteen minutes, I saw Jean smile, and looking round beheld a group for a picture. In the middle of the long dusty highway stood my little Jap servant gazing up into the face of an old French woman perched high on a pile of rubbish which loaded a small cart almost to the breaking point, the whole being drawn by the most diminutive donkey I have ever seen. Surely there was a strange juxtaposition; she who might have been a descendant of the Vixen in Dickens' _Two Cities_ gazing down upon a representative of the far-off rising Empire. Yama is greatly amused by the carts drawn by small dogs, and in many ways he finds France different from the Land of the Morning. [Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF THE CHÂTEAU OF KING RENÉ AT TARASCON From a photograph] This is our third day and we are leaving Montpellier, having passed from Aix to Arles, Tarascon, and Nîmes, and thence here, and have had but one mishap, not at all our fault. In a long, straight stretch of the Corniche, between Nice and Cannes, two men were walking away from us and we fortunately were not moving at high speed. Our horn was blown constantly and there were no other machines in sight. One of the men, knowing we should follow the law of the land and pass him on his left, kept his side of the road, but the other completely lost his head, and dodging from one side to the other like a chicken, forced us either to run over him or into the ditch. Of course we did the latter. Jean managed the auto so well that no injury was done, as the ditch was but a few inches deep, but then came the problem, how to get out. The soft mud rendered our own power useless, we simply churned holes. Finally a van came along, drawn by two stately Normandy horses, the driver, after a moment's inspection of our plight, calmly hitched on to our springs and drew us on to the high-road, after which the horses stood nodding their great heads at us as though to say, "After all you have to come to us when in trouble, as you are most of the time." A few francs called down a benediction upon us from the old driver and we skimmed away, the horses still holding converse concerning us as we vanished in a cloud of dust. Jean takes as much interest in this auto as one does in a horse. He knows all its good points and one discovers its bad ones only by noting his watching of certain parts. The tire of the right hand rear wheel seems to bother him and late in the day that tire collapses. He claims that that wheel, being mostly off the crown of the road, or rather being forced off when we meet or pass anything is subject to a greater strain than the others, and we have some trouble until at Montpellier he buys some new ones, and to-day towards Carcassonne there has been no trouble--but I anticipate. The ride from Montpellier to Narbonne, where we have luncheon, is pleasant but not of much interest. In one village the people are _en fête_ for the return of Monseigneur, and we shortly meet his Reverence in a coupé, the only sign of affluence I have noted in all the land. When I ask Jean who is with his reverence, he suggests "his niece," and adds that it is marvellous how many "nieces" these priests have. Now that is the suggestion of Jean, who, as I have before stated, is not a good Catholic and does not go to Mass. I know, for I saw him, that the black-robed figure beside the one in purple was a priest. Narbonne is only five miles from the sea, and one may scent the salt marshes even in her streets. In the days of her birth, five centuries before our era, she was surrounded by lakes and so connected with the sea, making her one of the most important ports of the great Roman Empire. She is described as beautiful in the year 95, possessed of theatres, temples, baths, a superb capitol, and all that in those days made the splendour of a Roman city. All this has vanished utterly in the passage of Visigoths, and Saracens,--who defied Charles Martel and Pépin until treason aided the latter. Its history onward is that of France, but its decay began one hundred years before day dawned on America, at which time the Jews were expelled and the port began to fill up through the bursting of a dike. To-day we roll into a commonplace town with but two relics even of the middle ages, and nothing at all of the more ancient periods. A fragment of a cathedral and a bishop's palace alone attract the eye. Of the former there is little of interest, though it would have been a great shrine if completed. The palace has a stately façade, but nothing inside worthy of note. We find a comfortable hotel here with a garrulous old lady seated near its door, who immediately asks me where Madame is, and on my telling her that I am not married, offers to bring forth several applicants for the empty post, adding that I am none too old, as she herself married again but lately at sixty-five, and I am but a boy. However, I decline the proffered assistance, and we roll away out of the very ancient city, leaving the old dame shaking her head at the "queer ideas of those Americans." CHAPTER V THE APPROACH TO CARCASSONNE--ITS PICTURESQUENESS, ITS RESTORATION AND HISTORY The ride from Narbonne via Béziers proves most enjoyable. As we leave the town, the air becomes cooler, and from the summit of a hill the Pyrenees range into view, a long line of glittering snow marching in stately procession across the southern horizon. The air is full of the buoyant freshness of the hills, and one's thoughts turn to pine forests and rushing waters. Over the superb highway where in ancient days stately processions passed to and fro from Spain, our machine glides on with a sweeping, flying motion, until I find myself leaning over and looking for the wings which should project from the centre of each wheel,--winged wheels, surely. What intense satisfaction such a journey brings, how different from that of the most luxuriant train, where, no matter how comfortable our bodies may be made, our eyes are constantly irritated by being shut off from some desired view of mountain, town, or castle, by a deep cut or long line of freight cars. One has a proscenium box always when in an automobile, and is enabled to ring down or up the curtain at will. So to-day with not eyes enough to see the beauties of this fair land, we glide onward to the beating of the wings when suddenly on a hill before us sharply silhouetted rise the towers of Carcassonne. The old poem is at fault this time--I have "seen Carcassonne" even though I approach no nearer and surely the prospect is enchanting. [Illustration: THE FORTIFICATIONS AT THE OLD TOWN OF CARCASSONNE From a photograph] But is that Carcassonne, or any town built by man's hands? I have seen many a mirage in distant deserts like unto this before me. Through the fantastic dancings of the afternoon's waves of light, the old city looms up as though cut out of black cardboard. Sharply and clearly against the tawny background stands forth every tower and pinnacle, cathedral spire and parapet. Behind it, rise the yellow hills, the green mountains, and the eternal snows, while to the north, east, and west, stretch the undulating valleys of France, clothed now in a blanket of spring blossoms, and over all arches the deep, fathomless, southern sky. Occupying the top of a hill in the middle fore-ground, yonder dream city of the dark ages needs but the flaunting banners of its ancient lords and the call of trumpets to make the picture perfect. But it is ghostly and silent as we roll by, taking no note of the passage of this strange machine, which, in the Middle Ages, would have produced great commotion amongst its defenders and peopled the walls and towers with thousands to see us pass. To-day no living thing gives evidence of life, not even a dog barks, and as we glide onward and leave it, I wonder again--"Was that Carcassonne, or indeed its mirage? Shall we find it ahead of us; are there two such places in this world of the twentieth century?" Crossing a fine bridge, we pass through the streets of a comparatively modern town, and draw up at the excellent Hôtel Bernard. It does not take long to wash the dust off and I am shortly en route in a carriage to investigate the old _Cité_. How ridiculously slowly these horses move, how the trap jolts! It is hot and dusty and there is no singing of the wind as we do _not_ rush along. I would advise those who would retain their romantic impressions of Carcassonne to content themselves with the vision which greets their eyes in the approach and passing. Then the _Cité_ will dawn and vanish clothed in all the romance of its centuries, but when you really approach its walls and, crossing its drawbridge, enter its portals, all the romance vanishes in a flash. I suppose, as an example of a walled and fortified town, it was well to restore Carcassonne, but from a picturesque and romantic point, such restorations are always a failure. Carcassonne in ruins and covered with trailing vines would yet speak and relate its story, holding you enthralled for hours as you clambered over ruined towers and churches and the abodes of those so long dead. There are the foundations laid by the Romans, with the superstructures of the Visigoths and the battlements of later periods. In yonder citadel there are dungeons under dungeons, and a prison of the Inquisition. That cathedral was founded in the fifth century, rebuilt in the eleventh and twelfth, and restored in 1853. In fact to-day you will find a perfectly restored city, (and still the work goes on), its angles are all sharp, as though cut out of cardboard. You may not enter its citadel used as barracks, but you will in the tour of its walls mount perfectly new stairs, unlock new doors, and find sound floors beneath your feet. Not a shadow of romance or interest attaches to any of this, nor can you re-people in your imagination the place with the life of long ago. As a most perfect example of a walled town it is worthy of inspection, but Viollet-le-Duc has done so much for it and written so much about it, that it would be useless to enter here into detailed description. Loches which we will visit later, is to me of far greater interest and it cannot be said that that is merely a castle and this a whole city, for within those walls is an entire town, and there the ghosts are ever present to one's thoughts. Carcassonne dates from the days of the Romans, but its higher and greater wall was erected by Theodoric, King of the Visigoths, upon the site of the Roman structure. With the advent of the Moors (713), silence descends upon its history, and does not raise the curtain for four centuries. Of this occupation there are no traces; which is most unusual--not a horseshoe arch or a bit of Arabic in all the town, yet it is said to derive its name from a Saracen Queen named Carcas. The next we learn of it is in the year 1209 when it is besieged in the name of the Pope by Simon de Montfort. The result of the Albigensian "heresy"--this revolt against the symbolism and mysteries of the Church of Rome--fell heavily upon all this section but most terribly upon Carcassonne when Simon de Montfort with a French army attacked this French fortress. Baptism, the Mass, the Adoration of the Cross, and the sale of indulgences were absolutely rejected--with what effect one can imagine;--all this some centuries before Luther. The danger of this to the Pope and his Church promptly moved the powers of Rome to action. Béziers, through which we passed this morning, was the first point of attack, when forty thousand were slain. No quarter was given--orthodox and infidel, in all one thousand were put to death--"God will know his own," shouted the Abbé of Cîteaux; "slay them all." Into its great Church of St. Nazaire crowded both men and women, and the priest tolled the bells until all were dead. The news of this horror caused every town to open its gates save Carcassonne, which for fourteen days was the scene of continual slaughter before it fell through want of water and famine. It is stated that three hundred thousand from all over Europe assembled here, drawn by the promises of pardon and indulgences. How peaceful the scene to-day! How green the grass, and how blue the heavens! It was Louis IX, who made the "Key of the South" impregnable, clearing away the surrounding town and establishing it across the river where it now is. He had the outer line of the fortifications constructed around the _Cité_, forming a sure refuge in all the wars with Spain. Carcassonne was never again taken by storm and when the Black Prince devastated the lower town, the _Cité_ did not open its gates. It is stated that it required one thousand four hundred men to defend these walls and to this must be added some two thousand workmen, servants, etc.--To-day a few cannon would soon blow these towns into dust. The custodian rolls all of this off to you as he pilots you around the inner wall, up and down ladders and staircases, and into all sorts of impossible places, which would be of interest if they were not all so new; but the theatrical effect is beautiful, and so theatrical that one is surprised to find this tower of stone, not canvas, and yonder battlement entirely safe to lean upon. From the ramparts, the traveller will observe that between the outer and inner walls the space was once occupied by the hovels of the poor, but they are all gone now, and also that, around the outer circle where the moat once was, the grass mounts to the wall itself, so that one may encircle the _Cité_ and find nothing to distract one's attention from the old town save the wonderfully beautiful panorama of the distant mountains or far stretching valleys, all violet and pale rose in the light of the fading day. In his inspection of the _Cité_ one finds nothing of interest save the church, as the houses are those of the middle classes. The church holds some interesting monuments. There is no semblance of palace or "hôtel de ville," and the château seems but an empty shell. I am not allowed to enter it, which I do not greatly regret, and so turning again I pass one of the portals,--and emerge from the walls of the _Cité_, the outer circle of which is some sixteen hundred and the inner twelve hundred yards in circumference, so that the space enclosed is not so great as that at Loches, I think. Carcassonne has but two portals, each over double draws and many portcullises. Its towers are all named and, as I have stated, they have not forgotten to call one the Tower of the Inquisition, with, I doubt not, much truth, but its walls are new, its door and floors both new, and when one enters into comparisons--which at all times are odious--with Loches, Nuremberg, or Salzburg, one quietly turns from Carcassonne, gets into the carriage and drives away, wishing again that one had been contented with that first fantastic panorama spread against that tawny sky. CHAPTER VI THE ROUTE TO TOULOUSE--GREAT MACHINES ON THE ROADS OF FRANCE--DELIGHTS OF AN AUTO--TOULOUSE--ITS UNIVERSITY--THE CHÂTEAU DE ST. ELIX There is nothing of interest between Carcassonne and Toulouse and so we speed along at thirty-six miles an hour on the wide highways reaching Toulouse at eleven o'clock A.M.; seventy-five miles in just two hours is quite fast enough, for the wings again come out and the sensation is therefore as near angelic as mortal man is permitted to enjoy. The projection of our hood prevents that incurling of dust, which is the curse of autos without these tops, and I find that my linen keeps remarkably clean. I could have gotten along with much less clothing, and I have only a shirt case full as it is. A dress-suit case with perhaps the addition of a hand-bag, will hold all that a man needs. Such a ride as that of to-day demonstrates one of the many advantages of an auto over a carriage and horses. One can loiter when desirable, but one can also pass quickly over the tedious stretches which must occur in all journeys. To-day, for instance, we covered the seventy-five miles with actual pleasure, while the journey in a carriage would have taken two long, hot dusty days of absolutely no interest. An auto is also cheaper than a team. I could not have hired any sort of horses and a comfortable trap for less than ten dollars a day and could use the team certainly not longer than ten hours per day, whereas this machine, a 25-horse-power, at twenty dollars per day, costs me less than a dollar an hour and can be used every hour of the twenty-four. So that ride of seventy-five miles, all expenses included, cost about two dollars. Of course, the expense of renting an auto by the month counts in the possible delays by sickness, or otherwise, but I have so far had none of these occur, and if I may be allowed to anticipate, can state that in the three months' tour covering nearly five thousand miles, I was never laid up save when I so desired. If I had owned the machine, my expenses would have been enormous. Mr. B. of New York, whose auto (a new one) met him at Naples, told me that he had spent one thousand dollars in tires between that city and Paris. I have paid my twenty dollars per day, and no extras save the board and lodging of my chauffeur. If I lived in Paris I should own an auto, but under no other circumstances. It is always cheaper and more satisfactory to rent than to own. This holds good with electrics as well as gasoline. For three seasons I rented an electric in Newport. It was brought in the morning and taken away at any hour I desired, late or early, and all expenses were covered by the two hundred dollars per month. For two seasons there I owned an electric which cost me certainly one hundred dollars per month and I had it barely half the time and was never sure of it. It ended by my giving it to my brother-in-law, who has scarcely spoken to me since. If you own, your chauffeur, like your butler, is forced to be in league with the tradesman. If you rent, he makes nothing by accident or delay and runs the risk of being dismissed by _his_ employer if the car meets with accidents or delay through his fault. Of course, the pleasure, and a great one, of running the car is lost. I have not and shall not attempt that at all, as I well know that if I ran it but ten feet and all went well, any accident which occurred during the after time would be attributed to that ten feet. I should certainly wish to feel very sure of myself before running a great car on these roads where those of tremendous speed are constantly passing me. The slightest nervousness or error as to handle bars would mean death to all. I neglected to add that owners of cars must insure against all accidents, and also insure the life of the driver, whereas renting, as I did, from a responsible party, all that was upon his shoulders, not mine. If the car had been wrecked past repair and the chauffeur killed, in fact, from every sort of accident, I was held blameless. When I dismissed it at Geneva, I asked George whether it would be of service for another long tour. "Certainly, sir. It would be well to expend about one hundred dollars on it, but it would go all right without even that. We have covered nearly five thousand miles and it is in very good condition. Also we have met with no losses, save a few pneumatics." But I anticipate-- I noticed at Montpellier, when Jean thought a new envelope was necessary for one of the rear wheels, he telegraphed to the owner at Nice before he bought it. Toulouse, a city of 150,000 people, is one of the most prosperous in France, but it is not a place of interest for the tourist, and if the automobilist finds dusty, disagreeable roads anywhere in France it will be around this city of the Southwest, because of the very high winds prevailing in this section. Its past dates back some centuries before its capture by the Romans, and around and in it history has been made hard and fast throughout all these passing years until the present, when it is happy, contented, and prosperous, even if commonplace. It possesses probably the oldest literary institution in Europe, dating from 1300, and one which observes the singular custom of distributing flowers of gold and silver to its laureates; all of its prizes take the form of different flowers in gold or silver. But this does not interest the ordinary mortal and as we roll into the city over her rough pavements, I feel ordinary,--the high, hot winds irritate, and I am glad, after a very comfortable luncheon at a very good hotel to start forth towards Pau. The people of Toulouse have evidently never seen a Japanese before and I feel sorry for Yama, so great is the crowd around us at all times, but if he objects to the scrutiny his stolid, expressionless face gives no sign thereof. The day becomes hot as we turn southward toward St. Gaudens. About an hour and a half out, an ancient château, evidently unpolluted by restoration, is seen on the right. I hesitate as to whether I shall stop, but it is hot and we are moving so well that I give up the idea, when, _pop!_ a tire is torn wide open. Now we must stop and not three hundred yards from the château, which an old peasant, washing clothes in a brook, tells me is well worth a visit, and the lord of the manor willing to allow one. In the meantime poor Jean is down in the dust and when he pulls out the pneumatic finds a hole as large as a dime. Heat is the worst enemy of these pneumatics as the delicate rubber will not stand it. However, the work is finally done and we move off to the entrance of the Château de St. Elix. It is surrounded by its village and one approaches through an avenue guarded by stately gates. A wide moat in which water still flows is crossed by an ancient bridge, and beyond rises a structure of the date of Francis I. A central portion with an enormously high mansard roof is supported by two huge round towers, one on either side, crowned by cone-shaped tops. A winding step leads to the main portal, where a servant stands awaiting my approach. "I am a traveller, will it be permitted to inspect the château? I am told it is of great interest." I hand in my card which is carried to the master off somewhere in the out-buildings, which on one side appear to be stables, on the other, gardener's cottages and hot-houses. When he comes I meet a pleasant-faced young Frenchman, who smilingly conducts me to the house, his home, to which he seems much attached, and to me it proved most interesting. A long wide hall leads straight from the front door out upon a rear terrace which overlooks a great square garden holding many rows of cedar trees cut in all sorts of fantastic shapes, no two alike. One represents a huge bird upon its nest, another a layer of mushrooms, while a third is round as a ball, and a fourth square as a box. "They have been trimmed that way for centuries and would not know how to grow otherwise." But to return to the house. We enter a vast apartment with heavy rafters gilded, and in blue. Its walls are hung in ancient Flemish tapestry and a huge fire-place occupies one end. There are many curious pictures and ancient objects of art. Evidently the place has remained unchanged for centuries. What a sense of repose these places afford one, how far off the bustle of the world seems! I mention this to mine host, but he shakes his head replying, "There is little peace in France." In one of the great round towers is a library, and behind the salon a wide drawing-room where things are of the fashion of the great Louis, and where that monarch would not feel the lapse of years or out of place if he could return. Crimson damask, fast going to tatters, cover the walls, from which ladies in high wigs and gentlemen in court dresses question "your presence here in such a costume." The Grand Mademoiselle is in great array, but Marie Antoinette knows the vanity and sorrow of all things and smiles sadly at you. Here I discover that the present family have owned the château for only one century. The portraits are all of the ancient race who died out long ago. That painting under the groined roof of the great hall is of the last of that line, the Baron de St. Elix, who died childless and so the house passed to strangers. Whether the Terror was the cause of his death or not, I could not discover, but that man in the hall would have gone to the guillotine with dignity, of that I am sure. If his shade ever returns, he must feel grieved at the sadness of these old towers of his race. Some of that same sadness is reflected in the face of the present owner as he watches us speed away into the greater world of which he knows so little and which means life and progress to him. The sunlight strikes athwart the ancient portal and the stately towers, turning the garden into green and gold, lighting the village and its ancient dames in a sad sort of fashion, emphasizing the silence which is a part of it all. A turn in the long avenue and we are off and away down the dusty highway, leaving the Château de St. Elix to its dull repose. CHAPTER VII THE DEATH OF A DOG--ENCOUNTERS ON THE HIGHWAY--TRAVELLERS BY THE WAY--PEOPLE OF THE PROVINCES--LOURDES--HER SUPERSTITION AND HER VISIONS Later in the day as we speed down a long incline the only thing in sight is a huge van drawn by three horses tandem. Jean sounds his horn constantly, which has the effect of causing them to straggle all across the road. No man is in sight--nothing save an old dog that is working his best to get the horses into line and out of our way. This he succeeds in doing, but alas, though Jean does his _best_ to save him, he goes down under our wheels and I distinctly feel the crunch, crunch, as we pass over his poor old body, driving the life out. As I look back, it is only an old dog dead in the dusty highway with some old horses gazing down at his quiet figure. They have been friends for so many years,--it is all over now. When we see the stupid driver emerge from beneath the van, where he has been asleep in a swinging basket, we almost regret that it was not he instead of the old dog. My man did his best to save the dog and felt as badly as I did over his death, but he must have ditched the auto with danger to us and wreck for the machine to have done other than he did. These vans are the terror of these highways and the government should either banish the automobiles or force the van drivers to attend to their charges. We passed dozens to-day with the drivers fast asleep underneath, as was this man, or if not asleep then yards behind their teams. Several times serious wrecking was prevented only by Jean's cool head and prompt hand. There should be a law passed and enforced with a fine, that would correct matters. The death of that poor old dog saddened the whole day. About five o'clock in the afternoon, as the shadows lengthened and we were passing slowly through the streets of Lannemezan, on rounding a corner we were confronted by two hogs and a driver--the lesser beast fled away in terror, but the larger--a good-sized porker,--kept his place firmly planted in the middle of the road, while with his ears pointed forward and snout lowered, he gravely regarded our approach as much as to say, "Let me see, let me see, what have we here?" Just then Jean ran the machine gently against him and bowled him over, whereupon the air was rent asunder by squeals from his astounded and indignant pigship, and a volley of oaths in the patois of this section from his master, which together with remarks from Jean and shrieks of laughter from Yama rendered the spot anything but tranquil. The personalities and profanities of these two Frenchmen would certainly have caused their telephones to be removed if passed thereover. Our route all the afternoon is glorious, on a high table-land, overlooking the Garonne and commanding the sparkling Pyrenees as far as the eye can reach both east and west; the air is fresh and full of life. St. Gaudens and Montréjeau are passed in turn, and Tarbes reached at six o'clock, where we descend at the Hôtel de la Paix on the main square. The hotels in all this section show the influence of Spain. This one has a _patio_ and the one at Carcassonne also possessed one with a raised platform at the end over which a vine was twined and under which Carmen might have carried on her flirtations. Three autos arrived while I was in Carcassonne, a large one with three Englishmen, which had destroyed three tires that day and caught on fire; a small one of twelve horse-power with three men, and one just like ours, of twenty-four horse-power. This held a lady, a maid, and two dogs. Imagine travelling in an auto with two dogs. Jean says the lady is an American countess and seems surprised when I tell him that we have no titles in America. He might have replied that we try to marry as many as possible, which is quite true, to our sorrow generally. This person looked like a painted countess of the stage. One must journey through the provinces in France to find her men and understand the source of her past power. Those we meet with daily are a fine, manly looking lot of fellows, bright eyes and erect, sturdy figures, nothing effeminate about them, in all ways superior to the men of the towns who would seem to be descended from the old men and boys, all Napoléon left in the land in his wild race for self glory. What a magnificent figure his would have been in history had he placed France first and remained First Consul! How absurd that play at Emperor! Of his military and executive genius there can be no question, but for his own glory he deliberately sacrificed France and hundreds of thousands of her best men. His family playing at royalty always reminds one of some stage performance; "Belles of the Kitchen", for example. I think we made a mistake in coming via Toulouse. It would have been more interesting to have gone via Montreal, Pamiers, and St. Gaudens. If I ever come this way again, I shall keep nearer the Pyrenees. The run to-day has covered from Carcassonne at nine o'clock to Tarbes at six, one hundred and seventy-five miles. It is but thirty miles further into Pau, but man and master both are weary and the auto must be hot, to say the least. [Illustration: THE GROTTO AT LOURDES By permission of Messrs. Lévy] In Tarbes,--at the Hôtel de la Paix,--we find our last stopping place before Pau, a town with a comfortable little inn and but little else of interest. From there we turn southwest for an inspection of that centre of the greatest superstition of the nineteenth century, Lourdes. The ride is a pleasant one down, or rather up, a valley with a rushing river. Lourdes is found nestling in a nook of the foot-hills of the Pyrenees while high in its centre rises an ancient castle with the distant range of snow as a background. The location is beautiful, much like Salzburg, but Lourdes is a bustling busy city full of fine shops and big hotels, though I think I should have to be paid handsomely to sleep in any bed in the town. This is not the season, and therefore we perhaps have a better opportunity to inspect the theatre of the place, for one can call it by no other name. Beyond the castle and in a valley one first sees a sweeping circle of arches forming an approach to a species of Pantheon, at least shaped like the Roman structure and on a rock directly behind and above towers a Gothic church. Both are crammed with votive offerings of all sorts and descriptions. Passing around to the right one comes upon the sacred grotto. It is directly under the higher church, in fact, in the rock upon which that edifice stands, a simple grotto of slight depth and some thirty feet high. In a niche on the right is an image of the Virgin in white with a blue scarf. Hundreds of votive candles blaze and smoke in the grotto, smudging the whole with nasty soot. The sacred and healing spring issues from a spigot, in the front centre of the grotto, and the faithful are constantly drinking its water. Rows of benches occupy the space before the cave, which is enclosed by an iron grill, wherefore! one wonders. Certainly there is no one who would steal those candles and there is nothing else. On the left one sees a tablet upon which is inscribed the words of the peasant's dream as uttered by the Virgin, "Go to Lourdes, bathe, drink, and be cleansed," while the entire space and roof of the grotto is hung thickly with the discarded crutches, wooden legs, &c., &c., of those who, following the divine instructions, were healed. The water has been conducted into adjacent baths for men and for women, and I fancy it is the unusual cleanliness which produced the cures. Certainly there are many past all hope of cure even here, for the place is full of disgusting beggars. The whole affair is, as Jean announced, "good for commerce and politics." It is the greatest evidence of the superstition of the Middle Ages which Europe can show to-day. Let us leave it. Lourdes as God made it and its ancient rulers left it, is beautiful; Lourdes as that name means to-day is vile. No one with any regard for his health would venture near there while a pilgrimage is in progress. It is a relief to get off into the country where disease does not seem to hang in the air. CHAPTER VIII PAU AND THE LIFE THERE--DELIGHTFUL ROADS--ANCIENT ORTHEZ--MADAME AND HER HOTEL--THE CHÂTEAU OF BIDACHE AND ITS HISTORY Our ride to Pau is down the banks of the Gave de Pau, past quaint towns and churches and many mineral baths. Near noon, that well known watering-place of Southern France comes into view, her famous terrace rising high over the river; crowned by a line of hotels and villas, and with the ancient castle, the birthplace of Henry IV, rising majestically at its further end. In the valley rushes the Gave and beyond the foot-hills the higher Pyrenees rise tier on tier to the snows and clouds. The prospect is enchanting. I should imagine that one might become very fond of Pau. It is a quaint old city, delightfully placid, and its promenade like one great proscenium box with God's theatre of the mountains holding perpetual performance before you, and most of your time will be passed on that terrace watching the lights and shadows as they chase each other past the many mountain peaks into far-off valleys leading into Spain. You will find yourself quoting _Lucile_ on the slightest provocation, and will become romantic if you remain too long. The window of my room in the Hôtel de France,--a good hostelry by the way,--overlooked terrace, valley, and mountains, and I found myself hanging out of it in a most dangerous fashion at all hours of the day and night, until sleep and the murmuring river drove me to bed. The lover of golf will find in Pau, I am told, the best links in Europe. The hunter may follow the paper fox any day and the drives must be endless and all beautiful. Yet I fancy the stranger in Pau has little time to spend on them,--the social life being more attractive. It seems to be a pleasant existence, not too strenuous, and composed of pleasant people. The usual run of tourist does not come here, which is greatly in its favour. Its château, which has been judiciously restored, holds many beautiful rooms and much of interest within its wall, but I shall not describe so well known a building. Monday, April 3d. The day of our departure opens cloudy with threatening rain and I am in doubt as to going forward. However it may clear by ten, and as Jean has been "summoned" for fast driving and is now in court, we must wait at all events. I do not know why they have selected Jean for a victim. We are not of the great racing community and never have gone more than thirty-eight miles an hour. Perhaps it is because of the killing of the poor old dog, or maybe because of the old lady who climbed a tree,--then again that porker may have entered protest at our too close attentions. However, it will be but a small fine if anything. Jean returns disgusted. It was all because of a "spurt" a month ago between Nice and Monte Carlo when Mr. E. had the auto. They made no move during the weeks in Nice but tracked him by his number all over our crooked course from Nice here. We are finally off after having bidden mine host of the Hôtel de France _au revoir_, with thanks for the pleasant days passed in his excellent establishment and having insulted the little fat porter by asking him if he is not a German,--an insult wiped out by a franc. We roll off through the streets of this ancient capital and for a dozen kilometers fairly skim over the long white road, when an appearing sign-post shows Jean that he is off his route and we must perforce return until we find a cross-road that will put us on our way once more, a course which proves to be one of the longest stretches of straight road which we have encountered and for mile after mile the auto fairly flies. It is cloudy and there is no dust, so the sensation is delightful. It is marvellous how quickly the nerves become used to this rapid motion, so that one minds it no more than in a railway train, nor is the speed realized until the auto begins to slow down. One certainly loses all fear and ceases to hold on for dear life, and also is no more alarmed for the safety of men and beasts,--not that auto cars instill a desire for murder, but one certainly does become a species of Nero, and had that gentleman possessed an auto, Rome would not have been forced to endure so many quiet days under his rule as history relates. There would at least have been greater variety, and the game of nine pins, with useless Christians as the pins and autos as the balls, would have been much in vogue. We halt in the town of Orthez for luncheon and I note an ancient tower which will be visited after the inner man has become satisfied. The Grand Hôtel is another of those comfortable little inns with which France abounds and the smiling landlady assured me that when she saw us rush by she knew we would return, for there was no more comfortable inn than hers and no more agreeable landlady than herself in all France. How impossible it would be in America to find in our small towns such accommodations. Here is a scrupulously clean house and I am served with a most appetising luncheon. Two kinds of native wines, a good soup, shirred eggs, an entrée, a nice piece of steak with potatoes, a pastry, cheese, fruit and coffee, all good, and for three francs. Orthez, the ancient capital of Béarn, is a very quaint old town. Its tower is a remnant of the château of the Counts of Béarn and its streets, bordered by ancient dwellings with high slate roofs, belong to long past days. The world would never have returned to these old towns of France but for the autos, and under their passing all the post-houses are opening their eyes once more, like old gentlemen aroused from a nap, and the horns of the modern machine are not unlike in sound the ancient post-horns. [Illustration: THE BRIDGE OVER THE GAVE AT ORTHEZ By permission of Messrs. Lévy] After luncheon I mount the hill to the tower, which I find in stately seclusion amidst a grove of trees and still surrounded by its moat full of stagnant water. I have it all to myself and the old stones seem desirous of telling their store of legends from the days of chivalry. The tower reminds me of Niddry, from whose windows the Scotch queen gazed downward on her first day of freedom after Lochleven. Like Niddry this is but an empty shell now, but the view from it is characteristic of France. Long lines of white highways bordered by stately Lombardy poplars, a smiling river wandering here and there, now through quiet meadows and just there where it passes through Orthez, under an ancient bridge with a tower in its centre. The steep roofs of the old town cluster around the base of the castle hill and a tall church spire points the way to heaven. On the green slopes of the hills are numerous châteaux embowered in blossoming fruit trees, lilies bloom in the stagnant moat of the castle, tall and fair, and some yellow flowers yonder cast a cascade of gold over the delicate tracery of a ruined archway. Descending the hill, I express to Madame at the hotel my feelings that she lives in an interesting old town. "Oui, Monsieur, mais très triste." Surely, but places that have watched the passing of so many centuries, with all their joys and sorrows, must seem sad. Our ride during the afternoon is delightful, not by the direct route to Bayonne but via Sauveterre and Bidache. As we approach the latter place, a turn in the road brings in view a magnificent mansion, part castle and part palace. As it rises majestically on its terrace above the river it resembles Linlithgow, is as stately as Rheinfels, and, like both, is all in ruins. An old peasant on the highway tells us that many visitors go there and so Jean turns the auto into a shady lane and drives past some old cottages, near one of which the custodian stands smiling and is more than willing to go with us to yonder stately mansion, through whose empty windows the birds are flying and over whose walls the ivy tumbles in dark green masses. It is the property of the Ducs de Gramont, though they seldom come here. We wander into the court of honour, into the banquet hall, open now to all the winds of heaven; stop a moment to gaze upon the majestic keep, and passing on emerge upon the terrace from which another vision of the fair land of France is spread before us. Seated here the old custodian tells her story. "This is the Château de Bidache, Monsieur, et de Gramont." It is not certainly known when it was founded but it was so long, long ago that it seems to have been here since time was. It is known to have existed in the eleventh century at which period its masters, the Barons de Gramont, were in continual strife with their neighbors, the Seigneurs d'Asqs and de Guiche, or uniting with them against the neighbouring city of Bayonne or any other which offered the show of an exciting encounter,--the necessary breath of life to the lords of those dark ages. England and Navarre both claimed its allegiance and its history has been the history of Navarre and France throughout all the years. [Illustration: CHÂTEAU OF BIDACHE From a photograph] One of the most adventurous of the lords of Bidache would appear to have been Arnaud Guilhem II. de Gramont (1275). In wars with England, Navarre, and Spain, he sustained two sieges in the Château which was taken and burned. Then followed exile and departure for the Crusades, and a return at sixty-nine years of age. His tomb in the church of Villeneuve la Montarie was opened in 1860, when his long sword, casque, and spurs of gold were found in good condition after a lapse of five hundred and eighty-five years. He was but one of the many who made Bidache the theatre of their lives. The Château was reconstructed in 1530, upon what scale and in what fashion you may see to-day even in its ruins. In 1610, Louise Comtesse de Gramont, for an "intrigue galante", was tried by her husband's order before the parliament of Bidache, convicted, and executed. The endeavours of her father to save her, even by the aid of the King of France, were without avail, though the Count was later forced to grant her sepulchre in the tombs of his ancestors where she was interred with much state and ceremony. On this condition he was guaranteed relief from all attempts at revenge by the blood kin of the unfortunate lady. Mazarin was entertained here in great state when he returned from negotiating the treaty of the Pyrenees; then the Château and all the country round about was _en fête_ for days and Bidache was in the heyday of its popularity. Years of silence settled after that upon the Castle, during which in the days of the great Louis this terrace, where I sit writing these notes, was constructed. Whatever sorrow this Louis XIV. brought upon France, the land certainly owes much of its beauty of architecture, which still abides, to him. Not alone in the Royal palaces but in or around almost every château of the land, one is sure to find something beautiful of his day. This terrace redoubles the charm and stateliness of Bidache, and when mortals lived within these walls it must have been a continual joy; it is so to-day to all who come this way. Most of the improvements in the private châteaux were accomplished while the owners thereof suffered banishment from the court. Such was the case here with the lord of Bidache during the reign of Louis XIV. As usual another affair of love. To the terrace he added orangeries, fountains, and vast stables,--the latter still exist,--and Bidache reached the acme of its splendour in his day. Its library, placed on the ground floor of the great tower, was lighted from above by a dome more than thirty feet in diameter; below was a magnificent gallery of paintings (all destroyed in the final conflagration save those which had been taken to Paris) while the ground floor of the castle formed a vast armory, full of ancient and modern weapons. In the Revolution, the Château was not greatly disturbed and certainly was not destroyed in that convulsion. It remained for a dishonest agent to commence this work during the period of the emigration and for a great conflagration on a night of 1796 to reduce the immense structure in ten hours to the state in which we find it to-day. However, no fire or storm can entirely destroy Bidache and as I wander through its superb court of honour and gaze upon its mighty towers and walls there is enough left, bowered as it is in curtains of ivy and many flowers, to impress itself upon the memory for many a day, to be remembered always as a thing of beauty, even after its death. Turning reluctantly away, I bid the custodian farewell; she tells me she is very old and will not be here if I return, "save yonder where Monsieur can see the crosses on the hillside." I depart under her benediction, and, while Jean is at work and the auto beginning to breathe, I turn curiously to the present dwelling of the Duke of Gramont. He comes here every year and occupies this very unpretentious structure just outside the park gates,--a long low, two-storied house. There is certainly a satisfaction to him in knowing that he has just claim to that stately ruin yonder with its history and its wealth of associations, and he shows his good taste in not attempting a restoration. Moving swiftly, the auto glides down a hill and off and away across the valley, while I turn for one last glimpse of the stately mansion, the Château de Bidache. CHAPTER IX THE ROUTE TO BIARRITZ--BIARRITZ--THE HÔTEL DU PALAIS The route thence into Bayonne is hilly and winding but good withal. Our car moves rapidly forward with all wings spread until that prosperous city is reached and passed, and we are on the route to Biarritz. The deep and powerfully-flowing river Adour near by shows the influence of the neighbouring ocean and there is that sense of spaciousness, that freedom of body and spirit to be experienced only by the sea, on the higher mountains, or upon our vast Western plains. The traveller does not see the ocean itself until his machine mounts the last hill before reaching Biarritz. Nature has found it necessary to erect a huge barrier against the onslaught of all that water which just here in the right angle formed by the coasts of France and Spain rolls in with such terrible force that no wall built by man is able to withstand it. Hence the God of the earth erected these hills to protect his domain in the eternal warfare with the God of the sea, and Biarritz has set herself down on the outer side of the hills to have a good view of the conflict. Her green and pink villas and many hotels spread out before one on either hand, and down below cluster the hotels close to the water where even on "a quiet day" their windows are splashed by the attacking waves. Fortunately the God of the earth has made this coast a rocky one, using these foot-hills of the Pyrenees as buffers against the sea; otherwise, the town would vanish some stormy night. In fact, even a rock barrier does not appear to have protected at this point, for surely in some wild moment of rage the storm dragon did seize a large mouthful from just this corner of Europe,--thus forming the Bay of Biscay,--and turning, dropped it in the shape of the Island of New Foundland in the dreariest portion of the Western Atlantic. (Examine the map for yourself.) There he hides his plunder in perpetual mists, where the fishermen from this coast go down to their graves annually by the hundreds. Here to-day all is glorious sunshine with no thoughts of disaster. Off to the southwest the sparkling mountains of Spain stretch out and out until they blend with the swirling waters of the Bay of Biscay gleaming blackly, while to the northward the coast of France bears away on guard against further encroachments. As we roll into the outskirts of the town of Biarritz, the route is mostly between high walls draped in trailing vines and pierced with iron gateways, through whose trellis-work stiff walks bordered by formal flower beds, are to be seen leading up to much more formal villas. There are some quaint signs on the many little hotels; here, for instance, is the "Inn of the Parlor of Love" in a shady corner all by itself. Jean seems inclined to stop, but I veto the inclination, and rolling swiftly onward, we shortly draw up at the door of the Hôtel du Palais, recently opened and so new that its magnificence hurts both the sense of smell and sight. It was originally the palace of the Empress Eugenie and stands just over the sea. Turned into an hotel in 1893, it was burned down two years ago, and this is the rebuilt structure. Part of the palace remains. The main staircase is the original, and that woman in the days of her power and vanity must have swept down it many times. Even now she is not forgotten, as all the chandeliers bear the letters "N" and "E" in monogram. The location is magnificent, on the rocks right over the sea, whose waves in stormy times dash on the terrace and spray all the windows. This is the so-called little season in Biarritz, the great season comes in July, August, and September, when the place is crowded, but now it is only pleasantly full, though this new hotel is not half filled. This Grand Hôtel du Palais is evidently the Sherry's and Ritz's of Biarritz. The same life, exactly the same amount of gold lace and the same eternal dinner parties. As for the people, I fancy they are always English, Russians, or Americans. No German would pay the prices, much less a Frenchman. Yet they do not seem exorbitant. I have a very large front room with a commodious and complete bathroom, both having all the modern improvements, for which I pay twenty francs. The dinner is eight francs, and coffee and eggs three francs; add two oranges to the coffee and eggs and in New York it would be ninety cents, here certainly not more than seventy cents. The house is a spacious structure, with grand marble halls, with an attractive dining-room almost on the water, and there is certainly one feature which to my taste could be adopted to advantage in our hotels. The old table d'hôte has vanished from Europe, with all its weary details. The long tables are gone and now the dining-rooms are filled with small tables. In most of the houses, as here for instance, one may dine at any time from seven to nine and the dinner is excellent, all one could wish to offer to any guest. I have been many times wearied and disgusted by the long bills of fare offered at our best hotels; what to order, and to be obliged to order _at all_ is to me the great drawback. How much more attractive to find a good dinner ready whenever you desire and without words or thought. Let someone else do that for you, as the Shah said about our dancing. The dinner here costs only eighteen francs, and it is better than many a so-called feast at our American houses. The tables are beautifully decked with all that can be desired from flowers to linen and the service excellent. CHAPTER X THE ROAD TO THE MOUNTAINS--ST. JEAN-PIED-DE-PORT--ST. JEAN-DE-LUZ--MARRIAGE OF LOUIS XIV.--ISLAND OF PHEASANTS--THE ROADS IN SPAIN--THE SOLDIERS OF SPAIN--SAN SEBASTIAN The Bay of Biscay roars in a sullen monotone this morning, but the clouds are high up and in the warm sunshine the valleys glow with the blossom of the fruit trees while the air is laden with the perfume of flowers and sweet grasses. We are bowling along toward St. Jean-Pied-de-Port, some fifty miles away at the base of the Pyrenees. The road is fine and the machine in good condition. Jean sings as he turns on full speed until we fairly fly down and up the hills and over long stretches of curving road. This is quite off the grand route and we meet no autos all the distance. The natives are more than usually surprised at our advent and the animals have evidently not known enough about such machines to be afraid of them. As we speed down a hill I notice in the road what appear to be small piles of brush; but as we near them, they begin to move and, as Jean with a swish and a jerk passes to one side, some small ears and a nose or two emerge from the bundles which have paused in a startled sort of fashion and a loud, scared "Hee-haw, hee-haw" rends the soft spring air. Those are quite the smallest donkeys I have ever seen impressed into service; in fact, later on, one sturdy boy simply picks up his beast and deposits it in a place of safety. They are always amusing animals to me. They never lose their ruminating tendencies inherited from ancestors bred in the silence of distant deserts, and save, as now, by the pointing of an ear or by a loud "hee-haw," take no notice of our rushing progress. They were here before auto cars and will be here when autos are things of the past. We find St. Jean-Pied-de-Port deep in a dell in the foot-hills, and in a quaint little inn, furnished chiefly by dishes hung on the wall, we are served with refreshment for the inner man. As I enter the little dining-room, I find there two groups; in one is an Englishman and his wife, in the other, two Frenchmen. The former studiously avoid a glance, when I am looking in their direction; we must be in no way aware of the existence of each other--we have "never been introduced." The Frenchmen both bow as they meet my eye and in a few moments we are pleasantly conversing. You can make your choice, but to me the latter custom is more agreeable in travelling. Not that I do not like the English, for I most certainly do, still one cannot have too many of these small courtesies in one's fleeting life, and after all, it is the minute things which make our sunshine. After luncheon I am recommended by the landlord to visit the castle which rises on a hill near the hotel. I have mounted but part way to the height where it stands when a soldier warns me off, "It is not permitted." I suppose the same regulations must hold all over the republic, but it would certainly seem an altogether useless rule off in these mountains, and one would have imagined from the peremptory gestures made that that old ruin was the key to France. On our return trip we make a long detour to the west, where the roads are not so good and we are glad to strike the main highway once more and speed back to Biarritz. While Spain is not commended for an auto tour, one can at least go so far into the ancient kingdom as the city of San Sebastian, her great watering place in the north. The route hence, as far as the French frontier, is a delight to the automobilist. It rises and falls like the lines of a roller coaster or "Montagnes Russes" and you sail up on one side and down the other with a most delicious motion. Hills rise and fall, one's heart is gay and the scene is charming. To the right sparkles the deep blue Atlantic, while to the east and in front and far off to the westward, along the Spanish coast, range the sparkling Pyrenees. [Illustration: MAISON DE L'INFANTE AT ST. JEAN-DE-LUZ From a photograph] As we roll into the plaza of St. Jean-de-Luz the people are dancing a fandango and I pause awhile to view the sight. The quaint old place is surrounded on three sides by its ancient houses. That of King Louis XIV. is to your left, while the square towers of the one which sheltered the Infanta are across the plaza, and those are seen in the accompanying illustration. Through the portals of the queer old church the fragrance of frankincense rolls out to you, while the air is full of the wild barbaric music of the land and the sound of the neighbouring ocean. In couples or singly as the humour seizes them, the people are dancing, dancing with a life and a motion known only to the Spaniards and Italians. Flashing eyes and snapping fingers keep time to the shaking of the many tambourines and the clash of sabots. Then the music changes to that of the beautiful Spanish _danza_; fingers cease to snap and the eyes to flash, and the motion becomes wavy and dream-like, as the dancers float hither and thither over the grass. Then suddenly the multitude falls upon its knees with bowed heads and crossed hands as the Host is borne along to some passing soul. Passing onward, we pause a moment, to inspect the house where the grand Louis rested the night before he bestowed his affections, together with the crown matrimonial, upon the Infanta of Spain and then turn to her old palace, a quaint red and white brick structure, to which it is said strangers are admitted. A dainty maid answered my clamors of the bell but would not admit me; even the silver key had no effect. I think, had I been younger, matters might have prospered more to my advantage--as it was, I failed ingloriously and took refuge in the church of St. Jean, a very quaint old edifice where the influence of Spain is plainly evident in the rich gilding of the entire choir. Here also the men and women may not worship God together. The women have the whole body of the church while the men are confined to three galleries which rise one above the other on either side. The custom is still in force, but one wonders whether these galleries are over-crowded. If so, the men must be more religious than those in America. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH OF SAINT JOHN AT SAINT JEAN-DE-LUZ By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] The marriage of Louis and the Spanish princess was celebrated in this church of St. Jean, to which the bride advanced over a raised platform from yonder palace of the Queen-mother, Anne of Austria. Robed in white with a mantle of violet-coloured velvet, she is described as undersized, but well made, of fair complexion, and having blue eyes of charming expression; her hair was a light auburn. If she had been taller and had had better teeth, she would have been one of the most beautiful women in Europe. Louis at that period was at his best, and is described as a head taller than either of his ministers. Of the celebrated Island of Pheasants, where the Treaty of the Pyrenees and the contracts for this marriage were signed, there is little left. We passed it later on our ride to San Sebastian, turning off to Fontarabia for the purpose. Here, in a room half in France and half in Spain, French in its decorations in one half, Spanish in those of the other half, the Kings of Spain and France met, each advancing from doors exactly the same distance from two arm-chairs, two tables, and two inkstands--one of each in France and one of each in Spain. Neither monarch left his own kingdom but they embraced each other at the border line. We do not enter the Kingdom of Spain here but at Irun where we spend quite half an hour getting the auto and ourselves admitted. We must pay a toll of three francs and also deposit seven francs for the auto with the customs, but this is returned when we come back. Irun is a spot where the millions who have passed this way have paused in their progress to and fro. From the stately caravans down to these automobiles what a procession it has been. How instantly the type of the people changes as we cross the border! What superb-looking women gaze at one over the line of this frontier! How deep and magnificent are their great black eyes! Yonder is a Spanish blonde with golden hair and brown eyes; what a subject for a painter, in that picturesque dress and framed by that window, draped in wisteria in full bloom! The little soldier guarding here is funny to look at,--one cannot imagine his meeting fire and ball. Were our late opponents such boys? If so, we committed rank murder. His features are regular and he has fine eyes, but he certainly does not weigh one hundred and twenty pounds and is not five feet tall. However, his conceit is colossal, and he struts up and down with all the dignity of a Don Carlos, paying no attention to me until I happen to dismount near him and he gasps at my six feet and over. After a little, he attempts conversation, and asks if I am English. "No." And I hesitate to add "American," and when I do his eyes look doubtfully into mine until I smile and offer him my hand, which he smilingly accepts, and two francs seal our acquaintance; rather cheaper that than the unnecessary twenty million dollars we paid his country for a possession very doubtful in profit to us, some think, but----. We are off over the road into Spain and at once note the difference in its quality, bumpy and dusty and dirty, all the way, and I think on the whole that the people would rather like a break-down on our part. However, we roll into the modern town of San Sebastian and after a pause of some time turn back to France. San Sebastian has no interest for the traveller unless there is a bull fight on at its fine amphitheatre, but there is none now and this is not the season here, so we coast back to the protection of the French republic, pausing an instant at the frontier to receive the seven francs. The little soldier then shows me a wife and baby which he knows is more than I can do. So he smiles at me in happy content and would not think of changing places--that is if he had to leave wife and baby. At all events there is no envy in his glance as my red car speeds off towards France. CHAPTER XI DEPARTURES FOR THE NORTH--CRAZY CHICKENS--GRAND ROADS--DAX--RIDES THROUGH THE FORESTS--FRENCH SCENERY AND PEOPLE--MARMANDE--"AUTOMOBILE CLUB OF FRANCE" AND ITS WORK To-day we start for the heart of France. It is misty as we leave the hotel at Biarritz, but mist generally portends a fine day later on. Our road to Bayonne passes along by the sea and is a delightful highway, running much of the time through fragrant pine trees. There are two routes between Biarritz and Bayonne, but this is much to be preferred to that by which we entered the former town. It is that to the right after passing the walls of Bayonne. In the other, to the left, one is bothered by trams and much traffic. The route by the sea must have been especially constructed for autos, and it is a splendid piece of work. Jean is evidently of the same opinion and much pleased, for he grunts, and the machine flies. Yesterday in one of his wild moments he actually took off the tail feathers of a chicken, with no further injury, so far as we could determine, to her ladyship, who flew to a neighbouring wall, where, missing the accustomed balance of said tail, she ignominiously tumbled into the dung heap on the other side. As we drew away, her lord and master, certainly a Bourbon, stood gazing down upon her very much as the grand Louis must have glared at de Montespan as he turned her out of Court. Jean absolutely declines to pause or change his course for chickens, but he will do so for dogs. As for cats, the machine has yet to be invented that can take a tabby unawares, much less catch one; on the whole, they can beat an auto on a straight course, and yesterday a hobbled pony gave us a lively brush for an instant and at a fine gait too. Occasionally one meets a dog whose spirits are so broken that he cowers behind any available object moaning in fright, but it is not so generally, and the young steers, of which there are many, never give way. As for geese, they simply retire to a point of safety and scoff at us. The mist shifts about us all the way to Bayonne, and when we have passed that city, seems to have settled into rain, but we are no sooner made snug by the cover and lap-robes than the clouds break and the sun shines warmly and pleasantly. The same superb condition of the highway noted between Biarritz and Bayonne continues here. Broad and solid as a floor, it stretches away before us for miles on miles in a perfectly straight line and between Bayonne and Dax I do not think there are a dozen curves. Most of the way is through a thick pine woods where the trees are being tapped for the pitch and the air is heavy with the balsam. The bed of the road is elevated some four feet above the forest, and as I gaze off on either side, I am reminded of Florida; even the same kind of trees and climbing vines are all around us. I have heard many who have not travelled in automobiles in France express their fears that these long stretches of straight roadways would prove monotonous, but such is far from the case, and it cannot be, I think, with the delicious rushing motion one's car attains upon them. The run to Dax is rapidly covered and we descend at the Hôtel de la Paix for luncheon, though it is rather early. It is only in the small towns that one finds the pleasant little inns. This one at Dax is dark and dirty and I am greeted by a slovenly old woman who conducts me into an unattractive _salle à manger_, where the food is none too good. From Dax our route lies towards Mont-de-Marsan, and nearly the whole way is through the forest of pine. Accidents will happen, even to autos, and while we are speeding up a hill, Jean discovers by some signs that there is trouble with our left rear wheel, where we have never had any before, and on examination the ruin is very apparent. We have picked up a crooked nail which has punctured both envelopes and pneumatic. So another pneumatic must be put in place. It gives me an opportunity for a stroll in the pine forests, where I find that every tree has been blazed and to each is affixed a small concave cup; most of these are nearly full of the thick white sap. It is evident that many of these forests have been planted, as the trees stand in regular rows. During most of the day, our route lies through these forests, and is, in consequence, rather monotonous, as we cannot see beyond them, but as we pass Casteljaloux the scene changes to one of those characteristic French prospects, so familiar to most of us; a far-reaching, smiling green valley traversed by the many high-roads along which march the stately rows of Lombardy poplars, a church-crowned town here, and there a smiling river which is crossed by a graceful viaduct in light colored stone, over which a train is speeding; a sense of peace and prosperity over all, and above that a fair blue sky. That is France. One would fancy in contemplating such a picture, that trouble and sorrow never came to such a spot, and yet no land on earth has seen more of horror and bloodshed than this fair land of France. The French are a queer people, and it would take but little to erect the guillotine in any or all of these towns where the people are dancing now so merrily. It was but the other day in Paris that the police were forced to disperse a mob found dancing and singing around a guillotine (from some chamber of horrors), in the Temple Square. How long would it have been before the sound of the Carmagnole would have drawn the bloodhounds from the slums of the city, transforming that mob from monkeys who mocked to tigers which tore. The sight of that instrument to these people is as the smell of blood to a wild beast. My Japanese boy "Yama" excites the keenest kind of interest and curiosity, and to-day as we were forced to stop a moment in Casteljaloux where a fair was being held, I really felt apprehensive for a moment,--not that they would do anything to him, but as to how long his blank Oriental face could retain its utter lack of expression before changing to one of sudden fury, as I knew the faces of these Japs could do. The people pressed around the automobile and almost fingered him, yet he never for an instant lost his Buddha-like expression, or lack of expression. Let out amongst that crowd he could floor any number, for he is a master in _jiu-jitsu_. Last winter in Washington an English valet boasted to him that he could handle him with ease. "Let's try," said the Jap, and, no sooner attempted than the stalwart Englishman lay sprawling on the far side of the room. Again, when a burly priest weighing certainly two hundred and fifty pounds insisted upon calling for my cook at the main door of the house, upon my expressing my distaste thereat, the Jap, who weighs I should say one hundred and ten pounds, promptly offered to "put him out" if he came again, and he could probably have done so with great ease, but I declined to allow a priest of the Church to be treated in such a summary manner. Our stopping place to-night is Marmande, an uninteresting town, with a dirty hotel. There is absolutely nothing to see or to do save to watch the inhabitants and their manners and customs. How placidly the lives of these people seem to flow in these provincial towns. The café of this hotel--I suppose the Waldorf of the place--is the rendezvous of the wits and beaux of society hereabouts. It is a large room with sanded floor upon which are marble-topped tables ranged against the leather divans which line the walls. Madame presides in stately form over the whole and welcomes her _habitués_. The old gentleman in shiny black, the young gentleman in queer cut habiliments, the middle-aged gentleman with the pointed beard, all come and engage in a mild game of cards until the dinner hour. Do they dine here? Bless your soul, no; or, if so, in the outer room. "Madame" conducts me through to an inner sanctum where only the elect may break their fast, and here it is better than I had expected, judging from the hotel. This is certainly a spot in France to which not a dozen foreigners come in a year. There is no reason for their doing so unless the night overtakes them. We could have gone farther, but it was evident that Jean was tired. The strain upon a chauffeur must tell in time as it does upon the driver of an express engine. So we stopped over and are very well off. The waiter is surprised that here, where it is made, I let the wine alone. Jean comes around as usual after his dinner and we arrange our route for the next day. It is an intense satisfaction to travel in this country. The Automobile Club of France has mapped out all the Republic and every cross-road, every hill, or dangerous curve has its iron or stone sign post with names and distances or warning. These together with the excellent charts published by A. Taride, 18 Boulevard Saint Denis, Paris, under the directions of the "Union vélocipédique de France" render it almost impossible to go astray, or to get into trouble, yet in the rush of our auto we have several times gone a few kilos wrong, having passed the posts so quickly that we could not read the names, but that matters not with these cars which move so quickly or in France where it is a pleasure to get lost. CHAPTER XII RAPID MOTION--BEAUMONT--RACES AND DASHES--CADOUIN AND ITS CLOISTERS--THE ROUTE TO TULLE _April 7th._--We are late in starting from Marmande. Jean has just sped by with the auto, waving his hand in some sort of explanation. However, time is nothing on this trip and when we are _en route_ the world is so beautiful that one soon forgets any irritation which the unavoidable delay has occasioned. Nature has opened another eye during the night--all the valleys are clothed in that tender green which one associates with France, the fruit trees have suddenly put forth all their beauty and the landscape is radiant with the glory of white and pink blossoms. Almost every hill is crowned with the tower of some ancient windmill, whose arms have vanished long since; old châteaux and churches preside in stately fashion over quaint villages. Jean sings as we roll over the white roads and I ask him why. "Why, Monsieur! but the world is beautiful, it is spring, and I am young and a boy." Surely, Jean, sufficient reason for joy with any breathing mortal and it is well you appreciate that which never comes but once and goes so quickly. We are moving rapidly, for us, forty miles an hour for four hours. Yama is the time keeper and announces our record from his throne in the rear amongst the baggage. His excitement was most intense when just now we passed in a whirl over a black hen. The feathers flew in all directions, but when last seen the hen had rejoined her friends none the worse for her encounter. Can the naturalists inform me why all animals on the approach of a train or auto will, if possible, cross the track? For instance, that hen left the safety and seclusion of a neighbouring dung heap and did her best to throw dust in our eyes. One can have no regret for a creature that will deliberately run such risks, but when an old dog is killed doing his duty, while his lazy master sleeps, one's regret is great. The ancient town of Lauzun with a grand château and church are passed, and shortly thereafter, a tire gives up the ghost and we stop for repairs. We have expected it for some time as it is the one that bothered in starting. However, new ones having reached us at Pau, it is only a matter of a few moments' delay. _En route_ once more, we leave the meadows and mount to a more sterile region, stopping at Beaumont for luncheon. The inn is certainly not in the habit of receiving many strangers,--it is the dirtiest place we have encountered and I wonder what the meal will be. The table shows the wreck of a former feast which "Madame" with a dirty napkin sweeps onto the floor. But the vegetable soup is hot and good, followed by some sort of game, of which I eat and question not. Then comes a _pâté de foie gras_ made in this section and after that some cold mutton done up with onions and some fried fish, of all of which I eat. Coffee in a big glass with cognac follows and "Madame" even then wants me to partake of some other hot meat which a fat cook brings up smoking. But there is room for no more if I would not go to sleep. I can hear the people in the streets talking about Yama. The fat cook is greatly excited; never having seen a Jap before, she is surprised that he is not a monkey. She thinks she would rather have him little than big,--enough is as good as a feast. Beaumont is one of those quaint old walled towns long since forgotten of the world. It has its old church and gateway, the latter once taken by the English. Its houses project over the sidewalks like those of Chester, but life has left it long ago, and we pass onward and away. The ride all the afternoon is a delight, the roads are as fine as ever, and the air is cool and fresh. Our route lies over the hills and at last in a long descent through beautiful valleys. Much of the last hour or two Jean shuts off all the power and we coast like the wind down the floor-like roads. Many a dog joins in the race and one kept pace with us for some hundreds of yards. I laid ten francs on the dog but there were no takers. Another poor beast met instant death. We were going at a tremendous speed down hill, when he rushed from a doorway straight at the wheels and we passed over him like a flash. I looked back, but he never moved. Both "Madame" and her cook at Beaumont insisted that we stop at Cadouin and visit an old cloister there, which we promised to do, and on entering the town while its people are basking in the sun of this quiet day of rest we pass the ancient church and are directed by an old dame, who is washing her pans at the town pump, to a door in the rear whereby we enter an ancient kitchen garden, and wandering amongst its cabbages and sweet peas, find three portly priests who greet us smilingly. One conducts us to the ruined cloister, now a mass of broken carvings, tottering pillars and sad looking saints, around and over which nature has thrown a beautiful veil of trailing vines and flowers. Yonder saint is embowered in morning-glories, while red poppies spring from the soil in the centre where the dead sleep on and on. The whole is charming and one is taken far back into the past and reminded of the present only by the distant puffing of one's automobile. The garrulous old priest tells his story, but the place is too enchanting to listen to details. However, he pays no attention to my distraction; he has his story to tell and will not be gainsaid. Once out again into the garden I press a coin into his palm, which, glancing to see if the other priests have observed my act and will insist upon a division, he quickly pockets, assuring me that it is for the poor only that he accepts. Surely yes, father, for the poor only. I fully understand, but mentally I add that in this case charity begins at home. As we roll away, the smiling fathers stand watching us, six fat hands reposing upon three fat stomachs within which the succulent vegetable growing here but yesterday and the chickens which lately strutted these walks sleep side by side, but the end is peace. About four this afternoon, our auto stopped for no reason that I could see. Jean insists that he was not sure of the route, but the only other way ran into a church of no interest. However, as we stopped, there came from an open doorway a very pretty woman. I happened to glance at Jean's face and found it flaming red. Off came his cap and he seized the dame by both hands. The confab is not for me; so I do not listen but I do look. Presently Jean says that the lady would be pleased if we would stop and refresh ourselves. He looks sheepish as he puts the question. Really what does he take me for, does he think I am going to delay my journey for an hour or so that he may flirt with what I suspect is an old sweetheart? He tells me that her husband is fatigued and is upstairs, also that he is a client of his. (Just what sort of clients do chauffeurs have?) But I am obdurate and we move on. Then Jean acknowledges that he has known the lady when both were younger,--all of which his face told me half an hour ago. It is very evident that Yama has also sized up the situation, his remarks are to the point. That Jean was disappointed is proven by the movements of the car, which are jerky and uneven all the afternoon, until we enter ancient Tulle, which, like Carlsbad, is down in a gully with the river flowing through its centre. Tulle is well off the beaten track, and but few autos come this way, though by so doing they would pass over one of the most delightful roads in France. It has not the appearance of a place of importance though full of life and bustle and boasting some twenty thousand inhabitants. The evening shadows are falling as we enter its streets and all the people are abroad, while the cafés glitter with the life so dear to the French. As we pause a moment in the great square, the stately spire of the cathedral rises before us, backed by the fantastic old houses, piling up tier on tier and all sharply outlined against a lilac sky where the crescent of the new moon gleams faintly. But I am too tired with our rushing ride to examine the town to-night and so seek the quiet of my room at the Hôtel Moderne, and rest until dinner is served, though on the whole I think I should prefer to go to bed than to eat. CHAPTER XIII THE GREAT COURSE OF BELMONT--DIFFICULT STEERING--THE "CUP GORDON BENNETT"--DOWN THE MOUNTAINS TO CLERMONT-FERRAND The day opens cloudy, cold, and threatening and, as our way to Clermont lies over the high lands, good weather was to be desired. However, the fortunes of war vary. The entire journey is amongst the hills, mounting higher and higher, until the snow appears on the large peaks and it is cold, but no rain falls. We move forward very briskly; the weather must have instilled new life into the car though it was not needed. At Bourg we strike the great circuit, a circle from Clermont of some ninety kilos considered very fine for autos, though why I cannot understand. The road-bed is good and there are no trees on the side, but it is very circuitous and dangerous for fast machines. I am forced to call a halt on Jean as we are moving at a mile per minute down grade. That's not bad on a straightaway course such as we have found many times, but on these curves it is another thing. To my mind we have passed dozens of roads to be preferred to this for speeding. We reach Rochefort at half past twelve and after racing through the wind since half past eight are too cold to go farther without something to eat, and so we stop at a wretched little inn where, however, the welcome makes up for its appearance. Two Angora cats immediately adopt me as their father, and decline to leave my chair. While the food is simple it is good, and much better than one would find in such places in our land. This is the land of prunes. You do not know how delicious they can be until you come here, and I must say that the "dirty little inn" has put up a very good meal for us. Pity we can't have that cheese at home, though I am almost ill because of it. The route from here on leads over the high mountain table-lands until the valley of Clermont-Ferrand comes in view far below us. From this point the descent is rapid, circuitous, and zigzaggy. I cannot imagine a worse one for high speed. It must have been selected because of the difficulty it presents in handling the great cars. Certainly the chauffeur who succeeds in driving such machines at a speed approaching the rapid, should receive a gold medal, and I doubt not that in the coming contest in July for the "Coupe Gordon Bennett" there will be numerous accidents, and I fear fatal ones. I should not care to be in a machine on that occasion.[1] While all this is in consideration we reach the brow of the hill from whence the view down into the Valley of Clermont-Ferrand is superb. From its centre rises the city on a hill with its cathedral in the midst and the whole surrounded by an extended plain, encompassed by a circle of domes, all craters whose life died out almost before time began. [1] Strange to relate there were no casualties and few accidents. Our flight down the mountains is swift and we soon arrive at the excellent little Hôtel de l'Univers. As it has begun to rain, the shelter is very acceptable, and I am cold with my ride of two hundred kilos from Tulle. We left there at nine o'clock and reached here at three, with an hour's stoppage for luncheon, curving up and down the mountains most of the route. That's about forty miles an hour, quite fast enough. On reaching Clermont we learn that already, to-day, there has been a smash-up on the circle. A big auto, with three men, crashed into a tree and then over a bank. Result, three men in the hospital and one expensive ninety horse-power machine a total wreck, loss up in the thousands. The owner had brought the auto here to try the course before the races come on, and yesterday departed for Italy, leaving it in charge of a young man of fifteen. Said young man took two of his friends out in it to-day and essayed the zigzags, with the result above mentioned. Clermont-Ferrand, the ancient capital of Auvergne, is now a city of some fifty thousand people,--a city on a hill in the midst of encircling mountains rising to some five thousand feet above, extinct volcanoes all of them. The city possesses a stately cathedral, surrounded by a maze of narrow crooked streets where the lover of the artistic finds many a bit of beauty to delight the eye,--both beauty in stone and beauty in flesh and blood, for the maidens of Clermont are pleasant to look upon, and also in all her streets and almost every court you will come across some ancient façade or delicate staircase of stone most beautifully carved and mellow with age, and you will spend many hours wandering at will until darkness drives you within doors. CHAPTER XIV CLIMBING A MOUNTAIN IN AN AUTO--THE CHÂTEAU OF TOURNOËL--ITS HISTORY--DESCENT OF THE MOUNTAIN. Morning breaks with a cloudless sky and brilliant sunshine. This little city bubbles all over with life and, it being Sunday, every one is out for a good time. It is all so attractive that I decide to remain over for the day and night. That is one reason, but the second is the greater. I think it is absolutely imperative that the chauffeur have a day off now and then. The responsibility and strain is very great upon him. I can plainly detect it in Jean's face after a long day's run, more especially when the route has lain up and down the mountains like that of yesterday. Each instant of the day, every faculty is on the alert,--not only for the route ahead and behind but for what is going on in his machine. Every sound is full of meaning to his ears and anything unusual immediately attracts his attention. Yesterday while we were speeding at a rapid rate he suddenly stopped and got out, stating that there was a noise he could not account for. It turned out to be the clink of my umbrella handle on his air-pump, both of which lay in the hood; of course of no importance, but he was not sure, hence the stoppage. That is merely an incident told to show how careful a good chauffeur must be, and also how great the strain. Therefore if you desire continued perfect service you must give him a day off now and then. Jean is of the best of natures, and does not take advantage, as he might, of the whole day, but comes to me and states that we had better go this morning to a most interesting old castle and town some kilos away, as it may rain to-morrow. My man is better than a guide-book for he knows what is good and what of no interest, and I find that I do not miss anything. We start out after coffee and roll off into the hills nearby, mounting higher and higher every moment, until we come to the village of Volvic, where a route is pointed out, which leads to the old Château of Tournoël, far up in the mountains. I prepare to foot it, but Jean objects and turns the auto up hill. The route is but a country lane and not intended for machines, but up we go, turning and twisting ever higher and higher and I wait, wondering how long we can keep it up. Twenty-four horses have considerable power and when that power is condensed in one machine, it can do something, even considering the weight it must carry. So it proves now, for we climb like a cat and at a good pace until the castle walls frown directly above us, but even then Jean does not pause, but circles the ruins and mounting still higher comes to a halt directly under the great gateway and on a small platform not much larger than the automobile. How are we to get down, is a question which arises in my mind, even now, but do not cross a bridge until you reach it. Look rather at the superb panorama spread out before you. You are high up upon one of the domes which encircle Clermont. The vast plain stretches away below you, dotted here and there with picturesque towns, crossed by long highways, and overspread with splashes of pink and white fruit-tree blossoms. In the middle distance rises, upon a hill like that of Edinburgh, the city of Clermont, with its stately Cathedral crowning the summit. Immediately beyond is the Puy de Dôme and, stretching far away and up to the snow tops, circles the chain of mountains. Over all a brilliant sun sends glittering showers of light, and, though this is central France, Mt. Blanc can be seen on a clear day resting cloud-like on the horizon. The auto has ceased its puffing and we have been very silent for a long time gazing on that scene, and breathing the delicious perfume of spring arising from the valley, and the balsam of the pines from the woods around. It is Sunday and all the world up here is either asleep or gone to church. The little village of half a dozen houses, which clusters around this rock, gives no evidences of life. There is not even the bark of a dog, and the walls of the castle dominated by the great keep rise in silent majesty, while some white clouds drift by far up in a blue sky. The peace is intense and I regret to break in upon it, but there is the castle to be examined and I jangle an ancient bell at the great gateway, jangle and jangle, but no answer comes, until finally the bark of an old dog inside replies to my summons. He comes to the inside and barks again, plainly intimating that he is alone. It is Sunday and he was asleep and he wishes we would go away; _he_ cannot open the gate, any one should have sense enough to see that. The custodian, evidently a woman from the flowers in that window, must have gone to church and locked him in, but did she carry the key to that great lock? I doubt it and settle the question by lifting a smooth stone near the arch. Underneath are the keys and Jean and I are shortly on the other side of the great gateway with all the world, save the old dog, locked out. How charming! No one to bother one with useless tales of that of which they understand nothing, and full opportunity to wander at will over this enchanted place. The old dog returns to his slumbers before the door of a room where the custodian has evidently made a home for herself as though to tell us that there at least we must not enter. As for the rest, we may do as we desire. To his decision we pay due respect and leave him to his slumbers. The court of honour was once a splendid inclosure and its door-frames and windows still hold masses of fine carvings. On the far side, the donjon keep, a vast circular structure, rises more than one hundred feet above us. Mounting a flight of broken stairs, one comes to the ancient chapel, where the old custodian has erected an altar for herself and adorned it with some flowers and a picture of our Lady. These walls still show traces of painting and we find like traces in many of the rooms as we gaze up into them through the places where the floor used to be. The heavily carved chimney-places still retain their positions, tier above tier; that in the great hall with its pent-house roof could hold an ox. Reaching the battlements, we pass thence to the donjon, and find in its top two prisons, secure enough for the Iron Mask. In the floor of the lower one is an oubliette, through which, dropping a lighted paper, we watch it float downward until it rests far below, quite at the base of the tower one hundred feet beneath us. Those who went that way in the old days never returned to describe their experiences. This great tower holds nothing save those two donjons on top and that awful empty space downward; black as midnight, having no loopholes for any gleam of sunlight, though probably it mattered not. On descending by the outer wall we discover an opening leading into the base of that oubliette, and used, I should say, by the lord of the castle to discover whether life yet remained in his victims after that drop from the hole glimmering faintly far above us. There are other dungeons under the castle but nothing like this, which was the court of last resort, and one can picture the grimly smiling face of the jailer as he conducted his unsuspecting prisoner upon that rolling stone above. Even yet the blackness seems to resound with the shrieks of the poor wretch as he plunged downward, then, silence forever; while above the flag waved a summons to the Crusades "In the name of Christ" the compassionate, and the clouds drifted as idly by then as now. Gomot, in his interesting history of this castle, resents the generally accepted theory of this oubliette--holding rather that the tower was a last refuge for the besieged in this castle and this opening, yawning black before us, but the means of entrance from a ladder. I think him wrong, for all the vast space below shows no signs of any rest for a ladder, indeed the walls are smooth as a stone well for the entire one hundred feet. It is impossible to fix the date of the foundation of the Château de Tournoël, but like all old castles it was back in the time when such places were needed to protect the surrounding land from the barbarians of the adjoining mountains and used as often as an instrument of oppression. The name in Latin was Turnolium and has passed through many changes until to-day it is Tournoël. It is first mentioned in the eleventh century, but was very ancient at that period. Durand, Abbé of Chaise-Dieu, preached a crusade at that time. Bertrand was then Seigneur of the Château and such were his offences against the Church that Pope Grégoire excommunicated him, which promptly brought him to time. With Philip Augustus on the throne in 1180 we find him using Robert, Bishop of Clermont, as a weapon against his (Robert's) brother Guy, Count of Auvergne, and Lord of Tournoël, perhaps the most picturesque figure of that age and section, and long celebrated in song and story by the wandering minstrels. Audacious, brutal, gigantic in stature, and with long red hair, he knew no will save his own and reigned here like a king. His own brother, being betrayed into his hands, was confined in this donjon frowning above us and that created war in all the province, in which the Pope and the Church and State were involved. Count Guy did not fear the anathema of the Church in the least, and locked his Bishop brother up whenever he could catch him so that the journeys by force of Robert between his ecclesiastical city of Clermont, glistening in the sun over there, and this frowning fortress were frequent. War was forever on between them save when they united in a Crusade, but that was but a temporary interruption. Guy was finally summoned by the King to appear before him and answer for his sack of the rich abbeys of Marsat and Mozat. Refusing, war was declared against him by Church and King. Tournoël was considered impregnable with its lofty rampart, deep moat, and many towers, the whole placed so high upon the mountain that only the birds, one would think, could reach it. Three times the soldiers of the King made attacks only to be repulsed. Disease broke out amongst the royal forces and almost caused the siege to be abandoned. However, during a sortie by the garrison, the sons of Count Guy were taken prisoners, which finally caused a surrender of the fortress, and in the little chapel where the old custodian has her altar to-day were found all the stolen riches of the convents recently sacked. Those were gay days in France when knights would rather fight than eat, and bishops with great pleasure threw aside their copes for the sword. Here at Tournoël the castle was confiscated because of the felony of its lord. It passed to the care of Comte Guy de Dampierre and his successor restored it to Alphonse, Comte de Poitou, brother of St. Louis, and it became an appendage of the land of Auvergne. During the invasion of the English, Tournoël was several times attacked, but always without success. Later on we find the hands of Louis XI. at work, as ever, against the power of his nobles; in this case, by giving a charter to that little town of Volvic yonder and exciting it to rebellion against its high lords in Tournoël. As the years drift past, the history of the castle is painted also with the faces of many women, some good, mostly dissolute. During the reign of Francis I. it was repaired and restored by the Maréchal de St. André who had married its young _chatelaine_. Nothing was spared to make the work monumental and durable, yet the castle has been a ruin now for more than a hundred years. We spend a long time upon the tower and still there is no sign of life; no angry summons on the old bell from an astonished custodian, until one wonders whether there ever was any one save the old dog, or whether he alone is the custodian and if so, what shape he assumes on dark nights when the wind shrieks like lost souls around the Castle walls. It is warm and sunny to-day and we finally pass downward and out, locking the dog in and depositing the key where we found it, together with two francs. Just outside the gateway I pause to inspect an outer tower--one of the most curious bits of architecture I have ever seen. It is circular and formed by square, heavy blocks of lava, closely fitting together. Each block has carved upon it the half of a ball. There is a well in the enclosure and evidently this was the water supply for those in the Castle. I decide not to get into the auto until Jean has turned it around and I watch this manoeuvre with much interest and some fear as to results, for a sudden spurt would mean a fall of fifty feet and destruction all round. However, he manages it all as easily as I could a baby carriage, and we are shortly _en route_, skimming down the mountains and out onto the long white highways of the valley. CHAPTER XV ANCIENT TOWN OF RIOM--THE ROUTE TO VICHY--CHÂTEAU DE BOURBON-BUSSET--VICHY--THE LIFE THERE--DANGER OF SPEEDING--ARRIVAL AT BOURGES Returning to Clermont, we pass the old town of Riom, a very interesting relic of the days of Francis I. The walls have been removed but the town stands unchanged as it was constructed, and being built of blocks of lava from the Volvic quarries it will endure with time. Riom holds a beautiful chapel like the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, and many stately mansions with façades of the renaissance period. On a flight of steps are a group of Auvergne women with strong faces--faces one could trust. They are spinning and give no heed to our passing. As we are speeding through the streets, without warning, we are upon a baby carriage,--so near that it is impossible to stop and we strike it with great force. Believing that it holds a helpless child, one can fancy our feelings of horror, and also our feelings of thankful relief when out of it roll two empty milk cans. The old woman who owns it certainly makes more racket over her cans than she would have done over a baby. Our ride to Vichy is uneventful and short, over the usual fine roads. Dropping Yama and the baggage at the very excellent Hôtel Internationale we run out twelve miles to visit the Château de Bourbon-Busset, standing on a high plateau with a fine view of the valley of the Allier. The Château has been restored, which destroys the interest to my thinking and as we are not allowed to enter I can give no descriptions nor shall I attempt any description of Vichy. It is evidently a very gay place during the summer season and one which would never interest me in the least. And yet one cannot but pause an instant to compare Vichy with the great American watering-place, Saratoga, and very decidedly to the disparagement of the latter. Nature has not endowed Vichy as she has Saratoga. The French Spa lies flat--very flat--the surrounding country is not of interest and is the least beautiful through which we have passed. Yet what do we find? The entire section of the springs has been parked and finely cultivated. It holds the most gorgeous and largest casino in Europe--a building comprising vast halls for promenades, concerts, and balls, great halls for card-playing, the whole being surrounded by beautiful terraces. Of its kind the place is a fairy-land,--where art has done all that can be done. This holds with all the other spas of Europe. [Illustration: THE HOME OF MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ AT VICHY By permission of Jules Hautecoeur] What do we find in Saratoga? Nature there has done her best, and it should be the greatest sanatorium of our country. Where Vichy is only tolerable in summer, Saratoga's climate is superb the year round; and especially is this the case in winter, when it is in all respects equal to that of the Adirondacks, and it is within four hours of New York. Its hotels are so superior to those in Vichy that no comparison is possible. Its surrounding scenery is beautiful,--I do not refer especially to that on the lake side, though that might be made a superb drive at no great expense,--but rather to the many charming roads to the north and west. That scene from Mt. McGregor is a gem even in America, and it is totally neglected and the road thereto abandoned. The scenery to the westward of the town is in its way equally fine, yet how many of the thousands who go to Saratoga know anything about it. As for the springs, where are they and how are they used? A very few are in the park, which at one period with its detached white pagodas, was lovely. Observe the gimcrackery which adorns it now. The other springs are spread through a valley upon which all the back-yards, stable and otherwise abut,--a disgrace to the place. The waters are swallowed by the mob utterly regardless of their medicinal qualities or their effects--and with dire results. As I stated above the place might be the great sanatorium of our country the year round if our physicians would take it in hand. That has been done at the Hot Springs of Virginia, and has _made_ that place what it is, yet the waters there are as nothing when compared to those of Saratoga, which, according to the medical fraternity of Europe, has more and better springs than almost all of the spas of the old world put together. In Europe the visitor is warned to consult a physician before drinking the waters--so also at Hot Springs, Virginia. Nothing of the sort is attempted at Saratoga. The whole place is given over to gamblers and horse-racing. Reputable people, until within the last year or so, have been forced out of the great hotels and the future holds out no hope for the better. The people of the village have killed the goose provided by nature to lay their golden eggs. When they might make the place profitable the year round, they have deliberately sacrificed that opportunity for the few weeks--often dead failures--of midsummer. I speak strongly and feelingly, for I remember our beautiful "Springs" when they were the resort of all the best people in our land; and while many will not even to-day desert the spot, they are lost in the flood of the undesirables. [Illustration: RUE DE L'ÉTABLISSEMENT AT VICHY From a print] We start from Vichy on a threatening morning, but aside from a splash or two, have no rain, and a splendid trip all day. The roads are fine and we meet one or two autos. I do not know of anything more Satanic in appearance than a great auto passing one at full speed. Just now one came upon us unheard because of the high winds and passed with a swerve and a swish that made us gasp. Long, low and rakish, and dark grey in color, it sped by like a spirit of evil making our motion appear as nothing. The occupants clothed in furs and goggled turned, mouthing and shrieking upon us because we had not given way, which we should have done had we been aware of their approach. The appearance of the whole thing was devilish. There was no danger in the passing as the road was of ample width and we were upon our own side. It seems a question to me in great emergencies as to what a man in a great machine is to do. Mr. Croker, for instance, certainly sacrificed his life to the man on the motor cycle, who, to my thinking, had no business on a course where he knew those great machines were speeding and where they had come for that purpose only. On a highway it is another matter. Mr. Croker certainly knew also that when a machine is making such tremendous speed it is dangerous in the extreme to swerve. Of course it is horrible to run down a man and one would scarcely recover from the effects of so doing, yet self-preservation is the first law of nature. He certainly gave his life to save that of the other man who had no business on the course. I think I should have saved my own life and I do not consider that I am cold-blooded in saying so. It was another case with us to-day. If, on the highway, in approaching from the rear you cannot securely pass on you _must_ stop, there is only one law as to that. We should have slaughtered no end of men and beasts had we done otherwise and as the roads are open to all from the little work dogs to the great machines, each must exercise discretion and obey the laws of the land. So we shrieked back defiance at the mouthing monsters and kept upon the even tenor of our way. As for these very fast machines on the main roads, they should not be permitted. Every railroad is forced to maintain gates at the crossings or to pass over or under the highways, though these trains rarely exceed forty miles an hour. Yet great autos are permitted to exceed sixty miles an hour down the crowded highways. There certainly would appear to be an inconsistence in allowing the latter to traverse the length of the roads at high speed, while the former may not even cross them without gates. Again, if the tremendous speed is to be permitted, then certain routes should be set apart and the traveling world advised as to what they have to expect; otherwise loss of life, of man and beast, will occur constantly. Yet, again, if such speed is permitted the authorities should hold those who avail themselves of this permission blameless for accidents which the authorities know are bound to occur. Our route lay all day long through smiling valleys guarded by ancient towns and picturesque castles, which I should like to have inspected but we have lost much time in stupid Vichy and the day is fine. Also my letters are waiting at Tours. So we pass Moulins, lunch at Nevers, which is interesting, and reach Bourges in due time. No rain and a glorious run, all ill health, if there was any, driven completely out of one by the rushing winds of spring. We enter Bourges on a bright afternoon. The ancient city is steeped in sunshine and the towers and flying buttresses of the great cathedral glitter as though coated in gold. Our modern machine looks strangely out of place here as it rolls noisily through the narrow streets and one almost expects to be challenged by the sentries of the King and the reason for our intrusion demanded. But the gabled houses make no complaint; no men at arms sound rude alarms from the ancient palace of Charles VII.; and we descend at the Inn of the Boule d'Or amidst all the busy chatter of a provincial establishment. A "Madame" as usual welcomes us, but while she is showing my room to Yama I slip off on foot for a tour of the ancient city. CHAPTER XVI ANCIENT BOURGES--ITS CATHEDRAL--HOUSE OF JACQUES COEUR--LOUIS XI. AND THE HÔTEL LALLEMENT--THE HÔTEL CUJAS--THE RIDE TO MEILLANT--ITS SUPERB CHÂTEAU--ITS LEGEND Bourges, the ancient capital of Berry. The very name brings to the mind visions of stately days, panoramas of mediæval France, and those who come here will find the theatre of those times still intact. The great cathedral around which every thing centres remains unchanged in all its majesty; crooked streets, narrow and dark, yet in this sunshine cheerful withal, wind off and away from it down into the old city. If you take that one to your right you will find the house where Louis XI. was born; or the one to the left will lead you straight to the palace of "Jacques Coeur" as they call him; turn in any direction and these old streets will show you houses and palaces of the long ago, smiling down upon you or retiring in magnificent seclusion behind high walls. You may here have, if you so desire it, memories of Julius Cæsar, as he besieged this city, but the figures which flit across the shafts of sunlight move in stately procession into the cathedral or steal stealthily off into the shadows are to me those of the Maid, of the weak Charles, of the generous Jacques,--or of the malign and terrible Louis XI., the latter bent perhaps upon an urgent errand to poison his father a little more in yonder Castle of Mehun on the river Yèvre. [Illustration: THE SOUTH PORTAL OF THE CATHEDRAL AT BOURGES By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] Bourges was evidently a Court City, a home of the aristocracy; even to-day with its air of seclusion it impresses the beholder as very much the fine gentleman. Your automobile clothes worry you, you feel an inclination to return to your hotel and don silks and velvets, a plumed hat and sword and high-heeled shoes, as you may be summoned into the presence of the King to be questioned as to your purpose in coming here and also about that strange and devilish machine which in old times would have brought you to the stake promptly, unless you could have first induced His Majesty to take a ride through the sunny lands stretching out on all sides of the ancient city. After which Louis would probably have locked you up in one of his cages and kept the machine. In these days of flying, many pass this way to whom the stones of Bourges are dumb, but such is often the case. At Monte Carlo I met the owner of a great machine, who stared at me in dumb amazement when I asked him what he thought of Carcassonne. Actually he had not even seen it,--had sped by under the very walls of that vision on the hill and not known it was there,--remembered nothing save that he did not like the hotel in the modern town. Likewise later in Tours, when I asked one of the ancient faith, from America, what he thought of the châteaux which make Touraine an open book which he who runs may read, he replied that he would not give two dollars for the whole lot. He had "left Biarritz at eight o'clock in the morning" and "would reach Paris on record breaking time." _His_ machine "was the best on the road"--a swish, and a swirl, a cloud of dust, a starting, and a getting there, that was his idea of what automobile life should be, causing one to regret that so many at home through lack of means can never see these places save in dreams, while unstinted gold is thrown away upon those who cannot appreciate them. But all that has little to do with the ancient city of Bourges. It is to-day a town of some fifty thousand inhabitants, and its modern section holds a great arsenal and a gun foundry. Its streets are gay with the uniforms of many soldiers; its cafés bubbling over with life. Until the Maid delivered Orleans it was the capital of France. It possessed a university upon whose rolls appeared the names of Calvin and Cujas. It has been devastated by fire and sword, but I think its darkest day must have been that upon which Louis XI. first saw the light in yonder curious Hôtel Lallement; but let us pass on now and visit first the cathedral, considered by these people to be the most magnificent in France, and as one stands before its five great portals, each crowned with superb carvings, while far above soar the flying buttresses and great towers, the whole bathed in the mellow light of a setting sun, it surely is majestic, most impressive, and while perhaps not so perfect as Chartres it must delight the soul of an architect. Its location is especially fine. It stands high and is approached by long flights of steps up which the people are crowding for Vespers, to which the mellow tones of the old bells are summoning the faithful. As I enter and pass forward under the lofty arches, an ancient clock raps out the passing hour with a cheery tone and the great organ floods the silence with waves of melody. The church is especially rich in ancient glass through which the sunlight filters in long streams of colour touching here the living, bowed in prayer, and yonder an effigy of one long since dead,--dead for the sake of the Cross and holy Jerusalem. One is permitted to wander unattended wherever fancy dictates, which is always a pleasure to the lover of these old shrines, and so one may enter into their soul and spirit until the stones almost speak. Here to-day it is quiet enough, back in the chapel of the Virgin behind the high altar, where it would be dark but for the trembling lights before the sacred image, and deserted, save for one old dame muttering her petitions. Gazing backward the majestic double aisles reach away until lost in perspective and the roof of the nave in the fading light is so far above one as almost to seem a portion of the sky. Kings, princes, and people have passed by and left no mark, and the flying centuries have added to the beauty of this sacred edifice. A subdued murmur with the scraping of many chairs tells that the service is ended, and I pass with the people out on the great square to the south, gay with spring flowers and the brilliant scarlet of many uniforms. This is the hour when Bourges takes its pleasure and all the phases of that life so peculiar to France go on where once the walls of the city stood. That black _caniche_ is taking excellent care of the baby in the wagon while its nurse flirts with the soldier boy. Those two officers, gorgeous in scarlet and gold, have so far made no impression upon those girls in yonder window, while from the cathedral come the black-robed priests to bask awhile in the sunshine of this world. The old dame in the _kiosque_, after selling me many postal cards, and giving me many bits of information about those around us but which I shall not repeat here, assures me that I shall find the "most interesting house" of Jacques Coeur far down yonder crooked street and that there is yet time to inspect it before the day ends; so I wander on to where it stands, a monument to the enterprise of one of the best of French citizens, also a monument to the ingratitude of one of the poorest and weakest of French kings. [Illustration: THE PALACE OF JACQUES COEUR, AT BOURGES By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] Jacques Coeur was a famous silversmith of vast wealth, to whom Charles VII. applied for funds and who was taken at his word that "all that I have is thine." Jealousy and the sense of obligation on the part of all from the king down caused his destruction. He was accused of debasing the coinage, and of poisoning Agnes of Sorel. Sentenced to death he was saved by the Pope, and banished, and he finally died while leading a naval expedition for the Pontiff against the Turks. In this little Place you will pause a moment, ere you enter his still perfect palace, to gaze upon his statue which stands facing the house. The countenance is beautiful while stern, yet it possesses none of those attributes of craft necessary to meet such enemies as are raised up only to envy and jealousy. The house, as you see, shows a stately façade to the street and stands unchanged to-day, having been spared in the great revolution because of its history. One may even pull the same handle which jangles the same bell hung there by Jacques Coeur when the Maid of Orleans was alive. His misfortunes made him immortal on earth and his generosity to France has preserved his house to us, a quaint and curious structure of the olden days. Note the courtyard and its curious carving, also the ceilings of the guard-rooms shaped like inverted boats. The reception-room of Jacques is now a court-room and where he gave all to his country and received no justice in return, justice is administered impartially, let us hope, to the French of to-day. After all, his life was not a failure, as he is not forgotten, and the desire to be remembered on this earth is, I think, greater than the desire to enter heaven. Certainly, it is the source of all ambition. Bourges, however, possesses another figure in history which is better remembered by the world than that of Jacques, probably because wickedness always carves more deeply than goodness upon the pages of history and the life of a nation. Few in the world will remember who Jacques Coeur was, none can ever forget the crafty King Louis XI. and here in Bourges his sinister shadow was first cast athwart the life of France, for here in the Hôtel Lallement he was born. [Illustration: HÔTEL LALLEMENT AT BOURGES By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] It is more fitting to inspect such a spot after dark, and, as the moon shines brightly to-night, let us go. Leave the hotel and pass up the second crooked street to your left, the Rue Lallement, and you will find a queer old façade, with no evidence of life anywhere near it. The street is so narrow that one can almost touch the houses on either side and the moon can scarcely illumine the centre, much less the dark corners. A French officer, leaning from a casement, asks what I am looking for, and tells me to pull the old bell handle. Doing so brings the custodian who is surprised at a visit by night and suggests that daylight would be better. "Not for _this_ house surely," and I insist upon entering. I follow him across the quaint courtyard, which is alternately in deep shadow or the intense light of the moon, where carved faces grin at us as the wicked old king used to leer at his nobles. The house is not large but it possesses some curious apartments. Note the little chapel and the room near it, a good-sized chamber with heavy beams crossing a sagging ceiling and holding a deep fire-place facing the door. Here Louis was born to the delight of his father, Charles VII, who later on starved himself to death in the neighbouring castle of Mehun through fear of poison by this same son. [Illustration: CHÂTEAU OF MEHUN NEAR BOURGES By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] The old house is oppressed with these memories and the shadows are deep upon it, while the stealthy foot-falls in the street without might belong to the emissaries of that dreadful King. However, they are those of the law-abiding citizens of the Republic in this year of grace, 1905, and one may move without fear of any soul through the ancient city, and if your interest takes you to the museum in the old Hôtel Cujas, once the residence of the great Juris-consul, of that name when the University existed here (from 1465 to 1793,) you will find a statue of Louis, probably the best portrait extant, and you will remember the evil face for long thereafter. This Hôtel Cujas holds much that is curious, but it is itself of more interest than its contents, and the streets of Bourges are lined with many interesting structures, and those who pass by Bourges in the rushing mode of this twentieth century pass by one of the gems of France. The old dame in the _kiosque_ told me that I should not depart without a visit to the neighbouring Château of Meillant, now the property of the Duc de Mortemart. So, as it is but twenty-eight miles to the south, we are off and away, delaying our onward progress until after luncheon. The roads are superb and the morning divine. From Bourges to St. Amand the highway is a straight line and, as we descend, it stretches away until lost in perspective, a magnificent route for high speed, and as Jean puts the auto to its best; we skim along scarcely seeming to touch the earth,--hills rise and fall, and the motion is joyous, while the spring winds sweep the dreams of dead kings off and away, leaving only the smell of the grasses and blossoming fruit trees. We pause but once, and then, as we pass one of the many curious groups to be found on these highways. This time there are half a dozen mounted police gorgeous in high boots and blue and black uniforms, gravely regarding a travelling circus. The dancing bear, erect by his owner, solemnly contemplates our passing, while the trained ape glares and evinces a desire to go along. Indeed, I should not have been surprised to find him enthroned in the place of Yama, left behind in Bourges, nor, if he had donned Yama's blue glasses, could I have been certain which was which, save that the ape possesses a more expressive countenance. The Château of Meillant stands in a pleasant park on the road to St. Amand-Mont-Rond. It is in perfect condition and is occupied by its owner every summer. It is a Renaissance pile of great antiquity, the original portions dating from 1100. The illustration gives one a better idea of its exterior than any description can furnish, while its interior shows a succession of rooms splendid in themselves and full of objects of beauty and interest. [Illustration: THE CHÂTEAU AT MEILLANT By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] The façade in the illustration is not the oldest part of the château. Pass around to the other side and, overlooking the forest, you will find the Tour des Sarasins, the only remaining portion of the feudal castle and evidently forming at one period a part of the outer fortifications. There is also the Ladies' Tower and the Tower of the Chatelaine, but the most beautiful,--that shown in the illustration--is the Tower of the Lion, with its great spiral staircase, by means of which the traveller will enter the great drawing-room with its gorgeously coloured and heavily raftered ceiling, and its fire-place, with an immense mantel, that holds a gallery for musicians. The château is not only magnificent in itself and superbly furnished, but it is one that can be used and is used to live in. It is called the most splendid of its kind in France, and as you mount to its towers and look abroad, you discover that it stands in the heart of a vast forest, twenty thousand acres in extent, so the custodian tells me, and, as we sit perched high up among the grotesque gargoyles and strange carving of the tower, he weaves the château's legend into this. They say that this forest of Meillant is haunted by wolves of the demon order, and that one of them holds the spirit of a woman, who prowls these shadows nightly and pauses ever under the window of the former chamber of the Chevalier Bayard, who once came here to see the king and who did not respond to her advances,--in revenge for which she inserted a dreadful bit, of fangs of iron, into his horse's mouth before the battle of Milan, and so, nearly caused the death of Bayard and the loss of that conflict. Pursuing him even to his death, in the Battle of Pavia, he escaped her only by kissing the cross in his sword hilt as his spirit ascended to God and she fled shrieking away into the darkness. Now she must forever haunt the aisles of this ghostly forest in the shape of a werewolf, and it is said that on misty, moonless nights you may even see the fire of her eyes and hear her dismal howls. As I listen to this legend I wonder whether she has not perchance taken for to-day the shape of that ape which glared so malignantly at me on that hill yonder as we came down here. The world of travel does not come often to Meillant, but perhaps now in the days of auto cars the traveller may discover it. If so he will be amply repaid. I pause a moment as I depart to inspect an exquisite little chapel in the court, and then pass away to the outer gate, where I find a dark-eyed daughter of France sitting on the steps of my machine. She has allowed Jean to bring it within the gates, and smiles pleasantly at my recognition of her courtesy, and so we glide away into the dim aisles of the forest on the return ride to Bourges. [Illustration: THE GRAND SALON OF THE CHÂTEAU OF MEILLANT By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] CHAPTER XVII DEPARTURES FROM BOURGES--THE CHÂTEAU OF MEHUN--THE DEATH OF CHARLES VII.--THE VALLEYS OF TOURAINE--ROADS BY THE LOIRE--ENTRANCE TO TOURS After luncheon in Bourges, we set out for Tours, bidding the old city a reluctant farewell. Jean's interest in his country seems great, and he is always delighted when I bid him slow down or stop to visit some spot in passing. Ten miles out from Bourges we do so to inspect all that is left of the Castle of Mehun-sur-Yèvre where Charles VII. passed many years of his life with Agnes of Sorel, the earlier ones in indolence and the latter in horror of Louis, until, as I have stated, he starved himself to death for fear of poison by that same son. The accompanying illustration shows this château as it stands to-day. It suffered in the Revolution, but not until 1812 were the rooms of Agnes and the King destroyed. To-day two of the towers of the castle alone remain to testify to its former state. They are majestic structures built of very beautiful granite, rising in massive grandeur from the bosom of the swift flowing Yèvre, and on the whole, are the finest towers I have seen in France. We glide away through a stately gateway and off on our ride to Tours through the province of Touraine. It is, of course, beautiful. We are in the valley of the Cher almost the entire distance. Picturesque old towns and châteaux smile upon us from every nook and hill, and the river sings merrily. Yonder is Chenonceaux with its fantastic pinnacles and odd construction spanning the river. I visited it years ago before the old furniture had been sold and when it stood unchanged as it had been for centuries, so I do not care to see it now when it would be found full of modern stuff, a Court dame in an Edgeware Road frock, as it were. Towards three, the towers of Tours Cathedral and the older tower of St. Martin's loom up before us and as we mount to the summit of a hill the city lies spread out before us. Here at the junction of the Cher and the Loire our route is just above the water, a long smooth road with no trees, winding away before us, over which the auto flies as though anxious to reach its goal and have done with the day's journey. We enter the busy streets of the city, and passing on to the Hôtel de l'Univers, we leave mediæval France and rural life behind us. Here all is bustle and roar. How the times have changed the place; When I first knew Tours it was a sleepy old town where people came to rest and to learn French. It was also a cheap place in which to live. Now, with the coming of autos, all that is gone. This hotel is one of the most expensive in France and the city roars with the passing machines. There are twenty in and around this house now, making it at times difficult to be heard and most unpleasant. This is on the highway to Spain and the châteaux bring many travellers to Touraine. It is a singular sight to see an auto puffing and snorting just within the arch of an ancient castle with the teeth of the portcullis projecting above and seemingly about to descend upon it,--but--letters and papers from home drive thoughts of Europe off and away and I spend the rest of the day back in my own land once more and dream of it all night long. CHAPTER XVIII RIDE TO LOCHES--AN ACCIDENT--THE CASTLE OF LOCHES--ITS HISTORY--THE CAGES OF LOUIS XI.--THEIR COST TO THE KING--AGNES OF SOREL--THE MISTRESSES OF FRENCH KINGS VERSUS THEIR QUEENS Life is all sparkle to-day in this fair city of Tours, her people are evidently happy and we are not the least so as the car flies down the wide avenues, through her Champs-Élysées, and crossing the river, turns south-eastward through smiling meadows, where the sheep are grazing and the people wave at us as we pass. Some miles out on a long stretch of highway we are rapidly approaching a train of a dozen empty carts, each bearing a man and a woman, and, between the rattle of the carts and the clattering tongues of their occupants, I fancy the outer world and its sounds are completely drowned. However, we have a clear stretch to their left, can easily pass without danger, and are skimming onward with little thought of a catastrophe when, as we reach the last cart but one forward, it quietly draws out immediately across our track, evidently to allow the occupants to gossip with greater ease with those of the cart in front. Jean shuts off all power, puts on all breaks, we all shriek and horn and trumpet, to the utter confusion of the peasants, who drive in every direction save the right one, like a flock of chickens. There is no averting a collision, but we minimise as far as possible its danger and it results in nothing worse than a bent lamp as we bang into the tail-board of the cart, causing the old lady and gentleman therein to turn complete somersaults and land by the wayside,--reeds shaken by the winds, as it were,--but the winds of heaven were like unto a dead calm when compared with the clatter and shrieks which arose around us. I am afraid the remarks were personal, though the ancient dame who was dumped into the grass, when I told her her tongue was as long as her arm and had caused all the damage, looked at me in grand amaze and said--nothing. She knew that it was true and she knew also that the others would tell her that it _was_ true after we had vanished. At least I think the unfortunates of her village will be safe from the organ for a day or so. [Illustration: THE CHÂTEAU OF LOCHES From a photograph] The day changes as we move onward, and under clouds and through a gloomy forest we near the towers of Loches,[2] the most remarkable relic extant of the darkest days of the Middle Ages, the favourite abode of Louis XI. Doubtless he had many times approached over this same road and down this way his victims must have passed, the most of them to disappear forever,--certainly Cardinal Balue came this way from Plessis-lès-Tours, to occupy a cage of his own designing for many years. The forest drops away, and off across a valley we obtain our first glimpse of the château, its great square towers rising dark and forbidding, while all around it clusters the ancient city with its convent, church, and palace. The panorama is not so fantastic as that of Carcassonne, there are not so many pinnacles, barbettes, and curious towers, it is not backed by a glowing sky, but the whole is somber, majestic, and gloomy,--a fitting appearance for a château with such history. [2] Pronounced "Loche." As we roll onward up its narrow streets, the clouds lower and we are forced to take refuge under cover; but the rain does not last long and shortly we come out again, leaving the church and palace to our left, and noting as we move onward that while Carcassonne possessed few, if any, private houses of the nobility, these streets present many even to-day. Interesting façades rise around us at every turn, but with the castle before us we do not pause until under the shadow of its great gateway. I know of nothing in Europe more impressive of its kind than this entrance to the Château of Loches. It is absolutely unchanged by the flight of years. The moat, the drawbridge, the low-browed heavy portal, with the great square donjon rising above, inspire me with a greater respect for the power of that old King Louis, and, as I clang the bell, I wonder whether I may come out again once these portals close behind me,--a question I put to the bright-eyed French woman who smilingly admits me and as smilingly assures me that I may indeed go hence. [Illustration: THE ENTRANCE TO THE CHÂTEAU OF LOCHES From a photograph] Once inside, the great tower, which replaced an ancient Roman fortress in the eleventh century, rises one hundred and thirty feet before me in all its majesty. One does not see from here that it is but an empty shell, yet on entering it loses none of its impressiveness as one gazes upward through its vastness, noting where the floors were, and even from below descrying the many inscriptions carved by the weary prisoners of the King. I can distinctly see from here one deeply cut, "Help--God or man," which tells its own story. In this donjon--except the floors--there is nothing which could be consumed by fire. Its walls are nine feet in thickness at their base and six at the summit. The interior shows a deep well which communicated by subterranean passages with all the feudal châteaux in the neighbourhood, and was used to re-victual the Castle in times of siege. That this great tower was the royal residence in feudal days can be seen by the divisions on the walls. Such prisoners as were here confined were of little importance as they possessed light and fresh air. The little donjon adjoining the greater served as the residence of the Governor and communicated with the former tower by staircases in the thickness of the walls. It was in this section of the castle that history was made throughout so many centuries. We first hear of it when Foulques le Roux, Count of Anjou, acquired it by marriage in 879--but of all the lives lived out here before this date there is no tale remaining to us. It became the cradle of the Plantagenet race. John of England ceded the Castle to Philip Augustus in 1192, but Coeur de Lion on his return from captivity objecting, took it by storm; again it passed to France after a year's siege by Philip Augustus in 1205. Bells rang out for the wedding in this queer place of James V. of Scotland and Madeline of France, but that was after the days of Louis XI, and really nothing else holds the attention of the traveller here to-day save this King, sordid and devilishly horrible. The great donjon does not contain the most famous and fearful of Louis's prisons. You must pass on to the right and enter the smaller towers to find the cages where he placed those high in his favour. Both in the round tower and the Martelet and every tower of the outer walls, you will find dungeon under dungeon, high up or far underground, where the sun never shines and where men learned to see in the black darkness, as the carvings and names testify, for, rest assured, Louis allowed no lights to his guests in Loches. Passing onward, the traveller enters the round tower built by Louis. It is still in very excellent condition. Here one finds all the original floors in place. Here are the guard-rooms and many prisons,--used as such by the town to-day,--amongst them the great conical chamber where hung the famous iron and wooden cage of Cardinal Balue--an invention of his own, in which for conspiracy with Charles le Téméraire he spent eleven years, though some authorities state that it was but three. The tower is shaped like a vast cistern with a conical top, its walls are circular and there are slit-like apertures, through which the wind moans, and the sunlight could never come save in stray shafts, making the shadows deeper by contrast. [Illustration: THE CAGE IN WHICH JEAN DE LA BALUE WAS IMPRISONED FOR ELEVEN YEARS] Down the passage yonder, which communicates underground with the great donjon, Louis and his Tristan entered to torment the Cardinal, swinging like a huge bird in his cage. The walls still show two holes in each side into which the beams supporting the cage, were inserted,--the chains from each corner thereof met in a ring at the top, which was fastened into the beams and turned on a pivot. The cage composed of wood, bound and riveted with iron, formed a cube four feet in size, wherein its occupant could neither lie down or stand up, and there the Cardinal spent eleven years exposed and yet confined. A singular refinement of torture that. This cage in Loches, in which the historian Philippe de Comines was also confined, was very different from that in the Bastille,--the prison for fourteen years of the Bishop of Verdun. The expense account of the period holds the following item concerning that cage: "For making a great wooden cage of heavy beams, joists, and rafters, measuring inside nine feet long by eight broad and seven high between the planks, mortised and bolted with great iron bolts, which has been fixed in a certain chamber of one of the towers of the Bastille St. Antoine, in which said cage, is put and kept, by command of our Lord the King, a prisoner that before inhabited an old, decayed, and worn-out cage. Used in making said new cage ninety-six horizontal beams and fifty-two perpendiculars, ten joists each eighteen feet long; employed in squaring, planing, and fitting all the said woodwork in the yard of the Bastille, nineteen carpenters for twenty days,--used in the cage two hundred and twenty great iron bolts nine feet long,--with plates and nuts for fastening of said bolts, the iron weighing three thousand seven hundred and thirty-five pounds,--besides eight heavy iron _equières_, for fixing the said cage in its place with cramp-irons and nails weighing all together two hundred and eighteen pounds, without reckoning the iron for the trellis work of the windows of the chamber in which said cage has been placed, the iron bars of the door of the chamber and other articles. The whole amounts to three hundred and seventeen livres, five sol and seven deniers." A great, cubical mass of masonry, iron, and woodwork, its windows so thickly latticed with bars of iron that no glass was visible,--its door, one large flat stone like a tomb,--a door for entrance only! "Our Lady!" exclaimed the King, "here is a cage out of all reason." Therefore he curtailed expenses and space when he caused to be constructed the habitation for his Eminence of Balue, and then again there was exercise for the Cardinal as the cage was swung to and fro or whirled on its pivot at the bidding of Louis. What a picture! The great, gloomy, conical shaped prison, with the cage swinging to and fro, now in dense shadow and anon in the rift of sunlight shooting in through the slits in the wall,--the grotesque figure of the wretched old King crouching on the incline in yonder passage mumbling prayers before the leaden figures of the Virgin with which his greasy old hat is laden, and stopping now and then to command Tristan to "further agitate his Eminence." It is not reported that any remarks came from the Cardinal in the cage for he knew he had been guilty of treason and hope was not for him. Cages would appear to have been the fad of King Louis. There were two in Loches, and one at the old palace of the Tournelles. The one in the Bastille was evidently too spacious (9 x 8 x 7 feet), and it was considered necessary to attach a ball to the ankle of the unfortunate Bishop of Verdun, who, it is also stated, was the originator of these cages and not Cardinal Balue. It was a distinction scarcely coveted, I fancy, to be confined in one of these "filets du Roi." The cages in Loches existed in perfect condition until the days of 1789, when they were destroyed and the wood given to the poor, but a relic of one still exists in the barred door through which you pass into the corridor just outside. That is the same door which shut in the Cardinal for so many years, and you feel like leaving one of your number--not your heir at law--on guard, to see that it does not do likewise for yourself. Knowing Louis, one is quite certain that these prisoners were not allowed to feel forgotten, as Louis XIV. probably forgot Matthioli, the Man of the Iron Mask, whose master, Charles of Mantua, was in Paris when he died in 1703. It is very doubtful whether master or captor would, at first, have remembered who the poor wretch was who was being dragged to his grave in the Cemetery of St. Paul whilst they feasted in the Luxembourg. The Bastille witnessed few such horrors as those so common within the walls of Loches. Passing up the corridor to lesser prisons, one comes to a chamber with a vast chimney where the question, ordinary and extraordinary, was applied, and where one still finds many of the instruments of torture. I know of no more gruesome spot on earth than this castle, unless it be those chambers at Nuremberg, where chamber after chamber is filled with every conceivable instrument of torture until one stands shuddering before the Iron Virgin. Still, after all, those chambers and their instruments meant a speedy death, but Louis knew that life, as he could dole it out here, was more horrible than _any_ death. It is a relief to mount a winding stair in the thickness of the walls and emerge into the free fresh air. The panorama over city and rolling country is charming, and my red auto down there at the portal re-assuring, but neither can hold us long from a renewed contemplation of this château. Passing down into the court, we cross a grassy enclosure towards the walls, and the tower of the Martelet, where we descend ninety-six steps into prisons cut in the solid rock, passing four floors of them; the first was for ordinary prisoners and is of no interest, as there is too much sunlight and air. In the dungeon just below was imprisoned for ten years Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, a prisoner of Louis XII. in 1500. These walls are covered with carvings made during those ten years. There are many inscriptions and this carved face before us is said to be his portrait. Below is the name: "Ludovico." A sort of shadow of daylight penetrates through a small, heavily barred window in the wall twelve feet thick, and opposite this Ludovico deeply engraved in the stone a dial plate, which permitted him to know the passing of the hours. Further downward in the rock you find another prison where Francis I. confined the father of Diane de Poitiers, whose hair whitened in a single night. This prison is more gloomy than the one above it. We find here the name of one of the officers in the Scotch guard of Louis XI., "Ebenezer Kelburn." In the centre of the chamber there is an oubliette to the darkness below. Down there are the fosses waiting for more victims, which in the days when this chamber above was used for the torture, were not slow in coming. [Illustration: LOUIS XI. From the engraving by Hoopwood] Pontbrillant, governor of Loches, who certainly knew all the secrets of the donjons found an iron door which, upon being forced open, led in to a long passage cut in the rock, which conducted to a chamber far under ground, where was seated upon a stone a gigantic man, holding his head in his hands. The admission of the air reduced him instantly to dust, and in like manner, there crumbled away a little coffer of wood which had enclosed some linen, very white and carefully folded. Who or what he had been was never known. In the oubliette of the tower, is to be read an inscription which shows that the Revolution placed its seal upon Loches: "Without fear, we destroy the high walls, break the chains, and cause to disappear the tortures invented by the King, too weak to arrest a people moving to liberty.--1785" Doubtless this fortress would repay weeks of research and yield up many a present unknown dungeon, each with its grizzly horror and tale of distress. Against modern artillery it would have little show, but in the Middle Ages it was almost impregnable. The great donjon and inner sections surrounded by its immense wall, with many towers, is in its turn encompassed by a moat completely isolating the whole. The second line of fortifications established subsequently by Philip Augustus comprised also a moat "twenty-five metres in depth," and bastions flanked by round towers and "tours à bec." On the top of the bastions which were a mile and a half in circuit was a road protected by double walls. One of its outer gates is called the "Gate of the Queen," because Maria de Medici entered there after her escape from Blois in 1619. That there is so much of Loches standing to-day is probably due to the knowledge of the destroyers of 1793 that Louis, while he would hang a few of the people now and then, turned most of his attention to the upper classes. One was sure of good company if one went to the gibbet or to jail in those days of the fifteenth century. Loches does not appear to have been inhabited often by royalty after the reign of Louis XII. when the usefulness of such fortresses passed away, but it stood in perfect condition until 1793, and what is left will endure while time lasts, an object of intense interest to all who behold it. The clouds lower darker and darker as we move to leave this forbidding spot. The air is heavy as though laden with the sorrows of those who never left it, even after death; the winds sough through the ghostly trees, causing their branches to rattle against the walls of the great donjon like skeleton fingers,--and it is with a feeling of relief that we hear the outer portal clang behind us and know that we are outside. As I pause a moment, I can distinguish the sound of the foot-falls of my late guide, dying away fainter and fainter inside, and then silence deep and unbroken settles over the Château of Loches. In the town there is a cathedral and a royal palace and the whole was at one time surrounded by a great outer wall. Though the general effect is not so picturesque as Carcassonne, it is far more majestic, and its inspection amply repays all the time one can give while Carcassonne is a disappointment from the time one enters its inner portals. There is another name, Agnes of Sorel, connected with Loches,--the only mortal who ever produced one manly act in the weak Charles VII. All the good of his reign appears to be traceable to her influence and it is easily believed that she could not be acceptable to the dark spirit of Louis XI. Insulted and driven from the Court, she died, many assert by poison from his agents. She left a large dower to the Church of St. Ours here, and there she was buried. In the succeeding reign, the monks, after having secured the inheritance, alleging scruples as to her life, requested permission to remove her remains, which Louis granted, provided the inheritance was returned. That placed a different light upon the matter and she rested in peace until the Revolution scattered her ashes to the winds. Her tomb now stands in one of the towers of the Royal Palace. If that face is a portrait, she had claim to some of the beauty attributed to her,--of her good influence over the weak king there is no doubt. In the history of France, how insignificant a part her queens have generally played and how important that of many of these "lights o' love." One hears nothing of the Queen of this Charles VII., but how much of this Mistress Agnes. In the case of Louis XI. there would seem to have been no woman of importance though he had a queen--Did that figure of leather ever know passion or love? With Louis XII. one does hear of the Queen, Anne of Brittany. But with Francis I. it is all Diane de Poitiers, and again the same Diane with his son Henry II. Poor little Francis II. knew none save his Queen, Mary of Scots, and it was not until after his death that Queen Catherine de Medici came to the front on the stage of France. With Henry IV. and all the Louis, save one, we hear much of the mistresses, little of the queens, unless there be a touch of wickedness, as with Maria de Medici. True, there was Anne of Austria, but she came forward only when a widow and as regent. It is difficult to remember even the names of the queens of Louis XIV. and XV., but none forget La Vallière, Montespan, Maintenon, Pompadour and du Barry,--women who had so greatly to do with hastening the downfall of the throne and producing the horrors of the Revolution, when again a queen comes into view and we stand with bowed heads as Marie Antoinette moves to her doom. In all the long years from the time of Charles VII. until to-day there was but one of the royal favourites, his own Agnes of Sorel, who exerted her powers for good. As I stand in the old tower to-day gazing down upon her graven image, I quietly blow the dust away and leave a flower. Louis XI. ended the feudal period by breaking the power of the independent barons and establishing that of royalty. The traveller from Orleans to Blois may notice to-day opposite Meung the heavy square masses of the Church of Notre Dame de Cléry. There Louis XI. built his own grave and was wont to occupy it now and then during life, though he did not rest there for many years after his death as the tomb was destroyed by the Huguenots in 1563. Entering our car, we are off and away, rattling through the narrow streets, and gliding out on to the wide high-road for Tours. It was near Tours at "Plessis-lès-Tours" that Louis XI. met the grim destroyer. I have before this fully described that Château,[3] and will pass it now. [3] In _Palaces and Prisons of Mary Queen of Scots_. G. P. Putnam's Sons: New York and London. CHAPTER XIX AUTOMOBILES IN TOURS--DEPARTURE FROM THE CITY--THE ROAD TO CHINON--ROMANCE AND HISTORY OF CHINON--THE ABBEY OF FONTEVRAULT--RICHARD COEUR DE LION AND HIS TOMB--THE DEAD KING HENRY II. A bright, sparkling morning. The courtyard in Tours is alive with men and machines and every moment someone departs until we are almost the only travellers left here, but our time comes, and Jean, seated in state on our red car, sails out of the garage and draws up at the main portico, where Yama directs the loading of our luggage, and then seats himself in great grandeur in the midst thereof. Then I am allowed to take my place, which is always by Jean's side in front, and we start off on our day's ride--not on the grand route towards Paris but away to the south-westward, to Chinon and Angers and so into Brittany. Our road lies in from the Loire and through Azay-le-Rideau to where Chinon's towers circle the hilltop like a crown dominating its ancient city and wide-spreading valley. The place above is sweet and pure, while the towers with the passing rains of many centuries, glisten white in the sunlight. [Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF CHINON By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] Wandering up the steep ascent I clang the bell at the great entrance, kept still in good preservation. A sweet-faced little girl answers my summons and conducts me from tower to tower. There are many of them, some with dungeons under dungeons, some with one solitary oubliette; others holding chambers of state and one where the Maid slept before her departure for Tours and Orleans. But Chinon's crown to-day is one bestowed by nature. The whole hill is embowered in lilac trees, whose bending boughs brush our hats with white and pale purple blossoms and all the air is fresh and sweet with their delicate perfume so sacred to spring. Surely a fitting bloom to adorn the spot where one so pure as the Maid offered her life and service to her country. In contrast with the dismal, sordid Court of Louis XI. the gay court of his father Charles VII. stands forth in strong relief, and it reached its most spectacular period here in Chinon. The white château embowered in lilac blossoms formed a fairy background to the moving picture of the times. One imagines that Charles wore his gold pointed crown all the time, that his robes were of blue spangled with the silver fleur-de-lis, and that he used up many sceptres, never being without one, and that so fashioned he paced these alleys between the great white towers, the lilacs touching him now and then as though to contrast their colours with his. With him there moved the fair Agnes of Sorel in pink and silver, the many courtiers in velvets and cloth of gold, the men at arms in grim array and far above against the blue of heaven waved the white banner of France bearing its silver lilies, while from the door of yonder tower came a simple maiden to the King,--with none of the glory of his Court in her attire, but with all the glory of God in her face. One can picture the weak, smiling countenance of the monarch, the beautiful eyes of Agnes of Sorel, the scowling, contemptuous faces of the Court as they watch the Maid approaching, all unconscious of everything save her mission to save France. Ah well! we know the whole story now, but then at Chinon there was nothing of the sadness of her after days to cloud the face of this Maid of Orleans, to dampen the spirits of Jeanne d'Arc as she moved forward to kneel at the feet of this King here under the lilacs. Here then she induced him, amidst all the jealousy and ridicule of his voluptuous Court to rise in behalf of his country. History does not tell us that Agnes of Sorel had any part in this movement but such was probably the case; neither does it state that she made any effort to save the King and France the disgrace of that death in Rouen, which almost inclines one to believe that the story of that life and death is indeed but a fable. Leaving the castle we descend by the narrow, crooked street named for the Maid, undoubtedly the one she used four hundred and fifty years ago, though it did not bear her name at that time. This old gabled house of the town was surely here, and she may have stopped a moment by that ancient fountain which still gives its waters to the chattering women of Chinon. In the little hotel where we luncheon there is a parrot which speaks French. That seems an outrage,--Spanish, yes, but French for a parrot should not be allowed. Leaving Chinon, we return to the banks of the Loire. As we speed along this wide road on the dykes above the river, the waters go singing along beneath us and telling of spring and life and hope, pausing ever and anon as though to call our attention to some ruin from which life and hope fled long ago,--or to some stately château where both still abide amidst the surroundings of centuries. Reaching Candes, standing by its babbling brook whose waters rush on to the Loire, we pause a moment to inspect its quaint church of the twelfth century, where St. Martin of Tours died,--though Tours will dispute the truth of this claim,--and where they show us his tomb and recumbent effigy. Just across the brook stands the Castle of Montsoreau, once the abode of the counts of that name, who were but executioners of the bloody decree of the kings. The place to-day is an abode for the very poor, of which there appear to be many in this section. Here we turn southward some three miles to the secluded valley where rest the town and Abbey of Fontevrault. The scene behind us is so attractive that we almost hesitate to leave it, but to all lovers of history, history in its most romantic and picturesque years, the name of Fontevrault will conjure such a series of kingly tableaux that all else will be forgotten. Down in a valley, three miles from the Loire, the traveller comes upon the celebrated Abbey, the ancient shrine of the Plantagenets, where to-day reposes the dust of Henry II. and Richard Coeur de Lion, and while I am not tempted to do violence upon my swiftly moving machine, I certainly do enter protest against such an entrance to such a spot and command the slowest progress of which it is capable. The way should be lined with broom corn and there should be many knights and "ladyes" abroad; and towering above them all (they say he was six feet six), dressed in mail, with the sign of the Leopard on his shield--one more stately than the rest, with a lofty brow, blue eyes wide apart, reddish yellow hair and curling beard, both cut short,--Richard Coeur de Lion, Count of Anjou, King of England. The scene was undoubtedly picturesque in his time, but it is sombre and dull to-day. The Abbey stands long, low, and gloomy in the midst of the sad little town, and where the King found a religious establishment of great importance, we find one of the largest prisons in France and must obtain a permit to visit even the church. I wait in the little place while Jean is off to the Mayor for that purpose. It is a dull, sad-looking little place, and one not often intruded upon by those who move in autos, as I discover through the attention bestowed upon my machine, though save for those imprisoned in yonder buildings, there do not seem enough people here to make a crowd. Fontevrault is as forgotten of the world as those who are sent here at the expense of the State. [Illustration: PAVILION DE L'HORLOGE AT CHINON From a photograph] It is said that King Richard came here to pray by the body of his father, King Henry, who died at Chinon, and that he was met at the head of the cathedral steps by his brother John, who succeeded him on the throne. The edifice in those days evidently stood in an open square; to-day we approach it by a covered way, through whose openings we see the prison buildings. Richard came in all humility and in deep remorse for the war he had waged upon his father, and, it is said, that when he knelt and touched the corpse it bled and shuddered. What a picture! The high altar in shadow save for its one blinking light, the many candles around the dead king on his bier, with the dark stain on his face, the living king with Count John peering in terror over his shoulder, and all the Court with the Abbess and her nuns shrinking away, while over all the great church, which even at that day (1189), had neared its century, rose dim and shadowy full of the chill taint of darkness. Here Richard took up the Cross, and we know what followed in Palestine. To-day you must force yourself to bring to mind any of these pictures, for the church has little of romance about it. The structure is in the form of a Roman cross, with no aisles, and with short transepts having two chapels. The choir has three chapels. Where the royal dead originally slept does not appear,--certainly not in the south transept where one now finds the monuments restored after the Terrorists had done their work upon them. As for the nave, it is boarded off and divided into floors for dormitories for the prisoners. The place is more desecrated than Stirling, for that is a barrack, not a prison. The royal effigies are however of great interest, especially that of Coeur de Lion, as it is considered to be a portrait, and certainly fulfils one's idea of the appearance of that king. The traveller of to-day who does not stand long in contemplation before this figure in stone must be lacking in many ways; but the effigy of Henry II. will not hold his attention in the same degree, though he will pause a moment over that of Eleanor, queen to Henry and the mother of Richard. [Illustration: THE COURT OF THE CLOISTERS, ABBEY OF FONTEVRAULT By permission of J. Kuhn] The Abbey of Fontevrault was founded in 1099 by Robert of Arbrissel and held one hundred and fifty nuns and seventy monks, all under the rule of an Abbess of high degree, and the establishment existed as such throughout seven centuries to the days of the Revolution. Its cloisters and chapter house are still beautiful and in perfect preservation, and in the latter are some interesting old wall paintings. France prizes too highly her historic places to allow Fontevrault to remain long in its present state. The day will come when the traveller will find it restored almost to the state in which it stood when King Richard came over the downs and down this long avenue of poplars to visit it. [Illustration: TOMBS OF RICHARD I. AND ELEONORE OF GUINNE AT FONTEVRAULT From a photograph] We are speeding away now and shortly are again by the placid Loire, and rolling beneath the ruins of the Castle of Dampierre, given to Margaret of Anjou by Louis XI. Louis had his weak moments (which he undoubtedly regretted) or he would never have expended fifty thousand crowns in the ransom of a woman, who could be of no possible service to him, whose day was done, and whose life was to end in sorrow and bitter tears in yonder towers. As we move onward, the cliffs above us form a veritable rabbit warren inhabited by the poor. This stone is soft and easily cut and sawed so that many of the houses present pretentious façades to the highway and are nothing but dark holes behind. Now Saumur comes into view white and pleasing to look upon with its castle dominating the town--but the interest of the place is in this panorama before which we roll slowly on and, turning northward, cross the Loire. CHAPTER XX THE ROAD TO ANGERS--CATHEDRAL AND TOMB OF KING RENÉ--CASTLE OF BLACK ANGERS--CRADLE OF THE PLANTAGENETS--HISTORY--TO CHATEAUBRIANT IN A STORM--A FRENCH INN--RENNES AND THE TRIAL OF DREYFUS--THE ROADS IN BRITTANY--ARRIVAL AT ST. MALO--THE RIDE TO MONT ST. MICHEL--INN OF THE POULARD ÂINÉ--THE CATHEDRAL AND CASTLE--THEIR HISTORY. The country becomes more barren and unpleasing as we enter Anjou, and Angers is an uninteresting busy town. It holds some quaint old houses, and King René sleeps in its cathedral, being probably the only king of France--prior to 1793--who lies where he was interred. The furies of the Revolution did not discover his tomb, therefore it was not molested. I would rather sleep in fair Provence; but if he had been buried there, his ashes would long since have been scattered to the winds of heaven. As the traveller approaches the Castle of Angers over the long bridge, it presents a most impressive, majestic appearance. Its seventeen great round towers and lofty walls seventy feet high fairly oppress the beholder. In its prime this fortress was called the key of France, and bears a key upon its shield. It commanded the outlet of the rivers of Brittany when rivers were the open highways. The château dates only from the days of Philip Augustus, but it looks ancient enough to have sheltered Cæsar. It was the birthplace of the Foulques of Anjou, the ancestors of the Plantagenets, and the place still resounds with tales of their times. There was Foulques the black-hearted, also his son. One hears of a Geoffrey made by his father--the Black Falcon--to crawl for miles with a saddle on his back, of this same Geoffrey having led his wife, dressed in her most gorgeous robes, to the stake where he burned her swiftly and well for infidelity. He was all powerful. There was Foulques the Fifth, King of Jerusalem and his son Geoffrey Plantagenet, who married the Empress Matilda and so the countship of Anjou passed to England through their son Henry II., only to be returned to France in the next century. We read of Bertrade of Monfort so enchanting two husbands that they sat at the same table with her here. Roland's name is woven into the warp and woof of its history,--Charlemagne's also, though the present château is not of that date; still it is claimed that the "Tower of the Devil" is part of the early Celtic castle. It is certain that Robert the Strong, founder of the Capet family, lived here. It came finally to King René, who with his court of love and minstrels surely felt strangely out of place within yonder gloomy walls; at least fate would appear to have thought so, for it passed Anjou on to Louis XI., a more fitting custodian for this sullen fortress of this "Black City." [Illustration: THE STATUE OF KING RENÉ AND THE CHÂTEAU AT ANGERS By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] Disenchantment awaits one on entering the castle for it is but a vast, empty shell. There is nothing for the traveller of to-day save the panorama of its outer walls, and I confess the disappointment drove me hence and away. As we enter Brittany, the weather darkens, and rain sets in, so that we reach our stopping-place for the night, Chateaubriant, in a driving storm, not wet but very glad to get under cover. The little hotel has a blazing fire and the cook in cap and apron is enjoying a game of cards with one of the guests. He asks me to come in, but I do not care for cards, and so look on. The conversation is brisk. "Madame" joins in, and the cat takes her place by the fire, making the family complete. Outside the wind howls and the rain pours in torrents off the roofs of the old gabled houses. It is a night and place when one might hear such a story as that of "The Bells," but the faces all look friendly and we chat on until dinner, about anything save murder. It is a good night for sleep and I am not long in seeking that tonic of nature. Next day the ride is through storm and clouds. The people are more opposed to automobiles than in the other sections and we have several conflicts with old women who, with their cattle, insist upon occupying the entire road. We lunch at Rennes--a bustling, prosperous city of no interest save as the theatre for the trial of Dreyfus the Jew. One meets with soldiers everywhere in France and I have taken occasion to talk with many of them concerning this man, famous, or infamous, as the case may be, and from general to private I find but one opinion, "guilty." When I ask what they make of Esterhazy and Pâté du Clam, they do not hesitate to say that they were bought by the Jews, and that Dreyfus's entire case has been governed by money from the chosen people. I was not surprised at this opinion from the officers, but coming also from the rank and file it was unexpected, to say the least. It is early in the afternoon when St. Malo is reached and there we pass the night, almost the only guests within the Hôtel de France. All the world knows St. Malo, the ancient town on an island, where one must have a room on the third floor in order to see over the walls. Though it is picturesque as one approaches, St. Malo is gloomy and depressing when one enters within its gates. The whole town reeks with moisture and one is not tempted to remain, at least at this season. The route from there onward lies over roads not in very good condition, at least for France, though they would be considered prime in America. In fact the sections of Brittany through which we have passed do not possess the superb highways universal all over the rest of the Republic, and her climate just now is rainy and cold, though the rain is more of a mist from the sea. Occupying the long cape-like projection lying between the stormy Bay of Biscay and the equally unquiet Channel, she is swept by the winds of both, alternately, and at times it would seem from both at the same moment. But when one enters Normandy, all the land is as smiling as Touraine, and one goes on rejoicing. Brittany is picturesque, but with a sad sort of picturesqueness. In all of her churches you will find a catafalque ready for the dead, and she knows all the wild, sad legends, and truths sadder than any legend, of the neighbouring ocean. Normandy smiles at you seemingly happy. Her valleys are all abloom with millions of fruit trees, and spring is well advanced. As we turn out towards Mont St. Michel, a fussy little train makes great to-do over its no miles an hour and puffs indignantly as we, leaving it far behind, speed on over the broad high dyke, which connects St. Michel with the main land. On either side stretch the sands over which, when the tide races in, it outstrips a fast horse, but the sea is far out to-day, so far that its murmurs do not reach us, and there is no sound save our own on-rushing. Mont St. Michel, pinnacle on pinnacle, rises directly before us five hundred feet into the blue sky and becomes more and more distinct as we approach until we finally reach a stand-still with the nose of our auto poked against--a blank wall. Where to now? Above rises the wall with no sign of a gate, and on either side and below us stretch the wet sands,--no thoroughfare there surely. However, over an elevated foot-bridge come a man and a woman, the former covers up the auto, while the latter assures us that the Hôtel Poulard Âiné is the only place for a gentleman to breakfast, a statement which causes high words with the runner of another house who arrives a moment late. But "Madame" carries the day and we follow her over the foot-bridge which the high tides cover, and rounding a corner pass under a gateway and into the quaintest spot in France. The way is narrow and steep, disappearing upwards under a second gateway, but our guide turns us promptly into a great kitchen with a bell above its entrance clanging for the meal about to be served. One finds these kitchens in France, but I have no memory of them elsewhere. Always spotlessly clean, the walls hung with shining copper utensils, while the cook, in snowy cap and apron, turns the spit where some fowls are roasting before a roaring fire, whose glow is most acceptable after our swift ride through the air. These cooks are personages in France and the proper making of an omelette an affair of State, as it were. This man greets us with a salutation so magnificent that I return it in kind as nearly as I know how--but feel that I fall short. [Illustration: MONT SAINT-MICHEL, FROM THE SOUTH By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] Every house in St. Michel climbs up the rocks. This one climbs high and I must mount four flights of stairs to find the lavatories. As for a lift, Mont St. Michel permits no such desecration of her ancient usages. If you come here you will use the legs God gave you. After breakfast, which by the way was excellent, I descend to the street with the intention of exploring the place alone, but I reckon without my host, who, in this instance, proves to be the old lady who met us on arrival. She waves aside my gentle remonstrance, tells me that I may never come again and had best see it all, and no one can do as well for me as herself. I yield perforce, also because of her cheery old face; God bless her! I have no doubt but that she is a good mother to some one. So I start, Yama and Jean following closely. The latter will fully appreciate all he sees, but the former will not know any more two hours hence than he does now. But let him come; as my instructor in German used to say when I could not remember the dative case, that she should continue to pour it into one ear in the hopes that some of it would stick before it passed out of the other. I think she was wrong, for I never knew how I got into that case and was always at a loss as to how I was to get out. The old lady mounts to the lower battlements and begins her story. Her French is so distinct and so slowly spoken that all must understand her. She should command a high salary in some school at home. One could not help but learn even without studying. So she rolls out the history of the celebrated spot until we reach the portals of the fortress, a lofty donjon flanked by two projecting turrets. There she must consign us to its custodian, cheerily housed with his family in the great guard-room, and under his guidance we mount the wide and stately staircase of the Abbots, and for another hour wander through gallery after gallery, crypt over crypt, here in a donjon in the rock, and there in a prison spacious and cheerful. From every casement glimpses of the beautiful panorama without greet one's eyes, but the full glory of that is reserved until, having mounted five hundred steps, we emerge upon a platform where stands the Cathedral, lifted far above the sins of the earth, a fitting place for the worship of God. Gazing downward one sees the fair land of Normandy to the left, while Brittany stretches away to the right and the glistening waters of the English Channel are behind one. The sunlight comes in long rays through the cloud rifts and the land sparkles and the sea dances where it strikes far out towards England. High above us rise the pinnacles of the Cathedral, while on the topmost point of its Gothic spire the gilded statue of St. Michael seems to shout his hosannas upwards far towards the blue of heaven. The wind is strong and fresh and full of life, for this is spring, and the world rejoices; this is Holy Week with its divine resurrection and its hope for all men! Lilies and apple blossoms deck these altars, while in far off New Zealand autumn leaves will crown this festival. How strange a circumstance! There may be those in Europe and America who do not know the history of this famous spot, but it has been so often described that there can be but few so uninformed, and I fancy that its picture is certainly known to all.--A conical rock rising from the sands close to the sea and covered by houses, abbeys, and fortresses with the whole capped by a great Cathedral, which flings its gilded statue of St. Michael five hundred feet into the air where, on the apex of the delicate spire, it seems, especially on a cloudy day when the support is invisible, to float in the air. The Holy Monks of the Order of St. Benedict founded the abbey here in the year 709, and until the Revolution of 1793 it flourished and was a prime factor in most political events from the Norman conquest downward. Here again we hear of Louis XI. and Cardinal Balue who occupied one of these prisons for two years, probably before the King had conceived the happy thought of that cage,--and in fact, this same rock prison may have suggested the cage, for both were a singular combination of confinement and exposure. This in St. Michel, however, was spacious and supported by many columns, as you may see it in its perfect state to-day and from its loop holes the prisoner had spread out before him a page from the book of nature whose interest was inexhaustible and from which he could not be shut away save by chains or blindness. If I must go to prison I hope it will be in Mont St. Michel, for here I could scarcely be lonely. On sunny days one could see much of the world below and many stately ships on the seas, and on stormy nights what awe-inspiring sounds one must listen to, and listening, wonder whether even this fortress of stone will not be blown into high air, mere dust before the tempest, and then when the moon comes out, casting long rifts of light into the darkness amongst these arches, what strange shadows of kings, priests, knights, and prisoners must flit to and fro. In the cathedral above, Louis XI. founded the knightly order of St. Michael, but long before his day the city on the rock was called the "City of Books," and here is a cloister in perfect condition, where many of the books were written, I doubt not. Note the exquisite capitals of the columns of polished granite and the double arcades. In the crypt below, forming a cemetery, there is an old wheel of gigantic proportions used as a windlass to haul provisions up into the castle. [Illustration: THE CLOISTERS OF THE ABBEY OF MONT SAINT-MICHEL By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] The guard tells the history as he moves onward, and I notice that those of the party who evince the least reverence for the sacred places are two priests, who laugh at everything. The refectory interests them most--one of the finest Gothic halls in France--and time is spent in the inspection of the three great chimneys in the kitchen with many sighs and much patting of capacious stomachs,--in regret, I doubt not, at not having been on hand at all these feasts throughout the centuries. This portion of the monastery dates from the year 1203, and if you descend into the crypt beneath the church choir you will find pillars twelve feet in diameter. Though one sees much, I fancy, that as at Loches, there is much one does not see. If you could only come alone and be permitted the freedom of the place. But you might get lost,--it is quite possible I should think. If Louis XI. did not have some particularly choice and horrible prison hidden away in Mont St. Michel then he was not the king history paints for us. The cathedral is being restored by the State. France seems desirous of preserving her historic spots in the proper form and gives a good example to her neighbour, Great Britain, who allowed the great hall of Edinburgh Castle to be restored by a private citizen, and still permits the desecration of Stirling Castle. There are plenty of places which would serve as well and better for barracks and it is a disgrace to Scotland that she permits such a use to be made of Stirling, whose great halls are cut up and divided by common partitions to form accommodations of such a character. Royal Stirling of all places! For the sake of the history of the nation and the students thereof it should be cleared out, it would be far more instructive than any history extant. [Illustration: THE CRYPT DE L'AQUILON IN THE ABBEY OF MONT SAINT-MICHEL By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] But time passes,--we must move on. Descending the rock, we enter our machine and are soon speeding along the wide high dyke, which forms also the dividing line between Normandy and Brittany. These people look glad to see us. In Brittany we met with many frowns. As the day wears onward the air becomes perceptibly colder. We have a short storm or two and one burst of hail, so that the ancient city of Caen is not an unwelcome sight, nor the comfort of her hotel "Place Royale" objectionable. CHAPTER XXI ARRIVAL AT CAEN--WILLIAM THE NORMAN AND CHARLOTTE CORDAY--CHURCH OF ST. ÉTIENNE--PEOPLE AND RAILROADS OF NORMANDY--ROUEN AND ITS CHURCHES--THE MAID OF ORLEANS, HISTORY OR LEGEND?--CASTLE OF PHILIPPE LE BEL--DEPARTURE FROM ROUEN There are two names connected with the history of Caen which obliterate the memory of all others: one of a king and warrior, the other of a woman who gave her life for her country,--William of Normandy, and Charlotte Corday. How far apart their lives lay, how widely different their history! While the story of the man is full of interest and glory, my thoughts rest longest on that of the girl, and I seem to see her stepping from the door of the old house in the Rue St. Jean and flitting away, down the long highway towards Paris and the guillotine; her figure clothed in quiet gray stuff, a white kerchief crossed on her bosom, and fastened by a bow of black ribbon, while a mass of wavy black hair is crowned by a white cap bearing a black bow, and great dark eyes light up a pallid face,--eyes glowing with that intense love of country much more common to women than to men. That is to my mind Charlotte Corday and in a simple house of the bourgeoise in this quiet street she passed most of the years of her life. Its façade is changed but the interior remains and one can picture the simple provincial household with its scant furniture, its necessary economies, the old aunt confiding to the family friend her "fear for Charlotte," the meeting with her young patriots, and the last quiet closing of the door of her home with no farewells to any one--the flitting away down this long bright highway where we are speeding joyously to-day. Follow her and you will go to the garden of the Palais Royal where she bought the knife; go with her to the chamber of Marat where she slaughtered his vileness; see her in the hands of the furies of the Revolution; watch her as she mounts the scaffold. Surely if ever murder was forgiven by God, that girl went spotless into His presence,--pure as the Maid of Orleans. [Illustration: CHARLOTTE CORDAY After the painting by Raffet] But Charlotte did not walk to Paris. She travelled in the diligence, and seems to have had a very good time of it. She is a case in point showing that vanity in women, especially in French women, is strong even in the face of death by violence. We find her smiling upon the artist who sketched her during the trial and turning her face towards him, while, as the executioner waited, she gave a sitting for her portrait in the Conciergerie. In this portrait which still exists she is clothed in the red robe in which she met her death, as she called it, "the toilette of death arranged by somewhat rude hands, but it leads to immortality." It rained in torrents as she moved out to her doom, and then the sun shone forth. "Its departing rays fell upon her head, and her complexion heightened by the red of the chemise, seemed of an unearthly brilliance. Robespierre, Danton, and Camille Desmoulins watched her on her way, a celestial vengeance appeased and transfigured." How different the story of the other name which makes Caen famous! Pomp and glitter, the call to arms and a throne! While the girl's grave is unknown her death was attended by a nation, though the King sleeps in the choir of the majestic Church of Saint Étienne and his descendants rule in his stead, his death was neglected and he was buried by charity. But which name stands first in the great court of God? As the traveller enters Caen the first object which greets his eye is the Church of St. Étienne, the Church of the Abbey of Men, which was founded by the Conqueror in 1036, the same year his Queen Matilda founded the Church of the Abbey of Women,--La Trinité, which one sees over yonder, both as an expiation of the sin they had committed in marrying within the forbidden degree of consanguinity. While singularly majestic, St. Étienne is simple to severity, but what do architects think about its façade and the odd-looking spires? To me they appear as though brought by some giant on a dark night and set upon the wrong church, after which it was not worth while to take them down. Certainly to one who is not an architect, they seem oddly placed on that façade. [Illustration: THE ABBEY OF MEU AT CAEN By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] The interior however, the nave that is, satisfies by its dignified simplicity and was a fitting resting-place for a king like the Norman. I say "was" because the tomb under the black marble slab before the high altar is empty. The King formerly slept beneath the great central tower, but both Huguenots and Revolutionists desecrated his grave and his bones have never rested in that tomb or choir. Caen possesses many fine churches, especially that of Saint Pierre, also the "Trinité" or "Abbaye aux Dames" founded by the Queen of the Conqueror; but while that church is fine, its crypt is unique. [Illustration: LA TRINITÉ, ABBEY OF WOMEN, AT CAEN By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] Our way through Normandy is as though driving through a beautiful park. The long highways stretch off into the smiling country like great white ribbons turning and twisting on a bed of delicate green satin and the brooks bubble and sing along happy in the ever increasing life of spring. Tall poplars clothed in the pale green which seems peculiar to France in this season, march away in stately procession, while the quaint thatched cottages are all a-blossom with the flowers of peach and pear trees trained over their faces, and through which the windows twinkle out at you like the eyes of a maiden from under the frills of a white sunbonnet. There are many Evangelines abroad in this smiling country, still wearing their Norman caps and kirtles of homespun. Ancient dames sit by the open doors thankful that they may bask in the sunshine of another year, and that they will not as yet add another cross to the many on the hillside yonder. One with whom a black-robed priest is talking is evidently so old that she must say farewell to all this brightness before very long. We pass many curious groups. Here comes one on a make-shift of a wagon, evidently of home construction. It is hauled by three poor dogs, one on each side and one underneath it. A stolid-looking girl pushes behind, and in it sits enthroned a beast of a man, evidently a cripple in his legs, but with bestiality written on every feature; such a man as Quilp must have been. A wretched baby completes the party, but such groups of misery are the exception, most of the people of Normandy look happy. Our route lies through Lisieux, a prosperous little city, earnestly engaged in its own affairs, and having no time to waste on a passing show like ourselves. But we note as we glide by that Lisieux possesses a church and many bits of curious architecture that would interest, but to-day is one of those days when it is good to be alive, when there is great joy in motion, so we sail onward almost like the flight of a great flamingo, onward and onward, until from the top of a hill the Seine comes into view, winding through its fair valley on the way to the sea; and, off in the other direction, with her spires glittering in the sunlight, sits Rouen, the pride of all this region which would appear to have placed the town in its centre, and arranged its hills like a vast amphitheatre all around it, that the looker-on might the better observe the pageant of history as it swept through the ancient city. As we move onward and into her streets we discover that the Rouen of to-day, while evidently a "member of one of our oldest families" is not a dead town. The Seine sweeping through her midst bears on its waters ships from all over the world as well as the quaint barges and puffing little steamers which come down from Paris. The old walls have vanished, giving place to wide boulevards, which encircle the ancient town and are in turn surrounded by far-spreading suburbs. Light and life is everywhere and the cafés over-flow far into the streets with their little tables and merry throngs. Evidently the fortune of the ancient city was great, for its heir of to-day is certainly in affluent circumstances,--so that there is nothing of the sadness which envelops so many of the ancient towns of the Republic, and yet few, if any, of them preserve intact so much that belongs to the Middle Ages. Leave the wide, gay boulevard by the river and enter any of the adjoining streets and you slip at once backward for hundreds of years,--large sections stand unchanged by the flight of time,--ancient mansions gaze down upon you still bearing their coats of arms in stone,--still showing the high peaked roofs and heavy carving of a distant age. Moving on, you will pass the exquisite Church of St. Maclou and at last pause with a feeling of satisfaction before the majestic façade of the great cathedral. This temple holds perfect beauty in its plan, is a poem in stone, which satisfies the mind and the eye ever more and more. When the traveller passes into the shadowy interior he is forced to pause in deepest admiration. The majestic pillars of its nave stretch away hundreds of feet before him until merged in one of the most beautiful choirs in Europe; centuries old all of it, and never having been restored it possesses that mellow beauty which only the passage of the years can bestow, and the artist lingers long in its shadows drinking in the charm around him, with scarcely a desire to enter into an examination of details,--nor shall I attempt such descriptions here. [Illustration: MONUMENT OF CARDINAL D'AMBOISE, IN ROUEN CATHEDRAL By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] As you move on into the choir, you will pass over some small lozenge-shaped pieces of marble, marking the spot where rested once the lion heart of Richard, and the body of his brother Henry. Here they found the former in a greenish taffeta bag inclosed in a case of lead,--it is now in the Museum. The gorgeous monument of George, Cardinal of Amboise and Louis de Brézé will hold the attention in one of the chapels,--both stately affairs. Brézé was the husband of Diane de Poitiers, who is here represented clothed in deep mourning and shedding many tears. An inscription upon the tomb states that she was faithful in life and will be with him in death. Doubtless Francis I. or Henry II. helped her erect the monument and compose the epitaph. As for her sepulchre, it was built in her Château of Anet and there she was buried. As for her faithfulness to her husband, those two kings, father and son, can testify better than we can. One wonders why the furies of the Revolution did not pull that tomb to bits,--for even in our day, a complacent husband is not a pleasant object. As one wanders out into the quiet streets of the old town, one wonders much as to whether things in those days were after all very different from things in our own time. Certainly those husbands did not think it worth while to kill themselves. [Illustration: THE TOMB OF LOUIS DE BRÉZÉ IN THE CATHEDRAL OF ROUEN From a photograph] In the Church of St. Ouen, Rouen possesses another cathedral, beautiful in every line, but part is new and much restored, and, while the architect will be charmed with it, the artist and historian will find much greater pleasure in the Cathedral. So I wander in and out of it, and off into the winding streets of the old town, where a tide of life flows on making them cheery, cheerful places where even the ancient houses, with their weight of years, smile downward upon the passing throng like the "old, old, old, old lady at the boy just half-past three." The great clock in its ancient gate-house tower has something to say to me as I pass it by, as it has had something to say to kings and princes, to black-cowled monks and purple-robed bishops, to the Maid in her forbidden armour, to the child Queen of Scots when she slept in this ancient city,--perhaps to Charlotte Corday. "Time hath wings; how, O mortal, hast thou spent thine?" [Illustration: THE GREAT CLOCK OF ROUEN By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] Hearing its bell, you are reminded of that fragment in the Museum, once a part of the great bell of George of Amboise, which was melted by the Terrorists into sou pieces, bearing the inscription "Monument of Vanity, destroyed for utility, in the second year of the equality." Passing onward the traveller comes to the Church of St. Gervais--the oldest in Rouen and in the priory of which William the Conqueror died. The royal dead in France were generally treated with scant respect on their final journeys. Francis II. and Louis XV. were carted in old wagons by night to St. Denis, and even this English king owes his burial to a stranger. After the siege of Nantes, wounded to death, he retired to this priory of St. Gervais to die. Deserted by his sons and plundered by his servants when scarcely dead, his body lay naked and uncared for until in pity and charity, a neighbouring knight assumed the obligation of his funeral and escorted his body to the Church of St. Étienne in Caen. St. Gervais has suffered restoration, so let us move onward to where the Maid of Orleans is supposed to have ended her life at the stake. Which story are we to believe as to this maiden,--that given by history and with which every schoolboy is familiar, or that related by M. Lesigne, who terms the former "a beautiful legend?" He points out that it is incredible that people should seriously believe that the English were driven out by a peasant girl even though inspired and he shows that just then the power of the French was strengthened, while that of the English was weakened by dissensions at home; that Jeanne was taken up by the war party,--not to lead its armies but to instill religious fervour and courage into the hearts of its soldiers, that she was not even aware of the first action between the contending armies but was in fact in bed at the time; that Orleans fell because the English had been abandoned by their allies of Burgundy, and he gives credit for that to "the astute policy of Charles VII.," which, by the way, is the first move denoting any brains on the part of that monarch of which we have ever been made aware; that Jeanne's triumph came during the rejoicings at Orleans, and when Charles was crowned at Rheims. Taken by the Burgundians, she was transferred to the English, whose king, as a Christian monarch, was under obligations to hand her over to stand trial before the proper ecclesiastical court, but that court had no power to inflict punishment, death, or torture. The judgment of a secular court was necessary. On threat of being consigned to that court, Jeanne signed a recantation, which was accepted, provided she promised henceforth to wear woman's dress. Condemned to life imprisonment, she passed again into the hands of the English as a prisoner of war who represented a large ransom. Left to herself she soon assumed male attire and was again handed over to the Church for trial. Again recanting, she was recommended by that court to the mercy of the secular powers, the English, who had never pronounced judgment upon her. The legend of her burning was due to a desire to make her fulfil the whole prophecy of the ancient Merlin, who was supposed to have said that the islanders would put her to death, but she seems to have subsequently married Robert des Armoises, and we possess a document drawn up in the names of Robert des Armoises, Chevalier, Seigneur of Trichiemont and "Jehanne du Lys la Pucelle de France," wife of said Trichiemont. The identity of Jehanne du Lys and Jeanne d'Arc is proven by several documents, among these a part of the chronicle of Saint Thibault de Metz, describing her meeting with her brothers and mentioning her marriage. This is the substance of M. Lesigne's book, proving that every story has two sides. However, the world in general and the Church in particular accept the story as history gives it. She is now a regularly canonised saint of the Church of Rome and I should not like to suggest to many healthy schoolboys at home that she was not burned to death. If that did occur, it was not where this meaningless and absurd monument stands to-day, but on the site of the Théâtre Français. The scene of her imprisonment, trial, and condemnation was the ancient Castle of Philip Augustus in 1204, of which nothing now remains unless, as is claimed, the donjon tower shown to-day as the prison of Jeanne d'Arc be part thereof. It certainly was not her prison as that was torn down in 1809,--a year, by the way, which seems to have been more fatal to many of these old buildings than the period of the Revolution. [Illustration: THE TOWER OF JEANNE D'ARC AT ROUEN From an old print] This Castle of Philip was immense in size, possessed of many towers, and would be of intense interest to-day, as the illustration shows. It is said to have stood intact until 1809. Few of the old houses which crowd these streets and point their aristocratic gables towards the sky stood here in 1400, though many of the less pretentious did do so. The great churches were here, and in whatever direction you may stroll in Rouen, you will arrange to pass through one at least of these beautiful shrines, carrying away with you into after life the memory of something which you would not forget. [Illustration: A HOUSE OF THE 15TH CENTURY AT ROUEN From a photograph] We leave the city on a glorious morning. As we glide away down her wide boulevard stretching by the river, the world is all astir about its business, and this Rouen is all of to-day, but as we speed off up the encircling hillside, the modern town drops down toward earth as it were, while the majestic cathedral and her sister churches lift their dark walls and spires higher and higher, towards the sky. [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL AT ROUEN By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] CHAPTER XXII THE RACE THROUGH PICARDY--AMIENS CATHEDRAL--ITS VASTNESS--THE ROAD TO BOULOGNE So we bid farewell to Rouen, deep down in her valley by the river, and rolling swiftly through the fair country towards Neufchâtel, we pause a moment to render homage at the altar of their great god, cheese; and so onward past many picturesque spots and interesting ruins. But the day is too fair to pause for the dead past. This air is the wine of life and the rush of our car drives it into and through us until, on arriving at Amiens for luncheon, we are ready to eat anything. One really runs a risk of being ruined by dyspepsia on such a journey, as one's appetite becomes great and one gets no exercise. After a long day's ride and a hearty dinner, bed becomes most attractive at an early hour, and I often find myself snugly ensconced at eight o'clock and awakened at two in the morning by vivid dreams of my ancestors, entangled in flying wheels. There are few in the vast tide of travellers between London and Paris who do not note, as their train speeds across the plains of Picardy, the towering gables and gigantic roof of the great cathedral of her capital, Amiens. It rises so far above the surrounding city that it appears to have nothing in common with it, nor are there any other structures round about to detract from this impression. In common with millions of others, I had heretofore found no time for closer inspection. The tide of life sweeps too strongly through here to allow one to do more than gasp at the immensity of this church. To-day as we roll onward from the smiling country into the streets of the town, the cathedral looms up grander and grander until all thought of anything else passes from the mind. The busy tide of life and the city of seventy thousand souls does not and will not hold your attention for half an hour while within its limits. "It is a great manufacturing town, weaves cotton velvets for Spain, spins woolen yams, makes satin for ladies' shoes, and was the cradle of cotton manufacture in France." [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL AT AMIENS By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] Yes, yes, yes,--perhaps so, perhaps so, but, what is that to us? Leave it all and move faster, into that square. Now,--stop.----What are all the cotton mills of earth compared to this stately shrine? Look at those three deeply recessed and majestic portals towering as high as an ordinary church before you, the destroyer has passed them by and they are crowded with statues, prominent amongst which, dividing the central doors is that of the "Beautiful God of Amiens." Over the central doorway is the Last Judgment in high relief,--the twelve Apostles, the wise and foolish virgins. Yonder is the Virgin crushing a monster with a human head, and above it the expulsion of Adam and Eve. One sees the burial and assumption of the Virgin in another spot, and row after row of kings, bishops, and priests, with the great towers rising far above and equally rich in carvings to their very summit. There would appear to be too much of carved work and yet the church is so huge that it would look barren without it. Entering, you are at once impressed with the vast dimensions, which are surpassed only by St. Peter's and the Dom of Cologne. The nave rises one hundred and forty feet above you. Its height and breadth are so great and the pillars so majestic that one wonders whether this church was not built by and intended for a larger, grander race of beings than we who now walk this earth. Passing onward down the nave and into the choir, you are again struck with the beauty and richness of the carvings both in the stalls in wood and in the stone screens and altars, all around you. The rose windows are glorious, and yet--you feel that you have dropped your sense of delightful satisfaction somewhere. What is it,--why? It is absurd to criticise such a temple, yet Amiens, notwithstanding its majestic interior, does not fascinate, is not so satisfying as the great churches of Rouen, and I think it is because there is too much light. There, all is subdued; here a glare of white light detracts from the majesty, if such a thing be possible. Certainly one shivers and is cold and fully realises that ancient coloured glass has a wonderfully beautifying effect in these old churches. Amiens has her history also. Henry IV. from a seat up yonder watched the retreat of the Spaniards and Isabeau of Bavaria here married the idiot Charles VI. There is nothing in the city to interest, save the cathedral, and I come again and again, and finally take a swirling view as my auto flashes around it, and off and away to the northward. As we move farther and farther afield, I turn again and again to look backward and each time the cathedral has risen higher and higher until it reigns supreme in a kingdom all its own,--a thing not made by man. The route from Amiens to Boulogne is very unpleasant for France, narrow and badly marked, so that we several times go astray, especially before reaching Abbeville. The way is also crossed frequently by stone gutters which will in passing destroy the springs of the auto unless extreme caution be used. These should be changed, one does not find them south of Paris. As it would be impossible to pass through Brussels without a thought of Waterloo so at Abbeville the mind wanders away from the noisy town and off to the neighbouring battlefield of Crécy whose forest we see at our right as we speed northward. Reaching Boulogne at about three o'clock, we are almost blown backward by the winds off the Channel, and seek shelter in a draughty, desolate hotel. Yama thinks that we have come to the end of the world, and will be lost if we attempt to go out on that churning sea. He asks if England is five days off, and seems very doubtful of my truthfulness when I say it is but an hour's sail. CHAPTER XXIII THE RIDE TO BEAUVAIS--DEAD DOGS--GREAT CHURCHES--BEAUVAIS BY NIGHT--VAST WEALTH OF THE CHURCHES OF FRANCE--WONDERFUL TAPESTRIES Two days of gloom and mist in London, London during the holidays, which means a desert, rendered our return to France doubly agreeable. The sun streams out its light as we enter the harbour at Boulogne, and Jean waves his cap at us while the auto is snorting a welcome. The important custom-house officials insisted upon examining my bundle of home papers but finding the _Enquirer_ harmless, passed it and we sailed away. Collecting the wash and traps at the windy, disagreeable, and most expensive Hôtel Pavilion Impérial we started off once more, gladly shaking the dust of Boulogne from our wheels. It's a sadly dreary place where indigent English come over to enjoy the risk of gambling at a dead sort of casino,--good church members at home, very pillars of the sanctuary, who gamble like street arabs all the time they are here. Let us leave it and roll off and away into the fair land of France. The ride to Beauvais proves to be one of the most delightful of the journey. The roads are superb and we meet many autos which, while they add to the danger, also give zest to the sport as they go shrieking past us. Just now we killed one poor dog so suddenly that he never knew what hurt him. Rushing at us from an out-house he got his neck just in the spot for our flying wheels to pass over it, and he never moved after that. It was over in a flash, all his wild rollicking life snuffed out like the flame of a candle. We regretted the accident but could in no way have prevented it. Skirting the town of Abbeville and leaving Amiens well to our left, we go directly south via Poix, Grandvilliers, and "Marseilles the Little." Once during the afternoon, though the sun shines brilliantly the air becomes suddenly very cold and a short, sharp shower of hail forces us to slow down and draw up the cover. We are moving very rapidly and our momentum added to the force of the hailstones causes us to feel as though suddenly subjected to an assault of the enemy, but it lasts for a moment only, and with top again thrown back, we are speeding onward. If you would feel the elixir of life and youth pouring into your veins, take such a ride on such a day. There is nothing with which to compare it, save the wild flight of a toboggan. An eagle may know the sensation as he soars through space, but until mortals shall have put on immortality or wings we can know it only in auto cars or toboggans, for I am told that in a balloon one feels no motion unless one falls, and it does not last long even then,--mercifully so. The ride is superb all the way to Beauvais. It is Easter Sunday, all the villages are rejoicing. Giddy-go-rounds are in full swing, and the Beauvais hotel is occupied by boys from Paris and their best girls, the latter are not above flirting even with an elderly gentleman like myself. The fact that _his_ arm is around her waist and _his_ head on her shoulder does not in the least interfere with her double actions,--she can squeeze _his_ hand while she throws languishing glances at me. But dinner is over and the old town presents greater attraction to me than these passers-by within her limits. Darkness has come down upon the narrow streets, where, as I wander along, the lamps cast queer shadows under the eaves of the gabled houses. There is a mass of something over there that should be the cathedral, it towers so high into the sky and I pause before it in doubt. Part is Gothic and as the light will permit, I fancy very beautiful. The remainder is evidently a building of another century, certainly of a totally different style of architecture. While I am pondering, a foot-step draws nearer and nearer, the only sound of life in the city, and its owner, a little man, in answer to my question, assures me that this is not the Cathedral, but St. Étienne--a structure as old as the greater church which stands quite on the other side of the town, and "If Monsieur visits it, let him go at noon and ask for the old clock, it is well worth an inspection and very curious." So he patters off into the silence of the night, and I wander on through street after street until the Cathedral looms up before me. Only a piece of a church, but what a piece, how gigantic! Why, since there would be few if any rivals on the earth, does not the nation complete it to its own glory? It may lose some of its majesty by daylight,--that often happens,--but to-night it is superbly solemn and most majestic, even though but a fragment. These great religious temples are all in place here in old Europe, but I cannot but think that the erection of a vast cathedral for the Episcopal Church in America is money ill spent and but to gratify vanity. These structures were built when great temples were almost a necessity for the processions of the Church of Rome, but they are of little use, save the choir, for any other purpose even in that church of to-day and, aside from the Cathedral of Westminster in London, the Church of Rome has erected no such structures since that of Orleans. The good people of Beauvais in the year 1225 evidently bent upon building a church which would dwarf that of their neighbors in Amiens, began this one before me; and if they had completed it they would have succeeded in their intention, for that vast edifice could then have been placed bodily within this structure, as the ridge pole of this roof is one hundred and fifty-three feet above the pavement or thirteen feet higher than that of Amiens, and three feet higher than the Cathedral of Cologne; but, money and the genius of the architect both failed,--the former want calling a halt on further progress, and the latter, through his desire to have as few inner supports as possible over-shot his mark, so the walls bulged and roof collapsed in 1284. With the repair of that damage came a cessation of all work, and so the cathedral stands to-day. As I wander around it in the darkness, I stumble upon a little structure at its western end, evidently much older than its gigantic neighbour, as it is Roman in design, and in the shadow farther on rise two great round towers of some château; exactly what it is one does not know or care to inquire, leaving all facts for the plain daylight of the morrow and allowing the darkness of to-night to claim what it may. Even in the shadows one may discern that Beauvais is a very curious old place. Ancient it certainly is, as Cæsar mentions this district, but its most memorable day was that upon which it closed its gates in the face of a vast Burgundian army, and kept them closed until succour arrived from Paris. Women took such a prominent part in the siege that Louis XI. complimented them and declared that they should forever march first in the commemorative procession,--this they do in this year, 1905. One can well imagine that Louis cared little for the women, but it gave him another opportunity of humiliating his noblemen. On my return to the inn, I have the great square all to myself save for a rising moon,--in fact, I wonder whether I have not the whole of Beauvais to myself, for I have not met a dozen of my kind since I started out,--but as the air is cold and the moonlight seems very old to-night, let us to bed, where I, at least, dream of disjointed churches and queer round towers when I dream of anything at all,--which is not often, for sleep after these rushing rides is as profound as death. Daylight brings another state of affairs. The inn is alive with the noise of departing autos, and there is much wonderment that I will linger in this "queer place," with Paris and all it holds so near. There are even doubtful glances cast at my red car and insinuations that it will not go. It certainly will not now, nor for several hours to come. Passing out into the sunny street I find a busy little bustling city, alive to its own concerns. Yonder old gentleman in that postal card shop is very much alive to the fact that I have not patronised his wares, which I do at once, and he is delighted that I really take an interest in his beloved old town. His preference is for the ancient city but he does not forget her attractions of to-day and trusts that I will not depart without an inspection of the factory where the tapestries are made. This factory was established before the Gobelins, and these good people of Beauvais consider their work far superior to that of the better known fabric near Paris. [Illustration: THE GRAND PORTAL OF THE CATHEDRAL OF BEAUVAIS By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] As I enter the Cathedral, even the majesty of the building is for a time secondary to the interest excited by the splendid specimens of this work, which hang upon the walls. They are vast in size and very rich in colouring, as well as beautiful in design, and represent the histories of St. Peter and St. Paul after the cartoons of Raphael. These tapestries are worth a million and a half of francs, and it has been proven by the returns made to the Minister of Fine Arts from all over France, that the art treasures of the churches far surpass in beauty and value those of the great public institutions of Paris, Versailles, the Louvre, Luxembourg, de Cluny, and Carnavalet. In fact those vast collections are but a small part of the artistic wealth of France. Its real wealth is in its churches, and if brought to a sale would realise the fabulous sum of six thousand millions of francs, or twelve hundred millions of dollars. The little Roman church of Conques, hidden in the mountains of the Aveyron, possesses a treasure,--shown at the Exhibition of 1900, for which a syndicate offered thirty-two million francs. It is well for France that it is inalienable. It holds the finest enamels in the world, reliquaries given by the kings, and Roman statues in gold and silver. For the silver Virgin of Amiens, eight hundred thousand francs was offered, and the one at Le Mans is valued at a million, while the Cathedral of Rheims possesses in its panel, representing the Nativity, the most valuable piece of tapestry extant. That these treasures were not dispersed by the Terrorists is a marvel; they certainly would have produced far more money for their cause than the melting down of a few bells. The colouring of these pieces in Beauvais is of a freshness and strength which surprises one. They evidently have been shut off from the light through most of the many years since they were made. This cathedral in the daytime still impresses by its immensity, and now one sees the painted glass of the sixteenth century. There is so much of it and the windows are so close together that the effect is like that of the Sainte Chapelle in Paris enlarged enormously, and the church has the appearance of a glass house as the stone work is far less prominent than in other cathedrals. I spend some time in the adjacent château. The great round towers observed last night are but the guardians of the entrance to the court, across which rises the old palace of the Archbishop, now the Hôtel de Ville. The whole is picturesque, but the interior is not of interest. [Illustration: OLD HOUSES ON THE RUE DE LA MANUFACTURE, BEAUVAIS By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] There is much indeed of the picturesque in Beauvais and one may spend many hours wandering through her streets, but the attraction of motion is upon me and I am certain to secure it in yonder red car, which to-night will deposit me in the capital. But before that we shall have a delightful ride, all too speedily a thing of the past. CHAPTER XXIV THE ROUTE TO SAINT-GERMAIN-EN-LAYE--THE PEOPLE--THE CASTLE AND TERRACE--THEIR PICTURESQUE HISTORY--FIRST VIEW OF PARIS It is close to high noon when we enter the ancient and once royal city of St. Germain-en-Laye, after some miles speeding through the aisles of her forest, where they say wild boar may be found to this day. As we enter the town, the people are streaming out of the churches and off and away in every sort of vehicle for the festal part of the day. How happy they all look, especially the children, whose faces are, as it were, mirrors reflecting the sunlight. Here are the funny little donkey and dog carts, both such serious-looking concerns. Yonder is a bridal coach with its happy party, and in this tram-car is another bridal party not at all ashamed of its costumes, and all around it seem bent upon making it happy for this one day at any rate. The morrow and its sorrows will come soon enough. This is a work-a-day world, and this festival will be looked back upon throughout all the coming years. I saw last spring in one of the Parisian gardens a bride in full regalia, veil and all, proudly seated on an elephant, and very happy over the admiration of the groom and the others around below her. Passing rapidly through the streets of Saint-Germain we emerge upon the castle square, with that picturesque structure to our left, while far beyond it, along the brow of the hill, stretches the stately and famous terrace, its balustrade, vases, and statues glimmering white against the squarely trimmed, pale green trees bordering the walks, and behind all rise the darker masses of the forest. Off and away before us the land drops to where the Seine twists and winds through the valley of rich green. Yonder are the heights of Marly and the forest of Vésinet and beyond, the white city of Paris, glittering in the sunshine, spreads away over hill after hill, crowned on the one side by the Cathedral of Montmartre and on the other by the Fortress of Mt. Valerian. There is no fairer scene in all the world than this before us,--as there is no such fair city on earth as Paris in the month of May. All the world is abroad to-day. Here in the square of the palace of St. Germain the tide of people is quite tremendous, beating its human waves against the walls of this ancient abode of the kings of France and streaming far out upon the wide walks of her terrace. If Louis le Grand should return and visit this favourite promenade, favourite until he grew old enough to find the plainly to be seen towers of St. Denis disagreeable of contemplation, what would he think of this democratic assemblage where two centuries ago all was state and ceremony, velvets and laces? However, there are women here as lovely as La Vallière or de Montespan, and he would probably arrange a later meeting with some of them. After all is said, the people are about the same, notwithstanding the lapse of centuries. There are plenty of La Vallières and Louises in plain air on yonder terrace to-day where the gay god of love reigns just as supreme as in the days of le grand Monarque. [Illustration: THE CHÂTEAU OF SAINT-GERMAIN FROM THE NORTH By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] This old castellated château before us was built by Charles V. and finally completed by Francis I. It was more of a fort than a palace, and far too sombre to please the gay Henry of Navarre, who had constructed a gorgeous palace near where the terrace now stands, and wherein Louis XIII. died. This was destroyed by Charles X. But there were gay days even in this château before us. Louis XIV. was born here, and it was here that he came down through the trapdoor in the ceiling in search of La Vallière sleeping probably on straw. These old palaces were not always furnished and the king's bed was hauled from house to house many times. This is said to have occurred especially here at St.-Germain, to reach which it was in those days somewhat difficult. [Illustration: THE TERRACE AT SAINT-GERMAIN By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] The terrace was inaugurated when Louis XIV. was in the height of his glory and with a splendour we can scarcely conceive, surely a contrast to the very democratic crowds which swarm its alleys and hang over its balustrade in this year, 1905. James II. of England and his Queen lived and died here and in this church to our right he lies buried. The sadness and misfortune of the fated Stuarts never forsook them for an instant even after death, for the bodies of Henrietta Maria, widow of Charles I., and her daughter Henrietta were the first to be torn from their tombs in St. Denis and cast into the fosse. Before all this, St.-Germain witnessed the reception of the little Queen of Scotland and historic faces were clustered thickly around her fair head. One can picture that stately assemblage as it came from yonder portal to greet the very weary, tired out little girl, whose brows already ached with her Scottish crown; Henry II., the gay gallant; Catherine de Medici,--queen as yet in name only,--with the smouldering fires of ambition and the gleam of an indomitable will in her black, velvety, opaque eyes,--eyes which held no pupil yet saw all. One always pictures her as in her latter days, garbed in sweeping black with a long veil of sombre hue sweeping down from a black cap whose white frill comes to a point in the centre of her brow. But here she was clothed in brilliancy. Henry allowed no black in his court. In the throng came the boy princes whose short lives were to be so full of tragedies. Nostradamus also appeared with his prophecies of blood for the little princess. The head of the house of Guise and all who made history in those days together with the glittering courtiers,--poured in gorgeous array from yonder archway onto this square, crowded to-day with its plebeian humanity, and, as the eye wanders past the château and rests on the far-reaching terrace, the mental picture, shifting downward through the years is filled with a throng even far more brilliant. Masses of Watteau figures headed by Louis le Grand in his high red-heeled shoes and vast wig, and clothed with pomposity, advance out of the past; then the furies of the Revolution like a pack of great gaunt wolves sweep them away as though chaff, and passing onward give place to the beautiful if mock courts of the Napoléons, and then, the picture merges into this of to-day where the stage is the same, but how different the players thereon. Yonder, glittering in the sunshine lies the cauldron of Paris, which has produced and destroyed all who have performed on this stage of St.-Germain. Even with the gaiety of the scene around us we cannot altogether forget what has occurred here, or wonder what may not yet occur, for it is quite within the possibilities that future revolutionists may carry out the intention of Robespierre and establish the guillotine within this court as a permanence,--an intention thwarted only by his death. Certainly he was nothing if not picturesque. The grim court of this old fortress would form a picturesque surrounding for his pet instrument of destruction, and the last glimpse afforded its victims of the world they were to leave would be one of the most beautiful that the world contains. The contemplation of it holds me long to-day, but time flies, we must move on, and so, entering our red car, we drop away from St.-Germain speeding down the hillside, rushing through village after village, crossing and re-crossing the river, skimming onward through the beautiful Bois de Boulogne, where all Paris is coming outward to the races, and so through the grand avenues, past the Arch of the Star, and into the court of the hotel where the auto vanishes and we rest for a season. CHAPTER XXV PARIS AND HER SO-CALLED REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT--NECESSITY FOR AN AUTOMOBILE--THE RIDE TO CHARTRES--CATHEDRAL NOTRE DAME--THE AQUEDUCT AT MAINTENON AND ITS BURDEN OF SORROW--THE CASTLE OF MAINTENON--MADAME AND LOUIS XIV.--ST. CYR AND HER DEATH--RETURN TO PARIS. Paris is _en fête_ for the coming of the little Spanish King, and as the shadows lengthen, he passes in state, down the Avenue of the Champs-Élysées,--a delicate, pale-faced boy, with apparently no constitution. The French nation may be on the downward path, but this city of Paris is gay to-day with no fear of the handwriting on the wall. One seems to _live_, here, as in no other capital in the world; all the others are work-a-day where, to their credit be it said, business and the serious side of life are ever foremost; but here, all is pleasure and for pleasure, while work is shoved far off into the distant quarters of the city. To a citizen from a real republic, this of France seems one in name only. These people so dearly love the pomp and glitter of fine pageants that the simplicity of our republican nation could not be endured. One would judge that there are as many titles in France at the present time as before the great Revolution and I doubt the arrival of the day when they will be things of the past, to-day at least they are recognised in France and receive all due respect socially and politically. I have visited Paris many, many times in the years gone by and thought I knew the city thoroughly. So I did and do, the immediate city within the walls, and many of the points without them, but that is far from the whole of Paris. So much lies around it which it is bother-some to reach and that I never saw or should have seen but for an auto, that I feel deeply grateful to the puffing, conceited thing, which, so to speak, swallows one up and rushes off in any and all directions, and at a moment's notice; so that day after day glides by in skimming the country round about of its rich cream of interest. To-day we are off for Chartres,--a short run of fifty-five miles each way. I had asked an acquaintance to go along and warned him to bring his heavy wraps. He appeared in low shoes, silk socks, a light spring overcoat and wearing a delicate orchid in his buttonhole. Before we reach Chartres I have to wrap him up in about everything the car holds save the gasoline, and I think he is inclined to swallow some of that and to touch a match to it so hard are the shivers. However, a bottle of whiskey sets him on his legs again, but I fancy the next time he is warned he will take heed. The day's ride is beautiful and proves one of utmost interest, one in which the pages of France's history are unrolled all too rapidly before us. The air is fresh and life-giving as we race past the Arch, and so on into the shade of the Bois, which this morning is so entrancing that we speed through many of its avenues before starting onward for the real ride of the day. The machine skims over these level roadways soundlessly, and so smoothly that one may write if one were so disposed on such a morning. Other autos rush past us and we hold on to our caps and almost to our hair; thousands of bicycles flash along the by-paths; Paris is out to enjoy itself as only Paris knows how to do. Yonder is Bagatelle, to my thinking the most exquisite portion of the Bois, and one so little known, to Americans at least. Enter its gateways, and there, in the very centre of this French wood, you find a great park intensely English in its characteristics. One might imagine one's self in some English estate in the heart of that country, for, save for the villa, there is nothing to remind one that this is France. The villa itself is not of a size to greatly mar the picture, and as it is empty and closed you will spend your time in the winding walks and under the shade of the trees. There are two statements as to the building of yonder villa, one, that it was done by the Comte d'Artois on a wager with Marie Antoinette that he would build a château in a month's time. This he accomplished. The other statement makes the wager by that same nobleman with the Prince of Wales and the time sixty days. Whichever is true, the villa was built and for many years with its park belonged to and was the home of Sir Richard Wallace, who housed his superb collection, now in London, within its walls. Bagatelle now belongs to Paris and is part of the Bois, though still shut off by its walls and gateways, and you are only permitted to enter on foot. It would be pleasant to linger longer here to-day, but with Chartres in our minds we move off, passing en route the Café de Madrid, which, to the many thousands who visit or pass it by, means simply a place to get something to eat and yet it occupies the site of the villa built by Francis I. on the model of his prison in Madrid (hence the name). Here the gay monarch first caused ladies to become a necessary part of his Court, insisting that "a court without women is a year without spring time and a spring time without roses." With such power of compliment is it a marvel that he was a favourite of the fair sex, or that his taste was so perfect that his son could do no better than make his father's fair Diane the first lady of his Court? "Madrid" was a house of pleasure. After Francis, Henry II. used it with Diane de Poitiers, Charles IX. with Mlle. de Rouet. Henry III. changed it from a menagerie of women to that of beasts. Here the gay Marguerite divorced by Henry IV. spent her latter years; how, we can well imagine. History is silent concerning it after that, though it was probably used for the same purpose by the succeeding Louis until Louis XVI. ordered its demolition. There is not a vestige of it left to-day, but on its site stands the pink restaurant with its green benches and shading trees, its white covered tables and laughing throngs, but it is too early in the day for them as yet, and the place is rather silent as we flash by it towards the murmuring river. As we pass through Louveciennes, we pause a moment before the pavilion, all that remains of the Villa of Madame du Barry. Everything else has vanished and it is only the exterior of the pavilion that remains as she beheld it. What was her real character,--the daughter of a dressmaker, the mistress of a king, the power before which all the Court bowed, and whose influence over the aged monarch was unbounded? How did she use it? Should we pity her fate, or turn in disgust from a thing so degraded? Some authorities state that from the first to last she was all bad,--the mistress of one Comte du Barry, she was, by the King's orders, married to another, and so presented at Court where her power soon eclipsed that of all others. The Court was at its lowest stage of depravity during her time. She cost France thirty-five millions of francs, and died a coward, showing more fear and terror on the scaffold than any other woman who mounted its fatal platform. The only thing in her favour was her patronage of art and of the men of letters. The other side of the picture, told by an eye-witness, Madame Campan, is far different, at least as regards the standing of the frail du Barry. Therein we find her treated with indulgence by Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, and we are told that with the latter she was, during the dark days of the terror, in constant communication, giving the queen all the information which she worked so hard to obtain,--that her grief over the tragedy of the Queen was intense, and that she desired to dispose of all she possessed in their favour, in re-payment for the infinite goodness of the King and Queen towards herself. Returning to France to join the man she loved, de Bressac, she was forced to gaze upon his severed head carried on a pike past her windows in Versailles. Betrayed at last by the negro boy Zamore, whom she had benefited and protected for years, she was guillotined. She was evil, doubtless, but was there not enough good there to admit of the hope of a greeting in another world such as came to the woman of Palestine, "Neither do I condemn thee?" The figures of history come trooping to us as we roll onward towards Versailles, to which we give but a passing glance. Later on, we glide through the woods where Racine first learned the language of poetry and so on to Rambouillet, where Francis I. ended his days murmuring to his son, "Beware of the Guise." The château is a gloomy pile of red brick, and it was in a chamber in its great round tower that the soul of the merry monarch sailed forth on its long journey, scarcely faster I think we glide away from his palace to-day. To me, properly dressed, this ride is delightful. I find a lined leather jacket to be of all things the most comfortable, but poor Narcissus is chattering with cold and so we leave the Château de Maintenon for inspection on our return. There is much rushing water around the château and its little village, and we come soon upon a majestic aqueduct spanning the river,--a structure which might be considered one of the immediate causes of the French Revolution. Rising from the placid river and its bright green banks, the arches are picturesque and beautiful to-day, and yet, to build them, forty thousand troops were employed. The spot was so unhealthy that the mortality was immense,--many thousands,--and the dead were carried away by night that the workers might not be discouraged or the pleasure of the King delayed, for this was to furnish life to his fountains at Versailles. The King intended to carry the waters of the river through a new channel eight leagues in length, and hence this aqueduct, as it was necessary to connect two mountains. However, before it was completed, the work was abandoned for the hydraulics at Marly. This structure was partly demolished to build the Château of Crécy for Madame de Pompadour. Of the forty-seven original arches, fourteen remain, each eighty-three feet high with a forty-two foot span. The loss of life caused in the building of this canal of thirty-three miles does not appear to have excited much attention at the time,--such was the power of the King, but the people remember, and the grandchildren of these did remember in 1793, when, as usual, the innocent suffered for the guilty. Leaving the aqueduct with its burden of sorrow and the softly murmuring river, we mount the hills and enter upon La Beauce, the finest corn land in France. It spreads away from us, a vast plain, gently sloping off for miles, until far in the hazy distance of this lovely spring day the twin towers of the famous Cathedral of Chartres pierce the sky, and from now on with scarcely any power, and soundless, the car speeds on and on, ever faster and faster, until the wings come out on its hubs once more, and we are flying, fairly flying. If Sheridan had possessed an automobile that day at Winchester, T. Buchanan Reid would have lost the opportunity to make him immortal, but still "hurrah, hurrah for Sheridan, hurrah, hurrah for horse and man," and one feels like returning to boyhood's days and giving utterance to some wild whoops as this car rushes onward and onward. The vast plain spreads away, spangled with daisies. The hedges are all a-blossom, the air is full of perfume and this old world seems young once more, until, as we enter the ancient city of Chartres and pause before her Cathedral, we suddenly drop back again into the Middle Ages. [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL AT CHARTRES By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] This Cathedral of Notre Dame is considered by architects to be the most perfect in France. Its "vast size" is also mentioned. As to the former opinion, it arises, I think, so far as the exterior is concerned, from its simplicity of outlines. One comprehends the whole at a glance, and the eye is not confused and tired by a vast conglomeration of styles, as is the case with many churches. If one were to see this at Chartres first, many of the other cathedrals would impress one as over-dressed, so to speak. As for its size, after the churches of Rouen, Amiens, and Beauvais, this does not impress me, as it is on a far smaller scale than any of those edifices. For instance, the height of the nave is thirty-four feet less than in the Cathedral of Amiens and forty-seven less than that of Beauvais. Neither is it so long or wide as those of Rouen and Amiens. However, while it is not so vast, it is in its interior much more impressive than Amiens. Because of its ancient windows, it holds a "dim religious light" under its arches soothing to mind and heart. "Peace, be still," pervades the silence and follows you as a benediction when you go hence. But before you go, gaze a while upon the glory of these windows. Europe holds nothing like them. They are perfect, and they are eight hundred years old. Other cathedrals have a few or a few fragments, here are one hundred and thirty perfect windows; and from the great rose circle forty feet in diameter to those surrounding the aisles, all are full of that beautiful painted glass, such as we are not able to produce in this latter day. After all, the glory of this Church of our Lady is in such details as this, and in her exquisite lace-like carvings in stone, surrounding the outer wall of the choir. These, together with the Gothic porticoes on the north and south side, form the objects of the greatest beauty and interest in Chartres. [Illustration: THE NORTH PORTAL OF THE CATHEDRAL AT CHARTRES By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] [Illustration: THE SOUTH PORTAL OF THE CATHEDRAL AT CHARTRES By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] [Illustration: STONE CARVINGS SURROUNDING THE CHOIR OF THE CATHEDRAL AT CHARTRES From a photograph] The cathedral has been the object of vast pilgrimages because of a sacred image of the Virgin, which stood in its crypt,--it was destroyed in 1793. Henry IV. was crowned here, and here one still sees the celebrated black image of the twelfth century which was crowned with a "bonnet rouge" during the Terror, but is now restored to its ancient occupation of receiving the veneration of the faithful. [Illustration: THE VIERGE DU PILIER IN THE CATHEDRAL OF CHARTRES By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] We were not impressed with the town of Chartres and so after a good dinner and much whiskey for the frozen youth of the orchids, we bid it farewell. While there we met some friends who had come from Naples in their own car, a new one, and had spent a thousand dollars for it in tires alone. It was now on the way to the shops in Paris, to be "thoroughly overhauled" and it is not two months old. My red car is not so gorgeous, but I enter it with every satisfaction, and my enjoyment of my tour is not rendered any the less by the knowledge that though I keep it a year or for ever, I shall have no such items to pay when it leaves me, nor shall I have an old car on my hands, and that means much, for the fashions of these machines change so from year to year that a "last year's car" is worth little when you try to sell it. However, as I have stated before, Jean says that this car is of such sturdy make that it should last for years with small additional expense. [Illustration: THE VIADUCT OF MAINTENON, NEAR CHARTRES By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] As we near again the aqueduct of Louis XIV. its arches frame most picturesquely the Château de Maintenon, which stands some distance beyond it, on the river's bank. Built by Cocquereau, the treasurer of Louis XI., the castle was given by Louis XIV. to de Maintenon, and here in 1685 in its little chapel, he is supposed to have married her, though it is generally conceded that that ceremony occurred at Versailles but that they came here immediately afterwards. The King was but forty-seven and she fifty years of age, so that he lived with her thirty years. She certainly possessed charms past understanding to have enchained such a man at that comparatively youthful age, to have enchained and held him as she did for thirty years. We picture the widow Scarron as a pinched-nose, pale-faced woman of sour expression. She must have been far different and far more to have held this Louis, who probably was as nearly natural as it was possible for him to be, here in these rooms which to-day are, so they tell us, as she left them. If so, how did the Terrorists overlook them? Here is the sitting-room with its frayed green satin furniture, and yonder the bedroom and several other apartments. There was no great state maintained in Maintenon and I doubt not that the worthy couple often strolled down the banks of this placid river to look at the work on yonder aqueduct outlined against the sky. The King is described as always majestic, yet sometimes with gaiety, leaving nothing out of place or to hazard before the world. Down to the least gesture, his walk, his bearing, his countenance, all were measured, decorous, grand and noble, and always natural, which the unique, incomparable advantages of his whole appearance greatly facilitated. In serious affairs, no man ever was more imposing, and it was necessary to be accustomed to see him, if, in addressing him one did not wish to break down. The respect, which his presence at any place inspired, imposed silence and even a sort of dread. When the mob tore him from the tomb at St. Denis they found a "black mass of spices,"--the man was lost after death in perfumes, as during life in pride, and his body was flung, together with all the other royalties of France, into the great ditch at St. Denis, and, if the story be true, his heart swallowed by a canon of Westminster was interred with the very reverend gentleman in that sacred place. It probably killed him. Another tale is to the effect that one Philip Henri Schunck, a royalist did, in the year 1819 in Paris, make the acquaintance of an artist named St. Martin, a friend of one of the officials who superintended the opening of the royal monuments in the Jesuits' churches. St. Martin states that he was present on the opening of several monuments in order to secure the royal dust to be utilized as "Momie" a valuable dark brown pigment which was often obtained from mummy cases and ancient tombs. St. Martin converted part of the heart of Louis XIV. to this use but returned the rest together with the heart of Louis XII., intact to Schunck through whom they reached St. Denis where they now are. St. Martin made this surrender during his last illness--a time when he would scarcely have perpetrated a practical joke on posterity. At the opening of the monuments two painters were present; the other was Droling, and between them they bought eleven hearts including those of Anne of Austria, Maria Theresa, Gaston of Orleans, the regent, and Madame Henrietta and all were made into "Momie." There is a picture in the Louvre by Droling--"Intérieur de Cuisine"--whose rich colours may owe their brilliancy to these hearts of dead royalties. The heart of Louis le Grand mashed up by a painter's knife and spread on canvas--where now is your greatness, O King? But of all this these murmuring waters at Maintenon told the anointed of God nothing, but reflected his image as placidly as they do ours to-day. Madame is described as a woman of very stately elegant figure and bearing. Possessed of infinite tact she never lost her temper even before de Montespan had been banished from Court. Nothing appeared to vex her, and she would smile past and through all obstacles until she obtained what she desired. With all, she would appear to have been an austere woman, caring little for dress or the pageants of the Court and much for power. In that, she bore a certain resemblance to Catherine de Medici. As time wore on, she so influenced the King that we find the red heels, diamond buckles, laces and plumes almost all gone. That she ever loved the man is doubtful, and she certainly did not forgive his dying reference to her age, which exceeded his by two years. Her last words as she deserted him, which he probably heard--and which she intended he should hear--were as heartless as only a woman of that stamp could make them,--"There lies a man who never loved any one but himself." [Illustration: THE CHÂTEAU OF MAINTENON. FROM THE NORTH By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] To the students of history, Maintenon and its seclusion would seem a place more to the liking of its austere mistress than Versailles, and it is probable that she spent much time in the château. It may be that here she induced Louis to sign that revocation of the Edict of Nantes which so affected the fortunes of our own land, by driving the best of the population of France down the Rhine valley and out on to the ocean. On our return to Paris we pass by St. Cyr, the immense collection of buildings which Louis built for Madame as a wedding gift and wherein she held court at the head of a convent of two hundred and fifty noble dames. The place is at present a military school and we are not permitted to enter, but there is after all nothing to see save the black marble slab which covers her tomb. To St. Cyr she came a day before the king died, leaving him to enter upon the great hereafter alone. Here she lived the simplest and most austere of lives and here she ended her days. A rushing ride through the afternoon brings us again to Paris, in the twilight and into the Élysées Palace Hôtel where at least two hundred of the gayest women of the under world are taking tea, and I am surprised to find the majority of them speaking English, many, by their accents, coming from our own country. It is a strange sight this; London has some such scenes, but I know of none in New York, to its credit be it said.[4] [4] In view of the present conditions in one of New York's greatest hotels, I must qualify that statement.--M. M. S. With the auto disappeared also, but into the subway I think, the youth with the spring suit and the orchid, both sadly drooping. I believe he got into a boiling bath and filled up on what whiskeys and sodas Paris had left, for twenty-four hours, resting the while at the bottom of a deep, deep bed. CHAPTER XXVI MY CHAUFFEUR SUMMONED BY THE GOVERNMENT--THE NEW MAN--YAMA's OPINION OF PARIS--SPEED OF AUTOS IN PARIS. While I am dressing for dinner, Jean comes in with a flaming face and a telegram. He has been summoned for military service, and though it will last but two weeks it must be performed at Gap, near the Italian frontier, and what shall I do in the meantime? Certainly I do not propose to pay for an idle auto car, and can another chauffeur be gotten? Jean has wired to Nice and thinks that "George" may be sent, and if so, I will be all right as he states that George is a better chauffeur than he himself. All this is very annoying but cannot be helped, and one does not desire to growl at the government of a country where one receives so much kindness, especially when all this is for a very necessary service. Still, to lose a chauffeur that one knows, and can trust, is a serious business, and I am almost tempted to end the tour now, but the idea of foregoing the Vosges and the Black Forest, to say nothing of what may follow, is not any more acceptable, so I decide to see what can be done in Nice, and await the reply to Jean's telegram to the owner of the auto, Monsieur le Jeunne. It comes promptly and states that George is already _en route_ to us, and will arrive that night on the express. In the interval I take my last ride with Jean, rambling all over old Paris, which he seems to know and love, and he is so delighted that it interests me. Yama still insists that the capital does not look respectable. That from one _of a nation_ which maintains the Yoshawarra, as a national institution and which does not know the meaning of the word morality, is severe. Still, I doubt whether Japan could be considered as immoral as that great Yoshawarra called Paris; rather they are _un_moral. The order of things is certainly reversed in the two countries. In France, a girl is shut up in a convent until she marries, but after that, well the less said the better (I do not hold that this is the case in the provinces); whereas in Japan there is no morality, as we understand that word, before marriage, while there certainly is, after that ceremony. The Jap women are faithful wives and faithful mistresses. We consider Japan as a semi-barbarous nation and do not judge her people by our standards but France is another so-called Christian nation, yet I think _that_ slave market in the hotel is worse than any our Southern States knew of in their darkest days. I asked Yama which city he liked the better, New York or Paris. "Why certainly, New York, sir. Here there are such funny-looking men talking to disreputable-looking women at those dirty tables all over the street; the place is not respectable and you ought to go home." I quite agree with him but I do not go; but then to him the other side, the fair side of Paris, is a closed book. All its beauty, all its intense historical interest he does not see and cannot comprehend, but it is difficult to understand how any living being can fail to see and feel the beauty of Paris, when the horse-chestnuts are in bloom, when the trees in the Bois are of that tender green which seems peculiar to France, when the Seine dances and sparkles in the sun, and all the world goes for an outing. For my part, I most intensely enjoy the actual living when my carriage rolls between the horses of Marly up the Avenue of the Champs-Élysées past the arch and into that fairy-land beyond it. And yet I never pass the Place de la Concord that I do not remember its terrible history, see in my mind's eye the white-robed queen moving to her death, or the shrieking tumultuous mob which carried Robespierre to justice. The prancing stone horses from Marly which the gay world passes every day looked down upon both those scenes. Those old houses in the Rue St. Honoré saw the passing of both King and Queen and the saintly Madame Elizabeth. What were even French brutes made of to destroy a woman like that? George arrives at six o'clock in the evening, and Jean brings him to my rooms and then departs, with regret, as one can tell by the catch in his voice. Escorted by George and Yama he disappears into the "underground," and is gone to serve his country. As it turns out, that is the end of his service with me, though I have agreed to have him back when his time expires at Gap. But I anticipate--George seems to know his business and the first run through these crowded streets places my mind at rest on that score. Motor cars in Paris are lords of the way,--the police pay no attention to them, and just why each day is not marked by fatal accidents all over the city passes my comprehension. Apparently there is no limit placed upon their speed. Yesterday I saw one enter the city and fly up the Avenue of the Grand Army at certainly fifty miles an hour. That wide thoroughfare was crowded, yet no accident happened, and the car, rounding the arch, fled away down the avenue of the Champs-Élysées at the same furious pace. In the old days, Paris was considered dangerous for pedestrians, because of its cabs and carriages. To-day one waves them aside as one would a fly and pauses only for an auto car, for _it_ will not pause for you and it is very heavy. I confess my first ride down this Avenue in the car of one living in Paris tested my nerve. I held on for dear life, and fairly shrieked two or three times at what I thought was wilful murder. When we reached the Hôtel Ritz I descended in a shaking condition, and I had been used to a high rate of progress for two solid months. Personally, I do not care for such speeding and will not permit it with my car for many reasons aside from the danger, but most of these people have taken as their motto, "A short life and a merry one,"--all of which may have one good result, it will save tremendous funeral expenses, for there will be little left to bury. CHAPTER XXVII DEPARTURE FROM PARIS--THE CEMETERY OF THE PICPUS--RIDE THROUGH THE FOREST OF FONTAINEBLEAU TO SENS--THE CATHEDRAL--TOMB OF THE DAUPHINS--THE GREAT ROUTE TO GENEVA--STONED BY BOYS--TONNERRE To those who love her, Paris shows even yet glimpses of the olden days, and as we flash past the Louvre and along the banks of the Seine, many a stately façade rises above us. This section was Royal Paris for many centuries, and it is to be regretted that the government of the city does not assume control and preserve what is left of the private hotels, at least preserve their exteriors. To build a modern city is at all times possible, but once down, these ancient houses can never be replaced, and their existence brings thousands of strangers and much money to this capital of France and its people. Something of such preservation has been done, but there is much which should be preserved which stands in danger. The Hôtel de Sens, unique and perfect but a year or so ago, is gone, and for what? We leave the Column Bastille well to our left, and speed off down the Rue du Faubourg St. Antoine to the Place du Trône,--now, Place de la République--a vast open space guarded by two stately columns and from which broad avenues stretch away until lost in perspective. Here Louis XIV. erected a throne and received the homage of Paris when he returned from his Spanish marriage. All the gorgeousness and glitter of his capital gathered then with no shadows on their sky of what was to come. Just here where he was enthroned stood, later, a scaffold holding two long high posts with a glittering knife flashing up and down, a hedge of steel surrounded it and a howling mob thronged the place. When the Place de la Revolution became too slippery with blood, the guillotine came here, and here, between June 14 and July 27, 1794, fell thirteen hundred of the most illustrious heads of France. For any reason or for no reason, whole families came together and were glad to be allowed to go "together." It is related that a little child, a girl, at the Luxembourg, then a prison, came racing and shouting from the door to the waiting trumbril with the cry, "O Mama, Mama, my name _is_ on your list and I can go too." Close by in what is now the neighbouring cemetery of the Picpus they found rest. Leaving the Place du Trône on the city side, by the first street to the left we enter a quiet quarter of Paris which the tide of life rarely invades. These streets are of the oldest in Paris, and this convent before us, now called the Sacred Heart, was once that of the Bernardin-Benedictin, into which Jean Valjean penetrated, and I must confess that it is with him rather than the illustrious dead that my thoughts are busy as we draw up before the gates. The whole neighbourhood seems deserted, the yellow streets are as silent as the convent and its grave-yard, and one wonders over which of these walls Jean Valjean made that wonderful escape into this abode of Perpetual Adoration, of Perpetual Silence. [Illustration: THE TOMB OF LAFAYETTE IN THE PICPUS CEMETERY, PARIS From a photograph] But our George has jangled the porter's bell and the gate is shortly opened by a sad-faced Sister, who, with down-cast eyes conducts us through the long convent gardens, past the buildings which one may not enter, and into an oblong enclosure crowded with flat tombstones, upon which as we pass down the walks we read the most historical names in France, until upon reaching the last in the line, the name of La Fayette is before us. Two little American flags adorn it and hang motionless in the quiet air. But even La Fayette's tomb cannot hold our thoughts long here. The eye is irresistibly drawn to a small door in a wall just beyond it, guarded by an iron grill and surmounted by a tablet bearing a simple inscription. Gazing inward you see a space some seventy-five feet square and guarded by high walls. Its grass is shaded by some cypress trees, a simple iron cross rises in the centre. There are no stones or monuments of any sort to mark this last resting place of the flower of the French aristocracy. Thirteen hundred and six were brought here from the Place du Trône and were cast pell mell into the fosse. [Illustration: THE CEMETERY OF THE PICPUS. LAFAYETTE'S TOMB ON THE RIGHT, TABLET TO ANDRÉ CHÉNIER ON THE LEFT From a photograph by the author] Amongst them, the figure of the poet André Chénier will probably be remembered the longest. His only crime lay in his beautiful verses, in his life and character, all of which were a reproach to the wolves of the Revolution. The night following his execution a cart loaded with twenty-five headless corpses left the Place du Trône and wended its way to this deserted quarry, into which for six weeks had been tumbled pell mell, stripped of their clothing by the men in charge of the work, the victims of these last days of the Terror. This fosse remained open from day to day awaiting further executions and no day passed without its additions to the mournful assemblage. Here André Chénier was buried unknown to his family who sought for his grave, for the work was done in secret and these grave diggers never spoke of their task as to do so would have insured their joining the silent throng. The secret was discovered by a poor workwoman, Mlle. Paris, who followed the cart containing the body of her father, and each week she would repair thither to pray on the brink of his grave. The days of Robespierre accomplished and the Terror ended, the plot was bought by an inhabitant of the Faubourg de Picpus and enclosed in walls, after which it was blessed by a rebellious priest, rebellious against the Commune, in hiding in Paris. In 1802, when Mme. de Montagu Noailles returned to France, her first care was to discover the grave of her mother guillotined in 1794. Her search was fruitless until she heard by accident of this workwoman, and so in the end succeeded in buying this sacred plot of ground. The ancestor of Prince Salm Krybourg, who now owns the spot, was the last victim of the guillotine and sleeps here with all the others. None have the privilege of sepulchre in the outer enclosure unless they be of blood kin to those who suffered in the Terror and were buried in this fosse. If there be any aristocracy in death it is here in this cemetery of the Picpus. As I turn for a last glimpse, the spring sunshine is filtering down through the thickness of the trees caressing the grass within, and the tombs without, in a tender sort of way, as though to make up to the dead, in some small degree, for all the horrors which had been hurled upon them when alive. So we leave them under the benediction of spring and follow our sad faced guide who utters no word or sound, but stands with bowed head and crossed hands at the great gateway until we pass outward and away. After such a spot it is well to come down to the cheerful commonplace streets of this farthest corner of Paris on our way to the South, and yet as we roll onward through the sunshine, it is some time before we recover our usual spirits and the world seems gay once more, and here is one of the charms of automobiling. If all goes well with your machine, and such has been the case with mine, you cannot long remain sad or gloomy, ill or desponding. The rushing air and the glory of living wraps you round about and you cannot but be joyous. Care may be back there somewhere, but with good luck he cannot catch you. To-day the air is moist and warm and with the smell of the asphalt comes the odour of wood violets. The market women, as they rattle past us with their loads of bright yellow carrots and well washed turnips appear jolly and good-natured. Doubtless they could enjoy a good day at the guillotine, but they are not bent upon that now. So we roll onward through mile after mile of streets and a quarter of Paris heretofore unknown to me; rather uninteresting on the whole and yet to me no section of this city is without great interest, and the panorama of her people is an inexhaustible study, and one of which I never tire. Paris, like its wickedness, lays fast hold upon those who would leave it, as the traveller in an auto will find to his discomfort. Of all the exits from the great city there is but one, that to Brittany, which is open and straight away. As we entered two weeks ago from Beauvais we were entangled in a maze of streets which appeared to have no outlet, and so again as we leave for the south. It is all fair sailing down the magnificent avenues of the city, but once past the walls our trouble begins. George gets lost several times and it is with great relief that we at last leave the houses and roll out once more on one of the splendid highways of France. One half the day is misty and rainy with two short, sharp showers, but with all, the ride is beautiful, passing by the lovely Seine and through the forest of Fontainebleau. It is dark as we roll into the quaint old town of Sens and seek shelter in the comfortable Hôtel de Paris. Again I am welcomed by "Madame" who shows me to a comfortable room and soon has a fire blazing,--acceptable, though this is the sixth of May. After all, I enjoy these quaint hotels. They are so honest, their people so wholesome, and the whole such a relief after the perfume-laden air of Paris. Dinner at this hotel is served at a long white covered table, with its palms and bottles of wine, around which sit serious-looking provincials with their napkins tucked up under one ear and spread over ample stomachs. What am I writing, they wonder. They say nothing to each other but all stare at me. The newsman comes in and sells the Paris papers and high overhead chime softly the Cathedral bells noted for their silvery tones. The importance of Sens in other days is attested by its ancient and majestic gateways, but the Sens of to-day is a small place clustering around the portals of its Cathedral, which is supposed to be the parent of the Choir of Canterbury, that church having been built by Williams of Sens. There is a resemblance but I shall not enter into description here, after having described so many other cathedrals of France. [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL AT SENS By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] Passing its portals, one will linger a moment before the tomb of the Dauphin, father of Louis XVI., speculating as to whether he was a stronger character than his son, and as to what effect he would have had, had he worn the crown, though realising that nothing could have prevented that deluge of 1793. A Napoléon in command would have dispersed many of the mobs, spared the world much of the horrible bloodshed, but the Bourbon throne was doomed. Again, if the king had possessed a modern fire department he could have gained time if not saved his head. There is no mob which can stand against water as applied by a fire-engine. It has been tried and always with success. It would have saved the day at Versailles and the Tuileries and would do so at the present time in Russia--but to return to Sens. There is another monument not mentioned in the books and one of great beauty. It is to some archbishop whose name I have forgotten. The statue kneels on a black marble sarcophagus and is of white marble. It is not so much in the statue itself that the beauty lies, but in the wonderfully natural arrangement of the robe which flows behind in billowy folds, until one touches it and marvels that it is really marble and not heavy satin. Thomas à Becket fled to Sens to escape Henry II., and you may still see his robes and mitre in the treasury of this church. You may say your prayers if you desire at the same altar where he knelt, one wonders whether it was in adoration of himself or of God. In Sens you again encounter the work of Viollet-le-Duc, who has restored wherever he found it possible, but there are bits which escaped his eye if you care to hunt them out. I find myself before one now, off in a quiet corner. It is only a detached head on a column and the eyes gaze into mine in a sidewise fashion as though desirous of telling me its story,--just as the lips of the deserted Buddhas in the forests of Java seem ever quivering to speak. They say you were Jean du Cognot,--but will you pardon a wanderer in these latter days if he asks, who was Jean, and why his head is here all alone on this column? Was there ever any more to him? Did he listen to the booming of these great bells rolling out their summons above us? The eyes gaze downward at me in a sad sort of fashion and seem to follow me reproachfully as I pass outward. The people are streaming in for High Mass and it would be more respectful to get our car away from the sacred edifice, and so we move off down the streets of the little city and on into the fair land about it. As we leave Sens her beautiful bells shower a benediction upon all mankind. Their tone is wonderfully soft and mellow and follows us far out over the misty meadows and by the placid river. A light rain sets in and the skies give no hope of a pleasant day, but an hour later the blue patch appears, and when we stop for luncheon, the sun is shining. This is the main route to Geneva, the highways are superb, and great machines are rushing past us to and from Paris. Later on, speeding moderately, we are approaching a bridge where some boys are standing, when, as we move by, one of them casts a handful of small stones straight in our faces. Fortunately they did not strike our eyes, or there would have been a catastrophe more or less serious. Quickly stopping the car, George rushes after the fleeing culprits, but without success, those remaining on the bridge calmly tell us that we have no right to go so fast, and we reply that another time we shall answer by shooting. We were not going faster than fifteen miles an hour and the bridge was not in town, making the act one of pure deviltry. It was the first of its kind which we have encountered since starting from Nice. These towns nearly all have signs by the highway regulating speed within their limits and we have always obeyed the notice. Later we entered a very beautiful avenue of trees leading into Tonnerre, a melancholy old place with little of interest, save the Great Hall of a hospital founded by Marguerite de Bourgogne, seven hundred years ago,--a vast chapel resembling St. Stephen's hall in Westminster and quite as large. CHAPTER XXVIII DIJON--THE FRENCH AND FRESH WATER--THE ANTIQUITIES OF DIJON--RIDE THROUGH THE CÔTE D'OR--ARRIVAL AT BESANÇON. As we roll onward, Dijon comes into view, picturesquely placed at the foot of the vine-clad hills of the Côte d'Or, backed in turn by the Jura Mountains. The sun shines brightly as we roll into this ancient capital of Charles of Burgundy. It is only since motor cars have commenced to fly over this land that any one has thought of stopping at Dijon. Its glory has long since departed. It was absorbed into that of France under Louis XI. after the death of Charles, when ceasing of importance as a capital it has remained merely a prosperous provincial town, associated in one's mind, together with its province, with much that is rich and red and good in the shape of wine. Judging by the fat bottles all down the dinner table of this hotel, that reviver of mankind is cheaper here than water. We have descended at the Hôtel du Jura, which holds out a special inducement of "baths on every floor," an inducement I must confess, for aside from the greatest hotels in the largest cities, one finds no bathrooms in beautiful France,--and on arriving at an inn after a long auto ride, a bath is an absolute necessity, unless you are so utterly tired out, which I have never been, that nothing save bed is of the slightest importance. Where and how does the vast mass of the French nation bathe? I am not scoffing, I would like to know. It is a fact that until the advent of English and American tourists there were no baths in any hotel in France from Brest to Nice, and even with the building of the Hôtel Continental in Paris, in 1878, if one wanted a bath one must descend to the basement. In 1900, there were but one or two in all the hotel part of that vast establishment, and the rooms containing them were usually used as bedrooms. That condition is slowly improving, but even now they cannot understand the necessity of a bath with every bedroom. The plumbers' bills would drive them to drink, and even in the present Élysées Palace Hôtel, with all its paint, glass, and glitter, unless one has a large suite one has to walk a distance down the hall to the bath and often wait half an hour. The day may come when Europe will boast the convenience of such hotels as one finds in every American city, but she cannot do so now, and in Berlin it is reported that the Royal Palace has no bathrooms, that his Majesty's tub is behind a curtain at the end of a hall. The Empress is said to have exclaimed, when reading of a New York hotel, "I should think myself in heaven if I had such luxury around me." She evidently understood that luxury in its truest sense does not mean gorgeous pageants, pomp, and glitter, but a bathroom of your own less than a block away. How was it at Versailles in the days of the grand Louis? One reads much of the state function called "the toilet" where the King is represented as washing his eyes in some spirits of wine, but one has never read of a bath being part of the royal establishment, consequently one cannot but imagine that under all its pomp and majesty, the Court of France must have been a very dirty place. In fact it is necessary to look to the extremities of Europe, Turkey and Spain, to find evidences of the proper appreciation of fresh water as applied to the human frame. The Turks--though unspeakably vile in all other respects--do bathe and southern Spain holds mute testimony to the love of the Moors for water--a trait they certainly carried away with them when they crossed the straits. [Illustration: THE TOWER OF STATE, PALACE OF THE DUKES OF BOURGOGNE, AT DIJON By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] As I sally forth for an inspection of the city of Dijon the first glances show an entirely modern town of wide streets and rattling trams, while just below me the trains rush to and fro from Paris, but pass onward on to the left, and while you will not find a Bourges or Rouen, you will discover many quaint relics of another period. On the corner of the Rue du Secret and the square of the Duke of Burgundy is an ancient mansion with a turret at its angle and an image in the niche over its doorway. The whole is black with the passing ages and one wonders what the lives were which were lived out there in the old days of chivalry. It's a shop now and from the windows of the adjacent palace no faces look down. It might have housed some dainty mistress of the duke. In the little garden which separates it from the palace there is a fountain and under the trees the people sleep when they will and there, as the museum is not open just yet, I wait listening to the bells of Notre Dame and watching the progress of a love-making between a man and girl on the same bench. They pay no attention to me. The work in hand is too serious for any notice of a passing stranger. Poor fool! He is a bright-eyed, honest-looking lad and she is one of the streets in every sense of that word. They finally move away and I turn to enter the Hôtel de Ville where I find the ancient palace of its dukes, and where there is something of interest even now. The vast kitchen and its six great chimney-places, all unchanged is a curious spot. There the feasts for the "Wild Boar of Ardennes" were prepared, where whole oxen were cooked at once. Above it you may still see his Noble Hall with its richly carved stone work and great chimney with flamboyant traceries, and in its Museum, the gorgeous tombs of Philippe le Hardi and Jean-sans-peur will hold your attention by their beauty of carving and colour. Being in a museum, one can pardon their restoration which has been most successfully accomplished. I have never seen anything so exquisite as these carved draperies. [Illustration: THE TOMB OF JEAN SANS PEUR AT DIJON From a photograph] Passing outward, pause a moment before the Church of Notre Dame, and allow its curious clock, brought from Courtrai by Philippe le Hardi, to speak. If it is a quarter to the hour, it will be struck off by a child, if a half, by a "hammer woman," if the full hour, by a "hammer man," and all have been doing like service for the citizens of Dijon for six hundred years and more, and will do so for thousands long after you are dust and ashes. We would probably pull down the church and erect a skyscraper upon the premises, but these Burgundians love their ancient city, and so this old shrine will stand and yonder quaint figures continue to ring these people into life and through life and off into the realms of heaven, where I doubt not their souls will rest more in peace if sometimes the winds from earth waft to them the tones of their ancient bells. As I wander through the streets of the town it is plain to be seen that it was a Court city, for there are many stately and interesting façades lining the way. Passing onward beyond the railway station and its puffing locomotives, one comes to the ancient Chartreuse, once the ducal burying-place for the house of Burgundy. Charles the Bold slept here until carried off to Bruges. The only relic left here now is what formed once the base of a Calvary,--a group of stone figures surrounding the pedestal where formerly rose the crucifix. The figures of Moses, David, Jeremiah, Zachariah, Daniel, and Isaiah are life size, beautifully carved and very majestic. Formerly the whole Calvary was richly gilded and was the object of many pilgrimages, for which was accorded the remission of sins. I certainly feel better after my pilgrimage, but I fear it is for no religious feeling, but rather the brisk walk and the many hours of interest I have passed this sunny morning in the fresh air of this capital of Burgundy. [Illustration: THE WELL OF MOSES IN THE ABBEY OF CHARTREUX AT DIJON By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] However, luncheon is ready, and the auto waits, it would seem impatiently, judging from the row it is raising and so we speed away from Dijon, and enter upon the richest section of France, the Côte d'Or, where the yellow hills for league after league are smothered in vineyards, and all the prospect is green and gold, with villages nestling here and there, clean and delightful to look upon. As we ascend the terraces and speed off and away on the wide highway, winding along the table-land on their summits, the air is full of the freshness of the mountains and on reaching the top of a hill, George points out Mt. Blanc far in the distance. It is Sunday, the people are abroad and all the world goes singing onward. Everybody seems glad to see every one else. The chickens are more reckless than usual and even the machine moves joyously. If you pass this way during the season of the vintage, the air will be laden with the odour of the over-ripened grapes, and the vines will fairly shake out at you the fragrance of Chambertin, Pommard, or Volnay, until your senses swim as though in truth you had been drinking, but to-day in May there is only the fragrance of green leaves and the smell of the rich yellow earth wafted to us as we rush onward. Our route lies through Auxonne, which held out successfully against the Prussians in 1871;--and so on towards Dôle. Turning for a glimpse of the land behind us, we see the spires of Dijon far down in the valley, while before us and to the north stretch the mountains of the Vosges, and far in the hazy distance, the greater Alps are beginning to assume form and shape. Dôle is passed at a rapid rate, and turning northeastward towards Besançon we fairly fly along and all goes well until four o'clock when a storm, which has blackened the heavens in front of us breaks in heavy rain and--then a tire gives out. While I write, George is down in the mud putting on a new one. He does not seem to mind the work in the least. To-night we stop at Besançon. It is in sight all the time, but that tire must be replaced at once. So George takes refuge under a tree until the worst of the storm is over and then goes to work in the mud. Yama gets out to assist and is a good second,--the flow of French, Japanese, and pigeon English going on all the time. The work done, we roll on again. CHAPTER XXIX THE FORTRESS OF BESANÇON--AUTOS IN HEAVY RAINS--DREAMS--BELFORT--ENTRANCE INTO THE VOSGES--THE RISE TO BALLON D'ALSACE--SUPERB RIDE TO GÉRARDMER Besançon is so old that Cæsar thought it of the utmost importance as a basis, and France thinks so to-day. As we approach it, we note that every hill (and it is surrounded by hills) holds its fortifications and even the river assists in the work of defence, by enclosing the town in a complete horseshoe. At the opening of the horseshoe, is a hill crowned by the citadel. If you explore the town you will find relics of the Romans on every hand, even a triumphal arch, rich with statues and bas-reliefs. The Christian martyrs, St. Ferréol and St. Ferjeux, were slain in A. D. 212 in the amphitheatre whose remains one may see here. The wars of France have raged around Besançon to the present day. It is the most important stronghold on the Swiss frontier, and last but not least, it was the birthplace of Victor Hugo, who would seem to have acquired some of his ruggedness and strength from these surrounding mountains and yonder rushing river. The town is black and forbidding in appearance, as though strangers were not wanted, and we pass onward over the river Doubs and find refuge from the storm in the very comfortable "Hôtel des Bains," near the Casino, for Besançon is also a watering-place, has springs, a season, and a casino. Thank the Lord we are too soon for the season, and in consequence have the huge draughty hotel to ourselves. The air is cold here and a wood fire is most cheering and acceptable. It is storming hard, and as I look downward upon the dripping trees, three autos rush past, autos without tops, and whose occupants are fairly drowned out. While a fixed top is a great weight to carry, and very hard on pneumatics, one should certainly have a calash. We are so provided and could never get wet save in a water-spout. The poor women who are coming out of these veritable bath-tubs below there are forced to pause in the rain and allow some of the accumulated water to run off them. Wearily they struggle to the lift and disappear for the night. I have the _salle à manger_ all to myself, and gather my feet up upon the opposite chair to escape the draughts. Ensconced at last on a sofa in my room before a great blazing log, I look up the history of Besançon and while I read, the warm air gets into my brain and holds consultation with the cold air which has been rushing through it all day long, producing a drowsy effect. The dancing flames are full of shapes and fantasies, and as I watch them, the door opens and a queer figure dressed in sandals and short skirts and wearing a breast plate and helmet enters. He carries a green wreath in his hand, which, having doffed the helmet, he puts on: it has pointed leaves which stick forward over his big nose. I ask him if he likes Besançon, and he promptly tells me that it is called "Vesontio," at which I differ and we argue, finally deciding to go out and inquire. I take the auto which he scoffs at, preferring a thing shaped like a coal scuttle, with knives on its wheel hubs and drawn by three horses abreast--with a shout we are off through the storm, sweeping up and down the streets of the ancient city, past closed houses, and through silent fortresses, and even out on the face of the river, where car and auto hold a wild race, cheered by ghostly multitudes on the banks. Cæsar loses his wreath, and Yama stands up and yells a desire to have him in Manchuria. The race is mine and the Emperor of Rome is so enchanted with my red devil that he announces that it is his, and I will "just get out." Again discussion follows and he waves to his assistance some thousands or so of shadows, but a word to George and we rush right through them, and off and away until we come up with a bang somewhere, and I wake to find the fire out and the room very cold. Ah me, how one does sleep and dream after a rushing ride! Our entrance into the Vosges was not propitious. Heavy mist and some rain attended all our morning progress until we neared the luncheon hour. The roads were fine and the scenery picturesque, what we could see of it. At one we reached Belfort, another great army post, with soldiers everywhere,--necessary to prevent the gobbling up of one Christian nation by another. In the very good "Hotel of the Ancient Post" I have an excellent luncheon served by a waiter who scarcely speaks French. He is an Alsatian, speaks English, and was at Chicago in 1893, says he is going back to America "just as soon as he can get there," was "a fool to leave," says this place is no good save for soldiers and there would be no soldiers if it were not for the fine clothes. Yea, verily! The Emperor William would find his army melt away if he put the men in plain clothes. Vanity and ambition form the basis of most empires. Belfort is the last military post of great strength in this direction. If the traveller will mount to the foot of the old ruined tower which rises on a hill some twelve hundred feet above the town, he will obtain a view of all the fortifications, amongst them the famous "Intrenched Camp," capable of holding twenty thousand men. Off to the north, he will see the Vosges Mountains, and to the east, the Black Forest, while the Bernese Alps gleam in the south, rising above the Jura. The siege and capture of Belfort by the Germans in 1871 forms an interesting chapter in the history of that conflict, and one would judge from the warlike appearance here to-day that the place would not be taken unawares if a struggle came on. From Belfort to Ballon d'Alsace there is a rise of some four thousand feet. As we leave the former place, the clouds roll away and the sun streams out warmly. The road commences to mount soon after we quit the town and at one of the first hills the auto balks and refuses to go farther. George gets out and fusses and fixes for ten minutes and then away we go,--all of our twenty-four horses put their full speed forth and we sail up the mountains, skimming like a bird. The higher we mount, the steeper the grades, the faster we move. Really this is a sturdy machine. In all the long journey, save a burst tire now and then, we have had no accidents and now it is lifting itself and ourselves up and over these mountains as easily as it rolled along the level. It is good to be alive in such air and amidst such scenery. These mountains of the Vosges are very much like those at the Horse Shoe Bend and our Allegheny Mountains would be just as charming if we had such roads to reach them by. Here at an elevation of four thousand feet the highways are as fine as those in Central Park. Reaching the summit, a magnificent panorama is unrolled on all sides, but there is snow abroad and we do not linger long. Our route lies past Le Thillon. Farther on, we begin to ascend again and are soon high up in the snow line. As we round the shoulder of the peak, far off to the westward, between two great green mountain pyramids, the sun is setting in a golden glory high overhead the new moon sails in a pink sky, while far below, deep down in the valley sparkles an emerald lake on whose shore lies Gérardmer, where we shall stop for the night, the most beautiful spot in the Vosges. The descent is rapid and very crooked, but George manages the turns as easily as with a hand cart, though I confess I hold on tightly now and then, feeling that that will help matters. Waterfalls tumble all around us and the sunlight rolls down through the pine boughs in a golden glory. Far below, the land is spread out like a map and dotted thickly with villages, while above, the sky bends, a blue arch without shadow of a cloud,--a blessing after the mists of this morning. With all power shut off, our car glides down the white highway stretching in long curves and zigzags far below. The hills on either side are spangled with yellow easter lilies, and the glowing buttercups; the air is wine, which adds to one's lease of life; and again it is good to be alive,--one of those days and scenes which would force an atheist to believe in God. The road winds through dense forests of pine trees where no sound breaks the silence, save that of our on-rushing and the music of the many waterfalls; and as for the sound of our wheels, this auto on the down grade is almost noiseless. It is nearly as silent on the level, but on the up grade when the speed is changed its motor talks quite loudly,--does not hesitate to discuss the change. The journey to-day impresses me again with the advantages of motor cars over all other methods of locomotion for pleasure. We have run away from the storm and my perseverance in coming has had its reward. It was so wretched when we started and the prospects looked so hopeless that nothing save stubbornness and pride prevented my giving the order to turn southward towards the sun--if sun there could be--and give up the Vosges. My reward for not doing so has been a ride that I shall always remember as one of the most glorious of my travels. My own land holds many scenes of equal beauty, but as I have already stated we have not the roads by which to reach them. Then again we would find such wretched inns and poor food that the pleasure would be all gone, whereas here I draw up at the Hôtel de la Poste, where "Madame" shows me to a room, simple but clean, and later I sit down to a dinner which would do justice to any New York restaurant. To be sure, we are but a century old, whereas Cæsar fought for this section two thousand years ago, and I have a hazy recollection that he returns hereabouts every now and then. CHAPTER XXX GÉRARDMER AND THE MOUNTAINS--A WEDDING--FRENCH COURTSHIP--EXCURSIONS TO ST. DIÉ--OVER THE COL DE LA SCHLUCHT--GERMAN CUSTOM HOUSE--"ALWAYS A GERMAN"--COLMAR--RHINE VALLEY--ARRIVAL AT FREIBURG Gérardmer (pronounced _Je-rah-may_) is considered one of the loveliest spots in these mountains. It nestles deep down in a valley by a smiling lake, and lies far apart from the rush of the great whirl of life; yet life does come here, as the several pretty half Swiss hotels proclaim. Gérardmer has its season, but not until July, and to-day the place is placid and peaceful, as though knowing that there are good times in store, and I found later in Paris that the spot is well known in the great capital--but only to the French. I fancy few Americans ever come this way. Had I reached here yesterday, so "Madame" tells me, I would have been present at a wedding. It was here in her hotel, and she has the air of having added another leaf to her crown of laurels. She tells me that yonder middle-aged bachelor was one of the guests, and promptly lost his heart to one of the _demoiselles_. To-day he returns with his mother and that huge bouquet, and will shortly request the honour of the maiden's hand. But, I exclaim, you say he never saw her until yesterday? Certainly, Monsieur, but that is long enough surely, for at his age he must know his own mind. A statement which I do not think is always a true one. I watch him as he moves off into the garden of the hotel and wonder whether love can find any place under those prim angular black clothes. But the sunshine is too attractive to allow one to remain indoors, and to "Madame's" regret, who dearly loves to talk, I wander off into the streets of the town, lifting my eyes up to the hills all around it--for over them, we are told, cometh peace. The departing sunlight gilds the forests into gold, and sparkles on the cross high up on the village church, whose portals stand invitingly open bidding me enter. One of the attractions and beauties of the Catholic Church in Europe is that its sanctuaries are never closed; one may wander in at any and all times and be at rest and peace as long as one wishes it. Here in the heart of the Vosges, amidst this, busy little town is this one which I have all to myself save for the divine face looking downward from the cross and the painted saints in the windows. It is a simple structure, yet withal very impressive. Its Norman columns and arches must be very old, and very dear to these people, as the place where they have been baptised, married, and buried, throughout all the centuries. As I leave, two ancient black-robed priests greet me with smiles like a bit of late October sunshine. This afternoon has been passed in an excursion to St. Dié, a beautiful ride to an uninteresting town, noted merely as the place where Amerigo Vespucci published his account of the land now bearing his name. Coming back, we left the beaten track, climbed mountains, and descended into valleys where autos rarely go, and our appearance created much astonishment; only two machines have passed that way this year. That route is not down on the map but plunges through the mountains to the west of St. Dié, passing Laveline, Le Valtin, and other towns. Just a run of seventy-five miles for the fun of it. We finally leave Gérardmer on a glorious morning. George is well on time and the auto is snorting before the door at nine o'clock. Yama has become an expert in packing our goods and chattels in it, and they fit like a puzzle of his own land. The road begins to mount as soon as we leave the town, and when we reach the Col de la Schlucht we are far above the valley, and on one of the highest points of the Vosges. The road winds directly along the precipice. On one side, the pine forests mount above us, while on the other, the fall is sheer to the valley below, some three thousand feet and the panorama of the Rhine land and these mountains is magnificent. Here we enter Germany. George shuts off all power and for the next half hour we coast down the mountain in superb fashion to a village near the base where we are halted by a dapper little man in a German cap to pay a duty of one hundred francs for the auto, which will be returned when we leave the country. The number and make of the machine are taken and also my name, which I give with its present spelling; but the little man promptly changes it to that of his own land. When I venture to fear that it will cause confusion and that the spelling given has held in America for two centuries, he waves my objections aside, "Your name is Schumacher,--the fact that your family has spent _the last few years_ away from _home_ does not change it,--once a German, always a German." Well, perhaps, but in those two centuries and more, other strains have entered, which may claim a showing, and at least you could never get my mustache into that Kaiser fashion and I am very certain that I am exempt from military duty. [Illustration: LA SCHLUCHT. THE TUNNEL ON THE ROAD TO MÜNSTER By permission of Messrs. Neurdein] So we move on. The entire characteristics of the land have changed. All the neat, sweet appearance of France is gone, and the daintiness has vanished. Germany is a work-a-day world. No matter how interesting, and the interest is, of course, very great, at its best it cannot be called an elegant country, and that word does apply to France. The soldiers with their spiked helmets are an improvement over the rank and file of the French, but the French officers are _chic_, elegant. The same holds with her women, while in Germany, the word "dowdy" certainly suits the dress from the Court down. In Colmar at the Hotel of the "Two Keys" we find as much English spoken as German, and have cabbage, boiled mutton, and carrots for luncheon. Many German officers enter and, pausing at the dining-room door, take out pocket combs and carefully arrange their hair. I noticed a change in the highway, the moment we entered the Empire, and only trust it will not hold throughout. The excellent road-beds, well rolled and oiled to prevent dust, vanished, and we jolted on over an ordinary pike, dirty and rough, until it was agreeable to stop at Colmar. All this was before luncheon. Now that the meal has placed me more at peace with the world, my point of view is different and I am forced to retract at once. The road from Colmar to Freiburg is an excellent one, well marked, and well kept up. We make quick time, crossing the Rhine at Breisach, and then on through its wide green valley until we reach Freiburg, nestling under the hills which form a lovely background for the stately red stone spire of the great Cathedral. CHAPTER XXXI FREIBURG--FANTASTIC CITY--THE YOUTHS OF GERMANY--MUSIC AND LEGENDS OF THE OLD TOWN--CATHEDRAL BY MOONLIGHT I cannot overcome the feeling in strolling through these old German towns that I am on the stage of a theatre. Painted houses never look solid or ancient and especially when they are fantastic in decoration and brilliant in colour and are kept up. This city certainly is ancient but it is too well scrubbed and done up to be pleasing. Even the very superb cathedral is subject to the same objection. All the images inside and out glow with colour, and all the monuments likewise, and when compared to a cathedral like Westminster, for instance, or many in France, it lacks dignity and for that very reason. If you can banish from your thoughts all this and remember only the beautiful lines of the church, then you will appreciate the structure, but you will never enjoy it. [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL OF FREIBURG, BADEN By permission of F. Firth & Co.] The Cathedral is interesting and very stately, but in its inspection there is no such deep satisfaction, like unto a draught of spring water on a hot day, which one experiences in England and France. After I had wandered around the outside, which must appeal to every one, and through the nave, I approached the choir, to be greeted by the smell of soap and wet rags. Just inside the grating in the south aisle sat half a dozen scrub-women as loudly dirty as only scrub-women know how to be, munching great hunks of bread. I was told that I could not enter the holy of holies without the Sacristan. He was not to be found, but from the glimpse I had beyond, I don't regret it,--the chapels are full of monuments coloured to the last degree of gorgeousness,--saints in red, green, and blue with heads much too large for their bodies--which is generally the case with German statues--stand and lie around in all directions. The statues in this great church are nearly all of plaster, which at once detracts from their interest. How they escaped throughout the centuries is a marvel. There are many quaint structures in these streets, all freshly painted, and I find myself poking them, half expecting to discover canvas. To-day the charm of Germany does not fasten upon me until the shadows gather and the lights come out in her ancient city of Freiburg. Perhaps the spirits of the neighbouring Black Forest then descend upon the place. It is still theatrical, but one is in the mood for theatres after night falls, and as one moves through the fantastic place one would not be surprised to be accosted by any of the figures from Grimm's _Fairy Tales_. There are many old fairy godmothers and Rumplestiltskins wandering about. The throng is all moving in the same direction, and if you follow you will find a vast concert hall. There are thousands there, and, not knowing the customs of the university towns, I take a seat in the central section of the hall, only to be told promptly that it is reserved, and to be waved to the surrounding galleries. Then I discover that the centre is filled by the students, hundreds of them, divided into societies, the members of each wearing a different coloured cap, and every man with a great stein of beer before him. Groups of red, blue, yellow, green, and purple caps, worn all the time, make splotches of brilliant colour all over the hall, and shade bright wholesome faces,--the hope and strength of Germany, such boys as these,--manly young fellows all of them; and I cannot but feel sad when remembering that I saw no such scene throughout all my long tour in France. There must be young men there, but where are they? All through the provinces whenever I saw any and could talk with them, I found them bent upon going to Paris, which is not usually to their advantage. They did not seem to possess the strong feeling for "home" which keeps these Germans where they were born until they leave the fatherland for ever. Certainly Berlin is very much farther from being Germany than Paris is from being France. Here to-night, two hours are spent in listening to superb music from an orchestra of a hundred and more musicians, and the contrast between the vicious, lascivious gardens and halls of Paris is borne in upon one most markedly. Pondering upon what the future holds for these two nations, I pass off into the night with this German multitude and hear on all sides, "Good-night, good-night," and in fact, every one does seem to have gone off to bed and I shortly have this ancient university town of Freiburg all to myself, though there may be Fausts and Mephistopheles about; I should not be surprised to have the latter suddenly appear and, drawing liquid fire from yonder beer keg, sing his famous Song of Gold. The moon is at the full and the place looks more than ever like a scene in a theatre. Indeed, I think if you pushed, you could shove aside the front of yonder house and show us the interior, but, rounding a corner, I come suddenly before the great minster. Its lace-like majestic spire soars far up into the blue of heaven and seems to hold a diadem of stars around its cross. If there are any witches about, they are in the deep shadows of its great portals yonder which, being closed, protect them from a sight of the holy interior, and they may have their evil way for a time, but I see nothing save a large black cat and I do not think to-night that her mistress is evilly disposed. I am certain yonder fat King Gambrinus on the walls of that drink-hall is chuckling at me as I move off into the silence of the shadows, and so to bed where honest people should be at such an hour, leaving the moon to see what she may. Amidst the electric lights of the great cities, the moon is not of much account nowadays, but in these quiet old towns she is of importance, and to-night has thrown the shadows of yonder lace-like spire so sharply athwart the great square that I stop to trace its pattern with my stick, and looking up find her laughing at me, it would seem. She wrote a book once about what she has seen. I have it somewhere. It is in quaint old German and called, "Hear what the Moon Relates," and from its pages, I judge her to be an old gossip, for she tells much which she should keep silent about, but, to bed, to bed, or one may meet a committee of the _Vehmgericht_. CHAPTER XXXII FROM FREIBURG TO BADEN-BADEN--THROUGH THE WOODS TO GERNSBACH--SUPERB ROADS--PEOPLE OF THE BLACK FOREST--CROSSING THE DANUBE--CUSTOMS REGULATIONS AS TO AUTOS--AN OLD SWISS MANSION--THE RIDE TO GENEVA AND AIX-LES-BAINS The ride from Freiburg to Baden lies along the foot of the Black Forest Mountains through the Rhine valley and is hot and dusty, rough and without interest of any kind until we enter the valley of Baden-Baden, and find that lovely spa nestled under the shadow of the mountains. All the world knows the town. The portion which man has made is just like a hundred other resorts in Europe; an old section full of curious structures and a new part all great hotels, casinos, and pagodas. On entering the grounds of the Hôtel Stephanie, George takes a wrong turn and brings up on one of the fancy foot-bridges in the park. For an instant we are in dismay as to whether the structure will hold the great weight of the car, but it does, and George does not allow of any change of mind but backs promptly off on to safer ground. In Baden-Baden the traveller falls at once into the clutches of hotel porters and waiters, each of whom levies some sort of blackmail. This Hôtel Stephanie, for charges, quite surpasses any other of my tour. For a simple dinner of soup, roast beef, mashed potatoes, and asparagus, I pay $2.50. As usual, the dining-room is hermetically sealed, such is the dread of fresh air, and what air there is, is rent and tattered by the noise of the Hungarian band. The surrounding mountains are very beautiful, very romantic. Many of the crags hold ruined castles, which the people have had the good taste not to restore, simply preserving them as best they may. That of the Alten Schloss is especially romantic. The view from its tower embraces the Rhine Valley with the Vosges to the west and the Black Forest to the east; and there I spend an hour or more talking to the custodian who interlards his description with bits of personal history, until things are somewhat mixed. The sun has set beyond Strasburg and the mountains become dense in shadow before I seek the carriage. The woods of the Black Forest cover these mountains so thickly that only the light of the moon shows from above and it is far past the dinner hour before we reach the hotel, where the usual dinner parties are in full swing, and the fact that I do not order almost everything on the bill of fare causes the waiters to regard me as of little moment and not to be greatly bothered over. The spirit of the mountains abides too strongly to make the dining-room agreeable and I soon retire, and then for the next three hours am forced to regret that this is not a Moslem country. How softly on this delicious night air the voice of the muezzin would mingle with the sound of falling waters and music of the winds in the neighbouring forest over which the moon is sending downwards her cascades of silver light! How beautiful the scene is! How rudely the whole beauty is destroyed by the harsh tones of the brazen bells of the neighbouring church! Not only are the quarters marked with a double chime, but the full hours are struck _twice_ on different bells in the same steeple. The clangour and noise is such that sleep is an impossibility until utter weariness compels it. Such things are a stupid nuisance, a menace to health, and a death to any religious feelings one might possess. They should be suppressed. There is nothing more beautiful than a soft-toned bell or more discordantly disagreeable than harsh tones jangled out of tune. Those bells drive me out of Baden. The auto is at the door at nine o'clock and, though the day threatens rain, we are off and away through the woods. Our route lies via Gernsbach and Forbach to Freudenstadt, over these picturesque mountains. The road is good and well marked, and we swing along at a rapid pace, sailing upwards and downwards with a most intoxicating motion. The ride to Freudenstadt is very beautiful, all the way by a rushing stream, past the Schwarzenberg and through the forest, with glimpses of old castles high above us and red-roofed villages in the green valleys far down the distance. In Freudenstadt in Würtemberg, at the Schwarzwald Hotel which I have all to myself apparently, I am served by the host who talks English all the time. He says that while he does not approve of the French distaste for children he considers that Germany is overdoing in that respect, that there are too many,--they are "eating each other" so to speak. Well, they are sending one thousand a month, generally those who have been trained as soldiers, to Brazil, and they will be ready to meet us when that question arises. Freudenstadt is a quaint old town, high up in the hills. It has an antique market square and is somewhat of a watering-place. It was founded by Duke Frederick as a refuge for Protestants expelled from Salzburg. Our host here proves of service in directing our route onward as one can easily get lost in these mountains without watchfulness. While the routes are marked, the charts are not nearly so excellent as in France. That republic is divided into squares, each numbered and with a chart of the same number for each square, showing distinctly _first_ the roads, then the rivers and towns and all so simply that a child can understand at once, whereas the German charts are like an ordinary map with all its colours, mountains, etc., and the route not so plainly marked. The chart is too elaborate. However, both are good, only one is better, so do not growl. Our afternoon's ride takes us through the finest section and over the best roads of the Black Forest, and includes an extra spurt of some forty versts caused by our having lost our way during an animated discussion between George and myself over the comparative merits of American and French women. About that time two of our pneumatics give up the ghost in rapid succession, announcing that act by a report which makes George say things. We are near a secluded village around which the forest closes in thickly and, it being Sunday, we are shortly surrounded by all the children of the place; and what a lot of them there are, good-natured, respectful, little, yellow heads, whose chubby faces try to become solemn, as a funeral _cortege_ approaches, but with little success, and I must say that shortly that _cortege_ was diminished by half, said half coming to inspect my machine. I feel as though I were the owner of a successful rival show. These new comers are all men and all interested in my car, not superficially, but with comprehension of its parts. They tell me that they live here or hereabouts, and when I ask if they do not desire to go to Berlin or Munich they look at me wonderingly and ask, Why? There spoke the hope of Germany. This was near Triberg where we lost the route and we may as well go forward via Furtwangen and Villingen and so to Donaueschingen. When once you know the Hartz Mountains and the Black Forest you understand where these people got their knowledge of fairies and elves, witches, Christmas trees, and music. The woods are to my imagination full of funny little people who hurry away as this machine advances, and if I stop to listen I find the brooks are singing all sorts of carols to which the pine trees furnish the undertones; also I doubt not if you put a crank to yonder funny little white church its windows will glow with lights. Take the top off that pink house and you will find it full of candy. All this is because there are children everywhere and because of the children there are homes and home life--a gain--the hope of Germany. [Illustration: A CORNER IN THE BLACK FOREST From a photograph] It is getting cold as we roll into Donaueschingen where we cross the Danube, but as we are assured that it is down hill all the way to Schaffhausen and a splendid road, we speed onward, only to find shortly some of the steepest grades of our tour, one so steep that George turns the auto around and runs it up backwards, then stopping, he arranges matters and that will not have to be repeated. At the Swiss frontier, we deposited two hundred francs, which will be returned when we leave the country, and so passing Schaffhausen we draw up for the night at Neuhausen, having made two hundred and eighty kilometers during the day. When such a day is finished, there is little inclination left one save for dinner and bed, and I am soon through with the one and in the other. We had been told on paying that one hundred francs when we entered Germany, that it would be repaid whenever we left the Empire, but, on demanding it in Schaffhausen, the pompous officials in the German Custom House informs us that our papers stated that we would leave from some other town than Schaffhausen, and consequently he will not repay the money. When we assure him that the error, if error it is, is not ours and that our seal on the machine shows that we have _not_ left the country since we paid that money, he waves us off and will say no more. We must write to the town where we entered and so may get back the cash. I may state here that I turned the papers over to George and understand that he never did get it back. The whole thing was absurd and most irritating and kept me kicking my heels for hours around the post-house before they would decide one way or the other. [Illustration: THE MANOR HOUSE AT WÜLFLINGEN, NEAR WINTERTHUR From a photograph.] While the town of Winterthur aside from its quaintness is not of much interest, there stands on its outskirts an ancient and curious Manor House called "Wülflingen," a stately stone structure somewhat back from the highway. We visit it on our way to Zurich and the ancient dame in charge seems delighted that any one from the outer world should take an interest in her beloved old charge. She appears to be the only soul in the house and was I believe born here. It is deserted now by the family whose ancestors built it at a period when castles had ceased to be of importance and the protection of a town more to be desired. "Wülflingen" became the home of the Steiner family about 1620 A.D., when their castle on the mountains was deserted for this more cheery habitation. We enter through a curious old doorway into a large square hall wainscotted and ceiled in oak blackened by the flight of years, and we can hear the mice in the walls scamper away as the unusual sound of foot-steps breaks the profound silence. Opposite the doorway a tall old clock built into the wall has grown weary with telling of the flight of time and given up its work--useless work now that it is deserted by all those whose lives it regulated and whose faces were friends to it. A stately staircase with carved balustrade mounts to the floor above, but before going thither we inspect the lower rooms. Both are large square apartments entirely encased in polished oak; but the old dame draws us on and upward to what she claims were the state apartments. Of these also there were two of large size and interest connected by a large square hall like the one below. In that on the left the walls and ceiling are heavily panelled and black with time. Each panel is decorated with Swiss scenes and there are some antique brass drop-lights. In one corner stands one of those great porcelain stoves of elaborate make which are found all through Germany and Russia; this one we are told, is one hundred years older than the house, having been brought from the castle on the mountains when the family migrated. It is very curious and interesting and one discovers that the panels of the room have been decorated to correspond with those of the stove. This was evidently the state apartment, if one may use the term here, yet, for the day in which it was built and for a Swiss house, "Wülflingen" was considered a great mansion. In the Switzerland of three hundred years ago, the family who could produce sufficient funds to abandon one house and build such another as this were people of wealth and importance. In passing again into and across the upper hall one notes the arms of the family carved over the doorways--they are also found in the great hall of the Castle of Chillon on Lake Geneva. Entering the other room, an apartment occupying the entire side of the house and evidently at one period a salon or ball-room, one meets the questioning gaze of some old family portraits. Crossing the polished floor, which causes my foot-falls to resound through the empty house with a solemn sound, I throw open the window and let in the flickering sunshine and the song of birds, and seating myself on the sill, turn to these faces on the walls. There are several of them but I note especially a stately dame and an old gentleman whose eyes meet mine in a questioning gaze seemingly demanding the reason for my intrusion upon their solitude, time was when open-hearted hospitality reigned supreme here, but in these later days visitors have been few and far between and my violation of their solemn state does not appear altogether welcome. However I whisper a fact or two which produces an expression of lively interest. It was either this or the flickering sunshine drifting over their faces. Who or what yonder ancient dame in the high cap was, there is no record, but beneath the portrait of the old gentleman one reads in Latin the following: "Henricus Steinerius Med. Doct. Poliater, Inspector Scholae et Bibliothecarius Ano 1730, Aet 55." And what, my dear Sir, may "Poliater" mean? The rest is plain enough. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE MANOR HOUSE AT WÜLFLINGEN, NEAR WINTERTHUR From an old woodcut] In one corner of this portrait are his family arms, a steinbock on a white shield; above, a coronet on a closed helmet with a steinbock pawing the air, as crest. I am not versed in heraldry or I might read much from this coat-of-arms. The owner wears a suit of black velvet, a great white ruff and vast yellow curly wig. His hands, delicate and shapely, rest on a pile of books and are shaded by lace ruffles. He wears two signet rings. The custodian tells me that he was born in this house and also that his nephew, the Rev. John Conrad Steiner, also born here in 1707, was sent by the great council of the Reformed Church to that Church in Philadelphia in 1749, and I discover later that that church stood in what is now Franklin Square in that city. He was also in charge in Frederick, Maryland, but returning to Philadelphia to the same church, he died there in 1762, and was buried in what is now Franklin Square--in company with Wesley "Winkhams" and "Hendal" some ten feet below the surface on the north-east side of the fountain, they alone being left there when the place was changed into a public square. It certainly required great fervour in religion on the part of a young man with a family to leave a home like this in sunny comfortable Winterthur and face the ocean and the blackness of America in 1750. He should have his reward now in a brighter land than either Europe or America. This old _Herrenhaus_ smiles down upon us in a friendly manner as we leave its portal and as our car speeds off into the greater world, the ancient dame who cares for it waves us an adieu with the hope that we may return to "Wülflingen." Our route lies hence through Zurich to Geneva and so on to Berne. While we have no rain, it is chilly and disagreeable, and as for mountains, if I had not seen them often before, I should not believe that in Switzerland there were any, for from first to last we do not get a glimpse of their grandeur. The roads are good at all times, and the peasants friendly, but it rains heavily as we reach Berne, and the shelter of the hotel is not objectionable. The following morning, George comes in and announces that the incoming chauffeurs proclaim the route from here to Geneva is so deep in mud that I had better go on by train, as he may be stuck anywhere and delayed. I decide at first to do this, and then my distaste for the train overcomes all and I order the auto. That ride proved that you cannot trust these statements. There was little or no mud, the roads were excellent, the ride delightful, and we rolled into Lausanne and so on down to Ouchy in ample time for luncheon. From there on to Geneva the sun shone all the time and by three o'clock we descended at the Hôtel Beau-Rivage. Not a drop of rain during the whole day, no dust, and no mud. Here I find some friends and together we go to Aix-les-Bains. There are few more beautiful rides than that from Geneva to Aix-les-Bains, and, especially on the return, one is impressed with the enchanting vistas over mountain, valley, and lakes. The roads are both good and indifferent. The former in France, the latter in Switzerland, and one is again impressed with the belief that France is the land for auto touring. To the lover of flowers this section is fairy-land just now; especially is the wisteria beautiful; such masses of it over almost every cottage and church, and the terrace at the Hôtel Splendide in Aix is festooned from end to end with the dainty fragrant blossoms. Masses of lilacs bank the houses, while apple blossoms are abroad over all the land round about. Lake Bourget gleams like a vast emerald framed by the shadowy mountains, and there are some glimpses of the greater glory of the snows. The auto sings and hums and rushes down the slopes into the streets of Geneva, and swirls up before the door of the Beau-Rivage and the long tour is over. In my memory it will rank with that winter on Old Nile in a dihabiah. To-day as George came in to say goodbye and as I watched my red carriage rush off and disappear down the streets of Geneva, I felt a positive bereavement, even as though a friend had vanished forever, and truly that car has been a friend. It has carried me safely nearly seven thousand kilos. The journey has been all sunshine and pleasure; rushing over broad highways, under the shadows of stately mountains, by fair rivers, through smiling meadows; pausing here to loiter in an old château, or again to wander the streets of a mediæval city full of romance and story; yet again amidst the beauties and glories of the capital and then off to the mountains and forests; all joy, all delight, yet I do regret that old dog dead down on that long dusty highway under the shadows of the Pyrenees. INDEX Abbaye aux Dames, 151, 152 Abbeville, 164, 167 Abbey of Men, Church of the, 151 Abbey of Women, Church of the, 151, 152 Adour, the, 58 Aix, 10-16 Aix-les-Bains, 12, 242 Albigensian "heresy," the, 33 "Aliscamps," the, 21 Alphonse, Comte de Poitou, 93 Alten Schloss, the, 233 Amboise, George, Cardinal of, 155, 156 Amiens, 162-164, 169, 172 Anet, Château of, 155 Angers, 130, 138 Angers, Castle of, 14, 138 Anjou, 138 Anne of Austria, 66, 128, 191 Anne of Brittany, 128 Arbrissel, Robert of, 136 Ardennes, Wild Boar of, 211 Arles, 17-21 Armoises, Robert des, 159 Artois, Comte d', 182 Asqs, Seigneur d', 54 Automobile Club of France, 74 Auvergne, 84 Auvergne, Count of, _see_ Guy, Count of Auvergne Auxonne, 213 Aveyron, mountains of the, 172 Azay-le-Rideau, 130 Baden-Baden, 232, 233 Bagatelle, 182, 183 Ballon d'Alsace, 218 Balue, Cardinal, 118, 120, 121-123 Barry, Madame du, 129, 184 Bastille, the, 121-124 Bayard, Chevalier, 111 Bayonne, 54, 58, 69, 70 Béarn, 52 Beaucaire, 23 Beauce, La, 186 Beaumont, 77-79 Beauvais, 167-173 Belfort, 218 Bernardin-Benedictin, Convent of, Paris, 199 Berne, 242 Berry, 102 Bertrade of Montfort, 139 Bertrand, Count, 91 Besançon, 214-216 Béziers, 29, 33 Biarritz, 58-61, 64, 69, 70 Bidache, 53 Bidache, Château de, 54-57 Biscay, Bay of, 59 Black Forest, the 218, 226, 228, 232, 233, 236 Black Prince, the, 34 Blanc, Mt., 88, 213 Blois, 129 Bois de Boulogne, the, 179, 196 Boulogne, 164, 166 Bourbon-Busset, Château de, 96 Bourg, 82 Bourges, 100-109 Bourget, Lake, 243 Bourgogne, Marguerite de, 207 Breisach, 226 Bressac, de, 185 Brézé, Louis de, 155 Brittany, 130, 139, 140, 141, 142, 145, 148 Bruges, 212 Burgundy, Duke of, 210 Cadouin, 79 Caen, 148, 149, 151, 152, 157 Cæsar, Julius, 102 Calvin, John, 104 Camargue, the, 18 Campan, Madame, 184 Candes, 133 Cannes, 9, 26 Carcas, Queen, 32 Carcassonne, 27, 30-35, 45, 103, 118, 127 Casteljaloux, 72 Catherine de Medici, 128, 177, 192 Champs-Élysées the, Tours, 116 Champs-Élysées the, Paris, 196, 197 Charlemagne, 139 Charles V., 176 Charles VII., 15, 101, 106, 108, 127, 128, 129, 131, 158 Charles IX., 183 Charles X., 176 Charles le Téméraire, 120 Charles of Mantua, 123 Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, 208, 212 Chartres, 105, 181, 187-189 Chartreuse, the, 212 Chateaubriant, 140 Chénier, André, 200, 201 Chenonceaux, 114 Cher, the, 114 Chillon, Castle of, 240 Chinon, 130-133 Cîteaux, Abbé of, 33 Clermont-Ferrand, 82, 84, 85, 88, 92, 95 Clermont-Ferrand, Valley of, 83, 84 Cléry, 129 Cocquereau, 189 Coeur, Jacques, 15, 106, 108; palace of, 102, 106 Colmar, 225, 226 Conciergerie, the, 150 Concord, Place de la, Paris, 196 Conques, 172 Corday, Charlotte, 149, 150, 151, 156 Corniche, the, 9, 26 Côte d'Or, the, 208, 213 Courtrai, 211 Crécy, 164 Crécy, Château of, 186 Croker, Mr., 99 Cujas, 104 Dampierre, Comte Guy de, 93 Dampierre, Castle of, 136 Danton, 151 Danube, the, 237 Dax, 70, 71 Desmoulins, Camille 151 Diane de Poitiers, 125, 128, 155, 183 Dijon, 208, 210-213 Dôle, 213 Donaueschingen, 236, 237 Doubs, the, 216 Dreyfus, 141 Droling, 191 Durand, Abbé of Chaise-Dieu, 91 Edict of Nantes, _see_ Nantes, Edict of Eleanor, Queen, 136 Elizabeth, Madame, 196 "Field of Reeds," 18 Fontarabia, 66 Fontevrault, Abbey of, 133-136 Forbach, 234 Foulques V., King of Jerusalem, 139 Foulques le Roux, Count of Anjou, 119, 139 Francis I., 93, 125, 128, 155, 183, 185 Frederick, Duke, 235 Freiburg, 226, 228-231 Freudenstadt, 234, 235 Furtwangen, 236 Garonne River, 45 Gave de Pau, the, 49 Geneva, 206, 242, 243 Geoffrey Plantagenet, 139 Gérardmer, 219, 222-224 Gernsbach, 234 Gramont, Arnaud Guilhem II. de, 55 Gramont, Ducs de, 54, 57 Gramont, Louise, Comtesse de, 55 Grandvilliers, 167 Grégoire, Pope, 91 Guiche, Seigneur de, 54 Guy, Count of Auvergne, 91 Hartz Mountains, 236 "Hendal," 241 Henrietta, Madam, 191 Henry II., 128, 134-136, 139, 155, 177, 205 Henry IV., 49, 128, 164, 176, 188 Hugo, Victor, 215 Iron Mask, Man of the, 123 Iron Virgin, the, 124 Irun, 67 Isabeau of Bavaria, 164 James II. of England, 176 James V. of Scotland, 120 James, Henry, _Little Tour in France_, 24 Jean du Cognot, 205 Jean-sans-peur, 211 Jeanne d'Arc, _see_ Joan of Arc Joan of Arc, 15, 103, 104, 107, 131, 132, 150, 157 John, King of England, 120 John, Count, 135 Jura Mountains, 208 Kelburn, Ebenezer, 125 Krybourg, Prince Salm, 201 La Fayette, Marquis de, 200 Lannemezan, 44 Lausanne, 242 Lauzun, 77 Laval, Jeanne de, 14 La Vallière, 129, 176 Laveline, 224 Lesigne, M., 157, 159 Lisieux, 153 Loches, Castle of, 35, 117-127 Loire, the, 114, 130 Louis IX, 23, 33 Louis XI., 15, 93, 102-104, 108, 109, 117, 120, 123, 126-129, 131, 140, 146, 147, 170, 208 Louis XII., 124, 128, 191 Louis XIII., 176 Louis XIV. (Louis le Grand), 56, 64-66, 70, 128, 175, 176, 189, 191, 199 Louis XV., 128, 157, 176 Louis XVI., 183, 184 Lourdes, 46-48 Louveciennes, 184 Luxembourg, the, 199 Lys, Jehanne du, 159 Madeline of France, 120 Madrid, Café de, 183 Maintenon, Madame de, 129, 189, 190, 192 Maintenon, Aqueduct at, 186 Maintenon, Château de, 185, 186, 189, 190, 192 Maison Carrée, the, Nîmes, 24 Margaret of Anjou, 12, 22, 136 Maria de Medici, 126, 128 Maria Theresa, 191 Marie Antoinette, 129, 182, 184 Marly, 175 Marmande, 73, 76 Marsat, Abbey of, 92 "Marseilles the Little," 167 Martan, Cape, 1 Martel, Charles, 27 Mary Queen of Scots, 128 Matilda, Empress, 139 Matilda, Queen, 151, 152 Matthioli, 123 Mehun, Castle of, 108, 113 Meillant, Château of, 109-111 Meung, 129 Monaco, 7 Mont-de-Marsan, 71 Mont St. Michel, 142-147 Monte Carlo, 1, 3-7, 51, 103 Montespan, Madame de, 129, 176, 192 Montfort, Simon de, 33 Montmartre, Cathedral of, 175 Montmorency, Duke François de, 24 Montpellier, 25, 27, 39 Montreal, 46 Montréjeau, 45 Montsoreau, Castle of, 133 Mortemart, Duc de, 109 Moulins, 100 Mozat, Abbey of, 92 Nantes, Edict of, 192 Napoléon, 46 Narbonne, 27, 29 Neufchâtel, 161 Neuhausen, 237 Nevers, 100 Nice, 7, 26, 51 Nîmes, 24, 25 Noailles, Mme. de Montagu, 201 Normandy, 142, 152, 153 Nostradamus, 17 Notre Dame de Cléry, Church of, 129 Nuremberg, Castle of, 35, 124 Orleans, 104, 129 Orleans, Gaston of, 191 Orleans, Maid of, _see_ Joan of Arc Orthez, 52, 53 Pamiers, 46 Paris, 175, 180, 181, 193, 195-197, 199, 202, 203 Pau, 46, 49, 50 Pavia, Battle of, 111 Pépin, 27 Pheasants, Isle of, 66 Philip Augustus, 91, 120, 126, 139; Castle of, 120, 159 Philippe de Comines, 121 Philippe le Hardi, 211 Picardy, 162 Picpus, Cemetery of, 199-202 Plantagenets, the, 120, 134, 139 Plessis-lès-Tours, 118, 129 Poix, 167 Pompadour, Madame, 129, 186 Pontbrillant, 124 Promenade des Anglais, 9 Provence, 10, 11, 15, 138 Puy de Dôme, 88 Pyrenees, the, 29, 46, 49, 59, 64, 243 Pyrenees, Treaty of the, 55, 66 Racine, 185 Rambouillet, 185 René, King, 11-15, 22, 23, 138, 139 Rennes, 140 Republic, Place de la Paris, 199 Revolution, Place de la, Paris, 199 Rheims, Cathedral of, 172 Rhine Valley, the, 224, 232, 233 Richard Coeur de Lion, 134-136 Riom, 95 Robert, Bishop of Clermont, 91, 92 Robert the Strong, 139 Robespierre, 151, 178, 201 Rochefort, 83 Roland, 139 Rouen, 154-160 Rouet, Mlle. de, 183 St. Amand-Mont-Rond, 109, 110 St. André, Maréchal de, 93 St. Cyr, 192, 193 St. Denis, 175, 177, 190, 191 St. Dié, 224 St. Elix, Baron de, 42 St. Elix, Château de, 40-42 St. Étienne, Church of, Caen, 151, 157 St. Ferjeux, 215 St. Ferréol, 215 St. Gaudens, 40, 45, 46 St. Germain-en-Laye, 174-178 St. Gervais, Church of, Rouen, 157 St. Jean-de-Luz, 64-66 St. Jean-Pied-de-Port, 62, 63 St. Maclou, Church of, Rouen, 154 St. Malo, 141 St. Martin, an artist, 191 St. Martin, of Tours, 133 St. Nazaire, Church of, Béziers, 33 St. Ouen, Church of, Rouen, 156 St. Ours, Church of, Loches, 127 St. Sauveur, Cathedral of, 14 St. Thibault de Metz, 159 Saintes-Maries, Les, 18 Salon, 17 Salzburg, 235 Salzburg, Castle of, 35 San Sebastian, 66, 68 Saumur, 137 Sauveterre, 53 Scarron, Widow, 190 Schaffhausen, 237 Schlucht, Col de la, 224 Schunck, Philip Henri, 191 Schwarzenberg, the, 234 Seine, the, 153, 154 Sens, 203-206 Sforza, Ludovico, Duke of Milan, 124 Sorel, Agnes, 15, 106, 113, 127, 129, 132 Steiner, Henry, 240 Steiner, Rev. John Conrad, 241 Tarascon, 15, 22, 23 Tarbes, 45, 46 Taride, A, 74 Theodoric, King of the Visigoths, 32 Thillon, Le, 219 Thomas à Becket, 205 Tonnerre, 207 Toulouse, 36, 39 Touraine, 104, 114, 115 Tournelles, Palace of the, 123 Tournoël, Château of, 87-93 Tours, 100, 104, 113, 114, 116, 129, 130 Tours Cathedral, 114 Triberg, 236 Trichiemont, 159 Trinité, La (Church of the Abbey of Women), 151 Tristan l'Ermite, 121 Trône, Place du, Paris, 199-201 Tulle, 80, 81 Valerian, Mt., Fortress of, 175 Valjean, Jean, 199, 200 Valtin, Le, 224 Verdun, Bishop of, 122, 123 Versailles, 192, 210 Vésinet, forest of, 175 Vesontio, 217 Vespucci, Amerigo, 224 Vichy, 96-98, 100 Villeneuve la Montarie, Church of, 55 Villingen, 236 Viollet-le-Duc, 32, 205 Volvic, 87, 93, 95 Vosges Mountains, 217-224 Wallace, Sir Richard, 183 William the Conqueror, 149, 152, 157 "Winkhams," Wesley, 241 Winterthur, 238 Wülflingen, 238-241 Würtemberg, 235 Yèvre, the, 114 Yoshawarra, the, 195 Zamore, 185 Zurich, 238 By MICHAEL MYERS SHOEMAKER Islands of the Southern Seas With 80 Illustrations. 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Large square 8^o, handsomely bound, net, $5.00. _Large Paper Edition_. Limited to 375 copies. With portrait of Mary Stuart in colors. Photogravures printed on Japanese paper, and other full-page illustrations on India paper. 4^o, decorated parchment cover, in box, net, $12.00. This sumptuous work is now offered at very greatly reduced prices. "Nine people out of ten if asked to name the most romantic figure in history would without hesitation select the beautiful Queen of Scots, round whose tragic career more controversy has raged than concerning any other personage in the history of these islands.... Those who are fascinated by the great romance, who have as yet made no detailed study of the period, will find the story here outlined by a trustworthy hand, and adorned by a wealth of artistic illustration worthy of so picturesque and royal a theme."--_St. James's Gazette._ The Heart of the Orient Saunterings through Georgia, Armenia, Persia, Turkomania, and Turkestan, to the Vale of Paradise. 8^o. With 52 illustrations. Net, $2.50. These pages and pictures are descriptive of the heart of the Orient, from high life at the Persian Court to low life in the tents of Kirghiz. They include also a description of a tarantass journey through Central Asia. "Mr. Shoemaker's descriptive powers are of the best. He writes entertainingly, he is never tiresome, and is always enjoyable; his observation and statements of fact are unusually accurate, his style is pleasant. For big and for little, with all that makes up the intermediate, 'The Heart of the Orient,' with its excellent illustrations and its cultured letterpress, is one of the best books of travel that we have read in a long time."--_Times._ Winged Wheels in France 8^o, with about 60 Illustrations. Net, $2.50. The record of a motor-car trip of nearly 5000 miles over beautiful highways and enchanting byways of the Rhine Valley and Switzerland. It is in no sense of the word a guide-book; no set itinerary is followed with feverish haste; but, as fancy directs, the traveller pauses in ancient cities or quaint villages, climbs mountains, visits long-forgotten castles, or goes in quest of deserted abbeys. _Send for descriptive circular._ G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK LONDON +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Other | | errors are noted below. | | | | Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant | | form was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed. | | | | Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained. | | | | Mid-paragraph illustrations have been moved between paragraphs and | | some illustrations have been moved closer to the text that | | references them. The List of Illustrations paginations were not | | corrected. | | | | Italicized words are surrounded by underline characters, | | _like this_. | | | | Corrections: | | Bologne (pp. viii, 161) changed to Boulogne. | | Montmorenci (pp. 24, 249) changed to Montmorency. | | Chateau de Mehum (p. 102) changed to Château de Mehun. | | Trichemout (p. 159) and Trichiemout (p. 251) changed to Trichemont. | | Abbey of Meu (p. 152) changed to Abbey of Men. | | Andri Chenier (p. 202) changed to André Chénier. | | St. Ferrea and St. Farjeux (pp. 215, 250) changed to St. Ferréol | | and St. Ferjeux. | | Col de Schluct (p. 222) changed to Col de la Schlucht. | | Chapter XXIII (p. viii) in the Table of Contents was incorrectly | | labeled Chapter XVIII. Chapter XXII (p. 161) was incorrectly labeled| | XXI. Chapter XXIII (p. 166) was incorrectly labeled XXII. These | | errors were corrected. | +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ 
42231	----	[Illustration: BOULEVARD DES ITALIENS.] OLD AND NEW PARIS Its History, its People, and its Places BY H. SUTHERLAND EDWARDS AUTHOR OF "IDOLS OF THE FRENCH STAGE" "THE GERMANS IN FRANCE" "THE RUSSIANS AT HOME" ETC. ETC. VOL. I _WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS_ CASSELL AND COMPANY LIMITED _LONDON PARIS & MELBOURNE_ 1893 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED [Illustration] CONTENTS. CHAPTER I......PAGE PARIS: A GENERAL GLANCE......1 CHAPTER II. THE EXPANSION OF PARIS Lutetia--La Cité--Lutetia taken by Labienus--The Visit of Julian the Apostate--Besieged by the Franks--The Norman Invasion--Gradual Expansion from the Île de la Cité to the Outer Boulevards--M. Thiers's Line of Outworks.....6 CHAPTER III. THE LEFT BANK AND THE RIGHT. Paris and London--The Rive Gauche--The Quartier Latin--The Pantheon--The Luxemburg--The School of Medicine--The School of Fine Arts--The Bohemia of Paris--The Rive Droite--Paris Proper--The "West End".....9 CHAPTER IV. NOTRE DAME. The Cathedral of Notre Dame, a Temple to Jupiter--Cæsar and Napoleon--Relics in Notre Dame--Its History--Curious Legends--The "New Church"--Remarkable Religious Ceremonies--The Place de Grève--The Days of Sorcery--"Monsieur de Paris"--Dramatic Entertainments--Coronation of Napoleon.....12 CHAPTER V. SAINT-GERMAIN-L'AUXERROIS The Massacre of St. Bartholomew--The Events that preceded it--Catherine de Medicis--Admiral Coligny--"The King-Slayer"--The Signal for the Massacre--Marriage of the Duc de Joyeuse and Marguerite of Lorraine.....22 CHAPTER VI. THE PONT-NEUF AND THE STATUE OF HENRI IV. The Oldest Bridge in Paris--Henri IV.--His Assassination by Ravaillac--Marguerite of Valois--The Statue of Henri IV.--The Institute--The Place de Grève.....30 CHAPTER VII. THE BOULEVARDS. From the Bastille to the Madeleine--Boulevard Beaumarchais--Beaumarchais--The _Marriage of Figaro_--The Bastille--The Drama in Paris--Adrienne Lecouvreur--Vincennes--The Duc d'Enghien--Duelling--Louis XVI.....43 CHAPTER VIII. THE BOULEVARDS (_continued_). Hôtel Carnavalet--Hôtel Lamoignon--Place Royale--Boulevard du Temple--The Temple--Louis XVII--The Theatres--Astley's Circus--Attempted Assassination of Louis Philippe--Trial of Fieschi--The Café Turc--The Cafés--The Folies Dramatiques--Louis XVI. and the Opera--Murder of the Duke of Berri.....67 CHAPTER IX. THE BOULEVARDS (_continued_). The Porte Saint-Martin--Porte Saint-Denis--The Burial Place of the French Kings--Funeral of Louis XV.--Funeral of the Count de Chambord--Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle--Boulevard Poissonnière--Boulevard Montmartre--Frascati.....95 CHAPTER X. BOULEVARD AND OTHER CAFÉS. The Café Littéraire--Café Procope--Café Foy--Bohemian Cafés--Café Momus--Death of Molière--New Year's Gifts.....107 CHAPTER XI. THE BOULEVARDS (_continued_). The Opéra Comique of Paris--_I Gelosi_--The _Don Juan_ of Molière--Madame Favart--The Saint-Simonians.....115 CHAPTER XII. THE BOULEVARDS (_continued_). La Maison Dorée--Librairie Nouvelle--Catherine II. and the Encyclopædia--The House of Madeleine Guimard.....122 CHAPTER XIII. PLACE DE LA CONCORDE. Its History--Louis XV.--Fireworks--The Catastrophe in 1770--Place de la Révolution--Louis XVI.--The Directory.....143 CHAPTER XIV. THE PLACE VENDÔME. The Column of Austerlitz--The Various Statues of Napoleon Taken Down--The Church of Saint-Roch--Mlle. Raucourt--Joan of Arc.....155 CHAPTER XV. THE JACOBIN CLUB. The Jacobins--Chateaubriand's Opinion of Them--Arthur Young's Descriptions--The New Club.....161 CHAPTER XVI. THE PALAIS ROYAL. Richelieu's Palace--The Regent of Orleans--The Duke of Orleans--Dissipation in the Palais Royal--The Palais National--The Birthplace of Revolutions.....166 CHAPTER XVII. THE COMÉDIE FRANÇAISE. Its History--The _Roman Comique_--Under Louis XV.--During the Revolution--_Hernani_.....172 CHAPTER XVIII. THE NATIONAL LIBRARY AND THE BOURSE. The "King's Library"--Francis I. and the Censorship--The Imperial Library--The Bourse.....187 CHAPTER XIX. THE LOUVRE AND THE TUILERIES. The Louvre--Origin of the Name--The Castle--Francis I.--Catherine de Medicis--The Queen's Apartments--Louis XIV. and the Louvre--The Museum of the Louvre--The Picture Galleries--The Tuileries--The National Assembly--Marie Antoinette--The Palace of Napoleon III.--"Petite Provence".....193 CHAPTER XX. THE CHAMPS ÉLYSÉES AND THE BOIS DE BOULOGNE. The Champs Élysées--The Élysée Palace--Longchamps--The Bois de Boulogne--The Château de Madrid--The Château de la Muette--The Place de l'Étoile.....218 CHAPTER XXI. THE CHAMP DE MARS AND PARIS EXHIBITIONS. The Royal Military School of Louis XV.--The National Assembly--The Patriotic Altar--The Festival of the Supreme Being--Other Festivals--Industrial Exhibitions--The Eiffel Tower--The Trocadéro.....229 CHAPTER XXII. THE HÔTEL DE VILLE AND CENTRAL PARIS. The Hôtel de Ville--Its History--In 1848--The Communards.....242 CHAPTER XXIII. THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE. The Palais de Justice--Its Historical Associations--Disturbances in Paris--Successive Fires--During the Revolution--The Administration of Justice--The Sainte-Chapelle.....250 CHAPTER XXIV. THE FIRE BRIGADE AND THE POLICE. The Sapeurs-pompiers--The Prefect of Police--The Garde Républicaine--The Spy System.....270 CHAPTER XXV. THE PARIS HOSPITALS. The Place du Parvis--The Parvis of Notre Dame--The Hôtel-Dieu--Mercier's Criticisms.....276 CHAPTER XXVI. CENTRAL PARIS. The Hôtel de Ville--Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie--Rue Saint-Antoine--The Reformation.....281 CHAPTER XXVII. CENTRAL PARIS (_continued_). Rue de Venise--Rachel--St.-Nicholas-in-the-Fields--The Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers--The Gaieté--Rue des Archives--The Mont de Piété--The National Printing Office--The Hôtel Lamoignon.....298 CHAPTER XXVIII. CENTRAL PARIS (_continued_). The Rue Saint-Denis--Saint-Leu-Saint-Gilles--George Cadoudal--Saint-Eustache--The Central Markets--The General Post Office.....311 CHAPTER XXIX. THE "NATIONAL RAZOR." The Rue de l'Arbre Sec--Dr. Guillotin--Dr. Louis--The Guillotine--The First Political Execution.....327 CHAPTER XXX. THE EXECUTIONER. The Executioner--His Taxes and Privileges--Monsieur de Paris--Victor of Nîmes.....330 CHAPTER XXXI. PÈRE-LACHAISE. The Cemeteries of Clamart and Picpus--Père-Lachaise--La Villette and Chaumont--The Conservatoire--Rue Laffitte--The Rothschilds--Montmartre--Clichy.....333 CHAPTER XXXII. PARIS DUELS. The Legal Institution of the Duel--The Congé de la Bataille--In the Sixteenth Century--Jarnac--Famous Duels.....345 CHAPTER XXXIII. THE STUDENTS OF PARIS. Paris Students--Their Character--In the Middle Ages--At the Revolution--Under the Directory--In 1814--In 1819--Lallemand--In the Revolution of 1830.....355 CHAPTER XXXIV. THE RAG-PICKER OF PARIS. The Chiffonier or Rag-picker--His Methods and Hours of Work--His Character--A Diogenes--The _Chiffonier de Paris_.....360 CHAPTER XXXV. THE BOHEMIAN OF PARIS. Béranger's Bohemians--Balzac's Definition--Two Generations--Henri Mürger.....365 CHAPTER XXXVI. THE PARIS WAITER. The Garçon--The Development of the Type--The Garçon's Daily Routine--His Ambitions and Reverses.....369 CHAPTER XXXVII. THE PARIS COOK. Brillat Savarin on the Art of Cooking--The Cook and the Roaster--Cooking in the Seventeenth Century--Louis XV.--Mme. de Maintenon.....372 [Illustration] LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. .....PAGE Boulevard des Italiens....._Frontispiece_ Place de la Concorde.....1 The Left Bank of the Seine, from Notre Dame.....4 Right Bank of the Seine, from Notre Dame.....5 On the Boulevards--Corner of Place de l'Opéra.....8 Théâtre Français.....9 A Street Scene.....11 Notre Dame.....12 The Choir Stalls, Notre Dame.....13 Rue du Cloitre.....16 Apsis of Notre Dame.....17 The Leaden Spire, Notre Dame.....20 Gargoyles in the Sacristy, Notre Dame.....21 Church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois.....24 (Map) Principal Streets of Paris.....25 Scene during the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.....28 The Pont-Neuf and the Louvre, from the Quai des Augustins.....30 By the Pont-Neuf.....32 Seine Fishers.....32 View from the Pavilion de Flore....._facing_ 33 The Pont-Neuf and the Mint.....33 Statue of Henri IV. on the Pont-Neuf.....36 The Institute.....37 The Pont-Neuf from the Island.....40 View from the Western Point of the Île de la Cité.....41 Place de la Bastille and Column of July.....45 Junction of Grands Boulevards and Rue and Faubourg Montmartre.....48 The Bastille.....49 The Conquerors of the Bastille.....53 À la Robespierre.....56 A Lady of 1793.....56 A Tricoteuse.....56 Map showing the Extension of Paris.....57 Adrienne Lecouvreur.....61 A Duel in the Bois de Boulogne.....64 The Seine from Notre Dame....._facing_ 5 Recruits.....65 Hôtel Carnavalet.....68 Hôtel Lamoignon.....69 Statue of Louis XIII. in the Place des Vosges.....71 The Place des Vosges, formerly Place Royale.....72 The Arcade in the Place des Vosges.....73 The Winter Circus in the Boulevard des Filles de Calvaire.....77 Louis Philippe.....80 Attempted Assassination of Louis Philippe.....81 A Parisian Café.....84 Place de la République.....85 Frédéric Lemaître.....89 Porte Saint-Martin and the Renaissance Theatre.....92 Church of Saint-Méry, Rue Saint-Martin.....93 Apsis of Church of Saint-Méry, Rue Brisemiche.....96 Notre Dame....._facing_ 97 Entrance to the Faubourg Saint-Denis.....97 Boulevard and Porte Saint-Denis.....101 Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle and the Gymnase Theatre.....104 The Boulevard Montmartre.....105 Entrance to the Théâtre des Variétés, Boulevard Montmartre.....109 Cafés on the Boulevard Montmartre.....112 Molière.....113 Street Coffee Stall.....114 Boulevard des Italiens.....116 The 6th of June; the Last of the Insurrection.....121 Marivaux.....124 Paris in the Seventeenth Century.....125 Rue de la Chaussée d'Antin.....128 View from the Roof of the Opera House....._facing_ 129 Mlle. Clairon.....129 View from the Balcony of the Opera.....132 Avenue de l'Opéra.....133 One of the Domes of the Opera House.....135 Eastern Pavilion, Opera House.....136 The Public Foyer, Opera House.....137 Western Pavilion, Opera House.....140 The Staircase of the Opera House.....141 The Madeleine.....144 Interior of the Madeleine.....145 Place de la Concorde.....149 Place de la Concorde, from the Terrace of the Tuileries.....152 Trial of Louis XVI.....153 Top of the Vendôme Column.....155 The Place Vendôme.....157 Rue Castiglione.....160 A First Night at the Comédie Française--The Foyer....._facing_ 161 Mirabeau.....161 Robespierre.....164 The Palais Royal.....165 Gardens of the Palais Royal.....168 The Palais Royal after the Siege.....169 The Montpensier Gallery, Palais Royal.....170 Entrance to the Comédie Française.....172 The Public Foyer, Comédie Française.....173 The Green Room, Comédie Française.....176 Molière.....177 Corneille.....180 Voltaire.....181 The Committee of the Comédie Française: Alexandre Dumas (the younger) Reading a Play.....185 Behind the Scenes, Comédie Française.....186 Entrance to the National Library in the Rue des Petits Champs.....188 The Bourse.....189 The Apollo Gallery--The Louvre....._facing_ 193 The Louvre, from the Place du Carrousel.....193 The Old Louvre (Pierre Lescot's Façade).....195 The Colonnade of the Louvre.....196 Portion of the Façade of Henri IV.'s Gallery, Louvre.....197 Top of the Marsan Pavilion, Louvre.....200 The Marsan and Flora Pavilions, Louvre, from the Pont-Royal.....201 The Richelieu Pavilion.....205 The Tuileries in the Eighteenth Century.....208 The Terrace, Tuileries Gardens.....209 The Tuileries Gardens.....209 Lion in the Tuileries Gardens.....211 The Chestnuts of the Tuileries.....212 Louis XVI. Stopped at Varennes by Drouet.....213 The Royal Family at Varennes.....216 Monument to Gambetta, Place du Carrousel.....217 The Horses of Marly, Champs Élysées.....220 The Elysée.....221 Saint-Philippe du Roule.....221 The Great Lake, Bois de Boulogne.....223 Avenue du Bois de Boulogne.....224 Arc de Triomphe....._facing_ 225 Avenue des Champs Élysées.....225 Avenue Marigny, Champs Élysées.....227 Fountain in the Champs Élysées.....228 The Champ de Mars, 1889.....229 The Military School, Champ de Mars.....232 General La Fayette.....233 The Palais de l'Industrie, Champs Élysées.....236 View Showing Exhibition of 1889.....237 View from the First Platform of the Eiffel Tower.....240 The Trocadéro.....241 Hôtel de Ville in the Fifteenth Century.....244 Attack on the Hôtel de Ville, 1830.....245 Statue of Étienne Marcel on the Quai Hôtel de Ville.....246 The Municipal Council Chamber, Hôtel de Ville.....248 Île St. Louis.....249 The Quai de l'Horloge.....252 Pont au Change and Palais de Justice.....253 The Clock of the Palais de Justice.....255 Entrance to the Court of Assize.....256 The Palais de Justice....._facing_ 257 The Palais de Justice and Sainte-Chapelle.....257 The Façade of the Old Palais de Justice.....260 The Salle des Pas Perdus.....261 Police Carriages.....263 The Conciergerie, Palais de Justice.....264 The Sainte-Chapelle.....265 The Lower Chapel of the Sainte-Chapelle.....267 The Upper Chapel of the Sainte-Chapelle.....268 The Tribunal of Commerce.....269 A Pompier.....272 A Guardian of the Peace.....273 An Orderly of the Garde de Paris.....274 A Gendarme.....277 Principal Court of the Hôtel-Dieu.....280 Rue de Rivoli.....281 Façade of the Church of St. Gervais and St. Protais; and the Apsis, from the Rue des Barres.....284 Tower of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie.....285 Hôtel de Beauvais.....286 Church of St. Louis and St. Paul.....288 Rue de Rivoli and Hôtel de Ville....._facing_ 289 Rue Grenier-sur-l'eau.....289 The Pont-Marie.....292 Rue Saint Louis-en-l'Île.....293 Pont au Change, Place du Châtelet, and Boulevard de Sebastopol.....296 The Palmier Fountain, Place du Châtelet.....297 Rue de Venise.....299 St. Nicholas-in-the-Fields.....300 The Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers.....301 The Vertbois Tower and Fountain.....303 The Gaieté Theatre.....304 In the Temple Market.....305 The Temple Market.....305 Sixteenth Century Cloisters, Rue des Billettes.....307 Palace of the National Archives.....308 Hôtel de Hollande.....309 Turret at Corner of Rues Vieille du Temple and Francs Bourgeois.....309 Rue de Birague, leading to the Place des Vosges.....311 Fountain of the Innocents.....312 Saint-Eustache.....313 A Market Scene.....315 An Auction Sale of Poultry in the Central Market.....316 Rue Rambuteau in the Early Morning.....317 On the Way to the Central Markets.....319 The Fish Market.....320 Interior of the Mont de Piété, Rue Capron....._facing_ 321 The General Post Office.....321 The Poste Restante.....321 The Public Hall, General Post Office.....323 The Telephone Room at the General Post Office.....324 Place des Victoires.....325 Rue de la Vrillière.....328 In Père-Lachaise.....333 Parc des Buttes Chaumont.....336 Montmartre.....340 The Synagogue in the Rue de la Victoire.....341 St. Peter's Church, Montmartre.....343 The Bells of St. Peter's.....343 The New Municipal Reservoir and the Church of the Sacred Heart, Montmartre.....344 The Caulaincourt Bridge, Montmartre.....344 In the Parc Monceau.....345 Diana of Poitiers.....348 Marshal Ney.....352 The Race-course, Longchamps....._facing_ 353 Camille Desmoulins.....356 The Polytechnic School.....357 Notre Dame from the Pont Saint-Louis.....360 A Rag-picker.....361 A Rag-picker.....364 The Boulevard Poissonière.....368 Selling Goats.....369 The Bird Market.....373 Madame de Maintenon.....375 [Illustration: PLACE DE LA CONCORDE.] PARIS, OLD AND NEW. CHAPTER I. PARIS: A GENERAL GLANCE. "Paris," said Heinrich Heine, "is not simply the capital of France, but of the whole civilised world, and the rendezvous of its most brilliant intellects." The art and literature of Europe were at that time represented in Paris by such men as Ary Scheffer, the Dutch painter, Rossini, the Italian composer, the cosmopolitan Meyerbeer, and Heine himself. Towards the close of the eighteenth century most of the European Courts, with those of Catherine II. and Frederick the Great prominent among them, were regularly supplied with letters on Parisian affairs by Grimm, Diderot, and other writers of the first distinction, who, in their serious moments, contributed articles to the _Encyclopédie_. At a much remoter period Paris was already one of the most famous literary capitals of Europe; nor was it renowned for its literature alone. Its art, pictorial and sculptural, was also celebrated, and still more so its art manufactures; while of recent years the country of Auber and Gounod, of Bizet, Massenet and Saint-Saëns, has played a leading part in the world of music. Paris, too, has from the earliest times been a centre of science and philosophy. Here Abélard lectured, and here the first hospitals were established. Then, again, Paris has a military history of singular interest and variety. It has been oftener torn within its walls by civic conflicts, and attacked from without by the invader, than any other European city; while none has undergone so many regular sieges as the capital of the country of which Frederick the Great used to say that, if he ruled it, not a shot should be fired in Europe without his permission. Paris is at once the most ancient and the most modern capital in Europe. Great are the changes it has undergone since it first took form, eighteen centuries ago, as a fortress or walled town on an island in the middle of the Seine; and at every period of its history we find some chronicler dwelling on the disappearance of ancient landmarks. Whole quarters are known to have been pulled down and rebuilt under the second Empire. But ever since the Revolution of 1789, under each successive form of government and in almost every district, straggling lanes have been giving way gradually to wide streets and stately boulevards, and suburb after suburb has been merged into the great city. The Chaussée d'Antin was at the end of the last century a chaussée in fact as well as in name: a mere high-road, that is to say; and there were people living under the government of Louis-Philippe who claimed to have shot rabbits on the now densely populated Boulevard Montmartre. The greatest changes, however, in the general physiognomy of Paris date from the Revolution, when, in the first place, as if by way of symbol, the hated fortress was demolished in which so many victims of despotism had languished. "Athens," says Victor Hugo, "built the Parthenon, but Paris destroyed the Bastille." In the days when the great State prison was still standing, the broad, well-built Rue Saint-Antoine, in its immediate neighbourhood, used to be pointed to by antiquarians as covering the ground where King Henry II. was mortally wounded in a tournament by Montgomery, an officer in the Scottish Guard. It was there, too, that, after the death of their protector, the "minions" of Henry II. slaughtered one another. The now thickly inhabited Place des Victoires, where stands the statue of Louis XIV., lasting monument of kingly pride and popular adulation, was at one time the most dangerous part of the capital. In the open space now enclosed by lordly mansions and commodious warehouses thieves and murderers held their nightly assemblies, or even in the face of day committed depredations on the passers-by. "Could a better site have been chosen," asks an historian of the last century, "for the effigy of that royal robber, born for the ruin of his subjects and the disturbance of Europe: who aimed at universal monarchy and sacrificed the wealth and happiness of a whole kingdom to pursue an empty shadow; who lived a tyrant and died an idiot?" Not far distant, the Halles, or general markets, stand on the spot where Charles V. made a famous speech against Charles, surnamed the Mischievous, King of Navarre; when the former was hissed and hooted by the mob because he had neither the good looks, the eloquence, nor the reasoning power of his antagonist. It was here, too, that the first dramas were acted in France; and here, significantly enough, that Molière was born. At the Butte Saint-Roch, now remembered chiefly by the church of the same name, the Maid of Orleans was wounded during the siege of Paris, then in the hands of the English. Joan of Arc was not at this time--not, at least, with the Parisians--the popular heroine she has since become. Detesting Charles VII. and all his supporters, they could not love the inspired girl whose example had restored the courage of the king's troops. A Parisian of that day, who had witnessed the siege, describes her as a "fiend in woman's guise." The bell may still be heard of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois; the very bell, it is asserted, that called the faithful to the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Near the church from which the tragic signal rang forth stands the palace from whose windows Charles IX. fired upon the unhappy Huguenots as they sought safety by swimming across the Seine; and close at hand used to be pointed out another window from which money was thrown to an agitated crowd in order to keep it from attending Molière's funeral, at which the mob proposed, not to honour the remains of the illustrious dramatist, but to insult them. It was in the old Rue du Temple that the Duke of Burgundy fell by the hand of his assassin, the Duke of Orleans, only brother of Charles VI., who, though a madman and an idiot, was suffered to remain on the throne; and it was in this same Rue du Temple that Louis XVI. and Marie-Antoinette were confined before being taken to the guillotine. What scenes has not the Place de Grève witnessed! from the burning of witches to the torture of Damiens, and from the atrocious cruelties inflicted upon this would-be regicide to the first executions under the Revolution, when the cry of "A la lanterne!" (to the lamp-post, that is to say, of the Place de Grève) was so frequently heard. But the most revolutionary spot in this, the most revolutionary capital in the world, is to be found in the gardens of the Palais Royal; those gardens from whose trees Camille Desmoulins plucked the leaves which the besiegers of the Bastille were to have worn in their hats as rallying signals. Here, too, assembled the journeymen printers, who, their newspapers having been suppressed by Charles X., determined, under the guidance of the journalists--their natural leaders on such an occasion--to reply by force to the armed censorship of the Government. Again, in 1848, the Palais Royal Gardens witnessed the first manifestations of discontent, though it was a pistol-shot fired on a fashionable part of the boulevard that precipitated the collision between the insurgents and the troops. The next morning, at breakfast, Louis-Philippe was told that he had better abdicate; and an hour afterwards an old gentleman, with a portfolio under his arm, was seen to take a cab on the Place de la Concorde, and drive off in the direction of Saint-Cloud, whence he reached the coast of Normandy, and in due time the shores of England. Paris possesses one of the most ancient and one of the most characteristically modern churches in Europe--the venerable Notre-Dame, and in sharp contrast, the fashionable Madeleine, celebrated for the splendour of its essentially mundane architecture, the luxurious attire of its female frequenters, the beauty of its music, and the eloquence of its preachers. The first stone of Notre-Dame was laid, as Victor Hugo puts it, by Tiberius, who, recognising the site of the future cathedral as well-fitted for a temple, began by erecting an altar "to the god Cerennos and to the bull Esus." In like manner, on the hill of Sainte-Geneviève, where now stands the edifice known as the Pantheon, Mercury was at one time worshipped. So rich is Paris in historical associations that often the same street, the same spot, recalls two widely different events. Thus the statue of Henri IV. on the Pont-Neuf commemorates the glory of the best and greatest of the French kings, and at the same time marks the very ground where, in the fourteenth century, Jacques de Molay, the Templar, was infamously burned. At No. 14 in the Rue de Béthisy Admiral Coligny died and Sophie Arnould was born. At a house in the Rue des Marais Racine wrote "Bajazet" and "Britannicus" in the room where, fifty years later, the Duchess de Bouillon is said to have poisoned Adrienne Lecouvreur. There was a time when, at the corner of the Rue du Marché des Innocents, a marble slab, inscribed with letters of gold, associated the important year of 1685 with three notable events: the arrival of an embassy from Siam, a visit from the Doge of Genoa, and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. This strange record has disappeared, together with many other interesting memorials of various shapes and kinds: such, for example, as the iron cauldron in the Cour des Miracles, where, in the name of a whole series of kings who had played tricks with the national currency, and more than once produced national bankruptcy, coiners used to be boiled alive. As we go further back in the history of Paris, lawlessness on the part of the inhabitants, and cruelty on that of the rulers, seem constantly to increase. Until the reign of Louis XI., Paris was without police, though laws were nominally in force, especially against stealing. Theft was punished much on the principle laid down in the inscription of the sixth century which adorned one of the walls of Lutetia, the Paris of the Romans: "If a thief is caught in the act he must, in the case of a noble, be brought to trial; in the case of a peasant, be hanged on the spot." The capitular of Charlemagne forbade ecclesiastics to take human life: which did not prevent the abbés of different monasteries from besieging one another or crossing swords when, with their followers, they chanced to meet outside the fortified monasterial walls, whether in the plain or in the public street. The right of private warfare existed in France until 1235. Paris has undergone atrocious sufferings through war, famine, pestilence, and calamities of all kinds. The Normans, after burning one half of Paris, allowed the remainder to be ransomed with an enormous sum of money. In one of the famines by which Paris in its early days was so often visited, people cast lots as to which should be eaten. The taxes were so excessive that many pretended to be lepers, in order to profit by the exemption accorded in such cases. But it was sometimes not well to be a leper, real or pretended; for it was proclaimed one day to the sound of horn and trumpet that lepers throughout the kingdom should be exterminated: "in consequence of a mixture of herbs and human blood, with which, rolling it up in a linen cloth and tying it to a stone, they poison the wells and rivers." How terrible, and often how ridiculous, were the proclamations issued in those days! In front of the Grand-Châtelet six heralds of France, clothed in white velvet, and rod in hand, were wont to announce after a plague, a war, or a famine that there was nothing more to be feared, and that the king would be graciously pleased to receive taxes as before. In the centre of the so-called "town"--Paris in general, that is to say, as distinct from the city--was "la Maubuée" (derived, according to Victor Hugo, from _mauvaise fumée_), where Jews innumerable were roasted over fires of pitch and green wood to punish what a chronicler of the time terms their "anthropomancy"; and what the Counsellor de l'Ancre further describes as "the marvellous cruelty they have always shown towards Christians, their mode of life, their synagogue, so displeasing to God, their uncleanliness, and their stench." The unhappy Jews, however, were not the only victims. Close by, at the corner of the Rue du Gros-Chenet, was the place where sorcerers used to be burned. Torture, moreover, in its most hideous forms was practised upon criminals even until the time of the Revolution; which, while introducing the guillotine, abolished, in addition to a variety of other torments, breaking on the wheel, and the beating of criminals to death with the iron bar. Many of the names, still extant, of the old Paris streets recall the ferocity and the superstition of past times. The Rue de l'Arbre Sec was the Street of the Gibbet, with "Dry Tree" as its familiar name. The Rue d'Enfer, or Hell Street, was so called from a belief that this thoroughfare on the outskirts of Paris, just beyond the Luxemburg Gardens, was haunted by the fiend. In order to put an end to the scandal by which the whole neighbourhood was alarmed, it occurred to the authorities to make over the street to the Order of Capuchins who, they thought, would know how to deal with their inveterate enemy. The Capuchins accepted, with gratitude, the valuable trust; and thenceforth, whether as the result of some exorcising process or because public confidence had been restored, no more was heard of the visitor from below. [Illustration: THE LEFT BANK OF THE SEINE, FROM NOTRE-DAME.] To get a complete idea of the vastness and variety of Paris, it should be seen from the towers of Notre-Dame, the Pantheon, the July Column of the Place de la Bastille, the tower of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, the Vendôme Column, the Triumphal Arch, and, finally, the Eiffel Tower. From these different points panoramic views may be obtained which together would form a complete picture of Paris. The shape of Paris is oval. The longest diameter--east to west--would be drawn from the Gate of Vincennes to the Gate of Auteuil; and the shorter--north to south--from the Gate of Clignancourt to the Gate of Italy. Paris is divided longitudinally by the course of the Seine, whose windings are scarcely noticed by the observer taking a bird's-eye view. The river looks like a silver thread between two borders of green. These are the plantations of the quays, whose trees, during the last five-and-twenty years, have become as remarkable for their luxuriant growth as for their beauty of form. From the height of our observatory we see the Island of the City, looking like a ship at anchor, with its prow towards the west. On all sides the summits of religious edifices present themselves: the towers of Notre-Dame, the dome of the Pantheon, the turrets of Saint-Sulpice, the steeple of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the gilded cupola of the Invalides, and the lofty isolated belfry of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie. Following the course of the Seine with careful eye, one may see its twenty-one "ports"--eleven on the right bank, and ten on the left--from Bercy to the Tuileries; also, like slender bars thrown across the river, the twenty-seven bridges connecting the two banks, from the Pont-National to the viaduct of the Point du Jour. The double line of quays--quadruple, where the islands of St. Louis and of the City divide the river in two--presents an incomparable series of stately structures; such as the Hôtel de Ville, the Palais de Justice, the Louvre, the Mint, the Institute, the Palais Bourbon, and a number of magnificent private mansions. [Illustration: RIGHT BANK OF THE SEINE, FROM NOTRE-DAME.] From the Gothic steeple of the Sainte Chapelle the eye wanders to innumerable domes, built under the influence of the Renaissance; for while the domes have endured, the steeples, so numerous in ancient Paris, have, for the most part, succumbed either to fire or to the vandalism of the renovating architect. It must be remembered, too, that under the reign of Louis XIV. Gothic architecture was proscribed, as recalling "the age of barbarism." Every new edifice was constructed in the Italian or Italo-Byzantine style. The finest, if not the most ancient, dome that Paris could ever boast was the one which crowned the central pavilion of the Tuileries Palace. The cupola of St. Peter's was the model adopted in the early part of the sixteenth century by all French architects who had studied in Italy, or Italian architects who had settled in France; and the masterpiece of Michael Angelo at Rome was not yet finished when the first stone of the impressive and picturesque Church of Saint-Eustace was laid in 1532 at Paris. Only a few years afterwards the French architect, Philibert de l'Orme, attached to the service of Pope Paul III., returned to Paris, and, beneath the delighted eyes of Queen Catherine de Medicis, worked out the designs which he had formed under the inspiration of Michael Angelo and of Bramante. The dome, however, of Philibert de l'Orme was destined to lose its beauty through the additions made to it by other architects. Of late years it has been the rule in Paris not to destroy but to preserve the ancient architecture of the city. "Demolish the tower of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie?" asked Victor Hugo, when, during the reconstruction and prolongation of the Rue Rivoli, the question of keeping it standing or pulling it down was under general discussion: "Demolish the tower of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie? No! Demolish the architect who suggests such a thing? Yes!" CHAPTER II. THE EXPANSION OF PARIS. Lutetia--_La Cité_--Lutetia taken by Labienus--The Visit of Julian the Apostate--Besieged by the Franks--The Norman Invasion--Gradual Expansion from the _Ile de la Cité_ to the Outer Boulevards--M. Thiers's Line of Outworks. Lutetia, the ancient Paris, or Lutetia Parisiorum, as it was called by the Romans, stood in the midst of marshes. The name, derived, suggestively enough, from _lutum_, the Latin for mud, has been invested with a peculiar significance by those stern moralists who see in Paris nothing but a sink of iniquity. Balzac called it a "wen"; and Blucher, when some ferocious member of his staff suggested the destruction of Paris, exclaimed: "Leave it alone; Paris will destroy all France!" By a critic of less severe temperament Paris has been contemptuously described as "the tavern of Europe"--_le cabaret de l'Europe_. Lutetia, however, can afford to smile alike at the slurs of moralists and the sneers of cynics; and the etymology of her name need by no means alarm those of her admirers who will reflect that lilies may spring from mud, and that the richest corn is produced from the blackest soil. The development of the Lutetia of Cæsar's time into the Paris of our own has occupied many eventful centuries; and the centre of the development may still be seen in that little island of the so-called City--_l'Ile de la Cité_--once known as the Island of Lutetia. As to the dimensions of the ancient Lutetia, neither historians nor geographers are wholly agreed. The germ of Paris is, in any case, to be found in that part of the French capital which has long been known as _la Cité_, and which is the dullest and sleepiest part of Paris, just as inversely our "city," distinctively so called, is the most active and energetic part of London. The Parisians have always been given to insurrection; and their first rising was made against a ruler who was likely enough to put it down--Julius Cæsar, that is to say. Finding his power defied, Cæsar sent against the Parisians a body of troops, under the command of Labienus, who crushed the rebels in the first battle. Historians give different versions of the engagement, but modern writers are content for the most part to rely on a tradition related by an author of the fourteenth century, Raoul de Presles, who published a French version of Cæsar's account of the Battle of Paris, enriched by notes and comments from his own pen. Labienus, according to Cæsar and Raoul de Presles, was arrested in his first attack by an impassable marsh. Then, simulating a retreat along the left bank of the Seine, he was pursued by the Gauls, in spite of Camulogenes, their cautious leader; who, unable to restrain them, fell with them at last into an ambuscade, in which chief and followers all perished. Raoul de Presles gives some interesting details about the marsh which Labienus, on making his advance against Paris, was unable to cross. Some identify it with the Marshes of the Temple, which formed, on the north of Paris, a continuous semicircle; but Raoul de Presles seems to hold that the marsh which stopped the advance of Labienus protected Lutetia itself: that Lutetia of the Island which sprang from the mud as Venus sprang from the sea. The city of Lutetia was at that time so strong, so entirely shut in by water, that Julius Cæsar himself speaks of the difficulty of reaching it. "But since then," says Raoul de Presles, "there has been much solidification through gravel, sand, and all kinds of rubbish being cast into it." After the victory of Labienus, Lutetia, which the conqueror had destroyed, was quickly re-built; and it was then governed as a Roman town. This, however, was in Cæsar's time; and the first description of Lutetia as a city was given by Strabo some fifty years later. Thus it may safely be said that of the original Lutetia nothing whatever is known. It is certain, nevertheless, that in the new Lutetia, built by the Romans, the most important edifices stood at the western end of the island, including a palace, on whose site was afterwards to be erected the Palace of the French Kings; while at the eastern end the most striking object was a Temple to Jupiter, in due time to be replaced by the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. As early as the fourth century Lutetia found favour in the eyes of illustrious visitors; and the Emperor Julian, known as the "Apostate," when, after defeating seven German kings near Strasburg, he retired to Lutetia for winter quarters, spoke of it, then and for ever afterwards, as his "dear Lutetia." "Lutetia lætitia!"--Paris is my joy!--he might, with a certain modern writer, have exclaimed. Julian is not the only man who, going to Paris for a few months, has stayed there several years; and Julian's winter quarters of the year 355 so much pleased him that he remained in them until 360. Encouraged, no doubt, by what Julian, in his enthusiasm, told them about the already attractive capital of Gaul, a whole series of Roman emperors visited the city, including Valentinian I., Valentinian II., and Gratian, who left Paris in 379, never to return. From this date Paris ceased practically to form part of the Roman Empire. More than a century before (in 245) St. Denis had undergone martyrdom on the banks of the Seine, walking about after decapitation with his head under his arm. This strange tradition had probably its origin in a picture by some simple-minded painter, who had represented St. Denis carrying his own head like a parcel, because he could think of no more ingenious way of indicating the fate that had befallen the first apostle of Christianity in Gaul; just as St. Bartholomew has often been painted with his skin hanging across his arm like a loose overcoat. After the defeat and death of Gratian, the government of Lutetia passed into the hands of her bishops, who often defended the city against the incursions of the barbarians. In 476 Lutetia was besieged by the Franks, when Childeric gained possession of it, and destroyed for ever all traces of the Roman power. It now became a Frank or French town; and, "Lutetia Parisiorum" being too long a name for the unlettered Goths, was shortened by them first into "Parisius," and ultimately, by the suppression of the two last syllables, into "Paris." In the ninth century Paris underwent the usual Norman invasion, by which so many European countries, from Russia to England, and from England to Sicily--not to speak of the Norman or Varangian Guard of Constantinople--were sooner or later to be visited. The "hardy Norsemen"--or Norman pirates, as the unhappy Parisians doubtless called them--started from the island of Oissel, near Rouen, where they had established themselves in force; and, moving with a numerous fleet towards Paris, laid siege to it, and, on its surrender, first pillaged it and then burnt it to the ground. Three churches alone--those of Saint-Étienne, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and Saint-Denis, near Paris--were saved, through the payment of a heavy ransom. Sixteen years later, after a sufficient interval to allow of a reconstruction, the Normans again returned, when once more the unhappy city was plundered and burnt. For twenty successive years Paris was the constant prey of the Norman pirates who held beneath their power the whole course of the Seine. At last, however, a powerful fleet, led by a chief whom the French call "Siegfroi," but whose real name was doubtless "Siegfried," sustained a crushing defeat; and, simultaneously with the Norman invaders, the Carlovingian Dynasty passed away. With the advent of the Capet Dynasty a continuous history began for Paris--in due time to become the capital of all France. Ancient Paris was three times burnt to the ground: the Paris which dates from the ninth century has often been conquered, but never burnt. Ancient Paris, the Lutetia of the Romans, was an island enclosed between two branches of the Seine. But the river overflowed north and south, and it became necessary to construct large ditches or moats, which at once widened the boundaries of the "city." Gradually the population spread out in every direction; and when, under Louis XIV., the line of boulevards was traced, the extreme limits of the capital were marked by this new enclosure. Then under Louis XVI., the Farmers-General, levying dues (the so-called _octroi_) on imports into the town, established for their own convenience certain "barriers," at which persons bringing in food or drink were stopped until they had acquitted themselves of the appointed tax; and, connecting these "barriers," they thus formed the line of outer boulevards. Paris extended in time even to these outer boulevards. Then, under Louis-Philippe, at the instigation of his Minister, M. Thiers, a line of fortifications was constructed around Paris; which, proving insufficient in 1870 and 1871 to save the capital from bombardment, has in its turn been surrounded by a circle of outlying detached forts intercommunicating with one another. The fortifications of Paris have had a strange history. At the time of their being planned, opinions in France were divided as to whether they were intended to oppose a foreign invasion or to control an internal revolt. In all probability they were meant, according to the occasion, to serve either purpose. They were not only designed by M. Thiers, but executed under his orders; and this statesman, who had made a careful study of military science, lived to see them powerless against the German army of investment, and successful against the Paris Commune. [Illustration: ON THE BOULEVARDS--CORNER OF PLACE DE L'OPÉRA.] Paris had been invaded and occupied in 1814, and again in 1815. On the other hand, domestic government had been upset in 1830 by a popular insurrection, which, with adequate military force to oppose it, might at once have been suppressed. Was it as patriot, people asked, or as minister of a would-be despotic king, that M. Thiers proposed to raise around Paris a new and formidable wall? M. Thiers's circular line of outworks played no part in connection with the successful insurrection of February, 1848, nor with the unsuccessful one of June in the same year. Nor was a single shot fired from the fortifications in connection with the _coup d'État_ of 1851. They did not in 1871 prevent the French capital from falling into the hands of the Germans: but they delayed for a considerable time the fatal moment of surrender; and if the army of Metz could have held out a few weeks longer--if, above all, the inhabitants of the inactive south, who practically took no part in the war, had been prepared, to fight with something like the energy displayed by the Confederates against the Federals during the American Civil War--then the fortifications would have justified the views of those who had chiefly regarded them as a valuable defence against foreign invasion. The fortifications erected by M. Thiers have since been pulled down: partly because the constantly expanding city wanted fresh building ground, partly because, in view of new plans of defence, and of the new artillery of offence, it was considered desirable to protect Paris by a system of outlying but inter-protecting forts, at a sufficient distance from the houses of the capital to render reduction by what is called "simple bombardment" impossible. In time Lutetia, with fresh developments, may require yet another new girdle. CHAPTER III. THE LEFT BANK AND THE RIGHT. Paris and London--The _Rive Gauche_--The _Quartier Latin_--The Pantheon--The Luxemburg--The School of Medicine--The School of Fine Arts--The Bohemia of Paris--The _Rive Droite_--Paris Proper--"The West End." An effective contrast might be drawn between London and Paris. But, unlike as they are in so many features, physical, moral, and historical, they differ most widely, perhaps, by the relative parts they have played in the history of their respective countries. The history of Paris is the history of France itself. The decisive battles which brought the great civil and religious wars of the country to an end were fought outside or in the very streets of Paris. It was in Paris that the massacre of St. Bartholomew--darkest blot on the French annals--was perpetrated. The Revolution of 1789, again, was prepared and accomplished in the French capital; and, thenceforth, all those revolutions and _coups d'état_ by which the government of the country was periodically to be changed had Paris for their scene. In England, on the other hand, London had little or nothing to do with the battles of the great Rebellion, the Revolution, or the two insurrections by which the Revolution was followed. [Illustration: THÉÂTRE FRANÇAIS.] But the English visitor to Paris is in the first place struck by external points of dissimilarity. As regards the difference in the structural physiognomy of the two great capitals (less pronounced now than at one time, though Paris is still loftily, and London for the most part dwarfishly, built), it was ingeniously remarked, some fifty years ago, that the architecture of one city seemed vertical, of the other horizontal. To pass from the houses to their inhabitants, the population of Paris is as remarkable for variety as that of London for uniformity of costume. For in Paris almost every class has its own distinctive dress. In England, and especially in London, the employer and his workmen, the millionaire and the crossing-sweeper, wear coats of the same pattern. In London, again, every work-girl, every market-woman, wears a bonnet imitated more or less perfectly from those worn by ladies of fashion. When Gavarni first visited London, he was astonished and amused to see an old woman in a bonnet carrying a flower-pot on her head, and made this grotesque figure the subject of a humorous design, with the following inscription beneath it: "_On porte cette année beaucoup de fleurs sur les chapeaux._" Shop-girls and work-girls in Paris wear neat white caps instead of ill-made, or, it may be, dilapidated bonnets; though the more aspiring among them reserve the right of appearing in a bonnet on Sundays and holidays. The French workman wears a blouse and a cap, and looks upon the hat as a sign, if not of superiority, at least of pretension. "Car moi j'ai payé ma casquette, Et toi, tu n'as pas payé ton chapeau!" was the burden of a song very popular with the working classes during the revolutionary days of 1848 to 1851. Owing to the varieties of dress already touched upon, a crowd in Paris presents a less gloomy, less monotonous appearance than the black-coated mobs of London; and in harmony with the greater relief afforded by the different colours of the costumes are the animated gestures of the persons composing the crowd. Observe, indeed, a mere group of persons conversing on no matter what commonplace subject, or idly chatting as they sip their coffee together on the boulevards, and they appear to be engaged in some violent dispute. To mention yet another point on which Paris differs from London: the most interesting part of Paris lies on the right bank of the Seine, whereas all that is interesting in London lies on the left bank of the Thames. The left bank of the Seine possesses, however, buildings and streets of historical interest. Here, too, is the quarter of the schools: the Quartier Latin, as it is still called, not by reason of its Roman antiquities, which, except at the Hotel Cluny, would be sought for in vain, but because, in the mediæval period whence the schools for the most part date, even to comparatively modern times, Latin was the language of the student. On the "left bank," moreover, stand the Institute, the Pantheon or Church of Ste. Geneviève, as, according to the predominance of religion or irreligion, it is alternately called; the Ste. Geneviève Library, the Luxemburg Palace, with its magnificent picture gallery, the School of Medicine, and the School of Fine Arts. Many of the great painters, too, have their studios--often little academies in themselves--on the left bank of the river; while among the famous streets on the "left bank" is that Rue du Bac so often referred to in the chronicles and memoirs of the eighteenth century. The famous Café Procope, again, literary headquarters of the encyclopædists, stands on what is now considered the wrong side of the water. So too does the Odéon Theatre, once the Théàtre Français, where, in modern as well as ancient times, so many dramatic masterpieces have been produced. On the other hand, there is scarcely on the left bank one good hotel: certainly not one that could put forward the slightest pretension to being fashionable. Nor, except in the case of professional men connected with the hospitals or the schools, would anyone mixing in fashionable society care to give his address anywhere on the left bank. Jules Janin, one of the most distinguished writers of his time, and one of the most popular men in the great world of Paris from the reign of Louis Philippe until that of Napoleon III., did, it is true, live for years in a house close to the Luxemburg Gardens. But Janin possessed a certain originality, and thought more of what suited himself than of what pleased others. On one occasion, having engaged to fight a duel, he failed to put in an appearance by reason of the inclemency of the weather and his disinclination to get out of bed at the early hour for which the meeting had been fixed. Such a man would not be ashamed to live on the left bank if he happened to have found a place there which harmonised with his tastes. Apart, however, from all question of inclination and fashion, it is really inconvenient to anyone who mingles in Parisian life to live on the left bank of the Seine, remote as it is from the boulevards, the Champs Élysées, the best hotels, the best restaurants, the best cafés, and the best theatres. At the same time, no sort of comparison can be established between the transpontine districts of Paris and those of London. In London, no one who is anyone would dream of living "on the other side of the water," where neither picture galleries, nor public gardens, nor artists' studios, nor famous streets, nor great houses of business, nor even magnificent shops are to be met with. Even Jules Janin, had he been an Englishman, would have declined to live in the region of Blackfriars or the Waterloo Road. On the right bank of the Seine--the Paris West End, and something more--we find much greater concentration than in the West End of London. Here, indeed, all that is most important in the artistic, financial, and fashionable life of the capital may be found within a small compass. The Théàtre Français is close to the Bourse, and the Bourse to the Boulevard des Italiens, which leads to the Opera by a line along which stand the finest hotels, the best restaurants in Paris. From the Opera it is no far cry to the Champs Élysées, the Hyde Park of Paris; while, going along the boulevards in the opposite direction, one comes step by step to a seemingly endless series of famous theatres. All the best clubs, too, all the best book-shops and music-shops, are to be found on the most fashionable part of the boulevard, extending from the Boulevard des Italiens, past the Opera House, to the adjacent Church of the Madeleine: architecturally a repetition of the Bourse, as though commerce and religion demanded temples of the same character. [Illustration] [Illustration: NOTRE DAME.] CHAPTER IV. NOTRE DAME. The Cathedral of Notre Dame, a Temple to Jupiter--Cæsar and Napoleon--Relics in Notre Dame--Its History--Curious Legends--"The New Church"--Remarkable Religious Ceremonies--The Place de Grève--The Days of Sorcery--Monsieur de Paris--Dramatic Entertainments--Coronation of Napoleon There is no monument of ancient Paris so interesting, by its architecture and its historical associations, as the Cathedral of Notre Dame; which, standing on the site of a Temple to Jupiter, carries us back to the time of the Roman domination and of Julius Cæsar. Here, eighteen centuries later, took place the most magnificent ceremony ever seen within the walls of the actual edifice: the coronation, that is to say, of the modern Cæsar, the conqueror who ascended the Imperial throne of France on the 2nd of December, 1804. Meanwhile, the strangest as well as the most significant things have been witnessed inside the ancient metropolitan church of Paris. Among the curious objects deposited from time to time on the altar of Notre Dame may be mentioned a wand which Louis VII. inscribed with the confession of a fault he was alleged to have committed against the Church. Journeying towards Paris, the king had been surprised by the darkness of night, and had supped and slept at Créteil, on the invitation of the inhabitants. The village, inhabitants and all, belonged to the Chapter of Notre Dame; and the canons were much irritated at the king's having presumed to accept hospitality indirectly at their cost. When, next day, Louis, arriving at Paris, went, after his custom, to the cathedral in order to render thanks for his safe journey, he was astonished to find the gates of Notre Dame closed. He asked for an explanation, whereupon the canons informed him that since, in defiance of the privileges and sacred traditions of the Church, he had dared at Créteil to sup, free of cost to himself and at the expense of the flock of Notre Dame, he must now consider himself outside the pale of Christianity. At this terrible announcement the king groaned, sighed, wept, and begged forgiveness, humbly protesting that but for the gloom of night and the spontaneous hospitality of the inhabitants--so courteous that a refusal on his part would have been most uncivil--he would never have touched that fatal supper. In vain did the bishop intercede on his behalf, offering to guarantee to the canons the execution of any promise which the king might make in expiation of his crime; it was not until the prelate placed in their hands a couple of silver candlesticks as a pledge of the monarch's sincerity that they would open to him the cathedral doors; and even then his Majesty had to pay the cost of his supper at Créteil, and by way of confession, to deposit on the altar of Notre Dame the now historical wand. Louis XI., more devout even than the devout Louis VII., was equally unable to inspire his clergy with confidence. Before the discovery of printing, in 1421, manuscript books at Paris, as elsewhere, were so rare and so dear that students had much trouble in procuring even those which were absolutely necessary for their instruction. Accordingly, when Louis XI. wished to borrow from the Faculty of Medicine the writings of Rhases, an Arabian physician, he was required, before taking the book away, to deposit a considerable quantity of plate, besides the signature of a powerful nobleman, who bound himself to see that his Majesty restored the volume. [Illustration: THE CHOIR STALLS, NOTRE DAME.] Among the many legends told in connection with Notre Dame is a peculiarly fantastic one, according to which the funeral service of a canon named Raimond Diocre, famed for his sanctity, was being celebrated by St. Bruno, when, at a point where the clergy chanted the words: _Responde mihi quantas habes iniquitates?_ the dead man raised his head in the coffin, and replied: _Justo Dei judicio accusatus sum_. At this utterance all present took flight, and the ceremony was not resumed till the next day, when for the second time the clergy chanted forth: _Responde mihi_, etc., on which the corpse again raised its head, and this time answered: _Justo Dei judicio judicatus sum_. Once more there was a panic and general flight. The scene, with yet another variation, was repeated on the third day, when the dead, who had already declared himself to have been "accused" and "judged" by Heaven, announced that he had been condemned: _Justo Dei judicio condamnatus sum_. Witness of this terrible scene, St. Bruno renounced the world, did penance, became a monk, and founded the Order of Les Chartreux. The incident has been depicted by Lesueur, who received a commission to record on canvas the principal events in the life of the saint. It is looked upon as certain by the historians of Paris that the Cathedral of Notre Dame stands on the site formerly occupied by a heathen temple. But how and when the transformation took place is not known, though the period is marked more or less precisely by the date of the introduction of Christianity into France. Little confidence, however, is to be placed in those authors who declare that the Paris cathedral was founded in the middle of the third century by St. Denis, the first apostle of Christianity in France; for at the very time when St. Denis was preaching the Gospel to the Parisians the severest edicts were still in force against Christians. It cannot, then, be supposed that the officials of the Roman Empire would have tolerated the erection of a Christian church. It can be shown, however, that under the episcopacy of Bishop Marcellus, about the year 375, there already existed a Christian church in the city of Paris, on the borders of the Seine and on the eastern point of the island, where a Roman temple had formerly stood. Towards the end of the sixth century the cathedral was composed of two edifices, close together, but quite distinct. One of these was dedicated to the Virgin, the other to St. Stephen the Martyr. Gradually, however, the Church of our Lady was extended and developed until it touched and embraced the Church of St. Stephen. The Church of St. Mary, as many called it, was the admiration of its time. Its vaulted roofs were supported by columns of marble, and Venantius Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers, declares that this was the first church which received the rays of the sun through glass windows. More than once it is said to have been burnt during the incursions of the Normans. But this is a matter of mere tradition, and the destruction of the cathedral by fire, whether it ever occurred or not, is held in any case to have been only partial. In the twelfth century Notre Dame was, it is true, known as the "New Church." This appellation, however, served only to distinguish it from the smaller Church of St. Stephen (St. Etienne), which had been left in its original state, without addition or renovation. The plan of the cathedral has, like that of other cathedrals, been changed from century to century; but in spite of innumerable modifications, the original plan asserts itself. From the fourteenth to the seventeenth century the Church of Notre Dame was left nearly untouched. Then, however, in obedience to the wishes of Louis XIII., it was subjected to a whole series of pretended embellishments, for which "mutilations" would be a fitter word. In the eighteenth century, between the years 1773 and 1787, damaging "improvements," and "restorations" of the most destructive kind, were introduced; until at the time of the Revolution the idea was entertained of depriving the venerable edifice altogether of its religious character. The outside statues were first threatened, but Chaumette saved them by dwelling upon their supposed astronomical and mythological importance. He declared before the Council of the Commune that the astronomer Dupuis (author of "L'origine de tous les Cultes") had founded his planetary system on the figures adorning one of the lateral doors of the church. In conformity with Chaumette's representations, the Commune spared all those images to which a symbolic significance might be attached, but pulled down and condemned the statues of the French kings which ornamented the gallery and the principal façade. The cathedral at the same time lost its name. Temple of Reason it was now, until the re-establishment of public worship, to be called. Then new mutilations were constantly perpetrated, until at last, in 1845, the work of restoring the cathedral was placed in competent hands, when, thanks to the learning, the labour, and the taste of MM. Lassus and Viollet-Leduc, Notre Dame was made what it still remains--one of the most magnificent specimens of mediæval architecture to be found in Europe. Why describe the ancient monument, when it is so much simpler to represent through drawings and engravings its most characteristic features? Some of the most interesting, most curious facts of its history may, however, be appropriately related. The Count of Toulouse, Raymond VII., accused of having supported the Albigenses by his arms and of sharing their errors, was absolved in Notre Dame from the crime of heresy after he had formally done penance in his shirt, with naked arms and feet, before the altar. An attempt was made by a thief to steal from the altar of Notre Dame its candlesticks. After concealing himself in the roof, the man, aided by other members of his band, let down ropes, and, encircling the silver ornaments, drew them upwards to his hiding-place. In performing this exploit, however, he set fire to the hangings of the church, by which much damage was caused. The interior of Notre Dame has in different centuries been turned to the most diverse purposes. Here at one time, in view of Church festivals, vendors of fruits and flowers held market. At other times religious mysteries, and even mundane plays, have been performed; while in the thirteenth century the Paris cathedral was the recognised asylum of all who suffered in mind or body. A particular part of the building was reserved for patients, who were attended by physicians in holy orders. It was provided by a special edict that this hospital within a church should be kept lighted at night by ten lamps. All attempts, however, to keep order were in vain; and in consequence of the noise made by the invalids while religious service was going on, they were, one and all, excluded from the cathedral. During the troubles caused by the captivity of King John the citizens of Paris made a vow to offer every year to Our Lady a wax candle as long as the boundary-line of the city. Every year the municipal body carried the winding taper, with much pomp, to the Church of Notre Dame, where it was received by the bishop and the canons in solemn assembly. The pious vow was kept for five hundred and fifty years, but ceased to be fulfilled at the time of the religious wars and of the League. In 1603 Paris had gained such dimensions that the ancient vow could scarcely be renewed, and in place of it, François Miron, the celebrated Provost of the Merchants, offered a silver lamp, made in the form of a ship (principal object in the arms of Paris), which he pledged himself to keep burning night and day. In Notre Dame, too, were suspended the principal flags taken from the enemy, though it was only during war time that they were thus exhibited. When peace returned, the flags were put carefully out of sight. Notre Dame, while honouring peace, was itself the scene of frequent disturbances, caused by quarrels between high religious functionaries on questions of precedence. These disputes often occurred when the representatives of foreign Powers wished to take a higher position than in the opinion of their hosts was due to them. It must be noted, too, that at Notre Dame King Henry VI. of England, then ten years old, was crowned King of France. Under the Regency the cathedral of Paris was the scene of one of the most daring exploits performed by Cartouche's too audacious band. A number of the robbers had entered the church in the early morning, and had succeeded in climbing up and concealing themselves behind the tapestry of the roof. Their pockets were filled with stones, and at a pre-concerted signal, just as the priest began to read the first verse of the second Psalm in the service of Vespers, they shouted in a loud voice, threw their missiles among the congregation, and cried out that the roof was falling in. A frightful panic ensued, during which the confederates of the thieves overhead helped themselves to watches, purses, and whatever valuables they could find on the persons of the terrified worshippers. It was at Notre Dame, on the 10th of November, 1793, that the Feast of Reason was celebrated, the Goddess of Reason being impersonated by a well-known actress, the beautiful Mlle. Maillard. The space in front of Notre Dame was at one time the scene of as many executions as the Place de Grève, which afterwards became and for some centuries remained the recognised execution ground of the French capital. It was on the Place de Grève that Victor Hugo's heroine, the charming Esmeralda, suffered death, while the odious monk, Claude Frollo, gazed upon her with cruel delight, till the bell-ringer, Quasimodo, who, in his own humbler and purer way, loved the unhappy gipsy girl, seized him with his powerful arms, and flung him down headlong to the flags at the foot of the cathedral. In 1587, under the reign of Henry IV., Dominique Miraille, an Italian, and a lady of Étampes, his mother-in-law, were condemned to be hanged and afterwards burnt in front of Notre Dame for the crime of magic. The Parisians were astonished at the execution: "for," says L'Étoile, in his _Journal_, "this sort of vermin have always remained free and without punishment, especially at the Court, where those who dabble in magic are called philosophers and astrologers." With such impunity was the black art practised at this period, that Paris contained in 1572, according to the confession of their chief, some 30,000 magicians. [Illustration: RUE DU CLOÎTRE.] The popularity of sorcery in Paris towards the end of the sixteenth century is easily accounted for by the fact that kings, queens, and nobles habitually consulted astrologers. Catherine de Medicis was one of the chief believers in all kinds of superstitious practices; and a column used to be shown in the flower-market from which she observed at night the course of the stars. This credulous and cruel queen wore round her waist a skin of vellum, or, as some maintained, the skin of a child, inscribed with figures, letters, and other characters in different colours, as well as a talisman, prepared for her by the astrologer Regnier, an engraving of which may be found in the _Journal of Henry III_. By this talisman, composed as it was of human blood, goats' blood, and several kinds of metals melted and mixed together, under certain constellations associated with her birth, Catherine imagined that she could rule the present and foresee the future. Magic was employed not only for self-preservation, but with the most murderous intentions. When it was used to destroy an enemy, his effigy was prepared in wax; and the thrusts and stabs inflicted upon the figure were supposed to be felt by the original. A gentleman named Lamalle, having been executed on the Place de Grève in 1574, and a wax image, made by the magician Cosmo Ruggieri, having been found upon him, Catherine de Medicis, who patronised this charlatan, feared that the wax figure might have been designed against the life of Charles IX., and that Ruggieri would therefore be condemned to death. Lamalle had maintained that the figure was meant to represent the "Great Princess": Queen Marguerite, that is to say. But Cosmo Ruggieri was condemned, all the same, to the galleys; though his sentence--thanks, no doubt, to the personal influence of Catherine de Medicis--was never executed. Nicholas Pasquier, who gives a long account of Ruggieri in his _Public Letters_, declares that he died "a very wicked man, an atheist, and a great magician," adding that he made another wax figure, on which he poured all kinds of venoms and poisons in order to bring about the death of "our great Henry." But he was unable to attain his end; and the king, "in his sweet clemency, forgave him." When, after the Barricades, Henry III. left Paris, the priests of the League erased his name from the prayers of the Church, and framed new prayers for those princes who had become chiefs of the League. They prepared at the same time images of wax, which they placed on many of the altars of Paris, and then celebrated forty masses during forty hours. At each successive mass the priest, uttering certain mystic words, pricked the wax image, until finally, at the fortieth mass, he pierced it to the heart, in order to bring about the death of the king. Thirteen years later, under the reign of Henry IV., the Duke de Biron, who had his head cut off in the Bastille, publicly accused Laffin, his confidant and denunciator, of being in league with the devil, and of possessing wax figures which spoke. Marie de Medicis employed, even whilst in exile, a magician named Fabroni, much hated by Richelieu, for whom Fabroni had predicted a speedy death. It was in front of Notre Dame that by order of the princes, dukes, peers, and marshals of France, assembled in the Grand Chamber of Parliament, Damiens was condemned to do penance before being tortured and torn to pieces. He was to be tormented, by methods no matter how barbarous, until he revealed his accomplices, and was also required to make the _amende honorable_ before the principal door of Notre Dame. Thither, in his shirt, he was conveyed on a sledge, with a lighted wax candle in his hand weighing two pounds; and there he went down on his knees, and confessed that "wickedly and traitorously he had perpetrated the most detestable act of wounding the king in the right side with the stab of a knife"; that he repented of the deed, and asked pardon for it of God, of the king, and of justice. After this he was to be carried on the sledge to the Place de Grève, where, on the scaffold, he was to undergo a variety of tortures, copied from those appointed for the punishment of Ravaillac. Finally, his goods were to be confiscated, the house where he was born pulled down, and his name stigmatised as infamous, and for ever forbidden thenceforth, under the severest penalties, to be borne by any French subject. [Illustration: APSIS OF NOTRE DAME.] Damiens had been educated far above his rank. His moral character, however, was peculiarly bad. His life had been one perpetual oscillation between debauchery and fanaticism. His changeableness of disposition was noticed during his imprisonment at Versailles. Sometimes he seemed thoroughly composed, as though he had suffered nothing and had nothing to suffer; at other times he burst into sudden and vehement passions, and attempted to kill himself against the walls of his dungeon or with the chains on his feet. As in one of his furious fits he had tried to bite off his tongue, his teeth were all drawn, in accordance with an official order. When the sentence was read to him, Damiens simply remarked, "La journée sera rude." Every kind of torture was applied to him to extort confessions. His guards remained at his side night and day, taking note of the cries and exclamations which escaped him in the midst of his sufferings. But Damiens had nothing to confess, and on the 28th of January he was carried, with his flesh lacerated and charred by fire, his bones broken, to the place of execution. Immediately after his self-accusation in front of Notre Dame he was taken to the Place de Grève, where the hand which had held the knife was burnt with the flames of sulphur. Then he was torn with pincers in the arms and legs, the thighs and the breast, and into his wounds were poured red hot lead and boiling oil, with pitch, wax, and sulphur melted and mixed. The sufferer endured these tortures with surprising energy. He cried out from time to time, "Lord, give me patience and strength." "But he did not blaspheme," says Barbier, in his narrative of the scene, "nor mention any names." The end of the hideous tragedy was the dismemberment. The four traditional horses were not enough. Two more were added, and still the operation did not advance. Then the executioner, filled with horror, went to the neighbouring Hôtel de Ville to ask permission to use "the axe at the joints." He was, according to Barbier, sharply rebuked by the king's attendants, though in an account of the tragedy contributed at the time to the _Gentleman's Magazine_ (and derived from the gazettes published in Holland, where there was no censorship), the executioner was blamed for having delayed the employment of the axe so long. There are conflicting accounts, too, as to the burning of the prisoner's calves. It was said on the one hand that the _garde des sceaux_, Machault, caused red hot pincers to be applied in his presence to Damiens' legs at the preliminary examination; but another version declares this to be a mistake, and ascribes the burning of his legs to the king's attendants, who, seeing their master stabbed, are represented as punishing the assassin by the unlikely method of applying torches to his calves. The torture of Damiens lasted many hours, and it was not till midnight, when both his legs and one of his arms had been torn off, that his remaining arm was dragged from the socket. The life of the poor wretch could scarcely have lasted so long as did the execution of the sentence passed upon him. A report of the trial was published by the Registrar of the Parliament; but the original record being destroyed, it is impossible to test the authenticity of this report. It fills four small volumes, and is entitled "Pièces Originales et Procèdures du Procès fait à Robert François Damiens, Paris, 1757." Ivan the Terrible, when his digestion was out of order, and he felt unequal to the effort of breakfasting, used to revive his jaded appetite by visiting the prisons and seeing criminals tortured. George Selwyn claimed to have made amends for his want of feeling in attending to see Lord Lovat's head cut off by going to the undertaker's to see it sewn on again, when, in presence of the decapitated corpse, he exclaimed with strange humour, and in imitation of the voice and manner of the Lord Chancellor at the trial:--"My Lord Lovat, your lordship may rise." This dilettante in the sufferings of others is known to have paid a visit to Paris for the express purpose of seeing Damiens torn in pieces. On the day of the execution, according to Mr. Jesse ("George Augustus Selwyn and his contemporaries"), "he mingled with the crowd in a plain undress and bob wig," when a French nobleman, observing the deep interest he took in the scene, and supposing from the simplicity of his attire that he was a person of the humbler ranks in life, chose to imagine that the stranger must infallibly be an executioner. "Eh, bien, monsieur," he said, "êtes-vous arrivé pour voir ce spectacle?" "Oui, monsieur." "Vous êtes bourreau?" "Non, non, monsieur, je n'ai pas cet honneur; je ne suis qu'un amateur." Wraxall tells the story somewhat differently. "Selwyn's nervous irritability," he says, "and anxious curiosity to observe the effect of dissolution on men, exposed him to much ridicule, not unaccompanied with censure. He was accused of attending all executions, disguised sometimes, to elude notice, in female attire. I have been assured that in 1756 (or 1757) he went over to Paris expressly for the purpose of witnessing the last moments of Damiens, who expired in the most acute tortures for having attempted the life of Louis XV. Being among the crowd, and attempting to approach too near the scaffold, he was at first repulsed by one of the executioners, but having explained that he had made the journey from London solely with a view to be present at the punishment and death of Damiens, the man immediately caused the people to make way, exclaiming at the same time:--'Faites place pour monsieur; c'est un Anglais et un amateur.'" According to yet another story on this doleful subject, for which Horace Walpole is answerable, the Paris executioner, styled "Monsieur de Paris," was surrounded by a number of provincial executioners, "Monsieur de Rouen," "Monsieur de Bordeaux," and so on. Selwyn joined the group, and on explaining to the Paris functionary that he was from London, was saluted with the exclamation, "Ah, monsieur de Londres!" Among the minor celebrations of which the interior of Notre Dame has been the scene may be mentioned a mass said some twenty years before the Revolution for the broken arm of the famous dancer, Madeleine Guimard. One evening, when the fascinating Madeleine was performing in _Les fêtes de l'Hymen et de l'Amour_, a heavy cloud fell from the theatrical heavens upon one of her slender arms and broke it. Then it was that the services of the Church were invoked on behalf of the popular _ballerina_. The interesting and graceful, though far from beautiful, Madeleine, was justly esteemed by the clergy; for during the severe winter of 1768 she had given to every destitute family in her neighbourhood enough to live on for a year, at the same time paying personal visits to each of them. "Not yet Magdalen repentant, but already Magdalen charitable!" exclaimed a famous preacher, in reference to Madeleine Guimard's good action. "The hand," he added, "which knows so well how to give alms will not be rejected by St. Peter when it knocks at the gate of Paradise." The Paris Cathedral has, strangely enough, been the scene, both in ancient and modern times, of dramatic performances. There, in the olden days, "Mysteries" were represented; and there, in 1790, a melodrama was played, entitled "The Taking of the Bastille," and described as "specially written for Notre Dame." This performance was followed by a grand Te Deum, sung by members of the Opera, though one of the first effects of the Revolution was to drive the best singers away from Paris. Soon afterwards, music, history, and religion were once more to be intermingled. This was in August, 1792. when the last day of the French Monarchy (August 10) was at hand. The most imposing ceremony ever witnessed within the walls of Notre Dame was, as before said, the Coronation of Napoleon Bonaparte, at the hands of the Pope, on Sunday, the 2nd December, 1804. The Holy Father set out with his retinue at ten o'clock in the morning, and much earlier than the Emperor, in order that the ecclesiastical and royal processions should not clash. He was accompanied by a numerous body of clergy, gorgeously attired and resplendently ornamented, whilst his escort consisted of detachments of the Imperial Guard. A richly decorated portico had been erected all around the Place Notre Dame to receive on their descent from the royal carriages the sovereigns and princes who were to proceed to the ancient basilica. Already, when the Pope entered the church, there were assembled within it the deputies of the towns, the representatives of the magistracy and the army, the sixty bishops, with their clergy, the Senate, the Legislative Body, the Council of State, the Princes of Nassau, Hesse, and Baden, the Arch-Chancellor of the Germanic Empire, and the ministers of the different European Powers. The great door of Notre Dame had been closed, because the back of the Imperial throne was placed against it. The church, therefore, was entered by the side doors, situated at the two extremities of the transept. When the Pope, preceded by the cross and by the insignia of his office, appeared, the whole assembly rose from their seats, and a body of five hundred instrumentalists and vocalists gave forth with sublime effect the sacred chant, _Tu es Petrus_. The Pope walked slowly towards the altar, before which he knelt, and then took his place on a throne that had been prepared for him to the right of the altar. The sixty prelates of the French Church presented themselves in succession to salute him, and the arrival of the Imperial family was now awaited. The cathedral had been magnificently adorned. Hangings of velvet, sprinkled with golden bees, descended from roof to pavement. At the foot of the altar stood two plain arm-chairs which the Emperor and Empress were to occupy before the ceremony of crowning. At the western extremity of the church, and just opposite the altar, raised upon a staircase of twenty-four steps and placed between imposing columns, stood an immense throne--an edifice within an edifice--on which the Emperor and Empress were to seat themselves when crowned. [Illustration: THE LEADEN SPIRE, NOTRE DAME.] The Emperor did not arrive until considerably after the hour appointed, and the position of the Pope was a painful one during this long delay, which was due to the excessive precautions taken to prevent the two processions from getting mixed. The Emperor set out from the Tuileries in a carriage which seemed entirely made of glass, and which was surmounted by gilt genii bearing a crown. He was attired in a costume designed expressly for the occasion, in the style of the sixteenth century. He wore a plumed hat and a short mantle. He was not to assume the Imperial robes until he had entered the cathedral. Escorted by his marshals on horseback, he advanced slowly along the Rue St. Honoré, the Quays of the Seine, and the Place Notre Dame, amidst the acclamations of immense crowds, delighted to see their favourite general at last invested with Imperial power. On reaching the portico, already spoken of, Napoleon alighted from his carriage and walked towards the cathedral. Beside him was borne the grand crown, in the form of a tiara, modelled after that of Charlemagne. Up to this point Napoleon had worn only the crown of the Cæsars: a simple golden laurel. Having entered the church to the sound of solemn music, he knelt, and then passed on to the chair which he was to occupy before taking possession of the throne. The ceremony then began. The sceptre, the sword, and the Imperial robe had been placed on the altar. The Pope anointed the Emperor on the forehead, the arms, and the hands; then blessed the sword, with which he girded him, and the sceptre, which he placed in his hand; and finally proposed to take up the crown. Napoleon, however, saved him all possible trouble in the matter by crowning himself. "This action," says M. Thiers, in his description of the ceremony, "was perfectly appreciated by all present, and produced an indescribable effect," though it may be doubted whether in crowning himself Napoleon departed from the traditional practice at Imperial coronations. We have at all events in our own time seen, at several coronations, emperors, and even kings, assert the autocratic principle by taking the crown from the hands of the officiating prelate to place it on their own head without his aid. Napoleon, taking the crown of the Empress, now approached Josephine, and as she knelt before him, placed it with visible tenderness upon her head, whereupon she burst into tears. He next proceeded towards the grand throne, and, as he ascended it, was followed by his brothers, bearing the train of his robe. Then the Pope, according to custom, advanced to the foot of the throne to bless the new sovereign, and to chant the very words which greeted Charlemagne in the basilica of St. Peter, when the Roman clergy suddenly proclaimed him Emperor of the West: "Vivat in æternum semper Augustus!" At this chant shouts of "Vive l'Empereur!" resounded through the arches of Notre Dame, while the thunder of cannon announced to all Paris the solemn moment of Napoleon's consecration. The coronation of Napoleon has been made the subject of a masterpiece by David, whose work may be seen, and with interest studied, in the galleries of Versailles. The moment chosen by the painter is that at which the Emperor, after crowning himself with his own hands, is about to place the crown on the head of Josephine, in presence of the Pope, the cardinals, the prelates, the princes, the princesses, and the great dignitaries of the Empire. There are no less than 150 figures in this composition, and the portraits, conscientiously painted, are, for the most part, very like. The two principal figures occupy the centre of the picture. Napoleon is standing up on one of the steps of the altar, clad in a long tunic of white satin and a heavy cloak of crimson velvet sprinkled with golden bees. His hands are raised in the air, holding the crown which he is about to place on the head of the Empress. Josephine is kneeling on a cushion of violet velvet, attired in a white dress, above which she wears a crimson cloak sprinkled with bees, held up by Mme. de la Rochefoucauld, and Mme. de Lavalette, both in white dresses. Behind the Emperor is the Pope, seated in an arm-chair and holding up his right hand in sign of blessing. David had originally represented Pius VII. with his hands on his knees, as if taking no part in the solemn scene. Napoleon, however, insisted on the painter giving him the attitude just described. "I did not bring him here from such a distance to do nothing!" he exclaimed. [Illustration: GARGOYLES IN THE SACRISTY, NOTRE DAME.] "In his picture of the coronation," says M. Arsène Houssaye, "David, carried away by his enthusiasm, has reached the inaccessible summits of the ideal. His Napoleon is radiant with health, strength, and genius. The face of Josephine beams with conjugal tenderness and exquisite grace. The group formed by the Pope and the clergy is exceedingly fine." The execution of this picture occupied David four years. When it was finished Napoleon went to see it, not, by any means, for the first time, and said to the painter: "Very good; very good indeed, David. You have exactly seized my idea. You have made me a French knight. I am obliged to you for transmitting to future ages the proof of an affection I wished to give to her who shares with me the responsibilities of government." When the picture was exhibited a friendly critic pointed out to the painter that he had made the Empress younger and prettier than she really was. "Go and tell her so!" was the reply. CHAPTER V. ST.-GERMAIN-L'AUXERROIS. The Massacre of St. Bartholomew--The Events that preceded it--Catherine de Medicis--Admiral Coligny--"The King-Slayer"--The Signal for the Massacre--Marriage of the Duc de Joyeuse and Marguerite of Lorraine. One of the oldest and most interesting churches in Paris is that of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, which, dating from the last days of Lutetia, before the name of Parisius, or Paris, had been finally adopted for the gradually expanding city, is closely associated with the most terrible event in French history. Still, at the present time, in a perfect state of preservation, it was built about the year 572; and just one thousand years afterwards, in 1572, the signal for the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day was sounded from its belfry. Philip II., King of Spain, Pope Pius IV., and the Guises, especially Cardinal de Lorraine, were the authors of the massacre. Catherine de Medicis and her son Charles IX., King of France, were but accomplices and executants in the atrocious plot. Before speaking of the principal incidents of this ghastly day, a glance is necessary at the events which preceded it. Charles IX. and his sister Elizabeth, wife of Philip II., had brought together at Bayonne, in 1565, all the most distinguished members of the French Court. But the dominating figure of the assembly was the too famous Duke of Alva, worthy confidant and adviser of Philip II. Catherine de Medicis had frequent conferences with the duke, and in spite of the secrecy with which they were conducted, certain words reached the ear of the Prince of Béarn, afterwards Henry IV., whose extreme youth disarmed all suspicion, but who perceived, nevertheless, that the object of these conversations was to determine the best method of destroying the Protestants in France. The young prince hastened to tell the Queen of Navarre, his mother, and she informed the Prince de Condé and Admiral de Coligny, chiefs of the Protestant party, who at once took counsel as to how the blow with which they were threatened could be averted. The next year, in 1566, the assembly at Moulins furnished an opportunity for bringing about a reconciliation between the Catholic house of Guise and the Protestant house of Châtillon. But so little sincerity was there in the compact of peace, that just after the assembly had broken up Coligny was apprised that a plot had been formed for his assassination. He complained to the king, and was now more than ever on his guard. The whole of the Protestant party became filled with mistrust; and observing this, Catherine de Medicis determined to strike her blow at once. It was difficult, of course, to raise troops without alarming the Huguenots. But it so chanced that an army sent by the King of Spain to the Low Countries was then marching along the French frontiers. As if apprehensive for the safety of her dominions, Catherine raised 6,000 Swiss troops, and after the Spaniards had passed towards their destination, marched them to the centre of the kingdom. Everything seemed to favour Catherine's designs. But someone having informed the Calvinists of the peril which threatened them, they assembled in the house of the admiral at Châtillon, and there resolved to seize upon the Court, which was enjoying the fine weather at Monceau, in Brie, without the least precaution for its own safety; as though it had nothing to fear from that body of men whose destruction it notoriously meditated. The design of the Protestants was to drive away the Guises, and place the king and queen at the head of their own party. The attempt, however, failed through the firm attitude of the Swiss troops, who repulsed the attack of Andelot and La Rochefoucauld, and brought the king from Meaux to Paris surrounded by a strong battalion. The war began again, and the Calvinists, commanded by the Prince de Condé, were defeated, the prince himself being slain, or rather assassinated, during the conflict. He had just surrendered to Dargence, when Montesquieu, captain of the Duke of Anjou's guard, on learning who he was, shot him in the head, exclaiming, "Tuez! Tuez, Mordieu!" The Prince of Béarn now became the chief of the Protestant party, and as such, directed their forces at the Battle of Jarnac, with Coligny as second in command. The result of this engagement was a temporary peace, by which certain privileges were granted to the Protestants: not to be enjoyed, but simply to inspire a false confidence. It was not so easy to deceive Admiral Coligny, who, observing that the Guises had lost nothing of the influence they exercised over the king and queen, resolved to remain still upon his guard. At last, however, Catherine de Medicis succeeded in enticing him to the Court, and with him the Queen of Navarre, the Prince of Béarn, and the foremost chiefs of the Protestant party. Catherine spoke in a confiding tone to the old admiral about the war she pretended to contemplate against Flanders, and the king said to him, with a familiar slap on the shoulder: "I have you now, and don't intend to let you go." Flattered by these attentions, he felt secure, though many of his friends still doubted the sincerity of the king and queen. Their suspicions were confirmed by the sudden death of the Queen of Navarre, which was attributed to poison. Vainly, however, did they attempt to awaken the brave old admiral to his danger. He had, by express permission of the king, made a journey to Châtillon, and many of the Protestant chiefs warned and entreated him on no account to return to the Court. One of them, Langoiran by name, asked the admiral's permission to quit his service. "Why?" said Coligny, in astonishment. "Because," replied Langoiran, "they are loading us with caresses, and I would rather fly like a dog than die like a dupe." Nothing, however, could disturb the confidence of the admiral, who returned to Paris only to throw himself into the arms of his assassins. The young King of Navarre, the future Henry IV., was about to be married to the sister of the King of France, and the ceremony was to be made the occasion of all kinds of entertainments and festivities. The enemies of the Protestants were meanwhile preparing their massacre; and in the first place the death of Coligny was resolved upon. When Richard III., in Shakespeare's play, says to one of his pages, "Know'st thou a murderer?" the ingenuous youth replies-- "I know a ruined gentleman Whose humble means match not his haughty tastes." A gentleman of this sort (and it was precisely from such material during the Renaissance that murderers were formed) presented himself in La Brie, the favourite country of witchery and bedevilment. He was called Maurevel, and surnamed, for no obvious reason, "the King-slayer." Hired for the purpose, he concealed himself in a house in the Rue des Fossés Saint Germain l'Auxerrois, whence, just as Coligny passed by, on his way from the Louvre to dine at his house in Rue Béthizi, he fired at him with an arquebus, wounding him severely in the left arm and cutting off the forefinger of his left hand. Without showing much emotion, Coligny pointed to the house from which the shots had proceeded (the arquebus was loaded with several bullets), and tried to get the assassin arrested; but he had already fled. Then, leaning on his servants, he finished the journey to his own house on foot. The king was playing at tennis when the news of the infamous act was brought to him. "Shall I never have any peace?" he exclaimed, as he threw down his racquet. The admiral's friends resolved to complain at once to the king, and to demand justice. For this purpose Henry, King of Navarre, accompanied by the Prince de Condé, went to the palace, when Charles replied, with an oath, that he would inflict punishment. It was evident, he added, that a crime of this kind was a threat against the life of the king himself, and that no one would henceforth be safe if it were left unavenged. The king, profanely as he spoke, was sincere; nor had the remotest thought of a massacre yet entered his head. The very day of the attack on Coligny he paid a visit of sympathy to the wounded admiral, accompanied by his mother, the Duke of Anjou, and a brilliant suite. He called him the bravest general in the kingdom, and assured him that his assailant should be terribly punished, and the edict in favour of Protestants in France absolutely obeyed. Hitherto the queen had not dared to breathe to the king a word of her murderous designs, fearing an explosion of indignation on his part; and Charles's first bursts of passion were always terrible. But as they were returning to the Louvre from their visit to the admiral she succeeded in frightening her royal son by hinting at the dark and foul projects which she attributed to the admiral. So enraged was the king that she could now fearlessly own to him that everything had taken place by her orders and those of the Dukes of Anjou and Guise. The too credulous Charles vowed that in face of such nefarious plots on the part of the Protestants, Coligny should die, and the Huguenots be put wholesale to the sword, so that not one should survive to reproach him with the act. The massacre being thus decided upon, it now only remained to put the infamous project into execution. In a conference at the Tuileries between the king, the Duke of Anjou, the Duke of Nevers, the Count of Angoulême, illegitimate brother of the king, the keeper of the seals, Birague, Marshal de Tavanne and Count de Retz, the slaughter was fixed for Sunday, August 24th, 1572, the day of the Feast of St. Bartholomew. There was a difference of opinion as to whether the King of Navarre, the Prince de Condé, and the Montmorencys should be included in the massacre. Then Tavanne summoned Jean Charron, provost of the merchants, and in the king's presence ordered him to arm the Citizen Companies, and to march them at midnight to the Hôtel de Ville for active service. [Illustration: CHURCH OF ST.-GERMAIN-L'AUXERROIS.] The ferocious impatience of the Duke of Guise, who had undertaken the murder of Coligny, did not allow him to await the signal agreed upon for the massacre. He hurried, at two o'clock in the morning, to the house of the admiral, and ordered the gates to be opened in the name of the king. An officer, commanding the guard stationed in the court-yard to protect the admiral's person, turned traitor, and admitted the assassins with a deferential salute. Three colonels in the French army, Petrucci, Siennois, and Besme; a German, a native of Picardy named Attin, Sarlaboux, and a few other gentlemen, rushed up the staircase, shouting, "Death to him!" At these words Coligny, understanding that his life was as good as lost, got up, and leaning against the wall, was saying his prayers, when the assassins broke into his room. Besme advanced towards him. "Are you Coligny?" he asked, with the point of his sword at the old man's throat. "I am," he replied with calmness; "but will you not respect my age?" Besme plunged his sword into the admiral's body, drew it out smoking, and then struck his victim several times in the face. The admiral fell, and Besme, hastening to the window, cried out to the Catholic noblemen who were waiting in the court-yard, "It is done!" "M. d'Angoulême will not believe it till he sees the corpse at his feet," replied the Duke of Guise. Sarlaboux and Besme seized the body and threw it into the court-yard. The Duke of Angoulême wiped the admiral's face with his handkerchief; Guise said, "It is really he"; and both of them, after kicking the body with ferocious delight, leaped on horseback, and exclaimed, "Courage, soldiers! we have begun well; let us now see to the others. By order of the King!" [Illustration: THE PRINCIPAL STREETS OF PARIS.] This crime had scarcely been consummated when the great bell of St.-Germain-l'Auxerrois gave the signal for the massacre, which soon became general. At the cries and shrieks raised round them, the Calvinists came out of their houses, half-naked and without arms, to be slain by the troops of the Duke of Guise, who himself ran along the streets, shouting "To arms!" and inciting the people to massacre. The butchery was universal and indiscriminate, without distinction of age or sex. The air resounded with the yells of the assassins and the groans of their victims. When daylight broke upon the hideous picture, bodies bathed in gore were everywhere to be seen. Dead and dying were collected, and thrown promiscuously into the Seine. Within the precincts of the palace, the royal guards, drawn up in two lines, killed with battle-axes unhappy wretches who were brought to them unarmed and thrust beneath their very weapons. Some fell without a murmur; others protested with their last breath against the treachery of the king, who had sworn to defend them. At daybreak the king went to the window of his bedroom, and seeing some unfortunate Protestants making a frantic attempt to escape by swimming across the river, seized an arquebus and fired upon them, exclaiming, "Die, you wretches!" Marsillac, Count de la Rochefoucauld, one of the king's favourites, had passed a portion of the night with him, when Charles, who had some thought of saving his life, advised him to sleep in the Louvre. But he at last let him go, and Marsillac was stabbed as he went out. Antoine of Clermont Renel, running away in his shirt, was massacred by his cousin, Bussy d'Amboise. Count Teligni, who, ten months before, had married Admiral de Coligny's daughter, possessed such an agreeable countenance and such gentle manners that the first assassins who entered his house could not make up their minds to strike him. But they were followed by others less scrupulous, who at once put the young man to death. An advocate named Taverny, assisted by one servant, resisted at his house a siege which lasted nine hours; though, after exhausting every means of defence, he was at last slain. Several noblemen attached to the King of Navarre were assassinated in his abode. The prince himself and Condé, his cousin, were arrested, and threatened with death. Charles IX., however, spared them on their abjuring Calvinism. A few days before the massacre Caumont de la Force had bought some horses of a dealer, who, chancing to be in the immediate neighbourhood when Admiral de Coligny was assassinated, hastened to inform his customer, well known as one of the Protestant leaders, of what had taken place. This nobleman and his two sons lived in the Faubourg St.-Germain, which was not yet connected with the right bank by any bridge. The horse-dealer, therefore, swam across the Seine to warn La Force, who, however, had already effected his escape. But as his children were not following him, he returned to save them, and had scarcely set foot in his house when the assassins were upon him. Their leader, a man named Martin, entered his room, disarmed both father and sons, and told them they must die. La Force offered the would-be murderers a ransom of 2,000 crowns, payable in two days. The chief accepted, and told La Force and his children to place in their hats paper crosses, and to turn back their right sleeves to the shoulder: such being the signs of immunity among the slaughterers. Thus prepared, Martin conveyed them to his house in the Rue des Petits Champs, and made La Force swear that neither he nor his children would leave the place until the 2,000 crowns were paid. For additional security, he placed some Swiss soldiers on guard, when one of them, touched with compassion, offered to let the prisoners escape. La Force, however, refused, preferring, he said, to die rather than fail in his word. An aunt of La Force's furnished him with the 2,000 crowns, and he was about to count them out to Martin, when a French nobleman came to inform La Force that the Duke of Anjou wished to speak to him. On this pretext the emissary conducted both father and sons from the house without their caps: with nothing, that is to say, to distinguish them from the victims of assassination. They were at once set upon. La Force's eldest son fell, crying out "_Je suis mort._" The father, pierced to the heart, uttered a similar exclamation; on which the youngest La Force had the presence of mind to throw himself to the ground as if dead. Supposed to be a corpse, he was gradually stripped of his clothes, until a man who intended to steal from him a pair of woollen stockings, of which he had not yet been divested, could not restrain, as he looked upon the boy's pallid face, some expression of sympathy. Seeing that the stranger had taken pity on him, young La Force whispered that he was not dead. He was told to keep quiet; and the man with a taste for woollen stockings wrapped him up in his cloak and carried him away. "What have you there?" asked an assassin. "My nephew," replied the man. "He went out last night and got dead drunk, and I mean, as soon as I get him home, to give him a good thrashing." Young La Force made his preserver a present of thirty crowns, and had himself conveyed in safety to the Arsenal, of which his uncle, Marshal de Biron, was governor. The most famous, or rather infamous, of those who took part in the massacre as leaders or principal agents were Jean Férier, an advocate, and at that time captain of his quarter, Peyou, a butcher, and Curcé, a goldsmith, who, with upturned sleeves and bloody arms, boasted that 400 Huguenots had died beneath his blade. The massacre lasted in Paris with diminishing fury for a whole month. It was enacted, moreover, in nearly all the large towns; though in some few the governors refused to execute the orders transmitted to them. At Lyons 4,000 were killed. Here the governor, Mandelot by name, finding after several days' massacre that there were still a number of Huguenots to slay, ordered the executioner to despatch them; on which that functionary replied that it was his duty to execute criminals convicted of violating the laws of State, but that he was not an assassin, and would not do assassins' work. This spirited reply recalls Joseph de Maistre's celebrated paradox about the executioner and the soldier: the former putting to death only the worst offenders in virtue of a legal mandate, yet universally loathed; the latter plunging his sword into the body of anyone he is told to slay, yet universally honoured. The explanation of the ingenious paradox is, after all, simple enough. The executioner kills in cold blood, without danger to himself; the soldier risks his life in the performance of his duty. A Lyons butcher, less scrupulous than the executioner, killed so many Huguenots that, according to Dulaure, in his _Singularités Historiques_, he was invited to dinner by the Pope's Legate, passing through Lyons on his way to Paris. The number of Huguenots massacred throughout France was estimated at 60,000. Though the murders were generally due to fanaticism, many persons were put to death for purely private reasons. Heirs killed those from whom they expected to inherit, lovers their rivals, candidates for public offices those whom they wished to replace. On the third day of the massacre Charles IX. went to Parliament, and avowed that the slaughter of the Huguenots had taken place by his command, and in order to anticipate an intended Huguenot rising organised by Coligny. The Parliament accepted this announcement with approval; and despite the absence of all evidence against the admiral, it was decreed that his body should be dragged through the streets on a hurdle, then exhibited in the Place de Grève, and ultimately hung by the heels on a gibbet at Montfaucon. His house was at the same time to be destroyed, the trees in his garden cut down, and the members of his family reduced to the condition of plebeians, or _roturiers_, and declared unable to hold any public office; which, however, did not prevent Coligny's daughter from becoming soon afterwards the wife of the Prince of Orange. Not many years after the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the Church of St.-Germain-l'Auxerrois, in September, 1581, was the starting-point of a very different series of performances. "On Monday, September 18th," says the writer of a contemporary account, "the Duc de Joyeuse (Henry III.'s favourite 'minion') and Marguerite of Lorraine, daughter of Nicholas de Vaudemont, and sister of the queen, were betrothed in the Queen's Chamber, and the following Sunday were married at three o'clock in the afternoon at the parish church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois. The king led the bride, followed by the queen, the princesses, and other ladies in such superb attire that no one recollects to have seen anything like it in France so rich and so sumptuous. The dresses of the king and of the bridegroom were the same, and were so covered with embroidery, pearls, and precious stones, that it was impossible to estimate their value. Such an accoutrement had, for instance, cost ten thousand crowns in the making; and at the seventeen feasts which were now from day to day given by the king to the princes and lords related to the bride, and by other great persons of the Court, the guests appeared each time in some new costume, gorgeous with embroidery, gold, silver, and diamonds. The expense was so great, what with tournaments, masquerades, presents, devices, music, and liveries, that it was said the king would not be quit for twelve hundred thousand crowns. On Tuesday, October 16th, the Cardinal de Bourbon gave his feast in the palace attached to his abbey, St.-Germain-des-Prés, and caused to be constructed on the Seine a superb barque in the form of a triumphal car, which was to convey the king, princes, princesses, and the newly married pair from the Louvre to the Pré-aux-Clercs in solemn pomp. This stately vehicle was to be drawn on the water by smaller boats disguised as sea-horses, Tritons, dolphins, whales, and other marine monsters, to the number of twenty-four. In front, concealed in the belly of the said monsters, were a number of skilled musicians, with trumpets, clarions, cornets, violins, and hautboys, besides even some firework-makers, who, at dusk, were to afford pastime not only to the king, but to fifty thousand persons on the banks." The piece, however, was not well played, and it was impossible to make the animals advance as was intended, so that the king, after having from four o'clock in the afternoon till seven watched at the Tuileries the movements and workings of these animals without perceiving any effect, said sarcastically, "Ce sont des bêtes qui commandent a d'autres bêtes," and drove away with the queen in his coach, to be present at the cardinal's feast, which was the most magnificent of all. Among other entertainments, his Eminence gave that of an artificial garden, luxuriant with growing flowers and fruits, as if it had been May or August. [Illustration: SCENE DURING THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW.] On Sunday, the 15th, the queen gave her feast at the Louvre, and after the feast the ballet of "Circe and her Nymphs." This work, otherwise entitled "Ballet Comique de la Reine," was represented in the large Salle de Bourbon by the queen, the princes, the princesses, and the great nobles of the Court. It began at ten o'clock in the evening, and did not finish till three the next morning. The queen and the princesses, who represented the Naiads and the Nereids, terminated the ballet by a distribution of presents to the princes and nobles, who, in the shape of Tritons, had danced with them. For each Triton there was a gold medal with a suitable inscription; and the composer, Baltazarini--or Beaujoyeux, as he was now called--received flattering compliments at the end of the representation from the whole Court. His genius was extolled and his glory celebrated in verses which hailed him as one who "from the ashes of Greece had revived a new art," who with "divine wit" had composed a ballet, and who had so placed it on the stage that he surpassed himself in the character of "inventive geometrician." On the evening of Monday, the 16th, at eight o'clock, the garden of the Louvre was the scene of a torch-lit combat between Fourteen Whites and Fourteen Yellows. On Tuesday, the 17th, there were conflicts with the pike, the sword, and the butt end of the lance, on foot and on horseback. On Thursday, the 19th, took place the Ballet of the Horses, in which Spanish steeds, race-horses, and others met in hostile fashion, retired, and turned round to the sound of trumpets and clarions, having been trained to it five months beforehand. "All this," says the chronicler, "was beautiful and agreeable, but the finest feature of Tuesday and Thursday was the music of voices and instruments, being the most harmonious and most delicate that was ever heard. There were also fireworks, which sparkled and burst, to the fright and joy of everyone, and without injury to any." It was in the Church of St.-Germain-l'Auxerrois, too, three centuries earlier, that a priest astonished his congregation--and afterwards, when the incident was reported, the whole of Europe--by his mode of pronouncing the excommunication decreed by Pope Innocent IV. against the Emperor Frederick II. "Hearken to me, my brethren," he said. "I am ordered to pronounce a terrible anathema against the Emperor Frederick to the accompaniment of bells and lighted candles. I am ignorant of the reasons on which this judgment is based. All I know is that discord and hatred exist between the Pope and the Emperor, and that they are accustomed to overwhelm each other with insults. Therefore I excommunicate, as far as lies in my power, the oppressor, and I absolve the one who is suffering a persecution so pernicious to the Christian religion." It has been said that a report of this strange excommunication found its way all over Europe. The priest, as might have been expected, was rewarded by the Emperor and punished by the Pope. Nearly two centuries later, in 1744, the celebrated actress and singer, Sophie Arnould, came into the world in the very room in which Admiral de Coligny was assassinated. Sophie Arnould, of whose operatic career mention is made elsewhere, was the only French actress of whom Garrick, in narrating his experiences of Parisian theatrical life, could speak with enthusiasm. As a singer she does not seem to have possessed much power, for she writes in the fragment of her "Memoirs" which has come down to us: "Nature had seconded my taste for music with a tolerably agreeable voice, weak but sonorous, though not extremely so. It was, however, sound and well balanced, so that, with a good enunciation, and without any noticeable effort, not a word of what I sang was lost even in the most spacious buildings." With regard to her personal appearance, Sophie writes: "My figure is slender and regular, though I must admit that I am not tall. I have a graceful frame, and my movements are easy. I possess a well-formed leg and a pretty foot, with hands and arms like a model, eyes well set and an open countenance, lively and attractive." Collé, in his "Journal and Memoirs," declares that soon after her _début_ Sophie was the recognised "Queen of the Opera," and he adds: "I have never yet seen united in the same actress more grace, more truthfulness of sentiment, nobility of expression, intelligence, and fire, never beheld more touching pathos. Her physiognomy represents every kind of grief, and while depicting horror her countenance does not lose one feature of its beauty." [Illustration: THE PONT-NEUF AND THE LOUVRE, FROM THE QUAI DES AUGUSTINS.] CHAPTER VI. THE PONT-NEUF AND THE STATUE OF HENRI IV. The Oldest Bridge in Paris--Henri IV.--His Assassination by Ravaillac.--Marguerite de Valois--The Statue of Henri IV.--The Institute--The Place de Grève. Paris in 1886 contained, according to the census of that year, 2,344,550 inhabitants, of whom 1,714,956 (or 73.15 per cent.) lived on the right bank of the Seine. So much more important indeed by the number of its population as well as by its manifestations of life in every form is the right bank than the left, that a man might live all his life in the former division of Paris and, without ever having crossed the Seine, be held to know the French capital thoroughly. One may indeed be a thorough Parisian without ever having quitted the Boulevards. Ancient Paris, as represented by the "Cité" of to-day, the Paris of the left bank, and the Paris of the right bank are bound together by the Pont-Neuf: the one structure which they have all three in common. The Pont-Neuf may, therefore, be made a convenient starting-point from which to approach the right bank, the left bank, and finally the "City." The Pont-Neuf is, in spite of its name, the oldest bridge in Paris; and it is almost the only one which retains without alteration its original form. From time to time it has been partially repaired, but the lines on which it was originally constructed were never changed. Parisians have for the last three centuries regarded the Pont-Neuf as the type of solidity; and a Parisian who does not aspire to originality in conversation will not hesitate, even to this day, when asked how he is, to reply that he is "as strong as the Pont-Neuf." The first stone of the bridge was laid on Saturday, May 31, 1578, by King Henri III., in presence of his mother, Queen Catherine de Medicis, his wife, Queen Louise, and the principal officials of the kingdom. As the king had just been assisting at the obsequies of his favourites, Quélus and Maugiron, killed in a duel, he was very melancholy, and the bridge acquired everywhere the name of the Bridge of Tears. The idea of connecting the left bank with the island and the island with the right bank had been entertained by King Henri II. Henri III. undertook to defray the cost of construction. But this he did only in a theoretical way; for three years after his death, in 1592, the chief builder of the bridge, Guillaume Marchand, was still unpaid. The work, meanwhile, was far from complete, interrupted as it had been by the troubles of the League; and it was not until Henri IV. had established his power at Paris and throughout France that, in May, 1598, it was resumed. Three arches of the principal arm had yet to be reared, and it was only in 1603 that the king was able to perform the ceremony of crossing the bridge from left bank to right; part of the journey even then having to be made on a temporary plank, so insecurely fixed that it was by a mere piece of royal luck that the venturesome monarch did not go over into the Seine. In undertaking the hazardous passage, he indicated to the friends who tried to dissuade him his belief in the "divinity that doth hedge a king;" and he, in any case, failed on this perilous occasion either to break his neck or drown. The builder of the Pont-Neuf, Guillaume Marchand, was also its architect: so, at least, asserts his epitaph in the Church of St. Gervais: "The celebrated architect," he is called, "who created two admirable works: the Royal Castle of St. Germain and the Pont-Neuf of Paris." Marchand, however, died in 1604, so that although the bridge may have been originally planned by him, it is quite possible that the design may have been completed by another hand, and that the official title of "architect to the bridge" may have belonged to Baptiste du Cerceau, for whom it is often claimed. What is called the Pont-Neuf consists really of two bridges: one connecting the left bank with the island, the other stretching from the opposite side of the island shore to the right bank. According to its original plan, the Pont-Neuf, like all the old Paris bridges, was to support a number of houses for which cellars had been constructed beforehand among the piles on which the bridge rested. Henri IV., however, refused to allow the intended houses to be built, determined not to spoil the view of the Louvre, which he had just constructed. Many years afterwards, however, in the reign of Louis XV., a number of little shops were raised on the Pont-Neuf, occupied by match-sellers, sellers of hot and cold drinks, dog-shearers, second-hand booksellers, chestnut-roasters, makers of pancakes and apple fritters, shoeblacks, quacks, and musicians more or less blind. These shops and stalls were maintained until the first days of the Second Empire, when they disappeared. Henri IV. was determined to proclaim to future ages his connection with the bridge of which he considered himself in some sense the author; and on its completion he adorned it with an equestrian statue of himself in bronze which is almost as celebrated as the bridge itself. The statue stands on the promontory of the island between the two spans of the structure; and from this point a magnificent view may be obtained of the course of the Seine above and below bridge. The original statue was the work of Jean de Bologne, and of his pupil, Pierre Tacca. It was unveiled on August 23rd, 1613, at which time the corners of the pedestal were adorned by four slaves, since removed, but still preserved in the museum of the Louvre. Three years later the populace dragged to the Pont-Neuf the maimed and lacerated body of Marshal d'Ancre, and having cut it into pieces, burnt it before the statue. The so-called Marshal d'Ancre--Concini, by his family name--had come to Paris in the suite of Marie de Medicis, wife of Henri IV. He married one of the queen's attendants, and by intrigues and speculations of every kind succeeded in gaining a position of great influence, together with enormous wealth. He was known to be guilty of all sorts of abuses, and was suspected of having been privy to some of the attempts made upon the life of Henri IV. On the accession of Louis XIII., after the assassination of Henri IV. by Ravaillac, an ambush, not without the knowledge of Louis XIII., was laid for the marshal; and, to the delight of the people of Paris, he fell into it. According to a legend of the period, his heart, after he had been slain, was cut out, roasted, and eaten! Henri IV., the first of the royal house of Bourbon, was the greatest of all the French kings, and at least the best of the kings of the Bourbon line. Such faults as undoubtedly belonged to him seem to have had no effect but to increase his popularity; perhaps because, in a degree, they belonged also to the great mass of his subjects. This doubtful husband, good friend, and excellent ruler, beloved with warmth by his subjects, was nevertheless made the object of numerous attempts at assassination, the last of which proved fatal. His would-be murderers were for the most part religious fanatics--as dangerous in that day as the fanatics of revolution in ours; and to this class belonged Ravaillac, at whose hands Henri was destined to perish. Francis Ravaillac, the son of an advocate, was born and educated at Angoulême. When very young, he lived with one Rosières, also a lawyer, whom he served as clerk and valet. He afterwards lived with other legal practitioners, and at length, on the death of his last master, conducted lawsuits for himself. This profession he continued for several years, but to such small advantage that he finally quitted it, and gained his living by teaching. At this time his father and mother lived apart, and were so indigent that both subsisted chiefly on alms. Ravaillac, now thirty years old, and unmarried, lodged with his mother, and, becoming insolvent, was thrown into prison for debt. [Illustration: BY THE PONT-NEUF.] He was naturally of a gloomy disposition, and while under the depression of trouble was subject to the strangest hallucinations. In prison he often believed himself surrounded with fire, sulphur, and incense; and such fancies continued after he was released. He asserted that on the Saturday night after Christmas, 1609, having made his meditations, as he was wont, in bed, with his hands clasped and his feet crossed, he felt his mouth and face covered by some invisible agent, and was at the same time urged by an irresistible impulse to sing the Psalms of David. He therefore chanted the psalms "Dixit Dominus," "Miserere," and "De profundis" quite through, and declared that he seemed to have a trumpet in his mouth, which made his voice as shrill and loud as that instrument in war. [Illustration: SEINE FISHERS.] Whilst his mind was thus unhinged by fanaticism, he often reflected on the king's breach of promise in not compelling the Huguenots to return to the Catholic Church, and determined to go to Paris to admonish him to neglect this duty no longer. Arrived at Paris, he went frequently to the Louvre, and in vain begged many persons to introduce him to his Majesty. One of those applied to was Father Daubigny, a Jesuit, whom he informed not only of his desire to speak to the king, but of his wish to join the famous Order. Daubigny advised him to dismiss all these thoughts from his mind and to confine himself to bead-telling and prayer; but Ravaillac profited little by the counsel, and, under the conviction that Henri ought to make war on the Huguenots, took to loitering constantly about the Court, in hope of a chance interview with his Majesty. [Illustration: QUAI DU LOUVRE.--ÎLE DE LA CITÉ.--L'INSTITUT. VIEW FROM THE PAVILLON DE FLORE.] Some days later he happened to meet the king driving in a coach near St. Innocents' Church. His desire to speak to him grew more ardent at the prospect of success, and he ran up to the coach, exclaiming, "Sire, I address you in the name of our Lord Jesus and of the Blessed Virgin." But the king put him back with his stick, and would not hear him. After this repulse, despairing of being able to influence his Majesty by admonition, he determined to kill him. But he could come to no decision as to the mode of executing his design, and after a time returned to Angoulême. [Illustration: THE PONT-NEUF AND THE MINT.] He continued in a state of intense anxiety, sometimes considering his project of assassination as praiseworthy, sometimes as unlawful. Shortly afterwards he attended Mass in the monastery of the Franciscan Friars at Angoulême, and going afterwards to confession, admitted, among other things, an intention to murder, though without saying that Henri was the proposed victim. Nor did the confessor inquire as to the details of the crime. Still restless and disturbed, Ravaillac went back to Paris, and on entering the city, found his desire to kill the king intensified. He took lodgings close to the Louvre: but not liking his rooms, went to an inn in the neighbourhood to see if accommodation could be had there. The inn was full; but whilst Ravaillac conversed with the landlord, his eye happened to be attracted by a knife, sharp-pointed and double-edged, that lay on the table; and it occurred to him that here was a fit instrument for his purpose. He accordingly took occasion to convey it away under his doublet, and having had a new handle made for it, carried it about in his pocket. But he faltered in his resolution, and abandoning it once more, set out on his way home. As he went along he somehow broke the point of his knife. At an inn where he stopped for refreshment he heard some soldiers talking about a design on the part of the king to make war against the Pope, and to transfer the Holy See to Paris. On this, his determination returned strong upon him and going out of the inn, he gave his knife a fresh point by rubbing it against a stone, and then turned his face towards Paris. Arrived at the capital a third time, he felt an inclination to make a full confession of his design to a priest; and would have done so had he not been aware that the Church is obliged to divulge any secrets which concern the State. Henceforth he never once relinquished his purpose. But he still felt such doubts as to whether it were not sinful that he would no longer receive the Sacrament, lest, harbouring his project all the while, he should unworthily eat. Without hope of gaining admission to the king in his palace, he now waited for him with unwearied assiduity at the gates. At last, on the 17th of May, 1610, he saw him come out in a coach, and followed him for some distance, until the vehicle was stopped by two carts, which happened to get in the way. Here, as the king was leaning his head to speak to M. d'Epernon, who sat beside him, Ravaillac, in a frenzy, fancied he heard a voice say to him, "Now is the time; hasten, or it will be too late!" Instantly he rushed up to the coach, and standing on a spoke of the wheel, drew his knife and struck the king in the side. Finding, however, the knife impeded by one of the king's ribs, he gave him another--and this time a fatal--blow near the same place. The king cried out that he was slain, and Ravaillac was seized by a retired soldier of the guard. When searched, he was found to have upon him a paper painted with the arms of France, and with a lion on each side, one holding a key, the other a sword. Above he had written these words: "The name of God shall not be profaned in my presence." There was also discovered a rosary and a piece of a certain root in the shape of a heart, which he had obtained as a charm against fever from the Capuchins, who assured him that it had inside it a piece of the real cross of the Saviour. "This, however," says an ingenuous chronicler, "when the heart was broken, proved to be false." Ravaillac was first examined by the President of the Parliament and several commissioners as to his motives for committing the crime, and as to whether he had accomplices. During the interrogation he often wept, and said that though at the time he believed the assassination to be a meritorious action, he now felt convinced that this was a delusion into which he had been suffered to fall as a punishment for his sins. He expressed the deepest contrition for his offence, and implored the Almighty to give him grace to continue till death in firm faith, lively hope, and perfect charity. He denied that he had any confederate, and on being requested to say at whose instigation he did the deed, replied indignantly that it originated entirely with himself, and that for no reward would he have slain his king. He answered all other questions with great calmness and humility, and when he signed his confession, wrote beneath the signature these lines:-- "Que toujours en mon coeur Jésus soit le vainqueur." In spite, however, of Ravaillac's protests, at this and at a subsequent examination, that he was quite without advisers, abettors, or accomplices, the examiners would not believe him, and he was ordered to be put to the torture of the _brodequin_, or boot. This instrument, like its English counterpart, was a strong wooden box, made in the form of a boot, just big enough to contain both the legs of the criminal. When his legs had been enclosed, a wedge was driven in with a mallet between the knees; and after this had been forced quite through, a second, and even a third wedge was employed in the same way. Ravaillac, having been sworn, was placed on a wooden bench, when the _brodequin_ was fitted to his legs. On the first wedge being driven in, he cried out: "God have mercy upon my soul and pardon the crime I have committed; I never disclosed my intention to anyone." When the second wedge was applied he uttered horrid cries and shrieks, and exclaimed: "I am a sinner: I know no more than I have declared. I beseech the Court not to drive my soul to despair. Oh God! accept these torments in satisfaction for my sins." A third wedge was then driven in lower, near his feet, on which his whole body broke into a sweat. Being now quite speechless, he was released, water was thrown in his face, and wine forced down his throat. He soon recovered by these means, and was then conducted to chapel by the executioner. But religious exhortation only caused him to repeat once more that he had no associate of any kind in connection with his crime. At three in the afternoon of the 27th of May, 1610, he was brought from the chapel and put into a tumbril, the crowd in all directions being so great that it was with the utmost difficulty that the archers forced a passage. As soon as the prisoner appeared before the public gaze he was loaded with execrations from every side. After he had ascended the scaffold he was urged by two spiritual advisers to think of his salvation while there was time, and to confess all he knew; but he answered precisely as before. As there seemed to be a prospect of the murderer getting absolution from the Church, a great outcry was raised, and many persons cried out that he belonged to the tribe of Judas, and must not be forgiven either in this world or the next. Ravaillac argued the point thus raised, maintaining that having made his confession he was entitled to absolution, and that the priest was bound by his office to give it. The priest replied that the confession had been incomplete, and, therefore, insincere, and that absolution must be refused until Ravaillac named his accomplices. The criminal declared once more that he had no accomplices; and it was at last arranged that he should be absolved on certain conditions. "Give me absolution," he said: "at least conditionally, in case what I say should be true." "I will," replied the confessor, "on this stipulation: that in case it is not true your soul, on quitting this life--as it must shortly do--goes straight to hell and the devil, which I announce to you on the part of God as certain and infallible." "I accept and believe it," he said, "on that condition." Fire and brimstone were then applied to his right hand, in which he had held the knife used for the assassination, and at the same time his breast and other fleshy parts of his body were torn by red-hot pincers. Afterwards, at intervals, melted lead and scalding oil were poured into his wounds. During the whole time he uttered piteous cries and prayers. Finally, he was pulled in different directions for half-an-hour by four horses, though without being dismembered. The multitude, impatient to see the murderer in pieces, threw themselves upon him, and with swords, knives, sticks, and other weapons, tore, mangled, and finally severed his limbs, which they dragged through the streets, and then burned in different parts of the city. Some of these wretches went so far as to cut off portions of the flesh, which they took home to burn quietly by their firesides. Apart from his own violent death, more than one tragic story is connected with the memory of Henri IV. Close to the Hôtel de Ville stands the Hôtel de Sens, where, in December, 1605, lived Marguerite de Valois, the divorced wife of Henri IV. Already in her fifty-fifth year, this lady had by no means abandoned the levity of her youth. She had two lovers, both of whom were infatuated with her. The one she preferred, Saint-Julien by name, had a rival in the person of a mere boy of eighteen, named Vermond, who had been brought up beneath the queen's eyes. On the 5th of April, 1606, Marguerite, returning from Mass, drove up to the Hôtel de Sens at the very moment when Vermond and Saint-Julien were quarrelling about her. Saint-Julien rushed to open the carriage door, when Vermond drew a pistol and shot him dead. The queen "roared," according to a contemporary account, "like a lioness." "Kill him!" she cried. "If you have no arms, take my garter and strangle him." The people whom her Majesty was addressing contented themselves with pinioning the young man. The next morning a scaffold was raised before the Hôtel de Sens, and Vermond had his head cut off in the presence of Marguerite, who, from one of the windows of her mansion, looked on at the execution. Then her strength gave way, and she fainted. The same evening she quitted the Hôtel de Sens, never to return to it. At the time of the Revolution the mob attacked the statue of Henri IV. on the Pont-Neuf, overturned it from its pedestal, and virtually destroyed it. The present monument was erected by public subscription after the Restoration in 1814, and on the 25th of August, 1818, was inaugurated by Louis XVIII. In the pedestal is enclosed a magnificent copy of Voltaire's epic "La Henriade." The low reliefs which adorn the pedestal of this admirable equestrian statue represent, on the southern side, Henri IV. distributing provisions in the besieged city of Paris; on the northern side, the victorious king proclaiming peace from the steps of Notre-Dame. It has been said that the Pont-Neuf is traditionally famous for its solidity. In spite of this doubtless well-deserved reputation, the ancient bridge seemed, in 1805, on the point of giving way. Changes in the bed of the river had led to a partial subsidence of two of the arches supporting the smaller arm of the bridge. The necessary repairs, however, were executed, and the bridge's reputation for strength permanently restored. Among the many interesting stories told in connection with the Pont-Neuf may be mentioned one in which a famous actress of the early part of this century, Mlle. Contat, plays a part. She happened to be out in her carriage, and after a fashion then prevalent among the ladies of Paris, was driving herself, when, holding the reins with more grace than skill, she nearly ran over a pedestrian who was crossing the bridge at the same time as herself. In those days, when side-walks for pedestrians were unknown, the whole of the street being given up to people with carriages, it was easy enough to get run over; and Mercier, in his "Tableau de Paris," speaks again and again of the accidents that occurred through the haughty negligence and recklessness of carriage folk, and even of hirers of hackney coaches. A sufferer in these rather one-sided collisions was generally held to be in the wrong, and Mlle. Contat reproached her victim with having deliberately attempted to throw himself under her horses' feet. The pedestrian took the blame gallantly upon himself, bowed to the ground, offered the lady an apology, paid her a graceful compliment, and disappeared. Scarcely had he done so when the actress felt convinced, from his courtly manners and distinguished air, that she must have been on the point of mangling some personage of high rank, and for a long time she felt extremely curious to know who he could be. One night, about a month after the incident, when she was at the theatre, a letter from the gentleman whom she had accused of getting in the way of her horses was delivered to her. He proved to be not merely a person of high quality, as she had guessed, but a real live prince: Prince Henry, brother of the King of Prussia. He was a friend, moreover, of the drama; and he had written to beg "the modern Athalie" to do him the honour to preside at the rehearsal of a new piece in which he was interested. Partly for the sake of the piece, but principally for that of the man whom she was so near running over, Mlle. Contat complied with the prince's request. The piece was a comedy, with airs written by Baron Ernest von Manteuffel, and set to music by a composer of the day. The subject was extremely interesting, and Mlle. Contat saw that this musical comedy might prove an immense success at the Théâtre Français, where, being duly produced, it fully realised the actress's anticipations. "Les deux Pages" it was called; and the author, Prussian as he was, had written it in the French language, with which at that time the Court and aristocracy of Prussia were more familiar than with their own tongue. It will be remembered that Frederick the Great (who, by the way, was the leading personage in "Les deux Pages") wrote the whole of his very voluminous works in French. [Illustration: STATUE OF HENRI IV. ON THE PONT-NEUF.] Mercier, in his "Tableau de Paris," published at London in 1780 (its publication would not have been permitted at Paris), gives an interesting account of the Pont-Neuf as it existed in his time. "This," he says, "is the greatest thoroughfare in Paris. If you are in quest of anyone, native or foreigner, there is a moral certainty of your meeting with him there in the space of two hours, at the outside. The police-runners are convinced of this truth; here they lurk for their prey, and if, after a few days' look-out, they do not find it, they conclude with a certainty nearly equal to evidence that the bird is flown. The most remarkable monument of popular gratitude may be seen on this bridge--the statue of Henri IV. And if the French cannot boast of having in reality a good prince, they may comfort themselves in contemplating the effigy of a monarch whose like they will never see again. At the foot of the bridge, a large phalanx of crimps--commonly called dealers in human flesh--have established their quarters, recruiting for their colonels, who sell the victims wholesale to the king. They formerly had recourse to violent means, but are now only permitted to use a little artifice, such as the employment of soldiers' trulls for their decoy-ducks, and plying with liquors those youngsters who are fond of the juice of the grape. Sometimes, especially at Martinmas and on Shrove Tuesday, which are sacred in a peculiar manner to gluttony and drunkenness, they parade about the avenues leading to the bridge, some with long strings of partridges, hares, etc.; others jingling sacks full of half-crowns to tickle the ears of the gaping multitude; the poor dupes are ensnared, and, under the delusion that they are going to sit down to a sumptuous dinner, are in reality hastening to the slaughter-house. Such are the heroes picked out to be the support and pillars of the State; and these future great men--a world of conquerors in embryo--are purchased at the trifling price of five crowns a head." Among the remarkable incidents which the Pont-Neuf has witnessed during its three centuries of existence must be mentioned certain amateur robberies, committed by gentlemen of the highest position. The Duke of Orleans is said to have set the fashion, which, one stormy night, after prolonged libations, was imitated by the Chevalier de Rieux, the Count de Rochefort, and a number of friends more unscrupulous than themselves. The count and the chevalier, though the only ones of the party who got arrested, played the mild part of lookers-on, taking their seats on Henri IV.'s bronze horse, while the actual work of highway robbery was being done by their companions. In due time, however, after several of the passers-by had been plundered of their cloaks, the watch was called, when the active robbers took to flight, whereas their passive accomplices, unable to get down all at once from the back of the bronze horse, were made prisoners, and kept for some time in confinement. Mazarin, indeed, was so glad to have his enemy, the Count de Rochefort, in his power, that he could scarcely be prevailed upon to let him out at all. [Illustration: THE INSTITUTE.] On the left bank of the Seine, at the very foot of the Pont-Neuf, stands the Institute of France, with its various academies, of which the most famous is that devoted to literature, the Académie Française, where, said Piron, "there are forty members who have as much learning as four." "This establishment," writes Mercier somewhat bitterly, but with much truth, "was set on foot by Richelieu, whose every undertaking constantly tended to despotism. Nor has he in this institution deviated from the rule, for the Academy is manifestly a monarchical establishment. Men of letters have been enticed to the capital like the grandees, and with the same object: namely, to keep a better watch over them. The consequence is fatal to the progress of knowledge, because every writer aspiring to a seat in that modern Areopagus knows that his success depends on Court favour, and therefore does everything to merit this by sacrificing to the Goddess of Flattery, and preferring mean adulation that brings him academical honours to the useful, manly, and legitimate employment of his talents in the instruction of mankind. Hence the Academy enjoys no manner of consideration either at home or abroad. Paris is the only place where it can support any kind of dignity, though it is even there sorely badgered by the wits of the capital, who, expecting from it neither favour nor friendship, point all their epigrammatical batteries against its members. There is, in fact, but too much room for pleasantry and keen sarcasm. Is it not extremely ridiculous that forty men, two-thirds of whom owe their admission to intrigue or fawning, should be by patent created arbiters of taste in literature, and enjoy the exclusive privilege of judging for the rest of their countrymen? But their principal function has been to circulate and suppress new-coined words; regulating the pronunciation, orthography, and idioms of the French language. Is this a service or injury to the language? I should think the latter. "Instead of becoming, as they ought to do, the oracle of the age and their nation, our men of letters content themselves with being the echo of that dread tribunal; hence the abject state of literature in the capital. We have some, however, who boldly think for themselves, trust to the judgment of the public, and laugh at the award of the Academy. Nothing can better mark the contempt in which a few spirited writers hold the decrees of the forty forestallers of French wit and refinement than the following epitaph which the author above cited, the terror of Voltaire, the scourge of witlings, Piron, ordered to be engraved on his tombstone:-- "'Cy gît Piron, qui ne fut rien, Pas même Académicien.'" Many very distinguished writers have, in every generation since the birth of the Academy, been included among its members. Very few, however, of the forty members have at any one time been men of genuine literary distinction; a duke who has written a pamphlet, an ambassador who has published a volume, having always had a better chance of election than a popular novelist or dramatist. M. Arsène Houssaye has written a book entitled "The Forty-first Chair," which is intended to show, and does show, that the greatest writer of each successive period, from Molière to Balzac, has always been left out of the Academy: has occupied, that is to say, "the forty-first chair." M. Alphonse Daudet, to judge by his brilliant novel "L'Immortel," has no better opinion of the French Academy than had Arsène Houssaye some forty years ago, when his ingenious indirect attack upon the Academy was first published. The Pont-Neuf was, for a considerable time after its first construction, the most important highway in Paris. It connected Paris of the left bank with Paris of the right, and old Paris, the so-called Cité, with both. It was the only bridge of importance; and what is now the greatest thoroughfare of Paris--the line of boulevards--was not yet in existence. The Pont-Neuf dates from the reign of Henri IV.; the boulevards from that of Louis XIV. Long, moreover, after it had ceased to be fashionable, the Pont-Neuf remained popular by reason of the vast stream of passengers perpetually crossing it in either direction. It was much in favour with itinerant dealers of all kinds, and equally so with beggars. Even in our own time it was on the Pont-Neuf that _Les deux Aveugles_ of Offenbach deceived the public and exchanged confidences with one another. The plague of beggars is nothing, however, in these days, compared with what it was before the Revolution. "Who," asks a writer of the latter part of the eighteenth century, "seeing the populace of Paris ever merry, and the rich glittering in all the gaudy pomp of luxury, would believe that the streets of the metropolis are infested with swarms of beggars, were not the eye at every turn of the street shocked with some distressing spectacle, truly disgusting to the sight of every stranger who is not lost to all sense of humanity? Nothing has yet been done to remove this evil, and the methods hitherto practised have proved to be remedies worse than the disease. Amongst the ancients there was a class of people that might be called poor, but none reduced to absolute indigence. The very slaves were clothed, fed, had their friends; nor does any historian say that the towns and streets were full of those wretched, disgusting objects which either excite pity or freeze charity itself: wretches covered with vermin did not then go about the streets uttering groans that reach the very heart, and exhibiting wounds that frighten the eye of every passenger. "This abuse springs from the nature of the legislation itself--more ready to preserve large fortunes than small. Let our new schemers say what they will, great proprietors are a nuisance in the State. They cover the lands with forests and stock them with fawns and deer; they lay out pleasure-gardens; and thus the oppression and luxury of the great is daily crushing the most unfortunate part of the community. In the year 1769 not only beggars, but even the poorer class of citizens were treated with much savage barbarity by secret orders from the Government. In the very dead of night old men, women, and children were suddenly seized upon, deprived of their liberty, and thrown into loathsome gaols, without the assignment of any cause for so cruel a treatment. The pretence was that indigence is the parent of crimes, that seditions generally begin among that class of people who, having nothing to lose, have nought to fear. The ministers who then wished to establish the corn-law dreaded the effect it would have on that world of indigent wretches, driven to despair, as they would be, by the advanced price of bread which was then to be imposed. Their oppressors said: 'They must be smothered;' and they were. As this was the most effectual method of silencing them, the Government never took the trouble to devise any other. When we cast an eye abroad, it is then we are convinced of the forlorn condition in which our lower sort of people drag out their miserable life. The Spaniard can cheaply provide himself with food and raiment. Wrapped up in his cloak, the earth is his bed; he sleeps soundly, and wakes without anxiety for his next meal. The Italians work little, and are in no want of the necessaries, or even luxuries, of life. The English, well fed, strong and hale, happy and free, reap and enjoy undisturbed the fruits of their industry. The Swede is content with his glass of brandy. The Russian, whom no foresight disturbs, finds abundance in the bosom of slavery; but the Parisians, poor and helpless, sinking under the burden of unremitting toils and fatigue, ever at the mercy of the great, who crush them like vile insects whenever they attempt to raise their voice, earn, at the sweat of their brow, a scanty subsistence, which only serves to lengthen their lives, without leaving them anything to look forward to in their old age but indigence, or, what is worse, part of a bed in the hospital." The Pont-Neuf was always crowded when anything was coming off on the neighbouring Place de Grève, where Ravaillac was tortured and torn to pieces, and where, in the next century, like horrors were perpetrated upon the body of Damiens, who had attacked Louis XV. with a pen-knife and inflicted upon him a slight scratch. The Place de Grève has now lost its old historic name, and is called the Place de l'Hôtel-de-Ville. In the open space where Ravaillac and Damiens were subjected to such abominable cruelty, and where so many criminals of various kinds and classes were afterwards to be broken and beaten to death, the guillotine was at a later date set up. "The executioner in Paris," says Mercier (writing just before the Revolution of 1789), "enjoys a revenue of no less than 18,000 livres (£720). His figure is perfectly well known to the populace; he is for them the greatest tragedian. Whenever he exhibits they crowd round his temporary stage: our very women, even those whom rank and education should inspire with the mildest sentiments, are not the last to share in the horrid spectacles he provides. I have seen some of these delicate creatures, whose fibres are so tender, so easily shaken, who faint at the sight of a spider, look unconcerned upon the execution of Damiens, being the last to avert their eyes from the most dreadful punishment that ever was devised to avenge an offended monarch. The _bourreau_, although his employment brands him with infamy, has no badge to distinguish him from the rest of the citizens; and this is a great mistake on the part of the Government, particularly noticeable when he executes the dreadful commands of the law. It is not only ridiculous: it is shocking in the extreme, to see him ascend the ladder, his head dressed and profusely powdered; with a laced coat, silk stockings, and a pair of as elegant pumps as ever set off the foot of the most refined _petit-maître_. Should he not be clad in garments more suitable to the minister of death? What is the consequence of so gross an absurdity? A populace not overburdened with the sense of sympathy are all taken up with admiration for the handsome clothes and person of our Breakbones. Their attention is engrossed by the elegant behaviour and appearance of this deputy of the King of Terrors; they have hardly a thought to bestow upon the malefactor, and not one on his sufferings. Of course, then, the intention of the law is frustrated. The dreadful example meant to frighten vice from its criminal course has no effect on the mind of the spectator, much more attentive to the point ruffles and the rich clothes of the man whose appearance should concur in adding to the solemnity than to the awful memento set up by a dire necessity to enforce the practice of virtue by showing that he who lives in crime must die in infamy. The executioner, from the stigma inherent to his profession, and of course to himself, cannot hope to form alliances among the other ranks of citizens. The very populace, though as well versed in the history of the hangman and the malefactors as the upper classes are in that of the sovereigns of Europe and their ministers, would think it a disgrace to intermarry with his family to the latest generation. It is not many years since the Bourreau of Paris publicly advertised that he was ready to bestow the hand of his daughter, with a portion of one hundred thousand crowns, on any native Frenchman who would accept it, and agree to succeed him in business. The latter clause would have staggered avarice itself; but the executioner of Paris was obliged to follow the practice of his predecessors in office, and marry his heiress to a provincial executioner. These gentlemen, in humble imitation of our bishops, take their surnames from the cities where they are settled, and among themselves it is 'Monsieur de Paris,' 'Monsieur de Rouen,' etc. etc." [Illustration: THE PONT-NEUF FROM THE ISLAND.] Besides breaking the bones of the criminals entrusted to his charge, torturing them in various ways, and ultimately putting them to death, the executioner, under the old régime, had sometimes to perform upon books, which he solemnly burnt on the Place de Grève. Russia, Turkey, and the Roman Court are now the only Powers in Europe which maintain a censorship over books. But the custom of burning objectionable volumes, instead of simply pronouncing against them and forbidding their circulation, belongs altogether to the past. Plenty of books were forbidden in France under the First and Second Empire; and when the infamous Marquis de Sade sent Napoleon one of his disgraceful works, the emperor replied by ordering the man to be arrested and confined in a lunatic asylum. Under the Restoration many a volume was proscribed; but since the great Revolution of 1789 no Government in France has ventured to restore the custom of having a condemned book burnt by the executioner. When, in connection with the contest on the subject of the Church's relationship with the stage, a very able pamphlet was published, proving by the laws of France that the excommunication levelled against the stage was an illegal and scandalous imposition, it got condemned to be burnt in the Place de Grève by the executioner. Whereupon Voltaire, indignant at the barbarity of such a punishment, brought out, anonymously, another pamphlet in defence of the cremated one, when this, in its turn, was sentenced to the flames. Doubtless the writer foresaw the fate of his little volume, for the tract in question contained the suggestive remark that, "if the executioner were presented with a complimentary copy of every work he was ordered to burn, he would soon possess a handsome and very valuable library." "Monsieur de Paris" was accustomed in his best days to burn live witches as well as newly-published books; and the cremation of these unhappy wretches gave him at times much occupation. [Illustration: STATUE OF HENRY IV. (PONT-NEUF).--THE LOUVRE. VIEW FROM THE WESTERN POINT OF THE ILE DE LA CITÉ.] Without by any means introducing magic into France, Catherine de Medicis did her best to encourage magical practices; and in succeeding reigns the very people who, under her auspices, had cultivated relations with the fiend were punished for their tamperings with the supernatural. Catherine patronised astrologers and sorcerers of all kinds; and she was accused of holding in the woods _levées_ of magicians, who arrived at the place of meeting on flying goats, winged horses, or even simple broomsticks. The assembly, according to popular rumour, began at night, and ended with cock-crow. The place selected for the "Sabbath" was lighted by a single lamp, which cast a melancholy light, and intensified rather than dispelled the prevailing darkness. The president of the "Sabbath" was the fiend in person, who took his seat on a high throne, clad with the skin of a goat or of an immense black poodle. On his right was the solitary lamp, on his left a man or woman who had charge of the powders or ointments which it was customary to distribute among those present. The ointments were supposed to enable the members of these strange associations to recognise one another by the smell. But there is so much that is evidently false and so little that is apparently true in the accounts transmitted to us of these witches' Sabbaths, that the only thing worth noting in connection with them is that they possessed the privilege of interesting Catherine de Medicis. The secret meetings of the Templars, the Anabaptists, and the Albigenses have all been represented as assemblies of sorcerers. In the "History of Artois," by Dom de Vienne, it is said that the Inquisition established in the province caused many unfortunate Waldenses to be burnt alive in consequence of diabolical practices, "to which," as the Inquisition declared, "they themselves confessed." It may well be that the severity of the tortures inflicted on the accused, and the promise held out to them of forgiveness in case of avowal, induced many of them to admit the truth of charges without basis. The province of La Brie would seem during the magical times of Catherine de Medicis to have been inhabited almost entirely by sorcerers--by people, that is to say, who either considered themselves such or were so considered. The shepherds and herdsmen of the province possessed, it was said, the power of putting to death the sheep and cattle of their neighbours by burying various kinds of enchantments beneath the paths along which the animals were sure to pass. Some of these wonder-working shepherds were taken and prosecuted, when they confessed in many cases that they had exercised various kinds of bedevilments on the beasts of certain farmers. They made known the composition of their infernal preparations, but refused to state where they were buried, declaring that if they were dug up the person who had deposited them would immediately die. Whether the reputed sorcerers possessed the secret of some chemical mixtures which had really an injurious effect on cattle, or whether they were merely actuated by vain fancies, it would be impossible at the present time to say. But many shepherds and herdsmen of La Brie were, towards the end of the seventeenth century, condemned and executed for magical practices. Thus two shepherds, named Biaule and Lavaux, were sentenced by the same judge to be hanged and burnt; and the sentence, after being confirmed by the Parliament of Paris, was put into effect on the 18th of December, 1691. Magical practices have been denounced by more than one Church council; nor were incantations and witchcraft supposed by any means to be confined to the ignorant classes. Pharamond passed for the son of an incubus; and the mother of Clovis for a witch. Frédégonde accused Clovis, son of her husband Chilpéric and a former wife, of sorcery; and it was not until the reign of Charlemagne that any endeavour was made to destroy the popular belief in magic. After Charlemagne's death witchcraft took a greater hold on the public mind than ever; and ridiculous historians wrote that Queen Berthe had given birth to a gosling and that Bertrade was a witch. Philip the Bold consulted a sorceress. The madness of Charles VI. and the influence exercised upon him by Valentine of Milan were ascribed to magic; and it was as a witch that the Maid of Orleans was burnt. CHAPTER VII. THE BOULEVARDS. From the Bastille to the Madeleine--Boulevard Beaumarchais--Beaumarchais--The _Marriage of Figaro_--The Bastille--The Drama in Paris--Adrienne Lecouvreur--Vincennes--The Duc d'Enghien--Duelling--Louis XVI. The most important, the most interesting, the most absorbing thoroughfare on the right bank of the Seine, and, therefore, in Paris generally is that of the boulevards, in which the whole of the gay capital may be said to be concentrated. Numbers of Parisians pass almost the whole of their life on the Boulevard des Italiens; or between the Boulevard Montmartre to the east, and the Boulevard de la Madeleine to the west of what, to the fashionable Parisian, is the central boulevard. Nothing can be easier than to breakfast and dine on the boulevards; and it is along their length or in their immediate neighbourhood that not only the best restaurants, but the finest theatres are to be found. Stroll about the boulevards for a few hours--an occupation of which the true boulevardier seems never to get tired--and you will meet everyone you know in Paris. If, moreover, the upper boulevards, those of the Madeleine, the Capucines, and the Italiens, represent fashionable Paris, the lower boulevards, from the Boulevard Montmartre to the Boulevard Beaumarchais, represent the Paris of commerce and of industry; so that the line of boulevards, as a whole, from the Madeleine to the Bastille, gives a fair epitome of the French capital. The poorest of the boulevards are at the eastern end of the line, and the richest at the western; and the difference in character between the inhabitants of these opposite extremes is shown by a military regulation instituted under the Second Empire. Neither the district inhabited by the needy workmen of the east nor the western district, where dwelt the richest class of shop-keepers, was allowed to furnish the usual contingent of National Guards. The artisans were too turbulent to be entrusted with arms, while the tradespeople were equally unreliable, because from timidity they allowed their arms to be taken from them. Beginning at what most visitors to Paris will consider the wrong end of the line of boulevards, we find that on the Boulevard Beaumarchais Paris has a very different physiognomy from that which she presents on the Boulevard de la Madeleine, which the visitor may reach by omnibus, though it is more interesting to travel in some hired vehicle which may now and then be stopped, and more interesting still to make the whole of the three-mile journey on foot. At either end of the line of boulevards is a _Place_, or open space, which, for want of a better word, may be called a square: Place de la Bastille to the east, Place de la Madeleine to the west. The omnibuses which ply between the two extremities bear the inscription "Madeleine--Bastille"; and, beginning at the Bastille, the traveller passes eleven different boulevards, or, rather, one boulevard bearing in succession eleven different names: Beaumarchais, des Filles du Calvaire, du Temple, Saint-Martin, Saint-Denis, Bonne-Nouvelle, Poissonnière, Montmartre, des Italiens, des Capucines, and de la Madeleine. Advancing from the Bastille to the Madeleine, we find the appearance of the shops constantly improving, until, from poor at one end, they become magnificent at the other. What the military authorities of Germany call "necessary luxuries" (such as coffee, tea, and sugar), as well as luxuries in a more absolute sense (such as costly articles of attire, sweetmeats, and champagne), are sold all along the line. But at the Bastille end one notices here and there a little sacrifice to the useful and the indispensable. Indeed, on the lower boulevards grocers' shops are to be found, though nothing so commonplace offends the eye on the boulevards to which the name of "upper" is given. In like manner, the importance of the theatres increases as you proceed from the Bastille westward. Nearly half the playhouses of Paris are on the boulevards: ten on the north side, and three on the south. Many other theatres, if not entered direct from the boulevards, are in their close vicinity. The theatre nearest the Madeleine is the new Opera House; that nearest the Place de la Bastille is the Théâtre Beaumarchais. The Boulevard Beaumarchais owes its name to the brilliant dramatist who, among other works, wrote the _Barber of Seville_ and the _Marriage of Figaro_, still familiar to all Europe in their musical form. From 1760 to 1831 what is now called the Boulevard Beaumarchais was known as the Boulevard St.-Antoine. In the last-named year, however, under the government of Louis Philippe, it was determined to render homage to the author of the best comedies in the French language after those of Molière by naming a boulevard after him. The _Marriage of Figaro_ was played in public for the first time on April 27th, 1784. "The description of the first performance is," says M. de Loménie, "in every history of the period"; for which insufficient reason M. de Loménie omits it in his own history of "Beaumarchais and his Times." For at least two years before the _Marriage of Figaro_ was played in public the work must have been well known in the aristocratic and literary circles of Paris. The brilliant comedy, which was not to be brought out until April, 1784, had been accepted at the Théâtre Français in October, 1781. "As soon as the actors," writes Beaumarchais, "had received, by acclamation, my poor _Marriage_, which has since had so many opponents, I begged M. Lenoir (the Lieutenant of Police) to appoint a censor; at the same time asking him, as a special favour, that the piece might be examined by no one else: which he readily promised; assuring me that neither secretary nor clerk should touch the manuscript, and that the play should be read in his own cabinet. It was so read by M. Coqueley, advocate, and I begged M. Lenoir to notify what he retrenched, objected to, or approved. Six weeks afterwards I learnt in society that my piece had been read at all the soirées of Versailles, and I was in despair at this complaisance--perhaps forced--of the magistrate in regard to a work which still belonged to me; for such was certainly not the austere, discreet, and loyal course which belongs to the serious duty of a censor. Well or ill read--perhaps maliciously mutilated--the piece was pronounced detestable; and not knowing in what respect I had sinned (for according to custom nothing was specified), I stood before the inquisition obliged to guess my crimes, but aware, nevertheless, that I was already tacitly proscribed. As, however, this proscription by the court only irritated the curiosity of the town, I was condemned to readings without number. Whenever one party was discovered, another would immediately be formed." At the beginning of 1782 it was already a question who could obtain the privilege of hearing the play read by Beaumarchais--an admirable reciter--whether at his own house or in some brilliant _salon_. "Every day," writes Madame Campan, "persons were heard to say: 'I was present, or I shall be present, at a reading of Beaumarchais's piece.'" The first performance of the _Marriage of Figaro_ was thus described by a competent judge. "Never," says Grimm, in one of the letters addressed by him and by Diderot to the Grand Duke of Saxe-Gotha, "never did a piece attract such crowds to the Théâtre Français. All Paris wished to see this famous 'marriage,' and the house was crammed almost the very moment the doors were opened to the public. Scarcely half of those who had besieged the doors since eight in the morning succeeded in finding places. Most persons got in by force or by throwing money to the porters. It is impossible to be more humble, more audacious, more eager in view of obtaining a favour from the Court than were all our young lords to ensure themselves a place at the first representation of _Figaro_. More than one duchess considered herself too happy that day to find in the balconies, where ladies are seldom seen, a wretched stool side by side with Madame Duthé, Carline, and company." Ladies of the highest rank dined in the actresses' rooms, in order to be sure of places. "Cordons bleus," says Bachaumont, "mixed up in the crowd, elbowing with Savoyards--the guard being dispersed, and the iron gates broken by the efforts of the assailants." La Harpe, in one of his series of letters to the Grand Duke Paul of Russia and Count Schouvaloff, declares that three porters were killed; being "one more than were killed at the production of Scudéry's last piece." "On the stage, when the curtain was raised, there was seen," says De Loménie, "perhaps the most splendid assemblage of talent that was ever contained within the walls of the Théâtre Français, employed in promoting the success of a comedy which sparkled with wit, which carried the audience along by its dramatic movement and audacity, and which, if it shocked or startled some of the private boxes, excited and enchanted, inflamed and electrified the pit." All the parts were entrusted to performers of the first merit. Mademoiselle Sainval, who was the tragic actress then in vogue, had, at the urgent request of Beaumarchais, accepted the part of the Countess Almaviva, in which she displayed a talent the more striking from being quite unexpected. Mademoiselle Contat enchanted the public in the character of Susanna by her grace, the refinement of her acting, and the charms of her beauty and her voice. A very young and pretty actress, destined soon afterwards, at the age of eighteen, to be nipped in the bud by death--Mademoiselle Olivier, whose talent, says a contemporary, "was as naïve and fresh as her face"--lent her _naïveté_ and her freshness to the seemingly ingenuous character of Cherubino. Molè acted the part of Count Almaviva with the elegance and dignity which distinguished him. Dazincourt represented Figaro with all his wit, and relieved the character from any appearance of vulgarity. Old Préville, who was not less successful in the part of Bridoison, gave it up after a few days to Dugazon, who interpreted it with more power and equal intelligence. Delessarts, with his rich humour, gave relief to the personage of Bartholo, which is thrown somewhat into the background. The secondary parts of Basil and Antonio were equally well played by Vanhove and Bellemont. Finally, through a singular caprice, a somewhat celebrated tragedian, Larive, not wishing tragedy to be represented in the piece by Mademoiselle Sainval alone, asked for the insignificant little part of Grippe-soleil. [Illustration: PLACE DE LA BASTILLE AND COLUMN OF JULY.] "The success of this Aristophanic comedy," writes De Loménie, "while it filled some persons with anxiety and alarm, naturally roused the curious crowd, who are never wanting, particularly when a successful person takes a pleasure in spreading his fame abroad--and this foible of Beaumarchais is well known. It was in the midst of a fire of epigrams in prose and verse that the author of the _Marriage of Figaro_ pursued his career, pouring out on his enemies not torrents of fire and light, but torrents of liveliness and fun." Beaumarchais, on the famous first night, sat in a _loge grillée_--a private box, that is to say, with lattice-work in front--between two abbés, with whom he had been dining, and whose presence seemed indispensable to him, in order, as he said, that they might administer to him _des secours très spirituels_ in case of death. The _Marriage of Figaro_ was represented sixty-eight times in succession, and each time with the greatest possible success. In eight months, from April 27th, 1784, till January 10th, 1785, the piece brought the Théâtre Français, without counting the fiftieth representation (which, at Beaumarchais's request, was given for the poor), no less than 346,197 livres or francs; an immense sum for that period. When all expenses had been paid, there remained a profit of 293,755 livres for division amongst the actors, after the deduction from it of Beaumarchais's share as author, amounting to 41,469 livres. All sorts of anecdotes were told in connection with the success of the work. A gentleman--whom gossip transformed into a duke--wrote to Beaumarchais, asking for a _loge grillée_ for himself and two ladies who wished to see the piece without being seen. Beaumarchais replied that he had no sympathy with persons who wished to combine "the honours of virtue with the pleasures of vice"; and, moreover, that his comedy was not a work which honourable persons need be ashamed to see. The Boulevard Beaumarchais of the present day was (as already mentioned) called, until some fifty years after the Revolution, Boulevard St.-Antoine; where, until 1789, the year of its destruction, stood the celebrated fortress and prison of the Bastille. The destruction of the Bastille was the first event in the French Revolution; and many have asked why the fury of the crowd was particularly directed against a building which, monument of tyranny though it was, had never been employed against the people at large, but almost always against members of the aristocracy, on whose behalf the Revolutionists were certainly not fighting. But although the dungeons of the Bastille were for the most part filled with political offenders, persons of every station in life did, from time to time, find themselves enclosed within its walls. The too celebrated fortress was originally built to protect the east of Paris, as the Louvre was constructed to guard the west. It stood on the south side of the boulevard now known by the name of Beaumarchais, and consisted of eight towers, four of which looked towards the town--that is to say, the Rue St.-Antoine--and four towards the country--that is to say, the Faubourg St.-Antoine. Above the shop of the wine-seller who inhabits No. 232 in the Rue St.-Antoine, at the corner of the newly-built Rue Jacques-Coeur, a marble tablet sets forth that the house in question occupies the site of the outlying building into which the assailants, on the 14th of July, 1789, made their way before storming the fortress itself. The café which stands at the corner of the street and of the square bears for its sign, "The Cannon of the Bastille." It was less as a fortress than as a State prison that the Bastille was known, and by the nation at large execrated. Prisoners were taken to the Bastille on a simple _lettre de cachet_: a sealed order or warrant, which was sometimes given out blank, so that the favoured recipient might make whatever use of it he pleased, against no matter whom. The victims were introduced secretly into the fortress; and the soldiers on guard had instructions to turn aside when any prisoner was being brought in, so that they might not afterwards recognise him. Once inside the dungeon, he was liable to undergo frequent interrogations without even knowing on what charge, or even suspicion, he had been arrested. The treatment in prison depended absolutely on the will of the governor. Those under detention were kept in solitary confinement, without anyone outside being able to obtain news as to whether they even existed. They were not allowed to receive letters from their family or friends. The internal regulations of the Bastille are sufficiently well known to us by the numerous chronicles and memoirs published in connection with it, including, in particular, those of Linguet. "During the seven years that I passed in the Bastille," says M. Pelissery, quoted by Linguet, "I had no air even in fine weather, and in winter they gave me nothing in the way of fuel except wood just taken from the river. My bed was intolerable, and the bedclothes dirty and worm-eaten. I drank, or rather poisoned myself with, foul stagnant water. What food they brought me! Famished dogs would not have touched it. Accordingly, my body was soon covered with pustules, my legs gave way beneath me, I spat blood, and became scorbutic. The dungeons received neither light nor air, except by one narrow window pierced in a wall nearly five metres thick, and traversed by a triple row of bars, between which there were intervals of only five centimetres. Even on the most beautiful days the prisoners received but feeble rays of light. In the winter these fatal caves resembled ice-houses, being sufficiently raised for the cold to penetrate; while in summer they were like damp stoves, in which it was difficult not to be stifled, since the walls are so thick as to keep out the heat necessary for drying the interior. There are some rooms--and mine was one of them--which look out directly upon the moat into which flows the great sewer of the Rue St.-Antoine. Thence ascends a pestilential exhalation, which, when once it has entered these rooms, can only with much difficulty be got out again. It is in such an atmosphere that the prisoner has to breathe. There, not to be absolutely stifled, he is obliged to pass his nights and days glued to the inside bars of the little window in the door, through which a glimmer of light and a breath of air may reach him." "The history of the Bastille as a State prison," says Mongin, "might almost be said to include everything intellectual and political in France. Into its dungeons were thrown, one after the other, Hugues; Aubriot, who himself founded the Bastille, and who expiated by perpetual imprisonment his alleged heresy and his love relations with a Jewess; Jacques d'Armagnac, Duke of Nemours, in 1475; with many high and powerful noblemen in the time of Louis XI. and Richelieu. Here also were confined Marshal de Biron and Fouquet, the Superintendent of Finances, besides more than one officer of distinction under Louis XIV." When the Bastille had done its work on the last remains of feudalism and on the Court aristocracy, the turn came of the people--the precursors of the Republic, the martyrs of the Revolution. After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the Bastille was filled with Protestants. Here were shut up the Jansenists and the fanatics known as the Convulsionnaires. Here, too, suffered, until he was taken to the scaffold, the brave Governor of India under the French domination, Lally, who had given offence to the Court rather than to the sovereign. Voltaire, Mirabeau, Linguet (who, after making his escape, published in London his eloquent account of the cruelties to which prisoners in the Bastille were subjected), Latude, and numberless other men distinguished in different walks of life. The 14th of July, 1789, saw the first blow struck by the Revolutionists against that monument which, to them, symbolised all that was hateful in the ancient monarchy. War had already virtually been declared between the two sides. Everything seemed in favour of the king, the Court, the nobility, and the monarchical party generally. "If Paris must be burnt," one of the Ministers had said, "we will burn it." Paris was, indeed, surrounded with foreign troops; and whatever might be the attitude of the French regiments, commanded by officers some of whom were Royalists and others Republicans, it was certain that the popular movement would have to count with the Swiss, Austrian, and German troops stationed at Charenton, Sèvres, Versailles, at the Military School, and elsewhere in the immediate neighbourhood of the capital. On the 8th of July the National Assembly had, on the motion of Mirabeau, demanded from the king the removal of the foreign troops. The king's only reply, a few days afterwards, was to dismiss Necker, the popular Minister. The news of this tyrannical step fell upon Paris on Sunday, July 12th, like a spark on a barrel of gunpowder. The Palais Royal, which might be regarded as the head-quarters of the Revolution, became violently agitated. It was twelve o'clock on a hot summer's day when suddenly the midday cannon, with its lens above the touch-hole, was fired by the blazing sun. A superstitious importance was attached to the familiar incident; and the Revolutionists, with the people around them, saw in the ordinary explosion of a midday gun, intended only to interest the public by marking the time, the signal for an uprising against the ancient monarchy. A young man of twenty, then absolutely unknown, but who was afterwards to be remembered as Camille Desmoulins, rushed out of the Café Foy, sprang upon a table just outside, and in impassioned language addressed the crowd. "Citizens," he cried, "there is not a moment to lose! I have just come from Versailles. Necker is dismissed, and his dismissal is the signal for a new massacre of St. Bartholomew. This evening all the Swiss and German battalions will march from the Champ-de-Mars to put to death every patriot. We have but one resource: to rise to arms, after assuming cockades by which we may recognise each other. What colours do you prefer--green, the colour of hope, or the blue of Cincinnatus, the colour of American liberty and of democracy?" "Green, green!" cried the crowd. "Friends," continued the young man, in a sonorous voice, "the signal is already given. I see staring me in the face the spies and satellites of the police. But I will not fall alive into their hands. Let every citizen follow my example." He waved in the air two pistols, fastened a green ribbon to his hat, and descending from his chair, urged those present to take, as signs of recognition, leaves from the trees around them. Soon the trees of the Palais Royal garden were stripped. The excitement and enthusiasm spread in every direction. Arms were seized wherever they could be found. The busts of Necker and of the Duke of Orleans, idols of the moment, were carried through the streets veiled with black crape. More than one detachment of the French Guards joined the crowd. In the Tuileries Gardens several persons were killed by a cavalry charge under the command of Prince de Lambesc, of which the chief effect was to exasperate the insurgents to the utmost. Partial engagements now took place at various points. At the gates of Paris, the barriers where a tax was levied on provisions brought into the city were set in flames. Towards evening committees were formed in all the districts of the capital "for preventing tumult." The shops were now everywhere closed, and the theatres gave no performances. During the night the district assemblies held a general meeting, at which it was resolved to urge all who possessed arms to bring them to district head-quarters, that militia companies, to be promptly formed for the occasion, might be furnished therewith in a regular manner. These militia bands were intended to act on behalf of the nation; if necessary, against the populace. But the general excitement was too great to allow of such formal measures being taken as the well-to-do citizens of the hurriedly constituted district assemblies thought advisable. To all recommendations of prudence there was but one reply: "To Arms!" The Provost of the Paris merchants, De Flesselles by name, who had been elected president of the district assemblies, endeavoured to stay the spirit of revolution, now spreading so widely; but to no purpose. The Hôtel de Ville, from which he held forth, was now occupied in every corner by armed men, who had no intention of giving their weapons up for the equipment of any imaginary militia company; and as yet these companies were unformed. An order to evacuate the Hôtel de Ville met with no attention, and deliberations were now carried on beneath the eyes and under the pressure of the enraged mob. [Illustration: JUNCTION OF GRAND BOULEVARDS AND RUE AND FAUBOURG MONTMARTRE.] In place of the green colour adopted in the first instance by the insurgents of the Palais Royal, which the day afterwards was rejected as the family colour of the Counts of Artois, the tricolour had now been assumed: blue, in the new flag, being held to signify hope; red, the blood of sacrifice; and white, the ancient monarchy, against which war had not yet been declared. It was against the abuses of the ancient system, and in view of a thorough reform, that the people were rising. [Illustration: THE BASTILLE.] Camille Desmoulins had begun the Revolution on Sunday, the 12th of July, at noon. On the morning of Monday, July 13th, the alarm bell was rung in every church, and the drum beaten in every street. Bands were now formed, without much system, under the names of Volunteers of the Palais Royal, of the Tuileries, etc. Women were everywhere making blue and red cockades--the white was not absolutely essential; the blacksmiths were forging arms; and it has been calculated that in thirty-six hours fifty thousand pikes were made. Tumultuous meetings were held in the churches, with a view to some regular organisation of the movement. A Government dépôt of arms was invaded, and plundered of its contents. The Place de la Grève became an important centre to which arms taken from gunsmiths' shops or from Government stores, sacks of wheat and flour (stopped at the barriers), and even herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, were brought. Paris was being turned into a camp. The citizens of the district assemblies, carried away by the ardour of the people whose impetuosity they had sought to restrain, the students of the various schools, the clerks of the public offices, the workmen of the faubourgs: all hurried to the Hôtel de Ville, swearing to conquer or to die. The fact that Paris was threatened by Swiss, German, and various kinds of Austrian troops could not but awaken the patriotism of Frenchmen generally. The first enemy to be fought was the army of foreigners waiting to swoop down on the city. An important collection of arms, formed by those who had obeyed the first recommendations of the district assemblies, was reported to exist at the Invalides; and an enormous quantity of powder which was being sent out of Paris by way of the River Seine, apparently under the orders of the timid citizens composing the aforesaid assemblies, was seized, carried to the Hôtel de Ville, and partially distributed. No movement, meanwhile, had been made by the foreign troops, who were for the most part encamped or quartered in the École Militaire; the inaction being attributable to divided counsels among the king's ministers, and to hesitation on the part of the king himself. The one thing decided upon was to stop the entrance of provisions into Paris: a sure means, it was thought, of reducing the tumult, which at the outset was scarcely looked upon as serious. The National Assembly was behaving, meanwhile, in the most heroic manner. Threatened with dissolution and arrest, and quite at the mercy of the foreign troops, it voted an expression of regret at the dismissal of Necker, a demand that the foreign troops be forthwith sent away from Paris, and a declaration that the king's ministers, whatever their rank, would be held personally responsible for any misfortunes that might result from the present condition of things. On the morning of the 14th of July Paris was surrounded at all points by foreign troops, and was at the same time threatened with famine. But one course was open to the insurgents: that of immediate action. There was a general feeling that an attack must be made, and the object unanimously chosen for the first assault was the Bastille: symbol of everything hateful in the government it was proposed to overturn. "_A la Bastille!_" was now the universal cry. But a dearth of muskets retarded the impulse, and it was determined in the first instance to attack the Hôtel des Invalides, where arms in large numbers were known to be stored away. Thirty thousand men hurried to the asylum of aged soldiers; when, without much time being wasted in parleying with the governor, the sentinels were seized and the place entered by force. In the cellars twenty-eight thousand muskets were discovered concealed beneath hay and straw; and with these the invaders, whose numbers had gradually increased, hastened to arm themselves. Five years before, the king, on consenting to the liberation of Latude, had promised that henceforth no one should be sent to the Bastille except for a definite period, and after formal conviction on a positive charge. But this engagement had not been kept; people had been arrested, and incarcerated (as at the present time in Russia) on the simple denunciation of police officers and spies; sometimes on mere suspicion, at others without even suspicion, and simply for the gratification of private malice. The terrible _lettre de cachet_, on the strength of which arrests were made without further explanation, had indeed become a purchasable thing, with a fixed price, like any other article of commerce. It was doubtless, however, the memory of a long course of ancient wrongs that, above all, animated the people in their rage against the Bastille. There was, moreover, however, a strategical reason. As a fortress, the Bastille commanded the Rue St.-Antoine and the adjoining faubourg, and indeed dominated all Paris. To destroy it, therefore, was considered at once a good moral and a good military act. The governor, De Launay, had already prepared his defence; and in addition to the guns of position in the towers, he had placed a number in the interior courtyard. The gates and the outer walls had been loopholed and armed with wall-pieces, and a quantity of paving-stones, cannon-balls, and lumps of iron had been carried up to the towers, in order to be hurled down upon the heads of the expected assailants. The garrison consisted only of 114 men, 32 of whom were Swiss, while the other 82 were old pensioners. The defenders, indeed, were nearly all of them aged, but experienced, soldiers. Their material appliances and the strength of their position were such that the governor looked upon the fortress as impregnable against a mob of people who had neither the art nor the time to undertake regular siege operations. With his powerful batteries, De Launay could lay the whole quarter in ruins; and foreseeing this possibility, the committee of the Hôtel de Ville sent a deputation to the governor, promising not to attack him if he would withdraw the cannon, and promise not on his side to begin hostilities. A man of more energy, Thuriot de la Rozière, called, in the name of his district, upon the governor, and demanded the surrender of the fortress. His account of what was taking place in Paris astonished De Launay, and gained the sympathy of the French portion of the garrison. His final demand was that the Bastille should be occupied by some of the newly-formed bands conjointly with troops of the regular army. But this proposition, though more advanced than the feeble one made by the committee of the Hôtel de Ville, was by no means on a level with popular demands; and Thuriot, on leaving the Bastille, was threatened by the armed bands assembled outside, who demanded, not the occupation of the Bastille, but its destruction. A few brave men got into the outer yard through the roof of the guard-house, and at once destroyed with hatchets the chains of the drawbridge leading to the inner yard. They were followed by others, and soon the outer gates were forced. A terrible fire had been opened on the crowd of assailants, and it was resolved once more to approach De Launay by means of a deputation, which, however, was unable to reach him. At this moment the besiegers set fire to several carts of hay and manure, in order to burn the buildings which masked the fortress and to smoke out the defenders. At the same time, a constant fire was kept up from the windows and roofs of the neighbouring houses. All this, however, had but little effect on the garrison. A new deputation was now sent forward, bearing a white flag. A white flag was displayed in reply from the Bastille, and the soldiers reversed their muskets. An officer of the Swiss troops passed forward a note, by means of a crane, with these words: "We have twenty thousand pounds of powder, and we will blow up the fortress and the whole of the neighbourhood unless you accept a capitulation." The Commissaries of the Hôtel de Ville, believing in the pacific demonstrations of the garrison, were already urging the people to retire, when suddenly there was a discharge of musketry from the fortress, which laid low a good number of the insurgents. It was apparently the Swiss who had fired, heedless of the conciliatory attitude assumed by the French portion of the defending force. The whole garrison was held responsible for this act of treachery. The exasperation of the people had now gone beyond all bounds, and there was but one cry heard: "Down with the Bastille!" A number of the French guards seized five of the guns which had been brought from the Invalides, and pointed them at the fortress. The fire of the artillery proved more effective than that of the musketry, and the drawbridge was now swept by cannon-balls. Meanwhile, the garrison was divided against itself. The pensioners wished the contest, of which the end could now be foreseen, to cease, whereas the Swiss mercenaries, careless about the effusion of French blood (and, it must be admitted, full of a more youthful courage), were determined to resist to the last. There was another reason which made it unadvisable to prolong the defence. The fortress contained abundance of ammunition, but little or no food; and the numbers, constantly increasing, of the besiegers rendered it impossible to renew the supply. It was evident that all Paris demanded the fall of the Bastille. The Swiss, however, would hear of no surrender. As for De Launay, he felt that he was personally detested, not only for the blood he was uselessly shedding, but even more for his persecution of the prisoners under his charge. The _Memoirs_ of Linguet and other revelations had made his name odious throughout Europe. Thus the vengeful cries of the people seemed directed against himself personally. Wild with terror, he seized a match, and was about to explode his powder magazine, when two non-commissioned officers drove him back at point of bayonet. Outside, a sort of organisation had now established itself. Many bands of volunteers had been moving together since the first uprising, with the volunteers of the Palais Royal, under Camille Desmoulins, among them. These bands were under the command of officers of the French Guards, or of energetic men who were afterwards to distinguish themselves in the military career. According to some accounts, the surrender of the fortress took place immediately after the episode of the note thrust forward on a crane, or, according to another version, pushed through a loophole. The moment in any case arrived when, promised by some of the French Guards that their lives should be spared, the garrison agreed formally to surrender. The drawbridges were now lowered, and the Bastille was occupied in force. On being recognised, De Launay was arrested and led off towards the Hôtel de Ville. Hulin, afterwards one of Napoleon's generals and nobles, took charge of the prisoner, and, forming an escort, did his best to convey him safely through the infuriated mob, which, with execrations, pressed towards him from all sides. More than once De Launay was thrown down. Having lost his hat, he was now an easier mark than ever for the assaults of the crowd. That he might not so readily be distinguished, Hulin gave him his own hat, thus running the risk of being himself mistaken for the odious governor. At last Hulin and several members of the escort were thrown together to the ground; and when Hulin managed to rise, the head of the hated governor was being carried aloft on the point of a pike. Within the Bastille the invaders were, meanwhile, breaking open the dungeons. Only seven prisoners, however, were found, two of whom had become insane. One of the latter had a long white beard falling to his waist, and fancied himself still under the reign of Louis XV., who had been dead fifteen years. Instruments of torture were discovered. Shocking as this detail may be to a reader of the present day, it should be remembered that under the old monarchy torture was constantly employed in criminal process. It is only just to add that it was formally abolished a few years before the Revolution, and not afterwards, as is generally supposed. The archives of the prison were in part destroyed. All that was preserved of them was afterwards published, in order once more to throw light on the iniquity of the system under which such an institution as the Bastille could exist. The taking of the Bastille cost the assailants eighty-three killed on the spot, and fifteen who died from their injuries, besides sixty-three wounded. The garrison, on their side, protected by the walls of the fortress, lost but one killed and one wounded during a struggle which lasted five hours. The major of the garrison, De Losme, shared the fate of the governor, except that, instead of being put to death summarily by an enraged mob, he was taken deliberately to the famous _lanterne_, or lamp of the Place de la Grève, and hanged. Two of the pensioners, accused, like the major, of having pointed the guns of the fortress against the people, were also strung up. These were the first victims of the cry "_À la lanterne!_" afterwards to be heard so often in the streets of Paris. The _lanterne_ in question was attached to an iron gibbet; and it was on this gibbet that the victims of popular fury were hoisted aloft. The lives of all the other defenders were spared. They were set at liberty and a subscription opened for them, as they had now no means of earning an honest penny. The news of the capture of the Bastille caused great excitement at Versailles, where Louis XVI., in his habitual state of indecision, seemed unable to give an order of any kind. He had gone to bed at his usual hour, but was awakened early the next morning by the Duke de Liancourt, who enjoyed the privilege of entering the royal bedchamber at any time. The Duke informed his sovereign of what was taking place at Paris, and impressed upon him the necessity of putting himself in accord with the nation and with the Assembly. "Is it a revolt, then?" asked Louis XVI., with his eyes half open. "No, Sire," replied the duke; "it is a revolution." In these words, destined to become celebrated, the astonished king was informed that the ancient monarchy was at an end. The Bastille was now pulled down: partly in the natural course of things, partly in virtue of a formal resolution. The stones were broken up into little pieces, and worn by ladies as jewellery; ornaments and playthings were also made from the remains of the detested edifice. The conquerors of the Bastille formed a special corps, which had its recognised place in all public ceremonies. A medal was struck in their honour, and each of them was commissioned with an office. During the Revolution the ground on which the Bastille stood became a favourite place for public meetings. The Bronze Column which now lifts its head in the Place de la Bastille was erected under the reign of Louis Philippe, in memory of the Revolution of 1789 and of the lesser revolt of 1830. Although the Revolution began in Paris, the revolutionary spirit spread rapidly to the provinces. This is clearly set forth in Arthur Young's account of what took place at Strasburg, where he had just arrived when news of the Revolution reached him. [Illustration: THE CONQUERORS OF THE BASTILLE. (_From the Painting by François Flaming._)] "I arrived there," he writes, "at a critical moment, which I thought would have broken my neck: a detachment of horse, with their trumpets, on one side, a party of infantry, with their drums beating, on the other, and a great mob hallooing, frightened my French mare, and I could scarcely keep her from trampling on Messrs. the _tiers état_. On arriving at the inn, one heard the interesting news of the revolt of Paris; the _Garde Française_ joining the people; the unreliability of the rest of the troops; the taking of the Bastille; and the institution of the _milice bourgeoise_--in a word, the absolute overthrow of the old government. Everything being now decided, and the kingdom absolutely in the hands of the Assembly, they have the power to make a new constitution such as they think proper; and it will be a spectacle for the world to view in this enlightened age the representatives of twenty-five millions of people sitting on the construction of a new and better fabric of liberty than Europe has yet offered. It will now be seen whether they will copy the constitution of England, freed from its faults, or attempt from theory to frame something absolutely speculative. In the former case they will prove a blessing to their country; in the latter they will probably involve it in inextricable confusion and civil wars: perhaps not immediately, but certainly in the future. I hear nothing of their removing from Versailles. If they stay there under the control of an armed mob, they must make a government that will please the mob; but they will, I suppose, be wise enough to move to some central town--Tours, Blois, or Orleans, where their deliberations may be free. But the Parisian spirit of commotion spreads rapidly; it is here; the troops that were near breaking my neck are employed to keep an eye on the people who show signs of an intended revolt. They have broken the windows of some magistrates who are no favourites; and a great mob of them is at this moment assembled, demanding clamorously to have meat at five sous a pound. They have a cry among them that will conduct them to good lengths: '_Point d'impôt et vivent les états!_' I have spent some time at the _Cabinet Littéraire_ reading the gazettes and journals that give an account of the transactions at Paris; and I have had some conversation with several sensible and intelligent men in the present revolution. The spirit of revolt is gone forth into various parts of the kingdom; the price of bread has prepared the populace everywhere for all sorts of violence; at Lyons there have been commotions as furious as at Paris, and likewise at a great many other places. Dauphiné is in arms, and Bretagne in absolute rebellion. The idea is that hunger will drive the people to revolt, and that when once they find any other means of subsistence than honest labour everything will have to be feared. Of such consequence it is to a country to have a policy on the subject of corn: one that shall, by securing a high price to the farmer, encourage his culture sufficiently to secure the people from famine. I have been witness to a scene curious to a foreigner, but dreadful to those Frenchmen who consider. Passing through the square of the _Hôtel de Ville_, the mob were breaking the windows with stones, notwithstanding that an officer and a detachment of horse were on the spot. Observing not only that their numbers increased, but that they grew bolder and bolder every moment, I thought it worth staying to see how the thing would end, and clambered on to the roof of a row of low stalls opposite the building against which their malice was directed. Here I could view the whole scene. Perceiving that the troops would not attack them except in words and menaces, they grew more violent, and furiously attempted to beat the door in pieces with iron crows, placing ladders to the windows. In about a quarter of an hour, which gave time for the assembled magistrates to escape by a back door, they burst everything open, and entered like a torrent, amid a universal shout of triumph. From that minute a medley of casements, sashes, shutters, chairs, tables, sofas, books, papers, pictures, etc., rained down incessantly from all the windows of the house, which is seventy or eighty feet long; this being succeeded by a shower of tiles, skirting-boards, banisters, framework, and whatever parts of the building force could detach. The troops, both horse and foot, were quiet spectators. They were at first too few to interpose, and when they became more numerous the mischief was too far advanced to admit of any other course than that of guarding every avenue around, permitting no fresh arrivals on the scene of action, but letting everyone that pleased retire with his plunder; guards at the same time being placed at the doors of the churches and all public buildings. I was for two hours a spectator of this scene: secure myself from the falling furniture, but near enough to see a fine lad of about fourteen crushed to death by some object as he was handing plunder to a woman--I suppose his mother, from the horror pictured in her countenance. I remarked several common soldiers with their white cockades among the plunderers, and instigating the mob even in sight of the officers of the detachment. Mixed in the crowd, there were people so decently dressed that I regarded them with no small surprise. The public archives were destroyed, and the streets for some way around strewed with papers. This was a wanton mischief, for it will be the ruin of many families unconnected with the magistrates." Although at the critical moment the first object of the revolutionists' attack was the Bastille, that hateful building did not, according to Mercier, inspire the common people with any peculiar indignation. It will be seen from his own words that he was in this particular a less keen-sighted observer than he is generally reputed to have been. Writing just before the Revolution, Mercier saw well that his fellow-countrymen were oppressed, but believed they were too much inured to this oppression ever to rise against it. "I have already observed," he writes, "that the Parisians in general are totally indifferent as to their political interest; nor is this to be wondered at in a place where a man is hardly allowed to think for himself. A coercive silence, imposed upon every Frenchman from the hour of his birth on whatever regards the affairs of government, grows with him into a habit which the fear of the Bastille and his natural indolence daily strengthen, till the man is totally lost in the slave. Kingly prerogative knows no bounds, because no one ever dared to resist the monarch's despotic commands. It is true that at times, in the words of the proverb, the galled horse has winced. The Parisians have at times attempted to withstand tyranny; but popular commotions amongst them have had very much the air of a boyish mutiny at school; a rod with the latter, the butt end of a firelock with the former, quiets all, because neither act with the spirit and resolution of _men_ who assert their natural rights. What would cost the minister his life in those unhappy countries where self-denial and passive obedience are unknown is done off in Paris by a witty epigram, a smart song, etc.; the authors of which, however, take the greatest care to remain concealed, having continually the fear of ministerial runners before their eyes; nor has a _bon mot_ unfrequently occasioned the captivity of its author." Mercier at the same time points out that never since the days of Henri IV. had France been so mildly governed as under Louis XVI. One of the last acts of Louis XV. had been to cast into the Bastille all the volumes of the Encyclopædia. One of the first acts of Louis XVI. was to liberate from the Bastille all prisoners who had not been guilty of serious, recognisable offences. "At the accession of his present Majesty," writes Mercier, "his new ministers, actuated by humanity, signalised the beginning of their administration with an act of justice and mercy, ordering the registers of the Bastille to be laid before them, when a great number of prisoners were set at large." Among those liberated was a man of whom Mercier tells the same story that was afterwards to be told of one of the seven prisoners who were freed at the taking of the Bastille. "Their number included a venerable old man, who for forty-seven years had remained shut up between four walls. Hardened by adversity, which steels the heart when it does not break it, he had supported his long and tedious captivity with unexampled constancy and fortitude; and he thought no more of liberty. The day is come. The door of his tomb turns upon its rusty hinges, it opens not ajar, as usual, but wide, for liberty, and an unknown voice acquaints him that he may now depart. He thinks himself in a dream; he hesitates, and at last ventures out with trembling steps; wonders at everything; thinks to have travelled a great way before he reaches the outward gate. Here he stops a while; his feeble eyes, long deprived of the sun's cheering beams, can hardly support its first light. A coach waits for him in the streets; he gets into it, desires to be carried to a certain street, but unable to support the motion of the coach, he is set down, and by the assistance of two men at length he reaches the quarter where he formerly dwelt; but the spot is altered, and his house is no more. His wandering eye seems to interrogate every passenger, saying with heartrending accents of despondency: 'Where shall I find my wife? Where are my children?' All in vain; the oldest man hardly remembers to have heard his name. At last a poor old decrepit porter is brought to him. This man had served in his family, but knew him not. Questioned by the late prisoner, he replied, with all the indifference which accompanies the recollection of events long passed, that his wife had died above thirty years before in the utmost misery, and that his children were gone into foreign countries, nothing having been heard of them for many years. Struck with grief and astonishment, the old gentleman, his eyes riveted to the ground, remains for some time motionless; a few tears would have eased his deeply wounded heart, but he could not weep. At last, recovering from his trance, he hastens to the minister to whose humanity he was indebted for a liberty now grown burdensome. 'Sir,' he says to him, 'send me back to my dungeon! Who is it that can survive his friends, his relations, nay, a whole generation? Who can hear of the death of all he held dear and precious, and not wish to die? All these losses, which happen to other men by gradation, and one by one, have fallen upon me in an instant. Ah, sir! it is not dreadful to die; but it is to be last survivor.' The minister sympathised with this truly unfortunate man. Care was taken of him, and the old porter assigned to him for his servant, as he could speak with this man of his wife and children: the only comfort now left for the aged son of sorrow, who lived some time retired, though in the midst of the noise and confusion of the capital. Nothing, however, could reconcile him to a world quite new for him, and to which he resolved to remain a perfect stranger; and friendly death at last came to his relief and closed his eyes in peace." Although, as frigid historians have pointed out, the Bastille never did any harm to the common people, it was sometimes made use of to punish actresses who were much admired by the populace. Mlle. Clairon, a distinguished actress and excellent woman, on quitting the stage from religious scruples--or rather because, contrary to her own views on the subject, she found the profession of actress condemned absolutely by the Church--was sent to the Bastille on the ground that, being a paid servant of the king, she refused to do her duty. "The case of this lady," said a writer of the time, "is indeed hard. The king sends her to prison if she does not act, and the Church sends her to perdition if she does." Mlle. Clairon was much troubled at the view taken of her profession by the clergy; and after consulting her confessor, she came to the conclusion that so long as she remained on the stage she could have no hope of salvation. It was then that she refused any longer to act, and determined to retire altogether from the stage. So indignant had Mlle. Clairon become on learning for the first time under what severe condemnation the stage lay, that she raised a strong party with the view of removing so great a scandal. Much was written and said in favour of the comedians, but all to no purpose. The priests stood firm to their text, and, in the words of a French writer, would by no means give up "their ancient and pious privilege of consigning to eternal punishment everyone who had anything to do with the stage." [Illustration: À LA ROBESPIERRE.] [Illustration: A LADY OF 1793.] Mlle. Clairon's retirement threw her manager into the greatest confusion. She was by far the best actress of the day, and such a favourite that it was almost impossible to do without her. The theatre was soon deserted by the public, and still Mlle. Clairon refused to act. Then it was that by royal mandate she was imprisoned. She had not, however, been long in the Bastille, when an order came from the Court for the players to go to Versailles to perform before the king. Mlle. Clairon was released, and commanded to make her appearance with the rest of the company. Being already very tired of the Bastille, she decided to obey, and performing at Court with immense success, and finding that all attempts to gain even the toleration of the Church were in vain, she resigned herself to her fate and went on acting as usual. Some years previously, Mlle. Clairon, accused of organising a cabal against a rival, had been sent to another State prison, Fort l'Évêque, where, instead of pining, as at the Bastille, she held high court, receiving visits from all kinds of illustrious people, whose carriages are said to have made the approach to the prison impassable. [Illustration: A TRICOTEUSE.] [Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE EXTENSION OF PARIS.] Besides the Bastille and Fort l'Évêque, there was yet another prison, La Force, to which recalcitrant actresses used to be sent in the strange days of the ancient _régime_. Thus Mlle. Gavaudin, a singer at the Opera, having refused the part assigned to her in a piece called the "Golden Fleece," was sent to La Force, where she enjoyed herself so much, that she was warned as to the possibility of her being punished by solitary confinement in a genuine dungeon. On this, she agreed to appear in the character which she had at first rejected. When, however, an official came to the prison to set her at liberty, in order that she might play her part that very evening, she told him that for the present she would remain where she was, that she had ordered an excellent dinner, and meant to eat it. The official charged with her liberation insisted, however, on setting her free, telling her that after he had once got her into the street she might go wherever she chose. She simply returned to the prison, where she dined copiously, with a due allowance of wine. "Then," says a narrator of these incidents, "she went to the Opera, had a furious scene with the stage-manager, who, during her imprisonment, had given her dressing-room to another singer, and after a quarter of an hour of violent language calmed down, dressed herself for the part of Calliope, and sang very charmingly." It may be mentioned that before she was consigned to the Bastille, Mlle. Clairon's case interested greatly some of the best writers of the day, including Voltaire, who published an eloquent defence of the stage against the overbearing pretensions of the Church. It seems strange that in France, where the drama is cultivated with more interest and with more success than in any other country, actors and actresses should so long have been regarded as beyond the pale of Christianity. Happily, this is no longer the case. But the traditional view of the French Church in regard to actors and actresses was, until within a comparatively recent time, that they were, by the mere fact of exercising their profession, in the position of excommunicated persons. This is sufficiently shown not only by the case of Mlle. Clairon in connection with the Bastille, but also by the circumstances attending the burial of Molière in the seventeenth, of Adrienne Lecouvreur in the eighteenth, and of Mlle. Raucourt in the nineteenth century. Acting in _Le Malade Imaginaire_, Molière broke a blood-vessel, and was carried home to die. He was attended in his last moments by a priest of his acquaintance; he expired in presence of two nuns whom he frequently entertained, and who had come to visit him on that very day. Funeral rites were denied him, all the same, by the Archbishop of Paris; and when Mme. Molière appealed in person to Louis XIV., the king took offence at her audacious mode of address, and threw the whole responsibility on the Archbishop of Paris--to whom, nevertheless, he sent a private message. As a result of the king's interference--not a very authoritative one--a priest was allowed to accompany Molière's body to its otherwise unhonoured grave. The great comedy-writer was buried at midnight in unconsecrated ground; and of course, therefore, without any religious service. Adrienne Lecouvreur, who, more than a century after her death, was to be made the heroine of Scribe and Legouve's famous drama, is known to all playgoers as the life-long friend of Marshal Saxe, whom she furnished with money for his famous expedition to Courland. Voltaire entertained the greatest regard for her, and was never so happy as when he had persuaded her to undertake a part in one of his plays. Adrienne died in Voltaire's arms, and no sooner was she dead than public opinion accused her rival, the Duchess de Bouillon, of having poisoned her from jealousy and hatred; for the duchess had conceived a passion for Marshal Saxe to which that gallant warrior could not bring himself to respond. The clergy refused to bury Adrienne, as in the previous century they had refused to bury Molière. Her body was taken possession of by the police, who buried it at midnight, without witnesses, on the banks of the Seine. "In France," said Voltaire, "actresses are adored when they are beautiful, and thrown into the gutter when they are dead." Nearly a hundred years after the death of Adrienne Lecouvreur died another great actress, Mlle. Raucourt, who, like Adrienne Lecouvreur and like Molière, was refused Christian burial. This was in 1815, just after the Restoration, at a time when the clergy, so long deprived of power, were beginning once more to exercise it in earnest. The Curé of St.-Roch refused to admit the body of the actress into his church. An indignant crowd assembled, and became so riotous that the troops had to be called out. At last King Louis XVIII. ordered the church doors to be opened, and with the tact which distinguished him, commissioned his private chaplain to perform the service. In such horror was the stage held by the French clergy (if not by the Catholic clergy throughout Europe) so late as the beginning of the present century, that money offered to the Church by actors and actresses for charitable purposes, although accepted, was at the same time looked upon as contaminating. Thus, when Mlle. Contat gave performances for the starving poor of Paris, and handed the proceeds to the clergy of her parish for distribution, they refused to touch the money until it had been "purified" by passing through the hands of the police, to whom it was paid in by the stage, and by whom it was afterwards paid out to the Church. * * * * * The Place de la Bastille was formed in virtue of a decree of the First Consul, but it was not completed until after the establishment of the Empire. The principal ornament of the square was to be a triumphal arch to the glory of the Grand Army. But after taking the opinion of the Academy of Fine Arts, the emperor altered his views; and the triumphal arch was reserved for the place it now occupies at the top of the Champs Élysées. Oddly enough, too, a massive object, intended originally for the spot now occupied by the Arc de l'Étoile, was carried to the Bastille in the form of an elephant, whose trunk, according to the fantastic design, was to give forth a column of water large enough to feed a triumphal fountain, which was inaugurated December 2nd, 1808. The wooden model of the elephant, covered with plaster, was seventeen metres long and fifteen metres high, counting the tower which the animal bore on its back. Set up for a time on the western bank of the Canal de l'Ourcq, the plastered elephant was afterwards abandoned, like the project in which it played a preliminary part, and its wooden carcase became a refuge for innumerable rats. The remains of the elephant were not removed until just before the completion of the bronze column which now stands in the centre of the Place de la Bastille, in memory of the victims of the Revolutions of 1789 and 1830. The first stone of this monument was laid by King Louis Philippe on the 27th of July, 1831. It was finished at the beginning of 1843; and on the 28th of July of that year were placed, in the vaults constructed beneath the column for their reception, the remains of the insurgents of 1830, which for ten years had been lying buried in all parts of Paris, but particularly in the neighbourhood of the markets and at the foot of the Colonnade of the Louvre, where the relics reposed side by side with those of the Swiss soldiers who had died in protecting the palace. The figure lightly poised on the ball at the top of the column represents the Genius of Liberty. At a short distance from the Place de la Bastille, and easily accessible by train, is Vincennes: known by its wood, at one time the favourite resort of duellists; by its military establishment, to which the famous Chasseurs de Vincennes owed their name when, after the downfall of Louis Philippe, it was thought desirable to get rid of their former designation--that of Chasseurs d'Orléans; and for its castle, in whose ditch the ill-fated Duke d'Enghien was shot, after a mock trial, on an all but groundless accusation. The Duke d'Enghien, who, according to one of his biographers, had no fault but the one common to all the Bourbons--that of being "too easily influenced by beautiful eyes"--was living on the German side of the Rhine, nearly opposite Strasburg, with his wife, a Princess de Rohan-Rochefort, to whom he had been secretly married. As a royalist and a member of the royal family, he was naturally the enemy of Napoleon and the Napoleonic _régime_. But he had taken no part in any conspiracy, unless the League of Sovereigns and States formed against Napoleon could be so considered. The duke frequently crossed over from the right or German bank, especially at Binfelden, where the Prince de Rohan-Rochefort, his wife's father, had taken apartments at the local inn. It became known, moreover, to the French authorities that the Prefect of Strasburg had for some time past been sending various agents to the German side. The princess received at this time from an officer of the Strasburg garrison, who had been formerly attached to the Rohan family, secret intelligence that inquiries were being made in regard to the Duke d'Enghien. Soon afterwards a small body of troops crossed the Rhine, surrounded the little castle or Gothic villa where the duke was living at Ettenheim, seized him, and brought him over to Strasburg. He was permitted to write, and lost no time in sending a note to the princess, who, from the windows of the house, had followed in painful anxiety all the events of the alarming drama acted before her eyes. "They have promised me," wrote the duke from the citadel of Strasburg, "that this letter shall be delivered to you intact. This is the first opportunity I have had of reassuring you as to my present condition, and I do so now without losing a moment. Will you, in your turn, reassure those who are attached to me in your neighbourhood? My own fear is that this letter may find you no longer at Ettenheim, but on the way to this place. The pleasure of seeing you, however, would not be nearly so great as the fear I should have of your sharing my fate.... You know, from the number of men employed, that all resistance would have been useless. There was nothing to be done against such overpowering forces. "I am treated with attention and politeness. I may say, except as regards my liberty (for I am not allowed to leave my room), that I am as well off as could be. If some of the officers sleep in my chamber, that is because I desired it. We occupy one of the commandant's apartments, but another room is being prepared for me, which I am to take possession of to-morrow, and where I shall be better off still. The papers found on me, and which were sealed at once with my seal, are to be examined this morning in my presence." The first letters written by the young man from Strasburg to his wife (they are still preserved in the French Archives) showed no apprehension of danger; nothing could be proved against him except what was known beforehand, that he was a Bourbon and an enemy of Napoleon. "As far as I remember," wrote the duke to his wife, "they will find letters from my relations and from the king, together with copies of some of mine. In all these, as you know, there is nothing that can compromise me, any more than my name and mode of thinking would have done during the whole course of the Revolution. All the papers will, I believe, be sent to Paris, and it is thought, according to what I hear, that in a short time I shall be free; God grant it! They were looking for Dumouriez, who was thought to be in our neighbourhood. It seems to have been supposed that we had had conferences together, and apparently he is implicated in the conspiracy against the life of the First Consul. My ignorance of this makes me hope that I shall obtain my liberty, but we must not flatter ourselves too soon. The attachment of my people draws tears from my eyes at every moment. They might have escaped; no one forced them to follow me. They came of their own accord.... I have seen nobody this morning except the commandant, who seems to me an honest, kind-hearted man, but at the same time strict in the fulfilment of his duty. I am expecting the colonel of gendarmes who arrested me, and who is to open my papers before me." Transferred to Vincennes, the duke was tried summarily by court-martial, sentenced to death, and shot in the moat of the fortress on the 21st of March, 1804. Immediately before the execution he asked for a pair of scissors, cut off a lock of his hair, wrapped it up in a piece of paper, with a gold ring and a letter, and gave the packet to Lieut. Noirot, begging him to send it to the Princess Charlotte de Rohan-Rochefort. Lieut. Noirot forwarded the packet to General Hulin, who transmitted it to an official named Réal, together with the following letter:-- "Paris, 30th Ventôse, Year 12 of the French Republic.--P. Hulin, General of Brigade commanding the Grenadiers on Foot of the Consular Guard, to Citizen Réal, Councillor of State charged with the conduct of affairs relating to the internal tranquillity and security of the Republic. I have the honour, Councillor of State, to address you a packet found on the former Duke d'Enghien. I have the honour to salute you. (Signed) P. HULIN." The receipt of the package was thus acknowledged by Citizen Réal:-- "Paris, 2 Germinal, Year 12 of the Republic.--The Councillor of State, especially charged with the conduct of all affairs relating to the internal tranquillity and security of the Republic, has received from the General of Brigade, Hulin, commanding the Grenadiers on Foot of the Guard, a small packet, containing hair, a gold ring, and a letter; this small packet bearing the following inscription: 'To be forwarded to the Princess de Rohan from the former Duke d'Enghien.' "(Signed) RÉAL." The last wishes of the unfortunate duke were not carried out. The packet was never forwarded to his wife. She may have received the letter, but the ring, the lock of hair, and some fifteen epistles, written in German, from the princess to the duke, and found upon him after his death, remained, without the duke's letter, in the Archives of the Prefecture of Police. A fortnight after the duke's execution, his widow addressed from Ettenheim, on the 16th of July, 1804, the following letter to the Countess d'Ecquevilly:-- "Since I still exist, dear Countess, it is certain that grief does not kill. Great God! for what frightful calamity was I reserved? In the most cruel torments, the most painful anxiety, never once did the horrible fear present itself to my mind that they might take his life. But, alas! it is only too true that the unhappy man has been made their victim: that this unjust sentence, this atrocious sentence, to which my whole being refused to lend credence, was pronounced and thereupon executed. I have not the courage to enter into details of this frightful event; but there is not one of them which is not heartrending, not one that would not paralyze with terror--I do not say every kind-hearted person, but anyone who has not lost all feeling of humanity. Alone, without support, without succour, without defence, oppressed with anxiety, worn out with fatigue, denied one moment of the repose demanded by Nature after his painful journey, he heard his death-sentence hurriedly pronounced, during which the unhappy man sank four times into unconsciousness. What barbarity! Great God! And when the end came he was abandoned on all sides, without sympathy or consolation, without one affectionate hand to wipe away his tears or close his eyelids. "Ah! I have not the cruel reproach to make to myself of not having done everything to follow him. Heaven knows that I would have risked my life with joy, I do not say to save him, but to soften the last moments of his life. Alas! they envied me this sad delight. Prayers, entreaties, were all in vain; I could not share his fate. They preferred to leave me to this wretched existence, condemned to eternal regret, eternal sorrow." Princess Charlotte died at Paris in 1841; and quite recently a note on the subject of her last wishes appeared in the Paris _Intermédiaire_, the French equivalent of our _Notes and Queries_. It was as follows:--"After the death of the Princess Charlotte, there was found among her papers a sealed packet, of which the superscription directed that it should be opened by the President of the Tribunal--at that time M. de Balli. This magistrate opened the packet and examined its contents. He found the whole correspondence of Bonaparte's victim with 'his friend,' as the worthy magistrate put it: _avec son amie_. The president gave the packet to the family notary after re-closing it, saying that the letters were very touching, very interesting, but that they must be burnt; which was in fact done." [Illustration: ADRIENNE LECOUVREUR. (_From the Bust by Courtet in the Comédie Française._)] The marriage of the Duke d'Enghien to the Princess de Rohan had been informal; the informality consisting solely in its having been celebrated without some necessary sanction: probably that of the king, Louis XVI. The ceremony was performed by Cardinal de Rohan, the bride's uncle; and it is evident from her first letters that she was regarded by her nearest friends and relatives as the duke's lawful wife. Let us now, passing from political to private executions, say a few words about some of the famous duels of which Vincennes, or rather the wood of Vincennes, has from time to time been the scene. Duels in France are generally fought with swords; and as it depends upon the combatants to strike or not to strike at a mortal part, a hostile meeting is by no means always attended with serious consequences. It is a mistake, however, to assume, as Englishmen frequently do, that a duel in France fought for grave reasons is not itself a grave affair. Plenty of sword duels have placed the worsted combatant in imminent danger of his life; though it is undeniable that the pistol, being a more hazardous weapon, proves, as a rule, deadlier than the sword. When M. Paolo Fiorentino, blackballed at the Society of Men of Letters, on the ground that he had accepted bribes, undertook to fight every member of the association, beginning with M. Amédée Achard, whose name, thanks to its two A's, headed the alphabetical list, the Italian critic and bravo ran his first opponent through the body, and all but killed him. M. Henri de Pène received like treatment at the hands of an officer by reason of his having described the unseemly conduct of officers generally, as shown at a ball of which the École Militaire was the scene. Both Achard and Pène, however, recovered. Not so the unfortunate Armand Carrel, one of the boldest and most brilliant writers that the Republican Press of France possessed. Armand Carrel and his antagonist, Émile de Girardin, another famous journalist of Louis Philippe's reign, fought with pistols in that Bois de Vincennes whose name at once suggests crossed rapiers or whizzing bullets. M. de Girardin was the inventor of the cheap press, not only in France, but in Europe. To reduce the price of the newspaper, and thus increase the number of subscribers, while covering any possible loss on the sale by the enlarged revenue from advertisements, which would flow in more and more rapidly as the circulation widened: such was Girardin's plan. According, however, to his enemies, he proposed to "enlarge the portion hitherto allotted in newspapers to mendacious announcements to the self-commendations of quackery and imposture, at the sacrifice of space which should be devoted to philosophy, history, literature, the arts, and whatever else elevates or delights the mind of man." The proposed change was really one which Democrats and Republicans should have hailed with delight; for it promised to extend a knowledge of public affairs to readers who had hitherto been prevented from becoming acquainted with them by the high price of the newspapers, which, apart from their own articles on political affairs, published long accounts of the debates in the Chamber. M. de Girardin, however, found his innovation attacked as the device of a charlatan. He was accused of converting journalism into the most sordid of trades: of making it "a speaking-trumpet of the money-grabber and the speculator." Some of M. de Girardin's opponents went so far as to hint that he was not working in good faith, and that the losses to which the diminution of price must expose his journal were to be made good by a secret subsidy. Armand Carrel, as editor of the _National_, entered into the quarrel, and took part against Girardin, who, on his side, wrote a bitter attack upon Carrel. No sooner had Carrel read the scathing article than he called upon its author, demanding either retractation or personal satisfaction. He entered Girardin's room, accompanied by M. Adolphe Thibaudeau, holding open in his hand the journal which contained the offensive lines. Girardin asked Carrel to wait until he also could have a friend present. M. Lautour-Mézeray was sent for; but pending that gentleman's arrival some sharp words were interchanged. Armand Carrel conceived that he was justified in regarding the course adopted by M. de Girardin as indicating an intention to bring the matter to a duel, and on his suggesting as much, M. de Girardin replied, "A duel with such a man as you, sir, would be quite a _bonne fortune_." "Sir," replied Carrel, "I can never regard a duel as a _bonne fortune_." A few moments afterwards M. Lautour-Mézeray arrived. His presence served to give the discussion a more conciliatory tone, and it was ultimately agreed that a few words of explanation should be published in both journals. On M. de Girardin's proposing to draw up the note at once, "You may rely upon me, sir," said Armand Carrel, with dignity. The quarrel seemed almost at an end; but an incident reanimated it. M. de Girardin required that the publication of the note should take place simultaneously in the two journals. Carrel, on the contrary, held that it ought to appear first in the _Presse_, Girardin's paper; but he experienced on this point the most determined resistance. It was then that, carried away with indignation, wounded to the quick, utterly unable to adhere any longer to the moderation which, by a determined effort, he had hitherto enforced upon himself, Carrel rose and exclaimed, "I am the offended person; I choose the pistol!" It was early on the morning of Friday, July 22, 1836, that Armand Carrel and M. de Girardin found themselves face to face in the Bois de Vincennes. While the pistols were being loaded, Carrel said to M. de Girardin, "Should chance be against me and you should afterwards write my life, you will, in all honour, adhere strictly and simply to the facts?" "Rest assured," replied his adversary. The seconds had measured a distance of forty paces; the combatants were to advance within twenty of each other. Armand Carrel immediately took his place and advanced, presenting, despite the urgent entreaties of M. Ambert that he would show less front, the whole breadth of his person to his adversary's aim. M. de Girardin having also advanced some paces, both parties fired nearly at the same instant, and both fell wounded, the one in the leg, the other in the groin. "I saw him," wrote Louis Blanc some time afterwards, "as he lay; his pale features expressing passion in repose. His attitude was firm, inflexible, martial, like that of a soldier who slumbers on the eve of battle." M. de Girardin was profoundly grieved at the result of the duel, and he made a vow never to fight again. Many years afterwards, under the Republic of 1848, he visited the grave of the man he had killed, to express his regret and ask for pardon in the name of the form of Government to which he had now become a convert, and which Carrel had always placed above every other. The duelling chronicles of the Bois de Vincennes would lead us far away from the Paris of to-day. It may be mentioned, however, that in this wood Alexandre Dumas the elder fought his famous duel with a _collaborateur_, who claimed to have written the whole of the _Tour de Nesle_ and who, undoubtedly, supplied to the skilful dramatist the framework of the piece. Dumas was in all truth a skilful dramatist, though one may hesitate to give him the title of dramatic poet, which he loved to claim. "What are you?" said the judge of the Rouen Tribunal to the author of so many clever pieces, who had to give evidence in a certain case. "If I were not in the city of Corneille," answered Alexander the Great, "I should call myself a dramatic poet." "There are degrees in everything," replied the judge. Alexandre Dumas was, all the same, a great inventor, and he possessed an extraordinary talent for putting dramatic things into shape. When, therefore, the future editor of the _Courier des États-Unis_ claimed to have written all that was important in the _Tour de Nesle_, he doubtless declared what from a literary point of view was false. Dumas not only rejected his contention, but declined to allow his own name to appear in the bill side by side with that of his _collaborateur_. Hence angry words and a duel: once more a serious one, and with pistols, not swords. With a calm desire to kill his man, of which, were he not his own accuser, one would refuse to suspect him, Dumas tells us, in his _Memoirs_, how, when he appeared on the ground, he examined his adversary's costume, and, while thinking it excellent as a "make-up," was sorry to find that it offered no salient mark for a pistol-shot. M. Gaillardet was dressed entirely in black; his trousers, his buttoned-up coat, his cravat were all as inky as Hamlet's cloak, and according to the Parisian fashion of the time, he wore no shirt-collar. "Impossible to see the man," said Dumas to himself; "there is no point about him to aim at." He at the same time made a mental note of the costume, which he afterwards reproduced in the duel scene of the "Corsican Brothers." At last he noticed a little speck of white in his adversary's ear: simply a small piece of cotton-wool. "I will hit him in the ear," said Dumas to himself; and on his confiding the amiable intention to one of his seconds, the latter promised to watch carefully the effect of the shot, inasmuch as he was anxious to see whether a man hit with a bullet through the head turned round a little before falling or fell straight to the ground. Dumas's pistol, however, missed fire. The delightful experiment contemplated could not, therefore, be tried; and the encounter was bloodless. * * * * * At Vincennes was confined for a few days, just before his expulsion from France, the Young Pretender, or "Charles Edward," as the French called him. The Duke de Biron had been ordered to see to his arrest; and one evening when it was known that he intended to visit the Opera, Biron surrounded the building with twelve hundred guards as soon as the prince had entered it. He was arrested, taken to Vincennes, and kept there four days; then to be liberated and expelled from France, in accordance with the treaty of 1748, so humiliating to the French arms. The servants of the Young Pretender, and with them one of the retinue of the Princess de Talmont, whose antiquated charms had detained him at Paris, were conveyed to the Bastille; upon which the princess wrote the following letter to M. de Maurepas, the minister: "The king, sir, has just covered himself with immortal glory by arresting Prince Edward. I have no doubt but that his Majesty will order a _Te Deum_ to be sung to thank God for so brilliant a victory. But as Placide, my lacquey, taken captive in this memorable expedition, can add nothing to his Majesty's laurels, I beg you to send him back to me." "The only Englishman the regiment of French guards has taken throughout the war!" exclaimed the Princess de Conti, when she heard of the arrest. "Besides the Bastille and the Castle of Vincennes, which are the privileged places of confinement for State prisoners, there are others," says an old chronicler, "which may be called the last strongholds of tyranny. The minister by his private _lettre de cachet_ sends an objectionable individual to Bicêtre or Charenton. The latter place, indeed, is for lunatics; but a minister who deprives a citizen of his liberty because he so wills it may make him pass for what he pleases; and if the person taken up is not at that time, he will in a few months be, entirely out of his senses, so that at worst it is only a kind of ministerial anticipation. Upon any complaint laid by the parents or other relations, a young man is sent to St.-Lazare, where sometimes he will remain till the death of the complainants; and Heaven knows how fervently this is prayed for by the captive!" Under the reign of Charles VII. there stood in the Wood of Vincennes a castle which the King named Château de Beauté, and presented to Agnes Sorel. Of this abode the royal favourite duly took possession. Charles was by no means popular with his subjects, whom he taxed severely; and they were scandalised by the way in which Agnes Sorel squandered money, by her undisguised relations with the king, and by the kindness with which she was apparently treated even by the queen. Far, then, from rendering honours to "the beautiful Agnes," the Parisians murmured at her prodigality and arrogance; and the favourite, indignant to find herself so ill received in Paris, departed, saying that the Parisians were churls, and that if she had suspected they would render her such insufficient honour she would never have set foot in their city: "which," says a contemporary writer, "would have been a pity, but not a great one." [Illustration: A DUEL IN THE BOIS DE BOULOGNE.] After saying so much against Agnes Sorel, it is only fair to add that, according to many historians, it was she who roused Charles VII. from his habitual lethargy, and inspired him with the idea of driving the English out of France. * * * * * Vincennes is a military station, where a considerable body of troops is maintained. Hence, as already mentioned, the once famous Chasseurs derived their name. Each division has now its own battalion of Chasseurs. It may be added that special corps of infantry, such as Chasseurs de Vincennes, Zouaves, Turcos, together with the Chasseurs d'Afrique and other kinds of ornamental cavalry, have been abolished: to the detriment of the picturesqueness, if not the practical efficiency, of the French army. [Illustration: THE SEINE, FROM NOTRE-DAME.] The infantry regiments are all armed and dressed absolutely alike, with the exception of the battalions of "chasseurs" (corresponding to the "schützen" battalions of the German Army), whose tunics are of a lighter blue than those of the line regiments. The Germans, by the way, have only one battalion of sharpshooters to each army corps, whereas the French have two, one to each division. As the French are adopting as much as possible the principle of uniformity in their army, it seems strange that they should have made any distinction between chasseurs and infantry of the line; that, in short, they should have retained chasseurs in their army at all. Formerly sharp-shooters carried rifles and were supposed to be particularly good shots; whereas infantry of the line were armed with smooth-bore muskets, and if they could pull the trigger, could certainly not aim straight. Now every infantry soldier is supposed, more or less correctly, to be a good marksman; and linesmen and chasseurs are armed alike. [Illustration: RECRUITS.] Lancers exist no more; and the French cavalry, but for differences of uniform, would all be of the same medium pattern, neither "light" nor "heavy," but presumably fit for duties of all kinds. Some cavalry regiments are uniformed as dragoons, some as chasseurs, some as hussars; and every army corps has attached to it, or rather included in its integral force, four cavalry regiments of one of these three descriptions. The Recruitment Bill of 1872 and the Organisation Bill of 1873 form a net which, with the additions since made to them, takes at one sweep everybody whom the military authorities can possibly want. Even seminarists and students of theology are no longer exempted. Postmen, policemen of all kinds, workmen in Government factories, students of a certain age in Government schools and in all educational establishments private or public, members of the custom house and octroi service, firemen, Government engineers, clerks and workmen in the Department of Woods, Bridges, and Mines, scavengers, lighthouse-keepers, coast-guardsmen, engine-drivers, stokers, guards, pointsmen, station-masters, signalmen and clerks of the railway service, all persons employed in the telegraph service, all seamen not already on the lists of the navy, and generally all members of bodies having some recognised constitution in time of peace, may in time of war be formed into special corps in order to serve either with the active army or with the "territorial army"--as the French equivalent to the German Landwehr is called. "The formation of these special corps," says the text of the Law on the General Organisation of the French Army, "is authorised by decree. They are subject to all the obligations of military service, enjoy all the rights of belligerents, and are bound by the rules of the law of nations." For private gentlemen going out in plain clothes to shoot at invaders from behind hedges no provision is made; and such persons, whether called "francs-tireurs" or by any other name, would, if caught by the enemy, evidently be left to their fate. The franc-tireur, in fact, though still popular with the sort of people who delight in stories of brigands and highwaymen, is not looked back to with admiration even by his own Government. "These articles," says the report on the Law of Military Organisation in reference to the clause above cited, "are introduced in order to prevent the return of such unhappy misunderstandings as occurred in the last war, during which it is said that National Guards and francs-tireurs were shot by the enemy because our military laws had not given them the rights of belligerents." The rules under which these bodies of armed civilians, temporarily endowed with the military character, may be organised are strictly defined, so that the country may at no future time be troubled by "the formation of bands of foreign adventurers who have during all the worst epochs of our history fallen upon France, and, under pretext of defending her, have often subjected her to devastation and pillage." This is, of course, meant for the bands of Garibaldians. They were, nevertheless, regularly organised under officers bearing commissions from the Minister of War, and, apart from the question of "devastation and pillage," were the only bodies of partisans who showed any aptitude for guerilla warfare. [Illustration] CHAPTER VIII. THE BOULEVARDS (_continued_). Hôtel Carnavalet.--Hôtel Lamoignon.--Place Royale.--Boulevard du Temple.--The Temple.--Louis XVII.--The Theatres.--Astley's Circus.--Attempted Assassination of Louis Philippe.--Trial of Fieschi.--The Café Turc.--The Cafés.-The Folies Dramatiques.--Louis XVI. and the Opera.--Murder of the Duke of Berri. Let us return now from Vincennes to the Place de la Bastille and the Boulevard Beaumarchais. Perhaps the most interesting house on this boulevard is number twenty-three, which was built by Mansard, the famous architect, for his own occupation. One set of rooms in the house was occupied by the celebrated Ninon de Lenclos, who died there October 17, 1703, at the age of eighty-nine, preserving, according to tradition, her remarkable beauty to the very last. Here Voltaire, then in his twelfth year, was presented to her; nor did she forget to assign to him in her will 2,000 francs for the purchase of books. Next door to the house of Mansard and Ninon de Lenclos is the little Beaumarchais theatre, which, constructed in forty-three days, was opened on the 3rd of December, 1835, under the style of Théâtre de la Porte St.-Antoine. In 1842 it was re-named Théâtre Beaumarchais. Then at different periods it bore the titles of Opéra Bouffe Français, and Fantaisies Parisiennes, until at length, in 1888, when it was entirely rebuilt, it became once more the Théâtre Beaumarchais. The Government of 1830 did right in giving the name of Beaumarchais to the boulevard on which he at one time lived, and where he possessed a certain amount of property. During the stormy years that immediately preceded the Revolution of 1789 Beaumarchais was an important figure; and the effect of the "Marriage of Figaro" on the public mind was in a good measure to prepare it for the general overthrow then imminent. The King, the Queen, the Ministers, were all, in the first instance, afraid of the "Marriage of Figaro"; and we have seen that to get it produced Beaumarchais displayed as much diplomacy and energy as would suffice in the present day to upset a Cabinet. While living at his mansion near the Porte St.-Antoine, Beaumarchais built close at hand the Théâtre du Marais, where, after letting it to a manager, he brought out, in 1792, his "Mère Coupable"--the third part of his Figaro Trilogy, in which the Count and Countess Almaviva, Figaro and Susannah, are shown in their old age. The "guilty mother" is the Countess herself; the charming and, as one had hoped, innocent Rosina of the "Barber of Seville." The male offender is Chérubin, better known under his operatic name of Cherubino, who after saying in the French comedy, with a mixture of timidity and audacity, "Si j'osais oser!" ends by daring too much. "La Mère Coupable" obtained but little success, and deserved none. Closed by Imperial order in 1807, the Théâtre du Marais existed only for fifteen years. It must not be confounded with the ancient theatre of the same name where in 1636 Corneille produced his famous tragedy "Le Cid." The Marais or marsh, whose name recalls the early history of Paris, when Lutetia was defended by marshes as by a broad impassable moat, has long been known as the favourite abode of small pensioners and fundholders, who in this remote quarter found food and shelter at inexpensive rates. The Marais, however, has had, like most other parts of Paris, its illustrious residents; and when about the middle of the eighteenth century the immortal actress Mlle. Clairon lived there she was the third famous inmate of the tenement in which she had taken up her abode. "I was told of a small house in the Rue du Marais," she writes in her memoirs, "which I could have for two hundred francs, where Racine was said to have lived forty years with his family. I was informed that it was there he had composed his imperishable works and there that he died; and that afterwards it had been occupied by the tender Lecouvreur, who had ended her days in it. 'The walls of the house,' I reflected, 'will be alone sufficient to make me feel the sublimity of the author and develop the talents of the actress. In this sanctuary then I will live and die!'" Close to the Rue du Marais, in the Rue de Sévigné, stands the Musée Carnavalet, established in the former Hôtel Carnavalet, where Mme. de Sévigné, author of the famous Letters, lived from 1677 to 1698. It was restored in 1867 by Baron Haussmann, who converted it into a museum for preserving various monuments, statues, inscriptions, tombstones, ornaments, and objects of various kinds, proceeding from the wholesale demolition to which sundry streets and even whole quarters of Paris were at that time being subjected, under the orders of Baron Haussmann himself in his capacity of Prefect of the Seine. Another remarkable mansion in the same street is the Hôtel Lamoignon, now occupied by different manufacturers, especially of chemical products, but which, in its earliest days, had highly aristocratic and even royal occupants. Begun by Diana of France, legitimatised daughter of Henri II., the Hôtel Lamoignon was bought and finished in 1581 for Charles de Valois, Duke of Angoulême, natural son of Charles IX., who, according to Tallemant des Réaux, would have been "the best fellow in the world if he could only have got rid of his swindling propensities." When his servants asked him for money, he would reply to them: "My house has three outlets into the street; take whichever of them you like best." The architecture of the Hôtel Lamoignon is that of an ancient fortress, though its walls and façades are ornamented with crescents, hunting horns, and the heads of stags and dogs; the whole in allusion to the Diana for whom the building was originally planned. [Illustration: HÔTEL CARNAVALET.] Having once left the upper boulevard to enter the adjacent Marais, we cannot but go on towards the Place des Vosges, better known as the Place Royale, where, in 1559, Henri II. took a fancy one day for trying his powers at tilting against Montgomery, captain in the Scotch Guard; when the shock was so violent that a splinter from Montgomery's lance penetrated the king's eye through the broken visor of his helmet. The king was carried to the Hôtel des Tournelles, where, without having regained consciousness, he died on the 15th of July, 1559. The hotel or palace where the king breathed his last was thenceforth abandoned as a fatal and accursed place. In the course of four years it fell into a ruinous condition, and Charles IX. ordered it to be pulled down. The park belonging to the old palace was turned into a horse market, which was the scene in 1578 of the famous encounter between the favourite courtiers of Henri III. known as the Mignons and the partisans of the Duke of Guise. Four combatants, Maugiron, Schomberg, Riberac, and Quélus, lost their lives in this affair. The horse market, or Place Royale as it afterwards became, witnessed many sanguinary duels, until at last Richelieu determined to put an end to a fashion which was depriving France of some of her bravest men. With this view he cut off the head of Montmorency-Bouteville and of Count des Chapelles, his second in the duel which cost Bussy d'Amboise his life. In 1613 the Cardinal erected in the centre of the Place Royale an equestrian statue of his royal master Louis XIII. The Place Royale was at that time the favourite quarter of the French nobility, and the rendezvous of all that was witty, gallant, and distinguished in France. [Illustration: HÔTEL LAMOIGNON.] The house number six on the Place Royale is particularly interesting as having been inhabited in Richelieu's time by the brilliant and too celebrated Marion de Lorme, and two centuries later by Victor Hugo, who, in the very room that Marion de Lorme had occupied, wrote, at the age of twenty-five, the splendid tragedy of which she is the heroine. The statue of Louis XIII. which Richelieu had raised was overturned and broken to pieces in 1792, when the most critical period of the Revolution was at hand. It was replaced after the Restoration, under the reign of Charles X., by the present statue. The Boulevard du Temple owes its name to a building which was first occupied by the Order of Templars, and which, towards the close of the last century, enjoyed a sad celebrity as the prison where Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, and the young Dauphin were confined. No less than forty-eight works are said to have been written on the imprisonment of Louis XVII., and matters connected with it, including the histories of some dozen "claimants," asserting, in his name, their right to the French throne. Most of these pretenders, with Naundorff--who had been the Dauphin's valet in the Temple--prominent among them, had no difficulty in finding enthusiasts and dupes to further their designs; and even in France one of them caused himself to be described on his tombstone as "Louis de France." The Emperor Napoleon III. took, however, the liberty of ordering the inscription to be effaced. Soon after the death of the Count de Chambord, M. de Chantelauze published in the _Illustration_ an account of Louis XVII.'s life in the Temple, and of his last illness, death, and post-mortem examination, together with certificates which leave no doubt as to the young prince having really died in his prison. Simon, the gaoler, according to M. de Chantelauze's view, was, like so many other bad men, not wholly bad; while his wife was for the most part good, the appearance of badness or roughness which she manifested when the child confided to her care was visited by members of the Commune being assumed in order to inspire her employers with confidence. The task assigned to Simon was not, as has often been supposed, to reduce the young prince, by ill-treatment, to such a point that he would at last be attacked by illness and carried off, but simply to get from him evidence against his mother, the Queen, with respect to her complicity in the Varennes plot, and the various plans formed for effecting the escape of the child. The evidence having been obtained by the simple process of first putting it into the child's mouth, and afterwards taking it out, the special work assigned to the Simons was at an end, and the young prince experienced from them nothing but kindness. If he ultimately fell ill and died, his confinement and the bad air he breathed may well have been the cause. The life of Louis XVII., from the departure of the Simons until his death, can be made out continuously; and the evidence of his having died in the Temple is quite conclusive. Nevertheless, Louis XVIII., in view of the pretension constantly springing up, instituted for his own satisfaction an inquiry into the whole matter; and the proofs adduced in the course of it as to the identity of the "child in the Temple" with the son of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette seem decisive. M. Nauroy, however, author of "Les Secrets des Bourbons," is convinced that the true Louis XVII. was carried out of the Temple in a bundle of linen, and that by like means the child who ultimately died there was substituted for him. M. Nauroy finds in support of his belief abundant evidence, positive and negative, which he derives from a variety of sources, and sometimes discovers in the most unexpected places. The appearance of a long succession of impostors claiming to be Louis XVII. proves nothing, and will pass for what it is worth in the native land of Arthur Orton. It is remarkable, however, that Royalists and Republicans, including eminent personages on both sides, have agreed in maintaining that the child who died in the Temple was not Louis XVII. Louis Blanc favours this view in his "History of the Revolution." Nor does he do so without taking a calm, judicial survey of all the evidence in the case. He may consciously or unconsciously have been influenced by party spirit; and the moral he draws from the whole matter is that there is danger in the principle of "divine right" when, through a variety of accidents, it may be impossible to show on whom this questionable right has devolved. Those Royalists who deny that Louis XVII. died in the Temple, explain the announcement of his death and the proclamation of Louis XVIII. in the Royalist camp, first, by the inconvenience of bringing forward as King of France a child of tender years; secondly, by the difficulty of producing this child; and, thirdly, by the danger, when Louis XVIII. had once gained acceptance with the party, of dividing it by a revelation of the fact that his nephew, son of Louis XVI., was still alive. M. Nauroy, as already hinted, sees proofs of his favourite theory where no one else would perceive them. When, for instance, the Duke of Berri, dying from the stroke of an assassin, had some final words to whisper to his brother, the Duke of Angoulême--"What," asks M. Nauroy, "could this have been but the truth in regard to Louis XVII.?" When, again, one of the doctors who made the post-mortem examination of the supposed Louis XVII. offered to Louis XVIII. the heart which he had concealed and preserved, and the king declined the present--"Why," asks M. Nauroy, "should he have accepted the heart which he knew was not that of Louis XVII., but that of the child by whom the young prince was replaced in his prison?" Meanwhile, that some of the great Royalist families believed Louis XVII. to have been replaced in the Temple by another child and himself carried to La Vendée is beyond doubt; and a letter on the subject, addressed, December 4, 1838, to the _Times_, shows that this view of the matter was held by at least a section (probably a very small one) of the Royalist party. On January 19th the cobbler Simon ceased to do duty as gaoler. At that time there were, as M. Nauroy sets forth, only four persons in the Temple--the Dauphin, Simon, his wife, and the Princess Elizabeth, afterwards Duchess of Angoulême. Simon died on the scaffold six months afterwards, on the 28th of July. The Princess Elizabeth, confined in a room apart from her brother, never saw him again, and consequently knew nothing of him except by hearsay. From January 19th to July 28th there was no warder at the Temple. The child was watched by Commissaries, who were relieved from day to day, and of whom not one could establish his identity. When regular gaolers were appointed, not one of them had ever seen the Dauphin. If, then, after the departure of Simon, another child could have been substituted for Louis XVII., there was no one to notice the change when it had once been accomplished. The Dauphin was in perfect health at the time when Simon and his wife left him. But the child in the Temple fell ill immediately afterwards; and on the 6th of May, 1795, Dr. Desault, summoned to attend the "Dauphin," declared his little patient to be some other child. He had visited the Dauphin's brother in 1789, and on that occasion had seen the Dauphin himself at the Tuileries. If, as M. Nauroy asserts, Dr. Desault drew up a report on the subject, that report has disappeared. Indirect evidence, however, as to Dr. Desault's conviction that the child he attended in the Temple could not be the Dauphin, was given fifty years afterwards in a letter written and signed by the widow of P. A. Thouvenin, Dr. Desault's nephew, who claimed to remember what his uncle had frequently said on the subject. [Illustration: STATUE OF LOUIS XIII. IN THE PLACE DES VOSGES.] Whether or not Louis XVII. escaped to La Vendée to be cherished by the Vendean chiefs even when, in the Royalist army which was invading France from Germany, Louis XVIII. had been proclaimed, he is now in any case no more. The eighteenth Louis was ten years old when the child of the Temple is supposed to have died in prison; and according to the most convinced, not to say credulous, of those writers who maintain that Louis XVII. escaped, to live for years afterwards, he breathed his last in 1872 at Saveney (Loire Inférieure), under the name of Laroche, at the age of eighty-seven. The numerous impostors who with more or less success personated the unhappy prince had died much earlier. But the descendants of Naundorff, his valet, the most famous of all these pretenders, claim still to be of the blood royal, and on the occasion of the Count de Chambord's death they displayed a proud consciousness of their rights by publishing somewhere in Holland a manifesto asserting gravely the title of the chief of the family to the throne of France. [Illustration: THE PLACE DES VOSGES, FORMERLY PLACE ROYALE.] Another prisoner in the Temple of whom mention must be made is Sir Sidney Smith, whose friends were making every effort for his liberation, when a Royalist officer in the French army, named Boisgerard (who under the Revolution had quitted military life to become ballet-master at the Opera), effected his escape. With this view he had obtained an impression of the seal of the Directorial Government, which he affixed to an order, forged by his own hand, for the delivery of Sir Sidney Smith into his care. Accompanied by a friend, disguised, like himself, in the uniform of an officer of the revolutionary army, he did not scruple personally to present the fictitious document to the keeper of the Temple, who, opening a small closet, took thence some original document, with the writing and seal of which he carefully compared the forged order. Desiring the adventurers to wait a few minutes, he then withdrew and locked the door after him. Giving themselves up for lost, the confederates determined to resist, sword in hand, any attempt made to secure them. Highly interesting is Boisgerard's own description of the period of horrible suspense he now passed through. Under the dread that each successive moment might be attended by a discovery involving the safety of his life, the acuteness of his organs of sense was heightened to painfulness; the least noise thrilled through his brain, and the gloomy apartment in which he sat seemed filled with strange images. Both he and his companion, however, retained self-possession, and after the lapse of a few minutes their anxiety was terminated by the re-appearance of the gaoler, with his captive, who was delivered to Boisgerard. But here a new and unexpected difficulty occurred. Sir Sidney Smith, not knowing Boisgerard, refused for some time to quit the prison; and considerable address was required on the part of his deliverers to overcome his scruples. At last the precincts of the Temple were cleared. The fugitives rode a short distance in a fiacre, then walked, then entered another carriage, and in this way so successfully baffled pursuit that they ultimately got to Havre, where Sir Sidney was put on board an English vessel. Boisgerard, on his return to Paris, was a thousand times in dread of detection and had a succession of narrow escapes until his visit to England, which took place after the peace of Amiens. A pension had been granted to Sir Sidney Smith by the English Government for his meritorious services; and on Boisgerard's arrival here a reward of a similar nature was bestowed on him through the influence of Sir Sidney, who took every opportunity of testifying his gratitude. [Illustration: THE ARCADE IN THE PLACE DES VOSGES.] If the prison of the unfortunate king and queen who were to suffer for the sins of their predecessors was at the eastern end of the line of boulevards, as marked by the Boulevard du Temple, their place of execution on the Place Louis XV., now known as Place de la Concorde, was at the western extremity, which in due time we shall explore. Meanwhile from one end of the boulevards to the other, from the tiny Théâtre Beaumarchais to the magnificent Opéra, there is a long series of playhouses. Close to the Beaumarchais Theatre stands the Cirque d'Hiver, opened in 1852 under the title of Cirque Napoléon, which seats 3,800 persons. It occupies the site of the first circus that was ever established in Paris. In 1785 the Astleys, father and son, came to Paris and there opened a circus exactly like the one they had just founded in London. Under their direction this theatre, situated at number twenty-four Rue du Faubourg du Temple, and measuring twenty metres in diameter, was lighted by 2,000 lamps and furnished with two rows of boxes. The price of the seats varied from twelve sous to three francs. Astley junior is said to have possessed a remarkably fine figure; and, in the words of a contemporary writer, "his beauty was sculptural." Bachaumont, in his memoirs of the time, speaks of the numerous passions inspired by the young equestrian in too susceptible feminine hearts. The tricks of the circus, now so familiar, that in England, at least, no one cares to see them, were at that time new, and the sight of a man attitudinising on the back of a horse at full gallop excited the greatest wonder. Astley's Circus in Paris possessed, as so many operatic theatres have done, a sort of international character. Engagements were made for it by diplomatists abroad. It can be shown, indeed, that diplomatists have long and almost from time immemorial been in the habit of doing agency work for artists and managers of good position. Operatic celebrities have been particularly favoured in this respect. A great Minister of State, Cardinal Mazarin, introduced, or aided powerfully in introducing, opera into France. The engagement of Cambert as director of music at the Court of Charles II. was effected by diplomatic means. Gluck, more than a century later, was induced to visit Paris through the representations of a secretary of the French Embassy at Vienna--that M. du Rollet who arranged for Gluck, on the basis of Racine's _Iphigénie_, the libretto of _Iphigénie en Aulide_; and Piccini, at the instigation of Madame du Barry, was secured at Paris as opposition composer through the instrumentality of Baron de Breteuil, French Ambassador at Rome, working in co-operation with the Marquis Carraccioli, Neapolitan Ambassador at Paris. The great Montesquieu, moreover, when he was in England, had not thought it unbecoming to interest himself in the welfare of the French artists who occasionally arrived in England with recommendations addressed to him. Nor did the illustrious Locke occupy himself so exclusively with the "human understanding" as to have no time to bestow on the material interests of foreign _danseuses_. Locke was not indeed one of those practically Epicurean philosophers of whom M. Arsène Houssaye discourses so agreeably in his "Philosophes et Comédiennes." He had no general taste either for the public performances or for the private society of _ballerines_; but a certain Mlle. Subligny having come to him with a letter of introduction from the Abbé Dubois, he is known to have made himself useful, and therefore, no doubt, agreeable, to her during her stay in England. Locke, it is true, was a metaphysician, and had nothing whatever to do with diplomacy. But his friend Montesquieu was a personage of political importance, and in his anxiety to assist French artists in London he even went so far as to bring to their performances as many of the English nobility as were willing to attend. About the same time, at the suggestion of the Regent of Orleans, a Minister of State, M. de Maurepas, made overtures to Handel concerning a series of representations which it was proposed that his celebrated company should give at the Académie Royale of Paris. M. de Maurepas wished, like Mr. Washburne at a later day, to secure for Paris the best available talent; and he looked to Handel's opera-house for singers, as Mr. Washburne looked to the circuses of the United States for "bare-back riders." On this subject Ebers's "Seven Years of the King's Theatre" shows that immediately after the peace of 1815 all the offers of engagements to artists of the Paris opera were made through the medium of the English Embassy to the Court of France, or by special missions with which diplomatists of distinction were glad to be entrusted. The committee of noblemen who aided Ebers in his management treated, through the English Ambassador at Paris, with the Director of the Academy, or with the Minister of Fine Arts; though, as a matter of fact, they failed to secure by these elaborate means the services of artists who, in the present day, would be engaged through an exchange of telegrams. The outbreak of the Revolution was the signal for the Astleys and their company to recross the Channel, and the Astley Circus remained unoccupied until 1791. Then a company calling themselves "The Comedians without a Title" (_Les Comédiens sans titre_) opened it as a theatre on Thursday, March 20th, and closed it on the 23rd. Finally Franconi took it over, and achieved a triumphal success, his management being destined to last many years. In 1801 he moved his enterprise to the Garden of the Capucines, which had become a public promenade in the heart of Paris, subsequently transferring it to the theatre in the Rue du Mont-Thabor. In 1819 he returned with his company to the circus of the Faubourg du Temple, reconstructed by the architect Dubois, but doomed, on the night of March 15th, 1826, to be burnt to the ground. The destruction of the circus by fire excited much sympathy. Public subscriptions were opened, and public representations given for the benefit of the sufferers, the result being so satisfactory that the theatre was at once reconstructed, this time on the Boulevard du Temple, with a magnificent façade, and Franconi once more threw open his doors, about a year after the fire, on the 31st of March, 1827. The stage, which in the old building was an accessory, became in the new one of the first importance. It was now possible to perform military manoeuvres on a large scale. At the restored circus was represented during the last years of the reign of Charles X. the _Siege of Saragossa_; and under Louis Philippe a number of military pieces founded on incidents in the history of the Republic and the Empire. Every Government in France since the first Napoleon has had victories of its own, important or unimportant, to celebrate. The martial triumphs of Louis XIV. seem, by common consent, to have been forgotten, either because French history dates for the immense majority of the population from the time of the Revolution, or because the battles won under the old Monarchy are now too remote to stir the national pride. The reign of Napoleon I., however, was a series of brilliant victories. Under the Restoration a campaign was undertaken in Spain, the incidents of which so lent themselves to dramatic treatment that playwrights reproduced them on the stage and in the arena of the circus. The reign of Louis Philippe, too, had its military glories; first in Belgium, in connection with the War of Independence undertaken in 1830 by the Belgians, with the assistance of France and England, against the Dutch. It was in Africa, however, and in the neighbourhood of Algiers, that Louis Philippe's army played for many years so active a part. The war against the Dey of Algiers was begun by Charles X., whose consul had been insulted by that potentate; Louis Philippe continued it, chiefly, it was thought, in order to keep open for discontented spirits a field of activity at a safe distance from France. Many restless adventurers sought distinction and found it in the Algerian campaigns; and Algeria was the principal training-ground for those generals who were afterwards to aid Prince Louis Napoleon in executing his _coup d'État_. It was under Louis Philippe that those picturesque troops, the Chasseurs d'Orléans and Chasseurs d'Afrique, were created, not to mention the Zouaves and the Spahis. According to the criticisms of German officers, the laxity of discipline in the Algerian campaigns had a considerable effect in producing, or at least hastening, the long series of military defeats to which France was subjected in the war of 1870. The news of victories gained in Africa was, all the same, constantly reaching France; and each successive triumph was made the subject of a new dramatic spectacle at the circus or hippodrome. Abd-el-Kader became a familiar theatrical figure, and his famous interview with General Bugeaud was represented in more than one equestrian piece. Abd-el-Kader had by the most violent means been prevailed upon to make peace; and an interview was arranged at which the Arab chief and Bugeaud, the French commander, were to ratify it by a personal interchange of promises. Abd-el-Kader did not, however, keep his appointment, and seems, indeed, to have studiously missed it. The French general, in a fit of impatience, left his room, and went forward with a small escort, military and civil, towards the quarters of the unpunctual Arab chief, in order to stir him up. On reaching the advanced posts, the French general called a chieftain of one of the tribes, who pointed out to him the hill-side where the emir lay encamped. "It is unbecoming of your chief," said Bugeaud to this Arab, "to bring me so far, and then make me wait so long;" whereupon he continued resolutely to advance. The emir's escort now appeared. The Arab chieftains, most of them young and handsome, were magnificently mounted, and made a gallant display of their finery. Presently from their ranks a horseman advanced dressed in a coarse burnoose, with a camel-hair cord, and without any outward sign of distinction, except that his black horse, which he sat most elegantly, was surrounded by Arabs holding the bridle and the stirrups. This was Abd-el-Kader. The French general held out his hand; the other grasped it twice, then threw himself quickly from his horse, and sat down. General Bugeaud took his place beside him, and the conversation began. The emir was of small stature; his face serious and pale, with delicate features slightly marked by time, and a keen sparkling eye. His hands, which were beautifully formed, played with a chaplet that hung round his neck. He spoke gently, but there was on his lips and in the expression of countenance a certain affectation of disdain. The conversation turned, of course, upon the peace which had just been concluded, and Abd-el-Kader spoke of the cessation of hostilities with elaborate and feigned indifference. When the French general, after pointing out to him that the treaty could not be put into force until it was ratified, observed that the truce, meanwhile, was favourable to the Arabs, since it would save their crops from destruction so long as it lasted, the chief replied: "You may destroy the crops this moment, and I will give you a written authority to do so, if you like. The Arabs are not in want of corn." The conversation at an end, General Bugeaud stood up, and the emir remained seated; whereupon the former, stung to the quick, seized the emir's hand and jerked it, saying "Come, get up." The French were delighted at this characteristic act of an imperious and intrepid nature, and the Arabs could not conceal their astonishment. As for the emir, seized with an involuntary confusion, he turned round without uttering a word, sprang on his horse and rode back to his own people; his return being a signal for enthusiastic cries of "God preserve the Sultan!" which echoed from hill to hill. A violent thunder-burst added to the effect of this strange scene, and the Arabs vanished among the mountain gorges. Until 1860 the Boulevard du Temple was noted for a number of little theatres, where marionettes might be seen dancing on the tight-rope, or where pantomimes in the Italian style were performed. Then there was the cabinet of wax figures, together with other little shows, difficult to class: all destined in that year to disappear. The reconstruction of this portion of Paris caused the removal of many theatres, which were built again at other points. The site of the former circus was now occupied by the Imperial Theatre of the Châtelet. The circus reappeared, for winter performances, in the Boulevard des Filles de Calvaire, for the summer season in the Champs Élysées. In connection with the winter circus the Popular Concerts started by the late Pasdeloup must not be forgotten. Here the finest symphonic music of the French and other composers, chiefly modern, was performed in admirable style. Here the French public were familiarised with the works of Berlioz, and, in spite of a certain opposition at the outset, with selections from some of the operas of Wagner. Pasdeloup, who after thirty years' unremitting work died in poverty, used to find worthy imitators and successors in M. Colonne and M. Lamoureux, both renowned among the musical conductors of the period. Number forty-two of the Boulevard du Temple marks the house, formerly number fifty, whence the notorious Fieschi, on the 28th of July, 1835, exploded his infernal machine which was intended to kill Louis Philippe and his sons, and which, in fact, struck down by their side one of the veterans of the Empire, Marshal Mortier, Duc de Trévise, and several other superior officers. Not even in Russia have so many sovereigns been assailed by their subjects as in France. Since, indeed, the murder of Henri III. by Jacques Clément, it has been the rule, rather than the exception, with royal personages in France to be struck by the assassin or the executioner; or, if spared in body, to be brought all the same to some tragic end. Henri IV. fell by the hand of Ravaillac. No such fate awaited Louis XIII., Henri IV.'s immediate successor; but Louis XV. was stabbed by Damiens, Louis XVI. was guillotined, Louis XVII., imprisoned in the Temple, died one scarcely knows how or where. The Duke of Enghien was shot by order of Napoleon. Louis XVIII. had to fly from Paris at the approach of Napoleon returning from Elba; the Duke of Berri was assassinated by Louvel; Charles X. lost his crown by the Revolution which brought Louis Philippe to the throne; and Louis Philippe, who was ultimately to disappear in a hackney cab before the popular rising which led to the establishment of the Second Republic, and soon afterwards of the Second Empire, was meanwhile made the object of some half-dozen murderous attacks, the most formidable being the one planned and executed by Fieschi, otherwise Gérard. What, it may be asked, had a quiet, peaceful, and eminently respectable monarch like Louis Philippe done to provoke repeated attempts upon his life? The explanation is simple. Charles X. had been driven away in 1830 by the Republicans, not that another king might be appointed in his stead, but that the Republic might be established. Louis Philippe was, from their point of view, an interloper who must, at all hazards, be removed. [Illustration: THE WINTER CIRCUS IN THE BOULEVARD DES FILLES DE CALVAIRE.] Fieschi's experiment with his infernal machine created a sensation all over Europe; and the papers for some time afterwards were full of particulars, more or less authentic, of the diabolical attempt upon King Louis Philippe's life. The Revolutionists, whose action against Charles X. had led to the establishment, not of a Republic, but of a Monarchy--hateful to them in whatever form--had evidently sworn that he should die. It was ascertained by M. Thiers, the First Minister, that on the occasion of a journey which the King intended to make from Neuilly to Paris certain conspirators had arranged to throw a lighted projectile into the royal carriage; and His Majesty, therefore, was requested to let the royal carriage proceed on its way, at the appointed time, without him, and occupied simply by his aides-de-camp, no previous announcement being made as to the absence of the King. Louis Philippe having protested against this suggestion as unfair to the aides-de-camp: "Sire," replied M. Thiers, "it is their duty to expose themselves for the safety of your person, and they surely will not complain when they find the Minister of the Interior by their side in the threatened carriage." The King, however, rejected this proposition, declaring that he had resolved on the journey, and, hazardous as it might be, would undertake it. His resolution having been combated in vain by M. Thiers, the preparations for departure were ordered. Just as the King was about to get into the carriage, the Queen and the princesses suddenly presented themselves in an agony of terror and of tears. "It is impossible," says M. Louis Blanc, "to say whether a skilful indiscretion on the part of the Minister had initiated them into the secret of what had taken place, or whether they had received no other intimation than that supplied by the instincts of the heart." However this may have been, the Queen, finding that Louis Philippe would not abandon his intention, insisted on accompanying him, and it was quite impossible to prevent her from doing so. M. Thiers then begged the honour of a seat in the threatened carriage, and the journey was risked. The attack apprehended was not, however, on this occasion to be made; and it was as long afterwards as the 28th of July, 1835, on the occasion when Louis Philippe drove through Paris in memory of the "Three Days" of July, 1830, that Fieschi put his murderous project into execution. "On the 28th of July," says M. Louis Blanc, "the sun rose upon the city, already perplexed with fears and doubts. The drum which summoned the National Guards early in the morning beat for some time in vain: a heavy apathy, in which there mingled a sort of morbid distrust, weighed upon everyone. At ten o'clock, however, the legions of the Garde Nationale stretched in an immense line along the boulevards, facing 40,000 of the regular troops, horse and foot. The Boulevard du Temple having been pointed out by rumour as the scene of the contemplated crime, the police had orders to parade it with particular watchfulness, and to keep a close eye upon the windows." On the previous evening M. Thiers had a number of houses in this quarter searched. But the remonstrances of the inhabitants became so violent, that his original intention of examining every building on the boulevard had to be abandoned. The clock of the château was striking ten when the King issued from the Tuileries on horseback. He was accompanied by his sons, the Dukes of Orleans, Nemours, and Joinville; by Marshals Mortier and Lobau; by his ministers; and by a numerous body of generals and other superior officers and high functionaries. Along the whole line which he traversed there prevailed a dead silence, broken only at intervals by the _ex officio_ acclamations of the soldiers. At a few minutes past twelve the royal _cortège_ arrived in front of the Eighth Legion, which was stationed along the Boulevard du Temple. Here, near the end of the Jardin Turc, as the King was leaning forward to receive a petition from the hands of a National Guardsman, a sound was heard like the fire of a well-sustained platoon. In an instant the ground was strewn with the dead and dying. Marshal Mortier and General Lachasse de Verigny, wounded in the head, fell bathed in their blood. A young captain of Artillery, M. de Villaté, slid from his horse, his arms extended at full length, as though they had been nailed to a cross; he had been shot in the head, and expired ere he touched the ground. Among the other victims were the colonel of gendarmerie, Raffé; M. Rieussec, lieutenant-colonel of the Eighth Legion; the National Guardsmen Prudhomme, Benetter, Ricard, and Léger; an old man upwards of seventy years of age, M. Lebrouste; a poor fringe-maker named Langeray; and a girl of scarcely fourteen, Sophie Remy. The king was not wounded, but in the confusion his horse reared and he sustained a violent shock in the left arm. The Duke of Orleans had a slight contusion on the thigh. A ball grazed the croup of the Duke of Joinville's horse. Thus the odious attempt failed in its object; the royal family was saved. No language can express the utter horror which this frightful and cowardly attack created in the minds of the assembled multitudes. An aide-de-camp immediately galloped off to reassure the Queen, and the King continued his progress amidst manifestations of the deepest sympathy and the most enthusiastic loyalty. As a striking exemplification of the _sang-froid_ of Louis Philippe it has been gravely related, on the alleged authority of Marshal Maison, that immediately after the fatal occurrence, and while all around were overwhelmed with dismay and grief, the King's mind rapidly glanced over all the possible advantages which might be drawn from the event, and that he exclaimed, "Ah, now we are sure to get the appanages!" But this anecdote, in itself improbable, must be received with more than the usual grain of salt. Meantime, at the moment of the explosion, clouds of smoke were seen to issue from a window on the third floor of the house number fifty. A man got out of this window, and seizing a double rope which was fastened inside, slid down it on to the roof of a lower building. He was but half-dressed, and his face streamed with blood. A flower-pot which was caught in the movement of the rope after he quitted hold of it fell to the pavement, and the noise attracted the attention of an agent of police who had been posted in the courtyard of the house. "There is the assassin escaping on the roof!" he exclaimed; and one of the National Guards at once called upon the fugitive to surrender, threatening to fire if he refused. But the man, wiping away with his hand the veil of blood which obscured his sight, dashed on and made his way through an open window into an adjoining house. A track of blood indicated his route, as though his own crime pursued him. He reached the courtyard too late to escape unobserved, and was at once taken into custody. In the room whence he had fled were found the smoking remains of his death-dealing machine. It was raised upon a sort of scaffolding on four square legs connected together by strong oak cross-pieces. Twenty-five musket barrels were fastened by the breech upon the cross-piece at the back, which was higher than the front traverse by about eight inches. The ends of the barrels rested in notches cut in the lower traverse. The touch-holes were exactly in a line, so as to take fire simultaneously by means of a long train of gunpowder. The guns had been placed so as to receive the procession slantingly, embracing a large range, and rising from the legs of the horses to the heads of the riders. The charge in each barrel was a quadruple one. Fortunately, the calculations of the assassin were frustrated. Two of the barrels did not go off, four of them burst; and to these chances the King doubtless owed his life. Fieschi was found, on inquiry, to have lodged in the house for several months. He stated himself to be a machinist. The porter had never been inside Fieschi's room since he had occupied it. There had been but one man to see Fieschi, whom he represented as his uncle, and three women, who, he said, were his mistresses. On the morning of the 28th he had been noticed to go in and out, up and down, in a visible state of agitation, and once, though habitually abstemious, he went into a neighbouring cafe to drink a glass of brandy. At the military post where he was taken upon his arrest, a National Guard having asked him who he was, "What's that to you?" he replied, "I shall answer such questions when they are put by the proper people." Some gunpowder having been found upon his person, he was asked what it was for. "For glory!" he exclaimed. The trial of Fieschi and his accomplices took place on the 30th of January, 1836, before the Court of Peers assembled in the palace of the Luxembourg. In the body of the court, in front of the clerk's table, were displayed, among other proofs against the prisoners, a machine supporting a number of guns in an inclined position, an extinguished firebrand, a dagger, a shot belt with a quantity of bullets in it, an iron gauntlet, and a bloodstained rope. Fieschi, the chief conspirator, is described by Louis Blanc as "endowed with an energy and shrewdness which merely served to promote the aims of an inveterate and grovelling turpitude. Vain to a degree which almost approached insanity, this man had stained his life with every infamy. A Corsican by birth, he had fought bravely in the service of Napoleon. After the peace, however, he had launched upon a career of vice and crime. He had invented the so-called infernal machine (which was simply a battery of guns so arranged that they could be discharged from a window), not from any political or personal hatred of Louis Philippe, but simply as the hireling of a band of Republican and Revolutionary conspirators." Fieschi and his accomplices were duly guillotined. Other attempts had been made and were still to be made on the life of Louis Philippe. The ferocious exploit, however, of Fieschi remains the most notorious one of this reign. At last the Citizen King lost his nerve; and in February, 1848, disappeared in face of a danger not more formidable, if firmly met at the outset, than the one which he had despised thirteen years previously, in 1835. Fieschi was simply guillotined; and he was the first regicide or would-be regicide in France who escaped torture. The horrible cruelties inflicted on the assassins of French kings may make many persons less sensitive than they otherwise would be to the misfortunes reserved for the successors of these princes. The only possible excuse for the diabolical punishments devised for regicides under the old French Monarchy is that such barbarity was of the age. The torture of Damiens was imitated in every detail from the torture of Ravaillac, which had for precedent the torture of Gérard, the assassin of the Prince of Orange. An ingenious French writer attempted to decide whether Ravaillac's torments were greater than those of Gérard. It is certain in any case that the latter suffered with much greater constancy. Ravaillac shrieked out in a terrible manner, whereas Balthasar Gérard never uttered a groan. In this connection it is curious that, from the middle of the eighteenth century until the time of the French Revolution, the name of Damiens, or Damian, at present venerated throughout the civilised world, was in France, its country of origin, one of such opprobrium that nobody ventured to bear it. No Frenchman, indeed, would have dared to do so; for after the attempt upon the life of Louis XV. the name of Damiens, or D'Amiens, his would-be murderer, with all names of similar sound or spelling were, by a special edict, absolutely proscribed. To go by the name of D'Amiens, Damiens, or Damian, was to proclaim oneself affiliated nearly or remotely to the unspeakable being--the regicide, the parricide--who had lifted his hand against the Lord's anointed. Time has its revenges. The name associated a century and a half ago with villainy and crime is now suggestive only of heroism and virtue. Everyone knows by what glorious acts of self-sacrifice Damien, enthusiast and martyr, has brought honour to a once unutterable name. [Illustration: LOUIS PHILIPPE.] The French Revolution, which was separated from the torture of Damiens by only thirty-eight years, is associated with a number of sanguinary deeds. But it at least put an end to torture. No such horrors as had been perpetrated under the French Monarchy were ever to take place under the French Republic. Even in the case of ordinary criminals not specially condemned to torture, death, under the old Monarchy, was inflicted in the cruellest fashion. "After a prisoner has seen death under so many forms," says a writer of the time of Louis XVI., "when his soul is in a manner withered, his spirit exhausted, and life is grown a burthen, the sentence that ends his sufferings should be welcome to him--and it would be so were not our laws more calculated to torture the body than simply to punish the criminal. A man who pays the forfeit of his life to the injured laws of his country has, in the eyes of reason, more than sufficiently atoned for his crime; but here industrious cruelty has devised the most barbarous means of avenging the wrongs done to society; and the breaking the bones of a wretch on a cross, twisting his mangled body round the circumference of a wheel, are inventions worthy of the fertile brains of a Phalaris, and show to the utmost that such inhuman laws were more levelled against the man than the crime for which he is doomed to suffer." * * * * * Opposite the house on the Boulevard du Temple associated with the outrage of Fieschi stood formerly the Café Turc, which offered to the generation of its day a shady retreat and varied amusements. Here the celebrated Jullien, better known in London than even in Paris, gave in the early years of Louis Philippe's reign orchestral pieces of his own composition adorned with fireworks and emphasized by the booming of cannon. Little by little the Café Turc was to disappear; and now repeated alterations have reduced it to a beer-house, or _brasserie_. The Café Turc was the first of the French cafés-concerts or music halls; for, like so many of our dramatic entertainments, the music hall is an adaptation from the French. The English music hall differs, however, from the French café-concert about as much as an English farce differs from a French vaudeville. The café-concert may be looked upon either as a café at which there is singing, or as a concert where refreshments are served between the pieces and "consumed" during the performance. But whether you enter the place for the sake of art or with the view of sustaining nature, it is equally necessary that you should "consume"; and that there may be no mistake on this point, a curtain is at some establishments let down from time to time with "_On est prié de renouveler sa consommation_," and, at the side, in English, "One is prayed to renew his consumption," inscribed on it. The renewal of one's consumption is often a very costly proceeding. To avoid being classed with theatres, and, as a legal consequence, taxed for the benefit of the poor, no charge for admission is made at the doors of the café-concert. But at those where such stars as the once celebrated Thérèse are engaged, the proprietor finds it necessary to attach extravagant prices to refreshments of the most ordinary kind, so that a bottle of lemonade may be quoted in the tariff at three francs, a cup of coffee at a franc and a half, and even the humble glass of water at fifty centimes. In England the music hall proprietor would be often glad to obtain a dramatic licence. He has no fear of the poor before his eyes, and would be only too happy to combine with the profits of musical publican those of the regular theatrical manager. Why he should or should not be so favoured has been argued at length before the magistrates and duly reported in the columns of the newspapers. The result has been that, as a rule, the London music hall proprietor does not give theatrical performances, though he often ventures upon duologues and sometimes risks a dramatic trio. The argument of London managers against music hall proprietors may thus concisely be stated: the manager cannot by the terms of his licence allow the audience to smoke and drink in presence of a dramatic performance; and, correlatively, the music hall proprietor ought not to be allowed to give dramatic performances while smoking and drinking are going on. [Illustration: ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION OF LOUIS PHILIPPE.] Paris is celebrated above all the capitals of Europe for its cafés; and the beverage which gives its name to these establishments seems to have been known earlier in France than in any other European country. Coffee was introduced into central Europe in 1683, the year of the battle of Vienna; and from the Austrian capital the use of coffee spread rapidly to all parts of Germany. The circumstances under which the Austrians first became acquainted with it were somewhat curious. The Turks had brought with them to Vienna an imposing siege train. No European power possessed such formidable artillery; and their stone balls of sixty pounds each were not only the largest projectiles ever fired, but were regarded as the largest which by any possible means could be fired. According to the ingenious, but incorrect, view of one of Sobieski's biographers (the Abbé Coyer), the amount of powder requisite for the discharge of a missile of greater weight would be so enormous as not to give time for the whole of it to become ignited before the ball left the cannon. Kara Mustapha, the Turkish general, had also brought with him a number of archers; and when a letter from Sobieski to the Duke of Lorraine was intercepted by a Turkish patrol, the document was attached to an arrow and shot into the town, accompanied by a note in the Latin language to the effect that all further resistance was out of the question, and that the Vienna garrison had now nothing to do but accept its fate. The Turks, moreover, brought to Vienna an immense number of women, whose throats, when the Turkish army was forced to retire in headlong flight, they unscrupulously cut. The stone cannon balls of prodigious weight, the arrows, and the women could all be accounted for. But the Turks left behind them a large number of bags containing white berries, of which nothing could be made. Of these berries, however, after duly roasting and pounding them, an Austrian soldier, who had been a prisoner in Turkey, made coffee; and as he had distinguished himself during the battle, the Emperor granted him permission to open a shop in Vienna for the sale of the Turkish beverage which he had learned under such interesting circumstances to prepare. According to another less authentic anecdote, the use of the mysterious white berries found among the stores of the defeated Turks was first pointed out by a Turkish soldier who had been working in the trenches before the besieged city, and had so fatigued himself by his ceaseless toil, that he fell asleep and slumbered on throughout the whole of the battle, undisturbed by the cavalry charges, the musketry fire, and the explosions of the artillery with its terrible sixty-pounders. When at last, after sleep had done its restorative work, the exhausted soldier woke up to find himself in the hands of the Christians, he was terribly alarmed. But his life was spared, and in return for this clemency on the part of his enemies he taught them how to make coffee. Parisians, however, pride themselves on having known coffee fourteen years earlier than the Viennese. It is said, indeed, that an enterprising Levantine started a coffee-house at Paris in the very middle of the seventeenth century, and not later than the year 1650. The name of the stimulating beverage that he offered for sale was, as he wrote it, _cahoue_. But the unhappy man had not taken the necessary steps for getting his new importation spoken of beforehand in good society; and, no one knowing what to make of the strange liquor he wished to dispense--hot, black, and bitter--the founder of the first coffee-house or café became bankrupt. The French, however, during, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were sworn friends of the Turks, whose power they played off on every occasion against that of the hated Empire. Vienna might, indeed, on two occasions have been captured, plundered, and burnt by the infidels for all France cared to do towards saving it. France, on her side, was viewed with favour by the Turks; and in 1669 an ambassador, Soliman Aga by name, was sent by the Porte on a mission to Louis XIV., at whose court he made known the virtues of the berry which long previously the Arabs had introduced throughout the East. Properly presented, coffee met in Paris with a success which elsewhere it had failed to attain, and before long it became the rage in fashionable society. When it was at the height of its first popularity, however, Madame de Sévigné condemned it, saying that the taste for coffee, like the taste for Racine, would pass away. Racine, in spite of the beauty of his at once tender and epigrammatic lines, is not much read in the present day, and is scarcely ever acted. Coffee, on the other hand, is as popular now as in the days when Pope wrote his couplet on "Coffee, which makes the politician wise, And see through all things with his half-shut eyes." "There are in this capital," wrote the author of the "Tableau de Paris" more than a hundred years ago, "between six and seven hundred coffee-houses, the common refuge of idleness and poverty, where the latter is warmed without any expense for fuel, and the former entertained by a view of the crowds who make their entrance and exit by turns. In other countries, where liberty is more than an empty name, a coffee-house is the rendez-vous of politicians who freely canvass the conduct of the Minister, or debate on matters of State. Not so here! I have already given a very good reason why the Parisians are sparing of their political reflections. If they speak at all on State matters it is to extol the power of their sovereign, and the wisdom of his counsellors. A half-starved author, with all his wardrobe and movables on his back, dining at these restaurants on a dish of coffee and a halfpenny roll, talks big of the immense resources of France, and the abundance she offers of every necessary of life; whilst his only supper is the steam arising from the rich man's kitchen, as he returns to his empty garret." The writer goes on to show that the coffee-houses were haunted by cliques of critics, literary and artistic, and his description sometimes reminds one of Button's, in the days of Addison and Steele. "Those," he says, "who have just entered the lists of literature stand in dread of this awful tribunal, where a dozen of grim-looking judges, whilst they sip and sip, deal out reputation by wholesale. Woe to the young poet, to the new actor or actress! They are often sentenced here without trial. Catcalls, destined to grate their affrighted ears, are here manufactured over a dish of coffee." The writer then proceeds to lament the absence of sociability at the coffee-house, and the gloomy countenances of its frequenters, as contrasted with the convivial faces of those "brave ancestors" of his generation who used to pass their leisure, not at coffee-houses, but at taverns. One cause of the difference he finds in the change of beverage. "Our forefathers," he explains, "drank that mirth-inspiring liquor with which Burgundy and Champaign supplied them. This gave life to their meetings. Ours are more sober, no doubt, but is this sobriety the companion of health? By no means. For generous wine we have substituted a black beverage, bad in itself, but worse by the manner in which it is made in all the coffee-houses of this fashionable metropolis. The good Parisians, however, are very careless in the matter; they drink off whatever is put before them, and swallow this baneful wash, which in its turn is driven down by more deadly poisons, mistakenly called cordials." Since the above was written, coffee, far from dying out, has become more and more popular, and musical cafés, theatrical cafés, and literary cafés have been everywhere established in Paris. There are financial cafés, too, chiefly, of course, in the region of the Bourse; and among the cafés by which the Bourse is partly surrounded used to be one which owed its notoriety to the fact that Fieschi's mistress--in the character of "dame du comptoir"--was exhibited there to the public. Two days after the execution of the would-be regicide and actual maker of the famous infernal machine, a crowd of people might have been seen struggling towards the doors of a café on the Place de la Bourse, which was already as full as it could hold. "Those," says an eye-witness, "who performed the feat of gaining admission, saw, gravely seated at a counter, adorned with costly draperies, an ordinary-looking woman, blind of one eye, and possessing in fact no external merit but that of youth: It was Nina Sassave. There she was, her forehead radiant, her lip quivering with delight, her whole expression that of unmingled pride and pleasure at the eager homage thus offered to her celebrity. A circumstance eminently characteristic of the epoch! Here had a creature, only known to the world as a base and treacherous informer, as the mistress of an assassin, been caught up for a show by a shrewd speculator. And what is more remarkably characteristic still, the public took it all as a perfect matter of course, and amply justified the speculator in his calculations." On the same side as the Café Turc, but further on towards the Rue du Temple, stood the tennis ground of the Count d'Artois (afterwards Charles X.), built by the architect Belanger, one of the most intimate and faithful friends of the famous Sophie Arnould. [Illustration: A PARISIAN CAFÉ.] On the site of the Count d'Artois' tennis ground was erected, at the beginning of the Second Empire, a theatre, called in the first instance Folies-Meyer, but which, after various changes of title, became at last the Théâtre Déjazet, under the direction of the celebrated actress of that name, already seventy years of age, or nearly so, but still lively and graceful. For this theatre in 1860 Victorien Sardou wrote his first successful piece, "M. Garat," in which Déjazet herself played the principal part, supported by Dupuis, who was afterwards to become famous in opera-bouffe as the associate of Mademoiselle Schneider. The line of boulevards here presents an enormous gap, in the centre of which, between two fountains, stands a monument to the glory of the Republic. The rest of the open space serves twice a week as a flower market, the largest in Paris. At the beginning of the century La Place du Château d'Eau, as the open space in question is called, did not exist. The fountain which gave its name to the Place was constructed under the First Napoleon in the year 1811, but this fountain was replaced in 1869 by a finer one inaugurated by Napoleon III. The later fountain was itself, however, to disappear, soon afterwards to be replaced by the aforesaid monument to the Republic. Behind one of the large depots on the north side of the Place du Château d'Eau, looking out upon the Rue de Malte, was constructed in 1866 the Circus of the Prince Imperial, afterwards called the Theatre of the Château d'Eau, where at one time dramas, at another operas, have been given, never with success. Ill-luck seems to hang over the establishment, which, with its 2,400 seats, must be reckoned among the largest theatres in Paris. In Paris, however, as in London, theatres have often the reputation of being unlucky when, to succeed, all they require is a good piece with good actors to play in it. [Illustration: PLACE DE LA RÉPUBLIQUE.] The Boulevard du Temple had at one time its famous restaurants, like other boulevards in the present day. Here stood the celebrated Cadran Bleu and the equally celebrated Banquet d'Anacréon. The last of the great restaurants on this boulevard was the one kept by Bonvalet, who, during the siege of Paris, was generous enough to supply additional provisions to unfortunate actors and actresses who found themselves reduced to the limited rations distributed by the Municipal Council. The Rue de Bondi, running out of the Boulevard Saint-Martin, brings us once more to a group of theatres. The Folies Dramatiques stands at number forty. This theatre was started in 1830 by M. Alaux, previously manager of the Dramatic Parnassus on the Boulevard du Temple. It was opened on January 22nd, 1831, under the direction of M. Léopold, who produced at this house a long series of successful pieces. Among these may be mentioned "Robert Macaire" with Frédéric Lemaître in the leading part. When, amidst demolitions and reconstructions, the original Folies Dramatiques came down, the company was transferred to the new building which now stands in the Rue de Bondi. Here were brought out Hervé's "OEil Crevé" and "Petit Faust," Lecoq's "Fille de Madame Angot," Planquette's "Cloches de Corneville," and other works which were soon to become known all over Europe. Vaudevilles are now played at this theatre alternately with operettas. The house contains 1,600 seats. The Ambigu-Comique, built on a sort of promontory which dominates the Boulevard Saint-Martin and the Rue de Bondi, was opened in 1829, in place of the original Ambigu, burnt to the ground two years previously. The new house, which contains 1,600 seats, was inaugurated in presence of the Duchess of Berri, widow of the unhappy nobleman who a few years before was stabbed by Louvois on the steps of the Opera House. In 1837 this theatre was entirely rebuilt under the direction of M. Rochart. Untrue, like so many theatres, to its original name, the Ambigu-Comique was to become associated with nothing in the way of ambiguity, nothing in the way of comedy, but with melodramas, often of a most blood-curdling kind. Here, it is true, was produced the "Auberge des Adrêts," which, in the hands of Frédéric Lemaître, was to be transformed from a serious drama into a wild piece of buffoonery; so that the author of the work, too nervous to attend the performance himself, was almost driven mad when his trusted servant returned home and reported to him the bursts of laughter with which the work had been received. At the Ambigu were brought out some of the best pieces of Alexandre Dumas the elder, Frédéric Soulié, Adolphe Dennery, and Paul Feval. Immediately adjacent to the Ambigu stand the Porte Saint-Martin and Renaissance Theatres, covering the triangle formed by the Boulevard Saint-Martin, the Rue de Bondi, and the Place de la Porte Saint-Martin. The Porte Saint-Martin Theatre has a long and interesting history, dating from June 8, 1781, when it was opened as an Opera House after the destruction by fire of the one in the Rue Saint-Honoré. A performance was going on at the time, and the singers had to fly in their operatic dresses from the stage to the street. In the midst of the general consternation, the musical director, Rey by name, whose "Coronis" was the opera of the night, startled those around him, already sufficiently terrified, by exclaiming, "Save my child! Oh, Heaven, save my child!" As Rey was not known in the character of a family man, his friends thought he had gone mad. But it was the creature of his brain that was troubling him; and after heroic struggles, the score of "Coronis" was rescued from the flames. The fascinating Madeleine Guiniard had on this occasion a narrow escape of her life. She was in her dressing-room, and had just divested herself of her costume when inquiries were made for her, and it was found that, like Brunhilda in the legend, she was enveloped on all sides by flames. A Siegfried, however, was found in the person of a stage carpenter, who, making his way through the ring of fire, reached the unhappy valkyrie, wrapped her up in a blanket, and brought her out in safety, though he himself, in his second passage through the flames, was somewhat scorched. The new house established in the Porte Saint-Martin was opened 109 days after the destruction of the Opera House in the Rue Saint-Honoré. Here were brought out the "OEdipus Coloneus" of Sacchini, the "Daniades" and other works of Salieri, the "Demophon" of Cherubini, the "Re Teodoro" of Paisiello, and a French version of Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro." Many of the operas of Sacchini, Salieri, and Cherubini were composed specially for the French theatre. Paisiello's and Mozart's works were, of course, produced in translations. Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro" was brought out in the middle of the Reign of Terror, March 20, 1793. Meanwhile, doubts had always been entertained as to the solidity of the theatre, which had been run up in from fifteen to sixteen weeks; and on April 14, 1794, the Committee of Public Safety ordered the transfer of the opera from the Porte Saint-Martin to the Salle Montansier, in the Rue Richelieu. M. Castil Blaze, excellent writer, but by no means free from prejudices, insists, in his "History of the Royal Academy of Music," that in the removal of the Opera to the Rue Richelieu there was a determination on the part of the Committee of Public Safety to burn down the National Library, opposite which the Opera was now installed. "How was it," he asks, "that the Opera was moved to a building exactly opposite the National Library--so precious and so combustible a repository of human knowledge? The two establishments were only separated by a street very much too narrow; if the theatre caught fire, was it not sure to burn the Library? That is what a great many persons still ask; this question has been reproduced a hundred times in our journals. Go back to the time when the house was built by Mademoiselle Montansier; read the _Moniteur Universel_, and you will see that it was precisely in order to expose this same Library to the happy chances of a fire that the great lyrical entertainment was transferred to its neighbourhood. The Opera hung over it, and threatened it constantly. At this time enlightenment abounded to such a point that the judicious Henriot, convinced in his innermost conscience that all reading was henceforth useless, had made a motion to burn the Library. To shift the Opera to the Rue Richelieu--that Opera which twice in eighteen years had been a prey to the flames--to place it exactly opposite our literary treasures was to multiply to infinity the chances of their being burnt." Mercier, in reference to the literary views of the Committee of Public Safety, writes in the _Nouveau Paris_ thus:--"The language of Omar about the Koran was not more terrible than that by the members of the Committee of Public Safety, when they carried this resolution:--'Yes, we will burn all the libraries, for nothing will be needed but the history of the Revolution and its laws.'" If the motion of Henriot had been put into effect, David, the great Conventional painter, was ready to propose that the same service should be rendered to the masterpieces in the Louvre as to the literary wealth of the National Library. Republican subjects, according to David, were alone worthy of representation. The Opera in the Rue Richelieu was, however, to be destroyed, as will afterwards be seen, not by fire, but in deliberate process of dilapidation. Meanwhile, Louis XVI. and his family had fled from Paris on the 28th of June, 1791. The next day, and before the king was brought back to the Tuileries, the title of the chief lyric theatre was changed from Académie Royale to simply the Opera. At the same time, the custom was introduced of announcing the performers' names, which was evidently an advantage to the public, and which was also not without its benefit for the inferior singers and dancers, who, when they unexpectedly appeared in order to replace their betters, used often to get hissed to a handsomer degree than they ever could in their usual parts. By an order of the Committee of Public Safety, dated the 16th of the following September, the title of the Opera was again changed to Académie Royale de Musique. This was intended as a compliment to the king, who had signed the Constitution on the 14th, and who was to go to the Opera six days afterwards. On the 20th the royal visit took place. "'Castor and Pollux' was played," says M. Castil Blaze, "and not 'Iphigénie en Aulide,' as is asserted by some ill-informed historians, who even go so far as to pretend that the chorus '_Chantons, célébrons notre reine_' was hailed with transports of enthusiasm, and that the public called for it a second time." The house was well filled, but not crammed, as we see by the receipts, which amounted to 6,636 livres 15 sous. The same opera of Rameau's, vamped by Candeille, had produced 6,857 livres on the 14th of the preceding June. On the night previous to the royal representation a gratuitous performance of "Castor and Pollux" had been given to the public in honour of the Constitution. The royalists were present in great numbers on the night of state, and some lines which could be applied to the queen were loudly applauded. Marie Antoinette was delighted, and said to the ladies who accompanied her, "You see that the people are really good, and wish only to love us." Encouraged by so flattering a reception, she determined to go the next night to the Opéra Comique, but the king refused to accompany her. The piece performed was "Les Événements imprévus." In the duet of the second act, before singing the words "_Ah! comme j'aime ma maîtresse_," Mdme. Dugazon looked towards the queen, when a number of voices cried out from the pit, "_Plus de Maîtresse!_" "_Plus de Maître!_" "_Vive la Liberté!_" This cry was answered from the boxes with "Vive la reine! Vive le roi!" Sabres and swordsticks were drawn, and a battle began. The queen escaped from the theatre in the midst of the tumult. Cries of "_A bas la reine!_" followed her to her carriage, which went off at a gallop, with mud and stones thrown after it. Marie Antoinette returned to the Tuileries in despair. On the 1st of October, fourteen days afterwards, the title of Opéra National was substituted for that of Académie Royale de Musique. The Constitution being signed, there was no longer any reason for being civil to Louis XVI. This was the third change of title in less than four months. To conclude the list of musical performances which have derived a gloomy celebrity from their connection with the last days of Louis XVI., we may reproduce the programme issued by the directors of the Opéra National on the first anniversary of his execution, 1724. It ran thus:--"On behalf of and for the people gratis. In joyful commemoration of the death of the tyrant, the National Opera will give to-day, 6 Pluviose, year 2 of the Republic, 'Miltiades at Marathon,' 'The Siege of Thionville,' 'The Offering to Liberty.'" The Opera under the Republic was directed until 1792 by four distinguished _sans-culottes_--Henriot, Chaumette, Le Roux, and Hébert, the last named of whom had once been check-taker of the Académie. The others knew nothing whatever of operatic affairs. The management at the theatre was afterwards transferred to Francoeur, one of the former directors associated with Cellérier, an architect; but the dethroned _impresarios_, accompanied by Danton and other Republican amateurs, constantly made their appearance behind the scenes, and very frequently did the chief members of the company the honour of supping with them. In these cases the invitations, as under the ancient _régime_, proceeded, not from the artists, but from the artists' patrons; with this difference, however, that under the Republic the latter never paid the bill. "The chiefs of the Republic," says M. Castil Blaze, "were very fond of moistening their throats. Henriot, Danton, Hébert, Le Roux, Chaumette, had hardly taken a turn in the _coulisses_ or in the _foyer_ before they said to such an actor or actress, 'We are going to your room. See that we are properly received.' A superb collation was brought in. When the repast was finished and the bottles were empty, the National Convention, the Commune of Paris, beat a retreat without troubling itself about the expense. You think, perhaps, that the dancer or the singer paid for the representatives of the people? Not at all; honest Maugin, who kept the refreshment room of the theatre, knew perfectly well that the actors of the Opera were not paid, that they had no sort of money, not even a rag of an assignat; he made a sacrifice: from delicacy he did not ask from the artists what he would not have dared to claim from the _sans-culottes_, for fear of the guillotine." Sometimes the executioner, who, as a public official, was entitled to certain _entrées_, made his appearance behind the scenes, and it is said that, in a facetious mood, he would sometimes express his opinion about the "execution" of the music. Operatic kings and queens were suppressed by the Republic. Not only were they forbidden to appear on the stage, but even their names were not to be pronounced behind the scenes, and the expressions _côté du roi_, _côté de la reine_, were changed into _côté jardin_, _côté cour_, which, at the Theatre of the Tuileries, indicated respectively the left and right of the stage, from the stage point of view. But although, at first, all pieces in which kings and queens figured were prohibited, the dramas of _sans-culotte_ origin were so stupid and disgusting that the Republic was absolutely obliged to return to the old monarchical _repertory_. The kings, however, were turned into chiefs; princes and dukes became representatives of the people; seigneurs subsided into mayors; and substitutes more or less synonymous were found for such offensive words as crown, throne, sceptre, etc. In a new Republican version of "Le Déserteur," as represented at the Opera Comique, _le roi_, in one well-known line, was replaced by _la loi_, and the vocalist had to declaim "_La loi passait, et le tambour battait aux champs!_" A certain voluble executant, however, is said to have preferred the following emendation: "_Le pouvoir exécutif passait, et le tambour battait aux champs!_" The scenes of most of the new operas were laid in Italy, Prussia, Portugal--anywhere but in France, where it would have been indispensable from a political, and impossible from a poetical, point of view to make the lovers address one another as _citoyen_, _citoyenne_. On the 19th of June, 1793, the directors of the Opera having objected to give a gratuitous performance of the "Siege of Thionville," the Commune of Paris issued the following edict:--"Considering that for a long time past the aristocracy has taken refuge in the administration of various theatres; considering that these gentlemen corrupt the public mind by the pieces they represent; considering that they exercise a fatal influence on the revolution: it is decreed that the 'Siege of Thionville' shall be represented gratis, and solely for the amusement of the _sans-culottes_, who, to this moment, have been the true defenders of liberty and supporters of democracy." Soon afterwards it was proposed to shut up the Opera, but Hébert--the ferocious Hébert, better known as Le père Duchesne--undertook its defence, on the ground that it procured subsistence for a number of families, and "caused the agreeable arts to flourish." Whatever the Opera may have been under the Reign of Terror, it was conducted infinitely better in one important respect than under the ancient _régime_. [Illustration: FRÉDÉRIC LEMAÎTRE.] In the days of the old monarchy, as we learn from Bachaumont, a girl once inscribed on the books of the Opera was released from all control on the part of her parents. She might present herself for engagement of her own accord, or her name might be entered on the list by anyone who had succeeded in leading her away from her parents. In neither case had her family any further power over her. _Lettres de cachet_ were issued, commanding the person named in the order to join the Opera, and many young girls were thus victimised. It can scarcely be supposed that the privileges granted to the Opera were intended, in the first instance, to be turned to such evil account as they afterwards were. Indeed, young men equally with young women could be seized and committed to operatic control wherever they were found. "We wish, and it pleases us," says King Louis XIV., in the letters-patent granted to the Abbé Perrin, first director of the Académie Royale de Musique (1669), "that gentlemen (_gentilshommes_) and ladies may sing in the said pieces and representations of our Royal Academy without being considered, for that reason, to derogate from their titles of nobility, or from their rights and immunities." Many aristocrats of both sexes profited by this permission to appear either as singers or as dancers at the Opera. Young girls, amateurs, male and female, whose voices had been remarked, could be arrested and forced to perform at the Opera; and in the case of young girls it was evidently to the interest of the Académie Royale de Musique that it should be able to profit by their talents without interference on the part of parents, who might well object to see their children condemned to such service. Besides being liberated from all parental restraint, the pupils and associates of the Academy enjoyed the right of setting creditors at defiance. The salaries of singers, dancers, and musicians belonging to the Opera were explicitly liberated from all liability to seizure for debt. Of the freedom conferred by an engagement at the Opera, the young woman who enjoyed it would probably have been the last to complain; for, side by side with operatic conscription, a system of operatic privileges was in force. It was not the custom for young ladies in good society to visit the Opera before their marriage; but a _brevet de dame_ could be obtained, and the fortunate holder of such a document could without infringing any law of etiquette, attend all operatic performances. "The number of these brevets," says Bachaumont, in his _Mémoires Secrets_, "increased prodigiously under Louis XVI., and very young persons have been known to obtain them. Thus relieved from the modesty and retirement of the virginal state, they gave themselves up with impunity to all sorts of scandals. Such disorder has opened the eyes of the Government, and it is now only by the greatest favour that one of these brevets can be obtained." It has been seen that, according to Mercier and, after him, Castil Blaze, the extreme revolutionists among the Terrorist party desired that the Opera House in the Rue Richelieu might meet with the ordinary fate of theatres, in the hope that flames or flaming embers blown from the conflagration might reach the National Library, just opposite. This does not accord with the fact that the Convention did its utmost to encourage learning, literature, and art. The free system of the University, the College or Gymnasium at from eight to ten francs a month, and the Conservatoire de Musique, with its endowments, its scholarships, and its free tuition, all date from the first days of the Republic of 1789. As to the formal demolition of the Opera House, whose destiny was supposed to be fire, it happened in this way:-- On the 13th February, 1820, which was the last Sunday of the Carnival, an unusually brilliant audience had assembled at the Opera House, or Académie Royale, as it now once more was called. The Duke and Duchess of Berri were present; and before the performance had been brought to an end, the duke, struck by an assassin, was a dead man. The circumstances of the murder were very dramatic, not only by their theatrical surroundings (for the performance still went on while the duke was expiring in the manager's private apartments), but also by the remarkable way in which his whole life--with his double marriage and his two families--reproduced itself in the last few hours of his existence. The opera or operetta of the evening was at an end, and a portion of the ballet had been played, when the duke accompanied the duchess to her carriage, intending to return to his box to see the remainder of the performance. Then it was that the assassin grappled with him and pierced him to the heart. The duke was carried to the director's room, and in accordance with the practice of the day, was at once bled in both arms. The internal hemorrhage was still so great, that it was thought necessary to widen the orifice. "There," says a contemporary writer, "lay the unhappy prince on a bed hastily arranged, and already soaked with blood, surrounded by his father, brother, sister, and wife, whose poignant anguish was from time to time relieved by some faint ray of hope, destined soon to be dispelled. When Dupuytren, accompanied by four of his most eminent colleagues, arrived, it was thought for a moment that the duke might yet be saved. But it soon became evident that the case was hopeless. The duke's daughter had now been brought to him, and after embracing her several times, he expressed a desire to see the king, Louis XVIII. Then arrived two other daughters, the children of the union he had contracted in England. The duchess, seeing them now for the first time, received them with the greatest kindness, and said to them: 'Soon you will have no father, and I shall have three daughters.' In a neighbouring room the assassin was being interrogated by the Ministers Decaze and Pasquier, with the bloody dagger on the table before them; while on the stage the ballet of 'Don Quixote' was being performed in presence of an enthusiastic public. In the course of the night the king arrived, and his nephew expired in his arms at half-past six the next morning, begging that his murderer might be forgiven, and entreating the duchess not to give way to despair." The theatre on whose steps the crime had been committed was now demolished. The other Paris theatres were not indeed pulled down, but they were shut up for ten days, and there was general mourning in France, not only because a prince of the blood had been murdered, but also because the direct line of succession had to all appearance been brought to an end. It was not until more than seven months after the tragic scene at the Opera that the prince who was to have saved France, the "Enfant du Miracle," was born. The arrival of the two daughters born and brought up in England has been differently regarded by writers of different political views. Alexandre Dumas, in his _Memoirs_, and Castil Blaze, in his _Histoire de l'Académie de Musique_, represent the incident as a purely domestic one. M. Mauroy, in his recently published works, _Les Secrets des Bourbons_ and _Les derniers Bourbons_, lays stress on the fact that these children were treated with a consideration not shown to other children of the duke's, who were certainly born out of wedlock, and thus derives an argument in support of his proposition that the Duke of Berri contracted in England with the mother of these girls a regular marriage, invalid only in so far as it had never been sanctioned by the head of his house. Chateaubriand, as a royalist, would not allow the character of legitimate children to the two girls brought to the bedside of their dying father, and entrusted by him to the care of his wife, the duchess. "The Duke of Berri," writes Chateaubriand, in the _Mémoires d'outre-Tombe_, "had had one of those liaisons which religion reproves, but which human frailty excuses. It may be said of him as the historian has said of Henri IV.: 'He was often weak, but always faithful, and his passions never seemed to have enfeebled his religion.' The Duke of Berri, seeking vainly in his conscience for something very guilty, and finding only a few weaknesses, wished, so to say, to collect them around his death-bed, to prove to the world the greatness of his contrition and the severity of his penance. He had a sufficiently just opinion of the virtue of his wife to confess to her his faults, and to fulfil, beneath her eyes, his desire to embrace those two innocent creatures, the daughters of his long exile. 'Let them be sent for,' cried the young princess; 'they are my children also.' When the Viscountess de Gontaut, who had not been told beforehand, seemed astonished, Madame (_i.e._ the Countess of Artois) noticed it, and said to her: 'She knows everything; she has been sublime!'" The rest of Chateaubriand's narrative, especially as regards the Duke of Berri's two daughters, corresponds closely enough with the one left by Dupuytren, whose style, somewhat expressive, somewhat emphatic for a man of science, is less copious, and also less magniloquent than that of the marvellous author of _Le Gênie du Christianisme_ and of the _Mémoires d'outre-Tombe_. What the prince chiefly thought of in his last moments was his murderer, Louvel. "Twenty times in the course of the fatal night," says Dupuytren, the famous physician, whose account of the scene was published not many years ago, "he cried out, 'Have I not injured this man? had he not some personal vengeance to exercise against me?' In vain did Monsieur repeat to him, with tears in his eyes: 'No, my son, you never injured, you never saw this man; he had no personal animosity against you.' The prince returned incessantly to this groundless idea, and, without being conscious of it, furnished by his public and repeated inquiries the best proof that he had not provoked the frightful calamity which had befallen him. With this first idea he constantly associated another--that of obtaining pardon for his assassin. During his long and painful agony the prince begged for it at least a hundred times, and did so more earnestly in proportion as he felt his end approaching. Thus, when the increasing gravity of the symptoms made him fear that he would not live long enough to see the king, he called out piteously, 'Ah! the king will not arrive. I shall not be able to ask him to forgive the man.' Soon afterwards he appealed turn by turn to Monsieur and to the Duke of Augoulême, saying to them, 'Promise me, father, promise me, brother, that you will ask the king to spare the man's life.' But when at last the king arrived, he no sooner saw his Majesty than, summoning all his strength, he cried out, 'Spare his life, sir! spare the man's life!' 'My nephew,' the king replied, 'you are not so ill as you think, and we shall have time to think of your request when you have recovered.' Yet the prince continued as before, the king being still on his guard not to grant a pardon which was equally repugnant to the laws of nature and to those of society. Then this generous prince exclaimed in a tone of deep regret: 'Ah, sir! you do not say "yes,"' adding shortly afterwards: 'If the man's life were spared, the bitterness of my last moments would be softened.' As his end drew near, pursuing the same idea, he expressed in a low voice, broken by grief, and with long intervals between each word, the following thought: 'Ah!... if only ... I could carry away ... the idea ... that the blood of a man ... would not flow on my account ... after my death....' This noble prayer was the last he uttered. His constantly increasing and now atrocious pain absorbed from this moment all his faculties." The heroism of the Duke of Berri and his dying prayer for the pardon of his murderer may be contrasted with the cowardice of his grandfather, Louis XV., taking the last sacrament twice over when he had only been scratched; and the cruelty with which he caused his assailant, who, murderously disposed, no doubt, had nevertheless scarcely injured him, to be subjected to the most frightful tortures, and finally torn to pieces by four horses. [Illustration: PORTE SAINT-MARTIN AND THE RENAISSANCE THEATRE.] Let us now return to the Porte Saint-Martin Theatre, which, abandoned by the Opera, remained deserted for eight years, from 1794 to 1802. On September 30th of this year it was re-opened under the direction of the author and actor Du Maniaut, who brought out operas, melodramas, comedies, and pantomimes until the publication, in 1806, of the decree which put an end to the liberty of the stage. He afterwards, however, obtained permission to represent pantomimes and prologues, or vaudevilles, on condition that in each of these little pieces not more than two actors were employed. In September, 1810, Du Maniaut produced "The Man of Destiny"--a title indicating the Emperor Napoleon, whose victories were represented in a series of historical and allegorical pictures in honour of his marriage with Marie Louise. The music was by the celebrated Piccini, attached to the private staff of his Majesty the Emperor. The Man of Destiny was impersonated by a dancer and mimic named Chevalier, and his career, begun in Egypt, was continued up to the triumphal entry of the French troops into Berlin. After remaining closed for several years, the Porte Saint-Martin Theatre was re-opened in 1814, and thenceforward played a very important part in connection with the dramatic literature of the country. Here Mlle. Georges, Mme. Dorval, Frédéric Lemaître, and many other famous artistes, appeared. Here, too, were produced with enormous success "Marion Delorme," "Lucrèce Borgia," and "Marie Tudor," from Victor Hugo's pen; all the dramas of Alexandre Dumas, including "Antoine," "Angèle," "Richard Darlington," and "La Tour de Nesle": "The Mysteries of Paris" and "Mathilde" of Eugène Sue, "The Two Locksmiths" of Félix Pyat, the "Dame de Saint-Tropez" and "Don César de Bazan" of Adolphe d'Ennery. Here, too, the "Vautrin" of Balzac was brought out--to be stopped, after sixteen representations, by Government order, on the ground that Frédéric Lemaître's make-up in the part of the hero was intended to throw ridicule on the person of King Louis Philippe. The house built by Le Noir, which the Committee of Public Safety had looked upon as of doubtful solidity, enjoyed a life of ninety years, and might have been in existence still; but on the 24th of May, 1871, without any apparent motive for so useless and stupid an act, the Communists set fire to it. The old theatre was burnt to the ground, together with an adjoining building, which, in the days of the Republic of Vienna, had belonged to the Venetian Ambassador. [Illustration: CHURCH OF ST. MÉRY, RUE ST.-MARTIN.] Rebuilt on the same site, but after a different plan, the Porte St.-Martin Theatre was re-opened in the autumn of 1873, when Victor Hugo's "Marie Tudor" was revived. To this succeeded a couple of great successes--"The Two Orphans" and "Round the World," the former written by that fertile inventor of new plots, M. Adolphe d'Ennery, and the latter adapted by him from Jules Verne's famous novel. Close to this famous playhouse is the new Renaissance Theatre, which first opened its doors on the 8th of March, 1873. The Porte Saint-Martin contains 1,800 seats, the Renaissance only 1,200. Started as a dramatic theatre, with Belot's "Femme de Feu" and Zola's "Thérèse Raquin" in the bill, it was destined to obtain its chief success as an operetta theatre with the charming works of Charles Lecoq, including "La petite Mariée," "Le petit Duc," etc. In these works Mesdames Théo, Jeanne Granier, and Zulma Bouffar first appeared. At the point where the Boulevards St.-Martin and St.-Denis meet stands the Triumphal Arch known as the Porte St.-Martin, which Louis XIV. erected in 1674 on the site of the previous Gate, which dated from the minority of Louis XIII. The Porte St.-Martin faces on the one side the Rue St.-Martin, and on the other the Faubourg St.-Martin: that is to say, south and north. The low reliefs decorating the arch on all sides represent the taking of Besançon, the taking of Limburg, and the defeat of the Germans, in the form of an eagle repulsed by Mars. The pedestal bears a Latin inscription, which in English would run thus:--"To Louis the Great, for having twice taken Besançon and Franche-Comté, and for having crushed the German, Spanish, and Dutch armies. The Provost of the Merchants and the Citizens of Paris, 1674." At the end of the Rue St.-Martin, leading out of the boulevard of that name, stands the Church of St. Méry, near which a most determined struggle took place in that insurrection of the 6th of June, 1832, which was one of the numerous Republican movements directed against Louis Philippe by the disappointed revolutionists of 1830, who, aiming at a Republic, had brought about the re-establishment of a Monarchy. The Republicans received powerful aid from the Bonapartists: these two parties being at this, as on so many other occasions, ready to unite against royalty, while reserving to themselves the ultimate decision of the question whether the Empire or the Republic should be re-established. The occasion chosen for the outbreak was the funeral of General Lamarque--equally popular with Bonapartists and Republicans. A number of enthusiastic young men drew the funeral car, which was followed by exiles from all parts of Europe. Among the pall-bearers were General Lafayette, Marshal Clausel, and M. Laffitte. Of the insurgents, some took part in the procession, while others looked on in expectation of events that were inevitable. The crowd broke into several gunsmiths' shops, and finally into the arsenal. Many, too, had brought arms with them; and after a few hours' fighting the insurgents had gained several important positions, and determined to attack the bank, the post-office, and some neighbouring barracks. Their chief object at this moment was to render inaccessible the Rue Saint-Martin and the surrounding streets. Here they intended to establish the head-quarters of their insurrection, without having the slightest notion that at that very instant M.M. Thiers, Miguet, and other members of the Government were dining together at the Rocher de Cancale, fifty yards only from the camp wherein the Republicans were fortifying themselves with the firm resolution of proclaiming a Republic or dying in the attempt. A remarkable example was given towards the evening of this day of what M. Louis Blanc calls the sympathy of the Paris National Guard for heroism, though most persons would regard it as a proof of incapacity and cowardice. Eight insurgents, returning from the Place Maubert, presented themselves towards the decline of day at one of the bridges of the city which was occupied by a battalion of the National Guard. They authoritatively claimed their right to go over and join their friends who were fighting on the other side of the river, and as the guards hesitated to let them pass, they advanced resolutely towards the bridge at half charge, with fixed bayonets. The soldiers instantly ranged themselves on either side, and gave unimpeded passage to these eight men, whose infatuated heroism they at once admired and, reflecting upon its inevitable result, deplored. The enthusiasm of the insurgents at this period is shown by many a curious incident, such as that of their moulding bullets from lead stripped off the roofs of houses; whilst boys, too young to bear weapons, loaded the guns, using for wadding the police notices they had torn off the walls, or, when that resource failed, taking the shirts off their own backs to tear to shreds for the purpose. It was all, however, a forlorn hope; and the rising was destined to be crushed by superior force. More than one reference to the defence of the Cloître St.-Méry will be found in the novels of Balzac, and a dramatic description of it occurs in the memoirs of Alexandre Dumas. [Illustration] CHAPTER IX. THE BOULEVARDS (_continued_). The Porte St.-Martin--Porte St.-Denis--The Burial Place of the French Kings--Funeral of Louis XV.--Funeral of the Count de Chambord--Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle--Boulevard Poissonnière--Boulevard Montmartre--Frascati. Just beyond the Porte Saint-Martin the Boulevard Saint-Denis crosses the great thoroughfare, which is called on one side Boulevard de Sébastopol, on the other, Boulevard de Strasbourg. The Boulevard de Strasbourg was so designated (long before the Franco-German war, which suggests quite another origin for the name) in honour of the city where Prince Louis Napoleon made his first attempt to restore the Empire in France. The circumstances of the rash enterprise, represented at the time by the Government newspapers as merely ridiculous, were sufficiently romantic to deserve a few words of mention. Quitting his mother, with whom he had been living at the Castle of Arenberg, in Switzerland, he went as if to take the waters at Baden-Baden, a place he found suitable to his purpose from its vicinity to Alsace, and from the opportunity it afforded him of covering his ambitious views under the mask of pleasure. It was there that the prince gained the co-operation of Colonel Vaudrey, who commanded the 4th regiment of artillery at Strasburg, in which frontier city the prince had resolved to proclaim the restoration of the Empire before marching towards the capital. The Alsacian democrats were to be gained over by holding out to them a prospect of a fair representation of the people, while the garrison of Strasburg was to be captivated by the cry of "_Vive l'Empereur!_" The citizens were to be summoned to liberty, and the young men of the schools to arms. The ramparts were then to be entrusted to the keeping of the national guards, and the prince was to march to Paris at the head of the troops. "And then," says Louis Blanc, in his sketch of the project, "the pictures that naturally presented themselves to the mind of Louis Napoleon were towns surprised, garrisons carried away by the movement, young men eagerly enlisting among his adventurous followers, old soldiers quitting the plough from all quarters to salute the eagle borne aloft, amidst acclamations, caught up by echo after echo along the roads; bitter recollections of the invasion, proud memories of the great wars, reviving, meanwhile, in every part of the Vosges, Lorraine, and Champagne." The ardour of the conspirators steadily increased, and had they not possessed resolution and daring of their own, there was a woman in their midst who would have set them a bold example. Madame Gordon, the daughter of a captain of the Imperial Guard, had been initiated at Lille into the projects of Louis Napoleon without the knowledge of the prince himself, and entering impetuously into the conspiracy, she hastened to Strasburg, or rather to Baden-Baden in the immediate neighbourhood, and, appearing there as a professional singer, gave a series of concerts. Prince Louis was charmed with the lady's talents, and, on expressing his admiration, was astonished to find that she had come to Baden-Baden with no object but to help him in the attempt he was about to make on the other side of the Rhine. The Strasburg expedition having failed, it pleased the enemies of the prince to cast ridicule upon it; and he was accused of having exhibited himself in his uncle's boots, just as some years afterwards, in connection with the Boulogne expedition, he was said to have carried with him a trained eagle which at a given moment was to fly to the top of the Boulogne Column in memory of the Great Army. Both at Boulogne, however, and at Strasburg the prince had considerable chances of success: a fact sufficiently proved (apart from any demonstration in detail) by the popularity he was seen to possess when, in 1848, he appeared as candidate for the Presidency of the French Republic. At Strasburg, as afterwards at Boulogne, he did not make his attack until after he had had the ground thoroughly reconnoitred, and had ascertained that the troops before whom he was about to present himself were largely composed of his partisans. The soldiers of the 4th regiment of artillery were waiting, drawn up face to face in two lines, with their eyes fixed on Colonel Vaudrey, who stood alone in the centre of the yard. Suddenly the prince appeared in the uniform of an artillery officer, and hurried up to the colonel, who introduced him to the troops, crying out: "Soldiers, a great revolution begins at this moment. The nephew of the Emperor stands before you. He comes to place himself at your head. He is here on French soil to restore to France her glory and her liberty. He is here to conquer or to die for a great cause--the cause of the people. Soldiers of the 4th regiment of artillery, may the Emperor's nephew reckon on you?" At these words an indescribable transport seized the troops. As one man they cried, "_Vive l'Empereur!_" and brandished their arms amid shouts of enthusiasm. Louis Napoleon, deeply affected, made signs that he wished to speak. "It was in your regiment," he said, "that the Emperor Napoleon, my uncle, first saw service; with you he distinguished himself at the siege of Toulon; it was your brave regiment that opened the gates of Grenoble to him on his return from the island of Elba. Soldiers, new destinies are reserved for you!" And, taking the Eagle from an officer who carried it, "Here," he said, "is the symbol of French glory, which must henceforth be also the symbol of liberty." The shouts were redoubled, they mingled with the strains of martial music, and the regiment prepared to march. [Illustration: APSIS OF CHURCH OF ST. MÉRY, RUE BRISEMICHE.] [Illustration: NOTRE-DAME.] The excitement went on increasing, and cries of "_Vive l'Empereur!_" filled the air, when suddenly a strange rumour began to spread. It was said that the self-proclaimed nephew of the emperor was in reality the nephew of Colonel Vaudrey. The enthusiasts of a second before, lending ear to the idle whisper, now hesitated; and in revolts the man who hesitates or meets with hesitation is lost. The people of Strasburg had shown numerous marks of sympathy for the heir of the first Napoleon, and many officers and soldiers had espoused his cause. But the first impulse had received a check, and the power of discipline and routine soon asserted itself. The question now was, how the heir of the first Napoleon might escape from the mass of troops by which he was surrounded. Two of his adherents offered to cut a way for him, sword in hand; but this wild proposal was naturally rejected, and the prince had to surrender himself prisoner. [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE FAUBOURG SAINT-DENIS.] What to do with him, however, was for some time a difficult problem to the authorities. To try the Prince by an ordinary jury would be awkward, inasmuch as there was a considerable chance of his acquittal; while it was already known that if he were brought before the Chamber of Peers, many members of that august body had declared their resolution not to sit in judgment upon him. At last it was resolved to send him into exile. He was not allowed to go back to Switzerland, where he had been living for some years, and he was ultimately ordered to make America his destination. It was said that he promised to remain there for not less than ten years. But there is no proof of any such compact having been entered into, and the prince was soon to be heard of again in London. Formerly associated solely with the first attempt of Prince Louis Napoleon to place himself on the throne of France, the Boulevard of Strasburg now seems to mark the fact that the Alsatian city, so thoroughly French in feeling, has been made the capital of a province of the German Empire. It has been said that the Boulevard Saint-Denis crosses the Boulevard de Strasbourg; and it terminates at the Porte Saint-Denis, erected two years earlier than the Porte Saint-Martin, to which it is superior both by the boldness of its architecture and by the magnificence of its ornamentation. The Porte Saint-Denis was constructed in 1672 by the order and at the expense of the City of Paris, to celebrate the success of that astonishing campaign in which, during less than sixty days, forty strongholds and three provinces fell before the armies of the victorious monarch. The town side of the arch bears, on the left, a colossal figure of Holland, on the right, another of the Rhine: two masterpieces, due to the chisel of the Auguier Brothers. At the top of the arch is a frieze representing in low relief the famous passage of the Rhine under the orders of Louis XIV. On the Faubourg side the low relief at the top of the arch represents the taking of Maestricht. The Porte Saint-Denis bears this simple inscription: "_Ludovico Magno_"--"To Louis the Great." At the end of the Rue Faubourg Saint-Denis is the necropolis of Saint-Denis--the burial-place of the French kings. The obsequies of French kings have from the earliest times been attended with as much pomp and show as their coronations. It was not enough to embalm the body, place it in several coffins, and finally carry it to the royal burial place at Saint-Denis--to observe an elaborate ceremonial, which the Court functionaries and the officials of State followed out to the minutest detail; the effigy of the dead king was exposed for forty days in the palace, stretched on a State bed, clothed in royal garments, the crown on the head, the sceptre in the right hand, and the brand of justice on the left, with a crucifix, a vessel of holy water, and two golden censers at the foot of the couch. The officers of the palace, meanwhile, continued their duties as usual, and even went so far as to serve the king's meals as though he were still living. The embalmed body was afterwards transported to the Abbey of Saint-Denis, with the innumerable formalities laid down beforehand; while at the interment so many honours were paid to it that to enumerate them would be to fill a small volume. The details of the ceremony were so minute and fastidious that battles of etiquette constantly took place among the exalted persons figuring in the assembly. At the burial of Philip Augustus, the Papal Legate and the Archbishop of Rheims disputed for precedence; and as neither would give way, they performed service at the same time in the same church, but at different altars. A like scandal occurred at the funeral of St. Louis. When his successor, Philip III., wished to enter the Abbey of Saint-Denis at the head of the procession, the doors were closed in his face. The abbot objected to the presence, not of the king, his master, but of the Bishop of Paris and the Archbishop of Sens, whom he had observed among the officiating clergy, and who, according to his view, had no right to perform service in the Abbey of Saint-Denis, where he alone was chief. The difference was arranged by the archbishop and bishop stripping themselves of their pontifical garments, and acknowledging the supremacy of the abbot in his own sanctuary. At the death of Charles VI. it was found necessary to consult the Duke of Bedford as to the conduct of the funeral ceremony, and under the direction of the foreigner it was performed with great magnificence. The duke observed as nearly as possible the ancient ceremonial, the only important variation being that (possibly in his character of Englishman) he ordered the interment to be followed by a grand dinner. Even at the dinner--where, at least, concord might have been expected--there were absurd wranglings on points of etiquette between the State officials. These royal funerals naturally cost enormous sums of money, which were charged partly to the Crown, partly to the City of Paris. The obsequies of Francis I. took five hundred thousand livres from the purse of his successor, without counting the contribution, probably of equal amount, from the town. The effigies of his two sons who had died before him were carried with his own relics to Saint-Denis. Thus there were three coffins in the procession. By the observance of a similar custom, there were in the funeral procession of St. Louis no fewer than five. At the interments of the old kings genuine grief was often exhibited by the people. Such, however, was not the case at the obsequies of Louis XIV. The Duke de Saint-Simon, in his _Memoirs_, speaks of this funeral as a very poor affair, remarkable only for the confused style in which it was conducted. The king had left no directions in regard to his burial; and partly for the sake of economy, partly to save trouble, it was decided to regulate the ceremonies by those observed at the interment of Louis XIII., who, in his will, had ordered that they should be as simple as possible. "His modesty and humility, like the other Christian and heroic qualities he possessed, had not," says Saint-Simon, "descended to his son. But the funeral of Louis XIII. was accepted as a precedent, and no one saw the slightest objection to it, attachment and gratitude being virtues which had ceased to exist." Nor did the Duke of Orleans pay a flattering tribute to the royal memory, when, regent though he had only just become, he absented himself from the ceremony of carrying the king's heart to the Grand Jesuits: "that heart," says Saint-Simon, "which loved no one, and which excited so little love." In addition to the usual distribution of alms, the Regent of Orleans associated the funeral of Louis XIV. with an exceptional act of mercy. A number of persons had been arbitrarily imprisoned on _lettres de cachet_ and otherwise, some for Jansenism and various religious and political offences, others for reasons known only to the king or his former ministers. The regent ordered all the captives to be set at liberty, with the exception of a few who had been duly convicted of serious political or criminal misdeeds. Among the prisoners liberated from the Bastille was an Italian whose confinement had lasted thirty-five years, and who had been arrested the very day of his arrival at Paris, which he had come to see simply as a traveller. "No one ever knew why," says Saint-Simon; "nor, like most of the others, had he ever been interrogated. It was thought to be a mistake. When his liberty was announced to him, he asked sadly of what use it was to him. He said that he had not a child, that he knew no one at Paris, nor even the name of a street, that his relations in Italy were probably dead, and that his property must have been divided among his heirs, on the supposition that he was dead. He asked to be allowed to remain at the Bastille for the rest of his life, with board and lodging. This was granted to him, with liberty to go out when he pleased. As for the prisoners released from the dungeons into which the hatred of the Ministers and that of the Jesuits had thrown them, the horrible condition in which they appeared inspired horror, and rendered credible all the cruelties they related when they were in full liberty." The story of the Italian prisoner who declined to leave the Bastille is interesting from its having anticipated--perhaps it suggested--the one told by another prisoner on the occasion of the Bastille being taken by the Revolutionists in 1789. The funeral of Louis XV. was a very hurried affair. The king died on the 10th of May, at twenty minutes past three. The whole Court instantly took flight, and there only remained with the body a few persons required for the care of it. The utmost precipitation was used in removing it from Versailles. None of the usual formalities were observed. Everyone was afraid to go near the body--undertakers, like the rest, feared the small-pox, of which the king had died--and the corpse was carried to Saint-Denis in an ordinary travelling carriage, under the care of forty members of the body-guard and a few pages. The escort hurried on the dead man in the most indecent manner, and all along the road the greatest levity was shown by the spectators. The public-houses were filled with uproarious guests; and it is said that when the landlord of one of them tried to silence a troublesome customer by reminding him that the king was about to pass, the man replied: "The rogue starved us in his lifetime. Does he want us to perish of thirst now that he is dead?" A jest different in style, but showing equally in what esteem Louis XV. was held by his subjects, is attributed to the Abbé of Sainte-Geneviève. Being taunted with the powerlessness of his saint and the little effect which the opening of his shrine, formerly so efficacious, had produced, he replied: "What, gentlemen, have you to complain of? Is he not dead?" The last of the Bourbons buried at Saint-Denis was Louis XVIII., whose obsequies were conducted as nearly as possible on the ancient regal pattern. The exhibition of the king's effigy in wax had in Louis XVIII.'s time been out of fashion for more than a century. But the customs observed in connection with the lying-in-state of Louis XIV. were for the most part revived. The king, who died on the 16th of September, 1824, was embalmed, and on the 18th his body was exposed on a State bed in the hall of the throne. His bowels and heart had been enclosed in caskets of enamel. The exhibition of the body lasted six days, during which it was constantly surrounded by the officers of the Crown and the superior clergy. The translation of the remains to St.-Denis took place on the 23rd, in the midst of an imposing civil and military procession. The princes of the blood and grand officers of State occupied fourteen mourning coaches, each with eight horses, and the tail of the procession was formed by 400 poor men and women bearing torches. Received at the entrance to the church by the Dean of the Royal Chapter and the Grand Almoner of France, the body was placed on trestles in the chancel, while prayers were recited by the clergy. It was afterwards removed to an illuminated chapel, where it lay exposed for a whole month, the chapter performing services night and day. The interment took place on the 25th of October. The grand almoner celebrated a solemn mass; and after the Gospel a funeral oration was pronounced by the Bishop of Hermopolis. Then four bishops uttered a benediction over the body, and absolution was pronounced; twelve of the body-guard thereupon carrying the coffin down to the royal vault, where the grand almoner cast a shovelful of earth on it, and blessed it, saying: "_Requiescat in pace_." The king-at-arms approached the open vault, threw into it his wand, helmet, and coat-of-arms, ordered the other heralds to imitate him, and calling up the grand officers of the Crown, told them to bring the insignia of the authority they held from the defunct king. Each came in succession with the object entrusted to his care: such as the banner of the royal guard, the flags of the body-guard, the spurs, the gauntlets, the shield, the coat-of-arms, the helm, the pennon, the brand of justice, the sceptre, and the crown. The royal sword and banner were only presented at the mouth of the vault. The Grand Master of France now inclined the end of his staff towards the coffin, and cried in a loud voice: "The king is dead!" The king-at-arms, taking three steps backwards, repeated in the same tone: "The king is dead; the king is dead!" Then, turning towards the persons assembled, he added: "Let us now pray to God for the repose of his soul." The clergy and all present fell on their knees, prayed, and then stood up. The grand master next drew back his staff, raised it in the air, and exclaimed: "Long live the king!" The king-at-arms repeated: "Long live the king! Long live the king! Long live King Charles, the tenth of the name, by the grace of God King of France and of Navarre; very Christian, very august, very powerful; our honoured lord and master, to whom may God grant a life long and happy. Cry all 'Long live the king! Long live Charles X.!'" The tomb was closed, and the ceremony was at an end. At the funeral of the Count de Chambord the hearse was surmounted by a dome, on which rested four crowns. It was not explained what kingdoms these crowns were intended to represent. As the head of the House of France, the right of the count, heraldically speaking, to wear the French crown would scarcely be disputed. The four symbolical crowns on the count's hearse were possibly, then, meant to be simple reminders that the Bourbons claimed sovereign rights over four different countries; and in the days of Louis Philippe they indeed reigned in France, Spain, Naples, and Parma. But the Revolution of 1848 in France and the war of 1859 in Italy cleared three thrones of their Bourbon occupants, and the last of the reigning Bourbons disappeared when, in 1868, Isabella of Spain fled from Madrid. Thus, in the course of twenty years the four Bourbon crowns lost all real significance; and the Bourbon sovereigns had simply increased the numbers of those "kings in exile," so much more plentiful during the period of M. Alphonse Daudet than at that of Voltaire, who first observed them, in _Candide_, as a separate species. Now that the Comte de Chambord reposes by the side of his grandfather, Charles X., there are as many of the Bourbons buried at Göritz as at Saint-Denis, where, in the burial-place of the French kings, the only really authentic bodies are those of the Duke of Berri, the Count of Chambord's father, and Louis XVIII., his great-uncle. In regard to the later occupants of the French throne, it is at least certain where they are interred; Napoleon I. at the Invalides, Louis Philippe at Claremont, Napoleon III. at Chiselhurst, and the last two representatives of the Bourbons at Göritz. The first of the Bourbons, Henri IV., as likewise his successors, Louis XIII., Louis XIV., and Louis XV., were buried at Saint-Denis, in the vault known as that of the Bourbons; and to the coffins still supposed to contain their remains were added, after the Restoration, two more, reputed--without adequate foundation for the belief--to hold the bodies of Louis XVI. and of the child who died in the Temple--the so-called Louis XVII. The body of the Duke of Berri was laid in the vault of the Bourbons a few days after his assassination in 1820; and that of Louis XVIII. was consigned to the same resting-place in 1824. But in 1793 the tombs of the French kings had been dismantled, and their contents re-interred promiscuously in two large graves, hastily dug for the purpose; and the identity of the bones asserted to be those of Louis XVI. and Louis XVII., which were not placed in the Bourbon vault of the Saint-Denis church until 1815, could scarcely be demonstrated. [Illustration: BOULEVARD AND PORTE SAINT-DENIS.] "To celebrate the 10th of August, which marks the downfall of the French Throne, we must, on its anniversary," said Barrère, in his report addressed to the French Convention, "destroy the splendid mausoleums at Saint-Denis. Under the monarchy the very tombs had learned to flatter the kings. Their haughtiness, their love of display, could not be subdued even on the theatre of death; and the sceptre-bearers who have done so much harm to France and to humanity seem even in the grave to be proud of their vanished greatness. The powerful hand of the Republic must efface without pity those arrogant epitaphs and demolish those mausoleums which would revive the frightful recollections of the kings." The proposition of Barrère was adopted, and the National Assembly decreed "that the tombs and mausoleums of the former kings in the Church of Saint-Denis should be destroyed." The execution of the decree was undertaken on the 6th of August, and three days afterwards thirty-one tombs had been swept away. Not the least remarkable of these tombs was the earliest, erected by St. Louis in honour of "Le Roi Dagobert," of facetious memory, famed in song for having put on his breeches "à l'envers." It is one of the most curious monuments of the thirteenth century, and at least as interesting for its subject as for its architecture. On three zones, superposed one upon the other, is represented the legend of Dagobert's death. On the lowest zone we see St. Denis revealing to a sleeping anchorite, named Jean, that King Dagobert is suffering torments; and close by, the soul of Dagobert, represented by a naked child bearing a crown, is being maltreated by demons, frightfully ugly, who hold their prey in a boat. In the middle zone, the same demons are running precipitately from the boat, in the most grotesque attitudes, at the approach of the three saints, Denis, Martin, and Maurice, who have come to rescue the soul of King Dagobert. In the highest of the bas-reliefs the soul of King Dagobert is free. The naked child is now standing in a winding-sheet, of which the two ends are held by St. Denis and St. Martin; and angels are awaiting him in heaven, whither he is about to ascend. The commission appointed by the Convention did not destroy this tomb. They had it transported, with many other objects of artistic and intrinsic value, to Paris. The last King of France and of Navarre died on the 6th of July, 1836, and it was not until nine days afterwards that the fact was made known to the French public through the columns of the _Gazette de France_. The heart of Charles X. was, according to royal custom, separated from the body; though, instead of being preserved apart, as in the case of former French kings, it was enclosed in a box of enamel, and fastened with screws to the top of the coffin. The Comte de Chambord, on the other hand, was buried in the ordinary manner, and not, like Charles X., with his heart on the coffin lid; nor, like Louis XVIII., with his heart in one place and his body in another. The dead, according to the German ballad, "ride fast." But the living move still faster; and in France, almost as much as in England, the separation of a heart from the body, to be kept permanently as a relic, is in the present day a process which seems to savour of ancient times, though, as a matter of fact, it was common enough among the French at the end of the last century. In our own country the discontinuance of what was at one time as much a custom in England as in France, or any other continental land, is probably due to the influence of the Reformation, which, condemning absolutely the adoration of the relics of saints, did not favour the respectful preservation of relics of any kind. Great was the astonishment caused in England when in the last generation it was found that Daniel O'Connell had by will ordered his heart to be sent to Rome. The injunction was made at the time the subject of an epigram, intended to be offensive, but which would probably have been regarded by O'Connell himself as flattering: setting forth, as it did, that the heart which was to be forwarded to Rome had never in fact been anywhere else. The reasons for which in the Middle Ages hearts were enclosed in precious urns may have been very practical. Sometimes the owner of the heart had died far from home, and in accordance with his last wishes, the organ associated with all his noblest emotions was sent across the seas to his living friends. Such may well have been the case when, after the death of St. Louis at Tunis, the heart of the pious king was transmitted to France, where it was preserved for centuries--perhaps even until our own time--in La Sainte Chapelle. In the year 1798, while some masons were engaged in repairing the building which had been converted into a depôt for State archives, they came across a heart-shaped casket in lead, containing what was described as "the remains of a human heart." The custodians of the archives drew up a formal report on the discovery, and enclosing it in the casket with the relics, replaced the casket beneath the flagstones whence it had been disinterred. In 1843, when the chapel was restored, the leaden heart-shaped receptacle was found anew, and a commission was appointed to decide as to the genuineness of the remains, believed to be those of St. Louis. An adverse decision was pronounced, the reasons for discrediting the legend on the subject being fully set forth by M. Letrenne, the secretary of the commission. * * * * * The Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, which comes next to the Boulevard Saint-Denis, is bounded on the right by the Faubourg Poissonnière, and on the left by the Butte aux Gravois, on which was built in the seventeenth century the quarter named, after its parochial church, Notre-Dame de Bonne Nouvelle. The Bonne Nouvelle Bazaar, constructed in the reign of Louis Philippe, contained, in the basement, a sort of theatre of considerable size, where, in 1848, several political clubs and other conventions were established. Here on one particular day, arriving together by opposite staircases, Victor Hugo and Frédéric Lemaître would present themselves at the speaker's desk erected for political orators. Ultimately, but not without some hesitation, the interpreter of Ruy Blas gave way to the creator of the part. The object of the assembly was to constitute in a permanent way a club for Parisian writers and artists of the dramatic and other schools. Close by, at No. 26, is the Viennese beer-house, established on the site of the theatre opened in 1838, where the company of the old Vaudeville Theatre took refuge when, on the 18th of July in that year, they were burnt out. There is now but one theatre on the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle--that of the Gymnase, opened on the 20th of December, 1820, under the patronage of the Duchess of Berri, who four years afterwards allowed it to take the title of "Théâtre de Madame," which it retained until the Revolution of 1830. It was then entitled the "Gymnase Théâtre Dramatique," afterwards to be known simply as the Gymnase. For the last seventy years the Gymnase has been one of the very best theatres of the second order, ranking immediately after the theatres subventioned by the State. It was at the Gymnase that Scribe made his brilliant reputation with a long succession of little masterpieces, until at length he was followed by Alexandre Dumas the younger, who here produced "Le Demi-Monde," "Diane de Lys," and many other pieces less imposing, perhaps, but more thoughtful and more powerfully written than those of his predecessor. It was at the Gymnase, too, that Sardou brought out many of his best pieces, such as "Les Ganaches," "La Perle noire," "Nos bons Villageois," and "Fernande." This theatre, moreover, was the birthplace of Meilhac and Halévy's "Frou-Frou." The first house on the Boulevard Poissonnière, at the corner of the street of that name, bears an inscription which fixes at this point the boundary of Paris in 1726, though by some authorities 1726 is said to have been substituted for the true year in which the boundaries of Paris were marked--namely, 1702. With the last house on the Boulevard Poissonnière, at the corner of the Faubourg Montmartre, begins a whole series of celebrated restaurants. As the origin of this familiar word is not universally known, it may here be mentioned that it originated with an eating-house keeper, who inscribed above his establishment in large letters the following passage from the Gospel: "Venite ad me et ego 'Restorabo' vos." This restaurateur, or restaurant-keeper, had imitators, and the name which his quotation had suggested was applied to all of them. Paul Brébant, known as the _restaurateur des lettres_, has fed more than one generation of authors and journalists, who have not neglected him on becoming senators or ministers. A great number of monthly entertainments are given at this restaurant. Here dine together the Society of Men of Letters, the Dramatic Critics' Club, the Parisians, the Spartans, etc. Passing on, we next reach the ancient café of the Porte Montmartre, installed in the house which once belonged to the Marchioness de Genlis, sister-in-law of the authoress who superintended the education of the Orleans princes. Close by is the bazaar or arcade known as the Passage des Panoramas, which owes its name to a series of panoramas representing Paris, Lyons, London, and Naples, established here, under special privilege, by Robert Fulton, the inventor of steamers. The money which he made by exhibiting the panoramas enabled him to continue his experiments in marine locomotion. To the left of the Passage des Panoramas was a strip of land, on which, in 1806, the Théâtre des Variétés was built. This little theatre, which, under the name of Variétés Montansier, occupied the site where now stands the Théâtre du Palais Royal, had committed the offence of attracting the public and filling its coffers with gold, while the Comédie Française, close to it, had scarcely been able to make both ends meet. The famous theatre where, at that time, the principal actor was Talma and the principal actress Mlle. Mars, uttered a formal complaint; and the liberty of the stage being then at an end, the Théâtre des Variétés was expelled from the Palais Royal, but allowed to take refuge in a new house built especially for it on the before-mentioned strip of land. For many years the Théâtre des Variétés undertook to amuse the public with the lightest comedies, in which such actors as Brunet, Potier, Vernet, and Odry, such actresses as Flore and Jenny Vertpré appeared. After the Revolution of July, 1830, it made experiments in a more serious style, producing, for instance, the "Kean" of Dumas the elder, with Frédéric Lemaître in the principal character, and Bressant in the part of the Prince of Wales. Under the Second Empire the Variétés returned to its old trade, besides adopting an entirely new one--that of opera-bouffe, as cultivated by Offenbach. Here the earliest and best works of this master, such as "La belle Hélène" and the "Grand Duchess of Gerolstein," were first performed, with Schneider and Dupuis in the principal parts. Here, too, some of the best comedies of Meilhac, Halévy, and Labiche were brought out. The Boulevard Montmartre, in front of the Variétés, is the most animated part of the whole line of boulevards. The late Henri Dupin, the famous boulevardier, who died a centenarian, used to pretend that he had shot rabbits between the Rue Montmartre and the adjoining Rue Richelieu. This was doubtless an exaggeration. But a representation of this part of Paris, painted in the days of the First Empire, shows that at the point in question there were ditches intersecting a road lined with trees. The Boulevard Montmartre combines some of the features of the upper and of the lower boulevard, the shops which here abound offering for sale objects of use and of ornament, of interest and of luxury: clothes, bonnets, books, chocolate, bonbons, and music. [Illustration: BOULEVARD BONNE-NOUVELLE AND THE GYMNASE THEATRE.] At the corner of the Boulevard Montmartre and the Rue Vivienne stood the famous public gambling-house of Frascati, where, until the reign of Louis Philippe, as at a similar establishment in the Palais Royal, games of hazard were publicly played. These gambling-houses bore an important, and often, no doubt, disastrous part in the social life of the French capital, and innumerable anecdotes have been told of the sums lost and won within their walls. Both comedy and tragedy bore a part in the scenes produced by the fascinating cards. Materials for a farce might be found in one scene, in which Mlle. Contat, the famous actress, figured. She was far too beautiful to want, even from her girlhood, a host of admirers. Her first love affair was sufficiently unfortunate. The successful suitor was a certain M. de Lubsac, an officer in the king's household. He was a man of inferior birth, with an empty purse; but he was as handsome as Apollo, and a wit into the bargain. He laid such persistent siege to the actress that she at length yielded in sheer weakness to his importunity. De Lubsac was distinguished by two vices: he loved wine and cards. His passion for play was so reckless that one night he staked his beautiful mistress, or at least put to hazard the whole of her diamonds and trinkets. He lost; and the next day, just as Mlle. Contat was about to attend a _fête_, she looked for her jewellery in vain. The caskets were all empty; a clean sweep had been made of everything. She set up a cry of "Thieves!" and called in the police. De Lubsac thought it discreet to silence her by a free confession of his "fault." He admitted that he had pledged the whole of the missing property. She was furious, and De Lubsac expressed the deepest contrition. "Ah!" he cried, wringing his hands, "if I only had a few louis at this moment I could repair everything!" "How?" cried Mlle. Contat, with a sudden gleam of hope. "Why, to-night," replied Lubsac, "I feel that my luck is in. I should win everything back. But I have not a solitary sou." The repentance of the criminal was so comic that it touched the actress's heart. Presently she smiled, then she laughed outright. In the end she lent the gambler a couple of louis, the last she had in the world, and he hurried off to the gaming-table. In less than an hour he returned triumphant. He had won. He brought back the whole of the jewellery, which he had taken out of pawn, and he had a few louis in his pocket besides. It was impossible to be too severe with such a man. The actress, however, could not put up with him many months. He at length proved such a desperate rake that she dismissed him in disgust. [Illustration: THE BOULEVARD MONTMARTRE.] Every reader of Balzac's invaluable novels will remember one or more scenes in which some public gambling establishment is introduced. At the Frascati people lost their money according to rule, and under the superintendence of the police. Nor did the spendthrifts who haunted it cease to play even when ruin began to stare them in the face, for an occasional piece of luck would always revive the delusion that one day the goddess Fortune would return them the sums they had squandered in wooing her. Attached to the Frascati gambling-house were illuminated gardens, imitated from those of the Italian Ridotto, and largely resorted to, under the Directory and the Consulate, by fashionable citizens. The original proprietor of the Frascati establishment, Garchi by name, died insolvent. The place was seized, and in 1799 passed into the hands of one Perrin, whom Fouché, the celebrated minister of police, appointed Farmer-General of Games. Public gambling-houses were kept up in Paris until the year 1836, when, under Louis Philippe, the "Citizen King," they were brought to an end. With the Frascati Gardens disappeared the charming villa built by Brongniart, with its Italian roof, its portico, and its statues. It was replaced by a house which was to enjoy a celebrity of its own. On the ground-floor it was occupied by Jannisset, the fashionable jeweller; on the first floor by Buisson the tailor, who had the honour of dressing Balzac, the greatest novelist that France, if not the world, has produced. Balzac had inspired the man with the same sort of admiration that a certain wine-merchant felt for the unfortunate Haydon. "Ought a man who can paint like that to be in want of a glass of sherry?" said Haydon to the art loving vintner who had come to ask for a settlement of his bill. "Indeed, no," replied the wine-merchant, who not only went away without asking even for a trifle on account, but hastened to forward several dozen of sherry for Haydon's encouragement and stimulation. Buisson was treated by Balzac on the most friendly footing. Not only did the great novelist allow the fashionable tailor to dress him for nothing, but he also paid him long visits, and used a special set of apartments assigned to him in a lofty region of Buisson's house, where in the midst of the workshops he was beyond the reach of troublesome creditors. Far from being ungrateful to his benefactor, Balzac has rendered him immortal by naming him again and again in his works. Buisson will, thanks to Honoré de Balzac, be always known as the fashionable tailor of Louis Philippe's reign. The name of Frascati at one time belonged to the present Boulevard Montmartre. It is still retained by the pastrycook who sells ices and tarts in his shop at the corner of the boulevard. It should be mentioned that this pastrycook's shop was preceded by the Café Frascati, which owed its success entirely to the beauty of the lady who presided at the counter. When the _dame du comptoir_ disappeared the café became deserted, and had to close its doors. [Illustration] CHAPTER X. BOULEVARD AND OTHER CAFÉS. The Café Littéraire--Café Procope--Café Foy--Bohemian Cafés--Café Momus--The Death of Molière--New Year's Gifts. The history of France is in a large degree the history of its cafés; and the French might well retort that the history of England is to be read in its tavern signs. On the connection between our tavern signs and our naval and military heroes it would be superfluous to insist. We have, it is true, our Dogs and Ducks, our Geese and Gridirons, our Bells and Horns, but we have also our Admiral Keppels, our Wellington Arms, our Napier's Heads; and taking them altogether, the names of our hostelries indicate the various epochs of their origin in a remarkable manner. Another characteristic of the British tavern sign as compared with the French _enseigne_, whether of the café, the restaurant, or the tobacco-shop, is the permanency of the former. Who ever heard of the "Earl of Chatham" being converted into the "Sir Robert Peel," or of "Lord Nelson" turning into "Sir Charles Napier"? Just the contrary takes place in France, where all the cafés, tobacco-shops, theatres, steamers, and even omnibuses that rejoice in what may be called representative titles, change their signs and their appellations with each successive dynasty. But it is above all in the cafés proper that the history of France is to be read; and not the political history alone, for it can be shown that they also reflect every social, literary, and commercial change that takes place in the French metropolis. The _demoiselle du comptoir_ in the more popular quarters of Paris is herself an important historical figure, appearing as she did during the African war as an Algérienne, in the days of the Second Republic as a priestess of Liberty, and during the siege of Sebastopol as a Tartar girl of the Crimea. But she is a political rather than a social index. Such also were the United Cooks, whose miserable _gargotes_ flourished during the Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity period, with their _boeuf à la République_, their _agneau à la Robespierre_, their _veau à la baïonnette_, and their _mouton à la sauce rouge_. It would be difficult to say which of these was the most economical, or, above all, the most indigestible. Far different were the restaurants and cafés whose titles and interior arrangements might be looked upon as indicative of the social and intellectual movement of the nation. Of these, the most remarkable have, at various periods, been the huge Literary Café on the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, the Electric Cafés--of which there were at one time several--between the Porte Saint-Martin and the Théâtre Lyrique, and the Café Oriental, near the Boulevard du Temple. Most provincial Frenchmen and foreigners who have visited Paris in the character of sight-seers have been conducted to the dreary Café des Aveugles, and probably to the absurd Café des Singes; but it is only those who have wandered idly about the boulevards, careless how they might be devoured, that can have found their way to the Literary, the Electric, or the Oriental Café. The Café Littéraire (to go back to some ancient notes made on the subject by the present writer) "was a building of which it would be little to say that it was more magnificent than an English palace. Above the portico the title of the establishment, in gigantic letters and in striking relief, was conspicuous. The stone staircase which led to the entrance was so imposing that as you ascended it you instinctively put your hand in your pocket to assure yourself that you had a respectable number of francs at your disposal. In the vestibule stood two officials; one the under-waiter, the other the sub-editor of the establishment. 'Does monsieur wish to eat?' 'Does monsieur wish to read?' said the two functionaries at the same moment. Anxious to offend neither, and not possessing the art of eating and reading simultaneously, we replied that we wished to play billiards. 'You will find the professor and tables in abundance on the first floor,' said the under-waiter. 'Allow me to present you with the _carte_ of my department;' and he handed me an ordinary _carte du jour_. 'Here is the _carte_ of the department with which I have the honour to be connected,' said the sub-editor, giving me at the same time an astounding unheard-of literary bill of fare, with poetic dishes by Lamartine and Victor Hugo, and prose _entrées_ by the elder Dumas, Soulié, and George Sand. At the foot of the _menu_ were printed the following General Rules:--Every customer spending a franc in this establishment is entitled to one volume of any work, to be selected at will from our vast collection; or in that proportion up to the largest sum he may expend. N.B.--To avoid delay, gentleman consumers who may require an entire romance are requested to name their author with the soup.' After dining we repaired to the billiard-room and played a couple of games, for which two francs and a half were charged. Having paid the debt, and received a voucher for the sum, we were waited on by the editor-in-chief. In strict justice, the voucher entitled us to two volumes and a half, but the editor assured us that it was contrary to the rules of the establishment to serve less than an entire _livraison_. To ask for half a livraison, he said, was like ordering half a mutton-chop or half a lemonade." The establishment of the Café Littéraire was contemporaneous with the first issue, on a large scale, of three-franc volumes and four-sou _livraisons_, with liberty of the Press, open discussion, and the ascendency of literary men in connection with politics. As a natural consequence of this general intellectual activity, a taste for popular science arose, which the astronomer on the Pont-Neuf, with his long telescope and his interminable orations, was unable to satisfy. The electric cafés instituted at this period were sufficiently curious establishments. A thirsty Parisian entering one of them for the first time in his life, found himself in a place which resembled a buffet more than a café, and in which the most remarkable object was an enormous metal counter. Having swallowed his beverage, he proceeded to place his piece of money on the counter, when, to his astonishment, he received a violent shock in the right arm, which probably caused him to drop the coin as if it were red-hot. "I have had an electric shock!" he would exclaim to some frequenter lounging near him. "Impossible!" would be the reply. "You must have knocked your funny-bone against the edge of the counter." Protesting that he had received a galvanic shock, the victim was assured by the lounger, who had been lying in wait for his joke, that he had simply been electrified by the charms of the young lady behind the counter, just as a theatrical audience is said to be electrified by an actress or _prima donna_. Again, however, on receiving his change the new customer experienced a sharp shock, being the more astonished inasmuch as the _habitués_ present put down and took up their money evidently without feeling the electric current. Then he went away mystified, to return, perhaps, later in the evening with an inexperienced friend, whom, partly from curiosity, partly in a spirit of mischief, he led up to the counter. His friend no sooner touched it than he started back electrified, but he himself found that he could this time touch it with impunity. He had now obviously been admitted amongst the initiated; and when he had gone on drinking and spending enough to entitle him to confidence, the beautiful _demoiselle du comptoir_ condescended to explain to him the entire mystery. At the foot of the metal counter was a piece of strip iron connected with one of the wires of a galvanic battery, the other wire communicating with the counter itself. When any of the initiated touched the counter the presiding goddess stopped the current, which only novices were intended to feel. The whole device was simply employed to amuse customers. The electric counters became very popular, and had rapidly spread all over Paris, when the Government, thinking probably that such practical jokes might sometimes be carried too far, absolutely suppressed the _cafés électriques_. A whole chapter might be devoted to the literary cafés of Paris, much more numerous than ever were the literary coffee-houses of London in the last century. The first Paris café destined to identify itself with literature was the Café Procope, so called from the name of its founder, Procopio Cultelli, who, in the earliest days of coffee-drinking among the French and among Europeans generally, installed himself at No. 13, Rue des Fossés-Saint-Germain, opposite the Comédie Française. The wily Sicilian had evidently opened his coffee-house in view of the French actors. But it was the authors who became its principal frequenters; first the dramatists connected with the Comédie Française, and afterwards authors of all kinds. In France, however, there are scarcely any authors who do not at least try their hand at dramatic writing. Neither Crébillon, with his _Catalina_, nor Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, with _Jason_, nor Piron, with _Fernand Cortez_, nor Diderot, with _Le Fils naturel_, nor Voltaire, with so many celebrated plays, can be regarded solely or specially as dramatists; yet all of them contributed to the French theatre, and all are remembered among the frequenters of the Café Procope. The Café Procope was still at the height of its reputation when, in 1784, Beaumarchais' _Marriage of Figaro_ was produced; and it was the scene of a great literary gathering immediately before the representation of that famous comedy. After the Revolution, however, it gradually lost its character as a literary centre. [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE THÉÂTRE DES VARIÉTÉS, BOULEVARD MONTMARTRE.] And now the Comédie Française crossed the water--an unmistakable sign that the left bank no longer possessed its ancient importance, and that everything not already to be found on the right bank was gradually moving to that favoured shore. The Café Procope still exists, but it has quite lost its old literary character; nor is it much frequented even by the students, who on the left bank form so important a part of the community. The Café de la Régence owes its name to the period in which it was established. Haunted as it was by chess-players, it was nevertheless the resort of distinguished writers, with Voltaire, d'Alembert, and Marmontel amongst them. Here Diderot sat side by side with the Emperor Joseph II. Robespierre looked in now and then to have a game of chess, and among other occasional visitors of distinction was the youthful General Bonaparte. Nor, from the list of the modern frequenters of the Café de la Régence, must Méry or Alfred de Musset be omitted. Close to the Café de la Régence stood the Café Foy, celebrated under the Regency for its beautiful _dame du comptoir_, of whom the Duke of Orleans became desperately enamoured. It was from this cafe that Camille Desmoulins, on the 12th of July, 1789, marched forth to begin the attack which ended in the overthrow of the ancient _régime_. Until its demolition, not many years ago, the Café Foy was known as one of the very few cafés in Paris where smoking was not allowed. In ancient days cafés were broadly divided into cafés simply so called and _cafés-estaminets_; and in the latter only, as in a beer-house, could the customer smoke. The Café Foy was at one time greatly in favour with old gentlemen, dating from a now remote period, when the smoking of tobacco was considered not altogether (in Byronic language) a "gentlemanly vice." The Café Foy was known, moreover, by a certain swallow painted on the ceiling by Carle Vernet (father of the more celebrated Horace Vernet). He was lunching there one day with a joyous party of friends, when a bottle of champagne was opened, of which the cork struck the ceiling and left a mark there. To compensate for this mishap, the famous painter ordered a ladder to be brought in, and hurriedly, but with consummate art, painted a swallow where the cork had struck. Years passed, and still the swallow remained fresh. The form and colour of the bird were renewed from time to time by other painters; but to the sight-seer, as informed by the waiters of the café, it was always the very swallow that had been painted in the midst of a champagne luncheon by Carle Vernet. It was as clear and bright as ever when at last it disappeared with the ceiling it had so long adorned. Close to the Café Foy stood the Café des Aveugles, with an orchestra of blind men as its distinctive feature. It seems at that period to have been thought strange that blind men should be able to perform on musical instruments. In the present day no _virtuoso_ of any pretension plays with notes; though those, no doubt, are the least blind who do not pride themselves on disregarding what may well be a valuable, if not indispensable, aid to memory. A traditional figure associated with the orchestra of blind musicians was a so-called "savage": some personage, that is to say, from one of the Paris faubourgs, disguised with feathers, paint, and tattooing. After the Revolution the cafés became more and more political. Under the Republic, as in a less degree under the Empire, there had been no opposition cafés. But with the Restoration some freedom of thought returned. Imperialism had its head-quarters at the Café Leinblin, where the officers of the _Grande Armée_ exchanged ideas on the subject of the humiliations undergone by France now that the great Napoleon was an exile, and that power was vested in the hands, not of a military dictator, but of a mere Parliament, with a constitutional king as figure-head. At the Café Foy congregated the Liberals of the new _régime_; at the Café Valois came together the Royalists, who believed in nothing but the throne and the altar as maintained under the ancient monarchy. The café, in spite of the number of new clubs established in Paris, continues to be one of the most popular and most flourishing institutions of the French capital. Numbers of Parisians are not rich enough to belong to clubs, but can well afford from day to day the expenditure of fivepence or sixpence on a cup of coffee and a _petit verre_. Of Bohemian cafés--those frequented, that is to say, by the gipsies of literature and art--the most celebrated is, or was in the time of Henri Murger, the brilliant author of "La Vie de Bohême," the Café Momus. Here it was that poets, painters, and musicians of the future, blessed for the present with more genius than halfpence, waited until some comparatively wealthy lover of art and literature came to their relief, or until, by their noisy and reckless talk, they forced the alarmed proprietor to beg them to retire, and come in some other day to pay for their refreshment. Champfleury, gleaning here and there after Murger's abundant harvest, has told us how, armed with one cup of coffee and a small glass of brandy, half-a-dozen Bohemians would take absolute possession of the first floor of this establishment. Sometimes a Bohemian, not absolutely destitute, would order a cup of coffee and _petit verre_, and go upstairs. Soon afterwards a second Bohemian would come in, ask if the first Bohemian were in the café, and go upstairs to join him. A third would ask for the second, a fourth for the third, and so on, until around the solitary cup of coffee and the unique glass of liqueur a party of six had assembled. The proud paymaster, after sipping a little of the coffee, would pass it to a friend, who, having helped himself, would hand the remainder to some other member of the party. The cognac was in like manner shared, and the last served came in for the sugar, with which he would sweeten a glass of water. The Bohemian frequenters of the Café Momus were more liberal in giving their orders when one of them had sold a picture or a piece of music, a book or a play; and they would afterwards order on credit as long as credit could be obtained. A story is told of one Bohemian who persisted in ordering after his credit had been stopped, and who, having told the waiter repeatedly, but in vain, to bring him a cup of coffee, went himself to the counter, and said in a stern voice, "I have ordered a cup of coffee half-a-dozen times; either serve it at once or lend me five sous, and I'll go and get it elsewhere." It must be supposed that it somehow suited the proprietor of the Café Momus to encourage, or at least tolerate, his Bohemian visitors; otherwise he would have taken steps to exclude them permanently. Occasionally, it is said, they would barricade themselves in their favourite room on the first floor, and refuse absolutely to give up possession. The probability is that when they were in funds they spent their money lavishly; and they undoubtedly gave a certain reputation to the Café Momus, which became known throughout Paris as the café of literary aspirants, and attracted on that ground a certain number of sympathisers and admirers. The house formerly occupied by the Frascati establishment bears on the Rue Richelieu side a medallion with an inscription to the memory of Cardinal de Richelieu, put up by Antoine Elwart, professor of composition at the Conservatoire. The other side of the Boulevard Montmartre, whence springs the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre, is no less animated than the theatre side. Here, too, cafés abound, each of which, in theatrical phrase, is "full to overflowing"; for numbers of customers sit out in the street at the little tables in front of the café. The arcade on this side of the boulevard is known as the Passage Jouffroi. It runs through what was once the ground-floor of the house which, under the Restoration, was inhabited by three distinguished composers: Rossini, Carafa, and Boieldieu. A little further on, always in the direction of the Madeleine, stands an important club, called officially Le Grand Cercle, familiarly, Le Cercle des Ganaches. It is composed chiefly of commercial men and civil servants. It is considered old-fashioned, and the dinner-hour there is six o'clock, as it was in most Paris houses fifty years ago. At the right corner of the Rue Grange Batelière stands an immense house, on a site occupied, until a few years ago, by the mansion built in the eighteenth century, by two well-known farmers-general, the Brothers Lunge, which from 1836 to 1847 was the haunt of the Jockey Club, the best-known and most fashionable club in Paris, now installed further to the west, but still in the line of boulevards. Ask any Parisian in the present day for "the house of Molière," and he will tell you that La Maison de Molière is only another name for the Théâtre Français. The house, however, where Molière lived is situated at the corner of a little street off the Boulevard Montmartre; and here it was that he breathed his last. On the 10th of February, 1673, the "Malade Imaginaire" was performed for the first time. The curtain rose at four o'clock, and a few minutes afterwards Molière was on the stage, and acting with his accustomed humour. Everyone was laughing and applauding. None of the audience suspected that the actor who was throwing all his energy into the part he had himself created was now on the point of death. In the burlesque ceremony, just as Argan has to utter the word "Juro," a convulsion seized him, which he disguised beneath a forced laugh. But it was now necessary to carry him home. The performance went on, though without Molière, who meanwhile had been taken to his house in the Rue Richelieu. It had been found impossible to get his clothes off. The dying man was still wearing the dressing-gown of the "Imaginary Invalid." He was presently attacked with a violent fit of coughing, in the course of which he burst a blood-vessel and threw up a quantity of blood. A few minutes later he expired, surrounded by the members of his family, and supported by two nuns to whom he was in the habit of offering hospitality when they visited Paris. In his dying moments he had asked for religious consolation; but the priest of St.-Eustache rejected his prayer. Now that he was dead, Christian burial was denied to him: a piece of intolerance due to the Archbishop of Paris, Harley de Champvalon. So soon as Molière's wife heard of the archbishop's refusal, she exclaimed with indignation: "They refuse to bury a man to whom, in Greece, altars would have been erected." Then calling for a carriage, and taking with her the Curé of Auteuil, who was far from sharing the views of his ecclesiastical superior, she hurried to Versailles, threw herself at the king's feet, and demanded justice. "If," she exclaimed, losing all self-control--"if my husband was a criminal, his crimes were sanctioned by your Majesty in person." At these words the king frowned, and the Curé of Auteuil is said to have found the moment opportune for introducing a theological discussion, in the course of which he sought to disculpate himself from an accusation of Jansenism. But Louis XIV. had been affronted, and he told both actress and curé that the matter concerned the archbishop alone. He sent secret orders, however, to the churlish prelate, the result of which was a compromise. The body was refused entrance into the church, but two priests were allowed to accompany it to the cemetery. The archbishop's concession seemed to some bigots out of place: a proof that the ecclesiastical authorities were not alone in their wish to have Molière interred without Christian rites. They could not now prevent his being buried in sacred ground. But on the day of his funeral they organised a riot in front of his house, which Mme. Molière, frightened by the cries and menaces of the crowd, could only appease by throwing money out of the window, to the amount of about a thousand francs. It was on the 21st of February, 1673, that the remains of the great man were borne to their resting-place, without pomp, without ceremony, at night, and almost furtively, as though he had been a criminal. Molière was buried in the Cemetery of Saint Joseph, Rue Montmartre. His widow placed above the grave a great slab of stone, which was still to be seen in the early part of the eighteenth century, when the brothers Parfait published their _Histoire du Théâtre Français_. "This stone," writes M. du Tillet, "is cracked down the middle: which was caused by a very noble and very remarkable action on the part of the widow. Two or three years after Molière's death a very cold winter set in, and she had a hundred loads of wood conveyed to the cemetery, and burned on the tomb of her husband, to warm all the poor people of the quarter, when the great heat of the fire caused the stone to split in two." [Illustration: CAFÉS ON THE BOULEVARD MONTMARTRE.] The Church of Rome has pronounced again and again at councils, and through the mouths of distinguished prelates, against the abomination that maketh not "desolate," but joyful. In the fifth century it excommunicated stage-players, and the order of excommunication, though practically it may have ceased to be effective, has never been rescinded. In France up to the time of the Restoration (1814), or at least during the Restoration, it was in full force, so that the history of the relations between Church and stage in that theatre-loving country has been the history of the refusal of Christian burial in successive centuries to stage-players. Happily, for many years past theory and practice have been at variance in France with regard to the excommunicated position of actors and actresses. The Church, however much it may stand above society, cannot but reflect in some measure the views of society at large; and, if only from policy, it cannot permit itself to outrage a universal feeling. Accordingly, since the doors of Saint-Roch were closed, in 1817, against the body of the famous actress, Mlle. Raucourt--an incident which was followed by a popular outbreak, the calling out of the troops, and ultimately interference on the part of Louis XVIII., who ordered that the religious service should be performed by his own chaplain: since those days there have been few examples in France, and none in Paris, of any actor or actress being treated as beyond the pale of the Church. [Illustration: MOLIÈRE. (_From the Painting by Coypel in the Comédie Française._)] To be seen in all its glory, the Boulevard Montmartre--perhaps the most crowded of all the boulevards, especially by business people--should be traversed at the beginning of the New Year, when in the booths which line the great thoroughfare nearly along its whole length all kinds of objects supposed to be suitable as New Year's gifts are offered for sale. In England, the custom of making Christmas presents and New Year's gifts had, except among relatives, died out, when a few years ago some apparently childish, but in reality very ingenious, person invented Christmas cards. The invention was not successful at first; and the strange practice of exchanging pieces of cardboard adorned with commonplace pictorial designs, and inscribed with conventional expressions of goodwill, was, for a time, confined to the sort of persons who might be suspected of sending valentines. Eventually, however, it spread. The initiative in this matter seems to have been taken by enterprising young ladies, whose attentions it was impossible to leave unrecognised; and endeavours were naturally made to return them cards of superior value to those which they had themselves despatched. Thus a noble spirit of emulation was generated, which the designers, manufacturers, and vendors of Christmas cards did their best to gratify and stimulate; so that, latterly, there has been a marked rise in these products as regards price, and even quality. Many of them possess undeniable artistic merit, and during the last few years some very beautiful varieties of the Christmas card have been brought out at Paris. These pictorial adaptations from the English are at least more graceful and more original than the great majority of our own dramatic adaptations from the French. If, as everyone knows, the sending of Christmas cards is a custom of but a few years' standing, New Year's gifts are by no means of recent invention; and under the Roman Empire, as now in Russia, presents used, as a matter of course, to be made on the first day of the New Year to the magistrates and high officials. In the end, the practice of making New Year's gifts grew so popular that every Roman at the opening of a new year presented the reigning emperor with a certain amount of money, proportionate to his means; and what had, in the first instance, been among ordinary individuals but a token of esteem, was now, in regard to the sovereign, an assurance of loyalty, besides being a tolerable source of income. The barbaric nations, with simpler habits, had simpler ceremonies in connection with the New Year; and the Gauls were content to present one another at this season with sprigs of mistletoe plucked from the sacred groves. Coming to much more recent times, we find the custom of giving New Year's presents in full force at the Court of Louis XIV., when, on the 1st of January, ladies received tokens from their lovers, and gave tokens in return. The custom of making New Year's gifts became at length so general that servants murmured if their masters neglected them in this respect; and an amusing story is told of the stingy Cardinal Dubois, who, on his major-domo asking for his _étrennes_, replied, "Well, you may keep what you have stolen from me during the last twelvemonth." This, however, occurred a long time ago; and had the cardinal lived in the present century, he would scarcely have dared to make such an answer. The Frenchman who nowadays ventures to refuse to his servants, or to any other dependants, the expected annual gifts must be prepared to bear the bitterest sarcasm, which will possibly not cease to assail him even beyond the grave; for it may be his fate to have inscribed on his tomb some such epitaph as the following quite authentic one:-- "Ci-gît, dessous ce marbre blanc, L'homme le plus avare de Rennes; S'il est mort la veille de l'an C'est pour ne pas donner d'étrennes," which may be roughly rendered in English thus:-- "Here lies, beneath this marble white, The miserliest man in Rennes; If New Year's Eve he chose for flight, 'Twas that he need not give _étrennes_." Towards the end of the eighteenth century an edict was published in France forbidding New Year's gifts; but without avail. The _étrennes_ only became more numerous and more costly as the greed of the recipients grew more and more insatiable; and in the present day the meaning of the word _étrenne_ will be only too well understood by any Englishman who, in Paris at the time of the New Year, may venture to have dealings with the waiters at the cafés, with hair-dressers, drivers, or any other set of men who delight in certain traditional customs. [Illustration] CHAPTER XI. THE BOULEVARDS (_continued_). The Opéra Comique of Paris--I Gelosi--The Don Juan of Molière--Madame Favart--The Saint-Simonians. The Boulevard des Italiens derives its name from the so-called Comédie Italienne, the original Opéra Comique of Paris, which owes its existence to letters patent granted to it as far back as 1676. One of the most celebrated establishments on this boulevard is the Café Cardinal, at the corner of the Rue Richelieu. It justifies its title by exhibiting the bust of the famous political prelate, concerning whom the great Corneille, after receiving, first benefits, then injuries, at his hands, wrote these lines:-- "Qu'on parle mal ou bien du fameux cardinal, Ni ma prose, ni mes vers n'en diront jamais rien. Il m'a fait trop de bien pour en dire du mal, Il m'a fait trop de mal pour en dire du bien."[A] [A] "Whether good or evil be spoken of the famous Cardinal, neither my prose nor my verse shall say a word of him. He has done too well by me for me to speak ill of him; he has done too ill by me for me to speak well of him." Formerly known as the Café Dangest, the title it now bears has belonged to it only since the year 1830. Just round the corner stands the house of the well-known music publishers, Messrs. Brandus and Co., founded by Moritz Schlesinger, who, as a young man, brought out many of Beethoven's works, and was indeed one of Beethoven's first appreciators. During the _coup d'État_ of 1851 M. Brandus's hospitable residence was the scene of an outrage which threatened to become a tragedy on a large scale. He was entertaining a party of friends, among whom were M. Adolphe Saxe, the inventor of saxophones, and the eminent musical critic of the _Times_, the late Mr. J. W. Davison. The boulevards and many of the streets leading out of them were full of troops, for the most part in a state of great excitement, and some infantry soldiers at the corner of the Boulevard des Italiens and the Rue Richelieu believed, or affected to believe, that shots had been fired at them from M. Brandus's windows. Possibly some bullets discharged by the soldiers themselves had glanced back from the house or one of the neighbouring houses, and fallen into the street. The troops, in any case, forced M. Brandus's door, and his servant, who went downstairs to remonstrate with the invaders, was at once shot dead. The soldiers then made their way into the room where M. Brandus and his guests were at table, arrested them, and brought them down to the boulevard with the intention of shooting them in a formal manner, as if by way of example. Fortunately, the general in command was an amateur of music and a personal friend of Adolphe Saxe: whom he particularly remembered, moreover, as having fought with courage against the insurgents during the sanguinary days of June, 1848. Saxe at once declared that the accusation made by the soldiers was entirely without basis, and the general did not hesitate to accept his assurance. He enjoined him, however, to hurry away as quickly as possible from the boulevard, which was about to be "swept" by a fusillade. Saxe and his friends managed narrowly to escape. The Opéra Comique Theatre, or Comédie Italienne, as it was more generally called, was founded originally in the Hôtel de Bourgogne; and it was only in 1783 that it was re-established on the boulevard to which the Comédie Italienne was to give its name. The Opéra Comique of France descends indeed in a straight line from the most ancient dramatic entertainments given in that country. These were introduced in the sixteenth century by natives of the land to which the French owe nearly all the lighter and more ornamental part of their civilisation, from opera and the drama to ices and confectionery: from architecture, pictures, and statues, to gloves, fans, gambling-houses, and masked balls. In 1576 Henri III. invited from Venice to Paris a company known as "I Gelosi." The actors were "jealous" or "zealous" to please; and a contemporary writer informs us that after playing at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, where everyone was charged four sous for admission, they took possession of the Hôtel du Petit Bourbon, where such crowds assembled that "the four best preachers in Paris could not together have collected such a congregation." The same writer adds that on the 26th of June following the Parliament forbade "I Gelosi" to play their comedies any longer, as they taught "nothing but impropriety." The Italian actors, however, resisted the Parliamentary decree, and they obtained from the king letters patent permitting them to continue their performances, "consisting," says Mézerai, "of pieces of intrigue, amourettes, and agreeable inventions for awakening and exciting the softest passions." The Italian actors presented these letters patent to the Parliament the month following, when the letters were rejected, and they themselves forbidden to present to the Court such documents, under a penalty of ten thousand Paris livres. The Italians, however, appealed once more to the king, when Henri III. granted express permission, in virtue of which they re-opened their theatre in December, 1577. As, however, the country was now agitated by political troubles, "I Gelosi" discreetly returned to their native land. A few years afterwards a second troop of "Gelosi," and then a third, came to Paris; and later on Henri IV. brought from Pavia a new company, which stayed in Paris for two years. [Illustration: BOULEVARD DES ITALIENS.] Cardinal Mazarin (or Mazarini) did much to familiarise Parisians both with Italian operas and Italian plays; and about 1660 one of several Italian companies which had recently visited Paris obtained permission to play at the Hôtel de Bourgogne alternately with the French actors. But at last, in their love of satire, the Italian actors forgot themselves so far as to turn into ridicule no less a personage than Mme. de Maintenon. "The king," says the Duke de Saint-Simon, writing on this very subject, "drove out very precipitately the whole troop of Italian actors, and would suffer no others in their place. As long as they restricted themselves to indecency, or even impiety, nothing but laughter was excited." But they took the liberty of playing a piece called _The False Prude_, in which Mme. de Maintenon was easily recognised. Accordingly, everyone went to see it; but after three or four representations, the actors were ordered to close their theatre and quit the kingdom within a month. This caused a great noise; and if the actors lost their establishment by their boldness and folly, the Government which drove them out did not gain by the freedom with which the ridiculous incident was criticised. The Lieutenant of Police, accompanied by an army of commissaries, sergeants, and constables, had invaded and seized the manuscript of _The False Prude_. Jherardi, the harlequin of the troupe, hurried to Versailles, where he begged and entreated, but without being able to move Louis XIV., who had so many times protected the Italian comedians. "You came to France on foot," said the king, "and you have gained enough here to go back in carriages." During their stay in Paris the Italian actors expelled by Louis XIV. had accustomed themselves to play in French, and the celebrated comedy writer, Regnard, had entrusted them with several of his pieces. This rendered them more than ever disliked by the French actors, with whom they were always in rivalry. The pieces performed by the Italian actors consisted for the most part, and always when they confined themselves to their own language, of mere dramatic sketches, for which dialogue was supplied by the actors themselves. It was not until 1716 that the Italian actors re-appeared in France, and they now played at a theatre in the Palais Royal, occupied alternately by them and by the company of the Grand Opera. In time the Italian company varied their pieces, and even introduced songs in the midst of the dialogue. This at once exposed them to attacks from the Opéra, or Académie Royale de Musique, as it was called; and in conformity with the privileges secured to the Opéra, the Italians were forbidden to sing. Soon afterwards they produced a piece in which a donkey was brought on to the stage and made to bray, whereupon one of the actors cried out to the animal, "Silence! singing is forbidden on these boards." Ultimately, as the result of much opposition and many minatory decrees, an arrangement was made between the Italian actors and a company of French actors and singers which led to the establishment of the French Opéra Comique. At last the Italian and the French actors played together; but French wit and Italian wit were said not to harmonise, and in order to simplify matters, the Italians, with the exception of one or two who had adopted the French language, were sent out of the country. The theatre now given up to French comic opera continued, however, to be called the Théâtre Italien, to receive afterwards, in memory of Mme. Favart and her husband, the title of Salle Favart, and at a later period, under the Republic, that of Opéra Comique. The performances of the Italians came permanently to an end in 1783. In spite of the jealousy with which they were regarded by the great bulk of the theatrical profession, the Italian actors had an excellent effect on the development of the French stage, which, when the first troupe of Gelosi arrived in Paris, had no substantial existence. Molière profited much by their performances and borrowed freely from their productions, taking from them, according to his well-known saying, "his property" (that is to say, all that naturally belonged to him through affinity and sympathy) wherever "he found it." Apart from many other subjects and scenes, Molière borrowed his version of _Don Juan_ from the Italians. Much of it, including most of its philosophy and wit, belongs in the very fullest sense to the great comic dramatist of France. But the very title, _Festin de Pierre_--an incorrect and, indeed, unintelligible translation of _Il Convitato de Pietra_--is enough to show the origin of Molière's admirable work. The new establishment had been only ten years on the Boulevard des Italiens when its name was altered definitely from Comédie Italienne to Opéra Comique. A few years later the establishment was moved to the Rue Feydeau, where it was destined to enjoy a long life and a merry one. Meanwhile, the house which had given its ancient name to the Italian boulevard remained unoccupied--or but rarely occupied--for some considerable time, until, in 1815, the celebrated Catalani opened it for serious Italian opera. The Théâtre des Italiens now became the most fashionable theatre in Paris. Here Madames Pasta, Malibran, Grisi, Persiani, MM. Rubini, Tamburini, Lablache, etc., were heard. Here, too, Rossini for a time acted as musical director. This theatre, like all others, was soon destined to perish by fire; and Italian opera has of late years led a somewhat wandering life in France, to find itself ultimately without any home at all. The early history of the Opéra Comique, from the middle of the eighteenth until the first days of the nineteenth century, is sufficiently represented by the lives of two of its most distinguished ornaments: Mme. Favart and her successor in parts of the same kind, Mme. Dugazon. Mme. Favart--Duronceray by her maiden name--was the wife of Charles Simon Favart, the well-known dramatist, who for many years supplied the Opéra Comique with all its good pieces. The marriage took place in 1745, and immediately afterwards the Opéra Comique, as an establishment recognised and subventioned by the State, was suppressed. Favart had some time before made the acquaintance of Marshal Saxe, who may be said to have played almost as great a part in connection with the stage as with the camp; and he was now invited by the famous commander to organise a company for giving performances at the head-quarters, and for the entertainment of the army in Flanders generally. Favart hurried to Brussels, where Marshal Saxe was about to arrive; and on reaching the head-quarters, the commander-in-chief gave an entertainment to the ladies whose husbands were serving on his staff, and to the wives generally of the officers. The performance consisted of national dances by the Highland contingent, whose scanty costumes are said to have at once amused and scandalised the ladies. Then a piece of Favart's was played; and with so much success, that it became the fashion to attend Favart representations as often as they were given. Marshal Saxe told Favart that it was part of his policy to give theatrical entertainments, and the manager soon saw that his musical comedies interested the officers sufficiently to take them away from cards and dice, to which previously they had given themselves up with only too much devotion. The marshal pointed out to Favart, moreover, that a lively couplet, a few happy lines, would have more effect on French soldiers than the most eloquent harangues. Besides amusing his own people and keeping them out of mischief, Marshal Saxe found Favart's Comic Opera Company useful in promoting his negotiations with the enemy. Having heard of the Favart performances, the enemy desired much to see them; and the representations given in the enemy's camp had no slight effect in facilitating peace arrangements. Mme. Favart--Mlle. Chantilly, to describe her by her stage name--was a member of the operatic company engaged by the marshal to follow the army of Flanders; and the commander-in-chief--as, with a man of his well-known temperament, was sure to happen--fell in love with the charming _prima donna_. Mme. Favart was at last obliged to make her escape, and, forsaking the camp, returned to the capital. Here she appeared at the so-called Italian Theatre, which was really the Opéra Comique under another name. That Mme. Favart was greater as an actress than as a vocalist (which may be said of so many singers who have distinguished themselves at the Opéra Comique of Paris) is beyond doubt. "She is not a singer," said Grétry, the composer; "she is an actress who speaks song with the truest and most passionate accent." "What a wonderful woman!" exclaimed Boieldieu, after a representation of his _Caliph of Bagdad_. "They say she does not know music; yet I never heard anyone sing with such taste and expression, such nature and fidelity." Boieldieu, through Auber, his successor, brings us to modern times. With Ambroise Thomas, the composer of _Mignon_, and Bizet, the composer of _Carmen_, the Opéra Comique has always been the most French of all the French musical theatres. At the Grand Opéra, or Académie, nearly all the successful works have been composed by foreigners: by Lulli, Gluck, Piccinni, Spontini, Rossini, Meyerbeer, Donizetti, and Verdi. The most popular works at the Opéra Comique have, on the other hand, been composed by Frenchmen. _La Dame Blanche_, for instance, of Boieldieu; the _Fra Diavolo_, _The Black Domino_, _The Crown Diamonds_ of Auber; the _Mignon_ of Ambroise Thomas, and the _Carmen_ of Bizet, have all been due to the genius of Frenchmen. The Opéra Comique, since its formal separation from all connection with Italy, has itself had strange and tragic adventures. The last of these was its destruction by a terrible fire, in which more than one hundred lives were lost. Since this catastrophe, which took place on the 22nd of May, 1887, the Opéra Comique has been provisionally established in the Place du Châtelet. To make an inevitable excursion which here presents itself, the Rue Monsigny, deriving its name from one of the most famous composers connected with the Opéra Comique, will always be remembered as the head-quarters of the Saint-Simonians during the first meeting of that strange association, founded by Saint-Simon, lineal descendant of the duke who wrote the famous _Memoirs_. The aims of the Saint-Simonians, visionary as they may have been, were at least noble; and the society numbered among its members some of the most able and high-minded young men of the day. The truth of this latter assertion is proved by the distinguished part played by many of the Saint-Simonians in very different spheres after the society had come to an end. Michel Chevalier, the political economist, Duveyrier, the dramatist, and Félicien David, the composer, may be mentioned among those Saint-Simonians whose names will be familiar to many Englishmen. Saint-Simon, founder of the sect named after him, began his self-imposed career with a sufficiently large fortune to enable him to test various modes of existence. His purpose was, after studying society, to reform it. He had resolved to study it thoroughly in all its phases: all those, at least, which offered any special intellectual or physical character. Without apparently having conceived any system beforehand, he was constantly working towards one, making observations and writing down notes. That he might waste no time from sluggishness or sloth, he ordered his servant to wake him every morning with these significant words: "Rise, Count; you have great things to do." (_Levez-vous, Monsieur le Comte, vous avez de grandes choses à faire._) The great political principle that he ultimately adopted was that "all legislation should be for the benefit of the poorest and most numerous class," which was little more than a variation of Jeremy Bentham's "greatest good of the greatest number." He lived in aristocratic society a life of pleasure, studied science among scientific men, and finally, occupying himself with books and newspapers, made himself the centre of all kinds of literary gatherings. When, however, he had, according to his own previously formed conception, completed his knowledge of life, he had exhausted his means of living, and was quite unable to turn to account his accumulated experience. The descendant of the proud duke could only keep himself alive by copying manuscripts and by doing clerk's work in the Government Pawn Office, or _Mont-de-Piété_. At last his misfortunes were too great for him, and he endeavoured to commit suicide. But the bullet with which he had intended to blow his brains out glanced along the frontal bone and destroyed one of his eyes, without inflicting any mortal wound. The unhappy experimentalist had now had a bitter experience of poverty, which may or may not have been in his general programme. His enthusiasm ended in any case by inspiring a few rich men who possessed the money necessary for carrying out his ideas. Saint-Simon's mantle fell upon Le Père Enfantin, who presided over the Saint-Simonian family in the Rue Monsigny, until pecuniary embarrassments caused the learned and venerable father to give up the publication of the admirably written Saint-Simonian journal, _The Globe_, and to retire from a house for which, unhappily, rent had to be paid, to a house and garden of his own at Ménilmontant. Here he collected around him forty disciples, determined to work together under Le Père Enfantin's direction. "Poets, musicians, artists, engineers, civil and military," says a writer, fully in sympathy with the Saint-Simonians, even if he was not himself a member of their body, "applied themselves by turns to the hardest and rudest labours. "They repaired the house, regularly swept and kept in order the rooms, offices, and courtyard, cultivated the grounds, covered the walks with gravel, which they procured from a pit they had themselves with much toil opened, and so on. To prove that their ideas upon the nature of marriage and the emancipation of women were not founded upon the calculations of a voluptuous selfishness, they imposed upon themselves the law of strict celibacy. Every morning and evening they refreshed their minds with the discourses of Le Père Enfantin, or sought in the life of one of the Christian saints, read aloud by one of them to the rest, examples, precepts, encouragement. Hymns, the music to which had been composed by one of their number, M. Félicien David, served to exalt their souls, while soothing their labour. At five o'clock the horn announced dinner. The workmen then piled their tools, ranged the wheelbarrows round the garden, and took their places, after having chanted in chorus the prayer before meat. All this the public were admitted to see: a spectacle in which a sneering, jesting nation only marked the singular features, by turns simple and sublime, but which was assuredly deficient in neither broad aim nor in abstract grandeur. For in this practice of theirs the apostles of Ménilmontant went far beyond their own theories, and were sowing around them unconsciously the seeds of doctrine which were destined one day to throw their own into oblivion." It was on the 6th of June, amidst the roar of the cannon in the Rue Saint-Méry, and not far from the bloody theatre whence arose the cries of the combatants--it was on this very 6th of June that for the first time since they had entered it, the Saint-Simonian family threw open the doors of their retreat. "At half-past one," writes M. Louis Blanc, "they were assembled, standing in a circle in front of the house, while outside a second circle, formed of those whom the inmates of Ménilmontant termed the exterior family, was a small group of spectators, attracted by the curiosity of the thing." No sooner had the Government suppressed the formidable insurrection, which was finally stamped out in its last retreat at the corner of the Rue Saint-Méry, than, as if to assert the authority it had gained, it commenced proceedings against the Saint-Simonians, a noble-minded, highly moral body of men, who were accused, nevertheless, of spreading immoral doctrines. In his defence, Le Père Enfantin admitted, while rejecting with indignation the charge of immoral teaching, that one of the main objects of Saint-Simonianism was the reorganisation of property. "The misery," he said, "of the working classes and the wealth of idle men are the main causes of the evils we seek to remedy. But when we say that there ought to be an end to that hereditary misery and hereditary idleness which are the results of the existing constitution of property, founded, as it is, on the right of birth, our opponents charge us with an intention of overturning the State. "It is of no use for us to urge that this transformation of property can only be effected progressively, pacifically, voluntarily: that it can be effected much better than was the destruction of feudal rights, with every imaginable system of indemnity, and with even greater deliberation than you apply to the expropriations which you now effect for purposes of public utility: we are not listened to; we are condemned off-hand as reckless disturbers of order. Unweariedly we seek to show you that this transformation is called for by all the present and future wants of society: that its actual progress is marked out in the most palpable manner by the creation of the code of commerce, by all the habits of industry which have sprung up on every side, encouraging the mobilisation of property, its transference from the idle and incapable to the laborious and capable hand; we show you all this, but still you cry out, shutting your eyes, 'Your association is dangerous!'" In the end Enfantin, Duveyrier, and Michel Chevalier were condemned to a year's imprisonment and a fine of a hundred francs each, other less prominent members being let off with smaller degrees of punishment. Simonianism, as an organised thing, was now extinct, but its principles did not die with the organisation, and in the best forms of socialism and of democracy were soon to show themselves anew. The Rue Marivaux, another of the most interesting outlets from this part of the Boulevards, commemorates the witty and agreeable comedy writer who invented the half bantering, half complimentary style of dialogue to which the name of "marivaudage" is given. [Illustration] [Illustration: THE 6TH OF JUNE: THE LAST OF THE INSURRECTION.] CHAPTER XII. THE BOULEVARDS (_continued_). La Maison Dorée--Librairie Nouvelle--Catherine II. and the Encyclopædia--The House of Madeleine Guimard. At the corner of the Rue Marivaux stands the Café Anglais, now the only one remaining of the historical Paris restaurants, which for the most part date their reputation from the years 1814 and 1815, when the European Allies had their head-quarters in the French capital. The invasions which restored the French Monarchy, and which had been undertaken with no other object, brought defeat, but at the same time prosperity and gaiety to Paris; whereas the invasion of 1870 and 1871 caused nothing but misery to the vanquished. During the early days of the Restoration such houses as Les Trois Frères Provençaux, in the Palais Royal, La Maison Dorée, the Café Riche, and the still extant Café Anglais, did a magnificent trade, thanks to the number of Prussian, Russian, Austrian, and English officers who frequented them, and who, after the toils of war, abandoned themselves willingly to some of the joys of peace. Most of these famous restaurants sprang from wine-shops; for it is a fact that every celebrated dining-place in Paris has owed its reputation primarily to the quality of its wine. The three brothers from Provence who started the restaurant known under their name were simply three young men who, having vineyards of their own and a connection with other wine-growers, maintained an excellent cellar. But when people came in to taste its contents it was absolutely necessary, in order to render appreciable the flavour of the wine, to give them something to eat. Then, as they spent their money freely, it was found possible and even desirable to engage a first-rate cook; until at last the reputation of the cellar was equalled by that of the kitchen. Who has not read of Les Trois Frères Provençaux in Balzac's "Scenes from Paris Life"? It was in one of their upstairs rooms, moreover, facing the garden of the Palais Royal, that the hero of Alfred de Musset's "Enfant du Siècle" had his last sad interview, his last sad meal, with the young woman from whom he was about to separate for ever. La Maison Dorée, too, was a famous house. The scene of many an orgie, it kept its doors open continuously. Here it was that M. de Camors, in Octave Feuillet's novel of that name, at the end of an extremely late supper threw a gold piece into the mud and told a ragpicker who happened to be passing that if he would pull it out with his teeth he could have it for himself; and who does not remember how, so soon as the _chiffonnier_ had performed this feat, the dissipated but not altogether degraded gentleman begged the poor man to knock him down in return for the insult offered to him. La Maison Dorée used to be kept by a proprietor named Hardy, and the fact that the neighbouring café and restaurant, of almost equal celebrity and dearness, belonged to a Monsieur Riche, whose name it bore, gave rise to the saying that a man must be "_très riche pour dîner chez Hardy, et très hardi pour dîner chez Riche_." The Café Riche used to be the favourite dining place of Jules Janin on evenings of first performances. Here on these interesting occasions he was always to be seen; and the usual genial tone of his criticisms was possibly attributable to the excellence of M. Riche's chef. Not, however, that Janin wrote his notices of new plays the same night. He published them week by week in the _feuilleton_ of the _Journal des Débats_, afterwards to be corrected and published under the title of "Questionable History of Dramatic Literature." The Café Riche was never such a late house as La Maison Dorée, which went on day by day and year by year, never closing, regardless of the clock. Thus it was at once the earliest and the latest of Paris taverns; and if it was possible to get supper there at 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning after a dull evening party, a traveller was equally sure that the place would be open when, arriving at Paris by train at, say, 6 in the morning, the vacuum in his stomach demanded an immediate breakfast. A story is told of a gentleman who, living immediately opposite the side entrance of La Maison Dorée, dedicated to this famous hostelry all the time he did not spend in bed. Rising extremely late, he turned into the Maison Dorée towards four in the afternoon to look at the papers, converse with some of the frequenters, take a preparatory glass of absinthe, and finally dine--this being, of course, the great event of his well-spent day. His dinner began at an advanced hour of the evening, and lasted well into the night. Then he was joined by friends from the theatre bent on supping; and it was not till towards sunrise that he returned to his apartments over the way. Unlike the Temple of Janus, which was never shut in time of war, the Maison Dorée could only keep its doors open in time of peace. Such war, at all events, as the Prussians brought to the gates of Paris and to Paris itself in 1870 and 1871 was fatal to its existence. Since those terrible years Paris has lost something of its gaiety and frivolity. The Café Anglais still exists; but even at this celebrated supping-place of former years supper is now an unknown meal. Nothing is served in the Café Anglais after nine o'clock. This café, oddly enough, seems to have been named after a nation which in the year 1815 can scarcely have been popular among the French. Its origin, or at least its name, dates from the year of the Waterloo campaign, and, strangely enough, it is the only great restaurant of that period which to this day survives. Possibly the establishment was not called Café Anglais merely by way of invitation to the English portion of the occupying forces. The title may have been meant to indicate that the service of the table was conducted after the English rather than the French fashion. The French, it must be admitted, preceded us in the matter of napkins, and also, if their boast on the subject can be admitted, in the earlier use of four-pronged forks, made by preference of silver. But in the year 1815 the French knew nothing of salt-spoons; and though plates were changed frequently enough, the same knife and fork served throughout the various courses, the diner cleaning on a piece of bread a knife which did duty for every dish which came on the table. It replaced the salt-spoon, and was frequently used for conveying food to the mouth. Not only English dining-places, but English hotels were highly esteemed in 1815; and Dr. Véron, in his "Mémoires d'un Bourgeois de Paris," speaks of cleanliness as an English invention unknown to the French until the peace which followed the Napoleonic wars. In the art of living the French have generally been considered by the rest of Europe to have reached the greatest proficiency; and their methods and customs have accordingly been more imitated than those of any other nation. Of their cookery there is but one opinion; for every man in Europe who can afford a great table keeps either a French cook or a cook educated in the French school. The variety given by French cooks to the very simplest dish is too well known to require emphasis; and even Macaulay quotes the story of that Parisian chef who could make twelve different dishes out of a poppy-head. In the matter of table as of drawing-room etiquette the French in Arthur Young's time seem to have been both superior and inferior to the English. It is true that the French artisan would not dine without a clean napkin on his knee; but it is equally true that the French aristocrat would sometimes spit about the floor in presence of a duchess with a freedom which would be resented in any English tap-room. If Paris be really "the Tavern of Europe," the Café Anglais is at this moment the Tavern of Paris. Scarcely any foreigner of distinction visits the French capital without dining, perhaps even by special arrangement supping, at the Café Anglais, which is now under the management, not of an enterprising landlord, but of a well-regulated Limited Liability Company. * * * * * At the corner of the Rue de Grammont, separated from the Café Anglais by the Theatrical Bureau, or "Office de Théâtre," which supplies tickets for every playhouse in Paris, is the Librairie Nouvelle, where, exhibited for sale, may be seen all the latest novels in vogue and most of the standard works which, in spite of, or perhaps in consequence of, their ancient fame, still find readers. Books are published at much lower prices in Paris than in London. Lending libraries are now quite out of date in the French capital, and persons really interested in a new work do not get it to read at so much a volume or a subscription of so much a year, but buy it once and for all. Forty or fifty years ago the circulating library system had been pushed further in Paris than any point it has yet reached in London. Novels by popular authors were issued in six or eight volumes with from eighty to one hundred words in each page; a sore temptation to the Belgian pirates, who, in the days before International Copyright Conventions, vexed the soul of every French author by reproducing his works at so low a price that he had no more chance of selling his editions in Belgium than has an English author of to-day of vending his in the United States. Instead, however, of being separated from France as America is from England by thousands of miles of sea, Belgium was conterminous with the country it loved to despoil. It was impossible to prevent the fraudulent imitations of Belgium entering France; and to put an end at once to Belgian piracy and to the absurd circulating library system, a spirited and intelligent Paris publisher, Charpentier by name, introduced the novel at three and a half francs--a price which, as originally fixed, or at a reduction of half a franc, is still maintained. Copyright affairs between France and Belgium are now regulated under the clauses of the same International Convention which binds all other countries, with the exception of Russia and Holland on one side of the Atlantic, and the United States of America on the other. [Illustration: MARIVAUX. (_From the Bust by Mlle. Dubois-Davesne in the Comédie Française._)] To offer new books for sale in London at the strangely high prices fixed for the benefit of the circulating libraries would be out of the question; but at the Librairie Nouvelle all the latest works produced in Paris may be seen, partially read, and finally, if such be the desire of the reader, purchased. Many a Parisian, however, or visitor to Paris, whether from love of literature or merely to pass the time, strolls into the Librairie Nouvelle and looks through book after book without buying a single volume. Some day such an institution as this will possibly exist in London; not, however, until the prices of our new books are considerably lowered. But although the frequenters of the Librairie Nouvelle are not called upon, or even expected, to make purchases, only a small fraction of them leave the establishment without doing so; and it is as astonishing as it is interesting to see with what rapidity copies of a new novel of genuine popularity will sometimes go off. No trade has made such progress in France since the Great Revolution as that of bookselling. This result is due alike to the increase in the number of readers through cheap, gratuitous, and obligatory education, and to the liberty of the Press enjoyed by the French, with some interruptions (as under the First Empire and a few years of the Restoration), for an entire century. "How I should like to have Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot writing for me in one of my garrets," a French bookseller is represented as saying in Mercier's "Tableau de Paris," published only a few years before the Revolution. "I would feed them well, but, by Heaven, I would make them work! Why is one of them too rich, and the others too independent to write at so much per sheet?" It is noticeable that not one of these three authors whose works sold so largely was able to publish in France everything he wrote. Even the volume in which the above story is told was published in London. Many of Voltaire's works were brought out in London or Amsterdam. More than one of Rousseau's books were prohibited in France; and the publication of the "Encyclopédie," to which Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot all contributed, was not only prohibited, but cast materially into the Bastille, where the volumes were found on the destruction of the building; which gave the despotic, but in regard to literature, liberal-minded Catherine II. an opportunity of offering to continue the publication of the work in Russia. [Illustration: PARIS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.] Until the time of the Revolution nearly the whole of the book trade was in the hands of hawkers. "The business of these people," says a writer of the 18th century, "is to be the itinerant beasts of burden of literature, as the booksellers are its caterpillars. Illiterate, and hardly able to read, the hawkers may be said to deal in a ware as perfectly foreign to them as the business of mixing up colours would be to the blind. They only know the price of each book they offer for sale. They are haunted everywhere by police-runners, and such is their apprehension of falling under the censure of the despotic magistrate, and, altogether, their ignorance, that some sell even prayer-books under the cloak with as much care and circumspection as if it were an immoral or political pamphlet. These poor harmless hawkers, who give circulation to the clandestine works of the writers of every denomination without being able to read a single line; who, though far from suspecting it, are the asserters of public freedom, and with no other view than to procure to themselves a scanty subsistence--these are the first to feel the resentment of the offended great. It would be, perhaps, if not dangerous, at least impolitic, to attack the author himself; but a hawker sent to the Bastille or fastened in the public market by an iron _carcanet_ is a matter of too little importance to be noticed by the public." The very method employed to prevent the spread of ideas amongst the French people helped to overthrow the despotism by which it had been devised. This is well shown by Arthur Young, writing about the same time as the author whose account of the persecution in France of literature in all its forms has just been quoted. Such ignorance in Young's time was imposed on the French nation by a tyrannical censorship that, for aught the country knew to the contrary, their representatives were in the Bastille; and the mob was accustomed to pillage, burn, and destroy from sheer want of knowledge. Even in the large provincial towns Young could not see a newspaper. At the cafés there was nothing to read but the _Gazette de France_, a sheet in which the professed "news" was so dished up that "no man of common-sense" would attempt to digest it. The consequence was that the frequenters of cafés and restaurants could be heard gravely discussing news a fortnight old. On the first floor of the house of which the ground-floor is occupied by the Librairie Nouvelle, we find the Club of the Two Worlds, or "Cercle des Deux Mondes," established in an abode which was occupied for some time by the Jockey Club, until this latter, after deserting the mansion built by the Farmer-General de Lange on the Boulevard Montmartre, continued its western progress, to reach ultimately the domicile it at present inhabits on the Boulevard des Capucines. At the corner of the Rue de Choiseul is the well-known establishment of Potel and Chabot, who keep what, in London--for want of a better name, and probably in virtue of some tradition on the subject--is called an "Italian warehouse." This firm, however, does not confine itself to the lighter description of comestibles and dainties. In these it deals largely enough; and among the tempting delicacies offered to the passer-by are early vegetables, fruit, olives, ham, sausages of rare manufacture, and game pies. But besides selling stray articles to the chance epicure, the house of Potel and Chabot undertakes the supply of dinners on a very large scale, and employs a number of chefs, sous-chefs, scullions, roasters, pastry-cooks, and other functionaries of the kitchen. It was the firm of Potel and Chabot which, in July, 1888, supplied in the Champ de Mars the banquet offered to 10,000 mayors from all parts of France, furnishing it hot, so that many of the guests declared they had never before been anywhere so well served. The dinner was simple, but it is said to have been excellent. The ten thousand guests had one glass and two plates apiece; 500 waiters flitted about with the wines and the dishes. The end of the Boulevard des Italiens is marked by a circular pavilion, which has lost something of its original shape through the repairs necessitated by the ravages of time; though it still bears a number of sculptural ornaments which are much admired, including certain masks, reputed to be masterpieces. It is called the Pavilion of Hanover, and is so named from having been erected and adorned by the architect Cheveautel for the Duc de Richelieu at the end of the garden attached to his mansion, after the campaign of Hanover, in 1757, which he terminated by securing the capitulation of Closterseven. Under the Directory and the Consulate, in the first years of the Empire, the Pavilion of Hanover and a portion of the grounds belonging formerly to the Duc de Richelieu were the scene of public assemblies, balls, and concerts; and it was here that Tortoni established his famous ice-shop and café in partnership with another Italian, named Velloni. The latter is now forgotten; but Tortoni, who continued the business on his own account, is, in the world of cafés, an historical figure. Let us not hurry past the former Hôtel Choiseul, where, during the Reign of Terror, Pace, Minister of War, resided; where, under the Directory, the staff of the Army of Paris was established; and where Murat afterwards lived in the capacity of Governor. When the Restoration came to pass it was turned into the headquarters of the National Guard. Finally it was put up for sale, when, after the assassination of the Duc of Berri on the steps of the Opera House in the Rue Richelieu, it was determined to pull down the lyric temple and erect another on the site occupied by the Hôtel Choiseul. We shall see in the proper place that the demolition of the Opera House of the Rue Richelieu was due to the representations of the Archbishop of Paris, who refused to allow the last sacrament to be administered to the dying prince unless he received a promise that the profane building, in which so holy an act had to be performed, should immediately afterwards be destroyed. The Hôtel Choiseul was bought by the City of Paris, and close to what remained of the ancient mansion rose the new Opera House, opening on to the Rue Le Pelletier, where, between the years 1821 and 1823, so many great works were brought out, including Rossini's _Guillaume Tell_, Auber's _Masaniello_, as it is called in England, Donizetti's _Favorite_, Verdi's _Vêpres Siciliennes_, and Meyerbeer's _Robert le Diable_, _Prophète_, and _Africaine_. On the night of Tuesday, October 20, 1873, the eve of the hundredth representation of Ambroise Thomas' _Hamlet_, flames burst out in the wardrobe, and the next day the Opera House was a heap of ruins. It is a curious fact, not hitherto noticed, that the destruction by fire of the Opera House in the Rue Le Pelletier took place precisely two hundred years after the production of Lulli's earliest opera, the first lyrical piece ever performed in Paris under the royal patent which authorised the establishment of a regular opera house. Lulli has been represented, in a famous picture, receiving his "privilege" from the hands of Louis XIV. as a reward and encouragement for services rendered. It can scarcely be said, however, that Lulli, though he established opera in Paris, was the first to introduce it. Cardinal Mazarin brought Italian opera to Paris in 1645, when Lulli was but a child; and the French opera named _Akébar, Roi de Mogol_, written and composed by the Abbé Mailly, was represented the year afterwards in the episcopal palace of Carpentras under the direction of Cardinal Bichi. A public performance, moreover, was given of _Pomone_, words by Perrin, music by Cambert, in 1671; but though _Pomone_ was the first French opera offered in Paris to a general audience, Lulli's _Cadmée_ was the first of that long series of lyrical productions given at the State Opera House which extended, with but two short breaks, from 1673 to 1873. The new Opera House, which was to replace the one burnt down in 1873, had already, on a scale of unprecedented magnificence, been designed, constructed, and all but finished under Napoleon III. But 1873, scarcely more than two years after the disasters of the siege and Commune, was not the time at which to complete and inaugurate a sumptuous Opera House; and it was not until 1875 that the famous edifice, which may challenge comparison with any other of the kind in Europe, threw its doors open to the public. Another celebrated building in this neighbourhood, at the corner of the Rue Taitbout, is the former Hôtel de Brancas, built by the architect Bélanger, a devoted friend of the famous Sophie Arnould, to whom he was faithfully attached until her death. His endeavours to obtain for her, in default of a pension that was never paid, a portion of the large sum due to her from the directors of the Théâtre Français show him to have been a man of energy as well as heart. It was in the character of architect that Bélanger first became acquainted with the brilliant and witty actress; and when he made her an offer of marriage, which she did not accept, she at once observed that no one was better fitted than an architect to build up her damaged reputation. From the family of Brancas the mansion erected by Bélanger passed to the wife of General Rapp, then to the Marchioness of Hertford, to her son Lord Seymour, and to Sir Richard Wallace. Under Napoleon III. magnificent entertainments were given there by the late Khalil Pasha. On the ground-floor of the edifice appeared and disappeared the Café de Paris, celebrated in the reign of Louis Philippe, and for some years afterwards, as the rendez-vous of celebrities in literature, art, and the world of fashion. It was in time to be followed by other excellent restaurants, now vanished, but not forgotten. The last house on the Boulevard des Italiens, at the corner of the Rue de la Chaussée d'Antin, occupies the site of the old Military School, founded, for 200 officers' sons, under the name of Dépôt des Gardes Français; where for twenty years of his life Rossini lived on the first floor, and whence he moved to the villa at Passy offered to him by the City of Paris. It was in this retreat that he ended his days. [Illustration: RUE DE LA CHAUSSÉE D'ANTIN.] The Chaussée d'Antin, formerly a high road leading from the boulevards into the open country, is full of interesting associations. In the Chaussée d'Antin, or close to that thoroughfare in its present form, stood the celebrated Temple of Terpsichore built for Madeleine Guimard, the dancer; which so excited the jealousy of Sophie Arnould, the vocalist, that she insisted on having a mansion of equal magnificence side by side with that of her operatic friend and rival. Madeleine Guimard, according to one of her biographers, excited as much admiration and scattered as many fortunes as any woman that ever appeared on the stage. She was, nevertheless, ugly, thin, of sallow complexion, and marked with the small-pox. She is said to have preserved, in a marvellous manner, her youth and a certain indescribable charm which constituted her chief attractions. She possessed, moreover, such a perfect acquaintance with all the mysteries of the toilet that by the arts of dress and adornment alone she could still make herself look young when age had crept upon her. Queen Marie Antoinette would often consult her about matters of dress, and especially the arrangement of her hair; and once when, for her rebellious attitude at the theatre, she had, in accordance with the strange customs of the times, been ordered to prison, she is reported to have said to her maid: "Never mind, I have sent a letter to the queen telling her that I have discovered a new way of doing the hair. We shall be out before the evening." But to return to the Temple of Terpsichore, which, built in the finest architectural style, and magnificently furnished, was decorated internally by Fragonard, one of the most famous painters of that day. In his wall-pictures he never failed to introduce the face and figure of the light-footed divinity of the place: until at last he became enamoured of his model, and, presuming on one occasion to show signs of jealousy, was promptly discharged, to be replaced by the most unsuitable artist that can be conceived--by David, the painter of heroic figures, of Republican subjects, and of Napoleon in all his glory. The celebrated painter of the Consulate and the Empire was, in Madeleine Guimard's time, a very young man--a mere student, in fact. But he was a stern Republican, and when the luxurious but sympathetic dancer saw that the work of decorating her voluptuous palace did not accord with his lofty aspirations, she gave him the sum he was to have received for covering her walls with fantastic designs, in order that he might continue his studies in the style which best suited him. [Illustration: Mont Valérien and the Arc de Triomphe.--Church of St. Augustine. VIEW FROM THE ROOF OF THE OPERA HOUSE.] The house built by Sophie Arnould next door to Madeleine Guimard's Temple of Terpsichore bore no distinctive name. But it was of the same size as the "Temple," and on the portico, which was supported by two Doric columns, could be seen the figure of Euterpe with the features of Sophie Arnould. The first floor contained the reception rooms, with spacious ante-chambers for the servants. On the second floor were the bedrooms of the children, who, at a later period, were acknowledged by their father, Count Brancas de Lauragais, and bore his name. In the National Library of Paris several drawings and plates are exhibited of the different portions of Sophie Arnould's house; and the representation of the façade bears this inscription:--"Façade of a projected house for Mlle. Arnould in the Chaussée d'Antin. To be constructed side by side with that of Mlle. Guimard, and of the same dimensions.--Bélanger." [Illustration: MLLE. CLAIRON.] So much care did the amorous architect of the new house bestow on his work, and so agreeable did he make himself to the lady for whom it was being built, that he was asked to share it with the owner; and there was at one time a serious prospect of Sophie Arnould becoming Mme. Bélanger. To serve some purpose of her own she spread the report that she was married to the architect, who showed himself quite disposed to give reality to the fiction. He was a merry man, and pleased Sophie as much by his ready wit as by his agreeable manners. After a time she got tired of him, and having formed an attachment for the actor Florence, wrote Bélanger a letter of dismissal, at the same time addressing to Florence an avowal of her love. Bélanger, however, found an opportunity of changing the envelopes, so that Florence the actor received the letter intended for Bélanger the architect. The next time Florence saw Sophie he was naturally somewhat cold in his demeanour towards her, and this coldness was naturally resented by Sophie, who had written to him with much warmth. Bélanger triumphed, and his triumph was of long duration; Sophie, indeed, remained attached to him throughout her life. Of all her former friends the only ones who showed genuine solicitude for her in her latter days of poverty and sickness were Bélanger and Lauragais. Many years afterwards, in the gloomiest and most sanguinary days of the Revolution, when Bélanger was poor and Sophie Arnould still poorer, the architect begged the actress and singer to accept, as from an old friend, a piece of two louis which he at the same time forwarded to her. Sophie replied that she did not desire his money, but that she was deeply obliged to him for such thoughtfulness, and in memory thereof would wear the gold piece next her heart. When she was on her death-bed, the famous architect, himself without means, wrote to the Minister of Fine Arts a letter in which he reminded him that a considerable sum of money was due to Mlle. Arnould from the Opera; of which, now that she was in the greatest distress, it was impossible for her to obtain payment, even to the extent of a few louis. "This unhappy woman," he continued, "of whom Gluck said, 'Without the charm of the accent and declamation of Mlle. Arnould my _Iphigenia_ would never have been accepted in France,' finds herself without even the means of prolonging her life." In October, 1802, Sophie Arnould died, after receiving absolution from the curé of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, the parish in which she was born. Another remarkable personage who lived in, or rather close to, the Chaussée d'Antin, was that devoted lover of Mdlle. Clairon, Monsieur de S----, who succeeded in inspiring the famous actress with esteem, but not with any warmer feeling; and who, according to her belief, as well as that of several of her friends, paid her visits of complaint and menace after his death. "His humour," writes Mlle. Clairon, in her "Memoirs," "was gloomy and melancholy. 'He was too well acquainted with men,' he would say, 'not to despise and shun them.' His desire was to live only for me, and that I should live only for him. This last idea particularly displeased me. I might have been content to be restrained by a garland of flowers, but could not bear to be confined by a chain. I saw from that moment the necessity of destroying the flattering hope which nourishes attachment and of disallowing his frequent visits. This determination, which I persisted in, caused him a serious indisposition, during which I paid him every possible attention; but my constant refusal to indulge the passion he entertained for me made the wound still deeper." Afterwards, when the young man had partly recovered, Mlle. Clairon, convinced that his absence from her would be to his advantage, constantly refused his letters and his visits. "Two years and a half," continues Mlle. Clairon, "passed between our first acquaintance and his death. He entreated me to assuage the last moments of his life by repairing to his bed-side. My engagement prevented me from complying with this request, and he expired in the presence of his domestics and an old lady whom he had alone for some time suffered." The house in which M. de S---- died was the one previously referred to in the Chaussée d'Antin; and at eleven o'clock the same night Mlle. Clairon, who was living far off in the Rue de Bussy, near the Rue de Seine, was startled--as were also, she declares, several friends in company with her at the time--by "the most piercing cry" she had ever heard. "Its long continuance and piteous sound," she continues, "astonished everyone. I fainted away, and was nearly a quarter of an hour insensible." Every night at the same hour Mlle. Clairon heard the same bitter wail. "All of us in the house," she writes, "my friends, my neighbours, the police even, have heard this very cry repeated under my windows at the same hour, and appearing to proceed from the air." She was recommended by an incredulous acquaintance to invoke the phantom the next time it announced its presence. She did so, when "the same cry was uttered thrice in succession, with a degree of rapidity and shrillness terrible beyond expression." Poor Mlle. Clairon was persecuted in this manner at an hour before midnight for days at a stretch; until, at length, in lieu of a piercing cry, she heard every night, and always at eleven o'clock, the explosion of a gun. Fearing there might be some design upon her life, she communicated with the Lieutenant of Police, who, accompanied by proper officers, carefully examined the house next door, but without discovering any ground for suspicion. "The following day," says Clairon, "the street was narrowly watched; the officers of police had their eyes upon every house; but, notwithstanding all their vigilance, there occurred the same discharge, at the same hour, and against the same frame of glass for three whole months, though no one could ever discover from whence it proceeded." "This fact," she adds, "is attested by all the registers of police." One day a lady called on Mlle. Clairon and made herself known as the best friend of the late Monsieur de S----, and the only person he had suffered to be with him during the last moments of his life. "To condemn you," she said, "would be unjust ... but his passion for you overcame him, and your last refusal hastened his end. He counted every minute till half-past ten, when his servant positively informed him that you would not come to him. After a moment he took my hand in a paroxysm of despair which terrified me, and exclaimed, 'Cruel woman! but she shall gain nothing. I will pursue her as much after my death as I have during my life.' I endeavoured to calm him, but he was no more." The words had a terrible effect on the unhappy Mlle. Clairon; and the cries and threats from her distressed lover gradually ceased to afflict her, and in time this excellent woman--who could scarcely be expected to love by order--became pacified. The first building on the Boulevard des Capucines at the opposite corner of the Chaussée d'Antin is the Vaudeville Theatre, built to replace the old playhouse on the Place de la Bourse, and opened to the public on the 1st of October, 1867. Anciently this theatre seemed to be placed beneath the auspices of Collé des Augiers and Scribe, whose names mark different phases of the Vaudeville style, once exclusively cultivated by this theatre. Of later years, however, especially since the production of the younger Dumas' _Dame aux Camélias_, some forty years ago, it has often thrown gaiety on one side for the pathetic and dramatic. The Vaudeville, like all the Paris theatres, has frequently changed its habitation, though it has always retained its original name. Founded in 1792, when the Revolution was approaching the Terrorist period, at a building in the Rue de Chartres, between the Place du Carrousel and the Palais Royal (since pulled down), the Vaudeville was, after a life of half a century, driven from its first abode by the usual fire. In 1838, the year of the conflagration, it sought a temporary refuge on the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, to move in 1840 to the Place de la Bourse, where it took possession of the house previously occupied by the Opéra Comique. Here, where it remained from 1840 to 1867, it changed its style, and instead of comedies and comediettas interspersed with songs, produced with immense success a series of dramas of the most moving kind, such as the already named _Dame aux Camélias_, Octave Feuillet's _Dalila_ and _Roman d'un jeune Homme pauvre_, Barrière's _Filles de Marbre_, Sardou's _Nos Intimes_ and _Maison neuve_. It is not indeed at the Théâtre Français, but at the Vaudeville and the Gymnase, that in modern times the masterpieces of French dramatic literature have been produced. The first representation of _La Dame aux Camélias_ forms a turning point in the history of the Vaudeville Theatre. The play--which was soon to become celebrated throughout France, and in its operatic form, set to music by Verdi, throughout Europe--was not produced without serious objections on the part of the censorship; and it was only through the intercession of the Duke de Morny, Napoleon III.'s unacknowledged brother and chief adviser, that permission to represent the piece was obtained. When the performance at last took place, the success of the drama, owing a good deal to the pathetic acting of Mme. Doche in the part of the heroine, was marvellous; and it was made the occasion of innumerable articles in all the French journals at this period, not only on the play and on the novel from the same pen whence the play was derived, but on the unhappy young woman whose life and death the author had more or less faithfully depicted in the leading character. To show that light-minded Frenchmen were not alone capable of being moved by the tragic end of the fascinating Marie Duplessis, it may be mentioned that our own Charles Dickens was as much touched by it as the numerous French writers, who, more or less perfectly, have put their feelings on the subject into literary form. "Not many days after I left," writes Mr. Forster, in his "Life of Dickens," under date of 1847, "all Paris was crowding to the sale of a lady of the _demi-monde_, Marie Duplessis, who had led the most brilliant and abandoned of lives, and left behind her the most exquisite furniture and the most voluptuous and sumptuous _bijouterie_. Dickens wished at one time to have pointed the moral of this life and death, of which there was great talk in Paris while we were together. The disease of satiety, which, only less often than hunger, passes for a broken heart, had killed her. 'What do you want?' asked the most famous of the Paris physicians, at a loss for her exact complaint. At last she answered, 'To see my mother.' She was sent for, and there came a simple Breton peasant woman, clad in the quaint garb of her province, who prayed by her bed until she died." The _Dame aux Camélias_ called into existence a whole series of pieces, produced either at the Vaudeville or at the Gymnase, in which the true character of women in certain difficult positions was treated controversially, with examples in support of arguments; and at this moment the last kind of play one would expect to see at the Vaudeville is precisely that to which the theatre owes its name. The situation of this theatre in the most fashionable, most frequented part of the boulevard renders it, apart from its own special attractions, the favourite resort of foreigners living at the excellent hotels in this neighbourhood. The house, with its 1,300 seats, is only of moderate size, but it is much more commodious than the old theatre of the Place de la Bourse. The theatres of Paris, generally, are, indeed, far less commodious than those of London. The Parisians will go anywhere and submit to any discomfort in order to see good acting and a good play. In England we are much more particular; and the narrow ill-ventilated theatres of Paris would certainly be objected to by English audiences. The Paris theatres, however, are steadily improving, as one by one they get burnt down; and the new ones springing from the ashes of the old are often attractive without and convenient within. In the ancient days before the Great Revolution, the Parisians were as passionately fond of the theatre as they are now, but their playhouses, according to the author of "Le nouveau Paris," were abominable. "I shall say nothing of the nastiness," he writes, "that distinguishes these places of general resort, because I would not wish to injure the property of the comedians; nor shall I inveigh against the insolence of the box-keepers, and other servants of our theatres, as it would give to the world a bad opinion of the proprietors themselves, to whom some censorious readers might apply the proverb, 'Like master like man,' and think it a truism. I intend to confine myself to those points that more materially concern the spectator when he has once got in and has the good fortune to procure a clean seat. First let us survey the pit. Here everybody stands. You will imagine that its inhabitants are the formidable umpires of taste and dramatic productions; this may or may not be, just as it suits the caprices of the police, or the Lords of the Bedchamber, who, from making the master's bed, have raised themselves by degrees to judge of things which they hardly understand. Hence an actress is palmed upon the public. Whether she is good or bad is not the question, but whether she has had the good fortune to please one or the whole of those gentlemen; and everyone knows what price she has paid for her admission. Not a play is represented here without a guard of thirty men with a few rounds each to quiet the spectators. This internal guard keeps the frequenters of the pit in a kind of passive condition; and whether you are tired, crowded, or bruised, beware of giving any sign of uneasiness or discontent. Yet the unfortunate public pays to take, not what they desire, but what is given them. Surrounded with armed men, they must neither laugh too loud at a comedy nor express their feelings at a tragedy in too pointed a manner. Hence the pit, except in some fits of a transient excitement, is mournfully dull. If you venture to give any sign of your existence, you are collared by one of the guards and carried _pro formâ_ before a Commissionaire. I say for form sake, because everyone in the play-house is really under martial law; the civil magistrate is only there to hear and approve the sentence passed upon the culprit by the officer of the guard; who upon the report, seldom exact, but often groundless, of the soldier, orders the accused party to prison; and the Commissionaire, without inquiring into the merit of the charge, or so much as daring to hint at the least objection, signs the _mittimus_." [Illustration: Entrance to Rue du Quatre-Septembre.--Avenue de l'Opéra.--Entrance to Rue de la Paix. VIEW FROM THE BALCONY OF THE OPERA.] The Boulevard des Capucines seems on both sides entirely new; its houses are white, bright, and in perfect condition. If the crowd one sees on the Boulevard Montmartre is a Parisian crowd, that which animates the Boulevard des Capucines is a cosmopolitan one. It touches what in the artistic, if not in the general, sense must be looked upon as the heart of Paris--the New Opera, that is to say, standing in the centre of the place which bears its name and the streets called after those operatic celebrities, Scribe, Auber, Halévy, and Meyerbeer; one librettist and three composers. The Place de l'Opéra is, indeed, the heart of Paris, communicating by great arteries with all the most important organs of Parisian life. The magnificent Avenue of the Opera leads straight to the Louvre; in another direction the Rue du Quatre-Septembre goes to the Place de la Bourse. Look along the Rue de la Paix; at the end you will see La Place Vendôme, with its column in memory of the Grand Army standing out in its dark bronze against the fresh green of the Tuileries Gardens. Here all that is most Parisian in Paris may be seen: the finest shops, the most brilliant equipages, with all the glitter of fashionable life. The expensive jeweller and the exorbitant milliner here have their establishments side by side with hotels, restaurants, cafés, and clubs. [Illustration: AVENUE DE L'OPÉRA.] The Opera in France had much to go through before it attained its present artistic development, or, as regards the French form of grand opera, found its present capacious and splendid home. It is the proud boast of Frenchmen that Le Nouvel Opéra--as the existing Grand Opéra in Paris has been called for the last sixteen years, and as it will probably be called for a long while to come--covers thirteen times as much ground as the Royal Opera House of Berlin. It is, indeed, superior by its commodiousness as well as its magnificence to every other opera house in Europe; though what above all distinguishes it is its admirable site, and the wide open space in which it stands. In many capitals the theatres, even the finest, are only portions of a street. At Moscow, it is true, the Great Theatre stands by itself in a vast square--a square which, compared with the Place de l'Opéra, is a desert space. From its very origin the Opera in France has always been regarded as an institution of the first importance. It enjoyed special privileges from the Crown, it was managed like a department of the State, and an attack upon the Opera was punished like a treasonable offence. "Before I tell you," wrote Rousseau towards the end of the eighteenth century, "what I think of this famous theatre, I will state what is said about it. The judgment of connoisseurs may correct mine if I am wrong. The Opera of Paris passes in the capital for the most pompous, the most voluptuous, the most admirable spectacle that human art has ever invented. Its admirers declare it to be the most superb monument of the magnificence of Louis XIV., and one is not so free as you may think to express an opinion on such an important subject. Here you may dispute about everything except music and the Opera; on these topics alone it is dangerous not to dissemble. French music is defended, too, by a very rigorous inquisition, and the first thing intimated as a warning to strangers who visit this country is that all foreigners admit there is nothing in this world so fine as the Opera of Paris. The fact is, discreet people hold their tongues, and dare only laugh in their sleeves." Rousseau then, speaking in the person of St. Preuz, the hero of "La nouvelle Héloise," describes the performance as it took place at the Opera. "Imagine," he says, "an enclosure fifteen feet broad, and long in proportion; this enclosure is the theatre. On its two sides are placed at intervals screens, which are crudely painted with the objects which the scene is about to represent. At the back of the enclosure hangs a great curtain, painted in like manner and nearly always pierced and torn that it may represent at a little distance gulfs on the earth or holes in the sky. Everyone who passes behind this stage or touches the curtain produces a sort of earthquake which has a double effect. The sky is made of certain bluish rags suspended from poles or cords, as linen may be seen hung out to dry in any washerwoman's yard. The sun, which is here sometimes seen, is a lighted torch in a lantern. The cars of the gods and goddesses are composed of four rafters squared and hung on a thick rope in the form of a swing or see-saw; between the rafters is a cross plank on which the god sits down, and in front hangs a piece of coarse cloth, well dirtied, which acts the part of clouds for the magnificent car. One may see, towards the bottom of the machine, two or three stinking candles, badly snuffed, which, while the great personage dementedly presents himself swinging in his see-saw, fumigate him with an incense worthy of his dignity. The agitated sea is composed of long angular arrangements of cloth and blue pasteboard strung on parallel spits, which are turned by little blackguard boys. The thunder is a heavy cart rolled over an arch, and is not the least agreeable instrument one hears. The flashes of lightning are made of pinches of resin thrown on a flame; and the thunder is a cracker at the end of a fusee. "The theatre is, moreover, furnished with little square traps, which, opening at need, announce that the demons are about to issue from their cave. When they have to rise into the air little imps of stuffed brown cloth are substituted for them, or sometimes real chimney sweeps, who swing about suspended on ropes till they are majestically lost in the rags of which I have spoken. The accidents, however, which not unfrequently happen are sometimes as tragic as farcical. When the ropes break, the infernal spirits and immortal gods fall together, and lame or occasionally kill one another. Add to all this the monsters which render some scenes very pathetic, such as dragons, lizards, tortoises, crocodiles, and large toads, who promenade the theatre with a menacing air, and display at the Opera all the temptations of St. Anthony. Each of these figures is animated by a lout of a Savoyard who has not even intelligence enough to play the beast. "Such, my cousin, is the august machinery of the Opera, as I have observed it from the pit, with the aid of my glass, for you must not imagine that all this apparatus is hidden, and produces an imposing effect. I have only described what I have seen myself, and what any other spectator may see. I am assured, however, that there are a prodigious number of machines employed to put the whole spectacle in motion, and I have been invited several times to examine them; but I have never been curious to learn how little things are performed by great means." When our musical historian, Dr. Burney, visited Paris and heard at the Opera the works of Rameau, successor to Lulli, under whose direction the French Opera was founded, he found the music monotonous in the extreme, and without either rhythm or expression. He could admire nothing at the French Opera except the dancing and the decorations; and these alone, he says, seemed to give pleasure to the audience. It was not, at that time, the custom in France to name the singers in the programme; and throughout the eighteenth century no singer in France attained such eminence as was reached by numbers in Italy, and by not a few in England, some of Italian, some of English birth. Naturally, then, in the eighteenth century French Opera singers were not well paid; and chroniclers relate that a Mlle. Aubry and a Mlle. Verdier, being engaged in the same line of stage business, had to live in the same room and sleep in the same bed. Apart from the obscurity naturally resulting from the suppression of the names, inconvenience was caused by the uncertainty in which the public found itself of knowing which singer, on any particular evening, would appear. Shortly before the establishment of the Republic, when, for the first time, the names of singers were printed in the bills, an _habitué_ rushed out of the theatre in a high state of indignation, and began to beat one of the money-takers in the lobby. The poor man at once understood the reason of his aggressor's wrath. "How was I to know," he exclaimed, "that they would let Le Ponthieu sing to-night!" The initial step towards high melody at the French Opera was taken when, some fifteen years before the Revolution, first Gluck, then Piccini, were invited to Paris to produce adaptations of former successes, or original works, fitted in either case to French libretti. While praising the melody of the Italians as much as he condemns the solemnity of the French, Rousseau expresses the highest admiration for the genius of Gluck, the great reformer of the French operatic stage. After the arrival of Gluck in Paris Rousseau is said never to have missed a representation of _Orphée_. He said, moreover, in reference to the gratification which that work had afforded him, that "after all there was something in life worth living for, since in two hours so much genuine pleasure could be obtained." The next great assistance to the French Opera, and this a permanent one, was given by the Republic, through the establishment of a large music-school, known as the Conservatoire, where a course of gratuitous instruction is given to all comers capable at the stipulated age of passing the indispensable test examination. Before, however, the Conservatoire, destined to produce so many excellent vocalists, instrumentalists, and composers, had time to bear fruit, Napoleon had done much to encourage and develop French musical art. Napoleon, as a young man, was one of the first admirers of the afterwards famous Mme. St. Huberti; and when Mme. Mara refused an engagement pressed upon her at the time of the Empire, Napoleon would have arrested her and forced her to accept it had she not fled from Paris. Then, another cause of improvement at the French Opera was the frequent visits paid, early in this century, and especially since the Peace of 1815, by foreign artists to the capital which, in former days, had set its face both against vocalists and composers from abroad. Lulli, the founder of opera in France, was an Italian by birth, though after his naturalisation he got to be looked upon as a Frenchman. His successor, Rameau, was no doubt a Frenchman. But the French tradition was so completely broken by the advent of Gluck and Piccini that the French have never since exhibited any of their ancient prejudice against foreign composers; and it is to these that for the last seventy or eighty years the Grand Opera of Paris has owed most of its success, that is to say, to Spontini, Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi, and, above all, Meyerbeer. [Illustration: ONE OF THE DOMES OF THE OPERA HOUSE.] A highly interesting account of the rehearsals of Meyerbeer's _Robert le Diable_--one of the typical works of the modern repertoire of grand opera--is given, in his "Mémoires d'un Bourgeois de Paris," by Dr. Véron, for some time manager of the Opera House. "It was not," he tells us, "until after four months of orchestral and other rehearsals that the general rehearsals were reached. These latter," he continues, "caused great fatigue and great excitement to everyone; to the composer, the singers, the chiefs of department, and the manager. When a general rehearsal takes place, with choruses, principal singers, and full orchestra, but without scenery, without costumes, and without full light, the musical execution gains much and produces always a great effect. In the darkness and silence of the empty and more sonorous house, without any distraction for the other senses, one is, so to say, all ears; nothing is lost of the fine shades of expression in the singing, of the delicate embroideries of the orchestration. But at the first representation the disappointment is great. In the immense, splendidly lighted theatre, filled with an excited crowd, all the rich and elegant details of the score will be lost through the stuff of the women's dresses and the diminished sonority of a building crowded in pit, boxes, and gallery. Great musical ideas, grand orchestral effects, will now alone produce an impression. Thus it happened that at the first representation of _Robert the Devil_, the public, after applauding the first two acts, was only impressed and deeply moved by the chorus of demons." [Illustration: EASTERN PAVILION, OPERA HOUSE.] After describing the anxieties and perplexities which throughout the long series of rehearsals harass the unfortunate director, Dr. Véron proceeds to tell us how this gentleman's last and worst experience was this inevitable final conference, held in his own private room, at which the author of the words and the composer of the music had to be prevailed upon to accept some necessary "cuts." [Illustration: THE PUBLIC FOYER, OPERA HOUSE.] "The librettist maintains that to take away one phrase, one word, is to render the work unintelligible, so cunningly is it constructed. The composer resists with no less obstinacy. His score, he says, cannot be broken up into fragments. It is all combined and prepared in such a manner as to form a perfect whole. One piece serves as indispensable contrast to another. A chorus which it has perhaps been suggested to leave out is essential for the effect of the succeeding air. The discussions on such points are interminable. I had ended by showing myself impassible in presence of the storms and tempests that were raging around me; and I devoted the time during which these quarrels lasted to a polite and engaging correspondence with all the newspaper editors. I was still labouring for the success of the work. At last a conclusion was arrived at, and a general understanding established. The chief copyist was making the necessary changes and suppressions in the score; and the public at least never found fault with the words and music that were now suppressed. But when a director has prepared, like a good general, everything necessary for the success of the work on the stage, his troubles begin with the front of the house. Everyone wants something from him on the occasion of a first representation; and that of _Robert le Diable_ was exciting public interest to the highest degree. Everything and everyone must be thought of. It is necessary, in assigning places, to displease no one, and above all to avoid exciting jealousies, so as to have no irritated enemies in the house. Such and such a journalist will never pardon you for having given his fellow-journalist a better place than himself. The author and composer, the leading artists, the _claqueurs_ must be satisfied. The care, the foresight, the conferences, the instructions, indispensable to secure the efficient working of the _claque_ at each representation, and particularly on great critical occasions, will be dealt with elsewhere. One must remember, too, the number of the box that Madame---- would like to have, the number of the stall preferred by the friend of a minister or of the editor of some great journal. One must respect, moreover, the omnipotence of the unknown journalist, as of the journalist in vogue; and on the critical day the existence is revealed of a crowd of newspapers not previously heard of." It was in the old theatre of the Rue Le Pelletier that Rossini's _William Tell_ and Meyerbeer's great works were brought out. Gounod, Saint-Saëns, and Massenet, have all written for the New Opera, though it cannot be said that any of them has yet produced on its boards a work of the highest merit. Opened under the Third Republic in 1875, the New Opera House must be acknowledged to owe its existence to the Emperor Napoleon III., whose Minister of Fine Arts opened a competition for architectural designs in view of a new lyrical theatre as long ago as 1860, thirteen years before the old Opera House was burnt down, and fifteen years before the new one was completed and thrown open to the public. The successful competitor is known to have been Charles Garnier, who was almost unheard of at the time when, with rare unanimity, his design was accepted by the Commission, and approved with enthusiasm by the Press. The building of the Opera cost, from first to last, some 36,000,000 francs (nearly a million and a half sterling), 675,295 work days having been furnished, during its construction, to masons, bricklayers, carpenters, etc. The manager of the Opera House receives from the State the free use of the building together with a subsidy of 800,000 francs (£32,000) voted annually by the Chamber. Employed at the Opera are some five hundred persons, among whom may, in particular, be mentioned twelve in the administration, in connection with the archives, the library, the secretarial department, and the treasury; three orchestral conductors, four directors of singing, two directors and one assistant-director of the chorus; forty-five vocalists; and one hundred orchestral musicians. There are about one hundred men and women in the chorus, and the same number in the various divisions of the ballet. Scene-painters, scene-shifters (or "carpenters," as they are technically called), dressers, call-boys, box-openers, and so on, form another hundred. The inauguration of the New Opera took place on the 5th of January, 1875, in the presence of Marshal Macmahon, Duke of Magenta, at that time President of the Republic. All the great officers of State were present, besides a number of foreign notabilities, among whom may be mentioned Queen Isabella of Spain and the young King of Spain, Alphonso II. It is remembered, too, with satisfaction, that the Lord Mayor of London, accompanied by his mace-bearers, trumpeters, and powdered footmen, gave dignity to the occasion. One of the most interesting parts of the New Opera is the _foyer_, corresponding more or less to the refreshment room of our operatic theatres, but quite incomparable in the way of elegance and splendour. In the accompanying illustration the artist has made a point of introducing, amid well-dressed persons in evening clothes, an English lady in a morning gown and a sea-side hat, accompanied by two of her countrymen in shooting coats and pot hats. It is, indeed, a standing grievance with the Parisians that, whereas at our opera house no one is admitted to the boxes or stalls unless in evening dress, we ourselves, when we visit the Paris Opera, think any description of garment good enough to wear. One of the characteristic sights of Paris has, for nearly two centuries past, been the Masked Ball of the Opera, which, though it has doubtless lost much of its gaiety since the days when it inspired Gavarni with so many subjects for his witty pencil, is still worth seeing, simply as a picturesque display. No one any longer dances there unless paid to do so. It was, in fact, the introduction of hired dancers when the public were just beginning to show a disinclination to take an active part in the revels that put an end to spontaneous dancing altogether. The antics of some of the hired dancers may interest for a time; and the music of the large orchestra, conducted successively by Musard, Tolbecque, Strauss, Métra, and Arban, has always merited a hearing. Throughout the Carnival--that is to say, from Christmas until Lent--a masked and fancy dress ball (the wearing both of masks and fancy dress being optional) is given every week at the Opera, where the great ball of the year takes place on the night of Shrove Tuesday, the day preceding Lent. One other ball of the same kind is given in the middle of Lent--_la Mi-carême_ as it is called--and thenceforward there is no dancing at the Opera until Christmas has once more come and gone. The Opera Ball dates, like the Opera itself, from the reign of Louis XIV. But the license for musico-dramatic performances had been issued forty years before it occurred to the Chevalier de Bouillon to apply to the King for permission to give masked balls. The King hastened to grant the Chevalier's request; and was indeed so pleased with it that he assigned to him a pension of 6,000 livres (francs) for the idea, which had simply been borrowed. What is still more remarkable is the fact that an Augustine monk, Nicholas Bourgeois, invented the mechanism by which, in half an hour, the floor of the auditorium could be raised to the level of the stage boards. Although the privilege or patent was given to the Chevalier de Bouillon at the beginning of January, 1713, it was not until January, 1716, that the first opera ball took place. From that year until 1830 no masked or fancy dress ball could be given at any other theatre. On the accession, however, of Louis Philippe, the Opera lost its dancing monopoly, and there are now numbers of Paris theatres at which, during the Carnival, masked balls occur. The receipts at an Opera Ball are said to average 50,000 francs (£2,000). Close to the Opera lie all the fashionable clubs of Paris, beginning with the Jockey Club at the corner of the Boulevard de La Madeleine. The English Jockey Club is known to be an association of horse-owners and others interested in racing, who frame regulations and decide cases in connection with the Turf. The Jockey Club of Paris, while founded on much the same basis as the English institution of the same name, is also a club in the ordinary sense of the word, and an exceedingly good one. The Jockey Club, which boasts of numbering on its books members of all the reigning families of Europe, is, by its formal title, a "Society of Encouragement for the Amelioration of Breeds of Horses in France." It was originated in 1833, under the auspices of the Duke of Orleans, eldest son of Louis Philippe, in order to popularise racing, regulate it, and obtain for it subsidies from the State and the Municipalities. A committee of thirteen members is exclusively entrusted with the organisation and superintendence of races. The code of the Jockey Club is adopted as a basis of regulations by nearly all the other racing societies of France. The Jockey Club itself directs the racing of only three courses, those of the Bois de Boulogne, Fontainebleau, and Chantilly. This club, first established at the corner of the Rue du Helder, and then transferred to the Hôtel de Lange on the Boulevard Montmartre, moved in 1857 to the corner of the Rue de Grammont, where the Cercle des Deux Mondes now has its headquarters, and finally, in 1860, to its present abode, for which it pays an annual rental of 100,000 francs. Not one of the Paris clubs seems, like the principal London clubs, to possess its own house. As a rule the annual subscription to the Paris club is high, amounting in some cases to 500 francs. On the other hand, the large sums charged for entrance to the London clubs, ranging from 30 to 40 guineas, are unknown at the clubs of Paris, which consequently find themselves without much available capital. Close to the Opera, on the Boulevard des Italiens, at the corner of the Rue de Grammont, is Le Cercle des Deux Mondes; at the corner of the Rue de la Michodière, the Railway Club, or Cercle des Chemins de Fer; on the Boulevard des Capucines, at the corner of the Rue Louis le Grand, the Yacht Club. Just opposite the Yacht Club "Le Cercle de la Presse," celebrated for its literary and artistic evenings, suggests in the first place that no like institution exists in England, where the newspaper world, though less sharply broken up by political and personal animosities than that of France, is bound together by no such _esprit de corps_ as that which animates the authors and journalists of France. In England not only are we without a Press Club worthy of the name; we have no Société des Gens de Lettres, or Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques. Close to the Cercle de la Presse is the Sporting Club, with its English name. On the Place de l'Opéra is the Franco-American Club called the Washington Club, or Cercle Washington, and at the other corner of the square, the Cercle des Éclaireurs, or Scouts' Club, a survival from the war of 1870. On the Place de l'Opéra are the offices (as staring titles sufficiently proclaim) of the _Daily Telegraph_, the _Daily News_, and the _New York Herald_. The corner house, separating the Avenue of the Opera from the Rue de la Paix, has been occupied since 1886 by the Naval and Military Club, known as the Cercle des Armées de Terre et de Mer, and founded under the auspices of General Boulanger in the days when he was War Minister, with the eyes of all Europe upon him. Advancing towards the Madeleine, we come first to the Racing Club (Salon des Courses), then to the Union Club (Cercle de l'Union), the most artistic and most exclusive of all these institutions. Close by is the new Cercle de la Rue Royale, formerly known under the familiar name of "Cercle des Moutards;" whilst a little further on we find the Cercle des Mirlitons and Cercle Impérial, now combined, and the Cercle Artistique et Littéraire. [Illustration: WESTERN PAVILION, OPERA HOUSE.] [Illustration: THE STAIRCASE OF THE OPERA HOUSE.] More recently established than the best London clubs, the clubs of Paris possess some slight advantages over ours. There is but one London club at which a member can get shaved or have his hair cut, but at many of the fashionable Paris clubs the hair-cutter and barber play as important a part as at an American hotel. The best Paris clubs have private carriages always in readiness. At a London club members who have not their own private carriage content themselves with a hansom, or, if infirm, with a humble four-wheeler. The Paris clubs, moreover, are in constant communication with the theatres; and each club can command so many tickets for a first representation, which are distributed among the members according to the order of application. Some of the Paris clubs, too, have a box at the Opera or at the Comédie Française. One strange characteristic of the Paris clubs--strange at least to Englishmen--is that every member is supposed to know, more or less intimately, every other member. In Paris the newly-elected member of a club is formally introduced to the other members by his proposer and seconder. Nothing of the kind takes place in London; though a new member of a London club is allowed, if not expected, to invite his proposer and seconder with a few friends to dinner. Though there are still famous restaurants in Paris, dining-houses and cafés have alike suffered by the introduction of clubs, which, though fewer as yet than in London, are yearly increasing their number. The last of the boulevards on the western side is that of the Madeleine, with the Church of the Madeleine as its principal edifice. The Place de la Madeleine, in the centre of which stands the beautiful but most unecclesiastical church, becomes twice every week, on Tuesday and Friday, a large flower-market, the finest in Paris. Standing by itself in the place named after it, is the beautiful Greek temple, of which the first stone was laid, in one of his pious moods, by Louis XV. in 1764. But the building was not proceeded with until after a delay of some years. It was begun in its present form only twelve years before the Revolution; and when Napoleon became emperor it was still unfinished. Judging, no doubt, from the character of the architecture, that the edifice could scarcely have been intended for a place of Christian worship, Napoleon had it finished as a Temple of Glory under the direction of the celebrated architect Pierre Vignon. Like the Pantheon, however, which has sometimes been thus named, and at other times called the Church of Sainte-Geneviève, Napoleon's Temple of Glory was only for a time to be known in that character. Under the Restoration, in 1814, Louis XVIII. determined to restore the building to the Church; and, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene, it was duly consecrated. La Madeleine, as it is called, was, however, still uncompleted when, in 1830, Louis Philippe came to the throne; and it was under his reign that, in 1842, it was opened for public worship in the precise form and with the elaborate ornamentation now belonging to it. The architecture of the Madeleine is partly Roman, partly Greek; or rather it is Greek with Roman adaptations. It is surrounded by Corinthian columns, of which there are eighteen on each side. Sixteen, moreover, enclose the southern portion, and eight the northern. The building is without windows, and is entirely of stone. The niches in the colonnade are occupied by thirty-four statues representing the most venerated martyrs and saints. On the principal façade will be remarked a high-relief of huge dimensions by Lemaire, representing our Lord as Judge of the world. The figure of the Saviour is seventeen feet high. On His right are the Angel of Salvation and the saved; on His left the Angel of Punishment and the condemned, with Mary Magdalene interceding on their behalf. The interior is brilliant with gold and colour. The sanctuary, with its vaulted roof, exhibits a vast fresco by Zugler, representing the history of Christianity. Mary Magdalene, receiving Christ's forgiveness, is surrounded by the Apostles and Evangelists; and among the illustrious men who in successive ages have protected the Christian Church may be recognised Constantine, Godefroi de Bouillon, Clovis, Joan of Arc, Dante, and Napoleon. The principal altar supports an enormous group in white marble, generally known as the Assumption, though the central figure is that of Mary Magdalene. The Assumption in this case is that of Mary Magdalene into Paradise, whither she is being borne by two angels. Under the organ is the Chapelle des Mariages, with a marble group by Pradier, representing the marriage of the Virgin; and the Chapelle des Fonts, with a group by Rude, the subject being the Baptism of Christ. To the right of the altar we see illustrated the spread of Christianity in the East during the early centuries and the Crusades; and again, in modern times, through the uprising of the Greeks against the Turks. As leading Crusaders, Richard Coeur-de-Lion and Godefroi de Bouillon occupy places. The personages exhibited as having greatly contributed towards the progress of Christianity in the West are the early martyrs, Charlemagne, Pope Alexander III., Joan of Arc, Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Dante. In the centre of the picture stands Henri IV., who, after uttering his celebrated exclamation, "Paris is well worth a mass," goes over to the dominant religion. Then come Louis XIII., Richelieu, and finally Napoleon I., who not only was crowned by Pope Pius VII. in Notre-Dame, but really deserves credit for having restored Christian worship in France. In the first chapel, on the right as one enters the church, is a pillar bearing an inscription to the memory of the Abbé du Guerry, curé of the Madeleine, a man of remarkable piety and benevolence, who, with other hostages taken by the Communists, was shot on the 24th of May, 1871, in retaliation for the execution of Communist prisoners by the troops of Versailles. The Church of the Madeleine is famous for the eloquence of its preachers, the taste in dress of the fashionable ladies whom these preachers attract, and the excellence of the music. At the organ of the Madeleine a sound musician and a perfect player is always to be found. CHAPTER XIII. PLACE DE LA CONCORDE. Its History--Louis XV.--Fireworks--The Catastrophe in 1770--Place de la Révolution--Louis XVI.--The Directory. The Rue Royale, a continuation of the Boulevard de la Madeleine, leading to the Place de la Concorde, was the scene of some of the most violent outrages on the part of the Communists in May, 1871. Here, as in the neighbouring Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, a number of houses were deliberately set on fire, when some thirty persons perished in the flames. It was said, at the time, that the firemen employed to extinguish the conflagration were bribed by members of the Commune to replace the water in their pumps by petroleum. The Place de la Concorde, the finest of the many fine squares and open spaces in Paris, covers an area of 400 yards in length, by 235 yards in width. It is bounded on the south by the Seine, on the west by the Champs Élysées, on the north by the Rue de Rivoli (at right angles with the Rue Royale), and on the east by the Tuileries Gardens. From the centre of the Place may be seen the Madeleine at the further end of the Rue Royale; the Palace of the Chamber of Deputies just across the river, which is here traversed by the Pont de la Concorde; the Louvre on the one hand, and on the other, at the end of the Champs Élysées, the Triumphal Arch (Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile). At night the views from the Place de la Concorde are more striking even than by day; the Avenue of the Champs Élysées, more than a mile in length, leading in a straight line from the Place de la Concorde to the Triumphal Arch, presenting, with its seemingly interminable rows of lamps, a fairy-like spectacle. The history of the Place de la Concorde is quite modern. Its present name dates only from the Revolution; its creation from no further back than the year 1748. Louis XV., called _le bien-aimé_, had fallen ill at Metz, and the people regarding him, after the ruinously extravagant reign of his predecessor, Louis XIV., as a merciful sovereign, hurried in crowds to the churches, imploring heaven for the King's recovery. "What have I done to be thus beloved?" asked the young monarch, with astonishment; and his eyes moistened with tears--"the only ones," says an apparently well-informed historian, "he ever let fall." Louis XV. recovered and came back to Paris; and it was then that the Town Council voted with enthusiasm an equestrian statue to the sovereign whom it had pleased heaven to spare. The King, on his side, presented to the city a large open piece of ground at the end of the Tuileries Gardens, and in the centre of this plain the first stone was laid of the monument which was to celebrate the virtues of Louis the Well-beloved. This statue, according to the fashion of the time, represented the King in Roman costume with a crown of laurels on his head; and, among other devices, personifications of Strength, Wisdom, Justice, and Peace were made to figure at the corners of the pedestal, which gave rise to the following epigram:-- "Oh! la belle statue! oh! le beau piédestal! Les vertus sont à pied, le vice est à cheval;" which may be thus turned into English:-- "Fit statue, fitter pedestal! with laughter burst your sides, The virtues all below on foot, while vice triumphant rides!" Another satirist wrote:-- "Il est ici comme à Versailles; Il est sans coeur et sans entrailles." or, to give something like an equivalent in English:-- "Here have set up the builders with their trowels A King of brass who's neither heart nor bowels." A philosopher who seems to have foreseen what he fancied was by no means apparent to Louis XV.--that the ancient _régime_ was coming to an end--placed a bandage round the eyes of the statue with these words inscribed on it:-- "Have pity on a poor blind man!" This, however, is inconsistent with the tradition which attributes to him the saying, more generally believed to have been Metternich's, "Après moi le déluge!" [Illustration: THE MADELEINE.] [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE MADELEINE.] The open space was now to be marked in by ornamental limits; and the architects were working at the railings and walls, when, on the night of the 30th of May, 1770, a frightful catastrophe took place. To celebrate the marriage of the Dauphin, afterwards Louis XVI., with the Archduchess Marie Antoinette of Austria, the town of Paris had prepared a magnificent fête, of which the principal attraction was to be a display of fireworks under the direction of the famous Italian pyrotechnist, Ruggieri, perfecter of an art first introduced into France (like so many others) by his ingenious countrymen. Three centuries earlier, in 1465, it should be said, when fireworks were for the first time seen in France, much excitement and some accidents, though no fatal ones, were in like manner caused. After the battle of Montléhry, when the troops of Louis XI. retired to Corbeil, and the great noblemen who had been leagued against him to Étampes, the Duke of Berri and the Comte de Charolais took their places at the window of a house in the last-named town and looked out together on the soldiers and the mob who filled the streets. Suddenly a dart of fire was seen flashing and curling in the air, which, taking the direction of the window where the prince and the count were seated, struck against it with a violent explosion. The two noblemen were filled with alarm, and the Comte de Charolais in his fright ordered the Seigneur Contay to call out all the troops of the household, the archers of his body-guard, and others. The Duke of Berri gave like orders to all the troops under his command; and in a few minutes two or three bodies of armed men, with a great number of archers, were seen in front of the residence, making every endeavour to find out whence the marvellous and terrible apparition of fire could have proceeded. It was regarded as a diabolical device magically directed against the persons of the Comte de Charolais and the Duke of Berri. After close investigation it was discovered that the author of the marvel productive of so much alarm was a Breton known as Jean Boute-Feu, otherwise Jean des Serpents, so called from his having invented the kind of firework which still bears the name of "serpent." Jean threw himself at the feet of the princes, confessed to them that he had indeed fired rockets into the air, but added that his intention had been to amuse, not injure, them. Then, to prove that his fireworks were harmless, he let off three or four of them in presence of the princes, which quite destroyed the suspicions formed against him. Everyone now began to laugh. Much trepidation had meanwhile been caused by a very trifling incident. But let us return to the year 1770 and the fête on the Place Louis XV. All was going well, when suddenly a gust of wind blew down among the crowd some rockets only partially exploded. Fireworks, like so many inventions of Italian origin, were still, to the mass of the French public, a comparative novelty; and this, together with the positive inconvenience and even danger of a fall of blazing missiles in the midst of thousands of excited and closely-packed spectators, was quite enough to account for the terrible confusion, resulting in many hundreds of fatal accidents, which now ensued. There was, in the first place, a general rush towards the Rue Royale, far too narrow to receive such an invasion; and in the crush numbers of women fainted, fell, and were trampled to death. To make matters worse the stream of persons pressing into the Rue Royale was met by a counter-stream, advancing, in ignorance of what had taken place, to the Place de la Concorde. Even these, who were not in imminent peril, were now affected by a panic which soon became universal. In the midst of shrieks and groans some desperate men drew their swords and endeavoured to cut for themselves a passage through the dense mass by which they were surrounded. "I know many persons," says Mercier, in his "Tableau de Paris," "who thirty months after these frightful scenes still bore the marks of objects which had been crushed into them. Some lingered on for ten years and then died. I may say without exaggeration that in the general panic and crush more than twelve hundred unfortunate persons lost their lives. One entire family disappeared; and there was scarcely a household which had not to lament the death of a relative or friend." On the other hand the official returns put down the deaths at 133, already an immense number. Seven years later, in 1777, the Place Louis XV. was the scene of a further mishap. Certain strolling players, jugglers, and other mountebanks had established in the open space an annual fair known as the Fair of St. Ovid, which became such a nuisance to the aristocratic residents in the neighbourhood that a petition was presented to the Government for its suppression; when suddenly one evening the booths and theatres took fire. The conflagration became general, and the Fair of St. Ovid perished in the flames. The next incident of importance which took place on the great Place was important indeed. It was nothing less than the destruction of Louis XV.'s statue, which on the 11th of August, 1792, the day after the capture of the Tuileries, was removed by order of the Legislative Assembly, melted down, and converted into pieces of two sous. The statue of the king was replaced by a statue of Liberty, which, being made in terra-cotta, was called by the anti-Revolutionists the "Liberty of Mud." The Place was now named Place de la Révolution. Place de la Guillotine it might more fitly have been called, for it was here that the instrument of punishment, of vengeance, and often of simple hatred, was erected, to begin its horrid work, on the 21st of January, 1793, by the decapitation of Louis XVI. The unhappy monarch had been brought along the whole line of boulevards from the prison of the Temple, close to the Place de la Bastille, at one extremity, to the Place de la Révolution at the other. These two opposite points mark in a certain way the beginning and the end of the Revolution. Its first heroic act was the taking of the Bastille; the cruel deeds which marked its close had for their scene the former Place Louis XV., which the Revolution had now named after itself. The last moments of Louis XVI. have often been described, but never in so simple, touching, and direct a manner as by the Abbé Edgeworth, who accompanied the king to the scaffold, and at the fatal moment was by his side. He afterwards wrote in the French language an account of what he had witnessed, from which some of the most striking passages may here be reproduced. "The fate of the king," he says, "was as yet undecided, when M. de Malesherbes, to whom I had not the honour of being personally known and who could neither ask me to his house nor come to mine, requested me to meet him at Mme. de Senosan's house, where I accordingly waited on him. There M. de Malesherbes delivered to me a message from the king signifying the wish of that unfortunate monarch that I should attend him in his last moments, if the atrocity of his subjects should be contented with nothing less than his death. This message was conveyed in terms which I should have thought it my duty to suppress if they did not demonstrate the excellence of the prince whose end I am going to relate. He carried the delicacy of his expressions so far as to ask as a _favour_ the services he had a right to demand from me as a duty. He claimed them as the last proof of my attachment. He hoped that I would not refuse him. He added that if the danger to which I must be exposed should appear to me too great he would beg me to name another clergyman. This was not to be thought of, and on being admitted to the prison I fell at the king's feet without the power of utterance. The king was much moved, but soon began to answer my tears with his own." A high official from whom the Abbé Edgeworth had requested permission to administer the Sacrament replied that he deemed the request of the Abbé and that of Louis Capet conformable to the law, which declared all forms of worship to be free. "Nevertheless," added the official, "there are two conditions. The first is that you draw up instantly an address containing your demand signed by yourself; the second, that your religious ceremonies be concluded by 7 o'clock to-morrow at latest, for at 8 precisely Louis Capet must set out for the place of execution." "These last words," writes the Abbé, "were said, like all the rest, with a degree of cold-blooded indifference which characterised an atrocious mind. I put my request in writing and left it on the table. They re-conducted me to the King, who awaited with anxiety the conclusion of this affair. The summary account which I gave him, in which I suppressed all particulars, pleased him extremely. It was now past ten o'clock, and I remained with the King till the night was far advanced, when, perceiving he was fatigued, I requested him to take some repose. He replied with his accustomed kindness, and charged me to lie down also. I went, by his desire, into a little closet which Cléry occupied, and which was separated from the King's chamber only by a thin partition; and while I was occupied with the most overwhelming thoughts I heard the King tranquilly giving directions for the next day, after which he lay down on his bed. At five o'clock he rose and dressed as usual. Soon afterwards he sent for me, and I attended him for nearly an hour in the cabinet, where he had received me the evening before. I found an altar completely prepared in the King's apartment. The commissaries had executed to the letter everything that I had required of them. They had even done more than I had asked, I having only demanded what was indispensable. The King heard Mass. He knelt on the ground without cushion or desk. He then received the Sacrament, after which ceremony I left him for a short time at his prayers. He soon sent for me again, and I found him seated near his stove, where he could scarcely warm himself. 'My God,' said he, 'how happy I am in the possession of my religious principles! Without them what should I now be? But with them how sweet death appears to me! Yes, there dwells on high an uncorruptible Judge from Whom I shall receive the justice refused to me on earth!' The sacred offices I performed at this time prevent my relating more than a few sentences out of many interesting conversations which the King held with me during the last sixteen hours of his life; but by the little that I have told it may be seen how much might be added if it were consistent with my duty to say more. Day began to dawn, and the drums sounded in all the quarters of Paris. An extraordinary movement was heard in the tower--it seemed to freeze the blood in my veins. But the King, more calm than I was, after listening to it for a moment, said to me without emotion: 'It is probably the National Guard beginning to assemble.' In a short time detachments of cavalry entered the court of the Temple, and the voices of officers and the trampling of horses were distinctly heard. The King listened again and said to me with the same composure: 'They seem to be approaching.' On taking leave of the Queen the evening before he had promised to see her again next day, and he wished earnestly to keep his word; but I entreated him not to put the Queen to a trial under which she must sink. He hesitated a moment, and then, with an expression of profound grief, said: 'You are right, sir, it would kill her. I must deprive myself of this melancholy consolation and let her indulge in hope a few moments longer.' From seven o'clock till eight various persons came frequently, under different pretences, to knock at the door of the cabinet, and each time I trembled lest it should be the last. But the King, with more firmness, rose without emotion, went to the door and quietly answered the people who thus interrupted us. I do not know who these men were; but amongst them was one of the greatest monsters that the Revolution had produced. I heard him say to his King, in a tone of mockery, I know not on what subject: 'Oh, that was very well once, but you are not on the throne now.' His Majesty did not answer a word, but returned to me, contenting himself with saying, 'See how these people treat me. But I know how to endure everything.' Another time, after having answered one of the commissaries who came to interrupt us, he returned and said, with a smile, 'These people see poignards and poison everywhere; they fear that I shall destroy myself. Alas! they little know me. To kill myself would indeed be weakness. No, since it is necessary, I know how I ought to die!' We heard another knock at the door--destined to be the last. It was Santerre and his crew. The King opened the door as usual. They announced to him (I could not hear in what terms) that he must prepare for death. 'I am occupied,' said he, with an air of authority. 'Wait for me. In a few minutes I will return to you.' Then, having shut the door, he knelt at my feet. 'It is finished, sir,' he said. 'Give me your last benediction, and pray that it may please God to support me to the end.' He soon arose, and, leaving the cabinet, advanced towards the wretches who were in his bedchamber. Their countenances were embarrassed, yet their hats were not taken off. And the King, perceiving it, asked for his own. Whilst Cléry, bathed in tears, ran for it, the King said, 'Are there amongst you any members of the Commune? I charge them to take care of this paper.' It was his will. One of the party took it from the King. 'I recommend also to the Commune Cléry my valet. I can only congratulate myself on having had his services. Give him my watch and clothes, not only these I have here, but those that have been deposited at the Commune. I also desire that, in return for the attachment he has shown me, he may be allowed to enter into the Queen's--into my wife's service.' He used both expressions. The King then cried out in a firm tone: 'Let us proceed.' At these words they all moved on. The King crossed the first court, formerly the garden, on foot. He turned back once or twice towards the tower as if to bid adieu to all most dear to him on earth; and by his gestures it was plain that he was then trying to summon his utmost strength and firmness. At the entrance to the second court a carriage waited. Two gendarmes stood at the door. On the King's approach one of these men entered the carriage, and took up his position in front. The King followed and placed me by his side. Then the other gendarme jumped in and shut the door. It is said that one of these men was a priest in disguise. For the honour of religion I hope this may be false. It is also said that they had orders to assassinate the King on the smallest murmurs from the people. I do not know whether this might have been their design, but it seems to me that unless they possessed different arms than those that appeared it would have been difficult to accomplish their purpose, for their muskets only were visible, which it would have been impossible for them to have used. These apprehended murmurs were not imaginary. A great number of people devoted to the King had resolved on tearing him from the hands of his guards, or, at least, of making the attempt. Two of the principal actors, young men whose names are well known, found means to inform me, the night before, of their intentions; and though my hopes were not sanguine, I yet did not despair of rescue even at the foot of the scaffold. I have since heard that the orders for this dreadful morning had been planned with so much art, and executed with so much precision, that, of four or five hundred people thus devoted to their prince twenty-five only succeeded in reaching the appointed rendezvous. In consequence of the measures taken before daybreak in all the streets of Paris, none of the rest were able to get out of their houses. The King, finding himself seated in a carriage where he could neither speak to me nor be spoken to without witness, kept a profound silence. I presented him with my breviary, the only book I had with me, and he seemed to accept it with pleasure. He appeared anxious that I should point out to him the psalms that were best suited to his situation, and he recited them attentively with me. The gendarmes, without speaking, seemed astonished and confounded at the tranquil piety of their monarch, to whom, doubtless, they had never before approached so near. The procession lasted almost two hours. The streets were lined with citizens, all armed, some with pikes and some with guns, and the carriage was surrounded by a body of troops formed from the most desperate people of Paris. As another precaution, they had placed before the horses a great number of drums intended to drown any noise or murmurs in favour of the King. But how could such demonstrations be heard, since nobody appeared either at the doors or windows, and in the street nothing was to be seen but armed citizens--citizens all rushing to the commission of a crime which, perhaps, they detested in their hearts. The carriage proceeded thus in silence to the Place Louis XV., and stopped in a large space that had been left round the scaffold. This space was protected on all sides with cannon, and, beyond, an armed multitude extended as far as the eye could reach. As soon as the King perceived that the carriage was stopping, he turned and whispered to me: 'We have arrived, if I mistake not.' My silence answered that we had. One of the guards came to open the carriage door, and the gendarmes would have jumped out; but the King stopped them, and laying his hand on my knee, said to them in a tone of majesty: 'Gentlemen, I recommend to you this good man. Take care that after my death no insult be offered to him. I charge you to prevent it.' The two men answered not a word. The King was continuing in a louder tone, but one of them stopped him, saying: 'Yes, yes, we will see to it; leave him to us;' and I ought to add that these words were spoken in a tone which would have frozen me if at such a moment it had been possible for me to have thought of myself. As soon as the King had left the carriage, three guards surrounded him and would have taken off his garments, but he repelled them haughtily. He undressed himself, untied his neckcloth, opened his shirt and arranged it himself. The guards, whom the determined countenance of the King had for a moment disconcerted, seemed to recover their audacity. They surrounded him again, and would have seized his hands. 'What are you attempting?' said the King, drawing back his hands. 'To bind you,' answered the wretches. 'To bind me?' said the King with an indignant air. 'No, I shall never consent to that. Do what you have been ordered; but you shall never bind me.' The guards insisted; they raised their voices, and seemed to wish to call on others to aid them. [Illustration: PLACE DE LA CONCORDE.] "Perhaps this was the most terrible moment of the direful morning; another instant and the best of kings would have received from his rebellious subjects indignities too horrid to mention--indignities that would have been to him more insupportable than death. Such was the feeling expressed on his countenance. Turning towards me, he looked at me steadily, as if to ask my advice. Alas! it was impossible for me to give any, and I only answered by silence; but as he continued this fixed look of inquiry I replied, 'Sir, in this new insult I only see another trait of resemblance between your Majesty and the Saviour who is about to recompense you.' At these words he raised his eyes to heaven with an expression that can never be described. 'You are right,' he said, 'nothing less than His example should make me submit to such a degradation.' Then, turning to the guards, he added: 'Do what you will. I will drink of the cup even to the dregs.' The path leading to the scaffold was extremely rough and difficult to pass. The king was obliged to lean on my arm, and from the slowness with which he proceeded I feared for a moment that his courage might fail; so that my astonishment was extreme when, arrived at the last step, he suddenly let go my arm and I saw him cross with a firm foot the breadth of the whole scaffold; silence, by his look alone, fifteen or twenty drums that were placed opposite to him; and in a voice so loud, that it must have been heard at the Pont Tournant, pronounce distinctly these memorable words: 'I die innocent of all the crimes laid to my charge; I pardon those who have occasioned my death; and I pray to God that the blood you are now going to shed may never be visited on France.' He was proceeding, when a man on horseback, in the national uniform, waved his sword, and with a ferocious cry ordered the drums to beat. Many voices were at the same time heard encouraging the executioners. They seemed to have re-animated themselves, and seizing with violence the most virtuous of kings, they dragged him under the axe of the guillotine, which with one stroke severed his head from his body. All this passed in a moment. The youngest of the guards, who seemed about eighteen, immediately seized the head and showed it to the people, as he walked round the scaffold. He accompanied this monstrous ceremony with the most atrocious and indecent gestures. At first an awful silence prevailed; at length some cries of '_Vive la République!_' were heard. By degrees the voices multiplied, and in less than ten minutes this cry, a thousand times repeated, became the universal shout of the multitude, and every hat was in the air." "It is remarkable," writes Mr. Sneyd Edgeworth, the Abbé's brother, "that in this account of the last moments of Louis XVI., the Abbé Edgeworth has omitted to relate that fine apostrophe, which everyone has heard, and which everyone believes that he addressed to his king at the moment of execution-- "'Fils de St. Louis, montez au ciel!' "The Abbé Edgeworth has been asked if he recollected to have made this exclamation. He replied that he could neither deny nor affirm that he had spoken the words. It was possible, he added, that he might have pronounced them without afterwards recollecting the fact, for that he retained no memory of anything which happened relative to himself at that awful instant. His not recollecting or recording the words is perhaps the best proof that they were spoken from the impulse of the moment." The Reign of Terror had now begun. Foreign armies were marching towards Paris in order to liberate the King from prison and replace him on his throne. The Republican Government replied by removing the head of the monarch whom it was prepared to restore. During the Reign of Terror the Place de la Concorde, as it was afterwards to be called, might fitly have been named, not merely the Place of the Revolution, the title it bore, but the Place of Blood. In the terrible year of 1793 Charlotte Corday was guillotined on the 17th of July; Brissot, leader of the Girondists, with twenty-one of his followers, on the 2nd of October; Queen Marie Antoinette on the 16th of October; and Philippe Égalité, Duke of Orleans (father of Louis Philippe), on the 14th of November. Among the victims of the year 1794 may be mentioned Madame Élizabeth, sister of Louis XVI., who was guillotined on the 12th of May; Hébert and several of his most bloodthirsty associates, who, at the instigation of Robespierre and Danton, lost their heads on the 14th of March; Marat and members of his party, who followed a few days afterwards; Danton himself and a number of his adherents, with the heroic Camille Desmoulins among them, on the 8th of April; Chaumette and Anacharsis Cloots, together with the wives of some previous victims on April 16th; Robespierre, Saint-Just, and other members of the Committee of Public Safety, on July 28th; seventy members of the Commune who had acted under Robespierre's direction on July 29th; and twelve other members of the same body the day afterwards. One of the most eminent figures in the Girondist party, Lasource, exclaimed to his sanguinary judges, on receiving his sentence: "I die at a moment when the people have lost their reason; you will die the day they regain it." In reference to Saint-Just's arrogance, Camille Desmoulins had said: "He carries his head with as much veneration as though he were bearing the Church Sacrament on his shoulders;" to which Saint-Just playfully replied: "And I will make him carry _his_ head as St. Denis carried his." St. Denis, the martyr, it will be remembered, is said, after decapitation, to have marched some distance with his head under his arm. In the course of the two years over which the Reign of Terror extended (though its duration is variously estimated according to the political principles of the calculator) nearly 3,000 persons are declared to have perished on the Place de la Révolution; though this estimate would certainly be regarded by some as excessive, by others as inadequate. In reference to the Reign of Terror, Victor Hugo calls upon the world "not to criticise too closely the bursting of the thunder-cloud which had been slowly gathering for eighteen centuries;" as though, from the earliest period, France had always been grossly misgoverned, to be suddenly governed in perfection from the time of the Revolution. It is the simple truth, however, that the Reign of Terror was the result, not of the natural development of the Revolutionary forces, but of threats from abroad, the presence, real and imaginary, of foreign agents in Paris, and the advance of the German armies with a view to the liberation of the king and the suppression of the Republic. It ought also in fairness to be remembered that if the Revolutionists made a free use of the guillotine, they abolished torture and the cruel methods of executions (such as beating to death with an iron bar) in use under the ancient monarchy until the moment of the outbreak. Nor can it be forgotten that at various periods of French history (the Massacre of St. Bartholomew is an instance) life has been sacrificed more copiously, more recklessly, and more wantonly, than during the worst excesses of the French Revolution. When many years afterwards it was proposed to erect a fountain on the spot where the scaffold of Louis XVI. had stood, Chateaubriand declared that all the water in the world would not suffice to remove the blood-stains which had sullied the Place. Of those who suffered under the Revolution, many, such as Robespierre, Danton, and Marat, well deserved their fate, and none more so than the infamous Philippe Égalité, who, after playing the part of a democrat, and democratically voting for the death of his cousin the king, was himself, on democratic grounds, brought to the guillotine. Writing in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ four years after Louis Philippe's election to the throne, Chateaubriand reproached the reigning king with being the son of a regicide. Arguing that since the execution of Louis XVI., and as a punishment for that crime, it had become impossible to establish monarchy in France, Chateaubriand added: "Napoleon saw the diadem fall from his brow in spite of his victories; Charles X. in spite of his piety. To discredit the crown finally in the eyes of the nations, it has been permitted to the son of the regicide to be for one moment in the blood-stained bed of the murderer." That Louis Philippe suffered this outburst to be published unchallenged has been regarded as a proof of his extreme tolerance in press matters. Probably, however, he thought it prudent not to invite general attention to words which by a large portion of his subjects would have been accepted as true. It has been said by the defenders of the "regicide" that Philippe Égalité did his best not to be present at the sitting of the Convention when sentence had to be passed on the unfortunate king; and that he was threatened by his friends of the Left with assassination unless he voted with them for the "death of the tyrant." However that may be, he took his seat among the judges by whom the fate of his royal kinsman was to be decided; and when it came to his turn to deliver his opinion, he did so in these words: "Occupied solely with my duty, convinced that all those who have attacked or might afterwards attack the sovereignty of the people deserve death, I pronounce the death of Louis." Philippe Égalité had looked for general approval, and had voted in fear of that death which awaited him nevertheless, and which came to him in the very form in which a few months before it had been inflicted on the unhappy Louis. When his vote was made known, cries of indignation from all sides warned him that he had transgressed one of the great moral laws which are observed even by men who violate all others. A former soldier of the king's body-guard, hearing of Philippe Égalité's unnatural offence, resolved to kill him; but not being able to find him, killed another less guilty "regicide" in his place. Very different was the feeling excited by the conduct of Philippe Égalité in the breast of the king himself. "I don't know by what chance," says the Abbé Edgeworth in his "Relation sur les derniers Moments du Roi," "the conversation fell upon Philippe. The king seemed to be well acquainted with his intrigues, and with the horrid part he had taken at the Convention. But he spoke of him without any bitterness, and with pity rather than anger. 'What have I done to my cousin,' he exclaimed, 'that he should so persecute me? What object could he have? Oh, he is more to be pitied than I am. My lot is melancholy, no doubt, but his is much more so.'" Under the Directory, when the worst period of the Revolution was at an end, and the Republic itself was disappearing, the Place de la Révolution was called Place de la Concorde, and this name was preserved under the Consulate and the Empire. [Illustration: PLACE DE LA CONCORDE, FROM THE TERRACE OF THE TUILERIES.] At the time of the Restoration, when endeavours were made to revive in every form the associations of the old French monarchy, the name of Place de la Concorde was set aside for the original one of Place Louis XV., which, however, in obvious reference to the execution of Louis XV's successor, was changed in 1826 to Place Louis XVI. It was at the same time decreed that a monument should be erected to the memory of the unfortunate monarch, but the decree was never acted upon. Soon afterwards, in 1828, an order signed by Charles X. gave the place of many names to the town of Paris on condition that it should spend within five years, in completing the architectural and other decorations of the square, a sum of at least 2,230,000 francs. After the Revolution of 1830 the name of Place de la Concorde was re-adopted; and the Municipality was proceeding as rapidly as possible with the works ordered under the previous reign, when the cholera broke out, causing to the town an expenditure which rendered it necessary to stop the completion of the improvements. [Illustration: TRIAL OF LOUIS XVI.] The sum to be applied to the purpose was afterwards reduced to 1,500,000 francs; and this sum was conscientiously spent, but without by any means finishing the design contemplated by the architects. The fountains, with the Naiads and Tritons, and the eight statues representing in personification the principal sights of Paris, had been duly placed; and in 1836 the Obelisk of Luxor, a present from the Pasha of Egypt, was made the central ornament on the spot which had been successively occupied by the statue of Louis XVI. and the figure of Liberty. It was not until 1852, under the Empire, that the objects which still on one side mark the limits of the Place were set up. A large number of bronze candelabra which were at the same time fixed in various parts of the square greatly increased at night its picturesqueness and its beauty. For the last forty years the Place de la Concorde has remained as it was under the Empire. The Republic of 1871 could scarcely think it necessary to return to the truly Republican name of Place de la Révolution, which had been preserved for some two or three years during the worst period of the Revolution; and to the embellishment of the Place there was nothing to add. It remains what our Trafalgar Square was once, with or without reason, declared to be--"the finest site in Europe;" less admirable, however, as a mere site, than for the admirable views of such varied kinds that it commands in every direction. The history of the Place de la Concorde would not be complete without a record of the fact that it has been successively occupied by Russian and Prussian troops (1814); by English troops (1815); and again by Prussian troops (1871). It was the scene, too, in 1871 of a desperate struggle between the Communards and the troops advancing against them from Versailles. [Illustration] CHAPTER XIV. THE PLACE VENDÔME. The Column of Austerlitz--The Various Statues of Napoleon Taken Down--The Church of St.-Roch--Mlle. Raucourt--Joan of Arc. At the point where the long line of boulevards, extending for three miles from the Place de la Bastille to the Madeleine, comes to an end the road bifurcates. The Rue Royale leads in one direction towards the Place de la Concorde, the Rue Castiglione in another towards the Place Vendôme, a square, or rather an octagon, in the middle of which stands the famous column at which the typical French patriot, Le Colonel Chauvin, used to gaze with such enthusiastic admiration. [Illustration: TOP OF THE VENDÔME COLUMN.] The Place was constructed by the celebrated architect Mansard. In 1686, on the proposition of Louis XIV.'s minister, Louvois, the formation of the Place in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré was decreed "alike for the decoration of Paris and for facilitating communications in this quarter." Louvois, in the first place, purchased the Hôtel de Vendôme in the Rue Saint-Honoré, at the end of the Rue Castiglione, which, together with an adjacent convent, was pulled down. The open space thus obtained was for some time left unoccupied, the king's government being more concerned with works of war than of peace. It was originally intended to give the Place Vendôme the form of a square, with the king's library on one side, and various Government offices, together with mansions for the reception of special envoys, on the other. In carrying out his work Mansard made eight façades instead of the four first contemplated, and in the middle of the octagon he placed an equestrian statue of Louis XIV., twenty-one feet high. The Grand Monarch was attired, according to the sculptural fashion of the time, in Roman costume; and on the pedestal of the statue, which was in white marble, might be read pompous inscriptions in honour of his Majesty's victories. This statue remained on its pedestal for nearly a century. But on the 10th of August, 1792, when the Revolutionary fury was reaching its acute stage, the effigy was overturned by the people, and the name of Place Vendôme changed to Place des Piques. This eminently anarchical title was preserved until the establishment of the Empire, when Napoleon conceived the idea of the column to which the Place Vendôme now owes its chief importance. The true name of the column in question is the Column of Austerlitz. So, at least, it was designated by Napoleon; though the French people have persisted in calling it after the place in which it stands. It is a reproduction, as regards form, of the Trajan Column, which, however, is in marble, whereas the Column of the Place Vendôme is in stone covered with bronze castings. The column astonishes by its height, and excites admiration by its harmonious proportions. Few, however, notice the perfection of its details. The stone, of which the monument substantially consists, is covered by 378 sheets of bronze, so perfectly adjusted that the column appears to be one mass of solid metal. On an interminable spiral of low reliefs, the soldiers of the Empire are represented with the uniforms they wore, and the arms they carried. The principal personages are portraits, and the scenes represented are all from the campaign of 1805. The scrolls of bronze on which figure the actors and incidents of the Austerlitz campaign would measure, in one continuous line, more than 260 metres. The column is surmounted by the statue of the man who, in his own honour, erected it, and the base of the statue bears an inscription in these terms:-- "MONUMENT RAISED TO THE GLORY OF THE GRAND ARMY BY NAPOLEON THE GREAT. BEGUN XXV AUGUST, MDCCCVI, FINISHED XV AUGUST, MDCCCX, UNDER THE DIRECTION OF D. V. DENON, DIRECTOR-GENERAL, MM. J. B. LEPÈRE AND L. GONDOIN, ARCHITECTS." The base of the column bears this legend:-- "NEAPOLIO IMP. AUG. MONUMENTUM BELLI GERMANICI ANNO MDCCCV. TRIMESTRI SPATIO DUCTU SUO PROFLIGATI EX ÆRE CAPTO GLORIÆ EXERCITUS MAXIMI DICAVAT." which may be translated as follows:-- "Napoleon, august Emperor, dedicates to the glory of the Grand Army this monument made of bronze taken from the enemy, 1805, in the German War, terminated in three months under his command." This other very different translation from the same obscure original was suggested by Alexandre Dumas the elder: "Nearchus Polion, General of Augustus, dedicated this war tomb of Germanicus to the glory of the Army of Maximus, in the year 1805, with the money stolen from the vanquished, thanks to his conduct, during the space of three months." The sheets of bronze employed in the construction of the column would, it has been calculated, weigh 2,000,000 kilogrammes, about 4,000,000 pounds; and the metal was all obtained from the guns of the defeated armies. In 1814, the day after the entry of the allied troops into Paris, it was proposed to pull down the statue of Napoleon, costumed and crowned like a Roman emperor, from its proud position at the top of the Austerlitz Column; and with this view a cable was thrown round the Emperor's neck, the lower part of his legs having been previously sawn through so that he might fall with ease. The statue, however, stood firm. The angle at which the engineers were operating did not enable them to pull the statue sufficiently forward; and to tug at the cable was only to hold it faster to its base. A zealous royalist now came forward in the person of M. de Montbadon, chief of staff to the Paris garrison. Empowered by MM. Polignac and Semallé, commissaries of the Count of Artois, to take whatever measures he might think necessary, M. de Montbadon applied to Launay, who had made the castings for the column and had cast the statue itself. He who had made could also unmake, argued M. de Montbadon. But he had reckoned without Launay himself, who refused indignantly to do the work required of him. Thereupon he was taken to the headquarters, where an order was served upon him in these terms: "We command the said M. Launay, under pain of military execution, to proceed at once to the operation in question, which must be terminated by midnight on Wednesday, April 6th." This order, according to the well-informed Larousse, is dated April 4th, and signed Rochechouard, colonel aide-de-camp of H.M. the Emperor of Russia commanding the garrison. M. Pasquier, Prefect of Police, wrote on the document, "to be executed immediately." The National Guard was at that time on duty around the monument. Whether from a feeling of shame or of mistrust, the French National Guards were replaced by Russian troops. Launay now raised the statue by means of wedges, and let it down with pulleys. No sooner had the bronze figure touched the ground than it was replaced on the summit of the column by the white flag of the old monarchy. "Then," says Launay in an account he has left of the affair, "cries were heard of 'Long live the King!' ' Long live Louis XVIII.!'" This was on April 8th, at six in the evening, the operation having lasted four days, at an expense to the nation of only 4,815 francs 46 centimes. Launay obtained permission to take away the statue and keep it in his workshop as security for the payment of 80,000 francs still due to him from the Government as founder of the column. On the return of Napoleon from Elba Launay was forced by the Imperial police to give up the statue; and when, after the Hundred Days, the monarchy was a second time restored, the statue, a masterpiece of Chaudet, was melted down, and the metal used by Lemot for a new equestrian statue of Henri IV. Soon after the accession of Louis Philippe--a more popular sovereign than the legitimate King Charles X., whom, at the end of the Revolution of 1830, he succeeded--the Chambers passed a resolution for crowning the Vendôme Column once more with a statue of Napoleon. A competition was opened, and the model of a statue by M. Seurre was selected from a great number sent in. It was cast in bronze, and inaugurated with great show on the 28th of July, 1833, during the annual festivities in celebration of the Revolution of 1830. The Army and the National Guard were represented in force on this solemn occasion; and Louis Philippe, on horseback, in the midst of his staff, removed with his own hands the veil which concealed the statue from the eyes of the crowd. He then saluted, in this bronze effigy, the conqueror of Continental Europe; who, thanks in a great measure to the revived worship of Bonapartism, was in less than twenty years to be succeeded by a new emperor of the same dynasty. The Napoleon who now took his place at the top of the column was more in harmony with the details of the structure representing French generals and French soldiers than the Roman Emperor so rudely dethroned in 1814 had been. The new Napoleon was the Napoleon of real life and of Béranger's songs, the _Petit Caporal_ wearing his _redingote grise_, and standing in a characteristic attitude, with one of his hands behind his back. Instead of the laurel wreath he wore on his head the traditional _petit chapeau_. [Illustration: THE PLACE VENDÔME.] It seemed, however, to Napoleon III. that his uncle's own design ought to be respected; and in 1864 the statue of Napoleon "in his habit as he lived" was replaced by a statue after the model of the original one, representing the conqueror of Austerlitz in the conventional garb of a Roman emperor. The more realistic statue was placed in the middle of the rond-point of Courbevoie. Under the Commune the statue and the column itself were pulled down. The eminent painter, Courbet, had formed a project for replacing the column, which was only a monument of the victories gained by France at the expense of her plundered and humiliated neighbours, by one made out of French and German cannon in honour of the Federation of Nations and the Universal Republic. Courbet is said to have invited the Prussians to join him in carrying out this idea, which could not in any respect have suited their views. No period of French history, however, has been more diversely narrated than that of the Commune. One thing is certain; that the column fell, and in its descent went to pieces. The statue, too, suffered greatly by the fall. One of the legs was broken, and the head got separated from the body. A speech in honour of the Commune's mechanical triumph over the Imperial "idea" was pronounced by General Bergeret. After the suppression of the Commune the Assembly of Versailles ordered the re-establishment of the Vendôme column, which was duly set up in 1875. The interior construction of stone was entirely new. So also, as regards form, was the bronze plating, the scrolls being recast from the moulds preserved since the time of the first Empire. It had been decreed that the column should be surmounted by a statue of France. But this idea was not carried out, and, in conformity with another decree, Dumont's statue, as set up by Napoleon III. in 1864, was, after being repaired, put back in its former position. The pedestal at the top of the column has turn by turn been surmounted by the statue of Napoleon disguised as a Roman emperor; by the white flag of the ancient monarchy; by the statue of Napoleon in his ordinary military garb; by the statue of Napoleon once more costumed as a Roman Emperor; by the red flag of the Commune; and finally once again by the most recent statue in classic garb. The French seem at last to understand as a nation that, apart from all question of politics, the Napoleonic period was one of the most glorious of their history. At the corner of the Rue Castiglione stands the magnificent Hôtel Continental; which, independently of its positive attractions, possesses interest as occupying the site on which once stood the Ministry of Finance--burnt to the ground under the Commune in obedience to the famous, or infamous, telegraphic order: "_Flambez Finances_." On the west side of the Place Vendôme is the Ministry of Justice. The Hôtel du Rhin on the south side was the residence of Napoleon III. when he was a member of the National Assembly in 1848, before his election to the post of President, followed by his self-appointment (1851) to the dignity, first of President for ten years and a year afterwards of Emperor. In one of his letters of the 1848 period, inviting a friend to dinner at the Hôtel du Rhin, he apologised for proposing to entertain him at a "cabaret," a pleasantly contemptuous designation which the commodious and well-appointed Hôtel du Rhin scarcely deserved. The Hôtel du Rhin played a certain strategic part towards the end of May, 1871, when on the 23rd the Versailles troops passed through the hotel, and, attacking the insurgents in the rear, captured one of their principal barricades. The proprietor of the hotel, M. Maréchal, is said, on the occasion of the Vendôme column being threatened by the Communists, to have offered them 500,000 francs if they would spare it. "Give us a million and we will see!" was the answer; but the patriotic hotel-keeper, though he had the misfortune to see the column knocked down, lived to behold its restoration. The Rue Castiglione, which on the other side of the Place Vendôme continues southward towards the Rue de Rivoli and the Tuileries Gardens under the name of Rue de la Paix, is crossed, at the point where it changes its title, by the Rue Saint-Honoré. Here, close to the Place Vendôme, stands the ancient and interesting Church of Saint-Roch. The origin of this church was a chapel dedicated to the five wounds of Jesus, which, in 1577, was rebuilt on a much larger scale under the name of Saint-Roch, to be made, in 1633, the parochial church of the western part of Paris. The building in its present form dates from 1653, and it was not finished until 1736. Right and left of the principal entrance will be observed two statues, representing the two St. Rochs: one of them the pilgrim from Languedoc who cured the plague, accompanied by his legendary dog; the other the Bishop of Autun, mitre on head and staff in hand. Saint-Roch has been described as "the first parish church in France." It contains a number of statues and pictures by famous artists, such as Falconnet, Pradier, and Constan; Vien, Doyen, Deveria, Boulanger, and Abel de Pujol; also many interesting tombs, including that of the great Corneille, who died on the 1st of October, 1684, in the Rue d'Argenteuil at a house which not long ago was pulled down. On the 1st of October, 1884, the Curé of Saint-Roch performed a funeral service to commemorate the two hundredth anniversary of the poet's death; to which were invited the managers and the whole company of the Comédie Française. What a change did this mark in the views and feelings of the French clergy since the time, scarcely more than fifty years distant, when the Curé of Saint-Roch refused Christian burial to a celebrated actress who had relinquished her profession, and since her retirement had made abundant gifts through the clergy of Saint-Roch to the poor of the parish. "Mlle. Raucourt," says a writer on this subject, "had a better opinion of the Restoration than had the Restoration of Mlle. Raucourt. The clergy of the restored dynasty had shown itself in many ways intolerant; and Mlle. Raucourt's funeral was the occasion of a riot which threatened at one time to become formidable. The Curé of St.-Roch would not allow the body to be brought into his church, though he is said to have received again and again gifts from the actress, either for the church or for the poor of his parish. Only a few days beforehand, on the first day of the year, she had sent him an offering of five hundred francs. Representations were made to the clergy, but without avail. At last an indignant crowd broke open the church doors. Meanwhile, Louis XVIII., informed of what was taking place, had ordered one of his chaplains to go to Saint-Roch, and there, replacing the Curé, perform the funeral service. The soldiers had been called out, but they were judiciously withdrawn: they were kept, that is to say, in an attitude only of observation, while a crowd that was constantly increasing followed the corpse of Mlle. Raucourt to the cemetery of Père-la-Chaise." While the public excitement was at its height, one of the deceased actress's friends remarked: "If poor Raucourt could only see from her heavenly home what a scandal she is causing, how delighted she would be!" Among the various illustrious persons buried at Saint-Roch may be mentioned Diderot, to whose interment in 1784, five years before the Revolution, the clergy seem to have made no objection. The statue of Mary Magdalene in the Calvary sculpture reproduces the features of the Countess de Feuquières, cut in white marble by Lemoine. This figure originally formed part of the tomb of the Countess's father, Mignard, the celebrated painter, whose bust by Desjardins is preserved at Saint-Roch. Here may also be seen medallions of Marshal d'Asfeld, of the Duke de Les Aiguières and of Count d'Harcourt; the statue of the Duke de Créqui, and the monuments of Maupertuis, the philosopher, and of the benevolent Abbé de l'Épée. On the high ground, at some little distance from the Church of Saint-Roch, is the Butte Saint-Roch, already referred to as the camping-ground of the Maid of Orleans when the king's army was besieging Paris. Since Joan of Arc has been sung by great poets, impersonated by great actresses, and set to music by great composers, with Gounod and Verdi among them, all France has admired the warlike heroine; but while the Maid of Orleans was striving against the enemies of her country, the Parisians preferred the government of the English king to that of the lawful inheritor of the French Crown. Hating all the partisans of Charles VII., they detested Joan of Arc, who had restored the courage of his followers, and was in consequence looked upon in Paris as a doubtful sort of witch, whose prophecies were so many deceptions. A Parisian writer quoted by Dulaure says, in relating the incidents of his time, that Joan of Arc was a vicious creature in the form of a woman; "called," he ironically adds, "a maid, as she doubtless was." On the day of the Nativity of the Virgin, 1429, the Maid of Orleans and the king's troops lay siege to Paris. The assault commenced at eleven o'clock in the day, between the gate of Saint-Honoré and that of Saint-Denis. The Maid advanced, planted her standard on the edge of the moat, and addressed these words to the Parisians: "Surrender in the name of Jesus; for if you do not give in before night we will enter by force whether you like it or not, and you will all be put to death without mercy." Insulting names were applied to her by one of the besieged, who at the same time fired an arrow which pierced her leg. Thereupon she took to flight, when her standard-bearer was also wounded in the leg. He stopped and raised the visor of his helmet in order to pull out the arrow. A second one was now shot at him, which struck him between the eyes and killed him. The prediction of the Maid was not fulfilled on this occasion, for Paris did not surrender. Some time afterwards two women were arrested at Corbeil and thrown into prison at Paris. They were accused of believing and saying to everyone that the Maid of Orleans was sent from God; that Jesus often appeared to her, and that the last time she had seen Him He was clothed in a long white robe with a scarlet cloak above it. The elder of the two women refused to retract, and was consequently, on the 3rd of September, 1430, burnt alive. Some time after the burning of the Maid herself at Rouen, an inquisitor of the Jacobin order, master in theology, preached at Paris in the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields; and his sermon was nothing less than a violent satire against the courageous girl. He said in the pulpit that from the age of fourteen she had been in the habit of wearing men's clothes; that her parents would have killed her had they not been afraid of wounding their conscience; that she quitted her family accompanied by the devil, and became a slayer of Christians; and that since that time she had committed an infinity of murders; that in prison she caused herself to be waited on like a lady, and the devils came to her in the form of St. Catherine, St. Marguerite, and St. Michael. He added that, having been frightened into quitting her man's apparel to dress like a woman, the devil made her resume her customary dress, though he did not come to her succour at her execution as she had expected. This monk said moreover in this remarkable sermon that there were four Maids: namely, the two taken at Corbeil, one of whom was burnt at Paris; Jeanne d'Arc, burnt at Rouen; and the fourth, called Cathérine de la Rochelle, who followed the army of Charles VII., and who had visions like Joan of Arc. Ten years after the execution of Joan of Arc another Maid appeared, and the people firmly believed that this was the same one who had been burnt at Rouen, and who had miraculously risen from the dead. Another version was that someone had been executed in her place. [Illustration: RUE CASTIGLIONE.] "What appears strange," says Dulaure in the "Singularités Historiques," "and what perhaps suggested the idea put forth in our century that Joan of Arc was not burnt, and that she even left descendants, is that the inhabitants of Orleans who saw this Maid took her for Joan of Arc, and in consequence paid her much honour." The University and the Parliament of Paris, who ten years before had condemned the veritable Maid, wished now to deceive the people. They brought the false Maid by force to Paris, exhibited her publicly in the principal court of the Palace of Justice, and made her stand up on the famous marble slab and there pronounce a biographical confession, in which she declared that she was not a Maid; that she had been married to a knight by whom she had had two sons; that in a moment of anger against one of her neighbours, instead of striking one of the women she quarrelled with she struck her mother who was holding her back; that she had also struck priests or clerks in defence of her own honour, and that to obtain absolution for her crime she had been to Rome, and in order to make the journey in safety had put on man's clothes; finally, that she had served as a soldier in the army of the Pope, and while so serving had committed two homicides. The speech and the ceremony being finished, the Maid left Paris and returned to the war. [Illustration: A FIRST NIGHT AT THE COMÉDIE FRANÇAISE.--THE FOYER.] CHAPTER XV. THE JACOBIN CLUB. The Jacobins--Chateaubriand's Opinion of Them--Arthur Young's Descriptions--The New Club. Between the Church of St. Roch and the Place Vendôme is the Rue du Marché and the Marché, or market, itself; chiefly interesting at the present day as occupying the ground on which stood the ancient Monastery of the Jacobins, where from 1791 to 1794--from before the beginning until the very end of the Reign of Terror--the meetings of the famous Jacobin Club were held. [Illustration: MIRABEAU.] The name of Jacobin soon became familiar in England, and, as in France itself when the fury of the Revolution was quite at an end, was often applied as a term of reproach to all persons of Liberal ideas. The word, however, is now chiefly known among us from the _Anti-Jacobin_ of Canning and Frere, and latterly from the excellent, but short-lived, weekly newspaper of the same name edited by Mr. Frederick Greenwood. Under the Restoration, everyone in France who was not an ardent supporter of the ancient monarchy was called a Jacobin. But though towards the end of the Revolution Jacobinism became something hateful indeed, the principles which first brought the Jacobins together were such as neither lovers of liberty nor lovers of order could object to. In 1789 a number of popular associations were rapidly organised; this being the natural result of the reactionary feeling against a system which had subjected books, newspapers, and even conversation in public places (such as cafés) to a rigid censorship supported by officials and by spies. A passion suddenly arose throughout France for public speaking, and in a thousand different assemblies orators were formed. The States-General had just met; and, not content with the formal sittings, the deputies loved to address in a direct manner the outside public. With this view, the deputies from Brittany established a club called the Breton Club, which was joined by other deputies, and which presently changed its title to "Society of the Friends of the Constitution." This association included men of all shades of politics, who were afterwards to make war upon one another. Among the most famous may be mentioned Sieyès, Volney, Barnave, Pétion, Barrère, Lameth, Robespierre, the Duke of Orleans (Philippe Égalité), the Duke de La Rochefoucauld, Boissy d'Anglas, Talleyrand, La Fayette, and Mirabeau. The Society had its head-quarters at Versailles, in a building called Le Reposoir, which, later on, became a Protestant church. After the days of October the Assembly followed the King to Paris; and the famous club was established, first in a large hall which served as library to the Dominican monks at the convent of the Rue Saint-Honoré, and afterwards, when this order had been dissolved, in the Convent Church. As the Dominicans were more generally spoken of as the Jacobins, the latter name was soon applied to the Friends of the Constitution, who willingly adopted it. The same thing, strangely enough, happened to the Cordeliers and the Feuillants; so that the principal Revolutionary parties got to be known throughout Europe by appellations formerly monastic. What is still more curious is that the last of the Jacobin monks (in 1789 and 1790) took part in the meetings of which their convent was the scene, as, in like manner, did the last members of the Order of Cordeliers. The Jacobin Club possessed a large staff of officers, including a president, vice-president, four secretaries, twelve inspectors, four censors, eight commissaries, treasurer, and librarian, all appointed at quarterly elections. The privilege of membership was only granted under very strict conditions, and every newly-elected Jacobin had, before being formally admitted, to take the following oath:-- "I swear to live free or die; to remain faithful to the principles of the Constitution; to obey the laws; to cause them to be respected; to help with all my might to make them perfect; and to conform to the customs and regulations of the society." The sittings were held, first three, then four times a week. Little by little, however, the usual course in such assemblies was drifted into. The leaders went to extremes, and soon the most extravagant of them obtained the largest following. Then the moderate members retired to form counter-associations, until in time the hostile organisations made war upon one another, with the guillotine as their final weapon. "The Jacobins," says Michelet, "by their _esprit de corps_, which went on constantly increasing, by their hardened, uncompromising faith, by their harsh, inquisitorial ways, had something of a priestly character. They formed a sort of revolutionary clergy." Another great admirer of the Revolution, and especially of Robespierre, in whom the principle of Jacobinism was incarnate, sums up the Jacobin spirit in the following words:-- "Hatred of the conventional inequalities of former times, of unalterable beliefs, a sort of methodical fanaticism, intolerance of all that interfered with the development of the most daring innovations, and, fundamentally, a passion for regular forms; these, whatever may be said on the subject, were the components of the Jacobin spirit. The true Jacobin had something about him at once powerful, original and sombre. He stood midway between the agitator and the statesman; between the Protestant and the Monk; between the inquisitor and the tribune. Hence that ferocious vigilance transformed into a virtue: that spy system raised to the rank of a patriotic organisation: and that mania for denunciation, which made people at first laugh, and at last tremble." France, like England soon afterwards, had its _Anti-Jacobin_. _Les Sabbats Jacobites_ was the title of the French publication, and the Jacobin "mania for denunciation" was thus satirised in its columns:-- Je dénonce l'Allemagne, Le Portugal et l'Espagne, Le Mexique et la Champagne, La Sardaigne et le Pérou. Je dénonce l'ltalie, L'Afrique et la Barbarie, L'Angleterre et la Russie Sans même excepter Moscou. In spite of these attacks and a thousand others, the importance of the Jacobin Club went on constantly increasing; and at the funeral of Mirabeau, who died in the first year of the Revolution, the President of the Jacobin Club marched side by side with the President of the National Assembly, and had precedence of the Ministers. After the death of Mirabeau the influence of the Lameths, the Duports, the Barnaves, etc., gave way to that of Robespierre, in whom, says Louis Blanc, "Jacobinism in its extremest points was personified." Chateaubriand, the Royalist, ought, however, to be heard on this subject as well as Louis Blanc, the Republican; and this is what the former writes in his "Essay on Revolutions," published in 1797:-- "Much has been said about the Jacobins, but few people have known them. Nearly everyone rushes into declamations, and publishes the crimes of this society without enlightening us as to the general principle which directed its views. This principle consisted in a system of perfection towards which the first step to take was to restore the laws of Lycurgus. If, moreover, it be considered that France is indebted to the Jacobins for its numerous armies, courageous and disciplined; that it was the Jacobins who found the means of paying them, and of victualling a country without resources and surrounded by enemies; that it was they who created a navy as if by miracle, and who, through intrigues and money, ensured the neutrality of some of the powers; that under their reign the greatest discoveries in natural history were made, and great generals formed; that, in a word, they gave vigour to a warlike body, and, so to say, organised anarchy; one must then of necessity admit that these monsters, escaped from hell, had infernal talents." In 1791 the Jacobins were still Royalists, not from attachment to the Monarchy, but from a scrupulous regard for Constitutional legality. Nevertheless, after the flight to Varennes they departed from their former principles so far as to demand the abdication of the king. The next day, however, on the proposition of Robespierre, they returned to their customary prudence, pronounced against the Republic, and sent commissaries to the Champ de Mars to take back their demand. In connection with most of the great revolutionary events their conduct was the same, though the aristocratic Jacobins of 1789 had now quitted the society, to be replaced by men of extreme views--journalists, orators, and members of the National Assembly, who desired to place themselves in direct contact with the outside world. Among the questions put to candidates for election to the Jacobin Club were the following: "What were you in 1789? What have you done since? What was your fortune until 1789, and what is it now?" Every candidate was bound to answer all questions addressed to him, and he was to do this publicly in a loud voice. Anyone rejected by the Jacobin Club became at once an object of suspicion; and to be denounced by the Jacobin leaders was to receive a sentence of death. In this way perished the unfortunate Anacharsis Clootz, Fabre d'Églantine, and many others. At the critical moment the Jacobins remained faithful to the fortune of their chief. On the news of his arrest they ordered permanent sittings and voted unanimously their approval of the insurrectionary attitude of the Paris Commune. They spoke of resistance. But, though men of action abounded in the Jacobin Club, the members, as a body, were pusillanimous and could do nothing. Arthur Young in his "Travels in France" gives an interesting account of a meeting, which he attended, of the Jacobin Club at the time of the Revolution:-- "At night," he says, writing in diary form, "M. Decretot and M. Blin carried me to the revolutionary club of the Jacobins; the room where they assemble is that in which the famous league was signed. There were above one hundred deputies present, with a president in the chair; I was handed to him and announced as the author of the _Arithmétique Politique_. The President, standing up, repeated my name to the company and demanded if there were any objections. None; and this was all the ceremony, not merely of an introduction, but election; for I was told that now I was free to be present when I pleased, being a foreigner. Ten or a dozen other elections were made. In this Club the business that is to be brought into the National Assembly is regularly debated; the motions are read that are intended to be made there, and rejected, or corrected and approved. When these have been fully agreed to, the whole party are engaged to support them. Plans of conduct are here determined; proper persons nominated to act on committees and as presidents of the Assembly named. And I may add that such is the majority of members that whatever passes in this Club is almost sure to pass in the Assembly." Arthur Young also gives a description of a debate in the National Assembly on the subject of the conduct of the Chamber of Vacation in the Parliament of Rennes. [Illustration: ROBESPIERRE.] M. l'Abbé Maury, a zealous royalist, "made a long and eloquent speech, which he delivered with great fluency and precision and without any notes, in defence of the Parliament; he replied to what had been urged by the Count de Mirabeau on a former day, and strongly censured his unjustifiable call on the people of Bretagne to a _redoutable dénombrement_. He said that it would better become the members of such an assembly to count their own principles and duties and the fruits of their attention to the privileges of the subject than to call for a _dénombrement_ that would fill a province with fire and bloodshed. He was interrupted by the noise and confusion of the Assembly and of the audience six several times, but it had no effect on him; he waited calmly till it subsided, and then proceeded as if no interruption had occurred. The speech was a very able one and much relished by the Royalists; but the _enragés_ condemned it as good for nothing. No other person spoke without notes; the Count de Clermont read a speech that had some brilliant passages, but was by no means an answer to the Abbé Maury, as, indeed, it would have been wonderful if it were, being prepared before he heard the Abbé's oration.... Disorder and every kind of confusion prevails now almost as much as when the Assembly sat at Versailles. The interruptions are frequent and long, and speakers who have no right by the rules to speak will attempt to hold forth. The Count de Mirabeau pressed to deliver his opinion after the Abbé Maury; the president put it to the vote whether he should be allowed to speak a second time, and the whole house rose up to negative it, so that the first orator of the Assembly has not the influence even to be heard to explain. We have no conception of such rules, and yet their great numbers must make this necessary. I forgot to observe that there is a gallery at each end of the saloon which is open to all the world, and side ones for admission of the friends of the members by tickets. The audience in these galleries are very noisy; they clap when anything pleases them, and they have been known to hiss, an indecorum which is utterly destructive of freedom of debate." [Illustration: THE PALAIS ROYAL.] With Robespierre the grand period of the Jacobins came to an end, and nearly a hundred and twenty of them perished on the scaffold. Their hall was now closed and the club forbidden to meet except as a "regenerated society." At last the Committees of Public Safety and of General Security issued a decree which put an end to the Society of Jacobins. In the year 1796 a new Jacobin club was formed in the Riding School of the Tuileries, which soon afterwards moved to the church in the Rue du Bac, and boldly announced that it meant to revive the Jacobin traditions. "Jacobins of the Riding School" this society was called, and, after some ridicule (for the French public had grown sick of the Revolution), it was suppressed by an order from the Directory (1799). The Jacobin Club, however, as Arthur Young knew and described it, not only dictated the proceedings of the National Assembly, using this body as a sort of tool or cat's-paw by which it practically governed France, but exerted such an influence on Parisian society that enthusiasm for Liberal ideas took possession even of the fair sex. "The present devotion to liberty," he writes, "is a sort of rage. It absorbs every other passion and permits no other object to remain in view than what promises to confirm it. Dine with a large party at the Duke de La Rochefoucauld's, ladies and gentlemen are all equally politicians." Young adds, however, that one effect of the Revolution was to lessen the enormous influence of the gentler sex. Previously they had "mixed themselves in everything in order to govern everything," and the men of the kingdom had been mere "puppets moved by their wives." But now, "instead of giving the _ton_ to questions of national debate, they must receive it and be content to move in the political sphere of some celebrated leader." They were thus sinking into the position which, as Young considered, Nature had intended for them; and he maintained that the daughters of France would now become "more amiable and the nation better governed." CHAPTER XVI. THE PALAIS ROYAL. Richelieu's Palace--The Regent of Orleans--The Duke of Orleans--Dissipation in the Palais Royal--The Palais National--The Birthplace of Revolutions. The whole history of Paris may be read along the line of the Boulevards, and the whole life of the capital observed there in concentrated form. The Palais Royal, however, with its theatres, its restaurants, its shops of all kinds, its galleries, and its gardens, is in scarcely a less degree an epitome of Paris. It was formerly known as the Palais Cardinal, in memory of Richelieu, by whom, in its original shape, it was constructed. Richelieu afterwards made such frequent additions to the building that it lost all symmetry. In one of the wings a theatre was constructed; though it was not here, but in a large drawing-room, that the Cardinal's tragedies, _Eutrope_ and _Mirame_, were played. The palace, with its lateral developments, assumed at last the form of a quadrangle with a large garden in the interior. It suffered from the irremediable fault of not having been constructed from the first on a definite plan. But the garden, the fountain, the jewellers' shops, the booksellers' stalls, give the place a physiognomy of its own, and cause the beholder to overlook all architectural defects. Having completed his palace, and convinced himself that he had constructed an edifice worthy the acceptance of his sovereign, Richelieu presented it to Louis XIII. (1636), afterwards confirming the gift in his will (1642). Corneille, the recipient now of favours, now of slights from the great Cardinal, wrote, in an admiring mood, of the Cardinal's palace the following lines:-- "Non, l'univers entier ne peut rien voir d'égal Aux superbes dehors du Palais-Cardinal. Toute une ville entière, avec pompe bâtie, Semble d'un vieux fossé par miracle sortie, Et nous fait présumer, à ses superbes toits, Que tous ses habitants sont des dieux ou des rois."[B] [B] "No, the entire universe can behold nothing equal to the superb exterior of the Palais-Cardinal. The whole town, splendidly built, seems to have sprung by a miracle out of an old ditch, making one fancy from its magnificent roofs that all its inhabitants must be gods or kings." In spite of Corneille's praise, Louis XIII. seems to have thought but little of his minister's gift. Nor could he in any case have turned it to much account, for he did not survive the astute counsellor for more than a year. Louis XIV. passed some years of his childhood at the Palais-Cardinal, to which the name of Palais Royal was now given. Here the minister Mazarini, or Mazarin, resided during the troubles of the Fronde, and here it was that he heard the populace sing couplets about the _Facchino Italiano_. "They sing; they shall pay!" murmured the minister. But he was obliged all the same to take flight; and with the queen regent and the infant king he sought refuge at Saint-Germain. Never afterwards would the proud monarch inhabit the Palais Royal, which he assigned as a place of residence to Henrietta of France, Queen of England, and widow of Charles I. Afterwards, in 1692, Louis XIV. gave the Palais Royal as an absolute gift to his nephew, Philip of Orleans, Duke of Chartres, on the occasion of that prince's marriage. The Palace had now been increased by the addition of the Hôtel Dauville in the adjacent Rue Richelieu, and of a gallery constructed by the celebrated architect Mansard. The Regent of Orleans turned the theatre of Richelieu into an opera house, where he gave a number of masked balls which are remembered in history. Nor is the profligate life of which the Palais Royal now became the scene by any means forgotten. The theatre having been burnt down, the regent insisted on its being restored at the expense of the town; which was accordingly done. But the theatre was again destroyed by fire in 1781; and the Duke of Chartres, afterwards known during the Revolution as Philippe Égalité, the father of King Louis Philippe, instead of rebuilding it, constructed the three galleries surrounding the garden which still exist. The idea of three such galleries, communicating with the body of the palace, is said to have been entertained by Richelieu himself. As prodigal as his grandfather, the regent, the Duke of Orleans, was obliged to have recourse to various expedients for replenishing his exhausted exchequer. It occurred to him to turn the galleries of the Palais Royal into long lines of shops. This involved the expenditure of a considerable sum of money, but the result was most remunerative. The new Palais Royal became a centre of attraction to all Paris. Around the garden the three galleries, together with the one still known as the Galerie d'Orléans, formed a sort of bazaar, where jewellery, fans, and ornaments of all kinds were offered for sale. The shops were varied by cafés and restaurants. In the garden the Café de la Régence was established, and the Richelieu Theatre being once more rebuilt, now formed the home of the Comédie Française. Towards the end of the Monarchical period the Palais Royal became a recognised place of dissipation. In contrast with the loose morality of the locality was the rigid exactitude with which, every day at noon, a cannon in the centre of the garden, fired by the rays of the sun through a powerful lens, announced the hour; and crowds of people used to assemble round it, watch in hand, towards twelve o'clock. Walking through the Palais Royal one day with the Duke of Orleans, the Abbé Delille was requested by the Prince to sum up in a few words his ideas of the place, and did so in the following quatrain:-- "Dans ce jardin tout se rencontre, Excepté l'ombrage et les fleurs. Si l'on y dérègle ses moeurs, Du moins on y règle sa montre."[C] [C] "In this garden one may meet with everything, except shade and flowers. In it, if one's morals go wrong, at least one's watch may be set right." After the execution of the Duke of Orleans, who, having had the infamy to vote for the death of his blameless relative Louis XVI., was himself, by a mild retribution, to perish on the scaffold, the Palais Royal was appropriated by the State, and the place was now invaded by all the ruffians and reprobates of Paris. Let us on this subject hear Mercier in his "Tableau de Paris." "The Athenians," he writes, "raised temples to their Phrynes; curs find them in this enclosure already built. Speculators and their correlatives go three times a day to the Palais Royal, the centre of political and every other kind of debauchery. Some are occupied with the rise and fall of the funds. Gaming-tables are kept in every café, and it is a sight to see the sudden change in the expression of the players' faces as they lose or win. The Palais Royal is an elegant box of Pandora, beautifully carved, delicately worked, but containing what everyone knows it contains. All these followers of Sardanapalus or of Lucullus inhabit the Palais Royal, in apartments which the King of Assyria and the Roman Emperors would have envied." Under the Directory the number of gambling houses was limited, first to four, afterwards to eight; and it was not until the reign of Louis Philippe that they were finally suppressed. The gambling house at Number 113 figures in the "Peau de Chagrin" of Balzac; also in Dumas' "Femme au Collier de Velours." As for the "Palace"--the mansion inhabited by Mazarin and the infant Louis XIV., afterwards by Henrietta of England, and then by various members of the Orleans family--Napoleon established public offices in it. During the Hundred Days the palace was occupied by Lucien Bonaparte, and on the restoration of the Monarchy the whole place was bought back from the Government by the then Duke of Orleans, afterwards Louis Philippe. Some changes were made in the direction of the galleries, the popularity of which remained as great as ever. Nor was this diminished by the foreign occupation, for the Palais Royal was thronged day and night by officers of the Allied Army. It was now that the Café Lemblin became the head-quarters of Bonapartist officers on half-pay, and the Café des Mille Colonnes that of the officers serving in the newly organised Royalist army; and between the two bodies of officers numerous duels were fought. An ingenious rhymed description of the Palais Royal in its best and worst days has been left by Désaugiers, the celebrated songwriter of the period before Béranger, of which we may quote the concluding lines, telling how the resort, from being the scene of political storms, came to be the general _rendez-vous_ of pleasure-seekers of every kind and every nationality, from the Fleming to the Turk, and from the genius to the fool:-- "Si de maint politique orage Le Palais Royal Devint le théâtre infernal, Du gai carnaval Il est aujourd'hui l'héritage: Jeu, spectacle, bal Y sont dans leur pays natal, Flamand, Provençal, Turc, Africain, Chinois, sauvage, Au moindre signal Tout se trouve au Palais Royal. Bref, séjour banal, Du grand, du sot, du fou, du sage, Le Palais Royal Est le rendez-vous général." [Illustration: GARDENS OF THE PALAIS ROYAL.] Reformed in so many respects under the reign of Louis Philippe, the Palais Royal was destined at the same time to be overshadowed by the increasing importance of the Boulevards. After the Revolution of 1848 the Palais Royal, now styled Palais National, was once more treated as State property. Under the Second Empire it became the residence of Prince Jerome, succeeded by his son, Prince Napoleon. On the ornamentation of the portico, some _fleurs de lis_ dating from the time of Richelieu, which the Revolutionists of 1789 and of 1848 had forgotten to scrape off, were erased and replaced by Imperial eagles, themselves destined to disappear in the revolution of the 4th of September, 1871, when, at the same time, the Republican motto, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," was restored. Meanwhile, on the 23rd of May, 1871, while the expiring Commune was still struggling against the army of Versailles, the palace was invaded by the Communards and set in flames. The whole of the left wing, with part of the central pavilion, was burnt down. In the midst of the general incendiarism, the Théâtre Français, which may be regarded as an annexe of the Palais Royal, though it is entered from the Rue Richelieu, had itself a narrow escape from fire. The Palais Royal was destined to be the birthplace of more than one revolution. It was here that the great movement of 1789, and the minor one of July, 1830, began. The revolution of July seems, in the first instance, to have been intended simply as a protest, an act of resistance against arbitrary measures--and in particular against the muzzling of the Press to such an extent as to render it impossible under modern conditions to publish a newspaper. The celebrated _ordonnances_ had the immediate effect of throwing a multitude of journeyman printers out of work, and it was by these men that in one part of the city the insurrection was commenced. With them the question was not a political one in theory alone; it was a question whether they should get the hateful _ordonnances_ repealed or remain without work: that is to say, starve. [Illustration: THE PALAIS ROYAL AFTER THE SIEGE.] The 26th of July passed off very calmly in Paris as a whole. At the Palais Royal, however, some young men were seen mounting chairs, as formerly Camille Desmoulins had done. "They read the _Moniteur_ aloud," says a witness of the scene, "appealed to the people against the infraction of the charter, and endeavoured by violent gesticulation and inflammatory harangues to excite in their hearers and in themselves a vague appetite for agitation. But dancing was going on in the environs of the capital; the people were engaged in labour or amusement. The _bourgeoisie_ alone gave evidence of consternation. The _ordonnances_ had dealt it a twofold blow: they had struck at its political power in the persons of its legislators, and at its moral power in those of its writers." At first there was nothing to be seen throughout the whole _bourgeois_ portion of the population but one dull, uniform stupor. Bankers, traders, manufacturers, printers, lawyers, and journalists accosted each other with scared and astounded looks. There was in this sudden muzzling of the Press a sort of arrogant challenge that stunned men's faculties. So much daring inferred proportionate strength. The most active section of the _bourgeoisie_ went to work on the 27th, and nothing was left undone to stir up the people. The _Gazette_, the _Quotidienne_, and the _Universel_ had submitted to the _ordonnances_ from conviction or from party spirit; the _Journal des Débats_ and the _Constitutionnel_ from fear and mercantile policy. The _Globe_, the _National_, and the _Temps_, which defiantly continued to appear, were profusely circulated. The police order of the preceding day, forbidding their publication, only served to stimulate curiosity. Copies were disposed of by hundreds in the cafés, the reading-rooms, and the restaurants. Journalists hurried from manufactory to manufactory, and from shop to shop, to read the articles aloud and comment upon them. Individuals in the dress, and with the manners and appearance of men of fashion, were seen mounting on stone posts and holding forth as professors of insurrection; whilst students paraded the streets, armed with canes, waving their hats and crying "_Vive la Charte!_" The ordinary demagogues, cast into the midst of a movement they could not comprehend, looked on with surprise at all these things; but, gradually yielding to the contagion of the hour, they imitated the _bourgeoisie_, and running about with bewildered countenances, shouted like others for the charter. Begun in the Palais Royal, this revolution was continued and virtually concluded at the neighbouring Tuileries, where the Swiss Guard, fighting as faithfully for the restored monarchy as they had fought for the monarchy of Louis XVI., perished at the hands of the insurgents. The great Danish sculptor, Thorvaldsen, had already commemorated the heroism of Louis the Sixteenth's Swiss Guard in a magnificent figure of a wounded, expiring, but still undaunted lion, carved on a cliff or mountainside close to the town of Lucerne. The loyal mercenaries of Charles X. showed the same lionlike courage that those of Louis XVI. had displayed. [Illustration: THE MONTPENSIER GALLERY, PALAIS ROYAL.] There can be no doubt that the sight of the Swiss uniforms--scarlet, like that of the Household troops of most sovereigns--irritated greatly the people of Paris, who looked upon the revolution now taking place as a national movement under the tricolour flag against the monarchy, restored by foreign power after the defeat of Napoleon, with the white flag as its emblem. "The sight of those red uniforms," wrote an eye-witness of many of the scenes that took place during the three days of July, "redoubled the fury of the insurgents; fresh combatants rushed forth from every alley, and a barricade was manned and seized by the people. The Swiss sustained this attack with vigour; the guards advanced to support them, and the Parisians were beginning to give way, when a young man advanced to rally and cheer them on, waving a tricolour flag at the end of a lance, and shouting, 'I will show you how to die!' He fell, pierced with balls, within ten paces of the guards. This engagement was terrible; the Swiss left many of their numbers stretched on the pavement." The fighting, all over Paris, abounded in scenes which were either fantastic, heroic, or lamentable. The Marquis d'Antichamp had taken up his post, seated on a chair under the colonnade of the Louvre, opposite Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois. Bent under the burden of his years, and hardly able to sustain his tottering frame, he encouraged the Swiss to the fight by his presence, and sat with folded arms gazing on the terrible spectacle before him with stoical insensibility. A band of insurgents attacked the powder magazine at Ivry on the Boulevard de l'Hôpital, broke the gate in with hatchets and pole-axes, rushed into the courtyard, and obliged the people of the place to throw them packages of powder out of the windows. The insurgents, with all the hot-headed recklessness of the moment, continued with their pipes in their mouths to catch the packages as they fell, and carried them off in their arms. The debtors confined in Sainte-Pélagie, using a beam for a battering-ram, burst the gates, and then went and joined the guards on duty outside to prevent the escape of the criminal prisoners. A sanguinary encounter took place in the Rue de Prouvaires, and exhibited the spectacle, common enough in civil wars, of brothers fighting in opposite ranks. Throughout the whole city a sort of moral intoxication beyond all description had seized upon the inhabitants. Amidst the noise of musketry, the rolling of the drums, the cries and groans of the combatants, a thousand strange reports prevailed and added to the universal bewilderment. A hat and feathers were carried about in some parts of the town, said to be those of the Duke of Ragusa, whose death was reported. The audacity of some of the combatants was incredible. A workman, seeing a company of the 5th regiment of the line advancing upon the Place de la Bourse, ran straight up to the captain and struck him a blow on the head with an iron bar. He reeled, and his face was bathed in blood; but he had still strength enough left to throw up his soldiers' bayonets with his sword as they were about to fire on the aggressor. The leaders of the people added the most perfect self-denial to their intrepidity; and they ranged themselves by preference under the orders of those combatants whose dress proclaimed that they belonged to the more favoured classes of society. Furthermore, the young men found at every step guides for their inexperience in the persons of old soldiers who had survived the battles of the Empire--a warlike generation whom the Bourbons had for ever incensed in 1815. [Illustration] [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE COMÉDIE FRANÇAISE.] CHAPTER XVII. THE COMÉDIE FRANÇAISE. Its History--The Roman Comique--Under Louis XV.--During the Revolution--Hernani. Let us now return to the Palais Royal, and to the theatre which adjoins it. The Comédie Française, or Théâtre Français, as it is also called, was never, as the first of these names might suggest, devoted exclusively to comedy. The word "comedy" was used in France in the early days of its stage to denote any kind of theatrical entertainment. The famous "Ballet Comique de la Reine," produced towards the end of the 16th century, was, in fact, a dramatic entertainment with singing and dancing, strongly resembling what would now be called an opera; and the author of the work explains, in his preface, that he calls it "ballet comique," instead of "ballet" alone, because it possesses a dramatic character. Volumes innumerable have been written on the origin of the French theatre, which had as humble a beginning as the theatre in all other European countries; with the exception, however, of opera, which in the earliest days of the musical drama enjoyed the special patronage of kings, princes, cardinals, and great noblemen. In Italy, during the Renaissance period, the musical drama was invented by popes, cardinals, and other illustrious personages bent on restoring in modern form the ancient drama of the Greeks. The spoken drama of France, as of other European countries, had humbler beginnings, and the first regular troop of the Comédie Française had its origin in a combination of wandering companies. At the end of the sixteenth, and during the early part of the seventeenth century, the English stage, with Marlowe, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and other dramatic poets of the Elizabethan period, was far superior to the stage of France, which scarcely indeed existed at the time. But towards the end of the seventeenth century the French theatre enjoyed the supreme advantage of possessing simultaneously the three greatest dramatists that France even to this day has produced: Corneille, Molière, and Racine. [Illustration: THE PUBLIC FOYER, COMÉDIE FRANÇAISE.] It is a little more than two centuries ago, in the year 1689, that the theatre where "the comedians of the king" habitually performed received the title of Comédie Française; though its constitution dates from 1680, when, by order of Louis XIV., the company of the Hôtel de Bourgogne was united to that of the Théâtre Guénégaud in the Rue Mazarin. The history of the Comédie Française cannot well be separated from that of Corneille and of Molière, its greatest writers; though Molière, who died in 1673, and Corneille, who died in 1684, produced their works long before the Théâtre Français was officially constituted. Perhaps the most interesting account of the origin of the French theatre is to be found in the "Roman Comique" of Scarron, in which one of the leading personages is Madeleine Béjard, elder sister of the charming but unfaithful Armande Béjard, known to everyone as Molière's wife. Possibly, as in the case of the "Ballet Comique de la Reine," the adjective in the title of Scarron's work is used to signify, not "comic," but "dramatic," or "theatrical." Scarron in any case shows us how Molière (introduced under another name) joined a strolling company when he had just finished his studies as a law student. The incident might have been borrowed from Cervantes' "Gipsy of Madrid," wherein an infatuated young man throws in his lot with a troop of gipsies. But it is beyond doubt that the youth, "not brought up to the profession," who becomes a member of a wandering troop involved in the adventures and humours so graphically described by Scarron was no other than Molière himself, or Poquelin, to give him his proper family designation, as distinguished from his more euphonious theatrical name. One of the most interesting members of this celebrated company was Mdlle. du Parc, for whom is claimed the unique honour of having been passionately beloved by the three greatest dramatists of France: Corneille, Molière, and Racine. Having to choose between three writers, of whom the first was old, the second middle-aged, and the third young, Mdlle. du Parc was eccentric enough to select the last; a preference which left Molière silent, but which provoked from Corneille some verses so admirable that one cannot but forgive the lady who, by her heartless conduct, called forth such lines. Corneille and Molière had at this time separate companies, and Mdlle. du Parc appears to have acted in both. Corneille in any case endeavoured to persuade Mdlle. du Parc to pass from Molière's company to his own, pointing out to her that the troop of his friend Molière "was very inferior in tragedy, so that she would always be sacrificed, since she excelled above all in the tragic style." Racine employed the same kind of argument as Corneille, and ultimately succeeded in taking away the much-admired actress from Molière's company in order to attach her to his theatre of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, where tragedies from his pen were habitually produced. Mdlle. du Parc, who had previously caused an estrangement between Corneille and Molière, now brought about a complete rupture between Molière and Racine. The story of Mdlle. du Parc, with the intrigues of which she was made the object, brings out clearly the fact that in the early days of the French stage there was not one theatre, but three; Corneille, Molière, and Racine having each his separate company. In the present day the Théâtre Français comprises in its repertory all the masterpieces of France's three greatest dramatists; and many imagine that for this famous establishment may be claimed the honour of having first produced them. But the finest tragedies and comedies that France possesses were written for theatres of little or no standing; and not, as just pointed out, for one, but for three different theatres. An actress celebrated in her time, Mdlle. Beaupré, made some celebrated remarks on the subject of French dramatic literature, which give a good idea of the esteem in which the art of playwriting must have been held in France immediately before the advent of Molière. "M. de Corneille," she said, "has done the greatest harm to the dramatic profession. Before his time we had very good pieces which were written for us in a night for three crowns. Now M. de Corneille charges large sums for his plays and we earn scarcely anything." Even in these early days Louis XIV. took the greatest interest in theatrical representations, especially those given by Molière's company. Perhaps the very best period of the French stage was between the years 1645, when Molière abandoned the law courts to join a troop of wandering players, and 1680, when the two most important companies of the day were combined; at which time Molière had been dead seven years, while Corneille was on the point of dying. The Comédie Française was formed in the most arbitrary manner. It has been said that the company which had been in the habit of playing at the Hôtel de Bourgogne was joined to that of the Théâtre Guénégaud in the Rue Mazarin. But there was at that day a third theatre in Paris, the Théâtre du Marais; and in order that everything dramatic might be concentrated at the one establishment, this unhappy house was simply suppressed. By Royal decree the number of actors and actresses connected with the Comédie Française was fixed at twenty-seven. A year later the establishment received for the first time an annual subvention, to the amount of 12,000 livres or francs. At the same time the French comedians were authorised, in lieu of previous arrangements, to deduct the full expenses of the theatre before paying anything to the authors. The company had scarcely taken possession of the Théâtre de Guénégaud when they were obliged to leave it for another and more commodious building in the Rue des Fossés, Saint-Germain-des-Prés; and it was here that the name of Comédie Française was first adopted. Hence the name of the Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie, in which street, newly baptised, the Comédie Française was for so many years installed. The Comédie Française had everything to itself until the year 1699, when much alarm and indignation was caused in the ranks of the company by the establishment of an opposition theatre, the Comédie Italienne. The French comedians were ready to do anything in order to keep their monopoly. In a formal petition they represented to the king that they were twenty-six in number (the principal actress had died) and capable, if necessary, of amusing His Majesty at two different theatres. They thought it hard, however, that after quitting, by His Majesty's orders, first the Hôtel de Bourgogne, then the Théâtre Guénégaud, they should now be threatened in their new abode, which had cost them 200,000 francs to construct. The king paid no attention to these representations, and the Comédie Italienne soon became the home of French comic opera, doing a flourishing business according to the tariff of those days, when a place in the pit cost five sous, and a seat in the boxes ten. The Comédie Française did not in the long run suffer from the popularity of the opposition theatre, and perhaps profited by it. But soon the Comédie Française was to be subjected to a new inconvenience, and in the very year which had witnessed the invasion of the Comédie Italienne a tax was imposed on theatres generally for the benefit of the poor--"_taxe des pauvres_"--which exists even to the present day. The members of the Comédie Française endeavoured to meet the difficulty by raising the prices on the occasion of first representations. After the death of Louis XIV. the Comédie Française remained, as before, under the supreme government of the king, his ministers, and the gentlemen of the chamber. The new sovereign showed himself as munificent in the matter of the subvention as his predecessor, and the theatre was once more guaranteed an annual grant of 12,000 francs. A custom was now for the first time introduced, which has since become universal--that of playing a first piece in one act before the principal play of the evening. Under Louis XV. the Comédie Française was directed, in the matter of engagements and general administration, by the Duc de Richelieu, to whom were submitted the petitions intended for the king. The members of the Comédie Française kept a careful watch over the privileges conferred upon them, and we find them complaining whenever there are any signs of these privileges being interfered with by a rival establishment. Every booth opened at a temporary fair excited the suspicion of the comedians; and they at last succeeded in procuring an order by which the directors of the much-hated Comédie Italienne, now known as the Opéra Comique, were prevented from playing comedies, especially those which had been written expressly for the Comédie Française. In 1770 the famous company again changed their domicile, and, by the king's special permission, took possession of the theatre built in 1671 at the palace of the Tuileries. Here they remained twelve years, until 1782, when they left the palace of the kings of France and installed themselves in the house afterwards to become known as the Odéon, on the left bank of the Seine, close to the Luxemburg Palace. According to Fréron, the daring satirist who was in no way afraid to take even Voltaire for his mark, the dramatic literature of France had now fallen to a very low point, by reason of the worldly success of its authors. "The gay life of most of our authors helps," wrote Fréron, "to keep them within the bounds of mediocrity. Love of pleasure, the attractions of society that luxury which had so long kept them at a respectful distance, now enervate their souls. They are men of society, men of fashion, runners after women, and themselves much run after. They are at every party, every entertainment; no supper is complete without them; they are sumptuously dressed, and have luxuriously furnished rooms. It was not by supping out every night in society that the Corneilles, the Molières, the La Fontaines, and the Boileaus composed those masterpieces which will constitute for ever their glory and the glory of France. They were simply lodged and simply clothed; a large flat cap covered the sublime head of the great Corneille, but all the assembly rose before him when he made his appearance at the play." Since the days of Fréron the incomes and the luxury of French dramatic authors have greatly increased; a result mainly due to the exertions of Beaumarchais, whose _Marriage of Figaro_ was produced at the Comédie Française two years after its installation at the Odéon in 1784. It was Beaumarchais who secured for French dramatic authors a fixed proportion of the receipts, and caused this equitable arrangement, previously unknown, to be perpetuated. Under the Revolution, precisely five years after the production of _The Marriage of Figaro_, the spirit and tone of which seemed to the king himself prophetic of the approaching catastrophe, the Comédie Française assumed the title of "Théâtre de la Nation, Comédiens ordinaires du Roi," a compromise between loyalty to the old state of things and adhesion to the new of which the members of the company were afterwards bitterly to repent. Dissensions now sprang up between the different members of the company, some royalists, others republicans. On the whole, however, the actors and actresses showed a certain aptitude for placing themselves on good terms with the executive power of the moment. In 1792, on the eve of the Reign of Terror, the players were formally obliged to replace such words as "Seigneur" and "Monsieur" by "Citoyen," even when the piece was written in verse. In the classical tragedies of Racine the word "Seigneur" constantly occurs, as, for instance, where Agamemnon addresses Achilles, or Achilles Agamemnon. The heroes of the Iliad and of the history of Rome had now to be "Citoyens;" which, apart from the intrinsic absurdity of the thing, could not but spoil the metre. [Illustration: THE GREEN ROOM OF THE THÉÂTRE FRANÇAIS.] One effect of the Revolution was to deprive the Comédie Française of the privilege it had so long and so unjustly enjoyed of incorporating in its company any actor or actress whom it might choose to detach from some other troop, not only at Paris, but in any other part of France. It at the same time also lost its monopoly. A split having taken place in the company, a second Comédie Française was started in the Palais Royal with the celebrated Talma, and with Grandmesnil, Dugazon, and Mme. Vestris among its artists. Meanwhile, notwithstanding the loss of Talma, the Comédie Française kept up against all disadvantages. There was, however, too much sense of art, of dramatic propriety among the members to permit the replacement of the word "Seigneur" by "Citoyen," and as a punishment for neglecting the Governmental order on the subject the whole of the company of the Comédie Française was arrested one night and thrown into prison, with the exception only of Molé, who was apparently looked upon as a good Republican, and some other actor who was away from the capital. The piece performed on the night of the arrest had been a dramatic version of Richardson's _Pamela, or, Virtue Rewarded_, which, according to the judgment of the Republican Censors, was "full of reactionary feeling." Possibly the nameless hero, Mr. B----, was addressed from time to time not as "Citoyen," but as "Monsieur." [Illustration: MOLIÈRE. (_From the bust by Houdon in the Comédie Française_)] Not only were the actors and actresses of the Comédie Française imprisoned, but also the dramatists in the habit of writing for the theatre, with Alexander Duval, author of _Les Héritiers_ and other amusing comedies, and Laya, who had dramatised "Pamela," among them. One of the members of the Committee of Public Safety, the ferocious Collot d'Herbois, is reported to have said that "the head of the Comédie Française should be guillotined, and the rest sent out of the country." The famous actor, Fleury, sets forth in his "Memoirs" that on the margin of the depositions in the case of Mdlle. Raucourt, who had been arrested with the other members of the company, the said Collot d'Herbois had written with his own hand, in red, an enormous G. This was a death sentence without appeal, G standing for guillotine. "Arrested in 1793 with most of the principal actors and actresses, she was," says Fleury, "as a first step, imprisoned at Sainte-Pélagie; but already she was marked down for the scaffold. The Queen had protected her; she had received numerous benefits from the Royal Family; and she was suspected of gratitude for so many favours." In common with all her colleagues of the Comédie Française, who like herself had been arrested, Fleury among the number, Mdlle. Raucourt owed her life to the courage and ingenuity of a clerk in the employment of the Committee of Public Safety, who destroyed the Acts of Accusation drawn up by Collot d'Herbois for presentation to Fouquier-Tinville. Considerable delay was thus caused, during which the anger entertained against the theatrical troop gradually evaporated, though some of the players remained in prison until the fall of Robespierre. It was understood meanwhile that no such words as "king" or "queen," "lord" or "lady," were to be used on the stage, and the members of the Comédie Française had received a sufficiently severe lesson to render them disinclined for the future to set at naught the edict on the subject. As soon as she had regained her liberty, Mdlle. Raucourt tried to form a company for herself, and, succeeding, took a theatre, which was soon, however, closed by order of the Government, some allusion to its severity having been discovered in one of the pieces represented. Mdlle. Raucourt thenceforward made no secret of her hostility to the Directory, which, now that the Reign of Terror was at an end, could be attacked, indirectly at least, without too much danger. Fleury tells us that Mdlle. Raucourt's costume was a constant protest against the existing order of things; which, from a feeling of gratitude towards the Royal Family, her constant patrons, and from painful feelings in connection with that guillotine beneath whose shadow she had passed, she could not but hate. "She wore on her spenser," says Fleury, "eighteen buttons in allusion to Louis XVIII., while her fan was one of those weeping-willow fans, the folds of which formed the face of Marie Antoinette." Fleury speaks, moreover, of a certain shawl worn by Mdlle. Raucourt, of which the pattern, once explained, traced to the eyes of the initiated the portraits of Louis, the Queen, and the Dauphin. One day he accompanied her to a fortune-teller who had been expected to predict the restoration of the monarchy, but who foretold instead the revival of the Comédie Française. "The woman," says Fleury, "had read the cards aright, for in 1799 an order from the First Consul re-assembled in a new association the remains of the company dispersed at the time of the Revolution." But now the theatre was burnt down; and though the Comédie Française existed as an institution, and received in 1802 a special subsidy of 100,000 francs, it was not until 1803 that, in conformity with an order from the First Consul, it took possession of the building in the Rue Richelieu, close to the Palais Royal, where it has ever since remained. As under Louis XIV., so under Napoleon, the Comédie Française followed the sovereign to his palatial residence wherever it might be; to Saint-Cloud, to Fontainebleau, to Trianon, to Compiègne, to Malmaison, and even to Erfurt and Dresden, where Talma is known to have performed before a "pit of kings." Nor did Napoleon forget the Comédie Française when he was at Moscow, during the temporary occupation and just before the fatal retreat; though it may well have been from a feeling of pride, and a desire to show how capable he was at such a critical moment of occupying himself with comparatively unimportant things, that he dated from the Kremlin his celebrated decree regulating the affairs of the principal theatre in France. It has been the destiny of the Comédie Française during the past hundred years to salute a number of different governments and dynasties. That they conscientiously kicked against the Republic in its most aggravated form has already been shown. They had no reason for being dissatisfied with Napoleon; and after the destruction of the Imperial power it was perfectly natural that they should do homage to that house of Bourbon under which they had first been established, and which for so long a period had kept them beneath its peculiar patronage. They now resumed their ancient title of "Comédiens Ordinaires du Roi," and the direction of the establishment was handed over to the Intendant of the Royal Theatres. The Comédie Française has often been charged with too strict an adherence to classical ideas. Yet it was at this theatre that a dramatic work by Victor Hugo, round which rallied the whole of the so-called romantic school, was first placed before the public. The two most interesting events in the history of the Comédie Française are the first production of _The Marriage of Figaro_ in 1784, of which an account has already been given in connection with Beaumarchais and his residence on the boulevard bearing his name, and the first production of _Hernani_ forty-six years afterwards. _Hernani_ was the third play that Victor Hugo had written, but the first that was represented. There seems never to have been any intention of bringing out _Cromwell_, published in 1827, and known to this day chiefly by its preface. _Marion Delorme_, Victor Hugo's second dramatic work, was submitted to the Théâtre Français, but rejected, not by the management, but by the Censorship, and, indeed, by Charles X. himself, with whom Victor Hugo had a personal interview on the subject. "The picture of Louis XIII.'s reign," says a writer on this subject, "was not agreeable to his descendant; and the last of the Bourbon kings is said to have been particularly annoyed at the omnipotent part assigned in Victor Hugo's drama to the great Cardinal de Richelieu." But Victor Hugo had the persistency of genius, and though both his first efforts had miscarried, he was ready soon after the rejection of _Marion Delorme_ with another piece--that spirited, poetical work _Hernani_, which is usually regarded as his finest dramatic effort. _Hernani_, like _Marion Delorme_, was condemned by the Censorship; being objected to not on political, but on literary, moral, and general grounds. The report of the Committee of Censorship, scarcely less ironical than severe, concluded in these remarkable terms: "However much we might extend our analysis, it could only give an imperfect idea of _Hernani_, of the eccentricity of its conception, and the faults of its execution. It seems to us a tissue of extravagances to which the author has vainly endeavoured to give a character of elevation, but which are always trivial and often vulgar. The piece abounds in unbecoming thoughts of every kind. The king expresses himself like a bandit; the bandit treats the king like a brigand. The daughter of a grandee of Spain is a shameless woman without dignity or modesty. Nevertheless, in spite of so many capital faults, we are of opinion that not only would there be nothing injudicious in authorising the representation of the piece, but that it would be wise policy not to cut out a single word. It is well that the public should see what point of wildness the human mind may reach when it is freed from all rules of propriety." When at last the play was produced there was such a scene in the Comédie Française as has never been witnessed before or since. At two o'clock, when the doors were opened, a band of romanticists entered the theatre and forthwith searched it in view of any hostile classicists who might be lying hid in dark corners, ready to rise and hiss as soon as the curtain should go up. No classicists, however, were discovered; the band of romanticists was under the direction of Gérard de Nerval, author of the delightful "Voyage en Orient," translator of "Faust" in the early days when he called himself simply Gérard, and Heine's collaborator in the French prose translation of the "Buch der Lieder." On the eve of the battle, Gérard de Nerval, as Théophile Gautier has told us in one of many accounts he wrote of the famous representation, visited the officers who were to act under him; their number, according to one account, including Balzac, first of French novelists, if not first novelist of the world; that Wagner of the past, Hector Berlioz; Auguste Maquet, the dramatist; and Joseph Bouchardy, the melodramatist, together with Alexander Dumas, historian (in his "Memoirs") of the rehearsals of _Hernani_, and Théophile Gautier, chronicler in more than one place of its first representation. Victor Hugo had originally intended to call his play _Three to One_; which to the modern mind would have suggested a sporting drama. _Castilian Honour_--excellent title!--had also been suggested; but the general opinion of Victor Hugo's friends was in favour of _Hernani_, the musical and sonorous name of the hero; and under that title the piece was produced. It has been said that the supporters of Victor Hugo took possession of a certain portion of the theatre as early as two in the afternoon. They had brought with them hams, tongues, and bottles of wine; and they had what the Americans call a "good time" during the interval that passed before the public was admitted--eating, drinking, singing songs, and discussing the beauties of the piece they had come to applaud. "As soon as the doors of the theatre were opened the band of romanticists," says Théophile Gautier, "turned their eyes towards the incomers, and if among them a pretty woman appeared her arrival was greeted with a burst of applause. These marks of approbation were not bestowed on rich toilettes and dazzling jewellery, they were reserved for beauty in its simplest manifestations. Thus no one was received with so much enthusiasm as Mdlle. Delphine Gay, afterwards Mme. de Girardin, who, in a white muslin dress relieved by a blue scarf, wore no ornaments whatever. Mdlle. Gay assured the Duke de Montmorency the morning after the representation, that she had not spent on her dress more than twenty-eight francs." [Illustration: CORNEILLE. (_From the bust in the Comédie Française_)] The Hugoites did not form a compact body, but occupied different parts of the pit and stalls in groups. They are said to have been easily recognisable by their sometimes picturesque, sometimes grotesque costumes, and by their defiant air. The combatants on either side applauded and counter-applauded, cried "Bravo!" and hissed without much reference to the merits of the piece, and often in attack or defence of supposed words which the piece did not contain. Thus (to quote once more from Théophile Gautier) in the scene where Ruy Gomez, on the point of marrying Doña Sol, entrusts her to Don Carlos, Hernani exclaims to the former, "_Vieillard stupide! il l'aime_." M. Parseval de Grandmaison, a rigid classicist, but rather hard of hearing, thought Hernani had said, "_Vieil as de pique! il l'aime_." "This is too much," groaned M. Parseval de Grandmaison. "What do you say?" replied Lassailly, who was sitting next him in the stalls, and who had only heard his neighbour's interruption. "I say, sir, that it is not permissible to call a venerable old man like Ruy Gomez de Silva 'old ace of spades.'" "He has a perfect right to do so," replied Lassailly. "Cards were invented under Charles VI. Bravo for _'Vieil as de pique!' Bravo, Hugo!_" Théophile Gautier declares that Mdlle. Mars could only lend to the proud and passionate Doña Sol a "sober and refined talent," as she was pre-occupied with considerations of propriety more suited to comedy than to drama. Victor Hugo himself was, on the other hand, delighted with the performance of the principal actress; and one cannot but accept him as the best judge in the case. It would be impossible, in Victor Hugo's own words, without having seen her, to form an idea of the effect produced by the great actress in the part of Doña Sol, to which she gave "an immense development," going in a few minutes through the whole gamut of her talent, from the graceful to the pathetic, and from the pathetic to the sublime. The success of _Hernani_ corresponded closely enough with the triumph of the Revolution of July, which brought Louis Philippe to the throne; and under the new and more liberal form of monarchy it seemed as though the rising poet and dramatist, who was soon to establish an undisputed supremacy, would have his own way at the Comédie Française as elsewhere. But his next work, _Le Roi s'amuse_, found no more favour in the eyes of M. Thiers than _Marion Delorme_ had done in those of Charles X.'s ministers, and of Charles himself. _Le Roi s'amuse_ (of which the subject is better known in England by Verdi's opera of _Rigoletto_ than by the drama on which _Rigoletto_ is based) was played but once, and was not revived until some forty years afterwards, when it was produced under the Government of the Third Republic without much success. Victor Hugo's dramas have not, except to the reading public, displaced the tragedies of Corneille and Racine. Rachel as Chimène, Sarah Bernhardt as Phèdre are to this day better remembered by the old habitués of the Comédie Française than any actors in any of Victor Hugo's parts. That Victor Hugo is one of the greatest poets of the century can scarcely be denied; but his genius is more lyrical than dramatic. [Illustration: VOLTAIRE. (_From the statue by Houdon in the Comédie Française._)] To show by yet another example that the Comédie Française has not been so much opposed as is often asserted to novelty in the dramatic art, it may be mentioned that at this theatre the wildly melodramatic and strikingly original _Antony_ of Alexander Dumas was first produced. This work, written, not, like Victor Hugo's plays, in verse, but in vigorous prose, has been no more fortunate than other masterpieces of the romantic drama in keeping the stage. The great success it met with at the time of its first production was due in a great measure to the powerful acting of Mme. Dorval. The basis of _Antony_, and, as Alexander Dumas tells us himself in his "Memoirs," its very germ, is a deeply compromising situation in which the hero finds himself with the heroine. They are on the point of being discovered when, to save the honour of his mistress, Antony (without consulting her on the subject) takes her life. Having stabbed her he exclaims to the persons who now enter the room, "That woman was resisting me; I have assassinated her." This outrageous piece had the same fate as Victor Hugo's admirably written and truly dramatic play, _Le Roi s'amuse_, in so far that it was, after a very few representations, forbidden by the Censorship. In the year 1833 a private person was for the first time named Director of the Comédie Française. Jouslin de La Salle was his name, and he was succeeded, first by M. Vedel, in 1837, and afterwards by M. Buloz, Director of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. In 1852 the affairs of the theatre were entrusted to a committee of six members of the Comédie Française under the direction of an "administrator"; the first administrator being M. Arsène Houssaye, the well-known author and journalist. M. Houssaye was replaced in 1856 by M. Empis, and M. Empis in 1860 by M. Édouard Thierry, a dramatist. The present director is M. Perrin. The subvention paid by the Government to the Comédie Française was fixed definitively in 1856 at 240,000 francs a year. Among the actors and actresses who have appeared at this famous establishment, often pleasantly described as La Maison de Molière (though Molière, as already seen, never set foot in it), may be mentioned Adrienne Lecouvreur, Mdlle. Mars, Mdlle. Clairon, Mdlle. Contat, Mdlle. Raucourt, Talma, Rachel, Sarah Bernhardt, not to name many excellent comedians who in the present day are almost as well known in London as in Paris. In the immediate neighbourhood of the Comédie Française was born Adrienne Lecouvreur. Less perhaps from the influence of the _genius loci_ than from a desire to imitate the actors and actresses whom, from day to day, she must have seen passing her door, little Adrienne accustomed herself at an early age to act plays and scenes from plays with her young companions. Adrienne's talent was soon noticed by an inferior actor named Legrand, who, after teaching her some of the tricks of his trade, procured an engagement for her somewhere in Alsace. It was in the provinces that she formed her style; and for so long a time did she wander about from theatre to theatre that she was already twenty-seven years of age when an engagement was offered her at the Comédie Française. Here she was equally successful in tragedy and in comedy, though in the latter line her impersonations seem to have been chiefly confined to high comedy. Thus one of her best parts was that of Célimène in the _Misanthrope_. Adrienne was well acquainted with Voltaire when Count Maurice de Saxe, one of the innumerable natural children of Augustus II., King of Poland--Carlyle's Augustus the Strong--came to try his fortune in Paris. This was in the year 1720. In the first instance he met with no luck; and he had to wait a considerable time before he could get a simple regiment together. "Although he was scarcely twenty-four years of age," says a remarkable writer of the time, "Maurice had already made eleven campaigns and repudiated one wife. He joined," continues this unconscious humourist, "to the strength of his father the uncultured youth and fiery disposition of a sort of nomad, somewhat like our Du Guesclin, whom ladies used to call the wild boar. Under the guise of a Sarmatian, Adrienne discovered the hero, and undertook to polish the soldier. She was then thirty years of age, and had gained the experience and the passion which render a woman alike skilful to please and prompt to love." Adrienne Lecouvreur was carried off, after a short and somewhat mysterious illness, on the 20th of March, 1730. So sudden was her death that the public, who adored her, would not believe that it arose from natural causes; and the Duchess de Bouillon, known to be her rival and her implacable enemy, was declared by everyone to be her murderess. According to the story current at the time she owed her death to a box of poisoned sweetmeats, treacherously presented to her, though Scribe and Legouvé, in their well-known play, make her die from the effect of a poisoned bouquet given to her by the duchess, in feigned admiration of her genius. All that is really known on the subject is to be found in the "Memoirs" of the Abbé Annillon, the "Letters" of Mdlle. Aïssé, and a note appended to one of these letters by Voltaire himself. The popular version of the incidents of Adrienne's death was as follows. One night, when she was playing the part of Phèdre, she saw in a box close to the stage the Duchess de Bouillon, who, she knew, was endeavouring to replace her in the affections of Count de Saxe; and the sight of this woman made her deliver with exceptional energy these indignant lines:-- "Je sais mes perfidies, OEnone, et ne suis pas de ces femmes hardies Qui, goûtant dans le crime une tranquille paix, Ont su se faire un front qui ne rougit jamais." As the Duchess de Bouillon, according to Mdlle. Aïssé, was capricious, violent, impulsive, and much addicted to love affairs, she might well be considered one of those "brazen women who, finding an untroubled calm in crime, succeed in acquiring a brow that knows no blush." It may readily be believed, too, that Adrienne made every point tell, so that the duchess, brazen-faced as she might be, would feel wounded to the quick. So appropriate were the verses and so clear was the intention of the much-loved actress in applying them, that the audience, in full sympathy with her, applauded to the point of wild enthusiasm. Voltaire, on the other hand, wrote in a manuscript note appended to Mdlle. Aïssé's narrative: "She died in my arms of inflammation of the bowels, and it was I who caused the body to be opened. All that Mdlle. Aïssé says on the subject is mere popular rumour without any foundation." If the French clergy objected usually to bury actors and actresses with religious rites, they were scarcely likely to make an exception in favour of an actress who had died in the arms of Voltaire. Her body, then, was thrown "à la voirie," as the author of _Candide_ puts it, or, to be exact, was buried somewhere on the banks of the Seine, in the neighbourhood of a wharf, the interment being made secretly and at midnight, as though poor Adrienne had been a criminal. The Abbé Languet, Curé of Saint-Sulpice, the parish to which Adrienne Lecouvreur belonged, after taking the orders of the Archbishop, had refused to admit her body to the cemetery, and all hope of a Christian burial was then abandoned. The intolerance of the archbishop and of the priest provoked from Voltaire some indignant verses, beginning as follows:-- "Ah, verrai-je toujours ma faible nation, Incertaine en ses voeux, flétrir ce qu'elle admire; Nos moeurs avec nos lois toujours se contredire; Et le Français volage endormi sous l'empire De la superstition?"[D] [D] Voltaire's lines do not lend themselves easily to translation:--"Ah, must I ever see my weakly nation, inconstant in its loves, degrade that which it admires;--our morals ever at variance with our laws;--the quick-witted Frenchman drugged by superstition?" Voltaire, in writing the poem from which the above stanza is quoted, had simply obeyed his own natural impulse. His verses were not intended for publication, for he knew that if they were seen by the clergy they might get him into trouble. He simply sent a copy of the poem to his friend Thiériot, and perhaps to others, with a strong recommendation to keep it secret. The first thing, however, that Thiériot seems to have done was to take Voltaire's verses with him into society, where he was always received in the character of "Voltaire's friend." The poet had probably exaggerated the danger. The clergy could have no wish to re-awaken the scandal caused by the circumstances of Adrienne Lecouvreur's burial, and though Voltaire left Paris when he found that his poem on the death of Adrienne was being circulated everywhere in manuscript, there does not seem to have been any necessity for this species of flight. The place of Adrienne's burial, which long remained unknown, was discovered years afterwards, during some work of excavation and demolition. Voltaire and Maurice de Saxe were both dead; but an old friend of hers, named D'Argental, was still living, and he hastened to mark the spot by a tablet to her memory. The Comédie Française, beneath whose shadow Adrienne Lecouvreur was brought up, is not the only theatre connected with the Palais Royal. The Théâtre du Palais Royal forms part of the spacious construction from which it derives its name, and is entered from the Palais Royal itself. Standing at the northern extremity of the Galerie de Beaujolais, it was constructed in 1783 by Louis, architect to the Duke of Orleans. Its original name was Théâtre Beaujolais, and its original occupant the manager of a company of marionettes. The marionettes were replaced by children playing exclusively in pantomimes. But in 1790 Mdlle. Montansier, who had formerly directed the Royal Theatre of Versailles, and who had followed the king and queen, took possession of the little theatre in the Palais Royal, and opened it under the title of Théâtre des Variétés. Every kind of play was presented, and it was here that the directress brought out as a child the afterwards famous Mdlle. Mars. In time, under the Empire, the company of the Palais Royal left it to take possession of the theatre on the Boulevard Montmartre, to which the name of Théâtre des Variétés was thereupon transferred. The Palais Royal Theatre now passed into the hands of a succession of managers, who relied, one on tight-rope dancers, another on marionettes, and a third on learned dogs. "These animals," says Brazier in his "Petits Théâtres de Paris," "played their parts with an intelligence not often met with among bipeds. The company was completed with its light and low comedian, its walking gentleman, its heavy father, its chambermaid, its leading actor and actress, and so on. For the four-footed artists was arranged a melodrama which was scarcely worse than many others I have seen. Many private persons took their dogs to this theatre to act as 'supers.' Nothing droller can be imagined than these performances." From 1814 to 1818 the theatre was changed into a café-concert, inappropriately entitled Café de la Paix. This establishment became famous during the Hundred Days. Men of different periods met there as on some appointed fighting-ground; and as a result of many violent scenes the house had to be closed. After the Revolution of 1830 the theatre, still associated with the name of Mdlle. Montansier, was restored to its original purpose. Entirely reconstructed, it was opened to the public in June, 1831, under the title of Théâtre du Palais Royal. A company of excellent comedians had been engaged, many of whom, such as Alcide, Tousez, Achard, Levassor (who loved to impersonate eccentric Englishmen), Grassot, Ravel, and the fascinating Virginie Déjazet, were to attain European fame. Here were produced a number of highly diverting pieces, several of which have become known in translated or adapted form at our London theatres; for example, _Indiana et Charlemagne_ (_Antony and Cleopatra_); _Le Chapeau de Paille d'Italie_ (_A Wedding March_); _La Chambre aux deux Lits_ (_The Double-Bedded Room_); _Grassot embêté par Ravel_ (_Seeing Wright_); _Un Garçon de chez Véry_ (_Whitebait at Greenwich_); with many others. The liveliest and most risky pieces of the French stage have for the most part seen the light at the Palais Royal Theatre. These productions were, not without reason, considered in a general way unfit for the ears of young girls; and it became one of the recognised privileges of the married woman to be able in her new state to witness a Palais Royal farce. Even wives, however, in many cases thought it as well, while seeing, not to be seen at the Palais Royal; and for the benefit of such ladies were provided an extra number of _loges grillées_--those _loges grillées_, otherwise _petites loges_, one of which a certain abbé wished to have for the first performance of _The Marriage of Figaro_, when the author declined, declaring with indignant satire that he had "no sympathy with those who wished to unite the honours of virtue with the pleasures of vice." The _petite loge_ of France, like the private box of England, is comparatively a modern invention. In neither country were such things known till the end of the last century; and it is probable that, like most other theatrical novelties, they were imported, not from England into France, but from France into England. Even thirty or forty years ago private boxes were much less numerous at our English theatres than they have since become. They have increased in proportion as the pit has diminished, and, in some theatres, entirely disappeared. On their first introduction they were unpopular in both countries. "This is a modern refinement," writes Mercier, just before the Revolution of 1789, "or rather a public and very indecent nuisance introduced to please the humour of a few hundreds of our women of fashion. These boxes are held by subscription from year to year; nay, from mother to daughter, as part of her inheritance. Nothing could ever be devised better calculated to favour the impertinent pride and idleness of a first-rate actor, who, being paid handsomely by his share of the subscription, even before the beginning of the season, takes no trouble about getting up new parts, but solicits, under some pretence or another, leave of absence, and receives annually some 18,000 livres from the inhabitants of the capital, whilst he is holding forth at Brussels. Another objection against these hired boxes is that the comedians have constantly refused to admit the authors of new plays to a share in the subscription money; and they are so sensible to this advantage that they are daily improving it by throwing part of the pit into this kind of boxes. Whilst the public complain loudly of such encroachments on the liberty of the playhouses, hear the apology set up by our _belles_: 'What! will you, then, to oblige the _canaille_, compel me to hear out a whole play, when I am rich enough to see only the last scene? This is a downright tyranny! I protest! There is no police in France nowadays. Since I cannot have the comedians come to my own house, I will have the liberty to come in my plain deshabille, enjoy my arm-chair, receive the homage of my humble suitors, and leave the place before I am tired. It would be monstrous to deprive me of all these indulgences, and positively encroach upon the prerogatives of wealth and _bon ton_.' A lady therefore, to be in fashion, must have her _petite loge_, her lap-dog, etc.; but above all, a man-puppy who stands, glass in hand, to tell her ladyship who comes in and goes out, name the actors and so forth, whilst the lady herself displays a fan, which, by a modern contrivance, answers all the purpose of an opera-glass, with this advantage, that she may see without being seen. Meanwhile the honest citizen, who, like a tasteless plebeian, imagines that play-houses are opened for entertainment, cannot get in for his money, because part of the house is let by the year, though empty for the best part of it, so that he is obliged to put up, instead of rational amusement, with the low, indecent farces acted on the booth of the boulevards." [Illustration: THE COMMITTEE ROOM OF THE COMÉDIE FRANÇAISE: ALEXANDRE DUMAS (THE YOUNGER) READING A PLAY. (_From the painting of Laissement in the Comédie Française._)] [Illustration: BEHIND THE SCENES: COMÉDIE FRANÇAISE.] CHAPTER XVIII. THE NATIONAL LIBRARY AND THE BOURSE. The "King's Library"--Francis I. and the Censorship--The Imperial Library--The Bourse. The most interesting edifice in the Rue Richelieu is the Library, called, according to the existing form of Government, Royal, National, or Imperial. Its original title was King's Library (Bibliothèque du Roi), and it has been suggested that, to avoid the frequent changes of name to which the instability of things in France seems to expose this valuable institution, it should be called, once for all, Bibliothèque de France. The nucleus of the National Library, with its innumerable volumes, was formed by Charles V., and received considerable additions, considerable at least for the time, when books were scarce, from Louis XI. Under the reign of the latter sovereign so much value was attached to books of a rare character that, to obtain the loan of a certain volume written by the Arabian physician Rhazes, the king had to furnish security, and bind himself by the most solemn obligations to return it. According to Dulaure, this pious monarch had but a poor reputation for returning books, combined with an eagerness for getting them into his possession. "In 1472," says the author of "The History of Paris" and of the "Singularités Historiques," "Hermann Von Stathoen came from Mayence to Paris entrusted by the famous printers Scheffer and Hanequis to sell a certain number of printed books. While at Paris he was attacked by fever and died. In virtue of the _droit d'aubain_ the king's officers took possession of the books and money of the defunct, sending the latter to the king's exchequer and the former to the king's library. This proceeding was by no means to the taste of Scheffer and Hanequis, who complained to the emperor, and obtained from him letters addressed to Louis XI. in which the French king was invited to restore both books and money. Louis XI. admitted the justice of the claim, and on the twenty-first of April, 1475, issued Letters Patent in these terms: 'Desiring to treat favourably the subjects (Scheffer and Hanequis) of the Archbishop of Mayence, and having regard to the trouble and labour which the persons in question have had in connection with the art and craft of printing, and to the profit and utility derived from it, both for the public good and for the increase of learning; and considering that the value and estimation of the said books and other property which have come to our knowledge do not amount to more than 2,425 crowns and three sous, at which the claimants have valued them, we have for the above considerations and others liberally condescended to cause the said sum of 2,425 crowns and three sous to be restored to the said Conrad Hanequis.'" Dulaure, after citing this letter, adds that the restitution was made in such a manner that the printers received every year from the King's Treasury a mere driblet of 800 livres, or francs, until the entire sum had been repaid. Louis XII. had formed a library of his own at Blois, to which he added those collected by his predecessors. Francis I., called the Father of Letters, honoured writers, and had a particular taste for manuscripts; but he detested printed books, and, like the reactionists of the period, deplored the invention of printing, which the previous occupants of his throne had looked upon as of the greatest benefit to mankind. On the 13th of June, 1535, he ordered all the printing offices in the kingdom to be closed, and prohibited, under the severest penalties, the printing of any fresh books. Some have supposed that the king's sole object was, by preventing the reproduction of books, to keep up the value of the manuscripts which he so much prized. Against this view, however, must be placed the fact that when, in reply to remonstrances from various deputations, he rescinded his order against the printing offices a month after its issue, he at the same time limited the number of printing offices to twelve, which were only allowed to print books approved beforehand and deemed absolutely necessary. Thus Francis I. must be regarded as the inventor of that nefarious institution, the Censorship, which followed the invention of printing as shadow follows light. After the lapse of a century or two, the Censorship was destined to do harm to France, even in a commercial sense; for numbers of books which the Censor would never have allowed to be brought out in France were printed and sold in England, Holland, and Germany. [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE NATIONAL LIBRARY IN THE RUE DES PETITS CHAMPS.] "Whoever opposes the freedom of the Press," wrote Mercier on this subject two centuries and a half after Francis I.'s institution of the Censorship, "is a professed foe to improvement, and, of course, to mankind. But the very obstacles which are laid in an author's way are an inducement to break through all restrictions. 'It is in man's nature,' observes Juvenal, 'to wish for those things which are prohibited merely because they are so.' Were we permitted to enjoy even a moderate freedom authors would seldom fall into licentiousness. It may be set down as an axiom that the civil liberty of any nation may be estimated by the liberty of its Press. If so, we daily take new strides towards slavery, since the ministers are every day forging new fetters for the Press. What is the consequence of this unnatural restraint? All books published here on the history, political interests, and even manners of foreign nations are the most incomplete and despicable productions that ever disgraced a country. If despotism could, as it were, murder our thoughts in their impenetrable sanctuary, it would do so; but as it is beyond its power to pluck out the tongue of the true philosopher, or deprive him of the use of his instructive hand, other means are employed--a State inquisition is set on foot, and the boundaries of literature and all its avenues are blocked up by a world of satellites who endeavour to interrupt the slightest correspondence between truth and mankind. Fruitless endeavours! So preposterous an attempt against our natural and civil rights serves only to expose to public hatred the wretches who dare thus far to encroach on man's first privilege, that of thinking for himself. Reason daily gets ground, its powerful light shines to every eye, and all the witchcraft of tyranny cannot plunge it into utter darkness. In vain will despotism dread or persecute men of genius; all its efforts cannot put out the light of truth; and the sentence it awards against the injustice of men in power shall be confirmed by indignant posterity. You brave inhabitants of Great Britain! ye are strangers to our shameful slavery. Never, ah, never give up the freedom of the Press; it is the pledge of your liberty. It may be truly said that you are the only representatives of mankind. You alone have hitherto supported its dignity, and human reason, expelled from the Continent, has found a safer asylum in your fortunate island, whence it spreads its rays all over the world. We are so insignificant when compared with you, that you could hardly comprehend the excess of our humiliation." After this apostrophe, Mercier continues:--"If we next weigh the restraint laid on the Press in the scale of commercial interest, we shall find it greatly preponderate against the trade of this metropolis. The graphomania is not without its absurdities and disadvantages, but it is the chief support of different tradesmen. The Montagne Sainte-Geneviève is peopled by hawkers, bookbinders, etc., who must starve if not permitted to carry on the only business to which they were brought up. Meanwhile, as the desire of publishing their thoughts is common to all men, the money which would be laid out amongst our own countrymen is paid to the printers of Holland, Flanders, and Germany." [Illustration: THE BOURSE.] While discouraging the multiplication of printed books, Francis I. formed a valuable collection of manuscripts, many of which were copies made by his orders in Italy. He brought together some 450 manuscripts of various kinds, part of them original, the rest transcribed from the Greek (the king's favourite language), or from Eastern and other tongues. French literature was represented in the library of Francis I. by the works of Louise de Savoie and her sister Marguerite. Simple as was his collection of manuscripts and printed books, Francis I. found it necessary to place them in the charge of an official bearing the title of Master of the King's Library. The library of Francis was at Fontainebleau, whence Henri IV. removed it to the College of Clermont at Paris. Catherine de Medicis formed a collection of books, including eight hundred Greek and Latin manuscripts, which she added to those already preserved at the College of Clermont, the former habitation of the Jesuits, which, after their expulsion, was taken possession of by the Crown. When the Jesuits returned the books had to be removed, and they found a new abode in the house of the Cordeliers, on the site at present occupied by the School of Medicine. Under Louis XIII. the books were placed by the Cordeliers in the house belonging to the Order, but not occupied by it, in the Rue de la Harpe, and from the Rue de la Harpe they were, at the direction of the Minister Colbert, carried across the river to a house in the Rue Vivienne. The private library of the Count de Béthune, containing numerous works on the history of France, was next added to the Royal collection; and after the death of Cardinal Mazarin, his library was purchased from the heirs by Louis XV. and joined to the king's library, now of considerable value and importance. It has been seen that the library, justly called royal, was founded and constantly increased by the kings of France; and during the long and glorious reign of Louis XIV. the number of books on its shelves was raised from five thousand to seventy thousand. A decree of Henri II. had ordered all booksellers to send copies of whatever works they produced to the king's library; and this was renewed and made thoroughly effective by the Great Monarch. In 1697 the Mission of Father Bouvet brought back from China sixty-two volumes in the Chinese language and presented them to the Royal library. These books formed the nucleus of a collection which since that time has gone on constantly augmenting. In 1700 the Archbishop of Rheims presented to the Royal library five hundred Hebrew, Greek, and Latin manuscripts; and it received in the same year two manuscripts from Spanvenfeld, master of the ceremonies at the Court of Stockholm. In this year, too, a number of Latin manuscripts, including the works of Catullus, Propertius, and Tibullus, were bought at Rome for the French library. In 1706 an ingenious theft was committed at this library by an apostate priest named Aymon. Wishing, as he said, to consult certain works in order to demonstrate the errors of heretics, he asked for a number of manuscripts, and, carrying them off, sold them at large prices in Holland. After the Revolution, the Republican Government threw open to all comers a library which had previously been reserved for the use of a privileged few; and for many years the libraries of the French capital (for others in addition to the library founded by the French kings had now been formed) were the only ones in Europe which could be entered by the public at large. This fact scarcely harmonises with the assertion made by many writers, and insisted upon by M. Castil Blaze, that the Grand Opéra was installed by the Republican Government in a house just opposite the famous library in order that when the Opera House met with the usual fate of theatres the library facing it might at the same time be burnt. A few members of the Commune of Paris may have been wild enough to declaim against all literature produced before the Revolution, on the supposition that it must of necessity be impregnated with feudal, monarchical, and generally anti-Liberal ideas. But the Republic as a whole proved in many ways its love of enlightenment. It was the Republic which established all over France colleges and gymnasiums at fees of a few shillings a month; which called, free of cost, to the lectures of the College of France or la Sorbonne all who wished to hear them, and fixed at a nominal sum the examination fee for students desiring to receive degrees in arts or sciences from the University of Paris. During the Napoleonic period the Imperial Library, as it was now called, was enriched with numerous acquisitions from the countries invaded and conquered by the French army; and indignation is expressed even now by French writers at the spoils of war having been given back by the Allies, in their turn victorious, to the rightful owners. "The foreign powers," writes on this subject an eminent French publicist, "profited by their position after the fall of the Empire to claim all that had been carried away from their libraries at the time of our victories, now as trophies, now in virtue of formal stipulations in the treaties of peace. Austria was the first to demand restitution, and all that was taken from Vienna in 1809 had been given back when the return of Napoleon from Elba put an end to any further dealings in such matters. In 1815, after the Waterloo Campaign, Austria demanded for the Italian provinces annexed to her empire, and for Italy generally, all the works of literature and art that our armies had taken from the Italians; and on the 4th of October, 1815, we were deprived of a magnificent artistic monument acquired through the bravery of our soldiers." Mention has already been made of a theft of manuscripts--not a wholesale robbery of works of art such as the Allies, in restoring certain statues to their rightful owners, were accused of committing; and on various occasions, manuscripts, books, and models have been purloined by visitors to the library of the Rue Richelieu. The last misdeed of this kind occurred in 1848, when a member of the Institute, M. Libri, was charged with stealing a book. Not caring to meet the accusation, he quitted the country, and in his absence was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment. If anyone, Frenchman or foreigner, enters a public library in Paris to look at any particular book he cannot, as at the British Museum Library, consult the catalogue himself; one of the librarians will do this for him, and do it in effect as well as such a thing can be done. But the reader must know beforehand what book, or, at least, what kind of book he wants. However learned and however attentive a librarian may be, he is not likely to make his researches with the same assiduity and care as the earnest student occupied with one sole object. On the other hand, the librarian, as a man of learning, will know the literature of any one subject better than the ordinary student, and much better than the casual reader. Besides the National Library of the Rue Richelieu, Paris possesses the Mazarin Library, the Library of the Arsenal, of Sainte-Geneviève, of the Institute, of the Town, of the Louvre, of the National Assembly, of the Senate, and of a number of museums and learned societies. As for the readers, they are as varied in character and often as original as those of our own British Museum. In the French, as in the English, reading-room one sees, side by side with writers of distinction, unhappy scribblers, who, in London, when the Museum closes at night, look at the thermometer and weathercock to see if Hyde Park or the casual ward be the wiser dormitory. It is merely to avoid _ennui_ that many readers resort alike to the Bibliothèque Nationale and to our own Museum. Men of private means, at once with and without resources, can there escape from their own society, and, whatever their taste in literature, find relief in some book. Noise is carefully prevented, and there are even readers who volunteer active aid in maintaining silence. If anyone, for instance, speaks above a whisper, they hiss at him like serpents, or, wheeling round in their chairs, fold their arms and glare at him until he desists and leaves them once more to their sepulchral pursuits. Both in France and in England the public libraries have two other classes of readers. First, there is the somnolent reader, who stares for a few minutes vacantly at a book, drops, nods, and finally collapses with a snore. The music of the nose, however, is against the rules, and promptly brings down an "attendant." On the other hand--though, fortunately, as a rare specimen--we find the particularly wakeful reader, who in his neighbour's absence makes a clean sweep of that gentleman's property, and who is apt to attire himself in the wrong hat and overcoat, and to walk off with an innocent and even injured air. * * * * * The most important edifice in the Rue Vivienne--or, rather, in the open space which a portion of the Rue Vivienne faces--is the Bourse, or Exchange, of which the architecture so closely resembles that of the Madeleine. Yet there is nothing in the Bourse to suggest a house of prayer. At the entrance of the St. Petersburg Bourse stands a chapel, in which the operator for the rise or for the fall may invoke the protection of Heaven for the success of his own particular speculation. The noise of the dealers crying out prices and shouting offers and acceptances is far less suggestive of the "House of God" than of a "den of thieves," to which, it must be feared, it presents in many respects a considerable likeness. The origin of the word "Bourse," which has been adopted by almost every country in Europe, with the striking exception of England, seems evident enough, though it would be a mistake to suppose that it is derived from _bourse_, a purse. According to the best etymologist, the name of Bourse comes from the Exchange established in the sixteenth century at Bruges in the house of one Van der Bourse, who, in the well-known punning spirit of heraldry, had adopted for his arms three bourses or purses. The most ancient Bourse in France is said to be that of Lyons; and the next ancient that of Toulouse, which dates from 1549. The Bourse of Rouen was established a few years later, while that of Paris was not legally constituted until 1724. Paris, nevertheless, has possessed since the sixteenth century several places of exchange: now on the Pont au Change, now in the courtyard of the Palais de Justice, and then for a considerable time at the Hôtel de Soissons, in the Rue Quincampoix, which was the scene of the wild speculations in connection with Law's Mississipi scheme. In 1720 the Hôtel de Soissons was closed by the Government, and the formation of an institution to be called the Bourse was at the same time decreed. The Bourse was at first installed in the Hôtel de Nevers, in the Rue Richelieu, where the National Library is now established. After the Revolution, the Bourse was for a time closed by the Convention. But it was soon re-opened, and under the Directory was located in the Church of the Petits Pères. Under the Consulate and the Empire the Bourse was held in the Palais Royal. The Restoration moved it to the Rue Feydau, and it there remained until in 1826 it was definitively fixed in the palatial abode which it now occupies. The cost of building the Bourse as it now exists was defrayed by a subscription among the merchants of Paris, assisted by a grant from the State and from the city. Until Napoleon's time, or, at least, from the period of the Revolution to that of the Empire, the occupation of stockbroker or _agent de change_ was free to all who chose to take out a licence. Napoleon, however, limited the number of _agents de change_, or, as it turned out, the number of their firms, for it soon became the practice for several persons to club together in order to buy the necessary licence and to deposit the caution money. The Bourse, in marked opposition to the rigid rule observed at our own Stock Exchange, was open to everyone until 1856, when the price of admission was fixed at one franc to the financial, and half a franc to the commercial department. An annual ticket of admission could be obtained for 150 francs to the financial side, and seventy-eight francs to the commercial. This species of tax was imposed with the view of restraining the passion for speculation which had sprung up among the lower classes, but it was abolished by M. Achille Fould, Napoleon III.'s able Finance Minister, in 1862. The hours of the Bourse, as fixed by law, not being sufficiently long for the tastes or necessities of speculators, supplementary bourses under the name of _Petite Bourse_, have from time to time been held in the Passage de l'Opéra and on the Boulevard des Italiens. These informal assemblies are sometimes tolerated, sometimes repressed, by the Government. Ponsard, in one of his versified comedies, describes the Paris Bourse as (to translate the poet freely)-- "A market where all merchandise is keenly bought and sold; A genuine field of battle where instead of blood flows gold." [Illustration] [Illustration: THE APOLLO GALLERY, THE LOUVRE.] [Illustration: THE LOUVRE, FROM THE PLACE CARROUSEL.] CHAPTER XIX. THE LOUVRE AND THE TUILERIES. The Louvre--Origin of the Name--The Castle--Francis I.--Catherine de Medicis--The Queen's Apartments--Louis XIV. and the Louvre--The "Museum of the Louvre"--The Picture Galleries--The Tuileries--The National Assembly--Marie Antoinette--The Palace of Napoleon III.--_Petite Provence_. The origin of the Louvre is remote and the etymology of the word obscure. In the absence of any more probable derivation, philologists have fixed upon that of _lupus_, or rather in the Latin of the lower empire, _lupara_. According to this view, the ancient palace of the French kings was originally looked upon as a wolf's den, or it may be as a hunting-box from which to chase the wolf. The word "louvre" is said at one time to have been used as the equivalent of a royal palace or castle, and in support of this view the following lines are quoted from La Fontaine's fable of "The Lion, the King of Beasts," in which the monarch of the forest is represented as inviting the other animals to his "louvre." This, however, only proves that the name of a French palace which had existed since the beginning of the thirteenth century could be used in La Fontaine's time as a name for the palace of any king. "According to some," says M. Vitet, "the Louvre was founded by Childebert; according to others, by Louis Le Gros. It was either a place from which to hunt the wolf, a 'louveterie' (_lupara_), or, according to another view, a fortress commanding the river in front of the city. It seems probable that before the time of Philip Augustus there was a fortified castle where now stands the Louvre, and that this king simply altered it, and indeed reconstructed it, but was not its founder. The historians of the time speak frequently of the great tower built in 1204 by this prince, to which the name of New Tower was given; an evident sign of the existence of some other more ancient tower. It was not in any case until 1204 that, for the first time, the name of Louvre was officially pronounced. Until then the field is open to conjectures." It appears certain that the ground on which the palace stands was called Louvre before anything was built upon it. A chart of the year 1215, referred to by Sanval, shows that Henri, Archbishop of Rheims, built a chapel at Paris in a place called the Louvre. Whence the name? it may once more be asked. One facetious historian declares that the castle of the Louvre was one of the finest edifices that France possessed, and that Philip Augustus "called it, in the language of the time, Louvre, that is to say, _l'oeuvre_ in the sense of _chef-d'oeuvre_." According to another far-fetched derivation the word "Louvre" comes from _rouvre_, which is traced to _robur_, an oak, because the Louvre stood in the midst of a forest, which may have been a forest of oaks! Whatever meaning was attached to the word, it is certain that when in 1204 Philip Augustus built or reconstructed the Louvre he gave it the form, the defences, and the armament of a fortress. It was the strong point in the line of fortifications with which this monarch surrounded Paris. The first existing document in which the Louvre is mentioned by name is an account of the year 1205 for provisions and wine consumed by citizens who in the Louvre had done military duty. The castle was at that time in the form of a large square, in the midst of which was a big tower, with its own independent system of defence. The tower was 144 feet in circumference, and 96 feet in height. Its walls were 13 feet thick near the basement, and 12 feet in the upper part. A gallery at the top put it in communication with the buildings of the first enclosure, and it served at once as treasury and as prison. Here Ferrand, Count of Flanders, was confined by Philip Augustus in 1214, after the victory of Bouvines. John IV., Duke of Brittany, Charles II., King of Navarre, and John II., Duke of Alençon, were among many other illustrious prisoners shut up in the Big Tower or _donjon_ of the ancient Louvre. Louis IX. arranged in the west wing of the Louvre a large hall, which was long known as the Chamber of St. Louis. Charles V. enlarged and embellished the Louvre. He added to it another storey, and did all in his power to change what had hitherto been a purely military building into a convenient and agreeable place of abode. The architecture of the building, originally constructed for use, not show, was in many respects improved, and the gates were surmounted with ornaments and pieces of sculpture. The reception rooms were away from the river, and looked out upon a street long since disappeared, called La Rue Froidmanteaux. The apartments of the king and queen looked out upon the river. Each of the towers was designated by a particular name, according to its history, or the purpose it was intended to serve. The Big Tower was also called the Ferrand Tower, from the Count of Flanders having been confined in it; and there were also the Library Tower, where Charles V. had brought together 959 volumes, which formed the nucleus of the National Library; the Clock Tower, the Horseshoe Tower, the Artillery Tower, the Sluice Tower, the Falcon Tower, the Hatchet Tower, the tower of the Great Chapel, the tower of the Little Chapel, the Tournament Tower (where the king took up his position to see tournaments and jousts), besides others. Charles V. added to the Louvre a number of buildings for tradespeople and domestics, whose services had to be dispensed with when the Louvre was purely a military building. Such names as pantry, pastry, saucery, butlery, were given to the different buildings and departments by the bakers, the pastry-cooks, the makers of sauces, and the keepers of the wine. The gardens of the Louvre, though not very extensive, were greatly admired. Here were to be seen aviaries, a menagerie of wild beasts, and lists for different kinds of sports and combats. Charles VI., who lived by preference at the Hôtel St. Pol, increased the fortifications of the Louvre, and sacrificed to that end the gardens of the king and queen on the side of the river. The succeeding kings until the time of Francis I. occupied themselves very little with the Louvre, and scarcely ever resided there. During this first period of its history, from Philip Augustus until Francis I., the Louvre was the scene of numerous historical events. In 1358, during the captivity of King John in England, the citizens of Paris, in support of the deputies of the communes in the States-General, besieged and took the Louvre, driving away the governor, and carrying off to the Hôtel de Ville all the arms and ammunition they could find in the arsenal of the fortress. Soon afterwards the governor, Pierre Gaillard, was decapitated by order of the Dauphin Regent for making so poor a defence. It was at the Louvre, moreover, in 1377, that the Emperor of Germany, Charles IV., allied himself with Charles V. of France, to make war upon England. Under the reign of Charles VI., in 1382, while the king was engaged in suppressing an insurrection in Flanders, the Parisians, in their turn, revolted, and proposed to destroy alike the fortress of the Louvre, and that other fortress, destined five centuries later to fall beneath the first blows of the Revolution. They were counselled, however, by one of their leaders to spare both prison and palace; and the advice was sound, for after quieting the turbulent Flemings, the king returned to Paris more powerful than ever. In 1399, Andronicus, and in 1400, Manuel Palæologus, both Emperors of Constantinople, were entertained at the Louvre, as were also, in 1415, Sigismund, Emperor of Germany, and, in 1422, the King and Queen of England. When Francis I. ascended the throne, the Louvre regained all its importance as a royal residence. The king began by pulling down the Big Tower, constructed by Philip Augustus, which cast its shadow over the whole of the palace, and gave it the look of a prison. Twelve years later (1539), when the Emperor Charles V. visited Paris, Francis I. determined to receive him, not in the Hôtel des Tournelles, where he was living at the time, but in the old palace of the French kings. He undertook various repairs, and covered the crumbling walls with paintings and tapestry. Everything, too, was regilt, "even," says a chronicler, "to the weather-cocks." Finally the space comprised between the river and the moat of the castle was laid out in lists for tournaments. [Illustration: THE OLD LOUVRE (PIERRE LESCOT'S FAÇADE).] After spending large sums of money in repairing the Louvre, Francis I. decided to reconstruct it on a new plan, so as to get rid altogether of the irregularity of the old buildings, with their Gothic architecture. The work of reconstructing the Louvre was entrusted to the Italian architect Serlio. But his plan was laid aside in favour of one presented by Pierre Lescot, who, in spite of his French name, was, like Serlio, of Italian origin. He belonged to the Alessi family; and Serlio was so pleased with his designs that he at once pressed the king to accept them. Lescot associated with himself the graceful, ingenious sculptor Jean Goujon, who, like every French artist of the time, had formed his style in Italy; and the Italian sculptor Trebatti, a pupil of Michel Angelo, who possessed more force than belonged to Jean Goujon. To these illustrious men is due the admirable façade of the west in the courtyard of the Louvre. Great progress was made with the reconstruction of the Louvre under the reign of Henri II., who, while the works were going on at the ancient palace, lived at the Hôtel des Tournelles. It was to this residence that he was carried home to die after being mortally wounded by Montgomery, of the Scottish guard, in the fatal tournament of the Place Royale. Henri's successor, Francis II., would not live in a place associated with such a tragic incident, and took up his residence at the Louvre. The power of Catherine de Médicis was now beginning to assert itself, and she had the bad taste to interrupt the plans of Pierre Lescot, and to order new constructions of her own designing to be carried out by her own Italian architects. The Louvre was carried forward to the bank of the river; and the Italian painter Romanelli was employed to decorate a new suite of rooms, which became known as the apartments of the queen. The new work, while possessing a beauty of its own, was quite out of harmony with the severer style followed by Pierre Lescot in connection with the old Louvre. At the southern extremity of the wing built by Catherine de Médicis looks out upon the Seine a window of noble construction, from which, according to popular tradition, Charles IX. amused himself during the massacre of St. Bartholomew by firing on the unhappy Huguenots who were swimming to the other side of the river. Modern historians have, of course, discovered that the window in question did not exist at the time; also that Charles IX. on the day of the massacre was not at the Louvre, but at the Hôtel de Bourbon close by. It was possibly from one of the windows of the Hôtel de Bourbon that he fired. Henri IV. inhabited the Louvre; and it was there that he expired, mortally wounded by the dagger of Ravaillac. This sovereign had added a new gallery to the wing built by Catherine de Médicis, and had filled it with paintings by the most celebrated artists of the time. It perished, however, in a fire; and it was to replace it that Louis XIV. constructed what is now known as the Apollo Gallery. Henri IV. was the first moreover to connect the Tuileries with the Louvre, or, at least, to prolong the Tuileries along the Seine in the direction of the Louvre without completing the junction. The son of Henri IV., Louis XIII., continued the work left unfinished by Pierre Lescot; though, as happens with so many architectural continuations, he departed greatly from the original plan. [Illustration: THE COLONNADE OF THE LOUVRE.] The "queen's apartments," constructed by Catherine de Médicis, were successively occupied by Marie de Médicis and Anne of Austria; and under each reign new decorations and new pictures were added. Particularly admirable was a series of portraits of Queens of France ending with Marie de Médicis, whose likeness by Porbus was said to be a masterpiece. Nothing, according to an historian of the time, was spared to make the work perfect; and "although blue was then exceedingly dear, the painter nevertheless spread it over his canvas with so much prodigality that the cost of the colour came to six twenty-crown pieces." In front of the "apartments of the queen," which were furnished with every luxury, was a tastefully laid-out garden which, completely transformed, exists to this day. The "Garden of the Infanta" it is called, in memory of the poor little Infanta of Spain brought to France at the age of four to become the wife of Louis XV. Restricted for some years to the garden in question and the apartments adjoining it, she was afterwards sent back to Spain with a doll worth 20,000 francs, given to her by her late _fiancé_. The apartments of the queen consisted, according to Sanval, of a guard-room, a large ante-chamber, a sitting-room communicating with two galleries, a reception-room, and a boudoir. [Illustration: PORTION OF THE FAÇADE OF HENRI IV.'S GALLERY, LOUVRE.] While occupying himself chiefly with Versailles, his own personal creation, Louis XIV. did not forget Paris and the Louvre. It has been said that he reconstructed the gallery built by Henri IV., which, after the death of that monarch, was destroyed in a fire. The work of reconstruction was entrusted to Louis XIV.'s favourite painter, Lebrun; and the Apollo Gallery, which owes its name to the principal subject of the painter's art, is perhaps the most complete, most perfect monument of the style which prevailed under the "Grand Monarque"; a style which may be wanting in purity of taste, but which, in a decorative point of view, is magnificent. Colbert, appointed superintendent of royal buildings, was now ordered to complete the Louvre. The first thing to do was to add a façade on the east; by an idea which has since become commonplace, but which was strikingly original at the time, the Minister opened a competition for the best design. The one most admired was the work not of an architect, but of a doctor, Claude Perrault by name. Colbert was delighted with it, but before coming to a decision about a matter of so much importance, he sent to Nicolas Poussin, then at Rome, the designs of all the competitors except Perrault. Poussin sent back all the drawings with severe criticisms, and submitted a plan of his own, which satisfied neither Colbert nor the king. Things had reached this point, and Colbert was about to take upon himself the responsibility of adopting Perrault's design, when he was urged by the Abbé Benedetti and Cardinal Chigi, afterwards Pope Alexander VII., to have recourse to the services of the celebrated Bernini, whose reputation was at that time universal. Thus pressed, Colbert addressed himself to the Duke de Créquy, French ambassador at the Pontifical Court, and begged him to see Bernini on the subject. Louis XIV., moreover, wrote himself to Bernini a letter, which made him resolve to visit France. On his arrival at Paris, Bernini submitted to the king a project which is said to have been "full of grandeur," but which was not put into execution. He was now in delicate health, and the annoyance caused to him by the jealousy of the French artists, vexed at seeing the plans of a foreigner preferred to their own, made him solicit the king's permission to go back to Rome. Louis XIV. gave his consent, and at the same time granted Bernini a pension. Bernini having left Paris, Colbert hesitated no longer. He summoned Claude Perrault and ordered him to begin work at once. The first stone was laid by Louis XIV. with great ceremony, October 17, 1665; and, thanks to the activity of Colbert, the new façade was finished by 1670. This façade, known as the Colonnade of the Louvre, is upwards of 170 metres long, and more than 27 metres high. It may at once be objected to the new façade that, with all its magnificence, it is quite out of harmony with the style adopted in the four façades which form the admirable quadrangle of the Louvre. But whatever may be said against it, Perrault's colonnade is one of the most remarkable conceptions of modern architecture. When first erected, it was looked upon as an unapproachable masterpiece; and it exercised on architecture abroad, as well as at home, a considerable influence which still lasts. After finishing his colonnade, Perrault tried to bring it into harmony with the earlier portions of the building. But from the year 1680 Louis XIV. occupied himself no more with the Louvre. He thought of nothing but Versailles, which absorbed all, and more than all, the money he had to spare for building purposes. In 1688 Perrault died, and the Louvre was now not only neglected, but forgotten. Then it was remembered only to be turned to base uses. Stables were established in the ancient palace; though, by way of compensation, it must be added that a number of artists and men of learning had lodgings assigned to them in apartments formerly regarded as royal. Among Louis XIV.'s favourite lodgers may be mentioned the sculptors Girardon, Couston, Stoltz, and Legros; Cornu and Renaudin, famous for their marble vases; the medallist, Du Vivier; the painters Rigaud, Desportes, Coypel, and Claudine Stella; the two Baileys, father and son, keepers of the king's pictures; Bain, celebrated painter in enamel; the engraver Sylvestre, the decorators Lemoine and Meissonnier, who made nearly all the drawings for the festivals and ceremonies of the court; Bérin, celebrated for his theatrical costumes and scenes; the geographer Sanson, the engineer d'Hermand, goldsmiths Balin, Germain, Benier, and Mellin; the clockmakers Turet and Martinot, the gunmakers Renier and Piraube, the metal-worker Revoir, and finally (without mentioning many other men of science, art, and art work) Boule, the world-famed maker of the inlaid furniture invented by him. This furniture, known in France as _meubles de Boule_, has, by the way, in some inexplicable manner, got to be known in England as "buhl," and even "bühl" furniture, though Boule was born at Paris in 1642, and died there in 1732, without apparently having ever lived in Germany. In assigning to Boule a set of apartments in the Louvre, Louis XIV. at the same time appointed him engraver in ordinary of the royal seals. Boule, moreover, was honoured on this occasion with a diploma which gave him the titles of "architect, painter, sculptor in mosaic, artist in furniture, carver, decorator, and inventor of cyphers." In his furniture, Boule employed with great effect woods of different colours, while for his inlaid work he used mother-of-pearl, ivory, gold, brass, bronze, and mosaic. He imitated on his furniture all kinds of animals, flowers, and fruits. He even represented landscapes, hunting scenes, battles, and historical subjects. Besides furniture, Boule applied his art to clocks, casquets, inkstands, and all kinds of arms. He worked much for Versailles and the other royal residences, and received frequent orders from foreign sovereigns. The meaning, however, of Louis XIV.'s apparent liberality was, from a Versailles point of view, that the Louvre was not worth living in. To provide furnished apartments for the recipients of the king's bounty, it was unfortunately necessary to put up partitions so as to divide and sub-divide the majestic halls of the palace into little sitting-rooms and bed-rooms. The Louvre was now an hotel, or rather a _caravanserai_, in which everyone made his bed as best pleased him. Worse still, traders were allowed to erect shops and booths in front of the palace, these improvised constructions resting, indeed, on the palace walls. In 1754, under the reign of Louis XV., Marigny, superintendent of fine arts, undertook to remedy this state of things. He succeeded in interesting the king, who not only ordered the space in front of the Louvre to be cleared, but empowered the architect, Gabriel, to complete the edifice. Gabriel continued the unfinished façade, but had made but little progress when Louis XV. died. When Louis XVI. ascended the throne in 1774 the Louvre was far from being finished; and the first step taken by the new monarch in connection with the old palace was to have the interior quadrangle cleared of the heaps of sand and dust which had accumulated there, some of these heaps forming little mountains which reached the first floor of the building. Louis XVI., after the first years of his reign, had more pressing matters to attend to than the completion of the ancient palace of the Kings of France. His own throne was menaced, and the history of the Louvre as a royal residence was now at an end. More than one sovereign has left his mark on the walls of the Louvre. The western wing bears the monogram of Louis XIII. and Anne of Austria; also of Louis XIV. and Marie Thérèse. In the north wing, the letters L. B. are to be seen, signifying Louis de Bourbon, an extremely rare form of the name of Louis XIV. On the south wing, several K's are to be seen, standing for "Karolous," or Charles IX. Look to the east, and the Napoleonic empire is symbolised by several eagles. The Louvre, as we know it, with its magnificent gallery of pictures open to the whole world, dates only from the Revolution. There were from the time of Francis I. pictures in the old palace, and the collection was constantly increased under his successors. But the galleries were private. They were reserved for the delectation of the sovereign and his court. At the very beginning, however, of the Revolution, the Louvre was literally invaded, and some of the unfinished portions were finished in an unexpected manner by being converted into private dwelling houses. But the Republican Government soon put an end to this; and it was under the Convention that the picture gallery of the Louvre, increased by works of art from other palaces, was for the first time thrown open to the public. To speak only of the building, it was continued by the Republic, and all but completed by Napoleon, who, after appointing a committee of artists, and receiving from them a report in favour of Pierre Lescot's design, determined, on his own responsibility, to finish the Louvre according to the later design of Claude Perrault. Napoleon wished, moreover, to join the Louvre to the Tuileries, so as to make of the two palaces one immense palace. Two architects, Percier and Fontaine, were ordered to put this project into form, and they presented their plans to the Minister of Fine Arts in 1813. But the Imperial Government was now near its fall, and it was not during the calamitous retreat from Moscow that architectural projects of any kind could be entertained. Under the reigns of Louis XVIII. and Charles X. the halls of the Louvre were redecorated. When Louis Philippe came to the throne, M. Thiers, his Minister, laid before the Chambers a proposition for joining the Louvre to the Tuileries at a cost of fourteen million francs. But the Bill was thrown out, and a similar one presented to the Chamber ten years later, in 1843, met with the same fate. Liberal and even prodigal as the kings of France have often shown themselves in connection with art, they have never given it such effective encouragement as it has received from France's Republican Governments. After the Revolution of 1848, the Provisional Government had not been more than four days in power when, February 28th, it issued a decree ordering the completion of the Louvre under the name of "The People's Palace." A Bill was afterwards passed, on the proposition of the President, General Cavaignac, for restoring the two principal halls of the Louvre, together with the Apollo Gallery. A design from the hand of M. Visconti, in conformity with the decree of February 28th, was now adopted, and this was the one ultimately carried out. But the Assembly hesitated for a time before the expenditure which the execution of the plan would necessarily entail; and its deliberations were put an end to by the _coup d'état_ of 1851. Then came the Empire; and in 1854 Napoleon III. ordered the completion of the Louvre, and its junction with the Tuileries. The plan of M. Visconti, adopted by the Republican Government in 1848, was now carried out, and the palace begun by Francis I. was at last, after three centuries, completed by Napoleon III. [Illustration: TOP OF THE MARSAN PAVILION, LOUVRE.] Apart from certain incongruities between the different styles adopted, far less apparent to the general public than to the critical architectural eye, and from which no ancient building that has ever been repaired is entirely free, a magnificent line of palaces and gardens now extended for some three-quarters of a mile along the course of the Seine from St. Germain l'Auxerrois to the Place de la Concorde. But the Louvre and the Tuileries now, after so many ineffectual attempts, joined together, were not destined to remain together very long. The Emperor Napoleon was, after the catastrophe of Sedan, to be replaced by the Republican Government of the 4th of September, which was soon to give way to the Commune, under whose abominable rule so many fine buildings, with the Palace of the Tuileries among them, were wantonly sacrificed, and in a spirit of blind hatred burnt down. The conflagration lighted by the Communists had left standing and comparatively uninjured the outer walls, and therefore the general outline of the palace. But these were calmly pulled down by the "moderate" Republicans, less through considerations of art than from political prejudice. The Louvre subsists in its entirety, and in virtue of its magnificent collection of pictures, constantly enriched through sums voted during the last hundred years by National Assemblies, it has come to be looked upon as public property. The Tuileries, however, was a palace to the last; and the destruction of this palace, which the _communards_ had only partially accomplished, was effectually completed by the "moderate" Republic established on the ruins of its immediate predecessor. Interesting as the Louvre may be by its ancient history, the old palace is above all famous in the present day for its admirable picture gallery, first thrown open to the public in the darkest, most sanguinary days of the French Revolution. The modern collection was formed by Francis I., who, during his Italian campaigns, had acquired a taste for Italian art, and who not only invited celebrated Italian artists to his court, but gave princely orders to those who, like Raphael and Michel Angelo, were unable to visit France in person. He collected not only pictures, but art works, and especially antiquities of all kinds--statues, bronzes, medals, cameos, vases, and cups. Primatice alone brought to him from Italy 124 ancient statues and a large number of busts. These treasures were collected at Fontainebleau, and a description of them was published long afterwards by Father Dan, who, in his "Wonders of Fontainebleau" (1692), names forty-seven pictures by the greatest masters, nearly all of which had been acquired by Francis I. It was not, indeed, until the reign of Louis XIII. that any important additions were made to Francis I.'s original collection. Among the pictures cited by Father Dan may in particular be mentioned two by Andrea del Sarto, one by Fra Bartolommeo, one by Bordone, four by Leonardo da Vinci, one by Michel Angelo (the Leda, afterwards destroyed), three by Perugino, two by Primatice, four by Raphael, three by Sebastian del Piombo, and one by Titian. [Illustration: THE MARSAN AND FLORA PAVILIONS, LOUVRE, FROM THE PONT ROYAL.] The royal gallery was considerably augmented under the reign of Louis XIV. At his accession it included only 200 pictures. At his death the number had been increased to 2,000. Most of the new acquisitions were due to the Minister Colbert, who spared neither money nor pains to enrich the royal gallery, the direction and preservation of which was entrusted to the painter Lebrun. A banker, Jabach of Cologne, resident at Paris, had purchased a large portion of art treasures collected by King Charles I., and brought them over to Paris. He had bought many pictures, moreover, in various parts of the Continent. Ruined at last by his passion for the fine arts, he sold a portion of his collection to Cardinal Mazarin, and another portion, composed chiefly of drawings, to the king. On Mazarin's death, Colbert bought for Louis XIV. all the works of art left by that Minister, including 546 original pictures, 92 copies, 130 statues, and 196 busts. Louis XIV. placed his collection in the Louvre, and his first visit to the palace after the installation of the pictures is thus described in _Le Mercure Galant_ of December, 1681:-- "On Friday, the 5th day of the month, the king came to the Louvre to see his collection of pictures, which have been placed in a new series of rooms by the side of the superb gallery known as the Apollo Gallery. The gold which glitters on all sides is the least brilliant of its adornments. What is called 'the cabinet of his Majesty's pictures' occupies seven large and lofty halls, some of which are more than 50 feet long. There are, moreover, four additional rooms for the collection in the old Hôtel de Grammont adjoining the Louvre. So many pictures in so many rooms make the entire number appear almost infinite. The walls of the highest rooms are covered with pictures up to the ceiling. The following will give some idea of the number of pictures, by the greatest masters, contained in the eleven rooms:--There are sixteen by Raphael, six by Correggio, five by Giulio Romano, ten by Leonardo da Vinci, eight by Giorgione, twenty-three by Titian, sixteen by Carraccio, eight by Domenichino, twelve by Guido, six by Tintoretto, eighteen by Paul Veronese, fourteen by Van Dyck, seventeen by Poussin, and six by M. Lebrun, among whose works there are some (the battles of Alexander) which are 40 feet long. Besides these pictures there are a quantity of others by Rubens, Albano, Antonio Moro, and other masters of equal renown. Apart from the pictures, there are in the old Hôtel de Grammont many groups of figures and low reliefs in bronze and ivory." The royal visit, as described by the writer in _La Mercure Galant_, was followed by the dispersion of the collection. Louis XIV. was so pleased by the wonderful sight that he ordered a number of the pictures to be removed to Versailles, where, according to the _Mercure_, there were already twenty-six pictures by the first masters; and so long as Versailles was the royal residence the greater part of the king's collection was lost to the public, and served only to furnish the rooms, except, indeed, when the pictures had fallen to the ground and lay there covered with dust. Under the reign of Louis XIV. a critic whose name is worth preserving, Lafont de St. Yenne, complained that so many beautiful works were allowed to lie heaped up together and buried in "the obscure prison of Versailles," and demanded that all these treasures, "immense but unknown," should be "arranged in becoming order and preserved in the best condition" in a gallery built expressly for their reception in the Louvre, where they would be "exhibited to the admiration and joy of the French or the curiosity of foreigners, or finally to the study and emulation of our young scholars." The author of these judicious suggestions got into trouble as a pamphleteer; but four years afterwards, in 1750, Louis XIV. allowed the masterpieces previously stowed away in the apartments of the household at Versailles to be taken to Paris and submitted to the admiration of painters and lovers of painting. The Marquis de Marigny, Director of Royal Buildings, ordered Bailly, keeper of the king's pictures, to arrange the collection in the apartments which had been occupied at the Luxembourg by the Queen of Spain. The "cabinet," composed of 110 pictures, was opened for the first time October 14th, 1750, and the public was admitted twice every week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The pictures dedicated by Rubens to Marie de Médicis were on view the same days, and during the same hours. Until the reign of Louis XVI. the royal pictures, the number of which had been increased by the purchase of many examples of the Flemish school, continued to be divided into two principal sections, one placed in the Luxembourg, and visible twice a week to the public, the other kept out of sight in the palace of Versailles. The Louvre contained the "king's cabinet of drawings," to the number of about 10,000. The Apollo Gallery, which served as studio to six students patronised by the king, contained "The Battles of Alexander," and some other pictures by Lebrun, Mignard, and Rigaud. In 1775, under Louis XVI., Count d'Angiviller succeeded the Marquis de Marigny, and going a step beyond him, formed the project of collecting everything of value that the Crown possessed in the way of painting and sculpture. Contemporary writers applauded this idea, which was attributed by some to M. de la Condamine. All, however, that came of the new proposal was that instead of pictures being brought from Versailles to Paris, the Louvre collection was transferred to Versailles. "It was necessary," writes M. Viardot, "that a new sovereign--the nation--should come into power for all these immortal works rescued from the royal catacombs to be restored to daylight and to life. Who could believe, without authentic proofs, without official documents, at what epoch this great sanctuary, this pantheon, this universal temple consecrated to all the gods of art, was thrown open to the public? It was in the middle of one of the crises of the Revolution in that dreadful year 1793, so full of agitation, suffering, and horror, when France was struggling with the last energy of despair against her enemies within and without; it was at this supreme moment that the National Convention, founding on the ruins of the country a new and rejuvenated land, ordered the formation of a national art collection." A step in this direction had already been taken in 1791, when it was decreed that the artistic treasures of the nation should be brought together at the Louvre. The year following, August 14th, 1792, the Legislative Assembly appointed a commission for collecting the statues and pictures distributed among the various royal residences; and on the 18th of October in the same year, Roland, Minister of the Interior, wrote to the celebrated painter David, who was a member of the Convention, to communicate to him the plan of the new establishment. Finally, a decree of July 27th, 1793, ordered the opening of the "Museum of the Republic," and at the same time set forth that the "marble statues, vases, and valuable pieces of furniture placed in the houses formerly known as royal, shall be transported to the Louvre, and that the sum of 100,000 francs shall be placed annually at the disposition of the Minister of the Interior to purchase at private sales such pictures and statues as it becomes the Republic not to let pass into foreign hands, and which will be placed in the Museum of the Louvre." It should not be forgotten that France was then at war with all the German Powers, and threatened by all the Powers of Europe. Crushed by military expenditure, the Republic had yet money to spare for the purchase of works of art. The French Museum, as the Louvre collection was first called, received afterwards the name of Central Museum of the Arts; and it was first opened to the public on the 8th of November, 1793. The next decree in connection with the fine arts ordered that a number of pictures and statues formerly belonging to the palace of Versailles, and which the inhabitants of Versailles were detaining as their property, should be placed in the Louvre. The old palace was still inhabited by a number of artists and their families. David had his studio there, and most of the painters who had made for themselves a tolerable reputation had apartments in the Louvre. It was reserved for Napoleon to turn them all out, and to give to the Louvre the character which it has since preserved--that of a national palace of art treasures. The galleries of the Louvre profited greatly by the Napoleonic wars. All continental Europe was laid under contribution by the victorious French armies, but especially Italy and Spain. The stolen pictures formed the best part of what was now called the Musée Napoléon. Though not surreptitiously obtained they had been acquired in virtue of conventions imposed on a conquered people. Thus pictures from the galleries of Parma, Piacenza, Milan, Cremona, Modena, and Bologna, were made over to France by the armistices of Parma, Bologna, and Tolentino. The public was admitted to view the conquered treasures on the 6th of February, 1798. Some months afterwards masterpieces from Verona, Mantua, Pesaro, Loretto, and Rome were added to the marvellous collections; which on the 19th of March, 1800, was further augmented by drafts of pictures from Florence and Turin. In 1807 France received the artistic spoils of Germany and Holland. Among the famous works of art which France at this time possessed, and which were all on exhibition at the Louvre, may be mentioned "The Belvedere Apollo," "The Laocoon," "The Medicean Venus," "The Wrestlers," "The Transformation" and "The Spasimo"; Domenichino's "Communion of St. Jerome," Tintoretto's "Miracle of St. Mark," Paul Veronese's four "Last Suppers," and Titian's "Assumption"; Correggio's "St. Jerome" and Guercino's "St. Petronilla"; "The Lances" of Velasquez, and the "St. Elizabeth" of Murillo; Rubens' "Descent from the Cross," and Rembrandt's "Night Patrol." The French say with some justice that many of these works by being sent to the Louvre were saved from destruction. Many of them, too, though falling into decay, were restored with the greatest care; and some were transferred with success from worm-eaten panels to canvas, thus receiving new brilliancy and a new life. When Paris was occupied by the allies in 1814, the art treasures of which so many European countries had been despoiled were left in the possession of the French, who may be said on this occasion to have been magnanimously treated. The object, indeed, of the allies was not to weaken nor to humiliate France as a nation, but simply to restore Louis XVIII. to the throne of his ancestors. In 1815, after the return from Elba and the Waterloo campaign, it was determined to treat France with a certain severity. She was deprived of the Rhine provinces for the benefit of Prussia, while Milan and Venice were placed in the hands of Austria, so that both from the Italian and from the German side France might be held in check. The artistic plunder which France had collected from so many quarters was at the same time given back to the countries from which it had been taken. French statesmen protested that the pictures and statues brought to Paris from so many foreign picture galleries belonged to France in virtue of formal treaties and conventions; Louis XVIII. himself declined to sanction the restoration of the captured pictures and statues. Denon, Director-General of Museums, resisted even when threatened with imprisonment in a Prussian fortress; and he made the foreign commissaries sign a declaration to the effect that in giving up the works claimed he yielded only to force. The so-called spoliation of the Louvre was at last effected. The pictures and statues, that is to say, which had been seized by victorious France, were from vanquished France taken back and replaced in the museums to which they had originally belonged. Since the fall of the First Empire the Louvre has acquired but few masterpieces from abroad. Italy now guards her art treasures with a jealous hand; and there are few countries where the masterpieces of antiquity can be purchased except when some private gallery is broken up through the bankruptcy or death of the owner. Under the new monarchy the beautiful though armless Venus of Milo was brought to France; and under the Second Empire "The Conception" of Murillo was purchased for 615,000 francs. The Third Republic, under the presidency of M. Thiers, spite of its difficulties in connection with the crushing war indemnity, paid 206,000 francs for a fresco by Raphael. The regular annual allowance to the Minister of Fine Arts for the purchase of pictures is now 100,000 francs a year. Meanwhile, the Louvre collection has been constantly augmented by pictures transferred to the more classical museum from the gallery of pictures by living artists in the Luxembourg. The pictures exhibited at the Louvre are arranged on a system which leaves nothing to be desired. The supreme masterpieces of the collection are all together, without reference to school, nationality, or period, in a large square room known as the Salon Carré. In the other rooms the pictures are arranged historically. The principal entrance to the picture galleries of the Louvre is in the Pavilion Molière, opposite the square of the Carrousel. After passing a spacious vestibule, where mouldings of Trajan's Column and a fine collection of antique busts may be seen, the visitor ascends a staircase adorned with Etruscan works in terra-cotta and reaches the round hall or cupola of the magnificent Apollo Gallery, decorated with wall paintings and painted ceilings by the courtly Lebrun of Louis XIV.'s time and the vigorous imaginative Eugène Delacroix of our own. What can be more admirable than Delacroix's "Nymph," at whose feet crouches a panther? "Behold this work," writes Théophile Gautier, "and you will see that for colour France has no longer any reason for envying Italy, Flanders, or Spain. Delacroix, in this great page, in which the energy of his talent is freely displayed, shows a knowledge of decorative art which has never been surpassed. Impossible while never departing from his own genius to be more in harmony with the style of the gallery and of the epoch. One might here call him a florid romantic Lebrun." The Apollo Gallery leads to the before-mentioned Salon Carré, where Paul Veronese's "Marriage of Cana" at once attracts attention, not only by its immense proportions, but also and above all by the richness of the colouring and the beauty of the composition. Here, too, is the portrait by Leonardo da Vinci, known in France as "La Joconde"; "a miracle of painting," says Gautier, who has made it the subject of one of his most remarkable criticisms. "'La Joconde,' sphinx of beauty," he exclaims, "smiling so mysteriously in the frame of Leonardo da Vinci, and apparently proposing to the admiration of centuries an enigma which they have not yet solved, an invincible attraction still brings me back towards you. Who, indeed, has not remained for long hours before that head, bathed in the half-tones of twilight, enveloped in transparency; whose features, melodiously drowned in a violet vapour, seem the creation of some dream through the black gauze of sleep? From what planet has fallen in the midst of an azure landscape this strange being whose gaze promises unheard-of delights, whose experience is so divinely ironical? Leonardo impresses on his faces such a stamp of superiority that one feels troubled in their presence. The partial shadow of their deep eyes hides secrets forbidden to the profane; and the inflexions of their mocking lips are worthy of gods who know everything and calmly despise the vulgarities of man. What disturbing fixity, what superhuman sardonicism in these sombre pupils, in these lips undulating like the bow of Love after he has shot his dart. La Joconde would seem to be the Isis of some cryptic religion, who, thinking herself alone, draws aside the folds of her veil, even though the imprudent man who might surprise her should go mad and die. Never did feminine ideal clothe itself in more irresistibly seductive forms. Be sure that if Don Juan had met Monna Lisa he would have spared himself the trouble of writing in his catalogue the names of 3,000 women. He would have embraced one, and the wings of his desire would have refused to carry him further. They would have melted and lost their feathers beneath the black sun of these eyes." [Illustration: THE RICHELIEU PAVILION.] Leonardo da Vinci is said to have been four years painting this portrait, which he could not make up his mind to leave and which he never looked upon as finished. During the sittings musicians played choice pieces in order to entertain the beautiful model, and to prevent her charming features from assuming an expression of wearisomeness or fatigue. Raphael is represented in the Salon Carré by "St. Michael and the Demon," painted on a panel framed in ebony. This admirable work is signed not in the corner of the picture, but on the edge of the archangel's dress. "Raphaël Urbinas pingebat, M.D. XVIII." runs the inscription, which Raphael seems to have wished to make inseparable from the work. Among the other pictures of Raphael chosen for places of honour in the Square Room are "The Holy Family," which originally belonged to Francis I., and the virgin known as "La Belle Jardinière. Among the other masterpieces contained in the Salon Carré may be mentioned Correggio's "Antiope," Titian's "Christ in the Tomb," Giorgione's "Country Concert," Guido's "Rape of Dejanira," Rembrandt's "Carpenter's Family," Van Ostade's "Schoolmaster," Gerard Douw's "Dropsical Woman," Rubens' Portrait of his Wife, a "Charles I." by Van Dyck, and Murillo's "Conception of the Virgin." This last-named work, as already mentioned, was purchased under the Second Empire for upwards of 600,000 francs. It formed part of a valuable collection of Spanish pictures belonging to Marshal Soult, and had been acquired by that commander under peculiar circumstances during the Peninsular War. A certain monk had been sentenced to death as a spy. Two monks from the same monastery waited upon the marshal to solicit their brother's forgiveness. Soult was obdurate, until at last Murillo's wonderful picture was placed before him. The picture was forwarded to France, and the too patriotic monk set free. Among the selected works by Italian, Dutch, Flemish, and Spanish painters are to be found a few by French artists--for example, the "Diogenes" of Poussin and the "Richelieu" of Philippe de Champagne; but not one work by an English hand. Nor in the famous Salon Carré of the Louvre is a single landscape to be found. * * * * * The Tuileries, before incendiarism under the Commune rendered it a very imperfect building, had as a palace led a very imperfect life. Catherine de Médicis had ordered the destruction of the Palais des Tournelles, where, by a fatal accident Montgomery had pierced the eye and brain of Henri II. in the celebrated tournament, and had gone to live with her children at the Louvre. These children were Francis II., the husband of Marie Stuart; Charles IX., whose memory, like that of his mother, is indelibly associated with the massacre of St. Bartholomew; Henri III., who for his sins was elected King of Poland; and Francis d'Anjou, who gained the famous battle of Jarnac, and who on his death was succeeded by Henri IV., first King of France and of Navarre. The ancient fortress of the Louvre was not suited to the pomp of a Médicis, and Catherine ordered a new palace to be built for her own special convenience in the _Tuileries_, or tile yards, where the mother of Francis I. had bought a country house, but where Francis I. would never reside, preferring to his Parisian residence the castles of Fontainebleau, Amboise, and Chambord. According to the plan of Philibert Delorme, the new Palace of the Tuileries was to be a true palace of the French kings, with a royal façade, the most beautiful gardens, and the most magnificent courtyards. Philibert Delorme never got beyond the façade, which, however, was enough to stamp him as an architect of the first order. Henri IV.--or rather Androuet Ducerceaux acting upon his orders--continued the work of Philibert Delorme. Ducerceaux made many changes, and among others constructed a dome where Philibert Delorme had meant only to build a cupola. Who, meanwhile, was to live at the Tuileries? It was a royal palace, but not the palace of the French kings. Valois did not live there, Catherine de Médicis gave magnificent entertainments at the Tuileries, but held her Court at the Louvre. Nor did Henri IV. reside at the Tuileries. His private apartments, decorated by the genius of Pierre Lescot, were at the Louvre, from which Paris could be better observed. Henri's widow, Marie de Médicis, mourned for her generally excellent though not too faithful husband in the Luxembourg Palace. When Richelieu came to power and worked out the problem of the unity of France, he built the Palais Cardinal, but took no thought of the Tuileries. His eyes were fixed on the Louvre, where Louis XIII. was domiciled. Louis XIV. passed no more time at the Tuileries than any of his predecessors. His mother, Anne of Austria, established her regency at the Palais Cardinal, soon to become the Palais Royal; and all idea of completing the Tuileries seemed to have been given up, when in 1660, under Louis XIV., then twenty-two years of age, the architects Levan and Dorbay were ordered to resume the work of Philibert Delorme and Ducerceaux--the work begun by Catherine, continued by Louis XIV.'s grandfather, Henri IV., and abandoned by his father, Louis XIII. The Palace of the Tuileries having at last been completed, it became the residence simply of Mlle. de Montpensier. From time to time Louis XIV. visited the place, but only to make it the scene of some occasional entertainment. His favourite abode was always Versailles. While the Regent was at the Palais Royal, the youthful Louis XV. lived at the Tuileries. But as soon as he could walk alone, Louis le bien aimé, as he was afterwards to be called, hastened to Versailles; and the Tuileries Palace of strange destinies was now occupied by the French Opera Company. It became the Paris Opera House, the Académie Royale de Musique--to give the establishment its official title--whose theatre at the Palais Royal had been burnt down. In 1720 the Opera was replaced at the Tuileries by the Comédie Française. To Lulli succeeded Corneille and to Rameau Voltaire. One of the most interesting celebrations ever witnessed at the Tuileries was the crowning of Voltaire on the 30th of March, 1778, after a representation of his tragedy _Irène_. "Never," wrote Grimm, the chronicler, in reference to this performance, "was a piece worse acted, more applauded, and less listened to. The entire audience was absorbed in the contemplation of Voltaire, the representative man of the eighteenth century; philosopher of the people, who could justly say, 'J'ai fait plus dans mon temps que Luther et Calvin.'" Voltaire had but recently left Ferney to return to France, which he had not seen for twenty-seven years. Deputations from the Academy and from the Théâtre Français were sent to receive him, and on his arrival he was waited upon by men and women of the highest distinction, whether by birth or by talent. After the performance of _Irène_, he was carried home in triumph. "You are smothering me with roses," cried the old poet, intoxicated with his own glory. The emotion, the fatigue, caused by the interesting ceremony, had indeed an injurious effect upon his health, and hastened his death, concerning which so many contradictory stories have been told. That he begged the curé of St. Sulpice to let him "die in peace" is beyond doubt; and that he died unreconciled to the Church, whose bigotry and persecution he had so persistently attacked, is sufficiently shown by the fact that, equally with Molière (though the great comedy writer had in his last moments demanded and received religious consolation), he was refused Christian burial. His nephew, the Abbé Mignot, had the corpse carried to his abbey of Scellières, where it remained until, under the Revolution, it was borne in triumph to the Panthéon. Eleven years after the crowning of Voltaire at the Tuileries, Louis XVI. arrived there from Versailles, where he had fraternised with the people, only to find that he was no longer a king. On the 19th of October, 1789, three months after the taking of the Bastille, the National Assembly had waited in a body upon the king and queen, when the president, still loyal, said to Marie Antoinette: "The National Assembly, madame, would feel genuine satisfaction could it see for one moment in your arms the illustrious child whom the inhabitants of the capital will henceforth regard as their fellow-citizen, the offshoot of so many princes tenderly beloved by their people, the heir of Louis IX., of Henri IV., and of him whose virtues constitute the hope of France." The queen replied, "Here is my son;" and Marie Antoinette, taking the young Louis in her arms, carried him into the room occupied by the Assembly. On the 26th of May, 1791, Barrère said to this same Assembly: "The first things to be reserved for the king are the Louvre and the Tuileries, monuments of grandeur and of indigence, whose plan, whose façades, are due to the genius of art, but whose completion has been neglected or rather forgotten by the wasteful carelessness of a few kings. Each generation expected to see this monument, worthy of Athens and of Rome, at last finished; but our kings, fearing the gaze of the people, went far from the capital to surround themselves with luxury, courtiers, and soldiers. It is characteristic of despotism to shut itself up in the midst of Asiatic luxury, as formerly divinities were placed in the depths of temples and of forests, in order to strike more surely the imagination of men. A great revolution was needed to bring back the people to liberty, and kings to the midst of their people. This revolution has been accomplished, and the King of the French will henceforth have his constant abode in the capital of the empire. This is our project. The Tuileries and the Louvre shall together form the National Palace destined for the habitation of the king." Thereupon the Assembly decreed: "The Louvre and the Tuileries joined together shall be the National Palace destined for the habitation of the king, and for the collection of all our monuments of science and art, and for the principal establishments of public instruction." [Illustration: THE TUILERIES IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.] [Illustration: THE TERRACE, TUILERIES GARDENS.] [Illustration: THE TUILERIES GARDENS.] The position of the king at this time is well described by Arthur Young:-- "After breakfast," he writes in diary form, "walk in the gardens of the Tuileries, where there is the most extraordinary sight that either French or English eyes could ever behold at Paris. The king, walking with six Grenadiers of the _milice bourgeoise_, with an officer or two of his household, and a page. The doors of the gardens are kept shut in respect to him in order to exclude everybody but deputies or those who have admission tickets. When he entered the palace, the doors of the gardens were thrown open for all without distinction, though the queen was still walking with a lady of her court. She also was attended so closely by the _gardes bourgeoises_ that she could not speak but in a low voice without being heard by them. A mob followed her, talking very loud, and paying no other apparent respect than that of taking off their hats whenever she passed, which was, indeed, more than I expected. Her Majesty does not appear to be in health; she seems to be much affected and shows it in her face; but the king is as plump as ease can render him. By his orders there is a little garden railed off for the Dauphin to amuse himself in and a small room is built in it to retire to in case of rain; here he was at work with his little hoe and rake, but not without a guard of two Grenadiers. He is a very pretty, good-natured looking boy, five or six years old, with an agreeable countenance; wherever he goes all hats are taken off to him, which I was glad to observe. All the family being thus kept close prisoners (for such they are in effect) afford at first view a shocking spectacle, and is really so if the act were not absolutely necessary to effect the revolution. This I conceive to be impossible; but if it were necessary no one can blame the people for taking every measure possible to secure that liberty they had seized in the violence of a revolution. At such a moment nothing is to be condemned but what endangers the national freedom. I must, however, freely own that I have my doubts whether this treatment of the royal family can be justly esteemed any security to liberty; or on the contrary, whether it was not a very dangerous step that exposes to hazard whatever had been gained. I have spoken with several persons to-day and started objections to the present system, stronger even than they appear to me, in order to learn their sentiments, and it is evident they are at the present moment under an apprehension of an attempt toward a counter revolution. The danger of it very much, if not absolutely, results from the violence which has been used towards the royal family. The National Assembly was before that period answerable only for the permanent constitutional laws passed for the future; since that moment it is equally answerable for the whole conduct of the government of the State, executive as well as legislative. This critical situation has made a constant spirit of exertion necessary amongst the Paris militia. The great object of M. La Fayette and the other military leaders is to improve their discipline and to bring them into such a form as to allow a rational dependence on them in case of their being wanted in the field; but such is the spirit of freedom that even in the military, there is so little subordination that a man is an officer to-day and in the ranks to-morrow; a mode of proceeding that makes it the more difficult to bring them to the point their leaders see necessary. Eight thousand men in Paris may be called the standing army, paid every day 15 fr. a man; in which number is included the corps of the French Guards from Versailles that deserted to the people; they have also 800 horses at an expense each of 1,500 livres a year, and the officers have double the pay of those in the army." If the people and the popular leaders were in constant fear of a counter revolution, the king on his side had had enough of royalty, and on the first opportunity fled from his subjects. The flight of the royal family, as is plainly shown by the correspondence of Marie Antoinette and by other authentic documents, had been concerted beforehand with the foreign Powers. This course was dictated by the most obvious considerations of personal safety. But all idea of an understanding with the "foreigner" was repudiated in the most solemn manner by the king. What the revolutionary Government resented was less the king's desire to escape from a country where he had not only ceased to rule, but where his position was getting from day to day more precarious, than his apparent intention of making himself as soon as he had crossed the frontier the centre and support of a counter revolution. As the moment of departure approached, the king and queen renewed with increased energy protestations of their adhesion to the Constitution. At the same time the queen was writing to her brother Leopold, May 22nd, 1791: "We are to start for Montmédy. M. de Bouillé will see to the ammunition and troops which are to be collected at this place, but he earnestly desires that you will order a body of troops of from 8,000 to 10,000 to be ready at Luxembourg and at our orders (it being quite understood that they will not be wanted until we are in a position of safety) to enter France both to serve as example to our troops and if necessary to restrain them." On the 1st of June, after reiterating her demand for 8,000 or 10,000 troops at Luxembourg, close to the French frontier, she added: "The king as soon as he is safe and free will see with gratitude and joy the union of the Powers to assert the justice of his cause." The plan, concerted with the Austrian ambassador at Paris, who had been the queen's adviser, was first to place the royal family in safety beyond the French frontier, and then to act against France with an army of invasion aided within the country by a Royalist insurrection. It was at the same time understood that the Austrian Emperor and the German princes were not to give their aid gratuitously. They were to be recompensed by a "rectification" of the northern and eastern frontiers of France to their advantage. Troops were promised to Marie Antoinette by her brother Leopold, not only from Austria and various German States but also from Sardinia, Switzerland, and even Prussia. It was the popular belief at the time that Queen Marie Antoinette had determined to do some dreadful injury to Paris and other French cities; to blow them up, for instance, with gunpowder or by some secret means. At a village near Clermont in the Puy de Dôme, Arthur Young wished to see some famous springs; and the guide he had engaged being unable to render him useful assistance he took a woman to conduct him, when she was arrested by the _garde bourgeoise_ for having without permission become the guide of a stranger. "She was conducted," writes Young, "to a heap of stones they call the Château. They told me they had nothing to do with me; but as to the woman, she should be taught more prudence for the future. As the poor devil was in jeopardy on my account, I determined at once to accompany them for the chance of getting her cleared by attesting her innocence. We were followed by a mob of all the village with the woman's children crying bitterly for fear their mother should be imprisoned. At the castle we waited some time, and we were then shown into another apartment, where the town committee was assembled; the accusation was heard, and it was wisely remarked by all that in such dangerous times as these, when all the world knew that so great and powerful a person as the queen was conspiring against France in the most alarming manner, for a woman to become the conductor of a stranger, and of a stranger who had been making so many suspicious inquiries as I had, was a high offence. It was immediately agreed that she ought to be imprisoned. I assured them she was perfectly innocent; for it was impossible that any guilty motive should be her inducement. Finding me curious to see the springs, having viewed the lower ones, and wanting a guide for seeing those higher in the mountains, she offered herself; that she certainly had no other than the industrious view of getting a few sous for her poor family. They then turned their inquiries against myself--that, if I wanted to see springs only, what induced me to ask a multitude of questions concerning the price, value, and product of the land? What had such inquiries to do with springs and volcanoes? I told them that cultivating some land in England rendered such things interesting to me personally; and lastly, that if they would send to Clermont they might know from several respectable persons the truth of all I asserted; and, therefore, I hoped, as it was the woman's first indiscretion, for I could not call it offence, they would dismiss her. This was refused at first, and assented to at last, on my declaring that if they imprisoned her they should do the same by me and answer it as they could. They consented to let her go with a reprimand, and I started--_not_ marvelling, for I have done with that--at their ignorance in imagining that the queen should conspire so dangerously against their rocks and mountains. I found my guide in the midst of the mob, who had been very busy in putting so many questions about me as I had done about their crops." Such indeed was the general feeling against the king and queen, that, apart from other powerful motives, they had soon no alternative but to seek safety in flight. One of the principal agents in their escape was Count de Fersen, formerly colonel of the regiment of Royal Suédois. He was to drive the coach containing the king and queen. Marie Antoinette was to play the part of a governess, Mme. Rochet, in the service of an imaginary Russian lady, Baroness de Korff, impersonated by Mme. de Tourzel, actually governess to Marie Antoinette's children. As for the king, disguised in livery, he was to pass as the Russian lady's valet. The royal family was at this time confined more or less strictly to the Tuileries; and La Fayette, under whose command the troops on guard at the palace had been placed, had probably eyed with suspicion certain preparations made by the queen as if in view of a speedy departure. [Illustration: LION IN THE TUILERIES GARDENS. (_By Cain._)] M. de Bouillé, who commanded at Metz, had orders to occupy the high road with detachments of troops as far as Châlons. During the night of the 20th of June, 1791, the royal family escaped from the Tuileries, reached La Villette, where Colonel de Fersen with a travelling carriage awaited them, and drove off towards Bondy, whence they were to make first for Châlons, and then for Montmédy, a frontier town. The next morning Paris woke up without a king. La Fayette, who had been wanting in vigilance, defended himself as best he could. An alarm gun was fired from the Pont Neuf to warn the citizens that the country was in the greatest danger, for it was quite understood that the passage of the frontier by the king and queen would be the signal for a foreign invasion. The National Assembly met, and at once took into its hands the supreme direction of affairs. "This is our king!" said the Republicans; and Louis, by his flight, had in fact ceased to reign. Before leaving the Tuileries Louis XVI. had placed in the hands of La Porte, intendant of the civil list, a protest against the manner in which he had been treated, which was duly laid before the Assembly. Meanwhile, he had arrived at St. Ménéhould without accident, where he found himself protected by a detachment of dragoons which had arrived the night before. Here, however, his misfortunes began, for he was at once recognised by Drouet, a retired soldier now acting as postmaster. Called upon for horses, the young man could have no doubt but that the royal personages who required them were bound for the frontier, and he resolved to prevent their escape from France. With the dragoons in occupation of the village he could not refuse to supply horses; and the carriage which bore Louis and his fortunes, now approaching the end of its critical journey, went off in an easterly direction. Scarcely had the post chaise departed when Drouet, aided by a friend named Guillaume, also a retired soldier, called out by beat of drum the local national guard, and ordered it to prevent the dragoons from leaving the village. He then, together with Guillaume, galloped after the royal carriage, followed by a sub-officer of dragoons named Lagache, who, escaping from St. Ménéhould, had resolved to catch them up, and, if possible, kill them. Riding along, Drouet learned that the carriage had taken the road to Varennes, a town which has twice played an important part in the history of France, for it was here, seventy-nine years later, that the King of Prussia established his head-quarters on the eve of the battle of Sedan. [Illustration: THE CHESTNUTS OF THE TUILERIES.] By crossing a wood Drouet and Guillaume succeeded in getting to Varennes a trifle sooner than the royal carriage. Passing, at no great pace, the lumbering vehicle just as it was approaching the town, they at once made for the bridge on the other side of Varennes, which, as old soldiers, they saw the necessity of blocking, for beyond it, on the other side of the river Aire, they had discovered the presence of a detachment of cavalry under the command of a German officer, who, losing his head, took to flight. The energetic Drouet had already waked up the town, and, in particular, the principal officials, such as the Mayor, the Procureur of the Commune, &c. The population answered to Drouet's call, and soon a small body of armed men was on foot. [Illustration: LOUIS XVI. STOPPED AT VARENNES BY DROUET.] The fugitives were bound for the Hôtel du Grand Monarque. At this hotel a tradition is preserved which was communicated to the present writer by the proprietress, Mme. Gauthier, just before the battle of Sedan. Dinner was prepared there for Louis XVI. eight days running; from which it would appear that he was trying to escape from the Tuileries for eight days before he at last succeeded in getting away unobserved. The eighth, like all the preceding dinners cooked for the unfortunate king at the Hôtel du Grand Monarque, was destined to remain uneaten. It was now late at night, and when the royal carriage entered the town, it was surrounded in the darkness by a number of armed men, who asked for passports, and showed by their attitude that they had no intention of allowing the occupants of the vehicle to proceed any further. Emissaries from Varennes had been despatched in all haste to the surrounding villages and nearest towns to call out the national guard. The son of M. de Bouillé had meantime quitted the cavalry outside Varennes, and ridden towards Metz to inform the governor, his father, of the arrival of the fugitives. But when the commandant arrived outside Varennes with an entire regiment of cavalry, the town was occupied by 10,000 infantry, and all the approaches guarded in such a manner that it was impossible for de Bouillé's regiment to act. The Procureur, to whose house the royal family had been taken, informed the king in the early morning that he was recognised. A crowd, which had gathered before the house, called for him by name, and when Louis showed himself at the window he understood from the attitude of the mob that though he was saluted here and there with cries of "Vive le Roi!" there was an end to his project of reaching the frontier. At six o'clock couriers arrived from Paris with a decree from the Assembly ordering the king's arrest; and at eight o'clock on the morning of the 22nd of June, 1791, the royal family started under escort for the capital. They were surrounded at the moment of departure by an immense mob, a portion of which followed them for some distance along the road. At Epernay the commissaries appointed by the Assembly, MM. Pétion and Barnave, were waiting to take the direction of the cortege. On being questioned the king declared that he had never intended to leave the kingdom, and that his object in retiring to Montmédy had been to study the new Constitution at his ease, so that, with a clear conscience, he might be able to accept it. Barnave and Pétion got into the royal carriage as if to prevent all possibility of escape. Louis was treated with all the respect due to a royal captive, but his position was that of a prisoner. Reaching Paris three days after his departure from Varennes, he was received by the people with the greatest coldness. On the walls of the streets through which he passed, these words had been inscribed: "Whoever applauds Louis XVI. will be beaten; whoever insults him will be hanged." To avoid the popular thoroughfares, the Tuileries was approached by way of the Champs Élysées, and once more Louis took up his abode in the ancient palace of the French kings. Differences between Louis XVI. and the Assembly, which, from "Constituent" had become "Legislative," now suddenly occurred; and at the beginning of 1792 the Jacobin Rhul complained from the tribune that the king had treated with disrespect certain commissaries of the Assembly who had waited upon him. On the 25th of July of the same year the king was accused in the Chamber of collecting arms at the Tuileries. National guards, it was said, went in armed and came out unarmed; and it was declared to be unsafe for the National Assembly to have an arsenal of this kind in its immediate neighbourhood. Accordingly, the Assembly decreed that the terrace of the Tuileries gardens must be regarded as its property, and be placed beneath the care of the Assembly's own police. The king objected, naturally enough, to the gardens of his palace being thus interfered with. "The nation," said one of the deputies, "lodges the king at the Palace of the Tuileries, but I read nowhere that it has given him the exclusive enjoyment of the gardens." Some days afterwards the same deputy, Kersaint by name, said from the tribune: "The Assembly having thrown open one of the terraces of the Tuileries gardens, the king, who does not think fit to render the rest of the gardens accessible to the public, has lined the terrace with a hedge of grenadiers." Chabot called the garden of the Tuileries "a second Coblentz," in reference to the German fortified town where the allied sovereigns, who were plotting against the Revolution, had their head-quarters. On the 19th of August a journeyman painter named Bougneux sent word to the Assembly that there had recently been constructed in the Palace of the Tuileries several masked cupboards. Three months afterwards Roland brought to the Convention the papers of the famous iron cupboard. "They were concealed," he said, "in such a place, in such a manner, that unless the only person in Paris who knew the secret had given information it would have been impossible to discover them. They were behind a panel," he continued, "let into the wall and closed in by an iron door." The members of the Mountain, as the extreme party occupying the highest seats in the legislative chamber were called, accused Roland of having opened the metallic cupboard in order to make away with the papers of a compromising character for his friends the Girondists. In revolutionary times a good action may be as compromising as a bad one. Brissot proposed about this time that the meetings of the Convention should be held at the Tuileries. Vergniaud had preferred the Madeleine. "Not," he said, "in either case, that liberty has need of luxury. Sparta will live as long as Athens in the memory of nations; the tennis court as long as the palaces of Versailles and of the Tuileries. The external architecture of the Madeleine is most imposing. It may be looked upon as a monument worthy of liberty, and of the French nation." It need scarcely be explained that at the _jeu de paume_, or tennis court, the first revolutionary meetings were held. "At the Tuileries," said Brussonnet, "there is a finer hall; and the greater the questions which the National Assembly will have to treat the greater must be the number of hearers and spectators." It was at last decreed that the Minister of the Interior should order the preparation at the Tuileries of a suitable hall for the debates of the National Convention; and with that object a sum of 300,000 francs was voted. On the 4th of September, 1793, Chaumette, in the name of the Paris commune, appeared at the bar of the Convention, then presided over by Robespierre, and spoke as follows: "We demand that all the public gardens be cultivated in a useful manner. We beg you to look for a moment at the immense garden of the Tuileries. The eyes of republicans will rest with more pleasure on this former domain of the crown when it is turned to some good account. Would it not be better to grow plants in view of the hospitals, than to let the grounds be filled with statues, _fleurs de lis_, and other objects which serve no purpose but to minister to the luxury and the pride of kings?" Dussaulx added with a smile: "I demand that the Champs Élysées be given up at the same time as the gardens of the Tuileries to useful cultivation." It was at the Tuileries that the Committee of Public Safety held its meetings: that irresponsible body which struck so many and such sanguinary blows at the accomplices, real or imaginary, of invasion from abroad, and of insurrection at home. In the Tuileries gardens took place the festival of the Supreme Being, when proclamation was solemnly made, under the authority of Robespierre, that the French people believed in God and the immortality of the soul. "People of France," cried Robespierre, between two executions, "let us to-day give ourselves up to the transports of pure unmingled joy. To-morrow we must return to our progress against tyranny and crime." To Robespierre's passionate declamation succeeded solemn music, composed by Méhul. Soon afterwards Tallien, inspired to an act of daring by the news that the woman he loved and afterwards married had been condemned to death, denounced Robespierre; and it was at the Tuileries that the Reign of Terror, like so many other reigns, came to an end. On the 1st of February, 1800, Bonaparte took possession of the Tuileries, with his wife Joséphine. In 1814 he quitted the ancient palace with Marie Louise. The Tuileries was now on the point of being occupied by foreigners. "When I returned to Paris," writes Mme. de Staël, "Germans, Russians, Cossacks, Baskirs, were to be seen on all sides. Was I in Germany or in Russia? Had Paris been destroyed and something like it raised up with a new population? I was all confusion. In spite of the pain I felt I was grateful to the foreigners for having shaken off our yoke. But to see them in possession of Paris! to see them occupying the Tuileries!" Louis XVIII. and Charles X. both reigned at the Tuileries. But in July, 1830, the Revolution once more took possession of the palace; and in 1848, after the flight of Louis Philippe, the mob again ruled for a time in the home of the French kings. In 1848 the Provisional Government converted the Tuileries into an asylum for civilians. But the conversion was made only on paper, and in 1852 the Tuileries became for the second time an imperial palace--the palace of Napoleon III. The fate of the historical structure was, as everyone knows, to be burnt by the Communards. It was on the 24th of May, 1871, when the Versailles troops were already in the Champs Élysées, that the central dome of the palace, the wings, the whole building in short, was seen to be in flames. The new portions of the palace alone refused to burn. Then, in their rage, the incendiaries had recourse to gunpowder, and during the night a formidable explosion was heard. The troops of the Commune, commanded by the well-known General Bergeret, had retired some hours before. Bergeret, however, was not responsible for the incendiarism; and the person afterwards tried for it and condemned to hard labour for life (in commutation of the death punishment to which he was first sentenced) was a certain Benoit, formerly a private in the line, then, during the siege, a lieutenant in the National Guard, and finally colonel under the Commune. [Illustration: THE ROYAL FAMILY AT VARENNES.] The gardens of the Tuileries are now more than ever open to the reproach brought against them by the men of the Revolution, who objected to statues adorning its terraces and walls, and wished its works of art to be replaced by lettuces and cabbages. All the greatest sculptors of France are represented in the Tuileries gardens, which also contain many admirable reproductions of ancient statues and groups. There is one interesting walk in the Tuileries gardens which is the favourite resort of children. Here it was, in the so-called _petite Provence_, that the children's stamp exchange was established, against which the authorities found it necessary to take severe steps. The young people have since contented themselves with balls, balloons, and other innocent amusements. There is a Théâtre Guignol, moreover, a sort of Punch and Judy, in the middle of the old gardens; and from the beginning of April to the middle of October a military band plays every day. It is impossible to leave the Tuileries gardens without mentioning its famous chestnut tree--the chestnut tree, as it is called, "of the 20th of March," because in 1814 it blossomed on that very day as if to celebrate Napoleon's return from Elba. But the old chestnut tree had a reputation of its own long before the imperial era. More than a hundred years ago the painter Vien, at that time pupil of the French School, was accused of having assassinated a rival who had competed with him for a prize. He was about to be arrested when he proved that at the very hour when the crime must have been committed he was tranquilly seated beneath the future "chestnut tree of the 20th of March," which was distinguished just then from all the other trees in the garden by being alone in flower. This picturesque _alibi_ saved his life. [Illustration: MONUMENT TO GAMBETTA, PLACE DU CARROUSEL.] Outside the remains of the Tuileries was erected, on the Place du Carrousel, in 1888, a monument to Gambetta. The design as a whole has been unfavourably criticised, but the figure of the orator himself, represented in the act of declamation, is bold and striking, and full of character. CHAPTER XX. THE CHAMPS ÉLYSÉES AND THE BOIS DE BOULOGNE. The Champs Élysées--The Élysée Palace--Longchamp--The Bois de Boulogne--The Château de Madrid--The Château de la Muette--The Place de l'Étoile. Before entering the Champs Élysées, the greatest pleasure thoroughfare in Paris, next to, if not before, the line of boulevards, a brief examination of the frontiers, as approached from the Place de la Concorde, may be advisable. This region of the capital was for a long time one of those marshes by which ancient Paris, the Lutetia of the Romans, was enclosed like a fortress. Then it became cultivable land and passed into the hands of market gardeners, who grew their vegetables in fields by no means "elysian," until the latter part of the reign of Louis XV. The ancient marsh was bounded on one side by the Seine, on the other by the Faubourg St. Honoré, which in the eighteenth century was already a favourite locality for mansions of the nobility. The market gardens, more fertile, perhaps, by reason of their marshy origin, were traversed by the Chemin du Roule--so named from the slope called _rotulus_, in the days of Lutetia, of which the culminating point is now marked by the Triumphal Arch. At the entrance to the Champs Élysées stands the celebrated marble group known as the Horses of Marly; and close to the entrance is the garden of the Élysée Palace (Élysée Bourbon, to call it by its historical name), whose principal gates open into the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré. Built in 1718 by the architect Mollet on a portion of the St. Honoré marshes which had been given by the Regent to Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, Count of Evreux, the Élysée Palace passed in 1745 from the count's heirs to Madame de Pompadour. Her brother, the Marquis de Marigny, inherited it from her, and, holding the appointment of Inspector and Director of Royal Buildings, he embellished the palace and made great improvements in that portion of the neighbourhood known to-day as the Champs Élysées. It was now only that the mansion, called successively Hôtel d'Evreux, Hôtel de Pompadour, and Hôtel de Marigny, received the name of Élysée. Towards the period of the Revolution, in 1786, the Élysée Palace was purchased by the king, and, according to the terms of a royal decree, was to be reserved for the use of princes and princesses visiting the French capital as well as ambassadors charged with special missions. Almost immediately afterwards, however, the structure was bought by the Duchess of Bourbon, when Élysée Bourbon became its recognised name. This very appellation was enough to condemn it in the days of the Revolution; and the Duchess of Bourbon having migrated, her property was seized and confiscated. Sold by auction, it was acquired by Mlle. Hovyn, who seven years later ceded it to Murat; and Murat, on leaving Paris to assume the crown of Naples, presented it to the emperor. Napoleon accepted the gift and took a fancy to his new edifice. He often resided there; and after the defeat of Waterloo it was at the Élysée that he signed his abdication in favour of his son. In 1814 and 1815 the Élysée was temporarily occupied by Alexander I. of Russia. At the Restoration, the Duchess of Bourbon, returning to France, claimed her property. Her rights were recognised, but she was prevailed upon to accept, in lieu of the Élysée, the Hôtel de Monaco in the Rue de Varennes, which she left by will to the Princess Adelaide of Orleans, sister of Louis Philippe. Under the Restoration, it was at the Élysée, now called once more Élysée Bourbon, that the Duke and Duchess of Berry resided until 1820, when, after the assassination of the duke, the duchess felt unable to live there any longer. The duke and duchess were the last permanent tenants of the Élysée, which under the reign of Louis Philippe was utilised, in accordance with the intentions of Louis XVI., as a resting-place for royal guests, or guests of the first importance. In its new character it received Mahomet Ali Pasha of Egypt, and Queen Christina of Spain. After the 10th of December, 1848, Prince Louis Napoleon, elected President of the Republic, had the Élysée assigned to him as his official place of residence. It was here that the _coup d'état_ of the 2nd of December, 1851, was planned and plotted by the Prince-President, and the Count de Morny, his minister, confidant, and guide, General St. Arnaud, and other accomplices. On proclaiming himself Emperor, Napoleon III. gave up possession of the Élysée, and removed to the more regal, more imperial palace of the Tuileries; the Élysée, being now once more set apart for foreign potentates and other grandees visiting Paris. Under the Second Empire Queen Victoria, the Sultan Abdul Aziz, and the Emperor Alexander II. of Russia, were successively received there. Since the establishment of the Third Republic the Élysée has been made the official residence of the President; and it has been inhabited, one after the other, by M. Thiers, Marshal MacMahon, M. Grévy, and M. Carnot. It has been said that the Élysée Palace stands between the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré and the Champs Élysées, with its principal entrance in the street. Between these two thoroughfares stood the ancient Village du Roule, which possessed, as far back as the thirteenth century, an asylum for lepers with a chapel attached to it. This chapel was in 1699 elevated to the rank of parish church, under the invocation of St. Philip. Being now too small it was pulled down; and in place of it was built the present church of St. Philippe du Roule, which underwent a partial transformation in 1845 and 1846. The principal avenue of the Champs Élysées was planted with trees in 1723; but it was not until the reign of Louis XVI. that the Champs Élysées, or rather that portion of the avenue known as Longchamp, became a haunt of fashion. The so-called promenade of Longchamp was, towards the end of the eighteenth century, frequented by the most aristocratic society. Gradually after the Revolution it got to be a more miscellaneous resort, to become ultimately, in modern times, a sort of show ground for fashionable milliners and dressmakers, hatters and tailors. The Abbey of Longchamp, whence the promenade derived its name, was founded as a convent in the thirteenth century by Isabelle of France, sister of Louis IX., and pulled down at the time of the Revolution. It was situated close to the Bois de Boulogne, near the village of that name. "I wish to ensure my salvation," wrote the Princess Isabelle to Hémeric, Chancellor of the university, "by some pious foundation. King Louis IX., my brother, grants me 30,000 Paris livres, and the question is, shall I found a convent or a hospital?" The Chancellor's advice was to establish an asylum for the nuns of the order of St. Clara. In 1260 Isabelle built the church, the dormitories, and the cluster of the Humility of Our Lady; and according to Agnes d'Harcourt, who has written her life, the whole of the 30,000 livres was consumed. The year afterwards, on the 23rd of June, the nuns of the rule of St. Francis took possession of the abbey in presence of Louis IX. and all the Court. The king gave considerable property to the nuns, whom he often visited, and, by his will, dated February, 1269, this sovereign, on the point of undertaking his last expedition to Palestine, left a legacy to the Abbey of Our Lady. Isabelle in this very year ended her days within its walls. The royal origin and associations of the house which the princess had founded ensured for it the patronage of successive French sovereigns--Marguerite and Jeanne de Brabant, Blanche de France, Jeanne de Navarre, and twelve other princesses, taking the veil there; and it is recorded that Philippe le Long died in it with his daughter Blanche by his side on the 2nd of December, 1321, of complicated dysentery and quartan fever. When he was approaching his end the abbé and monks of St. Denis came in procession to his aid, bringing with them a piece of the True Cross, a nail that had been used at the Crucifixion, and one of the arms of St. Simon. The exhibition and application of these pious relics gained for the king enough time to make his will, after which he expired. Longchamp had no fewer than forty nuns in residence. Its proximity to Paris, its illustrious origin, its not less illustrious visitors, its aristocratic inhabitants, its vicissitudes during the sanguinary civil wars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, its decline, and, ultimately, its ruin, invested it with extraordinary interest. As regards the history of the abbey, it must be mentioned that, as with all other convents, its discipline gradually became relaxed until at last purity gave way to licence. Henri IV. took from Longchamp one of his mistresses, Catherine de Verdun, a young nun of twenty-two, to whom he gave the priory of St. Louis de Vernon, and whose brother, Nicholas de Verdun, became first President of the Parliament of Paris. "It is certain," wrote St. Vincent de Paul, on the 25th of October, 1652, to Cardinal Mazarin, "that for the last 200 years this convent has been gradually getting demoralised until now there is less discipline there than depravity. Its reception rooms are open to anyone who comes, even to young men without relations at the convent. The order of friars (Cordeliers) under whose direction it is placed, do nothing to stop the evil. The nuns wear immodest garments and carry gold watches. When, war compelled them to take refuge in the town the majority of them gave themselves up to all kinds of scandals, going alone and in secret to the men they desired to visit." It is evident from this letter that there were intimate relations between the Abbey of Longchamp and Paris. It had been the custom, moreover, since the fifteenth century, to go to Longchamp to hear the friars of the order of Cordeliers preach during Lent. "In 1420," says the journal of Charles VII., "Brother Richard, a Cordelier, lately returned from Jerusalem, preached such a fine sermon that the people from Paris who had been to hear it made more than one hundred fires on their return--the men burning tables, cards, billiard-tables, billiard-balls, and bowls; while the women sacrificed head-dresses, and all kinds of body ornaments, with pieces of leather and pieces of whalebone, their horns and their tails." A great many miracles were said to take place through invocations addressed to the Princess Isabelle, whom Pope Leo X., by a bull dated January 3, 1521, had canonised; while he, at the same time, granted to the nuns of Longchamp the privilege of celebrating annually, in her honour, a solemn service on the last day of August. From the early days of the reign of Louis XV. date those regular pilgrimages to Longchamp during Holy Week, which were soon to degenerate into mundane promenades. [Illustration] [Illustration: THE HORSES OF MARLY, CHAMPS ÉLYSÉES.] At one time the singing of the nuns had been found attractive. In 1729 a vocalist from the Opera, Mlle. Lemaure, sang with the choir, and "all Paris" went to hear her. The nuns profiting by her lessons, and studying her style, sang the "Tenebræ" during Holy Week with so much success that in order to make the choir perfect the abbess applied to the Opera for some additional voices. The abbey was now more than ever besieged. People crowded round the walls, filled the churchyard, and, according to one writer, stood on the tombstones. If the chorus-singers from the Opera were not converted to piety by the nuns, the nuns underwent the influence of the professional vocalists. At last, one Wednesday in Holy Week, a brilliant gathering of fashionable people arrived at the church of Longchamp only to find it closed. The Archbishop of Paris had ordered the doors to be locked. [Illustration: ST. PHILIPPE DU ROULE.] The original object of the Longchamp promenade was now at an end. But the promenade continued all the same; and it was at Longchamp every Holy Week that the first spring fashions were to be seen. This lasted for many years, until at last, as already set forth, the Longchamp Promenade became a medium for the exhibition of such articles of dress as the leading dressmakers, milliners, and tailors wished to see adopted during the approaching season. [Illustration: THE ÉLYSÉE.] Meanwhile, at the time of the Revolution, the old convent of Longchamp was brought to the hammer, and not only knocked down but pulled down. The tombs in the church were broken up, and the ashes of the pious founder, Jeanne de Bourgogne, wife of Philippe le Long, of Jean de Navarre, and of Jean II., Count of Dreux, were dispersed. Of Longchamp nothing remained but the name. To many the Champs Élysées are chiefly interesting as leading to the Bois de Boulogne with its picturesque scenery and its romantic lake, suggestive, in a small way, of the beautiful Loch Katrine. The Bois de Boulogne owes its name to the church of Notre Dame de Boulogne, built in the year 1319, under Philip, surnamed the Long. He gave permission to the citizens of his good town of Paris who had been on a pilgrimage to visit the Church of Nostre Dame de Boulogne-sur-le-mer, to build and construct a church, and there to institute a religious community. The new church became itself an object of pilgrimage, like the original church of Notre Dame at Boulogne-sur-mer, founded, according to the legend, in memory of the landing on the coast of the Holy Virgin accompanied by two angels. Up to the time of the Revolution the Bois de Boulogne was little more than a wilderness. Napoleon I. cut walks and avenues through it, and caused trees to be planted, so that it was already one of the most agreeable places in the neighbourhood, when, in 1815, after the Waterloo campaign, the soldiers of the Duke of Wellington and of the Emperor Alexander I. encamped beneath its groves; which they are said to have mutilated and ravaged. The Bois de Boulogne was considerably diminished when, in 1840, the fortifications of Paris were being constructed, the wood being traversed by the lines of brickwork. Soon afterwards, in 1852, under the Second Empire, it was made over to the town of Paris, and converted by the municipality into a park after the English model, with all the agreeable delightful features it now possesses. The first improvement introduced was the river with its picturesque islands and the lake with its wooded banks and its Swiss cottages. The waterfalls or "cascades" give their name to the celebrated restaurant and café constructed by their side; and for the last thirty or forty years the Bois de Boulogne has possessed spacious avenues, with grass borders and endless rows of lamps. The grass plots in every direction, and here and there wide lawns, give a softness to the general picture which has not its equal in any European capital. In the Bois de Boulogne stood formerly the Château de Madrid, said to have been erected by King Francis I. in memory and on the pattern of the one where, after the defeat of Pavia, Charles V. had held him captive. In spite of the recollections which it must have evoked, and which it is said to have been intended to evoke, Francis I. often visited his castle in the wood. It was turned to questionable use by various kings of France, and Henry III. varied the diversions of which it was so often the scene by introducing combats between wild beasts and bulls. One night, however, this depraved and sanguinary monarch dreamt that his animals wished to devour him, and the next morning he gave orders that they should all be killed and replaced by packs of little dogs. What remains of the ancient château is now a fashionable restaurant. Close by is the delightful Bagatelle, built in sixty-four days by the Count of Artois, and called at one time Folie d'Artois. Above the principal entrance the Count (afterwards Charles X.) had inscribed the words, _Parva sed apta_. Under the Revolution this "small but suitable" structure was used for public festivals; and it was here, at the time of the Restoration, that the Duke of Bordeaux, posthumous son of the Duke of Berry, was brought up. The Duke of Bordeaux (who afterwards took the title of Count of Chambord) was the last representative of the elder branch of the Bourbons, a house which is said to have produced since the fourteenth century some six hundred remarkable men, chiefly soldiers, and which, apart from their feats of war, founded thrones in all the Latin countries of Europe--in France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy. It has been said that the duke was brought up as a child at Bagatelle in the Bois de Boulogne; and many were the speculations and suspicions of which he was at that time the subject. When, indeed, after the Revolution of 1830 Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, assumed the crown, and was thereupon accused by the partisans of the dethroned Charles X. of violating his promise to act as Regent until the majority of the Duke of Bordeaux, a paper was issued, apparently by the Orleanists, denying that the Duke of Bordeaux was the legitimate son of the assassinated Duke of Berry, eldest son of Charles X. The _Courrier Français_, a journal devoted to the new dynasty, now published a letter which had first appeared ten years before in the _Morning Chronicle_ of London, asserting the illegitimacy of the Count of Chambord. "The proposals," said the _Courrier Français_, "which the Duke of Mortemart has just made to the Chamber of Peers in favour of the Duke of Bordeaux will naturally recall attention to a subject which at last may be freely examined and discussed. We shall confine ourselves to publishing a document inserted in the English papers of the time, and which has never appeared in France. Its publication is perfectly opportune; it completes the parallel that has been drawn until now between the Stuart and the Capet families." The _Courrier Français_ then reproduced a document entitled "Protest of the Duke of Orleans," which ran as follows: "His Royal Highness declares by these presents that he protests formally against the procès-verbal dated 29th September last, which document professes to establish the fact that the child named Charles Ferdinand Dieudonné is the legitimate son of Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Berry. The Duke of Orleans will produce in fit time and place witnesses who will make known the origin of the child and of its mother, and he will point out the authors of the machination of which that very weak princess has been the instrument." The _Morning Chronicle_, in publishing the document about six weeks after the Count's birth, denied its authenticity, adding, however, that it was being industriously circulated in every part of France, and that a copy of it had been addressed to the ambassador of every Power represented at Paris. It was not, of course, under Charles X. published in any Paris newspaper; and when at last, in Louis Philippe's reign, it found its way into the columns of the _Courrier Français_ it was impossible not to notice that the journal which first printed it was one devoted to the interests of the new king. [Illustration: THE GREAT LAKE, BOIS DE BOULOGNE.] The Château de la Muette, another of the remarkable edifices in the Bois de Boulogne, was originally a hunting-box where Charles IX., the hero of the St. Bartholomew Massacre, used to shoot stags and boars from a box before giving himself the royal pleasure of shooting Huguenots from the balcony of the Louvre. The Avenue Marigny has a greater number of frequenters among the Parisian public than the more distant Bois de Boulogne. It dates from the reign of Louis XV., until which time it formed part of the historic marsh, and it owes its name to its designer. After the cession of the Champs Élysées to the town of Paris in 1828, the Avenue Marigny became the scene of the fêtes given every year in honour of the successor of the monarch who made the cession. On the 27th, 28th, and 29th of July, the anniversaries of the Revolutionary days of 1830, two theatres were put up in the Avenue Marigny, on whose boards military spectacles were represented, while their orchestras played dance music for the exhilaration and physical recreation of the general public. Booths for acrobats and tight-rope dancers were also established; wild beasts were shown, and wrestling matches took place. One of the first acts of the Emperor Napoleon III. in 1852 was to change all this. The town of Paris gave back to the State, by a perpetual lease, the whole of the Champs Élysées, where it had been determined to construct an edifice which should serve for national exhibitions, and other civil and military festivals, the building to be after the model of the English Crystal Palace. In two years the Palace of Industry was finished; and in 1855 it became the scene of a universal exhibition opened in the course of the Crimean War, and honoured by the visit of Queen Victoria. The second and third universal exhibitions at Paris were held in a larger building constructed for the purpose, and the fourth (1889) in a larger building still. The Palais de l'Industrie of 1855 is now used for annual exhibitions of agriculture, horticulture, horses and fat cattle; also for the annual exhibition of painting, sculpture, and engraving. The Champs Élysées form a pleasure resort for all classes of the Parisian population; and the number of lightly constructed booths for the sale of cakes and toys show that among the frequenters of the Avenue Marigny there are a good number of children, many of whom may be seen driving about in little goat-chaises. The Avenue Marigny, with its interminable files, at every hour of the day, of horsemen, horse-women, and carriages, leads directly to the Triumphal Arch, known as the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile, from which a magnificent view may be obtained of the whole line of the Champs Élysées from its commencement as marked by the Obelisk of the Place de la Concorde. [Illustration: AVENUE DU BOIS DE BOULOGNE.] The Place de l'Étoile, in which stands the arch of the same name, is so called from the star of avenues of which it forms the centre. The idea of a monument on this spot dates from the reign of Louis XV., when it was proposed to place on the present site of the arch a colossal elephant. The animal in question found for a time a resting place not on the Place de l'Étoile but on that of the Bastille. At last, in 1806, Napoleon determined to erect on the spot once threatened with an elephant the triumphal arch in commemoration of victories gained under his command, of which the first stone was laid on the 15th of August, the Emperor's birthday. By the year 1810 the cornice of the first storey had been reached. Then Chalgrin, the original architect of the construction, died, to be replaced by his inspector, Goust; and the work was continued until 1814, when, Napoleon having been defeated and sent to Elba, all question of completing a monument in honour of his victories was at an end. [Illustration: ARC DE TRIOMPHE.] Under the Restoration, when endeavours were being made by official historians to suppress the Napoleonic period, or, at least, to represent it as a natural link of connection between the old monarchy and the monarchy now re-established, the Triumphal Arch was gone on with and dedicated to the glory of the Duke of Angoulême, who had intervened at the head of a large army in the affairs of Spain. Finally King Louis Philippe, who claimed to represent, not only the ancient monarchy, but also in some measure the Revolution and the Empire, restored the arch to its original purpose. The works were hurried to completion, and on the 29th of July, 1836, it was formally inaugurated. The dimensions of the arch, twice as large as those of the Porte St. Denis, may be called colossal. The frieze around the four sides (which are themselves arched) represents the departure and the return of the French armies. Comparatively small as the figures in the frieze appear, they are scarcely less than six feet high. On either side of the different arches the capture of Aboukir, the funeral of Marceau, the battle of Austerlitz, the capture of Alexandria, the bridge of Arcola, and the battle of Jemappes, are shown in low relief. The names of French victories are engraved all over the interior surfaces of the large and small arches, these inscriptions being completed and illustrated by allegorical figures. Nothing, however, is finer in the ornamentation of the arch than the four immense groups on the external sides of the two great façades. On the eastern side, looking towards Paris, one sees to the right the departure of the troops in 1792 beneath the Genius of War, which, with outstretched wings and open mouth, seems to protect and inspire them. On the left side, looking towards the south, is the apotheosis of the Emperor, in which Napoleon, attired in a chlamys, is being crowned by Victory, while Renown proclaims his lofty exploits, and History engraves them on her tablets. [Illustration: AVENUE DES CHAMPS ÉLYSÉES.] The two groups towards the west represent, on the right, Resistance to Invasion, and, on the left, Peace crowned by the figure of Minerva. Broad staircases lead to a higher platform which commands a magnificent view of central Paris. In 1854, two years after the proclamation of the Second Empire, a "place" was designed around the arch, which now forms the centre of twelve avenues, darting out from the Arc de l'Étoile like the rays of a star. The open-air entertainments of which the Champs Élysées and Bois de Boulogne are the scene possess as much importance as the entertainments taking place within the walls of the innumerable Paris theatres. Of the races which find so much favour in France the most celebrated is that of the Grand Prix, run on the course of Longchamp early in June, just after the English Derby, and the second Sunday after the so-called Derby of Chantilly. It was founded only in 1863 (until 1856 the racing ground of the Parisians had, for twenty-five years previously, been the Champ de Mars) though it has long been regarded as one of the national institutions of the country. The prize is of the value of 100,000 francs, of which half is furnished by the Town of Paris and half by the five great railway companies of the North, the West, Lyons, Orleans, and the South. The sight, as one approaches the course, suggests Ascot and Goodwood rather than Epsom; and the great majority of the sightseers seem to take more interest in the carriages and the costumes than in the racing, or even the betting, though the betting plague has settled upon Paris, where it replaces the lotteries and the gambling-houses suppressed by law. In a publicly organised form, betting is illegal, but the evil is a difficult one to deal with, and it is now tolerated in France, if not formally permitted. Every now and then an example is made of some unhappy offender; but these rare instances serve simply to excite the spirit of betting already so wide-spread amongst the community at large. The amusements of the Champs Élysées, although of a much more trifling kind than that royal one of racing reserved for the Bois de Boulogne, have from the earliest times been as remarkable for their variety as for their originality. The Parisians were always great lovers of public amusements, even from the days of Charles V. and Charles VI., when tight-rope dancers, whom it would be difficult to equal in the present day, walked down a rope stretched from the towers of Notre Dame to the Palais de Justice. One acrobat who excelled in performing this feat was so agile and so rapid that he seemed to fly, and was called the "flying man." One day he stretched a rope from the summit of one of the towers of Notre Dame to a house on the Exchange Bridge, danced as he came down it, holding, meanwhile, in one hand a flaming torch, and in the other a wreath, which, just as Queen Isabeau de Bavière passed across the bridge, in making her entry into Paris, he placed on her head, and immediately afterwards re-ascended to the point whence he had started. Another tight-rope dancer, named Georges Menustre, performed similar feats under the reign of Louis XII. The most popular entertainments of those days were representations of mysteries. These religious dramas were played when the king entered Paris, and on other joyful occasions. Some of the subjects were taken from the Old, some from the New Testament, others from the Lives of the Saints. They were treated either in prose, in verse, or even occasionally in pantomime. In the year 1425 the game of climbing the greasy pole is said to have been for the first time introduced. On St. Giles's Day inhabitants of the parish under the invocation of that saint invented "a new diversion." They planted a long pole perpendicularly in the Rue aux Ours opposite the Rue Quincampoix. They fastened to the top of the pole a basket containing a fat goose and six small coins. Then they oiled the pole, and promised goose, money, basket, and pole itself, to anyone skilful enough to climb to the top. But the most vigorous were unable to complete so slippery an ascent; and at last, after a succession of ludicrous failures, the goose was given to the one who had got the highest; though he received neither the pole, the money, nor the basket. The same year the Parisians invented a still more remarkable entertainment. They formed at the Hôtel d'Armagnac in the Rue St. Honoré an enclosure into which they introduced a pig and four blind men, each of them armed with a stick. The pig was promised to whichever of the four could beat it to death. The enclosure was surrounded by numerous spectators impatient to see the conclusion of this "comedy," as Dulaure calls it, though the pig might have described it by a different name. The blind men all rushed towards the spot where the animal, by its cries, proclaimed itself to be, and then struck away with their sticks, hitting, as a rule, one another, and not the pig; which, says a contemporary writer, caused infinite mirth to the assembly. They renewed the attack again and again, but never with any success; and although they were covered with armour from head to foot, they exchanged amongst themselves blows so severe that, despairing at last of the pig, they retired from a game which was pleasant only to the spectators. In the early days of Paris the churches were at Christmas-time made the scene of ceremonies and diversions recalling the Saturnalia of the Romans, from whom such civilisation as the French then possessed was for the most part inherited. Clerks and members of the inferior clergy took the place in churches and cathedrals of high ecclesiastical dignitaries when services were performed in which, with religious ceremonies, acts of buffoonery and even indecency were mingled. The Festival of the Fools, the Festival of the Ass, the Festival of the Innocents and of the Sub-deacons, were some of the names of these burlesque celebrations. At Paris, in the church of Notre Dame, the Festival of the Sub-deacons was also called the Festival of the Drunken Deacons. Begun on Christmas Day, it was kept up until Twelfth Day, the chief celebration being reserved for New Year's Day. [Illustration: AVENUE MARIGNY, CHAMPS ÉLYSÉES.] In the first place, from among the sub-deacons of the cathedral a bishop, archbishop, and sometimes a pope was elected. The mitre, the crook, and the cross, were carried before the mock pontiff, and he was then required to give his solemn blessing to the people. The entry of the pope, archbishop, or bishop into the church was announced by the ringing of the bells. Then the sham prelate was placed in the episcopal chair, and mass was begun. All the clergy who took part in the mass had their faces painted black, or wore hideous and ridiculous masks. They were dressed as acrobats or as women, danced in the middle of the choir, and sang improper songs. Then the deacons and sub-deacons advanced to the altar and ate black puddings and sausages before the celebrant. They played at cards or at dice, and placed in the incense box pieces of old shoes, the odour of which was by no means agreeable. When the mass was at an end the sub-deacons, in their madness or their intoxication, profaned the church still more, running, dancing, and leaping like lunatics, exciting one another to new extravagances, singing the most dissolute songs, and sometimes stripping themselves of their clothes. The Church as a body was far from approving these shameful practices, and it condemned them in several Councils; but for a considerable time the spirit of insubordination, together with the dissolute tendencies of a section of the priesthood, rendered all such condemnations nugatory. The clerical Saturnalia were continued up to the middle of the fifteenth century. Forbidden by the Pope's Legate at Paris, and by the Archbishop of Paris, they remained popular until 1445, in which year a letter was addressed by the Theological Faculty of Paris to all the prelates and chapters exhorting them to abolish customs so unworthy of religion. Sixteen years afterwards, in 1460, these burlesque celebrations were still spoken of at the Council of Sens as an abuse which must be destroyed. So difficult are popular customs to extirpate! [Illustration: FOUNTAIN IN THE CHAMPS ÉLYSÉES.] CHAPTER XXI. THE CHAMP DE MARS AND PARIS EXHIBITIONS. The Royal Military School of Louis XV.--The National Assembly--The Patriotic Altar--The Festival of the Supreme Being--Other Festivals--Industrial Exhibitions--The Eiffel Tower--The Trocadéro. A whole chapter might be devoted to the café concerts, the swings, the merry-go-rounds, and other entertainments of a constantly varying kind, which are to be witnessed and, according to taste, enjoyed from morning to night in the Champs Élysées. But against the frivolity of these popular diversions may well be placed the great international exhibitions of which the Champs Élysées have from time to time during the last thirty-six years been the scene. [Illustration: THE CHAMP DE MARS, 1889.] With each of the exhibitions of 1867, 1878, and 1889 the Champ de Mars has been connected; and its permanent association with these peaceful celebrations is now marked by the famous Eiffel Tower, which stands in the warlike field. Although it lies on the south side of the river, the Champ de Mars is so closely connected with the Champs Élysées that it may almost be regarded as belonging thereto. If the universal exhibitions of Paris were held in the Elysian Fields, they have, on each of the last three occasions, had an annex in the field of Mars. It is by the way of the Champs Élysées, moreover, that the troops march when the army of Paris is exercised and inspected in the great review-ground. The Champ de Mars was originally a simple field of exercise for the pupils of the Royal Military School. Established by Louis XV. in 1751 for five hundred sons of officers, this school came into existence half a century before the Polytechnic School and the School of St. Cyr, and formed, during the last years of the Monarchy, a great number of excellent officers, the most celebrated of all being Napoleon Bonaparte, who on the 22nd of October, 1784, entered the company of gentlemen cadets. On the 1st of the following September, having come out brilliantly in an examination, he was appointed second lieutenant in the artillery regiment of La Fayette. He had then passed by only fourteen days his sixteenth birthday. The School of Gentlemen Cadets, the military cradle of the future Emperor, was not precisely the school which Louis XV. had founded. His grandson had perceived that to admit, as a matter of right, children from eight to thirteen years of age would fill the military school with youths who had no fitness for the military career. He solved the problem by establishing in various country towns twelve colleges, where those qualified for admission could study up to the age of fifteen, after which a selection was made with a view to the Military School of Paris. One of these colleges was at Brienne, where the young Napoleon studied before being passed for the Military School. Until 1789 no one was admitted to the Military School but sons of officers and noblemen. In the first year of the Revolution the Constitutional Ministers of Louis XVI. procured a decree from the Council which abolished the qualification of nobility. This was not so great an innovation as it may appear, since Louis XV. had by a decree of the year 1750 granted privileges of nobility to officers; the children, therefore, of all officers were admissible to the Military School. The institution was all the same of doubtful origin; and not knowing what else to do with it the Convention abolished it in June, 1793, took possession of its funds, and changed the building into a flour magazine and a cavalry depôt. Soon afterwards, with a mutability characteristic of the time, the Revolutionary Government came to the conclusion that a Royal Military School, however detestable as of royal origin, would become admirable if the title of Republican were applied to it. It was accordingly decided in June, 1794, that each district of the Republic should send to Paris "six young citizens under the name of pupils of the School of Mars, aged from sixteen to seventeen years, in order to receive a Revolutionary education with all the knowledge, sentiments, and ideas of a Republican soldier." The project was voted for on a report of Barère, who had drawn a droll parallel between the students of the Royal Military School (descended from "some feudal brigand, some privileged rogue, some ridiculous marquis, some modern baron, or some court flunkey") and what the students of the School of Mars would be--"the offspring of Republican families, of parents of restricted means, or of useful inhabitants of the country. What," Barère went on to say, "has ever come out of the Military School? What has this brilliant college produced? No able officer, not a general, not an administrator, not one celebrated warrior." It had produced, all the same, General Bonaparte, who was even then preparing the plans of his Italian campaign. The very next year the young cadet of the Royal Military School reentered the École Militaire to establish his headquarters there as general commanding in chief the army of Paris. When he became emperor he inscribed on the portico of the school these words: "Napoleon's headquarters"; which only disappeared in 1815, when a regiment of the Imperial Guard was replaced in the building by the Royal Guard. Since it has ceased to be a school the so-called École Militaire has been used as a cavalry and artillery barrack. The Champ de Mars, in front of the École Militaire, has a very varied history. Here in the ninth century the Normans were defeated by Eudes, son of Robert the Strong, Count of Paris; who called the scene of his exploit, not Champ de Mars, but more explicitly, Champ de la Victoire. Then for many centuries the Field of Victory, or of Mars, seems to have witnessed nothing in particular until, at last, under the reign of Louis XV., it became the scene of a grand review in which the students of the Royal Military School took part. While the review was going on a young officer, nephew of Orry, controller of finance, who had suffered from the persecution of the king's favourite, was brought before a court-martial on an accusation of treason, suggested by the defeat of the French army in Germany. He was about to be condemned, when the king was informed by express, that not only was young Orry no traitor, but that the whole army, compromised by a serious mistake on the part of its commander, Marshal Maillebois, owed its safety to Orry's presence of mind, and to a vigorous charge of cavalry directed by him. Louis XV. gave the young man a new commission, thus marking the opening of the Champ de Mars by an act of justice. During the early days of the Revolution the Champ de Mars played an important part; and through the course of the Revolution it was the scene of all the most important national celebrations. Nor under the Empire did it lose the character it had thus acquired. In July, 1790, the year after the taking of the Bastille, the general federation of the nation was celebrated; and a quarter of a century later, after Napoleon's return from Elba, and immediately before the Waterloo campaign, the emperor assembled in the Champ de Mars the authorities and representative bodies of the country in order to swear fidelity to the new Constitution which he had just promulgated, even as Louis XVI. had sworn fidelity to the Constitution adopted by the National Assembly. On the 5th of June all military and naval bodies, national or foreign, were invited to send a number of delegates, according to the forces represented, to an assembly which was to be held in the Champ de Mars on the 14th of the month following. The details of the celebration were regulated by special decree; and artists of all kinds were invited to make suggestions towards the arrangement and decoration of the plain. It was determined in the first instance to convert this plain into a sort of basin or amphitheatre with sloping sides and a hollow in the middle. Many thousands of labourers were employed in this work, and they were ultimately joined by the whole population of Paris, just as two years afterwards all classes and conditions of people took part in the preparations for the festival of the Altar to the Country. On the day appointed deputations arrived from all parts of France, the visitors being hospitably entertained by private citizens, or received by innkeepers at reduced charges. Special seats were reserved for them at the meeting of the National Assembly; and they, in their turn, were full of enthusiasm for the Assembly, for the people of Paris, but above all for King Louis XVI. On the 13th, the day before the festival, the king reviewed the troops, the deputations, and a good portion of the Paris National Guard, on the Place Louis XV., and in the Champs Élysées. At five o'clock in the morning the National Guard and the entire population were on foot. Many had passed the night in the Champs Élysées, and several regiments of National Guards had marched there at midnight in order to be in good time for the approaching celebration. The deputies from the provinces assembled at the Bastille, where eighty-three white flags bearing the names of their respective departments were distributed among them. At seven o'clock the march began, headed by a body of cavalry belonging to the National Guard of Paris, which was followed by a body of infantry, the electors of Paris, the Paris Commune, and the National Assembly, preceded by a regiment of children, and followed by a regiment of old men with the flags of the sixty battalions of Paris around them. Then came the representatives of the federated departments, preceded by two marshals of France with a numerous staff, and followed by a number of officers of various corps, including the King's Body Guard. The procession passed through the town amid the acclamations of the people and to the sound of artillery, approaching the Champ de Mars by way of the Champs Élysées, and crossing the river by a bridge of boats constructed the night before just opposite the village of Chaillot. At the entrance to the Champ de Mars, now transformed into a vast circus, had been raised a triumphal arch bearing a number of inscriptions, among which may be cited the following:-- The rights of man were ignored for centuries; they have been re-established for the whole of humanity. You love that liberty which you now possess; prove your gratitude by preserving it. In the Champ de Mars 300,000 persons had assembled, men, women, and children, on the slopes of the newly-made amphitheatre, all wearing the national colours. The hillsides of Chaillot and of Passy were equally filled; as further on were the amphitheatres of Meudon and St. Cloud, of Mont Valérien and Montmartre. In front of the Military School were ascending rows of seats, covered with blue and gold drapery, for the king, the court, the National Assembly, the various constituted bodies and the most distinguished guests. In the centre of the Champ de Mars, on a raised piece of ground, was a monumental altar to the country with four immense staircases on the four sides. This altar was itself two years later made the object of a festival. The king had for this day only been named Chief of the National Guards of France. He appointed La Fayette to perform the duties of the post. Pending the commencement of the ceremony, 1,200 musicians played various pieces of music, including the national dances of Brittany, Auvergne, and Provence. French music of this period was, with the notable exceptions of the "Marseillaise" and of the "Chant du Départ," by no means impressive in itself, though hymns that are sung by thousands of voices can scarcely fail, from the volume of sound and the unanimity of feeling, to produce a certain effect. Patriotic hymns were in any case sung, and they excited general enthusiasm. At half-past three a salvo of artillery announced the beginning of the festival. The king was seated in his tribune, having on his right the President of the National Assembly at the same level as himself. La Fayette came forward to take the king's orders, and the ceremony commenced with a solemn mass, celebrated, according to general tradition, by Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun, afterwards to be known under every kind of government in France, including the Empire, the Restoration, and the Monarchy of Louis Philippe, as Talleyrand the Minister. According, however, to credible accounts, it was not Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun, but Montmorency, Grand Almoner of France, who performed mass on this solemn occasion. The prelate was in any case assisted by two hundred priests, who, wearing tricolour sashes, surrounded the altar; then the oriflamme symbol of the federation was blessed, together with the banners given to the deputations from the provinces. Finally La Fayette ascended the staircase, radiant, but full of emotion, and placing the point of his sword on the Altar of the Country, pronounced in a loud firm voice this sacred oath: "We swear to be for ever faithful to the nation, to the law, and to the king; to maintain with all our power the Constitution decreed by the National Assembly and accepted by the king; to protect the persons and property of all, and to remain united to all Frenchmen by the indissoluble bonds of fraternity." [Illustration: THE MILITARY SCHOOL, CHAMP DE MARS.] The general excitement seemed now to have reached its highest pitch. But it was raised still higher when the king in his turn swore fidelity to the Constitution. Many, however, complained at the time that he took the oath, not from the altar, but from the tribune, where he was sitting; and this was generally looked upon as of bad augury. From that time, throughout the Revolution, the Champ de Mars was known as the Champ de la Fédération, and the anniversary of the 14th of July was celebrated until the time of the Consulate. Some two years later the altar on which the Mass of the Federation had been celebrated was itself to be made the object of a festival. Enlarged and newly decorated, it became the Altar of Patriotism or _autel à la patrie_, and once more the whole population took part in the preparations, when, to judge by a letter on the subject left by an actress of the Théâtre Français, the work of the day was varied by a certain amount of pleasantry. "Every gentleman," says the actress, "chose a lady to whom he offered a very light spade decorated with ribands; then, headed by a band, the lovers of liberty hastened to the general rendezvous." In the centre of the Champ de Mars was at last constructed a colossal altar, at which the deputies from the National Guards of France and from the various army corps assembled, and swore allegiance to the Republic. Patriotic altars or _autels à la patrie_ had already been raised in various parts of France, when, by a decree of July, 1792, it was ordered that in every commune a patriotic altar should be erected, to which children should be brought, where young people should get married, and on which should be registered births, marriages, and deaths. Above all it was thought necessary that round the altars solemn deliberations should be held concerning the fate of the country, which was threatened by the whole continent of Europe. [Illustration: GENERAL LA FAYETTE.] After the flight of the king a petition was laid on the patriotic altar of the Champ de Mars demanding the monarch's formal dethronement. At the Jacobin Club the question of the fall of the monarchy had been boldly put forward; and after a long debate the petition just referred to was drawn up and forwarded for general acceptation to the patriotic altar of the Champ de Mars. The document set forth that the nation would no more acknowledge Louis XVI. or any other king. That very evening, however, the Jacobins were themselves alarmed by the revolutionary turn of affairs, and withdrew their petition, declaring it to be illegal in form. General La Fayette, at the head of the army and the National Guards, was meanwhile determined under all circumstances to keep order, and it soon became necessary for his troops to act. Two wretched men had concealed themselves beneath the staircase of the patriotic altar; and some insults said to have been addressed by them to women ascending the stairs led to their being attacked--trivial origin of a sanguinary massacre--by a number of washerwomen from the neighbourhood. The practical jokers in hiding beneath the staircase had with them a barrel of water, which popular indignation converted into a barrel of gunpowder intended to blow up the altar, together with the faithful assembled on its steps. The patriotic altar was at that time an object of religious veneration, and the conduct of the two men beneath the staircase was looked upon as nothing less than sacrilegious. Some fanatics fell upon them and put them to death; and the incident, commented upon from the most different points of view, was in the end represented as an onslaught by reactionists on the sworn friends of liberty. Meanwhile the crowd in the Champ de Mars was constantly increasing; and soon it was summoned by beat of drum, and with all the usual formalities, to disperse. Nothing came of this demand except a shower of stones hurled at the National Guard. The regular troops, composed principally of Royal Guards, replied by firing wildly at all around them. The patriotic altar was soon covered with blood and surrounded by corpses. The crowd fled as rapidly as its numbers would permit, but it was now charged by cavalry, and afterwards fired into by artillery. To stop the carnage La Fayette rode up to the guns, himself exposed to their shots. The number of persons killed has, of course, been differently--very differently--estimated; but according to a moderate computation, at least 1,500 persons were slain. General La Fayette, and Bailly, Mayor of Paris, had given a general order to repel force by force, and the responsibility of the massacre was accepted by Bailly. It was for this reason, indeed, that in November, 1793, he was sentenced to death, his execution taking place on the very scene of the massacre. When armies were being hastily formed for repelling the invasion of the German sovereigns the recruiting office was in the Champ de Mars, where amphitheatres were erected with flags bearing this inscription, "Our country is in danger." On a table, supported by two drums, the officers of the Municipality inscribed the names of those who wished to enlist, and the enthusiasm, now wide-spreading, gave to France fourteen armies, which, untrained as bodies, (though they contained numbers of trained men disbanded from the royal army) proved themselves valiant, and indeed invincible, in the field. The next great festival which was held in the Champ de Mars was that of the Supreme Being. All that was done during the Revolution against religion was aimed particularly at the clergy and the monks, the Inquisition and the stake. The celebration of the Festival of the Supreme Being had been fixed, according to the Revolutionary calendar, for the 20th Prairial, and the famous painter David had been charged with the elaboration of the programme. The day which Robespierre had chosen for the celebration coincided precisely this year with one of the great Catholic festivals--that of Whitsuntide. Robespierre had been elected President of the Assembly. At eight o'clock in the morning the beginning of the Festival was announced by a discharge of artillery from the Tuileries. Flowers had been brought to Paris from thirty miles round, and every house in the City had its garland, while all the women carried bouquets and all the men branches of oak. A vast amphitheatre constructed in the National Garden (the garden of the Tuileries, that is to say) held the members of the Convention, each of whom carried in his hand a bouquet of flowers and of ears of corn. Robespierre, detained by his duties at the Revolutionary Tribunal, arrived late, at which there was some amusement. Dressed in the blue coat worn by the representatives of the people, and holding in his hand a bouquet of flowers and wheat, he exclaimed: "O Nature, how delightful, how sublime is thy power! How tyrants must tremble and grow pale at the idea of such a Festival!" After the founder of the new religion had, in accordance with the programme, delivered his discourse, whence a few words have been cited, he walked down from the amphitheatre in company with his fellow-members of the Convention. At the entrance to the Palace had been erected a pyramid consisting of dolls representing atheism, ambition, egotism, and false simplicity; then came the rags of misery, through which could be seen the decorations and splendour of the slaves of Royalty. Robespierre went forward with a torch and set fire to these impostures. When wretchedness and vice had been consumed, the statue of Wisdom was discovered unfortunately a little scorched by the flames in which its opposites had perished. The whole procession next moved towards the Champ de la Réunion, as the Champ de Mars was now called. The Convention marched in a body surrounded by a tricolour ribbon, which was carried by children, young men, middle-aged men, and old men, all crowned with oak and myrtle. No arms were worn, but every deputy exhibited in token of his mission a tricolour sash, and carried a feather in his hat. In the centre of the procession eight oxen with gilded horns drew an antique car bearing, as tributes, instruments of art. When the Convention established itself on a symbolical mountain, it was surrounded by the fathers and mothers sent officially by the sections; also by their young daughters, crowned with roses, and older children adorned with violets. Everyone, moreover, in the procession wore national colours. Then there was a fresh discourse from Robespierre, after which hymns by Chénier and Désorgues, with music by Gaveaux, were sung. The music of the hymns, from one or two specimens preserved, seems to have been poor, but given forth by thousands of voices it was doubtless impressive. After an invocation to the Eternal, the young girls strewed their flowers on the ground, mothers raised their children in their arms, and old men stretched out their hands to bless the young ones, who swore to die for their country and their liberty. Revolutionary in its origin, the Festival of the Supreme Being, celebrated throughout France, helped everywhere to raise the Catholic party; which was not precisely what its founders had aimed at. Another solemn festival was held in the Champ de Mars, to celebrate the capture of Toulon from the English, as brought about by a young artillery officer named Bonaparte, whose name was being repeated from mouth to mouth by admirers as yet unable to foresee that the object of their admiration would before many years be the ruler of France; for, "born of the Republic," he was, in the energetic words of Chateaubriand, "to kill his own mother." On the 3rd of December, 1804, the day after the coronation of the Emperor at Notre-Dame, the Champ de Mars was to be the scene of yet another festival--the distribution of eagles among the different regiments of the French Army. It was in the Champ de Mars that Napoleon, after his return from Elba, gave a banquet to some 15,000 soldiers and National Guards; and again in the Champ de Mars that he assembled deputations from all the army-corps and all the State bodies convoked to hear the promulgation of the "additional Act" which gave new character to the old Napoleonic Constitution. This was the assembly known as that of the Champ de Mai, so called from the month in which it was held. Under the Restoration the Champ de Mars became the scene of a military representation in which the Duke of Angoulême, at the head of the army which had fought, or rather had executed a military promenade, in Spain, attacked some battalions playing the part of the Spanish army, which at the proper moment retreated. Then the high ground since known as the Trocadéro was stormed, as the Trocadéro of Spain had been stormed in the war just terminated; and it was now that the idea was conceived of treating the Arc de Triomphe as a triumphal arch erected to the glory of the army of Louis XVIII. Under the reign of Louis Philippe, the military representation of which under Louis XVIII.'s reign the Trocadéro had been made the scene was repeated, with the replacement of the Trocadéro by Antwerp. This display, on a very grand scale, was attended with a crush, a panic, and almost as many accidents as were caused by the celebrated fireworks on the Place Louis XV., on the occasion of Marie Antoinette's marriage. It was under the Restoration that the Champ de Mars was used as a course for the first races, or at least the first races of a popular character, established in France. They were, after some years, as already mentioned, transferred to Longchamps. Under the Second Empire, or rather when the Second Empire was about to be proclaimed, the Champ de Mars witnessed a magnificent review and distribution of eagles--the prelude, in fact, to the establishment of the imperial form of government. "Take back these eagles," said the prince president on this occasion, "not as a symbol of threats against the foreigner, but as a recollection of an heroic epoch, as a sign of nobility for each regiment in the service. Take back these eagles which so often led your fathers to victory, and swear, if necessary, to die in their defence." This was the last of the many political scenes of which the Champ de Mars has been the theatre. In 1867 it furnished a site for the annex or supplementary building where, in connection with the Universal Exhibition of that year, the machinery was displayed. If the Champs Élysées became during the first half of the century a portion of Paris, this was also to happen during the second half to the more distant Bois de Boulogne; and as Paris is still constantly growing the time may come when Sèvres and Saint-Cloud, whither the Bois de Boulogne leads, will no longer be regarded as suburbs, but as integral parts of the French metropolis, from which they are now distant (counting from the Place de la Concorde) some six miles. * * * * * No account, whether of the Champs Élysées or of the Champ de Mars, would be complete without some mention of the Universal Exhibitions of which the Elysian Fields and the Field of Mars have both been the scene. The first Universal Exhibition was held in England during the summer of 1851, but the first Industrial Exhibition on a large scale, without assistance or competition from the foreigner, took place in France immediately after the Revolution, of which it was one of the natural consequences. [Illustration: THE PALAIS DE L'INDUSTRIE, CHAMPS ÉLYSÉES.] Before 1789 the industrial system of France, as of other countries, was made up of corporations and guilds rigidly bound by rules and traditions; and many industrial processes were so many secrets into which apprentices, duly articled, were initiated, but which were jealously guarded from the knowledge of the outer world. A general exhibition of arts, manufactures, and machinery would, under the ancient _régime_, have been in direct opposition to the spirit of the time; it would have been impossible, that is to say. When, however, guilds and corporations were broken up and labour was throughout the country rendered free, the desirability soon became apparent of familiarising workmen with the best methods of work; and manufacturers of all kinds were brought together and invited to send specimens of their handicraft to a great Exhibition, of which Paris was to be the scene. The idea was conceived under the Directory, six years after the Revolution; and with a rapidity characteristic of the period it was at once carried out. Of some hundred exhibitors, nearly all belonged to Paris. But at a second exhibition held three years afterwards, thirty-eight departments, including some of the most distant ones, sent examples of their industry. These exhibitions were to be triennial; though their recurrence at fixed intervals was sometimes interfered with by political or military events. The Industrial Exhibitions of France, however, increased in importance until, under the reign of Louis Philippe, they took a prodigious development. After the Revolution of 1848 workmen as well as manufacturers were for the first time encouraged to exhibit, and many of them gained prizes. Now, too, an exhibition was held at which agriculture as well as industry was represented, and among the products and manufactures were a good number sent from the newly-acquired Algeria. Then came the English Universal Exhibition of 1851, held in Hyde Park; adorned for the occasion with a building of new architecture, to which Douglas Jerrold, writing in _Punch_, gave the name of "Crystal Palace." In 1855 France, not to be outshone by England, opened in her turn a Universal Exhibition in the Champs Élysées, imitated in part from the glass structure designed by Sir Joseph Paxton, but less fairylike though, it may be, more substantial. Sixty years have passed since the opening of France's first Industrial Exhibition; held at a time when, before the introduction of steamboats and railways, it would have been difficult, even if it had been thought desirable, for foreign manufacturers to compete with the manufacturers of France. The French Exhibition was held at the very height of the Crimean war; a sad reply to those who in the Universal Exhibition of 1851 saw a promise, if not a guarantee, of perpetual peace. Once more in 1867 the illusory nature of the belief that international commerce must put an end to international war was at least indicated by the important part played in the midst of the steel manufactures by Herr Krupp's breech-loading cannons, which were seen to do such dreadful work in the campaign of 1870. Even while the Exhibition was being held the Luxemburg difficulty seemed on the point of bringing France and Prussia into the field. The building erected for the first of France's International Exhibitions having been found too small, the second and third, in 1867 and 1878, took new territory in the Champ de Mars; and in addition to the principal building a number of so-called annexes or supplementary buildings were established, chiefly for the display of machinery; while, besides the Champ de Mars, the fourth, held in 1889, took in the Avenue Suffren, the Quai d'Orsay, the terrace of the Invalides, the banks of the Seine, and the Garden of the Trocadéro. [Illustration: VIEW SHOWING EXHIBITION OF 1889.] The Champ de Mars in its old character had now entirely disappeared. The Minister of War had strongly objected to its utilisation for peace purposes when it was first proposed that a temporary building for machinery in connection with the Exhibition of 1867 should be erected on a plain which had hitherto been reserved for military exercises and manoeuvres. Once invaded, the Champ de Mars was soon to be fully occupied, and the last and greatest of the Paris Universal Exhibitions swallowed up the Champ de Mars without even finding its vast space sufficient. The desert of former days had become the most frequented place in the world. More than that, it was now a spot where the whole world was represented--Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Australasia, with their different human types, their animals, their plants, their minerals, their natural products, their industries, their sciences, and their fine arts. An immense number of buildings in every form, in every style, and of every period had been erected. Domes, steeples, towers, cupolas, minarets, and factory chimneys stood out against the clear sky of Paris; and in the midst of this confused architecture were seen the large green masses of the winter gardens. The whole, beheld from afar in a bird's-eye view, formed an enormous ellipsis, with the marvellous Eiffel Tower in the centre. M. Eiffel, a French engineer, whose name would seem to denote a German origin, proposed the tower with which his name is now for ever associated five years before the date fixed for the Universal Exhibition. He was already known by some important works, such as the great iron bridge at Bordeaux, and several other bridges in the south of France; also by the Douro Viaduct, and by the bridge over the Szegedin Road, in Hungary. He had been employed in connection with the Universal Exhibition of 1867, where he had charge of the machinery annex. The Americans had proposed to commemorate the Philadelphia Exhibition of 1875 by a tower one thousand feet in height, equal to about 305 French metres. But they abandoned the project, which was to be realised by M. Eiffel, whose tower is within five metres of the height contemplated by the architects and engineers of Philadelphia. The calculations for the Eiffel Tower, formed entirely of iron trellis work, had been so carefully made that when the component parts, prepared separately, were brought to the workshops of the Champ de Mars to be verified and adjusted, they fitted to the greatest perfection. To give an idea of the dimensions of the Eiffel Tower it may be mentioned that the towers of Notre-Dame rise to a height of sixty-six metres above the level of the soil, while the Cathedral of Cologne, the loftiest in the world, does not exceed 159 metres. To go back to the remotest antiquity, the Eiffel Tower is half as high again as the notorious Tower of Babel, of which the altitude was 625 feet, otherwise 208 metres and a few centimetres. At its base the tower measures, on each of its four sides, 100 metres, and it slopes up to a platform at the summit which measures, on each side, ten metres. The first platform, with immense rooms for different purposes, is sixty-six metres above the level of the soil; just eight metres less than the towers of Notre-Dame, and it presents a surface of 5,000 square metres. It may be reached either by a staircase of 350 steps, or by a lift. The second platform stands 115 metres above the level of the soil, and measures thirty metres on each side, the area of the floor being 1,400 square metres. Here the Paris _Figaro_ established a printing office, whence issued the special edition of the _Eiffel Figaro_, in which were printed the names of all the visitors. The third platform, 276 metres in height, can only be reached by lift. It is surmounted by a campanile, or bell tower, in the Italian style, twenty-four metres in height, which is divided into apartments for scientific experiments, and which includes M. Eiffel's reception rooms. At the very top of the structure is a light, of the power employed in the great French lighthouses. The view from the Eiffel Tower becomes naturally more and more vast as one ascends; and M. Eiffel has had maps drawn showing the points visible from the third, or highest platform, to the ordinary sight. This map is exhibited on the third platform. On the north may be distinguished two villages in the department of the Somme, seventy kilometres from Paris (four kilometres = two-and-a-half miles); on the north-east the forest of Hallatte, at the back of Cenlis, distant seventy-five kilometres; on the east two hills in the direction of Château Thierry, eighty-two kilometres; on the south-east the environs of La Ferté-Bernard, in the department of the Marne, eighty-two kilometres; on the south, the other side of Étampes, sixty-two kilometres; on the south-west the Cathedral of Chartres and a hill at the back, eighty-three kilometres; on the west the Château of Versailles, the chapel of Dreux, and the environs of Dourdan, at a distance of fifty kilometres; and finally on the north-west the forest of Lyons, ninety kilometres. Telescopic distances have not been published. It can be seen, however, that this loftiest of observatories would be of immense use to Paris in case of her being again approached by invading armies. The Eiffel Tower was one of the greatest attractions of the Exhibition of 1889; and it remains a lasting memorial of that greatest of great exhibitions, which, on certain Sundays and holidays, attracted as many as 400,000 visitors. It has been calculated that it received altogether twenty-five million visitors--or, what is not quite the same thing, twenty-five million visits--which gives an average of 139,000 daily. Apart from the rich and varied interest belonging to the manufactures, the works of art, the products of all kinds, natural and artificial, that were on view, the Exhibition possessed a high significance in a political sense. It showed to Europe and to the world that France had more than recovered from the calamities of the war, and that she was once more in the very foremost rank of civilised powers. As in all exhibitions, the scientific departments attracted less attention, and were less frequented than the restaurants and the refreshment rooms; though here, also, there were opportunities for study, especially for those interested in ethnology. Universal exhibitions have been compared to small towns, but they bear a greater resemblance to small worlds; and this was particularly the case with the Paris Exhibition of 1889, which was a microcosm on rather a large scale. There was no part of the world unrepresented in its varied departments, especially in the departments consecrated to eating and drinking, where national dishes and beverages were served by attendants in national costume. Here, side by side with an Algerian or Turkish coffee-house, where Mocha of guaranteed authenticity was provided, with narghilis, chiboucks, and Oriental cigarettes as appropriate accompaniments, stood a Dutch tavern purveying genuine curaçoa, or a Bavarian beerhouse. Vienna was in evidence by its so-called "cutlets" of chopped meat, and Austria generally, together with Hungary, by rare and characteristic wines. The Spanish Café was as remarkable for the black mantillas, with eyes to match, of the waitresses, as for its Malaga and its Xeres. The Danish Café was distinguished by its kümmel, and the Swedish Café by its punch, made in the Swedish style, and handed to the customer (also in the Swedish fashion) by fair-haired, fresh-complexioned Swedish maidens. The Russian traktir, taken in connection with specimens of Russian village huts, formed a compendium of Russian popular life, in a country where the popular and the aristocratic, often strangely opposed, are sometimes strangely intermingled. The wooden _isbas_, with their high roofs, curiously surmounted by semblances of horses' heads, which have not only a picturesque, but a mystical significance--true examples of Russian rural architecture--showed such artistic carving above the portico, and at other points, that many a dull cynic declined to regard them as authentic, and held them to be mere fabrications, intended to astonish and delude the foreigner, even as Catherine II. is supposed to have been deluded by the village panoramas got up for her benefit in desert tracts by the ingenious Potemkin. In England and other countries which are supposed to have attained the highest point of civilisation, the humbler classes know nothing of art work in connection with their daily life. But the Russian peasant, poor and uneducated, tasting meat once, perhaps, in a month, and living principally on black bread, salt cucumbers, dried mushrooms, and porridge, wears a costume full of colour, a red shirt, or a blue kaftan with a scarlet sash; and he adorns in his own rough but picturesque fashion the house he lives in, and every article of its modest furniture. The Russian peasant, like the peasant in other countries, makes none too frequent a use of the towel; but every towel that he possesses is ornamented with an embroidered fringe, worked by women who have never studied in any sort of art school, but who have acquired certain arts by tradition, and possibly through inherited aptitude. The Russian peasantry are still, for the most part, ignorant of reading and writing. But when the whole population of the Russian Empire is sent to school its native artistic faculties will, it is to be feared, disappear. At present the brain of the poor moujik must somehow occupy itself during his periods of leisure; and it works for the most part--and exclusively when he happens to be quite unlettered--through eye and hand. At the Russian restaurant, or traktir, such national delicacies as caviar, dried salmon, pickled cucumbers, salt mushrooms, the ordinary components of the Russian zakouska or præprandium, were tasted by the visitor to the great Exhibition with less avidity than curiosity. These excellent comestibles (only one has got to know them first) were, if the Russian mode was followed, washed down with a glass of _vodka_; not, it must be admitted, the ordinary _vodka_ of the Russian rural districts, but _vodka_ of a more refined description, as swallowed (at least by the men) at the simple preparatory lunches given immediately before dinner at the houses of the great. [Illustration: VIEW FROM THE FIRST PLATFORM OF THE EIFFEL TOWER.] Those were wrong who, at the Russian restaurants of the Exhibition, confined themselves to making the acquaintance of the strange preparations offered at every well-ordered zakouska; for Russia has a cuisine of her own well worthy of practical study--a cuisine which, like Russian civilisation, consists partly of what is truly Russian, but largely of what has been adapted or simply borrowed from various foreign nations. The _stchee_, or cabbage soup, the _borsch_, or beetroot soup, the _oukha_, or fish soup, and the _batvinia_, or iced soup of Russia, are thoroughly national, and, except that the Poles have also an iced soup called _cholodiec_, are not to be found in any other country. The Russians have many solid dishes, too (such as boiled sucking-pig with horse-radish sauce) which are quite peculiar to Russia; but, on the other hand, they have adopted all kinds of entrées from the French, together with various dishes of German and of Viennese origin; while they have likewise, in the art of cookery, taken lessons from their eastern neighbours. Roumania, Servia, and what remains of Turkey were represented by dishes, drinks, and graceful female figures, all intensely national. Even such unpicturesque countries as England and America had their characteristic refreshment places. The English bars, served by much admired English barmaids, practised in the wiles and stratagems of casual flirtation, had many frequenters; while the American bars, typical of a country where women and liquor are becomingly kept apart, attracted amateurs of all classes and from all countries. Nor must Italy be forgotten; the land which gave to France not only its music and its drama, but also its ices and its pastry. It is believed that in some of the cafés whose appearance was most strikingly foreign, France was secretly represented; for numbers of young women attired in garments of Oriental make, while perfectly ignorant of Eastern languages, talked fluently, and often very agreeably, in French. [Illustration: THE TROCADÉRO.] "Trocadéro" is the name of one of the forts which the army of the Duke of Angoulême, operating in Spain, found it necessary to take before advancing upon Cadiz. The stronghold in question was constructed on an island of the same name, which, apart from walls, bastions, and batteries, was defended against assailants by a broad canal, in which, even at low tide, the water was four feet deep. The French approached the Trocadéro by regular siege works, and, after completing their second parallel, prepared to take the place by assault. The attack was made on the 15th of August, 1823, at three o'clock in the morning, just before daybreak, that is to say, when the Spanish garrison, trusting overmuch to the supposed efficiency of the water defences, were by no means on the alert. The French troops passed the water without firing a shot, scaled the walls, turned the guns and wall-pieces against the Spaniards, and, acting with great rapidity, were soon in possession of the fort. CHAPTER XXII. THE HÔTEL DE VILLE AND CENTRAL PARIS. The Hôtel de Ville--Its History--In 1848--The Communards. If the Place de la Concorde, with the line of the Champs Élysées leading from it in one direction, and that of the Rue Royale and the line of boulevards in another, may be regarded as one of the most central points of Paris, the administrative centre is to be found in the Hôtel de Ville on the east side of that Place de l'Hôtel de Ville which was the heart of ancient Paris, or at least of so much of ancient Paris as stood on the right bank of the Seine. The Hôtel de Ville, burnt by the Communards in 1871 as part of their general plan of incendiarism, was historically, as well as architecturally, one of the most interesting buildings in Paris. In spite of the modifications and restorations which it had undergone during the last two centuries of its existence, it never lost its original character. The Hôtel de Ville was the palace of the burgesses and merchants of the city, and there was a certain significance in its situation, just opposite the palace of the kings, with whom the representatives of the city were often, so far as they dared, in conflict. It had witnessed, moreover, many interesting scenes. It was always the head-quarters of insurrection so long as the struggle took place only between the monarchy and the middle classes. It perished in a struggle between the middle classes and the working men. The first important part played by the Hôtel de Ville in its communal character dates from the time of Étienne Marcel--most ambitious of Paris mayors--in the fourteenth century. Long, however, before the pretensions of Étienne Marcel, under the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius, privileged corporations existed in Paris under the name of Nautæ Parisiaci, who did a nautical business on the banks of the Seine. The Maison aux Piliers, where Étienne Marcel presided over the Municipality of the period, stood on the site afterwards occupied by the Hôtel de Ville, of which the first stone was laid by Francis I. on the 15th of July, 1533. "While the stone was being laid," says the annalist Du Breuil, "fifes, drums, trumpets, and clarions were sounded, together with artillery and fifty sack-butts of the town of Paris. At the same time were rung the chimes of Saint-Jean-en-Grève, of Saint-Esprit, and of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie. In the middle of the Grève wine was running, and tables were furnished with bread and wine for all comers, while cries were uttered in a loud voice by the common people: 'Vive le Roy et messieurs de la ville!'" An account of the before-mentioned ceremony has been left by Boccadoro. In spite of the pompous proceedings by which the laying of the foundation-stone was accompanied, the building of the Hôtel de Ville was proceeded with very slowly, and during various foreign and civil wars interrupted altogether. The south wing had been erected under Henri II. The north wing was not completed until the reign of Louis XIII. The building was finished during the reign of Henri IV., whose equestrian statue by Pierre Biard marked, until the Revolution, the principal entrance. After suffering various injuries during the wars of the Fronde, the figure of the once popular king was, in 1793, overturned and destroyed, to be afterwards replaced by a statue in bronze. Early in the eighteenth century the Hôtel de Ville had been found too small; and in 1749 it was proposed to reconstruct it on the other side of the Seine, on the site of the Hôtel Conti, where now stands the Mint. This project, however, met with a lively opposition on the part of Parisians generally; and in 1770 it was decided to enlarge the existing structure. Funds, however, were not forthcoming; and when, nineteen years afterwards, the Revolution broke out, the Hospital, or rather Hospice of the Holy Ghost, and the Church of Saint-Jean, suppressed as religious establishments, were, as buildings, annexed to the Hôtel de Ville, which they adjoined. After the Hôtel de Ville had been destroyed in 1871 by the incendiaries of the Commune, the statues of Charlemagne, of Francis I., and of Louis XIV. were found in the ashes. They had shared the fate of the equestrian figure of Henri IV. at the time of the Revolution; and they were afterwards replaced by groups of sculpture which have no sort of connection with the building. The Hôtel de Ville has an interesting history of its own. In 1411 Charles VI. restored to the Paris municipality, in acknowledgment of the courage shown by the Parisians against the English, several privileges which had been abolished or had fallen into abeyance. Then, during the troubles of the Armagnacs and the Burgundians, the Paris Municipality broke into two hostile factions; but at length, from hatred of the Armagnac party, the municipality accepted the English domination. After the return, however, of Charles VII. and during the whole of the second half of the fifteenth century the magistrates of the capital showed themselves thoroughly loyal and absolutely devoted to the interests of the monarchy. Louis XII. and Francis I. respected and even augmented the privileges of the Hôtel de Ville. But during the religious wars the municipality again split up into two factions. It took part, as a whole, in the massacre of St. Bartholomew, believing that it was thus helping to suppress conspiracy directed against the life of the king; but it made every effort to stop bloodshed when it understood the true character of the infamous attack upon the Huguenots. Towards the end of the sixteenth century the municipal officers were chosen from among the most determined supporters of the Catholic League; in spite of which the Hôtel de Ville made every effort to bring Henri IV. to Paris. In his gratitude, this monarch made lavish promises to the burgesses; and he kept them. In 1589 Henri III. had revoked all the privileges granted by his predecessors to the burgesses of Paris. The day after his entry into the capital Henri IV. re-established the municipal body, and gave back to it the whole of its ancient liberties. Then it was that the municipality resolved to place the king's statue before the principal gate of the Hôtel de Ville. During the reign of Louis XIII. Richelieu abolished the principle of election which constituted the very basis of the municipal authority of Paris. Various important offices, instead of being elective, were now made permanent appointments under the control of the king; and from this epoch dates the decline of the Paris municipal body. Under the ancient _régime_ Louis XIV. deprived the Town Council of all power; and communal liberty had disappeared in Paris when the great Revolution broke out. Then, however, the Hôtel de Ville became once more a centre of political activity; and it was at the Hôtel de Ville, on the eve of the taking of the Bastille, that the discussions were held which led immediately to the attack on the fortress-prison. The so-called "electors" of Paris, themselves chosen the moment before from among the Paris population, had assembled under the presidency of M. de Flesselles, provost of the merchants, when a report was spread that he had concealed several barrels of gunpowder in the cellars of the Hôtel de Ville. This was looked upon as a reactionary measure intended to prevent the meditated attack on the hated stronghold; and people rushed to the Hôtel de Ville to distribute the powder at once and with their own hands. The Bastille had scarcely been taken when the captors, returning to the Hôtel de Ville, called out, "Down with De Flesselles," who, attacked in the Hall of Assembly, escaped by a convenient door. He had scarcely, however, got outside when he was recognised and shot dead. With the death of the Provost de Flesselles the ancient corporation of the burgesses of Paris, with their privileges of holding courts, commercial, civil, and even criminal, came to an end. On its ruins was raised the Commune of Paris, which played so terrible a part in the Revolution, and especially during the Reign of Terror. The Hôtel de Ville has been called the "palace of revolution," and during the last hundred years, ever since the era of revolutions set in, it has well deserved its name. The Hôtel de Ville served as headquarters to the Commune of Paris, and to the Committee of Public Safety. The registers of the Commune are still preserved in the Archives, and furnish the only authentic materials relating to the history of the most sanguinary period of the French Revolution. Under the Consulate and the Empire the municipal power, like the legislative power, was abolished; and the Hôtel de Ville was now only known as the scene from time to time of public entertainments. Crowds were in the habit of assembling before the Hôtel de Ville to hear the victories of Napoleon proclaimed. On the occasion of the Emperor's marriage to Marie Louise the City of Paris revived the entertainments which it had been in the habit of giving to the ancient kings. Napoleon expressed a desire to present his wife to the burgesses of Paris assembled in the rooms of the Hôtel de Ville, which from this time, as long as the Empire lasted, gave an annual ball on the 15th of August. The Restoration did nothing for the Hôtel de Ville. In 1830, during the Revolution which placed Louis Philippe on the throne in lieu of Charles X., the Hôtel de Ville was the chief object of contention between the two parties; and it was in the Place de Grève, or Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, as it was afterwards to be called, that the most terrible conflict of the "three days" occurred. Taken and re-taken, the Hôtel de Ville at last remained in the power of the insurgents; and the tricolour flag, which for the previous fifteen years had been looked upon as an emblem of sedition, now floated once more above its walls. The provisional government, established there under the inspiration of La Fayette, offered a crown to Louis Philippe. "A throne surrounded by Republican institutions," such, in a few words, was the celebrated "programme of the Hôtel de Ville." The throne remained, but the Republican institutions disappeared; and Louis Philippe made no step towards re-establishing the very institution--the Municipal Council--which had made him king. [Illustration: HÔTEL DE VILLE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. (_From an Engraving by Rigaud._)] Eighteen years later another revolution was to take place; and after the flight of Louis Philippe a provisional government was again proclaimed--proclaimed itself, that is to say. Lamartine was at the head of it, and without showing any aptitude for exercising power, the celebrated writer, whose popularity had been much increased by his recently published "History of the Girondists," delivered a number of remarkable speeches at the Hôtel de Ville. Hating all government, a portion of the populace forced its way into the passages and approached the room where Lamartine was engaged with laws and proclamations, when the hero of the hour laid down his pen, rushed towards the invading crowd and called upon it to retire. No less than seven times did he repeat his adjurations to the mob, till, at last, some "man of the people," foreseeing that the republic about to be established would not be of the "red" hue desired by the extreme Revolutionists, called him a traitor and demanded his head. [Illustration: ATTACK ON THE HÔTEL DE VILLE, 1830.] "My head!" replied Lamartine. "Would to heaven that every one of you had it on his shoulders. You would then be calmer and more reasonable, and the Revolution would be accomplished with less difficulty." The day had been won, but the battle was to begin again on the morrow; and now once more Lamartine stilled the troubled waters by a few eloquent phrases. The question had been raised whether the tricolour flag, or the red flag of the Reign of Terror, should be adopted. Lamartine traced the history of both; and the crowd, carried away by the warmth of his oratory, decided with acclamation that the flag of the new republic must be the flag of the early days of the great Revolution, the flag under which the great battles of the Consulate and the Empire had been gained. It will be remembered that when, in 1789, a leaf torn from a tree of the Palais Royal by Camille Desmoulins was made a sign of recognition, green was on the point of being adopted for the new national flag. It was rejected, however, when someone pointed out that green was the colour of the Artois family; and thereupon blue and red, the colours of the town of Paris, were assumed, to which, out of compliment to the monarchy, favourable in the first instance to the claims of the people, white, the colour of the French kings, was added. Thus the tricolour flag became the flag of the Revolution, as, during successive changes of government, it was equally the flag of the Consulate and the Empire. At the Restoration the Monarchy committed the grave fault of re-introducing the white flag of the ancient _régime_, which Louis Philippe had the good sense to replace by the Republican and Imperial tricolour. [Illustration: STATUE OF ÉTIENNE MARCEL ON THE QUAI HÔTEL DE VILLE.] When in June, 1848, the insurrection of unemployed workmen broke out, demanding, in the words of certain insurgents at Lyons, "bread or bullets," the Hôtel de Ville became once more an object of contest between the opposing forces; but the supporters of the Democratic and Socialistic Republic were to be defeated, and the Hôtel de Ville did not, during the terrible days of June, change hands. As long as the Republic lasted--less than four years--the municipal institutions showed signs of vitality, which, however, were to disappear on the _coup d'état_ of December 2nd, 1851; and throughout the second Empire the Hôtel de Ville was occupied, in lieu of an independent Municipal Council, by a sort of consultative commission without mandate and without authority, attached to the Prefect in order to verify his accounts with closed eyes. By way of compensation, however, the Hôtel de Ville was encouraged to give balls, to which the chief of the State accorded his gracious patronage. It was at the Hôtel de Ville that the Prefect of the Seine, M. Berger, entertained Queen Victoria, and that his successor, Baron Haussman, received in like manner the Emperor of Russia, while proposing to extend his hospitality to the Sultan. The reception of the Emperor Alexander II. did not pass off without an incident which caused a very painful impression at the time, and which the French would, now more than ever, gladly forget; for as the Tsar was about to enter the Hôtel de Ville he was saluted with cries of "Vive la Pologne!" If the ball given in honour of the Emperor Alexander was marred by a mere exclamation, the one which it had been proposed to offer to the Sultan of Turkey was stopped by a tragic event. News had suddenly arrived of the execution of the Emperor Maximilian. Thus was marked the failure of the Emperor Napoleon's Mexican policy; and thus disappeared for ever his fantastic dreams of a confederation of Latin, or Latinised, or Latin-influenced nations, under the patronage of France. Up to this time Napoleon III. had been marching from one success to another. The turning point in his career had been reached, and the failure in Mexico was to be followed by failures in every direction. The ball in honour of the Sultan having been abandoned, it was nevertheless thought necessary to give him some idea of what it would have been had it really taken place. Accordingly the Hôtel de Ville was lighted up, and the Commander of the Faithful was escorted through the deserted ball-rooms and saloons, the officer appointed to accompany him explaining, as he passed from one apartment to another, "Here you would have seen the high functionaries of State in their uniforms with full decorations; here most of the dancing would have taken place, and you would have been enraptured by the sight of beautiful women in the most charming dresses; here would have been the orchestra, the best in Paris, and probably in the whole world." This strange jest must have reminded the Sultan of one of the most famous books in the Mahometan world, that "Thousand and One Nights," with its tale of an honoured guest to whom a dinner without viands was offered. Some months later the Hôtel de Ville was the scene of a grand dinner given in honour of the Emperor of Austria, brother of the unfortunate Maximilian. Here, for the first time in modern history, privileged guests were admitted by invitation cards to galleries, from which the spectacle of two sovereigns dining together could be enjoyed. Burton, in his "Anatomy of Melancholy," recommends the sight of two kings engaged in single combat as a cure for atrabiliousness. It was probably as an improvement on Burton's remedy, so difficult to procure, that a private view of two Emperors sitting together at table was offered to a favoured few. After the breakdown of the Second Empire and the flight of the Empress from Paris, the Government of National Defence, consisting of all the Paris Deputies, had its head-quarters at the Hôtel de Ville; and here, when the so-called government had given place to the Central Committee, and the Central Committee to the Commune, the last-named body held its deliberations. In 1875 the Hôtel de Ville was reconstructed, with certain modifications and amplifications, on the lines of the ancient one, burned down by the Communards. The new edifice contains either in niches, or on external pinnacles, rather more than 100 statues, reproducing the features of all kinds of celebrities, the whole of them belonging to France, with the single exception of Cortone, born in Italy. The collection includes the architects of the original building, some of the most famous merchant-provosts, mayors of Paris, prefects of the Seine, and municipal councillors, among whom may be mentioned Michel Lallier, who delivered Paris from the English, François Miron, and Pierre Viole. Literature, the stage, and music are largely represented in the effigies of Beaumarchais, Béranger, Boileau, F. Halévy, Hérold, Marivaux, Molière, Picard, Alfred de Musset, Charles Perrault, Quinault, Regnard, George Sand, Scribe, etc.; nor have architecture, sculpture, painting, and the industrial arts been forgotten in this spacious Walhalla, where are found the statues of Boucher, Boulle (known among Englishmen, in connection with various kinds of inlaid work, as "Bühl,") Chardin, Corot, Daubigny, Louis David, Eugène Delacroix, Decamps, Firmin Didot, the well-known printer, Jean Goujon, Gros, Lancret, Le Brun, Le Nôtre, Pierre Lescot, Lesueur, Mansard, Germain Pilon, Henri Regnault, Théodore Rousseau, Horace Vernet, etc. Mingled with the writers, composers, painters, sculptors, and architects, are statesmen and historians such as Cardinal de Richelieu, the Marquis d'Argenson, the Duke de Saint-Simon, De Thou, Pierre de l'Estoile, and Michelet. Two illustrious tragedians figure in this chosen company, Lekain and Talma. The new Hôtel de Ville has been furnished with magnificence and good taste. The staircases are very fine, but the essentially modern character of the internal arrangements is sufficiently shown by the lifts which work between the basement and the upper storeys. [Illustration: THE MUNICIPAL COUNCIL CHAMBER, HÔTEL DE VILLE.] On the side of the Hôtel de Ville looking towards the river are the private apartments of the Prefect of the Seine, who performs the functions of Mayor of Paris. In the left wing sit the clerks, engaged in duties as complicated as those of a Ministerial bureau, and here also is the hall in which the sittings of the Municipal Council are held. The prefectorial functions are divided between two prefects: the Prefect of the Seine, whose duties are exclusively administrative; and the Prefect of Police, who attends not only to the Police of Paris, but, in a general way, to Police matters throughout the country. The finances of the city or town of Paris ("ville de Paris" is its traditional, historic name) are regulated, under the authority of the Prefect of the Seine, by a Municipal Council composed of eighty members elected on universal suffrage, four members for each _arrondissement_, or one for each _quartier_. These eighty councillors form the Council-General of the Seine, whose principal duty it is to prepare the budget of the department. They are forbidden to occupy themselves in any manner with politics. Though the prefects of the various departments are not supposed in France to exercise political functions, they are really political officers--that is to say, they are appointed by the Central Government, and frequently, though in many cases secretly, do the work of political agents. During the invasion of 1870 they were regarded as political officers, and everywhere retired as the invaders advanced; the mayors meanwhile, as municipal officers, everywhere remaining. It has been said that the duties of the Prefecture of Paris are shared by the Prefect of the Seine and the Prefect of Police, and that the former conducts his business at the Hôtel de Ville. His associate, though connected with the Hôtel de Ville, has his establishment, with its various bureaux, at the Palais de Justice in the "Cité." The island of the Cité, the ancient Lutetia, the cradle of modern Paris, has possessed from time immemorial, and certainly from the first years of the Roman conquest, a religious edifice, first a Pagan temple and afterwards a Christian church, on the western extremity of the Parisian island; while the eastern extremity has been always occupied by a palace reserved for the Government, and for the administration of justice. [Illustration: ÎLE ST. LOUIS.] CHAPTER XXIII. THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE. The _Palais de Justice_--Its Historical Associations--Disturbances in Paris--Successive Fires--During the Revolution--The Administration of Justice--The _Sainte-Chapelle_. Next to Notre-Dame the most interesting edifice in the island of the City, at the corner of the Quai de l'Horloge, is the Palais de Justice, which dates from the time of the Romans. So much at least has been inferred, apart from the tradition on the subject, from the fact that when some years ago the building was reconstructed, Roman remains were discovered in the foundations. All, however, that can be affirmed with historical certainty as to the origin of the Palace is that towards the end of the ninth century it existed in the form of a fortress, and was the residence of the Frankish kings of the second race. It played an important part in the defence of Paris against the Normans invading the city by water from Rouen and the lower Seine. At the Palais de Justice lived the Counts of Paris, and afterwards the kings of the line which came to an end with the unfortunate "Louis Capet" (as in Revolutionary parlance he was called) who lost his head beneath the guillotine. Louis le Gros, the protector of the Communes, died at the Palace in 1137. Philip Augustus, while undertaking the entire reconstruction of the Château du Louvre, made the Palace his habitual residence, and it was there that he married Ingelburga, sister of Canute, King of Denmark. Under the reign of this monarch, the court or tribunal of the King received for the first time the name of Parliament, its functions being to discuss and decide questions submitted to it by the Sovereign, and to pronounce on the illegality or legality of certain acts. In these days the royal residence was not luxuriously furnished, hay doing duty for carpet during the winter, and a matting of weeds during the summer. These primitive coverings of the palatial floors were given by Philip Augustus to the hospital known as the Hôtel-Dieu whenever the Court left Paris. The King's Palace was called the Palace of Justice from the fact that here the Sovereign held Court, and decided the cases submitted to him by his subjects, sometimes with, sometimes without, the assistance of the before-mentioned Parliament. Here, too, St. Louis formed in a hall adjoining the Holy Chapel a library, in which he collected copies of all valuable manuscripts placed at his disposal. This library was open to learned and studious men, with whom the king loved to converse. Philip the Fair enlarged the Palace; and under his reign the Parliament, formerly styled "ambulatory," became sedentary: it no longer, that is to say, followed the king in his journeys from one residence to another. The members of Parliament had lodgings assigned to them in that part of the building now occupied by the prison of the Conciergerie. Under the reign of Charles V. the first great clock that had ever been seen in France was placed in a square tower on the quay; whence the name "Quai de l'Horloge." It was in the Palais de Justice that Charles VI. received the Greek Emperor, Manuel Palæologus, and the Emperor Sigismund, King of Hungary. A strange incident happened in connection with the visit of the latter sovereign. He had expressed a desire to witness the pleading of a case before the Parliament, and at the beginning of the process astonished everyone by taking the seat reserved for the King of France. One of the parties to the suit was about to lose his action on the ground that he was not a nobleman, whereupon, in a spirit of equity and chivalry, not appreciated by the assembly, Sigismund rose from his seat, and calling to him the pleader, who, from no fault of his own, was getting defeated, made him a knight; which completely changed the aspect of affairs, and enabled the man who was in the right to gain his case. It was at the Palace of Justice that the marriage of Henry V. of England with Catherine of France, daughter of Charles VI., was celebrated. Here, too, Henry VI., King of England, resided at the time of his coronation as King of France. Under the reign of Charles VII. certain clerks, "_les clercs de la basoche_," obtained permission to represent "farces and moralities" in the great banqueting hall, an immense marble table at one of the extremities of the hall serving as stage. According to a writer of the time, this table was "so long, so broad, and so thick, that no sheet of marble so thick, so broad, and so long was ever known elsewhere." The morality of the so-called "moralities" seems to have been more than doubtful; for after a time they were stopped by reason of their alleged impropriety. This was in 1476. Soon, however, the clerks attached to the Palace of Justice reappeared on the marble table; when they again got themselves into trouble by satirising the Government of Charles VIII., and even Charles himself. Several of the authors and actors concerned in the piece were imprisoned, and were only liberated at the instance of the Bishop of Paris, who claimed for them "benefit of clergy." The clerks of the tribunals and the students of the university were, in those days, troublesome folk. The students have always formed an exceptional class in Paris. Unlike the university students in England, they live in the capital, are exposed to its temptations, and take part in its struggles. During the present century in commotions and insurrections they have always been on the popular side. In former times, however, they formed a party in themselves; and the students of Paris would engage with the citizens in formidable contests, which, with exaggerated features, resembled the "town and gown" rows of which our own universities have so often been the scene. "In the year 1200," says the author of "Singularités Historiques," "a German gentleman studying at Paris sent his servant to a tavern to buy some wine. The servant was maltreated, whereupon the German students came to the aid of their fellow-countryman, and served the wine-dealer so roughly that they left him nearly dead. The townspeople now came to avenge the tavern-keeper; and, taking up arms, attacked the house of the German gentleman and his fellow-countrymen. There was great excitement throughout the town. The German gentleman and five students of his nation were killed. The Provost of Paris, Thomas by name, had been at the head of the Parisians in this onslaught; and the heads of the schools made a complaint on the subject to King Philip, who, without waiting for any further information, arrested the provost and several of his adherents, demolished their houses, tore up their vines and their fruit-trees, and fearing lest all the foreign students should desert Paris, issued a decree for the protection of the schools and those who frequented them. Thomas, for having incited instead of preventing disorder, was condemned to perpetual imprisonment." In 1221 the students of the university, encouraged by the privileges granted to them by Philip Augustus, gave themselves up to all kinds of excesses, carrying away women and committing outrages, thefts, and murders; whereupon Bishop Guillaume pronounced excommunication against all who went about by night or day with arms. As the decree of excommunication produced little effect, the bishop caused the most seditious to be put in prison, and drove the others out of the town, thus re-establishing tranquillity. In 1223 a violent quarrel and disturbance broke out between the scholars and the inhabitants. Three hundred and twenty students were killed and thrown into the Seine. Several professors went to the Pope to complain of so cruel a persecution; and some of them withdrew, with their students, from the capital. Paris was interdicted; and its schools, so superior to those of the other towns of France, remained without professors or scholars, and were closed. During the thirteenth century there was as much credulity and fanaticism as there was anarchy in Paris. This was fully shown when a new sect, composed entirely of priests, declared itself. Its members denied the Real Presence, looked upon most of the ceremonies of the Church as useless, and ridiculed the worship of saints and relics. They addressed themselves particularly to women, persuading them that nothing they did was sinful so long as it was done from charity. An ecclesiastic named Amaury, the chief of this sect, set forth his doctrine to the Pope, who condemned it. Amaury, it is said, died of grief, and was buried in the cemetery of St. Nicholas-in-the-Fields. The disciples he left behind him were nearly all ecclesiastics, or professors of the University of Paris. There was, however, one goldsmith among them, who, we are assured, uttered prophecies. To discover the members of this sect a stratagem was employed. Raoul de Nemours and another priest pretended to share the opinions of the heretics, that they might afterwards denounce them. The offenders were then arrested and taken to the Place des Champeaux, when three bishops and doctors in theology deprived them of their degrees, and condemned them to be burnt alive. Fourteen of the unhappy men underwent this frightful punishment and supported it with courage. Four were excepted and condemned to perpetual imprisonment. The execution took place on the 21st of October, 1210. [Illustration: THE QUAI DE L'HORLOGE.] The bishops and doctors, assembled in council to pronounce judgment, condemned at the same time two books of Aristotle on metaphysics; and after delivering them over to the flames forbade all persons to transcribe them, read them, or "retain the contents in their memory" under pain of excommunication. Under Louis XII. the irrepressible clerks of the Basoche ridiculed the sovereign as the personification of Avarice. The king was urged to treat the presumptuous young men as his predecessors had often done. "Let them play in all freedom," he replied. "Let them speak as they will of me and my Court. If they notice abuses why should they not point them out, when so many persons, reputed sage, are unwilling to do so?" After the death of Louis XII. the representations of the clerks were subjected to a more and more severe censorship; and towards the end of the sixteenth century the Theatre of the Marble Table was given up altogether. To pass to the reign of Francis I., it was at the Palais de Justice that this monarch received the challenge from the Emperor Charles V. His successors took up their residence in the Louvre, abandoning altogether the ancient palace, which was now occupied exclusively by the Law Courts. In 1618 a great portion of the building was destroyed by fire; and it was only by incurring great personal risk that the Registrar succeeded in saving the records of the Parliament. The fire was generally attributed to accomplices, real or supposed, of Ravaillac, the assassin of Henri IV. Although Ravaillac had declared himself solely responsible for the murder, and had received absolution only on condition of his swearing solemnly to the truth of his declaration, the police seemed resolved to implicate a number of other persons; and when a certain amount of evidence had been collected against them the suspected ones thought it judicious (so the story ran) to destroy all that had been written down against them. All the most characteristic, the most picturesque part of the building was destroyed, including the large hall lighted solely through windows of coloured glass, in which stood the statues of the Kings of France. Charles VII. had cut, with a chisel, the English King's face; and it was only by these mutilations that the statue of Henry VI. was recognised among the ruins. The famous marble table at the western extremity of the hall had been damaged beyond remedy by the flames. At the eastern extremity, the Chapel of Louis XI., in which that devout but treacherous monarch was represented kneeling to the Virgin, had been entirely destroyed. [Illustration: PONT AU CHANGE AND PALAIS DE JUSTICE.] Nearly all that remained of the ancient palace was the prison or "conciergerie," where Montgomery, who by mishap had slain his king in a tournament, and, at a later period, Damiens of the Four Horses had been confined. The tower of the conciergerie was for a long time called the Montgomery Tower. Besides the conciergerie, the hall known as the Salle des Pas Perdus and the so-called "Kitchen of Saint-Louis," with an immense chimney-piece in each of the four corners, formed part of the ancient building. In 1776 the Palais de Justice again took fire, and again was in great part reconstructed. In 1835, under Louis Philippe, the Town of Paris decided to enlarge it, and the plan by M. Huyot, the architect, was adopted by the Municipal Council in 1840. The royal sanction was then obtained; but Louis Philippe did not remain long enough on the throne to see the work of construction terminated. The Republican Government of 1848 stopped the building; and it was only under the Second Empire in 1854 that it was resumed, to be completed in 1868. More important by far than the re-alterations, additions, and reconstructions of which the Palais de Justice has in successive centuries been made the subject have been the changes in the French law, and in various matters connected with its administration. Up to the time of the Revolution citizens were arrested in the most arbitrary manner on mere suspicion, and imprisoned for an indefinite time without being able to demand justice in any form. Some half a dozen years before the uprising of 1789 the king had decreed that no one should be arrested except on a definite accusation; but the order was habitually set at nought. The Palais de Justice of the present day occupies about one third of the total surface of the Cité. Enclosed on the east by the Boulevard du Palais, on the west by the Rue de Harlay, on the north by the Quai de l'Horloge, and on the south by the Quai des Orfèvres, it forms a quadrilateral mass in which all styles are opposed and confused, from the feudal towers of the Quai de l'Horloge to the new buildings begun in Napoleon III.'s reign, but never completed. To the left of this strange agglomeration the air is pierced by the graceful spire of the Sainte-Chapelle, admirable monument of the piety and of the art of the middle ages. Some portions of the ancient Palace of Justice are preserved in the modern edifice, but only the substructures, as, for instance, in the northern buildings facing the Seine. The principal gate, and the central pavilion with its admirable façade at the bottom of the courtyard opening on to the Boulevard du Palais, were constructed under the reign of Louis XVI. The northern portion, from the clock tower, at the corner of the quay, to the third tower behind, has been restored or rebuilt in the course of the last thirty years. All the rest of the building is absolutely new. The clock tower, a fine specimen of the military architecture of the fourteenth century, was furnished in 1370 by order of Charles V. with the first large clock that had been seen in Paris, the work of a German, called in France Henri de Vic. To this clock the northern quay owes its name of "Quai de l'Horloge du Palais" or "Quai de l'Horloge." The bell suspended in the upper part of the tower is said to have sounded the signal for the massacre of the Protestants on the eve of St. Bartholomew's Day, August 24, 1572; a doubtful honour, which is also claimed for the bell of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois. The Palais de Justice, as it now exists, possesses a threefold character--legal, administrative, and punitive. Here cases are tried, here the Prefect of Police performs the multifarious duties of his office, and here criminals are imprisoned. Of the various law courts the Palais de Justice contains five: the Court of Cassation, in which appeal cases are finally heard on questions of form, but of form only; the Court of Appeal, the Court of Assizes, the Tribunal of First Instance, and the Tribunal of Police. These fill the halls of the immense building. The Court of Cassation, divided into three chambers, counts forty-eight counsellors, a first president, three presidents of chamber, a procurator-general, six advocates-general, a registrar-in-chief, four ordinary registrars, three secretaries of the court, a librarian, eight ushers, and a receiver of registrations and fines; altogether seventy-seven persons. The Court of Appeal, divided into seven chambers, is composed of a first president, seven presidents of chamber, sixty-four counsellors, a procurator-general, seven advocates-general, eleven substitutes attached to the court, a registrar-in-chief, and fourteen ordinary registrars; altogether 106 persons. The number of officials and clerks employed in the Tribunal of First Instance is still greater. Divided into eleven chambers, the tribunal comprises one president, eleven vice-presidents, sixty-two judges, and fifteen supplementary judges, a public prosecutor, twenty-six substitutes, a registrar-in-chief, and forty-five clerks of registration. As for the Police Court, it is presided over in turn by each of the twenty magistrates of Paris, two Commissaries of Police doing duty as assessors. With the addition of two registrars and a secretary the entire establishment consists of six persons. The entire number of judges, magistrates, registrars, and secretaries employed at the Palais de Justice amounts to 351; without counting a floating body of some hundreds of barristers, solicitors, ushers, and clerks, thronging like a swarm of black ants a labyrinth of staircases, corridors, and passages. Yet the Palais de Justice, constantly growing, is still insufficient for the multiplicity of demands made upon it. The history of the Palais de Justice is marked by the fires in which it has from time to time been burned down. The first of these broke out on the night of the 5th of March, 1618, when the principal hall and most of the buildings adjoining it were destroyed. The second, which took place on the 27th of October, 1737, consumed the buildings forming the Chamber of Accounts, situated at the bottom of the courtyard of the Sainte-Chapelle--an edifice of surpassing beauty, constructed in the fifteenth century by Jean Joconde, a monk of the Order of Saint Dominic. The third fire declared itself during the night of January 10, 1776, in the hall known as the Prisoners' Gallery, from which it spread to all the central buildings. In this conflagration perished the old Montgomery Tower. The last of the fires in which so many portions of the Palais de Justice have turn by turn succumbed, was lighted by order of the insurgent Commune on the 24th of May, 1871, when the troops from Versailles were entering Paris. The principal hall, the prison, the old towers with all the civil and criminal archives (in the destruction of the latter the insurgents may have been specially interested) were all consumed. These repeated catastrophes, together with numerous restorations, have left standing but very little of the ancient Palais de Justice. The central pavilion, reconstructed under Louis XVI. in accordance with the plans of the architect Desmaisons, is connected with two galleries of historical interest, on one side with the Galerie Mercière, on the other with the Galerie Marchande. The names of "Mercière" and "Marchande" recall the time when the galleries so named, as well as the principal hall and the outer walls of the palace, were occupied by stalls and booths in which young and pretty shop-girls sold all sorts of fashionable and frivolous trifles, such as ribbons, bows, and embroideries. Here, too, new books were offered for sale. Here Claude Barbin and his rivals sold to the patrons and patronesses of the stage the latest works of Corneille, Molière, and Racine. Here appointments of various kinds were made, but especially of one kind. The Palace Gallery, or Galerie du Palais, was the great meeting-place for the fashionable world until only a few years before the great Revolution, when it was deserted for the Palais Royal. Some of its little shops continued to live a meagre life until the reign of Louis Philippe. Now everything of the kind has disappeared, with the exception of two privileged establishments where "toques" and togas--in plain English, caps and gowns--can be bought, or even hired, by barristers attending the "palace." The entrance to the central building is from the Galerie Mercière, through a portico supported by Ionic columns, and surmounted by the arms of France. The visitor reaches a broad, well-lighted staircase, where, half-way up, stands in a niche an impressive statue of Law, the work of Gois, bearing in one hand a sceptre, and in the other the Book of the Law, inscribed with the legend "In legibus salus." [Illustration: THE CLOCK OF THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE.] The grand staircase of the Palais leads through a waiting-room, which serves also as a library, to the three first chambers of the Court of Appeal. The rooms are of a becomingly severe aspect. The walls are painted a greenish grey, of one uniform tint. The tribunal is sometimes oblong, sometimes in horse-shoe form. On the right sits the assessor representing the Minister of Justice, on the left the registrar on duty. In the "parquet," or enclosure beneath the tribunal, is the table of the usher, who calls the next case, executes the president's behests, and maintains order in the court, exclaiming "Silence, gentlemen," with the traditional voice and accent. The "parquet" is shut in by a balustrade technically known as the bar, on which lean the advocates as they deliver their speeches. The space furnished with benches which is reserved for them, and where plaintiff and defendant may also sit, is enclosed by a second bar, designed to keep off the public properly so-called, and prevent it from pressing too closely upon the court. There is no witness-box in a French court. The witness stands in the middle of the court and recites, often in a speech that has evidently been prepared beforehand, all he knows about the case under trial. [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE COURT OF ASSIZE.] Such is the general disposition of all the assize chambers in the Palais de Justice. Some, however, present features of their own. The first chamber, for instance, contains a magnificent Calvary, by Van Eyck; one of the rare objects of art which survive from the ancient ornamentation of the palace. On the centre of the picture, rising like a dome between two side panels, is the Saviour on the Cross. On His right is the Virgin supported by two holy women, by Saint John the Baptist and by Saint Louis, graced with the exact features of King Charles VII., under whose reign this masterpiece was executed. On the left are Saint John the Evangelist, Saint Denis, and Saint Charlemagne. Above the head of our Lord are the Holy Ghost and the Eternal Father surrounded by angels, while the background is occupied by a landscape less real than curious; for it represents the City of Jerusalem, the Tower of Nesle, the Louvre, and the Gothic buildings of the Palais de Justice. This work, by the great painter of Bruges, executed in the early part of the fifteenth century, was formerly in the Principal Hall of the Parliament, beneath the portrait of Louis XII., which the people (whose "father" he claimed to be) destroyed in 1793. The portion of the building which contains the three first chambers of the court--behind the portico opening on to the Galerie Mercière--escaped the fire of 1776. Its lateral and southern façade, turned towards the courtyard of the Sainte-Chapelle, is pierced with lofty windows, sculptured in the Renaissance style. It must have been constructed under the Valois, or under the reign of Henri IV. But it is difficult to ascertain its early history, for but few writers have given much attention to the subject. [Illustration: THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE.] [Illustration: THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE AND SAINTE-CHAPELLE.] The fifth, sixth, and seventh chambers of the Court of Appeal are all entered from the Galerie Marchande; while the fourth chamber stands in the north-east corner of the said gallery. On the left of the Galerie Mercière is the famous Salle des Pas Perdus, seventy-four metres long and twenty-eight broad. This is the great entrance hall to the courts generally. Why it should be called "Salle des Pas Perdus" is not evident, though the name may be due either to the "lost steps" of litigants bringing or defending actions without result, or, more probably, to the "lost steps" of those who walk wearily to and fro for an indefinite time, vainly expecting their case to be called on. Whatever the derivation of its name, the Salle des Pas Perdus is considered one of the finest halls in Europe. Twice has it been destroyed by fire and twice rebuilt. The first large hall of the palace, as it was at that time called, was built under Philip the Fair and finished towards 1313. It was adorned successively with the statues of the kings of France from Pharamond to Francis I.; the successful ones being represented with their hands raised to heaven in token of thanksgiving, the unfortunate ones with head and hands lowered towards the ground. The most celebrated ornament of the large hall was the immense marble table of which ample mention has already been made. After the fire of 1618 (in which the table split into several pieces, still preserved in the vaults of the palace) a new hall on the same site, and of the same dimensions as the old one, was built by Jacques Desbrosses, which was burnt in 1871 by the Commune, to be promptly rebuilt by MM. Duc Dommey and Daumet. The seven civil chambers of the tribunal are entered through the Salle des Pas Perdus, either from the ground floor or from the upper storey, which is reached by two staircases. This portion of the palace was partly reconstructed in 1853 under the reign of Napoleon III., Baron Haussmann being Prefect of the Seine. The fact is recorded on a marble slab let into one of the walls. In the middle of the south part of the Salle des Pas Perdus, a marble monument was raised in 1821 to Malesherbes, the courageous advocate who defended Louis XVI. at the bar of the Convention. The monument comprises the statue of Malesherbes with figures of France and Fidelity by his side. On the pedestal are low reliefs, representing the different phases of the memorable trial. The statues are by Cortot, the illustrative details by Bosio. The Latin inscription engraved on the pedestal was composed by Louis XVIII., in whose reign the monument was executed and placed in its present position. This king, who translated Horace and otherwise distinguished himself as a Latinist, is the author of more than one historical inscription in the Latin language, and he commemorated by this means, not only the heroism of Malesherbes, who defended Louis XVI. at the trial, but also the piety of the Abbé Edgeworth, who accompanied him to the scaffold. Towards the end of the hall, on the other side, is the statue of Berryer, which, according to M. Vitu, is "the homage paid to eloquence considered as the auxiliary of justice." In the north-east corner of the Hall of Lost Steps, to the left of Berryer's monument, is the entrance to the first chamber, once the bed-chamber of Saint Louis, and which, reconstructed with great magnificence by Louis XII. for his marriage with Mary of England, daughter of King Henry VII., took the name of the Golden Room. It afterwards played an important part in the annals of the Parliament of Paris. Here Marshal de Biron was condemned to death on the 28th of July, 1602. Here a like sentence was pronounced against Marshal d'Ancre on the 8th of July, 1617. Here the kings of France held their Bed of Justice, solidly built up at the bottom of the hall in the right corner, and composed of a lofty pile of cushions, covered with blue velvet, in which golden fleurs de lis were worked. Here, finally, on the 3rd of May, 1788, the Marquis d'Agoult, commanding three detachments of French Guards, Swiss Guards, Sappers, and Cavalry, entered to arrest Counsellors d'Épréménil and Goislard, when the president, surrounded by 150 magistrates and seventeen peers of France, every one wearing the insignia of his dignity, called upon him to point out the two inculpated members, and exclaimed: "We are all d'Épréménil and Goislard! What crime have they committed?" A resolution had been obtained from the Parliament declaring that the nation alone had the right to impose taxes through the States-General. This resolution and the scene which followed were the prelude to the French Revolution. Four years later there was no longer either monarch or parliament, French Guards or Swiss Guards. The great chamber of the palace had become the "Hall of Equality," where, on the 17th of April, 1792, was established the first Revolutionary Tribunal, to be replaced on the 10th of May, 1793, by the criminal tribunal extraordinary; which was reorganised on the 26th of September by a decree which contained this phrase, still more extraordinary than the tribunal itself: "A defender is granted by law to calumniated patriots, but refused to conspirators." Here were arraigned--one cannot say tried--that same d'Épréménil who had proclaimed the rights of the nation, and Barnave, the Girondists, the Queen of France, Mme. Élizabeth, Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Chaumette, Hébert, and Fabre d'Églantine; then, one after the other, the Robespierres, with Couthon, Collot d'Herbois, Saint-Just, Henriot, and Fouquier-Tinville--altogether 2,742 victims, whose 2,742 heads fell into the red basket either on the former Place Louis XV., which had become the Place de la Révolution and was afterwards to be known as the Place de la Concorde, or on the Place du Trône. The numbered list, which used to be sent out, like a newspaper, to subscribers, has been preserved. It began with the slaughter of the 26th of August, 1792, in which La Porte, intendant of the civil list, the journalist Durozoi, and the venerable Jacques Cazotte, author of "Le Diable Amoureux," lost their heads. Cazotte had kept up a long correspondence with Ponteaux, secretary of the civil list, and had sent him several plans for the escape of the Royal Family, together with suggestions, from his point of view invaluable, for crushing the revolution. The letters were seized at the house of the intendant of the civil list, the before-mentioned La Porte; and thereupon Cazotte was arrested. His daughter Elizabeth followed him to prison; and they were both at the Abbaye during the atrocious massacres of September. The unhappy young girl had been separated from her father since the beginning of the executions, and she now thought only of rejoining him either to save his life or to die with him. Suddenly she heard him call out, and then hurried down a staircase in the midst of a jingle of arms. Before there was time to arrest him she rushed towards him, reached him, threw her arms around him, and so moved the terrible judges by her daughterly affection that they were completely disarmed. Not only was the old man spared, but he and his heroic daughter were sent back with a guard of honour to their home. Soon afterwards, however, the father was again arrested, and brought before the revolutionary tribunal. On the advice of the counsel defending him, he denied the competence of the court on the plea of _autrefois acquit_. It was ruled, however, that the court was dealing with new facts, and the judges had indeed simply to apply the decree pronounced against those who had taken part in preparing the repression of the 10th of August. The evidence against Cazotte was only too clear, and he was condemned to death; which suggested the epigram that "Judges struck where executioners had spared." But these very judges, bound by inflexible laws, could not refuse the expression of their pity and esteem to the unhappy old man. While condemning him to death they rendered homage to his honesty and his courage. "Why," exclaimed the public accuser, "after a virtuous life of seventy-two years, must you now be declared guilty? Because it is not sufficient to be a good husband and a good father; because one must also be a good citizen." The President of the Court, in pronouncing sentence, said with gravity and emotion: "Old man, regard the approach of death without fear. It has no power to alarm you. It can have no terrors for such a man as you." Cazotte ascended with fortitude the steps of the scaffold, and exclaimed, before lowering his head: "I die as I have lived, faithful to my God and to my king." The last victim of the 2,472 was Coffinhal, vice-president of the Revolutionary Tribunal, and member of the Council-General of the Paris Commune. No show of equity, no imitation even of judicial forms, gave colour to these bloody sacrifices. Most of the victims, condemned beforehand, were brought to the prison of the Conciergerie at eight in the morning, led before the tribunal at two, and executed at four. A printing office established in a room adjoining the court was connected with the latter by an opening in the wall, through which notes and documents relating to the case before the tribunal were passed; and often the sentence was composed, printed, and hawked for sale in the streets before being read to the victims. "You disgrace the guillotine!" said Robespierre one day to Fouquier-Tinville, the public accuser. Of this historic hall nothing now remains but the four walls. Still, however, may be seen the little door of the staircase which Marie Antoinette ascended to appear before the revolutionary jury, and which she afterwards descended on the way to her dungeon. The Galerie Saint-Louis is the name given to the ancient gallery connected with the Galerie Marchande, its name being justified by the various forms in which incidents from the life of Saint Louis are represented on its walls. Here, in sculptured and coloured wood, is the effigy of Saint Louis, close to the open space where, when centuries ago it was a garden, the pious king was wont to imitate, and sometimes to render, justice beneath the spreading trees. One of the bureaux in the Palais de Justice contains an alphabetical list of all the sentences passed, by no matter what court, against any person born in one of the districts of Paris or of the department of the Seine. This record, contemplated by Napoleon I., was established in 1851 by M. Rouher, at that time Minister of Justice. The list is kept strictly secret; nor is any extract permitted except on the requisition of a magistrate, or on the application of one of the persons sentenced, requiring it in his own interest. [Illustration: THE FAÇADE OF THE OLD PALAIS DE JUSTICE.] The Bureau of "Judicial Assistance," dating from 1851, enables any indigent person to plead _in formâ pauperis_, whether as plaintiff or defendant. Nor is he obliged to plead in person. Not only stamped paper, but solicitors, barristers, and every legal luxury are supplied to him gratuitously. It is at the expense of the lawyers that the pauper litigant is relieved. Two curious bureaux connected with the Palais de Justice are those in which are kept, sealed up and divided into series indicated by different colours, objects of special value taken from persons brought before the court, or voluntarily deposited by them; together with sums of money which, in like manner, have passed into the hands of legal authorities. Still more curious is the collection of articles of all kinds stored in a sort of museum, which presents the aspect at once of a bazaar and of a pawnbroker's shop. Here, in striking confusion, are seen boots and shoes, clothes, wigs, rags, and a variety of things seized and condemned as fraudulent imitations; likewise instruments of fraud, such as false scales. Here, too, in abundance are murderous arms--knives, daggers, and revolvers. Singularly interesting is the collection of burglarious instruments of the most different patterns, from the enormous lump of iron, which might be used as a battering ram, to the most delicately-made skeleton key, feeble enough in appearance, but sufficiently strong to force the lock of an iron safe. There is now scarcely room for the constantly increasing collection of objects at the service of fraud and crime. Beneath this strange exhibition, rendered still more sinister by the method and order with which it is arranged, are disposed in two storeys the four chambers which together constitute the civil tribunal. Connected with the criminal tribunal, their duty is to try offences punishable by a scale of sentences, with five years' imprisonment as the maximum. According to one of the last legislative enactments of the Second Empire, persons brought before a police-court remained provisionally at liberty except under grave circumstances. Cases, moreover, in which the offender has been taken _in flagrante delicto_ are decided in three days. "This is a sign of progress," says M. Vitu; "but Paris still needs an institution of which London is justly proud, that of district magistrates, something like our _juges de paix_, deciding police cases forthwith. The principal merit of this institution is that it prevents arbitrary detention and serious mistakes such as unfortunately are only too frequent with us. Instances have occurred, and will occur again, in which an inoffensive man, arrested by mistake, in virtue of a regular warrant intended for another of the same name, is sent straight to the criminal prison of Mazas. It will then take him a week to get set at liberty. In London he would have been taken at once to the magistrate of the district, who would have proceeded without delay to the verification of his identity. It would have been the affair of two hours at most, thanks to the service of constables at the disposal, day and night, of the English magistrate." [Illustration: THE SALLE DES PAS PERDUS.] The police-courts have sometimes to deal with remarkable cases, but as a rule their duties are of a somewhat trivial character. Adventurers of a low order, swindlers on a petty scale, and street thieves who have been caught with their hands in the pocket of a gentleman or the muff of a lady, are the sort of persons they usually deal with. To these may be added vendors of pretended theatrical admissions, hawkers of forbidden books, and a few drunkards. From morning till night the police are constantly bringing in poor wretches of both sexes; the men for the most part in blouses, the women in rags. They arrive in "cellular" carriages, vulgarly called "salad baskets"; and leaving the vehicle they are kept together by a long cord attached to the wrist of each prisoner. The place of confinement where they remain pending the trial is called the "mouse-trap": two rows, placed one above the other, each of twenty-five cells, containing one prisoner apiece. Every cell is closed in front by an iron grating, in the centre of which is a small aperture--a little square window looking into the corridor. Through this window, which can be opened and shut, but which is almost invariably kept open, the prisoner sees all that takes place in the passage, and the occasional arrival of privileged visitors helps to break the monotony of his day. The wire cages in which the prisoners are detained suggest those of the Zoological Gardens; and the character of the wild beast is too often imprinted on the vicious criminal features of the incarcerated ones. Disputes with cab-drivers and hackney coachmen generally are, as a rule, settled by the commissary of the district or the _quartier_. But serious complaints have now and then to be brought before the Tribunal of Police. In former times the hackney coaches of Paris were at once the disgrace and the terror of the town. "Nothing," writes Mercier, "can more offend the eye of a stranger than the shabby appearance of these vehicles, especially if he has ever seen the hackney coaches of London and Brussels. Yet the aspect of the drivers is still more shocking than that of the carriages, or of the skinny hacks that drag those frightful machines. Some have but half a coat on, others none at all; they are uniform in one point only, that is extreme wretchedness and insolence. You may observe the following gradation in the conduct of these brutes in human shape. Before breakfast they are pretty tractable, they grow restive towards noon, but in the evening they are not to be borne. The commissaries or justices of the peace are the only umpires between the driver and the drivee; and, right or wrong, their award is in favour of the former, who are generally taken from the honourable body of police greyhounds, and are of course allied to the formidable phalanx of justices of the peace. However, if you would roll on at a reasonable pace, be sure you take a hackney coachman half-seas-over. Nothing is more common than to see the traces giving way, or the wheels flying off at a tangent. You find yourself with a broken shin or a bloody nose; but then, for your comfort, you have nothing to pay for the fare. Some years ago a report prevailed that some alterations were to take place in the regulation of hackney coaches; the Parisian phaetons took the alarm and drove to Choisy, where the King was at that time. The least appearance of a commotion strikes terror to the heart of a despot. The sight of 1,800 empty coaches frightened the monarch; but his apprehensions were soon removed by the vigilance of his guard and courtiers. Four representatives of the phaetonic body were clapped into prison and the speaker sent to Bicêtre, to deliver his harangue before the motley inhabitants of that dreary mansion. The safety of the inhabitants doubtless requires the attention of the Government, in providing carriages hung on better springs and generally more cleanly; but the scarcity of hay and straw, not to mention the heavy impost of twenty sols per day for the privilege of rattling over the pavement of Paris, when for the value of an English shilling you may go from one end of the town to the other, prevents the introduction of so desirable a reformation." In another part of his always interesting "Picture of Paris," Mercier becomes quite tragic on the subject of Paris coaches and Paris coachmen. "Look to the right," he says, "and see the end of all public rejoicings in Paris; see that score of unfortunate men, some of them with broken legs and arms, some already dead or expiring. Most of them are parents of families, who by this catastrophe must be reduced to the most horrible misery. I had foretold this accident as the consequence of that file of coaches which passed us before. The police take so little notice of these chance medleys that it is simply a wonder such accidents, already too frequent, are not still more numerous. The threatening wheel which runs along with such rapidity carries an obdurate man in power, who has not leisure, or indeed cares not, to observe that the blood of his fellow-subjects is yet fresh on the stones over which his magnificent chariot rattles so swiftly. They talk of a reformation, but when is it to take place? All those who have any share in the administration keep carriages, and what care they for the pedestrian traveller? Jean Jacques Rousseau, in the year 1776, on the road to Mesnil-Montant, was knocked down by a large Lapland dog and remained on the spot, whilst the master, secure in his berline, passed him by with that stoic indifference which amounts to savage barbarity. Rousseau, lame and bruised, was taken up and conducted to his house by some charitable peasants. The gentleman, or rather savage, learning the identity of the person whom the dog had knocked down, sent a servant to know what he could do for him. 'Tell him,' said Rousseau, 'to keep his dog chained,' and dismissed the messenger. When a coachman has crushed or crippled a passenger, he may be carried before a commissaire, who gravely inquires whether the accident was occasioned by the fore wheels or the hind wheels. If one should die under the latter, no pecuniary damage can be recovered by the heirs-at-law, because the coachman is answerable only for the former; and even in this case there is a police standard by which he is merely judged at so much an arm and so much a leg! After this we boast of being a civilised nation!" In addition to the place of detention already described, the Palais de Justice contains a permanent prison known historically as the Conciergerie, and, by its official name, as the House of Justice. Here are received, on the one hand, prisoners about to be tried before the Assize Court or the Appeal Court of Police; on the other, certain prisoners who are the object of special favour and who consider themselves fortunate to be confined in this rather than any other prison. The list of celebrated persons who have been detained in the Conciergerie would be a long one, from the Constable of Armagnac (1440) to Prince Napoleon (1883). Here may still be seen the dungeons of Damiens, of Ravaillac, of Lacenaire the murderer, of André Chenier the poet, of Mme. Roland, and of Robespierre. The name whose memory, in connection with this fatal place, extinguishes all others is that of the unhappy Marie Antoinette. After a captivity of nearly a year in the Temple the queen was conducted on the 5th of August, 1792, to the Conciergerie, and there shut up in a dark narrow cell called the Council Hall, lighted from the courtyard by a little window crossed with iron bars. This Council Hall was previously divided into two by a partition, which had now been removed; and in place of it a screen was fixed which, during her sleep, shut the queen off from the two gendarmes ordered to watch her day and night. The daughter of the Cæsars left her dungeon on the 15th of October, 1793, dressed in black, to appear before the Revolutionary Tribunal, and the next day, dressed in white, to step into the cart which conveyed her to the guillotine erected on the Place Louis XV. [Illustration: POLICE CARRIAGES.] This historical dungeon, which, says M. Vitu, could not contain the tears which it has caused to be shed, and ought to have been walled up in order to bury the memory of a crime unworthy of the French nation, was transformed into a chapel by order of Louis XVIII. in 1816. The altar bears a Latin inscription which, like others previously referred to, was composed by the king himself. Close to the queen's dungeon is the so-called Hall of the Girondists (formerly a chapel), in which the most enlightened and the most heroic of the Revolutionists are said, by a not too trustworthy legend, to have passed their last night. * * * * * Locally and even architecturally connected with the Palace of Justice is the Holy Chapel, one of the most perfect sacred buildings that Paris possesses. The courtyard of the Holy Chapel, mentioned more than once in connection with the Palace of Justice, stands at the south-east corner of the principal building, and is shut in by the Tribunal of Police and a portion of the Court of Appeal. It can be entered from five different points: from the Boulevard of the Palace of Justice; by two different openings from the Police Tribunal; from the so-called depôt of the Prefecture of Police; and from the Cour du Mai on the north-east. No more admirable specimen of the religious architecture of the middle ages is to be found; nor is any church or chapel more venerable by its origin and its antiquity. Founded by Robert I. in 921, the year of his accession to the throne, it replaced, in the royal palace of which it had formed part, a chapel dedicated to Saint Bartholomew, which dated from the kings of the first dynasty. [Illustration: THE CONCIERGERIE, PALAIS DE JUSTICE.] The royal palace contained, moreover, several private oratories, including in particular one dedicated to the Holy Virgin. In 1237 Baudouin II., Emperor of Constantinople, exhausted by the wars he had been sustaining against the Greeks, came to France to beg assistance from King Saint Louis. Baudouin was of the House of Flanders, and in consideration of a large sum of money, he pledged to the French king his county of Namur, and allowed him to redeem certain holy relics--the crown of thorns, the sponge which had wiped away the blood and sweat of the Saviour, and the lance with which his side had been pierced--on which the Venetians, the Genoese, the Abbess of Perceul, Pietro Cornaro, and Peter Zauni had lent 13,000 gold pieces. The relics arrived in France the year afterwards, and crossed the country in the midst of pious demonstrations from the whole population. The king himself, and the Count of Artois, went to receive them at Sens and bore on their shoulders the case containing the crown of thorns. Thus, in formal procession, they passed through the streets of Sens and of Paris; and the holy king deposited the relics in the oratory of the Virgin until a building should be erected specially for their reception. This was the Holy Chapel, of which the first stone was laid in 1245. The work had been entrusted to the architect Pierre de Montreuil or de Montereau. In three years it was finished, the chapel being inaugurated on the 25th of April, 1248. "Only three years for the construction of such an edifice," exclaims a French writer, "when the nineteenth century cannot manage to restore it in thirty years!" [Illustration: THE SAINTE-CHAPELLE.] The Holy Chapel is composed of two chapels one above the other, having a single nave without transept, each chapel possessing a separate entrance. The upper chapel, approached through the Galerie Mercière, was reserved for the king and his family, who, from the royal palace, entered it on foot. The lower chapel, intended for the inferior officers attached to the court, became later on, in virtue of a papal bull, the parish church of all who lives in the immediate neighbourhood of the palace. If the Holy Chapel is admirable by its design and proportions, it is a marvel of construction from a technical point of view. It rests on slender columns, which seem incapable of supporting it. The roof, in pointed vaulting, is very lofty; and for the last six centuries it has resisted every cause of destruction, including the fire which, in 1630, threatened the entire building. No more beautiful specimens of stained glass are to be seen than in the Holy Chapel, with its immense windows resplendent in rich and varied colours. A remarkable statue of the Virgin bowing her head as if in token of assent, now at the Hôtel Cluny, belonged originally to the Holy Chapel. According to a pious legend, the figure bent forward to show approval of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception as formulated by Duns Scotus, who was teaching theology at Paris in 1304, and from the time of the miracle until now maintains the same gesture of inclination. More than one mediæval tradition makes statues, and especially statues of the Virgin, perform similar actions. There is, for example, in the _Contes Dévots_ a story of a statue of the Virgin to which a certain _bourgeois qui aimait une dame_ prayed that she would either make the lady return his love or cause that love to cease. Some time previously a Hebrew magician had offered to secure the lady's affections for the infatuated _bourgeois_ provided he would renounce God, the saints, and especially the Blessed Virgin; to which the despondent lover replied that though, in his grief and despair, he might abandon everything else, yet nothing could make him relinquish his allegiance and devotion to the Blessed Virgin. This fidelity, under all temptations, gave him some right, he hoped, to implore the influence of the merciful Virgin towards softening the heart of the woman he so passionately loved; and the statue of the Virgin, before which he prostrated himself, showed by a gentle inclination of the head that his prayer was heard. Fortunately, the lady whose cold demeanour had so vexed the heart of her lover was in the church at the very moment of the miracle, and, seeing the Virgin bow her head to the unhappy _bourgeois_, felt convinced that he must be an excellent man. Thereupon she went up to him, asked him why he looked so sad, reproached him gently with not having visited her of late, and ended by assuring him that if he still loved her she fully returned his affection. Somewhat analogous to this legend, though in a different order of ideas, is that of the Commander whose statue Don Juan invited to supper, with consequences too familiar to be worth repeating. The ancient statue of the Virgin, once in the Holy Chapel, venerated now in the Hôtel Cluny, regarded simply as a curiosity, has been replaced by a modern statue. The sacred relics which the Holy Chapel at one time possessed are still preserved at Notre Dame. The gold case which enclosed them was, at the beginning of the Revolution, sent to the Mint to be converted into coin. The spire which now surmounts the Holy Chapel is the fourth since the erection of the building. The first one, by Pierre de Montreuil, was crumbling away from age under the reign of Charles V., who thereupon had it restored by a master-carpenter, Robert Foucher. Burnt in the great fire of 1630, this second spire was re-constructed by order of Louis XIII., and destroyed during the Revolution. The fourth edition of it, which still exists, was built by M. Lassus in the florid style of the first years of the fifteenth century. The one thing which strikes the visitor to the Holy Chapel above everything else, and which cannot but make a lasting impression on him, is the wonderful beauty of the stained glass windows already referred to. They date, for the most part, from the reign of Saint Louis, and were put in on the day the building was consecrated in 1248. In their present condition and form, however, they take us back only to the year 1837. During forty-six years (1791 to 1837) the Holy Chapel was given up to all kinds of uses. First it was a club-house, then a flour magazine, and finally a bureau for official documents. This last was the least injurious of the purposes to which it was turned. Nevertheless the incomparable stained glass windows were interfered with by the construction of various boxes and cupboards along the sides of the building, no less than three metres of the lower part of each window being thus sacrificed. Certain glaziers, moreover, employed to take down the windows, clean them, and put them back, had made serious mistakes, restoring portions of windows to the wrong frames. The subjects of the stained art-work are all from the Holy Scriptures, and on a thousand glass panels figure a thousand different personages. The restoration of the windows had been entrusted, after a public competition, to M. Henri Gérante, a French artist who, more than any other, has contributed to the resurrection of the seemingly lost art of painting on glass. But, unhappily, M. Gérante died before beginning his work, which, thereupon, was divided between M. Steintheil, for the drawing and painting, and M. Lusson for the material preparation. Their labours were crowned with the most complete success. Entering the Holy Chapel one is literally dazzled by the bright rich colours from the windows on all sides, blending together in the most harmonious manner. [Illustration: THE LOWER CHAPEL OF THE SAINTE-CHAPELLE.] Right and left of the nave the place is shown where Saint Louis and Blanche de Castille were accustomed to sit opposite one another to hear mass and other religious services. A corner, moreover, is pointed out, with an iron network before it, where, according to a doubtful tradition, the suspicious Louis XI. used to retire in order to hear mass without being seen; perhaps also to watch the faithful at their prayers. In many an old French church corners and passages may be met with, protected by a network or simply by rails, which served, it is said, to shut off lepers from the general congregation. * * * * * Closely associated with the Palais de Justice is the Tribunal of Commerce, which has its own code, its own judges and functionaries. Three centuries ago the necessity was recognised in France of leaving commercial and industrial cases to the decision of men competent, from their occupation, to deal with such matters. Paris owes its Tribunal of Commerce to King Charles IX.; but the code under which issues are now decided dates only from September, 1807--from the First Empire, that is to say. The commercial judges are named for two years by the merchants and tradesmen domiciled in the department of the Seine. Formerly the Tribunal of Commerce, or Consular Tribunal, held its sittings at the back of the Church of Saint-Méry in the Hôtel des Consuls, the gate of which used to support a statue of Louis XIV., by Simon Guilain. [Illustration: THE UPPER CHAPEL OF THE SAINTE-CHAPELLE.] This mercantile court consists of five merchants, the first bearing the title of judge, and the four others that of consuls. The Tribunal of Commerce was removed from the old house in the Rue Saint-Méry in 1826, to be installed on the first storey of the newly constructed Bourse. Soon, however, the place assigned to it became inadequate for the constantly increasing number of cases brought before the court; and a special edifice was erected for the Tribunal of Commerce in the immediate vicinity of the Palais de Justice. This structure, quadrilateral in form, is bounded on the north by the Quai aux Fleurs, on the east by the Rue Aubé, on the south by the Rue de Lutèce, and on the west by the Boulevard du Palais. To build a new Palais de Justice it was necessary to destroy all that existed of the ancient Cité. One curious building, which, after undergoing every kind of modification, ultimately, in order to make room for the Court of Commerce, disappeared altogether, was the ancient Church of Saint Bartholomew. This sacred edifice during the early days of the Revolution, when churches had gone very much out of fashion, became the Théâtre Henri IV., to be afterwards called Palais Variété, Théâtre de la Cité, Cité Variété, and Théâtre Mozart. Here was represented, in 1795, "The Interior of the Revolutionary Committees," the most cutting satire ever directed against the tyranny of the Jacobins; and, in another style, "The Perilous Forest, or the Brigands of Calabria," a true type of the ancient melodrama. Suppressed in 1807, this theatre underwent a number of transformations, to serve at last as a dancing saloon, known to everyone and beloved by students under the title of The Prado. [Illustration: THE TRIBUNAL OF COMMERCE.] The cupola of the Tribunal of Commerce is a reproduction, as to form, of the cupola of a little church which attracted the attention of Napoleon III. on the borders of the Lake of Garda while he was awaiting the result of the attack on the Solferino Tower. The Audience Chamber of the Tribunal is adorned with paintings by Robert Fleury, representing incidents in the commercial history of France from Charles IX. to Napoleon III. CHAPTER XXIV. THE FIRE BRIGADE AND THE POLICE. The _Sapeurs-pompiers_--The Prefect of Police--The _Garde Républicaine_--The Spy System. The Tribunal of Commerce, standing north of the Rue de Lutèce, has for pendant on its south side (that is to say, between the Rue de Lutèce and the quay) the barrack of the Republican Guard and two houses adjoining it, one of which is the private residence of the Prefect of Police: where, moreover, he has his private office; while the second contains the station of the firemen of the town of Paris. The Fire Brigade, or corps of Sapeurs-pompiers, is partly under the direction of the Prefect of Police, partly under that of the Minister of War, who takes charge of its organisation, its recruitment, and its internal administration. Much was said at the time of the terrible fire at the Opéra Comique in 1887 of the evils of this dual system; the chief of the corps, an officer appointed by the War Minister, being often an experienced soldier, but never before his appointment a skilled fireman. There is a reason, however, for placing the Sapeurs-pompiers under the orders of the Minister of War. During the campaign of 1870 and 1871 the Germans refused to recognise the military character of corps not holding their commission from this minister. Thus the National Guards, as a purely civic body, were not looked upon as soldiers, and were threatened with the penalties inflicted on persons taking up arms without authority from the central military power. In the next war against Germany the French propose to call out the whole of their available forces; and to be recognised as regular troops the Sapeurs-pompiers must have a military organisation and act under military chiefs formally appointed and responsible to a superior officer. All this, however, could surely be accomplished without rendering the corps unfit for the special duties assigned to it. The Sapeurs-pompiers are organised in twelve companies, forming two battalions, and are distributed among the 150 barracks, stations, and watch-houses comprised in the twenty districts, or _arrondissements_, of Paris. The Magistracy of the Prefect of Police was created under the Consulate of the 1st of July, 1800, when the Central Power took over the general police duties entrusted under the Monarchy to the Lieutenant-General of Police, and which had been transferred by the Revolution to the Commune of Paris. The Prefect is specially empowered to take, personally, every step necessary for the discovery and repression of crime and for the punishment of criminals. He is charged, moreover, under the authority of the Minister of the Interior, with all that relates to the administrative and economic government of the prisons and houses of detention and correction, not only in Paris, but throughout the department of the Seine, as well as in the communes of Saint-Cloud, Sèvres, Meudon, and Enghien, suburbs of Paris belonging to the department of Seine-et-Oise. The Prefect of Police has beneath his orders all the police of the capital, or rather of the department to which the capital belongs. This service is divided into two special organisations: Municipal Police and Agents of Security. The "Security" force consists of three hundred agents with the title of inspector, commanded by five chief inspectors, ten brigadiers, and twenty sub-brigadiers. These agents are employed in arresting malefactors, and are viewed with intense hatred by the criminal class generally. The Municipal Police counts an effective of about 8,000 men, commanded by 38 peace officers, 25 chief inspectors, 100 brigadiers, and 700 sub-brigadiers. The entire expenditure of the Prefecture of the Police Service amounts to twenty-five million francs a year, of which eleven millions are put down for pay and the remainder for uniforms, office expenses, and all kinds of extras. "If," says a French writer who knows London as well as Paris, "our police is not always so clear-sighted and so clever as it might be, it is, at any rate, more tolerant than vexatious. Our 'keepers of the peace' do not impose on the Paris population all the respect that the English people feels for its policemen; nor have they the same rigid bearing or the same herculean aspect. But, on the other hand, they are without their brutality--quite incredible to anyone who has not lived in London. Nearly all have been in the army, and they preserve the familiar aspect of the French soldier; while of the rules laid down by the Prefecture, the one they least observe is that which forbids them to talk in the street with servant maids and cooks. But they are intelligent, ingenious, possessed of a certain tact, and brave to the point of self-sacrifice. They are at present more appreciated and more popular, with their tunic, their military cap, their high boots, and their little cloak, which give them the look of troops on a campaign, than were the Sergents de Ville whose swallow-tail coat and black cocked hat were so much feared by rioters under the reign of Louis Philippe." The Barracks of the Prefecture are occupied by the Garde Républicaine, which succeeds the Garde de Paris, the latter having itself succeeded the Garde Municipale, which was simply the Gendarmerie Royale of the Town of Paris, created under the Restoration. After the Revolution of 1848 the name of the Garde Municipale was changed, as after the Revolution of 1830 the title of Gendarmerie Royale was abolished. Notwithstanding alterations of name and certain slight modifications of uniform, the Republican Guard is a legion of gendarmerie like the different corps that preceded it. Commanded by a colonel, the Republican Guard is divided into two detachments or brigades, each under a lieutenant-colonel; the first consisting of three battalions of infantry, the second of three squadrons of cavalry. The whole force comprises 118 officers, with 2,800 men beneath their orders--2,200 infantry, and 600 cavalry. The Republican Guard, one of the finest corps that can be seen, belongs to the cadres of the regular army; and it served brilliantly in the war of 1870 and 1871. Its special duties, however, are to keep order in the City of Paris; though, in consideration of its mixed character, the pay assigned to it is furnished, half by the State, half by the Town of Paris. Among other merits it possesses an admirable band, in which may be found some of the finest orchestral players in a capital possessing an abundance of fine orchestras. The evidence of a Garde Républicaine, or gendarme, is accepted at the police courts as unimpeachable. The written statement drawn up by a gendarme may be denied by the accused, but it cannot be set aside. "As a matter of fact," says M. Auguste Vitu, in his work on "Paris," "very few evil results are caused by this rule; for the gendarme is honest. But he may make a mistake. In London, the magistrate, having generally to deal only with policemen of his own district, knows them personally, can judge of their intelligence and disposition, and is able in certain cases to see whether they are obscuring or altering the truth. He exercises over them, in case of negligence or error, accidental or intentional, the right of reprimanding and of suspending them. In Paris the 'judges of correction,' before whom, at one time or another, every one of the 'keepers of the peace' or of the Republican Guards (altogether about 10,000 men) may appear, can only accept their evidence. It is doubtless sincere, but there is no way of testing it." Of the spy system in connection with police administration it is difficult to speak with accurate knowledge, for the simple reason that it is not until long afterwards that secret arrangements of this kind are divulged. But in principle the system described by Mercier more than a hundred years ago still exists. "This," writes that faithful chronicler, "may be termed the second part of Parisian grievances. Yet, like even the most poisonous reptile, these bloodhounds are of some service to the community: they form a mass of corruption which the police distil, as it were, with equal art and judgment, and, by mixing it with a few salutary ingredients, soften its baneful nature, and turn it to public advantage. The dregs that remain at the bottom of the still are the spies of whom I have just spoken; for these also belong to the police. The distilled matter itself consists of the thief-catchers, etc. They, like other spies, have persons to watch over them; each is foremost to impeach the other, and a base lucre is the bone of contention amongst those wretches, who are, of all evils, the most necessary. Such are the admirable regulations of the Paris police that a man, if suspected, is so closely watched that the most minute transaction in which he is concerned is treasured up till it is fit time to arrest him. The police does not confine its care to the capital only. Droves of its runners are sent to the principal towns and cities in this kingdom, where, by mixing with those whose character is suspicious, they insinuate themselves into their confidence, and by pretending to join in their mischievous schemes, get sufficient information to prevent their being carried into execution. The mere narrative of the following fact, which happened when M. de Sartine was at the head of this department, will give the reader an idea of the watchfulness of the police. A gentleman travelling from Bordeaux to Paris with only one servant in his company was stopped at the turnpike by the Custom House officer, who, having inquired his name, told him he must go directly to M. de Sartine. The traveller was both astonished and frightened at this peremptory command, which, however, it would have been imprudent to disobey. He went, and his fears soon subsided at the civil reception he met with; but his surprise was greatly increased when the magistrate, whom, to his knowledge, he had never seen before, calling him by his name, gave him an account of every transaction that had taken place previous to the gentleman's departure from Bordeaux, and even minutely described the full contents of his portmanteau. 'Now, sir,' continued the Lieutenant de Police, 'to show that I am well informed I have a trifle more to disclose to you. You are going to such and such an hotel, and a scheme is laid by your servant to murder you by ten o'clock.' 'Then, my lord, I must shift my quarters to defeat his wicked intention.' 'By no means, sir; you must not even take notice of what I have said. Retire to bed at your usual hour, and leave the rest to me.' The gentleman followed the advice of the magistrate and went to the hotel. About an hour after he had lain down, when, no doubt, he was but little inclined to compose himself to rest, the servant, armed with a clasp-knife, entered the room on tip-toe, drew near the bed, and was about to fulfil his murderous intention. Then four men, rushing from behind the hangings, seized the wretch, who confessed all, and soon afterwards paid to the injured laws of humanity the forfeit of his life." [Illustration: A POMPIER.] Since the Revolution the number of spies employed in France has doubtless diminished. But they have existed in that country, as in others, from time immemorial. A French writer, dealing with this subject, traces the history of espionage to the remotest antiquity; the first spies being, according to his view, the brothers of Joseph, who were for that reason detained when they visited him in Egypt as Pharaoh's minister. The Romans employed spies in their armies, and both Nero and Caligula had an immense number of secret agents. Alfred the Great was a spy of the chivalrous, self-sacrificing kind; for, risking his life on behalf of his own people he would assuredly, had he been recognised in the Danish camp, have been put to death. The spy system was first established in France on a large, widely organised scale by Richelieu, under whose orders the notorious Father Joseph became the director of a network of spies which included not only all the religious orders of France, but many persons belonging to the nobility and middle classes. This sort of conspiracy had, moreover, its correspondents abroad. The Police, strongly organised under Louis XIV., included a numerous body of spies. But all that had before been known in the way of espionage was eclipsed in Louis XV.'s reign, when the too famous De Sartine, Lieutenant of Police, gave to his spy system a prodigious extension. Under the administration of De Sartine spies were employed to follow the Court; and the Minister of Foreign Affairs maintained a subdivision of spies to watch the doings of all foreigners arriving in Paris, and to ascertain, in particular, the object of their visit. This course of action is followed to the present day in Russia, not only secretly, but in the first instance openly. Thus the chief of a bureau connected with the Foreign Office questions the stranger in the politest manner as to his motive in coming to Russia, the friends, if any, that he has there, his occupation, and his pecuniary resources. A report is attributed to the above-named Lieutenant of Police in which it is set forth that to watch thoroughly a family of twenty persons forty spies would be necessary. This, however, was an ideal calculation, for, in reality, the cost of the spy system under Louis XV., as set down in the official registers of the police, did not amount annually to more than 20,000 francs. The Government had, however, at its disposal much larger sums received for licences from the gambling houses, and as fines and ransoms from evil-doers of all kinds. Berryer, the successor of De Sartine--bearer of a name which, in the nineteenth century, was to be rendered honourable--conceived the idea, inspired, perhaps, by a familiar proverb, of employing as spies criminals of various kinds, principally thieves who had escaped from prison or from the pursuit of the police. These wretches, banded together in a secret army of observation, were only too zealous in the performance of the work assigned to them; for, on the slightest negligence or prevarication, they were sent back to the hulks or to gaol, where a hot reception awaited them from their former comrades in crime. Hackney-coachmen, innkeepers, and lodging-house keepers were also engaged as spies, not to speak of domestic servants, who, through secret agencies, were sometimes supplied to householders by the police themselves. Many a person was sent to the Bastille in virtue of a _lettre de cachet_ issued on the representation of some valet before whom his master had uttered an imprudent word. [Illustration: A GUARDIAN OF THE PEACE.] Mercier's picture of the spy system in Paris a few years before the Revolution is, to judge from other contemporary accounts, in no way exaggerated. The Revolution did not think even of suppressing espionage, but it endeavoured to moralise this essentially immoral, if sometimes necessary, institution. In a report on this subject dated November 30, 1789, only a few months after the taking of the Bastille, the following significant passage occurs:--"We have been deprived of a sufficient number of observers, a sort of army operating under the orders of the old police, which made considerable use of it. If all the districts were well organised, if their committees were wisely chosen and not too numerous, we should apparently have no reason to regret the suppression of that odious institution which our oppressors employed so long against us." The writer of the report was, in fact, recommending, without being apparently aware of it, a system of open denunciation necessitating previously that secret espionage which he found so hateful; for before denouncing it would be necessary to observe and watch. Nevertheless, the Police of the Revolution employed no regular spies, registered, organised, and paid, until 1793; though this did not prevent wholesale denunciation on the part of officious volunteers. Robespierre, however, maintained a spy system more or less on the ancient pattern; and when the Empire was established, Napoleon's famous Prefect of Police, Fouché, made of espionage a perfect science. Fouché had at his service spies of all classes and kinds; and the ingenious Mme. de Bawr has, in one of her best tales, imagined the case of a poor curé, who, after the suppression of churches and religious services, calls upon Fouché, an old schoolfellow of his, to ask for some employment; when the crafty police minister assigns a certain salary to his simple-minded friend and tells him not to do any serious work for the present, but to go about Paris amusing himself in various cafés and places of entertainment, after which he can look in from time to time and say what has chiefly struck him in the persons he has seen and the conversations he has heard. At last the innocent curé finds that he has been doing the work of a spy. Fortunately, when he discovers to what a base purpose he has been turned, Napoleon has just restored public worship; whereupon, by way of amends, Fouché uses his influence with the Emperor to get the poor man re-appointed to his old parish. [Illustration: AN ORDERLY OF THE GARDE DE PARIS.] Under the Restoration the spy system was maintained as under the Empire, but with additional intricacies. Fouché had been replaced by Vidocq, who, among other strange devices for getting at the thoughts of the public, obtained from the Government permission to establish a public bowling alley, which collected crowds of people, whose conversations were listened to and reported by agents employed for the purpose. The bowling alley brought in some 4,000 to 5,000 francs a year, which was spent on additional spies. The Prefect Delavau, with Vidocq as his lieutenant, went back to the system of Berryer under the ancient _régime_, taking into the State service escaped criminals, who for the slightest fault were sent back to gaol. An attempt was made by the same Delavau, in humble imitation of Berryer, to get into his service all the domestics of Paris; and in this way he renewed an old regulation by which each servant was to keep a book and bring it to the Prefecture of Police on entering or leaving a situation. To their credit, be it recorded, most of the servants abstained from obeying this discreditable order. Finding that his plan for watching private families through their servants did not answer, Delavau multiplied the number of agents charged with attending places of public entertainment. "The Police," writes M. Peuchet in his "Mémoires tirés des Archives de la Police," "will never learn to respect an order so long as its superintendents are taken from the hulks and feel that they have their revenge to take on the society which has punished them." The justice of this remark has since been recognised. The first care of Delavau's successor, the honourable and much regretted M. de Belleyme, was to dismiss, and even to send back to their prisons, the army of cut-throat spies employed by the Prefect he replaced. At present, though his occupation stands no higher in public opinion than of old, the spy is not the outcast that he formerly was. Without being an honest man in the full sense of the word, he is not literally and legally a criminal. It is even asserted that the French spy of our own time is a man of some character; by which is probably meant that he has never been convicted of any offence, that he does not drink, that he has no depraved tastes, and that in a general way he can be depended upon. "Espionage," says Montesquieu, "is never tolerable. Otherwise the trade would be exercised by honourable men. From the necessary infamy of the person must be inferred the infamy of the thing." This, in effect, is just what the Minister d'Argenson said when he was reproached with engaging none but rogues and knaves as spies. "Find me," he replied, "decent men to do such work!" The decent men have now, it appears, been found. So much the better. As, however, there is said to be honour among thieves, so there is sometimes honesty among spies. Witness the case of the Abbé Lenglet-Dufresnoy, simultaneously employed by Louis XIV. to keep watch over Prince Eugène, and by Prince Eugène to report all that was done by Louis XIV., and who is said to have given the most exact information to both his employers. [Illustration] CHAPTER XXV. THE PARIS HOSPITALS. The Place du Parvis--The Parvis of Notre Dame--The Hôtel-Dieu--Mercier's Criticisms. In the matter of police administration and of civic government generally; the Hôtel de Ville is to the whole of Paris what the Mansion House and the Guildhall are to that part of London known specially as the City. The Hôtel de Ville has charge, moreover, of all the Paris hospitals and benevolent institutions. The general administration of the hospitals is entrusted to a Director, under the surveillance of a Consultative Committee. The most ancient and most celebrated of all the Paris hospitals is the Hôtel-Dieu, occupying a space which is bounded on the north by the Quai aux Fleurs, on the south by the Place du Parvis, on the west by the Rue de la Cité, and on the east by the Rue d'Arcole. The Place du Parvis deserves a word of mention to itself. The word "Parvis" has several derivations, the most popular of which is from the Latin _paradisus_. The ancient form of the French word was _paraïs_ or _paravis_, contracted into _parvis_; and it was applied to the open space in front of a church because, in the days of the "mysteries," it was here that the paradise of the play was located. According to another derivation, the "parvis" is the ground outside a church which "_pare_" or "guards" the principal door--_huis_ in the ancient French. In this sense the word is used to denote, in the Jewish Temple, the space around the tabernacle. _Parvis céleste_ is a phrase employed by French poets to signify heaven or the firmament; which does not at all prove--indeed seems to disprove--that _parvis_ means, or ever did mean, the same thing as _paradisus_. The _parvis_ of the old churches was, in any case, used as a place of penance for those who had scandalised the town by some offence against good morals; and it was there that on certain occasions holy relics were brought for exhibition to the people. The temples of Greece and Rome were surrounded by enclosures, as if to separate them from the public thoroughfare; and the first Christian churches had enclosures in front of the principal entrance, where tombs, crosses, statues, and sometimes fountains were to be seen. After the twelfth century the _parvis_ ceased to be enclosed; though so late as the sixteenth century the Parvis of Notre Dame appears, by exception, to have been shut in by a wall not more than three feet high, through which there were three different gateways. The Parvis of Notre Dame served in ancient days the most varied purposes. Here, before the establishment of the University of Paris, public schools were held. It was a place of punishment, moreover; and it was on a scaffold erected in the Parvis of Notre Dame that Jacques de Molay and the Templars heard the sentence read which was afterwards executed upon them (March 18, 1314) in the Île aux Vaches, as the little island was anciently called where now stands the statue of Henri IV. Here, too, under Francis I., Huguenots were given to the flames. Jacques de Molay, the last grand master of the Templars, was born in Burgundy, and entered the order in 1265. He distinguished himself in Palestine, in the wars against the Mussulmans. Elected grand master in 1298, he was preparing to avenge the defeats which the Christian arms had recently sustained, when in 1305 he was recalled to France by Pope Clement V. The pretext for this summons was a projected union of the order of Templars with that of the Hospitallers. But the true object of Philip the Fair, for whom the Pope had acted only as instrument, was the destruction of the order, whose immense wealth had excited the monarch's covetousness. On the 13th of October, 1307, all the Templars were arrested at the same hour throughout France; and a process was instituted against them in which every form of justice was violated. Thirty-six knights expired under torture, and several owned to the crimes and the shameful immorality of which they were falsely accused. Molay himself, in the agony of torture, allowed some words to escape him; but before dying nearly all the victims retracted the utterances wrung from them by pain. The Pope, throughout this tragic affair, followed the directions of the French king, to whom he owed his tiara. To go back from history to legend, it was in the open space afterwards to become the Parvis of Notre Dame that in 464 Artus, King of Great Britain, son of Uther, surnamed Pendragon pitched his camp when invading Gaul and ravaging the country. Gaul was at that time governed for the Emperor Leo by the Tribune Flollo, who retired to Paris and there fortified himself. Artus now defied Flollo to single combat. The Tribune accepted, and the duel took place on the eastern point of the Île de la Cité, with lance and hatchet. Blinded by the blood which flowed from a wound he had received in the head, Artus invoked the Virgin Mary, who, it is said, appeared to him in presence of everyone, and covered him with her cloak, which was "lined with ermine." Dazzled at this miracle, Flollo lost his sight, and Artus had now no trouble in despatching him. In memory of the Virgin's interposition, Artus adopted ermine for his coat-of-arms; which for a long time afterwards was retained by the kings and princes of Britain. He wished at the same time to consecrate the memory of his triumph, and accordingly erected on the very ground where the combat had taken place a chapel in honour of the Virgin, which at last became the cathedral church of Paris. Then Artus (or Arthur) returned to his British island, and there founded the Order of the Knights of that Round Table which is still preserved in Winchester Cathedral. [Illustration: A GENDARME.] Until the Revolution the Parvis of Notre Dame was shut in north and south by populous districts through which ran narrow, ill-built streets, and which contained several buildings of importance. Since then a clean sweep has been made of all the tumble-down buildings in the ancient Cité, between the two banks of the Seine north and south, between the Cathedral on the east and the barracks of the Republican Guard on the west. The southern part of the Parvis has been transformed into a sort of English garden, in the centre of which stands an equestrian statue of Charlemagne by the sculptor Rochet. In old French, the second of two substantives joined together did duty as genitive; so that Hôtel-Dieu signified the hotel (or house) of God, just as in some ancient French towns _Mère-Dieu_, as the sign of an hotel, meant not, as is sometimes ignorantly supposed, "God the Mother," but "The Mother of God." The Hôtel-Dieu or Hôtel de Dieu (a house, that is to say, in which the poor and suffering were received and attended in the name of God and under His auspices) was founded about 660, in the time of Clovis II., son of Dagobert, by Saint Landri, twenty-eighth bishop of Paris. Here he was accustomed to receive, at his own expense, not only sick people, but also beggars and pilgrims. _Medicus et Hospes_, such was the motto of the bishop, who might justly claim the double title of physician and host. In the course of centuries the good work begun by Saint Landri was continued on a large scale by the French kings, with Philip Augustus, Saint Louis, and Henri IV. prominent among them. Among the benefactors of the Hôtel-Dieu must also be mentioned the Chancellor du Prat, and the first President, Pomponne de Bellièvre. The old Hôtel-Dieu, after undergoing all kinds of repairs, was at last condemned as too small and too ill-ventilated. In 1868 a new hospital was begun just opposite the old one; and the building as it now stands, large, airy, and in every respect commodious, was finished in 1878. With abundance of space at their command, the architects of the modern Hôtel-Dieu made it their sole aim to secure for the patients every possible advantage, and their first care was to provide spacious wards replete with light and air. One result has been that in a larger edifice the number of the beds has, in accordance with the best hygienic principles, been greatly diminished. In the time of Saint Louis the old Hôtel-Dieu received 900 patients. This number was increased under Henri IV. to 1,300, and under Louis XIV. to 1,900. At times, however, the sick or wounded persons admitted were far more numerous; and in 1709 the number of patients in the Hôtel-Dieu is said to have reached 9,000. Not, however, the number of beds; for in the same bed several patients, at the risk of infection, contagion, and frightful mortality, were placed together. The new Hôtel-Dieu, on the other hand, contains only 514 beds: 329 medical beds, 169 surgical beds, and sixteen cradles. The building having cost fifty million francs, it follows that each particular bed has cost nearly one hundred thousand francs; and philanthropists point out that at 6,000 francs per bed, "the ordinary figure in England and other countries," more than 8,000 patients might have been provided for in lieu of 500. It must be remembered, on the other hand, that the Hôtel-Dieu contains, besides its hospital service properly so called, an administrative department: including amphitheatres of practical surgery, laboratories of pharmacy, chemistry, etc., which alone cost fourteen millions of francs. According, moreover, to the original plan as approved by the principal professors and physicians of the Hôtel-Dieu, there was to have been an additional storey containing 260 beds, to which the patients below were to have been transferred on certain days for change of air and to allow the lower rooms to be thoroughly ventilated and cleaned. This additional storey cost four millions of francs, and it had already been completed, when, for reasons unexplained, but which, according to M. Vitu, were political, it was pulled down. The general plan of the Hôtel-Dieu as it now stands comprises two masses of parallel buildings: one beside the Parvis of Notre Dame, the other alongside the Quai Napoléon; the two façades, anterior and posterior, of the edifice being connected laterally by galleries at right angles to the Seine. The administrative department of the Hôtel-Dieu is in that part of the building which faces the Parvis. On the ground floor, to the left, is the Central Bureau of Hospitals; the head-quarters of the hospital service, not only of Paris, but generally of the Department of the Seine. The staff consists of twenty physicians, fifteen surgeons, and three accoucheurs chosen by competition; and from this body are selected the physicians and surgeons of the various Paris hospitals. Formerly patients were admitted on mere application; but at present they are carefully examined by the physicians of the Central Bureau, who give out tickets of admission and assign beds so long as there is room. If the Hôtel-Dieu is full the applicants for medical care are sent to other hospitals. Adjoining the Central Bureau are the rooms where out-door patients receive gratuitous advice. The wards occupied by the patients are lighted by two rows of windows, north and south, and they look out upon the interior courtyards, which are planted with trees. This arrangement allows air to enter the well-kept apartments, and the rays of the sun to light up the curtains and white beds of a model hospital, where everything possible has been done to relieve the suffering and depression of its unhappy inmates. In the ophthalmic wards curtains of a particular kind are so arranged as only to admit the degree of light which the patients can bear. Visitors to the Hôtel-Dieu, as to other hospitals in Paris, cannot fail to observe that the air is less pure in the men's than in the women's wards. This is to be explained by the men being allowed the only solace possible under the circumstances, that of tobacco. Nor are their grey dressing-gowns by any means so becoming as the white frocks and white caps worn by the female patients. Many of the wards contain only from two to eight beds. There is a sitting-room, moreover, with lounges, chairs, and sofas for the convalescent, not to speak of an open gallery above the portico, where patients who are well enough may, in fine weather, stretch their limbs. The upper storey of that part of the building which faces the Quai aux Fleurs used to be occupied by the community of Dames Augustines, who from time immemorial had had no other abode and no other head-quarters. But after the civil government had withdrawn from the Dames Augustines the hospital service of _La Pitié_ and _La Charité_, they all assembled at the Hôtel-Dieu, where additional sleeping rooms were prepared for them beneath the roof. Subscriptions were solicited for them in a pastoral letter from the Archbishop of Paris, dated December 2, 1888; and a new retreat was then found for them in the Hospital of Notre Dame de Bon Secours. One duty imposed upon them, in the days when the Hôtel-Dieu was composed of two large buildings on the banks of the Seine, was to wash, one day every month, whatever might be the temperature, 500 sheets. The sisters, equally with novices, were obliged to take part in these laundry operations. An ancient print, preserved in the National Library, gives a faithful representation of the washing of the 500 sheets. Admirable as has been the work accomplished in recent times by the Hôtel-Dieu, the place seems to have been little better than a pest-house at the period when Mercier wielded his conscientious pen. "A man meets there," he wrote, "with a death a thousand times more dreadful than that which awaits the indigent under his humble roof, abandoned though he be to himself and nature alone. And we dare call that the House of God!--where the contempt shown to humanity adds to the suffering of those who go there for relief! The physician and servant are paid--granted; the drugs cost nothing to the patient--true again; but he will be put to bed between a dying man and a dead corpse; he will breathe an air corrupted by pestiferous exhalations; he will be subject to chirurgical despotism; neither his cries, his complaints, nor his expostulations will be attended to; he will have nobody by to soothe and comfort him; pity itself will be blind and barbarous, having lost that sympathising compassion, and those tears of sensibility, which constitute its very being. In this abode of human misery every aspect is cruel and disgusting; and this is called the House of God! Who would not fly from the bloody, detested spot? Who will venture within a house where the bed of mercy is far more dreadful than the naked board on which lies the poorest wretch? This hospital, miscalled Hôtel-Dieu, was founded by Saint Landri and Comte Archambaud in the year 660 for the reception of sick persons of either sex. Jews, Turks, and infidels have an equal right to admission. There are 1,200 beds, and constantly between five and six thousand patients. What a disproportion! Yet the revenues of the hospital are immense. It was expected that the last fire which happened in this edifice would have been improved to the advantage of the patients, by the construction, on a healthier spot, of a new and more extensive structure. But no; everything remains on the same footing; though it is but too well proved that the Hôtel-Dieu has every requisite to create and increase a multitude of disorders on account of the dampness and confinement of the atmosphere. Wounds soon turn to a mortification; whilst the scurvy makes the greatest havoc amongst those who, from the nature of their maladies, are forced to remain there for some time. Thus, the most simple distempers soon grow into complicated diseases, sometimes fatal, by the contagion of that ambient air. Both the experience and observation of the naturalist concur to prove that a hospital which contains above one hundred beds is of itself a plague. It may be added that as often as two patients are laid up in the same room they will evidently hurt each other, and that such a practice is necessarily injurious to the laws of humanity. It is almost incredible, yet not the less true, that one-fifth of the patients are annually carried off. This is known and heard of with the most indifferent composure!" [Illustration: PRINCIPAL COURT OF THE HÔTEL-DIEU.] Nor does Mercier stop here. "Clamart," he continues, "is the gulf that swallows up the remains of those hapless men who have paid the last debt to nature in the Hôtel-Dieu. It is an extensive burying-ground, or rather a voracious monster whose maw is ever craving for new food, though most plentifully supplied. The bodies are there interred without a coffin and only sewed up in the coarsest linen cloth. At the least appearance of death the body is hurried away, and there are many instances of people having recovered under the hasty hand that wrapped them up; whilst others have been heard to cry "mercy" when already piled up in the cart that carried them to an untimely grave. The cart is drawn by twelve men. A priest, covered with filth and mud, carrying a hand-bell and cross, are all the funeral pomp reserved for these unfortunate victims. But at that hour all is one! Every morning at four o'clock the dismal cart sets off from the Hôtel-Dieu, and, as it rolls along, strikes terror into the neighbourhood, who are awoke by the awful sound of that bell. A man must be lost to all feeling who hears it unmoved. In certain seasons, when mortality was most rife, this cart has been seen to go backwards and forwards four times in four-and-twenty hours. It contains about fifty corpses, besides children, who are crammed between their legs. The bodies are cast into a deep pit, and are next covered with unslackened lime. This crucible, which is never shut up, seems to tell the affrighted looker-on that it could easily devour all the inhabitants that Paris contains. Such is the obedience paid to the laws, that the decree of the Parliament prohibiting all buryings within the walls of this city has at no time been carried into execution. The populace never fail on the day of All Souls to visit that cemetery, where they foresee that their bodies will one day be carried. They kneel and pray, and then adjourn to a tavern. To this spot, where the earth is fattened with the spoils of mankind, young surgeons resort by night, and, climbing the wall, carry off the dead corpses to make upon them their bloody experiments. Thus, the poor find no asylum even in death. And such is the tyranny over this unfortunate part of the community, that it does not cease till their very remains are hacked and hewed so as not to retain the least resemblance of man." [Illustration: RUE DE RIVOLI.] CHAPTER XXVI. CENTRAL PARIS. The Hotel de Ville--Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie--Rue Saint-Antoine--The Reformation. The Hôtel de Ville, new by its architecture, is old by its history, and to some extent by the buildings still surrounding it; though the ancient streets of the neighbourhood have during the last forty years been gradually disappearing. Close to the Church of St. Gervais and St. Protais stood the street significantly named Rue du Martroi--of martyrdom, or death-punishment; also the Rue de la Mortellerie, where the workers in "mortar"--stone-masons that is to say--were in the habit of meeting when out of work. With this may be connected the name of Place de Grève, formerly borne by what is now called the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville. The word _grève_ signifies in the present day a strike. Originally it meant simply the condition of being without employment; and it was on the Place de Grève that artisans who found, like Othello, their occupation gone, assembled in search of an employer. Afterwards this became a place of execution; and here it was that Ravaillac, Cartouche, Damiens, and such illustrious victims as the Constable of Saint-Pol under Louis XI., and Lally-Tollendal under Louis XVI., were decapitated, quartered alive, and otherwise tortured. "_La journée sera rude_," said Damiens, when, having already undergone various tortures, he learned that he was to be torn to pieces by four horses; and "rough" indeed have been the days passed by the unhappy wretches brought to punishment on the Place de Grève. After the Revolution of 1830, when the Hôtel de Ville became all at once a place of high political importance, the open space in front of it was looked upon as unworthy any longer to serve as a slaughter-ground, and the Place Saint-Jacques now became the head-quarters of the guillotine; which was afterwards to be transferred to the Place de la Roquette. The region of Paris commanded by the Hôtel de Ville forms a long irregular parallelogram, comprising, for the most part, the districts of Saint-Méry, Saint-Gervais and the Arsenal, bounded on the south by the Seine, on the west by the Place du Châtelet and the Boulevard Sébastopol, on the east by the Saint-Martin Canal and the Boulevard Bourdon, on the north by the Rue de Rivoli and the Rue Saint-Antoine, rejoining the Boulevard Bourdon at the Place de la Bastille. To the construction of the Rue de Rivoli is due the happy change which has taken place in this populous region, formerly deprived of light and air, and so overcrowded that the inhabitants were always suffering from some serious epidemic. The streets of the neighbourhood must at that time have been good specimens of those so energetically condemned by Arthur Young in one of his descriptions of Paris. "This great city," he wrote in the very year of the Revolution, "appears to be in many respects the most ineligible and inconvenient for the residence of a person of small fortune of any that I have seen; and vastly inferior to London. The streets are very narrow and many of them crowded, nine-tenths dirty, and all without foot-pavements. Walking, which in London is so pleasant and so clean that ladies do it every day, is here a toil and a fatigue to a man, and an impossibility to a well-dressed woman. The coaches are numerous, and, what is much worse, there is an infinity of one-horse cabriolets, which are driven by young men of fashion and their imitators, alike fools, with such rapidity as to be real nuisances and render the streets exceedingly dangerous without an incessant caution. I saw a poor child run over and probably killed, and have been myself many times blackened with the mud of the kennels. This beggarly practice of driving a one-horse booby-hutch about the streets of a great capital flows either from poverty or wretched and despicable economy; nor is it possible to speak of it with too much severity. If young noblemen at London were to drive their chaises in streets without footways as their brethren do at Paris, they would speedily and justly get very well threshed or rolled in the kennel. This circumstance renders Paris an ineligible residence for persons, particularly families, that cannot afford to keep a coach; a convenience which is as dear as at London. The _fiacres_ (hackney coaches) are much worse than at that city; and chairs there are none, for they would be driven down in the streets. To this circumstance also it is owing that all persons of small or moderate fortune are forced to dress in black with black stockings: the dusky hue of this in company is not so disagreeable a circumstance as being too great a distinction; too clear a line drawn in company between a man that has a good fortune and another that has not. With the pride, arrogance, and ill-temper of English wealth, this could not be borne; but the prevailing good humour of the French eases all such untoward circumstances. Lodgings are not half as good as at London, yet considerably dearer. If you do not hire a whole suite of rooms at an hotel you must probably mount three, four, or five pair of stairs, and in general have nothing but a bed-chamber. After the horrid fatigue of the streets such an elevation is a delectable circumstance. You must search with trouble before you will be lodged in a private family, as gentlemen usually are in London; and pay a higher price. Servants' wages are about the same as at that city. It is to be regretted that Paris should have these disadvantages, for in other respects I take it to be a most eligible residence for such as prefer a great city. The society for a man of letters or one who has any scientific pursuit cannot be exceeded. The intercourse between such men and the great, which, if it is not upon an equal footing, ought never to exist at all, is respectable. Persons of the highest rank pay an attention to science and literature, and emulate the character they confer. I should pity the man who expected, without other advantages of a very different nature, to be well received in a brilliant circle at London because he was a Fellow of the Royal Society. But this would not be the case with a member of the Academy of Sciences at Paris; he is sure of a good reception everywhere. Perhaps this contrast depends, in a great measure, on the difference of the governments of the two countries. Politics are too much attended to in England to allow a due respect to be paid to anything else; and should the French establish a freer government, academicians will not be held in such estimation when rivalled in the public esteem by the orators who hold forth liberty and property in a free parliament." Napoleon I. began the Rue de Rivoli, tracing it alongside the Tuileries Gardens and the Palais Royal to the Louvre as far as the Rue de Rohan. Napoleon III. continued the great conception of his uncle and pushed on the Rue de Rivoli through the mean habitations and crowded streets in the neighbourhood of the Palais Royal, of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, and of the Halles as far as the upper part of the Rue Saint-Antoine. The most celebrated, and certainly the most beautiful, monument in the street is the tower of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie; so named from its having been built close to the great butchers' market of Paris. Constructed in 1153, the church, which at first was little more than a chapel, was rebuilt in 1380, but not completed with the principal porch and the tower until the reign of Francis I. The tower is now all that remains of the church, which in 1737, under the Revolution, was alienated by the Administration of Domains and soon afterwards pulled down. Having become private property, the tower passed from hand to hand until 1836, when it was offered for sale, and purchased by the Municipality for 250,000 francs. This sum was not dear for a masterpiece of Gothic art in its last and most delicate period, when it was about to disappear in presence of the Græco-Roman Renaissance. Begun under the reign of Louis XII. in 1508, the tower was finished fourteen years afterwards in 1522. It measures fifty-two metres in height from the stone foundations to the summit. The platform of the steeple (which is reached by a staircase of 291 steps) is surrounded by a balustrade, which supports, at the north-west angle, a colossal statue of Saint Jacques. This statue replaces the ancient one which the Revolutionists of 1793 precipitated on to the pavement, though they respected the symbolical animals placed at the four corners of the balustrade. These have been carefully restored. From the height of the platform a magnificent view may be obtained. "One sees," wrote Sanval under Louis XIV., "as one looks over the town the distribution and course of the streets like the veins in the human body. Unfortunately this incomparable view can no longer be obtained--not at least without much difficulty. The tower of Saint-Jacques has been put in the hands of an astronomical and meteorological society, which denies access to the public, though on rare occasions it admits a few favoured persons to its experiments, which take place at night." It must here be mentioned that at the foot of the tower is a statue of Pascal, who continued from its top the observations he had begun from the summit of the Puy de Dôme. The writer Nicholas Flamel, librarian to the University of Paris, and Pernelle, his wife, both buried in the vaults of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie, had been the benefactors of this church; and their memory is preserved in the name, Nicholas Flamel, given to the street which, beginning on the right of the tower, leads from the Rue de Rivoli to the Rue des Lombards. Around the tower of Saint-Jacques is a large square, well planted with trees. Further on, towards the east, the Rue de Rivoli runs past the Hôtel de Ville and the Napoleon Barracks. Of the Church of Saint-Gervais, one side of which looks towards the Rue de Rivoli, mention has already been made. Close to the point where the Rue de Rivoli and the Rue Saint-Antoine meet, is an offshoot from the Rue Saint-Antoine called Rue François Miron, after the independent provost of merchants under the reign of Henri IV. In this street stands the Hôtel de Beauvais. From the windows of this mansion Anne of Austria, accompanied by the Queen of England, Cardinal Mazarin, Marshal Turenne, and other illustrious personages, witnessed the procession headed by her son, Louis XIV., and her daughter-in-law, Marie Thérèse of Austria, when the newly married couple made their solemn entry into Paris through the Gate of Saint-Antoine, August 26, 1660. Running from the Rue Saint-Antoine to the Rue Charlemagne is a narrow street scarcely twelve feet broad, with walls of extraordinary height. Rue Percée it was originally named. For some years past it has been called Rue du Prévôt, because at its south-east corner it joins the former mansion of the Provost of Paris, of which the principal entrance is in the Rue Charlemagne. The series of open courtyards known as the Passage Charlemagne, in which all sorts of trades are carried on, lead to the very centre of one of the most interesting and least known monuments of old Paris. It is composed of two blocks of parallel buildings constructed in the style of the first years of the sixteenth century, when French architects were beginning to throw aside the fantasies of Gothic art to subject themselves to the straight lines of the Neo-Roman style. After passing through various hands, and finally from François Montmorency, Governor of Paris, to Cardinal Charles de Bourbon--the structure was presented by the latter to the Jesuits, who attached to it a chapel dedicated to St. Louis and St. Paul. The Church of St. Louis and St. Paul possesses, among various works of modern art, the first picture known to have been painted by Eugène Delacroix: "Christ in the Garden of Olives." This work is dated 1816. [Illustration: FAÇADE OF THE CHURCH OF ST. GERVAIS AND ST. PROTAIS.] [Illustration: THE APSIS, FROM THE RUE DES BARRES.] The house given to the Jesuits was taken from them in 1767 on their expulsion from France, and it then became the general repository of all maps, plans, and other documents relating to the French navy, and at the same time the Library of the Town of Paris. A passage leading from the Rue Saint-Antoine to the Rue Saint-Paul separated formerly the Church or Chapel of Saint-Éloi, where Charles VI. was baptised, from the cemetery of the same name, where the man in the iron mask, under the name of Marchiali, was buried. Here, too, Rabelais, Hardouin, and Mansard, the architect, were interred. Rabelais died on the 9th of April, 1553, in the Rue des Jardins, not very far from the mercers' house where Molière went to live nearly a century later. [Illustration: TOWER OF SAINT-JACQUES-LA-BOUCHERIE.] The Rue Saint-Antoine was interrupted, until the Revolution of 1789, by the Bastille. This fortress was composed of eight towers, four looking towards the Town, that is to say towards the Rue Saint-Antoine, and four towards the country, that is to say the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. Curiously enough it was no despot, but Étienne Marcel, Provost of the Merchants, who built the original Bastille, destined afterwards to be enlarged (in 1370) by Hugues Aubriot, Provost of Paris. [Illustration: HÔTEL DE BEAUVAIS.] It was from the Hôtel de la Rochepot, in the Rue Saint-Antoine, that Henri II. was accustomed to view the burning at the stake of his Protestant victims. In this street, too, was one of the earliest of the Protestant places of worship established in France at the very beginning of the Reformation. Few persons are aware, though the fact has been pointed out by M. Athanase Coquerel the younger, that the Reformation of the sixteenth century, before breaking out in Germany and elsewhere, had already appeared in Paris. It had for cradle the left bank of the Seine separated at the time from the town and its suburbs, and divided into quarters subject to two special jurisdictions: the University and the vast territory of the Abbaye of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Was it not natural, asks M. Coquerel, in spite of the jealous vigilance of the Sorbonne, that the schools of Paris in which Abailard had so boldly attacked scholasticism should be the first to wake up to the new spiritual life? When professor at the college of Cardinal Lemoine, Lefèvre d'Étaples published in 1512 his "Commentary on St. Paul," in whose epistles he pointed out, five years before Luther, the essential doctrines of the Reformation. This book was dedicated to the powerful abbé of Saint-Germain, Briçonnet, under whose auspices was formed in Paris the first group of ardent propagators of the new ideas. During forty-three years the Reformation spread gradually through the university, the court, and the town; always keeping for headquarters the Faubourg Saint-Germain, which gained the name of "little Geneva," and which is now the most Catholic quarter in Paris. The first Protestant put to death in France for his religious views was one of the pupils of Lefèvre d'Étaples, a student named Pauvent, born in the year 1524. The martyrdom of Pauvent was followed by that of many other Huguenots. Calvin was then studying at Paris, but could not remain there. The rector of the university, Nicholas Cop, a secret promoter of the Reformation, had commissioned the young Calvin to write a discourse for the re-opening of the term, which, according to custom, was delivered on November 1, 1533, in the Church of the Mathurins, built on a portion of the site of the Emperor Julian's baths. The heresies contained in this discourse were denounced to the Parliament by several monks. The rector found it necessary to take flight to Bâle, where he became a pastor. Calvin followed his example, and was obliged, it is said, to escape through one of the windows of his college. The first place in Paris where the Reformation was publicly preached was the Louvre. Here Queen Margaret of Navarre, sister of Francis I., Briçonnet's studious and learned friend, ordered her chaplain, Gérard Roussel, and other disciples of Lefèvre d'Étaples to preach in her presence; for which reason Lemaud, of the Order of Cordeliers, declared publicly in the pulpit that she deserved to be put into a sack and thrown into the Seine. The rage of the priests was shared by the people, and the cry of "Death to the heretics!" was frequently heard about the town. "To be thrown into the river," says a chronicler of the time, "it was only necessary to be called a Huguenot in the open street, to whatever religion one might belong." In all the public places of Paris, on the bridges, and in the cemeteries Protestants were constantly burned. In 1535 Francis I., followed by his three sons, the court, the Parliament, and the guilds of all the trade associations, took part in a general procession, which halted at six of the public places, where six Protestants, suspended by iron chains, were burnt to death. "L'estrapade" this form of punishment was called; and not many years ago the name was still borne by an open space on the left bank of the Seine. Henri II. imitated his father. One day he assisted, from the window of a house in the Rue Saint-Antoine, at the execution of a Protestant tailor who was burnt alive. But the eyes of the martyr, steadily fixed on his, so frightened him that though this was not the last heretic he sentenced to death, it was the last he saw die. The Protestants of Paris had not at that time either churches or clergy, but they already had schools. "Hedge schools" they were called, from being held in the country. They would not have been permitted in the town. The first Protestant place of worship established in Paris was at a house in the Pré-aux-Clercs. Protestant congregations were often surprised; and in 1557 a number of Protestants assembled for worship at a house in the Rue Saint-Jacques, opposite the building where the Lycée Louis le Grand is now located, were besieged by a number of priests attached to the Collège du Plessis. The populace took part in the attack; and after remaining indoors six hours, those who at last went out were stoned, and in several instances killed. The rest of the congregation, to the number of 135, were made prisoners, and many of them sentenced to death. Among those executed was the young and beautiful widow of a member of the Consistory, Mme. de Graveron, who, "seated on the tumbril, showed a rosy countenance of excellent beauty." Her tongue had been cut out, which was often done in those days to prevent the exhortations which martyrs might address to the mob. At other times, as afterwards at the execution of Louis XVI., a constant rolling of drums was kept up. It was granted to Mme. de Graveron as a special favour that flames should be applied only to her feet and face, and that she should be strangled before her body was burnt. The Protestant poet, Clément Marot, to whom Francis I. had given a house, called the House of the Bronze Horse (now Number 30, Rue de Condé and 27, Rue de Tournon), translated at this epoch some of the psalms into French verse; and his version had an extraordinary vogue even at the court. The students who, at the close of day, were accustomed to amuse themselves in the Pré-aux-Clercs opposite the Louvre, replaced their ordinary songs by the psalms of Clément Marot; and it became the fashion with the lords and ladies of the court to cross the Seine in order to hear the singing of the "clerks." Often they would themselves join in, and the Huguenot King of Navarre, Antoine de Bourbon, was frequently seen singing the psalms in the "meadow" at the head of a long procession of courtiers and students. But persecution, which for a time had ceased, began anew: Marot was obliged to fly. In spite of the danger by which they were threatened, the deputies of the Protestant churches of France met at Paris in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and there, in 1559, held their first national Synod. Francis I., husband of Mary Stuart, allowed the cruel work of his father to be continued. Under his reign the illustrious chancellor Du Bourg was burnt and hanged; as to which Voltaire declared that "this murder did more for Protestantism than all the eloquent works produced by its defenders." Cardinal de Lorraine made many other victims, surrounding on one occasion a Protestant place of assembly, and taking all he could find within. There were secret passages, however, communicating with the buildings around, so that many persons effected their escape. The secret head-quarters of the Reformed Church in France were in the Rue des Marais-Saint-Germain, now called the Rue Visconti. Its ancient name, which need scarcely have been changed, was borne by it for more than three centuries; during which time it was inhabited, or frequently visited, by all the old Protestants of Paris: by the D'Aubignés and the Du Moulins; as later on by the Duke de la Rochefoucauld, Mme. de Sévigné, Racine and Voltaire, Mme. Clairon and Adrienne Lecouvreur. [Illustration: CHURCH OF ST. LOUIS AND ST. PAUL.] [Illustration: RUE DE RIVOLI AND HÔTEL DE VILLE.] Meanwhile the Reformation was constantly gaining ground in Paris. Coligny and his two brothers, one of whom was a cardinal, joined it openly; whereupon a monk, Jean de Han, preached against him, taking for his text, "Ite in castellum quod contra vos est," and translating it thus: "Fall upon Châtillon, who is against you." On becoming Regent, Catherine de Médicis, hesitating between the two religions, tried to bring together the Châtillons and those champions of Catholicism, the Guises. With a view to conciliation the conference of Poissy was held; and though no positive result was secured, the Reformed religion was allowed to be practised openly, though its places of worship were, for the most part, beyond the City walls. From time to time, however, a Protestant "temple" was attacked and burnt; and once, when one of these onslaughts caused a riot, Gabaston, Chief of the Watch, was hanged for arresting indiscriminately the rioters of both religions. The massacre of Vassy (directed by Guise, who boasted that he would cut the edict of toleration in favour of the Protestants with the edge of his sword) and two civil wars were but the prelude to the terrible Massacre of Saint Bartholomew. [Illustration: RUE GRENIER-SUR-L'EAU.] The extermination of the heretics had been recommended many times to Catherine de Médicis by Philip II., by the Duke of Alva, and by Pope Saint Pius V. (Letter 12 of Charles IX. and Papal Bull of August 1, 1568). The queen, after much hesitation, took a sudden resolution, when the Guises aggravated the situation by causing the assassination of Coligny. Catherine obtained, at the last moment, the consent of the king. But it was the brother and successor of Charles, it was Henri III. who assumed the direction of the massacre, and posted himself on the centre of the bridge of Notre Dame, in order to see what took place on both banks of the river. How the bell of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois gave the signal for the massacre, and how Coligny, after escaping with some severe wounds from the first attack, was afterwards put to death, has already been told. In the midst of the general slaughter a few Huguenots of distinction remained safe. Charles IX. kept in his own room the eminent surgeon, Ambroise Paré, of whom he had need, and his old nurse, Philippe Richard, whom he loved. Nor did anyone venture to attack Renée, daughter of Louis XII., a zealous Protestant, who was fortunate enough to save a few of her young co-religionists by giving them shelter in her mansion on the left bank of the river. Two days after the massacre thanksgivings were offered up by the clergy, who headed a procession in which all the Court, with the exception of Henri of Navarre, afterwards Henri IV. of France, took part. The King was congratulated from the pulpit by the Bishop of Asti on having "in one morning purged France of heresy." Little did the prelate foresee that the Church of Saint-Thomas of the Louvre in which he was preaching would, some two centuries later, become the recognised centre of this same heresy. Condé now abjured at Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and Henri de Navarre at the Louvre; but the Reformed Church was far from being destroyed. Only a few months after the massacre, Bérenger de Portal left to this church (whose re-establishment he ardently desired) a sum sufficient for the maintenance of the pastors and the education of candidates for the ministry. The Rue Saint-Antoine touches the Boulevard Bourdon, thus named in memory of Colonel Bourdon, of the 11th Dragoons, killed at Austerlitz. The building which now dominates all this district is the Arsenal, built by the Emperor in 1807 as a granary of reserve for provisioning Paris; at present occupied by manufacturers and workmen of various kinds. The Arsenal was erected on the site of the "little arsenal," built by Francis I. The new structure extends south to the Quai Morland, so styled in honour of the colonel of the Chasseurs of the Guard killed at Austerlitz. Augmented and renovated by various architects, the Arsenal contains a library of which the charming writer, Charles Nodier, was at one time the custodian. The collection was first formed by M. d'Argenson and the Marquis de Paulmy, Minister of State, who was the last Governor of the Arsenal before the suppression of this military establishment by Louis XVI. in 1788, on the eve of the Revolution. To gratify his own private tastes as a bibliophile, M. de Paulmy had got together a library of about 100,000 volumes and 10,000 manuscripts, which was increased by the addition of upwards of 26,000 works from the sale of the Duke de la Vallière's collection. To prevent the dispersion of the books after his death, M. de Paulmy sold the collection in 1785 to the Count of Artois for a certain number of annuities, which the Count omitted to pay. The library was, all the same, looked upon as government property, and confiscated as such in 1790. Enriched by the confiscation of other libraries in the neighbourhood, the Library of the Arsenal was thrown open to the public by the Imperial Government, which at the same time undertook the payment of the annuities due to M. de Paulmy's heirs. It now comprises about 350,000 volumes, 6,500 manuscripts, and a magnificent collection of prints. It contains, among other interesting documents, the original papers composing the archives of the Bastille, published in part by M. Ravaisson. A clock of ebony and gilt by Louis le Roy, which adorns the entrance, is said to be worth upwards of 40,000 francs; and two of the side rooms are full of curious woodwork, and of interesting objects of all kinds. In a room occupied at one time by the Duke de Sully are preserved the archives of the Saint-Simonians, including the sealed memoirs of Le Père Enfantin, which are not to be published until thirty years after his death; Enfantin's colossal bust in the style of Michael Angelo's Moses, a portrait of Saint-Simon, and another of Mme. Thérèse, the divinity, or at least the Egeria, of the sect. It was at the Arsenal, when Charles Nodier was librarian, that Victor Hugo, in the midst of a great literary gathering, recited his first poems, soon afterwards to be given to the world under the title of "Odes et Ballades." A complete list of the writers who have occupied the post of librarian at the Arsenal would include Ancelot, Paul Lacroix (better known as Le Bibliophile Jacob), Édouard Thierry, Hippolyte Lucas, and the Viscount de Bornier, author of "La Fille de Roland," "Agamemnon," "Attila," and "Mahomet." Among the interesting places in the neighbourhood of the Arsenal must be mentioned the little covered market to which the name of Ave Maria has been given. It marks the site of the old tennis court of the Black Cross, where Molière erected his second theatre after the failure of the first; and with so little success that he was imprisoned for debt contracted in the name of the company. The Rue des Nonnains d'Hyères, which joins the Rue Saint-Antoine, leads to the Pont Marie, by which the Seine is crossed to reach the Island of Saint-Louis. Parallel to this street is the Rue Geoffrey Lasnier, which is scarcely five-and-twenty feet wide, and which has nothing whatever attractive about it. Here, nevertheless, at No. 26, stands the hotel built by the Constable de Montmorency, and restored in the early part of the eighteenth century, when it was known as the Hôtel de Châlons. Most of the houses in this curious street are at least three centuries old. Wanderers in search of the quaint will pass from it to the Rue Grenier-sur-l'eau, which leads through the Rue des Barres to the very threshold of the Church of Saint-Gervais. The Rue Grenier-sur-l'eau is so narrow that it would scarcely admit of the passage of a bath chair. It is a lane of walls, without doors or windows, into which light scarcely penetrates. The Island of Saint-Louis, between the Île Louviers, which precedes it above bridge, and the Island of the City, which follows it below, was nothing but pasture-land until the beginning of Louis XIII.'s reign. It was composed at that time of two islets, a small one called the Isle of Cows, and a larger one known as the Isle of Notre Dame. In 1614 Christophe Marie, general constructor of the bridges of France, undertook to connect these two islets, to furnish them with streets and with a circumference of stone quays, and to join the whole to the right bank by a bridge leading to the Rue des Nonnains d'Hyères. In 1647 the work had been completed, and the island was covered with buildings. Its principal street crosses it lengthwise from east to west. Rue Saint-Louis-en-l'Île it is called, and it contains two remarkable buildings, the Church of Saint-Louis and the Hôtel Lambert. The Church of Saint-Louis was begun in 1664 by Louis Le Vau, continued by Gabriel Leduc, and completed in 1726 by Jacques Doucet, who constructed the cupola. The steeple, thirty metres high, is built of stone, and is in the form of an obelisk. The ornamental sculpture is the work of Jean Baptiste de Champaigne, nephew of the painter, Philippe de Champaigne. The church contains fine paintings by Mignard, Coypel, Lemoine, and Eugène Delacroix. At the beginning of the Rue Saint-Louis, towards the north, commanding a superb view of the Upper Seine, stands the Hôtel Lambert, built by Le Vau, Louis XIV.'s principal architect. The first proprietor of the Hôtel Lambert, Nicholas Lambert de Thorigny, spared nothing to make it a magnificent abode. The decoration of the interior was entrusted to Lesueur le Brun and other celebrated painters of the time. The treasures which the Hôtel Lambert originally contained have in the course of its varied fortunes been dispersed. It passed after the death of Lambert de Thorigny into the hands of M. de La Haye, farmer-general, and successively into those of the Marquis du Châtelet-Laumont, and of M. Dupin, another farmer-general, brother of the celebrated Mme. d'Épinay. The internal decorations suffered much from these constant changes of ownership. At the death of M. de La Haye, the painting on the ceiling of one of the rooms, "Apollo listening to the prayer of Phaeton," by Lesueur, was removed from the Hôtel Lambert to the Luxembourg Gallery, where it may still be seen. Most of the other paintings were transferred, at the time of the Revolution, to the Louvre. Many distinguished persons have resided at the Hôtel Lambert, including Voltaire when he was writing the "Henriade"; and it was here that M. de Montalivet, in 1815, after the battle of Waterloo, had a celebrated interview with Napoleon. Later on the Hôtel Lambert became a girls' school; then a depot for military stores; until finally, towards 1840, it was offered for sale, and purchased by Prince Czartoryski, to whose family it still belongs. The Quai d'Anjou, which looks towards the north, is rich in associations of various kinds. The façade of Number 17 bears these words inscribed on a marble slab, "Hôtel de Lauzun, 1657"; and beyond the principal door this other inscription: "Hôtel de Pimodan." Lieut.-General Count de Pimodan was the first inhabitant of this hotel, which was built for him in 1657, and which he occupied until the time of his fall. It was the abode of the Marquis de La Vallée de Pimodan at the time of the Revolution. Under the reign of Louis Philippe a number of distinguished writers lived successively or simultaneously in the mansion: Roger de Beauvoir, who published a collection of tales called "The Hôtel Pimodan"; Théophile Gautier, Charles Baudelaire, and others. It now gives shelter to a wonderful collection of books and objects of art brought together by Baron Pichon, one of the most eminent members of the Society of French Bibliophiles. Quitting the Island of Saint-Louis to return to the quay and square of the Hôtel de Ville, we reach the Avenue Victoria, which runs to the right of Boccador's façade, and which received this name in honour of Queen Victoria, who paid a visit to the Emperor and to the town of Paris in 1855, at the height of the Crimean War. The avenue in question leads to the Place du Châtelet, which is enclosed between two monumental façades, those of the Théâtre Lyrique and of the Théâtre du Châtelet. The Place du Châtelet was formed in 1813 on the site of the Grand Châtelet; an ancient castle of Gallo-Roman origin, which defended at this point the entrance to the City. It had been entirely rebuilt in 1684; and in 1813 only a few towers of the original building remained. The Châtelet was a court of justice with civil, criminal, and police tribunals. Beneath the buildings of the Grand Châtelet, and in the towers, were confined an enormous number of prisoners. Their dungeons were horrible. A Royal decree of the 23rd of August, 1780 (nine years, be it observed, before the Revolution) ordered the destruction of all subterranean prisons. The jurisdiction of the Châtelet having been abolished by the Revolution, its buildings remained unoccupied until 1802, when they were entirely destroyed. Of the two theatres which shut in the Place du Châtelet, the one to which the ancient building gives its name is much the larger. It accommodates 3,000 spectators, to whom some of the best-known spectacular pieces have been submitted, including _Michael Strogoff_, _Les Pilules du Diable_, etc. [Illustration: THE PONT MARIE.] The theatre on the other side of the Place du Châtelet, and which belongs to the town of Paris, has been occupied since the year 1887 by the Opéra Comique, the establishment having been transferred to it soon after the disastrous fire which consumed the historic Salle Favart. It was originally the Théâtre Lyrique; directed by M. Carvalho, and associated with the triumphs of Mme. Miolan Carvalho, and the earliest successes of Christine Nilsson. Burnt by the Communards in May, 1871, it was re-opened as a dramatic theatre under the title of Théâtre Lyrique-Historique, afterwards to become Théâtre des Nations, Théâtre Italien, Théâtre de Paris, and finally in 1888 Opéra Comique. The interior of the house is more remarkable for elegance than for comfort. It holds 1,500 spectators. The Opéra Comique, as here established, receives an annual subvention of 300,000 francs. The Boulevard de Sebastopol, which starts from the north of the Place du Châtelet, was, as the name sufficiently denotes, constructed in 1855; opening a broadway through the compact mass of old houses enclosed between the Rue Saint-Denis and the Rue Saint-Martin. It caused the destruction of no interesting edifices, and its roadway, thirty metres wide, is lined solely with new and lofty houses five storeys high. Here traders, artisans, and even artists are to be found: engravers and workers in metal, lamp-manufacturers, workers in bronze, haberdashers, mercers, clock-makers, jewellers, druggists, opticians, confectioners, dyers, lace-makers, button-makers, crape-makers, artificial flower makers, glovers, etc. This broad thoroughfare leads us to the end of the Boulevard Saint-Denis, passing behind the chancel of the Church of Saint-Leu, whose front entrance belongs to the Rue Saint-Denis, and behind the square of the Conservatory of Arts and Trades, which belongs to the Rue Saint-Martin. The street of the Lombards (Rue des Lombards) so much enlarged as to be no longer recognisable, is still the headquarters of the drug trade, wholesale and retail. But it does not now, as in former days, possess a monopoly for confectionery and sweetmeats. Even the Faithful Shepherd (_Fidèle Berger_), as one celebrated shop for the sale of bonbons was called, and which gave its title to the comic opera by Adolphe Adam, has migrated to a newer and more fashionable locality. The Rue de la Verrerie, just opposite, runs in a direct line to the Rue Saint-Antoine. It has preserved in a remarkable manner its physiognomy of two centuries ago; thanks to the architecture of its fine mansions, which has nobly resisted the ravages of time. Who would ever imagine that this dark and narrow street, which is constantly blocked by the most ordinary traffic, was enlarged in 1671 and 1672 because it was the ordinary route along which Louis XIV., coming from the Castle of the Louvre to that of Vincennes, was in the habit of passing, besides being the road by which foreign ambassadors made their formal entry into Paris? [Illustration: RUE ST.-LOUIS-EN-L'ÎLE.] At the corner of the Rue de la Verrerie and the Rue Saint-Martin stands the Église Saint-Merry, or Méry. The name, spelt both ways, is in either form a corruption of Saint-Méderic, a monk of the monastery of Saint-Martin d'Autun, who lived a strange life in a cell, and died in odour of sanctity on the 29th of August, 1700. The church was reconstructed as long ago as the tenth century, at the expense of Odo the Falconer, whose body, enclosed in a tomb of stone, was discovered in 1520. The legs were encased in boots of gilded leather. Odo the Falconer was one of the warriors who defended Paris in 886 against the attacks of the Normans. The actual edifice was begun in the reign of Francis I., between 1520 and 1530, and not finished until 1612, under the minority of Louis XIII. Constructed in the form of a Latin cross, the Church of Saint-Merry has two lateral entrances. But from the south side, that is to say, from the Rue de la Verrerie, only a gate of the principal entrance can be seen, together with the two turrets terminating in bell towers, along which "chimæras dire" are crawling. Buried under the Church of Saint-Merry are Chapelain, author of "La Pucelle," and the Marquis de Pomponne, Minister of Louis XIV. To the north of Saint-Merry stood the cloister of the canons, separated from the church by the façade of the Rue du Cloître, and by two narrow little streets bearing the expressive names of Brisemiche and Taillepain, on account of the daily distributions of bread of which they were the scene. At the back of the church the name of the Rue des Juges-Consuls recalls the fact that the first Tribunal of Commerce created by Charles IX. was installed there in a mansion which had belonged to President Baillet in 1570. The Tribunal of Commerce was, in the seventeenth century, the centre of a group of money-changers and bankers, who so infested the Rue Saint-Martin and the Rue Quincampoix as to render them impassable. The Rue Quincampoix is for ever associated with the name of Law, a Scotch banker related to the Argyll family, and son of a goldsmith and banker who died at Venice in 1729. Law (John Lauriston Law) was born at Edinburgh in 1671, and he is said at an early age to have studied assiduously the doctrine of chances, which he applied to games of hazard. Whether in virtue of his arithmetical combinations or of that luck which during a long course of years never deserted him, he won large sums of money at the gambling-table, after which he turned his attention to gambling on a wider scale: finance, that is to say. He was still in his twenty-fifth year when, as the result of a love affair, he fought a duel, for which he was sentenced to death. His punishment was commuted to that of imprisonment for life; but he succeeded in escaping, left England, and for some time travelled through the different states of Europe, playing everywhere with success, and proposing everywhere, but without success, a new system of public credit, due to his inexhaustible imagination. The system would, according to its inventor, multiply one hundredfold the resources of the State by putting into circulation a quantity of paper money, based upon the revenue from taxes and Government property of all kinds, coin, according to Law, being insufficient for the requirements of a large nation. The Regent of Orleans, captivated by this brilliant scheme, saw in it the means of saving France, at the time (1716) threatened by national bankruptcy. He, in the first place, granted to Law the privilege of establishing a general bank with a capital of 6,000,000 francs, divided into 12,000 shares of 500 francs each, with a discount of 25 per cent. to anyone purchasing a thousand shares. The shares were readily taken and the bank proved a great success. Then, in connection with the bank, Law started successively the Mississippi Company, the Senegal Company, the China Company, the French East India Company, and companies for coining the State money and farming the State revenue. Having now got into his hands all the sources of public income, he made over his bank to the State, and was himself appointed Controller-General of Finance. Instead, however, of helping commerce, Law's creations merely stimulated the spirit of speculation; so that priests, nobles, merchants, shopkeepers, workmen, all began to gamble in stocks and shares. Intoxicated by his success, Law issued an excessive number of shares: "watering" them, according to the financial expression of the present day. In due time, notwithstanding all kinds of expedients (such as forced currency for the new paper money) to keep them at par, the shares lost value in the market, and soon fell to such a point that their depreciation caused a general panic. There was no class in which some, and, indeed, many of Law's shareholders were not to be found; and ere long the inventor of the new system of credit became the object of so much public indignation that he went in danger of his life. There was a riot in the Palais Royal, and Law's carriage was stopped by a band of infuriated persons in the public street. A man of great nerve and of commanding presence, Law looked from the carriage window and exclaimed in a haughty tone: "Back, you rabble!" (_Arrière canaille!_) on which his assailants retired. This method of appeasing the stormy waters was tried the next day with less success by Law's coachman. His master was not inside the carriage. The vehicle, however, had been recognised, and the coachman found his progress impeded by an angry mob. "Back, you rabble!" he cried, in imitation of his master; when the mob, unwilling to receive from the servant the defiance which they had listened to in all humility from the master, tore him from his box and put him to death. Another carriage story of the same period, likewise associated with finance, has a less tragic conclusion. A footman who had learnt, by listening to the conversation of his master at dinner-table, the art of speculating, had at last made a sufficiently large fortune to be able to buy himself a carriage. As soon as he had taken possession of it, he paid a visit to the Rue Quincampoix, a narrow street near the Rue Saint-Martin, where the bankers, brokers, and speculators interested in Law's various enterprises had their headquarters. After transacting a little business, the enriched flunkey entered a much-frequented café and refreshed himself. Some time afterwards, in a fit of absence due either to preoccupation or to the effect of alcoholic liquors, he left the café and, instead of getting into his carriage, got up behind it. "You have made a mistake, sir," called out the coachman; "your place is inside." "I know it is," replied the proprietor of the vehicle, suddenly recovering his presence of mind; "I wanted to see whether there was room for a pair of lacqueys behind." If footmen became aristocrats, noblemen, in those subversive days, turned tradesmen. The Regent made his money with the greatest ease, by simply fixing the official value of the shares he held at a figure which suited his book. The members of the Court followed his lead. One of them, the Duke de la Force, did business on an extended scale. Nothing was too high or too low for him; and on one occasion, being unable to realise the value of his paper in any more profitable form, he took for it the contents of a grocer's shop. It was now necessary to sell the goods; on which the licensed grocers of the capital complained to the Lieutenant of Police that the Duke was entering into illegal competition with them. The Lieutenant did his duty, and the Duke's tea and sugar were confiscated. A footman named Languedoc, sent by his master to the Rue Quincampoix to sell some shares at a fixed rate, disposed of them for 500,000 francs more than the appointed price, and pocketing the balance, started as a gentleman on his own account, engaged servants and changed his name to that of Monsieur de La Bastide, by which he was thenceforth known. In times of feverish speculation the surest winners are the brokers--those happy intermediaries who, whether their clients buy or sell, sink or swim, steadily take their commission. A famous intermediary of the Rue Quincampoix was a certain hunchback, who used to let out his hump as a desk for buyers, sellers, and dealers of all kinds. In a comparatively short time he is said to have realised as much as 50,000 francs. When the financial crash arrived, it was felt necessary to punish someone, and proceedings were taken against Law by the Parliament of Paris. Law, as completely ruined as the most unfortunate of his victims, escaped to Belgium, and thence to England, to die ultimately in Italy. "When I took service in France," he wrote to the Duke of Orleans, "I had as much property as I needed. I was without debts and I had credit; I left the service without property of any kind. Those who placed confidence in me have been driven to bankruptcy, and I have not the means of paying them." At the time of his great failure, and for a long time afterwards, if not to the present day, Law was looked upon as a mere swindler; whereas he was nothing worse than a sanguine, over-confident, perhaps even reckless speculator. It has been seen that by his speculations he impoverished himself as well as others. "The machine he had invented," says one of his critics, M. Gautier, "was ingenious; but in a country like France, without industrial resources, it could not find sufficient motive power. Law thought he could remove this difficulty by joining to his mechanism an artificial motive power. He was wrong. The banks can no more found credit than credit can produce capital. They can turn to the best account a value that exists. But to create value is beyond their power." According to another French economist, M. Levasseur, "Law acted with the precipitation and violence of a man who, penetrated with the truth of his own ideas, marches straight towards his goal without caring whether the generality of persons understand him or not, and who becomes irritated when natural obstacles present themselves which he had not foreseen." Law himself, while asserting his own moral integrity, admitted that he had made mistakes. "I do not maintain," he said, "that I was right on every point. I acknowledge that I committed errors, and that if I had to begin again I should act differently. I should advance more slowly but more surely, and should not expose the State and my own person to the dangers necessarily resulting from a general panic." He persisted, however, in asserting that, though his mode of action had been faulty, he nevertheless possessed the true secret of national wealth. "Do not forget," he wrote from his place of exile, "that the introduction of credit has done more for commercial transactions between the countries of Europe than the discovery of India; that it is for the Sovereign to give credit, not to receive it, and that the people of every country have such absolute need of it that they must return to it in spite of themselves, however much they may mistrust the principle." [Illustration: PONT AU CHANGE, PLACE DU CHÂTELET, AND BOULEVARD DE SEBASTOPOL.] "We must render to this man," says M. Levasseur, "the justice he merits. He was not, as has sometimes been said, an adventurer who had come to France to profit by the weakness of the Regent. If he was wanting in that political prudence by which nations should be guided, and if he was wrong in some of his theories, he had at least fixed principles, and he occupied his whole life, not in making his fortune, but in ensuring the triumph of his ideas.... France allowed him to die in poverty. Yet if the recollection of the misery caused by the ruin of his system was somewhat too recent to give place to gratitude, France ought nevertheless to have felt grateful to him for the generous ideas he had put forth. He laboured to extend the commerce of the country, to re-establish the navy, to found colonies. He suppressed onerous privileges. He endeavoured to do away with venality in the magistracy; to create a less tyrannical and more simple administration of the tax system. Finally he established a bank, which, could it have survived, would have helped powerfully to develop commerce and would have augmented considerably the wealth of the country." It is not generally known that, besides introducing a new system of credit, Law was the inventor of pictorial advertisements. Specimens, however, have been preserved of the pictures issued by him in connection with the "flotation" of his Mississippi scheme, one of which represents the Indians on the banks of the river, dancing with joy at the approach of the French, who had come to civilise them. [Illustration: THE PALMIER FOUNTAIN, PLACE DU CHÂTELET.] CHAPTER XXVII. CENTRAL PARIS (_continued_). Rue de Venise--Rachel--St. Nicholas-in-the-Fields--The _Conservatoire des Artes et Métiers_--The _Gaité_--Rue des Archives--The Mont de Piété--The National Printing Office--The Hôtel Lamoignon. The Rue Quincampoix and the Rue Saint-Martin are connected by a narrow lane or alley scarcely ten feet wide, called Rue de Venise, which has a sinister renown in connection with the speculative mania of Law's time. Here it was, in the month of April, that a rich banker was enticed, under pretext of a sale of shares, and assassinated by Laurent de Mille and Count Horn, that same Count Horn whose servant, passing himself off as master, played so infamous a trick upon poor Angelica Kaufmann, ancestress of Pauline in the drama of _The Lady of Lyons_. A little higher up in the Rue de Venise, and, leading likewise to the Rue Quincampoix, is the Passage Molière, which owes its name to the Théâtre Molière, opened on the 4th of June, 1791, with a representation of the _Misanthrope_. In 1793 it was re-baptised Théâtre des Sans-Culottes. Its first director under its new name was Boursault-Malesherbes, comedian, member of the Convention, and farmer of public games. Closed and re-opened a score of times, this house became in the early years of Louis Philippe's reign a theatre for dramatic instruction, where Mlle. Rachel received her first lessons from Saint-Aulaire. Universally recognised as one of the greatest of French actresses, Rachel, of Jewish race, was born on the 28th of February, 1821, at Munf, a Swiss village in the Canton of Argovia. Her father and mother were, however, both French; the former, Jacques Felix, being a native of Metz, the latter, Esther Hayn, of Guers, in the department of the Lower Rhine. In the year 1831, Rachel, under her true name of Elisa, was a street singer at Lyons, where Choron, director of an important musical academy, chanced to hear her. He was so struck by the beauty of her voice that he called upon Elisa's parents, and induced them to settle in Paris, where he promised to take charge of their little daughter's musical education. He suggested that she should adopt in lieu of "Elisa" the more impressive name of Rachel. But before her studies had progressed very far she lost her voice; and Choron placed her in a dramatic class directed by Saint-Aulaire. This professor, a retired comedian who understood the art of acting better than he had ever practised it, had taken the Salle Molière just spoken of; and here during the years 1834, 1835, and 1836 Rachel was made to play a great variety of parts, including nearly every leading character in the plays of Corneille, Racine, and Molière. The charges for admission to the Salle Molière were moderate, but the house was always full when Rachel had been announced to play, and the tickets on these occasions were sold at a premium. One day M. Védl, treasurer of the Théâtre Français, went to the Salle Molière to see a soubrette whom his manager thought of engaging. He was about to leave the theatre, when Saint-Aulaire begged him to remain in order to see a pupil who had not yet appeared, and of whom he entertained the greatest hopes. This, of course, was little Rachel, who was about to play the part of Hermione in _Andromaque_. She resembled none of the other pupils whom the emissary from the Théâtre Français had seen. She was small in stature and had a hard, almost a harsh voice; which, however, was firm and impressive, and, when the young girl became excited, almost musical. After the performance, M. Védl complimented the young actress, and promised to do his best for her at the important theatre with which he was connected. He at once spoke of her to M. Jouslin de La Salle, director of the Français, who, after seeing her in _Tancrède_, arranged a special performance, which was attended, in the character of judges, by M. Samson and Mlle. Mars. "She is too short," objected one of the party. "She will grow," replied Mlle. Mars significantly; and on the recommendation of the manager of the Théâtre Français she was admitted to the Conservatoire. Rachel entered the class directed by M. Samson, one of the principal actors of the Théâtre Français, and under his tuition made rapid progress. Tempted, however, by an engagement offered to her at the Gymnase, she soon left the Conservatoire for that theatre, where she achieved a certain success as Suzette in Scribe's _Mariage de Raison_. The experiment, however, was not altogether satisfactory, and she returned to the Conservatoire, and remained until May, 1838, when, on the recommendation of M. Samson, she was engaged at the Théâtre Français. Her first appearance there, as Camille in _Les Horaces_, took place on the 12th of June in this same year. She was then but sixteen years old, and only moderately pretty. Short for her age, she had the further disadvantage of being marked with the small-pox. With narrow chin, high cheek-bones, and a projecting forehead, she had brilliant, expressive eyes, at once thoughtful and full of fire. The pose of her head was admirable, and all her gestures were marked by dignity and distinction. Calm and self-contained throughout the greater part of the performance, she never abandoned herself to her emotion even while expressing the most ardent passion. There was intensity in all she did, and so novel, so individual was her style that she inspired her audience with the strongest personal admiration. She had now established her position at the greatest theatre in Europe; but it was at the little Salle Molière that she had first learned to act. In the immediate neighbourhood, on the ancient territory of the Abbaye Saint-Martin, stands the Church of St. Nicholas-in-the-Fields, where the mayor or bailiff of the abbaye resided. Dating from the twelfth century, this church was rebuilt in 1420, and underwent various processes of modification and reconstruction until it received its definite form in 1576. Every style, from the Gothic of Charles VI. to the Neo-Roman of Henri III., has left its imprint in the highly composite architecture of this church, said to be the longest and the broadest in all Paris. In one of the chapels of the nave, dedicated to Saint Martin, is a picture which represents Saint Martin curing the leper by taking him in his arms; and the inscription sets forth that the priory of Saint Nicholas-in-the-Fields was founded on the spot where this miracle took place. In the fields of this church lie buried the philosopher Gassendi, and the historians Henri and Adrien de Valois, together with Malle de Scudéry, who wrote the once celebrated novels, "Le Grand Cyrus" and "Clélie." [Illustration: RUE DE VENISE.] Under the Revolution the Church of Saint Nicholas-in-the-Fields was converted into "The Temple of Hymen." Most of the property belonging to the religious community of Saint-Martin was sold by the Revolutionary Government. On a portion of what remained was built the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, which was created by a decree of the year 1794, though it did not finally take form until four years afterwards. The building, as it now exists, was partly restored, partly reconstructed, between the years 1852 and 1862, by M. Vandoyer. [Illustration: ST. NICHOLAS-IN-THE-FIELDS.] The "arts and crafts," until the time of the Revolution, formed close corporations of their own. The origin of these unions and guilds was very remote. In the middle ages the rules on the subject of apprenticeship were most severe; and after seven years' subjection to a master the artisan became only a "companion" or varlet, and could still work only under the direction of a full member of the guild. To pass as master it was necessary for a "companion" to produce a masterpiece and to pay, moreover, certain dues, onerous for a mere workman; which forced a great number of these varlets to remain in their original condition. The corporations of arts and crafts were governed by a number of edicts which regulated not only the quality and quantity of the work to be done, but prescribed methods of manufacture, and provided for the settlement of disputes between artisans and merchants, or artisans and private persons engaging their services. These strange organisations had the worst effect in an economical sense, and many endeavours were made long before the Revolution to destroy the monopolies they created. In 1776, thirteen years previously to the Revolution, the corporations of arts and crafts were abolished by the famous Minister, Turgot. But the edict was evaded, and it was not until the Revolution, when things that were abolished were abolished for ever, that the French guilds finally disappeared. [Illustration: THE CONSERVATOIRE DES ARTS ET MÉTIERS.] The "Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers," established soon after the Revolution, had no direct connection with the "arts and crafts," whose organisation into guilds and close corporations had been suppressed. It was thought desirable, however, to form a central depôt where newly invented machines, together with machines whose utility had been tested, might be placed together for public inspection. Vaucanson, chiefly remembered by his ingenious automatic contrivances, had formed a collection of machines, which during his lifetime he threw open to working men, and at his death bequeathed to the monarchical government. Thus the nucleus of the important collection formed by the Republic already existed under Louis XVI. That the exhibition of machines, as superintended during the last days of the monarchy by M. Vandermond, was a sight worth seeing is shown by Arthur Young having gone to see it when he was making, throughout France, that tour of inquiry which was destined to become famous. "I visited," he writes in 1789, just one month before the taking of the Bastille, "the repository of royal machines, which M. Vandermond showed and explained to me with great readiness and politeness. What struck me most was M. Vaucanson's machine for making a chain which, I was told, Mr. Watt, of Birmingham, admired very much, at which my attendants seemed not displeased. Another for making the cogs intended in iron wheels. There is a chaff-cutter from an English original; and a model of the nonsensical plough to go without horses. These are the only ones in agriculture. Many ingenious contrivances for winding silk, etc." The Convention took steps for keeping the Vaucanson machines when so many treasures of one kind and another were being dispersed, and it seized the earliest opportunity of enlarging the collection, to which, from 1785 to 1792, 500 new machines were added. In 1792 a commission had been appointed to "catalogue and collect in suitable places books, instruments, and other objects of science and art in view of public instruction"; and a few months later in the same year the Convention published a new decree constituting the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers on a solid basis, and assigned to it the buildings of the former "abbey of Saint-Martin." At present this Conservatoire is under the authority of the Minister of Commerce. Fifteen courses of lectures, public and gratuitous, are delivered within its walls on subjects connected with the application of art to manufactures; and for these, three amphitheatres, the largest of which can accommodate an audience of 750, have been provided. The ancient abbey of Saint-Martin is still represented by two edifices connected with the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, and containing the library of the institution. One of these buildings was formerly the chapel, the other the refectory of the abbey. At the corner of the Rue Saint-Martin and the Rue de Vertbois is an ancient tower in pepper-caster form, which once marked the junction of the fortified part of the abbey and its prison. This tower, bearing the name of Vertbois, was given, in 1712, to the City of Paris on condition that a public fountain should be constructed there; and the fountain, adorned with the arms of Paris, still exists, bearing a somewhat enigmatic inscription, thus: "This tower, which formerly constituted part of the fortified enclosure of the abbey of Saint Martin-in-the-Fields, constructed about the year 1150, and the fountain erected in 1712, have been preserved and restored by the town and the State on the demand of the Parisian archæologists, 1880." There was, in fact, a question of destroying both tower and fountain in 1877 in view of certain architectural improvements, or at least changes, then projected. The lovers of antiquity protested, and Victor Hugo is said to have exclaimed, in the very words likewise attributed to him in connection with the proposed destruction of the tower of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, "Demolish the tower? No! Demolish the architect? Yes!" The architect in the case of the tower of Vertbois was the poet's own nephew. Like the tower, however, he was not demolished. In front of the principal entrance to the Conservatoire a large square was made in 1860; its sides being formed by the Rue Saint-Martin, the Boulevard Sebastopol, the Rue Solomon de Caus, and the Rue du Caire. On the south side of the square, in the Rue du Caire, is seen the façade of the Théâtre de la Gaieté, which less deserves its title than our own Gaiety Theatre in London. Originally known by the name of Nicolet, its founder, and afterwards called, during the influence of Mme. du Barry, the Theatre of the King's Dancers, it at length received, towards the end of the last century, the inappropriate title which still belongs to it. There was a time, it must be presumed, when at the Gaieté gay pieces were performed. But since the beginning of the century this house has been chiefly associated with spectacular and melodramatic productions. Here the famous fairy piece, _Le Pied de Mouton_, was produced with striking success in 1806. Some twenty years ago it was revived at the Porte Saint-Martin, where it ran nearly a year. Reconstructed in 1808, the Gaieté was burnt to the ground in 1835. No sooner had it been built up again than it was pulled down to make way for the Boulevard du Prince Eugène. The Gaieté, which now, as already mentioned, stands on the southern side of the square of the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, is one of the four theatres belonging to the Town of Paris. Here were produced some of the best pieces of Auguste Maquet, the most renowned of Alexandre Dumas' numerous collaborateurs, and one of the very few who have shown themselves able, unaided, to produce first-rate work. Since its removal to the square of the Arts et Métiers, the Théâtre de la Gaieté has confined itself to no particular style. Here were represented Sardou's drama _La Haine_; Jules Barbier's _Jeanne d'Arc_, with music by Gounod; Offenbach's operettas revived on a large scale, with _Orphée aux Enfers_ prominent among them; Victor Massé's _Paul et Virginie_, Saint Saën's _Timbre d'Argent_, and the _Dmitri_ of Joncières. The last strikingly successful piece produced at this theatre was a dramatic version of Alphonse Daudet's _Tartarin sur les Alpes_. The first street parallel to the Rue Saint-Martin is the Rue du Temple, which, much increased in length by the demolition and reconstruction of 1851, is now one of the longest streets in Paris. It owes its name to the ancient habitation of the Order of Templars. After the violent suppression of this fraternity, the property passed to the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, who fixed upon it for their Paris headquarters. The Grand Prior of this Order had, by rule, to be a prince of the blood; and the last to hold the office was the Duke of Angoulême, eldest son of the Count of Artois, afterwards Charles X. Particulars of the captivity of Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, and the Dauphin in the Temple have already been given. It may here be added, however, that after being used for some years as a State prison, the old building was demolished in 1811. Finally the Palace of the Grand Prior, with its majestic colonnade, which had been allowed to remain untouched until 1854, was pulled down, and the land made over to the Town of Paris on condition of its planting trees on the site and erecting a monument to the memory of Louis XVI. This latter condition was never fulfilled. Nothing now remains of the fortress which Louis XVI. quitted, on the 21st of January, to be taken to the scaffold, but an old willow, dating from four or five centuries back, beneath whose shadow the king, during his confinement, loved to walk. The monument in the centre of the square is a statue of Béranger; "the divine Béranger," as Heine calls him, and of whom Benjamin-Constant said one day, when the poet was yet unknown: "He writes magnificent odes and calls them songs." Close to the spot marked to-day by his statue, in the Rue Vendôme, now re-named Rue Béranger, died this most poetical of popular song-writers, this most popular of poets. He was honoured by a public funeral at the expense of the State. [Illustration: THE VERTBOIS TOWER AND FOUNTAIN.] The Temple Market dates from a remote period; not, however, in its present form, which was given to it by the First Consul in 1802. It was made to include the Rotunda, built in 1788 for the accommodation of debtors without means or without intention to pay, who came to the Temple to enjoy the privileged security of all who there sought refuge. Men's clothes and women's dresses are the articles chiefly in demand at the Temple Market. To the ancient dealers in second-hand garments belonged a reputation for strong language, which has now faded away. Under the conditions of modern life, character perishes, and even the representatives of Mme. Angot and her celebrated daughter are well-behaved and even polite. Close at hand is the Synagogue of the Rue Notre Dame de Nazareth. The neighbouring Rue des Archives contains the Église des Carmes, consecrated since 1812 to the Lutheran rite, but formerly a Dominican church erected on the ground previously occupied by a chapel dating from the year 1295. On this site had previously stood the house of Jonathan, the Jew, convicted (or at least accused and declared guilty) of having profaned the sacred host, miraculously preserved from his fury. Of this strange legend, one of many similar ones invented in hatred of the unhappy Jews, an account may be found in Dulaure's "Singularités Historiques." The whole of the right side of the Rue des Archives is taken up by the imposing edifice in which the national archives are preserved. It was formerly the Hôtel de Soubise. On the western portion of the ancient property of the Guises was erected the Palais Cardinal, built by Armand Gaston de Rohan, Prince Archbishop of Strasburg, which has long been occupied by the National Printing Office. Up to the time of the Revolution the archives were preserved by the particular establishment, political, judicial, civil or ecclesiastical, to which they belonged; so that in 1782 there were upwards of a thousand different places where documents of national importance were preserved. In the midst of the general uprising, when convents were being pillaged and manor-houses burnt, an immense number of valuable papers were either torn up or given to the flames. At last special commissions were organised for the collection and preservation of all State papers; which in the first instance were deposited at the Tuileries with the official reports of the Assembly which there held its sittings. In 1808 Napoleon ordered that all archives of whatever kind should be kept in one place provided specially for them. He at the same time bought for State purposes, and for the sum of 690,000 francs, the Hôtel de Soubise and the Hôtel de Rohan; the first for the archives, the second for the Imperial printing office. [Illustration: THE GAIETÉ THEATRE.] The national archives, whose importance is yearly increasing, and which form an historical collection unrivalled elsewhere, are under the care of a Director-General who belongs to the Ministry of Public Instruction. The Director-General is assisted by three chiefs of section, who overlook the reception, classification, and preservation of State documents in the following order: 1. Historical section. 2. Administrative section. 3. Legislative and judicial section. Many very interesting documents relating to the history of France are exhibited in glass cases. The most ancient of these is dated 625, under the reign of Clotaire II. The most modern are of the year 1821. In connection with the national archives a reading-room is kept open every day from 10 to 5 for persons who have sought and obtained permission to consult documents in view of their studies. Attached to the National Archives is the School of Maps, under the direction of a member of the Academy of Inscriptions and of Belles Lettres, assisted by a council. The French, too, have invented a profession unknown in England--that of archivist. To become an archivist it is necessary to follow for three years a course of lectures, each of which is followed by an examination. To pass finally the student writes an essay on some appropriate subject, and, if successful, receives the name of archivist or palæographer, which entitles him to employment in connection with the archives, or with one of the libraries under the direction of the Ministry of Public Instruction. By reason of the exceptional importance of their duties, the archivists are liberated from military service, like the pupils of the superior normal schools and of the School of Oriental Languages. The School of Maps was, together with so many other institutions of which France is justly proud, founded by Napoleon I.; who wished, at the time, to establish a lay Order of Benedictines devoted to the study of French history. Without constituting themselves into an order, the students of the School of Maps have, by their conscientious and disinterested labours, done much to throw light on the history and literature of ancient France. [Illustration: IN THE TEMPLE MARKET.] [Illustration: THE TEMPLE MARKET.] On the south side of the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, opposite the School of Maps, stand the buildings of the Mont-de-Piété, established by Louis XVI. in 1771. After the revolution in 1796, the profits of the Mont-de-Piété were assigned to the hospitals, and the institution is now under the direction of the _Assistance Publique_, or Charity Board, presided over by the Prefect of the Seine. Besides the principal establishment, at No. 55, Rue des Francs Bourgeois, there are two district establishments and twenty-one auxiliary ones dispersed through the different quarters of the capital. The Mont-de-Piété of Paris lends no less than six million francs a year; and it obtains whatever working capital it requires by the issue of bonds bearing interest at five per cent., which are much in favour with investors. The capital of the Comédie Française is all permanently invested in bonds of the Mont-de-Piété. It was not without serious opposition that the first projectors of the Mont-de-Piété succeeded in getting it authorised; though Mercier, writing only a few years after the publication of the King's edict on the subject, regards this institution as of the greatest benefit to the poor. "The establishment of the Mont-de-Piété or pawn-warehouse," he says, "was long wished for in vain, but is at last perfected, notwithstanding the opposition it met with from several interested beings who live by the distress of their fellow creatures. At this place the poor may be supplied with money, upon any pawn whatever that they can leave for security, at a very trifling interest; for it is not here in the hands of private individuals, as I am told is the case in London, where a pawnbroker charges no less than 30 per cent. for the loan. I hear they are authorised to do so by law. So much the worse. In Paris the Mont-de-Piété is under the immediate inspection of the Government, and has hitherto proved of the greatest service by giving the mortal wound to usury and its infamous votaries. The greatest proof that can be given of the usefulness of this institution, and how needful it was in Paris, is the great concourse of people who daily resort there to raise temporary sums. It is said, but I will not vouch for the truth of the assertion, that in the space of a few months there were forty tuns filled with gold watches; this I rather take to be an exaggeration, meant only to give an idea of the very great number that were then in the warehouse. Certain it is that I have seen at one time four score people assembled; who, waiting for their turn, came there for the purpose of raising loans not exceeding six livres a head. The one carries his shirts, another a piece of furniture, this an old picture, that his shoe-buckles or a threadbare coat. These visits, which are renewed every day, are the most forcible proofs of the extreme want and poverty to which the greatest number of the inhabitants is reduced. Opulence itself is often obliged to have recourse to the public pawn-warehouse, and the contrast between extreme misery and indigent richness is nowhere better exemplified. In one corner a lady, wrapped up in her cloak, her face half covered, and just stepped out of her coach, deposits her diamonds to a large amount, to venture it in the evening at a card-table; whilst in the other a poor woman, who has trudged it on foot through the muddy streets, pawns her lower garment to purchase a bit of bread. The best regulation prevails in this place; a sworn appraiser stands there to estimate upon oath the real value of the pledge offered. Yet, as the best institution is liable to much abuse, it is said that the poorer sort of people are not always treated with that humanity which they are more justly entitled to than their betters; this evil, with a little attention from the magistrate who presides over this undertaking, may easily be remedied. I make no doubt but the Mont-de-Piété will prove as advantageous an establishment as it is useful and commendable." Some houses were being pulled down in 1878 for the enlargement of the Mont-de-Piété when a tower belonging to the wall of Philip Augustus was brought to light. This was one of the four towers which flanked the circumvallation of the king just named. The old tower was consolidated and repaired. Near this spot stood, in 1258, the Convent of the White Cloaks, founded by the serfs of the Virgin Mary; to be replaced, in the same century, by the hermits of Saint William, who, in 1816, joined the congregation of the reformed Benedictines. The name of Blancs Manteaux is still connected with a street and a market in the neighbourhood. The Benedictines constructed their church and their monastery in 1695; and it was here that these learned men composed many of their works, imperishable monuments of their erudition. "The Art of Verifying Dates" and "The Collection of the Historians of France" may in particular be mentioned. Sold as national property in 1797, the Benedictine Church was bought back by the Town in 1807 and made the second parochial church of Saint-Merry, under the name of Notre Dame des Blancs Manteaux. At the south-east corner of the Rue des Blancs Manteaux, in the Rue Vieille du Temple, stands, under the title of Hôtel de Hollande, all that remains of the ancient Hôtel de Rieux, at one time occupied by the Dutch ambassadors. The turret at the corner of the Rues Vieille du Temple and Francs Bourgeois is remarkably picturesque. Just to the right of the Rue Barbette is the ancient Palais Cardinal, forming the rear part of the Hôtel de Soubise, and containing the National Printing Office, there established by a decree of 1808. In the centre of the great courtyard a statue of Guttenberg, by David d'Angers, may be seen. On the first storey of the principal building is the bedroom of the Cardinal who played so sad a part in the "Affaire du Collier"--the affair, that is to say, of Marie Antoinette's necklace, which caused such scandal immediately before the Revolution. Here is now housed the library of the National Printing Office, called the Hall of the Monkeys, by reason of its being decorated with scenes from monkey life, attributed to Boucher. The Royal Printing Office, destined also to be called National and Imperial, according to the Government in power, was founded by King Louis XIII., and dates from 1640. Until that time the King employed private printers; Conrad Naebor, printer in Greek, with an annual allowance of 100 gold crowns, and Robert Estienne, printer in Latin and Hebrew. Though they printed for the King, both Naebor and Estienne had their own private printing offices. The Royal Printing Office was established by Louis XIII. at the Louvre, where it remained until the time of the Revolution--directed from 1691 to 1789 by Jean Anisson and members of his family. Then all kinds of printing offices were established under national control: a national legislative printing office, a national printing office of laws, a national executive printing office, etc. The Directory brought them all together in 1795, under the title of Printing Office of the Republic, which was established in the Rue de la Vrillière, at the Hôtel de Toulouse, afterwards occupied by the Bank of France. Since 1808 the National Printing Office ("Imperial" as it was called at the time) has not moved from the Palais Cardinal. It is governed by a director belonging to the Ministry, placed beneath the authority of the Minister of Justice. It prints for the State _Le Bulletin des Lois_, and all the papers, formulas, registers, and cards required by the different Ministries. It also prints--and in this resides its special importance--either at the expense of the State or of the authors, scientific and artistic works for which particular signs or characters, especially Oriental characters, are needed. [Illustration: SIXTEENTH CENTURY CLOISTERS, RUE DES BILLETTES.] The scientific and artistic publications of the National Library are counted among the masterpieces of typography. Pierre Corneille's edition of the "Imitation of Jesus Christ," printed expressly for the Exhibition of 1867, was universally admired. Indeed, from 1809, when, after considerable delay, "The Description of Egypt," based on the observations made during Bonaparte's famous campaign, was published, until the present day, the National Printing Office of France has produced a large number of perfectly printed editions. In war, as in peace, this office received important benefits at the hands of the first Napoleon, who, to enrich it, deprived the Italians of a fine collection of Arabic and Persian characters. [Illustration: PALACE OF THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES.] At the time of the Restoration, the National, now Royal Printing Office, was placed under the direction of a member of the Anisson family, lineally descended from the Anisson of 1690, who, while working for the Government, carried on a printing office as a private enterprise, and made immense profits. After the Revolution of 1830 it was taken over by the State; and the Government of Louis Philippe purchased for the Royal Printing Institution all kinds of Oriental characters. Now, too, were for the first time acquired fonts of Russian, Servian, and other Slavonian type. At the request of the Government, moreover, a complete set of Chinese characters was sent from Pekin. Under various changes of government the National Printing Office has, from Louis Philippe until now, remained a State establishment. [Illustration: HOTEL DE HOLLANDE.] It was calculated twenty years ago that the National Printing Office, with its one hundred hand-presses and a good number of presses worked by steam, prints every year about 200,000 reams of paper in different forms, or altogether about 100,000,000 sheets. Reducing these sheets to octavo volumes, each of thirty sheets, the National Printing Office produces every year 3,330,000 volumes; and reckoning 300 working days in the year, 11,100 volumes per day. Beneath the statue of Guttenberg, cast from the statue by David d'Angers which adorns Strasburg, Guttenberg's birthplace, is buried an historical account of the National Printing Office, with two commemorative medals. [Illustration: TURRET AT CORNER OF RUES VIEILLE DU TEMPLE AND FRANCS BOURGEOIS.] One of the most interesting buildings in this neighbourhood is the Hôtel Lamoignon, which, by its architecture, presents the aspect of a fortress, though its walls and windows are ornamented with crescents, hunting-horns, and the heads of stags and hounds, in allusion to its having been built by Diana of France, the legitimatised daughter of Henri II. Passing down the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, along the southern wall of the Hôtel Carnavalet, we reach, on the left, the entrance to the Musée Carnavalet, associated with the illustrious names of Jean Goujon the sculptor, François Mansard the architect, and Mme. de Sévigné the charming letter-writer. The Hôtel Carnavalet, which the Marquise de Sévigné inhabited from 1677 to 1698, was restored in 1867 and the years following, when Baron Haussmann resolved to create a municipal museum; of which, however, mention has already been made. It is impossible to quit the Marais, the ancient district in which we have lately been lingering, without calling attention to the beautiful façade of the Hôtel Carnavalet, with its graceful representations of the four seasons. We are now once more in the Rue Saint-Antoine, within a few paces of the ancient Rue de Birague, at the end of which is a large arcade leading to the Place Royale, which Parisians have not yet learned to call the Place des Vosges, a name given to it as long ago as 1800 by Lucien Bonaparte, Minister of the Interior, to reward the department of the Vosges for being the first department to pay certain taxes which had fallen into arrear. After being styled for thirty-four years, from the time of the Restoration, Place Royale, the square was named in 1848 Place des Vosges. In the previous description of this Place reference has been made to the statue of Louis XIII. which stands in its centre; and also to the beautiful garden which belongs to it. [Illustration] CHAPTER XXVIII. CENTRAL PARIS (_continued_). The Rue Saint-Denis--Saint-Leu-Saint-Gilles--George Cadoudal--Saint-Eustache--The Central Markets--The General Post Office. [Illustration: RUE DE BIRAGUE, LEADING TO THE PLACE DES VOSGES.] The Rue Saint-Denis is by ancient tradition, and still in the present day, as a matter of fact, the favourite abode of the French bourgeois. Our aldermen have long ceased to live in the City, and a John Gilpin of our own time, wherever his place of business might be, would have his private residence at Clapham or Brixton, at Holloway or Highgate. The Paris tradesman, however, still lives, like the M. Jourdain in Molière's "Bourgeois Gentilhomme," above his shop; and his shop, in a good many typical cases, is, as it was two centuries ago, in the Rue Saint-Denis. "La Grande Rue Saint-Denis" the street was formerly called; and, as it is upwards of three-quarters of a mile long, it may be said to deserve its name. It is even now the most central and the most commercial street in Paris. According to Sanval, one of the many historians of the French capital, it is the street _par excellence_ of all Paris. Voltaire, on the other hand, detested this street, and had good reasons for doing so. One day, when he was but seventeen years of age, he found himself by chance in the Rue Saint-Denis, with his purse well filled, at the very moment when an auctioneer was selling the goods of an unfortunate man who had not been able to pay his taxes. A carriage, with two horses, and the livery of the indispensable footmen, was put up, and in a sudden fit of wildness, the young philosopher, not yet philosophical, purchased the lot. The coachman, who was looking on, offered his services, which the youthful Voltaire at once accepted. "Put in the horses and get up on the box," he said; and the schoolboy, who had just left the Jesuits' College, was seen driving along the Rue Saint-Denis; not, however, for any length of time. The coachman he had engaged, an awkward fellow, managed, at the corner of the street, to upset the carriage. Voltaire's ardour now subsided and he lost no time in getting rid of his newly-acquired equipage. The Rue Saint-Denis, in consequence, no doubt, of this accident, had made a bad impression on Voltaire; and in after days he never spoke of it without sarcasm. [Illustration: FOUNTAIN OF THE INNOCENTS.] The Rue Saint-Denis was originally nothing but a highway leading to the Abbey of Saint-Denis; and one of its frequenters is said to have been that very Saint Denis whose name it was afterwards to bear. The highway, thanks to its central position, was soon lined with houses, and before long every house in the street had its shop. Along this great thoroughfare the kings and queens of France passed in returning from their coronations; and it was by the same road that they proceeded to their last resting-place. The Rue Saint-Denis became at once the central line of communication and the central commercial street of Paris. Then it was that the name of "La Grande Rue Saint-Denis" was given to it--a title it well might bear even in the present day. The Rue Saint-Denis connects the quarter of the "halles," or public markets, with the Bonne Nouvelle quarter. After crossing the Rue Saint-Honoré the Rue Saint-Denis breaks off on the left, interrupted by the Square of the Innocents, in the centre of which stands the fountain of the same name. This square replaces the Market of the Innocents abolished in 1860. The fountain dates from the thirteenth century, having been repaired in 1550 by Pierre Lescot, with Jean Goujon for his assistant. Despite the many alterations and modifications it has undergone, the fountain is still remarkable for a certain nobility and grace. But the five water-nymphs of Jean Goujon, worn by the rays of the sun and by the spray of the cascade, show signs of decay; and it has been proposed to replace them by copies, while preserving the originals in the Louvre. A little higher up on the right is the Church of Saint-Leu-Saint-Gilles, founded in 1235, and raised to the position of parish church in 1617. It has been so often repaired and reconstructed that very little of the original building remains. The church possesses a portrait of Saint-François de Salles, painted after his death by Philippe de Champagne, and a picture of the year 1772, embodying the legend of the soldier who was burnt in 1415 for having stabbed with his knife an image of the Virgin which stood at the corner of the Rue aux Ours, now known as Rue de la Bourse. The image, according to the tradition, shed blood in atonement for the soldier's profanity. An expiatory festival, which lasted three days, used to be celebrated up to the time of the Revolution. It was in the Church of Saint-Leu-Saint-Gilles that an heroic priest dared, in 1793, at the height of the Reign of Terror, to say a mass for the soul of the Princesse de Lamballe immediately after her execution. Here, too, George Cadoudal, the Vendean chief, pursued by the police, concealed himself for several days in one of the subterranean tombs. Cadoudal was the son of a farmer. But like all classes in La Vendée, he was devoted to the Monarchy, and joined one of the first bands formed during the Reign of Terror to fight against the Revolution. After the defeat of the principal corps, Cadoudal was arrested and imprisoned at Brest. He made his escape, however, and soon became one of the most formidable leaders of the rebellion in Brittany, known as that of the Chouans--so called from their cry of recognition resembling that of the screech-owl or _chouette_. In 1796 he surrendered to Hoche, and was pardoned on condition of not again bearing arms against the Republic. This, however, did not prevent him from heading a new insurrection in 1799. Again defeated, he was received in conference by General Brune, and was once more released on the same conditions as before. The First Consul wished to take him into his service, but Cadoudal would listen to no offers from one whom he regarded as a usurper. He now, in the year 1800, left France for England, where he received, with congratulations on the part of the English Government, the rank of lieutenant-general and the Grand Cordon of Saint Louis, the commission and the decoration being both handed to him by the Count of Artois in the name of Louis XVIII. [Illustration: SAINT-EUSTACHE.] After many vain attempts to bring about a new insurrection in the west of France, he resolved to attack Bonaparte's Government in Paris itself, and sent on one of his officers, Saint-Régent, to prepare the way for him. He afterwards denied all complicity in Saint-Régent's plot against Bonaparte's life. "He was at Paris," said Cadoudal, "in obedience to my orders, but I never ordered him to construct and employ his infernal machine." Cadoudal was in Brittany at the time. But closely pursued, he was advised once more to take refuge in England, where, with Pichegru and the Count of Artois, he prepared another plot against the First Consul, who was now to be arrested and carried away. In August, 1803, Cadoudal went to Paris, and remained there, in spite of the constant search of which he was the object, for seven months. He was at last arrested in a hackney-cab, but not until after he had killed one of the police agents. Brought to trial, he avowed that his object had been to upset the Government in order to place Louis XVIII. on the throne. He was executed with eleven of his accomplices. After the Restoration his family was ennobled by Louis XVIII. The Church of Saint-Leu-Saint-Gilles was converted during the Revolution into a salt-petre store, and then fell into the possession of Jews, from whom it was bought back when public worship was restored in France. Further on is the Abbey of Saint-Magloire, and beyond that the asylum of Saint-Jacques aux Pelerins, which dates from the early part of the fourteenth century. In 1317 under the reign of Philip V., called The Long, many notable and devout persons who had made the pilgrimage to Saint James Compostella in Galicia, moved by devotion, meditated the construction of a church and an asylum in the Rue Saint-Denis, to the glory of God, the Holy Virgin, and Saint James the Apostle, in order to lodge and feed the pilgrims, whether going or coming. The church was built with an asylum joined to it, and it was open, not only to the pilgrims, but also to seventy poor persons whom it received every day. The Abbey of Saint-Magloire dates from the tenth century, when it stood half-way on the road from the Cité to Saint-Denis. It was converted by Marie de Médicis into a convent known as that of the Filles-Dieu, where penitent girls found shelter. It was suppressed, like all the other religious houses, in 1793. Some fifty years afterwards the foundations of the convent, which had fallen into ruin, were being dug up with a view to some new building, when ten Gothic statues were discovered, mutilated and blackened. Among the stone figures Saint James was easily recognised by his pilgrim's costume. The statues were claimed by the town, and now figure in the Musée des Thermes. The shop which at present occupies the site of the ancient convent has for its sign:--"Aux Statues de Saint-Jacques." Another famous convent existed at one time in the Rue Saint-Jacques--the Convent of the Holy Sepulchre it was called, also known as the Hôtel of the Trinity. Built for the pilgrims returning from the East, it was kept up until the taking of Constantinople, more than a hundred years later. The Holy Sepulchre having then fallen into the hands of the Turks, the idea of making pilgrimages to it came to an end; and the hostelry for pilgrims to the Holy Land was no longer required. The convent was now occupied by the Brothers of the Passion, who had obtained letters patent from Charles VI. empowering them to play religious mysteries. Thus the earliest of French theatres stood in the Rue Saint-Denis. It has been said that the kings of France made their coronation processions along the Rue Saint-Denis; and when Louis XI. was crowned, fountains of wine, milk, and mead were established over the whole length of the Rue Saint-Denis. In the present day the Rue Saint-Denis has lost much of its ancient animation through the formation of the Boulevard de Sebastopol. But under the ancient _régime_ it was really the leading thoroughfare in Paris. When, after the surrender of Paris to Henri IV., the Spanish garrison marched away, they defiled down the Rue Saint-Denis, while the king, standing at an open window, called out: "Now go home, and do not let us see you here again." The Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis, on the other side of the boulevard, is less rich in historical associations than the Rue Saint-Denis itself. It may be mentioned, however, that at Saint-Lazare the bodies of the French kings made a halt on their way to their last resting-place in the Abbey of Saint-Denis. The region comprised between the left side of the Rue Saint-Denis, the Rue de Rivoli on the south, the Rue Croix des Petits Champs on the west, and the Rue Étienne Marcel on the north, forms the vast quarter of the markets, with the parish church of Saint-Eustache, the Protestant Temple of the Oratory, the Central Markets, and the old Corn Market as its principal features. Saint-Eustache is one of the most remarkable and one of the most admired churches in Paris. Erected on the site of an ancient chapel dedicated to Saint Agnes, which dated from the first years of the thirteenth century, it was already a parish church, under the invocation of Saint Eustache, in 1223. In the course of the next three centuries it became the richest and most frequented church in Paris. After Notre Dame, the Church of Saint-Eustache is the largest in Paris. Its coloured windows, signed Soulignac, and dating from the year 1631, eleven in number, are admirable alike by colour and by design. In addition to its mural paintings, dating from the reign of Louis XIII. (discovered beneath a thick coat of plaster in 1849), Saint-Eustache contains a number of frescoes and paintings of high merit. In the Ninth Chapel the tomb of the great Colbert, executed by Coysevox, after the designs of Lebrun, is to be seen. The grand organ, reconstructed in 1844 after a destructive fire, is one of the most complete and most sonorous that exists. This church, thanks to its colossal dimensions and to the perfection of its organs (one at each end), is the favourite church of musicians; and it is here that the Society of Musical Artists celebrates annually the festival of Saint-Cecilia, their revered patroness. On such occasions a new mass or musical service of some kind is given; and it was in this church that the Abbé Liszt had one of his most famous masses performed only a few months before his death. The angle formed by the meeting of the streets called Montmartre, Pont-Neuf, Montorgueil, and Rambuteau, is known as the "Saint-Eustache Point." It dominates the vast quadrilateral occupied by the Central Markets. The Central Markets were founded by Philip Augustus, and they were soon surrounded by houses and shops. These markets in their present form were constructed on one design, and, so to say, at a stroke, under the reign of Napoleon III., by the architect Beltard, who sought his model in the finest of the Paris railway stations. The principal office of the fish market, at the corner of the Rue Pirouette and of the Rue Rambuteau, is in the ancient Hôtel du Heaume, a building of the fourteenth century. At number 108, Rue Rambuteau, was born Regnard, author of "The Gambler" and of "The Universal Legatee," the house having been owned by his father, a fish salesman beneath the sign of Notre Dame. A little nearer the Church of Saint-Eustache, just at the mouth of the Rue de la Réalle, stands a house which once belonged to the carpet-maker, Jean Poquelin, and afterwards to his son and heir, J. B. Poquelin, better known by his adopted name of Molière. For the name of Poquelin, by the way, he was indebted to an ancestor serving in the Scottish Guard, who bore the surname and came from the place of Pawkelin. [Illustration: A MARKET SCENE.] The Paris markets are the scene of constant activity from morning till evening. Buying and selling comes to an end, it is true, with the approach of night; but then the remains of what has been sold, with rubbish of all kinds, have to be cleared away, and scarcely has this been done, when market carts arrive with produce for the next day. The provisions brought to Paris are either sold to the factors of the market, who buy wholesale and sell retail, or to the market men and market women, or to any private person whom it may suit to become a purchaser. The finest, best, and most highly quoted vegetables and fruits come from the suburbs of Paris, where kitchen-gardening is carried to the last point of perfection. The farmers and gardeners of the environs, whose heavily-laden carts arrive towards nine in the evening, are their own salesmen in the markets. The growers of the departments and of Algeria send their fruit and their fresh vegetables to factors or commissioners, to be sold either in Pavilion Number 6--reserved for this kind of business--or at shops established in the neighbourhood of the markets. [Illustration: AN AUCTION SALE OF POULTRY IN THE CENTRAL MARKET.] It is calculated that in the course of the year the sales of fruit and vegetables amount to 241 millions of kilogrammes (one kilogramme represents upwards of two pounds), to which must be added nine million kilogrammes of fresh grapes, 30 million kilogrammes of sea and river fish (including lobsters and crayfish), eight million kilogrammes of oysters from various parts, 18 million kilogrammes of butter, 57 million kilogrammes of cheese, 181 million kilogrammes of meat of all kinds, 24 million kilogrammes of poultry and game; besides 20,721,600 kilogrammes of eggs, representing eggs to the number of 414 million--which gives to each Parisian an average of 166 eggs in the year. This figure, indeed, understates the fact, for the supply contributed by Paris itself has not been reckoned. Paris contains a number of cow-houses and small dairy farms, where milk and eggs are sold morning and evening, new-laid eggs, of which the Parisians are particularly fond, fetching from three to four sous apiece. There are fowls, too, in the Garden of Acclimatization; also in the large stables of the omnibus and cab companies. Many private persons, moreover, keep fowls. During the siege of 1870 a provision dealer in the Rue Vivienne kept on a marble counter a fowl which, when so disposed, laid beneath the eyes of the customer; and the eggs, whose freshness was unimpeachable, were sold at three francs apiece. [Illustration: RUE RAMBUTEAU IN THE EARLY MORNING.] There is a great sale, moreover, in the Paris markets for raised pies of various kinds coming from Agen, Périgueux, Marseilles, Pithiviers, Chartres, Amiens, Auvernay, Colmar, and Strasburg. These are estimated at 1,250,000 kilogrammes in the course of the year. But such a figure represents only a small portion of the pâtés consumed by the Parisians, large numbers of the delicacies being made in Paris itself, either by pastry-cooks of repute or by the best restaurateurs. At rich private houses, as at the principal clubs, where the kitchen is in the hands of eminent chefs, the pastry is always prepared on the premises. Season the whole with 20 million kilogrammes of grey or white salt, pepper, oil, and vinegar, and Paris will be found to consume of market food-produce alone, 640 million kilogrammes, without counting bread, the consumption of which is estimated at 700 million kilogrammes per year. Each Parisian, male or female, small or great, consumes every year on the average 600 kilogrammes of food, which is washed down with 600 million litres of wine, beer, cider, or perry, independent of coffee and liqueurs, such as Cognac, Chartreuse, rum, Curaçao, kümmel, and kirsch. From the above figures it will be gathered that the Parisian population is well fed; and such is indeed the case. The very poor find their profit in the superfluity of the very rich; while the working classes profit by the relative cheapness of everything. If the minor restaurants, where dinner can be had for 22 sous and breakfast or lunch for 16 sous, are found too dear, there are the crèmeries and the wine shops, where a basin of soup, a slice of boiled beef, and a piece of bread may be had for 8 sous. A number of charitable institutions, moreover, exist, where a basin of soup or a slice of meat costs only 2 sous, or, in some instances, is given gratuitously. The corn market occupies a portion of the site of the ancient Hôtel de Soissons, given to the convent of Penitent Girls by Louis XII., from whom Catherine de Médicis bought it in 1572 as a residence for herself. A curious and significant memorial of the queen mother's abode subsists in the shape of a column 30 metres high (the French metre is somewhat longer than the English yard), which is said to have been erected for Ruggieri, chief astrologer to the queen. At the base of the column is a fountain inscribed with the Arms of Paris; at the summit a sun-dial, constructed by Canon Pingré. Two interesting buildings of different, and, indeed, opposite characters, that must not be forgotten in connection with the central markets are the new Commercial Exchange (in the Rue Etienne Marcel) and the old Fortress of John the Fearless, a very interesting specimen of the mediæval military architecture. The greater part of this ancient quarter has been pulled down, and in place of it has arisen a new General Post Office (Hôtel des Postes), a building which resembles at once a barrack, a prison, a market-place, and a stable. The despatch, reception, and distribution of letters and printed papers is managed in the upper storeys, to which there are lifts, while the ground floor is reserved for the public. The former Hôtel des Postes, which has been absorbed in the new one, belonged successively to the Duke of Epernon and to the Controller-General, Barthélemy d'Hervart, from whom, on a memorable occasion, La Fontaine received hospitality. The General Post Office of Paris, and central post office of all France, is established in a collection of houses, of which at least one possesses an historical character. Among the numerous persons of distinction who have from time to time directed the French Post Office mention in particular must be made of M. de Lavalette, who began life as a lawyer's clerk, entered, at the time of the Revolution, the National Guard, and volunteered to serve with the army when war broke out. He distinguished himself at Arcola, and attracted the attention of Bonaparte, who promoted him to the rank of captain, appointed him one of his aides-de-camp, and afterwards gave him in marriage the niece of his wife Joséphine. After taking part in the campaigns of Egypt, Germany, and Prussia, he was charged with the reorganisation of the Post Office, received the appointment of general-director, together with the title of Count, and the right of sitting in the Council of State. Dismissed by the Bourbons in 1814, he did his utmost towards bringing the dethroned Emperor from Elba, and, on the news of his arrival in France, took possession of the Post Office; in return for which Napoleon gave him the superior appointment of Minister of the Interior. After the battle of Waterloo and the Second Restoration, Lavalette was arrested, brought to trial on a charge of high treason, and condemned to death. His wife, however, Louise de Beauharnais, had sworn to save him, and with this view sought an audience of King Louis XVIII. She had many friends who were all willing to aid her in her wifely enterprise. The Duke de Richelieu promised to speak to the Duchess of Angoulême in favour of Lavalette; and she, it was hoped, would intercede with the king. Marmont, an intimate friend of the prisoner, had arranged to take the young wife to the Tuileries; but on the very day appointed for this purpose an order was issued that no woman was, under any circumstances, to enter the palace. The explanation of so unexpected an edict was that the Duchess of Angoulême had resolved not only to say nothing to the king on Lavalette's behalf, but to prevent anyone else, and especially his wife, from uttering a word to His Majesty on the subject. Marmont, however, accompanied by Mme. de Lavalette, contrived to force his way into the palace, and took up his position, with the agitated wife by his side, in a room through which he knew that the king and the Duchess of Angoulême would pass, on returning from mass. Seeing the unhappy woman on her knees, the duchess turned her head away; while the king, after receiving a petition from her, muttered something unintelligible, and walked on. All hope of pardon had vanished; and it was understood that the execution would take place the following day. Foreseeing what in all probability would happen, Mme. de Lavalette had already formed a plan for her husband's escape. One of her associates in the enterprise was an old friend of Lavalette's named Baudus, who, in case of success, had prepared a safe asylum for the prisoner at the house of an old member of the Convention named Bresson, then chief of a division in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The very evening of the day on which she had gone to the Tuileries Mme. de Lavalette was taken to the Conciergerie in a Sedan chair, accompanied by her daughter, a girl of 14, and an old governess. The husband and wife dined together in a separate room; then the countess exchanged clothes with the prisoner. During this time a stupid servant was imprudent enough to say to the porters that they would find their load heavier than when they brought it in; adding, "But there will be 25 louis to pocket." "We are to take away M. de Lavalette, are we?" asked one of the porters. Thereupon he refused to have anything more to do with the affair, and withdrew, but without divulging the secret. Another man was found to replace him. At last, after a painful leave-taking, three women appeared in the lobby of the prison; one of them being in such a state of grief that, covering her face with her handkerchief, she did nothing but sob. The janitor helped her out of the prison without venturing to lift up the veil she wore. Then going to the room which the prisoner had occupied, he saw no one there but Mme. de Lavalette. [Illustration: ON THE WAY TO THE CENTRAL MARKETS.] [Illustration: THE FISH MARKET.] "Ah, madame," he cried, "you have deceived me. I am lost!" One of the strangest things in connection with this escape was that M. de Lavalette, having been driven off by the friendly Baudus, found shelter with Bresson, who concealed him at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs until the 10th of January, 1816. That day three Englishmen--Mr. Bruce, Captain Hutchinson, and General Sir Robert Wilson--took Lavalette away in the uniform of an English colonel, and conducted him as far as Mons, whence he made for Bavaria, there to find hospitality in the house of his brother-in-law, Eugène de Beauharnais. On hearing of M. de Lavalette's escape, Louis XVIII. could not help exclaiming: "Well, of all of us, Mme. de Lavalette is the only one who has done her duty." After being arrested in the Conciergerie, where she was found wearing the clothes of her husband, the young and heroic woman was in a day or two set free. But the three Englishmen who had conducted Lavalette to Belgium were sentenced to three months' imprisonment, and the janitor to two years'. Soon afterwards the reason of Mme. de Lavalette, who in all her troubles had shown the greatest presence of mind, gave way; and when in 1822 her husband received his pardon and came back to France, she could no longer recognise him. She continued in her sad condition until 1855, when she died. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE MONT-DE-PIÉTÉ, RUE CAPRON.] [Illustration: THE GENERAL POST OFFICE.] The interesting "Memoirs" published by Lavalette were chiefly based on documents collected and notes made by his unhappy wife. [Illustration: THE POSTE RESTANTE.] The office of postmaster-general does not as a rule expose its holder to any of the dangers incurred by M. de Lavalette. It demands from him nothing more than a certain talent for organisation and administration. The postal services of all the countries in Europe are now for the most part conducted on the same plan, and offer to the public the same advantages. The English penny postage system, whose principle consisted less in the lowness than in the uniformity of the new charge for letter-carrying, has been adopted throughout the civilised world; and since the days of Sir Rowland Hill many innovations and improvements have been introduced in France and in Germany which afterwards found imitation in England. It is undeniable, however, that the most important reformations in connection with postal communications were first made in this country. It was not until nearly a year after the introduction of post-cards in England that, on the proposition of Count Bismarck, only a few weeks before the war of 1870, they were adopted in Germany, which may claim to be the first country that used post-cards, or, indeed, a regular postal service of any kind, in an enemy's country while hostilities were actually going on. The post-card was adopted by the French Chamber in 1872 on the recommendation of M. Wolowski, who had previously published an interesting pamphlet on the subject. After speaking of the great variety of purposes for which the post-card is employed in England, the celebrated economist went on to consider whether the use of post-cards could have an injurious effect on epistolary style. He decided that by imposing brevity it lent itself to conciseness, and that, forced to express himself in narrow limits, the writer on a post-card was bound to be terse, if not epigrammatic. The style, however, of correspondents making use of post-cards is probably not more lapidary than that of ordinary letter-writers. According to M. Wolowski, the circulation of post-cards in England amounted, in 1871, only a year or two after their first introduction, to 75 millions--nearly a million and a half per week. At the post-offices of France, as of England, money may be deposited at interest, lives insured, and annuities purchased; but in France, as in England, the Government hesitates to adopt the German device, by which tradesmen can send goods through the post with an obligation imposed on the postman to collect at the destination of the goods the money due upon them. The Place des Victoires, which we have previously passed, is close to the General Post Office; close also to two other edifices of commercial and financial importance, the Bourse and the Bank of France. Formerly the Place des Victoires was remarkable for its historic houses, many of which no longer exist. Here stood the mansion where, in 1653, Marshal de l'Hôpital married Françoise Marie Mignot, a simple grisette, or shop girl, who, after the Marshal's death, became the wife of Sobieski, King of Poland and Abbé of Saint-Germain des Prés. Up to the time of the Revolution the Place des Victoires was inhabited only by important noblemen or rich financiers. It is now given up entirely to commerce, wholesale and retail; silks, shawls, drapery, and haberdashery of all kinds being largely traded in. The mansion of Marshal de l'Hôpital became the first abode, in 1803, of the Bank of France, where, in virtue of an Imperial decree, it was permanently established five years afterwards. Founded in 1800 by a society of capitalists, who had collected 30 millions of francs, the Bank of France obtained in 1803 the privilege of issuing notes. The notes of the Bank of France now in circulation are of the value of more than three milliards (_i.e._, 3,000 millions) of francs; to meet which an equal amount of gold and silver are kept in the cellars. The name of the Secretary of State, de la Vrillière, for whom the mansion, afterwards occupied by Marshal de l'Hôpital, was originally built, is still preserved in the title of the remarkable and picturesque Rue de la Vrillière. Little more need be said about that portion of Paris which separates the quarter of the markets from the Seine; though here and there many a house might be pointed out which suggests interesting associations. Thus, in the Rue Saint-Honoré, at the corner of the Rue Sauval, is a butcher's shop surmounted by an inscription to the effect that in this house Molière was born "in 1620." To be quite accurate, he was born in 1622, not in the house which bears the announcement of his birth, but in one on the same site, which long ago fell into ruin. Close by is the Rue de l'Arbre Sec, where at one time lived the famous Mme. de Saint-Huberty, for whom in opera, as for Mdlle. Sallé in ballet, Mdlle. Clairon in tragedy, and Mme. Favart in comedy and comic opera, is claimed the honour of having played parts for the first time in the costumes historically appropriate to them. The costumes worn at that time on the French stage (nor were they much better on our own) were simply ludicrous. But the public was accustomed to them, and the managers found it more economical to keep to costumes already in the wardrobe than to order new ones for every fresh piece. Actresses representing queens were entitled to two trains and two pages, who followed them everywhere. "Nothing is more amusing," writes a critic of the time, "nothing more comic, than the perpetual movement of these little rascals, who have to run after the actress when she is tearing about the stage in moments of distress. Their activity keeps them in a constant state of perspiration. Their embarrassment, their blunders, excite general laughter. Thus, a farce is always going on, which diverts the spectator in an agreeable manner if the situation is too touching or too sad." When she appeared as Dido, Mme. de Saint-Huberty would have no little boy running after her--ready to pursue her even to the funeral pyre. She at the same time threw off the conventional train and all the trappings which had habitually accompanied it, to appear only in the tunic designed for her by an artist of the period who had studied archæology. The operatic directors strongly objected to the introduction of archæologists and other costly pretenders into their domain. "If," one director is accused of saying, "this fury for truthfulness of costume only enabled us to save a little money! But, on the contrary, models must be brought in, men of learning consulted, artists paid; and all this costs money, much more money than the dresses to which we are accustomed. Besides, when the piece is laid aside, all the costumes appropriate to it must be laid aside too." M. de la Ferté, the Intendant of the Opera, says in one of his letters on this subject:--"I have just ordered Saint-Huberty's dress. This is terrible. The consulting committee of the Opera held one day a special general meeting to consider whether Mme. de Saint-Huberty could really be allowed to have the costume she desired for the part of Armida." "Madame de Saint-Huberty," said the report on the subject addressed to the Minister, "has sent us the design of a dress she requires for the character of Armida. The committee, considering that this character in which Mme. de Saint-Huberty has not yet been seen, might give to the work the charm of novelty, and procure for the Opera advantageous receipts during a series of representations, has thought it right to agree to Mme. de Saint-Huberty's expressed wish; the more so as she has no objection to share the part with Mdlle. Levasseur, it being arranged that in case of illness the costume made for this opera shall be worn by the substitutes, as well as by Mme. de Saint-Huberty herself." [Illustration: THE PUBLIC HALL, GENERAL POST OFFICE.] In the margin of the report the following observation of the Minister appears:--"Good for this time only, and without the establishment of a precedent. All the members of the company must, without distinction, wear the dresses furnished to them by the administration of the Opera, so long as they are considered in a fit state to be worn." [Illustration: THE TELEPHONE ROOM AT THE GENERAL POST OFFICE.] "You must be convinced," wrote M. de la Ferté to Mme. de Saint-Huberty on another occasion, "of our desire to satisfy you in all reasonable things and to be generally agreeable to you. But, at the same time, you ought to understand that you are obliged to conform to established rules like all the other members of the company, and like those who played the first parts before you; for if, instead of accepting the appointed costume, each one wished to dress according to individual taste, the result would be hopeless confusion, together with an expenditure both useless and ruinous for the King and for the Opera." [Illustration: PLACE DES VICTOIRES.] The end of this celebrated representative of tragic personages was tragic indeed. After marrying Count d'Antraigues, engaged in secret diplomacy on behalf of the exiled royal family, she went with her husband to England, where they lived together for many years, the Count being during this time in constant relations with the Foreign Office, until in July, 1812, they both fell victims to a murderous attack on the part of one of their servants. A faithful account of the horrible affair appeared in the _Times_ of July 23rd, 1812, from which the following may be extracted:-- "The Count and Countess d'Antraigues, members of the French noblesse, and distantly related to the unfortunate family of the Bourbons, resided," says the English newspaper, "on Barnes Terrace, on the banks of the Thames. They lived in a style which, though far from what they had formerly moved in, yet was rather bordering on high life than the contrary. They kept a carriage, footman, coachman, and a servant out of livery. The latter was an Italian or Piedmontese, named Lawrence; and it is of this wretch that we have to relate the following particulars. The Count and Countess, intending to visit London yesterday, ordered the carriage to be at the door by eight in the morning, which it accordingly was; and soon after that hour they were in the act of leaving the house to get into it, the Countess being at the door, the Count coming downstairs, when the report of a pistol was heard in the passage, which, it has since appeared, took no effect; nor was it then ascertained by whom it was fired. Lawrence was at this time in the passage, and, on the smoke subsiding, was seen to rush past the Count and proceed with great speed upstairs. He almost instantly returned with a dirk in his hand, and plunged it up to the hilt into the Count's left shoulder; he continued his course and made for the street door, where stood the Countess, whom he instantly despatched by plunging the same dirk into her left breast. This last act had scarcely been completed when the Count appeared also at the door, bleeding, and following the assassin, who made for the house and ran upstairs. The Count, though extremely weak and faint, continued to follow him; but so great was the terror occasioned that no one else had the same resolution. The assassin and the Count had not been upstairs more than a minute when the report of another pistol was heard, which satisfied those below that Lawrence had finally put an end to the existence of his master. The alarm was now given, and the cry of 'Murder, murder!' resounded from every mouth. The Countess was still lying at the front door, by which the turnpike road runs, and at length men of sufficient resolution were found to venture upstairs, and, horrible to relate, they found the Count lying across his own bed, groaning heavily, and nearly dead, and the bloodthirsty villain lying by his side a corpse. He had put a period to his own existence by placing a pistol that he found in the room in his mouth, and discharging its contents through his head. The Count only survived about twenty-five minutes after the fatal blow, and died without being able to utter a single word. "The Countess had by this time been brought into the house; the wound was directly on her left breast, extremely large, and she died without uttering a single word. The servants of the house were all collected last night, but no cause for so horrid an act was at that time known--all was but conjecture. "The following circumstances in so extraordinary a case may be, however, worth while relating. The Count, it appears, always kept a brace of pistols loaded in his bedroom and a small dirk. About a month ago the Countess and the servants heard the report of a pistol upstairs, and were in consequence greatly alarmed. When one of the latter, a female, went upstairs and looked into her mistress's room, it was full of smoke, and she screamed out. On its clearing away she saw Lawrence standing, who told her nothing was the matter--he had only fired one of his master's pistols. It afterwards appeared that he had fired into the wainscot; it was loaded with ball, and the ball from the pistol is yet to be seen. "The Count and Countess were about sixty years of age. The latter was highly accomplished, a great proficient in music, and greatly admired for her singing in fashionable parties. There is no reason whatever to believe that Lawrence was insane. Only about ten minutes previous to his committing this deed of blood, he went over to an adjoining public-house and took a glass of gin. He had lived only three months in the family, and, report says, was to be discharged in a few days. "The Count and Countess had resided in Barnes for four or five years, and have left an only son, who, we understand, is at present in this country, studying the law. "Besides his house on Barnes Terrace, Count d'Antraigues had a town establishment, No. 7, Queen Anne Street, W. He was fifty-six and the Countess fifty-three years of age. The Count had eminently distinguished himself in the troubles which have convulsed Europe for the last twenty-two years. In 1789 he was actively engaged in favour of the Revolution, but during the tyranny of Robespierre he emigrated to Germany, and was employed in the service of Russia. At Venice in 1797 he was arrested by Bernadotte, at the order of Bonaparte, who pretended to have discovered in his portfolio all the particulars of the plot upon which the 18th Fructidor was founded. The Count made his escape from Milan, where he was confined, and was afterwards employed in the diplomatic mission of Russia at the Court of Dresden. In 1806 he was sent to England with credentials from the Emperor of Russia, who had granted him a pension, and placed great dependence upon his services. He received here letters of denization, and was often employed by the Government. The Countess was the once celebrated Mme. de Saint-Huberty, an actress of the Théâtre Français. She had amassed a very large fortune by her professional talents." CHAPTER XXIX. THE "NATIONAL RAZOR." The _Rue de l'Arbre Sec_--Dr. Guillotin--Dr. Louis--The Guillotine--The First Political Execution. The street in which Mme. de Saint-Huberty lived, besides suggesting her fatal end, is connected with a whole series of tragedies. The Street of the Dry Tree--Rue de l'Arbre Sec--recalls, by its picturesque name, the fact that here at one time stood the tree from which hung, as fruit, the bodies of capital offenders. In ancient days, and until the great epoch of the Revolution, hanging was the ordinary punishment in France for felony, though an exception was made in favour of high-born criminals, whose aristocratic origin entitled them to be decapitated. The modern method, indeed, of execution in France is primarily due to a Republican determination not to recognise inequalities, even in the manner of the death-punishment. It is certain that Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, in introducing the too-celebrated invention which is named after him, was actuated by a spirit of impartiality in the first instance, and by humanity in the second. With the legend, perhaps, of Phalaris and his bull running in their heads, many Frenchmen persist, even to this day, in believing that the inventor of the guillotine was the first victim to fall beneath its blade. As a matter of fact, he survived for upwards of twenty years the introduction of that machine which earned for him so odious a reputation that in the autobiography he left behind not a word, significantly enough, is said about the guillotine. We have seen that under the ancient _régime_ one of the privileges of the nobleman was, in case of execution, to have his head chopped off--a method of punishment held to be more honourable than hanging, which, reserved for plebeian offenders, lent to the execution a character of infamy. To die at the end of a rope was not only a blot on the memory of the offender, but involved his whole family in lasting disgrace. The principle of equality in the eye of the law, which came beneath the consideration of the Assembly in 1789, naturally included the equality of criminal punishment; which ought to vary according to the offence, but not according to the social rank of the offender. On the 10th of October in the year mentioned Dr. Guillotin moved in the Assembly, where he sat as one of the representatives for Paris, that the executioner should be rendered an impartial functionary, putting all his victims to death in the same fashion and by means of some mechanical apparatus. When he had put this motion he went on to propose the idea of a machine, rapid in action, which would diminish the sufferings of capital offenders. His motion was carried unanimously; but the suggestion as to the machine was reserved for future discussion. It was during this debate that Dr. Guillotin, vehemently advocating the instrument of death which hitherto existed only in his own mind, exclaimed, in an unguarded moment: "With my machine I will cut your head off in a twinkling, and without your suffering a twinge." There was a general roar of laughter. But the hilarity of the Assembly seems tragic enough when we remember how many of those who laughed were destined to perish by that insatiable weapon which as yet had neither name nor form. As a matter of fact, the worthy doctor, a man already at this time famed for his philanthropy, did not invent, but only suggested, the guillotine. By the expression, "my machine," he simply meant such a machine as the authorities, if they profited by his vague idea, would cause to be constructed. He had proposed nothing more than the principle of decapitation, whilst indicating in general terms the various instruments anciently employed for the purpose in different countries. Nevertheless, the whole nation was soon laughing at him, his exclamation being made the text of endless pleasantries. People were intensely amused at this notion of cutting off one's head in a twinkling from philanthropy. The instrument was christened long before it had been invented, and with the name of the unhappy doctor. A clever song was dashed off at the time, telling how a certain M. Guillotin, doctor and politician, woke up one fine morning and discovered that the custom of hanging was unpatriotic; how he immediately hit upon a method of punishment which, without rope or stake, would be so effective as to throw the executioner out of employment; and how the machine which the doctor indicated could bear no fitter name than the guillotine. [Illustration: RUE DE LE VRILLIÈRE.] It was this song, perhaps, which really fixed the name of the deadly weapon. So far, however, the Assembly, as we have seen, had come to no decision on the subject, having simply decreed the principle of equality in criminal punishments. The question of the mode of execution was entrusted for discussion to a special committee. On the 21st of September, 1791, after lengthy debate, the Assembly adopted the new penal code, of which one clause provided that every criminal sentenced to death should have his head cut off. The method of decapitation now remained to be decided. Hitherto the instrument employed had been the sword or the axe. This ghastly operation had been performed on a block, and clumsiness or emotion on the part of the executioner had sometimes caused the victim indescribably horrible tortures. Instances had occurred in which the criminal's head had not been severed from his body till the sixth or seventh stroke. This question greatly preoccupied the Assembly. Ministers openly expressed the horror with which decapitation by the sword inspired them; and the executioner himself published, in reference to the disadvantages of this method, a number of observations tinged with similar abhorrence. At length the Committee of Legislation called upon the celebrated surgeon Louis to draw up a report on the subject, indicating the fittest methods for cutting off a person's head rapidly and according to the principles of science. The witty Sophie Arnould, meeting once, as she walked through a wood, some physician of her acquaintance, with a gun under his arm, inquired of him: "Do you not find your prescriptions sufficient?" and it seems droll enough that, whilst the mission of doctors is, theoretically at least, to preserve life, a surgeon should have been selected by the Assembly to prescribe the fastest method of taking it. Yet, after all, the selection was prompted by humanity; for the infliction of death is a sufficiently sad necessity of State without the addition of needless torture. Dr. Louis in any case drew up his report, and presented it to the Assembly on the 20th of March, 1792. He set forth, in the first place, that cutting instruments are in reality nothing but saws of a more or less fine description, having very little effect when they strike perpendicularly, and that it was consequently necessary in executions to apply them in an oblique and gliding fashion. Adopting, therefore, the idea propounded by Guillotin--whom he did not even name in the report--he maintained that decapitation, in order to be surely effected, must be the direct act, not of a man, but of a machine, the adoption of which he now recommended. He mentioned a machine then employed in England which was, in fact, a rude sort of guillotine, and suggested several improvements in connection with it. Nor, indeed, was the notion of such an instrument by any means new. Some very old German prints exist representing executions performed in a similar fashion. The Italians employed in the sixteenth century, for the beheading of noble criminals, a machine called the _mannaja_, consisting of two upright posts, between which was fixed a sliding knife or cleaver, of great weight, designed to descend with enormous force and velocity on the neck of the prisoner leaning over a block below. Dr. Louis did not content himself with preparing this report. He hired a German mechanician, named Schmidt, to construct at his directions a machine which, after a succession of improvements, was definitely adopted. The first experiments were made at Bicêtre, on animals--which reminds one inevitably of Mr. W. S. Gilbert's executioner, who resolved first to practise on inferior beasts, and then to work his way up through the whole of animate creation until he was artist enough to behead a king. Schmidt, by the way, charged the State 824 livres (francs) for constructing those earliest machines, undertaking, moreover, to superintend their installation in the various departments. Originally the new instrument was sometimes called the Louisette, after the name of its actual creator. But guillotine was already the common title, and it soon became universal, as well as technical and official. Dr. Guillotin seems never to have protested against this appellation, though it is probable that during the troubles which were so close at hand he would fain have divested himself of the infamy which enshrouded him. As to Dr. Louis, he was fortunate enough not to witness a single political execution, for he died on the 20th of May, 1792. The guillotine took its first human life on the 25th of April, 1792. The subject was a highwayman named Nicolas-Jacques-Pelletier. The _Chronique de Paris_ said next day of this execution:--"The novelty of the execution had considerably enlarged that crowd of people whom a barbarous pity is wont to draw to these sad spectacles. The new machine has been justly preferred to the old methods of execution. It does not stain any man's hand with the murder of his fellow, and the promptitude with which it strikes the criminal is in the spirit of law, which may often be severe, but ought never to be cruel." The first political execution took place on the night of 21st August, 1792, at ten o'clock, to the flare of torches. The victim was Louis David Collenot d'Agremont, put to death for having been seen amongst the enemies of the people on the eventful day of the 10th August. This execution marked the commencement of an era of relentless and bloody feuds; but it was not until the establishment of the revolutionary tribunal, on 7th April, 1793, that the guillotine began to ply its deadly blade in such fearful earnest. From that moment to the 28th July the total number of persons executed was 2,625. The earliest political executions had for their scene the Place du Carrousel, whilst ordinary criminals continued to be decapitated on the Place de Grève. On the 10th May, 1793, the Convention, sitting then at the Tuileries, just opposite the ugly guillotine, called upon the Executive Council to choose another site. The Commune selected the Place de la Révolution (Concorde), where the guillotine was in operation until the 12th June, 1794. It was then erected in the Place du Trône. Some persons had suggested the Bastille; but in the eyes of the people this was a place which had acquired an almost sacred character. Under the Empire and the Restoration the guillotine stood on the Place de Grève, and under Louis Philippe at the Barrière St. Jacques, whilst to-day it is transferred to the Place de la Roquette. During the Reign of Terror the French nation was so familiarised with the idea of violent death that executions did not produce the same feeling of horror as at ordinary times. And now the real character of the Frenchman began to assert itself. In the gaols it became a favourite diversion with the prisoners to "play at the guillotine." People gave burlesque names to the horrible machine, such as "national razor," etc. It is even said that ear-rings in the shape of miniature guillotines were now largely worn by fashionable ladies. Within their Paris mansions aristocrats were accustomed to kill the time by means of a toy guillotine, which was placed on the table during dessert. Beneath this instrument were passed in succession several puppets, whose heads, representing those of leading Paris magistrates, liberated from the hollow trunk, as they rolled off the block, a red liquid like blood. All present, and especially the ladies, thereupon saturated their handkerchiefs with the fluid, which contained a highly agreeable scent. Under the Government of the Commune of Paris, the mob seized the guillotine and burnt it in the open street. Of late years the Paris executioner has distinctly improved the instrument. The scaffold, which was once an adjunct to it, has quite disappeared, and the criminal has no longer to climb a rude staircase before placing himself beneath the knife. CHAPTER XXX. THE EXECUTIONER. The Executioner--His Taxes and Privileges--_Monsieur de Paris_--Victor of Nîmes. The executioner is one of the most curious, interesting, and important figures in the history of France in general and of Paris in particular. Going back to the thirteenth century, we find that there already existed an individual whose duty it was to whip, hang, behead, break on the wheel, and burn in the name of the law. He was then called the Executioner of High Justice, and every bailiwick possessed such a functionary. An ordinance of 1264 against blasphemers provides that "anyone who has offended by word or deed shall be beaten, naked, with rods; that is to say, men by a man, and women by a woman, without the presence of any man." Hence some historians have inferred that the office of bourrelle, or female executioner, existed. This is an error; though it is quite true that the wife or the daughter of the _bourreau_ was usually preferred for the duty of whipping female misdemeanants. As to the rest, an elaborate apprenticeship had to be gone through by the executioner before he was deemed fit for his work, the law stipulating that he must be competent to whip, quarter, break on the wheel, fork, clip off ears, gibbet, dismember, and so forth. For a long time the executioner wore a special costume--a cassock wrought in the colours peculiar to the town in which he operated, and bearing in front the representation of a gibbet, and, behind, that of the scaffold staircase--emblems somewhat too obvious of his infamous profession. So soon as the office of _bourreau_ was permanently established, large taxes were enfeoffed to him, and the executioners of France now became so jealous of their prerogatives that one of them in 1560 sued a gentleman at law because, seizing a thief who tried to take his purse, he had drawn his sword and cut off the rascal's ear. In thus acting the gentleman was accused of having infringed on the executioner's rights and invaded his profession, the ear technically belonging to the executioner as one of his perquisites. No less curious than manifold were the taxes and privileges of all kinds enjoyed by this functionary. When he performed an execution on the domain of a monastery he was entitled, amongst other things, to the head of a pig; and the Abbé of Saint-Germain paid him an annual tax of this kind. The heads, moreover, of any pigs found straying in the streets or highways of Paris belonged to the executioner. During the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries the Parisians had permitted their pigs to stroll about in the public thoroughfares; but when the son of Louis le Gros was killed by a fall from his horse, which had stumbled over one of these wandering animals, it was forbidden thenceforth to allow them outside their owners' premises--though an exception was made in favour of the monks of Saint-Antoine, who were still at liberty to let out their pigs, which were distinguished by a peculiar mark on the ear. Any pig found walking abroad without this mark was now seized by the executioner, who could demand either its head, or, in lieu thereof, four sous. Another of his curious privileges was to levy a tax on young women leading objectionable lives. He received duty, moreover, on the goods vended by different classes of shopkeepers, and could walk into their shops and help himself to a certain fraction of their stock. Still more extraordinary than any hitherto mentioned was the tax he levied on all sick persons living in the suburbs of Paris, who were compelled to pay him four sous apiece every quarter. Some of the tolls taken at bridges went into his pocket. He was permitted to despoil the criminals he put to death. At first he could only take possession of what they had upon them above the girdle; but ultimately he obtained everything. Besides the innumerable imposts and perquisites of all kinds belonging to his office, he received a fixed fee for each execution. This, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, was 15 sous. In 1721 his taxes were for the most part abolished, and in lieu thereof an annual salary of 16,000 francs was assigned to him; though, out of this sum, he had to keep two assistants. In 1793 the National Convention entirely reformed the criminal legislation so far as concerned the executioner. By a decree of 13th June it decided that there should be an executioner to every department of the Republic. He was to be remunerated at the expense of the State. In towns with a population not exceeding 50,000 he was to receive a salary of 2,400 francs, besides another 1,600 francs for two assistants (in the departments), or 4,000 francs for four assistants (at Paris). In the French capital today the _bourreau_ has a fixed salary of 5,000 francs, and 10,000 francs for the maintenance of his formidable machine. The executioner is still regarded in France with much of the abhorrence which has always been felt for him; but although he is an outcast from the ordinary world, admission to churches, theatres, promenades, and public places generally is not to-day, as it once was, denied to him. Whenever his place becomes vacant there is a rush of candidates for it more multitudinous and more eager than for any other State office whatsoever. To be "Monsieur de Paris," as the executioner is styled, seems the pinnacle of ambition with only too large a section of the public. Once, indeed, the post of _bourreau_, although not, as some have imagined, hereditary, remained long in the same family; and that of Sanson produced seven generations of executioners, from 1688 to 1847. The post has seldom been a sinecure, and it was particularly far from being so during the centuries which followed the thirteenth. Thence, until the eighteenth, the executioner was a terribly busy man, hanging, quartering, and otherwise judicially massacring with scarcely a cessation. Kings with many enemies would sometimes make a pet of him. Louis XI. took a particular fancy to Tristan, whom he called his colleague. This man, by the way, had a genius for his ghastly business, chopping off heads with a dexterity well calculated to excite the favour of a king who had determined that all heads should fall which were difficult to bend. It was not only upon the persons of criminals that the executioner had to operate. He was sometimes required to burn or behead dummies representing offenders who had eluded capture. Peter the Cruel, King of Castile, having killed one of his subjects, was condemned to death. But as the person of the king was sacred, he was only executed in effigy, the _bourreau_ beheading with his sword an image intended to represent him. The public executioner has generally been more loathed in France than even in England. And justly so; for in the former country his work for many centuries has been peculiarly infamous, not to say diabolical. In the present day, it is true, "Monsieur de Paris" simply touches a button and his victim, without a struggle or a pang, is no more. But he was not always so humane. Once it was his own hand that dealt slow death and inflicted fiendish torture. It was he who quartered the condemned wretch--who attached horses, that is to say, to his legs and arms, and then drove them in four different directions. It was he who burned or broke on the wheel--the latter an indescribably ghastly operation, in which he used an iron bar to break almost every bone in the victim's body. It is not surprising, therefore, that even to-day "Monsieur de Paris," with such a history behind him, should be the object of a detestation which Ketch himself, or Marwood, failed to excite. The Revolution of 1789, although it swept away his privileges, completely rehabilitated that _bourreau_ whose services it was so frequently to require; and a decree of the Convention decided that thenceforth this functionary should be admitted to the rank of officer in the army. It was even proposed to confer upon him, as executioner, a new and finer title--that of "National Avenger"; and M. Matton de la Varenne was quite eloquent in his praise. "What would become of society?" he said; "of what use would be the judges, of what avail authority, if an active and legitimate force did not exist to avenge outrages committed upon citizens whom it is the care of the law to protect? If the punishment of the guilty is dishonourable to those who administer it, the magistrate who has pronounced the sentence, the notary who has drawn it up, the protractor and the criminal lieutenant who cause it to be executed beneath their eyes should bear part of the dishonour. Why should he who puts the last hand to the work be reputed infamous for duties which are simply the complement of those of the magistrate?" The argument was specious enough; but the difference between the two functionaries named is, after all, precisely the difference existing between a civic corporation which decrees that its town shall be kept clean, and the scavenger whom it hires to scrape the streets. However, the _bourreau_ became for a time an influential and admired personage. He was sometimes invited to dine at distinguished tables, and embraced as a favourite guest. Ultimately he figured as an autobiographer. The last of the Sansons wrote his own memoirs, together with those of his ancestors, executioners like himself. By no means the least curious fact in the history of the _bourreau_ is that, in former days, he killed with one hand and healed with the other. He was a physician, that is to say; and at his dispensary, in the intervals between his murderous operations, he dealt out medicines to poor people who flocked to him for advice. By far the most famous of these medical _bourreaux_ was Victor of Nîmes. His scientific reputation spread even beyond the boundaries of France. One day an Englishman called upon him for a consultation. This patient had a twisted neck, and had come over to place himself under the treatment of the once-famous school of Montpelier. After having endured all sorts of experiments, he found that his head showed no sign of resuming its normal position, and therefore, wishing his tormentors good day, he went on to Victor. "Can you cure me?" he inquired. The executioner examined him, and then said: "It is a simple case of _torticolis_. Nothing is easier than to cure you if you will confide in me, and do whatever I command." The Englishman consented; and after certain preliminaries both surgeon and patient passed from the consulting-room into a more retired apartment. That Victor, besides being a surgeon, was a humorist, seems beyond question. The room now entered was remarkable for nothing in particular--with one exception, namely, that from the ceiling hung a rope, at the end of which was a noose. The doctor ordered his patient to put his head in this noose. For a long time the Englishman hesitated and protested; ultimately he obeyed. Then Victor tightened the noose, hoisted his subject high up in the air, and, using the victim's legs as a kind of trapeze, went through the most frightful gymnastic exercises. At the end of a quarter of an hour--a _mauvais quart d'heure_ for our countryman--the performance concluded, and the patient was let down--cured. [Illustration: IN PÈRE-LACHAISE.] CHAPTER XXXI. PÈRE-LACHAISE. The Cemeteries of Clamart and Picpus--Père-Lachaise--La Villette and Chaumont--The Conservatoire--Rue Laffitte--The Rothschilds--Montmartre--Clichy. Before crossing the river to the left bank, we must say a few words about some of those districts of Paris which are reached naturally, and as a matter of course, by the great thoroughfares; the ancient estate, for instance, of Mont-Louis, where, for the last two centuries, has been established the cemetery known as Père-Lachaise. The cemeteries of Paris may be distinguished locally, or by the special character belonging to several of them. Each important district has its own cemetery: that of Montmartre, for instance, on the north, that of Mont-Parnasse on the south of Paris. The cemetery of Clamart was reserved, until the Revolution, for the bodies, dissected or undissected, of those who had died in hospital. It is now the last resting-place of criminals who have passed beneath the guillotine. The Picpus cemetery, at present a more or less private cemetery in which only privileged persons are buried, was formerly a place of interment for those who had distinguished themselves in insurrections and civil wars. There reposes La Fayette in the earth of the locality mingled with earth sent from America, in memory of the important part played by La Fayette in the American War of Independence. Père-Lachaise, the most celebrated and most interesting of all the cemeteries, owes its name to the famous confessor of Louis XIV., who proposed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes--the edict which accorded a certain toleration to the Protestants of France--and who celebrated the secret marriage of Louis XIV. to Mme. de Maintenon. Father Lachaise was a Jesuit with whom the idea of toleration could find no favour. The Duke de Saint-Simon, in his famous memoirs, gives a very favourable account of him, and while describing him as a "strong Jesuit," adds that he was "neither fanatical nor fawning." Although he advised the king to revoke the Edict of Nantes, he was no party to the active persecution by which the revocation was followed. The burial-ground of Père-Lachaise occupies the ancient domain of Mont-Louis, a property given to Father Lachaise by the king, and which in time became known exclusively by the name of its owner. It is for the most part an aristocratic cemetery. Although it contains monuments characterised by a solemnity befitting the idea of eternity, it is by no means the depressing, melancholy, awe-inspiring place which one might expect so vast a necropolis to be. On the one side wealth lies buried, on the other indigence. In juxtaposition to magnificent monuments, shaded with shrubs and graced with flowers, is the common trench, formed by two immense dikes dug in a sterile soil, where the poor sleep their last. There nothing but cold and dreary solitude meets the eye; whilst a few paces off stand Gothic chapels, sarcophagi, pyramids, obelisks, and artistic emblems of every kind--objects expressive, for the most part, of posthumous pride. Here social distinctions are marked with an ostentation painful to see: titles, coats of arms, escutcheons appearing in the marble or the stone. As to the inscriptions, these, written in a variety of styles--now pompous, now epigrammatic, now melodramatic--are frequently fantastic and seldom appropriate. Common to all the epitaphs, however widely they differ in other respects, is the uniform virtue which they ascribe to their subjects. In this connection a few words from the caustic pen of M. Benjamin Gastineau deserve reproduction. "At Père-Lachaise," he says, "you find nothing but good fathers, good mothers, good brothers, good husbands, faithful wives, true friends, noble hearts, angels flown to heaven, white flowers, chaste spouses, seraphim of perfection. Not a traitor, not a coward, not a hypocrite, not a knave, not an egotist!" The tombs of Père-Lachaise are frequently remarkable, not merely as fine specimens--or even masterpieces--of sculptural art, but on account of the illustrious personages who slumber beneath them. The magnificent tomb of Héloise and Abailard would justify a page of description, whilst the story of their romantic love sufficed, as we know, to inspire even the frigid pen of Alexander Pope with passion. From this ancient tomb a few steps will take the visitor into the company of the illustrious dead of a later day. Here is the monument of Frederick Soulié, the vehement and impassioned novelist--a simple marble slab, surmounted by a cross, and eloquently inscribed with his mere name. The tomb of the composer Chopin is not far off. In the front appears a medallion portrait of this brilliant genius, whilst, on the tomb itself, Cleslinger has sculptured a poetic figure, breaking the lyre he bears, and in an attitude of profound despair. Hard by is the tomb of Vivant Denon. Upon it his statue, by Cartelier, stands, still smiling with that smile which, as a French historian has ingeniously said, "pleased, turn by turn, Louis XV., Mme. de Pompadour, Voltaire, Louis XVI., Robespierre, and Napoleon." The most sumptuous monument in the cemetery is that of the Russian Princess, Demidoff. Its height is prodigious. Its semi-Oriental architecture, at once severe and beautiful, is highly imposing. It consists of a rich temple adorned with ten columns of white Carrara marble, supporting a magnificent canopy. On the sarcophagus rests a crown. This monument is said to have cost 120,000 francs. The stage is represented in this silent city. Here sleeps Mlle. Duchenois, once the rival of Mlle. Georges. At no great distance from where she lies a chapel stands over the remains of the last great Célimène, Mlle. Mars; whilst the name inscribed on a little sarcophagus in the Greek style shows us that even Talma had to die. Among the host of illustrious names inscribed on the stones of Père-Lachaise must be mentioned those of Laharpe, Beaumarchais, Molière, and La Fontaine. The relics of the two last were transferred to this cemetery at the same time as those of Héloise. Nor, finally, can we forget the monument raised to the famous General Foy. In the inscription which it bears an ingenious and eloquent use is made of the General's celebrated utterance in the Chamber of Representatives: "Yesterday I said I would not yield except to force. To-day I come to keep my word." The cemetery of Père-Lachaise has two special quarters: one reserved for Protestants, the other for Jews. The monuments of the former present, by their austere simplicity, a striking contrast to the elegant or sumptuous mausoleums in the Catholic burial-ground. Most of the tombs bear, as their sole emblem, a representation of the Bible, open at a page reflecting upon the ultimate way of all flesh. The Jewish cemetery is situated behind the monument of Héloise and Abailard. On entering it the visitor sees, to the right, a funeral chapel in the Greek style, which is the tomb of Rachel. Further on, to the left, is that of the Rothschild family. Lastly, at the summit of the hill of Père-Lachaise, covering an area newly annexed, is the Mussulman cemetery, provided with a mosque. The Princess of Oude and one of her relatives were its first occupants. On the 27th of May, 1871, Père-Lachaise became the scene of a horrible slaughter. Five days previously the Army of Versailles had penetrated into Paris. The troops of the Commune, despite a desperate resistance, had had to withdraw to one or two points of retreat: among others to Père-Lachaise. On the 27th some battalions of Marines, forming part of the corps of General Vinoy, invaded the cemetery. There was a fearful hand-to-hand fight over the tombs. Into the very vaults the marines pursued the insurgents who had spiked their guns and fled. Two days afterwards the cemetery was a litter of broken weapons, empty bottles, and other profane rubbish. During the last few years a corner of the cemetery of Père-Lachaise has been set apart for cremations. Paris, which claims to be first in so many things and which is so often justified in these pretensions, did not establish a crematorium until long after the city of Milan had done so. * * * * * To the north of Père-Lachaise extend the hillsides of Ménilmontant and Belleville, commanding, from innumerable points, a magnificent view, and memorable for the defence of Paris conducted from these heights in 1814. Belleville is the scene of more than one remarkable incident in the novels of Paul de Kock, the Maid of Belleville being as much associated with this suburban eminence as the Maid of Orleans with that of Montmartre. The vast region of Belleville and Ménilmontant is chiefly inhabited by the workpeople of Paris, who have here their headquarters. Close at hand is the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, communicating in a direct line with the Rue Saint-Antoine--street and faubourg both celebrated in the annals of popular insurrection. The streets and faubourgs of Saint-Denis and Saint-Martin belong equally to the workmen's quarter, which includes, moreover, La Villette and Chaumont, with its quarries. Here all the vagabonds and malefactors of Paris used at one time to seek refuge. Napoleon III., who systematically made war upon this class of the population, cleared the Buttes Chaumont and caused the slopes to be covered with picturesque gardens. In the valley is an artificial lake fed by one of the tributaries of the Saint-Martin canal. The gardens of the Buttes Chaumont belong to what used to be known as the District of the Fights, or Quartier des Combats, so called from the fights between dogs and bulls or other animals which here took place until the time of the Revolution. These, with some modifications, were continued up to the first years of Louis Philippe's reign. Here Jules Janin found the subject of his famous novel, "L'âne mort et la femme guillotinée"--a story written, according to some, in order to turn into ridicule the sensational novelists of the day; according to others, with the view of attracting and forcing attention by means of exaggerated and monstrous sensationalism. Returning from the heights which bound Paris on the north, by the Rue du Faubourg Poissonnière, we find at the corner of this street and of the Rue Bergère the building in which has existed, since the Revolution, the National Conservatory of Music and Declamation. The great musical academy had its origin in a school of singing and declamation established in 1784 in order to prepare singers for the Opéra. To this institution was added in 1786 a school of dramatic declamation, which had the honour of producing Talma. But the Conservatory of Music, as it now exists, owes its organisation to the Revolution. Founded in virtue of a decree dated August 3rd, 1795, it had for its first director the illustrious Cherubini, who was replaced by Auber, to whom has succeeded M. Ambroise Thomas, the composer of _Mignon_ and of _Hamlet_. The students are admitted by competition, and the teaching is gratuitous. Prizes are adjudged every year, and of these the most important is the so-called Prix de Rome, which enables its holder to study for a certain number of years in the great Italian city. The concerts of the Conservatoire are famous throughout Europe; and fortunate indeed is the visitor to Paris who can succeed in obtaining a place at concerts which are supported and attended exclusively (except, of course, in case of forced absence) by permanent subscribers. The orchestra which takes part in these concerts is of the finest quality, the principal instruments being all in the hands of the professors of the establishment--the first instrumentalists, that is to say, of France. The Rue Laffitte, formerly known as the Rue d'Artois, by which, in the neighbourhood of the Conservatoire, one reaches the best part of the Boulevard, has, since the Revolution of 1830, borne the name of the celebrated banker and politician whose mansion was the rendezvous of the Opposition Deputies during the so-called "days of July." Laffitte is, in some sense, the hero of a charming tale published by the so-called Saint-Germain under the title of "Story of a Pin." At the office of a Paris banker, a young man in search of employment has been refused by reason of there being no vacancy. As, however, he goes away in a dejected mood, he is seen to pick up a pin; and this indication of order and economy has such an effect upon the banker that he is called back and at once appointed to a supplementary chair. It is said that a friend of Laffitte's, also out of employment, hearing of the success of this "pin trick," as he termed it, resolved to try it himself. At the next office where he applied for a situation his conversation and general demeanour so pleased the principal that he was all but engaged, when, in order to determine the matter, he went through the gesture of picking up a pin--which he had held all the time between his fingers. "What was that?" asked the head of the firm. "A pin," was the reply. "A pin?" repeated the principal. "A man who would take a pin out of my office would take a cheque. Good morning, sir." [Illustration: PARC DES BUTTES CHAUMONT.] Laffitte was the most generous of millionaires. One of the Rothschilds assured the famous actress Rachel that if he had lent money to everyone who asked him he should at last have had to borrow five francs of her. This was in all probability the mere plea of Dives, unwilling to be too much put upon by Lazarus. Laffitte seems to have been ready to lend to anyone who really deserved assistance; and a strange story is told of his advancing a sum of money to an officer of whom he knew nothing. The officer had been gambling and had lost 5,000 francs which did not belong to him. It was necessary to restore this amount to the regimental chest or be for ever disgraced. Laffitte listened to the officer's story, counted out to him the 5,000 francs, and took a receipt, together with a promise that the money should be repaid at the rate of 250 francs a year. "It will take you a long time to pay it off at that rate," said Laffitte, "and who knows whether you will ever bring me the first instalment?" The officer, however, swore that he would keep his word--and, exactly to the day when the first payment became due, brought to the banker his first 250 francs. Laffitte, however, while complimenting him on his punctuality, declared himself unable to receive such a contemptibly small sum, and told his debtor to keep it for another year, when he must bring him 500. On the officer's return, at the expiration of another twelvemonth, with the increased amount, Laffitte exclaimed: "Yes; I see you are a man of honour. Keep the money and take back your note of hand." It is to be hoped that Heine, living in Paris at the time, heard this story, though he did not profit by its teaching; for it was one of his amusing if cynical maxims, that a man had more chance of getting a loan from a poor friend, anxious to appear better off than he really was, than from a rich one whose pecuniary position was above question. After the Revolution of 1830 Laffitte was appointed Minister of Finance and President of the Council. This just man could not, however, succeed in pleasing either of the sections into which the Chamber was divided. His own party thought him too lukewarm, too unprogressive, while the Legitimists could not forget his alliance with the party of Revolution. The Rue Laffitte may well be regarded as the headquarters of finance, for, in addition to the banking-house of Laffitte, the French branch of the Rothschilds has here for more than half a century been domiciled. The Rothschilds of Paris, like those of London, Frankfort, Vienna, and Naples, are descendants of the Mayer-Rothschilds who founded the first of the Rothschild banking-houses at Frankfort a century ago. Born at Frankfort-on-the-Maine in 1743, Mayer Anselm Rothschild belonged to a Jewish family of small means. He received, nevertheless, a good education and studied for some time with the view of becoming a Rabbi. Commerce and finance had, however, greater attractions for him than the Law and the Prophets, and, thanks to his industry and intelligence, he soon found himself the possessor of a small amount of capital. He had established himself in the Juden-gasse; and here, faithfully assisted by his young wife, he occupied himself with dealings of the most varied kinds. He had familiarised himself with financial operations at a bank where he had been engaged as clerk; and after his marriage he quickly became known by his enterprise, honesty, and tact to the great financial houses of Frankfort, Mayence, and Darmstadt, who often entrusted him with important commissions. Mayer Rothschild was forty-six years of age when the French Revolution broke out; and it was in the midst of the troubles caused by this great convulsion that he found his first great opportunity of enriching himself. Immediately after the Reign of Terror, when, in 1794, the French armies were replying to the German invasion by themselves invading Germany, the smaller German princes became panic-stricken, and fled with such haste towards the Elbe that some of them had not time to carry away all their gold. Among the illustrious fugitives was the Elector of Hesse-Cassel, who possessed more ready money than all his brethren of the German Federation united. Finding it imprudent, if not impossible, to take with him in his travelling-carriage heaps of silver and gold, he resolved to place a portion of his treasure in the hands of trustworthy persons, and one of those selected was Mayer Rothschild of Frankfort. Two millions of florins were confided to him on the simple understanding that he should restore the money at the conclusion of peace. The war, however, lasted for years; and during this period the talents confided to the Hebrew banker were not allowed to lie buried in a napkin. He put them out at interest, made loans to the Governments and to the military commanders and commissaries on all sides; speculated, in short, with the money carefully and judiciously, without permitting himself to be influenced by any of the prejudices of patriotism. _Ubi bene, ibi patria_, was the motto of the Hebrew at the beginning of the century, and naturally enough; for in a privileged society he was without privileges and almost without rights. Every career was closed to him except those of medicine and money-making; and in making money it was enough for the Hebrew to make it lawfully. There is no record of Mayer Rothschild's having lent anything to the French Republic, which had liberated the Jews from every burden, every disability, weighing upon them in other countries. But he made advances to Napoleon and also, with fine impartiality, to England, Napoleon's most consistent foe. Any prince, moreover, reigning or deposed, could, if he possessed the requisite security, count upon the Frankfort financier for pecuniary aid. When peace was established, the Elector of Hesse-Cassel received back the whole of his capital with a fair amount of interest, and Mayer Rothschild was able to congratulate himself on having benefited alike the Elector and himself. War had broken out again, and Napoleon had undertaken that campaign against Russia which was to bring him to ruin, when Mayer Rothschild died, like a patriarch, surrounded by his ten children. He had never quitted his house in the Juden-gasse, and, millionaire as he now was, had never abandoned the long, characteristic frock-coat of the Frankfort Jews. Of the ten children surrounding the bed of the dying financier, five were sons--Anselm, Solomon, Nathan, Charles, and James. In giving them his last blessing he exhorted them to live together in the most perfect harmony: a command which was to be religiously obeyed. The five brothers formed in common an immense banking house, with the central establishment at Frankfort, and four branches at Vienna, London, Naples, and Paris. To undertake no important operation without the consent of all the partners, to be content with a relatively small profit, to leave nothing to chance, to be always punctual and exact--such were the principles by which they were to be guided; and in formally adopting them they took this motto: _Concordia, Industria, Integritas._ The events of 1813 and 1814 offered to this fraternal association admirable opportunities. It was applied to for loans, first by the coalition of Powers marching against France, and, after Napoleon's final defeat, by the new monarchical Government of France, in view of the war indemnity. From this moment the house of Rothschild assumed colossal proportions. It seemed to hold Europe at every point, and no important financial operation could be undertaken without its consent and aid. The Emperor of Austria ennobled the brothers Rothschild in 1815, at the time of the Vienna Conferences, and in 1822 created them barons and appointed them consuls-general for Austria in the different cities where they were established. Of Mayer Rothschild's five sons, Baron Anselm, the eldest, born at Frankfort in 1773, assumed, after the death of his father, the direction of the Frankfort bank, and while remaining at its head took an active part in founding the four branch houses at Paris, London, Vienna, and Naples. He died at Frankfort in 1855. Baron Solomon de Rothschild, Mayer Rothschild's second son, born at Frankfort in 1774, died at Paris in 1855. After founding the branch bank of Vienna, he directed, in concert with his brother Anselm, most of the great financial operations undertaken in Germany. He was an intimate friend of Prince Metternich's, and his son, Baron Anselm Solomon, became, less from political tastes than in virtue of his rank, a member of the Austrian Reichsrath. After quitting Vienna, Baron Solomon, the father, went to Paris, where, in association with his brother James, he undertook the management of the French bank. His son, the before-mentioned Baron Anselm Solomon, died at Vienna in 1874, leaving behind him one of the finest art galleries in the world. He had three sons, Nathaniel, Ferdinand, and Albert, the last-named of whom took the direction of the Vienna bank. Baron Nathan de Rothschild, brother of the preceding, was born at Frankfort in 1777, and died there in 1836. His father, the founder of the family, had sent him as early as 1798 to England, where, after passing some years at Manchester, he established himself in London in 1806. After the death of his father he remained at the head of the London house, and played a considerable part in the great financial operations undertaken by the five brothers in common. In 1813 he lent large sums to the English Government, as well as to England's allies, and, after the peace, was, like his four brothers, appointed consul-general for Austria, and created baron. Nathan, who, by the way, never made use of his title, died at Frankfort in 1836, and was succeeded in the direction of the London house by Baron Lionel de Rothschild. Baron Charles de Rothschild, the fourth of the five brothers, was born at Frankfort in 1788, and died at Naples in 1855. He directed the Naples bank from its first establishment until his death. He reconstructed the finances of Piedmont and Tuscany, and, in association with his brothers, borrowed for the Roman Government between 1831 and 1856 some 200,000,000 francs. Baron James de Rothschild, the last of the brothers, born at Frankfort-on-the-Maine in 1792, died at Paris in 1868. It is with him we have chiefly to do, since it was he who in the year 1812, immediately after the death of his father, established at Paris the great banking house which now forms one of the most striking features of the Rue Laffitte. The post of consul-general for Austria was given to him in 1822. Under the Restoration, in December, 1823, Baron James subscribed for a loan of nearly five hundred millions, and, in association with his brothers, he undertook nearly all the important loans issued in Portugal, Prussia, Austria, France, Italy, and Belgium. He rendered important financial aid to the French Government under the reign of Louis Philippe, and during the Second Empire. It was Baron James de Rothschild, moreover, who furnished the brothers Pereire with the sums necessary for the construction of the first railways in France. Falsely accused of having speculated in corn during the dearth of 1847, he had reason to fear, at least for a time, after the Revolution of 1848, that he could no longer live safely at Paris. His house was pillaged and burnt, and he was indeed on the point of quitting France, when the Prefect of Police, Caussidière, persuaded him to stay, and placed at his disposal a picket of the Republican Guard, which was stationed in the courtyard of his mansion night and day. The baron gave 50,000 francs towards the relief of the wounded of February, illuminated his house to show that he was not hostile to Republican institutions, and tranquilly continued his operations at the bank. When Caussidière, obliged to leave France, decided to set up as a wine merchant in London, Baron James, mindful of the service he had rendered him, did not, it is true, offer him a present of money, which might have been refused, but in the handsomest manner ordered such large annual consignments of wine from him, that Caussidière could thenceforth have lived comfortably without selling a drop of his stuff to any other customer. The baron never boasted of this action, but the wine merchant took delight in telling the story of his patron's delicate gratitude. Thanks to his state loans, to his banking and exchange transactions, and to the great commercial enterprises which he had created or protected, the financier had amassed enormous wealth. He richly endowed or founded all kinds of Jewish institutions, notably a vast hospital in the Rue Picpus, and the synagogue of the Rue Notre-Dame de Nazareth. Every year he sent to Judæa large sums of money, which the Rabbis distributed to the poor; and the Jews of the East attributed to him the project of redeeming Jerusalem from the government of the Turks. His château at Ferrières, in the department of Seine-et-Marne, is a sumptuous palace; and besides this and his two other residences in the Rue Laffitte and the Bois de Boulogne, he possessed innumerable houses in Paris. In nearly all the great cities and towns of Europe, moreover, he owned valuable properties--at Rome, for instance, Naples, and Turin, where some of the finest palaces and mansions were his. To the end of his life the great financier displayed a most prodigious activity. He was quick, hot-tempered, peevish, and surly to approach. But if he has been often reproached with brutality to underlings, he, on the other hand, treated the great with none too much ceremony. One day the Count de Morny entered the baron's office at a moment when he was busily engaged. "Take a chair," said the financier, without looking at him. "Pardon me," said the injured visitor; "you cannot have heard my name. I am the Count de Morny." "Take two chairs," replied Baron James, without lifting his eyes off the papers before him. This prince of millionaires never carried more than fifty francs in his pocket; and he himself declared that by means of this aid to economy he had saved half a million francs in the course of his life. At the club of the Rue Royale, where he was accustomed to play whist after dinner, much amusement was caused by the extraordinary purse he always carried. It was fitted with a lock, and the key to this lock hung as a pendant to the baron's watchchain. To pay a debt of ten sous he had first to get hold of the key and then open the lock; nor even when he had done so was there always enough in the purse to discharge his liability. At his club he was called simply "The Baron"--his compeers were all barons of something or other; and for this title he had always a punctilious regard. He was a great lover of art, and had formed a magnificent collection in the château at Ferrières. By his marriage with his niece, daughter of Baron Solomon de Rothschild, he left four sons--Edmond, Gustave, Alphonse, and Nathaniel, of whom the first-named became naturalised in France, and assumed on his father's death the direction of the Paris house. During the siege of the capital in January, 1871, he, in association with his brothers, expended 300,000 francs on the relief of the necessitous; and in 1872 subscribed for a sum of 2,750,000,000 francs towards the loan required to buy the foe out of the country. * * * * * The three houses in the Rue Laffitte occupied by the Rothschilds are numbered 17, 19, and 21. At 21 is the banking establishment, now presided over by Baron Alphonse de Rothschild, third son of the late Baron James. Baron Alphonse is a painter of the highest distinction, in token of which he has been elected a member of the Academy of Fine Arts. No. 19 is the residence of the Dowager Baroness James de Rothschild; while No 17 is occupied by various administrative offices. Close by is the mansion which, under the First Empire, was inhabited by the Queen of Holland. In one of the rooms overlooking the garden was born, April 20th, 1808, Napoleon Louis, the future Emperor of the French. [Illustration: THE MUFFIN MILL.--THE OBELISK OF THE PARIS MERIDIAN.--THE OBSERVATORY. MONTMARTRE.] In the middle of the Rue de la Victoire stands the finest of the three synagogues of Paris, built by the architect Aldrophe in the Roman style. The perspective of the Rue Laffitte terminates at the frontispiece of the church of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette. The plan of this edifice is that of an ancient Roman basilica, and its aspect that of an Italian church. The interior is very richly adorned with works from the chisels of half a dozen famous sculptors, and from the brushes of a still greater number of distinguished painters. This church, situated in the midst of those quarters where literature, art, and the drama have made their home, is marked by an elegance which approaches the mundane. Passing northwards through the Rue Laffitte, the visitor sees, rising before him, the hill of Montmartre, which overlooks the church. The windmills which five-and-twenty years ago waved their arms on the summit of this eminence have given way to the imposing church of the Sacred Heart, a massive structure suggestive of a fortress. The Butte Montmartre, to give the hill its French name, figures on almost every page of the annals of Paris. It is supposed, with a certain degree of probability, that temples to Mars and Mercury were raised there in the Roman era. Three different etymologies have been given to the Butte Montmartre, namely, _Mons Martis_, or Mount of Mars; _Mons Mercurii_, or Mount of Mercury; and finally _Mons Martyrum_, or Mount of the Martyrs. The last-named derivation is justified by the martyrdom of St. Denis, first Archbishop of Paris, who in the third century perished upon this spot. The hill bears a reservoir of water, artistically decorated; and close to it an obelisk erected in 1736 to serve as a point of view by which, from the opposite or southern side of Paris, the city could be surveyed and measured. Our illustration shows, to the right of this edifice, the Observatory of Montmartre, and to the left the Moulin de la Galette, or Muffin Mill. [Illustration: THE SYNAGOGUE IN THE RUE DE LA VICTOIRE.] Close by is the church of St. Peter, which presents a miserable front, but which archæologists prize as a monument of extraordinary interest. It dates back to the earliest ages of Christianity. Destroyed by the Romans, it was completely rebuilt in 1137. Partly burnt in 1559, it was half demolished in 1792, and restored without any regard to regularity or unity of design. It thus presents, at first sight, the aspect of a ruin held together by means of shaky scaffoldings. The Butte Montmartre is an enormous mass of gypsum, about 125 metres high, and it has furnished century after century the finest kind of plaster, required for the construction of buildings in Paris. As a consequence it has been dangerously hollowed out, and in recent times a part of the hill gave way and precipitated itself upon the district below. The massive church of the Sacred Heart was built with a special eye to the insecurity of the hill; for it rests on an artificial foundation, in the shape of huge masses of cement, reaching deep down into the lower strata. In the last generation the Butte Montmartre was, to Parisians, simply a fresh-air resort, picturesque with the before-mentioned windmills, to which rustic taverns were usually attached. From the summit, where city-pent children used on Sundays joyously to romp on the future site of the church of the Sacred Heart, a magnificent view is obtained of the Plain of Saint-Denis, the course of the Seine, and beyond that the fringe of the Montmorency Forest. Then, turning suddenly towards the south, the astonished visitor sees the whole city of Paris lying at his feet. At the bottom of the Rue Lepic a vast enclosure is visible full of trees of various kinds, with the cypress prominent amongst them. This is the cemetery of Montmartre, or, by its official designation, Cemetery of the North. It contains many a monument as remarkable for its artistic beauty as for the character or celebrity of the sleeper beneath it; that of Godefroi Cavaignac, for instance, brother of the general of the same name, and one of the hopes of the Republican party under the monarchy of Louis Philippe; of Henri Beyle (otherwise "Stendhal"), author of "The Life of Rossini," the treatise on "Love," and of several admirable novels, including "La Chartreuse de Parme," described as a masterpiece by so competent a judge as Balzac. Here, too, repose Paul Delaroche the painter, Marshal Lannes, Halévy, composer of _La Juive_, and Henri Murger, observer, if not inventor, of the literary and artistic Bohemian, described with so much gaiety, vivacity, and picturesqueness in the "Scènes de la Vie de Bohême." Until a few years ago the Montmartre Cemetery barred the way from Paris to the Butte Montmartre. But since 1888 a bridge or viaduct has connected the Boulevard Clichy with the Rue Caulaincourt. The Barrière Clichy has given its name to one of the most characteristic of Horace Vernet's works--the picture of this barrier as seen in 1814 during the advance upon Paris of the allied armies. The prison of Clichy, familiarly known as "Clichy," in the street of the same name, was the Paris prison for debt. Here, until the Second Empire, debtors were confined under conditions peculiar to France, or at least never known in England. The duration of the imprisonment was determined by the magnitude of the debt, up to a period of five years; the maximum term, whatever amount might be owed. The debtor was maintained at the cost of the creditor, who had to deposit a sum of forty-five francs with the prison officials before his victim could be admitted within the prison walls. From early morning until ten o'clock at night the prisoners were free to walk about the grounds and occupy themselves as they thought fit. There were two hundred rooms for men, and sixteen for women; and, contrary to the general opinion on the subject, largely due to humorous writers and caricaturists, the prisoners belonged, for the most part, not to the aristocratic class, but to the class of small tradesmen. As the enforced allowance from the creditor was only sufficient to provide the necessaries of life, a fund was maintained among the prisoners for supplementing the ordinary bill of fare. There was a restaurant for prisoners of means, and light wines were on sale, to the exclusion of dessert wines and liqueurs. If, as often happened, the creditor omitted to pay for the support of the debtor, the latter was set free. It is recorded in the chronicles of Clichy that among the wines forbidden, as savouring specially of a luxury unbecoming on the part of a man unable to pay his debts, was champagne. The heart of the creditor, says one writer on this subject, would have been too much vexed by the thought of bursting corks and foaming wine. The prisoners at Clichy became, according to the French caricaturists, inordinately fat; and in one of Gavarni's pictures of Clichy a prisoner is represented saying to a friend who has called to see him: "If they don't let me out soon I shall be unable to get through the door." Thus, the mouse of the fable, having crept through a small hole into a basket of provisions, feasted till he was too big to squeeze his way out again. [Illustration: ST. PETER'S CHURCH, MONTMARTRE.] [Illustration: THE BELLS OF ST. PETER'S.] If, under the French system, the creditor was bound to maintain the debtor, the debtor, on his side, was denied the liberties accorded to him in England. Here a man who refused to pay his debts might be detained as long as the creditor wished without any charge to the latter; but here, also, the debtor might lead a luxurious life, and even leave the prison day after day on condition only of returning by a certain hour at night. To live "within the rules" of the Queen's Bench was simply to inhabit an unfashionable and remote part of London, with the additional obligation of getting home early every night. A former manager of Her Majesty's Theatre--King's Theatre, as it was then called--passed several years in the Queen's Bench Prison. This gentleman, Taylor by name, maintained, indeed, that it was the only place where an operatic manager could live so as to be quite beyond the reach of tenors dissatisfied with their parts, and _prime donne_ clamouring for new dresses and increased salaries. In fact, he once declared, it was the only place where a man so rash as to undertake an operatic speculation ought to be allowed to live, since no such person was fit to be at large. [Illustration: THE NEW MUNICIPAL RESERVOIR AND THE CHURCH OF THE SACRED HEART, MONTMARTRE.] [Illustration: THE CAULAINCOURT BRIDGE, MONTMARTRE.] Close to the Clichy district is the more important one of Les Batignolles, a growth of the present century and, one may almost say, of the last half-century. The village of Les Batignolles has developed into a town, inhabited for the most part by retired tradesmen and small annuitants. Close, again, to the Batignolles is the beautiful Parc Monceau, with its Avenue de Villiers, favourite abode of so many painters of the modern school. We are now once more in the neighbourhood of the Champs Élysées, with its picturesque avenues, its children, its popular theatres, and its cafés without number. Once more, too, we are in the vicinity of that Bois de Boulogne, with its beautiful drives, its luxurious restaurants, its enchanting lake, and its forest renowned for duels. CHAPTER XXXII. PARIS DUELS. The Legal Institution of the Duel--The _Congé de la Bataille_--in the Sixteenth Century--Jarnac--Famous Duels. Parisian duels are no longer to the death. As a rule, one of the combatants receives a scratch, and the farce is at an end. The story is well known of a Paris journalist's wife, who, alarmed by the sudden disappearance of her husband, continued for a long time to fret and worry about him, until a friend of his told her that he had gone into the country to fight a duel, whereupon she exclaimed: "Thank Heaven! Then he is safe." [Illustration: IN THE PARC MONCEAU.] From antiquity, however, until very recent times duels in Paris and in France generally have been only too sanguinary. The French first learned duelling from a ferocious nation. The ancient Franks, in invading Gaul, established there what was known as the "judicial combat." Previously, in their own country, it had been a custom amongst the Franks for an individual who had suffered any private wrong, serious or trivial, to wreak a personal vengeance on the offender, inflicting death, or no matter what bodily injury, in the most barbarous fashion. At length the law intervened and instituted formal combat between the parties at strife--a custom which, in due course, was introduced by the Franks into conquered Gaul. In the regulations of Philippe le Bel, 1306, it is set forth:-- "That the lists shall be forty feet in width and eighty feet in length. "That the duel shall only be permitted when there is presumptive evidence against the accused, but without clear proof. "That on the day appointed the two combatants shall leave their houses on horseback, with visor raised; their sabre, sword, axe, and other _reasonable_ arms for attack and defence being carried before them; when they shall advance slowly, making from step to step the sign of the cross, or bearing an image of the saint to whom they are chiefly devoted and in whom they have most confidence. "That having reached the enclosure, the appellant, with his hand on his crucifix, shall swear on his baptismal faith, on his life, his soul, and his honour, that he believes himself to have got a just subject of contention, and moreover that he has not upon him, nor upon his horse, nor among his arms, any herbs, charms, words, stones, conjurations, pacts, or incantations that he proposes to employ; and that the respondent shall take the same oaths. "That the body of the vanquished man, if he is killed, shall be delivered to the marshal, until the king has declared if he wishes to pardon him or to do justice upon him; that is to say, hang him up to a gibbet by one of his feet. "That if the vanquished man still lives, his aiguillettes shall be cut off; that he shall be disarmed and stripped; that all his harness shall be cast here and there about the field; and that he shall remain lying on the ground until the king, in like manner, has declared if he wishes to pardon him or to do justice upon him. "That, moreover, all his property shall be confiscated for the benefit of the king, after the victor has been duly paid his costs and damages." In regard to capital crimes, the issue of a combat authorised by law and consecrated by religious ceremonies was looked upon as a formal judgment by which God made known the truth or falsehood of the accusation. The defeated combatant was dragged on a hurdle in his shirt to the gallows, where, dead or alive, he was hanged. The church itself adopted and sanctioned the superstitious idea that the vanquished in the judicial duel must necessarily be guilty. The one who had been killed in such a duel or combat was, says Brantôme, "in no case received by the church for Christian burial; and the ecclesiastics alleged as a reason for this that his defeat was a judgment from Heaven, and that he had succumbed by the will of God because his quarrel was unjust." The judicial duel was fully recognised by the Church of Paris. Louis VI. declared that the serfs and ecclesiastics of the Church of Paris might "testify," that is to say maintain their word by a duel. In the reign of Louis the Young the monks of the Abbey of Saint-Geneviève, whose domains covered all the high ground which now overlooks the Panthéon, offered to prove by duel that the inhabitants of the little village in the neighbourhood were the serfs of their abbey. In the same reign (1144) the monks of Saint-Germain-des-Prés having demanded a duel in order to prove that Étienne de Maci had wrongly imprisoned one of their serfs, the two champions fought for a long time with equal advantage; but at last, "by the help of God," says a chronicler, "the champion of the abbey took out the eye of his adversary, and obliged him to confess that he was conquered." Among the most remarkable judicial duels may be mentioned one that took place between two Norman knights behind the church of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields in presence of Charles VI. and the whole court. Jacques Legris had been accused by the wife of Jean Carrouge of having entered his castle, masked, in the middle of the night, under pretence of being her husband, who was on his way from the Holy Land and whose return she was daily expecting. He protested his innocence, and on the demand of Carrouge the Parliament ordered the matter to be decided by duel. The judgment of God was unfavourable to Legris, and on being vanquished he was hung up at the gallows attached to the lists. Some time afterwards a malefactor, on the point of being executed for other crimes, confessed to having committed the infamous action for which Legris had suffered. This cruel mistake led to the abolition of the judicial duel. All demands on the subject addressed to the Parliament were from this time rejected--the judicial duel was at an end. Appeals for a decision by single combat could still be made to the king, who sometimes granted what was known as the _Congé de la Bataille_. But simple crimes were no longer the cause of duels; and the personal conflicts that now take place turn upon the modern "point of honour." Assemblies, however, were still held for the purpose of enacting that duels should not be fought without the recognition of the superior authorities and without fair play. Two French officers having quarrelled on a campaign, one of whom had suffered from the other a personal affront, the case was brought before a tribunal of honour, with the highest personages of the court, the Chancellor, the Pope's legate, two cardinals, and a certain number of prelates as judges; when, without any appeal to the sword, it was decided that one of the antagonists should go down on his knees before the other and declare that "madly and rashly, irreverentially, badly advised and badly counselled, he had given a box on the ear or blow with the fist to the other, in the tent and presence of the Duke de Longueville." The court of honour might or might not be the preliminary to the _Congé de la Bataille_. When the latter was granted the fact was announced by the king's herald. The duel might on certain grounds be declined, and an example of this is cited, in which Count William of Furstenberg refused to meet a certain Sieur de Vassé on account of his inferior birth. Victor Hugo has well reproduced this spirit of aristocratic punctilio, which did not spring from personal haughtiness alone, in his drama of _Marion Delorme_. Didier, the hero, of obscure birth, challenges a distinguished nobleman, who asks for his adversary's name. "Didier," is the reply. "Didier de quoi?" inquires the nobleman. "Didier de rien!" answers the bearer of the homely name, who declares that he never knew his father; whereupon the aristocrat, giving him the benefit of the doubt, observes that he may possibly be of the highest lineage, and at once consents to cut throats with him. This idea of disqualification on account of inferior birth disappeared with the Revolution. But it was maintained, with only the rarest exceptions, until the great outbreak of 1789. Voltaire challenged a duke who had caused him to be waylaid and beaten by hired ruffians, but with no result, except to get himself sent to the Bastille. The incident of the water-carrier, in one of Paul de Kock's novels, challenging and fighting a gentleman by whom he has been aggrieved, would, before the Revolution, have been not merely an improbable, but an impossible one. While tolerating duels up to the time of Louis XIII., the French kings sometimes intervened in person to put a stop to them. Charles VIII. separated two gentlemen who had "come furiously to blows," and Francis I. brought to an end a combat that was taking place between two gentlemen of Berry, named Veniers and Harzai. In the sixteenth century the duel was accompanied by great ceremony. Take, for example, the one fought between La Chateigneraie and Guychabot, better known under the name of Jarnac. Guychabot, a distinguished member of the court of Francis I., and afterwards of Henry II., had taken an important part in the war of Italy. But he is chiefly remembered by his duel with La Chateigneraie, arising from the rival influences at court of the Duchess of Étampes and Diana of Poitiers. An offensive statement about him having been made, or rather repeated, by the Dauphin, he replied by charging its author, whoever he might be, with mendacity. La Chateigneraie, as Jarnac may or may not have known, was the originator of the calumny, for which, indeed, he accepted full responsibility. Francis I., now in his old age, would not permit the adversaries to fight; and it was not until Henry II. came to the throne that the duel took place, on the plain of Saint-Germain, with all the pomp and ceremony of the ancient judicial duels, and in presence of the whole court. Jarnac, weaker and less skilful than his enemy, who was one of the first duellists of the age, had taken lessons of an Italian bravo; and he dealt La Chateigneraie a violent and unexpected thrust in the leg (afterwards to be known as _le coup de Jarnac_). La Chateigneraie perished in the duel, and Henry II. swore on his corpse never to permit another. He endeavoured to keep his word; but his authorisation was dispensed with, and duelling became one of the fashions of the day. In 1560 the States-General of the Kingdom, assembled at Orleans, begged Charles IX. to punish without remission all duellists; and the Tiers État having formulated the same request, a royal order was published, which served as basis to the edicts on this subject published by Henry IV. and Louis XIV. In these documents duelling was placed in the category of capital offences; which had no effect but to increase the number of duels. Among the remarkable duels of this period must be mentioned one which was fought in the island of the City, between two gentlemen, who, finding themselves pursued by the police in an approaching boat, fought with such a determination to get the affair quickly to an end, that four sabre strokes sufficed to lay both dead. To this epoch, too, belongs the duel of the Seigneur de Jensac, who insisted on fighting two adversaries at the same time. The duel was about to begin, when a friend of Jensac's rushed on the scene, and protested against so unequal a combat. "Did you never before hear of a man fighting two antagonists?" asked the seigneur. "Yes, but you must be mad to place yourself in such a position deliberately and beforehand." "Not at all," replied de Jensac; "I wish to be spoken of in the papers." [Illustration: DIANA OF POITIERS. (_From the Portrait by Belliard._)] In contrast with this reckless but fundamentally good-natured gentleman, who was ready to perish for a paragraph, may be placed the virtually licensed assassin, Baron de Vitaux, called by Brantòme the "brave baron," who began his murderous career by killing at Toulouse, with a surprise stroke, the young Baron de Soupez. He afterwards, and always with the same stroke, killed a gentleman named Gonnelion; next, the Baron de Millau; and finally the chief favourite of Henry II., Louis Béranger de Guast. The son of Millau, who had resolved to avenge his father, killed, in a duel, this assassin who never appeared in public unless accompanied by the two brothers Boucicault, known as "Baron de Vitaux's lions." Nor must we forget Bussy d'Amboise, who fought on the most trivial pretexts. A gentleman named Saint-Phal having said something about the letter "x" on a piece of embroidery, Bussy, in order to bring about a quarrel and a duel, declared that the letter was a "y." On this important point a first combat was fought, with six combatants on each side. Bussy having been wounded, Saint-Phal retired, but only to be summoned soon afterwards to a new combat. The Captain of the King's Guard, sent to interdict the fight, made no impression upon Bussy, who tried to pick a quarrel with him, and declared that he would appeal to the King and ask permission to meet his foe in the lists. From 1598 to 1608 duels caused more victims than the civil wars. It has been calculated that during this period nearly eight thousand gentlemen perished in single combat. Henry IV. himself followed the fashion; but unable from his regal position to fight in person, he fought by procuration. In presence of the Duke de Guise he had shown some jealousy in regard to Bassompierre, who had been much struck by Mlle. d'Antraigues. The duke offered to avenge the aggrieved monarch, and his proposition being accepted, a duel took place. Bassompierre received a lance wound from which he with difficulty recovered. But soon afterwards Henry IV. was himself obliged to issue an order against duelling, which was little more than a reproduction of the one put forth by his predecessor. He charged the constable, the marshals of France, and the governors of provinces to see that his commands were obeyed. The offenders were innumerable, but the king at the last moment mitigated in almost every case the severity of his edict. Thus, in the course of nineteen years seven thousand "letters of grace" were issued. Thanks to the clemency of Henry IV., the number of duels fought in France increased to such a point that in the reign of Louis XIII. the tragic custom seemed to have reached its height. Two gentlemen, the Vicomte d'Allemagne and the Sieur de la Roque, fought, on some mere question of precedence, a duel in which, holding each other by the left hand, they exchanged poniard stabs with the right. Another pair of combatants, inspired with deadly and ferocious hatred, shut themselves up together in an empty barrel, and cut each other's throats with knives. In process of time, however, a series of edicts were issued against judicial duelling. The practice received its severest blow in 1626 from Richelieu, who inspired an edict regulating the penalties according to the gravity of the offences. Praslin, who was the first to infringe this edict, was exiled and despoiled of his possessions. But the most remarkable infraction was that which cost the Count de Bouteville his head. He was a notorious bully, and had been known in this character since 1621. He had already crossed swords with the Count de Pont-Gibaut, the Marquis de Portes, and the Count de Thorigny, to mention no other names; and in 1627 he took upon himself, in defiance of the law, to fight the Baron de la Frette and the Marquis de Beuvron. This last duel was fatal to him. He had been foolhardy enough to draw swords with the marquis on the Place Royale and in broad daylight. The marquis fled to England, but Bouteville found his way to the scaffold. Before his execution, Richelieu had said to Louis XIII.: "It is a question of cutting the throat, either of these duels or of your Majesty's edicts." The exemplary punishment inflicted upon Bouteville did not, however, by any means exterminate duelling. Even ecclesiastics at this period went through a course of training at the fencing academies. Men of letters frequently laid down the pen for the sword. To know how to administer cold steel became the height of ambition with fashionable Parisians. The most desperate duellist of the time was Cyrano de Bergerac, who would challenge on the spot anyone who looked at him, or anyone who did not look at him. The contagion of the duel spread even to the gentler sex. Two ladies of the court fought at Paris with pistols. The King, when he heard of it, smiled and said that his prohibition had only been aimed at men. The troubles of the Fronde still further increased the number of sword-drawing swaggerers in Paris. One duel which occurred during the civil feuds that disturbed the earlier years of Louis XIV.'s reign, caused an extraordinary sensation. It had its origin in a letter supposed to have dropped from the pocket of the Count de Coligny, one of the tenants of Mme. de Longueville. The missive was compromising to the lady-writer, whoever she might be; and, in connection therewith, the Duchess de Montbazon spread certain scandalous rumours, for which Mme. de Longueville demanded, and obtained, an apology. But with this reparation the offended lady was not content. She urged Coligny to challenge one of the favourites of Montbazon, the Duke of Guise, to fight him. The duel took place on the Place Royale at three o'clock on the 12th of December, 1643. Guise, as he grasped the hilt of his sword, said to Coligny:--"We are going to decide the ancient quarrels of our two houses, and we shall soon see the difference there is between the blood of Guise and the blood of Coligny." Thereupon the adversaries fell to their work. Coligny, in making a gigantic thrust, slipped and fell on his knee. Guise hastened to put his foot on his shoulder, and said: "I do not wish to kill you--I simply treat you as you deserve for having dared to challenge a member of my house without cause." Then he struck the count with the flat of his sword. Coligny threw himself backwards and disengaged his weapon, whereupon the fight recommenced. Guise, however, terminated it by means of a tremendous blow which he dealt his adversary on the arm. At the same moment fell both of the seconds--d'Estrades and Bridieux--who had run each other through. This was the last of the famous duels fought on the Place Royale. Mme. de Longueville had witnessed it, concealed behind a window of the Hôtel de Rohan. Nine years later took place the celebrated and sanguinary duel between the Duke de Nemours and the Duke de Beaufort. They quarrelled at Orleans, where Nemours had cried out, in presence of Beaufort, "The prince is being deceived, and I know by whom!" "Name him," said Beaufort. "You, yourself!" answered Nemours. Beaufort's reply was a box on the ear, instantly returned by Nemours; and they would at once have crossed swords had not Mlle. de Montpensier been present. On the day fixed for the duel, in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, the two brothers-in-law seemed to have become reconciled. But some question of precedence revived the bad feeling between them. "M. de Beaufort," relates the Duchess de Montpensier, "did all he could to avoid the meeting. He set forth, among other reasons, that he had a number of gentlemen with him ready to take part in the duel, while his antagonist had only a few. Monsieur de Nemours returned to his house, where he found awaiting him just as many gentlemen as were required. He went back to M. de Beaufort, and they fought in the horse market, at the back of the Hôtel de Vendôme. M. de Nemours had with him Villiers, the Chevalier de La Chaise, Campan, and Luzerche. M. de Beaufort had the Count de Bury, de Ris, Brillet, and Héricourt. The Count de Bury was severely wounded. De Ris and Héricourt died in the course of the day. None of the others were wounded, except very slightly. M. de Nemours had brought with him swords and pistols. The latter had been loaded at his house. M. de Beaufort said to his adversary: 'Brother, what a shame! Let us forget and be friends.' M. de Nemours cried out to him: 'No, scoundrel! you must kill me or I will kill you.' He fired his pistol, which missed, and rushed upon M. de Beaufort, sword in hand, so that the latter was obliged to defend himself. He fired, and shot Nemours dead with three balls that were in the pistol." Under Louis XIV. no less than twelve edicts were issued against duelling. One of the last, published in 1704, promised lawful satisfaction for outraged honour. To give the lie, to strike with the hand or with a stick, were offences punishable with imprisonment. Anyone who had received a box on the ears was entitled to return it. But the royal commands remained without effect. Among the great duellists of Louis XIV.'s reign must be mentioned the Duke de Richelieu, who did as much to promote duelling as the famous cardinal of the same name had done in the previous reign to prevent it. He not only fought duels himself, but was the cause of duels on the part of others; and of ladies above all. In his various encounters he severely wounded the Duke de Bourbon, ran Prince de Lixen through the body, and killed Baron Pontereider. The two ladies who fought at his instigation were Mme. de Nesle and Mme. de Polignac. "Take the first shot," said the last-named antagonist. Mme. de Nesle fired and missed. "Anger makes the hand tremble," observed Mme. de Polignac, with a malicious smile. Taking aim in her turn, she cut off the tip of her adversary's ear; whereupon poor Mme. de Nesle fell to the ground as if mortally wounded. Two years before the outbreak of the Revolution a sub-lieutenant of the Fourth Hussars was chosen by his comrades to avenge an insult offered to the regiment by a fencing-master. The adversaries had just crossed swords when the officer found himself pulled violently back by someone who had got hold of his pigtail. It was the colonel of his regiment, who had come to stop the duel and to place his subaltern under arrest. This young officer was Michel Ney, afterwards Napoleon's famous marshal. On being liberated from prison, Ney sought out the fencing-master, challenged him, and gave him a wound which injured him for life. Hearing, some years later, that the poor man had fallen into the greatest distress, Ney, at that time a general, settled a pension upon him. After the Republic duels were fought as much as ever; but the pistol had now replaced the sword. Talma, the celebrated actor, fought a pistol duel with an actor named Naudet, in which neither was injured; and about the same time shots were exchanged between two members of the National Assembly, Barnave and Cazalès. Barnave missed Cazalès, and Cazales having twice missed Barnave, apologised for his want of skill and for keeping his adversary waiting so long. "I am only here for your satisfaction," said Barnave. "I should be very sorry to kill you," answered Cazales while the pistols were being reloaded, "but you caused us a great deal of trouble. All I desire is to keep you away from the Assembly for a little time." "I am more generous," replied Barnave. "I desire scarcely to touch you, for you are the only orator on your side, whilst on mine my loss would in no way be felt." Barnave's second shot struck Cazalès on the forehead, but the ball had expended its force on the point of his cocked hat. Charles Lameth, Mirabeau, and Camille Desmoulins likewise fought duels. Camille Desmoulins had the courage, however, to refuse to settle by arms quarrels of a political kind. "I should have," he said on one occasion, "to pass my life in the Bois de Boulogne if I were obliged to give satisfaction to all who took offence at the frankness of my speech. Let them call me a coward if they like. I fancy the time is not far off when opportunities for dying more gloriously and more usefully will present themselves." Napoleon did his utmost to stop duelling, but with scarcely more success than his predecessors on the throne. Under the Restoration duels were constantly being fought between the officers of the King's army and Napoleonic officers on half-pay. Benjamin Constant, the famous writer and politician, fought a duel in which, as he was too weak to stand, both antagonists were accommodated with armchairs. This comfortable arrangement was not attended by fatal results. M. Thiers fought a remarkable duel with the father of the young lady to whom he was engaged to be married. Being without means, he wished to postpone the marriage from year to year, till at last the indignant parent insisted on satisfaction. M. Thiers, with the historian Mignet as one of his seconds, received the old gentleman's bullet between his legs without returning the shot. Writers at this period seem to have frequently found themselves compelled to throw down the pen and snatch up the sword or the pistol. General Gourgaud challenged the author of "The History of the Russian Campaign," and slightly wounded him in the duel which ensued. A young cavalry officer, Beaupoil de Sainte-Aulaire by name, having published a political pamphlet under the title of "Funeral Oration of the Duke de Feltre," was immediately called out by the duke's son. Hardly scratched in the encounter, he was challenged a second time by a cousin of the deceased, who killed him with a sword-thrust in the breast. The Chamber of Deputies in 1819, and the Chamber of Peers in the year following, debated the question of definitive legislation on the subject of duelling; but their deliberations came to nothing. Shortly afterwards literature contributed another victim to the insatiable Moloch of "honour," in the person of a highly talented poet named Dovalle. He had attacked, in some journal, a theatrical director; and the offensive article cost him his life. At the time when the Duchess de Berry was under arrest the editor of the Legitimist journal, the _Revenant_, called at the office of the _Tribune_ to demand satisfaction for an article directed against the duchess. The immediate result was a second article in the _Tribune_ defying the advocates of the fair prisoner; and so strong a spirit of partisanship was now excited on either side that students from the schools rushed in crowds to enroll their names at the offices of the antagonistic journals. Two small armies having thus been raised, a letter, signed by Godefroi Cavaignac, Armand, Marrast, and Garderin, was addressed to the _Revenant_ in these terms: "We send you a first list of twelve persons. We demand, not twelve simultaneous duels, but twelve successive duels--time and place as may be conveniently arranged. No excuses, no pretexts, no cowardly evasion; this would avail you nothing, and of this you would have to bear the consequences. Henceforth, between your party and ours, there is a drawn sword. There will be no truce, except when one yields to the other." The Legitimist party did not choose to accept the challenge in so generalised a form. It entrusted its cause to the hands of M. Roux-Laborie, who fought a duel with Armand Carrel, the appointed champion of the opposite side. Carrel received an almost fatal wound in the stomach; nor was this the last combat which the arrest of the Duchess de Berry occasioned. Tragedy and comedy were often intermingled in the duelling of the period. There was one well-known swaggerer, an ex-body-guard named Choquart, who was so enormously vain of the reputation he had gained for drawing his sword that, when once a pedestrian had, accidentally, with his elbow pulled it partly out of the sheath as the two men were passing each other in the street, Choquart pulled it out altogether and exclaimed:--"The wine is drawn, and now you must drink it!" "Many thanks," was the cool reply; "but I never take anything between meals." [Illustration: MARSHAL NEY.] A list of the duels of this epoch would be too formidable; though mention can scarcely be omitted of the one fought between Armand Carrel and Émile de Girardin, in which the fatal wound received by Carrel was a serious blow to the Democratic cause of which he was so great a champion. It is certain that no one afterwards regretted his death so keenly as the man whose bullet had pierced him; and when, on the second of May, 1848, a concourse of workmen, national guards, and students from the Polytechnic School reassembled at Carrel's grave in the cemetery of Saint-Mandé to pay homage to his memory, it was Girardin himself who made the most pathetic speech over the sleeping democrat. In this speech he expressed a hope that the provisional government would crown the splendid work which Carrel had done by abolishing the duel--that appeal to arms to which he so keenly regretted ever having had recourse. Since then there have been repeated agitations in favour of this abolition, but without result. Duels in France, though seldom serious nowadays, are still fought frequently and with comparative impunity. [Illustration: THE RACE-COURSE, LONGCHAMPS.] The leading trait in the French national character is doubtless gaiety. We have seen how, after the first sentiment of horror excited by the guillotine had subsided, ladies in Paris wore miniature guillotines as ear-rings; and we might have mentioned the case of a famous French epicure who used a small guillotine for cutting up his dinner. In like manner duels have been made the subject of endless pleasantries in France, and a good-sized volume could be made up of duelling anecdotes. A few specimens, however, must suffice us here. M. de Langerie and M. de Montendre, both exceedingly ugly, were drawn up against each other in single combat. Suddenly de Langerie exclaimed: "I cannot fight you. You really must excuse me. I have an invincible reason." "And what is it, pray?" inquired the foe. "Why, this: if I fight, I shall, to all appearances, kill you, and remain the ugliest man in the kingdom." De Montendre yielded. A ballad-writer, known by numerous successes, had a quarrel. An intimate friend interposed his authority, ascertained the exact nature of the difference, and promised to settle it. A few moments afterwards he returned. "The affair," he said "is arranged. I had only to speak and we were instantly agreed." "That is good," replied the writer of ballads, visibly relieved. "Yes," said the amiable intercessor, grasping his friend by the hand; "it is arranged. You fight to-morrow morning at five." A fastidious duellist, who was ready to fight about any trifle, "to find a quarrel in a straw," as Hamlet expresses it, had taken umbrage at something said by an entirely inoffensive man. He sent his seconds to wait upon this person and to say that he would fight him at a distance of twenty-five paces. "I agree," replied the recipient of the challenge; "but since you have regulated the distance, the choice of arms must rest with me--I name the sword." Romieu, renowned for his spirit of pleasantry, received one day, from a barren scribbler who had been educated at the École de Droit, the manuscript of a play accompanied by the following letter: "Sir,--I herewith submit a piece to which I beg you to give your very careful attention. I accept beforehand any alterations which you may think fit to make in it, with this exception--that I am most punctilious about the philosophical reflections remaining untouched." A few days afterwards the author received back his manuscript with this reply: "Sir,--I have read your work with the greatest attention. I leave to you the choice of arms." Fortunately it was ink alone, and not blood, which was spilt in the affair. At the time when Sainte-Beuve was contributing to the _Globe_ he quarrelled with a member of the staff of that journal. A duel was arranged; when the combatants arrived on the ground it was raining in torrents; Sainte-Beuve had come provided with an umbrella and with flint pistols of the sixteenth century. At the moment when the adversaries were to pull their triggers Sainte-Beuve was still carefully shielding himself from the elements with his umbrella. The seconds protested, but Sainte-Beuve refused to get wet. "I don't mind being killed," he exclaimed; "but I decline to catch cold." The duel then proceeded, Sainte-Beuve levelling his pistol with one hand and holding up his umbrella with the other. Four shots were exchanged, but without injury on either side. Cyrano de Bergerac, of whom mention has already been made, was the most ferocious duellist of his time. His nose, of inordinate length, had received such a number of dents that it was quite a curiosity. He was very touchy on this subject, and would allow no one to look at him pointedly. More than ten men expiated with their lives some satirical glance at him, or some ill-sounding word uttered in his presence. A certain bravo challenged an apothecary, by whom he conceived himself insulted. The duel was arranged, and the adversaries duly met, each accompanied by two seconds. One of the seconds of the aggrieved man held out a pair of swords, and the other a brace of pistols. "Sir," cried the bravo, "choose weapons. Pistol and sword are the same thing to me." "That is all very well," replied the apothecary, "but I do not see why you should impose your arms upon me; I think I have as much right, and more, to impose mine on you." "Good. What are your arms?" was the reply. The apothecary took a little box from his pocket, opened it, and presented it to his adversary. "There are two pills," he said: "one is poisoned and the other harmless. Choose!" The affair ended in laughter. The Marquis de Rivarolles, who had just lost one of his legs in battle, uttered certain words offensive to Madillan, Schomberg's aide-de-camp. He was challenged. The marquis appointed his surgeon to act as second. The surgeon promptly waited upon Madillan, but introduced himself without mentioning either his profession or the reply he was authorised to give. He simply displayed his case of surgical instruments. Madillan, mystified, inquired whether the visitor was the representative of de Rivarolles. "I am," he said. "M. de Rivarolles is quite ready to fight you, according to your desire; but, convinced that a man as brave and generous as yourself would not like to fight at a disproportionate advantage, he has ordered me to take one of your legs off beforehand, so that the chances between you will be equal." Madillan was enraged at this extraordinary proposition; but the duel was, in the end, prevented by Marshal de Schomberg, who succeeded in reconciling the adversaries. Voltaire had recourse to a custom which he had himself energetically condemned. Dining one day at the Duke de Sully's, he happened, in the course of a discussion, to raise his voice a little. "Who is that young man contradicting me so loudly?" asked the Chevalier de Rohan-Chabot. "He is a man," replied Voltaire, "who does not boast a great name, but who honours the name he bears." The chevalier did not reply, but a few days afterwards he caused Voltaire to be waylaid and beaten by half a dozen ruffians. After having vainly tried to persuade the Duke de Sully to espouse his cause, Voltaire determined to trust solely to his own personal courage. He took fencing-lessons, and as soon as he was able to handle a sword, waited upon the chevalier in his box at the Théâtre Français. "Sir," he said, "unless some business affair has caused you to forget the insult which I suffered at your hands, I hope you will afford me satisfaction." This was one of those arrows, barbed with irony, which Voltaire knew so well how to throw. "Some business affair" was a phrase which the chevalier could not decently bear. He accepted the challenge, but without intending to fight. Instead of crossing swords with the young poet he caused him to be thrown into the Bastille for having presumed to call out so great a personage. That most amiable of men, La Fontaine, once persuaded himself, or rather allowed himself to be persuaded, that he ought to be jealous of his wife. The circumstances were these. He was on terms of close friendship with an old captain of dragoons, retired from service, named Poignant; a gentleman distinguished by candour and good nature. So much time as Poignant did not spend at the tavern he passed at the house of La Fontaine, and often in the society of his wife when the poet happened not to be at home. One day someone asked La Fontaine how it was that he permitted Poignant to visit him every day. "Why should he not? he is my best friend," was the reply. "That is scarcely what the public say. They maintain that he only goes to see Mme. La Fontaine." "The public are wrong. But what ought I to do in the matter?" "You must demand satisfaction, sword in hand, of the man who has dishonoured you." "Very well," said the fabulist, "satisfaction I will demand." On the morrow, at four in the morning, he called upon Poignant, whom he found in bed. "Get up," he said, "and let us go out together." His friend asked why he wanted him, and what urgent affair had brought La Fontaine out of bed at such an hour. "I will tell you," was the answer, "after we have gone hence." Poignant, quite mystified, arose, dressed, and then inquired to what place the poet was taking him. "You will soon see," replied La Fontaine, who, when they had both quitted the house and reached a sufficiently retired spot, said with solemnity, "My friend, we must fight." Poignant, more puzzled than ever, asked in what way he had offended. "Besides," he added, "I am a soldier, and you scarcely know how to hold a sword." "No matter," replied La Fontaine; "the public wishes me to fight you." Poignant, after protesting for a long time in vain, at length drew his sword from complaisance, and easily disarmed La Fontaine. Then he inquired the meaning of the whole affair. "The public declare," said La Fontaine, "that you come every day to my house to see, not me, but my wife." "My dear friend," returned Poignant, "I should never have suspected you of such a misgiving, and I promise henceforth never to set foot across your threshold." "On the contrary," said La Fontaine, shaking the captain by the hand, "I have done what the public wanted, and I now wish you to continue your visits to my house with more regularity than ever." Let us conclude with an anecdote concerning another duel which the "public" would have liked to see fought, but which never came to pass, because the aggrieved party had a great weakness for keeping lead and steel out of his body. A certain marquis had been thrashed with a walking-stick, but showed no disposition to take vengeance on his castigator. "Why doesn't he appeal to arms?" people inquired--to which the witty Sophie Arnould replied: "Because he has too much good sense to take any notice of what goes on behind his back." CHAPTER XXXIII. THE STUDENTS OF PARIS. Paris Students--Their Character--In the Middle Ages--At the Revolution--Under the Directory--In 1814--In 1819--Lallemand--In the Revolution of 1830. If art and fashion, industry and commerce, are chiefly represented on the right bank of the Seine, science and the schools have their headquarters on the left. The "Latin country" or "pays Latin" occupies a considerable portion of the territory known as the Rive Gauche, and gives to it a distinctive character. Latin, since the Revolution, has been no more the language of instruction in France that it is now in other countries, though in Hungary and Austrian Poland it was the language of the law-courts even until the revolutionary year of 1848. The students of Paris have so interesting a history that the task of writing it in voluminous fashion was undertaken long ago by a very able writer, Antonio Watripon, whom death unfortunately prevented from completing his "Histoire politiques des Écoles et des Étudiants." Already in the reign of Charlemagne schools existed and learning flourished in the capital. At the commencement of the twelfth century Abailard grouped around him a large number of pupils; and not long after his time Paris students had so multiplied that in some quarters they outnumbered the townspeople, and lodging was scarcely procurable. The schools were thrown open to the whole world, and foreigners coming to Paris to study were granted the same privileges as native scholars. The Duke Leopold of Austria received his education there, and Charles of Luxemburg, King of Bohemia, and afterwards Emperor of Germany, took the Paris school, in which he had studied, as model for the one he afterwards founded at Prague. Before very long the students of Paris, spoilt by the special privileges which they enjoyed, gave rein to every whim and fancy which occurred to them. In the thirteenth century they nicknamed the townspeople, whom they despised for their ignorance, "cornificiens"; and the latter, jealous of the advantages conferred on the students, took their revenge by calling them "Abraham's oxen," and even "Balaam's asses." A writer of this period gives the students in general a most profligate character. Their reading was a farce. "They preferred to contemplate the beauties of young ladies rather than those of Cicero." On the other hand the Abbé Leboeuf cites a letter in which, as a body, they are spoken of with the highest esteem. The truth, doubtless, is that then, as now, some students were serious, and others abandoned to idleness and folly. As early as the thirteenth century student-riots became so frequent in Paris that, the church in this matter supporting the State, all scholars were forbidden to carry arms under pain of excommunication. During the Carnival of 1229 a band of students, after having eaten and drunk at a tavern in the suburb of Saint-Marcel, then outside the walls, provoked a quarrel at the moment of paying, and beat the tavern-keeper and his wife. The neighbours put the aggressors to flight. Next day the students returned in great force, broke into the house, smashed up the furniture, set the wine running, and wounded several persons. The Provost of Paris hastened to the scene with his archers, and meeting a group of peaceable students who were innocent of the affair, swooped down upon them. Two were killed. The masters demanded reparation, but to no purpose. Then the schools were suspended, and Paris was deserted both by professors and students, who went to Rheims, Toulouse, Montpelier, already celebrated for its faculty of medicine, Orleans, and other towns, where the foundations of other universities were laid. The Paris University remained closed for two years. After the reopening of the schools new subjects of quarrel between the students and the townspeople, and between the students and the authorities, constantly arose. The right of fishing in one of the arms of the Seine was claimed by the students, or at least exercised by them until fines were imposed, which in most cases had to be recovered by legal process. The foreign students, moreover, who from the earliest times until now have always been admitted to the Paris schools on the most favourable terms, had disputes of their own; seldom with the other members of the university, but very often with the citizens and the officials. As we leave the Middle Ages we find that the Paris students, whilst losing a good deal of their original character, preserve all their turbulence and want of discipline. At the fair of Saint-Germains in 1609 they abandoned themselves to all kinds of debauchery, and fought in companies with pages, lackeys, and soldiers of the guard. One lackey cut off a student's ears and put them in his pocket; after which the students pounced upon every footman or groom they came across, killing some and wounding others. The students of Louis XIII.'s reign are described as "more debauched than ever"; carrying arms, pillaging, killing, making love, and in order to support their excesses, robbing their relatives or even their professors. [Illustration: CAMILLE DESMOULINS.] It was doubtless the schools, however, which chiefly contributed to make Paris the powerful and active agent of civilisation which that capital so early became. They formed a theatre of discussion for a vast laboratory of ideas. Many a student was beheaded, hanged, or burned in a wooden cage on accusations of heresy; for liberty of conscience, that is to say. "We should greatly deceive ourselves," says Antonio Watripon, "if we judged the students of other days by their external aspect--drunken challengers, beaters of tavern-keepers, brawlers in the Pré aux Clercs, ravishers of tradesmen's wives. It is always the same picture on the surface; but underneath there is something which is not at first perceived, and which is marching ever forward--thought! A poor student is persecuted by the parliament. The rector is called to the bar and commanded to imprison the suspected heretic, who, however, has the good fortune to find refuge in Saintonge. Soon the whole world will know that his name is Calvin. The Protestant books are burnt and the printers cast into the dungeons of the bishopric. These persecutions serve only to swell the ranks of the reformers." The reputation of the Paris schools spread far and wide, and their civilising influence created institutions of learning in foreign lands. From the ranks of the Paris students in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries stepped forth artists and writers who have remained the glory of France. A great number of students were initiated into freemasonry and the other secret fraternities which preceded the Revolution. They saluted the era of political emancipation with enthusiasm. The first actor in the great drama, Camille Desmoulins, had sat on the benches of the École de Droit. Most of the orators or politicians of the great Assemblies were old students. In 1789 the students of law and medicine in the departments fraternised with those of Paris, so as to march hand-in-hand in the exploration of liberty and truth. Many scholars hastened to the menaced frontiers. On the 9th Thermidor a medical student named Soubervielle rallied around him the patriots of the schools, a large number of whom prepared, in insurrection, to fly to the assistance of those sacred principles which threatened to perish with the last of the Montaguards. [Illustration: THE POLYTECHNIC SCHOOL.] Under the Directory the generous impulses of a section of the studious youth were lost in the orgies of libertinism. The Imperial despotism weighed upon the students as upon the rest of the citizens. Nevertheless the Republican sentiment was by no means extinguished within them, nor did it fail to find expression amid those events which were the development of the vast revolutionary tradition. The defence of Paris against the foreign invasion, in 1814, offered the students of the various schools, with those of the Polytechnic as leaders, an opportunity of proving their patriotism. In presence of the peril into which the insatiable ambition of Napoleon had thrown the nation, the Polytechnic students, with those of law and medicine, made up twelve batteries of artillery for the National Guard. The pupils of the veterinary school of Alfort particularly distinguished themselves by their splendid defence of Charenton. These, however, were but isolated examples. "History," writes Louis Blanc, "which soars high above the lies of party, will tell us that in 1814 Paris did not care to protect itself; that the National Guard, with the exception of a few true men, failed to do their duty; that the townspeople, with the exception of a small number of valorous students and of devoted citizens, fled before the invasion." In 1815 the students, called anew to the defence of the capital, were reconstituted into companies of artillery, and served beneath the walls of Paris. At political junctures the students of Paris have seldom failed to assert themselves. The opposition of the younger generation to the Restoration had its origin in the Polytechnic School, which in 1816 refused to conform to certain religious observances. Fifteen pupils were expelled on the 12th of April, and next day the school was dissolved by the king. In 1819, when the cry of "Liberty" was resounding through more than one European country, the Paris schools responded to the agitation. The lectures delivered by Nicholas Bavoux, professor of criminal law, caused between the Liberal students and certain Royalist auditors discussions which, but for the intervention of the dean and of armed force, would have degenerated into sanguinary conflicts. Bavoux's professorship was suspended and the school of law closed. Prosecuted in a criminal court, Bavoux was acquitted by the jury and found himself the hero of the hour. At Grenoble, on 8th May, 1820, the law students profited by the arrival of the Duke of Angoulême to make a public manifestation, in which they endeavoured to drown the cry of "Vive le roi!" with that of "Vive la charte!" Every day large groups of students stationed themselves outside the Palais-Bourbon to cheer the deputies of the Opposition, defenders of electoral liberty. Driven back from the Quai d'Orsay by the gendarmerie, they reassembled on the Place Louis XV., still shouting for the charter. Again forcibly displaced, they repaired in a mass to the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, where they fraternised with the working men. Thirty-five were arrested. On Saturday, the third of June, new gatherings took place at the approaches to the Chamber in which the deputies sat. A descent was made upon them by the police. The students, who wore as their sign of recognition a white cravat as well as a buckle in front of their hats, rescued those of their friends who were taken prisoners. On the Place du Carrousel they snatched from the hands of the body-guards by whom he had been seized one of their comrades named Lallemand. This young man, a law student of three-and-twenty, was at the selfsame instant struck by a bullet and killed. The death of Lallemand fanned the flame of rebellion. His corpse was transported to the Church of Bonne-Nouvelle, guarded by the scholars themselves. Next day it was borne to Père-Lachaise by the two schools of medicine and law. Within the cemetery accents of vengeance and of liberty could be heard. The friends of the victim determined to raise a monument to his honour, and the subscription-lists which for this purpose were instantly opened by the schools, not only of Paris but of the provinces, showed that enough money could have been procured to erect to Lallemand a statue nearly as big as the Colossus of Rhodes. These incidents produced a burning discussion in the Chamber, where the schools found at least one eloquent champion in the person of M. Demarcay. "These youths," he said, "who, by their studies, their occupations, their emulation, would seem to belong to a ripe age of life, fill our schools and surrender themselves to the ardour of work and science. They have fire, you say, in their nature; they love liberty: and at what age would you wish men to love liberty and defend it with courage? Is it not the same fire and courage which you demand when you summon such youths to defend the country? Cease, then, to impute to them those disorders of which they have been the victim." Foy and Benjamin Constant spoke in the same strain. But the Commission of Public Instruction passed a measure which excluded from the schools thirteen students of law and medicine; and one of these, Robert Lailavoix, suffered an imprisonment of two months. The indignation thus excited amongst the scholars of Paris found an echo in the provinces. Not long afterwards some six hundred students were secretly formed into a military corps styled the Free Company of the Schools. For two months they were instructed in the use of arms. The students, however, were Republican, whilst their leaders were Bonapartist; and the latter, seized at the last moment with a fit of discretion, refused to act. Otherwise the fiery youths who looked to them for guidance, and who had numerous sympathisers in the military, would have carried out their programme to the letter. The first anniversary of the death of Lallemand reunited the Paris students into an enthusiastic federation. The funeral service having been forbidden, they affected to fix their rendezvous at the Buttes Chaumont; where at the price of their blood they had defended the capital against invasion seven years before. Forming themselves into a long file, they silently descended towards the cemetery of Père-Lachaise. They found the gates shut. Then a remarkable scene occurred. A certain student, acting as orator, was hoisted by his comrades on to one of the highest walls in the cemetery, and spoke from this elevation as from an improvised tribunal. He invoked the shade of Lallemand, and called upon him to witness both the odious persecution which pursued his memory and the solemn oath which everyone took, in presence of his tomb, to avenge him or die as he had died. An electric thrill ran through the crowd; all fell on their knees in the dusty road, and bent their heads while the orator, turning towards the cemetery, bade Lallemand a last adieu. The column returned to Paris and defiled, bareheaded, along the Rue des Petits-Carreaux, past the house of Lallemand. The victim's father appeared at one of the windows, with his hand pressed to his heart, to show how deeply he was affected by this public protestation. Constantly engaged in political agitation, the students of Paris bore a formidable part in the Revolution of 1830. On the 26th of July the famous Ordonnances were issued. The same day secret meetings were held by the students, at which they resolved to take up arms. In the evening, at the Chaumière ball, the quadrilles were stopped in virtue of the new decrees. A thrill of indignation ran through the assembly. The orchestra played the Marseillaise, and all present sang it in chorus. Hands were grasped, and vows uttered to conquer or die for liberty. The day afterwards intrepid students denounced the ordonnances in the public streets and called the citizens to arms. The pupils of the Polytechnic School passed the night in improvising implements of war, and with Vanneau, a bold spirit, at their head, scaled the walls and hurried to the barricades, where the students of the capital were mingled with the people. Already several had fallen dead. One student of medicine, named Papu, seeing his column, composed of youths and working men, disperse before a murderous musketry fire, sprang forward and cried--"I will show you how to die!" He was almost shattered to pieces, though he managed before expiring to gasp an exhortation to his comrades to continue the struggle. Rennes, his native town, honoured him with a monument. At the attack on the Hôtel de Ville another medical student, Labarbe, had both his legs broken, dying two days afterwards from the effects of the amputation, which he had undergone with a pipe in his mouth. Many a deed of heroism was done at this juncture by the Paris students, fighting like the populace for a Republic, which they did not obtain, and for which a disappointing compromise was furnished in the person of Louis Philippe. The political history, however, of the Paris students is too formidable to trace in anything like detail. In modern times these once ardent youths have shown themselves comparatively indifferent to politics, and have sought diversion from their studies rather in the cigar than in the sword or musket. The Paris student's general history, like that of everyone and everything French, consists largely of anecdotes. One of the best is a legend of a medical student who was not accustomed to pay his landlady. Tired at length of waiting for her money, she paid him a visit at his rooms. The student, forewarned, received her with perfect self-composure. "Sir," she exclaimed without circumlocution, as she crossed his threshold, "pay me or go." "I prefer to go," was the reply. "Very well then; go at once." "Precisely, madame; and I shall go all the faster if you will consent to assist me." Thereupon he went to his chest of drawers, and from the top drawer took out a large skeleton. "Would you," he said, "be kind enough to place this at the bottom of my portmanteau?" "What is it?" cried the lady, retreating a few paces. "What is it? Why, it is my first landlady. She had the indiscretion to demand three quarters' rent which I owed her, and then--mind you don't break it. It is No. 1 in my collection." "Sir!" exclaimed the lady, turning pale. The student, without replying, opened another drawer, and extracted a second skeleton. "This," he said quietly, "is my landlady of the Rue de l'École-de-Médecine, a most admirable woman, who, in like manner, had applied to me for two quarters' rent. Place it carefully on the other--it is No. 2. This," continued the student, "is No. 3, an excellent woman, whom I had ceased to pay. Let us now pass on to No. 4." The landlady fled, and her tenant was never thenceforth inconvenienced with applications for rent. [Illustration: NOTRE DAME, FROM THE PONT SAINT-LOUIS.] CHAPTER XXXIV. THE RAG-PICKER OF PARIS. The Chiffonnier, or Rag-picker--His Methods and Hour of Work--His Character--A Diogenes--The _Chiffonnier de Paris_. Perhaps the most distinct type of character in Paris is the chiffonnier. Every evening, towards eight o'clock in the summer, and somewhat earlier in the winter, the streets of the capital are scoured by a class of individuals of both sexes, clad in sordid garments, who carry on their back a wicker basket, in their left hand a lantern, and in their right a stick with an iron hook at the end. A provincial or a foreigner might ask with curiosity what part these persons, so strangely armed, play in the social system; but Parisians, to whom they have long been familiar, and to whom they are indeed historical, know them as the chiffonniers or rag-pickers. An observer, if he follows one of these wretched adventurers, will see him stop at every dust-heap lying along the thoroughfares, previously to their being cleared away by the city scavengers. He rummages in these heaps, turning their contents over and over, and with the aid of his stick picks up and thrusts into his basket whatever objects will find a sale in his peculiar market. Not content with collecting those rags or chiffons from which he seems to have derived his name, he gathers up old papers, corks, bones, nails, broken glass, human hair, and even cats and dogs, which, contrary to the regulations, have been flung dead into the streets. Some of the more enterprising of these explorers will, in defiance of the law, strip the walls or hoardings of their placards. Occasionally it happens that the rag-picker finds objects of value, silver spoons, jewels, or even bank-notes, which have accidentally got swept into the rubbish. In these cases he is obliged, under the severest penalties, to surrender the treasure-trove to the nearest commissary of police. The old papers and rags are employed in the manufacture of paper and cardboard; the glass is melted again; the bones are turned into animal black; the nails are thrown in with old iron; the cats and dogs are stripped of their skins, and the hair reappears--according to a vivacious, and, let us hope, imaginative writer--upon the heads of the fashionable, in waving tresses or other elegant forms of coiffure. But this human ferret, who may be seen every night at work in the corners of the Paris streets, is only the emissary of a more exalted chiffonnier: the lord of the iron crook, who does not quit his palace, but simply purchases the nightly harvests, which he afterwards "tests," sorts, and classifies, so as to sell again to the various trades which may have a use for such merchandise. Everything picked up serves some commercial purpose; each of those vile objects unearthed from the dust-heaps is a chrysalis to which industrial science will give an elegant form and transparent wings. The prices paid by manufacturers of paper and cardboard, who are the chief buyers of rag-pickers' produce, vary from something under a sou per pound for dirty old rags and papers, to five sous for rags of the very best description. The rag-picker does not exercise too nice a faculty of discrimination whilst filling his basket. The sifting is the business of the "tester," a special functionary employed to classify the harvest. He evolves order from the chaos of disgusting rubbish which the opulent rag merchant will presently convert into odourless gold. The professional "testers" enjoy but a short career. The scents exhaled by the accumulated abominations which they handle are so many virulent poisons. It is said that even the lamps go out in the horrible dens where they toil. The chiffonnier who scours the streets is always a miserable object; the master chiffonnier who buys the contents of his basket is often a millionaire, and splashes with his carriage wheels as he returns from the theatre those wretches who next day will go and sell to him what the city has thrown into the gutter. [Illustration: A RAG-PICKER] Upon the rag-pickers of Paris the law, as might be imagined, keeps an eye; and sundry ordinances regulating their profession have at different periods been issued. The oldest of these forbade them to wander in the Paris streets except by daylight, so that they might not be suspected of participation in night robberies and brawls. In the present day the chiffonnier is required, whilst exercising his profession, to wear an official docket, duly numbered, and attached conspicuously to his indispensable basket. The municipal law prohibits him from walking the streets between midnight and five in the morning. As the reaping of the gutter harvest begins at 8 p.m., and the scavengers do not clear the rubbish away till between 7 and 9 a.m., those rag-pickers who have been carried by their explorations too far from home are obliged to pass the interdicted hours in such filthy hovels as are left open for them. The chiffonniers of Paris can boast a history. They have played a part in their time, and once they were even invested with civil functions, though these functions were of a sad nature. In 1826 M. Delavan commissioned them to kill in the streets all dogs they could find attached to bakers' and greengrocers' carts; and they executed the order with downright ferocity. In 1832, when the cholera invaded Paris, they figured amongst the licensed murderers who massacred those luckless persons whom ignorance and superstition had accused of poisoning the fountains. At the same period they smashed a number of newly-invented dust-carts, intended to clear the streets instantly of rubbish, so that they could only explore it at the depôt where it was shot. The rag-pickers won the day. The authorities yielded before their violence and projected the relegated reforms into the future. No one would expect to find among the Paris chiffonniers a high moral standard; their work can scarcely have other than a degrading influence upon them. Their numbers are recruited as a rule from the most infamous regions of the capital, and from a social stratum only just above that of the vilest criminality. It has often been said that counts and marquises have sunk, by means of wine, cards, and so forth, into the ranks of the chiffonniers, even as a certain fraction of the English aristocracy are popularly supposed, after driving recklessly through life four-in hand, to end their career on the perch of a hansom cab. In London, it is true, such things have happened, and men of title have been known to adopt even less heroic methods of livelihood than that of driving a hackney vehicle for hire; they have--there is at least one contemporary instance--ground barrel-organs. But these are the very rarest exceptions; and in Paris, although it is not theoretically impossible for an aristocrat to find himself reduced to the basket and crook of the rag-picker, such a case would be an exception infinitely rarer still. So disgusting an occupation would be absolutely the last to which a ruined gentleman would resort. The chiffonnier, however, despised as he is, figures a good deal in literature. A moving drama from the pen of M. Felix Pyat, and a vaudeville by MM. Frédéric de Courcy, Sauvage, and Bayard, have reproduced on the stage his manners and customs. One chiffonnier named Liard passed for a philosopher, and has been treated as such by more than one writer, and by at least one distinguished artist. He had descended from a higher station in life, and had suffered misfortunes. He would come out with Latin sentences on occasion. Scorning the wicker basket, he carried a simple wallet on his shoulder. Having collected his scraps from the gutter, he would pensively study them and draw philosophical reflections therefrom. The chiffonniers, too, sketched by Gavarni are not mindless tramps but profound reasoners. Let us glance at the character of the Paris rag-picker as represented by a French writer of keen observation. "This chiffonnier," he says "carries in him the stuff of a Diogenes. Like the latter he is content in his nomadic life, in his endless peregrinations, in his ragged independence. He regards with infinite contempt the slaves who are shut up from morning till night in a workshop, or behind a counter. Let others, mere living machines, measure out their time by the hands of the clock, he, the philosophical rag-picker, works when he likes, rests when he likes, without recollections of yesterday or thoughts of the morrow. If the north wind is icy, he warms himself with a few glasses of camphor, or a cup of _petit noir_; if the heat inconveniences him, he throws off part of his rags, lies down beneath the shadow of his basket, and goes to sleep. If he is hungry, he hastens to earn a sou or two, and then feasts like a Lucullus on bread and Italian cheese. If he is ill, that matters nothing to him. 'The hospital,' he says, 'was not built for dogs.' Diogenes threw away his basin; the chiffonnier has no less a disdain for the goods of this world. It was a drunken chiffonnier, uncoifed by his own lurchings, who addressed to his battered felt hat, lying on the ground, this apostrophe full of logic: 'If I pick you up, I fall; if I fall, you will not help me up again. I shall leave you!' Subjected to all kinds of privations, the chiffonnier is proud because he feels himself free. He treats with haughtiness even the rag merchant to whom he brings the sheaves which he has gathered, and from whom he occasionally receives slight advances. 'If you don't want to buy of me, well and good; I shall go elsewhere,' he says, making a gesture as if to depart. Through the multitudinous holes in his coat his pride is visible. He will say to the great of the earth: 'Get out of my daylight.'" The _Chiffonnier de Paris_, Felix Pyat's drama, first produced at the Porte-Saint-Martin Théâtre in 1847, is admirable not only for its story and its dramatic power, but also for the fidelity with which it reproduces the life of the rag-picker. Let us glance at this piece, in which Frederick Lemaître, as the chiffonnier, achieved so great a triumph. In the prologue are represented two chiffonniers, who happen to meet on the Quai Austerlitz, lantern in hand, for it is evening. These men have begun life very differently. One has assumed the crook and basket after having recklessly squandered his patrimony. He has known the most sybaritic luxury, and now, in the position to which he has sunk, feels a disgust for life and wishes to have done with it. The other has never known anything but rags and tatters. Just as the former is going to leap into the dark waves of the Seine, which splash at his feet, his comrade, though drunk and scarcely able to stand, suspends his hiccoughs and rushing towards him prevents the accomplishment of the fatal purpose. Then he reasons with the would-be suicide, and his bacchanalian eloquence prevails with the wretch, who, in a paroxysm of despair, cries: "No, I will not kill myself--but I will kill!" At that moment a bank cashier, laden with money, passes by. The excited chiffonnier springs forward, seizes him by the throat, assassinates him, robs him, and flies. Father John, as the drunkard is called, has tried to prevent the tragedy, but the murderer, with a blow from his fist, has sent him rolling in the mud. When he gets up, sobered by the horrors of the moment, he hears the sound of an approaching patrol, and escapes in order to avoid unjust suspicion. And now the curtain rises. Twenty years meanwhile have elapsed. Father John, a virtuous and pensive rag-picker, has not moistened his lips with wine since that fatal night, of which the memory pursues him like a nightmare. In expiation for the drunken fit which prevented his staying the murderer's hand, he has set himself the task of watching over the daughter of the victim, Marie Didier, left alone and penniless in the world. Marie occupies a little room, bare of furniture, and near the sky, and here she struggles for a livelihood with her needle. She has nothing to divert her weary life but the visits of her neighbour, Father John, who occupies the adjoining room, both apartments being exhibited on the stage. The first scene shows us on one side Marie toiling at a ball-dress which she has to finish for one of her customers, and on the other the chiffonnier starting out upon his nocturnal explorations. It is the last night of the Carnival, and the streets resound with songs and laughter. Marie, as she stitches on and on, dreams of the pleasures which beneath the gauze-like garment she is preparing the rich wearer will experience, and then, in a moment of childish playfulness, tries whether the narrow corset will fit her own slender and graceful waist. As she is looking at herself sideways in the glass a number of young girls come trooping gaily upstairs into the room, disguised in different fancy costumes. They are Marie's companions and fellow-workers, who, at the risk of having no bread to eat during Lent, are revelling in the Carnival. Laughing, singing, dancing, they would drag Marie to the ball. She has no costume? they say. Then let her wear her customer's. She is surrounded, and despite a partial resistance is dressed in the twinkling of an eye. Timid in her beautiful attire, she allows herself to be carried off by the friendly revellers, and just afterwards Father John comes back from his midnight prowl, and proceeds to examine the contents of his basket. His reflections as he turns over the different and multitudinous objects, now a letter beginning: "Dearest Angel,--My blood, my life, my blood, my soul, I will sacrifice all for you"--now a printed police ordinance, "Rag-pickers are forbidden to tear placards from these walls"--now the fragment of a pie--form one of the most admirable passages in the play. Towards the end of the examination, as he is raking about with his crook, he comes across a little bundle of thousand-franc notes, ten in number. "What poor devil has lost these?" he exclaims. The idea of appropriating the treasure never once occurs to him. "If there is an honest reward to be had," he says, "I shall buy a new basket." Henceforth he will not close his eyes until he has discovered the possessor. [Illustration: A RAG-PICKER.] To return to Marie. The stage is transformed into a sumptuously decorated saloon. Around a table sparkling with wax tapers and crystals the joyous companions of Henri Berville are performing the obsequies of his bachelorhood, for he is shortly to be married. Henri alone resists the general gaiety. He neither eats nor drinks, and the champagne bubbling in the glass or discharging its corks against the ceiling is powerless to relieve his melancholy. Suddenly the door opens and the band of laughing grisettes who have carried off Marie from her dreary room enter to the movement of a polka. Marie follows them, but feels ashamed and bewildered; so much so that she crosses her hands over her mask as though it did not sufficiently disguise her. Her companions, however, are ready enough to lift their masks to anyone who will admire their neat little noses or roguish eyes; and presently one of the guests fastens himself on to the bashful Marie, and carries his insolence so far as to unmask her. In trying to escape, moreover, from his violent hands she tears a part of that precious robe which a year's toil would scarcely pay for. Henri Berville interposes and indignantly reproaches his friend with such behaviour. The friend replies with insolence, and a duel becomes inevitable. Marie, meanwhile, half mad with shame and fear, has fled. During her absence a mysterious woman has penetrated into her chamber and deposited on the bed an infant. This woman had been paid to kill the innocent child, but shrinking at the last moment from so great a crime, has simply got rid of it as best she could. The fee she had received was ten thousand francs, and this was the sum, in bank-notes, which the rag-picker had discovered at the end of his crook. In her eagerness to escape she had lost the precious paper. Now Marie enters the room with her torn dress, still deeply vexed at the affront she has received. But if she has been grossly insulted, she has likewise found a noble defender; and for this young man, as brave and generous as his companion was cowardly, she begins to feel the flame of an impossible love, which simply mocks her, whilst a thousand regrets disturb her gentle breast. How can she replace this torn dress? In despair she determines to put an end to her life. But, on the point of doing so, she hears a plaintive cry in the room. She goes to the bed and discovers the child. The sight of it changes her resolution, and when Father John appears he finds his protégée nursing the little one whom she proposes to adopt. In a later scene Marie pays a visit to the mansion of Baron Hoffman in order to present her bill to Mademoiselle, the baron's daughter. The little dressmaker is very ill received, and tries to excuse her importunity by explaining the circumstances in connection with the child she has to support--at which the daughter seems strangely disquieted and the father enraged. The truth is that Mlle. Hoffman herself has brought this child into the world, and has confessed her shame to the baron, who thereupon wished to get rid of the little creature for a very particular reason. Baron Hoffman is the rag-picker who assassinated Marie's father twenty years before. For the whole world he would not have had an obstacle arise to the marriage of his daughter with Henri Berville; nor is his anxiety on this point unintelligible. Henri Berville is the son of the banker whose cashier the ex-rag-picker has killed, and with whom, subsequently, he has entered into partnership. Dreading every moment of his life that some traces of his crime may be discovered, he wishes, by marrying his daughter to the banker's son, to identify the interests of Henri Berville with his own. From what is said during her visit to Mlle. Hoffman by the unsuspecting Marie, who does not dream that she is addressing the mother of the foundling, the baron sees that his grandchild is not dead. The woman who has already received one fee of ten thousand francs is now presented with another of like amount, and this time she executes her mission to the letter. The infant is found murdered in Marie's room. Marie is arrested on suspicion and imprisoned, and Father John swears to discover the true assassin. Fortune assists him. He discovers the owner of the bank-notes in his possession, visits her, perceives her guilt, and, working partly upon her cupidity, partly upon her fear, obtains from her a compromising letter. Then, armed with damnatory evidence, he calls upon Baron Hoffman, who, recognising him, gets his lackeys to make him drunk. An abstinence of twenty years has not destroyed his liking for wine, and he now in a weak moment sacrifices so unreservedly to Bacchus, that the baron has no difficulty in wresting from him as he lies inebriated the documentary evidence of his guilt. Instead of accuser he has now become the accused, and Baron Hoffman has him arrested for complicity with the murderer of the bank cashier. Having ridded himself of this dangerous witness, the baron goes to Saint-Lazare to see Marie, who is in detention there, and manages to make her believe that she will be the cause of Henri Berville's ruin by preventing his marriage with Mlle. Clara Hoffman. Between Marie and Henri an undeclared passion already exists. Since their first meeting at the masked ball, Henri has sworn that he will marry her and no one else; for indeed he has never loved Clara, whose hand was forced upon him, and who already has another less chivalrous lover, as events have only too painfully proved. Marie, deceived by the baron's representations, now resolves to sacrifice herself to Henri's welfare, and signs a false confession which has been prepared for her, and by which she lays claim to a crime of which she is guiltless. Meanwhile Father John, brought before the commissary, is concerned with nothing but the demonstration of Marie's innocence. He speaks with such eloquence and grief, his accents are so real and heartrending, that the hesitating magistrate consents to make experiment of a proof which the chiffonnier proposes. "Lend me thirty thousand francs!" he cries. At this demand everyone present thinks him insane, with the exception of Henri, who promptly furnishes the loan. With the aid of this sum the chiffonnier obtains from the murderess of Clara's child conclusive evidence of Marie's innocence and the baron's guilt. Hoffman is brought to justice, and no obstacle remains to the union of Marie and Henri Berville. "But how can we reward devotion like yours?" ask Henri and his friends of Father John; who, a true chiffonnier to the last, replies, "Give me a new basket!" CHAPTER XXXV. THE BOHEMIAN OF PARIS. Béranger's Bohemians--Balzac's Definition--Two Generations--Henri Mürger. Another extremely interesting type of character in Paris--likewise of the vagrant nature--is the Bohemian. According to the definition of a French lexicographer the Bohemian is "a gay and careless man who laughingly endures the ills of life." Béranger has written a charming poem upon the Bohemians of his day--describing the wandering and eccentric life of bronzed-faced, brilliant-eyed men of athletic stature, with their free amours and their romantic slumbers, during summer nights, beneath the canopy of heaven. But Béranger did not dream of any analogy between poets or artists in search of a supper and a cheap bed, and those simple mendicants whose existence he idealised. The comparison, however, soon began to assert itself. A new sense, peculiar and fascinating, was given to the word Bohemian; and George Sand, the first writer who seems to have applied it, finishes her novel entitled "La Dernière Aldini" with the exclamation, "Vive la Bohème!" Balzac, in his "Prince de la Bohème," presents an admirable definition of the intellectual Bohemians. "They are young men," he writes, "of any age over twenty, but not yet in their thirtieth year; men of genius in their respective walks of life, little known hitherto, but who will make themselves known and conquer fame. In this class you may find diplomatists who could overthrow the projects of Russia if supported by the power of France. Authors, too, administrators, warriors, journalists, artists, belong to the order of Bohemians." A less flattering notion, however, of the Bohemian is given by Xavier de Montépin, who in his "Confessions d'une Bohême" describes the adventurer thus: "A lost child of this great Paris, where all the vices have temples and all the bad passions altars and priests, the Bohemian cultivates, with dangerous skill, the worse side of human nature. Sometimes he is really clever and succeeds in deceiving the whole world, which for a moment accepts him. Then he is brilliant and proud, delicately gloved and fastidiously shod; he has horses, mistresses, gold. Of this lying edifice, so elaborately constructed, not one stone, perhaps, will to-morrow rest upon another." It is to be hoped that Montépin was, in this case, generalising from a few very bad specimens. Like his counterpart in London, the Bohemian of Paris has usually long to wait for his hour of triumph. He has to pass through years of struggles and privations, to hunger and to thirst. He does not surrender, however; for he has an ardent faith in himself, and never loses the sheet-anchor of hope. The life he leads has, moreover, its seductive side, without which the bravest soul could not support it--hours of delightful illusion, the pleasures of study, the buoyant companionship of others engaged in the same warfare, and a free vent for the explosive gaieties of youth. Then there are the periods of discouragement and anguish, the unkindnesses of friends, the physical frame yielding even whilst the spirit defiantly holds out; then, perhaps, despair or even death. Such things as these constitute the chequered life of the Bohemian. The Bohemia of Paris, according to Henri Mürger, is "the stage of artistic life; it is a preface to the Academy, to the hospital, or to the Morgue." This inevitably reminds an Englishman of the old Grub Street Bohemian, the man of talent or genius who, in a few exceptional instances, struggled on, like Johnson, to greatness, but who, as a rule, thought Fortune had smiled when he could fill the vacuum in his stomach with four-pennyworth of shin of beef; who, after months of toil in his garret, would take his work to the bookseller's and return with a pocketful of guineas, only to be penniless again on the morrow, to starve for another twelvemonth, and perhaps to end his career, heartbroken and forgotten, in a pauper's grave. The present century has produced two generations of Paris Bohemians who have left their mark upon the history of arts and letters. The first had its cradle in a now demolished house of the Rue du Doyenné. Nothing could have been more sombre or depressing than this street, which was one of the ugliest in Paris. Yet the indomitable spirits who made it their haunt lived within sight of all that the most artistic and delicate imagination could desire. There were the remains of the Hôtel Rambouillet, in which French literature had, in its infancy, been nursed; the façade of the Musée, resplendent with sculptures of the Renaissance; a cluster of trees, which might almost have been called a wood, in the branches of which feathered Bohemians trilled their songs of love and liberty. The walls of the house were old and bare; but the inhabitants soon covered them with decorations of a magnificence scarcely to be found in palaces. There Corot painted his Provence landscapes and Chausserian his bacchants; and there the earliest novels of Arsène Houssaye and the earliest poems of Théophile Gautier were penned. No troop of gipsies, encamped beneath foliage in the midst of a perfumed wood, ever led a more buoyant life. Comedy was played within those artistic walls; masked balls were given; the landlord and the scandalised citizens were defied. Years went by, and at last the Bohemians of the Rue du Doyenné had constrained the public to accept their ideals of art and literature. And now they were petted, fèted, adored by those who had previously taken them for fools. Yet even whilst Fortune was thus smiling, one famous member of the order--one who, in the eyes of posterity, personifies the Bohemians of this period--threw his fellows into mourning. The unhappy Gérard de Nerval--translator of _Faust_, friend and collaborator of Heine--was found one morning suspended from a street-lamp. So much for the first generation of Paris Bohemians. The second comprised, among others, Privat d'Anglemont, Auguste Vitu, Schanne, Alfred Delvan, Champfleury, and, above all, Henri Mürger. Their haunt was the Café Momus, in the Rue Prêtres-Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois. This café has, within the last few years, disappeared, and its site is now occupied by a colour-merchant's warehouse and a pawnbroking establishment. The place no longer resounds with the laughter, the reckless gaiety, the folly of Bohemians such as those just named. At the door of the little temple Death or Glory sometimes came and knocked, to summon one or other of its inhabitants away. Privat d'Anglemont entered the Municipal Maison-de-Santé and died there; Mürger, a few months afterwards, breathed his last in the same retreat. He left behind him a literary monument in the pictures, at once charming and grotesque, of that strange life in which he played so important a part. Every writer of distinction in Paris followed his bier to the grave; and the tomb erected to his memory is worthy of the man who slumbers beneath it. His companion, Privat d'Anglemont, lies near him; but without even a stone to tell his admirers where to cast their wreaths. Of the survivors, one--Schanne--became a toy-merchant in the Rue Saint-Denis and is suspected of having, to the delight of children, invented certain mechanical rabbits which beat a drum at every movement of the car to which they were harnessed. The first Bohemians of France must be looked for among her earliest poets. François Villon, for instance, who was publicly whipped, and the vagabond minstrels, one of whom in Victor Hugo's _Notre-Dame_ so narrowly escapes hanging. But these lively, luckless bards were in the position of the warriors who lived before the time of Homer, and whose deeds were destined to remain unsung. The great student and chronicler of Bohemian life (whose "Vie de Bohême," as translated into German, was classed by a Leipzic bookseller under the head of ethnography) was Henri Mürger, with his four literary and artistic personages and their servant, himself a Bohemian, who lends small sums of money to his masters out of the wages he does not receive, and who, in his love of the picturesque, finds himself unable to interfere with the _beau désordre_ in which they leave their rooms. Highly ingenious are these four typical Bohemians in getting rid of their money when there are funds in hand, and in making both ends meet when their purses are nearly empty. Thus, one of them having obtained a certain sum from a confiding relative, purchases for a young woman to whom he is attached a monkey and a parrot; only to find, a few days afterwards, that the monkey has eaten the parrot and died of indigestion. They have not even a suit of dress-clothes among them; and on one occasion, when the musician wishes to go to a ball, the painter induces a gentleman whose portrait he is taking to divest himself of his evening coat that he may secretly lend it to his pleasure-seeking friend. Varied and original are the devices by which the attention of the puzzled sitter is diverted from his missing garment. The Bohemian who has gone to the ball, and who puts on a pair of white gloves with the view of disguising himself from possible creditors, passes most of his time in the refreshment room; returning to it, when for a moment he has been taken out by one of the dancers, on the plea that if he were to stop away too long his absence would be "remarked." There are some Bohemians who seem to have a particular fancy for white kids. In M. Ponsard's drama of _Honneur et Argent_ the romantic but impecunious hero rushes forward at one critical moment to the front of the stage, exclaiming: _Je porte des gants blancs, et je n'ai pas dîné!_ Hégésippe Moreau, Bohemian and true poet, who for want of a bed slept at times in one of the trees of the Champs Elysées, went one evening to a ministerial party, where, expecting to get something to eat, he was driven to despair at finding nothing to relieve his hunger except jellies and ices. It was probably in view of famished Bohemians that an old French book on etiquette warned persons invited out to dinner not, if the meal was long delayed, to exclaim: _On ne aîne jamais dans cette maison_. A well-known Bohemian, on being asked by a wealthy friend to take pot-luck with him at a certain hour, is said to have replied: "With pleasure; and you will excuse me if I am rather punctual." The Bohemian consoles himself by the thought that the greatest writers have often in their youth been in almost as dire straits as himself. How indeed, without such a reflection, could he from day to day exist? He remembers that when, during the first performance of _Hernani_, Victor Hugo was called out of the theatre by a bookseller and requested to accept 6,000 francs for the right of publishing the play, he had not more than forty francs in his actual possession. He may even, if he has studied the literary history of a neighbouring country, recall the case of Samuel Johnson, who for years had to live on fourpence a day. Even in the depths of poverty Bohemians, if there is anything in them, are sure (so Henri Mürger testifies) to make from time to time an impression upon some rich man, who will invite them to dinner, partly from sympathy and admiration, partly in order to have the opportunity of reading to them some poem or drama that vanity has impelled him to compose. On these occasions the Bohemian is said to revenge himself for having been condemned to play the part of listener only--_auditor tantùm_--by staying late and drinking profusely. Macaulay had such a Bohemian in view when he described a member of this interesting class--a guest at the time in the house of his patron--as "roaring for fresh punch" at four in the morning. [Illustration: THE BOULEVARD POISSONIÈRE.] To be suspected, however, of a Bohemianism of which they are innocent is sometimes the fate of eminent and well-conducted authors; and Macaulay's roarer for punch reminds one of a certain fashionable Parisian novelist who, as Grenville Murray relates, went once to stay at a country house where the host and hostess had very romantic notions of the life usually led by the knights of the pen. Towards twelve o'clock the eminent littérateur, slightly fatigued by his journey, retired to his room, and before long was in bed and fast asleep. In about a quarter of an hour he was awakened by a continued tapping at the door, and, raising his head, wondered for a moment whether the house could be on fire. Then, recovering his presence of mind, he called out "Entrez"; on which two sturdy footmen appeared, bearing between them an ice-pail with a bottle of champagne in it. The novelist had some difficulty in prevailing upon the wine bearers to retire with their well-intended burden. His host and hostess had been under the impression that authors wrote habitually at night, and were unable to get through their work unless well primed with alcoholic liqueur. CHAPTER XXXVI. THE PARIS WAITER. The Garçon--The Development of the Type--The Garçon's Daily Routine--His Ambitions and Reverses. [Illustration: SELLING GOATS.] The waiter of Paris, whose manners are of velvet, whose flittings are bird-like, and whose smile is eternal, is another pronounced type of character. The _garçon_ may be said to have originated at a Paris refreshment-room established in or before the time of Scarron (who celebrates it in verse), by a certain Señor Lopes in association with a certain Señor Rodrigues. This restaurant, in the Portuguese style, was celebrated for a beverage then much in vogue, known as "citrate," and composed of lemon-juice, cedrat, and sugar in fresh or iced water. It was dispensed to the frequenters of the place by extremely polite servants, who were the first in France to exercise the suave and delicate functions of the waiter. Gradually other restaurants were opened in the capital for the sale, first of lemonade and orgeat, and subsequently of coffee, tea, chocolate, and wines. The waiter, as these houses of refreshment improved and developed, became more and more polished and indispensable, so that to-day, according to a French writer, "He is a personage. He wears shirts of the finest Holland, glazed shoes, white stockings, and a tie which would move the envy of a sub-prefect. But for his vest, which indemnifies itself for not being quite a vest by the fineness of its tissue, he would be mistaken for an ambassador or a tenor. His hair, cut in the latest fashion, exhales sweet odours, and his lips express a perpetual smile of complaisance. The lady at the counter, it should be added, shows him delicate attentions." The true Paris waiter, like the true poet, is born, not made. He has hereditary waiter's blood coursing through his veins. His father was a garçon before him, and from childhood he has been instructed in the family art, learning celerity and grace of movement, with that patience, politeness, and amiability by which he is distinguished. There are exceptions to this rule, all the same; and good waiters have sometimes been made out of men who have failed in the higher walks of life; of bankrupt merchants or ruined gentlemen. A spendthrift who, having run through his fortune, prefers to wait rather than work is already in some degree qualified for the post of garçon. His experience will constitute him an authoritative arbiter in disputes over a game of billiards, or a pretty girl, or dominoes, or cards; he knows how to please men who love to dine or sup as sumptuously as he once did, and the winebibbers excite within him no repulsion, but on the contrary strike a chord of sympathy in his soul. Whatever his antecedents may be, the Paris waiter invariably becomes fashioned after a certain recognised type. This type is well described by a French writer in the following words: "Vigour of constitution and honesty of soul are two qualities without which the café garçon would not exist. The master's eye cannot always be hovering over the bottles, the decanters, the cups, and the coffee-pots of the laboratory. Nothing is easier than to divert, in the midst of the gigantic consumption which distinguishes certain establishments, an occasional drop from the ocean of refreshments and liqueurs; a fraction of that total which the proprietor counts every evening, to the great annoyance of the late-staying customer exchanging his last ten-sou piece at midnight for a final _petit verre_. The garçon is therefore, of necessity, an honest man. From the rising of the sun to the extinction of the gas he is handling the money of others; he is a confidential servant, a cashier on a small scale. As to vigour of constitution, you will soon see how indispensable that is to the garçon. Day dawns, and late as he went to bed the night before, he has to rise betimes. At that hour there is hardly anyone awake in Paris but fruiterers, scavengers, and water-carriers; nevertheless he, the man of eloquence, who passes his time amongst epicures and who forms an indisputable part of the fashionable world, must tear himself from the luxury of repose. Every day the luxury of life surrounds him with its seductions, its perfumes, and its joys, and yet he is condemned to live the hard life of an artizan. His master wishes him to have at once the complaisant elegance of a spaniel and the vigilance of a fox. Well, he wakes up, and stretches his arms; striking, perhaps, with his extended fingers the table-legs between which he has thrown his mattress the night before. For you must quite understand that he is obliged to take his food and to sleep within that space which is the scene of his duties; like the soldier in action, he sleeps on the field of battle. When, thus early, he rises, he is breathing a heavy air, impregnated with the too-familiar emanations from gas, not to mention the odours (hermetically closed in by the café shutters) of that punch, wine, and haricot mutton which the proprietor has shared at midnight with his companions, at table No. 1, the table, that is to say, nearest the counter. The only glimpse of light which cheers the garçon as he opens his eyes proceeds from the inextinguishable lamp which burns in the laboratory with the obstinacy of the vestal fire. As to those matutinal sounds which herald the approach of day, the garçon is quite free to regard as such the mewing of the cat, or the shrill whistlings of Madame's canaries, which are anticipating a near visit from the chickweed merchant. But suddenly the tread of the master, who, in a room overhead, is searching for his braces and his cravat, shakes the ceiling. In an instant the mattresses of all the waiters are snatched up and bundled behind an old partition, side by side with spoilt billiard cues, watering cans, broken chess-boards, and the antique counter which the proprietor purchased with the original stock. The shutters are taken down, the milkmaid arrives, the principal comes downstairs with a bag of money under his arm, Madame thinks about her toilette, butter pats are distributed on the plates, the stove-tender lights the fire, and all the bees in this hive are in motion. The hour of work has struck." After this first tug at his collar, it is a relief to find that the garçon enjoys a brief period of repose, and, whilst awaiting custom, tears the wrappers off the newspapers and studies the European situation. In the morning he is occupied entirely with dispensing café-au-lait. This first service is productive of very few "tips," as the customers who breakfast at the cafés are usually employées, or old bachelors, or provincial visitors lodging in the small hotels of the neighbourhood; people more or less pledged to a discreet economy. From noon, however, till two o'clock black coffee and alcoholic liqueur absorb the waiter's energies. It is between those hours that gay consumers, with hearts already warmed by a visit to the neighbouring restaurant, arrive in troops and pay without counting their change. This, however, is not a wise proceeding if we are to be guided by a certain M. Vidocq, who, in his "Arch Thief (_Paravoleur_); or, The Art of conducting oneself prudently in all countries and especially at Paris," a book at once curious and rare, does not, like a beforementioned writer, rely on the universal integrity of the garçon, and whose advice to his readers is as follows:--"At the café you must not, from a sense of false shame or from misplaced confidence, put in your pocket without counting it the change which the garçon gives you when the piece of money you have tendered in payment exceeds the charge you have incurred. This is particularly to be avoided in the cafés-jardins, where the crowd presses on all sides, and where twenty panting waiters seem hardly sufficient to serve the customers. You have come with some friends, and have taken ices, punch, liqueurs, etc. When you are about to depart you tell the waiter that you wish to settle. You call in vain for him five or six times, getting no reply but--'Coming, sir; coming.' At length he arrives, scared, bewildered, and staring right and left as though anxious to despatch you and rush off to someone else. You tell him to reckon what you owe. He gabbles certain words about ices, punch, liqueurs, which you cannot understand, and then distinctly mentions a certain sum-total. If you pay on the spot, without any explanation, you are pretty sure to have been charged fifteen or twenty sous too much. If you have calculated your debt beforehand, with the aid of the tariffs posted up at these places, you will easily perceive, before parting with your money, what errors have been committed. If, however, you have failed to take this precaution, do not be imposed upon by the distracted air of the garçon, but make him enumerate each separate item of your account, and it will be a wonder indeed if you do not gain by this recapitulation." Yet another ingenious device on the part of the garçon is made by M. Vidocq a subject of admonition to his readers. "When a party of friends," he writes, "have run up rather a heavy bill, it often happens that the gentleman who is doing the honours finds amongst the change he receives a piece of ten or twenty sous from which the image and superscription have been almost entirely effaced; and he ultimately throws it to the waiter, saying that it is for him. This coin has not been introduced without intention. It has already been frequently presented to customers and frequently thrown back to the waiter. You would give the garçon two or three sous if you received good money, and you give him ten or twenty because he tenders a piece of money which you are afraid you cannot pass." Although everywhere very much on the same pattern, the Paris garçon varies somewhat in his manners, customs, and general bearing according to the establishment in which he exercises his functions. There are cafés on the Boulevard des Italiens where he deviates somewhat from his traditional amiability, and, when a customer complains of the café-au-lait with which he has been served, raises his eyes to the ceiling, sighs, places a fresh cup on the table, and filling it from the self-same coffee-pot, exclaims, "I know you will like that, sir." The waiter of the Boulevard Saint-Martin is a man of letters, particularly conversant with dramatic literature. He picks up his education from the eminent actors and dramatists who frequent the establishment, and knows everything that is going on behind the scenes. At one time the garçon of the Café Desmares was an eminent authority on military matters. He knew all the superior officers of the Royal Guard, and everything that was whispered in the barracks. In course of time--after 1830 that is to say--he lost his martial tint, and became highly aristocratic; speaking in measured tones and looking exceedingly bored. Now, however, like the café itself, he is no more. The body-guards were accustomed under the Restoration to assemble at the Café Valois; whilst the Bonapartists had their headquarters at the Café Lemblin. Challenges were sent from one café to the other, swords were drawn and duels were fought by the dim light of some street lamp. The weapons, it is said, were confided to the waiters of the belligerent cafés, together with the pipes of the frequenters. The intending duellist called for them as he would have called for a newspaper, and the waiter sometimes replied:--"They are all in use, sir." The garçon aspires to wealth and greatness. Sometimes, in his vaulting ambition, he o'erleaps himself. Says a French student of his manners and customs: "He takes a wife and a new house, puts frills on his shirt, and inscribes his name in the National Guard. Become, in his turn, a master, he puts a hundred thousand francs' worth of gilding, pictures, and mirrors (obtained on credit) into the establishment which he opens with unusual éclat. The public rush to his doors, and all goes well until some neighbouring café, more sumptuous still, draws the crowd away again. Then the time has arrived for him to make up his balance-sheet and pay two and a half per cent. to his creditors. What becomes of him after that? If he has protected his wife's dowry he takes refuge in his native country, between two cabbage beds with a pond for his ducks. One day the malady of dethroned kings seizes him, and he dies of ennui in the midst of an inconsolable family. Heaven take pity on his soul! Many café waiters die without having fulfilled their dream of having an establishment of their own. The life of fatigue which they lead kills them, as a rule, towards their thirtieth year. It is thus that we have seen the greatest of them all vanish from our midst--that waiter of the Café de la Rotonde, whose '_baoum!_' uttered in a far-resounding voice, has found so many imitators. We see him still, coffee-pot in hand, saying in a voice profound, 'Pas de Crême?' Alas, alas, he is dead. He died of consumption, and when he was about to expire the nurse still offered him a mixture of cod-liver oil and milk, which his doctor had prescribed. He exclaimed with his last gasp, 'Pas de Crême?'" CHAPTER XXXVII. THE PARIS COOK. Brillat-Savarin on the Art of Cooking--The Cook and the Roaster--Cooking in the Seventeenth Century--Louis XV.--Mme de Maintenon. From the Paris waiter to the Paris cook the transition is, in literary phrase, "easy and natural." There is probably no prouder personage in the world than this artist, who knows that mankind cannot dispense with him, and who, if one were to ask him whether the revolution of his spit or of the earth on its axis were the more important, might hesitate to decide. In that excellent comedy from the combined pens of Émile Augier and Jules Sandeau, entitled _Le Gendre de M. Poirier_, we see an illustration of the solemn importance which is attached by the French cook to a well-ordered menu. M. Poirier, an aspirant for social position, has married his daughter to a ruined marquis, Gaston de Nesle, whom he soon finds to be a magnificently expensive son-in-law. One day, determined to retrench, he sends for his chef and asks what he intends to prepare for dinner that day. The chef enumerates a list of some twenty costly and exquisite dishes; to which M. Poirier replies: "You will replace all that by soup, roast meat, salad, and a fruit tart." The cook feels like a soldier required to chop wood with the sword with which he has been accustomed to cut his way to glory, and who prefers to snap that sword in two. "I resign!" exclaims the cuisinier. "No man will cook for you!" "Then I will engage a woman," is the economist's base rejoinder. To pass from fiction to fact we find a very much stronger instance of the spirit of the French cook in the famous Vatel, who was so delicate on the "point of honour" that he ran a sword through his own body because the fish which should have arrived for an important dinner he was cooking did not turn up in time. This artist was first attached to the intendant Foquet, afterwards to the Prince de Condé; and he could not endure the shame of letting the king go short of one particular course in the dinner which the prince offered him at the Castle of Chantilly. Some of the loftiest functions of the Parisian chef can be performed by no one who is not endowed with absolute genius. Training, experience, industry, will go some distance in the French culinary art; but, according to Brillat-Savarin, in his _Physiologie du Goût_, they would apparently never qualify a man for the sublimer functions of roasting a joint or a fowl. "_On devient cuisinier mais on naît rotisseur_," exclaims this excellent writer, who raised the art of the kitchen to the dignity of a science, and who propounds the maxims of cooking with the same gravity, the same sincerity, the same ardour as if he were laying the bases of a grand moral philosophy. "A dessert without cheese is like a beautiful woman with but one eye," he declared in a neat sentence which admits of only a lumbering translation. Why a roasting-cook should require greater talent than one of his kitchen colleagues, who, for instance, like the chef spoken of by Macaulay, could make ten different dishes out of a poppy-head, is not at first sight apparent. One might imagine that the roaster required nothing but care and patience; but after the dictum of so high an authority as Brillat-Savarin, it must by the uninitiated be supposed that for the seemingly simple operation of roasting a bird or joint as it ought to be roasted, a combination of subtle qualities are requisite, just as the mere two hands of a watch need, for their due regulation, a complex system of machinery. [Illustration: THE BIRD MARKET.] As roaster, or in no matter what capacity, the Paris cook had his poetic eulogist. One gastronomic versifier was wont, whilst sitting at dinner, to regard the genius who was furnishing his stomach as a divinity-- _Un cuisinier, quand je aîne,_ _Me semble un être divin._ Another regarded his cook as a present from the sky-- _Que je puisse toujours, après avoir diné,_ _Bénir le cuisinier que le ciel m'a donné!_ The science of cooking in France was in a languid condition when Francis I. ascended the throne. The presence of ladies at his court, and the fêtes and banquets which were given, reanimated the cuisinier. It was the renaissance of the kitchen as well as of the arts; and Francis I. imported from Italy cooks as well as painters and sculptors. The Italian cooks viewed their art in a very serious light. Montaigne well portrays a typical member of their order. "Just now," he writes, "I was mentioning an Italian I have recently entertained, who acted as _maître d'hôtel_ to the late Cardinal Caraffe until his death. I made him describe his duties, and he gave me a discourse on this science of the jaws with a gravity and countenance quite magisterial, precisely as if he had been engaged on some subject in theology. He indicated the different stages of appetite: that which exists after fasting, and that which remains when the first or second course has been served; the methods employed, now simply to gratify it, now to awaken and spur it; the policy with which he prepares his dishes, adorning and embellishing them so as to fascinate the eye. After that he entered upon the order of the service, full of fine and important considerations; the whole inflated with a magnificence of words such as characterises a treatise on the government of an empire." The luxury of gastronomy was carried to such a point in France that edicts were issued by several French kings for the purpose of restraining it; but the Italian cooks whom Catherine de Medici brought to the court of Henri II. easily contrived to vanquish the law. They formed a school and produced pupils who were destined to surpass their preceptors. Until the Revolution the profession of cook was regulated by a succession of statutes. So far back as 1260 the corporation of "goose-cooks" (geese being their most important commodity) received statutes from the provost of the merchants. Later on the name of "roasters" was given to them; and anyone not of their order who ventured to cook for the public was termed a traitor. The cooks of Paris had already been made the subject of many enactments when Louis XIV., in 1663, gave them new statutes which were registered in parliament the following year; nor was it until the Revolution that their profession became free. In the seventeenth century the culinary art had reached a high pitch of perfection, and epicures abounded in high life, amongst princes, seigneurs, and even bishops--indeed bishops in particular. One day when a certain archbishop famed for good living, in a sense otherwise than ecclesiastical, had dined at the palace of his episcopal brother in the capital, he called his servants around him and said: "I have been dining with the archbishop of Paris; there was this and that dish, and such and such defects. Now I tell you, so that you may fall into the danger, that if you were to treat me in that fashion, you would be wishing to throw away your lives." At the end of dinner he was accustomed to send for Maître Nicholas, his cook, and say: "Maître Nicholas, what shall we have for supper?" After supper his inquiry was: "Maître Nicholas, what shall we have for to-morrow's dinner?" Another bishop having returned home very hungry and demanded his dinner, the episcopal cook made his appearance empty-handed. "As a bishop," he said, "I forgive you; but if you fail to produce my supper, I shall talk to you like a man, and flatten your nose for you." Louis XIV. was a great gastronomist, but in the refinements of the culinary art Louis XV. eclipsed his predecessor. The artists of the kitchen were not yet in his reign paid twenty thousand francs a year, as they have since been paid in Paris; but they were petted, yielded to, and stroked down when out of temper. The cooks from Languedoc were chiefly in demand at Paris; they received very large salaries and exercised domestic despotism, the other servants of the household having to bow to their authority. Expense was nothing when it became a question of stimulating the jaded appetite of a count or a wealthy merchant. Mercie in his "Picture of Paris" shows us a _maître d'hôtel_ presenting the bill of fare to his aristocratic master, who throws it down disdainfully, exclaiming: "Always the same dishes! You have no imagination. These are nothing but nauseating repetitions." "But, monseigneur, the sauces are varied." "I tell you the whole thing is detestable, and I can no longer eat it." "Well, monseigneur, I will prepare you a grilled boar." "When?" "To-morrow. I will make him drink sixty bottles of champagne first. And after that I want you to eat a Jamaica turtle." "Bravo! And when? Where is the turtle?" "In London." "Send a courier at once: let him fetch it post-haste." The courier is despatched, and returns with the turtle. There is a solemn conference as to the most effective way of preparing the animal; and after all kinds of processes, it appears on the table. That dish has cost a thousand crowns. Seven or eight gourmands devour it, and while they are drinking costly wines discuss the question as to how much a peasant can live on. They decide that three sous a day are enough for him, and that the inhabitants of the towns are well off if they have seventeen. Beyond these figures all is superfluity, according to the turtle-devouring economists. The whole court of Louis XV. consisted of gourmands, loyal imitators of their sovereign. Marshal de Richelieu attached his name to various dishes, prepared for the purpose of making an epicure's mouth water. The gay and ingenious Mme. de Pompadour invented three or four recipes which have become famous. Gastronomy, however, did not flourish at the court of Louis XVI., who was by no means fastidious in the choice of his food, and for whose robust appetite rude joints of meat amply sufficed. Coming to the Revolution, we find the culinary art injured a good deal by the arbitrary closing of the mansions of the great nobility. Those thousand and one ruinous inventions without which courtiers, financiers, and ecclesiastics found existence impossible, were seductions for the severe Republicans. A celebrated gastronomist, Grimod de la Reynière, paints, in what he doubtless intended for very black tints, the calamity which marked the revolutionary period. "It is an unquestionable fact," he writes, "that during the disastrous years of the Revolution not one fine turbot entered the market"; and he has thus exposed himself to Republican reproaches as to the seat of his patriotism and political sentiment being his stomach. All the celebrities of the eighteenth century sat at the table of the la Reynières, which was more sumptuously kept than Scarron's. There was first the grandfather, la Reynière, who died in 1754 with a napkin under his chin, suffocated by a _pâté-de-foie-gras_; then the father, whose dinners were better than his society, if we are to judge from the remark passed upon him by one of his guests, namely: "You can eat him; but digest him you cannot"; and finally the son, who has exercised by his pen and his stomach a considerable influence on gastronomy, and rescued French cookery from the indifference of the Revolution. [Illustration: MADAME DE MAINTENON. (_From an old Print._)] We have just mentioned the exquisite table which was kept by the inimitable Scarron. The time came, however, when his resources dwindled and the dishes laid before his distinguished guests were less numerous and less varied. The conversation of Scarron's vivacious wife, however, the future Mme. de Maintenon, did much to atone for a poor menu. On one occasion, whilst dinner was proceeding, Scarron received a secret message from his cook--who had to prepare the meal with very spare materials--to the effect that a certain dish, usually regarded as essential, was wanting. Turning his head aside from the guests, Scarron whispered to his wife: "My dear, give them another of those charming little stories. There is no roast." So much for the ingenuity of a French host. The ingenuity of a French cook was perhaps never better exemplified than under the following circumstances. A rich financier was once dining at an aristocratic table where one of the courses consisted of some preparation of veal, highly gratifying to the palate. Whilst this course was being eaten one of the guests happened to say to the host: "Your epigrams, you know, are excellent." When the financier got home he summoned his cook, told him he had just dined at a house where a ravishing dish of veal, mysteriously prepared, had been served, and directed the cuisinier to manufacture something like it, adding that he could not describe the precise nature of the dish, but that he knew it was called an "epigram." For a moment the cook was staggered. Then a sudden inspiration came upon him, and he declared that he clearly perceived how epigrams should be prepared. Next day he invented an exquisite dish, which was destined to become famous--to his own and his master's glory--as the "_Epigramme de veau á la financière_." It was a maxim of Brillat-Savarin's that "the discovery of a new dish is more precious for the universe than the discovery of a new star"; and there have been plenty of illustrious diners and cooks in Paris who lived up to this lofty idea. The greatest chef who ever turned a spit was doubtless the immortal Carême, who commenced his career as _maître d'hôtel_ to the Prince de Talleyrand. Having broken with his first master on some question of politics, he was successively employed by the Prince Regent of England, whom he quitted because George IV. did not sufficently understand the refinements of the culinary art; by the Emperor Alexander I. of Russia, whose dominions he found too cold; by Prince Bagration, who was a fine connoisseur but whose stomach was out of order; by the Prince of Wurtemberg, who had vulgar culinary tastes; and finally by an English lord, said to have been a glutton, and who was in any case choked to death with a bone. Carême was a friend of the illustrious Villeroux, famed partly as Mirabeau's cook, but chiefly for his courage and adventures. Having sailed to the Indies, he fell into the midst of a savage race with strong gastronomic instincts, and prepared for them such delicious sauces and ragouts that they enthusiastically proclaimed him king. For several years, with a frying pan in his hand and the crown on his head, he played the dual part of cook and king. When he died he left his subjects a very precious legacy, a recipe, that is to say, for a bacon-omelette. [Illustration] * * * * * Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: boulevard Saint-Denis=> Boulevard Saint-Denis {pg 95} It vain will despotism dread=> In vain will despotism dread {pg 188} THE PALMIER FOUNTAIN, PLACE DU CHÀTELET=> THE PALMIER FOUNTAIN, PLACE DU CHÂTELET {pg 298} The Boheman consoles himself=> The Bohemian consoles himself {pg 367} 
46035	----	A SPRING WALK IN PROVENCE _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_ THE HOUSE OF MERRILEES RICHARD BALDOCK EXTON MANOR THE SQUIRE'S DAUGHTER THE ELDEST SON THE HONOUR OF THE CLINTONS THE GREATEST OF THESE THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH WATERMEADS UPSIDONIA ABINGTON ABBEY THE GRAFTONS THE CLINTONS, AND OTHERS SIR HARRY MANY JUNES A SPRING WALK IN PROVENCE PEGGY IN TOYLAND [Illustration: EVENING AMONG THE OLIVES] A SPRING WALK IN PROVENCE BY ARCHIBALD MARSHALL AUTHOR OF "EXTON MANOR," "SIR HARRY," ETC. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS [Illustration] NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1920 COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC. The Quinn & Boden Company BOOK MANUFACTURERS RAHWAY NEW JERSEY To SIR OWEN SEAMAN PREFACE The following pages owe a considerable debt to what others who have been over the same ground have written. Mr. T. A. Cook's[1] "Old Provence" (London: Rivington's, 2 vols.) is a most valuable record of the history of the country as it attaches to the innumerable places of interest to be visited, and his taste and knowledge when brought to bear upon its architectural remains have greatly enhanced my own appreciation of those rich treasures. I know of no book, either in French or English, from which a visitor to Provence could get so much to supplement his own observation, and I have made constant use of it. To Mr. Thomas Okey's[2] "Avignon" in Dent's "Mediæval Towns" series, I also owe a great debt of gratitude. The Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould's "In Troubadour Land" (London: W. H. Allen), though slighter than those two works, contains much interesting information. Mistral's "Mes Origines" (Paris: Libraire Plon), translated from the Provençal, is of course invaluable for its pictures of Provençal life, and from that book and from M. Paul Mariéton's "La Terre Provençale" (Paris: Ollendorf) one can get the best information about the movement of the Félibrige, which has done so much to revivify the old life of Provence. A good deal of desultory information is afforded by M. Louis de Laincel's "La Provence" (Paris: Oudin), and some of the stories that linger on Provençal soil are well told in M. Charles-Roux's "Légendes de Provence" (Paris: Bloud). These books, and the French translation of Mistral's "Mirèio," which is a mine of Provençal lore, besides being a noble poem, have been my chief "authorities," but they have been very usefully supplemented by the various pamphlets to be picked up locally. Some of these have been excellent, and I have made mention of their authors in the following pages. The photographs are of my own taking, except those very kindly given to me by Mr. Hope Macey, whom I was fortunate enough to come across in Avignon in the course of an expedition that coincided with mine at many points. The one of Mistral's birthplace I bought at Arles, and those of the picture and tapestry at Aix in Paris.[3] This account of my spring journey has been finished under the shadow of the great war, which might have caused me to look upon the _jours de conscription_ with which I fell in on the early days of the walk in a light much sadder, if I could have foreseen it. I left Provence in a train full of young soldiers going to their homes in various distant parts of France for their Easter furlough. Of those who crowded the carriage in which I travelled from Arles to Lyons the faces come before me as clearly as if I saw them in the flesh, and I can hear their songs and jokes and laughter. They seemed to have been drawn from all classes, but to mix in the readiest frankest comradeship. Whenever I read now of the French in action I think of those light-hearted boys in their holiday mood, and wonder what they are doing, and how many of them are still alive. One has somewhat changed one's view of the toll that France has taken of her manhood since those days that now seem so far off. CHATEAU D'OEX, _August, 1914_. * * * * * The world has changed since this book was written, but I hope that the record of an expedition made in the happy days before the war may still be read with pleasure, now that the great shadow is in part removed. I have been over the manuscript again and made a few alterations here and there, but have altered nothing that shows it to have been written five years ago. BURLEY, HANTS, _August, 1919_. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. HILLS AND OLIVES 1 II. FLOWERS AND SCENTS 18 III. IN OLD PROVENCE 31 IV. DRAGUIGNAN AND SAINT-MAXIMIN 48 V. THE CHURCH OF SAINT-MAXIMIN 68 VI. CAIUS MARIUS AND THE GREAT BATTLE 85 VII. AIX 97 VIII. SALON AND THE CRAU 116 IX. LES BAUX 127 X. LES BAUX (_Continued_) 143 XI. MISTRAL 158 XII. SAINT-REMY 168 XIII. AVIGNON 175 XIV. THE PALACE OF THE POPES 190 XV. VAUCLUSE 209 XVI. NIMES AND THE PONT DU GARD 227 XVII. AIGUES-MORTES AND THE CAMARGUE 239 XVIII. SAINTES-MARIES DE LA MER 252 XIX. SAINT-GILLES AND MONTMAJOUR 266 XX. THE LAST WALK. ST. MICHEL DE FRIGOLET 282 XXI. VILLENEUVE-SUR-AVIGNON 301 XXII. ARLES 311 ILLUSTRATIONS Evening among the olives _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE The road downhill "looks just like a temperature chart" 10 I "posed" him among the ruins 11 A Provençal shepherd 44 Fayence could be seen on its own hillside 44 How they prune the plane-trees 45 The dolmen near Draguignan 45 Altar of the Crucifixion, Saint-Maximin 74 The Field of the Great Battle, with Mount Olympus in the background 75 The Canterbury Tapestry 106 The famous "Tarasque" 107 Le Buisson Ardent 110 Porte d'Eyguières 111 The Castle Ruins, Les Baux 130 The Castle Dovecot, Les Baux 131 Pavillon de la Reine Jeanne 140 Huguenot Chapel in Les Baux 141 Les Baux from the Castle Ruins 150 One of the beauties of Les Baux 151 Mistral's birthplace, Mas du Juge 160 Fresco in the Palace of the Popes at Avignon 161 The Mausoleum, Saint-Remy 170 The Triumphal Arch, Saint-Remy 171 Sixteenth century doors and Virgin and Child of Eighteenth Century, St. Pierre, Avignon 182 The Pont Benezet 183 The Cathedral, Avignon 194 "The Popes' Palace is most like those almost brutally strong buildings that the Romans left" 195 The "fountain," Vaucluse 212 The caves above the "fountain" 213 The Pont du Gard 228 The Fountains, Nîmes 229 The Maison Carrée 234 The Amphitheatre, Nîmes 235 Aigues-Mortes, the Ramparts 244 "Looked away to the desolate salt marshes" 245 Saintes-Maries, the Fortress Church 256 Saint-Gilles, the Central Porch 257 The Maison-Romaine 276 The staircase in the farmyard at Montmajour 277 Saint-Michel de Frigolet 284 The Coronation of the Virgin, Villeneuve-Sur-Avignon 285 A courtyard in Villeneuve 308 The Rotunda at Villeneuve 309 The Arena at Arles 312 The Greek Theatre, Arles 313 The Cloisters, South walk, St. Trophime 316 The Cloisters, North walk, St. Trophime 317 Arles, the Alyscamps 320 Boy's head in marble, Musée Lapidaire, Arles 321 A SPRING WALK IN PROVENCE A SPRING WALK IN PROVENCE CHAPTER I _Hills and Olives_ I was to walk through the country from the Italian border, but it rained so heavily on the first day that I went to Mentone and took the mountain tramway to Sospel, where in any case I had intended to spend the night. Two years ago, before this tram-line was quite finished, I motored up to Sospel to play golf. It was a pleasant experience, though not without its thrills, for the road zigzags and corkscrews up mountain sides and across deep gorges in a way to make one thankful for strong brakes and a reliable driver, especially on the return journey. The hillsides are cultivated everywhere. The precipitous slopes have been terraced with infinite labour, and orange and lemon groves surrounding pretty little lodges and cottages, only give way as one mounts higher to the grey-green of olive plantations. When you have climbed up 2,300 feet, the road, as if tired of twisting and turning, boldly attacks the mountain side, runs through a tunnel pierced in the solid rock and comes out on the other side of the peak. Then it takes a turn so sharp that not long ago a car coming too fast through the tunnel went over the precipitous edge and all its occupants were killed. The crowning danger safely surmounted, you drop down into a green mountain valley, surrounded by what Smollett, who passed through Sospel on his way from Nice to Italy a hundred and fifty years ago, described as "prodigious high and barren mountains." The valley is all verdant pasture, watered by a broad, shallow, tree-shaded river, which, to quote the same authority, "forms a delightful contrast with the hideous rocks surrounding it." All mountains were "hideous" and "horrid" in the eyes of our ancestors. We, as we play along the grassy meadows, and cross here and there the clear river rippling over its pebbles, have come to think that the towering rock-ramparts, upon which the sun and the clouds play with infinite gradations of light and colour, have as much to do with the beauty of the scene as the verdant valley itself, or the little old huddled Italian-looking town which hugs both banks of the river. It was that little old town, which the golfer coming up from Mentone only skirts on his way to the links, that had remained in my memory, even more than the unusual charm of the links and the excellence of the greens. It stands curiously aside from the wave of modernity that has washed up to it from the wealthy delocalized coast. Turn to the right when you reach the corner, and you are still in the atmosphere of the Côte d'Azur, although you are fifteen miles inland from Mentone; turn to the left and you are in southern provincial France, in a street of little shops and little _cafés_ and _buvettes_, and pick your way amongst a crowd of peasants and townspeople, buying and selling, talking of their crops and their commerce, and as little concerned with what is going on half a mile away as if they had never seen a mashie or a putter, and none of them had ever shouldered a bag of clubs for a curiously-garbed curiously-spoken foreigner. Probably it is only the caddies or the ex-caddies who ever mention golf in the town of Sospel. It stands so aloof that even its prices have not yet been affected by the lavish ways of the holiday coast, with which it has formed this late new connection. So I turned to the left. I wanted to have done for a time with everything English, and more particularly with the sort of hotel that has an English-speaking waiter, or indeed a waiter at all. Sospel was to provide me with my first genuine experience of a French inn, as used by the people of the country and not by the tourist. Sospel rose adequately to the occasion, as I had thought it would. I found an hotel facing the market stalls and the river beyond them. I went up a flight of stone stairs and into a kitchen, which was also the bureau of the _patronne_. Yes, I could have a room for the night, and the charge would be two francs. I went up to see the room. It had a tiled floor, which was very clean, a large four-poster bed hung round with muslin curtains, and a few old cumbrous pieces of furniture besides--just the sort of room I wanted. I had a good dinner, which I ate in company with four _commis voyageurs_ and an engineer, all of whom were cordially interested in my coming expedition, and none of whom had a word of English or seemed to have any idea in their minds of connecting Sospel with golf. I felt that I had fallen plumb into it by taking that left-hand turn, and it needed an effort to call to mind the great new hotel at the other end of the links two miles away, where no diner had tucked his napkin inside his collar, or would soak his dessert biscuits in his wine; where the waiter brought a clean knife and fork for every course, and the proprietor would have requested me to leave if I had sat down in the clothes in which I intended to walk on the morrow. I felt happy, as I went to bed at nine o'clock, after a look at the rapid-flowing river on which the moon was now shining through the parting clouds. The fun had begun. I felt happier still at six o'clock the next morning, when I took the road with my pack on my back. The clouds had blown away from the mountain tops, though wisps of them hung about the lower slopes, and the cup of the valley still held a light mist. It was going to be a lovely day, and perhaps hotter than would be altogether comfortable for a walker habited and burdened as I was. For it was still early in March, and I had come down from Alpine snows. Moreover, the replenishments of clothing that I had sent on ahead were at least a week away, and I carried "changes" to a rather nervous extent; also some reading matter, which is a mistake, for books weigh heavy, however light their contents, and if your day on the road is not filled with walking, eating and sleeping, and whatever recreation in the way of talk may come to you, you are not throwing yourself enough into the spirit of your adventure. The road wound and turned and twisted, always going uphill, but never very steeply. I was on the old high road from the north, where it enters on its last stage of about five and twenty miles to Nice. I thought I must have come near to its highest point when I had climbed up on a level with the heavy fort that frowned on me from a hill near by, and sat down to take my last look at the green valley now lying far beneath me. It showed as a level carpet of vivid green, broken by the grey mass and outlying buildings of the town, with the river threading it lengthwise. The hills rose up sheer on every side. Their lower slopes were so regularly terraced that at this distance they had the effect of horizontal "shadings" in a pencil drawing. Above that they were grey, and dark green, and red as with heather, and the summits of some of them still held snow. White roads jagged them here and there, but the flat valley floor had the effect of being completely cupped and confined by the rugged heights, as indeed it is, except just where the river, having filled up the bottom of the cup with a rich layer of alluvium, must have broken through at some time, and left the fertile plain all ready and waiting for cultivation. It was like looking down on a miniature Promised Land, so marked was the contrast between the fresh green of the valley and the sombre tones of its encircling hills. This southern country flushes to tender spring green only here and there. The cultivated hillsides keep their darker colours, though they may be most sweetly lit with the pink of almonds. March would be a glorious month in Provence if it were only for the almond blossom. Mixed with the soft grey of the olives it makes delicious pictures, and it is to be found everywhere. And the wild rosemary is in flower--great bushes of it, lighting up the rocky hillsides with their delicate blue. They were all around me as I sat on this height, and there were brooms getting ready to flower, and wild lavender, and thyme. The air held an aromatic fragrance, and as I walked on between the pines and the deciduous trees, not yet in leaf, the birds were singing and the water rushing down its channels from the snowy heights very musically. There were primroses and violets by the roadside, as if it had been spring in England, and juicy little grape hyacinths to remind one that it was not. There was something to look at and enjoy at every step. I was nowhere near the top of the pass, as I had thought, but reached it at last at the Col de Braus, where I found a rude little inn, and entered it not without reluctance in search of refreshment. I found myself in a vaulted stone kitchen, its floor below the level of the ground outside. An elderly woman sat by the hearth, winding wool, with a child playing at her knee; a younger woman brought me wine and bread and cheese. The place was very dirty, but the wine was good and the viands eatable. The older woman was a picture of grief as she sat under the great stone chimney and told me how hard life was in that exposed spot, especially in the winter, when they were sometimes flooded out of the lower rooms. And now they had taken away her only son, for his military service, and what she should do without him she could not think. It was a hard tax on poor mothers. In three years, when he had done with the army, who knew? She might be dead. "But you have a husband, madame, isn't it so? Otherwise they could not take him." Yes; she had a husband. She nodded her head slowly with infinite meaning, and as if to interpret it there entered the room an extremely unattractive person, dirtier even than his dirty surroundings, who addressed her, or the younger woman, or perhaps me, in a flood of intemperate speech, of which I could not make out a single word. Nobody answered him, and he slouched out of the room again. "Is that your husband, madame?" She nodded her head slowly up and down, without speaking. I could see for myself. We talked about the little child, and her face lighted up. Presently the husband came in again, and expressed himself in his unrecognizable tongue with as much freedom and fervour as before. Again nobody took any notice of him, and again he went out. I don't know whether he was drunk or not, but am inclined now to think that he only wanted to be. I was sure that he was annoyed with me, for some reason, by the way he glared at me, and as I was a customer and prepared to pay for my entertainment it must either have been because I did not offer him any or because I was interfering with the hour of his own repast. I think it is likely that his bark, which was strident enough, was worse than his bite, that he was merely a ne'er-do-well with an unusual gift of self-expression, which had ceased to interest those about him. His wife took no steps to carry out whatever may have been his wishes at this particular juncture of circumstances, and her attitude of frozen grief, effective at the time, thawed enough to enable her to make a mild overcharge when I came to settle up. She gave me permission to take a photograph of the room and its occupants if I wished to do so, but I said that the light was not good enough, and came away. Now I changed my view for a different set of hills, and began to descend on roads that zigzagged more than ever. There was a good deal of quarrying going on. Great blocks of stone were lying by the roadside ready to be built up into the parapet, and presently I came upon a group of Italian workmen busy with their picks and crowbars. I don't know why, after all these years, the enormous work of protecting this old road should be taken in hand, but certainly there are places in it at which a fall over the edge can hardly be thought of without a shudder, and with the surface in the muddy state in which I found it a motor-car might easily skid with danger. At one place, if you stand where it rounds a point and look down to where it takes another slope, it looks just like a temperature chart, where the thermometer has taken a series of rises and drops and at last runs off steadily downwards. This long downward slope led me at last to welcome shade, and I found a little lawn under olive boughs, below the road and above a river gorge which was an ideal place for a siesta. If food and drink are so good when one is on the long steady tramp, sleep is no less so. There are those who scorn it except at night between sheets, but when one has made an early start, and has covered many miles by the time the sun has reached its greatest power, it is pleasant enough to sleep for an hour under the shade of a tree, and to wake up refreshed for what remains to be done of the day's journey. The sound of the river beneath me, and the birds singing all around, lulled me to sleep. But for this there was no sound, except a very rare noise of wheels, and once a motor-car, on the road above, to arouse me for a moment and to make the sinking back into sleep more blissful. The first time, on an expedition of this sort, that you take your pack for a pillow, mother earth for your bed and green leaves for your canopy, there is something that falls away from you of the troubles and irritations of the world. You are as near to nature as you are ever likely to be in this sophisticated age, and nature will smooth things out for you if you trust yourself to her. [Illustration: THE ROAD DOWNHILL "LOOKS JUST LIKE A TEMPERATURE CHART"] [Illustration: I "POSED" HIM AMONG THE RUINS _Page 20_] I dropped down to L'Escaréne, a picturesque old town with an ancient bridge straddling across the quick-flowing river. But before I reached it I was met by a man with a drum and several intoxicated youths carrying a flag, who cried "Vive la République" and "Vive l'armée," with the most patriotic fervour. I had begun my walk just at the time when the conscripts were being called up from their homes all over France, and lived in the thick of the concomitant disturbances during the next few days. These rather pathetic little processions of service-old boys, usually accompanied by middle-aged men more drunk than they were, trailing out of a town and back again, became a commonplace. They shouted at me frequently, but never rudely. I sat under a naked vine-trellis on a raised terrace outside an inn and drank wine. A talkative damsel, with needlework to occupy her hands, but nothing to keep her fine eyes from noting everything that happened in the _place_, for the observation of which this was a vantage-ground, kept me company. She explained to me, with much shrugging of shapely shoulders, some of the differences between the _patois_ used in this part of the country and the true French, but she disclaimed knowledge of Provençal. I was in Provence, but not yet among the true Provençals--unless I mistook her altogether, which is quite possible. She gave me excited and exhaustive instructions how to reach the hill town of Berre, where I had thought to spend the night. I had had a description of it from the engineer in whose company I had dined the evening before, and when I came within sight of it, perched on its rock summit, an hour or two later, its high walls and dominating church tower lit by the westering sun, it gave me a little thrill--it was so beautiful, and so just right. It was just right to look at from a distance, or for a walk through its narrow twisting alleys, part staircase, part passage, part drain. There is nothing more picturesque than these little rock-perched towns and villages that lie behind the Italian and French Rivieras. They are as untouched as anything in the way of congregated buildings can be in these days, and carry your imagination right back into the past. And I had thought that a night spent in some old inn in one of them would strengthen that touch of romance for me. But in Berre there was no inn such as I had pictured, where one would sleep in such a room as I had slept in the night before and awake to a glorious view as from some commanding tower. There were two _cafés_, and I penetrated one of them in search of dinner and a bed. Militarism was being celebrated with much consumption of fluid, and much singing and shouting, and the place was very dirty, and had that air of hard discomfort and newness which is the peculiar property of French _buvettes_ of the poorer sort. I was not sorry to be told that it was impossible for me to have a bed there. I think I could have got one by pressing for it, but I did not press. The romance of Berre was oozing out fast, and I still had in me the four miles or so that would take me to Contes, in the valley below. The revellers here were all men of middle age, or at any rate long past the age at which the new three years' service could affect them personally, but their enthusiasm for it was very great. One of them, who had detached himself from the rest while I had been making my enquiries and was reeling down the road waving a branch of mimosa and singing loudly, showed me the way to Contes; for I already knew better than to follow the road, which always approaches these high-perched villages in an over-deliberate fashion for pedestrians. He was very amiable about it, and I rather feared that he would offer to go with me. But he only came a little way, to where he could point me out a mule-track, and during our walk together I understood him to be persuading me, and possibly himself, that he was on the eve of gaining much military glory. But he was bald and pot-bellied, and I think that he was only touched by that noble and unselfish enthusiasm which takes patriotic men when there is question of other people doing their duty. Dusk was falling, and I went down stony paths between olive gardens, which are very peaceful and mysterious in twilight. I met some of the inhabitants of Berre mounting slowly to their little town after their day's work. Most of the women carried cut olive boughs on their heads, and some of the men drove asses laden with them. It was the time of pruning, and olive leaves are very acceptable to most animals as food. By and bye I had the track to myself, and sometimes lost it, but I did not much mind. I could see the lights of Contes below me, and whenever I found myself on a path that seemed to lead aside from them I took a straight line over the terraces till I found a more suitable one. I was rather tired, but rest and refreshment were not far off, and it was soothing to the spirit to walk in this odorous dusk, and in such quietness. It was quite dark by the time I came to Contes, and I was quite ready for my dinner. But I did not reach it for some time yet. When I had gone down long, steep, paved paths between walls to what seemed to be the heart of the town I had to go down much farther still until I thought I should never come to the end of things. But at last, there was the bottom of the hill, and an hotel, no less, with a garden in front of it. I sat down in the _café_, since, although a room was promised me, there was no suggestion of taking me to it, and at the moment I had no wish to mount stairs even for the sake of a wash. There are certain habits of civilization that are very easily dropped. One comes to the end of a day's march, and one's first desire is for rest, one's second for food and drink; and in these little inns this sequence of desire seems to be well understood. It seemed quite natural to exchange my heavy dusty boots for a pair of slippers out of my pack, sitting by the table, to pass at once to the consumption of wine, and as soon as might be to the consumption of food, without any further preparation. The wine was very good, with a slight tang that was almost a sparkle in it, and as I sat blissfully at rest with it the room was invaded first by a man with a drum, then by a man with a cornet, then by several more men with very loud voices. I was immediately whisked away by the youth who had received me, and who seemed to be in sole charge of the place, into another little room across a passage, where he presently served me with dinner, consisting of soup, an omelette, beef, potatoes and carrots, cheese, oranges, and biscuits, and another litre of the good wine. Soon after that he showed me a clean little room, in which I slept deeply, hardly disturbed by the voices of the _jour de fête_ beneath me, and was only once thoroughly awakened, at about one o'clock, by a great bustle of arrival in a room adjoining mine. The busy young man was still as active as possible at that hour, but he was quite ready to give me my coffee at six o'clock the next morning, at a little table in the garden. He had also thoroughly cleaned my boots, but before I left I heard him called a marauder for something or other he had omitted to do for the two gentlemen who had arrived in the night. For the whole of this entertainment I paid five francs and a half, and the helpful and willing young man explained that the charge was rather high because I had drunk two litres of wine. And so I came happily to my second day, in the bright spring sunshine. CHAPTER II _Flowers and Scents_ If you look at a map of this coast, before it begins to run south from Cagnes and Villeneuve, you will see that the hills stretch down to the sea like the fingers of a hand spread out, and the main roads run down between them. I should have preferred to keep away from the coast and cross the remaining ranges by tracks and footpaths, but I wanted to see a relative who lives at Nice. Otherwise I should never have gone near such a place, for which I was quite unsuited, both in spirit and attire. Contes is only fourteen miles or so from Nice by a good road, and I thought I might pay my visit, and in the afternoon get back into the hills again. But crowning the ridge opposite to the one I had come down the night before was the old deserted town of Châteauneuf, and in the soft early morning sunshine it looked so attractive that I thought I would go up to it, and walk down to Nice along the valley on the other side. It was a steep and stony climb. When I got a little way up I was already glad I had embarked upon it, for if I had gone down by the road I should have missed the glorious view I had looking back upon Contes, and upon Berre on its wooded height far above it. I saw now that Contes itself was a most picturesque little town on a hill of its own, crowned by the spire of its church, that its outlying houses ran straggling up the higher slope down which I had come, and that the inn at which I had slept was in another little group right at the bottom of the hill. It was not nearly so large as it had seemed to me in the dark, but it was wonderfully picturesque, from whatever shifting point of view I saw it. I sat for half an hour outside a little inn before I climbed the last steep slope to the ruins above me. They loomed big and massive, and I asked why the place had been deserted. Owing to lack of water, they told me, but there was still a woman who inhabited it with her children, and had some small "lands" to cultivate thereabouts. There were a few little pocket handkerchiefs of terraced soil among the lower ruined walls, and some tall cypresses growing among the scattered stones. But it was a scene of desolation when one went along what had been a street or lane of the village. The ruin was too far advanced to tell many stories, and only the glorious view, which embraced the sea to the south and all the great panorama of the hills and distant mountains elsewhere, made the reward of the climb. A ragged child came running towards me over the stones. I "posed" him among the ruins which were his habitation, and asked him questions about them, which he did not answer. I found his mother, with some smaller children, in a dwelling not so very uncomfortable, and she was pleasant with me, and said there was no lack of water at all in Châteauneuf, and it was a convenient enough place to live in, and cheap. There was not much to stay there for. The ragged child was instructed to take me to some grotto or other which his mother said was well worth seeing, and he did accompany me a few hundred yards on my way down the other side of the hill; but I saw nothing of any grotto, and presently he went back again. A depression of spirit came upon me as I walked down the road to Nice, which, however, was picturesque enough, passing for some distance through a narrow gorge with a foaming river running along the bottom of it. But there were people in carriages and motor-cars, and presently there were tram-lines and untidy-looking buildings such as always hang on to the skirts of a French town. I was coming into a sort of civilization that I wanted none of at that time. I cut short the approach by taking a tram, and I will say nothing more of Nice except that I spent the rest of the day and the night there. It took me a long time to get out of it the next morning, and in fact its atmosphere seemed to hang about me all day. I walked along the pavement of the interminable Promenade des Anglais, drank coffee at an _auberge_ somewhere at the end of it, and then took a tram to Cagnes, where they play golf. I must not be taken to throw scorn upon Nice because it did not happen to be the sort of place I wanted at that particular time. It is the chief of the pleasure cities of that sunny flowery coast, and was so when all the rest were mere fishing villages. It is bright and gay, and fronts its curving shore with a flaunting elaboration of architecture that spells wealth and luxury down to the smallest eccentric pavilion. And this wealth and luxury spreads its influence for miles around. It was evident in the little _café restaurant_ at which I rested early in the afternoon, which was just off the dusty high road to Grasse, and was continually passed by motor-cars speeding along in either direction. It was not a place at which any of them were ever likely to stop, but I was charged at least double prices for the mild refreshment that I took, and when I had paid for it was requested to leave as soon as possible, for the lady of the house wished to shut it up and go and wash at the fountain. I was sitting outside, and could only have carried off a chair and a table if I had been minded to carry off anything, but I was not to be allowed to sit there a little longer. She had got my money and wanted to see my back. I walked on, into the land of flowers--flowers grown not for their beauty but for their scent, and grown in terraced fields, just like any other crop. Grasse, the centre of the industry, draws supplies for its scents and soaps, pomades and oils, from miles of country around it, and I was getting near to Grasse. There were great plantations of roses, all carefully pruned and trained on low trellises, but not yet in flower. Sometimes the rows were interspersed with vines, and many of the fields were bordered with mulberries. There were ledges covered with the green foliage of violets, and great double heads of purple, scented bloom peeping out of it. There were fields of jasmine, of tuberoses; terraces of lavender, of lilies of the valley, carnations, mignonette; gardens of orange trees, grown more for their flowers than for their fruit; and of course groves of olives, of which the oil forms so important a part in the local manufactures. This day and the next day I walked for miles with the scent of flowers all about me. I climbed up to another Châteauneuf; there must be a round dozen of them in Provence alone, and they are all very old. This was another most picturesque hill town, and again I thought I might get a bed there. But I could get no such thing, and after sitting for half an hour on a terrace and enjoying the wide view I set out again as the sun sank behind the hills to walk to Grasse. I had come up by a wide sweeping road, and took a short cut down through the olive groves to where I thought I should strike it again. But my sense of direction, never very strong, failed me altogether, and I don't know where I might have wandered to if I had not frequently caught sight of the lights of Grasse in the distance. Presently I seemed to be going right away from them, but between me and them there was a deep valley, and I knew that the road which I ought to have taken, or found again, kept to the level on my right. So I turned, to round the slope of the hill which would take me on to it. I wandered for an hour up paths and down paths and along the edges of terraces where there were no paths, but keeping my face generally to the right quarter. The lights of Grasse shone more and more plainly between the tree-trunks, but were still a very long way off. Sometimes I came across little secluded farms, and in the garden of one of them a great stretch of yellow jonquil shone in the dusk like a square of sunshine left behind from the departed day, and its fragrance followed me for a long way. From another a dog barked and somewhat alarmed me, for dogs are not to be lightly regarded in this country. Later on I should have been more alarmed still, for reasons which will presently appear. But this dog did no more than bark savagely, and bye and bye, when it was quite dark, I came out onto the road, not so very far from Châteauneuf, round which I had walked almost in full circle. I was still four miles or so from Grasse, but had no wish to walk there if I could find my dinner and bed closer at hand, and just beyond where I had come out onto the road there was an inn, in which I got both. I think this place was called Pré du Lac, but am not sure. I dined in the _café_, which was so large as to take up nearly the whole of the ground floor. There was a billiard table in it, but it was in a corner and seemed to make small impression on the floor space. As I sat at my table against a wall, the people of the inn dined at another one, pushed up against an iron stove, and at such a distance from mine that we had to raise our voices in talking to one another. They were an interesting group, but I had some difficulty in making out their relationship. There was a woman at the head of things, bustling and voluble, who brought me one special dish, which she said was a _plat du pays_, and not given to every guest. I have forgotten all about it, except that it was good. There was a man with one eye who may have been her husband, but I think he was only a friend of the family. There was a married daughter, rather handsome, with a small child who went to sleep over his macaroni. These sat at the table. But there were besides, a son, who was to be off on his military service the next day, and a girl who may have been a younger daughter. She wore a boy's cloth cap and a black skirt, and looked very much like a Kentish hop-picker. These two hovered about the scene. There were also people coming in now and then, to bring something or to take something away, and they all stayed for a word or two before going out into the night, and slamming the door. One man, who had just cut his beard very short, or else had not shaved for a week, came to fill a bottle with wine. He stood for a minute or two by the table, talking loudly, and then made for the door, still talking. By the time he reached it he had found something to say that took him back to the table, where he stayed for another two or three minutes. Then he went to the door again, stood there as before, and came back. He did this six or seven times. He first came in as I finished my soup, and finally left us as I was peeling my orange, and I am quite sure that he pictured himself as having stopped just to say a word, and told his wife so when he got home with the wine for their meal. I watched them as they sat and stood there, talking vociferously, and frequently all at the same time, and thought how different they were from our northern peasantry. They live far better; the poorest of them have well-cooked food and wholesome natural wine as a matter of course. Their ideas flow more freely, and they take a great delight in imparting them. They are not so much under the domination of richer men. One could not, in England, walk through the country and drop down to the way of life of the peasantry without a conscious and possibly irksome process of self-adjustment--as irksome to them as to oneself. There one lives exactly as they do, and lives better than in most middle-class houses in England; and they will talk to you freely, and interest you. I went over and sat at their table, while the one-eyed man and the married daughter played a game of cards, which they explained to me but I did not understand, and offered me most fragrant coffee, from the stove at the lady's elbow. The _patronne_ came in, and gave me a liqueur glass of rum, which she said would be good for me. A handsome young man in the clothes of a plasterer came in and watched the card game, and another rather older man joined the circle, together with the son and the girl in the cloth cap, who had carried off the sleeping child and put him to bed. She was smoking a cigarette. I suggested that the rum should go round to my order, but only the _patronne_ herself, the one-eyed man and the young plasterer accepted it. The budding soldier would have done so, but his mother forbade him. The talk was of military service, as it had been throughout the evening. They all disliked the new three years' law, except the one-eyed man, who said that soldiering was all fun and no work, and you saw the world. But they cried out at him that he had never done military service, and he subsided and helped himself largely to counters out of the pool. They were all as genial as possible with me, looked at my map with interest, and suggested various places that I might visit. The conscript presently showed me up to my room, which was bare but clean, and asked me how many handkerchiefs I had with me. I thought it was rather a personal question, but showed them to him, and he deluged each one with a different scent. He said they were the best scents that could be obtained in or around Grasse, and they were certainly very strong. For some days thereafter my "essences turned the live air sick," and one of the handkerchiefs now, after several washings, retains a faint commemorative odour. But the attention I valued, though the scent I came to dislike extremely. They were nice people, all of them, though a little greedy, as next morning's settling up showed. But I was still on the high road between Nice and Grasse, and I suppose was fair game. The weather was still lovely as I set out early in the morning, and Grasse was a sight to see, with its towers and roofs lit up by the sun, as it stood on its dominating height over the wide valley, in which the light mists still lingered. I walked right through the town, but if I had not already seen something of the processes by which the scents from the miles of flowery fields through which I was passing are extracted and hoarded, I think I should have stayed to do so. For I am so constituted that every manufacturing process remains a complete and insoluble mystery to me until I have seen it, and yet arouses my curiosity and my willing interest. It was about this time of the year that I had visited one of the light, airy factories of Grasse. I remember a huge, scented mass of the heads of violets heaped up on a white sheet on one of the upstairs floors. It was half as high as I was, and smelt divinely. These were the only flowers in evidence, for the full harvest, when all the great space of this chamber would be covered with gathered blossoms, was not yet. But there were sacks of lavender there besides, and bundles of sweet-scented roots--orris, and patchouli, and _vétiver_--which can be turned into essences as sweet as those taken from the flowers themselves. I remember in other rooms boiling vats, very clean, and bright copper vessels, and great stills; and casks full of the fine grease which is used to catch and hold the distilled essences. It is spread on sheets of glass, framed in wood, like school slates, which are stacked in tiers; and other tiers hold the wooden trays for the flower-heads ready to be treated. And of course there were great stores of attractive flasks and bottles, all labelled and ribboned, and ready to take their places in the shops of Bond Street or the Rue de la Paix, and every other place where there is a market for them. There was a room, too, with machinery for turning out scented soap. You saw a soft fat pink deliciously-smelling roll squeezed out of a press, and in no time sections were cut off and stamped in another press into cakes ready for the toilet table. I must confess that I have only the dimmest idea now as to the actual details of the various processes by which the scent of the flowers is stoppered up into the aristocratic bottles, but I have seen it all done, and the impression remains on my mind that any scent that bears a label from Grasse does come from the flowers themselves, and with no adulteration that I could see anywhere. CHAPTER III _In Old Provence_ I now finally left behind me the cosmopolitan coast, and came into the true Provence. My objective was the old city of Aix, which lay almost due east, across country in which there are not many places standing out on the map as of any importance, but which seemed to me rather more attractive on that account. Once at Aix, one would be in the thick of it. Avignon, Nîmes, Arles, and a score of points of interest lie within a few miles of one another. When I reached this rich and crowded corner, the adventure of walking through unknown country would take second place. But at least as long as the weather held I wanted to be on foot, and in the country that lies apart from the main tourist routes. When I had passed beyond the sphere of the villas with their flowery gardens the road became rather lonely. The fields of blossom became rarer, but there were vines and olives everywhere. The earth was red, and looked rich, and the hills on either side of me took on all sorts of lovely shades of orange and purple and blue, as the light changed and shifted during the day. I could still see, when I turned round, some of the higher mountains from among which I had come, and the country did not sensibly change its character until I had crossed another pass later on in the day. I walked for some miles, hoping to come across an inn where I could get something to drink. I had had nothing since the bread and coffee of the early morning, and had walked straight through Grasse, only stopping to get my letters and buy some provisions. I believe that most people on the tramp find it enough to have one good meal at the end of the day. Some of them find it necessary to start with a stout breakfast, but that is hardly possible outside England, and for my part the coffee and roll of France or Switzerland carries me on very well for two or three hours, when I am ready for something more substantial. You need not trust to an inn for this second collation, and if you do they will only send out to get for you what you could have got for yourself, and charge you rather more for it. They quite understand your bringing your own _vivres_ with you, and eating them to the accompaniment of their wine. Even the wine you can buy and carry with you, but it is hardly necessary to do that as long as you are in a country where you can get it anywhere. You go to a _boulangerie_ and buy a crisp, newly baked loaf for a penny. Then you go to an _épicerie_ and buy cheese or sausage, or both; also oranges and chocolate to amuse yourself with at odd moments during the day. Here is food fit for the gods, and all you want is wine to wash it down with. My own preference is for a great deal of wine at such times, but there are some who may be content with water. I want water, too, and a great deal of that, and carry an aluminum folding cup with me, filling it almost anywhere without regard to possible germs. It may be dangerous in some places, and possibly so in Provence; but I have never taken any harm from it, there or anywhere. It was on this morning that I realized for the first time that it was not necessary to find an inn in order to find wine. Everybody makes wine in Provence and almost anybody will sell it to you. I got my litre at a blacksmith's; they brought me out a chair under a tree, and I ate and drank to the ring of the anvil. The wine cost fourpence halfpenny--I like to present these little sums in English money--and was drinkable, but no more. I was beginning to get rather tired of the ordinary red wine of the country, though I never drank white that was not good. But it is mostly red wine that the peasants make, and it is only occasionally that it is anything more than a mere beverage. That afternoon I came to a beautiful place. The road had been falling for some time, and at last entered a deep and narrow valley of verdant meadows through which flowed a very clear river. I had walked a long way, and it was very hot. The idea came to me to find a sheltered spot and bathe in these clear waters. Perhaps fortunately, there was an inn at the point at which the road crossed a bridge and doubled back on the other side of the gorge, and when I had refreshed myself there bathing did not seem such a reasonable undertaking. The river, though invitingly clear, was rapid, and must have been fed by snows not so very far away; and it was still early March, in spite of the hot sun. There were motor-cars in front of this inn, and a party had finished a late and from evidence a long _déjeuner_ at a table in the open. They were flushed with food and wine and other liquors, and chattered like parrots before they packed themselves into their cars and made off in the direction of the coast. I disliked them one and all, and felt vastly superior to them--a feeling which no doubt they also experienced towards me, if they took any notice of me at all. Their sensation of superiority would be based upon the fact that they were showing themselves in command of quite a lot of money, and would be heightened by the mild delirium that comes from over-feeding and being carried along swiftly in that state, with no call for bodily or mental effort. Mine arose from the pride of living frugally and feeling particularly well from having walked a good many miles and being ready to walk a good many more in about half an hour's time. I'm not sure, now that I have drawn the comparison, that the one feeling was any more laudable than the other. I crossed the bridge, which was called the Pont de la Saigne, and began the long ascent to the Colle Noire. When I had reached it the scenery began to show a change. I had left the high rugged hills behind me at last, and was dropping down into a fertile valley, which spread out into a plain. The hills, more rounded now, bounded this plain to the north, and were dotted at intervals with little towns that showed up picturesquely from a distance on their blue and purple slopes. I was making for one of them--Fayence, where I had been assured that I should find a good inn. It was still a long way off after a few hours' walk, and still hidden from me by an intervening hill, and I had walked quite far enough that day. I sat down on the coping of a bridge as the dusk began to steal over the fields and hills. It was a peaceful, soothing scene. An old shepherd came slowly towards me with his flock following him to their night's shelter. It was like a picture by Millet. There was not enough light for a photograph, but I took one of another shepherd with his flock later on. They watch their sheep as the Swiss watch their cattle in the mountain pastures, never leaving them alone; and I never saw a flock of sheep in Provence that numbered above thirty. When I had walked on a little farther I got a lift in a cart drawn by an old white horse that was jogging along my way. It was driven by a good-looking young man with a wonderful set of teeth and a pleasant smile. He was a sort of general carrier. He dropped a large bundle of what looked like washing at one cottage and a basket of provisions at another, and a man stopped him on the road to hand in a lantern for repair, and a woman at a railway crossing asked for medicine to be brought the next day. There was a little conversation on general topics at every stop, and the tongue was the true Provençal, which he told me they all talked among themselves, though most of them talked French as well. Provençal is soft and sweet. It is not difficult to make out its meaning in print if one knows some Latin and some French, but I never succeeded in catching more than the glimmer of an idea of what was being talked about. Of Provençal as a literary language there will be more to say later on. As we rounded the hill that had hidden Fayence, there came into view a castle with two towers that stood most imposingly on a summit overlooking the valley; but as we approached it turned out to be, not an ancient ruined keep as it had seemed in the dusk, but a not very ancient unfinished château of enormous proportions. It had been built so far, my friend informed me, by a General Fabre, or Favre, and, as I afterwards learnt, about the year 1836. I made up my mind to visit it the next day, for it showed up as a most lordly pleasure house, with terraced gardens commanding the great stretch of country between the range of hills on which it stood, and the mountains of the Estérel and the Maures towards the sea. Fayence lay just beyond it. My carrier was going on to Seillans, and dropped me at the foot of the hill, and I made my way slowly up a winding road to my night's shelter. I found a good inn where they gave me an excellent dinner and a delicious white wine. The dinner consisted of pea soup, a spit upon which was impaled alternate morsels of liver and bacon, a dish of little sausages with succulent cabbage, a dish founded on beef or mutton, I forget which, cream cheese, biscuits, oranges, and nuts, and the charge for this, including the wine, of which I drank a large quantity, was two francs. My bed, in a small clean room, was also two francs, and coffee and rolls the next morning fifty centimes. This comes to about three shillings and ninepence for a day's living, apart from what one consumes upon the road; and this was the chief hotel in a town of fifteen hundred inhabitants. Such hotels are common all over southern France, and easy enough to find in a town not too large or too small. They are not so well furnished or so comfortable as an English inn of the same class, but it would be rare indeed to find an English inn where the food would be so good. An evening meal would have to be ordered or cooked specially, and one would consider oneself charged moderately in a bill that came to no more than three times as much. In the bigger towns such hotels are more difficult to find, but they are there if one knows where to look for them, and has learnt exactly what to look for. In the smaller places to which tourists go, and there is no choice, the charges are considerably higher; but one can usually get a bath, which is an unknown luxury in the ordinary way of things. I wish very much that I had not left these wanderings on foot over foreign countries until middle age. I can imagine no more delightful experience for a young man, either alone or in company. If I could go back to undergraduate days, I would spend some part of every spring and summer vacation on foot in this way. Ready money is apt to be scarce at that happy age, but it need cost so little. My own experiences, for various reasons, are no particular guide, but Mr. Hilaire Belloc, who is pastmaster in the art of seeing fresh country, is worth quoting on the subject. He wrote to me when I asked him for advice before setting out on this expedition: "I think the thing is quite easy if one only remembers that the conditions, upon the Western Continent at least, that is, in France, Italy and Spain, are so different from those in England that no one asks questions and no one dreams of interfering with one's liberty. The rule is as simple as possible. Any inn whatsoever in France and almost any inn north of Naples in Italy gives you a tolerable bed, and on entering it you ask the price of a room and of coffee the next morning. They are accustomed to the process and bargain with you. I have been to dozens of places where I was charged no more than a franc. "For your mid-day meal you will be wise to carry a leather bottle which the French call a _Gourde_ and the Spaniards a _Bota_, holding wine, which again you must have filled in shops where wine is sold retail. You will again do well to ask before it is filled at what price the wine is sold. I have carried a half-gallon _gourde_ of this kind over many journeys. It is slung from the shoulders by a strap and is purchasable in all the mountain countries. Bread is purchasable everywhere, and that kind of sausage which the French call by various names, which the Spaniards call 'Salpicon' and the Italians 'Salami' is common to all countries and is with cheese the accompaniment of the meal. Your night meal you must make the principal meal of the day, and if you wish to save money eat it at some place different from the place where you sleep. Thus accoutred you can live indefinitely at a rate of five francs a day and see all that there is to be seen. Always carry upon your person in such countries one good 'piece,' as they call it, for identification, the best of which is a passport issued by the British authorities wherever you are. Be careful to have it _viséd_ by the consul of the countries where you are to travel. It is the _visa_ that counts more than the passport. For instance, if you are starting from Switzerland get such a document _viséd_ by the consul in some principal towns of France, Italy and Spain, then you have nothing to fear. "Remember that telegrams or letters sent to you at one place _poste restante_ do not tie you to going to that place. You have but to send a message to the post office to have them forwarded to another, and it will be done. But you cannot get your letters, still less your registered letters, at a _poste restante_ without some such 'piece' as I mentioned. "It is a good rule not to carry personal luggage except in the smallest amount in your sack, and to buy things as you need them. It is cheaper in the long run." Now five francs a day is not quite thirty shillings a week, and for the price of a few days' revel "in town" an enterprising youngster might spend a fortnight walking through almost any beautiful stretch of country in nearer Europe, including his journey there and back to England. However it may have been in the past, it is now possible to travel third class on the Continent in no more discomfort than in England, and indeed in the holiday season third class is apt to be a good deal less crowded than second, on the fast trains in which third-class passengers are carried. They are not carried, of course, in all trains; but where the saving of shillings is an object it is no particular hardship to spend a few hours more on the way, and unless the journey is a very long one the time lost is small and the money saved considerable. The burden to be carried is a more debatable matter. Mr. Belloc's advice is worth a good deal more than mine, but his early training in arms must have used him to a less fearful regard of discomfort than is possible with most of us. The less you carry the easier your walking will be, and I would never hamper myself with any protection against rain. Unless you can keep your legs as well as your body protected you must occasionally expect to be under the necessity of having something dried before a fire, and while you are about it you may as well go to bed and have everything dried. But I should not care to be without a spare shirt, at least one pair of spare socks, and a pair of light felt slippers, and with other small necessaries for comfort and a reasonable degree of cleanliness this already makes up a fair weight. Let every one choose for himself. My experience is that one very quickly gets used to a moderate pack strapped upon one's shoulders, and hardly notices it, except for a time after one may have taken a day off and walked about carrying nothing. I took a day off at Fayence. It was Sunday, although I had no idea of it until well on into the morning. I came down at about half past seven, and found that the three _commis voyageurs_ in whose company I had dined the night before had already finished their breakfast and gone out; but two of them came in again as I was finishing mine, and transacted serious business with some townspeople whom they brought with them. They keep early hours in France. I walked up to the top of the hill upon which the town is built, and found an old and very solid tower with a clock in its face and a bell in a cage of wrought iron on the top of it. The clock had a date on it--1908--and I took some little trouble to discover whether it could be seen from any part of the town except by climbing up to it as I had done. I found that it could not. Then I made my way to the Château du Puy. I approached it along a sort of drive, and stood in a doorway looking down three stories deep into the stone-built husks of enormous rooms, and up into three or four stories more. There was a series of great halls, one above the other, in the main part of the building, and many rooms opening out of them in both wings, which were carried up into imposing towers; and there were lateral extensions besides. The house seemed to have been designed for the accommodation of a regiment rather than one solitary general. The gardens to the south of it were on a level two stories lower, and the gate to them was locked; but by a little scrambling I reached them. The terraces had been laid out on a grand scale, and gardening had been begun at some date or other. There were overgrown beds of iris getting ready to flower, and in one corner a _pièce d'eau_, without which no French garden is complete. A tall palm grew in one corner, and there were fig-trees and bushes of hibiscus. In an extension of the main building there were signs of habitation, and an orange-tree bright with fruit grew in the middle of a chicken-run. Olives and almonds had been planted where the ordered garden should have been, and most of the ground had been made use of. I had been able to get no information about the building of this great pile; the tradition seemed to have departed. I do not know whether it had been stopped by the death of the owner, or, as seems not improbable, by a lack of money to go on. I imagined him, as I sat and smoked in the deserted garden, as having thought continually of this glorious site in his native country, and coming back to it when his fighting was done to build himself the finest house for many miles around. I think he must have enjoyed himself enormously while it was in the building, but not without some doubts as to the way in which it was to be lived in when it should at last be finished. [Illustration: A PROVENÇAL SHEPHERD _Page 36_] [Illustration: FAYENCE COULD BE SEEN ON ITS OWN HILLSIDE _Page 45_] [Illustration: HOW THEY PRUNE THE PLANE-TREES _Page 50_] [Illustration: THE DOLMEN NEAR DRAGUIGAN _Page 53_] His site must have given him continual pleasure. From his terraced garden the wide fertile plain was spread out before him, in front and on either side. As I saw it, it was all browns and greens, threaded with white roads, and punctuated by dark cypress spires. Miles away it was bounded by pine-clad mountain slopes, beyond which lay the sea. At the back of the house the little town of Tourettes showed its huddle of old roofs and walls a mile away, and behind it the hills rose until snow could be seen on distant summits. From the little side garden with the fish pond, Fayence could be seen on its own hillside, and a range of blue and purple hills beyond it. The sun came out as I sat there, and the shadows of clouds played all over the beautiful scene. It was the true Provence, which gets into the blood of those who are born in it, and makes them think that no country in the world is fairer. I walked back to the town and went into the church, a large eighteenth century structure of some dignity, with an unornamented tower that looks much older. The curé came in as I was looking about me. He was as handsome and dignified as his church, with his white hair and portly presence, and reminded me of Parson Irvine in "Adam Bede." He was inclined to deprecate my admiration of his church. It was large, yes, not particularly fine, he thought. But I was judging by other standards. A church as large as this would hardly have been built in England in the eighteenth century for a thriving town; for one of the size of Fayence the idea of it would have been laughed at. It would hardly have been built in Fayence a few years later. When I had gone out on to the little _place_ in front of it, where there were busy market stalls under a row of giant planes, and a view past the Château du Puy to the rich plain and the mountains beyond it, I went back into the church and watched the congregation arrive for Mass. It was not until then that I made it out to be Sunday. One enjoys a blessed disregard of the calendar on such expeditions as mine, walking on from day to day. Women and children--they filled about a quarter of the seats provided, and these filled hardly more than half the church. There were two old men besides, and one middle-aged one, who came in with his family with an air of importance. The rest of the male population of Fayence was buying and selling outside in the market, or in the shops, or talking together on the terrace steps above the _place_, or in the _cafés_, or walking up and down the steep streets. In the late afternoon I walked over to Seillans, and saw the populace of that town enjoying themselves on a fine promenade that they have on the edge of their hill. It is planted with the ubiquitous shady plane, and overlooks the magnificent view to the south. A good many of the men were playing their game of _boule_, which needs only a few yards of hard ground, and some wooden balls about the size of a cricket ball, studded closely with nails. They throw a "jack" about fifteen or twenty yards and then follow closely the rules of our game of bowls. But they throw the ball with the back of the hand up, and give it a spin which makes it run on after it has fallen. When all of them do no more than this the game is dull enough, at least to watch, although the inequalities of the ground give it some interest to the players. But the good players will aim at coming right down upon an adversary's ball and punching it away out of danger. They bend down very low with the right leg curiously crooked, and then run forward fast and spin the ball in the air. It looks a most difficult shot, but I saw it brought off many times by these players at Seillans. CHAPTER IV _Draguignan and Saint-Maximin_ Early on Monday morning I set out to walk to Draguignan, which lay on the other side of a range of hills to the southwest, at a distance of about twenty-two miles. I kept to the high road all the way, but did not pass a single village, although the land was cultivated almost everywhere, with olives, vines, mulberries and cereals. The only episode of a rather dull walk that remains in my memory is a chat with a very stout proprietor of vineyards, who sold me a litre of his _bon vin_ for fourpence. He said that his wine was very wholesome, and I had no fault to find with any of its qualities, except possibly that of taste. He talked to me about Mistral, the poet. He had seen him, and said he was a very great man; but he did not seem to have read his poems. There was to be a big Provençal _fête_ at Draguignan in May, and Mistral would be there, as gay as any of them, in spite of his eighty-four years. But alas! Mistral's death was to move all this country for which he had done so much in little more than a week from that time. It was on that day that the wind, from which the poet's family took its name, and which so vexes the plains of Provence, began to blow. I did not recognize it at first. The sun still shone brightly in a blue sky, and I was rather glad of the strong clean wind that cooled me as I walked. There is something about the name _mistral_ that had seemed to me to connote an unhealthful fever-bringing air. I suppose I had unconsciously connected it with the word "malarial." But the _mistral_ of Provence is the _magistral_, the great master-wind from the north or the north-east, which rushes down from the Alps and Cevennes to replace the hot air that rises from the sun-baked plains in the great Rhône delta. It is like our east wind, keen and strong, and seems to deprive the air of all moisture, and to make even a cloudless sky look cold. I first saw Draguignan some four miles away, as I rounded the shoulder of a hill. It is the capital of the Department of Var, having replaced Toulon, which now has more than ten times its population, at the end of the eighteenth century. Baedeker describes it as an _assez belle ville_, but it was not _assez belle_ for me. I thought it the dullest possible sort of town, although there were picturesque "bits" in the streets of the older quarter. The first thing that struck the eye as I neared it was an enormous range of new barracks, with a huge barrack square. The bugles were blowing gaily, and when I came to the town it was alive with soldiers in dirty white, with dark-blue waist sashes, puttees and tam-o'-shanters. As I walked up the narrow streets of the old town into the untidy-looking newer part, I could not help comparing it with another French military city that I had visited some months before. This was Besançon, the brightest, cleanest, pleasantest large town that I have seen in the whole of France, and I have seen a good many. Perhaps it was hardly fair to compare the two, for I was in Besançon on a fine mellow September day, and Draguignan must have been about at its worst, with the _mistral_ tearing along its streets, filling the eyes with dust and making the pavements look as if all the waste paper and light rubbish of the town were habitually thrown on to them. And they were pruning the plane-trees. No one who has not visited the south of France when this operation is going on can form any idea of what it means. These trees are planted everywhere, and in summer give a most welcome shade to the hot streets and the wide squares of the bigger towns. They grow to an immense girth, and those in Draguignan were especially fine. The way they prune them, from the very first time of their planting, shows that they know very well what they are about, for they get a wide spread of branch and an even and impenetrable roof of green. The trees are never allowed to get out of hand, and are kept at school when they have passed the span of the longest human life. With ladders and saws and ropes they remove great branches with as little concern as one cuts into a rose-bush. The reward comes in the summer, but an avenue or a "square" of these trees in March, when the saws have been at work upon them, is a desolating sight. Those that I photographed the next morning are umbrageous compared with some. I have seen far bigger planes than these kept to three branches, each as big as a good-sized tree. I read in the official Directory of the Department of Var that towards the end of the fifth century the town was infested by an enormous dragon (symbol of heresy). The inhabitants had recourse to St. Hermentaire, Bishop of Antibes, who delivered them from the monster. To perpetuate the memory of this happy disencumbrance the town changed its ancient name of Griminum to that of Dragonia, from which has come Draguignan. And St. Hermentaire has been regarded with affection in the locality ever since, though his name is little known outside of it. I had been recommended by my friends among the _commis voyageurs_ at Fayence to an hotel of the right sort. I should certainly have passed it by but for that, for it seemed to be nothing but a large restaurant, not of the first order nor even of the second, and there was nothing to show that it had much accommodation elsewhere. But when I asked for a bedroom, and suggested two francs for it instead of two and a half, I was introduced to a noble apartment, which reminded me of the pictures one sees in the illustrated papers, when His Majesty the King is put up for a few days at an Embassy abroad. It was very large, and the furniture was old, and some of it handsome, especially the bed, which had more in the way of canopy and curtains than I am accustomed to. The lady of the house told me afterwards that she kept a shop of antiquities in the town, which accounted for some of the unusual splendour. I felt ashamed at paying no more than one and eightpence for the privilege of sleeping in such a room. The dinner was the same price, and included a bottle of white wine that was worth thinking about as one drank it. A good many men came in to dine, at any time between half past seven and half past eight. Very few of them looked to be above the rank of a workman, and all of them kept on their hats as they ate. They sat in groups at different tables, and enjoyed themselves in much the same way as men do in a club in London. Probably they paid even less for the same dinner than I did, and I hope their wives had as good a one at home. The _mistral_ blew as keenly as ever the next morning, and I determined to cut off a bit of the distance by train. I wanted to get to some of the interesting places, which are nearly all in the west of Provence. It was a two days' march to Saint-Maximin, where there is a noble church, but I thought I would sleep there that night. The train did not start until half past nine. I had time to walk out a few miles on the other side of Draguignan to see a famous dolmen, the only remains of prehistoric life to be found in this immediate region. It was a curious well-preserved structure, hard by a little farmhouse just off the road. I paid a youth who said he was the proprietor fifty centimes for the privilege of looking at it, but thought his demand for a further two francs because I had photographed it unreasonable. He blustered, but made no effort to detain me as I walked off the field with the two francs in my pocket instead of his. I had already been asked once or twice if I was travelling for the purpose of taking picture postcards, and probably that was his idea. But he was a potential robber all the same, and I doubt if he was the proprietor at all. I wish I had thought of threatening him with St. Hermentaire. It took three hours to cover the thirty miles to Barjols, where I took the road again at half past twelve. Barjols is quite out of the beaten track, although this pottering little line, which eventually reaches Arles, passes near it. As I walked through a very wide _place_ I stopped to ask a group of school children playing marbles which was my route. At the sound of my voice they scattered away with every sign of alarm, and I laughed at them and went on, with my vanity rather wounded at being regarded as an object of terror. When I had gone a mile down the hill I met a man in his best clothes reading a newspaper. I had seen the start of a funeral procession in Barjols, and I supposed him to have the intention of joining it at his own convenience. He asked me where I was going, and told me I could cut off four kilometres if I followed the route he would describe to me. He took immense trouble about it, and it was a kindly thought, but I wished afterward that he had not had it, although I found his interest in me soothing after having so lately been run away from. I left the road bye and bye and followed the path that he had indicated, but, as generally happens in such circumstances, it soon ceased to be a path at all, and I found myself wandering among the hills with a very small idea of where I was on the map. There was frequent cultivation, but very few signs of habitation, and I saw no living soul until I struck the high road again more than two hours later. It was not the high road I had expected, and left me about eleven miles to do out of what would have been a total of fifteen if my adviser had been punctual at the funeral. The road to Saint-Maximin was quite straight for the last three miles, and I saw the long line of the great church standing high above the roofs of the town from far away. I approached Saint-Maximin with an agreeable sense of anticipation. The learned M. Rostan considers that its church shows the fairest page of Gothic art in the South, and to be the only religious monument of real architectural importance in Provence. This is perhaps extravagant praise, but it was at any rate the first big thing of its kind that I was to see. I had surveyed the country at large for a week, and was ready for a different sort of interest, especially as the _mistral_ had blown steadily all day long and walking was beginning to lose the edge of its rapture. It is not only the architectural beauties of this noble church that give it its interest. It is its connection with a tradition that has left its marks all over Provence, and in past centuries has met with such universal acceptance that it is small wonder that innumerable people firmly believe in it to this day. Saint-Maximin was the first place to which I came that had to do with it. I read about it that evening sitting before a wood fire in a room more comfortable than is to be found in most French inns. I had come in to Saint-Maximin as dusk was beginning to fall and had gone straight to the church. But it was closed for the night. All I saw was the disappointing west front, which has never been finished. So I betook me to the hotel. Saint-Maximin is a town of small importance in the present day, but it contains a good one, something like an old English coaching inn, both in appearance and custom. It was a pleasant change to dine in a medium-sized parlour instead of a large bare _café_, and to find a fire in it; for the _mistral_ had blown away all the warmth in the air and was blowing still. Possibly it was from this inn that Lucien Bonaparte married his first wife, who was the daughter of an _aubergiste_ of Saint-Maximin, where at the age of twenty-one he administered the military provisions of the Revolutionary army. The Revolutionists, disliking any name inclusive of Saint, called the town Marathon, but it reverted later. So I sat very late before the fire and read about Saint-Maximin and about the legend of the three Marys. It must have been after ten o'clock when I took my candle and went up to bed. Here is the story, adapted from the learned M. Rostan, who made a life study of the antiquities of Provence and especially of Saint-Maximin, and whose memory is deservedly held in honour throughout the country. After the death of Jesus Christ and his divine resurrection, the Jews, alarmed by the rapid progress made by the new faith in Jerusalem, began a terrible persecution, for which the martyrdom of St. Stephen was, so to speak, the signal. They threw into a boat, without sails, oars or rudder, the following saints: Mary Magdalene,[4] Lazarus and Martha with their servant Marcelle, Sidonius, the man who was born blind, Maximin, one of the seventy-two disciples, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary the wife of Zebedee, also called Salome, and several others, including Sarah the black servant of these last two Marys, Trophimus, and Joseph of Arimathea. (The list extended itself as the legend grew, for it almost certainly began with three only, as we shall see later. But M. Rostan includes most of the above.) The illustrious confessors were exposed to what seemed a certain and horrible death, but the sacred barque, far from being overwhelmed by the waves, floated in a calm that spread immediately around it, and protected by the mercy of Providence on its long and perilous voyage, touched at last the shores of Provence at the mouth of the Rhône, at the place now called Saintes-Maries, or Notre Dame de la Mer. Mary the mother of James the Less, and Salome stayed in that place with their black servant Sarah. The other holy men and women spread themselves over different parts of the country and diligently preached their religion. St. Maximin went to Aix, of which he was the first bishop, St. Martha to Tarascon, which she delivered from the ravages of a horrible monster, St. Lazarus and St. Mary Magdalene to Marseilles. Now although the church and town of Saint-Maximin bear the name of that illustrious saint their chief glory is of a still greater. St. Mary Magdalene made herself celebrated at Marseilles, then one of the chief cities of the world, by her preaching. After having made numerous converts and performed striking miracles, she went to Aix, where she was named in the charter of the Church of St. Saviour as co-founder with the bishop, St. Maximin. After some years she formed a wish to take refuge from the eyes of the world, and betook herself to the heart of the mysterious mountain forest now called Sainte-Baume, because of the cave in which she passed the last thirty years of her life in the practice of the most austere penitence. Seven times a day angels came to her in this wild retreat and exalted her to the summit of the mountain, so that her ears might be ravished by the celestial harmonies. As her last moments approached they transported her some distance from Sainte-Baume near to an obscure spot in which St. Maximin was then in retreat. She received the last sacraments at his hands, and a few days later breathed her last sigh, leaving behind her, says the Golden Legend, "an odour so sweet that the oratory was perfumed by it for seven days." Her mortal remains were reverently interred, and her tomb became thenceforward an object of remarkable devotion. Shortly afterwards the holy Prelate himself, with others of the blessed saints, was buried at her side, and above these sacred remains arose a church that became from that time a place of pilgrimage and deep veneration. It is unfortunate that the invasions of the Saracens in the eighth century should have made it impossible to produce documentary evidence of any of this earlier than that date, for those barbarians devastated everything. Seven or eight hundred years is a big gap to cover, and when we begin to look into profane history the gap becomes much bigger; for the legend cannot be traced earlier than the translation of the relics of St. Trophimus in the twelfth century, and did not receive general acceptance until three hundred years later still. But since that time it has exercised an immense power upon the imagination of Christendom. M. Rostan, who was an antiquarian of note, believed in it. He summons in evidence the stones of Saint-Maximin itself. In 1859, when the church was undergoing restoration, he examined a brick-built tomb which was incontestably of the date of the early Christian era, and "might well be the primitive burial-place of one of the holy personages venerated on this spot." It is true that the tomb was empty, but the sacred relics are stated to have been removed after the persecutions of the fifth century into the sarcophagi which are there to this day. The walls of the crypt also, exposed in course of further restoration thirty years ago, convinced M. Rostan, who saw them uncovered, that this was "the veritable Cubiculum, the sepulchral chamber of St. Magdalene, not only in its plan and dimensions, but in its still living reality, as it existed when the celebrated penitent was buried there, and where they placed her sarcophagus in the fourth or fifth century after the triumph of the Church. The vaulting alone is not the same." Out of all of which the sceptic may at least accept the fact, interesting enough, that the crypt as it stands is of the date at which St. Mary Magdalene probably died. When the Saracens were burning all the churches, and scattering all the sacred relics that they could lay hands upon, the Cassianite monks who had been in charge of these peculiarly holy ones for three hundred years, filled the crypt of their church with earth so as to hide it, and for further precaution moved the bones of St. Mary Magdalene from their tomb in the place of honour into that previously occupied by those of Sidonius, where they remained for five hundred years. So far, then, we have in evidence the tradition of the landing of this company of saints on the shores of Provence and their subsequent missions, not from St. Maximin alone, but also from Aix, Marseilles, Tarascon and Saintes-Maries, in each of which places are monuments to their glory. We have also the evidence of a burial-place of the first century which was an object of veneration at that time and remained so thereafter. It is true that during the epoch of the Crusades the magnificent church of Vezelay in Burgundy, in which Bernard of Clairvaux preached and Richard Coeur de Lion took the vows, attracted to itself great honour by its claim to possess the true relics of St. Mary Magdalene. But M. Rostan points out that this belief on the part of Vezelay, so far from being in flagrant contradiction to the Provençal tradition, confirms it; for the monks of the Abbey of Vezelay attributed the possession of these sacred relics to the piety of their founder, Gérard de Roussillon, who was Count and Governor of Provence under the Emperor Lothair. "But as the body of St. Magdalene had not been visible at Saint Maximin for a long time, and the precise spot in which it was hidden was not known, the statement of Vezelay was believed, and conferred great celebrity upon it as a place of pilgrimage, until the moment when it entered the designs of Providence to clear up the mystery that enveloped the tomb of the glorious saint and dispel all uncertainty upon the subject of her relics." The instrument of this discovery was the Prince of Salerno, known later as Charles II, King of Sicily and Count of Provence, who was the son of Charles of Anjou, the belligerent brother of St. Louis. It was in 1279. While Charles I was fighting in Italy, his son, then at Aix, moved by a great devotion towards St. Mary Magdalene and a lively desire to recover her relics, betook himself to Saint-Maximin in order to have excavations made beneath the pavement of the church. He put himself at the head of the workers, and on the ninth day of September had the singular happiness of uncovering the ancient sarcophagus which held the venerated body. Restraining the zeal of his assistants the prince put his seal on the tomb, and at once summoned a convocation of prelates to witness the exhumation of the sacred bones, which took place on the eighteenth day of the same month. In the dust of the tomb was discovered a box of cork enclosing an inscription on parchment or papyrus, which, translated from the Latin, runs thus: "In the year of our Lord 716, in the month of December, very secretly in the night, when the most pious Odo was king of the French, at the time of the invasion of the perfidious nation of the Saracens, this body of the most dear and revered Mary Magdalene was translated from its own tomb of alabaster into this one of marble, out of fear of the said perfidious nation of the Saracens, because it is more secret here, the body of Sidonius having been removed." Contemporary historians unanimously report the miraculous circumstances that accompanied the discovery. All make mention of the delicious odour that came from the sarcophagus when it was opened. They tell, too, how a verdant plant of fennel grew from the tongue of the blessed penitent, whose body had not yet known corruption. The _noli me tangere_, the spot on the forehead which the Saviour had touched, was in a perfect state of preservation. Among the eminent churchmen who vouched for the miraculous events that surrounded the disinternment was the Cardinal de Cabassoles, Petrarch's friend, whose country retreat at Vaucluse we shall visit later. Prince Charles caused a magnificent reliquary to be made at Aix to hold the head of the saint. It was of silver gilt, in the form of a hollow bust, into which the skull was fitted. The face and the hair were of gold, and it was surmounted by a gold crown set with precious stones. In the next year Prince Charles was taken prisoner by Peter of Aragon, and shut up in Barcelona for four years. He attributed his deliverance and the restoration of his kingdom--his father having died in the meantime--to the influence of St. Mary Magdalene, and set in hand the building of a church at Saint-Maximin which should be more worthy of the holy relics it contained. But it was not until more than two hundred years later that it was finished. Charles carried to Rome the sacred head, to offer it for the veneration of the Pope, Boniface VIII. We are not told how it had come about, but the head had been discovered deprived of the lower maxillary. The Pope knew that a relic of this sort was honoured at the church of St. John Lateran in connection with St. Mary Magdalene. It was found to fit perfectly, and the Pope presented it to the King, who did not keep it with the greater part of the head, possibly because the magnificent reliquary would have had to be altered to receive it, but presented it in his turn to the nuns of Notre Dame de Nazareth at Aix. There it remained, until the amiable King René, who has left such a pleasant memory of himself in Provence, finally restored it to Saint-Maximin. During all the two hundred and forty years that the great church was in the building the precious relics that it enshrined attracted pilgrims without number. Six Popes visited them, to say nothing of two anti-Popes; in one year alone five kings bowed before the shrine; royalties came from as far off as Sweden; the unfortunate Albigenses, after they had "abjured their errors," were compelled to make pilgrimage to it; and finally Louis XIV, with his mother, Anne of Austria, his brother, afterwards Duke of Orleans, and a numerous and splendid following, bent his knee at the sacred tomb, and assisted in the translation of the relics into a magnificent receptacle of porphyry. These relics would not, of course, include the head. Some vertebræ were offered to the Queen, who accepted them with gratitude. The sacred bones were examined by the King's head physician, and immediately placed in a case of lead covered with gold brocade, upon which the King placed his seal in six places. It was carried the next day in procession, and the church was filled with people, who shed tears of joy to see renewed in their own day "a devotion so holy and august in the presence of a king and queen so pious and devout." During all these years, however, the relics had not been preserved without vicissitude or diminution. Under the Queen Jeanne, Provence was overrun by brigands, and for three years they were hidden at Sainte-Baume. King René gave part of the lower arm to the nuns who had the lower jaw. In 1505 a Neapolitan monk robbed the reliquary of its jewels, and was caught and hanged. After this mutilation a new reliquary was presented by the Queen of France, Anne of Brittany, as splendid as the old one, and a statuette of herself was added to it in enamelled gold. Louis XIII asked for some fragments of the body, and was refused. Four years later he asked again, on behalf of the Queens Mary of Medici and Anne of Austria, and was more successful, obtaining also a fragment to be presented to the Sovereign Pontiff. In 1639 a portion of the much venerated _noli me tangere_ was stolen from the head, and, whether it is the same or not, a minute particle of the _noli me tangere_ is cherished in the church of Mane, in the Basses-Alps. In 1781 Louis XVI ordered a thigh bone to be detached and presented to the Duke of Parma, which was done. We have followed the story for nearly eighteen hundred years, and now comes the Revolution, which wrought more havoc than all the successive disturbances that had taken place before it. The church was spoiled and the sacred relics profaned. The porphyry urn was violated, and the documents it contained burnt. The glorious remains of the saint were thrown pell-mell on the pavement, the head was torn from its gold case, and the other bones from their reliquaries. But the piety of the sacristan preserved the chief glory of the church, which was restored to it five years later. The head, a bone from one of the arms, some locks of hair, together with the reliquary of the Holy Ampulla, and sundry fragments of the bodies of other saints were received back when the storm had passed over, and there the bulk of them remain to this day. CHAPTER V _The Church of Saint-Maximin_ So persuasive was M. Rostan that when I had read his account of all this, sitting in front of the fire at my inn, within a stone's throw of the great church that had been the scene of so many strange and moving happenings, it is small wonder that I was inclined to believe at least a good half of it. It was my first introduction to the legend, which was to colour so much of my future wanderings, and many of the facts that I have given were unknown to me then. I thought, at least, that the main facts vouching for its truth went much farther back than they seem to, and if it was difficult to accept quite that galaxy of New Testament names, or the story of the miraculous voyage, still I thought there might be some truth in the tradition as attaching to some of them. What emerges as indisputable fact, and what moved me at the time, is that through some centuries countless people did believe in every word of it, and thronged this little town where I was resting from all parts of the then known world. And there in the church which I was to see on the morrow was--no doubt about this either--the very thing that had brought them here--princes and prelates, hard soldiers and lawyers, men and women of every degree, making journeys, some of them, of immense difficulty just for the sake of beholding what I or any other traveller coming into a dull little town could see for a few sous before passing on our way. Or would not even take the trouble to see. A man with whom I had talked at dinner came to Saint-Maximin several times in the year and had never seen it. He was '_bon Catholique_,' too, and said that there was no doubt at all that it was the head of St. Mary Magdalene they had in the church there. Some day he would go and see it, but not to-morrow, for he was too busy. You may put your finger on strange gaps in such a story; you may find the first foundations upon which it rests too weak to bear it; parts of it you may refuse altogether to believe. But make what deductions you wish, and what a lot remains. _Some_ poor tired body was laid to rest in the soil from which this great church has sprung at a time when there were still alive those who had walked and talked with Our Lord; and it was the body of one who was venerated. Out of the dusk of successive centuries come gleams of light that show innumerable people, who differed not so greatly from ourselves, believing that the remains they had knowledge of were those that their forbears had held in honour from the beginning. It becomes hardly more difficult to believe that they were than that they were not. Say that there has been error, say that there has been fraud if you like, and what have you denied? Nothing in the way of strong and moving power over those who have believed. There is the church, to which men whose names stand out in history made successive gifts through two centuries and a half, until it stood the splendid monument that it is today. There is the dust that countless pilgrims' feet have trodden for two centuries past. There is the echo of prayers and hymns, sighs from burdened hearts and praise from lightened ones that have gone up through ages from this place. The Revolution, which was to sweep away all error and superstition, might despise these sanctities, and scatter the venerated human dust, but it could not destroy the least particle of the faith that had been. It did not move the iconoclasts, but it had moved the world, and its effects remain in spite of them. The wind had blown itself out the next morning and the air was cold, but sunny and still, as I paid my early visit to the church. Its beauty is compelling, and when I had walked round it I sat down and tried to find out for myself in what it consists. The first impression is one of austere simplicity. There are a nave and two aisles, with chapels, no transepts, and except for the Renaissance work about the choir and the altar, and the fine pulpit, scarcely any decoration. Rows of clustered pillars carry arches between the nave and the aisles; and between the arches spring from the floor itself successive groups of three very slender pillars, like rods of stone attached to the wall, which run up uninterrupted far above the arcading, until from a simple moulding spring the delicate ribs of the vaulting, all as light as if it were a roof of leaves held up by slim tree-trunks. The sense of lightness is wonderful, gained as it is without the slightest disguise of the solid masonry, by sculpture or other suggestion; and the wonder increases when one remembers that this is not the work of one architectural genius, but the flower of many successive periods of building. It is clean and strong and beautiful, a church with a true religious significance. The choir contains some very fine wood-carving and metal-work of the seventeenth century, and above the gilt and jasper of the high altar is a rich device of almost life-size angels and cherubs, surrounding and enclosing a little oval window on which the Holy Dove is emblazoned. The morning sun, shining through this window, made a striking effect, though it is perhaps at variance with the pure dignity of the church itself. The celestial figures are wrought with a gay and delightful luxuriance of imagination. They overflow from the main composition with its sweep and spread of angels' wings; delicious cherubic forms perch on the marble of the reredos, on the carved frames of the medallions which it encloses, on the rich screens of the choir itself; and each of them has its own attitude of devotion, or interest, or expectation, or even curiosity.[5] The inspiration of the Gothic had begun to die away when the fabric of the church had come near to completion. We may perhaps be thankful that it was never quite finished, for it has such perfection of life as it stands: life that sprang from an impulse lasting through centuries. No such impulse exists now. It is safe to say that the most understanding and sympathetic architecture would seem like a dead thing if it were sought to complete what was left undone. The church lovers of the Renaissance made no such mistake. Their work was alive, too, and they spent their inspiration not on the beautiful fabric of the church but on its rich furnishing. What they wrought is as far away from us as the work of the Gothic builders was from them, and it is almost as unapproachable. The iconoclasts of the Revolution wreaked their devastating zeal upon this Gloria, and upon any symbol or figure in the rich carvings of the choir that spoke of power or privilege. The church itself they spared, though you may see a device of _fleur de lys_ on a boss of the roof vaulting spitefully disfigured by bullets. What was it that they hated so? The arrogance of a church that had allied itself too much with the rich and powerful and worked on superstitions of mankind to gain riches and power and glory to itself, when there was so much wretchedness all around that it made small attempts to cope with? They would have said so, and to imagine them possessed only by the spirit of wickedness would be to make the same mistake about them as they made about the Church. In that dark hour the Church reaped the reward of its virtues at the same time as it paid for its sins. To the extent that it had been faithful those who had drawn comfort and consolation from it came to its aid; and if the fury of its attackers had been ten times as great they could not have stamped out the life that persisted through all the years of destruction; and flowered again profusely when the poor substitutes that had been planted in its place had wilted away. Religion could have done everything to heal the wrongs that had been suffered by the people who were now rising up to take the redress of wrongs into their own hands; and religion had done very little. It had been chiefly on the side of the oppressors, not of the oppressed. At its best it had given consolation in trouble that it had not sought to remove, at its worst it had committed crimes unspeakable. No wonder that a blind, insensate fury against the outward tokens of such a system seized those who thought that they had a mission to remove all oppression from the world. The buildings that enshrined it they could put to other uses, and the churches themselves were spared. But sacred relics they scattered to the dust with bitter contempt, and the treasures of art which spoke of an impotent faith that they despised, they destroyed or mutilated. One of the minor glories of Saint-Maximin is the Altar of the Crucifixion, or the _Corpus Domini_, at the end of the north aisle. The high reredos, with gilded columns and pilasters, frames two large paintings and a series of sixteen smaller ones on wood, which are of the utmost interest. It has only comparatively lately become known that these are the work of a Venetian painter of the early sixteenth century, Antonio Ronzen, who stayed at Saint-Maximin two years and a half to execute them, together with the reredos itself. [Illustration: ALTAR OF THE CRUCIFIXION, SAINT-MAXIMIN] [Illustration: THE FIELD OF THE GREAT BATTLE, WITH MOUNT OLYMPUS IN THE BACKGROUND _Page 94_] Though Ronzen came into Provence from Venice, it seems unlikely that he was an Italian. His name is Dutch, and so is his style of painting; and a striking resemblance has been pointed out between one of these paintings and an engraving of the same subject executed by Lucas van Leyden ten years before. Wherever he came from, Ronzen was a great artist, and left behind him at Saint-Maximin a great treasure. The sixteen panels are of different scenes in the Passion. The light was not good when I was in the church, and some of them are too high to be seen easily; but most of them are wonderfully fresh and vivid and suggestive, crowded with figures, and creating that sense of intimacy which has always been the mark of the Dutch school. Each of the scenes is set in a characteristic landscape. You can pick out the Ducal Palace at Venice, the Palace of the Popes at Avignon, the Coliseum; and the figures include all the types of the period, from the aristocrat to the peasant. Many of them, no doubt, are portraits of people very well known in their time, who came in and out of the church, or wherever the artist did his work, to see how he was getting on, and had a great deal to say about the painting and about the magnificent present that the Seigneur de Semblançay was making to the church, and what a fortunate thing it was that so clever an artist had been available to undertake the commission. Perhaps they used a little flattery, so that he should offer to "put them in." He was an important person, this Jacques de Beaune, Seigneur de Semblançay. He was superintendent of the finances of Francis I, whose finances wanted a good deal of looking after, and lived at this time chiefly in Paris. But previously he had been Treasurer-General of Provence, and it might have been well for him if he had stayed in his own country. For he fell into disgrace, and was put to death seven years after Ronzen had finished the pictures he had ordered from him. Probably he found time, during the period from the end of 1517 to July, 1520, when Ronzen was at Saint-Maximin, to pay him a few visits and see how he was progressing. According to the custom of the time his portrait would almost certainly have been included among the figures that still appear so lifelike after five hundred years, and remains there, if we could only tell which of them all it is. Did he have any premonition or dread of the fate that was hanging over him, and did the people who were taking such a lively interest in the work he was inaugurating think of him as having attained to the pinnacle of success, and much to be envied in comparison with themselves, living humdrum lives in their beautiful Provence? Saint-Maximin has a fine Sacristy, furnished with presses and panelling of beautifully carved walnut, of the seventeenth century. Before the Revolution it contained many rich treasures, gold cups and chalices, silver reliquaries, ornaments jewelled and enamelled. Kings and Sovereign Pontiffs had showered gifts upon it; but in 1793 everything was rifled. "Barras and Fréron came to carry out the spoliation. Barras presented himself to the Popular Assembly to announce his mission, and a simple peasant, Jean Saurin, who died in 1842, Member of the Club, alone rose before the representative of the Convention to protest against the act of vandalism. He spoke honourably and with energy, but without success: the church was despoiled. Some rare and precious fragments, however, were saved from the wreck by the care and devotion of the sub-sacristan, Joseph Bastide, whose name deserves to be held in grateful memory by archæologists; for besides the sacred bones that the Church of Saint-Maximin can still offer, thanks to him, to public veneration, he was able to withdraw from the revolutionary spoliation a few rich ornaments, some ancient reliquaries, and a textile specimen of great value, the cope of St. Louis d'Anjou, Bishop of Toulouse. This cope, of the end of the thirteenth century, left by the holy bishop to the convent founded by his father, is one of the most beautiful and curious ornaments of the period." Thus M. Rostan, who proceeds to describe it. But alas! it is no longer there. The sacristan, worthy descendant of the pious Joseph Bastide, told me the sad story after he had made me admire the beautiful woodwork and shown me how the long drawers in the presses that held the vestments drew in and out, as if they had been made yesterday instead of two hundred and fifty years ago. He had taken such care of the treasures under his charge, locking up everything whenever he left the church, and seeing that all was fast when he went home for the night. And often he would look out of his window, in the little ancient house in which he lived hard by, to satisfy himself that no marauders were about. But ten years ago--how well he remembered it--the marauders had come. He pointed to the iron-barred window through which they had made their entry. They had taken I forget what from the sacristy, but not the precious cope. I think he rather wished they had. Then they had broken into the church and into the crypt, and from there they had stolen the Holy Ampulla. "This name is given," wrote M. Rostan, some years before the theft, "to a tube of crystal bearing the characters of the fourteenth century, and containing little fragments of glass, the remains of a phial still more ancient, which enclosed, according to tradition, some of the precious blood of the Saviour, collected by St. Mary Magdalene on Mount Calvary, brought by her to our country and discovered with the remains of this illustrious penitent." The thieves had broken into the iron-protected case in which this relic was kept, together with the skull of the saint in its rich and heavy reliquary, and a bone from the arm. They had stolen the bone, too, but had left the chief treasure intact, possibly because it was too heavy and bulky to bear away with safety. What was the meaning of this strange crime? As far as I understand what happened, the breaking in was difficult, and nothing of great intrinsic value was taken, though many things might have been. Much money, certainly, would be paid for such relics as were stolen, if they could have been bought openly; but if the fact that they had been stolen would have to be disclosed, as it would in order to attach even a damaged authenticity to them, of what value were they to anybody? Protestant zeal, which sometimes indulges itself in a similar way in England, may be ruled out. In France it does not act with those impulsions, and in any case destruction or contemptuous mutilation would be its object rather than theft, and I think the people who had done the damage would be rather inclined to advertise it, and themselves. The sacred skull was not damaged. Is it not forced upon one to believe that their value to the thief, or to those who may have encouraged the theft, was precisely that which they had always had; which was not represented by money at all? "If our tradition is well-founded," wrote M. Rostan, "the _Sainte Ampoule_ is evidently the most precious relic of the Church of Saint-Maximin. It has enjoyed wide celebrity throughout centuries, and frequent miracles have been attributed to it. On Good Friday, after the reading of the Passion, the traces of the divine blood were seen to liquefy, to rise and fall, bubbling, and to fill the whole phial. It was called the 'holy miracle.' A great crowd of pilgrims came each year to witness it." Where is the relic hidden now? Does the thief who risked so much to possess it cherish it in secret, with his sin on his conscience, but hoping from its possession one knows not what in the way of preservation or blessing? Or is it hidden fearfully in some church--a priceless treasure that may never be displayed, but may be expected, by its secret presence, to sanctify its resting-place above other places? Do those who hold it still watch with strained attention on Good Fridays for the "holy miracle" to be performed? Do they perhaps persuade themselves that they see it, as many others must have done before them? For even M. Rostan, good and believing Catholic that he is, does not assert that the liquefaction has been plain to see within living memory. I asked the sacristan whether the theft had been held to be the work of religious enthusiasts, but either he misunderstood me or his grievance overshadowed all such questions. They had taken the wonderful cope out of his care. It was a unique specimen of thirteenth century needlework, and is now in safe keeping in Paris. After so many years they might have trusted him to look after it, he said, ignoring the fact that his care had proved unequal to the preservation of relics still more valuable, at least in the eyes of the Church. The Ministry of Fine Arts, or whatever authority had deprived Saint-Maximin of the cope, had been quite content that it should keep the sacred skull, showing some cynicism, it may be thought, as well as indulgence. With much unlocking of iron grilles and doors, we descended into the crypt, the storied place that has seen so much during centuries past, where kings and popes have bent the knee, and before which so many princes and nobles have put off their arms. It is almost square--a vaulted chamber about fourteen feet wide and a little longer, with an apse containing the altar, behind which is the reliquary enclosing the skull. The staircase leading down to it, and the side walls of the crypt itself, have been decorated with marble, comparatively recently, but the form of the chamber remains much as it always has been. The sacred tombs, heavily carved with Biblical subjects, in the manner of the fourth century, are ranged on either side. They are said to be those of St. Maximin, St. Marcelle, St. Susan, St. Sidonius, and St. Mary Magdalene herself. They have been a good deal mutilated "by the piety of pilgrims," and in some degree made up, for the covers do not always belong to the sarcophagi on which they are fixed, or indeed to any other here. The head of the Magdalen is contained in an elaborate gilt reliquary of the year 1860, of small artistic value. Under a heavy canopy four angels hold up a hollow metal bust with flowing hair, into which the head has been fitted. What can one say of it? The sacristan pointed out to me the _noli me tangere_ on the forehead, and I tried hard but could not distinguish it, though he said that it was quite plain to him. He was a believer, and I, frankly, was not, although the great antiquity of the relic and its stirring history aroused at least an endeavour to put myself in the mood of one who believed. But he, the believer, made it all appear so commonplace, holding up his stump of a candle here and there to exhibit a great curiosity, but showing no sign either in manner or speech of being moved to veneration or awe, or to any feeling outside those attaching to his customary occupation, that it is little wonder that I was scarcely able to produce any emotion at all. One asks oneself many questions. Are not all the signs and wonders wrought by such relics as these a matter of self-deception, induced by crowds and movement and the atmosphere of enthusiasm? Or, in the rare instances in which they have been experienced by one alone, arising out of some state of ecstasy, hardly to be accepted as convincing testimony? If not, then how vaguely and arbitrarily these occult powers work! Faced by a known, even if half understood, power of nature, one knows the power to be there, and it will be felt beyond question if contact is made with it. Here, with a supposed spiritual power, there is only deadness of spirit, even with those who have the faith. With one's facile modern venerations one is inclined to shudder at the iconoclasm of the Revolutionists, who laid rude hands on such objects as this. But may they not have been right after all? Long periods of deadness of spirit are a heavy price to pay for an occasional and questionable exhibition of arbitrary activity. And there are spiritual powers that do react to an exercise of faith, neither occasionally nor questionably, nor arbitrarily, which belief in tangible sanctities tends to obscure. We locked and barred the grilles and doors and came up into the sunlight, leaving the much venerated relic to keep its watch in the dark crypt. With whatever lack of emotion it may be faced now, even by a believer, there has been no lack of it in the long past. And whatever view you may take of it, it is the seed from which sprang this strong and beautiful church. CHAPTER VI _Caius Marius and the Great Battle_ It was still early when I had finished with these sights and took the long straight road to Trets on my way to Aix. The sky was very clear and cold, and the country was flat and open. For a long time, whenever I looked back, I could see the great church standing up across the plain, and it was a long time before I ceased thinking about it. But gradually another interest began to take its place, for I was passing through country where scenes had been enacted that changed the current of history long before the legend of which my mind had been full had had its beginning. Indeed, centuries were to elapse before the legend was to emerge out of the twilight of rumour and tradition and to rest upon documentary evidence, and yet the one story seems to go back to the dim ages of history while the other far earlier one is as plain in its main facts as if it were of yesterday. For it is of the Roman occupation of this country, and our feet are on the solid rock of history. After two thousand years, the name of the great deliverer, Caius Marius, is still alive in Provence. Twice alive, indeed, if the very legend of the Marys which permeates the country can be traced back to the tradition of the Marii, of which there seems little doubt. But to that we shall come when we visit Les Baux and the monuments there. In the year 102 B.C. Caius Marius gained a great victory over the Ambrons and Teutons at a spot between Saint-Maximin and Trets which I was to pass that morning. It was one of the decisive battles of the world, and to judge by the number of the slain one of the fiercest. You may read all about it in Plutarch, and here on the very spot you may follow the details of the parallel march of the Romans and the barbarians until they came to the place of the great slaughter, with recognition at every step, finding indeed here and there actual traces of the battle itself. Certain doubtful points have been cleared up and the story told by the Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould, who went over the whole ground, Plutarch in hand, and published his results in a chapter of his interesting book, "In Troubadour Land." In the year 113 B.C. the northern frontiers of Italy were threatened by a vast horde of barbarians, of whom the chief were the Cimbri and the Teutons. They did not, however, cross the Alps, but swept westwards into Gaul, carrying with them other tribes, among whom were the Ambrons. They reached the Rhône three years afterwards and defeated the governor of the Roman province. Three successive consuls were sent against them from Rome, and were also defeated. Their chiefs exalted by success consulted as to whether they should march into Italy and exterminate or enslave the Romans, but although they devastated the province they could not yet make up their minds to march upon Rome. The Cimbri divided from the rest and poured into Spain, which they ravaged. A few years later they returned, and it was now decided to invade Italy. The Cimbri were to enter it by way of the Brenner Pass, the Teutons and Ambrons by the Maritime Alps. The menace of the barbarians had been hanging over Rome for ten years, and the utmost consternation now prevailed. Marius was despatched into Provence, as the only man who could cope with the danger there. The barbarian horde had not yet reached the Rhône on their eastward march, but were moving slowly in that direction, and Marius had a winter in which to organize the demoralized Roman troops and to choose his positions. In the spring, when the grass had grown enough to provide food for their horses and oxen, the barbarians put themselves in motion. Marius left the Cimbri to take their agreed-upon route to the north-east, and waited for the Teutons and Ambrons. He allowed them to cross the Rhône, and they drew up before his fortified camp at St. Gabriel on the westernmost spur of the Alpilles, and shouted defiance and insult to his troops. But he restrained the Romans from attacking them. Their ambition, he told them, should not now be for triumphs and trophies but to dispel the dreadful storm that hung over them and to save Italy itself from destruction. The barbarians made a half-hearted attack upon the Roman camp, which was easily repulsed, and then moved on. It was said that though they moved forward without pause it took them six days to pass the camp, so vast were their numbers. They were indeed nations and not only armies on the march. The cumbrous house-wagons with which they moved were their homes, for their wives and families were with them, and none had been left behind. The hot-blooded Romans were by now inured to their insults, one of which was to shout the question whether they had any commands for their wives in Italy, for they would shortly be with them. One can picture them sulkily watching from the high ground, where they were encamped, the interminable rabble moving on day after day, and wondering whether they would ever end. But directly the barbarians had passed Marius struck camp and followed them, not by the straight Roman road which they had taken along the valley, but by the heights to the south, and observed all their movements, himself out of sight. At Aix the Ambrons detached themselves from their allies to make a descent upon Marseilles. Marius had fixed upon a hill for his camp at Les Milles, four miles to the south of Aix. It was unexceptionable in point of strength, but afforded little water. By this circumstance, says Plutarch, they tell us he wanted to excite his soldiers to action, and when many of them complained of thirst he pointed to the river Arc, which ran close by the enemy's camp, and told them that thence they must buy water with their blood. It was this lack of water that precipitated the contest. The soldiers obeyed the order first of all to fortify their camp, but the servants of the army could not be restrained from going down to the river for water. Some of the enemy were bathing in the hot springs that well up in this place, others were eating. These were cut off by the camp-followers, others came to their assistance, and the Roman soldiers rushed down from the hill to rescue their servants. The engagement became general, and the Ambrons were beaten with great loss, the river being choked with their dead. This was a good beginning, but the Romans spent the night in fear of attack, for their camp was not yet fortified. "There remained yet many myriads of the barbarians unconquered; and such of the Ambrons as escaped mixing with them, a cry was heard all night not like the sighs and groans of men, but like the howling and bellowing of wild beasts. As this came from such an innumerable host the neighbouring mountains and the hollow banks of the river returned the sound, and the horrid din filled all the plains. The Romans felt a sense of terror, and Marius himself was filled with apprehension at the idea of a tumultuous night engagement." Fortunately, however, the barbarians did not attack, but after a day and a night moved on and joined the Teutons, who were passing along the road to the north of the river Arc. At this point Plutarch's narrative becomes confused, for he does not effectually distinguish the fields of the two battles, which were fought two days apart. It is here that Mr. Baring-Gould's careful investigations are valuable in elucidating the narrative. The barbarians halted at the Roman station Tegulata, now the hamlet of La Petite Pugère, a day's march from Aix. Marius crossed the river and kept to the south of it till he reached Trets. At his rear he had a fortified camp on Mount Olympus, to the north of the barbarians was another fortified Roman camp, Panis Annonæ, still called Pain de Munition. To this he had sent the day before an officer with three thousand men, who had made their way to it protected by the range of Mont Victoire. His plan must have been made long before, from a careful consideration of the route the enemy was likely to take, and the commanding positions fortified and provisioned. The barbarians were in a trap, but did not yet know it. In the morning the enemy awoke to see the bulk of the Roman army drawn up on the slope of a hill to the south of their camp. They could not contain their impatience until the army advanced into the plain, and received their first setback by rushing up to attack it. Marius sent his officers among the troops with orders to stand still and await the onslaught. When the enemy was within reach they were to throw their javelins, and then, sword in hand, press them down with their shields. He knew that the slope was so slippery that the blows of the enemy would be delivered with no great force and that they could not keep any close order. When this attack had been repulsed the Romans crossed the river and fell upon the main body of the enemy, who was beginning to form again. But at the same time the ambushed troops descended from Panis Annonæ in the rear, and panic seized the barbarians. The slaughter was terrific. Plutarch gives the number of killed as a hundred thousand of the enemy alone. Some accounts double the number, and give that of the prisoners as another eighty thousand. It is said also that three hundred thousand of the camp-followers and women were either killed or sold into slavery. It was the extermination not of an army but of a nation. So frightful was the carnage that the field of battle was known as Campi Putridi, and the neighbouring village is still called Pourrières. It was said that the inhabitants of Marseilles walled in their vineyards with the bones they found in the field, and that the rain which fell the winter following soaked in the moisture of the putrefied bodies and the ground was so enriched by it that it bore a prodigious crop. "After the battle, Marius selected from among the arms and other spoils such as were elegant and entire, and likely to make the greatest show in his triumph. The rest he piled together, and offered as a splendid sacrifice to the gods. The army stood round the pile, crowned with laurel; and himself, arrayed in his purple robe, and girt after the manner of the Romans, took a lighted torch. He had just lifted it up with both hands towards heaven, and was about to set fire to the pile, when some friends were seen galloping towards him. Great silence and expectation followed. When they were come near, they leaped from their horses and saluted Marius as consul for the fifth time, delivering him letters to the same purpose. This added great joy to the solemnity, which the soldiers expressed by acclamations and by clanking their arms; and while the officers were presenting Marius with new crowns of laurel, he set fire to the pile and finished the sacrifice."[6] How different from the sort of corroboration brought to bear upon the later Christian history of Provence is the fact that the spot on which this great holocaust took place two thousand years ago has lately been identified by the ashes, melted lead and other metals, and fragments of burnt pottery discovered there! Here also was erected a monument to Marius, which existed in its entirety up to the time of the Revolution, and was then partially destroyed, one would like to know why. And here was found some five and twenty years ago a beautiful Greek marble statue of Venus Victrix, but without head and arms, which is now in the museum at Avignon. Mr. Baring-Gould considers that this proves that the monument was raised by Julius Cæsar, for there would be an indirect compliment to his own family in it. "Venus was the ancestress of the Julian race, and Cæsar perhaps insinuated, if he erected the statue, that the success of Marius was due to the patronage of the divine ancestress and protectress of the Julian race, and of Julius Cæsar's aunt, the wife of Marius, quite as much as to the genius in war of Marius himself." On the top of Mount Victoire, which overlooks the scene of the terrific battle, a temple was erected and dedicated to Venus Victrix. This became a Christian church, and Venus Victrix became St. Victoire. Right up to the time of the Revolution the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages ascended the mountain on March 23rd, bearing boughs of box and shouting "Victoire! Victoire!" and Mass was celebrated. Then a bonfire was lit, and the peasants with garlands on their heads danced the farandole round it. The beautiful ancient music to which the peasants made their progress is still preserved; so hard does tradition die in this land of long memories. I should have liked to make a stay at Trets, and to explore this country. There is so much to see in connection with the battle--the ruins of the church on Mont Victoire, the ruins of the trophy on the field itself, the traces of the fortifications on the Pain de Munition, and perhaps the very hill slope of slippery marl upon which the Romans first bore back the attacking enemy. But I wanted to get on to Aix, the first large Provençal city in my itinerary, and thence to Arles and Nîmes and the rest of the beautiful places that are like a cluster of jewels in the country's diadem. So I contented myself with identifying the mountain heights which played their part in that grim struggle twenty centuries ago. There was the great range running parallel to the road on the south, with Mount Aurelian rising up and overlooking Saint-Maximin, and Mount Olympus due south from the field of battle. There was the bold rampart of Mont Victoire away to the north, and the hills among which is the Pain de Munition, on the other side of the plain on which the battle was fought. I could picture it alive with the tents and wagons of the vast horde of barbarians, so soon to be exterminated, and then strewn with their dead or mangled bodies. I knew that I was looking upon the same everlasting hills as those thousands upon thousands of dying eyes looked upon centuries ago; and there was more of a thrill in that than in the sight of the blackened skull in the church of Saint-Maximin. For this mighty conflict happened here, without a doubt, and the plain and the hills upon which our eyes look today were a part of the happening. There is something for the imagination to rest and work upon. CHAPTER VII _Aix_ The rain began to fall as I sat outside the inn at Porcieux, and by the time I reached Trets I was wet through. So I went to bed in an inn until my clothes should be dry, and greatly daring ordered a cup of tea. When it came it was of a pale straw colour, and its flavour would not have satisfied the connoisseurs of Mincing Lane. But it was tea, with the astringent quality possessed by that beverage alone among all infusions of herbs or berries. Wine is one of the gifts of God that in this drab world one may be thankful for, but as a beverage it palls. Of all the many drinks I enjoyed in my travels in Provence I think that cup of indifferent tea stands out as the most refreshing. My clothes were brought up to me in an hour or two's time almost as wet as ever, and I put them on and went down into the kitchen to dry them myself. There was an enormous open hearth, but very little fire on it; but they threw on bundles of sticks, and very soon there was a hot fire. The master of the inn, his wife and daughters, the cook in his white cap and apron, who had just come in to begin his evening's work, and one or two maids, all took the most serious and sympathetic interest in the process. I hung my coat on the back of a chair, which I placed on the hearth itself, and stood by the fire, turning to it first one side and then the other, enveloped in a cloud of steam from my sopping flannel trousers. I should have thought that most people under the necessity of drying their clothes would have done so something after this fashion, but to them it seemed to show an ingenious originality, and people were summoned from tables in the _café_ to stand at the kitchen door and see the remarkable sight. When I was fairly dry we all drank wine together, after which we shook hands and I went out to see the town, leaving behind me, by all tokens, an agreeable memory. Trets is very old, and has the appearance of being uncared for. One is so accustomed, in France, to seeing remains of historic interest cleaned and furbished up and saved from further decay, that these ruinous gateways and towers and fortifications, and narrow untidy streets with decayed-looking houses lining them, strike a dismal note. The church is partly of the eleventh century, very massive and very dark inside, and has an unfinished tower that adds to the general appearance of decay. Perhaps the rain, which had begun to fall again, had something to do with the impression that the place made upon me; I was glad enough to get away from it and take the train to Aix. I dined for a franc at Gardanne, and reached Aix after dark in renewed torrents of rain. But I had something to look forward to--an hotel that I knew, which would provide a hot bath, and a bag of clothes waiting for me. I had been on the road for nine days, and was ready for a little ordinary comfort. It was dull and cold the next morning, and Aix is a city that has provided itself against heat. Its fine broad central boulevard, the Cours Mirabeau, is shaded by a double avenue of planes, which must be among the largest to be found even in this land of planes. The Place de la Rotonde, at one end of it, has an elaborate system of fountains, and there are three other fountains in the middle of the boulevard itself, one of which is fed by a hot spring. The shade of the giant trees and the plash of the water must be pleasant enough in hot weather, but the bare branches conveyed none of the charm that their foliage would give later on, and Aix seemed to me a little cheerless, though I hasten to say that that is not its true character. Aix rejoices in the name of "The French Athens." It has always been learned, classical, and aristocratic. The streets are lined with the fine hotels of the Provençal _noblesse_, some of which are still occupied by families whose roots strike far back into history. Many of them are said to contain rare treasures of art, hidden from the public gaze in proud seclusion, and for the most part unknown to the world. These things are not for the wayfarer to see, but I think that if I had read M. Paul Mariéton's charming book, "La Terre Provençal," before my walk in Provence instead of after, I should have made an attempt to see some of them. "In Aix," he writes, "you will find masterpieces in rooms scarcely furnished, mansions mouldering to decay, with staircases of honour bare and cold leading to garden courts uncultivated--unless a few vegetables for the pot are grown between staves in wine casks. "An undoubted masterpiece, in a mansion neither cold nor bare, but full of laughter and gaiety, is the portrait of Rubens by Vandyke, which the master presented to his friend Peiresc at Antwerp. The existence of this page of genius, the most significant, it seems to me, of the great painter's work, is not suspected by the critics, and scarcely known except to a few amateurs." In another vast Louis XIV hotel, M. Mariéton mentions a Teniers, two Van Eycks, a Vanloo, a Hobbema, and a Raphael; in another, a superb ivory Christ attributed to Cellini. And he speaks of the store of historic documents, still unpublished, to be found in these ancient houses. A wandering Englishman might possibly receive a welcome in some of these houses because of his nationality. Aix used to be a favourite place of residence for English people of rank and wealth. In the cathedral is a memorial tablet which I find inscribed in a guide-book as that of the wife of "sir Dolben, baronnet d'Angleterre," and of his three children, who died, the first aged seven years, the second seven days, and the third seven hours; and there is another to "sir Webb, baronnet anglais." M. Louis de Laincel wrote thirty years ago of his childhood's memories of a very rich Englishwoman, "my lady Russel." "This lady had the generous habit of sending magnificent presents to all the children of her acquaintance on New Year's Day. Dieu! what joy for the children, when the lackey of mylady Russel rang at the door of the house, carrying on his arm an enormous basket full of presents! What bonbons, and what delightful toys! Bonne lady!"[7] This was in the twenties and thirties of the nineteenth century, but it is quite likely that in this country of long memories the tradition of English generosity still remains. But there is plenty to see in Aix without invading privacies. The city itself I found not very attractive, partly for the reasons I have already given. But it is lacking in the pleasant public gardens which make so many French towns places of grateful memory: there is only one, rather small and uninteresting, on the outskirts. Perhaps it was the society of Aix that attracted our forbears; otherwise one would have expected them to prefer Avignon, or Nîmes or Arles, of the inland cities of southern France. The large church of St. Madeleine is of the early eighteenth century, with a rather clumsy imitation Renaissance façade of the year 1860. It faces the Place des Prêcheurs, which opens out into the larger Place du Palais, on the west side of which is the fine Palais de Justice, and behind it the heavy ancient prison. A busy market was going on in this open space, and people were crowding in and out of the church for the Thursday's Mass. It was being sung at a side altar. From the stacks of chairs by the west door those who entered would take one, slipping the necessary _sous_ into the hand of the old woman in charge of them, and put it down in the most convenient place available within view of the ceremony. The organist sat at a harmonium to the left of the altar, with his choir boys about him and the congregation almost jostling his elbows. There was a sort of domesticity about the scene. One felt that all the people who came into the church so busily and familiarly thought of it as a place in which to make themselves at home. There was no such air about the fine cathedral church of St. Saviour. It gave the impression, more than any French church I have visited, that one gets in an English cathedral: of a noble monument of the past, kept in apple-pie order, but with its religious usages somewhat subordinated to its historic interest. At St. Madeleine, the little votive tablets and pictures and relics that pious souls have brought to their favourite altars for years past are stuck all over the walls of the chapels in great profusion, and with no particular regard to order. The cathedral is not without them, but they are confined severely to the neat oval tablet with a gilt frame and gold lettering on a blue or red ground, and they are disposed upon the walls or over the arches in austere devices. And there is none of the tawdriness about the altars that belongs to churches in which people make themselves at home. Indeed, the high altar, and the choir, might belong to a stately Anglican cathedral, with which the common people have about as much to do as with the furnishing of the Deanery. This cathedral church of St. Saviour is full of happy surprises. Its component parts have been built in widely different periods, but it has "come together" in the most satisfactory way, and its variety is only equalled by its beauty. The first surprise, upon entrance, is the magnificent octagonal Baptistery. It is said to have been originally a Temple of Apollo, and the eight monolithic columns that support the modern cupola are of the Roman period. Two are of granite, and the rest of porphyry, but the bases and the delicately carved capitals are of white marble. The effect of the whole structure is exquisite; it can be seen from different parts of the cathedral through intervening arches, and adds enormously to the charm of the building. The Baptistery is to the south of the aisle that was the original church. This aisle was consecrated in 1103. The present nave, with the choir slightly out of axis, and the north aisle, were begun at the end of the thirteenth century and not finished until the sixteenth. The central nave is enclosed by walls almost entirely solid, and the effect of the narrow openings cut through them, with glimpses into the side aisles, is singularly pleasing. The long rows of carved stalls on either side of the choir are surmounted by some very fine tapestries. The design is attributed to Quentin Matsy's, and although the guide-books call them the "Cantorbéry" tapestry, they state that they came from our St. Paul's Cathedral and were bought in Paris in the year 1656 for twelve hundred crowns. But Dr. Montagu Rhodes James, Provost of King's College,[8] investigated the whole question some years ago, and read a paper before the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, from which it appears that there is no foundation for the connection with St. Paul's. Nor does he say anything about Quentin Matsy's, though the tapestries are undoubtedly Flemish, and of his date. In the Inventory of Christchurch, Canterbury, taken in 1540, after the suppression of the monastery, is the entry "Item one faire new hanging of riche tapestrie con(taining) vj peces of the story of Christ and our Lady." Three of them were the gift of a prior, Thomas Goldston, whose device appears in the border, and three of Richard Dering, cellarer; and on the border is part of an inscription, of which the beginning is lost: _celarius me fieri fecit anno domini millesimo quingentesimo undecimo_; ... the cellarer had me made A.D. 1511. So there is no doubt about it. These fine tapestries hung in the choir of Canterbury Cathedral for at least a hundred and thirty years, and then they were sold and taken to Aix, where part of them hang in the choir and part in the Archbishop's Palace. They have been a good deal cut about, and Dr. James thinks there must originally have been five scenes to a piece, which would give thirty instead of the twenty-six now to be seen. Katharine of Aragon is said, but not by Dr. James, to be represented among the figures in the "Descent from the Cross," and there is a whole bevy of fair Englishwomen in the first panel of all, which represents "The Birth of the Virgin." They are portraits of ladies of the English court, and might be beautiful English girls of today, so lifelike and characteristic are they; some of them with the sweetest young faces of a type that is as well known now as it apparently was four hundred years ago. I tried to get photographs of at least some of this delightful work in Aix, but without success. There are postcards of the whole series, but they are evidently from drawings and not photographs of the original. In that charming picture of the English girls the faces lose most of their character and half their beauty. Let nobody who may happen to receive one of these postcards imagine that it gives a satisfactory reproduction of the original.[9] [Illustration: THE CANTERBURY TAPESTRY] [Illustration: THE FAMOUS "TARASQUE" _Page 108_] Behind the high altar is the Chapel of St. Mitre. The life of this saint is pictured in many of its episodes in a curious painting of the sixteenth century which is to be seen there. His end was remarkable. He was beheaded but rose to his feet, picked up his head, and carried it more than a thousand paces to this very spot. You may see him approaching the cathedral, his head in his hands, and the bishop with his attendant clergy waiting for him at the door. And in the centre of the composition he is represented, still with his head in his hands, with many people on their knees around him, including the whole family of the pious Jacques de la Roque, who did not happen to have been present at the time, but who gave the picture. St. Mitre's tomb is upheld by two columns of soft stone, from which is said to exude moisture that cures blindness. There is a little hole in the right hand pillar in which the sweating is supposed to show itself, and during the octave of the saint many people come to do him honour and to anoint their eyes from the pillar. In the Chapelle de l'Université in the north aisle is a moving representation of St. Martha and the Dragon, the famous "Tarasque," from which she freed the stricken country. The bull's head of this curious monster wears an expression of mildness and mournful surprise, as if it is wondering what it has done to make itself so disliked. It seems to be saying: "I was made like this; I can't help it; I have only followed the dictates of my nature." The tradition of the Tarasque is all over Provence, and as most of the early Christian legends are based upon Roman happenings it is probable that the dragon stands for the scourge of invasion by the barbarians, and the various rescuing saints for Marius and his Romans. The triptych, called "Le Buisson Ardent," famous since it was exhibited in the great exhibition of "Primtifs" in the Louvre, in 1904, hangs on a wall of the nave. It is kept closed, but a few _centimes_ will unlock it, and also uncover the beautiful carving of the west doors. This very fine picture is by Nicolas Froment, a fifteenth century painter from Avignon. It has been attributed to King René, but skilful as that versatile amateur was he could never have painted anything half so beautiful. The central picture, with its exquisite and wonderfully preserved gold border, represents the Virgin and the Holy Child seated upon a great mass of foliage, from which spring little flickering flames. Beneath them is an angel appearing to Moses, who is struck with astonishment and is taking off his shoe. A flock of sheep and goats is pasturing between them, and Moses's dog, resting at his feet, turns his head to the angel with a look of interest and watchfulness. Behind is a rich Provençal landscape, with the Rhône running through it. It is a delicious picture, both in design and colouring. The side panels contain portraits of King René, and of his second wife, Jeanne de Laval, kneeling--a panel to each. Above the king stand Saints Madeleine, Antoine, and Maurice, above the queen Saints Nicolas, Catharine and John, all of them evidently contemporary portraits. The old king, whose many trials and happy disposition, as well as his love for Provence, have preserved his memory as that of few kings has been preserved, is shown to us here as realistically as if we could look in on him in the flesh. It is a serious moment with him, and his mouth is set tightly above the jutting double chin. But it is not the seriousness of austerity. When he rises from his knees his face will break out into smiles, and he will have much to say about the details of the ceremony at which he has just assisted. For he was well versed in such matters, and a patron of all the arts besides. He was like a monarch out or a book, this good King René; and he has been put into at least one famous book, though not without a touch of caricature. In "Anne of Geierstein," Sir Walter Scott describes him thus: "René was a prince of very moderate parts, endowed with a love of the fine arts, which he carried to extremity, and with a degree of good humour, which never permitted him to repine at fortune, but rendered its possessor happy, when a prince of keener feelings would have died of despair. This _insouciant_, light-tempered, gay and thoughtless disposition conducted René, free from all the passions which embitter life, to a hale and mirthful old age. Even domestic losses made no deep impression on the feelings of this cheerful old monarch. Most of his children had died young; René took it not to heart. His daughter Margaret's marriage with the powerful Henry (VI) of England was considered a connection above the fortunes of the King of the Troubadours. But in the issue, instead of René deriving any splendour from the match, he was involved in the misfortunes of his daughter, and repeatedly obliged to impoverish himself to supply her ransom.... Among all his distresses, René feasted and received guests, danced, sang, composed poetry, used the pencil or brush with no small skill, devised and conducted festivals and processions, studied to promote the mirth and good humour of his subjects." [Illustration: LE BUISSON ARDENT] [Illustration: PORTE D'EYGUIÈRES _Page 128_] Of his genuine skill with the brush there is a most pleasing example preserved in the Bibliothèque Méjane at Aix--a Book of Hours, of which the initial letters are beautifully illuminated by his hand. There is also a patent of nobility signed by him in a bold and picturesque manner. Whether the illuminations are authentic or not--and I have no reason to throw doubt upon them--René could sign his name, like a king and an artist. At the end of the Cours Mirabeau is a large statue of this merry monarch, of no great artistic value, but showing him holding in his hand a bunch of Muscat grapes, which he first introduced into Europe. It is not his least claim to memory. We have not quite done with the cathedral. The wonderful carving of the west doors is protected by wooden covers, which have kept them in a perfect state of preservation. They are of walnut wood, and were done in 1504, seven years before Richard Dering, the Canterbury cellarer, gave that commission for the tapestries which now hang near them. In the lower parts are figures of Ezekiel, Daniel, Isaiah and Jeremiah, each under a rich canopy; and above them are the twelve Sibyls, each of a different nation and with appropriate symbol. The borders of fruit and flowers are exquisite. There is hardly a finer piece of wood-carving on a large scale to be seen anywhere than on these massive doors, and they and the triptych should on no account be missed by any one who finds himself in the cathedral. The portal that enshrines these beautiful doors is of the same date, and is quite worthy of them. There is a charming figure of the Virgin and Child on a pedestal between the doors. The lusty, well-grown baby is held upon his mother's arm, and she looks at him with smiling pride, as mothers do all the world over. The cloisters should also be visited, for the sake of the carvings on the double rows of pillars that hold up the arcading, in which the sculptors have let themselves loose in all sorts of luxuriant fancies. They are hardly less interesting than those in the famous cloisters of St. Trophime at Arles. Aix is rich in pictures, besides those in the churches. I spent a pleasant rainy afternoon in the Museum, and found a great deal to interest me. Not to mention the very fine examples of the "Primitives," there are several pictures by Ingres, including the richly coloured "Jupiter and Thetis," and the very interesting portrait of Granet. But it was my discovery of Granet himself that gives me my pleasantest recollection of the Aix Museum. There is a whole room devoted to his pencil and water-colour drawings, which contains also many of his best known paintings. His subjects are something of the same as those of Wilkie, who was his contemporary, but in his composition and beautiful effects of lighting he seems to me an incomparably greater artist. He was a native of Aix, and died there in 1849. I was told by an old gossip at Avignon that he was servant in the house of a rich amateur painter, and that he used to lock himself into his garret, whenever he had a moment to himself, to make his own experiments. One day his master looked through the keyhole and saw what he was doing. He might, said my gossip, have been struck with jealousy. But he was of the _noblesse_. He was struck instead with admiration of the work that he beheld--probably after having knocked at the door--, greeted the valet as _his_ master, and assisted him to make his career. The late afternoon was fine. I walked all about the town, visited the remaining churches, and paid due attention to other objects of interest. Among the curiosities of Aix is the monument of Joseph Sec, which the owner of that harmonious name caused to be erected on the edge of his garden in 1792. It faces the street, and bears the inscription: Venez, habitants de la terre, Nations, écoutez la loi! It includes the figures of Themis and Moses, and among other symbols two bas-reliefs of banknotes for a hundred and two thousand francs. The whole erection is rather absurd, although it was the work of the sculptor Chastel. But probably Joseph Sec was one of those patrons of the arts who know what they want and see that they get it. I have not the smallest doubt that Chastel, who was a sculptor of merit, heard from him the phrase: "I pay the piper, and it is only fair that I should call the tune," or its French equivalent. Joseph Sec called another very curious tune to Chastel, of which M. Mariéton tells. He was taken into the deserted garden behind the monument--"the Trianon of the bourgeois of Aix," he calls it--and into a little Louis XVI kiosk littered with tools. In it was an old sofa, the seat of which was lifted for him to see the life-sized figure of a naked man in painted marble, with a bloodstained scar on his forehead--a dreadful, realistic representation of a workman who had been killed by a stone falling from Joseph Sec's monument. How modern he was, this good bourgeois of Aix, who died over a hundred years ago! A taste for the arts, and money enough to indulge it! I own that I should have tried to get a glimpse of this artistic atrocity of his, if I had known of its existence. CHAPTER VIII _Salon and the Crau_ Ever since I first saw Les Baux, on a motoring trip from the north to the south of France, I had wanted to get back to it. I saw Aix and Avignon and Nîmes and Arles at the same time, and I wanted to get back to them. But Les Baux was the _bonne bouche_. When I contemplated this spring walk it was what I was thinking of as the central point of interest of the whole expedition; and I was thinking of it all the time I was walking through the country during those first nine days. For it sums up the whole past of Provence. It is connected with the Græco-Phoenician colonies that preceded the Roman occupation; with the Roman occupation itself, and especially with that stirring episode of the Marian defeat of the barbarian invaders; with the Christian Marian legends; almost more than any other place with the romantic era of the Troubadours; with every internal struggle of the many that disturbed the country during the Middle Ages; with the religious wars; and indeed with every movement of significance in Provence down to the time of the merging of the kingdom into that of France. After that its importance dwindled, but did not expire until much later. When it did, its ruin was so complete that it acquired another sort of interest altogether. It arouses much the same feelings now as the one-time flourishing cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii, for it is almost as dead as they, and its ruins tell as eloquently of the time when it was alive. Added to which, it is most romantically situated, in the very heart of the country that is most characteristic of Provence as it is today--the Provence that lives its rich, picturesque life with an eye kept always on its rich, picturesque past; the country of Mistral, and the scenes of that moving epic in which all the poetry and glamour of Provence is garnered up: "Mireille." I shouldered my pack once more, but was in such a hurry now to get to Les Baux that I took the train early in the morning as far as Maussane. It was well that I did so, for the rain fell heavily when I reached Salon, where I had an hour to wait. Nostradamus, who was born at Saint-Remy, lived at various times at Salon, and died there. Out of his thousand prophecies it is not surprising that a few hit the mark, and from them he gained an immense reputation. Exactly a hundred years after his death we find Pepys writing: "Amongst other discourse we talked much of Nostradamus, his prophecy of these times, and Sir George Cartaret did tell a story how at his death he did make the town (of Salon) swear that he should never be dug up or his tomb opened after he was buried; but that they did after sixty years do it, and upon his breast they found a plate of brasse saying what a wicked, unfaithful people the people of that place were, who after so many vows should disturb and open him such a day and year and hour, which, if true, is very strange." Probably it was not true, as to the time; but he would not have risked much if he had prophesied the fact. He did, however, prophesy that a new era would begin for France in the year 1792, which was a bold shot, as it was more than two hundred years after his death; and Napoleon is said to have seen predictions that concerned himself in his writings. M. Mariéton tells of the fashion in which he seized his opportunity in the town of Salon. Charles IX was making a solemn progress through Provence with his mother Catharine de' Medici and the little Prince Henry of Navarre. The town of Salon made elaborate preparations for their reception, and Nostradamus was asked where he would like to walk in the procession. He said that he proposed to have a little procession of his own. When the royal party appeared before the gates the queen mother looked anxiously about for the prophet, and when she saw him apart from the rest beckoned him to take up his position between herself and the king. He had been counting on something of this sort, for he had already been in Paris, and had gained a considerable ascendancy over Catharine. He was lodged in the castle during the royal visit, and invited to a solemn consultation on the subject of the stability of the royal line. Catharine wanted him to tell the fortune of Prince Henry. He was quite ready to do it, and ordered the child to be undressed, as a preliminary. The little prince thought he was going to be whipped, and filled the castle with his howls. When he had calmed down, Nostradamus boldly announced that he would come to be king. If this story is true, it shows the prophet to have been a schemer rather above his kind. Catharine had three sons still alive, and could not have been expected to welcome the announcement. Nor would the young king have been particularly pleased with it. Indeed, it may be said to have been a prophecy not altogether free from risk to the man who was bold enough to make it. But he seems to have judged human nature aright. His reputation was vastly increased by the prediction, and Catharine summoned him to Paris for the second time, which was no doubt what he wanted. The royal visit to Salon took place in the year 1564, and while the great humbug of the time was preparing for his own little private effect there must have been somewhere in the crowd that filled the streets strewn with rosemary and lavender and thyme a young man who deserved far better to be noticed. This was Adam de Craponne, who by that time had already begun his work of fertilizing the Great Crau. Mr. Baring-Gould, in the book already mentioned, gives an interesting account of this "little Sahara in Europe," which occupies 30,000 acres. "At a remote period, but, nevertheless in one geologically modern, the vast floods of the diluvial age that flowed from the Alps brought down incredible quantities of rolled stones, the detritus of the Alps.... This rubble, washed down from the Alps, forms the substratum of the immense plain that inclines at a very slight angle to the Mediterranean, and extends for a considerable distance below the sea.... There is a break in the chain on the south, between the limestone Alpines and the sandstone Trévaresse; and the brimming Durance, unable to discharge all her water, choked with rubble, into the Rhône, burst through the open door or natural waste-pipe, by Salon, and carried a portion of her pebbles into the sea directly, without asking her sister the Rhône to help her. Now the two great plains formed by the delta of the Rhône, and that of the Durance with the Rhône, are called the Great and the Little Crau. They were known to the ancients, and puzzled them not a little. Strabo says of the Great Crau: 'Between Marseilles and the mouth of the Rhône, at about a hundred stadia from the sea, is a plain, circular in form, and a hundred stadia in diameter, to which a singular event obtained for it the name of the Field of Pebbles. It is, in fact, covered with pebbles, as big as the fist, among which grows some grass in sufficient abundance to pasture heads of oxen.'" The singular event referred to was the fight between Hercules and the Ligurians. Hercules had used up all his arrows, and had retired to a cave in the Alpilles to make his last stand, when Jupiter came to his assistance and rained down a shower of stones which killed all his enemies. When the hero, thus miraculously aided, emerged from his cave, he saw the great plain covered with stones as it is today. Or rather, as it was; for thanks to Craponne and those who came after him the desolate area is now much circumscribed. This legend, which is still alive in Provence, takes us back to the very earliest times. For Hercules is the Phoenician Melkarth, and wherever his name survives it is in connection with Phoenician trading, before the Greek colonization. Craponne's scheme was to bring "some of the waters of the Durance through the gap where some of its overspill had flowed in the diluvial period, by a canal, into the Great Crau, so that it might deposit its rich alluvium over this desert of stones. He spent his life and his entire fortune in carrying out his scheme, and it is due to this that year by year the barren desert shrinks, and cultivation advances." There are few things more interesting to learn about than the bold works by which man gets the better of nature, or rather sets nature to work to correct, as it were, her own mistakes. About a hundred years later than this, Vermuyden, the Dutch engineer, started draining the Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire fens, a work of even greater magnitude, which gave England some of its richest agricultural land. The draining of Holland was already a thing accomplished; the draining of the Rommy marshes in Kent and Sussex was partly effected before the Roman conquest of Britain. Of late years Australia has dammed up a great river, and turned a dry valley into a lake over two hundred feet deep, from which land will be irrigated as many miles away. In all these great works, varied in means but the same in intention, the thing to be done is as simple as a child's diversion of water on the sloping sands of the seashore. What he does with his wooden spade, digging his channels and building up his banks, the engineers do with their laborious machinery, trenching canals, and piling up the huge masses of their dams. The waters, obeying the few simple laws of their fall, do all the rest. The greatest of all these works, and one of the simplest in idea, was the damming of the Nile at Assouan. More than two thousand years before Christ the yearly rise and fall of the great river began to be recorded, but it was not until four thousand years later that the action was adapted to man's more effective use. The natural laws are there waiting, always to be trusted. There is no scale too great, as there is none too small, upon which they can be applied. The result of this slow fertilization of the Provençal Crau is plain to be seen from the line that skirts it on the way to Arles. There are great plantations of olives, each tree clipped and pruned like a rare shrub in a conservatory, every branch and almost every twig at an even distance from the next, so as to get the maximum of air and sun to the buds and the fruit. And there are wonderful sheets of almond blossom, sometimes covering acres. As far as the eye can see on the level, the plain is of the richest. There are frequent villages and homesteads, and everywhere lines of cypresses, planted very close together and allowed to grow as tall as they please. These are to break the force of the _bise_, which blows so strongly as to scoop the crops out of the ground if they are left unprotected, and once actually carried away the suspension bridge between Beaucaire and Tarascon. We pottered along the little single line, while the rain still came down, but the clouds began to look a little lighter. One of my fellow-travellers was a young conscript who was on furlough from his regiment in Tunis. He was a handsome, charming-mannered youth. He said that he liked soldiering, and there was little hardship in the life. He wore his uniform when he was going on a journey, because soldiers are taken at half fares on the railways. He told me with a grin that he was liable to be court-martialled for wearing patent-leather boots, but on this line he thought he might risk it. He was inclined to be facetious at the expense of the line, and told me a story about it that I first heard some twenty years or so ago in connection with one of our own railways. And he said that it was a good deal used by companies of cinema actors; that at any time you might find yourself in the society of desperate characters prepared to do desperate deeds, or slowing down between stations so that somebody might be photographed crawling along the footboard or the roof of the carriages. The railway company had obligingly arranged for a collision not long before, being glad enough to sell some of its antiquated stock for this purpose; and in fact, if it had not been for the money made out of the cinema operators, it would have closed down long before. He told me something about the Crau, too. This fertile tract through which we were passing was very unlike the part that was still desert, which I should be able to see from the heights of Les Baux. It is dry and desolate, scorched by the sun in summer, but in winter affording pasturage for flocks and herds that are brought down from the Alps. The flocks are led by wise old goats, who know every mile of their three weeks' journey; then come the she-goats, and after them the innumerable company of sheep. The dogs of the shepherds surround the flock, and the rear of the procession is brought up by asses, carrying the baggage, and the little lambs that are too young to follow their dams. Every night the great flock is shut in with hurdles, and the shepherds keep guard over them. There are said to be two or three hundred thousand sheep in the flocks that make these yearly migrations, which have been going on for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. Pliny mentions them, and there is little doubt that the order followed in his day was much the same as it is now. For the primal industries of the world do not change much, and in this ancient land scarcely at all. I asked my young soldier if he had ever seen the flights of flamingoes that are said to make lovely the desert of the Crau, but I do not think that he had, although he would not say that they were not to be seen. He expressed himself with admiration and affection about his beautiful country of Provence, and especially about this corner of it, in which he had been brought up. A station or two before we reached Maussane, he got out. There was an open carriage waiting for him, and an elderly, prosperous-looking gentleman in it whom I took to be his uncle, on no grounds except that I liked to think of him during his holiday coming out from Salon to visit relations who lived in some roomy, picturesque "mas," where there was welcome and good cheer for him in the hospitable old-fashioned way of the country. CHAPTER IX _Les Baux_ As I got out of the train the rain ceased, though there looked to be more to come, and I walked the three miles to Les Baux with the sun shining, and the birds singing among the drenched leaves of the trees. I was faced by the craggy rampart of the Alpilles, which hang over the great plain, and were once sea cliffs washed by the Mediterranean. They are of white limestone, and rise in places to a height of close upon a thousand feet. Just at this point they thrust themselves forward in a series of fantastic crags, rising up sheer from the plain and crowned by great masses of gleaming rocks that look almost as if they had been placed there by some giant hand. I knew that Les Baux was upon one of these crags, and thought that I remembered which it was. But there was nothing of it to be seen from the plain. The line of cliffs was quite bare; the road might have been leading over some deserted col to fairer regions beyond. No one could have guessed himself to be nearing the remains of a once flourishing city. The road led up through a fertile valley in which there were fields and scattered houses and gardens, and some sort of a mill. The cliff rose abruptly to the right, and at a turn of the road--the green valley now lying some way below--there came into view the walls of a few houses. They were perched up high overhead, and seemed to be growing out of the cliff itself, as indeed they were; for half of this strange city is built out of the solid rock, and its ruins remain part of the cliff from which they were hewn. The road has been remade, so that it now zigzags steeply to an entrance from the north. But the foot passenger can leave it and take a still steeper track to the ancient gateway that was once the chief entrance into this eagle's aerie. It is called the Porte d'Eyguières, and is still in a good state of preservation, with the grooves of its portcullis to be seen, and a stone bearing the arms of the Lords of Les Baux--the star with sixteen rays which marks their descent from Balthasar, one of the wise kings from the East, who brought gifts to the Infant Christ. A steep and narrow lane leads up through the still inhabited quarter of the town, past the old but rebuilt Hôtel de Ville to the place where the new road comes in and the two inns are situated. So far there is nothing particularly to strike the visitor--nothing at all to compare for picturesqueness with the old hill towns of western Provence, from which I had come. Picturesqueness is not the note of Les Baux, and in the lower quarter of the town the air is rather that of a poor village which contains the bare remnants of some past importance. But as one mounts up towards the summit of the crag this impression of something like squalor gives place to a very different one. The inhabited cottages are soon left behind. They have already been seen to be interspersed with the ruins of noble mansions, and to be themselves, for the most part, salvage from greater buildings. They line a narrow, winding street, paved with rock in which the ruts of old cartwheels are worn, just as they are in the streets of Pompeii. And now there is nothing but ruin on either side, except where part of a great house has been put into some sort of repair for the purposes of a museum. It is ruin complete and irreparable; but it is not like other ruins. There stands up a bare wall, with apertures for windows and doors; and it is seen to be, not the remains of a structure of built-up stones, but a shell of living rock, from which the inside has been scooped, like a cheese with nothing left but the rind. Now one is on the summit of the crag. It is a wide, grassy platform, upon which rear themselves huge masses of rock cut into the forms of towers and battlements, like a giant's castle in some fantastic dream. The castle itself stands back on the northern edge of the cliff. Nearer at hand are the remains of dwellings that are nothing but caves in great jutting masses of rock. But they are caves with a difference. They are carefully squared chambers, with chimney places still showing the marks of fire, with holes into the walls that were once cupboards, with ceilings cut into so as to provide hanging for lamps. They are open to the south, and the entrances blocked with débris; but there is no doubt that they were once merely the back parts of houses, which showed fronts as well built as some of those still standing in the streets below. The grassy height is strewn with the stones of many buildings quite destroyed, but once it contained the ordered precincts of the great pile that nothing has been able completely to destroy. It stands grim and majestic, towering over the whole mass of tumbled walls and the few roofs and chimneys that are all that remain of the rich city. One can see stone stairs and galleries high up in the rock and can mount up to some of them. The dungeon, cut out of solid stone, shows a yawning hole in the ground. It lies open to the sky, but the ribs of its vaulting are still seen springing from the corners. Two sides of a rock hard by are scooped into cells. This was the great castle dovecot. There is a little ruined chapel, its roof delicately carved. [Illustration: THE CASTLE RUINS, LES BAUX] [Illustration: THE CASTLE DOVECOT, LES BAUX] From the summit of the castle there is a magnificent view of the great plain to the south. It includes the whole extent of the Crau; and now you can see which part of it has been fertilized, with the threads of canals running through it, and which part still remains in its stony desolation. The great lagoon, called the Etang de Berre, lies a glistening sheet almost on the horizon, and you can just descry the line of the sea beyond it. To the right you see Arles and the famous abbey of Montmajour, and the Rhône rolling its turgid waters through the plain of the Camarque, to where Stes. Maries rears its fortress church on the edge of the sea, and the holy men and women from Palestine miraculously landed. It is very far away, but there is hardly so much as a hillock between you and it. From here too can be seen the strange, blanched desolation of the valleys that creep up into the solitudes of these stony hills. They are strewn with gigantic rocks that take on all sorts of fantastic tortured shapes. Part of it is called the Val d'Enfer, and it is said that Dante, who is known to have sojourned in Arles, took from it the scenery of his Inferno. In the spring it is lightened with the delicate flush of almond blossom, and Les Baux is beautiful with the silvers and blues and purples of its surrounding country, and its own wild aspect of strength and desolation. But its appeal is to the past, and without some knowledge of its history it must present itself as an almost undecipherable riddle. We need not linger over the importance that this natural fortress had in the time of Marius, who had camps very near to Les Baux, and perhaps on the very spot; nor the story of the Christians who were driven to take refuge here by Alaric the Visigoth. The first of the long line of the counts of Les Baux who is known to history was Leibulf, who lived at the end of the eighth century. From that time, until the year 1426, when the death of the Princess Alix at last brought it to an end, it continually increased in wealth and importance, until it vied with the rest of the royal houses in Europe. Yes; this deserted, almost forgotten city, which now contains a bare hundred of inhabitants, was the seat of princes who intermarried with the reigning families of England, France, Poland, Savoy, Nassau, Brunswick and many more. It was the centre of a principality that included seventy-nine towns and bourgs, villages, or castles. Its rulers were Princes of Orange, besides, from which our own royal house is sprung; they derived titles from Milan, Naples, Piedmont, Marseilles and elsewhere; they were kings of Arles and Vienne; Princes of Achaia, Counts of Provence, Cephalonia, Spoleto, and other places; finally emperors of Constantinople, and that this was not an empty title is shown by the fact that an embassy was sent to a reigning princess of Les Baux to treat for her rights as empress. In the twelfth century the towns owned by the prince of Les Baux included Aix, Saint-Remy, Salon, Pertvis, and the Bourg-Neuf at Arles. The possessions of "La Baussenique" already made of it a second Provence. Indeed, Raymond des Baux, who died in 1150, claimed, through his marriage with the daughter of the Count of Provence, the whole of the country, and fought for it until his death. There was continual fighting, with Les Baux as its centre, during the Middle Ages, and sometimes its lords were on the summit of fortune, sometimes forced to give up some of their lands. They fought with the Saracen corsairs, with the counts of Barcelona and kings of Aragon, with the counts of Anjou and Poitou, the king of Naples, and many more. They went crusading with the rest, and one of them is mentioned with honour in the pages of Froissart. It was at the siege of La Reole in Gascony. The Earl of Derby lay before it for nine weeks, and the townspeople were so reduced by starvation that they wished the place to be given up. But Sir Agos des Baux, who commanded the troops, would not consent to this, and retired to the castle, with plenty of wine and other provisions. The castle had been erected by the Saracens, and was much stronger than the English had supposed. So they prepared to mine under it, and then the garrison grew alarmed. So "Sir Agous dyscendedde downe fro the hygh towre, and dyd put out his heed at a lytell wyndo, and make a token to speke with some of the host." Lord Derby, Sir Walter Manny and Lord Stafford came to parley with him, and he offered to give up the fortress if he and his troops might retain "our lyves and goodes saved." Lord Derby replied, "Sir Agos, Sir Agos, you will not get off so. We know your distress, and will receive only an unconditional surrender." Then Sir Agos said that he would trust to the honour of the English, and Lord Derby, commending his gallantry, granted honourable surrender to the garrison, with their armour. "Then they dyd on their harnesse and toke their horses, whereof they hadde no mo but sixe; some bought horses of thenglysshmen, the whiche they payed for truely. Thus Sir Agous de Baus departed fro the Ryoll, and yelded up the castele to the Englysshemen, and Sir Agos and his company wente to Tholons." One of the bloodiest struggles of all that had surrounded Les Baux took place when the Princess Alix succeeded to its sovereignty at the age of seven, and it was twenty-six long years before she was able, as a widow, to take up her residence in her much battered but still noble castle. She was the ward of the Viscount of Turenne, the "Scourge of Provence," who married her at the age of thirteen to a young noble whom he thought he could use for his own purposes, which were of course to get possession of his ward's property. But Adon de Villers unexpectedly decided to fight him, and succeeded in gaining valuable support, from the neighbouring cities, and from the Pope himself, who was then seated at Avignon. Besides men at arms, the Pope launched a threat of excommunication against Turenne, who laughed at it, and said that for a thousand florins he could get more soldiers than the Pope for seven years of plenary absolution. He was not in the least particular where he got his fighters from. He allowed a robber-chief to seize and sack Les Baux itself and to murder and pillage in all the country round, and he roused the Mediterranean pirates to spread further devastation through the lands of his ward. But, in the meantime, the Pope who had been deified died, and it happened that the King of France had a quarrel with his successor and sent troops against him under Marshal Boucicaut. When this little affair was settled Boucicaut turned his attention to Turenne, whose daughter he had married. As persuasion was useless, he besieged and took Les Baux and other towns, and Turenne was brought to his knees. He broke out again immediately afterwards, and there is no knowing how much longer the poor Princess Alix could have been kept out of her rights if he had not been accidentally drowned while he was crossing the Rhône. Her castle was almost defenceless, but she married again and lived in it in peace for another twenty-four years. When she lay dying, it is said that a bright star descended from the heavens and entered her room, hanging over her until she breathed her last, when it faded away. It was thought to be that very Star of the East which had shone upon the founder of her long race, now extinguished with her. Mr. T. A. Cook, in his admirable book on Provence, from which I have chiefly drawn for the above facts, gives an account of the inventory of Princess Alix's household effects, made for the crown after her death. It makes a welcome impression of peace and luxury, which no one can feel inclined to grudge this much-tried lady after the strife and bloodshed with which half of her life had been surrounded, and shows the grim castle of Les Baux in a light that is pleasant to contemplate. "The entrance-courtyard of the château lay to the south. The chapel of Ste. Marie, with its vaulted roof, was in the rez-de chaussée, near several large reception-rooms, with kitchens, bakery, larders, and cellars beneath them. Above were fifteen more out of the thirty-five rooms. That in which Alix died was situated in a tower, beneath a granary. It was furnished with two candlesticks of silver, with plate of silver and of gold, with many lengths of tapestry, and with fine Eastern rugs. In the oaken chests were robes of silk and velvet, of cloth of gold, and 'vair'; furs, belts, eight rosaries set with pearls, prayer-books, and books of hours, bound in red cloth of gold, with clasps of silver-gilt. Within the 'Chambre de la Rose' were more books of prayer, bound in cloth of gold and pearls, and set in a case of stamped leather, bound with a silver band all gilt with fleurs de lys. The chapel and its vestry were filled with rich ecclesiastical garments and plate, chalices, pattens, candlesticks, and reading-desks, in gold and silver-gilt, enriched with gems, enamel, and embroidery, a number of illuminated liturgies, and a set of tapestries, showing the adoration of the Magi, with Balthasar, the traditional ancestor of the house. In other rooms were tables with huge legs enriched with carving, long seats that opened to form linen-chests, sideboards in solid worked wood, cupboards let straight into the stone, and lined with cedar. In the larders and cellars were tuns of wine, both white and red, great store of nuts and grain, piles of salt beef and pork, rows of fishing-nets, and stronger nets for hunting the stag and the wild boar; with herds of cattle, pigs, and sheep, in the pastures below, and nearly fifty chickens. In the halls and passages were trophies of arms, cuirasses, helmets, arbalètes, coulevrines, bombardelles, lances; and swords; 'the most of them rusty,' for their day was over; the furniture was partly sold by order of the king, partly bequeathed to the Bishop of Tortosa, and partly sent over to the Château of Tarascon." The princedom of Les Baux now became merged in that of Provence, and a few years later the good King René succeeded to its honours. As Les Baux had been famous in the annals of the Troubadours, it is probable that he took considerable interest in the romantic place. He restored the ramparts and the towers of the castle, and made over the barony for life to his second wife, Jeanne de Laval, whose kneeling figure faces him in the Triptych at Aix. There is a charming little reminder of her still to be seen at Les Baux. In the valley beneath the fortress-rock is a square walled-in field which was once a garden. In a corner of it is a little stone pavilion with delicately carved Renaissance work, upon which time and weather have had very little effect. There was once one of these in each corner, but all signs of the others have disappeared, as well as the "knots" and parterres and treillages and the beds of sweet smelling herbs that lay between them. The one that is left is called the Pavillon de la Reine Jeanne, and if it did not, actually belong to her, which it probably did not, for she would have had her pleasaunce nearer to the castle, it must have given delight to some fair lady of her court, or to the wife of one of the Provençal nobles whose mansions lined the narrow streets of Les Baux. Fine as their remains show them to have been, they had no more ground attached to them than a house in a street of Mayfair, and it is agreeable to think that it was possible at this time for the ladies of Les Baux to enjoy a garden outside the fortifications, and not to be cooped up day after day within the protecting walls. Soon after the principality of Les Baux became merged in that of Provence, Provence itself came to the throne of France. Louis XI was on the throne, and in the last year of his reign he ordered the destruction of the ramparts and the castle of Les Baux. It was not the first time that the castle had been destroyed, and it was not to be the last. Its immense strength seems to have given it a sort of vitality that suffered dismemberment without complete destruction, and even now it seems not to be quite dead, though it is long since it was at last rendered uninhabitable. Probably on this occasion it was only the offensive and defensive parts of the castle that were destroyed, for fifty years later, during a royal progress through Provence, Francis I visited it with a brilliant train, and was entertained there by his own High Constable, Anne de Montmorency, to whom he had given the barony of Les Baux. Another royal visit, in 1614, ended in sad disaster. The Duc de Guise was entertained one Sunday in May in the castle, and at every toast that was drunk there was a salvo of artillery. Being probably a little flushed with wine, the prince announced his intention of firing a cannon himself. The cannon exploded and shattered his leg, and a few days later he was buried at St. Trophime in Arles. In the sixteenth century Les Baux, still in the thick of whatever strife was going forward, became the battleground of Catholics and Protestants. In 1543 Claude de Savoie, Count of Tende, who was Seneschal of Provence, took up his residence in the castle, and stayed there for a year trying to bring peace between the factions. In 1561 the Protestants got into Les Baux, and made havoc, quite in the old-fashioned way. In three months they were turned out, not at all gently. But two years later they were back again, not only free to practise their religion, but with the governor, Jehan de Manville, a convert to it. He converted part of his house into a chapel to the Huguenots. The house is in ruins, but there is enough left to show what a fine one it was, and among the remains is a pedimented Renaissance window of the chapel, with the famous Reformation motto carved over it in stone: "Post Tenebras Lux," and the date 1571. [Illustration: PAVILLON DE LA REINE JEANNE] [Illustration: HUGUENOT CHAPEL IN LES BAUX] This family of Manvilles is the most important in the annals of Les Baux after that of its titulary princes. They held some sort of seignorial authority for about a hundred years, but in 1621 the fourth and last of them had to resign his rights for continuing to harbour the Protestants. A few years later the prosperity of Les Baux departed. Louis XIII sent troops against its last seigneur, Antoine de Villeneuve, who was an adherent of the Duke of Orleans, and Richelieu ordered the final destruction of the castle. This time the work was done thoroughly. But the stout old pile made a resistance of its own. It took a month to demolish it, and gunpowder had to be used to blow it up. And even now there is a great deal of it left. After that Les Baux steadily declined until it became no more than a refuge for a handful of peasants, who squatted amongst the ruins, fed their sheep where the grass grew over the castle courts, and cultivated a few fields outside. But it kept one church out of its five or six, and has always had some sort of corporate life. It is a little more prosperous now, because of its visitors; but compared with its rich past the life is a mere trickle, and only the ruins remain to tell of what it once was. CHAPTER X _Les Baux_ (continued) Mr. Cook had written of the inn at Les Baux that lunch was "a perilous adventure, and any other form of hospitality impossible." This did not frighten me, because when one takes a pack on one's back one drops a good many prejudices. Read what the inns were like when Smollett travelled through France, or Casanova, or Arthur Young. Probably the inn at Les Baux, when Mr. Cook visited it, would have seemed to an eighteenth century traveller a most desirable place of entertainment. At any rate, the reproach is now removed altogether, for there is an excellent inn at Les Baux. It is called the Hôtel de la Reine Jeanne. The other inn is called the "Hôtel de Monte Carlo," which recalls a curious episode in the history of Les Baux--the last in its long history. It was after Richelieu had wrecked it, and was caused, says Mr. Cook, by the ambition of Spain to become possessed of Monte Carlo. "The young Honoré de Grimaldi, seeking the protection of Louis XIII, who had no desire to see the Spaniards conveniently planted between Genoa and Nice, so near to his own territories, arranged by the Treaty of Péronne for the independence of Monaco, and the protection of a French garrison, in 1641, together with sufficient lands in France to compensate for the loss of any Italian revenues confiscated by Spain. Grimaldi got the Spaniards out of Monaco by a cleverly audacious ruse, and was rewarded by lands in France which were called his Duchy of Valentinois; and in 1643 Les Baux was created a marquisate in the possession of the Grimaldis, Princes of Monaco, and Dukes of Valentinois. The title that had been held by Diane de Poitiers, and by Cæsar Borgia, added perhaps the last touch of sinister romance that was needed to complete the history of Les Baux. A little country pleasure-house, beneath the ruins of the fort, was enough for the Grimaldis; and even that was knocked to pieces by the Revolution, which also cut down every forest on the mountain-slopes."[10] This "Hôtel de Monte Carlo" used to be called "A la Chevelure d'Or." Some years ago when the pavement of the church was undergoing repair there was found the body of a beautiful young girl, wrapped in a mantle of her own golden hair. It fell to dust when exposed, all but the long strands of hair which the innkeeper possessed himself of and displayed in his tavern. When he left Les Baux he took the "Cabelladuro d'Or" with him, but a tress of it is now in the Musée Arlaten at Arles. The rock beneath the church is honeycombed with graves of the knights and ladies of old time, and this fair girl is supposed to have been the Princess Strella of Florence, who came to Les Baux to marry the Reine Jeanne's seneschal, but died instead, and was buried beneath the stone on which she would have stood to be wedded. A sad little story, very real at the time, then forgotten for four hundred years, and now again real enough to touch the heart! All that afternoon and evening I wandered about among the ruins of the deserted city. I call it deserted because the greater part of it is actually so, and the life of the part that is inhabited is so different from the life it once enshrined that it has little power to change the meaning of the old buildings in which it shelters. The church is perhaps an exception, for so many churches as ancient as this have survived. But if you sit in its darkness and silence for a time the present drops away from you and you are back again in the days when it rang with the tread of mailed knights and rustled with the silks and satins of their ladies. It has been clumsily enough restored without, but inside it is much as it was centuries ago. The south aisle is the oldest, and it has three chapels, as well as an altar, scooped out of the living rock. Mr. Cook reminds us of Dumas' visit to it. "As he entered the little, cold, dark building (in the days before its restoration) he heard a sound of sorrow at the eastern end. Upon an open bier, before the high altar, lay the dead body of a little girl. Her two tiny sisters knelt on either side. Her mother sat crying in a corner, and continued sobbing after the good Alexandre had thrown her his whole purse. Her little brother tried to toll the bell for a service at which no priest was present. A dozen or so of beggars had looked in to see the sight. They comprised the whole population of Les Baux." In front of the church is a terrace overlooking the valley in which is the garden with the pavilion. In one corner of it are the ruins of a chapel of the White Penitents. On the other side the rock rises sheer and steep, and in it is hollowed out a semi-circular cistern called the Deïmo. Into this the vassals of the Lords of Les Baux poured their tithes of wine and corn and olive oil. One can picture this terrace on a sunny spring morning filled with the people who had just come out from hearing Mass in the church. They would linger awhile to gossip by the stone parapet, or round the steps of the cross in the middle of the little _place_, before they went off to their fine houses in the narrow streets. Les Baux was a favourite residence of the Provencal nobility in its more peaceful days. Hardly less interesting than the ruins of the castle and the older houses are those of the fifteenth and sixteenth century mansions, with their noble proportions and their rich decoration. One of them, hard by the church, is still standing, and is used as a school. You can get permission to see its vaulted frescoed hall. It belonged to the noble family of the Porcelets, the origin of whose name is legendary. A proud lady of the family drove away a beggar woman, rebuking her for bringing into the world more children than she could provide for. The beggar chanced to be a witch, as so frequently happened in such circumstances, and prophesied in return that the lady herself would bear as many children as there should be little pigs in the litter of a sow that was near them. The sow produced nine _porcelets_, and the lady as many children, who with their descendants were thenceforward called Porcelet. If only one could catch just one glimpse of the place as it was in the days of high romance! It would be impossible to dip anywhere into the history of song and chivalry in the south during the Middle Ages without coming across mention of Les Baux. Some of its princes were noted Troubadours, knights and ladies thronged its Courts of Love, and the names of its queens ring musically through the poetry that was made there. Passe-Rose, Douce, Etiennette, Adélasie, Briande, Clairette, Barbe, Aybeline, Baussette--how sweet they sound! And there are stories to be told of all of them. Characteristic of the times is that of the fair Azalais, wife of Count Barral des Baux. Her charms were sung by the famous Troubadour, Foulquet of Marseilles, but "neither by his prayers nor by his songs could he ever move her to show him favour by right of love." Whether or no he actually transferred his affections to his lady's young sister-in-law, Laura, or only pretended to do so, Azalais took umbrage, and "would have no more of his prayers or fine words." So, "he left off singing and laughing, for he had lost the lady whom he loved more than the whole world." But his homage continued, and we hear no more of Laura. Barral des Baux grew tired of his countess and divorced her, but Foulquet, in spite of his friendship with her husband, maintained his allegiance to Azalais. At last he wearied of his fruitless sighing, and took the cowl. He rose to be Bishop of Toulouse, and his name lives, not as one of the greatest poets of his time, which he was, but as the cruel persecutor of the Albigensian heretics. As one mounts towards the summit of the rock one sees the ruins of yet other churches and chapels, and on the grassy plateau is a wide space that was once used as an arena for bull-fights, but before that was the site of a hospital for lepers, of which there were many in Les Baux during the seventeenth century. In the foundations of the walls that are left can be seen the recesses for the beds of the patients cut into the rock. It rained a good deal that afternoon, but as I was standing on the summit of the rock in the evening, looking out over the plain, the sun sank into a clear belt of sky between the clouds, and the whole wide landscape, with its encircling hills, was bathed in a glory of golden light. I turned, and almost held my breath at the beauty that was revealed to me. The setting sun had caught the ruins of the castle, and it was glowing in the unearthly light, like a fairy palace, while the walls and roofs below it were still in shadow. The deep blues and purples of the hills beyond were indescribably lovely. I could not expect to get a reminder of their beauty; but the castle, standing out like that--I might get it in a photograph. I turned and ran down the steep street to get my camera. I had carried it about with me all day, but had left it behind for my evening stroll. As I hurried up to the top again, the sun was just touching the lower bank of heavy cloud. As I ran towards the first place from which I could possibly get a view, the light slowly faded from the towers and battlements; as I reached it, it died away altogether. The ruins were once more cold and grim and forbidding. It was the more disappointing because it is very difficult to get any view of Les Baux that is characteristic of the place as a whole. The castle stands up boldly from the north-east, but even there the rock on which it is built does not show its height. The view of the town taken from the castle gives some idea of its situation, with the rocks on the other side of the valley and the plain spread out below; but it is only a fragment, after all, and the only photograph I took of it that "came out" was when there was a driving scud of rain that blotted out the view, and shows few details of the foreground. Another trouble came upon me that night. I was walking through a narrow street in the darkness when a big dog rushed out of a doorway and made for me. I turned quickly to defend myself, and at the same time a man standing in the doorway shouted at the dog and picked up a stone to throw at it. I felt a sudden pain in the calf of my leg, and thought that the dog had bitten me, or a stone had hit me, very sharply. But it was a split muscle, and it kept me laid up in Les Baux for two days longer than I had intended. And that produced the greatest disappointment of all. On Sunday I should have gone to Maillane, on my way to Avignon, and seen Mistral, who was then quite well, and who liked to see visitors. But on Monday I could not walk so far, and put off the visit till later; and on Monday Mistral was taken ill with the illness from which he died on Wednesday. [Illustration: LES BAUX FROM THE CASTLE RUINS] [Illustration: ONE OF THE BEAUTIES OF LES BAUX _Page 152_] But this further disappointment was hidden from me at the time, and I spent the next two days hobbling about Les Baux and getting an indelible impression of it, as familiarity with its nooks and corners increased. It became, by degrees, not so much a ruined city as a city of ruined houses, with a character to each. There are many intersecting streets and lanes, and as one poked about them here and there, some faint shadow of reality made itself felt above the destruction. Little bits of staircases, windows, hearths, chimneys, stood out from the mass of heaped stones. One could imagine the houses whole and clean and occupied. From some life seemed only recently to have departed, though they had been left to decay for centuries. The ghosts of the men and women of the past were very near to showing themselves, especially at dark, when what is preserved and what is destroyed was difficult to distinguish. I spent much time on the quiet grassy summit of the rock. A few sheep are fed there, and the shepherds watch them, as they always do in this country, sitting in the shade of some ruin or leaning over the rough stone parapet to look at the valley below. An old inhabitant came up to read his paper there, as he told me he did every evening when it was fine, and we saw the first swallow of the summer as we talked. The children came to cut plants for salads, busily turning over the stones and filling their wire baskets. They are very friendly, the children of Les Baux. When I had been there two years ago a slim little dark-eyed girl of twelve had shown me the church, and I had taken her photograph sitting on the steps of the cross. Now I found her grown into a young woman, and present her here as one of the beauties of Les Baux. Her name is Martha Montfort and I wondered if perhaps she was a descendant of the great Montforts. For our Simon de Montfort's father was Count of Toulouse, and campaigned it here against the Albigenses. The people at the inn were very kind to me over my accident, provided me with embrocation and cotton wool and the best of advice, and sent me away nearly cured. Mistral had visited them in the early days of their occupancy, and had written in their visitors' book, in his fine delicate hand, the following poem: Fiéu de Maiano S'ère vengu d'ou tèms de Dono Jano Quand èro à soun printems e soubeirano Coune èron autre-tèms S'ènso autro engano que soun regard courons, aurieu, d'elo amourouns, trouva, j'eu benurons vaur fino canvouneto que la bella Janeto m'aurié donna'n mantèu pèr parèisse au cassèn. One can get the lilt of the soft Provençal, in which the poet sings so sweetly, and with the French translation, added in his own hand, make out the sense. Fils de Maillanne, Si j'étais venu au temps de Madame Jeanne, Comme ou l'était dans sa fleur et Souveraine, Comme on l'était jadis, sans autre politique que son regard brillant, j'aurais, amoureux d'elle trouvé, moi bienheureux, chansonette si fine que la belle Jeanette m'eût donné un manteau pour paraître au château. Mistral would certainly have been rewarded if he had appeared at the castle of Les Baux in the time of the Troubadours. He sings in the same tongue, poems at least as beautiful as any that they have left behind them. He was anxious that the _patronne_ of the inn should wear the Provençal costume, and I do not wonder at it, for although she is a Swiss from Valais, she has the regular features and the stately bearing of the Arlesiennes who are said to be the most beautiful women in Europe. I found an English artist settled at Les Baux. He had bought one of the old houses and restored part of it, a great deal with his own hands. We sat and talked in a large upstairs room with a fine open fireplace and the window open to the western valley and the hills beyond it. And on Sunday we visited the Val d'Enfer together, and the chapel of the Trois Maries, or the "Trémaïé." The carved stone in front of which this little shrine is built--it lies under the castle rock to the west--supplies the key to much that we have already heard about. It is one of the great limestone rocks with which the hillside and the valley are littered--about twenty-five feet high, and is a semi-circular niche twelve feet or so from the ground containing the weathered carving of these draped figures, nearly life-size. At first sight they appear to be those of three women, and for centuries the tradition has been that they were the three Marys who landed with the other saints at Stes. Maries de la Mer. But the carving is Roman, and the figures are Roman, dressed quite recognizably in togas and tunics, the right-hand figure facing us is a man, the other two are women, the one in the middle, taller than the others and wearing a sort of turban and carrying a rod decorated with foliage, though this is not easy to make out now. But it is not difficult to identify the three figures. There is a wealth of evidence to show that they are contemporary portraits of Caius Marius, his wife Julia, and in the middle Martha the prophetess who attended Marius in his campaign against the barbarians. "For he had with him," writes Plutarch, "a Syrian woman named Martha, who was said to have the gift of prophecy. She was carried about in a litter with great respect and solemnity, and the sacrifices he offered were all by her direction. She had formerly applied to the senate in this character, and made an offer of predicting for them future events, but they refused to hear her. Then she betook herself to the women, and gave them a specimen of her art. She addressed herself particularly to the wife of Marius, at whose feet she happened to sit when there was a combat of gladiators, and fortunately enough told her which of them would prove victorious. Marius's wife sent her to her husband, who received her with the utmost veneration, and provided for her the litter in which she was generally carried. When she went to sacrifice she wore a purple robe lined with the same, and buttoned up, and held in her hand a spear adorned with ribbons and garlands." * * * * * The inscription below the figures has almost entirely disappeared; but enough remains to show its date, and the name of the sculptor, Caldus. Mr. Cook makes the interesting suggestion that this may have been "that plebeian partisan of Marius, who forged his own way to the front, was made tribune in 107 B.C., and won his honours by hard work like his master." For "he was lieutenant at Les Baux with Marius before he went to Spain; and in memory of his Spanish campaigns he struck the gold medals which record his rise to the consulate in 97 B.C." Here then are the three Marii: Caius Marius, Martha Marii, and Julia Marii; and as is the way of such things they became presently transformed to the three Maries, and a whole new tradition was attached to them. There is little doubt either that Martha the sister of Mary who rid Provence of the scourge of the dragon derived from Martha the companion of Marius, who rid it of the scourge of the barbarians. Not far from the rock of the Trémaïé is that of the Gaïé which bears the much mutilated carving of two figures which are probably those of Caius Marius and his wife Julia, or possibly of Martha. These two stones, and especially the Trémaïé, are from one point of view the most interesting remains in the whole of Provence; for they join on the past to a past still more remote, and a story that took two thousand years in the telling is made plain. CHAPTER XI _Mistral_ I started early on Monday morning to walk to Saint-Remy. It was fine and sunny again, but there was a touch of the _mistral_. The road winds up through the limestone crags to a _col_ from which there is a view even more magnificent than that from Les Baux to the south. The undulating plain, all silver and delicate green and indigo and deep purple, stretches away on either hand, and very far away rise the snow peaks of the Pyrenees, like mountains in a dream. The Rhône and the Durance are at about equal distances to the right and left, the Durance flowing on one side of the Alpilles to join her sister at Avignon, and both these together passing the other side on their way to the sea. Beyond Avignon are the heights of the Cevennes and the Basses-Alpes to close in the picture, of which the foreground is the very heart of the rich and picturesque Provençal country. The life of the soil, as it existed for hundreds of years, and exists still though shorn of some of its character since the days of steam, has been immortalized by Mistral, who was born in the village of Maillane a few miles off the road I was taking that day, spent all his life there, and was to die two days later. All its sweet charm is summed up in the great epic of "Mirèio," or "Mireille" published when he was twenty-five and instantly hailed by no less a critic than Lamartine as a work of genius. I had been reading it at Les Baux, in a version in which a French rendering--prepared, I am told, by Mistral himself--is printed parallel to the Provençal. It was possible to get an idea of the swing and mastery of the original verse. With some knowledge of Latin and French, with a few simple rules of pronunciation, which were given in the Introduction, and with the ear attuned somewhat to the sounds--for I had constantly heard Provençal spoken--I could take a stanza here and there and make it out. But one was carried along by the translation, even though it was in prose, and I could not put it down until I had finished its twelve books. The story is of the innocent burning loves of a youth, the son of a wandering basket-maker, and of a young girl, the daughter of a rich farmer. The earliest books are full of simple and beautiful feeling for the common episodes of country life, as they unrolled themselves before the poet's own eyes at the time he was writing of them. We see the basket-maker and his son joining the master of the farm, his family, and his numerous dependents, at their meal on the long stone table under the vine-trellis in front of the house, and hear the stories they tell; we see the girls picking the mulberry leaves from the trees, and winding the silk from the cocoons, their hands and tongues alike busy; and hear wise talk of seasons and crops, and of all the active pastoral and agricultural life of the country. There come three rich suitors for the hand of the fair Mireille; a man of mighty flocks, who brings his sheep and goats down from the high Alps to winter on the Crau; the owner of troops of horses running wild on the windy marshes of the Camarque; and the strong tamer of bulls, tales of whose strength and prowess ring through the country, who fights a Homeric battle with the young lover, is defeated by him, but by a stroke of malevolent cunning leaves him for dead before he goes to his own death in the flooded river. The after scenes have immortalized the Grotto des Fées in the Val d'Enfer of Les Baux, and the pilgrimage church of Saintes-Maries, in which Mireille dies, after hearing from the saints themselves the story of their miraculous voyage and their landing in Provence. All the scenes of the poem are laid within a few miles of Mistral's home, and neither in this poem nor in any other has he drawn inspiration except from the life and legends of his own Provence. [Illustration: MISTRAL'S BIRTHPLACE, MAS DU JUGE] [Illustration: FRESCO IN THE PALACE OF THE POPES AT AVIGNON _Page 203_] He has told the story of his own life in a charming book. His father was of the old peasant aristocracy of the country of Arles, and married his second wife, Mistral's mother, when he was already fifty-five. "One year, on St. John's day, the master, François Mistral, was in his cornfields, which the harvesters were cutting with their sickles. A crowd of women followed the reapers to pick up the grain which escaped the rake. Soon my father noticed a pretty girl who hung behind them as if she were afraid to glean like the others. He approached her and said: "'Where do you come from, little one? What is your name?' "'I am the daughter of Etienne Poulinet, Mayor of Maillane,' she replied. 'My name is Délaïde.' "'What!' said my father, 'the daughter of Poulinet, Mayor of Maillane, coming out to glean!' "'Master,' she replied, 'we are a large family, six girls and two boys, and our father, although he is fairly well-off, when we ask him for pin-money, says, "My dears, if you want money to make yourselves smart go and earn it." So that is why I have come to glean.' "Six months after this meeting, which reminds one of the old story of Ruth and Boaz the gallant yeoman asked Master Poulinet for his daughter, and I was born of this marriage. "Well, then, my arrival in the world having taken place on September 8, 1830, in the afternoon, the happy mother sent for my father, who was at that time, as usual, in his fields. "As soon as the running messenger came within hearing, he called out: 'Come, master, for the mistress has just been delivered.' "'How many?' asked my father. "'One--a fine boy.' "'A son! May the bon Dieu make him strong and wise!' "And without more, as if nothing had happened, the good man finished his work and returned deliberately to the farm. This showed no lack of tenderness, but, brought up, and indoctrinated, like the old Provençals, in the Roman tradition, his manner showed the surface roughness of the ancient _pater familias_."[11] The child narrowly escaped being christened Nostradamus, but was called Frédéric instead, in memory of a poor little urchin who had carried love-letters between Mistral's parents during their courtship and had died shortly afterwards. His childhood was spent in soaking in the details of the large simple life in and about his home, and all the lore of the past that was stored up by the country people. He went to the University of Avignon, and to Aix to study law, and there gradually formed in him the purpose to devote his life to the literary revival of the national tongue, which had sunk from its proud estate as a language of high poetry to little more than a peasant dialect. He was not alone in his love for it. Other names were honoured throughout Provence of the joyous, high-mettled band that formed themselves into a society to advance their object, and made such an immense pleasure of their lives as they worked towards their end. There were sweet singers among them--Aubanel, Roumanille, Félix Gras, and others--although none whose names will live as Mistral's will; for he long outlived them all, and his fame has spread everywhere. They called themselves the "Félibres," and their movement the "Félibrige," using a word that Mistral had found in an old legend to designate the seven Doctors of the Law with whom Christ disputed in the Temple; and no one who has visited Provence needs telling how much alive the movement is. Besides his poems, and some charming stories, Mistral has produced an exhaustive Dictionary of the Provençal language, and if his fame had not been established half a century ago on the publication of "Mireille," his museum at Arles, in which he sought to gather up all the story of Provençal life, so that what has passed or is passing away should never be forgotten, would keep his memory green. It is a noble gift in itself, this museum housed in one of the ancient buildings of Arles. In 1906 Mistral was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, and dedicated it to this purpose. He wanted nothing for himself that money could buy. For eighty-four years he lived among his own people the common life of the land, and came to be supremely honoured by them all. They called him the Emperor of the South; there was no one whose name carried more weight. For the gift that he brought to his people, his grand old father of whom he draws such a delightful portrait in his Memoirs, must be accorded some of the thanks. As in the case of Ruskin and of Browning, a parent who had no connection with literature himself fostered the early studies of the son and left him to follow his bent, while relieving him of the necessities which often smother talent, though never perhaps genius. But then Mistral's father was himself an inspiration to the work his son set himself to do when he returned to the large liberty of his home. "The Judge's farm was at this time a true home of pure poetry, biblical and idyllic. Did it not live and sing around me, this poem of Provence with its blue depths framed by the Alpilles? One had only to go out to be dazzled by it. Did I not see Mireille passing, not only in my young dreams, but even in person, sometimes in one of those pretty young girls of Maillane, who came to pick mulberry leaves for their silkworms, sometimes in the grace of those who came and went with bare throats and white coifs among the corn and the hay, in the olive-gardens and among the vines? "Did not the actors in my drama, the labourers, harvesters, herdsmen and shepherds, come and go before my eyes from dawn till dusk? Could you have a finer old man, more patriarchal, more worthy to be the prototype of my Master Ramon, than old François Mistral, whom no one, not even my mother, ever called anything but the Master? My poor father--sometimes when the work was pressing and he wanted help, either to get in the hay or to draw up the water from the well, he would call out: 'Where is Frédéric?' Although at that moment I might be stretched under a willow idly pursuing some fugitive rhyme, my dear mother would reply: 'He is writing.' And immediately the rough voice of the good man would soften as he said: 'Don't disturb him.' For to him, who had never read anything in his youth but the Bible and Don Quixote, writing was almost a holy office." As a young man Mistral's father had been requisitioned to carry corn to Paris during the Reign of Terror, and was struck with horror at the execution of the king.[12] * * * * * "He was profoundly religious. Every evening, summer as well as winter, kneeling at his chair, head uncovered, hands to his forehead, with his hair in a queue tied by a silk ribbon, he would pray for us aloud; and when the evenings lengthened in the autumn he would read the Gospels to his children and his servants.... "Although he would pick up a fagot on the road and carry it home; although he would content himself for his ordinary fare with vegetables and brown bread; although, in the midst of plenty, he was always abstemious, and would mix water with his wine, yet his table was always open, as well as his hand and his purse, to any poor wayfarer. Then, if there was talk of any one, he would ask first: 'Is he a good worker?' and if the answer was, yes, he would say: 'Ah, he's a good man; I'm his friend.'"[13] This charming book of Mistral's and his poems, give more of flavour of Provence than anything I have read, and the link between our times and his was not even snapped by his death on the day I walked through the country that he more particularly wrote of. He was never for long away from Provence during the eighty-four years of life, but was much lionized when he did venture as far as Paris. I very much wish that I had seen him, for his personality counted for a great deal in the movement he spent his life in fostering, and he was the last survivor of the original Félibres. It now remains to be seen whether the revival will continue of itself. I have heard it compared with other national revivals, fostered by intellectuals, but taking no great hold of the people, and prophecies of its decay. But I think it has life in it. Mistral would certainly not have called himself an intellectual, and he never behaved like one. He was one of the people himself, and they are fortunate to have found such an interpreter. CHAPTER XII _Saint-Remy_ On the way up from Les Baux to the _col_, and for some distance beyond, the country is arid and cold; but the wealth of aromatic and flowering shrubs that carpet the ground in these stony regions, and the breathing spirit of the spring, gives them a charm of their own that is far removed from desolation. The road was lonely enough. A few flocks of sheep and goats clattered among the loose stones of the hillsides that were on either side, among the pines and the thyme and rosemary and the yellow brooms; and the shepherds watched and whistled to them, never very far away. A motor-car passed me as I rested at the top of the hill, and a carriage jogging along the straight road to the "plateau des antiquités" offered itself for a lift; for I was on my way to see something that every tourist in these parts comes to see, and this one was plying for hire in this lonely region in the ordinary way of business. But otherwise I had the road to myself in the early morning, and took my time over the six or seven kilometres that were all that I was yet able to accomplish. The two noble monuments that stand in an open space a mile or so to the south of Saint-Remy, and dominate the wide expanse on all sides, can be seen long before one reaches them, from the south. The wildness of the hills has begun to give place to cultivation, but they stand by themselves with no other buildings near them, reminders of a story that has never been forgotten by the poorest and least educated of those who work within sight of them. The so-called mausoleum is the older of the two. It has an inscription that has caused considerable difficulties to the antiquarians. I need not go into the controversy, but will accept the conclusions set forth by Mr. Cook, who deals with the question in his own lucid and convincing way. The inscription is to the effect that Sextus, Lucius, and Marcus, Julii, and sons of Caius, dedicated this monument to their parents; and within the colonnade on the top of it are two statues which have been supposed to represent these objects of filial piety. But the inscription is not less than a hundred years later than the date of the monument on which it was carved, and the probability is that some rich colonials "calmly appropriated a fine 'antiquity,' wrote their own names on it, and buried the respected corpses of their parents within a building originally intended for entirely different uses." The bas-reliefs on the four sides of the base represent a Roman triumph, and there seems little doubt that this noble monument was erected to commemorate the great victory of Caius Marius over the barbarians, on the spot where he had first met them. It was erected by Julius Cæsar, the nephew of Marius, and the two figures represent the great general himself, and Catullus, his colleague in the consulship, when their combined forces crushed the Cimbrians upon the Raudine Plain. The Triumphal Arch, which stands close to the monument, was also erected by Julius Cæsar, to celebrate his great victory over Vercingetorix. It is the earliest Roman triumphal arch outside Italy, and there are probably only two in Rome that are earlier. [Illustration: THE MAUSOLEUM, SAINT-REMY] [Illustration: THE TRIUMPHAL ARCH, SAINT-REMY] The photographs will show the wonderful state of preservation of the monument, as well as its beautiful details. The arch also preserves much of its detail, and the two monuments together have a striking effect. Mr. Cook draws a just comparison between these sane and beautiful relics of classical antiquity and the misery and squalor of the mediæval ruins of Les Baux. It is a comparison that strikes one forcibly throughout Provence. We shall see other examples of Roman architecture--in the Pont du Gard, the Arenas at Nîmes and Arles, and elsewhere--and in comparison with them all but fragments of the oldest churches and palaces and fortifications that came after them are things of yesterday. And yet the Roman works seem to be built to stand for ever, and tell their tale so that all may read it; while with the buildings of centuries after, the tale is confused often beyond unravelment. We know of the history that led to the erection of these "antiquities" at Saint-Remy, and the men who made them, almost as if they were things of a generation ago. Move forward a thousand years and the long history of Les Baux was just beginning. Its princes crept out of obscurity, and its stately buildings arose, to arrive at splendour through long centuries, to decay and to lie in ruins for centuries more; and all the time these other buildings within a few miles of them, whose life has been twice as long as theirs in all their phases, have continued almost in their first perfection. And you must move on for much more than a thousand years before you find the Christian legends that derived from the people and events which these monuments commemorated firmly fixed in the minds of men, and giving rise to the beautiful buildings which now vie with those of the Romans in interest. In this country, one is not allowed to forget how many hundreds of years it took for the church to produce its fine flowers of architecture, when one is continually coming across those of a civilization that was old before the Church ever existed. Not far from these Roman "antiquities" is an interesting church and cloister of the twelfth century, but I did not turn aside to see it, as walking had now become a painful business, and it took me half an hour to limp down the long avenue that led to the pleasant town of Saint-Remy. It is a gay, clean little town, its broad streets and squares shaded by great limes and planes and chestnuts, its gardens full of flowering shrubs, and rich with beds of colour. One seems to have got back to the country about Grasse, but here the flowers are grown for seed, not for scent. Saint-Remy's chief industry is the production of seeds for the horticulturists. I should have liked to see something of it, but had to content myself with sitting still until the departure of the omnibus for Avignon. This was a great clumsy petrol-driven conveyance in which the men stood in one compartment, holding on to anything within reach as it lurched and swayed along the road, and the women sat in another. I think it was market-day. At any rate the seated compartment was full of peasant women nursing their baskets, every window closed and the heat considerable. I might have borne that for the sake of a seat, of which there was one vacant, but when I opened the glass door between the compartments I was met with such a powerful efflux of garlic that I closed it again hurriedly and swayed and lurched with the rest until we reached Châteaurenard. It was a charming, fertile country that we passed through, with one farm succeeding another--comfortable-looking, rambling, stone-built houses and outbuildings, shielded from the fierce winds by rows of tall cypresses, and even the fields and market-gardens fenced in with dried reeds. The _mistral_ and the _bise_, when they really set to work, are a scourge. But as old François Mistral used to say when he heard grumbling about the weather: "Good people, there is One above who knows what He is about, and what is good for us. Supposing those great winds which bring life to Provence never blew, how would the mists and fogs of our marshes be dispersed? And if we never had the heavy rains, how would our wells and springs and rivers be fed? We need all sorts, my children." At Châteaurenard we changed omnibuses for the five miles' journey to Avignon. They were mostly townspeople now who crowded the compartments. There was a family in the corner of mine--a mother with three handsome daughters who crocheted or knitted busily during the whole journey, and a father who sat silent and looked learned, but amiable. Perhaps he was a _félibre_; they are mostly learned and amiable; and Avignon is one of their chief centres. We crossed the Durance, a broad and mighty river, soon to join its waters with those of the Rhône. The sun was setting over it, and the knitting ladies laid down their wool and exclaimed at the beauty of the scene. After another mile or so we were set down just outside the ramparts of the ancient city. CHAPTER XIII _Avignon_ Some one had told me that he had stayed at Avignon for a night while motoring down to the Riviera early in March, and had seen the Rhône under a full moon from the garden of the Popes' Palace, while the nightingales sang among the trees all around him. This information had been presented to me amidst the dreary days of clouds and thawing snow which come with the end of winter in the Swiss Alps, and the contrast was so entrancing that I had half a mind to make straight for Avignon first of all, by train. I had seen that beautiful garden, and the grand view from its terraces, with the Rhône rolling its mighty stream down below; the fabled bridge of St. Bénézet still throwing a few arches across it, with its two-storied chapel at the end of them; the forts and towers of Villeneuve a mile away on the other side; and the distant mountains closing in the great expanse of fruitful country. It was a spot to dream of and to long for. But I think there must have been a mistake about the nightingales; or at least about the month. It was now the twenty-fourth of March, and, although the trees were beginning to break into leaf at last, I heard no nightingales in Provence. Avignon has a famous inn--the Hôtel de l'Europe--very old, very picturesque, with its archway and flower-grown court. Indeed, it is so much in keeping with all the rest that a stay there serves to heighten the pleasant memories that every visitor must carry away with him of the fascinating city. But on this journey I was on the lookout for something more retiring; and by good fortune I found something as good of its kind as I have ever happened upon. I walked up the broad Rue de la République, with its gay and busy shops, _cafés_ and picture palaces, its trams, plane-trees, soldiers and citizens, and all the life and appearance of a modern street, and came to the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville. On either side of this main artery lies the old Avignon, and I knew that I only had to turn aside from it to lose that somewhat disconcerting note of modernity, and perhaps to find my ideal _auberge_. I found it just off the _place_, very ordinary outside, and indeed in, but with a host and hostess whose sole aim seemed to be the welfare of their guests, and with cooking that would make the fortune of one of those Soho restaurants that the world occasionally discovers and flocks to for a time. Good wine, too, and all at a price that makes one wonder how these things are done. Find it for yourselves, ye travellers who want to save your pockets, and are content with a clean bed, good fare and a kindly welcome; commend me to madame, and ask her to give you a dish of _bouillabaisse_. I went up that evening, past the huge looming mass of the Popes' Palace and the cathedral to that delightful garden, with its dark foliage, gleaming sheets of water, statues and balustrades, and looked out over the Rhône and the dim country beyond. It is one of those places in which the past of a very old city seems to concentrate its memories. Whatever one knows of its history comes before one, half real; whatever is left of the city itself that is part of its history takes on its old meaning, and whatever is new is forgotten. In this corner of Avignon, the buildings round the great oblong of the Place du Palais, the ancient streets just off it, the huge rocks that lift it high in the air, the ramparts and towers and forts below, the cottages and quays along the river, the half-ruined bridge--all are of the old storied Avignon, and only the garden itself is new, though its newness takes off none of the effect of its surroundings. The site of this garden was in papal times a barren windswept waste, with windmills and forts, and a cemetery used when Avignon was isolated by floods. When the Rue de la République was cut right through the city, the débris was carted up here and mixed with soil from the river banks, and this delightful garden laid out. Shortly after the Crimean war Marshal Canrobert planted an oak among the ilexes and cedars and cypresses that mix their dark foliage with the living green of the deciduous trees, and dedicated the garden to the use of the citizens of Avignon. It is a charming spot at all times. I found myself continually wandering up there, in the intervals of more serious sight-seeing, or in the early morning before sight-seeing began, or in the evening when it was over. Sight-seeing is really the bane of all beautiful places; one wants to see everything and is glad one has done so afterwards, but the way to enjoy a place is to live one's own life in it, for however short a time, and take the sights as they come. Unfortunately they do not come quickly enough when one has only a day or two to spare for a place that is full of them, and the only way is to make a business of sight-seeing, with whatever intervals of peace one can afford. I did my duty the next day in spite of the rain that fell intermittently. In retrospect there are churches; crooked mediæval streets with little shrines in niches of the walls; broader Renaissance streets with handsome buildings; the immense ring of rampart, too big to make any single impression, but effective enough here and there when one found oneself at the edge of the city; the busy modern boulevards, which after a time fail to take away from the impression of the whole as a very ancient and very picturesque city; and the mighty palace so dominating everything that one is hardly ever able to forget it, however far one's wanderings take one. I think St. Agricol was the first church I visited. It is of the fourteenth century, on a very much older foundation, simple and pleasing, with a late Renaissance memorial chapel, richly and gracefully decorated, and containing some beautiful statuary. Avignon employed many sculptors of note in the days of its wealth and fame, and their work is to be found here and there, sometimes outside of a church and sometimes inside. One learns to look out for it, and gains many a little thrill of pleasure in spotting something true and right and beautiful, among a good deal that is commonplace. The same may be said of the paintings of which the churches are full, but both buildings and pictures are apt to be dark, and without a great deal of trouble it is difficult to pick out the good from the ordinary. Probably the best are in the Musée, and some of those are so fine that one is content to enjoy thoroughly a few, and let the rest go by. St. Agricol was rather busy on the morning I visited it. In one of the side chapels a number of small boys were awaiting their turn at the confessional box. They sat on wooden benches, their bare legs dangling, and occupied themselves as is usual with small boys on their best behaviour, not making too much noise and ready to be diverted by anything in the shape of novelty that came their way. When I came unexpectedly upon them they showed great interest in me, but the opportunities for comment that I afforded were immediately displaced by something much more worthy of attention. The great west doors were opened and a coffin was carried in and laid in the chancel. There was a muttered service lasting a very few minutes, and silverheaded _aspersoirs_ were handed from one to the other of the scant body of mourners. Then the untidy-looking men with their cloth caps on their heads lifted up the coffin and almost ran with it down the church, led by a cocked-hatted functionary whose aim seemed to be to get the whole business over as quickly as possible. It was the briskest funeral I have ever seen. After that, the church rapidly filled up with crowds of children, and the small boys from the side chapel, relieved of their burdens of sin, clattered in to join the rest. A handsome, cheerful-looking priest mounted the pulpit and began to address them and ask them questions. He very soon had them interested, and the church rang with their eager answers and not infrequent laughter, as he cleverly led them from one point to another, and caught and threw back every word that he drew from them. Just as I was going out of the church a mischievous urchin poked his head in at another door and shouted something opprobrious, then ran away as fast as his legs would carry him. The priest was as ready for this interruption as he had been for the calls of his flock. He said something too quickly for me to catch, and the whole churchful of children shouted their applause. More beautiful than St. Agricol is the church of St. Pierre. Its fine Gothic front, completed early in the sixteenth century, shows a wealth of delicate carving, and it fronts a picturesque _place_ which enables one to get its full effect. The façade is worth examining in detail, with the luxuriant carving, round the portal, of vines and oak leaves and acorns and little figures engaged in all sorts of agricultural pursuits. I did not see the carved sixteenth century doors, which are protected in the same way as those of the cathedral at Aix, but in a niche between them is a lifelike eighteenth century statue of the Virgin and Child--the Mother, tender and matronly, bending forward and holding up her flowing drapery--which is well worth noting. Very attractive is the little plane-shaded _Place du Cloître_, approached under an archway to the north of the church. The old ecclesiastical buildings have been taken possession of by all and sundry, and are alive with the signs of modern habitation--clothes fluttering, gay pot-flowers in windows of old grey stone, children playing under the trees. But it is a sweet and peaceful spot in the midst of a busy city, and its cloistered charm still hangs to it. I visited this church several times during the days I found myself in Avignon, between journeys. It has the same sort of interest as the churches one goes in and out of in Italy, though to a less degree than the finest of them--a sense of perfection in the whole, and a good deal that is worth looking at in detail. There is a lovely little Gothic pulpit of white stone, with statues of apostles and saints under delicately carved canopies; richly carved and gilded woodwork in the choir, which frames a series of dark but decorative pictures; a Renaissance altar-piece with a relief of the Last Supper; some really fine pictures by the best-known artists of Avignon--Nicholas Mignard, Simon de Châlons, Pierre Parrocel, and others. But the most human and pathetic possessions of this church are the cardinal's hat and tunic of St. Pierre de Luxembourg hung up in a glass case in one of the side chapels. [Illustration: SIXTEENTH CENTURY DOORS AND VIRGIN AND CHILD OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, ST. PIERRE, AVIGNON] [Illustration: THE PONT BÉNÉZET _Page 185_] This infant phenomenon of the Church had won fame in Paris for his learning and piety at the age of nine. At fourteen, already a bishop, he was made a cardinal, and summoned to the papal court at Avignon by Clement VII, in order that his fame might convert the Urbanists to the Clementine obedience. His reputation spread throughout Christendom, and was enhanced by the stories of his extraordinary self-disciplines. The poor child caused himself to be scourged as he was lying on his deathbed, and gave orders that he was to be buried in the common cemetery of the poor. His shroud and vestments were torn to shreds, and even the bier broken into fragments for relics, and countless miracles were wrought by the touch of his body and afterwards at his grave. Three thousand of these were attested by the papal commissioners, not of the common sort, it was explained, such as "recovery from fevers and such trivial ills, but the blind were given sight, the deaf heard, the dumb spake, and, what is more, the dead were raised to life." This boy-bishop was canonized a hundred and fifty years after his death. Now he is forgotten, and his relics hang there dusty and neglected. Baedeker does not even mention them, though Joanne does. There are none of the signs of devotion and remembrance that are shown to saints of popular memory, no candles or other offerings. The Church itself seems to have forgotten him. Has the efficacy of his self-tortured life died out, or is there still virtue in these relics of his princedom, which is there for any one to whom it may occur to draw on it? In the rather dark church of St. Didier is a notable work of art formerly known as the _Image du Roi René_, for whom it was executed. It is a relief in marble representing Christ bearing the Cross, with a figure of the Virgin on her knees in the foreground, and a score or so of other figures, with an architectural background. Its realism is striking, and rather painful, but it should not be missed, for it is one of the earliest sculptures of the Renaissance to be seen in France. High up on the wall opposite to the chapel in which this relief is half hidden is a beautiful Gothic pulpit, or tribune, which is also worth notice. Probably it was not used for preaching from. Mr. Okey in his admirable historical and descriptive account of Avignon, suggests that it was built for the exposition of relics. St. Didier has a fine tower and belfry, which draw the eye when one looks down upon the roofs of Avignon from the heights above. There are not many left now of the two or three hundred towers that were there before the Revolution, and of the sixty churches or chapels there are only eighteen, not all of which are intact, or used for their original purpose. But there are many curious "bits" still left in Avignon, which one continually comes across as one strolls about the streets--noble fronts of rich mansions, carved porches and doorways, innumerable ancient streets of smaller houses, which have remained almost untouched, and here and there a church or a single tower that has escaped destruction so long that one hopes it will be preserved for ever. Avignon, indeed, would be interesting enough if its great lions were left out; as it is, they dwarf everything else, and perhaps an apology is needed for dealing with the parish churches before the cathedral and the Palace of the Popes. But before we give ourselves over to the big things of Avignon, let us finish with the smaller. Every one has heard of the Bridge of St. Bénézet, and the old jingle: _Sur le Pont d'Avignon L'on y danse l'on y danse, Sur le Pont d'Avignon L'on y danse tout en rond. Les beaux messieurs font Comm' çà, Et puis encor Comm' çà. Sur le Pont d'Avignon L'on y danse tout en rond._ It was a stupendous work of its time, which even the Romans seemed to shirk; indeed, so great that it was necessary to assign it to a supernatural origin. The story was told by order of Friar Raymond of the Bridge, and sealed by the Pontifical Rectors. When Benet was a young child and was watching his mother's sheep, the voice of Jesus Christ came to him ordering him to build a bridge over the Rhône, which until then he had never heard of. An angel in the guise of a pilgrim led him to the place where the bridge was to be built and telling him to cross the river and show himself to the bishop and the townspeople of Avignon, vanished from his sight. The ferryman was a Jew, and scoffed at his prayer to be taken over the river for the love of God and Our Holy Lady Mary, but Little Benet gave him the three farthings which were all his worldly wealth, and he ferried him across. Little Benet interrupted the bishop's sermon by announcing his mission. He was led to the provost of the city to be chastised, and announced it also to him. The provost reviled him but said that if he could carry away a certain stone which he had in his palace he would believe that he could build the bridge. The bishop and all the townspeople looked on while he raised the stone, which thirty men could not have moved, as easily as if it were a small pebble and carried it away to form the foundation stone of his bridge. So, with a gift of money from the repentant provost, and more from the townsfolk, and with the usual miracles of healing and raising the dead to life, the bridge was begun, and Little Benet hailed as a true saint. The pretty story, which is given in full, translated from the Provençal, in Mr. Okey's book need not be rejected entirely. There _was_ a Little Benet, as well as a Great, and he was instrumental in building the bridge. For he was chief of a community of Friars Hospitallers founded at Maupas, near Avignon, in 1164, "to establish ferries, build bridges, and give hospitality to travellers along the rivers of Provence."[14] One of the most attractive exhibitions of religious feeling in the Middle Ages, among a good many that are not at all attractive, was this undertaking of works of necessity by men of piety who believed that they were doing service to God by doing service to men. "Travellers were considered as unfortunates deserving pity," says M. Jusserand in his "English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages," in which there is much interesting information about the building and preservation of roads and bridges, "and help was given to them to please God." Thus, when Henry VIII gave the lands of the dissolved monastery of Christ Church to Canterbury Cathedral, he declared that he made this donation "in order that charity to the poor, the reparation of roads and bridges, and other pious offices of all kinds should multiply and spread afar." It is probable that the Frères Pontifes, taking their pattern from the Collegium Pontificum of Rome, owed their Christian impetus to St. Benet of Avignon, for his is the first society of its kind that is known, though it was soon copied all over Europe. It took him eleven years to build the bridge, and he also built the chapel of St. Nicholas that still stands upon it. He was buried in this chapel, and his body remained there for five hundred years. But the great floods of 1669 so shook the structure that his remains were translated to a chapel at the end of the bridge, thence to the church of the Célestines, and finally at the Revolution, into the church of St. Didier. Is it too fanciful to suppose that there is some foundation in fact for the legend of his beginning his great work as a child? I like to imagine him filled with his great idea as he walked by the side of the Rhône as a boy, talking about it and being laughed at, gradually forming a strong purpose, and finally bringing it to a triumphant issue. It reminds me of Dickens, as a poor child, passing the mansion of Gad's Hill and making up his mind that he would some day live there. The bridge passed through many vicissitudes. It was much quarrelled over, and seems to have been kept in fair repair whenever the Church's rights in it were recognized, but let go when it was in the hands of the laity. It has been in ruins now for two hundred and fifty years, but the few arches that remain show how well Little Benet and his bridge-builders did their work; and as it stands now it is one of the most picturesque features of the beautiful city. CHAPTER XIV _The Palace of the Popes_ "No one who did not see Avignon in the time of the Popes has seen anything. For gaiety, life, animation and one fête after the other, there was never a town like it. From morning till night there were processions, pilgrimages, streets strewn with flowers and hung with stuffs, disembarkings of cardinals from the Rhône, banners flying, galleys gay with flags, the soldiers of the Pope singing Latin in the squares, the begging friars swinging their rattles. And from top to bottom of the houses that pressed humming round the great papal palace, like bees round their hive, there was the _tic-tac_ of the lace-makers' bobbins, the flying shuttles that wove cloth of gold for the chasubles, the little hammers of the metal-workers who made the chalices, the sound-boards being adjusted by the lute-makers, the songs sung over the looms; and above it all the pealing of the bells, and always the beating of tambourines down by the bridge. For with us, when people are happy they must dance, they must dance; and as in those times the streets of the town were too narrow for the _farandole_, fifes and tambourines posted themselves _sur le pont d'Avignon_, in the fresh air of the Rhône, and day and night _l'on y dansait, l'on y dansait_. "Ah, happy time! happy town! Halberds without an edge; state prisons in which wine was kept to cool! Never any scarcity; never any fighting! That was how the Popes of the Comtat knew how to rule their people; and that is why their people have missed them so much." Thus Alphonse Daudet, a true son of Provence, draws his picture of papal Avignon, in that delicious story of his, "La Mule du Pape." As for the freedom of Avignon from war, during the seventy years that the Popes had their seat there, history would hardly justify the people of Avignon in regretting them on that account; nor probably were the dungeons of the papal palace lacking in tenants even at the best of times, for it was a cruel age, and the pleasures of the best of Popes would not have been greatly disturbed by the thought of men rotting in misery beneath the hall in which he was feasting. But the experience of all times of strife is that life goes on side by side with fear and danger, and merrily enough when the weight is lifted ever so little. Very likely Daudet's picture of Avignon enjoying itself is true enough. Clement VI, to whose time his story would refer, if it were intended to refer to any particular pontificate, was not much like the kindly old man who fed his mule with spiced wine, and advanced the adventurer who admired her, but neither was he like what a Pope would have to be nowadays. "Generous and open-handed," writes Mr. Okey, "a thousand hungry clerics are said to have crowded into Avignon seeking preferment, none of whom went empty away; for no suitor should leave a prince's court, said he, unsatisfied. Exquisitely polite and courteous, Clement had a gracious amenity of manner. Accustomed to the society of noble ladies, his court was crowded with fair dames and gallant knights; his stables were filled with beautiful horses; his hospitality was regal and his table loaded with rich viands and rare wines. The fair Countess of Turenne, his constant companion, disposed of benefices and preferments, and her favour was the surest avenue to fortune. No sovereign of his time kept so brilliant and expensive a court, and when one of the cardinals remonstrated and recalled the examples of Benedict and John, he replied magnificently: 'Ah! my predecessors never knew how to be a pope.' Clement relaxed the rigid constitution of Gregory X, _Ubi magis_, for the government of conclaves, made in 1274, and ordered that the cardinals might have curtains to their cells, to be drawn when they rested or slept; they might have two servants, lay or cleric, as they pleased, and after the lapse of three days, in addition to their bread and wine, they might have fruit, cheese, and an electuary, and one dish of meat or fish at dinner, and another at supper."[15] It was in 1309, for reasons that we need not go into, that Clement V set up his court at Avignon in the papal county of Venaissan. "This was a man," wrote Villani, "most greedy for money and a simoniac. Every benefice was sold in his court for money, and he was so lustful that he openly kept a most beautiful woman, the Countess of Perigord, for his mistress." But he was also a great lover of the arts, as is shown by "the vast treasure of gold and silver vessels, gems, antiques and manuscripts seized by his nephew at his death." He died five years later, when there was an interregnum for two years. Then the Bishop of Avignon was elected Pope under the title of John XXII. He was a small, wiry, learned and subtle old man of seventy-one, the son of a cobbler, and he lived to be nearly ninety. The conclave took place at Lyons, and he is said to have compassed his election by a promise to the Roman cardinals that he would not mount horse or mule except to go to Rome. So he got into a boat, and dropped down the Rhône to Avignon, "entered the papal palace on foot, and never left it again save to cross to the cathedral."[16] His palace was the old bishop's palace that stood where the mighty mass of the Pope's Palace stands now, but the cathedral was the same, although it has been very much altered. It stands very nobly, high above the _place_, and towering above the palace itself, which it adjoins. Its square tower is surmounted by a colossal gilt statue of the Virgin, which was put there in 1859, and bears that appearance. The cathedral dates from the eleventh century, but was rebuilt in the twelfth. The west porch with its Corinthian architecture was long thought to be of Roman construction, but it was probably erected rather later than the first rebuildings, and owes its classical appearance to the influence that Roman work had upon the Provençal architects, who had before them many fine buildings to study. It was once decorated with frescoes by Simone Memmi, who was brought to Avignon from Siena in the fourteenth century and did some beautiful work there, some of which we shall see later in the Popes' Palace. His paintings in the cathedral have unfortunately disappeared, all but a few fragments, which, however, include a figure in a green gown, kneeling, which is said to be a portrait of Petrarch's Laura. Simone did meet Laura in Avignon and painted her portrait, for which Petrarch paid him in two sonnets that "brought more fame to the poor life of Master Simone," says Vasari, "than all his works have brought him or will bring." [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL, AVIGNON] [Illustration: "THE POPES' PALACE IS MOST LIKE THOSE ALMOST BRUTALLY STRONG BUILDINGS THAT THE ROMANS LEFT"] The great west doors of the cathedral stand open, and its floor is wholly bare. It is much more effective so, but it makes the church look smaller than it is. Indeed, when you consider that you are standing in what was, during the seventy years of the "Babylonian Captivity," the first church in Christendom, you must be struck by its smallness. But the Popes of Avignon gave most of their attention to their palace, and not much was done for the cathedral. The main plan is a high nave, lighted, from an octagonal lantern in the last bay, and a semi-circular apse. The chapels came later. So did the elaborately carved marble gallery and tribunes on either side of the nave. One of the two chapels first to be built contains the remains of the beautiful tomb of Pope John XXII and his nephew. It has been much mutilated and much restored. The recumbent figure is not that of the Pope whose effigy first lay there, and of the sixty marble statues that adorned its niches none remain, though it is possible that one or two of those on the pulpit of St. Pierre, which we have already seen, may have been taken from the tomb. It must have been a glorious monument when it was first erected, and is even now a thing to see. What is called the tomb of Benedict XII in another chapel is a pure "make-up," much of it of the nineteenth century. There _was_ a beautiful monument to this great pope, but in the eighteenth century all that was left of it was moved. It stood in the chapel of the Tailors' Guild, and they wanted the space for a monument to a tailor. The Revolution created great havoc in the cathedral. The cloisters and chapter-house that stood to the east of it were swept away, and all their treasures and those of the cathedral looted, or else broken up. For some reason the old papal throne was spared, and stands in the choir--a plain chair of white marble, with the lion of St. Mark and the ox of St. Luke carved upon it. It was John XXII who really fixed upon Avignon as the papal city--Clement V had thought of transferring his seat to Bordeaux--and he soon set about housing himself in a manner worthy of a pope. He bought land, and began to build splendidly, not only a palace for himself, but one for his nephew, who had been presented with the bishopric. It still stands on the north side of the _place_, a comfortable and roomy house enough, though nothing beside the vast pile upon which it looks. He also built himself splendid country houses, one of them at Châteauneuf, where were the famous papal vineyards, and from which still comes a famous wine. Experts have pointed out some traces of Pope John's work, as well as of the small palace which he replaced; but the great fortified pile in which these were incorporated dates from the next reign--that of Benedict XII. The necessity there was for building a fortress is rather curious. Pope John had amassed a treasure so vast that his successor had to take exceptional steps to guard it. "According to Villani--who makes the statement on the authority of his brother, who was the representative at Avignon of the great Florentine banking house of the Bardi, of which they were members--eighteen millions of gold florins were found in the papal treasury at John's death; and gold and silver vessels, crosses, mitres, jewels and precious stones to the value of seven millions more. And this prodigious wealth, adds the historian, was amassed by his industry and sagacity and the system of the reservation of all the collegiate benefices in Christendom on the plea of preventing simony."[17] Mr. Okey goes into an elaborate and interesting discussion as to the present-day value of this vast sum, and puts "the approximate value of the papal treasure at John's death, according to Villani's statement, at the incredible figure of one hundred million pounds sterling." No wonder the walls of the palace were built to stand! Benedict XII was the third French Pope, and in spite of remonstrances decided to stay on at Avignon. Indeed, Rome was impossible at this time. Civil strife raged there; and "so neglected and ruinous and overgrown with weeds were the churches, that cattle browsed up to the altars in St. Peter's and the Lateran, and a papal legate offered the marbles of the Coliseum for lime-burning." Sometimes, in all that welter of crime and piety, squalor and luxury, cruelty and sentiment, of the Middle Ages, there stands out the figure of a man whom we seem to recognize as something nearer to ourselves than most of them. Our religion--even the religion of Catholic countries--is so different in spirit from the religion of those days that it is difficult to account for the actions of one after another of the great churchmen, except under the supposition that they were a set of greedy, bloodthirsty hypocrites, which probably most of them were not. But through it all there were constantly arising men and women who were actuated by much the same ideas as we should recognize as holy and righteous if we contemplated them in a living person. The greatest of these saints, we know, helped to fix the standard of goodness that is generally held today. They were men and women of genius, and we understand them as well as they were understood in their own day or perhaps better. But it is something a good deal less than genius that brings that sense of recognition in the case of a character like that of Benedict XII. He was a large, red-faced man, who was said by his detractors to love coarse jokes and to drink heavily; but his detractors were the clergy from whom he insisted upon behaviour much more in accordance with modern ideas than with those of his own age, and they could not forgive him. "He was a man," wrote one of them, "hard, obstinate, avaricious; he loved the good overmuch, and hated the bad; he was remiss in granting favours, and negligent in providing for the services of the church; more addicted to unseemly jests than to honest conversation; he was a mighty toper, and '_Bibamus papaliter_--let us drink like a pope'--became a proverb of the day." The indictment contains more than a touch of spite. It is not to be supposed that a man who drank mightily, if he really did so, or laughed at a broad story, would have been thought deserving of much censure in those days, especially by one who felt no incongruity in accusing him of loving the good overmuch or setting his face against nepotism. Those were virtues that were hated in that society, so crooked in its views that it could even brand them openly as faults without fear of reproach. This bluff, honest man built the greater part of the palace, "which," wrote one of his chroniclers, "with its walls and towers of immense strength stands like himself, four-square and mighty." About half as much again, however, was added in later pontificates, and Benedict's building was a good deal altered; but the four great fortified towers are his, and the buildings in between, which include his chapel. These are used now for the storing of archives, and other similar purposes, and are not shown to the public, but one or two of the towers can be ascended and magnificent views obtained from them. Of the massive walls little has been destroyed either by time or by the many vicissitudes through which the great building has passed. Of all the architecture that one sees in this country the Popes' Palace is the most like those huge, enduring, almost brutally strong, buildings that the Romans left behind them. An ineffaceable impression is gained of it as one walks up the narrow, winding Rue de la Peyrolie which leads from the lower parts of the town on the east to the Place du Palais. Part of the street has been cut out of the naked rock, and far overhead towers the south wall of the building, looking no less solid and permanent than the rock itself. It is like a gigantic cliff rearing its bulk above one, and that impression as of something vaster and stronger than mere human building is never quite absent from the whole mass, on whatever point of view it obtrudes itself. The enormous Court of Honour, which is the first thing you see after passing in, is undergoing repair, as, fortunately, is the whole of the building. It badly needed it, for until seven or eight years ago the greater part of the palace was used as a military barracks, and not only was the noble Hall of Justice divided up into three floors, and other parts ruthlessly adapted, but great Gothic windows were destroyed to give place to commonplace square openings, and in fact no beauty was spared where it might interfere with convenience. The restoration has been in hand for over seven years and is expected to take about as long again before the palace is put back into something like its original state. The work is being done with the utmost care, as all such things are done in France, but in many details the damage done has been irreparable. The great _Salle du Conclave_ has been cleared of its rubbish and the tall Gothic windows restored. It is huge and bare. There are no more than the worn remains of the frescoes with which Clement VI caused its walls to be covered, either by Simone Memmi himself, or by some one of his school. Some effort was made nearly a hundred years ago to induce the military authorities to look after their preservation; but "the Commandant of the Engineers replied that he did not share the commissioners' views with regard to the frescoes; they were of little artistic interest and not worth preserving; in fact they were not consonant with the spirit of a military establishment." It was in this hall that Queen Joan of Naples defended herself from the charge of being privy to the murder of her first husband, and won the day by her eloquence and beauty. Avignon was hers, and she sold it for 80,000 golden florins to Clement VI, who thus made an excellent bargain for the papacy. By a broad staircase one mounts to the fine doorway leading to the "new" chapel. It contains two doors, and the part on the left has been barbarously mutilated, but the whole is now carefully restored, as well as the beautiful chapel itself. You pass through numerous chambers and corridors, some of them restored to what they were, others in the hands of the work-people, and some still showing the hideous wreck that the adaptations to military use made everywhere of the interior of the palace. There is a room with charming fourteenth century frescoes of country scenes as pleasant as anything of the sort I know of. There is a garden with a fish pond and people preparing to take the disturbed-looking fish out of it; nymphs bathing; boys getting fruit from a tree; sportsmen rabbiting with ferrets; others hunting with falcons. The walls are covered with a realistic and most decorative groundwork of foliage and grass, in which you can pick out all sorts of trees, flowers, fruits, birds and little animals. Fortunately the greater part of these delightful paintings are intact, and a great deal of skill has been shown in restoring them to something of their pristine state. The more famous frescoes of Simone Memmi in the chapel of St. John the Baptist, and those of Matteo di Viterbo in that of St. Martial above it have not escaped so well. "In 1816 a Corsican regiment being quartered in the Palace, some of the soldiers (who as Italians knew the value to collectors of the St. Jean frescoes) began the exploitation of the neglected chapel and established a lucrative industry in the corps. Special tools were fashioned for the work; the men became experts in the art of detaching the thin layer of plaster whereon the heads were painted, which they sold to amateurs and dealers."[18] So in these beautiful New Testament scenes which cover roof and walls there are many unsightly white patches which sadly lessen the effect of the whole. But I cannot help thinking that the soldiers must have been stopped in their depredations, for very much more is left than has been taken away. I forget in which of these two chapels it was that I noticed on a patch of white wall names scribbled, with dates, quite in the modern tourist's fashion, and as fresh as if they had been written yesterday. But the script was "German," and the dates of three hundred or so years ago. So little do habits change! The rest of the palace that one is allowed to see has left no very definite impression on my mind, except that of vast space, and, where it has not yet been cleared of its barrack adaptations, of miserable degradation. One sees the funnel chimney in the middle of the great kitchen which was for so long said to have been the torture chamber of the Inquisition; one gets beautiful views from the higher chambers and windows and from the towers; and here and there one looks down on to a neglected space that was once a trim garden. If one cannot picture the old popes and cardinals walking in the beautiful garden from which we now look down to the Rhône and across to Villeneuve and the purple country beyond, they were not without such pleasures, although it never occurred to any of them to make a garden just there. "Among the amenities of the old palace were the spacious and lovely gardens on the east, with their clipped hedges, avenues of trees, flower-beds and covered and frescoed walls, all kept fresh and green by channels of water. John XXII maintained a menagerie of lions and other wild and strange beasts; stately peacocks swept proudly along the green swards,--for the inventory of 1369 specifies seventeen peacocks, some old and some young, whereof six are white."[19] Even when the restoration is finished it will need a strong effort of imagination to recall the scenes that were witnessed by these gigantic walls. They tell of the strength of the place and of the necessity for that strength. One can imagine the fighting, but it will all be too much swept and garnished to call up the scenes of splendour and luxury that were piled one upon another even in times of misery--of war and of flood and of plague. The luxury was like nothing that we know of except that of some of the Roman Imperial courts. Mr. Okey has collected many extraordinary details, from which I take as an example the account of the banquet given by two cardinals to Pope Clement V. "Clement, as he descended from his litter, was received by his hosts and twenty chaplains, who conducted him to a chamber hung with richest tapestries from floor to ceiling; he trod on velvet carpet of triple pile; his state-bed was draped with fine crimson velvet, lined with white ermine; the sheets of silk were embroidered with silver and gold. The table was served by four papal knights and twelve squires, who each received silver girdles and purses filled with gold from the hosts; fifty cardinals' squires assisted them in serving the banquet, which consisted of nine courses of three plates each--twenty-seven dishes in all. The meats were built up in fantastic form: castles, gigantic stags, boars, horses, &c. After the fourth service, the cardinals offered his holiness a milk-white steed worth 400 florins; two gold rings, jewelled with an enormous sapphire and a no less enormous topaz; and a bowl, worth 100 florins; sixteen cardinal guests and twenty prelates were given rings and jewels, and twelve young clerks of the papal house and twenty-four sergeants-at-arms received purses filled with florins. After the fifth service, a great tower with a fount whence gushed forth five sorts of choicest wines was carried in; and a tourney was run during the interval between the seventh and eighth courses. Then followed a concert of sweetest music, and dessert was furnished by two trees--one of silver, bearing rarest fruits of all kinds, and the other loaded with sugared fruits of many colours. Various wines were then served, whereupon the master cooks, with thirty assistants, executed dances before the guests. Clement, by this time, having had enough, retired to his chamber, where, lest he might faint for lack of refreshment during the night, wine and spices were brought to him; the entertainment ended with dances and distractions of many kinds."[20] The luxury has gone, and so has the terror. The thick-barred windows of the towers speak of the many who were immured there in pain and misery; if the kitchen was not a torture-chamber, such a chamber was certainly to be found elsewhere; somewhere on the walls is the hook from which was suspended the iron cage in which a cardinal who had offended the pope was hung up for months in the sight of all. The times needed a good deal of gilding. CHAPTER XV _Vaucluse_ It was very pleasant to get on to the road again, with my pack on my back. I was not yet tuned up to the nearly twenty mile walk between Avignon and Vaucluse, though my damaged muscles were now giving me little trouble, so I took the train to L'Isle-sur-Sorgue, which is distant from Vaucluse between four and five miles. In 1789, Arthur Young made this pilgrimage to the shrine of Petrarch and Laura, and allowed himself to be more moved by sentimental interest than was his custom. L'Isle has changed very little since that time. It is still the bright, pleasant, well-watered little town he describes it. "L'Isle is most agreeably situated," he wrote. "On coming to the verge of it I found fine plantations of elms, with delicious streams, bubbling over pebbles on either side; well dressed people were enjoying the evening at a spot I had conceived to be only a mountain village. It was a sort of fairy scene to me. Now, thought I, how detestable to leave this fine wood and water, and enter a nasty, beggarly, walled, hot, stinking town; one of the contrasts most offensive to my feelings. What an agreeable surprise, to find the inn without the town, in the midst of the scenery I had admired! And more, a good and civil inn. I walked on the banks of this classic stream for an hour, with the moon gazing on the waters, that will run for ever in mellifluous poetry: retired to sup on the most exquisite trout and crawfish in the world. To-morrow to the famed origin."[21] I do not remember the elms, but the planes were there, as usual, and fine, spreading ones they were; and what was more, they were beginning to show a delicate haze of green, which was very delightful, and what I had been looking out for ever since I had started on my expedition. During the two days I had been at Avignon the spring seemed to have taken that little definite step forward which makes all the difference. In the south, where the sun gets hot long before the trees get green, and so many flowers come forth to greet it, this longed-for arrival of the true spring is apt to be discounted, and comes with less of a thrill than is felt in the north. But the thrill is there, if one's senses are open to it; and I felt it on that morning as I walked to Vaucluse. "I am delighted with the environs of L'Isle," Arthur Young wrote of his next morning's ride; "beautiful roads, well planted, surround and pass off in different directions, as if from a capital town, umbrageous enough to form promenades against a hot sun, and the river splits and divides into so many streams, and is conducted with so much attention that it has a delicious effect, especially to an eye that recognizes all the fertility of irrigation." * * * * * It is still a fertile, carefully cultivated country, but gets wilder as one approaches the famous spring "justly said to be as celebrated almost as that of Helicon." The river Sorgue, whose source provides the fountain, is already a full and rapid stream as one nears the village, and flows through green meadows down the valley not far from the winding road. The hills are high on either side and a great cliff looms in front of one, closing in the gorge. One's eye instinctively searches for a cleft down which the torrent must descend; but none is to be seen--only the tall rampart of rock. The village is pleasant enough, and contains two inns, each of them quite capable of providing for a comfortable night's lodging. Too much, I think, has been written in disgust of the paper-mills, which use the power of the stream and provide the village with employment. Their buildings are old enough to make them not so very incongruous, and they are a small detail beside the huge masses of rock that enclose the village on three sides. Nor is either of them in the village itself. There is an ancient church, an old stone bridge, gardens and terraces and parapets, and much shade of trees, and the beautiful sparkling river that makes music all the time. And dominating the village on a high crag are the ruins of the Bishop of Cavaillon's castle, up to which Petrarch so often climbed to see his friend. The fountain is some little distance beyond the village. The road, which runs by the river, passes one of the factories and then the garden of a _café_, where everything was being painted up and prepared for the coming influx of visitors, and "La Belle Laure," the motor-boat upon which trips can be taken on the river, was just about to be drawn from her winter quarters. With all this, and with the booths for the sale of picture-postcards and all sorts of reminiscent rubbish, most of which has nothing to do with Vaucluse, or even with Provence, the place has been cockneyfied enough, and I dare say that if I had seen it later in the year, or on a Sunday, when it is crowded with people, I should not have carried away with me the next morning such an agreeable impression. But I had it pretty well to myself, and when I had got past the last of the booths on to the rocky path above the stream it was as lonely as it must have been in Petrarch's time, six hundred years ago. [Illustration: THE "FOUNTAIN," VAUCLUSE] [Illustration: THE CAVES ABOVE THE "FOUNTAIN" _Page 223_] But where was the fountain? I had read of a rocky cave in which it bubbles up, and had pictured I don't know what in the way of gloom and mystery. The path led up to the straight, towering cliff, and there stopped. To my right was a broad pool of water, and that was all. At first sight it was just a pool at the foot of the great rock. Then I saw that the water was flowing all the time as it were from the face of the rock itself. There may have been an inch, but not more, of the top of the cavern showing. I had found it at its fullest. Sometimes it sinks so low that the waters of the pool do not rise to the rocks over which they were now thundering to the torrent below, and then the river is fed by an underground stream, of which the waterfall is only the overflow. The pool was very still, and very blue, and the rocks about it were very bold, but naked and oppressive. I must confess to having been rather disappointed; for this is a place in which countless people have been moved to tears by the beauty of their surroundings as well as by a sensibility to the past of which we seem in these prosaic days to have lost the knack. Mr. Okey tells us how in 1783 Alfieri, "on his way to buy horses in England, turned aside with transport to visit the magic solitude of Vaucluse, and 'the Sorgue,' he writes, 'received many of my tears; and not simulated or imitative tears, but verily hot, scalding, heartfelt tears.'" Also how Wordsworth, "on his way to Italy in 1837, was most of all pleased with the day he spent at Vaucluse, where he was enchanted with the power and beauty of the stream and the wildness and grandeur of the rocks." In the eighteenth century the cult of Petrarch and Laura was very much alive, and no traveller with any pretensions to taste would have omitted a visit to the famous fountain if he had found himself anywhere near. We have already seen how Arthur Young, who was anything but a sentimentalist, thought nothing of Avignon except in connection with the loves of Petrarch and Laura. The engaging rascal Casanova, who was a sentimentalist beyond everything, went to Avignon for no other purpose but to make the pilgrimage to Vaucluse. Of course he wept copiously; nothing else was to be expected of him, and I do not see why Mr. Okey should take it for granted that his emotion was not genuine.[22] He was not the most estimable of characters, but there can be no doubt of his love of letters, nor indeed of the power of such a story as that of Petrarch and Laura to touch him. "I threw myself on the ruins," he tells us, "arms extended as if to embrace them; I kissed them, I moistened them with my tears; I sought to breathe the divine breath which had animated them." And then he characteristically proceeded to draw a moral from his emotion that would help him with the lady to whom he was paying court at the time. "I asked pardon of Mme. Stuard for having relinquished her arm to render homage to the shade of a woman who loved the finest spirit that the age had produced. "I say spirit; for the flesh, as it seems, was not concerned in the matter. 'It is four hundred and fifty years, madame,' said I to the frigid statue that regarded me with an air of amazement, 'since Laura de Sade walked on the very spot on which you stand now. It is quite likely that she was not so beautiful as you are, but she was gay, bright, sweet, merry and good. May this air which she breathed, and which you are breathing at this moment, enliven you with the divine fire that ran in her veins, that made her heart beat and her breast palpitate! Then you will capture the homage of all sensible men, and you will find none who will dare to cause you the least annoyance. Gaiety, madam, is the lot of the happy, and sadness is the dreadful shadow of spirits condemned to eternal torments. Be gay then, and thus merit your beauty!'"[23] It is sad to read that this inspiring address was received by the lady with no signs of emotion whatever. She took the chevalier's arm again and the party returned to the house of Messer Francesco d'Arezzo, where Casanova spent a quarter of an hour in carving his name; after which they dined and went back to Avignon. From Casanova's description this scene must have passed at a house just below Philip de Cabassole's castle, as he describes himself mounting to the point of a rock. Such a house was shown as Petrarch's during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and one opposite to it, with an underground passage between the two, was shown as Laura's. I do not remember either of these houses, which I believe no longer exist. And it is pretty certain that none of the places that were ever celebrated as Petrarch's house was really his, though a fair case for the situation of his dwelling, and the garden he describes with such affection, has been made out. The story of Petrarch's love for Laura, like that of Dante for Beatrice and Abelard for Héloïse, has passed into the very texture of literature, and need not be told here. And it would be an affectation for one who is unable to read Italian to pretend to any absorbing interest in Petrarch's expression of it. I must confess that, for my own part, I find much more to delight me in the details of his life at Vaucluse than in anything that I can gather at second-hand of his worship of Laura, and those details are real and fresh enough to give to the place such a charm as hangs over no other that I visited in Provence. Mr. Okey has collected them so well in his chapter "Petrarch at Vaucluse," that I cannot do better than make a long extract from his pages. "In 1337 the poet, revolted by the atmosphere of the papal court, and perhaps a little disappointed at curial insensibility to his claims for beneficial favours, turned his back on Avignon and withdrew to live the simple life near the source of the Sorgue at Vaucluse, whose romantic beauty had been impressed on his mind since a boyish excursion he had made thither in 1316. To a modest little house fit for a Cato or a Fabricius, with no companion but a dog given him by Cardinal Colonna, living on hard rustic fare and dressed like a peasant, figs, nuts, almonds and some fish from the Sorgue his sole luxuries, the poet retired with his beloved books; the only sounds that greeted his ears in that sylvan solitude were the songs of birds, the lowing of oxen, the bleating of lambs, the murmuring of the stream. Like Horace, he scorns gold and gems and ivory and purple; the only female face he looks upon is that of his stewardess and servant--a visage withered and arid as a patch of the Libyan desert, and such that if Helen had possessed it, Troy would yet be standing. But her soul was as white as her body was black, and her fidelity was imperturbable. By indomitable industry she was able to attend to the poet's wants as well as to those of her own household; faring on hard, dry, black bread, watered wine, sour as vinegar, she lay on the bare ground, and would rise with the dawn; in the fiery heat of the dog-days, when the very grasshoppers are overcome, her invincible little body would never tire. Two small gardens the poet had: one a shady Transalpine Helicon, sacred to Apollo, overlooked the deep, mysterious, silent pool where the Sorgue rises, beyond which there was nothing save naked, barren, precipitous, trackless crags, inhabited only by wild animals and birds--the like of it could not be found under the sun. The other garden, better tilled and nearer his house, was bathed by the crystal waters of the rapid Sorgue, and hard by, separated by a rustic bridge from his house, was a grotto whose cool shade and sweet retirement fostered study; there, in a little retreat, not unlike the _atriolo_ where Cicero was wont to declaim, the happy recluse passed the hot afternoons in meditation; in the cool of the evening he roamed about the green meadows, and in the morning rose early to climb the hills. Were not Italy so far and Avignon so near the poet could end his days there, fearing nothing so much as the return to a town. "Dear friends, too, are not lacking. The cultured Philip of Cabassoles, Bishop of Cavaillon, dwells in the château that crowns the hill above his hermitage, and the great ones of the earth are pleased to seek him in his rustic home. The island garden of the Sorgue gave incessant trouble. Writing to Guglielmo di Pastrengo, the studious recluse recalls the stony patch of ground his friend helped to clear with his own hands, and informs him, the once barren waste is now enamelled with flowers, rebellious nature having been subdued by human toil. In a charming epistle, in Latin verse, to Cardinal Colonna, Petrarch tells of the fierce frontier wars he waged with the naiads of the Sorgue in order to recover possession of the garden which he had usurped from them and which they had reconquered during his absence in Italy. By dint of strenuous labour he had cleared a stony patch of land and planted there a little green meadow, as a retreat for the Muses. The nymphs, taking it ill that he should establish strangers in their territory and prefer nine old maids to a thousand young virgins, rushed furiously down the mountain to ravage and destroy his budding garden; he retires terrified, but, the storm passed, he returns shamefacedly and restores the desolated land to its former verdure. Scarce had the sun run his course when the furious nymphs return, and once more undo all his labour. Again he prepares to restore the evicted Muses, but is called away to foreign parts. After six years he returns to his solitude: not a vestige remains of his handiwork, and fish swim at their ease over the site of his garden. Grief gives him arms, and anger, strength; he calls to his aid the peasant, the shepherd, the fisherman; together the allies roll away great stones and tear out the entrails of the earth; they chase forth the invading nymphs; with Phoebus's help re-establish the sacred Muses in their place and build them an abiding temple. The enemy retires breathing vengeance and awaits the help of the winter floods and storms; but the victorious champion of the Muses is prepared; he defends his conquest by a rocky rampart and defies the fury of the nymphs. Now will he enjoy a lasting peace and fear no foes; not even were they allied to the waters of the Po and the Araxes. His triumph was, however, short-lived, for we learn from a further letter that with their allies, the winter floods, the naiads of the spring gained a final victory, and the defeated Petrarch was forced to lodge the Muses in another spot. "The poet always found solace and refreshment in his gardens. A true lover of horticulture, he cultivates exotics, experiments on soils and plants, and writes to Naples for peach and pear trees. He invites the Archdeacon of Genoa to his dwelling, happy, celestial and angelic; to the silence and liberty of his grateful solitude; he will find secure joy and joyful security, instead of the noise and strife of cities; he shall listen to the nocturnal plaints of Philomela, and the turtledove cooing for her mate. "He bids the convalescent Bishop of Viterbo find health of body and serenity of mind in the soft and balmy air of Vaucluse. There in the warm sun, by the crystal fountain, in umbrageous woods and green pastures, he shall experience the delights of Paradise as described by theologians, or the charms of the Elysian fields as sang by poets; a good supply of books and the society of faithful friends shall not be lacking."[24] That is a picture worthy to be put beside those that one makes for oneself of Horace enjoying his Sabine retreat, and indeed, if one were to leave Laura out of consideration, there is an almost exact parallel in the retirement of the two poets. If one could have read Petrarch, as one reads Horace, there would have been a constant series of little discoveries and recognitions to be made all about Vaucluse. Even as it was, wandering about the pleasant quiet place as I did that afternoon and evening, with the music of its many waters always in my ears, I gained an impression that comes back to me now as among the best that that land of many memories afforded me. It was only the "fountain" itself in which I was a little disappointed. The rest was as sylvan and poetic and peaceful as one would wish such a place to be, and the shade of the courtly nature-loving poet seemed to brood over it all, so little has it changed in essentials. I made my way up through the olive gardens to the ruins of the castle, of which there are enough left to provide a most picturesque feature, but hardly enough to enable one to picture it as it was when Petrarch visited his friend there. One sees the pool and the cliff from it, and the river running over its stones below, the curious cave dwellings high up in the rocks opposite, and the pleasant fertile valley opening out on the other side. It must have been a delightful country retreat, and in that remote spot fairly safe from the disturbances that were apt to centre round such dwellings, although it was strongly built and fortified. The next morning I set out early to walk back to L'Isle by a roundabout way which took me over the hills to Saumane, where I had heard that there was an ancient castle still inhabited. I found a hill village, very picturesque, as is the way of such villages in Provence, and walked round the walls that guarded the château from the gaze of the vulgar, but found it more inaccessible to curiosity than is usual with such places. So I went down again to the village and into the _auberge_ to refresh myself, and found a friendly postman also refreshing himself at a table in the kitchen, who conversed with me on many subjects but particularly on that of dogs. He seemed to take an occasional bite as something in the ordinary way of his rounds, and only showed apprehension in the case of the dog that bit him being "malade." I am bound to confess that this possibility gave me something of a chill. I had seen the teeth of so many dogs, which seem to be of a particularly unfriendly disposition in that country, and although I had always managed to drive them off, my accident at Les Baux had made me nervous about them. But I had not considered the chance of hydrophobia, which an Englishman is apt to forget all about. However, I suffered nothing further, except an occasional scare; but whenever I approached a farm and heard the bark of a dog, I went past very gingerly. Both the postman and the woman of the inn gave me to understand that, although the château was kept strictly closed against unauthorized visitors, something might possibly be done for me if I called at a certain cottage with a large rose over the porch and rattled the coins in my pocket. Which I did, and was sent up the road hopefully. On it I met a man leading a donkey laden with fagots, who promised to join me at the entrance when he had disposed of his load. Parts of the château date back to the twelfth century, but the dull square front is of the seventeenth. It is magnificently situated on a point of rock above the village, and commands splendid views. Or rather, the terraces do, for a grove of ilexes has been planted all along the front--I suppose for shade, and shelter from the wind--and nothing can be seen from those windows. I had exhausted the interest of the gardens, and the immediate surroundings of the château long before the man with the ass reappeared. There was an untidy "pièce d'eau" on the sandy square in front of the house, and some dejected-looking peacocks in a cage, and over all the rest was that air of makeshift and economy which marks so strange a contrast between the châteaux of France and the lavishly kept-up country houses of England. Nor was the impression altered when I was taken inside, as far as the appointments of the rooms were concerned. I have never been inside any of the great French provincial châteaux, but I have seen a good many of the size of an ordinary English country house, and never one that was not full of rubbish, or that had gardens kept up except with the bare minimum of labour. They have the air of places to which their owners occasionally retire for a sort of picnic existence, and I suppose that is what they are generally used for--as appanages to some fine house in a city. But all the rubbishy furniture and decoration of this château could not detract from its interest. It had belonged to the Marquises of Sade. I do not know whether the infamous eighteenth century marquis ever owned or lived in it, but it was the property of the Sades when Petrarch was at Vaucluse, and even if Laura had not married into the family, as it is generally supposed that she did, Petrarch must have visited it. The vaulted dining-hall, with its curious echo, can have changed but little since his time, and one can say almost with certainty that his feet trod the stones upon which one stands today, or at least that he knew the room as one sees it. The appalling dungeon cells, most of them too dark and inconvenient to be used now even as storerooms, show that this castle was equipped with all the conveniences of the middle ages. One could more easily imagine a nobleman of those days doing without his dungeons than a modern one without his bathrooms or garage. But the owners of this château seem to have been more enterprising in making economic use of their prisoners than most of their fellows. They ran an illicit mint. There are the stone trough and table in one of the maze of cells underground. Nobody could have been indelicate enough to pry into the domestic arrangements of a gentleman's dungeons, and the coiners were no doubt as safe from detection there as anywhere. Nor was it probable that any of them would give away the secret. They did not mix with the outside world, and were not likely to do so again when once they had been initiated into their new trade. CHAPTER XVI _Nîmes and the Pont du Gard_ The surpassing charm of Nîmes is provided by its waters, which are the chief feature of a garden as beautiful of its kind as is to be seen anywhere. But these waters were considered too sacred for common use in Roman times, and in order to provide this quite unimportant colonial town, which is not even mentioned by classical writers, with pure drinking water, an aqueduct was built to convey to it the waters of the springs five and twenty miles away; and the remains of this aqueduct are one of the wonders of the world. We will take the Pont du Gard first, as I did on this expedition, walking from Remoulins, and then back again by the other side of the river, and on to Nîmes. It was a bright, hot, spring day, and the first view I had of the famous aqueduct was through a haze of foliage which later on would have been thick enough to hide it until one was almost underneath its soaring arches. Taking this road to the left, which is the usual and the shorter one, the huge structure comes as a sudden surprise; but I am not sure that it does not provide a more interesting sight seen over miles of olive gardens from the other road. No detailed description of this mere fragment of a monumental and enduring work is necessary, as I am able to give an excellent photograph of it from a point of view that is not usually taken. But I doubt if its immensity can be gauged from any photograph that it is possible to take. It rises a hundred and eighty feet from the level of the river. The huge blocks of which it is composed are put together, and have held together, without any mortar. It has lasted for close upon two thousand years, and looks as if it would last till the end of the world, without much trouble being taken to keep it in repair. Its effect, indeed, as one lingers about it, and looks at it now from the hills above, now from the road below, now from a distance across the plain, and tries to get some definite outstanding impression, is of a work on such a scale that it rivals that of nature herself. It is huge and yet it is light; it is regular in design, but irregular in detail; its use is gone, yet it has life. It stands in majestic solitude. The blue river with its sandy bars flows between rocky, wooded hills, and the white road keeps it company, but seems to be little used. There is some sort of a _café_ near it, but it is hidden by the trees. I had the place all to myself during the hour or so that I stayed there. The impression of something belonging to nature more than to the art of man deepened. [Illustration: THE PONT DU GARD] [Illustration: THE FOUNTAINS, NÎMES] The photograph, taken from the north bank of the river, shows the end of the squared channel which conducted the water, and a little farther along the roofing with which the whole length of it was covered. A tall man can walk under it upright; but if he is inclined to be bulky there are places where he may have to squeeze himself through. This is because of the calcareous deposit left by the water flowing through the channel for centuries. The thickness and hardness of this coating must be seen to be believed. At first I could not imagine how such enormous masses of what looked like natural rock had been raised to the summit, and then I remembered reading something about the deposit, and recognized it for what it was. Houses have been built of it, and a whole church in a village not far off. The jutting-out stones in the middle row of arches may also be noticed. They were put there by the Romans probably to provide for scaffolding when repairs should become necessary. I do not know why it is that my stay in Nîmes seems in retrospect rather depressing. The weather was fine, and what there is to see is well worth seeing. Perhaps I was getting a little tired of being alone; perhaps the large, dirty hotel in which I spent the night had something to do with it. One puts up with very poor quarters in the country, and always has some sort of intercourse with one's fellow-creatures. But in a town it is different, and I was glad enough to get away from Nîmes the next morning, bearing with me nothing very fresh in the way of impressions to add to those that I had formed of the place during an hour's visit two years before. In fact, a motorist who stays to lunch at Nîmes, and sees the fountains, the arena and the Maison Carée, may congratulate himself that he has tasted the full flavour of the brew. But these three sights, and the "Temple of Diana," by the fountains, are by all means worth seeing. Except the Arena, which is somewhat similar to the one at Arles, there is nothing to equal them. The "fountains" are, as to their aspect, seventeenth century of the happiest. How far they follow the lines of the Roman baths and washing pools I have not troubled to enquire, nor does it very much matter. Probably the semi-circular basin in which rises the once sacred spring is much the same as it was in shape. From it the waters are led underneath pavings and bridges to the various balustraded and ornamented pools of the central garden, and then into canals, still of formal architecture, until they disappear somewhere at either end of the long tree-shaded Quai. It is always fascinating to see water flowing, and I know nothing more attractive of its sort than the way this limpid spring comes from under the dark arches leading to the central pool and covers a shallow stone floor recessed all the way round in a colonnade. The photograph gives some idea of this happy invention, but it is not possible to convey its pleasing ingenuity. The gardens, beautifully planted, slope up in a series of bold staircases and terraces. They show a wealth of variegated foliage that makes a most pleasing background to the graceful architecture of the pools and fountains, and on the lower side broad avenues of trees lead away from the charming place quite in the best style of French garden planning. In the garden itself are the ruins of a Roman temple, which has for long been known as the Temple of Diana. In 1739 an inscription was found dedicating it to the god Nemausus and the goddess Diana on behalf of the commonwealth of Nîmes, and attributing its building to the munificence of the Emperor Augustus. Part of the beautiful colonnaded portico has been reconstructed. It connected the temple with the Nymphæum, which was where the central square basin now is. Preserved in the temple is a single tall pillar--one of those used to support the _velarium_ under which the Roman ladies reclined in the course of their bathing. The architecture of this temple forms a valuable connecting link between that of the Romans and of the later Provençal builders, concerning which Mr. Cook has something interesting to tell us. He is more interesting still on the subject of the Maison Carrée, for he gives us, with a wealth of technical detail and illustration, the curious reason for its being so supremely satisfying to the eye. No one even with an uneducated eye for beauty can look at this little gem of Greek architecture without a sensation of pleasure. Mr. Baring-Gould, whose eye is not uneducated, writes of it: "It is the best example we have in Europe of a temple that is perfectly intact. It is _mignon_, it is cheerful, it is charming. I found myself unable at any time to pass it without looking round over my shoulder, again and again, and uttering some exclamation of pleasure at the sight of it."[25] And Mr. Henry James, in that delightful book, "A Little Tour in France," writes in his own way: "The first impression you receive from this delicate little building, as you stand before it, is that you have already seen it many times. Photographs, engravings, models, medals, have placed it definitely in your eye, so that from the sentiment with which you regard it curiosity and surprise are almost completely, and perhaps deplorably, absent. Admiration remains, however,--admiration of a familiar and even slightly patronizing kind. The Maison Carrée does not overwhelm you; you can conceive it. It is not one of the great sensations of the antique art; but it is perfectly felicitous, and, in spite of having been put to all sorts of incongruous uses, marvellously preserved. Its slender columns, its delicate proportions, its charming compactness, seemed to bring one nearer to the century that built it than the great superpositions of arenas and bridges, and give it the interest that vibrates from one age to another when the note of taste is struck." In a word, the beauty of this little temple is alive, and one of the reasons for its being so I now proceed to extract from Mr. Cook's discussion of a subject that he has made particularly his own. Why is it that the Maison Carrée is so eminently pleasing to the eye--is alive--while the Madeleine in Paris, which is a strictly mathematical enlargement of it, is "dull and unsuccessful"? Because the lines of the Madeleine are straight, and those of this temple, as of all Greek architecture, are not, though they are so nearly so that the fact was not discovered until about twenty years ago. The divergences are surprisingly small, and in fact this great secret of the ancient builders--Egyptian, Roman, Byzantine and Gothic, as well as Greek--was not suspected until it was proved on the Parthenon in the middle of the last century. "In the Parthenon the curve is under four inches in two hundred and twenty-eight feet. At Nîmes it is nearly five inches in less than a hundred feet."[26] These skilful curves can be traced in Gothic cathedrals. The walls in the nave of Westminster Abbey "are bent inwards at about the height of the keystones of the arches and outwards above and below this point, and they are structurally sound unto this day."[27] Mr. Cook explains the difference caused by following this principle "as something of the difference between an architectural drawing done with compass and rulers, and an artist's painting of the same building done with a free hand and with just those 'inaccuracies' which give it life and beauty." It is "an essential principle which, known to Greece, and known to the builders of the Maison Carrée, is one of the chief reasons why this little temple is the greatest treasure of classical architecture north of the Alps."[28] [Illustration: THE MAISON CARRÉE] [Illustration: THE AMPHITHEATRE, NÎMES] The Maison Carrée has been at various times a kind of Hôtel de Ville, a private dwelling, a stable, a church, a granary, and a public market, and it is surprising that with all the structural changes it has undergone there is anything of it left. But fortunately its exterior was never much interfered with, and now its interior has been cleared out, and is used as an antiquarian museum. The amphitheatre at Nîmes is very slightly smaller than that at Arles, but it is rather better preserved. In fact, it is the best preserved of any of the Roman amphitheatres--far better than the Coliseum, for instance. Its seating accommodation was about twenty-two thousand, as against ninety thousand of the Coliseum, but the area of the arena was in the proportion of about seven to twelve, so that this provincial city was very well off in this respect, as compared with the capital of the world. The photograph will show what a noble building this was, and will incidentally provide an example of the manner in which the French treat their ancient monuments. You may imagine from it an ellipse of about four hundred and thirty feet by three hundred and thirty, all of it in much the same state. It will be seen that where the original structure is strong enough it has been left, where it needs repair the old work has been copied, and here and there--as in the balustrading beneath the upper row of arches--features have been restored not absolutely necessary to the support of the building. There are those who object to this sort of restoration. I suppose it is a matter of knowledge and imagination; but ordinary persons, of whom in questions of architecture and archæology I am one, may be grateful for a system that shows plainly what an ancient building really looked like, and what purposes it served, while he is nowhere invited to take the new for the old. As the original seating accommodation of the amphitheatre would provide for more than a quarter of the present inhabitants of Nîmes--that at Arles would take some thousands more than there are now people in Arles--it has not been necessary to restore all the tiers of seats for the uses to which the arena is put. Consequently, it is possible to see the ingenious plan on which it was constructed, so as to give ample means of ingress and egress, and to divide up the spectators according to their rank. There were thirty-four tiers of them--four for the senators, ten for the knights, ten for the freedmen, and ten for the slaves and menials--and everybody had an uninterrupted view of what went on in the arena. The holes for the masts supporting the gigantic awning that sheltered the spectators can be seen here and there in the topmost circle; but the moderns do without that luxury, and watch their bull-fights in the full glare of the Southern sun. I cannot describe a Provençal bull-fight, as the season had not begun when I was in the country, though preparations were being made for a spectacle on the following Sunday. It is an ancient sport with the Provençaux, but, as Mr. Henry James says, "the thing is shabbily and imperfectly done. The bulls are rarely killed, and indeed often are bulls only in the Irish sense of the term,--being domestic and motherly cows." But the "Grande Tauromachie" is creeping in. Large bills were posted about the amphitheatre announcing events in which Spanish matadors and toréadors would compete for the favour of the populace, and the organizers of the sport were full of self-commendation of the noble struggle they were making over the innovation. It seemed to be almost a matter of conscience with them. They spoke of their loyalty and simplicity, of their scrupulous honesty and untiring good-will, and of the inexhaustible force of energy that they would bring to bear in this contest against discouraging circumstance. Mises à Mort they call their Spanish bull-fights, and to judge by a picture postcard that I bought of one in progress, in which every seat in the amphitheatre is occupied, and dense masses of people are standing where there are no seats, they are taking very kindly to the pastime. CHAPTER XVII _Aigues-Mortes and the Camargue_ Aigues-Mortes, like Les Baux, is one of those places which are apt to dawn upon the traveller only when he is in reach of them. I might hesitate to confess that I had never heard of Les Baux before my first journey in Provence, or of Aigues-Mortes even then, if I had not met so many well-informed and well-travelled people who had never heard of either of them. And yet Aigues-Mortes is a place of absorbing interest. It is romantically situated on the edge of the great plain of the Camargue, surrounded by salt marshes, lagoons, canals, and only a few miles from the sea. Here the town is entirely confined within its unbroken mediæval fortifications, and its walls and gates and towers are more perfectly preserved than those of any other fortified town in Europe; more so even than those of Carcassonne, which owe much to modern restoration. The story of its building is soon told, and it is a story that cannot be forgotten when one visits the place, for there has been nothing since that has overshadowed it. The poor little town, laid out in square "blocks" like an American village that hopes some day to become a city, has hardly a voice of its own, it is so nothing-at-all compared with its girdling ramparts. These are as nearly as possible a mile round, and probably the stones of all the buildings they enclose would not suffice for one side of them. So the walls and towers are everything at Aigues-Mortes, and speak insistently of the purpose for which they were built. When St. Louis took his crusading vows in 1244, he had to acquire a port from which to embark. He exchanged land with the Abbey of Psalmodi for the site of Aigues-Mortes and the marshland between it and the sea. There was already an old fortified tower there, erected five hundred years before as a place of refuge from the Saracens, and this was rebuilt as the Tour de Constance. St. Louis also dug the long winding canal to the sea, which is now completely silted up, and its place taken, for the barge traffic to Beaucaire, by one quite straight and about half its length. By this he embarked an army of thirty-six thousand men in 1248. In 1270 he embarked another great crusading army at Aigues-Mortes, but died almost immediately upon landing at Tunis. Between the two crusades the walls of the fortress town had begun to be built, but it was St. Louis's son Philip III who completed the fortifications as we see them today. They have lasted for seven centuries and a half, and although the history of Aigues-Mortes did not quite end in the thirteenth century, they have sustained no destruction or decay, and no essential modification. This, then, is what one sets out to see--a town which presents itself to our eyes exactly as it did to the eyes of the crusaders, who built it. Can one see the like anywhere else in Europe? I left Nîmes on a bright Sunday morning and travelled by the pottering little train that runs across the plain of the Camargue. It was a little too far to walk in one day, and I wanted to see Aigues-Mortes that afternoon and start early the next morning for Saintes-Maries. It was a very pleasant journey. The flat country lay soaking in a haze of sunshine, and the hills to the north showed lovely soft purples and golds and blues. At first the country reminded me very much of that stretch of reclaimed marshland across which one travels to get to our old English town of Rye. There were brooks and willows and green fields, and to one who has lived on "the Marsh" it was plain that all this fertility had the same origin--alluvial soil spread over what was once a bare expanse, from which the sea had receded. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I knew the fact and recognized the signs of it. But after a time this English-looking scenery gave place to the Provençal rows of cypresses, to groups and dottings of stone pines, and to scattered buildings on an unkinder-looking soil. After St. Laurent d'Aigouze, the next station before Aigues-Mortes and ten kilometres from it, the unreclaimed marsh begins, with stunted vegetation growing on poor stony soil, and water here and there, but not yet the great reed-bordered "étangs," which are the home of so many wild fowl. To the left of the line straggles the broad road, and beyond it is the clean-cut line of the canal that leads from the sea through St. Gilles to Beaucaire. On a sort of island in the marsh stand the ruins of the Abbey of Psalmodi, and a little farther on is the outpost Tour Carbonnière, which is about two miles from Aigues-Mortes and its main fortifications. The line, which runs quite straight from St. Laurent takes a right-handed turn just before it reaches Aigues-Mortes, and before the turn comes you can see the walled city in front of you, just as you can see the surprising picturesque little town of Rye, growing out of the marsh, as it were, before you come to it from Ashford. "On this absolute level, covered with coarse grass," writes Mr. Henry James, "Aigues-Mortes presents quite the appearance of the walled town that a schoolboy draws upon his slate, or that we see in the background of early Flemish pictures,--a simple parallelogram, of a contour almost absurdly bare, broken at intervals by angular towers and square holes." The sight makes its instant appeal. One is back in a long past century, the aspect of which is familiar from just those pictures which Mr. James recalls, and from little illuminated drawings in old manuscripts. There is an agreeable sense of surprise and recognition, almost of awe. It is rather as if one had suddenly come face to face with some dead personage well known from portraits--such as Napoleon or Henry VIII. One had no idea that there was anything left quite like that. You mount up through a fortified gateway into the little town, which although old is almost entirely devoid of interest. Its rectangular streets gave me a reminiscence of our old English Cinque Ports. About the time that Philip le Hardi was building Aigues-Mortes, Edward I was building, or causing to be built, the new town of Winchelsea in place of the old one that had been submerged by the sea; and Winchelsea was also laid out in rectangles, and surrounded by walls. The two princes had crusaded together. Perhaps they had talked over this new way of laying out a town, in place of the old way of radiating streets from a centre; but they could hardly have foreseen that it would be some hundreds of years before their plan would be generally adopted. There is a good inn at Aigues-Mortes, for people make an excursion of it from Nîmes and Arles, and on the Sunday I was there there were a good many visitors. And all the inhabitants of the town seemed to be about the streets. There was a confirmation going on in the church, and after it a well attended funeral, in which none of the mourners were dressed in black. I would rather have struck the place on any other day, for the slight air of bustle and holiday-making did not suit it. M. Maurice Barrès has made it the background of "Le Jardin de Berenice," and every one who has read that remarkable novel will remember the atmosphere of brooding peace and suggestion in which he has bathed it. Mr. Henry James indicates its charm no less skilfully: "It is true that Aigues-Mortes does a little business; it sees certain bags of salt piled into barges which stand in a canal beside it, and which carry their cargo into actual places. But nothing could well be more drowsy and desultory than this industry as I saw it practised, with the aid of two or three brown peasants and under the eye of a solitary douanier, who strolled on the little quay beneath the western wall. 'C'est bien plaisant, c'est bien paisible,' said this worthy man, with whom I had some conversation; and pleasant and peaceful is the place indeed, though the former of these epithets may suggest an element of gaiety in which Aigues-Mortes is deficient. The sand, the salt, the dull sea view, surround it with a bright, quiet melancholy. There are fifteen towers and nine gates, five of which are on the southern side, overlooking the water. I walked all round the place three times (it doesn't take long) but lingered most under the southern wall, where the afternoon light slept in the dreamiest, sweetest way. I sat down on an old stone, and looked away to the desolate salt marshes and the still, shining surface of the _étang_; and, as I did so, reflected that this was a queer little out-of-the-world corner to have been chosen, in the great dominions of either monarch, for that pompous interview which took place, in 1538, between Francis I and Charles V."[29] [Illustration: AIGUES-MORTES, THE RAMPARTS] [Illustration: "LOOKED AWAY TO THE DESOLATE SALT MARSHES"] This meeting between the Emperor and the Pope and the King of France is one of the few outstanding episodes in the history of Aigues-Mortes. It need only be remarked of it that Louis IX's channel had already fallen into disuse, and another and a shorter one had been dug out through the lagoons for the royal and papal galleys. This, from Grau de Croisette, has also ceased to be practicable, and the present canal starts from Grau de Roi, a little fishing and bathing resort at the nearest possible point on the coast, to which this railway also runs. Another chapter in the history of Aigues-Mortes--the last before it sank to be the unimportant village it is now--is a long and painful one. It centres round the strong Tour de Constance, which was used as a prison for Protestants in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, until the horror was finally removed from it in 1767. It was mostly women who were interned in it during long years, amidst circumstances of great cruelty. I quote, from Mr. T. A. Cook's pages, the account of one who accompanied the Prince de Beauvan in his mission of release. "We found at the entry of the tower," writes de Boufflers, "an eager guardian, who led us through a dark and twisting passage, and opened a great clanging door on which Dante's line might well have been inscribed: _Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch' entrate_. I have no colours in which to paint the terrors of the picture which gradually grew upon our unaccustomed eyes. The scene was hideous yet pathetic, and interest in its victims struggled with disgust at their condition. Almost without air and light, fourteen women languished in misery and tears within that stone-walled chamber. As the commandant, who was visibly touched, entered the apartment, they all fell down together at his feet. I can still see them, bathed in tears, struggling to speak, unable at first to do anything but sob. Encouraged by our evident sympathy they all began to tell us their sorrows at once. Alas, the crime for which they were then suffering was the fact that they had been brought up in the same religion as Henri Quatre. The youngest of them was fifty, and she had been here since she was eight years old. In a loud voice that shook with emotion the marshal said, 'You are free!' and I was proud to be his servant at that moment."[30] You can visit the three round chambers, one above the other, in which these unfortunate women were imprisoned, which are in exactly the same structural state. Their walls are of enormous thickness, and they are lighted by mere slits of windows. They have been swept and furnished, and one can admire their vaulting and other architectural features, but not without a thought of the misery that they contained, which is too recent and too detailed to lose any of its horror in the mists of time. At the other end of the north-west wall is the Tour des Bourgignans, round which also cling dreadful memories. In 1421 a party of Burgundians seized the town but were all massacred and their bodies were thrown into this tower, and covered with salt in order to avoid a plague. To the south of Aigues-Mortes lie the shimmering lagoons and the desolate marshlands of the Carmague, which breed fever and ague, and make the peace of the little dead town not altogether so desirable. This great plain, which contains something like twenty thousand acres, has had a varied history. It is naturally formed by the Rhône delta. The river rolls down its detritus which gradually chokes up its mouth. There is no tide in the Mediterranean to scour it out, and a bar is formed. Then the river has to find another outlet, and this happens again and again until it has wandered all over a large area, leaving behind it more and more deposit raised above the sea level. In the meantime, behind the bars thrown up both by the river and the sea, are left lagoons of fresh water, into which the sea sometimes rushes in times of storm, and leaves behind brackish and stagnant water. Now in classical times it was well understood that if outlets to these lagoons were kept open, not only were their surroundings perfectly healthy, but that natural forces would do what was necessary to turn the great expanse of the Camargue from a desert waste into fertile corn-growing land. These natural forces were the simple ones which have made the Nile and other deltoid rivers the fertilizers of the land about them--periodical floodings and changes of their beds. In fact in the time of the Roman occupation the Camargue was called "The granary of the Roman army," and Arles, which was the market for its corn was so flowing with plenty as to be called "The Breasts." Why is only part of this great stretch of land now fertile, and the rest a desolating waste? The mistake was made in the sixteenth century, when the engineers of Louis XIV examined the country and made recommendations for its treatment. The outlets from the lagoons had been allowed to get choked up, and the Camargue had for long been a fever-breeding waste instead of providing the rich corn land that it had once done. The king's engineers recommended the embanking of the Rhône, so that it should be kept to its course, instead of flooding the adjacent land, and the building of dykes against the inrush of the sea. Drains, protected by traps, were also cut to carry out the stagnant water from the lagoons into the sea, and all this was done at an original cost of about a million pounds, and is kept up at an annual cost of about five thousand. There are now two hundred and thirty miles of dike, and although the land is fertile enough where the Rhône is allowed its periodical overflow, and has been laboriously reclaimed elsewhere, the main effect of these works has been to reduce the Camargue to sterility. It has been estimated that at every overflow of the Rhône, eighteen thousand cubic yards of rich alluvial soil was deposited over the land. This is now carried out to sea, and thrown down to make new bars. Perhaps some day the work will be done again, the dikes removed and the river allowed to take its natural course. All that would have to be done then would be to keep open the mouths of the lagoons, to prevent them from stagnating and breeding fever and ague; and then the whole Camargue would once more be one of the most fertile tracts of the earth. In the meantime it has its own picturesque wild life, just as the fen country of eastern England had before it was drained. As in all flat countries it domed with magnificent skies; the mirage is a common effect of the scorched desolation; flights of rose-coloured flamingoes are to be seen among the commoner wild fowl. Bulls and horses roam the great solitudes in a wild state, until the time comes round for one of those great pastoral manoeuvres, half business, half sport, in which a whole countryside takes part, when the animals that are wanted are cut out from the rest and their ownership settled. The _Guardiens_ ride over the wide territory committed to their charge, mounted on wiry little white horses of the breed that is most common on the plain. They are splendid-looking young men, for the most part, and it gave me quite a thrill to see one of them a few days later. For there is a romance about them, and the wild yet anciently ordered life they lead, which is hardly of our civilization. You may read all about it in some of the novels of Jean Aicard, and especially in "Roi de Camargue," which seems to cry aloud for translation into English, it is so much finer than later ones by which he is chiefly known here. Now that Mistral and Daudet are dead Jean Aicard is the chief literary interpreter of Provençal life, and in his pictures of this wild life of the great plains with its primitive pursuits and passions he stands supreme. CHAPTER XVIII _Saintes-Maries de la Mer_ I was on the road early the next morning with a twenty-mile walk before me to Saintes-Maries de la Mer. I had to follow the canal for a couple of miles to the north, then to strike across the plain to the westward, then to follow the course of the Little Rhône to the south. This took me through country that has been for the most part reclaimed, and grows acres upon acres of vines. To the south and west of Aigues-Mortes it is nothing but _étangs_ and unreclaimed marsh, and if there is a way through it all I could hardly have expected to find it and should certainly have been cut off by water besides. The walk was not very inspiring. Any one who knows the reclaimed fen lands of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire will agree that, fertile though these flats may be, they provide the modicum of picturesque scenery. I imagine that the vine-growing industry hereabouts is a comparatively new thing, but it is already a big one. After walking along a straight road between vineyards--flat fields regularly planted with vines about the size of small gooseberry bushes--for five miles, I saw ahead of me an enormous castellated, spired building which I afterwards learnt to be a wine lodge, but which was not on my map at all. And just outside the walls of Aigues-Mortes they have recently erected a building having to do with the shipping or storage of wine over which there has been a good deal of controversy; for it is built in a sham castellated style, and interferes with the effect of the ancient fortifications. My road turned before I came to the big building I have mentioned, and presently the fields became less ruled and planed, and little bits of untouched marshland began to encroach upon them. I came to the hamlet of Sylvéreal at a turn of the Little Rhône, where there is a bridge and a road running to Saintes-Maries on either side of the river. I refreshed myself at a poor little inn and was heavily charged for sour bread and hard cheese. But these regions are really out of the world, habitations are sparse and communications rare. Five miles further on I came to a ferry--the Bac du Sauvage--and was put across the Little Rhône, which is not little at all, but a big river with a rapid flow. Except for the quite good road, one might well have imagined oneself during these last miles in a new country gradually being opened up. The river carries no merchandise, its banks are deserted. Since Aigues-Mortes, in sixteen miles or so, I had passed no village except Sylvéreal, and there cannot be more than a dozen houses there. I could not rid myself of the feeling of being somewhere in the bush of Australia, which I know best of the new countries. Even the occasional wayside shanties were not absent--little groups of them occasionally, in which there was nearly always one announcing itself as that of a _coiffeur_. The feeling vanished when I came within sight of the fortress church of Saintes-Maries towering above the low roofs of the village that surrounds it. It could be seen from afar across the plain, and immediately carried the mind back to the past, which is never very far away from you wherever you go in Provence. And this is one of the most ancient and storied places of the whole country. The walls and towers of Aigues-Mortes are new beside it. If you reject the story of the landing of the New Testament saints here--and you will find it hard to reject in Saintes-Maries itself--still the church itself dates partly from the tenth century; it was built on the site of another church destroyed by the Saracens; and that church was built on the site of a temple erected by Augustus. In Roman times there was a sort of island here, and a prosperous settlement. The state of almost destitution to which the wretched little town has come must be owing to the defertilization of the Camargue, of which I have already written. But in the time of King René it was a prosperous town with many privileges, afterwards confirmed to it by the kings of France, and at least since that time the church has been the object of a yearly pilgrimage that has kept its fame alive to an extent that is perhaps not equalled anywhere in France, except at Lourdes. I cannot but think that "Les Saintes," as it is commonly called, must be now at the very nadir of its poverty. It is right on the edge of the Mediterranean, and beautiful firm sands backed by sand dunes stretch away from it on either side. It is on a little line of railway from Arles; and by far the nearest possible watering-place to that city, and even to Avignon. In fact, Le Grau du Roi, near Aigues-Mortes, would be its only rival for the central cities of Provence. In England, a place of this historical importance and advantageous situation would be a prosperous town instead of a squalid village. I need scarcely say that to the sentimental traveller the present dejected state of Saintes-Maries, in which nothing detracts from the extraordinary interest of its shrine, is a boon almost beyond gratitude. But one can hardly help being struck by its possibilities, and the difference between France and England in respect of making use of such; nor by the fact that at any time the whole aspect of the place may become changed. There are two inns in Saintes-Maries, and I went to the worst of them, because it faced the sea. It was the dirtiest inn I struck in Provence, but that was not altogether the fault of the proprietors, as part of it was rebuilding. Perhaps the visitors to Saintes-Maries have already begun to demand more accommodation, and this is the sign of it. I did come across one honeymoon couple, or one that looked like it, sunning themselves below the stones of the dike in view of the shining Mediterranean, but I walked along the sands to the mouth of the Little Rhône, a distance of about two miles, without seeing any one else, except a few fishermen. And at the mouth of the river there were only a few scattered huts. It seemed almost ludicrous that a mighty and famous river--even if only the lesser branch of it--should be allowed to take to the sea with so little ceremony. Again the likeness to a stretch of coast in a brand-new country was overwhelming. But one only had to turn round and see that ancient church for the odd sensation to pass away again; and only the peace and the windy solitude of the sea remained of it. [Illustration: SAINTES-MARIES, THE FORTRESS CHURCH] [Illustration: SAINT-GILLES, THE CENTRAL PORCH _Page 268_] The church is, I think, the most compelling thing in Provence. The photograph will give an idea of its fortress exterior, but not of the way it dominates the country for miles around. That is a thing to remember, but unfortunately my own photograph, taken from the shore some little way off, went wrong. The first thing that strikes one in the dark interior--what windows there are are mere slits in the thick wall--are the rows of rough deal seating that run round three sides of the church in a sort of narrow gallery. These are for the crowds that come on May 24th, and during the following week for the great annual festival, when the coffin containing the bones of the blessed saints is let down from the chapel above the apse, and the church is packed full of pilgrims. They are a makeshift affair and do not add to the dignity of the church, although they serve to remind one that this church does not depend for its fame on its age or architecture. The high altar with its simple decoration of wrought iron stands forward. The priest celebrates facing the congregation; it is a privilege granted by the Pope to this church. Immediately in front of it is the entrance to the crypt. In front of that, just aside from the main aisle, is the miraculous well, with pitcher and pulley all complete. When the saints landed near to this place, they set about building a little oratory, "erecting an altar for the celebration of the holy mysteries, as near as possible like to the one which Moses constructed by the order of God. The two Marys, with Martha and Magdalene, prepared the ground for this purpose, and God made known to them how agreeable in his eyes were their devotion and their sacrifices, by causing to spring up a fountain of sweet water in a place where hitherto only salt water had been known." This well must have been of the utmost value to those who stood a siege in the church some hundreds of years later, and may be thought to have been sunk for that purpose. But its miraculous properties are still recognized, and its waters are resorted to by "persons bitten by enraged animals." The narrow little chapels that line the church are fuller of votive offerings than any others I have seen. Besides the usual _ex voto_ tablets, and chaplets and ribbons of first communions, there is a regular picture gallery of miraculous escapes, most of them, it must be confessed, of the lowest possible artistic value, but going a long way back, and telling a series of tales of considerable interest. A characteristic one, which bears the date of 1777, is of a man being attacked by five dogs. His companion is not going to his assistance, but is represented on his knees, and in an upper corner of the picture appear the two Marys, who presumably saved the victim from any ill effects of the attack. Another rather well-executed pencil drawing represents a man dragging a horse out of a swollen river. Another is of a child being run over--or possibly just not run over--by a cart. Many are of elderly people in bed with friends and relatives standing around them--and the saints in their usual corner. In one of the chapels are the old carved wood figures of the two Marys in their boat, which are carried every year in procession to the sea, and into it, in commemoration of the miraculous voyage which ended at this place. I don't know how it was that I did not realize on my first visit to the church that the chapel containing the sacred remains, the outside of which can be seen in the photograph above the apse, was to be seen by taking a little trouble about it. From the inside of the church appear the doors from which the double ark is let down by ropes and carried in procession, but I had not thought that there was rather an elaborate chapel up there behind the doors. It was rather late in the evening when the old priest came out from his presbytery to take me up to it. It is approached by a narrow, winding stairway from the outside of the church, and is about forty feet from the ground. It was enriched in the time of Louis XV, but its decorations were much damaged by the Revolutionaries. The pictured coffer containing the relics of the saints is in a chamber closed by ornamented double doors, in which are also the pulleys and cords by which it is lowered to the floor of the church on the great day of the pilgrimage. All round the little chapel are the crutches and other offerings of those who have been cured by attendance at the shrine. One of the latest is a sort of strait-waistcoat left behind by a cripple who had used it for many years, but went away, as the curé told me, on his own feet, and praising God and the blessed saints. I walked all round the strong battlements, from which a glorious view extends itself, of the plain with its bright sheets of water on the one side, and the sea and the sands on the other. It was a lovely, peaceful evening, and the old priest admired it as much as I did. He said he liked to come up here away from the world, and often said his Mass in the quiet chapel high above the low roofs of the town. I bought from him the little book he has written about his church, which contains the hymns and prayers and canticles, partly in Latin, partly in French, partly in Provençal, that are used during the days of pilgrimage. Of the church as a work of defence, he writes: "It is a fortress, with its sentry's walk, its watch tower, its crenellations and machicolations. When Saracens or pirates invaded us, and during the wars of religion, the men went up to the high chapel for defence, at the summons of the watchman, who gave the alarm, while the women and children were shut up in the church, which communicated by two staircases with the roof. During the religious wars, the church was smoked out several times by the assailants." It was nearly dark when we went down into the crypt, and what I saw of the tomb of the servant Sarah was by the light of a candle which the curé lit for me, dropping the grease about plentifully, as seems to be the way of those who show sacred treasures. It will be remembered that this black servant of the holy ladies accompanied them on their miraculous voyage to Provence. Her body, exhumed with theirs, under the auspices of the good King René, and in his presence, was reburied here, and this half subterranean chapel at Saintes-Maries has been from time immemorial the centre of a cult, the strangest of any with which we have to do. At the time of the yearly pilgrimage, when good Catholics come to venerate die remains of the saints, there come also hordes of gipsies, who prostrate themselves before the tomb of the servant Sarah, and practise strange rites which have nothing to do with the Christian religion. The good curé in his book mentions the fact that they come in, but says nothing about their worship, which is said to include the adoration of fire, and other mysteries of an immemorially old religion. I have been able to find nothing very illuminating that bears upon this strange survival and its origins. The Marquis de Baroncelli-Javon has published a little illustrated pamphlet which is of some interest on the subject of gipsies in general, and those that are to be found in this stretch of seaboard in particular, but he is not able to suggest why St. Sarah, as he calls her--but I do not think that she was ever canonized, or regarded as a Christian saint--should have attracted to herself this ancient worship, except by reminding us that she was commonly supposed to be an Egyptian, which is hardly convincing. But that the gipsies should gather at this particular spot and perform their rites, he does find some reason for, and his theories are at least interesting. He says, first of all, that there are two distinct races of _Bohémiens_ different in feature, in bone formation, colour, character, language and traditions; that they have nothing in common and treat each other not only as strangers but often as enemies. "A gipsy who traffics in horses will never have anything to do with one who leads about dancing bears or works in copper; there will be no understanding between them and they will treat one another with indifference if not with hatred. But this trafficker in horses will immediately recognize as his blood brother another _maquignon_ at Saintes-Maries, it matters not where he comes from." Now at Saintes-Maries the gipsies with performing bears, or the tinsmiths, are never to be met with. These are the Zingaris, and their home is in the east of Europe. They talk the languages of the north and the east willingly and easily, but with difficulty those of the south. The gipsies who are to be found in Spain, Languedoc, Provence and parts of Italy call themselves Gitanos or Gitans. These are they who come once at least during their life wanderings to Saintes-Maries, "to salute the earth, to fulfil strange rites, and to regard the sea, their eyes fixed in ecstasy." Where do they come from? "From the parts where the sun sets," they say of themselves; and if you ask an American Indian the same question he will tell you that he comes "from the parts where the sun rises." They are the ancient inhabitants, says M. de Baroncelli-Javon, of the lost Atlantis, which lay between the old world and the new. The resemblances between the Gitanos and the Redskins are curious, not only in appearance and language but in many small details and habits. They use, for instance, exactly the same actions when they examine a horse's teeth. The author adds to the list of survivors of Atlantis the Basques, the Bretons and perhaps the Copts of Egypt, and finds resemblances in them too. My small ethnological knowledge prompts me to reject the Bretons, but the Basques have always been a puzzle, and seem to fit in with this theory. There is also a hint, in a footnote, of the inclusion of the Laps, Samoyeds, and Esquimaux, whom we might perhaps accept in place of the Celts. But to continue. The Egyptians and the Gitanos--probably two branches of the same family--found themselves on either side of the Mediterranean. The Egyptians moved westwards to the Nile and the Red Sea, the Gitanos took up a roving life and were to be found everywhere along the coast, from the Gaudalquiver to the Var. They are thus not descendants, but brothers of the Egyptian race. "Little by little arrive the Iberians, and then others and still others. The Gitano flies before the invader; he finds refuge nearer and nearer to the coast, following the last wild horses into the most lonely places, among the lagoons and the unhealthy marshes, uninhabitable by all except him, the aboriginal. There he erects his temples, in which he adores Fire and the Sun, like the Redskin and the Egyptian, where he buries his chiefs and his wise men, thus consecrating special places. And he is always moving on, with the wild horse, along the line of the sea. Centuries and centuries pass, Christianity shines forth, which founds the altars of its saints on those of the pagans, and it is not unscientific to think that the pilgrimage to the place of the Saintes-Maries existed long before Christianity, and honoured first the gods of the soil, then those of the Iberians and Ligurians, before it honoured our saints." CHAPTER XIX _Saint-Gilles and Montmajour_ This was to be the last full day's walk. I had to meet a friend at Avignon the next afternoon; then to Arles with no further time for walking; and then home. There was a lot of ground to cover. The first stage, after going halfway to Arles by train, was an eight-mile walk across the plain to Saint-Gilles. The train started at six, and soon after seven I was on the road, on a fine still spring morning, and in company with an old peasant woman who was also going to Saint-Gilles, and had suggested in the train that we should walk together. I had not known quite how to refuse, but had thought that after a mile or so I might say that I was in a hurry, and push on from her. Provençal was her tongue, and French is not mine; the burden of a conversation lasting for two hours daunted me. We walked and talked together for about a mile, and although she must have been getting on for seventy, and carried a heavy basket, her steady pace was just a trifle faster than my usual one at the beginning of a long day's walk. I could not for shame suggest that I should drop back; besides, she would have offered to walk more slowly. So when we had exhausted the first burst of conversation, I drew myself together, lifted my hat, and with a word of apology, forged on ahead with all the air of a Marathon racer. She chased me for miles. Whenever I looked back I saw her plodding form on the straight road across the marsh. I was ashamed of myself, but I couldn't keep it up. The walk to Saint-Gilles was only to be the beginning of my day. At a wide turn of the road I took what looked to be an easy short cut across the marsh. If it had been easy, of course she would have taken it too, and the end of it was that when I came out on to the road again after my windings there was her black determined figure a quarter of a mile ahead of me. So I let her take her pace, and I took mine, and she crossed the great suspension bridge into Saint-Gilles nearly half an hour before I did. I saw her the whole way, and she never looked round. I hope she thought I was ahead of her. Scarcely any of its original importance is left to Saint-Gilles, which dates from the earliest dawn of Provençal history. It was the Phoenician Heraktra. In those days the branch of the Rhône upon which it stands was an open trade route. The Phoenician traders came to it from their expeditions to Britain, by way of the Seine valley and the Rhône. Early in the twelfth century the building of one of the noblest churches in Provence was begun here; and its remains, in spite of the successive destructions and mutilations it has received, make it still well worth a visit. All that is left in its original state is the wonderful carved façade, which is finer even than the famous one, of about the same date, of St. Trophimus at Arles, and takes in three portals instead of one. It is in its original state only as far as its main structure is concerned, for its figures have been sadly mutilated by successive generations of enraged Protestants. But one can be thankful to them for sparing it at all, instead of treating it as they did the church behind it. The story of St. Gilles is charmingly told by M. J. Charles-Roux, in his "Légendes de Provence." He was a Greek, of royal lineage. In all the country there was not to be found a man richer than his father, or a woman more chaste and charitable than his mother. He was baptized with great rejoicing, and from an early age his parents sought to bring him up in their faith. At seven years of age he was taught his letters, and thus early he devoted himself to study and the service of God. Modest and of fine address, he grew into the flower of his country's youth; his hair was fair and curling, his skin as white as milk, he had a delicate nose and ears, white teeth and a sweet mouth. The day came when God was ready to show His designs concerning him. He was on his way to school, when he saw crouching in the gutter a poor cripple, pale, hideous and horrible. The child addressed him, and he replied, "Sir, hunger is killing and cold overwhelming me; death is near, and I only want to die." Gilles's eyes filled with tears, and as he had neither silver nor gold he gave the poor wretch his coat, and he at once arose cured and thanked God with such fervour that presently more than a hundred persons appeared on the scene. The fame of Gilles's holiness began to spread, and soon afterward he healed a man bitten by a venomous snake. After his father and mother died he was pressed to marry by his vassals, who wished him to continue his royal race, but he begged a respite. He was much troubled by the crowd that besieged his doors--crippled, dumb, blind, lame,--who besought him to heal them. He was willing to do so, but dreaded the worldly fame that was beginning to attach itself to his name. He wished to seek a road that would bring him nearer to God, and he determined to go to Rome. He ordered a great feast in his palace, and at night, when all were sleeping, overcome with the fumes of wine, after praying for a long time he left his chamber softly, and made his escape from the battlements, hidden in a fog. He was never seen there again. After wandering on foot for a long time, he came to the sea, and saw a ship being driven on to the rocks in a storm. He prayed to God, and the storm abated, and the ship came safe to shore. He asked the sailors to take him to Rome, and they, recognizing him for a holy man, took him on board. They were for the most part Provençals, and were carrying a rich cargo of corn from Russia, silks, precious stuffs and spices. They sailed for days under a clear sky, and never had to touch a rope, for God was guiding them. They landed at Marseilles, and Gilles, who had been so rich, went from door to door, begging his food. After a time, having heard of the good bishop, Cæsar of Arles, he went to that ancient city. He lodged with a widow whose daughter had been paralysed for twelve years. When he had prayed for a moment beside her bed she arose well and joyful. When the good bishop heard of this miracle, he sent his archdeacon to bring Gilles to him. The archdeacon found him praying in the church. The bishop received him with affection and honour and kept him by him for twelve years, during which time he wrought many miracles. But this was not the sort of life Gilles had dreamed of. He escaped from Arles and plunged into the wild forest which surrounded it. At last he came to a monstrous rock in which some steps had been cut. He climbed up them and found a pious hermit with whom he lived for twelve years in perfect communion of prayer and meditation. Although his retreat was remote and hidden, the piety and the miracles of St. Gilles were so renowned that at last it was discovered. So he resolved to find a hiding-place more impenetrable still. He wandered far into the forest until he came to a cave choked with brambles. He hid its opening with branches, leaves and clods of turf, and took it as his hermitage. A fresh spring welled up at a short distance from it, round which grew a cress upon which he sustained himself until God sent him a doe which gave him milk. Every day while he was at his prayers she went into the forest to feed, and returned at fixed hours to the cave, where Gilles had prepared for her a couch near his own. At this time Florenz was king in Provence, under Charlemagne. Holding his Christmas court at Montpelier, he entertained all the lords of the country round at banquets and parties of the chase. One evening as they were feasting news was brought in by the royal huntsman of a wonderful white hind that had been tracked to her hiding-place in the forest, and early the following morning the king set out with a great retinue to chase her. The chase was long and Florenz found himself ahead of his companions with the hind flying in front of him. As she was disappearing among the trees, he launched an arrow at her, and immediately the hermit, Gilles, appeared, to whom the hind had flown for shelter, and whose hand the king's arrow had pierced. After this the king conceived a great veneration for the saint, visited him often alone and pressed him to accept presents. Gilles resisted him for a long time, but said at last: "Sire, if you really wish to give me a portion of your lands, of your treasures, of your vessels of gold and silver, found a monastery upon this spot, and fill it with monks for the service of God, who shall pray day and night for your people and for your law." "I will do so," said the king, "if you will be their abbot." After much hesitation Gilles consented, and the noble abbey was built and greatly enriched by gifts from the king. Gilles continued to live in it the same life as he had lived in the woods, and that his flesh might be still further mortified he prayed that the wound in his hand might never heal; which prayer was granted to him. After a time Gilles's great renown reached Charlemagne, who wished to confess his sins to so holy a man, and sent an embassy to invite him to Paris. After consultation with his brethren he went there, and was received with the utmost veneration and magnificence. But the honour done to him caused him nothing but shame. Charlemagne confessed all his sins but one, which he had not the courage to avow. Gilles pleaded with him for twenty days, but in vain. One Sunday, as he was going to celebrate the Mass at St. Croix he saw a demoniac chained to a pillar of the church. His prayers drove out the demon; all the bells in the city began to ring, and the king came with a great crowd to hear the Mass. During the celebration Gilles prayed that the king might be brought to confess the sin that it would cost him so much to acknowledge, and an angel appeared above the altar and deposited near the sacred Host a little letter which God Himself had sent His faithful servant. You can see the scene sculptured on a pillar in the cathedral of Chartres. The letter announced that the famous sin, of which we do not know the details, might be remitted to the king together with all other sins humbly confessed and secretly detested; also that the saint's own life would soon end and his reign in glory begin. Gilles, refusing the king's rich presents, made the journey back to his monastery in great pain because of his still open wound, but in great joy, and learnt that during his absence his monks had behaved in all respects as he could have wished them. He resumed his customary life of prayer and meditation, but feeling that he would not for long continue to direct the affairs of his flourishing abbey, and that the favour of kings was fleeting, he determined to go to Rome to put his monastery under the protection of the Holy See. The Pope received him with great honour and granted his request. He also showed his interest in the church that St. Gilles had built by giving him two doors of cypress wood, wonderfully carved. St. Gilles threw them into the Tiber, commanding the water to carry them to his church. He himself arrived at the moment when they stranded on the banks of the river, in perfect preservation, and was made happy by this still further proof of divine favour. His work was now done, and he prepared himself for death. His monks stood around him, scarcely able to recite the sacred offices because of their sobs. Just before midnight he began to recall to them events in the life of the Saviour, and at the moment of death he had a vision of the glorious resurrection of Our Lord, and prayed St. Michael to conduct him to God. These were his last words; he made signs of blessing those who knelt around him, and two of them saw angels take the soul that issued from his lips, to carry it to Paradise. Although the story which I have condensed speaks of Charlemagne, it was his grandfather, Charles Martel, in whose reign St. Gilles lived, and who gave him shelter when he fled from the Saracens who had attacked his monastery. But St. Gilles did die in peace in it in 721, and he had long before handed over the property to the Holy See, for the Pope's Bull taking it over in 685 is still extant. The fine crypt, which fortunately still remains, was constructed in the eleventh century to receive the tomb of the saint, and its high altar consecrated by the Pope in 1095. The church above it was begun twenty years later, and its magnificence can be judged from the ruins of the choir, which stretch far to the east of the present building, as well as from the carving of the front which took over thirty years to complete. In 1562 the victorious Protestant troops murdered the priests and the choir boys and threw their bodies into the well that is still to be seen in the crypt. The church, says Mr. T. A. Cook, "was alternately desecrated by the reformers and used as a fortress by the churchmen." It was completely destroyed in 1622, the tomb of St. Gilles removed and the crypt filled with rubbish; "and the façade itself seems only to have been left standing in order that its carvings might the more openly be debased and mutilated." At the Revolution still further havoc was wrought, and it was not until seventy years later that the crypt was excavated and restored under the auspices of the Commission of "Monuments Historiques," who also restored as far as possible the façade. Considering the vicissitudes it has gone through this splendid work retains a surprising effect. It stretches right across the front of the church, except for the two narrow towers on each flank, and is of a wonderful interest and richness. Another wonderful relic is the Vis de St. Gilles, the spiral stone staircase that stands among the ruins of the choir, and the tower. It is famous everywhere among architects for the delicacy and preciseness of its stone-cutting and vaulting. Another thing to see in Saint-Gilles is the Maison-Romaine, a tall town house of the twelfth century which was restored at the same time as the church. It comes as something of a surprise to the inexpert, it looks so very modern--rather like the sort of house an advanced architect might build in Munich today. But its proportions are beautiful, and the quiet wall space contrasting with the decorations of the windows is very effective. Indeed, the advanced architect might do worse than copy such a model. After eight hundred years he could learn more of the twelfth century builder than he could teach him. [Illustration: THE MAISON-ROMAINE] [Illustration: THE STAIRCASE IN THE FARMYARD AT MONTMAJOUR] I took train to Arles and walked straight out of the station towards the Abbey of Montmajour two miles distant. Arles itself was to wait for a few days. The road lay along a broad shady avenue too full of traffic for pleasurable tramping, but turned off presently from the main road to Tarascon, and the mass of the great Abbey could be seen towering above the trees across the open country. This great Benedictine abbey, under the stones of which lie buried the ancient kings of Arles, was founded in the sixth century, and its splendid church was rebuilt in the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. It was situated on an island among the lagoons of the Camargue, but now stands overlooking the fertile plain right away to the sea, on what is no more than a low hill overgrown on one side by a little wood. I left the road, which goes round by the front, and climbed up through the trees, to find myself in a littered farmyard, with the walls of a seventeenth century building, now in ruins, towering above me. The remains of a carved stone staircase finished off by a rickety wooden bridge ran up under a bold arch, and had a very extraordinary effect, springing thus out of the straw and muck of the yard. This great palace, joined on to the original monastic buildings, seems strangely out of place even now, more than a hundred years after both suffered the same destruction. It was built when the abbey was at its richest and proudest, but was not occupied for long, for the Revolution swept new and old alike away. Of all the treasures it contained, only three remain--a Bible of 1320, which is in the museum at Arles, an abbatial cross in the museum of Cluny, and a twelfth century pyx, now in the Louvre. What remain of the buildings themselves have suffered no less changes of ownership. When they were sold by the state after the Revolution many of the walls were broken down and the stones taken away to build bridges and houses and to mend roads. The painter Réatlu of Arles bought the great tower and saved it. The chapel of St. Croix became the property of a fisherman, but finally fell into the hands of the city of Arles, and was restored and maintained by them. This stands apart from the rest of the abbey, of which the site is still private property. Until recently the later buildings were partly inhabited by peasants. Gradually the rest has been bought back, and classed among the "Monuments Historiques." The buildings thus saved from further desecration are the church with its crypt and cloisters, the tower, the "Confessional" of St. Trophimus, and the chapel of St. Croix, and each and all of these are remarkable. The church, which was begun early in the eleventh century and was never quite finished, is of a severe and grateful simplicity. The enormous crypt beneath it is of a still earlier date, and is still more remarkable. The apse is divided into five little chapels opening on to an ambulatory, and from each can be seen the high altar. The cloisters are best preserved of anything, and retain their stone penthouse roofing. But the most interesting thing about Montmajour is the little chapel, part scooped out of the living rock, part built in the ninth century, which is called the Confessional of St. Trophimus. You descend to it down stairs cut in the side of the rock. It stands in a sort of overgrown garden, and looks as if it were trying to hide itself. Its rock chambers were no doubt used by the early Christians for hiding and shelter, in the same way as the catacombs at Rome. At the east end is a big chamber almost entirely filled with a stone bench, which opens into two other chambers. Whether St. Trophimus was ever there or not, it has very much the appearance of a confessional. And scepticism sinks before this pathetic little secret place, in which beyond doubt the holy mysteries were celebrated and the faith taught at a date before one can be certain of perhaps any other ecclesiastical remains in the country, whatever antiquity they may claim. The curious Eastern-looking Chapel of St. Croix stands at some little distance from the rest of the abbey buildings. It is in the form of a Greek cross with four semi-circular apses radiating from a central square-domed tower, and a porch attached to that on the west. Its date is 1019, but there was probably a cemetery on this spot at a much earlier date, and it was built entirely as a mortuary chapel. Viollet le Duc wrote of it: "The monks brought their dead here processionally; the body was placed in the porch and the brethren remained outside. When Mass was said, the body was blessed, and it was conveyed through the chapel and out at the little south door, to lay it in the grave. The only windows which lighted this chapel looked into the walled cemetery. At night, a lamp burned in the centre of this monument, and, in conformity with the use of the first centuries of the Middle Ages, these three little windows let the gleam of the lamp fall upon the graves. During the office for the dead a brother tolled the bell hung in the turret, by means of a hole reserved for the purpose in the centre of the dome." This little architectural gem with its delicate exterior carvings has been very carefully preserved. Up to the eighteenth century it was the object of a popular and crowded pilgrimage on May 3rd, but on the destruction of the abbey the precious indulgences with which it had been dowered by successive Popes were transferred to the church of St. Julian at Arles, and it is now nothing but a "Monument Historique." CHAPTER XX _The Last Walk. St. Michel de Frigolet_ I walked on from Montmajour through the most delightful country. The road dipped up and down, crossed thymy, brambly, rocky heaths, and gave promise of pleasant villages to come. One begins here to get out of the plain, and on the low heights the comfortable land, dotted with nestling farms and towers and steeples, can be seen stretching away to the white Alpilles, upon which Les Baux perches and makes its romantic presence felt, though it cannot be seen. This little corner is full of curiosities, but I had a long walk before me and a fair one behind, and turned aside to see none of them. There are the remains of the Roman aqueduct, built to carry the waters of Vaucluse into the Arena at Arles. It is still called Ouide de Sarrasin (stonework of the Saracens) by the country people, because the Spanish Moors marched along it to attack Arles. At the foot of the Montagne de Cordes are the remains of fortifications, contemporary and perhaps built by the invading Saracens. On the top of the same hill is the Grotto of the Fairies, with its curious pavement and stones which were cut in prehistoric times. And there are other megalithic remains in the little hill of Castellet, and a cavern in which were found a hundred skeletons, and among other objects ornaments of a stone only to be found in the Indies and the Caucasus. The French call it _calaïs_; I do not know its English name. All these things are to be seen within a mile or two of Montmajour. But two of the sights I did see, because they lay right on my road, and the second of them I would have gone out of it a reasonable distance to see in any case. The first was the "_allées couvertes_," of which signposts obligingly give notice, at so many metres from the road. They are subterranean passages, running at a short distance beneath the surface, on either side of the road and parallel to it, broken into here and there, and their entrances covered with brambles. When they were constructed, or what for, I have not the slightest idea, and no book that I have been able to get hold of tells me. My impression is that they extend for some miles, but I don't know where I got it from, and perhaps I am wrong. The "_allées couvertes_" are a mystery of which I am content to be without the key. But nearly halfway between Arles and Tarascon is the charming little village of Fontvieille, and there is something to see there that I would not willingly have missed. It is the disused mill which Alphonse Daudet bought to retire to as a young man, and from which he wrote that delightful collection of tales and essays about his beloved native country to which he gave the title "Lettres de Mon Moulin." They breathe Provence, as nothing modern does, except the works of Mistral and his brother Félibres, and some of the tales of Jean Aicard, and if one wanted to make a pilgrimage to the heart of it, one would come either to the "Mas" at Maillane in which Mistral was born, or to Daudet's mill at Fontvieille. Nevertheless when I came within sight of it I was a trifle disappointed. There it stood on its thymy hill overlooking the village, familiar enough in its aspect from the photograph in my edition of this book. But there were two other mills exactly like it on the little hill, and all three quite close together; and it was in full view of the village, and not very far from it. I had imagined a place of more reflective solitude. I was glad to have seen it, but did not trouble to go up and examine it more closely. [Illustration: SAINT-MICHEL DE FRIGOLET] [Illustration: THE CORONATION OF THE VIRGIN, VILLENEUVE-SUR-AVIGNON _Page 303_] In the evening I came to the roadside chapel of St. Gabriel, which was marked on my map with a cross, showing it to be something worth looking at, but was left without mention alike by the German Baedeker and the French Joanne. It is just a single, heavily buttressed nave with a richly carved porch, within the arch of which is a curious relief representing Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. It stands in an olive garden by the side of the road and there are no other buildings quite near to it, so that it comes as something of a surprise. It is important, as I have learnt since from Mr. T. A. Cook, as a link in the progression of early Provençal architecture, and is certainly worth seeing on its own account. A little farther on was an _auberge_, before which some great wagons were standing while their drivers refreshed themselves within. It was in a quiet and pleasant corner, where four roads met, all overshadowed by trees now in their full leafage. I should have liked to get a bed and a dinner there, as by this time I had walked quite far enough, and it was the sort of peaceful countrified place that it is pleasant to wake up in. But they did not want me, and after sitting there for a time I tramped the three or four miles into Tarascon. It was dark by the time I got there, and I saw very little of the immortal Tartarin's town. I went up under an old gateway, and wandered about the streets on the lookout for an inn. I would have taken the first that came, for I was very tired by this time. But I could not find one at all. At last I was directed to a large hotel, where they gave me a bad dinner and charged me preposterously. But I got a good deal of fun out of it. Tarascon is a military town, and the big dining-room in a corner of which I sat was providing entertainment for many of the soldiers of the regiments quartered there, and their friends among the townspeople. There were cavalry officers in natty little Cambridge-blue tunics, and troopers with tunics of a deeper shade of blue. They did not mix, but their friends were all of the same class, and of course a trooper of a French cavalry regiment may be just as well bred as his officers. It seemed to me, remembering the character that Daudet fixed upon the Tarasconnais, that he had done them no injustice. There was a sort of theatrical swagger about those that came within my view that marked them off from their companions of the military even more than their civilian garb. I remember Sir Henry Irving in "The Lyons Mail" taking a meal with his back to the audience. He seemed to be eating chiefly with his shoulders, and that was exactly the way in which these gentlemen of Tarascon ate, as if they were in the limelight, and everything must be done for effect. When they talked, they did so with terrific emphasis and gesticulation, and when somebody else was talking they would suddenly withdraw themselves from the conversation and reflectively twirl their moustaches. And when my waiter, who was tremendously overworked, did bring my long pauses of reflection to an end, he served me with a flourishing air that would have made it almost indecent to complain of being kept waiting, since my reward was to be attended to with an amount of pomp and circumstance that must warm the coldest of victuals. I was up early next morning and walked out of the town by a roundabout way, which gave me a sight of its quaint arcaded streets, King René's castle, which would have been worth a visit if I had had time for it, and the suspension bridge across the river to Beaucaire. I passed along a plane-shaded boulevard on the outskirts of the town, always on the lookout for Tartarin's villa, which I think I saw, though there were no signs of the india-rubber tree in its elegant little garden. I was on a literary pilgrimage. You remember Daudet's story "L'Elixir du Révérend Père Gaucher"--how the monastery of the White Canons had fallen upon such evil times that even the belfry was as silent as a deserted dovecot, and the monks, for lack of money, were obliged to sound to matins with rattles of almond-wood; how the humble cowherd restored them to affluence by the cordial cunningly distilled from Provençal herbs, of which he had learnt the secret from the naughty old woman who had brought him up; and the dreadful things that followed when the wonderful elixir proved too seductive for his soul's health. Now this monastery was St. Michel de Frigolet, up in the hills a mile or two off the road from Tarascon to Avignon, and there is a good deal more attached to it than Daudet's story. To begin with, Mistral went to school there, and I will make use of another chapter of his Memoirs to describe its situation and tell its story. It was nearly eighty years ago that he was taken there from Maillane in the farm cart, together with a small folding bed, a deal box to hold his papers and a bristly pigskin trunk containing his books and belongings. "At the Revolution, the lands of Saint-Michel had been sold piece by piece for paper money, and the despoiled abbey, deserted and solitary, remained up there, bereft in the wilds, open to the four winds and the wild animals. Sometimes smugglers would use it to make their powder in. When it rained the shepherds would shelter their sheep in the church. The gamblers of the neighbourhood would hide there in winter at midnight to avoid the police, and there by the pale light of a few candles, as the gold followed the movement of the cards, the vaulted roof echoed with oaths and blasphemies instead of psalms. Then when their game was finished these rakes ate and drank and revelled and rioted until dawn. "About 1832 some mendicant friars established themselves there. They had put a bell in the old Roman belfry, and rang it on Sundays. But they rang in vain; nobody came up the hill to their offices, for they had no faith in them. The Duchess de Berry about this time had come to Provence to raise the Carlists against Louis Philippe, and I remember it being whispered that these runaway friars were nothing but Spanish bandits under their black robes plotting some dubious intrigue. "Following these friars a worthy native of Cavaillon, M. Donnat, came and started a boarding-school for boys at the Convent of Saint-Michel, which he had bought on credit. "He was an old bachelor, yellow and swarthy in complexion, with lank hair, flat nose, large mouth with prominent teeth, in a long black frock-coat and tanned shoes. Very devout, and as poor as a church mouse, he had made shift to start his school and to find pupils without a penny to bless himself with. "For instance, he would go to Graveson, or Tarascon, or Barbentane or Saint-Pierre to a farmer who had boys. "'I have come to tell you,' he would say, 'that I have opened a school at Saint-Michel de Frigolet. You have thus at your very door an excellent institution to which you can send your sons and have them prepared for their examinations.' "'My dear sir,' the father of the family would reply, 'that may be all very well for rich people, but we are not the sort of folk to give our boys so much learning. They will have quite enough for working on the land.' "'Look here,' M. Donnat would say, 'there is nothing better than a good education. Don't worry about payment. Give me every year so many measures of corn, so many casks of wine, so many drums of oil, and arrange matters in that way.' "So the worthy farmer would send his children to Saint-Michel de Frigolet. "Then I suppose M. Donnat would go to a tradesman and begin thus: "'What a fine boy you have there! He looks sharp enough, too. I suppose you are not going to turn him into a counter-jumper.' "'Oh, sir, if we only could, we should be glad to give him a little education, but schools are dear, and when there isn't much money----!' "'If it's a question of a school,' M. Donnat would reply, 'send him to mine at Saint-Michel de Frigolet. We will teach him Latin and make a man of him. As for payment, let it come out of the shop. You will have an extra customer in me, and a very good customer too.' "And then and there the shopkeeper would promise him his son. "Another time he would pass a carpenter's house, and supposing he saw a child playing in the gutter who looked pale, he would say to his mother: 'What's the matter with this pretty little fellow? He looks very white. Is he ill, or has he been eating cinders?' "'Oh, no,' she would reply, 'it is always playing about that makes him look like that. Play is meat and drink to him, sir.' "'Well, then, why not send him to my school at Saint-Michel de Frigolet?' M. Donnat would say. 'The good air alone will give him rosy cheeks in a fortnight. And he will be watched over and taught his lessons; and when he has been well educated he will find an easier occupation than a carpenter's.' "'Ah, sir! But when one is poor!' "'Don't trouble about that. We have up there I don't know how many doors and windows to mend. I can promise your husband more work as a carpenter than he will know how to get through; and so, my good woman, we shall settle the matter of fees.' "So this child would also find himself at Saint-Michel, with those of the butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker, and by these means M. Donnat collected into his school about forty boys, of whom I was one. Out of them all, I and a few others were there for a money payment, but three-quarters of them were paid for in kind, or by the labour of their parents. In a word, M. Donnat had solved the problem of the Bank of Exchange, quite simply and without any fuss, which the celebrated Proudhom tried in vain to establish in Paris in 1848.... "In those days Saint-Michel was of much less importance than it has since become. There was left just the cloister of the Augustinian monks, with its green in the middle of the court; to the south the refectory and chapter-house; then the dilapidated church of St. Michael, with its frescoes of the damned, and of demons armed with forks, and the battle between the devil and the great archangel in the middle; and then the kitchen and stables. "But apart from this little group of buildings there was a buttressed chapel, dedicated to Our Lady of Succour, with a porch in front of it. Masses of ivy covered the walls, and the interior was lined with gilded carvings which enclosed pictures said to be by Mignard representing scenes in the life of the Virgin. Anne of Austria, mother of Louis XIV, had given these decorations in accordance with a vow she had made to the Virgin if she should bear a son. "This chapel, a real gem, hidden in the mountains, had been saved during the Revolution by the good people who piled up fagots under the porch and hid the entrance. It was there that every morning in the year, at five o'clock in summer and six in winter, we were taken to hear Mass; it was there that I prayed, I remember--we all prayed--with a faith that was really angelic.... "The little hills all around were covered with thyme, rosemary, asphodel, box and lavender. In odd corners there were vines, which produced a wine of some repute-the wine of Frigolet; patches of olives on the lower slopes; plantations of almond-trees, twisted, dark and stunted, on the stony ground; and wild fig-trees in the clefts of the rocks. This sparse vegetation was all that these rugged hills could show; the rest was nothing but waste and scattered rocks. But how delicious it smelt! The scent of the mountains at sunrise intoxicated us.... "We became as rugged as a troop of gipsies. But how we revelled in these hills and gorges and ravines, with their sonorous Provençal names ... eternal monuments of the country and its language, all embalmed in thyme and rosemary and lavender, all illumined in gold and azure. Oh, sweet land of scents and colours and delights and illusions, what happiness, what dreams of paradise thou didst reveal to my childhood!"[31] This idyllic existence came suddenly to an end. M. Donnat, being frequently away collecting pupils, neglected to educate them when he had found them, and being anxious to increase his numbers took pupils who paid little or nothing, and they were not those who ate the least. One morning the cook disappeared. "No cook, no broth for us. The masters left us in the lurch one after the other. M. Donnat had disappeared. His poor old mother boiled us some potatoes for a few days, and then his father said to us one morning, 'Children, there is nothing more to eat; you had better go home.'"[32] This was the end of poor M. Donnat's experiment, and he finally died in an almshouse. The old monastery was abandoned for twelve years, and was then bought by a Premonstrant, who restored it under the rules of his order, which had ceased to exist in France. "Thanks to the activity and preaching and begging of this ardent zealot, the little monastery grew enormously. Numerous crenellated buildings were added to it, a new, magnificently decorated church was built, with a nave and two aisles and two towers. A hundred monks or novices occupied its cells, and every Sunday the neighbouring people drove up to admire the elaborate pomp of their offices. The abbey of the White Fathers became so popular that when in 1880 the Republic ordered the convents to be closed a thousand peasants or inhabitants of the plains shut themselves up in it to protest against the execution of the decree. And it was then that we saw a whole army on the march--cavalry, infantry, generals and captains, with their commissariat and all the apparatus of war--and encamping round the Convent of Saint-Michel de Frigolet, seriously undertaking the siege of a comic-opera citadel, which would have given in to four or five gendarmes."[33] It may be remembered that the romantic heart of the immortal Tartarin was stirred within him to take part in these proceedings. Equipped with a regular arsenal of weapons, he led his followers up the hill one dark night and taking immense pains to circumvent the investing troops crawled laboriously to the gates of the monastery. As he was crouching behind a stone, an officer on guard, who had often met him at his club, called out affably, "Bon soir, M. Tartarin," and made no difficulty whatever about his proceeding. The more people there were inside the monastery to consume its stock of provisions the quicker the siege would end. It has been made the basis of other stories and poems, but Mistral assures us that none of them are half as comic as were the facts themselves. I have read elsewhere that two thousand soldiers, horse and foot, united to expel twenty recalcitrant but unarmed monks, who were finally reduced by hunger and led triumphantly between two files of dragoons to Tarascon. I do not know when or how the monks came back to their monastery, but they were finally expelled with all the rest ten years ago, and settled themselves somewhere in Belgium. Well, you will agree that Saint-Michel de Frigolet was a place to see. I got up to it by a winding track among the hills. It was a clear, sunny morning, and the bees were humming among the scented herbs that give such a character to these stony hills, just as they did in the poet's happy childhood. On this side of the hill were a few olives here and there, but no other sign of cultivation until I came to the top of a hill, where there was a patch of dug ground, and beyond it a collection of pinnacles and walls conveying the impression that I had unexpectedly hit upon a large modern cemetery. The first building I came to was a tall, jerry-built structure which seemed to have been used as a sort of factory. Its doors were open and its chambers empty and already beginning to fall to pieces. I walked down the hill between this and another building of the same sort, modern, hideous and deserted, and came to a large church, which looked on the outside much like a pretentious Nonconformist chapel in a London suburb. The west doors stood open, and I looked over an iron railing to find the interior blazing with gold and bright blues and reds and greens on every inch of wall and roof, and with coloured windows to match. At first sight it looked gorgeous, at second, its gorgeousness was seen to be mere garish vulgarity. The sacristan was inside, and I pushed open the iron gate and went in. He showed me the glories of the church with pride. He said that the decorations alone had cost one million six hundred thousand francs, which is £64,000, and the more I looked the more depressed I became at the senseless, conscienceless waste of it all. This was the building that the Premonstrants had erected in 1854, the "magnificently decorated church" to which Mistral describes all the neighbouring countryside flocking to admire the elaborate pomp of its offices. But all Mistral's artistic genius went into his poetry. He seems to have been incapable of appreciating the art that surrounded him so richly. I was told that the tomb he had erected for himself in the churchyard at Maillane was a close copy of the Pavillon de la Reine Jeanne at Les Baux, but that he had substituted the heads of favourite dogs for the carvings on the keystones of the arches; and I came across another instance of his lack of artistic understanding later on in his Musée Arlaten. The Premonstrants have for their object the celebration of the ceremonies of the Church with the highest possible degree of elaboration, and I suppose that when they acquired this monastery money was lavished upon them for enriching it. It was the same spirit, one would have said, that had created the treasures of ecclesiastical art and architecture of which Provence is so full, but if so, what had become of its creative force? And yet the people--the uncontaminated sons of the soil, to whom the latest doctrine would have us look for the truest appreciation of art--flocked to this pinchbeck shrine, and took its gaudy ignorance for a true revival of ancient splendours. The sacristan took me over the rest of the buildings. They had all been bought a few years before by a rich priest who admirably uses them for the training of boys whom he sends out to the colonies. He has bought farms and large tracts of land all around, and the score or so of youths that he looks after work on them. I should have liked a chat with him, but he was away for the day, and I suppose the boys were all out at work, for I did not see any of them. Some of the buildings that were used by the original monks--and I suppose also by M. Donnat--are used now; others, even of the newer ones, are empty and some of them dilapidated. I was shown the library--two big rooms fitted up with painted deal shelves from which all the books had been removed. They looked poor and desolate, and there was not a trace of architectural dignity about anything else I saw that had been built in the last century, though it was all convenient enough for its purpose. And yet there was the old church which these aspiring religionists had left to its quiet decay while they built their vulgar modern one, the sweet little peaceful cloister, the chapel of Our Lady of Succour, which Mistral has described, with its gilded Louis XIV _boiseries_ round the altar, from which, however, the pictures had been removed. They had models around them, if they had had the wit to use them. I went down the expensively embanked road towards Graveson, when I had seen all that there was to see. It was lined on either side with heavily built shrines exhibiting the Stations of the Cross, which looked like the rooks of a set of clumsy chessmen. And the last thing I saw of this derelict monument of bad taste, before the windings of the road hid it, was a large cross toppling over sideways, as if even that had not been built to last. CHAPTER XXI _Villeneuve-sur-Avignon_ My walking was done. I had another day and a half for Avignon and a day and a half for Arles, and that was to be the extent of this expedition. I wish it could have included Carcassonne, which is not, however, in Provence. But neither are Nîmes nor Aigues-Mortes, nor Saintes-Maries nor Saint-Gilles, strictly speaking. The old province of Provence ended with the Rhône, and Languedoc began on the other side of it. I should have liked, too, to renew my acquaintance with Orange, and visited Montelimar, if only for the sake of its _nougât_, and Martigues, and half a dozen other towns. But it is not a bad thing to leave out some places in a country one loves. There is always something to come back for. I have said nothing yet about Villeneuve, which, by the bye, is also in Languedoc; but one can never forget it in Avignon. The great fort of St. André frowns across the river on to the papal city; and the tower of Philip le Bel, at which the Pont Bénezet used to end, is a conspicuous object on the lower ground. I suppose the two cities, one very much alive, the other almost dead, are about a mile apart. The two branches of the Rhône and the Isle de Barthelasse are between them. It seems a long way round by the suspension bridge on a hot day, but it is worth going there, if only to see Avignon from the other side. The city stands up magnificently, its rock crowned by the cathedral and the palace. But there is much to see in Villeneuve itself. There is a fine fourteenth century church, which contains among other treasures a wonderful ivory virgin and child, coloured, which was presented by Cardinal Arnaud de Via, nephew of Pope John XXII, who founded the church in 1333. It is kept in an ancient safe in the sacristy, and there is a tremendous fuss of unlocking by various keys when it is shown. There is also the very fine Gothic tomb of Pope Innocent VI, which, although much restored, is still in better preservation than the not dissimilar one of John XXII in the cathedral at Avignon. "When seen by Mérrimée in 1834," writes Mr. Okey, "the monument was in the possession of a poor vine-grower and used as a cupboard; casks were piled up against it, and all the beautiful alabaster statuettes had been destroyed or sold. Another visitor of the period saw the tomb in use as a rabbit hutch."[34] The tomb stands in the middle of the little chapel of the Hôpital, which also contains a small collection of paintings, one at least of which is of first-rate importance. It represents the coronation of the Virgin. It was long attributed to King René, as were most of the pictures of its date of which the authorship was doubtful, then to Jan van Eyck, and then to Van der Meere. But in 1889 the contract for its painting was discovered, "drawn up in the spicer's shop of Jean Brea at Avignon, between a priest, Jean de Montagnac, and Master Enguerrand Charonton, of Laon, and dated April 24, 1453." As this contract shows the sort of terms on which artists of the middle ages worked, and how little was left to their own initiative, and is an interesting document besides, it is worth quoting Mr. Okey's mention of it. "Every detail is specified, narrowly and precisely, as in a contract for building a house, and in order that the artist may have no excuse for not following the specification, the details are written in French, whereas the terms of the contract are in Latin. First, there was to be the representation of a Paradise, and in this Paradise must be (_doit estre_) the Holy Trinity. There is to be no difference between the Father and the Son, and the Holy Ghost must be in the form of a dove. Our Lady is to be crowned by the said Holy Trinity, and the vestments are to be rich; that of Our Lady is to be cloth of white damask, figured as may seem best to the said master. The disposition of the angels and archangels, the cherubim, seraphim, prophets, patriarchs and saints is specified in elaborate detail: moreover, all the estates of the world are to be represented in the Paradise. Above Paradise are to be the heavens, with sun and moon, and the Church of St. Peter, and the walls of Rome are to be figured over against the setting sun; and at the issue of the church is to be a pine cone of bronze; thence spacious steps are to descend to the great piazza, and a street is to lead to the bridge of St. Angelo, with houses and shops of all kinds. The castle of St. Angelo must be also seen and many churches; the Tiber is to be shown starting from Rome and entering the sea; and on the sea are to be a certain number of galleys and ships. Beyond the sea must be figured part of Jerusalem: first, the Mount of Olives and the Crucifixion of my Saviour and a Carthusian in prayer at the foot of the cross; and a little further the sepulchre of my Saviour, and an angel saying: _Surrexit, non est hic_. At the foot of the sepulchre shall be two (persons) praying; and at the right side, the Vale of Jehosaphat, between two mountains, and in the valley a church with the tomb of Our Lady, and an angel saying: _Assumpta est_, etc., and there shall be a figure praying at the foot of the tomb. On the left is to be a valley, wherein are three persons of one and the same age, and from all these three shall shine forth rays of the sun, and there shall be seen Abraham coming out of his tent and worshipping the said three persons, saying, _Domini si inveni_, etc.; on the second mountain shall be Moses tending his sheep, and a young girl playing the pipes, and Our Lord in the burning bush, and Our Lord shall say: _Moyses, Moyses_, and Moses shall answer, _Assum_. And on the right shall be Purgatory with angels leading forth rejoicing those that are going to Paradise, whereat the devils shall show forth great grief. On the left side shall be Hell, and an angel is to be seen comforting the souls in Purgatory. Then in the part where Hell is shall be a devil, very hideous, turning his back to the angel and casting certain souls into Hell which other devils are handing to him. In Hell and Purgatory, too, all estates of the world are to be represented according to the judgment of the master. The said picture is to be painted in fine oil colour, and the blue must not be German blue but fine blue of Acre; German blue may, however, be used on the border. The gold used for the picture and the border must be fine burnished gold. The said master is to display all his science in the representation of the Holy Trinity and the Blessed Virgin, and the rest may be painted according to his conscience. On the reverse of the picture is to be painted a fine cloth of crimson damask figured with fleur-de-lys. The said master is to have the said picture faithfully done by St. Michael's Day, and to be paid 120 florins at 24 soldi to the florin, of which sum the master had received 40 florins on account; the balance is to be paid--20 florins when the picture was half finished; 40, according to the rate of the progress of the work thereafter; and the remaining 20 florins when the picture was completed and delivered at the Carthusian Church."[35] Almost an anecdotal picture! But a very beautiful one. It was amusing to stand before it with this description in one's hand and pick out the various commissions which Master Enguerrand Charonton so conscientiously fulfilled. They could do these things, even at that early date, without sacrificing composition or anything that is the mark of a great picture in all ages. I think there are not many artists who could do it now. The sleepy high street, or what corresponded to such, of the once famous city is full of memorials of its past grandeur, although they are for the most part hidden behind the rows of ordinary looking house-fronts. There are courtyards surrounded by stately buildings, deposed from their once high estate, when the princes of the Church and the great nobles of Provence had their summer palaces here; but the main surprise that Villeneuve holds out to the visitor is the ruins of the great charter house of the Val de Benediction, which was founded by Innocent III, and so grew in importance that it became the second of the Order. It is a surprising place to visit. The circuit of the walls was a full mile round, and they are mostly standing on the two sides towards the open country. On the other two sides there are streets, and the main entrance is in the Grande Rue--a fine gateway standing between the house-fronts and leading by a vaulted passage to what is left of the monastic buildings. These are all mixed up with houses and cottages, some rebuilt from the old materials, others adapted for modern dwellings out of the walls as they stood. At the Revolution the monastery was sacked, and its buildings sold in small lots. There are said to have been two hundred families of the poorer sort living within the walls, and there are still a very large number, although the whole is being very gradually bought up, and as much as possible of it restored as an historical monument. The church still stands, though in advanced ruin, and the chapel of the Holy Trinity, built by Innocent VI retains some of its frescoes. There are also the remains of a fine cloister, and in the cloister garth is the eighteenth century rotunda, built over the old well of St. Jean. To my mind, however, the interesting thing about these ruins are not the important remains, but the endless little ones that one comes across as one wanders about the narrow alleys and yards. There is probably not a hovel that has not got something about it that tells of the past. As I was poking about, two urchins accosted me and asked if I would like to see the _plafond_. They took me to a house standing in a row of others like it--a house of perhaps half a dozen rooms--and up a stone stair into a bedroom of which the ceiling was painted, not in the least ecclesiastically, but in a good eighteenth century style. It was in excellent preservation, and indeed the whole house, into some of the other rooms of which I peeped, was no more dilapidated than any house might be that had come down in the world, but not so very far. I do not know what purpose it may have served in the monastic days. I suppose there were those in this great monastery who lived much in the style of people outside, and this was the dwelling of one of them. The place was a town in itself, and not a very small one. [Illustration: A COURTYARD IN VILLENEUVE] [Illustration: THE ROTUNDA AT VILLENEUVE] The photograph of the Rotunda will give some idea of the sort of buildings that now surround this and other remains of the past. A lane runs round the two sides of the old walls that do not face the town, and doors are cut into them leading to the houses inside, or into their yards. The clearing out must be a very slow process, if all the descendants of those who acquired the many "lots" at the Revolution are to be removed. I doubt if the result will be worth while, except here and there. The whole has been destroyed and altered past repair, and it is interesting enough in its present state. The mighty fort of St. André stands on the hill above the monastery. With its double fortress towers and frowning battlements, it is the most conspicuous object in Villeneuve as seen from Avignon, and Avignon is seen from its heights, as well as the wonderful stretch of country around, perhaps to greater advantage than from any other point. Its long history was closed, except for later restorations, by an occupation which Mr. Okey describes as follows: "In the later years of the monarchy a post of artillery was stationed in the fort, and it was from the fire of a battery planted there that a young captain of artillery, one Napoleon Bonaparte, in 1793, overawed the city of Avignon, which was occupied by the Marseillais federalists who had declared against the Convention; and it was with the cannon seized at St. André that Bonaparte marched to Toulon and expelled the English from its harbour. The papal soldiery were ever objects of scorn to the royalists of Villeneuve, who dubbed them _patachines_ (_petachina_, Italian for slipper), and taunted them with drilling under parasols--a pleasantry repaid by the Italians who hurled the epithet _luzers_ (lizards) against the royalists, who were said to pass their time sunning themselves against the hot rocks of Villeneuve."[36] CHAPTER XXII _Arles_ Of all the larger towns in Provence, Arles is perhaps the one that creates the deepest impression upon the visitor. Avignon is much finer, and its interest is at least as great as that of Arles, although it lacks that of Roman remains. And the Roman remains of Nîmes are finer than those of Arles, although Nîmes has very little mediæval interest. But both Avignon and Nîmes are thriving modern cities, while Arles is a comparatively small provincial town. Its ancient remains are everything, and you can never forget them in connection with it. I do not remember any feeling of modernity at all about Arles. The streets are cobbled, narrow and puzzling. If you once get away from any central point you must use a map to get back again. I do not remember any modern houses or any large shops. It is a sleepy old town, and a pleasant one to wander about in, even when one has no immediate object in the direction of its outstanding antiquities. Of the Arena I need say little. The exterior is less striking than that of Nîmes, because it is not nearly so well preserved. The arches of the upper tier stand naked all the way round, and it is not possible anywhere to get an idea of what the exterior looked like without more knowledge and imagination than most visitors are likely to possess. The interior, as will be seen by the photograph, has been to some extent restored for spectacular purposes. As it was built to hold thirty thousand spectators, and the whole population of Arles is now about half that number, the ancient seats of honour afford ample accommodation, and the rest has been left to its ruin. But this ruin is really a considerable restoration in itself. The arenas, both at Arles and Nîmes, suffered many vicissitudes after the Roman occupation. The square tower above the entrance was a fortification of the Saracens, and there is another still standing which is not shown in the photograph. In the seventeenth century the whole area was crowded with houses. According to contemporary prints, the round tops of the arches, with the coping above them removed, formed the roofs of separate narrow dwellings; here and there extensions clung to the outside walls; the interior was a mass of buildings and alleys, and there was even a church. It was a little town within a town, and a very horrible one at certain times of its history, for it was the resort of criminals of the basest type, who made a sort of fortress of it. In 1640 the plague that ravaged Arles broke out first in this crowded den, and its inhabitants were shot down if they came out of it. It was not until 1825 that it began to be cleared of buildings, and a careful restoration was set in hand twenty years later and carried on slowly until the present considerable result was attained. [Illustration: THE ARENA AT ARLES] [Illustration: THE GREEK THEATRE, ARLES] The remains of the Greek theatre are unfortunately even less complete, but they are enough to cause one to linger over this unique survival of ancient days. The two beautiful marble columns which remain give one an idea of what the proscenium must have been like. One is of white marble from Carrara, the other of African marble. Charles IX took eight columns of porphyry and one of verd-antique for shipment to Paris, and they were lost in the Rhône. One would willingly exchange the whole of the Arena--contenting oneself with that of Nîmes--for an equal preservation of the theatre. But its destruction dates very far back. It was in 441 that the Deacon Cyril aroused a fanaticism that led a Christian mob to attack and wreck it, and they left it in little better state than it is now. In 1664 a monastery was built with the materials, actually on the stage of the theatre itself. This complete and sudden demolition, however, had the effect of preserving some precious objects which would otherwise have disappeared entirely. When excavations were made, possibly in preparation for the building of the monastery, there was brought to light the beautiful Vénus d'Arles, now in the Louvre, and there are other priceless remains of statuary and architecture in the Musée Lapidaire of Arles itself, which go to show what a treasure-house this theatre was; for the early iconoclasts paid special attention to the destruction of the statuary. Behind the stage of the theatre rises the Romanesque tower of the cathedral of St. Trophime. This wonderful church has suffered as little as anything of its date in Provence. Its carved façade is not so fine as that of St. Gilles, but it has been better preserved, and while St. Gilles has lost nearly everything that was behind its façade, St. Trophime has kept nearly everything. The interior of the church is very solid and very dignified. It has little decoration, but the light that is let in on it is just enough to give it mystery and solemnity. The aisles are so narrow that looking up to the vaulting one has the impression of mere passages, but their narrowness is effective, and the whole structure conveys an uplifting sense of austerity. The richness of the famous cloister, happily in good preservation, comes as something of a surprise when one steps into it from the dark church, though its earliest "walk" is of the same date as the portal and not less luxuriant in decoration. This beautiful cloister is one of the most satisfying things in all ecclesiastical Provence, and would make a visit to Arles memorable if there were nothing else there to see. A chapter might be written on its carvings alone, and its irregularities of date and of construction provide constant fresh interest. The photographs of the north and south walks will show the great variety that exists. The north is of the twelfth century, the south as it was altered at the end of the fourteenth, and the west is later still. At the south-east corner is a well, said to have been originally fed by a Roman aqueduct which was older than the amphitheatre, for the water rose in a channel cut through the rock beneath it. Mr. Henry James speaks of the Musée Lapidaire as the most Roman thing he knows of outside Rome, and, indeed, its contents, which are not so numerous as to confuse the mind, show what Arles had lost in the way of beauty centuries before St. Trophimus and other mediæval glories were bestowed upon it. I was pleased to come across, in Mr. James's pages, mention of the delightful little boy's head in marble, of the second century, which had particularly struck me. There is another similar one, not quite in such perfection, but even more tender and "naturalistique". One seems to know these little children, who died close upon two thousand years ago, and almost to love them. In the Musée are some of the finest of the early Christian tombs from the Alyscamps, which has enriched half the museums in Europe with its treasures. This ancient burying-place lies a little outside the town. It is a rather mournful avenue of poplars underneath which are the rows of stone coffers, all empty now, which remain of the many that once stood there, and an ancient ruined church at the end of it. "Here," writes Mr. T. A. Cook, "was the true necropolis of Gaul, consecrated, as the legend runs, by the blessing of the Christ Himself, who appeared to St. Trophime upon this sacred spot.... At first a Roman burial-place, this cemetery gradually became the chosen bourne of every man who wished his body to await in peace the coming of the resurrection. By the twelfth century it was sufficient to place the corpse of some beloved dead, from Avignon or further, into a rude coffin, fashioned like a barrel, and to commit it to the Rhône, which brought its quiet charge in safety to the beach of La Roquette. No sacrilegious hands were ever laid upon that travelling bier; for once a man of Beaucaire had robbed the coffin that was floating past his bridge, and straightway the corpse remained immovable in the current of the river, and stayed there until the thief confessed his crime and put the jewels back."[37] [Illustration: THE CLOISTERS, SOUTH WALK, ST. TROPHIME] [Illustration: THE CLOISTERS, NORTH WALK, ST. TROPHIME] The ancient church of St. Honorat, at the end of the avenue, is in a sad state of desolation, for its ruin went very far before what was left of it began to be cared for. I remember little of it but the octagonal domed belfry which gives it its character in the scene, the enormous round pillars of the interior, and a side chapel which interested me because it belonged to the Porcelets of Les Baux. St. Honorat was only one of nineteen churches and chapels within the Alyscamps when it was most famous. The translation of the body of St. Trophimus to the cathedral in 1152 took away something of its prestige. It was served by the monks of St. Victor of Marseilles until the middle of the fifteenth century, by which time the people of Arles seem to have realized that they had an almost inexhaustible supply of coveted Christian antiquities to dispose of, and ever since the sixteenth century the spoliation has been going on. There is nothing of much value left compared with what can be seen of the treasures of the Alyscamps elsewhere, and even the sacred ground has been whittled away by degrees, and the railway has set up workshops on the very spot where so many Christians of the first centuries were buried. One hears the clang of metal as one walks along the melancholy avenue, or stands in the empty ruined church. The glory has all departed, and most of the romance. There are many other memories of the past in Arles, but they need not detain us. The ancient city has of late years been the centre of the Provençal revival of the Félibres, and we may take leave of it as well as of the charming land of Provence, with a glance at the Musée Arlaten, which owes its foundation to the patriotism and largely to the generosity of Mistral. It is housed in a fine old mansion built round a courtyard in which have lately been discovered some valuable Roman remains. It fills all the rooms and passages of the first floor and is already an ethnological and local museum of great value. They call it the Palace of the Félibrige, and it aims to sum up all the life and traditions of Provence. "Art, letters, customs, manners, pottery, costumes, furniture," announces the catalogue, "all are there. The whole of Provence unfolds itself and lives again in all its aspects in these admirable galleries, masterpieces of patience as well as genius." The patience as well as the genius have been mostly Mistral's. His neat, angular writing is to be seen on nearly all the labels, and up to the very week before his death he came regularly to the museum one day every week and worked there cataloguing and arranging. As I was waiting at Graveson station after visiting Saint-Michel de Frigolet, the station-master told me how much they should miss him. Every Thursday he would come over from Maillane, in the old diligence, and take the train to Arles. He talked a great deal about his museum. It was his pride and his chief interest of latter years. One of the smaller rooms is called the Salo Mistralenco, or the Cabinet de Mistral. "The walls of this _salle d'honneur_ are decorated with illustrations of _Mireille_, _Nerte_, _Calendal_, &c. On the chimneypiece a superb bust of the Master. In glass cases: the works of Mistral, things that have belonged to him, the 'original' of the great Nobel Prize adjudged to the poet, and a letter to the same from Roosevelt, President of the United States, etc. In the middle of the _salle_, a wonderful reliquary estimated at over 10,000 francs, the gift of M. Mistral-Bernard of Saint-Remy: it contains the hair, the christening robe and the cradle of the infant Mistral; in the cradle the manuscript of 'Mireille.'" There may seem something a little odd to English ideas in this naïve acceptance of immortality, and preparation for the veneration of posterity, in a man's own lifetime. But Mistral's advanced years may excuse it, if excuse is needed. Long ago he saw his cause triumph, and it is a cause that looms big in Provence. He could hardly help knowing that he was its central figure, and from the very first he has laid all the fame that it brought him at the feet of his beloved country. In any case the slight anachronism will soon disappear. It was already beginning to fade away when I was there in the week after his death, and saw the chamber darkened and the pathetic reminders of his infancy all swathed and wreathed in black. [Illustration: ARLES, THE ALYSCAMPS] [Illustration: BOY'S HEAD IN MARBLE, MUSÉE LAPIDAIRE, ARLES _Page 313_] Two of the larger rooms have been given up to a kind of wax-work show, the one of a Christmas Eve feast in the kitchen of a Provençal farm, the other of the ceremonies surrounding the birth of a child. The descriptions in the catalogue, probably written by Mistral himself, may be quoted. * * * * * "Salle de Noël.--Here is Christmas Eve represented in all the truth of its poetry, very spaciously and completely, in the kitchen of a Provençal 'mas.' A dozen very expressive _mannequins_ in coloured stucco by M. Férigoule represent the inhabitants of the farm.... On the table; three cloths and three candles; the _pain calendal_ is served with the great pike cooked with black olives, and with snails, celery, artichokes, brandied raisins, and the little cask of mulled wine. By the hearth, facing the grandmother, the head of the house sprinkles with wine and blesses the Yule log. Round the table the servants mix with the masters: here family simplicity equalizes all ranks. * * * * * "Chambre Conjugale.--Another group, superb in arrangement, expression and poetry. In the room, discreetly lighted, there arrive, wonderfully dressed in Arlésian costume, the relations and friends of the young mother, lying with her new-born child in a bed of the fifteenth century. The visitors are bringing the symbolical and traditional gifts, of bread, salt, a match and an egg. They are expressing the customary wishes: _Sage coume la sau;--bon coume lou pan;--plen coume un ion;--dre coume uno brouqueto_; which means, May your child be as wholesome as salt, as good as bread, as full as an egg, and as straight as a match. With what jealous care does the grandmother, seated apart, seem to watch that those coming and going shall behave quietly! Bravo, M. Férigoule, for your composition; you have done the work of an artist. The scene, indeed, is religious in its impression." Well, I suppose M. Férigoule has done his work as well as such work can be done; but as for art!--it is the negation of all art, this imitation of life, which is as dead as the stuff of which it is made. The more realistic such figures are the more dreadful they are. For my part I can never look at them without a shudder, and those in the Musée Arlaten took away all my pleasure in the careful and interesting furnishing of the rooms, in which they stand and sit and lie in their horrible immobility. If only they were taken out, how imagination might play about the rooms themselves, which contain every detail of the warm picturesque home-life of the past, now fading away. With them, imagination is killed. It is as if the rooms had been prepared for corpses. But one must not let one's disgust for these _mannequins_, which cannot be felt by everybody, or so great a man as Mistral would not have been so pleased with them, stand for one's whole impression of this interesting museum. I spent a couple of hours in it very happily employed in gathering up the pleasure that this spring expedition in Provence had brought me. It touches on all the life and all the memories of that fascinating country, and it is especially rich in the accessories of the ancient and picturesque work of the soil, perhaps more ancient and more picturesque in Provence than in most countries. In Mistral's youth there can have been little change from the ways of centuries past. He lived to see much that made his country unlike others disappear, and gathered what he could in his museum so that it should not be forgotten. But it has not all disappeared. Except here and there, men and women have given up their old distinctive costumes, harvests are reaped by machinery, the Rhône no longer bears its freights drawn by the huge teams of horses or oxen, the festivals of the church do not see every house decked and every street strewn with green. But the queenly Arlésian women still wear their becoming coifs; and on high days and holidays some of the rich dresses, of which there is such a variety in this museum, are taken out of old coffers and presses, in the great country farmhouses the old furniture that has descended from father to son is polished and cherished, and many of the old customs are kept up. The harvest of the olives sees the girls of Provence filling their baskets as they did in the days of Mireille, and the old-fashioned mills grind out their tons of rich oil. The shepherds lead their flocks over the stony, herb-scented hills as they led them when Marius drove out the barbarians. The wild bulls and horses roam the plains of the Camargue, and the life of the men who have to do with them is not changed. Of all these things, and many others, there is evidence in the Musée Arlaten, and walking through the country one sees it for one's self, enough at least to make one love the fair sunburnt land that holds so many memories, and to love its roads and fields and hills no less than the treasures it hoards in its ancient cities. THE END. APPENDIX _The Provençal Legend_ Dr. M. R. James has sent me a pamphlet, "Saint Lazare et Saint Maximin," by Dom G. Morin, which, although published in Paris in 1897, he considers to be the last word on the Provençe legends of St. Lazarus, etc. I summarize its conclusions shortly. 1. Dom Morin produces evidence that the cult of St. Lazarus by the Church of Marseilles, which dates at least from the eleventh century, has, for historic foundation, the burial of a bishop of that name in the crypt of the Abbey of Saint-Victor. This was not the Lazarus of the New Testament, but most probably a Bishop of Aix in the first half of the fifth century, who was dispossessed of his See for the part that he had taken in the Pelagian controversy, and came to end his days with the Bishop of Marseilles, who had ordained him. 2. For the cult of the saints of Saint-Maximin there is an ingenious and probable explanation. In the ancient town of Billom, in the Auvergne, and in the adjacent villages, the relics of several saints were venerated from a very early date. Among them were St. Maximin, a Confessor, perhaps a Bishop; St. Sidonius, who was none other than Sidonius Apollinaris, the fifth century poet and orator; St. Marcelle, a shepherdess for whom the villagers of Chauriat have had from time immemorial a deep veneration. Now these are not names that are to be found scattered all over the martyrologies. Besides those of Billom and Saint-Maximin, there are only three or four other St. Maximins, one St. Sidonius, and two St. Marcelles; and there are not two of any of them, otherwise, who can be referred to the same locality or between whom there exists any connection whatever. Dom Morin can find no other explanation of this curious 'bilocation' than by supposing a translation of relics either from Auvergne to Provence or from Provence to Auvergne; and he gives good reasons for preferring the first supposition. June, 1920. INDEX Aicard, Jean, 251, 284 Aigues-Mortes, 239, 240, 241, 242, 244, 245, 246, 248, 252, 254, 255, 301 Aix, 31, 58, 61, 62, 64, 65, 85, 89, 91, 95, 97, 99, 100, 101, 102, 106, 113, 116, 133, 163, 181 Alaric the Visigoth, 132 Albigenses, 65, 149, 152 Alix, Princess, 132, 135, 136, 137 "Allées convertes," 283 Alpilles, 88, 121, 127, 158, 165, 282 Alpines, 120 Alps, 49, 86, 120, 125, 160, 175, 235 Altar of the Crucifixion, or Corpus Domini, St. Maximin, 74 Alyscamps, 316, 317 Ambrons, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90 Anne of Austria, 65, 66, 293 Anne of Brittany, 66 Arc, 89, 90 Arena, The, Arles, 171, 235, 282, 311, 313 Arena, The, Nîmes, 171, 230, 235, 311, 312, 313 Arles, 31, 54, 95, 102, 116, 123, 131, 132, 161, 164, 171, 230, 235, 236, 244, 249, 255, 266, 268, 271, 277, 278, 281, 282, 283, 301, 302, 311, 312, 313, 314, 315, 317, 318, 319 Aubanel, 163 Avignon, 31, 94, 102, 108, 113, 116, 135, 151, 158, 163, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 190, 191, 192, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 202, 209, 210, 214, 216, 217, 219, 255, 266, 288, 301, 302, 303, 309, 311, 316 Augustus, Emperor, 231 Azalais, 148 Bac du Sauvage, 253 Barbentane, 290 Barjols, 54 Baroncelli-Javon, Marquis de, 262, 263 Barras, 77 Barrés, M. Maurice, 244 Basses-Alps, 67, 158 Bastide, Joseph, 77, 78 Baux, Sir Agos des, 133, 134 Baux, Count Barrai des, 148 Baux, Raymond des, 133 Beaucaire, 124, 240, 242, 287, 316 Beauvan, Prince de, 246 Beaune, Jacques de, 75, 76 Benedict XII, Avignon, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200 Bernard of Clairvaux, 61 Berre, 12, 13, 14, 19 Berry, Duchess de, 289 Besançon, 50 Bibliothèque Méjane, 111 "The Birth of the Virgin," Aix, 106 Bonaparte, Lucien, 56 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 310 Boniface VIII, Pope, 64 Boucicaut, Marshal, 135 Bourg-Neuf, Arles, 133 Brenner Pass, 87 Cabassoies, Cardinal de, 64 Cabassole, Philip de, Bishop of Cavaillon, 212, 216 "Cabelladuro d'Or," 145 Cæsar Borgia, 144 Cæsar of Arles, Bishop, 270 Cagnes, 18, 21 Caldus, 156 Camargue, The, 131, 160, 239, 241, 248, 249, 250, 255, 277, 323 Campi Putridi, 92 Canrobert, Marshal, 178 "Cantorbery" tapestry, Aix, 105 Carcassonne, 239, 301 Carlists, 289 Casanova, 143, 214, 216 Cassianite Monks, 61 Castellet, 283 Catullus, 170 Cavaillon, 289 Célestines, Church of, Avignon, 188 Cevennes, 49, 158 Châlons, Simon de, 182 Chapelle de l'Université, Aix, 107 Charlemagne, 271, 273, 275 Charles II, Count of Provence, 62, 64 Charles V, 245 Charles IX, 118, 313 Charles Martel, 275 Charles of Anjou, 62 Charonton, Master Enguerrand, 303, 306 Chartres, Cathedral of, 273 Chastel, 114 Château du Puy, 43, 46 Châteauneuf, 18, 20, 23, 24, 197 Châteaurenard, 173 Cimbri, 86, 87, 88, 170 Cinque Ports, 243 Clement V, Pope, 193, 196, 206, 207 Clement VI, Pope, 191, 192, 202 Clement VII, Pope, 183 Cluny Museum, 278 Col de Braus, 7 Colle Noire, 35 Contes, 13, 14, 15, 18, 19 Cook, A. T., 136, 143, 146, 156, 169, 170, 232, 233, 234, 246, 275, 285, 316 Côte d'Azur, 3 Craponne, Adam de, 120, 121, 122 Crau, 123, 125, 126, 131, 160 Crusades, 61 Daudet, Alphonse, 191, 251, 284, 286, 287, 288 Deacon Cyril, 313 Deïmo, 146 Derby, Earl of, 133, 134 "Descent from the Cross," Aix, 106 Donnat, M., 289, 290, 291, 292, 294, 299 Dragonia, 51 Draguignan, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53 Dumas, Alexandre, 146 Durance, 120, 122, 158, 174 Estérel, 37 Etang de Berre, 131 Fabre, or Favre, General, 37 Fayence, 35, 37, 43, 45, 46, 51 "Félibres," 163, 167, 284, 318 "Félibrige," 163, 318 Field of Pebbles, 121 Florenz, King of Provence, 271, 272 Fontvieille, 283, 284 Foulquet of Marseilles, 148 Fountains, The, Nîmes, 230 Francis I, 76, 140, 245 Fréron, 77 Friars Hospitallers, 187 Froissart, 133 Froment, Nicolas, 108 Gardanne, 99 Gaul, 86 Gitanos, or Gitans, 263, 264 Granet, Portrait of, Aix, 112, 113 Gras, Félix, 163 Grasse, 21, 22, 23, 24, 27, 28, 30, 32, 172 Grau de Croisette, 246 Grau de Roi, Le, 246, 255 Graveson, 89, 299, 319 Great Crau, 120, 122 Grimaldi, Honoré de, 143, 144 Griminum, 51 Grotto des Fées, Les Baux, 160 Guardiens, 251 Guise, Duc de, 140 Henry VI of England, 110 Henry of Navarre, Prince, 118, 119 Henri Quatre, 247 Hercules, 121, 122 Holy Ampulla, 67, 78, 80 Holy Trinity, Chapel of, Villeneuve, 308 Hôtel de la Reine Jeanne, Les Baux, 143 Hôtel de l'Europe, Avignon, 176 "Hôtel de Monte Carlo," Les Baux ("A la Chevelure d'Or"), 143, 144 Hôtel de Ville, Les Baux, 128 Huguenots, 141 Iberians, 264, 265 "Image du Roi René," Avignon, 184 Innocent III, 307 Innocent VI, Pope, 302, 308 Isle de Barthelasse, 302 Jeanne, Queen, 66, 109, 138, 145 Joan of Naples, Queen, 202 John XXII, Pope, 193, 195, 196, 197, 198, 205, 302 Joseph of Arimathea, 57 Julia, wife of Caius Marius, 155, 156, 157 Julius Cæsar, 94, 170 Jupiter, 121 "Jupiter and Thetis," by Ingres, Aix, 112 Katharine of Aragon, 106 "La Baussenique," 133 Laincel, Louis de, 101 Lamartine, 159 Languedoc, 263, 301 La Petite Pugère, 90 La Reole, Gascony, siege of, 133 La Roquette, 316 Laura, 195, 209, 214, 215, 216, 217, 222, 225 "Le Buisson Ardent," Aix, 108 Leibulf, 132 "Le Jardin de Berenice," 244 "L'Elixir du Révérend Père Gaucher," 287 Les Baux, 86, 116, 117, 125, 127, 128, 129, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 138, 139, 140, 141, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 154, 156, 158, 159, 168, 170, 171, 239, 282, 317 L'Escaréne, 11 Les Milles, 89 "Lettres de Mon Moulin," 284 Ligurians, 121, 265 L'Isle-sur-Sorgue, 209, 210, 223 Little Benet, 186, 187, 189 Little Crau, 121 Little Rhone, 252, 253, 256 Lothair, Emperor, 62 Louis IX, 246 Louis XI, 139 Louis XIII, 66, 141, 143 Louis XIV, 65, 249, 293 Louis XV, 260 Louis XVI, 67 Louis Philippe, 289 Lourdes, 255 Louvre, 108, 278, 314 Madeline, The, Paris, 233, 234 Maillane, 151, 159, 165, 284, 288, 298, 319 Maison, Carée, Nîmes, 230, 232, 233, 235 Maison-Romaine, Saint-Gilles, 276 Mane, 67 Manny, Sir Walter, 134 Manville, Jehan de, 141 Mariéton, Paul, 100, 114, 118 Maritime Alps, 87 Martha, 155, 156, 157 Marius, Caius, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 108, 132, 155, 156, 169, 170, 323 Marius Mausoleum, Saint-Remy, 169 Marseilles, 58, 61, 89, 92, 121, 270 Martigues, 301 Mary of Medici, 66 Mary, wife of Cleophas, 57, 58, 258, 259 Mary, wife of Zebedee (Salome), 57, 58, 258, 259 Matsys, Quentin, 105 Maupas, 187 Maures, 37 Maussane, 117, 126 Medici, Catharine de, 118, 119 Memmi, Simone, 194, 195, 202, 203 Mentone, 1, 2, 3 Mignard, Nicholas, 182, 293 Millet, 36 "Mireille," or "Mirèio," 117, 159, 160, 164, 165, 319, 323 Mistral, François, 161, 162, 164, 165, 166, 173 Mistral, Frédéric, 48, 117, 151, 152, 154, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 167, 251, 284, 288, 296, 297, 298, 299, 318, 319, 320, 322 Mistral-Bernard, M. of Saint-Remy, 319 Monaco, 144 Montagnac, Jean de, 303 Montagne de Cordes, 282 Montelimar, 301 Montfort, Martha, 152 Montfort, Simon de, 152 Montmajour, Abbey of, Les Baux, 131, 277, 279, 282, 283 Montmorency, Anne de, 140 Montpelier, 271 Mont Victoire, 91, 94, 95 Monuments Historiques, 276, 278, 281 Mount Aurelian, 95 Mount Olympus, 91, 95 Musée Arlaten, Arles, 145, 298, 318, 322, 324 Musée Lapidaire, Arles, 314, 315, 316 Museum, Aix, 112, 113 Musée, Avignon, 179 Nice, 2, 5, 18, 20, 21, 28, 144 Nîmes, 31, 95, 102, 116, 171, 227, 229, 230, 231, 234, 235, 236, 241, 244, 301, 311, 312 Noli me tangere, 64, 66, 67, 82 Nostradamus, 117, 118, 119 Notre Dame de Nazareth, Nuns of, Aix, 65 Odo, 63 Okey, Thomas, 184, 187, 192, 198, 206, 213, 214, 217, 302, 303 Orange, Princes of, 132 Orange, 301 Orleans, Duke of, 65, 141 Ouide de Sarrasin, 282 Our Lady of Succour, Chapel of, Saint-Michel de Frigolet, 292, 299 Palace of the Popes, Avignon, 75, 175, 177, 185, 194, 200, 201, 203 Palais de Justice, Aix, 102 Panis Annonæ, 91, 92 Pain de Munition, 91, 95 Parma, Duke of, 67 Parrocel, Pierre, 182 "Passion, The," St. Maximin, 75 Pavillon de la Reine Jeanne, Les Baux, 139, 298 Peiresc, 100 Périgord, Countess of, 193 Péronne, Treaty of, 144 Pertvis, 133 Peter of Aragon, 64 Petrarch, 64, 195, 209, 212, 214, 215, 216, 217, 219, 221, 222, 225, 226 Philip III (Philip le Hardi), 241, 243 Philip le Bel, Tower of, 301 Plutarch, 86, 89, 90, 92, 155 Poitiers, Diane de, 144 Pont Bénezet, Villeneuve, 301 Pont de la Saigne, 35 Pont du Gard, Nîmes, 171, 227 Porcelets, 147, 317 Porcieux, 97 Porte d'Eyguières, 128 Poulinet, Délaïde, 161 Poulinet, Etienne, 161, 162 Pourrières, 92 Pré du Lac, 24 Premonstrants, 294, 297, 298 Promenade des Anglais, 21 Proudhon, 292 Provence, 6, 12, 23, 31, 33, 36, 45, 49, 53, 55, 57, 58, 61, 62, 65, 66, 75, 76, 86, 87, 93, 97, 108, 109, 116, 117, 118, 122, 126, 129, 133, 136, 138, 139, 140, 157, 160, 161, 163, 165, 167, 173, 176, 187, 212, 217, 223, 239, 254, 255, 256, 257, 261, 263, 268, 271, 284, 289, 298, 301, 307, 311, 314, 315, 318, 320, 322, 323 Psalmodi, Abbey of, 240, 242 Pyrenees, 158 Raudine Plain, 170 Réattlu, 278 Remoulins, 227 René, King, 65, 66, 108, 109, 110, 111, 138, 255, 261, 287, 303 Rhône, 49, 58, 87, 88, 109, 120, 121, 131, 136, 158, 174, 175, 177, 186, 188, 190, 191, 194, 205, 248, 249, 250, 267, 268, 301, 302, 313, 316, 323 Richard Coeur de Lion, 61 Richelieu, 141, 143 Riviera, 12, 175 "Roi de Camargue," 251 Romans, 86, 87, 88, 90, 91, 93, 95, 108 Ronzen, Antonio, 74, 75, 76 Roque, Jacques de la, 107 Rostan, M., 55, 57, 60, 62, 68, 78, 80, 81 Roumanille, 163 Roussillon, Gerard de, 62 Rubens, portrait of, by Vandyke, 100 Sade, Marquises of, 225 Sainte-Baume, 59, 66 Saintes-Maries, or Les Saintes, or Notre Dame de la Mer, 58, 61, 131, 155, 160, 241, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 261, 263, 265, 301 Saint-Gilles, 266, 267, 276, 301, 314 Saint-Maximin, 53, 55, 56, 60, 62, 64, 65, 69, 74, 75, 76, 77, 80, 86, 95, 96 Saint-Pierre, 290 Saint-Remy, 117, 133, 158, 169, 171, 172 Salo Mistralenco, or the Cabinet de Mistral, 319 Salon, 117, 118, 120, 121, 126, 133 Saracens, 59, 61, 63, 66, 134, 240, 254, 261, 275, 282, 312 Sarah, 57, 58, 261, 262 Saumane, 223 Saurin, Jean, 77 Savoie, Claude de, 140 See, Joseph, 113, 114 Seillans, 37, 47 Smollett, 2, 143 Sorgue, 211, 214, 217, 218, 219, 220 Sospel, 1, 2, 3, 4 St. Agricol, Church of, Avignon, 179, 180, 181 St. André, Fort of, Villeneuve, 301, 309 St. Antoine, 109 St. Bénézet, Bridge of, Avignon, 175, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189 St. Catherine, 109 St. Croix, Chapel of, Montmajour, 273, 278, 279, 280 St. Didier, Church of, Avignon, 184, 188 St. Gabriel, Camp of, 88 St. Gabriel, Chapel of, 284 St. Gilles, 242, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 276 St. Hermentaire, Bishop of Antibes, 51, 54 St. Honorat, Church of, Arles, 317 St. John, 109 St. Julian, Church of, Arles, 281 St. Laurent d' Aigouze, 242 St. Lazarus, 57, 58 St. Louis, 62, 240 St. Louis d' Anjou, Bishop of Toulouse, 77 St. Madeleine, 109 St. Madeleine, Church of, Aix, 102, 103 St. Marcelle, 57, 82 Ste. Marie, Chapel of, Les Baux, 137 St. Martha, 57, 58, 107, 258 St. Mary Magdalene, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 69, 79, 82, 258 St. Maurice, 109 St. Maximin, 57, 58, 59, 61, 82 St. Michael, 275 St. Michel de Frigolet, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 295, 296, 319 St. Mitre, Chapel of, Aix, 107 St. Nicolas, 109 St. Pierre, Church of, Avignon, 181, 183, 196 St. Saviour, Church of, Aix, 58, 103, 104 St. Sidonius, 57, 61, 63, 82 St. Stephen, 57 St. Susan, 82 St. Trophimus, 57, 60, 112, 140, 268, 279, 314, 315, 316, 317 St. Victor of Marseilles, Monks of, 317 St. Victoire, 94 Strella of Florence, Princess, 145 Sylvéreal, 253, 254 Tailors' Guild, Chapel of, Avignon, 196 Tarascon, 58, 61, 124, 138, 277, 283, 285, 286, 288, 290, 296 "Tarasque," 108 Tartarin, 285, 287, 295, 296 Tegulata, 90 "Temple of Diana," Nîmes, 230, 231 Teutons, 86, 87, 88, 90 Tomb of Innocent VI, Villeneuve, 302 Tortosa, Bishop of, 138 Toulon, 49, 310 Tour Carbonnière, 242 Tour de Constance, 240, 246 Tour des Bourgignans, 248 Tourettes, 45 Trets, 85, 86, 91, 94, 97, 98 Trévaresse, 120 Triumphal Arch, Saint-Remy, 170 Trois Maries, or the "Trémaïé," Les Baux, 154, 157, 160 Troubadors, 116, 138, 148, 154 Turenne, Countess of, 192 Turenne, Viscount of, "Scourge of Provence," 135, 136 Urbanists, 183 Val de Benediction, Villeneuve, 307 Val d' Enfer, Les Baux, 131, 154, 160 Valentinois, Duchy of, 144 Var, Department of, 49, 51 Vasari, 195 Vaucluse, 64, 209, 210, 212, 214, 217, 222, 225, 282 Venaissan, 193 Venice, 75 ----, Ducal Palace, 75 Venus d'Arles, 314 Venus Victrix, 94 Vercingetorix, 170 Vermuyden, 122 Vezelay, 61, 62 Via, Cardinal Arnaud de, 302 Villeneuve, Antoine de, 141 Villeneuve-sur-Avignon, 18, 175, 205, 301, 302, 307, 309, 310 Villers, Adon de, 135 Vis de St. Gilles, Saint-Gilles, 276 Viterbo, Matteo di, 203 White Canons, Monastery of, Tarascon, 287, 295 White Penitents, Chapel of, Les Baux, 146 Young, Arthur, 143, 209, 211, 214 Zingaris, 263, 264 FOOTNOTES: [1] Now Sir T. A. Cook. [2] Now Professor Okey. [3] I have added others recently bought. [4] According to the tradition held from time immemorial by the churches of Provence, St. Mary Magdalene and St. Mary of Bethany were one and the same. [5] I have not been able to get a photograph of the Gloria, but some of the cherubs are to be seen over the Altar of the Crucifixion. [6] Plutarch. [7] Laincel, _La Provence_. [8] Now Provost of Eton. [9] I have since procured the accompanying photograph in Paris, but something seems to have been lost even in that, besides the fresh colouring. [10] Cook, _Old Provence_. [11] Mistral, _Mes Origines_. [12] Mistral, _Mes Origines_. [13] Mistral, _Mes Origines_. [14] Okey, _Avignon_. [15] Okey, _Avignon_. [16] Okey, _Avignon_. [17] Okey, _Avignon_. [18] Okey, _Avignon_. [19] Okey, _Avignon_. [20] Okey, _Avignon_. [21] Young, _Travels in France_. [22] The robust Dr. Samuel Butler, Bishop of Lichfield, wrote in his diary, in 1822: "I could not contemplate from this spot (the Capitol), which commands all the monuments of Ancient Rome, without feeling very strong sensations; in short I could not refrain from an actual gush of tears." [23] Casanova, _Mémoires_. [24] Okey, _Avignon_. [25] Baring-Gould, _In Troubadour Land_. [26] Cook, _Old Provence_. [27] Cook, _Old Provence_. [28] Cook, _Old Provence_. [29] James, _A Little Town in France_. [30] Cook, _Old Provence_. [31] Mistral, _Mes Origines_. [32] Mistral, _Mes Origines_. [33] Mistral, _Mes Origines_. [34] Okey, _Avignon_. [35] Okey, _Avignon_. [36] Okey, _Avignon_. [37] Cook, _Old Provence_. TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE -Plain print and punctuation errors fixed. 
46069	----	provided by the Internet Archive VANISHED HALLS AND CATHEDRALS OF FRANCE By George Warton Edwards Illustrated with 32 Plates in full Color and Monotone. 1917 [Illustration: 0001] [Illustration: 0010] [Illustration: 0013] VANISHED HALLS AND CATHEDRALS OF FRANCE FOREWORD Quis funera faudo Explicet, aut possit lacrymis aequare Labores? Urbs antiqua ruit, fnultos dominât a per annos; Plurima perque vias sternuntur inertia passim. Corpora, perque domos, et religiosa deorum Limina! (Virgil, Æneid, II. v. 361.) Surviving the ancient wars and revolutions in this, "the Cockpit of Europe," the great examples of architecture of the early days of France remained for our delight. The corroding fingers of time, it is true, were much more merciful to them, but certainly the destroyers of old never ventured to commit the crimes upon them now charged against the legions of the present invader. These fair towns of Picardy and Champagne are sacked, pillaged and burned even as were the beautiful Flemish towns of Ypres, Malines, Termonde, Dixmude, and Dinant on the Meuse.... Never again shall we enjoy them: the chalices are broken and the perfume forever vanished.... The catastrophe is so unbelievable that one cannot realize it. The Seven Churches of Soissons, Senlis, Noyon, Laon, Meaux, Rheims, St. Remi; these such as man probably never again can match, are either razed to the foundations, or so shattered that it will be impossible to restore them. It is said that the Imperial Government has promised to rebuild these Gothic masterpieces.... One cannot trust one's self to comment upon this announcement. Imagine these sacred ruins.... Rheims!... Rheims can never be restored to what it was before the bombardment. Let it rest thus.... A sacred ruin--the scarred, pierced heart of France! Likewise "these fair sweet towns" of the middle ages; these wonderful little streets and byways, filled with the gray old timbered houses, "old in Shakespeare's day." Up to the outbreak of the war there were many of these throughout France, in spite of the wave of modernity which resulted in so much so called town improvement. In Arras the two old Squares, the Grand Place and the Petit Place, survived until destroyed by bombs in 1914. Those double rows of Ancient Flemish gables, and the beautiful lace like tower of the Town Hall cannot be forgotten, although they are now but calcined beams and ashes. Between the Seine and the Flemish frontier lay a veritable storehouse of incomparable architectural monuments. Of these Rouen, with its famous Cathedral, is happily out of reach of the guns of the invader, and one hopes out of danger. Beauvais likewise has not yet suffered, nor Chalons, with its great church of St. Loup and St. Jean, but the Cathedral and the town of Noyon have been leveled, and the gray walls of incomparable coucy-le-Château, "that greatest of the castles of the Middle Ages," whose lords arrogantly proclaimed "Roi ne suys, ne prince, ne duc, ne conte aussi; je suys le Sire de Coucy," have vanished forever from the heights under the wanton fire of the invaders' shells, and twenty thousand pounds of powder placed in the walls and exploded in revenge on the day of the retreat (April 1917). Amiens, for some reason, has been spared, but it too may yet receive its baptism of fire, even as Rheims. Amiens and Rheims! Never were there such miracles of art as shown in these temples! Rheims is now a ragged ruin of roofless leaning walls. So Amiens, miraculously preserved, is now the greatest existing example of Christian architecture in the world. In the following chapters I have quoted extracts from accounts written by eyewitnesses of acts committed by the invader in the devastated towns of France. I am not responsible for these statements, nor can I vouch absolutely for their truth, or correctness. I give them for what they are worth as part of the setting--the frame work of the pictures I have made of the noble, now vanished monuments which can never be replaced.... If I have betrayed bitter feeling it is because of their destruction by whomsoever accomplished. "Woe be unto him from whom offense cometh." The Author. Greenwich, Conn. May 1917. [Illustration: 0027] ARRAS |It was half-past six o'clock on a summer's morning, and a deep-toned bell in the cathedral sounded over the quaint gables of this really Flemish city of Arras. Although we were in France, little difference either in the people, costumes or architecture could be noted, so mingled here were the characteristics of the French and the Belgians. The sun was well up and gleamed hotly upon the old roof tops of the town, old many of them in Shakespeare's day, and flooded with golden light the quaint market place, now filled with swarming peasants. There were great heaps of flowers here and there, among the booths containing varied merchandise, and some of the market people were taking their morning bowls of hot _café au lait_, made fresh in green and yellow earthenware "biggins," over small iron braziers containing burning charcoal. The odor was inviting, and as the people are always kindly disposed towards the traveler who has _savoir faire_, one may enjoy a fragrant and nourishing bowl with them in profitable and friendly commune, for almost whatever he chooses to offer, and not rarely free of any fee whatever save a "thank you," which is always received with a gracious smile and a murmured "_N'pas d'quoi, M'sieu_," or an "_Au plaisir_." It was perchance a market morning in Arras, and the long open square lined on either hand with strangely gabled Flemish houses, and closed at the upper end by the admirable lofty towered Town Hall, was filling fast with arrivals from the country round about. Town Hall Arras [Illustration: 0031] Everything was fresh and clean from the late rains, and the air was laden with the mingled perfume of flowers; with butter and cheese. Country carts of extravagant design and painted green were unloading, and the farmer's boys were fitting together the booths for the sale of their varied commodities. Here and there were active dark complexioned Hebraic looking men and women, hard faced and sinister, who presided over stalls for the sale of cloth, shoes and the trinkets of small value calculated to tempt the peasantry. A cinematograph booth, resplendent with gilding, mirrors, and red and white paint, towered over the canvas covered booths, and a "merry go round," somewhat shabby by contrast, stood near it, its motive power, a small fat horse, contentedly eating his breakfast out of a brass hooped pail. The shops were opening one by one, displaying agricultural tools, and useful articles desired by the peasants. One heard bargaining going on, sometimes in the Flemish tongue, proving how near we were to Flanders, and sometimes in Walloon. Both tongues are used here, and the costumes partake of their characteristics, the women in neat if coarse stuffs, and the men in stiff blue blouses, usually in wooden shoes, too. This was remarkable, for the wooden shoe was fast vanishing from the towns. We noted too, that women were abandoning the snowy white lace trimmed caps once forming such a quaint feature of market day gatherings. Now various hideous forms of black and purple bonnets, decked out with beads and upstanding feathers disfigured them, but with what pride they were worn! This market place at Arras was a sight worth a long journey to witness, if but to see the display of animals, chickens, and flowers on a bright sunny morning in the square beneath the tower of the Town Hall. The fowls squawked and flapped their wings; dogs barked; horses neighed; and hoarse voiced vendors called out their bargains. Here and there the fowl were killed on the spot for the buyer, and carried off by rosy cheeked unsentimental housewives, carried off, too, often hidden in bunches of bright flowers. Did I write unsentimental?--An error. Nowhere were the common people more given to sentiment. Does not one remember the large room that la belle madame at the 'Couronne d'or provided for the traveling painter, who occupied it for two weeks, and during the season too, and when he discovered on the morning of departure that it was not included in the bill, on pointing out the omission to madame, did she not, and with the most charming smile imaginable say, with a wave of her shapely brown hands--"One could not charge for a room used as M'sieur's studio. The honor is sufficient to the 'Couronne d'or." And how to repay such kindness? In an hour the noise and chattering of a market morning was in full sway. And over all sounded the great bell of the Cathedral: other church bells joined in the clamor, and at once began an accompaniment of clattering wooden shoes over the rough cobbles towards the church doors. Following these people up the street, we entered the dim pillared nave of the old church. On Sundays and market days the interior formed a picture not to be forgotten, and one especially full of human interest. The nave was freer of modern "improvements" than most of the churches, and there was much quiet dignity in the service. A large number of confessional cabinets, some of very quaint and others of most exquisitely carved details, were set against the walls. Some of these had heavy green baize curtains to screen them instead of doors, and some of the cabinets were in use, for the skirt of a dress was visible below one of the curtains. The women before the altar knelt on the rush seats of small chairs, resting their clasped hands, holding rosaries, on the back, furnished with a narrow shelf between the uprights. They wore dark blue or brown stuff dresses, and small plaid shawls. We noted that not one of these wore wooden shoes or sabots. All on the contrary wore neat leather shoes. The women, especially the older ones, all turned their heads and curiously examined us as we tip-toed about, without, however, interrupting their incessant prayers for an instant. And they did not seem to resent our presence in the church, or regard it as an intrusion. In the subdued colored light from the painted windows, with the clouds of incense rising, the proportions of the columns and the lancet arches and windows were most impressive, and together with the kneeling peasants made a very fine effect. While there was little to be found in Arras that was really remarkable, for the town was given over to the traffic in grain and the townspeople were all very commercial, there were bits of the town corners and side streets worthy of recording. Near the dominating Town Hall were many types of ancient Flemish gabled houses, of which we shall not find better examples even in Flanders itself. Arras was as noisy as any Belgian market town where soldiers are stationed. There was the passing of heavy military carts through the ill-paved streets; the clatter of feet; the sounds of bugle and rolling of drum at sundown. The closing of the cafés at midnight ended the day, while at dawn in the morning the din of arriving and passing market wagons commenced again, followed by the workmen and women going to their daily tasks at the factories. "Do these people never rest?" asked Lady Anne, whose morning nap was thus rudely interrupted. Ma-dame's answer came: "Ah, indeed, yes. But not in the summer. Mark you, in the dark short days of winter, there is little going on in Arras. Then we are very quiet." Urselines Tower: Arras [Illustration: 0039] The old town was old, very old. There were of course some modern looking white houses of stucco in which we were told some rich people live, and there were large blank walled factories with tall chimneys, from which heavy black smoke poured the livelong day. There were plate glass windows here and there, too, in some of the shops, with _articles de Paris_ exposed for sale, and there were occasionally smooth pavements to be found, but mainly there were quaint old corners, high old yellow fronted, narrow windowed houses, and old, old men and older women passing to and fro in the narrow by streets. In one corner of the market place sat an ancient dame in a wonderful lace cap, who presided over a huge pile of pale green earthenware pots of various sizes and fine shapes, who all unconsciously made for me a picture in sunlight and shadow; brown wrinkled hands busy with knitting; brown wrinkled face and bright shrewd greeny blue eyes, twinkling below the flaps of her lace cap; all against a worn, old, rusty-hinged green door! I could not resist the opportunity. So in a convenient doorway I paused to make a note of it without attracting much attention from the passers-by. Entering the wide "place" (there were two of these) one was confronted by an astonishing vista of quaintly gabled Flemish houses on either hand, all built mainly after one model but presenting some variations of minor detail. These led to the Hotel de Ville. The houses were furnished with arcades below supported by monolithic sandstone columns. The Hotel de Ville, built in the sixteenth century (not a vestige of which remains at this writing, April, 1917), was one of the most ornate in France. Its fine Gothic façade rose upon seven quaintly different arcades, in the elaborate Renaissance style, pierced by ornate windows with Gothic tracery in the best of taste and workmanship. Overhead rose the graceful Belfry, terminating in a gilded ducal crown at the height of some two hundred and fifty feet. The weekly market fair was in full progress, and the old Grand' Place was swarming with carts, animals, booths, and chattering peasants. Before the Revolution, the Chapelle des Ardents and the spire of La Sainte-Chapelle on the Petit' Place commemorated the deliverance of Arras in the twelfth century from the plague called the "_mal des ardents_," when the Virgin is believed to have given a candle to two fiddlers, declaring that "water into which a drop of its holy wax had fallen would save all who drank it." * Behind the dominating tower of the Hotel de Ville was the modern Cathedral, formerly the abbey church of St. Vaast, with an unfinished tower of 1735. We found in the Chapel of the Virgin the tomb of Cardinal de la Tour d' Auvergne-Lauraguais, and the twelfth century tombs of an abbot, of Philippe de Torcy, a governor of Arras, and his wife. The treasury is said to have contained the blood-stained "_rochet_" worn by Thomas à Becket when he was murdered, but the sacristan refused to show it unless he was first paid a fee of two francs, which we thought exorbitant. * Hare's "Northeastern France." Arras was the capital of the Gallic tribe "Atrebates," and even in the dim fourth century was famous for the manufacture of woolen cloth, dyed with the madder which grows luxuriously in the neighborhood. The wearing of tapestry hangings gave Arras a high reputation, and examples are preserved in the museums of France and England, where the name of the town is used to identify them. The art has long since ceased to exist, needless to say. Briefly, the town followed the fortunes of the Pays d' Artois, of which it was the capital, passing by marriage from the house of France to Burgundy, Flanders, Burgundy again, Germany and Spain. After the battle of Agincourt, the English and French signed the treaty of peace at Arras. The town was finally incorporated with France in 1640. According to legend one of the ancient gates, of which no trace now remains, bore the proud distich= ```"Quand les souris prendront les chats, ```Le roi sera seigneur d'Arras."= which is said to have so enraged Louis of France that he expelled the whole population, abolishing even the name of Arras, which he changed to that of Franchise. Here was born the great Robespierre, but we were unable to find the house, or even the street in which it was situated, nor could any of the ecclesiastics to whom we applied for information enlighten us in regard to the matter. The Cathedral, a romanesque structure, at an angle of the abbey buildings, and approached by high stone steps broken by a platform, was built in 1755. Perhaps if we had not seen it after having feasted our eyes upon the exquisite details of the Hotel de Ville, it might have seemed more impressive and interesting. It contained some good pictures, including a "Descent from the Cross," and "The Entombment," attributed to Rubens and Van Dyck respectively. The high altar enshrined a notable bas-relief in gilt bronze. The Abbatial buildings were occupied by the 'Evéche, Seminary, Library, and the Musée, the latter containing a lot of modern paintings, badly hung, and seemingly indifferent in quality. In the cloisters, however, were rooms containing an archaeological collection of sculptures and architectural fragments, and a small collection of Flemish pictures by "Velvet" Breughel, Heemskerk, N. Maes and others, and upstairs, a fine model of an antique ship, "offered" by the States of Artois to the American Colonies in the War of Independence. One wonders why it was never sent. At the end of a quiet street which crossed the busy and crowded Rue St. Aubert, we came upon the remains of a remarkable old town gate, and the remains, too, of the ancient fortified walls, and farther on, the dismantled citadel constructed by the great Vauban in 1670, and called "La Belle Inutile." Here in this region, called the "cockpit of Europe," for ages incessant wars have been waged, covering the land with such a network of evidences of bitterly fought rivalries as no other portion of the earth can show, and when no foreign foe had to be baffled or beaten off, then the internecine wars of clan against clan have flooded the fair land with gore and ruin. But all was peaceful here about this old town this bright morning in July, 1910. There was no evidence of the red waves of the wars which had rolled over and eddied about this very spot, save the old dismantled Vauban tower and the remains of the ancient wall, in which we were only mildly interested. It was the present day's wanderings which interested us more; the lives of the peasants, their customs and their daily occupations. Time seemed to stand still here without any consciousness of backwardness. Nothing hurried at Arras, and change for the sake of change had no attraction for it. The ways of the fathers were good enough for the children. There was a newspaper here, of course, but yet the town crier held his own,--a strange looking old man in a long crinkly blue blouse, balloon like trousers of velveteen corduroy, wooden shoes and a broad brimmed felt hat. A drum hung suspended from his shoulder by a leather strap. He was followed by a small procession of boys and girls. He stopped and beat a vigorous tattoo on the drum; windows above and doors below were filled with heads as if by magic. He produced a folded paper from his pocket, glanced about him proudly conscious of the importance of the occasion, and read in a loud voice some local news of interest, and then announced the loss of something or other, with notice to hand whatever it was to the commissaire de Police, and then marched off down the street to repeat the performance at the next corner. The heads vanished from the windows like the cuckoos of German clocks, and the street was quiet again. Who could have believed that such a custom could have survived in the days of telegraph and telephone, and in a city of, say, thirty thousand inhabitants? The old streets and highways about the town were indescribably attractive, and beyond in the country, the shaded ways beneath large trees offered charming vistas, and shelter from the sun. The people seemed to have an intuitive feeling for harmony, and little or nothing in or about the cottages, save an occasional odoriferous pig sty, offended one. Colors melted into half tones in the most seductive fashion, and there was, too, an insistent harmony in the costumes of the peasants, the stain of time on the buildings or the grayish greens of the landscape. But of all this the peasant was most certainly unconscious. The glories of nature and her marvelous harmonies were no more to him than to the beast of the field. He was hard of heart, brutal of tongue and mean of habit. Balzac has well described him in his "Sons of the Soil." Money was his god, and greed his pursuit. Yet all about him nature bloomed and fructified, while he toiled and schemed, his eyes ever bent earthwards. The peasant had no sentiment. It was best therefore to view him superficially, and as part of the picturesqueness of the country, like the roofs and gables of the old town, say, without seeking out secrets of the "menage" behind the walls. We were interested in the various occupations of these semi-Flemish peasants, and the cries of the vendors in the streets in the early morning. Most of these cries were unintelligible to us because of the mixed patois, but it amused us to identify the cry of the vendor of eels, which was most lugubrious--a veritable wail of distress, seemingly. And when we saw her in the street below our windows, laden with two heavy baskets containing her commodity, her fat rosy face lifted to the sky, her appearance so belied the agonizing wail that we laughed aloud--and then--she heard us! What vituperation did she not address to us? Such a vocabulary, too! although we did not understand more than a few words she made it very plain that she regarded us as most contemptible beings. "_Miserable espece de Mathieux_" she called up to us again and again. Whatever that meant, whatever depths of infamy it denoted, we did not know, nor did we ever find out. We were much more careful thereafter, and kept away from the window, for setting down her baskets she planted herself on the curb opposite and there presiding over the curious group of market people whom she had collected about her, she raged and stormed with uplifted fat red arms gesticulating at our windows, until the crowd, wearying of her eloquence, gradually melted away. We never saw her again. There was also the seller of snails, whose cry was a series of ludicrous barks and cackles. I don't know how else to describe the extraordinary sounds he made. They quite fascinated us, for he varied them from time to time, taking seemingly much enjoyment in the ingenuity of his performance. His baskets, which hung by brass chains from a green painted yoke on his shoulders, contained a collection of very large snails, all, as he said, freshly boiled, and each shell being closed by a seal of fresh yellow butter, sprinkled, I think, with parsley (I never tasted them), and prettily reposing upon a bed of crisp pale green lettuce leaves. These seem to be highly esteemed by the people. Our chief search in Arras, after valuing the ancient halls and the limited treasures of the museum, was for some examples of the wonderful tapestries known far and near by the name of "Arras." In vain we sought a specimen; there was none in the museum, nor in the town hall either. Those whom we thought might be able to assist us in our search professed ignorance of any such article, and the priest whom we met in the cathedral, directed us to the local furniture shop for what he called "_belle tapis_" So we gave it up, most reluctantly, however. It is strange that not one example could be found in the town of this most renowned tapestry, for this ancient town enjoyed a reputation second to none in the low countries for art work of the loom. Cloth and all manner of woolen stuffs were the principal articles of Flemish production, but it was chiefly from England that Flanders drew her supply of wool, the raw material of her industry, and England was her great market as early as the middle of the twelfth century. There was a great guild established in London called the Flemish "Hanse," to which the merchants sent their manufacture. It was governed by a burgher of Bruges who was styled "Count of the Hanse." "The merchants of Arras became so prosperous and powerful, that (says a chronicler), Marguerite II, called The Black, countess of Flanders and Hainault, 1244 to 1280, was extremely rich, not only in lands but furniture, jewels, and money; and, as is not customary with women, she was right liberal and right sumptuous, not alone in her largesses, but in her entertainments and whole manner of living; insomuch that she kept up the state of a queen rather than a countess." (Kervyn de Lettenhove, Histoire d' Flandre, t, ii. p. 300.) To Arras, in common with the neighboring towns, came for exchange the produce of the North and the South, the riches collected in the pilgrimages to Novogorod, and those brought over by caravans from Samarcand and Bagdad,--the pitch of Norway and oils of Andalusia, the furs of Russia and dates from the Atlas, the metals from Hungary and Bohemia, the figs of Granada, the honey of Portugal, the wax of Morocco and the spices from Egypt: "Whereby" says the ancient manuscript, "no land is to be compared in merchandise to this land." And so, even if the guide books do dismiss Arras at the end of a few curt details with the words "The Town is now given over to various manufactures, and its few attractions may be exhausted between trains," Arras certainly did offer to the curious tourist many quaint vistas, a Town Hall of great architectural individuality, and in her two picturesque squares, the "Grand' Place" and the "Petit' Place," a picture of antiquity not surpassed by any other town in Northern France. Saint Jean Baptiste: Arras [Illustration: 0053] Quoting that eminent architect, Mr. Ralph Adams Cram, "We may pause in spirit in Arras (it would not be well to be there now in body, unless one were a soldier in the army of the Allies, when it would be perilous, but touched with glory), for sight of an old, old city that gave a vision, better than almost any other in France, of what cities were in this region at the high-tide of the Renaissance. It is gone now, utterly, irremediably, and the ill work begun in the revolution and continued under the empire, when the great and splendid Gothic Cathedral was sold and destroyed, has been finished by Prussian shells. "Capital of Artois, it had a vivid and eventful history, continuing under Baldwin of the Iron Arm, who became the first Count of Arras; then being halved between the Count of Flanders and the King of France; given by St. Louis to his brother Robert, passing to the Counts of Burgundy, reverting to Louis de Male, of Flemish fame, abandoned to the Emperor, won back by France;... coming now to its end at the hands of the German hosts. "What Arras must have been before the Revolution we can only guess, but its glorious Cathedral, its Chappelle des Ardents, and its 'Pyramid of the Holy Candle' added to its surviving Town Hall, with its fantastically beautiful spire, and its miraculously preserved streets and squares lined with fancifully gabled and arcaded houses, it must have been a sanctuary of old delights. The Cathedral was of all styles from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, while the Chapel and the Pyramid were models of medieval art in its richest state. Both were destroyed by one Lebon, a human demon and an apostate priest, who organised a 'terror' of his own in his city, and has gone down to infamy for his pestilential crime. Both the destroyed monuments were votive offerings in gratitude to Our Lady for her miraculous intervention in the case of the fearful plague in the twelfth century, the instrument of preservation being a certain holy candle, the melted wax from which was effective in preserving the life of all it touched. The Pyramid was a slender Gothic tabernacle and spire, ninety feet high, standing in the 'Petit' Place,' a masterpiece of carved and gilded sculpture, unique of its kind. Every vestige has vanished,--Berlin has just announced that it has been completely and intentionally destroyed by gun-fire. "The fine vigor of the Renaissance and its life were gone with the color and gold of the carved and painted shrines and houses, the fanciful costumes, the alert civic life.--Wantonly destroyed!" Madeline Wartelle, a voluntary nurse, who was in Arras during the great bombardment in July, 1915, wrote in the volume "Les Cites Meurtries" the following account of her experiences during the destruction of the Cathedral and the other noble buildings. "On July 2d, about six o'clock in the evening several shells fell upon the Cathedral. Then followed a calm for two hours. At half past eight, a bomb dropped from above, set fire to the house of M. Daquin in the rue de' l'Arsenal, and in a few moments the flames were mounting to a great height. When the firemen (_pompiers_) arrived, the fire had already spread to the house of Mme. Cornnan, and could not be confined even to the neighboring ones. During and following this catastrophe, at one o'clock in the morning, an avalanche of great bombs, those called 'Marmites,' fell all over this quarter of the town. This time, alas, we had no trouble in getting all the details of the happening, for our house collapsed, being struck by the second bomb dropped by the 'Taube,' which went through the roof to the cellar. Luckily, we had gone to R--s when the fire broke out, and thus we all escaped. "Forced to leave (Arras) we did not see the demolishment of the Cathedral and the Palace of St. Vaast on Monday, July 5th, but I set down here what I have learned from the lips of a witness of the deplorable 'aneantisment.' "From six o'clock on that date, the gun-fire of the 'Huns' was especially directed at the Cathedral, and the fire which ensued spread to the end of the Palace of St. Vaast, which contained the archives of the town, and which was entirely consumed, and spreading further likewise destroyed the Library and the Museum of the Seminary. The fire department did what it could to save the books and sacred objects, but their efforts were in vain, such was the rain of projectiles from the 'Taubes' above, and the shells from the great guns miles away. So the order to evacuate was given by the authorities. "At one o'clock the following morning the smouldering fire in the Cathedral was fanned by a high wind which sprang up, and soon enveloped the whole interior; the two great organs, the large pulpit, and the Bishop's stalls were entirely consumed. The fire in the Cathedral burned two whole days, watched by a mourning throng of the townspeople, who thus braved death by the falling bombs. All was consumed but the great door on the rue des Charriottes, which did not fall until the week following. On the twelfth day, at five in the morning, the fire demolished the Bishopric, and the Chapel of the great Seminary. Nothing is now left but a heap of smoking cinders and ashes, from which some charred beams protrude. The treasured Chateau d'Eau is gone!" Château, d'Eau: Arras [Illustration: 0061] "Happily, the 'Descent from the Cross' by Rubens, which decorated the Cathedral was removed from its place some hours before the fire, when the first of the great shells fell upon the town, and secreted by the priests. Also two 'triptychs' by Jean Bellegambe were saved by M. Levoy, who buried them in the cellar of the Chateau of the Counte de Hauteclocque. Curiously enough, some little time after they were thus secreted, a shell penetrated this cellar, but it is said that the damage to the pictures is small and may easily be repaired. "The Abbe Miseron, Vicar of the Cathedral, himself, at the peril of his life saved some of the most precious objects in the Treasury. He says (happily) that the great tombs of the Bishops, though buried beneath the ashes of the Cathedral, have suffered small damage. "Of the four colossal statues of the Evangelists, not a trace remains; they are entirely pulverized by the great shells exploding before them. "Of the Library, too, not a trace remains! Some of the archives have, I hear, been saved, together with a number of paintings, and M. Dalimeir, under secretary of Beaux Arts has decided to send them to Paris. All the rest has vanished. A fragment of the plan in relief of the old town of Arras, formerly in the Invalides was saved, but nothing remains of the Roman antiquities which were discovered in the caves beneath the town, nor of the old tapestries, nor the faience, nor of the objects which filled the galleries of Natural History in the museum.--All is gone! "In eleven months since the bombardment began, one hundred and seventy-five of our citizens have been killed in the streets and in their houses, and the number of wounded is more than double that number. After the demolition of our charming home, we found shelter for three nights in the cellar of a kind neighbor, but on the fifth of July, in the early morning, we had to take in our turn 'le chemin d' 'Exil.' For nine months now we have had to retreat from place to place, each filled with possible dangers, and certain discomfort, but with hearts filled too with profound emotion, and the hope that we may soon return to our beloved town and to our charming old home, our house so beloved--so peaceful once in those happy days, when the pigeons cooed on the eaves in the warm sunlight, the swallows darting to their nests on the chimney--all the cherished souvenirs of those past days--my tears--"... Our poor town"--(_ville Meurtrie_). "Around about Arras, the villages, once so smiling and prosperous, are now all in ruins.--Later on when glorious peace breaks upon the land of France, each hamlet shall be starred upon the pages of the golden book of history. And this black page of war once closed, that Arras-la-Morte shall rise from her ruins and ashes, more beautiful than ever, is my prayer." (Signed) Madeline Wartelle. July, 1915. In the _Journal Officiel_, of Paris, is the following:= ````Ministère de la Guerre. ```Citation à l' ordre de l' Armée.= Wartelle (Madeleine), Infirmière volontaire à l' ambulance 1/10 du Saint Sacrement: N'a cessé de prodiguer des Soins aux blessés et de fournir aux médicins la plus précieuse collaboration; a contribué par une action personnelle, lors du bombardment du 25 Juin, à sauver les blessés en les mettant hors d'atteinte des projectiles ennemis (27 Septembre 1915).= ````Ministère de l'Intérieur.= Le Gouvernement porte la connaissance du pays la belle conduite de Mlle. Wartelle (Madeleine): a fait preuve, dans des circonstances tragiques, du plus grand courage. Alors que l'ambulance du Saint-Sacrement à Arras, où elle était infirmière voluntaire, venait d' etre violemment bombardée, que des soldats et des religieuses etaient tués, elle est demeurée résolument à son poste, ardent à descendre à la cave les blessés, prodignant à tous ses soins empressés. (28 Novembre 1915.) LILLE |OUR fruitless search in Arras for some examples of the ancient tapestries somewhat dampened the ardor of our tour at the very beginning. But in the train on our way to Lille we Had a charming view of suburban Arras lying basking in the sun, all girt by its verdant belt of dense dark green trees. From the window of the railway carriage we saw the horizon expand, and hill after hill unroll, covered with waving corn, and realized that France s great northern granary lay spread before our eyes, the fields like cabochon emeralds set royally in virgin gold. Approaching Lille one got the impression of a region in which the commonweal formed the keynote, so to speak, and after the beauties surrounding quaint Arras, it seemed somewhat sordid. The embossed fair green hills were replaced by level plains; the smiling cornfields vanished before barren brown moors. The wealth of the earth here lay far below the plains, and man was busied in bringing it to the surface. Ceres gave way to Vulcan: Prosperous picturesque farmsteads were displaced by high black and ugly furnaces from which tremendous volumes of pitch black smoke issued the live-long day, and maybe the night as well. The stacks of grimy chimneys were seemingly as high as the spires of churches, and ashes and dust covered all. Lille is in the coal region. Somehow as we approached it we thought of our own Pittsburgh. The latter is no whit dirtier, but it is not so picturesque as was Lille. Roubaix, on the horizon, is even dirtier, so a traveling companion informed us, and gave us other information which kept us away from that Flemish town. Lille was said to be the administrative factor of northern France, in point of industry. The town had upwards of one hundred and thirty thousand inhabitants, among whom there were some possessed of great fortunes. These built for themselves houses of magnificent proportions on both sides of boulevards leading nowhere. In this region we found a café restaurant of princely aspect "as good as any in Paris," the townspeople proudly said, with a huge mansard roof, and a tower which did not fit it. On the river bank, lined with barges, were two fine promenades, brand new, and at the end of one was an artificial waterfall with plenty of water falling over artificial rocks in doubtful taste, of which the Lilleois were so pathetically proud that we could only smilingly agree to their extravagant joy in it as a work of art. Here we found American made tram cars running through the rather commonplace streets, which however were teeming with life and "business." In response to a question, a "cabby" urged as the greatest attraction a ride out to the hydraulic works situated on a plain, where a great engine pumped drinking water from a deep well inclosed in brick work. The whole atmosphere of the place was like unto that of one of our own Yankee towns. But there were, of course, some notable and picturesque buildings in Lille. There was the Exchange, the chief architectural ornament of the city, and really it was impossible to see it without pausing in admiration of its characteristics. Occupying, as it did, the great Market Place, I know of no other building like it save perhaps the Exchange in Antwerp, that lovely semi-Moorish hall with its shield-emblazoned frieze, and its lofty glass ceiling. This one at Lille was, of course, smaller, but it had the great advantage of being free from encroaching buildings, and standing quite alone, being visible from all four sides. Then, too, it was a genuine example of its order of architecture, a beautifully preserved specimen of the ancient Spanish style, with an added touch here and there of Italian Renaissance which blended charmingly. The walls were of Flemish red brick, while the Atrium, open to the sky, and serving as an inner court, was pure Italian. Here was a fine bronze statue of Napoléon I, all clad in imperial robes, about which the busy, bustling merchants of Lille transacted some of their business in the afternoons. In the mornings we found most delightful solitude here in this court, which then by contrast seemed liker unto the cloisters of some abbey than the busy commercial center it was later in the day. Emblazoned here upon marble slabs one could read of the records of famous citizens of the town whose deeds were esteemed as precious and noteworthy. It is said that it was at either Lille or Tournai that Napoleon found the golden bees which he adopted for the Imperial insignia, these being taken from the tomb of a Frankish king. We were further reminded of the Palais Royal in Paris, in the small shops, most brilliantly lighted at night, which formed the outer ring of the building. Here were displayed _bijoux-or-et-argent_, and also more or less exquisitely made robes for Madame de Lille. The upper part of the building, which was two-storied, had dormer windows, and a quadrant of beautifully designed and executed interlaced stonework with a profusion of caryatides, pilasters, and bands of carved stone fruit and garlands of flowers, all of the greatest richness, within an astonishingly small space. Nowhere could we find the name of the architect, but it is said that the foundation was laid in 1652 by the Spanish. Workmen were busy cleaning a small turret of most graceful design which rose from above the walls of this quaint old Hispano-Flemish monument, and I noted the care with which the work was being done, a pleasing testimonial to the love of the people of Lille for their ancient work of art. The Rihour Palace was far greater in size than the Exchange, but it did not match it in importance. The greater part of it was modern, for it was almost destroyed in the eighteenth century. Used as a town hall in the time of Louis Philippe, it became a sort of academy of art, wherein was displayed, and very well, too, a princely collection of paintings of Flemish and Dutch schools, and also the great collection of drawings known as the "Wicar Legacy," representing the Italian school, and containing a piece of sculpture of which all the museums of Europe envied that of Lille. This in the catalogue was described as, "A waxen head of Raphael's time, titled thus by the hand of Wicar himself when in 1834 he drew up in Rome the inventory of the old Italian art collection." * Huet regards this as a marvel that one should not miss seeing. He says, "In truth, one fancies himself to be looking at the transparent, softly tinted face of one of Raphael's Madonnas. Innocence and gentleness dispute each other the palm in the expression of the features, they have settled on the pure brow, they play tranquilly and somewhat sadly around the mouth, they are crowned by the plaits of the fair tresses." We admired the head and treasured Wicar's description of it. * "The Land of Rubens," C. B. Huet. Enumeration of the treasures contained in the Palais des Beaux Arts would take a volume in itself. Suffice it to say here that the collection contained in this edifice was among the most important in all France. Rumors have appeared in print during the last two years, that this whole collection has been carefully packed and sent to Berlin. At this date of writing (May, 1917) Lille has not yet been evacuated by the Germans, and we are told that none of the buildings has been destroyed save some unimportant ones near the railway station. Just what will be the fate of the town may be conjectured when one reflects upon what happened to Noyon, to Rheims, to Soissons, and to St. Quentin, when the invaders were no longer able to hold them. Let us pray that the Musée Wicar may be spared, by some happy chance. Wicar was an artist who died in 1834, who made a great deal of money by his work, and whose real hobby was the collection of the drawings by great masters, including nearly two hundred and fifty drawings by Michelangelo, sixty-eight by Raphael, and a large number by Francia, Titian and others, besides endless examples of the Renaissance. Statue of Jeanne d'Arc: Rheims [Illustration: 0077] Wandering about in Lille one came upon some handsome buildings behind the Hôtel de Ville in the Rue du Palais, which proved to be those of the Military Hospital, formerly a Jewish college. Here was an ancient chapel of the seventeenth century, containing a remarkable altar, and some huge dark paintings which may have been good, but the light was so dim, and they were hung so high that it was impossible to examine them. Continuing the wandering one reached the fine old town gate, the ancient Porte de la Barre, in a good state of preservation. There were a number of these gates. The old Porte de Paris was part of the fortifications, and built in the form of a sort of triumphal arch to the honor of Louis XVI. Some quaint streets as yet untouched by the march of commercialism, led from here into busy thoroughfares teeming with life and activity. One, running eastwards from the Porte de Paris, passed between a square and the old Hôtel du Génie, and this led one to the Gothic church of St. Sauveur, noteworthy for its double aisles, and most elaborate white marble high altar, carved in the Gothic style and with a bewildering detail and accompaniment of statues and alto-reliefs. There was also the great church of St. Maurice in the Flamboyant style, with a most notable west portal, most carefully restored in very good taste. An open-work spire of stone rose above it, all of admirable character. The interior proved to be distinguished by the width of the nave and the double aisles all of the same height, and by the richness of the effect lent by the remarkable lightness of the columns. The handsomest streets of the old town were the Rue Esquermoise and the Rue Royale. Near the entrance to the latter was the ancient church of St. Catherine, founded in the twelfth century, and rebuilt in its present style in the sixteenth, and restored again in the eighteenth century. Here above the altar was a fine "Martyrdom of St. Catherine," by Rubens. In common with the other Flemish cities of Douai, Cambrai, and Valenciennes, Lille suffered regularly from sieges and sackings, invasions and conquests from its very beginnings. "In June, 1297, Philip the Handsome, in person, laid siege to Lille, and on the 13th of August, Robert, Count of Artois, at the head of the French chivalry, gained at Furnes, over the Flemish army a victory which decided the campaign. Lille capitulated." "The English reinforcements arrived too late and served no other purpose but that of inducing Philip to grant the Flemings a truce for two years. A fruitless attempt was made with the help of Pope Boniface VIII, to change the truce into a lasting peace. The very day on which it expired, Charles, Count of Valois, and brother of Philip the Handsome, entered Flanders with a powerful army, surprised Douai,... gave a reception to its magistrates who came and offered him the keys. 'The burghers of the towns of Flanders,' says a chronicler of the age, 'were all bribed by gifts or promises from the King of France, who would never have dared to invade their frontier had they been faithful to their Count.' The Flemish communes desired the peace necessary for the prosperity of their commerce; but patriotic anxieties wrested with material interests.... "In the spring of 1304 the cry of war resounded everywhere. Philip had laid an import extraordinary upon all real property in his kingdom; regulars and reserves had been summoned to Arras to attack the Flemings by land and sea. He had taken into his pay a Genoese fleet commanded by Regnier de Grimaldi, a celebrated Italian admiral; and it arrived in the North Sea, blockaded Zierickzee, a maritime town of Zealand.... The Flemish fleet was beaten. A great battle took place on the 17th of August between the two great land armies at Mons-en-Puelle, or Mont-en-Pévèle, according to the true local spelling, near Lille. The action was for some time indecisive, and even after it was over both sides hesitated about claiming a victory; but when the Flemings saw their camp swept off and rifled, and when they no longer found in it 'their fine stuffs of Bruges and Ypres, their wines of Rochelle, their beers of Cambrai, and their cheeses of Bethune,' they declared that they would return to their hearths; and their leaders, unable to restrain them, were obliged to shut themselves up in Lille, whither Philip, who had himself retired to Arras, came to besiege them. When the first days of downheartedness were over, and the danger which threatened Lille, and the remains of the Flemish army became evident, all Flanders rushed to arms. "The labors of the workshop and the field were everywhere suspended; the women kept guard in the towns; you might traverse the country without meeting a single man, for they were all in the camp at Courtrai, to the number of twelve hundred thousand (!) according to popular exaggeration, swearing to one another that they would rather die fighting than live in slavery. Philip was astounded. "'I thought the Flemings were destroyed,' said he, 'but they seem to rain from heaven.' "The burghers of Bruges had made themselves a new seal whereon the old symbol of the bridge of their city on the river Reye was replaced by the Lion of Flanders, wearing the crown and armed with the cross, with this inscription: 'The Lion hath roared and burst his fetters' (Rugiit leo, Vincula fregit). "During ten years, from 1305 to 1314, there was between France and Flanders a continual alternation of reciprocal concessions and retractions, of treaties concluded and of renewed insurrections without decisive and ascertained results. It was neither peace nor war; and after the death of Philip the Handsome, his successors were destined for a long time to come to find again and again amongst the Flemish communes deadly enmities and grievous perils." * * Guizot's "History of France." What wonder then that Lille retains so few remarkable public monuments. Perhaps of all the Flemish towns she suffered most from pillage and fire. Farther on in the Rue Royale, beyond the statue of General Négrier, was the eighteenth century church of St. André, once belonging to the "Carmes déchaussés," where there were some good paintings by a native artist, Arnould de Vuez, who enjoyed considerable celebrity. Following the attractive quays along the river front, which was teeming with life and movement, one reached the small square of St. Martin, where was the church of "Notre Dame de la Trielle," which is said to have occupied the site of the ancient moated Chateau du Buc, which formed the origin of the city of Lille, and which the Flemish to this day call Ryssel. A fortress of the first class, Lille's citadel is said to have been Vauban's masterpiece, and perhaps this is one of the reasons why the invaders of 1914 surrounded it with the network of concrete trenches and galleries which formed the angle of the famous Hinden-burg line after the disastrous retreat from Arras in April, 1917. So far Lille has not suffered very much from the bombardment of this present year, but it is safe to say now that the invader will not spare it in retreat. AMIENS |THERE was no better way of realizing the great bulk and height of the Cathedral than by proceeding to the banks of the river Somme northward, and from this point appraising its architectural wonder rising above the large and small old gray houses, tier above tier, misted in the soft clouds of gray smoke from their myriad chimneys, capped with red dots of chimney pots, "a giant in repose." In approaching Amiens the traveler was offered no "coup d'oeil" like that of other cathedral towns; here "this largest church in the world except St. Peter's, at Rome," was hidden from view as one entered the town, and followed the Rue des Trois Cailloux, along what was formerly the boundaries of the ancient walls. It was difficult to obtain a good view of the façade, that of the west point was seen from a parvis, which qualified the difference in level between the east and west ends, and here was the central porch which took its name, "Porche de le Beau Dieu d'Amiens," from the figure of the Savior on its central pillar, and of which Ruskin wrote, "at the time of its erection, it was beyond all that had then been reached of sculptured tenderness." It is not known at this time of writing (May, 1917) whether Amiens has suffered greatly at the hands of the Germans. Perhaps without its destruction there have been sufficient crimes committed against the church in the name of military necessity, and it thus has been spared. For some reason or other Ruskin was not overenthusiastic over Amiens. He described the beautiful "flèche," which rose so gracefully from the great bulk against the sky, as "merely the caprice of a village carpenter," and he further declared that the Cathedral of Amiens is "in dignity inferior to Chartres, in sublimity to Beauvais, in decorative splendor to Rheims, and in loveliness of figure sculpture to Bourges." On the other hand, the great Viollet-le-Duc called it the "Parthenon of Gothic Architecture." Of the two authorities, one may safely pin one's faith to the opinion of the eminent Frenchman, who spent his life in restoring great works rather than in abusing them. Whewell says: "The mind is filled and elevated by the enormous height of the building (140 feet), its lofty and many colored clerestory, its grand proportions, its noble simplicity. The proportion of height to breadth is almost double that to which we are accustomed in English cathedrals; the lofty solid piers, which bear up this height, are far more massive in their plan than the light and graceful clusters of our English churches, each of them being a cylinder with four engaged columns. The polygonal E apse is a feature which we seldom see, and nowhere so exhibited, and on such a scale; and the peculiar French arrangement which puts the walls at the outside edge of the buttresses, and thus forms interior chapels all around, in addition to the aisles, gives a vast multiplicity of perspective below, which fills out the idea produced by the gigantic height of the center. Such terms will not be extravagant when it is recollected that the roof is half as high again as Westminster Abbey." Indeed this great height is only surpassed by that of one cathedral in all of France--Beauvais. The vast arches here rose to nearly half the height of the structure, and then above these the architect placed a lovely band or frieze of carved foliage; then the triforium, and above this the glorious windows, separated from each other only by tall slender pillars springing gracefully from heavier ones. Nearly all the original painted glass was destroyed in the thirteenth century, but that which replaced it was of a certainty entirely satisfying. Between two immense pillars at the entrance to the nave were the heavily ornamented gilded brass tombs of the Bishops who founded the Cathedral. That on the left was Geoffroi d'Eu, who died in 1236, and on the right was that of Evrard de Fouilloy, who died in 1223. Each shows a recumbent figure in full robes inclosed in Gothic canopies with pointed arches, and sustained by lions. The great organ loft was beneath the magnificent "rose de mer" window which was filled with the arms of the house of Firmin de Coquerel. In the choir were one hundred and ten carved stalls, said to have been designed and made by local artists of Amiens, and these alone would have made any cathedral noteworthy. According to that eminent authority, Mr. Francis Bond, the height of the nave and the aisles is three times their span, and this feature gave the effect for which the architect worked, that is, a splendid blaze of luminosity shining down into gloomy and most mysterious shadow. This blaze of light and color came not only from the clerestory, but also from the triforium, in which the superb blue glass shone with celestial splendor. The meaning of the word "triforium" is perhaps somewhat obscure to all save architects. Herbert Marshall * defines the word as "Applied to the ambulatory or passage, screened by an arcade, which runs between the pier arches and clerestory windows and is considered to refer to the three openings, or spaces, 'trinae fores,' into which the arcading was sometimes divided. It probably has nothing to do with openings in multiples of three, nor with a Latinised form of 'thoroughfare' as suggested by Parker's Glossary, although the main idea is a passage running round the inside of a church, either as at Westminster, in the form of an ambulatory chamber, or of a gallery pierced through the main walls, from whence the structure may be inspected without the trouble of using ladders. M. Enlart in his 'Manuel d'Archéologie Française' derives the word from a French adjective, 'trifore,' or 'trifoire,' through the Latin 'transforatus,' a passage pierced through the thickness of the wall; and this idea of a passageway is certainly suggested by an old writer, Gervase, who, in his description of the new cathedral of Canterbury, rebuilt after the fire, alludes to the increased number of passages round the church under the word 'triforia.' 'Ibi triforium unum, hie duo in Choro, et in alâ ecclesiae tercium.'" * "Gothic Architecture in England." Ruskin wrote in his diary under date of May 11th, 1857: "I had a happy walk here (Amiens) this afternoon, down among the branching currents of the Somme: it divides into five or six, shallow, green and not over-wholesome; some quite narrow and foul, running beneath clusters of fearful houses, reeling masses of rotten timber; and a few mere stumps of pollard willow sticking out of the banks of soft mud, only retained in shape of bank by being shored up with timbers; and boats like paper boats, nearly as thin at least, for costermongers to paddle about in among the weeds, the water soaking through the lath bottoms, and floating the dead leaves from the vegetable baskets with which they were loaded. Miserable little back yards, opening to the water, with steep stone steps down to it, and little platforms for the ducks; and separate duck staircases, composed of a sloping board with cross bits of wood leading to the ducks' doors; and sometimes a flower pot or two on them, or even a flower--one group of wall flowers and geraniums curiously vivid, being seen against the darkness of a dyer's backyard, who had been dyeing black, and all was black in his yard but the flowers, and they fiery and pure; the water by no means so, but still working its way steadily over the weeds, until it narrowed into a current strong enough to turn two or three 'wind mills,' (!) one working against the side of an old Flamboyant Gothic church, whose richly traceried buttresses sloped down into the filthy stream; all exquisitely picturesque, and no less miserable. (! ) We delight in seeing the figures in these boats, pushing them about the bits of blue water, in Prout's drawings; but as I looked to-day at the unhealthy face and melancholy mien of the man in the boat pushing his load of peat along the ditch, and of the people, men as well as women, who sat spinning gloomily at cottage doors, I could not help feeling how many persons must pay for my picturesque subject and happy walk." The reader will probably exclaim: "Well, if this is Ruskin's idea of a 'happy walk,' what then would be his description of a gloomy one?" We did not find the view of the town so squalid as this. Rising against the golden glow of the evening sky, the great bulk of the Cathedral massed itself in purple mist, its slender needle-like center tower and spire piercing the sky. Below lay the dull reds and slaty grays of the houses, concealed here and there by the massive foliage of the trees that lined the river bank. Barges of picturesque shape were tied up to the banks here and there, with lines of pink, white and blue freshly washed clothes strung along the decks, where children played, and there were brightly painted cabin deck houses, all white and green, from the chimney pipes of which ascended long pale lines of smoke from the galley stoves, showing that the evening meal was being cooked. On the decks of these barges nervous shaggy dogs ran up and down barking furiously at one thing or another; over all seemed to rest the air of well being and sweet content. If there were stagnant pools of filthy water, as Ruskin claimed, we saw them not, nor did the peasants seem unhealthy or miserable to our eyes. Amiens was delightful to look upon, and we drove back to the hotel quite satisfied with our first view of it. Day by day afterwards we haunted the great Cathedral, studying it from every viewpoint. Again and again we returned to the choir to gloat over the one hundred and ten magnificent stalls, carved as fluently as if modeled in clay, the forms so flowing and graceful as to suggest living branches, pinnacle crowning pinnacle, and detail of grace of design so exquisite as to be almost painful to follow--"Imperishable, fuller of leafage than any forest, and fuller of story than any book." (Ruskin.) The outside wall of the choir was quite concealed by the most richly Flamboyant Gothic archwork. In these arches were quantities of figures of saints, all emblazoned with gold and crimson and blue. These groups have been described by Lubke so well that I can do no better than quote him: "St. John is shown when he sees Christ and points him out to the multitude; then St. John preaching in the wilderness, and the Baptism of Christ, which is arranged with peculiar beauty and simplicity; lastly St. John as a preacher of repentance when the listening multitude is depicted with life. Then there are four scenes: the Apprehension of St. John; the Banquet, at which Herodias asks for the head of the Preacher of Repentance--a scene executed with genre-like style, the figures appearing in the costume of the period; the 'Beheading of St. John'; and, lastly, another banquet scene, in which the severed head appears on the table, and Herodias puts out the eyes, at which her daughter sinks in a swoon, and is caught up by a young man, while a page in horror runs away with the dish. Below these larger representations, in the one case in ten, in the other in five medallions, scenes from the youth of St. John are depicted. The relief is more shallow, and with simple arrangement is very attractive in expression." The great blazing rose windows of the transept were named "Fire" and "Water," but which was which we never quite discovered, because of a difference of opinion held by those whom we questioned, but this did not in the least affect our opinion of their great artistic value, or interfere with our admiration. In the south transept we readily found the gravestone in memory of the Spanish Captain Hernando Tiello, who captured Amiens in 1597, and just opposite, the great stone sarcophagus of the Canon Claude Pierre, who must have been a canon of great importance, to have been so favored and placed. In the Chapel of Notre Dame de Puy were a great number of marble tablets emblazoned with the names of the Fraternity of Puy, and bore reliefs in marble, showing scenes in the life of the Virgin Mary. Here there was much intricate Flamboyant tracery framing some scenes in the life of St. James the Great, of the sixteenth century style, presented by Canon Guillaume Aucouteaux. The north transept contained the fine monument of the Canon Jehan Wyts, who died in 1523. This showed the temple at Jerusalem, in four scenes depicting the "Sanctum," the "Atrium," the "Tabernaculum," and "Sanctum-Sanctorum." In this transept was buried the remains of the comic poet "Gresset," who flourished in the eighteenth century, and a great shrine for the head of John the Baptist, said to be incased here, and to have been brought from the Holy Land and presented with imposing ceremonies, by the Crusader Wallon de Sarton, who was likewise Canon of Picquigny. Singularly enough there were several other heads incased in magnificent jeweled reliquaries which were to be seen in other churches, notably in the south of France, and in Genoa, each one claiming, with much documentary proof, to be the sole and only authentic head of the Great Preacher of Repentance. In one of the chapels in the left aisle of the nave, that of St. Saulve, was a remarkable crucifix, which enjoyed great repute, for it was gravely alleged to have bowed its head upon the occasion of the installment of the sacred relics of St. Honoré. Inside the great open porches the whole space was filled with the most delicate fourteenth century lacework in stone. The principal one showed on its frontal a statue of St. Michael conquering the dragon. The fine ironwork of the doors was made in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries by natives of Amiens, whose names are forgotten. Walter Pater ("Miscellaneous Studies") says: "The builders of the church seem to have projected no very noticeable towers; though it is conventional to regret their absence, especially with visitors from England, where indeed cathedral and other towers are apt to be good and really make their mark.... The great western towers are lost in the west front, the grandest, perhaps the earliest, of its species--three profound sculptured portals; a double gallery above, the upper gallery carrying colossal images of twenty-two kings of the house of Judah, ancestors of our Lady; then the great rose; above it the Singers' Gallery, half marking the gable of the nave, and uniting at their topmost stories the twin, but not exactly equal or similar towers, oddly oblong in plan as if meant to carry pyramids or spires. In most cases these early Pointed churches are entangled, here and there, by the construction of the old round-arched style, the heavy Norman or other, Romanesque chapel or aisle, side by side, though in strange contrast, with the soaring new Gothic nave or transept. But of the older manner of the round arch, the 'plein-cintre,' Amiens has nowhere, or almost nowhere, a trace. The Pointed style, fully pronounced, but in all the purity of its first period, found here its completest expression." Amiens, the ancient capital of Picardy, was one of the greatest of the manufacturing towns of France. There were many large factories engaged in the production of cashmere, velvet, linen, and woolens, and in the early morning, and again at night, thousands of the employees filled the streets of the town on their way to and from work. It was called by the Ambiani, before it was captured by Cæsar, Samarobriva, and was their chief town. Christianity was introduced by St. Firmin in the year 301, which perhaps is as far back as any one cares to go in the matter. And history farther cautions the reader not to confound this St. Firmin with that other St. Firmin, who was only a "Confessor" or something of the sort. The Normans seem to have had a strong desire to put an end to the town, for they regularly pillaged and burned it. The place was ceded to the Duke of Burgundy in 1435, but was recovered in 1463 by Louis XI. The Spaniards conquered it in 1597, but Henry IV retook it from them. The Peace of Amiens between France, Great Britain, Spain and Holland was signed here in 1802. The battle of Amiens, in the Franco-Prussian War, resulted in the entry of the Germans in November, 1870. Its present fate is problematical, but it would seem, in view of the retirement of the invader northward of Arras and Lens, that the great and noble monuments of the ancient town are now safe. Heinrich Heine long ago wrote the following prophetic words: "Christianity--and this is its highest merit--has in some degree softened, but it could not destroy, the brutal German joy of battle. When once the taming talisman, the Cross, breaks in two, the savagery of the old fighters, the senseless Berserker fury, of which the Northern poets sing and say so much, will gush up anew. That talisman is decayed, and the day will come when it will piteously collapse. Then the old stone gods will rise from the silent ruins, and rub the dust of a thousand years from their eyes. Thor, with his giant's hammer, will at last spring up, and shatter to bits the Gothic Cathedrals." PÉRONNE |THE delightful banks of the river Somme are imprinted on one's memory among those "sweet places" where it would seem as though man could not but choose to be happy, so liberally had nature decked them with her gifts. Yet all of this region formerly known as Flanders, has from time immemorial been war's favorite playground, "the Cockpit of Europe." Even in the intervals of wars, strife equally bitter, if less bloody, has raged here,--the struggle of industry against adequate reward. One could never forget the sight of women laboring early and late in the fields, or harnessed together at the end of long tow lines, painfully dragging barges against the current of the river, or in the factory yards, trampling with bare feet a mixture of coal dust and clay which, molded into briquettes, was used as fuel. Strangely enough, these women and girls, some of them of tender age, seemed happy and content with their work. The sound of their singing as they labored could be heard for a long distance. As the barges passed on the river bank, with these women bending forward, straining at the yoked ends of the tow rope, moving slowly step by step, we noted that not seldom they were quite handsome of face, and of good figure. Invariably they saluted us good humoredly with smiles, but when I removed my hat in response, I could see that this courtesy struck them as unusual, and did not leave the impression I desired. Thereafter I modified the salutation. At the inn in Péronne a young "commis-voyageur" with whom I made conversation, and related this incident, told me that I had better beware of offering such civilities in future, since these Amazons had been known to seize strangers for fancied offenses, and after giving them rough treatment, cast them into the river. He called upon the proprietor of the inn to substantiate his warning, and the latter satisfied me as to its truth, giving details which need not be set down here, and which quite decided the matter. Péronne as an historic and notable town was second to none in all Picardy. Here the early kings had a great palace given to them by Clovis II. Hotel de Ville: Péroinne [Illustration: 0107] Erchinold, the Mayor, erected a monastery near by for Scotch monks, presided over by St. Fursy. Not a trace of this now remains. It is said to have contained the tomb of Charles the Simple, who died of famine at the hands of Hubert in a dungeon. When Philip d'Alsace, Count of Vermandois, was killed in the Crusades (1199) the towns of Péronne and St. Quentin were united to the crown of France, and so remained. Charles V, in 1536 unsuccessfully besieged Péronne, and during this siege a young woman named Marie Fourré performed prodigious deeds of heroism which history records. The great Ligue of 1577 was proclaimed here, following its announcement at Paris. Until the Duke of Wellington captured it on his way to Paris' after the battle of Waterloo, Péronne-la-Pucelle had never been taken by an enemy. In the Franco-Prussian War, 1870-71, Péronne was sacked and burned after a most memorable siege, in which many of the remarkable old buildings were destroyed, but in 1910 the town, when I last saw it, was one of the quaintest in all Picardy. There was a remarkable old church here, that of St. Jean, which dated from the sixteenth century, which had a portal of three Gothic arches and arcades surmounted by a great flamboyant rose-window, the glass of which, though modern, was of fine quality and workmanship. It had a tower flanked by a "tourelle" of beautiful proportions, and in the interior the vaulting, pulpit, and the stained glass windows were pronounced by experts to be well-nigh faultless. This church, and the most singular and picturesque Hôtel de Ville (sixteenth century), a sketch of which I made in 1910, the invaders took great pains entirely to destroy in April, 1917, when they made their celebrated "victorious retreat." The latest accounts say that not a trace of these two remarkable monuments now exists, that for a week or more before the retreat, the German engineers used tons of explosives to destroy them. The gray old square before the Hôtel de Ville is now a yawning pit, bordered by shapeless piles of stone and ashes. At this time we know not what other mischief the invader has committed in this neighborhood. There are endless opportunities for destruction and pillage, and we may be fully prepared for irreparable damage and losses in all of this region before the Iconoclasts are driven back to their last line of defenses. All of Champagne, of Picardy,--all of Flanders were filled with exquisite villages, towns, and cities, each of which was unique in works of art and antiquity. These have shriveled like a garden of flowers before a heavy frost. This great catastrophe has so stunned humanity, that we are only beginning to realize what it means. The invader says contemptuously that no cathedral is worth the life of one German soldier. So Rheims has been destroyed; so St. Peter's of Louvain; so--but why enumerate here?--The list is recorded in letters of fire. CAMBRAI, and the SMALL TOWNS |THE "Cameracum" of ancient days of Roman occupation, holding this name up to the twelfth century, Cambrai, at the outbreak of the war in 1914, was entirely satisfying to the seeker of the charms of picturesqueness, as well as the historian. After what is known as the period of the Antonine Itinerary, it became the capital of a petty episcopal arrondisement, under the protection of the Dukes of Burgundy who, unable to hold it, gave it over "for privileges" to the German emperors, who thereafter retained it under the title of "Châtelains," as it was a fortified stronghold. Situated on a hillside on the right bank of the river Scheldt, it was a busy and prosperous commercial town, with a semi-Flemish population of about twenty-five thousand. Its history in thumbnail form is as follows: In 1508 the Emperor Maximilian, Pope Julius II, Ferdinand of Aragon, and Louis XII of France formed here the celebrated League of Cambrai, which was directed against Venice. In 1529 the so-called Paix de Dames was signed by Louise of Savoy and Margaret of Austria, who negotiated its provisions in the castle on the hill, for Francis I and Charles V. However, by the treaty of Nimwegen, Louis XV recovered it, and it was thus held by France until captured by the Duke of Wellington in 1815. Many celebrated men were born at Cambrai, or became identified with the town, such as the chronicler, Enguer-rand de Monstrelet, who died in 1453. The great Fénelon was Archbishop of Cambrai, as was also Cardinal Dubois, who served as minister for Louis XV, and then follows an array of names that lent glory to the annals of Flanders. Perhaps few know that the town gave name to that fine linen which was produced here in the fifteenth century, the invention of a native named Baptiste. The English named the cloth "Cambric," but to the Flemish and French it was known, and is still for that matter, as "Ba'tiste" after the inventor. At the outbreak of the war this linen cloth was the chief product of the town. Entrance to the town was through the gate called "Porte Robert," near which was the citadel. There was a large and impressive square called the "Esplanade," where statues had been raised to "Batiste" and the historian "Enguerrand de Monstrelet." Then followed the "Place aux Bois," lined with handsome trees, and large "Place d'Arms," on which was the "Hôtel de Ville," which, while of comparatively modern construction and rebuilt in the last century, was sufficiently interesting even to a student of ancient Flemish architecture. Its most elaborate façade was sculptured by one Hiolle of Valenciennes. The tower bore two gigantic statues, much venerated by the townspeople, named respectively "Martin" and "Martine," but curiously enough there was a wide difference of opinion as to which was which, some saying that the left hand giant was Martin, and others protesting the contrary. The figures dated from the time of Charles V, and were presented by him to the town in 1510. On the square at the opening of the Rue St. Martin was a fine Gothic belfry dated 1447, and attached to the church of that name. This contained a notable chime of bells, a carillon, the work of the Hemonys. * In the Rue de Noyon was the Cathedral of "Notre Dame," part of which had been rebuilt since a fire which consumed it about sixty years ago. The interior contained notably the fine marble and bronze monument of Fénelon, and a statue to this celebrity, the work of David d'Angers, all worth a considerable journey to see. The body of the church was of the eighteenth century and while of purity in detail, offered no very striking features. There were eight very large mural paintings "en grisaille" after the works of Rubens, by Geeraerts, a modern artist of Antwerp, but these, despite the obvious merit of the work, seemed somehow out of key with the interior. * See "Vanished Towers and Chimes of Flanders," for chapter on bell founding. Wandering about, we came upon a small street in which we found a remarkable collection of paintings of the Netherlands School owned by a private collector, who was pleased to show them, and delighted by our enthusiasm over their qualities. This gentleman insisted upon becoming our guide about the town, and showed us so many attentions that my Lady Anne became bored with him, and this led to our leaving Cambrai before the time we had set--but we left a letter of appreciation and thanks addressed to him. He it was who brought us to the church of St. Géry in the Place Fénelon, on the site of one founded by St. Vaast in 520. This had a remarkable dome which was upheld by four very slender columns, of very unusual character, and there was also a magnificent renaissance "jube," or altar screen, of colored marble, and a transept containing a large painting of the "Entombment," attributed to Rubens. The "Episcopal Palace of Fénelon" was just across the street, or at least a fragment of the original building, with a very richly decorated triple portal in the Renaissance style. It was this palace that Fénelon opened to the fugitives of the battle of Malplaquet, who thronged the town of Cambrai for protection and food. History states that every corner of the building was filled with the hapless people, and their small belongings hastily gathered together in the flight. The gardens and courts were crowded with cows, calves, and pigs, and the scene is said to have been indescribable. Emanuel de Broglie, who wrote the account ("Fénelon a Cambrai," de Broglie), says, "Officers to the number of one hundred and fifty, both French and prisoners of war, were received by Fénelon at his house, and seated at his table at one time." "God will help us," said the Archbishop; "Providence hath infinite resources on which I can confidently rely. Only let us give all we have: it is my duty and my pleasure." Over the side doors were inscriptions on "banderoles"--"A Clare Justitia" on one, and on the other "A gladio pax." The fine "Chateau de Selles," on the banks of the Scheldt River, was built in the fifteenth century. The beautiful reliefs of its gables, its statues, and the wrought iron grills of its balconies were still perfect, and the view from its green terrace was most enjoyable. There was a curious sort of penthouse shown to us, near a building called "Vieux Château" of which pillars with rudely sculptured capitals remained. Near this was a well with some ancient rusty ironwork, and a stone which our quondam guide said had served in ages long ago as a block in executions. Somehow we thought that he lied, and with considerable skill withal, but we dismissed him with payment of a franc for his pains. He did not go, however, but followed us about at a distance muttering to himself and occasionally waving his hands in a most absurd manner, until at length we happily lost him. There was a curious small building called the Grange aux Dimes, divided into two parts, one subterranean, the other on the level of the soil. Two staircases, one inside, the other outside, led to a hall on the first floor. This was divided by two ranges of pillars, with ornate capitals of foliage. The door to the subterranean passage was unfastened and we ventured down into the darkness and must for a short distance. I am convinced that we might have had some adventures below had we explored the tunnel. Near this was "Le Puits," supposed to be the entrance to other vast vaults, a subterranean town extending beneath the hill for miles, and formerly used for many purposes in the Middle Ages. These vaults were to be found in many of the towns hereabouts, and during the occupancy of the country by the Germans since the invasion of 1914, the soldiers have used them to store away ammunition and supplies. Over these small towns for three years now have raged battles the like of which for fierceness and bloody loss the world has never seen. The small town of Marcoing, about five miles from Cambrai, had one of these wonderful caverns of refuge dating from the Middle Ages, and there were others at Villers-Guizlain and at Honnecourt, where there were the ruins of a Roman town, and an immense church with a porch of the eleventh century. This was said to have been a famous place of pilgrimage in the twelfth century. Tradition has it that in that century three brothers of the family of Courcy le Marchais were taken prisoners during the crusades. In the power of the Sultan they languished, until at length he bethought him to send his young daughter to their dungeon, where they lay in chains, thinking that she might by the power of her beauty and eloquence bring them to the faith of the Mussulmans. But strange to relate, she it was who succumbed to the arguments of the three fair-haired brothers, and finally promised to become a Christian provided that they show her an image of the Holy Virgin of whom they had so eloquently told her. Now the three brothers had no image of the Virgin, everything having been taken from them when they were cast into the dungeon. But all at once, says the Chronicle, the image of the Virgin bathed in golden Celestial light appeared miraculously before them in a niche on the wall, so the Sultan's daughter, thus convinced, not only set the three fair-haired brothers free, but accompanied them, bearing in her bosom the sacred image, which henceforth was enshrined here on the altar and venerated. The three brothers then built a church in the twelfth century, on the site of which this present one of the fourteenth century was erected. Its portal was fifteenth century, and at the cross was a spire with quaintly formed pinnacles. Inside, a remarkably rich "jube," or altar screen, divided the nave from the choir, almost hiding the sanctuary containing a singular coal black doll-like sort of image, and a large collection of "Ex-votos," with some other offerings most tawdry in character. North of Valenciennes and very near the Flemish border was the old town of St. Amand-les-Eaux, famous for its mud baths for the cure of rheumatism and gout since the time of the Romans. The town was situated at the confluence of the rivers Elnon and Scarpe, and is said to have grown up around an abbey built by St. Amand in the seventh century. Save for the portal and the façade of the church nothing remained of the original structure. A tower containing a fine carillon of bells by Flemmish founders, perhaps the Van den Gheyns of Malines, is said to have been designed by Peter Paul Rubens. From the summit of the tower a wonderful view of the surrounding country was had, and for this reason the Germans blew it up in April, 1917, before their retreat. Maison du Provost: Valenciennes [Illustration: 0123] There was here a quaint Hôtel de Ville in the Flemish-Renaissance style, much floriated in parts. Let us hope that this has been spared. The site of the ancient abbey had been most charmingly covered with a blooming garden of brilliant flowers, and here children and nurses played, while "invalides" dozed on the benches in the sunlight. From the baths a very wild and beautiful park stretched across the country to the forest of Raismes through the forest of St. Amand. Epehy is another small town now held by the Germans because of its strategical value. It is on the ancient Roman road, or "Chaussée Brunehaut," which runs from Arras to Rheims. Under the great church are subterranean galleries, which, it is said, stretch for unknown distances in every direction; indeed, it seems as if the whole country hereabouts were undermined by these ancient galleries, many of which were unexplored, and in some instances shunned by the peasants as haunted by evil spirits, and many and fantastic were the tales told of some of these caverns, during the summer days when wanderings about the countryside held us here in happy durance. It was delightful to watch the grave old men of the village playing bowls or skittles, and their pride over the skill which enabled one of them, a patriarch, to account for six pins at one shot. His cannoning was the very poetry of statics. As a foil the unskillful efforts of the present writer were not altogether unsuccessful, for they brought to the stolid faces of the players smiles not unkindly, but of considerable latitude. In the little "estaminet" (Spanish estamento) at the foot of the hill, cutlets, broiled young chicken, and a rough and cheap but good sparkling wine, all graced by the good humor of the proprietor, raised our content to enthusiasm, so we saw and studied the locality, socially and mythologically, to the end of its possibilities. We found that these peasants, seemingly so phlegmatic and commonplace, were really chimerical, and their tales and conversation skirted the borderland of fact and fancy. The two were so melted down and run into one mold as to be impossible of separation. I have listened to some of these tales with interest, until the splashes of golden light were gone from the valleys and a vast canopy of rose-shot lilac emblazoned the setting of the sun. In the woods hereabouts, as in other parts of this region of caverns, thin mysterious sounds were often audible at night to those who had ears to hear: the noise of a distant hunt, the sound of winding horns, the confused shouts of a troop of hunters, and the chime of hounds in full cry. Pious and superstitious peasants, listening indoors, crossed themselves, those who were abroad in the lanes hastened their steps, not glancing in the direction from which the sounds came. It was the Wild Chasseur. This is the story: St. Amand, Count of the Palatinate, lived hereabouts in the tenth century, in a great castle of which even the foundations have long since disappeared. He was known as a mighty hunter, but was a profane prince, caring naught for the worship of the Lord, nor the chant of the priest, but following ever the wild creatures, rather than the ways of truth and righteousness. There came one day in the autumn, and it was Sunday, long before the coming dawn disclosed the distant dome of the Cathedral. When this reckless count mounted his great horse, and at the head of an equally reckless band of merry hunters, started out on the chase, the great dim forests rang with the loud blasts of the horn, and the loud shouts of the young men broke the calm stillness of the holy day and scandalized the good priests, and the pious people of the neighborhood. Out came the noisy cavalcade into the open where four roads met. To them, one from the North and one from the South, and galloping furiously, came two horsemen; the one from the North was young, blonde and handsome, with an air of distinction, all clad in bright new cloak and bonnet of golden yellow. The cavalier from the South seemed a man of temper, and was of sinister visage, bestriding a great horse of a temper to match that of its rider. His costume was of black velveteen save for his headpiece of scarlet cloth, which flowed scalloped down his back. The Count at the head of his troop saluted these two strangers courteously and invited them bear him company in the chase. "My lord," answered the rider from the North, removing his bonnet, and showing his fair hair in a golden mass about his shoulders, "the Sabbath bells are ringing in your church for the service in praise of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, for'tis the hour in which the voices of men in holy canticle are sent on high asking forgiveness of our sins and iniquities. This day is sanctified to Him above. I do bid you now accompany me unto the throne of Grace, on bended knee, in all humility.--For upon the offender shall descend the vengeance of the Most High, forever and ever." "In Satan's name, Sir Golden Locks!" answered St. Amand scornfully, "thou hast a tongue like a ranting priest. What right hast thou to wear a sword, pray?--I have no mind for canticles to-day!" Loud laughed the troop of cavaliers at this, and then was heard the voice of the rider in black from the South, whose great horse champed the bit and tossed its head restlessly. "Come, let us away, St. Amand! What care have we for monastery bells and sniveling priests!--Let us to the noble chase for mass, with sound of the winding horn for organ note!" "Well said, Sir Red Crest," replied St. Amand, with a loud laugh and a wave of his gauntleted hand. "_Ventre son gris!_ Let us away then!" The whole troop sprang forward at the word. Over the hills, through the ravines and deep ditches, and into the dark woods, ever rode the strangers, one at the right and one at the left of St. Amand. On the right, the fair young golden haired knight, and on the left, the black clad sinister man with the crimson hood. All at once appeared among the great trunks of the beech trees an antlered deer white as the driven snow, which after one startled look at the furiously riding troop of men, sped away like the wind. With winding horn the hunters pursued it over the green meadows and up and down the hills, trampling corn fields and peasant gardens under foot all unmindful of what ill they did. Naught counted for these men but the chase, and ever St. Amand headed the band, and on his right rode the fair young blonde rider from the North and on his left the swarthy knight from the South. Finally, with trembling limbs the antlered deer slackened its speed before the open door of a chapel in the midst of the wildwood. Here stood the frightened animal, its fur flicked with bloody foam, unable to stir a step further. From the open door of the chapel stepped a holy friar, who placed a sheltering arm about the panting animal's neck, and stood with uplifted arm warning back the band of hunters. In vain did the fairhaired stranger plead with Amand to spare the deer, for the jeering voice of the knight of the scarlet hood urged him on, and dismounting from his horse Count St. Amand pushed aside the monk and was about to run the animal through with his hunting knife, when there came a burst of thunder sound that shook the earth as though the heavens had fallen. The Count was stunned: When he came to himself he was alone in a clear space in the forest; the chapel, the deer, the monk, all his band, including the two strangers, had vanished as though they had never been. Over all was a terrible silence. When St. Amand attempted to call, no sound came from his parched lips. Then came a blinding flash of lightning, which split the darkness, and on the wings of the rushing wind he heard a terrible voice in judgment.--"Even as thou hast flouted and mocked at the Lord thy God, and have had no compassion upon man nor beast, so shalt thou fly before the wrath of the Most High! Pass on then, thou accursed Knight, forever be thou the hunted by evil spirits until the end of the world!" "And so," continues the legend, "since that day the wraith of that sinful Count St. Amand has haunted these hills and dales by night, and these great caverns underneath by day, the fiends of hell at his heels. After him fly these hideous fiends, driving him ever on towards the judgment that waits him on the last day." As may be surmised, with such tales as this to hold over the youth of the valleys, the people hereabouts were most devout and God fearing. Here in this region have raged battles innumerable from the earliest days of history, with fire, famine and pestilence. It was all prosperous, when I last saw it, and charming to look upon. But now the beautiful orchards have been cut down by the invader, the homesteads have been burned, and the once happy peasants transported to hard labor in another country. ST. QUENTIN |UGLY and down at the heel," were the uncomplimentary terms used by an æsthetic fellow traveler to describe this prosperous manufacturing town situated rather picturesquely on a hill rising above the banks of the river Somme. And while it may be admitted that St. Quentin is not very clean looking when viewed from the railway station, certainly a later and more intimate inspection revealed charms which repaid leisurely investigation on our part, and even our first view of the gray walls and gables of the houses, and the quaint pinnacles of the town hall, and the tower of the church rising against the golden glow of the sunset sky was quite satisfying. The road to the town on the hill was by way of the Rue de l'lsle, which brought us to the small square on which was the flamboyant Gothic Hôtel de Ville. It had a most charming and unusual pent roof, over which rose a slender tower with large clock face shining in the sunlight. On the ground floor of the façade was an open arcaded gallery above which were richly ornamented flamboyant Gothic windows divided by niches. The upper story had a quaint and ornate balustrade and three gables. From the central gable the campanile rose gracefully. This much we were able to see on our way to the Hôtel du Cygne, the landlady of which gave us more comfort than our quondam traveling companion had led us to expect. This individual quite abandoned us to our fate thereafter, as impossible Yankees who gloated over picturesqueness and gables, and meekly ate whatever was set before them--even of an omelette which he scorned, and fussed about at the table d'hôte. He listened with a sarcastic grin to our admiring comment on the furnishings of the dining-room, with its paneled walls in the Flemish fashion, on which hung brass placques and some good old china plates, and after lighting a cigarette, noisily kicked back his chair, shrugged his shoulders, and vanished from our ken forever. Madame told us that he was a "commis-voyageur" in the woolen trade, from Brussels, and "bien difficile." St. Quentin was the ancient capital of the Gaulish Veromanduens, and took its present name from Caius Quintinus, a priest who came here to preach Christianity in the third century, and for his pains was martyred by the Prefect Rictius Varus. Honor to his remains was encouraged by St. Eloi in the time of Dagobert. Whilst here we may recall that the building of the Escurial was due to a vow which Philip II of Spain made in case of success, when he was besieging St. Quentin in 1557. The town was given back to France in 1589, and in the following year was bestowed as a dowry upon Mary Stuart, who possessed its revenues till her death. On January 19, 1871, a great victory was gained near St. Quentin by the Prussian General Goeben over the French army of the north, * under Faidherbe. * Hare's "Northeastern France." In the "Place du Huit Octobre" was a very good monument by Barrias, symbolizing the successful defense of the town against the first attack by the Germans on October 8, 1870. We found that the Hôtel de Ville contained a most unusual "Salle du conseil," a large well proportioned room, the roof of which rested upon two circular wooden vaults. This was furnished with a most elaborate mantel or chimney piece in the mixed Gothic and Renaissance styles, and of remarkable workmanship. In the great German retreat of April, 1917, this noble building was blown up with bombs. Perhaps they placed upon it, as they did upon other shattered structures, a sign bearing the inscription: "Nicht Argern, nur Wundern." There was a noble "Collegiate Church of St. Quentin" near this Hôtel de Ville, considered by architects to be a splendid example of French Gothic of the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. This was unfortunately so shut in by small buildings as to make a study of it difficult. Its choir, nave, and portal, and its really vast height, formed unusual features, and added to these wonders were the beautiful triforium and terminal windows of the principal transept (there were two of these, "very rare in a Gothic church," says Hare). The oldest part of the church was easily discovered between these transepts. There were seven absidal chapels; in that of St. Roch was the incised tombstone of "Mahaus Patrelatte," dated 1272. Under the choir were crypts said to have been of the ninth century, and in one of these was a stone sarcophagus of St. Quentin and SS. Victorious and Gentianus, who were St. Quentin's companions in martyrdom. The west portal of the church was formerly adorned with a large number of statues, vestiges of which were plainly visible. A statue of Quentin Delatour, a famous draftsman in crayon of the eighteenth century, a native of the town, stood before the church; it was by Lauglet the sculptor, and of considerable merit. A collection of Delatour's crayon drawings were in the small museum in the rue du Petit-Origny.... Unfortunate St. Quentin, now once more in ashes, and this time so completely obliterated that nothing remains on the hill but some blackened ragged piles of masonry, was besieged by Philip II in 1558, when war broke out between Picardy and Flanders. "Philip II had landed there with an army of forty-seven thousand men, of whom seven thousand were English. Never did any great sovereign and great politician provoke and maintain for long such important wars without conducting them in some other fashion than from the recesses of his cabinet and without ever having exposed his life on the field of battle. The Spanish army was under the orders of Emmanuel-Philibert, Duke of Savoy, a young warrior of thirty, who had won the confidence of Charles V. He led it to the siege of St. Quentin, a place considered one of the bulwarks of the kingdom. "Philip II remained at some leagues' distance in the environs. Henry II was ill prepared for so serious an attack; his army, which was scarcely 20,000 strong, mustered near Laon under orders of the Duke of Nevers, Governor of Champagne; at the end of July, 1557, it hurried into Picardy, under the command of the Constable de Montmorency, who was supported by Admiral de Coligny, his nephew, by the Duke of Enghien, by the Prince of Condé, by the Duke of Montpensier, and by nearly all the great lords and the valiant warriors of France. They soon saw that St. Quentin was in a deplorable state of defense; the fortifications were old and badly kept up; soldiers and munitions of war, as well as victuals were all equally deficient. Coligny did not hesitate, however; he threw himself into the place on the 2nd of August during the night with a small corps of 700 men and Saint Remy, a skillful engineer, who had already distinguished himself in the defense of Metz. The Admiral packed off the useless mouths, repaired the walls at the points principally threatened, and reanimated the failing courage of the inhabitants. "The Constable and his army came within hail of the place; and d'Andelot, Coligny's brother, managed with great difficulty to get 450 men into it. "On the 10th of August the battle was begun between the two armies. The Constable affected to despise the Duke of Savoy's youth: 'I will soon show him,' said he, 'a move of an old soldier.' "The French army, being very inferior in numbers, was for a moment on the point of being surrounded. The Prince of Condë sent the Constable warning. 'I was serving in the field,' answered Montmorency, 'before the Prince of Condé came into the world; I have good hopes of still giving him lessons in the art of war for some years to come.' "The valor of the Constable and his comrades-in-arms could not save them from the consequences of their stubborn recklessness, and their numerical inferiority; the battalions of Gascon infantry closed their ranks, with pikes to the front, and made a heroic resistance, but all in vain, against repeated charges of the Spanish cavalry; and the defeat was total. "More than 3,000 men were killed; the number of prisoners amounted to double this figure; and the Constable, left upon the field with his thigh shattered by a cannon ball, fell into the hands of the Spaniards, as was also the case with the Dukes of Longueville and Montpensier, la Rochefoucauld, d'Aubigné, etc.... The Duke of Enghien, Viscount de Turenne and a multitude of others, many great names amidst a host of obscure, fell in the fight. The Duke of Nevers and the Prince of Condé, sword in hand, reached La Fère with the remnants of their army. Coligny remained alone at St. Quentin with those who survived of his little garrison, and a hundred and twenty arquebusiers whom the Duke of Nevers threw into the place at a loss of three times as many. Coligny held out for a fortnight longer, behind walls that were in ruins and were assailed by a victorious army. At length, on the 27th of August, the enemy entered St. Quentin in shoals. "The Admiral, who was still going about the streets with a few men to make head against them, found himself hemmed in on all sides, and did what he could to fall into the hands of a Spaniard, preferring rather to await on the spot the common fate than to incur by flight any shame or reproach. They took him prisoner, after having set him to rest a while at the foot of the ramparts, and took him away to their camp, where as he entered, he met Captain Alonzo de Cazieres, commandant of the old bands of Spanish infantry; when up came the Duke of Savoy, who ordered the said Cazieres to take the Admiral to his tent." * * Commentaire de François de Rabutin sur les Guerres entre Henri II., roi de France, et Charles Quint, empereur. Vol. I, p. 95, in the Petitot Collection. "D'Andelot, the Admiral's brother, succeeded in escaping across the marshes. Being thus master of St. Quentin, Philip II, after having attempted to put a stop to the carnage and plunder, expelled from the town, which was half in ashes, the inhabitants who had survived, and the small adjacent fortresses of Ham and Catalet did not hesitate long before surrendering. Five years later, in 1557, after the battle and capture of St. Quentin, France was in a fit of stupor; Paris believed the enemy to be already beneath her walls; many of the burgesses were packing up and flying--some to Orleans, some to Bourges, some still further." * And now once more history repeats itself in the sacking and burning of this quaint town, in the retreat of the invader of 1914-5 after three years of agony endured by its people. "God makes no account of centuries, and a great deal is required before the most certain and most salutary truths get their place and their rights in the minds and communities of men," says Guizot, quaintly, and thus dismisses the record of Henry II: "On the 29th of June, 1559, a brilliant tournament was celebrated in lists erected at the end of the street of Saint Antoine, almost at the foot of the Bastile. Henry II, the Queen, and the whole court had been present at it for three days." * Guizot's "Histoire de France." Vol. Ill, p. 204. "The entertainment was drawing to a close. The King, who had run several tilts 'like a sturdy and skillful Cavalier,' wished to break yet another lance, and bade the Count de Montgomery, captain of the guards, to run against him. Montgomery excused himself; but the King insisted. The tilt took place. The two jousters, on meeting, broke their lances skilfully; but Montgomery forgot to drop at once, according to usage, the fragment remaining in his hand; he unintentionally struck the King's helmet and raised the visor, and a splinter of wood entered Henry's eye; he fell forward upon his horse's neck." All the appliances of art were useless; the brain had been pierced. Henry II languished for eleven days and expired on the tenth of July, 1559, aged forty years and some months. "An insignificant man and a reign without splendor, though fraught with facts pregnant of grave consequences," concludes the historian. The fame of Henry Martin, noted as an historian, who died in 1883, was commemorated by a bronze statue "such as the chimes and the great bell of the Collegiate erected before the Lycée," a rather handsome building in the Rue du Palais de Justice. Before leaving St. Quentin in April, 1917, the invaders shipped this statue to Germany, it is announced in the German press, and melted it up at the gun works with other scrap metal, "such as the chimes and the great bell of the Collegiate Church of St. Quentin." A few miles to the northeast on the river Oise was the small town of Guise, most picturesquely situated, and commanded by an ancient castle, or chateau, as these ruins are sometimes styled, which dated from the sixteenth century, and was occupied by a few soldiers as a sort of garrison. In this château in troublous times the nuns of the Guise, and those of the neighboring nunneries as well, took refuge. There was here, too, a most famous chapter of monks, but the nuns were of greater renown. These threw off the severe rules of St. Benedict in the twelfth century, and becoming "chanoinesses," lived apart with the utmost comfort, their abbess bearing a scepter rather than a cross. Endowed by successive ducal rulers, this chapter became one of the most illustrious of the province. "Its abbess, always chosen from a family of the most exalted rank, exercised almost sovereign authority over the domain, and furthermore in virtue of a document from the Emperor Rudolph (1290), bore the title of Princess of the Holy Empire. She was elected only by the united voice of the chapter, and went to Rome to receive consecration from the Pope himself in the Lateran. To him she is said to have offered in sign of homage, every three years, a white horse and a piece of purple velvet; and when after many years the Pope remitted this tax, she bore, in all solemn processions, a red silk banner sprinkled with gold and silver buds in remembrance of it. A double handed sword was carried before her in processions. She had the right of granting liberty to prisoners. In the choir of the cathedral she sat upon a throne placed upon a carpet of crimson velvet ornamented with gold leaves, and upon fête days she held 'grand-couvert,' as was the custom with sovereigns. The chapter counted sixty-four abbesses, of whom the last in line was Louise-Adelaide de Bourbon-Condé." * * Brantôme, Paris, 1822. Vol. I. Considering its part in history, it is surprising how little interest was taken in Guise of late years. In 1339 the English, under John of Hainault, burned the town, but were unable to conquer the castle, owing to the courageous resistance of the small body of warriors who were commanded by the noble lady of its absent lord, the daughter of John of Hainault himself. In the curious old crypt were the tombs of several abbesses, and the shrine contained the relics of SS. Romaric, Arnat, and Idulphe, which the nuns brought with them in the tenth century from the old church on the hill. On one of the streets were ancient houses with stone arcades. Guise was the birthplace of Camille Desmoulins, the revolutionary. Near the town, which was busy and prosperous, with a population of eight thousand or so, there was a sort of workmen's colony upon the communistic plan, and included a "phalanstère," or common dwelling place for the members, upon the Fourier plan, founded by some philanthropist. As far as we could judge superficially it was successful, and it is said the chance visitor was always welcomed most cordially by the members who happened to be present. These inoffensive people have been shipped away, no one now seems to be able to say just where, and the little town, gutted by fire, has ceased to exist save in the memory of those who once knew its charm. A few miles southwest of St. Quentin, on the river Somme, was a small town named Ham, which had, however, nothing in common with that excellent viand. Here was a famous château of the tenth century, of the Comtes de Vermondais. In 1374 it passed to the Coucy family, and then to the Comtes of St. Pol, from whom it came by marriage to the house of Bourbon-Vendôme. This great stronghold had a donjon, the walls of which were thirty-five feet thick, and the room inside it was one hundred and ten feet broad, and the same number of feet high. In shape it was a rectangle, flanked at each corner by a round tower, and with square towers on the north and west. Rising from a canal on the northeast angle was a huge round tower, named the Tour de Connétable, built by Louis de Luxembourg in 1490. Emblazoned on the stone over the portal was the motto of the founder: "Mon Myeulx" (My Best). The walls of this tower were said to have been of enormous thickness. The figures varied so much that I omit all of them, but from the appearance of the tower one might believe even the most exaggerated statements. Its lower apartment was a vast hall of hexagonal shape, the vaulting of which was Gothic in style, and we were shown some curious arched spaces, said to be intended for furnaces or magazines to be blown up and thus destroy the castle in case of its capture. There was a great "Salle de Gardes," where the soldiers slept and ate in time of siege, and this contained an enormous fireplace, a well of considerable depth, and an oven where bread had been baked. Above this vast room was the "Chambre de Conseil," lighted by a single large window, and furnished with stone benches below it. Here Jeanne d'Arc was imprisoned by Jean of Luxembourg, and many other notables languished in the dungeons from the time of the Revolution down to the time of the capture of Prince Louis Napoléon, in August, 1840, at Boulogne, and from which he escaped disguised as a workman on the morning of May 22, 1846. He took refuge at St. Quentin, went thence to Belgium, and finally reached England. Like all of the other great castles in the region occupied by the invaders, Ham was blown up before the German army "victoriously" retreated to the now celebrated "Hindenburg" line, in April, 1917. VALLENCIENNES |THE town of lace," wrote William of Orange to the Estates on the 13th of April, 1677, "is lost to us. We are very sorry to be obliged to tell your High Mightinesses that it has not pleased God to bless on this occasion the arms of the State under our guidance." And then fell also to the troops of Louis XIV the towns of Cambrai, St. Omer, and the defense of Lorraine. But there is now no lace made in Valenciennes. The larger part of the population of twenty-eight thousand worked in the iron foundries and the great machine shops surrounding the town, from which clouds of soft coal smoke rose, reminding one of our own Pittsburgh, but with the addition of much quaint antiquity, which was now (1910) unhappily rapidly disappearing through lack of interest on the part of not only the inhabitants but the authorities, whom one would think alive to their value as an attraction to the town. Formerly strongly fortified and most powerful, this quaint semi-Flemish town, which was now given over thus to prosaic manufacture, was situated at the junction of the rivers Scheldt and Rhondelle. There were huge, ugly sugar factories as well as iron mills, indeed,'tis said that nearly all the sugar used in France was produced here. Like all Flemish towns, Valenciennes had a good deal of drunkenness to contend with on the part of its working people, but I must confess I saw little of it. It is said that Valentinian I, Roman Emperor, gave name to the town, which was at first the capital of a small independent principality. Later it passed into the hands of the Counts of Hainault; suffered and resisted sieges by Margaret of Hainault in 1254; by Louis XI, in 1477; by Turenne, in 1656; and by the Spaniards in the seventeenth century; and by Scherer in 1794. Since the treaty of Nymegen in 1678 it has belonged to France. A great many celebrated men were born at Valenciennes, and all about the statue of Froissart their effigies are arranged in a series of medallions. Among these are Antoine, Louis and François Watteau, Pujol, the painters, Lemaire and Carpeaux, the sculptors, and Charles, Sire de Lannoy and Viceroy of Naples--all natives of the little town. Madame d'Epinay, the author, also was born here. Valenciennes had a most attractive and picturesque square, which occupied the former glacis of the ancient fortifications demolished about twenty years ago, and there was a handsome street, called the Rue de Ferrand, upon which was the "Lycée," formerly a Jesuit college, and the Ecole des Beaux Arts, in which was a museum of natural history, containing a fine collection of minerals of which the townspeople were inordinately proud. They quite ignored the value of a splendid collection of MSS., numbering nearly a thousand examples of mediaeval workmanship, contained in the Municipal Library, occupying part of the old Jesuit college. The custode wrung his hands in despair at the indifference of the authorities to its importance, and became positively and alarmingly affectionate over me when I showed enthusiasm for some of the specimens, so that I had to place myself behind one of the cases where he could not well reach me while I examined the illuminations. There was a fine statue of Antoine Watteau, the painter, by the sculptor Carpeaux, with four figures grouped about it representing Italian comedy. (This statue, I am informed, was shipped to Germany by the invaders in 1916, to be melted up and cast into cannon. An irreparable loss, as it was considered one of the finest examples of the work of Carpeaux.) In the Square was the ancient Church of St. Géry, a remarkable example of Gothic workmanship dating from the thirteenth century, and much studied and valued by architects. In its choir were fine wood carvings illustrating events in the life of St. Norbert, who was the founder of the Præmonstratensian order. The handsome and noteworthy Place d'Armes contained some most quaint and ancient timber dwellings, which were dated variously during the seventeenth century, and in an astonishingly fine state of preservation. But by far the most interesting building in Valenciennes was the Hôtel de Ville, which though lately restored (1868), dated from the seventeenth century, the period of the Spanish occupation. The façade was quite imposing, consisting of a row of Doric columns, upholding a row of Ionic columns, which supported a number of caryatides and a sort of open gallery above. Carpeaux designed the sculptures ornamenting the pediment, which represented the Defense of Valenciennes. Corner of Grand' Place: Valenciennes [Illustration: 0157] This building was occupied by the Musée of Paintings and Sculpture, which was really one of the most important and extensive collections in France of examples of the Flemish school of painting. Here I saw in 1910 a large number of beautiful original drawings, and a collection of Flemish tapestries of incalculable value. There were nine or ten rooms devoted to the Flemish masters, and to mention only a few of the treasures they contained, I note here: "Hell-fire"; Breughel, Toil Devoured by Usury; Jordaens, Twelfth Night; Van Balen, Rope of Europa; P. A. da Cortona, Herodias; Seghers, St. Eloi and the Virgin; Neets, the younger, Church Interior; Vinckboons, Forest; Van Aelst, Still Life; Van Mieris, Pan and Syrinx; Al. Adriensis, Fish Merchant; Van Goyen, Landscape; "Velvet" Breughel, Landscape; Van de Velde, Sea Piece; Van Oost, Adoration of the Shepherds; Pourbus (younger), Marie de Medicis; Brouwer, Tavern Scene; Wouverman, Hunters; Teniers, Interior of Grotto; Rubens, Descent from the Cross; Guido (?), St. Peter; Metsys, Banker and His Wife. The fate of this remarkable collection of Flemish and Spanish paintings is at present shrouded in mystery. It is said, and denied variously, that they were removed to Paris before the German army arrived. I understand from reports in the newspapers, which may or may not be authentic, that this old Hôtel de Ville was entirely destroyed by British shells early in the war, and that the venerable Maison du Prévost, built during the Spanish invasion, and the old timbered and slated houses at the corner of the Grand' Place, one of them occupied by the "Café Modeste," have been entirely destroyed. But at present (May, 1917) Valenciennes is behind the curtain of mystery drawn over its miseries by the Germans. This little town played a small part in the peace of Cambrai, called the "Ladies' peace," in honor of the Princesses who while at Valenciennes had negotiated it there between Charles V and Francis I. "Two women, Francis I's mother and Charles V's aunt, Louise of Savoy, and Margaret of Austria, had the real negotiation of it; they had both of them acquired the good sense and the moderation which come from experience of affairs and from the difficulties in life; they did not seek to give one another mutual surprises and to play off one another reciprocally. They resided in two contiguous houses, between which they caused a communication to be made from the inside, and they conducted the negotiation with so much discretion that the petty Italian princes who were interested in it did not know the results of it until peace was concluded on the 5th of August, 1529.... These women, though morally different and of very unequal social status, both had minds of a rare order, trained to recognize political necessities and not to attempt any but possible successes. They did not long survive their work; Margaret of Austria died on the 1st of December, 1530, and Louise of Savoy on the 22nd of September, 1531." * * Guizot's "France," Vol. Ill, p. 94. This peace lasted until 1536; incessantly troubled, however, by far from pacific symptoms, proceedings and preparations, but it was certainly a monument to the skill of these two princesses. Charles V, on his way through the kingdom, after passing a week at Paris, pushed on to Valenciennes, the first town in his Flemish dominions, where he rested in state. When his eyes rested upon all the wealth and cheerful industry that surrounded him here, he said (according to Brantôme), "There is not in this world any greatness such as that of a King of France." Valenciennes, when I saw it before the outbreak of the great war in 1914, was a rather sleepy little town given over to most prosaic manufactures. There was little evident picturesqueness; most of the ancient buildings had given way to stupid looking stucco covered houses. In vain did my Lady Anne seek the lace makers; they were not to be found--if they existed. There were no bric-a-brac or antique shops, either, wherein one might browse, but there was a quaint and most comfortable hotel, presided over by a garrulous landlord whose (artful) innocence and unworldliness quite took us in, and whose bill, when presented, proved to be fifty per cent more than we had reckoned upon. Valenciennes should have been an economical town to live in, but it was not so; at least in the delightful hotel, which was so well kept and apparently so clean. The day following our arrival two charwomen started at the top of the house with buckets of water and scrubbing brushes. The buckets, by the way, were not the ordinary iron ones, but immense affairs of rough earthenware of a rich buff color outside, and a most delicious bright green enamel inside. The women scrubbed the floors from attic to back door--except the parquet floors--ignoring the corners, for cleanliness comes evidently very near to godliness in these semi-Flemish towns of Northern France; they are not very thorough. Following these bare-armed amazons came the housemaid with a great cake of beeswax, which was fixed into a fork of wood at the end of the handle as long and thick as a broomstick. With this beeswax she rubbed the floor most energetically until the grain of the old oak floor came out clearly. Then followed the polisher with a large, thick, flat brush made in the form of a sort of sandal which was fastened to one foot by a wide strap of leather, the brushless foot was kept stationary; the other with deft slides backwards and forwards produced a most beautiful polish like varnish. There were few carpets to be found anywhere, and in the summer one did not miss them, but I should imagine that the houses would be very damp and cold in the winter, when there is little provision made for heating these old drafty rooms, and (if one might consider expense) wood for the grate fires is charged for at the rate of "F. 1.25 per basket of nine sticks." (Per published tariff.) We were told that the proper way to study this part of the country is to take a small house for the summer. One could furnish cheaply here, it was urged, in the country style, no carpets, and with the furniture made hereabouts. My Lady Anne was quite taken with the idea. The furniture was in good taste, stained a dark brown; it made a charming foil for the bright yellows and pale greens of the crockery. The bedrooms had alcoves for the beds, with a curious little door cut out of the wooden partition wall at the back of the bed: this was for the convenience of the housemaid, as it saved the necessity of pulling out the bed to get behind it. These walls were almost always made of boards, and thus the doors were easily cut, so that covered with wall paper one scarcely ever noticed them. My Lady Anne discovered that the clothing sent to be washed was, unless otherwise ordered, sent home rough dried! Ironing is special. Following the custom here there was no weekly washing day, but washing was done once a month or even two months, and this is the reason why there were so many of the really fine oak or chestnut armoirs to be found. Some of these were most beautiful, made of polished wood, and had often unique brass hinges and locks. Every household had one or more, in spite of the fact that the dealers were on the quest for them. The peasants who lived off the beaten track of travel willingly parted with them for comparatively small prices. We thought it rather extraordinary to find in a poor laborer's cottage a specimen of these fine chests fit for the hall of a millionaire collector. There were also fine wardrobes to be found, with handsomely carved chestnut or applewood panels polished like glass, and with brass knobs and locks worn bright with the use of many generations. Occasionally one could find the old fashioned double decked bed made of dark oak, and the long heavy Norman table, which was the household larder, for in its long and deep drawer were generally stored the household provisions of ham, bacon, or dried fish; never the bread, though, for this was kept overhead upon a well polished board, in the older houses, hung from the ceiling, well out of the way of the rats, the torment of the peasant. In these houses the clothes were hung on ropes high up against the sloping roofs to prevent these pests from gnawing them. The broken necks of bottles were fastened at the ends of these cords or ropes, and on these the rats jumped from the rafters and went spinning over onto the floor far beneath. In all the villages there were public washing pools, a feature of the country. No washing was done in the cottages. Hundreds of peasant women washed the clothes, kneeling in long lines at the sides of the streams, keeping up all the time a chattering and laughing that could be heard from a distance. Sometimes there were shelters overhead for their protection from sun and rain, sometimes not. They washed the clothes on flat boards, and beat them when lathered with a flat wooden sort of paddle. The washing was well done too, surprising to tell, but although they say not, one would think that the process was rather hard upon the clothes. These quaint customs quite charmed us, and we were inclined to shut our eyes to certain evidences of drunkenness and its accompanying sins among the lower classes which could not be concealed, and which perhaps need not be entered into here. Valenciennes was a manufacturing town, and the condition of the artisan classes was said to be even worse than that in Belgium just over the border. The hours of labor were long--unquestionably too long--and said to be as a rule fixed by the employer. Children of tender age were employed in factory and warehouse, and this perhaps explains the stunted appearance of the poor people. The law says that no child under sixteen can be kept at work for more than twelve hours a day, but it is understood that this law was easily evaded. The result was inevitable. If the child could be kept at work for twelve hours a day, then it will be understood that an adult was assumed to be able to do more. Of course the man did not really work as hard as our own men do, and that he did piece work, and also that a considerable portion of his time must be deducted for shirking, for gossip and for rest. Still, at the foundries the hours and the labor were both excessive. The thought had not occurred to these manufacturers and proprietors that a man might do more in sixty hours a week than he will do in seventy. The terrible "Borinage" district of the mines of Belgium, which extends as far west as Quevrain on the border, really runs over the line, and some of its conditions existed at Blanc Misseron, Fresnes, and at Bruay. The name "Borinage" signifies the place of boring. Here was to be found a state of society that does not exist in any other part of the country, and the miners and their wretched families were a type quite distinct from all the rest of their countrymen. By the character of their work and by the deficiencies or lack of education, supplemented by the poisonous effects of the fiery and deleterious potato brandy and other decoctions which they freely imbibe, they had sunk into a state of both physical and mental decay. "A visit to these places is not a pleasant experience, and the closer the acquaintance made with the life of the mining population the less attractive does it appear. The employment of children of tender years lies at the root of the ignorance of the people of the province.... To the proprietors, with rare exceptions, the miners are mere beasts of burden, in whom they do not feel the least interest. No steps whatever are taken to improve the lot of the miners, to elevate their ideas, or even to provide them with amusement or recreations.... The only places of resort are the 'Estaminets' and cabarets that are to be found in every third or fourth house.... It is scarcely going too far to say that morality does not exist in the Borinage; but the great curse in this community is the large number of immature mothers, and the consequent inseparable deterioration of the whole race.... Ignorance and immorality explain the low condition to which the mining population has sunk, but even these causes would not have produced such an appalling result if they had not been supplemented by the prevalence of drunkenness. As there is no restriction upon the sale of drink, every house may retail intoxicating liquors, and in many places where it is procurable there is no external appearance of the place being a drinking shop. The room of the cottage will contain a few chairs and benches, besides a table, and the liquor comes from a cupboard or an inner room. In warm weather the table and chairs are placed outside, and on Sundays and feast days there is not one of these houses which will not be crowded with visitors. The only amusement known to these people is to drink and to get drunk.... The beer drinkers are the more reasonable drunkards of the two. Having soaked themselves with 'faro' (a thin sour beer) they sleep it off. Not so the spirit drinkers, for when they have finished their orgies they are half mad with the poisonous alcohol which they have imbibed. "The true explanation of the evils that follow this spirit drinking is to be found in the character of the spirit itself. In name it is gin or 'genievre,' but it bears little or no trace of that origin. What it is, no one outside the place of manufacture--which appears to be unknown--can correctly declare, but by the smell it would seem to be mainly composed of paraffin oil. This beverage is called 'Schnick' and is the favorite spirit of the miners. It is sold for ten centimes (1 penny) for a large wine glass, and five centimes (1/2 penny) for a small, and official statistics show that a large majority of the miners drink a pint of this stuff every day of their lives, while it is computed that there are no fewer than fifty thousand who drink a quart.... Lest the reader should imagine that there is some exaggeration in the figures just given, it may be mentioned that the total consumption of spirits per head of the population (of Belgium) exceeds fifty quarts." * * "Belgian Life in Town and Country." Demetrius C. Boulger, p. 76. This is, of course, written of Belgium, but as this mining country extends beyond the border into France, as I have said, these conditions exist in the neighboring villages to the north and east of Valenciennes. It is a relief to turn from this terrible picture to the vistas southwards, but it is only just to add that the Belgian Government was doing its best to cleanse this region when the war broke out and put a stop to the work. How could the people who dwell in this terrible spot be other than debased? Conditions were all against them. World welfare demands the product of the mines; so workers are automatically produced to supply it, and thus across this fair land stretches this great black belt, like a vast unhealed wound, that extends from the western boundaries of Picardy, far beyond the German Westphalian province, and digs deep into the bowels of the earth, its presence being detected from afar by the heavy clouds of pungent, evil smelling black and brown smoke of the furnaces, as one approaches, and by the great heaps of clay and ashes along the railway lines. This is the territory coveted by the "war lord." This is the road to the Channel, and over this strip by day and by night fall the shells of the invaders and defenders alike. Gone now are the peaceful farmsteads; the quaint old villages clustered about the gray towers of the churches and monasteries, and the many towered, white walled châteaux in the vine clad gardens. The quiet towns and villages which we explored in those memorable summer days of 1910 are swept from the face of the earth, and there are now long level wide roads stretching towards and into the horizon, upon which the whole day and night, two mighty lines of silent armed men linking together heavy wagons and immense shapeless masses of heavy guns and tractors, to and from the fighting lines, form endless processions. The God of Efficiency in destruction now reigns where once peaceful thrift was enthroned. SOISSONS |BOTH Abelard and Thomas à Becket are identified with this venerable fortress town, which was lately noted for its haricot-beans, and whose people, steeped in trade with Paris, were entirely oblivious to the value and beauty of the great cathedral of Notre Dame, SS. Gervais and Protais, the equal of which was perhaps not in all France. Here Abelard was imprisoned in a tower which was shown, to those who sought it out, by a lame old priest. This tower was surmounted by a small chapel; it contained nothing, however, which was identified with the prisoner. There was also to be seen the ancient Abbey of St. Jean des Vignes, in which Thomas à Becket "spent nine years." The chief and most interesting part of this was the west façade or "portail," in the style of the thirteenth century, and flanked by a great tower more than 200 feet high, some say 225 feet, which could be seen from a great distance. The approach to the town by way of the river bank was all that could be desired for picturesqueness, and above the trees and the quaint red tiled roofs of the many gabled houses, the great tower of the venerable cathedral lifted its heavy gray mass against a fleecy sky. The river was full of quaintly fashioned barges, and heavily built boats with huge rudders painted with stripes of vivid green and red, something like those on the Maas in Holland. Here and there a small black steamer belched forth pungent sooty smoke, and there seemed to be a great deal of business going on all about, and an air of prosperity and alertness, entirely out of keeping in so venerable a town, and which one could not decide to be quite as it should be or not. There were modern shops also with windows dressed quite _à la Paris_, and a good hostelry, the _Lion Rouge_, where one was made extraordinarily comfortable for a rather small sum. The streets were filled with quaint and unusual characters, and now and again we saw costumes and some headdresses on the peasant women that we had not seen elsewhere. An old traveler writing of Soissons said: "At a small inn, 'Des Trois Pucelles,' I had a noble salmon, that still excites emotions in me when I think of it. I have never met with its like since--and there was also venison, a whole haunch brought to table, and claret the like of which would grace the king's table." I looked for "Des Trois Pucelles," but alas, it had been pulled down long since. Cathedral: Soissons [Illustration: 0177] In this pleasant town, one might have lingered indefinitely and not lacked entertainment. Soissons was called Augusta Suessionum under the early Empire. The town has great notoriety among historians for the great number of sieges it has undergone, down to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, when for three days it resisted all attempts to take it. Here Pépin le Bref was proclaimed King, and Louis le Débonnaire's undutiful sons imprisoned him in the Abbey of S. Medard. From the beginning of the eleventh century to the middle of the fourteenth century, Soissons was ruled by its hereditary counts, but one of these, Louis de Chatil-lon, who fell at the battle of Crécy, being imprisoned in England, to pay his ransom, sold his countship to En-guerrand VII de Coucy in 1367, and with all the rest of the appanage of Coucy, it was taken by the crown of Louis XII. From Cæsar to Napoleon its importance from a military point of view has been of the greatest value from its splendid position on the banks of the river Aisne. For centuries it had to defend itself from continued attacks, and in these, although many times successful, the stronghold seems to have worn down to its walls and towers. It has been called by historians "The City of Sieges," and certainly few towns seem to have suffered more. Doubtless its magnificent strategic position on the river Aisne has been the reason for the successive attacks upon it. It was also a favorite seat of royalty, and the capital of a Roman king, Syagrius. Architects have pronounced the Cathedral's interior even more impressive than that of Rheims, and say that "the beautiful proportions of the nave, the simplicity and purity of the carved capitals, the splendid glass, rendered it one of the most beautiful cathedrals of France." ("Cathedral Cities of France," Herbert Marshall.) It was a splendid example of mixed Romanesque and Gothic of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The west façade had three beautiful doors, and a great rose window of Gothic design containing glass, the equal of which cannot, in the writer's opinion, be found in all France. There is a great square tower on the south side, terminating in an apse. Inside, I saw some tapestry of the fifteenth century in good condition, and the sacristan showed an "Adoration of the Shepherds," which he attributed to Rubens, but it was so badly lighted that little of the detail could be seen. Soissons suffered much at the hands of the Germans during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, when it was besieged by a force under the command of the Duke of Mecklenburg, whose soldiers burned and destroyed to their hearts' content. Even as late as 1910, when I visited the town, the sacristan of the Cathedral, in response to a question as to his knowledge of the siege, became quite incoherent in his denunciations of the enemy. One wonders what has become of this cultured and delightful old man, who was at once priest and patriot. The south transept is said to have been the oldest part of the Cathedral, and here was the sacristy (dated the end of the twelfth century). The sacristan showed us the choir (1212) which was surrounded by eight square, and the apse by five chapels of polygonal form. Of these "Fergusson" says, "Nothing can exceed the justness of the proportions of the center and side aisles, both in themselves and to one another." Kneeling statues of the abbesses, Marie de la Rochefoucauld and Henriette de Lorraine d'Elbeuf were placed at either side of the west portal. These were from the royal abbey of Notre Dame, but the sacristan could not, or at any rate did not, give me any other information concerning them. In the west end was a lovely little chapel, in what is called the "Salle capit-ulaire," entrance to which is through an early Gothic cloister with graceful vaulting supported by two beautiful columns. Very little remained of the once magnificent Abbey of St. Jean des Vignes, except two spires, and a ruined façade, and this is on an eminence near the station. In the bombardment of the town during the Franco-Prus-sian War these were greatly damaged, but not destroyed. Here Thomas à Becket lived in 1170. Some of the remaining buildings were being used as a military prison in 1910. The beautiful remains of the royal abbey of Notre Dame were given over to the authorities as a soldiers' barracks, and admission to the premises was refused us at the gate by a sentry. Behind the Cathedral was the Hôtel de Ville, which contained the Library and the Museum, neither of which was impressive. Near the royal abbey of Notre Dame was the old Tour Lardier, in which, according to legend, Satan was put in chains and confined by St. Vaast. Outside the town, to the north, was the ruined church of St. Crepin-en-Chaye, where in an abbey built in the eleventh century, the Saints Crepinien were burned at the stake as martyrs. The abbots of old were certainly militant personages, and their castles were strongholds. We saw the remains of the abbey of St. Medard, which is said to have been founded in 560 by Clotaire I. Here the Kings Clotaire and Sigebert were buried, and here Childeric III was deposed; Pépin of Heristal received his crown, and Louis le Débonnaire imprisoned by his heartless sons in 833. Abelard, condemned at the Council of Soissons, was confined here for years. Cathedral: Noyon [Illustration: 0185] The monastery was one of the richest in France, holding an appanage of two hundred and fifty villages, including manor houses and farmsteads. A warrior abbot headed one hundred and fifty armed vassals at the Battle of Bouvines. Of the seven churches of St. Medard nothing remained, and the site was occupied by some nondescript buildings used as some sort of charitable institution. In a crypt under the chapel of the abbey church we were shown a large stone coffin, alleged to be that of Clotaire, and a small vault contains a cell in which the unfortunate Louis le Débonnaire languished. There is an inscription supporting this as follows:= ```"Hélas, je suys bons prins des douleurs `````que j'endure! ````Mourir mieux me vaudrait: `````la peine me tient dure." `````(Fourteenth Century.)= Of the genuineness of this inscription some authorities are doubtful, but I include it here, nevertheless. This whole region is now hidden behind the mask of smoke and mystery of the present infernal war. Just what ruin lies behind this dropped curtain is uncertain. It has been reported that Soissons is in ashes, burned and sacked in revenge for the failure of the Verdun attack. At any rate its inhabitants are confined within the limits of the town, and it is understood that they are compelled to toil unceasingly for the invaders. The vast farmsteads and fields are understood to be worked to the utmost by the townspeople in regular "gangs" under the eyes of German officers, and that the crops have been regularly gathered and distributed under the remarkable system for which the Germans are noted. Other than these no details have been allowed to creep forth from this unfortunate town. That this sanctuary of architecture may perchance escape entire destruction at the hands of these barbarians is not too much to hope for, but that the Cathedral should be spared is inconceivable, when one remembers the fate of Rheims, Ypres, Louvain, Arras, Malines and Noyon, to mention but a few of the incomparable treasures that have vanished before their onslaught. Soissons' magnificent monuments are now probably heaps of calcined stone and charred beams. Those marvels of painted glass will live henceforth only in the memory of those whose good fortune it was to have seen and valued them. As I write this the Cathedral of Lâon is reported to be a wreck, and is thus added to the list. Words fail me. These "murdered cities" are glorified forever more.... How one's imagination responds to their very names: Verdun, Amiens, Soissons, Rheims, Arras, Valenciennes!--and those others of Flanders: Bruges, Ghent, Louvain, Malines, Lille and Ypres--how full are these of grace and fancy. What ring of shield!--What clang of arms! For forty years these towns have enjoyed peace and fancied security, while that once great power, with hypocritical words of good will towards all men, even while sending delegates to the conferences at The Hague, was deliberately planning the destruction of sleeping nations whose lands are now invaded; whose young manhood is disappearing in a storm of blood and iron; whose architectural treasures are now but smoldering heaps of ashes! Rheims Cathedral, it is urged, was a landmark; a menace to the invader;--and this is true. It was a landmark, most certainly, and therefore it was a menace to the army of the invader, and was destroyed. This fact established, there followed the destruction of the other cathedrals, and it may be that before the invader is beaten off and pushed back over his own boundary line, those other great works of art still untouched will vanish under the rain of fire and shell--and none remain. Such a catastrophe is appalling, and it may be realized before the war is over, for there is small reason why all should not suffer the fate of great St. Martin's at Ypres, and Rheims, at the hands of the descendants of the Huns and the Allemanni. As it is now six great cathedral towns lie inclosed within their iron clad battle lines--Soissons, Lâon, Senlis, Amiens, Noyon and Rheims; of these Rheims, Soissons, Noyon and Senlis have been ruined; Amiens remains (so we are told) intact. No such assurance is given of Lâon, with its wonderful square ended choir, the only one in France, and the remarkable effigies of oxen, carved in stone, on the tops of the twin towers. NOYON |NOYON is really a most beautiful little town asleep amid surrounding heavy verdure and, with its dominating cathedral towers of Notre Dame, half Romanesque, half Gothic, which architects pronounce one of the best specimens of the transition period in France, is a veritable storehouse of interest." (I find this in my notebook, dated July, 1910.) It was named by the Romans "Noviodunam Veroman-duorum" and was notable as the residence of the great Bishops SS. Medard and Eloi. Here Charlemagne was crowned King of the Franks in 768. Jacques Sarrazin was born here in 1592, and a monument to him by the sculptor Mohlknecht was placed on the promenade in 1851. Just what the invaders have done to this sleepy, peaceful, little town, can not at this writing be ascertained, but it is reported that the great towers of the cathedral have been shot away, and that most of the town is a mass of shapeless debris. Mr. Ralph Adams Cram, the eminent architect who has made a study of the cathedral, says in his scholarly and informing book ("The Heart of Europe," p. 99), "The ancient cathedral was burned in 1131, and the present work begun shortly after, though it is hard to believe that much of the existing structure antedates the year 1150. The crossing and transepts date from about 1170, and the nave ten years later, while the west front and towers are of the early part of the next century. The certainty and calm assurance of the work is remarkable. Paris, which is later, is full of tentative experiments, but there is no halting here, rather a severe certainty of touch that is perfectly convincing.... In 1293 the whole town was destroyed by fire, and the cathedral wrecked; but it was immediately reconstructed, however; and at this time the sexpartite gave place to the quadripartite vaulting, while the west front with its great towers, very noble in their proportions and their powerful buttressing, was completed." From the earliest days Noyon in common with its neighboring towns seems to have had a hard time of it, whether in war or peace. The communes constantly fought with each other, the ancient burghers of Noyon being at daily loggerheads with the established metropolitan clergy. A certain Baudri de Larchainville, a native of Artois who had the title of chaplain of the bishopric, "a man of wise and reflecting mind" who did not share the violent aversion felt by most of his order for the existing institutions of communes, realized that sooner or later all would have to bow to authority, and that it was better to surrender to the wishes of the citizens than to shed blood in order to postpone an unavoidable revolution. Elected Bishop of Noyon in 1098, he found this town in the same state of unrest and insurrection as Cambrai. The registers of the church contained a host of documents entitled "Peace Made between Us and the Burghers of Noyon." But no reconciliation was lasting. "The truce was soon broken either by the clergy or by the citizens, who were the more touchy in that they had less security for their persons and their property." The new bishop believed that the establishment of a commune sworn to by both the rival parties might become a sort of compact of alliance between them, and he set about realizing this noble idea before the word commune had served at Noyon as the rallying cry of popular insurrection. "Of his own mere motion he convoked in assembly all the inhabitants of the town, clergy, knights, traders, and craftsmen. He presented them with a charter which constituted the body of burghers, an association forever under magistrates called _Jurymen_, like those of Cambrai. 'Whosoever,' said the charter, 'shall desire to enter this commune shall not be able to be received as a member of it by a single individual, but only in the presence of the Jurymen. The sum of money he shall then give shall be employed for the benefit of the town, and not for the private advantage of any one whatsoever. If the commune be outraged, all those who have sworn to it shall be bound to march to its defense, and none shall be empowered to remain at home unless he be infirm or sick, or so poor that he must needs be himself the watcher of his own wife and children lying sick. If any one have wounded or slain any one on the territory of the commune, the Jurymen shall take vengeance therefor.'" The other articles guarantee to the members of the commune of Noyon the complete ownership of their property, and the right of not being handed over to justice save before their own municipal magistrates. The bishop first swore to this charter, and the inhabitants of every condition took the same oath after him. In virtue of his pontifical authority he pronounced the anathema, and all the curses of the Old and New Testament, against whoever should in time to come try to dissolve the commune or infringe its regulations. Furthermore, in order to give this new pact a stronger warranty, Baudri requested the King of France, Louis the Fat, to corroborate it, as they used to say at the time, by his approbation and by the great seal of the Crown. The King consented to this request of the bishop, and that was all the part taken by Louis the Fat in the establishment of the Commune of Noyon. Fifteenth Century House: Noyon [Illustration: 0199] The King's Charter is not preserved but, under the date of 1108, there is extant one of the bishop's own, which may serve to substantiate the account given. "Baudri, by the grace of God, bishop of Noyon, to all those who do persevere and go on in the faith: "Most dear brethren, we learn by the example and words of the holy Fathers, that all good things ought to be committed to writing for fear lest hereafter they come to be forgotten. "Know then all Christians present and to come, that I have formed at Noyon a commune, constituted by the council and in an assembly of clergy, knights and burghers; that I have confirmed it by oath, by pontifical authority and by the bond of anathema, and that I have prevailed upon our lord King Louis to grant this commune and corroborate it with the King's Seal. This establishment formed by me, sworn to by a great number of persons, and granted by the King, let none be so bold as to destroy or alter; I give warning thereof, on behalf of God and myself, and I forbid it in the name of Pontifical Authority. "Whosoever shall transgress and violate the present law, be subjected to excommunication; and whosoever, on the contrary, shall faithfully keep it, be preserved forever amongst those who dwell in the house of the Lord." Thus was formed the Commune of Noyon in the year of our Lord 1108. At the end of the eleventh century the town had become one of the most important in the kingdom, filled with rich and industrious inhabitants; thither came, as to Lâon, the neighboring people for provisions or diversion; and such concourse led to many disturbances. Thierry says, "The nobles and their servitors, sword in hand, committed robbery upon the burghers; the streets of the town were not safe by night or even by day, and none could go out without running a risk of being stopped and robbed or killed." "Let me give as example," says Guibert of Nogent, "a single fact, which had it taken place amongst the Barbarians or Scythians, would assuredly have been considered the height of wickedness, in the judgment even of those who recognize no law. On Saturday the inhabitants of the country places used to leave their fields, and come from all sides to get provisions at the market. The townsfolk used then to go round the place carrying in baskets or bowls or otherwise, samples of vegetables or grain or any other article, as if they wished to sell. They would offer them to the first peasant who was in search of such things to buy; he would promise to pay the price agreed upon; then the seller would say to the buyer, 'Come with me to my house to see and examine the whole of the articles I am selling you.' The other would go; and then when they came to the bin containing the goods, the _honest_ seller would take off and hold up the lid, saying to the buyer, 'Step hither and put your head or arms into the bin to make quite sure that it is exactly the same goods as I showed you outside.' And then when the other unsuspecting, jumping on to the edge of the bin, remained leaning on his belly, with his head and shoulders hanging down, the worthy seller, who kept in the rear, would hoist up the thoughtless rustic by the feet, push him suddenly into the bin, and clapping down the lid as he fell, keep him shut up in this safe prison until he _bought_ himself out." This story, told of the Commune of Lâon, formed in imitation of that at Noyon, was typical of all such communities. Lâon elected one Gaudri, a Norman by birth, referendary of Henry I, King of England, and one of those churchmen who according to Thierry's expression, "had gone in the train of William the Bastard to seek their fortunes amongst the English by seizing the property of the vanquished." Of scarcely edifying life, he had the tastes and habits of a soldier; was hasty and arrogant; a fighter and also something of a glutton. He met at Langres Pope Pascal II, come to France to keep the festival of Christmas at the Abbey of Cluny. The Pope had heard of his reputation, for afterwards he asked the ecclesiastics who accompanied Gaudri, "why they had chosen a man unknown to them." "The question being asked in Latin, none of the priests knew even the rudiments of the tongue, so they could not answer," (says Guibert de Nogent, who records the matter). Gaudri certainly was scantily fitted for the bishopric, as the town soon discovered. "Scarcely had he been installed when he committed strange outrages. He had a man's eyes put out on suspicion of connivance with his enemies; and he tolerated the murder of another in the metropolitan church. In imitation of rich crusaders on their return from the East, he kept a black slave, whom he employed upon his deeds of vengeance. The burghers began to be disquieted and to wax wroth. So a commune was resolved upon like that at Noyon, and was speedily set up and proclaimed, to the manifest wrath of Gaudri, who for days abstained from entering the town. But the burghers, craftily acting upon his cupidity and avariciousness, 'offered him so large a sum of money as to appease the tempest of his words,' so he accepted the commune and swore to respect it. "For the space of three years all went well, and the burghers were happy and proud of the liberty they enjoyed, but when in 1112 the Bishop had spent the money thus received, he meditated over and keenly regretted the power thus bartered away, and resolved to return the townspeople to the old condition of serfdom. Consulting with King Louis the Fat, he won his consent to the plan he had in mind, by promising him untold sums of money." The Charter, sealed with the King's Seal, was annulled; and on the part of the King and the Bishop an order was issued to all the magistrates of the commune to cease from their functions, to give up the seal and the banner of the town, to ring no longer the belfry chimes which rang out the opening and closing of their audiences. But at this proclamation, so violent was the uproar in the town, that the King, who had hitherto lodged in a private hotel, thought it prudent to leave, and go to pass the night in the Episcopal Palace, which was surrounded by high walls. Not content with this precaution, and probably a little ashamed of what he had done, he left the next morning at daybreak with all his train, without waiting for the celebration of the festival of Easter for which he had undertaken the journey. Such troubles and disorders marked the rise and fall of all the communes. Those who are interested in such history of the struggles of the people for liberty of person and action may read further the accounts of the communes in Guizot's admirable History of France, from which these are extracts. Suffice it to say here that all the towns of Cambrai, Beauvais, Amiens, Soissons, Rheims and several others displayed at this period a vast deal of energy and perseverance in bringing their lords to recognize the most natural and the most necessary rights of every human creature and community. From this brief account some idea may be had of the ancient conditions. Let us now turn to the terrible state of affairs under which the unfortunate inhabitants of these quaint towns of Northern France are suffering. In the book of Octave Beauchamp, "Le Tour de France aux Cités Meurtries," is the following letter (which I translate roughly) of Leonie Godfroy, a nurse, known as "Schwester" God-froy: "During the night of the 28th to the 29th of August, the Mayor of Noyon advised the people, that as the situation had become critical because of the approach of the German army, all those who could do so should leave the town to escape the terrors of the invasion." L' Ancien Eveche: Noyon [Illustration: 0209] "In one of my school books, I remember a picture which, when I first saw it, filled me with horror. It represented the Exodus of the Gauls at the approach of the Huns, and was drawn, I think, by Gustav Doré,--the women half naked, dragged away by the savage soldiers; the terrified and crying children; the old men and women hurrying away, some empty-handed, others laden with all manner of objects which at any other time, or under different conditions would have seemed ridiculous, but which coupled with their terror, became pathetic. This picture now was enacted by my unfortunate fellow townspeople in their attempt to escape from the dangers of the bombardment and acts of the invaders. Crowds were running towards the railway depot, not realizing that the cars were already crowded to suffocation with half fainting women and terrified children. Others sat beside the ways, wailing and wringing their hands; here and there sat groups silent, staring as if they had lost their senses! "The forests outside the town were filled with hiding, terrified women, and here the Uhlans gathered on the morning of the 30th, after the invasion and occupation of Noyon. During this flight from town many women became mothers by the roadside, and lay there helpless until attended to by the German Ambulance Corps. The Germans arrived on the 30th of August. They entered Noyon after having fired three great shells into the city, which met with no response. The silence of death was over the town, save for the howling here and there of an abandoned dog, shut indoors. "We, the staff at the hospital, gathered about the president of our committee, with clasped hands, vowed solemnly that come what would, we should remain at our post, to do our duty to the end. With us stayed some courageous young women nurses, and several of the attendants. "Some hours before we had received at the hospital some dozen or so wounded English soldiers from the front. We were in the midst of our work with these, when there came the sound of violent banging on the front door. Two Uhlans burst in past the attendant and entered the court. "Catching sight of us ranged about the cot of a wounded soldier, these pushed us aside, examined the condition of the wounded men in the room and without saying one word to any of us, hurriedly took their departure. "From this instant our wounded were prisoners of war, and must resign themselves to all the circumstances of such state. The smallest resistance (of course there could be no resistance whatever on their part, wounded unto death as they were) would be visited upon us all; we would be shot in groups, and the hospital burned. Shortly after this a 'section' (so-called) entered the hospital without any formality, pistols in hand. The officers at once commandeered the autos in the court, and demanded our entire supply of gasolene. "Behind these advance soldiers, the German troops began to defile past the windows in plain sight. Then came weary men covered with dust and grime of the march, demanding food and drink. Some of these threw themselves upon the cots beside the lesser wounded, and seemed instantly to fall asleep. "We were soon unable to reply satisfactorily to the questions of the officers. They asked us, Frenchmen, how we found the French; if the English were numerous; if they had burned the bridges. We answered as well as we could, and as briefly as possible without giving them offense. The rooms being full, we placed foot tubs in the court, and attended to them. For the most part they impressed us filled with a great anxiety, even fear...." (Here follow allegations that are untranslatable--ignoble--they are omitted.) "We saw from the windows regiments of men in gray passing in great disorder, the men covered with dust and grime, and not always keeping step. Great army wagons passed, the drivers of which slept nodding on the seats. Some we saw fall as the wagons lurched. The horses seemed spent, and only kept going because of heavy blows and prods from bayonets. "This army of invasion resembles more an army in retreat. Imagine the state of affairs in this little city of Noyon, once so happy and peaceful, now resounding with the noise of the great guns of the Germans both day and night--nights of terror! "All the grocery shops are pillaged and gutted, so also the pharmacies and the bazaars. "Many of the houses are turned into something like shops for the barter of objects stolen by the soldiers in the town. In these furniture, silver, objects of art and linen are exchanged and packed up to be sent to Germany. The inhabitants are commanded to deposit with the 'Kommandantur' not only all firearms, but also all photographic cameras and telephone instruments in their possession. All pigeons in the town have been killed to prevent their being employed as messengers by the people. In occupying Noyon, the Germans have attempted to strip the place thoroughly of everything of value. Their hospital ambulances, called 'lazarets,' are used to gather in the proceeds of their thefts. "There is one at the theater, and others in the most important establishments. Here all that is collected by the soldiers each day is taken. The wine cellars have been emptied, it is said, and large quantities shipped to Germany. It has for days now been impossible for us to get a bottle of wine for our patients." Retable in the Cathedral: Noyon [Illustration: 0217] "In the great bombardment now going on of Noyon by the French endeavoring to drive out the enemy, the _faubourgs_ have suffered greatly; that of d'Amiens, the boulevards and the Rue d'Oroire particularly. The gas works and the depot are both destroyed, as well as the military casernes. I have heard the officers say how much they admire the French cannon, and the artillery corps. They frequently repeat in our hearing the ancient 'blague'--the Germans and the French should be friends--they will be sooner or later--they should unite for the good of humanity and for the downfall of England!--From officer to soldier this is the shibboleth. It does not ring true! Now and then there are visits from princes and dignitaries, accompanied by tremendous excitement and troops blazing with color, bands of music, and all intended to impress and encourage the dusty, dirty troops of soldiers who are continually coming from and going to the front, and lend a factitious animation to the town. Each day the German 'Etat Major' sends out the 'communiqués,' which are placarded all over town. The people of Noyon who remain pay little attention to them. "They do, however, study and commit to memory the rules of circulation. For instance, it is dangerous for one to pass twice on any given day in the same street; to stand talking with a friend without plausible reason, or to go to the railway station or walk upon a public promenade without permission. In the evening all are ordered to be in the house by four o'clock. The town is plunged in inky darkness at night, for the gas house and works are destroyed. Those who must have light use candles, but the price of these has risen beyond all belief. All lights at night are carefully hidden by blinds and heavy curtains, for at the least ray of light seen by the German patrol, suspicion is cast upon the inmates, and a 'crime' of this sort invariably brings arrest and a night in confinement under guard at the 'post' or even the risk of being sent to Germany. I have seen young and old, a priest and a sacristan thus sent away. "Often even a gesture misunderstood by a patrol results in the banishment of the offender over the border into Germany. "The Mayor of Noyon has carried on the difficult tasks entrusted to him with great skill and remarkable courage. Many times his administrations have placed him in grave danger, but so far he has not suffered for his demands for justice towards his unfortunate fellow townsmen. "Every Sunday mass is celebrated in the untouched part of the Cathedral. A Protestant service also is given following it. The troops attend in two detachments, and the sight of these two bodies at once in the Cathedral is sufficiently curious, and certainly most unusual. "In the afternoon the officers arrange a sort of concert, at which artists who are unlucky enough to be here are expected to perform. These are usually melancholy affairs. "When the town was first occupied by the Germans, in September, 1914, it was to the Cathedral that they sent their prisoners for confinement. The inhabitants were ordered to bring provisions for them, but were not allowed access to them. It was necessary to intrust the food they brought to the sentinels, and no one knows whether the food reached the poor prisoners or not. "As for the Cathedral, I can say truly that the two great towers were constantly used by the German soldiers as posts of observation. Our glorious dead have been laid at rest at the foot of an immense cross erected outside the town. "The Germans have prepared for their dead a large 'fosse' in the middle of a field. An armed picket guard assists at the interments of both French and Germans, at which military honors are scrupulously observed and given. These ceremonies, often under the heavy fire of the great guns of the French, have made an impression upon me that I shall never forget. "The morning of the 17th of October, as I was engaged in renewing the dressing of a lieutenant s wounds, two German policemen brusquely entered, and called out 'Schwester Godfroy!' "Hearing my name I turned and prepared to follow the two men, but these rough men, deeming my movements not quick enough, seized me by the arms and pushed me towards the stairs leading to my chamber. In the hallway I perceived my companions, each grasped by a 'gendarme.' An officer and five men pushed me with them into my chamber and locked the door; then these men, with a brutality impossible here to describe, ransacked my bed, ripped open the mattress and pillows, after which they turned the contents of my valise out on the floor, threw my clothing about; even breaking off the legs of my '_table de nuit_' to see if I had not letters or papers hidden therein. I kept my temper, remaining quiet. "Seeing me so calm seemed to render them furious at finding nothing to incriminate me. My trunk in a corner of the room attracted their attention, and they roughly ordered me to open it. I made them understand that there was no key to it. One of them wrenched off the lid with his saber, to discover that the trunk was empty. They then questioned me minutely, after eyeing suspiciously several German newspapers lying on the table. "'You speak German, and you refuse to admit it; but do not mistake--you and the others--we know you to be Belgians, and if you can get to Paris, it is not for the purpose of caring for the wounded...' "This seemed so foolish to me that I refused to answer. "For at least ten minutes they bent over my poor papers, my little souvenirs, and a piece of paper money which they examined minutely, thinking to find state secrets, I suppose. "Afterwards, when they returned my money, they kept five or six letters which I had preserved and kept by me as dear relics, precious letters from my mother and sisters... Their gross impoliteness made no outward impression upon me, but the instant their attention was attracted from me, and they turned their heads in another direction, I threw adroitly in a corner of my valise, which remained open beside me, a small packet which I carried in the waist of my dress. In this I had written a sort of diary of my experiences since the beginning of the war, together with accounts given me by wounded Frenchmen of their personal impressions of the combats in which they had been wounded; a few sketches and such matters, all innocent of any military value, but which, if found upon me, would have but one quick result... I pushed the valise farther under the table with a stealthy movement of my foot. The men then left the room, shutting the door behind them. Almost instantly two horrible 'Schwestern' entered without knocking, and proceeded to undress me, examining even the lining of my clothes for concealed papers--Of course they found none. My companions suffered the same indignities at the hands of these horrible creatures, who seemed to us more brutes than women. When they had gone, and I was sure that no one observed, I again concealed the packet of papers in the waist of my dress as before." Of her further adventures I can give no more here. She was taken away from Noyon shortly after the experience just related and sent to a detention camp of Holzminden in Germany with her companion nurses. Her experiences there were remarkable, and after serving with faithfulness until the following April, she was sent to Rastadt, the fortress, from which she obtained permission to leave, and return to Noyon by way of Switzerland. She finishes by writing: "Now, after more than a year has passed, I am once more in our dear little cottage, among those whom I had thought and feared never to see again. Alas--the war continues. Certainly I dreamed that war was very different from what I found it to be, and if my health returns to me, as I hope, I shall resume my work. I have seen the soldiers in the midst of battle at the front; I have attended them in the ambulances with undreamed of wounds; I have listened to and received their agonized confidences, and attended them to the end. They are all heroes to me... I have known them in captivity, famished for food, insulted, brutalized by their captors. Our brave boys! "Their courage, the grandeur of their souls, their indifference to pain in the face of duty, imparts to me something of their courage which inspires me. "A country defended by such an army has no right to doubt final victory. "(Signed) Leonie Godfroy." Hotel de Ville: Noyon [Illustration: 0227] One revolts at these terrible pictures and accounts of the ravages of war in this former peaceful town, now so ravaged by the German army. Its picturesque town hall with the emblazoned coat of arms below the turret, where those flocks of white pigeons paraded the coping, cooing in the sunshine--now a mass of blackened ruin, behind a vast hole in the ground in what was once the town square, marking where one of the great shells fell and burst; and the shattered towers of the gray old Cathedral, the roof of which is gone, leaving the debris filled interior open to the rainy gray cloudy sky. Where now are the throngs of happy, apparently care-free peasants who thronged the "place" before the flag-hung old Town Hall that morning we last saw it in September, 1910?... The Patron Saints' day--a day dear to the peasants. This festival which takes place but once a year, is an event in the peasant's life. On this day he invites his friends and his relatives to his house, each in turn. In such communities throughout France, where the church still preserves authority, the priest earnestly endeavors to protect the peasants from the wiles and temptations of sin--this is one of the few days when dancing is allowed. Thus in each section of the country or province the occasion is given a different name, although the circumstances of its celebration do not differ greatly. In the North of France the day is known under the name of "La Dricasse," in the East as "La Rapport," in Savoy as the "Vogue"; in Touraine as the "Assemblée"; as the "Ballade" in Poitou; as the "Frairie" in Angoumois; and as the "Pardon" in Brittany. The day before the fête, long lines of wagons with peddlers and mountebanks arrived in the "place" and each took up its station upon a position marked out with white stones, according to whatever license has been allotted to the showman at the Town Hall. There was no disorder whatever, no dispute with the _Sergeant de Ville_, whose word is law. The wagons were unpacked in the light of flaring naphtha torches under the excited eyes of the gamins who formed a wondering, pushing ring about the workmen until driven away by the police. One may believe that during that night the peasants slept lightly for thinking of the joys of the feasting and dancing of the morrow. At dawn of day the chimes in the cathedral awakened them. Soon they thronged the streets, the men dressed in new blouses, or treasured wedding coats, the girls all in unaccustomed finery of stiff skirts and Sunday headdress. All go to mass on a day of this sort as a sacred duty. The old Cathedral was crowded to the doors with the people; sitting and standing. Late comers fared badly and remained at the porch. Even there, they knelt piously at their devotions. But it seemed to us that the whole congregation was nervously excited and impatient to be gone. We could not hear the words of the priest's sermon, but undoubtedly he counseled them to keep sober and to beware of the attractiveness of sin. When the Amen was chanted how quickly the peasants left the old church! How they hastened to the square, where already flags were flying all about, and where the mountebanks were shouting out the attractions of their tented shows; where the booths displayed their attractive collections of brassy jewelry; and the firemen were gathered bravely in their brazen horsehair-plumed helmets, all ranged about the absurd diminutive fire pump, two feet in height and mounted on four twelve-inch scarlet wheels. How innocent, even pathetically ludicrous it seemed, yet what a charm it all had for us. Everything was calculated to attract and excite the desires of these simple people, who know nothing of the luxuries to which free born Americans are so accustomed. Here in the open square sharp-eyed Semitic merchants from Paris unpacked their paniers and heavy cases of cheap clothing, gaudy ribbons and flimsy varnished furniture, over which the women and girls crowded and pushed excitedly, fingering their lean purses, containing their hard earned "francs," and eagerly bargaining for the usually worthless articles. The "barkers" called out loudly the merits of the shows, before which, on elevated board platforms, hard faced girls in tights and motley clad buffoons paraded. Tinsel and glitter never failed to attract the peasant, and the clashing cymbal and the loudly beaten drum gives him delight. Here, before the old Town Hall, built three centuries ago, a modern moving picture tent was set up, with a large sign over it reading thus: "Cinema--Américain. Phonograph--Edison. Entree f. 1.50"--but the peasants did not yet know what this meant and they seemed dubious about it. The fortune teller, however, was highly successful, and his long green canvas covered wagon was surrounded by an eager waiting crowd of women; the men did not seem to care for it. An itinerant quack dentist, in a magnificently varnished open carriage hung with flags and diplomas from the "Crowned Heads of Europe," was extracting "an aching tooth," from the mouth of a frightened boy, who leaped away from the carriage, as the quack held up the offending tooth in a glittering forceps before the astonished eyes of the peasants. Spitting out blood, the boy, holding his jaw in his hands, and surrounded by other admiring "gamins," went away behind the back of a cart; following him I was just in time to see him display a bright new one franc piece to the others who were grouped about him. They all jumped away at my approach. "Did your teeth ache badly?" I asked him. "No, M'sieur, not at all, but he offered me one good silver franc for it, and _Mère de Dieu_, what would you?--a franc is a franc--and I have plenty of teeth left!" In the gorgeous carriage stood the loud mouthed "quack" flourishing the teeth in the silver plated forceps, and calling for "amateurs" to come forward and have their teeth out. There were booths filled with sweets about which the children lingered most longingly, and others where "fritters" were cooked in evil smelling grease, which were eagerly bought and consumed in large quantities by the young fellows and their girls. The various small inns and drinking-places were filled to suffocation the whole day long. From the open windows and doors came the sounds of loud singing, mingled with the raucous tones of barrel organs, and the jingling of glasses and bottles. There was much shouting and laughing on the part of the peasants, who on ordinary occasions are serious enough, if not morose. That night the festival was in full swing. The two large "merry-go-rounds" with their gaudily painted wooden lions, tigers, and horses, were whirling about in blazing circles laden with excited boys and screaming girls, to the groaning strains of large barrel organs, filling the air with noise. These merry-go-rounds were ornamented thickly with squares and diamonds of mirror glass, and these made a magnificent whirling show in the square. There was, too, the town orchestra vainly endeavoring to play the popular music, and finally there were some sputtering fireworks, followed by a speech by the Mayor, and a "retraite aux Flambeaux," consisting of a dozen firemen with oil lamps, which, preceded by a drum corps, made the round of the adjacent streets. After seeing this we returned to our little Hôtel du Nord, for it was near to midnight, but all night long the festivities went on in the square, and in the small dancing halls. We thought it all most quaint, even somewhat pathetic then. But the act of the aggressor which has swept away this pretty little town, leaving nothing but blackened, fire-eaten walls, and driving a simple innocent people into exile is nothing short of a crime against humanity. Of the ruin wrought in the neighborhood of Noyon and Lassigny by the Teutons before they abandoned this part of their line a correspondent (_Le Matin_, Paris) states that it is difficult to speak without entering into details of the most sordid character. What were once charming streets in Lassigny are now covered with masses of rubbish discarded by the Germans when they plundered the city. The beautiful old fifteenth century church, which was the Mecca for thousands of sightseers in times before the war, has been reduced to a heap of stones. Along the road from Lassigny to Noyon the spectacle of ruin is the same. Suzoy and many small villages were too far from the French lines to be damaged by the heavy artillery fire, but they bear, nevertheless, many traces of the barbarian rage. All furniture that could not be carried off by the Germans was battered and broken to prevent its use even for firewood. Much of it was piled in heaps along the road and burned to ashes. In some parts of the road the French found carts loaded with household furniture which the Germans in their haste were unable to move or burn. Farm implements, curtains, carpets and most of the household goods of the villages were smashed and in some cases covered with offal. At Noyon the houses have suffered comparatively little damage. The most noticeable wreckage was done in the vicinity of the bridges which had been blown up to prevent and delay pursuit. At some places the Germans exploded bombs and mines in the middle of the roadway, causing immense holes and ridges. The Cathedral is ruined; likewise the notable and remarkable old Town Hall, but the quaint old fountain in the Square has by some good fortune escaped damage. In March, 1917, on their departure from Noyon, the Germans delegated a staff of officers to visit the different banks in the town. Several prominent citizens were brought along to accelerate the work of pillage, and the officers compelled the opening of all safes. Even the minute objects whose chief value lay in sentimental attachment were taken by the Germans. Securities, jewelry and silver in the banks, amounting to $500,000 approximately, were taken before the town was evacuated. M. Poiret, mayor of the village of Pimpres, who was separated from his family two years ago, and compelled to remain at Noyon, says of his treatment by the Germans: "The humiliations we had to put up with are indescribable. During the last few weeks our physical discomforts became unbearable. There was neither meat, nor coal, nor vegetables, nor fat. In addition the Germans cut all the mains, so that we had no gas. They were constantly requisitioning what little we had. They took even the bells from the ruins of the Cathedral, and the old Town Hall, and last week the great organ in the church (Sainte Chapelle of the old Bishop's Palace) was removed. "We were joyous when we heard that the Germans were preparing to leave on Friday night. We were told to remain indoors on penalty of being shot if we stirred outdoors. "During the night the Germans blew up mines in the streets and dammed up the river Verse so as to flood the town. The evacuation began the following night (Saturday) and was finished by daybreak. "On Sunday at 11 o'clock the sight of French cavalry coming up the street toward my house was the most 'gorgeous' spectacle I have seen for more than two years." During the nights of March 16 and 17, two companies of German infantry arrived at the village of Ham, where there was a famous château (tenth century) of the Counts of Vermandois and later of the family of Coucy. The infantry remained until the following day, pillaging systematically, under orders of their officers, everything in the neighborhood. The ancient Château of Coucy furnished them with considerable valuable booty, and here four officers burned and broke up all the furniture they could not carry away. The château was in the form of a rectangle flanked at each corner by a round tower, and with great square towers on the north and east. The round tower at the northeast angle which rose from the canal was the work of Louis de Luxembourg in 1490. and was called the "Tour du Connetable," and bore above the portal the motto of its founder, "Mon Myeul." Its walls were of tremendous thickness and strength. The whole lower story was an immense hall of hexagonal form, and it had a number of strange pits, called furnaces, which were to be used to blow up the castle in case of capture. In this château many notable personages had been confined; for instance, Jeanne d'Arc; Condé, the Huguenot leader; Jacques Cassard of Nantes; and Prince Napoleon, after his failure and capture at Boulogne in 1840. This great and historical château they wantonly destroyed; after sacking it they blew it up with cases of explosives placed in the walls. The officers took away from their sleeping quarters in the town all chairs, bed clothing and even the smallest toilet articles. Some of the soldiers excused their acts to the townspeople by informing them that all this was done "by order of the Emperor." General von Fleck, commanding officer of the army corps stationed at Ham, took everything in the house he occupied from the cellar to the roof, using a wagon to carry away the objects. "After the wagon had gone with the last chair in the house, the general found himself in need of one on which to write a letter, so an orderly was dispatched to get one at the Mairie." MEAUX |THE little town of Meaux on the banks of the Marne is only thirty miles or so from Paris, and was remarkable for its old mills on the bridge over the river bed, behind the Hôtel de Ville, as well as for the beautiful cathedral of St. Etienne. The beauties of the town could best be appreciated from the shady walk along the river side. Here were great shade trees overhanging the roadway, through the branches of which one got glimpses of the cream colored tower of the old cathedral, above the red tiled roofs of the town, all against a summer sky of pale blue. Upon reaching the town, there were the two bridges over the Marne, both of them covered with some old mills with high wooden walls and quaint buttresses; almost theatrical and unbelievable in these practical days. The town had about twelve or thirteen thousand inhabitants, and was busied with a trade in grain. Some rather handsome boulevards seemed entirely out of key with the rest of the town, but there were the remains of an ancient chateau of the Counts of Flanders, built during the thirteenth, or maybe the twelfth century, accounts differ, which seemed much more in keeping with the place, and a most delightful little hotel called the "_Trois Rois_" from which it was hard to get away, so ideal were its comforts, and so moderate its charges. Meaux, says history, was the refuge of the noble ladies of France in the Jacquerie revolts of the thirteenth century, when the horrors of the rebel persecutions at Beauvais commenced. Once having reached the shelter of its walls, they dared not leave, and remained prisoners until the terror ended. Here remained the Duchesses of Orléans and Normandy among others no less famous and prominent, so that intrepid warrior, the Captai de Buch, accompanied by the Earl of Foix, gathered together a force of armed men for their rescue. All the roads leading to the town, from Paris, from Beauvoisie, from Valois, were filled with bands of peasantry, all bound for the town, which they had heard contained great treasure. Arriving at Meaux, de Buch and Foix were welcomed with great joy, for the peasants had begun to pillage wherever they could. Then ensued a great slaughter in which the marauding peasants were rounded up and killed like rats by the armed warriors. "They flung them in great heaps into the river. In short, they killed upwards of seven thousand; not one would have escaped if they had chosen to pursue them." Meaux, too, is famous for a great siege during the wars of Henry V, when he camped before the town walls in 1421. Monstrelet says, "The King of England was indefatigable in the siege of Meaux, and having destroyed many parts of the walls of the market place, he summoned the garrison to surrender themselves to the King of France and himself, or he would storm the place. To this summons they replied that it was not yet time to surrender, on which the King ordered the place to be stormed. The assault continued for seven or eight hours, in the most bloody manner; nevertheless, the besieged made a most obstinate defense, in spite of the great numbers that were attacking them. Their lances had been almost all broken, but in their stead they made use of spits, and fought back with such courage that the English were driven back from the ditches, which encouraged them much." Eventually, however, not receiving help from the Dauphin, upon which they had counted, they capitulated to Henry's soldiers. Under the treaty which followed, they agreed: "On the 11th day May, the market place, and all Meaux was to be surrendered into the hands of the Kings of France and England." As a warning to the people against further insurrection the leader, one Vauras, "the bastard," who had in his career killed many English and Burgundians, was hanged, drawn, and quartered before the walls of the town. After this, King Henry, who was very proud of his victory, entered the town in great pomp and splendor, remaining for some days with his princes and attendants, and left after giving orders that the town walls should be rebuilt and all other damages repaired. The ancient building called the "Evêché" near the cathedral was the residence of Bossuet, the famous preacher, in 1681. He was nicknamed the "Aigle de Meaux," and renowned for his eloquence, even at a time when France was rich in such genius. Bossuet stood head and shoulders even above such contemporaries as Mas-silon and Bourdaloue, Arnauld, Fleury, and Fénelon. It was really he who established the privileges and liberty of the Gallican church. Here in the little green garden behind the gray walls of the "Evêché," he sat, mused, and wrote his essays upon the encroachments of Papacy, which destroyed the remnants of Pope Innocent's power in France. In his later years he remained in seclusion here at Meaux, leading the life of a simple parish priest, and here he died "full of honors and beloved by all," and was buried in the church in 1704. A handsome statue by Ruxtiel was erected in his honor on the south side of the choir. Old Mills: Meaux [Illustration: 0249] Here, too, was a fine kneeling statue of Philip of Castile, dated 1627. But the great point of attraction for the stranger at Meaux was the bridge and the old timbered mills which overhung it, and the curious greeny water of the river Marne. I could not ascertain what gave the water its green color; it did not seem natural, yet there were apparently no dye works near at hand--none of the inhabitants whom I questioned seemed able to answer my question; they had never noticed it, they said. The morning upon which I made my sketches of the ancient mills and the old bridges, there were two of them over the river, the sky suddenly darkened, and a heavy shower of rain fell. I took refuge in the open doorway of one of the old mills, and sat on the lower step of a ruinous dusty steep stairway leading upwards into mysterious deep shadows. Somewhere in the interior sounded the rhythmic beating of heavy machinery, but save for this, the "drumming fingers of the rain," and an occasional tinkle of a bell high up in the tower of the cathedral, there were no signs or sounds of life. Meaux is not a large town, neither is it a very lively one, but it is charmingly situated. Were it farther away from Paris, I doubt not that it might attract the tourist, for it has a most delightful public promenade along the river Marne which is entered immediately before the railway station. But up to the time of the outbreak of the great world war, Meaux was comparatively unknown to the foreigner tourist, and were it not for the old mills of which I had heard, I should not have stopped there. The cathedral treasury possessed copies of nine of Raphaël's cartoons, and included two of the three "lost" ones, described as "Martyrdom of St. Stephen and Conversion of St. Paul." There were also copies of frescoes by Guido Reni and Dominichino, an "Adoration of the Magi" after Champaigne and an "Annunciation" after Stella. I had made notes concerning these in my pocket diary and as I sat on the step in the old doorway of the dusty mill, I mused over the pages while the raindrops fell outside. All at once the door swung to slowly, and when I tried to open it, I found that it was fast and would not yield. There was no sort of knob visible in the gloom, nor was there any aperture in the door through which light could come. There seemed to be light somewhere above, so I mounted the steps, which stopped abruptly before another closed door which, however, was not fastened, for it yielded at once to my touch. There was a small window here of four panes thick with dust, through which some feeble light came. More steep steps led upward, and I continued to mount, judging that I should soon come to some sort of room where there were men at work. But at the top of these stairs was a similar door and more steps, and still another flight brought me into an immense empty room with an uneven floor, the planks of which were loose here and there and gave alarmingly to my weight. Overhead huge beams crossed and recrossed the dimness, and on these beams perched countless numbers of rooks, who uneasily regarded my intrusion. The windows--there were five of them--I could not reach from the floor, nor could I by jumping up, try as I might, reach the sills, so that I might see out. Backwards and forwards I passed, and then along the blank wall which I judged adjoined the neighboring mill, seeking a doorway. I could find none. Finally I found a small door, not more than three feet from the floor in the blank wall. This was fastened by a hasp and opened readily. I got down on my hands and knees in the dust which lay thickly, and crept through it into a second large dim room, almost the counterpart of that which I had just left, save that it was lighted by only one window and this without glass. It, too, was high up in the wall like the others. In the very middle of the uneven floor was an unguarded opening through which the heavy ropes of a pulley hung. I lost no time in feeling my way carefully down the steps at one side which were without any rail to hold on to. I found that there was a ladder here by which I might descend, which I did at once, but with some misgivings as to where it might land me. Now I heard voices from below and, reassured, I put foot to the ladder. In a few moments I was on the floor below, but as I was about to walk away from the ladder in the darkness towards an opening on the farther end, I bethought me to put out a foot carefully to try the floor. To my horror there was no floor there, and retreating I lighted a match and threw it before me. The feeble flame was enough to show a great black chasm where I had thought to step a moment before, and the hair on my scalp rose in fright at my escape. I shouted aloud for help--I heard running footsteps--and right beside me a door opened letting in a flood of daylight and the figure of one of the millers, who regarded me with openmouthed astonishment, as well he might. When I had explained my predicament, he and the other men who gathered about were loud in their expressions of wonder at my escape from a terrible death, for had I but stepped a foot farther, I had fallen forty or fifty feet into a sluiceway from which they vowed I never could have escaped alive. I invited all hands over to the café, and there I gave offerings to Bacchus in honor of my escape which were eagerly consumed by the millers of Meaux. Cathedral: Meaux [Illustration: 0257] M. Georges Montorgueil, writing in "La Cités Meurtries, 1916," his account of the early days of terror in Meaux, gives a picture of the old priest who so devotedly and courageously shepherded his little flock of women and children, helpless before the invasion and destruction of the town by the Germans: "Where, meanwhile, was the venerable priest, an old man of seventy-five years, the Abbé Fossin, whose age and gray hairs was no protection, to him, nor the eighteen unfortunates who were seized with him by the Germans and thrown into jail, under the most atrocious circumstances, not matched by any of its most ancient barbarities when the Germans were known as 'Huns.' "The Abbé Fossin kept a Journal of events during the tragic hours preceding his arrest: "'5th of September, 1914. Saturday. "'I read my breviary. An aéroplane passed above my head. The bodies of two pilots killed by a bomb were taken to the cemetery. A group of captured French soldiers are passing. "L'église en ambulance." The prisoners of Guerard have gone. All the electric lights in the town are out. "'6th September. Sunday. "'A bad night. Impossible to say Mass or hold funeral of the two aviators in the cemetery because of the falling shells. The cannonade began at nine o'clock and lasted until five o'clock without interruption. We are under a very rain of fire! The batteries of the Germans, placed behind the presbytery, have been located by the English. I believe my last hour has arrived. The din is frightful! I have thanked God that I am protected. "'7th September. Monday. "'The battle has recommenced. Still impossible to say the Holy Mass. I paid a visit to the Germans in the Church. These are the most terribly wounded. They gave me their hands. They are badly off. I cannot give them bread; all I had, all the fruits of my garden have disappeared! I have nothing left!--' "The diary ends here. Here was a holy man of venerable years of known truth and great charity, visiting his enemies to give them what he had, his prayers. He had nothing else to give. He was fatigued for lack of sleep. He was hungry, but he had nothing to eat. All he had in his meager house and small garden had been either taken away or destroyed. Witness now his recompense: less than an hour after he had written those last notes in his diary, the Germans had seized and dragged him before a wrathful German officer. "He was charged with having climbed the tower of the cathedral to signal to the British lines. He who so suffered from rheumatism that he could hardly walk from his doorway to the church, a few paces away, by the aid of a cane. He was insulted by the officer, the soldiers who held him up before his questioner spat in his face. At length his shoes and clothes were stripped from him, and with great brutality he was thrown into a cellar, where he spent the night, with some potato bags to cover him. In the morning the door above was flung open, and a number of captives were thrown down the steep steps of the cellar way. These were Milliardet, Jourdin, Vapaille, Therré, Croix, Eugene Leriche, Lacour, Jules Denis, Berthelemy Denis, Merillon, Combes, Mesnil, Liévin, Faure and his son, aged fifteen, who was baker's boy in the village of Vareddes, and known under the nickname of 'Marmiton.' "To this group the Germans added later in the day Paul Lebel and Vincent Denis, arrested because the latter called out to a German soldier, 'Eh, well, old man, you are not yet at Paris!' "On Saturday, without feeding them or allowing any one to visit them, all these unfortunates were divided into several groups, and surrounded by soldiers, hustled along the road to Lizy-sur-Ourcy, where they were halted. "They numbered now fifteen in all, not counting the old priest, the Abbé Fossin. "Père Leriche, who was himself seventy-four years old, relates that the Abbé, who lay prostrate on the ground beside him, said to him in a low voice, 'I believe that they are going to shoot me--take my watch and breviary, and try and get them to my family.' When the march was resumed the Abbé could not walk fast enough to suit the soldiers. He was pushed and struck by them, his soutane was torn to ribbons. Finally they threw him into a wagon which they seized on the road. In this he lay groaning. He died a short time later, and was left beside the road. The heat was atrocious; thus they marched, the younger ones sustaining the elders, through the long hours to the rear, without water or food, insulted and beaten constantly by their captors. "At Coulomb, Père Jourdain fell in the road, unable to continue the march. He was immediately dispatched by a revolver shot. "At Chézy-en-Orxois, another old man, Milliardet, eighty years old, was similarly disposed of. Any complaint was the signal of death. Both Terry and Croix were shot for whistling. "Old Eugene Menie, who halted on the edge of a deep ditch, was struck by the butt of a gun in the hands of one of the soldiers, and his neck broken--they threw him into the ditch and went on. "Père Liévin, aged sixty-one, who had heart disease, could not keep step with the others; he was purple in the face, and his eyes stuck out so comically that it amused the soldiers, who finally shot him and left his body at the cemetery gate in Chauny." These are only haphazard extracts from the records of that terrible month of September, 1914, when unfortunate Meaux was the very center of affairs. Elsewhere we read of the aspects of the streets after each successive bombardment, the telegraph hanging in festoons on the footways, the trunks of huge trees felled by cannon barring the way; the carcasses of animals lying about amid strange débris, such as heavy leather shoes, broken guns, sticks and barrels, empty tin cans, torn and ragged clothing clotted with blood, strange piles of still smoking ashes containing small bones, and over all the odor of burning petroleum. The houses with wide open doors and sashless window frames; gardens uprooted and despoiled; walls thrown down, and strewn about an immense quantity of broken glass bottles. These were the streets of Meaux, which I had explored on that peaceful morning in August, 1910, and made the sketches of the old bridge with its clustered mills, the fire blackened beams now hanging in grotesque ruins over the water of the little green river. The bombardment began on Monday, the 7th of September, 1914. The first of the German shells fell upon the town at eleven in the morning, in the direction of the fauburg St.-Nicholas, then in the fauburg St.-Faron. The bombardment followed the line of the railway. In the cemetery the ancient tombs were scattered in all directions; ten shells destroyed the hospital. The Grand Seminary fell next. Of the one hundred and twenty shells which on this Monday fell in the town, the first five did the greatest damage. Whole lines of houses were thrown down and set on fire. This lasted until six in the afternoon. The next day shells began to fall again in the early morning. The cathedral was encircled by shells, which did great damage, but by a special Providence with the exception of an enormous hole in the roof, and the destruction of the venerable cloisters, the ancient cathedral escaped the fate of its neighbors. This is the chronology: Wednesday, September 2, the exodus; Thursday, the town lay deserted and helpless; Friday, the organization of all the available defensive forces; Saturday and Sunday, the battle; Monday, the bombardment; Tuesday, the enemy driven off, and the town saved. SENLIS |FROM the railway station one could see the towers of the cathedral and the old church of St. Pierre, above the heavy trees of a short avenue which led to that part of the town, where formerly stood the old ramparts--and to the Porte Royale. The best and most picturesque part of the town, of interest to the antiquary, was the western end, and here were tortuous and delightful crooked narrow streets, quaint little gabled houses, old mossy walls surrounding luxuriant gardens, and some remains of the remarkable chateaux of a bygone period. Ancient stronghold in past centuries, it had become a little old sleepy town given over to churches and the priesthood. Of the ancient Gallo-Roman fortifications there were still to be seen, up to the outbreak of the war in 1914, sixteen of the Roman towers in a fair state of preservation. A small river, the Nonette, passes through it, winding most exquisitely. Situated some thirty-five miles from Paris, and on the edge of the Champagne district, its character could be best appraised from the charming public promenade along the river's bank, lined with fine trees and offering vistas of great picturesqueness. The old cathedral dates back to the early days of the thirteenth century; its lace-like gray tower, covered with exquisite Gothic ornamentation, was a source of delight to artists and antiquarians. Usually covered with scaffolding, the tower was in a constant state of repair, but the spidery scaffolding seemed not at all to detract from the charm of its lines. One of the architects in charge explained that the vaulting and the first stage of the choir, the "triform ambulatory" had been removed because of cracks developing in the masonry, but this alteration did not seem to have resulted in any loss to the interior artistically. Indeed, as it stood in 1910, the choir elevation was a most exquisite example of thirteenth century construction and design. Ancient Ramparts: Senlis [Illustration: 0271] Lying in the midst of the great forest lands of Chantilly and Hallette, Senlis, until the dissolution of the Carlo-vingian Empire, was the place of royal residence, and even thereafter, to the time of Henry of Navarre, the kings of France preferred it to all others. The Castle was built upon the site of the Roman Prætorium, the ruins of which were pointed out to tourists. The ancient Roman ramparts which still in part surrounded the town were also shown, and the walls were said to be thirteen feet thick. "They enclosed an area, oval in form, one thousand and twenty feet long from east to west and seven hundred and ninety-four feet wide from north to south. At each of the angles formed by the broken lines of which the circuit of two thousand seven hundred and fifty-six feet is composed, stands or stood a tower; numbering twenty-eight and now only sixteen, they are semicircular in plan, and up to the height of the wall are unpierced. The Roman city had only two gates; the present number is five." The old cathedral was both curious and fascinating, as well as of great beauty. Begun in 1154 on really enormous lines, its original plan was never carried out for want of funds. Century after century it had been rebuilt, altered, extended and replanned, until it had become, as an American architect of renown styled it, "an epitome of French architecture from the middle of the twelfth to the middle of the fifteenth century." Its companion unfinished, the great southwest tower is of the thirteenth century, and is said to be "unsurpassed by no other spire in France for subtlety of composition and perfection of detail." One of its beautiful "crocketed" pinnacles was shot away in the bombardment by the Germans in 1915, and the loss left the world poor indeed. It is certainly a strange sensation for us to watch from a distance the continuous destruction of the great works of art of the world, powerless to prevent it. For us all this loss is personal, poignant, unexampled; a horror that nothing can palliate nor time soften. The ancient Renaissance tower of St. Pierre had been used as a public market, and also as a cavalry barrack because of its ruinous state. In form it was most curious, being very short and too wide for proportion. While the prevailing style was flamboyant, it contained a certain amount of early Gothic work of considerable interest and value. I regret that I did not make a sketch of it when I was there, for the scene at early morning with the crowds of market people, and the vegetable stalls all about, and rising above them the bare gray walls of the nave and the choir, formed a picture of much quaintness. The glory of the old cathedral of "Notre Dame" was the beautiful spire upon the southwest tower. Of infinite grace and lightness with its detached pillars, it rose from an octagonal base which supported a sort of canopy in pyramidal form, the whole adorned with a wealth of delicate carving and tracery, and pierced by high dormer lancet shaped windows, about which flew clouds of ravens or starlings. The great door in the west front reminded one of that at Chartres, and was adorned with figures of Our Lord and the Virgin, some of the figures of the angels being of remarkable character and grace. Inside in the ambulatory, behind the altar, are some of the twelfth century Romanesque capitals, and elsewhere are found other evidences of Roman influence. All accounts agree that this beautiful edifice has now been entirely destroyed by the invader (1917). Former wars have swept the little town from time to time in the past, but the cathedral remained practically untouched until the present day. Whatever the former causes, or however violent the onslaught of the opposing forces, these priceless records of art were spared by common consent, save perhaps when the Revolution swept over the cloisters, and even then the havoc wrought was reparable, but now comes one calling himself the anointed representative of God, and annihilates an innocent people and destroys the treasures of a land which he cannot conquer. Just what remains at this time of Senlis cannot be ascertained, but all accounts agree that the huge gray Romanesque tower can no longer be seen upon the horizon, and that the bombardment of the ruins continues. Baron André de Maricourt has written a most complete monograph of Senlis. (Senlis. Baron André de Maricourt, ancien élève de l'école des Chartes. "Les Cités Meurtries." Paris. Librarie de l'Eclair.) "Hidden away among the heavy trees which surround it upon all sides, lies the little town of Senlis, almost a suburb of Paris." According to the old proverb, "To live happily is to remain hidden." So Senlis remained comparatively forgotten. The very names of its streets were strange to modern ears and evoked smiles from the stranger, and its old houses, dating from the days of "la reine Berthe," enchanted the antiquary. This little town of seven thousand inhabitants was indeed one of the capitals of ancient France during the times of the Capets, and in the royal château which sheltered the chiefs of the Merovingians, and royalties down to the days of Henry IV, were written many pages of the history of France. One recalls the days of Charles le Chauve, of d'Hugues Capet and St. Louis, the quarrel of the Armagnaces and the Bourguignons, recalled by the strange picture by Melingue, "Les Otages de Senlis," which was in the Hôtel de Ville up to the time of the bombardment by the Germans. Also may be recalled the passage of Jeanne d'Arc through the town, and then the wars of the "Ligue,"--all proving the importance of Senlis of the past. In the eighteenth century, Louis XV, in order to render the town more accessible, constructed a fine roadway from Paris to the royal residence, and Senlis emerged from its quietude, amazed at the lines of gilded equipages and the prancing horses urged on the gallop by gorgeously dressed lackeys which daily thronged the way. Cathedral: Senlis [Illustration: 0279] This roadway, called formerly the "Rue Neuve de Paris," was the principal artery of the little old city, under the twenty-year-old name of "Rue de la République." Sung by poets, such as Gérard de Nerval, and Maurice Barrés, M. André Haileys described Senlis as "tortueuse, taciturne et charmante," and dwelt lovingly upon its "mossy terraces," its ancient walls bathed in sunlight, and its grand old tower whose perfect bells sounded over the golden green fields. In the early summer days of 1914, the Society of Amateurs held their celebration at Senlis, says Baron de Maricourt, "a few months ago, months which seem years now. The ceremony was to celebrate the Victory of Bouvignes. In the St. Rieul Hall, Madame la duchesse de Vendôme sat beside M. Odent, the mayor of the town, who spoke feelingly of ancient France, and of Flanders.... "One month later the Hall was occupied by cavalry; our own cavalry of France.... On the horizon lay the German army.... "Three weeks later M. Odent, the mayor, was killed in the bombardment; the Hall of Saint-Rieul was a hospital; the brother of the princess had become 'Albert le Brave,' the plain of Bouvignes was bathed in blood; Senlis was burning; the inhabitants had fled." It would appear that Senlis was burned and sacked to inspire Paris with terror, and as an example of the fate that awaited her. Nearly all the inhabitants fled when the news came that the Germans had crossed the border. A few of the citizens resolved to remain to support the mayor and magistrates in keeping the peace, to patrol the town to prevent looting, and to watch for fires. Some pieces of heavy artillery had been arranged before the Hôtel de Ville and under the towers of the Cathedral, but there was neither ammunition for these nor soldiers in the town to use them. The town was silent, the factories empty, the streets almost deserted. In the town hall, the few faithful ones remained on watch day and night grouped about the mayor. In some of the rooms were refugees from neighboring towns, old men and women with young children who had nowhere else to go. In the hospitals the nuns and nurses cared for the wounded who had been brought to the town in large numbers. There were no soldiers hereabouts. This is the truth (affirms the Baron de Maricourt). The Germans understood and saw a different picture, so they say. They heard the movement of vast bodies of armed men; they saw the "franc tireurs" in the trees firing upon them, they saw cannon protruding from the windows of the towers of the old cathedral.... So the knell of Louvain sounded for Senlis.... So wrote the Baron de Maricourt of Senlis, who remained in the town during the occupation by the Germans, who suffered at their hands all the indignities they could devise; who remained calm and heroic through all the terrors of the bombardment and destruction of his beloved town. "The first German body of troops which entered the town carried with them a corps of incendiaries in regular formation upon bicycles, armed with tubes of metal containing, as was afterwards ascertained, picric acid, and others a kind of wick of cotton charged with gasoline or petroleum. Some of the men carried hand grenades strung around their waists or over their shoulders, and these they threw into open windows and doorways of designated houses. By midnight the sky was illuminated by fires in every quarter of the town." It commenced in the faubourg St.-Martin. It is said that the soldiers warned the occupants of houses designated to leave before they set fire to them. "Let us be just to the German soldiers," says M. de Maricourt. "In the evening of the day of occupation, the Archdeacon was brought to the Hôtel du Grand-Cerf, by the concierge Boullay. He was paraded before the officers, but was not mistreated, except that he was compelled to stand, and no one addressed him. Finally he was ordered to return to his quarters, but hardly had he arrived there, before another order came for him to return at once to the Grand-Cerf. Already towards the south end of the town the houses were in flames, and he saw the soldiers carrying lighted torches. He was brought before an officer who spoke French and whose manner was not discourteous:-- "'Monsieur,' said he, 'attend to me,'--and he read from a paper charges that the priest had allowed citizens to fire upon the entering German troops. "'It is not true,' replied the Archdeacon, 'I was alone in the church, and the keys were in my pocket.' "The officer read upon the face of the priest the evident sincerity of his words. "'Poor priest! Poor town!' he said pityingly, 'I believe you, but I must obey orders.' "'How so?' "'Because I am ordered to treat Senlis as was Louvain; by to-morrow there will remain not one stone upon another.' "M. Douvlent pleaded eloquently for his parishioners, whose innocence he vouched for. The officer seemed impressed. "'You are a Catholic priest, but alas, war is cruel, and orders are not to be ignored. This town merits chastisement.' "'Take me before the General,' urged the priest, 'I am your prisoner, and I have the right to plead the cause of my innocent parishioners.' "'No, sir,' retorted the officer frowningly, 'nothing of the sort; do you not realize that you are in great danger?' "'Danger?' ejaculated the priest, 'I fear no danger, I have made my sacrifice; I have faced it all this morning.' "'Very well,' said the officer, somewhat more gently, 'but I think it will be best for you to return to your house. If necessary I will call you.' "A short time after this conversation, I saw the priest, with the few who remained of his household, standing in the Square. I saw them again at about one in the morning; they were still standing in the Square beneath the lamp which shone upon their anxious faces. A dozen or so German soldiers stood about. Two sentries paced up and down, one at each crossing. No one returned to their houses. The curtain had risen upon the drama of Senlis.... "At the end of this day, Thursday, M. Odent (the mayor of Senlis), left the Hôtel de Grand-Cerf accompanied by an officer, and entering a covered automobile was driven rapidly away, followed by five cavalrymen. "They stopped at a place called 'le Poteari,' situated between Senlis and Chamont; there they found six captives whom the Germans had taken at hazard on the route. "One of these, named Delacroix, had been arrested in company with two workmen named Quentin and Reck, the latter a mason by trade, at the corner of the Rue de Bordeaux and la République, at the moment when the firing was the hottest in that quarter. Reck had been hit in the jaw and in the arm. The German soldiers entering the town found him bleeding in the road and with the singular, the unexplainable attitude of the German, at one moment cruel to the last degree, at the next of lamblike gentleness, these soldiers conducted the wounded man Reck to the 'prefecture,' _where his wounds were tenderly dressed by a German Major!_ "Quentin and Delacroix were taken at Chamont with revolvers in their hands, together with a stranger who was visiting the house of his sister, and two others, Benoit Decrens, a domestic servant, and Boullet, a laborer. "Up to eleven o'clock in the evening these unhappy captives were marched up and down the various streets and alleys of the village by their captors, until at length near the Bon Secours woods in a secluded spot, an officer ordered the mayor and the six captives to lie down on the grass. When this was done, he ordered the mayor, M. Odent, to rise and advance three paces. "The soldiers presented arms. "'You are the Mayor Odent?' called out the officer brusquely. "'Yes.' "'You have fired on our men?' "'No.' "'You have fired on our men,' insisted the ferocious voice, 'you are to be shot!' "M. Odent handed his papers to Benoit and shook hands with his companions. He then clasped his hands in prayer, after which he stood with eyes calmly fixed upon the officer. The officer raised his hands, motioning to the soldiers. "They shot the mayor with their revolvers.... "Afterwards, the officer made a little speech to the terrified men. "'War is as sad for us as it is for you. It is France and your Poincaré that you must blame--they would have it. We Germans do not make war upon civilians, but those who fire upon us will be promptly shot.' "These men were then used as guides by the officers, during their occupancy of the town. When no longer of use, _they disappeared._ "There were others, too; I do not know how many. There was little Gabanel, the son of the butcher, a merry little chap, known throughout the neighborhood, he disappeared with his father's old white horse and the red, two-wheeled wagon. He was never heard of again... and there was the baker's boy Jaudin, whose mutilated body was found in a field at Villers-St. Frambourg.... There was the hunchback Cottreau, aged seventeen, a harmless cripple who was found hanging in the attic of an inn.... "Arthur Rigault, the stone cutter, Elisée Pommier, aged 67 years.... "Jean Barbier, wagon driver.... "Pierre Dewart, chauffeur. "None of these can ever relate their terrible stories. We shall never know what happened to them." THE CHATEAU OF GÈRBÉVILLER |THE château and the Chapel Palatine of Gèrbéviller were unique in many respects. Dating from the thirteenth century, the chateau served as appanage to the Cadets of Lorraine, to whom they were given by Charles the Bold, and transmitted in 1486 to Huet du Châtelet, whose illustrious family founded the _Maison des Cannes_. In 1641 it came into the hands of Charles-Emmanuel de la Tornielle, step-brother of Christian du Châtelet of the powerful Tornielle family, thence it descended successively to the Lombartyes, in whose possession it remained until it was seized and sold by the state in the troublous times of 1796. The chapel was restored, almost reconstructed and consecrated on the nineteenth of July, 1865, by Monsignor Lavigerie with great splendor and pomp in the presence of the Lombartye family and a score of dignitaries of the state. The château itself, constructed in the eighteenth century, was possessed of what the French call "grand air," and was certainly imposing in size from a distance, shining among the dark green of the heavy foliage which surrounded it. Its façade on the road was somewhat marred by the narrowness of the approach. But the façade on the parkway, through which a small brook called the "Montagne" meandered most delightfully, was most impressive. The sketch which I made of it will serve to show the character of the great house better than many pages of written description. The reputation enjoyed by this great typical château of France was not by any means confined to the country. It was known throughout Europe, and for this reason, I suppose, was a shining mark for the Teutons. At the side of the château was the grand entrance, used only upon state occasions. This entrance was flanked by two immense "vasques" or vases of dark gray marble, a little too monumental, perhaps architects might think, but taken together with the "grand air" of the château entirely in keeping, to my mind. These it is claimed still stand unharmed amid the ruins all about. Chapel of the Château: Gèrbéviller [Illustration: 0295] The Chapel Palatine architecturally, perhaps, does not merit extended eulogy. Its towers are shot away, and some blackened calcined walls are all that remain. But the treasures which it contained, now either destroyed or carried off to Berlin, who shall say if they can ever be replaced? I am told that the family of Lombartye, and notably its last representative, who restored it in 1865, was long a resident of Rome, and being very wealthy had collected a vast store of most valuable objects of art of all kinds, including statuary and paintings, and these he had installed not only in the château, but had so enriched the chapel that it was a veritable storehouse of precious objects--even more than a museum, because most of them related to the history of the ancient families who had occupied Gèrbéviller. Here then in this small chapel was a collection of marvels of decorative art, tapestries of Arras, examples of the jeweler's craft, illuminations upon vellum, a hundred or more priceless volumes, and notably a collection of funerary urns, containing the ashes of most illustrious personages, including some of the Saints. Among the treasures in this small chapel was a series of the tapestries of Gobelin, another of Beauvais, and a third complete pictorial set made in Antwerp after the cartoons of Nicolas Memling. These last, just before the destruction of Gèrbéviller, were presented to the Cathedral of Nancy. The others are among the ashes of the ruins. The Master altar of the chapel was covered by a magnificent "ciborium," raised upon three columns of black marble, ornamented by "tears" of silver of twelfth century workmanship. The great candelabra, called "Flambeaux," were of Flemish work, and had twenty-four lusters; these were destroyed. There were splendid tombs on all sides; one was a reproduction of that of Henry I, Count of Champagne, and of St. Etienne of Troyes; the tomb of Lombartye, of de la Vieufville, of Rochechourt-la-Rochefoucauld, of du Caylar, of Vieuville, of Gouy d'Arsy, and that of Père Jandel the Dominican. All these are mutilated and broken. Of the funeral urns, one contained the ashes of St. Auguste, the martyr; another of what is called "cipollin," the ashes of Ste Victoire; a red marble one those of St. Vital; a "chasse" held a portion of the petrified bones of Candide, presented by the Bishop of Nancy. Another one contained the bones of St. Felix Romain. A great tall "ciborium" contained the "relique" of Tarcisius, the young martyr of the Eucharist. These, contained in a wonderful chest covered with vermilion enamel, bore an epitaph composed by Pope Damase, and were brought from Rome by the Dominicans. Overjoyed in the possession of such a treasure, the Marquis of Lombartye, sought an artist of renown who could make a fitting monument to contain it. His choice fell upon Fal-guière the sculptor. He it was who fashioned the exquisite statue in the Luxembourg. But it is not generally known that this is a replica of the original which was in the Chapel of Gèrbéviller, and which is now entirely destroyed. I understand that in searching the ruins, certain fragments of precious objects have been found and removed to Paris. M. Pigot in his report claims that the head of Fal-guière's statue of St. Tarcisius was found among the ashes, and, placed in a strong oaken box, has been given into the hands of M. le Sous-Préfet of Lunéville. But the remarkable paintings which the chapel contained are of course entirely consumed in the fire caused by the bombs and shells which fell upon the chapel for days at a time. There was the painting by Lippo Lippi; a portrait of Prosper Lambartini (Pope Benoit XIV); a triptych by Fra Angelico; one by Sandro Botticelli; The Virgin, the infant and two angels; a copy of the "_Femme Adultéré_" by Titian; a Benozzo Gozzoli; a canvas by a pupil of Ferrare, and various others. There was a splendid statue of the Virgin in terra cotta of the sixteenth century; a life size St. Joseph by Lizier-Richie; and two statues of Christ and John the Baptist in bronze by Dubois. Of these the statue of Christ remains (says M. Pigot in his report) "unharmed." The little town of Gèrbéviller itself is entirely destroyed, and the wretched inhabitants are scattered to the four winds. And for what good was all this, one asks? M. Georges Goyan, writing in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, of the heroic work performed by the nuns of France, relates a touching story of a Sister Julia of Gèrbéviller, who, when the village was in flames and a German officer was about to give the order to burn the Red Cross pavilion, stepped before the lieutenant and with the most superb courage defied him to commit the sacrilege. The officer, a Bavarian, taken aback for the moment, bowed his head, and the pavilion was spared. Sister Gabriela of the little town of Clermont-en-Ar-gonne was no less courageous. She advanced to meet the army of the Crown Prince when it arrived, saying, "We will care for your wounded, if you will spare the town." She received a promise, which was not kept, however. Again, she sought the Colonel, and bravely said, "I see now that the word of a German officer is not to be relied on." Ashamed, he ordered the work of destruction stopped, and thus the town was spared. Twenty-five wounded French prisoners owed their lives to this devoted nun, who in April, 1916, received the decoration of the war medal. Goyan quotes verbatim from the report of the nun, "The Major made his congratulatory speech while I was completing the bandage of my poor 'poilu,' whose head rested on my lap." Château: Gèrbéviller [Illustration: 0303] Waldeck-Rousseau, the former Premier of France, in a speech before the French senate in 1903 stated that "Catholicism survives in France, if not as a religious law, faithfully observed by everybody, at least as a social statute respected by the vast majority." M. Goyan declares that the French church is indeed a moral power to be reckoned with, "and when the war-tocsin had rung throughout the land, when the hour of death had been welcomed as an old dear friend, all misunderstandings of the past melted away, and now for fully twenty-eight months the church could again place itself at the disposal of France." With emotion and gratitude he relates the patriotic sacrifices made by the Protestant churches and the synagogues of France. Out of four hundred and ninety pastors of the Lutheran and Reformed churches, "one hundred and eighty are in the trenches: all students of the Paris Rabbinical Seminary and more than three-fifths of the officiating rabbis of the Republic left for the front; two of them were killed, one was missing. "When after this war is over, our sister churches will write their own martyrology, Catholic witnesses will rise to glorify their dead. The whole Catholic press rendered a well deserved homage to Chief Rabbi Bloch of Lyons, who was mortally wounded by a German bullet while he attended a dying Catholic soldier, holding the cross to his livid lips." After these prefatory remarks the author traces in his inimitable style a picture of the life and activity of the Catholic church from the unforgettable July days of 1914, to date. One-third of its priesthood followed the call of their country. * * The Literary Digest, Feb. 17, 1917. The Paris diocese alone has already buried forty-five of its members. The Cardinal-Archbishop of Lyons had to enlist laymen to fill the gaps in his decimated clergy. Bishops have become again parish priests. "Eleven young French monks, surprised by the German invasion in their monastery in the grand duchy of Luxembourg, disguised themselves, walking stealthily into Belgium, and from there to France, immediately joining their barracks. Dominicans and Jesuits vie with each other in patriotic devotion. The Church, cheerfully accepting the abrogation of its time honored immunities, with a noble gesture commanded the young priests to shoulder their rifles: 'Your parish,' explained the Cardinal Archbishop of Rheims, Monseigneur Luçon, to his priests, is henceforth your regiment, your trench, your hospital. Love it as you have loved your church. Perhaps you will be buried on the battlefield. What of it? Why should we priests not give our blood?' Thus, the priest is no longer isolated from the people; he has become an integral part of it. The Dominican sergeants and Jesuit lieutenants have built the bridge. And who, on the other hand, would have believed, a short three years ago, that a company of French soldiers, educated in the godless school of the Republic, should, before preparing for assault, receive absolution on their knees? "A parallel case to this kneeling company receiving absolution is the scene in the Bois d'Argonne, of March 7, 1916, when 'the successive waves of a regiment, marching to the attack, bowed themselves before the representative of God, de Chabrol, Chaplain of the division, whose hand, while the guns were thundering, made the sign of the redemption.'" (Quoted textually from an order of the day, by the commanding general.) Fifty-nine priests and seminarists of the Paris diocese received crosses while practically under fire. "The natural love of the soil and the love of the church combined, produce heroic souls of a peculiarly noble blending. The olden days when bishops were the supreme lords of towns and countries were revived, if only for a short time, at Meaux, and elsewhere, shortly before the battle of the Marne. On September 3, 1914, the armies of von Kluck were expected any moment and the civil authorities fled. Bishop Marbeaux took possession of the City Hall, and with a rare skill organized the various municipal services. Generals Joffre and Galliéni had stopped the triumphal onslaught of the German troops. On September 9, the civil authorities returned to Meaux and Mayor Mar-beaux gave in his resignation. Similar was the situation in Soissons and Chalons-sur-Marne; the cathedrals again became civic centers. "But our priests (continues M. Goyan) in the midst of the brutal butchery, are not unmindful of the Saviour's advice to love even our enemies--above all, if the latter are in great stress themselves. Thus Rev. Landrieux of the cathedral of Rheims, while the church was burning, saved from its ruins at the risk of his life a group of wounded German soldiers. The enraged population was about to lynch them. 'You will have to kill me first,' said the courageous priest. Words fail to describe as they deserve the deeds of Bishop Lobbedeye of Arras and his clergy. "The tradition of the catacombs revived; a cellar was transformed into a church (while the town was under bombardment) and here the Bishop read his mass. The priests threw off their 'soutanes' to become police and firemen, moving men and grave diggers. One of them, de Bonnieres, of noble birth, went every morning, braving the bullets which whistled about his ears, into the suburbs begging the soldiers for the scraps, left over from their meals, to distribute these pittances among the starving poor of Arras." Church: Gèrbéviller [Illustration: 0311] "Thus, before the enemy the old union of church and state had been effected. The same population, the same government, which before had adopted the slogan, The priest's place is in the church,' requested the cooperation of the clergy. And the church obeyed the call. Everything was forgotten. 'Who cares now,' exclaimed Cardinal Savin, 'for the religious misunderstandings, political quarrels, and personal rivalries of the past! France first! United by the common danger, we learned to know and respect one the other, and after the war we will solve the grave problems which had separated us before the war. Our victory will be our main ally in this future work of pacification.' "Forever memorable will remain that great religious manifestation at Paris during the week of the Battle of the Marne, in honor of St. Geneviève, the patron of the French capital. She and Joan of Arc became again the divine protectors of France. "The people of Paris fell on their knees on the famous heights of Montmartre, the mountains of the Saint-Martyrs of the past, a place historical in the annals of France. Even the skeptics thanked the church for its resuscitation of the religious spirit. France again remembered that she had once been 'the eldest daughter of the Church.'" (Georges Goyan.) A HEROINE |WHEN the history of the war is written at least three names of women will be enshrined forever in the annals: Sister Julie, the fearless nun of Gèrbéviller; that heroic woman who took the place of and acted as mayor of Soissons when von Kluck's legions occupied and ravaged that unfortunate little city; and Marcelle Semmer, a young girl of eighteen, who showed such bravery and extraordinary fortitude in aid of France as to win encomiums from both the British and French officers, who recommended that she be decorated. She has just received both the ribbon of the Legion of Honor, and the War Cross as reward. M. L. L. Klotz, Deputy from the war-ravaged department of the Somme, has told in glowing words the story of how at the outbreak of the war, these noble women, left defenseless and at the mercy of the invaders, proudly faced these savages and really defied them. He told of Marcelle Semmer, a young orphan girl of eighteen, living in the little village of Eclusier, near Frise on the river Somme, at the beginning of the war. This young girl who showed the most extraordinary bravery and fortitude in the service of France, is perhaps but one of many others whose stories may never be known to the world. She was acting as bookkeeper and clerk in a factory, producing phosphates, which had been founded by her father, an Alsatian refugee. The invaders, driving back the Allies at Charleroi, captured the town, taking many prisoners. The French fell back across a canal, near the home of Marcelle Sem-mer, where there was a drawbridge. The heroic girl, unmindful of her danger, succeeded in raising the drawbridge before the enemy came up, and threw the lever into, the canal. Without this lever the bridge could not be lowered again. The canal at this point was so deep that the invading army could not ford it, and seeing the fleeing figure of the girl, the soldiers fired volley after volley after her, without once hitting her. By this audacious act, Marcelle Semmer held back the advance of an entire German army corps until the following day, for the Germans had to await the arrival of their engineers before they were able to put a temporary bridge in place, and this they made of boats, and pontoons hastily constructed, thus consuming hours which were of great value in enabling the hard-pressed French to escape from the hordes which far outnumbered them. In spite of the danger of detection, the young girl insisted upon remaining in the village during its occupation by the Germans; happily they did not recognize her as the girl who raised the drawbridge against them or she would have been shot at once. Near the factory where she worked was a shed covering a subterranean passage leading to the phosphate mine. She succeeded in concealing the entrance trap to this passage by means of some large tuns and bagging. During the night she managed to conceal in this passage no less than seventeen French soldiers who had been somehow left in the retreat from the towns of Mons and Charleroi. Not only did she succeed in keeping these men hidden, but she managed to secure for them both food and peasant clothing, and aided them to get away to the French lines to the south. Sixteen of these men succeeded in getting away, but one dark night in a furious rainstorm while she was piloting the seventeenth to a cross-country lane, she was detected by a sentry, who dragged both of them before the German lieutenant. In the examination before the Commandant at headquarters she defiantly confessed to having aided the French soldiers to escape, crying out, "Yes, I did it for France, and I shall do it again and again, if I am able. Do with me what you will. I am an orphan, I have but one mother, France! For her, my life!" The Commandant promptly sentenced her to be shot. She was taken out of the room into the courtyard, where they placed her against the wall facing the firing squad, her arms tied behind her. Suddenly French artillery opened upon the German lines at Eclusier. Before the officer could give the word to fire upon the brave girl, a shell fell in the courtyard, and in the confusion, wonderful to relate, she escaped. While she had been assisting her fellow countrymen to escape the French had crept up, and routed the invaders from their position in the little town. So Marcelle once more fled to the subterranean passage, and there took up her quarters, rendering great service to the army, through her knowledge of the surrounding country. Between the lines of the opposing armies lay the river Somme, which here in the vicinity of Eclusier and Frise spreads out into a pond with marshy banks, and innumerable pitfalls and bogs. In these the soldiers frequently lost their way, and here Marcelle found a way to help France by her knowledge of the safe paths. Again and again she faced death; finally she was captured while leading a squad of men across the bogs to a trench at Frise. She was brought by the Germans to the village of Frise, and there confined in the parish church, now, alas, a mass of ruin. Once more her never departing good fortune was her salvation. Almost before the door of her prison was fastened upon her, the French artillery began a lively bombardment of Frise. One of the shells blew a great hole in the wall of the little church, and out of this hole, unperceived by her captors, Marcelle escaped, over the marshes and through the tangled roads into the French lines. Enabled to give most valuable information as to the numbers and guns of the enemy, Marcelle's fame soon spread through the ranks. She was mentioned in the dispatches, and received the Cross of the Legion of Honor, and later, before the drawn up soldiers of the corps, she received the War Cross. She was so useful in this region of the Somme that she asked to be allowed to remain at Frise to work for France, and so for a year and a half, despite the turn of the war, she stayed on, taking care of the wounded men, and protecting as far as possible women and children. So beloved did she become that an English general ordered his soldiers to salute her on passing, and to refrain from addressing her unless she required it. Everywhere she went the soldiers both admired and honored this young girl. The loss of her brothers, who died fighting for France, and the strain of her work told upon her health, and the doctors ordered her to Paris. Here she asked to be allowed to work at the nurses' school and to aid the wounded soldiers. To this the authorities assented, as she was thus enabled to earn a livelihood, for all that she had was lost at Eclusier when the mill was destroyed. In the great hall of the Sorbonne at Paris, a short time ago Deputy Klotz (of the Somme) eulogizing this young girl, suddenly stretched out his arms in dramatic gesture, electrifying the great audience with these words: "This little heroine of Picardy, this admirable girl; this incarnation of the qualities of the women of France; this girl of simple origin, flawless dignity, of serious mind and gentle ways; this girl of indomitable will power is here, ladies and gentlemen, here among you, in this room! "And I feel that I am the spokesman for every one of you when I now extend to her the expression of our respect, our gratitude, our admiration!" The vast audience, every man and woman of them, leaped to their feet, in enthusiasm, craning their necks to catch a glimpse of the heroine. Through the great Hall of the Sorbonne, where the most famous men of the world had been honored by France, swept a storm of cheers; a reward more splendid than the Cross of the Legion of Honor, than the War Cross, than the salutes of the soldiers at the front, had come to Marcelle Semmer, of Eclusier. LÂON |MOST travelers from Paris to Geneva will recall the brief stop of the train at the station, and a glimpse perhaps of the gaunt gray towers on the top of the great hill against the evening sky, looking much more like a fortress than a cathedral from the viewpoint below. Called the "Rock of Lâon," it was in ancient days the Celtic Laudunam, and was known to the Romans as Lug-dunam Clavatum. "Lâon is the very pride of that class of town which out of Gaulish hill forts grew into Roman and Mediaeval cities. None stands so proudly on its height; none has kept its ancient character so little changed to our own day" (says Marshall). It was here that Louis, or Lodo-wig, who was the famous son of Count Eudes, established an illustrious court, presided over by the "brave" Duchess Gerberga, and here afterwards Charles, their son, maintained a successfully defended siege against the onslaught by Hugues Capet on this stronghold. The treachery of Asceline the Bishop resulted in the capture of the town, and as a reward, Capet made him "the second Ecclesiastical Peer of France." Henceforth the city was famed as the seat of the Capetian dynasty, whose bishops ruled it until it was captured by the Prussians in 1814, when it served as the headquarters of Blucher, in his operations against Napoleon I. After the Battle of Waterloo the French troops attempted to reform their shattered lines under its walls. Lâon was the birthplace of the mother of Charlemagne, Lothaire, Louis IV, and Louis V. Crowning royally the great hill which dominated the town and the plain, the remarkable Cathedral of Notre Dame with its many beautiful towers formed a picturesque feature that once seen could not be forgotten. One can only compare it to the towers of Mont St. Michel of La Manche, with its encircling battlemented walls, but Lâon in point of architecture was infinitely the finer of the two. It is said to have been the work of Bishop Gauthier II (de Montagne) of the twelfth century, and built upon the site of a previous structure which had been burnt during an uprising in the early part of that century. Originally there were four great towers, one at each of the angles. Of these two remained lacking the spires. The façade was most remarkable for its extremely deep portals. The two towers, which were square at the base, terminated in octagonal belfries, and the angle buttresses supported light two-storied open-work turrets of most graceful design. The cathedral was remarkable for the square apse, and there was a tall lanthorn tower in the center of the church, which had two windows separated by buttresses. In the "chevet" a rose window was placed above three long openings, over which was a gallery between the turrets. The pulpit was from the Abbey of Val-St.-Pierre. From below, the cathedral, as I have already said, looked more like a fortress surmounted by a great chateau. Strange celebrations, seemingly lacking in religious character, were enacted in the cathedral, particularly those celebrated during the month of December. "This, the fête des Innocents, took place in the choir, when the children, wearing strange costumes with copes occupied the high carved stalls and chanted the £ offices' of the mass with every sort of buffoonery, to the great delight of the people. "Eight days after this comes the 'day of Fools,' during which the chaplain and choristers meet to elect a 'pope,' who is styled the Patriarch of Fools. Those who neglect to participate in this election are expected to pay a fine. After a procession the Patriarch is offered a repast of wine and bread with great solemnity, and he in turn gives to each chorister a present of corn in payment. The whole troop wear the most fantastic ornaments, and during the two following days the entire cathedral is given over to their buffoonery. After many cavalcades by the townspeople the fête terminates in a great procession of the 'rabardiaux.'" (Viollet le Duc.) This celebration degenerated into a simple custom of the giving wreaths of flowers following the celebration of mass on the Day of Epiphany. It is strange that these towns, explored by the present writer, should have been so neglected by the tourist. Of course, it is chiefly to the artist that they seemed so quaint, entrancing and profitable. No such exquisite arrangements of composition were found in other countries as here in France, and really at the doorway of Paris. Of course now and then there was trouble for me, because I made sketches of these charming localities; and even as late as 1910, when the sketches reproduced in this book were made, forty years after the Franco-Prussian War, when there seemed to be no possible danger of war in France, I was many times in danger of arrest for drawing a church or an old wall. Several times my portfolio had been seized by officers at the frontier towns, and I had been "detained" with more or less brusqueness until the superior officer could be summoned, but I must say that these occasions usually ended by profuse apologies on the part of M. le Commissaire, who deplored the activity of his men and offered his cigarette case most graciously, begging that I should forget the incident and wishing me "good luck." But it is perhaps now unnecessary to warn the artist abroad to keep away from fortifications, or to carry his passports with him. Lâon to-day is hidden behind a heavy black curtain of smoke from the great guns of the Germans. What has been the fate of that old gray town is problematical. It is said that the Germans have shot away the two great towers of the beloved old cathedral, and that the walls of the picturesque plateau upon which it rested have been razed. Beyond this nothing has been disclosed for the two years during which the invader has occupied it. Northeast of the cathedral was the thirteenth century Bishopric, used for a long time as the Hall of Justice. It was erected by Bishop Garnier in 1242. It was a rather dismal looking structure, and altogether lacking in architectural distinction. Whatever it may have been in former days, I ventured to say as much to an advocate with whom I chanced to converse at the table d'hôte, and I shall not soon forget the reproof my criticism called down upon me. I learned thereafter to govern my tongue, whatever my convictions. The Lâonaise bitterly resented adverse criticism of any one of their beloved monuments. Along the edge of the hill below there were unusually delightful promenades, shaded here and there by thick heavy foliage, through which charming vistas appeared. The long street on the ridge of the embattlemented hill wound along most delightfully, bringing the wanderer to the old church of St. Martin at the edge of the town. This, it is said, was once the appanage of a Premonstratensian Abbey of the twelfth century. It had two bays and a transept, and six small chapels of unique character. According to legend, the first bay was built to enclose the tomb of a Sire de Coucy, its benefactor. This Sire de Coucy had been excommunicated by the clergy, and being thus outside the pale of religion, he had been buried without ceremony outside the west door. This caused such remonstrance upon the part of the people, who loved him well for his great charities, if not for his sins, that the clergy relented, and it was necessary to enlarge the bay to accommodate his grave. The twin towers from the last bay are of the thirteenth century. Near the entrance were a number of tombs, some of them of remarkable richness of design, notably that of Jeanne de Flandre, widow of Enguerrand IV, Sire de Coucy, Abbess of Saviour-sous-Lâon in the fourteenth century, and said to have been the work of the Flemish sculptor, Pierre de Puez. If this work of art has been destroyed as reported, another unnecessary crime is added to the list. There was also the low relief figure of a knight in armor, evidently of the greatest antiquity, although it was dated twelve hundred and something, the first two figures being barely discernible. The ancient suburb of Vaux has been under bombardment for more than two years. Little is known to us of the extent of the damage it has suffered, but I remember a lovely old church of the eleventh century, with a most beautiful old choir of a little later period, where the old priest, who was considerable of an antiquary, by the way, showed me a fragment of tapestry, done in silk and wool, and of considerable value, as a specimen of workmanship. He plainly was anxious that I should admire it, and to oblige him I did so. He showed me also his books, some with good bindings, others worn by use. He seemed an innocent sort of man and lonely for companionship, telling me with simple dignity of his daily life in the quiet parish and the details of his office. The highest pay of a parish priest, he said, was fifteen hundred francs a year ($300); the lowest, eight hundred, of course in addition to his living quarters. He eked out his scanty income by the fees paid him at weddings, christenings, and burials. When I told him of the sums paid in America to ministers, his eyes bulged and his under lip bulged comically. Then he wagged his head, lifted his arms, shoulders and eyebrows, sighed heavily, and changed the subject. Poor old fellow, I wonder what has become of him in these terrible days. When I left him I gave him a pencil sketch of his church which I had made, embowered in heavy trees, as a souvenir. I neglected to make another, so I cannot picture it here, in this chapter, to my great regret. Château: Couey [Illustration: 0335] Perhaps the greatest, or at any rate the most indefensible piece of vandalism perpetrated by the retiring armies of the invader, was the total annihilation of the great castle of Coucy-le-Château in March of this year. Coucy castle, legend says, was built upon the site given to St. Remi by Clovis, in the fulfillment of a condition that the former should walk around it while the King enjoyed his noonday siesta. Afterwards it was part of the property of the Chapter of Rheims for upwards of two hundred years. In the year nine hundred and twenty-nine King Charles the Simple was imprisoned in its donjon by Herbert, Count of Vermandois. Enguerrand I, founder of the house of Coucy, received the castle in fief from the Archbishop of Rheims, and from it departed with his knights in quest of the Holy Grail and was distinguished in the Crusades. His descendant, Enguerrand III, who was surnamed the Great, rebuilt the castle, and when he flouted the authority of the Chapter of Rheims, and they laid the matter before the king, he answered with the words: "Je ne puis faire autre chose pour vous que de priere le Sire de Coucy de ne point vous inquiéter." In the subsequent quarrel with the Chapter of Lâon, Enguer-rand at the head of his cohort stormed the Cathedral and carried off the dean a prisoner to Coucy, where he languished at the pleasure of the fiery knight. The laws he promulgated and forced upon the barony were called "Le Coutume de Coucy." The battle of Bouvignes, in which he performed many acts of prowess and valor, and also his successes during the Albigensian war of 1209 added to his great fame as a warrior and caused the league of nobles to propose the dethronement of Louis IX, then a child, whose crown they offered to Enguerrand. So proud were his descendants that they abandoned their other titles and called themselves simple "de Coucy" and adopted the motto "Roi ne suys--ne prince, ne duc, ne compte aussi--je suys le Sire de Coucy." Descendants sold the Château, as it was called, and Jie Seigneurie de Coucy to Louis d'Orléans in 1400, who made it a duchy, and so amplified and decorated it that it became noteworthy throughout the realm. In 1411 it was besieged and captured by the royal army, and retained until 1419, when it was taken by the troops of the Duke of Orleans. In 1423 it was captured by the English, and again in 1652 by the royal army and dismantled by order of Mazarin. At the outbreak it was an "historical monument" kept up by the state as a museum. Coucy-le-Chateau was one of the greatest and most splendid relics of the thirteenth century. Nothing remains of it now. It has been utterly blasted away from the foundations. On the heights is only a series of great piles of crumpled masonry and pulverized rock. The oldest, the strongest, the largest and most historic of the castles of Europe is now only a memory. So enraged were the French at this piece of wanton destruction, that they refused to bombard the ruins, even though they knew that the invader had intrenched machine gunners behind and beneath it. Instead the infantry, unsupported by artillery, charged across a plain swept by gun fire and wrested the sacred ruin from the enemy. So terrific was the assault that the Germans could make no counter attack. Before they left the Germans boasted to the French villagers that more than thirty tons of explosives were used to destroy the castle. So great was the explosion, the peasants who witnessed it from a distance report that the great round tower, visible for miles around, seemed to rise in its vast bulk from the foundations, and slowly vanish in a cloud of whitish smoke. So fell Coucy. Another crime added to the already long list against the invader. The official explanation for its destruction coming from Berlin, is that "the Castle was not worth more than the life of one German soldier, and there are plenty of other such castles in southern Germany." The best view of the great chateau was that from the approach from the town of Lâon. My sketch shows the ruin in springtime, its battlements rising from the trees at its base, its magnificent pinkish gray mass against a sky of heavy white cumulous cloud just after a gentle rain. The small town nestled below it, and still had some vestiges of the old walls that formerly protected it. There was a small inn bearing the grandiose title: "Hotel des Trois Empereurs," whose landlady cooked for us the best omelette we ever tasted, and begged us to take her daughter to America with us as "maid for Madame." The daughter we never saw, by the way. She had gone to Lâon for the day and we left on the afternoon train before she returned, to the great chagrin of Madame. My sketch shows the château on the end of a promontory. This was approached by a steep and narrow roadway. The great outer court was of irregular form, with what is styled a "curtain wall," of remarkable thickness; more than twenty feet, authorities claim. Beneath it was a subterranean passageway, "so arranged as to be mine proof" (Viollet le Duc). The wall was supported by ten remarkable towers, three of them circular in form. There was a great dry moat between this wall and the keep proper, paved with rounded stones, and there was a drawbridge lifted by heavy chains which completely shut off the inner court of the castle when lifted. On the arch of the great portal over this drawbridge was a rude sculptured scene depicting a combat between one of the "Sires of Coucy" and a lion which, according to legend, took place in the nearby wood of Prémontré. Near it was a sort of stone table supported by three couchant lions upon which stood a lion passant. Here each year, according to a pretty custom, a young girl of the peasant class gave cakes and flowers to the townspeople, after which there was a parade by the local fire company, and in the evening a "retraite aux flambeaux," in which the young men carried lighted torches through the town, headed by a drum and fife. The tower of the chateau was more than one hundred and fifty feet high and three hundred feet in circumference. In the drawing by Viollet le Duc it is shown surmounted by a conical roof, and this must have made it quite two hundred feet in height. "The interior was divided into three floors, once covered by ribbed vaulting, which has now perished. The upper floors and the platform at the top were reached by a winding staircase in the thickness of the wall. In the center of each vault was an opening through which men in armor could be let down quickly. The two lower floors were apparently used for the arms and provisions of the garrison." (Hare's "Northeastern France.") The donjon, according to Viollet le Duc, was the finest specimen in Europe of mediaeval military architecture. "Compared with this giant," he says, "the largest towers known appear mere spindles." So vanished from the face of the earth a great architectural treasure destroyed simply for revenge. RHEIMS |INSTEAD of being in appearance "a most venerable and aged town," as one might be led to expect from the accounts in the various guides, Rheims, or Reims (so variously spelled) was (1910) nothing of the sort. Situated on the right bank of the river Vesle in the midst of a vast plain encompassed by vine-clad hills, a most ideal setting, it was the busy and chief center of the champagne trade, and also otherwise occupied in the manufacture of both woolen and other fabrics. Until recently one of the most picturesque towns in France, it was intersected by wide and handsome streets reminding one of the Parisian boulevards, which although convenient gave it quite another character. And this "Haussmanization" (if one may so style it) did away with its former quaint mediævalness. Formerly there was an ideally artistic approach to the great cathedral of "Notre Dame," in a quaint narrow street lined with strangely gabled houses and small shops shown in my sketch, but these have been demolished, and a wide straight street, lined with characterless buildings, now forms a very commonplace frame to hold one's first view of this noble and magnificent structure, the master work of the architects Rob. de Coucy and J. d'Orbais, which Fergusson justly names and qualifies as "perhaps the most beautiful structure produced in the middle ages." Far down this commonplace street one could see the exquisite recessed portals (there are three), with its rows of saints, surmounted by the great rose window, nearly forty feet in circumference, and above the forty-two exquisite lancets, each containing a colossal figure representing the Baptism of Clovis, and the Kings of France. All detail softened by distance, like unto carved tracery upon a jewel casket. The three portals, so exquisitely recessed, were adorned with some five hundred and fifty statues of various sizes, some of them of great antiquity, and many of them on close inspection proving to be much worn by the action of the elements, or having suffered mutilation in the wars. Without entering into a tiresome architectural description, which would be out of place in these pages, one may call attention to some of the remarkable details of the façade above the three portals pierced by large windows, which was so lavishly decorated with sculpture; to the left, Christ in the garb of a pilgrim; to the right, the Virgin, and the Apostles, David and Saul; and Goliath. Place du Marché: Rheims [Illustration: 0349] The twin towers, more than two hundred and fifty feet high, which were without spires, were none the less impressive. The north portal contained statues of the Bishops of Rheims from Clovis down, and there was here a doorway walled up containing a Gothic tympanum of the Last Judgment, the figures of which, however, with the exception of the Christ, were greatly mutilated. History states that Rheims was known at the time of the Roman invasion as _Durocortorum_. Briefly, about the year 352 a. d. the worthy SS. Sixte and Sinice came here to preach Christianity, and converted the consul Jovinus, whose cenotaph is in the archevêché. The Vandals arrived forty years later, and captured the town, murdering St. Nicaise on the very steps of the cathedral which he had founded. The See of Rheims was occupied for seventy-five years after the Conquest of Champagne, by Clovis, by St. Remi, or Remigius, who was already a bishop at the age of twenty-two. He it was who baptised Clovis in the cathedral, which act gave such renown to the place that thereafter the kings came to be consecrated with the oil, which according to tradition was brought by a snow white dove in a holy phial (ampoule) for the baptism of the first Christian king, and was thereafter preserved in the Abbey of St. Remi. Rheims was taken in 563 by Chilperic, and in 720 by Charles Martel, despite the great courage and resistance by the Bishop, St. Rigobert, who was exiled. Here took place, too, the interview of Pope Stephen III and Pepin, and Charlemagne and Leo III. Also the coronation of Louis le Debonnaire by Stephen IV in 816. In the following years the Archbishops of Rheims became world famous, for instance the Scholar Hincmar, and Gerbert, who was afterwards Pope Sylvester II, and who as a simple monk under the great Adalbéron attained great celebrity for his lectures. Until the fourteenth century Archbishops had temporal power over Rheims, coining their money and ruling as sovereigns. Calixtus II in 1119 held here a council to excommunicate the Emperor, Henry V. In 1429 Rheims was delivered from the English yoke by Jeanne d'Arc, who personally gave the keys of the town to Charles VII and assisted at his coronation in the Cathedral. Lubke, writing of the sculptural details of the Cathedral, says, "All the dignity and grace of the style here reaches a truly classical expression. Nevertheless, even here, in one of the master works of the time, we find a great variety in the mode of treatment. There are heavy stunted statues with clumsy heads and vacant expression, like the earlier works of Chartres; others are of the most refined beauty, full of nobility and tenderness, graceful in proportion, and with drapery which falls in stately folds, free in movement and with a gentle loveliness or sublime dignity of expression; others again are exaggerated in height, awkward in proportion, caricatured in expression, and affected in attitude." North Door of Cathedral: Rheims [Illustration: 0355] Strange that Lubke could not realize that the sculptor produced these contrasts with design, so that the ugly and grotesque of some might make the grace and beauty of the others the more telling; but such is the quality of the Teutonic mind. But he has written so appreciatively of the beauties of the figures, that we can overlook his shortcomings. He further says, "That different hands were employed on the same portal (the North Transept) may be seen in the forty-two small seated figures of bishops, saints and kings, which in three rows fill the hollows of the archi-volts. They are one and all of enchanting beauty, grace, and dignity; the little heads delightful; the attitudes most varied; the drapery nobly arranged, and so varied in conception that it would be impossible to conceive more ingenious variations." Of the smaller portal which contained the beautiful figure of Christ in benediction, known as the "_Beau Dieu_," he says: "This is a work of such beauty that it may be considered _the most solemn plastic creation of its time_. It shows perfect understanding and admirable execution of the whole form in its faultless proportions, and moreover there is such majesty in the mild, calm expression of the head, over which the hair falls in soft waves, that the divine seriousness of the sublime Teacher seems glorified by the truest grace. The right hand is uplifted, and the three forefingers stretched out; the left hand holds the orb, and, at the same time the mantle, which is drawn across the figure, and the noble folds of which are produced by the advancing position of the right foot. The following of nature in this masterly figure is in all its details so perfect that not merely the nails of the fingers, but the structure of the joints is characterized in the finest manner." Two years ago it was ablaze with all this sculptural splendor. Now the picture is replaced by a gray monotone of fire-swept portals empty of tracery; of gaping, blackened lancet window-panes destitute of glass; its perfectly designed Gothic arches laced with fantastically bent iron bars, and its nave buried in pulverized calcined heaps of ashes from which protrude here and there blackened, charred beams, while scattered about are the broken fragments of the great bronze bells which once pealed out pæons of sound in celebration of imperial coronations. Although many have attempted the task, it is difficult if not impossible to analyze Rheims, or even adequately to describe its vital exquisite quality, its stimulating originality, or to explain clearly the well nigh incredible competence, beauty and delicacy of even its minor details. One may dwell upon the glory of its sculpture in pages of description, which fail to picture it. Rheims Cathedral was what may be styled a great consistency, that placed it quite in a category by itself. It was quite completely without a fault. All other cathedrals of France form a chronicle of splendor. They record changing epochs, times, and architectural impulse. The varying personalities of their great designers were wrought out in their details; they present the thoughts of many men, each expressing his highest thought and ideals, and the result is magnificent agglomeration, covering many years of work. With Rheims however, which was begun in 1211, the case is different. For it was finished within the same century, to be exact, in fifty years, and in perfect accordance with the original plan and conception. To say that its sculpture ranked with that of ancient Greece does not magnify its importance. To urge that the splendor and artistry of its painteld glass was unrivaled, means little now, for its disappearance is too recent, too grievous and painful. Its eulogy must be written by an abler pen than mine--and in a day far hence, when time has softened the blow. (Paris, Jan. 10, 1917.) "Albert Dalimier, Under Secretary of Fine Arts, made a statement to-day regarding Rheims Cathedral, which, it has been reported, the Pope is anxious to have restored, having asked permission to this end from the German authorities." "Orders were given by the French Government for provisional repairs to the roofs of the Cathedral in autumn of 1914," said M. Dalimier, "but we were unable to begin work without an agreement with the military authorities, and they begged us to do nothing. They pointed out that the Cathedral was _still under German fire_, that from Nogent to La Bassée, where the batteries firing on the town were installed, everything that passed could be distinctly seen by the Germans, and that workmen on the Cathedral would therefore be sure to be observed and fired upon." The great interior was four hundred and sixty-six feet long and one hundred and twenty-one feet high. Both nave and transepts have aisles. Eight bays were in the nave, and each transept projected to the depth of a single bay. A triforium was above the aisles, and eight exquisite chapels radiated from the choir. Apse of Cathedral: Rheims [Illustration: 0363] The great capitals were covered with beautiful sculpture, beggaring description. Over the large west portal was shown the Martyrdom of St. Nicaise, and over the whole west wall was a multitude of small statues in niches ending in a display of the Massacre of the Innocents. A myriad of these statues filled the whole church. Adoring angels too adorned the buttresses of the choir chapels. Rich tapestries, fourteen in number, the gift of Robert de Lénoncourt in 1530, hung on the chapel walls, and there were two magnificent pieces given by Cardinal Lorraine in 1570, called the "Tapisseries du fort roi Clovis," and others from Archbishop Henri de Lorraine in 1633, called the "Perpersack." Some Gobelins, also, designed in 1848 by Raffaelle, were hung here. The large organ was dated 1481, and designed by Oudin Hestre, and in the chapel of St. Jean was the thirteenth century monument of Hugues Libergier, the architect of St. Nicaise.. (This is buried in the ashes, and is said to be uninjured.) The Treasury included many reliquaries and holy objects of priceless value, such as the reliquary of Sanson (twelfth century); that of SS. Peter and Paul (fourteenth century); of the Holy Sepulcher (sixteenth century) which was given by the King, Henry II, at his coronation; the vessel of St. Ursula, given by Henry III; the Chasuble of Thomas à Becket; the Chalice of St. Remi; the Reliquary of St. Ampoule, and an immense quantity of gold and silver objects given by Charles X. It is said that this treasure was removed to Paris when Rheims was first threatened with destruction, and that it is therefore intact, for which we may be thankful, but what of the incomparable shrine which held it? More than a year and a half (1915) ago the roof was consumed by fire, and was held by authorities to be irreparable, but since then, perhaps daily the bombardment has continued mercilessly, simply to destroy what remains. Even the latest news from the front in France does not claim that the invader and iconoclast has been driven back fast enough to ensure safety to Rheims. In one day (April, 1917) the Germans are said to have poured seventy-five hundred shells into the city. Just how much of the incomparable fabric of the Cathedral, from which all the statuary, all the wonderful glass and framework have been pulverized by the blasts from the great shells, survives, is not known outside of the town, or is concealed by the authorities; but for one thing we pray fervently, and that is, that no so-called restoration may be attempted or allowed. Let no imitations of stone, glass or marble caricature its vanished glories.... Let it remain, we pray, the living, standing record of an infamous crime. Consumed by fire, soaked in blood, Rheims, which crowned and sheltered a hundred kings, has passed; _deleta est Carthago_. ST. MIHIEL |AT the foot of a group of tall pointed limestone rocks, which seemed to be much higher than the seventy-five feet ascribed to them, nestled this most theatrical looking little town on the river Meuse, which winds in and out most charmingly through a district once covered with dense forests. All about were beautiful gorges between which the river rushed noisily, now following the base of a precipice of solid limestone, and again laving the roots of large trees growing luxuriantly on the slaty banks. Each of these valleys, each breach in the limestone wall, was overgrown with lush verdure, contrasting most strikingly with the dark brown or gray tones of the cliffs. Hereabouts small towns and hamlets, with scant room for the old houses and mills clinging to the steeps, thickly occupied the spaces between the rocks and the rushing stream. This small town of St. Mihiel, with its population of about eight thousand inhabitants, is said to have grown up around an ancient abbey dedicated to St. Michael, established here by some pious monks in the eighth century, but the landlord of the Hôtel du Cygne told me, with a shrug of the shoulders, that the abbey was not so old as all that; that M. le Père had informed him that the abbey had been built in the seventeenth century; the same year as the church; that he wished to set M. le Voyageur (myself) right in the matter; not that he cared how old or how new it was, but that he, the proprietor of the Hôtel du Cygne, was a truthful man, and no one, least of all, a gentleman who had made such a long journey as Monsieur the American from New York--"bien intendu," should receive any but the most truthful information from him, proprietor as he was of the Hôtel du Cygne. Which long speech he delivered with appropriate shrugs, gesticulations, and uplifted eyebrows. Mine host turned out to be an interesting personality. There were many such in these small towns on the banks of the Meuse. He was named Camille Robert Joseph Laroche, and not only was he a genial and valuable "raconteur," but he had a saint for a forebear. According to his tale, which I have no reason to discredit, more than three hundred years ago his ancestor bequeathed the entire family patrimony to the church, which in gratitude therefor promptly canonized him, insomuch that he now adorns the galaxy at St. Matthias Roche. For this great honor and distinction, said mine host, all the descendants had ever since been paying, for, deprived of their estates, they became "hoteliers" and "négociants," their only wealth being the good will and esteem of the countryside. Thus I had the high honor at St. Mihiel of lodging at an inn kept by the scion of a saint. It was pleasant to arrive at this pretty hill-embosomed town when evening was drawing on and the stars, like unto glimmering altar tapers in a vast cathedral space, were shining forth one by one. I sat before the inn door upon a bench with mine host» who had lapsed into silence, and watched the crystal disk of the moon over the "Falaise," shining, with that peculiar tint which has no name nor likeness on earth; that large mystic peace, the charm of a village at eventime, brooded in the air: Truly God is known in the breath of the still woods; a very frankincense. Some passing girls in groups who had come to see the arrivals by train, that puffing, cautiously moving train that had come from Verdun, with the mail, the writer, and a few "commis-voyageurs," several soldiers on leave, and three shovel-hatted priests lent some animation to the street. Each girl, chattering and laughing, was knitting industriously. Their eyes were bright and blue; their hair, gathered with gay ribbons into knots, was sunny: they seemed care-free. The great gray limestone pointed rocks stand sentry over St. Mihiel. Upon one stands a Calvary. There were fragmented castles round about. Each dominated a ridge, stretching away like a line of bulwarks for the nestling towns between. I found, in the days of exploration that followed my arrival, that facing beyond the thread of the river, an amphitheater of great beeches, tier upon tier, ensconced all. One might fancy a couchant lion on guard here, the old town lying snug between its outstretched paws, or to use another simile as if it had been cast down by giant hands and caught in the cleft. The town lay in somewhat the shape of a T, the head-stroke turned downwards on both sides; the upright formed by the long nestling town of the valley, the cross bar by the bowed overspread of habitations at the valley's mouth, one thronged crescent of river, road, and terraced verdancy. Just at the point of junction in the nailhead was a small convent garden, all scarlet, pink, white and dazzling emerald green. One would think this quiet, rident town, looking down upon it by morning light from the Calvary on the limestone pinnacle, a very sanctuary home of dreams. On the contrary, it was only a more or less prosaic manufacturing town to the inhabitants who lived among all this picturesqueness without realizing it. Listening from my perch at the foot of the Calvary on the "Falaise," I could hear the hum of looms. At the clang of the midday Angelus they stopped short for the brief hour of rest and repast. For a thousand years some of the old walls had lain much as I saw them, for St. Mihiel figures in territorial documents of a. d. 950. It is said that there was a time when the outstretched paws of the lion were joined by huge stone-turreted walls. These closed in the town and made a sanctuary. The Barons of St. Mihiel were greatly distinguished personages; they played a noble part in the Crusades. I found their records quaintly set forth upon tombs in archaic words, the meaning of which was often entirely puzzling and obscure. I made notes of these names and dates, but they were carelessly mislaid. Should one be curious about them, I doubt not that Froissart has recorded them in all their state and glory. St. Mihiel claimed the usual list of heroes and warriors, and her claim was granted without question. The old market place was graced by lime trees, and the ruined walls were overgrown with ivy and vine of luxuriant leafage, hiding crack and gap cunningly. The aged towers still cleaved to the rock by leave of the roots of beech and fir tree, whose spreading roots are more lenient foes to masonry, perhaps, than German mines. Imagine the great empty shell of the donjon, with a rugged façade, ivy grown and rook-haunted, a ruined chapel-apse with its suspended "piscina and aumbry," (thus named for me correctly by a scholarly architect friend, else I should not have known how to call them), its Gothic columns and arches; this sheer wall overhung the town perilously. There was a story told of the old bell's tolling at the death of a child. Within the donjon is the remains of the well, fifty feet deep. In olden days a young chatelaine threw herself down this well, her child in her arms, to escape the brutality of the besiegers, in the fourteenth--or was it the thirteenth?--century. There were twin brothers who did the same, in some remote period, after refusing to open the gates to Wenceslaus, or was it Baldwin of the Iron Arm*? There was a cavern at the bottom where the knights-proprietors hid their gains during the sieges. All these and many other tales of fear, blood and bravery were told at St. Mihiel. Some years ago, they said, a young maid drawing water from the well, discovered a golden bracelet at the bottom of the bucket; but beyond a few fragments of bone and some pieces of rusty iron that is all that has been discovered of treasure. It was said that the great hidden treasure is guarded by an immense serpent, which, when any one was so foolhardy as to attempt its recovery, blew out his candles and then devoured him at leisure. On the night before Maundy Thursday, at the hour of twelve, the master knight, clad all in his Templar's armor regalia, and bearing the scarlet cross upon his breast, rides the ruins with his cohort: but to no one save a true and devout Catholic was this vision vouchsafed, so it was said. St. Mihiel was unusually quaint in many ways. One did not find sheep grazing anywhere. When by some rare chance they were brought to town by a drover, the sensation produced was equal to that which might be caused by the appearance of an elephant or a camel. Children ran after the poor frightened dusty things, tugging at their wool, some trying to climb upon their backs, and the whole square was in an uproar. There were plenty of pigs about, and these, curiously, were in charge of a professional pig handler, who took them to pasture, and cared for them for a weekly wage. It was not uncommon on a morning ramble to come upon a drove of them occupying the whole road to the limit of space: a symphony in pink amid a cloud of dust. The little town was the residence of the great Cardinal de Retz, who is said to have written his memoirs here. The Rue Notre Dame, which led to the ancient abbey, and the church of St. Michael, had some very fine old fifteenth century houses, which were still (in 1910) in an excellent state of preservation. The great church dated in part from the seventeenth century, and contained a remarkable statue of the Madonna, attributed to Ligier Richier, a pupil of Michelangelo, who also carved the noted sepulchral monument of René de Châlons, Prince of Orange, in the church of St. Pierre at Bar-le-Duc. There was here too, a figure of a child surrounded by skulls, with two of which she was playing. Said to be by Jean Richier, this was a most beautiful piece of seventeenth century miniature work. The Madonna mentioned above was depicted as fainting in the arms of St. John, the pose being most remarkable. One of the curiosities of the old church was the remains of a stone rood loft, a structure said by architects to be very rarely met with. The ruined remains of the abbey at the east end of the church were found near some sort of public offices, which should have been cleared away so that they might be seen the better. In the Rue des Ingénieurs was the house of the sculptor, Ligier Richier, dated 1538. And in the church of St. Sepulcré was the famous tomb by this master, consisting of thirteen figures, showing the Virgin, Mary Cleopas and John, and some dice players, all of great realism and character. This whole region is filled with legend, related with such great circumstantial detail that one might not venture, on pain of giving offense, to show disbelief, no matter how fantastic the story. There was one curious old house which I saw in the Rue de la Vaux, which had a rude frieze of great animals below its roof, the effect being so singular as to be well nigh unbelievable. What its history or origin I was unable to discover. Indeed much mystery was made of it, when I inquired; much as if I had asked an indiscreet question. So I desisted. In the neighborhood were the most delightful walks and rambles, overgrown with verdure, leading past small farmsteads embosomed in thick forests, in a region filled with myth and legend. Following the course of the Meuse, dotted with small mills taking toll of her one by one, whose splashing mossy wheels she cheerfully spins; eddying here and there, bright gardens, one was led to a certain gushing fountain, under a shelving bay of ferny rock, and this was named "the Easter fountain." It would be strange indeed if a fountain in this region had not a story connected with it. This one was no exception, and here follows this story of the Easter fountain, as told by Brother Antoine of St. Mihiel. In the thirteenth century of our redemption Count Reni, in the castle on the heights, governed this region; at Commercy reigned Count Alan. A common sorrow bound the two to friendship: their young wives had faded in their first bloom. The châtelaine of Reni had left a boy of four years, and the Lady Elsa a girl baby at the cost of her life. This babe, sweet souvenir, was also named Elsa by her mourning, inconsolable father. All fêtes and celebrations were thenceforth banished from the two castles, the lords of which sought comfort only in the high and holy offices of the Church, and in mutual companionship. Pope Honoré, at the call of John of Brienne, King of Jerusalem, summoned all knights to the Holy Crusade. In this call the two bereft counts found the command of the Most High. Burying their grief in the forests of St. Mihiel, they set their affairs in order, gave over their domains to the care of overseers, and taking down shield and great cross hiked sword, ranged themselves "cap à pie" beneath the banner of their high and knightly leader, the Emperor Frederic. Count Reni leaves his little Elsa to the care of her godmother and the abbess under the protection of his faithful aged squire, Père Carol. So passes by the period of ten or more years, young boy and girl grow up even as brother and sister, ranging the paths of the scented wood, hand in hand; learning together the lore of God's wisdom of flower and bird, and with the pious help of the abbess, the wondrous stories of the lives of the saints in those great vellum bound, brass clasped office books of the altar. Occasionally to the castle comes a wandering singer, who teaches them in song the doughty deeds of the absent soldiers of the Cross, naming their fathers gloriously. To these songs the children, now grown tall in stature, listened with shining eyes and panting breath. Thus they dreamed of the brave fathers they had hardly known. Now that the young Count had come almost to man's estate, the old esquire thought of presenting him at the Court of Rheims. It was summertime, and the time had come for the parting. Elsa wandered alone through the wooded paths of the forest. But the once loved scenes of nature had lost half their charm for her. To pass the time she set about acts of devotion and mercy; visiting the poor huts of the woodsmen, dispensing tender charities to their families and teaching the children to pray to the saints and the Holy Fathers. So passed the long months of summer and then came autumn in a blaze of red and golden leaves. Now the young Count, learning at the Court of Rheims that the two Counts were shortly expected to return from the Crusades in the East, returned to the castle with his retinue, and passing a small cottage by the roadside on the river bank, caught a glimpse of his former playmate and companion, on her knees, binding up the wounds of a poor charcoal burner, who had been injured by the fall of a tree trunk. But, lo: there was something in the expression of her face that was all new to him. Dismounting from his horse, he knelt before her, as to a saint. She was to him, all at once, an aureoled angel; a burning reverence overcame him, surging from head to foot, and he knew in that instant that for him time had brought its fullness to him, and that henceforth they were to be inseparable. Entranced, he studied her face, so different to him from those which he had seen at court at Rheims, exquisite as those faces were. But this one! Ah, now it was clear to him that he had all his life never had a soul. Elsa had gazed into his eyes unable to speak, her hands clasped upon her bosom. Now she gave a cry of gladness, but stopped all at once, for a new and strange quickening in her heart: Young Alan is transfigured in her sight, like unto St. Michael. Alan seizes her hand, he calls her his sweet flower of innocence, and so swears to be her loyal knight even unto death; thus they remained hand in hand in ecstasy, while she prayed that the blessed mother watch over them forever more. At the castle the pair knelt before the good abbot, and then the old Esquire and the Abbess joined their hands and blessed them. When the news of the Count's arrival at the coast, and young Alan's home coming went forth, the whole region rejoiced, the bells rang in the churches, and the vassals assembled to greet the young seigneur. From her bower in the lofty tower of the castle Elsa watched the road along the river. It was eventide when the sounds of approaching cavalry broke the stillness. Soon the great drawbridge of the castle fell with a clang of chains, and young Alan was clasped in the arms of the returned Crusader. In the great banquet hall, hung with flags and trophies of the chase, the retainers thronged to welcome and acclaim their returned lord and master. Great flagons and cups of wine were passed, and the vaulted stone roof rang with the loyal shouts of "Long live Count Alan!" But, strange to say, all was not well with Alan the Crusader. A dark cloud sat upon his knitted brow, and his worn thin hand bent upon the knob of the great chair upon which he sat. Elsa, in a very heaven between the joys, plied him with questions which he answered vaguely, and finally bade the churls to bring the torches from the walls, and gave the word of dismissal to the throng. Much troubled, Elsa gave her white brow to her father's kiss, bade him good night; and very shortly the castle was in darkness, and silent save for the measured tread of the sentinels on the parapet. On the following day the Abbess told Elsa that the two counts, once so inseparable, had for certain reasons become enemies, that the young Count of Bré must never more be named within the hearing of her father; and that henceforth she must forget her love for Alan, which now was quite hopeless. Broken hearted but obedient, the young girl, bathed in tears, spent hours before the altar upon her knees, but devoted herself to her father whenever he would see her. Autumn came, and brought winter in its train. Young Alan she had not seen since the day of his return when they met at the charcoal burner's cottage in the wood. The fête of Noël came in with a great snow storm. The Count no more went forth, nor did he attend at chapel. The abbot had admonished him upon one occasion--"If ye from your hearts forgive not those who--" whereupon the Count had struck the rail with his hand, arose, and left the chapel. Affairs at the other castle were quite similar, and the lord had refused to offer his hand in friendship to his old friend Count Alan, swearing a terrible oath that he would wither away unshriven ere he did such a thing. Thus matters stood at the two castles, and two fond hearts were breaking, while pride held out. As to the young Alan, he had well-nigh lost his reason but for the kindly and wise advice of the old Abbot. Then one day the aged châtelaine lay upon her death bed, with Elsa bathed in tears beside her. "Call thee thy father, child," she said, "I have much to say to him before I go." Of the conversation between them nothing was ever known, but a marked change came over the old knight, after the chatelaine had been laid at rest beneath the altar in the chapel. He passed the whole night before the Stations of the Cross, and cried aloud for mercy, striking his breast with both hands. In the morning he called Elsa and told her that he was to set out upon a long journey, and she begging that he allow her to accompany him he at length consented, and so together, with an escort, the old knight and the tender maiden set out through the forest. It was the Holy Week of the Passion, and there were bands of pious pilgrims met upon the road, nearly all afoot, for that was the custom. Seeing this the old knight dismounted, and bidding the escort take the horses and return to the castle, they joined one of the processions, and continued on foot as far as the Calvary which was at the bend in the road toward St. Mihiel. Here they paused and let the procession proceed without them. It was fair spring time; the fairest flowers bloomed all about them, and wild birds in the trees hymned the Resurrection of God. Elsa's heart sang in unison with the birds. She suspected the object of the old knight's pilgrimage. When they were near the castle of Count Alan, all at once she saw on the road the Count and his son, arm in arm, approaching them. When they met there was an instant's silence, then cried out the old knight, "Alan! I come to thee!" "And I was coming to thee to ask thy forgiveness," replied Count Alan with shining eyes; and they embraced, retiring arm and arm beneath the great beech trees, leaving Elsa and young Alan face to face. Elsa's hands were clasped upon her heaving bosom, her brimming eyes raised to the sky; then she knelt down beside the cliff in the moss, and young Alan knelt beside her. All at once Elsa's voice burst forth in the holy canticle, "Benedicite, opera Domini, Domino--fontes benedicite," and as she uttered the last words of the canticle, there burst forth from the limestone rock, just where their united tears had dropped, a tiny stream of crystal clear water. Soon this grew larger, bubbling forth like pearls into the sunlight, and making a channel for itself, flowed onward, dancing and leaping as for joy. And thus kneeling there at the fountain of their united tears the knights found them.... And this is the story of the fountain of the lovers' tears at St. Mihiel, where broken friendships were said to be healed by one draft of the waters, partaken of by both be it understood. One wonders now as to the fate of St. Mihiel-on-the-Meuse; is that gray old church entirely destroyed by the rain of shells that has beaten upon it for more than two years? And what remains of the little town clustering against the two tall limestone peaks all clad with green verdure, where all was so prosperous and peaceful before the onslaught of the destroying legions? Chatel Gate: Verdun [Illustration: 0379] VERDUN |UPON well nigh every headland of any considerable size on the banks of the winding river Meuse, there glowered a vine clad castle in a more or less ruinous state, and usually at its foot slept a farmstead, a village, or a town. Over each stream-laved promontory and every high hill there have been fought great and small battles year in, year out, through the ages since the time of Charlemagne. One could not wander far here in any direction without lighting upon some shattered monument of human passion and pride. "Here might reigned supreme with fantastic honor as its handmaid; at ambition's footstool religion and right were vassals." One stands before one of these shattered, time-battered castle walls, and tries perchance to picture the siege of old, with the crowds of iron-armed men busily sapping the walls. Through the ragged breaches made by the great stone-hung rams, they discharged into the interior by quaint cumbrous machines large stones, blazing bundles of fagots, and even carrion, while from the besieged warriors on the battlemented walls above came streams of molten lead, and showers of heavy iron barbed bolts. The country about during these battles was considerably damaged, and there must have been an appalling noise over it all, but somehow one cannot picture any very great carnage as a result, at least nothing like that which took place here at Verdun in the great battle of 1916, nor any such destruction of property. This town of Verdun, now upon every one's lips, was the ancient Roman "Verodunam" and ever has held a most important place in European affairs and history. Captured by Charlemagne, in the dim days of a. d. 843, it was divided among his three grandsons, Charles the Bald, Lothaire, and Lewis the German. Thus divided, the members of the Empire, Teutonic and Gallic, were never again united. Until the year 1552 the town, once the seat of a powerful bishop, remained free, and in 1648 it was formally united to France after the peace of Westphalia, when Austria relinquished the three great bishoprics of Verdun, Toul, and Metz. Verdun fell to the Prussians after a fierce bombardment lasting only five hours, and a story is told of how a bevy of fair young girls appeared in the public square before the Hôtel de Ville, where the conquerors were drawn up, and made peace-offering to them of the "bon-bons" for which, even up to the outbreak of the great world war, and invasion of 1914, Verdun was famous. These bon-bons were known locally as "Dragées." Old House on the Meuse: Verdun [Illustration: 0397] After the battle of Valmy, the revolutionists recaptured the town and, it is said, sought out these same young maidens and put them to death. The town, which was rather attractive and picturesque, stood in a sort of plain, on the river Meuse, which divides here into several streams. It was surrounded by fortifications, considered impregnable, which were planted with large trees, and there was a very satisfying Mediaeval gateway flanked by two great towers, while an attractive street called the "Promenade de la Digne" followed the banks of the river. The sights of the town, however, were very soon exhausted. If one followed the Avenue de la Gare, one came to the Porte St. Paul, and just beyond it the Palais de Justice and a large new college building. Then there was the Porte Chaussée, which was very old and had two fine crenelated towers. There were several bridges crossing the river Meuse, and along its banks a collection of ancient many colored houses, all so battered, bewindowed, and balconied, as to be quite fascinating pictorially but certainly very dirty and "smelly." Ranged along the water washed walls of these quaint houses, were many barges and washing boats, painted in charming tones of green and brown, and these, reflected in the water, made delightful pictures for the painter and snap shots for tourists. A very good regimental band played in the square once a week, and this formed an excuse for a promenade of the townspeople, and a social gathering at the small cafés, for the post prandial "bock." There was a Hôtel de Ville of the seventeenth century, lacking however in character, in the courtyard of which were displayed some bronze cannon, given to Verdun by the government in recognition of its heroic resistance in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. Near the cathedral were the remains of an ancient gate called the Porte Châtel. The Cathedral, the towers of which were high above the town, though lacking spires, was not unimpressive, but it had been so often rebuilt and changed, as to have few vestiges of the structure begun in the twelfth century. The two towers were square and topped by balustrades of little or no character. The buttresses of the apse were, however, of architectural value, and the apse had some curious and remarkable sculptures, while the triple nave was of noble proportions and had some Gothic vaulting. A curious bas relief representing the Assumption was shown in the transept; but beyond these features the Cathedral had little or nothing to offer, save a very beautiful fifteenth century cloister, which we nearly missed seeing, connecting die Cathedral with the grand séminaire. The great Citadel, renowned throughout Europe, upon which such high hopes centered in the beginning of the present war, and which resisted the efforts of the army of the Crown Prince, occupied the ancient site of the Abbey of St. Vannes, of the tenth century. It was so rigidly guarded that no one was permitted to enter it. From a roadway called the Promenade de la Roche one might idle away the hours appraising the picturesque valley of the Meuse. Alost of those who visited Verdun, and stopped at "des trois Maures or du Cog Hardi," which were the rival hostelries, usually started to explore the town after "dejeuner," and brought up at the Cathedral as a finish. But to him who stayed awhile, and rambled about aimlessly outside the town, there was no end of curious beauties, of small scenic and antique discoveries, of quaint nooks, and groupings and surprises! all about were flowers and vines, and long white winding roads, past small mills embosomed in verdure, and wayside shrines where old women seemed rooted telling their beads. And night beyond the town brought her own peculiar graces, when the mazy ravines lay hidden in the glimmering dusk, and the lights of Verdun twinkled across the valley, or answered to their images in the stream. In towns of this region one was impressed with the prevalence of Colonels and Generals. Each hotel seemed to be provided with an officer, looking, too, much like all the others. They were invariably somewhat red faced and "puffy," bored in manner, and while slow of speech, were not mentally active or entertaining. Invariably, too, they were anglers, displaying in sporting knee breeches stockinged calves of the shape of "ten pins." They seemed mysterious as to their families, but were undisguisedly gallant in their attentions to the fair sex, and invariably headed the "table d'hôte" at which universal deference was accorded them. Once, in a small town, I fancied that the spell was broken, and that no General or Colonel was in the hotel, but on the third day I learned that "M. le General was confined to his room with the gout." This room was on the floor above, and although the proprietor often assured us that "M. le General" would, in all probability, be able to come down on the morrow, and occupy his wonted seat at the head of the table, he did not come, and so we never saw him. All about Verdun were charming small villages, particularly along the river Meuse, and if one liked one could take a slow moving train, which went through a long black tunnel, and at length entered the valley of the Moselle--but that was another adventure which is not to be set down in this volume. Cathedral: Verdun [Illustration: 0405] For this summer end of 1910, the valley of the Meuse was to us all sufficient. Here, while dozing among these small towns and villages, bordering on the vine clad river's splash and sparkle, resting by night in quaint clean and generally well kept inns, the world beyond became a figment. Curious fortresses still were to be found among these old rocks; and on the plateau the antiquarian, the geologist, the botanist may find much food for wonder and study, if they searched. But if they did, at least I never met them there. Should tourist by chance pass that way, it was by train, or swiftly speeding automobile all begoggled of eyes, and mummied by greatcoat, mindful only of the smoothness of the winding road, or the consumption of gasoline. But from all such doth Dame Nature hide her soul. Then, tiring of this aloofness, one could always return to the bustle of Verdun, and find entertainment in the tortuous streets between the amorphous houses, with their aged carven doors surmounted by strange old trade-emblems, their overhanging gables; across the rough cobbled market place with the old town hall of pepperbox turret, its arcade, and its dusty hall where the "Échevins" held their courts of justice, and where the peasants chaffered their wares on market days, through the ancient gateways, and over the old bridges reflected in the eddying river. I like to think of Verdun, as we saw it "en fête" that late summer morning. The town was gay with wreaths and flags and streamers, the windows aflame with flowers. In the Cathedral since five o'clock there had been scarce space to kneel for the toll of masses unbroken at the altar. White clad priests came and went through the aisles. The air was tense and restless with murmured prayer and the incessancy of "sacring-bells." When the last "housel" had been taken, the last "Ite" said, thousands of people filled the streets, lining the narrow ways in thick serried ranks, crowding the doors and windows, and stretching in a double row across the bridge. Over all is a sense of waiting, as for a solemn thing about to happen, and this thrills the multitude. At the bridge end I could see the figure of a priest gesticulating, raised somewhat above the crowd, clad in a cope of gold and white, but I was too far away to hear his voice. Soon came a procession headed by a banner bearer, and I caught a glimpse of the scarlet of my lord the Archbishop, amid a cloud of filmy laced priestly cottas, and the violet surplices of chanting men, set in a great splash of white robes. Here and there a banner shone all red and gold, and at the end of the bridge was a great golden Crucifix. Here a short sermon was preached, and this being over there came a stir and a heave in the crowd, which fell back along the ways. Forward moved the cross, twelve banners escorting it; tapers of wax tall and thick blazed, and from upcast censers sprang misty spirals of fragrance, blue as the hills beyond the town. From a murmur which sweeps through the throng of people, a chant grows in volume until it is like the sound of a vast organ. All at once the gay burners, the smoking censers, and the gorgeously clad priests vanish around a turning in the street; the spell is broken; the crowd, before so orderly, swarms like bees in the hive, and here and there are couples dancing and jostling all unmindful of each other's proximity, but performing with stolid good humor. The spirit of the dance takes hold of the crowd, it spreads across the bridge, and sets of four, six and eight form in rows, holding one another at handkerchief length, eyes dancing with eyes to limbs' measure. There was little of passion but much of poetry in this dance, a sort of polka with three steps forward and two back, a serpentine swinging unison. Words are poor painters of the scene: like unto a moving wheatfield swept by two winds, or the sea surge whose oscillant ebb and flow is so fascinating. And so throughout the day, and far into the night the celebration continued, with meetings--rejoicings--and mild potations sacramental of reunited friendships; but not until long after the celebration ended and common events regained dominion over the streets and square, did one cease to see mentally the swinging sway of that dance, or hear the pounding, insistent, snarling drone on the barrel organs of that reiterated tune.... And this is how one likes to recall old, old Verdun, now so pathetically battered and shell torn, its cathedral towers ragged against the sky, and its Citadel dismantled. DOMREMY AND THE MAID |ALIGHTING from the ordinary train (none other stops here apparently) at the dismal little stucco station at Domremy-Maxey-sur-Meuse, in a downpour of rain, we asked the little roly-poly _chef de la Gare_, who wore a tall red cap ornamented with a band of gold lace, all a size too large for his round bullet head:--First, could we have a conveyance to Domremy?--Secondly, was there an inn there?--Thirdly, did he think that we could be accommodated there? To the first question he returned explosively,--"No, there was no conveyance; there had never been a conveyance there of any sort." To the second: "No, there was no inn there--but there was one at Domremy-la-Pucelle, 'toute en face,' near the church; no great thing, you understand--M'sieur and Madame--but not so bad, and clean of a surety." To the third: "Yes, possibly; stay, as it rains torrents, I shall go over there and enquire for M'sieur and Madame.'Tis but a short walk for me, and I have the paletot which resists the rain." And go he did, in the driving rain, too; in spite of our remonstrances he trudged out into the rain-soaked road, and we watched him out of sight down the footpath leading from the station towards the river. And this is but one of the instances of consideration and kindness that one received in this charming countryside. Briefly, we were well housed at Domremy among the poplars, and though the sheets were damp from the rainy weather, a huge wood fire lighted for us by Madame at the inn soon dried them, and a good supper revived our spirits. Here charming days may be spent among the scenes filled with memories of la Pucelle. There are two villages here, besides Vaucouleurs, which equipped Jeanne for her campaign, and whence she set forth aided by Baudricourt, the Governor. The larger is Gréoulx, perhaps half a mile away. The hamlet is probably much as it was during the time of Jeanne; a collection of small low white houses on either side of the roadway, squalid and odorous from the dung-hill before each doorway. Here sit Madame and the children, who play with the chickens and droves of small pink pigs running up and down in every direction, and in and out of the open doors. The street now widens into a sort of "place" before the church with a square, pinnacled tower in which is a clock. The interior with low vaulting is rich with festoons of drapery, wreaths and some very ornate silk banners, all displayed with much taste in honor of la Pucelle, the sainted Jeanne. To right is a fine monument, dated fifteenth century, embellished with figures of Jacob and Didier Tierselin, who were the sons of her godmother, who, it will be remembered, was a witness in her behalf at the trial. Here at Domremy the maid Jeanne is regarded and honored as a saint, and over the altar are large paintings of her representing her mission, and the events. One of them is of the appearance of the Archangel to the young girl. Outside the door is a bronze statue of the Maid of Orleans by E. Paul (1855) and farther on is a very ill-kept little square in which is a most absurd monument erected by some one who is nameless, in 1820. Just opposite a sort of court guarded from the droves of little pink pigs by an iron railing, is the quaint "lean to" sort of cottage in which Jeanne la Pucelle, called by the English Joan of Arc, was born in 1411. Above the arched door is displayed the emblazoned royal arms of France, together with those assigned to Jeanne and her family by the King, Louis XI. Above is a Gothic canopied niche in which is a kneeling figure of la Pucelle, reproduced, it is said, from the one inside the cottage, bearing the date of 1456. Here the principal room is the kitchen, in which, however, only the middle beam of the ceiling is original. It is said that the kneeling statue in armor was posed for by a niece of Jeanne. Behind the kitchen is a dark little closet, in which Jeanne is said to have slept. It is lighted by a tiny window high up in the wall, and here against the wall is a chest said to have been used by Jeanne. Domremy, in her honor, was, up to the time of the Revolution, exempted from any taxation. The hill where Jeanne heard the mysterious voices is about a mile farther on, and a sort of basilica was being built here to mark the spot, to be further enriched by a statue of the Maid by Allard. The house of Jeanne was cared for by the sisters of charity who conducted a school and a small shop where the pilgrims bought medals and souvenirs. On the other side of the railway line was a small chapel, to which it is said Jeanne made a pilgrimage once a week on Saturday, placing a lighted wax taper before the altar. House of Jeanne d'Arc: Domremy [Illustration: 0419] On the 6th of January, 1428, this young girl, the daughter of simple peasants, humble tillers of the soil, of good life and repute, she herself a good, simple, gentle girl, no idler, occupied in sewing and spinning with her mother, or driving afield her father's sheep, and sometimes even, when her father's turn came round, keeping for him the whole flock of the commune, was fulfilling her sixteenth year. ("Jeanne d'Arc," by M. Wallon, Vol. I, p. 32.) It was Joan of Arc, whom all the neighbors called Joannette. She was no recluse; she often went with her companions to sing and eat cakes beside the fountain by the gooseberry bush, under an old beech, which was called the fairy-tree; but dancing she did not like. She was constant at church, she delighted in the sound of the bells, she often went to confession and communion, and she blushed when her friends taxed her with being too religious. In 1421, when Joan was hardly nine, a band of Anglo-Burgundians penetrated into her country and transferred thither the ravages of war. The village of Domremy and the little town of Vaucouleurs were French and faithful to the French kingship; and Joan wept to see the lads of her parish returning bruised and bleeding from encounters with the enemy. Her relatives and neighbors were one day obliged to take flight, and at their return they found their houses burnt or devastated. Joan wondered whether it could possibly be that God permitted such excesses and disasters. In 1425, on a summer's day, at noon, she was in her father's little garden. She heard a voice calling her, at her father's right side, in the direction of the church, and a great brightness shone upon her at the same time in the same spot. At first she was frightened, but she recovered herself on finding that "it was a worthy voice"; and at the second call she perceived that it was the voice of angels. "I saw them with my bodily eyes," she said six years later to her judges at Rouen, "as plainly as I see you; when they departed from me I wept and would fain have had them take me with them." The apparitions came again, and exhorted her "to go to France for to deliver the kingdom." She became dreamy, wrapt in constant meditation. "I could endure no longer," said she at a later period, "and the time went heavily with me as with a woman in travail." She ended with telling everything to her father, who listened to her words anxiously at first, and afterwards wrathfully. He himself one night dreamed that his daughter had followed the King's men-at-arms to France, and from that moment he kept her under strict superintendence. "If I knew of your sister's going," he said to his sons, "I would bid you drown her; and, if you did not do it, I would drown her myself." Joan submitted: there was no leaven of pride in her sublimation, and she did not suppose that her intercourse with celestial voices relieved her from the duty of obeying her parents.. Attempts were made to distract her mind. A young man who courted her was induced to say that he had a promise of marriage from her and claim the fulfillment of it. Joan went before the ecclesiastical judge, made affirmation that she had given no promise and without difficulty gained her cause. Everybody believed her and respected her. In a village hard by Domremy she had an uncle whose wife was near her confinement; she got herself invited to go and nurse her aunt, and thereupon she opened her heart to her uncle, repeating a popular saying which had spread indeed throughout the country: "Is it not said that a woman shall ruin France and a young maid restore it?" She pressed him to take her to Vaucouleurs to Sire Robert de Baudricourt, captain of the bailiwick, for she wished to go to the dauphin and carry assistance to him. Her uncle gave way, and on the 13th of May, 1428, he did take her to Vaucouleurs. "I come on behalf of my Lord," she said to Sire de Baudricourt, "to bid you send word to the dauphin to keep himself well in hand and not to give battle to his foes, for my Lord will presently give him succor." "Who is thy Lord?" asked Baudricourt. "The King of Heaven," answered Joan. Baudricourt set her down and urged her uncle to take her back to her parents "with a good slap o' the face." In July, 1428, a fresh invasion of Burgundians occurred at Domremy, and redoubled the popular excitement there. Shortly afterwards the report touching the siege of Orleans arrived there. Joan, more and more passionately possessed with her idea, returned to Vau-couleurs. "I must go," said she to Sire de Baudricourt, "for to raise the siege of Orleans. I will go should I have to wear, off my legs to the knee." She returned to Vaucouleurs without taking leave of her parents. "Had I possessed," said she to her judges at Rouen, "a hundred fathers and a hundred mothers and had I been a king's daughter, I should have gone." Baudricourt, impressed without being convinced, did not oppose her remaining at Vaucouleurs, and sent an account of this singular young girl to Charles, Duke of Lorraine, at Nancy, and perhaps even, according to some chronicles, to the King's court. Joan lodged at Vaucouleurs in the house of a wheelwright, and passed three weeks there, spinning with her hostess and dividing her time between work and church. There was much talk in Vaucouleurs of her "visions" and her purpose. John of Metz (also called John of Novelomport), a knight serving with de Baudricourt, desired to see her, and went to the wheelwright's. "What do you here, my dear?" he said. "Must the King be driven from his kingdom and we become English?" "I am come hither," answered Joan, "to speak to Robert de Baudricourt, that he may be pleased to take me or have me taken to the King; but he pays no heed to me or my words. However, I must be with the King before the middle of Lent, for none in the world, nor kings, nor dukes, nor daughter of Scottish king can recover the Kingdom of France; there is no help but in me. Assuredly I would far rather be spinning beside my poor mother, for this other is not my condition; but I must go and do the work because my Lord wills that I should do it." "Who is your Lord?" "The Lord God." "By my faith," said the Knight, seizing Joan's hands, "I will take you to the King, God helping. When will you set out?" "Rather now than to-morrow; rather to-morrow than later." Vaucouleurs was full of the fame and sayings of Joan. Another knight, Bertrand de Poulengy, offered, as John of Metz had, to be her escort. Duke Charles of Lorraine wished to see her, and sent for her to Nancy. Old and ill as he was, he had deserted his duchess, a virtuous lady, and was leading anything but a regular life. He asked Joan's advice about his health. "I have no power to cure you," she said, "but go back to your wife and help me in that for which God ordains me." The Duke ordered her the sum of four golden crowns, and she returned to Vaucouleurs, thinking of nothing but her departure. There was no want of confidence and good will on the part of the inhabitants of Vaucouleurs in forwarding her preparations. John of Metz, the knight charged to accompany her, asked her if she intended to make the journey in her poor red rustic petticoats. "I should like to don man's clothes," answered Joan. Subscriptions were made to give her a suitable costume. She was supplied with a horse, a coat of mail, a lance, a sword, the complete equipment indeed of a man-at-arms; and a king's messenger and an archer formed her train. Baudricourt made them swear to escort her safely, and on the 25th of February, 1429, he bade her farewell, and all he said was: "Away then, Joan, and come what may." Charles VII was at that time at Chinon, in Touraine. In order to reach him Joan had nearly a hundred and fifty leagues to go, in a country occupied here and there by English and Burgundians and everywhere a theater of war. She took eleven days to do this journey, often marching by night, and never giving up man's dress, disquieted by no difficulty and no danger, and testifying no desire for a halt save to worship God. "Could we hear mass daily," said she to her companions, "we should do well." They consented only twice, first at the Abbey of St. Urban, and again in the principal church of Auxerre. As they were full of respect though at the same time also of doubt toward Joan, she never had to defend herself against familiarities, but she had constantly to dissipate their disquietude touching the reality or the character of her mission. "Fear nothing," she said to them; "God shows me the way I should go; for thereto I was born." On arriving at the village of St. Catherine-de-Fierbois, near Chinon, she heard three masses on the same day and had a letter written thence to the King to announce her coming and to ask to see him; she had gone, she said, a hundred and fifty leagues to come and tell him things which would be most useful to him. Charles VII and his councilors hesitated. The men of war did not like to believe that a little peasant girl of Lorraine was coming to bring the King a more effectual support than their own. Nevertheless, some, and the most heroic amongst them, Dunuois, La Hire, and Xaintrailles, were moved by what was told of this young girl. The letters of Sire de Bau-dricourt, though full of doubt, suffered a gleam of something like a serious impression to peep out; and why should not the King receive this young girl whom the Captain of Vaucouleurs had thought it a duty to send? It would soon be seen what she was and what she would do. The politicians and courtiers, especially the most trusted of them, George de la Tremoille, the King's favorite, shrugged their shoulders. What could be expected from the dreams of a young peasant girl of nineteen? Influences of a more private character and more disposed toward sympathy--Yolande of Arragon, for instance, Queen of Sicily, and mother-in-law of Charles VII, and perhaps also her daughter, the young queen, Mary of Anjou, were urgent for the King to reply to Joan that she might go to Chinon. She was authorized to do so, and on 6th March, 1429, she, with her comrades, arrived at the royal residence. At the very first moment two incidents occurred (says M. Wallon) still further to increase the curiosity of which she was the object. Quite close to Chinon some vagabonds had prepared an ambuscade for the purpose of despoiling her and her train. She passed close by them without the least obstacle. The rumor went that at her approach they were struck motionless, and had been unable to attempt their wicked purpose. Joan was rather tall, well shaped, dark, with a look of composure, animation and gentleness. A man-at-arms, who met her on the way, thought her pretty, and with an impious oath, expressed a coarse compliment. "Alas," said Joan, "thou blasphemest thy God, and thou art so near thy death!" He drowned himself, it is said, shortly after. Already popular feeling was surrounding her marvelous mission with the halo of instantaneous miracles. On her arrival at Chinon she first lodged with an honest family near the castle. For three days longer there was a deliberation in the council as to whether the King ought to receive her. But there was bad news from Orleans. There were no more troops to send thither, and there was no money forthcoming; the King's treasurer, it is said, had but four crowns in the chest. If Orleans was taken, the King would be perhaps reduced to seeking refuge in Spain or in Scotland. Joan promised to set Orleans free. The Orleanese themselves were clamorous for her; Dunois kept up their spirits with the expectation of this marvelous assistance. It was decided that the King should receive her. She had assigned to her for residence an apartment in the tower of the "Coudray," a block of quarters adjoining the royal mansion, and she was committed to the charge of William Bellier, an officer of the King's household, whose wife was a woman of great piety and excellent fame. On the 9th of March, 1429, Joan was at last introduced into the King's presence by the Count of Vendôme, high steward, in the great hall on the first story, a portion of the wall and fireplace being still visible in the present day. It was evening, candle light; and nearly three hundred knights were present. Charles kept himself a little aloof amidst a group of warriors and courtiers more richly dressed than he. According to some chroniclers, Joan demanded that "she should not be deceived, and should have pointed out to her him to whom she was to speak." Others affirm that she went straight to the King, whom she had never seen, "accosting him humbly and simply, like a poor shepherdess," says an eye-witness, and according to another account, "making the usual bends and reverences, as if she had been brought up at court." Whatever may have been her outward behavior, "Gentle dauphin," she said to the King (for she did not think it right to call him king, so long as he had not been crowned), "my name is Joan the maid; the King of Heaven sendeth you word by me that you shall be anointed and crowned in the city of Rheims, and shall be lieutenant of the King of Heaven, who is King of France. It is God's pleasure that our enemies, the English, should depart to their own country; if they depart not, evil will come to them, and the kingdom is sure to continue yours." Charles was impressed without being convinced, as so many others had been before, or were as he was on that very day. He saw Joan again several times. She did not delude herself as to the doubts he still entertained. Gentle dauphin, she said one day, "why do you not believe me? I say unto you that God hath compassion on you, your kingdom and your people; St. Louis and Charlemagne are kneeling before Him making prayer for you, a thing which will give you to understand that you ought to believe me." Charles gave her audience on this occasion in the presence of four witnesses, the most trusted of his intimates, who swore to reveal nothing, and according to others, completely alone. "What she said to him there is none who knows," wrote Allan Chartier a short time after (in July, 1429) "but it is quite certain that he was all radiant with joy thereat, as at a revelation from the Holy Spirit." M. Wallon continues this fascinating and intimate account of the Maid's mission with most minute detail through her early triumphs and ordeal, down to the days of her capture, confinement at Rouen, the capital of the English in France, and her trial and execution in that town. She arrived (in Rouen) on the 23rd of December, 1430. On the 3rd of January the following year, an order from Henry VI, King of England, placed her in the hands of the bishop of Beauvais, Peter Cauchon. Some days afterwards, Count John of Luxembourg accompanied by his brother, the English Chancellor, and his Esquire, the Earl of Warwick, and Humphrey, Earl of Stafford, the King of England's constable in France, entered the prison where Joan was confined. Had John of Luxembourg come out of sheer curiosity, or to relieve himself of certain scruples by offering Joan a chance for her life? "Joan," said he, "I am come hither to put you to ransom, and treat for the price of your deliverance; only give us your promise here no more to bear arms against us." "In God's name," answered Joan, "are you making a mock of me, Captain? Ransom me? You have neither the will nor the power; no, you have neither." The Count persisted. "I know well," said Joan, "that these English will put me to death; but, were they a hundred thousand more 'Goddams' than have already been in France, they shall never have the kingdom." "What is to be thought of her? What is to be thought of the poor shepherd girl from the hills and forests of Lorraine, that like the Hebrew shepherd boy from the hills and forests of Judea--rose suddenly out of the quiet, out of the safety, out of the religious inspiration, rooted in deep pastoral solitudes, to a station in the van of armies, and to the more perilous station at the right hand of kings? "The Hebrew boy inaugurated his patriotic mission by an _act_, by a victorious _act_, such as no man could deny. But so did the girl of Lorraine, if we read her story as it was read by those who saw her nearest. Adverse armies bore witness to the boy as no pretender; but so they did to the gentle girl. Judged by the voices of all who saw them _from a station of good will_, both were found true and loyal to any promises involved in their first acts. "Enemies it was that made the difference between their subsequent fortunes. The boy rose to a splendor and a noon-day prosperity, both personal and public, that rang through the records of his people, and became a byword amongst his posterity for a thousand years, until the scepter was departing from Judah. "The poor forsaken girl, on the contrary, drank not herself from that cup of rest which she had secured for France. She never sang together with the songs that rose in her native Domremy, as echoes to the departing steps of the invaders. She mingled not in the festal dances at Vaucouleurs which celebrated in rapture the redemption of France. No! for her voice was then silent; no! for her feet were dust. Pure, innocent, noble-hearted girl! Whom, from earliest youth, ever I believed in as full of truth and self-sacrifice, this was amongst the strongest pledges of thy truth, that never once--no, not for a moment of weakness--didst thou revel in the vision of coronets and honor from man. Coronets for thee! Oh, no! Honors if they come when all is over, are for those that share thy blood. Daughter of Domremy, when the gratitude of thy king shall awaken, thou wilt be sleeping the sleep of the dead. Call her, King of France, but she will not hear thee. Cite her by the apparitors to come and receive a robe of honor, but she will be found '_en Contumace_.' When the thunders of universal France, as even yet may happen, shall proclaim the grandeur of the poor shepherd girl that gave up all for her country, thy ear, young shepherd girl, will have been deaf for centuries. To suffer and to do, that was thy portion in this life; that was thy destiny; and not for a moment was it hidden from thyself. Life, thou saidst, is short; and the sleep which is in the grave is long; let me use that life, so transitory, for the glory of those heavenly dreams destined to comfort the sleep which is long! "This pure creature--pure from every suspicion of even a visionary self interest; even as she was pure in senses more obvious--never once did this holy child, as she regarded herself, relax from her belief in the darkness that was traveling to meet her. She might not prefigure the very manner of her death; she saw not in vision the aerial altitude of the fiery scaffold, the spectators without end on every road pouring into Rouen as to a coronation, the surging smoke, the volleying flames, the hostile faces all around her, the pitying eye that lurked here and there until nature and imperishable truth broke loose from artificial restraints--these might not be apparent through the mists of the hurrying future. But the voice that called her to death, that she heard forever. "Great was the throne of France even in those days, and great was he that sat upon it; but well Joanna knew that not the throne nor he that sat upon it was for her; but on the contrary, that she was for them; not she by them, but they by her, should rise from the dust. "Gorgeous were the lilies of France, and for centuries had they privilege to spread their beauty over land and sea, until in another century the wrath of God and man combined to wither them; but well Joanna knew, early at Domremy she had read that bitter truth, that the lilies of France would decorate no garland for her. Flower nor bud, bell nor blossom, would ever bloom for her." (Thomas De Quincey.) And now comes in this, which is perhaps the final year of the great war, a strange story from a small town in the Loire region near Cholet, of another illiterate peasant girl named Clotilde Perchaud, seemingly the reincarnation of Jeanne, who likewise sees visions and hears voices. Brought up on one of the small farms on the edge of the hamlet of Puy-Saint-Bonnet, this girl, now about twenty years old, since the age of fourteen has been of a strange personality. Instead of following the fairs and dancing at the village festivals like the other young girls of the neighborhood, Clotilde has always kept aloof, avoiding the young men who would offer her attentions, and devoting herself to devotions at church, and prayers in her squalid room in the farmhouse granary, where she had constructed an altar. So strange were her actions at the village school that the good priest advised her parents to keep her at home, as she would not study her lessons, but preferred to sit with clasped hands, and her eyes fixed in a wrapt gaze at the ceiling, to the demoralization of the scholars, who at length came to believe her half witted, and ceased to consider her. Not so, however, the elders. Soon it became known that this strange girl was a clairvoyant, and the more credulous consulted her as to future events, but these became dissatisfied because all of the girl's prophecies had to do with events beyond the ken of the simple folk of the neighborhood; with kings and heavenly hosts, with saints in armor waving banners and leading armies on to victory. Thus passed the life of this young peasant girl during the peaceful years between fourteen and twenty, until the great war broke out and armed hosts led by princes indeed invaded her unhappy land. So in the field below the red tiled roofs of her village of Puy-St.-Bonnet, Clotilde Perchaud erected to the Virgin a rude altar of field stones, which she trimmed with green boughs, and here she passed all her spare time, praying and seeing visions in the sky, while upon the horizon mighty guns boomed, and at night the flashes could plainly be seen. Soon this altar became a rendezvous for the neighbors, and even for those of the more remote villages from which the young men had gone forth to fight for France, and to this young girl were brought pictures of the absent soldiers at the front in the trenches and written prayers for their safety. That she possessed some strange power was admitted by even the most skeptical, for her responses to those who had loved ones missing led to their being found in distant camps as prisoners, or wounded in hospitals in distant parts of the country. In some instances, it is reported, this strange girl was able to give the names in full of those long missing, and information so detailed and circumstantial as to be marvelous. These matters were brought to the attention of the priests, and were in turn reported by them to the heads of the church, finally reaching the ears of the Bishop of Angers, who had her brought to his palace. Here she confronted unabashed a conclave of priests. The Bishop is said to have dressed himself in the ordinary black cassock of a priest, in order to test the young girl's power of divination; an ordinary priest wearing the Bishop's robes, and being seated on the throne; but to the amazement of all in the room, the girl turned from him, and kneeling before the real Bishop, asked his blessing upon her and her mission. To him she announced, then, that a white robed angel had appeared to her above her altar in the fields, and to the strains of heavenly music charged that she had, as a pure and blameless maid, been selected to deliver their beloved France from the hands of the invader. She presented to the Bishop the book in which she had written the words spoken to her on many occasions by the "shining angel in white." This book, says the account from which this is taken, "is partly illegible and almost entirely illiterate; rudely illustrated in a sort of futurist style." Its contents are said to be most perplexing and wonderful. "Savants and students of religion who have examined the book assert that it shows a knowledge of the primal principles of theology, which indicates that the author has the clearest insight into the fundamentals of Roman Catholicism, but is apparently not gifted with the power to translate those ideas into fluent French. Throughout the work are passages in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, yet she apparently had less than the usual schooling of a French child." The Bishop of Angers was so impressed with her attitude and her evident earnestness that he sent her under escort by nuns, to the Archbishop-Cardinal Amette at Paris. To him she demanded that she be at once taken to the heights of Montmartre, so that she might see the sun rise there over Paris. In this she was humored, and standing with the nuns and priests before the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on Montmartre, at sunrise, as the first beam shone upon the great gilded cross on the tower, she recited in a loud voice the vow which she had taken to deliver France from the invader. Since this, it is said no one has been allowed to talk to Clotilde, and she is said to be at the convent in the Avenue Victor Hugo. Here she is under observation of the nuns, who each send reports of her prayers and prophecies to the Cardinal. A correspondent who was permitted to see her from a distance in the convent garden, where she walked, followed at a distance of several paces by the nuns, describes her as a rather tall girl, clad in somber baggy black robes, very light of step and walking with her head thrown back and her eyes directed heavenward. Her carriage reminded him of "Genee, Pavlowa, or some other dancer," and he speaks of her as having "a wealth of filmy hair, which because of its fineness, seemed to float about her like a cloud, and only partly covered by a religious headgear," and he could see, too, "her hands, which are lily white and tiny, and tender, as those of the most pampered lady, despite the fact that the girl has done chores which in peace times would belong to men even on the French farms where the women are accustomed to labor long and hard." A strange story; but then these are strange times, and who shall say that this is unworthy of credence? CONCLUSION |AESCITIS quâ horâ fur veniet" (Ye know not in what hour the despoiler cometh) were the words of an inscription carved on the capstone of a church porch in the fifteenth century by a monkish stonecutter, overlooking a smiling valley in Picardy. That valley is now a waste place; its once populous and peaceful villages are in ruins; its fruitful orchards are gone; its murmuring streams have overflown their banks, choked with the debris of war. No church towers are visible, nor are there any forests left in the blasted expanse of shell-torn earth. The joy felt by the people of this ravaged land over the retreat of the invader, is turned to bitterness by the sight of so much wanton destruction, for they realize that this once peaceful smiling land, the richest region of France, is now a great desert waste strewn with ruins of the priceless records of her glorious achievements in the world of art. And this loss of these irreplaceable monuments is especially bitter to a people so attuned to beauty. With a contemptuous disregard for the accumulated animosity of the whole world, the Imperial high command seems bent upon leaving its hall mark upon the evacuated country. Acknowledging its inability to hold Rheims any longer, it retires its great guns to a locality from which it sends hundreds of shells crashing into that hapless town, and these are mainly aimed at the ruins of the great Cathedral. "The ruin even of ruins," cries a correspondent of the _Tribune_; adding, "In so many of the military transactions of the Hun you may perceive the hatred of humanity that actuates him, his longing to glut upon some personal victim the passion for destruction that is in his soul." Philip Gibbs, perhaps the fairest and most moderate of war correspondents, in describing the retreat of March, 1917, deals with the aspect of the country beyond the tract of shell craters, the smashed barns and country houses and churches, the tattered tree trunks, and great belts of barbed wire: "Behind the trenches are two towns and villages in which they had their 'rest billets,' and it is in these places that one sees the spirit and temper of the men whom the British are fighting. "All through this war I have tried to be fair and just to the Germans, to give them credit for their courage and to pity them because the terror of war has branded them as it has branded the British. "But during these last days I have been sickened and saddened by the things I have seen, because they reveal cruelty which is beyond the inevitable villainy of war. They have spared nothing on the way of their retreat. They have destroyed every village in their abandonment with systematic and detailed destruction. Not only in (the towns of) Bapaume and Péronne have they blown up or burned all the houses which were untouched by shell-fire, but in scores of villages they laid waste the cottages of poor peasants, and all their little farms, and all their orchards. At Bethonvillers, to name only one village out of many, I saw how each house was marked with a white cross before it was gutted with fire. The Cross of Christ was used to mark the work of the devil, for truly this has been the devil's work. "Even if we grant that the destruction of houses in the wake of retreat is the recognized cruelty of war, there are other things which I have seen which are not pardonable, even of that damnable code of morality. In Baupaume and Péronne, in Roye and Neslé and Lian-court, and all these places over a wide area the German soldiers not only blew out the fronts of houses, but with picks and axes smashed mirrors and furniture and even picture frames.... There is nothing left in these towns. Family portraits have been kicked into the débris of the gutters. The black bonnets of old women who lived in these houses lie in the rubbish heaps, and by some strange pitiful freak these are almost the only signs left of the inhabitants who lived here before the soldiers wrecked their houses. "The ruins of houses are pitiful to see when done deliberately even when shell-fire spared them in the war-zone, but worse than that is the ruin of women and children and living flesh. "I saw that ruin to-day in Roye and Neslé. At first I was rejoiced to see how the inhabitants were liberated after being so long in hostile lines.... The women's faces were dead faces, shallow and mask-like and branded with the memories of great agonies. The children were white and thin, so thin that the cheek bones protruded, and many of them seemed to be idiot children. Hunger and fear had been with them too long." This is the reverse of the pictures I found, during those calm and beautiful summer days of 1910, in that sunny and prosperous land. Pictures framed with quaint customs; the simple pleasures of fête days enjoyed by a happy and prosperous peasantry, all unmindful of the terrible days so soon to come upon them. "Nescitis qua horâ fur veniet." How prophetic the warning words of that old monk inscribed upon the capstone of that little church overlooking the green plains of Picardy! And now what is left in place of the gray old churches, the quiet monasteries, the fruitful farms and flocks and the dense forests? Where now shall we look for the gleaming white walls of the turreted châteaux, the precious mossy towers of mediaeval ruined castles; the somnolent quaint towns with wandering streets filled with timbered, carved and strangely gabled houses of half forgotten periods; the sleepy deserted market places over which towered architectural treasures of town halls famed throughout the world. Where shall the artist seek the matchless châteaux gardens, which took centuries in the making? Where seek the still reaches of silent canals crossed here and there by arched stone bridges, all shaded by great trees casting cool shadows in midday, or the vast dim interiors of cathedrals marked with the skill of many ages,--filled with the aroma of incense, and the inspiration of centuries of prayer? "The old order changeth, giving place to new." But at least one may be thankful now to have been privileged to know and to have seen these wonderful and beautiful remains of that "old order." And this feeling of gratitude tempers somewhat one's fury at the result of this invasion and destruction. But one would not have these sacred remains disturbed; there must be no attempt at restoration of these matchless monuments, at the hands of well-meaning municipalities. Rheims, Arras, Soissons, Lâon, must be left mainly as they now lie prostrate, lasting memorials for future ages. Leave to Dame Nature the task of draping them with green clinging vines, and embossings of velvet moss. So let them remain in their solemn majesty, monuments to the failure of an imperial order unhampered by the love of mankind or the fear of God. THE END 
46321	----	provided by the Internet Archive THE SPELL OF THE HEART OF FRANCE The Towns, Villages and Chateaus about Paris By André Hallays The Page Company 1920 [Illustration: 0010] [Illustration: 0013] INTRODUCTION Whoever has read "The Spell of Alsace" by André Hallays will need no introduction to the present book. While the work on Alsace was undoubtedly read by many because of its timely publication just at the close of the Great War, when Alsace and all things French were uppermost in the public mind, these readers found themselves held and charmed as much by Monsieur Hallays' wondrous talent for visualizing landscape and for infusing the breath of life into images of the past as by the inherent interest of the subjects on which he discoursed. His books are not travel books in the hackneyed sense of the word. He does not catalogue the things which should be seen, or describe in guidebook fashion those objects which are starred by Baedeker. He does not care to take us to see the things which "every traveler ought to see." He specializes in the obscure and the little-known. He finds that the beauty of out-of-the-way places and objects far from the beaten track of tourist traffic is as great as can be found in famous spots, and far more gratifying because of the fact that it can be observed in solitude and enjoyed in moods undisturbed by the multitude. His manner of depicting landscapes is not by meticulous description, but by apparently casual touches of color, brilliantly illuminating what might to the ordinary observer seem monotonous and colorless landscapes. The inspired flash of description clings in the mind and gives an unforgetable impression of landscape or architectural beauty. In Alsace he saw everywhere the red-tiled roofs, the pink sandstone of the Vosges, sharply contrasted against the green foliage of lush summer or the golden light of the declining sun. In the heart of France, as indeed also in Alsace, he sees, especially, architectural delights which are unknown to the guidebook and the multitude. In fact, it is with the eye of an architect that Monsieur Hallays has traveled through the outer suburbs of Paris, to write the essays which are included in this book. Everywhere he is impressed by the marvelous perfection of French architectural styles at their best, as he has found them in the regions which he traversed. He makes us see new beauty in churches and châteaux which we might pass with a casual glance had not his illuminating vision and description marked that which we might see and wonder at. The architectural settings, however, much as they may appeal to his professional eye, are but the beautiful frames in which to set a multitude of charming portraits of French worthies, from the most famous to the most obscure. He knows his French literature, and more particularly the memoirs and the letters which shed so vital a light on men and motives. He has resurrected more than one character from obscurity and forgetfulness. His pathetic picture of Bosc, the lover of nature, choosing his grave in the woods which he loved so well, in defiance of the immemorial custom of his race, will seem perhaps more unusual to the European mind than to the American, for the New England pioneer of necessity made his own family graveyard in the most accessible spot, and these little plots on farms and in woods dot American soil. His portrait of the mystic Martin of Gallardon is particularly timely in this era of revival of interest in psychical research. Written, as these essays were, through a series of years, his descriptions of Soissons and the valley of the Oise tell us of since-devastated regions as they were before the whirlwind and havoc of war swept over heroic France. Doubtless the visitor today would find but a memory of some of the architectural beauties here described. Their memories are imperishable, and not the least of the merits of the book is that the guns of the Hun cannot destroy the written records of this beauty, though they may have blasted from the earth the stones and mortar which composed those sacred edifices. Frank Roy Fraprie. Boston, June 23,1920. The SPELL of the HEART of FRANCE [Illustration: 0025] I. MAINTENON [Illustration: 0029] |THERE is in _L' Education Sentimentale_ a brief dialogue which recurs to my memory whenever I enter a historic home. Frédéric and Rosanette were visiting the château of Fontainebleau. As they stood before the portrait of Diane de Poitiers as Diana of the Nether World, Frédéric "looked tenderly at Rosanette and asked her if she would not like to have been this woman." "'What woman?' "'Diane de Poitiers!' "He repeated: 'Diane de Poitiers, the mistress of Henry II.' "She answered with a little, 'Ah!' That was all. "Her silence proved clearly that she knew nothing and did not understand, so to relieve her embarrassment he said to her, "'Perhaps you are tired?' "'No, no, on the contrary!' "And, with her chin raised, casting the vaguest of glances around her, Rosanette uttered this remark: "'That brings back memories!' "There could be perceived on her countenance, however, an effort, an intention of respect... "That brings back memories." Rosanette does not know exactly what they are. But her formula translates--and with what sincerity!--the charm of old châteaux and old gardens about which floats the odor of past centuries. She "yawns immoderately" while breathing this vague perfume, because she is unfamiliar with literature. Nevertheless, she instinctively feels and respects the melancholy and distinguished reveries of those who know the history of France. And besides, if these latter in their turn desired to express the pleasure which they feel in visiting historic places, I would defy them to find any other words than those which Rosanette herself uses. This pleasure is one of the most lively which can be felt by a loiterer who loves the past, but whose listless imagination requires, to set it in motion, the vision of old architecture and the suggestion of landscapes. It is also one of those which can most easily be experienced. The soil of France is so impregnated with history! Everywhere, "that brings back memories." It is, therefore, to seek "memories" that I visited Maintenon and its park on a clear and limpid October afternoon. I had previously read once more the correspondence of Madame de Maintenon and run through a few letters of Madame de Sévigné. My memory is somewhat less untrained than that of Rosanette. But, nevertheless, I am startled, on the day when I wish to learn again, to perceive how many things I have unlearned, if I ever knew them. ***** The Chateau of Maintenon dates from the sixteenth century. Since then it has been continued and enlarged without rigorous following of the original plan. It is built of stone and brick, worked and chiseled like the jewels of the French Renaissance. Its two unsymmetrical wings terminate, the one in a great donjon of stone, the other in a round tower of brick. Some parts have been restored, others have preserved their aspect of ancientness.... But here, as everywhere else, time has performed its harmonizing work, and what the centuries have not yet finished, the soft October light succeeds in completing. Diversity of styles, discordances between different parts of the construction, bizarre and broken lines traced against the sky by the inequalities of the roofs, the turrets, the towers and the donjon, neither disconcert nor shock us. All these things fuse into a robust and elegant whole. The very contrasts, born of chance, appear like the premeditated fancy of an artist who conceived a work at once imposing and graceful. The artist is the autumn sun. Before the chateau extends a great park which also offers singular contrasts. Near the building are stiff parterres in the French style. Beyond, a long canal, straight and narrow, between two grassy banks, is pure Le Nôtre. But, on both sides of the canal, these stiff designs disappear and are replaced by vast meadows, fat and humid, sown with admirable clumps of trees; Le Nôtre never passed here. Nature and the seventeenth century are now reconciled, and the park of Maintenon presents that seductiveness common to so many old French parks which are ennobled by their majestic remnants of the art of Versailles. Its unusual beauty springs from the ruined aqueduct which crosses its whole width. These immense arcades, half crumbled to ruin, clothed with ivy and Virginia creeper, give a solemn melancholy to the spot. They are the remains of the aqueduct which Louis XIV started to construct, to bring to Versailles the waters of the Eure, a gigantic enterprise which was one of the most disastrous of his reign. The gangs employed in this work were decimated by terrible epidemics caused by the effluvia of the broken soil. It is said that ten thousand men there met their death and fifty million francs were wasted. War in 1688 interrupted these works, "which," says Saint-Simon, "have not since been resumed; there remain of them only shapeless monuments which will make eternal the memory of this cruel folly." And, in 1687, Racine, visiting at Maintenon, described to Boileau these arcades as "built for eternity!" In the eighteenth century, the architects who were commissioned to construct the château of Crécy for Madame de Pompadour came to seek materials in the ancient domain of Madame de Maintenon.... These different memories are an excellent theme for meditation upon the banks of the grand canal, in whose motionless waters is reflected this prodigious romantic decoration. Within the château, we are allowed to visit the oratory, in which are collected some elegant wood carvings of the sixteenth century; the king's chamber, which contains some paintings of the seventeenth century; a charming portrait of Madame de Maintenon in her youth and another of Madame de Thianges, the sister of Madame de Montespan; and lastly, the apartment of Madame de Maintenon. What is called the apartment of Madame de Maintenon consists of two narrow chambers, containing furniture of the seventeenth century; I know not if these are originals or copies. Two portraits attract our attention, one of Madame de Maintenon, the other of Charles X. The portrait of Madame de Maintenon is a copy of that by Mignard in the Louvre. "She is dressed in the costume of the Third Order of St. Francis; Mignard has embellished her; but it lacks insipidity, flesh color, whiteness, the air of youth; and without all these perfections it shows us a face and an expression surpassing all that one can describe; eyes full of animation, perfect grace, no finery and, with all this, no portrait surpasses his." (Letter from Madame de Cou-langes to Madame de Sévigné, October 26, 1694.) Madame de Coulanges does not consider as finery the mantle of ermine, the royal mantle thrown over the shoulders of the Franciscan sister. [Illustration: 0035] Louis XIV had required this of the painter, and it was one of the rare occasions on which he almost officially admitted the mysterious marriage. This portrait, in truth, is one of the best works of Mignard. But, even without the witness of Madame de Coulanges, we would not have doubted that the artist had embellished his model. In 1694, Madame de Maintenon was fifty-nine. As to the portrait of Charles X, it is placed here to call to memory the fact that in 1830 the last of the Bourbons, flying from Rambouillet, came hither, "in the midst of the dismal column which was scarcely lighted by the veiled moon" (Chateaubriand), and that he found asylum for a night in the chamber of Madame de Maintenon. ***** It was on December 27, 1674, that Madame Scarron became owner of the château, and the domain of Maintenon, for the sum of two hundred and fifty thousand livres. Louis XIV gave her this present in recognition of the care which she had given for five years to the children of Madame de Montespan. At this time the mission of the governess, at first secret, had become a sort of official charge. The illegitimate offspring had been acknowledged in 1673. Madame Scarron had then left the mysterious house in which she dwelt "at the very end of the Faubourg Saint-Germain... quite near Vaugirard." She appeared at court. But she had calculated the danger of her position; she dreamt of putting herself out of reach of changes of fortune and of acquiring an "establishment." The letters which she then addressed to her spiritual director, Abbé Gobelin, were full of the tale of her fears and her sorrows. She desired a piece of property to which she could retire to lead the life of solitude and devotion, to which she then aspired. She finally obtained from Madame de Montespan and the King the gift of Maintenon, and, two months later, she wrote to her friend, Madame de Coulanges, her first impressions as a landed proprietor: "I am more impatient to give you news of Maintenon than you are to hear them. I have been here two days which seemed only a moment; my heart is fixed here. Do you not find it admirable that at my age I should attach myself to these things like a child? The house is very beautiful: a little too large for the way I propose to run it. It has very beautiful surroundings, woodlands where Madame de Sévigné might dream of Madame de Grignan very comfortably. I would like to live here; but the time for that has not yet arrived." It never came. Madame de Maintenon--the King had given this name to Scarron's widow--remained at court to carry out her great purpose: the conversion of Louis XIV. Not that this project was then clearly formed in her mind. But, little by little, she saw her favor increase, the King detach himself from Madame de Monte-span, and all things work together to assure her victory, which was to be that of God. So it was necessary for her to abandon her project of living in retirement, and to remain at Versailles upon the field of battle. She had hours of weariness and sadness; but, sustained by pride and devotion, she always returned to this court life, which, as La Bruyère expresses it, is a "serious and melancholy game which requires application." At first it was necessary that she should struggle against the caprices, the angers and the jealousies of Madame de Montespan; for a profound aversion separated the two women. "It is a bitterness," says Madame de Sévigné, "it is an antipathy, they are as far apart as white is from black. You ask what causes that? It is because the friend (Madame de Maintenon) has a pride which makes her revolt against the other's orders. She does not like to obey. She will mind father, but not mother." At one time, the preaching of Bourdaioue and the imprecations of Bossuet had determined the King to break with Madame de Montespan (during Lent of 1675), and, before departing for the campaign in Flanders, Louis XIV had bidden farewell to the favorite in a glazed room, under the eyes of the whole court. But when the King returned the work of the bigots was in vain. Madame de Montespan regained her ascendancy. "What triumph at Versailles! What redoubled pride! What a solid establishment! What a Duchess of Valentinois! What a relish, even because of distractions and absence! What a retaking of possession!" (No one has expressed like Madame de Sévigné the dramatic aspect of these spectacles of the court.) After this dazzling reentry into favor, every one expected to see the position of Madame de Maintenon become less favorable. But she had patience and talent. Her moderation and good sense charmed the King, who wearied of the passionate outbursts of his mistress and who was soon to be troubled by the frightful revelations of the La Voisin affair. It is true that the Montespan was succeeded by a new favorite, Mlle, de Fontanges. But she was "as beautiful as an angel and as foolish as a basket." She was little to be feared; her reign was soon over. And Madame de Maintenon continued to make the King acquainted with "a new country which was unknown to him, which is the commerce of friendship and conversation, without constraint and without evasion." But how many efforts and cares there still were before the day of definite triumph, that is, until the secret marriage! In going through her correspondence, we find very few letters dated from Maintenon. During the ten years which it took her to conquer and fix the King's affection, she made only rare and brief visits to her château. It is true that Louis XIV had commissioned Le Nôtre "to adjust this beautiful and ugly property." The domain had been increased by new acquisitions. But her position as governess, and later when she was lady of the bed-chamber to the Dauphiness, the wishes of Louis XIV kept Madame de Maintenon at court. [Illustration: 0041] The only time when she remained several months at Maintenon seems to have been in the spring of 1779; Madame de Montespan, whom the King was neglecting at the moment for Mile, de Ludres, had come to beg shelter of the friend of her friend, in order to be delivered under her roof of her sixth child, Mlle, de Blois. This memory has a special value, if we wish to become well acquainted with the characteristic morality of the seventeenth century. Observe, in fact, that this child was adulterous on both sides; that Madame de Montespan, abandoned, could only hate Madame de Maintenon, more in favor than ever; that, five years later, Madame de Maintenon was to marry Louis XIV, and finally that, in spite of this curious complaisance, Madame de Maintenon had none the less the most sure and vigilant conscience in regard to everything which touched on honor.... It is most likely that others will discover some day terrible indelicacies in acts which we today think very innocent. There is an evolution in casuistry. From the epoch of the foundation of Saint Cyr, Madame de Maintenon had less time than ever for her property. She lived her life elsewhere, divided between the King and the House of St. Louis. When her niece married the Duke of Ayen she gave her Maintenon, but reserved the income for herself but it was to St. Cyr that she retired and there she died. ***** Under the great trees of the park, where the verdure is already touched with pale gold, in the long avenue which is called the Alley of Racine, because the poet is supposed to have planned Athalie there (I do not know if tradition speaks the truth), I recall that letter to Madame de Coulanges which I transcribed a little way back. "My heart is fixed here," said Madame de Main-tenon. But, the more I think of it the less it seems to me that her heart was ever capable of becoming attached to the beauty of things. The "very beautiful surroundings" of Maintenon pleased her because this château was the proof of the King's favor, because, after the miseries of her childhood, after the years of trials and anxieties, she finally felt that her "establishment" was a fact. But there is something like an accent of irony in her way of vaunting the "woodlands where Madame de Sévigné might dream of Madame de Grignan very comfortably," for there never was a woman who dreamed less and scorned dreaming more than this beautiful tutoress, possessed of good sense, sound reason and a poor imagination. She was very beautiful and remained so even to an advanced age. She was about fifty when the Ladies of Saint Cyr drew this marvelous portrait of her: "She had a voice of the most agreeable quality, an affectionate tone, an open and smiling countenance, the most natural gestures of the most beautiful hands, eyes of fire, such affectionate and regular motions of a free figure that she outshone the most beautiful women of the court.... Her first glance was imposing and seemed to conceal severity.... Her smile and her voice opened the cloud...." (This is better than all the Mignards.) Her conversation was delightful: Madame de Sévigné bears witness to it, and that at a time when her testimony cannot be questioned, since nothing could then cause her to foresee the prodigious destiny of Madame Scarron. She had a sovereign grace in her apparel, although the material of her clothing was always of extreme simplicity; and this amazed her confessor, the excellent and respectful Abbé Gobelin, who said to her: "When you kneel before me I see a mass of drapery falling at my feet with you, which is so graceful that I find it almost too much for me." She knew that she was irresistibly beautiful, and her confessor had assuredly taught her nothing by telling her that her commonest robes fell into folds about her with royal elegance. There was no coquettishness in her. No one today can have any doubt of her integrity and her virtue. Bussy-Rabutin has certified this and he was not accustomed to give such a brevet without good reasons. But, to refute the calumnies of Saint-Simon, nothing more is required than to read the letters of Madame de Maintenon. They have a turn and an accent which cannot deceive. The whole rule of her conduct was double. She was virtuous from devotion and from care for her reputation. The second sentiment was certainly much more important to her than the first. She has herself confessed it: "I would like to have done for God all that I have done in the world to keep my reputation." [Illustration: 0047] "I wanted to be somebody of importance," she said. This explains everything: her ambition, her prudence, her moderation and her scruples. She cares little for the advantages which her high position could give her; she seeks neither titles, nor honors, nor donations. She wishes for the approbation of honest men; she desires "good glory, _bonne gloire_," as Fénelon has expressed it. We find in her, mingled in proportions which it is impossible to measure, a passion for honor quite in the manner of Corneille, and a much less noble apprehension of what people will say about her. But if this is truly her character--and, when we have read her letters, it is impossible to retain a doubt on this point--she is incapable of the weaknesses of which she has been accused. "I have a desire to please and to be well thought of, which puts me on my guard against all my passions." That is truth itself, and good psychology. But even more fine and more penetrating appears to me the remark once made about Madame de Maintenon by a woman of intellect: "This is what has passed through my mind... and has made me believe that all the evil they have said about her is quite false: it is that if she had had something to reproach herself about in regard to her morals, if she had had weaknesses of a certain kind, she would have had to fight less against vainglory. Humility would have been as natural to her as it was-; foreign to her, I mean in the bottom of her heart; for externally every appearance denied that secret pride of which she complains to her spiritual director. It was therefore necessary that this should have been a secret esteem for herself. Now how could she esteem herself, with the uprightness which was part of her, if she had not known herself to be estimable, she who in her conversations paints so well those whose reputation has been tarnished by evil conduct.... I do not know if my thought is good; but it has pleased me." Thus in the eighteenth century, Madame de Louvigny wrote to La Beaumelle, the first historian of Madame de Maintenon. The analysis is just and delicate. One of the grievances of Saint-Simon against Madame de Maintenon is the manner in which she used her credit to displace certain prelates of noble birth, preferring to them "the crass ignorance of the Sulpicians, their supreme platitude... the filthy beards of Saint-Sulpice." Chance has brought to my notice a copy of the letters of Madame de Maintenon which belonged to Scherer and which he annotated when reading it. I find there this remark penciled upon a page: "Neither Jesuit, nor Jansenist, but Sulpician." It is impossible to give a better definition of the devotion of Madame de Maintenon. She had the reasonable piety which is the mark of Saint Sulpice. From her family and from her infancy she had preserved a sort of remnant of Calvinism: she did not like the mass and was pleased with psalm singing. This was to estrange her from the Jesuits. On the other hand, Jansenism had an air of independence, almost of revolt, which must have displeased her intelligence, with its love of order. She was wisely and irreproachably orthodox. Her grave, tranquil, active piety reveals a conscience without storms and an imagination without fever. Thus she had great pride and little vanity, great devotion and little fervor. She had much common sense in everything. She loved her glory passionately and her God seriously. She was charitable, as was enjoined by the religion which she practiced with a submissive heart. But we know neither a movement of sensitiveness nor an outburst of tenderness in her life. She had a very lofty soul, a very clear intelligence, a very rigid will. She was desperately dry. Did this Sulpician, spiritual, cold and ambitious, ever feel the charm of the great trees of her park? I doubt it. $II. LA FERTÉ-MILON |RACINE was about twelve years old when he left La Ferté-Milon, to go first to the college of Beauvais and later to Port-Royal des Champs. He passed his infancy there in the house of his paternal grandmother, Marie des Moulins, the wife of Jean Racine, controller of the salt warehouse; he was thirteen months old when his mother died and three years old at the death of his father. Of these early years we know nothing except that the grandmother loved the orphan more than any of her own children, an affection of which Racine retained the most tender memory. [Illustration: 0053] He later often returned to the town of his birth, where his sister Marie had remained and had married Antoine Rivière. The two families remained united; Racine handled the interests of his brother-in-law at Paris; the Rivières sent Racine skylarks and cheeses; and when Racine's children were ill, they were sent to their aunt to be cared for in the open air. And these were almost all the bonds between Racine and La Ferté-Milon. It is therefore probable that almost nothing at La Ferté-Milon today will awaken reminiscences of the poet. However, let us seek. At the exit from the station a long street, a sort of _faubourg_ of low houses, with their naïve signs swinging in the wind, leads us to the bridge across the Ourcq. On the opposite bank, the little old town with its little old houses clambers up the abrupt slope of a hill which is crowned by the formidable ruin of the stronghold. Here and there, at the water's edge are remnants of walls, towers and terraced gardens, which, with the meadows and the poplars of the valley, compose a ravishing landscape. Once across the bridge, behold Racine. It is a statue by David d'Angers. It is backed by the mayoralty and surrounded by a portico. Racine wears a great wig, which is not surprising; but, notwithstanding his great wig, he is half naked, holding up with his hand a cloth which surrounds his body and forms "harmonious" folds. It is Racine at the bath. Near him stands a cippus, on which are inscribed the names of his dramatic works, from _Athalie to Les frères ennemis_, the title of which latter is half concealed by the inevitable laurels. While I was contemplating this academic but ridiculous image, a peasant, carrying a basket on his arm, approached me and delivered the following discourse: "This is Jean Racine, born in 1639, died in 1699. And you read upon this marble the list of his dramatic works. He was bom at La Ferté-Milon and I have at home parchments where one may see the names of the persons of his family; I possess also his baptismal font. I am, so to speak, the keeper of the archives of La Ferté.... The _Comédie française_ will come here April 23.... Racine had two boys and five girls.... There was a swan in his coat of arms; the swan is the symbol of purity. Fénelon, Bishop of Cambrai, has been compared to a swan. Fénelon, born in 1651 and dead in 1715, is the author of _Télémaque_ and of the _Maximes des Saints_. This last work embroiled him with Jacques Bénigne Bossuet, in Latin Jacobus Benignus, Bishop of Meaux, who wrote _Oraisons funèbres and the Discours sur V histoire universelle_, which he was unfortunately unable to finish.... My name is Bourgeois Parent, and here is my address. And you, what is your name? You would not belong to the _Comédie française?_" All this uttered in the voice of a scholar who has learned his lesson by heart, with sly and crafty winks.... I thank this bystander for his erudition; I admit humbly that I do not belong to the _Comédie française_ and I take leave, not without difficulty, of this extraordinary "Ra-cinian," who truly has the genius of transition, in the manner of Petit-Jean. In what house was Racine born? The accepted tradition is that his mother was brought to bed at No. 3, Rue de la Pescherie (now Rue Saint-Vaast); in this house lived the Sconin couple, the father and mother of Madame Racine. The old house has been demolished, and there remains of it nothing more than a pretty medallion of stone which represents the _Judgment of Paris_. This is inserted above a door in the garden of the new house. But, in the same street, there stands another house (No. 14) which belonged to the paternal grandparents of Jean Racine; it is here, according to other conjectures, that the author of _Athalie_ was born. And these two houses are not the only ones at La Ferté which dispute the honor of having seen the birth of Racine.... I will not get mixed up in the search for the truth. I have heard that the people of Montauban recently had recourse to an ingenious means of ending a quarrel of the same kind. No one knew in which house Ingres had been born; a furious controversy had arisen between various proprietors of real estate. It was ended by a referendum. Universal suffrage gave its decision. Now the question is decided, irrevocably. [Illustration: 0059] There is another monument to the poet. Behind the apse of the church, in a little square, on top of a column, is perched an old bust more or less roughly repaired; at its foot has been placed a tawdry cast-iron hydrant. This is called the Racine Fountain. Decidedly La Ferté is a poor place of pilgrimage: few relics, and the images of the saint are not beautiful! Fortunately, to recompense the pilgrim, there are in the two churches precious stained glass windows of the sixteenth century; those of Notre Dame, despite grievous restorations, are brilliant in coloring and free in design. The _Saint Hubert_ is a good picture of almost Germanic precision, and, above the right-hand altar, the portraits of the donors and their children are natural and graceful. Above all, there is the admirable façade of the old castle of Louis of Orleans, an enormous crenelated fortress, flanked with towers, whose naked grandeur is set off by sculptures, marvelous but mutilated, alas! There are statues of armed champions framed in elegant foliage, and, above the arch of the great door, the celebrated _Coronation of the Virgin_, one of the masterpieces of French sculpture; a cast of it can be studied at the Trocadero, and there we can admire at full leisure the truth of the attitudes and the freedom of the draperies. But no one can imagine the beauty of this composition, unless he has seen it relieved against and shining from the ferocious wall of the citadel, colored with the golden green of mosses, while tufts of yellow wallflowers, growing among the delicate carvings of the wide frame, give an exquisite sumptuousness to the whole decoration. Returning to the terrace on the other side of the castle, which dominates the houses, the towers and the gardens of the village, I find myself before the framework of a great tent which is being erected for the approaching performance by the Comédie française, and find myself brought back from the Middle Ages to Racine. These juxtapositions no longer surprise us, since we are now so accustomed to ramble through history and literature as through a great second-hand store, stopping at all the curiosities which amuse our eclectic taste. I imagine, however, that a man of the seventeenth century, a contemporary of Racine, would have been stupified to think that any one could enjoy the verses of Bérénice and at the same time be sensitive to the charm of the old Gothic images, carved upon the wall of this "barbarous" donjon. Time has done its work; it has effaced the prejudices of centuries; it has allowed us to perceive that the sculptor of the Coronation of the Virgin and the poet who wrote Bérénice were, after all, sons of the same race and servants of the same ideal. No, this is not a vain dream; there is something Racinian in the statues of La Ferté-Milon. They possess purity, nobility and elegance. Has not this Virgin, kneeling before the throne of the Lord, while two angels ceremoniously hold up the train of her royal mantle, has she not, I say, the attitude and the touching grace of Racine's Esther at the feet of Ahasuerus? At the edge of this terrace, I have before me the delightful landscape of the little hills of the Ourcq valley, and, as I contemplate the soft and beautiful undulations covered by the forest of Retz, I am more and more struck by the harmony of this charming spot. I think of the pages which Taine placed at the beginning of his essay on La Fontaine, in which he discovers in the French landscape the very qualities of the Gallic mind. You remember this picture of the land of Champagne: "The mountains had become hills; the woods were no longer more than groves.... Little brooks wound among bunches of alders with gracious smiles.... All is medium-sized here, tempered, inclined rather toward delicacy than toward strength." How exact all this is! There is a perfect concordance between the genius of La Fontaine and the aspect of the country of his birth. In the valley of the Marne, if we follow one of those long highways which stretch, straight and white, between two ranks of trembling poplars, it seems unnatural not to see the animals leave the fields and come to talk to us upon the roadway. These French landscapes have still another sort of beauty, and, in the country of Racine, this beauty is more striking than elsewhere; its design has an incomparable grace and nobleness. The fines of the different planes intermingle without ever breaking one another. The undulations unfold with a caressing, almost musical, slowness. These hillocks which surround La Ferté-Milon have, in truth, the sweetness of a verse of _Bérénice_. They have the flexibility of rhythm of a chorus from _Esther_: Just as a docile brook Obeys the hand which turns aside its course, And, allowing the aid of its waters to be divided, Renders a whole field fertile; Oh, God, Thou sovereign master of our wills, The hearts of kings he thus within Thy hand. We must repeat these verses upon the terrace of La Ferté-Milon, at the foot of which the Ourcq ramifies among the gardens and the meadows; and we must follow upon the horizon the elegant sinuosity of the low hills, to appreciate the mysterious and subtle harmony which was established for life between the imagination of Racine and the sweet countryside of his infancy. I did not wish to leave the town of Racine without following the Faubourg de Saint-Vaast up to the wooded hillside where the Jansenists who took refuge at La Ferté-Milon often came to pray. In 1638, the recluses of Port-Royal had been dispersed; Lancelot had taken refuge at La Ferté-Milon, with the parents of one of his pupils, Nicolas Yitart (the Vitarts were relatives of the Racines); then M. Antoine Le Maître and M. de Sericourt had come to join him. They long led a life of complete seclusion in the little house of the Vitarts; but in the summer of 1639 they sometimes decided to go out after supper. Then they went into the neighboring wood, "upon the mountain," which overlooks the town, and there they conversed of good things. They never spoke to anybody; but when they returned at nine o'clock, walking in single file and telling their beads, the townsfolk, seated before their doors, rose in respect and kept silence as they passed. (It is still easy to imagine this admirable scene in the little streets of La Ferté; the architecture has changed so little!) The good odor, as Lancelot calls it, which was spread by the three Jansenists, remained as a living influence in the little town. And this sojourn of the hermits brought Port-Royal near to the Racine family. The sister of the poet's grandmother was already cellaress at the abbey; his aunt will later take the veil; his grandmother will end her life at Port-Royal des Champs; and the young Jean Racine (he entered the world only after the hermits had departed) will have for masters Lancelot, Le Maître and Hamon.... Later he will make a scandal at Port-Royal; he will rally his masters. But, in spite of this, their lessons will remain ineffaceable; and the author of the Cantiques spirituelles will desire to be buried at the foot of Hamon's grave. On what did the destiny of the poet depend? Perhaps Esther and Athalie would never have been written if these three hermits, fleeing from persecution, had not come one day to "Jansenize" La Ferté and to converse about good things upon the "Mountain," as they called this pretty hillock of the Valois, with its soft and shadowy slopes. III, MEAUX AND GERMIGNY |WHILE the glacial downpours of this endless winter continue, I find pleasure in running over and completing the notes collected in the course of a stroll which I undertook on a warm and charming day last autumn. In weather as bad as this one can ramble only in memory, unless desirous of catching influenza. ***** [Illustration: 0067] I went to Meaux and to Germigny-l'Evêque to discover, either at the episcopal residence or in Bossuet's country house, whatever may still recall the memory of the "Eagle." To tell the truth, it was not the "Eagle" who interested me on that day, but the man himself. I had recently read the remarkable portrait which forms the close of the beautiful study of M. Rebelliau, those pages which are so vivid and in which is sketched with so much relief and truth the figure "of an everyday Bossuet, sweet and simple." [1] It seemed to me that nowhere could this Bossuet be better evoked than in the garden of the bishop's house at Meaux and in the park of Germigny. "_In Germiniaco nostro_," we read at the end of the Latin letters of "M. de Meaux." I recalled, besides, with what surprise I had read the _Mémoires_ of Abbé Le Dieu, those notes, sometimes puerile, but so touching in their familiar simplicity, which reveal to us a Bossuet very different from that of Bausset. This cardinal, although he composed his book from the manuscripts of Abbé Le Dieu, could not resign himself to the simplicity of the faithful secretary. He has doubtless collected everything; he has said everything; but he has thought it his duty to ascribe to his model a continuous majesty and an inexhaustible pride. He has drawn the Bossuet of Rigaud's portrait. Shall we cite an example of the way in which Cardinal de Bausset transposes the descriptions of Abbé Le Dieu? Bossuet invited his priests to say the mass quickly: "_It is necessary to go roundly_, for fear of tiring the people." This is the phrase reported by Abbé Le Dieu. And this is how Cardinal de Bausset translates the expression to make it more suitable to the gravity of the author of the _Oraisons funèbres_: "It is necessary to perform all the ceremonies with dignity," said Bossuet, "but with suitable speed. It is not necessary to tire the people." A simple shading; but a characteristic trait is effaced. ***** I commenced my pilgrimage by a visit to the cathedral of Meaux. "He had taken possession of the bishopric of Meaux on Sunday, February 8, 1682, and, on Ash Wednesday in the following week, preaching in his cathedral to signalize the beginning of Lent, he declared that he would devote himself entirely to his flock and would consecrate all his talents to their instruction. He promised to preach on every occasion when he should pontificate; and that no business, however pressing, should ever prevent him from coming to celebrate the high, feasts with his people and to preach the word of God to them. He never failed in this, not even to exercise his office of Grand Almoner. He took leave of the princesses to whom he had been attached with much respect, and left to others the charge of administering Holy Communion to them on the high feasts." (_Mémoires_ of Abbé Le Dieu, Volume I, page 182.) [Illustration: 0071] The pulpit from which Bossuet preached so many sermons no longer exists. Its panels have been found and reassembled to form a new pulpit. Otherwise, in this beautiful Gothic cathedral there is nothing to arouse the emotions or to speak to the imagination. Externally and internally, all has been "freshly restored." The soul of the past has departed from it. There is soon to be placed under the roof of the church a commemorative monument which was recently exhibited in the Grand Palace, in the midst of an amusing crowd of statues. I was told that the authorities have not yet selected the place which this monument will occupy in the cathedral. How admirable! The monument has been conceived and executed for an undetermined position! This formidable pile of sculpture has been treated like a simple mantelpiece ornament.... But let us pass; this does not concern in the least the memory of Bossuet. * * * * * In the bishopry, the episcopal apartments are on the second floor. Bossuet did not live there very much. He voluntarily gave up the house to his nephews and his niece, Madame Bossuet. His family had undertaken the management of the household; he was a spendthrift and gave little attention to the cares of daily life, devoting all his time to his formidable labors. "I would lose more than half of my mental ability," he wrote to Marshal de Beliefonds, "if I restricted myself in my household expenses." Madame Bossuet knew how to take advantage of this weakness of her uncle, inability to take care of his income. She had become mistress of the episcopal mansion; she led a worldly life there; she entertained; she gave suppers and concerts. During Lent of 1704, Bossuet lay at death's door. The terrible agonies of illness had caused him to lose sleep. See what happened just outside of the room where he lay in agony: "This evening Madame Bossuet gave an entertainment to the Bishop of Troyes, Madame de La Briffe, the dowager, Madame Amelot, President Larcher, and other male and female company, to the number of eight. There was a magnificent repast for those who were fasting and those who were not, with all the noise which attends such assemblies, and yet this went on in the very antechamber of M. de Meaux and in his hearing, when he longed for sleep with the greatest inquietude." (Mémoires of Abbé le Dieu, Volume III, page 74.) It is easy to understand that Bossuet did not find in such surroundings the peace and quiet necessary for his immense labors. He had to find a retreat where he could escape the sounds of feasting and conversation which filled the episcopal house. Let us cross the garden which was once laid out by Le Nôtre. Beyond the flower beds, overlooking the ancient ramparts of the town of Meaux, an avenue of clipped yews offers a sure and austere asylum for meditation. This was, it is said, the bishop's promenade. At the very end, upon the platform of a former bastion, a little pavilion served as his study. Its old wainscot-ings have disappeared, but the original division of the pavilion into two rooms has remained; one contained his bed, the other his worktable. Here Bossuet shut himself up every evening. In the middle of the night, after sleeping four or five hours, he waked up of his own accord, for he was master of his hours of sleep. He found his desk in readiness, his armchair in position, his books piled upon chairs, his portfolio of papers, his pens, his writing pad and his lighted lamp; and he commenced to think and to write. On winter nights he buried himself to his waist in a bearskin bag. After a vigil of three hours, he said his matins and returned to slumber. While, in the silence of the night, M. de Meaux wrote against heretics and prayed for them, armed himself for the eternal combat and worked for the welfare of the souls which were in his charge, the salons of the episcopal house were made gay by lights and violins. ***** Bossuet remained faithfully in his diocese during the twenty-two years that he was bishop of Meaux. But he always preferred to live in his country house at Germigny rather than in his episcopal palace. Two leagues across a pleasant and slightly undulating country, the road crosses the Marne by a stone bridge. In the seventeenth century there was only a ferry. On the left bank appears the little village of Germigny with its few houses dotted pleasantly along the hillside. The landscape has the grace and freshness which is characteristic of the whole valley of the Marne: a horizon of tiny hills, humble and smiling, a fertile and regularly cultivated plain, an old mill lost among the willows, a line of great poplars, a sluggish, grassy rivulet, resigned to continual detours, and finally, spread over all these things, a somewhat humid light which imparts to them a delicate charm--a lovable spectacle of which the eye cannot tire, since its subtle seductiveness lies wholly in the changes of the height and the flight of the clouds. From the twelfth century, the pleasure house of the Bishops of Meaux was at Germigny, on the banks of the Marne. Kings often stopped there when they came to hunt in the neighboring forests. Bossuet's predecessor, M. de Ligny, spent fifty thousand crowns in transforming the old house into a veritable château. The domain was sold at the time of the Revolution. But Msr. de Briey has bought back a part of it and has thus renewed the tradition of the former bishops of Meaux. What remains of the old château? The park has been cut up. Of the gardens a lawn and a few alleys remain. The buildings have been ruined. A dovecote and an old turret are still standing, and the wreckers have respected the long terrace whose foot was formerly bathed by the Marne; it is today separated from the river by a highway. This is shaded by great trees, a charming place which seems to have been made especially for the meditative promenade of an orator or the relaxation of a theologian. Bossuet loved Germigny. In his letters he often celebrated the charm of "his solitude." He even sung it in Latin in a hymn which he composed in honor of Saint Barthélémy, the patron of his parish. Every year he came to his country house to realize that dream of his youth which he had ingenuously expressed in a sermon: "What an agreeable diversion to contemplate how the works of nature advance to perfection by insensible increase! How much pleasure we can have in observing the success of the trees which we have grafted in a garden, the growth of the wheat, the flow of a river!" For he was sensitive to the spectacles of nature. "Do you desire to see a sight worthy of your eyes? Chant with David: 'When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained.' Listen to the word of Jesus Christ who said to you: 'Consider the lily of the field and the flowers which pass in a day. Verily, verily, I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory and with that beautiful diadem with which his mother crowned his head, was not arrayed like one of these.' See these rich carpets with which the earth covers itself in the spring. How petty is everything in comparison with these great works of God! There we see simplicity joined with grandeur, abundance, profusion, inexhaustible riches, which were created by a word and which a word sustains...." And, in this same _Traité de la concupiscence_ from which I have just extracted these lines, written with a grace almost worthy of Saint Francis, do you recall the admirable picture of a sunrise: "The sun advanced, and his approach was made known by a celestial whiteness which spread on all sides; the stars had disappeared and the moon had arisen as a crescent, of a silver hue so beautiful and so lively that the eyes were charmed by it.... In proportion as he approached, I saw her disappear; the feeble crescent diminished little by little; and when the sun was entirely visible, her pale and feeble light, fading away, lost itself in that of the great luminary in which it seemed to be absorbed..." Is not this the work of an attentive and passionate observer? The numerous letters and decrees dated at Germigny show how much this retreat pleased Bossuet. His books followed him there. Labor seemed easier to him in this salubrious air and at this delicious spot. There he received, in noble and courteous fashion, the illustrious personages who came to visit him. The Great Condé, the Duc de Bourbon, the Prince de Conti, the Comte de Toulouse, the Duc de Maine, Cardinal Noailles, Marshal de Villars, Madame de Montespan, and her sister, the Abbess of Fontevrault, were the guests of Bossuet at Germigny. In 1690, the Dauphin, on his way to the army in Germany, had wished to make his first halt at Germigny, at the home of his ancient tutor. The most celebrated preachers were invited by the Archbishop of Meaux to preach at his cathedral, and were afterward entertained in his country house. It was in this way that the Abbé de Fénelon often came to Germigny. At this period the bishop and the abbé esteemed and loved each other. "When you come," the Abbé de Fénelon wrote from Versailles to the Bishop of Meaux, "you will tell us of the marvels of spring at Germigny. Ours commences to be beautiful: if you do not wish to believe it, Monsignor, come to see it." (April 25, 1692.) And on another occasion, Fénelon sent to Bossuet verses upon his countryside which are, alas!--verses by Fénelon! Nine years later the springtimes of Germigny were forgotten. The _Maximes des Saints_ had been condemned. _Têlêmaque_ had been published; Têlémaque which Bossuet read at this very Germigny, under the trees which had witnessed the former friendship now broken, Télémaque which he declared "unworthy not only of a bishop, but of a priest and of a Christian." And one day, he said to Abbé Le Dieu that Fénelon "had been a perfect hypocrite all his life...." [Illustration: 0081] Among the visitors at Germigny, we must not forget Malebranche, whose name was given to one of the avenues of the garden; Rigaud, who commenced in this country house the portrait of Bossuet which today may be found in the Louvre; Santeul, "the gray-haired child," who made Latin verses to describe and celebrate the chateau and the park of Germigny. How many verses Germigny has inspired! ***** This beautiful terrace which overlooks the Marne and where so many illustrious shades surround that of "M. de Meaux," is the very place to evoke the "sweet and simple" Bossuet! When we see that he has so many friends and know this taste for retreat and country life, the man loses at once a little of that solemnity and that inflexible arrogance which have come down in legend as characteristic of his personality. We also seem to sustain a paradox, even after M. Brunetière, even after M. Rebelliau, in speaking today of the sweetness and the humanity of Bossuet. The entire eighteenth century labored to blacken and calumniate the victorious adversary of "sweet Fénelon." It is not in the course of a promenade upon the banks of the Marne that I pretend to study the quarrel of quietism. Nevertheless, however little we may wish to recall the vicissitudes of the dispute, we must admit that the excess of shiftiness of the crafty Perigordian sufficiently justified the excess of hardness of the impetuous Burgundian. But, in addition, we are not dealing here with Bossuet as a polemist. The profundity as well as the ingenuousness of his faith would excuse the vehemence of his arguments, if we could permit ourselves to be scandalized by so courteous a vehemence, we who, unbelieving or Christian, cannot discuss the most insignificant problems of politics without resorting to extremes of insult. Bossuet had neither hatred nor rancor. When he recovered from the emotion of the combat, he resumed his natural mood, which was all charity and sweetness. He was nearer to the gospel than Fénelon ever was with his artistic vanity. He had in him something simple and awkward which brought him nearer to the people than to the great ones among whom he had lived. At court, he made more than one false move. In his diocese, he was loved for his goodness. By regarding Bossuet as a persecutor, Jurieu and the philosophers in his train have obliged the historians to examine closely what the conduct of the Bishop of Meaux had been in regard to the Protestants of his diocese. Now it has appeared that, of all the prelates of France who were charged with assuring the execution of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, not one showed more humanity. Bossuet condemned violence and constraint, and there was only a single military execution in the diocese of Meaux. It would be childish to reproach a Catholic bishop of the seventeenth century for not having criticized the Revocation, of the Edict, especially since this bishop, the author of _Politique tirée de l'Ecriture sainte_, should have been, more than any other, impressed by the perils which the republican spirit of the French Protestants threatened to the monarchy. He preached to the Protestants as eloquently as he could, turned persecution aside from them, and gave alms to them. He received at Germigny a great number of ministers who had come to dispute with him; and it was in the little chapel of his chateau that Joseph Saurin and Jacques Bénigne Winslow abjured Protestantism beneath his hands. All of this, I know, you can read in the biographies of Bossuet and, if you have not already done it, do not fail to read it in M. Rebelliau's book. But things have mysterious suggestiveness, and when we have seen the beautiful garden of the bishop's house at Meaux and the charming country about Germigny, we are more disposed to believe that the Bossuet of the modern historians is the true Bossuet. I have not verified their researches; but I have read Le Dieu and I have walked upon the terrace along the Marne; that is sufficient. And I would be ungrateful if I failed to add that I had the most amiable and the best informed of guides in my promenade: the Abbé Formé, priest of Germigny, deserving of the parish of Bossuet, in all simplicity. IV. SAINTE RADEGONDE |I HAD heard that, deep in the forest of Montmorency, near the hermitage of Sainte Radegonde, there might be found a little cemetery lost in the midst of the woods. I wondered who had chosen this romantic burial place. One of my friends, to whom I had imparted my curiosity, sent me a book by M. Auguste Rey, entitled _Le Naturaliste Bosc_, and assured me that I would there find enlightenment on the mystery which intrigued me. I read it, and the story told by M. Auguste Rey increased my desire to become acquainted with the cemetery of Sainte Radegonde. [2] So, on an October afternoon, I wandered in the forest seeking tombs. The search was long and charming. As the forest of Montmorency is not provided with guideposts, it is impossible not to get lost in it. But the magnificence of the weather, the miraculous splendor of the golden and coppery foliage, the lightness of the luminous mists which float over the reddened forest, the perfume of the softened earth and of the moist leaves, make one quickly forget the humiliation of having lost his way. Following one path after another, I ended by stumbling upon Sainte Radegonde. The place is well known to all walkers. Of the ancient priory, which was founded here in the thirteenth century by the monks of the Abbey of Saint Victor, there is left no more than a tumbledown building which serves today as a ranger's house. It is surrounded by a wall, so that it is no longer possible to approach the well which formerly attracted numerous pilgrims to Sainte Radegonde, for this saint cured, it is said, the itch and sterility. Before the hermitage of Sainte Radegonde (the word hermitage was made fashionable in this country by Jean Jacques Rousseau) there opens a vast glade, whose slope descends to the brooklet called Ru du Nid-de-l'Aigle, which flows in the midst of a scrub of blackberries and hawthorns. At the end of the meadow, half hidden by copses, there rises a little bluff which elbows the stream aside. Here is the cemetery. A few very simple graves surround a little boulder on which is carved: "Bosc, Member of the Institute." Four great cedars overlook them with their superb shafts. The site possesses an inexpressible beauty, at the hour when the forest loses the splendor with which it was but recently decked by the sun's rays, while a cold breeze shakes the half-naked branches, announcing the approaching frosts and sorrows of winter. The scene is set. Now listen to the story, which I borrow almost entirely from the interesting study of M. Auguste Rey. [Illustration: 0089] Louis Augustin Guillaume Bosc, whose mortal remains repose in the cemetery of Sainte Radegonde, was born at Paris January 29, 1759. His family, originally from the Cevennes, belonged to the reformed religion. His father was one of the physicians of the king. At Dijon, where he had been sent to college, he followed the courses of the naturalist Durande, became enthusiastic over the Linnæan system, and discovered his vocation. When, after returning to Paris, he was obliged by reverses of fortune to accept a very modest position in the post office, he continued the studies of his choice and took the public courses given by the professors and demonstrators of the King's Garden. In 1780, it was proper to have a republican soul and a taste for botany. It was good form to attend the lectures of M. de Jussieu and to read Plutarch. Rousseau had made the love of flowers fashionable, for he had said: "While I collect plants I am not unfortunate." Madame de Genlis composed a _Moral Herbal_. Amateurs added a museum of natural history to their collection of paintings. One might then meet in the alleys of the King's Garden a great number of personages who were later to take part in the revolutionary assemblies. Bosc needed to make no effort to follow the fashion. Being a Huguenot, he was republican from birth. As to botany, he cherished it with a deep and ingenuous passion, and not as a pastime. It was in the Botanic Garden, either at Jussieu's lectures or in André Thouin's home, that he sealed the great friendships of his life. He was, in fact, among the frequenters of the hospitable apartment where lived the four brothers Thouin, with their sisters, their wives and their daughters; this family of scientist gardeners received their friends in winter in the kitchen and in summer before the greenhouses. Celebrated men came to converse with and learn from these worthy men, who were the true masters of the King's Garden; and the "venerable" Malesherbes, seated upon a trough, often conversed with Madam Guillebert, the sister of André Thouin, for whom he had a particular esteem. [3] Bosc at that time entered into friendship with three future members of the Convention, from whom he had acquired the taste of studying plants: Creuzé-Latouche, Garan de Coulon and Bancal des Issarts. The first two died Senators of the Empire. As to Bancal, we will soon run across him again. It was in the same surroundings that he met Roland, an inspector of manufactures, and his young wife, then in all the flower of her robust beauty. The husband was forty-eight; the wife was twenty-six; Bosc was twenty; naturally he fell in love. Madame Roland gave him to understand that he had nothing to hope for from her; but she mockingly added that in eighteen years it would be allowable for him to make a like declaration to her daughter Eudora. Bosc resigned himself to the situation and consented to the friendship which was offered him; but he committed the folly, later, of taking seriously the raillery with which he had been dismissed. For ten years Bosc continued a correspondence with Madame Roland which was full of confidence and freedom. These letters no longer exist, and it is a pity; for this republican botanist seems to have possessed sensitiveness, tenderness and judgment. We do possess, however, most of the letters which were written to him by Madame Roland. [Illustration: 0093] Without these letters and various others of the same period, we would never have had any other means of knowing Madame Roland than the image drawn by herself in her Memoirs, her intolerable Memoirs. We would always have seen her behind the tragic mask, heroic, unapproachable and full of vanity, and we would have remained almost unconscious of the frightful tragedy of her death if she had not left us these intimate and familiar effusions, in which are revealed the heart and the mind of a woman who was truly feminine. We are very little moved by the celebrated letter which she wrote one day to Bancal, Bosc's friend, to spurn his love, although she confessed to "tumultuous sentiments" which agitated her, and to tears which obscured her vision. I know that Michelet cries: "The cuirass of the warrior opens, and it is a woman that we see, the wounded bosom of Clorinda." But we must doubt, after all, the severity of the wound which leaves Clorinda cool enough to call to witness "the absolute irreproachability" of her life. There is something theatrical in such half-avowals. On the contrary, her letters to Bosc are simple in diction and ofttimes charming. They are spontaneous: "Seated in the ingle nook, but at eleven o'clock in the morning, after a peaceful night and the different cares of the day's work, my friend (that is, Roland) at his desk, my little girl knitting, and myself talking to one, watching over the work of the other, savoring the happiness of existing warmly in the bosom of my dear little family, writing to a friend, while the snow falls upon so many poor devils loaded down with misery and grief, I grieve over their fate; I turn back with pleasure to my own..." And elsewhere: "Now, know that Eudora reads well; begins to know no other plaything than the needle; amuses herself by drawing geometrical figures; does not know what shackles clothes of any kind may be; has no idea of the price one has to pay for rags for adornment; believes herself beautiful when she is told that she is a good girl and that she has a perfectly white dress, remarkable for its cleanness; that she finds the greatest prize in life to be a bonbon given with a kiss; that her naughty spells become rarer and shorter; that she walks through the darkness as in the daylight, fears nothing and has no idea that it is worth while to tell a lie about anything; add that she is five years and six weeks old; that I am not aware that she has false ideas on any subject, that is important at least; and agree that, if her stiffness has fatigued me, if her fancies have worried me, if her carelessness has made it more difficult for us to influence her, we have not entirely lost our pains..." And it would be possible to quote twenty other passages written with the same grace and the same simplicity.... As for the young friend to whom were addressed these nice letters, here is his portrait: "As for you, whom I see even at this distance talking quickly, going like lightning, with an air sometimes sensible and sometimes heedless, but never imposing when you try to be grave, because then you make grimaces derived from Lavater, and because activity alone suits your face; you whom we love well and who merit it from us, tell us if the present is supportable to you and the future gracious." ***** Let us return to Sainte-Radegonde. While botanizing through the woods which surround Paris, Bosc had discovered this retreat. The little house, last relic of a priory long since abandoned, was inhabited by an old peasant woman who gladly offered hospitality to strollers from Paris, when the Revolution broke out. Bosc, by his temperament, his tastes and his friendships, was led to the new ideas. He was not satisfied with presiding over the Society of Natural History; he likewise joined the Society of Friends of the Constitution and, later, he became a member of the Jacobin Club. On September 25, 1791, we find him taking part in a festival given at Montmorency to celebrate the inauguration of a bust of Rousseau: before the dances and illuminations, he made a speech and offered periwinkles to the spirit of the philosopher. Meanwhile, the hermitage of Sainte Radegonde, confiscated as ecclesiastical property, was about to be offered for sale, and Bosc was desolated at the thought that a new owner would perhaps forbid him access to the wood where he was accustomed to dream and work. He was poor and could not dream of buying the little property, valued at more than four thousand livres by the experts of the district of Gonesse. So he persuaded his friend Bancal to acquire Sainte Radegonde at the public auction, February 14, 1792. We do not know if he was a partner in the transaction. What seems certain is that Bancal never came to dwell in his hermitage. A few days later Roland became Minister of the Interior and he named Bosc Administrator of Posts; it was a question of "disaristocratizing" this service. Bosc used his best talents toward it.... But, at the end of a year, the Gironde was overthrown, the Girondins were under warrants of arrest, and Bosc took refuge at Sainte Radegonde. [Illustration: 0099] He did not arrive there alone. Roland accompanied him; tracked by the revolutionists of the Commune, separated from his wife, who had been imprisoned in the Abbaye, he concealed himself for fifteen days with his friend before seeking a safer asylum at Rouen, in the home of the Demoiselles Malortie. After having assured the escape of Roland, Bosc gets hold of his daughter Eudora, who was then twelve years old, and confides her to the wife of his friend Creuzé-Latouche; then he succeeds in entering the prison, where he reassures Madame Roland as to the fate of her child. After being temporarily released, this lady is again arrested and shut up at Sainte Pélagie. Bosc continues to come and see her at the peril of his life. He brings her flowers, for which he goes to the Botanical Garden; but, one day, he understands the danger of thus going to visit the Thouins, and then it is the flowers of Sainte Radegonde that he brings to the prisoner in a basket. It is to him that Madame Roland confides _Les Notices Historiques_--these are her _Memoirs_,--written in her prison. Finally, when her sentence has become inevitable, she begs from him poison, by which she may escape the insults of the judges and the populace: "Behold my firmness, weigh the reasons, calculate coldly, and appreciate how little is the worth of the canaille, greedy for spectacles." Bosc decides that for her own glory and for the sake of the Republic his friend must accept all: the outrages of the tribunal, the clamors of the crowd and the horror of the last agony. She submits. A few days later Bosc returns to Paris and hears of her execution. Sainte Radegonde sheltered others who were proscribed. One day when Bosc visited Creuzé-Latouche, he met there Laréveillière-Lépeaux. The latter, sought for at the same time as his two inseparable friends, Urbain Pilastre and Jean Baptiste Leclerc, had just learned of the flight of Pilastre and the arrest of Leclerc. He wished to return to his home, be arrested, and partake the fate of his friend. Creuzé dissuaded him from this act of despair.... Bosc knew Laréveillière from having formerly seen him at the home of André Thouin, for the future high priest of the Theophilanthropists had become quite expert in botany. He offered to share his hiding place with him. Laréveillière accepted. Both succeeded in leaving Paris without being noticed, and reached Sainte Radegonde. For three weeks Laréveillière remained hidden in the forest of Emile. (At this time Montmorency was called Emile, in honor of Rousseau.) Neither he nor Bosc had a red cent. They had to live on bread, roots and snails. Besides, their hiding place was not safe; there was nothing unusual in the presence of Bosc in this solitude, but Laré-veillière might any day excite the curiosity of the patriots of Emile. The ugliness of his countenance and the deformity of his figure caused him to be noticed by every passer-by. Robespierre was then living in the hermitage of Jean Jacques; it has even been related that he met the fugitive face to face one day; at all events such an encounter was to be dreaded. The administrators of Seine-et-Oise sometimes took a fancy to hunt in the neighborhood of Sainte Radegonde.... The peril increased from day to day. A faithful friend, Pincepré de Buire, invited Laréveillère to take refuge at his home near Péronne. He left Sainte Radegonde. "The good Mile. Letourneur," he has related, "gave me two or three handkerchiefs; Rozier, today a counselor at the royal court of Montpellier, then judge of the district of Montmorency, whose acquaintance we had made at Mile. Letourneur's, put one of his shirts in my pocket. Poor Bosc gave me the widow's mite--he put a stick of white crab in my hand and guided me through the forest to the highway. To use the English expression, on leaving him I tore myself from him' with extreme grief." [4] Laréveillière arrived without difficulty at the village of Buire. On the same day that he left Sainte Radegonde, another deputy of the Convention, Masuyer, came to take his place; he was accused because he had assisted at the escape of Pétion; but his greatest crime was that he had, in full Assembly, said to Pache, who insisted on proscriptions: "Haven't you got a little place for me on your list? There would be a hundred crowns in it for you!" Masuyer, disregarding Bosc's advice, wished to enter Paris. He was arrested near the Neuilly Bridge. Bosc, who had insisted on accompanying him, had just time to plunge into the Bois de Boulogne, escaped, and returned to his hermitage, where he awaited the end of the Terror. ***** When he returned to Paris, in the autumn of 1794, Bosc devoted his entire time to the labors imposed upon him by the last will of Madame Roland. He withdrew the manuscript of her Memoirs from the hiding place where he had left it, on top of the beam over the stable door of Sainte Radegonde, and published the first part of it in April, 1795. At the same time he endeavored to collect the remnants of the patrimony of Eudora, whose guardianship he had accepted. Here begins the most melancholy episode of the life of this worthy man. He became smitten with his pupil. He allowed himself to be blinded by some marks of gratitude. "She is tenderly attached to me," he wrote to one of his friends, "and shows the happiest disposition; so I can no longer fail to meet her wishes and take her for my wife, despite the disproportion of our ages." Nevertheless, he still had scruples, and sent Eudora for several months to the Demoiselles Malortie, who had given asylum to Roland when a fugitive. It was well for him that he did, for his illusion was of short duration. Eudora did not love him.... Without employment, without means, his heart broken, he resolved to expatriate himself. He reached Bordeaux on foot, paid calls on the widows of his friends of the Gironde, and took passage on a ship departing for America. He left France in despair, without receiving a single word of farewell from Eudora. When he landed at Charleston, he learned of the marriage of his pupil to the son of a certain Champagneux, a friend of Madame Roland, to whom he had intrusted the guardianship of the young girl. Laréveillière, who had become a Director, had him appointed vice-consul at Wilmington, and later consul at New York. But there were great difficulties between the United States and France; he could not obtain his exequatur. He tried to console himself by devotion to botany. But the wound which he had received still bled. "I do not know," he wrote to Madame Louvet, "when the wound of my heart will be sufficiently healed to allow me to revisit without too much bitterness the places and the individuals still dear to me, whose presence will bring back to me cruel memories. Although I am much more calm than when I left, although I am actually easily distracted by my scientific labors and even by manual occupations, I do not feel that I have courage to return to Paris. I still need to see persons to whom I am indifferent, in order to accustom myself to facing certain persons whom I have loved and whom I cannot forget, whatever injustice they may have done to me or to the Republic, without counting my Eudora...." And his memory takes him back to the dear retreat of Sainte Radegonde; he writes to Bancal: "Well! Then you no longer go to visit Sainte Radegonde? Do you then take no more interest in it? I conclude from that that you will undergo no further expense on account of it and that you will soon get rid of it. Nevertheless I had the project of planting there many trees from this country, since it is the soil most similar to that of South Carolina that I know in the neighborhood of Paris..." Bosc did see Sainte Radegonde again. At the end of two years he returned to France and married one of his cousins. The Revolution was over and Eudora was forgotten. From that time on, he gave himself up entirely to his work as a naturalist. He became Inspector of the nurseries of Versailles and also of those which were maintained by the Ministry of the Interior. In 1806 he was elected a member of the Institute. In 1825 he succeeded his friend André Thouin as Professor of Horticulture at the Botanical Garden, and after a long and cruel illness, which prevented him from lecturing, he died in 1828. In 1801, when the first daughter born of his marriage had died in infancy, he had begged Bancal to transfer to him two perches of land in his domain of Sainte. Radegonde, in order that he might bury his child there. Such was the origin of the little cemetery where Bosc reposes in the midst of his children and his grandchildren. I have not regretted making a pilgrimage and evoking, in the autumnal forest, the phantoms of these Revolutionists and these botanists. How touching a figure is that of this Bosc, whose name recalls--it is Laréveillière-Lépeaux who speaks--"the most generous friendship, the most heroic courage, the purest patriotism, the most active humanity, the most austere probity, the most determined boldness, and at the same time the most extended knowledge in natural science and different branches of administration as well as in political, domestic and rural economy..." and also, let us add, the eternal blindness of the amorous Arnolphe! V. SENLIS |THE spire of the ancient cathedral of Senlis overlooks an immense horizon. This belfry is the lightest, the most elegant, the most harmonious that Gothic art has given us. It rises with a flight so magnificent and so perfectly rhythmical that at the first glance one might think it a growth of nature; it seems to live with the same life as the heavens, the clouds and the birds. This masterly grace, this warm beauty, are, however, the work of time and of men. An architect endowed with genius thought out this miraculous plan, proportioned with this infallible precision the elevation of the different landings, distributed the openings and the surfaces, invented the pointed turrets and the frail columns which flank the edifice, taper off its structure, precipitate its flight and make it impossible to perceive the point at which the square tower is transformed into an octagonal spire, so that the highest pyramid seems to burst forth from a long corolla. Then the centuries have painted the stones with the pale gold of lichens, and have completed the masterpiece. The whole of Senlis seems to have been built for the glory of its spire. Streets, gardens, squares, monuments, houses, all seem to be arranged by a mysterious artist, who persists in incessantly bringing back our glance to the dominating spire, the better to reveal to us all its graces and all its magnificence, at all times and under all lights. We wander at random about the little episcopal city: it is charming, tortuous and taciturn, with its moss-covered pavements, its deserted alleys, its flowering orchards, its shadowed promenades, its ancient houses. We discover at every step houses of earlier days which the barbarism of the men of the present time has spared: here turrets, spiral staircases, doors surmounted by old escutcheons, long half-grotesque gargoyles, mullioned windows, evoke the refined elegance of the fifteenth century; yonder, a wall decorated with pilasters and medallions, or a noble brick and stone crow-stepped façade, witness the opulence of the citizenry at the time of the second Renaissance; there are admirable remains of hospitals of the thirteenth century; heavy Tuscan porches stand before beautiful hôtels of the eighteenth: and all this rich and varied architecture is an excellent commentary on the words of Jean de Jandun, the historian of Senlis: "To be at Senlis is to dwell in magnificent homes, whose vigorous walls are built, not of fragile plaster, but of the hardest and most selected stone, placed with an industrious skill, and whose cellars, surrounded by solid constructions of stone, so cool the wines during the summer season, thanks to the degree of their freshness, that the throat and the stomach of drinkers thereby experience a supreme delight." (Note 5.) To the charm of the spectacle is added the charm of ancient names: the sinuous streets have retained their antique appellations. (How wise is Senlis to maintain these strange words, carved in the stone, at the corners of its streets, rather than to inscribe upon ignoble blue plates the names of all the celebrities dear to Larousse!) The beautiful houses of former days seem in some undiscoverable way to be more living when we discover them in the Street of the Red Mail, the Street of the Trellis, the Street of the White Pigeons, the Street of Tiphaine's Well, the Street of the Little Chaâlis, the Impasse du Courtillet, etc.... An amusing sign which represents three scholars arguing with an ape would no longer have any flavor if we had to seek for it in some Place Garibaldi; it is delicious when found at Unicom Crossways. On the old Town Hall, an inscription continues to indicate the position of the rabbit and broom market; and it is very fine that the name of Louis Blanc or of Gambetta has not been given to the Street of the Cheese Makers, were it only out of consideration for that excellent Jean de Jandun who, decidedly, well knew how to appreciate all the merits of Senlis, for he wrote in regard to the cheeses of his native town: "The sweetest milk, a butter without admixture, fat cheeses, served in abundance to mean and minor purses, banish that furious activity of the brain which fatigues almost without exception the majority of admirers of highly spiced meats, and thus furnish the well-regulated habitude of a tranquil life and a simplicity of the dove." Façades, names and souvenirs are exquisite; and one says to one's self in sauntering about Senlis that, even without the assistance of the treatment recommended by Jean de Jandun, the silent and antique grace of the little town would be sufficient to inspire in old neurasthenics "the regulated habitude of a tranquil life and a simplicity of the dove...." The promenade is charming. But neither the picturesqueness of the streets, nor the beauty of the houses, nor the piquancy of the old names, nor even the words of Jean de Jandun are worth as much as the picture which here strike the glance at every turn: the spire, always the spire of Notre Dame. It appears suddenly between two gables. It projects above the old brownish tile roofs. Above the flower-covered walls of the gardens it is framed between clumps of lilac and horse-chestnut. It overlooks the houses, it dominates the parks. The poor tower of Saint Peter, with its disgraceful lantern, sometimes accompanies it at a distance, as if to make barbarians better appreciate the grandeur and the slenderness of Notre Dame's incomparable spire. Senlis has preserved the ruins of its royal château. It is a place which abounds in memories, for a great number of the kings of France, from the Carlovingians to Henri IV, came here to visit for a season. Even its ruins are not without interest. They rest upon the Roman wall, which has remained intact at this spot, and we find there a fireplace of the thirteenth century, towers, casements.... But how completely indifferent all this archaeology leaves us when we behold the spire of the cathedral emerging from the greenery of the garden! The great trees conceal all the rest of the church. We see only, mounting into the full heaven, the golden pyramid, still finer and more aspiring in the midst of all these spring greeneries. A mysterious harmony exists between the youthful boldness, the robust lightness of the human work, and the triumphant freshness of the new vegetation. Besides, the monuments of Gothic art are as marvelously suited to intimacy with nature as to familiarity with life. This familiarity, which has so often been destroyed by foolishly clearing away the surroundings of cathedrals, proves its value to us at Senlis on the Place du Parvis-Notre-Dame. This is a rectangular space, where grass grows between the paving stones. The façade of the church is framed by two rows of noble chestnuts. Behind a venerable wall rise the turret and the gable of a fifteenth-century house. One might suppose it to be the deserted and well-kept courtyard of a Flemish _béguinage_. In this ancient frame, in the midst of this solitude, the cathedral preserves all its youth. Here there is a perfect unison between the building and its surroundings. Not only are the trees, the walls, the houses, in harmony with the architecture, but this architecture itself remains alive, because its proportions have not been falsified. The dimensions of the square are exactly those which are needed in order that our eye may be able to discover in their beauty of propinquity the portal, the unfinished tower and the spire. All this is so perfect that its grace is eternal. This cathedral of Senlis would be an incomparable edifice even if it did not possess its sublime spire. The western portal is one of the most beautiful works of mediaeval sculpture. On the two sides of the porch, as on the northern door of Chartres, are arranged the kings and the prophets who foreshadowed the Saviour in the Old Testament. Vandals have mutilated these statues in olden times. In the nineteenth century other savages have restored them and have put in the place of the broken heads masterpieces of bad taste and silliness. Happily these malefactors have spared the rest of the sculptures; they have touched neither the ruins of the charming calendar, whose popular scenes unfold themselves above the kings and the prophets, nor the marvelous statuettes, still almost intact, which adorn the voussoirs of the portal, nor the bas-reliefs of the tympan where angels huddle about the dead Virgin, that some may carry to heaven her body and others her soul. As to the _Coronation of the Virgin_, which occupies the upper part of the tympan, it also has been respected alike by iconoclasts and by restorers. Of all the images of the Mother of God which the sculpture of the thirteenth century has left us, I know none more moving than this Virgin of Senlis. She is a peasant girl, a simple country maid, with heavy features, and resignation in her face; her unaccustomed hands can scarcely hold the scepter and the book; she is ready for all dolors and for all beatitudes, extenuated by miracles, harassed by maternity, still and always _ancilla Domini_, even in the midst of the glories of the coronation and of the splendors of Paradise. The church of the twelfth century, to which this doorway belongs, was finished in the thirteenth, burned in the fourteenth, rebuilt in the fifteenth, and again ruined by fire at the beginning of the sixteenth. It is possible to discover in the cathedral of today the traces of these various reconstructions. But, however interesting it may be to follow, upon the stones of the monuments, the history of their vicissitudes, I will spare you this somewhat austere amusement. Continuous archaeology is tiresome. I stop at the sixteenth century. It was at this period that the church took the form and the aspect which it has preserved to our time. [Illustration: 0117] In 1505, the Bishop Charles de Blanchefort, together with the chapter, addressed the following request to the King: "May it please the King to have pity and compassion on the poor church of Senlis... which, by fortune and inconvenience of fire, in the month of June, 1504, was burned, the bells melted, and the belfry which is great, magnificent and one of the notable of the kingdom, by means of the said fire in such wise damaged that it is in danger of falling." Louis XII showed himself favorable to the request. Nobles, citizens and merchants contributed to the work. The spire was made firm. The walls of the nave were raised, the vaulting was reconstructed, the transept was built, and there were constructed at the north and south sides those two finely chiseled portals which give to Notre Dame de Senlis so much elegance and sumptuousness. How, without diminishing the pure beauty of the old cathedral, the architects of the Renaissance should have been able to give it this luxurious attire, this festal clothing; how, without damage to the ancient edifice, they should have been able to envelop it with all these laces and jewels of stone, slender columns, balustrades, carved copings, pierced lanterns, is a miracle of taste and ingenuity. The French builders of the first half of the sixteenth century often produced such prodigies; but nowhere, I believe, has the success been as complete as at Senlis. In the interior, even though the nave is very short and the choir very deep, the same impression of unity. Nevertheless, the balustrades in Renaissance style, which garnish the upper galleries, shock us for a moment. The discrepancy in the styles is more visible inside the edifice. Outside the light envelops all and softens the contrasts; the sun creates harmony. The chapels are poorly decorated. The architects and clergy have there rivaled each other in bad taste. They have broken open the apse to add to it a chapel of the Virgin, which breaks all the lines of the monument inside and out. Two statues of the thirteenth century, one representing Saint Louis and the other Saint Levain, have been ridiculously colored, so that one would take them today for products of the Rue Bonaparte. A pretty Virgin of the fourteenth century would have been better off without the new gilding which has been inflicted on it..... At the end of the church, I read on one of the pillars the following inscription: "Nicolas Jourdain, administrator of this parish, deceased January 30, 1799.--This church owes to him its restoration and its embellishment. The grateful parishioners have erected this monument to him.--Marie Françoise Truyart, his spouse, equally benefactress of this church, deceased January 17, 1811.--Pray for their souls." Who was M. Jourdain? What embellishments does the church of Senlis owe to him? I would have liked to know. X looked for the sacristan, that he might tell me, and also that he might allow me to enter the sacristy, where one may see the Dance of Fools on a capital. But the sacristan of Notre Dame de Senlis dwells very far from his church, on the banks of the Nonette, in the place called the Asses' Backs; he goes home before eleven o'clock in the morning to get his lunch, and is never seen again at the cathedral, according to the bell-ringer, before four o'clock in the afternoon. So I returned at four o'clock. The sacristan was still eating breakfast at the Asses' Backs.... So I shall never know anything about either M. Nicolas Jourdain nor Marie Françoise Truyart, his wife. * * * * On the other bank of the Nonette, turn about. A little bridge over a little river; some orchards, still pink and white with their last flowers; a street which climbs through the town, whose roofs and uneven gables are outlined softly against a sky of pale blue; remnants of ramparts starred with golden flowers; great clumps of verdure rising everywhere among the rosy roofs, and finally the great belfry dominating all, the little town, the little valley, the fields which rise and fall to the horizon. Behold, and if you are "one of us," you will recognize the most perfect, the most elegant, the finest, the best arranged of all the landscapes of the world. Here is France, the France of Fouquet, the France of Corot. And I must also, before leaving Senlis, announce that this truly aristocratic town has not a single statue in its squares. $VI. JUILLY |THE Oratorist Fathers founded the college of Juilly September 2, 1639. They still directed it when these lines were written. The world knows what fate has since come to the masters of this old institution. Here we are deep in the soil and the history of France. Juilly, an ancient monastery of the Canons Regular of Saint Augustine, is seven leagues from Paris, four leagues from Meaux, in the Parisis, in the heart of the region where France discovered that it had a conscience, a destiny, a tongue and an art. The earth here is so opulent, so fat and so heavy that six oxen harnessed to a plow labor over the furrow. The rich plateau lifts here and there in slow and measured undulations or sinks in laughing and umbrageous folds. The brooks are called the Biberonne, the Ru du Rossignol (Nightingale Brook); the villages, Thieux, Compans, Dam-martin, Nantouillet. Joan of Arc prayed in the church of Thieux. Saint Geneviève, to slake the thirst of one of her companions, called forth the limpid spring about which the monastery grew. All the virtues and all the legends of France render the air more gentle and more salubrious here. [Illustration: 0125] The valley of Juilly has the modest and penetrating grace of the exquisite landscapes of the Ile-de-France. At the bottom of the valley stretch lawns and a pool with formal banks. On one of the slopes, a beautiful park displays its grand parallel avenues, which debouch on wide horizons, a park made expressly for the promenade of a metaphysician, a Cartesian park. On the opposite slope, a farm, a dovecote, then the vast buildings of the college, massive constructions of the seventeenth century, whose austere and naked façades are not without grandeur. On the edge of the pool rises a chestnut tree, thrice centenarian. Tradition will have that it sheltered the reveries of Malebranche. It is perhaps in this place that the Oratorist read Descartes, with such transports "that he was seized with palpitations of the heart, which sometimes obliged him to interrupt his reading," an extraordinary emotion which inspired Fontenelle with this delicious remark: "The invisible and useless truth is not accustomed to find so much sensitiveness among men, and the most ordinary objects of their passions would hold themselves happy to be the object of as much." The chestnut tree of Malebranche has been pruned. Under the weight of centuries, its branches bent and broke. They have been cut, and the venerable trunk now stretches toward the sky only the wounded stumps. This spectacle in this place makes one think of the destiny of a philosophy. The decaying branches of the system have been broken, the soil has been strewn with the great branches under which men formerly enjoyed the repose of certainty. But, when the pruner has finished his task, we still admire the structure of the old tree and the fecundity of the soil whence it grew. The college, with its long corridors and its vast staircases, preserves a monastic appearance, which would be severe and harsh if the countryside, the grass plots, the park and the pool did not display their gayety about the old walls. When M. Demolins and his imitators created their new schools, they followed the example of England; but, in a certain manner, they revived a French tradition. Before any one thought of crowding children into the university barracks of the nineteenth century, there were in France colleges where life was lived in the open air, in the midst of a beautiful park. Within, the house is grave and without luxury. The Oratorists were never rich. The house has remained almost in the state in which it was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The chapel only was rebuilt a few years ago, for the ancient convent chapel of the thirteenth century had fallen to ruins. The magnificent wainscot-ings of oak in the strangers' refectory enframe paintings of the time of Louis XV, representing skating, fishing and hunting scenes; the staircase which leads to the apartments of the Superior is ornamented with a beautiful railing of iron and brass; these are the only traces of ancient decoration to be met with in the whole college. But the ancient home is rich in memories. Before entering, we have already half seen on the bank of the pool the meditative shade of Malebranche. Other ghosts rise on every side. The Oratory of France lives again at Juilly. Here, in the chapel, is the image of Cardinal de Bérulle. This statue, an admirable work by Jacques Sarazin, is the upper portion of a mausoleum which the Oratorist Fathers of Paris had erected in their institution to the memory of their founder. The cardinal, in full canonicals, kneels on a _prie-dieu_, in the attitude of prayer, with an open book before him. His head and the upper portion of his body turn toward the left in a curious way, but the face is a prodigy of life and expression. The coarse features, strongly accentuated, breathe good-will and kindness. He has the magnificent ugliness of a saint. The concordat of Francis I had caused the moral ruin of the convents of France; the secular clergy, among the troubles of the religious wars, had fallen into the most miserable condition, without piety, without knowledge, and without manners, when, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, Pierre de Bérulle, Madame Acarie and Saint Vincent de Paul undertook the religious restoration of France, which the adjuration of Henri IV had just definitely restored to Catholicism. Bérulle founded the Oratory of France on the model of the Oratory of Rome, instituted by Saint Philip Néri. On November 11, 1611, Saint Martin's Day, in a house of the Faubourg Saint Jacques, called the House of Petit Bourbon (the Val-de-Grâce was later built on this same spot), Bérulle and five other priests assembled to constitute a congregation. The aim of this was to "increase the perfection of the priestly calling." But its rule and its spirit had nothing in common with the rule and the spirit of the monastic orders. The Oratorist does not pronounce special vows, and remains under the jurisdiction of his bishop. Bossuet, in his funeral oration on Father Bour-going, splendidly summarized the constitution of the Oratory: "The immense love of Pierre de Bérulle for the Church inspired him with the design of forming a company to which he desired to give no other spirit than the very spirit of the Church nor any other rules than its canons, nor any other superiors than its bishops, nor any other bonds than its charity, nor any other solemn vows than those of baptism and of the priesthood. "There, a holy liberty makes a holy engagement. One obeys without dependence, one governs without commands; all authority is in gentleness, and respect exists without the aid of fear. The charity which banishes fear operates this great miracle, and, with no other yoke than itself, it knows how, not only to capture, but even to annihilate personal will." The Jesuits had returned to France seven years before Pierre de Bérulle created the Oratory. He was not the enemy of the Company of Jesus, since he himself had labored to procure its return to France. His work was none the less opposed to that of Saint Ignatius. "In our body," said a century later an Oratorist who was faithful to the spirit of his congregation, "liberty consists....in wishing and in doing freely what one ought, _quasi liberi_." This _quasi liberi_ is exactly the opposite of the famous _perinde ac cadaver_. We may understand sufficiently why, in the course of time, the Jesuits showed little sympathy for the Oratorists. The work of Pierre de Bérulle must have appeared to them a perilous compromise between Catholic orthodoxy and the detested principles of the Reformation: what good is it to renew, at every moment of one's life, one's adhesion to a rule to which it is more simple and more sure to enchain one's self once for all? Why wish to give one's self at any cost the haughty joy of feeling and exercising one's liberty? And what is this annihilation which allows the will to reassert itself incessantly, vivacious and active? The Jesuits, therefore, were not surprised to see the Oratory threatened by the Jansenist contagion. We might be tempted to say, employing a vocabulary which is too modern, that the spirit of the Oratory was, from its inception, a liberal spirit. Let us rather say: It was a _Cartesian_ spirit. Pierre de Bérulle loved and admired Descartes and urged him to publish his writings. The greatest of disciples of Descartes, Malebranche, was an Oratorist.... A Jesuit would not have failed to call our attention also to the fact that here is displayed the imprudence of Pierre de Bérulle and of his successors; for from _methodical doubt_ came all the rationalism of the eighteenth century.... Let us return to Juilly. On the walls of the masters' refectory hangs a long series of portraits: they are those of the Generals Superior of the Oratory and of some illustrious Oratorists. The most beautiful is that of Malebranche: this long, meager face witnesses the candid and simple soul of the metaphysician, who saw "all in God." Other paintings are less attractive. But they are all precious for the history of the Oratory and of Juilly.... Let us stop before some of these images. Father de Condren. "God had rendered him," said Saint Chantai, "capable of instructing angels." His features are impressed with infinite gentleness; but the height of his forehead and the veiled splendor of his glance reveal an unconquerable tenacity, and thanks to this contrast the whole face assumes a strange delicacy. Pierre de Bérulle died at the age of fifty-four, overcome by fatigue; his labor had been immense; he had created and guided his congregation, founded seminaries,'' delivered sermons, written books, guided consciences, and he had been mixed up in affairs of state. It was Father de Condren who succeeded him in the office of Superior General. He gave to the Oratory its permanent constitution and founded Juilly. With Father de Condren, the Oratory abandoned the path which its founder had traced for it. It was less occupied in forming the clergy and instituting seminaries than in giving instruction to lay youth. The original purpose of the congregation was thereafter followed and achieved by M. Olier and the priests of Saint Sulpice. The wishes of Louis XIII were not averse to this change, for which in any case Father de Condren had no dislike; he had taste and talent for teaching. The ancient abbey of Juilly was thus transformed into a model college called the Royal Academy (1638). The King authorized the institution to add the arms of France to the arms of the Oratory. Father de Condren himself prepared the new regulations for study and discipline of the young Academy. These regulations were a veritable reform in French education,--a durable and profound reform, for the programs of the University in the nineteenth century were drawn up in accordance with the principles of the Oratory. At that period the Jesuits were masters of education and instruction. They considered as the foundation of all studies a grammatical knowledge of the dead languages, and gave little attention to history and the exact sciences. They had instituted that classical education which is so appropriate to the very genius of our nation that its ruin would perhaps be the downfall of our language, our taste and our literature. Nevertheless, their method in certain respects was narrow and antiquated: they excluded the history and the language of France from a college training. The work of the Oratorists was in a certain measure to Frenchify and modernize the instruction of the Jesuits. They remained faithful to classic antiquity. A year before his death, Father de Condren said to Thomassin that he did not desire to leave this world until he had once more read the entire works of Cicero. However, the Ratio Studiorum, at Juilly, introduced great novelties in the college course. The masters were required to address the youths in their mother tongue and to put in their hands Latin grammars written in French. From that time they began by learning the rules of French orthography. Latin became obligatory only from the fourth class on. The Catechism was given in Latin only in the second class. History lessons were always given in French. In the study of Latin, without abandoning the use of themes, translations were preferred. Greek was taught in the same way, but its knowledge was not pushed as far, A special chair of history was instituted. The history of France was given first place, and became the object of a three-year course. The private library of the pupils contained principally books on ancient and modern history. There were also geography lessons. Finally, in this Cartesian house, mathematics and physics naturally received great honor. They also taught drawing, music, horsemanship, fencing and dancing. But comedies and ballets, which the Jesuits allowed their pupils, were replaced at Juilly by the sessions of a sort of literary Academy where the most advanced pupils imitated the French Academy. Richelieu, who had so profound and just an instinct for the interest of France in all directions, could not be indifferent to the enterprise of Father de Condren. He understood that the Oratorists were associating themselves with his great work, gave their methods "applause such as one could scarcely believe," and, when he founded a college in his natal town of Richelieu, laid out the regulations and the program in imitation of those which were in use at Juilly. Sainte-Beuve has done honor to the little schools of Port-Royal for this great revolution in teaching: "It is indeed," he says, "to these gentlemen of Port-Royal that the honor is due of having put education in accord with the literary progress which the French Academy accomplished about the same time, and for having first introduced the regularity and elegance of French into the current of learned studies. To get rid of pedantry without ruining solidity, might have been their motto.... So, a great innovation! To teach children to read in French, and to choose in French the words which stood for the objects with which they were already acquainted and of which they knew the meaning: this was the point of departure of Port-Royal...." [6] [Illustration: 0137] A historian of Juilly (M. Charles Hamel) has observed that the lower schools were opened only four years after the foundation of Juilly, and that we must restore to Father de Condren the glory of having been the first "to get rid of pedantry without ruining solidity," and to cause French to be spoken in the schools of France. [7] _Father Bourgoing_. This third superior was a harsh and absolute master. He was also a rather rough man of business and one who was not embarrassed by an excess of power. He imposed the authority of the rules in all possible ways. His conduct had a tinge of superb vehemence which contrasted strongly with the modesty and gentleness of his predecessors. The Jansenist heresy was commencing to hover around the Oratory. Father Bourgoing drew back those who were straying, with a rough and heavy crook. He was, besides, as Cardinal Perraud says, in _L'Oratoire de France,_ "the living model of the virtues which he desired that others should practice." [8] He inflicted terrible penances. We behold him to his very last day "shorten his sleep in spite of his need; endure the rigors of cold despite his advanced years; continue his fasts in spite of his labors; finally afflict his body by all sorts of austerities without considering his bodily infirmities." Thus Bossuet expressed himself in his funeral oration for Father Bourgoing, one of the least celebrated, but one of the most magnificent, that he composed. We have only to read it to know the men and the spirit of the Oratory in the seventeenth century. _Father de Sainte-Marthe_. This man seems to have been a student, full of virtue, good sense and good fellowship, but a man who found himself very much at a loss in the midst of vexations. And it was exactly at the period of his government that the tempests were unloosed upon the Oratory. Jansenism had entered the house. Fathers Quesnel and Du Guet were expelled from the community. But these punishments did not satisfy the Archbishop of Paris, M. de Harlay, who wished to govern the Oratory with a strong hand. In the midst of these griefs and intrigues the unfortunate Father de Sainte-Marthe exonerated himself, proclaimed his submission, preached conciliation, sought to ward off the animosity of the Archbishop and the King, defended his congregation against the assaults of heresy, and went away in exile from province to province, until the day came when it was necessary for him to resign his office.... The more we look at the portrait of Father de Sainte-Marthe, the more we pity this good priest, who was evidently born to live in fair weather. _Father de la Tour_. One of the most pleasing portraits in the refectory of Juilly, full of grace and malice. Saint-Simon has also drawn a portrait of Father de la Tour and the painter has added nothing to the sketch of the writer. "He was tall of stature, well built, agreeable but imposing of countenance, well known for his pliant but firm mind, adroit but strong in his sermons, in the way he led in gay and amusing conversation without departing from the character which he bore, excelling by a spirit of wisdom, conduct and government, and held in the greatest consideration." ***** We have arrived at the threshold of the eighteenth century. Before going farther, let us evoke once more the remembrance of two illustrious guests of whom the old house was proud. They still show at Juilly the room of Bossuet. It is lined with very simple paneling and has an alcove. The furnishings are in the style of the First Empire. It is here that Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, often slept in the course of his pastoral visits, for Juilly was situated in his diocese. He preached in the village chapel and presided at the exercises of the Academy. On August 6, 1696, he wrote to his nephew, Abbé Bossuet: "I came here to listen to a thesis which was dedicated to me. There are here a number of worthy people, and the flower of the Oratory...." The other "great man," whose memory has been preserved at Juilly is Jean de La Fontaine. He was scarcely twenty years old when a canon of Soissons, named Héricart, lent him some religious books. The reading of these inflamed him with great devotion and he believed that he was called to the ecclesiastical state. He departed for Paris and entered the institution at the Oratory on April 27, 1641. This was his first distraction. A few weeks later his masters sent him to Juilly, under Father de Vemeuil, who was to prepare him for ordination. La Fontaine read Marot and looked out of the window. Now, as his room overlooked the farmyard, he amused himself every day by watching the hens pick up their living. To get the sympathy of the hen-keeper, he let down by a cord his cap full of bread crumbs. Father Bourgoing, then superior of the congregation, was not the man to sympathize with the tastes and crotchets of Jean de La Fontaine; he sent him back to Paris, to the seminary of Saint-Magloire. Then one fine day, the young man went away as he had come, leaving behind him his brother, Claude de La Fontaine, who, taking his example seriously, had also entered the Oratory. His stay at Juilly does not seem to have left a very deep trace in its memory. But he had at least furnished the future students of the college with a very fine subject for Latin verses. It is well known that Canon Héricart, as he had not been able to make a priest of his friend, later decided to marry him to one of his relatives. La Fontaine went to the marriage as he had gone to the Oratory; he escaped from it in the same way. [Illustration: 0143] The fate of the Oratory of France was less glorious in the eighteenth century than it had been in the seventeenth: the theological quarrels which broke out as a result of the Bull _Unigenitus_ divided and enfeebled the congregation. But the renown of Juilly did not suffer from this, and the college founded by Father de Condren prospered. The buildings of the old monastery were reconstructed and enlarged. The methods of instruction remained the same. As to discipline, it is said to have been quite paternal, and was exercised by reprimands or affectionate chidings rather than by punishments. At Juilly, however, as in all colleges, the children continued to be whipped. In 1762, the Jesuits were expelled from France and their properties sold. This was apparently a great advantage for the Oratory: the closing of the colleges of the Company of Jesus made it the master of education. But the thoughtful Oratorists did not fall into this illusion. "It is the destruction of our congregation," said Father de la Valette at that time; he understood that this brutal blow touched the Church itself, even if some doubted this and others were unwilling to admit it. Besides, the succession of the Jesuits was too heavy a burden to be undertaken. The Oratory was not sufficiently numerous suddenly to take charge of so many houses; it found it necessary to associate with itself a great number of "lay brothers," whose vocation was doubtful; these young "regents" were generally found to be unprepared to undergo the constraints of a religious rule. This was being discovered when the Revolution broke out. An old student of Juilly, Antoine Vincent Arnault, a tragic poet, author of _Marius à Miniurne, Lucrèce, Cincinnatus_, etc., whom Napoleon wished to have as collaborator in writing a tragedy and who was the predecessor of Scribe in the French Academy, left some interesting memoirs entitled _Souvenirs d'un sexagénaire_. [9] He was born in 1766 and entered Juilly in 1776. He has told us of his college years, "the eight un-happiest years of his life." Thanks to him, we know the existence which was the rule at Juilly from 1780 to 1784, and what professors had charge of the instruction. The picture seems to me to be worth redrawing, now that we know the architecture and the history of the school. The superior of the house at that time was Father Petit. "A skilled administrator, a prudent director, a mentality without prejudice or illusions, more of a philosopher than he perhaps believed himself to be, indulgent and malevolent at once, he guided this great house with good words, and maintained admirable order in it for thirty years.... Religious, but not fanatical, he did not forget that he was director of a boarding school and not of a seminary, and that the children who were confided to him were to live in the world: so he was especially anxious that they should be turned into worthy men: this was his own expression." In truth, this "admirable order" was sometimes troubled. The collegians of 1780 played their parts: they wrote little verses and little libels against their masters, became enthusiastic about the American Revolution, and played at uprisings. The wisdom and moderation of Father Petit did not always succeed in calming the revolutionary effervescence of these youths. The wind which commenced to blow across France blew hard even in the high monastic corridors of Juilly. The middle classroom was the most turbulent and the promptest to revolt against iniquity. One day these "middles" decided to hang their prefect in effigy. The victim got angry, shut off recreation and ordered the children to return to the schoolroom. Instantly the candles went out; dictionaries, candlesticks, writing desks, became so many projectiles which rained upon the prefect's back; struck down by a copy of the Gradus, the pedant fled. The class then built barricades and lit a bonfire, into which they threw the ferule, the mortarboard and the scholarship record which the enemy had left upon the field of battle. They refused to listen to overtures of peace, and remained deaf to the warnings of the Superior, although they were in the habit of respecting them. From the viewpoint of a man who later went through several revolutions, Arnault here makes this judicious remark: "Whoever may be the individuals of which it is composed, the mob always obeys the same principles. The breath of a child in a glass of water produces the same effects as the blast of the hurricane upon the ocean." It became necessary to turn the siege into a blockade. On the next day, vanquished by hunger, the scholars surrendered. They were promised a general amnesty. But, once in possession, the besiegers violated the treaty. "Then," adds Arnault, "I understood what politics was; I saw that it was not always in accord with the morality which we were so eloquently advised to respect as the equal of religion." And this was doubtless the reason why there were so many prefects of the Empire among the former pupils of Juilly! Father Petit was not the only Oratorist of whom Arnault handed down a good report. Father Viel, the translator of _Télémaque_ into Latin verse, showed so much justice and goodness in the college that the students always arranged to rebel while he was traveling, thus showing how much they respected him. Father Dotteville, the translator of Sallust and of Tacitus, built at Juilly a charming retreat where he cultivated literature and flowers. Father Prioleau, who taught philosophy, knew how to make all work lovable, even the study of Aristotle's Categories. Father Mandar, who later became superior of the college, was famous as a preacher--he was compared to Massillon--and as a poet--he was compared to Gresset. His lively muse, fertile in songs, rose even to descriptive poetry. Father Mandar wrote a poem called the Chartreuse; for he was sensitive to the beauties of nature and Jean Jacques had sought his company.... These remained, even to the end of their life, faithful to their vocation. Others failed in this, and owed their great celebrity neither to translations nor to the practice of oratorical virtues. Juilly was a nursery of Revolutionists and of Conventionals. One day--science was still honored in this Cartesian college--it was decided to give the pupils a scientific recreation. Under the direction of their professor of physics, they built a fire balloon of paper, upon which a prefect of studies who indulged in fugitive verse wrote this quatrain of his own composition: We have grown too old for soap bubbles; In changing balloons we change pleasures. If this carried our first homage to King Lotus, The winds would blow it to the goal of our desires. We do not know if the fire balloon came down in the park of Versailles. But we do know the names of the physicist and the poet of Juilly. The physicist was Father Fouché, and the poet was Father Billaud (Billaud-Varennes). Arnault remarks in this connection: "Ten years afterward, they showed themselves less gracious toward the monarch." Father Billaud, good Father Billaud, as he was called at Juilly, was a young man of twenty-one years. He was the son of a lawyer of La Rochelle who had neither fortune nor clients. He had scarcely left college when he abducted a young girl and then became a member of a troupe of comedians. He was a failure on the stage and returned to La Rochelle. There he put on the stage a satirical comedy: _La Femme comme il n'y en a plus_, in which he defamed all the women of his town. It was hissed off the boards and he had to flee to Paris. As he was penniless, he entered the Oratory; and, as the Oratory needed regents for its colleges, they sent him to Juilly as prefect of studies. His pupils loved his good fellowship. But his superiors had very quickly seen what was under the mask. "Billaud--To judge by the way in which he reads Latin, he does not know it very well. Has he brains? I have not had sufficient time to find out. But he has a high opinion of himself, and I regard him as only a worldly man, clothed in the habit of the Oratory, coolly regular and honest, who has tried hard not to compromise himself in the last few? months, for when he first came here his behavior was not of the best. Though he may be judicious in his conduct, I do not think that he is suited to the Oratory, because of his age, of what he has been, and of what he is." Such was the judgment passed upon him by his superior, for the Superior General of the congregation, in 1784. Shortly afterward it was learned that Father Billaud had offered a tragedy to the comedian Larive: he was expelled.... We know what followed: his entry of the bar at Paris, his marriage to the natural daughter of a farmer-general, his friendship with Marat and Robespierre, his complicity in the massacres of September, his ferocities and cowardices, his turnabout on the ninth of Thermidor, his banishment to Guiana, his escape, his death in San Domingo. He ended his career as a teacher of parrots. Was good Father Billaud of Juilly a hypocrite? Did he already dissimulate under the appearance of cold regularity the wild passions of the Jacobin of '93.... I prefer the explanation of Arnault who, decidedly, does not lack judgment: "Father Billaud, who later became so frightfully famous under the name of Billaud-Varennes, also appeared to be a very good man at that time, and perhaps he was so; perhaps he would even have been so all his life, if he had remained a private citizen, if the events which provoked the development of his atrocious policy and the application of his frightful theories had never presented themselves. I would prefer to believe that morally, as physically, we all carry in ourselves the germs of more than one grave malady, from which we seem to be exempt as long as we do not meet the circumstance which is capable of provoking the explosion." Father Fouché, professor of physics, was a year older than Father Billaud. He also passed at Juilly as a good fellow, and interested his pupils by showing them spectacular physical experiments. He, however, did not enter the Oratory from necessity or caprice. He was brought up by the Oratorists of Nantes, and had come to the institution at Paris with the intention of devoting himself to the teaching of science. He had no bent for theology, but was fond of studying Horace, Tacitus and Euclid's Commentaries. He was soon to abandon Euclid; but he did not forget the examples of perfect wickedness which were presented to him by Tacitus, and he served the Terror, the Directory and Napoleon with the cold infamy of a freedman; as for Horace, he was never faithless to him, for he had a taste for gardens and for friendship. He was regent at Vendôme, then at Juilly, then at Arras, where he made the acquaintance of Robespierre. He was prefect of studies at Nantes when the Revolution threw him into public life. [Illustration: 0153] He never forgot Juilly. Perhaps some of the verses of Horace were associated in his mind with the memory of the trees of the park and the waters of the pool.... In 1802, when he was Minister of the General Police, he wished to come to visit his old college, he who, in the time of the Terror, in the Nièvre and at Lyons, had added to the most frightful massacres the most childish sacrilege. Events then passed easily over the imagination of men, and even more quickly over the imagination of a Fouché. An ex-Oratorist, Father Dotte-ville, accompanied him to Juilly. The pupils received the visitors by singing verses of their own composition: Leaving, to revisit your friends, The worries of the ministry, Such leisures as are allowed you In that solitary asylum; Our forebears had the good fortune To profit by your lessons.... This last allusion appeared a little too precise to Fouché, who turned his back on the singers. But, after this moment of ill humor, his Excellency showed himself very amiable. Fathers Lombois and Crenière, his former associates, who still lived at Juilly, refused to speak to him, however. But he did not despair of weakening their determination, and it was he who in 1806 gave to the chapel of the college the magnificent statue of Bérulle, of which I have spoken to you. It was natural that Fouché, when he became an official under Bonaparte, should show himself less vehemently irreligious than at the period when he was the colleague of Collot d'Herbois. It was even necessary for him to pretend devotion when Louis XVIII consented to give him a civil position. But it is impossible to read without smiling the following lines written to M. Charles Hamel, the historian of Juilly, by L. Roberdeau, the former secretary of Fouché: "Here are the facts, whose exactness I can guarantee to you. The curate of Ferrières always had a place set for him at the chateau, when the Duke of Otranto was there. He received from him annually a supplementary salary of six hundred francs and was allowed to sign wood, bread and meat tickets ad libitum, as well as to call for any other kind of aid or to distribute arms. The Duke also gave a magnificent dais to the church. [This touch is exquisite, when attributed to the former conventional who had methodically plundered and wrecked all the churches of the Nièvre.] The doctor of the château was required to take care of all the invalid poor of his domains; he exacted that they should receive the same attention as himself, etc." But this is the most admirable: "I do not know in what sentiments the Duke of Otranto died; but I know that, when Louis XVIII offered him an ambassadorship of the first rank, _he chose the humble court of Dresden because the King of Saxony was known to be a sincerely religious man._" I do not doubt that Fouché may have thus talked to his credulous secretary. It is possible that he even said the same thing to Louis XVIII. But the Kins: assuredly did not believe it, and was right. I cannot decide to leave Fouché without quoting in this place some lines from a magnificent portrait drawn by Charles Nodier. This passage is almost unknown, being buried in the _Dictionnaire de la conversation_; M. Charles Hamel has quoted it in his book: "There was not a feature in his face, not a line in all its structure, on which work or care had not left their imprint. His visage was pale, with a paleness which was peculiar to himself. It was a cold but living tone, like that which time gives to monuments. The power of his eyes, which were of a very clear blue, but deprived of any light in their glance, soon prevailed over all the impressions which his first aspect produced on one. Their curious, exacting, profound, but immutably dull fixedness, had a quality which was frightful.... I asked myself by what operation of the will he could thus succeed in extinguishing his soul, in depriving the pupil of its animated transparency, in withdrawing his glance into an invisible sheath as a cat retracts its claws." This is wonderful! ***** Father Fouché and Father Billaud were not the only masters of Juilly who played a part in the Revolution. About the same time Father Gaillard was regent of the sixth class, and Father Bailly was prefect of studies. This Father Gaillard was a terrible man; he frightened his pupils by his severity and his intractable piety. "Here is a man who, if justice had been done, would have been burned, together with his writings," he said before a portrait of Jean Jacques. In 1792 he left Juilly, having exchanged his robe for the uniform of the National Guard; he went with his company to Melun, where he married and became president of the criminal court. Later he found means of paying a compliment to the First Consul, and had the good luck again to come in contact with his former associate Fouché. The latter elevated him to the Court of Cassation, and made him one of his agents; Gaillard rendered great services to the Duke of Otranto, at the court of Ghent. Father Bailly also left the Oratory to take part in public affairs; but he had more moderate opinions. As a deputy to the Convention from Meaux, he voted against the death of the King; he was one of the Thermidorians, took part in the Eighteenth Brumaire, and became a prefect of the Empire.... If we believe with Taine that the Revolution was entirely an outcome of Cartesianism and of the classic spirit, what a beautiful allegory is this assembly of future Revolutionists in square caps, under the wide branches of Malebranche's chestnut tree! ***** The Oratory did not survive the Revolution, but Juilly outlived the Oratory. After 1789, the congregation was divided against itself. Some fathers were willing to take the oath; others refused it. Some of the young associates scorned the authority of the Superior General. The law of August 18, 1792, dissolved the Oratory. But the Oratorists remained at Juilly at the very height of the tumult. One day mobs from Meaux invaded the buildings and pillaged the chapel; even after this, a few priests and a score of pupils again assembled in the college. They left it only during three months in 1793, when a military hospital was installed in place of the school. After the Terror was over, the woman who had acquired Juilly as a national property returned it to its former masters. The college peopled itself anew. Napoleon dreamed for a time of reestablishing the Oratory and of putting it in charge of all secondary education; Jérôme was brought up at Juilly. But this project was abandoned. But at least, when he reorganized the University, Fontanes was inspired by the rules and the programs of the colleges of the Oratory. The last Oratorists retired in 1828. Juilly passed under the direction of the Abbés de Scorbiac and de Salinis. Then comes another of the glorious moments of its history. In 1830 and in 1831 Lamennais became the guest of Juilly. Enveloped in his long black quilted coat, following by choice the path at the water's edge--doubtless to rediscover there memories of the pool of La Chesnaie, Lamennais carried back and forth, under the trees of the old park, his passionate dreams. It was here that he meditated his articles for L'Avenir, conceived the plan of the "General Agency for the Defense of Religious Liberty," composed the ardent diatribes in which he claimed independence for the Church, the right of teaching for Catholics, freedom to associate for the monks. It was here that he charmed his friends by the sensitiveness of his heart and frightened them by the boldness of his imagination. It was from Juilly that he returned to Paris to appear with Lacordaire before the Court of Assizes. It was from Juilly that he left for Rome.... Abbé Bautain and Abbé Carl, then Abbé Maricourt, directed Juilly after MM. de Scorbiac and de Salinis, up to the time (1867) when the reconstituted Oratory reentered in possession of the college founded by Father de Condren. In 1852 a few priests had been united by Father Pétetot, ex-curate of Saint Roch, for the purpose of restoring the congregation dispersed at the time of the Revolution. They had sought and found the traditions of the former Oratory, and slowly "reconstituted in its entirety the pacific and studious city built more than two centuries before by Father de Bérulle." "They could then," said Cardinal Perraud, "place a living model under their eyes in order, to imitate it." The Oratory was thus reborn with the ancient rule which had formerly been its originally--a simple association of lay priests submissive to bishops, it asked of its members neither the vow of obedience nor the vow of poverty. [10] It was natural that it should undertake the direction of Juilly, the most ancient and the most glorious of its houses.... Here I end the rather desultory notes which I have made while visiting Juilly and rummaging through its history. I wish to speak neither of yesterday, nor of today..., nor of tomorrow. I have not attempted to plead for the masters of Juilly, now threatened with again being expelled from their house. I have not the ability to defend them, and besides one cannot plead against a position already taken, or folly, or wickedness. Nor have I the candor to believe that the illustrious phantoms with which are populated the shady avenues and the long galleries of Juilly, Malebranche, Bossuet, La Fontaine, Lamennais, can move the vulgar pedants to whom France now belongs. But if by chance I have evoked "the long, mobile and flat face... the physiognomy like an agitated fizgig... the little bloody eyes... the restless and convulsive attitudes" of Joseph Fouché, I have allowed myself this historical amusement, without thinking that the President of the Council may be able to take the same pleasure in it. Father Fouché and the representative of the Mountain, the bad Oratorist and the good Jacobin, must be congenial to him, without doubt; but there is also the Duke of Otranto: M. Combes has not yet got to that point. Finally, if I have tried to show that the Oratory is attached by a close bond to the past of France, that the mold in which, for two centuries and a half, French intelligence was founded was fabricated at Juilly, and that the very basis of our education remains Oratorist in spite of everything, I have not for a single instant dreamed that these considerations based on history could awake the least respect or the least gratitude among the politicians, for these gentlemen are sincerely convinced that France was born on the day when a majority of three votes, captured, bought or stolen, made them ward bosses. VII. THE CHÂTEAU DE MAISONS |NOT long ago the Château of Asay-le-Rideau, a masterpiece of the French art of the sixteenth century, was in peril. Today it is the turn of the Chateau de Maisons, a masterpiece of the French art of the seventeenth century. But this time it is not a question of a peril which is more or less distant. The destruction of Maisons is a fact which is decided upon. The property has just fallen into the hands of a real estate speculator. He intends to cut up what remains of the park into house lots. As to the chateau, the wreckers will first rip out the magnificent mantelpieces and the incomparable sculptures which adorn the walls; they will sell them; then they will tear down the building. The fragments will serve to fill the moats, and on the ground thus made level they will build suburban villas. [Illustration: 0167] The Department of Fine Arts looks on powerlessly at this act of abominable vandalism, for the Chateau de Maisons is not listed as a national monument. And not one of those amateurs who spend fortunes every day to buy childish ornaments, restored pictures and ragged tapestries, not a single one of these can be found who will preserve for France one of the monuments which are the glory of French architecture. Not one of those public administrations which incessantly build at enormous expense hospitals, asylums, colleges, has thought that it might be able, by utilizing this vast building, to render at the same stroke a brilliant service to art and to history! It is said that the department of Seine-et-Oise is looking for a site on which to build a hospital; why did it not long ago decide to appropriate the Chateau de Maisons for this purpose? It is intolerable to think that one of the most beautiful residences of old France, situated at the very gates of Paris, is going to be stupidly demolished, at a time when the curators of our museums can find the necessary money to purchase archaeological curiosities and foreign trifles! [11] And you will see that, as soon as Maisons is stripped by the house wreckers, it will be found very proper to purchase at great expense for the Louvre a few of the statues and a part of the bas-reliefs which vandals will have been permitted to tear from the place where François Mansart had them placed! The agony of Maisons will have lasted more than seventy years. It was the banker Laffitte who, after 1830, commenced the work of destruction, made way with the terraces and the cascades which were placed between the château and the Seine, and demolished the great stables, a magnificent building decorated with precious sculptures, which was the marvel of Maisons. It was he who cut up the greater part of the park, five hundred hectares, and cut down the centenarian trees of the domain of the Longueils. After Laffitte, what remained of Maisons passed to less barbarous hands. Another proprietor tried to restore some beauty to the fragments of park which had been preserved. Even today there remain pretty thickets, a fine greensward, avenues lined with great antique busts, while the château itself is almost intact. Every Parisian knows, at least by having seen it from the window of a railway train, this superb construction which tomorrow will be no more than a pile of rubble and plaster. It ravishes us by the beauty of its lines, by the happy choice of the site where it is placed, by the just proportion of the architecture to the hillside on which it is seated. The façade facing the court of honor is composed of two superposed orders. In the pediments of the windows are sculptured eagles, and women, terminated like sphinxes, as lions or dogs. To the right and left, before the pavilions of the wings, rise two projections which form terraces at the height of the first story. The whole monument has a charming air of nervous elegance. The vestibule (here was formerly the marvelous grille which today closes the gallery of Apollo in the Louvre) rests on beautiful Doric columns. The vault is decorated, on its four faces, with grand bas-reliefs representing four divinities: never did sculptures show more docility, more suppleness, in clothing architectural forms without overloading them, without injuring the purity of their lines. And everywhere the eagle of the Longueils unfolds its great wings of stone. In the halls of this devastated château, there remains nothing but the sculptured decoration. But what a masterpiece! Under the strong and intelligent discipline of François Mansart, Gilles Guérin, Buyster, Van Obstal and Sarazin surpassed themselves. The great mantelpiece where, under a medallion of the great Condé, an antique triumph is marshaled, the adorable playing children which Van Obstal carved above the cornice of the grand stone staircase, the noble caryatides which sustain the dome of the bedchamber, all the decoration of the guardroom where, about 1840, a poor painter called Bidault painted tiresome views of the Bay of Naples, all the sculptures scattered through the different rooms of the chateau, form one of the most perfect achievements, if not the most perfect, which the seventeenth century has left us. The wreckers are going to ruin it, they are going to annihilate it. And they will annihilate also that admirable dining hall where the Count of Artois set up, at the end of the eighteenth century, Houdon's Ceres, Boizot's Vertumnus, Clodion's Erigone, and Foucou's Flora. Plaster casts have replaced the originals on the ancient pedestals. But the hall has retained its coffered ceiling, whose bas-reliefs equal, in grace, fancy and richness of invention, the most delicate works of the Renaissance, in surety and simplicity of execution, the purest works of Greek genius. They will find wretches who will pull down these sacred stones with pick and crowbar! And they will also find those who will tear from the little oratory of Maisons its exquisite, its delicious marquetries! When we wander through the deserted apartments of the old mansion, now devoted to demolition, the heart contracts, and we ask with anger how such vandalism is still possible in a period when everybody, even to the least politician, talks of art and beauty! The Château de Maisons was built by François Mansart, between 1642 and 1651, for René de Longueil. The family of Longueil, originating in Normandy, where its feudal possessions were near Dieppe, possessed the territory of Maisons from the end of the fourteenth century. It has increased it by successive acquisitions. René de Longueil, Councilor in Parliament, had just been named president of a court, when he commissioned Mansart to build him a new chateau on his domain. He gave entire freedom to his architect in plan and decoration. It is related that Mansart, after he had built the right wing, leveled it with the ground to begin it over again on a new plan, because he was not satisfied with his work. The expense was enormous: it has been estimated at more than six millions. Maisons, when it was finished, was considered one of the most beautiful châteaux of France. How could Longueil afford this royal fancy? We are very ill-informed on this point today. All that is known is that in 1650 the president was named superintendent of finance; when, shortly afterward, he was dismissed, he was responsible for this charming and significant remark: "They are wrong; I have taken care of my own business; I was about to look out for theirs." Louis XIV sometimes visited Maisons. He came there unexpectedly with the court, July 10, 1671, fleeing from Saint-Germain, where the Duke of Anjou was dying. Bossuet brought the King the news of the death, and the Queen's fool, Tricomini, transmitted it to Mlle, de Montpensier in these terms: "You, great lords, you will all die like the least of men; here is one who comes to say that your nephew is dead." This fool talked like Bossuet. Mlle, de Montpensier adds that she went to pay her respects to the King and that she wept bitterly with him. "He was deeply afflicted, and with reason, for this child was very pretty." After the death of René de Longueil, the chateau passed to his descendants, the last of whom died in 1732. It then passed to the Marquis of Soye-court, who let it fall into ruin; but in 1777 the Count of Artois bought it, restored it, and embellished it magnificently. We reach the upper stories of the château by a narrow and winding staircase, ensconced in the thickness of the wall. Here is a maze of corridors and tiny chambers. A larger apartment, however, exists in the center of the building, below the lantern which crowns the roof. It is ornamented with mythological paintings and Danae adorns the ceiling over the bed in the alcove. This is the chamber of Voltaire. [Illustration: 0175] The great intimacy between Voltaire and the President de Maisons is well known. The latter, great-grandson of the creator of the chateau, was a studious young man of delicate tendencies. At the age of eighteen he was President of Parliament. Re was said to be a good Latinist. His education had been irreligious and he loved science. He had established a chemical laboratory, where he manufactured the most perfect Prussian blue which could be found in Europe, and a botanic garden of rare plants where he cultivated coffee. He belonged to the Academy of Science, and also possessed a collection of coins. In 1723 Voltaire came to make his home with his friend. He found there a good reception and a society ready to admire him. He knew, above all, that the President was the nephew of Madame de Villars, and Voltaire was then in all the heat of his passion for the Marshal's wife.... He arrived at Maisons in the month of November. He planned to finish his tragedy of Marianne in this retreat. But he was immediately taken sick with the smallpox and thought he would die. So he sent for the curate of Maisons and confessed. The Danaë of the alcove possibly heard the confession of Voltaire! Doctor Gervasi saved the dying man by making him drink "two hundred pints of lemonade." As soon as he was cured, to disembarrass his hosts and not abuse their goodness, Voltaire had himself taken to Paris. Then occurred an episode which almost became tragic. We must let Voltaire tell it: "I was scarcely two hundred yards from the château when a part of the ceiling of the chamber where I had lain fell in flames. The neighboring chambers, the apartments which were below them, the precious furniture with which they were adorned, all were consumed by the fire. The loss amounted to a hundred thousand livres and, without the help of the engines for which they sent to Paris, one of the most beautiful edifices of the kingdom would have been destroyed. They hid this strange news from me on my arrival; I knew it when I awoke; you cannot imagine how great was my despair; you know the generous care which M. de Maisons had taken of me; I had been treated like a brother in his house, and the reward of so much goodness was the burning of his chateau. I could not conceive how the fire had been able to catch so suddenly in my chamber, where I had left only an almost extinguished brand. I learned that the cause of this conflagration was a beam which passed exactly under the fireplace.... The beam of which I speak had charred little by little from the heat of the hearth.... "Madame and Monsieur de Maisons received the news more tranquilly than I did; their generosity was as great as their loss and as my grief. M. de Maisons crowned his bounty by giving me the news himself in letters which make very evident that he excels in heart as in mind; he occupied himself with the care of consoling me and it almost seemed as if it had been my chateau which was burned." And it is not only the shade of Voltaire which haunts the apartments of Maisons! We may also be shown the chamber of Lafayette. In addition, decorations in Empire style recall to us that in 1804 the château was bought and inhabited by Lannes.... But what good is it to evoke these memories, since the admirable beauty of the architecture and of the decorations has not sufficed to arrest the enterprise of the housebreakers? [12] VIII. THE VALLEY OF THE OISE |WHEN the first automobiles made their appearance upon the highways, some persons thought that, thanks to this new mode of locomotion, the French were finally going to discover the thousand beauties of France. They awoke from their dream when they heard the conversations of automobilists. The latter, when they returned from their excursions, told of the achievements of the engine, the misfortunes of the tires, the treacheries of the road. They computed distances, counted kilometers, passed judgment on macadam; but of the country traversed they had seen, it was manifest, only the wide ribbon of the road unrolling before their cars. If one talked to them of the picturesqueness of a region through which they had passed, they replied: "Too steep grades!"; and they cursed the rough cobbles when one praised to them the pretty church in a village through which they had passed. They were full of stories of autos, as hunters are of hunting yarns; but every one knows that the beauty of the forest is the last thing a hunter thinks of. The chauffeurs went into ecstasies at the memory of a straight, smooth, deserted highway, drawn like an arrow for leagues across an endless plain, far from the villages which are populated by hens, children and straying dogs. The most romantic celebrated the pleasure of speed, the intoxication of danger. In all of them one guessed, though none would consent to avow it, the wild pride of hurling themselves across the world, with a terrible uproar, in the midst of universal fright, like petty scourges of God. Some protested, and swore that it is easy to avoid the contagion of this delirium, that they themselves had succeeded in using their machine as a commodious vehicle and not as a simple instrument of sport. I only half believed them. Some experiences had shown me that one feels himself becoming an automobilist an hour after one is seated in an automobile.... But recently one of my friends asserted: "Your experiences prove nothing. You chose your auto badly, or perhaps your chauffeur, or even your companions. Three conditions are indispensable for traveling, or rather for loitering, in an automobile: 1. A firm decision to see everything, which depends on you alone; 2. A docile chauffeur; 3. A comfortable auto of moderate speed. My chauffeur and my machine fulfil the two latter conditions. Arrange the itinerary yourself. We will stop as often as you please. Will an experience of three days consecrated to archaeology seem conclusive to you?" I proposed to my friend to pass in review all the churches of the Oise Valley from Saint Leu d'Esserent to Noyon.... There is not in this part of France a single village whose church is not worthy of a visit. It is the cradle of Gothic art. My friend was right. You can loiter in an automobile; but it is necessary, to be successful, to be a lover of loafing almost to a mania, and to be a lover of sightseeing until it is a passion. If you are not sustained by a tenacious and obstinate curiosity, you immediately succumb to the mania of automobilism. Do not speak of the attraction of rapidity; for, to get rid of this, there is a sure and simple means, that of choosing a machine of medium speed. But, whatever may be the rapidity of the machine, you remain exposed to a double obsession. There is at first the search for a good road, the hatred of cobblestones, dirt roads and badly kept pavements; doubtless an automobile, well built and prudently driven, can overcome the most difficult roads; but the fear of jolts and the terror of breakdowns cause us to see, always and everywhere, the good road, where the machine reaches its maximum of speed. Every detour becomes odious if it compels the abandonment of a smooth road for more dangerous crossroads. The chauffeur is therefore desirous of following blindly the line marked on his special map. (Let us remark in passing that maps for the use of automobilists are generally detestable.) But the essential peculiarity of the state of mind common to automobilists is a disgust with halts. "Keep on, keep on!" a mysterious voice seems to cry to us whenever there comes a desire to stop. Nothing hurries us; we are loafing; we have long hours ahead of us before we reach the end of the day's rim; nevertheless the briefest stop seems to be an unnecessary delay. We can no longer admit the idea of immobility; we experience a sort of ennui when trees, houses and men cease their regular flight along both sides of the road. Then we understand how it is that so many automobilists are happy in driving between moving pictures, without looking at anything, and how they get from it a pleasure which is both careless and frenzied. These are unfortunate circumstances for the contemplation of landscapes and of monuments. It is, however, possible to triumph over them. The slavery of the good road can be escaped, But do not count upon it without a veritable effort of the will. If one is master of himself as of his machine, then traveling in an auto becomes delightful, for one can modify, shorten, lengthen, the itinerary of the excursion according to one's fancy. We turn aside at a crossroad to climb a hill, from which we hope to discover an agreeable outlook, or perhaps to visit a church of whose spire, rising in the midst of the woods, a glimpse has been caught. If we perceive that we have passed, without noticing it, a monument or a picturesque site, we turn back. Yes, we turn back. This assertion will leave more than one chauffeur incredulous. But everything is possible when one really has the taste of travel, even to losing two minutes by turning his machine around on a straight road. This way of traversing the highroads of France has, I admit, its inconveniences, the most serious of which is the necessity of incessantly watching the map to guide the chauffeur at every fork. The signboard always appears too late, when the machine has already made the wrong turn. The speed of the auto is such that it is not possible to study the map and to enjoy the view at the same time. It is necessary to choose. The wisest plan is to make up your mind to miss the road occasionally. The mistake is so quickly corrected! I also recognize that traveling in an auto will never replace the slow promenade, in which one stopped at every turn of the route, amused by people and by things. But it has the great advantage of annihilating distance, of bringing sites and monuments close to one another, of permitting rapid comparisons without any effort of memory, and of revealing the general characteristics of a whole region. It suits synthetic minds. It repels a little those who have the passion of analysis. In short it makes us acquainted with the forest, but leaves us ignorant of the beauty of the trees.... ***** From Paris to Chantilly there is at first the monotonous plateau which separates the valley of the Marne from that of the Oise. In this gently rolling plain the villages are numerous, and everywhere, overlooking the housetops, rise the pointed or saddle-roofed spires of old belfries. There is not a hamlet of the Ile-de-France which does not possess a precious and exquisite church. It is here, on the soil of the royal domain, that the soul of France was formed. It is here that its national art was born. We will stop, as the luck of the road wills. Louvres formerly possessed two churches: one of them has disappeared and of it there remains only a fine Romanesque belfry; in the other, which shows the somewhat absurd elegance of the fifteenth century, we see a frieze of vine leaves running all around the wall. And behold, at the very first stop, in this petty village, a charming résumé of the whole of French art; a robust Romanesque tower, finished in the first period of pointed Gothic and, beside the gray belfry, the excessive and delightful luxury of flamboyant Gothic. A league farther on, the church of Marly-la-Ville offers a perfect example of the art of the thirteenth century; with its little flying buttresses and its low triforium, one might say that it was the tiny model for a great cathedral. By the side of the road, a poor half-ruined shed, with a broken roof, a hollowed pavement and moldy walls, is the church of Fosses; in its misery and its degradation, the humble nave of the twelfth century still preserves some remnants of its pure beauty.... A glance at the pleasing Renaissance façade of the church of Luzarches.... The automobile rolls along the edge of the forest.... Villas of horsebreeders and jockeys.... Some English cottages.... The immense greensward and the very uneven cobbled street of Chantilly.... A few more woods, and we behold the wide valley of the Oise. On the opposite hill rises the church of Saint-Leu-d'Esserent, on a large terrace, above the houses and the gardens of the town. The apse turned toward the Oise, the robust flying buttresses and the radiating chapels, two great square towers which flank the choir, the tower of the porch with its tapering steeple, the grand and harmonious mass of the edifice, all give to this church the aspect of a proud and gracious citadel. Saint-Leu-d'Esserent is one of the most moving types of the architecture of the twelfth century, of that architecture which is called transitional. The façade is still semi-Romanesque, but its openings are already finer and more numerous. Internally, the mixture of Romanesque and pointed gives to the monument an extraordinarily varied aspect; the arches which separate the nave from the low side aisles are broken; the full semicircle reappears in the triforium, and in the upper windows the arch is pointed again. The vaulting is formed by the intersection of pointed arches; but in the chapels of the apse there are trilobes inscribed in circular arches. And this diversity of styles is here the result neither of gropings nor of fresh starts; it results from a marvelously conceived plan in which the builders knew how to mingle and harmonize the beauties of tradition and the audacities of the new art. The Romanesque architecture had no period of decadence and, on the other hand, at the period when Saint-Leu-d'Esserent was built, the time of research and of trial whence emerged the pointed architecture was already past. It is the meeting of the two styles which renders so magnificent certain churches of the twelfth century, such as Saint-Leu-d'Esserent and Noyons. [Illustration: 0189] The ambulatory of the choir was enriched in a free and infinitely harmonious style; the columns and the capitals, even as early as this, show an admirable purity of style. Saint-Leu-d'Esserent was an important priory of the Cluniac order. Some arcades of the cloister still adhere to the wall of the church. Other remains of the monastery exist on private property. We would have been pleased to visit them. The proprietor answered us: "It is impossible; this is the day I dry my washing." An inhabitant of Saint-Leu-d'Esserent said to us a few moments later, in a mysterious tone: "The monks were rich. There is buried treasure there. That man is sifting all the soil on his land: he is looking for gold..." (Saint-Leu is sixty kilometers from Paris.) ***** For two days we are going to follow the valley where the river slowly coils its long bends through the wheat fields and the poplars. The low hills, covered with forests, lie in the distance and never come near enough to force the Oise to sudden detours. This river is not like the Marne, incessantly turned aside by the spur of a hill. It flows indolently under a pale horizon, in a vast landscape whose shades are infinitely delicate, and whose lines are infinitely soft. It bears silent barges through the fertile plains. Daughter of the north, it reflects in its clear green waters villages of brick. The smoke of workshops mingles with the mist-banks of its sky. At night the lights of the glass furnaces brighten its banks. By talking with the men who drive their horses upon the towpath, it is easy to guess that the Oise is born in Belgium. Bell-towers dot the valley on both banks of the river. That of Montataire rises above the trees of a park at the top of a bluff. The church possesses an exquisite portal surmounted by a frightfully mutilated bas-relief of the Annunciation; but how much grace the draperies still possess! It is useless to stop at Creil, since a barbarous municipality thought it advisable to pull down the church of Saint Evremont, one of the most beautiful specimens of the architecture of the twelfth century. The people of Nogent-les-Vierges are not barbarians: they have preserved their church. It is not as pure in style as that of Saint Evremont. But its belfry--terribly restored--is adorned with original details. The rectangular choir, which the thirteenth century added to the Romanesque nave, possesses a rare elegance, with its slender pillars. What a diversity there is in the creations of Gothic architecture! How inventions in construction permitted infinite variation in the plans of churches! It is only by thus traversing the countrysides of France that one can admire the abundant imagination of the builders of the thirteenth century. There are many churches, especially in the north, which, like that of Nogent-les-Vierges, possess a choir terminated by a flat wall. But the type is diversified from edifice to edifice. Open a manual of archæology; take the most recent and the most complete of all, that of M. Enlart, and you will observe what difficulty the author has in classing and characterizing such work, after the last years of the twelfth century. At no other period was architecture so profoundly individual an art. We may say that every building was then original, not only in the details, but especially in the plan. I have written that the people of Nogent-les-Vierges were not barbarians, but I am on the point of taking it back, when I think of a sort of panoramic Calvary which they have installed in their beautiful church. Let them look at this picture which might seem beautiful to a Kanaka: then let them look at the two beautiful bas-reliefs of the fifteenth century which are placed at the extremity of the nave, and let them blush! A little farther on, the church of Villers-Saint-Paul also possesses a Romanesque nave on low, squat pillars, and a Gothic choir whose columns expand into wide branches of stone. This choir is square, like that of Nogent-les-Vierges. The two villages are only a league apart; without doubt only a few years separated the two buildings, yet it will always be impossible for us to confound these two churches in our memory! Rieux also had its Romanesque nave and its Gothic choir. The nave has been made into a schoolhouse. As to the choir, it is being restored, but the orientation of the altar is being changed in the process, so that the width of the choir becomes the length of the church. And they are executing this lovely transformation without any thought of the ancient plans, or any more respect for the wishes of the dead who, buried under the pavement of the sanctuary, will no longer occupy the position with respect to the altar in which they had wished to rest forever. On the left bank of the Oise, Pont-Sainte Maxence: a pointed-arched church of the Renaissance, heavy, massive. This type of architecture, which has produced so many elegant works in Normandy, has been less happy in the Isle of France. Pontpoint: a Romanesque nave, a pointed choir, at the end of which they have preserved an old apse of the eleventh century, and these patchings are delightful! We salute at the portal of the church of Yerberie an adorable statue of the Virgin. We cross back to the right bank of the Oise to admire the stone steeple of Venette, pleasingly planted on the pedestal of a Romanesque tower: we reach Compiègne. ***** [Illustration: 0195] Compiègne has a beautiful château which everybody knows, and Compiègne is a charming town which many sojourners do not know. More than one traveler has gone through it without ever having seen the chapel of the ancient Hôtel-Dieu, whose grand reredos of carved wood is one of the most brilliant masterpieces of the French sculpture of the seventeenth century. Compiègne possesses a historical society, which shows much zeal in causing the preservation of the appearance and the monuments of the old town. Let us praise in passing the efforts of these worthy men: we must not lose a chance for exalting the good and saying evil of the wicked, On one occasion this historical society intervened to prevent that, under pretext of straightening a line, the remnants of an old bastion should be destroyed because they injured, it was said, the beautiful perspective of the subprefecture. It also undertook the defense of the old tower called the Tower of Joan of Arc, and succeeded in saving this venerable monument. Alas, it did not succeed in protecting the bridge of Compiègne against the engineers who wrapped it up in an iron apron, under pretext of facilitating traffic.... Yes, the traffic of the bridge of Compiègne! From belfry to belfry, we continue our route toward Noyon. At the junction of the Aisne, in a pleasing landscape, the church of Choisy-au-Bac seems to watch over the tombs of a little cemetery filled with flowers. It is Romanesque, fairly well restored, and charmingly picturesque. At Longueil-sous-Thourotte, the poor old church is about to disappear. By its side they have built a grand new church, a copy of twelfth-century architecture. Was it worth while to demolish the modest and venerable edifice of earlier days? Could it not be preserved beside the proud modern construction, even if it were tottering and dilapidated? It contained beautiful funeral slabs of the Renaissance, which are going to be exiled, no one knows where; it contained, above all, superb stained glass of the thirteenth century. Two windows have been placed in the new church; but there remains a third, and there remain also remarkable monochromatic frescoes. What is going to be done with these precious remnants? They have not been listed as national treasures. ... Tomorrow, perhaps, they will go to decorate the dining room of a Chicago millionaire: what a disgrace! And all the windows of the new church are adorned with stained glass whose banal horror makes the magnificence of these ancient windows apparent to every eye! The church of Thourotte--it is of the twelfth century, but has lost much of its character--contains a fine altar screen of gilded wood, representing the different scenes of the Passion. It is said to be Flemish work; judging by the types of certain personages, this might be doubted; but the shutters which close upon the screen bear paintings whose origin is not in the least doubtful. Poor paintings, whose restoration was confided by a too-zealous curate to a pitiable dauber! Now, the Commission of Historic Monuments has fisted the beautiful sculptures and has put them under glass: the effect of this is abominable, but we live among barbarians and second-hand dealers, and we are actually forced to put our works of art under lock and key to defend them. As for the painted shutters, they are hung up on the wall: a few were spared by the dauber. In the same church we may still see two beautiful altars supported by torsos of the seventeenth century. How many beautiful works of art still remain in our little churches of France, in spite of revolutions and dealers in antiques! The Cistercian abbey of Ourscamp is now a cotton spinning mill. Behind a magnificent iron fence stretch vast buildings of the seventeenth century. In the center rises a grand pavilion. We pass through an open door between the high columns which support the balcony of the upper story, and suddenly discover that this immense construction is a mere veneer to hide the old church of the monastery. Of the nave there is no longer anything remaining; but a little farther on, in the midst of the park, the choir still lifts its arches of magnificently pure architecture. The roof has fallen, but the columns and the walls still stand. It is a picture like that of the church of Long-pont, in the forest of Villers-Cotterets. (There is also great similarity between the architecture of Longpont and that of Ourscamp.) It seems that the intimate beauty of Gothic art is better revealed to us when we thus discover the ruin of one of its masterpieces among the trunks and branches of trees; we then can better feel the living grace of its columns and the freedom of its arches.... There is so much truth in this admirable page from the _Génie du christianisme_: "The forests of the Gauls have passed in their turn into the temples of our fathers, and our forests of oak have thus maintained their sacred origin. These vaults carved into foliage, these jambs which support the walls and end suddenly like broken trunks, the coolness of the vaults, the darknesses of the sanctuary, the obscure wings, the secret passages, the lowly doorways, all retrace the labyrinths of the woods in the Gothic church: everything makes us feel in it religious horror, mysteries and divinity, etc...." The centuries have accomplished their work, and, in the ruins of the edifice, which is surrounded and invaded by the verdure of the forest, we recognize still better what art learns from nature. [13] Of the old abbey, there still remains a superb hall with Gothic vaults and a triple nave. It is called the "Hall of the Dead," because it is said that the bodies of the monks were placed there for two days before the funeral. So great a room for this use? Was it not rather the chapter room of the monastery? I will say nothing of Noyon today. On another occasion we will return to this lovable and silent town, which is adorned with one of the most perfect religious edifices of our country. * * * * * Upon the return trip, in the forest and valleys adjacent to the valley of the Oise, the obedient auto stopped before many other exquisite churches. [Illustration: 0201] The belfry of Tracy-le-Val is one of the pearls of French art. The tower rests upon a square subbasement; when it has reached the height of the apse, two long, narrow windows open upon each side, framed by little columns of adorably fine workmanship, and monsters and grotesques grimace on all sides under the arches and upon the capitals. Above these strange details, the tower suddenly becomes octagonal, but, to mask the abrupt change in the architectural scheme, statues with outstretched wings are placed at the four angles. A conical tower of stone crowns this strange belfry, twice admirable, by the richness of its decoration and by the grace of its proportions. Saint-Jean-aux-Bois, in the midst of the forest of Compiègne, is a church of the twelfth century which the restorers have rebuilt. Perhaps it will still interest a few archaeologists by the originality of its plan: designed in the form of a Latin cross, its crossarms have double bays, like the nave; but this singularity of construction is the only merit which the church retains today: it is clean, new, frozen and dead. Morienval, with its three towers, its triple nave, and its ambulatory, is a beautiful church. In the interminable controversies which have raged over the date and the place of the origin of the Gothic style, Morienval has been cited a hundred times, and it has been much discussed because of its ambulatory, which is vaulted with pointed arches and which certain historians affirm to have been built in the middle of the 'eleventh century.... I do not know. But what I know well, is that, in future controversies, one will do well to hold to the texts and to the drawings, and not to attempt to reason from the monument itself; for this exists no longer, or at least it is restored, which amounts to the same thing. Yes, they have restored the ambulatory of Morienval, and they have not half restored it, I can assure you. For they have completely recarved certain capitals.... It is truly a singular spectacle to see in the twentieth century so many stone carvers occupied, some in producing Romanesque, others Gothic, and still others classical architecture. It is also diverting to think of the mistakes into which future archaeologists will fall, led astray by all these copies. But, in spite of all, as it is the old monuments which pay for these debauches of sculpture, as it is at the expense of their conservation that this fury of restoration is exercised, we would willingly renounce these ironical joys. Oh, if the restorers would only consecrate each year to the placing of tiles or slates the sums which they squander in having capitals recarved! Since the fancy of this archaeological excursion has taken me into the valley of the Authonne, a pretty name for a pretty brook, I desire to see that chateau of Vez which its owner, M. Dru, recently bequeathed to the nation. It is a magnificent fortress on the summit of a wooded hill. The donjon and the encircling wall have been skillfully restored. Of the main body of the building, of which only ruins remain, a part only was rebuilt by M. Dru.... Will the nation accept the legacy? I hope so, because it appears that M. Dru left a sum sufficient to finish the work. This sort of archaeological restitution seems to me very unnecessary; it would be far better to leave such things to theatrical scene builders. But it is not necessary to discourage the worthy who diminish the profits of the house wreckers by bequeathing their castles to the public. Irony of geographical names! At the foot of the hill which sustains the donjon of Vez, we see, in the midst of the fields, a Gothic church of the flamboyant period, remnant of a Premonstraten-sian monastery. It is now used as a farmstead. Ï consult my map to know the name of the hamlet: it is called _Lieu-Restauré _(Restored Place). I took the road back to Paris through the great plains of Valois, overlooked by the sublime spire of the cathedral of Senlis. IX. GALLARDON [Illustration: 0207] |GALLARDON, a town of the region of Chartres, is built upon the spine formed by the valleys of the Ocre and the Voise, two of those narrow and sinuous ravines, clothed with trembling alders and poplars, which traverse the immense plateau of La Beauce. The houses rise, stage above stage, on the side of the hill; then, at the summit of the slope, commences the endless plain, the ocean of harvests, dotted with the whirling iron arms of water-pumping windmills, where the towers of the cathedral of Chartres are dimly seen above the horizon. Gallardon was formerly a strong defensive position, and the ruin of its old donjon, "the shoulder of Gallardon," still sketches curious outlines against the sky. Gallardon possesses a remarkable church, whose choir is a marvel of elegance, and whose nave is covered with a beautiful vault of painted wood. It also boasts of a beautiful Renaissance house.... Finally, it is noted for the richness of its fields and above all for the excellence of its beans. But, today, neglecting the picturesque, archaeological and horticultural merits of Gallardon, I wish to tell the story of a singular personage who was born in this tiny village of La Beauce, Thomas Ignatius Martin, a visionary laborer, known under the name of Martin of Gallardon. [14] ***** In 1816, the White Terror reigned in La Beauce as in other places. Gallardon had not escaped the fever which torments the least village of France on the morrow of every revolution. Conquered and furious, the Liberals met in the hall of an inn to exchange their regrets and their rancors; with airs of bravado they evoked the memories of the Revolution and the glories of the Empire. Opposite them, and in opposition to them, the Royalist Committee celebrated the victory of its party and exploited it. It annoyed and threatened its adversaries, bombarded the Chamber with petitions, and the ministers with denunciations. It was the appointed hour for all reprisals, all enthusiasms and all credulities. Thomas Ignatius Martin was born at Gallardon of a family of small farmers who had been known there from time immemorial. He was thirty-three years old and the father of four children. He was a robust, simple, upright, easy-going and open-hearted citizen. In the midst of aroused passions he had never mixed in political affairs. On the testimony of the mayor of Gallardon, "the Revolution always seemed to displease him, especially on account of the disorders which it caused, in which he never took part. He remained tranquil in all these events, even on the 20th of March, when Bonaparte returned; he seemed, however, to be angry at the banishment of the King; but he also took tranquilly the return of the King in the month of July, rejoicing at it, but without ostentation." In short, he was a wise man. He fulfilled his religious duties exactly, but without fervor, went to mass, kept Lent, read nothing but his prayer book and when, passing by his fields, the curate asked of him: "How goes the work?" he replied: "Much obliged, M. Curé, it goes well." He was never seen at the tavern. Now, on February 15, 1816, about half-past two in the afternoon, Thomas was in his fields busy in spreading manure on his land, when he suddenly saw an unknown man appear before him. This man, who appeared to be about five feet two inches high, was slim of figure, with a tapering, delicate and very white face; he was enveloped to his feet in a long frock coat of blonde color, was shod with boots tied with strings, and wore a high silk hat. He said to Martin in a very gentle voice: "It is necessary that you should go to see the King; that you should say to him that his life is in danger, as well as that of the princes; that evil men are still attempting to overturn the government; that several writings or letters are already in circulation in some provinces of his States on this subject; that it is necessary that he shall have an exact and general watch kept in all his States, and especially in the capital; that it is also necessary that he should exalt the day of the Lord, that it may be kept holy; that this holy day is misused by a great portion of his people; that it is necessary that he shall cause public works to stop on that day; that he shall cause public prayers to be ordered for the conversion of the people; that he shall exhort them to penitence; that he shall abolish and annihilate all the disorders which are committed on all the days which precede the holy forty days of Lent: that if he does not do all these things, France will fall into new evils. It is necessary that the King should behave towards his people as a father to his child who deserves to be punished; that he shall punish a small number of the most culpable among them to intimidate the others. If the King does not do what is said, there will be made so great a hole in his crown that this will bring him entirely to ruin." To this discourse Martin replied very judiciously: "But you can certainly go away and find others than me to undertake such a commission as that." "No," replied the unknown, "it is you who shall go." Martin replied still more judiciously: "But since you know it so well, you can indeed go yourself to find the King and say all that to him; why do you address yourself to a poor man like me, who does not know how to explain himself?" The unknown showed himself inflexible: "It is not I," said he, "who shall go, it will be you; pay attention to what I say to you, for you shall do all that I command you." Then his feet appeared to lift from the earth, his head to sink, his body to shrink, and the apparition disappeared. A mysterious force prevented Martin from quitting his field and made him finish his work much more rapidly than was usual. When he returned to Gallardon, Martin went to his priest to relate the adventure to him. The curate, who was called M. Laperruque, advised him to eat, drink and sleep well, without worrying about this chimera. But, on the following day, the unknown presented himself on several occasions before the more and more frightened peasant, and repeated to him the order to go and find the King. Martin, on the advice of the curate, visited the Bishop of Versailles, who questioned him and sent him back to Gallardon. A new apparition: the unknown declares that he will not tell his name, that he is sent from heaven, and that if Martin is chosen above all to speak to Louis XVIII, "it is to lower pride." From this day he does not cease to lecture Martin: "It is not necessary to believe that it is by the will of men that the usurper came last year, it is to punish France.... France is in a state of delirium: it shall be delivered to all sorts of evils...." At the same time he warned him "that he would be led before the King, that he would discover to him the secret things of the period of his exile, but that the knowledge of them would only be given to him at the moment when he would be introduced into the King's presence." Whether he cultivates his fields, or whether he remains in the barn to thresh his wheat, the unfortunate farmer always finds himself in the presence of the haunting apparition. Meanwhile, the curate Laperruque corresponds with the Bishop of Versailles, who corresponds with the Minister of Police. The latter requests the prefect of Eure-et-Loir to verify "if these apparitions, said to be miraculous, were not rather a flight of the imagination of Martin, a veritable illusion of his exalted spirit; or if possibly the pretended apparition, or perhaps Martin himself, ought not to be severely questioned by the police and then turned over to the courts." [Illustration: 0215] Warned by the unknown that he is soon going to appear "before the first magistrate of his arrondissement," Martin repairs to Chartres with his curate, and goes to see the prefect; he relates to him his visions, announces himself as ready to repeat the story of them to the Minister of Police and to the King himself, and on March 7, at five o'clock in the morning, departs from Chartres by the diligence, in the company of M. André, lieutenant of gendarmes. They both arrive at Paris at half-past five and take rooms at the Hôtel de Calais, Rue Montmartre. On the next morning, the lieutenant of gendarmes takes his man to the General Police Headquarters. In the courtyard, the unknown appears again to Martin: "You are going," says he, "to be questioned in several ways; have neither fear nor inquietude, but tell the things as they are." It is nine o'clock; the minister, M. Decazes, has not yet arisen. A secretary makes Martin undergo a preliminary interrogatory. The latter allows himself to be neither intimidated nor disconcerted. Then he is introduced into the private room of the minister, to whom he relates again the series of apparitions, and describes the countenance and the clothing of the unknown. "Well," the minister then says to him, "you will see him no more, for I am going to have you arrested and taken to prison." This news leaves Martin very incredulous.... And, having returned to the Hôtel de Calais, he again hears the unknown assure him that the police have no power over him, and that it is high time to warn the King. The minister begins to be embarrassed. It is evident that the words of the unknown are not unlike--even to style--the discourses uttered by M. de Marcellus, M. de Chateaubriand, the ultras who meet every evening in the Rue Thérèse, in the salon of M. Piet, in short, all the enemies of M. Decazes. On the other hand, the simplicity of Martin, his air of frankness, the concordance of his stories, all preclude the idea of an imposture. Could this peasant, then, be playing a part in some political machination? But it is impossible to discover who could be the instigators of the mystification. M. Decazes, to get to the bottom of the affair, then orders Pinel, physician in chief of the Salpêtrière, to repair to the Hôtel de Calais and examine the individual in question. After a long conversation, Pinel decides that Martin is afflicted with an "intermittent alienation"; then he reflects and writes to the minister that the wisest course is to take the subject to Charenton for a few days, in order that it may be possible to observe him and pronounce upon his case. Meanwhile, the unknown continues to appear to Martin and to announce to him the worst catastrophes. Suddenly, on March 10, he decides to reveal his name: "I had told you that my name would remain unknown; but, since incredulity is so great, it is necessary that I discover my name to you; I am the Archangel Raphael, an angel very celebrated at the throne of God; I have received the power to strike France with all sorts of plagues." And he adds that peace will not return to France before the year 1840. These words terrify Martin. Three days later, the lieutenant of gendarmes causes him to enter a hired carriage and, under pretext of a drive, conducts him to Charenton. Martin, however, displays no astonishment at this: the supernatural voice has warned him of it. Martin remained about three weeks at Charenton, observed and studied very closely by Doctor Royer-Collard, chief physician of the hospital. He set down his observations and his conclusions in a long report, which he signed with Pinel. It is from this document that I have just related the first visions of Martin. This report gives us a high idea of the prudence, the method and the scruples of the physicians who prepared it. As we read these clear and judicious pages, we are obliged to recognize that if the science of mental maladies has made little progress since 1816, the specialists resort to boldness of diagnosis and obscurities of language which Pinel and Royer-Collard knew nothing of. These two doctors knew that their work would pass under the King's eyes, and they doubtless put particular care into it. Nevertheless, not one of our most famous alienists would consent today to sign such an avowal of uncertainty, nor, above all, to express his doubts and reserves in a fashion as limpid and as intelligible, without once dissimulating by a barbarous jargon the fragility of his knowledge. The doctors begin by an exposition of the facts, the apparitions of the archangel, the confidences of Martin to his curate, his trip to Paris and his arrival at Charenton. They report that after having submitted him to a detailed examination, they had found in him no sign of malady nor any symptom of derangement of mind: he is sound of body, reasons well, manifests neither overexcitement nor violence; he accepts his internment with resignation and asks only that he be permitted to accomplish his mission, for he continues to receive the visits and the admonitions of the archangel. We shall see that he finally obtained entry to the presence of the King. But let us see first, according to expert medical testimony, whether Martin was an impostor or an illuminate. "If Martin is an impostor," say the doctors, "he can have become so only in one of two ways: either by imagining his rôle alone and executing it without any outside assistance, or by obeying the influence of other persons more enlightened than himself and by receiving their counsel and their instruction." The physicians discard the first hypothesis; what they themselves have observed of the character of Martin and what they have learned through information brought from Gallardon, prevents their believing in trickery. "Martin was the last man in the world whom one would suspect of forming a project such as this and of cleverly bringing together all the parties to it; he did not have the religious and political acquaintances which this requires, and he would never have been able to compose by himself alone the discourses which he assures us were addressed to him; but even supposing, contrary to all probability, that he might have been capable of conceiving such a plan, his skill would have come to an end at the first difficulty of execution. Let us imagine him in this contingency face to face with the different persons who have questioned him; let one oppose his inexperience to their penetration, his ignorance to the artifice of their questions, his timidity to the impression of respect which the exercise of authority always calls forth, and let one ask one's self if he would not have been disconcerted a score of times and fallen into the traps which were laid for him in all directions. Let us add that, if he had only been an adroit rogue, he would have infallibly sought to turn this roguery to his own profit by making it a means of fortune or of credit. Now, he has not dreamed for a single instant of taking advantage of the extraordinary things which happened to him; he has not even been willing to accept a small sum of money which was offered him for his traveling expenses; he has never worked to acquire partisans, and finally, he has returned to his village as simple and with as little pretension as before. Has one ever seen rogues so disinterested?" Must we believe that Martin is not the sole author of the imposture and that he was guided by outside advice? The physicians combat equally this hypothesis which would have made policemen smile in the beginning. Here is their reasoning, and it is very strong: "To admit this second hypothesis, it is necessary to admit also that a certain number of men, attached to some political or religious faction and knowing Martin directly or indirectly, should have entered into close relations with him at some time before January 15, and have continued these relations from January 15 up to the time of Martin's removal to Paris, and also in Paris itself, during the sojourn which he made there, and even at Charenton during the three weeks which he passed there...." Without these precautions, Martin, abandoned to himself and now obedient only to vague and insufficient guidance, would not have been able to escape the perils which surrounded him.... Previous to January 15, Martin associated only with his family or the people of his village; he has never been known to have had any acquaintance or association with persons of a higher class; consequently he has not had them; for in a village nothing remains secret; every one knows what his neighbor is doing. From January 15 up to the time of his removal to Paris, the most authentic reports certify that he has seen only his curate, the Bishop of Versailles and the prefect of Eure-et-Loir, and we know exactly what passed between them and Martin. In the journey from Gallardon to Paris, and during the stay which he made in that city, Martin was accompanied by an officer of gendarmes who left him neither by day nor by night, and who affirms that, with the exception of M. Pinel, no one at all has had an interview with him. As to Charenton, we certify that he there met only three strangers: one was the commandant and the two others [M. Sosthène de La Rochefoucauld and the Abbé Dulondel, sent by the Archbishop of Rheims, to whom the King had entrusted the care and the solution of the Martin affair.], discreet persons, incapable of becoming the instruments of trickery; that all three have had communication with Martin only in the presence of the director, and that they were rigorously restricted to addressing a few questions to him without making any kind of insinuation.... Martin talked of his visions neither to the patients, nor to the attendants, nor to the gardeners. Besides, no letter, no advice, had reached him from outside... Then Martin is neither an impostor nor an accomplice in an imposture. He thus actually experienced the sensations which he reports. Having established the sincerity of Martin, the physicians asked themselves how his intellectual condition should be characterized. Martin is the puppet of hallucinations. Therefore his affection approaches insanity in certain characteristics. "It is for this reason," adds Royer-Collard, "that M. Pinel and myself did not hesitate at first sight to regard this affection as a particular kind of insanity, and it is probable that any other physician would have thought as we do on this point. But if Martin's affection approaches insanity in some particulars, it also differs from it in important and basic respects..." What were they? "In the case of ordinary mental patients, the hallucination of the senses is almost always led up to and brought on by causes which have acted strongly upon their imagination, or disturbed more or less the exercise of their intellectual faculties; it never manifests itself without a special concentration of efforts of the attention or the imagination upon a single idea or upon a particular series of ideas, at least in the period which immediately precedes the vision." Now, in Martin's case, there is nothing like this. He has religious visions, although he had a mind little inclined to the mystic and was even a rather lukewarm Christian. His visions relate to politics, yet he was a stranger to the passions of his fellow citizens and did not read the newspapers. Among ordinary insane, visions are always accompanied by a certain ecstatic exaltation which gives the seer the attitude of the inspired, of the prophet, and never permit him to relate his visions with calmness and tranquillity. Now Martin remains constantly the same. He confides his visions only to his superiors, he appears more annoyed than glorified by them, he relates them with simplicity; he is not turned for one instant from his habitual occupations. Singular coincidences justified certain of the prophecies of Martin: "If it is necessary to make use of the testimony of the officer of gendarmes who accompanied him, Martin announced to him in the morning the visit which M. Pinel was to make in the afternoon, without there being any way in which he could learn of this.... We are equally assured that he had actually written to his brother under date of March 12, to warn him that the authorities were going to have information collected in his neighborhood, in regard to the persons with whom he habitually associated there, while the letter by which these inquiries were ordered was not written until the sixteenth of the same month...." Pinel and Royer-Collard willingly admit that there exist "incontestable occurrences of previsions and presentiments which were later realized by the event." But what appears not less certain "is that these occurrences are met with only in the case of persons who enjoy all their faculties and never among the mentally afflicted. This is a side of our nature which remains inexplicable to us even to this day and which will probably long escape our researches." Finally, Martin is distinguished by his excellent health from other hallucinate insane, who are always the victims of physical troubles. What can then be the nature of this condition, so individual and so different from insanity as it is usually observed? I have had to abridge this long scientific discussion, but I will copy the conclusions of the report verbatim: "We here find ourselves arrested by important considerations. On the one hand, it very often happens that true insanity shows itself at first only by indefinite symptoms and takes its real form and its complete development only at a period more or less remote from its first appearance; on the other hand, the methods of classification applied even to this day in medicine are still very imperfect, and lack much of that degree of precision which seems to belong especially to the other physical sciences.... The external and tangible properties of objects are the only ones which receive the attention of the doctor: it is by the examination of these that he regulates his ministry, and intellectual facts are almost always surrounded with so many obscurities that it is extremely difficult to assert rigorously exact analogies or differences. "If these reflections are true, in general, they are especially so with respect to the facts observed in Martin's case, and the mere statement of these facts furnishes a sufficient proof of this. We consequently think that Martin's condition may change. It would be rash to pronounce upon this condition before the lapse of a year, and until then we think it is proper that we should abstain from judging him. We also think that this condition, as we have observed it, cannot, taking into consideration the present imperfection of our knowledge, be characterized in a precise manner, and that even if we suppose that it would always remain the same, it would still be necessary to wait, in order to determine its nature, until facts of the same kind, observed and recorded with care, should have been discovered in sufficient quantity to spread new light upon this still obscure portion of our knowledge." Consequently, Pinel and Royer-Collard declare that they have found it necessary to refrain from giving any treatment, they decide that the minister has done "an act of justice and humanity" in returning Martin to his family, and request that, during a period of considerable duration, he should be the subject of "enlightened observation." When Louis XVIII decided to summon Martin to the Tuileries, he had not yet read this report, which was not drawn up until several days later. But M. Decazes had communicated to him the observations of the physicians, and the Archbishop of Rheims in like manner the impressions of his emissary, Abbé Dulondel. To what sentiment did he respond in summoning Martin? Probably to simple curiosity. "Infected with his century, it is to be feared that religion was for the Very Christian king' only an elixir suitable for the amalgamation of the drugs of which royalty is composed." (This admirable formula is by Chateaubriand.) On April 2, Martin was conducted from Charen-ton to police headquarters. The minister announced to him that he was about to be taken to see the King, then went into a neighboring room. Then Martin beheld the archangel, and heard these words: "You are going to speak to the King and you will be alone with him; have no fear in appearing before the King because of what you have to say to him." A carriage was ready. But the peasant preferred to go to the Tuileries on foot, and the first gentleman in waiting introduced him into the King's apartment. ***** Martin was in the presence of Louis XVIII; he was finally going to be able to acquit himself of his mission and to transmit to the King the warnings of the archangel. He himself reported this interview to Doctor Royer-Collard; then, after returning to Gallardon, he made a more detailed statement to his curate, M. Laperruque; the latter wrote down the relation under the dictation of Martin, who certified to its exactness, and the manuscript was sent to the prefecture of Chartres. We are obliged to confine ourselves to the statements of the laborer of La Beauce, for the scene had no witness. To the Duchess of Berry, who questioned him about this personage, Louis XVIII merely replied that _Martin was a very worthy man who had given him good advice from which he hoped to be able to profit._ Martin finds the King seated at a table "upon which," he says, "there were many papers and pens." He bows, hat in hand. "Sire, I salute you." "Good morning, Martin." "You surely know, Sire, why I come." "Yes, I know that you have something to tell me and I have been told that it was something which you could say only to me. Be seated." Martin takes an armchair, sits down on the other side of the table, facing the King, and begins the conversation. [Illustration: 0231] "How is your health, Sire?" "I feel a little better than I have for some time; and how are you getting along?" "I am very well, thank you." "What is the reason for your coming here?" And the seer commences to relate the admonitions and the prophecies of the archangel, all that had happened to him since January 15, the date of the first apparition. He adds: "It has also been said to me: One has betrayed the King and will betray him again; a man has escaped from prison; the King has been made to believe that this occurred through subtleness, skill and chance; but the thing is not so, it was premeditated; those who should have attempted to recapture him have neglected the matter; they have used in their task much slowness and negligence; they have caused him to be pursued when it was no longer possible to recapture him. I do not know who, they have not told me this." "I know him well, it is Lavalette." "It has been said to me that the King examines all his employees, and especially his ministers." "Have they not named the persons to you?" "No, it has been said to me that it was easy for the King to know them; as for myself I do not know them." Martin pretends that, at this moment, Louis XVIII lifted his eyes to heaven, saying: "Ah! it is necessary!"... and began to weep. Seeing which, he himself wept with the King to the end of the interview. But his emotion does not prevent him from continuing. "It has also been said to me that the King should send into his provinces confidential officials to examine the administrations, without their being warned, without their even knowing that any one has been sent; and you will be feared and respected by your subjects. It has been said to me that I should say to you that the King should remember his distress and his adversity in the time of his exile. The King has wept for France; there has been a time when the King no longer had any hope of returning hither, seeing France allied with all its neighbors." "Yes, there was a time when I no longer had any hope, seeing all the States which no longer had any support." "God has not wished to destroy the King; he has recalled him into his States at the moment when he least expected it. At last the King has returned to his legitimate possessions. What are the acts of grace which have been returned for such a benefit? To punish France once more, the usurper has been drawn from his exile: it was not by the will of men, nor by the effect of chance that things were permitted thus. He returned without forces, without arms, without any defense being made against him. The legitimate King was obliged to abandon his capital, and although he believed that he could still hold one city in his States, he was obliged to abandon it." "It is very true, I intended to remain at Lille." "When the usurper returned... [let us omit these historic matters]. The King again reëntered his States. Where are the acts of grace which have been rendered to God for so glorious a miracle?" And Louis XVIII still weeps.... Then Martin recalls to him private facts regarding his exile. "Keep the secret of them," returns the King; "there will only be God, you and myself who will ever know that.... Has it not been said to you how it is necessary that I should conduct myself in governing France?" "No, he has made no mention to me of all that which is in the writings; the minister has the writings, as the things have been announced." "Has he not said to you that I have already sent forth decrees for all that you have spoken of to me?" "No, no one has mentioned it to me...." "... If, however, he returns, you will ask him how it is necessary that I should conduct myself in governing." "It has been said to me that as soon as my commission to the King had been accomplished, I would never see anything more and that I would be undisturbed." Louis XVIII, perhaps less troubled than the worthy Martin believes, continues to question the seer and to make him detail the circumstances under which certain of his previsions have been realized. (The medical report informs of these curious coincidences.) Then, having listened to this story--"It is the same angel," he says, "who led the young Tobias to Ragès and who made him marry her." He takes the right hand of Martin, that which the angel has pressed, and adds: "Pray for me." "Surely, Sire, I and my family, as well as the curate of Gallardon, have always prayed that the affair should succeed." "How old is the curate of Gallardon? Has he been with you long?" "He is almost sixty; he is a worthy man; he has been with us about five or six years." "I commend myself to you, to him and to all your family." "Surely, Sire, it is much to be desired that you should remain; because if you should happen to depart or if some misfortune should come to you, we others would risk nothing also by going away, because there are also evil people in our country; they are not lacking." After having renewed all the recommendations which the archangel had charged him to transmit to the King, Martin wishes Louis XVIII good health and asks his permission to return "to the center of his family." "I have given orders to send you back there." "It has always been announced to me that no harm and no evil would happen to me." "Nor will anything happen to you; you will return there tomorrow; the minister is going to give you supper and a bedroom and papers to take you back." "But I would like it if I could return to Charenton to bid them good-by and to get a shirt which I left there." "Did it not trouble you to remain at Charenton? Did you get along well there?" "No trouble at all; and surely if I did not get along well there, I would not ask to go back." "Well, since you desire to go back there, the minister will see that you are sent there at my expense." On the next day, having said farewell to the physicians at Charenton, Martin was taken back to Chartres, where the prefect of Eure-et-Loir recommended him to observe the greatest discretion in regard to his adventure, then he returned to Gallardon. The curiosity seekers who had been worried by his absence questioned him: "When you have business," he replied to them, "do you not go and do it? Well, I have been to do mine." And he went back to working in the fields. M. Decazes and the King himself would doubtless have preferred that the affair should remain secret; but it was soon bruited about. Troubled by the extraordinary events which had occurred in France in the last two years, imaginations were eager for the supernatural. On the other hand, the most violent members of the Royalist party did not find it inopportune that a miraculous voice had come to recall to the sovereign his duties as "very Christian king." Copies of the medical report and manuscript relations circulated among the public. In the month of August, 1816, an English journal told the story of Martin. It was published in the _Journal général de France_ in January, 1817. Finally pamphlets were printed. A "former magistrate" of Dijon told the stories of the visions which he considered miraculous; he accused the physicians of having "spread clouds over the truth of the revelations made to Martin," and compared the "divine" mission of the peasant to that of Joan of Arc. A priest, Abbé Wurtz, answered: for him, all the visions of the man of Gallardon were only fables and illusions; they touched upon "the dignity of the most august family of the universe"; this pretended archangel was an enemy of the legitimate monarchy; upon the high hat of the unknown, there was perhaps a tricolored cockade under the white one! Finally, there appeared a work which subsequently ran into twenty editions and spread the name of Martin of Gallardon throughout the whole of France: _Relation Concerning the Events Which Happened to a Laborer of La Beauce in the Early Days of 1816_. Its author was M. Silvy, "former magistrate," a man of great knowledge and of great piety; it was he who acquired the site of the ruins of Port-Royal and who perpetuated in the nineteenth century the spirit and the traditions of Jansenism. Written from the accounts of Martin himself and the reports of the director and the doctors of Charenton, this relation was accompanied by religious considerations. M. Silvy did not doubt that Thomas had been inspired by God through the mediation of an archangel. He interpreted in his own fashion the quite scientific prudence which the doctors had evidenced in refusing to give a definite opinion upon the case of the illuminate. A whole life of disinterestedness and charity proved the good faith of M. Silvy. But it is sufficient, to eliminate the idea of a fraud, to know the mortifications and the disillusions which eventually overwhelmed this honest man, without affecting his belief. The police commenced to be stirred up. The peasant had been sent back to his plow with a recommendation to be silent; he was silent, but many others talked in his stead. It was impossible to act vigorously against him without becoming ridiculous, for the authorities had been forced to recognize his sincerity, and the report signed by the alienists would not allow a personage as inoffensive as he to be returned to Charenton. Measures were therefore taken against his historian, and the police prosecuted M. Silvy. The latter, who was a good Royalist, did not hesitate to declare that when the first edition of his pamphlet was sold out he would bind himself not to publish a second. This, for the moment, was all that M. Decazes could wish. The prosecution was abandoned: the publicity of a trial was useless. The archangel Raphael had announced to Martin that "when his commission had been carried out he would see nothing more." But, one day, the visions recommenced, to the great astonishment of all those who had believed in the first revelations. They admitted their embarrassment, and made the conjecture that, after having received his inspirations from a messenger of light, Martin might now be visited by a messenger of darkness. Besides, the archangel did not appear again. Martin merely heard voices which announced to him the fall of the Bourbons and the dismemberment of France; he saw hands tracing mysterious letters upon the walls; he predicted frightful catastrophes. The peasant had become prophet. His mental condition changed, in accordance with the prediction of Doctor Royer-Collard. People came to consult him from twenty leagues around. His poor cracked head put him at the mercy of all the plotters. He got mixed up in his revelations. We have seen that when he had been admitted to the presence of Louis XVIII, he had told the latter certain secrets of his exile and that the King had begged him to preserve this confidence. He was silent until the death of the King; but in 1825 he believed that he was able to speak and made this strange confidence to Duc Mathieu de Montmorency; one day Louis XVIII, then Count of Provence, had, while hunting, formed the design of killing Louis XVI, had even taken aim at his brother, and only chance had prevented the murder. It was this criminal thought that he, Martin, had recalled to the King. Certain Royalists observed, not without foundation, that the historical knowledge of Martin was not very sound, and that it was not a question here of secrets of the period of exile. Martin did not trouble himself about these inconsistencies, and continued to prophesy. In 1830 he announced the Revolution. On the Saturday which preceded the ordinances, he heard a voice pronounce these words: "The ax is raised, blood is going to flow." When Charles X in flight sent the Marquis de la Rochejacquelin to him from Rambouillet to question him as to the decision he must make, Martin replied that all was over and that it was necessary to leave France. On the next day, while listening to the mass, he saw three red tears, three black tears, and three white tears, fall upon the chalice. The puzzle was solved by three words: Death, Mourning, Joy. The Joy seemed superfluous to the adherents of the legitimate monarchy. As to the famous "secret of the King," it was not long before he gave a new version of it. What he had revealed to Louis XVIII was the survival of Louis XVII. He had fallen into the hands of the partisans of Naundorff; he remained there until his death. Shortly after the Revolution of 1830, there appeared an anonymous pamphlet entitled: The Past and the Future Explained by Extraordinary Events. The author, who did not give his name, was Abbé Perrault, secretary of the Grand Almonry of France during the Restoration and member of a "Committee of Researches Respecting Louis XVII." He made use of the revelations of Martin to demonstrate the illegitimacy of Louis XVIII and of Charles X, and Martin certified to all of this with his name and his signature. [15] His former friends, whom he seemed to deny and whom he allowed to be defamed by the anonymous author of the pamphlet, were greatly grieved by this. I have before me a touching letter which was written him at that time by M. Silvy: "May the Lord deign to give you eyes enlightened by the heart, to lead you back into the way of truth and sincerity. I cannot nor should I conceal from you that in separating yourself from it, as you seem to have done for several years, you do an infinite wrong to the special work with which you were charged by the angel of the Lord in the early months of 1816. You were then only a simple instrument in his hands, chosen by him as a good villager whom no one could suspect of belonging to any party, and unhappily there are many of these which divide the Church and the State. What a change has happened in you! And what a difference between Thomas Martin as he showed himself in 1816, and the same Thomas Martin in 1832!... Such is the evil fruit (the fruit of death) of this book (a lie) Du passé et de Vavenir, which confirms and must confirm more than ever different persons in unbelief and in avoidance of the salutary advice which was given to all France by the mission which was confided to you (and which you have just dishonored). I have learned by myself and I am still certain from different testimonies that many of those who at first had believed in your first announcements no longer give to you the shadow of faith. I could even name to you, if you desire it, curates and honorable priests, vicars and even seminarists whom your new visions and their manifest falsity have totally disgusted with your previous revelations of 1816..." This letter was not answered. The unfortunate Martin belonged henceforward to those who exploited his hallucinations. When, in the month of May, 1833, the clock-maker of Crossen, Duc de Normandie, arrived at Paris to make himself known to his faithful, and when the sect commenced to be organized, the King and the Prophet met. The circumstances of this interview are not known precisely. According to certain authors, Martin was taken to Saint Arnoult, a village near Dourdan, to the home of the curate Appert, one of the most zealous and most devoted partisans of Naundorff; there, in the presbytery, they presented him to a mysterious personage whom he immediately hailed as the true King of France, while the friends of Naundorff wept at the spectacle of the miracle. But the Viscount of Maricourt received from the mouth of Doctor Antoine Martin, son of Thomas Martin, a version according to which the scene may have been less solemn and less touching. In September, 1833, on waking one morning, Martin said to his son: "At this moment there resides at Paris, with Madame de Rambaud, an unknown who calls himself King Louis XVII. My angel requires me to assure myself of his identity. Let us depart, my son." They departed. "Are you King Louis XVII?" Martin brusquely said to the stranger who was called Naundorff, when he was in his presence. "In that case, you have upon the shoulder, a half-ring, an indelible sign of your identity, marked there by the Queen your mother, a sleeping lion upon your breast and a dove on your thigh." Then Naundorff took the Martins, father and son, into "a discreet place prescribed by decency," and allowed them to see that these signs were marked upon his body. [16] From the day when Martin enrolled himself in Naundorffs party he leads a wandering life, full of tribulations. He stays but rarely in his own village. He retires sometimes to Chartres, sometimes to Versailles; for the voices order him incessantly to flee from his enemies and to hide himself. On April 12, 1834, he leaves Gallardon to make a retreat at Chartres. When leaving, he tells his wife that he well knows that something is going to happen to him, but that he confides all to the will of God. He goes to see some honorable persons who are accustomed to receive him. But, when his novena is finished and he is about to return home, he is taken with frightful pains and dies before a doctor can be called. The honorable persons send for the widow, require her to send the body of the deceased to the home of a curate, her relation, and the latter is requested to declare that the death took place in his house. He refuses, and the body is transported to Gallardon. The strangeness of all these circumstances and the appearance of the body cause suspicion of poisoning. Martin's family demand that the body shall be exhumed and an autopsy made. The doctors examine the body, but nothing more is heard of the affair. Thus ends very mysteriously the seer Thomas Martin of Gallardon. X. FROM MANTES TO LA ROCHE-GUYON [Illustration: 0249] |WHEN we leave Mantes and follow the valley of the Seine, we leave behind us the charming town so well named Mantes-la-Jolie. At each turn of the road the sleeping waters reflect a heaven of blue, and trembling verdure beneath: we dream of Corot. Through the gaps in the curtain formed by the poplars of the isles and the river banks, appears the white and smiling town, rising above its river, sweetly ordered below the towers of its fine and proud cathedral; we dream of the delicate, precise and finished grace of those landscapes which form the background of fifteenth-century miniatures. Farther on, the aspect and the color of things change completely. Chalky escarpments close the horizon. Here commences the bluff, the abrupt bluff, which henceforth will overlook the bank of the Seine all the way to the channel, and which uninterruptedly will form the bastion of the Norman coast from Havre to Dieppe. The locality has already a sort of maritime flavor. On days of tempest, the clouds which flee from the northwest and rush across the great valley seem to be swept by the wind of the open sea, the river is covered with little short, foamy waves, the air has a salty tang; and when Vetheuil, at the entrance of a tiny ravine, presents its low houses, its lanes tumbling toward the river bank, the high terrace and the Norman tower of its church, we might swear it was a fishing village.... This church of Vetheuil, which is said to have been commenced in the twelfth century, boasts of a fine belfry pierced with high lancet windows, which was built by Charles le Bel. It was recommenced and completed in the sixteenth century by the Grappins, architects of Gisors. This family enriched the Vexin with precious buildings. The church of Yetheuil is the masterpiece of the most celebrated artist of the dynasty, Jean Grappin the elder. The Renaissance gave France few religious edifices more seducing and more harmonious than this. Nowhere were the new decoration and the classic styles more ingeniously applied to the transformation of an old church. The façade of Gisors, which is also by Jean Grappin, seems to be less perfect in its art. Here the architectural effect is light and finely balanced. Niches, consoles, dais, balustrades, medallions, are charmingly invented. We still see the elegance and sobriety of the earliest Renaissance; and yet there already appear, under the little porch, the H and the crescent. The Grappins had remained faithful to the traditions of taste and restraint, which were beginning to be lost by their contemporaries. Within, there are some pretty statues of earlier days, a fine Flemish altar screen with scenes from the Passion, and abominable colored statues of the most modern hideousness. We stop before a singular chapel, shut off by a vilely daubed wooden grating: to look at the rags and strange accessories which hang on the walls, we might at first take it for the property room of a theater. The paintings with which it is afflicted represent sepulchral things, thigh bones, tears and death's heads. The wall which faces the altar is covered with the portraits of a large number of persons dressed in black, and covered with a sort of bonnet with tumed-up edges. This is the chapel of the Charity of Vetheuil, a lay brotherhood, whose function is to assist the dying and bury the dead. It doubtless dates from the Middle Ages, like other brotherhoods of the same type, which were formed in the Vexin, the remembrance of which is not yet totally lost at Mantes, at La Roche-Guyon, at Vetheuil, at Rosny. Like them also, it was restored by a bull of Gregory XIII at the end of the sixteenth century, as a result the frightful ravages of the plague at Milan. The Charities of Rosny, of La Roche and of Mantes have been dissolved. That of Yetheuil has survived. The costumes of the brothers, great robes of black serge with a blue collar, are what we see hung on the chapel wall; and here are also the lanterns and the crosses which are carried before the bier, the bell of the bell-ringer, and his dalmatica sprinkled with skulls and bones, as well as the insignia of the chief banner bearer. [17] Each time that I have returned hither I have feared to see this little chapel abandoned and to learn that this touching trumpery had been banished to an attic. Till now the people of Yetheuil have preserved their Charity. But how much longer will these vestiges of the rites and the customs of the past endure? Below Yetheuil a torn and ravined promontory presses close to the sudden bend of the river. No trees; a handful of vines; tufts of stunted vegetation dotting the chalky slope. Nature has not been alone in tormenting and tearing this strange wall. Men have carved their habitations in this soft stone; and a subterranean village has been built in the hillside, like those villages which we find in the tufa of the river banks of the Loire. The men have deserted these troglodyte homes, which are now no longer used save as cellars and stables. But the spot has retained a singular picturesqueness. A little church tower springs from the rock and sometimes we may still see the chimney of a cavern sending its smoke through the vines or the thickets. The village is called Haute-Isle. Formerly the manor house, surrounded by walls, was the only one which stood in the open. In the seventeenth century it sheltered "the illustrious M. Dongois, chief registrar of parliament." Now this illustrious M. Dongois was the uncle of the not less illustrious M. Nicolas Despréaux. And it was thus that Haute-Isle (then written Hautile) had the honor of being sung, if I dare say it, by Boileau himself: It is a tiny village, or rather a hamlet, Built upon the slope of a long range of hills, Whence the eye may wander far across the neighboring plains.^ The Seine, at the foot of the mountains which are washed by its waves, Beholds twenty islets rise from the bosom of its waters, Which, dividing its flow in diverse manners, Form twenty rivers from a single stream. All its banks are covered with wildling willows And with walnut trees often scourged by the passer-by.... These verses are a little rough, a tiny bit difficult. Lyric quality and picturesqueness were not the business of Boileau. Like all his contemporaries--omitting La Fontaine and Sévigné--he neither knew how to describe a landscape nor to translate its emotion. From this incapacity it has been assumed that the men and the women of the seventeenth century were indifferent to the charm of nature.... They were not pantheists, assuredly; they had neither ecstasies nor tremblings before the "dramas" of light and the "savage beauties" of the ocean or of the peaks.... But they understood and felt the grace of a beautiful valley. Since we have met the rural Boileau upon our way, let us collect his souvenirs of country residences. Let us first remark that if his description of Haute-Isle somewhat resembles a page of pen and ink drawing, we nevertheless find indicated there all of the particulars by which this landscape enchants us: the contrast of the rough, wild slope with the wide plain which stretches beyond the Seine, the grace of the river and its islands, the verdure of the willows and the walnuts. And Boileau does not forget to show us--by a somewhat obscure periphrase--the urchin who, as he passes along the road, brings down the nuts by hurling stones. [Illustration: 0257] What does Boileau do when he is in the country? He makes verses naturally, since his business is to be a poet. Here, in a valley which answers all my needs, I buy at little expense solid pleasures: Sometimes, with book in hand, wandering in the meadows, _I occupy my mind with useful thoughts;_ Sometimes seeking the end of a line which I have constructed I find in a nook of the woods the word which had escaped me.... Behold the solid pleasures of a constructor of verses, the friend of useful reveries. Reporters have recently questioned our men of letters as to how they "employ their vacations."... They have replied in prose by confidences quite like those which Boileau addressed in verse to M. Lamoignon, advocate general. But at Hautile, Boileau sometimes stopped to dream and rhyme; then, he "jestingly allured the too eager fish"; or, he "made war on the inhabitants of the air"; and he tasted, on returning from the chase, the pleasure of an "agreeable and rustic" repast. So, when he was about to leave the country, he expressed the ordinary wish of every citizen and of every poet obliged to return to Paris: Oh, fortunate sojourn! Oh, fields beloved of heaven! Why, strolling forever through your delicious prairies, Can I not fix my wandering course here And, known by you alone, forget the world outside? Charming verses, of which La Fontaine would not have been ashamed. And he said a sad adieu to this countryside, whose peace seemed to him sweeter and more salutary in proportion as the years made him feel more deeply the value of calm and especially of silence; he was then forty years old: Already less full of fire, to animate my voice, I have need of the silence and the shadow of the woods. ***** I need repose, meadows and forests. This is another very pretty line, the line of a quadragenarian... ***** "By the riverside of Seyne is a marvelous mount upon which formerly was built a castle, over strong and over proud and called La Roche-Guyon. It is still so high and fierce that scarcely may one see to its summit. He who made it and enclosed it, made, at the base of the mount and by cutting the rock, a great cave in the semblance of a house, which might have been made by nature." [18] The "over proud" castle is still standing on the summit of the hill, dismantled, breached, ruined, but ever keeping its proud and fierce aspect. As to the house created "by cutting the rock," it has, so to speak, slowly moved away from the slope from century to century. It was at first a sort of den, hollowed beneath the donjon. Then its galleries stretched out and were extended to the edge of the escarpment; then the entrances to the subterranean castle were closed by façades of stone and armed with towers; a fortress was thus built against the rock, and at the same time its ramparts were thrown forward to the Seine. To the gloomy feudal citadel succeeded a chateau of the Renaissance, somewhat less terrible, and the castellans of the eighteenth century changed it in the taste of their time without being able to deprive it of its warlike aspect. This history of the construction is manifest when we look upon this curious pile of different buildings. Above, the ruin of the donjon; at the foot of the slope and united to it, a grand chateau whose front façade is framed by two towers of the Middle Ages; and before this semi-feudal abode, charming stables in the style of those of Chantilly. A grandiose aggregation, utterly without harmony, almost barbaric, but in which is reflected with attractive clearness the whole past of France, from the invasion of the Normans to the Revolution. Beautiful furnishings, lovely paintings, fine carvings, adorn the apartments. The walls of the salon are covered with matchless tapestries, which portray the history of Esther. But it is the portraits which monopolize our attention here. Some are mere copies. The others are attributed--correctly--to Mignard, to de Troy, to Nattier. They evoke the glorious or charming memories of the castellans and the chatelaines, and, thanks to them, the whole past of La Roche-Guyon is born again. I do not know that there is in the whole of France a chateau so rich in memories and in history. [Illustration: 0263] It belonged to the Guys de la Roche, and the wife of one of them, the heroic Perrette de la Riviere, there sustained a siege of five months against the English. In the sixteenth century it belonged to the Sillys, and you may be shown the chamber where, on the morrow of the battle of Ivry, King Henri found a good supper, a good lodging and nothing more, for the virtuous Marquise de Guercheville ordered that his coach should be harnessed, so that he went away to the house of one of his lady friends two leagues from there--an admirable adventure on which a novel might be written. Then La Roche passed to the du Plessis-Liancourts: thus its name is mingled with the history of Jansenism; then to the La Rochefoucaulds: the author of the Maxims dwelt here; then, after the Revolution, to the Rohans, and in 1829 it returned to the La Rochefoucaulds. These names alone are a pæan of glory. Among the portraits hung on the walls several represent the Marquise d'Enville at various ages. What pretty, fine features! It was this Marquise who created the château as it still exists today, and transformed the old citadel into a home of luxury. Her father, Alexandre de la Rochefoucauld, exiled by Louis XV to La Roche-Guyon, had taken advantage of the leisure given him by the King's disfavor to commence great works in his domain; he had planted trees upon the naked hillside, thrown down the useless embattlements of the fortress and constructed a new pavilion. The Marquise d'Enville succeeded him in 1779 and continued his work. Without thinking of expense, she built, laid out gardens, ordered paintings, tapestries and statues. She was a woman of taste and spirit: she corresponded with Walpole and Voltaire, was intimate with Turgot and Condorcet, declared herself the pupil of the philosophers, and made her salon the rendezvous of the economists. But it was said that she practiced philosophy more than she preached it; she had founded a free school in her village and had engaged nuns to teach in it; in years of bad harvests, she opened charitable workrooms for the poor. She showed herself faithful and open-hearted in her friendships, for she remained the friend of Mlle. de L'Espinasse without ceasing to be the friend of Madame du Deffand. She was one of those aristocrats who worked with candid generosity for the ruin of the aristocracy: the Revolution neither surprised nor frightened her. But, on September 4, 1792, a band of revolutionists at Gisors murdered her son, the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, who had sat in the Constituent Assembly among the Constitutionalists. In the following year she was herself denounced, arrested, thrown into prison and owed her liberty, perhaps her life, only to a petition of the citizens of the commune of La Roche-Guyon. She died in 1797 at the age of eighty. ***** A little way back we met Boileau, dreaming at the foot of the bluff of Haute-Isle. A few steps farther on, at La Roche-Guyon, we meet Hugo and Lamartine; both stopped in this château during the Restoration. La Roche then belonged to the Duc de Rohan-Chabot. A short while ago M. Charles Bailie published a fat book upon this personage, who was somewhat slender, somewhat droll, and even, I will venture to say, a little ridiculous. But as this biography gave its author an opportunity to study men and manners of the period of the Restoration, and as this study swarms with new and well-told anecdotes, we gladly ignore the insignificance of the hero. Here is a summary of the life of this cardinal-duke: Auguste de Chabot, born February 29, 1788, followed his father, the Prince of Leon, into exile, and returned to Paris with him in 1800. He was educated in a somewhat haphazard fashion by a refractory Oratorist and later by a former college regent. In 1807, when his grandfather, the Duc de Rohan, died, his father became Duc de Rohan and he himself Prince de Leon. When his father died in 1816 he became Duke de Rohan. In 1808 he married Mlle. de Séreit, who was seventeen years old. Chateaubriand sometimes said to him: "Come, Chabot, so that I may corrupt you"; but his morals remained irreproachable. He traveled in Italy; he saw Madame Recamier and did not fall in love with her. Queen Caroline distinguished him. "She treated him," said Lamartine, "with a marked favor which promised a royal friendship, if the future cardinal had seen in the most beautiful of women anything else than the delight of the eye." He had pretty features, gave infinite care to his toilet, wrote romantic poems and dabbled in water colors. [Illustration: 0269] In 1809 he became a chamberlain of the Emperor. In 1815 his wife was burned to death, the laces of her gown having taken fire. In 1819 he entered the seminary of Saint Sulpice and was ordained a priest in 1822. Madame de Broglie thus described him, in the following year: "He had a thin pale face, and, at the same time, a coquettish care for his person which seemed to join honest instincts with former worldly memories; in his face there was a mingling of fanaticism and foolishness." He went to La Roche-Guyon to preach and on this occasion he chose five hundred volumes from the magnificent library collected by the Marquise d'Enville, piled them up in the castle courtyard and burned them: they were rare volumes adorned with precious bindings. Later he went to Rome, where he expected to be made a cardinal. He returned without the purple; but he had converted Madame de Récamier's chambermaid. In 1828 he was elevated to the archbishopric of Auch and later to that of Besançon. He dissatisfied the seminarists by untimely reforms; he did not take it amiss that ecclesiastics should wear polished laced boots. He shocked the liberals by his bigotry and the clergy by his luxury. He restored his cathedral; but he spoiled the apse, broke out the crossbars of the windows to replace them by frightful stained glass, demolished the altar, which was a beautiful work of art of the eighteenth century, and cast out a beautiful stone pulpit of the fifteenth century from which Saint Francis de Sala had preached. He was made cardinal in the month of July, 1830. The fall of the Bourbons forced him to flee to Belgium, whence he passed into Switzerland. After the death of Pius VIII, he took part in the conclave which elected Gregory XVI and officiated at the marriage of the Duchess de Berry to Count Lucchesi-Pali. He returned to his diocese in 1832, where he was received by a riot. He nevertheless remained there and died in 1833 of typhoid fever. The _Patriote_, a newspaper of Besançon, which had opposed him, published the day after his death a courteous article: "We do not doubt that he owed what influence he had to his virtue. He prayed devoutly and the accent of his voice, intoning the chants of the Church, breathed true religion. No one can say what he would have effected among us, if his career had been longer and if he had become reconciled to our Revolution." ... You think, without doubt, of Bouvard and Pécuchet taking notes to write the life of the Duc d'Angoulême. So do I. Now let us return to La Roche-Guyon. Montalembert, Marchangy, Berryer, Dupan-loup, Hugo, Lamartine, were there the guests of the Abbé-Duc de Rohan. How Hugo made the acquaintance of the Due de Rohan and visited him at La Roche-Guyon; how, terrified by the princely formality which reigned as well in the chapel of the château as in the dining room, he fled after two days; finally how the Duc de Rohan gave Lamennais to Hugo as a confessor, may be read in Volume II of _Victor Hugo raconté par un témoin de sa vie_. We must not neglect to consult also the severe but exact work of M. Biré. Lamartine wrote one of his most admirable _Meditations_ at La Roche-Guyon: Here comes to die the world's last echoing sound; Sailors whose star has set, ashore! here is the port: Here, the soul steeps itself in peace the most profound, And this peace is not death. In the note which he left as a sequel to this poem, Lamartine relates that, in 1819, the Due de Rohan was introduced to him by Duc Mathieu de Montmorency. "We became close friends without his ever making me feel, and without my ever allowing myself to forget, by that natural tact which is the etiquette of nature, the distance which he indeed wished to bridge, but which nevertheless existed between two names which poesy alone could bring together for an instant." This is exquisite, with an affectation of respect which borders on impertinence. The Meditation is entitled Holy Week at La Roche-Guyon. Not a line of this grand lyric piece reveals that it was conceived in this place rather than in any other. Lamartine has thus attempted to justify his title: "The principal ornament of the château," he writes, "was a chapel hollowed in the rock, a true catacomb, affecting, in the cavernous circumvolutions of the mountain, the form of the naves, the choirs, the pillars, the rood-lofts, of a cathedral. He induced me to go to pass Holy Week there with him. He took me there himself.... The religious service, _pious voluptuousness_ of the Duc de Rohan, was celebrated every day in this subterranean church, with a pomp, a luxury, and holy enchantments, which intoxicate youthful imaginations...." The picture is delightful. Unfortunately it entirely emerged from the "youthful imagination" of Lamartine. The subterranean church still exists at La Roche-Guyon, just as in the time of the Duc de Rohan. But the triple chapel, cut in the hill, and sufficiently lighted from outside, has nowise the appearance of a catacomb. There are no "cavernous circumvolutions," naves, choirs, pillars, rood-lofts. The cathedral is composed of three little vaulted rooms.... And I now think of the honest Boileau. He would not have mystified us or himself in this manner! It is true that you and I would give the whole epistle to Lamoignon for this single line: Sailors whose star has set, ashore! here is the port. XI. NOYON |THE light softens and dims, even in these days of the dog star, and, under this heaven of palest azure, the puissant harmony of verdure and red bricks announces the neighborhood of Flanders. Only the stone towers of the cathedral dominate with their gray mass the ruddy buildings and the leafage of the gardens. Noyon possessed immense convents which were razed during the Revolution. Scattered remnants still mark the sites of these monasteries; here an apse transformed into a storehouse, there the façade of a chapel. The monks have departed; but the town has retained a monastic aspect; and it is a place where one might make a retreat. In the silence of the melancholy streets, the pavements seem to ring more sonorously, and the passer listens with surprise to the echo of his steps between the silent houses.... Upon the market place, the delicate and florid façade of the old Hôtel de Ville of the Renaissance calls up the images of communal life, peculiar to the little cities of the north; we look for the belfry tower, we expect to hear the chimes; but the disputatious commune of the Middle Ages is now a wise, sad and pensive little town. In the staircase, sculptures in high relief portray the heavy gayeties of northern climes; but Noyon is now a wise, sad and decent little town. On the same square stands a curious fountain provided by the liberality of an eighteenth-century prelate. Statues of the cardinal virtues decorate its pedestal from which rises an obelisk, surrounded by emblems and allegories; we see there a Cupid caressing a lamb, quivers, arrows, a hound,--symbols of innocent love and of fidelity. An inscription placed upon the monument recalls to the people of Noyon that among them Chilpéric II was buried, Charlemagne consecrated and Hugh Capet elected king. I do not know whether this inscription is as old as the fountain: it has a certain grandeur in its conciseness; let us praise the towns which thus array themselves in their past glories, and recall the part which they have played in the destinies of France.... With its houses of brick and its gardens surrounded by high walls, its silence and its memories, Noyon would merit the tenderness of its people, even if Noyon did not possess its admirable cathedral.... What a charming picture is made by the apse, with its radiating chapels! Torch holders ornament the flying buttresses, which were restored in the eighteenth century: they drive to despair the pure archaeologists and fill with joy men without taste who, insensitive to unity of style, love to hear monuments tell their history, their whole history. To this harmonious apse is joined the treasury, and then a fine structure with wooden panels of the sixteenth century, the library of the canons: its street floor was formerly arcaded and sheltered a market; alas! it has been walled up,... Behind, the buildings of the chapter house, hovels, turrets, an arcade thrown across the street, a high crenellated wall, surround the cloister and the flanks of the cathedral; and the picturesqueness of these disordered lines is delightful. On the other side of the apse appears a lamentable breach. Here formerly stood the chapel of the bishopry; it was attached to the crossing of the church and thus the little portal of the transept was exquisitely framed. This thirteenth-century chapel was long since abandoned; it had lost its ancient roof; but these ancient walls should have been respected. To free the cathedral, they have been leveled to the ground.... Not quite, however, for the owner of a cellar excavated beneath this chapel resisted the efforts of the architect. Today the remnants of the little edifice still remain. And they have not even the appearance of a ruin, but the piteous aspect of a demolition. Thus has been destroyed a truly beautiful grouping, and the cathedral, quite contrary to good sense, has been isolated from the ancient bishopry to permit the people of Noyon to walk all around their church. At least, this is the only benefit they have received from it. Before the east front of the church lies a little square surrounded by the tranquil and substantial homes of the canons. Upon the piers of each door, great vases swell their paunches and project their stone flames: this is the leit motiv of the eighteenth century. The canons for whom these beautiful homes were constructed had only to cross the parvis to enter the cathedral. This rises before their houses with its massive towers, which are not crowned by spires, but in which the mixture of the plain arch with the pointed marks the originality of the building. The vast porch, with three doorways whose sculptures were sacked by the Revolutionists and then by the administrators of the Restoration, preserves an inimitable majesty.... ***** The exterior of this church charmed us especially by its picturesqueness; within, it gives us an impression of perfect beauty. It ravishes us at first by the balance of its different parts, by the justness of its proportions. Its plan is a masterpiece. In almost all our cathedrals we admire the choir, then we admire the nave; if we wish to take in the whole edifice at a single glance, we are still astonished by its grandeur and majesty, but our eye no longer experiences the same delight nor our mind the same satisfaction. If we take up a position at the entrance of Notre Dame de Noyon, in that species of vestibule which opens on the first bay of the nave and which here rises to the height of the vaulting, we have before us an absolutely harmonious work. The glance can travel as far as the apse without being arrested by any discordance. There is, I believe, no Gothic church where the dimensions of the nave correspond in so happy a fashion to the dimensions of the choir. The unity of the monument is incomparable. The choir seems to be the completion, the expansion of the long Gothic structure. The nave seems to make its way to this circle of light, without haste, with a tranquil and bold rhythm which is produced by the regular alternation of its naked columns and its pilasters flanked by tiny pillars.... [Illustration: 0279] This forms the beauty, so to speak, the intellectual beauty, of the cathedral of Noyon. But its most original character, by which it enchants our imagination and impresses itself in our memory, is the marvelous combination of the pointed and the circular arch. [19] It is charming among all those charming churches which rose in the twelfth century in the valleys of the Oise and the Seine, and in which architects endowed with genius knew how to bring together the round arcs of the declining Romanesque and the pointed arches of the Gothic at its dawning. In no other place did the art of these constructors display itself in so refined and subtle a manner; nowhere else can we find so complete a success; in no other region has the marriage of tradition and moderation given birth to a more exquisite work. Consider the elevations of the nave: the arches which separate the nave from the side aisles break in ogives; the tribunes are pierced with pointed apertures divided by little columns and surmounted by trefoil windows; the light penetrates this triforium through Romanesque windows; above these tribunes runs a little gallery whose arches are circular, and higher still the twin windows of the clerestory are framed with semicircular arches. In the transepts, whose two arms end in apses, there are other combinations, but the two varieties of arches are always fraternally associated; the Gothic and the Romanesque alternate from the ground to the vaulting. In the choir, finally, the arcades, round-arched in the two first bays, are pointed at the back of the apse and the lines of the clerestory reproduce the same arrangement; the tribunes are cut in points and the arches of the gallery are divided in trefoil. To this diversity of lines we must add the diversity of decoration. Two styles are here juxtaposed: here are the monsters, the grotesques and the foliage of Romanesque art, and there the more sober and truthful sculpture of Gothic art. But--here is the miracle--all these contrasts appear only when we closely analyze the elements of the edifice. They never make discords; they never enfeeble the impression of grace, ease and perfection which we experienced when we entered Notre Dame de Noyon. ***** There has been much discussion about the date of the construction of this church. This question was not in the least embarrassing to Jacques Le Vasseur, the dean of the chapter, who published in 1633 a volume of 1400 pages, entitled _Annales de Véglise cathédrale de Noyon_. For him, the choir where he went every day to sing the psalms had been built by Saint Médard in the sixth century; Charlemagne had constructed the nave; then, after the year 1000, "our choir was refreshed, our nave completed, our belfries added, for the accomplishment of the work." Nevertheless he added: "At least the experts judge that these works and manufactures are of these times...." The excellent Le Vasseur was not, in any case, the man to contradict them in their judgments, for he consecrated a chapter of his book to demonstrating that the foundation of Noyon by Noah was "probable"; and it is easy to guess the reasons which he extracted from philology. The "experts" of the nineteenth century looked a little closer. When they had learned to distinguish Romanesque art from Gothic art, they quickly succeeded in classifying the cathedral of Noyon among the monuments of the transition. In a vital and eloquent study which he published in 1845, in which in describing the cathedral of Noyon he studied the origins and celebrated the beauties of Gothic art, Vitet maintained that this cathedral was "conceived and entirely outlined from 1150 to 1170 and that it was entirely carved, finished off and completed only toward the end of the century or perhaps even a little later." These dates are not quite exact: M. Eugène Lefèvre-Pontalis has demonstrated this by the archives and by the archaeological examination of the monument itself; he has proved that the choir was finished in 1157, the nave in 1220, that the vaultings fell in a fire at the close of the thirteenth century and that the church was then repaired.... And I refer you to his excellent _Histoire de la cathédrale de Noyon_. [20] ***** The two arms of the transept are rounded in the form of an apse. This plan is frequently met with in Romanesque cathedrals, and especially in those of the lower Rhine. We find it also in the cathedral of Tournai, and it was doubtless from the latter that the architects of Noyon borrowed the idea of their transept, for until the middle of the twelfth century the two dioceses were united under the same pastoral staff. Besides, if I were an archæologist, I would study attentively the plans of these two churches: perhaps this comparison would explain some of the peculiarities of Noyon. Nothing can be more graceful than these two circular arms, where the variety of the arches gives an additional charm to the curved lines.... But here behold the malice of the restorers. The north arm has not been restored. Several of its windows were bricked up in the eighteenth century; the ground-floor windows have been replaced by niches decorated with statues, and at the end of the apse a little door has been opened to communicate with the sacristy. The men who thus treated a venerable monument of the Middle Ages were vandals, I admit. But there is, just the same, a very pleasing and very delicate reminiscence of the Renaissance in the decoration which they plastered over the twelfth-century walls. They diminished the light in this part of their church; but is not this better than the crude daylight which enters through the clear panes? In short, they altered the character of the ancient edifice, but they left it accent and life. Turn toward the opposite arm. It also had been modified in the course of centuries, but it has recently been restored to its original condition. A door gave communication with the bishop's garden; it has been suppressed. Several openings had been blocked up, but have been reopened. In short, it has been restored; and it is just for the purpose of better restoring it that they have, as I have described, demolished the little chapel of the bishopry. All this was accomplished with the rarest skill and the most exact science. This apse now presents the aspect of a perfect scheme of architecture. It is light, it is clean, it is finished. But where is the accent? Where is the life? The most vandal of the vandals are not always those we would suspect. Under the crossing of the transept stands the chief altar of white marble. Its table is a vast rounded console, supported by the uplifted hands of six angels of gilded bronze and surmounted by a little circular temple. The steps of the altar, the friezes and the capitals of the little temple are ornamented with chiseled copper. It is a very beautiful work of art of the style of Louis XVI. It was put in place in 1779. Until the eighteenth century, the cathedral had retained its old altar of the thirteenth century: placed, according to the ancient custom, at the very end of the apse, without candles, without crucifix, without tabernacle, it was a simple table surrounded by curtains which were opened only at the elevation of the host; the altar cloths varied according to the office of the day; the altar screen was adorned with precious shrines. Now, in 1753, an architect and inspector of buildings of the King, who resided at Compiègne, Louis Godot, proposed to the chapter of Noyon the designing of an altar "_à la romaine_." His project pleased the chapter, which accepted it, despite the violent opposition of Claude Bonne-dame and several other canons, who were displeased with the proposed destruction of the Gothic altar. Godot, who proposed also to replace the ancient choir stalls, to demolish the rood-loft and to surround the choir with gratings, prepared a sketch. The chapter appropriated the sum necessary for the work. But Bonnedame and his friends were not through; they addressed a request to the lieutenant-general of the bailiwick, invoking the fathers of the church, the liturgy and respect for ancient things. The intendant of the province-ship came to Noyon to pacify the chapter. But Bonnedame became more and more intractable. The King remitted the affair to the council of state. The opposing parties again brought forward their liturgical arguments, and added that the sum asked for the decoration of the choir would be better employed if used to reconstruct the vaultings which threatened to collapse. Experts were appointed to examine the condition of the vaultings and declared it to be excellent. Bonnedame did not wish to confess himself vanquished and reasserted his grievances. Godot replied and set up the authority of Michelangelo: it should be quite permissible to place the altar in the transept at Noyon, since it was thus done at Saint Peter's in Rome! The council of state finally ratified the first decision of the chapter and completed the discomfiture of Bonnedame and his partisans. M. Lefèvre-Pontalis, from whom I borrow this anecdote, cites with honor the names of the canons who, under the leadership of Bonnedame, showed themselves in these circumstances "the defenders of good archaeological traditions." Let us therefore praise the canons Du Héron, Cuquigny, Bertault, du Tombelle, Antoine de Caisnes, Pelleton, Mauroy and Reneufve, who showed a meritorious zeal for the protection of an altar of the thirteenth century. Such sentiments are not common among churchmen, even in 1905; they were still more rare in 1754. Yes--for the love of principle--let us celebrate this pious pigheadedness. Only... only, when I look at the altar "à la romaine" conceived by Godot, I ask myself, with all sorts of remorse and scruples, whether Bonnedame or his adversaries were right. This Roman altar is a pure marvel of elegance. The angels of gilded bronze which support the table, and which are attributed to Gouthièze, are delightful statuettes; the copper garlands and emblems which decorate the marble are of the finest workmanship; the little temple elevated above the tabernacle is delicate in taste, despite its Trianonesque appearance... And what an unexpected harmony between this charming bibelot and the old cathedral of the twelfth century! Yes, this altar is in its right place, in spite of the liturgy, in spite of the proprieties, in spite of the respectable prejudices of Bonnedame. An exquisite harmony exists between the curve of the steps, the table and the tabernacle, and the rounded forms of the choir and of the transept. What foolishness is this unity of style! Then Bonnedame was wrong? I do not know, but, today, we must honor his memory and recommend his example; for, if some one today decided to plan to remove the Romanesque altar of the cathedral of Noyon, it would be to substitute for it a Neo-Gothic altar, which would be abominable, encumbering and out of place: on this point there is no doubt. Godot's altar just escaped being treated by the Revolutionists as the Gothic altar had been by the canons. A mason wished to break down this monument of superstition. But a representative of the people interfered and made this brute understand that what he thought were angels were goddesses of love, that the bunches of grapes and the ears of wheat were not the emblems of the Eucharist, but those of the cult of Ceres and of Bacchus. The altar was spared and became that of the Goddess of Reason. Persons who today still share the opinion of Bonnedame, will perhaps find that the representative of the people did but reëstablish the truth. Let us reprove such a manner of thought.... Of the cloister of the cathedral, there still remains only a single gallery. The rest, very dilapidated, was tom down by the workmen of the fabric of Notre Dame de Noyon in 1811. On this gallery opens the great chapter hall, an admirable Gothic nave where the restorers have done their work. In the cloister itself, their zeal was more moderate and more discreet. They repaired the broken roofs, bound with iron the falling columns, respected the breaches and the breaks. As the great walls on which the destroyed triforium rested still stand, the aspect of the place has not changed, its intimate beauty has not been violated. One may still enjoy there the eternal silence, shadow, freshness and coolness.... One hears there only the droning of the flies, while, in the midst of the area, a grand weeping willow shades an old well with rusty iron fittings. Under the cloister fragments of carving have been laid, and in this pile of stones we discover with melancholy a few admirable fragments. Some beautiful tombstones have been set up along the walls.... The afternoon is torrid. It is pleasant to linger under these arches and deliver oneself to the pleasures of epigraphy. Let us decipher the epitaphs. Here is that of a Bishop of Noyon, M. Jean François de La Cropte de Bourzac, who died January 23, 1766. Three distichs commemorate the humility of the defunct, his piety, his devotion to the King. Below these Latin verses, which are elegantly banal, we discover a name which excites our curiosity: Gresset. It was, in fact, the author of _Vert-Vert_ whom the canons retained to compose the epitaph of their bishop. It is doubtful whether our Bonnedame, the enemy of Roman altars, would have aided the poet in glorifying the virtues of M. Jean François de La Cropte de Bourzac: for it was in fact under the rule of this bishop that an abandoned architect undertook the new decoration of the choir of the cathedral of Noyon. Upon a great tombstone is represented the Last Judgment. We see there the Great Judge, the angel who sounds the trumpet and declaims: Surgite, mortui, venite, the defunct who rises from his tomb, hangs his shroud on the arm of the cross and says to the Lord: Domine, jube ad me venire, other open sepulchers and scattered bones. Below these images we read these lines, which lack neither force nor savor [21]: The body of Gilles Coquevil, Were he rich or poor, noble or vile, Before being laid to rot here, Is without food and drink Awaiting the Judgment And the decree of the last day Where we must all... Render account of past evils. May God give his soul promptly Pardon, and so to all trespassers. In the same church, beside the door of the cloister, a singular face surmounts an interminable epitaph. It is the face of an old mandarin, uniformly bald and symmetrically wrinkled. We see the man to the middle of his body, his arms folded and his thumbs down. His mien, his pose, the expression of his face, have something indescribably Chinese. On his breast appears a mysterious object, in the shape of an ostrich egg, on which is engraved a column with these words: _Ito fidens_.... It is necessary to read the epitaph to find the key to the riddle. This mandarin is Jacques Le Vasseur, canon and historian of the church of Noyon, whose name I have already mentioned in connection with the origins of the cathedral. The epitaph commences with a terrible pun upon the Latin name of Le Vasseur, Vasserius. A golden vase, it is there said, vas aureus, is hidden in this tomb, but it should not tempt the cupidity of any one, for it contains only virtues. It is this symbolic vase that is carved upon the stone. The*column is that which guided the confident canon towards his eternal home: fidens ito... And we learn also--in a delightful Latin which I translate clumsily,--that "this man of good lived, in every place, niggardly for himself, generous for others; that is why, dying, he left little except mingled rare and precious books, preferable--by the declarations of the wise--to the treasures of the Orient as much as to the magnificent and tinkling adornments of the North...." All these puerilities do not lack charm, especially when they keep us in the cool shadow of a cathedral, at the hottest and most blinding hour of the day.... ***** The day declines. It is the moment when all the beauty of the cathedral is revealed. Now the contrasts of lights and shades become more moving. A soft green clarity fills the choir, and lends to its architecture a more subtle and airy grace; it filters through the high openings of the nave, illuminates the pointed arches of the vaulting, accentuates the ramifications of the arches; the whole structure appears lighter and more triumphal. We return toward the great open doors, and, after the magnificence of the church, savor the delicate and peaceful intimacy of the town. In the triple bay of the portal is framed the little square of the parvis where, ranged like canons in the choir, the houses of the chapter seem to slumber in the twilight, and... at the end of a narrow street, roofs, gables and dark clumps of verdure outline themselves against a rosy sky.... XII. SOISSONS |SOISSONS is a white, peaceable and smiling city whose tower and pointed spires rise from the bank of a lazy river, in the midst of a circle of green hills: town and countryside call to mind the little pictures which the illuminators of our old manuscripts painted with loving care. Here is France, pure France: nothing of that Flemish air assumed by the little towns of the valley of the Oise, with their brick houses, such as exquisite Noyon, like a great _béguinage_. Precious monuments relate the whole history of the French monarchy, from the Merovingian crypts of the abbey of Saint Médard to the beautiful hotel built on the eve of the Revolution for the intendants of the provinces. In the midst of the narrow streets and the little gardens, a magnificent cathedral extends the two arms of its great transept; on the north a fiat wall and an immense expanse of glass; on the south, that marvelous apse where the pointed and the rounded arch mingle in so delicate a fashion. One cannot omit a malediction in passing on the architect who, to the dishonor of the interior of this monument, marked off each stone with black joints, checkering it in such an exasperating manner that all the lines of the architecture are lost. A promenade through the streets of this lovable town is charming. Today, I would like to entertain you with the most celebrated of the monuments of Soissons, the abbey of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes. Of this monastery, which was one of the most beautiful and richest in France, there remains only the façade of the church, the remains of a cloister of the fourteenth century, traces of a cloister of the Renaissance, a few buildings of the seventeenth century, and a magnificent Gothic hall, the refectory of the convent. How the abbey of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes was reduced to a state of ruin is an interesting chapter of the history of vandalism, which I will briefly relate to you. Then we will see what steps would be necessary to save the refectory building. ***** Founded in the eleventh century, the abbey of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes followed the rule of Saint Augustine. Its monks were Joannist canons. Their duty consisted in celebrating mass within the monastery and in acting as curates in the forty parishes which belonged to the community in the dioceses of Soissons and of Meaux. Ninety canons remained encloistered; fifty priests served the parishes. Because of their holiness and their knowledge, the Joannists had acquired such renown during the Middle Ages that Cardinal Jean de Dormans confided to the monks of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes the direction of the college of Dormans-Beauvais founded by him at Paris. The gifts of kings, nobles and citizens gave the canons means wherewith to undertake the construction of a great church. About 1335 they laid the foundations of the nave and the towers. At the end of the fourteenth century the walls of the nave were finished, and the towers had risen to the level of the great rose window. The plunderings of the Abbé Remy d'Orbais, and later the wars of the Armagnacs and the Burgundians, interrupted the work, and it was not until about the end of the fifteenth century that the vaultings and the tiles were put in place. The two towers were not finished until later, the smaller in the last years of the fifteenth century, the greater in 1520. The construction of the church had occupied more than two hundred years. [22] In 1567, two years after the death of the last canon regular of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes, the Protestants devastated the abbey: the library and the treasury were plundered, the stained glass and the statues were broken, the carvings were burned and the fountains demolished. The commendatory monks took little pains to repair the damages. At the beginning of the Revolution, there were no more than thirty monks in the monastery. They were expelled, and the nave of the church was used as a military bakeshop. There is a widely believed legend that the church was demolished during the Revolution. This is absolutely false. At this time, as the roofs were not well looked after, a bay of the vaulting fell; but, under the Consulate, the monument was still solid and a few repairs would have sufficed to preserve it. It was torn down by a bishop of Soissons, Msr. Leblanc de Beaulieu. It is a painful story. I have before me the administrative documents of this abominable destruction, documents which were brought to my attention by M. Max Sainsaulieu, the architect of the historic monuments of Soissons. These documents are instructive. On August 1, 1804, the churchwardens of the cathedral and parish church of Soissons address themselves to the mayor of the city and disclose to him that their church is in great need of repairs and that these indispensable works will cost 23,786 francs. "The desire," they write, "to lighten as much as possible this charge upon our town, has suggested to us a means which would totally free us from it, at least for several years. This means consists in obtaining from the government the right to dispose of the former church of the abbey of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes, in order to employ the products of its demolition for the conservation and repair of the cathedral. It will not be difficult for you, Monsieur le Maire, to convince the government by a description of the present condition of this church, and by a relation of the accidents which almost happened two years ago and again recently, by the falling of various parts of it, that the total demolition of this structure will produce no real disadvantage to the national treasury and will contribute advantageously to public safety...." Behind the churchwardens, it is really the bishop who demands the demolition of the church. As a matter of fact, on April 25, 1805, by a decree given at the Stapinigi Palace, the Emperor orders that the prefect of the department of the Aisne, at the instance of the Bishop of Soissons, shall put at his disposal the church of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes, "in order that the materials coming from the church may be used in the repair of the cathedral": the inhabitants of Soissons must merely, in exchange for this concession, consolidate the walls of the other parts of the abbey which have been granted to the Administration of Powder and Saltpeter. Mgr. Leblanc de Beaulieu receives his decree. Meanwhile the inhabitants of Soissons are alarmed at this project of demolition, protest against the plan of the prelate and take their grievances to the prefect. It is often assumed that before the advent of romanticism no one in France cared for the monuments of the Middle Ages. Now, as early as 1805, the news that the church of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes is about to be destroyed excites the indignation of the people of Soissons. The archaeologists make ready for battle. The prefect writes to the bishop (June 26, 1805): "Monsieur, I am receiving a great number of complaints against the approaching demolition of the church of Saint-Jean: the inhabitants of Soissons appear to be extremely attached to this edifice, which they regard as a precious monument of the arts. I have the honor to forward to you a copy of a historical summary which has been forwarded to me. As it belongs to you, Monsieur, to decide the fate of this church, which is at your disposal, I can only confide in what your good sense and your enlightened love for the arts will suggest to you." His "enlightened love for the arts" does not in the least inspire the bishop with a desire to save the church; but the complaints of his flock embarrass him, and he explains to the prefect that he himself cannot proceed in a regular manner, that it is unsuitable that a bishop should have "personal connection with the demolition of a church." And, for four years, matters remain at this stage. Finally, in 1807, disdaining the protests and triumphing over his own scruples, the bishop awards the glass and the ironwork to a certain Archin. In 1809 he empowers his notary to treat in his name with the contractors for demolition. All that he accords to the inhabitants of Soissons is the preservation of the façade. The bargain is concluded between "Antoine Isidore Petit de Reimpré, imperial notary, domiciled at Soissons, in the name and endowed with the powers of Mgr. Jean Claude Leblanc-Beaulieu, Bishop of Soissons and Laon, baron of the Empire and member of the Legion of Honor, of the first part; and Leonard Wallot, building contractor, and Pierre-Joseph Delacroix père, carpenter...." By the terms of the agreement, the two towers and the portals must remain intact, and the contractors are even obliged to do certain work of consolidation. But nothing will remain of the nave and the choir of the church: "All the parts to be demolished shall be demolished down to and including the foundations. The rubbish caused by the demolition shall at first be thrown into the vaults of the church; consequently the ceilings of the aforesaid vaults shall be demolished, the ground shall be perfectly leveled and the surplus of the rubbish shall be transported into the fields." This is not all. The bishop reserves for his own share a hundred and sixty cubic meters of ashlar! The price of the sale was fixed at three thousand francs. For six hundred dollars, they leveled to the ground a marvelous Gothic edifice, the largest church of the diocese except the cathedral; the choir was composed, as a matter of fact, of two bays, the transept likewise of two bays, and the nave of five; it was sixty meters long and twenty-six high. It is an excellent custom to carve upon the monuments the names of those who have built and repaired them. It would not be ill if upon the ruins of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes an inscription should recall the absurd demolition and the name of its author, Mgr. Leblanc de Beaulieu. In 1821 the demolition was not yet complete, for Wallot found some difficulty in selling his ashlar. It is said that several houses of Soissons were built with the stone of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes. [Illustration: 0305] The Department of War, which had been granted the buildings of the abbey, continued the work of the ecclesiastical housebreakers. It tore down a small Renaissance cloister. Had it not been for the intervention of the Archaeological Society of Soissons, it would have destroyed the two galleries of the great cloister which still stand. Finally, in 1870, the German shells did great damage and set a fire which calcined the lower part of the portal. * * * * * Today, a part of the ruins has been placed in charge of the Administration of Fine Arts. It is possible to visit the towers, the organ platform and the great cloister. It is a lamentable spectacle, that of this magnificent façade, now isolated like a useless stage setting: through the three bays of the portal we perceive the ground which was carefully leveled, in accordance with the orders of Mgr. Leblanc de Beaulieu; the great rose window is an empty hole against the sky. Nevertheless, how precious this fragment of a church still is! What masterpieces of grace and boldness are these two towers, unlike, but both so perfect, with their galleries, their arcades, their pinnacles, their bell towers and their stone spires. And what admirable carvings! There are, under the elegant canopies attached to each story of the towers, the images--alas! too often mutilated by the Huguenots or by the Revolutionists--of the Apostles and the Evangelists; there is the crucified Christ upon the window bars of the great tower window; there are, above all, on the two sides of the rose window, the touching and expressive statues of Our Lady of Sorrow and of Saint John the Evangelist. Two of the galleries of the cloister have disappeared. The other two present arcades of a charming design. Ornaments of rare delicacy frame the inner door. Heads of monsters decorate the gargoyles. About the capitals and upon the bases of the corbels are twined allegorical flowers of perfect execution: here the vines which recall the name of the abbey itself, there the ivy and the wormwood to which Saint John the Baptist, patron saint of the monastery, communicated the virtue of counteracting witchcraft; elsewhere the oak, the apple, the strawberry, the wild geranium, all the plants which in the Middle Ages were reputed to cure ills of the throat, for, until the last century, it needed but a pilgrimage to Saint-Jean-des-Vignes to be freed from quinsy. [23] And this is all that one is allowed to see of the abbey of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes. Whoever is curious to become acquainted with the last remnants of the Renaissance cloister (a few arches and four very beautiful stone medallions) and to enter the ancient refectory of the abbey, will run against the veto of military authority. It is probable that the Administration of Fine Arts will without difficulty obtain permission that the public may have access to the courtyard where the little cloister stands. But it will doubtless be more difficult to recapture from the War Department the refectory building, where it has been installed for a century. This refectory is a vaulted hall, forty meters long and divided into two naves by fine columns. Whoever wishes to obtain an idea of the beauty of this admirable structure may think of the refectory of Royaumont, today much disfigured, or even the refectory of the priory of Saint Martin in the Fields, now the Library of Arts and Trades, and whose character has been altered by useless daubs of paint. These two latter edifices belong to the thirteenth century. The refectory of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes seems to date from the fourteenth. Here may be found, as in all the halls of the same kind, the readers' stall hollowed in the thickness of the wall, and reached by several stone steps. A food storehouse has been installed in this refectory. To utilize the space, it has been divided into two stories by a floor which passes below the capitals of the columns. Here are piled boxes of canned goods, biscuits, bags of grain. In conformity with the military regulations, all the walls are covered, for a meter above the floor, with a thick layer of coal tar, so that the capitals, just above the second story floor, have disappeared under this covering. The rest of the walls is simply covered with whitewash. At some unknown time the whitewash was removed from certain spots to uncover two pictures which appear to be contemporary with the building. One is still visible and represents the Resurrection. The other has almost completely disappeared. Formerly wooden shutters protected them from the curiosity of the soldiers employed in the storehouse. They are now exposed to every insult. Perhaps other paintings exist under the whitewash. Under this great hall is a vaulted subterranean room, whose bays correspond to the bays of the refectory. It is likewise used for army provisions. This is the condition to which, in 1905, one of the most precious monuments of Gothic architecture which exists in France is abandoned. And the vandals are not satisfied with secularizing the buildings, with tarring the capitals and with dooming the paintings to certain destruction. By overloading the edifice they endanger its safety. The War Department is not responsible for all this vandalism. It has been assigned a Gothic hall in which to store its provisions. It has used it as well as it knew how; it has applied to it the rules which are common to all military buildings; it is not the guardian of monuments of the past. This guardianship belongs to the Bureau of Historic Monuments; its responsibility is to take notice of and to save the refectory of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes. It is not possible to conceal the difficulties of the attempt. The Minister of War will consent to abandon this edifice only if he is furnished another provision storehouse in Soissons itself. So a new building must be put up. Who will pay for it? The city of Soissons, interested in the preservation of a "precious monument of the arts," as the prefect of 1805 said, doubtless will not refuse to contribute to the expense. But the state must come to its aid. When, tomorrow, at some public sale, there shall be put up at auction some primitive of more or less certain authenticity, a hundred thousand francs will be spent to hang it in a room of the Louvre, and there will be glorification over the acquisition. Would it not be wiser and safer to preserve the paintings of the fourteenth century which decorate the refectory of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes, whose authenticity, I believe, no one will ever dare to contest? With the same stroke, a magnificent bit of architecture will be saved. Who knows if we may not even see other mediaeval paintings appear from under the whitewash?... In short, we shall have saved a precious work of Gothic art for France. And future centuries will draw a parallel between the house-wrecking bishop who destroyed the church of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes and the pious undersecretary of state who protected the refectory of the Joannist canons. [24] XIII. BETZ At the bottom of a valley, There is a charming château Whose adored mistress Is its most beautiful ornament; The charms of her countenance And the virtues of her heart Embellish nature And spread happiness. ***** At the sound of her voice a limpid stream Will take a happier course; The most smiling verdure Will enchant all eyes; A scattered and dusky grove Planted by her beautiful hands, Will cover with its shade Candor and beauty. |THIS song, which was set to the tune, _Que ne suis-je la fougère_, was written by Louis Joseph de Bourbon-Condé. The "adored mistress" was Marie Catherine de Brignole, Princess of Monaco. The "charming château" was that of Betz, celebrated at that period because of the beauty of its gardens laid out in the English fashion. The château has disappeared; but the design of the park is not effaced; not all of the structures with which it was adorned by the caprice of the Princess of Monaco have perished. After a long period of neglect, the domain is today in safe hands: the remnants of the gardens of Betz are now safeguarded. Groves, ruins and temples here still evoke a memory of the imagination at once silly, incoherent and delightful, which satisfied men and especially women on the eve of the French Revolution. Marie Christine de Brignole had married at eighteen a roué of forty, the former lover of her mother. The Parliament of Paris had divorced her from this brutal and jealous husband, and she had become the unconcealed mistress of Condé. Their relations were public. The Princess lived at Paris in a hotel in the Rue Saint Dominique, beside the Palais Bourbon. She reigned at Chantilly. Condé was tender but faithless. He deceived his lady love, was desolated to see her unhappy, accused God of having given her too sensitive a heart and began over again. Still other cares troubled the Princess of Monaco: however great may then have been the toleration of the world and the ease of morals, the children of the Prince could not resign themselves to dissimulate the disdain which they felt for La Madame. The Princess of Bourbon amused herself one day by composing a tableau in which she put on the stage her father-in-law and the Princess; these two, who played the two principal parts, perceived the wicked allusions of the author only when they perceived the embarrassment of the spectators; but a family scene occurred as soon as the curtain dropped. Then the public decided that the favorite was responsible for the quarrel which soon separated the Duke and the Duchess of Bourbon.... [25] La Madame had the wisdom to perceive that the moment had come to make a strategic retreat, and to seek a shelter against hostilities which, in the end, might have become perilous. It was necessary for her to find a property which was at the right distance from Chantilly and from Paris, "neither too far nor too near," where she might be forgotten by the world, but where Condé could come to see her without difficulty. She chose Betz, near Crepy-en-Valois. The lords of Levignen had early built a stronghold above the valley of Betz. Later another home had been constructed on an island formed by the Grivette, a tributary of the Ourcq. It was in this château, already rebuilt in the seventeenth century, that Madame de Monaco established herself. A donjon, the two great round towers which flanked the wings of the principal block, the waters which bathed the feet of the walls, gave the house an almost feudal aspect. But the interior was decorated in the taste of the day, wainscoted with delicate panels, oramented with charming furniture, paintings and precious objects of art. The buildings and the adornment of the park cost more than four millions. The Princess of Monaco passed at Betz the happiest years of her life. She guided the labors of her architects, her sculptors and her gardeners. She played at farming. Her sons, from whom her husband had formerly separated her, came to make long visits with her. Condé, wiser with age, redoubled his tenderness. When he was obliged to travel, either to Dijon to preside over the States or to the camp of Saint Omer to direct the maneuvers of the royal army, he wrote to her at length, and the refrain of his letters was: "Would that I were at Betz!" As soon as his service at court or with the army permitted it, he hastened to the Princess: he brought rare books and pictures to enrich the château; he interested himself in the works undertaken for his friend. He advised the workmen and gave his opinion upon the plans.... [Illustration: 0318] Madame de Monaco renewed her youth in this "rural retreat," and the years passed without lessening the grace of her countenance, without thickening her slender waist, without slowing her light step. It is not an inhabitant of Betz who drew for us this portrait, it is Goethe, at Mayence, in 1792: "The Princess of Monaco, declared favorite of the Prince of Condé, and the ornament of Chantilly in its palmy days, appeared lively and charming. One could imagine nothing more gracious than this slender blondine, young, gay, and frivolous; not a man could have resisted her sallies. I observed her with entire freedom of mind and I was much surprised to meet the lively and joyous Philine, whom I had not expected to find there...." Philine was then fifty-three years old. ***** The great occupation of the Princess at Betz was to create a park in modern taste. She found in this her cares and her glory. The Due d'Har-court, former preceptor of the first son of Louis XVI, who had already distinguished himself by designing his park at La Colline near Caen, undertook to design the avenues, to form the vistas, to plan the buildings: in a certain sense he drew up the scenario of the garden. Hubert Robert made the plans of the temples and the ouins. The architect Le Gendre supervised the buildings. The site was adapted for the establishment of an English garden: on the two banks of the Grivette rose little wooded hills, and, thanks to the undulations of the landscape, sometimes gentle, sometimes brusque, it was there possible to mingle the "picturesque," the "poetic" and the "romantic." The thickets were pierced by sinuous paths; pines and perfumed exotics varied the verdure of the hornbeams and the beeches; the course of the river, which spread out into a marshy meadow, was confined within sodded banks. The forest was thinned to allow the eye to perceive the surrounding fields, and there were scattered in the valley and through the woods Temples and tombs and rocks and caverns, The lesson of history and that of romance. Models were not lacking. Without speaking of the parks created in England by Kent and his disciples, there existed the admirable examples of Ermenonville, belonging to M. de Girardin, Limours, to the Countess de Brionne, Bel-Eil, to the Prince de Ligne, Maupertuis, to M. de Montesquiou, the Little Trianon and Bagatelle, Le Moulin-Joli of the engraver Watelet.... And at the same moment when Madame de Monaco was undertaking the construction of her garden, the financier Jean Joseph de La Bordé was completing, upon the advice of Robert and de Vernet, the construction of the admirable park of Méréville. The chatelaine of Betz conformed to the rules of the type. [Illustration: 0321] Possibly some day some one will write the history of these English gardens of the eighteenth century: no study would be more suitable to acquaint us with the contradictory sentiments and the confused thoughts which agitated society in the years which preceded 1789. The lectures of M. Jules Lemaître and the penetrating book of M. Lasserre upon Romanticism have recently drawn attention to the disorders caused in the French body politic by the poison of Rousseau. To illustrate such remarks, nothing would be better than the plans and the structures of the parks composed in France from 1770 to 1789. We would there behold a mingling of pedantry and sentimentality, the most refined taste united to the most silly feeling, adorable reminiscences of classical antiquity mingled with the first abortions of romantic bric-a-brac. We would especially distinguish there the laborious artifices and the childish conventions in which the pretended lovers of nature became entangled. And I do not insist upon the prodigious disaccord between ideas and manners: for this I will send you to the charming discourse which the Count de Larborde puts at the beginning of his Description des nouveaux jardins (1808), where he shows the foolish and joyous guests of the fashionable parks, laughing in "the valley of tombs," quarreling upon "the bench of friendship" and bringing to the country the tastes and the habits of the city: "while praising the pure air of the fields, they rose at two o'clock in the afternoon, they gambled until four o'clock in the morning, and while they grew tender over the simplicity of country manners, the women plastered themselves with rouge and beauty spots, and wore panniers...." To tell the truth, the men of this period retained too much delicacy of mind not to feel the ridiculousness of the inventions in which they found their delight. But fashion was master. The theorists of "modern gardens" endeavored to make headway against the excesses of the irregular type. In his agreeable poem, Les Jardins, which contains so many ingenious lines, the worthy Abbé Delille lavished the most judicious counsels on his contemporaries and endeavored to hold the balance equal between Kent and Le Nôtre. In his Essai sur les jardins, the modest Watelet, the creator of Le Moulin-Joli, recalled to good taste the constructors of park buildings, and pronounced it ill that one should build a mausoleum to the memory of a favorite hound (an allusion to a grotto in the gardens of Stowe which Lord Granville Temple had consecrated to the memory of Signor Fido, an Italian greyhound); unluckily, he judged that a perfect, simple and "natural" structure for a park would be the true monastery of Héloïse, and he imagined the inscription which it would have been necessary to carve "upon a myrtle"--if the climate 'permitted it--in order to move young lady visitors.... Morel, the landscape architect of Ermenonville, did not like fictitious constructions which assemble in a single locality, all centuries and all nations. But, on the other hand, Carmontelle, the designer of the fantastic constructions of Mousseaux, found that Morel's conceptions were deplorable: and neither of them was wrong. Horace Walpole, in his Essay on Gardens, praised the English gardens, but made fun of the abuse of buildings, of which hermitages seemed to him particularly inappropriate: "It is ridiculous," said he, "to go to a corner of a garden to be melancholy," and he deplored that the hypothesis of irregularity should have brought people to a love for the crooked. Baron de Tschoudy, author of the article Bosquet, in the supplement to the Encyclopédie, wrote in regard to tombs, inevitable accessories of all English gardens: "A somber object may not be displeasing in a landscape by Salvator; it is too far from the truth to sadden us; but what is its excuse? Do we go walking to be melancholy? Indeed, I would like much better to raise the tendrils of the ivy from the base of an overturned column, to read a touching inscription! How my heart would expand at the sight of a humble cabin, filled by happy people of my own kind, who would gayly spade their little enclosure and whose flocks would gambol about it! With what ecstasy would I listen to their songs in the silence of a beautiful evening! For is there anything more sweet than songs caused by happiness which one has given?" But all this did not discourage the proprietors of English parks from building hermitages, tombs, Gothic chapels, Tartar kiosks and Chinese bridges.... In rambling through the gardens of Betz we will meet these structures and many others. The design of the alleys at Betz has remained almost the same as it was in the eighteenth century. But, as the park has in the meantime belonged to owners who were little interested in preserving its former appearance, some of the woods have been cut, and places which were formerly bare are today grown up to copses. Rows of poplars which were assuredly not foreseen by the landscape gardeners of the Princess of Monaco grow on the banks of the Grivette. Many views have thus been modified and many vistas no longer exist. In addition, some of the old buildings have been destroyed, while only remnants remain of others. Fortunately, to guide us in our ramble and permit us to reconstruct the places as they were in the time of the Princess of Monaco, we possess a very complete description of the gardens. It was drawn up in verse by Cérutti and published January 1, 1792, under this title: _Les jardins de Betz, poème accompagné de notes instructives sur les travaux champêtres, sur les arts, les lois, les révolutions, la noblesse, le clergé, etc...; fait en 1785 par M. Cérutti et publié en 1792 par M..., éditeur du "Bréviaire philosophique du feu roi de Prusse_." This work, although in verse, and deplorable verse, contains a sufficiently exact list of the buildings of Betz, and the copious commentary in prose which accompanies the "poem" is sufficiently amusing.... But it will perhaps not be useless, before accepting Cérutti as a guide, to briefly recall his life and his writings. There exists a peremptory and delightful letter of the Marquise de Créqui about him: "The administrator Cérutti has just finished his rhetoric: he promised well, twenty years ago. He has not made a step forward during this time. We see, as a matter of fact, beginnings which will become only miscarriages. In short, his verses have appeared prosaic to me and his prose profusely ornamented poverty. Do not be astonished at his ecstasy in regard to the century: he owes all to it." Here is the very man: the medal is sharply coined. Born in Piedmont, Cérutti had entered the Company of Jesus. He taught at first with success in a college at Lyons. In other times, he would have remained the good college regent which he was at the beginning of his life and, as he possessed a certain brilliancy, he would have composed Latin verses in the manner of Father Rapin. Perhaps he would even have succeeded in the pulpit, for he had a fine bearing, an amiable countenance, a pleasing voice, measured gestures and brilliancy of mind. But he was gifted at the same time with exalted sensibility, and the century in which he lived seemed to promise everything to sensible men capable of exhaling all their sensibility in prose and verse. Cérutti declaimed and rhymed during the whole of his life. While he was still professor at Lyons he had sent an essay on the duel to the Feast of Flora and another essay to the Academy of Dijon on this subject: "Why have modern republics acquired less splendor than the ancient republics?" Some people ascribed the dissertation of the Jesuit to Rousseau: it was the dawn of his glory. Then, to defend his company, Cérutti composed an Apologie de l'institut des Jésuites. This work brought him the favor of the Dauphin: he came to court. The poor man became smitten with a beautiful lady who was cruel to him and he fell into the deepest melancholy. He emerged from it only to compose verses on charlatanism or chess, and to give his opinion on public affairs in short pamphlets. He was very friendly to new ideas: but, at need, he put his muse to the service of his noble protectresses. One of his works acquired a certain reputation: it was an interminable apologue, The Eagle and the Owl, "a fable written for a young prince whom one dared to blame for his love for science and letters." Grimm, though he was very indulgent to Cérutti, made a remark in regard to this fable which is not lacking in subtlety or truth: "There is no sovereign philosopher, there is no celebrated man of letters, who has not received a tribute of distinguished homage from M. Cérutti. Let us congratulate philosophy on seeing the apologist of the Jesuits become today the panegyrist of the wise men of the century, praise the progress of illumination and counsel the kings to take as confessors only their conscience, good works, or some philosophic poet. _All this is perhaps not so far from a Jesuit as one might imagine_... When the Revolution broke out, despite his poor health and the deafness with which he was afflicted, Cérutti, who, in accordance with the strong expression of the Marquise de Créqui, owed everything to the century, wished to pay his debt to it. He multiplied his pamphlets and booklets, collaborated in the discourses of Mirabeau, and it was he who pronounced the funeral oration of the orator in the church of Saint Eustache. He was elected a member of the Legislative Assembly, edited a little newspaper, La Feuille villageoise, whose purpose was to spread the spirit of the Revolution in the country districts, and died in 1792. If he had lived a few months longer, the guillotine would doubtless have interrupted the ingenuous dream of this unfrocked Jesuit, maker of alexandrines." What led Cérutti to describe the gardens of Betz? I despaired of discovering what circumstances might have placed him in the household of the Princess of Monaco, until I noticed, scattered through his poem, some verses which had been engraved in the Temple of Friendship at Betz. So Cérutti had been charged with composing the mottoes and the inscriptions indispensable to every English garden. Such a task was well suited to his poetic talent: it seemed to agree less well with his philosophical convictions. But the philosopher required the poet, in accomplishing his task, to tell the truth to the clergy as well as to the nobility. Thus Cérutti's conscience was appeased. Madame de Monaco, doubtless, was less satisfied. This perhaps explains why the poem was not published until 1792; the nation had then confiscated the chateau and the beautiful gardens, and the princess was living a life of exile at Mayence, where, for her glory, a better poet than Cérutti sketched her charming portrait in five lines. Let us follow the sinuous ways which lead across the park to the different "scenes" invented for the amusement of the Princess of Monaco. The author of the poem, Les jardins de Betz, Cérutti, will revive for us the buildings which are gone. He is a prosy guide, somewhat of a ninny. But his heavy diatribes on priests, nobles and kings make the description of these childish fancies almost tragic. Behind the canvas so pleasingly covered by Hubert Robert, we might almost believe we could hear the heavy tramp of the stage hands preparing for the change of scene. The chateau which was inhabited by the Princess of Monaco stood on an island in the Grivette, quite near the village of Betz. Its towers were reflected in the river, on which floated white swans. Baskets of flowers ornamented the banks. Farther up, the Grivette formed another isle, embellished with exotic shrubs and an oriental kiosk. A Chinese bridge joined it to the park, and little junks were moored to the margin. Pekin gave this kiosk and Nankin these light boats. Nothing more remains of the château, which was sold during the Revolution and was totally demolished in 1817. There also remains nothing more of these Chinese fancies, by which the landscape artists of the eighteenth century endeavored to recall the true origin of irregular gardens. The rotted planks of the Chinese bridge fell into the little river long ago. In vain also would we seek some trace of the "Druid Temple." To erect this curious construction, this "little bosky oratory," there had been chosen for cutting young oaks of equal thickness and perfectly straight; they had been cut off at the same height and planted in a circle on an isolated mound; then this circular palisade was crowned by a wooden cupola, whence were suspended pine cones and tufts of sacred mistletoe. On beholding this spectacle Cérutti burst forth: Who would believe it? This place so pure and peaceful Was the cruel nest of superstition! There formerly, frightening the shadows every evening, The Druid, surrounded by a hundred funereal torches, Strangled a mortal at the foot of Theutatès. It is probable that the vision of human sacrifices obsessed neither the Princess of Monaco nor her friends, when they came to rest themselves in this sort of belvedere. But Cérutti is a philosopher; and from the Druids his indignation spreads to all theocracies--Hebrew, Scandinavian, Roman. The priests of Theutatès force him to think of the fagot fires of the Inquisition, of the crimes of monasticism and of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew.... So much so that he can no longer restrain himself and passes to other structures: Cursing the incense bearer, I leave the fatal hill. Not far from the Druid Temple rose the ruin of a "Feudal Tower." It still stands. Time has somewhat enlarged the breaches provided by Hubert Robert when he drew the plan. But the ivy has grown for more than a century and it has given an almost venerable aspect to this factitious ruin. Everything here is imagined to show the ravage of centuries: the battlements have crumbled; the interior is empty, and we still see the traces of the floors which separated the various stories; the stone fireplaces still remain attached to the walls. Over the lintel of a door, we may read in Gothic characters an inscription in the purest "old French" of the eighteenth century. Below the tower there are dungeons. We love to imagine the blonde princess for whom this romantic ruin had been erected, coming to sit at the foot of her tower, and, in order to put her thoughts in harmony with the melancholy of this legendary site, reading, in a nice little book published by Sieur Cazin, bookseller of Rheims, some chivalrous romance by M. de Mayer, for example Geneviève de Cornouailles et le Dameisel sans nom. Even for us, this imitation is not without charm; its picturesqueness is agreeable; then we surprise here the first awakening of the romantic imagination, the birth of the modern taste for the Middle Ages, and we regret a little the time when people amused themselves by fabricating entirely new ruins, without thinking of restoring and completing the true ruins, those which are the work of time.... As to Cérutti, the spectacle of this false donjon cannot distract him from his folly: Oh, castles of the oppressors! Oh, insulting palaces! Walls of tyranny, asylum of rapine, May you henceforth exist only in ruins! Instead of those barons who vexed the universe, We see on the remains of your deserted donjons Cruel wolves wander, together with hungry foxes: Under different names, they are of the same race. And he immediately adds a note of which I reproduce only these few lines: "I am very far from confounding modern castles with ancient ones, and the castellans of today with those of former times. The modern chateaux are not soiled with the blood of their vassals, but how many are still bathed in their tears!... The castellans of today are, however, distinguished for the most part by a reputation for humanity, philosophy, politeness. But let us plumb these shining exteriors. In these so human mortals, you will find... tyrants inflexible to their inferiors. Their philosophy is still less solid than their humanity.... As to this politeness so vaunted by them, it is in the final analysis nothing but the art of graduating and seasoning scorn, so that one does not perceive it and even enjoys it.... They seem to except you, to distinguish you from the common herd; but try to emerge from it, and they will thrust you back." The whole bit would be worth quoting. It is beautiful, this outpouring of venom on account of a garden pavilion! In the midst of a thicket, in a place which was formerly open, a little pyramid stands on a high base. The inscription which it formerly bore in golden letters: L'INDEPENDANCE AMERICAINE has disappeared. Reflections of Cérutti upon "the impetuous car of revolutions": events have combined to give them a certain opportuneness here. The mingling of centuries and the diversity of allusions were one of the laws of the composition of an English garden. This is why, a little farther on, we penetrate to the "Valley of Tombs." A Latin inscription invites visitors to meditation and silence. An avenue of cypress, of larches, of pines, of junipers, "of all the family of melancholy trees," led to the tombs and disposed the soul to meditation. Sepulchers "without worldly pomp and without curious artistry," bore naïve epitaphs. Here were the tombs of Thybaud de Betz, dead on a Crusade, and of Adèle de Crépy, who, having followed her knight to the Holy Land, brought back his mortal remains and "fell dead of grief, at the last stroke of the chisel which finished ornamenting this monument." The epitaphs were engraved in Gothic characters; for "this Gothic form is something more romantic than the Greek and the Roman." It is needless to remark that these tombs were simple monuments intended for the ornamentation of the garden and that no lord of Betz was ever buried in this place. Some of the "melancholy trees" planted by the Princess of Monaco still remain among the thickets which have since grown in the "Valley of Tombs," which valley was an "elevated esplanade": a pleasing incongruity of the friends of nature! As to the tombs, there remain only a few mutilated remnants of the statues of the two recumbent figures. ***** After the inevitable tombs, come the inevitable chapel and the inevitable hermitage. But the hermitage of Betz possessed this much originality, that it was inhabited by an actual hermit. The hermitage (today there remains of it no more than the lower part) was composed of two little rooms, one above the other. The upper one was a sort of a grotto used as an oratory. This monastic cave is a charming spot. There we see shining in a little space, Transparent nacre and vermilion coral. A ray of sun which penetrates the grot Illumines it and seems a ray of grace. Cérutti immediately delivers to us the "secrets" of this illumination. The walls of the grotto were pierced by little crevices, closed by bits of white, yellow, purple, violet, orange, green, blue and red glass. When the sun passed through these glittering bits, its rays, tinged with all the colors, produced a magical light within the grotto. "One would believe that the hermit is an enchanter who brings down the sun, or an astronomer who decomposes light." Cérutti adds judiciously: "This curious phenomenon is, however, only child's play." Any other than Cérutti would perhaps have a word of pity for the poor man condemned to live in a home thus curiously lighted. But he does not love the "pale cenobites"; he approaches them only to scandalize them by his frank speech.... At the foot of the crucifix, the hermit in his corner Celebrates his good fortune... in which I do not believe. The hermit believed in it. He even believed in it so well that he lived in his hermitage through the whole time of the Revolution and died there in 1811, aged seventy-nine years,--having observed to the day of his death the rules set for him by the Princess of Monaco. In accordance with these rules, he was required to lead an edifying life, to appear at mass in the habit of his estate, to preserve seclusion and silence, to have no connection with the inhabitants of the neighboring villages, to cultivate flowers and give his surroundings a pleasant appearance, finally to exhibit the hermitage, the grotto and the chapel to curious visitors and to watch that no one touched anything. He received a hundred francs a year, the use of a little field and a little vegetable garden, every Saturday a pound of tallow candles, and in winter the right to collect dead branches to warm himself. He was furnished in addition the necessary tools for kitchen and culture, two small fire pumps, a little furniture, a house for his chickens and the habit of a hermit. The tailor of Betz--his bill has been discovered--asked ninety-nine francs, five sous for dressing a hermit. Finally two cash boxes were placed, one in the chapel and the other in the hermitage, to receive the offerings of generous souls who wished to better the condition of the recluse. ***** By passing from ruins to tombs and from tombs to hermitages, we have reached the end of the park. Let us retrace our steps along the banks of the Grivette. Under the trees which shade its banks, the little river forms a little cascade, and the picture composed by the landscape architect has here lost nothing of its pristine grace. Cérutti thus describes it: A vast mass of rocks arrests it in its course But, soon surmounting this frightful mass, The flood precipitates itself in a burning cascade. Then, resuming its march and its pompous detours, Etc.... Poor little Grivette! [Illustration: 0339] Upon the right bank of the stream stands a ravishing edifice. It is the Temple of Friendship, the most beautiful and, fortunately, the best preserved of the structures of Betz, which alone, the chateau having been destroyed and the park disfigured, is sufficient to immortalize here the memory of Madame de Monaco. Among the great trees which make an admirable frame for it, it presents the four columns and the triangular gable of its Neo-Greek façade. It is the most charming and the most elegant of the Hubert Roberts--a marvelous setting for an opera by Gluck. As we ascend the grassy slope, we savor more vividly the exquisite proportions of the architecture, the sovereign grace of the colonnade, the nobility of the gable, and also the strange beauty of the pines which enframe the masterpiece. (These trees with red trunks and twisted shapes made an important part of the decoration of all English gardens. Introduced into Europe for the first time in the gardens of Lord Weymouth, in Kent, they are called by the landscapists of the times Weymouth pines, or more briefly, Lord pines.) Formerly, a wood of oaks extended on both sides of the temple; it was cut in the nineteenth century; the hillside is now partly denuded; this is very unfortunate, for the picture conceived by Hubert Robert has thus been altered. Nevertheless, the essential feature of the landscape is intact, for the Weymouth pines still shelter the access to the peristyle. Under the colonnade, between two statues, opens a door of two leaves on which are sculptured fine garlands of flowers. Within the temple, along the naked wall, Ionic columns alternate with truncated shafts which once supported the busts of the heroes of friendship, and nothing is more original than the oblique flutings of these pedestals. Coffers of singular beauty decorate the ceiling, in the midst of which an opening allows light to enter. About the edifice runs a cornice, the design of which is at once rich and delicate. A charming marble bas-relief decorates the top of the doorway. The rear wall curves back between two columns to form a little apse, raised by two steps: its curve is so pleasing, its dimensions are so just, the arch of the demi-cupola which shelters it is designed with so much grace, that we experience, in contemplating these pure, supple and harmonious lines, that ravishment of eye and soul which only the spectacle of perfect architecture can produce. Before the steps is placed a round stone altar. In the little apse, we might have admired until recently a plaster reproduction of Love and Friendship, the celebrated group which Pigalle carved for Madame de Pompadour, the marble of which--much damaged--belongs to the Louvre. M. Rocheblave, who saw the statue in the place where the Princess of Monaco had placed it, and who has written very interestingly about it [26], affirms, and we can believe it, that this cast of the original, made and lightly retouched by the sculptor Dejoux, was a unique work, infinitely precious. It has been removed from Betz; but it will soon be replaced by another cast of the same group. The divinity will recomplete its temple. On the pedestal of the statue appeared this quatrain: Wise friendship! love seeks your presence; Smitten with your sweetness, smitten with your constancy, It comes to implore you to embellish its bonds With all the virtues which consecrate thine. And on the wall of the apse this was engraved: Pure and fertile source of happiness, Tender friendship! my heart rests with thee; The world where thou art not is a desert for me; Art thou in a desert? thou takest the place of this world. This last motto is by Cérutti. The cast of Love and Friendship is not the only object which has disappeared from the temple of Betz. There was also there a "circular bed," where meditation invited Romantic Love and Ambitious Hope to be seated. This "circular bed" was also a poetic invention. A document, discovered by M. de Ségur in the archives of Beauvais, shows us that Cérutti was commissioned to "furnish" the Temple of Friendship. As his archaeological knowledge was insufficient, he addressed himself to the author of the Voyage du jeune Anacharsis. We possess the reply of Abbé Barthélémy. The latter seems quite embarrassed: he states that the ancients prayed standing, on their knees or seated on the ground, and that there were no seats in the temples; he thinks that one might take as a model either the curule chair of the Senators, or the throne on which the gods were represented as seated, or even a bench, a sofa.... "Besides," he ended, "I believe, like M. Cérutti, that as friendship is a goddess of all times, we may furnish her as we will." Quatrains, sensibilities and puerilities, all these do not prevent the temple of Betz from being one, of the most perfect works of the Greco-Roman Renaissance of the last years of the eighteenth century. [27] In the gardens of the Little Trianon, Mique produced nothing more exquisite than this work of Le Roy. And how adorable they are, these little monuments, supreme witnesses of classic tradition, suddenly revivified by the discoveries of the antiquaries, by the Voyages of the Count de Caylus, by the first excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii! With what surety of taste, with what subtlety of imagination, have the lines and the forms of ancient art been accommodated to the adornment of the northern landscape! It is the last flower of our architecture. It is necessary to hearken to and meditate upon the instruction, the eternal instruction given us by this temple so gracefully placed before the verdant meadows of a valley of the Ile-de-France. The caprice of a sentimental princess dedicated it to friendship. Let us dedicate it in our grateful thought to the strong and charming god whose decrees were respected and whose power was venerated for three centuries by poets and artists without an ingratitude, without a blasphemy. This sanctuary was doubtless the homage of a disappearing piety: already those who built it celebrated in the neighboring groves the rites of a new cult; there they deified disorder, ruin and melancholy; there they abandoned themselves to childish and dangerous superstitions; already romanticism and exoticism mastered hearts and imaginations. The more reason for admiring and cherishing the last altars where men sacrificed to reason, order and beauty. Besides, behold: a century has elapsed; the false ruins are ruined; the false tombs are no more than rubbish; the Chinese kiosks have disappeared; yet, upon the hillside, the four Ionic columns still show the immortal grace of their spreading bases and their fine volutes. Another stage, and the last, to the "Baths of the Princess." This rustic retreat had been constructed in the midst of the woods. The woods have been cut and now there remains no more than a single clump of trees in the midst of a meadow, overshadowing the basin of a spring. Here were formerly placed remnants of sculpture in the antique fashion, Marbles broken and dispersed without arrangement. The Graces sometimes came to rest themselves there. ***** Seated near these benches, we easily forget ourselves; Voluptuousness follows the shadow and melancholy.... Melancholy was not the only visitor to this charming retreat. Let us rather listen to the Prince de Ligne describing the "baths" of an English garden. His prose will console us for the verses of Cérutti: "Women love to be deceived, perhaps that they may sometimes avenge themselves for it. Occupy yourselves with them in your gardens. Manage, stroll with, amuse this charming sex; let the walks be well beaten, that they may not dampen their pretty feet, and let irregular, narrow, shaded paths, odoriferous of roses, jasmines, orange blossoms, violets and honeysuckles, coax these ladies to the bath or to repose, where they find their fancy work, their knitting, their filet and especially their black writing desk where sand or something else is always lacking, but which contains the secrets unknown to lovers and husbands, and which, placed upon their knees, is useful to them in writing lies with a crow's plume." With this pleasing picture, let us leave the gardens of Betz. ***** I continued to read the _Coup d'oil sur les Jardins_ of the Prince de Ligne, whence are extracted the pretty things which I have just quoted, and I wish to reproduce the ending of this work, which is the whole philosophy of the English garden. "Happy, finally, if I have been able to succeed (the Prince de Ligne did not content himself with writing about gardens; he had transformed a part of the park of Bel-Oeil in the new fashion), if, in embellishing nature, or rather in approaching her, let us rather say in making her felt, I could give taste for her! From our gardens, as I have announced, she would lead us elsewhere; our minds would no longer have recourse to other powers than her; our purer hearts would be the most precious temples that could be dedicated to her. Our souls would be warmed by her merit, truth would return to dwell among us. Justice would quit the heavens, and, a hundred times more happy than in Olympus, the gods would pray men to receive them among themselves." In the midst of their philosophical and rural amusements, while they "embellished" the woods of Betz and purified their hearts by tasting nature, the Princess of Monaco and the Prince of Condé doubtless spoke similar words. Nevertheless the omniscient gods remain in Olympus: they knew Cérutti and foresaw the morrow. It is just this which gives a singular melancholy to the gardens which were laid out in France on the eve of the Revolution, a true melancholy, a profound melancholy, no longer the light and voluptuous melancholy with which the romantic "friends of nature" pleased themselves. It was scarcely five years after the Princess of Monaco had finished designing and ornamenting her gardens when it was necessary for her to abandon everything to follow Condé and partake with him the perils, the sufferings and the mortifications of emigration, to face the privations of the fife of the camp and the humiliations of defeat, to flee, always to flee across Europe before the victorious Revolution, and to learn at each stage of the bloody death of a relative or a friend. Such memories kill the smile awakened by the childishness of the structures scattered through the gardens of Betz; they communicate a touching grace to the allegories of the Temple of Friendship; they envelop the entire park with a touching sadness. [28] XIV. CHANTILLY I--THE HOUSE OF SYLVIE |THE most charming part of the gardens of Chantilly lies behind the Chateau d'Enghien and is called the Park of Sylvie, in memory of Marie Félice Orsini, the wife of Henri II de Montmorency, the "Sylvie" of Théophile. On the site of the little house where the Duchess had received and sheltered the proscribed poet, the great Condé built a pavilion, and pierced the neighboring woods with "superb alleys"; his son, Henri Jules, added to it the amusement of a labyrinth. [Illustration: 0351] The park and the house of Sylvie have been reconstructed in our day at the order of the Duc d'Aumale. Overarching avenues lead to the pavilion, which we perceive through a curtain of verdure as soon as we pass the gate of honor of the chateau. Behind the little structure, an elegant trellis encloses regular parterres, and the picture thus composed almost reproduced the picture of the house of Sylvie as it is shown to us by an engraving of Pérelle. The Due d'Aumale has enlarged the pavilion of the seventeenth century by a lovely round hall, decorated by beautiful carved wainscotings, removed from one of the hunting lodges of the forest of Dreux. The other rooms are ornamented with Chinese silks and lacquers, with Beauvais and Gobelins tapestries, with precious furniture and various hunting pictures. We see there also two modern paintings by Olivier Merson, one representing Théophile and Sylvie, the other Mlle, de Clermont and M. de Melun; they recall two famous chapters of the chronicles of Chantilly. The first belongs to history, for nothing is more certain than the misadventure of the unfortunate Théophile. The second is known to us only from a novel of Madame de Genlis in which, for lack of documents, it is difficult to decide which parts are due to the imagination of the author; we might even inquire if this moving and tragic anecdote is anything more than simple romantic fiction. Of these two stories, let us call up first the most distant, that which gave to the charming wood of Chantilly the adornment of a delightful name and of some elegant verses. ***** In 1623, when Théophile composed his odes on the _Maison de Sylvie_, Chantilly belonged to Henri II de Montmorency, grandson of the grand constable Anne de Montmorency, and to his wife Marie Felice Orsini. Their tragic destiny is well known, how the Duke, involved by Gaston d'Orléans in a foolish prank, lost his head in 1632 and how the Duchess went to hide her tears and her mourning with the Visitandines de Moulins. But at this time they lived happy and powerful in the most beautiful of the residences of France and everything smiled on their youth; he was twenty-nine years old; she was twenty-four. Louis XIII continued toward Henri II the great friendship which Henri IV had always witnessed toward his "crony," Henri I de Montmorency. Like his father he often came to Chantilly. The chateau, built by Pierre Chambiges for the constable Anne de Montmorency, on the foundations of the old feudal fortress, decorated by the greatest artists of the Renaissance, was still being embellished day by day: the original gardens, laid out to the west of the château and consisting of a few flower beds, had been enlarged. In this magnificent house the Duke held a most brilliant court: he was, says Tallemant, "brave, rich, gallant, liberal, danced well, sat well on horseback and always had men of brains in his employ, who made verses for him, who conversed with him about a million things, and who told him what decisions it was necessary to make on the matters which happened in those times." Among these "men of brains," who ate the bread of the Duc de Montmorency, the most celebrated was the poet Théophile de Viau, a native of Clairac sur le Lot, a Huguenot and a "cadet of Gascony." Under Henri IV, men of his religion and of his country were well received at court: it was under "the Béarnais" that Paris commenced to dislike them. The young man from the region of Agen had therefore left his little paternal manor and settled in the capital to seek his fortune when he was twenty years old, in 1610. The assassination of the King must have shaken his hopes for a moment. But Théophile was soon assured of the protection of the Duc de Montmorency; he found means to retain it in the midst of the frightful catastrophes of his existence. In any case, this sort of domesticity did not weigh too heavily on his shoulders, for he said to his master: Now, I am very happy in your obedience. In my captivity I have much license, And any other than you would end by tiring Of giving so much freedom to a serf so libertine. The fame of the poet Théophile has suffered much from two lines by Boileau: ... To prefer Théophile to Malherbe or to Raoan And the false money of Tasso to the pure gold of Virgil. So, when the Romanticists began to revive the classics and to discover far-distant ancestors in old French literature, they thought of Théophile: Boileau himself pointed him out to them. In Les Grotesques, Gautier rehabilitated him and called him a "truly great poet," esteeming that one cannot make bad verses when one bears the glorious Christian name of Théophile. To completely demonstrate this to us, he quoted several pieces by his namesake which he abridged and even tastefully corrected--a stratagem which revolted the scrupulous Sainte-Beuve. To tell the truth, now that we are free from romantic prejudices, it is difficult for us not to think that on this occasion, as on many others, Boileau was right. Among the poets of the time of Louis XIII, Théophile is perhaps the one whom we now read with the least pleasure. We find in him neither the beauty, the force and the style of Malherbe, nor that so lively sentiment for nature which gives so much value to various bits by Racan, nor the vigorous local color of Saint Amant. He shows a facile and sometimes brilliant imagination; but he lacks taste and restraint in a continuous and desolating fashion. La Bruyère has finely expressed this in comparing Théophile with Malherbe: "The other (Théophile), without choice, without exactness, with a free and unequal pen, overloads his descriptions too much, emphasises the details; he makes a dissection; sometimes he paints, he exaggerates, he overpasses the truth of nature; he makes a romance of it." Théophile, who had a brilliant mind, rendered justice to Malherbe; but he decorated with the name of originality his distaste for labor, his scorn of rules: Let him who will imitate the marvels of others. Malherbe has done very well, but he did it for himself. ***** I love his fame and not his lesson. ***** I know some who make verses only in the modern fashion, Who seek Phobus at mid-day with a lantern, Who scratch their French so much that they tear it all to tatters, Blaming everything which is easy only to their own taste. ***** Rules displease me, I write confusedly; A good mind never does anything except easily. * * * * * I wish to make verses which shall not be constrained, To send forth my mind beyond petty designs, To seek out secret places where nothing displeases me, To meditate at leisure, to dream quite at my ease, To waste a whole hour in admiring myself in the water, To hear, as if in a dream, the flowing of a brook, To write within a wood, to interrupt myself, to be silent by myself, To compose a quatrain without thinking of doing it. Here are eight lines which make us think of La Fontaine, in accent and in sentiment. But we would be embarrassed if we had to find twenty others as well turned in all the works of Théophile. What emphatic odes! What fastidious elegies! What feeble sonnets! Without the divine gift, this kind of nonchalance leads the poet either to platitudes or to disorder. Théophile is not lyrical. Here and there, by fits and starts, a few striking images appear, but the strophes come forth without grace, with terrible monotony. His love poems are frozen: gallantry mingled with sensuality takes the place of passion with him, and while it sometimes inspires a few lines which are happy by reason of gentleness or voluptuousness, most often they are poor nonsense. His best odes, like Matin or Solitude, whence we may select a few delicately shaded lines, repel us as a whole because of his fashion of painting too minutely, too dryly, too exactly.... [Illustration: 0359] So, what caused the great fame of Théophile in the seventeenth century and later gave him the indulgence of the Romanticists, was much less his poetic talent than the renown of his adventures. As Gautier took care to inform us, this poor devil was bor "under a mad star"; he knew exile and prison, he just escaped being burned alive for atheism and libertinage. In a page of charming prose (Théophile's prose is better than his verse) the poet has told us his taste and his philosophy: "One must have a passion not only for men of virtue, for beautiful women, but also for all sorts of beautiful things. I love a fine day, clear fountains, the sight of mountains, the spread of a wide plain, beautiful forests; the ocean, its calms, its swells, its rocky shores; I love also all which more particularly touches the senses: music, flowers, fine clothes, hunting, blooded horses, sweet smells, good cheer; but my desires cling to all these only as a pleasure and not as a labor; when one or another of these diversions entirely occupies a soul, it passes from affection to madness and brutality; the strongest passion which I can have never holds me so strongly that I cannot quit it in a day. If I love, it is as much as I am loved, and, as neither nature nor fortune has given me much power to please, this passion with me has never continued very long either its pleasure or its pain. I cling more closely to study and to good cheer than to all the rest. Books have sometimes tired me, but they have never worn me out, and wine has often rejoiced me, but never intoxicated...." [Once more the memory of La Fontaine crosses our minds and we recall _The Hymn of Passion_ at the end of _Psyche_.] Théophile is thus a perfect Epicurean by birth and by principle, an Epicurean in the diversity and the brevity of his enjoyments, an Epicurean in the prudent and wise administration of his pleasures. Did he carry further than he admits the practice of doctrine, and freedom of manners? Did he use the free and obscene speech which has been ascribed to him? Had he still other passions of which he says nothing in this public confession? It is only necessary to read Tallemant to be instructed as to the way of living common to libertines at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and to judge that, even if Théophile practiced all the vices which his enemies have ascribed to him, fate was nevertheless very cruel in inflicting on him a punishment which so many others might then have merited. The poet's misfortune was to unloose against himself the ire of some Jesuits who--for reasons which have remained obscure--sought for his destruction with frenzied zeal. Imprudence in writing and speaking had already compromised him: when exiled for the first time, he had had to seek a refuge in Gascony, in Languedoc, even to take refuge in England for several months. But he had been recalled and, following an august example, and thinking that Paris was well worth a mass, he had abjured Calvinism: he could thenceforth believe himself in safety. Then burst the storm. A collection of licentious and sacrilegious poetry appeared at Paris in 1622 under the title of _Parnasse Satyrique_; certain pieces were attributed to Théophile, who endeavored, but in vain, to disavow the publication. A year after, he was accused before Parliament and condemned, in contumacy, to be burned alive. On the eve of his sentence, Father Garasse had published a formidable quarto entitled _La Doctrine curieuse des beaux esprits de ce temps,_ in which were heaped up calumnies, insults and invectives against Théophile and his disciples, whom the Jesuit called "the school of young calves." While he was being executed in effigy upon the Place de Grève, and while the Jesuits aroused the court and the magistrates against him, Théophile prudently escaped to Chantilly and from there set out for the frontier of the kingdom. But he was arrested near Saint-Quentin, brought back to Paris, thrown into the prison of Ravaillac. He remained there two years waiting for a new trial. The Jesuits were in charge of the proceedings and the investigation. The poet was again found guilty. But this time the sentence was less rigorous: it was banishment. He died two years later, at the age of thirty-six. During these trials, the Duke and Duchess de Montmorency had not ceased to interest themselves in their protégé. More than once the Duke had intervened in his favor, but without success. After the first sentence he gave him asylum at Chantilly in a "cool hall" built in the woods at the end of the pool. It was the memories of this retreat that the poet later evoked in his prison, to make them the subject of the ten little odes which he entitled, _La Maison de Sylvie_. I doubt that the odes of the Maison de Sylvie are superior to the other works of Théophile. However, if any one asked me: "What must I read by Théophile?" I would reply to him: "La Maison de Sylvie, on condition that you read it at Chantilly beside the pool." The great poets have sometimes added a special grace or nobility to the landscapes which they have described. But it is also true that ancient verses, whose attractiveness seems lost today, réassumé an indescribable savor in the very places which have formerly inspired them. The poet sometimes makes us better feel the beauty of nature; but by a mysterious sorcery, nature can return a breath of life to dead poems. To leave, before dying, The living features of a painting Which can never perish Except by the loss of nature, I pass golden pencils Over the most revered spots Where virtue takes refuge, Whose door was open to me To put my head in shelter, When they burned my effigy. Poor rhymer, they are indeed effaced, the lines of your "golden pencils"! You promised yourself immortality, you promised it to Sylvie: Thus, under modest vows My verses promise Sylvie That charming fame which posterity Calls a second life; But you added with more reason: What if my writings, scorned, Cannot be authorized As witnesses of her glory, These streams, these woods, Will assume souls and voices, To preserve its memory. Such has been fate: it is the soul and the voices of the waters, the woods and the rocks which preserve today the memory of the beautiful Italian princess and her poor devil of a poet! It is not for the pure beauty of the verses (which, however, do not lack grace), it is for the elegance of the picture which they evoke from far away, from very far away, that we love today to read once more these lines: One evening when the salty waves Lent their soft bed To the four red coursers Which are yoked by the sun, I bent my eyes upon the edge Of a bed where the Naiad sleeps, And, watching Sylvie fish, I saw the fishes fight To see which would soonest lose its life In honor of her fishhooks. Warning against noise with one hand And throwing her fine with the other, She causes that, at the onset of night, The day should decline more sweetly. The sun feared to light her And feared to go away; The stars did not dare to appear, The waves did not dare to ripple, The zephyr did not dare to pass, The very grass restrained its growing. (This is the scene which M. Oliver Merson desired to represent upon one of the walls of Sylvie's pavilion; I do not dare to affirm that he rendered all its charm.) Despite a very obscure and very pretentious mythological machinery, we may still enjoy the Tritons transformed into a troop of white deer by a single glance of Sylvie, and gamboling timidly among the thickets of the wood: Their hearts, deprived of blood by fear, Can only with timidity Behold the sky or trample on the earth. (Here is one of those pictures which abound in Théophile and disconcert the reader, even when the coolness of the charming grove disposes him to every indulgence.) We will also discover an Albanesque grace in a combat of Loves and Nereids in the waters of the Now together, now scattered, They shine in this dark veil And beneath the waves which they have pierced Allow their shadow to disappear; Sometimes in a clear night, Which shines with the fire of their eyes, Without any shadow of clouds, Diana quits her swain And goes down below to swim With her naked stars. But the plays of the Naiads are not the only visions which present themselves to the memory of the prisoner in the inky dungeon where the hatred of Father Garasse has condemned him to rhyme his idyls. He remembers that one day Thyrsis, whom he loves with a "chaste and faithful friendship," came to visit him at Chantilly and to tell him a frightful and interminable nightmare in which were announced all his future misfortunes. This episode might appear superfluous if it did not give Théophile the opportunity to establish in eleven lines the innocence of his manners, an opportune apology after the defamations of the Jesuit.... Soon, casting aside these unpleasant images, he returns to the marvels of the "enchanted park"; he sings the perfume of the flowers, the glances of his mistress, the coolness of the waters, the graces of the spring, the fecundity of nature and the concert of birds which salutes Sylvie in the woods.... And the ode terminates by an abrupt flattery addressed to the King. But he has not yet exhausted the whole chaplet of lovable remembrances; he diverts himself by imagining the song of the nightingales, and in the darkness of his prison, it is always Chantilly that he sees. How sad that a better poet might not have treated this charming thought! Forth from my dark tower My soul sends out its rays which pierce To this park which the eyes of day Traverse with so much difficulty. My senses have the whole picture of it: I feel the flowers at the edge of the water. I sense the coolness which endews them. The princess comes to sit there. I see, as she goes there in the evening, How the day flees and respects her. The last ode is a promenade about the pool, and, while lacking in poetic beauty, it contains some topographical indications which it would be amusing to verify with the aid of the plans and the documents of the archives. There is a question there of a "lodge today deserted" where Alcandre once came to enjoy solitude. Alcandre is Henri IV, and we thus know the place of the "King's Garden," a retreat where Henri IV loved to pass his time, when he came to Chantilly. Then Théophile leaves on the left a thick wood favorable for lovers' meetings, a "quarter for the Faun and for the Satyr," and stops at a chapel, probably the little chapel of Saint Paul, which still exists today; he remains there a long time and prays the Lord, with the fervor of a poor poet persecuted by the Jesuits and accused of atheism; but words, already sufficiently undisciplined when he wishes to employ them to sing the sport of the nymphs, refuse to obey him when he seizes the harp of David: his prayer is a miracle of platitude.... And if, following my advice, you shall one day read La Maison de Sylvie under the trees of Chantilly, perhaps, despite its poverty of style and monotony of rhymes, you may still find some pleasure there, in spite of the disdain of Boileau, in spite of the enthusiasms of Gautier. II-MADEMOISELLE DE CLERMONT We are in 1724. A century has elapsed since the day when the proscribed poet found asylum in a little house built at the extremity of the pool, and now there remains hardly a remnant of the Chantilly of the Montmorencies. Le Nôtre and Mansart have been here. Immense regular gardens, traversed by canals, decorated with statues and fountains, have replaced the modest garden plots of the Renaissance. The swelling woods which neighbored the château are transformed to a majestically clipped park. Of the ancient buildings, the great Condé has allowed only the little château to remain, and he has arranged the apartments of even this in a new fashion. For the old manor house which the architects of the sixteenth century had transformed into a luxurious, elegant and picturesque residence, he has substituted a veritable palace, with grand though monotonous façades, flanked with sufficiently disgraceful pepper boxes. He has built the orangery and the theater, and created a mass of cascades, basins and fountains which rival Versailles. Henri Jules has continued the work of his father, built a house for his gentlemen in place of the farm of Bucan, established a magnificent menagerie at Vineuil, designed the labyrinth of Sylvie's grove and dispersed throughout the park a multitude of marbles copied from the antique. Now the master of Chantilly is the Duc de Bourbon, Monsieur le Duc, Prime Minister of the King; he also is a great lover of gardens and the buildings; he transforms the chapel, he demolishes and reconstructs the three faces of the interior court of the chateau, and he confides to Jean Aubert the task of finishing the construction of the Great Stables, commenced by Mansart. [29] [Illustration: 0369] Chantilly is then, after Versailles and Marly, the most beautiful of the residences of France. It is also the theater of the most sumptuous festivals. M. le Duc there spends royally an immense fortune, which is still growing from operations in the funds. His mistress, Agnes de Pléneuf, Marquise de Prie, holds a veritable court there. [Illustration: 0373] The King comes to pass two months at Chantilly and, every day, he is offered "the diversion of stag hunting or wild boar hunting." The evenings are reserved for the opera, for the comedy and for the dance. The gazettes of Paris describe with a thousand details the hecatombs of wild boars, the lansquenet parties and the suppers at which shine the three sisters of M. le Duc, Mlles, de Charolais, de Clermont and de Sens. The peddlers offer in the streets the list of expert beauties whom chance, added by Madame de Prie, has put in the path of the young King, and for whom the young King has not lusted. On August 30, 1724, one of the friends of the Duc de Bourbon, the Duc de Melun, is killed in one of the hunts given in honor of the King. Here is the story from the gazettes: "Towards seven o'clock in the evening, half a league from the château, the Duc de Melun, riding at a gallop in one of the forest ways, was wounded by the stag which was being tracked and which was almost at bay. The blow which he gave in passing was so hard that horse and horseman were thrown. The Duc de Melun was aided at first by the Due de Bourbon and the Comte de Clermont. Sieur Flandin du Montblanc, surgeon to the King, gave him first aid and had him carried to the château where he died today, the 31st, at five o'clock in the morning, in the thirtieth year of his age, after having received all the sacraments and made his will." This tragic event moves the guests of the château, for the Duc de Melun is related to all the great families of the kingdom. The King sheds a few tears and talks of leaving the same evening. But he is made to understand that so sudden a departure will be interpreted in a fashion not very complimentary to the Prime Minister. He consents to remain two days longer at Chantilly and returns to Versailles. ***** Madame de Genlis is the author of a historical novel entitled _Mademoiselle de Clermont_. In it she relates that this princess had secretly married the Duc de Melun eight days before the accident which led to his death. Of the history of the amours of Mlle, de Clermont and M. de Melun, she had composed a touching and dramatic little story. At the bottom of the first page of this work she puts the following note: "The substance of this history, and almost all the details which it contains, are true; the author received them from a person (the late Marquise de Puisieulx-Sillery) who was as noteworthy for the sincerity of her character as for the superiority of her mind, and whom Mlle, de Clermont honored for twenty years, up to the day of her death, with her most intimate friendship. It was at Chantilly itself and in the fatal alley, which still bears the name of Melun, that this story was told for the first time to the author, who then wrote down its principal features and afterward forgot this little manuscript for thirty years. It was neither finished, nor written for the public, but no historic detail has been excised." Is not this merely one of those subterfuges which romancers use to persuade us that they have "invented nothing" and to give us the illusion that it "really happened"? Or did Madame de Genlis really receive the confidences of a well-informed old lady? First, we must note that if the author wished to mystify her readers, she succeeded on this occasion. When the Due d'Aumale had Mile, de Clermont and M. de Melun painted as a pendant to Théophile and Sylvie, he accepted the truth of the story told by Madame de Genlis. It may possibly be said that the Due d'Aumale could not refuse such a species of posthumous homage to the tutor of Louis Philippe. But all the historians who have written of Chantilly have in turn told the story of the adventure of Mlle, de Clermont, without even discussing its probability.... And now let us read the novel of Madame de Genlis. It is a short and very agreeable task. The contemporaries of Madame de Genlis united in considering Mademoiselle de Clermont as her masterpiece and as a masterpiece. On the first point, I am ready to believe them; I cannot compare Mademoiselle de Clermont with the innumerable romances, tales and novels of the same author: I do not know them. As a child, I read Les Veillées du Chateau, and I cannot say today if it is necessary to set them above the similar works of Boüilly and of Berquin. As to the Souvenirs de Félicie, it has always seemed to me a sufficiently diverting book, full of doubtful anecdotes and of untruthful portraits, but in which the author shows her true self, with all her vanities of a woman and all her ridiculous traits as a writer. Is Mademoiselle de Clermont a masterpiece? Perhaps it was, but it is no longer. It remains a delightful book. It has great merits: marvelous rapidity, perfect skill and ease in the knitting together of the different episodes, a facile, supple and natural way of telling. If we confine ourselves to the composition of the work, it is a model: neither Mérimée nor Maupassant has written anything more concise or more polished. Without doubt, the style of Madame de Genlis seems terribly out of date today; her simple, limpid, perfectly correct language entirely lacks accent; her somewhat vague expressions have today a trace of age and colorlessness; in the tragic passages she exasperates us a little by the abuse of points of suspense; finally we are sometimes tired out by the lazy sensibility of the writer, the simplicity of the maxims which she inserts in her narration, her childish efforts to give a moral appearance to the most passionate of adventures; we discover too often the author of Les Veillées du Château in a story which we would have preferred to have told by the author of La Chartreuse de Parme. But the pleasure of a well-written story is so vivid that even in spite of the affectations, the artifices and the childishness, we still feel the emotion of the drama. The two principals of the story are Mademoiselle de Clermont, sister of the Duc de Bourbon, and the Duc de Melun. "Mlle, de Clermont received from nature and from fortune all the gifts and all the goods which can be envied: royal birth, perfect beauty, a fine and delicate mind, a sensitive soul and that sweetness, that equality of character which are so precious and so rare, especially in persons of her rank. Simple, natural, chary of words, she always expressed herself delightfully and wisely; there was as much reason as charm in her conversation. The sound of her voice penetrated to the bottom of the heart, and an air of sentiment, spread over her whole person, gave interest to her least important actions; such was Mlle, de Clermont at the age of twenty." She appears at Chantilly and, immediately, the beauty of the place, which offers "all that a sensitive soul can love in the way of rural and solitary delights," the splendor of "the most ingenious and the most sumptuous feasts," the pleasure of her first homage and her first praise, intoxicate her youthful heart. Portrait of M. de Melun: "His character, his virtues, entitle him to personal consideration, independently of his fortune and of his birth. Although his figure was noble and his features mild and intellectual, his outer man showed no brilliancy; he was cold and distracted in society; though gifted with a superior mind, he was not at all what is called an amiable man, because he felt no desire to please, not from disdain or pride, but from an indifference which he had constantly preserved up to this period.... Finally the Duc de Melun, though endowed with the most noble politeness, had no gallantry; his very sensitiveness and extreme delicacy had preserved him till then from any engagement formed in caprice; aged scarcely thirty years, he was still only too capable of experiencing a grand passion, but, because of his character and his morals, he was safe from all the seductions of coquetry." One of the favorite diversions of Mlle, de Clermont was to read romances aloud before a few friends, and on these occasions, they never failed to praise her reading and her sensitiveness. "The women wept, the men listened with the appearance of admiration and sentiment; they talked quite low among themselves; it was easy to guess what they said; sometimes they were overheard (vanity has so fine an ear!), and the hearer gathered the words ravishing, enchanting..." We will soon see if this story is true. But let us emphasize in passing the improbability of this little picture. Is it credible that people wept so abundantly at Chantilly in 1724? A single man, always present at these lectures, preserves an obstinate silence: it is M. de Melun. The attitude of this motionless and silent auditor pricks the curiosity of Mlle, de Clermont. She questions. The Duke lets her understand that the reading of romances seems futile and frivolous to him. On the morrow she inflicts on her auditors the reading of a book of history. And the intrigue is begun. Mlle, de Clermont seeks the company of the Marquise de G..., a tiresome and loquacious person, but the cousin of M. de Melun: her presence takes the curse off the promenades and conversations in the gardens of Chantilly. During one of these promenades, a petition is presented to the princess. She promises to hand it to her brother. But, in the hurry of dressing for the ball, she forgets her promise. M. de Melun, without saying anything about it, picks up the petition which was forgotten upon a table, and obtains from M. le Duc the favor which was asked, pretending that he is fulfilling the wishes of Mlle, de Clermont. Confusion of the forgetful young girl, who makes a vow not to appear at a ball for a year.... I will not say that this sentimental catastrophe is the most happy episode of the novel of Madame de Genlis. More delicate, more truthful, more touching--with an agreeable dash of romance--is the story of the incidents which lead up to the inevitable declaration. Mlle, de Clermont is the first to avow her passion. Her birth and rank forbid M. de Melun to seek the hand of a princess of the blood royal. He goes away, he returns. Oaths are exchanged, and it is finally Mlle, de Clermont who proposes a secret marriage. The two lovers appoint a meeting in a cottage. M. de Melun throws himself at the feet of Mile, de Clermont and abandons himself to all the transports of passion. Suddenly he rises and in a stifled voice begs her for the last time to abandon him. "No, no," returns Mlle, de Clermont, "I will not flee from him whom I can love without shame, without reserve and without remorse, if he dares, as well as myself, to brave the most odious prejudices." At these words the Duke regarded Mlle, de Clermont with surprise and shock. "I am twenty-two years old," she continued; "the authors of my being no longer exist; the age and the rank of my brother give him only a fictitious authority over me, for nature has made me his equal." "Great God!" cried the Duke, "what are you trying to make me think?" "What! would I then be doing such an extraordinary thing? Did not Mlle, de Montpensier marry the Duc de Lauzun?" "What do you say? Oh, heavens!" "Did not the proudest of our kings at first approve this union? Later a court intrigue made him revoke his permission; but he had given it. Your birth is not inferior to that of the Duc de Lauzun. Mlle, de Montpensier was blamed by nobody, and she would not have failed to appear interesting in all eyes, because she was young and especially because she was loved." "Who? Me? By such an excess I would abuse your sentiments and your inexperience!" "There is no longer time for us to flee.... There is no longer time for us to deceive ourselves by discussing impossible sacrifices.... As we cannot break the tie which binds us, we must render it legitimate and sanctify it." The next night, at two o'clock in the morning, clothed in a simple white muslin dress, she leaves the chateau. As she crosses the courtyard, her skirt catches on one of the ornaments of the pedestal of Condé's statue. She turns around in terror and believes that she must relate to her great ancestor the reasons for her attire. This nocturnal discourse is not one of the most ingenious inventions of Madame de Genlis. In the same hut where the supreme explanation had occurred a chaplain secretly unites the new Lauzun to the new Montpensier. Eight days later the King arrives at Chantilly. Festivals and hunts. M. de Melun is thrown off his horse and wounded by a stag: we have seen the true story of the accident. Mlle, de Clermont is a few steps from the place where her husband is wounded; her carriage serves to transport the wounded man to the chateau. Passion is stronger than convention: she confesses all to M. le Duc. He, to avoid a scandal, feigns a trifle of indulgence and persuades the unfortunate lady to conceal her grief until the King's departure. She is buoyed up by false news, is told that the wound is not mortal and is not informed of the death of M. de Melun until Louis XV has left Chantilly. * * * * * Let us first remark that, whether history or romance, there is nothing to localize this story at the House of Sylvie. Madame de Genlis simply says to us that she thought it out in Sylvie's wood, that is all. In the great gallery of the Musée Condé, a painting by Nattier shows us the delicate countenance and the ardent eyes of Mlle, de Clermont. The princess is there represented in the guise of a nymph; her elbow rests on an overturned urn whence flows a limpid stream; a Love smiles at her feet; near her a servant holds a ewer bound with gold and from it fills a cup. In the background a pretty garden pavilion is outlined against a winter sky. This pavilion is that of the "Mineral Springs," and thus explains the allegories of the portrait. This little structure disappeared more than a century ago: it was situated in a part of the gardens which formerly extended over the hill of La Nonette, between the little stream and the main street of Chantilly: this land was separated from the domain during the Revolution and is now occupied by private owners. Possibly, at some time, some one has taken the pavilion in Nattier's picture for the House of Sylvie and perhaps this confusion explains why the souvenir of Mlle, de Clermont and M. de Melun has been placed beside the souvenir of Théophile and the Duchess of Montmorency. But do we find here only an error of topography? Did Mlle, de Clermont secretly marry the Duc de Melun? [Illustration: 0385] What might make us doubt the truth of the anecdote is primarily the character of the author who related it to us. Madame de Genlis made a travesty of everything: the past, the present and even the future. She put romanticism and romance into her own existence as well as that of others; whether it is a question of events of which she was witness or of those which she relates from hearsay, it is never prudent to accept her word without confirmation. Let us apply the test. Neither in the memoirs nor in the letters of the first half of the eighteenth century have I discovered an allusion to the intrigue of one of the sisters of M. le Due with the gentleman whom a stag mortally wounded in the forest of Chantilly on August 30, 1724. I have questioned the man who today best knows the history of Chantilly, M. Gustav Macon: he told me that he has never met a mention of the adventure of Mlle, de Clermont before 1802, the date at which Madame de Genlis published her novel. We do not know much about the pretty naiad painted by Nattier. We know the charm of her features and we know that Montesquieu wrote for her the Temple de Guide, "with no other aim than to make a poetic picture of voluptuousness." But an anecdote told by Duclos will show us a person somewhat different from the heroine of Madame de Genlis. When the marriage of Louis XV with Marie Leczinska was decided upon, the Due d'Antin was sent to Strasbourg as an envoy to the Polish princess. He pronounced in these circumstances a discourse in which, with singular lack of tact, he found it necessary to make an allusion to the project which M. le Duc had recently conceived of marrying the King to the youngest of his sisters, Mlle, de Sens: the King, he said, having to choose between the Graces and Virtues, had taken the latter. Mile, de Clermont, superintendent of the future household of the Queen, heard this remark: "Apparently," she said, "d'Antin takes us, my sisters and myself, for prostitutes." This is not the tone of the romance of Madame de Genlis. [Illustration: 0389] Madame de Tracy relates that one day she read Mademoiselle de Clermont and wept for a solid hour. Madame de Coigny then said to her: "But all that is not true." Madame de Tracy answered: "_What has that to do with it, if it seems true?_" And Madame de Tracy was right.... Today it seems a little less true, and I do not promise my female readers, if they take the fancy of reading Mademoiselle de Clermont, that they will weep for an hour. It is even possible that in certain places they might have more desire to laugh than to weep. Nevertheless, it is a pleasant bit to read under the trees of Chantilly, this tiny romance printed by Didot, and which Desenne illustrated with fine and childish little designs, where we see gentlemen in wigs and ladies in curls in surroundings of Empire style; a lovable and opportune anachronism, for it has marvelously translated the character of this sentimental novel, which never had any history back of it. XV. THE CHÂTEAU OF WIDEVILLE. |IN a little valley, between Versailles and Maule, at the end of an immense green carpet where a few old garden statues still stand, the château of Wideville deploys its beautiful façade of red brick framed in white stone. The harmonious lines of the uneven roofs show up against the background of the wooded hillside. Around the building, wide moats filled with running water form a square, and at each angle of the platform projects a square bastion topped by a watch tower. This parade-armor harmonizes well with the robust elegance of the construction. On beholding the admirable mixture here produced by the reminiscences of the feudal manor, the graces of the Renaissance and the majesty of classic architecture, we immediately think of that magical line of Victor Hugo: It was a grand château of the day of Louis Treize. To tell the truth, we know no other architectural work in France which expresses with more delicacy and seduction the noble and chivalrous charm of the period when order and discipline had not effaced all traces of fancy. And as, by rare good fortune, Wideville still belongs to descendants of him who built it, and as its possessors have preserved it and repaired it with jealous care and perfect taste, it is a living image of French art of the time of Louis XIII which we have before our eyes. At the commencement of the seventeenth century, the manor of Wideville was a square fortress, flanked with towers and rising upon a mound; it was doubtless restored at the time of the Renaissance, for magnificent mantels of this period were moved into the new château which Claude de Bullion built in 1632 at the bottom of the valley, after he had bought the estate of Wideville from René de Longueil, Marquis de Maisons. This little Claude de Bullion was a very great personage, though the tininess of his stature provoked all kinds of jeers. He was the son of a Burgundian magistrate, and his mother was one of the twenty children of Charles de Lamoignon. Tallemant des Réaux has related that a certain Countess de Sault had contributed to the advancement of the little Claude, and had succeeded in getting him nominated as President of the Inquests. "Ah! Madame!" she said one day to Marie de Médicis, "if you only knew Monsieur de Bullion as well as I do!" "Gawd preserve me from it, Madame la Comtesse!" replied the Italian. Henri IV had charged him with various embassies. Louis XIII made him guardian of the seals of his orders, and then superintendent of the finances. Whatever may have been the origin of the good luck of Bullion, he showed himself worthy of his position by his talent and probity. When he became superintendent of the finances, he had the prudence to make an inventory of his property, in order to be able to defend himself against any future accusation of peculation. It became necessary for him to provide for the financial demands of Richelieu, which were terrible. So he laid new taxes and became very unpopular, but it did not displease him to oppose the multitude. In 1636, when the Spanish army had invaded the kingdom, Richelieu did not dare to face the discontent of the people, exasperated by defeat. "And I," said Bullion to him, "whom they hate more than your Eminence, I will go through the whole city on horseback, followed by two lackeys only, and no one will say a word to me." He did it as he had promised, and the next day the Cardinal, emboldened, repaired in a carriage with doors open from his palace to the Porte Saint Antoine. The King and his minister backed up Bullion. He groaned incessantly about the state of the finances and forecast bankruptcy. His complaints did not trouble Richelieu: "As to the humors of M. de Bullion," wrote the Cardinal, "we must overlook them without worrying about them, when they are bad." He was extremely rich, for he was a good manager and received each year from the King a present of one hundred thousand livres in addition to his salary. His manner of life never exceeded his income. Later, in the time of the great prodigality of the superintendent Nicolas Fouquet, people recalled the economy of M. de Bullion and the modest appearance of his hotel in the Rue Plâtrière. As for his morals, they were scandalous, also on the authority of Tallemant. The superintendent often repaired to the Faubourg Saint Victor, to the home of his friend Doctor de Brosse, who had there founded a botanical garden, and there he indulged in gross debauchery at his ease. But we possess a very curious letter from Richelieu to Madame de Bullion, where we read: "I would like to be able to witness more usefully than I have the affection with which I shall always be at your service. Aside from the fact that the consideration of your merit would cause this, the frequent solicitations which M. de Bullion makes to me in regard to what can concern your contentment, renders me not a little agreeable to this. I have seen the day when I believed that he was one of those husbands who love their wives only because of the money they have brought; but now I perceive that he loves his skin better than his shirt, the interest of his wife more than those of another, and that he is, as concerns marriage, like those who do not think that they have done a good work unless they do it in secret...." Harmonize the testimony of Tallemant with that of Richelieu. [Illustration: 0397] The story of Bullion's death is rather tragic. On December 21, 1640, in the new château of Saint Germain, as the King, who was already very ill, seemed to sleep before the fire, stretched out in his great Roman chair, some courtiers who were talking in a window embrasure asked one another in a low voice who would succeed Cardinal de Richelieu, whose life was known to be in danger. The King heard their words and turned around: "Gentlemen," he said, "you forget M. de Bullion." On the next day the words of Louis XIII were reported to the minister, who became furious at the thought that his place was being thus disposed of. He harshly criticized Bullion, who had come to see him as ordinarily, for having forgotten a detail of administration, and wished to make him sign an acknowledgment of it. As the superintendent refused, he seized the tongs from the fireplace "to give them to him on the head." Bullion signed, but was stricken with apoplexy as the result. He was bled twice in the arm. The Cardinal came to see him, and found him without speech or knowledge. "Having seen which,"--it is Guy Patin who relates it,--"dissolved in tears, the Cardinal Prince returned. The sick man died from congestion of the brain." Such was the man who built the Château de Wideville. The neighborhood of Saint Germain, and the nearness of the forests where the King usually hunted, doubtless decided him to choose for his residence this melancholy and solitary valley surrounded by woods. ***** We do not know what architect drew the plan and superintended the construction of Wideville. We do not know to whom to attribute this building, so well seated upon the fortified platform, these façades so pleasingly designed, cut by a central projection and flanked by two pavilions, these roofs where dormers of charming style alternate with projecting bull's-eyes, these rounded platforms which unite the mansion to the court of honor and to the gardens, and that delightful coloring which is given to the whole construction by the happy union of stone and brick. Two great artists collaborated in the decoration of Wideville, the sculptor Sarazin and the painter Vouet, for whom Bullion seems to have felt especial esteem, for he commissioned the pair of them with the ornamentation of his Parisian hotel also. Sarazin executed the four statues in niches which beautify the façade towards the gardens; he also carved the two hounds which guard the door of the house on the same side. [Illustration: 0401] Behind the château are gardens in the French style. The flower-beds have been restored in the antique taste. In Bullion's time a wide avenue started from the platform, bordered with mythological statues, works of Buyster, but nothing remains of it today. The grotto, situated at the end of this alley, still exists, and this grotto is the marvel of Wideville. Of all the edifices of this species with which fashion ornamented so many French gardens in imitation of Italy, this is, I believe, the best preserved. It is a pavilion whose façade presents four columns of the Tuscan order, cut by rustic drums and charged with carved mosses. The three bays between these columns are closed by hammered iron gratings, masterpieces of the locksmith's art. Male and female figures, representing rivers, lying on a bed of roses, enframe the arched pediment which surmounts the grotto. The interior is lined with shells. The nymphæum has lost its statues, but we still see the vase from which water flowed through three lions' heads. Stucco figures of satyrs frame the great cartouches of the ceiling, where Youet executed admirable mythological paintings. These are now very much damaged, but what time has spared of them shows a marvelous decorator, a worthy disciple of the great Venetians. Near the chateau, a pleasant little house which is called the "Hermitage," and which was slightly modified in the eighteenth century, contains some delicate wood carvings. Farther away stands the chapel, a simple oratory with an arched ceiling. There, before the altar, a stone sarcophagus bears the words Respect and Obedience; this is the sepulcher of the Duchesse de La Vallière, niece of the Carmelite Louis de la Miséricorde. Of all the phantoms which people Wideville, there is none more charming than that of Julie de Crussol, Duchesse de La Vallière. The whole eighteenth century celebrated her grace, her charity, her sharp and brilliant wit, her beauty which defied years. Voltaire versified for her his finest compliments. During the whole Revolution she remained in her château, and her presence preserved Wideville from the fate which then overtook so many old seigniorial domains. The thought of being buried under the earth had always horrified her; so her remains were placed in this sarcophagus standing above ground. ***** Like the exterior and the gardens, the apartments of the château have preserved their aspect of earlier years. Some changes which dated from the eighteenth century have been removed in order that the house might be as it was in the time of Claude de Bullion. Three Renaissance chimney pieces adorn the great rooms of Wideville. They are constructed of white stone and of different colored marbles, ornamented with marvelous carvings, which represent foliage, sirens and female heads, and they were found in the earlier manor which Bullion demolished. Perhaps it was by the advice of Sarazin that he had them moved to the new home. Except the guardroom, whose ceiling is a masterpiece of architectural ingenuity, all the rooms of the château have ceilings with painted beams. The enameled brick pavements are intact. Everywhere are tapestries, one of which with deliciously faded tones represents the siege of La Rochelle, precious paintings, family portraits. In the "King's Chamber" almost nothing has been changed since January 23, 1634; it was on this day that Louis XIII paid M. de Bullion the compliment of sleeping at Wideville. And everywhere there occurs to our memory the line of Victor Hugo: It was a grand chateau of the time of Louis Treize. XVI. THE ABBEY OF LIVRY |THE ancient abbey of Livry, situated between the village of Livrv-en-l'Aulnoye and that of Clichy-sous-Bois, three leagues from Paris, is about to be sold by public auction. This property belonged to the Congregation of the Fathers of the Assumption, who had their houses of novices here. As in a short time it will probably be turned over to speculators, who will cut it into lots for suburban houses, it is necessary before its destruction to evoke some of the souvenirs which have rendered this place illustrious. Other than precious and charming memories, there is nothing which can interest us at Livry; and these relate only to literary history. The religious chronicles of the abbey of Notre Dame de Livry, founded at the end of the twelfth century as a monastery of canons regular, offers no episode worthy of attention. There is nothing here for the archaeologist save a pile of old stones, remnants of capitals and of funeral slabs, which were discovered a few years ago. Of the architecture of the ancient monastery, there remains only a dwelling house of the seventeenth century. The rest of the buildings were destroyed after the Revolution and have since been replaced by characterless structures. Finally, though the park presents almost its former beautiful design, its trees were replanted in the nineteenth century. But Livry was the "pretty abbey" dear to Madame de Sévigné. It is here that she wrote her most charming pages, passed her sweetest horns, felt the most vividly the seduction of the country. So Livry is sacred soil for every lover of French letters. [Illustration: 0409] ***** In 1624 the King gave the abbey of Livry to Christophe de Coulanges as commendator. He was then only eighteen years old. In both a spiritual and a worldly sense the abbey was in a pitiable condition: its church was crumbling, its houses were scarcely inhabitable, and great disorder reigned among the few ecclesiastics who remained in the cloister. The young abbot was pious and economical. The abbey was reformed with his consent, the church restored, and a part of the cloister rebuilt. He put up this grand building of noble and simple aspect, which still stands; he made of it an agreeable country house, surrounded by orange trees, flower beds bits of water, and easily accessible, for a fine avenue joined it to the highway from Paris to Meaux. He furnished apartments there, received his family and his friends, and led a life without display, but without privations. Besides, if the rule was then strictly observed in the monastery, the monks were not very numerous: in 1662, there were only eight professed friars there. [30] In 1636, the Abbé de Coulanges was invested with the guardianship of a little orphan, his niece, Marie de Chantai: the child was ten years old; the tutor twenty-nine. For fifty years he watched over the person and the property of his ward with an entirely paternal solicitude, gave her very wise masters, like Ménage and Chapelain, occupied himself with her establishment and, when she became a widow, wisely administered her fortune. But everything was said by Madame de Sévigné herself, when the "very good" died: "There is nothing good that he did not do for me, either in giving me his own property entirely, or in preserving and reestablishing that of my children. He drew me from the abyss in which I was at the death of M. de Sévigné, he won lawsuits, he restored all my properties to good condition, he paid our debts, he made the estate which my son inhabits the most handsome and agreeable in the world, he married off my children; in a word I owe peace and repose in life to his continuous cares..." And she adds this reflection so tenderly true and so sadly human: "The loss that we feel when the old die is often considerable when we have great reasons for loving them and when we have always seen them." (September 2, 1687.) Madame de Sévigné had passed her youth at Livry near this worthy man. After the death of her husband she stayed there from choice. She lived happily there with her daughter, and the latter even returned there several times after her marriage. These memories rendered Livry still more dear to Madame de Sévigné, who, on an April day, after having heard the nightingales and contemplated the budding greenery of the park, wrote to Madame de Grignan: "It is very difficult for me to revisit this place, this garden, these alleys, this little bridge, this avenue, this meadow, this mill, this little view, this forest, without thinking of my very dear child." (April 22, 1672.) In the summer, when they put her little daughter in her care, she took her to Livry: "Presently I am going to Livry; I will take with me my little child and her nurse and all the little household...." (May 27, 1672.) She loved to receive her son at Livry. She went to Livry to care for her maladies and to follow her treatments. She also went there to pay her devotions in Holy Week: "I have made of this house a little Trappe.... I have found pleasure in the sadness which I have had here: a great solitude, a great silence, a sad office, Tenebræ intoned with devotion (I had never been at Livry in Holy Week), a canonical fast and a beauty in these gardens with which you would be charmed, all these have pleased me." (March 24, 1671.) It was her favorite place for writing, and she said that her mind and her body were there in peace. And, truly, almost all the letters which she wrote from Livry breathed joy and health. So what despair, when, at the death of the Abbé de Coulanges, she believes that she will no longer be able to return to Livry and that she must say farewell to that agreeable solitude which she loves so much! "After having wept for the Abbé," she cries, "I weep for the abbey." (November 13, 1687.) Happily the successor of the Abbé de Coulanges is Séguier de la Verrière, former bishop of Nîmes. He is a very holy prelate, and allows Madame de Sévigné liberty to go to Livry, as in the days of the "very good." But Séguier dies. New anxieties. Finally the abbey is given to Denis Sanguin, bishop of Senlis, an uncle of Louis Sanguin, Lord of Livry, friend of the Coulanges and of Madame de Sévigné. Then she writes to her daughter: "It is true that these Sanguins, this Villeneuve, the idea of the old Pavin, these old acquaintances, are so confused with our garden and our forest, that it seems to me it is the same thing, and that not only have we lent it to them, but that it is still ours by the assurance of again finding there our old furniture and the same people whom we saw there so often. Finally, my child, we were worthy of this pretty solitude by the taste which we had and which we still have for it." ***** Since we have opened the letters of Madame de Sévigné, let us continue to mark the pages in which she has spoken of Livry, and let us seek the reason for the taste for this "pretty solitude" which she showed to the end. She knew how to enjoy the days of sadness in this "solitude," for example when she had just been separated from her daughter, or when she had received some unpleasant news from Grignan. On these days she tasted the silence of the forest and of the meadow: "Here is a true place for the humor in which I am: there are hours and alleys whose holy horror is interrupted only by the love affairs of our stags, and I enjoy this solitude." (October 4, 1679.) And, a few days later: "I wish to boast of being all afternoon in this meadow talking to our cows and our sheep. I have good books and especially the little letters and Montaigne. What more is needed when I have not you?" (October 25, 1679.) But she was not the woman to content herself with the holy horror of the woods and to converse forever with the beasts of her meadow. She had a little of the turn of imagination of the good La Fontaine. But, affectionate and sociable, she also wished friends about her and loved conversation. At Livry she very often met her uncle, her cousins, the de Coulanges, her friend Corbinelli, the Abbé de Grignan and many others. She was neighborly with the families and guests of de Pomponne, de Clichy and de Chelles. Chariots brought from Paris loquacious visitors, rich in news. Walks on foot in the near-by forest were improvised. Nowhere--not even at Les Rochers, where she drew so many pleasant landscapes--did Madame de Sévigné better express the pleasure given her by the spectacles of nature. She has expressed with inimitable art the particular charm of each season in a few words, and we might, by collecting certain passages of the letters written at Livry, compose, as it were, the picturesque calendar of Madame de Sévigné. Let us try it. February: "We have passed here the three days of carnival, the sun which shone Saturday made us decide on it.... We have tempered the brilliancy of approaching Lent with the dead leaves of this forest; we have had the most beautiful weather in the world, the gardens are clean, the view beautiful, and a noise of birds which already commences to announce spring has seemed to us much more pleasant than the horrid cries of Paris...." (February 2, 1680.) April: "I departed quite early from Paris: I went to dine at Pomponne; there I found our bonhomme (Arnaud d'Andilly).... Finally, after six hours of very agreeable, though very serious conversation, I left him and came here, where I found all the triumph of the month of May. The nightingale, the cuckoo, the warbler have opened the spring in our forests. I walked there all evening quite alone." (April 29, 1671.) May: "The beauty of Livry is above everything that you have seen; the trees are more beautiful and more green; everything is full of those lovely honeysuckles. This odor has not yet sickened me; though you greatly scorn our little bushes, compared with your groves of oranges." (May 30, 1672.) July: "Ah, my very dear one, how I would wish for you such nights as we have here! What sweet and gracious air! What coolness! What tranquillity! What silence! I would like to be able to send it to you and let your north wind be confounded by it." (July 3, 1677.) August: "You well remember that beautiful evenings and full moonlight gave me a sovereign pleasure." (August 14, 1676.) November: "I have come here to finish the fine weather and bid adieu to the leaves; they are all still on the trees; they have only changed color; instead of being green, they are the color of dawn and of so many kinds of dawn that they compose a rich and magnificent cloth of gold which we wish to find more beautiful than green, even if it were only as a change (November 3, 1677.)--I leave this place with regret, my daughter: the country is still beautiful; this avenue and all that was stripped by the caterpillars and which has taken the liberty of growing out again with your permission, is greener than in the spring of the most beautiful years; the little and the great palisades are adorned with those beautiful shades of autumn by which the painters know so well how to profit; the great elms are somewhat stripped, but we do not regret these punctured leaves; the country as a whole is still all smiling..." These samples, chosen from a hundred others, show how delicate was the sentiment of nature in Madame de Sévigné. We find in her letters all the themes with which modern poets since Lamartine have experimented: the first songs of birds announcing the spring, the "triumph of May," the serenity of summer nights, the beauty of moonlight, the charm of Indian summer, the sumptuous sadness of autumn. We may say that these are the commonplaces of universal poetry. But as it was long since conceded that, except for La Fontaine, no one in the seventeenth century was sensible of the charm of landscapes, it is well to note these impressions of Madame de Sévigné. I know the reply: Madame de Sévigné is herself a second exception. Is this quite certain? Observe that Madame de Sévigné does not witness in the least that she considers it original to take a Virgilian pleasure in the song of the nightingale or even in the full moon. Her correspondents whose letters we possess, do not show any more surprise at these effusions. There is no doubt that they themselves are moved by the same emotion before the same pictures. They do not say so. Therefore, the rule is to communicate one's intimate thoughts and sentiments only with all sorts of reserves and precautions; one's "impressions" are not written down. La Fontaine scorns this rule, like all others. Madame de Sévigné does not submit to it any more than he does, because she writes only for a little group of friends, and because she abandons herself to her expansive nature in everything. But, even if not the object of literature, the love of the country was neither less lively nor less widespread in the seventeenth century than at any other period. Madame de Sévigné, then, is pleased at Livry because she is sensitive to the varied shadings of landscapes and to the changes of nature. But she has a singular preference for this bit of soil, so much so that she does not seem to feel the dampness there--which is unusual for a rheumatic--and that one day she will regret all of it, even to the rain: "How charming these rainy days are! We will never forget this little place." Perhaps the landscape of Livry, this modest and gracious landscape of the Parisis which she describes so charmingly--"this garden, these alleys, this little bridge, this avenue, this meadow, this mill, this little view, this forest"--is what accords best with her imagination. Exalted in her maternal tenderness, passionate in her friendships, Madame de Sévigné offers the contrast of ardent sensitiveness and controlled taste. Her judicious spirit shudders at excess and disorder. The humble and fine elegance of this countryside in the surroundings of Paris must have enchanted her. She loves her estate of Les Rochers greatly, but more as a proprietor proud of the improvements with which she has enriched her domain. For Livry she has a tenderness of the heart. The comparison between Livry and Grignan recurs incessantly in her letters, as we have seen. Without doubt she is thinking principally of the health of her daughter when she curses the north wind of Provence and "this sharp and frosty air which pierces the most robust." But, at the same time, how clearly we see that to the harsh and rocky sites of the Midi she prefers northern nature, more gentle, more smiling, and to "this devil of a Rhone, so proud, so haughty, so turbulent," the "beautiful Seine" whose gracious banks are "ornamented with houses, trees, little willows, little canals, which we cause to issue from this great river!" On another occasion she writes: "How excessive you are in Provence! All is extreme, your torridities, your calms, your north winds, your rains out of season, your thunders in autumn: there is nothing gentle nor temperate. Your rivers are out of their banks, your fields drowned and furrowed. Your Durance has almost always the devil in its bosom; your Isle of Brouteron very often submerged." (November 1, 1679.) In the last years of her life, she ended by pardoning Provence for its north wind and its sharp air; one winter, she will even decide that the mountains covered with snow are charming, and she will wish that a painter might reproduce these frightful beauties. And it will be not only the joy of living near her daughter which will cause her thus to abjure her tastes of aforetime, but also the softness of the sun and of the light. There are no old people who can resist this sorcery. In the last letters written to Grignan there is no longer a mention of Livry. We would like to, find today in the house and the garden of the old abbey some trace of the sojourn of Madame de Sévigné; but everything has been upset since the end of the eighteenth century. Here is the dwelling house constructed by the Abbé de Coulanges, in which Madame de Sévigné dwelt. Where was the apartment of the Marquise? In a letter of August 12, 1676, she says: "We have made a casement opening on the garden in the little cabinet, which takes away all the damp and unhealthy air which was there, and which gives us extreme pleasure; it does not make the room warm, for only the rising sun visits it for an hour or two...." The indication is precise. We are oriented, and we recognize very nearly the position of the little cabinet. But was this on the first or second floor? It is impossible to discover any indication. And we walk about soberly in the apartments, deserted since the departure of the Assumptionists: some abandoned books, collections of sermons, rest on a shelf of the library; old priests' hats lie on the floor; a béret lies on a corner of a table, a great map of Paris in the eighteenth century hangs askew upon a wall; the breeze blows through the windows whose panes are broken.... The gardens have long since given place to meadows and thickets. An old orange house with broken glass is half in ruins. The basins have disappeared. Here is, however, the canal where M. du Plessis, tutor of the children of M. de Pomponne, tried to down himself. The little bridge, near which Madame de Sévigné went to wait for her visitors or her mail, no longer exists, but the abutments mark its position, and, there also, an iron gate which assuredly dates from the time of the Abbé de Coulanges still hangs between two stone pillars. And this poor remnant of the ancient architecture is sufficient to render more lively the little picture which Madame de Sévigné has drawn in one of her letters: "I pace about the little bridge; I emerge from the 'Humor of my Daughter' and look through the 'Humor of my Mother' to see if La Beauce (one of her lackeys) does not come; and then I walk up again and return to put my nose into the end of the path which leads to the little bridge; and by dint of taking this walk, I see this dear letter come, and I receive it and read it with all the sentiments which you may imagine." (August 4, 1677.) And naturally, nothing exists of the two alleys which had been given those singular names, "under which"--the remark is by Father Mesnard, the best of the biographers of Madame de Sévigné--"one cannot fail to imagine the so different tastes of the mother and of the daughter, their so opposite characters, their occasional poutings, and their promenades separated after some quarrel, and which make us always think, the one of a beautiful smiling alley, full of light and verdure, the other of some path more cramped, more sad and more dry." In the park, if we no longer promenade under the very trees that sheltered the reveries of Madame de Sévigné, the alleys at least have remained rectilinear and still present the perspectives which were ingeniously arranged by the gardener of the Abbé de Coulanges. Finally, the "little view" which charmed Madame de Sévigné has not changed. There is always, beyond the meadows and the park, the same horizon harmoniously bounded by a swell of land covered with woods--a gracious site, ennobled by so many beautiful memories that, if we were not entirely barbarous, we would have to save it from the woodcutters and the builders. Ah! if there could only be found some friend of Madame de Sévigné to prevent them from touching the "pretty solitude!" THE END FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: Page 28. Bossuet by Rebelliau, in the series "Grands Écrivains français."] [Footnote 2: Page 42. Le Naturaliste Bosc. Un Girondin herborisant, by Auguste Rey.--Versailles, published by Bernard.] [Footnote 3: Page 45. Mémoires de Larêveillière-Lêpeaux.] [Footnote 4: Page 53. Mémoires de Larêveillière-Lêpeaux, Vol. I, page 167.] [Footnote 5: Page 61. I owe this quotation to the excellent work of Canon Müller: Senlis et ses environs. Why can we not have a book written with such knowledge and skill about every city of France!] [Footnote 6: Page 82. Sainte-Beuve] Port-Royal, Vol. Ill, pages 510-512.] [Footnote 7: Page 82. The historian of Juilly is M. Charles Hamel. His book (Paris, Gervais, 1888) is a moving and very vivid picture of the college during its three centuries of existence.] [Footnote 8: Page 83. L'Oratoire de France, by Cardinal Perraud.] [Footnote 9: Page 88: Published in four volumes by Dufey, Paris, 1833.] [Footnote 10: Page 101. In regard to the history of the Oratory in the nineteenth century we may profitably read the work in which Father Chauvin has preserved the life and work of Father Gratry.] [Footnote 11: Page 105. The Louvre has just bought an Egyptian stele for a hundred and three thousand francs, and the Château de Maisons going to be demolished.] [Footnote 12: Page 113. We may remark that the Château de Maisons was later purchased by the State while M. Henri Marcel was Director of Fine Arts.] [Footnote 13: Page 130. It must be understood that this impression does not correspond to archaeological facts.] [Footnote 14: Page 136. The most important document about Thomas of Gallardon is the medical report, addressed to the Ministry of Police, by Doctors Pinel and Royer-Collard, in 1816. I owe to the courtesy of M. Gazier the opportunity of seeing a copy of this report. At the same time, this learned professor of the Sorbonne has been kind enough to place at my disposal a mass of pamphlets and manuscripts, some of which are unpublished, in regard to the seer of Gallardon: I have made use of these various documents in preparing this little essay.--In 1892, Captain Marin published an interesting book: Thomas Martin de Gallardon (published by Carré of Paris), in which he studied numerous articles which appeared during the Restoration, and reproduced the report of the doctors from a copy in the possession of M. Anatole France. We may add that the latter wrote a charming article in review of Captain Marin's book (Temps, March 13, 1892).] [Footnote 15: Page 165. The most extraordinary thing was that ingenious Legitimists later found a way to give credence to the prophecies of Martin of Gallardon without ceasing to be faithful to the Count de Chambord. In 1871, thirty-seven years after Martin's death, an anonymous author (the question of Louis XVII has been handled by a number of anonymous writers) relates a conversation which M. Hersent, a Lazarist, had with the visionary in 1830. The latter then announced that the crown of France would return to its true heir. "But," said the curious Lazarist, "how will he ascend to the throne?" "Monsieur, he will ascend to the throne over corpses!" "Who will lead him to us?" "The troops of the north." "How long will he reign?" "Not very long; he will leave the crown to a prince of his race." "And when will all this happen?" "When France shall have been sufficiently punished for the death of his father." Now see the conclusion of the anonymous writer of 1871: "Henri V has indeed said lately, in a letter which has been universally judged to be of very great importance: 'I am the heir'; but he has not said: 'I am the immediate heir' If Louis XVII exists, his proposition is true; he is the heir, after the immediate heir, since, according to Martin, this true heir, who must come in an extraordinary manner, led by troops from the north, who have already frightfully punished France, is to reign only a very short time, and leave the crown to a prince of his race, who can only be Henri V." (Grave question.--Louis XVII est-il bien mort?--Roanne, 1871.) Credulous persons are full of subtlety.] [Footnote 16: Page 167. Figaro, August 8,1904.] [Footnote 17: Page 172. In regard to these charities consult the work of Émile Rousse: La Roche-Guyon: Châtelains, Château et Bourg (Hachette et Cie., 1892). This book,--much more vivid and captivating than this kind of local monographs generally are,--contains a very accurate and very complete history of La Roche-Guyon. I have used it extensively.] [Footnote 18: Page 176. Chronique de Sabit-Denis.] [Footnote 19: Page 191. Instead of to give it would be better to write here arc en tiers-point, so as not to annoy the archaeologists. But all my readers are not archaeologists and would not be interested in the fine distinctions among pointed arches.] [Footnote 20: Page 194. This history is a reprint from the Mémoires du Comité archéologique de Noyon (Vol. XVII); it is adorned with numerous illustrations which show different aspects of the cathedral.--The members of a recent Congress of the French Society of Archaeology met at Novon. The Guide published for members of the Congress contains short and precise notes upon the different monuments which were visited. That which relates to the Cathedral of Noyon was written by the Director of the Society, M. Eugène Lefèvre-Pontalis.] [Footnote 21: Page 201. The stone is broken at the end of the seventh line.] [Footnote 22: Page 206. I have taken these dates and some other facts from an article by M. Fernand Blanchard, Secretary of the Archaeological, Historical and Scientific Society of Soissons (1905). This pamphlet contains a very clear summary of the history of the monument and an excellent description of the ruins.] [Footnote 23: Page 213. These ingenious remarks on the flora of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes were made by M. Fernand Blanchard (Joe. cit).] [Footnote 24: Page 217. Nothing has been done since 1905 in the way of freeing from military authority the refectory of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes.] [Footnote 25: Page 220. The history of Madame de Monaco has been pleasingly told by Marquis Pierre de Ségur, in a study which forms the second part of the book entitled La Dernière des Condé. I have borrowed from this work many details regarding Betz which the Marquis de Ségur has extracted from the archives of Beauvais.] [Footnote 26: Page 243. Musées et Monuments de France, 1906, No. 10.] [Footnote 27: Page 244. The architect of the Temple of Friendship was called Le Roy; this is the name which is signed to the memorandum of the sums paid to the sculptor Dejoux for the casting of the group by Pigalle,--a memorandum which has been published by M. Rocheblave.] [Footnote 28: Page 249. Since these lines were written the Archaeological Committee of Senilis has published a work on the gardens of Betz by M. Gustav Macon. The gifted curator of the Musée Condé reproduces in this a very complete description of the gardens of the Princess of Monaco which must have been drawn up in the last half of 1792 or the first half of 1793. Its author is unknown. According to M. Macon, he was perhaps one of the writers who collaborated at that time in the preparation of Le Voyage 'pittoresque de la France' we might also think of Mérigot, who had just described the gardens of Chantilly so attractively. To this unpublished description M. Macon has added a series of notes in which he has collected all the information which he has found in the works of other historians or which he has himself discovered in regard to the artists who collaborated in the adornment of the domain of Betz. In short, he has exhausted the subject.] [Footnote 29: Page 266. The transformations of Chantilly have been studied and described by M. G. Macon Revue de l'art ancien et moderne, April, 1898.] [Footnote 30: Page 293. I have profitably consulted Livry et son abbaye, by Abbé A. E. Genty (1898).] 
47213	----	BY THE SAME AUTHOR. THREE GREEK TALES. 16mo, pp. 173. Price, $1. THE GEO. M. ALLEN COMPANY. PRESS COMMENTS. REVIEW OF REVIEWS. The three tales which compose this little volume have been previously published in the _Hartford Post_. "The author frankly acknowledges himself a disciple of the romantic school," and his stories have the dreamy, remote atmosphere which he has aimed to produce. There is much beauty in these pale, pathetic creations and they have doubtless a certain affinity with the scenery of Greece, as Mr. Dodge suggests. It is the present day Greece of a modern man's imagination, however, and we must not take the title "Greek Tale," as at all applicable to the stories in the classical sense. They might in some truth be compared in style with Mr. Winter's poems. NEW YORK COMMERCIAL ADVERTISER. * * * They are, all three, quiet, unpretentious, gracefully told stories that almost all classes of readers will enjoy. NEW YORK RECORDER. * * * In method and scene alike the book is a pleasing variation from the conventional. TOWN TOPICS. There is a charm in Walter Phelps Dodge's "Three Greek Tales" wholly in keeping with the classic scenery in which they are laid and the classical associations it suggests. Of those fair isles, dear alike to the artist and the _littérateur_, story and picture each take on qualities borrowed from its rival, and these tales of modern Greek life are enjoyable largely for their picturesque setting. NEW YORK TELEGRAM. * * * A young author could hardly have a more auspicious introduction to the public than this small volume gives. If there is no realism or pretence to analysis of character, there is something far better and rarer, in these days of over-stuffed and over-seasoned "roast and boiled"--there are characters that stand out and that live and breathe by reason of a few fine outlines of suggestiveness. NEW YORK WORLD. * * * Love stories, all of them, well told in the main. AS THE CROW FLIES FROM CORSICA TO CHARING CROSS BY WALTER PHELPS DODGE AUTHOR OF "THREE GREEK TALES" [Illustration] NEW YORK GEO. M. ALLEN COMPANY 1893 COPYRIGHT, 1893 GEO. M. ALLEN COMPANY NEW YORK THE ALLEY-ALLEN PRESS, NEW YORK TO MY FATHER D. STUART DODGE _Acknowledgment is made to the Editors of the_ HARTFORD POST _and the_ HARTFORD COURANT; _in whose papers these letters first appeared_ INDEX PAGE INTRODUCTION 7 A GLIMPSE OF CORSICA 9 ALONG THE RIVIERA 17 SAN REMO 29 THE CITY OF PALACES 40 THE NAPOLEONIC LEGEND 49 A DEVONSHIRE MARKET TOWN 62 OXFORD 68 THE ENGLISH LITTORAL 76 A DAY AT WINDSOR 81 SCARBOROUGH 89 CLIMBING IN LAKELAND 94 WINDERMERE 105 SANDRINGHAM HOUSE 112 THE LATTER-DAY JACOBITES 122 [Illustration] INTRODUCTION IN Summer, particularly in travelling, one is very apt to prefer a simple glass of ice-cold lemonade--not too sweet,--to a bumper of burgundy or a tankard of ale; and it has been the author's experience that the mental processes are not unlikely to follow the example of the physical, in this particular. For this reason he is encouraged to submit these slight sketches of divers persons and places to an indulgent public. He may say that the sketch entitled "Sandringham House" has been submitted to the highest authority, and that its substance is approved by the Personage with whom it is chiefly concerned. W. P. D. NEW YORK, April 1st, 1893. [Illustration] As the Crow Flies. A GLIMPSE OF CORSICA. BASTIA.--Nice is too attractive to leave without regret at any time, and we felt particularly sorry for ourselves one evening towards six o'clock when we saw the disreputable little tub of a steamer that was to take us over to Corsica; and as we penetrated the odourous mysteries of the cabin we devoutly hoped that we might see Bastia in the morning without foundering, for the berths were suspiciously like the long, narrow coffin shelves in family vaults and had been built apparently for children, so cribbed, cabined and confined were their proportions. We said little as we put away our portmanteaux and cameras and took our rugs from the strap, but our looks spoke volumes and we were careful to sprinkle plenty of Keating's powder about the place. A fine, drizzling rain soon began and we were compelled, much to our disgust, to leave the comparatively unobjectionable deck where sturdy, bare-legged sailor boys were shouting and singing and throwing ropes and chains about to no apparent end. As soon as we had reached the depths of the noisome little cabin, dinner was served, and oh, the mockery of that dinner! Everything was scented with garlic, and when the flavour of that questionable delicacy was absent it was replaced by the taste of rancid oil. We did not sit the meal out, and although it was barely nine o'clock, threw ourselves on our shelves to try and forget the too perceptible motion as the little boat quitted the sheltering harbour of Nice. Although the sea was calm enough, the small size of the boat unconsciously suggested the idea of a rough sea. Our sleep was more or less broken--generally more, and at six we were awakened by a fiendish blast of the whistle which was near our berths, to an overpowering sense of certain strange and gruesome odours. The cabin had been hermetically closed on account of the rain, and on the floor about the tables were stretched in various attitudes of _abandon_ several human forms, who proceeded to rise and shake themselves. It is needless to say we had thrown ourselves down fully dressed, and we made a sudden rush for the companion way, for if ever there was an odour that could be cut it was the one in the tightly closed little cabin of that dirty little steamer off Bastia in the rainy, chill darkness of that December morning. A hasty fee to the steward--and the next moment saw us on the quay at Bastia, holding fast to our valises, threatened by a ragged mob of urchins who would have had but little respect for the doctrine of meum and tuum. We scrambled into a musty, damp hotel 'bus and, half asleep still, were rattled over the badly-paved streets to our hotel. And what a hotel! We were received in a mouldy courtyard by an antiquated porter in undress uniform, with a farthing tallow dip, who gruffly informed us that we could get no coffee for two hours and who then ushered us upstairs to the grimy little room reserved for us. I don't know yet how high the hotel was, but it seemed as if we were never to reach the top as we struggled after that wavering candle. No wonder tourists who think nothing of a run to Colombo or Aden or a trip to New Zealand shudder at the thought of doing Corsica or Sardinia, for anything more uncivilized than the ways of getting there I have never seen. The time passed drearily on as we waited in the cold, stone-floored room, but eight o'clock finally came and we hurried down eager for coffee and eggs. The dining room was _sui generis_ and the cloth and napkins were not above reproach, but we managed to make out a fair meal with the exception of the bread, which was hard and sour; and then sallied out to do the town. Bastia is rather a decent town to the view and the architecture is solid and not altogether in the flimsy stucco of Italy. There are no handsome public buildings, except the theatre, which is built on the lines of an old Greek temple. In the square on the water front, where the raw recruits are drilled, is a huge statue of the first Napoleon in the toga and laurel wreath of a Roman Consul. It is of heroic size and dazzlingly white and seems to dominate everything in its immediate neighbourhood. Of course the Corsicans are inordinately proud of Napoleon, and one cannot converse for five minutes with an ordinary inhabitant without his remarking nonchalantly that Corsica has produced the greatest military genius of the world. The islanders are a curious cross between the French and Italian types, perhaps inclining more to the latter. The language is a _patois_ of French and Italian, with a few Spanish words, and is hard to comprehend, but anyone understanding good Italian can easily manage. It is really yet a question to what country Corsica should strictly belong, for it has tasted the rule of many nations. It knew the yoke of both the Roman and Byzantine Empires, and belonged in turn to the Republics of Genoa and Pisa in the middle ages; when the short-lived King Theodore raised the standard of revolt, too soon lowered. Then the patriot, Pasquale Paoli, ruled the island from 1755 to 1769, when the Genoese transferred their claim to the island to France, which has since annexed it. It is absurd to say that Vendetta has died out, for it is still popular in the island to an almost incredible extent, and anyone refusing to continue a blood feud when his plain duty would be to avenge his ancestor would soon have the Rimbecco sung under his windows. A thirst for blood seems ingrained in the Corsican nature, and few families in either the upper or lower classes of the island are without their hereditary feud. This custom is said to be worse now than under the Second Empire, and is particularly prevalent round about Corte. It originated when the Genoese ruled the island and male members were obliged to take the honour of their family into their own keeping. There are several strict laws in existence enacted against this barbarous practice, but they have fallen into disuse and are unregarded. I have several times been asked what the principal industry of Bastia was. The only answer that occurs to me is to say stilettoes, for really all the shops seem to have inexhaustible supplies of this keen, murderous little blade. Not only are they sold in the guise of weapons, but as charms, as brooches, as sleeve buttons, as scarf pins--in coral, lava, gold, silver and brass. Even the pawnbrokers display second-hand stilettoes in their windows, several of them covered with a rust that has been blood. To a stranger, all this gives Bastia a savage air, and when he thinks of the hotels and the food he is apt to start for the station or the dock. But Vendetta is confined strictly to local affairs, and it is very rare to find a case where strangers have been brought into family feuds. The literature of Vendetta is rich. The famous "Corsican Brothers," "Mr. Barnes of New York," Marie Corelli's "Vendetta," and Prosper Merrimée's delightful "Colomba" all dwell on the subject. But besides Vendetta, which exists only in this island; Corsica shares with Sardinia the honour of being the only place in Europe where the moufflon is now found, and so attracts numbers of English sportsmen, who, however, land usually at Ajaccio. Few tourists reach Bastia. Ajaccio is a sort of health resort, modeled after the places on the Riviera and is only a second-rate imitation at best; but Bastia is a quiet, semi-commercial little town, on the sea, with huge mountains at its back, and content to dream away its time in ignorant obscurity. All traces of the old island costumes have disappeared and one does not know whether to be amused or sad at the pathetic attempt to imitate French fashions. The older streets in Bastia are curious. They differ from those of most old Italian towns in being paved with large, flat stones and are kept scrupulously clean, showing their French origin. The old citadel, built in 1383, is worth a visit for the sake of its curious walls. In poking about among the old curiosity shops I unearthed a valuable souvenir. It was an old bronze medal, bearing on one side "Louis Napoleon Bonaparte," with his portrait, and on the other "Pour Valeur." It had evidently been given as a reward of valor by Napoleon III. in the eventful two years when he was Prince-President, before the _coup d'état_, and I have since ascertained its rarity. A drive in the country about Bastia shows a landscape rich in hills and pines, but in nothing else. A diligent search among the grocers' shops finally unearthed a tin of "picnic tongue," and we feasted on that and on some Albert biscuits to save ourselves a return to the too odourous hotel dining room. We did not regret sailing for Sardinia that night, as we hoped to find there what we had missed in Corsica--clean beds and decent food. [Illustration] [Illustration] ALONG THE RIVIERA. CANNES.--Any one with a liking for titles, that is, English titles, which are the only ones worth having, is sure to be gratified at Cannes. For Cannes is like Bournemouth, select and expensive. At the _Prince de Galles_ Hotel in Cannes the other day, when the register was brought to me to sign, I noticed that for five pages mine was the only name of a commoner. Earls were as thick as blackberries and there were Viscounts galore. This explains why so few, comparatively, are met with at the other Riviera resorts. Cannes is _par excellence_ an English resort, and woe betide the _bourgeois_ Frenchman or spectacled German who innocently happens upon one of its mammoth hotels; and many are the shivers that shake his _Jäger_-clothed frame at the numerous open windows and delightful draughts of fresh air that are so home-like to an Englishman or a civilized American. Like Bournemouth, Cannes is rich in pines and poor in shops and cabs. But here every one brings their own turn-out, and few teams are to be seen without both footman and coachman in some well-known London livery. For amusements Cannes is a poor place, that is, for theatres; but there is plenty of tennis, which one may, if properly introduced, play with Russian Grand-Duchesses or Austrian Archdukes; and the Grand Duke Michael is working up some excitement over golf links. He did me the honour to ask for my subscription, but as I am not in Cannes _en permanence_ I was not obliged to subscribe. One can go to twenty teas in an afternoon, if one is so disposed, and "_pique-niques_," dances and dinners are almost too numerous to count. At Rumpelmayer's the "_Hig-lif_" of Cannes, as the French call it, is to be met between five and six o'clock, when most of the _habitués_ of Rotten Row happen in for a cup of the delicious chocolate tempered with whipped cream of which Rumpelmayer makes a specialty. All the villa owners at Cannes (for there are very few villas rented here; if one wants a house in Cannes one must build it) send to Regent Street for whatever they want, consequently no shops at Cannes but those making a specialty of kitchen necessaries or provisions have any _raison d'être_ and they are not missed. Most of the hotels have good libraries, and one can lounge away days in the palm-shaded garden, watching the sunshine dance and sparkle upon the rich blue sea. There is a restful feeling about Cannes, an aristocratic repose and seclusion not shared by any of the other resorts on the coast, except, perhaps, in a modified degree, by San Remo; and physicians say the air here is not so stimulating as at Nice and Mentone. Of course, it is not so stimulating as at Monte Carlo, either, but that is for a different reason! No one can get a footing at Cannes unless their social record is unassailable, and as it costs a small fortune to live here for even a week, objectionable people are kept away, and one does not meet the cockney Londoner who drops his h's promiscuously or the shoddy American who speaks with a twang and is always looking for a spittoon. Even the cooking is English at Cannes, and cold "ros-bif" and pickles with a tankard of ale and a bit of apple tart (than which there is no more palatable luncheon) often forms the meal of some hearty party of Britons. One leaves Cannes with regret; and a sigh for its quiet pleasures as one is whirled into the noisy, huge station at Nice. One finds here a very different atmosphere. All is gaiety, noise and bustle. Splendid shops thrust their wonderfully arranged windows upon one's notice. Redfern's name appears in gilt with the Prince of Wales' plumes above it, and many names familiar to frequenters of the Paris jewellers' shops are met with. Strolling along the Quai Masséna one could spend hours simply looking in the shop windows at pearl pins marked at £1,000, or at some little pink emerald worth a fortune simply because it does not happen to be green. And the famous Galignani library is not to be ignored, with its fascinating display of all the latest London books and the Christmas numbers of the English papers with their half-hidden pictures of Santa Claus; nor the huge Casino and Winter Garden where one pays two francs for a ticket of admission, good for the whole day, where reading-rooms and the latest telegrams of Reuter's Agency tempt one to settle down for several hours. There, in the domed central garden, among hundreds of palms and tropical plants, one can listen to a capital band while having an ice from the Nice Bignon's. There, too, one may see a good exhibition of marionettes, a sort of glorified Punch and Judy show, where all the gilded infancy of Nice congregates to enjoy the fun. And one can waste hours over the _petits chevaux_; where, on a huge, green-clothed table, six small horses are wound up, and race around a circle, bets being made upon the colour and number of the winner. In the height of the season the management is said to make 3,000 francs per day out of this simple amusement. At the far end of this pleasant Jardin d'Hiver is the entrance to the small play-house connected with it; but the companies who perform here are not above reproach; except during Carnival, when no expense is spared to secure the best talent, and the Paris play-houses are called upon to contribute their best actors for the edification of the visitors. A stroll among the Nice shops in the evening is delightful, in the warm balmy air, with the moonlight over all and the echo of some mandolin concert in the distance. One can listen to street musicians in this sunny land without any fear of hearing "Comrades" or "Ask a P'leeceman," and may even reasonably expect something decent in the way of selections from "Carmen" or "Dinorah," both of which are prime favorites among the lower classes. Nice has long had a municipal theatre, but this is not well supported, and the most flourishing establishment of this sort in the town is a huge music hall or _café concert_, which does a roaring business. Sweet-shops abound in Nice and are a never-ending surprise to English folk, who very sensibly put them down to the increasing number of Americans who come here. A huge Casino has just been built on the end of a long pier stretching out into the sea, and they tell an amusing tale of the way in which the gambling privilege was secured. An unsuccessful appeal had been made to the Mayor, M. Henry, and the speculators were in despair until it suddenly occurred to them that their establishment was not on land, but at sea, and so they appealed to the Minister of Marine at Paris with better success. Charming drives abound in every direction around Nice, and coaches go over to Monte Carlo every few hours. There is but one drawback to Nice as a place of residence--the increased number of the descendants of Israel who are making it a seaside synagogue. Fashion has deserted it for Cannes, but it will always be the favoured resort of the gay and the bored--those who do not care for society, and for whom society does not care. The change to the small station of Monte Carlo and the gaudily-ornamented lift that slowly rises to the bluff above is marked. For pure luxury and the highest degree of comfort Monte Carlo ranks next to Paris. Take the Hôtel de Paris, next the Casino, for instance, an establishment owned and conducted by the Casino company. Soft velvet carpets into which one's foot sinks, Wedgwood toilet sets, and easy chairs that would not look out of place in Belgravia, are the distinguishing characteristics of the bedrooms; and there is not a gas lamp in the place; hundreds of little wax candles, each shaded by a deep red shade, give light; and when one is enjoying the cooking, which is a dream in itself, and drinking in all the beauty and elegance, it is hard to remember that one is in what has been called the most wicked place on earth. The Bishop of Gibraltar considers it so abandoned, in fact, that he has refused to license a Chaplain or consecrate a Church--queer logic on His Lordship's part, who seems to go on the principle that the worse the place the less necessity for a Church. And yet the villa holders of Monte Carlo form a very respectable class. The late Mr. Junius Morgan had a villa here and many other well-known names might be cited. The place is charmingly small and centres round about the immense and beautiful Casino. Ask the inhabitants of the Principality of Monaco what they think of the Casino and the gambling company. They will reply that it is an unmixed blessing. For the company pays the taxes of the little realm, keeps all the roads and public works in good repair; and poverty is almost unknown. The inhabitants are allowed to enter the gambling rooms but one day in the year--on the fête day of the Prince of Monaco. Strangers gain admission to the rooms by presentation of their visiting cards, and without them are not allowed entrance. A droll tale is told of the application of this rule to the Marquis of Salisbury. He was going to the rooms with a party and not having any visiting card with him was stopped by the gigantic doorkeeper. He was somewhat angry at this and drew himself up, saying, in very English French: "_Mais j'ai ne pas besoin d'une carte de visite. Je suis le Marquis de Salisbury, Premier d'Angleterre._" But the doorkeeper still refused and would not let him in. He afterwards explained his incredulity by saying to a friend: "How could I believe he was Milord Salisbury and the Prime Minister of England? He wore a tweed suit and had his trousers turned up." This brother evidently derived his idea of the appearance of a Marquis from the Italian article of that name, which is usually greasy, and fearfully and wonderfully attired. The Casino at Monte Carlo and its tables have been often described; but the crowds that linger three deep about the green cloth are always fascinating to watch. _Grande dames_ and _cocottes_ elbow each other, and English statesmen rub shoulders with Parisian blacklegs. The day I was there I saw the Duc de Dino (who married Mrs. Stevens, of New York,) philosophically drop £2,000, and stand it better than a young man who lost five francs at roulette. But the saddest thing of all was to see young girls of eighteen or twenty (the rule is not to admit anyone under twenty-one, but of course the officials are often hoodwinked) with "systems," pressing close to the table and pricking number after number on their cards as they eagerly follow a run on the red or the black. These people are always sure they will some day break the bank, and linger on from day to day and from week to week leaving whole fortunes in the maw of the remorseless "Administration." Each additional week seems to add to the strained, eager look in their eyes, the drawn, pinched look about the mouth, and the tell-tale wrinkles about the temples that proclaim an habitual gambler. The _croupiers_, too, are curious studies, as they whirl the ball or deal the cards that mean so much to the eager crowd; cool, calm, impassive, there is something devilish about the monotonous way in which they call "_Faites vos jeux, Messieurs_," or "_Le jeu est fait. Rien ne va plus._" Some of them, it is easy to see, have come down in the world; and one man was shown to me who had filled a high position in a crack British regiment, before he had been detected cheating at cards and had been ruined for life. I may not give his name or all the facts in the case, but it bore a striking resemblance to Sir William Gordon-Cummings' "accident." There is a peculiar class of harpies in the Casino, but very well dressed harpies, who make their living by "living up" to the table, so to speak, and grabbing the winnings of the lucky but slow players. Enormous sums are lost in this way by careless winners, for the ball (in roulette) rolls so quickly around, and the _croupiers_ toss the gold so quickly in the general direction of the winners, that a very quick eye is needed to spy one's property. The "_Série Noir_" has already begun at Monte Carlo, and two suicides have occurred. Of course the "Administration" policy is to hush up these little matters, and whenever a dead body is found in the lonely gardens surrounding the Casino (about one a fortnight is the average during the season) its pockets are pretty sure to be filled with gold and notes, placed there by the wily detectives of the Casino, to show that the poor man could not have shot himself on account of his losses at play. And rumour says that they have an admirably prompt way of getting rid of the bodies of those who are thoughtless enough to commit suicide on the company's grounds without noise or scandal. An eye witness told me the following tale of a tragedy in the rooms last year, which he vouches for: about ten o'clock at night, when everything was in full swing and the rooms were crowded with well-dressed people (no shabby-looking character is ever admitted; and the devil in this case is certainly "in society"), a shot was suddenly heard, and a handsome young fellow, pale as death, staggered from the _Trente et Quarante_ table with his hand to his bleeding side. He fell with a crash, and at once, like lightning, a crowd of the Casino detectives had closed around him, opened a window overlooking the sea, and thrown him out upon the rocks below. So quickly did this take place that not six people saw it, and the people who inquired about the disturbance were told that a lady had fainted from the heat and from the explosion in a gas pipe. The next morning the dead body of the young man was found on the rocks, with his pockets filled with gold and no trace of a wound about him. Lovely Monte Carlo! It is like a decayed lady-apple--lovely to look on, but rotten at the core. [Illustration] [Illustration] SAN REMO. SAN REMO.--There is a certain apparent similarity between Bournemouth and San Remo. Both are "winter resorts" and both are popular with invalids. But this similarity is only apparent. Frost and snow were rife at Bournemouth a month ago. Sunshine and ripe oranges on the trees are _en evidence_ at San Remo now. One shudders here, to think of Bournemouth in winter, just as in Bournemouth the idea of the Lake District out of summer was repelling. The climate of the Riviera is not perfect, by any means, but unless one goes to Honolulu or to "the Cape," it is hard to do better for the winter. And yet it is not a tropical climate--or even sub-tropical, simply one with a more or less genial warmth in the winter time. San Remo is not so "mixed" in its society as Nice, so renowned for suicides as Monte Carlo, or so vault-like as Mentone. Cannes is the only place on the coast that approaches San Remo (and, indeed, outdoes it, so far as exclusiveness in the "English Colony," which includes the small American contingent, goes); but Cannes is really a slice cut out of Belgravia and set down by the Mediterranean, and one may be in the height of the London Season all winter there. Cannes is popularly referred to as the "Dukeries," on account of the number of English Dukes spending the winter there. But to a person liking society in moderation with a few good dances sprinkled in during the winter and a fair amount of tennis, San Remo is an ideal place. Knickerbockers and cricketing flannels are frequently seen, and there is none of that striving after effect so much found at Cannes, where top hats and frock coats are _de rigeur_ most of the time. San Remo is near the French frontier and so, of course, is a queer mixture of French and Italian village life (for it has only seventeen thousand inhabitants). It is thirty-six hours from London and easily reached either by the P. L. and M. Railway, by way of Lyons and Marseilles, or by Milan and Geneva, via the Mont-Cenis tunnel. The old town, or _Citta Vecchia_, is built on a hill away from the sea, and the steep streets are crowded together pell-mell on the nearly perpendicular hillside. Bradshaw's Guide refers to them as "steep, mediæval streets"; but, although I admit the steepness, I have never discovered the mediævalism--unless the abundant dirt and endless supply of unsavoury smells may be taken to represent it. Of course, the dark, narrow lanes are garlic-haunted, and that reminds me of a story I heard here. At the old Cathedral, an English priest was talking to an Italian peasant woman about the next world. She was giving her ideas on the subject and ended up a glowing rhapsody in this way: "And, oh, our Holy Father, the Pope, will be there on a great golden throne, smiling at the faithful; with big bunches of our angelic garlic under his chair to give to each of his flock as St. Peter brings them to him." If that idea of Paradise were presented to many good Christians, I fear their faith might be shaken, for of all the sickening, clinging odours, a whiff of garlic-scented air is the worst. This old town is nearly devoid of interest. There are even no curio shops, and after one walk the average English tourist comes back to his hotel to "take a tub," and leaves its mysteries undisturbed in future. To any one, however, brave enough to pick his way through the overhanging alleys and dark streets, up to the very top of the hill, an old church presents itself, the "Madonna della Costa," where there is a wonderful picture of the Virgin which is supposed to be a certain cure for leprosy. (The method of applying the cure is an unsolved mystery.) Most people here go to Mentone to get gloves and stockings, and smuggle them back over the frontier to avoid paying the absurd prices asked in San Remo. The new town is built at the foot of the hill and consists of two streets, with a few good shops, where the tradesmen speak bad French and charge enormous prices for the necessaries of life. On each side of this new town stretch the English and German colonies, the English settling at the west end and the Teutons preferring the east. Ever since the Emperor Frederick lived in a villa here the east end has been a resort for patriotic Germans who want the warm breezes of the Riviera, but do not care to enjoy them on French territory. It is not the most pleasant part of the town, and English and Americans are very chary of settling there, as the more aristocratic west end turns the cold shoulder to the unfortunate villa holders and dwellers in hotels and _pensions_ at the east end, and has a tendency to consider them doubtful or _déclassé_. The west end has all the best hotels and _pensions_ as well as villas scattered along the pretty Promenade overlooking the sea and bordered with wide-branching date palms. The Promenade ends in lovely gardens, and both Promenade and gardens are called after the late Empress of Russia, who spent a winter here early in the seventies. The Promenade is used as a scene for "church parade" after service on Sunday mornings by the English colony, and every afternoon, from four onward, one may meet the world and his wife there. The municipal band plays twice a week in the public gardens, but the performance--a rather poor one--is attended mainly by Italians. The language of San Remo is a curious _patois_ made up of Ligurian Italian--very different to the pure _Lingua Toscana_ of Florence, and the bastard French heard in Nice and Cannes. Five days in every week are bright and sunny, one of the remaining two is usually cloudy and the other rainy. The average temperature is fifty-two degrees in winter. The winds are hardly ever troublesome, as the high chain of hills behind the town act as a natural barrier. Among the many bad shops there is one really good one: Squire's, the English chemist's, who dubs himself (but by real Letters Patent) "Court Chemist to the late German Emperor and to H. R. H. the Prince of Wales." When the late Emperor Frederick was ill here in '88 at his villa and all his affairs and correspondence were in confusion, his much-loved wife, the popular Empress Victoria (who looks so much like her mother, the Queen of England) used to have all her English letters sent to the villa enclosed in this chemist's prescription envelopes, to keep them safe from Bismarck's spies; for the relations, never very cordial, between the grim Chancellor and the Illustrious Lady were then at a dangerous tension and the friends of the Empress claimed that he did not scruple to confiscate her private letters from the English Court when he could get hold of them. The young Princesses were very fond of taking long walks in the endless olive groves about San Remo, and sketching the town from either of the two high rocks that shut in the bay on each side. A pretty peasant girl in a small fruit shop near the Emperor's villa made a small fortune by selling mouldy pears and sour oranges to enthusiastic British tourists who thronged the shop, because the Empress Victoria had made a lovely study of her in oils, which has appeared in a London exhibition. Another permanent memorial of the visit of the Royal Family to San Remo is the constant appearance of the highly-gilt arms of the Hohenzollerns over most of the shops in the new town, which, one and all, describe themselves as "Court Grocer to the Emperor Frederick"; "Court Bootmaker to the Imperial Family," when possibly the _chef_ may have bought some candles from the one and the Emperor's valet may have been measured for a pair of boots at the other. I have even seen the advertising card of one "Guiseppa Candia, Court Laundress to the German Empress." The English set in San Remo is charming and very hospitable when one comes with letters of introduction. The leading English physician, Dr. Freeman, and his wife are always ready to extend the courtesies of the place to fresh arrivals; and any visitor at the English Club will easily recall the jovial person of Mr. Benecke. But when one comes without letters or other credentials, the English colony can be very freezing; as a third-rate American author found some years since, when, with his wife, he tried to take the town by storm. The country round about San Remo is full of pleasant walks. Ospedaletti is only two miles away, and one may take a charming walk there and back in the afternoon. It is an interesting place, albeit a dreary one, for it is the monument of a great failure. Some years ago a great International Company bought up all the land along the lovely bay, built splendid hotels and shops, made good roads and put up the magnificent Casino still to be seen there. The shares were at a high premium and every one was sure the company would make a huge fortune, and so it would if it had not neglected the trifling formality of obtaining the consent of King Humbert to the establishment of a large gambling hell in his dominions. The result was that he stepped in at the last minute and intimated that while he had no objections to a Casino, he was not prepared to allow games of chance. Of course, this ruined not only the company, but the place, for Ospedaletti's only _raison d'être_ was in the Casino, and the Casino's in the roulette table. The hotels and shops are all closed now and the beautiful building is gradually falling to pieces from decay. The roads are all overgrown, and a few poor Italian families are the only representatives of the gay world that was to make Ospedaletti a successful rival of Monte Carlo. Then, beyond, is the town of Bordighera, an Anglo-Italian resort nearer the frontier and especially loved by consumptives. George McDonald, the Scotch author, has a beautiful house there and his daughters are famous in the tennis courts along the Riviera. Bordighera is a garden of palms and supplies all the churches of Rome on Palm Sunday. A more interesting walk from San Remo is to take the Corniche road as far as the Pietra Lunga on the east side of San Remo, and then to strike inland through the olive groves until one finds the dreary village of Bussana, a place totally destroyed by the earthquake of 1886. The ruins of the quaint old church are still shown (with the inevitable monogram of the Virgin on everything), where a service was being held when the first shock came on that eventful Sunday. The peasants say there are still bodies hidden under the massive masonry and swear that the place is haunted. This was the earthquake that startled Cannes early on the same morning, when walls were falling and people flying from the hotels and houses in various stages of undress. The Prince of Wales was there then on his yearly visit to the Riviera, and one of his valets rushed in to call him at five o'clock for the hotel walls had fallen at the back, and there was danger that the others might go. But the Prince only scolded the valet sleepily for waking him and refused to get up in spite of the man's entreaties, finally turning over and going to sleep again amid the noise of falling chimneys and crashing walls. It is needless to say that H. R. H. was not injured and that the other walls did not fall. The local government of San Remo is vested in the Syndic, the jovial _Cavvaliere_ Bartolomeo Aquasciati, who is practically elected for life and who has an almost despotic authority over the civil affairs of the town; while the _Sous Prefect_ is at the head of the police and ranks above the Colonel of the regiment of Bersaglieri (or sharpshooters) now here. San Remo is particularly suited, on account of its peculiarly antiseptic climate, to persons troubled with throat complaints, and several really wonderful cures have been wrought by its balmy air. Living is much cheaper than in Cannes, Nice or Mentone; there is capital medical advice available, and very pleasant society. The old rhyme that applies to Zante: "Zante, Zante, Fior di Levante," might be paraphrased to suit San Remo, for it is certainly the _fine fleur_ of the Riviera. [Illustration] [Illustration] THE CITY OF PALACES. GENOA.--Streets of palaces, dingy and dirty with the mould of ages, but with interiors adorned with all the lavish luxury of the East, such is Genoa to the cursory view. The tourist, rushing through the Cathedral and the Cemetery, his Murray in hand; hastily conning the names of old masters and then going away satisfied, does not begin to know his Genoa. It is a city to linger in, to study slowly and lovingly, to muse over, in its deserted squares and sleepy parks. Certainly it is a famous introduction to Italian art. Every one knows it was called La Superba in the old days, so there is no need for me to do anything but jot down a few random memories of the place. Genoa, of course, is chiefly interesting on account of its past, not its present, but it may be as well to say that its capacious harbour accommodates steamers sailing daily to nearly every port in the Mediterranean and that in 1888 the total tonnage entered amounted to 3,000,000 tons. The lanterna or lighthouse in the harbour is old enough to be a curiosity, for it was built in 1547, and is apparently good for another couple of centuries. Near its foot are the dockyard and arsenal, which were established in 1276. But since 1860 the Italian government has made Spezia its chief dockyard, to the disgust of the Genoese. The one wide modern street in Genoa is the Via Vittorio Emanuele, on which are all the good hotels. In every Italian city and village one meets this name, and a certain degree of monotony attaches to it after one has shopped in fifty or sixty such streets in as many towns; but it shows the popularity of the late king, _Il Re Galant'uomo_, as they still call him. The shops in this street in Genoa are Parisian in every way, and there is an indescribable air of cheerfulness and gayety as one moves along past crowds of handsome black-browed Italian women. This word comes involuntarily to one in thinking of Italian women or girls. They could never be called pretty, or even beautiful, with their dark, glowing skins, large, warm eyes, thick, perfectly-curved eyebrows, and a more or less faint down on the upper lip; but they are undeniably handsome. Then, too, their way of walking out in afternoon or evening in full toilette and with perfectly-arranged coiffures, but without hat or bonnet, is attractive and gives a cosy air to the open street. Behind our hotel is a long, glass-covered arcade about the length of two city blocks, always filled with a gay, chattering crowd of both sexes, who promenade up and down, now stopping to look at the brilliantly-lighted window of some shop rich in statues and statuettes of Parian and Carrara marble, or to sit at small tables in front of some smart café to eat ices, or the Italian equivalent, _granita_. This arcade is one of the sights of the city and forms one of the most attractive features of Genoa. One often thinks of the gay scenes enacted there nightly, when far away. A walk about the town is delightful, provided one is unfettered by that abomination, a _valet-de-place_, or local guide. Such narrow streets running in all directions past grim palaces and squalid houses (but all of stone, for wood has no part in the internal economy of Genoese building) ending frequently in some odourous _cul de sac_, or doubling on themselves, to bring the helpless wanderer back to his starting point, after an hour's walk! The Cathedral must form the objective point of a first walk in Genoa. Indeed, it would be hard to miss it, for it is built of squares of black and white marble and resembles an immense chess board on end. But there is a pathetic dignity about it, for it is very old. It was begun in the twelfth century, and it is most probable that Columbus said his _Aves_ and _Paters_ under its vaulted roof, for he was a native of the erst-while republic of Genoa, when that power ruled the Mediterranean and boasted, like Venice, of a Doge. There is a curious inscription above the arches which part the nave from the aisles, near the Doge's gallery, to the effect that the great-grandson of Noah founded Genoa and that the nave was restored in 1307. But this is only one of the curious things about this curious Cathedral, for the verger who was gorgeous in his cocked hat and wand-of-office, showed us two huge pictures on either side of the high altar, which had been taken by the great Napoleon from Genoa to Paris when he conquered Italy; which had gone thence to Vienna and had finally returned to their former resting place. They showed the effect of travel, but were wonderfully well preserved. One represented the martyrdom of St. Sebastian--that ever-present product of Italian galleries, but in this case the arrows were happily absent. We saw, too, the picture of the Madonna, painted by St. Luke and alluded to by Mark Twain. It had not grown at all clearer since he saw it twenty odd years ago. A wonderfully beautiful Byzantine tomb was shown us in John the Baptist's chapel, and was declared to contain the ashes of that saint. Certainly it must have been old, and the carving was exquisitely done. The original chains worn by John the Baptist were also shown. They were very rusty! No woman but the Queen is allowed in this little side chapel, erected to commemorate the crime of Herodias, but why Her Majesty should be excepted from the rule is not quite clear, unless we accept the theory of the divine right of Kings which Kaiser Wilhelm holds so strongly. There they also show the _sacro catina_, supposed to be made of a single emerald given by the Queen of Sheba to Solomon. This vessel formed part of the spoils of the Genoese at Cæsarea in 1101. It is brought out of the treasury three times a year for the veneration of the faithful, but no one is allowed to touch it under severe penalties. But as I was admiring this and preparing to enthuse over its associations, the verger asked if I understood Latin and immediately launched forth into the original text of the Excommunication pronounced against any female who should dare to enter that _sanctum sanctorum_ where John the Baptist reposed. But, alas, if his accent was not that I had learned at Oxford, it was still less that of Yale; and I could only guess at the meaning of most of his sonorous periods. We left the Church with this avalanche of mediæval Latin ringing in our ears. The interior, taken as a whole, is impressive. The nave and two aisles are unusually long, and standing at one end a semi-gloomy vista of respectable length is opened up. There are other Churches in Genoa, but none so rich in tradition or saintly relics. The Via Balbi is worth a visit, for there stand the famous Palazzo Rosso or Red Palace, built entirely of dark red stone; and the Galliera Palace with its magnificent collection of paintings. The Galliera family has done much for Genoa as well as for Paris. The late Duke gave £80,000 to the harbour works a few years ago, and now the city of Genoa owns the fine gallery of paintings. The Duchess, who has been dead only a short time, left her splendid house in Paris to the Austrian Emperor to be used as the permanent house of his Embassy in Paris and (as she was childless) willed her large private fortune to the clever Empress Frederick, Queen Victoria's eldest daughter, in trust for deeds of charity. A description of one of these immense palace galleries may stand for all. Always there is a grand hall supported in part on columns leading to an arcade-surrounded court. Beyond comes the great staircase, in two ascents. All this is open to the public view, and the long perspective of halls, courts, columns and arcades is magnificent in the extreme. In a splendid suite of rooms on the second floor of this Palazzo Rosso is the largest collection of pictures in Genoa. The Palazzo Reale or Royal Palace is interesting, having been splendidly fitted up by King Charles Albert in 1842. There are palaces innumerable in Genoa, many rich in historical interest and full of pictures by the old masters, and if one were compiling a guide book one could write quires of description about gilding that cost a million francs in one, and mosaic floors worth several fortunes in another. But the crowning glory of Genoa is its Campo Santo or Holy Field, where the noble families of Genoa bury their dead. Imagine vast arcades surrounding an open space of several acres and these arcades crowded with wonderfully beautiful statues. Each family pays a sum (no small one) for a niche in one of these arcades with the accompanying vault beneath and then erects a life-size statue of the departed, or some symbolical figure. Some are pathetic and tender--the fairy-like child dancing on roses, for example, or the full-sized sailing boat crossing the Styx, every rope and sail wrought with wondrous grace in snowy marble. Others succeed in being only grotesque. One huge figure of Father Time sitting cross-legged on a coffin with his knee cocked up, for instance; or an unpleasantly realistic model of an old man with one foot in an open grave with his face turned over his shoulder. This was erected by an old Count, still living, when his wife died. And so on _ad infinitum_. This is a place to muse, to think grave thoughts and to reflect upon sudden death, but not a place to get up an appetite. Genoa is an attractive city, although they say that, unlike Florence and Pisa, it is not an economical town for strangers of limited means and that lodgings are scarce. The character of the inhabitants betrays little of the fiery valour that gave Genoa its proud position in the Middle Ages. Now its people are quiet, hard-working and practical; they take little interest in politics and are well content to live under a constitutional Monarchy, without showing any disturbing tendency toward an anarchistic Republic. [Illustration] [Illustration] THE NAPOLEONIC LEGEND. ROME.--Prince Napoleon, the head of the Bonaparte family and _de jure_ Emperor of the French, has died at Rome after a long and serious illness, during the course of which, faithful to his declared principles, he refused to accept a drop of medicine. His has been a strange and eventful life. Nephew of the great Napoleon, born in Trieste in 1822, he has been four times in exile. He was born in exile and he has died in exile. One of the most brilliant men who ever lived, one of the most statesmanlike, his whole life has been ruined, and the great promise of his youth spoiled, by the cynical disregard of the opinion of others which has always distinguished him. He was far the superior of his cousin, the Emperor Napoleon III., and if his advice had had more weight with the Emperor, the Republic in France would still be a hopeless dream, and the mud of Panama would not have soiled France. Prince Napoleon had, of course no connection with the _coup d'état_ of the Second December that gave Napoleon III. the French Empire, for his claims were indisputably superior to those of the successful plotter; and although a reconciliation did take place between them, their relations were never very cordial, in spite of the fact that the Emperor placed great reliance upon Prince Napoleon's judgment. It may be safely said that if Prince Napoleon had been in Paris during the fatal days of 1870, the unfortunate war with Prussia would never have been declared. It is ancient history now that the Empress Eugénie was the cause of that war, and in private conversation often referred to it as "_Ma Guerre_." Not long since I met the famous Doctor Cordes of Geneva, who had been called in consultation by the Emperor before he started on the fatal campaign that culminated in Sedan; and he told me that the Emperor was simply a child in the hands of the Empress, for he was, at that time, suffering the most terrible agony from stone in the bladder. At that time, however, Prince Napoleon was traveling in Spitzbergen with his _bon amis_, Ernest Renan, the clever author of the "_Vie de Jésus_," and knew nothing of passing events. A warning dispatch was indeed sent to him, but he shrugged his shoulders on receiving it and remarked that although the members of the government in France were "_imbeciles_," still they were not all fools. But events proved that they were, and Prince Napoleon hurried back upon the declaration of war, meeting with a hostile reception on his way through Scotland, where the sympathies of the people were with Prussia. He found the French Ambassador in London, M. de la Vallette, jubilant and repeating the boomerang-like phrase, "_A Berlin_." The Prince foretold the result clearly and exactly, and after Sedan quietly devoted himself to scientific pursuits until the time for the third Empire should arrive. He had never liked the Empress Eugénie. He saw clearly the mistake the Emperor had made in not allying himself with one of the reigning houses; and in espousing the beautiful Mademoiselle de Montijo. He assumed a spiteful attitude toward the Empress whom he called "_Ni-Ni_," and once refused to drink her health in public. M. Renan says of him that his grasp of a subject was wonderful, his wit extraordinary, and his executive ability unsurpassed. His sister, the brilliant Princess Mathilde, who shares so many of his gifts, has the only _salon_ in Paris to-day, and with her brother's death and the union of his party it will become historical. Prince Napoleon was so reserved that he went through life without inspiring or receiving any real affection, and without meaning it he unconsciously repelled adherents who wished to become devoted. He had the misfortune of passing for a Republican under the Empire and for an Imperialist under the Republic, which was the more unfortunate as he despised all forms of government, and in his ambition to rule would have put up with any. A curious thing about him was the fact that his followers liked him better at a distance. Only the other day one of his staunchest friends exclaimed: "I never liked him so well as now, when I know I shall not see him again." At a distance people remembered only his brilliancy, culture, eloquence and the surprising ease with which he mastered every problem, however difficult, in public affairs. He was superior everywhere and popular nowhere, and although he had the personal magnetism which enforces admiration at first sight, he had also the unfortunate power of inducing antipathy toward him on further acquaintance. The deceased Prince's life was in all its vicissitudes an extraordinary one and is rich in anecdotes and stories. His career was a succession of false steps, and again and again the cup of power was at his lips, only to be dashed to the ground by his own mistake. A man of majestic person, high ambitions and unexcelled ability, his singular lack of tact and knack of doing the wrong thing in the right place ruined his chances of success. Prince Jerome Napoleon, or the Emperor Napoleon the Fifth--to give him his real title--was the son of Jerome Bonaparte (the brother of the great Napoleon), King of Westphalia, by his marriage with the Princess Catherine of Wurtemburg. He was brought up in Rome, Austria and Geneva, and finished his education under the supervision of his uncle, the King of Wurtemburg, at the military school of Ludwisburg, near Stuttgart. On the establishment of the Empire, under his cousin, he took rank as Heir Apparent before the Prince Imperial's birth, after which he became Heir Presumptive, and was for some time Governor-General of Algeria. The Emperor often employed him upon various diplomatic military and scientific missions. Many people may have forgotten that at one time Prince Napoleon was a prominent rival of the Emperor. When the future Napoleon III. was indulging in various little escapades that made it seem unlikely he would ever rise to any great position, fortune favoured his more youthful cousin. Prince Napoleon had every advantage. In looks he was weirdly like the first Napoleon. I saw him here last year and instinctively looked for the cocked hat and knee breeches associated forever with "_le petit caporal_." No one who saw his massive, clean-shaven, powerful face could doubt that he stood face to face with a veritable Napoleon. He seemed to hold the winning card when the Revolution of 1848 broke out, but every day he lost ground, notwithstanding his active interference in affairs, and every day Prince Louis Napoleon gained more influence in spite of his reserve. And this illustrates French nature. It prefers a man who is impenetrable rather than one who bustles about and allows his plans to be found out. After a few pitched battles Prince Napoleon allowed it to appear that he recognized his cousin as the stronger man, and attached himself to his cause. But he had no sympathy with the men who planned the _coup d'état_. He distrusted and disliked them, and they returned the compliment. But he became Heir Presumptive, was made a general and had the Palais-Royal as a residence with £40,000 a year. In 1859 he married Princess Clotilde, the daughter of King Victor Emanuel, and sister of the present King of Italy. He leaves three children, Prince Victor Napoleon--now Napoleon the Sixth,--Princess Letitia, widow of the Duke of Aosta, and Prince Louis, a colonel in the Russian Dragoons. And now we come to two mistakes generally made as to the dead Prince's character. He was not a coward and he was not an atheist. Ever since the Crimean war Prince Napoleon has been dogged with a reputation for cowardice and was given the nicknames of "_Plon Plon_" and "_Cringe Plomb_" by the Parisian mob. There is not a doubt, however, that he behaved with all the courage of his race at the battle of the Alma, and that his recall was not due to his own choosing, but to the intrigues of his enemies. The report of the Marshal Commanding confirms this. But a damning story of his ill-health was circulated at the time by the semi-official papers, and the mob was ready to put the worst construction on it. Report says the Empress Eugénie was in no small degree responsible for these rumours, for she cordially disliked him and he returned the feeling with interest. Fate was again cruel to him in the war with Prussia in 1870-'71. When he returned from Spitzbergen he was anxious to be given a responsible command in the Imperial army, but instead was sent off to Italy to keep King Victor Emanuel in a good humour. He had one more chance, before the war, of redeeming his honour, when the Duc d'Aumale challenged him to a duel, but lost it by too much conscientiousness. He hastened to the Tuilleries to ask if he ought to fight. Of course the Emperor said no, and then the Empress made her famous but ill-natured _bon mot_, "If a bullet is ever found in our cousin's body it will be that he has swallowed it." Prince Napoleon was not an atheist. This is proved by his whole life, by his friends and by his death, and will be proved by his memoirs, for in his last moments, while still conscious, he received Extreme Unction from Cardinal Bonaparte, and he has had a religious funeral. He was an anti-clerical, and while certainly not a religious man, he inclined towards the doctrines of Rousseau. The famous Good Friday dinner at which the Prince and his guests ate _charcuterie_ and drank a somewhat profane toast was the base of the belief respecting his religious opinions--a belief greatly magnified and spread by the Empress Eugénie. Prince Napoleon never knew when to speak and when to remain silent, although a magnificent orator, and his failing has been well summed up by a famous senator: "The Prince speaks well, he is the best of orators--but he says only too well what had best been left unsaid." His friends were the most famous men of the day, Victor Hugo, Edmond About, Ste. Beuve and Père Hyacinthe, who sent him his blessing as he lay dying. His relations with the Emperor show many instances of his want of tact. Having been complimented by Napoleon upon two speeches delivered in the Senate against the temporal power of the Pope, he resolved to improve upon them, and then delivered his famous anti-Papal speech at Ajaccio, a speech which drew forth the following interesting letter of remonstrance from the Emperor: "_Monsieur Mon Cousin_,--I cannot help informing you of the painful impression which I received on reading the speech you delivered at Ajaccio. When I left you in Paris with the Empress and my son and as President of the Privy Council, I hoped that you would prove yourself by your acts, conduct and speeches, worthy of the trust which I had placed in you, and that you would set the example of that unity which ever ought to exist in our family. You have raised questions which no longer concern our day. It is necessary to have borne, as I have, the responsibilities of power in order to judge how far the ideas of Napoleon I. are applicable to the present time. Before the great statue of the founder of our family, what are we but pigmies, only able to behold a part and incapable of grasping the whole? One thing, however, is certain, and that is that Napoleon exercised--first of all in his family and then in his government--that severe discipline without which all government is impossible, and without which all liberty leads to anarchy. Having said this much, my cousin, I pray God to have you in his holy keeping. NAPOLEON." This letter was written in 1866, when the Emperor was traveling in Algeria. After the fall of the Empire and the death of the Emperor, Prince Napoleon kept up a sort of armed neutrality with the Empress Eugénie and his young cousin, the Prince Imperial (then Napoleon the Fourth), after whom, he was the head of the Bonapartist party. When the Prince Imperial fell in Zululand in 1879, Prince Napoleon became the head of the family. But the Prince Imperial had made a foolish, boyish will in which he named his cousin, Prince Victor, the eldest son of Prince Napoleon, his heir and successor. The Empress Eugénie was only too glad to annoy her hated foe by pretending to accept this absurd arrangement, and unfortunately Prince Victor Napoleon fell into the hands of foolish advisers, quarreled with his father and set up a party of his own. For several years father and son have not spoken, each claiming to represent the Imperialist party in France. But it is now stated with authority that Prince Victor Napoleon was reconciled to his father on his death-bed, and this will do much towards wiping out the memory of his unfilial conduct. But he was strongly tempted. The Empress Eugénie urged him, all the old adherents of his great family urged him, to set up the Napoleonic standard, while his father seemed apathetic and indifferent. Then, of course, he commanded a divided allegiance. Now he stands at the head of a united party. Thousands of men who would not join Prince Napoleon on account of his anti-clerical opinions and who refused to support Prince Victor Napoleon against his father, are now rallying to the Imperial standard. Scoffers said the Napoleonic legend was dead when the first Napoleon died. Scoffers say so now. Yet Napoleon III. proved that it was very much alive in the fifties, and it is well on the cards that Napoleon VI. may do so in the nineties. The new Emperor _de jure_, is clever, eloquent and possesses tact, above all the _sine qua non_ of one in his position. He has few enemies and many friends and will inherit the Empress Eugénie's large fortune upon her death. And so the greatest service Prince Napoleon has ever done for his family and cause is by dying, for his death unites, while his life divided, his party. History will judge him fairly. Brilliant, clever, witty, statesmanlike, eloquent and masterful, his life has been ruined by want of tact. His last words are significant: (I quote from the London _Times_.) "He declared that he died an Emperor, adhering to the principles of the _Concordat_, and fully imbued with the religious sentiments of the Bonapartes." Such was the Emperor Napoleon the Fifth, a man misjudged by many and loved by few, but a man whose talents will one day be recognized by France. [Illustration] [Illustration] A DEVONSHIRE MARKET TOWN. NEWTON ABBOT, DEVON.--At the first blush the sudden change from the balmy breezes of the Riviera to the comparatively harsh winds that blow over Dartmoor, would seem to be a trial. But such is hardly the case. I am writing to-day in a private sitting room of the quaint Globe Inn in this little-visited town, with the windows wide open and the sun streaming in with a warmth that is almost too genial. One never hears of a tourist visiting Newton Abbot, and from all I can gather Newton Abbot is in the same position. It is a queer, quiet little market town in South Devon, about six miles from Torquay, the great southern watering place, and not far from Dartmouth and the moors. One can have hunting and fishing in the neighbourhood, for the South Devon fox hounds meet near by three times a week and the rivers Eske and Culme supply capital salmon fishing. Several big country houses are close by, and to the casual observer Newton Abbot exists simply to form a coterie of tradespeople for the benefit of the County Families in the neighbourhood. It has no society of its own, and even its Mechanics' Institute gives entertainments only by the suffrages of the "surrounding Nobility and Gentry," to quote from its programmes. And yet it is a happy, quiet little town enough, sunning itself in its own small valley, and with many of its by-streets running up the numerous hills at the back, whose brows are dotted with genteel (how popular that word is among the lower-middle class in England) semi-detached "villas." The London papers get down at mid-day, and until noon Newton Abbot gets on very well with a local print which reproduces the news from yesterday's _Times_. By the way, "The Thunderer" is too dear for the average man (it is three-pence a copy as against a penny for the other London dailies) and so it is lent out to read by the local library which advertises itself as "in connection with Mudie's." One rather wonders where the "connection" comes in when a copy of "Robert Elsmere" is handed one as the "last thing out, sir, just down from London." But Newton Abbot has some historical interest. In the midst of the town, just in front of the old ivy-covered tower of St. Leonard's, is a remarkably ugly stone surmounted by a modern lamp-post. The stone bears an inscription to the effect that in 1688 the then Mayor of the town, standing thereon, read the first proclamation made by William of Orange after landing in England. Enthusiastic Orangemen visit the stone to this day, and zealous members of the Order of the White Rose curse it heartily, as they regret King James and the Stuart dynasty; which, whatever its faults, at least inspired more romantic loyalty and personal devotion than the phlegmatic Dutch Prince ever did. I visited several houses near Newton Abbot with a view to taking one furnished for the sake of the good fishing near, and although none was found to suit I had some droll experiences. One house was very well furnished, and the family seemed in a remarkable hurry to get away while offering the place at a low rent, but it afterwards turned out that the paterfamilias--a clergyman--had just eloped with the parlourmaid. At another house I was received by a smartly-dressed person who tried hard to give me the impression that she was a lady, and who at length airily inquired: "And would you like to move in, at once, forthwith directly?" But her drawing room was decorated with wax flowers under glass shades; and mottoes done in Berlin wool, with a chromo-lithograph of the late Lord Palmerston over the mantel; so I was not exposed to much temptation. The occupant of another cottage waxed confidential as she showed me over the house, told me her name was Mrs. Mudge and that she "laundered" for a living. She looked as if she did something for a living, for her face was fiery red and she diffused an odour of gin and cloves as she slowly maundered on. Nearly every street in the town shows by its name some connection with the Courtenay family--Earls of Devon--who in the old days owned most of the property in South Devon. Now evil times have come upon them and beautiful old Powderham Castle, near Dartmouth, alone remains to them. But they are venerated still in the county and the "Courtenay interest" is a great help to the candidate for Parliamentary honours. Newton Abbot has the distinction--if it be a distinction, which is very strongly debated--of having as its representative in Parliament the only Liberal member from Devonshire. Mr. Seale-Hayne is a wealthy follower of Mr. Gladstone and is faithful to his chief, but even he owes his seat to a prudent refusal to accept Mr. Gladstone's extreme views on the subject of home rule. The sturdy farmers of Devon have ideas of their own and do not see why the efforts of a few Irish agitators should be allowed to break up an Empire. The Conservatives and Liberal-Unionists divide the representation of Devon between them, with the solitary exception of the aforesaid Mr. Seale-Hayne, and the Conservatives are working hard to defeat him at the next general election. The echoes of the great gathering at Exeter last year, when Lord Salisbury addressed an audience of several thousand working people upon the fallacies of home rule for Ireland, have not yet died away, and his speech will bear fruit at the next general election. The tactics of the Gladstonians in the rural districts are now devoted to drawing off the attention of the rural voters from home rule--an attention that, to Gladstonian minds, is too closely fixed upon the struggles of the rival Irish parties, and the probability of their following the lead of the famous Kilkenny cats--and fixing it upon co-called "rural reforms." The Conservatives and Liberal-Unionists, on the other hand, place home rule in the front and make it the main issue; so the curious spectacle is presented of the party responsible for the measure placing it in the background, and the party opposed to it making it the main issue in the campaign. Turning to sweeter subjects--who, having once tasted Devonshire clotted cream can forget it? And when to a glass dish of clotted cream is added a sunny morning, a well-laid breakfast table and a hissing tea urn, life looks at least cheerful. [Illustration] [Illustration] OXFORD--FROM A STUDENT'S NOTE BOOK. OXFORD.--Everything at Oxford is quaint and charming, but its inns are unique and it is impossible to find one that sells bad beer,--the undergrads would never stand it,--and where a better judge of bitter beer than a Christ-Church, or a Magdalen, or a "Johns" man is to be found, it is hard to say. The names even of these inns are soothing. It is such a relief to get away from the American hotel abomination, with its gilded radiator, and from its cold, stiff restaurants and pretentious name; to the sanded coffee room of the quaint, cosy "Mitre," or to the bar-parlour of the "Bell" or the "Plough." And although these small, low-built inns are old--older than New York City several of them--they are radiant with a fresh lavender-smelling cleanliness that is never found in the big American hostelries, where the befringed and be-ribboned Irish importation reigns in her pride. Rosy-cheeked country lasses serve the public here, and are shining examples of civil service, while behind the bar stands a lively, neat and pretty barmaid, who is an adept in chaffing the college men, but with too much self-respect to allow any vulgar jesting in her domain. We undergrads were not allowed to frequent every inn, but the "Clarendon" was a great favourite, and I have heard many jolly stories in its quaint old "Smoke Room," lined with prints after Hogarth. When I was "in residence" at the University, three years ago, there used to be a very pretty barmaid who officiated at the "Plough," opposite my rooms, and I noticed that she was usually at the window when Connigsby Disraeli, nephew to the great Earl of Beaconsfield, who was then a student at "New," passed by. A queer fellow, Disraeli, and sure to make his mark if he lives. I met him at the theatre constantly, where he always led the applause. He is very popular still in Oxford, for he is hail fellow well met with everyone, be it "town" or "gown"; and he is "up" on dogs and horses as well as in the classics. His kennels were famous when he was "in residence" or "up," as it is sometimes called. If his uncle had not been the first Earl, and had the title not therefore been confined to his direct line (he had no sons), Disraeli would have been "Milord"; but he is sure to make his own way. At the last general election he was elected to Parliament from the Altrincham Division of Sussex by a large majority over his Liberal opponent. The Queen is said to take a personal interest in his success, and Her Majesty's partiality for his uncle is well known. He has already begun to attract attention by active work in the Conservative cause and by clever addresses at Primrose League meetings all over England. My rooms in the college days were in Cornmarket Street, near the "High," and my landlord (who was duly licensed by the all-powerful Proctors) rejoiced in the name of Huckings. He was formerly valet to the Marquis of Queensberry, and never allowed one to forget the fact; few were the days when allusions to "His Lordship the Markis" failed to greet my ears. Huckings is very proud of his "acquaintance" with the Nobility, and often boasted that Prince Christian-Victor, a grandson of Her Majesty and a student of Magdalen, once knocked him down in the cricket field. But Huckings is eminently respectable and very civil. His furniture was usually covered with a green material stiffly starched, that crackled and rustled like an Irish-American servant out for a Sunday walk,--no English housemaid would dream of taking the liberty of allowing herself to rustle. Huckings was a capital cook and an experienced butler, and his welsh-rarebits were as light as air. There is but one theatre in Oxford, and that is directly under the supervision of the Vice-Chancellor, and no play can be performed without his sanction. The programmes are headed "By permission of the Reverend the Vice-Chancellor, and the Right-Worshipful the Mayor." For Oxford, as a 'Varsity town, is under the control of the head of the University as well as of the Mayor. The unsophisticated crowd in the gallery always hisses the villain, who is usually the best actor, and applauds the hero, who is often a poor one; but this is usual all through England, and is taken by the heavy villain of the play as a tribute to his genius. Very good entertainments are given as a rule: "The Pirates," Toole in "The Don," and the inimitable Corney Grain have appeared among others. The bar is forbidden to sell whiskey to the undergrads, so the call is for "lime-juice," which answers the same purpose! I met my old tutor, or coach for "cramming," in the street to-day, and I have just had him to dine. He is typical--a short, squat man with a heavy, unkempt beard, and with countless lines seaming his face. He has not been out of Oxford for twenty years and spends all his time in coaching backward students. He reminds one in some ways of a ripe and somewhat mouldy Stilton cheese. His rooms are musty and cobwebby, for he tells me no one has dusted them for two years, as he cannot stand having his papers disturbed. And how he smokes! His pipe rack must hold twenty pipes at least, and most of them are beautifully coloured. The walks about Oxford are charming and on returning from a long tramp it is delightful to stand on Folly Bridge at dusk and watch the punts and canoes come dropping down the "Char," or to see a college eight dash swiftly down the Isis to Iffley. The old inn at Godstow, just opposite the ruins of the famous Nunnery, is very quaint; and the fame of Mumby's cherry brandy is known to all the colleges in Oxford. The author of "Alice in Wonderland" is a Fellow of Christ Church College, and lives in two rooms looking out over the green old "Quad." He is fond of children and has them always with him. They tell a droll story of him in Oxford. The Queen enjoyed "Alice" so much that she requested the author, by letter, to send her another of his "charming books." Much flattered, he forwarded Her Majesty his "Treatise on the Differential Calculus." When I was an undergrad it was almost impossible to pay for what one bought in Oxford, for the tradespeople insist on one's taking long credits--a neat little plan by which they make a good deal in the long run, as they charge heavy interest. Oxford changes little as the years go by. It was lovely spring weather to-day and everyone wandered to the river, through the green Christ Church meadows, just as they have done for hundreds of years and will do in future centuries; and they are wise, for nothing is so delightful on a warm afternoon in June as to take a punt and slowly glide along the Cherwell, or to drop down the Isis in a canoe and take a plunge at "Parson's Pleasure." Descriptions of College life at Oxford have been done to death and it is hardly worth while to go over the well-worn ground. "The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green" still give a fair idea of 'Varsity life, and "Tom Brown" is as good to-day as when it was written. The contrast between American and English college life is sharply marked. A short experience of Yale made me enjoy Oxford all the more. There is no class spirit, but the tone in the twenty-odd colleges--each a small Yale--is more athletic and more _Commencement-de-siècle_ in every way. A curious thing is the way in which cap and gown are worn here. The gown with its two short tails reaches only to the small of the back, and is only worn when absolutely necessary. There has been a good deal of amused talk "in Hall" over the report that some upper classmen at Yale actually wear a long gown reaching to the feet. It would be considered bad form for Oxford undergrads to wear such a thing, as long gowns are worn only by dons and tutors. Americans are coming in increased numbers every year; and for some unknown reason they usually go to New College, or to "Ch. Ch.," as Christ Church is familiarly called. But I found St. John's College--or "Johns,"--with its lovely gardens and long, low, time-worn buildings, a delightful place to study in or at. "Ch. Ch." is pre-eminently the "swell college." Balliol is for hard students, and Magdalen is very aristocratic; Jesus is for Welshmen, Wadham for men who want an easy time, and Brazenose and Oriel for athletes. "Johns" combines the happiest features of each. The others have no marked characteristics. The good old dons are a feature of Oxford, and it is easy to see from their rosy cheeks and well-fed look that they do not despise the famous Oxford ale, which is pure and wholesome, while the wine is bad and dear. Consequently everyone drinks beer, except a few old Deans and Masters of Colleges, whose gout confines them to toast and water. The thought of dons brings up memories of the payment of gate fines, if one happened to be out of college after the great bell of Christ Church had boomed out the hour of nine; and it was harder than may be supposed to dodge the Proctor and his "bull dogs" if one was out "in mufti," _i. e._, without cap or gown. But take it all in all, college life at Oxford is an enviable thing, and Oxford itself is a delightful place. [Illustration] [Illustration] THE ENGLISH LITTORAL. BOURNEMOUTH.--Imagine a few houses set down in the midst of a forest of pines on two great cliffs overhanging the sea; with a sandy soil, and you have Bournemouth. There are shops, indeed, and a principal street, but they are so mixed up with the pines and so divided, one from the other, that they do not give an impression of town life at all, and one easily imagines oneself to be in the depths of the country. The pines are the fetishes of Bournemouth. You breathe in their healing balsam, you bathe in pine juice and sleep on pine pillows. You walk in pine groves, and sit on furniture made exclusively of pine and, when you die, you are laid under the shade of the pines. I don't doubt the fact that pines are healthy in moderation, but they are monotonous. Bournemouth is a new place, for everything dates back only forty years. Before that there were only plantations of pines on the cliff. The name of the discoverer of Bournemouth is unknown, but the man who has "made" the place, and made it, too, with wonderful taste and skill, building all the houses in the pine woods and cutting hardly any of them down, is Sir George Meyrick, ably assisted by the Lord of the Manor who owns the half not belonging to Sir George. One cannot call Bournemouth wildly gay, but it is eminently select--so are the prices, which are high enough to frighten away any one under the rank (and income) of a Marquis. There is no theatre in the town, the aforesaid Lord of the Manor who owns most of the freehold objecting to such worldly amusements; but the inhabitants have managed to get around him by fitting up the town hall as an amateur play-house, where occasional third-rate companies perform. But people hardly come here to go to the play. They come for rest and change. Bournemouth is a good long way from London: three hours from Waterloo station, and in Hampshire, on the border line of Dorset. The climate is wonderfully dry, and milder than that of London, but not warm. Indeed, there is little difference between the climates of Geneva and Bournemouth, except that, of course, there is more snow in Geneva, and the air is less relaxing. One can easily understand how consumptives may derive benefit from it (lately many have hurried off to Berlin to place themselves in Dr. Koch's clinic), but to healthy people it is debilitating, even more so than the climate of Nice and San Remo. The scenery around is lovely. Great hollows (locally called chines) extend to the sea between the cliffs, and a drive along the coast reminds one forcibly of the drive along the Corniche road between Monte Carlo and Mentone. Indeed, this part of the Hampshire coast is beginning to be called the British Riviera, and it deserves the name, although the sea is less blue and the sky has a duller tinge than those of the Mediterranean coast can show. The neighbouring drives are full of interest. The ruins of Corfe Castle will repay a visit, and Canford Manor, Lord Wimborne's place, is well worth seeing. There are drives to Poole, a sea-port near, and to Christchurch, with which Bournemouth is incorporated for the purpose of Parliamentary representation. Boscombe Chine and Branksome Chine are lovely spots, a little way out of Bournemouth. Bournemouth is rich in churches. St. Peter's is a noble bit of architecture, and Holy Trinity is a remarkable building, whose steeple is a tower distinct from the main building. Its rector, Canon Eliot, has recently been appointed Dean of Windsor and Domestic Chaplain to the Queen; and people are lamenting his departure, for he has been here twenty years and during that time has gained for his church, by his own efforts, the sum of £40,000. The inhabitants of Bournemouth have been anxious for some time to have the place granted a charter of incorporation, so that they might rejoice in a _bona fide_ Mayor of their own instead of having to put up with a simple Chairman of Commissioners. A member of Her Majesty's Privy Council came down to inspect the town and advised the Queen to grant the charter, which she did last month. Lately political feeling has been running high over the election of the Mayor, and there have been several Richmonds in the field, one of whom put forward the fact that he had been for seven years caterer to H. R. H. the Prince of Wales and to the Guards' Club in London as a claim to the office. He came within a few votes of election, but was beaten by the leading stationer of the town. Now to celebrate this important epoch in the history of Bournemouth, Lord and Lady Portarlington, who live very near, decided to give a _conversazione_ in the Winter Garden of the Hotel Mont Doré. Of course, the Mayor and Aldermen appeared; and now the current of feeling in Bournemouth is at fever heat, for "the right worshipful, the Mayor," to give him his proper title, appeared in robes and chains of office--_hinc illæ lachrymæ_. England is divided equally on this subject; about half the Mayors of provincial towns wearing robes and badges, with cocked hats and the other half confining themselves to a simple chain of office. The Bournemouth papers are fighting the matter tooth and nail, and one worthy Alderman (an Irish-American green-grocer) has resigned office rather than submit to wear "these relics of mediævalism." It will be news to most of us that cocked hats were _en evidence_ in the middle ages. But Bournemouth is really a charming place and well worth a visit. [Illustration] [Illustration] A DAY AT WINDSOR. WINDSOR, BERKS.--"Personally conducted" parties have done Windsor to death; and the place has been described so often and so poorly that it needs a bold pen to make another attempt. My day at Windsor was passed during the cold month of January; when the Royal Borough was hung with crape, when the flags were at half mast and when everything was redolent of gloom and sadness. I saw the highest in the land weeping, and Royalty when overcome with grief; for the Heir Presumptive to the English Throne had been cut off and the nation was in mourning. The clearest memory that remains with me after the splendid ceremonial in St. George's Chapel, is the recollection of the bowed figure and grief-worn face of the Prince of Wales as he stood at the foot of his older son's coffin, between his only remaining son, Prince George, and his son-in-law, the Duke of Fife. He raised his head as Sir Albert Woods, Garter King of Arms, proclaimed the "style and title of His late Royal Highness"; and his terrible loss was evident to the most unobservant there. But the funeral has been everywhere fully described, and it would be useless to repeat a catalogue of its many and varied incidents. After it was over, I walked through the grassy stretches of Windsor Great Park with an old Oxford friend, who had known "Prince Eddie" well, both on the _Bacchante_ and afterward at York. He told me much that was new of him and several stories of his wonderful tact in social matters, by means of which he had averted serious scandal from a family well known to readers of Burke and Debrett. I parted from him that evening with a better appreciation of the dead Prince and his character than I had ever had before. His death has been a terrible blow to all the Royal Family, but in the midst of their terrible grief the Prince and Princess of Wales cannot but feel consoled by the overwhelming sympathy that has been poured out upon them not only by English hearts; but from Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and from the greater England beyond the sea. There is something infinitely pathetic about the death of their eldest son, just a week after his twenty-eighth birthday and the month before his wedding. All England has wept with the Royal Family, and foreigners realize as never before the depth and strength of English loyalty. The crowds that lined the streets in front of Marlborough House when Prince Eddie lay ill, contained many work-people and clerks; and the grief and respect shown by the lower classes everywhere has been a wonder to all, and a complete refutation of Andrew Carnegie's windy diatribes as to the progress of democracy in England. There is no jarring note in the sympathy of grief, for no word has been said against the dead Prince--nothing but praise and a hearty recognition of his modesty and hard work. We shall see, when we review the history of his engagement, something of his strength of character. Prince Albert Victor Christian Edward was born at Frogmore, Windsor, on January 8, 1864, and his names were carefully chosen, representing two grandfathers (the Prince Consort, and the King of Denmark); one grandmother (the Queen); and a great-grandfather (the Duke of Kent, Queen Victoria's father). The Queen preferred the two first names, and so, until he was created Duke of Clarence in 1890, his official designation was Prince Albert Victor of Wales. But to the great mass of the English people he was always Prince Edward, or Prince Eddie as he was affectionately called, for Edward was a name that held glorious associations for them and they looked forward to having another "Long-shanks" on the throne. The history of his life has been repeated so often that it is only necessary to recall a few incidents: his two years as naval cadet in the training ship _Britannia_ at Dartmouth with his brother; his three years' cruise around the world in the _Bacchante_; his studies at Cambridge and Heidelberg; and his tour in India. He and his brother, Prince George, had always been together until their choice of professions separated them. Prince Eddie went with all his soul into army work and Prince George chose the navy. The grief of the British army at Prince Eddie's death shows what Tommy Atkins thought of him. During the last six years in England every one has been wondering why Prince Eddie did not marry and settle the succession; and, finally, the truth leaked out last year, although long before that his attentions to his pretty cousin, Princess May of Teck, had attracted attention. Ever since they had played together as children he had been devoted to her, and his father and mother heartily approved his choice. The Queen, his royal grandmother, resolutely opposed all thoughts of this match and brought pressure to bear to get Prince Eddie to marry his cousin, Princess Margaret of Prussia, a daughter of the Empress Frederick and sister of the present Kaiser. But Prince Eddie was firm and declared if he could not marry Princess May he would not marry any one. And so matters stood for several years. But when Princess Louise of Wales (who is next in succession after Prince George) married the Duke of Fife, the necessity for the marriage of Prince Eddie grew greater, as there was a shrewd suspicion that the great English nobles would hardly care to have the children of the Duke of Fife rule over them if the other branches failed. But even yet Prince Eddie stood firm and would not yield, although at last even the Prince of Wales urged compliance with the Queen's wishes. And finally Prince Eddie's reward came. When Prince George was so ill with typhoid, popular sentiment urged Prince Eddie's marriage and then the Queen gave in and made the two young people happy. The public announcement of the engagement was received with universal joy, for Princess May was thoroughly English, and both the _fiancées_ leaped at once into great popularity. They went down to Windsor together to salute the Queen, and everything seemed to give universal satisfaction. Even Her Majesty relaxed when she saw how joyfully her subjects received the news of the royal betrothal, and the Prince of Wales declared at a public dinner his delight that his son was to marry a Princess who was English by birth, education and preference. The ground of the Queen's objection to the marriage was simple, and she was soon convinced that the English nation attached no importance to it. On her mother's side, Princess May is descended from King George III. and stands in nearly the same relationship to that monarch as her late betrothed, for the Duchess of Teck is the daughter of King George's son, the Duke of Cambridge; and Queen Victoria's father the Duke of Kent, was another son; so the Queen and the Duchess of Teck are first cousins; Princess May and the Prince of Wales second cousins; and Princess May and Prince Eddie second cousins once removed. But the Duke of Teck's pedigree was the trouble, for he is the descendant of a morganatic marriage, and but for that would now be heir to the throne of Wurtemburg. The English people found no fault with Princess May's descent, and, indeed, a sweeter, more gracious, more charming Princess it would be hard to find. The marriage was fixed for February, and soon wedding gifts began to pour in. Committees were formed all over the British Empire for the purpose of subscribing to a national gift. In Ireland it had been decided to present the royal bride and bridegroom with a castle, and Scotland and Wales were planning the same gifts. Bridesmaids were chosen and everything seemed to smile upon the national rejoicing. When Princess May went with her father and mother to pay a visit to the Prince and Princess of Wales at Sandringham early in January, huge shooting parties were organized in which Prince Eddie joined, and every morning the ladies of the Royal Family drove out to join the sportsmen at luncheon. On one of these occasions, on a rainy, misty day, Prince Eddie complained of feeling very cold, and instead of waiting to drive back with the others, walked briskly home to Sandringham with Princess May. The next day he was better and insisted upon going out with the other sportsmen. Again he was compelled to leave them, and again he walked back with Princess May. How she must value the remembrance of those two walks now! This was on the Friday. On Sunday he was ill, on Tuesday alarming bulletins were issued, and on Thursday he was dead. Oh, the pity of it! On the threshold of his career, on the eve of his marriage he was taken. One is tempted to ask _Cui bono?_ He will have his place in English History; and the memory of my day at Windsor will always linger; for I have seen what is of more interest than the Castle, with all its wealth of art--the loyalty of a people to their Royal House in its time of trial. [Illustration] [Illustration] SCARBOROUGH. SCARBOROUGH.--The seaside resorts of England are numberless, and yet there is a curious lack of similarity in their surroundings, their atmosphere and in their class of visitors. Scarborough is to the north of England what Bournemouth is to the south. It is select and exclusive, but the ultra smart London set is not found in its purlieus. It is a great place of resort for the old Yorkshire families--families who can trace their descent back to Norman William and behind him to the Saxon Thanes and Earls; and who look with ill-concealed disgust upon the _nouveaux riches_ who are so painfully to the fore just now in Belgravian drawing rooms and at crushes in Mayfair. Scarborough is not wildly gay; its visitors take their pleasures sedately, and the voice of the imitation nigger-minstrel is unheard in the land. One needs to be in rude health to enjoy Scarborough, for the sea breezes come rushing in from the lap of the Atlantic to mingle with the keen air of the downs; and if one's lungs are sound it is a delight to live. Hotel prices are fearfully and wonderfully conceived in Scarborough, but the landlords say people eat so much on account of the splendid air that they must charge high prices in self-defence. The amusements and distractions of Scarborough? If one hunts or shoots there is plenty of sport. Several packs of hounds meet on the downs near by, and although the country is a bit stiff, the going is fairly decent. It may perhaps be considered a drawback that hounds occasionally disappear over the cliffs in the ardour of the chase, and that a too-eager hunter might easily do the same--with his rider on his back; but most men who hunt here say that they enjoy the spice of danger. Scarborough has two features distinctively its own: its "Spa" and its cabs. Just why the long promenade where the band plays should be called the "Spa" no one knows, but the fact remains, and every Sunday all the world and his wife walk there for "Church Parade." The Scarborough cab is really a small Victoria, drawn by one horse, ridden by a correctly-got-up tiger, who lends a picturesque air to the trap. They go well, these small horses, and gallop up and down the long hills on which Scarborough is built, with greatest ease. The "day tripper," with his 'Arriet, is unknown here, for the simple reason that there would be nothing for him to do. There are no stands in the streets to display "s'rimps," "whilks" and other questionable marine delicacies, put up in brown paper bags at "tuppence the quart"; no merry-go-rounds; no cheap photographic studios; or one-horse circuses where the manager is clown, acrobat and owner in one, to tempt the taste and gratify the curiosity of the lower classes. And there are no Americans in Scarborough. It is too far from Paris, and too quiet for the extraordinary specimens of nasal tendencies, who make an annual descent upon the Continent and swarm from Dan to Beersheba. One never meets them at home, these painfully rich and newly varnished Yankees who travel through Great Britain in great state and pomp, and whose breeding is shamed by that of the scullery maid in the cosy little inns they so disdain. It is really trying to see the impression most Englishmen have of Americans--impressions gathered simply from these inflictions who, knowing no one but the green-grocer on their corner at home, come abroad to astonish the natives; and who succeed in doing nothing but in making the appellation of American to stink in the nostrils of the foreigner. Of course there are ruins near Scarborough, and again of course the favourite drive is to these ruins. Another excursion is to a hill overlooking the town, where tradition says that unsavoury individual yclept Oliver Cromwell, once stood, or sat or performed some other operation equally important. Politically, as becomes its staid and exclusive _clientèle_, Scarborough is Conservative; and has no sympathy with an old man's visionary plans to break up a great Empire. Irish agitators appear occasionally but not often, and they rarely carry away a full purse from the collections they invariably take up. Descriptions of places are invariably tiresome. One place is usually like another, and the best way to know a town or city is to go there; but anyone who can picture a town built up on the cliffs and down in the hollows between, with stretches of sandy beach in front, will have a fair idea of the Bournemouth of the north. The country round about Scarborough is attractive. Quaint villages quite out of the world like Symsbury, are met with at every turn; small market towns, like Yarm, where the old custom of engaging servants by the "hold fast" in the market-place on the yearly appointed day still obtains; and small seaside resorts, like Redcar and Coatbridge; with Whitby famous for its jet; all these are worth a visit. Yorkshire men are canny, and good at a bargain and no better judges of horseflesh are found anywhere. The only drawback connected with Scarborough is its distance from London, but that is really only a drawback to Londoners. The Scarborough man is rather proud of the fact. He looks with pity upon the benighted south of England man, and has no words to express his contempt for the finnicky foreigner, who comes to Scarborough and drinks sour red wine, instead of quaffing huge draughts of the glorious old Yorkshire ale. [Illustration] [Illustration] CLIMBING IN LAKELAND. ROSTHWAITE, NEAR KESWICK.--A couple of days since I started off with a barrister friend to do a days' climb in the Lake country. He promised me a good view from the top of Scafell Pike, but a rough time in getting there; and took an almost pathetic interest in my boots and "shorts," hinting darkly that certain mysterious "screes," over which the path lay, would test their strength and durability to the utmost. We travelled third class, of course, for my friend would have thought me insane to propose anything else; and, really, we were very comfortable, as all the seats were cushioned. He wore the regulation British walking costume: stout, heavy, hob-nail boots, thick woolen stockings, and loose and impossibly wide knickerbockers; while a blue serge jacket and a peaked cloth cap clothed his upper man. Of course, his short briar-wood pipe was to the fore, and on the whole, he looked comfortable. My own get-up was more ordinary, as I had started at half an hour's notice. We rushed into Darlington station before long--an immense glass-covered structure, with platforms half a mile long--and there changed for Penrith and Keswick. We began to ascend soon after leaving Darlington, passing by Barnard Castle, the "beauty spot of Yorkshire"--the tracks lying over breezy moorlands. We changed at Penrith, a dreary junction, and reached Keswick about seven o'clock in a mist of half-twilight that was very kind to the distant mountains, making them appear much bigger and grander than they were ever meant to be. Fortunately, we found the Borrowdale coach still running, and as it would take us within two miles of our destination, we were well pleased. Before it started we had time to attend a very lively meeting of the Salvation Army in the Keswick market-place, where the tall, thin man who dealt out freely sundry dismal prophecies, betrayed painful need of a bronchial trochee. The drive on the box seat of the four-in-hand was glorious. The moon came out as we reached the edge of Derwentwater and threw her soft light full on the lonely lake; and, what was of more importance, on the broad road ahead of us. The horses were fresh and the road inclining to a descent, so we rolled gaily on past the Lodore Hotel, hard-by the famous falls, until, too soon, we stopped before the Borrowdale Inn. Then, with a cheery good-night from the coachman, we started to walk the remaining two miles, our appetites forcibly reminding us that we had eaten nothing since early morning; and with a cheery feeling of expectancy for the comforts of the inn presided over by the famous Mrs. Rigg. The lights of the little hamlet of Rosthwaite soon appeared and we halted at a long, low, straggling house, buried in vines. A tall, stout lady stood in the doorway and proved herself to be _the_ Mrs. Rigg by the way in which she bustled about in all directions, calling several buxom country lasses to her aid. She sent two of them to prepare our much-wanted supper, while she herself piloted us to our quaint, low-ceilinged bed-rooms, where every bed had curtains. Now, Mrs. Rigg is a widow, and has been ever since the memory of man, and concerning the original Mr. Rigg nothing is known; but, whoever he was, people take more interest in the fact that his wife knows how to keep a good homely inn, called by Mrs. Rigg herself the "Royal Oak," but known to all the neighbourhood as "Mrs. Rigg's." Mrs. R. herself is a tall, stout old lady with a false front and an imposing cap, and when she sits in the little bar parlour behind the steaming tea kettle, reading the _Family Herald_, she presents a picture of comfort not easily surpassed. Mrs. Rigg is suspected of a leaning toward the village painter, to the regret of all concerned, and dismal are the forebodings of the aforesaid country lassies should she yield herself (and her inn) to his fascinations. We enjoyed our supper--huge chops served with mealy potatoes and foaming tankards of "bitter"--and then in the cozy smoke room (why never smoking room in England?), we proceeded to lay out the route for the next day. Our intention in coming to Rosthwaite had been to climb Scafell Pike and, possibly Glaramara; so we confidently looked forward to a fine day. But, oh, the despair when we woke up next morning, for the rain was coming down in a steady drizzle and the mist was floating gently over and about all the mountain tops within view. We met with rueful faces in the coffee room, for now Scafell was quite out of the question as well as Glaramara; for, of course, no view could be had on such a day, and the idea of wandering along the edge of precipices in the mist was hardly tempting. But an inspiration came to us. It was unanimously voted a pity to waste that day, as we should be obliged to return on the next; so, after much poring over maps and guides, we decided to go as far up Scafell as possible and then, making a circuit, to return by Sty Head Pass. This sounded easy and I began to congratulate myself--rather previously, as it afterward turned out--upon the probability of getting back in time for dinner at six. We had scraped acquaintance with an "undergrad" from Oxford--Wadham College--and we invited him to go with us. We hurried over breakfast, taking care, fortunately, to eat a hearty one; and then, with a rueful look at the cozy, firelit room we were leaving, tramped out into the rain about ten o'clock. We knew we should get wet through, so we took no overcoats and simply buttoned our jackets tight about our necks to keep our flannel shirts dry as long as possible. The road was very good for some distance, being the coach road to Buttermere, so we went gaily on. About two miles from Rosthwaite we reached the queerly-named little village of Seatollar (which our Wadham friend insisted on referring to as "Tolloller"), where we turned off into a rustic road overgrown with grass, which for some time led us among pine groves before bringing us to the famous Borrowdale yews: a group of fine old firs upon the hillside. Here our Oxonian again would have it that the name applied to the various flocks of sheep grazing near and pointed out to us some "genuine Borrowdale ewes." It got damper and damper as we went on, but I ceased to wonder when I heard we were drawing near the "wettest place in England," the hamlet of Seathwaite, where the annual rainfall is actually one hundred and fifty-six inches! There is not much of interest in Seathwaite except its moisture and the fact that it has no public house, as Sir Wilfred Lawson the great temperance advocate owns all the freehold. Here we left the road and struck up the side of the valley, having Glaramara and Great Gable in front of us, two big mountains covered with clouds; while Talyors-Gill poured its rushing, thread-like stream down the hillside opposite. Here we first began to walk on grass, and grass that had been rained on for the last hundred years without intermission, judging from its appearance. But we said little and pushed on by the side of the beck for some time, until it became necessary to go straight up the mountain by the sheep track, which was marked only by an occasional cairn or small heap of stones. It was hard work to climb over slippery rocks almost perpendicular; but we persevered and surmounted the hill, only to find ourselves struggling in a green bog at the top. The rain now came down harder than ever and as the Oxford man began to whistle "Wot Ch'er?" we felt gloomy. We pushed on in single file, each one dripping as he walked, the sound of the water swashing about inside our boots being painfully evident. We went on like this for some time. My friend suddenly broke into a shout, "Here we are, boys, thank goodness, this is Eske Hause." "Oh, then we are half way up Scafell," said the Oxonian--"hang the mist!" This last observation was timely, for a thick Scotch mist had now shut in upon the small plateau known as Eske Hause, where we stood, but as to the derivation of that name deponent sayeth not. We stopped here for a few minutes while our Oxonian produced a guide map, and with the water pouring down from the peak of his cap, proceeded to mark out our path. The rest of us wrung ourselves out and paid as much attention as we could. "We must go down by Sprinkling Tarn (good name, that) and then by Sty Head Tarn until we get to the Pass. Now, shall we lunch up here or down by the tarn?" We decided to postpone luncheon until we reached a lower and presumably warmer level, and we eagerly proceeded to make the descent. The path, or track, was steep and stony and the stones were slippery. I will draw a veil over that descent, but when we got down by Sprinkling Tarn (a small, lonely bit of water) we felt like being put through a wringer. We hurried on, not noticing that the path had merged itself imperceptibly in the surrounding turf, until our Wadham friend exclaimed: "Oh, I say, you know, this can't be right. It's quite time we were at that confounded tarn and I haven't seen a cairn this half hour." It was too true. We were off the track. There was mist all about us and the keen rain was chilling us through and through. We searched for the path in vain, until we were entirely discouraged, when some one suggested that it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a bite; so we stood about in a dripping group as we got out our sandwiches and flasks. We were wet and chilled, and I doubt if Sir Wilfred himself would have objected to a taste of Scotch whisky under the circumstances. But the sandwiches! Oh, Mrs. Rigg, Mrs. Rigg, how we blessed you, there, on the steep side of Scafell as we found that the ham of which they were exclusively composed had "gone bad!" We said little, but we thought hard just then. After that we went sadly and silently on. Soon we found we were going down instead of up, which we knew to be wrong, as Sty Head Pass was above us. And now the thunders of a torrent swollen by recent rains began to be heard, and presently we came in sight of a tumbling mass of water hurrying along the bottom of the valley. We stood aghast, for this we knew must be Lingmell Beck, and the valley the one leading to Wastwater, miles away from the Pass. Night was closing in and the mist was nothing lighter, while it was really hard to carry the wet and dripping mass our clothes had become. We wandered up and down this valley for some time in bewilderment, not finding any trace of a path. But at last my friend, who had been carefully examining the mountain side, cried but: "Look, boys, there's the Pass, way above us! We must push straight up if we ever want to get back to-night." We looked doubtfully at the thin black line that might be the Pass, and which seemed miles above us, and then, with one determined look, set our teeth and went up the mountain. I say went, for we didn't walk, although we used every other means of progression, for we crawled and crept and stumbled along, sometimes on our hands and knees, frequently sliding back with great agility. I never experienced such a climb anywhere, even in Greece among the wild Theban mountains; for, dripping wet, with our clammy clothes clinging to us, we went a solid mile up that hill before we found the Sty Head Pass. That, although rough, was child's play compared with what we had come through, and when we reached the small cairn that marks the highest part of the Pass, we shuddered as we looked down the almost perpendicular mountain and wondered how on earth we ever came up. From the top of the Pass it was a fairly easy walk to Rosthwaite by Sty Head Tarn, which, owing to the encircling mist, looked like an immense ocean. Mrs. Rigg was at the door when we got down and looked so cheerful and glad to see us that we forgot to mention that ham. But we haven't got the damp of that walk out of ourselves yet; and it is doubtful if anything but the warm Italian sun is capable of removing the general mildew that enshrouds us. [Illustration] [Illustration] WINDERMERE. AMBLESIDE.--The chief peculiarity of the Lake country is the ever-present dampness. But once used to this one begins to enter into its peace and quiet. A month here away from the world would be, to a tired and overworked man, better than all "cures" or sanitoriums, for the damp is not the city pest, but that peculiar kind of moisture which makes the hard, smooth turf as green as an emerald and gives to the temporary visitor an appetite wolfish in its intensity. Ambleside is five miles from Windermere village (the nearest station) and is reached by four-horse drags running three times a day. The road is as smooth as a billiard table, the horses always fresh, and on the day it doesn't rain, a drive to Ambleside by the Lake is a thing to be remembered. Ambleside is a village of a few thousand inhabitants and primitive, to a certain degree. The Post Office, for instance, is in a stationer's shop and the drapers' and tailors' establishments are one. Ambleside is nestled at the foot of Wansfell Pike and is built on the side of a hill, consequently the streets are steep. There is but one street really, and the chemist, the butcher and the inevitable relic shop are to be found in it. The village is honeycombed with lodgings and there are many inns, for it is a great centre for excursions. The immediate neighbourhood is rich in attractions. Stock-Ghyll Force is but a short distance off--through the stable yard of the "Salutation Inn," and although a turn-stile with the sign "No Admission" appears, one may enter boldly without paying. The waterfall is not high but is wonderfully picturesque as it falls down the moss-covered rocks and dashes away through a deep ravine. The Stock-Ghyll is a favorite resort for newly-married couples and is certainly romantic enough for the purpose. Then there is a charming walk to Rydal--Wordsworth's village--by the banks of the Rothay, past Fox-How, where the noble Arnold of Rugby, beloved by all readers of "Tom Brown's School Days," lived; and Fox-Ghyll, the residence of the late Mr. Foster. Fox-How is an ideally perfect place, situate on the side of a hill, with a smooth green expanse of lawn in front, and buried in rose vines and honeysuckles. It is a low stone building with old-fashioned windows and has a cheery, hospitable look. The name is curious and a frequent one in the lake country. It comes, I believe, from the old Norwegian word "hague" (a sepulchral mound). Dr. Arnold named the three roads between Rydal and Grassmere. The highest he called Corruption Road, the middle Bit-by-Bit Reform (now called Bitbit Road), and the most level, Radical Reform. A little further on is Rydal Mount, Wordsworth's home, a charming old place, cushioned in trees. There the road goes on by Rydal Water, a small lake almost covered with rushes, and then through a gap in the mountain to Grassmere. This is all haunted ground, for Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge and De Quincy all walked and mused by the side of these lakes and on these hills, and one hardly wonders that they were inspired by the lovely scenery. Then, in another direction, one may walk from Ambleside to the quaint little village of Clappersgate, which is made up entirely of low grey stone cottages covered with vines and roses. The resources of Ambleside in providing day excursions for its visitors are really unbounded, and one of the pleasantest of these is to walk down to Waterhead, at the end of Windermere, and take passage on one of the small steamers that run several times a day. As the small vessel starts out from the pier one gets a splendid view of the mountains at the back of Ambleside, and the little village looks like a cluster of one or two houses in a vast amphitheatre. Then we turn around a wooded point and stop for a minute at Low-wood, the big hotel on the border of the lake, and then go on past hills and valleys and flocks of sheep to Bowness, passing two or three small islands, one of which, Holm Crag, is a favorite resort of birds in the winter months. Then we dart over the lake to the little island of Ferry, and then go straight on past a bewildering number of bays and islets to Lakeside at the foot of the lake where the railway station of the Midland line gives access to Ulverston and the iron country of Furness. Windermere is almost equal to Lake Geneva, and although it has become the fashion to cry down the English lakes, it is a fact that more enjoyment at an extremely moderate outlay may be obtained in the small belt of country that contains them, than in Switzerland, overrun as it is by the cockneys and _parvenues_ of every nation. I know of hardly any greater treat to a person of any artistic appreciation than that trip up and down Windermere on a clear day. Then the drives from Ambleside are charming. One may drive to Grassmere by Red Bank, a steep hill overlooking that lake and Rydal Water, and also to Hawkshead, where a very curious old church demands attention; and to High Wray, where there is an inn rejoicing in the name of "The Dun Cow." A hill outside High Wray commands a splendid view of the hills behind and about Ambleside: Loughrigg Fell, Wansfell Pike, Nab-Scar, Crinkle Crags, Coniston-Old-Man and Great Gable. On a clear day one may also see Helvellyn. The road passes Wray Castle, a modern house built to imitate perfectly a mediæval fortress. The owner is a retired M. D. of Liverpool. Another delightful drive is to Langdale Pikes and to Megeon Ghyll, a lovely waterfall rather bigger than most of the cascades in Lakeland. On this drive one may have a capital view of Red Screes, another of the high mountains. Curious names are met with all through Westmoreland. For instance, three peaks not far from here are called Harrison Stickle, Pike O'Stickle and Pike O'Blisco. There are many curious customs still extant in and about Ambleside. Christmas is celebrated in the old hospitable way. At that time the farmer and his family are away at other houses night after night and one must look for them anywhere but at home. At Christmas every Cumberland and Westmoreland farmer gives two banquets, one called "t'auld foak's neet" and the other, "t'young foak's neet;" the first of which is for those who are married and the second for those who are single. The tables groan under old-fashioned dainties: raised and mince pies, goose, caudle cup, "guid strang yell," as they call the home-brewed October, and a huge bowl of punch. Intoxication never happens at these Cumberland feasts. Among others, Mrs. Hemans once had a cottage on Windermere called "Dove's Nest," and wrote some verses on the scenery, which are well known; but she can hardly be ranked with the school of "Lake Poets." There is a queer old rhyme current in the district, in itself a significant comment on the weather of the country: "When Wansfell wears a cap of cloud The roar of Brathay will be loud; When mists come down on Loughrigg Fell, A drenching day we all foretell; When Red Screes frown on Ambleside, The rain will pour both far and wide. When Wansfell smiles and Loughrigg's bright, 'Twill surely rain before the night; If breezes blow from Bowness Bay, 'Tis certain to be wet all day; And if they blow from Grassmere Lake, You'd better an umbrella take. But if no rain should fall all day From Ambleside to Morecambe Bay, Upon that morning you will see Fishes and eels in every tree; When in the nets on Windermere Twelve pickled salmon shall appear, No rain shall fall upon that day And men may safely make their hay." [Illustration] [Illustration] SANDRINGHAM HOUSE. WOLVERTON.--The country in Norfolk is real country and the scenery is typically English. The Prince Consort could hardly have selected a more suitable spot than Sandringham for the country seat of the Heir Apparent; and the fact that the Prince and Princess of Wales make Sandringham House their headquarters for the greater part of the year has naturally given an impetus to property in the neighbourhood. Sandringham House is not a palace. It is simply large, genial, hospitable and attractive, like its master. The Prince of Wales is a much discussed man, and the ordinary American who has not travelled and who derives his knowledge of English affairs from the American daily papers--which usually give only that side of the question which is acceptable to the Liberals and Radicals of Great Britain--has little idea of his personality, and does not begin to gauge the strength of his character. The Prince is usually supposed to be a jovial, good-natured man who devotes his whole time to pleasure, and who has no ideal in life beyond the pursuit of social gayeties and field sports. This is a total and gross mistake. The Prince of Wales is one of the most hard-working men in the Kingdom, and the humblest of his future subjects has probably more time to himself than the Heir Apparent; and, I venture to say, does not spend it half so usefully as this much-abused Prince. For many years he has been King of England in everything but name, and he is far more than the figurehead of the nation. His knowledge of public affairs is remarkable; he is a master of diplomacy and his tact is famous. Like his father, he possesses a fine mind, and sometimes displays a depth of foresight astonishing even to his old friend, Mr. Gladstone. He has a happy knack of looking at all sides of a question, and his mature judgment upon matters of public import is often sought by statesmen of all shades of opinion. He has never meddled in politics, and his success in steering a straight course among the quicksands of party passion and strife is well shown by a dinner he gave in London only the other day to the King of the Belgians, at which Mr. Gladstone sat next to Lord Salisbury, and Mr. Balfour chatted pleasantly with Mr. John Morley. The Prince of Wales alone could give such a dinner. A fair estimate of the Prince is rarely found in American papers. Because he is Prince and will some day become King, they think it their duty to spatter his reputation with mud; and to show their "Republican sympathies" (I use the word in its widest sense) by ill-digested diatribes against royalty. The Conservative party, like the English Court, has hardly a representative among us, and our knowledge of important events on the other side usually comes from a "Liberal" source. It is evident that in many cases the American papers know a bitter editorial against the Prince of Wales may serve some political end of their own; and they never hesitate to sacrifice him on such occasions. It is no exaggeration to say that the most popular man in England is the Prince of Wales. Even the Radicals cheer him, for he is always ready to do anyone a good turn, while still careful of his dignity. It is interesting to note the Prince's daily life at Sandringham, his country seat, where he appears as a simple Squire. Saturday-to-Monday parties are frequent at Sandringham in the autumn when the shooting has begun; and often seven or eight gentlemen; a General, an Admiral, a Diplomat or two, with their wives, a foreign Prince or Nobleman, and possibly a Bishop, assemble on Friday evening. These with the household officers make up the party; and gathered under the rose-shaded candles around the flower-laden table in the dining room they present a varied picture of gay and stern humanity. No sooner is the substantial dinner over than McKay, the Scotch piper, emerges from a neighbouring room and intones some wild Scotch air on his bag-pipes. In the evening the Prince and Princess move from group to group in the drawing room, saying a few pleasant words to each of the guests, and then withdraw to their private apartments, while music by some famous pianist usually closes the evening. Baccarat is never played at Sandringham, and the smoking-room cohort breaks up early. Breakfast is served at half-after-nine (previous to which several gongs have sent their echoes loudly through the house) at small round tables in the dining room, and the meal must be quickly despatched, for at eleven the carriages start for the meeting-place, whether all the guests are ready or not. A four-horse drag carries eight or ten guests with their guns and game bags; and an array of dog-carts, village-carts and various traps is at the disposal of the remaining visitors. A breezy morning on the moors is followed by a merry al-fresco meal in a tent, where curries from India await the Hindoo Maharajahs, and a juicy ham sent by the King of Portugal tempts the ordinary appetite, while savoury Irish stews show the Hibernian sympathies of the Prince. The genial Host always rides a grey cob to and from the moors; at dusk the traps and drags again appear; and the party, indulging in cigars and lively chat, returns gaily to the house. After a change of garments and a "tub," they are just in the mood to enjoy the comfort of the sitting room, where the charming Princess presides behind the tea tray, looking more like a sister of her three tall daughters than anything else. No one, of course, really sits down to tea; each one takes his cup and wanders through the rooms, stopping to listen for a moment to the piano, or to admire the small green parrot who gives three very emphatic and loyal cheers for the Queen. When the guests finally leave this most hospitable and royal house they are sure to find among their luggage at the station a well-filled hamper of game. Another morning the Prince takes an early train to London, lays the corner stone of a Masonic asylum; drives to a new hospital which he opens; presides over a meeting of the British Bible Society; and then attends a meeting at the Imperial Institute, finally returning to Sandringham by a late train. The hearty cheers which meet him in London on his way to and from the station are, if anything, more cordial than those which greet his Royal Mother on her drives through the town. Very little of the Prince's time is spent in amusing himself. He is at the nation's disposal, and the nation is a hard taskmaster. His is a difficult position to fill, and in the fierce, white light that beats upon a throne, his slightest actions are distorted. The present baccarat affair is a good illustration of the way in which the Prince's affairs are twisted to suit the scandal-loving readers of the Radical press; but the storm of adverse criticism now raging around his head has already begun to create a reaction in his favour, and thoughtful people are commencing to ask themselves whether it is quite fair to shower so much abuse upon the Heir Apparent for what is admitted to be an error of judgment, but which amounts to nothing more. His attitude in this baccarat affair has been strictly honourable, although open to criticism. It may be worth while to analyze the charges against him. A slight examination will show the flimsy character of the foundation upon which they rest. In the first place, people are under the impression that the fact of his connection in any way with the affair was disgraceful. This view of the case will hardly be accepted upon mature reflection. When the Prince ran down to Tranby Croft for a few days' rest, and in the evening sat down to a friendly game of baccarat, he never dreamed that one of his oldest friends would deliberately try to cheat him. With the fact of his playing cards for money the world has nothing to do. Each man must decide for himself whether games of chance when played for money are wrong or right. It may be claimed that the Prince was not a man, but a Personage; but it is well to remember that he played cards in his private capacity and not as Heir Apparent. The jury has decided that Sir William Gordon-Cumming did cheat at cards; and to any one knowing the game, his very feeble explanation appears absurd; while the fact that five witnesses saw him push his counters over the line to add to his stake at an improper time practically places the matter beyond dispute. The only fault that the Prince of Wales committed was one of kindness. He signed the paper, prepared by Lord Coventry and General Owen Williams, promising secrecy if Sir William would agree never to touch cards again. That is: he, a Field Marshal of the British Army, tacitly agreed to allow Sir. William to remain in the Army and in his regiment while knowing that he had cheated at cards. His duty as an officer was to report Sir William's conduct at once to the Duke of Cambridge, the Commander-in-Chief. This he failed to do out of regard for his friend; and for this he has been so bitterly attacked in the press! Again, he has been criticised for his continued presence at the trial, where he came--it was suggested--for the purpose of muzzling eminent Counsel. Can any one fail to see what scorn and contempt the press would have poured out upon him had he failed to appear in person? Every one would have said he was afraid to be present. No one recognizes more fully than the Prince himself that an error of judgment was committed when he condoned Sir William's offence; and his recognition of this fact has been proved by the apology offered in his name by Mr. Stanhope, Secretary-of-State for War, in the House of Commons. All this talk and discussion in England is merely froth on the surface. The resolutions and strictures passed by various Dissenting bodies with much display of bad taste appear to be equally due to a desire on their part to condemn gambling in high places, and at the same time to draw public attention to themselves. The lower-middle class and the agricultural labourers, who compose the great bulk of the population of England, go placidly on their way, paying no attention to this noisy affair and only longing for their beef and beer. The upper-middle class is more deeply stirred; for does it not count many a Mr. Pecksniff among its members, and are not Mr. Stiggins and Mr. Chadband to be met within its chaste and highly moral circles? There is no doubt that the Prince will be decidedly more careful in future as to whom he admits to the honour of his acquaintance. This baccarat affair may cause him some slight temporary loss of popularity, but a generous fault often makes a man more popular than a miserly virtue; and the enthusiastic cheers which greeted the Prince at Ascot only a day or so ago are perhaps a better indication of what the people of England think of their future King's course in this matter. A significant fact is Mr. Gladstone's loyal adherence to his Prince, and his stern discouragement of the intention of his unruly Radical colleagues to attack the Prince in Parliament. Mr. Labouchere, too, the cynical editor of the Radical _Truth_, as well as the Liberal _Daily News_, supports the Prince; and the authors and literary men whom he has so often helped are rallying to his aid. The Prince of Wales, like every one, is mortal; but far more than his great-uncle, King George IV., does he deserve his well-earned title of "The First Gentleman in Europe." [Illustration] [Illustration] THE LATTER-DAY JACOBITES CHARING CROSS.--A few years ago Mr. Gladstone brought down upon himself a perfect hailstorm of remonstrance, reproach and denial by a statement in a public letter, to a candidate for Parliamentary honours in the Liberal interest. This statement was to the effect that no one ever now dreamed of objecting to the Revolution of 1688, and its results. Previous to this, the great majority of English and Americans had thought the cause of the Stuarts forever dead; and that a romantic interest--chiefly historical--alone remained of the intense devotion shown to that fated family in the unsuccessful risings of 1715 and 1745. But the great majority was undeceived upon the appearance of Mr. Gladstone's letter, and learned with a degree of sympathetic amazement that there existed in Great Britain two "Orders" or "Leagues," both aiming at the return and recall of the heiress of the Stuarts, to the throne of her ancestors. One of these, the "Order of the White Rose," was merely platonic and existed to gratify a passion for historical romance on the part of its members. Its principal object was to hold meetings on the anniversary of the death of Mary Queen of Scots, King Charles I., and the battle of Culloden--the battle that proved the death-blow to the cause of the gallant young "Pretender." I say its object "was," advisedly; for the stupid action of the powers that be, on a certain day in February last (1892), has changed its somewhat lukewarm hero-worship to working zeal, and has brought it into closer relations with the other association: the "Legitimist Jacobite League," This society makes no secret of the fact that it meditates treason. Its avowed purpose is to restore the Stuarts; and on its books appear the names of seven thousand people devoted to its cause. Most of these rebels in embryo hail from the Highlands, where the old loyalty to the Stuarts still exists, and where the last desperate stand was made against the bloodhounds of the butcher-Duke of Cumberland. This League always refers to Her Majesty as "The Lady Victoria" and recognizes as Queen the heiress of the Stuarts--the wife of the oldest son of the Prince Regent of Bavaria. It would be interesting to digress here and wander in the fascinating paths of the genealogy and descent of the Stuarts; but it would fill columns. However, the Order of the White Rose and the Jacobite League are satisfied with the descent of the Princess, and they are the ones chiefly concerned. Lest my information be considered apocryphal, I may say that all my statements have been verified by a member of the Order. Lately the League has turned its attention to Parliamentary matters, and although the members consider that the last legal Parliament was held when King James II. was cheated out of his throne by his Dutch son-in-law, they are not above agitating in a constitutional way, and have secured several Legitimist candidates to stand at the general election. So to sum up in a few words: Before last February there existed in Great Britain two associations each looking upon the present Royal Family as usurpers, and each devoted to the Stuart cause; one theoretically, the other practically. Both these associations had existed since the rising of 1745, but in a more or less chrysalis condition until Mr. Gladstone's letter aroused them to declare themselves, when they were amazed at the adherents that poured in from all over the United Kingdom--principally from Scotland and Ireland, many from England, but not one from Wales. Some of these recruits were animated simply by a desire for something new and were people who are never happy unless in pursuit of some interesting fad; but the majority consisted of those whose ancestors had fought either at Killiekrankie, at Culloden or at Preston Pans. There is more or less mystery as to the attitude assumed by the object of all these hopes. But she is believed to take up a position of innocuous desuetude, so to speak. That is, if the royal lightning should strike her, she would, like Barkis, "be willin';" but until the Jacobite thunderstorm gathers, and the White Rose lightning illumines the political sky, she bides her time. For Bavaria is at peace with England. A glimpse at the incident of last February before referred to and another which happened a short time before, may be instructive. Everyone knows the statue of King Charles the First, which stands at Charing Cross. The Order of the White Rose had decided to decorate this statue of the King upon the anniversary of his martyrdom, and about three o'clock in the morning a small band of zealous Jacobites, with wreaths of white roses, gathered near the statue--as on Primrose Day the Conservatives gather to cover the statue of the great Earl with primroses--but to their annoyed surprise a surly policeman was stationed there who told them gruffly to "move on"--that no decorations would be allowed on or near the statue. Many were the murmurs and loud the remonstrances, but both were unavailing, until one of the party sarcastically inquired if they might leave the wreaths at the foot of the statue of George III. hard by. No objection was made to this (mark the distinction drawn!) but the Legitimist sympathizers preferred to carry their wreaths away as souvenirs, and moved on with many muttered observations on the "Hanoverian pack," hated of their fathers. Several of the papers referred to this peculiar action of the authorities with ridicule, and blamed the Home Secretary for giving an unnecessary prominence to the lately resuscitated party. This was the first thing which quickened the lukewarm zeal of the Order while it inflamed the ardour of the League. The next blunder of the authorities was more serious, and to this may be ascribed the Stuart revival. Of this incident I was fortunate enough to be an eye witness. I had happened to see a paragraph in an obscure little evening paper on the seventh of February to the effect that as the next day was the anniversary of the death of Mary Queen of Scots, the Order of the White Rose would form a procession in Westminster Abbey to lay a wreath upon her tomb. The Jacobite League was not mentioned, but, as events proved, many of its members had learned of the purpose of the Order and had arranged to be present. Mindful of the refusal to allow the Order to decorate King Charles's statue, and yet hardly thinking that any opposition would be offered to the attempt to honour the memory of the unfortunate Queen, especially as on that day the Chapels Royal were opened to the public, I arrived early at the Abbey and as soon as I entered could see that something unusual was in the air. Small knots of people were whispering in the nave, and excited vergers bustled about, dropping their h's all over the Abbey. The daily afternoon service was to commence at half-past three, so there was some anxiety to get the function over. The Marquis de Ruvigny--a name familiar to all versed in the history of the Stuart cause--and Mr. Clifford Mellish were waiting at the door for the arrival of the wreaths, when the appearance of a score of stalwart police-constables created some surprise. The majority of the strangers present (there were about six hundred) had evidently come for the ceremony of placing the wreaths on Queen Mary's tomb and were waiting silently and reverently until everything should be ready. Fortunately, as we all thought, the day was one when the royal tombs were open to visitors; but soon an ominous murmur arose that the gates leading to the chapels where the royal tombs were had been closed. The Marquis de Ruvigny indignantly refused to believe that such a _bétise_ was possible on the part of the Dean; but a surging of the now increasing, crowd towards the chapels showed that the gates were secured. Then in no measured terms the disgust and anger of the Jacobites broke forth: "Intolerable Stupidity!" "Afraid of the consequences!" "Absurd!" "Idiotic!" were some of the expressions used. But one braw Scotchman summed up the situation in a few words: "The government has turned a romantic pilgrimage into real treason, and has raised us to the dignity of a political party." The leaders now got together near the gates and talked earnestly while waiting for the wreaths to come. I was curious as to the effect of the closing of the gates on the British public in general, and wandered through the Abbey, catching expressions here and there. "It's a perfect shame," exclaimed a rosy-cheeked vicar evidently just up from the country. "It makes me sympathize with the Jacobites--the idea of depriving Englishmen of their right of free assembly." And a stout old gentleman near him, who was evidently something in the city, turned with the plaint: "My ancestors lent King George the First money, and I have always been a staunch Hanoverian; but by Jove this is too much. Do you suppose if these people wished to decorate the tomb of George III. or of Dutch William they would be stopped?" And many more spoke to the same effect. The impression made on the general public present was evidently bad. But the sight of a well-known figure pacing up the nave suggested Archdeacon Farrar, and it was indeed he. Soon the leaders of the abortive procession spied him and entered into eager expostulation, but all to no purpose. Dean Bradley was in Algiers, and the Canon-in-residence for the time being (Canon Ainger) had decided to close the Chapels Royal. He could not interfere. But then the large wreath appeared, a beautiful affair of white roses and camellias, and it was hastily decided to affix it to the gates leading to the royal tombs. Then a short, stout man with sandy hair and beard pressed forward, eager to take it. "My grandfather, Robbie Anderson, led the way for Prince Charlie at the Battle of Preston Pans and I'll be proud to lead ye now," he said. A scarcely suppressed cheer broke forth as the wreath was placed on the gates, in which those of us who claimed a touch of the old Scotch Cavalier blood joined. A card was attached, and by general request the descendant of Robbie Anderson read it aloud. I afterwards copied it: "In memory of Mary, Queen of Great Britain, France and Scotland. Presented by the Legitimist (Jacobite) League. February 8th, 1892." Then as the inspectors from Scotland Yard drew nearer, a red-faced verger bustled through the crowd up to the gates and pointing to the wreath exclaimed, "Take that thing down!" This gave rise to murmurs of remonstrance and indignation and the Marquis de Ruvigny spoke for all: "I decline," said the Marquis, "to touch that wreath. Take it down yourself." But this the verger had no orders to do, and retreated in discomfiture. Then it was proposed to hold a meeting in Deans' Yard to protest, but Mr. Stuart Mellor very sensibly observed that it would do no good to be arrested for brawling, and that public opinion would know what to think. And as most of the Jacobites present were Catholics this exclamation of one of them was to the point and caused a quick clearance: "I say, if we don't look sharp, we shall be in a Protestant place of wash-up at time of service." And so the crowd faded gradually away, and what but for the tact of the leaders might have turned into a "demonstration" in the Abbey, was safely over. But the moral effect of the gathering and the severe measures used by the authorities has not yet died away, and many Englishmen who cared little for the Stuarts have joined the Order or the League as protest against this act of the government. The Dean, I believe, refers the matter to the Bishop of London, and he mentions the Ecclesiastical Commissioners more or less vaguely. It is difficult, therefore, to fit the blame. But there is no doubt that this incident has given renewed force to the Jacobite cause. Their Parliamentary candidates are busy, and the coming general election will afford a practical test of their strength with the common people. There is no doubt that in Ireland they could secure many seats if they tried, for the Irishmen of the south still remember the Battle of the Boyne. Sensible people all around regret the blunder of the government, and as usual H. R. H., the Prince of Wales, voiced the universal sentiment when he declared the suppression of the pilgrimage a shame. "Why," said he, "I would have gone with them myself, and would have worn a white rose, too, if they had asked me." And no doubt if the Canon-in-residence, or the Dean of Westminster, or the Bishop of London, or the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, or whoever was responsible, had acted in this sensible, unprejudiced way, the incident would have closed and people would have smiled at the archæological enthusiasm of the Jacobites, instead of thinking them hardly used, and, ergo, sympathizing with them. [Illustration] * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Page 115, "Princesss" changed to "Princess" (and Princess move from) Page 125, "inocuous" changed to "innocuous" (of innocuous desuetude) Page 129, "sympatize" changed to "sympathize" (makes me sympathize) 
47233	----	Transcriber's notes: Errata have been left as in the original book and not altered in the text. Obvious printer's errors have been corrected as they were not listed in the errata. Other than that, the archaic and inconsistent spelling from the original has not been altered. [Illustration: Dr. Samuel Stearns. An American Philosopher.] Dr. STEARNS's TOUR FROM LONDON TO PARIS. CONTAINING, A Description of the Kingdom of France--The Customs, Manners, Polity, Science, Commerce, and Agriculture of the Inhabitants--Its ANCIENT form of Government,--and the NEW--Particulars concerning the Royal Family--Causes of the late Revolution--Proceedings and Decrees of the National Assembly--An Account of the Destruction of the Bastille, and of many dreadful Commotions which have happened in the Nation--With a minute Detail of the late grand Proceedings at the Champ de Mars.--The whole interspersed with a Variety of Reflections, _humourous_, _moral_, _critical_, and _philosophical_. AFTER WHICH IS DELINEATED, A NEW CONSTITUTION: WITH A DESCRIPTION OF THE ROAD TO LIBERTY. * * * * * "Applicans animum meum ad disquirendum & ad explorandum Sapientiam de omni eo quod fit sub cælis." Sol. * * * * * LONDON, Printed: AND SOLD BY C. DILLY, IN THE POULTRY. * * * * * M DCC XC. PRICE 3S. STERLING. Entered at Stationers Hall. PREFACE. Kind Reader, As I am obliged to spend the greatest part of my time in mathematical, philosophical, and physical studies, it was not my design to have written on this subject, although I was advised to do it more than twelve months ago; but on seeing the movements in France, on account of the _Revolution_, I altered my mind, kept a journal of many things which I saw and heard, and have accordingly written the following pages, which are presented for your perusal and consideration. I have endeavoured to avoid error, and to compile the narration as accurate as possible: if any thing of that kind shall be discovered, I hope it will be imputed to my being misinformed, and not to any intention of mine to impose upon the public. As it is the duty of every philosopher to promote the union, harmony, and felicity of mankind, I have mentioned many things which I hope may be productive of establishing the peace and happiness of the inhabitants of the world. But, alas! it is to be regretted, that some who have shone greatly in the philosophical profession, instead of promoting this laudable work, and for the sake of ingrossing the riches, honours, and profits of this perishing world to themselves, have, under a cloak of religion and liberty, sowed discord amongst brethren, excited insurrections, mobs, and riots, which have terminated in carnage and desolation, and proved destructive of the public tranquillity, and of the liberty and happiness of the people. But these abominable works are by no means the business of a true philosopher, who will attempt to do good instead of doing evil. How far the politicians of the present, or future ages, may agree with me in sentiment, time alone must determine. But if the things that are written in the subsequent sheets shall prove useful and profitable, it will rejoice the author. After wishing your health and prosperity, and the felicity of mankind through the world, I subscribe myself, kind Reader, Your's and the Public's most obedient humble Servant, SAMUEL STEARNS. London, Sept. 30, 1790. ERRATA. Page 13. line 13. for _ni_ read _in_. 14. ---- 3. -- _abliged_ read _obliged_. 18. ---- 19. -- _was_ read _were_. 23. ---- 5. -- _market_ read _marked_. 26. ---- 7. -- _received into the centre_ read _received them into the centre_. 36. ---- 18. -- _meteria_ read _materia_. 71. ---- 10. -- _malconduct_ read _maleconduct_. 96. ---- 20. -- _againt_ read _against_. 98. ---- 15. -- _The semicolon should have been placed after the word_ only;--. TOUR FROM LONDON TO PARIS. CHAP. I. _The_ Doctor _engages a Passage to_ Paris.--_Copy of a Card received at Piccadilly.--He arrives at_ Dover, _and_ Calais.--_Is met by a number of Gentlemen, who welcome him to France.--An Account of the Beggars, and of the French Diet.--Observations on drinking Healths._ July 7, 1790. Having had an inclination to go to Paris for some months past, I went to Piccadilly this day, where I engaged a passage on board the stage coaches, called the diligences, for which I paid five guineas, and was told "That I would be found for that sum, with every thing that might be needful on the way, only I must give about five shillings to the porters." At Piccadilly I received a card, a copy of which I publish for the information of strangers, and benefit of the owners of the stages. "The Paris diligences to and from London, set out from the office next the White Bear Inn, Piccadilly, every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday, at five o'clock in the morning. Five guineas each person, for carriage, sea passage, diet and lodging: Port fees excepted. Fourteen pounds luggage allowed; all above to pay three-pence farthing per pound. "N. B. In case passengers should be detained by contrary winds, they are to pay their own expences from the next day of their arrival at the seaport, to the time of their shipping. "Also a wagon, every Monday at ten o'clock in the morning, to carry goods and merchandize, which are registered at the said office, and at the Blossoms Inn, Lawrence-lane, Cheapside, where declarations must be delivered in writing, and signed by the owner, of the quality, quantity, and value of the said merchandize, which will be conveyed to Paris in the course of a fortnight, at the rate of seventeen shillings per hundred weight, Custom-house duties excepted. The proprietors, for the conveniency of the public, will discharge the said duties either in England or France, and charge them with the carriage to the person they are directed to, without requiring any interest or commission whatever. "Attendance at the above offices every day from nine in the morning till seven in the evening, where parcels are registered to Paris, and to every part of France. "*** Passengers luggage must be sent to the office between six and seven o'clock in the evening, or it will be left 'till the following carriage." As I was on my way to Piccadilly, I was informed that the king of France was to be crowned on the fourteenth of this month, and sworn to adhere to the new Constitution which has been framed by the National Assembly. This made me anxious to get to Paris as soon as possible: but being told the places were all taken in the coaches, and that it was impossible for me to set off till the 12th, I was obliged to wait till that time, but was informed that I must be at Piccadilly with my trunk, &c. by seven in the evening of the 11th; and I was there at the time; lodged at the White Bear inn, and at five the next morning set off for Paris in company with five gentlemen. A lady in a post-chaise overtook us near Greenwich, and came into the diligence. We breakfasted at a good inn on the road, and dined at Canterbury, where the lady left us, and at evening reached Dover, where we supped, lodged, and went to breakfast. About eleven in the morning of the 13th, we embarked for Calais, and arrived there in about three hours; but had a very rough passage, in consequence of which almost every lady and gentleman on board was afflicted with sea-sickness, which I believe was advantageous to the greatest part of us. On our arrival at Calais a great number of French gentlemen came to our vessel, to welcome us to France, and invite us to put up at their houses; but on finding that some of us belonged to the diligences, and that there was a place prepared for our entertainment, they went off disappointed. Although we had been told that we should have nothing to pay, only about five shillings to the porters, we found ourselves mistaken; for we were obliged to pay for the wine which we drank when we dined and supped on the preceding day, and to give money to a swarm of servants, &c. At Calais we were obliged to give in a list of our names to the Custom-house officers, and to give them some money to buy liquor with, that they might drink our healths--that being the custom, as we were told. We put up at a hotel, called _De la Messagrie_; where we left another list of our names; for such were the orders of the mayor of the city. An English lady that had come from Dover with us, and was a decent well-behaved person, and one of excellent sense and understanding, put up at this hotel: she told me she had travelled above 4,000 miles on the European Continent, had been through France, Germany, &c. and was then on her way to Flanders. At this place we were soon beset with a number of beggars, as 1. By a priest of the order of St. Francis. 2. By the captain of the vessel, that brought us over the English Channel. 3. By the steward of the vessel. 4. By the sailors that came with us. 5. By the poor of the city. 6. By the porters, &c. We gave the priest some money, and he pronounced a blessing and departed very well pleased. I was told that he and his convents got their living altogether by begging. We gave the captain half a crown a-piece, and some silver, sous, &c. to the other beggars. In a few minutes another swarm of beggars came that belong to Calais, and as we did not supply all their wants, some of them broke one of the windows belonging to the room where we were sitting, by a rapid stroke with a stick, stone, or some such thing. We soon sat down to dinner. The table was spread in an elegant manner, with napkins laid in our plates, which we used to keep our clothes clean. I was asked, _A'imez vous la soupe à la Françoise, Monsieur?_ My answer was--_Oui, Madame_. Besides soup, we had beef, mutton, veal, rabbits, hares, geese, fowls, pigeons, &c. several sorts of pies, excellent wine, and sweet cakes, figs, appricots, cherries and strawberries; the latter we mixed with white sugar and wine, and eat the composition with spoons, which is the French fashion. Their loaves of bread were about two feet in length, and six inches in breadth, and their knives had picked points, and their forks four tines a piece. Every one of us was allowed a tumbler to drink out of: but the French do not drink healths, though they pretended at the Custom-house, that we must give them money to buy liquor with for that purpose. We did not pay for our wines in France as we were on our way to Paris, as we had done at Dover, &c. The drinking of healths has been, and still is, too much practised both in Great Britain and America; and especially among the lower class of people. For when Timothy Toss Pot is in company, he says, "_Your healths ladies and gentlemen_," every time he drinks, which will be perhaps fifty times in an evening; whereas it might be as well, nay much better, to drink their healths but once, or not at all, which would save much trouble, and prevent the company from being interrupted with such clamours. I have asked why the health drinkers do not follow that practice when they drink tea, or coffee; as the Irish woman did when she partook of the sacrament; and have been told, that it is _because it is not the fashion_, and that from hence it has been omitted. The fashion, however, must be followed, right or wrong; for, Out of the fashion out of the world, according to the old woman's scripture: And, When we are among the Romans we must do as the Romans do. For, "Custom is a living law, whose sway "Men more than all the written laws obey." Says the poet. Because it is customary I have sometimes been induced to drink healths myself, when I have been in company, through fear that I should be called an uncivil and an unpolite person. But this needless custom is now growing out of use; for our nobility and gentry have discovered that it is superfluous, and many of them have forsaken the needless practice; which example will undoubtedly be followed by the commonality in process of time. We are told in Bailey's Dictionary, that the custom of drinking healths sprang from Rowena, a beautiful daughter of Hengistus, general of the Saxons. The general invited king Vortigern to supper, and after it was over called for Rowena, who, richly attired, and with a graceful mein, enters with a golden bowl full of wine in her hand, and drinks to the king, saying, "Be of health, lord king:" to which he replied, "Drink health." The king enamoured with her beauty, married her, and gave her and her father all Kent. This was upwards of 1300 years ago. We are also told in the Historian's _Vade-mecum_, that the custom of drinking healths was in fashion so early as 1134 years before Christ. The accounts do not agree, and which is the truest I cannot tell. CHAP. II. _The Latitude, Longitude, and Description of_ Calais.--_The_ Doctor _and others obliged to wear National Cockades.--English Money and Bank Notes not passable in France.--How Strangers ought to be dressed.--A Table of French Coins, with their Value in English Money.--Of French Measures, in Length._ Calais is situated in latitude 50 deg. and 58 min. North, and longitude 1 deg. and 49 min. East from the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. It is a very pleasant town, invironed with ramparts thrown up at a vast expence. At this place we found the people under arms, and they seemed to be filled with joy in consequence of the Revolution. We that were strangers, were obliged to put on and wear National Cockades, to prevent being insulted by mobs; and no lady or gentleman was suffered to travel without. Whilst we tarried at Calais we were informed that English money would not pass in France, and that it would be best for us to get our guineas changed. We therefore took change for some, and received 26 livres for each guinea, although an English guinea commonly passes for but 24 livres in France. Hence, about twelve-pence is lost by the exchange. Bank notes are not negotiable in France; therefore those that travel into that country, ought to take gold and silver, otherwise they will meet with much difficulty. If you draw on the bankers, they will charge you eight _per cent._ discount; but sometimes it is done at _par_ by French merchants who want to send money to London. No money is allowed to pass in France, unless coined in the present king's reign. Strangers ought therefore to be upon their guard, lest they get imposed upon by taking old coin. They that go to France ought to dress in the French mode, to prevent being known by sharpers, who sometimes try to take the advantage of those they find to be foreigners. As it may be of some utility to strangers going into France, I will just add A TABLE _of_ FRENCH COINS, _with their value in_ ENGLISH. | £. _S._ _D._ | £. _S._ _D._ A Louis d'or, 24 Livres | 2 0 0 | 1 0 0 A Grand Ecu, 6 ditto | 0 10 0 | 0 5 0 The Ecu, 3 ditto | 0 5 0 | 0 2 6 The Vingt-quatre Sols Piece | 0 2 0 | 0 1 0 A Livre | 0 1 8 | 0 0 10 A douze Sols Piece | 0 1 0 | 0 0 6 A Six Sols Piece | 0 0 6 | 0 0 3 A deux Sols | 0 0 2 | 0 0 1 A Sols 1/2 | 0 0 1-1/2 | 0 0 0-3/4 A Sol, or Sous | 0 0 1 | 0 0 0-1/2 A deux Liard Piece | 0 0 0-1/2 | 0 0 0-1/4 A Liard | 0 0 0-1/4 | 0 0 0-1/8 A louis d'or is a gold coin. A grand ecu, the ecu, vingt quatre sols piece, the livre, a douze sols piece, and the six sols pieces, are silver: though a livre is no coin, but nominal only. The deux sols, and the sols and half, are a mixture of copper and silver, and the other coins are all copper. The French measure the distances between their towns by leagues, posts, &c. and a post is two leagues, of their measure. A French league is fifty-seven yards and nine inches longer than an English league. A French toise, or fathom, is 76-3/4 inches longer than an English; and a French foot is equal to 12-79/100 inches English measure, &c. CHAP. III. _Leaves_ Calais.--_A Description of the Stage Coaches in France.--The_ Doctor _arrives at_ Paris.--_A further Account of the Beggars.--With a Description of the Country._ Early in the morning of the memorable 14th of July we left Calais, and proceeded in a stage coach, drawn by eight horses, on our journey towards Paris. These coaches are almost as large as a small house. They are very heavy; and eight persons may sit comfortably in the inside, and I believe a dozen more upon the outside. We had a conductor who rode armed on the fore-part of this wonderful machine, and a very large dog sitting upon his rump at the conductor's left hand; both of which were employed as sentinals to guard us on the way. The harnesses for the horses were made of ropes instead of leather, and were very long. Hence, as our coach was very large and the traces very long, we made a grand appearance as we travelled! Upon the hindmost and foremost horses, on the near side, two Frenchmen were mounted, with boots of a most surprizing magnitude, so well constructed with leather, wood, and iron, that if a horse falls down the rider is not in much danger of having his legs broke; for the prevention of which, the boots were thus made. The horses were not quite so large as ours in England; but we drove about five or six miles in an hour, and at the end of every post the horses and postillions were changed. The postillions received twelve sous of us when we parted with them, which gave content. We breakfasted at Boulogne, dined at Montreul, and in the evening came to Abbeville, where we lodged. The people were in arms through the country. Scarce any body was at work in the fields, as it was a time of feasting, and all seemed rejoiced at the sound of the liberty they expect, in consequence of the great and glorious Revolution. At this place there was a young lady, who manifested by her actions, which speak louder than words, that she had an inclination to lodge with me that night; but as I had no disposition to deal in such commodities, she was disappointed. The next morning we set out early, breakfasted at Amiens, dined at the Breteuil, supped at Clermont, and rode all night; but were obliged to pay for our breakfasts out of our own pockets the next morning before we came to Paris. We arrived at Paris about nine in the morning, being the 16th of July, having been four days and four hours on our journey. We were abliged to give the conductor half a crown a-piece; and I spent near three guineas on the way, besides what I paid at Piccadilly. At Paris we had our trunks searched at the Custom-house, and went from thence in a coach to the _Hotel de Beauvais, Rue des Vieux Augustins, No. 69, Quartier du Palais Royal_, where a gentleman that had come from London with me, and myself, hired three large rooms, neatly furnished, for four livres a-day. We breakfasted at this place, which cost us fifteen sous a-piece each morning, besides what we gave to the servants. I hired a servant, who remained with me all the time I tarried at Paris: he charged me forty sous per day; but he conducted me so well, that I gave him more than double that sum. I found Paris very full of people from the country, and from foreign parts. They had met to celebrate the Revolution, and tarried till the next Sunday in order to have another grand convention at the _Champ de Mars_. Whilst we were on our way from Calais to Paris, we were followed, in some of the intermediate towns and villiages, by swarms of beggars, who seemed to be in great distress. I asked the reason of their begging; and was told that they were reduced to poverty in consequence of the commercial treaty between England and France; that the manufactories in Great Britain were so much cheaper than they were in France, that the merchants bought many of their goods in England, which had thrown those poor people out of employ, and obliged them to beg for a livelihood. We frequently contributed to the relief of those distressed objects: but because we could not give to every one, some of them threw a stone at our coach, which did not happen to strike any of us. At, and near Paris, we found but a few beggars, in proportion to the great number of people. Some how or another, they seemed to be much better provided for than they were in the country. The face of the country between Calais and Paris, appears much like many parts of the Province of Quebec, in America. But I think the soil is not quite so rich. Though some have supposed it is full as good by nature as the island of Great Britain; and that it would produce as large crops, if it was as well manured and cultivated. I was told, that agriculture had been much discouraged in France, before the Revolution, by reason of the oppression that the peasants were under. More then three-fourths of the land between Calais and Paris, appeared to be overspread with grain, consisting of rye, wheat, oats, and barley. There was also some excellent hemp and flax. The people had begun to reap, and there was a sign of a very plentiful harvest; but the crops were not so large in general as they are in England. We saw but a very few cattle, horses and sheep, and those we did see were small. The fields are not fenced, but lie open to the high-way. We often passed by boys holding cows to feed, by lines tied round their horns, to keep them from running into the fields. The wages for reaping are, generally, thirty sous per day. Both men and women follow the business, begin early, and lie down on the ground, and sleep in the open sunshine, at about ten or eleven in the morning; a practice which I esteem to be unhealthy. Perhaps one may see fifty asleep at a time. CHAP. IV. _Views and Describes the_ Champ de Mars.--_Goes to the Royal Palace belonging to the Duke of Orleans.--Dines with the French Officers at the Grand Hotel._ On the day of our arrival at Paris, I went in a coach with the gentleman that had put up at the hotel with me, and viewed the _Champ de Mars_. Here we saw great multitudes of people, eating, drinking, and dancing at the sound of the bands of music. At this place the oaths of allegiance had been administered to the people on the preceding Wednesday; and both the king and the subjects were sworn to adhere to the constitution that has been framed by the National Assembly. Some of the French took me by the hand when I entered into the _Champ de Mars_, and cried, "Entrée, entrée, Monsieur." I viewed the place with admiration, and was informed that it took about fifty thousand people near ten days to erect the seats and other great works there. The _Champ de Mars_ was formed into a grand amphitheatre, having at one end the military school, against which was erected a covered gallery two hundred and twenty-eight feet (French measure) in length, and twenty-one in heighth, for the king, queen, foreign ambassadors, national assembly, &c. &c. and at the other the triumphal arch; from which, to the military school, on either side were thirty rows of seats raised one above another, two thousand seven hundred and ninety French feet in length. In the middle of the area was an altar in a circular form, whose circumference was six hundred and forty-eight feet, French measure, and whose heighth was twenty feet, built of stone taken from the Bastille. The rest of the area, except the places for the federation, was filled with seats; the whole forming an oblong, capable of accommodating between four and five hundred thousand people. Out of these limits were a number of galleries, erected for a great multitude of spectators. Opposite the triumphal arch, a bridge of boats was thrown across the Seine, and the banks of the river was lined with cannon. For a great distance round the _Champ de Mars_, a number of temporary buildings were erected for the entertainment of the people. When we had surveyed these admirable works, we went to the royal palace, which was built by cardinal Richelieu, and given by him to Lewis the XIV. but is now the town seat of the duke of Orleans, who is a nobleman of royal blood, and enjoys the greatest revenue in France. This palace is a most elegant and magnificent structure, which is adorned and beautified with splendid ornaments, that dazzle the eyes of a spectator. In the centre of this structure is an oblong square, laid out in beautiful walks, interspersed with trees, flowers, &c. Sometimes the duke resides in one part of the palace himself. But the other part is let out in shops, which are under piazzas, and the rooms over them to gay fashionable ladies and gentlemen. In this palace there is a gallery, which contains most of the illustrious personages that France has produced, drawn by the greatest masters: Italy has been ransacked, and no expence spared to make the whole complete, with pictures, busts, statues, medals, and other curiosities worthy of being collected. It is thought that this building exceeds all in Europe for beauty and grandeur. After we had viewed the palace we went to a grand hotel, where we dined with a great number of officers. We had a variety of dishes, very excellent wines, and was entertained with much civility and politeness, and at a very reasonable rate. At evening we retired to our lodgings, very well pleased with the entertainments of the day. CHAP. V. _The Contents of the King's Proclamation.--Of the Obedience paid to it--and, the Proceedings of the Grand Confederation, on the 14th of July, at the_ Champ de Mars. Having in the preceding chapter given a description of the _Champ de Mars_, I shall attempt in this to exhibit how matters were conducted on the 14th: but it may be proper to premise, that on the 11th, the king, to prevent confusion and disorder, wisely issued a proclamation, setting forth how the different corps that were to compose the confederation was to march, &c. His majesty ordered that no troops, but those on guard, should be armed with guns; nor any carriages suffered to follow those of his majesty, the royal family, and their trains. That if any deputy of the confederation, or person invited, should be unable to walk, they might ride in a carriage, and be escorted by a _Chevalier d'Ordonnance_ to the military school, providing they had permission from the mayor of Paris. That M. de la Fayette should be commander-general of the Parisian national guard, then charged by a decree of the national assembly, and sanctioned by his majesty, with the care of the public tranquillity, should fulfil, under the king's orders, the functions of major-general of the confederation; and in that quality the orders should be given and observed as the orders of his majesty himself. That the king had in like manner nominated M. Gouvion, major-general of the Parisian guard, lieutenant-general of the confederation for the day of the ceremony. That when all persons were placed, the blessing the flags and colours should be proceeded to, and the celebration of the mass. That the king empowered the said M. de la Fayette, to pronounce the confederation oath in the name of all the deputies of the national guards, and those of the troops and marines, according to the forms decreed by the national assembly, and accepted by his majesty; and that all the deputies of the confederation should hold up their hands. That then the president of the national assembly should pronounce the civic oath for the members of the national assembly; and that the king should in like manner pronounce the oath, the form of which had been decreed by the national assembly, and accepted by his majesty. That the _Te Deum_ should be sung, and conclude the ceremony; after which the procession should return from the _Champ de Mars_ in the same order it came. In obedience to this proclamation, an order of procession was drawn up, and proper measures concerted to prevent tumult and disorder, by M. de la Fayette, and M. Bailli, the mayor of Paris. On the 13th, at ten o'clock in the evening, 4000 Paris guards on the outside of the _Champ de Mars_, and 2000 within, were placed to preserve order. Before eleven the people began to assemble and seat themselves and came in small parties till day-break; from three to nine they poured in in crowds at the great avenues, where the guards cautioned them not to hurry. By ten o'clock the seats were filled, the outside gallaries, the windows, and roofs of houses; and every place where a glimpse of the grand procession could be had, was filled with people of all ranks, sexes, and ages, who kept their places till the business was finished, notwithstanding the rain fell in torrents, accompanied with cold squalls of wind from eight till four. Those guards that were not wanted in the procession, danced in circles, and in great parties marched triumphantly at the beat of the drums, with their hats and caps on the points of their swords, forming battalions, and making sham fights, &c. Sometimes they ran in all directions, flourishing their swords, and being filled with joy cried, "_Vive la Libertie! Vive la Loi! Vive la Roi! Vive la Confederation National! Vive mon Frere!_"--embracing one another, and the spectators that sat near them. One, personating a victim of tyranny, was carried with great solemnity to a market spot, where the body was laid, and made the occasion of more firmly uniting, which was testified with a variety of actions. Having an abbé within the circle, they marched him round with a gun in his hand and a grenadier's cap on his head; and in the same manner they marched a capuchin friar. At seven o'clock a crucifix was placed on the great altar. Just before nine a body of priests appeared on the altar, and tied sashes of national colours around their waists, and decorated the crucifix, and various parts of the altar, with ribbons of the same. At half past ten the bishop of Auton, with more than one hundred priests, proceeded in a double line, guarded by a strong body of national troops, from the grand pavilion to the altar, carrying with them the tables with the commandments, and the sacred books. When they had ascended the altar they began the ceremony of consecrating it. Just before twelve, a grand salute of one hundred cannon announced the near approach of the procession to the triumphal arch; and the guards formed into ranks for their reception. The national federatives, and all who assisted in the grand procession, had assembled at six this morning on the Boulevards, between the gates of St. Martin and St. Antoine, and were drawn up in the following order: 1. A troop of horse, with standards, and six trumpets. 2. One division of music, consisting of several hundred instruments. 3. A company of grenadiers. 4. The electors of the city of Paris. 5. A company of volunteers. 6. The assembly of the representatives of the commons. 7. The military committee. 8. A company of chasseurs. 9. A band of drums. 10. The presidents of the districts. 11. The deputies of the commons, appointed to take for them the federal oath. 12. The sixty administrators of the municipality, with the city guards. 13. The second division of music. 14. A battalion of children, pupils of the military school, carrying a standard with the words, "The hopes of the nation." 15. A detachment of the colours of the national guard of Paris. 16. A battalion of veterans. 17. The deputies of forty-two chief departments of the nation, in alphabetical order. 18. The _oriflamme_, or grand standard of France, borne by the marischalls of France, general officers, officers of the staff, subaltern officers, commissioners of war, invalids. 19. The lieutenants of the marischalls of France,--deputies of infantry,--deputies of cavalry. 20. Deputies of hussars, dragoons, and chasseurs. 21. General officers, and deputies of the marine, according to rank. 22. The deputies of forty-one last departments, in alphabetical order. 23. A company of volunteer chasseurs. 24. A company of cavalry, with a standard and two trumpets. Each department was preceded by a banner, borne by the oldest deputy. These banners were a present from the city of Paris. They consisted of two branches, forming an oak wreath, tied together with national coloured ribbons, bearing on one side--_The National Confederation at Paris, July 14, 1790_; and the other--_The Constitution_, with the number and device of the department to which they severally belong. The military deputies had only their side arms. At nine the procession passed along the streets of St. Denis, of the Forronerie, to St. Honoré Royal, to the palace of Louis XV. where they halted; and the detachment of the colours of the national guard Paris opening to the right and left, received into the centre. The procession then moved on through the _Cours la Reine_, along the quay to the bridge of boats; and the deputies from the provinces received loud acclamations of applause from the people, which were answered by _Vivent lis Parisians!_ At the end of the bridge the triumphal arch appeared, adorned with various allegorical paintings which represented the gate of St. Antoine. Over the principal entrance, referring to figures that were darting through all the obstacles to reach the law, was inscribed on the side: "Sacred to the grand work of the constitution: We will finish it." On the other: "Under this defender, the poor man shall no more fear lest the oppressor should spoil him of his heritage." Over the lateral entrance on the left side, figures of warriors taking the civic oath, seemed to utter, "Our country, or the law alone can arm us: Let us die to defend it, let us live to love it." Over the lateral entrance, on the right, heralds sounding trumpets, proclaimed peace throughout the kingdom, and the people were singing, "Every thing is propitious to our happiness; every thing flatters our wishes; sweet peace drives tumult far from us, and fills up the measure of our pleasures." On the front, next the amphitheatre, over the middle arch, was a picture of deputies from various nations, come to do homage to the national assembly, with this inscription: "The rights of men were unknown for ages: They have been re-established for the whole human race." Under this picture, "The king of a free people is alone a powerful king." Over a picture--a woman chaining lions to her ear, with Force and Power in her suite, and leaning on the book of the law. The king and queen holding the dauphin by the hand, follow, preceded by a group of sages. A combat is exhibited with a dreadful hydra, whose head was seen struck off. "We dread you no more, ye subordinate tyrants, who oppressed us under a hundred various names." In another place an immense multitude listening with attention to the sage exhortations of a victorious warrior, who seemed to say, "You prize this liberty, you possess it while you do: Shew yourselves worthy to preserve it." At one o'clock the van of the procession appeared under this triumphal arch. M. de la Fayette leading a body of cavalry, himself mounted on a milk white charger, rode into the amphitheatre amid the acclamations of the people, _Vive la Fayette!_ The cavalry filed off to the right, and ranged themselves in the exterior line, on the opposite side to the entrance. The company of grenadiers formed under the steps of the amphitheatre, as well as all the companies who were employed as escorts. The civil bodies took the places allotted for them, which was previously marked out. The battalion of youths of the military school, formed about one hundred paces from the grand altar, crossing the _Champ de Mars_; but facing the altar on the side next the military school. While the national assembly passed through the triumphal arch, the escort of colours passed through the lateral gates, and the members took their seats on the right and left of the chair of state, and the chair of their own president. The battalion of veterans was placed a hundred paces behind the altar, across the _Champ de Mars_, but facing the altar. The detachments of the national guards, appointed to take the oath, ranged themselves under each banner, indicative of his place in the amphitheatre. The music collected into one band, and occupied the side of the platform under the altar, next to the invalids; and the band of drums were placed on the opposite side. The detachment of cavalry that closed the procession, formed the exterior line, on the side where they entered, opposite to the first detachment. The altar was after an antique model. The ascent to it was by four stair cases; at each corner was a platform supporting an urn, which exhaled perfumes. On the south front were these verses from Mahomet, under a picture of arts and sciences: "Les mortals sont egaux, ce ne'st pas leur naissance, "C'est la seule vertu qui fait leur difference." "Men are equal: it is not by birth. It is virtue alone that confers distinction." And these, "La loi dans tout doit etre universelle, "Le mortels quels qu'ils soient egaux devant elle." "The law in all things ought to be universal: Men of all descriptions are equal in its eyes." On the opposite side were four angels sounding trumpets, with this inscription: "Hold in your remembrance these sacred words, which are the guarantee of your decrees;--The nation, the law, and the king. The nation is yourselves--the law is your own, for it is your will--and the king is the guardian of the law." On the front, next to the Seine, was the figure of Liberty, dispersing the surrounding clouds, with attributes of Agriculture, and Abundance; and the Genius of France hovering in the air, and pointing to the word _Constitution_. On the front, facing the throne, were warriors pronouncing the federal oath, _viz._ "We swear to remain ever faithful to the _nation_, the _law_, and the _king_: to maintain, with all our power, the constitution decreed by the national assembly, and accepted by the king: to protect, according to the law, the surety of persons and property, the circulation of corn and provisions within the realm, the levying of public contributions, under whatever form they may exist; and to continue united to all the French by the indissoluble ties of brotherhood." At three the signal was made for conducting the _oriflamme_, or sacred royal standard, with the banners of the eighty-three departments, to the altar to receive the benediction. Upon the same signal the queen, (with her attendants) made her appearance in a partitioned place immediately behind the king's chair, having the dauphin with her, whom she placed on her knee: she was well received, and the dauphin much applauded. She was most becomingly dressed; her cap decorated with pearls, a pearl necklace, and pearl ear-rings. As soon as she was seated, the king entered and took his chair of state, which was fixed upon a line with a lesser chair, upon which the president of the national assembly sat. From the top of the king's state chair, the crown had been removed, and the cap of liberty substituted in its place. He was superbly dressed in a rich suit of gold tissue, and appeared to be in good spirits. He directed his conversation to the president, and it drew forth continual bursts of applause. At forty minutes after three the conclusion of the ceremony of consecrating the banners was announced, by a heavy discharge of the artillery, and the sound of martial music. The banners having rejoined their several stations, the great body of the national guards, who hitherto had lined the extreme of the inner circle, now formed on each side a half circle, from the foot of the pavilion steps to the altar; the ensigns of each of the sixty of Paris districts, all of which were extremely beautiful, and various in their devices, being marched first up to the front of the pavilion, and saluting as they passed it. The bishop of Autun, as grand Almoner, assisted by sixty deputy Almoners, elected by sixty districts of Paris, then celebrated mass, to the sound of the musical instruments. Some delay took place in the expectation that the king would advance to the altar, and there take the civic oath. But his majesty remained on the throne. M. de la Fayette then gave the signal for the national deputies to come forward and take the oath. He ascended the altar; and on the sound of the trumpet, extending his right hand, and looking steadfastly at the altar while the oath was reading, pronounced the words,--"I swear it." Which the national guards all repeated after him, turning round their hats on the points of their bayonets. The discharge of a bomb was the signal. Mons. Bonnay, the president of the national assembly, next rose from his seat, and advancing to the front of the covered gallery, in which the members of the national assembly and the civil bodies were seated, fixed his eyes on the altar, extended his right arm, and as the oath was repeating, pronounced with great dignity, "I swear it:" followed in like manner by the legislative, and the deputies of the civil and municipal bodies. At forty-five minutes past four the king rose; and, waiting till every thing was silent, read very audibly, and with an excellent majesty of manner, the OATH[1] assigned to him; extended his arm, looked steadfastly at the altar, and pronunced, "I swear it." Footnote 1: "I swear to be faithful to the Nation, the Law, and the King, and to maintain the Constitution to the utmost of my power, as decreed by the National Assembly, and confirmed by the King." The acclamations of the people, shouting "_Long live_ Louis, _our Country, and Constitution!_"--the clattering of sixty thousand swords, the waving of one hundred and forty-three banners and ensigns, and the discharge of an immense line of artillery, excited feelings which words cannot express, and which the human imagination, unaided by a view of the grand and glorious scene, can form no adequate conception of. The awful and unbroken stillness maintained during the administration of the oaths, rendered the acclamations which followed more forcible than they would otherwise have been. _Te Deum_ was then sung by a choir of more than three hundred voices, accompanied by three hundred drums, and all the military musical instruments. The ceremony being over, the king went away almost immediately. The procession moved off in the order in which it entered. The people walked home as they came, without crowding; and in little more than an hour the place was cleared. A repast for the deputies was served up at the _Chateau de la Muette_. Each battalion of Parisian guards undertook to be entertainers of their provincial brethren, who all partook of the repast with the utmost order. Thirty thousand persons dined in the gardens, and wine and provisions were distributed to more than one hundred thousand. The people were so temperate, that I cannot learn that any of the troops were seen at night reeling about the streets, in a state of intoxication. The day concluded with dances in all places near the _Champ de Mars_. In the evening a superb fire-work was exhibited in the square of the _Hotel de Ville_; and at night there was a general illumination. This is the most accurate account that I have been able to obtain of the proceedings of the king and the people. As it is thought there were more people collected together upon this occasion then ever met at one time and place in the world, and as some people are desirous of having a particular description of the transactions of the day; it is hoped the reader will excuse the author for being more than usually copious in the incidents treated of throughout this chapter. CHAP. VI. _Inquiry is made whether the_ Doctor _had Recommendations, &c.--His Advice to Gentlemen and Ladies.--He is visited by a Physician to the Court of Spain.--Views the Place where the Bastille stood.--How that Place was taken, and the Governor and other Officers executed._ Paris, July 17. This morning the gentleman who had put up at the hotel with me, asked if I had any letters of recommendation from any gentlemen in London, to any in Paris? I told him I had not: that I had had the offer of some, but for the want of time did not go to receive them: That as I could not tarry long, and had money enough to bear my expences, I believed that _that_ would be recommendation enough, if I behaved well. I had though, by the way, a general recommendation from some gentlemen of my acquaintance, but it was not directed to any body in particular in Paris; and I also had a diploma in my pocket, which was a sufficient recommendation, in any quarter of the globe; but I did not let the inquirer know I had any such thing with me. He seemed to think I would cut but a poor figure without recommendations; but as it happened I had no need of shewing any--though I would not advise any gentleman or lady to travel without; because a recommendation may be of great service sometimes, and especially in a time of war. At about nine this morning, I was visited by M. Iberti, _Docteur en Médecine_, and physician to the Court of Spain. He informed me that he had heard that an English physician had arrived, and that he was come to tell me, that if he could be of any service to me any way, he should be happy in doing of it. I thanked him for his kindness, and told him that I wanted to get an account of the practice of the hospitals, and with that an account of the operation of medicines in France: That for more than sixteen years I had been preparing for publication, a New Dispensatory, which will contain; 1. The _meteria medica_. 2. The operation of medicines. 3. The art and science of pharmacy. 4. The composition of medicines. 5. An index of diseases, and their remedies; with, 6. The manual operations and remedies used in surgery. That the work would be adorned with cuts of the chymical and surgical instruments, and also with chymical characters and botanical figures: That I had travelled in Great Britain and America, to obtain knowledge; and was come to Paris for the same purpose.-- Said he, I am employed by the court of Spain on the same business, and have travelled through England, Scotland, and Ireland; and am come here to collect all the knowledge I possibly can. He gave me a description of the state and condition of the hospitals in Paris; and told me where I could obtain the publications I wanted, which are entirely new, and had not reached London. He also advised me to view the hospitals, and to go to Cherenton and see the anatomical productions there, which he said exceeded every thing of the kind in the world. He visited me three times, and brought a French physician to see me once. I visited M. Iberti once, and he gave me a book he had published, entitled, _Observations Generales sur les Hopitauz; suivies d'un Projeett d'Hospital_. In consequence of which the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences at Paris had honoured him with a _medal_, in token that his works were highly applauded. He also told me that he had the use of the king's library. I told him that I would endeavour to make him a present of a New Dispensatory, if he would let me know where I could send one that would get to him: he thanked me, and desired I would send one to the Spanish Ambassador in Great Britain, with whom he said he was well acquainted. The Spanish physician's advice did me infinite service: I followed his direction, and obtained what I went after. Among the many curiosities that I viewed this day was the ground where the Bastille stood, which had been a horrible place of punishment for about 400 years. I found this prison almost demolished, though a few of the dungeons remained: but the people were taking down the arches, walls, &c. An amazing quantity of stone had been carried from this disagreeable prison, and piled up in a street that environs the city, besides those at the _Champ de Mars_. Before this prison was demolished it was surrounded by a ditch, and had no entrance to it but by a draw-bridge. On the 6th of July, 1789, the National Assembly having established a committee of finances, which consisted of 64 members, and appointed M. Necker, president; the king afterwards appointed Baron de Breteuil, president, in the room of M. Necker; and having removed several other officers, the indignation of the populace was raised, who armed themselves, and were joined by the French guards. A slight skirmish ensued in the _Place de Louis XV._ in which two was killed, and two wounded, which belonged to the Duc de Choiseu's regiment of dragoons. On the 8th the populace forced the convent of St. Lazare, in which was found a quantity of corn, arms, ammunition, &c. A general consternation prevailed; the shops were shut, and business was at a stand. On the 14th the hospital of invalids surrendered to about 20,000 citizens, headed by the French guards: About 4,000 troops, 52,000 stands of arms, besides cannon, ammunition, &c. were taken. In the evening about 10 or 12,000 men, with two pieces of cannon, demanded the ammunition deposited in the Bastille. The governor held out a white flag, and opened one of the gates, through which about forty citizens and soldiers entered: he immediately drew up the bridge, and his troops massacred those that had entered. This breach of faith enraged the populace: a battle ensued, and the Bastille was taken in about three hours. The governor, the jailor, chief gunner, and two others were carried prisoners to the Hotel de Ville, where they were tried and executed, by being shot, and afterwards beheaded. M. de Flesselles, the first municipal officer of Paris, underwent the same fate, on being suspected of betraying the citizens. Their heads were carried in triumph through the streets of the city. In taking the Bastille about 300 were killed, besides those the governor massacred. The prisoners were liberated; and an old man, who had been in a dungeon thirty years, fell down when he came out, by reason of the operation the light had upon him. Those that took the Bastille are honoured with a particular mark in their apparel, to distinguish them from other people. CHAP. VII. _The_ Doctor _goes to the_ Champ de Mars--_an Air Balloon descends on his Head.--He dines at a Grand Hotel, where commences_ un tête à tête _with a fine Lady.--He goes to the Italian Opera._ Paris, July 18. This morning, being Sunday, I sent my servant for a coach to carry me to the _Champ de Mars_; but he returned without any, with this intelligence from the coachman, _viz._ that they were all forbid to move a coach that day, by reason of the great multitude of people that was to convene; as it was supposed, that many would be crushed to death if they were allowed to ride in coaches. The nobility, gentry, and commonalty, were therefore all obliged to walk to the _Champ de Mars_; at which place I took a seat, a little to the left of the National Assembly, where I had a fine prospect. There was the greatest multitude of people collected that I ever saw at one time, and they behaved with decency and good order. The Marquis de la Fayette rode at the head of the army, and was frequently honoured with huzzas, loud acclamations, and other demonstrations of joy. Among the bands of music was a very large drum, that seemed to make the earth tremble when it was beat. I took a seat about ten, and tarried about five hours. About half past one, an air balloon, of a large magnitude, ascended to the southward of the _Champ de Mars_. It was conducted by a great number of men, who held its lines, over the place where I was sitting. It descended on our heads, and the French cried, _En bas, en bas, Monsieur_: Down, down, Sir. I bowed myself almost to the ground, to prevent being hurt; but arose, and pushed the balloon upwards with my hand: It ascended, and went to the northward; but descended again several times, and afterwards passed to the southward by the National Assembly, almost in a horizontal direction. When it had got at a little distance from the _Champ de Mars_, the inflammable air took fire, and the balloon split, with a report something like that of a cannon. It was said that several persons were considerably burnt when the balloon burst. I understood the next day, that some of the French supposed, that a great blessing will follow those upon whom the balloon descended. After I had left the _Champ de Mars_, I dined at a grand hotel, where thirty-two tables were spread in one room. At this place a French lady viewed me with an _amorous eye_; and I perceived by some of her _motions_, after I had dined, that she had an inclination to _lead me into temptation_: but I was soon off with myself, and was thereby _delivered from evil_. In the evening I went to the _Italian opera_, where sixty-two persons appeared on the stage at the first view. The vocal and instrumental music was excellent, and the other performances very entertaining. CHAP. VIII. _The_ Doctor _views three Hospitals, and the largest Cathedral in the Kingdom.--An Account of the Foundling Hospital. He goes to_ Versailles--_views the King and Queen's Palaces, returns to_ Paris, _and sees the Dauphin of France_. Paris, July 19. This morning I viewed the grand hospital, the lying-in hospital, the foundling hospital, and the greatest cathedral in the kingdom, called _L'Eglise de Notre Dame_. It is a grand Gothic structure, has a very fine choir, altar, &c. and many paintings, some of which represent the miracles and resurrection of Christ. There were 17,500 children belonging to the foundling hospital, above 7,000 of which had been taken in within the compass of a year. They were kept very clean, and I did not hear a child cry amongst the whole number. The matron, or governess of the hospital, shewed me their grand stores of linen and garments for the children, which was worth beholding. This hospital is a most excellent institution: People of all kinds, and from all countries, are allowed to bring their children into it; and no questions are asked; only the person that leaves the child is asked if the child has been christened. If that has not been done, they get it done at the hospital. Those that bring their children put a ribbon round their necks, or mark them with something whereby they may be known in some future time, and they are permitted to take them away when they please. Those that remain in the hospitals, are put out to learn trades, when they are old enough;--and sums of money are given to those who take them. I was told that a young woman from Great Britain had just lain in at the lying-in hospital, and had put her child into the foundling hospital. Perhaps she may pass for a _virgin_ again, on her arrival in England! This hospital must be of great utility to the people, because it relieves the poor, and prevents murder; as women have not the temptation to kill their children through fear of not having them supported; and also, because it produces a great number of good members of society. After I had viewed the hospitals, I made a purchase of two books, which contained all I was in pursuit after. I also viewed the house where Voltaire the famous French poet died. The same day I went in a coach with my servant to Versailles, which is about twelve miles from Paris. We arrived there about noon; and I viewed the king and queen's palaces, which are said to be the richest in the world, or at least, the most beautiful and magnificent in Europe. I also viewed the royal chapel and two of the royal theatres, and the king's gardens planted with tropical and other trees, plants, and herbs. The buildings are adorned and beautified with gold, and many splendid ornaments, and there are a great number of statues, and elegant paintings; all of which afford a very beautiful prospect. Versailles is a pleasant place, and there are about 60,000 inhabitants in the town. I dined after I had viewed the curiosities, and returned to Paris in the evening, where I saw the Dauphin of France, attended by a monk. Versailles is said to be the dearest place for entertainment that there is in France, owing to the great number of nobility and gentry that resort there: Therefore ought every traveller to be well provided with money when he goes to see that place. CHAP. IX. _Views two Hospitals, the Royal Observatory, and sundry other Magnificent Buildings.--Goes to the French Theatre, &c.--A Caution against going into bad Company._ Paris, July 20. This day I viewed the charity hospital, and the hospital for invalids. The latter is a large and elegant building, in which there is a chapel, that is said to cover as much ground as the cathedral of St. Paul's, in London. The floors of the domes are made of fine marble, and each dome is dedicated to some saint, whose statue is placed in a niche, or hallow. There are some of the finest paintings in this chapel that I ever saw; and the hospital commonly contains about 200 officers, and 3,000 soldiers. Afterwards I viewed the house of Bourbonne, and the royal observatory, where _astronomical observations_ are taken. I looked through the telescopes, and surveyed the mathematical instruments. I saw an account of the late observations, and perceived that the French are very accurate in performances of that kind: but I did not give them to understand that I was a professor of the science. I also viewed a great church, called _Jamies_, which has been near twenty years in building, and is not yet wholly finished. In this church there are some of the largest and finest pillars that I ever beheld. Afterwards I took a survey of the buildings and gardens which belong to the king's eldest brother; and went to the French theatre and saw the grand performances there. After the play was over, on returning to my lodgings, I was seized on the way by a very gay young lady, who accosted me with--_J' aime vous, Monsieur.--Voulez vous venir avec moi?_--My answer was in the negative. I was obliged to break her hold, and be off with myself. "Perhaps, said I, if I go with you, I may be robbed and murdered: it is best for me to keep out of the fire whilst it is in my power." I had heard but a few days before of a man that was so simple as to accept of the invitation of two lewd women, who took him to their lodgings; but before morning he was robbed, not only of his watch and money, but of his clothes, and turned out naked into the street by some whore-mongers that frequented the house. This shews how dangerous it is to venture one's-self amongst strangers, and especially those of this sort. It is safest for every one, either at home or abroad, to shun all such kind of company, as well as the company of thieves, drunkards, gamesters, and those that use bad language: for the keeping of bad company has been the destruction of thousands; and especially the greatest mischief has been done among unthinking _youth_: their inexperience, and unsuspecting dispositions, making them the fit subjects for villainy to work upon. CHAP. X. _Contemplations, Philosophical and Moral, on the State and Condition of the Living and the Dead, which the Author indulges at the Abbey of St._ Denis, _where the Kings of France are buried_. St. Denis, July 21, _At half past one_, P. M. I am now standing in the abbey of St. Denis, which is about six miles from Paris, and have been told that all the kings of France, excepting Lewis XVI. are buried here, and that the house of Bourbon lie under my feet.--Alas! said I, here is the end of those mighty monarchs, that once ruled the kingdom, commanded armies, fought battles, obtained victories, collected riches, and enjoyed the honours, the profits and the pleasures of this perishing world.--Here they lie silent! and their dominion, strength, and power, are wholly gone!--Their bodies are returned to the elements out of which they were formed, _viz._ to the earth, air, fire, and water. Alas! continued I, the present king of France, with all the mighty kings and princes on the globe, together, with the rest of the human race, must soon pass through this change! And not only the human race, but the birds, beasts and fishes, trees, plants, and herbs; even every thing that hath life must be dissolved, and return to the elements, _viz._ Earth to earth, air to air, fire to fire, and water to water; for it is the _decree_ of the _Divine Artificer_, who is the former of our bodies, and the father of our spirits, that all these things shall _once die_!--And, none of the mighty kings, or learned physicians, can hinder themselves or others, from experiencing this awful change. Moreover, I had further contemplations upon the state of the living and the condition of the dead. I considered the mutability of our bodies; that they are continually changing; that they increase in proportion to the quantity of nutrition which they receive from meat, drink, the circumambient air, &c. or, decrease in proportion to a want of nourishment from those things. That they are continually flying off by insensible perspiration and other evacuations, and would soon come to a dissolution, if not nourished by the vegetable and animal productions. That the bodies we had seven years ago, are totally dissolved by those evacuations; and from hence we have new flesh, new bones, new skin, new hair, new nails, &c. formed out of the four elements. That the time we have lived, is past and gone; and, that the time we are to live is not yet come, so that we only live at the present time. That death is only a change from this state to another,--as our bodies return again to the elements, and our spirits to Him that gave them: that the dead, being at rest, are totally free from the cares, troubles, and vexations of a mortal life. The king is not afraid of losing his kingdom, nor the beggar of perishing with hunger. I beg leave to conclude this chapter with the following reflections, which will not, I hope, detract from their solemnity, because cast in a _poetical_ mould. Short is our passage thro' this nether world, For soon by death we from the stage are hurl'd. The tender infants in their lovely bloom, Are often hurry'd to the silent tomb! Adults grown up, nay some of ev'ry age, By cruel death are taken from the stage; The high, the low, the rich, the poor, the small, By the great _king of terrors_ soon must fall. The richest man, (it cannot be deny'd) Who with good things most amply is supply'd; Soon, too, he feels th' impartial stroke of death, Down falls his body, and off flies his breath: But where it goes, or how far it doth fly, No mortal man can tell below the sky. The elements that in the body are, Return to those from whence they taken were. Thus, dust to dust, and air to air, we find, And heat to heat, are soon again combin'd, Water to water soon again doth flow, And the whole mass to dissolution go! Await, O man! thy doom; for 'tis the fate Of ev'ry creature in this mortal state: Yet shall th' immortal spark ascend on high, Of righteous ones who _in the_ LORD _do die_. Thus whilst their bodies are behind at rest, Their pious souls with happiness are blest. ---- Again.---- O happy state in which the dead are cast! Their pain is gone and all their trouble's past. When roaring winds bring up the thick'ned cloud, And the deep thunder rumbles out aloud; When the earth quakes, when lofty cities fall, When places sink, and can't be found at all; When inundations o'er the land arise, And burning mountains burst towards the skies; When famine and the pestilence doth rage, And wicked nations in a war engage; When blood and carnage greatly doth expand, And desolation overspreads the land, And boist'rous tempests rage upon the sea; Then are the Dead from danger wholly free. They're not afraid of being hurt, or slain, Like wretched mortals who alive remain. Let not the living then at Death repine, Since it was made by God an _act divine_, To raise the Just--the _husband_, _child_, and _wife_, From scenes of trouble to a better life! CHAP. XI. _Of the Curiosities in the Abbey of St. Denis.--The_ Doctor _views the King's Treasure.--Goes to the Italian Theatre.--Observations on the Actors, &c._ Whilst I was at the abbey of St. Denis, I viewed many elegant statues and paintings, and the font, or baptismal bason, out of which the kings of France had been christened. Afterwards I was admitted by a monk into the king's treasure, where I saw the crowns of the kings and queens of France, with many golden vessels and splendid ornaments. I dined at a hotel in St. Denis, and returned to Paris; but in my rout I ascended a hill which commands a sight of the city, and affords a fine prospect. On this hill there is a great number of wind-mills, dwelling-houses, and other buildings. In the evening I went to the Italian theatre, where I was very well entertained with performances of different kinds. Their artificial thunder and lightning, was alarming; as the claps were very loud and sudden, and the flashes appeared as natural as those from the clouds. The theatres in Paris are very large. They are opened at five o'clock, and the performances begin at six, and end at nine,--which is much better then to keep people till almost midnight; because they have time to return to their dwellings in season. I have often thought that the actors are deficient in one thing; that is, in their not apprising the spectators of the subject before the play begins; and whether it is to be a tragedy or a comedy, and who or what it is to be in imitation of; and whether it is to represent a battle, a duel, or a courtship, &c. for the entering upon these things without any previous notice, is like a divine's preaching without naming his text, or letting his auditors know what subject he is about to discourse upon. It is true, indeed, that the actors often send forth publications, to let the people know what is to be represented such and such evenings; but I do not think that more than one person in twenty that attends the plays ever reads the publications; and those that do, are put to the trouble of carrying them to the theatres, and of tracing them through the evening, or they will not know before-hand what play is to be acted next. CHAP. XII. _Views the Anatomical Productions at_ Cherenton. _A Description of the Vineyards.--The People meet where the Bastille stood, and pray for the Souls of them that were slain in taking that Place. Their Form of Prayer.--Surveys the King's Physical Gardens._ Paris, July 22. This morning I went to Cherenton, which is two leagues from Paris, and viewed a great number of skeletons, not only of human bodies, but of birds, beasts, and fishes; and I must join in opinion with the Spanish physician, _viz_. that they exceed every thing of the kind in the world, or at least that I ever saw or heard of. Here are skeletons of infants and adults, mounted upon the skeletons of horses, of different sizes; some with the bones only, and some with the veins and arteries, muscles, &c. In short every part of the human machine is exposed to the view of the spectator. The various parts of the body are also preserved in spirits, and anatomy is demonstrated in all its branches in the best manner; which must be of excellent use to young students. As I was returning to Paris, I viewed a number of vineyards which are cultivated for the purpose of raising grapes. The vines in general were planted about two feet apart, and are hoed much like the maze, or Indian corn, in America. In some places they have rows of potatoes between the vines, but at such places they are planted more than two feet apart; and for want of knowledge in philosophy, many hill their potatoes too high, which hinders their growth, by obstructing the rays of the sun from heating their roots. The vines run upon poles, that are about four or five feet high; and after the grapes are gathered in the fall, the vines are cut down close to the ground, and from the roots another set arises, which bear grapes the next year. It appears to me that such vines would grow in many parts of America, if they were properly cultivated. On entering into Paris, I passed by the place where the Bastille stood; and, behold! a number of the priests, with a great multitude of people, had met together to pray for the souls of them that had been slain, when the Bastille was taken on the 14th of July, 1789. I was told, that this was the first time that the priests and the people had met to pray on that occasion since the battle happened. The catholics have various forms of prayer, which they make use of when they pray for the dead. The one for brethren, relations, and benefactors, runs thus: "O God, the giver of pardon, and lover of the salvation of man, we beseech thy clemency in behalf of our brethren, relations, and benefactors, who departed this life; that by the intercession of the Blessed Virgin _Mary_, and of all thy saints, thou wouldest receive them into the joys of thy eternal kingdom: through our Lord Jesus Christ, _Amen_." At the end of each form, the following is used: "Eternal rest give to them, O Lord; and let perpetual light shine upon them." After I had left the place where the people were praying, I walked through the king's physical gardens, where there are about seven thousand different kinds of vegetables, consisting of trees, plants and herbs, collected from the four quarters of the globe, that can possibly be made to grow in Paris. I have been informed, that this botanical garden, and a museum of natural curiosities, which may be seen every Wednesday and Friday in the afternoon, costs the king 72,000 livres _per annum_. In these gardens there is a mount, which I ascended by a path that runs round it, in a spiratic course. At the top of this hill I had a fine prospect, not only of the gardens, but of the city. I observed as I passed through the gardens, that the vegetables were distinguished from one another by Latin inscriptions, as _calamus_ _aromaticus_, _sambucus_, _rhabarbarum_, &c. CHAP. XIII. _A Description of_ Paris.--_Of the River_ Seine.--_Of the Climate.--Dress,--Anecdote of a Frenchman.--French Courtship, and the Fondness of the Ladies_, &c. Paris, the capital of France, is situated in lat. 48 deg. 50 min. north; and long. 2 deg. 10 min. east of the royal observatory at Greenwich; and is called one of the grandest and most beautiful cities in Europe. It is built in a circular form, and was about eighteen miles in circumference, 'till of late it has been made much larger by the augmentation of their buildings, and the erection of a new wall, which encompasses the old one at a great distance. The city is walled in to prevent smuggling, sentries being placed at the gates, where duties are paid, &c. The houses in this city are from six to eight stories high in general, built chiefly of hewn stone, which are of a lightish colour. These stories are much higher than ours in London. The buildings are very magnificent; and the city is amazingly populous. It contains upwards of 22,000 houses,--979 streets,--52 parishes,--130 convents,--28 hospitals,--and about 800,000 people. The streets of this city are narrow; and being paved to the sides of the houses, with stones much like those in the middle of the streets in London, makes the walking inconvenient, and exposes travellers to the danger of being hurt by the carriages. It is a pity that the streets of Paris, and many other cities, had not been laid out at right angles, at proper distances, and at convenient breadths, when the places were first built. Paris is divided almost into equal parts by the river Seine, which did not appear to me to be so large as the river Thames. There is a number of bridges over the Seine, and several of them have buildings on either side, which form a complete street. This river rises in Burgundy, and running through Paris, empties itself into the English Channel, between Havre-de-Grace and Honfleur. The tides are not strong enough to bring heavy vessels up to Paris. The people are obliged to make use of long barges, and to tow them up with horses. There are some water-mills erected on this river, for the purpose of grinding grain, &c. The air is much clearer at Paris than it is at London; and the country is healthy: the climate in the south of France is called the wholesomest in Europe. It is something remarkable that I did not see one funeral all the time I was in France; which made me suppose that they buried their dead in the night: but this, on enquiry, I found not to be the practice. The inhabitants of Paris are polite, gay and luxurious; many of them very handsome. The amusements of the city are pleasing, and the people enjoy their pleasures at a cheap rate, as foreigners contribute much towards the support of their theatres, hotels, &c. The people in France do not seem to be much given to intemperance; and I was told, that when the farmers and mechanics have received their wages, they spend them at home in their families, instead of being drunk at ale-houses; a thing too common in England. I was also told, that the French do not use so much corrupt and abominable language as the English and Irish do. The ladies have a much handsomer head dress than the English; they do not wear stays, neither do they make many of their gowns so long as to draw on the ground, which is a waste, and a dirty indecent fashion. The gentlemen dress much as we do in London, only they sometimes wear cloaks, and the collars of their coats are not quite so high as ours. I have sometimes wondered that cloaks are not more in fashion in London. The French are very merry and cheerful; and their light and airy turn makes them patient in times of adversity; they have also the just reputation of being witty; and it has been said, that they are sometimes too cunning for the English. This brings to my mind the following anecdote, _viz._ A Frenchman, who had supped and lodged at an inn kept by an Englishman, demanded his reckoning: the landlord made out a bill of ten shillings, which the Frenchman paid, thinking in the mean time that his host was something extravagant in his demands, and was therefore resolved to be _up_ with him. The landlord soon complained that he was very much troubled with rats. "Vell," said the Frenchman, "for von bouteille of vin, I vill tell how you may get rid of dem all." The landlord gave the wine. "Vell," said the Frenchman, "do you make out a bill, and charge dem rats ten shillings a-piece for every night da have lodged in your house, and I vill be bound da vill all go off, and never trouble you any more." I shall here give a slight specimen of the _French courtship_, which a gentleman repeated to me; and if the gentlemen in England, Scotland, Ireland, America, or elsewhere, shall see fit to follow the same mode of address to the ladies, I shall have no objection, providing they address themselves to proper persons. "Madame, "Upon the consideration of the good reputation you bear in the nation, I find an inclination to offer you my salutation; and, upon my salvation, if this my declaration finds your acceptation, it will cause an obligation that will be of long continuation, even from generation to generation." The ladies in France are very amorous, and those that are married are not much troubled with their husbands being jealous of them, let them be honest or dishonest: and you may court a Frenchman's wife before his face, and he will not be jealous of you, as I was informed. Great numbers of the lewd women are said to be licensed by authority, to keep public houses for the entertainment of persons of that character. The disease that is commonly spread by such people is rather upon the decline at Paris, it is said; owing to the frequent use of different kinds of remedies, as preventatives, &c. CHAP. XIV. _The Length, Breadth, Boundaries, Inhabitants, New Divisions, Mountains, Rivers, Soil, Produce, Manufactories, Commerce, Religion, and Laws of_ France. The kingdom of France is about six hundred and twenty-two miles in length from north to south, and six hundred and twenty in breadth from east to west: It is bounded--Easterly on Germany, Switzerland, Savoy, and Piedmont--Southerly on the Mediterranean sea, and the Pyrenean mountains, which separate it from Spain--Westerly on the Bay of Biscay--Northerly on the English channel--and North-easterly on the Spanish Netherlands. It contains near 26,950-7/12 square leagues--25,000,000 of inhabitants--Eighteen arch-bishoprics--167,000 clergymen--28 universities--25 academies--750 great convents of monks--200 of nuns--10,000 of a smaller kind--and upwards of 200,000 of monks and nuns. I understand that the National Assembly have divided the kingdom into eighty grand divisions, or counties, of eighteen leagues in length, and as many in breadth; and each grand division into nine commonalities, that are six leagues square; and also each commonality into nine cantons, of two leagues in length, and two in breadth. Hence there are eighty grand divisions, seven hundred and twenty commonalities, and 6480 cantons in the kingdom. The mountains in France are, the Alps--the Pyrenees--the Vague--Mount Jura--the Convennes--and Mount Dor. The chief rivers are, the Rhone--the Garoune--the Loire--the Seine--the Somme--and the Ardour. The climate is mild and healthy, as has already been observed; and the soil fruitful, though not equal to Great Britain for corn: but their fruits are more numerous, and of a higher flavour than ours, by reason of their growing in a more southern country. They have the largest plumbs I ever saw: but their beans, peas, and strawberries were small. In the northern provinces they have good cider and perry; and in the southern the best of wines. In the province of Languedoc they raise silk and olive oil. France does not abound in coal, which obliges the people to raise and burn wood, and sometimes turf. There are many excellent forests between Paris and Calais, and some beds of turf. In Paris they have the largest magazines of wood that I ever saw. The animals in France are of the same kinds of those in England; only they have some wolves, as I was informed. The French manufacture silks, woollens, velvets, brocades, alamodes, lawns, laces, cambrics, tapestry, glass, hardware, war-like implements, paper, hats, thread, toys, &c. but I do not think their manufacturies are equal to those of England in all respects. France carries on the greatest foreign trade of any kingdom in the world, except Great Britain; and the inland trade is very large, by the way of their navigable rivers, canals, &c. One of the latter is said to be one hundred miles in length, and opens a communication between the ocean and the Mediterranean; it is carried over mountains and vallies, and through one mountain. It was begun and finished in the reign of Lewis XIV. It is called the Royal Canal, or Canal of Languedoc. The established religion of France is that of the Roman Catholicks; but of late the Protestants have been allowed a toleration. I was told at Paris that many of the people look upon the Romish clergy as impostors, and that they had found them out, and intend to pull them down. It was said that a few of the laws of France were very arbitrary and tyrannical before the late Revolution, as they were totally inconsistent with the laws of humanity; among which was that for confiscating the property of foreigners dying in France, and appropriating it to the use of the state. But since my arrival at Paris the National Assembly have abolished for ever that unreasonable decree. Had I died whilst I was in that kingdom, and before the decree was abolished, my hat, shirts, coats, waistcoats, breeches, stockings, shoes, buckles, books, trunk, money, diploma, recommendations, &c. would have been confiscated and taken from my heirs; and for no other crime than that of my going to see the country, and do business for myself in Paris! How unreasonable was it, that the heirs of the deceased, _viz._ the poor widows and the fatherless children, should have their property alienated in such a manner! Surely such a transaction must be disgraceful, not only to Christendom, but even to the most barbarous nations! I was told that the National Assembly had also abolished, for ever, two other decrees, which they deemed unreasonable. They were those that debarred the clergy from the liberty of entering into the bands of matrimony, and certain females the same privilege; and also, for the keeping them in confinement all the days of their lives in nunneries. Before the Revolution the laws were executed with the utmost severity. A servant would be hung for stealing less then a shilling. Murderers and high-way robbers, and those that attempted to poison any body, were broke on the wheel. Smugglers were condemned to be gally-slaves for life. Women brought to bed with dead bastard children, without having made known their pregnancy, were burnt alive. Priests that revealed the confessions of penitents, had their tongues tore out, their gowns stripped off, and were expelled from their employments. He that robbed a church had his hands cut off at the church door, and was afterwards burnt at the place of execution, which was always in the centre of the town. People of family, convicted of a capital offence, though not executed, are disennobled, with all their relations, turned out of their public employments, and rendered incapable of holding any afterwards, and all marriage contracts become void. The nobility and clergy, with the burgesses of Paris, and some other free cities, were exempted from paying land taxes. CHAP. XV. France _an unlimited Monarchy before the Revolution.--The Kingdom was divided into fifteen Parts, in which were as many Parliaments.--It was also divided into twenty-five Generalities.--The King nominated the Bishops.--The Privileges of the Clergy.--The Orders of Knighthood.--From what the Revenues were collected.--A Statement of the Annual Incomes and Expences.--Of the Gold and Silver in Circulation.--National Debt, &c._ Having, partly from my own knowledge, and partly from credible information, given in the preceding chapter a short geographical description of the kingdom of France, I proceed, in the next place, to say something concerning its Constitution and Government before the late Revolution. Let us therefore observe, 1. That France was an unlimited monarchy. 2. That both the legislative and executive powers resided in the king. 3. That his decrees had the same force as our acts of parliament. 4. That the kingdom was divided into fifteen parts, each of which had a parliament; as that of Paris, Toulouse, Rouen, Grenoble, Bordeaux, Dijon, Aix, Rennes, Pau, Besancon, Metz, Dowa, Perpignan, Arras, and Alsace. 5. That these parliaments consisted of a certain number of presidents and inferior judges, who purchased their offices of the crown, or of those that possessed them, as they were for life, unless the officers were found guilty of malconduct in the execution of their office. 6. That the parliament of Paris was esteemed the highest, because it was composed of princes of royal blood, dukes and peers, besides ordinary judges. Here the king frequently came in person, and had his royal edicts recorded and promulgated. 7. That the kingdom was also divided into twenty-five generalities, every one of which had an intendant, on whom the king depended for the administration of justice, in civil and criminal causes; for ruling and governing the subordinate officers, and ordering and conducting his finances and revenues. 8. That the king nominated the bishops and their livings, and then the pope sent his bulls of consecration. 9. That the crown seized all the temporalities of archbishopricks, and bishopricks, which was called the _regal_, and the king frequently gave pensions to laymen out of the bishopricks. The privileges of the clergy were: 1. An exemption from paying land-taxes. 2. From having their books seized, with the other things they used in divine service. 3. They might be tried in criminal causes, if they chose it, before the grand chamber, which is a court where the nobility were tried. 4. They had the liberty of being degraded, or placed lower, before they could be executed for any atrocious crime. 5. They were exempt from having soldiers quartered on them. 6. Their persons could not be taken with executions in civil actions. 7. They were exempted from being brought before lay courts for personal matters: But they could not bring a layman before an ecclesiastical court. All spiritual actions were recognizable in the ecclesiastical courts, providing they were not blended with temporal matters; and when that was the case, they were obliged to try their causes before the civil courts. There have been four orders of knighthood in France: _Viz._ 1. Knights of the Holy Ghost,} { 1578. 2. Knights of St. Michael, } Instituted in { 1469. 3. Knights of St. Louis, and } { 1693. 4. Knights of St. Lazarus, } The annual revenues were collected by a land-tax--by the customs--by a tax on salt--by a poll-tax--by a tenth of estates and employments--by a sale of all offices of justice--and by a tenth, or free gift of the clergy. But this revenue was subject to an enlargment, by raising the value of the coin, and by the compounding of the state bills and debentures. The annual revenue of France, before the Revolution, was said to be 585,000,000 of livres, or 24,375,000 pounds sterling. Of which sum the clergy possessed 130,000,000 of livres. The annual balance of trade in favour of France, was 70,000,000 of livres. The gold and silver supposed to be in circulation 2,000,000,000 of livres, and the annual increase of it 40,000,000 more. The annual expences of France 610,000,000 livres, or 25,416,666_l._ 13_s._ 4_d._ sterling. The annual income 24,375,000_l._ The nation run in debt 1,041,666_l._ 13_s._ 4_d._ _per annum_. A GENERAL STATEMENT _of the Expences, Incomes, &c. stands thus_: Livres Sterling. Expences for collecting taxes 58,000,000 2,416,666 13 4 Annual of importations 230,000,000 9,583,333 6 8 Ditto of exportations 300,000,000 12,500,000 0 0 Ditto of balance of commerce 70,000,000 2,916,666 6 8 An. int. of the national debt 207,000,000 8,625,000 0 0 Annual charge of the army 124,650,000 5,193,750 0 0 Ditto of the navy 45,200,000 1,883,333 6 8 The amount of the taxes, &c. 585,000,000 24,375,000 0 0 Annual expences of the state 610,000,000 25,416,666 13 4 Gold and silver coin 2,200,000,000 91,666,666 13 4 Supposed annual increase 40,000,000 1,666,666 13 4 National debt 3,400,000,000 141,666,666 13 4 ------------------------------ May 1, 1779, National expen. 475,294,000 Revenue 431,533,000 ----------- Nation fell in debt 43,761,000 =========== CHAP. XVI. _The Constitution of_ France _changed from Monarchy to Democracy.--The Number and Power of the National Assembly.--The King is only an executive Officer.--A Decree of the National Assembly.--Titles of Nobility abolished._ Having in the preceding chapter given an account of the constitution and government of France before the Revolution, let us consider, in the next place, of the present constitution and government of that kingdom. We must therefore observe: 1. That the constitution is changed from monarchy to democracy; that the legislative powers are taken from the king, and vested in the people. 2. That the kingdom is divided into eighty grand divisions, and subdivided into seven hundred and twenty commonalities and 6480 cantons. 3. That each commonality is empowered to send one representative to the National Assembly. 4. That the National Assembly is composed of seven hundred and twenty members, when the whole are convened. 5. That this assembly is the supreme legislative head of the nation. 6. That the power of making laws, raising of taxes, the coining, borrowing, and lending of money; the setting up and pulling down of officers, granting of commissions and employments; the making of war and peace; and the entering into treaties and alliances with foreign powers, belongs to this assembly only. 7. That the king is only an executive officer, as he is to see the laws of the representatives of the nation executed. The king is to execute the actual decrees of the National Assembly, respecting war and peace; and is allowed to provide for the safety of the realm, in case of a foreign invasion, during the recess of the assembly. A decree of the National Assembly, passed in May last, runs thus: "The king shall have the right to provide for the security of the frontiers, to make every preparation, and take every necessary step to defend the national possessions; to manage the operations of the war, and to propose whatever he thinks proper for the general good: "But the legislative body shall have the right to decide on the propriety of the war, make peace, and settle treaties. "In case of war, the king shall give immediate notice of it to the legislative body, if the assembly is sitting, and if not, it shall be summoned immediately." I was informed in Paris, that the National Assembly have abolished all the titles of nobility; and observed that their coats of arms were taken from their carriages. It was also reported, that the nobility are to pay land and other taxes, in proportion to their abilities. These are some of the fundamental alterations in the Constitution, according to the best information that I have been able to obtain. Let us then, in the next chapter, consider of the causes of the Revolution. CHAP. XVII. _Supposed Causes of the Revolution.--The Resolutions of the National Assembly.--Names of some of the Officers appointed under the New Constitution._ It is said that the Revolution arose from various causes: as, 1. The people had no part of the power of legislation. 2. They were deprived of the right of a trial by jury. 3. They paid more than their proportion of the public taxes, because the nobility, clergy, &c. were exempted from paying a land-tax. 4. They were under some laws peculiarly oppressive. Their grievances will appear by the following resolutions, which on the 4th of August, 1789, the National Assembly unanimously agreed to, as a proof of their genuine patriotism to the people, as their affectionate and disinterested representatives, devoid of every motive but the common good; and, to give a great example to nations and ages, in the sacrifice of every abusive right and privilege whatsoever, incidental to all the orders, provinces, cities and communities, will raise the French name to a heighth unparalleled in history, and consecrate their memory as worthy of representing the enlightened knowledge, the courage, and the virtues of so great and generous a people. "Article I. An equality of taxes, to commence from the present moment. "II. The renunciation of all privileges for orders, cities, provinces, and individuals; a general uniformity to take place through the whole kingdom. "III. The redemption of all feudal rights. "IV. A suppression of mortmain and personal servitude. "V. The produce of the redemption of the estates of the clergy to be applied to the augmentation of the salaries of the parish priests. "VI. The abolition of the game laws, _capitaineries_. "VII. The abolition of seigniorial jurisdictions. "VIII. The abolition of the venality of officers. "IX. Justice to be rendered gratuitously to the people. "X. The abolition of privileged dove-coats and warrens, (a dreadful and serious grievance to the French peasant). "XI. The redemption of tithes and field-rents. "XII. It is forbidden to create in future any rights of the same nature, or any other feudal rights whatever. "XIII. The abolition of the fees of parish priests, for births, marriages, or deaths, except in the cities. "XIV. A speedy augmentation of the benefices of parish priests. "XV. A suppression of the _droits d'annates_, or first fruits. (The sum paid by France to the pope on this head, ammounted annually to 357,133_l._ sterling.) "XVI. The admission of all ranks of citizens to civil and military employments. "XVII. The suppression of the duties of removal, paid by parish priests to the bishops in certain provinces. "XVIII. The suppression of corporations and wardenships. "XIX. The suppression of the plurality of livings. "XX. A medal to be struck to consecrate this memorable day; expressive of the abolition of all the privileges, and of the complete union of all the provinces and all the citizens. "XXI. _Te Deum_ to be sung in the king's chapel, and throughout all France. "XXII. Louis XVI. proclaimed the restorer of public liberty." There were several other articles, _viz._ The abolition of all unmerited pensions. All artizens to be exempt from taxes, who employ no journeymen. All suits for seignioral and royal rights, then pending in the courts, to be suspended till the constitution shall be completed. All the interior councils were suppressed; and the cabinet were composed of the following ministers, who were responsible for every measure of state: 1. M. Necker, minister of the finances, or first lord of the treasury. 2. M. Montmorin, secretary for the foreign department. 3. M. St. Priest, secretary for the home department. 4. M. de la Lazurne, minister of the marine department. 5. M. le Comté de la Tour du Piu Paulin, minister of the war department. 6. M. l'Archeveque de Bourdeaux, keeper of the seal. 7. M. l'Archeveque de Vienne, minister for bishops and abbies. 8. M. le Prince de Beauveau, to be of the council, but with no particular department. CHAP. XVIII. _A Declaration of the Rights which have been adopted by the National Assembly.--Reductions made from the Annual Revenues.--Two Banks established.--Criminals may employ Counsel, &c._ "The representatives of the people of France, constituted in national assembly, considering that ignorance, forgetfulness, or neglect of the rights of man, are the sole causes of public misfortunes, and of the corruption of governments, have resolved to explain, in a solemn declaration, the natural imprescriptible, inalienable, and sacred rights of man; to the end that this declaration, being constantly presented to all the members of society, may unceasingly recal to their minds their duties and their rights; and to the end that the acts of legislative and executive powers, being at all times compared with the design of the political institution, may be more respected, and that the appeals of the citizens, being founded henceforward on plain and incontestible principles, may always tend to the maintenance of the constitution and the general happiness. "The National Assembly, in consequence, recognizes and declares in the presence, and under the auspices of the Supreme Being, the sacred rights of the man and the citizen. "I. Men are born and remain free and equal in their rights. No distinction can be founded, but in principles of general utility. "II. The object of all society ought to be the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are his liberty, his property, his security, and the resistance of oppression. "III. The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation; and no authority, which is not expressly derived from thence, can be exercised by any associations, or any individual. "IV. Liberty consists in the power of doing every thing which does not injure another person: Thus the exercise of the natural rights of every man, have no other boundaries, than those which assure to men the free exercise of the same rights. These boundaries cannot be determined by law. "V. The law ought to prohibit only such actions as are injurious to society. That which is not forbidden by the law, should not be prevented; and no person can be compelled to do what the law does not ordain. "VI. The law is the expression of the general will; and all citizens have a right to contribute, either personally, or by their representatives, to its formation. The law, whether it protects or punishes, ought to be the same to all. All citizens being equal in its regard, are equally admissible to all dignities, places, and employments, according to their capacities, without any other distinction than what arises from their virtues and their talents. "VII. No man can be accused, arrested, or retained, but in the case determined by the law, and under the forms which it has prescribed. Those who solicit, forward, execute, or cause to be punished. Every citizen called on or arrested by the power of the law, ought to obey, and renders himself culpable by resistance. "VIII. The law should establish no punishments but what are strictly and evidently necessary; and no person can be punished but by the power of the law established; promulgated at a period anterior to the offence, and legally applied. "IX. Every man shall be presumed innocent until he is condemned. If it be deemed indispensibly necessary that he should be detained in custody, all rigour that is not absolutely necessary to secure his person, should be severely repressed by law. "X. No person shall be disturbed for his opinions, even though on religion, provided that the manifestation of those opinions does not disturb the public order established by law. "XI. The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the most precious rights of man. Every citizen shall, therefore, speak, write, and print his opinions freely, still being responsible for the abuse of his liberty, in cases prescribed by the law. "XII. The security of the rights of man and of citizens requires a public force; but this force is instituted for the advantage of all, and not for the particular use of those to whom it is confided. "XIII. For the maintenance of the public force, and the other expences of government, contribution is necessary; but this should be as common as it is indispensible, and should be levied equally on all citizens, in proportion to their ability. "XIV. Every citizen has a right, either by himself or his representatives, to establish the necessity of the public contribution, to consent to it freely, to look to its application, and to determine on its quota, the assessment, and duration. "XV. Society has a right to demand from every public agent an account of his administration. "XVI. Every society, if the guarantee of the individual rights is not assured, and the distinction of the several powers ascertained, is without a constitution. "XVII. The right of property being inviolable and secured, no person can be deprived of his, but when the public necessity, legally established, shall evidently demand it, and then only on the just and previous assurance of indemnification." In Sept. 1789, the National Assembly resolved, it is said, to make the following Reductions from the Annual Income: Livres. 1. The household of the king, queen, and princes 8,000,000 2. The foreign department 8,300,000 3. The war ditto 8,900,000 4. The marine ditto 2,000,000 5. The finance ditto 1,000,000 6. The pensions, besides the reductions made before 6,000,000 7. The intendants and delegates 1,800,000 8. The registers and farmer-general 2,600,000 9. The mint 1,700,000 10. The premiums and encouragements to trade 600,000 11. The royal gardens 36,000 12. ---- ---- library 62,000 13. ---- ---- stud, to be suppressed 800,000 14. The contingencies 2,500,000 15. The fund reserved for lotteries, to be suppressed 173,000 16. The plantation of forests 817,000 17. The clergy 2,502,000 18. The charities 5,511,000 ---------- Livres 53,301,000 Sterling £. 2,220,875 And I understand that two public banks have been established; one consisting of about 205 millions of livres, and the other of near 273 millions. Criminals are now permitted to employ counsel, bring evidence, and have the benefit of a trial by jury, in France. CHAP. XIX. _An Account of several Insurrections, Mobs, and Riots in_ France.--_Of an Attempt to seize and kill the Queen.--The King, Queen, &c. go from_ Versailles _to_ Paris.--_An Account of several other Riots.--The King, a wise and prudent Man._ It appears by the information I received in France, and a number of publications that I have read, that there have been divers tumults and outrages in different parts of the kingdom, in consequence of the Revolution: for besides the taking of the Bastille, where more than three hundred were slain, exclusive of those that were afterwards executed, hostilities have commenced in other places. It has been said, they first began in the park of the _Thuilleries_, by a regiment of German troops, commanded by Le Prince Lambache, who is cousin to the queen. This park being thronged by Parisians, and the prince conceiving something that had passed among the people as a gross insult, ordered his regiment to fire:--His orders were obeyed. The populace immediately beat to arms, and a vast concourse joined the standard, drove the prince and his regiment out of the park, and obliged them to fly to Germany. The prince narrowly escaped with his life. His carriage was burnt to ashes, his horses killed, and a reward was offered for his head. How many were slain in this action I have not been able to learn. The people have been much enraged against Le Compte de Artois, and have supposed that he was the author of their wrongs. His estate has been confiscated, and his horses, with three hundred of his houses, sold. It was thought at Paris, that he cannot return at present with safety. Some time in the spring, 1789, a proprietor to a large manufactory in Paris, reported that fifteen sous per day would be sufficient to support a journeyman and his family, providing certain taxes were abolished. His house was soon surrounded by the manufacturers, who came in a very hostile manner. The guards were sent to preserve the peace. But the enraged multitude killed several of the soldiers with stones. The military was drawn forth, and a battle ensued, in which more then six hundred persons were killed on the spot. At St. Germin and Poissy, the populace seized all the arms belonging to the invalids; and upwards of six hundred went to the house of one Sauvage, where they found between six and seven hundred sacks of flour. He was a miller, and it is probable they supposed he meant to hoard up his flour. He was dragged to a convent, was examined by the friars, and declared innocent: but notwithstanding, the mob led him to a butcher, who cut off his head; and carried it about the streets; and they were so inhuman as to insist upon the miller's sons being present at the execution. His daughter, unable to bear the sight, threw herself over the bridge, into the water, and was drowned. Dreadful were the outrages committed at Rouen: Many of the citizens were killed by the troops, and some suffered greatly by the populace, who ransacked and pillaged all the houses where they suspected corn was concealed. Two vessels were stripped, and all sorts of carriages attacked and robbed. On the 14th of July, 1789, an insurrection happened at Lions, wherein three peasants were killed by the dragoons, who suppressed the mob. At the castle of Quinsay, as an immense crowd of citizens and soldiers were amusing themselves with festivity and dancing, on account of the Revolution, they were blown up by a powder plot, and found floating in their blood. Scattered corpses, and dissevered members, palpitating for life, were seen, after some spectators had arrived, near the place where the horrible catastrophe happened. This plot was supposed to be laid by the very man who had prepared the feast, and had invited the people, but had withdrawn himself before the powder took fire. On the 5th of Oct. 1789, 5,000 women, armed with different weapons, marched from Paris to Versailles, followed by a great multitude of people, among which were several detachments of the city militia. The Marquis de la Fayette arrived at Versailles late in the evening, with 20,000 corps, who were under arms all night, in order to prevent acts of violence. About two in the morning of the 6th, a number of persons in women's dresses, many of whom, it is said, were guards, having gained the outward entrances of the castle, forced their way into the palace, and went up the stair-case leading to the queen's apartment, with an intent to seize and murder her; but they were fired upon by the king's guard. Seventeen were killed on the spot, the rest retreated, and things remained quiet till day-light. The Parisian troops demanding an entrance into the palace, were fired upon by a regiment of the king's body guard. The Parisians returned the fire; and the action becoming more general, the Count de Lusignan, commandant of a regiment of Flanders, ordered his troops to fire, but they refused, and laid down their arms. The king's body guard finding themselves overpowered, took to flight. The troops then forced the entrances of the castle, but were prevented from entering the palace by the prudent management and command of M. de la Fayette. It is thought that the king, queen, and royal family, would have fallen victims to the troops, had they entered the palace. The Marquis was soon introduced to the king, with some of the magistrates of Paris, and communicated the desire of the city, that he might conduct his majesty and the royal family thither. On being assured of protection, the king complied with the request; and their majesties, with the dauphin, &c. the king's aunts, with their attendants, proceeded toward town in eighteen carriages, attended by M. de la Fayette, and about 5,000 guards. The road from Versailles was so thronged by the mob, notwithstanding 50,000 Parisian troops had been sent to keep the way clear, that the royal family were eight hours in reaching the _Hotel de Ville_, though only twelve miles distance. This tedious journey must have been rendered the more painful, by the thoughts of being led captives in triumph to the city of Paris, and the fear of what might follow. The king, with the royal family, stayed near two hours at the _Hotel de Ville_, and were afterwards conducted to the old ruinous place of the _Thuilleries_, which had not been inhabited since the days of Lewis XIV. and where nothing was prepared for their reception. The regiment of the king's body guards, both officers and privates, were composed of persons of the second order of nobility in France. About thirty of them were killed, and their heads carried in triumph to Paris, and shewn about the streets on tent poles. Eighty were carried prisoners to this city; but the rest saved themselves by flight. About fifty of the Parisian troops and mob were killed in the affray. On the 7th, the avenues of the _Thuilleries_ were guarded by 1000 men, and the gates of the palace were secured by a train of cannon, to prevent any surprize or escape. This day being court day, their majesties received the foreign ministers in the palace. The king looked uncommonly dejected; the queen was in tears the whole time, and only talked a little to the imperial ambassador. The sight was uncommonly gloomy, and the court broke up after a short time. In the evening the districts of Paris passed a resolution, that the regiment of the king's body guard should be immediately broken, and never more revived; and that in future his majesty should be guarded by citizens instead of soldiers. This evening the National Assembly at Versailles resolved to adjourn to Paris; and that its meeting should ever be inseparable from the king's place of residence. Just before the affray at Versailles, several riots had commenced at Paris. It is said, that whilst the king, queen, &c. were on their journey from Versailles, nothing but the watchful eye of the Marquis de la Fayette, and the confidential guards around the royal coaches, prevented the mob from committing the most violent outrages. The queen's name was handed about in very gross terms: One barbarian asked his companion, "Whether he thought her head would not make a very pretty tennis-ball?" In short, her majesty must be in the most imminent danger. The harmless spectators were in a dangerous condition at this tumultuous scene. An English gentleman, dressed in white clothes, on a riotous day, was seized by a mob, when one cried out, "That is the miller of----, who secreted so many bags of flour:" He told them he was an Englishman, and was innocent: but all was in vain: they insisted he was the man; and he was so much affrighted that he spake nothing but French. They dragged him to the place of execution, he protesting all the way that he was an Englishman: at last one of the mob cried out, "D----n you, if you are an Englishman, speak _English_." He then spake in his own language, and was released. Besides these insurrections, I understand that two happened in May last: one was at Montpellier, and the other at Saumur, where several lives were lost. I was told in Paris, that the king would have lost his kingdom, if he had not been a wise and prudent man; that had he opposed the National Assembly, he would have been no longer king. And it was reported that the representatives of the nation, are able to raise an army of seventeen hundred thousand men, in the defence of liberty. CHAP. XX. _Of the Birth, Marriage, and Character of the King of France--Of the Birth and Character of the Queen.--An Account of the Dauphin, and of the Princess Royal.--Where the Royal Family may be seen._ His most Christian Majesty, Lewis XVI. king of France and Navarre, was born August 23, 1753. He was married May 16, 1770; to Marie Antoinette, sister to the late Emperor of Germany. The king began to reign, May 10, 1774; and was crowned June 11, 1775. He is of a middling stature, something corpulent, and of a light complexion. His majesty is good humoured, very humane, kind, and affable; and as he is easy of access, and possesses the most amiable virtues, he is much beloved by his people. The queen was born November 2, 1755. She is very handsome, and of a civil, mild, complaisant, and obliging deportment. And although the public clamour was violent againt her for a time, on a supposition that she wished the king absolute; yet I was informed, that the spirit of discontent has subsided. Madame la princesse royal is about thirteen years of age. She is very handsome, and possesses excellent accomplishments. The dauphin is about seven years old: an active, beautiful child. The royal family may be seen at the royal chapel on Sundays, and also upon every other day in the week, at the same place, when they are at Paris. CHAP. XXI. _Some of the Nobility and Clergy opposed to the Revolution.--Monks and Nuns have Liberty to marry.--The Standing Army reduced.--Soldiers Wages augmented--And the Incomes of the lower Orders of the Clergy.--Why the Revolution is called Glorious.--The Protest of a Bishop.--Observations on the King's Oath._ It is said, that some of the nobility and clergy are much opposed to the Revolution, because the titles of honour are abolished, the annual incomes diminished, and all are obliged to pay taxes in proportion to their abilities. I was informed, that the salaries of the bishops are reduced from twenty-five thousand pounds _per annum_, to one thousand; only that some of them could not live with twenty-five thousand, without running in debt, and that they are now in a disagreeable situation. It was reported that the National Assembly have given leave to the monks and nuns to marry, a privilege that people of those orders have been debarred from through many ages and generations. I asked, what must be done on account of the solemn vows by which they had devoted themselves to Heaven, by engaging to shun the pomps and vanities of this wicked world, and the sinful lusts of the flesh? and was informed that they were all absolved and abolished. The standing army is to be reduced from two hundred to one hundred and fifty thousand: but the soldiers' wages have been augmented: and although the incomes of the bishops are greatly reduced, yet those of the inferior orders of the clergy are to be increased; and the sale of judicial offices will no longer be permitted. The impost on salt is also abolished. Before the Revolution the king had the disposal of the whole of the national revenue; and with unbounded generosity gave 1,500,000 pounds annually to the nobility, as I was informed. Some call the Revolution in France _Glorious_, 1. Because (they say) that no Revolution ever conferred _liberty_ and _equal laws_ upon so great a number of people. 2. Because it has been brought about with so little effusion of blood. 3. Because they suppose that other nations will follow the laudable example, until liberty, in its meridian splendor, is extended and established through the world! It is said, that the prince bishop of Spiers has again solemnly protested against the proceedings of the National Assembly, in choosing mayors, and municipal members in the towns and places of Elsas, belonging to his bishopric, and other innovations against his rights and privileges. In this important protest he says, "That he had laid before the king, in the most earnest manner, his opposition to the decrees of the National Assembly; which decrees had absolutely overset all the existing treaties with France: that he had delivered a memorial to the emperor and to the realm upon this important subject; notwithstanding which they had proceeded to the appointment of new municipal officers in Elsas, according to the decrees of the National Assembly, and against his right of jurisdiction and appointment; that the new mayors committed great outrages, and set his subjects against paying him any dues, and were endeavouring to make them throw off his dominion:" and he concludes by saying, "that his powers leave him no other remedy than to _protest_ against what is done, which he does in the most solemn manner." A spirit of discontent will undoubtedly reign for a time among some of those that have had their incomes diminished in consequence of the Resolution. Agreeable to the bishop's opinion, in regard to the existing treaties, &c. being overset, is the following paragraph, inserted in the St. James's Chronicle, July 24, 1790. "The king of France has now bound himself by a sacred oath, to adhere to the decrees of the National Assembly, and support the constitution in its renovated form; consequently there is an end to all foreign interferences on his behalf, either in Spain, Sardinia, or any other quarter. To countenance such an interference would be an act of perjury, and justify his subjects in such measures as might be fatal to himself and the whole house of Bourbon. His majesty may be deemed unfortunate; but no prince ranks higher in the estimation of mankind, as an honest and conscientious man." The National Assembly have decreed to strengthen, by a treaty, the family compact between France and Spain, and to augment the Gallic navy in consequence of the armaments of the different nations in Europe. CHAP. XXII. _The_ Author _sets out for_ London.--_Falls in Company with a Lady.--Arrives at_ Amiens.--_Views the Convent, Cathedral, &c. in Company with the Lady--With whom he is left alone.--They discourse about Matrimony._ Paris, July 23, Having viewed the greatest hospitals and principal curiosities in this city, and the parts adjacent, and obtained an account of the late observations on the operation of medicines, and collected intelligence upon political subjects, I paid my reckoning at the hotel, bid the people farewel, and set off for London. My landlady sent a servant after me, praying that I would put up there again when I came to Paris. I returned her my thanks, and told the servant that I would endeavour to come there if I should ever visit the city again. Some days before I had engaged a passage back to London, on board the diligences, for which I paid five _Louis d'ors_. My servant who had waited upon me, seemed urgent I should take him to England, having an inclination to live with me; which I should have done, had I not determined to spend much of my time in travelling. I left Paris about noon, in company with two Spanish, one French, one Irish, and two English gentlemen: one of the latter was a lawyer, who had travelled through many countries on the European continent. I inquired where we should dine; and was informed that we were to have no dinner that day, unless we payed for it ourselves, although we were to be found on the way, according to the agreement we had made when we paid for our fare, entertainment, &c. at Paris. As we had no inclination to starve, we stopped at a hotel, where we dined and paid for our dinners a second time. At evening we came to Clermont, where we supped and lodged, but was called up before day-light, to proceed on our journey. At this place a lady came into our coach, who had come in a post-chaise on the preceding day from Paris. July 24. At about twelve we came to Amiens, having breakfasted by the way. We put up at a hotel, where the lady that came in company with us, said she had an inclination to go and see the convent. Several of us waited upon her to the convent; but just after we had set out, she said she had so much silver with her that she could not walk; and desired I would ease her of a part of her burthen. I took a large number of her crowns into my pocket, and she walked betwixt the lawyer and myself. After we had viewed the convent, and conversed with the nuns, we went to a very elegant cathedral church at Notre Dame, where some of the inside pillars are said to be one hundred and thirty feet high. The pulpit is made of beautiful white marble, gilt with gold, and the cloths of the altar are ornamented with beautiful gold and silver embroidery: many rich vessels, and other splendid ornaments also dignify this cathedral. Afterwards we viewed the town, in which are eleven parish churches. Amiens is the capital of the province of Picardie, which is esteemed the most fruitful of all the provinces in France, for corn and flax. As we continued our walk, our company took a wrong street, and left me with the lady. Now, forsooth, said I to myself, we shall be taken for _man_ and _wife_; however, that will not trouble me, inasmuch as she is a decent behaved person, and one that appears to have an excellent education, with a proper share of good sense and understanding. She told me by the way that she belonged to Great Britain, but had had her education in a convent in France: That she had been a widow about three years, was left with four children, _viz._ with two sons and two daughters, and had been to Paris to get her daughters into a convent, as she esteemed such places to be the best for the instruction of young persons. I told her that as she was but young herself, it was probable she would marry again; but she said that she did not intend to marry. Said I, Perhaps you will alter your mind, peradventure you may find an agreeable companion. Said she, If I should be inclined to marry, nobody will have me, because I have so many children. My answer was, You ought not to be despised because you have children. Undoubtedly many would be glad to marry you, though you have sons and daughters. As we had arrived at the hotel, we dropped our discourse upon this subject; I returned her silver, and she thanked me for my kindness. She was a beautiful woman, and was besides well stocked with cash, which often _makes the mare to go_. But as I was not in pursuit of a wife, I did not attempt to court her on my own account; but told her, however, that I believed I could send her an agreeable companion. CHAP. XXIII. _The Lady concludes to lodge at_ Abbeville.--_Observations on her Plan.--She being disappointed about getting a Post-chaise, continues in the Stage Coach.--A short Description of_ Montreul.--_They arrive at_ Calais.--_Embark for and arrive at_ Dover.--_Of Disputes upon Philosophical Subjects._ Saturday, July 24. We dined at the hotel, and set off towards London. Sometime before night, our lady told me, that she was almost beat out; that she had had but a little sleep for several nights, and intended to lodge at Abbeville, and go from thence in a post-chaise in the morning to Calais; as she supposed that she could get there as soon that way, as she should if she kept in the stage coach, which was to travel all night. She told me, by the way, that she had no company, and wished she could get somebody to ride in the post-chaise with her. I informed her, that I had paid for my passage and entertainment to London: but if she could do no better, I would tarry all night, and ride with her in the morning. She thanked me, and said, it should cost me nothing; for _she had money enough_. Now, thought I, you are opening a fine door for another discourse upon matrimony; now you are laying a foundation whereby we may be taken for man and wife. This may be an artful plan of yours to get another husband, as you may suppose I am a batchelor, or a widower; and that we may converse, eat, drink, and even sleep together, and escape undiscovered. She said she was in a great hurry to get to England; that she had tarried longer than she had expected, and wanted to see her family, as she supposed they thought she was dead by that time: and withal informed me that she lived forty miles from London. But I did not ask her name, thinking it would be an impertinent question, and esteemed unpolite. At length we arrived at Abbeville, where we supped; and as our lady found she could not have a post-chaise till the next Monday, and as she felt much refreshed by her supper, she concluded to take the stage again. We travelled all night, and arrived in the morning at Montreul, where we viewed the town and went to breakfast. This town is situated on a high hill, and is strongly fortified with great walls, intrenchments, &c. There are some good buildings in it, and many genteel inhabitants. From Montreul we went to Boulogn, where we were obliged to dine at too early an hour, _viz._ at about eleven. Many of us had an inclination not to dine at all; but on being informed that there would be no other dinner for us, we consented. We left this place about twelve, and arrived at Calais at about four in the afternoon, much fatigued with our journey. As we had rode all night, we escaped being haunted by the beggars, which I have spoken of in the beginning of this _Tour_; and from hence it did not cost me quite so much to come from Paris as it did to go there. We drank tea and supped at the hotel in Calais, and were visited again by the same monk or priest, who had begged of me at the hotel before. We gave him some money, and he pronounced a blessing, and departed. As the tide was down, we were not able to set off for Dover till late in the evening. At about nine we were obliged to go down near the vessel, and tarry till it was high-water, because we had to pass through several gates that the people were ordered to shut at that hour. We stayed at a public-house, where we drank punch, negus, &c. and at about eleven we embarked for Dover, and arrived at our desired haven about four the next morning, having had a very pleasant and agreeable passage. But as it was low water when we came to Dover, we were obliged to go ashore in a boat, and to pay three shillings a-piece to the boatman for carrying us about half a mile. Whilst I was on the way to and from Paris, we had some warm debates upon several philosophical subjects, _viz._ Chymestry, electricity, the cause of earthquakes, the variation of the compass; the formation, preservation, and dissolution of the human body, &c. and, although I do not take much delight in arguments, but have rather endeavoured to shun and avoid them as much as possible; yet inasmuch as I had begun upon a good basis, and found myself violently opposed, I stood my ground, supported and maintained my cause, and at last had the satisfaction of seeing my opponents convinced of their error. CHAP. XXIV. _Further Claims on our Bounty.--French Coin exchanged for English.--Views the Castle and Town of_ Dover.--_Arrives at_ Canterbury.--_A Description of the Abbey.--Comes to_ Rochester, _and at length reaches_ Piccadilly. July 26. When we had arrived at Dover we breakfasted at the hotel, where the captain of the vessel, the steward, porters, &c. came and begged of us. We gave the captain half a crown a-piece, and something to the rest of the beggars; but were now obliged to get our French money changed for English, and to lose considerably by the exchange. Afterwards we walked upon the High-lands at Dover, and viewed the castle and the town: and when the tide was up, our vessel arrived with our baggage: our trunks were searched at the Custom-house, and one in our company, who had brought a number of prints from Paris, had them seized, because they were prohibited goods. A thing he said he did not know till they were taken from him. He told me they were worth about thirty pounds. When our business was done at the Custom-house, we returned to the hotel, where our lady, the lawyer, and one of the merchants, set off in a post-chaise for London, because they had not paid their fare any further than to Calais, and could travel faster in the chaise than they could in the diligences. I told the lady before we parted, that I intended to give the public a narration of my journey. She prayed I would let her have one, and promised to call on me when she came to London. The two Spanish gentlemen, a Frenchman, and two other gentlemen, with myself, left Dover about noon, and dined at Canterbury, where we viewed the abbey, which is a very ancient and elegant building: A part of it has been built eleven hundred years. We were there in the time of divine worship. They chanted the service, and their vocal and instrumental music was very excellent: The former bishops of Canterbury are buried here, and there are many statues and paintings in commemoration of ancient kings, bishops, and generals. Before we left the hotel we were obliged to pay for the wine we had drank. At about ten in the evening we came to Rochester, where we called for supper: but were informed that if we had one we must pay for a part of it, as the money was all exhausted that we had paid for our passages and entertainment, excepting five shillings. We had a supper, and paid an extravagent price for it, but were careful to have the five shillings deducted. After we had supped, we pursued our journey, and arrived at the White Bear Inn, Piccadilly, about five the next morning, greatly fatigued; as we had been but about eighty-nine hours upon our journey, which is nineteen hours short of the time commonly allowed for the performance thereof. I had not been in bed for three nights, only I lay down a few minutes on a mattress when we were crossing the English Channel. I do not think that the owners of the diligences can afford to carry people to and from Paris for a less sum than what they demand, nor to give better entertainment than such as we received, as it is a great distance, and half a guinea is given, out of five for the conveyance of a passenger over the English Channel: but people ought to know how they are to fare before they set off to France; and for that reason I have been more minute in many circumstances, than at first sight might appear to some to be necessary. CHAP. XXV. _Definition of Liberty.--All have a Right to it, but some deprive themselves of that Right by their own Conduct, and some by the Conduct of others.--Of the Duty of Nations.--The evil Effects of bad Constitutions.--Of the French Revolution.--The happy Condition of the British Empire._ As liberty consists in the free exercise of our religion, the enjoyment of our rights, and the profits of our labour, with the protection of our persons and properties, it is a privilege of an immense value. And as it is the natural right of every man, it is our indespensible duty to seek after it, whenever we are deprived of its benefits. But we find that many deprive themselves of liberty by their own evil conduct--by breaking the good and wholesome laws of the land, by doing things dishonourable to the Creator, and injurious to mankind. Thus thieves, robbers, murderers, &c. destroy their own freedom by their vicious behaviour; and expose themselves, not only to confinement, but to more severe punishments. We also find, that many are deprived of liberty by the inhuman conduct of tyrants, who oppress and persecute those over whom they have usurped dominion and power, by taking from them the liberty of conscience, and loading them with burthens which they are unable to bear. It is the duty of every nation to guard against all these evils; and from hence arises the necessity of having a good constitution and system of laws in every kingdom or state; binding upon all ranks, orders, and degrees of men. Hence also arises the necessity of having kings, counsellors, governors, magistrates, and other officers appointed for the administration of justice, and the preservation of public tranquillity. Various constitutions and systems of laws have been framed and established amongst different nations; and where ignorance and superstition have reigned triumphant, the constitution and laws have been very deficient, so that things have been established and practised that were repugnant to the principles of justice and humanity. What numerous multitudes have been massacred for a difference of opinion in matters of religion and modes of worship! And how many thousands have worn out their days in vassalage and slavery, because laws have been made contrary to the requisitions of the great law of reason! But whenever the minds of the people are illuminated, and the clouds of darkness, ignorance and superstition are dispelled, the spirit of liberty breaks forth like the sun in its meridian splendor. The constitutions are altered, oppressive laws abolished, the bands of tyranny and oppression are broken asunder, distressed objects are discharged from confinement, the liberal and mechanical arts and sciences thrive and flourish, and all enjoy those liberties which are the natural right of every man. The illumination of the minds of the people in France, has been productive of the great and glorious Revolution; of the forming of a new constitution, the enacting of new laws, and the abolishing of those things that were repugnant to the interest and prosperity of the kingdom. How pleasing must it be to see both the King and the National Assembly unite together in establishing the new constitution, and in promoting whatever may conduce to the good of the nation, and benefit of mankind in general! May the flame of liberty, like the refulgent beams of the sun, be extended over the face of the whole globe; and may all nations partake of the great and glorious blessings of natural freedom! And with pleasure we recollect, that once in the _British Empire_, the inhabitants, fired with the love of liberty, drove ignorance, darkness, and superstition before them; made a glorious stand for their rights, and were thereby brought into a happy situation. We are now blest with a good king, with good rulers, and with a good constitution and system of laws.--Here a man enjoys a free toleration of religion.--Here he is rewarded for his labour.--Here he is protected in his person and property.--Here agriculture, navigation, trade, commerce, architecture, and the manufactories thrive and flourish; and the nation has arrived to an inconceivable pitch of grandeur and affluence. Our constitution, being pregnant with a variety of privileges, is admired by distant nations: foreigners come from afar, and find shelter and protection, liberty and freedom, under our government! CHAP. XXVI. THE GREAT CONSTITUTION OF LIBERTY, Founded upon the Principles of Justice, and the Laws of Humanity. Every constitution and system of laws ought to be constructed upon the principles of justice and humanity, which will ensure the rights of a king, and the peace, liberty, and happiness of his subjects. I shall therefore beg leave to observe: 1. That every man has a legal right to perform religious worship according to the dictates of his conscience, at such times and places as shall be most agreeable to himself; providing he doth not injure others in their persons, characters, or properties. 2. That it is unlawful to persecute any of the human race, for a difference of opinion in matters of religion or modes of worship. 3. That public teachers are needful to instruct people in the principles of religion and morality. 4. That good rulers, both in church and state, ought to be reasonably rewarded for their services, out of the public funds; and impowered to remove officers for malconduct; and, by and with the advice and consent of the body corporate, to expel members for vicious practices. 5. That the freedom of speech, and the liberty of the press, are the natural rights of every man, providing he doth not injure himself nor others by his conversation, or publications. 6. That legislative and executive officers, consisting of kings, counsellors, governors, judges, magistrates, representatives, and other rulers, are necessary to make and execute laws for the preservation of the public tranquillity in empires, kingdoms, and states. 7. That it is unlawful for rulers to make and execute laws repugnant to those of the great _Governor_ of the universe, or destructive to the peace and prosperity of the community at large. 8. That the people have a right to chuse and send delegates, to represent their state and condition in a legislative assembly. 9. That a legislative body ought to consist of a mixture of monarchical, aristocratical, and democratical governments, and be divided into three branches, as that of a king, lords, and commons. 10. That each branch ought to have a negative voice on the other branches; and no bill ought to be passed into a law without the advice and consent of, at least, two-thirds of the members of two of the branches of the legislature. 11. That legislators ought to meet once in a year, and as much oftener as the circumstances of the nation may require, at such times and places as may be most convenient. 12. That the people have a right to petition the legislature for a redress of grievances. 13. That every branch of an empire ought to be subject to the supreme legislative head of a nation: To render all proper honour and obedience to the king, and to all in authority, and to be subordinate to the good and wholesome laws of the land. 14. That a king ought to be considered as the first supreme legislative and executive officer in a kingdom, and to be empowered to grant pardons to criminals whenever it may be needful. He has a right to a free liberty of conscience; to protection in his person, character, and property; to rule and govern his people according to the constitution, statutes, laws and ordinances of his realm; to that honour and obedience that is due to personages in such an exalted station; and to such a revenue as his circumstances may require, and his subjects be able to raise. 15. That no man ought to be chosen into office, unless he is endowed with wisdom and knowledge, and can be well recommended for good works and pious actions. 16. That it is lawful to confer titles of honour upon, and to give rewards to such persons as may merit them, by their vigorous exertions and good conduct. 17. That legislators ought to be exempted from being arrested for debt, whilst they are passing to, remain at, and are returning from the legislative assemblies, because an arrestment would impede the public service. 18. That courts of justice ought to be established, and justice administered to all, without respect of persons. 19. That every man ought to be allowed a trial by jury. 20. That those under confinement ought to know what they are confined for; who their accusers are; not be compelled to bear witness against themselves; be allowed to bring evidence, with the benefit of counsel; and should not be condemned, unless found guilty by the testimony of two or three credible witnesses. 21. That excessive bail ought never to be demanded, excessive fines required, nor excessive punishments inflicted. 22. That criminals under confinement, ought to have no punishment laid upon them, but that which is requisite for the securing of their bodies; unless after they have been found guilty, it is ordered by the judges, agreeable to the laws of the land. 23. That no man ought to be imprisoned for debt, providing he gives up his property to his creditors, and has not waited his time in idleness, nor his estate by intemperance, gaming, or any other vicious practice. 24. That persons falsely imprisoned, ought to be immediately liberated, and to have ample satisfaction for the injuries they have received; and those guilty of the abomination of confining the innocent, ought to be severely punished for their atrocious conduct. 25. That every one who is a subject of taxation, ought to be allowed to vote for a representative. 26. That every man ought to be taxed in proportion to his abilities. 27. That the power of levying and collecting taxes, duties, imposts, &c. with that of coining money, emitting bills of credit, borrowing money for the public use, entering into treaties and alliances with foreign powers, appointing, commissioning, and sending of ambassadors, ministers, consuls, messengers, &c. belongs to the legislature. 28. That such treaties ought to be esteemed as a part of the law of the land; kept inviolate; and whenever they are broken, restitution ought to be made to the party injured. 29. That as money is a defence as well as wisdom, a circulating medium ought to be established, consisting of gold, silver, copper, and bills of exchange. Its credit should be kept up, and but one currency established in a kingdom. 30. That churches ought to be built for the accommodation of the people when they perform religious worship; public schools, colleges, academies, and universities erected, for the promotion of literature; hospitals founded for the reception of the sick; work-houses for the employment of idle persons; and prisons for the securing of thieves, robbers, murderers, and other felons;--and societies instituted, for the purpose of making further discoveries and improvements in the liberal and mechanical arts and sciences. 31. That custom-houses, post-offices, and post-roads, ought to be established in every kingdom and state. 32. That weights and measures ought to be alike in every part of an empire, if not through the world. 33. That all foreigners ought to be treated with hospitality, and protected by the laws of the land. 34. That the heirs of an estate ought not to be disinherited by reason of the ill conduct of their parents; nor thrown out of their posts of honour and profit, in consequence of the unlawful behaviour of their relations. 35. That every author ought to have the benefit of his own productions, whether they be upon theological, mathematical, philosophical, physical, mechanical, or any other subject. 36. That all officers, whether ecclesiastical, civil, or military, with every other person, ought to guard against sedition, treason, rebellion, and every thing that may tend to sow discord amongst brethren, destroy the public tranquillity, and make mankind unhappy. Thus have I framed a CONSTITUTION, which appears to me to be according to the law of reason, and the dictates of sound policy. Perhaps some things have escaped my observation, that might justly be added. However, I believe that one calculated and established upon these principles, would secure the rights of kings and those of their subjects, which is all that any rational person can desire. CHAP. XXVII. _Of the impossibility of framing a Constitution that will please every Body.--Anecdote of two Irishmen.--The Rights of Kings, and Liberties of their Subjects, ought to be secured by a good Constitution and System of Laws.--Story of the Parson's Wig.--Thoughts on the Mode of chusing Representatives.--The Happiness of the People ought to be promoted._ I cannot expect my political sentiments will please every body, let them be ever so well founded on reason; for there are such a number of discontented mortals in the world, who lust after dominion and power, and such multitudes that do not wish to be under any government at all, that should the _Angel Gabriel_ frame and send a _Constitution_ from _Heaven_, some would be found to murmur at it. Many are of such a craving temper and disposition, that they would engross the whole world to themselves, and rule and govern it, were it in their power. The ambition of some men is almost boundless.--This brings to my mind an anecdote of two Irishmen, who being intoxicated with liquor at an inn, began to think that they were masters of the whole globe, and agreed to divide it equally between themselves: but as the intoxication increased, one of them, who was of a very craving disposition, concluded that he had the best right to the world, and swore that he would have it all to himself; whilst the other contended, that he was justly entitled to one half of it, and wanted no more than his right. At last they settled the matter by a number of heavy blows; but whether the world was at last to be equally divided, or whether one was to have it all, and the other no part of it, I have forgot, although I had my information from a gentleman who was witness to this very singular contest, and knew something of our _wise_ combatants. The same temper and disposition amongst others, has prevailed too much in the world; and has sometimes broke out into such acts of violence, that kings and nobles have been deprived of their rights, and oftentimes the people at large of theirs. A monarch may crave the estates, and all the profits of the labours of his subjects; and, on the contrary, the people may crave those things that legally belong to their king; and, by acts of violence and injustice, both may lose their rights. But both of these extremes ought to be carefully guarded against, and the rights of kings, and those of their subjects, secured by a _good Constitution_ and system of laws. Is it not strange that mortal men, who can abide but a very short time in this troublesome world, should be so craving as to lust after more riches, honours and profits, than they can enjoy, or that can possibly do them any good? "Why doth the miser all his cares employ, "To gain those riches that he can't enjoy?" When the powers of legislation are lodged altogether in one man, and the nobles and other inhabitants of a country are shut out from having any voice in the making of laws; or when the powers are in the nobles, or in the people only, it will naturally generate a spirit of discontent amongst those who have not a share in that power. Will not a king feel very uneasy, if he has no part of the legislative power? Will not the nobles be discontented, if they have no part of it? And, will not the people murmur, if they have no share in the same? Therefore, to prevent uneasiness, and promote a spirit of union and harmony in empires, kingdoms and states, it is best, in my opinion, to have a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy in every legislative body, like the parliament of Great Britain. The things of this world are so mutable, that we cannot foretel what constitutions may be established hereafter. And although an astronomer can determine the revolutions and rotations of the rambling planets, and point out the directions, stations, and retrogradations of the luminaries of heaven, for thousands of years to come; yet he cannot foretel what will be done hereafter, even in his own country, or in any other part of the globe, in regard to the overturning, altering, framing, and establishing of constitutions, kingdoms, or states. It is probable that there may be alterations in these things; and perhaps the future generations may have a greater knowledge in politics than the present, and be able to frame better modes of government than the nations are in this age: for if the knowledge of philosophy increases in the world, and the glorious sun-shine of liberty and freedom breaks forth, the clouds of darkness and ignorance will be dispelled, atheism, superstition and idolatry will wear away, and the people be freed from those burthens and impositions that involve many, in the dark and benighted corners of the globe, in vassalage and slavery! It is probable they will discover that some constitutions have been deficient, and be able to correct and amend whatever has been amiss. But such is the changeableness and discontented tempers of many, that they would be for ever altering that which is even good and complete, and so alter till they spoil it,--_like the minister's wig_; an account of which I will just relate as I received it. A _Reverend Divine_ having lost his hair in his old age, bought a large white wig to cover his naked head; but it displeased his auditors to that degree that they had a church-meeting on the subject, and concluded that the wearing of such a large wig was idolatry, and accordingly sent a committee to their _Reverend Pastor_, to acquaint him that his congregation was much displeased, &c. He told them that he did not wish to have any uneasiness about the wig, and if they thought it was too large they might make it smaller; and delivered it to the committee, who laid it before the congregation to have it altered; when one cut off a lock of hair in one place, and another in another, &c. till the wig was utterly spoilt. At length they agreed that it was fit to be seen in the pulpit, whereupon it was returned to the owner; who said it could not now be _idolatry_ to wear the wig, for it had not the _likeness_ of any thing in _Heaven_ or _Earth_.--Just so it is with a constitution that is constructed in the best manner; it will not suit every one; and if it is clipped by every discontented mortal, it will be wholly ruined, _like the Reverend Divine's wig_. There is a vanity that I have seen under the sun, and have often wondered that it has not been suppressed in this enlightened age. I mean the unjustifiable mode of chusing legislators in some parts of the globe. When the people are called upon to chuse their representatives, a number will put up in some public place, when perhaps not more than one or two is to be chosen. There scaffolds must be erected, publications sent forth, mobs convened day after day, harangues delivered, and many thousands spent to induce the freeholders to chuse their delegates--when the whole of the work might be completed in half a day, by the people's assembling at the places appointed for the performance of religious worship, and carrying in their votes, in writing, to the clerk of every parish, who might easily send them to some person that might be authorised in the county to receive and count the same, and to promulgate who has the greatest number, or who the people have chosen for their legislators. Would not this mode take up less time, be much easier to the people, and much more commendable, and beneficial to the community, than to have the freeholders fatigue themselves by coming a great distance, wasting their time by being kept from their employments, day after day; quarrelling and wrangling about the choice of a representative? or, than to have the candidates for such places waste their estates by keeping open houses, giving away victuals, drink, ribbands, cockades, &c. till they have ruined themselves, families, and creditors? THE EPISTLE Of the AUTHOR. CHAP. XXVIII. _A Description of the_ Road _to_ Liberty. To all people, nations, and languages, that dwell in all the world. 2. Grace, mercy, and peace be multiplied unto you. 3. It hath seemed good unto me to promulgate this _Epistle_, and to make known thereby the genuine description of the road which leads to that liberty which is destitute of licentiousness. 4. To mention those things that will make you comfortable in this life, and conduct you in the way to everlasting felicity in the realms of immortal bliss and happiness. 5. I beseech you, therefore, to remember that atheism, superstition, idolatry, sedition, treason, rebellion, covetousness, theft, robbery, murder, intemperance, debauchery, bad language, gaming, idleness, and all kinds of vice, will carry you out of the road that leads to liberty, and involve you in destruction and misery. 6. Shun, therefore, all kinds of vice and immorality, and walk in the pleasant paths of piety and virtue, which will establish your freedom on a parmanent basis. 7. Let those who doubt the existence of a _Supreme Being_; and, those who worship the sun, moon, or stars;--the birds, beasts, or fishes;--or idols made by the hands of men, contemplate upon the works of the visible creation; which will naturally convince them of their error, and excite them to pay homage and adoration to Him, who created, upholds, and governs the universe, and is the only proper object of religious worship. 8. Avoid contentions, divisions and animosities, which too frequently terminate in bloodshed and devaluation. 9. Follow peace with all men; break not your oaths of allegiance, fulfil your obligations; fear God, honour the king, and those in authority, and be subordinate to the good and wholesome laws of the kingdom or state in which you reside. 10. Walk honestly; render to all their dues; pay your debts, and your proportion of the public taxes. 11. Be kind to the poor and needy, relieve the oppressed, visit the sick, bury the dead, feed the hungry, clothe the naked; and shew acts of kindness, charity, and humanity to strangers, captives, and prisoners. 12. Love yourselves, your families, and your neighbours; do good to your enemies; avenge not yourselves. 13. Be not high-minded in prosperity, but patient in adversity. 14. Cultivate and improve the liberal and mechanical arts and sciences, and promote every thing that may tend to make mankind happy. 15. Be careful of your credit, your time, and your money; shun bad company, use not bad language, be not idle, waste not your estate in superfluities, be temperate and exemplary in your lives and conversations. 16. Shun the pollutions that are in the world, suppress that which is evil; do as you would be done by, and continually follow that which is good: then will ye be in the road that leads to liberty. 17. Grace, mercy, and peace be multiplied unto you all, _Amen_. This Epistle of the Author, was written from _Anglia_, to the inhabitants of the world. FINIS. 
49318	----	http://www.freeliterature.org (Images generously made availabl by the Hathi Trust) GUY DE MAUPASSANT AFLOAT (SUR L'EAU) WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY RIOU _TRANSLATED BY LAURA ENSOR_ LONDON GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL GLASGOW, MANCHESTER, AND NEW YORK 1889 _This Diary contains no story and no very thrilling adventure. While cruising about on the coasts of the Mediterranean last Spring, I amused myself by writing down every day what I saw and what I thought._ _I saw but the water, the sun, clouds and rocks,--I can tell of nought else,--and my thoughts were mere nothings, such as are suggested by the rocking of the waves, lulling and bearing one along._ AFLOAT [Illustration] _April 6th._ I was sound asleep when my skipper Bernard awoke me by throwing up sand at my window. I opened it, and on my face, on my chest, in my very soul, I felt the cold delicious breath of the night. The sky was a clear blue gray, and alive with the quivering fire of the stars. The sailor, standing at the foot of the wall, said: "Fine weather, sir." "What wind?" "Off shore." "Very well, I'm coming." Half-an-hour later I was hurrying down to the shore. The horizon was pale with the first rays of dawn, and I saw in the distance behind the bay _des Anges_ the lights at Nice, and still further on the revolving lighthouse at Villefranche. In front of me Antibes was dimly visible through the lifting darkness, with its two towers rising above the cone-shaped town, surrounded by the old walls built by Vauban. In the streets were a few dogs and a few men, workmen starting off to their daily labour. In the port, nothing but the gentle swaying of the boats at the side of the quay, and the soft plashing of the scarcely moving water could be heard; or at times the sound of the straining of a cable or of a boat grazing against the hull of a vessel. The boats, the flagstones, the sea itself seemed asleep under the gold-spangled firmament, and under the eye of a small lighthouse which, standing out at the end of the jetty, kept watch over its little harbour. Beyond, in front of Ardouin's building yard, I saw a glimmer, I felt a stir, I heard voices. They were expecting me. The _Bel-Ami_ was ready to start. I went down into the cabin, lighted up by a couple of candles hanging and balanced like compasses, at the foot of the sofas which at night were used as beds, I donned the leathern sailor's jacket, put on a warm cap, and returned on deck. Already the hawsers had been cast off, and the two men hauling in the cable, had brought the anchor apeak. Then they hoisted the big sail, which went up slowly to the monotonous groan of blocks and rigging. It rose wide and wan in the darkness of the night, quivering in the breath of the wind, hiding from us both sky and stars. The breeze was coming dry and cold from the invisible mountain that one felt to be still laden with snow. It came very faint, as though hardly awake, undecided and intermittent. Then the men shipped the anchor, I seized the helm, and the boat, like a big ghost, glided through the still waters. In order to get out of the port, we had to tack between the sleeping tartans and schooners. We went gently from one quay to another, dragging after us our little round dingy, which followed us as a cygnet, just hatched from its shell, follows the parent swan. [Illustration] As soon as we reached the channel between the jetty and the square fort the yacht became livelier, quickened its pace, and seemed more alert, as though a joyous feeling had taken possession of her. She danced over the countless short waves,--moving furrows of a boundless plain. Quitting the dead waters of the harbour, she now felt under her the living sea. There was no swell, and I directed our course between the walls of the town and the buoy called _Cinq-cents francs_ (Twenty pounds sterling) that marks the deeper channel; then, catching the breeze astern, I made sail to double the headland. The day was breaking, the stars were disappearing, for the last time the Villefranche lighthouse closed its revolving eye, and I saw strange roseate glimmers in the distant sky, above the still invisible Nice; the heights of the Alpine glaciers lighted up by the early dawn. I gave the helm over to Bernard, and watched the rising sun. The freshened breeze sent us skimming over the quivering violet-tinted waters. A bell clanged, throwing to the wind the three rapid strokes of the _Angelus._ How is it that the sound of bells seems livelier in the early dawn, and heavier at nightfall? I like that chill and keen hour of morn, when man still sleeps, and all Nature is awakening. The air is full of mysterious thrills unknown to belated risers. I inhale, I drink it; I see all life returning, the material life of the world; the life that runs through all the planets, the secret of which is our eternal puzzle. Raymond said: "We shall soon have the wind from the east." Bernard replied: "More likely from the west." [Illustration] The skipper Bernard is lean and lithe, remarkably clean, careful and prudent. Bearded up to his eyes, he has a frank look and a kindly voice. He is devoted and trusty. But everything makes him anxious at sea; a sudden swell that foretells a breeze out at sea, a long cloud over the Esterel mountains announcing a _mistral_ to westward, even a rising barometer, for that may indicate a squall from the east. Moreover, a capital sailor, he exercises a constant supervision and carries cleanliness to such an extent, as to rub up the brasses the moment a drop of water has touched them. [Illustration] His brother-in-law, Raymond, is a strong fellow, swarthy and moustached, indefatigable and bold, as loyal and devoted as the other, but less variable and nervous, more calm, more resigned to the surprises and treachery of the sea. Bernard, Raymond and the barometer are sometimes in contradiction with each other, and perform an amusing comedy with three personages, of which one, the best informed, is dumb. "Dash it, sir, we're sailing well," said Bernard. We had, it was true, passed through the gulf of La Salis, cleared La Garoupe, and were approaching Cape Gros, a flat low rock stretching out on a level with the water. Now, the whole Alpine mountain range appeared, a monster wave threatening the sea, a granite wave capped with snow, where each pointed tip looks like a dash of spray motionless and frozen. And the sun rises behind this ice, shedding over it the light of its molten silver rays. Then directly after, as we round the Antibes headland, we discover the Lerins Isles, and further off behind them, the tortuous outline of the Esterel. The Esterel is the stage scenery of Cannes, a lovely keepsake kind of mountain of faintest blue, elegantly outlined in a coquettish and yet artistic style, washed in water-colours on a theatrical sky by a good-natured Creator for the express purpose of serving as model for English lady landscape painters, and as a subject of admiration for consumptive or idle royal highnesses. [Illustration] With each hour of the day, the Esterel changes its aspect, and charms the gaze of the _upper ten._ [Illustration] In the morning the chain of mountains, correctly and clearly cut out, is sharply delineated on a blue sky; a tender and pure blue, the ideal blue of a southern shore. But in the evening, the wooded sides of the slopes darken and become a black patch on a fiery sky, on a sky incredibly red and dramatic. Never have I seen elsewhere such fairy-like sunsets, such conflagrations of the whole horizon, such an effulgence of clouds, such a clever and superb arrangement, such a daily renewal of extravagant and magnificent effects which call forth admiration but would raise a smile were they painted by men. The Lerins Isles, which to the east close the Gulf of Cannes and separate it from the Gulf of Juan, look themselves like two operatic islands placed there for the satisfaction and delight of the invalid and winter sojourners. Seen from the open sea, where we now are, they resemble two dark green gardens growing in the water. Out at sea, at the extreme end of Saint-Honorat stands a romantic ruin, its walls rising out of the waves, quite one of Walter Scott's castles, ever beaten by the surf, and in which, in former days, the monks defended themselves against the Saracens; for Saint-Honorat always belonged to monks, except during the Revolution. At that period the island was purchased by an actress of the _Comédie-Française._ Stronghold, militant monks, now toned down into the fattest of smilingly begging Trappists, pretty actress come thither no doubt to conceal her love affairs in the dense thickets and pines of this rock-belted islet; all, down to the very names; "Lerins, Saint-Honorat, Sainte-Marguerite," fit for Florian's fables, all is pleasing, coquettish, romantic, poetic and rather insipid on the delightful shores of Cannes. To correspond with the antique manor embattled, slender and erect, which looks towards the open sea at the extremity of Saint-Honorat, Sainte-Marguerite is terminated on the land side by the celebrated fortress in which the Man in the Iron Mask and Bazaine were confined. A channel about a mile long stretches out between the headland of the Croizette and the fortress, which has the aspect of an old squat house, devoid of anything imposing or majestic. It seems to crouch down dull and sly, a real trap for prisoners. I can now see the three gulfs. In front, beyond the islands, lies that of Cannes; nearer, the Gulf Juan, and behind the bay des Anges, overtopped by the Alps and the snowy heights. Further off, the coasts can be seen far beyond the Italian frontier, and with my glasses I can sight at the end of a promontory the white houses of Bordighera. [Illustration] And everywhere, all along the endless coast, the towns by the seashore, the villages perched up on high on the mountain side, the innumerable villas dotted about in the greenery, all look like white eggs laid on the sands, laid on the rocks, laid amongst the pine forests by gigantic birds that have come in the night from the snowlands far above. Villas again on the Cape of Antibes, a long tongue of land, a wonderful garden thrown out between the seas, blooming with the most lovely flowers of Europe, and at the extreme point, Eileen Rock, a charming and whimsical residence that attracts visitors from Cannes and Nice. The breeze has dropped, the yacht hardly makes any progress. After the current of land wind that lasts all night, we are waiting and hoping for a whiff of sea air, which will be most welcome, wherever it may blow from. Bernard still believes in a west wind, Raymond in an east one, and the barometer remains motionless at a little above 76. The sun now radiant, overspreads the earth, making the walls of the houses sparkle from afar like scattered snow, and sheds over the sea a light varnish of luminous blue. Little by little, taking advantage of the faintest breath, of those caresses of the air which one can hardly feel on the skin, but to which nevertheless lively and well-trimmed yachts glide through the still waters, we sail beyond the last point of the headland, and the whole gulf of Juan, with the squadron in the centre of it, lies before us. From afar, the ironclads look like rocks, islets, and reefs covered with dead trees. The smoke of a train runs along the shore between Cannes and Juan-les-Pins, which will perhaps become later on the prettiest place on the whole coast. Three tartans with their lateen sails, one red and the other two white, are detained in the channel between Sainte-Marguerite and the mainland. [Illustration] All is still, the soft and warm calm of a morning's springtide in the south; and already it seems to me as if I had left weeks ago, months ago, years ago, the talking, busy world; I feel arise within me the intoxication of solitude, the sweet delights of a rest that nothing will disturb, neither the white letter, nor the blue telegram, nor the bell at my door, nor the bark of my dog. I cannot be sent for, invited, carried off, overwhelmed by sweet smiles, or harassed by civilities. I am alone, really alone, really free. The smoke of the train runs along the seaside; while I float in a winged home that is rocked and cradled; pretty as a bird, tiny as a nest, softer than a hammock, wandering over the waters at the caprice of the wind, independent and free! To attend to me and sail my boat, I have two sailors at my call, and books and provisions for a fortnight. A whole fortnight without speaking, what joy! Overcome by the heat of the sun I closed my eyes, enjoying the deep repose of the sea, when Bernard said in an undertone: "The brig over there has a good breeze." Over there it was true, far away in front of Agay, a brig was advancing towards us; I could distinctly see with my glasses her rounded sails puffed out by the wind. "Pooh, it's the breeze from Agay," answered Raymond, "it is calm round Cape Roux." "Talk away, we shall have a west wind," replied Bernard. I leant over to look at the barometer in the saloon. It had fallen during the last half hour. I told Bernard, who smiled and whispered: "It feels like a westerly wind, sir." And now my curiosity awakens; the curiosity special to all those who wander over the sea, which makes them see everything, notice everything, and take an interest in the smallest detail. My glasses no longer leave my eyes; I look at the colour of the water on the horizon. It remains clear, varnished, unruffled. If there is a breeze, it is still far off. What a personage the wind is for the sailors! They speak of it as of a man, an all-powerful sovereign, sometimes terrible and sometimes kindly. It is the main topic of conversation all the day through, and it is the subject of one's incessant thoughts throughout the days and nights. You land folk, know it not! As for us, we know it better than our father or our mother, the invisible, the terrible, the capricious, the sly, the treacherous, the devouring tyrant. We love it and we dread it; we know its maliciousness and its anger, which the warnings in the heavens or in the depths, slowly teach us to anticipate. It forces us to think of it at every minute, at every second, for the struggle between it and us, is indeed ceaseless. All our being is on the alert for the battle; our eye to detect undiscernible appearances; our skin to feel its caress or its blow, our spirit to recognize its mood, foresee its caprices, judge whether it is calm or wayward. No enemy, no woman gives us so powerful a sensation of struggle, nor compels us to so much foresight, for it is the master of the sea, it is that thing which we may avoid, make use of, or fly from, but which we can never subdue. And there reigns in the soul of a sailor as in that of a believer, the idea of an irascible and formidable God, the mysterious, religious, infinite fear of the wind, and respect for its power. "Here it comes, sir," Bernard said to me. Far away, very far away, at the end of the horizon, a blue-black line lengthens out on the water. It is nothing, a shade, an imperceptible shadow; it is the wind. Now we await it motionless, under the heat of the sun. I look at the time, eight o'clock, and I say: "Bless me, it is early for the westerly wind." "It will blow hard in the afternoon," replied Bernard. I raised my eyes to the sail, hanging flat, loose and inert. Its great triangle seemed to reach up to the sky, for we had hoisted on the foremast the great fine-weather gaff topsail and its yard overtopped the mast-head by quite two yards. All is motionless, we might be on land. The barometer is still falling. However, the dark line perceived afar, approaches. The metallic lustre of the waters is suddenly dimmed and transformed into a slatey shade. The sky is pure and cloudless. [Illustration] Suddenly, around us the polished surface of the sea is rippled by imperceptible shivers gliding rapidly over it, appearing but to be effaced, as though it were riddled by a rain of thousands of little pinches of sand. [Illustration] The sail quivers slightly, and presently the main boom slowly lurches over to starboard. A light breath now caresses my face, and the shivers on the water increase around us, as though the rain of sand had become continuous. The cutter begins to move forward. She glides on upright, and a slight plash makes itself heard along her sides. I feel the tiller stiffen in my hand, that long brass crossbar which looks in the sun like a fiery stem, and the breeze steadily increases. We shall have to tack, but what matter; the boat sails close to the wind, and if the breeze holds, we shall be able to beat up to Saint-Raphaël before the sun goes down. We now approach the squadron, whose six ironclads and two despatch boats turn slowly at their anchors, with their bows to the west. Then we tack towards the open sea to pass the Formigues rocks, which are marked by a tower in the middle of the gulf. The breeze freshens more and more with surprising rapidity, and the waves rise up short and choppy. The yacht bends low under her full set of sails, and runs on, followed by the dingy, which with stretched-out painter is hurried through the foam, her nose in the air and stern in the water. On nearing the island of Saint-Honorat we pass by a naked rock, red and bristling like a porcupine, so rugged, so armed with teeth, points, and claws as to be well-nigh impossible of access; and one must advance with precaution, placing one's feet in the hollows between the tusks: it is called Saint-Ferréol. A little earth, come from no one knows where, has accumulated in the holes and crevasses of the rock, and lilies grow in it, and beautiful blue irises, from seeds which seem to have fallen from heaven. It is on this strange reef, in the open sea, that for five years lay buried and unknown the body of Paganini. The adventure is worthy of this artist, whose queer character, at once genial and weird, gave him the reputation of being possessed by the devil, and who, with his odd appearance in body and face, his marvellous talent and excessive emaciation, has become an almost legendary being, a sort of Hoffmanesque phantasm. As he was on his way home to Genoa, his native town, accompanied by his son, who alone could hear him now, so weak had his voice become, he died at Nice of cholera, on the 27th May, 1840. The son at once took the body of his father on board a ship and set sail for Italy. But the Genoese clergy refused to give burial to the demoniac. The court of Rome was consulted, but dared not grant the authorization. The body was, however, about to be disembarked, when the municipality made opposition, under the pretext that the artist had died of cholera. Genoa was at that time ravaged by an epidemic of this disease, and it was argued that the presence of this new corpse might possibly aggravate the evil. Paganini's son then returned to Marseilles, where entrance to the port was refused him for the same reasons. He then went on to Cannes, where he could not penetrate either. He therefore remained at sea, and the waves rocked the corpse of the fantastic artist, everywhere repelled by men. He no longer knew what to do, where to go, on which spot to lay the dead body so sacred to him, when he espied the naked rock of Saint-Ferréol in the midst of the billows. There at last he landed the coffin, and buried it in the centre of the islet. It was only in 1845 that he went back with two of his friends to take up the remains of his father, and transfer them to Genoa to the Villa Gajona. Would one not have preferred that the extraordinary violinist should have remained at rest upon the bristling reef, cradled by the song of the waves as they break on the torn and craggy rock. Further on, in the open sea, rises the castle of Saint-Honorat, which we had already perceived as we rounded the Cape of Antibes, and further on still, a line of reefs ended by a tower called "Les Moines." They are now quite white with surf and echoing with the roar of the breakers. They form one of the most dangerous perils of the coast during the night, for they are marked by no light, and they are the cause of frequent wrecks. A sudden gust heels us over, so that the water washes the deck, and I give orders for the gaff topsail to be lowered, the cutter being no longer able to carry it without endangering the safety of the mast. The waves sink, swell, and whiten; the wind whistles, ill-tempered and squally,--a threatening wind, which cries "Take care!" "We shall have to go and sleep at Cannes," said Bernard. And in fact, at the end of half an hour, we had to lower the standing jib, and replace it by a smaller one, taking a reef in the sail at the same time; then a quarter of an hour later we had to take in a second reef. Thereupon I decided to make for the harbour at Cannes, a dangerous harbour, without shelter; a roadstead open to the south-westerly sea, where the ships are in constant danger. When one thinks what a considerable amount of wealth would accrue to the town, by the large number of foreign yachts that would flock there, were they certain of finding a proper shelter, one understands how inveterate must be the indolence of this southern population, who have not yet been able to obtain from government such indispensable works. At ten o'clock we dropped anchor opposite the steamboat _Le Cannois,_ and I landed, thoroughly disappointed at the interruption of my trip. The whole roadstead was white with foam. CANNES, _April 7th_, 9 P.M. Princes, Princes, everywhere Princes. They who love Princes are indeed happy. No sooner had I set foot yesterday morning on the promenade of the _Croisette_ than I met three, one behind the other. In our democratic country, Cannes has become the city of titles. If one could open minds in the same manner as one lifts the cover off a saucepan, one would find figures in the brain of the mathematician; outlines of actors gesticulating and declaiming in a theatrical author's head; the form of a woman in that of a lover's; licentious pictures in that of a rake; verses in the brain of a poet; and in the cranium of the folk who come to Cannes there would be found coronets of every description, floating about like vermicelli in soup. Some men gather together in gambling houses because they are fond of cards, others meet on race-courses because they are fond of horses. People gather together at Cannes because they love Imperial and Royal Highnesses. There they are at home and, in default of the kingdoms of which they have been dispossessed, reign peacefully in the salons of the faithful. Great and small, poor and rich, sad and gay, all are to be found, according to taste. In general they are modest, strive to please, and show in their intercourse with humbler mortals, a delicacy and affability that is hardly ever found in our own _députés,_ those Princes of the ballot. However, if the Princes, the poor wandering Princes without subjects or civil list, who come to live in homely fashion in this town of flowers and elegance, affect simplicity, and do not lay themselves open to ridicule, even from those most disrespectfully inclined, such is not the case with regard to the worshippers of Highnesses. [Illustration 011] These latter circle round their idols with an eagerness at once religious and comical; and directly they are deprived of one, they fly off in quest of another, as though their mouths could only open to say "Monseigneur" or "Madame," and speak in the third person. They cannot be with you five minutes without telling you what the Princess replied, what the Grand Duke said; the promenade planned with the one, the witty saying of the other. One feels, one sees, one guesses that they frequent no other society but that of persons of Royal blood, and if they deign to speak to you, it is in order to inform you exactly of what takes place on these heights. What relentless struggles, struggles in which every possible ruse is employed in order to have at one's table, at least once during the season, a Prince, a real Prince, one of those at a premium. What respect one inspires when one has met a Grand Duke at lawn tennis, or when one has merely been presented to Wales,--as the mashers say. To write down one's name at the door of these "exiles," as Daudet calls them, of these tumble-down Princes, as others would say, creates a constant, delicate, absorbing and engrossing occupation. The visitor's book lies open in the hall between a couple of lackeys, one of whom proffers a pen. One inscribes one's name at the tag end of some two thousand names of every sort and description, amongst which titles swarm and the noble particle _de_ abounds! After which, one goes off with the haughty air of a man just ennobled, as happy as one who has accomplished a sacred duty, and one proudly says to the first person met: "I have just written down my name at the Grand Duke of Gerolstein's!" Then in the evening at dinner one says, in an important tone: "I noticed just now, on the Grand Duke of Gerolstein's list, the names of X..., Y..., and Z..." And everyone is interested and listens as if the event were of the greatest importance. [Illustration 012] But why laugh and be astonished at the harmless and innocent mania of the elegant admirers of Princes, when we meet in Paris fifty different races of hero-worshippers who are in no wise less amusing. [Illustration 013] Whoever has a salon must needs have some celebrities to show there, and a hunt is organised in order to secure them. There is hardly a woman in society and of the best, who is not anxious to have her artist or her artists; and she will give dinners for them in order that the whole world may know that her's is a clever set. Between affecting to possess the wit one has not, but which one summons with a flourish of trumpets, or affecting Princely intimacies--where is the difference? Among the great men most sought after by women, old and young, are most assuredly musicians. Some houses possess a complete collection of them. Moreover, these artists possess the inestimable advantage of being useful in the evening parties. However, people who desire a superlative _rara avis,_ can hardly hope to bring two together in the same room. We may add that there is not a meanness of which any woman, a leader of society, is not capable, in order to embellish her salon with a celebrated composer. The delicate attentions usually employed to secure a painter or only a literary man, become quite inadequate when the subject is a tradesman of sounds. For him allurements and praise hitherto unknown are employed. His hands are kissed like those of a King, he is worshipped as a God, when he has deigned to execute his _Regina Coeli._ A hair of his beard is worn in a ring; a button fallen from his breeches one evening in a violent movement of his arm, during the execution of the grand finale of his _Doux Repos,_ becomes a medal, a sacred medal worn in the bosom hanging from a golden chain. Painters are of less value, although still rather sought after. They are not so divine and more Bohemian. Their manners are less courteous and above all not sufficiently sublime. They often replace inspiration by broad jests and silly puns. They carry with them too much of the perfume of the studio, and those who by dint of watchfulness have managed to get rid of it, only exchange one odour for another, that of affectation. And then they are a fickle, light, and bragging set. No one is certain of keeping them long, whereas the musician builds his nest in the family circle. [Illustration 014] Of late years, the literary man has been sought after. He presents many great advantages: he talks, he talks lengthily, he talks a great deal, his conversation suits every kind of public, and as his profession is to be intelligent, he can be listened to and admired in all security. [Illustration 015] The woman who is possessed with the mania for having at her house a literary man, just as one would have a parrot whose chatter should attract all the neighbouring _concierges,_ has to take her choice between poets and novelists. There is more of the ideal about the poet, more spontaneity about the novelist. The poets are more sentimental, the novelists more positive. It is a matter of taste and constitution. The poet has more charm, the novelist has often more wit. But the novelist presents dangers that are not met with in the poet: he pries, pillages, and makes capital of all he sees. With him there is no tranquillity, no certainty that he will not, some day, lay you bare in the pages of a book. His eye is like a pump that sucks up everything, like the hand of a thief that is always at work. Nothing escapes him; he gathers and picks up ceaselessly; he notices the movements, the gestures, the intentions, the slightest incidents and events; he picks up the smallest words, the smallest actions, the smallest thing. He makes stock from morning till night of these observations out of which he will make a good telling story, a story that will make the round of the world, which will be read, discussed, commented upon by thousands and thousands of people. And the most terrible part of all is that the wretch cannot help drawing striking portraits, in spite of himself, unconsciously, because he sees things as they are, and he must relate what he sees. Notwithstanding the cunning he uses in disguising his personages, it will be said: "Did you recognize Mr. X... and Mrs. Y... They are striking resemblances?" It is assuredly as dangerous for people in good society to invite and make much of novelists, as it would be for a miller to breed rats in his mill. And yet they are held in great favour. When, therefore, a woman has fixed her choice on the writer she intends to adopt, she lays siege to him by means of every variety of compliments, attractions, and indulgence. Like water which, drop by drop, slowly wears away the hardest rock, the fulsome praise falls at each word on the impressionable heart of the literary man. Then, when she sees that he is moved, touched, and won by the constant flattery; she isolates him, severing, little by little, the ties he may have elsewhere, and imperceptibly accustoms him to come to her house, make himself happy, and there enshrine his thoughts. In order the more thoroughly to acclimatise him in her house, she paves the way for his success, brings him forward, sets him in relief, and displays for him, before all the old _habitués_ of the household, marked consideration and boundless admiration. At last, realising that he is now an idol, he remains in the temple. He finds, moreover, that the position affords him every advantage, for all the other women lavish their most delicate favours upon him to entice him away from his conqueror. If, however, he is clever, he will not hearken to the entreaties and coquetries with which he is overwhelmed. And the more faithful he appears, the more he will be sought after, implored, and loved. Ah! let him beware of allowing these drawing-room syrens to entice him away; he will immediately lose two-thirds of his value, if he once becomes public property. Soon he forms a literary circle, a church of which he is the deity, the only deity, for true faiths never have more than one God. People will flock to the house to see him, to hear him, to admire him, as one comes from afar to visit certain shrines. He will be envied! She will be envied! They will converse upon literature as priests talk of dogmas, scientifically and solemnly; they will be listened to, both the one and the other, and on leaving this literary salon, one will feel as though one were quitting a cathedral. Other men are also sought after, but in a lesser degree; for instance, generals, who, neglected by society and not held in much greater consideration than _députés,_ are yet in demand amongst the middle classes. The _député_ is only in request at moments of crisis. He is kept on hand, by a dinner now and then during a parliamentary lull. The scholar has also his partisans--every variety of taste exists in nature; and a clerk in office is himself highly esteemed, by folk who live up six pairs of stairs. However, these sort of people do not come to Cannes; there are only a few timid representatives to be seen of the middle class. It is only before twelve o'clock that the noble visitors are to be met on the _Croisette._ The _Croisette_ is a long semi-circular promenade that follows the line of the beach, from the headland in front of Sainte-Marguerite down to the harbour overlooked by the old town. [Illustration 016] Young and slender women,--it is good style to be thin,--dressed in the English fashion, walk along with rapid step, escorted by active young men in lawn-tennis suits. But from time to time appears some poor emaciated creature, dragging himself along with languid step, and leaning on the arm of a mother, brother or sister. He coughs and gasps, poor thing, wrapped up in shawls notwithstanding the heat, and watches us, as we pass, with deep, despairing and envious glances. He suffers and dies, for this charming and balmy country is the hospital of society and the flowery cemetery of aristocratic Europe. The terrible disease which never relents, and is now called tuberculosis, the disease that gnaws, burns and destroys men by thousands, seems to have chosen this coast on which to finish off its victims. How truly in every part of the world, this lovely and terrible spot must be accursed, this ante-room of Death, perfumed and sweet, where so many humble and royal families, burghers or princes, have left someone, some child on whom they concentrated all their hopes, and lavished all their love and tenderness. I call to mind Mentone, the warmest and healthiest of these winter residences. Even as in warlike cities, the fortresses can be seen standing out on the surrounding heights, so in this region of moribunds, the cemetery is visible on the summit of a hill. What a spot it would be for the living, that garden where the dead lie asleep! Roses, roses, everywhere roses. They are blood red or pale, or white, or streaked with veins of scarlet. The tombs, the paths, the places still unoccupied and which to-morrow will be filled, all are covered with them. Their strong perfume brings giddiness, making both head and legs falter. And all those who lie there, were but sixteen, eighteen, or twenty years of age. One wanders on from tomb to tomb, reading the names of those youthful victims, killed by the implacable disease. 'Tis a children's cemetery, a cemetery similar to the young girls' balls, where no married couples are admitted. From the cemetery the view extends to the left in the direction of Italy as far as the Bordighera headland, where the white houses stretch out into the sea; and to the right as far as Cape Martin, which dips its leafy coast in the water. Nevertheless all around, all along these delightful shores, we are in the home of Death. But it is discreet, veiled, full of tact and bashfulness, well bred in fact. Never does one meet it face to face, although at every moment it passes near. It might even be thought that no one dies in this country, so thorough is the complicity of deceit in which this sovereign revels. But how it is felt, how it is detected; how often a glimpse is caught of its black robes! Truly all the roses and the orange blossoms are requisite, to prevent the breeze being laden with the dread smell which is exhaled from the chamber of death. Never is a coffin seen in the streets, never any funeral trappings, never is a death-knell heard. Yesterday's emaciated pedestrian no longer passes beneath your window, and that is all. If you are astonished at no longer seeing him, and inquire after him, the landlord and servants tell you with a smile, that he had got better and by the doctor's advice had left for Italy. In each hotel Death has its secret stairs, its confidants, and its accomplices. A philosopher of olden times would have said many fine things upon the contrast of the elegance and misery which here elbow one another. It is twelve o'clock, the promenade is now deserted, and I return on board the _Bel-Ami,_ where awaits me an unpretending breakfast prepared by Raymond, whom I find dressed up in a white apron, frying potatoes. All the remainder of the day, I read. The wind was still violently blowing, and the yacht danced between her anchors, for we had been obliged to let go the starboard one also. The motion ended by benumbing me, and I fell into a long doze. When Bernard came into the cabin to light the candles it was seven o'clock, and as the surf along the quay made landing difficult, I dined on my boat. After dinner I went up and sat in the open air. Around me Cannes stretched forth her many lights. Nothing can be prettier than a town lighted up and seen from the sea. On the left, the old quarter with its houses that seemed to climb one upon the other, mingled its lights with that of the stars; on the right, the gas lamps of the _Croisette_ extended like an enormous serpent a mile and a half long. And I reflected that in all the villas, in all the hotels, people were gathered together this evening, as they were last night, as they will be to-morrow, and that they are talking. Talking! about what? the Princes! the weather! And then? ... the weather! ... the Princes! ... and then ... about nothing! Can anything be more dreary than _table d'hôte_ conversation? I have lived in hotels, I have endured the emptiness of the human soul as it is there laid bare. In truth, one must be hedged in by the most determined indifference, not to weep with grief, disgust, and shame, when one hears men talk. Man, the ordinary man, rich, known, esteemed, respected, held in consideration, is satisfied with himself, and he knows nothing, he understands nothing, yet he talks of intelligence as though he knew all about it. [Illustration 017] How blinded and intoxicated we must be by our foolish pride, to fancy ourselves anything more than animals slightly superior to other animals. Listen to them, the fools, seated round the table! They are talking! Talking with gentle confiding ingenuousness, and they imagine that they are exchanging ideas! What ideas? They say where they have been walking: "It was a very pretty walk, but rather cold coming home;" "the cooking is not bad in the hotel, although hotel food is always rather spicy." And they relate what they have done, what they like, what they believe. I fancy I behold the deformity of their souls as a monstrous foetus in a jar of spirits of wine. I assist at the slow birth of the commonplace sayings they constantly repeat; I watch the words as they drop from the granary of stupidity into their imbecile mouths, and from their mouths into the inert atmosphere which bears them to my ears. But their ideas, their noblest, most solemn, most respected ideas, are they not the unimpeachable proof of the omnipotence of stupidity,--eternal, universal, indestructible stupidity? * * * * * All their conceptions of God, an awkward deity, whose first creations are such failures that he must needs recreate them, a deity who listens to our secrets and notes them down, a God who, in turn, policeman, Jesuit, lawyer, gardener, is conceived now in cuirass, now in robes, now in wooden shoes; then the negations of God based upon pure terrestrial logic, the arguments for and against, the history of religious beliefs, of schisms, heresies, philosophies, the affirmations as well as the doubts, the puerility of principles, the ferocious and bloody violence of the originators of hypotheses, the utter chaos of contestation, in short, every miserable effort of this wretchedly impotent being man, impotent in conception, in imagination, in knowledge, all prove that he was thrown upon this absurdly small world for the sole purpose of eating, drinking, manufacturing children and little songs, and killing his neighbour by way of pastime. Happy are those whom life satisfies, who are amused and content. There are some such who, easily pleased, are delighted with everything. They love the sun and the rain, the snow and the fog; they love festivities as well as the calm of their own homes; they love all they see, all they do, all they say, all they hear. They lead either an easy life, quiet and satisfied amid their offspring, or an agitated existence full of pleasures and amusement. In neither case are they dull. Life, for them, is an amusing kind of play, in which they are themselves actors; an excellent and varied show, which though offering nothing unexpected, thoroughly delights them. Other men, however, who run through at a glance the narrow circle of human satisfactions, remain dismayed before the emptiness of happiness, the monotony and poverty of earthly joys. As soon as they have reached thirty years of age all is ended for them. What have they to expect? Nothing now can interest them; they have made the circuit of our meagre pleasures. Happy are those who know not the loathsome weariness of the same acts constantly repeated; happy are those who have the strength to recommence each day the same task, with the same gestures, amid the same furniture, in front of the same horizon, under the same sky, to go out in the same streets, where they meet the same faces and the same animals. Happy are those who do not perceive with unutterable disgust that nothing changes, and that all is weariness. We must indeed be a slow and narrow-minded race to be so easily pleased and satisfied with what is. How is it that the worldly audience has not yet called out, "Curtain," has not yet demanded the next act, with other beings than mankind, other manners, other pleasures, other plants, other planets, other inventions, other adventures? Is it possible no one has yet felt a loathing for the sameness of the human face, of the animals which by their unvarying instincts, transmitted in their seed from the first to the last of their race, seem to be but living machinery; a hatred of landscapes eternally the same, and of pleasures never varied? Console yourself, it is said, by the love of science and art. But is it not evident that we are always shut up in ourselves, without ever being able to quit ourselves, for ever condemned to drag the chains of our wingless dream. All the progress obtained by our cerebral effort, consists in the ascertainment of material facts by means of instruments ridiculously imperfect, which however make up in a certain degree for the inefficiency of our organs. Every twenty years, some unhappy inquirer, who generally dies in the attempt, discovers that the atmosphere contains a gas hitherto unknown, that an imponderable, inexplicable, unqualifiable force can be obtained by rubbing a piece of wax on cloth; that amongst the innumerable unknown stars, there is one that has not yet been noticed in the immediate vicinity of another, which had not only been observed, but even designated by name for many years. What matter? Our diseases are due to microbes? Very well. But where do those microbes come from? and the diseases of these invisible ones? And the suns, whence do they come from? We know nothing, we understand nothing, we can do nothing, we foresee nothing, we imagine nothing, we are shut up, imprisoned in ourselves. And there are people who marvel at the genius of humanity! Art? Painting consists in reproducing with colouring matter monotonous landscapes, which seldom resemble nature; in delineating men, and striving without ever succeeding, to give the aspect of living beings. Obstinately and uselessly one struggles to imitate what is; and the result is a motionless and dumb copy of the actions of life, which is barely comprehensible even to the educated eye that one has sought to attract. Wherefore such efforts? Wherefore such a vain imitation? Wherefore this trivial reproduction of things in themselves so dull? How petty! Poets do with words what painters try to do with colours. Again, wherefore? When one has read four of the most talented, of the most ingenious authors, it is idle to open another. And nothing more can be learned. They also, these men, can but imitate men. They exhaust themselves in sterile labour. For mankind changing not, their useless art is immutable. Ever since our poor minds have awakened man is the same; his sentiments, his beliefs, his sensations are the same. He has neither advanced nor retrograded; he has never moved. Of what use is it to me to learn what I am, to read what I think, to see myself portrayed in the trivial adventures of a novel? Ah! if poets could vanquish space, explore the planets, discover other worlds, other beings; vary unceasingly for my mind the nature and form of things, convey me constantly through a changeful and surprising Unknown, open for me mysterious gates in unexpected and marvellous horizons, I would read them night and day. But they can, impotent as they are, but change the place of a word, and show me my own image, as the painters do. Of what use is all this? For man's thought is motionless. And the precise limits, so nigh, so insurmountable, once attained, it turns like a horse in a circus, like a fly shut up in a bottle, fluttering against the sides and uselessly dashing itself against them. And yet, for want of any better occupation, thought is always a solace, when one lives alone. On this little boat, rocked by the sea, that a wave could fill and upset, I know, I feel, how true it is that nothing we know exists, for the earth which floats in empty space is even more isolated, more lost than this skiff on the billows. Their importance is the same, their destiny will be accomplished. And I rejoice at understanding the nothingness of the belief and the vanity of the hopes which our insect-like pride has begotten! [Illustration 018] I went to bed, cradled by the pitching of the boat, and slept with the deep slumber that one sleeps at sea, till the moment when Bernard awoke me to say: "Bad weather, sir, we cannot sail this morning." The wind had fallen, but the sea, very rough in the open, would not allow of our making sail for Saint-Raphaël. Another day that must be spent at Cannes! At about twelve o'clock, a westerly wind again got up, less strong than the day before, and I resolved to take advantage of it and visit the squadron in gulf Juan. In crossing the roads, the _Bel-Ami_ jumped about like a goat, and I had to steer very carefully in order to avoid, with each wave which took us broadsides, having a mass of water dashed in my face. Soon however I was sheltered by the islands and entered the channel under the fortress of Sainte-Marguerite. Its straight wall stretches down to the rocks, washed by the waves, and its summit hardly overtops the slightly elevated coast of the island. It is somewhat like a head crammed down between two high shoulders. The spot where Bazaine descended can be easily made out. It was not necessary to be much of a gymnast to slide down those accommodating rocks. The escape was related to me with every detail, by a man who pretended to be, and probably was, thoroughly well informed. Bazaine was allowed a good deal of liberty, his wife and children being permitted to come and see him every day. Madame Bazaine, who was an energetic woman, declared to her husband that she would leave him for ever, and carry off the children, if he would not make his escape, and she explained her plan. He hesitated at first, on account of the danger of the flight and the doubtfulness of success, but when he saw that his wife was determined to carry out her plan, he consented. Thereupon, every day some toys for the little ones were brought into the fortress, amongst others an entire set of appliances for drawing-room gymnastics. Out of these toys was made the knotted rope that the Marshal was to make use of. It was very slowly made, in order to give rise to no suspicion, and when finished it was hid away by a friendly hand in a corner of the prison yard. The date of the flight was then decided upon. They chose a Sunday, the supervision appearing to be less rigorous on that day. Madame Bazaine then absented herself for a few days. The Marshal usually walked about in the yard till eight o'clock in the evening, in company with the governor of the prison, a pleasant man whose agreeable conversation was a resource to Bazaine. Then he would go back to his rooms, which the chief jailor locked and bolted in the presence of his superior officer. On the evening of the escape, Bazaine pretended he was indisposed, and expressed a wish to retire an hour earlier than usual. He returned therefore to his apartment, but as soon as the governor had gone off to call the jailor and tell him to lock up the captive, the Marshal came out again quickly and hid himself in the yard. The empty prison was locked up, and each man went home. At about eleven o'clock Bazaine, armed with the ladder, left his hiding place, fastened the ropes, and made his descent on to the rocks. At dawn of day, an accomplice unfastened the ladder and threw it over the walls. Towards eight o'clock in the morning, the governor, surprised at not seeing anything of his prisoner, who was wont to be an early riser, sent to enquire about him. The Marshal's valet refused, however, to disturb his master. At length at nine o'clock, the governor forced open the door and found the cage empty. [Illustration 019] On her side Madame Bazaine, in order to carry out her scheme, had applied to a man who was indebted to her husband for a most important service. She appealed to a grateful heart, and gained an ally both energetic and devoted. Together they settled all the details; she then went in an assumed name to Genoa, and under pretext of an excursion to Naples hired for a thousand francs (forty pounds sterling) a day, a little Italian steamer, stipulating that the trip should last at least a week, and that it might be extended to another week on the same terms. The vessel started, but no sooner were they at sea, than the traveller appeared to change her mind, and asked the captain if he would object to going as far as Cannes to fetch her sister-in-law. The sailor willingly consented, and he dropped anchor on Sunday evening in the gulf Juan. Madame Bazaine was set on shore and ordered the boat to keep within hail. Her devoted accomplice was awaiting her in another boat near the promenade of the _Croisette_, and they crossed the channel which separates the mainland from the little island of Sainte-Marguerite. There her husband was waiting on the rocks, his clothes torn, face bruised, and hands bleeding. The sea being rather rough, he was obliged to wade through the water to reach the boat, which otherwise would have been dashed to pieces against the coast. When they returned to the mainland, they cast the boat adrift. They rejoined the first boat, and then at last the vessel, which had remained with steam up. Madame Bazaine informed the captain that her sister-in-law was not well enough to join her, and pointing to the Marshal, she added: "Not having a servant, I have hired a valet. The fool has just tumbled down on the rocks and got himself in the mess you see. Send him, if you please, down to the sailors, and give him what is necessary to dress his wounds and mend his clothes." Bazaine went down and spent the night in the forecastle. The next morning at break of day, they were out at sea; then Madame Bazaine again changed her mind, and pleading indisposition, had herself reconducted to Genoa. However, the news of the escape had already spread, and the populace hearing of it, a clamouring mob assembled under the hotel windows. The uproar soon became so violent, that the terrified landlord insisted on the travellers escaping by a private door. I relate this story as it was told to me, but I guarantee nothing. We drew near the squadron, the heavy ironclads standing out in single file, like battle towers built in the sea. They were the _Colbert,_ the _Dévastation,_ the _Amiral-Duperré,_ the _Courbet,_ the _Indomptable,_ and the _Richelieu;_ two despatch boats, the _Hirondelle_ and the _Milan;_ and four torpedo boats going through evolutions in the gulf. I wanted to visit the _Courbet,_ as it passes for the most perfect type in the French navy. [Illustration 020] Nothing can give a better idea of human labour, of the intricate and formidable labour done by the ingeniously clever hands of the puny human animal, than the enormous iron citadels which float and sail about bearing an army of soldiers, an arsenal of monstrous arms, the enormous masses of which are made of tiny pieces fitted, soldered, forged, bolted together, a toil of ants and giants, which shows at the same time all the genius, all the weakness, and all the irretrievable barbarousness of the race, so active and so feeble, directing all its efforts towards creating instruments for its own self-destruction. Those who in former days raised up cathedrals in stone, carved as finely as any lacework, fairy-like palaces to shelter childish and pious fancies, were they worth less than those who now-a-days launch forth on the sea these iron houses, real temples of Death? At the same moment that I leave the ship to get on board my cockleshell, I hear the sound of firing on shore. It is the regiment at Antibes practising rifle shooting on the sands and amongst the pine-woods. The smoke rises in white flakes, like evaporating clouds of cotton, and I can see the red trousers of the soldiers as they run along the beach. The naval officers suddenly become interested, point their glasses landwards, and their hearts beat faster at this spectacle of mimic warfare. At the mere mention of the word war, I am seized with a sense of bewilderment, as though I heard of witchcraft, of the inquisition, of some far distant thing, ended long ago, abominable and monstrous, against all natural law. When we talk of cannibals, we proudly smile and proclaim our superiority over these savages. Which are the savages, the true savages? Those who fight to eat the vanquished, or those who fight to kill, only to kill? The gallant little soldiers running about over there, are as surely doomed to death, as the flocks of sheep driven along the road by the butcher. They will fall on some plain, with their heads split open by sabre cuts, or their chests riddled by bullets, and yet they are young men who might work, produce something, be useful. Their fathers are old and poverty-stricken, their mothers, who during twenty years have loved them, adored them as only mothers can adore, may perchance hear in six months or a year, that the son, the child, the big fellow, reared with so much care, at such an expense and with so much love, has been cast in a hole like a dead dog, after having been ripped open by a bullet and trampled, crushed, mangled by the rush of cavalry charges. Why have they killed her boy, her beautiful boy, her sole hope, her pride, her life? She cannot understand. Yes, indeed, why? War! fighting! slaughtering! butchering men! And to think that now, in our own century, with all our civilisation, with the expansion of science and the height of philosophy to which the human race is supposed to have attained, we should have schools, in which we teach the art of killing, of killing from afar, to perfection, numbers of people at the same time; poor devils, innocent men, fathers of families, men of untarnished reputation. The most astounding thing is that the people do not rise up against the governing power. What difference is there then between monarchies and republics? And what is more astounding still, why does society not rise up bodily in rebellion at the word "war." [Illustration 021] Ah yes, we shall ever continue to live borne down by the old and odious customs, the criminal prejudices, the ferocious ideas of our barbarous forefathers, for we are but animals, and we shall remain animals led only by instinct, that nothing will ever change. Should we not have spurned any other than Victor Hugo, who should have launched forth the grand cry of deliverance and truth? "To-day, might is called violence, and is beginning to be condemned; war is arraigned. Civilisation, at the demand of all humanity, directs an inquiry and indicts the great criminal brief against conquerors and generals. The nations are beginning to understand that the aggrandizement of a crime can in no way lessen it; that if murder is a crime, to murder a great many does not create any attenuating circumstance; that if robbery is a disgrace, invasion cannot be a glory. "Ah! Let us proclaim the peremptory truth, let us dishonour war." Idle anger, poetic indignation! War is more venerated than ever. A clever artist in such matters, a slaughtering genius, M. de Moltke, replied one day to some peace delegates, in the following extraordinary words: "War is holy and of divine institution; it is one of the sacred laws of nature; it keeps alive in men all the great and noble sentiments, honour, disinterestedness, virtue, courage, in one word it prevents them from falling into the most hideous materialism." Therefore to collect a herd of some four hundred thousand men, march day and night without respite, to think of nothing, study nothing, learn nothing, read nothing, be of no earthly use to any one, rot with dirt, lie down in mire, live like brutes in a continual besotment, pillage towns, burn villages, ruin nations; then meeting another similar agglomeration of human flesh, rush upon it, shed lakes of blood, cover plains with pounded flesh mingled with muddy and bloody earth; pile up heaps of slain; have arms and legs blown off, brains scattered without benefit to any one, and perish at the corner of some field while your old parents, your wife and children are dying of hunger; this is what is called, not falling into the most hideous materialism! Warriors are the scourges of the earth. We struggle against nature and ignorance; against obstacles of all kinds, in order to lessen the hardships of our miserable existence. Men, benefactors, scholars wear out their lives toiling, seeking what may assist, what may help, what may solace their brethren. Eager in their useful work, they pile up discovery on discovery, enlarging the human mind, extending science, adding something each day to the stock of human knowledge, to the welfare, the comfort, the strength of their country. War is declared. In six months the generals have destroyed the efforts of twenty years' patience and genius. And this is what is called, not falling into the most hideous materialism. We have seen war. We have seen men maddened and gone back to their brute estate, killing for mere pleasure, killing out of terror, out of bravado, from sheer ostentation. Then when right no longer exists, when law is dead, when all notion of justice has disappeared, we have seen ruthlessly shot down, innocent beings who, picked up along the road, had become objects of suspicion simply because they were afraid. We have seen dogs as they lay chained up at their master's gate, killed in order to try a new revolver; we have seen cows riddled with bullets as they lay in the fields, without reason, only to fire off guns, just for fun. And this is what is called, not falling into the most hideous materialism. To invade a country, to kill the man who defends his home on the plea that he wears a smock and has no forage cap on his head, to burn down the houses of the poor creatures who are without bread, to break, to steal furniture, drink the wine found in the cellars, violate the women found in the streets, consume thousands of francs' worth of powder, and leave behind misery and cholera. This is what is called, not falling into the most hideous materialism. What have they ever done to show their intelligence, these valiant warriors? Nothing. What have they invented? Guns and cannons. That is all. The inventor of the wheelbarrow, has he not done more for humanity by the simple and practical idea of fitting a wheel between two poles, than the inventor of modern fortifications? What remains of Greece? Books and marbles. Is she great by what she conquered, or by what she produced? Was it the invasion of the Persians that prevented her from falling into the most hideous materialism? Was it the invasion of the barbarians that saved Rome and regenerated her? Did Napoleon the First continue the great intellectual movement begun by the philosophers at the end of the last century? Well, yes, since governments assume the right of death over the people, there is nothing astonishing in the people sometimes assuming the right of death over governments. They defend themselves. They are right. No one has an absolute right to govern others. It can only be done for the good of those who are governed. Whosoever governs must consider it as much his duty to avoid war, as it is that of the captain of a vessel to avoid shipwreck. When a captain has lost his ship, he is judged and condemned if found guilty of negligence or even of incapacity. Why should not governments be judged after the declaration of every war? If the people understood this, if they took the law into their own hands against the murdering powers, if they refused to allow themselves to be killed without a reason, if they used their weapons against those who distributed them to slaughter with, that day war would indeed be a dead letter. But that day will never dawn! AGAY, _April 8th_. "Fine weather, sir." I get up and go on deck. It is three o'clock in the morning; the sea is calm, the infinite heavens look like an immense shady vault sown with grains of fire. A very light breeze comes from off the land. The coffee is hot, we swallow it down, and, without losing a moment, in order to take advantage of the favourable wind, we set sail. Once more we glide over the waters towards the open sea. The coast disappears, all around us looks black. It is indeed a sensation, an enervating and delicious emotion to plunge onward into the empty night, into the deep silence on the sea, far from everything. It seems as though one was quitting the world, as though one would never reach any land, as though there were no more shores and even no more days. At my feet, a little lantern throws a light upon the compass, that guides me on my way. We must run at least three miles in the open to round Cape Roux and the Drammont in safety, whatever may be the wind when the sun has risen. To avoid any accidents, I have had the side-lights lit, red on the port and green on the starboard side. And I enjoy with rapture this silent, uninterrupted, quiet flight. Suddenly a cry is heard in front of us. I am startled, for the voice is near; and I can perceive nothing, nothing but the obscure wall of darkness into which I am plunging, and which closes again behind me. Raymond who watches forward says to me: "'Tis a tartan going east, put the helm up sir, we shall pass astern." And of a sudden, nigh at hand, uprises a vague but startling phantom; the large drifting shadow of a big sail, seen but for a few seconds and quickly vanishing. Nothing is more strange, more fantastic, and more thrilling, than these rapid apparitions at sea during the night. The fishing and sand boats carry no lights, they are therefore only seen as they pass by, and they impart a tightening of the heart strings, as of some supernatural encounter. [Illustration 022] I hear in the distance the whistling of a bird. It approaches, passes by, and goes off. Oh that I could wander like it! At last dawn breaks, slowly, gently, without a cloud, and the day begins, a real summer's day. [Illustration 023] Raymond asserts that we shall have an east wind, Bernard still believes in a westerly one, and advises my changing our course, and sailing on the starboard tack straight towards the Drammont, which stands out in the distance. I am at once of his opinion, and under the gentle breath of a dying breeze, we draw nearer to the Esterel. The long red shore drops into the blue water, giving it a violet tinge. It is strange, pretty, bristling with numberless points and gulfs, capricious and coquettish rocks, the thousand whims of a much admired mountain. On its slopes, the pine forests reach up to the granite summits, which resemble castles, towns, and armies of stones running after each other. And at its foot the sea is so clear, that the sandy shoals or the weedy bottoms can be distinguished. Ay, verily, I do feel on certain days such a horror of all that is, that I long for death. The invariable monotony of landscapes, faces and thoughts, become an intensely acute suffering. The meanness of the universe astonishes and revolts me, the littleness of all things fills me with disgust, and I am overwhelmed by the platitude of human beings. At other times, on the contrary, I enjoy everything as an animal does. If my spirit, restless, agitated, hypertrophied by work, bounds onward to hopes that are not those of our race, and then after having realised that all is vanity, falls back into a contempt for all that is, my animal body at least, is enraptured with all the intoxication of life. Like the birds, I love the sky, like the prowling wolf, the forests; I delight in rocky heights, like a chamois; the thick grass, I love to roll in and gallop over like a horse, and, like a fish, I revel in the clear waters. I feel thrilling within me, the sensations of all the different species of animals, of all their instincts, of all the confused longings of inferior creatures. I love the earth as they do, not as other men do; I love it without admiring it, without poetry, without exultation; I love with a deep and animal attachment, contemptible yet holy, all that lives, all that grows, all we see; for all this, leaving my spirit calm, excites only my eyes and my heart: the days, the nights, the rivers, the seas, the storms, the woods, the hues of dawn, the glance of woman, her very touch. The gentle ripple of water on the sandy shore, or on the rocky granite affects and moves me, and the joy that fills me as I feel myself driven forward by the wind, and carried along by the waves, proceeds from the abandonment of myself, to the brutal and natural forces of creation, from my return to a primitive state. When the weather is beautiful as it is to-day, I feel in my veins the blood of the lascivious and vagabond fauns of olden times. I am no longer the brother of mankind, but the brother of all creatures and all nature! * * * * * The sun mounts above the horizon. The breeze dies away as it did the day before yesterday; but the west wind foretold by Bernard, does not rise any more than the easterly one, announced by Raymond. Till ten o'clock, we float motionless like a wreck, then a little breath from the open sea starts us on our road, falls, rises again, seems to mock us, glancing across the sail, promising at each moment a breeze that does not come. It is nothing, a mere whiff, a flutter of a fan; nevertheless it is sufficient to prevent our being stationary. The porpoises, those clowns of the sea, play about around us, dashing out of the water with rapid bounds, as though they would take flight, striking into the air like lightning, then plunging and rising again further off. [Illustration 024] At about one o'clock, as we lay broadside on to Agay, the breeze completely gave way, and I realized that I should sleep out at sea if I did not man the boat to tow the yacht and take shelter in the bay. I therefore made the two men get into the dingy, and when at a distance of some thirty yards or so, they began to tug me along. A fierce sun was glaring on the water, and its burning rays beat down upon the decks. [Illustration 025] The two sailors rowed in slow and regular fashion like worn-out cranks, which, though working with difficulty, ceaselessly continue their mechanical labour. The bay of Agay forms a very pretty dock, well sheltered and closed on one side by upright, red rocks, overlooked by the semaphore on the summit of the mountain, and prolonged towards the open sea by the _Ile d'Or,_ so called on account of its colour; while on the other side is a line of sunken rocks, and a small headland level with the surface of the water, bearing a lighthouse to mark the entry. At the further end is an inn, ready for the entertainment of skippers of vessels, that have taken refuge there from stress of weather, or for fishermen during the summer; and a railway station where trains only stop twice a day, and where no one ever gets out; and a pretty river that winds away into the Esterel, as far as the valley named Malin-fermet, which is as full of pink oleanders as any African ravine. No road leads from the interior to the delicious bay. A pathway only, takes you to Saint-Raphaël, passing through the porphyry quarries of Drammont; but no vehicle could use it. We are therefore quite lost in the mountain. I resolved to wander about till nightfall, in the paths bordered by cistus and lentisk. The scent of wild plants, strong and perfumed, filled the air, mingling with the powerful resinous breath of the forest, which seemed to pant in the heat. After an hour's walk, I was deep among the pine trees, scattered sparsely on a gentle declivity of the mountain. The purple granite,--the bones of the earth,--seemed reddened by the sun, and I wended my way slowly, happy as the lizards must be on burning hot stones; when I perceived on the summit of the mountain, coming towards me, without seeing me, two lovers lost in the depths of their love dream. [Illustration 026] 'Twas a charmingly pretty sight; on they came, with arms entwined, moving with absent footsteps through the alternating sun and shade, that flecked the sloping banks. She appeared to me very graceful and very simple, with a grey travelling dress and a bold coquettish felt hat. I hardly saw him, I only noticed that he seemed well bred. I had seated myself behind the trunk of a pine tree, to watch them pass by. They did not perceive me, and continued their descent with interlocked arms, silently, and without a word, so much did their love absorb them. When I lost sight of them, I felt as though a sadness had fallen on my heart. A felicity that I knew not, had passed near me, and I guessed that it was the best of all. And I returned towards the bay of Agay, too dejected now to continue my stroll. Until the evening, I lay stretched out on the grass, by the side of the river, and at about seven o'clock I went into the inn for dinner. My men had warned the innkeeper, and he was expecting me. My table was set in the white-washed room, by the side of another at which were already settled my love-stricken couple, face to face, with eyes fondly gazing upon each other. I felt ashamed at disturbing them, as though I were committing a mean and unbecoming action. They stared at me for a few seconds, and then resumed their low-toned conversation. The innkeeper who had known me for a long time took a seat near mine. He talked of wild boars, and rabbits, the fine weather, the _mistral,_ about an Italian captain who had slept at the inn a few nights before, and then, to flatter my vanity, he praised my yacht, the black hull of which I could see through the window, with its tall mast, and my red and white pennant floating aloft. My neighbours, who had eaten very rapidly, soon left. As for me, I dawdled about looking at the slight crescent of the moon, shedding its soft rays over the little roadstead. At last I saw my dingy nearing the shore, scattering lines of silver as it advanced through the pale motionless light that fell upon the water. When I went down to my boat, I saw the lovers standing on the beach gazing at the sea. And as I went off to the quick sound of the oars, I still distinguished their outlines on the shore, their shadows erect side by side. They seemed to fill the bay, the night, the heavens, with a symbolic grandeur, so penetrating was the atmosphere of love they diffused around them, so widespread over the far horizon. [Illustration 027] And when I had reached my yacht, I remained seated a long while on deck, overcome with sadness without knowing wherefore, filled with regrets without knowing why, unwilling even to decide on going down to my cabin, as though I would fain absorb a little more of the tenderness they had diffused around them. Suddenly, one of the windows of the inn was lit up, and I saw their profiles on the bright background. Then my loneliness overpowered me, and in the balminess of the springlike night, at the soft sound of the waves on the sand, under the delicate crescent shedding its rays over the sea, I felt in my heart such an intense desire of love, that I was near crying out in my envious distress. Then, all at once, I became ashamed of this weakness, and, unwilling to admit to myself that I was a man like another, I accused the moonshine of disturbing my reason. I have moreover always believed, that the moon exercises a mysterious influence on the human brain. It fills poets with vagaries, rendering them delightful or ridiculous, and produces on lovers' affections, the effect of Ruhmkorff's pile on electric currents. The man who loves in a normal manner under the sunlight, adores with frenzy under the moon. A youthful and charming woman maintained to me one day, I forget on what occasion, that moon strokes are infinitely more dangerous than sun strokes. They are caught, she said, unawares, out walking perchance on a beautiful night, and they are incurable; you remain mad; not raving mad, not mad enough to be shut up, but mad of a special madness, gentle, incurable; and you no longer think on any subject like other men. I have certainly been moon-struck to-night, for I feel strangely unreasonable and light headed; and the little crescent in its downward course towards the sea affects me, melts me to tears, and rends my heart. Wherein lies the power of seduction of this moon, aged dead planet that it is, rambling through the heavens with its yellow face and sad ghostly light, that it should thus agitate us, we whom even our vagabond thoughts disturb? Do we love it because it is dead? as the poet Haraucourt says: "Puis ce fut l'âge blond des tiédeurs et des vents. La lune se peupla de murmures vivants: Elle eut des mers sans fond et des fleuves sans nombre, Des troupeaux, des cités, des pleurs, des cris joyeux, Elle eut l'amour; elle eut ses arts, ses lois, ses dieux, Et lentement rentra dans l'ombre."[1] Do we love it because the poets, to whom we owe the eternal illusion that surrounds us in this world, have dimmed our sight by all the images they have seen in its pallid rays, have taught our over-excited sensibility to feel in a thousand different ways, the soft and monotonous effects it sheds over the world? When it rises behind the trees, when it pours forth its shimmering light on the flowing river, when it descends through the boughs on to the sand of the shaded alleys, when it mounts solitary in the black and empty sky, when it dips towards the sea, stretching out on the undulating surface of the waters a vast pathway of light, are we not haunted by all the charming verses with which it has inspired great dreamers? If we wander forth by night in joyous spirits, and if we see its smooth circle, round like a yellow eye watching us, perched just over a roof, Musset's immortal ballad is recalled to our mind. [Illustration 028] And is it not he, the mocking poet, who immediately presents it to us through his eyes? "C'était dans la nuit brune, Sur le clocher jauni La lune Comme un point sur un I. Lune, quel esprit sombre Promène an bout d'un fil, Dans l'ombre, Ta face ou ton profil?"[2] [Illustration 029] If we walk on some evening full of sadness, on the beach by the side of the ocean illuminated by its rays, do we not, in spite of ourselves, at once recite the two grand and melancholy lines: "Seule au-dessus des mers, la lune voyageant, Laisse dans les flots noirs tomber ses pleurs d'argent."[3] [Illustration 030] If we awake, to find our bed lighted up by a long beam coming in at the window, do we not feel at once as though the white figure evoked by Catulle Mendè's were descending upon us: "Elle venait, avec un lis dans chaque main, La pente d'un rayon lui servant de chemin."[4] If, in some evening walk in the country, we suddenly hear the long sinister howl of a farm dog, are we not forcibly struck by the recollection of the admirable poem of Leconte de Lisle, _les Hurleurs?_ "Seule, la lune pâle, en écartant la nue, Comme une morne lampe, oscillait tristement. Monde muet, marqué d'un signe de colère, Débris d'un globe mort au hasard dispersé, Elle laissait tomber de son orbe glacé Un reflet sépulcral sur l'océan polaire."[5] At the evening trysting place, one saunters slowly through the leafy path, with arm encircling the beloved one, pressing her hand, and kissing her brow. She is perhaps a little tired, a little moved, and walks with lagging step. [Illustration 031] A bench appears in sight, under the leaves bathed by the soft light, as by a calm shower. In our hearts and minds, like an exquisite love-song, the two charming lines start up: "Et réveiller, pour s'asseoir à sa place Le clair de lune endormi sur le banc!"[6] Can one see the lessening crescent, as on this evening, cast its fair profile on the vast sky spangled with stars, without thinking of the end of that masterpiece of Victor Hugo's, which is called "Boaz Endormi:" "Et Ruth se demandait, Immobile, ouvrant l'oeil à demi sous ses voiles, Quel Dieu, quel moissonneur de l'éternel été Avait, en s'en allant, négligemment jeté Cette faucille d'or dans le champ des étoiles."[7] And who has better described the moon, courteous and tender to all lovers, than Hugo: "La nuit vint, tout se tut; les flambeaux s'éteignirent; Dans les bois assombris, les sources se plaignirent. Le rossignol, caché dans son nid ténébreux, Chanta comme un poète et comme un amoureux. Chacun se dispersa sous les profonds feuillages, Les folles, en riant, entraînèrent les sages; L'amante s'en alla dans l'ombre avec l'amant; Et troublés comme ou l'est en songe, vaguement, Ils sentaient par degrés se mêler à leur âme, A leurs discours secrets, à leur regards de flamme, A leurs coeurs, à leurs sens, à leur molle raison, Le clair de lune bleu qui baignait l'horizon."[8] And I remember also the admirable prayer to the moon, which is the opening scene, of the eleventh book of Apuleius' _Golden Ass._ Still all the songs of mankind are not enough to account for the sentimental sadness with which this poor planet inspires us. We pity the moon, in spite of ourselves, without knowing the reason, and for this it is we love it. Even the tender feeling we bestow on it is mingled with compassion; we pity it like an old maid, for we vaguely feel, the poets notwithstanding, that it is not a corpse but a cold virgin. Planets, like woman, need a husband, and the poor moon, disdained by the sun, is nothing more nor less than an old maid, as we mortals say. And it is for this reason that, with its timid light, it fills us with hopes that cannot be realized, and desires that cannot be fulfilled. All that we vainly and dimly wait and hope for upon this earth, works in our hearts like mysterious but powerless sap, beneath the pale rays of the moon. When we raise our eyes to it, we quiver with inexpressible tenderness and are thrilled by impossible dreams! [Illustration 032] The narrow crescent, a mere thread of gold, now dipped its keen gleaming point in the water, and gradually plunged gently and slowly till the other point, so delicate that I could not detect the moment of its vanishing, had also disappeared. Then, I raised my eyes towards the inn. The lighted window was closed. A dull melancholy crushed my heart, and I went below. [1] Then it was the fair age of balminess and breezes. The moon became peopled with living whispers; She had bottomless seas and numberless rivers, Flocks, cities, tears, and cries full of joy, She had love; she had her arts, her laws, her gods, Then slowly sank back into darkness. [2] 'Twas in the dusky night, Above the yellowed steeple, Stood the moon Like a dot on an I. By what sombre spirit Is thy face or profile, Swung as from a thread Through the shadows of the sky? [3] Alone above the seas, the wandering moon Lets fall her silver tears in the black billows. [4] "With a lily in each hand she came, The slanting beam her pathway. [5] Alone the pale moon parting the clouds Like a gloomy lamp, sadly oscillates Dumb world, marked by a sign of anger, Fragment of a dead globe dispersed at haphazard, She let fall from her frozen orb A sepulchral reflection on a polar ocean. [6] And, to take her place, one awakens A ray of moonlight asleep on the bench. [7] And Ruth, motionless, Asked herself, as she opened her half-closed eye under her veil, What God, what reaper of the eternal summer, Had negligently thrown as he passed by This golden sickle in the starry field. [8] Night fell, all was hushed; the torches died out Under the darkening woods, the springs lament. The nightingale, hidden in its shady nest, Sang like a poet and like a lover. In the depths of the dark foliage all dispersed, The madcaps laughing carried off the wise, The fair one disappeared in the gloom with her lover And with the vague trouble of some dream They felt by degrees intermingled with their souls, With their secret thoughts, with their glances of flame, With their hearts, their senses, with their yielding reason The blue moonlight that bathed the vast horizon. [Illustration 033] _April 10th._ No sooner had I lain down than I felt sleep was impossible, and I remained lying on my back with my eyes closed, my thoughts on the alert, and all my nerves quivering. Not a motion, not a sound, near or far, nothing but the breathing of the two sailors through the thin bulkhead, could be heard. Suddenly, something grated. What was it? I know not. Some block in the rigging, no doubt; but the tone--tender, plaintive, and mournful--of the sound sent a thrill through me; then nothing more. An infinite silence seemed to spread from the earth to the stars; nothing more--not a breath, not a shiver on the water, not a vibration of the yacht, nothing; and then again the slight and unrecognisable moan recommenced. It seemed to me as I listened, as though a jagged blade were sawing at my heart. Just as certain noises, certain notes, certain voices harrow us, and in one second pour into our soul all it can contain of sorrow, desperation, and anguish. I listened expectantly, and heard it again, the identical sound which now seemed to emanate from my own self,--to be wrung out of my nerves,--or rather, to resound in a secret, deep, and desolate cry. Yes, it was a cruel though familiar voice, a voice expected, and full of desperation. It passed over me with its weird and feeble tones as an uncanny thing, sowing broadcast the appalling terrors of delirium, for it had power to awake the horrible distress which lies slumbering, in the inmost heart of every living man. What was it? It was the voice ringing with reproaches which tortures our soul, clamouring ceaselessly, obscure, painful, harassing; a voice, unappeasable and mysterious, which will not be ignored; ferocious in its reproaches for what we have done, as well as what we have left undone; the voice of remorse and useless regrets for the days gone by, and the women unloved; for the joys that were vain, and the hopes that are dead; the voice of the past, of all that has disappointed us, has fled and disappeared for ever, of what we have not, nor shall ever attain; the small shrill voice which ever proclaims the failure of our life, the uselessness of our efforts, the impotence of our minds, and the weakness of our flesh. It spoke to me in that short whisper, recommencing after each dismal silence of the dark night, it spoke of all I would have loved, of all that I had vaguely desired, expected, dreamt of; all that I would have longed to see, to understand, to know, to taste, all that my insatiable, poor, and weak spirit had touched upon with a useless hope, all that, towards which it had been tempted to soar, without being able to tear asunder, the chains of ignorance that held it. Ah! I have coveted all, and delighted in nothing. I should have required the vitality of a whole race, the varying intelligence, all the faculties, all the powers scattered among all beings, and thousands of existences in reserve; for I bear within myself every desire and every curiosity, and I am compelled to see all, and grasp nothing. From whence, therefore, arises this anguish at living, since to the generality of men it only brings satisfaction? Wherefore this unknown torture, which preys upon me? Why should I not know the reality of pleasure, expectation, and possession? It is because I carry within me that second sight, which is at the same time the power and despair of writers. I write because I understand and suffer from all that is, because I know it too well, and above all, because without being able to enjoy it, I contemplate it inwardly in the mirror of my thoughts. Let no one envy, but rather pity us, for in the following manner does the literary man, differ from his fellow-creatures. For him no simple feeling any longer exists. All he sees, his joys, his pleasures, his suffering, his despair, all instantaneously become subjects of observation. In spite of all, in spite of himself, he analyses everything, hearts, faces, gestures, intonations. As soon as he has seen, whatever it may be, he must know the wherefore. He has not a spark of enthusiasm, not a cry, not a kiss that is spontaneous, not one instantaneous action done merely because it must be done, unconsciously, without reflection, without understanding, without noting it down afterwards. If he suffers, he notes down his suffering, and classes it in his memory; he says to himself as he leaves the cemetery, where he has left the being he has loved most in the world: "It is curious what I felt; it was like an intoxication of pain, etc...." And then he recalls all the details, the attitude of those near him, the discordant gestures of feigned grief, the insincere faces, and a thousand little insignificant trifles noted by the artistic observation,--the sign of the cross made by an old woman leading a child, a ray of light through a window, a dog that crossed the funeral procession, the effect of the hearse under the tall yew trees in the cemetery, the face of the undertaker and its muscular contractions, the strain of the four men who lowered the coffin into the grave, a thousand things in fact that a poor fellow suffering with all his heart, soul and strength, would never have noticed. [Illustration 034] He has seen all, noticed all, remembered all, in spite of himself, because he is above all a literary man, and his intellect is constructed in such a manner, that the reverberation in him is much more vivid, more natural, so to speak, than the first shock, the echo more sonorous, than the original sound. He seems to have two souls, one that notes, explains, comments each sensation of its neighbour, the natural soul common to all men, and he lives condemned to be the mere reflection of himself or others; condemned to look on, and see himself feel, act, love, think, suffer, and never be free like the rest of mankind; simply, genially, frankly, without analysing his own soul after every joy, and every agony. If he converses, his words often wear the air of slander, and that only because his thoughts are clear-sighted, and that he cannot refrain from investigating the secret springs, which regulate the feelings and actions of others. If he writes, he cannot refrain from throwing into his books all that he has seen, all he has gathered, all he knows; he makes no exception in favour of friends or relations, but he pitilessly lays bare the hearts of those he loves or has loved, with a cruel impartiality,--exaggerating even to make the effect more powerful,--wholly absorbed by his work, and in no wise by his affections. And if he loves, if he loves a woman, he will dissect her, as he would a corpse in a hospital. All she says, all she does, is instantly weighed in the delicate scales of observation, which he carries within him, and is docketed according to its documentary importance. If in an unpremeditated impulse she throws herself on his neck, he will judge the action, considering its opportuneness, its correctness, its dramatic power, and will tacitly condemn it, if he feels it artificial, or badly done. Actor and spectator of himself and of others, he is never solely an actor, like the good folk who take life easily. Everything around him becomes transparent, hearts, deeds, secret intentions; and he suffers from a strange malady, a kind of duality of the mind, that makes of him a terribly vibrating and complicated piece of machinery, fatiguing even to himself. Owing to his peculiarly morbid sensibility, he is no happier than one flayed alive, to whom nearly every sensation becomes a torture. I can remember dark days, in which my heart was so lacerated by things I had only caught sight of for a second, that the memory of those visions, has remained within me like grievous wounds. One morning, in the Avenue de l'Opéra, in the midst of a stirring and joyous crowd, intoxicated with the sunlight of the month of May, I suddenly caught sight of a creature, for whom one could find no name, an old woman bent double, dressed in tatters that had been garments, with an old straw bonnet stripped of its former ornaments, the ribbons and flowers having disappeared in times immemorial. And she went by, dragging her feet along so painfully, that I felt in my heart, as much as she did, more than she could, the aching pain of each of her steps. Two sticks supported her. She passed along without seeing anyone, indifferent to all--to the noise, the crowd, the carriages and the sun! Where was she going? She carried something in a paper parcel hanging by a string. What was it? Bread? Yes, without a doubt. Nobody, no neighbour had been able or willing to do this errand for her, and she had undertaken herself, the terrible journey from her garret to the baker. At least two hours must she spend, going and coming. And what a mournful struggle! Surely as fearful a road, as that of Christ on his way to Calvary! I raised my eyes towards the roofs of the tall houses. She was going up there! When would she get there? How many panting pauses on the steps, in the little stairway so black and winding? Every one turned round to look at her! They murmured "Poor woman!" and passed on. Her skirt, her rag of a skirt hardly holding to her dilapidated body, draggled over the pavement. And there was a mind there! A mind? No, but fearful, incessant, harassing suffering! Oh, the misery of the aged without bread, the aged without hope, without children, without money, with nothing before them but death; do we ever think of it? Do we ever think of the aged famished creatures in the garrets? Do we think of the tears shed by those dimmed eyes, once bright, joyous, full of happy emotion. [Illustration 035] Another time, it was raining, I was alone, shooting in the plains of Normandy, plodding through the deep-ploughed fields of greasy mud, that melted and slipped under my feet. From time to time, a partridge overtaken, hiding behind a clod of earth, flew off heavily through the downpour. The report of my gun, smothered by the sheet of water that fell from the skies, hardly sounded louder than the crack of a whip, and the grey bird fell, its feathers bespattered with blood. [Illustration 036] I felt sad unto tears, tears as plentiful as the showers that were weeping over the world, and over me; my heart was filled with sadness and I was overcome with fatigue, so that I could hardly raise my feet, heavily coated as they were with the clay soil. I was returning home when I saw in the middle of the fields, the doctor's gig following a cross-road. The low black carriage was passing along, covered by its round hood and drawn by a brown horse, like an omen of death wandering through the country on this sinister day. Suddenly, it pulled up, the Doctor's head made its appearance, and he called out: "Here." I went towards him, and he said:-- "Will you help me to nurse a case of diphtheria? I am all alone, and I want someone to hold the woman, while I take out the false membrane from her throat." "I'll come with you," I replied, and I got into his carriage. He told me the following story:-- Diphtheria, terrible diphtheria that suffocates unhappy creatures, had made its appearance at poor Martinet's farm. Both the father and son, had died at the beginning of the week. The mother and daughter, were now in their turn dying. A neighbour who attended to them, feeling suddenly unwell, had taken flight the day before, leaving the door wide open, and abandoning the two sick people on their straw pallets, alone, without anything to drink, choking, suffocating, dying; alone, for the last twenty four-hours! The doctor had cleaned out the mother's throat and made her swallow; but the child, maddened by pain and the anguish of suffocation, had buried and hidden its head in the straw bedding, absolutely refusing to allow itself to be touched. The doctor accustomed to such scenes, repeated in a sad and resigned voice: "I cannot really spend all day with these patients. By Jove, these do give one a heart ache. When you think that they have remained twenty-four hours without drinking. The wind blew the rain in on to their very beds. All the hens had taken shelter in the fire-place." [Illustration 037] We had reached the farm. The doctor fastened his horse, to the bough of an apple-tree before the door, and we went in. A strong smell of sickness and damp, of fever and mouldiness, of hospital and cellar greeted our nostrils as we entered. In this grey and dismal house, fireless and without sign of life, it was bitterly cold; the swampy chill of a marsh. The clock had stopped; the rain fell down into the great fire-place, where the hens had scattered the ashes, and we heard in a dark corner the noise of a pair of bellows, husky and rapid. It was the breathing of the child. The mother, stretched out in a kind of large wooden box, the peasant's bed, and covered with old rags and old clothes, seemed to rest quietly. She slightly turned her head towards us. The doctor inquired: "Have you got a candle?" She answered in a low depressed tone: "In the cupboard." He took the light, and led me to the further end of the room towards the little girl's crib. She lay panting, with emaciated cheeks, glistening eyes, and tangled hair, a pitiable sight. At each breath, deep hollows could be seen in her thin strained neck. Stretched out on her back, she convulsively clutched with both hands the rags that covered her, and directly she caught sight of us, she turned her face away, and hid herself in the straw. I took hold of her shoulders, and the doctor, forcing her to open her mouth, pulled out of her throat a long white strip of skin, which seemed to me as dry as a bit of leather. Her breathing immediately became easier, and she drank a little. The mother raising herself on her elbow watched us. She stammered out: "Is it done?" "Yes, it's done." "Are we going to be left all alone?" A terror, a terrible terror shook her voice, the terror of solitude, of loneliness, of darkness, and of death that she felt so near to her. I answered: "No, my good woman, I will stay till the doctor sends you a nurse." And turning towards the doctor, I added: "Send old mother Mauduit; I will pay her." "Very well, I'll send her at once." He shook my hand, and went out; and I heard his gig drive off, over the damp road. I was left alone with the two dying creatures. My dog Paf had lain down in front of the empty hearth, and this reminded me that a little fire would be good for us all. I therefore went out to seek for wood and straw, and soon a bright flame lit up the whole room, and the bed of the sick child, who was again gasping for breath. I sat down, and stretched out my legs in front of the fire. The rain was beating against the window panes, the wind rattled over the roof. I heard the short, hard wheezing breath of the two women, and the breathing of my dog who sighed with pleasure, curled up before the bright fire-place. Life! life! what is it? These two unhappy creatures, who had always slept on straw, eaten black bread, suffered every kind of misery, were about to die! What had they done? The father was dead, the son was dead. The poor souls had always passed for honest folk, had been liked and esteemed as simple and worthy fellows! [Illustration 038] I watched my steaming boots and my sleeping dog, and there arose within me, a shameful and sensual pleasure, as I compared my lot with that of these slaves. The little girl seemed to choke, and suddenly the grating sound became an intolerable suffering to me, lacerating me like a dagger, which at each stroke penetrated my heart. I went towards her: "Will you drink?" I said. She moved her head to say yes, and I poured a few drops of water down her throat, but she could not swallow them. The mother, who was quieter, had turned round to look at her child; and all at once a feeling of dread took possession of me, a sinister dread that passed over me, like the touch of some invisible monster. Where was I? I no longer knew! Was I dreaming? What horrible nightmare was this? Is it true that such things happen? that one dies like this? And I glanced into all the dark corners of the cottage, as though I expected to see crouching in some obscure angle, a hideous, unmentionable, terrifying thing, the thing which lies in wait for the lives of men, and kills, devours, crushes, strangles them; the thing that delights in red blood, eyes glistening with, fever, wrinkles and scars, white hair and decay. The fire was dying out. I threw some more wood on it, and warmed my back, shuddering in every limb. At least, I hoped to die in a good room, with doctors around my bed and medicines on the tables! And these women had been all alone, for twenty-four hours in this wretched hovel, without a fire, stretched on the straw with the death rattle in their throats! At last I heard the trot of a horse and the sounds of wheels; and the nurse came in coolly, pleased at finding some work to do, and showing little surprise at the sight of such misery. I left her some money and fled with my dog; I fled like a malefactor, running away in the rain; with the rattle of those two throats still ringing in my ears,--running towards my warm home where my servants were awaiting me and preparing my good dinner. But I shall never forget that scene, nor many other dreadful things, that make me loathe this world. What would I not give at times, to be allowed not to think, not to feel, to live like a brute in a warm, clear atmosphere, in a country mellow with golden light, devoid of the raw, crude tones of verdure, a country of the East where I might sleep without weariness, and wake without care, where restlessness is not anxiety, where love is free from anguish, and existence is not a burden. I should choose there a large square dwelling, like a huge box sparkling in the sun. From the terrace, I should look upon the sea and the white wing-like pointed sails of the Greek and Turkish boats, as they flit to and fro. The outer walls have hardly any apertures. A large garden with air heavily laden under the overshadowing palm-trees, forms the centre of this Oriental home. Sprays of clear water shoot up under the trees, and fall back again with a slight splash, into a broad marble fountain sanded with golden dust. Here I should bathe often, between two pipes, two dreams, or two kisses. [Illustration 039] I should have slaves, black and handsome, draped in light airy clothing, noiselessly running hither and thither over the heavy carpets. My walls should be soft and rebounding, with the round contours of a woman's bosom, and on the divans encircling each room, numberless cushions of every shape, should permit of my reposing in every conceivable attitude. Then, when I should tire of my delicious repose, of my immobility, of my eternal day-dream; satiated with the calm enjoyment of my own well-being, then, I would order a horse to be brought to my door--a horse black or white, as fleet as a gazelle. And I would spring upon his hack, and in a furious gallop, quaff the tingling intoxicating air. And I would dart like an arrow, over the glowing country which fills the eye with delight, and has all the bouquet of wine. In the calm hour of eve, I would fly in a mad career, towards the vast horizon dyed rose colour in the setting sun. Out there, all becomes rose in the twilight: the sun-burnt mountains, the sand, the garments of the Arabs, the dromedaries, the horses, the tents! The rose-coloured flamingoes fly upwards from the marshes to the rose-coloured sky, and I should scream with delight, plunged in the boundless infinite rosiness, of all that surrounds me. [Illustration 040] I shall be released from the sight of the streets and the deafening noise of cabs on the pavement, from the sight of black-coated men, seated on uncomfortable chairs, as they sip their absinthe and talk over business. I should ignore the state of the money market, political events, changes of ministry, all the useless frivolities on which we squander our short and vapid existence. Why should I undergo these worries, these sufferings, these struggles? I would rest sheltered from the wind in my bright and sumptuous dwelling. The winged dream was floating before my closed eyelids, and over my mind as it sank to rest; when I heard my men awakening, lighting the boat's lantern, and setting to work at some arduous and lengthy task. I called out to them: "What on earth are you doing?" Raymond replied in a hesitating voice: "We are getting some lines ready, sir; for we thought that you would like to fish, if it was fine enough at sun-rise." Agay is during the summer, the rendezvous of all the fishermen along the coast. Whole families come there, sleeping at the inn or in the boats, eating _bouillabaisse_ on the beach, under the shade of the pine trees, the resinous bark of which crackles in the sun. I inquired: "What o'clock is it?" "Three o'clock, sir." Then, without rising, I stretched out my arm, and opened the door that separated my room from the forecastle. The two men were squatting in the low den, through which the mast passes in fitting into the step; the den was full of such strange and odd things, that one might take it for a haunt of thieves; in perfect order along the partitions, instruments of all kinds were suspended: saws, axes, marling spikes, pieces of rigging, and saucepans; on the floor between the two berths, a pail, a stove, a barrel with its copper circles, glistening under the immediate ray of light from the lantern which hangs between the anchor bitts, by the side of the cable tiers; and my men were busy, baiting the innumerable hooks hanging all along the fishing lines. "At what hour must I get up?" I asked. "Why, now, sir, at once." Half an hour after, we all three embarked on board the dingy, and left the "_Bel-Ami_" to go and spread our net at the foot of the Drammont, near the Ile d'Or. Then when our line, some two or three hundred yards long, had sunk to the bottom, we baited three little deep-sea lines, and having anchored the boat by sinking a stone at the end of a rope, we began to fish. It was already daylight, and I could distinctly see the coast of Saint-Raphaël, near the mouth of the Argens, and the sombre mountains of the Maures, themselves running out seawards till they came to an end, far away in the open sea, beyond the gulf of Saint-Tropez. Of all the southern coast, this is the spot I am fondest of. I love it as though I had been born there, as though I had grown up in it, because it is wild and glowing, and because the Parisian, the Englishman, the American, the man of fashion, and the adventurer have not yet poisoned it. Suddenly the line I held in my hand quivered, I started, then felt nothing, and again a slight shock tightened the line wound round my finger, then another one more violent, shook my whole hand, and with beating heart, I began to draw in the line, gently, eagerly, striving to peer through the transparent blue water, and soon I perceived in the shadow of the boat, a white flash describing rapid circles. [Illustration 041] The fish thus seen appeared to me enormous, and when on board it was no bigger than a sardine. Then I caught many others, blue, red, yellow, green, glittering, silvery, striped, golden, speckled, spotted, those pretty rock fish of the Mediterranean, so varied, so coloured, that seem painted to please the eye; then sea-urchins covered with prickles, and those hideous monsters of the sea, conger-eels. Nothing can be more amusing than the uplifting of a sea fishing line. What will come out of the sea? What surprise, what pleasure, or what disappointment at each hook pulled out of the water! What a thrill runs through one when from afar some large creature is perceived struggling, as it rises slowly towards us! At ten o'clock we had returned on board the yacht, and the two men beaming with delight, informed me that our take weighed twenty-three pounds. I was, however, doomed to pay dearly for my sleepless night! A sick headache, the dreadful pain that racks in a way no torture could equal, shatters the head, drives one crazy, bewilders the ideas, and scatters the memory like dust before the wind; a sick headache had laid hold of me, and I was perforce obliged to lie down in my bunk with a bottle of ether under my nostrils. [Illustration 042] After a few minutes, I fancied I heard a vague murmur which soon became a kind of buzzing, and it seemed as if all the interior of my body became light, as light as air, as though it were melting into vapour. Then followed a numbness of spirit, a drowsy, comfortable state, in spite of the persisting pain, which, however, ceased to be acute. It was now a pain which one could consent to bear, and not any longer the terrible tearing agony, against which the whole tortured body rises in protest. Soon the strange, and delightful sensation of vacuum I had in my chest, extended, and reached my limbs, which in their turn became light, light as though flesh and bone had melted away and skin only remained; just enough skin to permit of my feeling the sweetness of life, and enjoy my repose. Now I found that I no longer suffered. Pain had disappeared, melted, vanished into air. And I heard voices, four voices, two dialogues, without understanding the words. At times they were but indistinct sounds, at other times a word or two reached me. But I soon recognized that these were but the accentuated buzzing of my own ears. I was not sleeping, I was awake, I understood, I felt, I reasoned with a clearness, a penetration and power which were quite extraordinary; and a joyousness of spirit, a strange intoxication, produced by the tenfold increase of my mental faculties. It was not a dream like that created by haschich, nor the sickly visions produced by opium; it was a prodigious keenness of reasoning, a new manner of seeing, of judging, of estimating things and life, with the absolute consciousness, the certitude that this manner was the true one. And the old simile of the Scriptures, suddenly came back to my mind. It seemed to me that I had tasted of the tree of life, that all mystery was unveiled, so strongly did I feel the power of this new, strange, and irrefutable logic. And numberless arguments, reasonings, proofs, rose up in my mind, to be, however, immediately upset, by some proof, some reasoning, some argument yet more powerful. My brain had become a battle-field of ideas. I was a superior being, armed with an invincible intelligence, and I enjoyed prodigious happiness in the sensation of my power. This state lasted a long, long time. I still inhaled the fumes of my ether bottle. Suddenly, I perceived that it was empty. And I again began to suffer. For ten hours I endured this torture for which there is no remedy, then I fell asleep, and the next day, brisk as after convalescence, having written these few pages I left for Saint-Raphaël. SAINT-RAPHAËL, _April 11th_. On our way here the weather was delightful, and a light breeze carried us over in six tacks. After rounding the Drammont, I caught sight of the villas of Saint-Raphaël hidden amongst the pine-trees, among the little slender pines beaten all the year round, by the everlasting gusts of wind from Fréjus. Then I passed between the Lions, pretty red rocks that seemed to guard the town, and I entered the port, which, choked up with sand at the further end, obliges one to remain some fifty yards off the quay. I then went on land. A large crowd was gathered in front of the church. Some one was being married. A priest was authorising in Latin with pontifical gravity, the solemn and comical act which so disturbs mankind, bringing with it so much mirth, suffering, and tears. According to custom, the families had invited all their relatives and friends to the funereal service of a young girl's innocence, to listen to the piously indecorous ecclesiastical admonitions, preceding those of the mother, and to the public benediction, bestowed on that which is otherwise so carefully veiled. And the whole country-side, full of broad jokes, moved by the greedy and idle curiosity that draws the common herd to such a scene, had come there to see how the bride and bridegroom would comport themselves. I mingled with the crowd, and watched it. Good heavens, how ugly men are! For at least the hundredth time, I noticed, in the midst of this festive scene, that, of all races, the human race is the most hideous. The whole air was pervaded by the odour of the people, the nauseous, sickening odour of unclean bodies, greasy hair and garlic, that odour of garlic, exhaled by the people of the South, through nose, mouth, and skin, just like roses spread abroad their perfume. Certainly men are every day as ugly, and smell as obnoxious, but our eyes accustomed to the sight of them, our nostrils used to their odour, fail to distinguish their ugliness and their emanations, unless we have been spared for some time the sight and stink of them. Mankind is hideous! To obtain a gallery of grotesque figures, fit to raise a laugh from the dead, it would be sufficient to take the ten first-comers, set them in a line, and photograph them with their irregular heights, their legs, either too long or too short, their bodies too fat or too thin, their red or pale, bearded or smooth faces, their smirking or solemn looks. Formerly, in primeval days, the wild man, the strong naked man, was certainly as handsome as the horse, the stag or the lion. The exercise of his muscles, a life free from restraint, the constant use of his vigour and his agility, kept up in him a grace of motion, which is the first condition of beauty, and an elegance of form, which is produced only by physical exercise. Later on, the artistic nations, enamoured of form, knew how to preserve this grace and this elegance in intelligent man, by the artificial means of gymnastics. The care bestowed on the body, the trials of strength and suppleness, the use of ice-cold water and vapour baths, made the Greeks true models of human beauty, and they have left us their statues, to show us what were the bodies of these great artists. But now, O Apollo! look at the human race moving about in its festive scenes. The children rickety from the cradle, deformed by premature study, stupefied by the school life that wears out the body at fifteen years of age, and cramps the mind before it is formed, reach adolescence with limbs badly grown, badly jointed, in which all normal proportions have completely disappeared. [Illustration 043] And let us contemplate the people in the street, trotting along in their dirty clothing! As for the peasant! Good Heavens! Let us go and watch the peasant in the fields, his gnarled knotted frame, lanky, twisted, bent, more hideous than the barbarous types exhibited in a museum of anthropology. In comparison how splendid are those men of bronze, the negroes; in shape, if not in face; how elegant, both in their movements and their figure, the tall lithe Arabs. Moreover, I have yet another reason for having a horror of crowds. I cannot go into a theatre, nor be present at any public entertainment. I at once experience a curious and unbearable feeling of discomfort, a horrible unnerving sensation, as though I were struggling with all my might, against a mysterious and irresistible influence. And in truth, I struggle with the spirit of the mob, which strives to take possession of me. How often have I observed that the intelligence expands and grows loftier, when we live alone, and that it becomes meaner and lower, when we again mix among other men. The contact, the opinions floating in the air, all that is said, all that one is compelled to listen to, to hear, to answer, acts upon the mind. A flow and ebb of ideas goes from head to head, from house to house, from street to street, from town to town, from nation to nation, and a level is established, an average of intellect is created, by all large agglomerations of individuals. The inherent qualities of intellectual initiative, of free will, of wise reflection and even of sagacity, belonging to any individual being, generally disappear the moment that being is brought in contact with a large number of other beings. The following is a passage from a letter of Lord Chesterfield to his son (1751) which sets forth with rare humility, the sudden elimination of all active qualities of the mind, in every large body of people: "Lord Macclesfield, who had the greatest share in forming the bill, and who is one of the greatest mathematicians and astronomers in Europe, spoke afterwards with infinite knowledge, and all the clearness that so intricate a matter would admit of, but as his words, his periods, and his utterance were not near so good as mine, the preference was most unanimously, though most unjustly, given to me. "This will ever be the case; every numerous assembly is _mob,_ let the individuals who compose it be what they will. Mere reason and good sense is never to be talked to a mob; their passions, their sentiments, their senses and their seeming interests, are alone to be applied to. "Understanding they have collectively none, &c...." This deep observation of Lord Chesterfield's, a remark, however, that has often been made, and noted with interest by philosophers of the scientific school, constitutes one of the most serious arguments against representative government. The same phenomenon, a surprising one, is produced each time a large number of men are gathered together. All these persons, side by side, distinct from each other, of different minds, intelligences, passions, education, beliefs, and prejudices, become suddenly, by the sole fact of their being assembled together, a special being, endowed with a new soul, a new manner of thinking in common, which is the unanalysable resultant of the average of these individual opinions. It is a crowd, and that crowd is a person, one vast collective individual, as distinct from any other mob, as one man is distinct from any other man. A popular saying asserts that "the mob does not reason." Now why does not the mob reason, since each particular individual in the crowd does reason? Why should a crowd do spontaneously, what none of the units of the crowd would have done? Why has a crowd irresistible impulses, ferocious wills, stupid enthusiasms that nothing can arrest, and, carried away by these thoughtless impulses, why does it commit acts, that none of the individuals composing it would commit alone? A stranger utters a cry, and behold! a sort of frenzy takes possession of all, and all, with the same impulse, which no one tries to resist, carried away by the same thought, which instantaneously becomes common to all, notwithstanding different castes, opinions, beliefs, and customs, will fall upon a man, murder him, drown him, without a motive, almost without a pretext, whereas each one of them, had he been alone, would have precipitated himself, at the risk of his life, to save the man he is now killing. And in the evening, each one on returning home, will ask himself what passion or what madness had seized him, and thrown his nature and his temperament out of its ordinary groove; how he could have given way to this savage impulse? The fact is, he had ceased to be a man, to become one of a crowd. His personal will had become blended with the common will, as a drop of water is blended with and lost in a river. His personality had disappeared, had become an infinitesimal particle of one vast and strange personality, that of the crowd. The panics which take hold of an army, the storms of opinion which carry away an entire nation, the frenzy of dervish dances, are striking examples of this identical phenomenon. In short, it is not more surprising to see an agglomeration of individuals make one whole, than to see molecules, that are placed near each other form one body. To this mysterious attraction, must without doubt be attributed the peculiar temperament of theatre audiences, and the strange difference of judgment, that exists between the audience of general rehearsals, and that of the audience of first representations, and again between the audience of a first representation, and that of the succeeding performances, and the change in the telling effects, from one evening to another; and the errors of judgment condemning a play like _Carmen,_ which, later on, turns out an immense success. What I say about crowds, must be applied to all society, and he who would carefully preserve the absolute integrity of his thought, the proud independence of his opinion, and look at life, humanity and the universe as an impartial observer free from prejudice, preconceived belief and fear, must absolutely live apart from all social relations; for human stupidity is so contagious, that he will be unable to frequent his fellow-creatures, even see them, or listen to them, without being, in spite of himself, influenced on all sides by their conversations, their ideas, their superstitions, their traditions, their prejudices, which by their customs, laws and surprisingly hypocritical and cowardly code of morality, will surely contaminate him. Those who strive to resist these lowering and incessant influences, struggle in vain amidst petty, irresistible, innumerable and almost imperceptible fetters; and through sheer fatigue soon cease to fight. But a backward movement took place in the crowd; the newly-married couple were coming out. And immediately I followed the general example, raised myself on tip-toe to see,--and longed to see,--with a stupid, low, repugnant longing, the longing of the common herd. The curiosity of my neighbours had intoxicated me; I was one of a crowd. [Illustration 044] To fill up the remainder of the day, I decided on taking a row in my dingy up the Argens. This lovely and almost unknown river, separates the plains of Fréjus from the wild mountain range of the Maures. I took Raymond, who rowed me along the side of the low beach to the mouth of the river, which we found impracticable and partly filled up with sand. One channel only communicated with the sea; but so rapid, so full of foam, of eddies and of whirlpools, that we were unable to ascend it. We were therefore obliged to drag the boat to land, and carry it over the sandhills to a kind of beautiful lake, formed by the Argens at this spot. In the midst of a green and marshy country, of that rich green tint given by trees growing out of water, the river sinks down between two banks, so covered with verdure, and with such high impenetrable foliage, that the neighbouring mountains are barely visible; it sinks down, still winding, still looking like a peaceful lake, without showing or betraying that it continues twisting its way through the calm, lonesome and magnificent country. As in the low Northern plains, where the springs ooze out under the feet, running over and vivifying the earth like blood, the clear, cold blood of the soil; so here, we find again the same strange sensation of exuberant nature which floats over all damp countries. Birds, with long legs dangling as they fly, spring up from amongst the reeds, stretching their pointed beaks heavenwards; while others, broad-winged and slow, pass from one bank to another with heavy flight, and others, smaller and more rapid, skim along the surface of the river, darting forward like rebounding pebbles. Innumerable turtle-doves cooing on the heights, or wheeling about, fly from tree to tree, and seem to exchange messages of love. One feels a sensation that all around this deep water, throughout all this plain, up to the foot of the mountains, there is yet more water; the deceitful water of the marsh, sleeping yet living; broad clear sheets, in which the skies are mirrored, over which the clouds flit by; in which, widely scattered, all manner of strange rushes spring up; the fertile limpid water, full of rotting life and deathly fermentation; water breeding fever and miasma, at the same time food and poison, spreading itself out in attractive loveliness, over the mysterious mass of putrefaction beneath it. The atmosphere is delightful, relaxing and dangerous. Over all the banks which separate the vast still pools, amid all the thick grasses, swarms, crawls, jumps, and creeps a whole world of slimy, repugnant, cold-blooded animals. I love those cold, subtle animals that are generally avoided and dreaded; for me there is something sacred about them. [Illustration 045] At the hour of sunset the marsh intoxicates and excites me. After having been all day a silent pond lying hushed in the heat, it becomes at the moment of twilight, a fairy-like and enchanted country. In its calm and boundless depths the skies are mirrored: skies of gold, skies of blood, skies of fire; they sink in it, bathe in it, float and are drowned in it. They are there up above, in the immensity of the firmament, and they are there below, beneath us, so near and yet so completely beyond our touch, in that shallow pool, through which the pointed grasses push their way like bristling hairs. All the colour with which earth has been endowed, charming, varied, and enthralling, appears to us deliciously painted, admirably resplendent, and infinitely shaded around a single leaf of the water-lily. Every shade of red, rose, yellow, blue, green, and violet are there, in a little patch of water which shows us the heavens, and space, and dreamland, and the flight of the birds as they skim across its face. And then there is still something else,--I know not what,--in the marshes beheld in the setting sun. I feel therein a confused revelation of some unknown mystery, an original breath of primeval life, which is, perhaps, nothing more than the bubble of gas rising from a swamp at the fall of day. [Illustration 046] SAINT-TROPEZ, _April 12th_. We left Saint-Raphaël at about eight o'clock this morning, with a strong northwest breeze. The sea in the gulf, though it had no waves, was white with foam, white like a mass of soap-suds, for the wind, the terrible wind from Fréjus which blows almost every morning, seemed to throw itself on the water, as though it would tear it to pieces, raising a rolling mass of little waves of froth, scattered one moment, reformed the next. The people at the port having assured us that this squall would fall towards eleven o'clock, we decided upon starting with three reefs in, and the storm-jib. The dingy was placed on board at the foot of the mast, and the _Bel-Ami_ seemed to fly directly it left the jetty. Although it carried scarcely any sail, I had never felt it dash along like this. One might have thought that it hardly touched the water, and one would never have suspected that it carried at the bottom of its large keel, two and a-half yards deep, a slab of lead weighing over thirty cwt., besides thirty-eight cwt. of ballast in its hold, and all we had on board in the shape of rigging, anchors, chains, cables and furniture. I had soon crossed the bay, at the further end of which the Argens throws itself into the sea; and as soon as I was under shelter of the coast the breeze completely fell. It is there that the splendid, sombre, and wild region begins, which is still called the land of the Moors. It is a long peninsula, composed of mountains; with a contour of coasts over sixty miles long. Saint-Tropez, situated at the entry of the lovely gulf, formerly called Gulf of Grimaud, is the capital of the little Saracen kingdom, of which nearly every village, built on the summit of a peak in order to secure it from attack, is still full of Moorish houses with arcades, narrow windows, and inner courtyards, wherein tall palm trees have grown up, and are now higher than the roofs. If one penetrates on foot into the unknown valleys of this strange group of mountains, one discovers an incredible country, devoid of roads, and lanes; without even footpaths, without hamlets, without houses. At intervals, after seven or eight hours' walking, appears a hovel, often abandoned, or sometimes inhabited by a poverty-stricken family of charcoal burners. The Monts des Maures have, it appears, a system of geology peculiar to themselves, a matchless flora said to be the most varied in Europe, and immense forests of pines, chestnuts, and cork trees. Some three years ago, I made an excursion into the very heart of the country, to the ruins of the _Chartreuse de la Verne,_ and have retained an ineffaceable recollection of it. If it is fine to-morrow I shall return there. A new road follows the sea, going from Saint-Raphaël to Saint-Tropez. All along this magnificent avenue, opened up through the forest by the side of a matchless beach, new winter resorts are being started. The first one planned is called Saint Aigulf. This bears a peculiar stamp. In the midst of a forest of fir trees stretching down to the sea, wide roads are laid out in every direction. There is not a house, nothing but the barely indicated plan of the streets, running through the trees. Here are the squares, the cross-roads and the boulevards. The names are even written up on metal tablets: Boulevard Ruysdaël, Boulevard Rubens, Boulevard Van Dyck, Boulevard Claude Lorrain. One wonders at all these painters' names. Why indeed? Simply because the _Company_ has decided, like God before he lit the sun: "This shall be an artists' resort!" The _Company!_ No one knows in the rest of the world, all this word contains of hopes, dangers, money gained, and money lost on the Mediterranean shores! The _Company!_ fatal and mysterious word, deep and deceitful! [Illustration 047] In this instance however the _Company_ seems to have realized its expectations, for it has already found purchasers, and of the best, amongst artists. At various places one reads: "Building lot bought by M. Carolus Duran; another by M. Clairin, another by Mlle. Croizette, etc." Nevertheless--Who can tell? The Mediterranean Companies are not in luck just now. Nothing is more ludicrous than this fury of speculation, which generally ends in terrible failures. Whosoever has gained ten thousand francs (four hundred pounds) over his field, at once buys ten millions (four hundred thousand pounds) worth of land at twenty sous (ten pence) the metre, in order to sell it again at twenty francs (sixteen shillings). Boulevards are traced, water is conveyed, gasworks are prepared, and the purchaser is hopefully expected. The purchaser does not make his appearance, but instead of him---ruin. Far off in front of me I perceive the towers and the buoys, that mark the breakers on both sides, at the opening of the gulf of Saint-Tropez. The first tower is called "Tour des Sardinaux," and marks a regular shoal of rocks, level with the top of the water, some of which just show the tips of their brown heads; the second one has been christened "Balise de la Sèche à l'huile."[1] We now reach the entrance of the gulf, which extends back between two ridges of mountains and forests as far as the village of Grimaud, built at the very extremity, on a height. The ancient castle of Grimaldi, a tall ruin that overlooks the village, appears in the distant haze like the evocation of some fairy scene. The wind has fallen. The gulf looks like an immense calm lake, into which, taking advantage of the last puffs of the squall, we slowly make our way. To the right of the channel, Sainte-Maxime, a little white port, is mirrored in the water which reflects the houses topsy-turvy, and reproduces them as distinctly as on shore. Opposite, Saint-Tropez appears, guarded by an old fort. At seven o'clock _Bel-Ami_ anchored by the quay, at the side of the little steamboat which carries on the service with Saint-Raphaël. The only means of communication between this isolated little port, and the rest of the world is by this _Lion de Mer,_ an old pleasure yacht, which runs in connection with a venerable diligence, that carries the letters, and travels at night by the one road which crosses the mountains. [Illustration 048] This is one of those charming and simple daughters of the sea, one of those nice modest little towns; which, fed upon fish and sea air, and breeder of sailors, is as much a produce of the sea as any shell. On the jetty, stands a bronze statue of the Bailli de Suffren. [Illustration 049] The pervading smell is one of fish and smoking tar, of brine and hulls. The stones in the streets glitter like pearls, with the scales of the sardines, and along the walls of the port, a population of lame and paralysed old sailors bask in the sun, on the stone benches. From time to time they talk of past voyages, and of those they have known in bygone days, the grandfathers of the small boys running yonder. Their hands and faces are wrinkled, tanned, browned, dried by the wind, by fatigue, by the spray, by the heat of the tropics and by the icy cold of Northern seas, for they have seen, in their roamings over the ocean, the ins and outs of the world, every aspect of the earth and of all latitudes. In front of them, propped upon a stick, passes and repasses the old captain of the merchant service, who formerly commanded the _Trois-Soeurs,_ or the _Deux-Amis,_ or the _Marie-Louise_ or the _Jeune-Clémentine._ All salute him, like soldiers answering the roll-call, with a litany of "Good day, captain," modulated in many tones. This is a true land of the sea, a brave little town, briny and courageous, which fought in days of yore against the Saracens, against the Duc d'Anjou, against the wild corsairs, against the Connétable de Bourbon, and Charles-Quint, and the Duc de Savoie, and the Duc d'Epernon. In 1637, the inhabitants, fathers of these peaceful citizens, without any assistance repelled the Spanish fleet, and every year they renew with surprising realism, the representation of the attack and their defence, filling the town with noisy bustle and clamour, strangely recalling the great popular festivities of the middle ages. In 1813, the town likewise repulsed an English flotilla, that had been sent against it. Now it is a fishing town, and the produce of its fisheries supplies the greater part of the coast with tunny, sardines, _loups,_ rock-lobsters, and all the pretty fish of this blue sea. On setting foot on the quay after having dressed myself, I heard twelve o'clock strike, and I perceived two old clerks, notary or lawyer's clerks, going off to their midday meal, like two old beasts of burden, unbridled for a few minutes while they eat their oats at the bottom of a nosebag. Oh, liberty! liberty! our sole happiness, sole hope, sole dream! Of all the miserable creatures, of all classes of individuals, of all orders of workers, of all the men who daily fight the hard battle of life, these are the most to be pitied, on these does fortune bestow the fewest of her favours. No one believes this,--no one knows it. They are powerless to complain; they cannot revolt; they remain gagged and bound in their misery, the shamefaced misery of quill-drivers. They have gone through a course of study, they understand law, they have taken a degree, perhaps. How dearly I like that dedication by Jules Vallès: "To all those, who, nourished upon Greek and Latin, have died of starvation." And what do they earn, these starvelings? Eight to fifteen hundred francs, (thirty-two to sixty pounds) a year! Clerks in gloomy chambers, or clerks in office, you should read every morning over the door of your fatal prison, Dante's famous phrase: "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!" They are but twenty when they first enter, and will remain till sixty or longer. During this long period not an event takes place! Their whole life slips away in the dark little bureau, ever the same, carpeted with green portfolios. They enter young, at the age of vigorous hopes; they leave in old age, when death is at hand. All the harvest of recollections that we make in a life-time, the unexpected events, our loves,--gentle or tragic memories, our adventures, all the chances of a free existence, are unknown to these convicts. The days, the weeks, the months, the seasons, the years, all are like. They begin the day's work at the same hour; at the same hour, they breakfast; at the same hour, they leave; and this goes on for sixty or seventy years. Four accidents only constitute landmarks in their existence: marriage, the birth of the first-born, and the death of father, or mother. Nothing else; stop though, yes, a rise in salary. They know nothing of ordinary life, nothing of the world! Unknown to them are the days of cheerful sunshine in the streets, and idle wanderings through the fields, for they are never released before the appointed hour. They become voluntary prisoners at eight o'clock in the morning, and at six, the prison doors are opened for them, when night is at hand. But, as a compensation, they have, for a whole fortnight in the year, the right,--a right indeed much discussed, hardly bargained for and grudgingly granted,--to remain shut up in their lodgings. For where can they go without money? The builder climbs skywards; the driver prowls about the streets; the railway mechanic traverses woods, mountains, plains; moves incessantly from the walls of the town, to the vast blue horizon of the sea. The _employé_ never quits his bureau, his coffin, and in the same little mirror, wherein he saw himself a young fellow with fair moustache the day of his arrival, he contemplates himself bald, and white-bearded, on the day of his dismissal. Then, all is finished, life is played out, the future closed. How can he have reached this point? How can he have grown old without any event having occurred, without having been shaken by any of the surprises of existence? It is so nevertheless. He must now make way for the young! for the young beginners! Then the unfortunate mortal steals away, more wretched than before, and dies, almost immediately from the sudden snapping of the long and obstinate habit of his daily routine, the dreary routine of the same movements, the same actions, the same tasks at the same hours. As I went into the hotel for breakfast, an alarmingly big packet of letters and papers was handed to me, and my heart sank as at the prospect of some misfortune. I have a fear and a hatred of letters; they are bonds. Those little squares of paper bearing my name, seem to give out a noise of chains, as I tear them open,--of chains linking me to living creatures, I have known or know. Each one inquires, although written by different hands: "Where are you? What are you doing? Why disappear in this way, without telling us where you are going? With whom are you hiding?" Another adds: "How can you expect people to care for you, if you run away in this fashion from your friends? It is positively wounding to their feelings." Well then, don't attach yourselves to me! Will no one endeavour to understand affection, without joining thereto a notion of possession and of despotism. It would seem as if social ties could not exist without entailing obligations, susceptibilities, and a certain amount of subserviency. From the moment one has smiled upon the attentions of a stranger, this stranger has a hold upon you, is inquisitive about your movements, and reproaches you with neglecting him. If we get as far as friendship, then each one imagines himself to have certain claims; intercourse becomes a duty, and the bonds which unite us seem to end in slip-knots which draw tighter. This affectionate solicitude, this suspicious jealousy, eager to control, and to cling, on the part of beings who have met casually, and who fancy themselves linked together because they have proved to be mutually agreeable, arises solely from the harassing fear of solitude, which haunts mankind upon this earth. Each of us, feeling the void around him, the unfathomable depth in which his heart beats, his thoughts struggle, wanders on like a madman with open arms and eager lips, seeking some other being to embrace. And embrace he does, to the right, to the left, at haphazard, without knowing, without looking, without understanding, that he may not feel alone. He seems to say, from the moment he has shaken hands: "Now, you belong to me a little. You owe me some part of yourself, of your life, of your thoughts, of your time." And that is why so many people believe themselves to be friends, who know nothing whatever of each other, so many start off hand in hand, heart to heart, without having really had one good look at one another. They must care for some one, in order not to be alone, their affections must be expended in friendship or in love, but some vent, must be found for it incessantly. And they talk of affection, swear it, become enthusiastic over it, pour their whole heart into some unknown heart found only the evening before, all their soul into some chance soul with a face that has pleased. And from this haste to become united, arise all the surprises, mistakes, misunderstandings and dramas of life. Just as we remain lonely and alone, notwithstanding all our efforts, so in like manner we remain free, notwithstanding all our ties. No one, ever, belongs to another. Half unconsciously we lend ourselves to the comedy,--coquettish or passionate, of possession, but no one really gives himself--his ego--to another human being. Man, exasperated by this imperious need to be the master of some one, instituted tyranny, slavery and marriage. He can kill, torture, imprison, but the human will inevitably escapes him, even when it has for a few moments consented to submission. Do mothers even possess their children? Does not the tiny being but just entered into the world, set to work to cry for what he wants, to announce his separate existence, and proclaim his independence? Does a woman ever really belong to you? Do you know what she thinks, whether even she really adores you? You kiss her sweet body (waste your whole soul on her perfect lips): a word from your mouth or from hers--one single word--is enough to put between you, a gulf of implacable hatred! All sentiments of affection lose their charm, when they become authoritative. Because it gives me pleasure to see and talk with some one, does it follow that I should be permitted to know what he does, and what he likes? The bustle of towns, both great and small, of all classes of society, the mischievous, envious, evil-speaking, calumniating curiosity, the incessant watchfulness of the affections and conduct of others, of their gossip and their scandals, are they not all born of that pretension we have, to control the conduct of others, as if we all belonged to each other in varying degrees? And we do in fact imagine that we have some rights over them, and on their life, for we would fain model it upon our own; on their thoughts, for we expect them to be of the same style as our own; on their opinions, in which we will not tolerate any difference from ours; on their reputation, for we expect it to conform to our principles; on their habits, for we swell with indignation, when they are not according to our notions of morality. I was breakfasting at the end of a long table, in the hotel Bailli de Suffren, and still occupied with the perusal of my letters and papers, when I was disturbed by the noisy conversation of some half-dozen men, seated at the other end. [Illustration 050] They were commercial travellers. They talked on every subject with assurance, with contempt, in an airy, chaffing authoritative manner, and they gave me the clearest, the sharpest feeling of what constitutes the true French spirit; that is to say, the average of the intelligence, logic, sense and wit of France. One of them, a great fellow with a shock of red hair wore the military medal, and also one for saving life,--a fine fellow. Another, a fat little roundabout, made puns without ceasing and laughed till his sides ached at his own jokes, before he would leave time to the others to understand his fun. Another man with close-cut hair, was re-organizing the army and the administration of justice, reforming the laws and the constitution, sketching out an ideal Republic to suit his own views, as a traveller in the wine trade. Two others, side by side, were amusing each other thoroughly with the narrative of their _bonnes fortunes;_ adventures in back parlours of shops, and conquests of maids-of-all-work. And in them I saw France personified, the witty, versatile, brave and gallant France of tradition. These men were types of the race, vulgar types, it is true, but which have but to be poetized a little, to find in them the Frenchman, such as history--that lying and imaginative old dame--shows him to us. And it is really an amusing race, by reason of certain very special qualities, which one finds absolutely nowhere else. First and foremost it is their versatility, which so agreeably diversifies both their customs, and their institutions. It is this, which makes the history of their country resemble some surprising tale of adventure in a _feuilleton,_ of which the pages "to be continued in the next number," are full of the most unexpected events, tragic, comic, terrible, grotesque. One may be angry or indignant over it, according to one's way of thinking, but it is none the less certain that no history in the world is more amusing, and more stirring than theirs. From the pure art point of view--and why should one not admit this special, and disinterested point of view, in politics as well as in literature?--it remains without a rival. What can be more curious, and more surprising, than the events which have been accomplished in the last century? What will to-morrow bring forth? This expectation of the unforeseen is, after all, very charming. Everything is possible in France, even the most wildly improbable drolleries, and the most tragic adventures. What could surprise them? When a country has produced a Joan of Arc, and a Napoleon, it may well be considered miraculous ground. And then the French love women: they love them well, with passion and with airy grace, and with respect. Their gallantry cannot be compared to anything in any other country. He who has preserved in his heart, the flame of gallantry which burned in the last centuries, surrounds women with a tenderness at once profound, gentle, sensitive and vigilant. He loves everything that belongs to them; everything that comes from them, everything that they are; everything they do. He loves their toilette, their knick-knacks, their adornments, their artifices, their _naïvetés,_ their little perfidies, their lies and their dainty ways. He loves them all, rich as well as poor, the young and even the old, the dark, the fair, the fat, the thin. He feels himself at his ease with them, and amongst them. There he could remain indefinitely, without fatigue, without _ennui,_ happy in the mere fact of being in their presence. He knows how, from the very first word, by a look, by a smile, to show them that he adores them, to arouse their attention, to sharpen their wish to please, to display for his benefit all their powers of seduction. Between them and him there is established at once, a quick sympathy, a fellowship of instincts, almost a relationship through similarity of character and nature. Then begins between them and him a combat of coquetry, and gallantry; a mysterious, and skirmishing sort of friendship is cemented, and an obscure affinity of heart and mind is drawn closer. He knows how to say what will please them, how to make them understand what he thinks; how to make known, without ever shocking them, without offending their delicate and watchful modesty, the admiration, discreet yet ardent, always burning in his eyes, always trembling on his lips, always alight in his veins. He is their friend and their slave, the humble servitor of their caprices, and the admirer of their persons. He is ever at their beck and call, ready to help them, to defend them, as secret allies. He would love to devote himself to them, not only to those he knows slightly, but to those he knows not at all, to those he has never even seen. He asks nothing of them but a little pretty affection, a little confidence, or a little interest, a little graceful friendliness or even, sly malice. He loves, in the street the woman who passes by, and whose glance falls upon him. He loves the young girl with hair streaming down her shoulders, who, a blue bow on her head, a flower in her bosom, moves with slow or hurried step, timid or bold eye, through the throng on the pavements. He loves the unknown ones he elbows, the little shopwoman who dreams on her doorstep, the fine lady who lazily reclines in her open carriage. From the moment he finds himself face to face with a woman, his heart is stirred, and his best powers are awakened. He thinks of her, talks for her, tries to please her, and to let her understand that she pleases him. Tender expressions hover on his lips, caresses in his glance; he is invaded by a longing to kiss her hand, to touch even the stuff of her dress. For him, it is women who adorn the world, and make life seductive. He likes to sit at their feet, for the mere pleasure of being there; he likes to meet their eye, merely to catch a glimpse of their veiled and fleeting thoughts; he likes to listen to their voice, solely because it is the voice of woman. It is by them, and for them, that the Frenchman has learnt to talk, and to display the ready wit which distinguishes him. To talk! What is it? It is the art of never seeming wearisome; of knowing how to invest every trifle with interest, to charm no matter what be the subject, to fascinate with absolutely nothing. How can one describe the airy butterfly touch upon things by supple words, the running fire of wit, the dainty flitting of ideas, which should all go to compose talk? The Frenchman is the only being in the world who has this subtle spirit of wit, and he alone thoroughly enjoys and comprehends it. His wit is a mere flash and yet it dwells; now the current joke, now the wit, which illumines the national literature. That which is truly innate, is wit in the largest sense of the word, that vast breath of irony or gaiety, which has animated the nation from the moment it could think or speak: it is the pungent raciness of Montaigne and Rabelais, the irony of Voltaire, of Beaumarchais, of Saint-Simon, and the inextinguishable laughter of Molière. The brilliant sally, the neat epigram, is the small-change of this wit. And nevertheless, it is yet an aspect of it, a characteristic peculiarity of the national intelligence. It is one of its keenest charms. It is this that makes the sceptical gaiety of Paris life, the careless cheerfulness of their manners and customs. It is part and parcel of the social amenity. Formerly, these pleasant jests were made in verse, now-a-days they appear in prose. They are called, according to their date, epigrams, _bons mots,_ traits, hits, _gauloiseries._ They fly through town and drawing-room, they spring up everywhere, on the boulevard as well as Montmartre. And those of Montmartre are often just as good as those of the boulevard, they are printed in the papers; from one end of France to the other, they excite laughter. For, at least, the French know how to laugh. Why should one good thing more than another, the unexpected, quaint, juxtaposition of two terms, two ideas or even two sounds; a ridiculous pun, some unexpected cock-and-bull story, open the floodgates of our gaiety, causing explosions of mirth, fit to blow up all Paris and the provinces like a mine? Why do all the French laugh, while all the English and all the Germans can understand nothing of the fun? Why? solely and wholly because they are French, because they possess the intelligence which is peculiar to the French, and because they possess the delightful, enviable gift of laughter. With them, moreover, a little mother-wit, enables any government to hold its own. Good spirits takes the place of genius, a neat saying consecrates a man at once, and makes him great for all posterity. The rest matters little. The nation loves those who amuse it, and forgives everything to those who can make it laugh. A glance thrown over the past history of France, will make us understand that the fame of their great men, has only been made by flashes of wit. The most detestable princes have become popular by agreeable jests, repeated and remembered from century to century. The throne of France, is maintained by the cap and bells of the jester. Jests, jests, nothing but jests, ironic or heroic, polished or coarse,--jests float for ever to the surface in their history, and make it like nothing so much as a collection of puns and witticisms. Clovis, the Christian king, cried on hearing the story of the Passion: "Why was I not there with my Franks?" This prince, in order to reign alone, massacred his allies and his relations, and committed every crime imaginable. Nevertheless, he is looked upon as a pious and civilizing monarch. "Why was I not there with my Franks?" We should know nothing of good King Dagobert, if the song had not apprised us of a few particulars, no doubt erroneous, of his existence. Pepin, wishing to remove the king Childeric from the throne, proposed to Pope Zacharias the following insidious question: "Which of the two is the most worthy to reign? He who worthily fulfils all the kingly functions without the title, or he who bears the title without knowing how to reign?" What do we know of Louis VI.? Nothing. Pardon! In the battle of Brenneville, when an Englishmen laid hands upon him, crying, "The king is taken," this truly French monarch replied: "Do you know, knave, that a king can never be taken, even at chess?" Louis IX., saint though he was, has not left a single good saying to remember him by. In consequence, his reign appears to the French a wearisome episode, full of orisons and penances. That noodle, Philip VI., beaten and wounded at the battle of Crécy, cried as he knocked at the gates of the castle of Arbroie: "Open: here are the fortunes of France!" They are still grateful to him for this melodramatic speech. John II., made prisoner by the Prince of Wales, remarks, with chivalrous good will, and the graceful gallantry of a French troubadour, "I had counted upon entertaining you at supper to-night; but fortune wills otherwise, and ordains that I should sup with you." It would be impossible to bear adversity more gracefully. "It is not for the King of France to avenge the quarrels of the Duke of Orleans," was the generous declaration of Louis XII. And it is, truly, a kingly saying; one worthy of the remembrance of all princes. That hare-brained fellow Francis I., more apt at the pursuit of the fair sex, than at the conduct of a campaign, has saved his reputation, and surrounded his name with an imperishable halo, by writing to his mother those few superb words, after the defeat of Pavia: "All is lost, Madame, save honour." Does not that phrase remain to this day as good as a victory? Has it not made this prince more illustrious, than the conquest of a kingdom? We have forgotten the names of the greater number of the famous battles, fought in these long bygone days; but shall we ever forget: "All is lost, save honour?" Henry IV.! Hats off, gentlemen! Here is the master! Sly, sceptical, tricky, deceitful beyond belief, artful beyond compare; a drunkard, debauchee, unbeliever, he managed by a few happy and pointed sayings, to make for himself in history, an admirable reputation as a chivalrous, generous king, a brave, loyal, and honest man. Oh! the cheat! well did he know how to play upon human stupidity! "Hang yourself, brave Crillou, we have gained the day without you." After a speech like this, a general is always ready to be hanged, or killed for his master's sake. At the opening of the famous battle of Ivry: "Children, if the colours fall, rally to my white plumes, you will find them always on the road to honour and victory." How could a man fail to be victorious, who knew how to speak thus to his captains and his troops? This sceptical monarch wishes for Paris; he longs for it, but he must choose between his faith and the beautiful city: "Enough," he murmurs, "after all Paris is well worth a mass!" And he changes his religion, as he would have changed his coat. Is it not a fact, however, that the witticism caused a ready acceptance of the deed? "Paris is well worth a mass," raised a laugh among the choicer spirits, and there was no violent indignation over the change. Has he not become the patron of all fathers of families, by the question put to the Spanish Ambassador, who found him playing at horses with the Dauphin: "Are you a father, M. l'Ambassadeur?" The Spaniard replied: "Yes, sir." "In that case," said the King, "we will go on." But he made a conquest for all eternity of the heart of France, of the _bourgeoisie,_ and of the people, by the finest phrase that prince ever pronounced,--a real inspiration of genius, full of depth, heartiness, sharpness, and good sense. "If God prolongs my life, I hope to see in my kingdom no peasant so poor, that he cannot put a fowl in the pot for his Sunday's dinner." It is with words such as these, that enthusiastic and foolish crowds are flattered and governed. By a couple of clever sayings, Henry IV. has drawn his own portrait for posterity. One cannot pronounce his name, without at once having a vision of the white plumes, and of the delicious flavour of a _poule-au-pot._ Louis XIII. made no happy hits. This dull King had a dull reign. Louis XIV. created the formula of absolute personal power: "The State is myself." He gave the measure of royal pride in its fullest expansion: "I have almost had to wait." He set the example of sonorous political phrases, which make alliances between two nations: "The Pyrenees exist no longer!" All his reign is in these few phrases. Louis XV., most corrupt of Kings, elegant and witty, has bequeathed to posterity that delightful keynote of his supreme indifference: "After me, the deluge." If Louis XVI. had been inspired enough to perpetrate one witticism, he might possibly have saved his kingdom. With one _bon mot,_ might he not perhaps have escaped the guillotine? Napoleon I. scattered around him by handfuls, the sayings that were suited to the hearts of his soldiers. Napoleon III. extinguished with one brief phrase, all the future indignation of the French nation in that first promise: "The Empire is peace." The Empire is peace! superb declaration, magnificent lie! After having said that, he might declare war against the whole of Europe, without having anything to fear from his people. He had found a simple, neat, and striking formula, capable of appealing to all minds, and against which facts would be no argument. He made war against China, Mexico, Russia, Austria, against all the world. What did it matter? There are people yet, who speak with sincere conviction of the eighteen years of tranquillity he gave to France: "The Empire is peace." And it was also with his keen words of satire, phrases more mortal than bullets, that M. Rochefort laid the Empire low, riddling it with the arrows of his wit, cutting it to shreds and tatters. The Maréchal MacMahon himself has left as a souvenir of his career to power: "Here I am, here I remain!" And it was by a shaft from Gambetta that he was, in his turn, knocked down: "Submission or dismissal." With these two words, more powerful than a revolution, more formidable than the barricades, more invincible than an army, more redoubtable than all the votes, the tribune turned out the soldier, crushed his glory, and destroyed his power and prestige. As to those who govern France at this moment, they must fall, for they are devoid of wit; they will fall, for in the day of danger, in the day of disturbance, in the inevitable moment of see-saw, they will not be capable of making France laugh, and of disarming her. Of all these historical phrases, there are not ten really authentic. But what does it matter, so long as they are believed to have been uttered by those to whom they are attributed: "Dans le pays des bossus Il faut l'être Ou le paraître,"[2] says the popular song. Meanwhile the commercial travellers were talking of the emancipation of women, of their rights, and of the new position in society they longed for. Some approved, others were annoyed; the little fat man jested without ceasing, and ended the breakfast, as well as the discussion, by the following entertaining anecdote: "Lately," said he, "there was a great meeting in England, where this question was discussed. One of the orators had been setting forth numerous arguments in favour of the women's case, and wound up with this observation: "To conclude, gentlemen, I may observe that the difference between man and woman is after all, very small." A powerful voice, from an enthusiastic and thoroughly convinced listener, arose from the audience, crying: "Hurrah for the small difference!" [1] Buoy of the oily scuttle-fish! [2] In the country of hunchbacks One must be so, Or at least appear so. SAINT-TROPEZ, _April 13th_. As it was remarkably fine this morning, I started for the _Chartreuse de la Verne._ Two recollections draw me towards this ruin: that of the sensation of infinite solitude and the unforgettable melancholy of the deserted cloister; and also that of an old peasant couple, to whose cottage I had been taken the year before by a friend who was guiding me across this country of the Moors. [Illustration 051] Seated in a country cart, for the road soon became impracticable for a vehicle on springs, I followed the line of the bay to its deepest point. I could see upon the opposite shore the pine woods where the _Company_ is attempting to create another winter resort. The shore indeed is exquisite, and the whole country magnificent. Then the road plunges into the mountains, and soon passes through the town of Cogolin. A little further on, I quitted it for a rough broken lane, which was scarcely more than a long rut. A river, or rather a big stream, runs by the side, and every hundred yards or so, cuts through the ravine, floods it, wanders away a little, returns, loses itself again, quits its bed and drowns the track, then falls into a ditch, strays through a field of stones, appears suddenly to calm down into wisdom, and for a while follows its due course; but seized all at once by some wild fancy, it precipitates itself again into the road, and changes it into a marsh, in which the horse sinks up to the breast-plate, and the high vehicle up to the driving seat. There are no more houses; only from time to time, a charcoal burner's hut; the poorest live in absolute holes. Is it not almost incredible that men should inhabit holes in the ground, where they live all the year, cutting wood and burning it to extract the charcoal, eating bread and onions, drinking water, and sleeping like rabbits in their burrows, in narrow caverns hewn in the granite rocks. Lately, too, in the midst of these unexplored valleys, a hermit has been discovered, a real hermit, hidden there for these thirty years, unknown to anyone, even to the forest rangers. The existence of this wild man, revealed by I know not whom, was, no doubt, mentioned to the driver of the diligence, who spoke of it to the post-master, who talked of it to the telegraph clerk male or female, who flew with the wonder to the editor of some little local paper, who made out of it a sensational paragraph, copied into all the country journals of Provence. The police set to work, to hunt out the hermit, without apparently causing him any alarm, whence we may conclude that he had kept all needful papers by him. But a photographer, excited by the news, set off in his turn, wandered three days and three nights amongst the mountains, and ended by photographing some one, the real hermit some say, an impostor, others will tell you. Last year then, the friend who first revealed to me this strangely quaint country, showed me two creatures infinitely more curious, than the poor devil who had come to hide in these impenetrable woods, a grief, a remorse, an incurable despair, or perhaps simply the mere ennui of living. This is how he first discovered them. Wandering on horseback among these valleys, he suddenly came across a prosperous farm: vines, fields, and a farmhouse, which looked comfortable though humble. He entered. He was received by a woman, a peasant, about seventy years old. The husband, seated under a tree, rose and came forward to bow. "He is deaf," she said. He was a fine old fellow of eighty, amazingly strong, upright, and handsome. They had for servants, a labourer and a farm-girl. My friend, a little surprised to meet these singular persons in the midst of a desert, enquired about them. They had been there for a long time; they were much respected, and passed for being comfortably off, that is, for peasants. He came back several times to visit them, and little by little became the confidant of the wife. He brought her papers and books, being surprised to find that she had some ideas, or rather remains of ideas, which scarcely seemed those of her class. She was, however, neither well read, intelligent nor witty, but there seemed to be, in the depths of her memory, traces of forgotten thoughts, a slumbering recollection of a bye-gone education. One day, she asked him his name: "I am the Count de X...," he said. Moved by the obscure vanity which is lodged deep in all souls, she replied: "I too am noble." Then she went on, speaking for certainly the first time in her life, of this piece of ancient history, unknown to anyone. "I am the daughter of a colonel. My husband was a non-commissioned officer in my father's regiment. I fell in love with him, and we ran away together. "And you came here?" "Yes, we hid ourselves." "And you have never seen your family since?" "Oh no! don't you see my husband was a deserter." "You have never written to anyone?" "Oh no!" "And you have never heard anyone speak of your family, of your father, or mother?" "Oh no, mama was dead." This woman had preserved a certain childishness, the simplicity of those who throw themselves into love, as if over a precipice. He asked again: "You have never told this to anyone?" She answered: "Oh no! I can say it now, because Maurice is deaf. As long as, he could hear, I should not have dared to mention it. Besides, I have never seen anyone but the peasants since I ran away." "At least, then, you have been happy?" "Oh yes; very happy. I have been very happy. I have never regretted anything." Well, I also had gone last year to visit this woman, this couple, as one goes to gaze at some miraculous relic. I had contemplated with surprise, sadness, and even a little disgust, this woman who had followed this man, this rustic Adonis, attracted by his hussar uniform, and who had continued to see him under his peasant's rags, with the blue dolman slung over his back, sword at his side, and the high boot with clanking spur. She had, however, become a peasant herself. In the depths of this wilderness, she had become perfectly accustomed to this life without luxuries, without charm, or delicacy of any sort, she had adapted herself to these simple manners. And she loved him still. She had become a woman of the people, in cap and coarse petticoat. Seated on a straw-bottomed chair at a wooden table, she eat a mess of cabbage, potatoes and bacon from an earthenware plate. She slept on a straw mattress beside him. She had never thought of anything but him! She had regretted neither ornaments, nor silks, nor elegance, nor soft chairs, nor the perfumed warmth of well-curtained rooms, nor repose in a comfortable bed. She had never needed anything but him! As long as he was there, she had wanted nothing else! She was quite young when she abandoned life, the world, and those who had brought her up and loved her. Alone with him she had come to this savage ravine. And he had been everything to her, everything that could be longed for, dreamt of, expected, ceaselessly hoped for. He had filled her life with happiness from one end to another. She could not have been happier. Now I was going for the second time to see her again, filled with the surprise, and the vague contempt, with which she inspired me. [Illustration 052] She lived near the Hyères road, on the opposite slope of the mountain on which stands the _Chartreuse de la Verne;_ and another carriage was awaiting me on this road, for the deep track we had followed, had now ceased and become a mere footpath, only accessible to pedestrians and mules. I started therefore alone, on foot, and with slow steps to climb the mountains. I was in a delightful wood, a real Corsican thicket, a fairy tale wood composed of flowering creepers, aromatic plants with powerful scents, and huge magnificent trees. [Illustration 053] The granite fragments in the track sparkled as they rolled beneath my steps, and in the openings between the branches, I saw sudden peeps of wide gloomy valleys full of verdure, winding lengthily away to the distance. [Illustration 054] I was warm, the quick blood flowed within my flesh, I felt it coursing through my veins, burning, rapid, alert, rhythmical and alluring as a song; the vast song brutish and gay, of life in movement under the sun. I was happy, I was strong, I quickened my pace, climbed the rocks, ran, jumped, and discovered every minute a larger view, a more gigantic network of desert valleys, from whence not one single chimney sent up a wreath of smoke. Then I reached the top, dominated by other heights, and after making some circuit, perceived on the slope of the mountain before me, a bleak ruin, a heap of dark stones, and of ancient buildings supported by lofty arcades. To reach it, it was necessary to go round a large ravine, and to cross a chestnut grove. The trees, old as the abbey itself, enormous, mutilated and dying, had survived the building. Some have fallen, no longer able to sustain the weight of years; others, beheaded, have now only a hollow trunk in which ten men could conceal themselves. And they look like a formidable army of giants, who in spite of age and thunderbolts are ready still to attempt the assault of the skies. In this fantastic wood one feels the mouldy touch of centuries, the old, old life of the rotting roots, amidst which, at the feet of these colossal stumps, nothing can grow. For amongst the grey trunks the ground is of hard stones and a blade of grass is rare. Here are two fenced springs, or fountains, kept as drinking places for the cows. I approach the abbey, and find myself face to face with the old buildings, the most ancient of which date back to the 12th century, while the more recent are inhabited by a family of shepherds. In the first court, one sees by the traces of animals, that a remnant of life still haunts the spot; then after traversing crumbling and tumbling halls, like those of all ruins, one reaches the cloister, a long and low walk still under cover, surrounding a tangled square of brambles and tall grasses. In no spot in the world, have I felt such a weight of melancholy press upon my heart, as in this ancient and sinister cloister, true pacing court of monks. Certainly, the form of the arcades and the proportions of the place contribute to my emotion, to my heartache, and sadden my soul by their action on my eyes, exactly as the happy curve of some cheering bit of architecture would rejoice them. The man who built this retreat must have been possessed with a despairing heart, to have an inspiration so desolate and dreary. One would fain weep and groan within these walls, one longs to suffer, to reopen all the wounds of one's heart, to enlarge and make the very utmost of all the sorrows compressed within it. I climbed upon a breach in the wall to see the view outside, and I understood my emotion. Nothing living around, nothing anywhere but death. Behind the abbey, a mountain ascending up to the sky, around the ruins the chestnut grove, in front a valley, and beyond that, more valleys,--pines, pines, an ocean of pines, and on the far horizon, pines still on the mountain tops. And I left the place. [Illustration 055] I crossed next a wood of cork trees, where, a year ago, I had experienced a shock of strong and moving surprise. [Illustration 056] It was on a grey day of October, at the time when they strip the bark of these trees, to make corks of it. They strip them thus from the foot to the first branches, and the denuded trunk becomes red, a blood red as of a flayed limb. They have grotesque and twisted shapes; the look of maimed creatures writhing in epileptic fits, and I suddenly fancied myself transported into a forest of tormented beings, a bleeding and Dantesque forest of hell, where men had roots, where bodies deformed by torture, resembled trees, where life ebbed incessantly, in never-ending torment by these bleeding wounds, which produced upon me the tension of the nerves and faintness that sensitive people feel at the sudden sight of blood, or the unexpected shock of a man crushed, or fallen from a roof. And this emotion was so keen, this sensation so vivid, that I imagined I heard distracting cries and plaints, distant and innumerable; I touched one of these trees, to reassure my fainting spirit, and I fancied, I beheld my hand, as I drew it back, covered with blood. To-day they are cured--till the next barking. At length the road appears, passing near the farm which has sheltered the long happiness of the non-commissioned officer of hussars, and the Colonel's daughter. From afar, I recognize the old man walking among the vines. So much the better; the wife will be alone in the house. The servant was washing in front of the door. "Your mistress is here," I said. [Illustration 057] She replied, with a singular look, in the accent of the south: "No, sir; since six months she is no more." "She is dead?" "Yes, sir." "And of what?" The woman hesitated, then muttered: "She is dead--dead, I tell you." "But of what?" "Of a fall, then!" "A fall! where from?" "From the window." I gave her a few pence. "Tell me about it," I said. No doubt she strongly wished to talk of it, no doubt, too, she had often repeated this history for the last six months, for she retailed it at great length, as a story well-known by heart and invariable in its repetition. Then I learnt that for thirty years, the old deaf man had had a mistress in the neighbouring village, and that his wife having learnt this by chance from a passing carter, who spoke of it without knowing who she was, rushed panting and bewildered to the attic, and there hurled herself from the window, not perhaps with deliberate purpose, but impelled by the torture of the horrible agony caused by her discovery, which goaded her forward in an irresistible gust of passion, like a whip lashing and cutting. She had flown up the staircase, burst open the door, and without knowing, without being able to stop her headlong speed, had continued to run straight ahead and had leaped into empty space. _He_ had known nothing of it; he did not know even now; he would never know, because he was deaf. His wife was dead, that was all. All the world must die some time or other! I could see him at a distance giving orders by signs to his labourers. Then I caught sight of the carriage which was waiting for me in the shade of a tree, and I returned to Saint-Tropez. _April 14th_. I was going to bed yesterday evening, although it was only nine o'clock, when a telegram was handed to me. A friend, one of my dearest, sent me this message: "I am at Monte-Carlo for four days, and have been telegraphing to you at every port on the coast. Come to me at once." And behold, the wish to see him, the longing to talk, to laugh, to gossip about society, about things, about people; the longing to slander, to criticize, to blame, to judge, to chatter, was alight within me in a moment, like a conflagration. On that morning, even, I should have been furious at this recall, yet in the evening I was enchanted at it; I wished myself already there, with the great dining-room of the restaurant full of people before my eyes, and in my ears that murmur of voices in which the numbers of the roulette table dominate all other phrases, like the _Dominus vobiscum_ of the church services. I called Bernard. "We shall start at about four o'clock in the morning for Monaco," I said to him. He replied philosophically: "If it is fine, sir." "It _will_ be fine." "The barometer is going down, though." "Pooh! it will go up again." The mariner smiled an incredulous smile. I went to bed and to sleep. It was I who woke the men. It was dark, and a few clouds hid the sky. The barometer had gone down still more. The two men shook their heads with a distrustful air. I repeated: "Pooh! it will be fine. Come, let us be off!" [Illustration 58] Bernard said: "When I can see the open, I know what I am about; but here, in this harbour, at the end of this gulf, one knows nothing, sir, one can see nothing; there might be a fearful sea on, without our knowing anything about it." I replied: "The barometer has gone down, therefore we shall not have an east wind. Now, if we have a west wind, we can put into Agay, which is only six or seven miles off." The men did not seem much reassured; however, they got ready to start. "Shall we take the dingy on deck," asked Bernard. "No, you will see it will be quite fine. Let it tow astern as usual." A quarter of an hour later, we had quitted the harbour, and were running through the entrance of the gulf, to a light and intermittent breeze. I laughed. "Well you see, the weather is good enough." Soon, we had passed the black and white tower built upon the Rabiou shoal, and although sheltered by Cape Camarat which runs far out into the open sea, and of which the flashing light appeared from minute to minute, the _Bel-Ami_ was already lifted forwards by long powerful slow waves; those hills of water which move on, one behind the other, without noise, without shock, without foam, menacing without fury, alarming in their very tranquillity. One saw nothing, one only felt the ascent and descent of the yacht over the dark and silently moving waters. Bernard said: "There has been a gale out at sea to-night, sir; we shall be lucky if we get in without accident." The day broke brightly over the wild crowding waves, and we all three looked anxiously seawards to see if the squall were returning. All this time the boat was running a great pace before the wind and with the tide. Already Agay appeared on our beam, and we held counsel whether we should make for Cannes, to escape the rough weather, or for Nice, running to seaward of the isles. Bernard would have preferred Cannes: but as the breeze did not freshen, I decided in favour of Nice. For three hours all went well; though the poor little yacht rolled like a cork in the awful swell. No one who is unacquainted with the open sea, that sea of mountains, moving with weighty and rapid strides, separated by valleys which change place from second to second, filled up and formed again incessantly, can guess, can imagine the mysterious, redoubtable, terrifying and superb force of the waves. Our little dingy followed far behind us, at the extremity of forty yards of hawser, through this liquid and dancing chaos. We lost sight of it every moment, then suddenly it would reappear perched on the summit of a wave, floating along like a great white bird. Here is Cannes in the depth of its bay, Saint-Honorat with its tower standing up among the waves, and before us the Cape d'Antibes. The breeze freshened little by little, and the crests of the waves became flocks of sheep, those snowy sheep which move so fast, and of which the countless troop careers along without dog or shepherd under the endless sky. Bernard said to me: "It will be all we shall do to make Antibes." And indeed seas began to break over us, with inexpressible and violent noise. The sharp squalls shook us, throwing us into yawning gulfs, whence as we emerged, we righted ourselves with terrible shocks. The gaff was lowered, but at every oscillation of the yacht, the boom touched the waves and seemed ready to tear away the mast, which if it should fly away with the sail, would leave us to float alone and lost upon the wild waves. Bernard cried out: "The dingy, sir." I turned to look. A huge wave filled it, rolled it over, enveloped it in foam as if it would devour it, and, breaking the hawser by which it was made fast to us, took possession of it, half sinking, drowned; a conquered prey which it will presently throw upon the rocks down there, below the headland. The minutes seem hours. Nothing can be done, we must go on, round the point in front of us, and when we have done that, we shall be sheltered, and in safety. At last we reach it! The sea is now calm and smooth, protected as it is by the long tongue of rocks and earth which forms the Cape of Antibes. There is the harbour from which we started only a few days ago, although it seems to me we have been voyaging for months, and we enter just as noon is striking. The men are radiant on finding themselves back again, though Bernard repeats at every other moment: "Ah, sir! our poor little boat; it went to my heart, to see it go down like that!" As for me, I took the four o'clock train, to go and dine with my friend in the principality of Monaco. I wish I had time to write at length about this surprising state; smaller than many a village in France, but wherein one may find an absolute sovereign, bishops, an army of Jesuits and _seminarists_ more numerous than that of the ruler; an artillery, the guns of which are nearly all rifled, an etiquette more ceremonious than that of his lamented Majesty Louis XIV., principles of authority more despotic than those of William of Prussia, joined to a magnificent toleration for the vices of humanity, on which indeed, live both sovereign, bishops, Jesuits, _seminarists,_ ministers, army, magistrates, every one in short. Hail to this great pacific monarch, who without fear of invasion or revolution, reigns peacefully over his happy little flock of subjects, in the midst of court ceremonies which preserve intact the traditions of the four reverences, the twenty-six handkissings, and all the forms used once upon a time around Great Rulers. This monarch, moreover, is neither sanguinary nor vindictive, and when he banishes, for he does banish sometimes, the measure is put in force with the utmost delicacy. Is a proof needful? An obstinate player, on a day of ill luck, insulted the sovereign. A decree was issued for his expulsion. During a whole month, he prowled around the forbidden Paradise, fearing the sword blade of the archangel, in the guise of the sabre of the policeman. One day, however, he hardened his heart, crossed the frontier, reached the very centre of the kingdom in thirty seconds, and penetrated into the precincts of the Casino. But suddenly an official stopped him: "Are you not banished, sir?" "Yes, sir, but I leave by the next train." "Oh! in that case it is all right. You can go in." And every week he came back: and each time, the same functionary asked him the same question, to which he invariably gave the same answer. Could justice be more gentle? Within the last few years, however, a very serious and novel case occurred within the kingdom. This was an assassination. A man, a native of Monaco, not one of the wandering strangers of whom one meets legions on these shores--a husband, in a moment of anger, killed his wife; killed her without rhyme or reason, without any excuse that could be accepted. Indignation was unanimous throughout the principality. The Supreme Court met to judge this exceptional case (a murder had never taken place before), and the wretch was with one voice, condemned to death. The indignant sovereign ratified the sentence. There only remained to execute the criminal. Then arose a difficulty. The country possessed neither guillotine nor executioner. What was to be done? By the advice of the minister of Foreign affairs, the Prince opened negotiations with France to obtain the loan of a headsman and his apparatus. Long deliberations took place in the ministry at Paris. At last they replied by sending an estimate of the cost of moving the woodwork and the practitioner. The whole amounted to sixteen thousand francs (six hundred and forty pounds). The Monarch of Monaco reflected that the operation would cost him dear; the assassin was certainly not worth that price. Sixteen thousand francs for the head of a wretch like that! Never! The same request was addressed to the Italian government. A King and a brother would no doubt show himself less exacting than a Republic. The Italian government sent in a bill which amounted to twelve thousand francs, (four hundred and eighty pounds). Twelve thousand francs! It would be necessary to impose a new tax, a tax of two francs (twenty pence) a head! This would be enough to cause serious, and hitherto unknown trouble in the State. Then they bethought them of having the villain beheaded by a simple soldier. But the general, on being consulted, replied hesitatingly, that perhaps his men had scarcely sufficient practice to acquit themselves satisfactorily of a task, which undoubtedly demanded great experience in the handling of the sword. Then the Prince again assembled the Supreme Court, and submitted to it this embarrassing case. They deliberated long, without finding any practical way out of the difficulty. At last the first president proposed to commute the sentence of death, to that of lifelong imprisonment, and the measure was adopted. But they did not possess a prison. It was necessary to fit one up, and a gaoler was appointed who took charge of the prisoner. For six months all went well. The captive slept all day on a straw mattress in the nook arranged for him, and his guardian lazily reclined upon a chair before the door, while he watched the passers-by. The Prince, however, is economical--extravagance is not his greatest fault--and he has accurate accounts laid before him of the smallest expenses of his State (the list of them is not a long one). They handed him, therefore, the bill of the expenses incurred in the creation of this new function, the cost of the prison, the prisoner, and the watchman. The salary of this last was a heavy burden on the budget of the Sovereign. At first he merely made a wry face over it; but when he reflected that this might go on for ever (the prisoner was young), he requested his Minister of Justice to take measures to suppress the expense. The minister consulted the President of the Tribunal, and the two agreed to suppress the expense of a gaoler. The prisoner, thus invited to guard himself, could not fail to escape, which would solve the question to the satisfaction of all parties. The gaoler was therefore restored to his family, and it became the duty of a scullion from the palace kitchen, to carry to the prisoner his morning and evening meals. But the captive made no attempt to recover his liberty. Finally, one day, as they had neglected to furnish him with food, they beheld him tranquilly appear at the palace to claim it; and from that day forward, it became his habit to come at meal-times to the palace, to eat with the servants, whose friend he became, and thus save the cook the trouble of the walk to and fro. After breakfast, he would take a turn as far as Monte Carlo. He sometimes went into the Casino, to venture a five-franc piece on the green cloth. When he had won, he gave himself a good dinner at one of the most fashionable hotels; then he returned to his prison, carefully locking his door on the inside. He never slept away a single night. The situation became a little puzzling, not for the convict, but for the judges. The court assembled afresh, and it was decided that they should invite the criminal to leave the State of Monaco. When this decision was announced to him, he simply replied: "You are pleased to be facetious. Well! and what would become of me in that case? I have no longer any means of subsistence. I have no longer a family. What would you have me do? I was condemned to death. You did not choose to execute me. I made no complaint. I was afterwards condemned to imprisonment for life, and placed in the hands of a gaoler. You took away my guardian. Again I made no complaint. "Now, to-day, you want to turn me out of the country. Not if I know it. I am a prisoner, your prisoner, judged and condemned by you. I am faithfully fulfilling my sentence. I remain here." The Supreme Court was floored. The Prince was in a terrible rage, and ordered fresh measures to be taken. Deliberations were resumed. Then, at last, they decided to offer to the culprit a pension of six hundred francs (twenty-four pounds), if he would leave the State and live elsewhere. He accepted. He has rented a little plot five minutes' walk from the kingdom of his former sovereign, and lives happily upon his property, cultivating a few vegetables, and despising all potentates. However, the Court of Monaco has profited, though a little late, by this experience, and has made a treaty with the French Government, by which they send their convicts over to France, who keeps them out of sight, in consideration of a modest compensation. In the judicial archives of the principality, one is shown the decree which settles the pension, by which the rascal was induced to leave the State of Monaco. Opposite to the palace, rises the rival establishment, the Roulette. There is, however, no hatred, no hostility between them; for the one supports the other, which in return protects the first. Admirable example! unique instance of two neighbouring and powerful families living in peace in one tiny state: an example well calculated to efface the remembrance of the Capulets and the Montagues. Here, the house of the sovereign; there, the house of play; the old and the new society fraternizing to the sound of gold. The saloons of the Casino are as readily opened to strangers, as those of the Prince are difficult of access. I turn to the first. A noise of money, continuous as that of the waves, a noise at once deep, light and terrible, fills the ears from the moment one enters, then fills the soul, stirs the heart, troubles the mind, and bewilders thought. Everywhere this sound, this singing, crying, calling, tempting, rending sound. Around the tables, a motley crowd of players, the scum of every continent and of every society; mixed with princes, or future kings, women of fashion, _bourgeois,_ money lenders, disreputable women; a mixture unique in the world, of men of all races, of all castes, of all kinds, of every origin; a perfect museum of adventurers from Russia, Brazil, Chili, Italy, Spain, Germany; of old women with reticules, of disreputable young ones carrying little bags containing keys, a handkerchief, and the three last five-franc pieces which are kept for the green cloth, when the vein of luck shall chance to return. I approached the first table, and saw ... a pale face, with lined forehead, and hard-set lip; features convulsed, with an expression of evil ... the young woman of Agay bay, the beautiful sweetheart of the sunny wood, and the moonlit bay. He, too, is there, seated before her, his hand resting on a few napoleons. "Play on the first square," said she. He inquired anxiously: "All?" "Yes, all." He placed the coins in a little heap. The croupier turned the wheel. The ball ran, danced, and stopped. "Nothing further counts," jerks forth the voice, which resumes after a moment: "Twenty-eight." The young woman started, and in a hard, sharp tone said: "Come away." He rose, and without looking at her, followed her; and one felt that some dreadful thing had sprung up between them. Some one remarked: "Good-bye to love. They don't look as if they were of one mind to-day." A hand taps me on the shoulder. I turn round. It is my friend. * * * * * I have only now to ask pardon for having thus trespassed on my reader by talking so much of myself. I had written this journal of day-dreams entirely for myself, or rather, I had taken advantage of my floating solitude, to capture the wandering ideas which are wont to traverse our minds, like birds on the wing. But I am asked to publish these few pages, which, unconnected, deficient in composition and in art, follow one after the other without a reason, and abruptly conclude without a motive; simply because a squall of wind put an end to my voyage. I have yielded to this request. Perhaps I am wrong. 
52706	----	[Illustration: "PARIS HAD TAKEN OFF HER MOURNING"] ABOUT PARIS BY RICHARD HARDING DAVIS ILLUSTRATED BY CHARLES DANA GIBSON [Illustration] NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 1895 BY RICHARD HARDING DAVIS. OUR ENGLISH COUSINS. Illustrated. Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 25. THE RULERS OF THE MEDITERRANEAN. Illustrated. Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 25. THE WEST FROM A CAR-WINDOW. Illustrated. Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 25. THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES. Illustrated. Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 50. VAN BIBBER, AND OTHERS. Illustrated. Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 00; Paper, 60 cents. =Published by= HARPER & BROTHERS, =New York=. Copyright, 1895, by Harper & Brothers. _All rights reserved._ TO PAUL BOURGET CONTENTS PAGE I. THE STREETS OF PARIS 1 II. THE SHOW-PLACES OF PARIS--NIGHT 47 III. PARIS IN MOURNING 98 IV. THE GRAND PRIX AND OTHER PRIZES 138 V. AMERICANS IN PARIS 177 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE "PARIS HAD TAKEN OFF HER MOURNING" _Frontispiece_ "THE CONCIERGE OF EACH HOUSE STOOD CONTINUALLY AT THE FRONT DOOR" 3 "SHE LOOKED DOWN UPON OUR STREET" 9 "WITH A LONG LOAF OF BREAD" 15 "TES DANS LA RUE, VA, T'ES CHEZ TOI" 19 "THE PARTY PROMPTLY BROKE UP" 25 "AND TRANSFORM LONG-HAIRED STUDENTS INTO MEMBERS OF THE INSTITUTE" 31 INSIDE COLUMBIN'S 37 "AND YOU BELIEVE THE GUIDES" 41 THE CHÂTEAU ROUGE 59 AT BRUANT'S 65 AT THE BLACK CAT 71 A CAFÉ CHANTANT 77 ON MONTMARTRE 83 SOME YOUNG PEOPLE OF MONTMARTRE 89 AT THE MOULIN ROUGE 93 AT THE JARDIN DE PARIS 103 PORTRAITS OF CARNOT IN HEAVY BLACK 109 "TO BRING A QUEEN BACK TO PARIS" 115 "THE GIRL WHO REPRESENTED ALSACE" 131 THE RESTAURANT AMONG THE TREES 143 INTERESTED IN THE WINNER 149 "AROUND SOME STATELY DIGNITARY" 159 "THE MAN THAT BROKE THE BANK AT MONTE CARLO" 167 "LISTENING FOR THE VOICE TO SPEAK HIS NAME ONCE MORE" 179 "STANDING ON THEIR FEET FOR HOURS AT A TIME" 187 "THE AMERICAN COLONY IS NOT WICKED" 195 WHAT MIGHT SOME TIME HAPPEN IF THESE WERE LOVE-MATCHES 203 "'I HAVE ONE PICTURE IN THE SALON'" 215 ABOUT PARIS I THE STREETS OF PARIS The street that I knew best in Paris was an unimportant street, and one into which important people seldom came, and then only to pass on through it to the Rue de Rivoli, which ran parallel with it, or to the Rue Castiglione, which cut it evenly in two. It was to them only the shortest distance between two points, for the sidewalks of this street were not sprinkled with damp sawdust and set out with marble-topped tables under red awnings, nor were there the mirrors and windows of jewellers and milliners along its course to make one turn and look. It was interesting only to those people who lived upon it, and to us perhaps only for that reason. If you judged it by the circumstance that we all spent our time in hanging out of the windows, and that the concierge of each house stood continually at the front door, you would suppose it to be a most interesting thoroughfare, in which things were always happening. What did happen was not interesting to the outsider, and you had to live in it some time before you could appreciate the true value of the street. With one exception. This was the great distinction of our street, and one of which we were very proud. A poet had lived in his way, and loved in his way, in one of the houses, and had died there. You could read the simple, unromantic record of this in big black letters on a tablet placed evenly between the two windows of the entresol. It gave a distinguished air to that house, and rendered it different from all of the others, as a Legion of Honor on the breast of a French soldier makes him conspicuous amongst his fellows. ALFRED DE MUSSET né à Paris Le 11 Décembre 1810 est mort dans cette maison Le 2 Mai 1857 [Illustration: "THE CONCIERGE OF EACH HOUSE STOOD CONTINUALLY AT THE FRONT DOOR"] We were all pleased when people stopped and read this inscription. We took it as a tribute to the importance of our street, and we felt a proprietary interest in that tablet and in that house, as though this neighborly association with genius was something to our individual credit. We had other distinguished people in our street, but they were very much alive, and their tablets were colored ones drawn by Chéret, and pasted up all over Paris in endless repetition; and though their celebrity may not live as long as has the poet's, while they are living they seem to enjoy life as fully as he did, and to get out of the present all that the present has to give. The one in which we all took the most interest lived just across the street from me, and by looking up a little you could see her looking out of her window, with her thick, heavy black hair bound in bandeaux across her forehead, and a great diamond horseshoe pinned at her throat, and with just a touch of white powder showing on her nose and cheeks. She looked as though she should have lived by rights in the Faubourg St.-Germain, and she used to smile down rather kindly upon the street with a haughty, tolerant look, as if it amused her by its simplicity and idleness, and by the quietness, which only the cries of the children or of the hucksters, or the cracking at times of a coachman's whip, ever broke. She looked very well then, but it was in the morning that the street saw her at her best. For it was then that she went out to ride in the Bois in her Whitechapel cart, and as she never awoke in time, apparently, we had the satisfaction of watching the pony and the tiger and cart for an hour or two until she came. It was a brown basket-cart, and the tiger used to walk around it many times to see that it had not changed in any particular since he had examined it three minutes before, and the air with which he did this gave us an excellent idea of the responsibility of his position. So that people passing stopped and looked too--bakers' boys in white linen caps and with baskets on their arms, and commissionnaires in cocked hats and portfolios chained to their persons, and gentlemen freshly made up for the morning, with waxed mustaches and flat-brimmed high hats, and little girls with plaits, and little boys with bare legs; and all of us in-doors, as soon as we heard the pony stamp his sharp hoofs on the asphalt, would drop books or razors or brooms or mops and wait patiently at the window until she came. When she came she wore a black habit with fresh white gloves, holding her skirt and crop in one hand, and the crowd would separate on either side of her. She did not see the crowd. She was used to crowds, and she would pat the pony's head or rub his ears with the fresh kid gloves, and tighten the buckle or shift a strap with an air quite as knowing as the tiger's, but not quite so serious. Then she would wrap the lap-robe about her, and her maid would take her place at her side with the spaniel in her arms, and she would give the pony the full length of the lash, and he would go off like a hound out of the leash. They always reached the corner before the tiger was able to overtake them, and I believe it was the hope of seeing him some morning left behind forever which led to the general interest in their departure. And when they had gone, the crowd would look at the empty place in the street, and at each other, and up at us in the windows, and then separate, and the street would grow quiet again. One could see her again later, if one wished, in the evening, riding a great horse around the ring, in another habit, but with the same haughty smile; and as the horse reared on his hind-legs, and kicked and plunged as though he would fall back on her, she would smile at him as she did on the children in our street, with the same unconcerned, amused look that she would have given to a kitten playing with its tail. The houses on our street had tall yellow fronts with gray slate roofs, and roof-gardens of flowers and palms in pots. Some of the houses had iron balconies, from which the women leaned and talked across the street to one another in purring nasal voices, with a great rolling of the r's and an occasional disdainful movement of the shoulders. When any other than a French woman shrugs her shoulders she moves the whole upper part of her body, from the hips up; but the French woman's shoulders and arms are all that change when she makes that ineffable gesture that we have settled upon as the characteristic one of her nation. [Illustration: "SHE LOOKED DOWN UPON OUR STREET"] In a street of like respectability to ours in London or New York those who lived on it would know as little of their next-door neighbor as of a citizen at another end of the town. The house fronts would tell nothing to the outside world; they would frown upon each other like family tombs in a cemetery; but in this street of Paris the people lived in it, or on the balconies, or at the windows. We knew what they were going to have for dinner, because we could see them carrying the uncooked portions of it from the restaurant at the corner, with a long loaf of bread under one arm and a single egg in the other hand; and when some one gave a fête we knew of it by the rows of bottles on the ledge of the window and the jellies set out to cool on the balcony. We were all interested in the efforts of the stout gentleman in the short blue smoking-jacket who taught his parrot to call to the coachman of each passing fiacre; he did this every night after dinner, with his cigarette in his mouth, and with great patience and good-nature. We took a common pride also in the flower-garden of the young people on the seventh floor, and in their arrangement of strings upon which the vines were to grow, and in the lines of roses, which dropped their petals whenever the wind blew, upon the head of the concierge, so that she would look up and shake her head at them, and then go inside and get a broom and sweep the leaves carefully away. When any one in our street went off in his best clothes in a fiacre we looked after him with envy, and yet with a certain pride that we lived with such fortunate people, who were evidently much sought after in the fashionable world; and when a musician or a blind man broke the silence of our street with his music or his calls, we vied with one another in throwing him coppers--not on his account at all, but because we wished to stand well in the opinion of our neighbors. It was like camping out on two sides of a valley where every one could look over into the other's tent. There was a young couple near the corner, who, I think, had but lately married, and every evening she used to watch for him in a fresh gown for a half-hour or so before he came. During the day she wore a very plain gown, and her eyes wandered everywhere; but during that half-hour before he came she never changed her position nor relaxed her vigil. And it made us all quite uncomfortable, and we could not give our attention to anything else until he had turned the corner and waved his hand, and she had answered him with a start and a little shrug of content. After dinner they appeared together, and he would put his arm around her waist, with that refreshing disregard for the world that French lovers have, and they would smile down upon us in a very happy and superior manner, or up at the sun as it sank a brilliant red at the end of our street, with the hundreds of chimney-pots looking like black musical notes against it. There was also a very interesting old lady in the house that blocked the end of our street, a very fat and masculine old lady in a loose white wrapper, who spent all of her time rearranging her plants and flowers, and kept up an amiable rivalry with the people in the balconies above and below her in the abundance and verdure of her garden. It was a very pleasant competition for the rest of us, as it hung that end of the street with a curtain of living green. [Illustration: "WITH A LONG LOAF OF BREAD"] For a little time there was a young girl who used to sit upon the balcony whenever the sun was brightest and the air not too chill; but she took no interest in the street, for she knew nothing of it except its noises. She lay always in an invalid's chair, looking up at the sky and the roof-line above, and with her profile against the gray wall. During the day a nurse in a white cap sat with her; but after dinner a stout, jaunty man of middle age came back from his club or his bureau, and took the place beside her until it grew dark, when he and the nurse would lift her in-doors again, and he would take his hat and go off to the boulevards, I suppose, to cheer himself a bit. It did not last long, for one day I came home to find them taking down a black-and-silver curtain from the front of the house, and the concierge said that the girl had been buried, and that her father was now quite alone. For the first week after that he did not go to the boulevards, but used to sit out on the balcony until late into the evening, with the night about him, so that we would not have known he was there save for the light of his cigar burning in the darkness. The step from our street to the boulevards is a much longer one in the imagination than in actual distance. Our street, after all, was only typical of thousands of other Parisian streets, and when you have explained it you have described miles after miles of other streets like it. But there is nothing just like the boulevards. If you should wish to sit at the exact centre of the world and to watch it revolve around you, you have only to take your place at that corner table of the Café de la Paix which juts the farthest out into the Avenue de l'Opéra and the Boulevard Capucines. This table is the apex of all the other tables. It turns the tides of pedestrians on the broad sidewalks of both the great thoroughfares, and it is geographically situated exactly under the "de la" of the "Café de la Paix," painted in red letters on the awning over your head. From this admirable position you can sweep the square in front of the Opera-house, the boulevard itself, and the three great streets running into it from the river. People move obligingly around and up and down and across these, and if you sit there long enough you will see every one worth seeing in the known world. There is a large class of Parisians whose knowledge of that city is limited to the boulevards. They neither know nor care to know of any other part; we read about them a great deal, of them and their witticisms and café politics; and what "the boulevards" think of this or that is as seriously quoted as what "a gentleman very near the President," or "a diplomat whose name I am requested not to give, but who is in a position to know whereof he speaks," cares to say of public matters at home. For my part, I should think an existence limited to two sidewalks would be somewhat sad, especially if it were continued into the middle age, which all boulevardiers seem to have already attained. It does not strike one as a difficult school to enter, or as one for which there is any long apprenticeship. You have only to sit for an hour every evening under the "de la," and you will find that you know by sight half the faces of the men who pass you, who come up suddenly out of the night and disappear again, like slides in a stereopticon, or whom you find next you when you take your place, and whom you leave behind, still sipping from the half-empty glasses ordered three hours before you came. The man who goes to Paris for a summer must be a very misanthropic and churlish individual if he tires of the boulevards in that short period. There is no place so amusing for the stranger between the hours of six and seven and eleven and one as these same boulevards; but to the Parisian what a bore it must become! That is, what a bore it would become to any one save a Parisian! To have the same fat man with the sombrero and the waxed mustache snap patent match-boxes in your face day after day and night after night, and to have "Carnot at Longchamps" taking off his hat and putting it on again held out for your inspection for weeks, and to seek the same insipid silly faces of boys with broad velvet collars and stocks, which they believe are worn by Englishmen, and the same pompous gentlemen who cut their white goatees as do military men of the Second Empire, and who hope that the ruddiness of their cheeks, which is due to the wines of Burgundy, will be attributed to the suns of Tunis and Algiers. And the same women, the one with the mustache and the younger one with the black curl, and the hundreds of others, silent and panther-like, and growing obviously more ugly as the night grows later and the streets more deserted. If any one aspires to be known among such as these, his aspirations are easily gratified. He can have his heart's desire; he need only walk the boulevards for a week, and he will be recognized as a boulevardier. It is a cheap notoriety, purchased at the expense of the easy exercise of walking, and the cost of some few glasses of "bock," with a few cents to the waiter. There is much excuse for the visitor; he is really to be envied; it is all new and strange and absurd to him; but what an old, old story it must be to the boulevardier! [Illustration: "TES DANS LA RUE, VA, T'ES CHEZ TOI"] The visitor, perhaps, has never sat out-of-doors before and taken his ease on the sidewalk. Yet it seems a perfectly natural thing to do, until he imagines himself doing the same thing at home. There was a party of men and women from New York sitting in front of the Café de la Paix one night after the opera, and enjoying themselves very much, until one of them suggested their doing the same thing the next month at home. "We will all take chairs," he said, "and sit at the corner of Twenty-sixth Street and Broadway at twelve o'clock at night and drink bock-bier," and the idea was so impossible that the party promptly broke up and went to their hotels. Of course the visitor in Paris misses a great deal that the true boulevardier enjoys through not knowing or understanding all that he sees. But, on the other hand, he has an advantage in being able to imagine that he is surrounded by all the famous journalists and poets and noted duellists; and every clerk with a portfolio becomes a Deputy, and every powdered and auburn-haired woman who passes in an open fiacre is a celebrated actress of the Comédie Française. He can distribute titles as freely as the Papal court, and transform long-haired students into members of the Institute, and promote the boys of the Polytechnic School, in their holiday cocked hats and play-swords, into lieutenants and captains of the regular army. He believes that the ill-looking individual in rags who shows such apparent fear of the policeman on the corner really has forbidden prints and books to sell, and that the guides who hover about like vultures looking for a fresh victim have it in their power to show him things to which they only hold the key--things which any Frenchman could tell him he could see at his own home if he has the taste for such sights. The best of the boulevards is that the people sitting on their sidewalks, and the heavy green trees, and the bare heads of so many of the women, make one feel how much out-of-doors he is, as no other street or city does, and what a folly it is to waste time within walls. I do not think we appreciate how much we owe to the women in Paris who go without bonnets. They give the city so homelike and friendly an air, as though every woman knew every other woman so well that she did not mind running across the street to gossip with her neighbor without the formality of a head-covering. And it really seems strange that the prettiest bonnets should come from the city where the women of the poorer classes have shown how very pretty a woman of any class can look without any bonnet at all. The enduring nature of the boulevards impresses one who sees them at different hours as much as does their life and gayety at every hour. You sometimes think surely to-morrow they will rest, and the cafés will be closed, and the long passing stream of cabs and omnibuses will stop, and the asphalt street will be permitted to rest from its burden. You may think this at night, but when you turn up again at nine the next morning you will find it all just as you left it at one the same morning. The same waiters, the same rush of carriages, the same ponderous omnibuses with fine straining white horses, the flowers in the booths, and the newspapers neatly piled round the colored kiosks. [Illustration: "THE PARTY PROMPTLY BROKE UP"] The Champs Élysées is hardly a street, but as a thoroughfare it is the most remarkable in the world. It is a much better show than are the boulevards. The place for which you pay to enter is generally more interesting than the place to which admittance is free, and any one can walk along the boulevards, but to ride in the Champs Élysées you must pay something, even if you take your fiacre by the hour. Some Parisians regret that the Avenue des Champs Élysées should be so cheapened that it is not reserved for carriages hired by the month, and not by the course, and that omnibuses and hired cabs are not kept out of it, as they are kept out of Hyde Park. But should this rule obtain the Avenue des Champs Élysées would lose the most amusing of its features. It would shut out the young married couples and their families and friends in their gala clothes, which look strangely unfamiliar in the sunlight, and make you think that the wearers have been up all night; and the hundreds of girls in pairs from the Jardin de Paris, who have halved the expense of a fiacre, but who cannot yet afford a brougham; and the English tourists dressed in flannel shirts and hunting-caps and knickerbockers, exactly as though they were penetrating the mountains of Afghanistan or the deserts of Syria, and as unashamed of their provincialism as the young marquis who passes on his dog-cart is unashamed of having placed the girl with him on his right hand instead of his left, though by so doing he tells every one who passes who and what she is. It would shut out the omnibuses, with the rows of spectators on their tops, who lean on their knees and look down into the carriages below, and point out the prettiest gowns and faces; and it would exclude the market-wagons laden with huge piles of yellow carrots and purple radishes, with a woman driving on the box-seat, and a dog chained beside her. There is no other place in the world, unless it be Piccadilly at five o'clock in the afternoon, where so many breeds of horses trot side by side, where the chains of the baron banker and the cracking whip of a drunken cabman and the horn of some American millionaire's four-in-hand all sound at the same time. To be known is easy in the boulevards, but it is a distinction in the Avenue des Champs Élysées--a distinction which costs much money and which lasts an hour. Sometimes it is gained by liveries and trappings and a large red rosette in the button-hole, or by driving the same coach at the same hour at the same rate of speed throughout the season, or by wearing a fez, or by sending two sais ahead of your cart to make a way for it, or by a beautiful face and a thoroughbred pug on a cushion at your side, although this last mode is not so easy, as there are many pretty faces and many softly cushioned victorias and innumerable pug-dogs, and when the prevailing color for the hair happens to be red--as it was last summer--the chance of gaining any individuality becomes exceedingly difficult. When all of these people meet in the afternoon on their way to and from the Bois, there is no better entertainment of the sort in the world, and the avenue grows much too short, and the hours before dinner even shorter. There are women in light billowy toilets, with elbows squared and whip in hand, fearlessly driving great English horses from the top of a mail-phaeton, while a frightened little English groom clutches at the rail and peers over their shoulder to grasp the reins if need be, or to jump if he must. And there are narrow-chested corseted and padded young Frenchmen in white kid gloves, who hold one rein in each hand as little girls hold a skipping-rope, and who imagine they are so like Englishmen that no one can distinguish them even by their accent. There are fat Hebrew bankers and their equally fat sons in open victorias, who, lacking the spirit of the Frenchmen, who at least attempt to drive themselves, recline consciously on cushions, like the poodles in the victorias of the ladies with the red hair. There are also visiting princes from India or pashas from Egypt; or diplomats of the last Spanish-American republic, as dark as the negroes of Sixth Avenue, but with magnificent liveries and clanking chains; the nabobs of Haiti, of Algiers and Tunis, and with these the beautiful Spanish-looking woman from South America, the wives of the _rastaqouères_; and mixed with these is the long string of bookmakers and sporting men coming back from the races at Longchamps or Auteuil, red-faced and hot and dusty, with glasses strapped around them, and the badges still flying from their button-holes. There are three rows of carriages down and three of carriages up, and if you look from the Arc de Triomphe to the Tuileries you see a broken mass of glittering carriage-tops and lace parasols, and what looks like the flashing of thousands of mirrors as the setting sun strikes on the glass of the lamps and windows and on the lacquered harness and polished mountings. Whether you view this procession from the rows of green iron seats on either side or as a part of it, you must feel lifted up by its movement and color and the infinite variety of its changes. A man might live in the Champs Élysées for a week or a month, seeing no more of Paris than he finds under its beautiful trees or on its broad thoroughfare, and be so well content with that much of the city as to prefer it to all other cities. There was a little fat man in his shirt sleeves one morning in front of the Theatre of the Republic, which, as everybody knows, stands under the trees in the Champs Élysées, on the Rue Matignon, hanging a new curtain, and the fat man, as the proprietor and manager, was naturally anxious. Two small boys with their bare legs, and leather belts about their smocks, and a nurse with broad blue ribbons down her back, and myself looked our admiration from the outside of the roped enclosure. The orchestra had laid down its fiddle, and was helping the man who takes the twenty centimes to adjust the square yard of canvas. The proprietor placed his fat fingers on the small of his back and threw his head to one side and shut one eye. We waited breathlessly for his opinion. He took two steps backward from the ten-centime seats, and studied the effect of the curtain from that distance, with his chin thrown up and his arms folded severely. We suggested that it was an improvement on the old curtain, and one that would be sure to catch the passer's eye. [Illustration: "AND TRANSFORM LONG-HAIRED STUDENTS INTO MEMBERS OF THE INSTITUTE"] "Possibly," the proprietor said, indulgently, and then wiped his brow and shook his head. He told us we had little idea how great were the trials of an _impresario_ of an open-air theatre in the Champs Élysées. What with the rent and the cost of the costumes and the employment of three assistants--one to work the marionettes, and one to take up the money, and one to play in the orchestra--expenses did run up. Of course there was madame, his wife, who made costumes herself better than those that could be bought at the regular costumers', and that was a saving; and then she also helped in working the figures when there were more than two on the scene at once, but this was hard upon her, as she was stout, and the heat at the top of the tin-roofed theatre up among the dusty flies was trying. And then, I suggested, there was much competition. The proprietor waved a contemptuous dismissal of the claims of the four little theatres about him. It was not their rivalry that he cared for. It is true the seats were filled, but with whom? Ah, yes, with whom? He placed his finger at the side of his nose, and winked and nodded his head mysteriously. With the friends of the proprietor, of course. Poor non-paying acquaintances to make a show, and attract others less knowing to a very inferior performance. Now here with him everybody paid, and received the worth of his money many times. Perhaps I had not seen the performance; in that case I should surely do so. The clown and the donkey-cart were very amusing, and the dancing skeleton, which came to pieces before the audience and frightened the gendarme, was worthy of my approval. So the two small boys and the nurse and the baby and I dodged under the rope and waited for the performance. The idle man, who knows that "they also serve who only stand and wait," must find the Champs Élysées the most acceptable of all places for such easy service. There are at one corner the stamp-collectors to entertain him, with their scrap-books and market-baskets full of their precious bits of colored paper, gathered from all over the known world, comparing and examining their treasures, bargaining with easy good-nature and with the zeal of enthusiasts. Three times a week he will find this open market or exchange under the trees, where old men and little boys and pretty young girls meet together and chatter over their common hobby, and swap Columbian stamps for those of some French protectorate, and of many other places of which they know nothing save that it has a post-office of its own. At another corner there are smoothly-shaven men and plump, well-fed-looking women waiting to take service on some gentleman's box-seat or in front of some lady's cooking-stove--an intelligence office where there is no middleman to whom they must pay a fee, and where, while they wait for a possible employer, they hold an impromptu picnic, and pay such gallant compliments that one can see they have lived much in the fashionable world. Or the idler can drop into a chair in one of the cafés chantants on an off day, when there is no regular performance, but a rehearsal, to which the public is neither invited nor forbidden. It is an entertaining place in which to spend an hour or two, with something to drink in front of you, and a cigar, and the sun shining through the trees upon the mirrors and artificial flowers and the gaudy hangings of the stage. Here you will see Mlle. Nicolle as she is in her moments of leisure. The night before she wore a greasy gingham gown, with her hair plastered over her forehead in oily flat curls, as a laundress or charwoman of Montmartre might wear them. Now she is fashionably dressed in black, with white lace over it, and with a lace parasol, which she swings from her finger in time to the music, while the other artists of the Ambassadeurs' stand farther up the stage waiting their turn, or politely watch her from the front. The girl who chalked her face as Pierrot the evening before follows her in a blue boating-dress and a kick at the end of it, which she means to introduce later in the same day; and the others comment audibly on it from their seats, calling her by her first name, and disagreeing with the leader of the orchestra as to the particular note upon which the kick should come, while he turns in his seat with his violin on his knee and argues it out with them, shrugging his shoulders, and making passes in the air with his lighted cigarette as though it were a baton. [Illustration: INSIDE COLUMBIN'S] Two gendarmes, with their capes folded and thrown over their shoulders, come in and stand with the waiters, surveying the rehearsal with critical disapproval, and the woman who collects the pennies for the iron seats in the avenue takes a few moments' recess, and brings with her two nurse-maids, with their neglected charges swinging by the silken straps around their silken bodies. And so they all stand at one side and gaze with large eyes at the breathless, laughing young woman on the stage above them, who runs and kicks and runs back and kicks again, reflected many times in the background of mirrors around her; and then the two American song-and-dance men, and the English acrobats, and the Italian who owns the performing dogs, and the smooth-faced French comédiennes, and all the idle gentlemen with glasses of bock before them, sit up as though some one had touched their shoulders with a whip, and all the actresses smile politely, and look with pressed lips and half-closed eyes at a very tall woman with red hair, who walks erectly down the stage with a roll of music in her gloved hands. This is Yvette Guilbert, the most artistic and the most improper of all the women of the cafés chantants. She is also the most graceful. You can see that even now when she is off her guard. She could not make an ungraceful gesture even after long practice, and when she shudders and jumps at a false note from the orchestra she is still graceful. When the rehearsal is finished you can cross the Place de la Concorde and hang over the stone parapet, and watch the Deputies coming over the bridge, or the men washing the dogs in the Seine, and shaving and trimming their tufts of curly hair, and twisting their mustaches into military jauntiness; or you can turn your back to this and watch the thousands of carriages and cabs and omnibuses crossing the great square before you from the eight streets opening into it, with the water of the fountains in the middle blown into spray by the wind, and turned into the colors of the rainbow by the sun. This great, beautiful open place, even to one accustomed to city streets and their monuments, seems to change more rapidly and to form with greater life than any other spot in the world, and its great stupid obelisk in the centre appears to rise like a monster exclamation-point of wonder at what it sees about it, and with the surprise over all of finding itself in the centre of it. [Illustration: "AND YOU BELIEVE THE GUIDES"] You cannot say you have seen the streets of Paris until you have walked them at sunrise; every one has seen them at night, but he must watch them change from night to day before he can claim to have seen them at their best. I walked under the arches of the Rue de Rivoli one morning when it was so dark that they looked like the cloisters of some great monastery, and it was impossible to believe that the empty length of the Rue Cambon had but an hour before been blocked by the blazing front of the Olympia, and before that with rows of carriages in front of the two Columbins. There were a few belated cabs hugging the sidewalk, with their drivers asleep on the boxes, and a couple of gendarmes slouching together across the Place de la Concorde made the only sound of life in the whole city. The Seine lay as motionless as water in a bath-tub, and the towers of Notre Dame rising out of the mist at one end, and the round bulk of the Trocadéro bounding it at the other, seemed to limit the river to what one could see of its silent surface from the Bridge of the Deputies. The Eiffel Tower, the great skeleton of the departed exposition, disappeared and reformed itself again as drifting clouds of mist swept through it and cut its great ugly length into fragments hung in mid-air. As the light grew in strength the façades of the government buildings grew in outline, as though one were focussing them through an opera-glass, and the pillars of the Madeleine took form and substance; then the whole great square showed itself, empty and deserted. The darkness had hidden nothing more terrible than the clean asphalt and the motionless statues of the cities of France. A solitary fiacre passed me slowly with no one on the box, but with the coachman sitting back in his cab. He was returning to the stables, evidently, and had on his way given a seat to a girl from the street, whom he was now entertaining with genial courtesy. He had one leg thrown over the other, and one arm passed back along the top of the seat, and with the other he waved to the great buildings as they sprang up into life as the day grew. The girl beside him was smiling at his pleasantries, while the rising sun showed how tired and pale she was, and mocked at the paint around her sleepy eyes. The horse stumbled at every sixth step, and then woke again, while the whip rocked and rolled fantastically in its socket like a drunken man. From up the avenue of the Champs Élysées came the first of the heavy market-wagons, with the driver asleep on the bench, and his lantern burning dully in the early light. Back of him lay the deserted stretch of the avenue, strange and unfamiliar in its emptiness--save for the great arch that rose against the dawn, and seemed, from its elevation on the very top of the horizon, to serve as a gateway into the skies beyond. The air in the Champs Élysées was heavy with a perfume of flowers and of green plants, and the leaves dripped damp and cool with the dew. Hundreds of birds sang and chattered as though they knew the solitude was theirs but for only one more brief hour, and that they then must give way to the little children, and later to crowds of idle men and women. It seemed impossible that but a few hours before Duclerc had filled these silent, cool woods with her voice--Duclerc, with her shoulder-straps slipping to her elbows and her white powdered arms tossing in the colored lights of the serpentine dance. The long, gaudy lithographs on the bill-boards and the arches of colored lamps stood out of the silence and fresh beauty of the hour like the relics of some feast which should have been cleared away before the dawn, and the theatres themselves looked like temples to a heathen idol in some primeval wood. And as I passed out from under the cool trees to the silent avenues I felt as though I had caught Paris napping, and when she was off her guard, and good and fresh and sweet, and had discovered a hidden trait in her many-sided character, a moment of which she would be ashamed an hour or two later, as cynics are ashamed of their secret acts of charity. II THE SHOW-PLACES OF PARIS NIGHT Paris is the only city in the world which the visitor from the outside positively refuses to take seriously. He may have come to Paris with an earnest purpose to study art, or to investigate the intricacies of French law, or the historical changes of the city; or, if it be a woman, she may have come to choose a trousseau; but no matter how serious his purpose may be, there is always some one part of each day when the visitor rests from his labors and smiles indulgently and does as the Parisians do. Whether the city or the visitor is responsible for this, whether Paris adopts the visitor, or the visitor adapts himself to his surroundings, it is impossible to say. But there is certainly no other capital of the world in which the stranger so soon takes on the local color, in which he becomes so soon acclimated, and which brings to light in him so many new and unsuspected capacities for enjoyment and adventure. Americans go to London for social triumph or to float railroad shares, to Rome for art's sake, and to Berlin to study music and to economize; but they go to Paris to enjoy themselves. And there are no young men of any nation who enter into the accomplishment of this so heartily and so completely as does the young American. It is hardly possible for the English youth to appreciate Paris perfectly, because he has been brought up to believe that "one Englishman can thrash three Frenchmen," and because he holds a nation that talks such an absurd language in some contempt; hence he is frequently while there irritable and rude, and jostles men at the public dances, and in other ways asserts his dignity. But the American goes to Paris as though returning to his inheritance and to his own people. He approaches it with the friendly confidence of a child. Its language holds no terrors for him; and he feels himself fully equipped if he can ask for his "edition," and say, "Cocher, allez Henry's tout sweet." There is nothing so joyous and confiding as the American during his first visit to the French metropolis. He has been told by older men of the gay, glad days of the Second Empire, and by his college chum of the summer of the last exposition, and he enters Paris determined to see all that any one else has ever seen, and to outdo all that any one else has ever done, and to stir that city to its suburbs. He saves his time, his money, and his superfluous energy for this visit, and the most amusing part of it is that he always leaves Paris fully assured that he has enjoyed himself while there more thoroughly than any one else has ever done, and that the city will require two or three months' rest before it can readjust itself after the shock and wonder due to his meteoric flight through its limits. London he dismisses in a week as a place in which you can get good clothes at moderate prices, and which supports some very entertaining music-halls; but Paris, he tells you, ecstatically, when he meets you on the boulevards or at the banker's, where he is drawing grandly on his letter of credit, is "the greatest place on earth," and he adds, as evidence of the truth of this, that he has not slept in three weeks. He is unsurpassed in his omnivorous capacity for sight-seeing, and in his ability to make himself immediately and contentedly at home. There is a story which illustrates this that is told by a young American banker who has been living in Paris for the last six years. He met one day on the boulevards an old college friend of his, and welcomed him with pleasure. "You must let me be your guide," the banker said. "I have been here so long now that I know just what you ought to see, and I shall enjoy seeing it with you as much as though it were for the first time. When did you come?" The new arrival had reached Paris only three days before, and said that he was ready to see all that it had to show. "You have nothing to do to-night, then?" asked the banker. "Well, we will drop in at the gardens and the cafés chantants. There is nothing like them anywhere." His friend said he had made the tour of the gardens on the night of his arrival, but that he would be glad to revisit them. But that being the case, the banker would rather take him to the cafés--"The Black Cat," and Bruant's, and "The Dead Rat." These his friend had visited on his second evening. "Oh, well, we can cross the river, then, and I will show you some slumming," said the banker. "You should see the places where the thieves go--the Château Rouge and Père Lunette." "I went there last night," said the new-comer. The man who had lived six years in Paris took the stranger by the arm and asked him if he was sure he was not engaged for that evening. "For if you are not," he said, "you might take me with you and show me some of the sights!" The American visitor is not only undaunted by the strange language, but unimpressed by the signs of years of vivid history about him. He sandwiches a glimpse at the tomb of Napoleon, and a trip on a penny steamer up the Seine, and back again to the Morgue, with a rush through the Cathedral of Notre Dame, between the hours of his breakfast and the race-meeting at Longchamps the same afternoon. Nothing of present interest escapes him, and nothing bores him. He assimilates and grasps the method of Parisian existence with a rapidity that leaves you wondering in the rear, and at the end of a week can tell you that you should go to one side of the Grand Hôtel for cigars, and to the other to have your hat blocked. He knows at what hour Yvette Guilbert comes on at the Ambassadeurs', and on which mornings of the week the flower-market is held around the Madeleine. While you are still hunting for apartments he has visited the sewers under the earth, and the Eiffel Tower over the earth, and eaten his dinner in a tree at Robinson's, and driven a coach to Versailles over the same road upon which the mob tramped to bring Marie Antoinette back to Paris, without being the least impressed by the contrast which this offers to his own progress. He develops also a daring and reckless spirit of adventure, which would never have found vent in his native city or town, or in any other foreign city or town. It is in the air, and he enters into the childish good-nature of the place and of the people after the same manner that the head of a family grows young again at his class reunion. One Harvard graduate arrived in Paris summer before last during those riots which originated with the students, and were carried on by the working-people, and which were cynically spoken of on the boulevards as the Revolution of Sarah Brown. In any other city he would have watched these ebullitions from the outskirts of the mob, or remained a passive spectator of what did not concern him, but being in Paris, and for the first time, he mounted a barricade, and made a stirring address to the students behind it in his best Harvard French, and was promptly cut over the head by a gendarme and conveyed to a hospital, where he remained during his stay in the gay metropolis. But he still holds that Paris is the finest place that he has ever seen. There was another American youth who stood up suddenly in the first row of seats at the Nouveau Cirque and wagered the men with him that he would jump into the water with which the circus ring is flooded nightly, and swim, "accoutred as he was," to the other side. They promptly took him at his word, and the audience of French bourgeois were charmed by the spectacle of a young gentleman in evening dress swimming calmly across the tank, and clambering leisurely out on the other side. He was loudly applauded for this, and the management sent the "American original" home in a fiacre. In any other city he would have been hustled by the ushers and handed over to the police. Those show-places of Paris which are seen only at night, and of which one hears the most frequently, are curiously few in number. It is their quality and not their quantity which has made them talked about. It is quite as possible to tell off on the fingers of two hands the names and the places to which the visitor to Paris will be taken as it is quite impossible to count the number of times he will revisit them. In London there are so many licensed places of amusement that a man might visit one every night for a year and never enter the same place twice, and those of unofficial entertainment are so numerous that men spend years in London and never hear of nooks and corners in it as odd and strange as Stevenson's Suicide Club or Fagan's School for Thieves--public-houses where blind beggars regain their sight and the halt and lame walk and dance, music-halls where the line is strictly drawn between the gentleman who smokes a clay pipe and the one who smokes a brier, and arenas like the Lambeth School of Arms, from which boy pugilists and coal-heavers graduate to the prize-ring, and such thoroughfares as Ship's Alley, where in the space of fifty yards twenty murders have occurred in three years. In Paris there are virtually no slums at all. The dangerous classes are there, and there is an army of beggars and wretches as poor and brutal as are to be found at large in any part of the world, but the Parisian criminal has no environment, no setting. He plays the part quite as effectively as does the London or New York criminal, but he has no appropriate scenery or mechanical effects. If he wishes to commit murder, he is forced to make the best of the well-paved, well-lighted, and cleanly swept avenue. He cannot choose a labyrinth of alleyways and covered passages, as he could were he in Whitechapel, or a net-work of tenements and narrow side streets, as he could were he in the city of New York. Young men who have spent a couple of weeks in Paris, and who have been taken slumming by paid guides, may possibly question the accuracy of this. They saw some very awful places indeed--one place they remember in particular, called the Château Rouge, and another called Père Lunette. The reason they so particularly remember these two places is that these are the only two places any one ever sees, and they do not recall the fact that the neighboring houses were of hopeless respectability, and that they were able to pick up a cab within a hundred yards of these houses. Young Frenchmen who know all the worlds of Paris tell you mysteriously of these places, and of how they visited them disguised in blue smocks and guarded by detectives; detectives themselves speak to you of them as a fisherman speaks to you of a favorite rock or a deep hole where you can always count on finding fish, and every newspaper correspondent who visits Paris for the first time writes home of them as typical of Parisian low life. They are as typical of Parisian low life as the animals in the Zoo in Central Park are typical of the other animals we see drawing stages and horse-cars and broughams on the city streets, and you require the guardianship of a detective when you visit them as much as you would need a policeman in Mulberry Bend or at an organ recital in Carnegie Hall. They are show-places, or at least they have become so, and though they would no doubt exist without the aid of the tourist or the man about town of intrepid spirit, they count upon him, and are prepared for him with set speeches, and are as ready to show him all that there is to see as are the guides around the Capitol at Washington. I should not wish to be misunderstood as saying that these are the only abodes of poverty and the only meeting-places for criminals in Paris, which would of course be absurd, but they are the only places of such interest that the visitor sees. There are other places, chiefly wine-shops in cellars in the districts of la Glacière, Montrouge, or la Villette, but unless an inspector of police leads you to them, and points out such and such men as thieves, you would not be able to distinguish any difference between them and the wine-shops and their _habitués_ north of the bridges and within sound of the boulevards. The paternal municipality of Paris, and the thought it has spent in laying out the streets, and the generous manner in which it has lighted them, are responsible for the lack of slums. Houses of white stucco, and broad, cleanly swept boulevards with double lines of gas lamps and shade trees, extend, without consideration for the criminal, to the fortifications and beyond, and the thief and bully whose interests are so little regarded is forced in consequence to hide himself underground in cellars or in the dark shadows of the Bois de Boulogne at night. This used to appeal to me as one of the most peculiar characteristics of Paris--that the most desperate poverty and the most heartless of crimes continued in neighborhoods notorious chiefly for their wickedness, and yet which were in appearance as well-ordered and commonplace-looking as the new model tenements in Harlem or the trim working-men's homes in the factory districts of Philadelphia. The Château Rouge was originally the house of some stately family in the time of Louis XIV. They will tell you there that it was one of the mistresses of this monarch who occupied it, and will point to the frescos of one room to show how magnificent her abode then was. This tradition may or may not be true, but it adds an interest to the house, and furnishes the dramatic contrast to its present wretchedness. It is a tall building painted red, and set back from the street in a court. There are four rooms filled with deal tables on the first floor, and a long counter with the usual leaden top. "Whoever buys a glass of wine here may sleep with his or her head on the table, or lie at length up-stairs on the floor of that room where one still sees the stucco cupids of the fine lady's boudoir. It is now a lodging-house for beggars and for those who collect the ends of castaway cigars and cigarettes on the boulevards, and possibly for those who thieve in a small way. By ten o'clock each night the place is filled with men and women sleeping heavily at the tables, with their heads on their arms, or gathered together for miserable company, whispering and gossiping, each sipping jealously of his glass of red wine." [Illustration: THE CHÂTEAU ROUGE] There is a little room at the rear, the walls of which are painted with scenes of celebrated murders, and the portraits of the murderers, of anarchists, and of their foes the police. A sharp-faced boy points to these with his cap, and recites his lesson in a high singsong, and in an _argot_ which makes all he says quite unintelligible. He is interesting chiefly because the men of whom he speaks are heroes to him, and he roars forth the name of "Antoine, who murdered the policeman Jervois," as though he were saying Gambetta, the founder of the republic, and with the innocent confidence that you will share with him in his enthusiasm. The pictures are ghastly things, in which the artist has chiefly done himself honor in the generous use of scarlet paint for blood, and in the way he has shown how by rapid gradations the criminal descends from well-dressed innocence to ragged viciousness, until he reaches the steps of the guillotine at Roquette. It is a miserable chamber of horrors, in which the heavy-eyed absinthe-drinkers raise their heads to stare mistily at the visitor, and to listen for the hundredth time to the boy's glib explanation of each daub in the gallery around them, from the picture of the vermilion-cheeked young woman who caused the trouble, to an imaginative picture of Montfaucon covered with skulls, where, many years in the past, criminals swung in chains. The café of Père Lunette is just around several sharp corners from the Château Rouge. It was originally presided over by an old gentleman who wore spectacles, which gave his shop its name. It is a resort of the lowest class of women and men, and its walls are painted throughout with faces and scenes a little better in execution than those in the Château Rouge, and a little worse in subject. It is a very small place to enjoy so wide-spread a reputation, and its front room is uninteresting, save for a row of casks resting on their sides, on the head of each of which is painted the portrait of some noted Parisian, like Zola, Eiffel, or Boulanger. The young proprietor fell upon us as his natural prey the night we visited the place, and drove us before him into a room in the rear of the wineshop. He was followed as a matter of course by a dozen men in blouses, and as many bareheaded women, who placed themselves expectantly at the deal tables, and signified what it was they wished to drink before going through the form of asking us if we meant to pay for it. They were as ready to do their part of the entertainment as the actors of the theatre are ready to go on when the curtain rises, and there was nothing about any of them to suggest that he or she was there for any other reason than the hope of a windfall in the person of a stranger who would supply him or her with money or liquor. A long-haired boy with a three days' growth of hair upon his chin, of whom the proprietor spoke proudly as a poet, recited in verse a long descriptive story of what the pictures on the wall were intended to represent, and another youth, with a Vandyck beard and slouched hat, and curls hanging to his shoulder, sang Aristide Bruant's song of "Saint Lazare." All of the women of the place belonged to the class which spends many months of each year in that prison. The music of the song is in a minor key, and is strangely sad and eerie. It is the plaint of a young girl writing to her lover from within the walls of the prison, begging him to be faithful to her while she is gone, and Bruant cynically makes her designate three or four feminine friends as those whose society she particularly desires him to avoid. The women, all of whom sang with sodden seriousness, may not have appreciated how well the words of the song applied to themselves, but you could imagine that they did, and this gave to the moment and the scene a certain touch of interest. Apart from this the place was dreary, and the pictures indecent and stupid. There is much more of interest in the Café of Aristide Bruant, on the Boulevard Rochechouart. Bruant is the modern François Villon. He is the poet of the people, and more especially of the criminal classes. He sings the virtues or the lack of virtue of the several districts of Paris, with the life of which he claims an intimate familiarity. He is the bard of the bully, and of the thief, and of the men who live on the earnings of women. He is unquestionably one of the most picturesque figures in Paris, but his picturesqueness is spoiled in some degree by the evident fact that he is conscious of it. He is a poet, but he is very much more of a _poseur_. [Illustration: AT BRUANT'S] Bruant began by singing his own songs in the café chantant in the Champs Élysées, and celebrating in them the life of Montmartre and the Place de la République, and of the Bastille. He has done for the Parisian bully what Albert Chevallier has done for the coster of Whitechapel, and Edward Harrigan for the East Side of New York, but with the important difference that the Frenchman claims to be one of the class of whom he writes, and the audacity with which he robs stray visitors to his café would seem to justify his claims. There is no question as to the strength in his poems, nor that he gives you the spirit of the places which he describes, and that he sees whatever is dramatic and characteristic in them. But the utter heartlessness with which he writes of the wickedness of his friends the souteneurs rings false, and sounds like an affectation. One of the best specimens of his verse is that in which he tells of the Bois de Boulogne at night, when the woods, he says, cloak all manner of evil things, and when, instead of the rustling of the leaves, you hear the groans of the homeless tossing in their sleep under the sky, and calls for help suddenly hushed, and the angry cries of thieves who have fallen out over their spoils and who fight among themselves; or the hurried footsteps of a belated old gentleman hastening home, and followed silently in the shadow of the trees by men who fall upon and rob him after the fashion invented and perfected by le Père François. Others of his poems are like the most realistic paragraphs of _L'Assommoir_ and _Nana_ put into verse. Bruant himself is a young man, and an extremely handsome one. He wears his yellow hair separated in the middle and combed smoothly back over his ears, and dresses at all times in brown velvet, with trousers tucked in high boots, and a red shirt and broad sombrero. He has had the compliment paid him of the most sincere imitation, for a young man made up to look exactly like him now sings his songs in the cafés, even the characteristically modest one in which Bruant slaps his chest and exclaims at the end of each verse: "And I? I am Bruant." The real Bruant sings every night in his own café, but as his under-study at the Ambassadeurs' is frequently mistaken for him, he may be said to have accomplished the rather difficult task of being in two places at once. Bruant's café is a little shop barred and black without, and guarded by a commissionnaire dressed to represent a policeman. If you desire to enter, this man raps on the door, and Bruant, when he is quite ready, pushes back a little panel, and scrutinizes the visitor through the grated opening. If he approves of you he unbars the door, with much jangling of chains and rasping of locks, and you enter a tiny shop, filled with three long tables, and hung with all that is absurd and fantastic in decoration, from Chéret's bill-posters to unframed oil-paintings, and from beer-mugs to plaster death-masks. There is a different salutation for every one who enters this café, in which all those already in the place join in chorus. A woman is greeted by a certain burst of melody, and a man by another, and a soldier with easy satire, as representing the government, by an imitation of the fanfare which is blown by the trumpeters whenever the President appears in public. There did not seem to be any greeting which exactly fitted our case, so Bruant waved us to a bench, and explained to his guests, with a shrug: "These are two gentlemen from the boulevards who have come to see the thieves of Montmartre. If they are quiet and well-behaved we will not rob them." After this somewhat discouraging reception we, in our innocence, sat perfectly still, and tried to think we were enjoying ourselves, while we allowed ourselves to be robbed by waiters and venders of songs and books without daring to murmur or protest. Bruant is assisted in the entertainment of his guests by two or three young men who sing his songs, the others in the room joining with them. Every third number is sung by the great man himself, swaggering up and down the narrow limits of the place, with his hands sunk deep in the pockets of his coat, and his head rolling on his shoulders. At the end of each verse he withdraws his hands, and brushes his hair back over his ears, and shakes it out like a mane. One of his perquisites as host is the privilege of saluting all of the women as they leave, of which privilege he avails himself when they are pretty, or resigns it and bows gravely when they are not. It is amusing to notice how the different women approach the door when it is time to go, and how the escort of each smiles proudly when the young man deigns to bend his head over the lips of the girl and kiss her good-night. The café of the Black Cat is much finer and much more pretentious than Bruant's shop, and is of wider fame. It is, indeed, of an entirely different class, but it comes in here under the head of the show-places of Paris at night. It was originally a sort of club where journalists and artists and poets met round the tables of a restaurant-keeper who happened to be a patron of art as well, and fitted out his café with the canvases of his customers, and adopted their suggestions in the arrangement of its decoration. The outside world of Paris heard of these gatherings at the Black Cat, as the café and club were called, and of the wit and spirit of its _habitués_, and sought admittance to its meetings, which was at first granted as a great privilege. But at the present day the café has been turned over into other hands, and is a show-place pure and simple, and a most interesting one. The café proper is fitted throughout with heavy black oak, or something in imitation of it. There are heavy broad tables and high wainscoting and an immense fireplace and massive rafters. [Illustration: AT THE BLACK CAT] To set off the sombreness of this, the walls are covered with panels in the richest of colors, by Steinlen, the most imaginative and original of the Parisian illustrators, in all of which the black cat appears as a subject, but in a different rôle and with separate treatment. Upon one panel hundreds of black cats race over the ocean, in another they are waltzing with naiads in the woods, and in another they are whirling through space over red-tiled roofs, followed by beautiful young women, gendarmes, and boulevardiers in hot pursuit. And in every other part of the café the black cat appears as frequently as did the head of Charles I. in the writings of Mr. Dick. It stalks stuffed in its natural skin, or carved in wood, with round glass eyes and long red tongue, or it perches upon the chimney-piece with back arched and tail erect, peering down from among the pewter pots and salvers. The gas-jets shoot from the mouths of wrought-iron cats, and the dismembered heads of others grin out into the night from the stained-glass windows. The room shows the struggle for what is odd and bizarre, but the drawings in black and white and the watercolors and oil-paintings on the walls are signed by some of the cleverest artists in Paris. The inscriptions and rules and regulations are as odd as the decorations. As, for example, the one placed halfway up the narrow flight of stairs which leads to the tiny theatre, and which commemorates the fact that the café was on such a night visited by President Carnot, who--so the inscription adds, lest the visitor should suppose the Black Cat was at all impressed by the honor--"is the successor of Charlemagne and Napoleon I." Another fancy of the Black Cat was at one time to dress all the waiters in the green coat and gold olive leaves of the members of the Institute, to show how little the poets and artists of the café thought of the other artists and poets who belonged to that ancient institution across the bridges. But this has now been given up, either because the uniforms proved too expensive, or because some one of the Black Cat's _habitués_ had left his friends "for a ribbon to wear in his coat," and so spoiled the satire. Three times a week there is a performance in the theatre up-stairs, at which poets of the neighborhood recite their own verses, and some clever individual tells a story, with a stereopticon and a caste of pasteboard actors for accessories. These latter little plays are very clever and well arranged, and as nearly proper as a Frenchman with such a temptation to be otherwise could be expected to make them. It is a most informal gathering, more like a performance in a private house than a theatre, and the most curious thing about it is the character of the audience, which, instead of being bohemian and artistic, is composed chiefly of worthy bourgeoisie, and young men and young women properly chaperoned by the parents of each. They sit on very stiff wooden chairs, while a young man stands on the floor in front of them with his arms comfortably folded and recites a poem or a monologue, or plays a composition of his own. And then the lights are all put out, and a tiny curtain is rung up, showing a square hole in the proscenium, covered with a curtain of white linen. On this are thrown the shadows of the pasteboard figures, who do the most remarkable things with a naturalness which might well shame some living actors. It would be impossible to write of the entertainment Paris affords at night without cataloguing the open-air concerts and the public gardens and dance-halls. The best of the cafés chantants in Paris is the Ambassadeurs'. There are many others, but the Ambassadeurs' is the best known, is nearest to the boulevards, and has the best restaurant. It is like all the rest in its general arrangement, or all the others copy it, so that what is true of the Ambassadeurs' may be considered as descriptive of them all. The Ambassadeurs' is a roof-garden on the ground, except that there are comfortable benches instead of tables with chairs about them, and that there is gravel underfoot in place of wooden flooring. Lining the block of benches on either side are rows of boxes, and at the extreme rear is the restaurant, with a wide balcony, where people sit and dine, and listen to the music of the songs without running any risk of hearing the words. The stage is shut in with mirrors and set with artificial flowers, which make a bad background for the artists, and which at matinées, in the broad sunlight, look very ghastly indeed. But at night, when all the gas-jets are lit and the place is crowded, it is very gay, joyous, and pretty. [Illustration: A CAFÉ CHANTANT] The Parisian may economize in household matters, in the question of another egg for his breakfast, and in the turning of an uneaten entrée into a soup, but in public he is most generous; and he is in nothing so generous as in his reckless use of gas. He raises ten lamp-posts to every one that is put up in London or New York, and he does not plant them only to light some thing or some person, but because they are pleasing to look at in themselves. It is difficult to feel gloomy in a city which is so genuinely illuminated that one can sit in the third-story window of a hotel and read a newspaper by the glare of the gas-lamps in the street below. This is a very wise generosity, for it helps to attract people to Paris, who spend money there, so that in the end the lighting of the city may be said to pay for itself. If we had as good government in New York as there is in Paris, Madison Square would not depend for its brilliancy at night on the illuminated advertising of two business firms. Individuals follow the municipality of Paris in this extravagance, and the Ambassadeurs' is in consequence as brilliant as many rows of gas-jets can make it, and these globes of white light among the green branches of the trees are one of the prettiest effects on the Champs Élysées at night. They do not turn night into day, but they make the darkness itself more attractive by contrast. The performers at the Ambassadeurs' are the best in their line of work, and the audiences are composed of what in London would be called the middle class, mixed with cocottes and boulevardiers. You will also often see American men and women who are well known at home dining there on the balcony, but they do not bring young girls with them. It is interesting to note what pleases French people of the class who gather at these open-air concerts. What is artistic they seem to appreciate much more fully than would an American or an English audience--at least, they are more demonstrative in their applause; but the contradictory feature of their appreciation lies in their delight and boisterous enthusiasm, not only over what is very good, but also over what is most childish horse-play. They enjoy with equal zest the quiet, inimitable character studies of Nicolle and the efforts of two trained dogs to play upon a fiddle, while a hideous, gaunt creature, six foot tall, in a woman's ballet costume, throws them off their chairs in convulsions of delight. They are like children with a mature sense of the artistic, and still with an infantile delight in what is merely noisy and absurd. It is also interesting to note how much these audiences will permit from the stage in the direction of suggestiveness, and what would be called elsewhere "outraged propriety." This is furnished them to the highest degree by Yvette Guilbert. It seems that as this artist became less of a novelty, she recognized that it would be necessary for her to increase the audacity of her songs if she meant to hold her original place in the interest of her audiences, and she has now reached a point in daring which seems hardly possible for her or any one else to pass. No one can help delighting in her and in her line of work, in her subtlety, her grace, and the absolute knowledge she possesses of what she wants to do and how to do it. But her songs are beyond anything that one finds in the most impossible of French novels or among the legends of the Viennese illustrated papers. These latter may treat of certain subjects in a too realistic or in a scoffing but amusing manner, but Guilbert talks of things which are limited generally to the clinique of a hospital and the _blague_ of medical students; things which are neither funny, witty, nor quaint, but simply nasty and offensive. The French audiences of the open-air concerts, however, enjoy these, and encore her six times nightly. At Pastor's Theatre last year a French girl sang a song which probably not one out of three hundred in the audience understood, but which she delivered with such appropriateness of gesture as to make her meaning plain. When she left the stage there was absolute silence in the house, and in the wings the horrified manager seized her by the arms, and in spite of her protests refused to allow her to reappear. So her performance in this country was limited to that one song. It was a very long trip to take for such a disappointment, and the management were, of course, to blame for not knowing what they wanted and what their audiences did not want, but the incident is interesting as showing how widely an American and a French audience differs in matters of this sort. There was another Frenchwoman who appeared in New York last winter, named Duclerc. She is a very beautiful woman, and very popular in Paris, and I used to think her amusing at the Ambassadeurs', where she appealed to a sympathetic audience; but in a New York theatre she gave you a sense of personal responsibility that sent cold shivers down your back, and you lacked the courage to applaud, when even the gallery looked on with sullen disapproval. And when the Irish comedian who followed her said that he did not understand her song, but that she was quite right to sing it under an umbrella, there was a roar of relief from the audience which showed it wanted some one to express its sentiments, which it had been too polite to do except in silence. This tolerance impressed me very much, especially because I had seen the same woman suffer at the hands of her own people, whom she had chanced to offend. The incident is interesting, perhaps, as showing that the French have at times not only the child's quick delight, but also the cruelty of a child, than which there is nothing more unreasoning and nothing more savage. [Illustration: ON MONTMARTRE] One night at the Ambassadeurs', when Duclerc had finished the first verse of her song, a man rose suddenly in the front row of seats and insulted her. Had he used the same words in any American or English theatre, he would have been hit over the head by the member of the orchestra nearest him, and then thrown out of the theatre into the street. It appeared from this man's remarks that the actress had formerly cared for him, but that she had ceased to do so, and that he had come there that night to show her how well he could stand such treatment. He did this by bringing another woman with him, and by placing a dozen bullies from Montmartre among the audience to hiss the actress when she appeared. This they did with a rare good-will, while the rejected suitor in the front row continued to insult her, assisted at the same time by his feminine companion. No one in the audience seemed to heed this, or to look upon it as unfair to himself or to the actress, who was becoming visibly hysterical. There was a piece of wood lying on the stage that had been used in a previous act, and Duclerc, in a frenzy at a word which the man finally called to her, suddenly stooped, and, picking this up, hurled it at him. In an instant the entire audience was on its feet. This last was an insult to itself. As long as it was Duclerc who was being attacked, it did not feel nor show any responsibility, but when she dared to hurl sticks of wood at the face of a Parisian audience, it rose in its might and shouted its indignation. Under the cover of this confusion the hired bullies stooped, and, scooping up handfuls of the gravel with which the place is strewn, hurled them at Duclerc, until the stones rattled around her on the stage like a fall of hail. She showed herself a very plucky woman, and continued her song, even though you could see her face growing white beneath the rouge, and her legs twisting and sinking under her when she tried to dance. It was an awful scene, breaking so suddenly into the easy programme of the evening, and one of the most cowardly and unmanly exhibitions that I have ever witnessed. There did not seem to be a man in the place who was not standing up and yelling "À bas Duclerc!" and the groans and hisses and abuse were like the worst efforts of a mob. Of course the stones did not hurt the woman, but the insult of being stoned did. They put an end to her misery at last by ringing down the curtain, and they said at the stage door afterwards that she had been taken home in a fit. When I saw her a few months later at Pastor's, I was thankful that, as a people, our self-respect is not so easily hurt as to make us revenge a slight upon it by throwing stones at a woman. Of course a Frenchman might say that it is not fair to judge the Parisians by the audience of a music-hall, but there were several ladies of title and gentlemen of both worlds in the audience, who a few months later assailed Jane Harding when she appeared as Phryne in the Opéra Comique with exactly the same violence and for as little cause. These outbursts are only temporary aberrations, however; as one of the attendants of the Ambassadeurs' said, "To-morrow they will applaud her the more to make up for it," which they probably did. It is in the same spirit that they change the names of streets, and pull down columns only to rebuild them again, until it would seem a wise plan for them, as one Englishman suggested, to put the Column of Vendôme on a hinge, so that it could be raised and lowered with less trouble. Of the public gardens and dance-halls there are a great number, and the men who have visited Paris do not have to be told much concerning them, and the women obtain a sufficiently correct idea of what they are like from the photographs along the Rue de Rivoli to prevent their wishing to learn more. What these gardens were in the days of the Second Empire, when the Jardin Mabille and the Bal Bullier were celebrated through books and illustrations, and by word of mouth by every English and American traveller who had visited them, it is now difficult to say. It may be that they were the scenes of mad abandon and fascinating frenzy, of which the last generation wrote with mock horror and with suggestive smiles, and of which its members now speak with a sigh of regret. But we are always ready to doubt whether that which has passed away, and which in consequence we cannot see, was as remarkable as it is made to appear. We depreciate it in order to console ourselves. And if the Mabille and the Bullier were no more wickedly attractive in those days than is the Moulin Rouge which has taken their place under the Republic, we cannot but feel that the men of the last generation visited Paris when they were very young. Perhaps it is true that Paris was more careless and happy then. It can easily be argued so, for there was more money spent under the Empire, and more money given away in fêtes and in spectacles and in public pleasures, and the Parisian in those days had no responsibility. Now that he has a voice and a vote, and is the equal of his President, he devotes himself to those things which did not concern him at all in the earlier times. Then the Emperor and his ministers felt the responsibility, and asked of him only that he should enjoy himself. [Illustration: SOME YOUNG PEOPLE OF MONTMARTRE] But whatever may have been true of the spirit of Paris then, the man who visits it to-day expecting to see Leech's illustrations and Mark Twain's description of the Mabille reproduced in the Jardin de Paris and the Moulin Rouge will be disappointed. He will, on the contrary, find a great deal of light and some very good music, and a mixed crowd composed chiefly of young women and Frenchmen well advanced in years and English and American tourists. The young women have all the charm that only a Frenchwoman possesses, and parade quietly below the boxes, and before the rows of seats that stretch around the hall or the garden, as it happens to be, and are much better behaved and infinitely more self-respecting and attractive in appearance than the women of their class in London or New York. But there are no students nor grisettes to kick off high hats and to dance in an ecstasy of abandon. There are in their places from four to a dozen ugly women and shamefaced-looking men, who are hired to dance, and who go sadly through the figures of the quadrille, while one of the women after another shows how high she can kick, and from what a height she can fall on the asphalt, and do what in the language of acrobats is called a "split;" there is no other name for it. It is not an edifying nor thrilling spectacle. [Illustration: AT THE MOULIN ROUGE] The most notorious of these dance-halls is the Moulin Rouge. You must have noticed when journeying through France the great windmills that stand against the sky-line on so many hilltops. They are a picturesque and typical feature of the landscape, and seem to signify the honest industry and primitiveness of the French people of the provinces. And as the great arms turn in the wind you can imagine you can hear the sound of the mill-wheel clacking while the wheels inside grind out the flour that is to give life and health. And so when you see the great Red Mill turn high up where four streets meet on the side of Montmartre, and know its purpose, you are impressed with the grim contrast of its past uses and its present notoriety. An imaginative person could not fail to be impressed by the sight of the Moulin Rouge at night. It glows like a furnace, and the glare from its lamps reddens the sky and lights up the surrounding streets and cafés and the faces of the people passing like a conflagration. The mill is red, the thatched roof is red, the arms are picked out in electric lights in red globes, and arches of red lamp-shades rise on every side against the blackness of the night. Young men and women are fed into the blazing doors of the mill nightly, and the great arms, as they turn unceasingly and noisily in a fiery circle through the air, seem to tell of the wheels within that are grinding out the life and the health and souls of these young people of Montmartre. If you have visited many of the places touched upon in this article in the same night, you will find yourself caught in the act by the early sunlight, and as it will then be too late to go to bed, you can do nothing better than turn your steps towards the Madeleine. There you may find the market-people taking the flowers out of the black canvas wagons and putting up the temporary booths, while the sidewalk is hidden with a mass of roses in their white paper cornucopiæ and the dark, damp green of palms and ferns. It will be well worth your while to go on through the silent streets from this market of flowers to the market of food in the Halles Centrales, where there are strawberry patches stretching for a block, and bounded by acres of radishes or acres of mushrooms, and by queer fruits from as far south as Algiers and Tunis, just arrived from Marseilles on the train, and green pease and carrots from no greater a distance than just beyond the fortifications. It is the only spot in the city where many people are awake. Everybody is awake here, bustling and laughing and scolding--porters with brass badges on their sleeves carrying great piles of vegetables, and plump market-women in white sleeves and caps, and drivers in blue blouses smacking their lips over their hot coffee after their long ride through the night. It is like a great exposition building of food exhibits, with the difference that all of these exhibits are to be scattered and are to disappear on the breakfast-tables of Paris that same morning. Loud-voiced gentlemen are auctioneering off whole crops of potatoes, a sidewalk at a time, or a small riverful of fish with a single clap of the hands; live lobsters and great turtles crawl and squirm on marble slabs, and vistas of red meat stretch on iron hooks from one street corner to the next. You are, and feel that you are, a drone in this busy place, and salute with a sense of guilty companionship the groups of men and girls in dinner dress who have been up all night, and who come singing and chaffing in their open carriages in search of coffee and a box of strawberries, or a bunch of cold, crisp radishes with the dew still on them, which they buy from a virtuous matron of grim and disapproving countenance at a price which throws a lurid light on the profits of Bignon's and Laurent's. And then you become conscious of your evening dress and generally dissolute and out-of-place air, and hurry home through the bright sunlight to put out your sputtering candle and to creep shamefacedly to bed. III PARIS IN MOURNING [Illustration] The news of the assassination of President Carnot at Lyons reached Paris and the Café de la Paix at ten o'clock on Sunday night. What is told at the Café de la Paix is not long in traversing the length of the boulevards, and in crossing the Place de la Concorde to the cafés chantants and the public gardens in the Champs Élysées, so that by eleven o'clock on the night of the 24th of June "all Paris" was acquainted with the fact that the President of the Republic had been cruelly murdered. There are many people in America who remember the night when President Garfield died, and how, when his death was announced from the stage of the different theatres, the audience in each theatre rose silently as one man and walked quietly out. To them the President's death was not unexpected; it did not stun them, it came with no sudden shock, but it was not necessary to announce to them that the performance for that evening was at an end. They did not leave because the manager had rung down the curtain, but because at such a time they felt more at ease with themselves outside of a place of amusement than in one. This was not the feeling of the Parisians when President Carnot died. On that night no lights were put out in the cafés; no leader's bâton rapped for a sudden silence in the Jardin de Paris, and the Parisians continued to drink their bock and to dance, or to watch others dance, even though they knew that at that same moment Madame Carnot in a special train was hurrying through the night to reach the death-bed of her husband. It is never possible to tell which way the French people will jump, or how they will act at a crisis. They have no precedents of conduct; they are as likely to do the characteristic thing, which in itself is different from what people of any other nation would do under like circumstances, as the uncharacteristic thing, which is even more unexpected. They complicate history by behaving with perfect tranquillity when other people would become excited, and by losing their heads when there is no occasion for it. As the Yale captain said of the Princeton team, "They keep you guessing." So when I was convinced by the morning papers, after the first shock of unbelief, that the President of France was dead, I walked out into the streets to see what sign there would be of it in Paris. I argued that in a city given to demonstrations the feelings of the people would take some actual and visible form; that there would be meetings in the street, rioting perhaps in the Italian quarter, and extraordinary expressions of grief in the shape of crêpe and mourning. But the people were as undisturbed and tranquil as the sun; the same men were sitting at the same round tables; the same women were shopping in the Rue de la Paix, and but for an increased energy on the part of the newsboys there was no sign that a good man had died, that one who had harmed no one had himself been cruelly harmed, and that the highest office of the state was vacant. When I complained of this to Parisians, or to those who were Parisians by choice and not by birth, they explained it by saying that the people were stunned. "They are too shocked to act. It is a horror without a precedent," they said; but it struck me that they were an inordinately long time in recovering from the blow. At one o'clock on Monday morning a workman crawled out upon the roof of the Invalides, and, gathering the tricolored flag in his arms, tied a wisp of crêpe about it. The flags in the Chamber of Deputies and in the War Office were draped in the same manner, and with these three exceptions I saw no other visible sign of mourning in all Paris. On Monday night those theatres subsidized by the government, and some others, but not all, were closed for that evening. At three o'clock on Tuesday, two days after the death of the President, I counted but three flags draped with crêpe on the boulevards; but on the day following all the shops on the Rue de la Paix and the hotels on the Rue de Rivoli put out flags covered with mourning, and so advertised themselves and their grief. It is interesting to remember that the most generous display of crêpe in Paris was made by an English firm of ladies' tailors. During this time the correspondents were cabling of the grief and rage of the Parisians to sympathetic peoples all over the world; and we, in our turn, were reading in Paris the telegrams of condolence and the resolutions of sympathy from as different sources as the Parliament of Cape Town and the Congress of the United States. What effect the reading of these sincere and honest words had upon the people of Paris I do not know, but I could not at the time conceive of their reading them without blushing. I looked up from the paper which gave Lord Rosebery's speech, and the brotherly words which came from little colonies in the Pacific, from barbarous monarchs, and from widows to Madame Carnot, and from corporations, Emperors, and Presidents to the city of Paris, and saw nothing in the countenances of the Parisians at the table next to mine but smiles of gratification at the importance that they had so suddenly attained in the eyes of the whole world. [Illustration: AT THE JARDIN DE PARIS] It was also interesting to note by the Paris papers how the French valued the expressions of sympathy which poured in upon them. The fact that both Houses in the United States had adjourned to do honor to the memory of M. Carnot was not in their minds of as much importance as was the telegram from the Czar of Russia, which was given the most important place in every paper. It was followed almost invariably by the message from the German Emperor, whose telegram, it is also interesting to remember, was the second one to reach Paris after the death of the President was announced. When one reads a congratulatory telegram from the German Emperor on the result of the Cambridge-Oxford boat-race, and another of condolence to the King of Greece in reference to an earthquake, and then this one to the French people, it really seems as though the young ruler did not mean that any event of importance should take place anywhere without his having something to say concerning it. But this last telegram was well timed, and the line which said that M. Carnot had died like a soldier at his post was well chosen to please the French love of things military, and please them it did, as the Emperor knew that it would. But the condolence from the sister republic across the sea was printed at the end of the column, after those from Bulgaria and Switzerland. In the eyes of the Parisian news editor, the sympathy of the people of a great nation was not so important to his readers as the few words from an Emperor to whom they looked for help in time of war. This was not probably true of the whole of France, but it was true of the Parisians. Two years from now Carnot's assassination will have become history, and will impress them much more than it did at the time of his death. The next Salon will be filled with the apotheosis of Carnot, with his portrait and with pictures of his murder, and of France in mourning laying a wreath upon his tomb. His son will find quick promotion in the army, and may possibly aspire to Presidential honors, or threaten the safety of the republic with a military dictatorship. It sounds absurd now, but it is quite possible in a country where General Dodds at once became a dangerous Presidential possibility because he had conquered the Dahomans in the swamps of Africa. Where the French will place Carnot in their history, and how they will reverence his memory, the next few years will show; but it is a fact that at the time of his death they treated him with scant consideration, and were much more impressed with the effect which their loss made upon others than with what it meant to them. It is not a pleasant thing to write about, nor is it the point of view that was taken at the time, but in writing of facts it is more interesting to report things as they happened than as they should have happened. It is also true that those Parisians who could decently make a little money out of the nation's loss went about doing so with an avidity that showed a thrifty mind. Almost every one who had windows or balconies facing the line of the funeral procession offered them for rent, and advertised them vigorously by placards and through the papers; venders of knots of crêpe and emblems of mourning filled the streets with their cries. Portraits of Carnot in heavy black were hawked about by the same men who weeks before had sold ridiculous figures of him taking off his hat and bowing to an imaginary audience; the great shops removed their summer costumes from the windows and put stacks of flags bound with crêpe in their place; the flower-shops lined the sidewalks with specimens of their work in mourning-wreaths; and the papers, after their first expression of grief, proceeded to actively discuss Carnot's successor, quoting the popularity of different candidates by giving the betting odds for and against them, as they had done the week before, when the horses were entered for the Grand Prix. This was three days after Carnot's death, and while he was still lying unburied at the Élysée. The French constitution provides that in such an event as that of 1893 the National Assembly shall be convened immediately to select a new President. According to this the President of the Senate, in his capacity as President of the National Assembly, decided that the two Chambers should convene for that purpose at Versailles on Wednesday, June 27th, at one o'clock. This certainly seemed to promise a scene of unusual activity, and perhaps historical importance. I knew what the election of a President meant to us at home, and I argued that if the less excitable Americans could work themselves up into such a state of frenzy that they blocked the traffic of every great city, and reddened the sky with bonfires from Boston to San Francisco, the Frenchman's ecstasy of excitement would be a spectacle of momentous interest. This seemed to be all the more probable because to the American an election means a new Executive but for the next four years, while to the Frenchman the new state of affairs that threatened him would extend for seven. Young Howlett had a vacant place on the top of his public coach, and was just turning the corner as I came out of the hotel; so I went out with him, and looked anxiously down on each side to see the hurrying crowds pushing forward to the palace in the suburbs; and when I found that all roads did not lead to Versailles that day, I decided that it must be because we were on the wrong one, which would eventually lead us somewhere else. [Illustration: PORTRAITS OF CARNOT IN HEAVY BLACK] It did not seem possible that the Parisians would feel so little interest as to who their new President might be that they would remain quietly in Paris while he was being elected on its outskirts. I expected to see them trooping out along the seven-mile road to Versailles in as great numbers as when they went there once before to bring a Queen back to Paris. But when we drove into Versailles the coach rattled through empty streets. There were no processions of cheering men in white hats tramping to the music of "Marching through Georgia." No red, white, and blue umbrellas, no sky-rocket yells, no dangling badges with gold fringe, nothing that makes a Presidential convention in Chicago the sight of a lifetime. No one was shouting the name of his political club or his political favorite; no one had his handkerchief tucked inside his collar and a palm leaf in his hand; there were no brass-bands, no banners, and not even beer. Nor was there any of the excitement which surrounds the election of even a Parliamentary candidate in England. I saw no long line of sandwich-men tramping in each gutter, no violent Radicals hustling equally elated Conservatives, and crying, "Good old Smith!" or "Good old Brown!" no women with primrose badges stuck to their persons making speeches or soliciting votes from the back of dog-carts. And nobody was engaged in throwing kippered herring or blacking the eyes of anybody else. Versailles was as unmoved as the statues in her public squares. Her broad, hospitable streets lay cool and quiet in the reflection of her yellow house-fronts, and under the heavy shadows of the double rows of elms the round, flat cobble-stones, unsoiled by hurrying footsteps, were as clean and regular as a pan of biscuit ready for the oven. There were about six hundred Deputies in the town, who had not been there the day before, and who would leave it before the sun set that evening, but they bore themselves so modestly that their presence could not disturb the sleepy, sunny beauty of the grand old gardens and of the silent thoroughfares, and when we rattled up to the Hôtel des Réservoirs at one o'clock we made more of a disturbance with the coach-horn than had the arrival of both Chambers of Deputies. These gentlemen were at _déjeuner_ when we arrived, and eating and drinking as leisurely and good-naturedly as though they had nothing in hand of more importance than a few calls to make or a game of cards at the club. Indeed, it looked much more as though Versailles had been invaded by a huge wedding-party than by a convention of Presidential electors. Some of the Deputies had brought their wives with them, and few as they were, they leavened and enlivened the group of black coats as the same number of women of no other nation could have done, and the men came from different tables to speak to them, to drink their health, and to pay them pretty compliments; and the good fellows of the two Chambers hustled about like so many maîtres d'hôtel seeing that such a one had a place at the crowded tables, that the salad of this one was being properly dressed, and that another had a match for his cigarette. Besides the Deputies, there were a half-dozen young and old Parisians--those who make it a point to see everything and to be seen everywhere. They would have attended quite as willingly a fête of flowers, or a prize-fight between two English jockeys at Longchamps, and at either place they would have been as completely at home. They were typical Parisians of the highest world, to whom even the selection of a President for all France was not without its interest. With them were the diplomats, who were pretending to take the change of executive seriously, as representatives of the powers, but who were really whispering that it would probably bring back the leadership of the fashionable world to the Élysée, where it should be, and that it meant the reappearance of many royalist families in society, and the inauguration of magnificent functions, and the reopening of ballrooms long unused. It was throughout a pretty, lazy, well-bred scene. Outside the entrance to the hotel, coachmen with the cockades of the different embassies in their hats were standing at ease in their shirtsleeves, and with their pipes between their teeth; and the gentlemen, having finished their breakfast, strolled out into the court-yard and watched the hostlers rubbing down the coach-horses, or walked up the hill to the palace, where the boy sentries were hugging their guns, and waving back the few surprised tourists who had come to look at the pictures in the historical gallery, and who did not know that the palace on that day was being used for the prologue of a new historical play. [Illustration: "TO BRING A QUEEN BACK TO PARIS"] At the gates leading to the great Court of Honor there were possibly two hundred people in all. They came from the neighboring streets, and not from Paris. None of these people spoke in tones louder than those of ordinary converse, and they speculated with indolent interest as to the outcome of the afternoon's voting. A young man in a brown straw hat found an objection to Casimir-Perier as a candidate because he was so rich, but he withdrew his objection when an older man in a blouse pointed out that Casimir-Perier would make an excellent appearance on horseback. "The President of France," he said, "must be a man who can look well on a horse;" and the crowd of old women in white caps, and boy soldiers with their hands on their baggy red breeches, from the barracks across the square, nodded their heads approvingly. It was a most interesting sight when compared with the anxious, howling mob that surrounds the building in which a Presidential convention is being held at home. It is also interesting to remember that a special telephone wire was placed in the Chamber at Versailles in order that the news of the election might be communicated to the newspaper offices in Paris, and that this piece of enterprise was considered so remarkable that it was commented upon by the entire newspaper press of that city. In Chicago, at the time of the last Presidential convention, when a nomination merely and not an election was taking place, the interest of the people justified the Western Union Telegraph Company in sending out fifteen million words from the building during the three days of the convention. Wires ran from it directly to the offices of all the principal newspapers from San Francisco to Boston, and in Chicago itself there were two hundred extra operators, and relays of horsemen galloping continually with "copy" from the convention to the main offices of the different telegraph companies. This merely shows a difference of temperament: the American likes to know what has happened while it is hot, and to know all that has happened. The European and the Parisian, on this occasion at least, was content to wait at a café in ease and comfort until he was told the result. He did not feel that he could change that result in any way by going out to Versailles in the hot sun and cheering his candidate from the outside of an iron fence. At the gate of the Place d'Armes there was a crowd of fifty people, watched by a few hundred more from under the shade of the trees and the awnings of the restaurants around the square. The dust rose in little eddies, and swept across the square in yellow clouds, and the people turned their backs to it and shrugged their shoulders and waited patiently. Inside of the Court of Honor a single line of lancers stood at their horses' heads, their brass helmets flashing like the signals of a dozen heliographs. Officers with cigarettes and heavily braided sleeves strolled up and down, and took themselves much more seriously than they did the matter in hand. A dozen white-waistcoated and high-hatted Deputies standing outside of the Chamber suggested nothing more momentous or national than a meeting of a Presbyterian General Assembly. Bicyclers of both sexes swung themselves from their machines and peered curiously through the iron fence, and, seeing nothing more interesting than the fluttering pennants of the lancers, mounted their wheels again and disappeared in the clouds of dust. In the meanwhile Casimir-Perier has been elected on the first ballot, which was taken without incident, save when one Deputy refused to announce his vote as the roll was called until he was addressed as "citizen," and not as "monsieur." This silly person was finally humored, and the result was declared, and Casimir-Perier left the hall to put on a dress-suit in order that he might receive the congratulations of his friends. As the first act of the new President, this must not be considered as significant of the particular man who did it, but as illustrating the point of view of his countrymen, who do not see that if the highest office in the country cannot lend sufficient dignity to the man who holds it, a dress-suit or his appearance on horseback is hardly able to do so. The congratulations last a long time, and are given so heartily and with such eloquence that the new President weeps while he grasps the hand of his late confrères, and says to each, "You must help me; I need you all." Neither is the fact that the President wept on this occasion significant of anything but that he was laboring under much excitement, and that the temperament of the French is one easily moved. People who cannot see why a strong man should weep merely because he has become a President must remember that Casimir-Perier wears the cross of the Legion of Honor for bravery in action on the field of battle. The congratulations come to an end at last, and the new President leaves the palace, and takes his place in the open carriage that has been waiting his pleasure these last two hours. There is a great crowd around the gate now, all Versailles having turned out to cheer him, and he can hear them crying "Vive le Président!" from far across the length of the Court of Honor. M. Dupuy, his late rival at the polls, seats himself beside him on his left, and two officers in uniform face him from the front. Before his carriage are two open lines of cavalry, proudly conscious in their steel breastplates and with their carbines on the hip that they are to convoy the new President to Paris; and behind him, in close order, are the lancers, with their flashing brass helmets, and their pennants fluttering in the wind. The horses start forward with a sharp clatter of hoofs on the broad stones of the square, the Deputies raise their high hats, and with a jangling of steel chains and swords, and with the pennants snapping in the breeze like tiny whips, the new President starts on his triumphal ride into Paris. The colossal statues of France's great men, from Charlemagne to Richelieu, look down upon him curiously as he whirls between them to the iron gateway and disappears in the alley of mounted men and cheering civilians. He is out of it in a moment, and has galloped on in a whirling cloud of yellow dust towards the city lying seven miles away, where, six months later, by his unexpected resignation, he is to create a consternation as intense as that which preceded his election. It would be interesting to know of what Casimir-Perier thought as he rode through the empty streets in the cool of the summer evening, startling the villagers at their dinners, and bringing them on a run to the doors by the ringing jangle of his mounted men and the echoing hoofs. Perhaps he thought of the anarchists who might attempt his life, or of those who succeeded with the man whose place he had taken, or, what is more likely, he gave himself up to the moment, and said to himself, as each new face was framed by a window or peered through a doorway: "Yes, it is the new President of France, Casimir-Perier; not only of France, but of all her colonies. By to-night they will know in Siam, in Tunis, in Algiers, and in the swamps of Dahomey that there is a new step on the floor, and governors of provinces, and native rulers of barbarous states, and _sous-préfets_, and pretenders to the throne of France, will consider anxiously what the change means to them, and will be measuring their fortunes with mine." The carriage and its escort enter the cool shadows of the Bois de Boulogne at Passy, and pass Longchamps, where the French President annually reviews the army of France, and where now the victorias and broughams and fiacres draw to one side; and he notes the look of amused interest on the faces of their occupants as his outriders draw rapidly nearer, and the smiles of intelligence as they comprehend that it is the new President, and he catches a glimpse out of the corner of his eye of nodding faces, and hats half raised in salute as he gallops past. It must have been a pleasant drive. Very few men have taken it. Very few men have swept round the circle of the Arc de Triomphe and seen the mass of glittering carriages stretching far down the avenue part and make way for them on either side. Casimir-Perier's brief term included many imbitterments, but it is a question if they will ever destroy the sweetness of that moment when power first touched him as he was borne back to Paris the President of France; and in his retirement he will recall that ride in the summer twilight, which the refractory Deputies who caused his downfall have never taken, and hear again the people cheering at Versailles, and the galloping horses, and see the crowd that waited for him in the Place de la Concorde and ran beside his carriage across the bridge. * * * * * Although the funeral procession was not to leave the Élysée until ten o'clock on Sunday morning, the thrifty citizens of Paris began to prepare for it as early as eleven o'clock on Saturday night. The Champs Élysées at that hour was lined with tables, boxes, and ladders, and any other portable object that could afford from its top a view of the pageant and standing-room, for which one might reasonably ask a franc. This barricade stretched in an unbroken front, which extended far back under the trees from the Avenue Marigny to the Place de la Concorde, where it spread out over the raised sidewalks and around the fountains and islands of safety, until the square was transformed into what looked like a great market-place. It was one of the most curious sights that Parisians have ever seen in time of peace. Over four thousand people were encamped around these temporary stands, some drinking and eating, others sleeping, and others busily and noisily engaged in erecting still more stands, while the falling of the boards that were to form them rattled as they fell from the carts to the asphalt like the reports of musketry. Each stand was lit by a lantern and a smoking lamp; and the men and women, as they moved about in the half-darkness, or slept curled up beneath the carts and tables, suggested the bivouac of an army, or that part of a besieged city where the people had gathered with their household goods for safety. The procession the next morning moved down the Champs Élysées and across the Place de la Concorde and along the Rue de Rivoli to Notre Dame, from whence, after the ceremony there, it proceeded on to the Panthéon. All of this line of march was guarded on either side by double lines of infantry, and one can obtain an idea of how great was the crowd behind them by the fact that on the morning of the procession five hundred people were taken in ambulances to the different hospitals of Paris. This included those who had fainted in the crush, or who had been overcome by the heat, or who had fallen from one of the many tottering scaffoldings. Each of the great vases along the iron fence of the Tuileries held one or two men, one of whom sat opposite us across the Rue de Rivoli, who had been there six hours, like Stylites on his pillar, except that the Parisian had an opera-glass, a morning paper, and a bottle of red wine to keep him company. The trees in the Tuileries were blackened with men, and the sky-line of every house-top moved with them. The crowd was greatest perhaps in the Place de la Concorde, where it spread a black carpet over the great square, which parted and fell away before the repeated charges of the cavalry like a piece of cloth before a pair of shears. It was a most orderly crowd, and an extremely good-humored one, and it manifested no strong feeling at any time, except over two features of the procession, which had nothing to do with the death of Carnot. Except when there was music, which was much too seldom, the crowd chattered and laughed as it might have done at a purely military function, and only the stern hisses of a few kept the majority from applauding any one who passed for whom they held an especial interest. The procession left the Élysée at ten o'clock, to the accompaniment of minute-guns from the battery on the pier near the Chamber of Deputies. It was led by a very fine body of cuirassiers, who presented a better appearance than any of the soldiers in the procession. It was not the great military display that had been expected; there was no artillery in line, and the navy was not represented, save by a few guards around the wreath from the officers of that particular service. The regiments of infantry, who were followed by the cavalry, lacked form, and marched as though they had not convinced themselves that what they were doing was worth doing well. The infantry was followed by the mourning-wreaths sent by the Senate and by the different monarchs of Europe. These wreaths form an important and characteristic part of the funeral of a great man in France, and as the French have studied this form of expressing their grief for some time, they produce the most magnificent and beautiful tributes, of greater proportions and in better taste than any that can be seen in any other country in the world. The larger of these wreaths were hung from great scaffoldings, supported on floats, each drawn by four or six horses. Some of these were so large that a man standing upright within them could not touch the opposite inner edges with his finger-tips. They were composed entirely of orchids or violets, with bands of purple silk stretching from side to side, and bearing the names of the senders in gold letters. The wreath sent by the Emperor of Russia was given a place by itself, and mounted magnificently on a car draped with black, and surrounded by a special guard of military and servants of the household. The wreaths of the royalties were followed by more soldiers, and then came the black and silver catafalque that bore the body of the late President. The wheels of this car were muffled with cloth, and the horses that drew it were completely hidden under trappings of black and silver; the reins were broad white ribbons, and there was a mute at each horse's head. As the car passed, there was the first absolute silence of the morning, and many people crossed themselves, and all of the men stood bareheaded. Separated from the catafalque by but a few rods, and walking quite alone, was the new President, Casimir-Perier. There were soldiers and attendants between him and the line of soldiers which guarded the sidewalks, but he was alone in that there was no one near him. According to the protocol he should not have been there at all, as the etiquette of this function ruled that the new President should not intrude his person upon the occasion when the position held by his predecessor is being officially recognized for the last time. Casimir-Perier, however, chose to disregard the etiquette of this protocol, arguing that the occasion was exceptional, and that no one had a better right to mourn for the late President than the man who had succeeded to the dangers and responsibilities of that office. He was also undoubtedly moved by the fact that it was generally believed that his life would be attempted if he did walk conspicuously in the procession. Had Carnot died a natural death, Casimir-Perier's presence at the funeral would have been in debatable taste, but Carnot's assassination, and the threats which hung thick in the air, made the President take the risk he did, in spite of the fact that Carnot had been murdered in a public place, and not on account of it. It was distinctly a courageous thing for him to do, and it was done against the wishes of his best friends and the entreaties of his family, who spent the entire night before the procession in a chapel praying for his safety. He walked erect, with his eyes turned down, and with his hat at his side. He was in evening dress, with the crimson sash of the Legion of Honor across his breast, and he presented a fine and soldierly bearing, and made an impression, both by his appearance and by his action, that could not have been gained so soon in any other manner. The embassies and legations followed Casimir-Perier in an irregular mass of glittering groups. All of these men were on foot. There was no exception permitted to this rule; and it was interesting to see Lord Dufferin in the uniform of a viceroy of India, which he wore instead of his diplomatic uniform, marching in the dust in the same line with the firemen and letter-carriers. The ambassadors and their attachés were undoubtedly the most brilliant and picturesque features of the occasion, and the United States ambassador and his secretaries were, on account of the contrast their black-and-white evening dress made to the colors and ribbons of the others, on this occasion, the most conspicuous and appropriately dressed men present. [Illustration: "THE GIRL WHO REPRESENTED ALSACE"] But what best pleased the French people were two girls dressed in the native costumes of Alsace and Lorraine. They headed the deputation from those provinces. The girl who represented Alsace was particularly beautiful, with long black hair parted in the middle, and hanging down her back in long plaits. She wore the characteristic head-dress of the Alsacian women, and a short red skirt, black velvet bodice, and black stockings. She carried the French flag in front of her draped in crêpe, and as she stepped briskly forward the wind blew the black bow on her hair and the folds of the flag about her face, and gave her a living and spirited air that in no way suited the occasion, but which delighted the populace. They applauded her and her companion from one end of the march to the other, and the spectacle must have rendered the German ambassador somewhat uncomfortable, and made him wish for a billet among a people who could learn to forget. The only other feature of the procession which called forth applause, which no one tried to suppress, was the presence in it of an old general who was mistaken by the spectators for Marshal Canrobert. This last of the marshals of France was too ill to march in the funeral cortége; but the old soldier, who looked not unlike him, and whose limping gait and bent back and crutch-stick led him to be mistaken for the marshal, served the purpose quite as well. One wondered if it did not embarrass the veteran to find himself so suddenly elevated into the rôle of popular idol of the hour; but perhaps he persuaded himself that it was his white hair and crutch and many war-medals which called forth the ovation, and that he deserved it on his own account--as who can say he did not? The unpleasant incident of the day was one which was unfortunately acted in full view of the balconies of the hotels Meurice and Continental. These were occupied by most of the foreigners visiting Paris, and were virtually the grandstands of the spectacle. In the Rue Castiglione, which separated the two hotels, and in full sight of these critical onlookers, a horse was taken with the blind staggers, and upset a stand, throwing those who sat upon it out into the street. In an instant the crash of the falling timbers and the cries of the half-dozen men and women who had been precipitated into the street struck panic into the crowd of sight-seers on the pavement and among the firemen who were at that moment marching past. The terror of another dynamite outrage was in the minds of all, and without waiting to learn what had happened, or to even look, the thousands of people broke into a confused mass of screaming, terrified creatures, running madly in every direction, and changing the quiet solemnity of the moment into a scene of horror and panic. The firemen dropped the wreath they were carrying and fled with the crowd; and then the French soldiers who were lining the pavements, to the astonishment and disgust of the Americans and English on the balconies, who were looking down like spectators at a play, tucked their guns under their arms and joined in the mad rush for safety. It was a sight that made even the women on the balconies keep silence in shame for them. It was pathetic, ridiculous, and inexcusable, and the boy officers on duty would have gained the sympathy of the unwilling spectators had they cut their men down with their swords, and shown the others that he who runs away from a falling grandstand is not needed to live to fight a German army later. It is true that the men who ran away were only boys fresh from the provinces, with dull minds filled with the fear of what an anarchist might do; but it showed a lack of discipline that should have made the directors of the Salon turn the military pictures in that gallery to the wall, until the picture exhibited in the Rue Castiglione was effaced from the minds of the visiting strangers. Imagine a squad of New York policemen running away from a horse with the blind staggers, and not, on the contrary, seizing the chance to club every one within reach back to the sidewalk! Remember the London bobby who carried a dynamite bomb in his hand from the hall of the Houses of Parliament, and the Chicago police who walked into a real anarchist mob over the bodies of their comrades, and who answered the terrifying bombs with the popping of their revolvers! It is surprising that Napoleon, looking down upon the scene in the Rue Castiglione from the top of his column, did not turn on his pedestal. After such an exhibition as this it was only natural that the people should turn from the soldiers to find the greater interest in the miles of wreaths that came from every corner of France. These were the expressions of the truer sympathy with the dead President, and there seemed to be more sentiment and real regret in the little black bead wreaths from the villages in the south and west of France than there were in all the great wreaths of orchids and violets purchased on the boulevards. The procession had been two hours in passing a given point. It had moved at ten o'clock, and it was four in the afternoon before it dispersed at the Panthéon, and Deputies in evening dress and attachés in uniform and judges in scarlet robes could be seen hurrying over Paris in fiacres, faint and hot and cross, for the first taste of food and drink that had touched their lips since early morning. A few hours later there was not a soldier out of his barracks, the scaffoldings had been taken to pieces, the spectators had been distributed in trains to the environs, the bands played again in the gardens, and the theatres opened their doors. Paris had taken off her mourning, and fallen back into her interrupted routine of pleasure, and had left nothing in the streets to show that Carnot's body had passed over them save thousands of scraps of greasy newspapers in which the sympathetic spectators of the solemn function had wrapped their breakfasts. IV THE GRAND PRIX AND OTHER PRIZES I think the most satisfying thing about the race for the Grand Prix at Longchamps is the knowledge that every one in Paris is justifying your interest in the event by being just as much excited about it as you are. You have the satisfaction of feeling that you are with the crowd, or that the crowd is with you, as you choose to put it, and that you move in sympathy with hundreds of thousands of people, who, though they may not be at the race-track in person, wish they were, which is the next best thing, and which helps you in the form of moral support, at least. You feel that every one who passes by knows and approves of your idea of a holiday, and will quite understand when you ride out on the Champs Élysées at eleven o'clock in the morning with four other men packed in one fiacre, or when, for no apparent reason, you hurl your hat into the air. There are two ways of reaching Longchamps, the right way and the wrong way. The wrong way is to go with the crowd the entire distance through the Bois, and so find yourself stopped half a mile from the race-track in a barricade of carriages and hired fiacres, with the wheels scraping, and the noses of the horses rubbing the backs of the carriages in front. This is entertaining for a quarter of an hour, as you will find that every American or English man and woman you have ever met is sitting within talking distance of you, and as you weave your way in and out like a shuttle in a great loom you have a chance to bow to a great many friends, and to gaze for several minutes at a time at all of the celebrities of Paris. But after an hour has passed, and you have discovered that your driver is not as clever as the others in stealing ground and pushing himself before his betters, you begin to grow hot, dusty, and cross, and when you do arrive at the track you are not in a proper frame of mind to lose money cheerfully and politely, like the true sportsman that you ought to be. The right way to go is through the Bois by the Lakes, stopping within sound of the waterfall at the Café de la Cascade. The advantage of this is that you escape the crowd, and that you have the pleasing certainty in your mind throughout the rest of the afternoon of knowing that you will be able to find your carriage again when the races are over. If you leave your fiacre at the main entrance, you will have to pick it out from three or four thousand others, all of which look exactly alike; and even if you do tie a red handkerchief around the driver's whip, you will find that six hundred other people have thought of doing the same thing, and you will be an hour in finding the right one, and you will be jostled at the same time by the boys in blouses who are hunting up lost carriages, and finding the owners to fit them. You can avoid all this if you go to the Cascade and take your coachman's little ticket, and send him back to wait for you in the stables of the café, not forgetting to give him something in advance for his breakfast. It is then only a three minutes' walk from the restaurant among the trees to the back door of the race-track, and in five minutes after you have left your carriage you will have passed the sentry at the ticket-box, received your ticket from the young woman inside of it, given it to the official with a high hat and a big badge, and will be within the enclosure, with your temper unruffled and your boots immaculate. And then, when the races are over, you have only to return to the restaurant and hand your coachman's ticket to the tall chasseur, and let him do the rest, while you wait at a little round table and order cooling drinks. All great race meetings look very much alike. There are always the long grandstand with human beings showing from the lowest steps to the sky-line; the green track, and the miles of carriages and coaches encamped on the other side; the crowd of well-dressed people in the enclosure, and the thin-legged horses cloaked mysteriously in blankets and stalking around the paddock; the massive crush around the betting-booths, that sweeps slowly in eddies and currents like a great body of water; and the rush which answers the starting-bell. The two most distinctive features of the Grand Prix are the numbers of beautifully dressed women who mix quietly with the men around the booths at which the mutuals are sold, and the fact that every one speaks English, either because that is his native tongue, or because, if he be a Frenchman, he finds so many English terms in his racing vocabulary that it is easier for him to talk entirely in that tongue than to change from French to English three or four times in each sentence. But the most curious, and in a way the most interesting feature of the Grand Prix day, is the queer accompaniment to which the races are run. It never ceases or slackens, or lowers its sharp monotone. It comes from the machines which stamp the tickets bought in the mutual pools. If you can imagine a hundred ticket-collectors on an elevated railroad station all chopping tickets at the same time, and continuing at this uninterruptedly for five hours, you can obtain an idea of the sound of this accompaniment. It is not a question of cancelling a five-cent railroad ticket with these little instruments. It is the same to them whether they clip for the girl who wagers a louis on the favorite for a place, and who stands to win two francs, or for the English plunger who has shoved twenty thousand francs under the wire, and who has only the little yellow and red ticket which one of the machines has so nonchalantly punched to show for his money. People may neglect the horses for luncheon, or press over the rail to see them rush past, or gather to watch the President of the Republic enter to a solemn fanfare of trumpets between lines of soldiers, but there are always a few left to feed these little machines, and their clicking goes on through the whole of the hot, dusty day, like the clipping of the shears of Atropos. [Illustration: THE RESTAURANT AMONG THE TREES] The Grand Prix is the only race at which you are generally sure to win money. You can do this by simply betting against the English horse. The English horse is generally the favorite, and of late years the French horse-owners have been so loath to see the blue ribbon of the French turf go to perfidious Albion that their patriotism sometimes overpowers their love of fair play. If the English horse is not only the favorite, but also happens to belong to the stable of Baron Hirsch, you have a combination that apparently can never win on French soil, and you can make your bets accordingly. When Matchbox walked on to the track last year, he was escorted by eight gendarmes, seven detectives in plain clothes, his two trainers, and the jockey, and it was not until he was well out in the middle of the track that this body-guard deserted him. Possibly if they had been allowed to follow him round the course on bicycles he might have won, and no combination of French jockeys could have ridden him into the rail, or held Cannon back by a pressure of one knee in front of another, or driven him to making such excursions into unknown territory to avoid these very things that the horse had little strength left for the finish. But perhaps the French horse was the better one, after all, and it was certainly worth the loss of a few francs to see the Frenchmen rejoice over their victory. To their minds, such a defeat of the English on the field of Longchamps went far to wipe away the memory of that other victory on the field near Brussels. Grand Prix night is a fête-night in Paris--that is, in the Paris of the Boulevards and the Champs Élysées--and if you wish to dine well before ten o'clock, you should engage your table for that night several days in advance. You have seen people during Horse Show week in New York waiting in the hall at Delmonico's for a table for a half-hour at a time, but on Grand Prix night you will see hundreds of hungry men standing outside of the open-air restaurants in the Champs Élysées, or wandering disconsolately under the trees from the crowded tables of l'Horloge across the Avenue to those of the Ambassadeurs', and from them to the Alcazar d'Été, and so on to Laurent's and the Café d'Orient. Every one apparently is dining out-of-doors on that night, and the white tables, with their little lamps, and with bottles of red wine flickering in their light, stretch under the trees from the Place de la Concorde up to the Avenue Matignon. There are splashing fountains between them and bands of music, and the voices of the singers in the cafés chantants sound shrilly above the chorus of rattling china and of hundreds of people talking and laughing, and the never-ceasing undertone of the cabs rolling by on the great Avenue, with their lamps approaching and disappearing in the night like thousands of giant fire-flies. You are sure to dine well in such surroundings, and especially so after the great race--for the reason that if your friends have won, they command a good dinner to celebrate the fact; or should they have lost, they design a better one in order to help them forget their ill-fortune. The spirit of adventure and excitement that has been growing and feeding upon itself throughout the day of the Grand Prix reaches its climax after the dinner hour, and finds an outlet among the trees and Chinese lanterns of the Jardin de Paris. There you will see all Paris. It is the crest of the highest wave of pleasure that rears itself and breaks there. You will see on that night, and only on that night, all of the most celebrated women of Paris racing with linked arms about the asphalt pavement which circles around the band-stand. It is for them their one night of freedom in public, when they are permitted to conduct themselves as do their less prosperous sisters, when, instead of reclining in a victoria in the Bois, with eyes demurely fixed ahead of them, they can throw off restraint and mix with all the men of Paris, and show their diamonds, and romp and dance and chaff and laugh as they did when they were not so famous. The French swells who are their escorts have cut down Chinese lanterns with their sticks, and stuck the candles inside of them on the top of their high hats with the burning tallow, and made living torches of themselves. So on they go, racing by--first a youth in evening dress, dripping with candle-grease, and then a beautiful girl in a dinner gown, with her silk and velvet opera cloak slipping from her shoulders--all singing to the music of the band, sweeping the people before them, or closing in a circle around some stately dignitary, and waltzing furiously past him to prevent his escape. Sometimes one party will storm the band-stand and seize the musicians' instruments, while another invades the stage of the little theatre, or overpowers the women in charge of the shooting-gallery, or institutes a hurdle-race over the iron tables and the wicker chairs. [Illustration: INTERESTED IN THE WINNER] Or you will see ambassadors and men of title from the Jockey Club jostling cockney bookmakers and English lords to look at a little girl in a linen blouse and a flat straw hat, who is dancing in the same circle of shining shirt-fronts _vis-à-vis_ to the most-talked-of young person in Paris, who wears diamonds in ropes, and who rode herself into notoriety by winning a steeplechase against a field of French officers. The first is a hired dancer, who will kick off some gentleman's hat when she wants it, and pass it round for money, and the other is the companion of princes, and has probably never been permitted to enter the Jardin de Paris before; but they are both of the same class, and when the music stops for a moment they approach each other smiling, each on her guard against possible condescension or familiarity; and the hired dancer, who is as famous in her way as the young girl with the ropes of diamonds is in hers, compliments madame on her dancing, and madame calls the other "mademoiselle," and says, "How very warm it is!" and the circle of men around them, who are leaning on each other's shoulders and standing on benches and tables to look, smile delightedly at the spectacle. They consider it very _chic_, this combination. It is like a meeting between Madame Bernhardt and Yvette Guilbert. But the climax of the night was reached last year when the band of a hundred pieces struck buoyantly into that most reckless and impudent of marches and comic songs, "The Man that Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo." The cymbals clashed, and the big drums emphasized the high notes, and the brass blared out boastfully with a confidence and swagger that showed how sure the musicians were of pleasing that particular audience with that particular tune. And they were not disappointed. The three thousand men and women hailed the first bars of the song with a yell of recognition, and then dancing and strutting to the rhythm of the tune, and singing and shouting it in French and English, they raised their voices in such a chorus that they could be heard defiantly proclaiming who they were and what they had done as far as the boulevards. And when they reached the high note in the chorus, the musicians, carried away by the fever of the crowd, jumped upon the chairs, and held their instruments as high above their heads as they could without losing control of that note, and every one stood on tiptoe, and many on one foot, all holding on to that highest note as long as their breath lasted. It was a triumphant, reckless yell of defiance and delight; it was the war-cry of that class of Parisians of which one always reads and which one sees so seldom, which comes to the surface only at unusual intervals, and which, when it does appear, lives up to its reputation, and does not disappoint you. * * * * * It happened a short time ago, when I was in Paris, that the ranks of those members of the Institute of France who are known as the Forty Immortals were incomplete, one of the Forty having but lately died. I do not now recall the name of this Immortal, which is not, I trust, an evidence of ignorance on my part so much as it is an illustration of the circumstance that when men choose to make sure of immortality while they are alive, in preference to waiting for it after death, they are apt to be considered, when they cease to live, as having had their share, and the world closes its account with them, and opens up one with some less impatient individual. It is only a matter of choice, and suggests that one cannot have one's cake and eat it too. And so, while we can but envy François Coppée in his green coat and his laurel wreath of the Immortals of France, we may remember the other sort of immortality that came to François Villon and François Millet, who were not members of the Institute, and whose coats were very ragged indeed. I do, however, remember the name of the gentleman who was elected to fill the vacancy in the ranks of the Forty, and in telling how he and other living men take on the robe of immortality I hope to report the proceedings of one of the most interesting functions of the French capital. He was the Vicomte de Bornier, and his name was especially impressed upon me by a paragraph which appeared in the _Figaro_ on the day following his admittance to the Academy. "M. Manel," the paragraph read, "the well-known journalist, has renounced his candidacy for the vacant chair among the Forty Immortals. M. Manel will be well remembered by Parisians as the author who has written so much and so charmingly under the _nom de plume_ of 'Le Vicomte de Bornier.'" Whether this was or was not fair to the gentleman I had seen so highly honored I do not know, but it was calculated to make him a literary light of interest. You are told in Paris that the title of Academician is the only one remaining under the republic which counts for anything; and, on the other hand, you hear the Academy called a pleasant club for old gentlemen, to which new members are elected not for any great work which they are doing in the world, but because their point of view is congenial to those who are already members. All that can be said against the Academy by a Frenchman has been printed by Alphonse Daudet in _The Immortals_. In that novel he charges that the Academy numbs the style of whosoever wears its green livery; he says that he who enters its door leaves originality behind, that he grows conservative and self-conscious, and that whatever freshness of thought or literary method may have been his before his admittance to its venerable portals is chilled by the severe classicism of his thirty-nine brethren. This may or may not be true of some of the members, but it certainly cannot be true of all, as many of them were never distinguished as authors, but were elected, as were De Lesseps and Pasteur, for discoveries and research in science, medicine, or engineering. Nor is it true of M. Paul Bourget, who is the last distinguished Frenchman to be received into the ranks of the Immortals. The same observations which he made to me while in this country, and when he was not an Academician, upon Americans and American institutions, he has repeated, since his accession to the rank of an Immortal, in _Outre Mer_. And the freedom with which he has spoken shows that the shadow of the palm-trees has not clouded his cosmopolitan point of view, nor the classicism of the Academy dulled his wonderful powers of analysis. In his election, representing as he does the most brilliant of the younger and progressive school of French writers, the Academy has not so much honored the man as the man has honored the Academy. M. Daudet's opinion, however, is interesting as being that of one of the most distinguished of French writers, and it is a satire which costs something, for it shuts off M. Daudet forever from hope of election to the body at which he scoffs, and at the same time robs him of the possibility of ever enjoying the added money value which attaches to each book that bears the leaves of the Academy on its title-page. Since the days of Richelieu, Frenchmen have mocked at this institution, and Frenchmen have given up years of their lives in working, scheming, and praying to be admitted to its councils, and died disappointed, and bitterly cursing it in their hearts. We have on the one hand the familiar story of Alexis Piron, who had engraved on his tombstone, "_Ci-gît Piron, qui ne fut rien, Pas même Académicien._" And on the other there is the present picture of M. Zola knocking year after year at its portals, asking men in many ways his inferior to permit him a right to sit beside them. If you look over its lists from 1635 to the present day you will find as many great names among its members as those which are missing from its rolls; so that proves nothing. [Illustration: "AROUND SOME STATELY DIGNITARY"] No ridicule can disestablish the importance of the work done by the Academy in keeping the French language pure, or the value of its Dictionary, or the incentive which it gives to good work by examining and reporting from time to time on literary, scientific, and historical works. A short time ago the anarchists of Paris determined to actively ridicule the Académie Française by putting forth a foolish person, Citizen Achille Le Roy, as a candidate for its honors. As a preliminary to election to the Academy a candidate must call upon all of its members. It is a formality which may be considered somewhat humiliating, as it suggests begging from door to door, hat in hand; but Citizen Le Roy made his round of visits in triumphal state, dressed in the cast-off uniform of a Bolivian general, and accompanied by a band of music and a wagonette full of journalists. Wherever he was not received he deposited an imitation bomb at the door of the member who had refused to see him, either as a warning or as a joke, and much to the alarm of the servants who opened the door. He concluded his journey, which extended over several days, by being photographed outside of the door of the Institute, which was, of course, the only side of the door which he will ever see. The Institute of France stands beyond the bridges, facing the Seine. It is a most impressive and ancient pile, built around a great court, and guarded by statues in bronze and stone of the men who have been admitted to its gates. The ceremony of receiving a new member takes place in one end of this quadrangle of stone, in a little round hall, not so large as the auditorium of a New York theatre, and built like a dissecting-room, with three rows of low-hanging stone balconies circling the entire circumference of its walls. One part of the lowest balcony is divided into two large boxes, with a high desk between them, and a flight of steps leading down from it into the pit, which is packed close with benches. In one of these boxes sit some members of the Institute, and in the other the members of the Académie Française, which is only one, though the best known, of the five branches into which the Institute is divided. Behind the high desk sits the President, or, as he is called, the Secrétaire Perpétuel, of the Academy, with a member on either side. It is the duty of one of these to read the address of welcome to the incoming mortal. It is a very pretty sight and a most important function in the social world, and as there are no reserved places, the invited ones come as early as eight o'clock in the morning to secure a good place, although the brief exercises do not begin until two o'clock in the afternoon. At that hour the street outside is lined with long rows of carriages, guarded by the smartest of English coachmen, and emblazoned with the oldest of French coats-of-arms. In the court-yard there is a fluttering group of pretty women in wonderful toilets, surrounding a few distinguished-looking men with ribbons in their coats, and encircled by a ring of journalists making notes of the costumes and taking down the names of the social celebrities. A double row of soldiers--for the Institute is part of the state--lines the main hall leading to the chamber, and salutes all who pass, whether men or women. I was so unfortunate as to arrive very late, but as I came in with the American ambassador I secured a very good place, although a most awkwardly conspicuous one. Three old gentlemen in silk knickerbockers and gold chains bowed the ambassador down the hall between the soldiers, and out on to the steps which lead from the desk between the boxes in which sat the Immortals. There they placed two little camp-stools about eight inches high, on which they begged us to be seated. There was not another square foot of space in the entire chamber which was not occupied, so we dropped down upon the camp-stools. We were as conspicuous as you would be if you seated yourself on top of the prompter's box on the stage of the Grand Opera-house, and I felt exactly, after the audience had examined us at their leisure, as though the Secretary was about to suddenly rap on his desk and auction me off for whatever he could get. Still, we sat among the Immortals, if only for an hour, and that was something. The venerable Secretary peered over his desk, and the other Immortals gazed with polite curiosity, for the ambassador had only just arrived in Paris, and was not yet known. The gentleman on the right of the Secretary was François Coppée, a very handsome man, with a strong, kind face, smoothly shaven, and suggesting a priest or a tragic actor. He wore the uniform of the Academy, which Napoleon spent much time in devising. It consists of a coat of dark green, bordered with palm leaves in a lighter green silk; there are, too, a high standing collar and a white waistcoat and a pearl-handled sword. The poet also wore a great many decorations, and smiled kindly upon Mr. Eustis and myself, with apparently great amusement. On the other side of the President, back of Mr. Eustis, was Comte d'Haussonville; he is a tall man with a Vandyck beard, and it was he who was to read the address of welcome to the Vicomte de Bornier. Below in the pit, and all around in the balconies, were women beautifully dressed, among whom there were as few young girls as there were men. These were the most interesting women in Parisian society--the ladies of the Faubourg St.-Germain, who at that time would have appeared at scarcely any other function, and the ladies who support the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, and the pretty young daughters of champagne and chocolate-making papas who had married ancient titles, and who try to emulate in their interests, if not in their toilets, their more noble sisters-in-law, and all the prettiest women of the high world, as well as the sisters of pretenders to the throne and the wife of President Carnot. The absence of men was very noticeable; the Immortals seemed to have it all to themselves, and it looked as though they had purposely refrained from asking any men, or that the men who had not been given the robe of immortality were jealous, and so stayed away of their own accord. Those who were there either looked bored, or else posed for the benefit of the ladies, with one hand in the opening of their waistcoats, nodding their heads approvingly at what the speaker said. In the pit I recognized M. Blowitz, the famous correspondent of the _Times_, entirely surrounded by women. He wore a gray suit and a flowing white tie, and he did not seem to be having a very good time. There were also among the Immortals Jules Simon, and Alexandre Dumas fils, dark-skinned, with little, black, observant eyes, and white, curled hair, and crisp mustache. He seemed to be more interested in watching the women than in listening to the speeches, and moved restlessly and inattentively. When the exercises were over, and the Academicians came out of their box and were presented to Mr. Eustis, Dumas was gravely courteous, and spoke a few words of welcome to the ambassador in a formal, distant way, and then hurried off by himself without waiting to chat with the women, as the others did. He was the most interesting of them all to me, and the least interested in what was going on. There were many others there, and it was amusing to try and fasten to them the names of Pasteur and Henri Meilhac, Ludovic Halévy, and the Duc d'Aumale, the uncle of the Comte de Paris, who was then alive, and Benjamin Constant, who had the week before been admitted to the Institute. Some of them, heavy-eyed men, with great firm jaws and heavy foreheads, wearing their braided coats uneasily, as though they would have been more comfortable in a surgeon's apron or a painter's blouse, kept you wondering what they had done; and others, dapper and smiling and obsequious, made you ask what they could possibly do. The Vicomte Bornier opened the proceedings by reading his address to the beautiful ladies, with his cocked hat under his arm and his mother-of-pearl sword at his side, and I am afraid it did not appeal to me as a very serious business. It was too suggestive of an afternoon tea. There was too much patting of kid-gloved hands, and too many women altogether. It was a little like Bunthorne and the twenty maidens. If the little theatre had been crowded with men eager to hear what this new light in literature had to say, it might have been impressive, but the sight of forty distinguished men sitting apart and calling themselves fine names, and surrounded by women who believed they were what they called themselves, had its humorous side. I could not make out what the speech was about, because the French was too good; but it was eminently characteristic and interesting to find that both Bornier and D'Haussonville made their most successful points when they paid compliments to the ladies present, or to womenkind in general, or when they called for revenge on Germany. I thought it curious that even in a eulogy on a dead man, and in an address of welcome to a live one, each Frenchman could manage to introduce at least three references of Alsace-Lorraine, and to bow and make pretty speeches to the ladies in the audience. [Illustration: "THE MAN THAT BROKE THE BANK AT MONTE CARLO"] There is a peculiarity about this second address which is worth noting. It concerns itself with the virtues of the incoming member, and as he is generally puffed up with honor, the address is always put into the hands of one whose duty it is to severely criticise and undervalue him and his words. It is a curious idea to belittle the man whom you have just honored, but it is the custom, and as both speeches are submitted to a committee before they are read, there is no very hard feeling. It is only in the address read after a member's death that he is eulogized, and then it does not do him very much good. On the occasion of Pierre Loti's admission to the Academy he, instead of eulogizing the man whose place he had taken, lauded his own methods and style of composition so greatly that when the second member arose he prefaced his remarks by suggesting that "M. Loti has said so much for himself that he has left me nothing to add." * * * * * It is very much of a step from the Académie Française to the Fête of Flowers in the Bois de Boulogne, but the latter comes under the head of one of the shows of Paris, and is to me one of the prettiest and the most remarkable. I do not believe that it could be successfully carried out in any other city in the world. There would certainly be horse-play and roughness to spoil it, and it is only the Frenchman's idea of gallantry and the good-nature of both the French man and woman which render it possible. It would be an easy matter to hold a fête of flowers at Los Angeles or at Nice, or in any small city or watering-place where all the participants would know one another and the masses would be content to act as spectators; but to venture on such a spectacle, and to throw it open to any one who pays a few francs, in as great a city as Paris, requires, first of all, the highest executive ability before the artistic and pictorial side of the affair is considered at all, and the most hearty co-operation of the state or local government with the citizens who have it in hand. On the day of the fête the Allée du Jardin d'Acclimatation in the Bois is reserved absolutely for the combatants in this annual battle of flowers, which begins at four o'clock in the afternoon and lasts uninterruptedly until dinner-time. Each of the cross-roads leading up to the Allée is barricaded, and carriages are allowed to enter or to depart only at either end. This leaves an open stretch of road several miles in extent, and wide enough for four rows of carriages to pass one another at the same moment. Thick woods line the Allée on either side, and the branches of the trees almost touch above it. Beneath them, and close to the roadway, sit thousands of men, women, and children in close rows, and back of them hundreds more move up and down the pathways. The carriages proceed in four unbroken lines, two going up and two going down; and as they pass, the occupants pelt each other and the spectators along the road-side with handfuls of flowers. For three miles this battle rages between the six rows of people, and the air is filled with the flying missiles and shrieks of laughter and the most graceful of compliments and good-natured _blague_. At every fifty yards stands a high arch, twined with festoons trailing from one arch to the next, and temporary flagpoles flying long banners of the tricolor, and holding shields which bear the monogram of the republic. The long festoons of flowers and the flags swinging and flying against the dark green of the trees form the Allée into one long tunnel of color and light; and at every thirty paces there is the gleaming cuirass of a trooper, with the sun shining on his helmet and breastplate, and on other steel breastplates, which extend, like the mirrors in "Richard III.," as far as the eye can reach, flashing and burning in the sun. Between these beacons of steel, and under the flags and flowers and green branches, move nearly eight miles of carriages, with varnished sides and polished leather flickering in the light, each smothered with broad colored ribbons and flowers, and gay with lace parasols. It is a most cosmopolitan crowd, and it is interesting to see how seriously some of the occupants of the carriages take the matter in hand, and how others turn it into an ovation for themselves, and still others treat it as an excuse to give some one else pleasure. You will see two Parisian dandies in a fiacre, with their ammunition piled as high as their knees, saluting and chaffing and calling by name each pretty woman who passes, and following them in the line you will see a respectable family carriage containing papa, mamma, and the babies, and with the coachman on the box hidden by great breastworks of bouquets. To the proud parents on the back seat the affair is one which is to be met with dignified approval, and they bow politely to whoever hurls a rose or a bunch of wild flowers at one of their children. They, in their turn, will be followed by a magnificent victoria, glittering with varnish and emblazoned by strange coats-of-arms, and holding two coal-black negroes, with faces as shiny as their high silk hats. They have with them on the front seat a hired guide from one of the hotels, who is showing Paris to them, and who is probably telling them that every woman who laughs and hits them with a flower is a duchess at least, at which their broad faces beam with good-natured embarrassment and their teeth show, and they scramble up and empty a handful of rare roses over the lady's departing shoulders. There are frequent halts in the procession, which moves at a walk, and carriages are often left standing side by side facing opposite ways for the space of a minute, in which time there is ample opportunity to exhaust most of the ammunition at hand, or to express thanks for the flowers received. The good order of the day is very marked, and the good manners as well. The flowers are not accepted as missiles, but as tributes, and the women smile and nod demurely, and the men bow, and put aside a pretty nosegay for the next meeting; and when they draw near the same carriage again, they will smile their recognition, and wait until the wheels are just drawing away from one another, and then heap their offerings at the ladies' feet. There are a great number of Americans who are only in Paris for the month, and whom you have seen on the steamer, or passing up the Rue de la Paix, or at the banker's on mail day, and they seize this chance to recognize their countrymen, and grow tremendously excited in hitting each other in the eyes and on the nose, and then pass each other the next day in the Champs Élysées without the movement of an eyelash. The hour excuses all. It has the freedom of carnival-time without its license, and it is pretty to see certain women posing as great ladies, in hired fiacres, and being treated with as much _empressement_ and courtesy by every man as though he believed the fiacre was not hired, and the pearl necklace was real and not from the Palais Royal, and that he had not seen the woman the night before circling around the endless treadmill of the Jardin de Paris. Sometimes there will be a coach all red and green and brass, and sometimes a little wicker basket on low wheels, with a donkey in the shafts, and filled with children in the care of a groom, who holds them by their skirts to keep them from hurling themselves out after the flowers, and who looks immensely pleased whenever any one pelts them back and points them out as pretty children. But the greater number of the children stand along the road-side with their sisters and mothers. They are of the good bourgeois class and of the decently poor, who beg prettily for a flower instead of giving one, and who dash out under the wheels for those that fall by the wayside, and return with them to the safety of their mother's knee in a state of excited triumph. When you see how much one of the broken flowers means to them, you wonder what they think of the cars that pass toppling over with flowers, with the harness and the spokes of the wheels picked out in carnations, and banked with shields of nodding roses at the sides and backs. These are the carriages entered for prizes, and some of them are very wonderful and very beautiful. One holds a group of Rastaqouères, who have spent a clerk's yearly income in decorating their victoria, that they may send word back to South America that they have won a prize from a board of Parisian judges. And another is a big billowy phaeton blooming within and without with white roses and carnations, and holding a beautiful lady with auburn hair and powdered face, and with the lace of her Empire bonnet just falling to the line of her black eyebrows. She is all in white too, with white gloves, and a parasol of nothing but white lace, and she reclines rather than sits in this triumphal car of pure white flowers, like a Cleopatra in her barge, or Venus lying on the white crest of the waves. All the men recognize her, and throw their choicest offerings into her lap; but whenever I saw her she seemed more interested in the crowds along the road-side, who announced her approach with an excited murmur of admiration, and the little children in blouses threw their nosegays at her, and then stood back, abashed at her loveliness, with their hands behind them. She was quite used to being pelted with flowers at one of the theatres, but she seemed to enjoy this tribute very much, and she tossed roses back at the children, and watched them as they carried her flowers to the nurse or the elder sister who was taking care of them, and who looked after the woman with frightened, admiring eyes. V AMERICANS IN PARIS Americans who go to Paris might be divided, for the purposes of this article at least, into two classes--those who use Paris for their own improvement or pleasure, and those who find her too strong for them, and who go down before her and worship her, and whom she either fashions after her own liking, or rides under foot and neglects until they lose heart and disappear forever. Balzac, in the last paragraph of one of his novels, leaves his hero standing on the top of a hill above Paris, shaking his fist at the city below him, and cursing her for a wanton. One might argue that this was a somewhat childish and theatrical point of view for the young man to have taken. He probably found in Paris exactly what he brought there, and it seems hardly fair, because the city was stronger than he, that he should blame her and call her a hard name. Paris is something much better than that, only the young man was probably not looking for anything better. He had taken her frivolous side too seriously, and had not sought for her better side at all. Some one should have told him that Paris makes a most agreeable mistress, but a very hard master. There are a few Americans who do not know this until it is too late, until they lose their heads with all the turmoil and beauty and unending pleasures of the place, and grow to believe that the voice of Paris is the voice of the whole world. Perhaps they have heard the voice speak once; it has praised a picture which they have painted, or a book of verses that they have written, or a garden fête that they have given, at which there were present as many as three ambassadors. And they sit breathless ever after, waiting for the voice to speak to them again, and while they are waiting Paris is exclaiming over some new picture, or another fête, at which there were four ambassadors; and the poor little artist or the poor little social struggler wonders why he is forgotten, and keeps on struggling and fluttering and biting his nails and eating his heart out in private, listening for the voice to speak his name once more. [Illustration: "LISTENING FOR THE VOICE TO SPEAK HIS NAME ONCE MORE"] He will not believe that his time has come and gone, and that Paris has no memory, and no desire but to see and to hear some new thing. She has taken his money and eaten his dinners and hung his pictures once or twice in a good place; but, now that his money is gone, Paris has other dinners to eat, and other statues to admire, and no leisure time to spend at his dull receptions, which have taken the place of his rare dinners, or to climb to his garret when there is a more amusing and more modern painter on the first floor. Paris is full of these poor hangers-on, who have allowed her to use them and pat them on the back, and who cannot see that her approbation is not the only reward worth the striving for, but who go on year after year tagging in her train, beseeching her to take some notice of them. They are like the little boys who run beside the coaches and turn somersaults to draw a copper from the passengers on top, and who are finally left far behind, unobserved and forgotten beside the dusty road. The wise man and the sensible man takes the button or the medal or the place on a jury that Paris gives him, and is glad to get it, and proud of the recognition and of the source from which it comes, and then continues on his way unobserved, working for the work's sake. He knows that Paris has taught him much, but that she has given him all she can, and that he must now work out his own salvation for himself. Or, if he be merely an idler visiting Paris for the summer, he takes Paris as an idler should, and she receives him with open arms. He does not go there to spend four hours a day, or even four hours a week, in the serious occupation of leaving visiting-cards. He does not invite the same people with whom he dined two weeks before in New York to dine and breakfast with him again in Paris, nor does he spend every afternoon in a frock-coat watching polo, or in flannels playing lawn-tennis on the Île de Puteaux. He has tennis and polo at home. Nor did he go all the way to Paris to dance in little hot apartments, or to spend the greater part of each day at the race-tracks of Longchamps or Auteuil. The Americans who do these things in Paris are a strange and incomprehensible class. Fortunately they do not form a large class, but they do form a conspicuous one, and while it really does not concern any one but themselves as to how they spend their time, it is a little aggravating to have them spoiling the local color of a city for which they have no real appreciation, and from which they get no more benefit than they would have received had they remained at home in Newport. They treat Paris as they would treat Narragansett Pier, only they act with a little less restraint, and are very much more in evidence. They are in their own environment and in the picture at the Pier or at the Horse Show, and if you do not like it you are at perfect liberty to keep out of it, and you will not be missed; but you do object to have your view of the Arc de Triomphe cut in two by a coach-load of them, or to have them swoop down upon D'Armenonville or Maxim's on the boulevards, calling each other by their first names, and running from table to table, and ordering the Hungarians to play "Daisy Bell," until you begin to think you are in the hall of the Hotel Waldorf, and go out into the night to hear French spoken, if only by a cabman. I was on the back seat of a coach one morning in the Bois de Boulogne, watching Howlett give a man a lesson in driving four horses at once. It was very early, and the dew was still on the trees, and the great, broad avenues were empty and sweet-smelling and green, and I exclaimed on the beauty of Paris. "Beautiful?" echoed Howlett. "I should say it was, sir. Now in London, sir, all the roads lie so straight there's no practice driving there. But in Paris it's all turns and short corners. It's the most beautiful city in the world." I thought it was interesting to find a man so wrapped up in his chosen work that he could see nothing in the French capital but the angles which made the driving of four horses a matter of some skill. But what interest can you take in those Americans who have been taught something else besides driving, and who yet see only those things in Paris that are of quite as little worth as the sharp turns of the street corners? You wonder if it never occurs to them to walk along the banks of the Seine and look over the side at the people unloading canal-boats, or clipping poodles, or watering cavalry horses, or patiently fishing; if they never pull over the books in the stalls that line the quays, or just loiter in abject laziness, with their arms on the parapet of a bridge, with the sun on their backs, and the steamboats darting to and fro beneath them, and with the towers of Notre Dame before and the grim prison of the Conciergerie on one side. Surely this is a better employment than taking tea to the music of a Hungarian band while your young friends from Beverly Farms and Rockaway knock a polo-ball around a ten-acre lot. I met two American women hurrying along the Rue de Rivoli one morning last summer who told me that they had just arrived in Paris that moment, and were about to leave two hours later for Havre to take the steamer home. "So," explained the elder, "as we have so much time, we are just running down to the Louvre to take a farewell look at 'Mona Lisa' and the 'Winged Victory;' we won't see them again for a year, perhaps." Their conduct struck me as interesting when compared with that of about four hundred other American girls, who never see anything of Paris during their four weeks' stay there each summer, because so much of their time is taken up at the dress-makers'. It is pathetic to see them come back to the hotel at five, tired out and cross, with having had to stand on their feet four hours at a time while some mysterious ceremony was going forward. It is hard on them when the sun is shining out-of-doors and there are beautiful drives and great art galleries and quaint old chapels and curious museums and ancient gardens lying free and open all around them, that they should be compelled to spend four weeks in this fashion. There was a young woman of this class of American visitors to Paris who had just arrived there on her way from Rome, and who was telling us how much she had delighted in the galleries there. She was complaining that she had no more pictures to enjoy. Some one asked her what objection she had to the Louvre or the Luxembourg. "Oh, none at all," she said; "but I saw those pictures last year." These are the Americans who go to Paris for the spring and summer only, who live in hotels, and see little of the city beyond the Rue de la Paix and the Avenue of the Champs Élysées and their bankers'. They get a great deal of pleasure out of their visit, however, and they learn how important a thing it is to speak French correctly. If they derive no other benefit from their visit they are sufficiently justified, and when we contrast them with other Americans who have made Paris their chosen home, they almost shine as public benefactors in comparison. For they, at least, bring something back to their own country: themselves, and pretty frocks and bonnets, and a certain wider knowledge of the world. That is not much, but it is more than the American Colony does. [Illustration: "STANDING ON THEIR FEET FOR HOURS AT A TIME"] There is something fine in the idea of a colony, of a body of men and women who strike out for themselves in a new country, who cut out their homes in primeval forests, and who make their peace with the native barbarians. The Pilgrim Fathers and the early settlers in Australia and South Africa and amidst the snows of Canada were colonists of whom any mother-nation might be proud; but the emigrants who shrink at the crudeness of our present American civilization, who shirk the responsibilities of our government, who must have a leisure class with which to play, and who are shocked by the familiarity of our press, are colonists who leave their country for their country's good. The American Colony in Paris is in a strange position. Its members are neither the one thing nor the other. They cannot stand in the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe and feel that any part of its glory falls on them, nor can they pretend an interest in the defeat of Tammany Hall, nor claim any portion in the magnificent triumph of the Chicago Fair. Their attitude must always be one of explanation; they are continually on the defensive; they apologize to the American visitor and to the native Frenchman; they have declined their birthright and are voluntary exiles from their home. The only way by which they can justify their action is either to belittle what they have given up, or to emphasize the benefits which they have received in exchange, and these benefits are hardly perceptible. They remain what they are, and no matter how long it may have been since they ceased to be Americans, they do not become Frenchmen. They are a race all to themselves; they are the American Colony. On regular occasions this Colony asserts itself, but only on those occasions when there is a chance of its advertising itself at the expense of the country it has renounced. When this chance comes the Colonists suddenly remember their former home; they rush into print, or they make speeches in public places, or buy wreaths for some dead celebrity. Or when it so happens that no one of prominence has died for some time, and there seems to be no other way of getting themselves noticed, the American Colony rises in its strength and remembers Lafayette, and decorates his grave. Once every month or so they march out into the country and lay a wreath on his tomb, and so for the moment gain a certain vogue with the Parisians, which is all that they ask. They do not perform this ceremony because Lafayette fought in America, but because he was a Frenchman fighting in America, and they are playing now to the French galleries and not to the American bleaching-boards. There are a few descendants of Lafayette who are deserving of our sincere sympathy. For these gentlemen are brought into the suburbs many times a year in the rain and storm to watch different American Colonists place a wreath on the tomb of their distinguished ancestor, and make speeches about a man who left his country only to fight for the independence of another country, and not to live in it after it was free. Some day the descendants of Lafayette and the secretaries of the American embassy will rise up and rebel, and refuse to lend themselves longer to the uses of these gentlemen. They will suggest that there are other graves in Paris. There is, for instance, the grave of Paul Jones, who possibly did as much for America on the sea as Lafayette did on shore. If he had only been a Frenchman, with a few descendants of title still living who would consent to act as chief mourners on occasion, his spirit might hope to be occasionally remembered with a wreath or two; but as it is, he is not to be considered with the French marquis, who must, we can well imagine, turn uneasily beneath the wreaths these self-advertising patriots lay upon his grave. The American Colony is not wicked, but it would like to be thought so, which is much worse. Among some of the men it is a pose to be considered the friend of this or that particular married woman, and each of them, instead of paying the woman the slight tribute of treating her in public as though they were the merest acquaintances, which is the least the man can do, rather forces himself upon her horizon, and is always in evidence, not obnoxiously, but unobtrusively, like a pet cat or a butler, but still with sufficient pertinacity to let you know that he is there. As a matter of fact the women have not the courage to carry out to the end these affairs of which they hint, as have the French men and women around them whose example they are trying to emulate. And, moreover, the twenty-five years of virtue which they have spent in America, as Balzac has pointed out, is not to be overcome in a day or in many days, and so they only pretend to have overcome it, and tell _risqués_ stories and talk scandalously of each other and even of young girls. But it all begins and ends in talk, and the _risqués_ stories, if they knew it, sound rather silly from their lips, especially to men who put them away when they were boys at boarding-school, and when they were so young that they thought it was grand to be vulgar and manly to be nasty. It is a question whether or not one should be pleased that the would-be wicked American woman in Paris cannot adopt the point of view of the Parisian women as easily as she adopts their bonnets. She tries to do so, it is true; she tries to look on life from the same side, but she does not succeed very well, and you may be sure she is afraid and a fraud at heart, and in private a most excellent wife and mother. If it be reprehensible to be a hypocrite and to pretend to be better than one is, it should also be wrong to pretend to be worse than one dares to be, and so lend countenance to others. It is like a man who shouts with the mob, but whose sympathies are against it. The mob only hears him shout and takes courage at his doing so, and continues in consequence to destroy things. And these foolish, pretty women lend countenance by their talk and by their stories to many things of which they know nothing from experience, and so do themselves injustice and others much harm. Sometimes it happens that an outsider brings them up with a sharp turn, and shows them how far they have strayed from the standard which they recognized at home. I remember, as an instance of this, how an American art student told me with much satisfaction last summer of how he had made himself intensely disagreeable at a dinner given by one of these expatriated Americans. "I didn't mind their taking away the character of every married woman they knew," he said; "they were their own friends, not mine; but I did object when they began on the young girls, for that is something we haven't learned at home yet. And finally they got to Miss ----, and one of the women said, 'Oh, she has so compromised herself now that no one will marry her.'" At which, it seems, my young man banged the table with his fist, and said: "I'll marry her, if she'll have me, and I know twenty more men at home who would be glad of the chance. We've all asked her once, and we're willing to ask her again." [Illustration: "THE AMERICAN COLONY IS NOT WICKED"] There was an uncomfortable pause, and the young woman who had spoken protested she had not meant it so seriously. She had only meant the girl was a trifle _passée_ and travel-worn. But when the women had left the table, one of the men laughed, and said: "You are quite like a breeze from the piny woods at home. I suppose we do talk rather thoughtlessly over here, but then none of us take what we say of each other as absolute truth." The other men all agreed to this, and protested that no one took them or what they said seriously. They were quite right, and, as a matter of fact, it would be unjust to them to do so, except to pity them. The Man without a Country was no more unfortunate than they. It is true they have Henry's bar, where they can get real American cocktails, and the Travellers', where they can play real American poker; but that is as near as they ever get to anything that savors of our country, and they do not get as near as that towards anything that savors of the Frenchman's country. They have their own social successes, and their own salons and dinner-parties, but the Faubourg St.-Germain is as strange a territory to many of them as though it were situated in the heart of the Congo Basin. Of course there are many fine, charming, whole-souled, and clean-minded American women in Paris. They are the wives of bankers or merchants or the representatives of the firms which have their branches in Paris and London as well as New York. And there are hundreds more of Americans who are in Paris because of its art, the cheapness of its living, and its beauty. I am not speaking of them, and should they read this they will understand. The American in Paris of whom one longest hesitates to speak is the girl or woman who has married a title. She has been so much misrepresented in the press, and so misunderstood, and she suffers in some cases so acutely without letting it be known how much she suffers, that the kindest word that could be said of her is not half so kind as silence. No one can tell her more distinctly than she herself knows what her lot is, or how few of her illusions have been realized. It is not a case where one can point out grandiloquently that uneasy lies the head that wears a coronet; it is not magnificent sorrow; it is just pathetic, sordid, and occasionally ridiculous. To treat it too seriously would be as absurd as to weep over a man who had allowed himself to be fooled by a thimblerigger; only in this case it is a woman who has been imposed upon, and who asks for your sympathy. There is a very excellent comic song which points out how certain things are only English when you see them on Broadway; and a title, or the satisfaction of being a countess or princess, when viewed from a Broadway or Fifth Avenue point of view, is a very pretty and desirable object. But as the title has to be worn in Paris and not in New York, its importance lies in the way in which it is considered there, not here. As far as appears on the surface, the American woman of title in Paris fails to win what she sought, from either her own people or those among whom she has married. To her friends from New York or San Francisco she is still Sallie This or Eleanor That. Her friends are not deceived or impressed or overcome--at least, not in Paris. When they return to New York they speak casually of how they have been spending the summer with the Princess So-and-So, and they do not add that she used to be Sallie Sprigs of San Francisco. But in Paris, when they are with her, they call her Sallie, just as of yore, and they let her understand that they do not consider her in any way changed since she has become ennobled, or that the glamour of her rank in any way dazzles them. And she in her turn is so anxious that they shall have nothing to say of her to her disadvantage when they return that she shows them little of her altered state, and is careful not to refer to any of the interesting names on her new visiting-list. Her husband's relations in France are more disappointing: they certainly cannot be expected to see her in any different light from that of an outsider and a nobody; they will not even admit that she is pretty; and they say among themselves that, so long as Cousin Charles had to marry a great fortune, it is a pity he did not marry a French woman, and that they always had preferred the daughter of the chocolate-maker, or the champagne-grower, or the Hebrew banker--all of whom were offered to him. The American princess cannot expect people who have had title and ancestors so long as to have forgotten them to look upon Sallie Sprigs of California as anything better than an Indian squaw. And the result is, that all which the American woman makes by her marriage is the privilege of putting her coronet on her handkerchief and the humble deference of the women at Paquin's or Virot's, who say "Madame the Baroness" and "Madame the Princess" at every second word. It really seems a very heavy price to pay for very little. We are attributing very trivial and vulgar motives to the woman, and it may be, after all, that she married for love in spite of the title, and not on account of it. But if these are love-matches, it would surely sometimes happen that the American men, in their turn, would fall in love with foreign women of title, and that we would hear of impecunious princesses and countesses hunting through the States for rich brokers and wheat-dealers. Of course the obvious answer to this is that the American women are so much more attractive than the men that they appeal to people of all nations and of every rank, and that American men are content to take them without the title. The rich fathers of the young girls who are sacrificed should go into the business with a more accurate knowledge of what they are buying. Even the shrewdest of them--men who could not be misled into buying a worthless railroad or an empty mine--are frequently imposed upon in these speculations. The reason is that while they have made a study of the relative values and the soundness of railroads and mines, they have not taken the pains to study this question of titles, and as long as a man is a count or a prince, they inquire no further, and one of them buys him for his daughter on his face value. There should be a sort of Bradstreet for these rich parents, which they could consult before investing so much money plus a young girl's happiness. There are, as a matter of fact, only a very few titles worth buying, and in selecting the choice should always lie between one of England and one of Germany. An English earl is the best the American heiress can reasonably hope for, and after him a husband with a German title is very desirable. These might be rated as "sure" and "safe" investments. But these French titles created by Napoleon, or the Italians, with titles created by the Papal Court, and the small fry of other countries, are really not worth while. Theirs are not titles; as some one has said, they are epitaphs; and the best thing to do with the young American girl who thinks she would like to be a princess is to take her abroad early in her life, and let her meet a few other American girls who have become princesses. After that, if she still wants to buy a prince and pay his debts and supply him with the credit to run into more debt, she has only herself to blame, and goes into it with her pretty eyes wide open. It will be then only too evident that she is fitted for nothing higher. [Illustration: "WHAT MIGHT SOME TIME HAPPEN IF THESE WERE LOVE-MATCHES"] On no one class of visitor does Paris lay her spell more heavily than on the American art student. For, no matter where he has studied at home, or under what master, he finds when he reaches Paris so much that is new and beautiful and full of inspiration that he becomes as intolerant as are all recent converts, and so happy in his chosen profession that he looks upon everything else than art with impatience and contempt. As art is something about which there are many opinions, he too often passes rapidly on to the stage when he can see nothing to admire in any work save that which the master that he worships declares to be true, and he scorns every other form of expression and every other school and every other artist. You almost envy the young man his certainty of mind and the unquestionableness of his opinion. He will take you through the Salon at a quick step, demolishing whole walls of pictures as he goes with a sweeping gesture of the hand, and will finally bring you breathless before a little picture, or a group of them, which, so he informs you, are the only ones in the exhibition worthy of consideration. And on the day following a young disciple of another school will escort you through the same rooms, and regard with pitying contempt the pictures which your friend of the day before has left standing, and will pick out somewhere near the roof a strange monstrosity, beneath which he will stand with bowed head, and upon which he will comment in a whisper. It is an amusing pose, and most bewildering to a philistine like myself when he finds all the artists whom he had venerated denounced as photographers and decorators, or story-tellers and illustrators. I used to be quite ashamed of the ignorance which had left me so long unenlightened as to what was true and beautiful. These boys have, perhaps, an aunt in Kansas City, or a mother in Lynn, Massachusetts, who is saving and pinching to send them fifteen or twenty dollars a week so that they can learn to be great painters, and they have not been in Paris a week before they have changed their entire view of art, and adopted a new method and a new master and a new religion. It is nowise derogatory to a boy to be supported by a fond aunt in Kansas City, who sends him fifteen dollars a week and the news of the social life of that place, but it is amusing to think how she and his cousins in the West would be awed if they heard him damn a picture by waving his thumb in the air at it, and saying, "It has a little too much of that," with a downward sweep of the thumb, "and not enough of this," with an upward sweep. For one hardly expects a youth who is still at Julien's, and who has not yet paid the first quarter's rent for his studio, to proclaim all the first painters of France as only fit to color photographs. It is as if some one were to say, "You can take away all of the books of the Boston Library and nothing will be lost, but spare three volumes of sonnets written by the only great writer of the present time, who is a friend of mine, and of whom no one knows but myself." Of course one must admire loyalty of that sort, for when it is loyalty to an idea it cannot help but be fine and sometimes noble, though it is a trifle amusing as well. It is just this tenacity of belief in one's own work, and just this intolerance of the work of others, that make Paris inspiring. A man cannot help but be in earnest, if he amounts to anything at all, when on every side he hears his work attacked or vaunted to the skies. As long as the question asked is "Is it art?" and not "Will it sell?" and "Is it popular?" the influence must be for good. These students, in their loyalty to the particular school they admire, of course proclaim their belief in every public and private place, and are ever on their guard, but it is in their studios that they have set up their gods and established their doctrines most firmly. One of these young men, whom I had known at college, took me to his studio last summer, and asked me to tell him how I liked it. It was a most embarrassing question to me, for to my untrained eye the rooms seemed to be stricken with poverty, and so bare as to appear untenanted. I said, at last, that he had a very fine view from his windows. "Yes, but you say nothing of the room itself," he protested; "and I have spent so much time and thought on it. I have been a year and a half in arranging this room." "But there is nothing in it," I objected; "you couldn't have taken a year and a half to arrange these things. There is not enough of them. It shouldn't have taken more than half an hour." He smiled with a sweet, superior smile, and shook his head at me. "I am afraid," he said, "that you are one of those people who like studios filled with tapestries and armor and palms and huge, hideous chests of carved wood. You are probably the sort of person who would hang a tennis-racket on his wall and consider it decorative. _We_ believe in lines and subdued colors and broad, bare surfaces. There is nothing in this room that has not a meaning of its own. You are quite right; there is very little in it; but what is here could not be altered or changed without spoiling the harmony of the whole, and nothing in it could be replaced or improved upon." I regarded the studio with renewed interest at this, and took a mental inventory of its contents for my own improvement. I was guiltily conscious that once at college I had placed two lacrosse-sticks over my doorway, and what made it worse was that I did not play lacrosse, and that they had been borrowed from the man up-stairs for decorative purposes solely. I hoped my artist friend would not question me too closely. His room had a bare floor and gray walls and a green door. There was a long, low bookcase, and a straight-legged table, on which stood, ranged against the wall, a blue and white jar, a gold Buddha, and a jade bottle. On one wall hung a gray silk poke-bonnet, of the fashion of the year 1830, and on another an empty gold frame. With the exception of three chairs there was nothing else in the room. I moved slightly, and with the nervous fear that if I disturbed or disarranged anything the bare gray walls might fall in on me. And then I asked him why he did not put a picture in his frame. "Ah, exactly!" he exclaimed, triumphantly; "that shows exactly what you are; you are an American philistine. You cannot see that a picture is a beautiful thing in itself, and that a dead-gold frame with its four straight lines is beautiful also; but together they might not be beautiful. That gray wall needs a spot on it, and so I hung that gold frame there, not because it was a frame, but because it was beautiful; for the same reason I hung that eighteen-thirty bonnet on the other wall. The two grays harmonize. People do not generally hang bonnets on walls, but that is because they regard them as things of use, and not as things of beauty." I pointed with my stick at the three lonely ornaments on the solitary table. "Then if you were to put the blue and white jar on the right of the Buddha, instead of on the left," I asked, "the whole room would feel the shock?" "Of course," answered my friend. "Can't even you see that?" I tried to see it, but I could not. I had only just arrived in Paris. There was another artist with a studio across the bridges, and his love of art cost him much money and some severe trials. His suite of rooms was all in blue, gray, white, and black. He said that if you looked at things in the world properly, you would see that they were all gray, blue, or black. He had painted a gray lady in a gray dress, with a blue parrot on her shoulder. She had brown lips and grayish teeth. He was very much disappointed in me when I told him that lips always looked to me either pink or red. He explained by saying that my eyes were not trained properly. I resented this, and told him that my eyes were as good as his own, and that a recruiting officer had once tested them with colored yarns and letters of the alphabet held up in inaccessible corners, and had given me a higher mark for eyesight than for anything else. He said it was not a question of colored yarns; and that while I might satisfy a recruiting sergeant that I could distinguish an ammunition train from a travelling circus, it did not render me a critic on art matters. He pointed out that the eyes of the women in the Caucasus who make rugs are trained to distinguish a hundred and eighty different shades of colors that other eyes cannot see; and in time, he added, I would see that everything in real life looked flat and gray. I took a red carnation out of my coat, and put it over the gray lady's lips, and asked him whether he would call it gray or red, and he said that was no argument. He suffered a great deal in his efforts to live up to his ideas, but assured me that he was much happier than I in my ignorance of what was beautiful. He explained, for instance, that he would like to put up some of the photographs of his family that he had brought with him around his room, but that he could not do it, because photographs were so undecorative. So he kept them in his trunk. He also kept a green cage full of doves because they were gray and white and decorative, and in spite of the fact that they were a nuisance, and always flying away, and being caught again by small boys, who brought them back, and wanted a franc for so doing. He suffered, too, in his inability to find the shade of blue for his chair covers that would harmonize with the rest of his room. He covered the furniture five times, and never successfully, and hence the cushions of his lounge and stiff chairs were still as white as when they had last gone to the upholsterer's. These young men are friends of mine, and I am sure they will not object to my describing their ateliers, of which they were very proud. They believed in their own schools, and in their own ways of looking at art, and no one could laugh or argue them out of it; consequently they deserved credit for the faith that was in them. They are chiefly interesting here as showing how a young man will develop in the artistic atmosphere of Paris. It is only when he ceases to develop, and sinks into the easy lethargy of a life of pleasure there, that he becomes uninteresting. There was still another young man whom I knew there who can serve here now as an example of the American who stops in Paris too long. I first met this artist at a garden-party, and he asked me if I did not think it dull, and took me for a walk up to Montmartre, talking all the way of what a great and beautiful mother Paris was to those who worked there. His home was in Maine, and he let me know, without reflecting on his native town, that he had been choked and cramped there, and that his life had been the life of a Siberian exile. Here he found people who could understand; here, the very statues and buildings gave him advice and encouragement; here were people who took him and his work seriously, and who helped him on to fresh endeavors, and who made work a delight. "I have one picture in the Salon," he said, flushing with proper pride and pleasure, "and one has just gone to the World's Fair, and another has received an honorable mention at Munich. That's pretty good for my first year, is it not? And I'm only twenty-five years old now," he added, with his eyes smiling into the future at the great things he was to do. Nobody could resist the contagion of his enthusiasm and earnestness of purpose. He was painting the portrait of some rich man's daughter at the time, and her family took a patronizing interest in him, and said it was a pity that he did not go out more into society and get commissions. They asked me to tell him to be more careful about his dress, and to suggest to him not to wear a high hat with a sack-coat. I told them to leave him alone, and not to worry about his clothes, or to suggest his running after people who had pretty daughters and money enough to have them painted. These people would run after him soon enough, if he went on as he had begun. [Illustration: "'I HAVE ONE PICTURE IN THE SALON'"] When I saw him on the boulevards the next summer he had to reintroduce himself; he was very smartly dressed, in a cheap way, and he was sipping silly little sweet juices in front of a café. He was flushed and nervous and tired looking, and rattled off a list of the fashionable people who were then in Paris as correctly as a _Galignani_ reporter could have done it. "How's art?" I asked. "Oh, very well," he replied. "I had a picture in the Salon last year, and another was commended at Munich, and I had another one at the Fair. That's pretty good for my first two years abroad, isn't it?" The next year I saw him several times with various young women in the court-yard of the Grand Hôtel, than which there is probably no place in all Paris less Parisian. They seemed to be models in street dress, and were as easy to distinguish as a naval officer in citizen's clothes. He stopped me once again before I left Paris, and invited me to his studio to breakfast. I asked him what he had to show me there. "I have three pictures," he said, "that I did the first six months I was here; they--" "Yes, I know," I interrupted. "One was at last year's Salon, and one at the World's Fair, and the other took a prize at Munich. Is that all?" He flushed a little, and laughed, and said, "Yes, that is all." "Do you get much inspiration here?" I asked, pointing to the colored fountain and the piles of luggage and the ugly glass roof. "I don't understand you," he said. He put the card he had held out to me back in his case, and bowed grandly, and walked back to the girl he had left at one of the tables, and on my way out from the offices I saw him frowning into a glass before him. The girl was pulling him by the sleeve, but he apparently was not listening. The American artist who has taken Paris properly has only kind words to speak of her. He is grateful for what she gave him, but he is not unmindful of his mother-country at home. He may complain when he returns of the mud in our streets, and the height of our seventeen-story buildings, and the ugliness of our elevated roads--and who does not? But if his own art is lasting and there is in his heart much constancy, his work will grow and continue in spite of these things, and will not droop from the lack of atmosphere about him. New York and every great city owns a number of these men who have studied in the French capital, and who speak of it as fondly as a man speaks of his college and of the years he spent there. They help to leaven the lump and to instruct others who have not had the chance that was given them to see and to learn of all these beautiful things. These are the men who made the Columbian Fair what it was, who taught their teacher and the whole world a lesson in what was possible in architecture and in statuary, in decoration and design. That was a much better and a much finer thing for them to have done than to have dragged on in Paris waiting for a ribbon or a medal. They are the best examples we have of the Americans who made use of Paris, instead of permitting Paris to make use of them. And because they did the one thing and avoided the other, they are now helping and enlightening their own people and a whole nation, and not selfishly waiting in a foreign capital for a place on a jury for themselves. THE END Transcriber's Note: 1. Obvious punctuation and typographical errors repaired. 2. Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by =equal signs=. 
46678	----	[Every attempt has been made to replicate the original as printed. Some typographical errors have been corrected; a list follows the text. No attempt has been made to correct or normalize all of the printed spelling of French names or words. (i.e. chateau, Saint-Beauve, etc.) (note of etext transcriber.)] Castles and Chateaux of Old Burgundy and the Border Provinces _WORKS OF FRANCIS MILTOUN_ [Illustration] _Rambles on the Riviera_ $2.50 _Rambles in Normandy_ 2.50 _Rambles in Brittany_ 2.50 _The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine_ 2.50 _The Cathedrals of Northern France_ 2.50 _The Cathedrals of Southern France_ 2.50 _In the Land of Mosques and Minarets_ 3.00 _Castles and Chateaux of Old Touraine and the Loire Country_ 3.00 _Castles and Chateaux of Old Navarre and the Basque Provinces_ 3.00 _Castles and Chateaux of Old Burgundy and the Border Provinces_ 3.00 _Italian Highways and Byways from a Motor Car_ 3.00 _The Automobilist Abroad_ _net_ 3.00 (_Postage Extra_) [Illustration] _L. C. Page and Company_ _New England Building, Boston, Mass._ [Illustration: _Chateau de Montbéliard_ (See page 194) ] Castles and Chateaux OF OLD BURGUNDY AND THE BORDER PROVINCES BY FRANCIS MILTOUN Author of "Castles and Chateaux of Old Touraine," "Castles and Chateaux of Old Navarre," "Rambles in Normandy," "Italian Highways and Byways from a Motor-Car," etc. _With Many Illustrations Reproduced from paintings made on the spot_ BY BLANCHE MCMANUS [Illustration] BOSTON L. C. PAGE & COMPANY 1909 _Copyright, 1909_, BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY (INCORPORATED) _All rights reserved_ First Impression, November, 1909 _Electrotyped and Printed by THE COLONIAL PRESS C. H. Simonds & Co., Boston, U.S.A._ [Illustration: CONTENTS] CHAPTER PAGE I. THE REALM OF THE BURGUNDIANS 1 II. IN THE VALLEY OF THE YONNE 19 III. AVALLON, VEZELAY, AND CHASTELLUX 36 IV. SEMUR-EN-AUXOIS, ÉPOISSES AND BOURBILLY 50 V. MONTBARD AND BUSSY-RABUTIN 62 VI. "CHASTILLON AU NOBLE DUC" 75 VII. TONNERRE, TANLAY AND ANCY-LE-FRANC 84 VIII. IN OLD BURGUNDY 101 IX. DIJON THE CITY OF THE DUKES 131 X. IN THE COTE D'OR: BEAUNE, LA ROCHEPOT AND ÉPINAC 113 XI. MAÇON, CLUNY AND THE CHAROLLAIS 153 XII. IN THE BEAUJOLAIS AND LYONNAIS 170 XIII. THE FRANCHE COMTÉ; AUXONNE AND BESANÇON 185 XIV. ON THE SWISS BORDER: BUGEY AND BRESSE 199 XV. GRENOBLE AND VIZILLE: THE CAPITAL OF THE DAUPHINS 218 XVI. CHAMBÉRY AND THE LAC DU BOURGET 229 XVII. IN THE SHADOW OF LA GRANDE CHARTREUSE 245 XVIII. ANNECY AND LAC LEMAN 259 XIX. THE MOUNTAIN BACKGROUND OF SAVOY 278 XX. BY THE BANKS OF THE RHÔNE 290 XXI. IN THE ALPS OF DAUPHINY 300 XXII. IN LOWER DAUPHINY 313 INDEX 325 [Illustration: List _of_ ILLUSTRATIONS] PAGE CHATEAU DE MONTBÉLIARD (_see page_ 194) _Frontispiece_ GEOGRAPHICAL LIMITS COVERED BY CONTENTS (Map) x THE HEART OF OLD BURGUNDY (Map) _facing_ 2 CHATEAU DE SAINT FARGEAU _facing_ 28 TOUR GAILLARDE, AUXERRE _facing_ 32 CHATEAU DE CHASTELLUX _facing_ 38 SEMUR-EN-AUXOIS _facing_ 50 CHATEAU D'ÉPOISSES _facing_ 54 ARNAY-LE-DUC _facing_ 60 CHATEAU DE BUSSY-RABUTIN _facing_ 68 CHATEAU DES DUCS, CHÂTILLON _facing_ 76 CHATEAU DE TANLAY _facing_ 90 CHATEAU AND GARDENS OF ANCY-LE-FRANC 94 CHATEAU OF ANCY-LE-FRANC _facing_ 96 MONOGRAMS FROM THE CHAMBRE DES FLEURS 98 BURGUNDY THROUGH THE AGES (Map) 101 THE DIJONNAIS AND THE BEAUJOLAIS (Map) _facing_ 112 KEY OF VAULTING, DIJON 113 CUISINES AT DIJON 119 CHATEAU DES DUCS, DIJON _facing_ 122 CLOS VOUGEOT.--CHAMBERTIN 137 HOSPICE DE BEAUNE _facing_ 144 CHATEAU DE LA ROCHEPOT _facing_ 148 CHATEAU DE SULLY _facing_ 150 CHATEAU DE CHAUMONT-LA-GUICHE _facing_ 154 HÔTEL DE VILLE, PARAY-LE-MONAIL _facing_ 156 CHATEAU DE LAMARTINE _facing_ 166 CHATEAU DE NOBLE 169 PALAIS GRANVELLE, BESANÇON _facing_ 192 THE LION OF BELFORT 195 WOMEN OF BRESSE _facing_ 200 CHATEAU DE VOLTAIRE, FERNEY _facing_ 204 TOWER OF THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE, GRENOBLE 219 CHATEAU D'URIAGE _facing_ 224 CHATEAU DE VIZILLE _facing_ 226 PORTAL OF THE CHATEAU DE CHAMBÉRY _facing_ 230 PORTAL ST. DOMINIQUE, CHAMBÉRY 231 CHATEAU DE CHAMBÉRY _facing_ 232 LES CHARMETTES 235 CHATEAU DE CHIGNIN _facing_ 238 ABBEY OF HAUTECOMBE _facing_ 240 MAISON DES DAUPHINS, TOUR-DE-PIN _facing_ 246 CHATEAU BAYARD _facing_ 248 LA TOUR SANS VENIN 255 CHATEAU D'ANNECY _facing_ 260 CHATEAU DE RIPAILLE _facing_ 272 ÉVIAN _facing_ 276 AIX-LES-BAINS TO ALBERTVILLE (Map) 279 MONTMELIAN 280 CHATEAU DE MIOLANS _facing_ 284 CONFLANS _facing_ 286 SEAL OF THE NATIVE DAUPHINS 290 TOWER OF PHILIPPE DE VALOIS, VIENNE _facing_ 292 CHATEAU DE CRUSSOL _facing_ 298 CHATEAU DE BRIANÇON _facing_ 304 BRIANÇON; ITS CHATEAU AND OLD FORTIFIED BRIDGE 305 CHATEAU QUEYRAS _facing_ 308 CHATEAU DE BEAUVOIR _facing_ 316 CHATEAU DE LA SONE _facing_ 320 [Illustration: Geographical Limits covered _by_ Contents] Castles and Chateaux of Old Burgundy and the Border Provinces CHAPTER I THE REALM OF THE BURGUNDIANS "_La plus belle Comté, c'est Flandre;_ _La plus belle duché, c'est Bourgogne,_ _Le plus beau royaume, c'est France._" This statement is of undeniable merit, as some of us, who so love _la belle France_--even though we be strangers--well know. The Burgundy of Charlemagne's time was a much vaster extent of territory than that of the period when the province came to play its own kingly part. From the borders of Neustria to Lombardia and Provence it extended from the northwest to the southeast, and from Austrasia and Alamannia in the northeast to Aquitania and Septimania in the southwest. In other words, it embraced practically the entire watershed of the Rhône and even included the upper reaches of the Yonne and Seine and a very large portion of the Loire; in short, all of the great central plain lying between the Alps and the Cevennes. The old Burgundian province was closely allied topographically, climatically and by ties of family, with many of its neighbouring political divisions. Almost to the Ile de France this extended on the north; to the east, the Franche Comté was but a dismemberment; whilst the Nivernais and the Bourbonnais to the west, through the lands and influence of their seigneurs, encroached more or less on Burgundy or vice versa if one chooses to think of it in that way. To the southeast Dombes, Bresse and Bugey, all closely allied with one another, bridged the leagues which separated Burgundy from Savoy, and, still farther on, Dauphiny. The influence of the Burgundian spirit was, however, over all. The neighbouring states, the nobility and the people alike, envied and emulated, as far as they were able, the luxurious life of the Burgundian seigneurs later. If at one time or another they were actually enemies, they sooner, in many instances at least, allied themselves as friends or partisans, and the manner of life of the Burgundians of the middle ages became their own. [Illustration: Map The HEART _of_ OLD BURGUNDY ] Not in the royal domain of France itself, not in luxurious Touraine, was there more love of splendour and the gorgeous trappings of the ceremonial of the middle ages than in Burgundy. It has ever been a land of prosperity and plenty, to which, in these late days, must be added peace, for there is no region in all France of to-day where there is more contentment and comfort than in the wealthy and opulent Departments of the Côte d'Or and the Saône and Loire which, since the Revolution, have been carved out of the very heart of old Burgundy. The French themselves are not commonly thought to be great travellers, but they love "_le voyage_" nevertheless, and they are as justifiably proud of their antiquities and their historical monuments as any other race on earth. That they love their _patrie_, and all that pertains to it, with a devotion seemingly inexplicable to a people who go in only for "spreadeaglism," goes without saying. "_Qu'il est doux de courir le monde!_ _Ah! qu'il est doux de voyager!_" sang the author of the libretto of "Diamants de la Couronne," and he certainly expressed the sentiment well. The Parisians themselves know and love Burgundy perhaps more than any other of the old mediæval provinces; that is, they seemingly love it for itself; such minor contempt as they have for a Provençal, a Norman or a Breton does not exist with regard to a Bourguignon. Said Michelet: "Burgundy is a country where all are possessed of a pompous and solemn eloquence." This is a tribute to its men. And he continued: "It is a country of good livers and joyous seasons"--and this is an encomium of its bounty. The men of the modern world who own to Burgundy as their _patrie_ are almost too numerous to catalogue, but all will recall the names of Buffon, Guyton de Morveau, Monge and Carnot, Rude, Rameau, Sambin, Greuze and Prud'hon. In the arts, too, Burgundy has played its own special part, and if the chateau-builder did not here run riot as luxuriously as in Touraine, he at least builded well and left innumerable examples behind which will please the lover of historic shrines no less than the more florid Renaissance of the Loire. In the eighteenth century, the heart of Burgundy was traversed by the celebrated "_coches d'eau_" which, as a means of transportation for travellers, was considerably more of an approach to the ideal than the railway of to-day. These "_coches d'eau_" covered the distance from Chalon to Lyon via the Saône. One reads in the "Almanach de Lyon et des Provinces de Lyonnois, Forêz et Beaujolais, pour l'année bissextile 1760," that two of these "_coches_" each week left Lyon, on Mondays and Thursdays, making the journey to Chalon without interruption via Trévoux, Mâcon and Tournus. From Lyon to Chalon took the better part of two and a half days' time, but the descent was accomplished in less than two days. From Chalon, by "_guimbarde_," it was an affair of eight days to Paris via Arnay-le-Duc, Saulieu, Vermanton, Auxerre, Joigny and Sens. By diligence all the way, the journey from the capital to Lyon was made in five days in summer and six in winter. Says Mercier in his "Tableau de Paris": "When Sunday came on, the journey mass was said at three o'clock in the morning at some tavern en route." The ways and means of travel in Burgundy have considerably changed in the last two hundred years, but the old-time flavour of the road still hangs over all, and the traveller down through Burgundy to-day, especially if he goes by road, may experience not a little of the charm which has all but disappeared from modern France and its interminably straight, level, tree-lined highways. Often enough one may stop at some old posting inn famous in history and, as he wheels his way along, will see the same historic monuments, magnificent churches and chateaux as did that prolific letter writer, Madame de Sévigné. Apropos of these mediæval and Renaissance chateaux scattered up and down France, the Sieur Colin, in 1654, produced a work entitled "Le Fidèle Conducteur pour les Voyages en France" in which he said that every hillside throughout the kingdom was dotted with a "_belle maison_" or a "_palais_." He, too, like some of us of a later day, believed France the land of _chateaux par excellence_. Evelyn, the diarist (1641-1647), thought much the same thing and so recorded his opinion. The Duchesse de Longueville, (1646-1647), on her journey from Paris called the first chateau passed on the way a "_palais des fées_," which it doubtless was in aspect, and Mlle. de Montpensier, in a lodging with which she was forced to put up at Saint Fargeau, named it "_plus beau d'un chateau_,"--a true enough estimate of many a _maison bourgeois_ of the time. At Pouges-les-Eaux, in the Nivernais, just on the borders of Burgundy, whilst she was still travelling south, Mlle. de Montpensier put up at the chateau of a family friend and partook of an excellent dinner. This really speaks much for the appointments of the house in which she stopped, though one is forced to imagine the other attributes. She seemingly had arrived late, for she wrote: "I was indeed greatly surprised and pleased with my welcome; one could hardly have expected such attentions at so unseemly an hour." La Fontaine was a most conscientious traveller and said some grand things of the Renaissance chateaux-builders of which literary history has neglected to make mention. Lippomano, the Venetian Ambassador of the sixteenth century, professed to have met with a population uncivil and wanting in probity, but he exalted, nevertheless, to the highest the admirable chateaux of princes and seigneurs which he saw on the way through Burgundy. Zinzerling, a young German traveller, in the year 1616, remarked much the same thing, but regretted that a certain class of sight-seers was even then wont to scribble names in public places. We of to-day who love old monuments have, then, no more reason to complain than had this observant traveller of three hundred years ago. Madame Laroche was an indefatigable traveller of a later day (1787), and her comments on the "_belles maisons de campagne_" in these parts (she was not a guest in royal chateaux, it seems) throw many interesting side lights on the people, the manners and the customs of her time. Bertin in his "Voyage de Bourgogne" recounts a noble welcome which he received at the chateau of a Burgundian seigneur--"Salvos of musketry, with the seigneur and the ladies of his household awaiting on the _perron_." This would have made an ideal stage grouping. Arthur Young, the English agriculturist, travelling in France just previous to the Revolution, had all manner of comment for the French dwelling of whatever rank, but his observations in general were more with reference to the _chaumières_ of peasants than with the chateaux of seigneurs. Time was when France was more thickly bestrewn with great monasteries and abbeys than now. They were in many ways the rivals of the palatial country houses of the seigneurs, and their princely _abbés_ and priors and prelates frequently wielded a local power no less militant than that of their secular neighbours. Great churches, abbeys, monasteries, fortresses, chateaux, donjons and barbican gates are hardly less frequently seen in France to-day than they were of old, although in many instances a ruin only exists to tell the tale of former splendour. This is as true of Burgundy as it is of other parts of France; indeed, it is, perhaps, a more apt reference here than it would be with regard to Normandy or Picardy, where many a mediæval civic or religious shrine has been made into a warehouse or a beet-sugar factory. The closest comparison of this nature that one can make with respect to these parts is that some Cistercian monastery has become a "wine-chateau" like the Clos Vougeot or Beaune's Hospice or Hotel Dieu, which, in truth, at certain periods, is nothing more nor less than a great wholesale wine-shop. Mediæval French towns, as well in Burgundy as elsewhere, were invariably built up on one of three plans. The first was an outgrowth of the remains and débris of a more ancient Gaulish or Roman civilization, and purely civic and secular. The second class of community came as a natural ally of some great abbey, seigneurial chateau, really a fortress or an episcopal foundation which demanded freedom from molestation as its undeniable right. It was in such latter places that the bishops and abbés held forth with a magnificence and splendour of surroundings scarcely less imposing than that of royalty itself, though their domains were naturally more restricted in area and the powers that the prelates wielded were often no less powerful than their militant neighbours. The third class of mediæval settlements were the _villes-neuves_, or the _villes-franches_, a class of communities usually exempt from the exactions of seigneurs and churchmen alike, a class of towns readily recognized by their nomenclature. By the sixteenth century the soil of France was covered with a myriad of residential chateaux which were the admiration and envy of the lords of all nations. There had sprung up beside the old feudal fortresses a splendid galaxy of luxurious dwellings having more the air of domesticity than of warfare, which was the chief characteristics of their predecessors. It was then that the word _chateau_ came to supplant that of _chastel_ in the old-time chronicles. Richelieu and the Fronde destroyed many a mediæval fane whose ruins were afterwards rebuilt by some later seigneur into a Renaissance palace of great splendour. The Italian builder lent his aid and his imported profusion of detail until there grew up all over France a distinct variety of dwelling which quite outdistanced anything that had gone before. This was true in respect to its general plan as well as with regard to the luxury of its decorative embellishments. Fortresses were razed or remodelled, and the chateau--the French chateau as we know it to-day, distinct from the _chastel_--then first came into being. Any review of the castle, chateau and palace architecture of France, and of the historic incident and the personages connected therewith, is bound to divide itself into a geographical or climatic category. To begin with the manner of building of the southland was only transplanted in northern soil experimentally, and it did not always take root so vigorously that it was able to live. The Renaissance glories of Touraine and the valley of the Loire, though the outcome of various Italian pilgrimages, were of a more florid and whimsical fashioning than anything in Italy itself, either at the period of their inception or even later, and so they are to be considered as something distinctly French,--indeed, it was their very influence which was to radiate all over the chateau-building world of the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. By contrast, the square and round donjon towers of the fortress-chateaux--like Arques, Falais and Coucy--were more or less an indigenous growth taking their plan from nothing alien. Midi and the centre of France, Provence, the Pyrenees and the valleys of the Rhône and Saône, gave birth, or development, to still another variety of mediæval architecture both military and domestic, whilst the Rhine provinces developed the species along still other constructional lines. There was, to be sure, a certain reminiscence, or repetition of common details among all extensive works of mediæval building, but they existed only by sufferance and were seldom incorporated as constructive elements beyond the fact that towers were square or round, and that the most elaborately planned chateaux were built around an inner courtyard, or were surrounded by a _fosse_, or moat. In Burgundy and the Bourbonnais, and to some extent in the Nivernais, there grew up a distinct method of castle-building which was only allied with the many other varieties scattered over France in the sense that the fabrics were intended to serve the same purposes as their contemporaries elsewhere. The solid square shafts flanking a barbican gate,--the same general effect observable of all fortified towns,--the profuse use of heavy Renaissance sculpture in town houses, the interpolated Flemish-Gothic (seen so admirably at Beaune and Dijon), and above all, the Burgundian school of sculptured figures and figurines were details which flowered hereabouts as they did nowhere else. So far as the actual numbers of the edifices go it is evident that throughout Burgundy ecclesiastical architecture developed at the expense of the more luxuriously endowed civic and domestic varieties of Touraine, which, we can not deny, must ever be considered the real "chateaux country." In Touraine the splendour of ecclesiastical building took a second place to that of the domestic dwelling, or country or town house. For the most part, the Romanesque domestic edifice has disappeared throughout Burgundy. Only at Cluny are there any very considerable remains of the domestic architecture of the Romans, and even here there is nothing very substantial, no tangible reminder of the palace of emperor or consul, only some fragments of more or less extensive edifices which were built by the art which the Romans brought with them from beyond the Alps when they overran Gaul. If one knows how to read the signs, there may still be seen at Cluny fragments of old Roman walls of stone, brick, and even of wood, and the fact that they have already stood for ten or a dozen centuries speaks much for the excellence of their building. It was undoubtedly something just a bit better than the modern way of doing things. Of all the domestic edifices of Burgundy dating from the thirteenth century or earlier, that enclosing the "cuisines" (the only name by which this curious architectural detail is known) of the old palace of the dukes at Dijon is credited by all authorities as being quite the most remarkable, indeed, the most typical, of its environment. After this comes the Salle Synodale at Sens. These two, showing the civic and domestic details of the purely Burgundian manner of building, represent their epoch at its very best. In Dauphiny and Savoy, and to a certain extent the indeterminate ground of Bresse, Dombes and Bugey which linked Burgundy therewith, military and civic architecture in the middle ages took on slightly different forms. Nevertheless, the style was more nearly allied to that obtaining in mid-France than to that of the Midi, or to anything specifically Italian in motive, although Savoy was for ages connected by liens of blood with the holder of the Italian crown. It was only in 1792 that Savoy became a French Département, with the rather unsatisfactory nomenclature of Mont Blanc. It is true, however, that by holding to the name of Mont Blanc the new department would at least have impressed itself upon the travelling public, as well as the fact that the peak is really French. As it is, it is commonly thought to be Swiss, though for a fact it is leagues from the Swiss frontier. Before a score of years had passed Savoy again became subject to an Italian prince. Less than half a century later "La Savoie" became a pearl in the French diadem for all time, forming the Départements of Haute Savoie and Savoie of to-day. The rectangular fortress-like chateau--indeed more a fortress than a chateau--was more often found in the plains than in the mountains. It is for this reason that the chateaux of the Alpine valleys and hillsides of Savoy and Dauphiny differ from those of the Rhône or the Saône. The Rhine castle of our imaginations may well stand for one type; the other is best represented by the great parallelogram of Aigues-Mortes, or better yet by the walls and towers of the Cité at Carcassonne. Feudal chateaux up to the thirteenth century were almost always constructed upon an eminence; it was only with the beginning of this epoch that the seigneurs dared to build a country house without the protection of natural bulwarks. The two types are represented in this book, those of the plain and those of the mountain, though it is to be remembered that it is the specific castle-like edifice, and not the purely residential chateau that often exists in the mountainous regions to the exclusion of the other variety. After that comes the ornate country house, in many cases lacking utterly the defences which were the invariable attribute of the castle. Miolans and Montmelian in Savoy stand for examples of the first mentioned class; Chastellux, Ancy-le-Franc and Tanlay in Burgundy for the second. Examples of the _hôtels privées_, the town houses of the seigneurs who for the most part spent their time in their _maisons de campagne_ of the large towns and provincial cities are not to be neglected, nor have they been by the author and artist who have made this book. As examples may be cited the Maison des Dauphins at Tour-de-Pin, that elaborate edifice at Paray-le-Monail, various examples at Dijon and the svelt, though unpretending, Palais des Granvelle at Besançon in the Franche Comté. To sum up the chateau architecture, and, to be comprehensive, all mediæval and Renaissance architecture in France, we may say that it stands as something distinctly national, something that has absorbed much of the best of other lands but which has been fused with the ingenious daring of the Gaul into a style which later went abroad to all nations of the globe as something distinctly French. It matters little whether proof of this be sought in Touraine, Burgundy or Poitou, for while each may possess their eccentricities of style, and excellencies as varied as their climates, all are to-day distinctly French, and must be so considered from their inception. Among these master works which go to give glory and renown to French architecture are not only the formidable castles and luxurious chateaux of kings and princes but also the great civic palaces and military works of contemporary epochs, for these, in many instances, combined the functions of a royal dwelling with their other condition. CHAPTER II IN THE VALLEY OF THE YONNE There is no more charming river valley in all France than that of the Yonne, which wanders from mid-Burgundy down to join the Seine just above Fontainebleau and the artists' haunts of Moret and Montigny. The present day Département of the Yonne was carved out of a part of the old Senonais and Auxerrois; the latter, a Burgundian fief, and the former, a tiny countship under the suzerainty of the Counts of Champagne. Manners and customs, and art and architecture, however, throughout the department favour Burgundy in the south rather than the northern influences which radiated from the Ile de France. This is true not only with respect to ecclesiastical, civic and military architecture, but doubly so with the domestic varieties ranging from the humble cottage to the more ambitious _manoirs_ and _gentilshommeries_, and finally, to the still more magnificent seigneurial chateaux. Within the confines of this area are some of the most splendid examples extant of Burgundian domestic architecture of the Renaissance period. The Yonne is singularly replete with feudal memories and monuments as well. One remarks this on all sides, whether one enters direct from Paris or from the east or west. From the Morvan and the Gatinais down through the Auxerrois, the Tonnerrois and the Époisses is a definite sequence of architectural monuments which in a very remarkable way suggest that they were the outgrowth of a distinctly Burgundian manner of building, something quite different from anything to be seen elsewhere. In the ninth century, when the feudality first began to recognize its full administrative powers, the local counts of the valley of the Yonne were deputies merely who put into motion the machinery designed by the nobler powers, the royal vassals of the powerful fiefs of Auxerre, Sens, Tonnerre and Avallon. The actual lease of life of these greater powers varied considerably according to the individual fortunes of their seigneurs, but those of Joigny and Tonnerre endured until 1789, and the latter is incorporated into a present day title which even red republicanism has not succeeded in wiping out. The real gateway to the Yonne valley is properly enough Sens, but Sens itself is little or nothing Burgundian with respect to its architectural glories in general. Its Salle Synodale is the one example which is distinct from the northern born note which shows so plainly in the tower and façade of its great cathedral; mostly Sens is reminiscent of the sway and tastes of the royal Bourbons. A few leagues south of Sens the aspect of all things changes precipitately. At Villeneuve-sur-Yonne one takes a gigantic step backward into the shadowy past. Whether or no he arrives by the screeching railway or the scorching automobile of the twentieth century, from the moment he passes the feudal-built gateway which spans the main street--actually the great national highway which links Paris with the Swiss and Italian frontiers--and gazes up at its battlemented crest, he is transported into the realms of romance. Travellers there are, perhaps, who might prefer to arrive on foot, but there are not many such passionate pilgrims who would care to do this thing to-day. They had much better, however, adopt even this mode of travel should no other be available, for at Villeneuve there are many aids in conjuring up the genuine old-time spirit of things. At the opposite end of this long main street is yet another great barbican gate, the twin of that at the northerly end. Together they form the sole remaining vestiges of the rampart which enclosed the old Villeneuve-le-Roi, the title borne by the town of old. Yet despite such notable landmarks, there are literally thousands of stranger tourists who rush by Villeneuve by road and rail in a season and give never so much as a thought or a glance of the eye to its wonderful scenic and romantic splendours! Before 1163 Villeneuve was known as Villa-Longa, after its original Roman nomenclature, but a newer and grander city grew up on the old emplacement with fortification walls and towers and gates, built at the orders of Louis VII. It was then that it came to be known as the king's own city and was called Villeneuve-le-Roi. By a special charter granted at this time Villeneuve, like Lorris on the banks of the Loire, was given unusual privileges which made it exempt from Crown taxes, and allowed the inhabitants to hunt and fish freely--feudal favours which were none too readily granted in those days. Louis himself gave the new city the name of Villa-Francia-Regia, but the name was soon corrupted to Villeneuve-le-Roi. For many years the city served as the chief Burgundian outpost in the north. The great tower, or citadel, a part of the royal chateau where the king lodged on his brief visits to his pet city, was intended at once to serve as a fortress and a symbol of dignity, and it played the double part admirably. Attached to this tower on the north was the Royal Chateau de Salles, a favourite abode of the royalties of the thirteenth century. Little or nothing of this dwelling remains to-day save the walls of the chapel, and here and there an expanse of wall built up into some more humble edifice, but still recognizable as once having possessed a greater dignity. There are various fragmentary foundation walls of old towers and other dependencies of the chateau, and the old ramparts cropping out here and there, but there is no definitely formed building of a sufficiently commanding presence to warrant rank as a historical monument of the quality required by the governmental authorities in order to have its patronage and protection. Philippe-Auguste, in 1204, assembled here a parliament where the celebrated ordonnance "Stabilementum Feudorum" was framed. This alone is enough to make Villeneuve stand out large in the annals of feudalism, if indeed no monuments whatever existed to bring it to mind. It was the code by which the entire machinery of French feudalism was put into motion and kept in running order, and for this reason the Chateau de Salles, where the king was in residence when he gave his hand and seal to the document, should occupy a higher place than it usually does. The Chateau de Salles was called "royal" in distinction to the usual seigneurial chateau which was merely "noble." It was not so much a permanent residence of the French monarchs as a sort of a rest-house on the way down to their Burgundian possession after they had become masters of the duchy. The donjon tower that one sees to-day is the chief, indeed the only definitely defined, fragment of this once royal chateau which still exists, but it is sufficiently impressive and grand in its proportions to suggest the magnitude of the entire fabric as it must once have been, and for that reason is all-sufficient in its appeal to the romantic and historic sense. Situated as it was on the main highway between Paris and Dijon, Villeneuve occupied a most important strategic position. It spanned this old Route Royale with its two city gates, and its ramparts stretched out on either side in a determinate fashion which allowed no one to enter or pass through it that might not be welcome. These graceful towered gateways which exist even to-day were the models from which many more of their kind were built in other parts of the royal domain, as at Magny-en-Vexin, at Moret-sur-Loing, and at Mâcon. A dozen kilometres from Villeneuve-sur-Yonne is Joigny, almost entirely surrounded by a beautiful wildwood, the Forêt National de Joigny. Joigny was one of the last of the local fiefs to give up its ancient rights and privileges. The fief took rank as a Vicomté. Jeanne de Valois founded a hospice here--the predecessor of the present Hotel Dieu--and the Cardinal de Gondi of unworthy fame built the local chateau in the early seventeenth century. The Chateau de Joigny, as became its dignified state, was nobly endowed, having been built to the Cardinal's orders by the Italian Serlio in 1550-1613. To-day the structure serves the functions of a schoolhouse and is little to be remarked save that one hunts it out knowing its history. There is this much to say for the schoolhouse-chateau at Joigny; it partakes of the constructive and decorative elements of the genuine local manner of building regardless of its Italian origin, and here, as at Villeneuve, there is a distinct element of novelty in all domestic architecture which is quite different from the varieties to be remarked a little further north. There, the town houses are manifestly town houses, but at Joigny, as often as not, when they advance beyond the rank of the most humble, they partake somewhat of the attributes of a castle and somewhat of those of a palace. This is probably because the conditions of life have become easier, or because, in general, wealth, even in mediæval times, was more evenly distributed. Certainly the noblesse here, as we know, was more numerous than in many other sections. Any one of a score of Joigny's old Renaissance houses, which line its main street and the immediate neighbourhood of its market-place, is suggestive of the opulent life of the seigneurs of old to almost as great a degree as the Gondi chateau which has now become the École-Communal. Of all Joigny's architectural beauties of the past none takes so high a rank as its magnificent Gothic church of Saint Jean, whose vaultings are of the most remarkable known. Since the ruling seigneur at the time the church was rebuilt was a churchman, this is perhaps readily enough accounted for. It demonstrates, too, the intimacy with which the affairs of church and state were bound together in those days. A luxurious local chateau of the purely residential order, not a fortress, demanded a worthy neighbouring church, and the seigneur, whether or not he himself was a churchman, often worked hand in hand with the local prelate to see that the same was supplied and embellished in a worthy manner. This is evident to the close observer wherever he may rest on his travels throughout the old French provinces, and here at Joigny it is notably to be remarked. Saint Fargeau, in the Commune of Joigny, is unknown by name and situation to the majority, but for a chateau-town it may well be classed with many better, or at least more popularly, known. On the principal place, or square, rises a warm-coloured winsome fabric which is the very quintessence of mediævalism. It is a more or less battered relic of the tenth century, and is built in a rosy brick, a most unusual method of construction for its time. The history of the Chateau de Saint Fargeau has been most momentous, its former dwellers therein taking rank with the most noble and influential of the old régime. Jacques Coeur, the celebrated silversmith of Bourges and the intimate of Charles VII, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, and the leader of the Convention--Lepelletier de Saint Fargeau--all lived for a time within its walls, to mention only three who have made romantic history, though widely dissimilar were their stations. An ornate park with various decorative dependencies surrounds the old chateau on three sides and the ensemble is as undeniably theatrical as one could hope to find in the real. In general the aspect is grandiose and it can readily enough be counted as one of the "show-chateaux" of France, and would be were it better known. Mlle. de Montpensier--"la Grande Mademoiselle"--was chatelaine of Saint Fargeau in the mid-seventeenth century. Her comings and goings, to and from Paris, were ever written down at length in court chronicles and many were the "incidents"--to give them a mild definition--which happened here in the valley of the Yonne which made good reading. On one occasion when Mademoiselle quitted Paris for Saint Fargeau she came in a modest "_carosse sans armes_." It was for a fact a sort of sub-rosa sortie, but the historian was discreet on this occasion. Travel in the old days had not a little of romanticism about it, but for a [Illustration: _Chateau de Saint Fargeau_] lady of quality to travel thus was, at the time, a thing unheard of. This princess of blood royal thus, for once in her life, travelled like a plebeian. Closely bound up with the Sennonais were the fiefs of Auxerre and Tonnerre, whose capitals are to-day of that class of important provincial cities of the third rank which play so great a part in the economic affairs of modern France. But their present commercial status should by no means discount their historic pasts, nor their charm for the lover of old monuments, since evidences remain at every street corner to remind one that their origin was in the days when knights were bold. The railway has since come, followed by electric lights and automobiles, all of which are once and again found in curious juxtaposition with a bit of mediæval or Renaissance architecture, in a manner that is surprising if not shocking. Regardless of the apparent modernity roundabout, however, there is still enough of the glamour of mediævalism left to subdue the garishness of twentieth century innovations. All this makes the charm of French travel,--this unlocked for combination of the new and the old that one so often meets. One can not find just this same sort of thing at Paris, nor on the Riviera, nor anywhere, in fact, except in these minor capitals of the old French provinces. The Comté d'Auxerre was created in 1094 by the Roi Robert, who, after the reunion of the Burgundian kingdom with the French monarchy, gave it to Renaud, Comte de Nevers, as the dot of one, Adelais, who may have been his sister, or his cousin--history is not precise. The house of Nevers possessed the countship until 1182, when it came to Archambaud, the ninth of the name, Sire de Bourbon. One of his heirs married a son of the Duc de Bourgogne and to him brought the county of Auxerre, which thus became Burgundian in fact. Later it took on a separate entity again, or rather, it allied itself with the Comtes de Tonnerre at a price paid in and out of hand, it must not be neglected to state, of 144,400 _livres Tournois_. The crown of France, through the Comtes d'Auxerre, came next into possession, but Charles VII, under the treaty of Arras, ceded the countship in turn to Philippe-le-Bon, Duc de Bourgogne. Definite alliance with the royal domain came under Louis XI, thus the province remained until the Revolution. With such a history small wonder it is that Auxerre has preserved more than fleeting memories of its past. Of great civic and domestic establishments of mediævalism, Auxerre is poverty-stricken nevertheless. The Episcopal Palace, now the Préfecture, is the most imposing edifice of its class, and is indeed a worthy thing from every view-point. It has a covered _loggia_, or gallery running along its façade, making one think that it was built by, or for, an Italian, which is not improbable, since it was conceived under the ministership of Cardinal Mazarin who would, could he have had his way, have made all things French take on an Italian hue. From this _loggia_ there is a wide-spread, distant view of the broad valley of the Yonne which here has widened out to considerable proportions. The history of this Préfectural palace of to-day, save as it now serves its purpose as a governmental administrative building, is wholly allied with that of Auxerre's magnificent cathedral and its battery of sister churches. Within the edifice, filled with clerks and officials in every cranny, all busy writing out documents by hand and clogging the wheels of progress as much as inefficiency can, are still found certain of its ancient furnishings and fittings. The great Salle des Audiences is still intact and is a fine example of thirteenth century woodwork. The wainscotting of its walls and ceiling is remarkably worked with a finesse of detail that would be hard to duplicate to-day except at the expense of a lord of finance or a king of petrol. Not even government contractors, no matter what price they are paid, could presume to supply anything half so fine. It was at Auxerre that the art and craft of building noble edifices developed so highly among churchmen. The builders of the twelfth century were not only often monks but churchmen of rank as well. They occupied themselves not only with ecclesiastical architecture, but with painting and sculpture. One of the first of these clerical master-builders was Geoffroy, Bishop of Auxerre, and three of his prebendarys were classed respectively as painters, glass-setters and metal-workers. The towering structure on the Place du Marché is to-day Auxerre's nearest approach to a chateau of the romantic age, and this is only a mere tower to-day, a fragment left behind of a more extensive residential and fortified chateau which served its double purpose well in its time. It is something more than a mere belfry, or clock tower, however. It is called the Tour Gaillarde, and flanked at one time the principal breach in the rampart wall which surrounded the city. It is one of the finest specimens of its [Illustration: _Tour Gaillarde, Auxerre_] class extant, and is more than the rival of the great Tour de l'Horloge at Rouen or the pair of towers over which conventional tourists rave, as they do over the bears in the bear-pit, at Berne in Switzerland. The entire edifice, the tower and that portion which has disappeared, formed originally the residence of the governor of the place, the personal representative of the counts who themselves, in default of a special residence in their capital, were forced to lodge therein on their seemingly brief visits. The names of the counts of Tonnerre and Auxerre appear frequently in the historical chronicles of their time, but references to their doings lead one to think that they chiefly idled their time away at Paris. That this great tower made a part of some sort of a fortified dwelling there is no doubt, but that it was ever a part of a seigneurial chateau is not so certain. With respect to the part Auxerre played in the military science of the middle ages it is interesting to recall that the drum, or _tambour_, is claimed as of local origin, or at least that it was here first known in France, in the fourteenth century. No precise date is given and one is inclined to think that its use with the army of Edward III at Calais on the 3rd August, 1347, was really its first appearance across the Channel after all. Above Auxerre the Yonne divides, or rather takes to itself the Armançon and the Seruin to swell its bulk as it flows down through the Auxerrois. Above lies the Avallonnais, where another race of seigneurs contribute an altogether different series of episodes from that of their neighbours. It remains a patent fact, however, that the cities and towns of the valley of the Yonne give one ample proof of the close alliance in manners and customs of all mid-France of mediæval times. The inhabitants of this region are not a race apart, but are traditionally a blend of the "natural" Champenois and the "frank and loyal" Burgundian,--"strictly keeping to their promises, and with a notable probity in business affairs," says a proud local historian. Here in this delightful river valley were bred and nourished the celebrated painter, Jean-Cousin; the illustrious Vauban, the builder of fortresses; the enigmatical Chevaliere d'Eon; the artist Soufflot, architect of the Pantheon; Regnault de Saint-Jean d'Angely, Minister of Napoleon; Bourrienne, his secretary and afterwards Minister of State under the Bourbons. Following the Yonne still upwards towards its source one comes ultimately to Clamecy. Between Auxerre and Clamecy the riverside is strewn thickly with the remains of many an ancient feudal fortress or later chateaux. At Mailly-le-Chateau are the very scanty fragments of a former edifice built by the Comtes d'Auxerre in the fifteenth century, and at Chatel-Censoir is another of the same class. At Coulanges-sur-Yonne is the débris, a tower merely, of what must one day have been a really splendid edifice, though even locally one can get no specific information concerning its history. From Clamecy the highroad crosses the Bazois to Chateau Chinon in the Nivernais. The name leads one to imagine much, but of chateaux it has none, though its nomenclature was derived from the emplacement of an ancient _oppidum gaulois_, a _castrum gallo-romain_ and later a feudal chateau. The road on to Burgundy lies to the southwest via the Avallonnais, or, leaving the watershed of the Yonne for that of the upper Seine, via Tonnerre and Châtillon-sur-Seine lying to the eastward of Auxerre. CHAPTER III AVALLON, VEZELAY AND CHASTELLUX Avallon owes its origin to the construction of a chateau-fort. It was built by Robert-le-Pieux, the son of Hugues Capet, in the tenth century. Little by little the fortress has crumbled and very nearly disappeared. All that remains are the foundation walls on what is locally called the Rocher d'Avallon, virtually the pedestal upon which sits the present city. Avallon, like neighbouring Semur and Vezelay, sits snugly and proudly behind its rampart of nature's ravines and gorges, a series of military defences ready-made which on more than one occasion in mediæval times served their purpose well. It was in the old Chateau d'Avallon that Jacques d'Epailly, called "Forte Épice," was giving a great ball when Philippe-le-Bon beseiged the city. Jacques treated the inhabitants with the utmost disrespect, even the ladies, and secretly quitted the ball just before the city troops surrendered. History says that the weak-hearted gallant sold out to the enemy and saved himself by the back door, and in spite of no documentary evidence to this effect the long arm of coincidence points to the dastardly act in an almost unmistakable manner. Near Avallon are still to be seen extensive Roman remains. A Roman camp, the Camp des Alleux, celebrated in Gaulish and Roman history, was here, and the old Roman road between Lyons and Boulogne in Belgica Secundus passed near by. It is not so much with reference to Avallon itself, quaint and picturesque as the city is, that one's interest lies hereabouts. More particularly it is in the neighbouring chateaux of Chastellux and Montréal. The Seigneur de Chastellux was one of the most powerful vassals of the Duc de Bourgogne. By hereditary custom the eldest of each new generation presented himself before the Bishop of Auxerre clad in a surplice covering his military accoutrements, and wearing a falcon at his wrist. In this garb he swore to support Church and State, and for this devotion was vested in the title of Chanoin d'Auxerre, a title which supposedly served him in good stead in case of military disaster. It was thus that the Maréchal de Chastellux, a famous warrior, was, as late as 1792, also a canon of the cathedral at Auxerre. It was, too, in this grotesque costume that the Chanoin-Comte d'Chastellux welcomed Louis XIV on a certain visit to Auxerre. At Auxerre, in the cathedral, one sees a monument commemorative of the Sires de Chastellux. It was erected by César de Chastellux under the Restoration, to replace the tomb torn down by the Chapter in the fifteenth century. This desecration, by churchmen themselves, one must remember, took place in spite of the fact that a Chastellux was even then a dignitary of the church. Chastellux, beyond its magnificent chateau, is an indefinable, unconvincing little bourg, but from the very moment one sets foot within its quaintly named Hotel de Maréchal de Chastellux he, or she, is permeated with the very spirit of romance and mediævalism. The bridge which crosses the Cure in the middle of the village owns to the ripe old age of three hundred and fifty years, and is still rendering efficient service. This is something mature for a bridge, even in France, where many are doing their daily work as they have for centuries. Will the modern "suspension" affairs do as well? That's what nobody knows! The hotel, or [Illustration: _Chateau de Chastellux_] _auberge_ rather, can not be less aged than the bridge, though the manner in which it is conducted is not at all antiquated. A rocky, jagged pedestal, of a height of perhaps a hundred and fifty feet, holds aloft the fine mass of the Chateau de Chastellux. For eight centuries this fine old pile was in the making and, though manifestly non-contemporary as to its details, it holds itself together in a remarkably consistent manner and presents an ensemble and silhouette far more satisfactory to view than many a more popular historic monument of its class. Its great round towers, their coiffes and the pignons and gables of the roof, give it all a _cachet_ which is so striking that one forgives, or ignores the fact that it is after all a work of various epochs. Visitors here are welcome. One may stroll the corridors and apartments, the vast halls and the courtyard as fancy wills, except that one is always discreetly ciceroned by a guardian who may be a man, a woman, or even a small child. There is none of the espionage system about the surveillance, however, and one can but feel welcome. Blazons in stone and wood and tapestries are everywhere. They are the best, or the worst, of their kind; one really doesn't stop to think which; the effect is undeniably what one would wish, and surely no carping critic has any right to exercise his functions here. There is not the least cause to complain if the furnishings are of non-contemporary periods like the exterior adornments, because the certain stamp of sincerity and genuineness over all defies undue criticism. The Chateau de Chastellux dates, primarily, from the thirteenth century, with many fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth century restorations or additions which are readily enough to be recognized. From its inception, the chateau has belonged to the family of Beauvoir-de-Chastellux, the cadet branch of Anseric-de-Montréal. Practically triangular in form, as best served its original functions of a defensive habitation, this most theatrical of all Burgundian chateaux is flanked by four great attached towers. The Tour de l'Horloge is a massive rectangular pile of the fifteenth century; the Tour d'Amboise is a round tower dating from 1592; the Tour de l'Hermitage and the Tour des Archives, each of them, also round, are of the sixteenth century. In the disposition and massiveness of these towers alone the Chateau de Chastellux is unique. Another isolated tower, even more stupendous in its proportions, is known as the Tour Saint Jean, and is a donjon of the ideally acceptable variety, dating from some period anterior to the chateau proper. Moat-surrounded, the chateau is only to be entered by crossing an ornamental waterway. One arrives at the actual entrance by the usual all-eyed roadway ending at the _perron_ of the chateau where a simple bell-pull silently announces the ways and means of gaining entrance. The domestic appears at once and without questioning your right proceeds to do the honours as if it were for yourself alone that the place were kept open. The chief and most splendid apartment is the Salle des Gardes, to a great extent restored, but typical of the best of fifteenth century workmanship and appointments. Its chimney-piece, as splendid in general effect as any to be seen in the Loire chateaux, is but a re-made affair, but follows the best traditions and encloses moreover fragments of fifteenth century sculptures which are authentically of that period. The cornice of this majestic apartment bears the Chastellux arms and those of their allied families, interwoven with the oft repeated inscription, _Monréal à Sire de Chastellux_. In this same Salle des Gardes are hung a pair of ancient Gobelins, and set into the floor is a dainty morsel of an antique mosaic found nearby. The modern billiard-room, also shown to the inquisitive, contains portraits of the Chancelier d'Aguesseau and his wife, and its fittings--aside from the green baize tables and their accessories--are well carried out after the style of Louis XIII. Good taste, or bad, one makes no comment, save to suggest that the billiard tables look out of place. In what the present dweller calls the Salon Rouge are portraits and souvenirs of a military ancestor Comte César de Chastellux, who, judging from his dress and cast of countenance, must have been a warrior bold of the conventional type. After the Salle des Gardes the Grand Salon is the most effective apartment. Its wall and ceiling decorations are the same that were completed in 1696, and incorporated therein are fourteen portraits of the Sires and Comtes who one day lived and loved within these castle walls. These portraits are reproductions of others which were destroyed by the unchained devils of the French Revolution who made way with so much valuable documentary evidence from which one might build up French mediæval history anew. The village church contains several tombal monuments of the Chastellux. The Chateau de Montréal, or Mont-Royal, so closely allied with the fortunes of the Chastellux, between Avallon and Chastellux, is built high on a mamelon overlooking the Seruin, and is one of the most ancient and curious places in Burgundy. The little town, of but five hundred inhabitants, is built up mostly of the material which came from one of the most ancient of the feudal chateaux of mid-France. This chateau was originally a primitive fortress, once the residence of Queen Brunhaut, the wife of the Roi d'Austrasie in 566. It was from this hill-top residence that the name Montréal has been evolved. The sparse population of the place were benefited by special privileges from the earliest times and the _cité movenageuse_ itself was endowed with many admirable examples of administrative and domestic architecture. Of the Renaissance chateaux of the later seigneurs, here and there many portions remain built into other edifices, but there is no single example left which, as a whole, takes definite shape as a noble historical monument. There are a dozen old Renaissance house-fronts, with here and there a supporting tower or wall which is unquestionably of mediæval times and might tell thrilling stories could stones but speak. In Renaissance annals Montréal was celebrated by the exploit of the Dame de Ragny (1590), who recaptured the place after it had been taken possession of by the Ligeurs during the absence of her husband, the governor. At the entrance of the old bourg is a great gateway which originally led to the seigneurial enclosure. It is called the Port d'en Bas and has arches dating from the thirteenth century. Montréal and its Mediæval chateau was the cradle of the Anseric-de-Montréal family, who were dispossessed in 1255 to the profit of the Ducs de Bourgogne. It was to the cadet branch of this same family Chastellux once belonged. To the west lies Vezelay, one of the most remarkable conglomerate piles of ancient masonry to be seen in France to-day. It was a most luxurious abode in mediæval times, and its great church, with its ornate portal and façade, ranks as one of the most celebrated in Europe. Vezelay is on no well-worn tourist track; it is indeed chiefly unknown except to those who know well their ecclesiastical history. It was within this famous church that Saint Bernard awakened the fervour of the Crusade in the breast of Louis-le-Jeune. The abbey church saw, too, Philippe-Auguste and Richard Coeur-de-Lion start for their Crusades, and even Saint Louis came here before setting out from Aigues Mortes for the land of the Turk. This illustrious church quite crushes anything else in Vezelay by its splendour, but nevertheless the history of its other monuments has been great, and the part played by the miniscule city itself has been no less important in more mundane matters. Its mediæval trading-fairs were famous throughout the provinces of all France, and even afar. In the middle ages Vezelay had a population of ten thousand souls; to-day a bare eight hundred call it their home town. The seigneurial chateau at Vezelay is hardly in keeping to-day with its former proud estate. One mounts from the lower town by a winding street lined on either side by admirably conserved Renaissance houses of an unpretentious class. The chateau, where lodged Louis-le-Jeune, has embedded in its façade two great shot launched from Huguenot cannon during the siege of 1559. Another seigneurial "_hôtel privée_" has over its portal this inscription: "_Comme Colombe humble et simple seray_ _Et à mon nom mes moeurs conformeray._" Here in opulent Basse-Bourgogne, where the vassals of a seigneur were often as powerful as he, their dwellings were frequently quite as splendid as the official residence of the overlord. It is this genuinely unspoiled mediæval aspect of seemingly nearly all the houses of this curious old town of Vezelay which give the place its charm. The Porte Neuve is a great dependent tower which formerly was attached to the residence of the governor--the chateau-fort in fact--and it still stands militant as of old, supported on either side by two enormous round towers and surmounted by a machicoulis and a serrated cornice which tells much of its efficiency as a mediæval defence. To the right are still very extensive remains of the fourteenth and fifteenth century ramparts. Near Vezelay is the Chateau de Bazoche, which possesses a profound interest for the student of military architecture in France by reason of its having been the birthplace of Maréchal Vauban, who became so celebrated as a fortress-builder that he, as much as anybody, may be considered the real welder of modern France. Vauban's body is buried in the local churchyard, but his heart had the distinction of being torn from his body and given a glorious (?) burial along with countless other fragments of military heroes in the Hotel des Invalides at Paris. Bazoches is not a name that is on the tip of the tongue of every mentor and guide to French history, though the appearance of its chateau is such that one wonders that it is not more often cited by the guide-books which are supposed to point out the quaint and curious to vagabond travellers. There are many such who had rather worship at a shrine such as this than to spend their time loitering about the big hotels of the flash resorts with which the Europe of the average tourist is becoming overcrowded. Makers of guide-books and the managers of tourist agencies do not seem to know this. Bazoches is a townlet of five hundred inhabitants, and not one of them cares whether you come or go. They do not even marvel that the chateau is the only thing in the place that ever brings a stranger there,--they ignore the fact that you are there, so by this reckoning one puts Bazoches, the town and the chateau, down as something quite unspoiled. Half the population lives in fine old Gothic and Renaissance houses which, to many of us, used to living under another species of rooftree, would seem a palace. What the Chateau de Bazoches lacks in great renown it makes up for in imposing effect. Each angle meets in a svelt round tower of the typical picture-book and stage-carpenter fashion. Each tower is coiffed with a peaked candle-snuffer cap and a row of machicoulis which gives the whole edifice a warlike look which is unmistakable. The finest detail of all is "La Grande Tour" supporting one end of the principle mass of the chateau, and half built into the hillside which backs it up on the rear. Vauban bought an old feudal castle in 1663 and added to it after his own effective manner, thus making the chateau, as one sees it to-day, the powerful bulwark that it is. The chateau belongs to-day to the Vibrave family, who keep open house for the visitor who would see within and without. The principle apartment is entirely furnished with the same belongings which served Vauban for his personal use. Another neighbouring chateau, bearing also the name Chateau de Vauban, was also the property of the Maréchal. It dates from the sixteenth century, and though in no way historic, has many architectural details worthy of observation and remark. CHAPTER IV SEMUR-EN-AUXOIS, ÉPOISSES AND BOURBILLY Due east from Avallon some thirty odd kilometres is Semur-en-Auxois. It is well described as a feudal city without and a banal one within. Its mediæval walls and gates lead one to expect the same old-world atmosphere over all, but, aside from its churches and an occasional architectural display of a Renaissance house-front, its cast of countenance, when seen from its decidedly bourgeois point of view, is, if not modern, at least matter-of-fact and unsympathetic. In spite of this its historical recollections are many and varied, and there are fragments galore of its once proud architectural glories which bespeak their prime importance, and also that the vandal hand of so-called progress and improvement has fallen heavily on all sides. The site of Semur to a great extent gives it that far-away mediæval look; that, at least, could not be taken away from it. It possesses, moreover, one of the most astonishing [Illustration: _Semur-en-Auxois_] silhouettes of any hill-top town in France. Like Constantine in North Africa it is walled and battlemented by a series of natural defences in the form of ravines or gorges so profound that certainly no ordinary invading force could have entered the city. Semur was formerly the capital of the Auxois, and for some time held the same rank in the Burgundian Duchy. The city from within suggests little of mediævalism. Prosperity and contentment do not make for a picturesque and romantic environment of the life of the twentieth century. It was different in the olden time. Semur, by and large, is of the age of mediævalism, however, though one has to delve below the surface to discover this after having passed the great walls and portals of its natural and artificial ramparts. Semur's bourg, donjon and chateau, as the respective quarters of the town are known, tell the story of its past, but they tell it only by suggestion. The ancient fortifications, as entire works, have disappeared, and the chateau has become a barracks or a hospital. Only the chateau donjon and immediate dependencies, a group of towering walls, rise grim and silent as of old above the great arch of the bridge flung so daringly across the Armançon at the bottom of the gorge. The last proprietor of Semur's chateau was the Marquis du Chatelet, the husband of the even more celebrated Madame du Chatelet, who held so great a place in the life of Voltaire. The philosopher, it seems, resided here for a time, and his room is still kept sacred and shown to visitors upon application. Semur as much as anything is a reminder of the past rather than a living representation of what has gone before. Within the city walls were enacted many momentous events of state while still it was the Burgundian capital. Again during the troublous times of the "Ligue," Henri IV transferred to its old chateau the Parliament which had previously held its sittings at Dijon. Semur's monuments deserved a better fate than has befallen them, for they were magnificent and epoch-making, if not always from an artistic point of view, at least from an historic one. We made Semur our headquarters for a little journey to Époisses, Bourbilly and Montbard, where formerly lived and died the naturalist Buffon, in the celebrated Chateau de Montbard. Époisses lies but a few kilometres west of Semur. Its chateau is a magnificently artistic and historic shrine if there ever was such. In 1677 Madame de Sévigné wrote that she "here descended from her carriage: _chez son Seigneur d'Époisses_." Here she found herself so comfortably off that she forgot to go on to Bourbilly, where she was expected and daily awaited. It was ten days later that she finally moved on; so one has but the best of opinions regarding the good cheer which was offered her. At the time it must have been an ideal country house, this mansion of the Seigneur d'Époisses, as indeed it is to-day. The lady wrote further: "Here there is the greatest liberty; one reads or walks or talks or works as he, or she, pleases." This is what everyone desires and so seldom gets when on a visit. As for the other natural and artificial charms which surrounded the place, one may well judge by a contemplation of it to-day. Here in the chateau, or manor, or whatever manner of rank it actually takes in one's mind, you may see the room occupied by Madame de Sévigné on the occasion of her "pleasant visit." It is a "Chambre aux Fleurs" in truth, and that, too, is the name by which the apartment is officially known. Above the mantel, garlanded with flowers carved in wood, one reads the following attributed to the fascinating Marquise herself. The circumstance is authenticated in spite of the fantastic orthography. As a letter writer, at any rate, she made no such faults. "_Nos plaisirs ne sont capparence_ _Et souvent se cache nos pleurs_ _Sous l'éclat de ces belles fleurs_ _Qui ne sont que vaine éperance._" The Chateau de Bourbilly, where Madame de Sévigné was really bound at the time she lingered on "_chez son cher seigneur_," is a near neighbour of Époisses. It was the retreat of Madame de Chantal, the ancestress of Madame de Sévigné, the founder of the Order of the Visitation who has since become a saint of the church calendar--Sainte Jeanne-de-Chantal. This fine seventeenth century chateau, with its pointed towers and its mansard, belonged successively to the families Marigny, de Mello, de Thil, de Savace, de la Tremouille and Rabutin-Chantel, of which the sanctified Jeanne and Madame de Sévigné were the most illustrious members. Madame de Sévigné, the amiable letter writer, sojourned here often on her voyages up and down France. She herself lived in the [Illustration: _Chateau d'Époisses_] Chateau des Rochers in Brittany and her daughter, the Comtesse de Grignan, in Provence, and they did not a little visiting between the two. Bourbilly was a convenient and delightful halfway house. Madame de Sévigné can not be said to have made Bourbilly her residence for long at any time. For a fact she was as frequently a guest at the neighbouring Chateau de Guitant, a feudal dwelling still inhabited by the de Guitants, or at Époisses, as she was at Bourbilly. In the chapel, which is of the sixteenth century, is the tomb of the Baron de Bussy-Rabutin and some _reliques_ of Sainte-Jeanne-de-Chantal. The latter has served to make of Bourbilly a pilgrim shrine which, on the 21st August, draws a throng from all parts for the annual fête. There was a popular impression long current among French writers that Madame de Sévigné was born in the Chateau de Bourbilly. A line or two of that indefatigable penman, Bussy, tended to make this ready of belief when he wrote of his cousin as "_Une demoiselle de Bourgogne egarée en Bretagne_." She herself claimed to have been "transplanted," but it was a transplantation by marriage; she was most certainly not born at Bourbilly, at any rate, for history, better informed than an unconvincing scribbler, states that she was born in Paris, like Molière and Voltaire, who also have finally been claimed by the capital as her own. At all events, at Bourbilly Madame de Sévigné was true enough on the land of the "_vieux chateau de ses pères, ses belles prairies, sa petite rivière, ses magnifiques bois_." It was her property in fact, or came to be, and she might have lived there had she chosen. She would not dispose of it when importuned to do so, and replied simply, but coldly (one reads this in the "Letters"), "I will not sell the property for the reason that I wish to hand it down to my daughter." From this one would think that she had a great affection for it, but at times it was a "_vieux chateau_" and at others it was a "_horrible maison_." Capricious woman! The letters of Madame de Sévigné written from here were not numerous, as she only "stopped over" on her various journeyings. When one recognizes the tastes and habits of the Marquise, it is not to be wondered at that her visits to Bourbilly were neither prolonged nor multiplied. Turning one's itinerary south from Semur one comes shortly to Cussy-la-Colonne, where "la Colonne" is recognized by the archæologists as one of the most celebrated and most ancient monuments of Burgundy. One learns from the inscription in Franco-Latin that the ancient monument (_antiquissimum hoc monumentum_) much damaged by the flapping wings of time, was rebuilt, as nearly as possible in its original form, by a prefect of the Department of the Côte d'Or (Collis Aurei Praefectus), M. Charles Arbaud, in the reign (sous l'empire) of Charles X (imperante Carolo X.... Anno Salutis MDCCCXXV.) An astonishing mélange this of the tongue of Cicero and modern administrative _patois_. The Colonne de Cussy, is rather a pagan memorial of a victory of the Romans in the reign of Diocletian, or, from another surmise, a funeral monument to a Roman general dead on the eve of victory. In either case, there it stands fragmentary and wind and weather worn like the pillars of Hercules or Pompey. One simply notes Cussy and its "colonne" _en passant_ on the road to Saulieu and Arnay-le-Duc, where the Ducs de Bourgogne had one of their most favoured country houses, or manors. We only stopped at Saulieu by chance anyway; we stopped for the night in fact because it was getting too late to push on farther, and we were glad indeed that we did. Saulieu is a most ancient town and owes its name to a neighbouring wood. Here was first erected a pagan temple to the sun; fragments of it have recently been found; and here one may still see the tracings of the old Roman way crossing what was afterwards,--to the powerful colony at Autun,--the Duchy of Burgundy. As a fortified place Saulieu was most potent, but in 1519 a pest destroyed almost its total population. Disaster after disaster fell upon it and the place never again achieved the prominence of its neighbouring contemporaries. It was here at Saulieu in Revolutionary times that the good people, as if in remembrance of the disasters which had befallen them under monarchial days, hailed with joy the arrival of the men of the Marseilles Battalion as they were marching on Paris "to help capture Capet's castle." Before the church of Saint Saturnin the Patriots' Club had lighted a big bonfire, and the "Men of the Midi" were received with open arms and a warm welcome. "How good they were to us at Saulieu," said one of the number, recounting his adventures upon his arrival at Paris; "they gave us all the wine we could swallow and all the good things we could eat,--we had enough boeuf-à-la-daub to rise over our ears...." To-day the good folk of Saulieu treat the stranger in not unsimilar fashion, and though the town lacks noble monuments it makes up for the deficiency in its good cheer. Saulieu in this respect quite lives up to its reputation of old. This little capital of the Morvan-Bourguignon has ever owned to one or more distinguished Vatel's. Madame de Sévigné, in 1677, stopped here at a friend's country house, and, as she wrote, "_le fermier donne à tous un grand diner_." This was probably the Manoir de Guitant between Bourbilly and Saulieu. They were long at table, for it was a _diner des adieux_ given by her friend Guitant to his visitors. She wrote further: "With the dinner one drank a great deal, and afterwards a great deal more; all went off with the greatest possible éclat. Voila l'affaire!" Evidently such a manner of parting did not produce sadness! A donjon tower with a duck-pond before it, opposite the Hotel de la Poste is all the mediævalism that one sees within the town at Saulieu to-day. It is all that one's imagination can conjure up of the ideal donjon of mediævalism and interesting withal, though its history is most brief, indeed may be said to exist not at all in recorded form, for the chief references to Saulieu's historic past date back to the pagan temple and the founding of the Abbey of Saint Andoche in the eighth century. Still heading south one comes in a dozen kilometres to a chateau of the fourteenth century, and the restorations of Henri IV at Thoisy-la-Berchere. Later restorations, by the Marquis de Montbossier, who occupies it to-day, have made of it one of the most attractive of the minor chateaux of France. One may visit it under certain conditions, whether the family is in residence or not, and will carry away memories of many splendid chimney pieces and wall tapestries. For the rest the furnishings are modern, which is saying that they are banal. This of course need not always be so, but when the Renaissance is mixed with the art nouveau and the latest fantasies of Dufayal it lacks appeal. This is as bad as "Empire" and "Mission," which seem to have set the pace for "club furniture" during the past decade. Arnay-le-Duc still to the south was the site of a ducal Burgundian manor which almost reached the distinction of a palace. Here the country loving dukes spent not a little of their leisure time when away from their capital. Arnay-le-Duc, more than any other town of its class in France, retains its almost undefiled feudal aspect to-day when viewed from beyond the walls. Formerly it was the seat of a _bailliage_ and has conserved the débris of the feudal official residence. This is supported in addition by many fine examples of Renaissance-Burgundian architectural treasures which give the town at once the stamp of genuineness which it will take many years of progress to wholly eradicate. None of these fine structures, least of all the ducal manor, is perfectly conserved, but the remains are sufficiently ample and well cared for to merit the classification of still being reckoned habitable and of importance. The old manor of the dukes has now descended to more humble uses, but has lost little of the aristocratic bearing which it once owned. It was near this fortified bourgade of other days--fortified that the dukes might rest in peace when they repaired thither--that the infant Henri IV, at the age of sixteen, received his baptism of fire and first gained his stripes under the direction of Maréchal de Cossé-Brissac. CHAPTER V MONTBARD AND BUSSY-RABUTIN Montbard lies midway between Semur and Châtillon-sur-Seine, on the great highroad leading from Burgundy into Champagne. The old Chateau de Montbard is represented only by the donjon tower which rises grimly above the modern edifice built around its base and the sprawling little town which clusters around its park gates at the edge of the tiny river Brenne. The "grand seigneur" of Montbard was but a simple man of letters, the naturalist Buffon. Here he found comfort and tranquillity, and loved the place and its old associations accordingly. Here he lived, "having doffed his sword and cloak," and occupied himself only with his literary labours, though with a gallantry and _esprit_ which could but have produced the eloquent pages ascribed to him. Buffon was a native of the town, and through him, more than anyone else, the town has since been heard of in history. Having acquired the property of the old chateau, the donjon of which stood firm and broad on its base, he made of the latter his study, or _salon de travail_. This is the only remaining portion of the mediæval castle of Montbard. The ancient walls which existed, though in a ruined state, were all either levelled or rebuilt by Buffon into the dependent dwelling which he attached to the donjon. The Revolution, too, did not a little towards wiping out a part of the structure, as indeed it did the tomb of the naturalist in the local churchyard. Buffon, or, to give him his full title, Georges-Louis-Leclerc-de-Buffon lived here a life of retirement, amid a comfort, perhaps even of luxury, that caused his jealous critics to say that he worked in a velvet coat, and that he was a sort of eighteenth century "nature-fakir." This is probably an injustice. In 1774 Louis XV made the "_terre de Buffon_" a countship, but the naturalist chose not to reside in the village of the name, but to live at Montbard some leagues away. Montbard's actual celebrity came long before the time of Buffon, for its chateau was built in the fourteenth century and was for centuries the possessor of an illustrious sequence of annals intimately associated with the dukedom of Burgundy. Jean-Sans-Peur, it is to be noted, passed a portion of his youth within its walls. This gives it at once rank as a royal chateau, though that was not actually its classification. The Princesse Anne, sister of Philippe le Bon, here married the Duke of Bedford in 1423. All this would seem fame enough for Montbard, but the local old men and women know no more of their remote rulers than they do of Buffon; local pride is a very doubtful commodity. It is disconcerting for a stranger to accost some _bon homme_ or _bonne femme_ to learn the way to the Chateau de Buffon, and to receive in reply a simple stare and the observation, "I don't know the man." Aside, to some crony, you may hear the observation, "Who are these strangers and what do they want with their man Buffon anyway?" This may seem an exaggeration, but it is not, and furthermore the thing may happen anywhere. Glory is but as smoke, and local fame is often an infinitesimal thing. _Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas!_ Buffon wrote his extensive "Histoire Naturelle" at Montbard. It created much admiration at the time. To-day Buffon, his work and his chateau are all but forgotten or ignored, and but few visitors come to continue the idolatry of Jean Jacques Rousseau, who kissed the "_seuil de la noble demure_." Not long since, within some few years at any rate, a former friend of Alfred de Musset quoted some little known lines of the poet on this "_berceau de la histoire naturelle_," with the result that quite recently the local authorities, in establishing the Musée Buffon, have caused them, to be carved on a panel in the naturalist's former study at the chateau. "Buffon, que ton ombre pardonne A une témérité D'ajouter une fleur à la double couronne Que sur ton front mit l'Immortalité." Buffon's additions to the old chateau were made for comfort, whatever they may have lacked of romanticism. The French Pliny was evidently not in the least romantically inclined, or he would not have levelled these historic walls and the alleyed walks and gardens laid out in the profuse and formal manner of those of Italy. The result is a poor substitute for a picturesque grass-grown ruin, or a faithfully restored mediæval castle. Between the Brenne and a canal which flows through the town rises an admirable feudal tower indicating the one time military and strategic importance of the site. It is called Mont Bard, and marks where once stood the fortress that surrendered in its time to the "Ligueurs." Near Montbard is a hamlet which bears the illustrious name of Buffon, but it is doubtful if even a few among its three hundred inhabitants know for whom it is named. Still further away, on the Châtillon road, is the little town of Villaines-en-Dumois, a bourg of no importance in the life of modernity. It is somnolent to an extreme, comfortable-looking and apparently prosperous. The grand route from Paris to Dijon passes it by a dozen kilometres to the left, and the railway likewise. Coaching days left it out in the cold also, and modern travel hardly knows that it exists. In spite of this the town owns to something more than the trivial morsels of stone which many a township locally claims as a chateau. Here was once a favourite summer residence of the Burgundian dukes, and here to-day the shell, or framework, of the same edifice looks as though it might easily be made habitable. The property came later to the Madame de Longueville, the sister of the Grand Condé. There is nothing absolutely magnificent about it now, but the suggestion of its former estate is still there to a notable degree. The walls and towers, lacking roofs though they do, well suggest the princely part the edifice once played in the life of its time. In spite of the fact that the name of the town appears in none of the red or blue backed guide-books, enough is known of it to establish it as the former temporary seat of one of the most formal of the minor courts of Europe, where--the records tell--etiquette was as strict as in the ducal palace at Dijon. Four great round towers are each surrounded by a half-filled moat, and the suggestion of the old chapel, in the shape of an expanse of wall which shows a remarkably beautiful ogival window, definitely remains to give the idea of the former luxury and magnificence with which the whole structure was endowed. A detached dwelling, said to be the house of the prior of a neighbouring monastery who attached himself to the little court, is in rather a better state of preservation than the chateau itself, and might indeed be made habitable by one with a modest purse and a desire to play the "grand seigneur" to-day in some petty gone-to-seed community. These opportunities exist all up and down France to-day, and this seems as likely a spot as any for one who wishes to transplant his, or her, household gods. Beyond Montbard is Les Laumes, a minor railway junction on the line to Dijon, which is scarcely ever remembered by the traveller who passes it by. But, although there is nothing inspiring to be had from even a glance of the eye in any direction as one stops a brief moment at the station, nevertheless it is a prolific centre for a series of historical pilgrimages which, for pleasurable edification, would make the traveller remember it all his life did he give it more than a passing thought. One must know its history though, or many of the historic souvenirs will be passed by without an impression worth while. On Mont Auxois, rising up back of the town, stands a colossal statue of Vercingetorix, in memory of a resistance which he here made against the usually redoubtable Cæsar. Six kilometres away there is one of the most romantically historic of all the minor chateaux of France and one not to be omitted from anybody's chateaux tour of France. It is the Chateau de Bussy-Rabutin, to-day restored and reinhabited, though for long periods since its construction it was empty save for bats and mice. This restoration, which looks to-day like [Illustration: _Chateau de Bussy-Rabutin_] a part of the original fabric, was the conceit of the Comte de Bussy-Rabutin, a cousin of Madame de Sévigné in the seventeenth century. It gives one the impression of being an exact replica of a seigneurial domain of its time. The main fabric is a vast square edifice with four towers, each marking one of the cardinal points. The Tour du Donjon to the east, and the Tour de la Chapelle to the west are bound to a heavy ungainly façade which the Comte Roger de Bussy-Rabutin built in 1649. This ligature is a sort of a galleried arcade which itself dates from the reign of Henri II. As to its foundation the chateau probably dates from an ancestor who came into being in the twelfth century. In later centuries it frequently changed hands, until it came to Leonard du Rabutin, Baron d'Epiry, and father of the Comte Roger who did the real work of remodelling. It was this Comte Roger who has gone down to fame as the too-celebrated cousin of Madame de Sévigné. To-day, the chateau belongs to Madame la Comtesse de Sarcus and although it is perhaps the most historic, at least in a romantic sense, of all the great Renaissance establishments of these parts, it is known to modern map-makers as the Chateau de Savoigny. Much of its early history is closely bound with that picturesque owner, Comte de Bussy-Rabutin. In Holy Week in 1657, at the age of forty-one, Bussy became involved in some sort of a military scandal and was exiled from France. The following year he made peace with the powers that be and returned to court, when he composed the famous, or infamous, "Histoire Amoureuse des Gaules," a work of supposed great wit and satirical purport, but scandalous to a degree unspeakable. It was written to curry favour with a certain fair lady, the Marquise de Monglat, who had an axe to grind among a certain coterie of court favourites. Bussy stood her in great stead and the scheme worked to a charm up to a certain point, when Louis XIV, not at all pleased with the unseemly satire, hurried its unthinking, or too willing, author off to the Bastile and kept him there for five years, that no more of his lucubrations of a similar, or any other, nature should see the light. In 1666 Bussy got back to his native land and was again heard of by boiling over once more with similar indiscretions at Chazeu, near Autun. Finally he got home to the chateau and there remained for sixteen consecutive years, not a recluse exactly, and yet not daring to show his head at Paris. It was a long time before he again regained favour in royal circles. The Cour d'Honneur of the chateau is reached by a monumental portal which traverses the middle of the _corps du logis_. Above this are two marble busts, one of Sainte-Jeanne-de-Chantal, which came originally from the Couvent de Visitation at Dijon, and the other of Colbert, the minister of Louis XIV. The ancient Salle des Devises (now the modern billiard room) has a very beautiful pavement of hexagonal tiles, and a series of allegorical _devises_ which Bussy had painted in 1667 by way of reproach to one of his feminine admirers. On other panels are painted various reproductions of royal chateaux and a portrait of Bussy with his emblazoned arms. The Salon des Grands Hommes de Guerre, on the second floor, is well explained by its name. Its decorations are chiefly interlaced monograms of Bussy and the Marquise Monglat, setting off sixty odd portraits of famous French warriors, from Duguesclin and Dunois to Bussy himself, who, though more wielder of the pen than the sword, chose to include himself in the collection. Some of these are originals, contemporary with the period of their subjects; others are manifestly modern copies and mediocre at that, though the array of effigies is undeniably imposing. The Chambre Sévigné, as one infers, is consecrated to the memory of the most famous letter writer of her time. For ornamentation it has twenty-six portraits, one or more being by Mignard, while that of "La Grande Mademoiselle," who became the Duchesse de Berry, is by Coypel. Below a portrait of Madame de Sévigné, Bussy caused to be inscribed the following: "Marie de Rabutin: vive agreable et sage, fille de Celse Béninge de Rabutin et Marie de Coulanges et femme de Henri de Sévigné." This, one may be justified in thinking, is quite a biography in brief, the sort of a description one might expect to find in a seventeenth century "Who's Who." Beneath the portrait of her daughter--Comtesse de Grignan--the inscription reads thus: "Françoise de Sévigné; jolie, amiable, enfin marchant sur les pas de sa mere sur le chapitre des agreements, fille de Henri de Sévigné et de Marie de Rabutin et femme du Comte de Grignan." A rather more extended biography than the former, but condensed withal. Another neighbouring room is known as the Petite Chambre Sévigné, and contains some admirable sculptures and paintings. Leading to the famous Tour Dorée is a long gallery furnished after the style of the time of Henri II, whilst a great circular room in the tower itself is richly decorated and furnished, including two _faisceaux_ of six standards, each bearing the Bussy colours. Legend and fable have furnished the motive of the frescoes of this curious apartment, and under one of them, "Céphale et Procris," in which one recognizes the features of Bussy and the Marquise, his particular friend, are the following lines: "Eprouver si sa femme a le coeur précieux, C'est être impertinent autant que curieux: Un peu d'obscurité vaut, en cette matière, Mille fois mieux que la lumière." Not logical, you say, and unprincipled. Just that! But as a documentary expression of the life of the times it is probably genuine. Here and elsewhere on the walls of the chateau are many really worthy works of art, portraits by Mignard, Lebrun, Just, and others, including still another elaborate series of fourteen, representing Richelieu, Louis XIII, Anne d'Autriche, Mazarin, Louis XIV. Again in the _plafond_ of the great tower are other frescoes representing the "Petits Amours" of the time, always with the interlaced cyphers of Bussy and Madame la Comtesse. From the Chambre Sévigné a gallery leads to the tribune of the chapel. Here is a portrait gallery of the kings of the third race, of the parents of Bussy, and of the four Burgundian dukes and duchesses of the race of Valois. The chapel itself is formed of a part of the Tour Ronde where are two canvasses of Poussin, a Murillo and one of Andrea del Sarto. The gardens and Park of the chateau are attributed to Le Notre, the garden-maker of Versailles. This may or may not be so, the assertion is advanced cautiously, because the claim has so often falsely been made of other chateau properties. The gardens here, however, were certainly conceived after Le Notre's magnificent manner. There is a great ornamental water environing the chateau some sixty metres in length and twelve metres in width, and this of itself is enough to give great distinction to any garden-plot. CHAPTER VI "CHASTILLON AU NOBLE DUC" (The War Cry of the Bourguignons) The importance of the ancient Chastillon on the banks of the Seine was entirely due to the prominence given to it by the Burgundian dukes of the first race who made it their preferred habitation. The place was the ancient capital of the Bailliage de la Montague, the rampart and keep to the Burgundian frontier from the tenth to the fifteenth century. The origin of the Chateau des Ducs is blanketed in the night of time. Savants, even, can not agree as to the date of its commencement. One says that it and its name were derived from Castico, a rich Sequanais; and another that it comes from Castell, an enclosed place; or from Castellio--a small fortress. Each seems plausible in the absence of anything more definite, though according to the castle's latest historian it owes its actual inception to the occupation of the Romans who did build a castrum here in their time. During the pourparlers between Henri IV and the League, the inhabitants of the city demanded of Nicolas de Gellan, governor of the place, the giving up of the castle which had for years been the cause of so much misery and misfortune. The place had been the culminative point of the attacks of centuries of warriors, and the inhabitants believed that they had so suffered that it was time to cry quits. When the surrender, or the turning over, of the castle took place, all the population, including women and children, marched en masse upon the structure, and wall by wall and stone by stone dismantled it, leaving it in the condition one sees it to-day. A castle of sorts still exists, but it is a mere wraith of its former self. There is this much to say for it, however, and that is that its stern, grim walls which still stand remain as silent witnesses to the fact that it was not despoiled from without but demolished from within. Peace came soon after, and the people in submitting to the new régime would not hear of the rebuilding of the chateau, and so for three hundred years its battered walls and blank windows have stood the stresses of rigorous winters and broiling summers, a [Illustration: _Chateau des Ducs, Châtillon_] silent and conspicuous monument to the rights of the people. The majestic tower of the chateau, for something more than the mere outline of the ground-plan still exists, is bound to two others by a very considerable expanse of wall of the donjon, and by the _courtines_ which formerly joined the bastions with the main structure. The suggestion of the ample inner court is still there, and the foundations of still two other towers, as well as various ruined walls. A neighbouring edifice, the buildings formerly occupied by the Canons of Saint Vorles, is inexplicably intermingled with the ruins of the chateau in a way that makes it difficult to tell where one leaves off and the other begins. The _chevet_ of the Eglise de Saint Vorles and its churchyard also intermingle with the confines of the chateau in an extraordinary manner. To say the least, the juxtaposition of things secular and ecclesiastic is the least bit incongruous. Châtillon's Tour de Gissey, practically an accessory to the chateau, is a noble work whose well-preserved existence is due entirely to the solidity of its construction. Its lower ranges are of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but its upper gallery and its row of _meurtrières_ were due to the military engineers of Henri IV. who sought to make it the better serve the purpose of their royal master. Within this tower are two fine apartments, of which the upper, known as the Salle des Gardes, was, before the Revolution, the sepulchre of certain wealthy neighbouring families. Within the limits of the plot which surrounds the chateau, the church and the tower, is the tomb of Maréchal Marmont, Duc de Raguse. The present edifice at Châtillon occupied by the Sous-Préfecture was built, as a plaque on the wall indicates, by Madame la Comtesse de Langeac in 1765. It is a fine example of the architecture of the period which, in spite of glaring inconsistencies to be noted once and again, is unquestionably most effective, and suggests that after all the chateau filled its purpose well as a great town house of a wealthy noble. The building plays a public part to-day, and if it serves its present purpose half as well as its former, no one should complain. Within this really superb and palatial structure is still to be seen the magnificent stairway of forged iron of the period of Louis XVI. Besides this are various apartments with finely sculptured wooden panels and rafters of the same epoch, all of which accessories were brought thither from the nearby Chateau de Courcelles-les-Ranges, demolished during the Revolution. The Chateau de Marmont at Châtillon was formerly the princely residence of the Maréchal de Marmont, rebuilt from the fifteenth century chatelet occupied by the Sires de Rochefort, who were simply the appointed chatelains of the Duc de Bourgogne, to whom the property really belonged. In various successive eras the edifice was transformed, or added to, until it took its present form, the gradual transformation leaving little or no trace of its original plan. The Maréchal de Marmont, one of Châtillon's most illustrious sons, would have transformed his native city into a Burgundian Versailles, or at least a "Garden City." He did found a great agricultural enterprise, of which the chateau, its gardens and its park, formed the pivot. Too enterprising for his times, the Duc de Raguse saw himself ruined, and then came the German invasion of '71, when, in a combat with the Garibaldians, the chateau was burned. Châtillon has perpetuated the name of its great man in the public _place_, and also by naming one of the principal streets for him, but has not yet erected a statue to him. This indeed may be a blessing in disguise. Statues in trousers are seldom dignified, and this noble duke lived too late for cloak and sword or suit armour. The Chateau de Marmont, so called even to-day, was rebuilt after the fire and now serves a former Maire of the city as his private residence. Châtillon-sur-Seine was--though all the world seems to have forgotten or ignored it--the seat of a convention in 1814 which proposed leaving France its original territorial limits of 1792, a proposition of the ambassadors which was utterly rejected by Napoleon. Albeit that Châtillon lies on the banks of the Seine it is well within the confines of Burgundy. Roundabout is a most fascinating and little exploited region. Thirty kilometres to the north is Bar-sur-Seine and to the northwest Brienne-le-Chateau, where the Corsican first learned the rudiments of the art of war. "_La grand'ville de Bar-sur-Seine a fait trembler Troyes en Champaigne!_" Poor _grand'ville_! To-day it is withered and all but dried up and blown away. Poor grand'ville! It is the same of which Froissart recounts that it lost in one day the houses of nine hundred "_nobles et de riches bourgeois_" by fire. Without doubt these houses were of wooden frames and offered but little resistance to fire, as the period was 1359. Afterwards the town was rebuilt and became again populous and rich. Then began the decadence, until to-day it is the least populous "_chef-lieu_" of the department. Its population is, and ever has been, part Bourguignon and part Champagnois, the latter province being but a league to the northward, where, on the actual boundary, is found the curiously named little village of Bourguignons. South from Châtillon, across the great forest of the same name, one of the great national forests of France so paternally cared for by the Minister for Agriculture, is the actual source of the Seine. Here is what the engineers call a "Chateau d'Faux," though there is little enough of the real chateau of romance about it. It is simply a head-house with an iron _grille_ and various culverts and canals and what not which lead the bubbling waters of the Seine to a wider bed lower down, there to continue their way, via Paris, to the sea. A classic sculpture, typifying the Source of the Seine, has been erected commemorating the achievement of the engineers, but appropriate as the sentiment is it has not prevented the dishonouring hand of that abominable certain class of tourist of graving its names and dates thereon. The Seine at this point is nothing very majestic. It is simply a "_humble filet que le nain vert, Oberon, franchirait d'un bond sans mouiller ses grelots_." All Frenchmen, and Parisians in particular, have a reverence for every kilometre of the swift-flowing waters of the Seine. This is perhaps difficult for the stranger, who may be familiar with greater if less historic streams at home, to appreciate until he has actually discussed the thing with some Frenchman. Then he learns that it is the Frenchman's Niagara, Mississippi and Yosemite and Pike's Peak all rolled into one so far as his worship goes. Midway between Châtillon and the source is Duesme, a smug, unheard of little hamlet, the successor of a feudal bourg of great renown in its day. The sparse ruined walls still suggest the pride of place which it once held when capital of the powerful Burgundian Countship of Duesme. Its walls are still something more than mere outlines, but the manorial residence has become one of those "walled farms," so called, so frequently seen, and so unexpectedly, in the countryside of France. Here and there a gate-post, a wall or a gable, is as of old, and two great ornamental vases support the entrance to the alleyed row of trees which leads from the highroad to the dwelling, suggesting, if in a vague way, the old adage, "Other days, other ways." The fall of this fine old feudal residence has been great, but the present occupant--if he has a thought or care for such things--must be content indeed with such a princely farm-house. It must be a fine thing to raise chickens and other barn-yard livestock amid such surroundings! CHAPTER VII TONNERRE, TANLAY AND ANCY-LE-FRANC The origin of Tonnerre was due to a chateau-fort built here on the right bank of the Armançon, surrounded by a groupment of huddling dwellings which, in turn, were enclosed by a corselet wall of ramparts. Tonnerre grew to its majority through the ambitions of a powerful line of counts who made the original fortress which they constructed the centre of a tiny capital of a feudal kingdom in miniature. From the suzerainty of the Sennonais, of which it was a county, Tonnerre came to bear the same title under control of the Burgundians, in whose hands it remained until it passed to the house of Luvois. Only skimpy odds and ends remain of Tonnerre's one-time flanking gates, walls and towers. Its old chateau--which the counts invariably referred to, and with reason doubtless, as a palace--has been rebuilt and incorporated into the structure of the present hospital, itself a foundation by Marguerite de Bourgogne and dating back to 1293. No doubt many of the wards which to-day shelter the ill and crippled were once the scene of princely revels. In the nineteenth century the structure was further remodelled and put in order, but it remains still, from an architectural point of view at least, an admirable example of Renaissance building, though none of its attributes to be seen at a first glance are such as are usually associated with a great chateau of the noblesse of other days. At all events its functions of to-day are worthy, and it is far better to admire a mediæval chateau which has become a hospital than one which has been transformed into a military barracks or a prison for thieves and cutthroats, an indignity which has been thrust on many a grand old edifice in France deserving of a better fate. To-day such a hard sentence is seldom passed. The "Commission des Monuments Historiques" sees to it that no such desecrations are further committed. Within the hospice is the remarkably sculptured tomb of Marguerite de Bourgogne; as remarkably done in fact as the better known ducal tombs at Dijon, and those of the Église de Brou at Bourg-en-Bresse. The workmanship of these elaborate sculptures is typical of that known as the École de Dijon. Tonnerre's most remarkable sight is neither its chateau, nor its hospice, at least not according to the inhabitant. There is nothing to the native more curious or interesting to see than the celebrated Fosse Dionne (the Fons Dionysius of the ancients), a fountain which supplies the city with an abundance of fresh water coming from no one knows where, but spouting from the earth like a geyser, and with a sufficient force to turn a couple of water-mills. An ordinary enough bubbling spring is interesting to most of us, so that one enjoying an ancient and mysterious reputation is put down as a local curiosity well worth coming miles to see. Half a dozen kilometres out from Tonnerre, on the road to Châtillon-sur-Seine, is the Chateau de Tanlay, not known at all to the travellers by express trains who are whisked by to Switzerland with never as much as a slow-up or a whistle as they pass the little station but a short distance from the park gates. The Chateau de Tanlay is a superb relic of a sixteenth century work. This was a period when architectural art had become debased not a little, but here there is scarcely a trace of its having fallen off from the best traditions of a couple of centuries before. It is this fact, and some others, that makes Tanlay a sight not to be neglected by the lover of old chateaux. In the midst of a great flowered and shady park sits this admirable edifice belonging to the descendants of the family of Coligny. It was here, to be precise, that the Coligny and the Prince de Condé leagued themselves together against the wily Catherine de Medicis and her crew, and much bad blood was shed on both sides before they got en rapport again. The Chateau de Tanlay is perhaps the finest, certainly one of the most monumental, chateaux of Burgundy. Frankly Renaissance, the best of it dating from 1559, it was begun by Coligny d'Andelot, the brother of the "Admiral." One of the most notable of its constructive features is the imposing Tour de la Ligue where, previous to that dread Saint Bartholomew's night, the Colignys and the Prince de Condé and their followers plotted and planned their future actions, and those of their associated Ligueurs. The Marquis de Tanlay, the present owner of the ancient lands of the Courtneys of royal race, graciously opens the portal of the chateau that the world of curiosity-loving folk who pass by may enter if they will, and marvel at the delights within. The "Terre de Tanlay" in the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries belonged to the de Courtneys, by whom, it was sold to Louise de Montmorency, the mother of the Huguenot Admiral of Henri IV. This latter, in 1559, ceded it to another of her sons, François d'Andelot, the Coligny who began the work of construction of the chateau forthwith. In 1574 d'Andelot bequeathed the unachieved work to Anne de Coligny, the wife of the Marquis de Mirabeau, who, still working on the original plans, left it uncompleted at his death in 1630. His daughter Catherine fell heir to the property, but sold it five years later to Porticelli d'Hémery--Mazarin's Surintendant des Finances, who called in the architect Lemuet to carry the work to a finish. This he did, or at least brought it practically to the condition in which it stands to-day. The name of Hémery did not long survive as chatelain of the property, and the lands passed by letters patent to the Thévenin family, its present owners, who were able to have the fief made into a marquisat. The chateau fortunately escaped Revolutionary destruction and to-dayranks as one of the most beautiful examples of the Renaissance-Bourguignonne style of domestic architecture to be seen. The edifice in its construction and exterior decoration shows plainly its transition between the _moyen-age_ manner of building and that which is considerably more modern. It is towered and turreted after the defensive manner of the earliest times, and moat surrounded in a way which suggests that the ornamental water is something more than a mere accessory intended to please the eye. Entrance is had by a bridge over this moat and finally into the Cour d'Honneur through a fortified gateway, as pleasingly artistic in its disposition as it is effective as a defence. Chiefly, the chateau shows to-day d'Hémery's construction of the seventeenth century, paid for, says one authority, by silver extorted from the poor subjects of his king in the form of general taxes. This may or may not be so, but as d'Hémery's wealth was quickly acquired only when he had need of it to build this great chateau, it is quite likely that some of it came from sources which might never otherwise have produced a personal revenue. Another distinct portion of the chateau is that arrived at through the Cour d'Honneur, and known as Le Petit Chateau, a sort of distinct pavillion, a beautiful example of late Renaissance work at least a century older than the main fabric. Though non-contemporary in its parts, the chateau taken entire is intensely interesting and satisfying in every particular. Furthermore, its sylvan site is still preserved much as it was in other days, and its alleyed walks are the same through which strolled the Colignys and the de Courtneys of old. No sacrilege has been committed here as in many other seigneurial parks, where more than one virgin forest has been cut down to make firewood, or perhaps sold to bring in gold which an impoverished scion of a noble house may have thought he needed. One avenue alone of this great park runs straight as the proverbial flight of an arrow, only ending at the chateau portal after a course of two kilometres straightaway. The park in turn is enclosed by a wall nearly six kilometres long, and the chief ornamental water is considerably over five hundred metres in length, and merits well its appellation of Grand Canal. This water which fills the moat and surrounds the chateau is not stagnant, but flows gently from the Quincy to the Armançon after first enveloping the property in its folds. The greater portion of the structure, that of Lemuet, is imposingly grand with its central _corps de logis_ and its two wings which advance to join up with the extended members of the Petit Chateau, forming with them the grand Cour d'Honneur, more familiarly known as the Cour Verte. The actual entrance is known as the Portail Neuf (1547) and serves as the habitation of the concierge. At the right is the imposing Tour de la Ligue (1648) and to the left the Tour des Archives, each enclosing a large spiral stairway and surmounted by a dome terminated with a _lanternon_. At each end of the outer façade are two other towers, in form more svelt than those in the courtyard. In the vestibule within, as one enters the main building, are the marble busts of eight Roman Emperors, of little interest one thinks in a place where one would expect to find effigies of the former illustrious occupants of the chateau. Various trophies of the chase are hung about the walls of this corridor and are certainly more in keeping with the general tone of things than the cold-cut visages of the noble Romans before mentioned. A gallery of mythological paintings opens out of the vestibule and leads to the seventeenth century chapel, which contains a "Descent from the Cross," by Peregrin, and other religious paintings of the Flemish school. Distributed throughout the various apartments are numerous paintings and portraits by Mignard, Nattier, Philippe-de-Champaigne, and others, and some pastels by Quentin de la Tour. The chimney-pieces throughout are notable for their gorgeousness; that in the Chambre des Archevèques, at least a dozen feet high, is decorated with two pairs of massive caryatides and other statuettes in relief. On another is a carven bust of Coligny, the Admiral, with a cast of countenance suggesting a sinister leer towards the statue of a sphinx which is supposed to represent the features of Catherine de Medicis. The paintings of the Tour de la Ligue, supposedly by Primataccio, representing mythological divinities in the personages of the members of the court of the Medicis, bespeak a questionable taste on the part of the Colignys who caused them to be put there. It would seem as though spite had been carried too far, or that the artist was given carte blanche to run a riot of questionable fantasy for which no one stood responsible. All these gods and goddesses of the court are, if not repulsive, at least unseemly effigies. Catherine herself is there as Juno, her son Charles IX as Pluto, the Admiral as Hercules, Guise as Mars, and Venus, of course, bears the features of the huntress, Diane de Poitiers. About as far south from Tonnerre as Tanlay is to the eastward is Ancy-le-Franc. It is in exactly the same position as Tanlay; its charms are pretty generally unknown and unsung, but its sixteenth century chateau of the Clermont-Tonnerre family is one of the wonder works of its era. Rather more admirably designed to begin with than many of its confrères, and considerably less overloaded with meaningless ornament, it has preserved very nearly its original aspect without and within. The finest apartments have been conserved and decorated to-day with many fine examples of the best of Renaissance furnishings. This one may observe for himself if he, or she, is fortunate enough to gain entrance, a procedure not impossible of accomplishment though the edifice is not usually reckoned a sight by the guide-books. At present the Marquis de Clermont-Tonnerre holds possession of the property, and keeps it up with no little suggestion of its former magnificent state. If not notable for its fine suggestive feudal nomenclature, Ancy-le-Franc certainly claims that distinction by reason of the memories of its chateau, which dates from the reign of Henri II. Nearly three-quarters of a century were given to its inception. Of a unique species of architecture, presenting from without the effect of a series of squat façades, ornamented at each corner with a two storied square pavillon, it is sober and dignified to excess. The interior arrangements are likewise unique and equally precise, though not severe. The whole is a blend of the best of dignified Italian motives, for in truth there is little distinctively French about it, and nothing at all Burgundian. [Illustration] The structure was begun by the then ruling Comtes de Tonnerre in 1555, and became in 1668 the property of the Marquis de Louvois, the minister of Louis XIV, and already proprietor of the countship of Tonnerre which came to him as a _dot_ upon his marriage with the rich heiress Anne de Souvre. The gardens and park, now dismembered, were once much more extensive and followed throughout the conventional Italian motives of the period of their designing. Enough is left of them to make the site truly enough sylvan, but with their curtailment a certain aspect of isolation has been lost, and the whole property presents rather the aspect of a country place of modest proportions than a great estate of vast extent. The Chateau de Ancy-le-Franc is commonly accredited as one of the few edifices of its important rank which has preserved its general aspect uncontaminated and uncurtailed. No parasitical outgrowths, or additions, have been interpolated, and nothing really desirable has been lopped off. With Chambord and Dampierre, Ancy-le-Franc stands in this respect in a small and select company. Ancy-le-Franc is even now much the same as it was when Androuet du Cerceau included a drawing of it in his great work (1576), "Les Plus Excellents Bastiments de France." He was an architect as well as a writer, this Androuet du Cerceau, and he said further: "For my part I know no other minor edifice so much to my liking, not only for its general arrangements and surroundings, but for the dignified formalities which it possesses." Comte Antoine de Clermont, Grand Maitre des Eaux et Forêts, built the chateau of Ancy-le-Franc on the plans of Primataccio, probably in 1545, certainly not later, though the exact date appears to be doubtful. That Primataccio may have designed the building there is little doubt, as he is definitely known to have contributed to the royal chateaux of Fontainebleau and Chambord. For a matter of three-quarters of a century the edifice was in the construction period however, and since Primataccio died in 1570 it is improbable that he carried out the decorations, a class of work upon which he made his great reputation, for the simple reason that they were additions or interpolations which came near the end of the construction period. This observation probably holds true with the decorations attributed to the Italian at neighbouring Tanlay. It may be that Primataccio only furnished sketches for these decorations and that another hand actually executed them. Historical records are often vague and indefinite with regard to such matters. Again, since Primataccio was chiefly known as a [Illustration: _Chateau of Ancy-le-Franc_] decorator the doubt is justly cast upon his actually having been the designer of Ancy-le-Franc. It is all very vague, one must admit that, in spite of claims and counterclaims. All things considered, this chateau ranks as one of the most notable in these parts. The surrounding walls bathe their forefoot in the waters of the Armançon and thus give it a defence of value and importance, though the property was never used for anything more than a luxurious country dwelling. Built, or at any rate designed, by an artist who was above all a painter, its walls and plafonds naturally took on an abundance of decorative detail. For this reason the chateau of Ancy-le-Franc, if for no other, is indeed remarkable. Two of its great rooms have been celebrated for centuries among art-lovers and experts, the Chambre des Fleurs, with its elaborately panelled ceiling, and that of Pastor Fido, whose walls show eight great paintings depicting the scenes of a pastoral romance. The Chambre du Cardinal contains a portrait of Richelieu, and the Chambre des Arts is garnished most ornately throughout. The monograms and _devises_ of the ceiling of the Chambre des Fleurs suggest the various alliances of the Clermonts, but the painted arms are those of the Louvois, who substituted their own _marque_ for that of the Clermonts wherever it could readily be done. [Illustration: _Monograms from the Chambre des Fleurs_] The present Marquis de Clermont-Tonnerre has ably restored the chateau of his ancestors and put the family arms for the great part back where they belong. His arms are as follows: "_De gueules aux deux clefs d'argent en sautoir avec la tiare pour cimier_." The motto is "_Etsi omnes ego non_." These arms were originally conceded to Sibaut II de Clermont by Pope Calixtus II in recognition of his having chased the Anti-Pope Gregoire VIII from Rome in 1120. In the Salle des Empereurs Romains are a series of paintings of Roman Emperors which makes one think that Tanlay's sculptured Roman busts must have set the fashion hereabouts or vice versa. The Bibliothèque contains a remarkable folio showing plans and views of the chateaux of Ancy-le-Franc and Tonnerre, the latter since destroyed as we have found. In the Chapel, dedicated to Sainte Cécile, are a series of admirable painted panels of the apostles and prophets, a favourite religious decorative motif in these parts, as one readily recalls by noting the Puits de Moise and the tomb of the Burgundian dukes at Dijon, the inspiration doubtless of all other similar works since. The Grand Salon of to-day was once the sleeping apartment of Louis XIV when one day he honoured the chateau with his presence. A dozen kilometres south from Ancy-le-Franc is Nuits-sous-Ravières. Nuits, curiously enough, a name more frequently seen on the wine-lists of first class restaurants than elsewhere, here in the heart of Burgundy, is supposedly of German origin. Its original inhabitants were Germans coming from Neuss in Prussia, whose inhabitants are called Nuychtons, whilst those of Nuits are known as Nuitons. Again, near Berne, in Switzerland, is a region known as Nuitland, which would at least add strength to the assertion of a Teuton origin for this smiling little wine-growing community of the celebrated Cote d'Or. Nuits possesses a minor chateau which to all intents and purposes fulfils, at a cursory glance, its object admirably. It is a comfortably disposed and not unelegant country house of the sixteenth century, sitting in a fine, shady park and looks as habitable as it really is, though it possesses no historical souvenirs of note. A fortified gateway leads from the north end of the town towards Champagne, Nuits being on the borderland between the possessions of the Ducs de Bourgogne and those of the Comtes de Champagne. [Illustration: BURGUNDY THROUGH THE AGES] CHAPTER VIII IN OLD BURGUNDY Burgundy has ever been known as a land of opulence. Since the middle ages its _richesse_ has been sung by poets and people alike. There is an old Burgundian proverb which runs as follows: _"Riche de Chalon_ _Noble de Vienne_ _Preux de Vergy_ _Fin de Neufchâtel_ Et la maison de Beaufremont D'où sont sortis les hauts barons" The Burgundians were first of all vandals, but with their alliance with the Romans in the fifth century they became a people distinct and apart, and of a notable degree of civilization. They established themselves first in Savoy, a gift to them of the Emperor Valentinian, and made Geneva the capital of their kingdom. A new Burgundian kingdom of vast extent came into being under the Frankish kings; this second dynasty of Burgundian rulers finally came to the French throne itself. In the meantime they held, through their powerful line of dukes, the governorship of the entire province with a power that was absolute,--a power that was only equalled by that of independent sovereigns. The Burgundians were no vassal race. The hereditary Ducs de Bourgogne reigned from 721 to 1361, during which period the duchy rose to unwonted heights of richness and luxury as well as esteem by its neighbours. Under the Frankish line the career of the province was no less brilliant, and when the King of France gave the duchy to his third son Philippe, that prince showed himself so superior in ability that he would treat with his suzerain father only as an equal in power. In the reign of Louis XIV the eldest son of the house of France bore again the title Duc de Bourgogne, his grandson, born in 1751, being the last prince to be so acknowledged. Burgundy in 1789 still formed one of the great "_gouvernements_" of the France of that day, and in addition was recognized in its own right as a Pays d'État. With the new portioning out of old France under Revolutionary rule the old Burgundian province became the modern Départements of the Cote d'Or, the Saône et Loire and the Yonne. The Burgundian nobles who made Dijon their residence in Renaissance times lived well, one may be sure, with such a rich larder as the heart of Burgundy was, and is, at their door. There is no granary, no wine-cellar in France to rival those of the Cote d'Or. The shop-keepers of Dijon, the _fournisseurs_ of the court, supplied only the best. The same is true of the shop-keepers of these parts to-day, whatever may be their line of trade. Even the religious institutions of old were, if not universal providers, at least purveyors of many of the good things of the table. When the monks of Saint Béninge sent out their lay brothers, sandalled and cowled, to call in the streets of Dijon the wines of the convent vineyards not a wine dealer was allowed to compete with them. This made for fair dealing, a fine quality of merchandise and a full measure at other times, no doubt. The monks who sold this product were accompanied by a surpliced cleric who fanfared a crowd around him and announced his wine by extolling its virtues as if he was chanting a litany. In Burgundy there has come down from feudal times a series of sobriquets which, more than in any other part of France, have endured unto this time. There were the "_buveurs_" of Auxerre, the "_escuyers_" of Burgundy and the "_moqueurs_" of Dijon. All of these are terms which are locally in use to-day. The Bourguignons in the fifth century, by a preordained custom, wore, suspended by cords or chains from their belts, the keys of their houses, the knives which served them at table as well as for the hunt (forks were not then invented, or at any rate not in common use), their purse, more or less fat with silver and gold, their sword and their ink-well and pens; all this according to their respective stations in life. When one was condemned for a civil contravention before a judge he was made to deposit his belt and its dangling accessories as an act of acknowledgment of his incapacity to properly conduct his affairs. It was no sign of infamy or lack of probity, but simply an indication of a lack of business sagacity. It was the same, even, with royalty and the noblesse as with the common people, and the act was applied as well to women as men. The Duchesse de Bourgogne, widow of Philippe-le-Hardi, who died covered with debts brought about by his generosity, admitted also that she was willing to share the responsibilities of his faults by renouncing certain of her rights and deposition on his tomb of his _ceinture_, his keys and his purse. Isabelle de Bavière, who owed so much to a Duc de Bourgogne of the seventeenth century, was criticised exceedingly when she came among his people because of the luxury of possessing two "chemises de toile," the women of the court at the time--in Burgundy at all events--dressing with the utmost simplicity. With what degree of simplicity one can only imagine! Another luxury in these parts in mediæval times was the use of candles. What artificial light was made use of in a domestic manner came from resinous torches, and _cires_ and candles were used only in the churches, or perhaps in the oratories, or private chapels, of the chateaux. The homes of the Burgundian _bourgeoisie_ were hardly as luxuriant or magnificent as those of the nobles, nor were they as comfortably disposed in many instances as one would expect to learn of this land of ease and plenty. Frequently there was no board flooring, no tiles, no paving of flag stones, even. A simple hard-pounded clay floor served the humble householder for his _rez-de-chaussee_. In the more splendid Renaissance town houses, or even in many neighbouring chateaux, it was not infrequent that the same state of affairs existed, but sheaves or bunches of straw were scattered about, giving the same sort of warmth that straw gives when spread in the bottom of an omnibus. If a visitor of importance was expected fresh straw was laid down, but this was about all that was done to make him comfortable. Otherwise the straw was generally of the Augean stable variety, since it was usually renewed but three times during the cold season, which here lasts from three to five months out of the twelve. In time a sort of woven or plaited straw carpet came into use, then square flags and tiles, and finally rugs, or _tapis_, which, in part, covered the chilly flooring. Elsewhere, as the rugs came into the more wealthy houses, plain boards, sometimes polished, served their purpose much as they do now. Only the rich had glazed windows. The first window glass used in France was imported from England in the twelfth century, at which time it was reckoned as one of the greatest of domestic luxuries. Chimneys, too, were wanting from the houses of the poor. Houses with windows without glass, and entirely without chimneys, must have lacked comfort to a very great degree. Such indeed exist to-day, though, in many parts of France. This is fact! A sort of open grate in a lean-to outside the house, and iron barred open windows without even shutters are to be found in many places throughout the Midi of France. One such the writer knows in a town of three thousand inhabitants, and it is occupied by a prosperous "decorated" Frenchman. What comfort, or discomfort! The Burgundian householder of mediæval times sat with his family huddled around a great brazier upon which burned wood or charcoal. The rising smoke disappeared through a hole in the centre of the roof in primitive redman's fashion. As late as the fifteenth century there were no individual chairs in any but the most prosperous and pretentious homes. Their place was taken by benches, and these mostly without backs. Chiefly the meaner houses were built of wood and thatched after the manner of such thatched roofs as exist to-day, but with less symmetry, one judges from the old prints. All the world and his wife retired early. This one learns from the Burgundian proverb already old in the time of Louis XII. "_Lever à cinq, diner à neuf_ _Souper à cinq, coucher à neuf_ _Fait vivre d'ans nonante et neuf._" This is probably as true to-day as it was then if one had the courage to live up to it and find out. The ancient reputation of the wine of Burgundy dates back centuries and centuries before the juice of the grape became the common drink of the French. During the famous schism which divided the Church in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Duc de Bourgogne, Philippe-le-Hardi, was deputed, in 1395, to present to Pope Benoit XIII, then living at Avignon in the Comtat, "rich presents and twenty _queues_ of the wine of Beaune." History and romance have been loud in their praises of the rich red wines of Burgundy ever since the dawn of gormandizing. Petrarch has said that his best inspirations and sentiments came from the wine of Beaune, and the Avignon Popes lengthened their sojourn in their Papal City on the banks of the Rhone because of the easy transport and the low price of the fine wines of Beaune. "There is not in Italy," they said, "the wine of Beaune nor the means of getting it." The heart of old Burgundy, that is, the Côte d'Or of to-day, is the region of France the most densely wooded after the Vosges. Great forests exploited for their wood are everywhere, oak and beech predominating. Only the _coteaux_, the low-lying hillsides, where the vines are chiefly grown, are bare of forest growth. Two great rivers cross the province from north to south, and two from east to west, the Aube, the Dheune, the Saône and the Vingeanne, and the Seine itself takes birth between Saint Seine and Chanceaux, this last, like most of the great rivers of Europe, being but a humble rivulet at the commencement. Two canals furnish an economical means of communication, and are really remarkable waterways. The Canal de Bourgogne joins up the Saône and the Seine, and more important still is that which joins the Rhône and Rhine. Eight "Routes Royales" crossed the province in old monarchical days, and where once rolled princely corteges now whiz automobiles without count. In the seventeenth century from Paris to Dijon was a journey of eight days in winter and seven in summer, by the _malle-poste_. One departure a week served what traffic there was, and the price was twenty-four _livres_ (francs) a head, with baggage charged at three _sols_ a pound. The departure from Paris was from the old auberge "Aux Quatre Fils Aymon," and more frequently than not the announcements read that the coach would leave "as soon as possible" after the appointed hour. Whatever feudal reminiscence may linger in the minds of the readers of old chronicles let no one forget that France in general, and Burgundy in particular, is no longer a land of poverty where everybody but the capitalist has to pick up fagots for fires. Far from it; the peasant hereabouts, the worker in the fields, may lack many of the commonly accepted luxuries of life, but he eats and drinks as abundantly as the seemingly more prosperous dweller in the towns, and if not of meat three times a day (the worn-out, threadbare argument of the English and American traveller who looks not below the surface in continental Europe) it is because he doesn't crave it. That he is the better in mind and body for the lack of it goes without saying. The valley of the Saône above Dijon is a paradise of old fiefs of counts and dukes. Almost every kilometre of its ample course bears a local name allied with some seigneur of feudal days. The whole watershed is historic, romantic ground. Mantoche was the site of a Cité Romain; Apremont gave birth to one of the most prolific of romancers, Xavier de Montepin, a litterateur who wrote mostly for concierges and shop girls of a couple of generations ago, but a name famous in the annals of French literature nevertheless. Leaving the country of the minor counts the Saône enters into Basse Bourgogne, taking on at various stages of its career the name of Petite Saône, Saône Supérieur or Grande Saône. All told it has a navigable length of nearly four hundred kilometres, making it one of France's mightiest _chemins qui marche_, to borrow Napoleon's phrase. The entire heart of old Burgundy above Dijon, the plain that is, is most curiously sown with cultures of a variety that one would hardly expect to find. Here and there a _chateau de commerce_, as the French distinguish the "_wine-chateaux_" from the purely domestic establishments and the "_monuments historiques_" of which the French government is so justly proud, crops up surrounded by its vineyards, with its next door neighbour, perhaps, an exploitation of hops, the principal ingredient of beer, as the grape is of wine. The paradox is as inexplicable, as is the fact that Dijon is famous for mustard when not a grain of it is grown nearer the Côte d'Or than India. It is true that Dijon is noted quite as much for its mustard and its gingerbread as for its sculpture. The École Dijonnais is supreme in all three specialties. The historic figure, "mustardmaker to the Pope," has caused many a "_rire bourguignon_"; nevertheless the preparing of Dijon mustard is a good deal of a secret still, as all who know the subtleness of this particular condiment recognize full well. The mustard pots of Dijon, even those of commonest clay, are veritable works of art. It would pay some one to collect them. The "Fontaine de Jouvence," which one may buy for thirty sous at the railway buffet, is indeed a gem; another, blazoned with the arms of Burgundy, and the legend "Moult me tarde," followed by "d'y gouster" is no less. CHAPTER IX DIJON, THE CITY OF THE DUKES [Illustration: KEY of VAULTING DIJON] Of no city of France are there more splendid ducal memories than of Dijon. To the French historians it has ever been known as "the city of the glorious dukes." It is one of the cities which has best conserved its picturesque panoramic silhouette in Europe. Certainly no other of the cities of modern France can approach it in this respect. Its strikingly mediæval skyline serrated with spires, donjon and gables innumerable gives it a _cachet_ all its own. Its situation, too, is remarkable, lying as it does snugly wrapped between the mountain and the plain by the flanks of the gently rolling _coteaux_ round about. Dijon is still a veritable reminder of the moyen-age in spite of the fact that countless of its palaces, towers and clochers have disappeared with the march of time and the insistent movement of progress. This was less true a generation or so ago. Then the city's old ramparts were intact. To-day not more than a scant area of house front or garden wall suggests the one time part that the same stones played in the glory of war and siege. Nearby, too, the contemplation of Dijon evokes the same emotions in spite of a monotonous modernity to be seen in the new quarters of the town, where all is a dull drab in strong contrast to the liveliness of the colouring of the older parts. Dijon, take it all in all, is indeed a museum of architectural splendours. "_Nous allions admirant clochers, portails et tours,_ _Et les vielles maisons dans les arrière cours._" Thus said Saint-Beauve, and any who come this way to-day, and linger long enough in the city of the dukes, may well take it for their text. After many and diverse fortunes Dijon became the capital of the Duché de Bourgogne in 1015 under Duc Robert, the first of the line of Burgundian dukes, known as the dukes of the _première race royale_. This particular Robert was the grandson of Hugues Capet. Twelve princes in succession (until 1349) ruled the destinies of the dukedom from the capital, and showered upon its inhabitants benefits galore. At this time Philippe de Rouvres came into the control of the duchy, under the tutelage of his mother, Jeanne de Bourgogne. One reads in the "Rôle des Dépenses" of 1392 unmistakable facts which point to the luxury which surrounded the court of Burgundy in the fourteenth century. Particularly is this so with regard to the _garde-robe_ of Philippe-le-Hardi, wherein all his costumes, including the trappings of his horses, were garnished with real gold. Many other attributes went to make up the gorgeous properties of this admirable stage setting. There was an elaborate "_chaine à porter reliques_" and "_la bonne ceinture de Monseigneur Saint Louis_" to be counted among the _tresor_ of the court. Amid all this sumptuousness there was a notable regard for the conservation and safeguarding of governmental funds and property. This is to be remarked the more because of the fact that the overlord generally took for his own, and that of his heirs, all that came within his immediate presence. The Burgundian dukes at Dijon administered their rule with prudence and good judgment in all particulars until the Duché and the neighbouring Comté (afterwards the Franche Comté) stood almost alone among the European states of their time in not being obliged to own to a profligate hierarchy of administrators. In all phases of their history the Dijonnais have ever been jealous of their personal liberties. François Premier, a prisoner at Madrid, had ceded Burgundy as a part of unwillingly given ransom to Charles Quint, who had already acquired the Franche Comté. The Dijon parliament would hear nothing of such a project, and energetically refused to ratify the treaty, sending their deputies to Cognac, to the convention which had been called, in protest. Dijon's chateau was first built by Louis XI to hold in leash his "_bonne ville de Dijon_." The edifice was only completed in 1572, under Louis XII. It was in its prime, judging from historical descriptions, a most curious example of fifteenth century military architecture. The Dijonnais of late years demanded the suppression, and the clearing away, of the débris of this old royal chateau, believing (wrongly of course) that the ducal palace was sufficient to sustain the glory of their city. Accordingly, there remains nothing to-day of the chateau of the Louis but a scant funeral pile built up from the stones of the former chateau merely as a historical guide post, or rather, memorial of what has once been. Historical enthusiasm and much palavering on the part of a certain body of local antiquarians against the popular wave of feeling, could accomplish no more of a restoration. For the past fifty years the ruin has been, it is true, something of an eye-sore, an ill-kept, badly guarded, encumbering ruin, and unless it may be better taken care of, it would be as well to have it removed. In form this chateau was a perfectly rectangular tower, sustained at each corner by a round tower of lesser proportions. As a whole it was one of the most massive works of its era in these parts. Its defence towards the north was a great horse-shoe shaped redoubt, a most unusual and most efficient rampart. Towards the city it was defended by a moat over which one entered the chateau proper by the traditional drawbridge. The vast monumental pile at Dijon which bears the name of Hôtel de Ville to-day has been variously known as the Palais des Ducs, the Logis du Roi and the Palais des États. It has served all three purposes and served them well and with becoming dignity. The exact origin of the structure has been left behind in the dim distance, but it is certain that it was the outgrowth of some sort of a foundation which existed as early as the tenth century, a period long before the coming of the so-called chateau. In the twelfth century Hugues III built the Sainte Chapelle, all vestiges of which, save certain decorative elements built into the eastern wall of the Palais des Ducs, have now disappeared. Philippe-le-Hardi, in 1366, almost entirely rebuilt the palace as it then existed, and Philippe-le-Bon actually did complete the work in 1420, when the great square Tour de la Terrasse, of a height of nearly fifty metres, was built. There is still existing another minor tower, the Tour de Bar, so named from the fact that for three years it was the prison of René d'Anjou, the Duc de Bar. In 1407 and 1502 this tower was nearly destroyed by fire, which carried away as well a great part of the main structure of that time. The edifice is to-day occupied by many civic departments, including the Musée, the Archives and the École des Beaux Arts, but the Salle des Gardes and the "Cuisines des Ducs" still remain, as to their general outlines of walls and ceilings, as they were when they served the dukes themselves. The present edifice, in spite of being known as the Ducal Palace, was not inhabited by any of the nobles of the first race; there is no part which dates from so early a period as that of the end even of their régime. The most ancient of the elements which formerly made up the collective block of buildings was the Sainte Chapelle, which was demolished in 1802, and the _rez-de-chaussee_ of the Tour de Bar, which still exists. The lower part of this tower dates from the thirteenth century, the upper portions from the fourteenth. [Illustration: CUISINES at DIJON] From the ducal account books it appears that the portions known as the "Cuisines"--actually housing the Musée Lapidaire to-day--were constructed in 1445, and it is this part of the old palace which is the most interesting because it best illustrates the manner of building hereabouts at that period. The Burgundian court attached great importance to the service at table, and during the fifteenth century there was not in all of Europe a line of princes who were better fed or got more satisfaction from the joys of the table. This is historic fact, not mere conjecture! The descriptions of the _festins_ which were given by the Ducs de Bourgogne and described in the "Mémoires d'Olivier de la Marche" make interesting reading to one who knows anything of, and has any liking for, the chronicles of gastronomy. For such a bountiful serving at table as was habitual with the dukes, kitchens of the most ample proportions were demanded. It is recounted that on many occasions certain of the _mets_ were cooked in advance, but a prodigious supply of soups, ragouts and sauces, of fish, _volaille_, and _rotis_ were of necessity to be prepared at the moment of consumption. To produce these in their proper order and condition was the work of an army of cooks supported by a numerous "_batterie de cuisine_;" necessarily they required an ample room in which to work. The modern French cook demands the same thing to-day. Details in this line do not change so rapidly in this "land of good cooks" as elsewhere, for the French chef is still supreme and cares not for labour or time-saving appliances. The "Cuisines," as to their ground plan, form a perfect square, the roof being borne aloft by eight columns, which on three sides of the apartment serve as supporters also for the great twin-hooded chimneys. Two _potagers_, or _braisers_, where the pots might be kept simmering, were at B on the plan, and the oven, or _foyer ardente_ was at C. D was a well, and E its means of access. The windows were at F and G, and H was a great central smoke-pipe, or opening in the roof, which served the same functions as the hole in the roof of the Indian's wigwam. K was a serving table, made also of stone, to receive the dishes after being cooked; and, that they might not become literally stone cold before being finally served, this table had a sort of subterranean heating arrangement. The conglomerate structure of to-day which serves its civic functions so well is an outgrowth of all these varied components which made up the ducal residence of old. It was midway in its career that it became the Parliament House of the États de Bourgogne, so it took naturally to its new function when it came to uphold merely civic dignity. The apartment where sat the Burgundian Parliament, the Salle des États, has been recently restored and decorated with a series of wall paintings depicting the glories of Burgundy. It is a seemingly appropriate decoration and in every way admirably executed, though the name attached thereto may not be as famous as that of an Abbey or a Sargent. In general the character of the great pile of buildings to-day, on account of the heterogeneous aspect of the mass, forbids any strict estimate applicable to its artistic merits. The most that can be ventured is to comment on that which is definitely good. At many times during its career it has been remodelled and added to by many able hands. As a result there are naturally many worthy bits which may be discovered by close observation that in general run a fair chance of being overlooked. Two pupils of Mansart worked upon the remodelling of the structure, and Mansart himself designed the colonnade and the vestibule of the Salle des États. Twelve principal buildings surrounding the main courtyard came into being from time to time, and in one [Illustration: _Chateau des Ducs, Dijon_] form or another they are all there to-day, though in the scantiest of fragments in some instances. An old-time iron gateway, or _grille_, still exists midway between the two principal façades of the Doric order. The effect of this façade is heavy, but ornate: frankly it is bad architecture, but it is imposing. It is bad because it is a manifest Italian interpolation with little or nothing in common with other decorative details to be seen, details which are of the transplanted French variety of Renaissance, and that in truth is far and away ahead of anything in Italy or any rank copy of anything of Italian origin. The old Place Royale opened out fan-like before the building and gave a certain spectacular effect which saved it from ultra bad taste at that period. The Place d'Armes, before the present Hotel de Ville (which now occupies the principal part of the old ducal palace), and the Place des Ducs, at the rear, lend the same artistic aid which was performed by the Place Royale in its time. Of the interior arrangements but little remains as it was of old save a range of vaulted rooms on the lower floor, the Salle des Gardes, the apartments of the Tour de Bar and the "Cuisines." The public functions which have been performed by the structure in late years have nearly swept away the old glamour of romance and chivalry which might otherwise have hung about the place for ages, so that to-day it is, like many edifices of its class in France, simply a hive of office-holders and little-worked authorities of the state and civic administrations. It is difficult to see any romance in the visage of a modern town-clerk or a sergeant-at-arms. This old palace of the dukes was chiefly the work of Dijon craftsmen, at least those portions which were built in the sixteenth century or immediately after. This is the more to be remarked because the gables and roof-tops are not unlike that Flemish-Gothic of the Hospice de Beaune which was built by alien hands. At Dijon the northern portal was designed by Brouhée and the roofing of the Grande Salle was made from the plans of Sambin and Chambrette, as was the doorway from the street to the chapel. The Chambre Dorée has a most beautiful ceiling of the time of François Premier, and the _boiseries_ and the _grisaille_ of the same apartment date from the period of Louis XIII. There are two other notable ceilings in the edifice, those of the Bibliothèque and the Salle d'Assises. Dijon has ever been noted down by those who know as a city of a distinctly local and a really great and celebrated art. The École de Dijon was a unique thing which had no counterpart elsewhere. Under the liberally encouraging patronage of the Ducs de Bourgogne numerous habile artists banded together and constituted the local "École de Dijon." It was a body of artists and craftsmen whose careers burned brilliantly throughout the best period of the Renaissance, indeed up to its end, for the Hôtel de Vogué at Dijon, of a very late period, shows the distinct local manner of building at its best. Hugues Sambin, who designed the Palace of the Burgundian Parliament, was the best known of these Dijon craftsmen--best known perhaps because of his architectural writings (1572), for his work was not indeed superior to that of his fellows. His dwelling exists to-day at Dijon, in the Rue de la Vannerie, somewhat disfigured and not at all reminiscent of the great capabilities of his art which he so freely bestowed on the more magnificent structures of his clients. A tower, presumably a part of the house itself, rises close beside, and on its vaulting one sees the _devise_ "Tout par Compas," the same that may be seen in the Hôtel de Vogué, though it is declared that there is no other connection between the two save that Sambin had a hand in the construction of both. The motto is undeniably a good one for an architect. The local Museum contains one of the most important provincial collections in France. It occupies the ancient Salle des Gardes of the Palais and encloses the tombs of Jean-Sans-Peur and Philippe-le-Hardi. As examples of the sculptures of the Burgundian school of the fifteenth century these ornate tombs are in the very first category. They were brought from the Chartreux de Dijon in 1795. How they escaped Revolutionary desecration is a marvel, but here they are to-day in all the glory of their admirable design and execution. If Sargent's frieze of the prophets in the Boston Public Library was not inspired by these cowled figures surrounding the ducal tombs at Dijon, it must be a dull critic indeed who will not at least admit the suggestion of similarity. The mausoleum of Philippe-le-Hardi has a single recumbent effigy on the slab above, whilst that of Jean-Sans-Peur is accompanied by another, that of his wife, Marguerite de Bavière. The tiny statuettes in the niches of the arcade below, and surrounding each of the tombs, are similar; finely chiselled, weeping, mourning figures, most exquisitely sculptured and disposed. The tomb of Philippe-le-Hardi is the older, and is the work of Claus Sluter and Claus de Werve; that of Jean-Sans-Peur was conceived (half a century later) by Jehan de la Heurta and Antoine Moiturier. A statue of Anne de Bourgogne, the Duchess of Bedford, the daughter of Jean-Sans-Peur, stands between these two royal tombs. It is worthy to note that the robe of the statue of Marguerite de Bavière is sown with that particular species of field daisy which we have come to know as the _marguerite_, so named from the predilection of the princess in question for that humble flower. Dijon's Maison de Saint François-de-Sales may well be given passing consideration for reasons stated below. It dates from 1541 and thus belongs to an epoch when the art of the Renaissance was at its height. It is an elaborately conceived edifice and, judging from the escutcheons of its façade, was the habitation, at one time or another, of some of the royal family of France. In spite of this the authorities have little definite to say with regard to its founders. On the svelt tourelle at the side one notes that the lead _épi_, or weather-vane, is intact, a remarkable fact when one considers that it has endured for nearly five centuries. All things considered, this dainty habitation is one of the most pleasing and ornate structures of its class. If it were at Azay-le-Rideau in Touraine, or at Beaugency on the Loire, it would be heralded far and wide as one of the flowers of the Renaissance. To rank it in any place but as one of the most charming _hôtels privés_, or small town chateaux, of Burgundy would be a grave error. Dijon possesses as well a most curious and little known structure, at least not known to the usual hurly burly world of tourists. It is near the Palais de Justice, enclosed behind a high protecting wall, through which easy access is to be had by a gateway opened on request. The edifice is mysteriously called the Hôtel de Venus, and is a diminutive edifice with its entire outer wall garlanded with flowers and emblems cut deep into its rather crumbly stones. Just what the significance of this strange building was, and who, or what, were its antecedents, is in great doubt. Dijon's Bibliothèque occupies a part of the great town house built by Odinet Godran in 1681. The Departmental Archives occupy the restored city dwelling of Nicolas Rollin, the Chancellor of the first Burgundian Parliament. It is a reconstruction now of the eighteenth century, but originally came into being in the fifteenth. The principal apartment owns to a richly sculptured chimney-piece and an elaborate _plafond à caissons_, each the work of Rancurelle, a seventeenth century sculptor of Dijon. In the Rue des Forges are numerous old Renaissance houses, many of them of a grandeur which entitles them to a higher rank than a mere _maison bourgeoise_. Many of them indeed bear the proud names of the old Burgundian noblesse. One is called the Maison des Ambassadeurs d'Espagne, though just why, history is dark. One can readily surmise however, for it certainly is a luxuriously appointed dwelling in spite of the fact that it lacks a definite history. Near the Eglise Notre Dame are the Maison Milsand, the old Hôtel des Ambassadeurs d'Angleterre; the Hôtel du Vogué is in the Rue Chaudronnerie, and also the Maison des Cariatides. All are admirable examples of the Burgundian Renaissance, which tells its history in its stones. And what history! The old Hôtel des Ambassadeurs d'Angleterre was the residence of the Duke of Bedford when he married, in 1423, Anne de Bourgogne. The alleys and the "park," supposedly designed by the famous "Le Notre, the man of gardens," who was responsible for those of Versailles and Vaux, are little changed to-day from what they were in the century of Louis XIV. CHAPTER X IN THE CÔTE D'OR: BEAUNE, LAROCHEPOT AND ÉPINAC In the heart of the Cote d'Or are found first of all the _bonnes villes de bons vins_ of the French, Beaune, Pommard, Nuits, etc. Here is a region which was literally sown with great country houses of wealthy seigneurs; each ancient seigneurie of any importance whatever had its own little fortress or block-house which stood forth as an advance post at some distance from the residence of the overlord. By this means only could the seigneurs command respect for their vineyards. One notes much the same condition of affairs to-day. If there are no forts nor block-houses any more, nor arrows shot from bows, nor melted lead poured down on one from some castle wall, there are at least high stone barriers and big dogs and guardians of all ranks to serve their masters as faithfully as did the _serfs_ and _vilains_ of old. One is glad to say, however, that the Cote d'Or of to-day is not an inhospitable region. The transformations of later years which have taken place hereabouts have been very considerable, and the historic names one recognizes best to-day are those used by the _chateaux de commerce_, and found reproduced on the labels on the bottles in the chic restaurants and hotels throughout the world. One can not, must not, pass these great enterprises by unnoted or with their praises unsung. Their histories are often as interesting as those of the _maisons de plaisance_ of the seigneurs who despised trade and robbed and grafted for a livelihood. Undoubtedly many of them did take the wide road to riches, for the feathering of political nests by the willing or unwilling aid of one's constituents is no new thing. The gatherers of the grape under the Burgundians and the Bourbons were not always the happy contented crew that they have so frequently been pictured on canvas. The novelists, the playwrights and the painters have limned the lily a little too strong at times. One judges of this from a chanson which has come down through centuries. "_Allons en vendagne pour gagner cinq sous_ _Coucher sur la paille, ramasser les poux_ _Manger du fromage qui pue comme la rage._" It was said in the good old days that the grape-pickers were wont to eat as much as eight kilos of the grapes a day, to say nothing of drinking three litres of wine,--manifestly they were not so badly off, even at a wage of only five sous for a whole day's labour. South from Dijon the itinerary through the core of the Côte d'Or passes in review a succession of names which one usually associates only with a wine list. If one has studied the map of France closely the surprise is not so great, but for many it will come as something unexpected to be able to breakfast at Chambertin, lunch at Nuits, dine at Beaune and sleep at Mersault or Nolay. First off, on leaving the capital of the dukes, almost within sight of its palace towers, one comes to the great wine district of Chénove, and more than all others of this region it is to be revered by the lover of the history and romance of feudal lords. Sheltered, and almost enwrapped by the mountain background, it sits on the edge of the sunny plain where once the Ducs de Bourgogne marshalled their armies and their courtiers. Not one of the very first wines of the Côte d'Or Chénove comes from the bright particular vineyards or _closes_ of the Burgundian dukes. Their ancient cellars and _cuviers_ are still existent but the wines matured in them are to-day the growth of American roots, planted in the last dozen or twenty years to take the place of those destroyed by the phylloxera, the grafted stocks serving to give that classic body and flavour which have made the Burgundian _crus_ famous. Thus the favourite axiom is proved that it is the soil and not the grape which makes fine wine. Here at Chénove there is still to be seen the wine vats and presses which served the minions of Philippe-le-Hardi and Charles-le-Téméraire as they pressed their masters' wines, handling the great fifty foot levers and chanting much as do sailors as they march around the capstan. A block of stone weighing twenty-five tons was alternately raised and lowered with the grapes beneath in great hollowed-out troughs of stone or wood in no far different fashion from the methods of to-day. Below Chénove is Fixin, glorious in memory because of a striking monument to Napoleon, placed there by one of his fanatical admirers, Commandant Noisat. The Clos de la Perrière, and the Clos du Chapitre, two of the grand wines of the Côte d'Or, also help to give Fixin its fame--how much, who shall say--although this Napoleonic shrine is really a wonder of statuesque sculpture. An alley of pines leads up to a fountain behind whose basin rise stone seats and a rustic shelter destined to protect the effigy of Napoleon, a bronze by the Dijon sculptor, Rude. The whole ensemble is most effective, far more so than the usual plaster, or cast-iron statues of the "Little Corporal" with which France is peopled. To carry the devotion still farther, Monsieur Noisat built the guardian's house in the form of the Fortress of Saint Helena. Gevrey is near by, with an old ducal chateau, still well preserved, and supported by an ivy-grown square tower. Gevrey produces one of the most celebrated wines to be found on the lists of the _restaurants mondains_ throughout the world. It is the "Chambertin of Yellow Seal," coming from the Champs de Bertin, a narrow strip of land sloping down the flank of the hillside to the plain below. Another famous vineyard at Gevrey which festoons itself between the height and the plain is that of Crais-Billon, which takes its name from the celebrated feudal fief of Crébillon. The Clos Vougeot, the cradle of an equally well known Burgundian wine, is scarce a half dozen kilometres away and may be classed among the historic chateaux of France. Still enclosed with its rampart of whitewashed wall, the great square of vineyard remains to-day as it has been since first developed by the monks of Citeaux. The property has, it is true, been dismembered and divided among many proprietors, but the two great square pavilions joined together originally gave the Clos that distinctive aspect which, in no small measure, it retains unto this day. Taken as a whole, it still possesses a proud mediæval aspect, though the modern porte-cochère, an iron gate which looks as though it was manufactured yesterday in South Chicago--and perhaps was--somewhat discounts this. Years ago, when the Clos Vougeot was the nucleus of the many Vougeots of to-day, the grapes passed entirely through the wine-presses of the monks, who reserved the product entire to be used as presents to Popes and Princes. Thus Clos Vougeot was the model for all other ambitious, monastic vineyards, and those mediæval monks who excelled all others of their time as wine-growers were the logical inheritors of that Latin genius of antiquity which gave so much attention to the arts of agriculture. Hard by Vougeot is Romanée-Conti, first celebrated under the ancient régime when the [Illustration: B. McManus CLOS VOUGEOT CHAMBERTIN] court-physician, Fagon, ordered its wine as a stimulant for the jaded forces of Louis XIV, a circumstance which practically developed a war between the wine growers of Champagne and Burgundy, with a victory for the Côte d'Or, as was proper. To-day we are backsliders, and "champagne" has again become fashionable with kings, emperors and the _nouveau riche_. The property known as Romanée-Conti has been thus known since the Revolution, when this princely family of royal blood came into possession thereof. The old abbey is to-day, in part, turned into a beet-sugar factory, its thousand brothers and sisters now giving place to working men and women of the twentieth century, less picturesque and less faithful to their vocation, without doubt. Moulin-a-Vent was another of the near-by properties of the Citeaux monks, and to-day preserves the great _colombier_, or pigeon-house, as all may note who travel these parts by road. It is the most conspicuous thing in the landscape for miles around, and looks as much like the tower of a military chateau as it does a dove-cote. The Forêt Nationale de Citeaux was once the particular domain of the monastery, whose monks preserved and enveloped it with the same degree of devotion which they bestowed upon their vineyards, planting villages here and there, of which the most notably picturesque and unspoiled still alive is that of Saint Nicholas-les-Citeaux, a red-roofed chimney-potted little village in close proximity to the uncouth fragments of the old conventual establishment. Nuits, not to be confounded with Nuits-sous-Ravières, is more famous for its wine _crus_ than its monuments or its history. Besides a picturesque belfry and hôtel-de-ville, both excellent examples of the local architecture, it has no monuments of remark, although a sort of reflected glamour hangs over it by reason of its proximity to the site of the ancient Chateau de Vergy, when it was the capital of the tiny province belonging to the celebrated Burgundian family of this name. The metropolis of these parts is Beaune. It has been called a "_vieille grande dame qui s'est faite ouvrière et marchande_." And Beaune is, for a fact, all this. But by contrast with its commercialism its mediæval aspect is also well preserved in spite of the fact that its manorial magnificence is much depleted. The contrastingly modern and mediæval aspect, and to some extent its military character, makes Beaune most interesting. The ramparts themselves have been turned into a series of encircling boulevards, but here and there a fragment of wall is left plunging sheer down to the moat below, which has not yet been filled up. This gives quite a suggestion of the part the old walls once played, an effect heightened the more by three or four massive towers and portals flanking the entrances and exits of the town. This at least gives a reminiscence of what the former city must have been when it was girded in its corselet of stone. Here and there a sober and dignified _maison bourgeoise_ rears its Renaissance head above a more humble and less appealing structure suggestive of an ancient prosperity as great, perhaps greater, than that which makes possible the comfortable lives of the city's fourteen thousand souls to-day. Another civic monument of more than ordinary remark is the watch-tower, or belfry, a remainder of the cities of Flanders, a most unusual architectural accessory to find in these parts, the only other neighbouring example recalled being at Moulins in the Allier. In spite of all this, Beaune's historic tale has little of blood and thunder in its make-up; mostly its experiences have been of a peaceful nature, and only because the dukes so frequently took up their residence within its walls was it so admirably defended. Beaune was originally the seat of the Burgundian Parliament. Henri IV, who was particularly wroth with all things Burgundian, treated the city with great severity after the revolt of Maréchal de Biron, razing its castle, one of the most imposing in the province, to the ground. As a part of the penalty Biron was put to death. On the scaffold he said to his assistants "_Va t'en! Va t'en! Ne me touche pas qu'il soit temps_." Five minutes later his head fell into the basket and his king was avenged. Since this time Beaune has been little heard of save in the arts of peace; there is no city in France more calm to-day, nor "_plus bourgeoise_" than Beaune, and by the use of the word _bourgeoise_ one does not attempt irony. The Hospice de Beaune is for all considerations a remarkable edifice; its functions have been many and various and its glories have been great. Formerly the Hospice stood for hospitality; to-day it is either a hospital, or a matter-of-fact business proposition; you may think of it as you like, according to your mood, and how it strikes you. The Benedictine Abbey de Fécamp, like Dauphiny's Grande Chartreuse, is but a business enterprise whose stocks and bonds in their inflated values take rank with Calumet and Hecla, Monte Carlo's Casino, or other speculative projects. The same is true of the wine exploitation of the monks of Citeaux at Clos Vougeot, and of the famous wine cellars of the Hospice de Beaune. We may like to think of the old romantic glamour that hangs over these shrines, but in truth it is but a pale reflected light. This is true from a certain point of view at any rate. Beaune's Hospice, with its queer mélange of churchly and heraldic symbols ranged along with its Hispano-Gothic details, is "more a _chateau-de-luxe_ than a poor-house," said a sixteenth century vagabond traveller who was entertained therein. And, taking our clue from this, we will so consider it. "It is worth being poor all one's life to finally come to such a refuge as this in which to end one's days," said Louis XI. The foundation of the Hospice dates from 1443, as the date on its carven portal shows. It was started on its philanthropic and useful career by Nicholas Rollin and his wife Guignonne de Salins. It was then accounted, as it is to-day, "a superb foundation endowed with great wealth." The desire of the founders was that the occupants should be surrounded with as much of comfort and luxury as a thousand of _livres_ of income for each (a considerable sum for that far-away epoch) should allow. This fifteenth century Hospice de Beaune is one of the most celebrated examples of the wood-workers' manner of building of its time. The role that it plays among similar contemporary structures wherever found is supreme. It is only in Flanders that any considerable number of similar architectural details of construction are found. The general view of the edifice from without hardly does justice to the many architectural excellencies which it possesses. The _heurtoir_, or door-knocker, in forged iron, still hanging before the portal, is the same that was first hung there in the fifteenth century, and which has responded to countless appeals of wayfarers. The iron work of the interior court is of the same period. With the inner courtyard the aspect changes. On one side is the Flemish-Gothic, or Hispano-Gothic, structure of old, one of the most ornate and satisfying combinations of wooden gables and _pignons_ and covered galleries one can find above ground to-day. Frankly it is an importation from alien soil, a transplantation from the Low Countries, where the style was first developed during the Spanish occupation in Flanders. Save for certain modifications in 1646, 1734 and 1784 this portion of the edifice remains much as it was left by the passing of the good old times when knights, and monks as well, were bold. The Grande Salle, where the Chancelier Rollin first instituted the annual wine sale which still holds forth to-day, and the entrance portal were again restored in 1879, but otherwise the aspect is of the time of the birth of the structure. The Hospice de Beaune is properly enough to be classed among the palaces and chateaux of Burgundy, for its civic functions were many, besides which it was the princely residence of the chancellor of the Burgundian Parliament. The old Collége de Beaune, now disappeared, or transformed out of all semblance to its former self, was a one-time residence of the Ducs de Bourgogne, and in addition the first seat of the Burgundian Parliament when its sittings were known as the _Jours Généraux_. A near neighbour of Beaune is Corton. [Illustration: _Hospice de Beaune_] "_C'est le Chambertin de la Côte de Beaune_," said Monillefert, writing of its wine. Another neighbouring vineyard is that which surrounds the little village of Pernand. Its _cru_, called Charlemagne, has considerably more than a local reputation. Savigny-sous-Beaune is another place-name which means little unless it be on a wine-card. The little town is set about with sumptuous _bourgeoise_ houses, and a local chateau bears the following inscription over its portal, "_Les vins de Savigny sont nourrisants, theologiques et morbifuges_." They have been drunk by countless _bon vivants_ through the ages, and the Ducs de Bourgogne were ever their greatest partisans. Mention of them appears frequently in the accounts written of public and private fêtes; almost as frequently, one may note, as the more celebrated "_vin du Hospice_." South from Beaune is Mersault, a tiny city of the Côte de Beaune. All about its clean-swept streets rise well-kept, pretentious dwellings, many of them the gabled variety so like the mediæval chateaux, though indeed they may date only from the last three-quarters of a century, or since the Revolution. An old feudal castle--the typical feudal castle of romance--has been restored and remodelled, and now serves as Mersault's Hôtel de Ville. All about is the smell of wine; barrels of it are on every curb, and running rivers of the lees course through every gutter. Nolay, a trifle to the west, is scarcely known at all save as the name of a wine, and then it is not seen on every wine list of the popular restaurants. In the good old days it was the seat of a marquisat and was of course endowed with a seigneurial chateau. Nothing of sufficient magnitude, seemingly, exists to-day, and so one does not linger, but turns his attention immediately to the magnificent Chateau de La Rochepot, which virtually dominates the landscape for leagues around. In contrast with the vast array of _chateaux de commerce_ scattered all through the Côte d'Or--the "Golden Hillside" of the Romans--is the Chateau de La Rochepot, marvellous as to its site and most appealing from all points. It was at Nolay that was born Lazare Carnot. It is the name of the _grand homme_ who is almost alone Nolay's sole claim to fame. His ancestor has his statue on the little Place, and his grandson--he who was President of the French Republic--is also glorified by a fine, but rather sentimentally conceived, monument. Lazare Carnot was born in a humble little cottage of Nolay, and this cottage, after all, is perhaps the town's most celebrated monument to the glorious name. The ancient home of the Sires de la Roche, the Chateau de La Rochepot, to-day belongs to Captaine Carnot, the son of the former President, who, thoroughly and consistently, has begun its restoration on model lines. The Sire de la Roche-Nolay, who planned the work, hired one by the name of Pot, it is said, to dig a well within the courtyard. The price demanded was so high that he was obliged to turn over the property itself in payment. It was by this means, says historic fact or legend, that the line of Pots, big and little, came into possession. This Philippe Pot, by his marriage, brought the property to the Montmorencys and himself to the high office of Counsellor of Anne de Beaujeau. He became seigneur of the lands here in 1428, and was afterwards better known as ambassador of the Duc de Bourgogne at London. His tomb was formerly in the Abbey of Citeaux, but has been transported to the Louvre. After the Rochepots' tenure the property came to the Sullys, and in 1629 to the family De Fargis. During the Revolution it was acquired as a part of the _biens nationaux_ of the government, and in 1799 the donjon of the chateau was pulled down, the same which is to-day being rebuilt stone by stone on the same site. The present noble edifice is after all nothing more than a completion of the admirably planned reconstruction of the fifteenth century; the restoration, or rebuilding, of to-day being but the following out of the plans of the original architect, a procedure which has seldom been attempted or accomplished elsewhere. It was done with the sixteenth century fountain of the Medicis in the Luxembourg Gardens (whose sculptures according to the original designs were only completed in 1839), but this is perhaps the only instance of a great mediæval chateau being thus carried to completion. The restorations of Carcassonne, Saint-Michel and Pierrefonds are in quite another category. The Chateau La Rochepot was a development of the ancient Chastel-Rocca, which stood on the same site in the twelfth century, and which drew its name originally from its situation. Épinac, just to the west of La Rochepot, is in the heart of a veritable "black country"; not the "black country" of the Midlands in England, but a more picturesque region, where the soot and grime of coal and its products mingle by turns with the brilliancy of foliage green and gold. In addition to drawing its fame from the mines roundabout, Épinac owes not a little of its distinction to its chateau, and a neighbouring Chateau de Sully which dates from the sixteenth century. The Chateau de Sully is a magnificent edifice built in 1567 for the Maréchal de Saulx-Tavannes, and is to-day classed by the French government as a "monument historique." It was built from the plans of Ribbonnier, a celebrated architect of Langres in the sixteenth century, and terminated only in the reign of Henri IV. It is an excellent type of the French Renaissance of the latter half of the sixteenth century. In form it is a vast rectangle with square _pavilions_, or towers, at each angle set diagonally. Though varied, its architecture is sober to a degree, particularly with respect to the _rez-de-chaussée_. The inner court of this admirable chateau is surrounded by an arcaded gallery whose rounded arches are separated by a double colonnette. The gardens are of the "jardin anglais" variety, so affected by the French at the time of the completion of the chateau, and are cut and crossed by many arms of the ornamental water which entirely surrounds the property. After the tenure of the family of Tavannes, the property passed to those of Rabutin and Montaigu, and, for the last century, has been owned by the MacMahons. There are some fragments lying about which belong to another edifice which dates from the thirteenth century, but not enough to give the stones the distinction of being called even a ruined chateau. Épinac's chateau dates from at least two centuries before the Chateau de Sully, and is a resurrection of an old chateau-fort. Two great heavy towers remain to-day as the chief architectural features, beside an extent of main building through whose walls are cut a series of splendid Gothic window frames. Tradition has it that these towers were originally much more lofty, but at the period when barons, whether rightly or wrongly, held their sway over their peers and anyone else who might be around, if the local seigneur was beaten at a tourney, the penalty he paid was to cut the towers of his castle down one-half. This seems a good enough tale to tack to a mediæval castle, as good as a ghost tale, and as satisfactory as if it were a recorded fact of history, instead of mere legend. [Illustration: _Chateau de Sully_] Originally these towers of the Chateau d'Épinac were of such an overwhelming height that they could be seen a hundred leagues around--this is local tradition again, and this time it is probably exaggeration. Three hundred miles is a long bird's-eye view indeed! Anyway a local couplet reads thus, and is seemingly justifiable: "_Démène-toi, tourne toi, vire toi,_ _Tu ne trouveras pas plus beau que moi._" Épinac, too, is noted for its bottles, the fat-bellied, ample litres in which ripe old Burgundy is sold. "_Dame Jeans_" and "_flacons_" are here made by millions, which is only another way of referring to demijohns and bottles. Of their variety of shapes and sizes one may judge by the song the workers sing as they ply their trade: "_Messieurs, messieurs, laissez nous faire_ _On vous en donnera de toutes les façons._" The glass industry of Épinac, if not as old as its chateau, at least dates from the very earliest days of the art. Retracing one's steps some forty kilometres to Chalon-sur-Saône one comes midway to Chagny. The railroad guides chiefly make mention of Chagny as a junction where one is awakened at uncomfortable hours in the night to change cars. Some of us who have passed frequently that way can call attention to the fact that Chagny possesses, among other wonders, certain architectural glories which are worthy of consideration by even the hurried twentieth century traveller. Here is a fine twelfth century Roman tower, a former dependency of some civic establishment, but now serving as the _clocher_ of the church, a svelt but all imposing square broad-based tower of the local manor from which the seigneur of other days, even though he was not a "grand seigneur," stretched forth his velvet-clad iron hand in mighty benediction over his good men and true. Besides this there is a monstrosity of a cupola of the modern chateau which is hideous and prominent enough to be remarked from miles around. Clearly, then, Chagny is much more than a railway junction. No one who stops more than a passing hour here will regret it, although its historic shrines are not many nor beautiful to any high degree. CHAPTER XI MÂCON, CLUNY AND THE CHAROLLAIS Mâcon is a name well known to travellers across France, but its immediate environs are scarcely known at all save as they are recognized as a region devoted to the product of the vine. For a fact the romantic and historic lore which abounds within a short radius of the capital of the Mâconnais makes it one of the most interesting regions of mid-France. Lying just to the westward is the Charollais, whose capital, Charolles, the ancient fortress of the Comtes de Charolles, is surrounded by a veritable girdle of castles and donjons, the nearest two kilometres beyond the town. They formed in their prime an outer line of defence behind which the counts lived in comparative safety. Montersine, the nearest of these works, a vast rectangular donjon with _echauguettes_, must certainly have been the most formidable. Within ten leagues are the chateaux of Lugny, Rambeauteau and Corcheval--one of the most ancient of the Charollais. There are also Terreaux-à-Verostres, the Renaissance Chaumont at Saint-Bonnet-de-Joux and, finally, the fortress of Commune-sur-Martigny-le-Comte. Of these, that of Chaumont-la-Guiche, two kilometres from Saint-Bonnet-de-Joux, is quite the most splendid when it comes to best fulfilling the mission of a luxurious Renaissance _maison de campagne_. It is to-day the magnificent twentieth century residence of the Marquis de la Guiche, but is a lineal descendant of the edifice built in the reign of François Premier and terminated by Philibert de Guiche, who died in 1607. At the time of the Saint Bartholomew massacre he was Bailli de Mâcon, and, throughout, the Mâconnais and the Charollais took a firm stand against the killing off of the Protestants as an unholy means to a Christian end. Before the chateau is an equestrian statue of its sixteenth century chatelain, and the stables, a great vaulted hall whose ceiling is upheld by more than fifty svelt colonnettes, are in no small way reminiscent of the still more extensive Écuries at Chantilly. There is also, as a dependency of the chateau, a remarkably beautiful Gothic chapel with fine old glass in its windows--Gothic of a late construction, be it understood, but acceptable Gothic nevertheless. At Paray-le-Monail--a place of sainted pilgrimage, because of the miracle of the Sacré Coeur which took place here--is to be seen the luxurious dwelling of a local seigneur who was closely allied to the Comte de Charolles. It is a palace in all but name, and were it on the well-worn travel track in Touraine would be accounted one of the marvels of the brilliant array of Renaissance dwellings there. It holds this distinction to-day among the comparatively few who know it, and, as it serves the public functions of a Hôtel de Ville, its future as a "monument historique" worthy of preservation seems assured. Chateau or palace it may not be; it may be only a luxurious town house; who shall make the distinction after all? Let the reader, or better yet, the visitor, to this admirable Renaissance wonder-work be assured that it is more royally palatial than many which have sheltered the heads and persons of the most fastidious of monarchs. South from Charolles, behind the hills of the Brionnais, almost on the edge of the ancient Forez, in part only Burgundian, is the _coquette bourgade_ (a French expression absolutely untranslatable) of Marcigny, all ochre and brown after the local colouring. It is a town of a great tree-bordered Place, or Square, with decrepit old houses overhanging its narrow streets, made famous in the past by a celebrated Benedictine priory which received only the daughters of the nobility. Of this monastery there remains only the prior's palace, a princely sort of abode which to-day has been turned into a hotel. Here one may experience one of the greatest and most joyful surprises of French travel, and pick up his historical lore on the spot. Leaving Marcigny for Semur-en-Brionnais, one passes a vestige of the feudal past in the shape of an elaborately decorated feudal tower. At a distance this decorative effect seems to be produced by shot still clinging to the walls, an effect that may be seen also at Arques in Normandy and at Tarascon in the Midi. Here this is an illusion. As one approaches nearer it is easy to see these round bosses transform themselves into _mascarons_, or sculptured decorative details, like the escutcheons and plaques so frequently seen stuck into the walls of so many civic edifices in Italy. This old tower is of a different species, but manifestly it is a memorial of some sort. Its peaked head rises above a sort of _pavillon_, or loft, like a gigantic pigeon-house. There is a diminutive barbican on one side, and on the other are narrow slits of Gothic [Illustration: _Hôtel de Ville, Paray-le-Monail_] windows, as if for defence rather than as a means of letting light and air within. "This is some ancient historic monument, no doubt?" you query of some passing peasant. And to be precise he answers: "Yes, a tower." That is all the information you can get beneath its shadow, but you are content and go your way. It fulfils exactly your idea of what a mediæval donjon should be, and what it lacks in apparent authenticated history can be readily enough imagined by anyone with a predilection for such musings. Leaving the Charollais and the Brionnais, one turns toward Mâcon by the gateway of Cluny. Mediævalism here is rampant in memory, song and story, though the monuments are unfamiliar ones. It is an echo of the days when abbots and priors were often barons, and barons were magistrates who held the keys of life and death over other of mankind. These were the days, too, when the Pope was the real ruler of many a kingdom with another titular head. Large parcels of land, from the Black Sea to Brittany, fiefs, countships and even dukedoms, were church property, and others held their brief sway therein only by the tolerance of the Pontiff. Seemingly exempt from this domination, the powerful monks of Cluny knew no lord nor master. On one occasion a Pope and a King of France, with numberless prelates and nobles in their train, took refuge in the old abbey, but not a brother put himself out in the least to do them honour. By the fifteenth century, the hour of decadence had rung out for Cluny; no more was it true "_En tout pays où vent vente_ _L'Abbe de Cluni à rente._" It was at this time that the "_arbitres des rois_" lost their power. The great Abbey of Cluny may readily enough be included in any contemplation of the great civic and domestic establishments of these parts. The only difference is that in some cases the chatelains or chatelaines were princes or princesses instead of abbés or abbesses. Cluny's destinies were presided over by an abbé, but kings and cardinals and popes all, at one time or another, came to dwell within its walls. When Cluny was but a mere hamlet, in the year 910 A.D., Guillaume, Duc d'Aquitaine et Comte d'Auvergne, founded this abbey, which became one of the most celebrated in the universe. From the first its abbés were cardinals and princes of Church and State. In 1245 Pope Innocent IV. visited the abbey with a train of twelve cardinals and scores of minor churchmen. The Sainted Louis and the queen, his mother, enjoyed hospitality within its walls, and the Emperor of Constantinople, and a throng of followers, all found a welcome here; and this without incommoding the four hundred monks who were attached to the foundation. Pope Gelasse II died at the abbey, and the Archbishop Guy of Vienne was here elected Pope, under the name of Calixtus II, by a conclave assembled within its halls. To-day the pride of the former powerful abbey rests only on its laurels of other days. Its superb basilica has practically disappeared. Only its foundations, five hundred and fifty feet in length, are to be traced. The extensive library has disappeared, and only certain of the walls and roofs and a few minor apartments of the former palatial conventual buildings remain to suggest the one time glory. The rich plain of Cluny was, in 910 A.D., but a forest called the "Vallé Noire" when the Abbé Bernon with a dozen brothers founded the celebrated Abbey of Cluny, called the "cradle of modern civilization." Of the conventual buildings the most remarkable features still standing are the south arm of the great transept of the abbey church, the massive octagonal tower, of a height of sixty metres, another slighter octagonal _clocher_, and the Chapelle des Bourbons. Cluny's old houses, or such of them as remain, have been to a large extent rebuilt and remodelled, but still enough remains to suggest that the old monastic city was a place of luxury-loving and worldly citizens as well as monks. Here and there a flying stair, a balcony, a loggia, or a _rez-de-Chaussée_ arcade suggests a detail almost Italian in its motive. Colonnettes divide a range of windows and pilasters support stone balconies and terraces here and there in a most pleasing manner, and with a most surprising frequency,--a frequency which is the more pleasing, since, as has been said, scarcely anything of the sort is to be seen here in more than fragmentary form, though indeed all the architectural orders and devices of the ingenious mediæval builder are to be noted. The Revolution respected Cluny, but the Empire and "La Bande Noire" condemned it to destruction. The Abbatial Palace, a palatial dependence of the abbey, where lodged visiting potentates and prelates, escaped entire destruction, and is to-day the chief ornament of the town. A national educational institution now occupies the halls and apartments of this great building where lords and seigneurs and churchmen once held their conclaves. A fine Gothic portal leads to the inner court of this magnificent edifice, which was erected by two abbés, Jean de Bourbon and Jacques d'Amboise. Each had built a separate dwelling on either side of the great portal. That of the Cardinal de Bourbon is unlovely enough, as such edifices go, but has an air of a certain sumptuousness notwithstanding. That of Jacques d'Amboise is a highly ornate work of the Renaissance, and now serves as the Hôtel de Ville, whilst the other houses a local museum and library. A garden of the formal order surrounds the two edifices and covers a goodly bit of the ground formerly occupied by the other buildings attached to the abbey. Entrance to this garden, and its Palais Abbatial, as the ensemble is officially known, is through a double Romanesque portal, as much a militant note as the rest is religious. Cluny's Hôtel Dieu is another remarkable souvenir of old. Within are various monuments and statues of churchmen and nobles which give it at once a lien on one's regard. There is a luxurious monument to one of the Abbés of Cluny; another, that the Cardinal de Bouillon erected to his father, Maurice de la Tour d'Auvergne, Duc Souverain de Bouillon, Prince Souverain de Sedan. Here and there about the town an old feudal tower or house-front juts out in close communion with some banal modern façade, but the whole aspect of the city of some four thousand inhabitants to-day is, when viewed from a distant approach, as of a feudal city with no modernities whatever. Near acquaintance disabuses one of this idea, but, regardless of this, the aspect of Cluny, the monastery and the city, is one of imposing and harmonious grandeur, hardly to be likened to any similar ensemble in France or beyond the frontiers. Near Cluny, in the heart of the "Black Valley," is the Chateau de Cormatin, belonging to a M. Gunsbourg, and containing an important collection of pictures and furniture, all of them antique, which are cordially submitted to the gaze of the curious upon a diplomatic request. Rising from the plain, on the road to Tournus, is the Chateau de Brançion, a feudal relic and not much more, but proclaiming its former military glory as if its history had been epoch-making, which it probably was not, as there is but scant reference to it in local annals. As one approaches Mâcon by road from the north or west, great villas and "_chateaux de commerce_" line every kilometre of the way. Some are ancient and historic, though in no really great sense; others are modern and banally, painfully, well-kept and whitewashed--only the _badigeon_ is pink or blue or green, painted one can readily believe by the artist (_sic_) descendants of the Italians who once inhabited the region in large numbers. There are overhanging balconies on all sides; balustrades, terraces and loggias relieve the monotony of most of the façades, and indeed, it is as if a corner of Italy had been transported to mid-France. Mâcon is a picturesque ensemble of much that is ancient, but the smugness of the place, its undeniable air of modernity and prosperity, have done much to discount what few well conserved architectural charms it still possesses. This is true of great churches and palatial dwellings alike, though there are many undeniably fine bits here and there which, if one only knew, perhaps possess a history as thrilling as that enjoyed by many more noble edifices. For one of the best impressions of Mâcon it is possible to have, there is nothing better than Turner's painting "Mâcon," or a photographic copy thereof. It is a drawing which until recently was never engraved. Turner and his engravers never dared attempt it, so complex was the light and shadow of the vintage sun shining on the hillsides and valleys of the Côte d'Or. Recently Frank Short made a mezzotint of it, and it stands to-day as one of the most expressive topographical drawings extant. Mâcon was originally the capital of a _petit pays_, the Mâconnais, and is to-day, in local parlance. In former times it was the governmental seat of a line of petty sovereigns, from the day of Louis-le-Débonnaire until the country passed into the hands of the ducal Burgundians. From this time forth, though forming a component part of the great duchy, the region was settled frequently upon various members of the parent house as a vassal state where the younger branch might wield a little power of its own without complicating the affairs of the greater government. In Revolutionary times Mâcon was considered by the Republicans as "a hateful aristocratic hole." This being so, one wonders that more souvenirs of royalty have not remained. In feudal times the city was enclosed by an _enceinte_ cut with six great gates, supported by an inner citadel. These walls and bastions were demolished later, and the city was almost alone among those of Burgundy to freely open its doors to the Ligueurs and Henri IV. From this time on important historical events seem to have avoided Mâcon. The site of Mâcon's ancient citadel is now occupied by the Préfecture. It was formerly the Episcopal Palace, a regal dwelling which the bishops of other days must have found greatly to their liking. It is the nearest thing to a chateau which Mâcon possesses to-day. The Hôtel de Ville is a banal structure of the eighteenth century, the gift of the Comte de Montreval, formerly his family residence. The Palais de Justice is also a made-over _hôtel-privée_ and has some architectural distinctions, but there is nothing here to take rank among the castles and chateaux of the rest of the Burgundian countryside. Southwest from Mâcon, scarce thirty kilometres away, is a romantic little corner of old France known to the French themselves--those who know it at all--as the Pays de Lamartine. The little townlets of Milly and Saint-Pont were the cradle and the refuge of Lamartine, who so loved this part of France extending from the Loire to Lac Leman and the Alps. The political world of the capital, into whose vortex the great litterateur was irresistibly drawn, had not a tithe of the effect upon his character as compared with that evoked by the solitudes of his Burgundian _patrie_ and his Alpes de Chambéry. Milly, here in the midst of the opulent plains and hillsides of Burgundy, is a spot so calm and so simply environed that one can not but feel somewhat of the inspiration of the man who called it his "_chère maison_." A half a dozen kilometres from Milly is Saint-Pont surrounded by a magnificent framing of rounded summits forming one of those grandiose landscapes of which Lamartine so often wrote: "_Oui, l'homme est trop petit, ce spectacle l'écrase._" Here is the Chateau de Lamartine, not a tourist sight by any means, at least not an over-done one, but a shrine as worthy of contemplation and admiration as many another more grand and more popular. Seated snugly at the foot of a wooded slope, the chateau, flanked with two great towers, lifts its serrated sky-line proudly above the reddish, ochre-washed walls (a colour dear to the folk of the Mâconnais) high above the level of the roofs of the town below. A more massive square tower sets further to the rear, and a _tourelle_, with a pointed candle-snuffer roof, accentuates the militant aspect of the edifice, though indeed its claims rest entirely on the arts of peace to the exclusion of those of war. Here, in the family chateau, Alphonse-Marie-Louis-de-Lamartine passed the happiest years of his life. This was at a time when the pomp of power which he afterwards tasted as Minister of Foreign Affairs, after the abdication of Louis Philippe, had no attraction for him. "_Il est sur la colline_ _Une blanche maison,_ _Une tour la domine,_ _Un buisson d'aubepine_ _Est tout son horizon._" As Lamartine himself wrote: "Nothing here will remind one of luxury; it is simply the aspect of a great farm where the owners live the simple life in a great block of a silent dwelling." These words describe the Chateau de Lamartine very well to-day. Saint-Pont and the Chateau de Lamartine are well worth half a day of anyone who is found at Mâcon and not hard pressed to move on. Near Saint-Pont is the ancient Chateau de Noble, belonging, in 1558, to Nicolas de Pisa, and, in 1789, to Claude de la Beaune. It is not a splendid structure in any architectural sense, but a most curious and appealing one. Its chief distinction comes from its two pointed coiffed towers, one at either end of a high sloping gable. Repairs and restorations made since the Revolution have deprived it of the ancient ramparts which once entirely surrounded it, but the romantic and curious aspect of the main body of the structure, and those all-impressive, svelt, sky-piercing towers, make it seem too quaint to be real. Certainly no more remarkable use of such adjuncts to a seigneurial chateau has ever been made than these towers. Here they are not massive, nor particularly tall, but their proportions are seemingly just what they ought to be. They are, at any rate, entirely in accord with the rest of the structure, and that is what much modern architecture lacks. [Illustration] CHAPTER XII IN THE BEAUJOLAIS AND LYONNAIS South from Chalon, by the banks of the Saône, lies the Beaujolais, a wine-growing region which partakes of many of the characteristics of the Côte d'Or itself. Further south, beyond Mâcon, the aspect of the Lyonnais is something quite different. All is of a bustle and hustle of the feverish life of to-day, whilst in the Beaujolais pursuits are agricultural. Each of these regions is profoundly wealthy and prosperous, an outgrowth, naturally enough, of the opulent times of old, for here, as in the heart of Burgundy, the conditions of life were ever ample and easy. Throughout the countryside of the Beaujolais and the Mâconnais one notes a manner of building with respect to the meaner dwellings which, to say the least, is most curious. These small houses are built of a species of sun-dried bricks or lumps of clay. It seems satisfactory; as satisfactory as would be an adobe dwelling--in a dry climate. But here in times of flood those built in the river bottoms have been known to melt away like the sand castles of children at the seashore. The present Département of the Saône-et-Loire was evolved from the very midst of the Burgundian kingdom, and comprises chiefly the mediæval Comtés of the Autunnois, Chalonnais, Mâconnais and Charollais. The Romans were the real exploiters of all this region, and only with the pillage of the Normans, and the successive civil and religious wars, did the break-up of Burgundy really come to be an assured fact. Chalon-sur-Saône itself is most attractive--in parts. As a whole it is disappointing. François Premier built the fortifications of Chalon in 1521, and half a century later Charles IX constructed the citadel--"to hold the town in subjection, and the inhabitants in ignorance." Dijon was the city of the mediæval counts; Chalon was a city of churchmen. Nevertheless the bishops of the episcopal city bore the title of Counts, and of its churches which remain none is more typical of the best of Romanesque in France than the nave and side aisles of Chalon's Cathedral de Saint Vincent. Chalon's monuments of the feudality are few indeed to-day; they and their histories have been well nigh forgotten, but here and there some fine old gable or portico springs into view unannounced, and one readily enough pictures again the life of the lords and ladies who lived within their walls, whilst to-day they are given over to matter of fact, work-a-day uses with little or no sentimental or romantic atmosphere about them. There is no distinct official edifice at Chalon which takes up its position as a chateau, or _manoir_, at least none of great renown, though a rebuilt old church now transformed into a hotel of the second or third rate order is one of the most curiously adapted edifices of its class anywhere to be seen. What a great family the Chalonnais were is recalled by the fact that in the sixteenth century all the folk of the city were regarded as cousins. This is taking the situation by and large, but certain it was that a community of family liens as well as interests did tend to make this relationship notable. Furthermore each of the trades and _métiers_ herded by themselves in real clansman fashion, the nail-makers in the Rue des Cloutiers, the boiler-makers in the Rue des Chaudronniers and the barrel-makers in the Rue des Tonneliers. And there was a quarter, or faubourg, devoted to the priests and monks, as well as another where none but the nobility were allowed to be abroad. To the west of Chalon are two famous vineyards, Touches and Mercurey, surrounded by mere hamlets, there being no populous centres nearer than Givry or Chalon. One remarks these two famous vineyards because of their repute, and because of the neighbouring superb ruin of the mediæval Chateau de Montaigu which crowns a hill lying between the two properties. In the neighbourhood of Chalon are numerous little towns of no rank whatever as historic or artistic shrines, but bearing the suffix of _Royal_. It is most curious to note that many have changed their nomenclature--as it was before the Revolution. Saint Gengoux-le-Royal and ten other parishes all dropped the Royal, and became known as Saint Gengoux-le-National, etc. Donzy-le-Royal was not so fortunate in its position. Saint Gengoux has gained nothing by its spasm of republicanism. It is not more national to-day than Cavaillon or Carpentras, whereas the suffix Royal meant, if it meant anything, that it was an indication of its ancient rank when it belonged directly to the crown of France. Republicanism did not change its allegiance, only its name. The diligence from Paris stopped at Chalon-sur-Saône in the old days and passengers made their way to Lyons by the river. Colbert it was who sought to develop the service of _coches d'eau_ on the Saône between Chalon and Lyons. He carried the thing so far, in 1669, that he suppressed the public diligence by land which had formerly made the journey between the two capitals. This was not accomplished without a live protestation from the residents of the terminal cities. In the last days of the _malle-poste_, when Chalon was the end of the journey from Paris, four steamboats of a primitive order competed for the privilege of carrying passengers from Chalon to Lyons. To-day the service has been suppressed; the "_piroschapes_," as they were called, have gone the way of the mail coaches. Travel to-day is accomplished with more comfort and more expedition. Below Chalon, following down the Saône, within a league, one comes to Toisé, with a celebrated chateau, almost wholly ignored to-day when checking off the historical monuments of France. And this is true in spite of the fact that it was here within the walls of the Chateau de Toisé that was signed the famous treaty between Henri IV and the Duc de Mayenne. The chateau is simply an admirable Renaissance monument of its time with no very remarkable features or history save that noted above. This is enough to make it better known and more often visited, if only glanced at in passing. The author hopes the suggestion may be taken in earnest by those interested. Midway between Mâcon and Chalon is Tournus, the site of a chateau-fort built by the Franks, and also of an abbey founded by Charles-le-Chauve in 875 A.D. This monarch gave the abbey a charter as proprietor of the city of Tournus in consideration of the monks putting it and its inhabitants under the protection of the Virgin and Saint Philibert. He also made the congregation of monks of the order of Saint Benoit "_fermiers_" of this "_celestial domain_." The Abbés of Tournus were a powerful race, rivalling the princes and dukes of other fiefs, and owning allegiance only to the king and Pope, more often to the latter than to the former. Among them were numbered no less than eight cardinals in the fifty-nine who ruled the city and the "domain." The monastery itself has become a sort of institution, a secular lodging house, but its fine church still remains as one of the most famous Romanesque-Burgundian examples of its time. Above Tournus, high on the hill back of the town, sits a disused ancient fabric, a former Benedictine abbey. Its abbés had the right to wear the pontifical vestments, and to administer justice to the city and its neighbouring dependencies. More like an antique fortress than a religious foundation, it is the most ambitious and striking edifice now to be seen in Tournus. Tournus has an artistic shrine of great moment and interest, although its architectural details comport little with the really dignified examples of mediæval architecture. It is the birthplace of the painter Greuze, and before its arcades rises a monument to his memory. The great painter of the idealist school was born here. In the local museum are nearly five hundred designs from his hand. Opposite Tournus, in mid-Saône, is a strip of flat island known as the Ile-de-la-Palme, a morsel of alluvial soil respected by centuries of spring floods which have passed it by on either side, and indeed, often over its surface. The Helvetians, quitting their country in ancient times, invaded Gaul and made use of the Ile-de-la-Palme to cross the Saône, aided by either pontoons or rafts. Centuries later, after the bloody battle of Fontenay, the son of Louis-le-Débonnaire held a conference on this isle with regard to the division of the conquered territory. Thus it is that the Ile-de-la-Palme in the Saône has something in common with that other historic island in the Bidassoa where France and Spain played a game of give and take in the sixteenth century. A short distance from the east bank of the Saône is Romenay in the heart of the Chalonnais. It is a relic of an ancient fortified city, a townlet to-day of less than six hundred inhabitants, though once, judging from the remains of its oldtime ramparts, much more extensive and influential. Saint Trivier-de-Courtes, like Romenay, has little more than a bare half a thousand of population to-day, though it was once a noble outpost planted by the Ducs de Savoie, the masters of Bresse, against the possible invasion of the Burgundians and the French from the north. At Bagé-le-Chatel, between Mâcon and Bourg, rises a grim reminder of the feudality. It is the silhouette of the fine old castle of the ancient Seigneurs de Bagé. Passing Mâcon by, and still following the Saône, one comes in a dozen or twenty kilometres to Thoissey, a town which has not been greatly in evidence these latter days. It is a somnolent little city of the ancient Principality of Dombes, that disputed ground of the Burgundians and the Savoyards in the middle ages. Only from the fact that it was the birthplace of Commandant Marchand of the ill-fated Faschoda expedition would it ever have been mentioned in the public prints of the last generation. In good old monarchial days it was different. Then Thoissey set an aristocratic example to many a neighbour more prosperous and better known to-day. The Princes de Dombes had a chateau here, and they embellished the local Hospice in a way that made it almost a rival of that other establishment of its class at Beaune. Throughout Thoissey there were, and are still, many admirable examples of the town houses of the nobles and courtiers of the little State of Dombes. Thoissey was the miniature capital of a miniature kingdom. The local "college" still shows evidences of a luxuriant conception of architectural decoration with its finely sculptured window frames and doorways. The most striking incident of Thoissey's career was when the Seigneur de Bagé attacked the Seigneur de Thoissey, who was at the time the Sire de Beaujeau, in his stronghold. The latter called the Duc de Bourbon to his aid and thus brought about an inter-province imbroglio which necessitated the intervention of the King of France as mediator, though without immediate success. The litigation finally went before Pope Clement VII (a French Pope, by the way), and only in 1408, a quarter of a century after the feud began, did the Duc de Bourbon, who meantime had become also the Sire de Beaujeau, succeed in throwing off his adversaries. Thoissey during the time of the Ligue, or more particularly its Seigneur, threw in its lot with Mayenne, who ultimately, when he finally went over to his royal master, caused the Chateau de Thoissey to be razed to earth. This is why to-day one sees only the heap of stones, locally called "the chateau," which, to be appreciated, require a healthy imagination and some knowledge of the situation. At Belleville-sur-Saône is a little strip of the earth's surface called by the French the finest panorama in the world and "le plus bel lieu de France." It is beautiful, even beyond words, a smiling radiant river valley with nearly all the artistic attributes which go to make up the ideal landscape. Just how near it comes to being the finest view in the world is a matter of opinion. The New Zealander thinks that he has that little corner of God's green earth, and so does many a down-east farmer, to say nothing of the man from the Missouri Valley and the occasional Scotch Highlander. The tiny little city of Anse has few recollections for most travellers, but it possesses an admirable ruin of a chateau-fortress, with two towers bronzed by time and still proudly erect. This ruin, together with the memory that Augustus once had a palace here in the ancient Anita of the Romans, and the neighbouring ruin of the chateau of the Sires de Villars over towards Trévoux, are all that Anse has to-day for the curious save its delightful situation in a bend of the Saône. Opposite Belleville-sur-Saône is Montmerle. In the middle ages it was one of the sentinel cities which guarded the Principality of Dombes. Sieges and assaults without number were its portion, from the Bourguignons, the troops of the Sire de Beaujeau, the Dauphinois and the Counts and Dukes of Savoy. The imposing ruins of the former chateau-fortress tell the story of its mighty struggle which endured for nearly a century. For the most part the bulk of the material of which it was built has disappeared, or at least has been built up into other works, but the massive signal tower which once bolstered up the main portal still rises high above the waters of the Saône. The tower supposedly dates from the twelfth century--the period to which belonged the chateau--and is distinguished by its hardiness and height rather than for its solidity and massiveness. At Farcins, near-by, is a magnificent and still habitable chateau of the end of the reign of Henri IV, built by Jean de Sève, Conseiller du Roi, on the plans of Baptiste Androuet du Cerceau. From Montmerle one may see the towers and roofs of half a dozen other minor chateaux of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries scattered here and there through the Beaujolais, but nothing distinctive arrests one's attention until Villefranche and Trévoux are reached. The Sires de Beaujeau, from motives of policy if from no other, ever respected the privilege of Villefranche (founded by Humbert IV). The traditions of Villefranche's old Auberge du Mouton are classic, and have been used time and again by playwright and novelist without even acknowledgment to history. It was here in the "Free City" beside the Rhone that Edward II swore to observe the city's claims of municipal liberty. Villefranche has no other notable monuments save the Hôtel de Ville of to-day, which is an admirable Renaissance town house, and another equally striking in the Rue Nationale. The latter is almost palatial in its proportions. Just below Villefranche is Trévoux, the ancient capital of the Principality of Dombes. It comes into the lime-light here only because of its ruined castle on a height above the town which travellers by road or rail cannot fail to remark even if they do not think it worth while to become intimately acquainted. The old castle is situated on the summit of a hill to the west of the town, its two black-banded towers of the middle ages proclaiming loudly the era of its birth. The octagonal donjon is a master-work of its kind and dates from the twelfth century. Since the Revolution this remarkable donjon has been shorn of a good two-thirds of its former height, and the effect is now rather stubby. With another twenty metres to its credit it must indeed have been imposing, as well by its construction as its situation. It is no wonder that this powerful defence was able to resist the attack of the Sire de Varambon, who, after capturing the city, sought vainly to take the chateau in 1431. It was a cruel victory indeed, for the wilful seigneur, not content with capturing the city, drove out all its wealthy and comfortably rich inhabitants and charged them a price of admission to get in again, mutilating their persons in a shocking manner if they did not disgorge all of their treasure as the price of this privilege. The local seigneur, his family and immediate retainers, were meanwhile huddled within the walls of the chateau and only escaped starvation at the hands of the victor by his having tired of the game of siege and by his withdrawal, carrying with him all the loot which he could gather together and transport. It was at Trévoux that the Jesuits compiled the celebrated Dictionary and Journal which made such a furor in the literary annals of the eighteenth century. With the exception of François Premier all of the French monarchs from Philippe-Auguste down to Louis XIV acknowledged the independence of the Principality of Dombes, and owed them the allegiance of supplying men and money in case they were attacked. The Parliament met at Trévoux and the Principality was one of the earliest and smallest political divisions of France to coin its own money. CHAPTER XIII THE FRANCHE COMTÉ: AUXONNE AND BESANÇON East of Dijon, from the centre of which radiated Burgundian influence and power, was a proud and independent political division which, until 1330, never allied itself intimately with the royal domain of the French kings nor with Burgundy. From this time, as a part of the Burgundian dukedom, it retained the right to be known as the Franche Comté, and was even then exempted from many impositions and duties demanded of other allied fiefs: "_Burgundiæ Comitatus, Liber Comitatus_," was its official title. It is characteristic of the independent spirit of the people of these parts that they should tell Henri IV, who praised the wine they offered him, when he was making a stay among them, and was being entertained in Besançon's citadel, that they had a much better one in the cellar which they were saving for a more august occasion. The Franche Comté is in no sense a tourist region; its varied topography has not been given even a glance of the eye by most conventional tourists, and its historical souvenirs have been almost entirely ignored by the makers of romances and stage-plays. Switzerland-bound travellers have an excellent opportunity to become acquainted with this comparatively little known corner of old France as they rush across it by express train via Pontarlier, but few avail themselves thereof. For this reason, if no other, the architectural monuments of the Franche Comté come upon one as genuine surprises. From Dijon our way lay through Genlis and Auxonne to Besançon, and there is no better way of approaching the heart of things, though it will require some courage on the part of travellers by train to accommodate themselves to the inconvenient hours of departure and arrival. The traveller by road will have a much easier and a much more enjoyable time of it; and right here is a suggestion of a new ground for touring automobilists who may be tired of well-worn roads. It is just as enjoyable to hunt out historic monuments with an automobile as with a Cook's ticket and a railway train--more so, some of us think. It would certainly not have been possible for the makers of this book to have otherwise got over the ground covered herein, so let not the ultra-sentimentalist decry the modern mode of locomotion. Winding its way between the confines of Burgundy and the Comté the highroad from Paris to Pontarlier and Switzerland led us first to Auxonne. Genlis we passed _en route_ and almost had a thrill over it by recalling the notorious Comtesse de Genlis. We racked our brains a moment and then remembered that the celebrated "_bas bleu_" hailed from somewhere in Picardy, so, then, this particular Genlis had no further interest for us, above all in that there was no chateau in sight. Auxonne (the old Ad Sonam of the Romans, afterwards corrupted into Assona, then Assonium and finally as it is to-day) was but a dozen kilometres beyond Genlis, and, sitting astride the great highway from Paris to Geneva, was early a fortified place of great strategic importance. Vauban traced its last ramparts and it was thought likely to hold its rank for all time, but now the fortifications have disappeared and the city no longer takes its place as a frontier outpost, that honour having been usurped by Besançon in the Jura. Of the military and feudal past there are still vivid memories at Auxonne. The chateau-fort is still there, built in different epochs by Louis XI, Charles VIII and Louis XII, and these works combined to make an edifice seemingly all-resistant, or at least formidable to a high degree. The chateau is still there, in part at least--not much has actually been despoiled, but actually the railway station is more militant in aspect. The stranger coming to Auxonne for the first time--unless he be prepared beforehand--will have grave doubts at first as to which is the chateau and which is the _gare_. The latter has a crenelated cornice, meurtrières pierced in its walls, and the vague appearance of bastions, all of which are also found in the real in the old chateau grimly overlooking the swift-flowing Saône. The enormous flanking towers of the real chateau, in spite of the city having been shorn of its prime military rank, are still kept in condition for the service of long-range guns, for the French are ever in a state of preparedness for the invasion which may never come. The lesson of "71" was well learned. On the great entrance portal of the chateau is blazoned a stone-sculptured hedgehog, the _devise_ of Louis XII, and in opposing niches are two carven angels holding aloft an escutcheon. Another doorway is hardly less impressive, though somewhat vague as to the purport of its ornament, which stands for nothing military or even civic. This introduction to the militant glory of the Auxonne of other days is a ripe indication of the dignity with which the place was one day enhanced. Of a population to-day of something less than five thousand souls, the city shelters nearly three thousand soldiers of all arms. Its warlike aspect can hardly be said to have changed much from what it was of old in spite of the fact that its importance is lower down in the scale. Another warlike reminder is the statue which rises proudly in the Place d'Armes. It is that of the Sous-Lieutenant Bonaparte as he was upon his arrival at Auxonne, a pallid youth just out of the military school of Brienne. In the plain neighbouring upon Auxonne, a sort of mid-France Flanders, is a populous town with a momentous and romantic history, albeit its architectural monuments, save in fragments, are practically nil. The Revolutionary authorities took away its old name and called it "Belle Defense," in memory of a heroic resistance opposed by the place to the invading Duc de Lorraine in 1616. Gallas had freed the Saône with thirty thousand men, and with Cardinal La Valette at the head of his army (a cardinal whom Richelieu had made a general) found Dijon so well guarded that he turned on his steps and attacked what is to-day Saint Jean-de-Losne. Fifty thousand soldiers in all finally besieged the place, and less than fifteen hundred of the inhabitants, and a garrison of but a hundred and fifty, held them at bay. The Duc d'Enghien, the future Grand Condé, then Governor of Burgundy, was able to send a feeble body of reinforcements and thus turn the tide in favour of the besieged. For this great defence Louis XIII exonerated the city from all future taxes, and the grand cross of the Legion d'Honneur was allowed to be incorporated into the city arms, as indeed it endures unto to-day. The tracings of the former fortifications are plainly marked, though the walls themselves have disappeared. Dole is commonly thought of as but a great railway junction. Besançon and Montbéliard are the real objectives of this itinerary through the Franche Comté and the half-way houses are apt to be neglected. For fear of this we "stopped over" at Dole. Dole's historic souvenirs are many and have in more than one instance left behind their stories writ large in stone. The present Hôtel de Ville was the old Palais du Parlement, built in the sixteenth century, from the designs of Boyvin, who was himself President of the Chambre at the time. Within the courtyard of this old Parliament House is an impressive donjon of a century earlier, the Tour de Vergy, which offers as choice a lot of underground cells, or _oubliettes_, as one may see outside the Chateau d'If or the Castle of Loches. The Palais de Justice at Dole, with a magnificently carved portal, was formerly the Couvent des Cordeliers and dates from 1572. The memory of Besançon in the minds of most folk--provided they have any memory of it at all--will be recalled by the opening lines of Stendhal's "Rouge et Noir." "_Besançon n'est pas seulement une des plus jolies villes de France, elle abonde en gens de coeur et d'esprit._" The flowing Doubs nearly surrounds the "Roc" of Besançon with a great horse-shoe loop which gives a natural isolation and makes its citadel more nearly redoubtable than was ever imagined by Vauban, its builder. From an artistic point of view Besançon's monuments are not many or varied if one excepts the Palais Granvelle and the military defences, which are made up in part of a number of mediæval towers and Vauban's citadel. There are four great sentinel towers surrounding the city, all dating from the period of Charles Quint, but the city gates, piercing the fortification walls, were built also by Vauban between 1668-1711, and are by no means as ancient as they look. The Palais Granvelle, of the sixteenth century, has a fine dignified monumental aspect wholly impressive regardless of its lack of magnitude and the absence of a strict regard for the architectural orders. Liberties have been taken here and there with its outlines which place it beyond the pale of a thoroughly consistent structure, but for all that it undeniably pleases the eye, and more. And what else has one a right to demand unless he is a pedant? In general the civic and domestic architecture of the Franche Comté are of a sobriety which gives them a distinction all their own; the opposite is true of the churches, taking that at Pont-à-Mousson as a concrete example. The street façade of the Palais Granvelle is undeniably fine, with a dignity born of simplicity. Its interior façade, that giving on the courtyard, is freer in treatment, but still not [Illustration: _Palais Granvelle, Besançon_] violent, and its colonnaded cloister forms a quiet retreat in strong contrast with the bustle and noise which push by the portal scarce twenty feet away. The Palais Granvelle actually serves to-day the purpose of headquarters of Besançon's Société Savante. Nicolas Perrenot, Seigneur de Granvelle, its builder (1533-1540), was the chancellor of Charles Quint, and brother of the Cardinal de Granvelle, minister of Charles Quint and Philippe II. He was descended from a noble Burgundian family, not from a blacksmith as has faultily been given by more than one historian. Charles Quint, in writing to his son, after the death of his chancellor--"in his palace at Besançon," said: "My son, I am extremely touched by the death of Granvelle. In him you and I have lost a firm staff upon which to lean." The centre of the admirable town house of the sixteenth century is occupied by a vast courtyard surrounded by a series of Doric columns in marble, supporting a range of low arcades. The principal façade is built of "_marbre du pays_," which is not marble or anything like it, but a very suitable stone for building nevertheless. It might be called "near-marble" by an enterprising modern contractor, and a fortune made off it by skilful advertising. It is better, at any rate, than armoured cement. The structure rises but two stories above the _rez-de-chaussée_, but is topped off with an "_attique_" (a word we all recognize even though it be French) and three great stone _lucarnes_, ornamented with light open-work _consoles à jour_. Each story is decorated at equal intervals by a superimposed series of columns. The first is Doric, the second Ionic and the third Corinthian, and each divides its particular story into five _travées_. The entrance portal is particularly to be remarked for its elegance. It is flanked on either side by a Corinthian column and is surmounted by a pair of angel heads in bronze. Drawing closer and closer to the frontier, the face of everything growing more and more warlike the while, one comes to Montbéliard, practically a militant outpost of modern France, though actually its importance in this respect is overshadowed by neighbouring Belfort. At Belfort Bartholdi's famous lion--a better stone lion by the way than Thorwaldsen's at Luzerne--crouches in his carven cradle in the hillside ready to spring at the first rumours of war. If France is ever invaded again it will not be by way of the gateway which is defended by Belfort and Montbéliard, that is certain! [Illustration] Montbéliard is a little fragment of Germany that has become French. Rudely grouped around the walls of the old chateau of the Wurtemburgs, the town remains to-day an anomaly in France, more so than the greater Strassbourg and Metz are to Germany, because they have become thoroughly Germanized since "la guerre" and the "annexation," which are the half whispered words in which the natives still discuss the late unpleasantness. How did this little German stronghold become French? One may learn the story from "Le Maréchal de Luxembourg et Le Prince d'Orange," by Pierre de Ségur, better even than he may from the history books. The tale is too long to retell here but it is undeniably thrilling and good reading. The town, the chateau and the local duke were, it seems, all captured at one fell swoop. There was no defence, so it was not a very glorious victory, but it came to pass as a heroic episode and a Wurtemburg castle thus came to be a French chateau. The Chateau de Montbéliard has all the marks of a heavy German castle. It has little indeed of the suggestion of the French manner of building in these parts or elsewhere. To-day it serves as a barracks for French soldiers, but its alien origin is manifest by its cut and trim. The history of Montbéliard has been most curious. Its name was derived from the Latin Mons Peligardi (in German Munpelgard) and the principality, as it once was, had a council of nine _maîtres-bourgeois_, as the city councilmen were called. The principality comprised the seigneuries of Héricourt, Blamont, Chatelet and Clémont. For a time it was a part of the Duchy of Lorraine, then it passed to the house of Montfaucon, and then to the Wurtemburgs, who built the castle. The Treaties of Luneville and Paris made it possible for the tricolor to fly above the castle walls, otherwise it might have remained a German town with a burgomaster instead of a French _ville_ with a _maire_. The Tour Neuve of the chateau dates from 1594 and the Tour Bossue from 1425. The main fabric was restored in such a manner that it would seem to have been practically remodelled, if not actually rebuilt, in 1751. It preserves nevertheless the _cachet_ that one expects to see in a castle of its time, albeit that an alien flavour hovers around it still. It is worth continuing in this direction a step farther to Belfort in the "territory," although it is actually beyond the confines of Burgundy's "Free County." Belfort is worth seeing for the sake of its "Lion," though if one is pressed for time he may take a ride in Paris over to the Rive Gauche and see the same thing in the Place de Belfort, or at least a miniature replica of it. In the midst of the great entrenched camp of Belfort rises "La Chateau," as Belfort's citadel is known. It sets broad on its base nearly five hundred metres above sea-level. The chateau and the "Roc" were first fortified in the sixteenth century, since which time each year has added to the strength of the defences until to-day it is perhaps the most strongly fortified of all the frontier posts of France. It is at the base of the massive "Roc" which bears aloft the chateau that is sculptured Bartholdi's celebrated lion. Its proportions are immense, at least seventy-five feet in length and perhaps forty in height. The ancient Tour de la Miotte is all that remains of a fortress of the middle ages, so Belfort's claims rest on something more than its artistic monumental remains, though the silhouette and sky-line of the grouping of its chateau and citadel are imposingly effective and undeniably artistic. CHAPTER XIV THE SWISS BORDER: BUGEY AND BRESSE "La Bresse, le Bugey, le Val-Romey et la Principauté de Dombes" was the high-sounding way in which that hinterland between Burgundy and Savoy was known in old monarchial days. Of a common destiny with the two dukedoms, it was allied first with one and then with the other until the principality was nothing more than a name; independence was a myth, and allegiance, and perhaps something more, was demanded by the rulers of the neighbouring states. In Roman times these four provinces were allied with the I-Lyonnais, but by the Burgundian conquerors forcibly became allied with the stronger power. Bresse of itself belonged to the Sires de Bagé and in 1272 became a countship allied with the house of Savoy, which in 1601 ceded it to the king of France. Local diction perpetuates the following quatrain which well explains the relations of Bresse with the surrounding provinces. "_Pont-de-Veyle et Pont-de-Vaux,_ _Saint Trivier at Romeno_ _Sont quat' villes bien renommo;_ _Mias viv' Mâcon pour beir_ _Et Bourg pour mangi._" Bresse, more than any other of the subdivisions of mediæval and modern France, is endowed with renown for the sobriety and purity of the life of its people; and family ties are "respectable and respected," as the saying goes. Above all has this been notably true of the nobility, who were ever looked up to with love and pride by those of lower stations. Among the common people never has one been found to willingly ally himself, or herself, with another family who might have a blot on its escutcheon. The marriage vow and its usages are simple but devout, and in addition to the usual observations the peasant husband grants, as a part of the marriage contract, a black dress to be worn at Toussaint and the Jour des Mortes, and to all family mourning celebrations. If a widow or widower seeks another partner the event is celebrated by a ball--for which the doubly wedded party pays. [Illustration: _Women of Bresse_] The village fêtes of Bresse, still continued in many an out-of-the-way little town, are the usual drinking and dancing _festins_ of the comic opera merry-making variety. They are simple and proper enough exhibitions, and never descend to the freedom of speech and manners that such exhibitions often do in the Midi. None more than Brillat-Savarin has carried the fame of Bresse abroad. A one-time member of the Cour de Cassation, he perhaps was better known to the world at large as the father of gastronomy in France. His "Psychologie de Gout," if nothing else, would warrant giving him this title. Val-Romey--the Vallis Romana of the Emperors--and Bugey had for overlords the Sires de Thoire et Villars. It, too, came in time to the Ducs de Savoie, by gift and by heritage, and also was ceded in 1601 to Henri IV, by virtue of the Treaty of Lyons. Dombes, principality in little, although at first a part of the kingdom of Burgundy, later fell by favour of circumstances to the Sires of Beaugé and afterwards to the Sire de Beaujeau. Finally it turned its fortunes into the hands of the Bourbons, when Mademoiselle de Montpensier came to rule its destinies. She turned it over to Louis XIV as payment for his authorization for her marriage with Monsieur de Lauzun. The princess made this sacrifice of love in vain, and Dombes fell to the Duc de Maine, while Lauzun languished in the prison Pignerolo, for the king did not abide by his back-handed favouritism. On the border between the mediæval dukedom and the principality of Dombes, to-day the Départements of the Saône et Loire and the Ain, is a race apart from other mankind hereabouts. In numerous little villages, notably at Boz and Huchisi, one may still observe the dark Saracen features of the ancients mingled with those of to-day. A monograph has recently appeared which defines these peoples as something quite unlike the other varied races now welded into the citizens of twentieth century France. Modern vogue, style, fashion, or whatever you may choose to call it, is everywhere fast changing the old picturesque costume into something of the ready-made, big-store order, but to stroll about the highways and byways in these parts and see men in baggy Turkish trousers with their coats and waistcoats tied together by strings or ribbons in place of conventional buttons, is as a whiff of the Orient, or at least a reminder of the long ago. The women dress in a distinct, but perhaps not otherwise very remarkable, manner, save that an occasional "Turk's-Head" turban is seen, quite as Oriental as the _culotte_ of the men. A blend of Spain, of Arabia, of Persia and of Turkey could not present a costume more droll than that of the "_Chizerots_," as these people are known. Another _petit pays_, and one of the most remarkably disposed, politically, of all the old provinces which go to make up modern France, is what is known even to-day as the Pays de Gex. It belonged successively to the house of Joinville, to the Comté de Savoie and to the States of Berne and Geneva. The Duc de Savoie, by the treaty of 1601, ceded it to France, but a strip is still neutral ground for both Switzerland and France, which by common accord allows Geneva full access to the territory in order to establish its communications with Swiss territory on the west and south shores of Lac Leman, particularly to that region beyond Saint-Gingolphe. The name Gex is evolved from the Latin Gesium, the capital of a kingdom owning but a length of six leagues and a width of about half as much. The Bernese and the Genevois conquered it in turn, and to-day its personality is _nil_ except that one recalls it as the head centre for the trade in Gruyère cheese, the kind which we commonly call Swiss cheese. It is in the Pays de Gex, on the railway line from Gex to Geneva, that one notes the name of Fernay and endeavours to recall for just what it stands. At last it comes to one. Fernay possesses a literary shrine of note that all who pass this way may well remember. The wonder is that one did not recall it with less effort. The whole town is virtually a monument to Voltaire. It was he who built the town, practically; that is, he furnished the land and the means to erect many of the meaner houses which surround the chateau which he came himself to inhabit, and from which, for a time, the rays of his brilliant wit were shed over the whole literary world of the eighteenth century. After his flight from Berlin, Voltaire, the Seigneur de Fernay, founded Fernay, within six kilometres of the frontier and Geneva, and sought to attract Swiss watch-makers thither that a similar industry might there be established on French soil. Surely Voltaire was more of a benefactor of his race than he is usually considered. The Voltaire manor, or chateau, albeit that it is nothing grandly monumental, still exists with [Illustration: _Chateau de Voltaire, Ferney_] furniture and portraits of the time of the satirist. At the entrance to the chateau is a tiny chapel, built also by Voltaire when he was in that particular mood. Over its portal it bears the following words, "Deo Erexit Voltaire MDCCLXI." Arsène Houssaye called the words an impertinence, and, admitting Voltaire's genius, one is inclined to assent to the dictum. "My church," said Voltaire, "is erected to God, the only one throughout Christendom; there are thousands to Saint Jean, to Saint Paul and to all the rest of the calendar, but not another in all the world to God." Such a romantically storied region as this might naturally be expected to abound in historic souvenirs and monuments almost without end. To an extent this is true, but such souvenirs and recollections of the past more frequently present themselves than do actual castle walls, be they ruined or well-preserved. The antique lore of ancient Bresse goes back to Druidical days. Stone axes, Celtic tombs and medals, skeletons wearing bracelets and anklets of iron and copper have been found in great numbers, and from these have been built up a vague history of the earliest times. Of Roman remains there are still evident many outlines of the camps of the legionaries, innumerable evidences and tracings of old Roman highroads, with here and there fragments of aqueducts, baths and temples. Near Bourg have been discovered various medals of the ancient colony of Massilia, on the shores of the Mediterranean, and one wonders what were the relations of the Ostragoth peoples of Bresse with the Phoceans of Marseilles. History is non-committal. There are no magnificent monumental remains of Roman times left in these parts save occasional fragments and towers which presumably served for signalling purposes as a part of the fortifications of the Saracens. For any architectural monuments of note one can not with certainty go back to a period earlier than that in which the Burgundian power was at its height, or to the time of Charles-le-Chauve in the ninth century. The feudal memories of Bresse are chiefly the ruins of the seigneurial chateau at Chateauneuf, the chief-town of the Val-Romey. Built high on the summit of a peak of rock and surrounded by deep-cut fosses, and walls which drop down sheer like the sides of a precipice, this chief feudal residence of the Val-Romey was more a fortress than a delectable domestic establishment, though it served the functions of both, as was frequently the case with the feudal edifice of its class. What it lacked in actual luxury or comfort it made up for in the added protection offered by its sturdy walls. This was notably true of all seigneurial residences which occupied isolated positions in the feudal epoch. Its walls to-day, shorn of any æsthetic beauty which they may once have possessed, and crumbling and moss-grown on every side, still rise a hundred or more feet in air above their rocky foundations, and in many places have a thickness of a dozen or fifteen feet. They built well in those old days, before the era of armoured cement covered with stucco. Modern builders make great claims for their product, but will it last? No man knows, and, from the fact that masonry cannot be built even to-day so as to stand up against shot and shell, one doubts if modern work is really as durable as that of a thousand years ago. The military architecture of feudal France, so often closely allied with that of the civic and domestic varieties, was preëminent in its time. The religious architecture, the monasteries and churches, of these parts have certainly more ornate reminders of the undeniable opulence of the region than the secular examples still existing. Connecting Bresse and the Franche Comté is a curious little battery of townlets that have never been mentioned in the guide-books, nor ever will be. A motor flight from Bourg-en-Bresse to Besançon evolved the following: First came a smug little town named briefly Pierre. It possesses a chateau, too, reckoned as one of the really remarkable examples of the style of Burgundian building. It certainly looks all that is claimed for it, though we saw it only in the dim twilight of a May evening. The impression was all-satisfying, and, that being what one really travels for, one should be content. For a neighbour there was Champdivers, which recalled a memory of Odette de Champdivers, the one time companion of the poor Charles VI. during his latter unhappy days. Truly this was proving for us a most romantic region, a region utterly neglected by the great world of tourists who pick out the big-type names on the map and make up their itineraries accordingly. On the banks of the Doubs, near the border of Bresse and the Comté, lies Molay, whose seigneur, Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master of the Templars, died at the stake in Paris during the playing of the great drama of 1314. After Molay a succession of dwellings continues to the important frontier town and fortress of Dole, a decayed county-town whose official importance, even, has been absorbed by the fortified city and watch-making metropolis of Besançon. Dole will never be reckoned a city of celebrated art, but regardless of this its fine old Renaissance houses and Parliamentary Palace of other days all follow the architectural scheme which makes the civic and secular edifices of mid-France the most luxurious of their epoch. Bourg, the capital of Bresse, has ever been one of the most important towns of France lying near the eastern frontier, though indeed as a fortified place the modern French military authorities give it scant value from a strategic point of view. Six great national highways cross and recross the city, and many of the narrow streets of the days of the dukes have lately given way to avenues and boulevards. From this one puts Bourg down as something very modern--which it is, in parts. Built on the site of the ancient Forum Sebusianorum, the city came in time under the sway of Burgundy, of the Empire of the States of Savoy, and finally definitely allied itself with France in 1601. Bourg is in the heart of Bresse. Its inhabitants are known as Bressans de Bresse, in contradistinction to those who live on the borders of the old province. "_Viv Mâcon pour beir et Bourg pour mangi_"--Mâcon for drinking and Bourg for eating--say the Bressans of Bresse, and with good reason. The Bressan costume is most peculiar, at least so far as that of the women is concerned; the men might be of Normandy or Poitou. Only on a fête day will one see the real costume of the women of Bresse, but on such occasions the mere sight of the triple-decked, steeple-like coiffe--a good replica of an ornamental fountain in miniature--will suggest nothing so much as the costume of a masquerade. The only palatial domestic or civic edifice notable in Bourg to-day is the Parliament Building of the ancient États de la Bresse. Of the many princely dwellings of the time of the Seigneurs de Bagé, and of the Savoyan princes of the sixteenth century, not a fragment remains, though the records tell of a splendid chateau-fort and an episcopal residence of like luxurious proportions which existed at the time of the union of Bresse with France. This may be the edifice of the États which now shelters the Musée Lorin. The longbeards disagree as to this, but the casual observer will be quite willing to accept the suggestion. The monument is certainly a splendid one, even if its history is vague. The famous Église de Brou at Bourg is intimately bound with the life of the nobles of mediæval times, as closely indeed as if it had been a secular establishment where lived lords and ladies and their courts. A description of this classic wonder of architectural art can have no extended place here. It must suffice to recall that it was erected by Philibert le Beau in completion of a vow made by his mother Marguerite de Bourbon. Within are the magnificently sculptured tombs of the two royalties and another of Marguerite d'Autriche. The sculpture of these famous tombs has been the subject of more than one monograph, and indeed the whole ornate structure--church, tombs and sculpture--is a never-ceasing source of supply to critics and archæologists. The Italian style, in the most gracious of its flowering forms, is here united with the flamboyant Flemish school in a profligate profusion. The Église de Brou is one of the greatest marvels of Renaissance architecture in all the world. North of Bourg, on the road to Louhans, through the heart of the Bresse so dear to gastronomes, are the well conserved remains of the Chateau de Montcony, and those of more ruinous aspect which represent the departed glories of Duretal. Cuiseaux' monumental remains are even more scant, and the town itself hardly resembles a town of Burgundy. It is more like a place in Switzerland or the Jura; indeed, to the latter region it once belonged, and only came to be Burgundian when the princes of the house, through some petty quarrel, took it for their own by force, as was the way in those gallant, profligate days. Cuiseaux does possess, however, a ruined aspect of wall and rampart which suggests that it must have been one of the most admirably defended places of the neighbourhood, judging from an old fifteenth century plan preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale. Then it was proud of its ramparts which possessed thirty-six protecting towers. To-day but two of these sentinels remain, and it were vainglorious to claim too much for them, particularly since the modern plan of the town makes it look as conventionally dull and uninteresting as an Arab _ghourbi_ in the Atlas, or an adobe village in Arizona. At Pont-de-Vaux, between Bourg and Louhans, one comes to a trim little town, an outgrowth of the ancient village of Vaux, belonging at one time to the Sires de Baugé, and later to the Duc de Savoie, Charles III, who made it a Comté in 1623. It afterwards grew to the dignity of a Duché, so made by Louis XIII. Much is preserved to-day of the ancient manner of building, and, all in all, it is quite as satisfactory an example of a mediæval town as has been left untouched by the mature hand of progress of these late days. Nantua is known to the traveller in modern France only as another of those lakeside resorts which are such delightful places of sojourn for those who would avoid for a time the strife of great cities. It is a gem of a town, set in a diadem of beauty which surrounds the tiny lake of the same name, but it has no historic monuments, if we except the tomb of Charles le Chauve in the church. This at least entitles it to a passing comment here, this and the memory of a happy afternoon we passed by the crystal waters of this brilliant lake. Midway between Bourg and Mâcon is Pont-de-Veyle. This old feudal town was once the particular possession of a brilliant line of seigneurs of France and Savoy, the last, under François I, being the Comte de Furstemburg, who acquired it as a payment for certain levies of Germans that he had furnished the French monarch. The ancient manor of the Furstemburgs still exists, but it is hardly of a proportion or architectural merit to have distinction. Here, too, are the reconstructed remains of the eighteenth century of a family chateau of the Maréchal de Lesdiguières, whose fortunes were more intimately bound up with Gap and Vizille than with this less accessible property. Like Vizille it has been "put into condition" in recent years, and, while lacking the mossy, romantic air of mediævalism, fulfils most of the demands of the worshipper at historic shrines. There is still standing here an old city gate dating from the thirteenth century, and this in turn is surmounted by a belfry of the sixteenth. The ensemble suggests that it was once a part of a more noble fortress-chateau. The Maison des Savoyards was probably a princely rest-house when the nobles of its era passed this way. Beyond its name, and the elaborate decorations of its façade, there is nothing else to support the conjecture. Its history, whatever it may have been, is lost in the confusion with which many ancient records are covered to-day. Turning southwest on the highroad, from Burgundy into Savoy through the heart of Dombes, one soon reaches Châtillon-les-Dombes. As its name indicates, it is a descendant of the town which grew up around an ancient seigneurial residence here of the fourteenth century. Chiefly this is memory only, for the fragmentary débris takes on no distinction to-day beyond that of any other indiscriminate pile of stones and mortar. Montluel, near-by, is in much the same category. It is famous only for the fact that it was here that Amé VII was presented the Duché de Savoie by Sigismond in 1496, and that in troublous, mediæval days it was the safe haven for many political refugees from Geneva and Florence. Montluel, in Latin Mons Lupelli, was the capital of the fief of Valbonne. The remains existing to-day, and locally called "le chateau," are those of an edifice which had an existence and a career of sorts in the eleventh century, but which since that date has no recorded history. To Pont d'Ain and Belley is still on the direct road to Savoy. On the great "route internationale" from Paris to Turin sits the ancient chateau of Pont d'Ain, which owes its name to the old bridge which once spanned the Ain at this point. On an eminence high above the river is the old chateau built by the Sires de Coligny in 1590, the ancestors of the great admiral. Previously it had been the residence of the rulers of Savoy, and to this luxurious dwelling the princesses of the house invariably came to give birth to the inheritors to the throne. Louise de Savoie, the mother of François Premier, was born here in 1476, and here died Philibert II, Duc de Savoie, in 1504, he whose death gave impetus to the erection of that magnificent mausoleum, the Église de Brou. Belley, a matter of fifty kilometres further on, is a veritable gateway through which passed the ancient Route de Savoie along which trotted the palfreys and rolled the coaches of Renaissance days. Lacking entirely mediæval monuments of note, Belley ranks, judging from positive documentary evidence, as one of the most ancient towns of the border province lying between Burgundy and Savoy. Its episcopate dates from the year 412 A.D., and, if its feudal monuments have disappeared, its great episcopal palace of later centuries is certainly entitled to be considered an example of domestic architecture quite as appealing as many a feudal chateau of more warlike aspect. So strong a centre of the church as Belley was bound to be prominent politically, and its bishops bore as well the title of Princes of the Empire. Herein has been given an epitome of a round of travel in this forgotten and neglected border country lying between old Burgundy, Switzerland and Savoy. What it lacks in elaborate examples of feudal and Renaissance architecture it makes up for in storied facts of history, which though too extensive to be more than hinted at here are as thrilling and appealing as any chapter of the history of old France. For that reason, and the fact that some acquaintance with these tiny border provinces is necessary for a proper appreciation of the exterior relations of both Burgundy and Savoy, the détour has been made. CHAPTER XV GRENOBLE AND VIZILLE: THE CAPITAL OF THE DAUPHINS Dauphiny owes its name as a province to the rightful name of the eldest sons of the French kings down to the middle of the nineteenth century. The actual origin of the application of the name seems to have been lost, though the Comtes de Vienne bore a dolphin on their blazon from the eleventh century to the fourteenth, when Comte Humbert, the last Dauphin, made over his rights to the eldest son of Philippe de Valois, who acquired the country in 1343, bestowing it upon his offspring as his patrimony. Thus is logically explained the absorption of the title and its relations with the province, for it was then that it came first to be applied to that glorious mountain region of France lying between the high Alpine valleys and the shores of the Mediterranean. The Dauphin, Humbert II, first established the Parlement du Dauphiné at Saint Marcellin in 1337, but within three years it was transferred to Grenoble, where it held rank as third among the provincial parliaments of France. [Illustration: Tourelle _du_ Palais _de_ Justice GRENOBLE B. McM. '08.] Saint Laurent, the Grenoble suburb, not the mountain town hidden away in the fastness of the mountain _massif_ of Chartreuse, occupies the site of an ancient Gaulish foundation called Cularo. Its name was later changed to Gratianopolis, out of compliment to the Emperor Gratian, which in time evolved itself into Grenoble, the capital of "the good province of our most loyal Dauphin." Grenoble's chief architectural treasure is its present Palais de Justice, the ancient buildings of the old Parliament of Dauphiny and its Cour des Comptes. Virtually it is a chateau of state and is, moreover, the most important monument of the French Renaissance existing in the Rhône valley. Begun under Louis XI, it was terminated under François Premier, when, following upon the Italian wars, it was a place of sojourn for the kings of France. On entering the portal at the right one comes directly to the Chambre du Tribunal of to-day, its walls panelled with a wonderful series of wood-carvings coming from the ancient Cour des Comptes, the work of a German sculptor, Paul Jude, in 1520. The portal to the left leads to the Cour d'Appel--the Chambres des Audiences Solennelles--whose ceiling was designed in 1660 by Jean Lepautre, a great decorative artist of the court of Louis XIV, and carved by one Guillebaud, a native of Grenoble. The ancient chapel, or such of it as remains, where the parliament heard mass, is reached through this room. The ancient Chambre des Comptes dates from the reign of Charles VIII. The Grande Salle on the upper floor is one of the notable works of its epoch with respect to its decorations, though the noble glass of its numerous windows was destroyed long years ago, leaving behind only a record of its magnificently designed _armoiries_ and inscriptions. The chief, out-of-the-ordinary, decorations still to be observed are the sculptured fronts of thirty-eight cupboard doors which enclose the provincial archives. From an artistic, no less than a utilitarian, point of view, they are certainly to be admired, even preferred, before the "elastic" book cases of to-day. Much of the old Palais des Dauphins' former magnificent attributes in the shape of decorative details remain to charm the eye and senses to-day, but of the extensive range of apartments of former times only a bare three or four suggest by their groinings, carvings and chimney-pieces the splendour with which the elder sons of the kings of France were wont to surround themselves. A remarkably successful work of restoration of the façade was accomplished within a dozen years on the model of the best of Renaissance details in other parts of the edifice, until to-day the whole presents a most effective ensemble. In Grenoble's museum is a room devoted to portraits of the good and great of Dauphiny. There are a dozen busts in marble of as many Dauphins, a portrait of Marie Vignon, the wife of Lesdiguières, and a crayon sketch of Bayard, which is the earliest portrait of the "Chevalier" extant. In the Église Saint Andre is the tomb of Bayard. The funeral monument surmounting it was erected only in the seventeenth century. The official chapel of the Dauphins has a great rectangular _clocher_ remaining to suggest its former proportions. This fine tower is surmounted by an octagonal upper story and is flanked at each corner with a _clocheton_ rising hardily into the rarefied atmosphere. The grim tower braves the tempests of winter to-day as it has since 1230. Grenoble's Hôtel des Trois Dauphins is an historic monument as replete with interest as many of more splendour. It was here that Napoleon lodged, with General Bertrand, on the night when he passed through the city on that eventful return from Elba when he sought to kindle the European war-flame anew. Grenoble's sole vestige of ancient castle or chateau architecture, aside from the temporary royal abode of the French kings and the Dauphins, is a round tower--La Grosse Tour Ronde--now built into the Hôtel de Ville, the only existing relic of a still earlier Palais des Dauphins which in its time stood upon the site of the ancient Roman remains of a structure built in the days of Diocletian. Grenoble's citadel possesses to-day only a square tower with _machicoulis_ to give it the distinction of a militant spirit. It was built in 1409, but to-day has been reduced to a mere barrack's accessory of not the slightest military strength, a "_colombier militaire_," the authorities themselves cynically call it. Vauban's ancient ramparts have now been turned into a series of those tree-planted promenades so common in France, but the militant aspect of Grenoble is not allowed to be lost sight of, as a mere glance of the eye upward to the hillsides and mountain crests roundabout plainly indicates. Grenoble, with its fort-crowned hill of "La Bastille," has been called the Ehrenbreitstein of the Isère, a river which has played a momentous part in the history of Savoy and Dauphiny, but which is little known or recognized by those who follow the main lines of French travel. Mont Rachet forms the underpinning of "La Bastille" and gives a foothold to an old feudal fortress now built around by a more modern work. Below is the juncture of the Isère and the Drac, and the great plain in the midst of which rests the proud old capital of the Dauphins. The site is truly remarkable and the strategic importance of the fortress was well enough made use of in mediæval times as a feudal stronghold. What its value for military purposes may actually be to-day is another story. The walls of the fortress certainly look grim enough, but it is probable that even the puniest of Alpine mountain batteries could reduce it in short order. Grenoble, as might be expected of a wealthy provincial capital, is surrounded by a near-by battery of palatial country houses which may well take rank as _chateaux de marque_. Some are modern and some are remodelled from more ancient foundations, but all are of the imposing order which one associates with a mountain retreat. These of course are of a class quite distinct from the countless forts, fortresses, towers and donjons with which the whole countryside is strewn. Uriage, a near neighbour, is a popular resort in little, in fact, a _ville d'eau_, as the French aptly name such places. The Chateau d'Uriage will for most folk have vastly more sympathetic interest than the semi-invalid attractions of the spa itself. It is at present the property of the Saint Ferreol family, and though not strictly to be reckoned as a sight, since it is not open to the public, it still remains one of the most striking residential chateaux of these parts. It was built by the Seigneurs d'Allemon under the old régime. Its architecture is frankly of the nondescript order, a mélange of much that is good and some that is bad, but all of it effective when judged from a more or less distant view-point. With respect to its details it is a livid mass of non-contemporary elements to which the purist would give scant consideration, but the effect, always the most desirable quality after all, is undeniably satisfying. The situation heightens this effect, no doubt, but what would you? The high sloped roof, in place of the mansards one usually sees, may be considered an innovation in a structure of its epoch. It was so built, without question, that it might better shed the snows of winter, which here come early and stay late. The Chateau de Vizille, in a wooded park bordering upon the little industrial suburb of Grenoble bearing the same name, is a most imposing pile, and is fairly reminiscent of its eighteenth century contemporaries in Touraine and elsewhere in mid-France. It was the place of meeting of the États Généraux of Dauphiny in 1788, one of the momentous preambles to the French Revolution, a chapter of the great drama which was vigorously spoken and acted. It was on July 21, 1788, under the presidency of the Comte de Marges, that were voted the preliminary paragraphs of the famous "Declaration des Droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen." The occasion is perpetuated in memory by a monument erected in the town to "La Gloire de l'Assemblée de Vizille ... et prepare la Revolution Française." This was the first parliamentary vote against the sustaining of aristocratic hereditary government in favour of popular representation--really the general signal for revolution, a year before the convention at Versailles. The massive pile, ornate but not burdensome, with its mansards, its towers and terraces, composes with its environment in a most agreeable manner. Known originally as the Chateau des Lesdiguières, for it was built originally by that celebrated Constable, Vice-Roi du Dauphiné, the Chateau de Vizille was formerly the property of the family of Casimir Perier, that which gave a president to the later Republic. In the early part of the seventeenth century a German traveller, Abraham Goelnitz, "greatly admired" the chateau, and compared it to that of the Duc d'Epernon at Cadillac, which contained seventy rooms. That of the Maréchal Lesdiguières had a hundred and twenty-five, among them (at that time) a picture gallery, an arsenal with six hundred suits of armour, two thousand pikes and ten thousand muskets, as the inventory read. No wonder Richelieu would have reduced the power of the local seigneurs when they could get, and keep together, such a store as that. Vizille abounds in historical memories the most exciting; the very fact that it was the home of Lesdiguières, the terrible companion of the Baron des Adrets--a Dauphinese tyrant, a warrior-pillager and much more that history vouches for--explains this. "_Viendrez ou je brulerai_," Lesdiguières wrote to the recalcitrant vassals of his king who originally had a castle on the same site. And when they stepped out, leaving the edifice unharmed, he stepped in and threw it to the ground and built the less militant chateau which one sees to-day. This edifice as it now stands was practically the work of Lesdiguières. The Protestant governor of Dauphiny was reckoned a "sly fox" by the Duc de Savoie, and doubtless with reason. It is a recorded fact of history that the governor built his chateau with the unpaid labour of the neighbouring peasants. This was in conformity with an old custom by which a governor of the Crown could release his subject from taxes by the payment of a _corvée_, that is, labour for the State. He took it to mean that as the representative of the state the peasants were bound to work for him. And so they did. The charge goes home nevertheless that it was a case of official sinning. This "Berceau de la Liberté" is in form an elegant pavilion of the style current with Louis XIII. Originally it possessed certain decorative features, statues and bas reliefs, all more or less mutilated to-day. What is left gives an aspect of magnificence, but after all these features are of no very high artistic order. Within, the decoration of the apartments and their furnishings rise to a considerably higher plane. Everywhere may be seen the arms of the Constable, three roses and a lion, the latter rampant, naturally, as becomes the device of a warrior. The later career of the Chateau de Vizille has been most ignoble. Twice in the last century it suffered by fire, in 1825 and 1865, and finally it was rented as a store-house for a manufacturing concern, later to become a boarding house controlled by a Société Anglaise. Nothing good came of the last project and the enterprise failed, as might have been anticipated at the commencement. To-day the property is on the market, or was until very recently. CHAPTER XVI CHAMBÉRY AND THE LAC DU BOURGET One comes to Chambéry to see the chateau of the Ducs de Savoie, the modest villa "Les Charmettes," celebrated by the sojourn of Jean Jacques Rousseau and Madame de Warens, and the Fontaine des Elephants. That is all Chambéry has for those who would worship at picturesque or romantic shrines, save its accessibility to all Savoy. To begin with the last mentioned attraction first, one may dispose of the Fontaine des Elephants in a word. It has absolutely no artistic or sentimental appeal, though the town residents worship before it as a Buddhist does before Buddha. The ducal splendour of the chateau and of "La Sainte Chapelle," which together form the mass commonly referred to as "the chateau," is indeed the first of Chambéry's attractions. Restorations of various epochs have made of the fabric something that will stand the changes of the seasons for generations yet to come and still preserve its mediæval characteristics. This is saying that the restoration of the Chateau de Chambéry has been intelligently conceived and well executed. The great portal, preceded by an ornate terrace, with a statue of the Frères de Maistre, is the chief and most splendid architectural detail. A good second is the old portal of the Église Saint Dominique, which has been incorporated into the chateau as has been the Sainte Chapelle. Its chevet and its deep-set windows form the most striking externals of this conglomerate structure. One of the old towers forms another dominant note when viewed from without, but let no one who climbs to its upper platform for a view of the classic panorama of the city and its surroundings think that he, or she, treads the stones where trod lords and ladies of romantic times, for the stairway is a poor modern thing bolstered up by iron rods, as unlovely as a fire-escape ladder on an apartment house, and no more romantic. It was in the Chateau de Chambéry that was consummated the final ceremony by which Savoy was made an independent duchy in 1416. Historians of all ranks have described the magnificence of the event in no sparing [Illustration: _Portal of the Chateau de Chambéry_] [Illustration: _Portal St. Dominique, Chambéry_] terms. It was the most gorgeous spectacle ever played upon the stage of which this fine old mediæval castle was the theatre. The final act of the ceremony took place before a throng of princes, prelates and various seigneurs and minor vassals of all the neighbouring kingdoms and principalities. The Emperor Sigismond, Amadée VIII, who was to be the new duke, dined alone upon a raised dais in the Grande Salle, and the service was made by "a richly dressed throng of seigneurs mounted on brilliantly caparisoned chargers." This is quoted from a historical chronicle, which however neglects to state the quality of the service. It is quite possible that it may not have been above reproach. Here, a couple of centuries later, another Victor-Amadée married the Princesse Henriette, Duchesse d'Orléans. The bride to be had never met her future husband until they came together at a little village near-by, as she was journeying to the Savoyan castle for the ceremony. Says the chronicle: "When the princess saw the pageant, at the head of which marched Victor-Amadée, the fair young man of distinguished and martial bearing, without a moment's hesitation, casting to the winds all her previous instruction in matters of etiquette, [Illustration: _Chateau de Chambéry_] she flew down the stairs and into the street and finally into the arms of the duke." The marriage was not, however, a happy one. The duke became disloyal to his vows and left his wife to pine and moan away her days in the ducal chateau whilst he went off campaigning for other hearts and lands. He acquired Sicily, and became the first King of Sicily and Sardinia, and paved the way for the future greatness of his house, but this was not accomplished by adherence to the code of marital constancy. The Chateau de Chambéry was finally abandoned definitely by the Savoyan dukes, who, when they became also monarchs of Sardinia, took up their residence at Turin. The "_beaux jours_" had passed never to return. Henceforth its career was to be less brilliant, for it but rarely received even passing visits from its masters. In 1745 it was considerably damaged by fire; in 1775 it was, in a way, furbished up and put in order for the marriage of Charles Emmanuel and Madame Clotilde of France, but again, in 1798, it was ravaged by fire. From 1793 to 1810 the chateau was the headquarters of the officialdom of the newly formed Département du Mont Blanc, and in 1860 it was used as the Préfecture of the Département de la Savoie. Napoleon III, journeying this way in 1860, decided to make it an imperial residence and certain transformations to that end were undertaken, but it never came to real distinction again, save that it exists as an admirable example of a "monument historique" of the old régime. It was on the esplanade, beneath the windows of the chateau, that Amadée VI won the title of the Comte Vert, because of the preponderant colours of his arms and costume in a tournament which was held here in 1348. The third of Chambéry's classic sights, "Les Charmettes," is the "delicious habitation" rendered so celebrated by Rousseau. One arrives at "Les Charmettes" by a discreet and shady by-path. It has been preserved quite in its primitive state and is devoid of any pretence whatever. Its charm is idealistic, romantic and intimate. Nothing grandiose has place here. It is a simple two-story, sloping tiled-roof habitation of the countryside. As the "Confessions" puts it, "Les Charmettes" was discovered thus: "_Apres avoir un peu cherché nous nous fixâmes au Charmettes ... à la porte de Chambéry, mais retirée et solitaire, comme si l'on en était à cent lieus._" This dwelling where Jean Jacques passed so many of his "_rares bons jours_" of his [Illustration: Les Charmettes 75 · _McManus_ 1909] adventurous life has been bought by the city, and will henceforth be guarded as a public monument, a tourist shrine like the Chateau des Ducs and La Grande Chartreuse. Here Madame de Warens will reign again in the effigy of a reproduction of Quentin de la Tour's famous portrait, possessed of that "_air caressant et tendre_" and "_sourire angelique_" which so captured the author of the "Confessions." Arthur Young, that observant English agriculturalist, who travelled so extensively in France, paid a warm tribute to Rousseau's good fairy when he wrote: "There was something so amiable in her character that in spite of her frailties her name rests among those few memories connected with us by ties more easily felt than described." In one of his stories Alphonse Daudet tells us of a _bourgeois_ who had purchased an old chateau, and was driven away from it by the ghosts of the family which had preceded him as proprietors. Surely something of the same kind might have happened to that citizen of the United States who proposed to transport "Les Charmettes" to Chicago. The offer was declined and that is how the city of Chambéry came to possess it for all time. It is well that this took place, for there is hardly a house in Europe in which one would imagine that the ghosts of history would so persistently survive. Not only was "Les Charmettes" and Madame de Warens connected so intimately, but they were also associated with another name less known in the world of letters. Hear what the "Confessions" has to say: "He was a young man from Viaud; his father, named Vintzinried, was a self-styled captain of the Chateau de Chillon on Lac Leman. The son was a hair-dresser's assistant and was running about the world in that quality when he came to present himself to Madame de Warens, who received him well, as she did all travellers, and especially those from her own country. He was a big, dull blond, well-made enough, his face insipid, his intelligence the same, speaking like a beautiful Leander ... vain, stupid, ignorant, insolent." For the rest one is referred to the "Confessions." Within a radius of fifty kilometres of Chambéry there are more than thirty historic chateaux or fortresses of the middle ages and the Renaissance. Many are in an admirable, if not perfect, state of preservation, and all offer something of historic and artistic interest, though manifestly not all can be included in a rush across France. This fact is patent; that a picturesquely disposed and imposing castle or chateau adds much to the pleasing aspect of a landscape, and here in this land of mountain peaks and smiling valleys the prospect is as varied as one could hope to find. Built often on a mountain slope--and as often on a mountain peak--frequently within sight of one another, the dwellers therein would have been glad of some means of "wireless" communication between their houses, for not always were the seigneurs at war with their neighbours. Off to the southward, towards Saint Michel de Maurienne, is one of the most conspicuous of these hill-top chateaux. Chignin is still the proud relic of an ancient chateau which is a land-mark for miles around. It has no history worth recounting, but is as much like the conventional Rhine castle of reality and imagination as any to be seen away from the banks of that turgid stream. On a lofty eminence are four great towers to remind one of the more extensive structure to which they were once connected. These ruins, and another rebuilt tower of the old chateau of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, are now practically all devoted to the religious usages of the Chartreux, but in spite of this they present a militant aspect such as one usually associates with things secular. The round of Lac Bourget, which environs Chambéry on the north, suggests many historic souvenirs of the dukes and the days when they held their court at the Chateau de Chambéry. [Illustration: _Chateau de Chignin_] Between Chambéry and Aix-les-Bains, just beside that wide dusty road along which scorch the twentieth century _nouveau riche_, who with their villas and gigantic hotels have all but spoiled this idyllic corner of old Europe, rise the walls of the Chateau de Montagny, captured in 1814 by the allied armies marching against France, and which still conserves, embedded in its portal, a great shot, one of a broadside which finally battered in its door. If one would see war-like souvenirs still more barbarous, a cast of the eye off towards Montmélian and Miolans will awaken even more bloody ones. Their story is told elsewhere in these pages. At Bourget du Lac, a dozen kilometres out, are the ruins of the Chateau de Bourget, within sight of the ancient Lacus Castilion, and a near neighbour of the celebrated Abbey of Hautecombe. Comte Amé V was born in the Chateau de Bourget in 1249. It had previously belonged to the Seigneur de la Rochette, and during the thirteenth century was occupied continually by the princes of the house of Savoy. As may be judged by all who view, its site was most ravishing, and though one may not even imagine what its architectural display may actually have been it is known that Amé V bestowed much care and wealth upon it when he came to man's estate. A pupil of Giotto's was brought from Italy to superintend the decorations, and evidences have been found in the ruined tower at the right of the present heap of ruins which suggest some of the decorative splendour which the building one day possessed. In spite of its fragmentary condition the ruin of the Chateau de Bourget is one of the most romantically disposed souvenirs of its era in Savoy, and one may well echo the words of a local poet who has praised it with all sincerity. "_O lac, te souvient-il ... des beaux jours du vieux castel._" The chronicles, too, have much to say of the brilliant succession of seigneurs who came to visit the Comtes de Savoie here in their wildwood retreat, "a line of counts as noble, rich and powerful as sovereigns of kingdoms." The sepulchre of the Savoyan counts in the old Abbey of Hautecombe must naturally form a part of any pilgrimage to the neighbouring chateau. For no reason whatever can it be neglected by the visitor to these parts, the less so by the chateau-worshipper just because it is a religious foundation. It is in fact the mausoleum of the princes of the house of Savoy. Within its walls are buried various members [Illustration: _Abbey of Hautecombe_] of the dynasty who would have made of it the Valhalla of their time. "_Il est un coin de terre, au pied d'une montagne_ _Que baigne le lac du Bourget_ * * * * * _Hautecombe! port calme! O royal monastere!_ _Abri des fils de Saint Bernard._" At the extreme northerly end of the Lac du Bourget is the ancient Manoir de Châtillon, sitting high on an isolated and wooded hillside above the gently lapping waters, and in full view of the snow-capped mountains of the Alpine chain to the eastward. Here was born, towards the end of the twelfth century, Geoffroi de Châtillon, son of Jean de Châtillon and Cassandra Cribelli, sister of Pope Urban III. In every way the edifice is an ideally picturesque one, as much so because of its site and its historical foundation. As an architectural glory it is a mélange of many sorts, with scarce a definite æsthetic attribute. It is as an historical guide-post that it appears in its best light. Its chief deity, Geoffroi, became a canon and chancellor of the chapter at Milan; later he entered the religious retreat of Hautecombe, from which Gregory IX finally drew him forth to make him a cardinal-bishop. He ultimately succeeded to the pontifical robes and tiara himself as Celestin IV (1241). He died eighteen days later, poisoned, it is said, so his reign at the head of Christendom was perhaps the briefest on record. Bordeau, another ruined memory of mediævalism, also overlooks the Lac du Bourget from near-by. Aix-les-Bains is of course the lode-stone which draws the majority of travellers to this corner of the world. It is but a city of pleasure, a modern "Spa," the outgrowth of another of Roman times when they took "_cures_" more seriously. It has the reputation to-day, among those who are really in the whirl of things, as being the gayest, if not the most profligate--and there is some suspicion of that--watering place in Europe. Judging from prices alone, and admitting the disposition or willingness of those who would be gay to pay high prices without a murmur, this is probably so. The site of Aix-les-Bains is lovely, and its waters really beneficial--so the doctors say, and probably with truth. Its Casino is only second to that of Monte Carlo. The chief charm of Aix-les-Bains after all is, or ought to be, its accessibility to the historic masterpieces roundabout, and its delightful situation by the shores of the "_lac bleu_" whose praises were so loudly sung by Lamartine in "Raphael." North from Chambéry and east from Aix-les-Bains, is a mountain region known as Les Bauges, a little known and less exploited region. It is a charming isolated corner of Savoy, where once roamed the gorgeous equipages of the Ducs de Savoie, who here hunted the wild boar, the deer and the bears and foxes to their hearts' content. To-day pretty much all game of this nature has disappeared, save an occasional _sanglier_, or wild boar, which, when met with, usually turns tail and runs. Midway in this mountain land between Aix-les-Bains and Albertville is Le Chatelard, a tiny townlet on the banks of a mountain torrent, the Chéran. On a hill above the town, at a height of nearly three thousand feet above the sea level, are the insignificant remains of the chateau of Thomas de Savoie. Scant remains they are to be sure, endowed with a history as scant, since little written word is to be met with concerning them. Otherwise the chateau is a very satisfactory historical monument. After climbing a tortuous winding path one comes suddenly upon a great walled barrier through which opens a door on which is to be read: ON EST PRIE DE FERMER LES PORTES (J'exige). The last line is delicious. Of course one would close the doors after the mere intimation that it was desired that they should be closed. The proprietor says that he demands it, but he takes no measures to see that his demands are carried out. What pretence! All the same the pilgrimage is worth the making, but it's not an easy jaunt. CHAPTER XVII IN THE SHADOW OF LA GRANDE CHARTREUSE One may leave Rousseau's smiling valley above Chambéry and journey to Grenoble via La Grande Chartreuse, or by the valley of the Isère, as fancy dictates. In either case one should double back and cover the other route or much will otherwise be missed that will be regretted. Grenoble is militant from heel to toe. Its garrison is of vast numbers, soldiers of all ranks and all arms are everywhere, and every hill round-about bristles with a fortification or a battery of masked guns. Every foot of the region is historic ground, and whether one crosses from Savoy to Dauphiny or from Dauphiny to Savoy the borderland is at all times reminiscent of the historic past. The cradle of the Dauphin princes of France is not only a region of mountains and valleys, but it is a land where a numerous and warlike nobility was able to withstand invaders and oppressors to the last. Like Scotland, Dauphiny was never conquered; at least it lost no measure of its original independence by its alliances until it was cut up into the present-day departments of modern France. Dauphiny is possessed of multiple aspects. It has the sun-burnt character of Provence in the south, with Montelimar and Grignan as its chief centres; it has its _coteaux_ and _falaises_, like those of Normandy, around Crest and Die; and its "Petite Hollande" neighbouring upon Tour-de-Pin where the Dauphins once had a gem of a little rest-house which still exists to-day. The mountains of Dauphiny rival the Alps of Switzerland--the famous Barre des Écrins is only a shade less dominant than Mont Blanc itself. The chief singer of the praises of Dauphiny has ever been Lamartine. No one has pictured its varied aspects better. "L'oeil embrasse au matin l'horizon qu'il domine Et regarde, à travers les branches de noyer, Les eaux bleuir au loin et la plaine ondoyer. * * * * * On voit à mille pieds au dessous de leurs branches La grande plaine bleue avec ses routes blanches Les moissons jaunes d'or, les bois comme un point noir, L'Isère renvoyant le ciel comme un miroir." [Illustration: _Maison des Dauphins, Tour-de-Pin_] The very topographical aspect of Dauphiny has bespoken romance and chivalry at all times. The mass of La Grande Chartreuse was dedicated to religious devotion, but those of other mountain chains, and the plains and valleys lying between, were strewn with castle towers and donjons almost to the total exclusion of church spires. Coming south from Chambéry by the valley of the Graisivaudan, by the side of the rushing waters of the Isère hurrying on its way to join the greater Rhône at Valence, the point of view is manifestly one which suggests feudalism in all its militant glory, rather than the recognition of the fact that it is overshadowed by the height of La Grande Chartreuse, whose influences were wholly dissimilar. It was the valley of Graisivaudan that Louis XII rather impulsively called the most beautiful garden of France: "_charmé par la divinité de ses plantements et les tours en serpentant qu'y fait la rivière Isère_." Stendhal, too, compared it to the finest valleys of Piedmont. One may differ, but it is a very beautiful prospect indeed which opens out from Barraux or Pontcharra, midway between Grenoble and Chambéry. Near Pontcharra is the Chateau Bayard, where was born and lived the famous "_Chevalier, sans peur et sans reproche_." As an historic monument of rank its position is pre-eminent, though not much can be said of its architectural pretence. Still here it is, on the route from Grenoble to Gap by the famous Col. Bayard, also celebrated in history, almost as much so as the famous Breche de Roland in the Pyrenees. It was through this cleft in the mountain that Napoleon marched on that eventful journey from Golfe Jouan to Paris in the attempt to rise again to power. It was not far from the crest, the pass between the two principal valleys of the French Alps, that Napoleon made the first important additions to the few followers who had gathered around him on his doubtful journey. The troops sent out from Grenoble opposed his progress, whereupon he advanced towards them, bareheaded and alone, and demanded to know if they, his former fellows in arms, would kill their leader. Not one of them would fire, though the order was actually given. With one common inspiration they went over to him _en masse_, with the classic cry of "_Vive l'Empereur!_" and continued their way towards the capital, where, just before Grenoble, they were also joined by the forces of Labedoyère, with their colonel at their head, sent out to stop them. On the shores of the Grand Lac de Laffrey, as the marvellous mountain road swings by on its _corniche_, one notes a marble tablet on which is carven the following words, which are quite worth copying down. No further explanatory inscription is to be seen, simply the words: "_Soldats! Je suis votre Empereur. Ne me reconnaissez vous pas! S'il en est un parmi vous qui veuille tuer son general, me voila!_" (7 Mars 1815.) In spite of the significance of the words the driver of a cart going the same way as ourselves professed an utter ignorance of their meaning. Passing strange, this, but true! Is it for this that history is written? The ruins of the Chateau de Bayard sit imposingly on a height commanding a wide-spread panorama of the valley below, and the distant barrier of mountain peaks on every side. The walls and turrets are mouldering to-day, as they have been for generations, but local historians and antiquarians have on more than one occasion written of the rooms and gardens where strolled and played the youthful warrior, and acquired the principles which afterwards led to so great a fame. Of the ancient chateau of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, where (1476-1524) was born the Chevalier Bayard, but a crumbling portal and tower remain sufficiently well preserved to suggest the dignity it once had. They attach themselves to two minor structures, one of which was probably the chapel, and the other, perhaps, the Salle des Gardes. Within the walls which enclose the latter are also the apartments which were occupied by the warrior-knight in his youth, doubtless the same as that in which his mother, Helene Alleman, gave him birth. The guardian claims all this, and, since this is what you come to see, you accept the assertion gratefully, though history itself vouches for nothing so precise. A bridge which crosses the river Breda at this point has on its parapet an equestrian statue representing the infant Bayard. The "bon chevalier" was descended from a local lord who bore the name of Bayart, but some careless chronicler changed the final consonant of Aymon Terrail's title (Seigneur de Bayart), and the name of his better known progeny has thus gone to history. The family was of antique extraction; "of a noble and antique chivalry," as one learns from the old historians of Dauphiny. "The prowess of a Terrail" has passed into a local proverb. So the infant Terrail who was to become the future Bayard came to his glorious calling by good right. At the age of six or seven the young Terrail went to live with his uncle, Bishop of Grenoble, but at twelve returned to the paternal chateau, where his inclinations became the "_plus belliqueuses_," whereas, before, his infant predilections were of a studious kind. Henceforth he was for war, and he came rightly enough by his liking, for one of his ancestors, Philippe Terrail, died gloriously at Poitiers, another at Crécy, another at Verneuil and another, already known as "Épée Terrail" to the English, died at the side of Louis XI. Young Pierre was asked by his father (1487) what profession he would adopt, and it was then that he replied that the war spirit was bred in him and that he would never renounce it. His uncle, the bishop, presented him to the Duc Charles de Savoie, who was holding court at the moment at Chambéry, and by his mere riding up on his horse before the duke, he was immediately accepted as a page of his suite. Opposite Pontcharra, on the opposite bank of the Isère, is the comparatively modern Fort Barraux, which looks far more ideally picturesque than the historic castle of the Bayards. History has not been silent with regard to the fortifying of these mountain peaks of Dauphiny and Savoy. The fortress was first built on this site by Charles Emmanuel, Duc de Savoie, though an opposing army was drawn up before him under the command of the celebrated Connetable Lesdiguières. Being reproved by his king, Henri IV, for his dilatoriness in allowing the enemy to so entrench itself whilst he and his men stood idly by, the Connetable sagaciously and brilliantly replied, "Your Majesty has need of a fortress on the Savoyan side to hold in check that of Montmélian, and since Charles Emmanuel has been good enough to commence the building of one, let us wait until it is finished." The wait was not long, and the completed fortress, after a very slight struggle, came to the French king. The remarkable feudal Chateau de Rochefort-en-Montagne, above Pontcharra, is a ruin scarcely equalled, as a ruin, by any other above ground to-day. It has a majestic sadness and appeal, crumbled and dishonoured though it is. To paint the picture one must hold the brush himself. Little satisfaction can be got from the contemplation of another's sketch of this noble ruin. Grand and imposing it is, however, though but a mere echo of the splendid edifices of the Renaissance in the Loire valley, and yet its firm, flat ground plan, its massive portal and its massive round tower are all reminiscent of the best of the Renaissance castle builder's art. The point should be recognized nevertheless that it is of the mountain and not of the plain. This will account for many of its vagaries of detail as compared with the more familiar chateaux of the Loire. The surroundings are varied and beautiful, and the grim gaunt drabness of the proud old walls give at once a note of melancholy memory which sounds perhaps the stronger because this fine old feudal monument is but a shell as compared contrastingly with the better preserved examples of its era to be seen in mid-France. The property belongs to-day to the Rochefort-Lucay family, of which Henri Rochefort, the publicist, is best known. It is not, however, habitable in any sense, but it could be made so with a more reasonable expenditure than one usually puts into a great country house, so let us hope that its fortunes will some day come into their own again. Just below Grenoble are Sassenage and Saint Donat, quite unknown and unworshipped. They deserve a better fame. Sassenage, but six kilometres from Grenoble, is what the French call "_propre, riant_" and "_aise_." It is all this, as a round of a fortnight's excursions in different directions, in and out of Grenoble, proved to us. There is nothing else quite in its class, and its chateau is a wonderfully chiselled sermon in stone, as its portal and façade demonstrate readily enough to the most casual observer. A most curious emblem is here to be noted. It is worthy of being added to those carved porcupines and salamanders of Louis XII and François Premier. In this case it is a mythological, or traditional, figure, half woman and half snake, and possessed of two tails. It is a most unpleasant architectural decoration and perpetuates the mythical character of a local legend. One is glad to know that it is not an emblem personal to the family of the present owner. Some kilometres to the south is the Tour Sans Venin, one of the ancient wonders of Dauphiny, though it is little more than a single flank of wall to-day. The natives, skeptical when they first heard the tale of Roland the Paladin, built the edifice of which this wall formed a part, and built it of wonderful stone, [Illustration] or earth, warranted to chase away reptiles and vermin. Imagination, no doubt, played its part, but one can readily enough accept the properties as desirable ones for a building material to possess. Saint Donat, still further down the valley, has hardly a memory for one save that he remembers having heard of it in connection with the rather merry life of Diane de Poitiers. To-day it is nothing but a no-account little Dauphinese village. It is not even a railway junction. It has however an old mill built up out of an old _rendez-vous de chasse_ where the fickle Diane had more than one escapade. Like many another old ruin of Dauphiny the Chateau de Saint Donat is reminiscent of the local manner of building. It is nothing luxurious, but massive, and, withal, a seemingly efficient stronghold for the time in which it was built, or would have been had it ever been called upon to serve its purpose to the full. It seems a fatal destiny that a chateau should be no longer a chateau, for here in Dauphiny no inconsiderable number of mediæval dwellings of this class have been turned into factories of one sort or another. Here in the _salles_ and _chambres_, as the apartments are still named on the spot, are machines and workmen spinning silk and weaving ribbons for the great Paris department stores. The Chambre de Diane, however, is still preserved as a show-place in much the same manner in which it was originally conceived. It is a circular apartment, rather daringly attached to the main building. A sort of alcove, or addition, is built out into the open still further, and one only reaches it by three steps up from the floor. Three secret doors separate the sleeping apartment itself from the connecting corridor. If there is anything of the sentiment of the enchanting huntress Diane hanging about the apartment to-day one quite forgets it by reason of its being drowned out by the noise of the whirring mill-wheels below. The twentieth century is far from the time when romance dwelt in purling brooks or stalked through marble halls. "Other days, other ways" is a trite saying which applies as well to chateaux as other things. To-day, in Dauphiny in particular, a purling brook or a mountain torrent is more valued for its "_force motrice_" than for any other virtues, and a chateau that can be readily transformed into a silk-mill is a better business proposition than would be its value as a ruin. This is the practical, if sad, point of view. There are no coal mines in Dauphiny, but the _houille blanche_, as the French call water-power, is a product highly valued. Sentiment and romance are apt to be little valued in comparison. CHAPTER XVIII ANNECY AND LAC LEMAN The immediate environs of the Lac du Bourget, the Lac d'Annecy and the French shores of Lac Leman,--more popularly known to the world of tourism as the Lake of Geneva--offer a succession of picturesque sights and scenes, presented always with a historic accompaniment that few who have come within the spell of their charms will ever forget. It is not that these Savoyan lakes are more beautiful than any others; it is not that they are grander; nor is it that they are particularly "unspoiled," considering them from a certain point of view, for in the season they are very much visited by the French themselves and loved accordingly. The charm which makes them so attractive lies in the blend of the historic past with the modernity of the twentieth century. The mélange is less offensive here than in most other places, and their contrasting of the old and the new, the historic and the romantic, with the modern ways and means of travel and accessibility, gives this mountain lakeland an unusual appeal. On almost every side are the modern appointments of great hotels; there are "good roads" everywhere for the automobilist, and the main lines of railway crossing France to Italy give an accessibility and comfortable manner of approach which is not excelled by the region of the Swiss and Italian lakes themselves. Annecy, the metropolis of these parts, has an old chateau that is much better conserved than that of Chambéry so far as the presentation of it as a whole is concerned. It is more nearly a perfect unit, and less of a conglomerate restoration than the former. The Chateau d'Annecy was the ancient residence of the Comtes de Genevois, but in 1401 the seigniory passed to the house of Savoy. Robert de Geneve, known to ecclesiastical history as Pope Clement VII, the first of the Avignon Popes, was born here in 1342. The military history of the Chateau d'Annecy is intimately bound up with that of the town because of the fact that as a matter of protection the first settlement grouped itself confidingly around the walls which sheltered the seigneurial presence. Populace and the guardians of the chateau together were thus enabled to throw off the troops which turned back on Annecy after the defeat at Conflans in 1537, but no resistance whatever was made to Henri IV and his followers, who entered without a blow being dealt, and "found the inhabitants agreeable and warm of welcome." This was perhaps a matter of mood; it might not have so happened the day before or the day after, but their cordiality was certainly to the credit of all concerned from a humane point of view, whatever devotees of the war-game may think. In 1630 Comte Louis de Sales commanded the chateau when the Maréchal de Chatillon marched against it. The besieged made a stiff fight and only capitulated after being able to make such terms as practically turned defeat into victory. On the morrow the Comte de Sales escorted his troops to the Chateau de Conflans, "with all the honours of war." After a brilliant career of centuries the ancient residence of the Comtes de Genevois, and the Princes de Savoie-Nemours who came after, has become a barracks for a battalion of Chasseurs Alpins. Fortunately for the æsthetic proprieties, it has lost nothing of its seigneurial aspect of old as have so many of its contemporaries when put to a similar use. Really, Annecy's chateau, its well lined walls, its ramparts and towers, and above all, its situation, close to the water's edge, where the ensemble of its fabric mingles so well with artistically disposed foreground, has an appeal possessed by but few structures of its class. If one would see the town and lake of Annecy at their best they should be viewed of a September afternoon, when the oblique rays of the autumn sun first begin to gild the heavy square towers of the ancient chateau of the Ducs de Nemours. Behind rise the roofs and spires of the town set off with the reddish golden leaves of the chestnuts of La Puya. All is a blend of the warm colouring of the southland with the sterner, more angular outlines of the north. The contrasting effect is to be remarked. To the left, regarding the town from the water's edge, or better yet from a boat upon the lake, rises the Villa de la Tour, where died Eugene Sue; and farther away the Grange du Hameau de Chavoires, where lingered for a time Jean Jacques Rousseau. All around, through the chestnut woods, are scattered glistening _villas_ and _manoirs_ and _granges_, with, away off in the distance, the towering walls of the feudal Chateau de Saint Bernard. Another marvellous silhouette to be had from the bosom of the lake is midway along the western shore, where the ramparts of Tournette and the crenelated walls of the Dents du Lanfont and Charbonne are, after midday, lighted up as with yellow fire. The brown and yellow roof and façade of an old Benedictine convent, now become a hotel, rise above the verdure of the foreshore, and the whole is as tranquil as if the twentieth century were yet to be born. On the opposite shore of the lake is the Chateau de Duingt, with its white towers piercing the sky in quite the idyllic manner. The Chateau de Duingt is a pretentious country residence belonging to the Genevois family which in the seventeenth century gave a bishop to the neighbourhood, a bishop, it is true, who was excommunicated and shorn of all his rights by the Comte de Savoie, Amadée V, but a bishop nevertheless. The environs of the Lac d'Annecy have ever been a retreat for litterateurs and artist folk. Ernest Renan lodged here in the _hôtellerie_ of the famous Abbey, where he occupied a _chambre de prieur_. José-Maria Héredia came here in company with Taine; Ferdinand Fabre passed many months here in an isolated little house on the very shores of the lake; Albert Besnard, the painter, has recently built a studio here, and a quaint and altogether charming villa; Paul Chabas, too, has resorted hither recently for the same purpose, and indeed scores have found out this accessible but tranquil little corner of Savoy. Another Parisian, a Monsieur Noblemaire, has acquired the picturesque Savoyard Manoir de Thoron, built sometime during the seventeenth century, and lives indeed the life of a noble under the old régime amid the very same luxuriant and agreeable surroundings. Faverges, at the lower end of the Lac d'Annecy, backed up by the sombre Forêt de Doussard, and in plain view of the snowy top of Mont Blanc off to the eastward, is at once a _ville industrielle_ and a reminiscent old feudal town. Its interest is the more entrancing because of the contrasting elements which go to make up its architectural aspect and the life of its present day inhabitants. A mediæval chateau elbows a modern silk factory, and the idle gossip of the workers as they take their little walks abroad on the little _Place_ blends strangely enough with the amorous escapades of Henri IV which still live in local legend. On the road from Faverges to Thone, by the switch-back mountain road, following the valley of the Fier, is the Manoir de la Tour, where on a fine mid-summer morning in 1730 Jean Jacques Rousseau climbed a cherry tree and bombarded the coquettish Mademoiselle Graffeny and Mademoiselle Galley with the rich, ripe--not overripe--fruit. We know this because Jean Jacques himself said so, and for that reason this little human note makes a pilgrimage hither the pleasurable occupation that it is. The fine old manor is still intact. But the cherry tree? No one knows. May be it was a mythical cherry tree like that of the George Washington legend. In spite of this the guardian will show visitors many cherry trees, and one may take his choice. Lac Leman is commonly thought a Swiss lake, as is Mont Blanc usually referred to as a Swiss mountain--which it isn't. A good third of the shore line of Lac Leman is French--"_Leman Français_," it is called. Practically the whole southern, or French, shore of the Lake of Geneva--or Lake Leman, as we had best think of it since it is thus known to European geographers--is replete with a fascinating appeal which the Swiss shore entirely lacks. It is difficult to explain this, but it is a fact. The region literally bristles with old castle walls and donjons, though their histories have not in every instance been preserved, nor have they always been so momentous as to have impressed themselves vividly in the minds of the general reader or the conventional traveller. Perhaps they are all the more charming for that. The writer thinks they are. Mont Blanc dominates the entire region on the east, and may be considered the good genius of Savoy and Upper Dauphiny, as it is of French-speaking Switzerland and the high Alpine valleys of Italy. The French shore of Lac Leman, the Département of Haute-Savoie, is cut off from Geneva by the neutral Pays de Gex, and from Switzerland on the east by the torrent of the Morge, just beyond Saint Gingolph. For fifty-two kilometres stretches this French shore, or the "Côte de la Savoie" as the Swiss call it, and its whole extent is as romantic and fair a land as it is possible to conceive. One may come from Geneva by boat; that indeed is the ideal way to make one's entrance to Haute Savoie, unless one rolls in over the superb roads comfortably ensconced on the soft cushions of a luxurious automobile, a procedure which is commonly thought to be unromantic, but which, it is the belief of the writer, is the only way of knowing well the highways and byways of a beloved land, always excepting, of course, the ideal method of walking. Not many will undertake the latter, least of all the stranger tourist, who, perforce, is hurried on his way by insistent conditions over which he really has but little control. Walking tours have been made with pleasure and profit in Switzerland before now; the suggestion is made that the thing be attempted on the "Côte de la Savoie" sometime and see what happens. One should leave the Geneva boat at Hermance, the last Swiss station on the west. After that, one is on French soil. Touges is a simple landing place, but rising high above the greenswarded banks are the donjon and imposing gables of the Chateau de Beauregard belonging to the Marquis Leon Costa. It is in a perfect state of conservation. It was here that was born, in 1752, Marquis Joseph Costa, a celebrated historian, whose fame rests principally on a work entitled "Comment l'Education des Femmes Peut-elle Rendre les Hommes Meilleurs?" This is considered an all-absorbing question even to-day. At Nernier is a charming souvenir of Lamartine. It was here he lodged in 1815, in a humble thatched cottage--one of the few in France, one fancies, as they are seldom seen--at a franc a day, "_la table et le couvert compris_." There are some artists and literary folk living cheaply in France to-day, but the _pension_ is not nearly as _bon marché_ as that. A little farther on, beyond the green hillside of Boisy, is the tiny Savoyan city of Yvoire, with a great square mass of an old chateau, now moss-grown and more or less crumbled with age. Near-by are Excevenex, Sciez and the magnificently environed Chateau de Coudrée, surrounded by a leafy park, a veritable royal domain in aspect. Back a few kilometres from the shore of the lake is Douvaine, about midway between Geneva and Thonon. Here is the ancient Chateau de Troches, on the very limits of the Comté de Genevois, to the seigneurs of which house it formerly belonged. It served many times as the meeting place of the Princes of Savoy, and has been frequently cited in the historical chronicles. In 1682 Victor Amadée II made Troches and Douvaine a barony in favour of François Marie Antoine Passerat, whose family were originally of Lucca in Italy. The descendants of the same family have held the property until very recent times, perhaps hold it to-day. Throughout this region of the Chablais, as it is known, on towards Thonon, and beyond, are numerous well preserved chateaux (_chateaux debout_ the French appropriately call them in distinction to the ruined chateaux which abound in even greater numbers), and others, here and there arising a crumbled wall or tower above the dense foliage of the hillsides round about. Certain of these old manors and chateaux of the Genevois, the Chablais and Faucigny have, in recent years, after centuries of comparative ruin, taken on new life as country houses and "villas" of commoners--as sad a fall for a proud chateau as to become a barracks or a poorhouse if the transformations have not been undertaken in good taste. Still others remain at least as undefiled memories of the _chateaux orgueilleux_ of other days. A remodelled, restored chateau of the middle ages may be sympathetic and appealing, but the work must be well done and all _art nouveau_ instincts suppressed. There are other examples which have been allowed to tumble to actual ruin, mere heaps of stones without form or outline, and others, like Allinges, La Rochette, De la Roche and Faucigny, possessing only a crumbling tower perched upon a height which dominates the valley and the plain below and tell only the story of their former greatness by suggestion. Chiefly however these can be classed as nothing more pretentious than ruins. Thonon-les-Bains, midway along the extent of the French shore, is renowned as a "_ville d'eau_." In all ways it quite rivals many of the Swiss stations on the opposite shore. It sits high on a sheaf of rock, the first buttresses of the Alps, and enjoys a wide-spread view extending to the other shore, and beyond to the Swiss Jura and the Bernese Oberland. A dainty esplanade shaded with lindens is the chief thoroughfare and centre of life of this attractive little lakeside resort. Here once stood an old chateau of the Ducs de Savoie. The court frequently repaired thither because of the purity of the air and the altogether delightful surroundings. It was one of the later line of dukes who exploited the mineral springs which have given Thonon its latter-day renown. Back of Thonon rises a curiously disposed table-land known as the Colline des Allinges. It alternates bare rock with a heather-like vegetation in a colouring as wonderful as any artist's palette could conceive. The ruins of two fortress-chateaux crown the height of the plateau, one coming down from a period of great antiquity, whilst the other is of more recent date, with a well preserved portal and a drawbridge. Within the precincts of this latter are still to be seen the ruins of a chapel rich in memories of Saint François-de-Sales, who spent a considerable part of his apostleship here in the Chablais. To-day, the old chateau and its chapel are a place of pious pilgrimage, but with the piety left out it is the chief and most popular excursion for mere sight-seers coming out from Thonon. This mere fact does not, however, detract from its historic, religious and romantic significance, so let no one omit it for that reason. The Chateau de Ripaille, beyond Thonon towards Évian, is a grander shrine by far. It was the retreat of a Duc de Savoie who was finally withdrawn from his hiding place that he might be crowned with the papal tiara. The incident is historically authenticated, and the very substantial remains of the old chateau to-day--monumental even--make it one of the most interesting shrines of its class in all France. The Chateau de Ripaille was originally built by Amadée VIII as a _rendez-vous de chasse_. "Near the Couvent des Augustins he built himself a chateau of seven rooms and seven towers, after the death of his wife, Marie de Bourgogne, in 1434," say the chronicles. Here Amadée shut himself up with six fellowmen, either widowers or celibates, who formed his sole counsellors and society. The Council of Bale of 1439 sent the Cardinal d'Arles and twenty-five prelates to offer the self-deposed monarch the papal crown. The attractions of the position, or the inducements offered, were seemingly too great to be resisted, and, as Felix V, he was made Pontiff in the Église de Ripaille in the same year. Soon the cramped quarters of the chateau and all the town were filled with a splendid pageant of ambassadors, prelates and dignitaries. All were anxious to salute in person the new head of the Church. France, England, Castile, the Swiss Cantons, Austria, Bohemia, Savoy and Piedmont recognized the new Pope, but the rest of Christendom remained faithful to Eugene IV. Ripaille and Thonon received such an influx of celebrities as it had never known before, nor since. The towered and buttressed walls remain in evidence to-day, but within all is hollow as a sepulchre. The great portal by which one passed from the chapel to the dwelling is monumental from every point of view. What it lacks in architectural excellence it makes up in its imposing proportions, and moreover possesses an individual note which is rare in modern works of a similar nature. The chief centre after Thonon, going east, is Évian, with which most travellers in France are familiar only as a name on the label on the bottle of the most excellent mineral water on sale in the hotels and restaurants. The "Eau d'Évian" is about the only table water universally sold in Europe that isn't "fizzy," and is accordingly popular--and expensive. Évian, sitting snug under the flank of Mont Bénant, a four thousand foot peak, its shore front dotted with little latteen-rigged, swallow-sailed boats is the "Biarritz de Lac Leman," but a Biarritz framed with a luxuriant vegetation, whereas its Basque prototype is, in this respect, its antithesis. Twenty thousand visitors come to Évian "for the waters" each year now, but in 1840, when the delightful Tapffer wrote his "Voyages en Zig Zag," it was difficult for his joyous band of students to find the change for a hundred franc note. Aside from its fame as a watering-place Évian has no little architectural charm. The waters of Évian and their medicinal properties were discovered by a local hermit of the fifteenth century who loved the daughter of the neighbouring Baron de la Rochette. This daughter, Beatrix, also loved the hermit, all in quite conventional fashion, as real love affairs go, but the obscure origin of the young man was no passport to the good graces of the young lady's noble father, who had fallen ill with the gout or some other malady of high living and was more irascible than stern parents usually are. So acute was the old man's malady that he caused it to be heralded afar that he would give his daughter in marriage to him who would effect a cure. This was a new phase of the marriage market up to that time, but the hermit, Arnold, at a venture, suggested to the baron that he had but to bathe in the alkaline waters of Évian to be cured of all his real or imaginary ills. The miraculous, or curative, properties of the waters, or whatever it was, did their work, and the lovers were united, and the smiling little city of Évian on the shores of Lac Leman has progressed and prospered ever since. The origin of Évian is lost in the darkness of time, though its nomenclature is supposed to have descended from the ancient _patois_ Evoua (water), which the Romans, who came long before the present crop of flighty tourists, translated as Aquianum. From this one gathers that Évian is historic. And it is, as much so as most cities who claim, an antique ancestry. From the thirteenth century Évian possessed its chateau-fort, surrounded by its sturdy bulwarks and a moat. Some vestiges still remain of this first fortification, but the wars between the Dauphin of the Viennois and the Comtes de Genevois necessitated still stronger ones, which were built under Amadée V and Amadée VI. Within the confines of the town are three distinctly defined structures which may be classed as mediæval chateaux: the Chateau de Blonay, the Tour de Fonbonne, and the Manoir Gribaldi, belonging to the Archbishops of Vienne. This last has been stuccoed and whitewashed in outrageous fashion, so that unless the rigours of a hard winter have softened its violent colouring, it is to-day as crude and unlovely as a stage setting seen in broad daylight. It has moreover been incorporated into the great palatial hotel which, next to the more splendid Hotel Splendid on the height, is the chief land-mark seen from afar. _Sic transit!_ Évian's parish church, capped with an enormous tower, is most curious. A great Place, or Square, has been formed out of the ancient lands of the Seigneurie of Blonay, which belonged to Baron Louis de Blonay, Vice-Roi de Sardaigne. The seigneurial residence itself has been transformed, basely enough, one thinks, into a casino and theatre, with an _art nouveau_ façade. Not often does such a debasement of a historic shrine take place in France to-day. Sometimes a fine old Gothic or Renaissance house will disappear altogether, and sometimes a chateau, a donjon or even a church may be turned to unlikely public uses, such as a hospital, a prison or a barracks. This is bad enough, but for an historic monument to be turned into a music hall and a gambling room seems the basest of desecration. That's a great deal against Évian, but it must stand. Another property once belonging to the same proprietor, and known as the Manoir de Blonay, a name continually recurring in the annals of the Chablais, is to be noted beyond the town, near the little village of Maxilly. Beyond Évian is "La Tour Ronde," a name given to a structure on the edge of the lake. The nomenclature explains itself. A dismantled donjon of the conventional build rises grim and militant among a serried row of coquettish villas, chalets and hotels, but uncouth as it is, using the word in a liberal sense, it forms a contrasting note which redounds to its benefit as compared with the latest craze for fantastic building which has been incorporated into many of the houses which line the shores of the lake. Your modern tourist often cares as much for an armoured cement, green tiled villa with a plaster cat on its ridge pole as he does for a great square manoir of classic outline, or a donjon with a _chemin de rond_ at its sky line and a half-lowered portcullis at its entrance. Meillerie, just beyond the Tour Ronde, is ever under the glamour cast over it by Jean Jacques Rousseau. A souvenir of the hero of "La Nouvelle Heloise" is here, the vestiges of the grotto where Saint Preux sought a refuge. As a sight it may compare favourably with other grottos of its class, but that is not saying that it is anything remarkable. CHAPTER XIX THE MOUNTAIN BACKGROUND OF SAVOY "La Savoie," say the French, is "La Suisse Française," and indeed it is, as anyone can see and appreciate. With respect to topography, climate and nearly all else this is true. And its historic souvenirs, if sometimes less romantic, are more definite and far more interesting, in spite of the fact that the sentimentally inclined have not as yet overrun the region; it may with confidence be said that they have not even discovered it. The amalgamation of Savoy with France was fortunate for all concerned. As President Carnot said, when on a speech-making tour through the region in 1892: "Can any of us without emotion recall those memorable days when the Convention received the people of this province with the welcome: 'Generous Savoyards! In you we cherish friends and brothers; never more shall you be separated from us.'" Savoy was ever more French in spirit than Italian in spite of its variable alliances. Leaving the resorts like Aix-les-Bains, Annecy and Évian behind, and following the turbulent Isère to its icy cradle beneath the haunches of Mont Saint Bernard, one may literally leave the well-worn travel track behind, the railway itself striking off Italy-wards via a gap in the mountain chain to the southeast, where it ultimately burrows through the massif of the chain of which Mont Cenis forms the most notable peak. [Illustration] Just at the confines of Dauphiny and Savoy the Isère sweeps majestically around the forefoot of the fortress of Montmélian, which guards the mountain gateway to the snowbound upper valleys. Montmélian can be seen from a great distance; from a great distance even one may imagine that he hears the echoes of the cries of the victims of the cruel Seigneurs de Montmélian who once lived within its walls. Their barbarous acts were many, and historic facts, not merely legendary tales, perpetuate them. It is the knowledge that such things once existed that makes the suggestion of course, but these are the emotions one usually likes to have nourished when viewing a mediæval castle. [Illustration] Montmélian's chateau-fort played a very important role in the history of Savoy. It was one of the finest fortresses of the States of Savoy, and was the chief point of attack of François Premier, who, in 1535, succeeded finally in taking it, but by treason from within. The French from the moment of their occupation gave it a heavy garrison, and Henri II still further strengthened its massive walls, as did also Henri IV later on. He called it "a marvellously strong place; a stronger one has never yet been seen." In Montmélian's proud fortress-chateau, also, were born Amadée III and Amadée IV, Princes of Savoy. Once it was considered, and with reason apparently, the strongest fortress of Savoy, and was for ages the wall against which the Viennois Dauphins battled vainly. Treason opened its doors to François Premier and treason delivered it to Henri IV. This last giving over of the chateau was brought about by the wife of Sully, who by "sweet insinuations" got into the good graces of the wife of Brandes, the governor, and between them planned to win him over. In 1690 it was again attacked and taken by the French, costing them the bagatelle of eight thousand men, for lives were cheap in those days compared to castles. It was a hollow victory, too, for the French, for they marched out again after the Peace of Ryswick. In the early years of the eighteenth century the French again came into possession and immediately began the work of demolishing the defensive walls, leaving only the residential chateau, that which in its emasculated form exists to-day. Thus disappeared from the scene, said the celebrated historian, Leon Menabrea, a fortress to whose annals are attached the names most grand and the events most important in Savoyan history. The Montmayeurs, the feudal family which first made Montmélian its stronghold, have left a vivid and imperishable memory in the annals of Savoy. They were a warlike race to begin with, and bore the eagle and the motto UNGUIBUS ET ROSTRO in their family arms. Legend recounts that the last of the seigneurs, having lost a case at law, invited the president of the court, one Fésigny, to dinner. Either before, or after, he cut off the judge's head, enclosed it in a sack bearing a label which read: "Here is a new piece of evidence for the court to digest," and deposited it on the public highway circling below the rocky foundations of Montmélian. This episode took place in 1465, and the ignoble seigneur naturally fled the country immediately. His reputation has ever lived after him in the region where the historic fact, or legend, of the "Dernier des Montmayeurs" is still current. Near the rock-cradled chateau of Montmélian is La Rochette; there one sees the vast remains of a chateau which was overthrown by Louis XIII. This chateau, called also the Chateau des Hulls, occupies one of the most strikingly imposing sites imaginable, and only in a lesser degree than Montmélian presents all the qualities which one would naturally suppose to be necessary in order to make such a work impregnable. It was heroically defended by Pierre de la Chambre, but the defence availed nothing, and now what is left has been built up into--of all things--a silk-mill. Its outlines might well be that of a mediæval chateau even now; site and silhouette each have this stamp, and it will take little exercise of the imagination to picture the smoke from its chimneys as coming from the fires which may have been lighted at some epoch before the invention of the steam engine. There is nothing, from a distant point of view, to suggest that the old Chateau des Hulls is the murky, work-a-day hive of industry that it is. Above Montmélian is Saint Pierre d'Albigny, where rises the ancient and formidable chateau of the Sires de Miolans. In the eighteenth century it was a prison of state incarcerating many famous personages, among them the celebrated Marquis de Sade, the story of whose escape would make as thrilling a chapter as was ever read in a romance of the cloak and sword variety. Another famous, or infamous, prisoner was the unfortunate Lavin, the minister of finance of Charles-Emmanuel III, who was imprisoned because of his fine, but unappreciated, talent for copying bank-notes. For twenty-four years Lavin languished in the dungeons of Miolans; indeed it was within these walls that he passed the greater part of his life after becoming of age. For this reason Miolans may be called the Bastille of Savoy. Miolans is typical of the middle ages. It can be seen, it is said, fifty kilometres away, either up or down the Isère. This one can well believe. It can only be compared to a castled burg of the Rhine or Meuse: it is like nothing else in modern France. The great moats surround it as of old, its drawbridge, its _chemin-de-ronde_, its _cachets_, dungeons and _oubliettes_ are quite undespoiled, and its chapel as bright and inspiring as if its functions served to-day as in the time of the seigneurs of the joint house of Miolans and Montmayeur, a family one of the most ancient in Savoy, but which became extinct in 1523. The Sardinian government in 1856--when Savoy belonged still to the Crown of Sardinia--sold the edifice for the paltry sum of five thousand francs, scarcely more than the price of a first rate piano. The buyer preserved and made habitable, in a way, the mediæval fabric, but not without considerably lessening its genuine old-time flavour. This is not apparent from afar, and only to the expert near at hand, so the castle lives to-day as one of the most thrillingly romantic piles of its class in all the mountain background of Savoy. To-day the castle, for it is more a feudal castle than a modern chateau after all, is still in private hands, but no incongruous details have been further incorporated and the chatelain as lovingly cares for it as does that of Langeais in Touraine, perhaps the best restored, and the best kept, of all the habitable mediæval castles in the pleasant land of France. In the time of the Savoyan dukes each of these upper valleys was deprived of communication with its neighbours, because of either the utter lack of roads, or of their abominable up-keep. A sort of petty state or kingdom grew up in many of these shut-in localities, each possessing its individual life, and, above all, ecclesiastical independence. The sovereigns of each had their own particular lands and ruled with velvet glove or iron hand as the mood might strike them or the case might demand. Still higher up above Montmélian, which may properly be considered the barrier between the lower and the upper valleys of the Tarentaise and the Maurienne, are scores of these chateaux, as appealing, and with reason, as many more noble in outline and record elsewhere. At Grésy is one of these; at Bathie is a fine feudal ruin with a round and square tower of most imposing presence; Blay has another, with a wall surmounted by a range of tripled tourelles; Feisons has yet another, and a castle wall or an isolated tower is ever in view whichever way one turns the head. The roadway through Albertville and Moutiers leads into Italy over the Petit Saint Bernard; that by the valley of the Maurienne over the Mont Cenis. Here, just as Lans-le-Bourg is reached, you may still see the signboards along the road reading: "Route Impériale No. 16: Frontière Sarde à 10 kilom." It would seem as though Lans-le-Bourg had not yet heard that the Empire had fallen, nor of the creation of the unified Italian Kingdom. Still penetrating toward the heart of the Savoyan Alps one soon reaches Albertville, primarily a place of war, secondly a centre for excursions in upper Savoy. This gives the modern note. For that of mediævalism one has to go outside the town to Conflans, where sits the old town high on a rocky promontory, with a picturesque citadel-fortress filled with souvenirs of warlike times. The Chateau du Manuel flanks the old fortress on one side, and the garrison barracks of to-day was at one time an old convent of Bernardins. This structure of itself is enough, and more, to attract one thither. It is built of red brick, with a range of curiously patterned twin windows. Besides these attributes the faubourg has also the Chateau Rouge, another of the resting places of the Savoyan dukes. The historic souvenirs of Conflans and its chateau are many and momentous. It defended the entrance to the Tarentaise, and was able to resist the terrible battering sieges of the troops of François Premier and Henri IV, which was more than Miolans could do, in spite of the fact that it was supposedly a more efficient stronghold. The town itself was erected into a Principality in favour of the Archbishops of the Tarentaise, and in 1814, following upon the Treaty of Paris, which gave back to Sardinia a part of its estates, the administrative authorities of Savoy took up their seat here. All around are modern forts and batteries only to be arrived at by military roads climbing the mountain-side in perilous fashion, but they have nothing of sentiment or romance about them and so one can only marvel that such things be. The neighbouring Fort Barraux is one of the marvels of modern fortresses, rebuilt out of an old chateau-fort. This fortress was originally constructed before the end of the sixteenth century by Charles-Emmanuel de Savoie, and taken over, almost without a struggle, by Lesdiguières, almost before the masons had finished their work for the ducal master. "Wait," said the Maréchal to his king, "we will not be in a hurry. It were better that we should have a finished fortress on our hands than one half built." And with a supreme confidence Lesdiguières waited six months and then simply walked up and "took it" and presented it to his royal master. At Montvallezen-sur-Séez, in the Tarentaise, there existed, in the seventeenth century, a sort of a monkish chateau, at least it was a purely secular dwelling, a sort of retreat for the Canon of the Hospice of Saint Bernard. It was built in 1673 by the Canon Ducloz, and though all but the tower has disappeared, history tells much of the luxury and comfort which once found a place here in this "Logement du Vicar." The tower rises five stories in height and contains a heavy staircase lighted on each landing by a single window. From this one judges that the tower must have been intended as a defence or last refuge for the dwellers in the chateau in case they were attacked by bandits or other evil doers. On arriving at the final floor, the walls are pierced with ten windows. A carven tablet reproduced herewith tells as much of the actual history of the tower as is known. +-------------------+ | HOC . OPVS | | | | F. F. R. D . LOES | | | | DVCLOT | | | | CUBERNATOR | | | | DOMUS . SATI | | | | BERNARDI | | | | 16 + 73 | +-------------------+ CHAPTER XX BY THE BANKS OF THE RHÔNE The boundary between Dauphiny and Provence was by no means vague; it was a well defined territorial limit, but in the old days, as with those of the present, the climatic and topographic limits between the two regions were not so readily defined. The Rhône, the mightiest of French rivers when measured by the force and, at times, the bulk of its current, played a momentous historic part in the development of all the region lying within its watershed, and for that reason the cities lying midway upon its banks had much intercourse one with another. [Illustration] Vienne, on the left bank of this swift-flowing river, was the capital of the Counts of the Viennois, and the birthplace of the earliest of the "native" Dauphins, who afterwards transferred their seat of power to Grenoble. For this reason it is obvious that the history of Vienne and that of the surrounding territory was intimately bound up with the later mountain province of Dauphiny, whose capital was Gratianopolis. As the capital of this mountain empire evolved itself into Grenoble, and the power of the Dauphins gradually waned at Vienne, Comte Humbert, who was then ruler at Vienne, transferred his sceptre to the heir of Philippe de Valois who built his palace in the ancient mountain stronghold of the Romans in preference to continuing the seat of governmental dignity and rule by the banks of the mighty Rhône. From this one gathers, and rightly, that Vienne is one of the most ancient cities of Dauphiny, and indeed of all the Rhône valley. Its history has been mentioned by Cæsar: "_Accolit Alpinis opulenta Vienna calonis._" In the fifth century it was the capital of the first Burgundian kingdom, and at a later period the official residence of the native Dauphins, the race that came before those eldest sons of the French kings who wielded their power from their palace at Grenoble. Vienne's architectural monuments are many and of all states of nobility, but of palaces, castles and chateaux it contains only the scantiest of memories. Down by the river, at the terminus of the ugly wire-rope suspension bridge, the modern useful successor of the more æsthetic works of the mediæval "Brothers of the Bridge," is a most remarkable tower known as the "Tour de Mau Conseil." It has for a legend the tale that Pontius Pilate threw himself from its topmost story. History, more explicit than the over-enthusiastic native, says that it was only the shore-end or gatehouse of a chateau which guarded the river crossing, and was built by Philippe de Valois. There is a discrepancy here of some centuries, so with all due respect to local pride one had best stick to historic fact. There is a Chateau de Pilate, so-called, on the banks of the Rhône just below Saint Vallier, a few leagues away, of which the traditional legend is also kept green. It may be only a story anyway, but if one is bound to have it repeated, it had best be applied at this latter point. This tower of Philippe de Valois as it exists [Illustration: _Tower of Philippe de Valois, Vienne_] to-day, also known as the "Clef de l'Empire," is thus much more explicitly named, for it was in a way a sort of guardian outpost which controlled the entrance and exit to and from the neighbouring Lyonnais. Vienne, being the outgrowth of a city of great antiquity, its Roman remains are numerous and splendid, from the bare outlines of its Amphitheatre to its almost perfectly preserved Temple d'Auguste. Monuments of its feudal epoch are not wanting either, though no splendid domestic or civic chateau exists to-day in its entirety. Instead there are scattered here and there about the town many fragmentary reminders of the days of the first Burgundian kingdom, and of the later city of the counts and Dauphins. In 879 A.D. the ruler of the province, Boson, Comte de Vienne, Arles et Provence, by his ambition and energy, was proclaimed king by the barons and bishops assembled in the Chateau de Mantaille, belonging to the Archbishop of Vienne and situated at Saint Rambert, between Vienne and Valence. In the Rue de l'Hopital one sees two coiffed towers rising high above the surrounding gables. They are all that remain of the semi-barbarian Comte Boson's palace. In the passage entered by an antique portal, and running between two rows of rather squalid buildings, there is a slab which bears the following inscription: +-------------------------+ | LE PALAIS DE BOSON | | SERVIT D'HOTEL DE VILLE | | DE 1551-1771. | +-------------------------+ It is not a very convincing souvenir, but the sight of the great round towers, rising above the canyon-like alleys roundabout, at least lends aid to the acceptance of the assertion by one who does not demand more clearly defined proofs. In the Rue Boson is another edifice which may have something in common with the life of the first Burgundian court. It is a house which combines many non-contemporary features and possesses a marvellously built winding Renaissance stairway and two great towers, one a mere watch-tower, seemingly, the other strongly fortified. Frankly these towers might be accessories of some church edifice, or yet the chimneys of a factory, or of an iron furnace, since, even considering their situation, there is nothing distinctively feudal about them. They are, however, of manifest ancient origin and served either military or chateau-like functions. Of that there is no doubt in spite of their ungainliness. Valence is a _bruyante_, grandiose city, which, without the Rhône or the mountains, might be Tours or Lille so far as its local life goes, and this in spite of the fact that it is on the border line between the north and the south. "_À Valence le Midi commence_" is the classic phrase with which every earnest traveller in France is familiar, though indeed for three or four months of the year Valence is surrounded by snow-capped mountains. "The women of Valence are _vive et piquante_" is also another trite saying, but the city itself has nothing but its historic past to recommend it in the eyes of the sentimental traveller of the twentieth century. The strategic position of Valence has made it in times past the scene of much historic action. With this importance in full view it is really astonishing that the city possesses so few historic monuments. Almost at the juncture of the Isère and the Rhône, Valence to-day bustles its days away with a feverish local life that, in a way, reminds one of a great city like Lyons, to which indeed it plays second fiddle. There are few strangers except those who have come to town from places lying within a strictly local radius, and there is a smug air of satisfaction on the face of every inhabitant. Things have changed at Valence of late years, for it was once one of the first cities of Dauphiny where religious reform penetrated in the later years of the sixteenth century, and even in the preceding century it had already placed itself under the protection of Louis XI, fearing that some internal upheaval might seriously affect its local life. Valence has always played for safety and that is why it lacks any particularly imposing or edifying aspect to-day. When Napoleon was staying at the military school at Valence he wrote of it as a city "_sombre, severe et sans grace_." There is no cause to modify the view to-day. Almost the sole example of domestic architecture at Valence worthy to be included in any portrait gallery of great Renaissance houses, is that which is somewhat vulgarly known as the "Maison des Têtes." It was built in 1531 by the art-loving François Premier, not for himself but as a recompense for some less wealthy noble who had served him during his momentous Italian journey. The name applied to this historic house is most curious, but is obvious from the decoration of its façade. Who its owner may actually have been has strangely enough been overlooked by those whose business it is to write such things down. Certain it is that he was fortunate to have a patron who would bestow upon him so luxurious a dwelling as it must once have been. Perhaps, to go deeper into the question, the edifice was one of those "_discrets chateaux_" which François had a way of building up and down France, where he might repair unbeknownst to the world or even his court. Surely, here, in a tortuous back street of the dull little city of Valence, in the sixteenth century, one might well consider himself sheltered from the few inquisitive glances which might be cast on his trail. The _oeil de boeuf_, that Paris spy or coterie of spies, did not exist for the monarch at Valence. The Maison des Têtes is the more remarkable by reason of its modest proportions and the exceedingly ornate and bizarre decorations of its façade. Below and above the window-frames is an elaborate sculptured frieze, and between the _arceaux_ of the windows, even, are equally finely chiselled motives. There is a series of medallions of five philosophers and poets of antiquity, flanked on either side by a head of a Roman emperor and another of Louis XI. Two mutilated effigies, nearly life size, occupy niches on a level with the second story, and directly beneath the roof are posed four enormous heads, typifying the winds of the four quarters. This interesting façade, no less than the vague history which attaches to the house itself, is in a comparative state of dilapidation. It seems a pity that in a city so poor in artistic shrines it were not better preserved and cared for. But there it is--Valence again! As a matter of fact the lower floor is occupied by a mean sort of a wine-shop, which assuredly casts an unseeming slur upon the proud position that the edifice once held. Nearly opposite the Maison des Têtes is the house where the young Napoleon lodged in 1785-1786. Just above Valence, at the confluence of the Isère and the Rhône, is the magnificent feudal ruin of Crussol, the guardian of the gateway leading from the south to the north. It sits at a great height above the swirling waters of the current on a peak of rock, and from the aspect of its projecting, fang-like gable is locally known as the "Corne de Crussol." [Illustration: _Chateau de Crussol_] For years this typical feudal castle and military stronghold of great power belonged to the family of Crussol, the old Ducs d'Uzes. So vast was it originally in extent that it contained a whole village within its walls, and indeed there was no other protection for those who called the duke master, as the castle had appropriated to itself the entire mountain-top plateau. Certainly Crussol must have been as nearly impregnable a fortress as any of its class ever built, for from its eastern flank one may drop down a sheer thousand feet and then fall into the whirlpool waters of the Rhône. This was sure and sudden death to any who might lose their footing from above, but it was also an unscalable bulwark against attack. The panorama which opens out from the platform of the ruined chateau is remarkable and extends from the Alps on the east to the Cevennes on the west, and from the Vivarais on the north to the distant blue of the Vercors on the south, and perhaps, at times, even to Mont Ventoux in Vaucluse. CHAPTER XXI IN THE ALPS OF DAUPHINY In the high Alpine valleys back of the Barre des Écrins is a frontier land little known even to the venturesome tourist by road, who with his modern means of travel, the automobile, goes everywhere. The conventional tour of Europe follows out certain preconceived lines, and if it embraces the passing of the Alps from France into Italy it is usually made by the shortest and most direct route. If the Saint Bernard or the Mont Cenis route seems the shortest and quickest, few there are who will spend a day longer and pass by the highway crossed by Hannibal, even though they would experience much that was delectable _en route_. Southeast from Grenoble and Vizille is Bourg d'Oisans, the end of a branch railway line, and a diminutive, though exceedingly popular, French Alpine station. To the traveller by road it is the gateway to the high Alpine valleys of Dauphiny, whose heart is the palpitating mountain fortress of Briançon, the most elevated of all French cities. The highroad between Bourg d'Oisans and Briançon, really the only direct communication between the two places, was begun by Napoleon, that far-seeing road-builder whom future generations of travellers in France have good reason to rise up and call blessed. The roadway climbs up over the Lautret Pass, leaving the Galibier--the highest carriage road in Europe except the Stelvio--to the left, finally descending the southeastern slope and entering Briançon via Monetier-les-Bains, just opposite the famous Barre des Écrins, the highest of the French Alps, a peak of something over thirteen thousand feet, the first ascent of which is credited to Whymper as late as 1864. Briançon's chateau, or rather Fort du Chateau, is no chateau at all, being a mere perpetuation of a name. Its history is most vivid and interesting nevertheless. Briançon itself is one vast fortress, or a nest of them. The bugle call and the tramp of feet are the chief sounds to awaken mountain echoes roundabout. It has rightfully been called the Gibraltar of the Alps, and commands the passage from France into Italy. The town sits most ravishingly placed just above the pebbly bed of the incipient Durance, which rushes down to the Mediterranean in a mighty torrent. Save Briançon's barrier of forts and fortresses and mountain peaks roundabout, the town is a sad, dull place indeed, where winter endures for quite half the year, and, until the last century, it was entirely cut off from the world, save the exit and entrance by the single carriage road which rises from Gap via Embrun and Argentière. Charles le Chauve died here at Briançon in the edifice which stood upon the site of the present Fort du Chateau, and to that circumstance the place owes its chief historic distinction. Above the city, a dozen kilometres away only, rises the famous international highroad into Italy. On one side of the mountain the waters flow through the valley of the Po into the Adriatic, and on the other, via the Durance and the Rhône, to the Mediterranean. "Adieu, ma soeur la Durance, Nous nous séparons sur ce mont: Tu vas ravager la Provence, Moi féconder le Piedmont." On the extreme height of the pass is the famous Napoleon obelisk, commemorating the passage of the First Consul in 1806, though indeed the pass was one of the chief thoroughfares crossing the Alps for long centuries before. In 1494 Charles VIII crossed here with the army with which he invaded Italy. There remains little of actual monumental aspect at Briançon which has come down from other days. There is still something left of the old chateau of the Seigneurs de Briançon, but not much. This was the same edifice in which Charles le Chauve died, and the mountain retreat of the lords of the Tarentaise. The general outlines of its walls are still to be traced, and there is always the magnificent site to help one build it up anew, but that is all. The donjon is built on a peak of triangular rock rising sheer from the torrent at the bottom of the gorge which has cut its way through the town from the source higher up under the Montagne de la Madeleine. The donjon is still there in all its solidity and sadness, but it takes a climb of two hundred and fifty steps up an exceedingly steep stair to reach the platform of rock on which it sits, and this after one has actually arrived at the base. The retreat was practically untakable by the enemy, and the seigneurs conceived the idea of making it still more difficult of access by ignoring any convenient and comfortable means of approach. This must have been a great annoyance to themselves, but those were the days before time was money, so what matter? The old Roman way through the Tarentaise ran close along by the base of the chateau. There are four distinct ruined elements to-day from which one may build up anew the silhouette of this mediæval stronghold. Chiefly these elements have been crumbled by stress of time, but here and there a reminder more definite in form, a gaunt finger of stone, points skyward,--a battery of them in fact surround the actual donjon. The bridge on which the Roman road crossed the Durance was fortified, but was built of wood brought from the neighbouring mountain sides. It is supposed that the present stone structure is the direct successor of this wooden bridge, though it possesses the antique look which may well claim a thousand years. Aymon, the Seigneur de Briançon, when occupying the donjon on the heights, committed many extortions for toll on travellers passing this way. It was a sort of scandalous graft of the eleventh century which finally induced Héraclius, Archbishop of the Tarentaise, to petition [Illustration: _Chateau de Briançon_] Humbert II, the overlord, Comte de Maurienne, to call his brother lord to a more reasonable method of procedure. This was to the Comte de Maurienne's liking, for he fell upon him tooth and nail and drove Aymon from his castle, leaving it in the ruined and dismantled condition in which it stands to-day. [Illustration] This toll of roads and bridges was, by inherited right, the privilege of many local seigneurs throughout the feudality, but here the demand was so excessive, so much greater than the traffic could stand, to put it in modern parlance, that the concession was suppressed in the same fashion as has been often brought to bear on latter day monopolies badly administered. This thing doesn't happen often, but with the precedent of the toll bridge at Briançon it has been steadily growing as a commendable practice. Incidentally the Seigneur of Briançon was killed in the struggle which deprived him of what he thought his right, but that was seemingly a small matter; the main thing was to do away with the oppression, and the Lord of the Maurienne, being one of those who did things thoroughly, went at the root of the evil. It is to his credit that he did not continue the toll-gathering for his own benefit. The enormous flanks of wall of the Chateau de Briançon, which still stand, show a thickness in some instances of thirty feet, and the mortar of eight centuries still holds the blocks firmly together here and there. What a comparison between the ancient and modern manner of building! The same strategic position which first gave a foothold to the seigneurial chateau was newly fortified in 1536, in order to resist the troops of François I. The French by chance, or skill, finally took the position, and occupied it for a quarter of a century, until the time when Savoy was returned to Emmanuel-Philibert by the victory of Saint Quentin. Again it was captured in 1690 by Lesdiguières, the date of the conquest of Savoy by Henri IV. The walls of the chateau which are to be remarked to-day are probably of the eleventh and twelfth centuries; all other works are of the later fortifications, or of the more modern military structure of the present war system of France. Briançon from the plain below has the appearance and dignity of a monumental and prosperous city. Near-by this aspect is lost entirely. As the French say, it is like a shako stuck rakishly over the ear of a grenadier. One may take his choice of view points, but at all events Briançon is marvellously imposing and romantic looking from a distance. Roundabout on every peak and monticule are forts bristling with guns, all pointing Italy-wards; whilst on the height of Mont Genèvre the Italians in turn train their cannon on Briançon's chateau and the plain beyond. South from Briançon runs the great _route nationale_ from Dauphiny and the Alps to Provence and the Mediterranean. It is replete with historic and romantic souvenirs, but like all the rest of these more or less poverty-stricken mountain regions, it lacks any great or splendid domestic or civic monuments on its route. Souvenirs of mediæval times there are, and many, but they were born of warlike deeds rather than peaceful ones. Midway between Briançon and Embrun is Mont Dauphin, another key to the Italian gateway. The fortress is a conspicuous point of rock sitting strategically at the mouth of the river Guil at its junction with the Durance. The fortress was the work of Vauban, and its bastions are built of a curious pink marble found in the valley of the Queyras. No doubt but that the fortress is impregnable, or was when built, but it would avail little to-day against modern explosives. Up the valley of the Guil is the region known as the Val de Queyras, one of the "Protestant Valleys" of Dauphiny, where the religious wars under Lesdiguières, during the reign of Henri IV, raged fast and furious. Chateau Queyras, as its name indicates, is the seat of a mediæval pile which, if not stupendous with respect to its outlines, is at least more than satisfying when viewed from afar. It is an ancient feudal castle and befits its name, in looks at least, and was once the seat of the seigneurs of Chateau-Vieille Ville. Like the fort of Mont Dauphin it seemingly was built to guard the passage to the frontier by the Col Lacroix and the Col de Traversette. Here as early as 1480 Louis II of Dauphiny cut a tunnel below the Col to make the road between the French valleys and the rich plains of the Po the easier of passage. South of Chateau Queyras is Saint Véran, the highest collection of human habitations in France, and one of the most elevated in Europe. It is commonly called the highest commune in Europe where the peasants eat white bread. Approximately its elevation is seven thousand feet, still some thousands below Leadville, one recalls. Because of its altitude also, it has been called the most pious village in France. This may or may not be so, but at any rate the place has ever been on the verge of changing its religion from Protestant to Catholic and from Catholic to Protestant. What is in the rarefied atmosphere, one wonders, to induce such fickleness in matters spiritual! Embrun, of all the towns of this part of Dauphiny, is the most illustrious and famous. This is perhaps as much from its association with Louis XI as for any other reason, for it is reckoned one of the dullest towns in France. The general aspect of Embrun is most singular as it snuggles intimately around the drab walls of an old donjon, the sole relic of its ancient feudal glory. The roof and gables of the houses of the town rise abruptly from the low levels to the height on which sits the donjon and the shrine dedicated to the divinity of Louis XI, "Our Dear Lady of Embrun," as he called her. To know more of what passed in the mind of Louis XI with regard to Embrun and its divinity one should re-turn the pages of "Quentin Durward." The monarch indeed resided so long in Dauphiny, at one place or another, that many of the most affecting scenes of his life were enacted here. A Roman city was here in ancient times, and from this grew up a great strategic military base. Not a morsel of the débris of the Roman town remains, but the cathedral still preserves the best of Roman principles of building in the stones of its pillars and vaulting. The donjon of the old chateau, the Tour Brune, as it is called, is not far from the cathedral, within the confines of the military barracks. It is, therefore, not accessible to the general public, unless by chance one makes the acquaintance of some genial Alpin-Chasseur who can be induced to do the honours--of course with permission of his superior, which on this particular occasion was, for us, not easy to get. The thing was finally "arranged." Military property in France is not for the vulgar eye, leastwise not in the vicinity of a frontier boundary. The Tour Brune is accredited as the most ancient military edifice in Dauphiny. Gotran, Roi de Bourgogne, built it and ravished the valleys roundabout, using it as a base from which to make his pillaging sorties and then as a retreat in case he was hard pressed. This was according to the ethics of guerrilla warfare at that time, and probably is to-day. As a mere habitation, the Tour Brune could hardly have been very comfortable. It certainly never partook of any luxurious appointments or accessories, judging from its build alone. The metropolis of the upper valley of the Durance is Gap, whose chief romantic memory, since indeed it has no worthy architectural monuments to-day, is recalled by the magnificent marble statue of the Connetable de Lesdiguières on the mausoleum of this Dauphinese hero, now installed in the Préfecture, having been brought thither from the warrior's natal chateau in the neighbourhood. It shows the protestant defender of the rights of Henri IV in Dauphiny clad in the full regalia of his fighting armour. It is worthy of record to note that from being a protestant Governor of Dauphiny, Lesdiguières changed faith as did his royal master and became a Catholic, acquiring at the same time the title of Connetable de France as a mark of favour for his devotion to the tenets of his sovereign. There is another Chateau de Lesdiguières, which lies out on the road running from Grenoble to Gap, via Corps and Vizille, and is nothing at all grand or monumental in aspect. For a fact, the chateau at Vizille was his preferred domicile, and the present shapeless, ruined mass, though built by the Connetable, was intended merely to be a mausoleum rather than a dwelling. He was actually buried here, his body having been brought hither from Italy, but the Revolution threw his ashes to the winds and his funeral monument was removed to Gap. CHAPTER XXII IN LOWER DAUPHINY There is not a village or a town in Dauphiny, be it ever so humble, but which guards some vestige or tradition of some feudal chateau or fortress of the neighbourhood. Nor are ocular evidences wanting which even he who runs may read. This is far from stating that the region is strewn with noble and luxurious monuments as are Touraine or Anjou, but nevertheless he, or she, who knows how to translate the story of the stones may make up history to any extent he likes, and yet never finish the volume. And much of the tale will be as vivid and thrilling as that of the western and southern provinces, which are usually given the palm for romance. On almost any site around one's horizon a seigneur might have built himself a chateau, an all but impregnable stronghold where he might sustain successfully the powers vested in him as a vassal of the Dauphin. This was the usual procedure, and if many of these classic strongholds have disappeared, there are enough remaining to suggest the frequency and solidity of mediæval building in these parts, a species of castle building which here in the mountains differed not a little from that of the lowlands. It is just this view-point that makes the study of the chateaux of Dauphiny the more interesting. Even the imperfectly preserved ruins which crown many a peak and hill-top are suggestive of this unique and effective manner of castle building, and though many have fallen from sheer decay in later years, it is chiefly because they were undermined or overthrown in some great or petty quarrel, and not because their design was not well thought out nor their workmanship thorough. The picks of Louis XI caused more actual depredation than has the stress of time. Often but a local legend remains to tell the tale. Chambaraud, Mantailles, and Beaufort have disappeared, and Moras, Thodure and Vireville, all of them reminiscent of the prowess of the feudal barons, are in truth but dim reminiscences of their once proud estate. Between Grenoble and Vienne is the Chateau de Bressieux, most picturesque, the first great requirement of a castle. It dates, in part, from the twelfth century. That is its second qualification. Antiquity comes after picturesqueness in its appeal to even the traveller of conventional mould. The Barons of Bressieux were by the right of their title members of the Parliament of Dauphiny. The situation of their chateau assured them the full and free exercise of their power, right or wrong, and, like all the Dauphinese seigneurs, they were practically rulers of a lilliputian empire. It seems that the celebrated Mandrin, a brigand so dignified that he was ranked as a "_gentilhomme_," married into the family of Bressieux. History has apparently been unjust to Mandrin, "the _escroc_ who possessed the manners of a dandy," but at any rate there be those in Dauphiny to-day who revere his memory before that of Bayard. Saint Marcellin, in the lower valley of the Isère, is Italian in its general aspect and layout. Its house walls, its roof-tops and its arcaded streets are what most folk will at once call Italian. Be this as it may, it was originally the stronghold of the native Dauphins and the place in their _royaume_ where they lived the most at ease and ate and drank the best. This is not conjecture or a far-away twentieth century estimate, but a quotation from recorded history. The only thing one recalls of Saint Marcellin in the eating line to-day is an exceedingly pungent variety of goat's milk cheese. It is not for that that most of us make of the quaint little Dauphinese city a place of pilgrimage. Saint Marcellin was the seat of the ancient Dauphinese Parliament, but since it was three times destroyed by fire, it actually possesses but few of its old-time monumental records in stone. Beauvoir, scarce a kilometre away from Saint Marcellin, was the site of an incomparable chateau-fort which, it is sad to state, the enthusiasm of Louis XI for pulling things down did not leave unspoiled. To-day the chateau is a reminiscence only, but the situation, at the juncture of the Iseret, the Isère and the Cuman, tells the possibilities of its storied past in the eye's rapid review. There is little doubt that mere attack could have had but small effect on its sturdy walls, and that its having been destroyed or injured in any way must have been the result of weakness or lack of courage on the part of those who held it from within. Only two definite architectural details of this great fortress remain as they were in those warlike [Illustration: _Chateau de Beauvoir_] times, the tower of the chapel and a flank of wall containing a series of ogival windows. Still in the Vallée Saint Marcellinoise, as this junction of the three rivers is known, one sees the ignoble pile which marks the site of the former chateau of the Seigneur de Flandaines, one of the allies of the Dauphins, descended from one of the proudest families of the region. The Seigneur de Flandaines would build himself a stronghold so sturdy that no one might take it from him, nor no one drive him out; primarily this was the formula upon which all castles were built. This was the very sentiment that the seigneur expressed to Louis XI at the time when the latter was but a Prince of Dauphiny: "_Lou vassa de fe valan mais que lousignous in buro._" It was only another way of saying (in the local _patois_) that a vassal clothed in armour was worth considerably more than one who dressed only in velvet. The Dauphin took this to mean much, but he had a mighty envy for the Seigneur de Flandaines, and sought forthwith the ways and means by which to turn him out of his fortress abode. The Dauphin invited the seigneur to a court ball and plied him and his retainers with food and drink, not only to excess, but to the point of insensibility. After this the troops of the Dauphin marched on Flandaines, took it without the least resistance, turned it over to the crowbars of the house-breakers, and went back and told their prince that their work was finished. In the Chateau de Rochechinard, near Flandaines, the Dame de Beaujeau, emulator of the policy of Louis XI, martyred the poor Zizim, son of Mohamet II and brother of Bajazet. The history of the affair entire is not to be recounted here, but the Turk was exiled in France and chose this "pays de Franguistan," of which he had read, as the preferred place of his future abode. Louis XI arranged with one of his Dauphinese familiars to take the infidel into his chateau. The alien was at first enchanted with his new life and played the zither and sang songs to the fair ladies of Dauphiny all the long day with all the gallantry of a noble of France. He went further: he would have married with one of the most gracious he had met: "It was a thing a thousand times more to be sought for than the control of the Ottoman Empire," he said. For the moment it was the one thing that the Turk desired in life. Proof goes further and states that for the purpose he became converted to Christianity. And the rest? The fair lady of Dauphiny did not marry the Turk; so he was sent a hundred leagues away in further exile and the daughter of the Béranger-Sasseange married and forgot--in fact she married three times before she eradicated the complete memory of the affair. To-day the walls of Rochechinard are half buried in an undergrowth of vine and shrubs and are nothing more than a sad reminder of the history which has gone before. Three leagues from Saint Marcellin and Beauvoir is Saint Antoine, a sixteenth century townlet of fifteen hundred souls which has endured much, as it has always existed unto this day. It possesses one of the most remarkable and astonishing flamboyant-Gothic churches in all Christendom. During the middle ages Saint Antoine was a place of pilgrimage for Popes and princes, and the Dauphins, by reason of their intimate associations with the distinguished visitors to their country, gained both riches and power from the circumstance. When Dauphiny came to be united to the Crown of France the tradition of Saint Antoine and its life-giving wine continued, and neither François Premier nor Louis XI neglected to make the journey thither. In the case of François Premier there may have been another good, or at least sufficient, reason, for Saint Vallier and Diane de Poitiers were but a few hours away. But that's another point of view, a by-path which need not be followed here, since it would lead us too far astray. Following still the valley of the Isère, one comes to the Chateau de la Sone, at one time one of the strongest fortifications of the lower valley. It was the key to the Royonnais, and a subterranean passage led from its platform underneath the bed of the Isère itself to a chateau of the Dauphins on the opposite bank. With the establishment of a silk-mill here in the chateau in 1771 all romance fled, and there being no more need for a subterranean exit, the passage-way was allowed to fill up. To-day one takes the assertion on faith; there is nothing to prove it one way or another. It was here within these walls that Vaucanson (1709-1782), the "_sorcier-mécanicien_," invented the chain without end, which revolutionized the silk-spinning industry. The aspect of the chateau to-day, declassed though it is, is most picturesque. It is the very ideal of a riverside castle, for it bears the proud profile of a fortress of no mean pretensions even now, far more than it does that of a luxurious dwelling or a banal factory. It is one of those structures one loves to know intimately, and not ignore just because it has become a commoner among the noble chateaux of history. Two very curious twin towns are Romans and Bourg-de-Péage, separated by the rapidly flowing waters of the Isère. If such a groupment of old houses and rooftops were in Switzerland or Germany, and were presided over by some burgrave or seneschal, all the world of tourists would rave over their atmosphere of mediævalism. Being in France, and off the main lines of travel, they are largely ignored, even by the French themselves. It is to be remarked that their history and romance have been such that the souvenirs and monuments which still exist in these curious old towns are most appealing. In that they are now seeking to attract visitors, a better fate is perhaps in store for Romans and Bourg-de-Péage than has been their portion during the last decade of popular touring. Chateaux of a minor sort there are galore at Romans. Noble and opulent _hôtels privées_ in almost every street reflect the glories of the days of the Dauphins, still but little dimmed. Here and there an elaborately sculptured façade without, or a courtyard within, bespeaks a lineal dignity that of later years has somewhat paled before the exigencies of modern life. Romans of late years has become a _ville commercante_ and has broken the bounds of its old ramparts and flowed over into new quarters and suburbs which have little enough the character of the old town. This is a feature to be remarked of most French towns which are not actually somnolent, though true enough it is that in population they may have gained very little on the centuries gone by. The demand is for new living conditions, as well as those of trade, and so perforce a certain part of the population has to go outside to live in comfort. It was from the castle of Mazard at Romans, now a poor undignified ruin, that the last of the _native_ Dauphins signed his abdication in favour of Philippe de Valois, who acquired the province for the French Crown. The event was induced by the loss of his infant son, who, by some mysterious agent, fell into the swift-flowing Isère at the base of the castle walls. Overwhelmed with grief, the father would no longer hold the reins of state, and turned his patrimony over to the French king with content and satisfaction, stipulating only that the French heir to the throne should be known as the Dauphin henceforth, a state of affairs which obtained until the reign of Louis Philippe. South from Romans lies Die, which in spite of its great antiquity has conserved little of its ancient feudal memories. There are some ancient walls with a supporting tower here and there, but this is all that remains to suggest the power that once radiated from the _Dea Vocontiorum_ of the ancients. From Die down towards the Rhône, through the valley of the Drome, is however a pathway still strewn with many reminders of the feudality. Where the valley of Quint enters that of the Drome, are Pontaix and Sainte Croix, each of them possessed of a fine old ruin of a chateau on a hill overlooking the town and the river-bed below. Outside the stage setting of an opera no one ever saw quite so romantically disposed a landscape as here. The hills and vales bordering upon the Rhine actually grow pale before this little stretch of a dozen kilometres along the banks of the Drome. The village of Sainte Croix, and its chateau, is the more notable of the two mentioned, and played an important rôle in the military history of the Diois. First of all the Romans laid the foundations of the fortress one sees on the height above the crooked streets of the town. This was originally a work intended to protect their communications from their capital city at Vienne, on the banks of the Rhône, with Milan, beyond the Alpine frontier. Formerly, it was a stronghold of the Emperor of the Occident, and in 1215 the Emperor Frederick II gave it to the Bishop of Saint Paul-Trois-Chateaux, who, by the end of the century, had transferred it to the house of Poitiers. Catholics and Protestants occupied it turn by turn during the religious wars, when, after the taking of La Rochelle, Richelieu razed it, as he did so many another feudal monument up and down the length and breadth of France. A great modern--comparatively modern--pile situated at the entrance of the village, has nothing in common with the old fortress on the height, and, though to-day it well presents the suggestion of a fortified mediæval manor, it is in reality nothing but a walled farm, a transformation from an old Antonian convent suppressed at the Revolution. Index _Adrets, Baron des_, 227 _Aguesseau, Chancelier d'_, 42 Aix-les-Bains, 239, 242-243, 279 Albertville, 243, 286 _Allemon, Seigneurs d'_, 224 Allinges, 269 _Amboise, Jacques d'_, 161 Ancy-le-Franc, 16, 93-99 _Andelot Family_, 87-88 _Angely, Regnault de Saint-Jean d'_, 34 _Anjou, René d'_, 118 Annecy, 260-262, 279 Anse, 180 Apremont, 111 _Arbaud, Charles_, 57 Argentière, 302 _Arles, Cardinal d'_, 272 Arnay-le-Duc, 5, 57, 60-61 Autun, 58, 70, 171 Auxerre, 5, 19, 20, 29-34, 35, 37, 38, 104 _Auxerre, Comtes d'_, 30, 33, 35 _Auxerre, Geoffroy, Bishop of_, 32 Auxois, The, 51 Auxonne, 186, 187-189 Avallon, 20, 36-37, 43, 50 Avignon, 108 Bagé-le-Chatel, 177 _Bagé, Seigneurs de_, 177, 179, 199, 210 _Bar, Duc de_, 118 Bar-sur-Seine, 80-81 Barraux, Fort, 247, 251-252, 288 _Bartholdi_, 194, 198 Bathie, 286 _Bavière, Family_, 105, 126, 127 Bayard, Chateau de, 247-252 _Bayard, Chevalier_, 221-222, 247-251, 315 Bazoche and its Chateau, 46-48 Beaufort, 314 _Beaujeau, Anne de_, 147, 318 _Beaujeau, Sire de_, 179, 180, 201 Beaujolais, The, 170, 181 Beaune, 9, 13, 108, 109, 124, 131, 133, 139-145, 178 _Beaune, Claude de la_, 168 Beauregard, Chateau de, 267 Beauvoir, 316, 319 _Bedford, Duke of_, 64, 127, 130 Belfort, 194, 195, 197-198 Belleville-sur-Saône, 179-180 Belley, 215, 216-217 _Benoit XIII_, 108 _Berry, Duchesse de_, 72 _Bertin_, 8 _Bertrand, General_, 222 Besançon, 17, 185, 186, 187, 190, 191-194, 208 _Besnard, Albert_, 263 _Biron, Maréchal de_, 141 Blamont, 196 Blay, 286 _Blonay, Baron de_, 276 Blonay, Chateau de, 275 Blonay, Manoir de, 276 Bordeau, 242 Boulogne, 37 Bourbilly and its Chateau, 52, 53, 54-56, 59 _Bourbon, House of_, 30, 161, 179, 201, 211 Bourbonnais, The, 2, 12 Bourg-de-Péage, 321 Bourg d'Oisans, 300-301 Bourg-en-Bresse, 85, 177, 206, 209-211, 212, 213 Bourges, 27 Bourget du Lac and its Chateau, 239-240 Bourgogne, Canal de, 109 Bourguignons, 81 _Bourrienne_, 34 _Boyvin_, 191 Boz, 202 Brançion, Chateau de, 162-163 _Brandes_, 281 Bresse, 2, 14, 177, 199-201, 205-214 Bressieux, Chateau de, 314-315 _Briançon, Seigneurs de_, 303-306 Brienne-le-Chateau, 80, 189 _Brillat-Savarin_, 201 _Brouhée_, 124 _Buffon_, 4, 52, 62-66 Bugey, 2, 14, 199, 201 _Burgundy, House of_, 30, 37, 4, 57, 64, 75, 79, 85, 100, 102, 105, 108, 113-130, 133-134, 144, 145, 147, 164, 272, 311 Bussy-Rabutin, Chateau de, 68-74 _Bussy-Rabutin Family_, 55, 69-74 _Calixtus II_, 98, 159 _Capet, Hughes_, 36, 115 _Carnot, Lazare_, 4, 146-147, 278 Carpentras, 173 Cavaillon, 173 _Celestin IV_, 242 _Cerceau, Androuet du_, 95-96, 181 _Chabas, Paul_, 264 Chablais, The, 269, 271, 276 Chalon-sur-Saône, 5, 151, 170, 171-173, 174, 175, 177 Chambaraud, 314 Chambertin, 133, 135, 137 Chambéry, 229-239, 243, 247, 251, 260 Chambord, 95, 96 _Chambre, Pierre de la_, 283 _Chambrette_, 124 _Champagne, Counts of_, 19, 100 Champdivers, 208 _Champdivers, Odette de_, 208 Chagny, 151-152 Chanceaux, 109 _Chantel, Mme. de_ (St. Jeanne de), 54, 55, 71 Chantilly, 154 Charbonne, 262 _Charles I_ (Le Chauve), 175, 206, 213, 302, 303 _Charles VI_, 208 _Charles VII_, 28, 30 _Charles VIII_, 188, 220, 303 _Charles IX_, 93, 171 _Charles X_, 57 _Charles V_ (Emperor), 116, 192, 193 Charolles, 153, 155, 171 Chastellux, Chateau de, 16, 37-43, 44 Chastillon (see Châtillon) Chateau des Ducs (see Chastillon) Chateauneuf, 206-207 _Chateau-Vieille Ville, Seigneurs de_, 308 Chatel-Censoir, 35 Chatelet, 196 _Chatelet Family_, 52 Châtillon-sur-Seine, 35, 62, 66, 75-82, 86 Châtillon-les-Dombes, 215 _Châtillon, House of_, 241-242, 261 Chaumont-la-Guiche, 154 Chazeu, 70 Chénove, 133-134 Chéran, The, 243 Chignin, Chateau de, 238 Chinon, Chateau, 35 Clamecy, 35 _Clement VII_, 179, 260 Clémont, 196 _Clermont Family_, 93, 96, 97-98 Clos de la Perrière, 134 Clos du Chapitre, 134 Clos Vougeot, 9, 135-137, 142 Cluny and Its Abbey, 13-14, 157-162 _Coeur, Jacques_, 27 Cognac, 116 _Colbert_, 70, 174 _Coligny Family_, 87-88, 90, 92, 93, 216 _Colin, Sieur_, 6 _Condé, Prince de_, 66, 87, 190 Conflans, 261, 286-288 Corcheval, 153 Cormatin, Chateau de, 162 Corps, 312 Corton, 144-145 _Cossé-Brissac, Maréchal_, 61 _Costa, Marquis Leon and Joseph_, 267 Coucy, 12 Coudrée, Chateau de, 268 Coulanges-sur-Yonne, 35 Courcelles-les-Ranges, Chateau de, 79 _Courtney Family_, 87-88, 90 _Cousin, Jean_, 34 _Coypel_, 72 Crais-Billon, 135 Crest, 246 Crussol, 298-299 Cuiseaux, 212 Cure, The, 38 Cussy-la-Colonne, 56-57 Dampierre, 95 _Daudet, Alphonse_, 236 Dauphiny, 2, 14, 15, 218-228, 245-247, 252, 256, 257, 266, 279, 290-324 De La Roche, 269 Dents du Lanfont, 263 Dheune, The, 109 Die, 246, 323-324 Dijon, 13, 14, 17, 24, 52, 66, 67, 68, 70, 85, 99, 103, 104, 110, 111, 112, 113-130, 133, 135, 171, 185, 186, 190 Dole, 190-191, 209 Dombes, Principality of, 2, 14, 178, 180, 182, 183-184, 199, 201, 202, 215 Donzy, 173 Doussard, Forêt de, 264 Douvaine, 268 _Ducloz, Canon_, 288 Duesme, 82-83 Dufayal, 60 _Duguesclin_, 71 Duingt, Chateau de, 263 _Dunois_, 71 Duretal, 212 _Edward III_, 33 Embrun, 302, 308, 309-311 _Eon, Chevalier d'_, 34 _Epailly, Jacques d'_, 36 Épinac, 148-151 _Epiry, Baron d'_, 69 Époisses, 20, 52-55 _Eugene IV_, 272 _Evelyn_, 6 Évian, 271, 273-276, 279 Excevenex, 268 _Fabre, Ferdinand_, 263 _Fagon_, 138 Falais, 12 Farcins, 181 _Fargis Family, De_, 147 Faucigny, 269 Faverges, 264 Fécamp, Abbey de, 142 Feisons, 286 _Felix V_, 272 Fernay, 204-205 _Fésigny_, 282 Fixin, 134-135 _Flandaines, Seigneur de_, 317-318 Franche, Comté, 2, 17, 116, 185-197, 208 _François I_, 116, 124, 154, 171, 183, 213, 216, 220, 254, 280, 281, 287, 296-297, 306, 320 _Froissart_, 80 _Furstemburg, Comte de_, 213-214 _Gallas_, 189 _Galley, Mlle._, 265 Gap, 214, 248, 302, 311-312 Gatinais, The, 20 _Gellan, Nicolas de_, 76 _Gelasse II_, 159 Geneva, 102, 203-204, 215, 259, 265-268 _Genevois, Comtes de_, 260-261, 263, 268, 275 Genlis, 186, 187 Gevrey, 135 Gex, 203-204, 266 Givry, 173 _Godran, Odinet_, 129 _Goelnitz, Abraham_, 226 _Gondi, Cardinal de_, 25 _Graffeny, Mlle._, 265 Grange du Hameau de Chavoires, 262 _Granville Family_, 193 _Gregory VIII_, 98 _Gregory IX_, 241 Grenoble, 219-224, 225, 244, 247, 248, 253, 254, 291, 292, 300, 314 Grésy, 286 _Greuze_, 4, 176 Gribaldi, Manoir, 275 Grignan, 246 _Grignan, Comtesse de_, 55, 72 Guiche Family, De, 154 _Guillebaud_, 220 Guitant, Chateau de, 55, 59 _Gunsbourg, M._, 162 Hautecombe, Abbey of, 239, 240 _Hémery, Porticelli d'_, 88-89 _Henri II_, 69, 73, 94, 280 _Henri IV_, 52, 60, 61, 76, 77, 88, 141, 149, 165, 175, 181, 185, 201, 252, 261, 264, 281, 287, 306 _Héredia, José-Maria_, 263 Héricourt, 196 Hermance, 267 _Heurta, Jehan de la_, 127 _Houssaye, Arsène_, 205 Huchisi, 202 _Hugues III_, 118 Hulls, Chateau des (see La Rochette) _Humbert IV_, 181 Ile-de-la-Palme, 176-177 _Innocent IV_, 159 _Jean-sans-Peur_, 64, 126-127 Joigny, 5, 20, 25-27 _Joinville, House of_, 203 _Jude, Paul_, 220 _Just_, 73 Labedoyère, 249 _La Fontaine_, 7 _Lamartine_, 165-168, 243, 246, 267-268 Lamartine, Chateau de, 166-168 _Langeac, Comtesse de_, 78 _Langres_, 149 Lans-le-Bourg, 286 _Laroche, Madame_, 8 La Rochepot, Chateau de, 146-148 La Rochette, 269, 282-283 La Tour Ronde, 276-277 _Lauzun_, 202 _La Valette, Cardinal_, 190 _Lavin_, 284 _Lebrun_, 73 Le Chatelard, 243 _Lemuet_, 88, 91 _Le Notre_, 30, 74 _Lepautre, Jean_, 220 _Lepelletier de Saint Fargeau_, 28 Les Bauges, 243 Lesdiguières, Chateaux de, 311-312 _Lesdiguières, Maréchal de_, 214, 221, 226-227, 252, 288, 306, 308, 311-312 Les Laumes, 68 _Lippomano_, 7 _Longueville, Duchesse de_, 6, 66 Lorraine, Duchy of, 196 Lorris, 22 Louhans, 211, 212 Louis I (Le Débonnaire), 164, 177 _Louis VII_ (Le Jeune), 22, 45 _Louis IX_ (Saint), 45, 159 _Louis XI_, 30, 116, 142, 188, 220, 251, 296, 298, 309-310, 314, 316, 317, 318, 320 _Louis XII_, 108, 116, 188, 247, 254 _Louis XIII_, 73, 124, 190, 213, 228, 282 _Louis XIV_, 38, 70, 71, 74, 94, 99, 102, 130, 138, 183, 201-202, 220 _Louis XV_, 63 _Louis XVI_, 78 _Louis Philippe_, 167, 323 _Louvois, Marquis de_, 94, 98 Lugny, 153 _Luvois Family_, 84 _MacMahon Family_, 150 Mâcon, 5, 25, 153, 157, 163-165, 168, 170, 171, 175, 177, 178, 210, 213 Magny-en-Vexin, 25 Mailly-le-Chateau, 35 _Maine, Duc de_, 202 _Mandrin_, 315 _Mansart_, 122 Mantaille, Chateau de, 293 Mantailles, 314 Mantoche, 111 Manuel, Chateau de, 287 _Marchand, Commandant_, 178 Marcigny, 155-156 _Marges, Comte de_, 225 _Marigny Family_, 54 Marmont, Chateau de (see Châtillon) _Marmont, Maréchal_, 78, 79 _Maurienne, Comte de_, 305-306 Maxilly, 276 _Mayenne, Duc de_, 175, 179 _Mazard, Castle of_, 322 _Mazarin, Cardinal_, 31, 74, 88 _Medicis, Catherine de_, 87, 92 Meillerie, 277 _Mello Family, De_, 54 _Menabrea, Leon_, 282 _Mercier_, 5 Mercurey, 173 Mersault, 133, 145-146 _Michelet_, 4 _Mignard_, 72, 73, 92 Milly, 166 Miolans, Chateau de, 16, 239, 283-285, 287 _Mirabeau, Marquis de_, 88 Molay, 208 _Molière_, 56 _Moiturier, Antoine_, 127 _Monetier-les-Bains_, 301 _Monge_, 4 _Monglat, Marquise de_, 70, 71, 73, 74 _Monillefert_, 145 Montagny, Chateau de, 239 Montaigu, Chateau de, 173 _Montaigu Family_, 150 Montbard and its Chateau, 52, 62-66, 68 Montbéliard, 190, 194-197 _Montbossier, Marquis de_, 60 Montcony, 212 Mont Dauphin, 308 Montelimar, 246 _Montepin, Xavier de_, 111 Montersine, 153 _Montfaucon Family_, 196 Montluel, 215 Montmayeur Family, 282, 284 Montmélian, 16, 239, 252, 279-282, 283, 285 Montmerle, 180-181 _Montmorency Family_, 88, 147 _Montpensier, Mlle. de_, 6, 7, 28, 201 Montréal, Chateau de, 37, 43-44 _Montréal, Family of_, 40, 44 _Montreval, Comte de_, 165 _Montvallezen-sur-Séez_, 288 Moras, 314 Moret-sur-Loing, 25 _Morveau, Guyton de_, 4 Moulin-à-Vent, 138 Moulins-en-Allier, 140 Moutiers, 286 _Murillo_, 74 _Musset, Alfred de_, 65 Nantua, 213 _Napoleon I_, 80, 111, 134-135, 189, 222, 248-249, 296, 298, 301, 302-303 _Napoleon III_, 233 _Nattier_, 92 _Nemours, Ducs de_, 261-262 Nernier, 267-268 _Nevers, Renaud, Comte de_, 30 Noble, Chateau de, 168-169 _Noblemaire, M._, 264 _Noisat, Commandant_, 134-135 Nolay, 146-147 Nuits, 131, 133, 139 Nuits-sous-Ravières, 99-100 _Orléans, Henrietta, Duchesse d'_, 232 Paray-le-Monail, 17, 155 _Passerat, Baron_, 268 _Peregrin_, 92 _Perier, Casimir_, 226 Pernand, 145 _Perrenot, Nicolas_, 193 _Philibert le Beau_, 211 _Philibert II_, 216 _Philippe-Auguste_, 23, 45, 183 _Philippe-de-Champaigne_, 92 _Philippe-le-Bon_, 36, 64, 118 _Philippe-le-Hardi_, 105, 108, 115, 118, 126-127, 134 _Philippe II_, 193 Pierre, 208 _Pisa, Nicolas de_, 168 _Poitiers, Diane de_, 93, 256-257, 320 Pommard, 131 Pontaix, 323 Pontarlier, 186, 187 Pontcharra, 247, 251, 252 Pont d'Ain, 215 Pont-de-Vaux, 212-213 Pont-de-Veyle, 213-214 _Pot, Philippe_, 147 Pouges-les-Eaux, 7 _Poussin_, 74 _Primataccio_, 92, 96-97 _Prud'hon_, 4 _Quentin de la Tour_, 92 Queyras, Chateau, 308-309 Quincy, The, 90 _Rabutin Family_, 150 _Rabutin-Chantel Family_, 54, 69 _Ragny, Dame de_, 44 _Raguse, Duc de_, 78, 79 Rambeauteau, 153 _Rameau_, 4 _Rancurelle_, 129 _Renan, Ernest_, 263 _Ribbonnier_, 149 _Richard Coeur-de-Lion_, 45 _Richelieu_, 10, 73, 97, 190, 227, 324 Ripaille, Chateau de, 271-273 _Roche, Sires de la_, 147 Rochechinard, Chateau de, 318-319 _Rochefort, Sires de_, 79 Rochefort-en-Montague, Chateau de, 252-253 _Rochefort-Lucay Family_, 253 _Rochette Family, De la_, 239, 274 _Rollin, Nicolas_, 129, 142, 144 Romanée-Conti, 136-138 Romans, 321-323 Romenay, 177 Rouge, Chateau, 287 _Rousseau, Jean Jacques_, 65, 229, 234-237, 245, 262, 265, 277 _Rude_, 4, 135 _Sade, Marquis de_, 283 Saint Antoine, 319-320 _Saint-Beauve_, 114 Saint Béninge, 103 _Saint Bernard_, 45 Saint Bernard, Chateau de, 262 Saint-Bonnet-de-Joux, 154 Sainte Croix, 323-324 Saint Donat, 253, 256-257 Saint Fargeau, 6, 27-28 _Saint Ferreol Family_, 224 _Saint François-de-Sales_, 271 Saint Gengoux, 173 Saint Gingolph, 266 Saint Jean-de-Losne, 190 Saint Laurent, 219 Saint Marcellin, 218, 315-316, 319 Saint Michel de Maurienne, 238 Saint Nicholas-les-Citeaux, 139 Saint Pierre d'Albigny, 283 Saint-Pont, 166-168 Saint Rambert, 293 Saint Seine, 109 Saint Trivier-de-Courtes, 177 Saint Vallier, 292, 320 Saint Véran, 309 _Saint Vorles, Canons of_, 77 _Sales, Comte Louis de_, 261 _Salins, Guignonne de_, 142 _Sambin, Hugues_, 4, 124, 125-126 _Sarcus, Comtesse de_, 69 _Sarto, Andrea del_, 74 Sassenage, 253-254 Saulieu, 5, 57-60 _Saulx-Tavannes, Maréchal de_, 149 _Savace Family, De_, 54 Savegny-sous-Beaune, 145 Savoigny, Chateau de, 69 Savoy, 2, 14, 15, 16, 102, 199, 215, 216-217, 223, 229-244, 245, 252, 264, 266, 278-289, 306 _Savoy, House of_, 177, 180, 201, 203, 210, 213, 215, 216, 227, 229-234, 239, 240, 243, 251, 252, 260, 263, 268, 270, 271, 281, 285, 288 Sciez, 268 _Ségur, Pierre de_, 195 Semur-en-Brionnais, 156-157 Semur-en-Auxois, 36, 50-53, 56, 62 Sennonais, The, 19, 29, 84 Sens, 5, 14, 20, 21 _Serlio_, 25 Seruin, The, 34, 43 _Sève, Jean de_, 181 _Sévigné, Mme. de_, 6, 53-56, 59, 69, 72 _Short, Frank_, 164 _Sigismond, Emperor_, 215, 232 _Sluter, Claus_, 127 Sone, Chateau de la, 320-321 _Soufflot_, 34 _Souvre, Anne de_, 95 _Stendhal_, 191, 247 _Sue, Eugene_, 262 Sully, Chateau de, 149-150 _Sully Family_, 147, 281 Taine, 263 Tanlay, Chateau de, 16, 86-93, 96, 98 _Tapffer_, 273 Tarentaise, The, 286-288, 303, 304 _Tavannes Family_, 149-150 _Terrail Family_, 250-251 Terreaux-à-Verostres, 154 _Thil Family, De_, 54 _Thévenin Family_, 88 Thodure, 314 _Thoire et Villars, Sires de_, 201 Thoissey, 178-179 Thoisy-la-Berchere, 60 Thone, 264 Thonon-les-Bains, 268-270, 271, 272, 273 Thoron, Manoir de, 264 _Thorwaldsen_, 194 Toisé, 174-175 Touches, 173 Touges, 267 Tour de Fonbonne, 275 Tour-de-Pin, 17, 246 Tour, Manoir de la, 264-265 _Tour, Quentin de la_, 236 Tour Sans Venin, 254-255 Tour, Villa de la, 262 Tournette, 263 Tournus, 5, 162, 175-176 Trévoux, 5, 180, 181-184 Tonnerre, 20, 29, 35, 84-86, 93, 99 _Tonnerre Family_, 30, 33, 84, 93, 94, 95, 98 _Tremouille Family, De la_, 54 Troches, Chateau de, 268 _Turner_, 164 _Urban III_, 241 Uriage, 224-225 _Uzes, Ducs de_, 299 Valbonne, 215 Valence, 247, 293, 295-298 _Valentinian, Emperor_, 102 _Valois, Jeanne de_, 25 _Valois, Philippe de_, 218, 291, 292, 322 Val-Romey, 199, 201, 206 _Varambon, Sire de_, 183 _Vatel Family_, 59 Vauban, Chateau de, 48-49 _Vauban, Maréchal_, 34, 46-49, 187, 191, 192, 223, 308 _Vaucanson_, 320 Vergy, Chateau de, 139 Vermanton, 5 Vezelay, 36, 44-46 _Vibrave Family_, 48 Vienne, 290-295, 314, 324 _Vienne, Archbishops of_, 275 _Vienne, Comtes de_, 218, 291, 293 _Vienne, Guy of_ (see _Calixtus II_) Villaines-en-Dumois, 66-67 _Villars, Sires de_, 180 Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, 21-25 Villefranche, 181-182 Vireville, 314 Vizille, Chateau de, 214, 225-228, 300, 312 _Voltaire_, 52, 56, 204-205 _Warens, Mme. de_, 229, 236 _Werve, Claus de_, 127 _Whymper_, 301 Wurtemburgs, Chateau of the, 195-196 _Young, Arthur_, 8, 236 Yvoire, 268 _Zinzerling_, 7 _Zizim_, 318-319 * * * * * Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: Forêz et Beaujolais, pour l'annee=> Forêz et Beaujolais, pour l'année {pg 5} Le Fidele Conducteur=> Le Fidèle Conducteur {pg 6} mon nom mes mes=> mon nom mes {pg 46} francherait d'un bond=> franchirait d'un bond {pg 82} distict pavillon=> distict pavillion {pg 90} D'ou sont sortis=> D'où sont sortis {pg 101} hôtels privées=> hôtels privés {pg 128} restaurants mondaines=> restaurants mondains {pg 135} toutes les facons=> toutes les façons {pg 151} En tout pays ou vent vente=> En tout pays où vent vente {pg 158} rez-de-Chausée=> rez-de-Chaussée {pg 160} ce spectacle l'ecrase=> ce spectacle l'écrase {pg 166} rez-de-chaussêe=> rez-de-chaussée {pg 194} la Principaute de Dombes=> la Principauté de Dombes {pg 199} Mias viv' Macon pour beir=> Mias viv' Mâcon pour beir {pg 200} chateaux débout=> chateaux debout {pg 269} surounded by=> surrounded by {pg 224} comem si l'on=> comme si l'on {pg 234} rendezvous de chasse=> rendez-vous de chasse {pg 256} Route Imperiale=> Route Impériale {pg 286} said the Marechal to his king=> said the Maréchal to his king {pg 288} guerilla warfare=> guerrilla warfare {pg 311} 
535	----	Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk Second proof by Margaret Price. Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes by Robert Louis Stevenson A New Impression with a Frontispiece by Walter Crane London: Chatto & Windus, 1907 [Frontispiece, by Walter Crane: front.jpg] My Dear Sidney Colvin, The journey which this little book is to describe was very agreeable and fortunate for me. After an uncouth beginning, I had the best of luck to the end. But we are all travellers in what John Bunyan calls the wilderness of this world--all, too, travellers with a donkey: and the best that we find in our travels is an honest friend. He is a fortunate voyager who finds many. We travel, indeed, to find them. They are the end and the reward of life. They keep us worthy of ourselves; and when we are alone, we are only nearer to the absent. Every book is, in an intimate sense, a circular letter to the friends of him who writes it. They alone take his meaning; they find private messages, assurances of love, and expressions of gratitude, dropped for them in every corner. The public is but a generous patron who defrays the postage. Yet though the letter is directed to all, we have an old and kindly custom of addressing it on the outside to one. Of what shall a man be proud, if he is not proud of his friends? And so, my dear Sidney Colvin, it is with pride that I sign myself affectionately yours, R. L. S. VELAY Many are the mighty things, and nought is more mighty than man. . . . He masters by his devices the tenant of the fields. SOPHOCLES. Who hath loosed the bands of the wild ass? JOB. THE DONKEY, THE PACK, AND THE PACK-SADDLE In a little place called Le Monastier, in a pleasant highland valley fifteen miles from Le Puy, I spent about a month of fine days. Monastier is notable for the making of lace, for drunkenness, for freedom of language, and for unparalleled political dissension. There are adherents of each of the four French parties--Legitimists, Orleanists, Imperialists, and Republicans--in this little mountain-town; and they all hate, loathe, decry, and calumniate each other. Except for business purposes, or to give each other the lie in a tavern brawl, they have laid aside even the civility of speech. 'Tis a mere mountain Poland. In the midst of this Babylon I found myself a rallying-point; every one was anxious to be kind and helpful to the stranger. This was not merely from the natural hospitality of mountain people, nor even from the surprise with which I was regarded as a man living of his own free will in Le Monastier, when he might just as well have lived anywhere else in this big world; it arose a good deal from my projected excursion southward through the Cevennes. A traveller of my sort was a thing hitherto unheard of in that district. I was looked upon with contempt, like a man who should project a journey to the moon, but yet with a respectful interest, like one setting forth for the inclement Pole. All were ready to help in my preparations; a crowd of sympathisers supported me at the critical moment of a bargain; not a step was taken but was heralded by glasses round and celebrated by a dinner or a breakfast. It was already hard upon October before I was ready to set forth, and at the high altitudes over which my road lay there was no Indian summer to be looked for. I was determined, if not to camp out, at least to have the means of camping out in my possession; for there is nothing more harassing to an easy mind than the necessity of reaching shelter by dusk, and the hospitality of a village inn is not always to be reckoned sure by those who trudge on foot. A tent, above all for a solitary traveller, is troublesome to pitch, and troublesome to strike again; and even on the march it forms a conspicuous feature in your baggage. A sleeping-sack, on the other hand, is always ready--you have only to get into it; it serves a double purpose--a bed by night, a portmanteau by day; and it does not advertise your intention of camping out to every curious passer- by. This is a huge point. If a camp is not secret, it is but a troubled resting-place; you become a public character; the convivial rustic visits your bedside after an early supper; and you must sleep with one eye open, and be up before the day. I decided on a sleeping-sack; and after repeated visits to Le Puy, and a deal of high living for myself and my advisers, a sleeping-sack was designed, constructed, and triumphantly brought home. This child of my invention was nearly six feet square, exclusive of two triangular flaps to serve as a pillow by night and as the top and bottom of the sack by day. I call it 'the sack,' but it was never a sack by more than courtesy: only a sort of long roll or sausage, green waterproof cart-cloth without and blue sheep's fur within. It was commodious as a valise, warm and dry for a bed. There was luxurious turning room for one; and at a pinch the thing might serve for two. I could bury myself in it up to the neck; for my head I trusted to a fur cap, with a hood to fold down over my ears and a band to pass under my nose like a respirator; and in case of heavy rain I proposed to make myself a little tent, or tentlet, with my waterproof coat, three stones, and a bent branch. It will readily be conceived that I could not carry this huge package on my own, merely human, shoulders. It remained to choose a beast of burden. Now, a horse is a fine lady among animals, flighty, timid, delicate in eating, of tender health; he is too valuable and too restive to be left alone, so that you are chained to your brute as to a fellow galley-slave; a dangerous road puts him out of his wits; in short, he's an uncertain and exacting ally, and adds thirty-fold to the troubles of the voyager. What I required was something cheap and small and hardy, and of a stolid and peaceful temper; and all these requisites pointed to a donkey. There dwelt an old man in Monastier, of rather unsound intellect according to some, much followed by street-boys, and known to fame as Father Adam. Father Adam had a cart, and to draw the cart a diminutive she-ass, not much bigger than a dog, the colour of a mouse, with a kindly eye and a determined under-jaw. There was something neat and high-bred, a quakerish elegance, about the rogue that hit my fancy on the spot. Our first interview was in Monastier market-place. To prove her good temper, one child after another was set upon her back to ride, and one after another went head over heels into the air; until a want of confidence began to reign in youthful bosoms, and the experiment was discontinued from a dearth of subjects. I was already backed by a deputation of my friends; but as if this were not enough, all the buyers and sellers came round and helped me in the bargain; and the ass and I and Father Adam were the centre of a hubbub for near half an hour. At length she passed into my service for the consideration of sixty-five francs and a glass of brandy. The sack had already cost eighty francs and two glasses of beer; so that Modestine, as I instantly baptized her, was upon all accounts the cheaper article. Indeed, that was as it should be; for she was only an appurtenance of my mattress, or self-acting bedstead on four castors. I had a last interview with Father Adam in a billiard-room at the witching hour of dawn, when I administered the brandy. He professed himself greatly touched by the separation, and declared he had often bought white bread for the donkey when he had been content with black bread for himself; but this, according to the best authorities, must have been a flight of fancy. He had a name in the village for brutally misusing the ass; yet it is certain that he shed a tear, and the tear made a clean mark down one cheek. By the advice of a fallacious local saddler, a leather pad was made for me with rings to fasten on my bundle; and I thoughtfully completed my kit and arranged my toilette. By way of armoury and utensils, I took a revolver, a little spirit-lamp and pan, a lantern and some halfpenny candles, a jack-knife and a large leather flask. The main cargo consisted of two entire changes of warm clothing--besides my travelling wear of country velveteen, pilot-coat, and knitted spencer--some books, and my railway-rug, which, being also in the form of a bag, made me a double castle for cold nights. The permanent larder was represented by cakes of chocolate and tins of Bologna sausage. All this, except what I carried about my person, was easily stowed into the sheepskin bag; and by good fortune I threw in my empty knapsack, rather for convenience of carriage than from any thought that I should want it on my journey. For more immediate needs I took a leg of cold mutton, a bottle of Beaujolais, an empty bottle to carry milk, an egg-beater, and a considerable quantity of black bread and white, like Father Adam, for myself and donkey, only in my scheme of things the destinations were reversed. Monastrians, of all shades of thought in politics, had agreed in threatening me with many ludicrous misadventures, and with sudden death in many surprising forms. Cold, wolves, robbers, above all the nocturnal practical joker, were daily and eloquently forced on my attention. Yet in these vaticinations, the true, patent danger was left out. Like Christian, it was from my pack I suffered by the way. Before telling my own mishaps, let me in two words relate the lesson of my experience. If the pack is well strapped at the ends, and hung at full length--not doubled, for your life--across the pack-saddle, the traveller is safe. The saddle will certainly not fit, such is the imperfection of our transitory life; it will assuredly topple and tend to overset; but there are stones on every roadside, and a man soon learns the art of correcting any tendency to overbalance with a well-adjusted stone. On the day of my departure I was up a little after five; by six, we began to load the donkey; and ten minutes after, my hopes were in the dust. The pad would not stay on Modestine's back for half a moment. I returned it to its maker, with whom I had so contumelious a passage that the street outside was crowded from wall to wall with gossips looking on and listening. The pad changed hands with much vivacity; perhaps it would be more descriptive to say that we threw it at each other's heads; and, at any rate, we were very warm and unfriendly, and spoke with a deal of freedom. I had a common donkey pack-saddle--a barde, as they call it--fitted upon Modestine; and once more loaded her with my effects. The doubled sack, my pilot-coat (for it was warm, and I was to walk in my waistcoat), a great bar of black bread, and an open basket containing the white bread, the mutton, and the bottles, were all corded together in a very elaborate system of knots, and I looked on the result with fatuous content. In such a monstrous deck-cargo, all poised above the donkey's shoulders, with nothing below to balance, on a brand-new pack-saddle that had not yet been worn to fit the animal, and fastened with brand-new girths that might be expected to stretch and slacken by the way, even a very careless traveller should have seen disaster brewing. That elaborate system of knots, again, was the work of too many sympathisers to be very artfully designed. It is true they tightened the cords with a will; as many as three at a time would have a foot against Modestine's quarters, and be hauling with clenched teeth; but I learned afterwards that one thoughtful person, without any exercise of force, can make a more solid job than half-a-dozen heated and enthusiastic grooms. I was then but a novice; even after the misadventure of the pad nothing could disturb my security, and I went forth from the stable door as an ox goeth to the slaughter. THE GREEN DONKEY-DRIVER The bell of Monastier was just striking nine as I got quit of these preliminary troubles and descended the hill through the common. As long as I was within sight of the windows, a secret shame and the fear of some laughable defeat withheld me from tampering with Modestine. She tripped along upon her four small hoofs with a sober daintiness of gait; from time to time she shook her ears or her tail; and she looked so small under the bundle that my mind misgave me. We got across the ford without difficulty--there was no doubt about the matter, she was docility itself--and once on the other bank, where the road begins to mount through pine-woods, I took in my right hand the unhallowed staff, and with a quaking spirit applied it to the donkey. Modestine brisked up her pace for perhaps three steps, and then relapsed into her former minuet. Another application had the same effect, and so with the third. I am worthy the name of an Englishman, and it goes against my conscience to lay my hand rudely on a female. I desisted, and looked her all over from head to foot; the poor brute's knees were trembling and her breathing was distressed; it was plain that she could go no faster on a hill. God forbid, thought I, that I should brutalise this innocent creature; let her go at her own pace, and let me patiently follow. What that pace was, there is no word mean enough to describe; it was something as much slower than a walk as a walk is slower than a run; it kept me hanging on each foot for an incredible length of time; in five minutes it exhausted the spirit and set up a fever in all the muscles of the leg. And yet I had to keep close at hand and measure my advance exactly upon hers; for if I dropped a few yards into the rear, or went on a few yards ahead, Modestine came instantly to a halt and began to browse. The thought that this was to last from here to Alais nearly broke my heart. Of all conceivable journeys, this promised to be the most tedious. I tried to tell myself it was a lovely day; I tried to charm my foreboding spirit with tobacco; but I had a vision ever present to me of the long, long roads, up hill and down dale, and a pair of figures ever infinitesimally moving, foot by foot, a yard to the minute, and, like things enchanted in a nightmare, approaching no nearer to the goal. In the meantime there came up behind us a tall peasant, perhaps forty years of age, of an ironical snuffy countenance, and arrayed in the green tail-coat of the country. He overtook us hand over hand, and stopped to consider our pitiful advance. 'Your donkey,' says he, 'is very old?' I told him, I believed not. Then, he supposed, we had come far. I told him, we had but newly left Monastier. 'Et vous marchez comme ca!' cried he; and, throwing back his head, he laughed long and heartily. I watched him, half prepared to feel offended, until he had satisfied his mirth; and then, 'You must have no pity on these animals,' said he; and, plucking a switch out of a thicket, he began to lace Modestine about the stern-works, uttering a cry. The rogue pricked up her ears and broke into a good round pace, which she kept up without flagging, and without exhibiting the least symptom of distress, as long as the peasant kept beside us. Her former panting and shaking had been, I regret to say, a piece of comedy. My deus ex machina, before he left me, supplied some excellent, if inhumane, advice; presented me with the switch, which he declared she would feel more tenderly than my cane; and finally taught me the true cry or masonic word of donkey-drivers, 'Proot!' All the time, he regarded me with a comical, incredulous air, which was embarrassing to confront; and smiled over my donkey-driving, as I might have smiled over his orthography, or his green tail-coat. But it was not my turn for the moment. I was proud of my new lore, and thought I had learned the art to perfection. And certainly Modestine did wonders for the rest of the fore- noon, and I had a breathing space to look about me. It was Sabbath; the mountain-fields were all vacant in the sunshine; and as we came down through St. Martin de Frugeres, the church was crowded to the door, there were people kneeling without upon the steps, and the sound of the priest's chanting came forth out of the dim interior. It gave me a home feeling on the spot; for I am a countryman of the Sabbath, so to speak, and all Sabbath observances, like a Scottish accent, strike in me mixed feelings, grateful and the reverse. It is only a traveller, hurrying by like a person from another planet, who can rightly enjoy the peace and beauty of the great ascetic feast. The sight of the resting country does his spirit good. There is something better than music in the wide unusual silence; and it disposes him to amiable thoughts, like the sound of a little river or the warmth of sunlight. In this pleasant humour I came down the hill to where Goudet stands in a green end of a valley, with Chateau Beaufort opposite upon a rocky steep, and the stream, as clear as crystal, lying in a deep pool between them. Above and below, you may hear it wimpling over the stones, an amiable stripling of a river, which it seems absurd to call the Loire. On all sides, Goudet is shut in by mountains; rocky footpaths, practicable at best for donkeys, join it to the outer world of France; and the men and women drink and swear, in their green corner, or look up at the snow-clad peaks in winter from the threshold of their homes, in an isolation, you would think, like that of Homer's Cyclops. But it is not so; the postman reaches Goudet with the letter-bag; the aspiring youth of Goudet are within a day's walk of the railway at Le Puy; and here in the inn you may find an engraved portrait of the host's nephew, Regis Senac, 'Professor of Fencing and Champion of the two Americas,' a distinction gained by him, along with the sum of five hundred dollars, at Tammany Hall, New York, on the 10th April 1876. I hurried over my midday meal, and was early forth again. But, alas, as we climbed the interminable hill upon the other side, 'Proot!' seemed to have lost its virtue. I prooted like a lion, I prooted mellifluously like a sucking-dove; but Modestine would be neither softened nor intimidated. She held doggedly to her pace; nothing but a blow would move her, and that only for a second. I must follow at her heels, incessantly belabouring. A moment's pause in this ignoble toil, and she relapsed into her own private gait. I think I never heard of any one in as mean a situation. I must reach the lake of Bouchet, where I meant to camp, before sundown, and, to have even a hope of this, I must instantly maltreat this uncomplaining animal. The sound of my own blows sickened me. Once, when I looked at her, she had a faint resemblance to a lady of my acquaintance who formerly loaded me with kindness; and this increased my horror of my cruelty. To make matters worse, we encountered another donkey, ranging at will upon the roadside; and this other donkey chanced to be a gentleman. He and Modestine met nickering for joy, and I had to separate the pair and beat down their young romance with a renewed and feverish bastinado. If the other donkey had had the heart of a male under his hide, he would have fallen upon me tooth and hoof; and this was a kind of consolation--he was plainly unworthy of Modestine's affection. But the incident saddened me, as did everything that spoke of my donkey's sex. It was blazing hot up the valley, windless, with vehement sun upon my shoulders; and I had to labour so consistently with my stick that the sweat ran into my eyes. Every five minutes, too, the pack, the basket, and the pilot-coat would take an ugly slew to one side or the other; and I had to stop Modestine, just when I had got her to a tolerable pace of about two miles an hour, to tug, push, shoulder, and readjust the load. And at last, in the village of Ussel, saddle and all, the whole hypothec turned round and grovelled in the dust below the donkey's belly. She, none better pleased, incontinently drew up and seemed to smile; and a party of one man, two women, and two children came up, and, standing round me in a half-circle, encouraged her by their example. I had the devil's own trouble to get the thing righted; and the instant I had done so, without hesitation, it toppled and fell down upon the other side. Judge if I was hot! And yet not a hand was offered to assist me. The man, indeed, told me I ought to have a package of a different shape. I suggested, if he knew nothing better to the point in my predicament, he might hold his tongue. And the good-natured dog agreed with me smilingly. It was the most despicable fix. I must plainly content myself with the pack for Modestine, and take the following items for my own share of the portage: a cane, a quart-flask, a pilot-jacket heavily weighted in the pockets, two pounds of black bread, and an open basket full of meats and bottles. I believe I may say I am not devoid of greatness of soul; for I did not recoil from this infamous burden. I disposed it, Heaven knows how, so as to be mildly portable, and then proceeded to steer Modestine through the village. She tried, as was indeed her invariable habit, to enter every house and every courtyard in the whole length; and, encumbered as I was, without a hand to help myself, no words can render an idea of my difficulties. A priest, with six or seven others, was examining a church in process of repair, and he and his acolytes laughed loudly as they saw my plight. I remembered having laughed myself when I had seen good men struggling with adversity in the person of a jackass, and the recollection filled me with penitence. That was in my old light days, before this trouble came upon me. God knows at least that I shall never laugh again, thought I. But oh, what a cruel thing is a farce to those engaged in it! A little out of the village, Modestine, filled with the demon, set her heart upon a by-road, and positively refused to leave it. I dropped all my bundles, and, I am ashamed to say, struck the poor sinner twice across the face. It was pitiful to see her lift her head with shut eyes, as if waiting for another blow. I came very near crying; but I did a wiser thing than that, and sat squarely down by the roadside to consider my situation under the cheerful influence of tobacco and a nip of brandy. Modestine, in the meanwhile, munched some black bread with a contrite hypocritical air. It was plain that I must make a sacrifice to the gods of shipwreck. I threw away the empty bottle destined to carry milk; I threw away my own white bread, and, disdaining to act by general average, kept the black bread for Modestine; lastly, I threw away the cold leg of mutton and the egg-whisk, although this last was dear to my heart. Thus I found room for everything in the basket, and even stowed the boating- coat on the top. By means of an end of cord I slung it under one arm; and although the cord cut my shoulder, and the jacket hung almost to the ground, it was with a heart greatly lightened that I set forth again. I had now an arm free to thrash Modestine, and cruelly I chastised her. If I were to reach the lakeside before dark, she must bestir her little shanks to some tune. Already the sun had gone down into a windy-looking mist; and although there were still a few streaks of gold far off to the east on the hills and the black fir-woods, all was cold and grey about our onward path. An infinity of little country by-roads led hither and thither among the fields. It was the most pointless labyrinth. I could see my destination overhead, or rather the peak that dominates it; but choose as I pleased, the roads always ended by turning away from it, and sneaking back towards the valley, or northward along the margin of the hills. The failing light, the waning colour, the naked, unhomely, stony country through which I was travelling, threw me into some despondency. I promise you, the stick was not idle; I think every decent step that Modestine took must have cost me at least two emphatic blows. There was not another sound in the neighbourhood but that of my unwearying bastinado. Suddenly, in the midst of my toils, the load once more bit the dust, and, as by enchantment, all the cords were simultaneously loosened, and the road scattered with my dear possessions. The packing was to begin again from the beginning; and as I had to invent a new and better system, I do not doubt but I lost half an hour. It began to be dusk in earnest as I reached a wilderness of turf and stones. It had the air of being a road which should lead everywhere at the same time; and I was falling into something not unlike despair when I saw two figures stalking towards me over the stones. They walked one behind the other like tramps, but their pace was remarkable. The son led the way, a tall, ill-made, sombre, Scottish-looking man; the mother followed, all in her Sunday's best, with an elegantly embroidered ribbon to her cap, and a new felt hat atop, and proffering, as she strode along with kilted petticoats, a string of obscene and blasphemous oaths. I hailed the son, and asked him my direction. He pointed loosely west and north-west, muttered an inaudible comment, and, without slackening his pace for an instant, stalked on, as he was going, right athwart my path. The mother followed without so much as raising her head. I shouted and shouted after them, but they continued to scale the hillside, and turned a deaf ear to my outcries. At last, leaving Modestine by herself, I was constrained to run after them, hailing the while. They stopped as I drew near, the mother still cursing; and I could see she was a handsome, motherly, respectable-looking woman. The son once more answered me roughly and inaudibly, and was for setting out again. But this time I simply collared the mother, who was nearest me, and, apologising for my violence, declared that I could not let them go until they had put me on my road. They were neither of them offended--rather mollified than otherwise; told me I had only to follow them; and then the mother asked me what I wanted by the lake at such an hour. I replied, in the Scottish manner, by inquiring if she had far to go herself. She told me, with another oath, that she had an hour and a half's road before her. And then, without salutation, the pair strode forward again up the hillside in the gathering dusk. I returned for Modestine, pushed her briskly forward, and, after a sharp ascent of twenty minutes, reached the edge of a plateau. The view, looking back on my day's journey, was both wild and sad. Mount Mezenc and the peaks beyond St. Julien stood out in trenchant gloom against a cold glitter in the east; and the intervening field of hills had fallen together into one broad wash of shadow, except here and there the outline of a wooded sugar-loaf in black, here and there a white irregular patch to represent a cultivated farm, and here and there a blot where the Loire, the Gazeille, or the Laussonne wandered in a gorge. Soon we were on a high-road, and surprise seized on my mind as I beheld a village of some magnitude close at hand; for I had been told that the neighbourhood of the lake was uninhabited except by trout. The road smoked in the twilight with children driving home cattle from the fields; and a pair of mounted stride-legged women, hat and cap and all, dashed past me at a hammering trot from the canton where they had been to church and market. I asked one of the children where I was. At Bouchet St. Nicolas, he told me. Thither, about a mile south of my destination, and on the other side of a respectable summit, had these confused roads and treacherous peasantry conducted me. My shoulder was cut, so that it hurt sharply; my arm ached like toothache from perpetual beating; I gave up the lake and my design to camp, and asked for the auberge. I HAVE A GOAD The auberge of Bouchet St. Nicolas was among the least pretentious I have ever visited; but I saw many more of the like upon my journey. Indeed, it was typical of these French highlands. Imagine a cottage of two stories, with a bench before the door; the stable and kitchen in a suite, so that Modestine and I could hear each other dining; furniture of the plainest, earthern floors, a single bedchamber for travellers, and that without any convenience but beds. In the kitchen cooking and eating go forward side by side, and the family sleep at night. Any one who has a fancy to wash must do so in public at the common table. The food is sometimes spare; hard fish and omelette have been my portion more than once; the wine is of the smallest, the brandy abominable to man; and the visit of a fat sow, grouting under the table and rubbing against your legs, is no impossible accompaniment to dinner. But the people of the inn, in nine cases out of ten, show themselves friendly and considerate. As soon as you cross the doors you cease to be a stranger; and although these peasantry are rude and forbidding on the highway, they show a tincture of kind breeding when you share their hearth. At Bouchet, for instance, I uncorked my bottle of Beaujolais, and asked the host to join me. He would take but little. 'I am an amateur of such wine, do you see?' he said, 'and I am capable of leaving you not enough.' In these hedge-inns the traveller is expected to eat with his own knife; unless he ask, no other will be supplied: with a glass, a whang of bread, and an iron fork, the table is completely laid. My knife was cordially admired by the landlord of Bouchet, and the spring filled him with wonder. 'I should never have guessed that,' he said. 'I would bet,' he added, weighing it in his hand, 'that this cost you not less than five francs.' When I told him it had cost me twenty, his jaw dropped. He was a mild, handsome, sensible, friendly old man, astonishingly ignorant. His wife, who was not so pleasant in her manners, knew how to read, although I do not suppose she ever did so. She had a share of brains and spoke with a cutting emphasis, like one who ruled the roast. 'My man knows nothing,' she said, with an angry nod; 'he is like the beasts.' And the old gentleman signified acquiescence with his head. There was no contempt on her part, and no shame on his; the facts were accepted loyally, and no more about the matter. I was tightly cross-examined about my journey; and the lady understood in a moment, and sketched out what I should put into my book when I got home. 'Whether people harvest or not in such or such a place; if there were forests; studies of manners; what, for example, I and the master of the house say to you; the beauties of Nature, and all that.' And she interrogated me with a look. 'It is just that,' said I. 'You see,' she added to her husband, 'I understood that.' They were both much interested by the story of my misadventures. 'In the morning,' said the husband, 'I will make you something better than your cane. Such a beast as that feels nothing; it is in the proverb--dur comme un ane; you might beat her insensible with a cudgel, and yet you would arrive nowhere.' Something better! I little knew what he was offering. The sleeping-room was furnished with two beds. I had one; and I will own I was a little abashed to find a young man and his wife and child in the act of mounting into the other. This was my first experience of the sort; and if I am always to feel equally silly and extraneous, I pray God it be my last as well. I kept my eyes to myself, and know nothing of the woman except that she had beautiful arms, and seemed no whit embarrassed by my appearance. As a matter of fact, the situation was more trying to me than to the pair. A pair keep each other in countenance; it is the single gentleman who has to blush. But I could not help attributing my sentiments to the husband, and sought to conciliate his tolerance with a cup of brandy from my flask. He told me that he was a cooper of Alais travelling to St. Etienne in search of work, and that in his spare moments he followed the fatal calling of a maker of matches. Me he readily enough divined to be a brandy merchant. I was up first in the morning (Monday, September 23rd), and hastened my toilette guiltily, so as to leave a clear field for madam, the cooper's wife. I drank a bowl of milk, and set off to explore the neighbourhood of Bouchet. It was perishing cold, a grey, windy, wintry morning; misty clouds flew fast and low; the wind piped over the naked platform; and the only speck of colour was away behind Mount Mezenc and the eastern hills, where the sky still wore the orange of the dawn. It was five in the morning, and four thousand feet above the sea; and I had to bury my hands in my pockets and trot. People were trooping out to the labours of the field by twos and threes, and all turned round to stare upon the stranger. I had seen them coming back last night, I saw them going afield again; and there was the life of Bouchet in a nutshell. When I came back to the inn for a bit of breakfast, the landlady was in the kitchen combing out her daughter's hair; and I made her my compliments upon its beauty. 'Oh no,' said the mother; 'it is not so beautiful as it ought to be. Look, it is too fine.' Thus does a wise peasantry console itself under adverse physical circumstances, and, by a startling democratic process, the defects of the majority decide the type of beauty. 'And where,' said I, 'is monsieur?' 'The master of the house is upstairs,' she answered, 'making you a goad.' Blessed be the man who invented goads! Blessed the innkeeper of Bouchet St. Nicolas, who introduced me to their use! This plain wand, with an eighth of an inch of pin, was indeed a sceptre when he put it in my hands. Thenceforward Modestine was my slave. A prick, and she passed the most inviting stable door. A prick, and she broke forth into a gallant little trotlet that devoured the miles. It was not a remarkable speed, when all was said; and we took four hours to cover ten miles at the best of it. But what a heavenly change since yesterday! No more wielding of the ugly cudgel; no more flailing with an aching arm; no more broadsword exercise, but a discreet and gentlemanly fence. And what although now and then a drop of blood should appear on Modestine's mouse- coloured wedge-like rump? I should have preferred it otherwise, indeed; but yesterday's exploits had purged my heart of all humanity. The perverse little devil, since she would not be taken with kindness, must even go with pricking. It was bleak and bitter cold, and, except a cavalcade of stride-legged ladies and a pair of post-runners, the road was dead solitary all the way to Pradelles. I scarce remember an incident but one. A handsome foal with a bell about his neck came charging up to us upon a stretch of common, sniffed the air martially as one about to do great deeds, and suddenly thinking otherwise in his green young heart, put about and galloped off as he had come, the bell tinkling in the wind. For a long while afterwards I saw his noble attitude as he drew up, and heard the note of his bell; and when I struck the high-road, the song of the telegraph-wires seemed to continue the same music. Pradelles stands on a hillside, high above the Allier, surrounded by rich meadows. They were cutting aftermath on all sides, which gave the neighbourhood, this gusty autumn morning, an untimely smell of hay. On the opposite bank of the Allier the land kept mounting for miles to the horizon: a tanned and sallow autumn landscape, with black blots of fir- wood and white roads wandering through the hills. Over all this the clouds shed a uniform and purplish shadow, sad and somewhat menacing, exaggerating height and distance, and throwing into still higher relief the twisted ribbons of the highway. It was a cheerless prospect, but one stimulating to a traveller. For I was now upon the limit of Velay, and all that I beheld lay in another county--wild Gevaudan, mountainous, uncultivated, and but recently disforested from terror of the wolves. Wolves, alas, like bandits, seem to flee the traveller's advance; and you may trudge through all our comfortable Europe, and not meet with an adventure worth the name. But here, if anywhere, a man was on the frontiers of hope. For this was the land of the ever-memorable BEAST, the Napoleon Bonaparte of wolves. What a career was his! He lived ten months at free quarters in Gevaudan and Vivarais; he ate women and children and 'shepherdesses celebrated for their beauty'; he pursued armed horsemen; he has been seen at broad noonday chasing a post-chaise and outrider along the king's high-road, and chaise and outrider fleeing before him at the gallop. He was placarded like a political offender, and ten thousand francs were offered for his head. And yet, when he was shot and sent to Versailles, behold! a common wolf, and even small for that. 'Though I could reach from pole to pole,' sang Alexander Pope; the Little Corporal shook Europe; and if all wolves had been as this wolf, they would have changed the history of man. M. Elie Berthet has made him the hero of a novel, which I have read, and do not wish to read again. I hurried over my lunch, and was proof against the landlady's desire that I should visit our Lady of Pradelles, 'who performed many miracles, although she was of wood'; and before three-quarters of an hour I was goading Modestine down the steep descent that leads to Langogne on the Allier. On both sides of the road, in big dusty fields, farmers were preparing for next spring. Every fifty yards a yoke of great-necked stolid oxen were patiently haling at the plough. I saw one of these mild formidable servants of the glebe, who took a sudden interest in Modestine and me. The furrow down which he was journeying lay at an angle to the road, and his head was solidly fixed to the yoke like those of caryatides below a ponderous cornice; but he screwed round his big honest eyes and followed us with a ruminating look, until his master bade him turn the plough and proceed to reascend the field. From all these furrowing ploughshares, from the feet of oxen, from a labourer here and there who was breaking the dry clods with a hoe, the wind carried away a thin dust like so much smoke. It was a fine, busy, breathing, rustic landscape; and as I continued to descend, the highlands of Gevaudan kept mounting in front of me against the sky. I had crossed the Loire the day before; now I was to cross the Allier; so near are these two confluents in their youth. Just at the bridge of Langogne, as the long-promised rain was beginning to fall, a lassie of some seven or eight addressed me in the sacramental phrase, 'D'ou'st-ce- que vous venez?' She did it with so high an air that she set me laughing; and this cut her to the quick. She was evidently one who reckoned on respect, and stood looking after me in silent dudgeon, as I crossed the bridge and entered the county of Gevaudan. UPPER GEVAUDAN The way also here was very wearisome through dirt and slabbiness; nor was there on all this ground so much as one inn or victualling-house wherein to refresh the feebler sort. PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. A CAMP IN THE DARK The next day (Tuesday, September 24th), it was two o'clock in the afternoon before I got my journal written up and my knapsack repaired, for I was determined to carry my knapsack in the future and have no more ado with baskets; and half an hour afterwards I set out for Le Cheylard l'Eveque, a place on the borders of the forest of Mercoire. A man, I was told, should walk there in an hour and a half; and I thought it scarce too ambitious to suppose that a man encumbered with a donkey might cover the same distance in four hours. All the way up the long hill from Langogne it rained and hailed alternately; the wind kept freshening steadily, although slowly; plentiful hurrying clouds--some dragging veils of straight rain-shower, others massed and luminous as though promising snow--careered out of the north and followed me along my way. I was soon out of the cultivated basin of the Allier, and away from the ploughing oxen, and such-like sights of the country. Moor, heathery marsh, tracts of rock and pines, woods of birch all jewelled with the autumn yellow, here and there a few naked cottages and bleak fields,--these were the characters of the country. Hill and valley followed valley and hill; the little green and stony cattle-tracks wandered in and out of one another, split into three or four, died away in marshy hollows, and began again sporadically on hillsides or at the borders of a wood. There was no direct road to Cheylard, and it was no easy affair to make a passage in this uneven country and through this intermittent labyrinth of tracks. It must have been about four when I struck Sagnerousse, and went on my way rejoicing in a sure point of departure. Two hours afterwards, the dusk rapidly falling, in a lull of the wind, I issued from a fir-wood where I had long been wandering, and found, not the looked-for village, but another marish bottom among rough-and-tumble hills. For some time past I had heard the ringing of cattle-bells ahead; and now, as I came out of the skirts of the wood, I saw near upon a dozen cows and perhaps as many more black figures, which I conjectured to be children, although the mist had almost unrecognisably exaggerated their forms. These were all silently following each other round and round in a circle, now taking hands, now breaking up with chains and reverences. A dance of children appeals to very innocent and lively thoughts; but, at nightfall on the marshes, the thing was eerie and fantastic to behold. Even I, who am well enough read in Herbert Spencer, felt a sort of silence fall for an instant on my mind. The next, I was pricking Modestine forward, and guiding her like an unruly ship through the open. In a path, she went doggedly ahead of her own accord, as before a fair wind; but once on the turf or among heather, and the brute became demented. The tendency of lost travellers to go round in a circle was developed in her to the degree of passion, and it took all the steering I had in me to keep even a decently straight course through a single field. While I was thus desperately tacking through the bog, children and cattle began to disperse, until only a pair of girls remained behind. From these I sought direction on my path. The peasantry in general were but little disposed to counsel a wayfarer. One old devil simply retired into his house, and barricaded the door on my approach; and I might beat and shout myself hoarse, he turned a deaf ear. Another, having given me a direction which, as I found afterwards, I had misunderstood, complacently watched me going wrong without adding a sign. He did not care a stalk of parsley if I wandered all night upon the hills! As for these two girls, they were a pair of impudent sly sluts, with not a thought but mischief. One put out her tongue at me, the other bade me follow the cows; and they both giggled and jogged each other's elbows. The Beast of Gevaudan ate about a hundred children of this district; I began to think of him with sympathy. Leaving the girls, I pushed on through the bog, and got into another wood and upon a well-marked road. It grew darker and darker. Modestine, suddenly beginning to smell mischief, bettered the pace of her own accord, and from that time forward gave me no trouble. It was the first sign of intelligence I had occasion to remark in her. At the same time, the wind freshened into half a gale, and another heavy discharge of rain came flying up out of the north. At the other side of the wood I sighted some red windows in the dusk. This was the hamlet of Fouzilhic; three houses on a hillside, near a wood of birches. Here I found a delightful old man, who came a little way with me in the rain to put me safely on the road for Cheylard. He would hear of no reward; but shook his hands above his head almost as if in menace, and refused volubly and shrilly, in unmitigated patois. All seemed right at last. My thoughts began to turn upon dinner and a fireside, and my heart was agreeably softened in my bosom. Alas, and I was on the brink of new and greater miseries! Suddenly, at a single swoop, the night fell. I have been abroad in many a black night, but never in a blacker. A glimmer of rocks, a glimmer of the track where it was well beaten, a certain fleecy density, or night within night, for a tree,--this was all that I could discriminate. The sky was simply darkness overhead; even the flying clouds pursued their way invisibly to human eyesight. I could not distinguish my hand at arm's-length from the track, nor my goad, at the same distance, from the meadows or the sky. Soon the road that I was following split, after the fashion of the country, into three or four in a piece of rocky meadow. Since Modestine had shown such a fancy for beaten roads, I tried her instinct in this predicament. But the instinct of an ass is what might be expected from the name; in half a minute she was clambering round and round among some boulders, as lost a donkey as you would wish to see. I should have camped long before had I been properly provided; but as this was to be so short a stage, I had brought no wine, no bread for myself, and little over a pound for my lady friend. Add to this, that I and Modestine were both handsomely wetted by the showers. But now, if I could have found some water, I should have camped at once in spite of all. Water, however, being entirely absent, except in the form of rain, I determined to return to Fouzilhic, and ask a guide a little farther on my way--'a little farther lend thy guiding hand.' The thing was easy to decide, hard to accomplish. In this sensible roaring blackness I was sure of nothing but the direction of the wind. To this I set my face; the road had disappeared, and I went across country, now in marshy opens, now baffled by walls unscalable to Modestine, until I came once more in sight of some red windows. This time they were differently disposed. It was not Fouzilhic, but Fouzilhac, a hamlet little distant from the other in space, but worlds away in the spirit of its inhabitants. I tied Modestine to a gate, and groped forward, stumbling among rocks, plunging mid-leg in bog, until I gained the entrance of the village. In the first lighted house there was a woman who would not open to me. She could do nothing, she cried to me through the door, being alone and lame; but if I would apply at the next house, there was a man who could help me if he had a mind. They came to the next door in force, a man, two women, and a girl, and brought a pair of lanterns to examine the wayfarer. The man was not ill- looking, but had a shifty smile. He leaned against the doorpost, and heard me state my case. All I asked was a guide as far as Cheylard. 'C'est que, voyez-vous, il fait noir,' said he. I told him that was just my reason for requiring help. 'I understand that,' said he, looking uncomfortable; 'mais--c'est--de la peine.' I was willing to pay, I said. He shook his head. I rose as high as ten francs; but he continued to shake his head. 'Name your own price, then,' said I. 'Ce n'est pas ca,' he said at length, and with evident difficulty; 'but I am not going to cross the door--mais je ne sortirai pas de la porte.' I grew a little warm, and asked him what he proposed that I should do. 'Where are you going beyond Cheylard?' he asked by way of answer. 'That is no affair of yours,' I returned, for I was not going to indulge his bestial curiosity; 'it changes nothing in my present predicament.' 'C'est vrai, ca,' he acknowledged, with a laugh; 'oui, c'est vrai. Et d'ou venez-vous?' A better man than I might have felt nettled. 'Oh,' said I, 'I am not going to answer any of your questions, so you may spare yourself the trouble of putting them. I am late enough already; I want help. If you will not guide me yourself, at least help me to find some one else who will.' 'Hold on,' he cried suddenly. 'Was it not you who passed in the meadow while it was still day?' 'Yes, yes,' said the girl, whom I had not hitherto recognised; 'it was monsieur; I told him to follow the cow.' 'As for you, mademoiselle,' said I, 'you are a farceuse.' 'And,' added the man, 'what the devil have you done to be still here?' What the devil, indeed! But there I was. 'The great thing,' said I, 'is to make an end of it'; and once more proposed that he should help me to find a guide. 'C'est que,' he said again, 'c'est que--il fait noir.' 'Very well,' said I; 'take one of your lanterns.' 'No,' he cried, drawing a thought backward, and again intrenching himself behind one of his former phrases; 'I will not cross the door.' I looked at him. I saw unaffected terror struggling on his face with unaffected shame; he was smiling pitifully and wetting his lip with his tongue, like a detected schoolboy. I drew a brief picture of my state, and asked him what I was to do. 'I don't know,' he said; 'I will not cross the door.' Here was the Beast of Gevaudan, and no mistake. 'Sir,' said I, with my most commanding manners, 'you are a coward.' And with that I turned my back upon the family party, who hastened to retire within their fortifications; and the famous door was closed again, but not till I had overheard the sound of laughter. Filia barbara pater barbarior. Let me say it in the plural: the Beasts of Gevaudan. The lanterns had somewhat dazzled me, and I ploughed distressfully among stones and rubbish-heaps. All the other houses in the village were both dark and silent; and though I knocked at here and there a door, my knocking was unanswered. It was a bad business; I gave up Fouzilhac with my curses. The rain had stopped, and the wind, which still kept rising, began to dry my coat and trousers. 'Very well,' thought I, 'water or no water, I must camp.' But the first thing was to return to Modestine. I am pretty sure I was twenty minutes groping for my lady in the dark; and if it had not been for the unkindly services of the bog, into which I once more stumbled, I might have still been groping for her at the dawn. My next business was to gain the shelter of a wood, for the wind was cold as well as boisterous. How, in this well-wooded district, I should have been so long in finding one, is another of the insoluble mysteries of this day's adventures; but I will take my oath that I put near an hour to the discovery. At last black trees began to show upon my left, and, suddenly crossing the road, made a cave of unmitigated blackness right in front. I call it a cave without exaggeration; to pass below that arch of leaves was like entering a dungeon. I felt about until my hand encountered a stout branch, and to this I tied Modestine, a haggard, drenched, desponding donkey. Then I lowered my pack, laid it along the wall on the margin of the road, and unbuckled the straps. I knew well enough where the lantern was; but where were the candles? I groped and groped among the tumbled articles, and, while I was thus groping, suddenly I touched the spirit- lamp. Salvation! This would serve my turn as well. The wind roared unwearyingly among the trees; I could hear the boughs tossing and the leaves churning through half a mile of forest; yet the scene of my encampment was not only as black as the pit, but admirably sheltered. At the second match the wick caught flame. The light was both livid and shifting; but it cut me off from the universe, and doubled the darkness of the surrounding night. I tied Modestine more conveniently for herself, and broke up half the black bread for her supper, reserving the other half against the morning. Then I gathered what I should want within reach, took off my wet boots and gaiters, which I wrapped in my waterproof, arranged my knapsack for a pillow under the flap of my sleeping-bag, insinuated my limbs into the interior, and buckled myself in like a bambino. I opened a tin of Bologna sausage and broke a cake of chocolate, and that was all I had to eat. It may sound offensive, but I ate them together, bite by bite, by way of bread and meat. All I had to wash down this revolting mixture was neat brandy: a revolting beverage in itself. But I was rare and hungry; ate well, and smoked one of the best cigarettes in my experience. Then I put a stone in my straw hat, pulled the flap of my fur cap over my neck and eyes, put my revolver ready to my hand, and snuggled well down among the sheepskins. I questioned at first if I were sleepy, for I felt my heart beating faster than usual, as if with an agreeable excitement to which my mind remained a stranger. But as soon as my eyelids touched, that subtle glue leaped between them, and they would no more come separate. The wind among the trees was my lullaby. Sometimes it sounded for minutes together with a steady, even rush, not rising nor abating; and again it would swell and burst like a great crashing breaker, and the trees would patter me all over with big drops from the rain of the afternoon. Night after night, in my own bedroom in the country, I have given ear to this perturbing concert of the wind among the woods; but whether it was a difference in the trees, or the lie of the ground, or because I was myself outside and in the midst of it, the fact remains that the wind sang to a different tune among these woods of Gevaudan. I hearkened and hearkened; and meanwhile sleep took gradual possession of my body and subdued my thoughts and senses; but still my last waking effort was to listen and distinguish, and my last conscious state was one of wonder at the foreign clamour in my ears. Twice in the course of the dark hours--once when a stone galled me underneath the sack, and again when the poor patient Modestine, growing angry, pawed and stamped upon the road--I was recalled for a brief while to consciousness, and saw a star or two overhead, and the lace-like edge of the foliage against the sky. When I awoke for the third time (Wednesday, September 25th), the world was flooded with a blue light, the mother of the dawn. I saw the leaves labouring in the wind and the ribbon of the road; and, on turning my head, there was Modestine tied to a beech, and standing half across the path in an attitude of inimitable patience. I closed my eyes again, and set to thinking over the experience of the night. I was surprised to find how easy and pleasant it had been, even in this tempestuous weather. The stone which annoyed me would not have been there, had I not been forced to camp blindfold in the opaque night; and I had felt no other inconvenience, except when my feet encountered the lantern or the second volume of Peyrat's Pastors of the Desert among the mixed contents of my sleeping-bag; nay, more, I had felt not a touch of cold, and awakened with unusually lightsome and clear sensations. With that, I shook myself, got once more into my boots and gaiters, and, breaking up the rest of the bread for Modestine, strolled about to see in what part of the world I had awakened. Ulysses, left on Ithaca, and with a mind unsettled by the goddess, was not more pleasantly astray. I have been after an adventure all my life, a pure dispassionate adventure, such as befell early and heroic voyagers; and thus to be found by morning in a random woodside nook in Gevaudan--not knowing north from south, as strange to my surroundings as the first man upon the earth, an inland castaway--was to find a fraction of my day-dreams realised. I was on the skirts of a little wood of birch, sprinkled with a few beeches; behind, it adjoined another wood of fir; and in front, it broke up and went down in open order into a shallow and meadowy dale. All around there were bare hilltops, some near, some far away, as the perspective closed or opened, but none apparently much higher than the rest. The wind huddled the trees. The golden specks of autumn in the birches tossed shiveringly. Overhead the sky was full of strings and shreds of vapour, flying, vanishing, reappearing, and turning about an axis like tumblers, as the wind hounded them through heaven. It was wild weather and famishing cold. I ate some chocolate, swallowed a mouthful of brandy, and smoked a cigarette before the cold should have time to disable my fingers. And by the time I had got all this done, and had made my pack and bound it on the pack-saddle, the day was tiptoe on the threshold of the east. We had not gone many steps along the lane, before the sun, still invisible to me, sent a glow of gold over some cloud mountains that lay ranged along the eastern sky. The wind had us on the stern, and hurried us bitingly forward. I buttoned myself into my coat, and walked on in a pleasant frame of mind with all men, when suddenly, at a corner, there was Fouzilhic once more in front of me. Nor only that, but there was the old gentleman who had escorted me so far the night before, running out of his house at sight of me, with hands upraised in horror. 'My poor boy!' he cried, 'what does this mean?' I told him what had happened. He beat his old hands like clappers in a mill, to think how lightly he had let me go; but when he heard of the man of Fouzilhac, anger and depression seized upon his mind. 'This time, at least,' said he, 'there shall be no mistake.' And he limped along, for he was very rheumatic, for about half a mile, and until I was almost within sight of Cheylard, the destination I had hunted for so long. CHEYLARD AND LUC Candidly, it seemed little worthy of all this searching. A few broken ends of village, with no particular street, but a succession of open places heaped with logs and fagots; a couple of tilted crosses, a shrine to Our Lady of all Graces on the summit of a little hill; and all this, upon a rattling highland river, in the corner of a naked valley. What went ye out for to see? thought I to myself. But the place had a life of its own. I found a board, commemorating the liberalities of Cheylard for the past year, hung up, like a banner, in the diminutive and tottering church. In 1877, it appeared, the inhabitants subscribed forty-eight francs ten centimes for the 'Work of the Propagation of the Faith.' Some of this, I could not help hoping, would be applied to my native land. Cheylard scrapes together halfpence for the darkened souls in Edinburgh; while Balquhidder and Dunrossness bemoan the ignorance of Rome. Thus, to the high entertainment of the angels, do we pelt each other with evangelists, like schoolboys bickering in the snow. The inn was again singularly unpretentious. The whole furniture of a not ill-to-do family was in the kitchen: the beds, the cradle, the clothes, the plate-rack, the meal-chest, and the photograph of the parish priest. There were five children, one of whom was set to its morning prayers at the stair-foot soon after my arrival, and a sixth would ere long be forthcoming. I was kindly received by these good folk. They were much interested in my misadventure. The wood in which I had slept belonged to them; the man of Fouzilhac they thought a monster of iniquity, and counselled me warmly to summon him at law--'because I might have died.' The good wife was horror-stricken to see me drink over a pint of uncreamed milk. 'You will do yourself an evil,' she said. 'Permit me to boil it for you.' After I had begun the morning on this delightful liquor, she having an infinity of things to arrange, I was permitted, nay requested, to make a bowl of chocolate for myself. My boots and gaiters were hung up to dry, and, seeing me trying to write my journal on my knee, the eldest daughter let down a hinged table in the chimney-corner for my convenience. Here I wrote, drank my chocolate, and finally ate an omelette before I left. The table was thick with dust; for, as they explained, it was not used except in winter weather. I had a clear look up the vent, through brown agglomerations of soot and blue vapour, to the sky; and whenever a handful of twigs was thrown on to the fire, my legs were scorched by the blaze. The husband had begun life as a muleteer, and when I came to charge Modestine showed himself full of the prudence of his art. 'You will have to change this package,' said he; 'it ought to be in two parts, and then you might have double the weight.' I explained that I wanted no more weight; and for no donkey hitherto created would I cut my sleeping-bag in two. 'It fatigues her, however,' said the innkeeper; 'it fatigues her greatly on the march. Look.' Alas, there were her two forelegs no better than raw beef on the inside, and blood was running from under her tail. They told me when I started, and I was ready to believe it, that before a few days I should come to love Modestine like a dog. Three days had passed, we had shared some misadventures, and my heart was still as cold as a potato towards my beast of burden. She was pretty enough to look at; but then she had given proof of dead stupidity, redeemed indeed by patience, but aggravated by flashes of sorry and ill-judged light-heartedness. And I own this new discovery seemed another point against her. What the devil was the good of a she-ass if she could not carry a sleeping-bag and a few necessaries? I saw the end of the fable rapidly approaching, when I should have to carry Modestine. AEsop was the man to know the world! I assure you I set out with heavy thoughts upon my short day's march. It was not only heavy thoughts about Modestine that weighted me upon the way; it was a leaden business altogether. For first, the wind blew so rudely that I had to hold on the pack with one hand from Cheylard to Luc; and second, my road lay through one of the most beggarly countries in the world. It was like the worst of the Scottish Highlands, only worse; cold, naked, and ignoble, scant of wood, scant of heather, scant of life. A road and some fences broke the unvarying waste, and the line of the road was marked by upright pillars, to serve in time of snow. Why any one should desire to visit either Luc or Cheylard is more than my much-inventing spirit can suppose. For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilisation, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints. Alas, as we get up in life, and are more preoccupied with our affairs, even a holiday is a thing that must be worked for. To hold a pack upon a pack-saddle against a gale out of the freezing north is no high industry, but it is one that serves to occupy and compose the mind. And when the present is so exacting, who can annoy himself about the future? I came out at length above the Allier. A more unsightly prospect at this season of the year it would be hard to fancy. Shelving hills rose round it on all sides, here dabbled with wood and fields, there rising to peaks alternately naked and hairy with pines. The colour throughout was black or ashen, and came to a point in the ruins of the castle of Luc, which pricked up impudently from below my feet, carrying on a pinnacle a tall white statue of Our Lady, which, I heard with interest, weighed fifty quintals, and was to be dedicated on the 6th of October. Through this sorry landscape trickled the Allier and a tributary of nearly equal size, which came down to join it through a broad nude valley in Vivarais. The weather had somewhat lightened, and the clouds massed in squadron; but the fierce wind still hunted them through heaven, and cast great ungainly splashes of shadow and sunlight over the scene. Luc itself was a straggling double file of houses wedged between hill and river. It had no beauty, nor was there any notable feature, save the old castle overhead with its fifty quintals of brand-new Madonna. But the inn was clean and large. The kitchen, with its two box-beds hung with clean check curtains, with its wide stone chimney, its chimney-shelf four yards long and garnished with lanterns and religious statuettes, its array of chests and pair of ticking clocks, was the very model of what a kitchen ought to be; a melodrama kitchen, suitable for bandits or noblemen in disguise. Nor was the scene disgraced by the landlady, a handsome, silent, dark old woman, clothed and hooded in black like a nun. Even the public bedroom had a character of its own, with the long deal tables and benches, where fifty might have dined, set out as for a harvest-home, and the three box-beds along the wall. In one of these, lying on straw and covered with a pair of table-napkins, did I do penance all night long in goose-flesh and chattering teeth, and sigh, from time to time as I awakened, for my sheepskin sack and the lee of some great wood. OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 'I behold The House, the Brotherhood austere-- And what am I, that I am here?' MATTHEW ARNOLD. FATHER APOLLINARIS Next morning (Thursday, 26th September) I took the road in a new order. The sack was no longer doubled, but hung at full length across the saddle, a green sausage six feet long with a tuft of blue wool hanging out of either end. It was more picturesque, it spared the donkey, and, as I began to see, it would ensure stability, blow high, blow low. But it was not without a pang that I had so decided. For although I had purchased a new cord, and made all as fast as I was able, I was yet jealously uneasy lest the flaps should tumble out and scatter my effects along the line of march. My way lay up the bald valley of the river, along the march of Vivarais and Gevaudan. The hills of Gevaudan on the right were a little more naked, if anything, than those of Vivarais upon the left, and the former had a monopoly of a low dotty underwood that grew thickly in the gorges and died out in solitary burrs upon the shoulders and the summits. Black bricks of fir-wood were plastered here and there upon both sides, and here and there were cultivated fields. A railway ran beside the river; the only bit of railway in Gevaudan, although there are many proposals afoot and surveys being made, and even, as they tell me, a station standing ready built in Mende. A year or two hence and this may be another world. The desert is beleaguered. Now may some Languedocian Wordsworth turn the sonnet into patois: 'Mountains and vales and floods, heard YE that whistle?' At a place called La Bastide I was directed to leave the river, and follow a road that mounted on the left among the hills of Vivarais, the modern Ardeche; for I was now come within a little way of my strange destination, the Trappist monastery of Our Lady of the Snows. The sun came out as I left the shelter of a pine-wood, and I beheld suddenly a fine wild landscape to the south. High rocky hills, as blue as sapphire, closed the view, and between these lay ridge upon ridge, heathery, craggy, the sun glittering on veins of rock, the underwood clambering in the hollows, as rude as God made them at the first. There was not a sign of man's hand in all the prospect; and indeed not a trace of his passage, save where generation after generation had walked in twisted footpaths, in and out among the beeches, and up and down upon the channelled slopes. The mists, which had hitherto beset me, were now broken into clouds, and fled swiftly and shone brightly in the sun. I drew a long breath. It was grateful to come, after so long, upon a scene of some attraction for the human heart. I own I like definite form in what my eyes are to rest upon; and if landscapes were sold, like the sheets of characters of my boyhood, one penny plain and twopence coloured, I should go the length of twopence every day of my life. But if things had grown better to the south, it was still desolate and inclement near at hand. A spidery cross on every hill-top marked the neighbourhood of a religious house; and a quarter of a mile beyond, the outlook southward opening out and growing bolder with every step, a white statue of the Virgin at the corner of a young plantation directed the traveller to Our Lady of the Snows. Here, then, I struck leftward, and pursued my way, driving my secular donkey before me, and creaking in my secular boots and gaiters, towards the asylum of silence. I had not gone very far ere the wind brought to me the clanging of a bell, and somehow, I can scarce tell why, my heart sank within me at the sound. I have rarely approached anything with more unaffected terror than the monastery of Our Lady of the Snows. This it is to have had a Protestant education. And suddenly, on turning a corner, fear took hold on me from head to foot--slavish, superstitious fear; and though I did not stop in my advance, yet I went on slowly, like a man who should have passed a bourne unnoticed, and strayed into the country of the dead. For there, upon the narrow new-made road, between the stripling pines, was a mediaeval friar, fighting with a barrowful of turfs. Every Sunday of my childhood I used to study the Hermits of Marco Sadeler--enchanting prints, full of wood and field and mediaeval landscapes, as large as a county, for the imagination to go a-travelling in; and here, sure enough, was one of Marco Sadeler's heroes. He was robed in white like any spectre, and the hood falling back, in the instancy of his contention with the barrow, disclosed a pate as bald and yellow as a skull. He might have been buried any time these thousand years, and all the lively parts of him resolved into earth and broken up with the farmer's harrow. I was troubled besides in my mind as to etiquette. Durst I address a person who was under a vow of silence? Clearly not. But drawing near, I doffed my cap to him with a far-away superstitious reverence. He nodded back, and cheerfully addressed me. Was I going to the monastery? Who was I? An Englishman? Ah, an Irishman, then? 'No,' I said, 'a Scotsman.' A Scotsman? Ah, he had never seen a Scotsman before. And he looked me all over, his good, honest, brawny countenance shining with interest, as a boy might look upon a lion or an alligator. From him I learned with disgust that I could not be received at Our Lady of the Snows; I might get a meal, perhaps, but that was all. And then, as our talk ran on, and it turned out that I was not a pedlar, but a literary man, who drew landscapes and was going to write a book, he changed his manner of thinking as to my reception (for I fear they respect persons even in a Trappist monastery), and told me I must be sure to ask for the Father Prior, and state my case to him in full. On second thoughts he determined to go down with me himself; he thought he could manage for me better. Might he say that I was a geographer? No; I thought, in the interests of truth, he positively might not. 'Very well, then' (with disappointment), 'an author.' It appeared he had been in a seminary with six young Irishmen, all priests long since, who had received newspapers and kept him informed of the state of ecclesiastical affairs in England. And he asked me eagerly after Dr. Pusey, for whose conversion the good man had continued ever since to pray night and morning. 'I thought he was very near the truth,' he said; 'and he will reach it yet; there is so much virtue in prayer.' He must be a stiff, ungodly Protestant who can take anything but pleasure in this kind and hopeful story. While he was thus near the subject, the good father asked me if I were a Christian; and when he found I was not, or not after his way, he glossed it over with great good-will. The road which we were following, and which this stalwart father had made with his own two hands within the space of a year, came to a corner, and showed us some white buildings a little farther on beyond the wood. At the same time, the bell once more sounded abroad. We were hard upon the monastery. Father Apollinaris (for that was my companion's name) stopped me. 'I must not speak to you down there,' he said. 'Ask for the Brother Porter, and all will be well. But try to see me as you go out again through the wood, where I may speak to you. I am charmed to have made your acquaintance.' And then suddenly raising his arms, flapping his fingers, and crying out twice, 'I must not speak, I must not speak!' he ran away in front of me, and disappeared into the monastery door. I own this somewhat ghastly eccentricity went a good way to revive my terrors. But where one was so good and simple, why should not all be alike? I took heart of grace, and went forward to the gate as fast as Modestine, who seemed to have a disaffection for monasteries, would permit. It was the first door, in my acquaintance of her, which she had not shown an indecent haste to enter. I summoned the place in form, though with a quaking heart. Father Michael, the Father Hospitaller, and a pair of brown-robed brothers came to the gate and spoke with me a while. I think my sack was the great attraction; it had already beguiled the heart of poor Apollinaris, who had charged me on my life to show it to the Father Prior. But whether it was my address, or the sack, or the idea speedily published among that part of the brotherhood who attend on strangers that I was not a pedlar after all, I found no difficulty as to my reception. Modestine was led away by a layman to the stables, and I and my pack were received into Our Lady of the Snows. THE MONKS Father Michael, a pleasant, fresh-faced, smiling man, perhaps of thirty- five, took me to the pantry, and gave me a glass of liqueur to stay me until dinner. We had some talk, or rather I should say he listened to my prattle indulgently enough, but with an abstracted air, like a spirit with a thing of clay. And truly, when I remember that I descanted principally on my appetite, and that it must have been by that time more than eighteen hours since Father Michael had so much as broken bread, I can well understand that he would find an earthly savour in my conversation. But his manner, though superior, was exquisitely gracious; and I find I have a lurking curiosity as to Father Michael's past. The whet administered, I was left alone for a little in the monastery garden. This is no more than the main court, laid out in sandy paths and beds of parti-coloured dahlias, and with a fountain and a black statue of the Virgin in the centre. The buildings stand around it four-square, bleak, as yet unseasoned by the years and weather, and with no other features than a belfry and a pair of slated gables. Brothers in white, brothers in brown, passed silently along the sanded alleys; and when I first came out, three hooded monks were kneeling on the terrace at their prayers. A naked hill commands the monastery upon one side, and the wood commands it on the other. It lies exposed to wind; the snow falls off and on from October to May, and sometimes lies six weeks on end; but if they stood in Eden, with a climate like heaven's, the buildings themselves would offer the same wintry and cheerless aspect; and for my part, on this wild September day, before I was called to dinner, I felt chilly in and out. When I had eaten well and heartily, Brother Ambrose, a hearty conversible Frenchman (for all those who wait on strangers have the liberty to speak), led me to a little room in that part of the building which is set apart for MM. les retraitants. It was clean and whitewashed, and furnished with strict necessaries, a crucifix, a bust of the late Pope, the Imitation in French, a book of religious meditations, and the Life of Elizabeth Seton, evangelist, it would appear, of North America and of New England in particular. As far as my experience goes, there is a fair field for some more evangelisation in these quarters; but think of Cotton Mather! I should like to give him a reading of this little work in heaven, where I hope he dwells; but perhaps he knows all that already, and much more; and perhaps he and Mrs. Seton are the dearest friends, and gladly unite their voices in the everlasting psalm. Over the table, to conclude the inventory of the room, hung a set of regulations for MM. les retraitants: what services they should attend, when they were to tell their beads or meditate, and when they were to rise and go to rest. At the foot was a notable N.B.: 'Le temps libre est employe a l'examen de conscience, a la confession, a faire de bonnes resolutions, etc.' To make good resolutions, indeed! You might talk as fruitfully of making the hair grow on your head. I had scarce explored my niche when Brother Ambrose returned. An English boarder, it appeared, would like to speak with me. I professed my willingness, and the friar ushered in a fresh, young, little Irishman of fifty, a deacon of the Church, arrayed in strict canonicals, and wearing on his head what, in default of knowledge, I can only call the ecclesiastical shako. He had lived seven years in retreat at a convent of nuns in Belgium, and now five at Our Lady of the Snows; he never saw an English newspaper; he spoke French imperfectly, and had he spoken it like a native, there was not much chance of conversation where he dwelt. With this, he was a man eminently sociable, greedy of news, and simple- minded like a child. If I was pleased to have a guide about the monastery, he was no less delighted to see an English face and hear an English tongue. He showed me his own room, where he passed his time among breviaries, Hebrew Bibles, and the Waverley Novels. Thence he led me to the cloisters, into the chapter-house, through the vestry, where the brothers' gowns and broad straw hats were hanging up, each with his religious name upon a board--names full of legendary suavity and interest, such as Basil, Hilarion, Raphael, or Pacifique; into the library, where were all the works of Veuillot and Chateaubriand, and the Odes et Ballades, if you please, and even Moliere, to say nothing of innumerable fathers and a great variety of local and general historians. Thence my good Irishman took me round the workshops, where brothers bake bread, and make cartwheels, and take photographs; where one superintends a collection of curiosities, and another a gallery of rabbits. For in a Trappist monastery each monk has an occupation of his own choice, apart from his religious duties and the general labours of the house. Each must sing in the choir, if he has a voice and ear, and join in the haymaking if he has a hand to stir; but in his private hours, although he must be occupied, he may be occupied on what he likes. Thus I was told that one brother was engaged with literature; while Father Apollinaris busies himself in making roads, and the Abbot employs himself in binding books. It is not so long since this Abbot was consecrated, by the way; and on that occasion, by a special grace, his mother was permitted to enter the chapel and witness the ceremony of consecration. A proud day for her to have a son a mitred abbot; it makes you glad to think they let her in. In all these journeyings to and fro, many silent fathers and brethren fell in our way. Usually they paid no more regard to our passage than if we had been a cloud; but sometimes the good deacon had a permission to ask of them, and it was granted by a peculiar movement of the hands, almost like that of a dog's paws in swimming, or refused by the usual negative signs, and in either case with lowered eyelids and a certain air of contrition, as of a man who was steering very close to evil. The monks, by special grace of their Abbot, were still taking two meals a day; but it was already time for their grand fast, which begins somewhere in September and lasts till Easter, and during which they eat but once in the twenty-four hours, and that at two in the afternoon, twelve hours after they have begun the toil and vigil of the day. Their meals are scanty, but even of these they eat sparingly; and though each is allowed a small carafe of wine, many refrain from this indulgence. Without doubt, the most of mankind grossly overeat themselves; our meals serve not only for support, but as a hearty and natural diversion from the labour of life. Yet, though excess may be hurtful, I should have thought this Trappist regimen defective. And I am astonished, as I look back, at the freshness of face and cheerfulness of manner of all whom I beheld. A happier nor a healthier company I should scarce suppose that I have ever seen. As a matter of fact, on this bleak upland, and with the incessant occupation of the monks, life is of an uncertain tenure, and death no infrequent visitor, at Our Lady of the Snows. This, at least, was what was told me. But if they die easily, they must live healthily in the meantime, for they seemed all firm of flesh and high in colour; and the only morbid sign that I could observe, an unusual brilliancy of eye, was one that served rather to increase the general impression of vivacity and strength. Those with whom I spoke were singularly sweet-tempered, with what I can only call a holy cheerfulness in air and conversation. There is a note, in the direction to visitors, telling them not to be offended at the curt speech of those who wait upon them, since it is proper to monks to speak little. The note might have been spared; to a man the hospitallers were all brimming with innocent talk, and, in my experience of the monastery, it was easier to begin than to break off a conversation. With the exception of Father Michael, who was a man of the world, they showed themselves full of kind and healthy interest in all sorts of subjects--in politics, in voyages, in my sleeping-sack--and not without a certain pleasure in the sound of their own voices. As for those who are restricted to silence, I can only wonder how they bear their solemn and cheerless isolation. And yet, apart from any view of mortification, I can see a certain policy, not only in the exclusion of women, but in this vow of silence. I have had some experience of lay phalansteries, of an artistic, not to say a bacchanalian character; and seen more than one association easily formed and yet more easily dispersed. With a Cistercian rule, perhaps they might have lasted longer. In the neighbourhood of women it is but a touch-and-go association that can be formed among defenceless men; the stronger electricity is sure to triumph; the dreams of boyhood, the schemes of youth, are abandoned after an interview of ten minutes, and the arts and sciences, and professional male jollity, deserted at once for two sweet eyes and a caressing accent. And next after this, the tongue is the great divider. I am almost ashamed to pursue this worldly criticism of a religious rule; but there is yet another point in which the Trappist order appeals to me as a model of wisdom. By two in the morning the clapper goes upon the bell, and so on, hour by hour, and sometimes quarter by quarter, till eight, the hour of rest; so infinitesimally is the day divided among different occupations. The man who keeps rabbits, for example, hurries from his hutches to the chapel, the chapter-room, or the refectory, all day long: every hour he has an office to sing, a duty to perform; from two, when he rises in the dark, till eight, when he returns to receive the comfortable gift of sleep, he is upon his feet and occupied with manifold and changing business. I know many persons, worth several thousands in the year, who are not so fortunate in the disposal of their lives. Into how many houses would not the note of the monastery bell, dividing the day into manageable portions, bring peace of mind and healthful activity of body! We speak of hardships, but the true hardship is to be a dull fool, and permitted to mismanage life in our own dull and foolish manner. From this point of view, we may perhaps better understand the monk's existence. A long novitiate and every proof of constancy of mind and strength of body is required before admission to the order; but I could not find that many were discouraged. In the photographer's studio, which figures so strangely among the outbuildings, my eye was attracted by the portrait of a young fellow in the uniform of a private of foot. This was one of the novices, who came of the age for service, and marched and drilled and mounted guard for the proper time among the garrison of Algiers. Here was a man who had surely seen both sides of life before deciding; yet as soon as he was set free from service he returned to finish his novitiate. This austere rule entitles a man to heaven as by right. When the Trappist sickens, he quits not his habit; he lies in the bed of death as he has prayed and laboured in his frugal and silent existence; and when the Liberator comes, at the very moment, even before they have carried him in his robe to lie his little last in the chapel among continual chantings, joy-bells break forth, as if for a marriage, from the slated belfry, and proclaim throughout the neighbourhood that another soul has gone to God. At night, under the conduct of my kind Irishman, I took my place in the gallery to hear compline and Salve Regina, with which the Cistercians bring every day to a conclusion. There were none of those circumstances which strike the Protestant as childish or as tawdry in the public offices of Rome. A stern simplicity, heightened by the romance of the surroundings, spoke directly to the heart. I recall the whitewashed chapel, the hooded figures in the choir, the lights alternately occluded and revealed, the strong manly singing, the silence that ensued, the sight of cowled heads bowed in prayer, and then the clear trenchant beating of the bell, breaking in to show that the last office was over and the hour of sleep had come; and when I remember, I am not surprised that I made my escape into the court with somewhat whirling fancies, and stood like a man bewildered in the windy starry night. But I was weary; and when I had quieted my spirits with Elizabeth Seton's memoirs--a dull work--the cold and the raving of the wind among the pines (for my room was on that side of the monastery which adjoins the woods) disposed me readily to slumber. I was wakened at black midnight, as it seemed, though it was really two in the morning, by the first stroke upon the bell. All the brothers were then hurrying to the chapel; the dead in life, at this untimely hour, were already beginning the uncomforted labours of their day. The dead in life--there was a chill reflection. And the words of a French song came back into my memory, telling of the best of our mixed existence: 'Que t'as de belles filles, Girofle! Girofla! Que t'as de belles filles, L'Amour let comptera!' And I blessed God that I was free to wander, free to hope, and free to love. THE BOARDERS But there was another side to my residence at Our Lady of the Snows. At this late season there were not many boarders; and yet I was not alone in the public part of the monastery. This itself is hard by the gate, with a small dining-room on the ground-floor and a whole corridor of cells similar to mine upstairs. I have stupidly forgotten the board for a regular retraitant; but it was somewhere between three and five francs a day, and I think most probably the first. Chance visitors like myself might give what they chose as a free-will offering, but nothing was demanded. I may mention that when I was going away, Father Michael refused twenty francs as excessive. I explained the reasoning which led me to offer him so much; but even then, from a curious point of honour, he would not accept it with his own hand. 'I have no right to refuse for the monastery,' he explained, 'but I should prefer if you would give it to one of the brothers.' I had dined alone, because I arrived late; but at supper I found two other guests. One was a country parish priest, who had walked over that morning from the seat of his cure near Mende to enjoy four days of solitude and prayer. He was a grenadier in person, with the hale colour and circular wrinkles of a peasant; and as he complained much of how he had been impeded by his skirts upon the march, I have a vivid fancy portrait of him, striding along, upright, big-boned, with kilted cassock, through the bleak hills of Gevaudan. The other was a short, grizzling, thick-set man, from forty-five to fifty, dressed in tweed with a knitted spencer, and the red ribbon of a decoration in his button-hole. This last was a hard person to classify. He was an old soldier, who had seen service and risen to the rank of commandant; and he retained some of the brisk decisive manners of the camp. On the other hand, as soon as his resignation was accepted, he had come to Our Lady of the Snows as a boarder, and, after a brief experience of its ways, had decided to remain as a novice. Already the new life was beginning to modify his appearance; already he had acquired somewhat of the quiet and smiling air of the brethren; and he was as yet neither an officer nor a Trappist, but partook of the character of each. And certainly here was a man in an interesting nick of life. Out of the noise of cannon and trumpets, he was in the act of passing into this still country bordering on the grave, where men sleep nightly in their grave-clothes, and, like phantoms, communicate by signs. At supper we talked politics. I make it my business, when I am in France, to preach political good-will and moderation, and to dwell on the example of Poland, much as some alarmists in England dwell on the example of Carthage. The priest and the commandant assured me of their sympathy with all I said, and made a heavy sighing over the bitterness of contemporary feeling. 'Why, you cannot say anything to a man with which he does not absolutely agree,' said I, 'but he flies up at you in a temper.' They both declared that such a state of things was antichristian. While we were thus agreeing, what should my tongue stumble upon but a word in praise of Gambetta's moderation. The old soldier's countenance was instantly suffused with blood; with the palms of his hands he beat the table like a naughty child. 'Comment, monsieur?' he shouted. 'Comment? Gambetta moderate? Will you dare to justify these words?' But the priest had not forgotten the tenor of our talk. And suddenly, in the height of his fury, the old soldier found a warning look directed on his face; the absurdity of his behaviour was brought home to him in a flash; and the storm came to an abrupt end, without another word. It was only in the morning, over our coffee (Friday, September 27th), that this couple found out I was a heretic. I suppose I had misled them by some admiring expressions as to the monastic life around us; and it was only by a point-blank question that the truth came out. I had been tolerantly used both by simple Father Apollinaris and astute Father Michael; and the good Irish deacon, when he heard of my religious weakness, had only patted me upon the shoulder and said, 'You must be a Catholic and come to heaven.' But I was now among a different sect of orthodox. These two men were bitter and upright and narrow, like the worst of Scotsmen, and indeed, upon my heart, I fancy they were worse. The priest snorted aloud like a battle-horse. 'Et vous pretendez mourir dans cette espece de croyance?' he demanded; and there is no type used by mortal printers large enough to qualify his accent. I humbly indicated that I had no design of changing. But he could not away with such a monstrous attitude. 'No, no,' he cried; 'you must change. You have come here, God has led you here, and you must embrace the opportunity.' I made a slip in policy; I appealed to the family affections, though I was speaking to a priest and a soldier, two classes of men circumstantially divorced from the kind and homely ties of life. 'Your father and mother?' cried the priest. 'Very well; you will convert them in their turn when you go home.' I think I see my father's face! I would rather tackle the Gaetulian lion in his den than embark on such an enterprise against the family theologian. But now the hunt was up; priest and soldier were in full cry for my conversion; and the Work of the Propagation of the Faith, for which the people of Cheylard subscribed forty-eight francs ten centimes during 1877, was being gallantly pursued against myself. It was an odd but most effective proselytising. They never sought to convince me in argument, where I might have attempted some defence; but took it for granted that I was both ashamed and terrified at my position, and urged me solely on the point of time. Now, they said, when God had led me to Our Lady of the Snows, now was the appointed hour. 'Do not be withheld by false shame,' observed the priest, for my encouragement. For one who feels very similarly to all sects of religion, and who has never been able, even for a moment, to weigh seriously the merit of this or that creed on the eternal side of things, however much he may see to praise or blame upon the secular and temporal side, the situation thus created was both unfair and painful. I committed my second fault in tact, and tried to plead that it was all the same thing in the end, and we were all drawing near by different sides to the same kind and undiscriminating Friend and Father. That, as it seems to lay spirits, would be the only gospel worthy of the name. But different men think differently; and this revolutionary aspiration brought down the priest with all the terrors of the law. He launched into harrowing details of hell. The damned, he said--on the authority of a little book which he had read not a week before, and which, to add conviction to conviction, he had fully intended to bring along with him in his pocket--were to occupy the same attitude through all eternity in the midst of dismal tortures. And as he thus expatiated, he grew in nobility of aspect with his enthusiasm. As a result the pair concluded that I should seek out the Prior, since the Abbot was from home, and lay my case immediately before him. 'C'est mon conseil comme ancien militaire,' observed the commandant; 'et celui de monsieur comme pretre.' 'Oui,' added the cure, sententiously nodding; 'comme ancien militaire--et comme pretre.' At this moment, whilst I was somewhat embarrassed how to answer, in came one of the monks, a little brown fellow, as lively as a grig, and with an Italian accent, who threw himself at once into the contention, but in a milder and more persuasive vein, as befitted one of these pleasant brethren. Look at him, he said. The rule was very hard; he would have dearly liked to stay in his own country, Italy--it was well known how beautiful it was, the beautiful Italy; but then there were no Trappists in Italy; and he had a soul to save; and here he was. I am afraid I must be at bottom, what a cheerful Indian critic has dubbed me, 'a faddling hedonist,' for this description of the brother's motives gave me somewhat of a shock. I should have preferred to think he had chosen the life for its own sake, and not for ulterior purposes; and this shows how profoundly I was out of sympathy with these good Trappists, even when I was doing my best to sympathise. But to the cure the argument seemed decisive. 'Hear that!' he cried. 'And I have seen a marquis here, a marquis, a marquis'--he repeated the holy word three times over--'and other persons high in society; and generals. And here, at your side, is this gentleman, who has been so many years in armies--decorated, an old warrior. And here he is, ready to dedicate himself to God.' I was by this time so thoroughly embarrassed that I pled cold feet, and made my escape from the apartment. It was a furious windy morning, with a sky much cleared, and long and potent intervals of sunshine; and I wandered until dinner in the wild country towards the east, sorely staggered and beaten upon by the gale, but rewarded with some striking views. At dinner the Work of the Propagation of the Faith was recommenced, and on this occasion still more distastefully to me. The priest asked me many questions as to the contemptible faith of my fathers, and received my replies with a kind of ecclesiastical titter. 'Your sect,' he said once; 'for I think you will admit it would be doing it too much honour to call it a religion.' 'As you please, monsieur,' said I. 'La parole est a vous.' At length I grew annoyed beyond endurance; and although he was on his own ground and, what is more to the purpose, an old man, and so holding a claim upon my toleration, I could not avoid a protest against this uncivil usage. He was sadly discountenanced. 'I assure you,' he said, 'I have no inclination to laugh in my heart. I have no other feeling but interest in your soul.' And there ended my conversion. Honest man! he was no dangerous deceiver; but a country parson, full of zeal and faith. Long may he tread Gevaudan with his kilted skirts--a man strong to walk and strong to comfort his parishioners in death! I daresay he would beat bravely through a snowstorm where his duty called him; and it is not always the most faithful believer who makes the cunningest apostle. UPPER GEVAUDAN (continued) The bed was made, the room was fit, By punctual eve the stars were lit; The air was still, the water ran; No need there was for maid or man, When we put up, my ass and I, At God's green caravanserai. OLD PLAY. ACROSS THE GOULET The wind fell during dinner, and the sky remained clear; so it was under better auspices that I loaded Modestine before the monastery gate. My Irish friend accompanied me so far on the way. As we came through the wood, there was Pere Apollinaire hauling his barrow; and he too quitted his labours to go with me for perhaps a hundred yards, holding my hand between both of his in front of him. I parted first from one and then from the other with unfeigned regret, but yet with the glee of the traveller who shakes off the dust of one stage before hurrying forth upon another. Then Modestine and I mounted the course of the Allier, which here led us back into Gevaudan towards its sources in the forest of Mercoire. It was but an inconsiderable burn before we left its guidance. Thence, over a hill, our way lay through a naked plateau, until we reached Chasserades at sundown. The company in the inn kitchen that night were all men employed in survey for one of the projected railways. They were intelligent and conversible, and we decided the future of France over hot wine, until the state of the clock frightened us to rest. There were four beds in the little upstairs room; and we slept six. But I had a bed to myself, and persuaded them to leave the window open. 'He, bourgeois; il est cinq heures!' was the cry that wakened me in the morning (Saturday, September 28th). The room was full of a transparent darkness, which dimly showed me the other three beds and the five different nightcaps on the pillows. But out of the window the dawn was growing ruddy in a long belt over the hill-tops, and day was about to flood the plateau. The hour was inspiriting; and there seemed a promise of calm weather, which was perfectly fulfilled. I was soon under way with Modestine. The road lay for a while over the plateau, and then descended through a precipitous village into the valley of the Chassezac. This stream ran among green meadows, well hidden from the world by its steep banks; the broom was in flower, and here and there was a hamlet sending up its smoke. At last the path crossed the Chassezac upon a bridge, and, forsaking this deep hollow, set itself to cross the mountain of La Goulet. It wound up through Lestampes by upland fields and woods of beech and birch, and with every corner brought me into an acquaintance with some new interest. Even in the gully of the Chassezac my ear had been struck by a noise like that of a great bass bell ringing at the distance of many miles; but this, as I continued to mount and draw nearer to it, seemed to change in character, and I found at length that it came from some one leading flocks afield to the note of a rural horn. The narrow street of Lestampes stood full of sheep, from wall to wall--black sheep and white, bleating with one accord like the birds in spring, and each one accompanying himself upon the sheep-bell round his neck. It made a pathetic concert, all in treble. A little higher, and I passed a pair of men in a tree with pruning-hooks, and one of them was singing the music of a bourree. Still further, and when I was already threading the birches, the crowing of cocks came cheerfully up to my ears, and along with that the voice of a flute discoursing a deliberate and plaintive air from one of the upland villages. I pictured to myself some grizzled, apple-cheeked, country schoolmaster fluting in his bit of a garden in the clear autumn sunshine. All these beautiful and interesting sounds filled my heart with an unwonted expectation; and it appeared to me that, once past this range which I was mounting, I should descend into the garden of the world. Nor was I deceived, for I was now done with rains and winds and a bleak country. The first part of my journey ended here; and this was like an induction of sweet sounds into the other and more beautiful. There are other degrees of feyness, as of punishment, besides the capital; and I was now led by my good spirits into an adventure which I relate in the interest of future donkey-drivers. The road zigzagged so widely on the hillside, that I chose a short cut by map and compass, and struck through the dwarf woods to catch the road again upon a higher level. It was my one serious conflict with Modestine. She would none of my short cut; she turned in my face; she backed, she reared; she, whom I had hitherto imagined to be dumb, actually brayed with a loud hoarse flourish, like a cock crowing for the dawn. I plied the goad with one hand; with the other, so steep was the ascent, I had to hold on the pack- saddle. Half-a-dozen times she was nearly over backwards on the top of me; half-a-dozen times, from sheer weariness of spirit, I was nearly giving it up, and leading her down again to follow the road. But I took the thing as a wager, and fought it through. I was surprised, as I went on my way again, by what appeared to be chill rain-drops falling on my hand, and more than once looked up in wonder at the cloudless sky. But it was only sweat which came dropping from my brow. Over the summit of the Goulet there was no marked road--only upright stones posted from space to space to guide the drovers. The turf underfoot was springy and well scented. I had no company but a lark or two, and met but one bullock-cart between Lestampes and Bleymard. In front of me I saw a shallow valley, and beyond that the range of the Lozere, sparsely wooded and well enough modelled in the flanks, but straight and dull in outline. There was scarce a sign of culture; only about Bleymard, the white high-road from Villefort to Mende traversed a range of meadows, set with spiry poplars, and sounding from side to side with the bells of flocks and herds. A NIGHT AMONG THE PINES From Bleymard after dinner, although it was already late, I set out to scale a portion of the Lozere. An ill-marked stony drove-road guided me forward; and I met nearly half-a-dozen bullock-carts descending from the woods, each laden with a whole pine-tree for the winter's firing. At the top of the woods, which do not climb very high upon this cold ridge, I struck leftward by a path among the pines, until I hit on a dell of green turf, where a streamlet made a little spout over some stones to serve me for a water-tap. 'In a more sacred or sequestered bower . . . nor nymph nor faunus haunted.' The trees were not old, but they grew thickly round the glade: there was no outlook, except north-eastward upon distant hill- tops, or straight upward to the sky; and the encampment felt secure and private like a room. By the time I had made my arrangements and fed Modestine, the day was already beginning to decline. I buckled myself to the knees into my sack and made a hearty meal; and as soon as the sun went down, I pulled my cap over my eyes and fell asleep. Night is a dead monotonous period under a roof; but in the open world it passes lightly, with its stars and dews and perfumes, and the hours are marked by changes in the face of Nature. What seems a kind of temporal death to people choked between walls and curtains, is only a light and living slumber to the man who sleeps afield. All night long he can hear Nature breathing deeply and freely; even as she takes her rest, she turns and smiles; and there is one stirring hour unknown to those who dwell in houses, when a wakeful influence goes abroad over the sleeping hemisphere, and all the outdoor world are on their feet. It is then that the cock first crows, not this time to announce the dawn, but like a cheerful watchman speeding the course of night. Cattle awake on the meadows; sheep break their fast on dewy hillsides, and change to a new lair among the ferns; and houseless men, who have lain down with the fowls, open their dim eyes and behold the beauty of the night. At what inaudible summons, at what gentle touch of Nature, are all these sleepers thus recalled in the same hour to life? Do the stars rain down an influence, or do we share some thrill of mother earth below our resting bodies? Even shepherds and old country-folk, who are the deepest read in these arcana, have not a guess as to the means or purpose of this nightly resurrection. Towards two in the morning they declare the thing takes place; and neither know nor inquire further. And at least it is a pleasant incident. We are disturbed in our slumber only, like the luxurious Montaigne, 'that we may the better and more sensibly relish it.' We have a moment to look upon the stars. And there is a special pleasure for some minds in the reflection that we share the impulse with all outdoor creatures in our neighbourhood, that we have escaped out of the Bastille of civilisation, and are become, for the time being, a mere kindly animal and a sheep of Nature's flock. When that hour came to me among the pines, I wakened thirsty. My tin was standing by me half full of water. I emptied it at a draught; and feeling broad awake after this internal cold aspersion, sat upright to make a cigarette. The stars were clear, coloured, and jewel-like, but not frosty. A faint silvery vapour stood for the Milky Way. All around me the black fir-points stood upright and stock-still. By the whiteness of the pack-saddle, I could see Modestine walking round and round at the length of her tether; I could hear her steadily munching at the sward; but there was not another sound, save the indescribable quiet talk of the runnel over the stones. I lay lazily smoking and studying the colour of the sky, as we call the void of space, from where it showed a reddish grey behind the pines to where it showed a glossy blue-black between the stars. As if to be more like a pedlar, I wear a silver ring. This I could see faintly shining as I raised or lowered the cigarette; and at each whiff the inside of my hand was illuminated, and became for a second the highest light in the landscape. A faint wind, more like a moving coolness than a stream of air, passed down the glade from time to time; so that even in my great chamber the air was being renewed all night long. I thought with horror of the inn at Chasserades and the congregated nightcaps; with horror of the nocturnal prowesses of clerks and students, of hot theatres and pass-keys and close rooms. I have not often enjoyed a more serene possession of myself, nor felt more independent of material aids. The outer world, from which we cower into our houses, seemed after all a gentle habitable place; and night after night a man's bed, it seemed, was laid and waiting for him in the fields, where God keeps an open house. I thought I had rediscovered one of those truths which are revealed to savages and hid from political economists: at the least, I had discovered a new pleasure for myself. And yet even while I was exulting in my solitude I became aware of a strange lack. I wished a companion to lie near me in the starlight, silent and not moving, but ever within touch. For there is a fellowship more quiet even than solitude, and which, rightly understood, is solitude made perfect. And to live out of doors with the woman a man loves is of all lives the most complete and free. As I thus lay, between content and longing, a faint noise stole towards me through the pines. I thought, at first, it was the crowing of cocks or the barking of dogs at some very distant farm; but steadily and gradually it took articulate shape in my ears, until I became aware that a passenger was going by upon the high-road in the valley, and singing loudly as he went. There was more of good-will than grace in his performance; but he trolled with ample lungs; and the sound of his voice took hold upon the hillside and set the air shaking in the leafy glens. I have heard people passing by night in sleeping cities; some of them sang; one, I remember, played loudly on the bagpipes. I have heard the rattle of a cart or carriage spring up suddenly after hours of stillness, and pass, for some minutes, within the range of my hearing as I lay abed. There is a romance about all who are abroad in the black hours, and with something of a thrill we try to guess their business. But here the romance was double: first, this glad passenger, lit internally with wine, who sent up his voice in music through the night; and then I, on the other hand, buckled into my sack, and smoking alone in the pine-woods between four and five thousand feet towards the stars. When I awoke again (Sunday, 29th September), many of the stars had disappeared; only the stronger companions of the night still burned visibly overhead; and away towards the east I saw a faint haze of light upon the horizon, such as had been the Milky Way when I was last awake. Day was at hand. I lit my lantern, and by its glow-worm light put on my boots and gaiters; then I broke up some bread for Modestine, filled my can at the water-tap, and lit my spirit-lamp to boil myself some chocolate. The blue darkness lay long in the glade where I had so sweetly slumbered; but soon there was a broad streak of orange melting into gold along the mountain-tops of Vivarais. A solemn glee possessed my mind at this gradual and lovely coming in of day. I heard the runnel with delight; I looked round me for something beautiful and unexpected; but the still black pine-trees, the hollow glade, the munching ass, remained unchanged in figure. Nothing had altered but the light, and that, indeed, shed over all a spirit of life and of breathing peace, and moved me to a strange exhilaration. I drank my water-chocolate, which was hot if it was not rich, and strolled here and there, and up and down about the glade. While I was thus delaying, a gush of steady wind, as long as a heavy sigh, poured direct out of the quarter of the morning. It was cold, and set me sneezing. The trees near at hand tossed their black plumes in its passage; and I could see the thin distant spires of pine along the edge of the hill rock slightly to and fro against the golden east. Ten minutes after, the sunlight spread at a gallop along the hillside, scattering shadows and sparkles, and the day had come completely. I hastened to prepare my pack, and tackle the steep ascent that lay before me; but I had something on my mind. It was only a fancy; yet a fancy will sometimes be importunate. I had been most hospitably received and punctually served in my green caravanserai. The room was airy, the water excellent, and the dawn had called me to a moment. I say nothing of the tapestries or the inimitable ceiling, nor yet of the view which I commanded from the windows; but I felt I was in some one's debt for all this liberal entertainment. And so it pleased me, in a half-laughing way, to leave pieces of money on the turf as I went along, until I had left enough for my night's lodging. I trust they did not fall to some rich and churlish drover. THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS We travelled in the print of olden wars; Yet all the land was green; And love we found, and peace, Where fire and war had been. They pass and smile, the children of the sword-- No more the sword they wield; And O, how deep the corn Along the battlefield! W. P. BANNATYNE. ACROSS THE LOZERE The track that I had followed in the evening soon died out, and I continued to follow over a bald turf ascent a row of stone pillars, such as had conducted me across the Goulet. It was already warm. I tied my jacket on the pack, and walked in my knitted waistcoat. Modestine herself was in high spirits, and broke of her own accord, for the first time in my experience, into a jolting trot that set the oats swashing in the pocket of my coat. The view, back upon the northern Gevaudan, extended with every step; scarce a tree, scarce a house, appeared upon the fields of wild hill that ran north, east, and west, all blue and gold in the haze and sunlight of the morning. A multitude of little birds kept sweeping and twittering about my path; they perched on the stone pillars, they pecked and strutted on the turf, and I saw them circle in volleys in the blue air, and show, from time to time, translucent flickering wings between the sun and me. Almost from the first moment of my march, a faint large noise, like a distant surf, had filled my ears. Sometimes I was tempted to think it the voice of a neighbouring waterfall, and sometimes a subjective result of the utter stillness of the hill. But as I continued to advance, the noise increased, and became like the hissing of an enormous tea-urn, and at the same time breaths of cool air began to reach me from the direction of the summit. At length I understood. It was blowing stiffly from the south upon the other slope of the Lozere, and every step that I took I was drawing nearer to the wind. Although it had been long desired, it was quite unexpectedly at last that my eyes rose above the summit. A step that seemed no way more decisive than many other steps that had preceded it--and, 'like stout Cortez when, with eagle eyes, he stared on the Pacific,' I took possession, in my own name, of a new quarter of the world. For behold, instead of the gross turf rampart I had been mounting for so long, a view into the hazy air of heaven, and a land of intricate blue hills below my feet. The Lozere lies nearly east and west, cutting Gevaudan into two unequal parts; its highest point, this Pic de Finiels, on which I was then standing, rises upwards of five thousand six hundred feet above the sea, and in clear weather commands a view over all lower Languedoc to the Mediterranean Sea. I have spoken with people who either pretended or believed that they had seen, from the Pic de Finiels, white ships sailing by Montpellier and Cette. Behind was the upland northern country through which my way had lain, peopled by a dull race, without wood, without much grandeur of hill-form, and famous in the past for little beside wolves. But in front of me, half veiled in sunny haze, lay a new Gevaudan, rich, picturesque, illustrious for stirring events. Speaking largely, I was in the Cevennes at Monastier, and during all my journey; but there is a strict and local sense in which only this confused and shaggy country at my feet has any title to the name, and in this sense the peasantry employ the word. These are the Cevennes with an emphasis: the Cevennes of the Cevennes. In that undecipherable labyrinth of hills, a war of bandits, a war of wild beasts, raged for two years between the Grand Monarch with all his troops and marshals on the one hand, and a few thousand Protestant mountaineers upon the other. A hundred and eighty years ago, the Camisards held a station even on the Lozere, where I stood; they had an organisation, arsenals, a military and religious hierarchy; their affairs were 'the discourse of every coffee-house' in London; England sent fleets in their support; their leaders prophesied and murdered; with colours and drums, and the singing of old French psalms, their bands sometimes affronted daylight, marched before walled cities, and dispersed the generals of the king; and sometimes at night, or in masquerade, possessed themselves of strong castles, and avenged treachery upon their allies and cruelty upon their foes. There, a hundred and eighty years ago, was the chivalrous Roland, 'Count and Lord Roland, generalissimo of the Protestants in France,' grave, silent, imperious, pock-marked ex-dragoon, whom a lady followed in his wanderings out of love. There was Cavalier, a baker's apprentice with a genius for war, elected brigadier of Camisards at seventeen, to die at fifty-five the English governor of Jersey. There again was Castanet, a partisan leader in a voluminous peruke and with a taste for controversial divinity. Strange generals, who moved apart to take counsel with the God of Hosts, and fled or offered battle, set sentinels or slept in an unguarded camp, as the Spirit whispered to their hearts! And there, to follow these and other leaders, was the rank and file of prophets and disciples, bold, patient, indefatigable, hardy to run upon the mountains, cheering their rough life with psalms, eager to fight, eager to pray, listening devoutly to the oracles of brain-sick children, and mystically putting a grain of wheat among the pewter balls with which they charged their muskets. I had travelled hitherto through a dull district, and in the track of nothing more notable than the child-eating beast of Gevaudan, the Napoleon Bonaparte of wolves. But now I was to go down into the scene of a romantic chapter--or, better, a romantic footnote in the history of the world. What was left of all this bygone dust and heroism? I was told that Protestantism still survived in this head seat of Protestant resistance; so much the priest himself had told me in the monastery parlour. But I had yet to learn if it were a bare survival, or a lively and generous tradition. Again, if in the northern Cevennes the people are narrow in religious judgments, and more filled with zeal than charity, what was I to look for in this land of persecution and reprisal--in a land where the tyranny of the Church produced the Camisard rebellion, and the terror of the Camisards threw the Catholic peasantry into legalised revolt upon the other side, so that Camisard and Florentin skulked for each other's lives among the mountains? Just on the brow of the hill, where I paused to look before me, the series of stone pillars came abruptly to an end; and only a little below, a sort of track appeared and began to go down a break-neck slope, turning like a corkscrew as it went. It led into a valley between falling hills, stubbly with rocks like a reaped field of corn, and floored farther down with green meadows. I followed the track with precipitation; the steepness of the slope, the continual agile turning of the line of the descent, and the old unwearied hope of finding something new in a new country, all conspired to lend me wings. Yet a little lower and a stream began, collecting itself together out of many fountains, and soon making a glad noise among the hills. Sometimes it would cross the track in a bit of waterfall, with a pool, in which Modestine refreshed her feet. The whole descent is like a dream to me, so rapidly was it accomplished. I had scarcely left the summit ere the valley had closed round my path, and the sun beat upon me, walking in a stagnant lowland atmosphere. The track became a road, and went up and down in easy undulations. I passed cabin after cabin, but all seemed deserted; and I saw not a human creature, nor heard any sound except that of the stream. I was, however, in a different country from the day before. The stony skeleton of the world was here vigorously displayed to sun and air. The slopes were steep and changeful. Oak-trees clung along the hills, well grown, wealthy in leaf, and touched by the autumn with strong and luminous colours. Here and there another stream would fall in from the right or the left, down a gorge of snow-white and tumultuary boulders. The river in the bottom (for it was rapidly growing a river, collecting on all hands as it trotted on its way) here foamed a while in desperate rapids, and there lay in pools of the most enchanting sea-green shot with watery browns. As far as I have gone, I have never seen a river of so changeful and delicate a hue; crystal was not more clear, the meadows were not by half so green; and at every pool I saw I felt a thrill of longing to be out of these hot, dusty, and material garments, and bathe my naked body in the mountain air and water. All the time as I went on I never forgot it was the Sabbath; the stillness was a perpetual reminder; and I heard in spirit the church-bells clamouring all over Europe, and the psalms of a thousand churches. At length a human sound struck upon my ear--a cry strangely modulated between pathos and derision; and looking across the valley, I saw a little urchin sitting in a meadow, with his hands about his knees, and dwarfed to almost comical smallness by the distance. But the rogue had picked me out as I went down the road, from oak wood on to oak wood, driving Modestine; and he made me the compliments of the new country in this tremulous high-pitched salutation. And as all noises are lovely and natural at a sufficient distance, this also, coming through so much clean hill air and crossing all the green valley, sounded pleasant to my ear, and seemed a thing rustic, like the oaks or the river. A little after, the stream that I was following fell into the Tarn at Pont de Montvert of bloody memory. PONT DE MONTVERT One of the first things I encountered in Pont de Montvert was, if I remember rightly, the Protestant temple; but this was but the type of other novelties. A subtle atmosphere distinguishes a town in England from a town in France, or even in Scotland. At Carlisle you can see you are in the one country; at Dumfries, thirty miles away, you are as sure that you are in the other. I should find it difficult to tell in what particulars Pont de Montvert differed from Monastier or Langogne, or even Bleymard; but the difference existed, and spoke eloquently to the eyes. The place, with its houses, its lanes, its glaring river-bed, wore an indescribable air of the South. All was Sunday bustle in the streets and in the public-house, as all had been Sabbath peace among the mountains. There must have been near a score of us at dinner by eleven before noon; and after I had eaten and drunken, and sat writing up my journal, I suppose as many more came dropping in one after another, or by twos and threes. In crossing the Lozere I had not only come among new natural features, but moved into the territory of a different race. These people, as they hurriedly despatched their viands in an intricate sword-play of knives, questioned and answered me with a degree of intelligence which excelled all that I had met, except among the railway folk at Chasserades. They had open telling faces, and were lively both in speech and manner. They not only entered thoroughly into the spirit of my little trip, but more than one declared, if he were rich enough, he would like to set forth on such another. Even physically there was a pleasant change. I had not seen a pretty woman since I left Monastier, and there but one. Now of the three who sat down with me to dinner, one was certainly not beautiful--a poor timid thing of forty, quite troubled at this roaring table d'hote, whom I squired and helped to wine, and pledged and tried generally to encourage, with quite a contrary effect; but the other two, both married, were both more handsome than the average of women. And Clarisse? What shall I say of Clarisse? She waited the table with a heavy placable nonchalance, like a performing cow; her great grey eyes were steeped in amorous languor; her features, although fleshy, were of an original and accurate design; her mouth had a curl; her nostril spoke of dainty pride; her cheek fell into strange and interesting lines. It was a face capable of strong emotion, and, with training, it offered the promise of delicate sentiment. It seemed pitiful to see so good a model left to country admirers and a country way of thought. Beauty should at least have touched society; then, in a moment, it throws off a weight that lay upon it, it becomes conscious of itself, it puts on an elegance, learns a gait and a carriage of the head, and, in a moment, patet dea. Before I left I assured Clarisse of my hearty admiration. She took it like milk, without embarrassment or wonder, merely looking at me steadily with her great eyes; and I own the result upon myself was some confusion. If Clarisse could read English, I should not dare to add that her figure was unworthy of her face. Hers was a case for stays; but that may perhaps grow better as she gets up in years. Pont de Montvert, or Greenhill Bridge, as we might say at home, is a place memorable in the story of the Camisards. It was here that the war broke out; here that those southern Covenanters slew their Archbishop Sharp. The persecution on the one hand, the febrile enthusiasm on the other, are almost equally difficult to understand in these quiet modern days, and with our easy modern beliefs and disbeliefs. The Protestants were one and all beside their right minds with zeal and sorrow. They were all prophets and prophetesses. Children at the breast would exhort their parents to good works. 'A child of fifteen months at Quissac spoke from its mother's arms, agitated and sobbing, distinctly and with a loud voice.' Marshal Villars has seen a town where all the women 'seemed possessed by the devil,' and had trembling fits, and uttered prophecies publicly upon the streets. A prophetess of Vivarais was hanged at Montpellier because blood flowed from her eyes and nose, and she declared that she was weeping tears of blood for the misfortunes of the Protestants. And it was not only women and children. Stalwart dangerous fellows, used to swing the sickle or to wield the forest axe, were likewise shaken with strange paroxysms, and spoke oracles with sobs and streaming tears. A persecution unsurpassed in violence had lasted near a score of years, and this was the result upon the persecuted; hanging, burning, breaking on the wheel, had been in vain; the dragoons had left their hoof-marks over all the countryside; there were men rowing in the galleys, and women pining in the prisons of the Church; and not a thought was changed in the heart of any upright Protestant. Now the head and forefront of the persecution--after Lamoignon de Bavile--Francois de Langlade du Chayla (pronounce Cheila), Archpriest of the Cevennes and Inspector of Missions in the same country, had a house in which he sometimes dwelt in the town of Pont de Montvert. He was a conscientious person, who seems to have been intended by nature for a pirate, and now fifty-five, an age by which a man has learned all the moderation of which he is capable. A missionary in his youth in China, he there suffered martyrdom, was left for dead, and only succoured and brought back to life by the charity of a pariah. We must suppose the pariah devoid of second-sight, and not purposely malicious in this act. Such an experience, it might be thought, would have cured a man of the desire to persecute; but the human spirit is a thing strangely put together; and, having been a Christian martyr, Du Chayla became a Christian persecutor. The Work of the Propagation of the Faith went roundly forward in his hands. His house in Pont de Montvert served him as a prison. There he closed the hands of his prisoners upon live coal, and plucked out the hairs of their beards, to convince them that they were deceived in their opinions. And yet had not he himself tried and proved the inefficacy of these carnal arguments among the Buddhists in China? Not only was life made intolerable in Languedoc, but flight was rigidly forbidden. One Massip, a muleteer, and well acquainted with the mountain- paths, had already guided several troops of fugitives in safety to Geneva; and on him, with another convoy, consisting mostly of women dressed as men, Du Chayla, in an evil hour for himself, laid his hands. The Sunday following, there was a conventicle of Protestants in the woods of Altefage upon Mount Bouges; where there stood up one Seguier--Spirit Seguier, as his companions called him--a wool-carder, tall, black-faced, and toothless, but a man full of prophecy. He declared, in the name of God, that the time for submission had gone by, and they must betake themselves to arms for the deliverance of their brethren and the destruction of the priests. The next night, 24th July 1702, a sound disturbed the Inspector of Missions as he sat in his prison-house at Pont de Montvert: the voices of many men upraised in psalmody drew nearer and nearer through the town. It was ten at night; he had his court about him, priests, soldiers, and servants, to the number of twelve or fifteen; and now dreading the insolence of a conventicle below his very windows, he ordered forth his soldiers to report. But the psalm-singers were already at his door, fifty strong, led by the inspired Seguier, and breathing death. To their summons, the archpriest made answer like a stout old persecutor, and bade his garrison fire upon the mob. One Camisard (for, according to some, it was in this night's work that they came by the name) fell at this discharge: his comrades burst in the door with hatchets and a beam of wood, overran the lower story of the house, set free the prisoners, and finding one of them in the vine, a sort of Scavenger's Daughter of the place and period, redoubled in fury against Du Chayla, and sought by repeated assaults to carry the upper floors. But he, on his side, had given absolution to his men, and they bravely held the staircase. 'Children of God,' cried the prophet, 'hold your hands. Let us burn the house, with the priest and the satellites of Baal.' The fire caught readily. Out of an upper window Du Chayla and his men lowered themselves into the garden by means of knotted sheets; some escaped across the river under the bullets of the insurgents; but the archpriest himself fell, broke his thigh, and could only crawl into the hedge. What were his reflections as this second martyrdom drew near? A poor, brave, besotted, hateful man, who had done his duty resolutely according to his light both in the Cevennes and China. He found at least one telling word to say in his defence; for when the roof fell in and the upbursting flames discovered his retreat, and they came and dragged him to the public place of the town, raging and calling him damned--'If I be damned,' said he, 'why should you also damn yourselves?' Here was a good reason for the last; but in the course of his inspectorship he had given many stronger which all told in a contrary direction; and these he was now to hear. One by one, Seguier first, the Camisards drew near and stabbed him. 'This,' they said, 'is for my father broken on the wheel. This for my brother in the galleys. That for my mother or my sister imprisoned in your cursed convents.' Each gave his blow and his reason; and then all kneeled and sang psalms around the body till the dawn. With the dawn, still singing, they defiled away towards Frugeres, farther up the Tarn, to pursue the work of vengeance, leaving Du Chayla's prison-house in ruins, and his body pierced with two- and-fifty wounds upon the public place. 'Tis a wild night's work, with its accompaniment of psalms; and it seems as if a psalm must always have a sound of threatening in that town upon the Tarn. But the story does not end, even so far as concerns Pont de Montvert, with the departure of the Camisards. The career of Seguier was brief and bloody. Two more priests and a whole family at Ladeveze, from the father to the servants, fell by his hand or by his orders; and yet he was but a day or two at large, and restrained all the time by the presence of the soldiery. Taken at length by a famous soldier of fortune, Captain Poul, he appeared unmoved before his judges. 'Your name?' they asked. 'Pierre Seguier.' 'Why are you called Spirit?' 'Because the Spirit of the Lord is with me.' 'Your domicile?' 'Lately in the desert, and soon in heaven.' 'Have you no remorse for your crimes?' 'I have committed none. My soul is like a garden full of shelter and of fountains.' At Pont de Montvert, on the 12th of August, he had his right hand stricken from his body, and was burned alive. And his soul was like a garden? So perhaps was the soul of Du Chayla, the Christian martyr. And perhaps if you could read in my soul, or I could read in yours, our own composure might seem little less surprising. Du Chayla's house still stands, with a new roof, beside one of the bridges of the town; and if you are curious you may see the terrace-garden into which he dropped. IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN A new road leads from Pont de Montvert to Florac by the valley of the Tarn; a smooth sandy ledge, it runs about half-way between the summit of the cliffs and the river in the bottom of the valley; and I went in and out, as I followed it, from bays of shadow into promontories of afternoon sun. This was a pass like that of Killiecrankie; a deep turning gully in the hills, with the Tarn making a wonderful hoarse uproar far below, and craggy summits standing in the sunshine high above. A thin fringe of ash- trees ran about the hill-tops, like ivy on a ruin; but on the lower slopes, and far up every glen, the Spanish chestnut-trees stood each four- square to heaven under its tented foliage. Some were planted, each on its own terrace no larger than a bed; some, trusting in their roots, found strength to grow and prosper and be straight and large upon the rapid slopes of the valley; others, where there was a margin to the river, stood marshalled in a line and mighty like cedars of Lebanon. Yet even where they grew most thickly they were not to be thought of as a wood, but as a herd of stalwart individuals; and the dome of each tree stood forth separate and large, and as it were a little hill, from among the domes of its companions. They gave forth a faint sweet perfume which pervaded the air of the afternoon; autumn had put tints of gold and tarnish in the green; and the sun so shone through and kindled the broad foliage, that each chestnut was relieved against another, not in shadow, but in light. A humble sketcher here laid down his pencil in despair. I wish I could convey a notion of the growth of these noble trees; of how they strike out boughs like the oak, and trail sprays of drooping foliage like the willow; of how they stand on upright fluted columns like the pillars of a church; or like the olive, from the most shattered bole can put out smooth and youthful shoots, and begin a new life upon the ruins of the old. Thus they partake of the nature of many different trees; and even their prickly top-knots, seen near at hand against the sky, have a certain palm-like air that impresses the imagination. But their individuality, although compounded of so many elements, is but the richer and the more original. And to look down upon a level filled with these knolls of foliage, or to see a clan of old unconquerable chestnuts cluster 'like herded elephants' upon the spur of a mountain, is to rise to higher thoughts of the powers that are in Nature. Between Modestine's laggard humour and the beauty of the scene, we made little progress all that afternoon; and at last finding the sun, although still far from setting, was already beginning to desert the narrow valley of the Tarn, I began to cast about for a place to camp in. This was not easy to find; the terraces were too narrow, and the ground, where it was unterraced, was usually too steep for a man to lie upon. I should have slipped all night, and awakened towards morning with my feet or my head in the river. After perhaps a mile, I saw, some sixty feet above the road, a little plateau large enough to hold my sack, and securely parapeted by the trunk of an aged and enormous chestnut. Thither, with infinite trouble, I goaded and kicked the reluctant Modestine, and there I hastened to unload her. There was only room for myself upon the plateau, and I had to go nearly as high again before I found so much as standing-room for the ass. It was on a heap of rolling stones, on an artificial terrace, certainly not five feet square in all. Here I tied her to a chestnut, and having given her corn and bread and made a pile of chestnut-leaves, of which I found her greedy, I descended once more to my own encampment. The position was unpleasantly exposed. One or two carts went by upon the road; and as long as daylight lasted I concealed myself, for all the world like a hunted Camisard, behind my fortification of vast chestnut trunk; for I was passionately afraid of discovery and the visit of jocular persons in the night. Moreover, I saw that I must be early awake; for these chestnut gardens had been the scene of industry no further gone than on the day before. The slope was strewn with lopped branches, and here and there a great package of leaves was propped against a trunk; for even the leaves are serviceable, and the peasants use them in winter by way of fodder for their animals. I picked a meal in fear and trembling, half lying down to hide myself from the road; and I daresay I was as much concerned as if I had been a scout from Joani's band above upon the Lozere, or from Salomon's across the Tarn, in the old times of psalm-singing and blood. Or, indeed, perhaps more; for the Camisards had a remarkable confidence in God; and a tale comes back into my memory of how the Count of Gevaudan, riding with a party of dragoons and a notary at his saddlebow to enforce the oath of fidelity in all the country hamlets, entered a valley in the woods, and found Cavalier and his men at dinner, gaily seated on the grass, and their hats crowned with box-tree garlands, while fifteen women washed their linen in the stream. Such was a field festival in 1703; at that date Antony Watteau would be painting similar subjects. This was a very different camp from that of the night before in the cool and silent pine-woods. It was warm and even stifling in the valley. The shrill song of frogs, like the tremolo note of a whistle with a pea in it, rang up from the river-side before the sun was down. In the growing dusk, faint rustlings began to run to and fro among the fallen leaves; from time to time a faint chirping or cheeping noise would fall upon my ear; and from time to time I thought I could see the movement of something swift and indistinct between the chestnuts. A profusion of large ants swarmed upon the ground; bats whisked by, and mosquitoes droned overhead. The long boughs with their bunches of leaves hung against the sky like garlands; and those immediately above and around me had somewhat the air of a trellis which should have been wrecked and half overthrown in a gale of wind. Sleep for a long time fled my eyelids; and just as I was beginning to feel quiet stealing over my limbs, and settling densely on my mind, a noise at my head startled me broad awake again, and, I will frankly confess it, brought my heart into my mouth. It was such a noise as a person would make scratching loudly with a finger-nail; it came from under the knapsack which served me for a pillow, and it was thrice repeated before I had time to sit up and turn about. Nothing was to be seen, nothing more was to be heard, but a few of these mysterious rustlings far and near, and the ceaseless accompaniment of the river and the frogs. I learned next day that the chestnut gardens are infested by rats; rustling, chirping, and scraping were probably all due to these; but the puzzle, for the moment, was insoluble, and I had to compose myself for sleep, as best I could, in wondering uncertainty about my neighbours. I was wakened in the grey of the morning (Monday, 30th September) by the sound of foot-steps not far off upon the stones, and opening my eyes, I beheld a peasant going by among the chestnuts by a footpath that I had not hitherto observed. He turned his head neither to the right nor to the left, and disappeared in a few strides among the foliage. Here was an escape! But it was plainly more than time to be moving. The peasantry were abroad; scarce less terrible to me in my nondescript position than the soldiers of Captain Poul to an undaunted Camisard. I fed Modestine with what haste I could; but as I was returning to my sack, I saw a man and a boy come down the hillside in a direction crossing mine. They unintelligibly hailed me, and I replied with inarticulate but cheerful sounds, and hurried forward to get into my gaiters. The pair, who seemed to be father and son, came slowly up to the plateau, and stood close beside me for some time in silence. The bed was open, and I saw with regret my revolver lying patently disclosed on the blue wool. At last, after they had looked me all over, and the silence had grown laughably embarrassing, the man demanded in what seemed unfriendly tones: 'You have slept here?' 'Yes,' said I. 'As you see.' 'Why?' he asked. 'My faith,' I answered lightly, 'I was tired.' He next inquired where I was going and what I had had for dinner; and then, without the least transition, 'C'est bien,' he added, 'come along.' And he and his son, without another word, turned off to the next chestnut- tree but one, which they set to pruning. The thing had passed of more simply than I hoped. He was a grave, respectable man; and his unfriendly voice did not imply that he thought he was speaking to a criminal, but merely to an inferior. I was soon on the road, nibbling a cake of chocolate and seriously occupied with a case of conscience. Was I to pay for my night's lodging? I had slept ill, the bed was full of fleas in the shape of ants, there was no water in the room, the very dawn had neglected to call me in the morning. I might have missed a train, had there been any in the neighbourhood to catch. Clearly, I was dissatisfied with my entertainment; and I decided I should not pay unless I met a beggar. The valley looked even lovelier by morning; and soon the road descended to the level of the river. Here, in a place where many straight and prosperous chestnuts stood together, making an aisle upon a swarded terrace, I made my morning toilette in the water of the Tarn. It was marvellously clear, thrillingly cool; the soap-suds disappeared as if by magic in the swift current, and the white boulders gave one a model for cleanliness. To wash in one of God's rivers in the open air seems to me a sort of cheerful solemnity or semi-pagan act of worship. To dabble among dishes in a bedroom may perhaps make clean the body; but the imagination takes no share in such a cleansing. I went on with a light and peaceful heart, and sang psalms to the spiritual ear as I advanced. Suddenly up came an old woman, who point-blank demanded alms. 'Good,' thought I; 'here comes the waiter with the bill.' And I paid for my night's lodging on the spot. Take it how you please, but this was the first and the last beggar that I met with during all my tour. A step or two farther I was overtaken by an old man in a brown nightcap, clear-eyed, weather-beaten, with a faint excited smile. A little girl followed him, driving two sheep and a goat; but she kept in our wake, while the old man walked beside me and talked about the morning and the valley. It was not much past six; and for healthy people who have slept enough, that is an hour of expansion and of open and trustful talk. 'Connaissez-vous le Seigneur?' he said at length. I asked him what Seigneur he meant; but he only repeated the question with more emphasis and a look in his eyes denoting hope and interest. 'Ah,' said I, pointing upwards, 'I understand you now. Yes, I know Him; He is the best of acquaintances.' The old man said he was delighted. 'Hold,' he added, striking his bosom; 'it makes me happy here.' There were a few who knew the Lord in these valleys, he went on to tell me; not many, but a few. 'Many are called,' he quoted, 'and few chosen.' 'My father,' said I, 'it is not easy to say who know the Lord; and it is none of our business. Protestants and Catholics, and even those who worship stones, may know Him and be known by Him; for He has made all.' I did not know I was so good a preacher. The old man assured me he thought as I did, and repeated his expressions of pleasure at meeting me. 'We are so few,' he said. 'They call us Moravians here; but down in the Department of Gard, where there are also a good number, they are called Derbists, after an English pastor.' I began to understand that I was figuring, in questionable taste, as a member of some sect to me unknown; but I was more pleased with the pleasure of my companion than embarrassed by my own equivocal position. Indeed, I can see no dishonesty in not avowing a difference; and especially in these high matters, where we have all a sufficient assurance that, whoever may be in the wrong, we ourselves are not completely in the right. The truth is much talked about; but this old man in a brown nightcap showed himself so simple, sweet, and friendly, that I am not unwilling to profess myself his convert. He was, as a matter of fact, a Plymouth Brother. Of what that involves in the way of doctrine I have no idea nor the time to inform myself; but I know right well that we are all embarked upon a troublesome world, the children of one Father, striving in many essential points to do and to become the same. And although it was somewhat in a mistake that he shook hands with me so often and showed himself so ready to receive my words, that was a mistake of the truth-finding sort. For charity begins blindfold; and only through a series of similar misapprehensions rises at length into a settled principle of love and patience, and a firm belief in all our fellow-men. If I deceived this good old man, in the like manner I would willingly go on to deceive others. And if ever at length, out of our separate and sad ways, we should all come together into one common house, I have a hope, to which I cling dearly, that my mountain Plymouth Brother will hasten to shake hands with me again. Thus, talking like Christian and Faithful by the way, he and I came down upon a hamlet by the Tarn. It was but a humble place, called La Vernede, with less than a dozen houses, and a Protestant chapel on a knoll. Here he dwelt; and here, at the inn, I ordered my breakfast. The inn was kept by an agreeable young man, a stone-breaker on the road, and his sister, a pretty and engaging girl. The village schoolmaster dropped in to speak with the stranger. And these were all Protestants--a fact which pleased me more than I should have expected; and, what pleased me still more, they seemed all upright and simple people. The Plymouth Brother hung round me with a sort of yearning interest, and returned at least thrice to make sure I was enjoying my meal. His behaviour touched me deeply at the time, and even now moves me in recollection. He feared to intrude, but he would not willingly forego one moment of my society; and he seemed never weary of shaking me by the hand. When all the rest had drifted off to their day's work, I sat for near half an hour with the young mistress of the house, who talked pleasantly over her seam of the chestnut harvest, and the beauties of the Tarn, and old family affections, broken up when young folk go from home, yet still subsisting. Hers, I am sure, was a sweet nature, with a country plainness and much delicacy underneath; and he who takes her to his heart will doubtless be a fortunate young man. The valley below La Vernede pleased me more and more as I went forward. Now the hills approached from either hand, naked and crumbling, and walled in the river between cliffs; and now the valley widened and became green. The road led me past the old castle of Miral on a steep; past a battlemented monastery, long since broken up and turned into a church and parsonage; and past a cluster of black roofs, the village of Cocures, sitting among vineyards, and meadows, and orchards thick with red apples, and where, along the highway, they were knocking down walnuts from the roadside trees, and gathering them in sacks and baskets. The hills, however much the vale might open, were still tall and bare, with cliffy battlements and here and there a pointed summit; and the Tarn still rattled through the stones with a mountain noise. I had been led, by bagmen of a picturesque turn of mind, to expect a horrific country after the heart of Byron; but to my Scottish eyes it seemed smiling and plentiful, as the weather still gave an impression of high summer to my Scottish body; although the chestnuts were already picked out by the autumn, and the poplars, that here began to mingle with them, had turned into pale gold against the approach of winter. There was something in this landscape, smiling although wild, that explained to me the spirit of the Southern Covenanters. Those who took to the hills for conscience' sake in Scotland had all gloomy and bedevilled thoughts; for once that they received God's comfort they would be twice engaged with Satan; but the Camisards had only bright and supporting visions. They dealt much more in blood, both given and taken; yet I find no obsession of the Evil One in their records. With a light conscience, they pursued their life in these rough times and circumstances. The soul of Seguier, let us not forget, was like a garden. They knew they were on God's side, with a knowledge that has no parallel among the Scots; for the Scots, although they might be certain of the cause, could never rest confident of the person. 'We flew,' says one old Camisard, 'when we heard the sound of psalm-singing, we flew as if with wings. We felt within us an animating ardour, a transporting desire. The feeling cannot be expressed in words. It is a thing that must have been experienced to be understood. However weary we might be, we thought no more of our weariness, and grew light so soon as the psalms fell upon our ears.' The valley of the Tarn and the people whom I met at La Vernede not only explain to me this passage, but the twenty years of suffering which those, who were so stiff and so bloody when once they betook themselves to war, endured with the meekness of children and the constancy of saints and peasants. FLORAC On a branch of the Tarn stands Florac, the seat of a sub-prefecture, with an old castle, an alley of planes, many quaint street-corners, and a live fountain welling from the hill. It is notable, besides, for handsome women, and as one of the two capitals, Alais being the other, of the country of the Camisards. The landlord of the inn took me, after I had eaten, to an adjoining cafe, where I, or rather my journey, became the topic of the afternoon. Every one had some suggestion for my guidance; and the sub-prefectorial map was fetched from the sub-prefecture itself, and much thumbed among coffee- cups and glasses of liqueur. Most of these kind advisers were Protestant, though I observed that Protestant and Catholic intermingled in a very easy manner; and it surprised me to see what a lively memory still subsisted of the religious war. Among the hills of the south-west, by Mauchline, Cumnock, or Carsphairn, in isolated farms or in the manse, serious Presbyterian people still recall the days of the great persecution, and the graves of local martyrs are still piously regarded. But in towns and among the so-called better classes, I fear that these old doings have become an idle tale. If you met a mixed company in the King's Arms at Wigton, it is not likely that the talk would run on Covenanters. Nay, at Muirkirk of Glenluce, I found the beadle's wife had not so much as heard of Prophet Peden. But these Cevenols were proud of their ancestors in quite another sense; the war was their chosen topic; its exploits were their own patent of nobility; and where a man or a race has had but one adventure, and that heroic, we must expect and pardon some prolixity of reference. They told me the country was still full of legends hitherto uncollected; I heard from them about Cavalier's descendants--not direct descendants, be it understood, but only cousins or nephews--who were still prosperous people in the scene of the boy-general's exploits; and one farmer had seen the bones of old combatants dug up into the air of an afternoon in the nineteenth century, in a field where the ancestors had fought, and the great-grandchildren were peaceably ditching. Later in the day one of the Protestant pastors was so good as to visit me: a young man, intelligent and polite, with whom I passed an hour or two in talk. Florac, he told me, is part Protestant, part Catholic; and the difference in religion is usually doubled by a difference in politics. You may judge of my surprise, coming as I did from such a babbling purgatorial Poland of a place as Monastier, when I learned that the population lived together on very quiet terms; and there was even an exchange of hospitalities between households thus doubly separated. Black Camisard and White Camisard, militiaman and Miquelet and dragoon, Protestant prophet and Catholic cadet of the White Cross, they had all been sabring and shooting, burning, pillaging, and murdering, their hearts hot with indignant passion; and here, after a hundred and seventy years, Protestant is still Protestant, Catholic still Catholic, in mutual toleration and mild amity of life. But the race of man, like that indomitable nature whence it sprang, has medicating virtues of its own; the years and seasons bring various harvests; the sun returns after the rain; and mankind outlives secular animosities, as a single man awakens from the passions of a day. We judge our ancestors from a more divine position; and the dust being a little laid with several centuries, we can see both sides adorned with human virtues and fighting with a show of right. I have never thought it easy to be just, and find it daily even harder than I thought. I own I met these Protestants with a delight and a sense of coming home. I was accustomed to speak their language, in another and deeper sense of the word than that which distinguishes between French and English; for the true Babel is a divergence upon morals. And hence I could hold more free communication with the Protestants, and judge them more justly, than the Catholics. Father Apollinaris may pair off with my mountain Plymouth Brother as two guileless and devout old men; yet I ask myself if I had as ready a feeling for the virtues of the Trappist; or, had I been a Catholic, if I should have felt so warmly to the dissenter of La Vernede. With the first I was on terms of mere forbearance; but with the other, although only on a misunderstanding and by keeping on selected points, it was still possible to hold converse and exchange some honest thoughts. In this world of imperfection we gladly welcome even partial intimacies. And if we find but one to whom we can speak out of our heart freely, with whom we can walk in love and simplicity without dissimulation, we have no ground of quarrel with the world or God. IN THE VALLEY OF THE MIMENTE On Tuesday, 1st October, we left Florac late in the afternoon, a tired donkey and tired donkey-driver. A little way up the Tarnon, a covered bridge of wood introduced us into the valley of the Mimente. Steep rocky red mountains overhung the stream; great oaks and chestnuts grew upon the slopes or in stony terraces; here and there was a red field of millet or a few apple-trees studded with red apples; and the road passed hard by two black hamlets, one with an old castle atop to please the heart of the tourist. It was difficult here again to find a spot fit for my encampment. Even under the oaks and chestnuts the ground had not only a very rapid slope, but was heaped with loose stones; and where there was no timber the hills descended to the stream in a red precipice tufted with heather. The sun had left the highest peak in front of me, and the valley was full of the lowing sound of herdsmen's horns as they recalled the flocks into the stable, when I spied a bight of meadow some way below the roadway in an angle of the river. Thither I descended, and, tying Modestine provisionally to a tree, proceeded to investigate the neighbourhood. A grey pearly evening shadow filled the glen; objects at a little distance grew indistinct and melted bafflingly into each other; and the darkness was rising steadily like an exhalation. I approached a great oak which grew in the meadow, hard by the river's brink; when to my disgust the voices of children fell upon my ear, and I beheld a house round the angle on the other bank. I had half a mind to pack and be gone again, but the growing darkness moved me to remain. I had only to make no noise until the night was fairly come, and trust to the dawn to call me early in the morning. But it was hard to be annoyed by neighbours in such a great hotel. A hollow underneath the oak was my bed. Before I had fed Modestine and arranged my sack, three stars were already brightly shining, and the others were beginning dimly to appear. I slipped down to the river, which looked very black among its rocks, to fill my can; and dined with a good appetite in the dark, for I scrupled to light a lantern while so near a house. The moon, which I had seen a pallid crescent all afternoon, faintly illuminated the summit of the hills, but not a ray fell into the bottom of the glen where I was lying. The oak rose before me like a pillar of darkness; and overhead the heartsome stars were set in the face of the night. No one knows the stars who has not slept, as the French happily put it, a la belle etoile. He may know all their names and distances and magnitudes, and yet be ignorant of what alone concerns mankind,--their serene and gladsome influence on the mind. The greater part of poetry is about the stars; and very justly, for they are themselves the most classical of poets. These same far-away worlds, sprinkled like tapers or shaken together like a diamond dust upon the sky, had looked not otherwise to Roland or Cavalier, when, in the words of the latter, they had 'no other tent but the sky, and no other bed than my mother earth.' All night a strong wind blew up the valley, and the acorns fell pattering over me from the oak. Yet, on this first night of October, the air was as mild as May, and I slept with the fur thrown back. I was much disturbed by the barking of a dog, an animal that I fear more than any wolf. A dog is vastly braver, and is besides supported by the sense of duty. If you kill a wolf, you meet with encouragement and praise; but if you kill a dog, the sacred rights of property and the domestic affections come clamouring round you for redress. At the end of a fagging day, the sharp cruel note of a dog's bark is in itself a keen annoyance; and to a tramp like myself, he represents the sedentary and respectable world in its most hostile form. There is something of the clergyman or the lawyer about this engaging animal; and if he were not amenable to stones, the boldest man would shrink from travelling afoot. I respect dogs much in the domestic circle; but on the highway, or sleeping afield, I both detest and fear them. I was wakened next morning (Wednesday, October 2nd) by the same dog--for I knew his bark--making a charge down the bank, and then, seeing me sit up, retreating again with great alacrity. The stars were not yet quite extinguished. The heaven was of that enchanting mild grey-blue of the early morn. A still clear light began to fall, and the trees on the hillside were outlined sharply against the sky. The wind had veered more to the north, and no longer reached me in the glen; but as I was going on with my preparations, it drove a white cloud very swiftly over the hill- top; and looking up, I was surprised to see the cloud dyed with gold. In these high regions of the air, the sun was already shining as at noon. If only the clouds travelled high enough, we should see the same thing all night long. For it is always daylight in the fields of space. As I began to go up the valley, a draught of wind came down it out of the seat of the sunrise, although the clouds continued to run overhead in an almost contrary direction. A few steps farther, and I saw a whole hillside gilded with the sun; and still a little beyond, between two peaks, a centre of dazzling brilliancy appeared floating in the sky, and I was once more face to face with the big bonfire that occupies the kernel of our system. I met but one human being that forenoon, a dark military-looking wayfarer, who carried a game-bag on a baldric; but he made a remark that seems worthy of record. For when I asked him if he were Protestant or Catholic-- 'Oh,' said he, 'I make no shame of my religion. I am a Catholic.' He made no shame of it! The phrase is a piece of natural statistics; for it is the language of one in a minority. I thought with a smile of Bavile and his dragoons, and how you may ride rough-shod over a religion for a century, and leave it only the more lively for the friction. Ireland is still Catholic; the Cevennes still Protestant. It is not a basketful of law-papers, nor the hoofs and pistol-butts of a regiment of horse, that can change one tittle of a ploughman's thoughts. Outdoor rustic people have not many ideas, but such as they have are hardy plants, and thrive flourishingly in persecution. One who has grown a long while in the sweat of laborious noons, and under the stars at night, a frequenter of hills and forests, an old honest countryman, has, in the end, a sense of communion with the powers of the universe, and amicable relations towards his God. Like my mountain Plymouth Brother, he knows the Lord. His religion does not repose upon a choice of logic; it is the poetry of the man's experience, the philosophy of the history of his life. God, like a great power, like a great shining sun, has appeared to this simple fellow in the course of years, and become the ground and essence of his least reflections; and you may change creeds and dogmas by authority, or proclaim a new religion with the sound of trumpets, if you will; but here is a man who has his own thoughts, and will stubbornly adhere to them in good and evil. He is a Catholic, a Protestant, or a Plymouth Brother, in the same indefeasible sense that a man is not a woman, or a woman not a man. For he could not vary from his faith, unless he could eradicate all memory of the past, and, in a strict and not a conventional meaning, change his mind. THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY I was now drawing near to Cassagnas, a cluster of black roofs upon the hillside, in this wild valley, among chestnut gardens, and looked upon in the clear air by many rocky peaks. The road along the Mimente is yet new, nor have the mountaineers recovered their surprise when the first cart arrived at Cassagnas. But although it lay thus apart from the current of men's business, this hamlet had already made a figure in the history of France. Hard by, in caverns of the mountain, was one of the five arsenals of the Camisards; where they laid up clothes and corn and arms against necessity, forged bayonets and sabres, and made themselves gunpowder with willow charcoal and saltpetre boiled in kettles. To the same caves, amid this multifarious industry, the sick and wounded were brought up to heal; and there they were visited by the two surgeons, Chabrier and Tavan, and secretly nursed by women of the neighbourhood. Of the five legions into which the Camisards were divided, it was the oldest and the most obscure that had its magazines by Cassagnas. This was the band of Spirit Seguier; men who had joined their voices with his in the 68th Psalm as they marched down by night on the archpriest of the Cevennes. Seguier, promoted to heaven, was succeeded by Salomon Couderc, whom Cavalier treats in his memoirs as chaplain-general to the whole army of the Camisards. He was a prophet; a great reader of the heart, who admitted people to the sacrament or refused them, by 'intensively viewing every man' between the eyes; and had the most of the Scriptures off by rote. And this was surely happy; since in a surprise in August 1703, he lost his mule, his portfolios, and his Bible. It is only strange that they were not surprised more often and more effectually; for this legion of Cassagnas was truly patriarchal in its theory of war, and camped without sentries, leaving that duty to the angels of the God for whom they fought. This is a token, not only of their faith, but of the trackless country where they harboured. M. de Caladon, taking a stroll one fine day, walked without warning into their midst, as he might have walked into 'a flock of sheep in a plain,' and found some asleep and some awake and psalm-singing. A traitor had need of no recommendation to insinuate himself among their ranks, beyond 'his faculty of singing psalms'; and even the prophet Salomon 'took him into a particular friendship.' Thus, among their intricate hills, the rustic troop subsisted; and history can attribute few exploits to them but sacraments and ecstasies. People of this tough and simple stock will not, as I have just been saying, prove variable in religion; nor will they get nearer to apostasy than a mere external conformity like that of Naaman in the house of Rimmon. When Louis XVI., in the words of the edict, 'convinced by the uselessness of a century of persecutions, and rather from necessity than sympathy,' granted at last a royal grace of toleration, Cassagnas was still Protestant; and to a man, it is so to this day. There is, indeed, one family that is not Protestant, but neither is it Catholic. It is that of a Catholic cure in revolt, who has taken to his bosom a schoolmistress. And his conduct, it is worth noting, is disapproved by the Protestant villagers. 'It is a bad idea for a man,' said one, 'to go back from his engagements.' The villagers whom I saw seemed intelligent after a countrified fashion, and were all plain and dignified in manner. As a Protestant myself, I was well looked upon, and my acquaintance with history gained me further respect. For we had something not unlike a religious controversy at table, a gendarme and a merchant with whom I dined being both strangers to the place, and Catholics. The young men of the house stood round and supported me; and the whole discussion was tolerantly conducted, and surprised a man brought up among the infinitesimal and contentious differences of Scotland. The merchant, indeed, grew a little warm, and was far less pleased than some others with my historical acquirements. But the gendarme was mighty easy over it all. 'It's a bad idea for a man to change,' said he; and the remark was generally applauded. That was not the opinion of the priest and soldier at Our Lady of the Snows. But this is a different race; and perhaps the same great-heartedness that upheld them to resist, now enables them to differ in a kind spirit. For courage respects courage; but where a faith has been trodden out, we may look for a mean and narrow population. The true work of Bruce and Wallace was the union of the nations; not that they should stand apart a while longer, skirmishing upon their borders; but that, when the time came, they might unite with self-respect. The merchant was much interested in my journey, and thought it dangerous to sleep afield. 'There are the wolves,' said he; 'and then it is known you are an Englishman. The English have always long purses, and it might very well enter into some one's head to deal you an ill blow some night.' I told him I was not much afraid of such accidents; and at any rate judged it unwise to dwell upon alarms or consider small perils in the arrangement of life. Life itself, I submitted, was a far too risky business as a whole to make each additional particular of danger worth regard. 'Something,' said I, 'might burst in your inside any day of the week, and there would be an end of you, if you were locked into your room with three turns of the key.' 'Cependant,' said he, 'coucher dehors!' 'God,' said I, 'is everywhere.' 'Cependant, coucher dehors!' he repeated, and his voice was eloquent of terror. He was the only person, in all my voyage, who saw anything hardy in so simple a proceeding; although many considered it superfluous. Only one, on the other hand, professed much delight in the idea; and that was my Plymouth Brother, who cried out, when I told him I sometimes preferred sleeping under the stars to a close and noisy ale-house, 'Now I see that you know the Lord!' The merchant asked me for one of my cards as I was leaving, for he said I should be something to talk of in the future, and desired me to make a note of his request and reason; a desire with which I have thus complied. A little after two I struck across the Mimente, and took a rugged path southward up a hillside covered with loose stones and tufts of heather. At the top, as is the habit of the country, the path disappeared; and I left my she-ass munching heather, and went forward alone to seek a road. I was now on the separation of two vast water-sheds; behind me all the streams were bound for the Garonne and the Western Ocean; before me was the basin of the Rhone. Hence, as from the Lozere, you can see in clear weather the shining of the Gulf of Lyons; and perhaps from here the soldiers of Salomon may have watched for the topsails of Sir Cloudesley Shovel, and the long-promised aid from England. You may take this ridge as lying in the heart of the country of the Camisards; four of the five legions camped all round it and almost within view--Salomon and Joani to the north, Castanet and Roland to the south; and when Julien had finished his famous work, the devastation of the High Cevennes, which lasted all through October and November 1703, and during which four hundred and sixty villages and hamlets were, with fire and pickaxe, utterly subverted, a man standing on this eminence would have looked forth upon a silent, smokeless, and dispeopled land. Time and man's activity have now repaired these ruins; Cassagnas is once more roofed and sending up domestic smoke; and in the chestnut gardens, in low and leafy corners, many a prosperous farmer returns, when the day's work is done, to his children and bright hearth. And still it was perhaps the wildest view of all my journey. Peak upon peak, chain upon chain of hills ran surging southward, channelled and sculptured by the winter streams, feathered from head to foot with chestnuts, and here and there breaking out into a coronal of cliffs. The sun, which was still far from setting, sent a drift of misty gold across the hill-tops, but the valleys were already plunged in a profound and quiet shadow. A very old shepherd, hobbling on a pair of sticks, and wearing a black cap of liberty, as if in honour of his nearness to the grave, directed me to the road for St. Germain de Calberte. There was something solemn in the isolation of this infirm and ancient creature. Where he dwelt, how he got upon this high ridge, or how he proposed to get down again, were more than I could fancy. Not far off upon my right was the famous Plan de Font Morte, where Poul with his Armenian sabre slashed down the Camisards of Seguier. This, methought, might be some Rip van Winkle of the war, who had lost his comrades, fleeing before Poul, and wandered ever since upon the mountains. It might be news to him that Cavalier had surrendered, or Roland had fallen fighting with his back against an olive. And while I was thus working on my fancy, I heard him hailing in broken tones, and saw him waving me to come back with one of his two sticks. I had already got some way past him; but, leaving Modestine once more, retraced my steps. Alas, it was a very commonplace affair. The old gentleman had forgot to ask the pedlar what he sold, and wished to remedy this neglect. I told him sternly, 'Nothing.' 'Nothing?' cried he. I repeated 'Nothing,' and made off. It's odd to think of, but perhaps I thus became as inexplicable to the old man as he had been to me. The road lay under chestnuts, and though I saw a hamlet or two below me in the vale, and many lone houses of the chestnut farmers, it was a very solitary march all afternoon; and the evening began early underneath the trees. But I heard the voice of a woman singing some sad, old, endless ballad not far off. It seemed to be about love and a bel amoureux, her handsome sweetheart; and I wished I could have taken up the strain and answered her, as I went on upon my invisible woodland way, weaving, like Pippa in the poem, my own thoughts with hers. What could I have told her? Little enough; and yet all the heart requires. How the world gives and takes away, and brings sweethearts near only to separate them again into distant and strange lands; but to love is the great amulet which makes the world a garden; and 'hope, which comes to all,' outwears the accidents of life, and reaches with tremulous hand beyond the grave and death. Easy to say: yea, but also, by God's mercy, both easy and grateful to believe! We struck at last into a wide white high-road carpeted with noiseless dust. The night had come; the moon had been shining for a long while upon the opposite mountain; when on turning a corner my donkey and I issued ourselves into her light. I had emptied out my brandy at Florac, for I could bear the stuff no longer, and replaced it with some generous and scented Volnay; and now I drank to the moon's sacred majesty upon the road. It was but a couple of mouthfuls; yet I became thenceforth unconscious of my limbs, and my blood flowed with luxury. Even Modestine was inspired by this purified nocturnal sunshine, and bestirred her little hoofs as to a livelier measure. The road wound and descended swiftly among masses of chestnuts. Hot dust rose from our feet and flowed away. Our two shadows--mine deformed with the knapsack, hers comically bestridden by the pack--now lay before us clearly outlined on the road, and now, as we turned a corner, went off into the ghostly distance, and sailed along the mountain like clouds. From time to time a warm wind rustled down the valley, and set all the chestnuts dangling their bunches of foliage and fruit; the ear was filled with whispering music, and the shadows danced in tune. And next moment the breeze had gone by, and in all the valley nothing moved except our travelling feet. On the opposite slope, the monstrous ribs and gullies of the mountain were faintly designed in the moonshine; and high overhead, in some lone house, there burned one lighted window, one square spark of red in the huge field of sad nocturnal colouring. At a certain point, as I went downward, turning many acute angles, the moon disappeared behind the hill; and I pursued my way in great darkness, until another turning shot me without preparation into St. Germain de Calberte. The place was asleep and silent, and buried in opaque night. Only from a single open door, some lamplight escaped upon the road to show me that I was come among men's habitations. The two last gossips of the evening, still talking by a garden wall, directed me to the inn. The landlady was getting her chicks to bed; the fire was already out, and had, not without grumbling, to be rekindled; half an hour later, and I must have gone supperless to roost. THE LAST DAY When I awoke (Thursday, 2nd October), and, hearing a great flourishing of cocks and chuckling of contented hens, betook me to the window of the clean and comfortable room where I had slept the night, I looked forth on a sunshiny morning in a deep vale of chestnut gardens. It was still early, and the cockcrows, and the slanting lights, and the long shadows encouraged me to be out and look round me. St. Germain de Calberte is a great parish nine leagues round about. At the period of the wars, and immediately before the devastation, it was inhabited by two hundred and seventy-five families, of which only nine were Catholic; and it took the cure seventeen September days to go from house to house on horseback for a census. But the place itself, although capital of a canton, is scarce larger than a hamlet. It lies terraced across a steep slope in the midst of mighty chestnuts. The Protestant chapel stands below upon a shoulder; in the midst of the town is the quaint old Catholic church. It was here that poor Du Chayla, the Christian martyr, kept his library and held a court of missionaries; here he had built his tomb, thinking to lie among a grateful population whom he had redeemed from error; and hither on the morrow of his death they brought the body, pierced with two- and-fifty wounds, to be interred. Clad in his priestly robes, he was laid out in state in the church. The cure, taking his text from Second Samuel, twentieth chapter and twelfth verse, 'And Amasa wallowed in his blood in the highway,' preached a rousing sermon, and exhorted his brethren to die each at his post, like their unhappy and illustrious superior. In the midst of this eloquence there came a breeze that Spirit Seguier was near at hand; and behold! all the assembly took to their horses' heels, some east, some west, and the cure himself as far as Alais. Strange was the position of this little Catholic metropolis, a thimbleful of Rome, in such a wild and contrary neighbourhood. On the one hand, the legion of Salomon overlooked it from Cassagnas; on the other, it was cut off from assistance by the legion of Roland at Mialet. The cure, Louvrelenil, although he took a panic at the arch-priest's funeral, and so hurriedly decamped to Alais, stood well by his isolated pulpit, and thence uttered fulminations against the crimes of the Protestants. Salomon besieged the village for an hour and a half, but was beaten back. The militiamen, on guard before the cure's door, could be heard, in the black hours, singing Protestant psalms and holding friendly talk with the insurgents. And in the morning, although not a shot had been fired, there would not be a round of powder in their flasks. Where was it gone? All handed over to the Camisards for a consideration. Untrusty guardians for an isolated priest! That these continual stirs were once busy in St. Germain de Calberte, the imagination with difficulty receives; all is now so quiet, the pulse of human life now beats so low and still in this hamlet of the mountains. Boys followed me a great way off, like a timid sort of lion-hunters; and people turned round to have a second look, or came out of their houses, as I went by. My passage was the first event, you would have fancied, since the Camisards. There was nothing rude or forward in this observation; it was but a pleased and wondering scrutiny, like that of oxen or the human infant; yet it wearied my spirits, and soon drove me from the street. I took refuge on the terraces, which are here greenly carpeted with sward, and tried to imitate with a pencil the inimitable attitudes of the chestnuts as they bear up their canopy of leaves. Ever and again a little wind went by, and the nuts dropped all around me, with a light and dull sound, upon the sward. The noise was as of a thin fall of great hailstones; but there went with it a cheerful human sentiment of an approaching harvest and farmers rejoicing in their gains. Looking up, I could see the brown nut peering through the husk, which was already gaping; and between the stems the eye embraced an amphitheatre of hill, sunlit and green with leaves. I have not often enjoyed a place more deeply. I moved in an atmosphere of pleasure, and felt light and quiet and content. But perhaps it was not the place alone that so disposed my spirit. Perhaps some one was thinking of me in another country; or perhaps some thought of my own had come and gone unnoticed, and yet done me good. For some thoughts, which sure would be the most beautiful, vanish before we can rightly scan their features; as though a god, travelling by our green highways, should but ope the door, give one smiling look into the house, and go again for ever. Was it Apollo, or Mercury, or Love with folded wings? Who shall say? But we go the lighter about our business, and feel peace and pleasure in our hearts. I dined with a pair of Catholics. They agreed in the condemnation of a young man, a Catholic, who had married a Protestant girl and gone over to the religion of his wife. A Protestant born they could understand and respect; indeed, they seemed to be of the mind of an old Catholic woman, who told me that same day there was no difference between the two sects, save that 'wrong was more wrong for the Catholic,' who had more light and guidance; but this of a man's desertion filled them with contempt. 'It is a bad idea for a man to change,' said one. It may have been accidental, but you see how this phrase pursued me; and for myself, I believe it is the current philosophy in these parts. I have some difficulty in imagining a better. It's not only a great flight of confidence for a man to change his creed and go out of his family for heaven's sake; but the odds are--nay, and the hope is--that, with all this great transition in the eyes of man, he has not changed himself a hairbreadth to the eyes of God. Honour to those who do so, for the wrench is sore. But it argues something narrow, whether of strength or weakness, whether of the prophet or the fool, in those who can take a sufficient interest in such infinitesimal and human operations, or who can quit a friendship for a doubtful process of the mind. And I think I should not leave my old creed for another, changing only words for other words; but by some brave reading, embrace it in spirit and truth, and find wrong as wrong for me as for the best of other communions. The phylloxera was in the neighbourhood; and instead of wine we drank at dinner a more economical juice of the grape--La Parisienne, they call it. It is made by putting the fruit whole into a cask with water; one by one the berries ferment and burst; what is drunk during the day is supplied at night in water: so, with ever another pitcher from the well, and ever another grape exploding and giving out its strength, one cask of Parisienne may last a family till spring. It is, as the reader will anticipate, a feeble beverage, but very pleasant to the taste. What with dinner and coffee, it was long past three before I left St. Germain de Calberte. I went down beside the Gardon of Mialet, a great glaring watercourse devoid of water, and through St. Etienne de Vallee Francaise, or Val Francesque, as they used to call it; and towards evening began to ascend the hill of St. Pierre. It was a long and steep ascent. Behind me an empty carriage returning to St. Jean du Gard kept hard upon my tracks, and near the summit overtook me. The driver, like the rest of the world, was sure I was a pedlar; but, unlike others, he was sure of what I had to sell. He had noticed the blue wool which hung out of my pack at either end; and from this he had decided, beyond my power to alter his decision, that I dealt in blue-wool collars, such as decorate the neck of the French draught-horse. I had hurried to the topmost powers of Modestine, for I dearly desired to see the view upon the other side before the day had faded. But it was night when I reached the summit; the moon was riding high and clear; and only a few grey streaks of twilight lingered in the west. A yawning valley, gulfed in blackness, lay like a hole in created nature at my feet; but the outline of the hills was sharp against the sky. There was Mount Aigoal, the stronghold of Castanet. And Castanet, not only as an active undertaking leader, deserves some mention among Camisards; for there is a spray of rose among his laurel; and he showed how, even in a public tragedy, love will have its way. In the high tide of war he married, in his mountain citadel, a young and pretty lass called Mariette. There were great rejoicings; and the bridegroom released five- and-twenty prisoners in honour of the glad event. Seven months afterwards, Mariette, the Princess of the Cevennes, as they called her in derision, fell into the hands of the authorities, where it was like to have gone hard with her. But Castanet was a man of execution, and loved his wife. He fell on Valleraugue, and got a lady there for a hostage; and for the first and last time in that war there was an exchange of prisoners. Their daughter, pledge of some starry night upon Mount Aigoal, has left descendants to this day. Modestine and I--it was our last meal together--had a snack upon the top of St. Pierre, I on a heap of stones, she standing by me in the moonlight and decorously eating bread out of my hand. The poor brute would eat more heartily in this manner; for she had a sort of affection for me, which I was soon to betray. It was a long descent upon St. Jean du Gard, and we met no one but a carter, visible afar off by the glint of the moon on his extinguished lantern. Before ten o'clock we had got in and were at supper; fifteen miles and a stiff hill in little beyond six hours! FAREWELL, MODESTINE! On examination, on the morning of October 3rd, Modestine was pronounced unfit for travel. She would need at least two days' repose, according to the ostler; but I was now eager to reach Alais for my letters; and, being in a civilised country of stage-coaches, I determined to sell my lady friend and be off by the diligence that afternoon. Our yesterday's march, with the testimony of the driver who had pursued us up the long hill of St. Pierre, spread a favourable notion of my donkey's capabilities. Intending purchasers were aware of an unrivalled opportunity. Before ten I had an offer of twenty-five francs; and before noon, after a desperate engagement, I sold her, saddle and all, for five- and-thirty. The pecuniary gain is not obvious, but I had bought freedom into the bargain. St Jean du Gard is a large place, and largely Protestant. The maire, a Protestant, asked me to help him in a small matter which is itself characteristic of the country. The young women of the Cevennes profit by the common religion and the difference of the language to go largely as governesses into England; and here was one, a native of Mialet, struggling with English circulars from two different agencies in London. I gave what help I could; and volunteered some advice, which struck me as being excellent. One thing more I note. The phylloxera has ravaged the vineyards in this neighbourhood; and in the early morning, under some chestnuts by the river, I found a party of men working with a cider-press. I could not at first make out what they were after, and asked one fellow to explain. 'Making cider,' he said. 'Oui, c'est comme ca. Comme dans le nord!' There was a ring of sarcasm in his voice: the country was going to the devil. It was not until I was fairly seated by the driver, and rattling through a rocky valley with dwarf olives, that I became aware of my bereavement. I had lost Modestine. Up to that moment I had thought I hated her; but now she was gone, 'And oh! The difference to me!' For twelve days we had been fast companions; we had travelled upwards of a hundred and twenty miles, crossed several respectable ridges, and jogged along with our six legs by many a rocky and many a boggy by-road. After the first day, although sometimes I was hurt and distant in manner, I still kept my patience; and as for her, poor soul! she had come to regard me as a god. She loved to eat out of my hand. She was patient, elegant in form, the colour of an ideal mouse, and inimitably small. Her faults were those of her race and sex; her virtues were her own. Farewell, and if for ever-- Father Adam wept when he sold her to me; after I had sold her in my turn, I was tempted to follow his example; and being alone with a stage-driver and four or five agreeable young men, I did not hesitate to yield to my emotion. 
44777	----	Transcriber's Note This version of the text is unable to reproduce certain typographic features. Italics are delimited with the '_' character as _italic_. The 'oe' ligature is rendered as separate characters. Words printed using "small capitals" are shifted to all upper-case. The 'oe' ligature is given here as separate characters. There are various fonts employed. These are indicated, usually, simply by indenting those passages. Illustrations cannot be reproduced here, but the approximate position of each is indicated as: [Illustration: <caption>]. The captions, it should be noted, are limited to a plate number. The few footnotes are repositioned at the end of the paragraph or quotation where they are referenced. They have been numbered consecutively. Please consult the note at the end of this text for details of any corrections made. CATLIN'S NOTES OF EIGHT YEARS' TRAVELS AND RESIDENCE IN EUROPE, WITH HIS NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN COLLECTION. VOLUME II. ADVENTURES OF THE OJIBBEWAY AND IOWAY INDIANS IN ENGLAND, FRANCE, AND BELGIUM; BEING NOTES OF EIGHT YEARS' TRAVELS AND RESIDENCE IN EUROPE WITH HIS NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN COLLECTION, BY GEO. CATLIN. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. II. With numerous Engravings. _THIRD EDITION._ LONDON: PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR, AT HIS INDIAN COLLECTION, NO. 6, WATERLOO PLACE. 1852. CONTENTS OF VOL. II. CHAPTER XVII. Arrival of fourteen Ioway Indians in London--Their lodgings in St. James's Street--The Author visits them--Their portraits and names--Mr. Melody, their conductor--Jeffrey Doraway, their interpreter--Landlady's alarm--Indians visit the Author's Collection in the Egyptian Hall--Arrangement to dance in the Collection--The Doctor (Medicine or Mystery man) on top of the Hall--Their first drive in a bus--Doctor's appearance outside--Indians' first impressions of London--Lascars sweeping the streets--Man with a big nose--The Doctor lost, and found on the housetop--Their first exhibition in Egyptian Hall--Eagle-dance--The Doctor's speech--Great amusement of the ladies--His description of the railroad from Liverpool to London--War-dance, great applause--The "jolly fat dame"--She presents a gold bracelet to the Doctor by mistake--Her admiration of the _Roman-nose_--War-whoop--Description of--Approaching-dance--Wolf-song, and description of--Great amusement of the audience--Shaking hands--Mistake with the bracelet Page 1 CHAPTER XVIII. Character of the Doctor (_mystery_ or _medicine man_)--An omnibus-drive--The Doctor's admiration of the "jolly fat dame"--Jealousy--War-dress and war-paint of the _Roman-nose_--His appearance--He leads the War-dance--The Welcome-dance, and Bear-dance--Description of--Pipe-of-peace (or Calumet) dance, and Scalp-dance--_Chip-pe-ho-la_ (_the Author_)--Speech of the War-chief--The "jolly fat dame"--She presents a gold bracelet to _Roman-nose_--Jealousy and distress of the Doctor--She converses with Daniel--Two reverend gentlemen converse with the Indians about religion--Reply of White-cloud and War-chief--Questions by the reverend gentlemen--Answers by the War-chief--Indians invited to breakfast with Mr. Disraeli, M.P., Park Lane--Indians' toilette and dress--The Doctor and Jim (Wash-ka-mon-ya) fasting for the occasion 27 CHAPTER XIX. Kind reception at Mr. Disraeli's--View of Hyde Park from the top of his house--Review of troops, and sham fight--Breakfast-table--The Doctor missing--The Author finds him in the bathing-room--Champagne wine--Refused by the Indians--_Chickabobboo_: _Chippehola_ tells the story of it--The Indians drink--Presents--The "big looking-glass"--The Doctor smiles in it--Speech of the War-chief--Shake of hands, and return--Exhibition-room, Egyptian Hall--Doctor presents a string of wampum and the "_White-feather_" to the "jolly fat dame"--Indians talk about _chickabobboo_--The Rev. Mr. G---- calls--A different religion (a Catholic)--Interview appointed--Two Methodist clergymen call--Indians refuse to see them--The giant and giantess visit the Indians--The Doctor measuring the giantess--The talk with the Catholic clergyman Page 47 CHAPTER XX. The Doctor and Jim visit several churches--The Indians in St. Paul's--In Westminster Abbey--The exhibition at the Hall--The Doctor agrees to go in the carriage of the "jolly fat dame"--Mr. Melody objects--The Doctor's melancholy--Indians stop the bus to talk with Lascars--Make them presents of money--Indians discover _chickabobboo-ags_(gin-palaces)--and ladies lying down in their carriages reading books--_Chim-e-gotch-ees_ (or fish)--Jim's story of "Fish"--Experiments in mesmerism--Wash-ka-mon-ya (Jim) mesmerized--The Doctor's opinions on mesmerism--Ioways in Lord's Cricket-ground--Archery and ball-playing--Encampment--Wigwams--Indians invited by Mrs. Lawrence to Ealing Park--Their kind reception--Their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge--The Princess Mary--The Duchess of Gloucester--The Hereditary Grand Duke and Duchess, and other distinguished guests--Amusements--Beautiful grounds--Indians dine on the lawn--Roast beef and plum-pudding--_Chickabobboo_--Alarm of the parrots--Doctor's superstition--_Chickabobboo_ explained--Speech of the War-chief--Taking leave--Fright of the poor birds--Handsome presents--Conservatory--The Doctor's ideas of it--Indians visit Surrey Zoological Gardens--Fright of the birds and animals--Indians sacrifice tobacco to the lion and the rattle-snakes 63 CHAPTER XXI. Indians' remarks on the Zoological Gardens--Their pity for the poor buffalo and other animals imprisoned--Jim's talk with a clergyman about Hell and the hyænas--Indians' ideas of astronomy--Jim and the Doctor hear of the hells of London--Desire to go into them--Promised to go--Indians counting the gin-palaces (_chickabobboo-ags_)in a ride to Blackwall and back--The result--Exhibition in the Egyptian Hall--A sudden excitement--The War-chief recognises in the crowd his old friend "Bobasheela"--Their former lives on the Mississippi and Missouri--Bobasheela an Englishman--His travels in the "Far West" of America--Story of their first acquaintance--The doomed wedding-party--Lieut. Pike--Daniel Boone and Son--Indians visit a great brewery--Kind reception by the proprietors--Great surprise of the Indians--Immense quantities of _chickabobboo_--War-dance in an empty vat--Daniel commences Jim's book of the statistics of England--Indians visit the Tunnel--Visit to the Tower--The Horse Armoury--The Royal Regalia--Indians' ideas of the crowns and jewels--"_Totems_"(arms) on the fronts of noblemen's houses--Royal arms over the shops--Strange notions of the Doctor--They see the "man with the big nose" again--And the "great white War-chief (the Duke of Wellington) on horseback, near his wigwam" Page 90 CHAPTER XXII. The Ioways in Vauxhall Gardens--Surrey Theatre--Carter in the lions' cage--Astonishment of the Indians--Indians in the Diving Bell, at the Polytechnic Institution--Indians riding--Shooting at target on horseback--Ball-play--"Jolly fat dame"--Ladies converse with the Doctor--His reasons for not marrying--Curious questions--Plurality of wives--Amusing scene--The Author in Indian costume--A cruel experiment--Ioways arrive in Birmingham--The Author's arrival there--Society of Friends--Indians all breakfast with Mr. Joseph Sturge--Kind treatment--Conversation after breakfast about religion and education--Reply of the War-chief--The button-factory of Turner and Sons--Generous presents to the Indians--_Bobasheela_ arrives--Indians dividing their buttons--Doctor found on top of the Shakespeare Buildings--Indians' kindness to a beggar-woman--Poorhouses--Many Friends visit the Indians--Indians' visit to Miss Catherine Hutton--Her great age--Her kindness--Dinner--Her presents to them in money--Parting scene--The War-chief's speech to her--Her letters to the Author--Indians present to the two hospitals 370 dollars--Address read by the Presidents to the Indians--Doctor's reply--Indians start for York--A fox-hunt--Curious notions of Indians about it--Visit to York Minster--Ascend the grand tower--Visit to the castle and prison--Museum of the instruments of murder--Alarm of the Doctor--Kindness of the governor of the castle and his lady--Indians' ideas of imprisonment for debt, and punishment for murder 117 CHAPTER XXIII. Newcastle-on-Tyne--Indians' alarms about jails--Kind visits from Friends--Mrs. A. Richardson--Advice of the Friends--War-Chiefs reply--Liberal presents--Arrive at Sunderland--Kindness of the Friends--All breakfast with Mr. T. Richardson--Indians plant trees in his garden--And the Author also--The Doctor's superstition--Sacrifice--Feast--Illness of the Roman Nose--Indians visit a coalpit--North Shields--A sailors' dinner and a row--Arrive at Edinburgh--A drive--First exhibition there--Visit to Salisbury Crag--To Arthur's Seat--Holyrood House and Castle--The crown of Robert Bruce--The "big gun"--"Queen Mab"--Curious modes of building--"Flats"--Origin of--Illness of Corsair, the little _pappoose_--The old Doctor speaks--War-chief's speech--A feast of ducks--Indians' remarks upon the government of Scotland--"The swapping of crowns"--The Doctor proposes the crown of Robert Bruce for Prince Albert--Start for Dundee--Indians' liberality--A noble act--Arrival at Dundee--Death of little Corsair--Distress of the Little Wolf and his wife--Curious ceremony--Young men piercing their arms--Indians at Perth--Arrival in Glasgow--Quartered in the Town-hall--The cemetery--The Hunterian Museum--The Doctor's admiration of it--Daily drives--Indians throw money to the poor--Alarm for _Roman Nose_--Two reverend gentlemen talk with the Indians--War-chiefs remarks--Greenock--Doctor's regret at leaving Page 155 CHAPTER XXIV. Arrival in Dublin--Decline of the _Roman Nose_--Exhibition in the Rotunda--Feast of ducks--First drive--Ph[oe]nix Park--Stags--Indians' ideas of game-laws and taxes--Annual expenses of British government--National debt--Daniel enters these in Jim's book--Indians called "Irishmen"--Author's reply--Speech of the War-chief--Jim's rapid civilization--New estimates for his book--Daniel reads of "Murders, &c.," in Times newspaper--Jim subscribes for the Times--Petition of 100,000 women--Society of Friends meet the Indians in the Rotunda--Their advice, and present to the chiefs 40_l._--Indians invited to Zoological Gardens--Presented with 36_l._--Indians invited to Trinity College--Conversation with the Rev. Master on religion--Liberal presents--They visit the Archbishop of Dublin--Presents--All breakfast with Mr. Joseph Bewly, a Friend--Kind treatment--Christian advice--Sickness of _Roman Nose_--Various entertainments by the Friends--A curious beggar--Indians' liberality to the poor--Arrival at Liverpool--Rejoicing and feast--Council--_Roman Nose_ placed in an hospital--Arrival in Manchester--Exhibition in Free Trade Hall--Immense platform--Three wigwams--Archery--Ball-play, &c.--Great crowds--_Bobasheela_ arrives--Death of the _Roman Nose_--Forms of burial, &c. 178 CHAPTER XXV. The Author arrives in Paris--Victoria Hotel--Mr. Melody and his Indians arrive--Doctor missing, and found on the top of the hotel--Alarm of servants--First drive in Paris--Visit to Mr. King, the American ambassador--French _chickabobboo_--M. Vattemare--Indians visit the Hôtel de Ville--Prêfet de Police--Magnificent salons--The "big looking-glasses" --The Prêfet's lady--Refreshments and _chickabobboo_--Speech of the War-chief--Reply of the Prêfet--Salle Valentino taken for the exhibition--Daniel arrives with the Collection from London--Indians visit the King in the palace of the Tuileries--Royal personages--Conversation--War-chief presents the calumet--His speech to the King--Eagle-dance--War-dance--Little Wolf presents his tomahawk and whip to the King--His speech--Refreshments and "Queen's _chickabobboo_"--Drinking the King's and Queen's health, and health of the Count de Paris--"Vive le Roi"--Jim's opinion of the King--An Indian's idea of descents--Presents in money from the King--Mode of dividing it--A drive--Ladies leading dogs with strings--The number counted in one drive--The Indians' surprise--An entry for Jim's book--Jim laments the loss of the Times newspaper and _Punch_--He takes Galignani's Messenger--Indians dine at W. Costar's--The Doctor's compliment to a lady's fine voice--Indians visit the Royal Academy of Sciences--Curious reception--M. Arago--Indians' suspicions and alarms--Jim's remarkable speech--Opening of the exhibition in Salle Valentino--Great excitement--Speech of the War-chief--Shaking hands--Public opinion of the Author's Collection 203 CHAPTER XXVI. Indians at Madame Greene's party--Their ideas of waltzing--The Doctor's admiration of the young ladies--The King's fête, 1st of May--Indians in the Palace--Royal Family in the balcony--Grand and sublime scene on the river--Indians in a crowd of nobility in the Duc d'Aumale's apartments--Messenger to Indians' apartments with gold and silver medals--Medals to the women and children--Consequent difficulties--Visit to the Hospital of Invalids--Place Concorde--Column of Luxor--The fountains--Visit to the Triumphal Arch--Jim's description of an ugly woman--Victor Hugo--Madame Georges Sands--Indians visit the Louvre--M. de Cailleux--Baron de Humboldt--Illness of the wife of Little Wolf--A phrenologist visits the Indians--The phrenologist's head examined--Two Catholic priests visit the Indians--Indians visit the Garden of Plants--Alarm of the birds and animals--The "poor prisoner buffalo"--Visit to the _Salle aux Vins_--Astonishment of the Indians--The war-whoop--_Chickabobboo_-- Cafés explained--Indians visit _Père la Chaise_--A great funeral--A speech over the grave--Hired mourners--Visit the _School of Medicine_--and "_Dupuytren's Room_"--Excitement of the Doctor--Visit to the _Foundling Hospital_--Astonishment and pity of the Indians--Entries in Jim's note-book, and Doctor's remarks--Visit the _Guillotine_--Indians' ideas of _hanging_ in England, and _beheading_ in France--Curious debate--Visit to the _Dog Market_--Jim's purchase and difficulty--The _Dog Hospital_--Alarm of the "petites malades"--Retreat--_Bobasheela_ arrives from London--Great rejoicing--Jim's comments on the Frenchwomen--The _little foundlings_ and the _little dogs_ 232 CHAPTER XXVII. _La Morgue_--The Catacombs--The Doctor's dream--Their great alarm--Visit to the _Hippodrome_--Jim riding M. Franconi's horse--Indians in the Woods of Boulogne--Fright of the rabbits--Jim and the Doctor at the _Bal Mabille_, Champs Elysées--At the _Masquerade_, _Grand Opera_--Their opinions and criticisms on them--Frenchwomen at confession in St. Roch--Doctor's ideas of it--Jim's speech--"_Industrious fleas_"--Death of the wife of Little Wolf--Her baptism--Husband's distress--Her funeral in the Madeleine--Her burial in Montmartre--Council held--Indians resolve to return to America--Preparations to depart in a few days--_Bobasheela_ goes to London to ship their boxes to New York--He returns, and accompanies the Indians to Havre--Indians take leave of _Chippehola_ (the Author)--M. Vattemare accompanies them to Havre--Kindly treated by Mr. Winslow, an American gentleman, at Havre--A splendid dinner, and (_Queen's_) _Chickabobboo_--Indians embark--Taking leave of _Bobasheela_--Illness of the Author's lady--His alarm and distress--Her death--Obituary--Her remains embalmed and sent to New York 261 CHAPTER XXVIII. Eleven Ojibbeway Indians arrive from London--Their exhibitions in the Author's Collection--Portraits and description of--Their amusements--Their pledge to sobriety--_Chickabobboo_ explained to them--Birth of a _Pappoose_--M. Gudin; Indians and the Author dine with him--His kind lady--The Author breakfasts with the Royal Family in the palace at St. Cloud--Two Kings and two Queens at the table--The Author presented to the King and Queen of the Belgians by Louis Philippe, in the salon--Count de Paris--Duc de Brabant--Recollects the Indian pipe and mocassins presented to him by the Author in the Egyptian Hall--Duchess of Orleans--The Princess Adelaide--The King relates anecdotes of his life in America--Washington's farewell address--Losing his dog in the Seneca village--Crossing Buffalo Creek--Descending the Tioga and Susquehana rivers in an Indian canoe to Wyoming, the Author's native valley--The King desires the Author to arrange his whole Collection in the Louvre for the private views of the Royal Family--He also appoints a day to see the Ojibbeways in the Park at St. Cloud--Great rejoicing of the Indians--A _dog-feast_--The Indians and the Author dine a second time at M. Gudin's 278 CHAPTER XXIX. Indians' visit to the Palace of St. Cloud--The Park--Artificial lake--Royal Family--Prince de Joinville--Recollected seeing the Author and Collection in Washington--King and Queen of Belgians--The _regatta_--The birch-bark canoe, and the Prince de Joinville's "Whitehaller"--War-dance--Ball-play--Archery--Dinner prepared for the Indians--M. Gudin and the Author join them--Indians' return--Gossip at night--Their ideas of the King and Royal Family--Messenger from the King, with gold and silver medals and money, to the Indians--The War-chief cures a cancer--Author's Collection in the _Salle de Séance_, in the Louvre--The Indians and the Author dine with M. Passy, Member of Deputies--Kind treatment by himself and lady--King visits the Collection in the Louvre--The Author explains his pictures--Persons present--An hour's visit--The King retires--Second visit of the King and Royal Family to the Collection--The Author's four little children presented to the King--His Majesty relates the anecdote of bleeding himself in America, and his visit to General Washington at Mount Vernon--His descent of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers in a small boat, to New Orleans--Orders the Author to paint fifteen pictures for Versailles 287 CHAPTER XXX. The Author leaves his Collection in the Louvre, and arrives with the Indians in Bruxelles--Indians at the soirée of the American Minister in Bruxelles--Author's reception by the King in the Palace--Small-pox among the Indians--Indians unable to visit the Palace--Exhibition closes--Seven sick with small-pox--Death of one of them--His will--A second dies--His will--The rest recover--Faithful attentions of Daniel--The Author accompanies them to Antwerp, and pays their expenses to London on a steamer--Death of the War-chief in London--His will--The Author raises money by subscription and sends to them--Letter from the survivors, in England, to the Author--Drawings by the War-chief--The Author stopped in the streets of London and invited to see the skeleton of the War-chief!--His indignation--Subsequent deaths of four others of this party in England--The three parties of Indians in Europe--Their objects--Their success--Their conduct--Their reception and treatment--Things which they saw and learned--Estimates and statistics of civilized life which they have carried home--Their mode of reasoning from such premises--And the probable results 294 CHAPTER XXXI. The Author returns to his little children in Paris--His loss of time and money--The three Indian speculations--His efforts to promote the interests of the Indians, and the persons who brought them to Europe--His advice to other persons wishing to engage in similar enterprises--The Author retires to his atelier, and paints the fifteen pictures for the King--The pleasure of quiet and retirement with his four little children around him--He offers his Indian Collection to the American Government--And sends his memorial to Congress--Bill reported in favour of the purchase--The Author has an interview with the King in the Tuileries--Delivers the fifteen pictures--Subjects of the pictures painted--Conversations with the King--Reflections upon his extraordinary life--The Author's thoughts, while at his easel, upon scenes of his life gone by--And those that were about him, as he strolled, with his little children, through the streets and society of Paris--Distressing and alarming illness of the Author's four little children--Kindness of sympathizing friends--Death of "little George"--His remains sent to New York, and laid by the side of his mother--A father's tears and loneliness--The Author returns with his Collection to London 311 APPENDIX--A. Extracts of Letters from the Ioway Mission, Upper Missouri 327 APPENDIX--B. Experiments in Horse-taming 332 CATLIN'S NOTES IN EUROPE, _&c. &c._ CHAPTER XVII. Arrival of fourteen Ioway Indians in London--Their lodgings in St. James's Street--The Author visits them--Their portraits and names--Mr. Melody, their conductor--Jeffrey Doraway, their interpreter--Landlady's alarm--Indians visit the Author's Collection in the Egyptian Hall--Arrangement to dance in the Collection--The Doctor (Medicine or Mystery man) on top of the Hall--Their first drive in a bus--Doctor's appearance outside--Indians' first impressions of London--Lascars sweeping the streets--Man with a big nose--The Doctor lost, and found on the housetop--Their first exhibition in Egyptian Hall--Eagle-dance--The Doctor's speech--Great amusement of the ladies--His description of the railroad from Liverpool to London--War-dance, great applause--The "jolly fat dame"--She presents a gold bracelet to the Doctor by mistake--Her admiration of the _Roman-nose_--War-whoop--Description of--Approaching-dance--Wolf-song, and description of--Great amusement of the audience--Shaking hands--Mistake with the bracelet. The event which I spoke of at the close of my last chapter--the arrival of another party of Indians--was one which called upon me at once for a new enterprise, and I suddenly entered upon it, again deferring the time of my return to my native land. The "fourteen Ioway Indians," as report had said, had arrived, and were in apartments at No. 7, St. James's Street, with their interpreter. This party was in charge of Mr. G. H. C. Melody, who had accompanied them from their own country, with a permission gained from the Secretary at War to bring them to Europe, which permission was granted in the following words:-- _War Department, Washington City, Sept. 14th, 1843._ DEAR SIR, In answer to your application relative to Mr. Melody's making a tour to Europe with a party of Ioway Indians, as well as to a similar one on his behalf from the Rev. Wm. P. Cochran, of Marian County, Missouri, I beg leave to say, that it has not been usual to grant any permissions of the kind, and the verbal instructions to the Agents, Superintendents, &c. have been against permitting such tours, for the reason, I presume, that the persons having them in charge are usually men who merely wish to make money out of them by exhibitions, without taking any care of their habits or morals, or inducing them to profit by what they see and hear upon their route. In the present case, however, I do not think that the evils usually to be apprehended will occur, from the character of Mr. Melody, and the mode in which the Indians are proposed to be selected. This I understand is to be done by the Chief, White Cloud, with the full assent of the individuals thus selected, and their continuance on the tour to be their own act. Under all the circumstances, I suppose all the Department can do, is to allow Mr. Melody and the Chiefs of the tribe to do as they please, without imposing the usual or any prohibition. I am, yours, very truly, J. M. PORTER, Secretary at War. Vespasian Ellis, Esq. _Washington City, Sept. 1843._ DEAR SIR, Under this letter you are authorised to make any arrangement with the Chief of the tribe of Indians that you and he may please to make; and the War Department agrees, in consideration of your well-known integrity of character, not to interfere with the arrangement which you and the Chief or the Indians may make. Your obedient Servant, VESPASIAN ELLIS. Mr. Melody. Mr. Melody called upon me immediately on his arrival in London, and I went with him to see his party, several of whom I at once recognized as I entered their rooms. On seeing me they all rose upon their feet and offered me their hands, saluting me by their accustomed word, "How! how! how! _Chip-pe-ho-la!_" and evidently were prepared for great pleasure on meeting me. _White Cloud_, the head chief of the tribe, was of the party, and also the war-chief _Neu-mon-ya_ (the Walking Rain). These two chiefs, whose portraits were then hanging in my collection, had stood before me for their pictures several years previous in their own village, and also one of the warriors now present, whose name was _Wash-ka-mon-ya_ (the Fast Dancer). These facts being known, one can easily imagine how anxious these good fellows had been, during a journey of 2000 miles from their country to New York, and then during their voyage across the ocean, to meet me in a foreign land, who had several years before shared the hospitality of their village, and, to their knowledge, had done so much to collect and perpetuate the history of their race. They had come also, as I soon learned, in the full expectation to dance in my collection, which they were now impatient to see. This first interview was during the evening of their arrival, and was necessarily brief, that they might get their night's rest, and be prepared to visit my rooms in the morning. A few pipes were smoked out as we were all seated on the floor, in a "talk" upon the state of affairs in their country and incidents of their long and tedious journey, at the end of which they now required rest, and I left them. By entering the city at night, they had created little excitement or alarm, except with the landlady and her servants, where they had been taken in. Their rooms had been engaged before their arrival, but the good woman "had no idea they were going to look so savage and wild; she was very much afraid that their red paint would destroy her beds," not yet knowing that they were to wash the paint all off before they retired to rest, and that then they were to spread their buffalo robes upon the floor and sleep by the side of, and under her beds, instead of getting into them. These facts, when they became known, amused her very much; and Mr. Melody's representations of the harmlessness and honesty of the Indians, put her at rest with respect to the safety of her person and her property about her house. The objects of these being the same as those of the former party, of seeing the country and making money by their exhibitions, I entered into a similar arrangement with Mr. Melody, joining with my collection, conducting their exhibitions, and sharing the expenses and receipts of the same, on condition that such an arrangement should be agreeable to the Indians. Their first night's rest in London being finished, they were all up at an early hour, full of curiosity to see what was around them; and their fourteen red heads out of their front windows soon raised a crowd and a novel excitement in St. James's. Every body knew that the "Indians had gone," and the conjectures amongst the crowd were various and curious as to this strange arrival. Some said it was "the wedding party returned;" others, more sagacious, discovered the difference in their appearance, and pronounced them "the real cannibals from New Zealand;" and others said "their heads were too red, and they could be nothing else than the real _red_-heads--the man-eaters--that they had read of somewhere, but had forgotten the place." The morning papers, however, which are the keys for all such mysteries, soon solved the difficulty, but without diminishing the crowd, by the announcement that a party of fourteen Ioway Indians, from the base of the Rocky Mountains, had arrived during the night and taken up their lodgings in St. James's Street. After taking their breakfasts and finishing their toilets, they stepped into carriages and paid their first visit to my collection, then open in the Egyptian Hall. Instead of yelling and shouting as the Ojibbeways did on first entering it, they all walked silently and slowly to the middle of the room, with their hands over their mouths, denoting surprise and silence. In this position, for some minutes (wrapped in their pictured robes, which were mostly drawn over their heads or up to their eyes), they stood and rolled their eyes about the room in all directions, taking a general survey of what was around them, before a word was spoken. There was an occasional "she-e" in a lengthened whisper, and nothing more for some time, when at length a gradual and almost imperceptible conversation commenced about portraits and things which they recognized around the room. They had been in a moment transferred into the midst of hundreds of their friends and their enemies, who were gazing at them from the walls--amongst wig-wams and thousands of Indian costumes and arms, and views of the prairies they live in--altogether opening to their view, and to be seen at a glance, what it would take them years to see in their own country. They met the portraits of their chiefs and other friends, upon the walls, and extended their hands towards them; and they gathered in groups in front of their enemies, whom the warriors had met in battle, and now recognized before them. They looked with great pleasure on a picture of their own village, and examined with the closest scrutiny the arms and weapons of their enemies. One may easily imagine how much there was in this collection to entertain these rude people, and how much to command their attachment to me, with whom they had already resolved to unite. A council was held and the pipe lit under the Crow wig-wam, which was standing in the middle of my room, when Mr. Melody explained to the Indians that he had now got them safe across the ocean as he had promised, and into the midst of the greatest city in the world, where they would see many curious things, and make many good and valuable friends, if they conducted themselves properly, which he was confident they would do. "You have met," said he, "your old friend _Chip-pe-ho-la_, whom you have talked so much about on the way; you are now in his wonderful collection, and he is by the side of you, and you will hear what he has to say." ("_How! how! how!_") I reminded the White-cloud of the time that I was in his village, and lived under his father's tent, where I had been kindly treated, and for which I should always feel grateful. That in meeting them here, I did not meet them as strangers, but as friends. ("_How! how! how!_") That they had come a great way, and with a view to make something to carry home to their wives and little children; that Mr. Melody and I had entered into an arrangement by which I was in hopes that my efforts might aid in enabling them to do so. ("_How! how! how!_") That I was willing to devote all my time, and do all that was in my power, but the continuation of my exertions would depend entirely upon their own conduct, and their efforts to gain respect, by aiding in every way they could, and keeping themselves entirely sober, and free from the use of spirituous liquors. ("_How! how! how!_") Mr. Melody here remarked that they had pledged their words to him and their Great Father (as the condition on which they were allowed to come), that they would drink no ardent spirits while absent, and that he was glad to say they had thus far kept their promise strictly. ("_How! how! how!_") I told them I was glad to hear this, and I had no doubt but they would keep their word with me on that point, for every thing depended on it. We were amongst a people who look upon drunkenness as low and beastly, and also as a crime; and as I had found that most white people were of opinion that all Indians were drunkards, if they would show by their conduct that such was not the case, they would gain many warm and kind friends wherever they went. ("_How! how! how!_") I told them that the Ojibbeways whom I had had with me, and who had recently gone home, gave me a solemn promise when they arrived that they would keep entirely sober and use no spirituous liquors,--that they kept that promise awhile, but I had been grieved to hear that before they left the country they had taken up the wicked habit of drinking whiskey, and getting drunk, by which they had lost all the respect that white people had for them when they first came over. (A great laugh, and "_How! how! how!_") _Neu-mon-ya_ (the war-chief) replied to me, that they were thankful that the Great Spirit had kept them safe across the ocean and allowed them to see me, and to smoke the pipe again with me, and to hear my wise counsel, which they had all determined to keep ("_How! how! how!_"). He said that they had been very foolish to learn to drink "_fire-water_" in their country, which was very destructive to them, and they had promised their Great Father, the President, that they would drink none of it whilst they were abroad. He said he hoped I would not judge them by the Ojibbeways who had been here, "for," said he, "they are all a set of drunkards and thieves, and always keep their promises just about as well as they kept them with you." (A laugh, and "_How! how! how!_")[1] [1] Some allowance will be made for the freedom with which the Ioways occasionally speak of their predecessors, the Ojibbeways, as these two tribes have lived in a state of constant warfare from time immemorial. This _talk_, which was short, was ended here, to the satisfaction of all parties, and the Indians were again amusing themselves around the room, leaving the wig-wam and further conversations to Mr. Melody, the interpreter, and myself. Mr. Melody, though a stranger to me, bearing the high recommendations contained in the letter of the Secretary at War, already published, at once had my confidence (which I am pleased to say his conduct has kept up) as an excellent and honest man. Their interpreter, Jeffrey Doraway (a mulatto), and who had been one of the first to recognize and hail me when I entered their rooms, had been an old and attached acquaintance of mine while travelling in that country, and that acquaintance had several times been renewed in St. Louis, and New York, and other places where I had subsequently met him. He had been raised from childhood in the tribe, and the chiefs and all the party were very much attached to him, and his interest seemed to be wholly identified with that of the tribe. He was of a most forbearing and patient disposition, and of temperate habits, and as he was loved by the chiefs, had great influence with them, and control over the party. I related to Mr. Melody and Jeffrey the difficulties that laid before us; the prejudices raised in the public, mind by the conduct of Mr. Rankin with his party of Ojibbeways, and the unfortunate season of the year at which they had arrived in London. That the middle of July was the very worst season in which to open an exhibition, and that it might be difficult to raise a second excitement sufficiently strong to pay the very heavy expenses we must incur; but that I had resolved to unite my whole efforts to theirs, to bring their party into notice; which formed so much more complete and just a representation of the modes and appearance of the wild Indians of America than the Ojibbeways had given. Finishing our conversation here, we found the Indians adjusting their plumes, and their robes, and their weapons, preparing to step into their "omnibus and four," to take their first rapid glance at the great City of London, in "a drive," which was to pass them through some of its principal thoroughfares for their amusement. At this moment of excitement it was suddenly announced that one of the party (and a very essential one), the "_Doctor_" (or _medicine man_), was missing! Search was everywhere making for him, and when it was quite certain that he could not have passed into the street, Jeffrey inquired of the curator of the Hall if there was any passage that led out upon the roof? to which the curator replied, "Yes." "Well then," said Jeffrey, "we may be sure that he is there, for _it is 'a way that he has_:' he always is uneasy until he gets as high as he can go, and then he will stay there all night if you will let him alone." I went immediately to the roof, and found him standing on one corner of the parapet, overlooking Piccadilly,--wrapped in his buffalo robe, and still as a statue, while thousands were assembling in the streets to look at him, and to warn him of the danger they supposed him in. The readers who have not had the pleasure of seeing this eccentric character, will scarcely be able to appreciate the oddity of this freak until they become better acquainted with the Doctor in the following pages. I invited him down from his elevated position, which he seemed reluctant to leave, and he joined his party, who passed into their carriage at the door. In this moment of confusion, of escaping from the crowd and closing the door, heads were counted, and the old Doctor was missing again. A moment's observation showed, however, that his _ascending_ propensity had gained him a position over their heads, as he had seated himself by the side of the driver, with his buffalo robe wrapped around him, the long and glistening blade of his spear passing out from underneath it, near to his left ear, and his vermilioned face surmounted by a huge pair of buffalo horns, rising out of a crest of eagle's quills and ermine skins. Thus loaded, and at the crack of the whip, and amidst the yelling multitude that had gathered around them, did the fourteen Ioways dash into the streets, to open their eyes to the sights and scenes of the great metropolis. An hour or so in the streets, in a pleasant day, enabled them to see a great deal that was unlike the green prairies where they lived; and the "old Doctor," wrapped in his robe, and ogling the pretty girls, and everything else that he saw that was amusing as he passed along, raised a new excitement in the streets, and gave an extensive notification that "the wedding party had actually got back," or that another party of _red skins_ had arrived. They returned to their lodgings in great glee, and amused us at least for an hour with their "first impressions" of London; the _leading_, _striking_ feature of which, and the one that seemed to afford them the greatest satisfaction, was the _quantity of fresh meat_ that they saw in every street hanging up at the doors and windows--pigs, and calves, and sheep, and deer, and prairie hens, in such profusion that they thought "there would be little doubt of their getting as much fresh meat as they could eat." Besides this, they had seen many things that amused them, and others that excited their pity. They laughed much about the "black fellows with white eyes" who were carrying bags of coal, and "every one of them had got their hats on the wrong side before." They had seen many people who seemed to be very poor, and looked as if they were hungry: for they held out their hands to people passing by, as if they were asking for something to eat. "They had passed two _Indians_, with brooms in their hands, sweeping the dirt in the streets!" This occurrence had excited their greatest anxieties to know "what Indians they could be, that would be willing to take a broom in their hands and sweep the dirt from under white men's feet, and then hold out their hands to white people for money to buy food to eat." They all agreed "that _Ioways_ would not do it, that _Sioux_ would not, that _Pawnees_ would not;" and when they were just deciding that their enemies, the _Ojibbeways_, _might_ be _slaves_ enough to do it, and that these were possibly a part of the Ojibbeway party that had been flourishing in London, I explained the mystery to them, by informing them that their conjectures were wrong--that it was true they were Indians, but not from North America. I agreed with them that no North American Indian would use that mode of getting his living, but that there were Indians in different parts of the world, and that these were from the East Indies, a country many thousands of miles from here; that these people were Indians from that country, and were of a tribe called _Lascars_; that many of them were employed by the captains of English ships to help to navigate their vessels from that country to this; and that in London they often come to want, and are glad to sweep the streets and beg, as the means of living, instead of starving to death. It seemed still a mystery to them, but partly solved, and they made many further remarks among themselves about them. The good landlady at this moment announced to Mr. Melody and Jeffrey that the dinner for the Indians was ready, and in a moment all were seated save the Doctor; he was missing. "That old fool," said Jeffrey, "there's no doubt but he has found his way to the top of the house." I was conducted by one of the servants through several unoccupied rooms and dark passages, and at last through a narrow and almost impassable labyrinth that brought me out upon the roof. The "Doctor" was _there_; and, wrapped in his buffalo robe, with his red face and his buffalo horns, was standing like a _Zealand penguin_, and smiling upon the crowds of gazers who were gathering in the streets, and at the windows, and upon the house-tops, in the vicinity. For the several days succeeding this, while the Indians were lying still, and resting from their long and tedious voyage, and I was announcing in the usual way their arrival, and the time of the commencement of their exhibitions, I held many curious and amusing conversations with them about things they had already seen, and scenes and events that were yet in anticipation and before them. These are subjects, however, that must be passed over for events that were before us, and fuller of interest and excitement. They had much amusement at this time also, about a man they said they had seen, with a remarkably big nose, which they said looked like a large potato (or _wapsapinnakan_), and one of the women sitting near the door of the omnibus declared "that it was actually a _wapsapinnakan_, for she could distinctly see the little holes where the sprouts grow out." The bus, they said, had passed on rather too quick for all to have a fair look, but they believed they would at some future time meet him again, and take a good look at him. The evening for their first appearance before the public having arrived, the Ioways were prepared in all their rouge and fine dresses, and made their _début_ before a fashionable, but not a crowded audience. Their very appearance, as they entered the room, was so wild and classic, that it called forth applause from every part of the hall. The audience was composed chiefly of my friends, and others who had been familiar with the other group, and who were able to decide as to the comparative interest of the two parties; and it was proclaimed in every part of the room, that they were altogether more primitive in their appearance and modes, and decidedly a finer body of men. I had accompanied them on to the platform, and when they had got seated, and were lighting their pipe, I introduced them by stating, that in the exhibition of this party of Indians, I felt satisfied that I was bringing before the eyes of the audience the most just and complete illustration of the native looks and modes of the red men of the American wilderness, that had ever been seen on this side of the Atlantic; and that I should take great pleasure in introducing them and their modes, as they so satisfactorily illustrated and proved what I had been for several years labouring to show to English people, by my numerous paintings and Indian manufactures which I had collected, as well as by my notes of travel amongst these people, which I had recently published: That the _Ioway_ was one of the remote tribes, yet adhering to all their native customs and native looks; and that this party, composed, as it was, of the two principal men of the tribe, and several of its most distinguished warriors, not only conveyed to the eyes of people in this country the most accurate account of primitive modes, but was calculated to excite the deepest interest, and to claim the respect of the community. That the position of this tribe being upon the great plains between the Missouri and the Rocky Mountains, 1000 miles farther west than the country from which the Ojibbeways came, their modes and personal appearance were very different, having as yet received no changes from the proximity of civilization: That I had visited this tribe several years before, during my travels in the Indian countries, and that I had there formed my first acquaintance with the two chiefs who were now here, and which acquaintance, from the hospitable manner in which they had welcomed me in their humble wig-wams, I now felt great pleasure in renewing: ("_Hear, hear," and applause_.) That these facts being known, with others which would be incidentally given, I felt fully assured that they would meet with a kind reception in this country, and that the audience were prepared for the introduction I was now to make of them and their modes.[2] (_Great applause_.) [2] _Names of the Indians_. 1. Mew-hew-she-kaw (the white cloud), first chief of the nation. 2. Neu-mon-ya (the walking rain), war-chief. 3. Se-non-ti-yah (the blistered feet), the medicine man (or Doctor). 4. Wash-ka-mon-ya (the fast dancer). 5. Shon-ta-yi-ga (the little wolf). 6. No-ho-mun-ya (one who gives no attention), or Roman Nose. 7. Wa-ton-ye (the foremost man). 8. Wa-ta-we-buck-a-na (commanding general). _Women_. 9. Ru-ton-ye-wee-ma (strutting pigeon), wife of White Cloud. 10. Ru-ton-wee-me (pigeon on the wing). 11. O-kee-wee-me (female bear that walks on the back of another). 12. Koon-za-ya-me (female war-eagle sailing). 13. Ta-pa-ta-me (wisdom), girl. 14. Corsair (pap-poose). I then pointed out and explained to the audience, the characteristic differences between the appearance and modes of this party and the Ojibbeways, whom they had seen, and which will be obvious to the reader in the annexed illustration (_Plate No_. 9). The Ioways, like three other tribes only, in North America, all adhere to their national mode of shaving and ornamenting their heads. This is a very curious mode, and presents an appearance at once that distinguishes them from the Ojibbeways and other tribes, who cultivate the hair to the greatest length they possibly can, and pride themselves on its jet and glossy black. Every man in the Ioway tribe adheres to the mode of cutting all the hair as close as he can, excepting a small tuft which is left upon the crown, and being that part which the enemy takes for the scalp, is very properly denominated the "_scalp-lock_." He then rouges with vermilion the whole crown of his head (and oftentimes his whole face), and surmounts his _scalp-lock_ by a beautiful crest, made of the hair of the deer's tail, dyed of vermilion red. The chief man of this party, the "_White Cloud_," the son of a distinguished chief of the same name, who died a few years since, was 35 years of age, and hereditary chief of the tribe. By several humane and noble acts, after he received his office of chief, he gained the admiration and friendship of the officers of the United States Government, as well as of his tribe, and had therefore been countenanced by the Government (as has been shown) in the enterprise of going abroad. _Neu-mon-ya_ (the Walking Rain), and war-chief of the tribe, was 54 years of age, and nearly six feet and a half in height. A noble specimen of the manly grace and dignity that belong to the American wilderness, and also a man who had distinguished himself in the wars that he had led against his enemies. _Se-non-ti-yah_ (the Blistered Feet), the _Medicine_ or _Mystery Man_, was a highly important personage of the party, and held a high and enviable position, as physician, soothsayer, and magician, in his tribe. These personages are found in every tribe, and so much control have they over the superstitious minds of their people, that their influence and power in the tribe often transcend those of the chief. In all councils of war and peace they have a seat by the chiefs, and are as regularly consulted by the chiefs, as soothsayers were consulted in ancient days, and equal deference and respect is paid to their advice or opinions, rendering them _oracles_ of the tribe in which they live. [Illustration: N^o. 9.] A good illustration of this was given by this magician, while on their voyage to this country, a few weeks since, when near the land, off the English coast. The packet ship in which the Indians were passengers, was becalmed for several days, much to the annoyance of the Indians and numerous other passengers, when it was decided, by the Indian chief, that they must call upon the _Medicine Man_, to try the efficacy of his magical powers in the endeavour to raise a wind. For this purpose he very gradually went to work, with all due ceremony, according to the modes of the country, and after the usual ceremony of a mystery feast, and various invocations to the _spirit_ of the _wind_ and the _ocean_, both were conciliated by the sacrifice of many plugs of tobacco thrown into the sea; and in a little time the wind began to blow, the sails were filled, and the vessel soon wafted into port, to the amusement of the passengers, and much to the gratification of the Indians, who all believed, and ever will, that the vessel was set in motion by the potency of the Doctor's mysterious and supernatural powers. Of the _Warriors_, _Shon-ta-yi-ga_ (the Little Wolf) and _Nu-ho-mun-ya_ (called the "Roman Nose") were the most distinguished, and I believe the world will agree with me, that it would be an act of injustice on my part, should I allow the poor fellows to carry through this country, without giving them publication, the subjoined documents,[3] by which it will be seen that they saved, in a humane manner, and worthy of warriors of better _caste_, the lives of ten unarmed and unoffending enemies. [3] KNOW ALL MEN BY THESE PRESENTS, That Shon-ta-yi-ga or the _Little Wolf_, an Ioway brave, is well entitled to be called a brave, from the fact of his having been engaged in many expeditions against the enemies of his tribe: in all such excursions he has, I am informed, universally behaved bravely. But especially is he entitled to the love and confidence of all men, whether white or red, on account of his humanity and daring conduct in arresting from the cruel nation of which he is a member, a party of _Omahaws_. On last Sabbath day he saved from the tomahawk and scalping-knife ten unoffending Omahaws: one of the party was decoyed out of sight and murdered; the other ten consisting of the well-known and much-loved chiefs Big Elk, Big Eyes, and Washkamonia, one squaw and six young men. This party was on a visit of friendship, by special invitation from the Ioways. When they arrived within ten miles of this post, they were seen and conversed with by the son in law of Neu-mon-ya, a chief of the Ioways, who undertook to bring the _tobacco_ and _sticks_ to the Ioway chiefs, as is a custom of Indians when on a begging expedition. This young man proved treacherous, and failed to deliver his message to his chiefs, and gave information of the approach of the Omahaws to a man who was preparing to go on a war party. He and two-thirds of the nation started out to murder their visitors, and were only prevented by the timely assistance and interference of the Little Wolf, or Shon-ta-yi-ga, and one other Ioway, whose name is the Roman Nose. This man (the Little Wolf) interfered, as he says, and doubtless he tells the truth, because he considered it treacherous and cowardly to strike a brother, after having invited them to visit their nation. Such treachery is rare indeed among the wildest North-American Indians, and never occurred with the Ioways before. I met him and Jeffrey, the Ioway interpreter, together with two other Ioways, guarding the Big Elk and his party on to my agency, in a short time after this occurrence took place. I cannot close this communication without expressing my sincere thanks to the Little Wolf and his comrade for their good conduct; and I most respectfully beg leave to recommend them to the kind attention of their great father, the President of the United States, and all gentlemen to whom this paper may be shown. W. P. RICHARDSON. _Great Nemahaw Sub-Agency, Oct. 23, 1843._ _Office of Indian Affairs, St. Louis, Missouri, April 10, 1844_. SIR, Permit me to introduce to you the bearer, No-ho-mun-ya (Roman Nose), an Ioway brave. Roman Nose, in company with Shon-ta-yi-ga, or Little Wolf, in October last defended and rescued from impending death by a party of his own nation, ten Omahaw Indians, consisting of four respected chiefs, braves, and squaws, under circumstances highly flattering to their bravery and humanity. I would recommend that a medal be presented to No-ho-mun-ya (Roman Nose) as a testimonial of his meritorious conduct on the occasion referred to. Medals from the Government are highly esteemed by the Indians; and if bravery and humanity are merits in the Indian, then I think Roman Nose richly merits one. His character in every respect is good. A notice by the Government of meritorious acts by the Indians has a happy tendency in making a favourable impression in reference to the act that may be the cause of the notice. I have presented Little Wolf with a medal that was in the office. On receiving it, he very delicately replied, that "he deserved no credit for what he had done--that he had only done his duty, but was gratified that his conduct had merited the approbation of his nation and his father." I have the honour to be, very respectfully, Sir, Your obedient servant, W. H. HARVEY, Sup. Ind. Aff. To his Excellency John Tyler, President of the United States, Washington City. I concur with Mr. Harvey in thinking this Indian Chief entitled for his bravery and humanity to a medal. June 8, 1844. J. TYLER, Presid. U. States, Washington City. Medal delivered accordingly to Mr. Geo. H. C. Melody, for the Chief. June 8, 1844. J. HARTLEY CRAWFORD. _Okee-wee-me_ (the wife of the Little Wolf) is the mother of the infant pappoose, called Corsair. This child is little more than three months old, and slung in the cradle on the mother's back, according to the general custom practised by all the American tribes, and furnishes one of the most interesting illustrations in the group. All tribes in America practise the same mode of carrying their infant children for several months from their birth upon a flat board resting upon the mother's back, as she walks or rides, suspended by a broad strap passing over her forehead, or across her breast. By this mode of carrying their children, the mothers, who have to perform all the slavish duties of the camp, having the free use of their hands and arms, are enabled to work most of the time, and, in fact, exercise and labour nearly as well as if their children were not attached to their persons. These cradles are often, as in the present instance, most elaborately embroidered with porcupine quills, and loaded with little trinkets hanging within the child's reach, that it may amuse itself with them as it rides, with its face looking _from_ that of its mother, while she is at work, so as not to draw upon her valuable time. This rigid, and seemingly cruel mode of binding the child with its back to a straight board, seems to be one peculiarly adapted to Indian life, and, I believe, promotes straight limbs, sound lungs, and long life. I having thus introduced the party to their first audience in England, and left other remarks upon them for their proper place, the Indians laid by their pipe, and commenced their evening's amusements by giving first their favourite, the _Eagle-Dance_. The _Drum_ (and their "_Eagle-Whistles_," with which they imitate the chattering of the soaring eagle), with their voices, formed the music for this truly picturesque and exciting dance. At their first pause in the dance, the audience, who had witnessed nothing of this description in the amusements of the Ojibbeways, being excited to the highest degree, encouraged the strangers with rounds of applause. The song in this dance is addressed to their favourite bird the war-eagle, and each dancer carries a fan made of the eagle's tail, in his left hand, as he dances, and by his attitudes endeavours to imitate the motions of the soaring eagle. This, being a part of the war-dance, is a _boasting_ dance; and at the end of each strain in the song some one of the warriors steps forth and, in an excited speech, describes the time and the manner in which he has slain his enemy in battle, or captured his horses, or performed some other achievement in war. After this the dance proceeds with increased spirit; and several in succession having thus excited their fellow-dancers, an indescribable thrill and effect are often produced before they get through. In the midst of the noise and excitement of this dance the Doctor (or _mystery-man_) jumped forward to the edge of the platform, and making the most tremendous flourish of his spear which he held in his right hand, and his shield extended upon his left arm, recited the military deeds of his life--how he had slain his enemies in battle and taken their scalps; and with singular effect fitting the action to the word, acting them out as he described. The thrilling effect produced by the Doctor's boast brought him showers of applause, which touched his vanity, and at the close of the dance he imagined all eyes in admiration fixed upon him, and no doubt felt himself called upon for the following brief but significant speech which he delivered, waving his right hand over the heads of the audience from the front of the platform where he stood, and from which he dropped his most humble and obsequious smiles upon the groups of ladies who were near him, and applauding at the end of every sentence:-- "My Friends,--It makes me very happy to see so many smiling faces about me, for when people smile and laugh, I know they are not angry--" _Jeffrey_, the _Interpreter_, now made _his_ début; the Doctor had beckoned him up by his side to interpret his speech to the audience, and when he explained the above sentence, the "Doctor" received a round of applause, and particularly from the ladies, who could not but be pleased with the simple vanity of the speaker and the self-complacent smiles which he always lavished upon the fair sex who were around him. The Doctor, though advanced to the sound and efficient age of 45, had never taken to him a wife; and, like too many of his fraternity, had always lived upon the excessive vanity of believing that he was the _beau idéal_ of his tribe, and admired too much by all to be a legitimate subject of exclusive appropriation to any particular one. And more than this (which may not have quite fallen to the happy lot of any of his brother bachelors in the polished world), from the sort of _charitable_ habit he had of spreading his glowing smiles upon the crowds about him, one would almost be of opinion that, in his own community, under the aids and charms of his profession, he in a measure had existed upon the belief that his smiles were food and clothing for the crowds upon whom they were bestowed. The Doctor yet stood, the concentration of smiles and anxious looks from every part of the room, and at length proceeded (_Plate No. 10_):-- "My Friends,--I see the ladies are pleased, and this pleases me--because I know, that if they are pleased, they will please the men." It was quite impossible for the Doctor to proceed further until he had bowed to the burst of laughter and applause from all parts of the room, and particularly from the ladies. This several times ceased, but suddenly burst out again, and too quick for him to resume. He had evidently made a "hit" with the ladies, and he was braced strong in courage to make the best use of it, although the rest of his comrades, who were seated and passing the pipe around, were laughing at him and endeavouring to embarrass him. One of the party, by the name of _Wash-ka-mon-ya_, and a good deal of the _braggart_, had the cruelty to say to him, "You old fool, you had better sit down, the white squaws are all laughing at you." To which the Doctor, deliberately turning round, sarcastically replied, "You badger, go into your burrow backwards: I have said more in two sentences than you ever said in your life." He then turned round, and calling Jeffrey nearer to his side, proceeded-- "My Friends,"--[here was a burst of irresistible laughter from the ladies, which the drollness of his expression and his figure excited at the moment, and in which, having met it all in good humour, he was taking a part, but continued]-- "My Friends,--I believe that our dance was pleasing to you, and that our noise has not given you offence. (_Applause._) "My Friends,--We live a great way from here, and we have come over a great salt lake to see you, and to offer you our hands. The Great Spirit has been kind to us; we know that our lives are always in his hands, and we thank him for keeping us safe. (_How, how, how!_ from the Indians, and applause, with _Hear, hear, hear!_) "My Friends,--We have met our friend _Chip-pe-ho-la_ here, and seen the medicine things that he has done, and which are hanging all around us, and this makes us happy. We have found our chiefs' faces on the walls, which the Great Spirit has allowed him to bring over safe, and we are thankful for this. (_How, how, how!_) "My Friends,--This is a large village, and it has many fine wig-wams; we rode in a large carriage the other day and saw it all. (_A laugh_, and _Hear!_) We had heard a great deal about the people on this side of the water, but we did not think they were so rich; we believe that the _Saganoshes_ know a great deal. (_How, how, how!_) "My Friends,--We have come on your great _medicine road_, and it pleased us very much. When we landed from our ship, we came on your _medicine road_, and were told it would be very fine; but when we started, we were all very much alarmed; we went in the dark; we all went right down into the ground, under a high mountain; we had heard that a part of the white people go into the ground when they die, and some of them into the fire; we saw some fire; there was a great hissing, and a great deal of smoke coming out of this place,[4] and we could not get out; we were then somewhat afraid, my friends and I began to sing our '_death-song_;' but when we had commenced, our hearts were full of joy, we came out again in the open air, and the country was very beautiful around us. (_How, how, how!_ and great applause.) "My Friends,--After we got out from under the ground, we were much pleased all the way on the _medicine road_ until we got to this village. There were many things to please us, and I think that before the trees were cut down, it was a very beautiful country. My friends, we think there were Indians and buffalos in this country then. (_How, how, how!_) "My Friends,--We think we saw some of the _k'nick k'neck_[5] as we came along the _medicine road_, and some _quash-e-gon-eh-co_,[6] but we came so fast that we were not certain; we should like to know. My Friends, this is all I have to say." (_How, how, how!_ and great applause.) [4] The railway tunnel at Liverpool. [5] The red willow, from the inner bark of which the Indians make their substitute for tobacco. [6] A medicinal herb, the roots of which the Indians use as a cathartic medicine. [Illustration: N^o. 10.] The Doctor's speech, which would have been terminated much sooner if he had been allowed to proceed unmolested, had a very pleasing effect upon the audience, and had allowed abundant time for the rest of the party to prepare for the next _dance_. I now announced to the audience that the Indians were about to give the _Warrior's-dance_, as performed by their tribe. I explained the meaning of it, the circumstances under which it was given, and the respects in which it differed from the War-dance as given by the Ojibbeways. After which they were all upon their feet, and, with weapons in hand, proceeded to give it the most exciting, and even _alarming_ effect. They received great applause at the end of this dance, and also a number of presents, which were handed and thrown on to the platform. This created much excitement and good cheer among them, and I was not a little surprised, nor was I less amused and gratified, to discover at this moment, that the (so-called) "_jolly fat dame_," of Ojibbeway notoriety, was along side of the platform, at her old stand, and, in her wonted liberality, the first one to start the fashion of making the poor fellows occasional presents. I regretted, however, that I should have been the ignorant cause of her bestowing her first present upon a person for whom she did not intend it. The finest-looking man of the party, and one of the youngest, was _No-ho-mun-ya_ (the _Roman-nose_), upon whom it seems this good lady's admiration had been fixed during the evening, notwithstanding the smiles that had been lavished by the Doctor, and the eloquence which he had poured forth in his boastings and speeches. The elegant limbs, Herculean frame, and graceful and terrible movements of this six foot and a-half young man, as she had gazed upon him in this last dance, had softened her heart into all its former kindness and liberality, and she had at this moment, when I first discovered her, unclasped a beautiful bracelet from one of her arms, and was just reaching over the platform to say to me as she did, "Wonderful! wonderful! Mr. Catlin; I think it one of the wonders of the world! Will you hand this to that splendid fellow, with my compliments--give him my compliments, will you--it's a bracelet for his arm (Cadotte has got the other, you know). Oh! but he is a splendid fellow--give him my compliments, will you. I think them a much finer party than the other--oh, far superior! I never saw the like; hand it to him, will you, and if he can't put it on, poor fellow, I will show him how." All this had been run over so rapidly that I scarcely could recollect what she said, for several were speaking to me at the same time; and at that unfortunate moment it was that I committed the error, for which I was almost ready to break my own back when I found it out. I presented it by mistake to the Doctor, who, I supposed, had of course been winning all the laurels of the evening, and with them the good lady's compliments, which it would have been quite awkward on her part and mine also to have unpresented. The Doctor raised up the bracelet as high as he could reach, and made the house ring and almost tremble with the war-whoop, which he several times repeated.[7] What could be done? _She_ was too gallant, and I did not yet know the mistake. The Doctor happened to know how to put it on--it fitted to his copper-coloured arm above his elbow--and his true politeness led him to bow and to smile a thousand thanks upon the fair dame as he bent over her from the platform. [7] The frightful war-whoop is sounded at the instant when Indians are rushing into battle, as the signal of attack. It is a shrill sounded note, on a high key, given out with a gradual swell, and shaken by a rapid vibration of the four fingers of the right hand over the mouth. This note is not allowed to be given in the Indian countries unless in battle, or in the war or other dances, where they are privileged to give it. The _Approaching-dance_[8] was now given, in which the Doctor took the lead in great glee, and of course with great effect. He tilted off with a light and elastic step, as he was "following the track of his enemy," and when he raised his brawny arm to beckon on his warriors to the attack, he took great pains to display the glistening trinket which he had accepted with such heartfelt satisfaction. [8] The Approaching Dance is a spirited part of the _War Dance_, in which the dancers are by their gestures exhibiting the mode of advancing upon an enemy, by hunting out and following up the track, discovering the enemy, and preparing for the attack, &c., and the song for this dance runs thus:-- O-ta-pa! I am creeping on your track, Keep on your guard, O-ta-pa! Or I will hop on your back, I will hop on you, I will hop on you. Stand back, my friends, I see them; The enemies are here, I see them! They are in a good place, Don't move, I see them! &c. &c. &c. This dance finished, they all sat down upon the platform and passed the pipe around, whilst I was further explaining upon their appearance and modes, and the dance which they had just given. I asked them what amusement they proposed next, and they announced to me, that as the Doctor was taking all the honours and all the glory to himself on that night (and of whom they all seemed extremely jealous), they had decided that he should finish the amusements of the evening by singing the "_Wolf-song_." He was so conscious of having engrossed the principal attention of the house that he at once complied with their request, though at other times it required a great effort to get him to sing it. I had not myself heard this song, which seemed, from their preparations, to promise some amusement, and which Jeffrey told me belonged exclusively to the Doctor, he having composed it. The Doctor was ready to commence, and wrapping his robe around him, having his right arm out, he shook a rattle (she-she-quoin) in his right hand, as he tilted about the platform, singing alone; at the end of a sentence he commenced to bark and howl like a wolf, when another jumped upon his feet and ran to him, and another, and another, and joined in the chorus, with their heads turned up like wolves when they are howling. He then sang another strain as he moved about the platform again, all following him, singing, and ready to join in the deafening chorus. This strange and comic song drew roars of laughter, and many rounds of applause for the Doctor, and left him, sure enough, the lion of the evening.[9] [9] WOLF SONG.--This amusing song, which I have since learned more of, and which I believe to be peculiar to the Ioways, seems to come strictly under the province of the _medicine_ or _mystery_ man. I will venture to say, that this ingenious adaptation will excite a smile, if not some degree of real amusement, as well as applause, whenever it is fairly heard and understood by an English audience. The occasion that calls for this song in the Ioway country is, when a party of young men who are preparing to start on a war excursion against their enemy (after having fatigued the whole village for several days with the war dance, making their boasts how they are going to slay their enemies, &c.) have retired to rest, at a late hour in the night, to start the next morning, at break of day, on their intended expedition. In the dead of that night, and after the vaunting war party have got into a sound sleep, the serenading party, to sing this song, made up of a number of young fellows who care at that time much less about taking scalps than they do for a little good fun, appear back of the wig-wams of these "_men of war_" and commence serenading them with this curious song, which they have ingeniously taken from the howling of a gang of wolves, and so admirably adapted it to music as to form it into a most amusing duet, quartet, or whatever it may be better termed; and with this song, with its barking and howling chorus, they are sure to annoy the party until they get up, light the fire, get out their tobacco, and other little luxuries they may have prepared for their excursion, which they will smoke and partake with them until daylight, if they last so long, when they will take leave of their morning friends who are for the "death," thanking them for their liberality and kindness in starting, wishing them a good night's sleep (when night comes again) and a successful campaign against their enemies. After he had finished his song, he traversed the platform a few times, lavishing his self-complacent smiles upon the ladies around the room, and then desired me to say to the audience, that on the next evening they were going to give the _Pipe of Peace-dance, and the Scalp-dance_, which he wished all the ladies to see, and that _now_ the chiefs and himself were ready to shake hands with all the people in the room. This of course brought a rush of visitors to the platform, anxious to welcome the new comers by giving them their hands. A general shake of the hands took place, and a conversation that occupied half an hour or more, and much to the satisfaction of the Indians as well as to those who came to see them. Much curiosity was kept up yet about the Doctor. The impression that his countenance and his wit had made upon the women had secured a knot of them about him, from whom it was difficult to disengage him: some complained that they were sick, and desired him to feel their pulse; he did so, and being asked as to the nature of their disease, he replied that "they were in love,"--and as to the remedy, he said, "Get husbands, and in a day and a night you will be well." All this they could have got from other quarters, but coming from an Indian, whose naked shoulders were glistening around the room, it seemed to come with the freshness and zest of something entirely new, and created much merriment. The amusements of their first night being over, the Indians were withdrawn from the room, and the audience soon dispersed. Daniel, as usual, had been at his post, and his report of a few moments' chat with the "jolly fat dame" gave me the first intelligence of the awful error I had committed in giving her bracelet to the Doctor instead of the Roman-nose, for whom she had intended it. She had said to him, however, that "it was no matter, and the error must not be corrected; she would bring one on the following evening for the Roman-nose, and begged that the Doctor might never be apprised of the mistake which had resulted to his benefit." "They are a splendid set of men, Daniel--far superior to the others. It is the greatest treat I ever had--I shall be here every night. You'll think by and by that I am a pretty good customer; ha, Daniel? That _Roman-nose_ is a magnificent fellow--he's got no wife, has he, Daniel?" "No, Madam, he is the youngest man of the party." "He is an _elegant_ fellow--but then his _skin_, Daniel. Their skins are not so fine as the others--they are _too_ black, or red, or what you call it; but Cadotte! what a beautiful colour he was, ha? But I dare say a little _washing_ and living in a city would bring them nearly white? These people love Mr. Catlin--he's a curious man--he's a _wonderful_ man; these are his old acquaintance, he has boarded with them; how they love him, don't they? Ah, well, good night, good night." She was the last of the visitors going out of the door, and did not know that I was so close behind her. CHAPTER XVIII. Character of the Doctor (_mystery_ or _medicine man_)--An omnibus drive--The Doctor's admiration of the "jolly fat dame"--Jealousy--War-dress and war-paint of the _Roman-nose_--His appearance--He leads the War-dance--The Welcome-dance, and Bear-dance--Description of--Pipe-of-peace (or Calumet) dance, and Scalp-dance--_Chip-pe-ho-la (the Author)_--Speech of the War-chief--The "jolly fat dame"--She presents a gold bracelet to _Roman-nose_--Jealousy and distress of the Doctor--She converses with Daniel--Two reverend gentlemen converse with the Indians about religion--Reply of White-cloud and War-chief--Questions by the reverend gentlemen--Answers by the War-chief--Indians invited to breakfast with Mr. Disraeli, M.P., Park Lane--Indians' toilette and dress--The Doctor and Jim (Wash-ka-mon-ya) fasting for the occasion. On paying a visit to the lodgings of the Indians, after they had returned from the exhibition, I found them in a merry mood, cracking their jokes upon the Doctor, who had put himself forward in so conspicuous a manner, to the great amusement of the ladies. During the exhibition, it would have appeared, from his looks and his actions, that he was to be perfectly happy for a twelvemonth at least; but he now appeared sad and dejected as he listened to their jokes, and turned his splendid bracelet around with his fingers. Several of the women had received brooches and other trinkets of value, and all had been highly pleased. It seemed that the War-chief was looked upon by the rest of the party as their orator; and, on an occasion like that which had just passed by, it was usual, and was expected, that he would have arisen and made a speech; and it was as little expected that the Doctor, who, they said, was a very diffident and backward man on such occasions, should have had so much, or anything to say. But the Doctor was a man of talent and wit, and with an exorbitant share of vanity and self-conceit, which were excited to that degree by the irresistible smiles of the ladies, that he was nerved with courage and ambition to act the part that he did through the evening. Under the momentary excitement of his feelings, he had, to be sure, but innocently, stepped a little out of his sphere, and in the way of the chiefs, which had somewhat annoyed them at the time, but of which they were now rather making merry than otherwise. The Doctor was a good-natured and harmless man, and entirely the creature of impulse. He was always polite, though not always in good humour. The two leading traits in his character, one or the other of which was always conspicuous, were extreme buoyancy of spirits and good humour, when he smiled upon everybody and everything around him, or silent dejection, which bade defiance to every social effort. In either of these moods he had the peculiarities of being entirely harmless, and of remaining in them but a very short time; and _between_ these moods, he was like a _spirit level_, exceedingly difficult to hold at a balance. The jokes that had been concentrated on the Doctor had been rather pleasant and amusing than otherwise, though there had been so many of them from the chiefs, from the warriors, from the squaws, and also from Mr. Melody, and Jeffrey and Daniel, all of whom were laughing at his expense, that I found him, and left him, sitting in one corner of the room, with his robe wrapped around him, in stoic silence, occasionally casting his eyes on his gold bracelet, and then upon the smoking beef-steaks and coffee which were on the table for their suppers, and of which he partook not. Whilst the rest were at the table, he silently spread his robe upon the floor, and wrapped himself in it. In the morning he washed, as usual, at the dawning of day, spent an hour or so in solitary meditation on the roof of the house, and afterwards joined with a pleasant face at the breakfast table, and through the amusements of the day and evening. Mr. Melody had, with my cordial approbation, employed an omnibus with four horses, to drive them an hour each day for the benefit of their health; and, at the same time, to amuse and instruct them, by showing them everything that they could see in the civilized world to their advantage. The Doctor joined, in good spirits, in the "drive" of that day; and, as on the day before, was wrapped in his buffalo, and seated by the side of the driver, with the polished blade of his lance glistening above his head, as many Londoners who read this will forcibly recollect. From their drive, in which they had seen many strange things, they returned in good spirits, and received in their chambers a private party of ladies and gentlemen, my esteemed friends, and several editors of the leading journals of London. A long and very interesting conversation was held with them on several subjects, and the clear and argumentative manner in which their replies were made, and the truly striking and primitive modes in which they were found, at once engaged the profound attention of all, and procured for them, besides some handsome presents at the time, the strongest recommendations from the editors of the press, as subjects of far greater interest than the party of Ojibbeways, whom they had before seen. Amongst these visiters they recognized with great pleasure, and shook hands with, my kind friend Dr. Thomas Hodgkin, at whose hospitable board they had, a few days before, with the author, partaken of an excellent dinner prepared for them. This was the first gentleman's table they were invited to in the kingdom, and probably the first place where they ever tried the use of the knife and fork in the English style. Dr. Hodgkin being of the Society of Friends, they received much kind and friendly advice from him, which they never forgot; and from the unusual shape of his dress, they called him afterwards (not being able to recollect his name) _Tchon-a-wap-pa_ (the straight coat). At night they were in the Hall again, and around them, amidst a greatly increased audience, had the pleasure of beholding nearly all the faces they had seen the night before; and the Doctor, in particular, of seeing the smiling ladies whom he had invited to see the _scalp-dance_ and the _scalps_, and, to his more identical satisfaction, of beholding, at the end of the platform where he had taken pains to spread his robe and seat himself, the fair dame of _gushing_ charms, to whom he was occasionally gently turning his head on one side and smiling, as he presented to her view his copper-coloured arm, encompassed with the golden bracelet. This kind lady's goodness was such that she could not but respond to the bows and the smiles of the Doctor, though (within herself) she felt a little annoyed at the position which he had taken, so immediately between her place, which the crowd prevented her from changing, and that of the splendid "_Roman Nose_," who was now much more an object of admiration than he had been the night before, and more peremptorily called for all her attention. He had been selected to lead in the _scalp-dance_ which was to be given that night; and for this purpose, in pursuance of the custom of the country, he had left off his shirt and all his dress save his beautifully garnished leggings and mocassins, and his many-coloured sash and kilt of eagle's quills and ermine around his waist. His head was vermilioned red, and dressed with his helmet-like red crest, and surmounted with a white and a red eagle's quill, denoting his readiness for peace or for war. His shoulders and his arms were curiously streaked with red paint, and on his right and his left breast were the impresses, in black paint, of two hands, denoting the two victims he had struck, and whose scalps he then held attached to his painted tomahawk, which he was to wield in triumph as he had in the _scalp-dance_. Thus arrayed and ornamented, he appeared in his "war dress," as it is termed; and as he arose from his seat upon the platform, and drew his painted shield and quiver from his back, shouts of applause rung from every part of the hall, and, of course, trepidation increased in the veins of the fair dame, whose elbows were resting on the edge of the platform, while she was in rapture gazing upon him, and but partly concealing at times a beautiful trinket, the sparkling of which the sharp eyes of the Doctor had seen, as she endeavoured to conceal it in her right hand. The Doctor could not speak to this fair lady except with his eyes, with the softest expressions of which he lost no time or opportunity; and (for several combined reasons, no doubt) he seemed quite unambitious to leave his seat to "_saw the air_," and strike for a repetition of the applause he had gained the night before. Unfortunately in some respects, and as fortunately no doubt in others, the splendid "_Roman Nose_" held his position at the farther end of the platform during the greater part of the evening; and the Doctor, for the several reasons already imagined, remained in the close vicinity of the fair dame, whose over-timidity, he feared, held her in an unnecessary and painful suspense. In this position of things and of parties, the amusements allotted for the evening had commenced, and were progressing, amidst the roars of applause that were ready at the close of each dance. They commenced by giving the _"Welcome Dance" and song_[10] peculiar to their tribe. The sentiment of this being explained by me, gave great pleasure to the audience, and prepared them for the dances and amusements which were to follow. [10] This peculiar dance is given to a stranger, or strangers, whom they are decided to welcome in their village; and out of respect to the person or persons to whom they are expressing this welcome, the musicians and all the spectators rise upon their feet while it is being danced. The song is at first a lament for some friend, or friends, who are dead or gone away, and ends in a gay and lively and cheerful step, whilst they are announcing that the friend to whom they are addressing it is received into the place which has been left. They next announced the "_Bear Dance_" and amused the audience very much in its execution. This curious dance is given when a party are preparing to hunt the _black bear_, for its delicious food; or to contend with the more ferocious and dangerous "_grizly bear_," when a similar appeal is made to the _bear-spirit_, and with similar results, (_i.e._) all hands having strictly attended to the important and necessary form of conciliating in this way the good will and protection of the peculiar _spirit_ presiding over the destinies of those animals, they start off upon their hunt with a confidence and prospect of success which they could not otherwise have ventured to count upon. In this grotesque and amusing mode, each dancer imitates with his hands, alternately, the habits of the bear when running, and when sitting up, upon its feet, its paws suspended from its breast. It was customary with them to be seated a few minutes after each dance, and to pass around the pipe; and in the interval they were thus filling up after this dance, the Indians, as well as the audience, were all surprised at the appearance of a large square parcel handed in, and on to the platform, by a servant in livery, as a present to the Indians from his anonymous mistress. "Curiosity was on tip-toe" to know what so bulky a parcel contained; and when it was opened, it was found to contain 14 beautifully bound Bibles--the number just equal to the number of Indians of the party; and a very kind letter addressed to them, and which was read, exhorting them to change the tenor of their lives, to learn to read, and to profit by the gifts enclosed to them. The Bibles being distributed amongst them, the War-chief arose, and in the most respectful and appropriate manner returned his thanks for the liberal present and the kind wishes of the lady who gave them; he said he was sorry he did not know which lady to thank, but by thanking all in the room, he considered he was taking the surest way of conveying his thanks to her. After this, the _ne plus ultra_ (as the Doctor would undoubtedly call it), the frightful "_Scalp Dance_,"[11] was announced. All parties, the modest _squaws_ (of whom they had four with them) as well as the men, were arranging their dresses and implements to take part in it. The drums struck up, and the "splendid _Roman Nose_" led off, waving his two scalps on the point of a lance, until he was once around the circle, when they were placed in the hands of a squaw to carry, whilst he wielded his tomahawk and scalping-knife, and showed the manner in which his unfortunate enemies had fallen before him. This was probably the first time that the Scalp Dance, in its original and _classic_ form, was ever seen in the city of London, and embellished by the presence of real and _genuine scalps_. [11] This barbarous and exciting scene is the Indian mode of celebrating a victory, and is given fifteen nights in succession, when a war party returns from battle, having taken scalps from the heads of their enemies. Taking the scalp is practised by all the American tribes, and by them all very much in the same way, by cutting off a patch of the skin from a victim's head when killed in battle; and this piece of skin, with the hair on it, is the scalp, which is taken and preserved solely for a trophy, as the proof positive that its possessor has killed an enemy in battle, and this because they have no books of history or public records to refer to for the account of the battles of military men. The scalp dance is generally danced by torch light, at a late hour in the night; and, in all tribes, the women take a conspicuous part in it, by dancing in the circle with the men, holding up the scalps just brought from battle, attached to the top of a pole, or the handle of a lance. A scalp, to be a genuine one, must have been taken from the head of an _enemy_, and that enemy _dead_. The living are sometimes scalped, but whenever it occurs, it is on a field of battle, amongst the wounded, and supposed to be dead, who sometimes survive, but with the signal disgrace of having lost a patch of the skin and hair from the top of their heads. This exciting scene, with its associations, had like to have been too much for the nerves and tastes of London people; but having evidently assembled here for the pleasure of receiving shocks and trying their nerves, they soon seemed reconciled, and all looked on with amazement and pleasure, whilst they were sure for once in their lives, at least, that they were drawing information from its true and native source. This dance was long and tedious, but when it was finished, it was followed by a deafening round of applause, not of approbation of the shocking and disgusting custom, but of the earnest and simple manner in which these ignorant and thoughtless people were endeavouring to instruct and to amuse the enlightened world by a strict and emphatic illustration of one of the barbarous, but valued, modes of their country. The subject and mode of _scalping_, and of thus celebrating their victories, so little understood in the enlightened world, afforded me an interesting theme for remarks at this time; and when the Indians were again seated and "_taking a smoke_," I took the occasion of this complete illustration to explain it in all its parts and meanings, for which, when I had done, I received five times as much applause as I deserved for doing it. _The Pipe of Peace_ (or Calumet) _Dance_[13] was the next announced; and was danced with great spirit, and gained them much applause. At the close of this, their favourite dance, it became peculiarly the privilege of the War-chief to make his boast, as the dance is given only at the conclusion of a treaty of peace between hostile tribes, and at which treaty he is supposed to preside. For this purpose he rose, and straightening up his tall and veteran figure, with his buffalo robe thrown over his shoulder and around him, with his right arm extended over the heads of his fellow warriors, made a most animated speech to them for several minutes (with his back turned towards the audience), reminding them of the principal exploits of his military life, with which they were all familiar. He then called upon one of the younger men to light his pipe, which being done, and placed in his hand, he took several deliberate whiffs through its long and ornamented stem; this done, and his ideas all arranged, he deliberately turned around, and passing his pipe into his left hand, extended his right over the heads of the audience and commenced:-- "My Friends,--We believe that all our happiness in this life is given to us by the Great Spirit, and through this pipe I have thanked Him for enabling me to be here at this time, and to speak to you all who are around me. (_How, how, how!_ and applause) "My Friends,--We have had a long journey, and we are still very much fatigued. We prayed to the Great Spirit, and He has heard our prayers; we are all here, and all well. (_How, how, how!_ and _Hear!_) "My Friends,--We are poor and live in the woods, and though the Great Spirit is with us, yet He has not taught us how to weave the beautiful things that you make in this country; we have seen many of those things brought to us, and we are now happy to be where all these fine things are made. (_How, how, how!_) "My Friends,--The Great Spirit has made us with red skins, and taught us how to live in the wilderness, but has not taught us to live as you do. Our dresses are made of skins and are very coarse, but they are warm; and in our dances we are in the habit of showing the skins of our shoulders and our arms, and we hope you will not be angry with us--it is our way. (_How, how, how!_ and great applause.) "My Friends,--We have heard that your chief is a woman, and we know that she must be a great chief, or your country would not be so rich and so happy. (Cheers and _Hear!_) We have been told that the Ojibbeways went to see your queen, and that she smiled upon them; this makes us the more anxious to see her face, as the Ojibbeways are our enemies. (_How, how, how!_) "My Friends,--We hope to see the face of your queen, and then we shall be happy. Our friend _Chippehola_[12] has told us that he thinks we shall see her. My Friends, we do not know whether there are any of her relations now in the room. (_How, how, how!_ and a laugh.) "My Friends,--We shall be glad to shake your hands. This is all I have to say." (Great applause.) [12] The _Pipe of Peace_ (or calumet) is a sacred pipe, so held by all the American tribes, and kept in possession of the chiefs, to be smoked only at times of peace-making. When the terms of a treaty have been agreed upon, this sacred pipe, the stem of which is ornamented with eagle's quills, is brought forward, and the solemn pledge to keep the peace is passed through the sacred stem by each chief and warrior drawing the smoke once through it. After this ceremony is over, the warriors of the two tribes unite in the dance, with the pipe of peace held in the left hand, and a she-she-quoi (or rattle) in the right. [13] Geo. Catlin. At the close of his speech, and as he turned around to meet the approbation of his fellow-warriors, there was a sudden burst of laughter amongst the Indians, occasioned by the sarcastic and exulting manner in which the old Doctor told him he had better say something more before he sat down, "because," said he, "you have not made half as much laugh yet as I did last night." "I should be sorry if I had," said the War-chief; "the audience always laugh the moment they see your ugly face." The Doctor's troubles commenced here, for just at that moment the "fair dame" had caught the eye of the "_Roman-nose_," and holding up a beautiful bracelet enclosing a brilliant stone, she tempted him up, while she clasped it upon his arm as it was extended immediately over the Doctor's head, whose unfailing politeness induced him to bow down his head to facilitate the operation. When the "_Roman-nose_" had taken his seat, and the poor Doctor had raised up his head to meet the eyes and the taunts of his fellow-Indians, who were laughing at him, and the gaze of the visitors from every quarter of the room, there _was_ a _smile_, but altogether a _new_ one, and a _new word_ should be coined for the sudden and singular distress of the dilemma he was in: it would not do to undervalue the beautiful present that was already upon his arm, and to save his life he could not smile as pleasantly upon the _fair hand_ that gave it as he had been smiling a few minutes before. The trinket had instantly fallen fifty per cent. in its value--the _brilliant_ prospect that had been before him had fled, and left him in the dread, not only that his beautiful commercial prospects were blighted, but that he was to have an enemy in the field. The _Roman-nose_ received his present in a respectful and thankful manner, but it was too late to be _affectionately_ accepted, as it was the _second_ one that was afloat, and taken by him, partly as an evidence of a kind heart, and partly as a foil to cover the true meaning of the first one that had been bestowed. However, he valued it very much, and the secret respecting the mistake that had been made in presenting the first, having been committed only to Daniel and myself, was thought best, for the peace of all parties, not to be divulged. The amusements of the evening being finished, there commenced a general shake of the hands, and when it had been requested by some of the audience that the Indians should come on to the floor, the request was instantly complied with, which afforded the most gratifying opportunity for the visitors to get near to them, and scan them and their costumes and weapons more closely. There was a general outcry by the ladies for the wife of the Little-wolf to descend from the platform with her little pappoose slung on her back in its splendid cradle, ornamented with porcupine's quills and ermine skins. It was a beautiful illustration, and formed one of the most attractive features of the exhibition, for gentlemen as well as for ladies, as thousands will recollect. The "jolly fat dame" had an opportunity of meeting the _Roman-nose_ and of shaking his hand: but, "oh, the distress!" she could not speak to him as she had done to Cadotte,--it was impossible for her to explain to him the abominable mistake of the first night, and she feared he never would properly appreciate the present which she had just made him; nevertheless they were "a noble, fine set of fellows." The Doctor passed about in the crowd shaking hands, and shaking his fan also, which was made of the eagle's tail. He met the "fair dame," and (cruel that he could not speak to her) he dropped many smiles as he looked down upon and over her dimpled cheeks and round neck, as he raised and showed her his brawny arm with the golden bracelet. The Indians soon withdrew, and after them the crowd; and after the crowd the "jolly fat dame," who said to Daniel as she passed, "I can't stop to-night, Daniel, I am in a great hurry; but I gave the bracelet to the _Roman-nose_--I got a good opportunity, Daniel--I buckled it on myself: oh, yes, I did--that I did--the good fellow, he stood it well--he never stirred. He'll recollect me, won't he, Daniel? I am going; but oh, look here--I can't, to save my life, make the poor fellow understand how the accident took place--it is so provoking!--it's awkward--it is very annoying to me. _You_ can tell him, Daniel--I wish you would tell him--I want you to explain it to him. Come, will you, Daniel? that's a good fellow. Tell him I never intended to give a bracelet to the old Doctor. But stop, he won't tell the Doctor that, will he? I wouldn't for the world hurt the poor old man's feelings--no, Daniel, not for twenty bracelets--what shall we do?" "Oh, there is no danger, Madam, that the Doctor will ever hear of it." "You think so?" "Oh, I am sure, Madam." "Then it's all right--good night. I shall be here every night, you know." The next morning after this, the Rev. Mr. ---- and Mr. ---- called upon me at my family residence, to ask if it would be consistent with my views and the views of the Indians for them to have some conversation with them in private on the subject of religion and education. I replied, that it was one of the greatest satisfactions I could have during their stay in England, to promote as far as in my power such well-meant efforts to enlighten their minds, and to enable them to benefit in that way by their visit to this country. I told them also, that I was very glad to say that this party was under the charge of Mr. Melody, a man who was high in the confidence of the American Government, and that I knew him to be a temperate and moral man: as he was interested in the missionary efforts being made in this very tribe, I felt quite certain that he would do all in his power to promote their object, and they had better call on him. They did so, and an appointment was made for them to visit the Indians in the afternoon, subsequent to their usual daily "drive." Mr. Melody had had a conversation with the Indians on the subject, and although they felt some reluctance at first, on account of the little time they would have to reflect upon it, they had agreed to see the reverend gentlemen in the afternoon, and I was sent for to be present. I was there at the time, and when the reverend gentlemen called, I introduced them to the Indians in their rooms. The Indians were all seated on the floor, upon their robes and blankets, and passing around the pipe. After the usual time taken by strangers to examine their curious dresses, weapons, &c., one of the reverend gentlemen mentioned to the chiefs, in a very kind and friendly manner, the objects of their visit, and with their permission gave them a brief account of the life and death of our Saviour, and explained as well as he could to their simple minds the mode of Redemption. He urged upon them the necessity of their taking up this belief, and though it might be difficult for them to understand at first, yet he was sure it was the only way to salvation. This gentleman took full time to explain his views to them, which was done in the most suitable language for their understanding, and every sentence was carefully and correctly interpreted to them by Jeffrey, who seemed to be himself much interested in hearing his remarks. After the reverend gentleman had finished, Mr. Melody stated to the Indians that he believed all that the gentleman said was true, and that he knew it to be worth their closest and most patient consideration. He then asked White-cloud if he had anything to answer; to which he said, "he had but a few words to say, as he did not feel very well, and _Neu-mon-ya_ (the War-chief) was going to speak for him." He thought, however, that it was a subject which they might as well omit until they got home. _Neu-mon-ya_ during this time was hanging his head quite down, and puffing the smoke as fast as he could draw it through his pipe, in long breaths, and discharging it through his nostrils. He raised up after a moment more of pause, and passing the pipe into White-cloud's hand, folded his arms, with his elbows on his knees, when he drew a deep sigh, and followed it with the last discharge of smoke from his lungs, which was now passing in two white streams through his distended nostrils, as he said-- "My friends,[14]--The Great Spirit has sent you to us with kind words, and he has opened our ears to hear them, which we have done. We are glad to see you and to hear you speak, for we know that you are our friends. What you have said relative to our learning to read and to write, we are sure can do us no good--we are now too old; but for our children, we think it would be well for them to learn; and they are now going to schools in our village, and learning to read and to write. As to the white man's religion which you have explained, we have heard it told to us in the same way, many times, in our own country, and there are white men and women there now, trying to teach it to our people. We do not think your religion good, unless it is so for white people, and this we don't doubt. The Great Spirit has made our skins red, and the forests for us to live in. He has also given us our religion, which has taken our fathers to 'the beautiful hunting grounds,' where we wish to meet them. We don't believe that the Great Spirit made us to live with pale faces in this world, and we think He has intended we should live separate in the world to come. "My friends,--We know that when white men come into our country we are unhappy--the Indians all die, or are driven away before the white men. Our hope is to enjoy our hunting grounds in the world to come, which white men cannot take from us: we _know_ that our fathers and our mothers have gone there, and we don't know why we should not go there too. "My friends,--You have told us that the Son of the Great Spirit was on earth, and that he was killed by white men, and that the Great Spirit sent him here to get killed; now we cannot understand all this--this may be necessary for white people, but the red men, we think, have not yet got to be so wicked as to require that. If it was necessary that the Son of the Great Spirit should be killed for white people, it may be necessary for them to believe all this; but for us, we cannot understand it." [14] Being a silent listener to these conversations, I took out my note book and wrote down the remarks here given, as they were translated by Jeffrey. He here asked for the pipe, and having drawn a few whiffs, proceeded. "My friends,--You speak of the '_good book_' that you have in your hand; we have many of these in our village; we are told that 'all your words about the Son of the Great Spirit are printed in that book, and if we learn to read it, it will make good people of us.' I would now ask why it don't make good people of the pale faces living all around us? They can all read the good book, and they can understand all that the '_black coats_'[15] say, and still we find they are not so honest and so good a people as ours: this we are sure of; such is the case in the country about us, but _here_ we have no doubt but the white people who have so many to preach and so many books to read, are all honest and good. In _our_ country the white people have two faces, and their tongues branch in different ways; we know that this displeases the Great Spirit, and we do not wish to teach it to our children." [15] Clergymen. He here took the pipe again, and while smoking, the reverend gentleman asked him if he thought the Indians did all to serve the Great Spirit that they ought to do--all that the Great Spirit required of them? to which he replied-- "My friends,--I don't know that we do all that the Great Spirit wishes us to do; there are some Indians, I know, who do not; there are some bad Indians as well as bad white people; I think it is very difficult to tell how much the Great Spirit wishes us to do." The reverend gentleman said-- "That, my friends, is what we wish to teach you; and if you can learn to read this good book, it will explain all that." The chief continued-- "We believe the Great Spirit requires us to pray to Him, which we do, and to thank Him for everything we have that is good. We know that He requires us to speak the truth, to feed the poor, and to love our friends. We don't know of anything more that he demands; he may demand more of white people, but we don't know that." The reverend gentleman inquired-- "Do you not think that the Great Spirit sometimes punishes the Indians in this world for their sins?" _War-chief._--"Yes, we do believe so." _Rev. Gentleman._--"Did it ever occur to you, that the small pox that swept off half of your tribe, and other tribes around you, a few years ago, might have been sent into your country by the Great Spirit to punish the Indians for their wickedness and their resistance to his word?" _War-chief._--"My Friends, we don't know that we have ever resisted the word of the Great Spirit. If the Great Spirit sent the small pox into our country to destroy us, we believe it was to punish us for listening to the false promises of white men. It is white man's disease, and no doubt it was sent amongst white people to punish _them_ for their sins. It never came amongst the Indians until we began to listen to the promises of white men, and to follow their ways; it then came amongst us, and we are not sure but the Great Spirit then sent it to punish us for our foolishness. There is another disease sent by the Great Spirit to punish white men, and it punishes them in the right place--the place that offends. We know that disease has been sent to punish them; that disease was never amongst the Indians until white men came--they brought it, and we believe we shall never drive it out of our country." The War-chief here reached for the pipe again for a minute, and then continued-- "My Friends,--I hope my talk does not offend you; we are children, and you will forgive us for our ignorance. The Great Spirit expects us to feed the poor; our wives and children at home are very poor; wicked white men kill so many of our hunters and warriors with _fire-water_, that they bring among us, and leave so many children among us for us to feed, when they go away, that it makes us very poor. Before they leave our country they destroy all the game also, and do not teach us to raise bread, and our nation is now in that way, and very poor; and we think that the way we can please the Great Spirit first, is to get our wives and children something to eat, and clothes to wear. It is for that we have come to this country, and still we are glad to hear your counsel, for it is good." The reverend gentlemen, and several ladies who had accompanied them, here bestowed some very beautiful Bibles and other useful presents upon the Indians; and thanking them for their patience, were about to take leave of them, when Mr. Melody begged their attention for a few moments while he read to them several letters just received from reverend gentlemen conducting a missionary school in this tribe, giving a flattering account of its progress, and presented them a vocabulary and grammar, already printed in the Ioway language, by a printing-press belonging to the missionary school in their country. This surprised them very much, and seemed to afford them great satisfaction. * * * * * The comments of the press, as well as the remarks of the public who had seen them, now being made upon the superior interest of this party, they were receiving daily calls from distinguished persons, and also numerous invitations to gentlemen's houses, which daily increased their consequence, and, of course, their enjoyment. Amongst the first of these kind invitations was one from Mr. Disraeli, M.P., for the whole party to partake of a breakfast at his house, in Park Lane. This was for the next morning after the interview just described; and, not knowing or even being able to imagine what they were to see, or what sort of rules or etiquette they were to be subjected to, they were under the most restless excitement to prepare everything for it, and the greatest anxiety for the hour to approach. They were all up at an unusually early hour, preparing every trinket and every article of dress, and spent at least an hour at their toilets in putting the paint upon their faces. The Doctor had been told that he would sit down at the table amongst many very splendid ladies; and this, or some other embarrassment, had caused him to be dissatisfied with the appearance of the paint which he had put upon his face, and which he was carefully examining with his little looking-glass. He decided that it would not do, and some bear's grease and a piece of deer-skin soon removed it all. He spent another half hour with his different tints, carefully laying them on with the end of his forefinger; and, displeased again, _they_ were all demolished as before. Alarm about time now vexed him, and caused him to plaster with a more rapid and consequently with a more "masterly touch." The effect was fine! He was ready, and so were all the party, from head to foot. All their finest was on, and all were prepared for the move, when I came in at about eight o'clock to advise them of the hour at which we were to go, and which I had forgotten to mention to them the evening before. I then referred to the note of invitation, and informed them that the hour appointed was twelve o'clock. The whole party, who were at that time upon their feet around me, wrapped in their robes, their shields and quivers slung, and the choice tints upon their faces almost too carefully arranged to be exposed to the breath of the dilapidating wind, expressed a decided shock when the hour of twelve was mentioned. They smiled, and evidently thought it strange, and that some mistake had been made. Their conjectures were many and curious: some thought it was _dinner_ that was meant, instead of _breakfast_; and others thought so late an hour was fixed that they might get their own breakfasts out of the way, and then give the Indians theirs by themselves. I answered, "No, my good fellows, it is just the reverse of this; you are all wrong--it is to _breakfast_ that you are invited, and lest their family, and their friends whom they have invited to meet you, should not have the honour of sitting down and eating with you, they have fixed the hour at twelve o'clock, the time that the great and fashionable people take their breakfasts. You must have your breakfasts at home at the usual hour, and take your usual _drive_ before you go; so you will have plenty of time for all, and be in good humour when you go there, where you will see many fine ladies and be made very happy." My remarks opened a new batch of difficulties to them that I had not apprehended, some of which were exceedingly embarrassing. To wait four hours, and to eat and to ride in the meantime, would be to derange the streaks of paint and also to soil many articles of dress which could not be put on excepting on very particular occasions. To take them off and put them on, and to go through the vexations of the toilet again, at eleven o'clock, was what several of the party could submit to, and others could not. As to the breakfast of huge beefsteaks and coffee which was just coming up, I had felt no apprehensions; but when it was on the table I learned that the _old Doctor_ and _Wash-ka-mon-ya_ and one or two others of the young men were adhering to a custom of their country, and which, in my rusticity (having been seven or eight years out of Indian life), I had at the moment lost sight of. It is the habit in their country, when an Indian is invited to a feast, to go as hungry as he can, so as to be as fashionable as possible, by eating an enormous quantity, and for this purpose the invitations are generally extended some time beforehand, paying the valued compliment to the invited guest of allowing as much time as he can possibly require for starving himself and preparing his stomach by tonics taken in bitter decoctions of medicinal herbs. In this case the invitation had only been received the day before, and of course allowed them much less than the usual time to prepare to be _fashionable_. They had, however, received the information just in time for the _Doctor_ and _Wash-ka-mon-ya_ and the _Roman-nose_ to avoid the annoyance of their dinners and suppers on that day, and they had now laid themselves aside in further preparation for the _feast_ in which they were to be candidates for the mastery in emptying plates and handling the "knife and fork" (or "knife and fingers"), the custom of their country. In this condition the _Doctor_ particularly was a subject for the freshest amusement, or for the profoundest contemplation. With all his finery and his trinkets on, and his red and yellow paint--with his shield, and bow and quiver lying by his side, he was straightened upon his back, with his feet crossed, as he rested in a corner of the room upon his buffalo robe, which was spread upon the floor. His little looking glass, which was always suspended from his belt, he was holding in his hand, as he was still arranging his beautiful feathers, and contemplating the patches of red and yellow paint, and the _tout ensemble_ of the pigments and _copper colour_ with which he was to make a sensation where he was going to _feast_ (as he had been told) with ladies, an occurrence not known in the annals of the Indian country. He had resolved, on hearing the hour was _twelve_, not to eat his breakfast (which he said might do for women and children), or to take his usual ride in the bus, that he might not injure his growing appetite, or disturb a line of paint or a feather, until the hour had arrived for the honours and the luxuries that awaited them. I reasoned awhile with these three epicures of the land of "_buffaloes' tongues_ and _beavers' tails_," telling them that they were labouring under a misconception of the ideas of gentility as entertained in the civilized and fashionable world; that in London, the genteel people practised entirely the opposite mode from theirs; that light dinners and light breakfasts were all the fashion, and the less a lady or gentleman could be seen eating, the more sentimental he or she was considered, and consequently the more transcendently genteel: and that when they went to breakfast with their friends at 12, or to dine at 7 or 8, they were generally in the habit of promoting gentility by eating a little at home before they started. My reasoning, however, had no other effect than to excite a smile from the Doctor, and the very philosophic reply, "that they should prefer to adhere to their own custom until they got to the lady's house, when they would try to conform to that of the white people of London." The drollness of these remarks from this droll old gentleman entirely prevented Mr. Melody and myself from intruding any further suggestions, until the hour arrived, and it was announced that the carriage was at the door. CHAPTER XIX. Kind reception at Mr. Disraeli's--View of Hyde Park from the top of his house--Review of troops, and sham fight--Breakfast-table--The Doctor missing--The Author finds him in the bathing-room--Champagne wine--Refused by the Indians--_Chickabobboo: Chippehola_ tells the story of it--The Indians drink--Presents--The "big looking-glass"--The Doctor smiles in it--Speech of the War-chief--Shake of hands, and return--Exhibition-room, Egyptian Hall--Doctor presents a string of wampum and the "_White-feather_" to the "jolly fat dame"--Indians talk about _chickabobboo_--The Rev. Mr. G---- calls--A different religion (a Catholic)--Interview appointed--Two Methodist clergymen call--Indians refuse to see them--The giant and giantess visit the Indians--The Doctor measuring the giantess--The talk with the Catholic clergyman. This chapter begins with the introduction of the Ioways into fashionable life, through the various phases of which they had the good or bad fortune to pass, in this and other countries, as will be seen, before they returned to resume the tomahawk and scalping-knife in their favourite prairies, and the Rocky Mountains in America. Mr. Melody and myself accompanied the Indians, and all together were put down at the door, where we met a host of waiters in livery, ready to conduct us to the kind lady and gentleman, whom they instantly recollected to have seen and shaken hands with in the exhibition room. This gave them confidence, and all parties were made easy in a moment, by a general introduction which followed. Through the interpreter, the ladies complimented them for their dances and songs, which they had heard, and pronounced to be very wonderful. Their women and little children were kindly treated by the ladies, and seats were prepared for them to sit down. The men were also desired to be seated, but on looking around the room, upon the richness of its furniture, the splendid carpet on which they stood, and the crimson velvet of the cushioned chairs that were behind them, they smiled, and seemed reluctant to sit upon them, for fear of soiling them. They were at length prevailed upon to be seated, however, and after a little conversation, were conducted by Mr. Disraeli through the different apartments of his house, where he put in their hands, and explained to them, much to their gratification, many curious daggers, sabres, and other weapons and curiosities of antiquity. In passing through the dining saloon, they passed the table, groaning under the weight of its costly plate and the luxuries which were prepared for them; upon this the old Doctor smiled as he passed along, and he even turned his head to smile again upon it, as he left it. After we had surveyed all below, the party were invited to the top of the house, and Mr. Disraeli led the way. The ladies, of whom there were a goodly number, all followed; and altogether, the pictured buffalo robes--the rouged heads and red feathers--the gaudy silks, and bonnets, and ribbons--glistening lances and tomahawks--and black coats, formed a novel group for the gaze of the multitude who were gathering from all directions, under the ever exciting cry of "Indians! Indians!" Hyde Park was under our eye, and from our position we had the most lovely view of it that any point could afford; and also of the drilling of troops, and the sham-fight in the park, which was going on under our full view. This was exceedingly exciting and amusing to the Indians, and also the extensive look we had in turning our eyes in the other direction, over the city. The ladies had now descended, and we all followed to the saloon, where it was soon announced that the breakfast was ready; and in a few moments all were seated at the table, excepting the Doctor, who was not to be found. Jeffrey and I instantly thought of his "_propensity_" and went to the house-top for him, but to our amazement he was not there. In descending the stairs, however, and observing a smoke issuing out of one of the chambers, into which we had been led, on going up to examine the beautiful arrangement for vapour and shower baths, we stepped in, and found the Doctor seated in the middle of the room, where he had lit his pipe, and was taking a more deliberate look at this ingenious contrivance, which he told us pleased him very much, and which he has often said he thought would be a good mode to adopt in his practice in his own country. He was easily moved, however, when it was announced to him that the breakfast was on the table and ready, where he was soon seated in the chair reserved for him. Great pains were taken by the ladies and gentlemen to help the Indians to the luxuries they might like best; and amongst others that were offered, their glasses were filled with sparkling champagne, in which their health was proposed. The poor fellows looked at it, and shaking their heads, declined it. This created some surprise, upon which Mr. Melody explained for them that they had pledged their words not to drink spirituous liquors while in this country. They were applauded by all the party for it, and at the same time it was urged that this was only a light _wine_, and could not hurt them: we were drinking it ourselves, and the ladies were drinking it, and it seemed cruel to deny them. Poor Melody!--he looked distressed: he had a good heart, and loved his Indians, but he felt afraid of the results. The _Doctor_ and _Wash-ka-mon-ya_ kept their hands upon their glasses, and their eyes upon Melody and myself, evidently understanding something of the debate that was going on, until it was agreed and carried, by the ladies and all, that taking a little champagne would not be a breach of their promise in the least, and that it would do them no harm. Their health and success were then proposed, and all their glasses were drained to the bottom at once. The Doctor, after finding the bottom of his glass, turned round, and smacking his lips, dropped me a bow and a smile, seeming to say that "he was thankful, and that the wine was very good." I told them that this was not "_fire-water_" as they could themselves judge, but that it was "_chickabobboo_." This word seeming to them to be an Indian word, excited their curiosity somewhat, and being called upon by the ladies to explain the meaning of it, as they did not recollect to have met such a word in Johnson's Dictionary or elsewhere, I related to them the story of _chickabobboo_, as told by the war-chief of the Ojibbeways, at Windsor Castle; and the manner in which those Indians partook of the Queen's wine, or "_chickabobboo_" as they called it, on that occasion. This explanation afforded much amusement to the party, and to the Indians also, as Jeffrey interpreted it to them; and it was soon proposed that their glasses should be filled again with _chickabobboo_. The Doctor sat next to me at the table, and every time he emptied his glass of _chickabobboo_ I was amused to hear him pronounce the word "good!"--the first word of English he had learned, and the first occasion on which I had heard him sound it. After the wine was first poured out, he had kept one hand around his glass or by the side of it, and had entirely stopped eating. He had minced but a little in the outset, and seeming to have a delicate stomach, was giving great pain to the ladies who were helping him and urging him to eat, in his irrevocable resolution to be _genteel_, as he had before suggested, and which they probably never understood. The last dish that was passed around the table, and relished by the Indians quite as much as the _chickabobboo_, was a plate of trinkets of various kinds, of brooches, bracelets, chains, and other ornaments for their persons, which they received with expressions of great thankfulness as they were rising from the table. Thus ended the "feast," as they called it; and on entering the drawing-room the Doctor became a source of much amusement to the ladies, as his attention was arrested by the enormous size of a mirror that was before him, or by the striking effect of his own beautiful person, which he saw at full length in it. He affected to look only at the frame, as the ladies accused him of vanity; and he drew out from under his belt his little looking-glass, about an inch square, imbedded in a block of deal to protect it from breaking. The contrast was striking and amusing, but what followed was still more so. The ladies were anxious to examine his looking-glass (which was fastened to his person with a leathern thong), and in pulling it out, there necessarily came out with it, attached to the same thong, a little wallet carefully rolled up in a rattle-snake's skin; and which, on inquiry, was found to be his toilet of pigments of various colours, with which he painted his face. A small pair of scissors also formed a necessary appendage, and by the side of them hung a boar's tusk and a human finger shrivelled and dried. This he had taken from a victim he had slain in battle, and now wore as his "_medicine_," or _talismanic charm_, that was to guard and protect him in all times of trouble or danger. This remarkable trophy was generally, on occasions when he was in full dress, suspended from his neck by a cord, and hung amongst the strings of wampum on his breast; but on this occasion he had so many other things to think of, that he had forgotten to display it there. The War-chief at this time preparing his mind to make some remarks before leaving, and to thank the lady for her kindness, was asking "if he should give any offence by lighting his pipe;" to which they all answered at once, "No, oh no! we shall be glad to see the old chief smoke; get him some fire immediately." When the fire arrived, he had lighted his pipe with his flint and steel, and was arranging his ideas as he was drawing the smoke through its long stem. It amused the ladies very much to see him smoke, and when he was ready he passed the pipe into White Cloud's hand, and rising, and throwing his head and his shoulders back, he said to the lady that "he was authorized by the chief to return to her and her husband his thanks, and the thanks of all the party, for the kindness they had shown them." He said they were strangers in the country, and a great way from home, and this would make them more thankful for the kindness they had met this day. "My Friends (said he), the Great Spirit has caused your hearts to be thus kind to us, and we hope the Great Spirit will not allow us to forget it. We are thankful to all your friends whom we see around you also, and we hope the Great Spirit will be kind to you all. "My friend the chief wishes to shake hands with you all, and then we will bid you farewell." The kindest wishes were expressed, in reply to the old man's remarks, for their health and happiness; and after a general shaking of hands we took leave, and our omnibus, for St. James's Street. The usual dinner hour of the Indians was just at hand when they returned, which was a joyful occurrence for the Doctor, who had, at some inconvenience, been endeavouring to practise Indian and civilized gentility at one and the same time. He smiled when dinner came on, and others smiled to see him endeavouring to mend the breach that had been made. The excitements of this day had put the Indians in remarkably good humour for their evening's amusements at the Hall, which they gave to a crowded house, and, as usual, with great applause. The "jolly fat dame" was there as she had promised, still admiring, and still "quite miserable that she could not speak to them in their own language, or something that they could understand." Daniel had taken a private opportunity to tell the Doctor the whole story of her attachment to Cadotte, and to assure him, at the same time, of her _extraordinary_ admiration of him, the evidence of which was, that "she had made him the first present, after which all others were mere foils." The Doctor took a peculiar liking to Daniel from that moment, and little else than a lasting friendship could be expected to flow from such a foundation as was then so kindly laid. This most welcome information had been communicated to the Doctor's ear on the evening previous, and he had now come prepared to present her (with his own hand, and the most gracious smile, and at the end of the platform) a string of wampum from his own neck, and a _white feather_ with two spots of red painted on it, to which he pointed with great energy, and some expression that she heard, but did not understand. The "_fair dame_" held her exciting present in her hand during the evening, with some little occasional trepidation, expecting to draw from Daniel some key to the meaning of the mysterious gift as she was leaving the rooms. This hope proved vain, however; for Daniel, it seems, was not yet deep enough in Indian mysteries to answer her question, and she carried the present home, with its mysterious meaning, to ruminate upon until the riddle could be solved. Mr. Melody and I visited the Indians in their apartments that evening after their exhibition was over, and taking a beefsteak and a cup of coffee with them, we found them still in high glee, and in good humour for gossip, which ran chiefly upon the immense looking-glasses they had seen (and "forgot to measure"), and the _chickabobboo_, which they pronounced to be first-rate for a grand _feast_, which it would be their duty to get up in a few days to thank the Great Spirit for leading them all safe over the ocean, and to ensure their safe return when they should be ready to go. I then told them of the kind of _chickabobboo_ that the Ojibbeways liked very much, and of which I had allowed each one glass every day at his dinner, and also at night after their dances were done, and which the physicians thought would be much better for them than the strong coffee they were in the habit of drinking; that I had talked with Mr. Melody on the subject, and he was quite willing, with me, that they should have it in the same way, provided they liked it. "_How, how, how!_" they all responded; and while the servant was gone for a jug of ale, I explained to them that we did not consider that this was breaking their solemn promise made to us, "_not to drink spirituous liquors_." I stated to them, also, that it was possible to get drunk by drinking _chickabobboo_; and if any of them drank so much of it as to produce that effect, we should consider it the same as if they had got drunk by drinking whiskey. The ale came in foaming, and being passed round, they all decided that "it was good, but not quite so good as that the kind lady gave us at the _feast_ to-day." These evening gossips with these good-natured fellows in their own rooms, after their day's work and excitements were over, became extremely pleasing to me; so completely reviving the by-gone pleasures I had felt in whiling away the long evenings in their hospitable wigwams, when I was a guest in their remote country, amused with their never-ending fund of anecdotes and stories. On the next morning, or the day after, at an early hour, Daniel announced to the Indians that there was a reverend gentleman in the sitting-room who wished to see them a little while, and to have some talk with them if possible. Daniel had taken this liberty, as he had heard Mr. Melody and myself say that we should feel disposed to promote, as far as we could, all such efforts. The Indians had not yet had their breakfasts, which were nearly ready, and felt a little annoyed; the War-chief observing "that they had had a long council with some clergymen, and had said to them all they had to say, and thought this gentleman had better go and see and talk with them; and another thing, as he believed that _Chippehola_[16] had written in a book all that he and the clergymen had said, he thought he might learn it all by going to him." [16] The author. Daniel whispered to him, in an earnest manner, that "this was a _Catholic priest_, a different kind of religion altogether." This created some little surprise and conversation around the room, that the white people should have two kinds of religion; and it was at last agreed that the War-chief and Jeffrey should step into the other room a few minutes and see him, the White Cloud saying "he did not care about going in." It seems that Jeffrey took some interest in this gentleman, as the little that his ancestors had learned of religion had been taught them by Roman Catholic clergymen, who have been the first to teach the Christian religion in most parts of the American wilderness. The conversation and manner of the priest also made some impression on the mind of the War-chief; and as they heard the others using their knives and forks in the adjoining room, they took leave of the reverend gentleman, agreeing to a council with him and a number of his friends in a few days. _White Cloud_ and _Wash-ka-mon-ya_ excited much laughter and amusement amongst the party, on learning that the War-chief had appointed another council, "when he was to make his talk all over again." They told him "they expected to take him home a preacher, to preach white man's religion when he got back;" and they thought he had better get a "black coat" at once, and be called "_Black-coat to the party of Ioway Indians_." The next day after the above interview, Daniel again announced to the chiefs and Jeffrey that there were two reverend gentlemen waiting to see them, who had seen Mr. Melody on the subject, and were to meet him there at that hour. White Cloud told the War-chief, that "as he had promised to meet them, he must do it; but as for himself, he would rather not see them, for he was not well." _Wash-ka-mon-ya_ laughed at the old chief and Jeffrey as they went out. "Now," said he, "for your grand council!" The War-chief lit his long pipe, and he and Jeffrey entered the room; but finding they were not the persons whom they were expecting to meet, they had a few words of conversation with them, taking care not to approach near to the subject of religion, and left them, as they had some other engagements that took up their time. There was much merriment going on in the meantime in the Indians' room, and many jokes ready for the War-chief and Jeffrey when they should get back, as Daniel had returned to their room, and told them that, by the cut of their clothes and their manners, he was quite sure that these two gentlemen were of a different religion still; he believed they were _Methodist preachers_. The War-chief, who was always dignified and contemplative in his manners, and yet susceptible of good humour and jokes, returned to the Indians' room at this time, apparently quite insensible to the mirth and the remarks around him, as he learned from the Indians, and got the confirmation from Daniel, that this was the _third_ kind of religion, and that there were the _Baptists_, the _Jews_, and several other kinds yet to come. He seated himself on his robe, which he spread upon the floor, and taking out of his pouch his flint and steel, and spunk, struck a light in the true Indian way (though there was fire within reach of his arm), and, lighting his pipe, commenced smoking. During this silent operation he seemed downcast, and in profound meditation. Mr. Melody and I entered the room at this moment, but seeing the mood he was in, did nothing to interrupt the train of his thoughts. When his pipe was smoked out, he charged it again with tobacco, but before lighting it he laid it aside, and straightening his long limbs upon the floor, and drawing another buffalo robe over his body and his head, he went to sleep.[17] [17] Though the old War-chief, who was their speaking oracle on the subject of religion, remained sad and contemplative, there was daily much conversation and levity amongst the rest of the party on the subject of the "six religions of white men," which they had discovered; and either Jim or the little "commanding general" (son of the War-chief), both of whom were busy with their pencils, left on the table for my portfolio the subjoined curious, but significant illustration of their ideas of white man's paradise, and the six different modes of getting to it. _Plate No._ 11 is a _fac simile_ of this curious document, which the reader will appreciate on examination. [Illustration: N^o. 11.] This was the day for "seeing the _Giants_," and they were soon after announced as having arrived, according to appointment. During one of the Indians' exhibitions there had been a great excitement produced amongst them by the appearance in the crowd, of two immense persons, a man and a woman, who stood nearly the whole length of their bodies above the heads of others about them! This had excited the amazement of the Indians so much, that for a while they stopped their dances, to sit down and smoke a pipe. They must necessarily make some sacrifice on such an occasion, and it was decided to be done with a piece of tobacco, which being duly consecrated by them, was carried by the Doctor (the medicine man) to an adjoining room, and burned in the fire. There were no questions asked by the Indians about these unaccountable people, where they came from, &c., but they wished me to invite them to call at their lodgings at No. 7, St. James's-street, the next day at twelve o'clock, where they would be glad to see them a little while. This wish was communicated to them in a note which I wrote on my knee, and was passed to them over the heads of the audience; the _giant man_ read it, and smiling, nodded his head, accepting of their invitation. This pleased the Indians, who all joined in sounding the war-whoop. These two extraordinary personages proved to be the well-known "Norfolk giants," who were brother and sister, and walking "arm-in-arm," so high that the eye of an ordinary man was just on a level with the apron string of the fair damsel; and the waist of the brother was, of course, yet some inches higher. I regret that I have not preserved the exact elevation of these two extraordinary persons, which I took pains to procure, but have somehow mislaid. The invitation thus given brought them on their present visit to the Indians, who had great satisfaction in shaking their hands, and closely inspecting them: and not many minutes after their arrival a scene ensued that would have made a sick man laugh, or a rich subject for the pencil of Hogarth. The Indians had sent Daniel for a ball of twine, which they had unfolded upon the floor, and each one having cut off a piece of sufficient length, was taking for himself the measure of the "_giant man_," from head to foot--from hand to hand, his arms extended--the span of his waist--his breast and his legs--the length of his feet, and his fingers; and tying knots in their cords to indicate each proportion. In the midst of all this, the Doctor presented the most queer and laughable point in the picture, as he had been applying his string to the back of the fair damsel, having taken her length, from the top of her head to the floor, and tied a knot in his cord at the place where the waist of her dress intersected it; he had then arrested the attention of all, and presented his singular dilemma, when he stood with both ends of his cord in his hands, contemplating the enormous waist and other proportions before him, which he coveted for other knots on his string, but which his strict notions of gallantry were evidently raising objections to his taking. I whispered to him, and relieved him from his distressing state of uncertainty, by saying I thought he had been particular enough, and he withdrew, but with a sigh of evident regret. They insisted on the _giant_ and _giantess_ receiving from them some little keepsakes of trinkets, &c., as evidences of the pleasure they had afforded them by calling on them. This extraordinary occurrence, like most others of an exciting or interesting nature which these jovial and funny fellows met with, made subject for much subsequent anecdote and amusement. _Wash-ka-mon-ya_ (the fast dancer), a big-mouthed and waggish sort of fellow (who for brevity's sake was called, in English parlance, "Jim"), was continually teasing the Doctor about his gallantry amongst the ladies; and could rather easily and coolly do it, as he was a married man, and had his wife constantly by the side of him. He had naturally an abundant stock of wit and good humour, and being so much of a wag withal, he was rather a painful companion for the Doctor all the way, and was frequently passing jokes of a cruel as well as of a light and amusing kind upon him. It was known to the whole party that there was no record kept of the length and breadth of the _giant lady_, except the one that the Doctor had taken, and carefully rolled up and put away in a little box, amongst other precious things, at the head of his bed, and which he generally used as his pillow. It was known also that much stress would be laid upon this in his own country, when they returned home, as something which the rest of the party could not produce, and which for him, therefore, would be of great and peculiar interest there, and probably on other occasions, when it might be proper to refer to it as a thing he could swear to as a subject of interest in this country. Jim's best jokes (like most Indian jokes) were those which no one else takes a share in; and a piece of the twine that had caught his eye as it was lying upon the floor, probably first suggested the wicked idea of being cut about two feet longer than the Doctor's measure of the fair giantess, and with a knot about one foot higher than the one made for her waist, and of being rolled up in the same way, and slipped (in place of the other) into the same corner of the box, to which the Doctor had a key, but, according to all Indian practice, he never made use of it. The sequel to all this, and the fun it might have subsequently made for "Jim," with his "big mouth," the reader may as well imagine here, or patiently wait till we come to it. In the afternoon the Catholic clergyman called with a couple of friends, for the interview which _Jeffrey_ and the _War-chief_ had promised. Mr. Melody sent me word when they called, and I came to the meeting, having taken a great interest in these interviews, which were eliciting opinions from the Indians which are exceedingly difficult to obtain in any other way, and which I was careful on all occasions to write down, as translated at the time. These opinions, however unimportant they may seem to be, I am sure many of my readers will find to be of curious interest; and I fully believe, if rightly appreciated, of much importance in directing future efforts to the right points in endeavouring to impress upon these ignorant and benighted people the importance of education, and a knowledge of the true Christian religion. On this occasion _Wash-ka-mon-ya_ (or "_Jim_" as I shall often call him) endeavoured to make himself conspicuous by teasing the War-chief and Jeffrey about "going to pray with the black-coats," and springing upon his feet, took his tomahawk in his hand, and throwing off his robe, jumped to the middle of the floor, where, naked down to the hips, he landed, in an attitude not unlike that of the colossal statue of Rhodes. He frowned a moment upon all around him, and then said, "Let me go in--I have said nothing yet; I want to make a speech to the black-coats." White-cloud, who was at that moment taking up his robe to accompany Jeffrey and the War-chief to the "talk," very mildly said to _Jim_, that "he would look much more respectful if he would sit down again and hold his tongue, for these were very good people who were calling to talk with them, and must be treated with respect, however their opinions might differ from those of the Indians." This severe rebuke from the chief instantly silenced Jim, who quietly and respectfully joined the rest of the party, at White-cloud's request, who seated themselves in the room where the talk was to be held. The pipe was lit and passing around, while one of the reverend gentlemen stated the views with which they had come to visit them, and asked the Indians if it was perfectly convenient and agreeable for them to hear what they had to say, to which the chief replied in the affirmative. The reverend gentleman then proceeded with his remarks upon the importance of education and religion, the nature of which the reader can easily imagine, and save the time it would require to record them here. To these the chiefs and all the party (excepting Jim and the Doctor, who had fallen asleep) listened with patience and profound silence, as the pipe was passing around. The reverend gentleman having finished, the War-chief took a few deep-drawn breaths through the pipe, and passing it along, said-- "My Friends,--I speak for the chief who is here, and not very well. My words are his words, and the words of all our party. We have heard what you had to say, because we had promised to do so. "My Friends,--We have talked many times on this subject, and some of our talks have been long; but at this time our words will be few, for we are weary, and as we have before said, we are poor, and our wives and children are hungry, and we have come over here to try to make some money to get them warm clothes and food to eat. (_How, how, how!_) "My Friends,--Many of our children are now in schools in our country, and the '_good book_' which is in your hands is in their hands at this time. We believe that the Great Spirit has made our religion good and sufficient for us if we do not in any way offend him. We see the religion of the white people dividing into many paths, and we cannot believe that it is pleasing to the Great Spirit. The Indians have but one road in their religion, and they all travel in that, and the Great Spirit has never told them that it was not right. "My Friends,--Our ears have been open since we came here, and the words we have heard are friendly and good; but we see so many kinds of religion, and so many people drunk and begging when we ride in the streets, that we are a little more afraid of white man's religion than we were before we came here. "My Friends,--The Indians occupied all the fine hunting grounds long before the white men came to them, but the white men own them nearly all now, and the Indians' hunting grounds are mostly all gone. The Indians never urge white men to take up their religion, they are satisfied to have them take a different road, for the Indians wish to enjoy their hunting grounds to themselves in the world to come. (_How, how, how!_) "My Friends,--We thank you, and shall wish the Great Spirit may be kind to you. I have no more to say." Thus ended the conversation this time, and the Indians all rising (except the Doctor, who was still asleep) shook hands with the clergymen and retired to their own room. These excellent gentlemen then expressed to Mr. Melody and myself their high admiration and respect for them as men, and said that they could make every allowance for them, travelling here only for the laudable objects which they had so clearly explained, and their patience taxed in so many instances as I had mentioned, of a similar nature. They agreed that it would be cruel to urge them to listen any further under their present circumstances, and that they had already exercised far greater patience than white men would in a similar condition. They said they should feel bound to call on another day (and did so), not to talk with them about religion, but to bring them some presents that would be serviceable to their wives and little children, and took leave. CHAPTER XX. The Doctor and Jim visit several churches--The Indians in St. Paul's--In Westminster Abbey--The exhibition at the Hall--The Doctor agrees to go in the carriage of the "jolly fat dame"--Mr. Melody objects--The Doctor's melancholy--Indians stop the bus to talk with Lascars--Make them presents of money--Indians discover _chickabobboo-ags_ (gin-palaces)--and ladies lying down in their carriages reading books--_Chim-e-gotch-ees_ (or fish)--Jim's story of "Fish"--Experiments in mesmerism--Wash-ka-mon-ya (Jim) mesmerized--The Doctor's opinions on mesmerism--Ioways in Lord's Cricket-ground--Archery and ball-playing--Encampment--Wigwams--Indians invited by Mrs. Lawrence to Ealing Park--Their kind reception--Their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge--The Princess Mary--The Duchess of Gloucester--The Hereditary Grand Duke and Duchess, and other distinguished guests--Amusements--Beautiful grounds--Indians dine on the lawn--Roast beef and plum-pudding--_Chickabobboo_--Alarm of the parrots--Doctor's superstition--_Chickabobboo_ explained--Speech of the War-chief--Taking leave--Fright of the poor birds--Handsome presents--Conservatory--The Doctor's ideas of it--Indians visit Surrey Zoological Gardens--Fright of the birds and animals--Indians sacrifice tobacco to the lion and the rattle-snakes. Mr. Melody, feeling the high importance of the charge of these fourteen wild people intrusted to his hands by the Government while they were to see the sights of a foreign country, and feeling the strongest attachment to them personally, was stimulated to every exertion by which he could properly open their eyes to the benefits of civilization, and consequently was inquiring from day to day "what shall be shown them next?" I had also, with feelings of the highest respect for the chiefs of the nation, knowing them to be of the party, enlisted my warmest exertions in their behalf, and resolved to render them, in all ways I could, the aid that was due from me for their hospitality which benefited me when I was in their country. With these views we continued our omnibus in driving them about the City and country, and one or the other of us was almost daily accompanying them to some institution or public works from which they might derive some useful information. To these they generally went together and in their native dresses, but there were others where their costumes and their paint would render them too conspicuous, and for such purposes two or three suits of clothes, beaver hats and wigs, became necessary for such a number as wished at any time to look further (and unobserved) into the arcana and hidden mysteries of the great metropolis. And the reader will be ready to exclaim with me, that the field before us was a vast and boundless one. The two most ambitious to profit by such adventures were "_Jim_" (as I have before denominated him) and the "_Doctor_:" the _first_, from a peculiar faculty he had of learning the English language (in which he was making daily progress), and a consequent insatiable desire to see and learn the modes, and everything he could, of white people, excepting their religion; and the _second_, from an indomitable desire to look in everywhere and upon everything, more for the pleasure of gratifying a momentary curiosity, and enjoying a temporary smile, than from any decided ambition to carry home and adopt anything, unless it might be a vapour-bath, or something of the kind, in the way of his profession. In frock-coats and beaver hats, and boots, with a large stick or an umbrella under the arm, and the paint all washed off, there was not much in the looks of these two new-fangled gentlemen to attract the public gaze or remark; and consequently little in the way of the sights and treasures of London being opened to their view. From the time that this expedient was adopted, our avocations became more diversified and difficult; our anxieties and cares increased, and with them our amusement: for with Melody the sights of London were as yet prospective; and with me, whether old or new, I met them with an equal relish with my unsophisticated brethren from the wilderness. The amusement of "trying on" and "getting the hang" of the new dresses made merriment enough for the party for one day; and all but these two were quite willing to forego all the pleasures they could afford, rather than cover their cool and naked heads with beaver hats, their shoulders with frock-coats, and substitute for their soft and pliant mocassins and leggings of buckskin, woollen pantaloons and high-heeled boots. The two wiseacres, however, who had adopted them were philosophers, and knew that they were only for certain occasions, after which they were to be dropped off, and their limbs "at home again" in their light and easy native dresses. They were obliged, on such occasions (to be in keeping), to leave their long and ornamented pipes and tomahawks behind, and (not to lose the indispensable luxury of smoking) to carry a short and handy civilized pipe, with their tobacco, and a box of lucifers, in their pockets. Reader, pray don't try to imagine what a figure these two copper-coloured "swells" cut, when they first sallied forth in their new attire, for it will be in vain: but behold them and me, in the future pages of this book, and when their dresses had got to work easy, profiting by gazing upon the wonders and glories of civilization, which we never otherwise could have beheld together. As one of the first fruits of the new expedient (and while the subject was fresh and revolving in the minds of all), there was now a chance of gratifying the Doctor's desire to see the modes and places of worship of some of the different denominations of religion, of which he had heard so much, from Daniel and others, within the few days past. These visits were their first attempts in their assumed characters, and were mostly made in the company of Mr. Melody or Jeffrey, and without any amusing results either for the congregations or the Ioways, save an incident or two, such as must be expected in the first experiments with all great enterprises. The Doctor had been told that when he entered the Protestant Church, he must take his hat off at the door, and had practised it before he started; but, seeing such an immense number of ladies, he had unfortunately forgot it, and being reminded of it when he had been placed in his seat, his wig came off with it, exposing, but a moment however, his scalp-lock and the top of his head, where he had not deemed it necessary to wash off the red paint. In the Methodist chapel, where these two queer fellows had ventured one day with Daniel, the sermon was long and tedious, and there was nothing observed curious excepting a blue smoke rolling up over the top of the pew, where the Doctor's pipe had been lit, and his head sunk down between his knees; and one other occurrence, that afterwards happened in the heat of the exhortation from the pulpit, and much to the amusement of the Doctor and Jim, of a young woman, in their immediate vicinity, who began to groan, then to sing, and at length tumbled down from her seat upon the floor. The Doctor thought at first she was very sick, and wondered there was no physician there to bleed her; but when Daniel told him what was the matter, the old man smiled, and often talked about it afterwards. I took the whole party through Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's, where they stood and contemplated in amazement the works of human hands, so entirely beyond their comprehension that they returned in reserved and silent contemplation. Returning again to the Exhibition-room at the Egyptian Hall, several evenings of which have passed by without mention, but much in the same way, we find the same excitement and applause, and the "jolly fat dame" at the end of the platform, nightly receiving the Doctor's impressive smiles, which are constantly ready for her; and which by this time, aided by the continued coldness of the _Roman-nose_, were making visible inroads upon her tender affections. She had had, it seemed, on this evening, some conversation with the Doctor, through the interpreter, who had heretofore studiously kept out of the way, and she had invited the Doctor to ride to her house in her carriage, after the exhibition was over, believing that he would be able to find in her garden, some roots which he was in great distress to find, and that she would bring him home again safe. Mr. Melody objected to this, which seemed to puzzle the fair dame, and to throw the Doctor into a profound melancholy and dejection. This rebuff from Mr. Melody was so unexpected and so provoking, when she had so nearly accomplished her object, that the good lady passed out of the room earlier than usual, and tossed her head about with her ostrich plumes as she passed along in the crowd, without having the heart to stop and speak a few words to Daniel, as she had been in the habit of doing. Mr. Melody retired with the Indians, and I remained after the crowd had left, at the solicitation of a party of ladies, who had sent me their card and wished to see me after the exhibition was over. The room being nearly emptied, I saw a party of several fashionably-dressed ladies at the further end of the room, examining the paintings on the walls. In advancing towards them, the one who seemed to be the leader of the party turned around and exclaimed, "Oh, here comes Mr. Catlin, I believe?" "Yes, Madam, I am Mr. Catlin." "Oh, I am so happy to have the honour of seeing you, Sir, and of speaking to you--you have made all these paintings?" "Yes." "These Indians are curious fellows, and well worth seeing, but I consider you ten times more of a curiosity. Look here, ladies, here's Mr. Catlin, the very man that I have so often told you about. Dear me, what dangers and hardships you must have been through! Oh, I do think you are one of the wonders of the world--and not a grey hair in your head yet! My dear Sir, I know your whole history-- you'd scarcely believe it--I know it 'like a book,' as they say. I recollect the very day when you started for India, and I have followed you the whole way--I have your book--I bought several copies to give to my friends; I have read every word of it over and over again--and, oh! it's wonderful--it's charming--one can't stop in it--there's no stopping place in it. By the way, I don't suppose you were down much in the neighbourhood of Chusan (I've got a nephew there--a fine fellow--he's a surgeon). I suppose you kept pretty much back in the mountains? You had no object in coming down about the coast; and they have had rather hot work there." "No, Madam, I had not the slightest object to take me near Chusan--I kept a great way back." "That was right; oh, how judicious! Oh, I have read your interesting work so often. By the way, these fellows are not from the coast--they are from a great way back, I dare say?" "Yes, Madam, they are a great way in the interior." "I thought so, I knew so--I can tell, d' ye see--I can always tell a coaster. These are fine men--they grow tea, I suppose, though?" "No, these people don't grow tea." "Ah, well, it's late, we won't take up your time; but I have been so happy to have seen you--glad, glad to see you home alive to your native soil, and out of that plagued India. Good night." "Good night, ladies." As they left me, I turned round, and met a poor fellow approaching me on one leg and a pair of crutches, and his wife holding on to his arm. He said he had been waiting some time to have the honour of speaking to me before he left, having heard my name pronounced. He told me he lived at Woolwich, where he held some situation for life, as he had lost his leg in the service of his country, and it was a good living for him, luckily, though he had been so unfortunate as to lose his leg. "My wife and I (said he) ave long eard of this extro'nary hexibition, and she as often hax'd me to come to see it; and though we ave been off and hon about it a great many times, we never got off together until this hafter-noon--it's a wonderful sight, sir, hand we are appy to ave seen you halso." I thanked the poor fellow, and asked him how he lost his leg. "It was done by the kick of a orse, Sir." "But your leg has been taken off above your knee." "Yes, Sir, the bone was broken, hand it ad to be hamputated." "It must have been very painful!" "Ah, hit urt a little; though as for the pain of hamputation, I woudn't give a penny for it: but the loss of my leg is worth a great deal to me; it's hall ealed up now, Sir, though it's very hunandy." This simple and unfortunate man and his very pretty little wife left me, and I repaired to the Indians' rooms in St. James's Street, where I found them finishing their suppers and taking their _chickabobboo_. Here was in readiness a long catalogue of the adventures of the day--of things they had seen in their drive, &c., to be talked over, as well as the cruel jokes to be listened to, which they were all passing upon the poor Doctor, for the sudden failure of his prospects of digging roots in the fair dame's garden. There were many subjects of an amusing nature talked over by these droll fellows during the pipes of this evening, and one of the themes for their comments was the drive which we had given them in two open carriages through Hyde Park, at the fashionable hour. They decided that "the Park, along the banks of the Serpentine, reminded them of the prairies on the shores of the Skunk and the Cedar rivers in their own country; and in fact, that some parts of it were almost exactly the same." They were amused to see many of the ladies lying down as they rode in their carriages; and also, that many of the great chiefs, pointed out to them riding on horseback, "didn't know how to ride--that they were obliged to have a man riding a little behind them to pick them up if they should fall off." Jim, who was in an unusual good humour this evening, either from the effects of his _chickabobboo_ or from some fine present he might have received in the room, seemed to be the chief "spokesman" for the evening, and for the purpose of assisting his imagination or aiding his voice had laid himself flat upon his back upon his robe, which was spread upon the floor. His loquacity was such, that there was little else for any of us to do than sit still and excessively laugh at the dryness of his jokes, and his amusing remarks upon the things they had seen as they were taking their ride on this and past mornings. He had now got, as has been said, a facility of using occasional words of English, and he brought them in once in a while with the most amusing effect. He said they had found another place where there were two more Ojibbeway Indians (as he called them), Lascars. sweeping the streets; and it seems that after passing them they had ordered their bus to stop, and called them up and shook hands, and tried to talk with them. They could speak a few words in English, and so could _Jim_: he was enabled to ask them if they were Ojibbeways, and they to answer, "No, they were Mussulmen." "Where you live?" "Bombay." "You sweep dirt in the road?" "Yes," "Dam fool!" _Jim_ gathered a handful of pennies and gave them, and they drove off. It seemed that in their drive this day, Jim and the Doctor had both rode outside, which had afforded to Jim the opportunity of seeing to advantage, for the first time. the immense number of "gin palaces," as they passed along the streets; and into which they could look from the top of the bus, and distinctly see the great number of large kegs, and what was going on inside. The Doctor had first discovered them in his numerous outside rides, and as he was not quite sure that he had rightly understood them, hearing that the English people detested drunkards so much, he had not ventured to say much about them. He had been anxious for the corroboration of _Jim's_ sharper eyes, and during this morning they had fully decided that the hundreds of such places they were in all directions passing, were places where people went to drink _chickabobboo_, and they were called _chickabobbooags_. The conversation of Jim and the Doctor enlarged very much on this grand discovery, and the probable effects they had upon the London people. They had seen many women, and some of them with little babies in their arms, standing and lying around them, and they were quite sure that some of those women were drunk. Jim said that he and the Doctor had counted two or three hundred in one hour. Some of the party told him he had made his story too big, so he said he and the Doctor next day would mark them down on a stick. Jim said there was one street they came through, where he hoped they would never drive them again, for it made their hearts sore to see so many women and little children all in dirty rags: they had never seen any Indians in the wilderness half so poor, and looking so sick. He was sure they had not half enough to eat. He said he thought it was wrong to send missionaries from this to the Indian country, when there were so many poor creatures here who want their help, and so many thousands as they saw going into the _chickabobbooags_ to drink fire-water. He said they came through a very grand street, where every thing looked so fine and splendid in the windows, and where the ladies looked so beautiful in their carriages, many of them lying quite down, and seemed as if they were very rich and happy; and some of them lay in their carriages, that were standing still, so as to let them read their books. And in this same grand street they saw a great many fine-looking ladies walking along the sides of the roads, and looking back at the gentlemen as they passed by them. These ladies, he and the Doctor observed, looked young, and all looked very smiling, and they thought they wanted husbands. A great deal, Jim said, they had seen of these ladies as they were every day looking out of their own windows in St. James's Street. A great many of these women, he said, behave very curious; he said he didn't know for certain but some of these might be _chimegotches_. This excited a tremendous laugh with the Doctor and several of the young men, and made some of the women smile, though it was rather hushed by the chiefs as an imprudent word for Jim to apply in the present case. This did little, however, to arrest the effects of Jim's joke, and he continued with some further ingenious embellishments, which set the chiefs into a roar, and Jim then kept the field. Melody and myself laughed also, not at the joke, for we did not understand it, but at their amusement, which seemed to be very great, and led us to inquire the meaning of _chimegotches_. "Fish," said Jim, "fish!" We were still at a loss for the meaning of his joke; and our ignorance being discovered, as well as our anxiety to know, they proposed that Jim should relate the story of _Chimegotches_, or "Fish." Some one was charging and lighting the pipe in the mean time, which was handed to him, as he rose and took a whiff or two, and then, resuming his former position, flat upon his back, he commenced-- "When the great Mississippi river was a young and beautiful stream, and its waters were blue and clear, and the Ioways lived on its banks, more than a thousand snows since, _Net-no-qua_, a young man of great beauty, and son of a great chief, complained that he was sick. His appetite left him, and his sleep was not good. His eyes, which had been like those of the war-eagle, grew soft and dim, and sunk deep in his head. His lips, that had been the music for all about him, had become silent; his breast, that had always been calm, was beating, and deep sighs showed that something was wrong within. _O-za-pa_, whose medicine was great, and to whom all the plants and roots of the prairies were known, was quite lost; he tried all, and all was in vain; the fair son of the chief was wasting away, as each sweet breath that he breathed went off upon the winds, and never came back to him. Thus did _Net-no-qua_, the son of _Ti-ah-ka_, pine away. The medicine man told him at last that there was but one thing that could cure him, and that was attended with great danger. In his dream a small prairie snake had got upon a bush, and its light, which was that of the sun, opened his eyes to its brightness, and his ears to its words: 'The son of _Ti-ah-ka_ grieves--this must not be--his breast must be quiet, and his thoughts like the quiet waters of the gliding brook; the son of _Ti-ah-ka_ will grow like the firm rocks of the mountain, and the chiefs and warriors, who will descend from him, will grow like the branches of the spreading oak.' The medicine man said to the son of _Ti-ah-ka_ that he must now take a small piece of the flesh from his side for his bait, and in a certain cove on the bank of the river, the first fish that he caught was to be brought to his wigwam alone, under his robe, and she, whose blood would become warm, would be to him like the vine that clings around and through the branches of the oak: that then his eyes would soon shine again like those of the eagle; the music of his lips would soon return, and his troubled breast would again become calm, his appetite would be good, and his sleep would be sweet and quiet like that of a babe. "_Net-no-qua_ stood upon a rock, and when the hook, with a piece of his side, lay upon the water, the parting hair of _Lin-ta_ (the river-born) was seen floating on the water, and its black and oily tresses were glistening in the sun as the water glided off from them; and her lips were opening to enclose the fatal hook that raised her beautiful breasts above the water. Her round and delicate arms shone bright with their beauty as she extended them to the shore, and the river shed its tears over her skin as her beautiful waist glided through its surface, above which the strong and manly arm of _Net-no-qua_ was gently raising her. The weeping waves in sparkling circles clung around her swelling hips and pressing knees, until the folding robe of the son of _Ti-ah-ka_ was over the wave and around her bending form. One hand still held her slim and tapering fingers, and with the other he encompassed her trembling form, as their equal steps took them from the shore and brought them to the wig-wam of _Net-no-qua_. His silent house was closed from the footsteps of the world; her delicate arms clung around the neck of the son of the chief, and her black and glossy tresses fell over and around his naked shoulders and mingled with his own. The same robe embraced them both, and her breath was purer than the blue waves from which she came. Their sleep was like the dreams of the antelope, and they awoke as the wild rose-buds open amidst the morning dew; the breast of _Net-no-qua_ was calm, his eyes were again like the eyes of the eagle, his appetite was keen, and his lips sounded their music in the ears of Lin-ta. She was lovely, she was the wife of the son of the chief, and like the vine that clings around and through the branches of the oak, did she cling to _Net-no-qua_. They were happy, and many have been the descendants that have sprung from the dreams of the son of _Ti-ah-ka_ and the beautiful _Lin-ta_ (the river-born). "_O-ne-ak'n_ was the brother of _Net-no-qua_, and _Di-ag-gon_ was his cousin: and _they_ were sick; and they sat upon the rock in the cove in the river: and the two sisters of Lin-ta shone as they lifted their graceful forms above the wave, and their beautiful locks spread as they floated on the surface. The two young warriors sighed as they gazed upon them. The two sisters embraced each other as they glided through and above the waves. They rose to full view, and had no shame. The river 'shed no tears, nor did the sparkling waves hang in circles about their swelling hips and pressing knees;' and as they sank, they beckoned the two young warriors, who followed them to their water-bound caves. They stole back in the morning, and were ashamed and sick. Their tongues were not silent, and others went. The two sisters again showed their lovely forms as they glided above the water, and they beckoned all who came to their hidden caves, and all came home in the morning sick and sad, while every morning saw the son of the chief and his river-born Lin-ta calm and bright as the rising sun. Shame and fear they knew not, but all was love and happiness with them; very different were the sisters of Lin-ta, who at length ventured from their caves at night, and strolled through the village; they were hidden again at the return of the light. Their caves were the resorts of the young men, but the fair daughters of Lin-ta knew them not. "Such was the story of Lin-ta (the river-born); she was the loved of her husband, and the virtuous mother of her children. Her beautiful sisters were the loved of all men, but had no offspring. They live in their hidden caves to this day, and sometimes in the day as well as in the night are seen walking through the village, though all the Indians call them _Chim-ee-gotch-es_, that is, _Cold-bloods_, or _Fish_." Jim got a round of applause for his story, though the Doctor thought he had left out some of the most essential and funny parts of it. Jim, however, seemed well content with the manner in which it was received, and continued to remark that he and the Doctor had come to the conclusion that those beautiful young women, that they saw looking back at the gentlemen in the streets, as well as those who were standing in front of their windows, and bowing to them, and kissing their hands every day, must be "fish;" and that in the great village of London, where so much _chickabobboo_ is drunk, there must be a great number of "fish." And they thought also that some of these they had seen in the Egyptian Hall when they were giving their dances. The above and other critiques of Jim upon London modes seemed to the chiefs to be rather too bold, and an impolitic position for Jim to take; and whilst their reprimands were being passed upon him, the train of humour he had happened to get into on that night turned all their remarks into jokes, and they were obliged to join in the irresistible merriment he produced on this occasion, merely from his having taken (as his wife had refused it on this evening as it was just now discovered) the additional mug of his wife's _chickabobboo_. Much merriment was produced amongst the Indians about this time by an appointment that had been made to see some experiments in mesmerism, to be performed by a Dr. M---- at the Indians' rooms. The Doctor was received at the appointed hour, and brought with him a feeble and pale-looking girl of 14 or 15 years of age to operate upon. This had taken the Indians rather by surprise, as no one had fully explained the nature of the operations to them. I got Jeffrey, however, to translate to them, as near as he could, the nature of this extraordinary discovery, and the effects it was to produce; and the doors being closed, and the young woman placed in a chair, the mesmeriser commenced his mysterious operations. I had instructed the Indians to remain perfectly still and not to laugh, lest they might hinder the operator, and prevent the desired effect. With one knee upon the floor, in front of her, and placing both of his extended thumbs (with his hands clenched) just in front of her two eyebrows, he looked her steadily in the face. This eccentric position and expression disposed Jim to laugh, and though he covered his huge mouth with his hand, and made no noise, still the irresistible convulsions in his fat sides shook the floor we were standing on; and the old Doctor at the same time, equally amused, was liable to do less harm, for all his smiles and laughter, however excessive, were produced by the curious machinery of his face, and never extended further down than the chin or clavicles. The little patient, however, was seen in a few minutes to be going to sleep, and at length fell back in the chair, in the desired state of somnambulism. The operator then, by mesmeric influences, opened her eyes, without touching them, and without waking her, and by the same influence closed them again. In the same way he caused her hand to close, and none of us could open it. Here our Doctor, who tried it, was quite at a stand. He saw the fingers of the operator pass several times in front of it, and its muscles relaxed--it opened of itself. He then brought, by the same influence, her left arm to her breast, and then the right, and challenged the strength of any one in the room to unbend them. This was tried by several of us, but in vain; and when his fingers were passed a few times lightly over them, they were relaxed and returned to their former positions. By this time the Indian women, with their hands over their mouths, began to groan, and soon left the room in great distress of mind. The chiefs, however, and the Doctor and Jim, remained until the experiments were all tried, and with unaccountable success. The operator then, by passing his fingers a few times over the forehead of his patient, brought her gradually to her senses, and the exhibition ended. The convulsions of Jim's broad sides were now all tempered down into cool quiet, and the knowing smiles of the old Doctor had all run entirely off from, and out of, the furrows of his face, and a sort of painful study seemed to be contracting the rigid muscles that were gathering over them. [Illustration: N^o. 12.] The chiefs pronounced the unaccountable operation to be the greatest of medicine, and themselves quite satisfied, as they retired; but the old Doctor, not yet quite sure, and most likely thinking it a good thing for his adoption among the mysteries of his profession in his own country, was disposed to remain, with his untiring companion Jim, until some clue could be got to this mystery of mysteries. With this view he had the curiosity of feeling the little girl's pulse, of examining and smelling the operator's fingers, &c., and of inquiring whether this thing could be done by any others but himself; to which I replied, that it was now being done by hundreds all through the country, and was no secret. The charm had then fled--it had lost all its value to the old Doctor. The deep thoughts ceased to plough his wrinkled face, and his self-sufficient, happy smiles were again playing upon his front. His views were evidently changed. _Jim_ caught the current of his feelings, and amusement was their next theme. The old Doctor "thought that _Jim_ could easily be frightened," and would be a good subject. It was proposed that _Jim_ should therefore take the chair, and it was soon announced to the squaws, and amongst them to his wife, that _Jim_ had gone to sleep, and was _mesmerised_. They all flew to the room, which upset the gravity of his broad mouth, and, with its movements, as a matter of course, the whole bearing of his face; and the operator's fingers being withdrawn from his nose, he left the chair amidst a roar of laughter. It was then proposed that the old Doctor should sit down and be tried, but he resisted the invitation, on the grounds of the _dignity of his profession_, which he got me to explain to the medical man, whom he was now evidently disposed to treat rather sarcastically, and his wonderful performance as a piece of extraordinary juggling, or, at least, as divested of its supposed greatest interest, that of novelty. He told him "that there was nothing new or very wonderful in the operation, that he could discover; it was no more than the charm which the snakes used to catch birds; and the more frightful and ugly a man's face was, the better he could succeed in it. He had no doubt but many ill-looking men amongst white people would use it as a mode of catching pretty girls, which they could not otherwise do, and therefore it would be called amongst white people a very useful thing." "All the _medicine-men_ (said he) in the Indian country have known for many years how to do the same thing, and what the white people know of it at this time they have learned from the Indians; but I see that they don't yet half know how to do it; that he had brought a _medicine dress_ all the way with him for the very purpose, and if the mesmeriser would come the next morning at 9 o'clock, he should see him with it on, and he would engage to frighten any white lady to sleep in five minutes who would take a good look at him without winking or laughing." The mesmeriser did not come, though the Doctor was on the spot and ready. (_Plate No. 12._) An event which they had long been looking for with great solicitude took place about this time--the prorogation of Parliament, which afforded the poor fellows their only opportunity of seeing the Queen. They were driven off in good season in their bus, and succeeded in getting the most favourable view of the Queen and the Prince as they were passing in the state-carriage; and, to use their own words for it, "The little Queen and the Prince both put their faces quite out of their carriage of gold to look at us and bow to us." There is no doubt but by the kindness of the police they were indulged in a favourable position and had a very satisfactory view of Her Majesty the Queen, and it is equally certain that they will never cease to speak of the splendour of the effect of the grand pageant as long as they live. The nightly excitements and amusements going on at the Egyptian Hall were increasing the public anxiety to see these curious people more at large, and we resolved to procure some suitable ground for the purpose, where their active limbs could be seen in full motion in the open air, as they are seen on their native prairies with their ball-sticks, in their favourite game of the ball, and the use of their bows and arrows, all of which they had brought with them, but could not use in their amusements at the Hall. Their dances, &c., were, however, to be kept up as usual, at night; and for their afternoon exercises in the open air, an arrangement was made for the use of "Lord's Cricket Ground," and on that beautiful field (prairie, as they called it) they amused thousands, daily, by their dances, archery, and ball-playing.[18] For this purpose an area of an acre or two was enclosed by a rope, and protected for their amusements by the police. To this the visitors advanced on every side, and seemed delighted with their rude appearance and native sports. This arrangement afforded the Indians the opportunity of showing their games and amusements to the greatest advantage, and also of meeting again the acquaintances they had made at the Egyptian Hall, and shaking hands with all who felt disposed to do them that honour. They had also brought with them, to illustrate the whole of Indian life, no less than three tents (wig-wams) made of buffalo hides, curiously but rudely painted, which the squaws daily erected on the ground, in presence of the spectators, forming by no means the least accurate and pleasing part of the exhibition. [18] This is, undoubtedly, the favourite and most manly and exciting game of the North American Indians, and often played by three or four hundred on a side, who venture their horses, robes, weapons, and even the very clothes upon their backs, on the issue of the game. For this beautiful game two byes or goals are established, at three or four hundred yards from each other, by erecting two poles in the ground for each, four or five feet apart, between which it is the strife of either party to force the ball (it having been thrown up at a point half-way between) by catching it in a little hoop, or racket, at the end of a stick, three feet in length, held in both hands as they run, throwing the ball an immense distance when they get it in the stick. This game is always played over an extensive prairie or meadow, and the confusion and laughable scrambles for the ball when it is falling, and often sought for by two or three hundred gathered to a focus, are curious and amusing beyond the reach of any description or painting. The beautiful scenes presented there could be repeated but a few days, owing to other uses to be made of the grounds; but during that time they were visited by vast numbers of the nobility of London, and several members of the Royal Family. The incidents of those days, which were curious and many, must be passed over, excepting that the Doctor daily beheld in front of the crowd, and at full length, the "jolly fat dame," to whom he as often advanced, with a diffident smile, to receive a beautiful rose, which she handed to him over the rope. These amusements in the open air in the daytime, with the dances, &c., at the Hall in the evenings, with their "drive" in the morning, and civil attentions to persons calling on them at their rooms, now engrossed completely all their time, and they were actually compelled to give offence to some parties who called on them, and to whom they could not devote the time. Amongst those were several deputations from public schools, of clergymen, and Sunday school teachers; and also three very excellent Christian ladies in a party, one of whom, Mrs. E----, I was well acquainted with, and knowing her extensive Christian and charitable labours, I had encouraged to call, as she had expressed a strong desire to talk with them on the subject of religion. They appealed to me, and I desired them to call at another hour, which they did, and I said to the chief that there was another proposition for a talk on the subject of religion. This seemed to annoy them somewhat, and after smoking a pipe, they decided not to see them. I then told them that they were three ladies; this seemed to startle them for a few moments, but they smoked on, and finally the War-chief said "it was a subject on which, if they had anything more to say, they would rather say it to the men than to women--they can talk with our women if they like." I then invited the Indian women into the room, and Jeffrey interpreted for the ladies, who had a long conversation with them, but, as the ladies afterwards told me, few words on the subject of religion: as to the first questions on that subject, the squaws answered that they left that mostly to their husbands, and they thought that if they loved their husbands, and took good care of their children, the Great Spirit would be kind to them. These kind ladies called the next day and left them fourteen Bibles and some other very useful presents, and their prayers for their happiness, feeling convinced that this was the most effectual and best way of making lasting and beneficial impressions on their minds. One of the very high compliments paid them from the fashionable world was now before them, and this being the day for it, all parties were dressing and painting for the occasion. I had received a very kind note from Mrs. Lawrence, inviting me to bring them to pay her a visit in her lovely grounds at Ealing Park, a few miles from the city of London. The omnibus was ready, and being seated, we were there with an hour's drive, and received on the fine lawn in the rear of her house. Here was presented the most beautiful scene which the Ioways helped to embellish whilst they were in the kingdom--for nothing more sweet can be seen than this little paradise, hemmed in with the richness and wildness of its surrounding foliage, and its velvet carpet of green on which the Indians were standing and reclining, and the kind lady and her Royal and noble guests, collected in groups, to witness their dances and other amusements. Their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, with the lovely Princess Mary, the Hereditary Grand Duke and Duchess of Mecklenburgh Strelitz, the Duchess of Gloucester, and many of the nobility, formed the party of her friends whom this lady had invited, and who soon entered the lawn to meet these sons of the forest, and witness their wild sports. At the approach of the lady and her Royal party, the Indians all arose, and the chiefs having been introduced, half an hour or more was passed in a conversation with them, through Jeffrey and myself, and an examination of their costumes, weapons, &c., when they seated themselves in a circle, and passing the pipe around, were preparing for a dance. The first they selected was their favourite, the eagle-dance, which they gave with great spirit, and my explanation of the meaning of it seemed to add much to its interest. (_Plate No. 13._) After the dance they strung their bows and practised at the target, and at length Mr. Melody tossed up the ball, when they snatched up their ballsticks, which they had brought for the purpose, and darted over and about the grounds in the exciting game of the ball. This proved more amusing to the spectators than either of the former exercises, but it was short, for they soon lost their ball, and the game being completed, they seated themselves again, and with the pipe were preparing for the _war-dance_, in which, when they gave it, the beautiful lawn, and the forests around it, resounded with the shrill notes of the _war-whoop_, which the frightened parroquets and cockatoos saucily echoed back with a laughable effect, and a tolerable exactness. The pipe of peace (or calumet) dance was also given, with the pipes of peace in their hands, which they had brought out for the purpose. While these exciting scenes were going on, the butler was busy spreading a white cloth over a long table arranged on the lawn, near the house, and on it the luxuries that had been preparing in the kitchen, for their dinners. This arrangement was so timed that the roast beef was on and smoking just when their amusements were finished, and when the announcement was made that their "dinner was up," all parties moved in that direction, but in two divisions, the one to partake, and the other to look on and see how wild people could handle the knife and fork. This was to be the _last_, though (as I could see by the anxiety of the spectators) not the _least amusing_ of their amusements, and it was in the event rendered peculiarly so to some of us, from the various parts which the kind and illustrious spectators were enabled to take in it, when in all their former amusements there was no possible way in which they could "lend a hand." Every one could here assist in placing a chair or handing a plate, and the Indians being seated, all were ready and emulous, standing around the table and at their elbows, to perform some little office of the kind, to assist them to eat, and to make them comfortable. His Royal Highness proposed that I should take my stand at the head of the table, before a huge sirloin of roast beef, and ply the carving knife, which I did; whilst he travelled, plates in hand, until they all were helped. The young Princess Mary, and the two little daughters of the kind lady, like the three Graces, were bending about under loads of bread and vegetables they were helping the Indians to, and the kind lady herself was filling their glasses from the generous pitcher of foaming ale, and ordering the butler to uncork the bottles of champagne which were ready and hissing at the delay. [Illustration: N^o. 13.] This unusual scene was taking place in the nearer vicinity of the poor parroquets and cockatoos, who seemed, thus far, awed into a discretionary silence, but were dancing to the right and the left, and busily swinging their heads to and fro, with their eyes and their ears open to all that was said and done. When the cork flew from the first bottle of champagne, the parrots squalled out, "There! there!! there!!!" and the Indians as suddenly, "_Chickabobboo! chickabobboo!_" Both laughed, and all the party _had_ to laugh, at the simultaneous excitement of the parrots and the Indians; and most of them were as ignorant of the language (and of course of the wit of) the one as of the other. _Chickabobboo_, however, was understood, at least by the Indians; and their glasses being filled with champagne, the moment they were raising it to their lips, and some had commenced drinking, the cockatoos suddenly squalled out again, "_There! there!! there!!!_" The old Doctor, and his superstitious friend Jim, who had not got their glasses quite to their mouths, slowly lowered them upon the table, and turned, with the most beseeching looks, upon Mr. Melody and myself, to know whether they were breaking their vow to us. They said nothing, but the question was sufficiently plain in their _looks_ for an answer, and I replied, "No, my good fellows, the parrots are fools, they don't know what they are talking about; they, no doubt, thought this was whiskey, but we know better; it's some of the '_Queen's chickabobboo_,' and you need not fear to drink it." This curious affair had been seen but by a part of the company, and only by the Indians at our end of the table, and therefore lost its general effect until I related it. The queer-sounding word "_chickabobboo_" seemed to amuse, and to excite the curiosity of many, and there was no understanding it without my going over the whole ground, and explaining how and where it originated, which, when finished, created much amusement. While I was relating this story the plates were being changed, and just at the end of it the parrots sang out again, "_There! there!! there!!!_" as before; but it was discovered that, at that instant, one of the waiters was passing near them with a huge and smoking plum-pudding, and so high that we could but just see his face over the top of it. This was placed before me, and as I divided and served it, the same hands, Royal and fair, conveyed it to the different parts of the table. This was a glorious pudding, and I had helped each one abundantly, expecting, as all did, that they would devour it without mincing; but, to the surprise of all, they tasted a little, and left the rest upon their plates. Fears were entertained that the pudding did not suit them, and I was constrained to ask why they did not eat more. The reply was reluctant, but very significant and satisfactory when it came. Jim spoke for all. He said, "They all agreed that it was good--very good; but that the beef was also very good, and the only fault of the pudding was, that it had come too late." The War-chief at this time was charging his long pipe with _k'nick k'neck_, and some fire being brought to light it, it was soon passed from his into the chiefs hands, when he arose from the table, and offering his hand to His Royal Highness, stepped a little back, and addressed him thus:-- "My Great Father,--Your face to-day has made us all very happy. The Great Spirit has done this for us, and we are thankful for it. The Great Spirit inclined your heart to let us see your face, and to shake your hand, and we are very happy that it has been so. (_How, how, how!_) "My Father,--We have been told that you are the uncle of the Queen, and that your brother was the King of this rich country. We fear we shall go home without seeing the face of your Queen, except as we saw it in her carriage; but if so, we shall be happy to say that we have seen the great chief who is next to the Queen. (_How, how, how!_) "My Father,--We are poor and ignorant people from the wilderness, whose eyes are not yet open, and we did not think that we should be treated so kindly as we have to-day. Our skins are red, and our ways are not so pleasing as those of the white people, and we therefore feel the more proud that so great a chief should come so far to see us, and to help to feed us; this we shall never forget. (_How, how, how!_) "My Father,--We feel thankful to the lady who has this fine house and these fine fields, and who has invited us here to-day, and to all the ladies and gentlemen who are here to see us. We shall pray for you all in our prayers to the Great Spirit, and now we shall be obliged to shake hands with you and go home. (_How, how, how!_)" His Royal Highness replied to him,-- "That he and all his friends present had been highly pleased with their appearance and amusements to-day, and most of all with the reverential manner in which he had just spoken of the Great Spirit, before whom we must all, whether red or white, soon appear. He thanked the chiefs for the efforts they had made to entertain them, and trusted that the Great Spirit would be kind to them in restoring them safe home to their friends again." At this moment, when all were rising and wrapping their robes around them preparing to start, the lady appeared among them, with a large plate in her hands, bearing on it a variety of beautiful trinkets, which she dispensed among them according to their various tastes; and with a general shake of the hand, they retired from the grounds to take their carriage for town. The parrots and cockatoos all bowed their heads in silence as they passed by them; but as the old Doctor (who always lingers behind to bestow and catch the last smile, and take the second shake of the hand where there are ladies in question) extended his hand to the kind lady, to thank her the second and last time, there was a tremendous cry of "_There! there!! there!!!_" and "_Cockatoo! cockatoo!_"--the last of which the poor Doctor, in his confusion, had mistaken for "_Chickabobboo! chickabobboo!_" He, however, kept a steady gait between the din of "_There! there!! there!!!_" and "_Cockatoo!_" that was behind him, and the inconceivable laughter of his party in the carriage, who now insisted on it (and almost made him believe), that his ugly face had been the sole cause of the alarm of the birds and monkeys since the Indians entered the ground.[19] [19] The polite Doctor often spoke of his admiration of this excellent lady and of her beautiful park, and expressed his regrets also that the day they spent there was so short; for while hunting for the ball which they had lost, it seemed he had strolled alone into her beautiful _Conservatoire_, where he said, "in just casting his eyes around, he thought there were roots that they had not yet been able to find in this country, and which they stood much in need of." He said "he believed from what he had seen when he was looking for the ball, though nobody had ever told him, that this lady was a great root-doctor." This was theme enough, to ensure them a merry ride home, where they arrived in time, and in the very best of humour, for their accustomed evening amusements at the Hall; and after that, of taking their suppers and _chickabobboo_ in their own apartments, which resounded with songs and with encomiums on the kind lady and her _chickabobboo_, until they got to sleep. The next morning we had an appointment to visit the Surrey Zoological Gardens, and having the greatest curiosity to witness the mutual surprise there might be exhibited at the meeting of wild men and wild animals, I was one of the party. The interview, in order to avoid the annoyance of a crowd, had been arranged as a private one: we were, therefore, on the spot at an early hour; and as we were entering (the Doctor, with his jingling dress and red face, being in advance of the party, as he was sure to be in _entering_ any curious place, though the last to _leave_ if there were ladies behind), we were assailed with the most tremendous din of "_There! there!! there!!!" "Cockatoo! cockatoo!_" and "_God dam!_" and fluttering of wings of the poor affrighted parrots, that were pitching down from their perches in all directions. I thought it best that we should retreat a few moments, until Mr. Cross could arrange the front ranks of his aviary a little, which he did by moving back some of their outposts to let us pass. We had been shown into a little office in the meantime, where Mr. Melody had very prudently suggested that they had better discharge as many of their rattling gewgaws as possible, and try to carry into the ground as little of the frightful as they could. Amusing jokes were here heaped upon the Doctor for his extreme ugliness, which, as Jim told him, had terrified the poor birds almost to death. The Doctor bore it all patiently, however, and with a smile; and partially turned the laugh upon Jim with the big mouth, by replying that it was lucky for the gentleman owning the parrots that Jim did not enter first; for if he had, the poor man would have found them all dead, instead of being a little alarmed, as they then were. We were now entering upon the greatest field for the speculations and amusement (as well as astonishment) of the Indians that they were to meet in the great metropolis. My note-book was in my hand and my pencil constantly employed; and the notes that I then and in subsequent visits made, can be allowed very little space in this work. All were ready, and we followed Mr. Cross; the Indians, fourteen in number, with their red faces and red crests, marching in single file. The squalling of parrots and barking of dogs seemed to have announced to the whole neighbourhood that some extraordinary visitation was at hand; and when we were in front of the lions' cage, their tremendous bolts against its sides, and unusual roar, announced to the stupidest animal and reptile that an enemy was in the field. The terrible voice of the king of beasts was heard in every part, and echoed back in affrighted notes of a hundred kinds. Men as well as beasts were alarmed, for the men employed within the grounds were retreating, and at every turn they made amidst its bewildering mazes, they imagined a roaring lion was to spring upon their backs. The horrid roaring of the lions was answered by lions from another part of the garden. Hyenas and panthers hissed, wolves were howling, the Indians (catching the loved inspiration of nature's wildness) sounded their native war-whoop, the buffaloes bellowed, the wild geese stretched their necks and screamed; the deer, the elk, and the antelopes were trembling, the otters and beavers dived to the bottom of their pools, the monkeys were chattering from the tops of their wire cages, the bears were all at the summit of their poles, and the ducks and the geese whose wings were not cropped, were hoisting themselves out of their element into quieter regions. The whole establishment was thus in an instant "brushed up," and in their excitement, prepared to be seen to the greatest possible advantage; all upon their feet, and walking their cages to and fro, seemingly as impatient to see what they seemed to know was coming, as the visiting party was impatient to see them. I explained to the Indians that the lion was the king of beasts--and they threw tobacco before him as a sacrifice. The hyenas attracted their attention very much, and the leopards and tigers, of the nature of all of which I promised to give them some fuller account after we got home. They met the panther, which they instantly recognized, and the recognition would seem to have been mutual, from its evident alarm, evinced by its hissing and showing its teeth. _Jim_ called for the Doctor "to see his brother," the wolf. The Doctor's _totem_ or _arms_ was the wolf--it was therefore _medicine_ to him. The Doctor advanced with a smile, and offering it his hand, with a smirk of recognition, he began, in a low and soft tone, to howl like a wolf. All were quiet a moment, when the poor animal was led away by the Doctor's "_distant howlings_," until it raised up its nose, with the most pitiable looks of imploration for its liberty, and joined him in the chorus. He turned to us with an exulting smile, but to his "poor imprisoned brother," as he called it, with a tear in his eye, and a plug of tobacco in his hand, which he left by the side of its cage as a _peace-offering_. The ostrich (of which there was a noble specimen there) and the kangaroo excited the admiration and lively remarks of the Indians; but when they met the poor distressed and ragged prisoner, the buffalo from their own wild and free prairies, their spirits were overshadowed with an instant gloom; forebodings, perhaps, of their own approaching destiny. They sighed, and even wept, for this worn veteran, and walked on. With the bears they would have shaken hands, if they could have done it, "and embraced them too," said the Little-wolf, "for he had hugged many a one." They threw tobacco to the rattlesnake, which is _medicine_ with them, and not to be killed. The joker, _Jim_, made us white men take off our hats as we passed the beaver, for it was his relation; and as he had learned a little English, when he heard the ducks cry "quack," he pointed to them and told the Doctor to go there--he was called for. Thus rapid were the transitions from surprise to pity, and to mirth, as we passed along, and yet to wonder and astonishment, which had been reserved for the remotest and the last. Before the massive _elephant_ little or nothing was said; all hands were over their mouths; their tobacco was forgotten, they walked quietly away, and all of us being seated under an arbour, to which we were conducted, our kind guide said to Jeffrey, "Tell the Indians that the immense arch they see now over their heads is made of the jaw-bones of a whale, and they may now imagine themselves and the whole party sitting in its mouth." "Well, now," said Jeffrey, "you don't say so?" "Yes, it's even so." "Well, I declare! why, the elephant would be a mere baby to it." Jeffrey explained it to the Indians, and having risen from their seats, and being satisfied, by feeling it, that it was actually bone, they wished to go home, and "see the rest at a future time." We were then near the gate, where we soon took our carriage, and returned to their quarters in St. James's Street. CHAPTER XXI. Indians' remarks on the Zoological Gardens--Their pity for the poor buffalo and other animals imprisoned--Jim's talk with a clergyman about Hell and the hyænas--Indians' ideas of astronomy--Jim and the Doctor hear of the hells of London--Desire to go into them--Promised to go--Indians counting the gin-palaces (_chickabobboo-ags_)in a ride to Blackwall and back--The result--Exhibition in the Egyptian Hall--A sudden excitement--The War-chief recognises in the crowd his old friend "Bobasheela"--Their former lives on the Mississippi and Missouri--Bobasheela an Englishman--His travels in the "Far West" of America--Story of their first acquaintance--The doomed wedding-party--Lieut. Pike--Daniel Boone and Son--Indians visit a great brewery--Kind reception by the proprietors--Great surprise of the Indians--Immense quantities of _chickabobboo_--War-dance in an empty vat--Daniel commences Jim's book of the statistics of England--Indians visit the Tunnel--Visit to the Tower--The Horse Armoury--The Royal Regalia--Indians' ideas of the crowns and jewels--"_Totems_" (arms) on the fronts of noblemen's houses--Royal arms over the shops--Strange notions of the Doctor--They see the "man with the big nose" again--And the "great white War-chief (the Duke of Wellington) on horseback, near his wig-wam." Three or four of my particular friends had joined us in our visit to the Zoological Gardens this morning, and amongst them a reverend gentleman, whose professional character was not made known to the Indians. He kept close to Jeffrey and the Indians all the way, and his ears were open to the translation of everything they said. He was not only highly amused at their remarks, but told me he heard enough to convince him that lessons of morality, of devotion, and religion, as well as of philosophy, might be learned from those poor people, although they were the savages of the wilderness, and often despised as such. Mr. Melody and I accompanied them to their rooms, and as we came in when their dinner was coming up, we sat down and partook of it with them. The Indian's mode is to _eat exclusively_ while he eats, and to talk afterwards. We adhered to their rule on this occasion, and after the dinner was over, and a pipe was lit, there were remarks and comments enough ready, upon the strange things they had just seen. As usual, the first thing was, to have a laugh at the Doctor for having frightened the parrots; and then to reflect and to comment upon the cruelty of keeping all those poor and unoffending animals prisoners in such a place, merely to be looked at. They spoke of the doleful looks they all wore in their imprisoned cells, walking to and fro, and looking through the iron bars at every person who came along, as if they wished them to let them out. I was forcibly struck with the truth and fitness of their remarks, having never passed through a menagerie without coming out impressed, even to fatigue, with the sympathy I had felt for the distressed looks and actions of these poor creatures, imprisoned for life, for man's amusement only. Jim asked, "What have all those poor animals and birds done that they should be shut up to die? They never have murdered anybody--they have not been guilty of stealing, and they owe no money; why should they be kept so, and there to die?" He said it would afford him more pleasure to see one of them let loose and run away over the fields, than to see a hundred imprisoned as they were. The Doctor took up the gauntlet and reasoned the other way. He said they were altogether the happiest wild animals he ever saw; they were perfectly prevented from destroying each other, and had enough to eat as long as they lived, and plenty of white men to wait upon them. He did not see why they should not live as long there as anywhere else, and as happy. He admitted, however, that his heart was sad at the desolate look of the old buffalo bull, which he would like to have seen turned loose on the prairies. The Roman-nose said he heard one of the parrots say "God dam." "So he did," said Jim; "and who could say otherwise, when the Doctor poked his ugly face so suddenly in amongst them? They know how to speak English, and I don't wonder they say God dam."[20] [20] No Indian language in America affords the power of swearing, not being sufficiently rich and refined. I here diverted their attention from the jokes they were beginning upon the Doctor, by asking them how they liked the _chickabobboo_ they got in the gardens, which they recollected with great pleasure, and which they pronounced to have been very good. Mr. Cross had invited the whole party to a private view, and after showing us, with great politeness, what he had curious, invited us into one of his delightful little refreshment rooms, and treated all to cold chickens, pork pies, pastries, and champagne, which the Indians called _chickabobboo_; and as he did not know the meaning of the word, I related the story of it, which pleased him very much. The Doctor made some laugh, by saying that "he was going over there again in a few days, if he could find some strings long enough, to measure the elephant and the bones of the whale, as he had got the dimensions of the giant man." Jim told him "he had not got the measure of the _giant man_--he had only measured the _giant woman_, and getting scared, he only half measured her; and he was so much afraid of women, that he didn't believe he could ever take the measure of one of them correct, if a hundred should stand ever so still for him." The Doctor smiled, and looked at me as if to know if I was going to ask some question again. He was fortunately relieved at that moment, however, by Mr. Melody's question to Jim, "how he liked the looks of the hyenas, and whether he would like him to buy one to carry home with him?" Jim rolled over on to his back, and drew his knees up (the only position in which he could "think fast," as he expressed it; evidently a peculiarity with him, and a position, ungraceful as it was, which it was absolutely necessary for him to assume, if he was going to tell a story well, or to make a speech); and after thinking much more profoundly than it required to answer so simple a question, replied, "Very well, very well," and kept thinking on. The Little Wolf, who was lying by his side, asked him "what he was troubled about?--he seemed to be thinking very strong." Jim replied to this, that "he was thinking a great way, and he had to think hard." He said, that when he was looking at the hyenas, he said to Jeffrey that he thought they were the wickedest looking animals he ever saw, and that he believed they would go to hell; but that the gentleman who came to the garden with Mr. Melody[21] said to him, "No, my friend, none but the animals that laugh and cry can go to heaven or to hell." He said that this gentleman then wanted to know how he had heard of hell, and what idea he had of it. He said, he told Jeffrey to say to him that some white men (_black coats_) had told amongst his people, that there was such a place as hell, very low under the earth, where the wicked would all go, and for ever be in the fire. He said, the gentleman asked him if he believed it? and that he told him he thought there might be such a place for white people--he couldn't tell--but he didn't think the Indians would go to it. He said, the gentleman then asked him why he thought those poor ignorant animals the hyenas would go there? And he replied to him that _Chippehola_[22] said "the hyenas live by digging up the bodies of people after they are buried;" and he therefore thought they were as wicked as the white people, who also dig up the Indians' graves, and scatter their bones about, all along our country;[23] and he thought such white people would go to hell, and ought to go there. He said he also told the gentleman he had heard there were some hells under the city of London, and that he had been invited to go and see them: this, he said, made the gentleman laugh, and there was no more said: that he had begun to think that this gentleman was a _black coat_, but when he saw him laugh, he found out that he was not. "Just the time you were mistaken," said Mr. Melody; "for that gentleman _was_ a clergyman, and you have made a very great fool of yourself." "I will risk all that," said Jim; "I have wanted all the time to make a speech to some of them, but the chiefs wouldn't let me." [21] The reverend gentleman. [22] Mr. Catlin. [23] One of the most violent causes of the Indian's hatred of white men is, that nearly every Indian grave is opened by them on the frontier for their skulls or for the weapons and trinkets buried with them. The pipe, during these conversations, was being handed around, and Jim's prolific mind, while he was "thinking fast" (as he had called it), was now running upon the elephant, and he was anxious to know where it came from. I told him it was from the opposite side of the globe: he could not understand me, and to be more explicit, I told him that the ground we stood upon was part of the surface of the earth, which was round like a ball, and many thousands of miles around; and that these huge animals came from the side exactly opposite to us. I never could exactly believe that Jim, at the moment, doubted my word; but in the richness of his imagination (particularly in his thinking position) he so clearly saw elephants walking underside of the globe, with their backs downwards, without falling, that he broke out into such a flood of laughter, that he was obliged to shut out his thoughts, and roll over upon his hands and knees until the spasms went gradually off. The rest of the group were as incredulous as Jim, but laughed less vehemently; and as it was not a time to lecture further on astronomy, I thought it best to omit it until a better opportunity: merely waiting for Jim's pencil sketch (and no doubt according to his first impression), which he was then drawing, with considerable tact; and with equal wit, proposed I should adopt as my "arms" or _totem_, the globe with an inverted elephant. Melody and I strolled off together, leaving the Indians in this amusing mood, while we were agreeing that they were a good-natured and well-disposed set of men, determining to take everything in the happiest way; and that they were well entitled to our protection, and our best energies to promote their welfare. We saw that they enjoyed every thing that we showed them, with a high relish; and in hopes that they might profit by it, and feel a stronger attachment to us, we resolved to spare no pains in showing them whatever we could, that they might wish to see, and which would be likely, in any way, to render them a benefit. The reader will have seen, by this time, that they were a close observing and an amusing set of fellows: and knowing also that at this time nearly all the curious sights of London were still before us, he will be prepared to meet the most exciting and amusing parts of this book as he reads on. We continued to give these curious and good fellows their daily drives in their bus, and by an hour spent in this way each day, for several months, they were enabled to form a tolerably correct idea of the general shapes and appearance of the city, and its modes, as seen in the streets. In these drives, as well as in institutions of various kinds, which they visited, they saw many curious things which amused them, and others which astonished them very much; but their private room was the place for their amusing debates, and remarks upon them, when they returned: and to that I generally repaired every night before they went to bed, to hear what they had to say and to think, of the sights they had seen during the day. _Chickabobboo_, though an Ojibbeway word, had now become a frequent and favourite theme with them, inasmuch as it was at this time an essential part of their dinners and suppers, and as, in all their drives about town, they were looking into the "gin palaces" which they were every moment passing, and at the pretty maids who were hopping about, and across the streets, in all directions, both night and day, with pitchers of ale in their hands. The elevated positions of the Doctor and Jim, as they were alongside of the driver of the bus, enabling them, in the narrow streets, to peep into the splendid interior of many of these, as they were brilliantly illumined, and generally gay with bonnets and ribbons, and imagining a great deal of happiness and fun to reign in them, they had several times ventured, very modestly, to suggest to me a wish to look into some of them--"not to drink," as they said, "for they could get enough to drink at home, but to see how they looked, and how the people acted there." I had told them that if they had the least curiosity, there should be no objection to their going with me on some proper occasion, when they again got on their frock coats and beaver hats; and also that if there were any other curious places they wished to see in London, Mr. Melody or I would take them there. Upon hearing this the big-mouthed and quizzical Jim at once took me at my word, and told me that "some gentleman with Daniel had been telling him and the Doctor that there were several '_hells_' under the city of London, and that they ought some time to go down and see them." He didn't think from what Daniel and that man said that they were hells of "fire," but he thought as Daniel had been to them, there could not be much danger, and he thought they would be very curious to see; he knew these were not the hells which the _black coats_ spoke of, for Daniel told him there were many beautiful ladies, and fine music, and _chickabobboo_ there; that they did not wish to drink the _chickabobboo_, but merely to look and see, and then come away; and they had no objections to put on the black coats for that purpose; he said, in fact, that Daniel had invited them to go, and that Jeffrey had agreed to go with them. Jim had me thus "upon the hip" for this enterprise, and when I mentioned it to poor Melody, he smiled as he seemed to shrink from it, and said, "Ah, Catlin, that never will do: we are going to spoil these Indians, as sure as the world; there will be in a little time nothing but what they will want to see, and we shall have no peace of our lives with them. They have all gone now, and Daniel and Jeffrey with them, in their bus, all the way to Blackwall, merely to see how many _chickabobbooags_ (gin palaces) they can count in the way, going by one route and returning by another. Their minds are running on _chickabobboo_ and such things already, and they are in the midst of such a scene of gin-drinking and drunkenness as they see every day, that I am almost sorry we ever undertook to drive them out at all. I am daily more and more afraid that they will all become drunkards, in spite of all I can do, and I sometimes wish I had them safe home, where we started from. You have no idea what a charge I have on my hands, and the annoyance I have about the front of their apartments every night, from women who are beckoning them down from their windows to the door, and even into the passages and streets. They seem daily to be losing their respect for me, and I find it every day more and more difficult to control them." "And so you will continue to find it," said I, "unless privileges and freedom to a reasonable extent are granted to them, while they are strictly adhering to the solemn promises and restraints we have laid them under. These people have come here under your promises to show them everything you can, and to teach them how the civilized world live and act. They have reposed the highest confidence in you to take care of and protect them, and in return they have solemnly promised to conduct themselves properly and soberly; and as long as they adhere to that, you should not let them doubt your confidence in them, by fearing to show them some parts of the shades as well as the lights of civilization. They are here to learn the ways of civilization, and I should deem it wrong to deny them the privilege, if they ask for it, of seeing such parts of it as you and myself would go to see. I have been to see the 'hells of London' myself, and would much sooner take my son there, and there give him the most impressive lesson in morality, than forbid him to go, expressing to him my fears of his contamination. These people are like children in some respects, and they are men in others; and while I fully appreciate all your noble attachment to them, and your anxieties for them, with the knowledge I have gained of the Indian character, I feel assured that as they are brought here to be shown everything of civilization, to restrict them in seeing the parts of it they desire to see, will be to exhibit to them a want of confidence which would be apt to lead to worse and more injurious results before you get home with them. I should have been very far from mentioning such places to them, or the many other dens of iniquity which exist in the great city of London and the cities of our own country, and which I hope they may remain strangers to; but they having heard of the hells of London, and expressed a desire to see them, I should feel no hesitation in giving Jim and the Doctor a peep into them, instead of representing them (as the means of keeping them away from them) as being a much greater degradation of human nature than they actually are." Good, kind Melody looked so much distressed, that I finished my arguments here, and told him to "rest quite easy; there was a way by which we could get over it, and I not break my promise with Jim and the Doctor. That a friend of mine who had been into them recently and narrowly escaped with his life, would have a talk with them on the subject in a few days, and all would be right.[24] As for the joke they are on to-day, about the _gin-shops_, I don't see the least harm in it. They must have something to laugh at, and while they are getting their usual daily ride in the open air, they are passing one of the best comments that ever was made upon one of the greatest vices of the greatest city in the world." [24] This unfortunate "friend of mine" called the next day, with a handkerchief tied over one eye, and one arm in a sling; and while we _happened_ to be talking of their intended visit to some of the "hells," he took occasion to exclaim at once, "My good fellows, let me advise you, go and see everything else in London, but take especial care you don't go into any of those infernal regions, and get served as I have been, or ten times worse, for I was lucky that I didn't lose my life." "Then you have seen them?" said I. "Seen them? yes, I _saw_, till I was knocked down three or four times, and my pockets picked, after I paid out to those infernal demons fifteen pounds; so I lost about thirty pounds altogether, and have not been able to see since. Nat B--n of New York was with me, and he got off much worse than I did; he was carried home for dead and hasn't been out of his room since. When I get a little better, my good fellows, I will give you a long account of what we saw, and I'll venture you never will want to risk your heads there." My friend here left us, and Jim and the Doctor had evidently changed their minds about going to see the "Hells of London." The simple old Doctor, in his curious cogitations amidst the din of civilised excitements, while he had been ogling the thousands of ladies and gin-palaces, and other curious things all together, from the pinnacle of his bus, had brought home one day in round numbers the total amount of _chickabobbooags_ that he had seen during the hour's drive on one morning. The enormous amount of these, when added up, seemed too great for the most credulous; and Jim, seeming to think that the Doctor had counted the ladies instead of the grog-shops, disputed the correctness of his report, which had led to the result that was being carried out to-day, by some pretty spirited betting between the Doctor, Jim, Daniel, and Jeffrey, as to the number of _gin palaces (chickabobbooags)_ they should pass on their way from St. James's Street to Blackwall (where they had curiosity to taste "white bait"), and back again by a different route, taking _Euston Station_ in their way as they returned. For this purpose it was arranged that the Doctor and Jim should take their customary seats with the driver; and _Roman Nose_ and the _Little Wolf_ inside of the bus, where there was less to attract their attention, should each take his side of the street, counting as they passed them, while the old War-chief should notch them on a stick which they had prepared for the purpose, having Daniel and Jeffrey by their sides to see that there was no mistake. The amusements of this gigantic undertaking were not to be even anticipated until they got back, nor its difficulties exactly appreciated until they appeared in the prosecution of the design. At starting off, the _Roman Nose_ and _Little Wolf_ took their positions on opposite seats, each one appropriating a pane of glass for his observations, and the old War-chief with his deal stick in one hand and a knife in the other; and in this way they were ready for, and commenced operations. Each one as he passed a gin-shop, called out "_chickabobbooag!_" and the old chief cut a notch. This at first seemed to be quite an easy thing, and even allowed the old man an occasional moment to look around and observe the direction in which they were going, while the two amusing chubs who were outside could pass an occasional remark or two upon the ladies as they were commencing to keep an oral account, to corroborate or correct the records that were making inside. As they gradually receded from the temperate region of St. James's (having by an ignorant oversight overlooked the numerous _club-houses_), their labours began to increase, and the old War-chief had to ply his knife with precision and quickness; the two companions outside stopped all further conversation, holding on to their fingers for tens, hundreds, &c. The word _chickabobbooag_ was now so rapidly repeated at times inside (and oftentimes by both parties at once), that the old chief found the greatest difficulty in keeping his record correct. The parties all kept at their posts, and attended strictly to their reckonings, until they arrived at Blackwall. They cast up none of their accounts there, but the old chief's record was full--there was no room for another notch. He procured another stick for the returning memorandums, and the route back, being much more prolific and much longer, filled each of the four corners of his new stick, and when it was full he set down the rest of his sum in black marks, with a pencil and paper which Daniel took from his pocket. The reckoning, when they got back, and their curious remarks upon the incidents of their ride, were altogether very amusing, and so numerous and discordant were their accounts, that there was no final decision agreed upon as to the bets. Their results were brought in thus: War-chief notches 446 Jim oral 432 doubtful 60 Doctor oral 754 doubtful 0 ---- Average 544. What route they took I never was able to learn, but such were their accounts as they brought them in; and as it was ascertained that the Doctor had been adding to his account all the shops where he saw bottles in the windows, it was decided to be a reasonable calculation that he had brought into the account erroneously: Apothecaries and confectioners--say 300 Leaving the average of all together (which was no doubt very near the thing) Chickabobbooags 450 So ended (after the half-hour's jokes they had about it) this novel enterprise, which had been carried out with great pains and much fatigue, and in which, it was suggested by them, and admitted by me, they had well earned a jug of _chickabobboo_. The settlement of this important affair was not calculated by any means to lessen the Doctor's curiosity in another respect, and which has been alluded to before--his desire to visit some of those places, to see the manner in which the _chickabobboo_ was made. I put him at rest on that subject, however, by telling him that there was none of it made at those shops where it was sold, but that I had procured an order to admit the whole party to one of the greatest breweries in the city, where the _chickabobboo_ was made, and that we were all to go the next day and see the manner in which it was done. This information seemed to give great pleasure to all, and to finish for the present the subject of _chickabobboo_. The night of this memorable day I had announced as the last night of the Indians at the Egyptian Hall, arrangements having been effected for their exhibitions to be made a few days in Vauxhall Gardens before leaving London for some of the provincial towns. This announcement, of course, brought a dense crowd into the Hall, and in it, as usual, the "jolly fat dame," and many of my old friends, to take their last gaze at the Indians. The amusements were proceeding this evening, as on former occasions, when a sudden excitement was raised in the following manner. In the midst of one of their noisy dances, the War-chief threw himself, with a violent jump and a yell of the shrill war-whoop, to the corner of the platform, where he landed on his feet in a half-crouching position, with his eyes, and one of his forefingers, fixed upon something that attracted his whole attention in a distant part of the crowd. The dance stopped--the eyes of all the Indians, and of course those of most of the crowd, were attracted to the same point; the eyes of the old War-chief were standing open, and in a full blaze upon the object before him, which nobody could well imagine, from his expression, to be anything less exciting than a huge panther, or a grizly bear, in the act of springing upon him. After staring awhile, and then shifting his weight upon the other leg, and taking a moment to wink, for the relief of his eyes, he resumed the intensity of his gaze upon the object before him in the crowd, and was indulging during a minute or two in a dead silence, for the events of twenty or thirty years to run through his mind, when he slowly straightened up to a more confident position, with his eyes relaxed, but still fixed upon their object, when, in an emphatic and ejaculatory tone, he pronounced the bewildering word of _Bobasheela!_ and repeated it, _Bobasheela?_ "Yes, I'm _Bobasheela_, my good old fellow! I knew your voice as soon as you spoke (though you don't understand English yet)." _Chee-au-mung-ta-wangish-kee, Bobasheela._ "My friends, will you allow me to move along towards that good old fellow? he knows me;" at which the old chief (not of a _hundred_, but) of _many_ battles, gave a yell, and a leap from the platform, and took his faithful friend _Bobasheela_ in his arms, and after a lapse of thirty years, had the pleasure of warming his cheek against that of one of his oldest and dearest friends--one whose heart, we have since found, had been tried and trusted, and as often requited, in the midst of the dense and distant wildernesses of the banks of the Mississippi and Missouri. Whilst this extraordinary interview was proceeding, all ideas of the dance were for the time lost sight of, and whilst these veterans were rapidly and mutually reciting the evidences of their bygone days of attachment, there came a simultaneous demand from all parts of the room, for an interpretation of their conversation, which I gave as far as I could understand it, and as far as it had then progressed, thus:--The old Sachem, in leading off his favourite war-dance, suddenly fixed his eye upon a face in the crowd, which he instantly recognized, and gazing upon it a moment, decided that it was the well-known face of an old friend, with whom he had spent many happy days of his early life on the banks of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers in America. The old chief, by appealing to this gentleman's familiar Indian cognomen of _Bobasheela_, brought out an instant proof of the correctness of his recognition; and as he held him by both hands, to make proof doubly strong, he made much merriment amongst the party of Indians, by asking him if he ever "floated down any part of the great Mississippi river in the night, astride of two huge logs of wood, with his legs hanging in the water?" To which _Bobasheela_ instantly replied in the affirmative. After which, and several _medicine_ phrases, and masonic grips and signs had passed between them, the dance was resumed, and the rest of the story, as well as other anecdotes of the lives of these extraordinary personages postponed to the proper time and place, when and where the reader will be sure to hear them. [Illustration: N^o. 14.] The exhibition for the evening being over, Bobasheela was taken home with the Indians, to their lodgings, to smoke a pipe with them; and having had the curiosity to be of the party, I was enabled to gather the following further information. This _Bobasheela_ (Mr. J. H., a native of Cornwall) (Plate No. 14), who is now spending the latter part of a very independent bachelor's life amongst his friends in London, left his native country as long ago as the year 1805, and making his way, like many other bold adventurers, across the Alleghany Mountains in America, descended into the great and almost boundless valley of the Mississippi, in hopes by his indefatigable industry, and daring enterprise, to share in the products that must find their way from that fertile wilderness valley to the civilized world. In this arduous and most perilous pursuit, he repeatedly ascended and descended in his bark canoe--his pirogue or his Mackinaw boat, the Ohio, the Muskingham, the Cumberland, the Tennessee, the Arkansas, the Missouri, and Mississippi rivers; and amongst the thousand and one droll and amusing incidents of thirty years spent in such a sort of life, was the anecdote which the War-chief alluded to, in the unexpected meeting with his old friend in my exhibition-room, and which the two parties more fully related to me in this evening's interview. The good-natured Mr. H. told me that the tale was a true one, and the awkward predicament spoken of by the War-chief was one that he was actually placed in when his acquaintance first began with his good friend. Though the exhibition had kept us to a late hour, the greetings and pleasing reminiscences to be gone over by these two reclaimed friends, and (as they called themselves) "brothers" of the "Far West," over repeatedly charged pipes of k'nick k'neck, were pleasing, and held us to a most unreasonable hour at night. When the chief, amongst his rapid interrogations to Bobasheela, asked him if he had preserved his _she-she-quoin_, he gave instant relief to the mind of his friend, from which the lapse of time and changes of society had erased the recollection of the chief's familiar name, _She-she-quoi-me-gon_, by which his friend had christened him, from the circumstance of his having presented him a _she-she-quoin_(or mystery rattle), the customary badge bestowed when any one is initiated into the degree of "doctor" or "brother." From the forms and ceremonies which my good friend _Bobasheela_ had gone through, it seems (as his name indicates) that he stood in the relationship of brother to the chief; and although the chief's interrogations had produced him pleasure in one respect, one can easily imagine him much pained in another, inasmuch as he was obliged to acknowledge that his sacred badge, his _she-she-quoin_, had been lost many years since, by the sinking of one of his boats on the Cumberland river. For his standing in the tribe, such an event might have been of an irretrievable character; but for the renewed and continued good fellowship of his friend in this country, the accident proved to be one of little moment, as will be learned from various incidents recited in the following pages. In this first evening's interview over the pipe, my friend Mr. H., to the great amusement of the party of Indians, and of Daniel and the squaws, who had gathered around us, as well as several of my London friends, related the story of "floating down the Mississippi river on two logs of wood," &c., as follows:-- "This good old fellow and I formed our first acquaintance in a very curious way, and when you hear me relate the manner of it, I am quite sure you will know how to account for his recognizing me this evening, and for the pleasure we have both felt at thus unexpectedly meeting. In the year 1806 I happened to be on a visit to St. Louis, and thence proceeded up the Missouri to the mouth of the 'Femme Osage' to pay a visit to my old friend Daniel Boone, who had a short time before left his farm in Kentucky and settled on the banks of the Missouri, in the heart of an entire wilderness, to avoid the constant annoyance of the neighbours who had flocked into the country around him in Kentucky. The place for his future abode, which he had selected, was in a rich and fertile country, and forty or fifty miles from any white inhabitants, where he was determined to spend the remainder of his days, believing that for the rest of his life he would be no more annoyed by the familiarity of neighbours. I spent several weeks very pleasantly with the old pioneer, who had intentionally built his log cabin so small, with only one room and one bed for himself and his wife, that even his best friends should not break upon the sacred retirement of his house at night, but having shared his hospitable board during the day were referred to the cabin of his son, Nathan Boone, about four hundred yards distant, where an extra room and an extra bed afforded them the means of passing the night. "The old hunter and his son were thus living very happily, and made me comfortable and happy whilst I was with them. The anecdotes of his extraordinary life, which were talked over for amusement during that time, were enough to fill a volume. The venerable old man, whose long and flowing locks were silvery white, was then in his 78th year, and still he almost daily took down his trusty rifle from its hooks in the morning, and in a little time would bring in a saddle of venison for our breakfast, and thus he chiefly supported his affectionate old lady and himself, and the few friends who found their way to his solitary abode, without concern or care for the future. The stump of a large cotton-wood tree, which had been cut down, was left standing in the ground, and being cut square off on the top, and his cabin being built around it, answered the purpose of a table in the centre of his cabin, from which our meals were eaten. When I made my visit to him, he had been living several years in this retired state and been perfectly happy in the undisturbed solitude of the wilderness, but told me several times that he was becoming very uneasy and distressed, as he found that his days of peace were nearly over, as two Yankee families had already found the way into the country, and one of them had actually settled within nine miles of him. "Having finished my visit to this veteran and his son, I mounted my horse, and taking leave followed an Indian trail to the town of St. Charles, some thirty or forty miles below, on the north banks of the Missouri. I here visited some old friends with whom I had become acquainted on the lower Mississippi in former years, and intending to descend the river from that to St. Louis by a boat had sold my horse when I arrived there. Before I was ready to embark, however, an old friend of mine, Lieutenant Pike, who had just returned from his exploring expedition to the Rocky Mountains, had passed up from St. Louis to a small settlement formed on the east bank of the Mississippi, and a few miles below the mouth of the Missouri, to attend a wedding which was to take place on the very evening that I had received the information of it, and like himself, being intimately acquainted with the young man who was to be married, I resolved to be present if possible, though I had had no invitation to attend, it not being known to the parties that I was in that part of the country. The spot where the wedding was to take place being on the bank of the river, and on my route to St. Louis, I endeavoured to procure a canoe for the purpose, but not being able to get such a thing in St. Charles at that time for love or money, and still resolved to be at the wedding, I succeeded in rolling a couple of large logs into the stream, which laid upon the shore in front of the village, and lashing them firmly together, took a paddle from the first boat that I could meet, and seating myself astride of the two logs I pushed off into the muddy current of the Missouri, and was soon swept away out of sight of the town of St. Charles. My embarkation was a little before sundown, and having fifteen or twenty miles to float before I should be upon the waters of the Mississippi, I was in the midst of my journey overtaken by night, and had to navigate my floating logs as well as I could among the snags and sandbars that fell in my way. I was lucky, however, in escaping them all, though I sometimes grazed them as I passed, and within a few inches of being hurled to destruction. I at length entered the broad waters of the Mississippi, and a few miles below on the left bank saw the light in the cabins in which the merry circle of my friends were assembled, and with all my might was plying my paddle to propel my two logs to the shore. In the midst of my hard struggle I discovered several objects on my right and ahead of me, which seemed to be rapidly approaching me, and I concluded that I was drifting on to rocks or snags that were in a moment to destroy me. But in an instant one of these supposed snags silently shot along by the side of my logs, and being a canoe with four Indians in it, and all with their bows and war-clubs drawn upon me, they gave the signal for silence, as one of them, a tall, long-armed, and powerful man, seized me by the collar. Having partially learned several of the languages of the Indian tribes bordering on the Mississippi, I understood him as he said in the Ioway language, 'Not a word! if you speak you die!' At that moment a dozen or more canoes were all drawn close around my two logs of wood, astride of which I sat, with my legs in the water up to my knees. These canoes were all filled with warriors with their weapons in their hands, and no women being with them, I saw they were a war party, and preparing for some mischief. Finding that I understood their language and could speak a few words with them, the warrior who still held me by the collar made a sign to the other canoes to fall back a little while he addressed me in a low voice. 'Do you know the white chief who is visiting his friends this night on the bank yonder where we see the lights?' to which I replied 'Yes, he is an old friend of mine.' 'Well,' said he, 'he dies to-night, and all those wig-wams are to be laid in ashes. _Stet-e-no-ka_ was a cousin of mine, and _Que-tun-ka_ was a good man, and a friend to the white people. The pale faces hung them like two dogs by their necks, and the life of your friend, the white warrior, pays the forfeit this night, and many may be the women and children who will die by his side!' I explained to him as well as I could that my friend, Lieutenant Pike, had had no hand in the execution of the two Indians; that they were hung below St. Louis when Lieutenant Pike was on his way home from the Rocky Mountains. I told him also that Lieutenant Pike was a great friend of the Indians, and would do anything to aid or please them; that he had gone over the river that night to attend the wedding of a friend, and little dreamed that amongst the Indians he had any enemies who would raise their hands against him. "'My friend,' said he, 'you have said enough: if you tell me that your friend, or the friend or the enemy of any man, takes the hand of a fair daughter on that ground to-night, an Ioway chief will not offend the Great Spirit by raising the war-cry there. No Ioway can spill the blood of an enemy on the ground where the hands and the hearts of man and woman are joined together. This is the command of the Great Spirit, and an Ioway warrior cannot break it. My friend, these warriors you see around me with myself had sworn to kill the first human being we met on our war excursion; we shall not harm you, so you see that I give you your life. You will therefore keep your lips shut, and we will return in peace to our village, which is far up the river, and we shall hereafter meet our friends, the white people, in the great city,[25] as we have heretofore done, and we have many friends there. We shall do no harm to any one. My face is now blackened, and the night is dark, therefore you cannot know me; but this arrow you will keep--it matches with all the others in my quiver, and by it you can always recognize me, but the meeting of this night is not to be known.' He gave me the arrow, and with these words turned his canoe, and joining his companions was in a moment out of sight. My arrow being passed under my hat-band, and finding that the current had by this time drifted me down a mile or two below the place where I designed to land, and beyond the power of reaching it with my two awkward logs of wood, I steered my course onward toward St. Louis, rapidly gliding over the surface of the broad river, and arrived safely at the shore in front of the town at a late hour in the night, having drifted a distance of more than thirty-five miles. My two logs were an ample price for a night's lodging, and breakfast and dinner the next day; and I continued my voyage in a Mackinaw boat on the same day to _Vide Pouche_, a small French town about twenty miles below, where my business required my presence. The wedding party proceeded undisturbed, and the danger they had been in was never made known to them, as I promised the War-chief, who gave me as the condition of my silence the solemn promise, that he would never carry his feelings of revenge upon innocent persons any farther. "Thus ends the story of 'floating down the Mississippi River on the two logs of wood,' which the War-chief alluded to in the question he put to me this evening. On a subsequent occasion, some two or three years afterwards, while sitting in the office of Governor Clark, the superintendent of Indian affairs in St. Louis, where he was holding 'a talk' with a party of Indians, a fine-looking fellow, of six feet or more in stature, fixed his eyes intently upon me, and after scanning me closely for a few moments, advanced, and seating himself on the floor by the side of me, pronounced the word '_Bobasheela_,' and asked me if ever I had received an arrow from the quiver of an Indian warrior. The mutual recognition took place by my acknowledging the fact, and a shake of the hand, and an amusing conversation about the circumstances, and still the facts and the amusement all kept to ourselves. This step led to the future familiarities of our lives in the various places where the nature of my business led me into his society, and gained for me the regular adoption as Bobasheela (or Brother) and the badge (the _she-she-quoin_, or Mystery Rattle) alluded to in the previous remarks, and which, it has been already stated, was lost by the sinking of one of my boats on the Cumberland River." [25] St Louis. There was a burst of laughter and mirth amongst the squaws and others of us who had listened to this curious tale, and, as the reader will easily decide, a great deal of pleasure produced by its relation. The supper-table by this time was ready, and Bobasheela took a seat by the side of his old friend. The author was also in the humour, and joined them at their beef-steak and _chickabobboo_, and so did Mr. Melody and Daniel, and all who had joined in the merriment of the occasion of _Bobasheela's_ relation of the story of his going to the wedding astride of the two logs of wood. After the supper was over, and while the pipe was passing around, a number of other recitals of adventures in the "Far-West" continued the amusements of the evening to a late hour, when the author retired and left them to their own jokes and their night's rest. The next morning after this was an exciting and bustling one, as all were preparing, at an early hour, to visit the great brewery on that day, as had been promised; and on their way back to see the Thames Tunnel, and the treasures of the Tower of London. One will easily see that here was a gigantic day's work struck out, and that material enough was at hand for my note-book. _Bobasheela_ must be of this party, and therefore was not left behind: with all in (except the two bucks, who habitually went outside), the Indian bus, with four horses, was a travelling _music_ box as it passed rapidly through the streets; and the clouds of smoke issuing from it at times often spread the alarm that "she was all on fire within" as she went by. At the brewery, where they had been invited by the proprietors, servants in abundance were in readiness to turn upon their giant hinges the great gates, and pass the carriage into the court; and at the entrance to the grand fountain of _chickabobboo_ there were servants to receive them and announce their arrival, when they were met, and with the greatest politeness and kindness led by one of the proprietors, and an escort of ladies, through the vast labyrinths and mazes, through the immense halls and courts, and under and over the dry-land bridges and arches of this smoking, steeping, and steaming wonder of the world, as they were sure to call it when they got home. The vastness and completeness of this huge manufactory, or, in fact, village of manufactures, illustrated and explained in all its parts and all its mysterious modes of operation, formed a subject of amazement in our own as well as the Indians' minds--difficult to be described, and never to be forgotten. When the poor untutored Indians, from the soft and simple prairies of the Missouri, seated themselves upon a beam, and were looking into and contemplating the immensity of a smoking steeping-vat, containing more than 3000 barrels, and were told that there were 130 others of various dimensions in the establishment--that the whole edifice covered twelve acres of ground, and that there were necessarily constantly on hand in their cellars 232,000 barrels of ale, and also that this was only one of a great number of breweries in London, and that similar manufactories were in every town in the kingdom, though on a less scale, they began, almost for the first time since their arrival, to evince profound astonishment; and the fermentation in their minds, as to the consistency of white man's teachings of temperance and manufacturing and selling ale, seemed not less than that which was going on in the vast abyss below them. The pipe was lit and passed around while they were in this contemplative mood, and as their ears were open, they got, in the meantime, further information of the wonderful modes and operations of this vast machine; and also, in round numbers, read from a report by one of the proprietors, the quantity of ale consumed in the kingdom annually. Upon hearing this, which seemed to cap the climax of all their astonishment, they threw down the pipe, and leaping into an empty vat, suddenly dissipated the pain of their mental calculations by joining in the Medicine (_or Mystery_) Dance. Their yells and screaming echoing through the vast and vapouring halls, soon brought some hundreds of maltsmen, grinders, firers, mashers, ostlers, painters, coopers, &c., peeping through and amongst the blackened timbers and casks, and curling and hissing fumes, completing the scene as the richest model for the infernal regions. Every reader will paint (and _must_ paint) this picture for himself, imagining the steeping vapour everywhere rising in curling clouds of white towards the blackened walls, and timbers, and wheels, and stairways, and arches, and bridges, and casks, and from amongst and between all of these, the blackened faces and glaring eyeballs piercing through the steam, upon the unusual, and to them as yet unaccountable, _fermentation_ going on (to the admiration and amusement of those who were in the secret) in the empty vat! At the end of their dance, a foaming mug of the _delicious_ was passed around, enabling them more easily and lightly to comprehend the wonders of this mighty scene; and after they had finished their round, and seen its varied mysteries, a huge and delicious beefsteak, and foaming mugs of the _cream of chickabobboo_, prepared for them by the kind lady of one of the proprietors of the establishment, soon smoothed off all the edges of their astonishment; and after the war-dance and the war-whoop, given to please the ladies, they again passed under the huge arches and gateways, and took their omnibus for a visit to the _Tower_. The mood in which these good-natured fellows had left the brewery was a very merry one; they had got just ale enough for the present emergency, and seen an abundant and infallible source at the great fountain of _chickabobboo_ to ensure them a constant supply, and seemed, as they passed along the streets, to be pleased with everything they saw. They met the man again with the "big nose," and succeeded in stopping the bus to take a good look at his wonderful proboscis. As the bus stopped, he, like many others, came up to catch a glimpse of the red skins, and they all declared, on close examination, that his nose at least must have been begot by a potato; for, as the women had before said, they could distinctly see the sprouts, and Jim and the Doctor both insisted, that "if it were planted it would sprout and grow." They stopped the bus again to speak with some poor Lascars sweeping the streets; it was difficult to get any interpretation from them, though the Indians tried their own language on both sides, but in vain; they gave them fifteen shillings, and passed on. The Tower, from its outward appearance, did not seem to excite in them any extravagant expectation of what they were to see within its gloomy walls. They remarked, when going in, that "they were going to prison;" and they were of opinion, no doubt, that it consisted of little else, as they had as yet heard no other description of it than that it was the "_Tower of London_" and they were going to see it. Poor fellows! they guessed right; they knew not of the illustrious prisoners who had pined within its gloomy walls, nor of the blood that had been shed within and around it. They went to _see_, and had enough to engage all their thoughts and attention without referring to the events of history. We were kindly conducted through the different rooms, and most of its curiosities explained to us. The "small-arms room," containing 200,000 muskets, had been burned. The "horse armoury" seemed to afford them much delight; the thousands of various spears and lances, they thought, presented some beautiful models for Indian warfare, and hunting the buffaloes. The _beheading block_, on which Lords Balmerino, Kilmarnock, and Lovat were beheaded in the Tower in 1746, attracted their attention, and the axe that severed the head of Anne Boleyn. In the _Regalia Room_, the crown of her Majesty and four other crowns, the sceptres and staffs, and orbs, swords of justice, swords of mercy, royal spurs, salts, baptismal fonts, &c., in massive gold and brilliant stones, seemed rather to disappoint than to astonish them; and to us, who knew better than they did the meaning and value of these magnificent treasures, there seemed a striking incongruity in the public exhibition of them in so confined and humble an apartment. The _Thames Tunnel_ was our next object, and a drive of a quarter of an hour brought us to the dismal neighbourhood of its entrance. Paying our fees, and descending some hundred or more steps by a spiral staircase, we were ready to enter the tunnel. Walking through its gloomy halls, and spending a few shillings for toys protruded under our faces at every rod we advanced, by young women sitting at their little stalls under each of its arches, we at length ascended an equal number of steps, and came to the light of day on the opposite side of the Thames; and in the midst of one of the most unintelligible, forlorn, and forsaken districts of London or the world, we waited half an hour or more for our omnibus to make its circuit across the bridge and take us up. We sauntered and loitered our way through, and as long as we were passing this monster speculation of the world, we met, to the best of our recollection, but four or five persons passing through, who had paid their penny a-head for the privilege. While waiting for the bus, some "on-the-spot" remarks were made by the Indians, which I thought had some sound sense in them. They thought it must have cost a great deal of money, and believed it was too far out of London ever to pay; and they did not see that it was any curiosity for them, as they had passed through several on the railway ten times as long. They did not think, however, that it need be time and money thrown away, as "they thought it might make a first-rate place to twist ropes." These and other remarks they were making about the great tunnel as we were jogging along towards home, and evidently somewhat surprised that we should have excited their curiosity so high about it. On our return, after this fatiguing day's work was finished, their dinner was ready; and after that their pipe was smoked, a nap taken, and then their accustomed amusements in the Egyptian Hall. Their supper was the next thing, and with it their mug of _chickabobboo_, then their pipe, passing around as they all reclined on their buffalo robes on the floor, and then began the gossip about the sights they had seen and incidents they had witnessed during the day. This extraordinary day's rambling had taken them across more bridges and through a greater number of crooked and narrow streets than they had passed on any former occasion, which brought the Doctor to one of the first and shrewdest remarks of the evening. He said "he thought from all that he had seen, sitting on top of the bus all day, that the English people had the best way in the world for crossing rivers, but he thought their _paths_ were many of them too narrow and much too crooked." "The poor people, and those who seemed to be drunk, were much more numerous than they had seen them in any other of their drives;" and they were counting the money left in their pouches to see how much they had thrown out to the poor. They soon agreed that "they had given away something more than thirty shillings, which they thought would do a great deal of good, and the Great Spirit would reward them for it." The _Doctor_ and _Jim_, the everlasting cronies, on the outside, were comparing their estimates of the numbers they had counted of the "_Kon-to-too-ags_ (fighters with one horn)[26] that they had seen over the doors and shops as they had passed along, which they had been looking at every day since they came to London, but had never yet been able quite to learn the meaning of," and also "the _totems_ (arms, as they supposed) of great chiefs, so beautifully painted and put out between their chamber windows." [26] The Royal Arms (the Lion and the Unicorn). The Doctor said "he believed the white people had got this custom from the Indians, as it was the habit of the great chiefs and warriors to put their '_totems_' over their wig-wam doors, but when they did so, they always put out scalps on certain days, to show what they had done. He had watched these totems in London as he had been riding, in all sorts of weather, and as he had seen no scalps or anything hung out by the side of them, he couldn't exactly see how all these people were entitled to them; still, it might all be right." Daniel put the Doctor's inquiries all at rest on the subject of totems and the "one-horn fighters," by telling him that if he would wait a little until Mr. Catlin and Mr. Melody had gone, he would give him the whole history of white men's totems, how they got them and the use they made of them; and he would also tell him all about the "Lion and the Unicorn fighting for the Crown," &c. The Doctor here made some comments on the great white war-chief (the Duke of Wellington) who had been pointed out to them on horseback as they passed him in the street, and his wig-wam was also shown to them (_i.e._ to the Doctor and Jim as they sat outside with the driver). He was disposed to learn something more of him, and Daniel silenced him by saying, "Let that alone too for awhile, and I will tell you all about him." Daniel and Jim I found at this time very busily engaged in a corner of the room, with a candle on the floor; whilst Daniel was entering in a little book the astonishing estimates given us at the brewery, of the quantity of ale on hand, the size and number of the vats, and the almost incredible quantity consumed in the kingdom each year. Jim, as I have before said, was the only one of the party who seemed ambitious to civilize; and as he was daily labouring to learn something of the English language, he had this day conceived the importance of instituting a little book of entries in which he could carry home, to enlighten his people, something like a brief statistical account of the marvellous things he was seeing, and was to see, amongst the white people. Daniel had at this moment finished entering into it the estimates of the brewery and _chickabobboo_, which had opened their eyes wider, perhaps, than anything else they had seen; and he had very wisely left a few blank pages in the beginning of the book for other retrospective notes and estimates of things they had already seen since the day they left home. Jim's Journal was thus established, and he was, with Daniel's aid, to become a sort of historian to the party; and as the sequel will show, he became stimulated thereby to greater exertions to see and to understand what was curious and interesting, and to get estimates of the beauties and blessings of civilization to carry home. He laboured from that moment indefatigably, not to write or to read, but to speak; and made rapid progress, as will be seen hereafter, having known, as he said, but two English sentences when he came to England, which were, "How do do?" and "God dam." CHAPTER XXII. The Ioways in Vauxhall Gardens--Surrey Theatre--Carter in the lions' cage--Astonishment of the Indians--Indians in the Diving Bell, at the Polytechnic Institution--Indians riding--Shooting at target on horseback--Ball-play--"Jolly fat dame"--Ladies converse with the Doctor--His reasons for not marrying--Curious questions--Plurality of wives--Amusing scene--The Author in Indian costume--A cruel experiment--Ioways arrive in Birmingham--The Author's arrival there--Society of Friends--Indians all breakfast with Mr. Joseph Sturge--Kind treatment--Conversation after breakfast about religion and education--Reply of the War-chief--The button-factory of Turner and Sons--Generous presents to the Indians--_Bobasheela_ arrives--Indians dividing their buttons--Doctor found on top of the Shakespeare Buildings--Indians' kindness to a beggar-woman--Poor-houses--Many Friends visit the Indians--Indians' visit to Miss Catherine Hutton--Her great age--Her kindness--Dinner--Her presents to them in money--Parting scene--The War-chief's speech to her--Her letters to the Author--Indians present to the two hospitals 370 dollars--Address read by the Presidents to the Indians--Doctor's reply--Indians start for York--A fox-hunt--Curious notions of Indians about it--Visit to York Minster--Ascend the grand tower--Visit to the castle and prison--Museum of the instruments of murder--Alarm of the Doctor--Kindness of the governor of the castle and his lady--Indians' ideas of imprisonment for debt, and punishment for murder. The scene of the Indians' amusements was now changed from the Egyptian Hall to the open air in Vauxhall Gardens, and their dances and other exercises were given in the afternoon. Their lodgings were also changed at the same time to the buildings within the enclosure of the gardens. This arrangement was one of very great pleasure to the Indians, as it allowed a free space to exercise in during their leisure hours, amongst trees and shrubbery, affording them almost a complete resumption of Indian life in the wilderness, as they had the uninterrupted range of the gardens during the hours that the public were not there to witness their amusements. This arrangement was pleasing to them in another respect, and to us also, as there were many things they were yet anxious to see in London, and which, as they could only be seen at night, our former arrangements had entirely precluded them from seeing. Under these new arrangements they still had their omnibus drives, and at night attended the parties of numerous friends who had been desirous to show them some attentions, and also were taken to several instructive exhibitions, and to two or three of the principal theatres. We were then in the vicinity of the Surrey Theatre, where Mr. Carter, "the lion-tamer," invited them several times to witness his wonderful feat of going into the lion's cage. This scene was one of the most impressive and exciting nature to them, and will probably be as long recollected by them as the wonders opened to their minds at the _fountain of chickabobboo_. The Polytechnic Institution was one I took great pleasure in accompanying them to; and a scene of much amusement for a numerous audience as well as amusing and astonishing to themselves, was that of their descending in the diving-bell. They were at first afraid of it, but after the Doctor had made a descent with me, and come out unhurt and unwet, several others went down with Mr. Melody, others with Jeffrey--the old War-chief with his old friend _Bobasheela_, and so on, until every one of the party, men, women, and children, went down and experienced the curious sensation of that (to them) greatest of _medicine affairs_. In Vauxhall Gardens the Indians erected their four wig-wams of buffalo hides, and in darting into and about them during their various games and amusements, whilst the blue smoke was curling out of their tops, presented one of the most complete and perfect illustrations of an Indian encampment that could possibly have been designed. It was _the thing itself_, and the very men, women, and children living and acting on a similar green turf, as they do on the prairies of the Missouri. In the amusements as there given, there was an addition to those which had been made in _Lord's Cricket-ground_ some weeks before, having in Vauxhall brought horses in to add, with equestrian exercises, to the completion of all the modes practised by this tribe. The Ioways, like most of the Indians of the prairies of America, subsist upon the food of the buffalo, and kill them from their horses' backs, with their bows and arrows, while running at full speed. In the same manner they meet their enemies in battle, in which they carry their shield and lance. Thus fully equipped, with their own native shields and lances, and bows, and even the saddles and trappings for their horses, they all mounted upon their backs, in the midst of their amusements, and dashing off at full speed, illustrated their modes of drawing the bow as they drove their arrows into the target, or made their warlike feints at it with their long lances as they passed. This formed the most attractive part of their exhibition, and thousands flocked there to witness their powers of horsemanship and skill in prairie warfare. This exciting exhibition which pleased the visitors, I could have wished might have been less fatiguing, and even dangerous, to the limbs of the Indians than it actually was from the awkwardness and perverseness and fright of the horses, not trained to Indian modes. With all these difficulties to contend with, however, they played their parts cheerfully and well, and the spectators seemed highly pleased. Amidst the throngs who visited them here, we could discover most of their old standard friends and admirers, who came to see them on horseback, and in the beautiful game of ball, in the open grounds of Vauxhall, where they could more easily approach and converse with them; and amongst such, the "jolly fat dame" was present, and more pleased than ever, when she could catch the Doctor's smile as he passed by her at full speed, and raising his shield of buffalo's hide upon his arm, he darted his long lance in feints at her breast, and sounded the piercing war-cry. The vanity of the Doctor was so well suited in this mode of the exhibition, where he could dash by ranks and files, and even phalanxes of ladies, with the endless flourishes of his shield and lance, that he soon began to exhibit convincing evidences that his ambition and his vanity were too much for his bodily resources, which it became necessary to replenish occasionally by refusing him his horse, on which occasions he made good use of his time, by placing himself, wrapped in his robe, with his fan in his hand, by the side of the ladies, with whom he could exchange by this time a few words, and many significant looks and gestures, which never failed to amuse, and seldom failed to operate upon their generous feelings, which were constantly adding to the contents of his tobacco pouch, which was now known to be a reservoir for money and trinkets of various kinds, instead of tobacco. I happened to be by the side of the Doctor on one of these occasions, when I became so much amused with the questions and answers, that I immediately after retired and committed them to my note book. A number of jolly fat dames, of middle and knowing age, had drawn themselves around the Doctor, and looking over their shoulders and under their arms, a number of delicate and coy little girls. And having called Jeffrey to translate, they were enabled to get the gist of all he said, without loss from modesty or evasion, which seemed to be exactly what they most desired. His friend Jim having seen him thus enveloped, turned _his_ horse loose and came to his aid (or countenance), and as the old man hesitated, Jim gave him the nod and the wink to be plain in his replies. They had first asked him if he was married? to which he replied "No." They then asked him why he did not get him a wife? he said "He had always been very particular about giving offence to the women, and he had feared that if he selected one in preference to the others, that the others would all be offended." This queer reply raised a great laugh amongst the crowd, and encouraged the Doctor to go on. Some one of the ladies then told him she feared he did not admire the ladies enough? he said, "he had always believed that the reason he did not get married was, that he admired them too much; he saw so many that he wanted, that he had never decided which to take, and so had taken none." Melody came up at this time, and seemed a little vexed, and said, "Catlin, you had better call that old fool away, those people will spoil him, he is quite vain enough now." "Oh, no," said I, "let him alone, he is gratifying the ladies, and we shall see, in a few moments, which is the fool, he or the ladies who are questioning him." Melody smiled, and looked on. "I have been told," said one of the ladies, "that some of the Indians have a number of wives: is that so?" "Yes," the Doctor replied in English, "sometimes have a heap." (The ladies all laughed.) Two or three inquired what a "_heap_" was? Jeffrey said, "Why, ma'am, it is what in our country means a '_lot_:' you know what they call a '_lot_' here?" "Oh, yes! it means a great many." "Yes, a number." "Well, tell the Doctor I want to know what they do with so many?" Here the poor Doctor was quite at a loss to know what to say; one thing he was sure to do--he smiled--and it seemed as if he wished that to go for an answer: and it might have done so with most of her sex, but in this instance it was not quite satisfactory, and the question was again put: to which the big-mouthed Jim, who I said had come to the relief of his friend, and who had a wife of his own, put in an instant reply, which relieved the Doctor, and seemed very much to embarrass the lady, for she instantly added, (as all were bursting with laughter,) "That isn't what I mean: I want to know how a chief can get along with so many, how he can manage them all, and keep them in good humour and satisfied; for," said she, "in this country, one is quite as much as a man can manage." This seemed to afford the Doctor a little relief, and he was evidently able to go on again, as he smilingly said, "It was quite easy, as Indian women were much more peaceable and quiet than white women, it was much more easy he thought to manage them; they drank no _chickabobboo_, and therefore did not require so much watching as white women." The lady seemed quite balked in the debate she was about entering on with the Doctor, from her ignorance of the meaning of _chickabobboo_, and asked for an explanation of it, as if for all the company about; to which Jim put in (again in plain English), "Gin!" "Oh! Doctor," said she, "I hope you don't accuse the ladies of London of drinking gin?" The Doctor replied, that "he had not seen them do it, but that he had been told that they did, and that it was the reason why the ladies here grew so large and so fat." He said, "that they could always look out of the windows, where he lived, and just before going to bed they could see any night a hundred women going home with pitchers full of it, to drink after they got into bed, so as to sleep sound: and that one night, coming home in their carriage at a late hour, from a distance, where they had been to see a show, he and Jim had counted more than three hundred women running along in the street, with pitchers filled with it in their hands, to drink as they were going to bed." The lady's explanation of this, that "It was only harmless ale that these women were carrying in for their masters and mistresses," excited the Doctor's smiles, but no reply. She seemed not satisfied yet about the first subject that she had started, and reverting to it again, said, "Well, Doctor, I can't excuse the Indians for having so many wives. I like the Indians very much, but I don't like that custom they have; I think it is very cruel and very wicked. Don't you think it is wrong?" The Doctor studied a moment, and replied, "that it might be wrong, but if it was, he didn't see that it was any worse than for white women to have a number of husbands." "But what, Doctor, what do you mean? I hope you have not so bad an opinion of white women as that?" To this he very coolly replied, "that when they drank a great deal of gin, he believed, from what he had seen in his practice, that a woman would require more than one husband; and that since he had been in London he had seen many walking in the streets, and some riding in fine carriages, whom he thought, from their looks, must have more than one husband: and from what he had been told, he believed that many women in London had a _heap_!" "That's a _lot_!" (cried out a very pretty little girl, who had been listening, and, frightened at her own unintentional interpretation, started to run.) "Come, come, Catlin," said Melody, "pull the old fellow out, and take him away;" and so the debate ended, amidst a roar of laughter from all sides. One more of the hundred little reminiscences of Vauxhall, and we will leave it. I have already said, that in the spacious apartments of Vauxhall, unoccupied, the Indians were quartered, and took their meals; and during the forepart of the day, between their breakfast and the hour of their afternoon exhibitions, their time was mostly spent in strolling around the grounds, or at their varied amusements. Many of my personal friends finding this a pleasing opportunity to see them, were in the habit of coming in, and amusing themselves with them. I had accidentally heard of a party of ladies preparing to come on a certain morning, some of them my esteemed friends, and others strangers to me: and from a wish to get relieved from a fatiguing conversation, as well as from a still stronger desire for amusement, I selected from my wardrobe a very splendid dress, head-gear and all complete, and fully arranged myself in Indian costume, "cap-à-pied," with face fully painted, and weapons in hand; and at the hour of their arrival in the house, took care to be strolling about in the grounds with Wash-ka-mon-ya (Jim). Whilst the ladies were amused with the party in the house, where there were constant inquiries for me, two of them observing us two beaus sauntering about in the garden, came out to keep us company, and to talk to us, and with themselves, in the English language, which of course we Indians knew nothing of: when we shook our heads to their inquiries, "Do you speak English, good Indians?" I saw they did not recognize me, yet I trembled for fear, for they were lovely women, and every sentence almost which they uttered would have made the discovery more cruel: we held ourselves dignified and dumb; whilst they, poor things, were so much regretting that we could not understand what they said. They finished their visit to us and their remarks, and returned, leaving me to regret my folly upon which I had thoughtlessly entered. Several weeks were spent in their daily exhibitions in Vauxhall, and, as one can easily imagine, much to the satisfaction of the Indians, and, I believe, much to the amusement of the visitors who came to see them. Within the last week of their exhibition I admitted from charity schools 32,000 children, with their teachers, free of charge; to all of whom I gave instructive lectures on the position of the tribe, their condition, their customs and character: and explained also the modes, which were acted out by 14 living Indians before their eyes; and but one of these schools ever communicated with me after, to thank me for the amusement or instruction; which might not have been a _curious omission_, but I thought it _was_, at the time. With the amusements at Vauxhall ended my career in London; and contemplating a tour to several of the provincial towns, in company with the Indians, I took my little family to Brighton, and having left them comfortably situated and provided for, I joined the party in Birmingham, where they had arrived and taken lodgings. The idea of moving about pleased the Indians very much, and I found them all in high spirits when I arrived, delighted to have found that the _chickabobboo_ was the same there as in London, and was likely to continue much the same in all parts of the kingdom to which they should go. There was an unfortunate offset to this pleasing intelligence, however, which seemed to annoy them very much, and of which they were making bitter complaint. On leaving London for the country, they had spent some days, and exercised all their ingenuity, in endeavouring to clean their beautiful skin dresses, which the soot of London had sadly metamorphosed; and on arriving in Birmingham they had the extreme mortification to anticipate, from appearances, an equal destruction of that soft and white surface which they give to their skin dresses, and which (though it had been entirely lost sight of during the latter part of their stay in London) had, with great pains, been partially restored for a more pleasing appearance in the country. Though I had several times passed through Birmingham, and on one occasion stopped there a day or two, I entered this time a total stranger, and in rather a strange and amusing manner. On my journey there by the railway, I had fallen in company and conversation with a very amusing man, who told me he was a commercial traveller, and we had had so much amusing chat together, that when we arrived, at a late hour at night, I was quite happy to follow his advice as to the quarters we were to take up in the town, at least for the night. He said it was so late that the hotels would be closed, and that the commercial inn, where he was going, was the only place open, and I should find there everything to make me comfortable, and a very nice sort of people. We took an omnibus for town, and as there was only room for one inside, he got upon the top, and so we went off; and getting, as I supposed, into or near the middle of the town, the bus stopped at a "commercial inn," which was open, and lighted up in front, and a number of passengers getting out, and others down from the top, I was seeing to get my luggage in safe, and the omnibus drove off with my jolly companion still on the top; or this I presumed, as he was not left behind. My only alternative now was, to make the best of it, and be as comfortable as I could; so I got into the "commercial room," and having been told that I should have a bed, I felt quite easy, and told the plump, tidy little landlady, who was waiting upon me herself, that I would have a mug of ale and a biscuit, and then be ready to go to bed. As she turned round to execute my command, she met a party consisting of three young women, and a man leading one of them on his arm, and in his hands carrying three or four carpet-bags and band-boxes, just got down from the same bus, and entering the inn on the same errand that I was on. " Madam," said he, "what have you?"--"Hevery-think, sir, that you can wish." "Well, one thing we must have, that is, two beds."--"They are ready, sir." "Well, ladies," said he, "suppose we take a drop of wet." This agreed to, the "wet" was brought in in a moment, and also my mug of ale. A very genteel-looking little man whom I had seen in the same carriage with me, and now sitting in the room before me, with his carpet-bag by the side of him, and his umbrella in his hand, addressed me, "Stranger, you'll allow me."--"Certainly, sir." "I think I heard you tell a gentleman in the carriage that you were from New York."--"Yes, I did so." "_I'm_ from there. I left there four months ago, and I've gone ahead, or I'll be shot. How long have _you_ bin from there, sir?"--"About five years." "Hell! there's been great fixins there in that time; you'd scarcely know New York now; look here, isn't this the darndest strange country you ever saw in your life? rot 'em, I can't get 'em to do anything as I want it done; they are the greatest set of numskulls I ever saw; now see, that little snub of a petticoat that's just gone out there, I suppose she is cock of the walk here too; she's been all civility to you, but I've had a hell of a blow up with her; I was in here not five minutes before you by the watch, and I spoke for a bed and a mug of ale; she brought me the ale, and I told her to bring me a tumbler and a cracker, and she turned upon me in a hell of a flare-up. She said she was very much obliged to me for my himpudence, she didn't allow crackers in her house, and as for 'tumblers,' they were characters she never had anything to do with, thank God; they were a low set of creatures, and they never got any favour about her house. She wanted to know what quarter I came from. I told her I wasn't from _any quarter_, I was from _half_--half the globe, by God, and the better half too--wasn't I right, stranger? She said her house was a hinn, to be sure, but she didn't hentertain blackguards, so there was my hale, and I might drink it hup and be hoff, and be anged, and then she cut her string quicker than lightning; now isn't she a hard un? I don't suppose there is another house open in this darned outlandish place at this time of the night; what the devil shall I do? _you_ are fixed snug enough." "Oh, well, never mind," said I, "be quite easy, it is settled in a moment,"--as I rung the bell. The tidy little landlady came in again, and I said, "This gentleman will have a glass if you please, and a biscuit."--"Hif he was a gentleman, Sir," said she, "but I assure you, Sir, is beaviour as'nt been much like it." "Well, well," said I, "never mind it now, you will be good friends after a little better understanding--he comes from a country where a glass is a _tumbler_ and a biscuit is a _cracker_: now, if you had known this, there would have been no difficulty between you." "Ho, that I hadmit, but it's very hodd." "Never mind that, you will find him a good fellow, and give him his bed." "Is bed, Sir?--hit's too late; it's been hoccupied hever since you entered the ouse--the only chance his for you and im to turn hin." "Well," said I, "never mind, he and I will manage that; it is after midnight, and I suppose the other houses are all shut?" "I'll hanswer for that: hif you are ready, gentlemen, I'll show you hup." My friend kept by my side, but knowing the gloomy fate that awaited him if he got into the street again, he kept entirely quiet until the little landlady was down stairs. "There," said he, "isn't she a roarer? I could have settled the hash with her myself in a twinkling, if she had only let me have said five words, but her tongue run so slick that I couldn't get the half of a word in edgewise." My new acquaintance and I talked a little more before we "turned in," but much more after we had got into bed. He could command words and ideas fast enough when he was on his feet; but I found in him something of Jim's peculiarity, that he thought much faster and stronger when on his back; and for half an hour or so I reaped the benefit of the improvement. How long I heard him, and how much he actually said, I never could tell exactly; but what he said before I went to sleep I always distinctly recollected, and a mere sentence or two of it was as follows:--"Well, stranger, here we are: this is droll, ain't it? 'hodd,' as the landlady would call it. I'd a been in the streets to-night as sure as catgut if it hadn't been for you. God knows I am obliged to you. Youv'e got a sort o' way o' gettin' along ur' these ere darned, ignorant, stupid sort o' beings. I can't do it: dod rot 'em! they put me out at every step; they are so eternally ignorant; did you ever see the like? I suppose you are going to stop awhile in Birmingham?" "A few days." "_I_ shall be here a week, and be bright and early enough to get into a decenter house than this is, and be glad to join you. I was told in London that the Ioway Indians went on here yesterday. I'm damned anxious to meet them: you've seen them, I suppose?" "Yes, I saw them in London." "Well, _I_ did not; I was just too late; but I must go and look 'em up to-morrow: they know me." "Then you have seen them'?" "Oh, dam 'em, yes: I've known 'em for several years: they'll be at home with me at once. I've run buffaloes with White-Cloud, the chief, many and many a time. He and I have camped out more than once. They are a fine set of fellows. I'm going to spend some time with them in Birmingham. I know 'em like a book. Oh yes, they'll know me quick enough. I was all through their country. I went clean up Lake Superior, nearly to Hudson's Bay. I saw all the Chippeways, and the Black-feet, and the Crows, Catlin's old friends. By the way, Catlin, I'm told, is with these Indians, or was, when they were in London--he's all sorts of a man." "Have you seen him?" "Seen him? why, dam it, I raised him, as the saying is: I have known him all my life. I met him a number of times in the Prairie country; he's a roarer." This was about the last that I distinctly recollected before going to sleep; and the next morning my vigilant and wide-awake little bedfellow, being about the room a little before me, where my name was conspicuous on my carpet bag and writing-desk, &c., had from some cause or other thought it would be less trouble and bother to wend his way amongst these "stupid and ignorant beings" alone, than to encounter the Indians and Mr. Catlin, and endeavour to obliterate the hasty professions he had made; and therefore, when I came down and called for breakfast for two, the landlady informed me that my companion had paid his bill and left at an early hour. I was rather sorry for this, for he was quite an amusing little man, and I have never heard of him since. I found the dumpy little landlady kindly disposed, and she gave me a very good breakfast, amusing me a great deal with anecdotes of the party who called for "a little bit of wet;" she informed me they were a wedding-party, and the man who had the lady on his arm was the bride-groom. While waiting for my breakfast I was much amused with some fun going on in the street before the window. It seems that the house directly opposite had been taken by a couple of tidy-looking young women who were sisters, and that, having established a millinery business on the lower floor, they had several apartments which they were anxious to underlet in order to assist them in paying their heavy rent. Young gentlemen are everywhere in this country considered the most desirable lodgers, as they give less trouble than any others, are less of the time at home, and generally pay best. These young adventurers had been therefore anxious to get such a class of lodgers in their house, and had, the day before, employed a sign-painter to paint a conspicuous board, in bright and glaring letters, which was put up on a post erected in the little garden in front of their house, near the gate. The announcement ran, when the young ladies retired to bed, "_Lodgings for single gentlemen_"--a customary and very innocent way of offering apartments; but owing to the cruelty of some wag during the night it was found in the morning, to the great amusement of the collected crowd, to read, "_Longings for single gentlemen_." How long this continued to amuse the passers-by, or how it might have affected the future prospects of the poor girls, I cannot of course tell, as I forthwith proceeded to a more pleasant part of the town. Birmingham I found on further acquaintance to be one of the pleasantest towns I visited in the kingdom, and its hotels and streets generally very different from those into which my commercial travelling acquaintance had that night led me. Mr. Melody had all things prepared for our exhibition when I arrived, having taken the large hall in the Shakspeare Buildings, and also procured rooms for the Indians to sleep in in the same establishment. The Indians and myself were kindly received in Birmingham, for which, no doubt, they, like myself, will long feel grateful. The work which I had published had been extensively read there, and was an introduction of the most pleasing kind to me, and the novelty and wildness of the manners of the Indians enough to ensure them much attention. In their exhibition room, which was nightly well attended, we observed many of the Society of Friends, whom we could always easily distinguish by their dress, and also more easily by the kind interest they expressed and exhibited, whenever opportunity occurred, for the welfare of those poor people. The Indians, with their native shrewdness and sagacity, at once discovered from their appearance and manner that they were a different class of people from any they had seen, and were full of inquiries about them. I told them that these were of the same society as their kind friend Dr. Hodgkin, whom they so often saw in London, who is at the head of the _Aborigines Protection Society_, who was the first person in England to invite them to his table, and whom the reader will recollect they called _Ichon-na Wap-pa_(the straight coat); that they were the followers of the great William Penn, whom I believed they had heard something about. They instantly pronounced the name of "Penn, Penn," around the room, convincing me, as nearly every tribe I ever visited in the remotest wildernesses in America had done, that they had heard, and attached the greatest reverence to, the name of Penn. These inquiries commenced in their private room one evening after the exhibition had closed, and they had had an interview in the exhibition room with several ladies and gentlemen of that society, and had received from them some very valuable presents. They all agreed that there was something in their manners and in their mode of shaking hands with them that was more kind and friendly than anything they had met amongst other people; and this I could see had made a sensible impression upon them. I took this occasion to give them, in a brief way, an account of the life of the immortal William Penn; of his good faith and kindness in all his transactions with the Indians, and the brotherly love he had for them until his death. I also gave them some general ideas of the Society of Friends in this country, from whom the great William Penn came;--that they were the friends of all the human race; that they never went to war with any people; that they therefore had no enemies; they drink no spirituous liquors; that in America and this country they were unanimously the friends of the Indians; and I was glad to find that in Birmingham we were in the midst of a great many of them, with whom they would no doubt become acquainted. There were here some inquiries about the religion of the Friends, which I told them was the Christian religion, which had been explained to them; that they were all religious and charitable, and, whatever religion the Indians might prefer to follow, these good people would be equally sure to be their friends. They seemed, after this, to feel an evident pleasure whenever they saw parties of Friends entering the room: they at once recognised them whenever they came in, and, on retiring to their own room, counted up the numbers that had appeared, and made their remarks upon them. In one of these conversations I pleased them very much by reading to them a note which I had just received from Mr. Joseph Sturge, with whom I had been acquainted in London, and who was now residing in Birmingham, inviting me to bring the whole party of Indians to his house to breakfast the next morning. I told them that Mr. Sturge was a very distinguished man, and one of the leading men of the Society of Friends. This pleased them all exceedingly, and at the hour appointed this kind gentleman's carriages were at the door to convey the party to his house. Mr. Melody and Jeffrey accompanied us, and there were consequently seventeen guests to be seated at this gentleman's hospitable board, besides a number of his personal friends who were invited to meet the Indians. After receiving all in the most cordial manner, he read a chapter in his Bible, and then we were invited to the table. This interview elicited much interesting conversation, and gained for the Indians and Mr. Melody many warm and useful friends. Before taking leave, the War-chief arose, and, offering his hand to Mr. Sturge, made the following remarks:-- "My Friend,--The Great Spirit, who does everything that is good, has inclined your heart to be kind to us; and, first of all, we thank Him for it. "The Chief, White Cloud, who sits by me, directs me to say that we are also thankful to you for this notice you have taken of us, poor and ignorant people, and we shall recollect and not forget it. "We hope the Great Spirit will be kind to you all. I have no more to say." The simplicity of this natural appeal to the Great Spirit, and its close (in which they were commended by the poor and unenlightened Indian of the wilderness to the care and kindness of their God), seemed to create surprise in the minds of the audience, and to excite in the Indians' behalf a deep and lively interest. After the breakfast and conversation were over, the whole party was kindly sent back by the same carriages, and the Indians returned in a state of perfect delight with the treatment they had met with, and the presents they had received. Poor _Jim_ (the student and recorder) was anxious that I should write down the name of _William Penn_ in his book, and also that of the gentleman who had just entertained us, that he might be able to repeat them correctly when he got back to the wilderness again, and have something to say about them. We found on our return that the hour of another engagement was at hand, and carriages were soon prepared to take us to the button-factory of Messrs. Turner and Son, to which we had been kindly invited; and on our arrival we found ourselves most cordially received and entertained. The proprietor led the party through every room in his extensive establishment, and showed them the whole process of striking the buttons and medals from various dies, which pleased them very much, and, after showing and explaining to them all the different processes through which they passed in their manufacture, led them into his ware-room or magazine, where his stock on hand was exhibited, and package after package, and gross upon gross, of the most splendid and costly buttons were taken down, and by his own generous hand presented to them. These were such _brilliant evidences_ of kindness, and would be so ornamental to the splendid dresses which they and their wives were to have when they got home, that they looked upon them as more valuable than gold or silver. These were presented to them in the aggregate, and all carried in a heavy parcel by the interpreter; and when they had thanked the gentleman for his munificent liberality and got back to their rooms, a scene of great brilliancy and much interest and amusement was presented for an hour or two, while they had their treasures spread out, covering half of the floor on which they lodged, and making a _per capita_ division of them. In the midst of this exhilarating and dazzling scene, their old friend _Bobasheela_ made his appearance, having just arrived from London on his way to Cornwall. He could not, he said, pass within a hundred miles of them without stopping to see them a few days, and smoke a pipe or two with them again. _Bobasheela_ was stopped at the door, notwithstanding their love for him; he could not step in without doing sacrilege with his muddy boots to the glittering carpet of buttons which they had formed on the floor, and upon which his eyes were staring, as he thought at the first glance they could have committed no less a trespass than to have plundered a jeweller's shop. A way was soon opened for his feet to pass, and, having taken a hearty shake of the hand with all, he was offered a seat on the floor, and in a few moments found that an equal parcel was accumulating between his knees as in front of each, and that, instead of fourteen, they were now dividing them into fifteen parcels. This he objected to, and with much trouble got them to undo what they had done, and go back to the first regulation of dividing them equally amongst fourteen. The Shakspeare Buildings afforded the Indians a fine promenade in its large portico overlooking the street, where all Birmingham passed before their eyes, giving them one of the most gratifying privileges they had had, and promising them a rich and boundless means of amusement; but their enjoyment of it was short, for the crowds that assembled in the streets became a hinderance to business, and they were denied the further privilege of their delightful look-out. They were therefore called in, and stayed in, and yet the crowd remained, and could not be dispersed, while their attention seemed fixed upon some object higher up than the portico, which led us at once to surmise its cause, and, searching for the old Doctor, he was not to be found: he was, of course, upon the pinnacle of the house, wrapped in his robe, smiling upon the crowd beneath him, and taking a contemplative gaze over the city and country that lay under his view. I could only get to him by following the intricate mazes through which the old lady (curatress) conducted me, and through which the Doctor said he had required several days of investigation to find his way, and which he had never succeeded in until just at that moment. Under this rather painful embargo there was no satisfactory way of peeping into the amusements of the streets but by going down the stairs, which Jim and his ever-curious friend the Doctor used daily and almost hourly to do, and, standing in the hall, see all they could that was amusing, until the crowd became such that it was necessary to recall them to their room. On one of these occasions they had espied a miserably poor old woman, with her little child, both in rags, and begging for the means of existence. The pity of the kind old Doctor was touched, and he beckoned her to come to him, and held out some money; but fear was superior to want with her, and she refused to take the prize. The Doctor went for Daniel, who, at his request, prevailed upon the poor woman to come up to their room, by assuring her that they would not hurt her, and would give her much more than white people would. She came up with Daniel, and the Indians, all seated on the floor, lit a pipe as if going into the most profound council; and so they were, for with hearts sympathizing for the misery and poverty of this pitiable-looking object, a white woman and child starving to death amidst the thousands of white people all around her in their fine houses and with all their wealth, they were anxious to talk with her, and find out how it was that she should not be better taken care of. Jeffrey was called to interpret, and Melody, _Bobasheela_, Daniel, and myself, with two or three friends who happened to be with us at the time, were spectators of the scene that ensued. The War-chief told her not to be frightened nor to let her little child be so, for they were her friends; and the Doctor walked up to her, took his hand out from under his robe, put five shillings into hers, and stepped back. The poor woman curtsied several times, and, crossing her hands upon her breast, as she retreated to the wall, thanked "his Honour" for his kindness. "The Lard be with your Honours for your loving kindness, and may the Lard of Haven bless you to al etarnity, for ee niver e thaught af sich threatment fram sich fraightful-lukin gantlemin as ee was a thakin you to ba." The War-chief then said to her, "There, you see, by the money we have been all of us giving out of our purses, that we wish to make you happy with your little child, that you may have something for it to eat; you see now that we don't wish to hurt you, and we shall not; but we want to talk with you a little, and before we talk we always make our presents, if we have anything to give. We are here poor, and a great way from home, where we also have our little children to feed; but the Great Spirit has been kind to us, and we have enough to eat." To this the Indians, who were passing the pipe around, all responded "_How! how! how!_" The old chief then proceeded to ask the poor woman how she became so poor, and why the white people did not take care of her and her child. She replied that she had been in the workhouse, and her husband was there still; she described also the manner in which she had left it, and how she became a beggar in the streets. She said that when she and her husband were taken into the poorhouse they were not allowed to live together, and that she would rather die than live in that way any longer, or rather beg for something to eat in the streets as she was now doing; and as the cold weather was coming in, she expected her child and herself would be soon starved to death. The poor Indians, women and all, looked upon this miserable shivering object of pity, in the midst of the wealth and luxuries of civilization, as a mystery they could not expound, and, giving way to impulses that they could feel and appreciate, the women opened their trunks to search for presents for the little child, and by White Cloud's order filled her lap with cold meat and bread sufficient to last them for a day or two. The good old Doctor's politeness and sympathy led him to the bottom of the stairs with her, where he made her understand by signs that every morning, when the sun was up to a place that he pointed to with his hand, if she would come, she would get food enough for herself and her little child as long as they stayed in Birmingham; and he recollected his promise, and made it his especial duty every morning to attend to his pensioners at the hour appointed.[27] [27] It is worthy of remark, and due to these kind-hearted people, that I should here explain that this was by no means a solitary instance of their benevolence in Birmingham. Whenever they could get out upon the portico to look into the streets, they threw their pence to the poor; and during the time they were residing in London, we ascertained to a certainty that they gave away to poor Lascars and others in the streets, from their omnibus, many pounds sterling. The moral to be drawn from all this was one of curious interest and results in the minds of the Indians, and a long conversation ensued amongst them, in which _Daniel_ and their friend _Bobasheela_ (who were familiar with the sufferings and modes of treatment of the poor) took part, and which, as Melody and I had withdrawn, afterwards gave us some cause to regret that such a pitiable object of charity had been brought into their presence for the temporary relief they could give her, and which resulted in so glaring an account of the sum total of misery and poverty that was constantly about them, of the extent of which we both began to think it would have been better to have kept them ignorant. Daniel and _Bobasheela_ had opened their eyes to the system of poorhouses and other public establishments for the employment and protection of the poor; and until this account, which was already entered in _Jim's_ book, had been given them by these two knowing politicians, they had but little idea of this enormous item that was to go into the scales in weighing the blessings of civilization. Almost daily visits were now being made to their private rooms by parties of ladies and gentlemen of the Society of Friends, with whom they were rapidly advancing into the most interesting acquaintance, and which I observed it was affording Mr. Melody almost unspeakable satisfaction to behold. They were kindly invited to several houses, and treated at their tables with the greatest friendship. Of these, there was one visit that it would be wrong for me to overlook and to neglect to give here the notes that I made of it at the time. A note was written to me in a bold and legible hand by Miss Catherine Hutton, desiring to know "at what hour it would be suitable for her to come from her house, a few miles out of town, to see the Indians (for whom she had always had a great love), so as not to meet a crowd, for her health was not very good, being in the ninety-first year of her age." This venerable and most excellent lady I held in the highest respect, from a correspondence I had held with her on the subject of the Indians ever since I had been in England, though I never had seen her. Her letters had always teemed with love and kindness for these benighted people, and also with thanks to me for having done so much as I had for their character and history. I therefore deemed it proper to respond to her kindness by proposing to take the whole party to her house and pay her the visit. Her note was answered with that proposition, which gave her great pleasure, and we took a carriage and went to her delightful residence. We were received with unbounded kindness by this most excellent and remarkable lady, and spent a couple of hours under her hospitable roof with great satisfaction to ourselves, and with much pleasure to her, as her letter to me on the following day fully evinced.[28] After a personal introduction to each one in turn, as she desired, and half an hour's conversation, they were invited into an adjoining room to a breakfast-table loaded with the luxuries she had thought most grateful to their tastes. This finished, another half-hour or more was passed in the most interesting conversation, containing her questions and their answers, and her Christian advice to prepare their minds for the world to which, said she, "we must all go soon, and, for myself, I am just going, and am ready." When we were about to take our leave of her, she called each one up in succession, and, having a quantity of money in silver half-crowns placed on the sofa by her side, she dealt it out to them as they came up, shaking hands at the same time and bidding each one a lasting farewell, embracing each of the women and children in her arms and kissing them as she took leave. This kindness melted their hearts to tears, and brought old _Neu-mon-ya_ (the War-chief) up before her at full length, to make the following remarks:-- "My Friend,--The Great Spirit has opened your heart to feel a friendship for the red people, and we are thankful to Him for it. We have been happy to see your face to-day, and our hearts will never forget your kindness. You have put a great deal of money into our hands, which will help to feed our little children, and the Great Spirit will not forget this when you go before him. "My kind Mother,--You are very old. Your life has been good; and the Great Spirit has allowed you to live to see us; and He will soon call you to Him. We live a great way from here, and we shall not look upon your face again in this world; though we all believe that, if we behave well enough, we shall see your face in the world to come." [28] _Bennett's Hill, near Birmingham, Nov. 1st, 1844._ My dear Mr. Catlin,--I have seen the nobility of England at a birth-night ball in St. James's palace. I have seen the King and Queen move around the circle, stopping to speak to every individual, and I have wondered what they could have to say. I have seen the Prince of Wales (afterwards George the Fourth) open the ball with a minuet, and afterwards dance down a country dance; and I thought him a handsome young man, and a fine dancer. This was in the year 1780. Yesterday, as you well know, for you brought them to visit me, I saw the fourteen Ioway Indians. I shook hands with each, and told them, through the interpreter, that red men were my friends. I looked at them, as they were seated in a half-circle in my drawing-room, immoveable as statues, and magnificently dressed in their own costume, with astonishment. I had never seen a spectacle so imposing. At my request, you presented them to me separately--first the men, and then the women and children--and I gave each a small present, for which they were so thankful. At parting, the War-chief stood before me and made a speech, thanking me for my kindness to them, which they should long recollect, and saying, "that, although we should meet no more in this world, yet he hoped the Great Spirit would make us meet in the next." The action of the chief was free and natural, and most graceful; far superior to anything I ever saw. Indeed, these people are the nobility of nature. I am, my dear Sir, your very obliged and very respectful CATHERINE HUTTON. The chief here stopped, and, shaking her hand again, withdrew. The excellent lady was overwhelmed in tears, and called to her maid, "Betty, bring all the silver that I left in the drawer there; bring the whole of it and divide it among them; my eyes are so weak that I cannot see it--give it to them, dear creatures! May God bless their dear souls!" Such had been the meeting, and such were her parting words as we came away. The Indians continued to speak in terms of the greatest admiration of this kind old lady, and the certainty that they should never see her face again made them for some days contemplative and sad. They had many civilities extended to them in town, however, which were calculated to dissipate melancholy and contemplation. Their repeated visits to the house and the table of Doctor Percy were exceedingly pleasing to them, where they were amused with experiments in electricity and galvanism, and other chemical results, to them new, and far beyond the reach of their comprehensions. Their days and nights were now passing away very pleasantly, visited by and visiting so many kind friends, doing all they could to make them happy--giving their nightly amusements at the Shakspearian Rooms, and enjoying the society and western jokes of their old friend _Bobasheela_, and, after their dinners and suppers, their other old friend, _chickabobboo_. About this time some very kindly-disposed friends proposed that a couple of nights of their exhibitions should be given in the immense room of the Town-hall, and one half of the receipts be presented to the two hospitals, representing that upon such conditions they thought the use of the hall would be granted free of expense, and believing that the results would be beneficial to both parties. Mr. Melody and I at once consented, and, the entertainments on those two nights being for a charitable purpose, the crowds that came in were very great, and the receipts beyond what we expected, the profits being 145_l._ 12_s._, the half of which, 72_l._ 16_s._, the Ioways presented to the two hospitals, and on the following day were invited to attend at the Town-hall at eleven o'clock in the morning, to receive an acknowledgment of it from the venerable Presidents of the two institutions, and to hear an address which was prepared to be read and given to them. The Indians met the two kind and excellent gentlemen (both of whom were Friends), and many others, both ladies and gentlemen, of their society; and seeing the results of this meeting likely to be of a very interesting nature, I took pains to make notes of all that was said on the occasion. The venerable Mr. R. T. Cadbury, from the General Hospital, in a very impressive manner, and suited to their understandings, explained to the Indians, through their interpreter, the purpose for which the hospital was built and carried on, after which he read the following resolution, which had been passed at the weekly meeting of the Board of Governors on the preceding day:-- "Resolved,--That the Chairman be requested to present the thanks of this Board to Mr. Catlin, Mr. Melody, and the Ioway Indians, for the donation of 36_l._ 8_s._, being a moiety of the net proceeds of two exhibitions made for the benefit of the two hospitals at the Town-hall; and to assure them their generous gift shall be faithfully applied to the relief of the sick and maimed, for whose benefit the said hospital was instituted, and for sixty-five years has been supported by voluntary donations and subscriptions." After reading this, Mr. Cadbury presented to each of them a copy of the annual report and rules of the institution, and expressed a hope that all of them would reach their distant homes in safety, and that their visit to this country would be beneficial to them. The chief, _White Cloud_, shook hands with Mr. Cadbury, and replied as follows:-- "My Friend,--I have very few remarks to make to you. We are all very thankful to you for the speech you have made to us, and for the prayer you have made that we may all reach home safe. Those words pleased all my people here very much, and we thank you for them. "My Friend,--We have now been some time in England, and, amongst all the words of friendship we have heard, nothing has been more pleasing to us than the words we have heard from your lips. We have seen some of the greatest men in this country, and none have delighted us so much as you have by the way in which you have spoken; and we believe that the service we have rendered to the hospital will be looked on with mutual satisfaction. "My Friend,--The Americans have been long trying to civilize us, and we now begin to see the advantages of it, and hope the Government of the United States will do us some good. I hope some of the people of my nation will place their children with white people, that they may see how the white children live. "My Friend,--I have nothing more to say, but to thank you." After the speech of White Cloud, Mr. J. Cadbury, at the head of a deputation from the "_Temperance Society_" (to which the Indians had sent also the sum of 36_l._ 8_s._), presented himself, and read an address from that association, thanking them for the amount received, and advising the Indians to abstain from the use of "_fire-water_" and to practise _charity_, which was one of the greatest of virtues. Mr. Cadbury then addressed the Indians, in all the fervency and earnestness of prayer, on the all-important subject of temperance. His words and sentences, selected for their simple understandings, were in the simplicity, and consequently the eloquence of nature, and seemed to win their highest admiration and attention. He painted to them in vivid colours the horrors and vice of intemperance, and its consequences; and also the beauty and loveliness of sobriety, and truth, and charity, which he hoped and should pray that they might practise in the wilderness, with constant prayers to the Great Spirit in the heavens, when they returned to their own country. When this venerable gentleman's remarks were finished, the old Doctor (or Medicine-man) arose from his seat upon the floor, with his pipe in his lips, and, advancing, shook hands with the two Messrs. Cadbury, and, handing his pipe to the chief, spoke as follows:-- "My Friends,--I rise to thank you for the words you have spoken to us: they have been kind, and we are thankful for them. "My Friends,--When I am at home in the wilderness, as well as when I am amongst you, I always pray to the Great Spirit; and I believe the chiefs and the warriors of my tribe, and even the women also, pray every day to the Great Spirit, and He has therefore been very kind to us. "My Friends,--We have been this day taken by the hand in friendship, and this gives us great consolation. Your friendly words have opened our ears, and your words of advice will not be forgotten. "My Friends,--You have advised us to be charitable to the poor, and we have this day handed you 360 dollars to help the poor in your hospitals. We have not time to see those poor people, but we know you will make good use of the money for them; and we shall be happy if, by our coming this way, we shall have made the poor comfortable. "My Friends,--We Indians are poor, and we cannot do much charity. The Great Spirit has been kind to us though since we came to this country, and we have given altogether more than 200 dollars to the poor people in the streets of London before we came here; and I need not tell you that this is not the first day that we have given to the poor in this city. "My Friends,--If we were rich, like many white men in this country, the poor people we see around the streets in this cold weather, with their little children barefooted and begging, would soon get enough to eat, and clothes to keep them warm. "My Friends,--It has made us unhappy to see the poor people begging for something to eat since we came to this country. In our country we are all poor, but the poor all have enough to eat, and clothes to keep them warm. We have seen your poorhouses, and been in them, and we think them very good; but we think there should be more of them, and that the rich men should pay for them. "My Friends,--We admit that before we left home we all were fond of '_fire-water_,' but in this country we have not drunk it. Your words are good, and we know it is a great sin to drink it. Your words to us on that subject, can do but little good, for we are but a few; but if you can tell them to the white people, who make the '_fire-water_,' and bring it into our country to sell, and can tell them also to the thousands whom we see drunk with it in this country, then we think you may do a great deal of good; and we believe the Great Spirit will reward you for it. "My Friends,--It makes us unhappy, in a country where there is so much wealth, to see so many poor and hungry, and so many as we see drunk. We know you are good people, and kind to the poor, and we give you our hands at parting; praying that the Great Spirit will assist you in taking care of the poor, and making people sober. "My Friends,--I have no more to say." #/ Temperance medals were then given to each of the Indians, and the deputation took leave. A council was held that evening in the Indians' apartments, and several pipes smoked, during which time the conversation ran upon numerous topics, the first of which was the interesting meeting they had held that day, and on several former occasions, with the Friends, and which good people they were about to leave, and they seemed fearful they should meet none others in their travels. They were passing their comments upon the vast numbers which Daniel and _Bobasheela_ had told them there actually were of poor people shut up in the poorhouses, besides those in the streets, and underground in the coal-pits; and concluded that the numerous clergymen they had to preach to them, and to keep them honest and sober, were not too many, but they thought they even ought to have more, and should at least keep all they had at home, instead of sending them to preach to the Indians. _Jim_ was busy poring over his note-book, and getting Daniel to put down in round numbers the amount of poor in the poorhouses and in the streets, which they had found in some newspaper. And he was anxious to have down without any mistake the large sum of money they had presented to the hospitals, so that when they got home they could tell of the charity they had done in England; and if ever they got so poor as to have to beg, they would have a good paper to beg with. The sum, in American currency (as they know less of pounds, shillings, and pence), amounted to the respectable one of 370 dollars. This last night's talk in Birmingham was rather a gloomy one, for it was after leave had been taken of all friends. _Bobasheela_ was to start in the morning for Liverpool, and I for London, where I had been summoned to attend as a witness in court, and Mr. Melody and the Indians were to leave for Nottingham and other towns in the north. So at a late hour we parted, and early in the morning set out for our different destinations, bearing with us many warm attachments formed during our short stay in the beautiful town of Birmingham. For what befel these good fellows in Nottingham and Leeds there will probably be no historian, as I was not with them. I commenced with them in York, where I became again the expounder of their habits and mysteries, and was delighted to meet them on classic ground, where there is so much to engage the attention and admiration of civilized or savage. I had visited York on a former occasion, and had the most ardent wish to be present at this time, and to conduct these rude people into the noble cathedral, and on to its grand tower. I had this pleasure; and in it accomplished one of my favourite designs in accompanying them on their northern tour. On my return from London I had joined the Indians at Leeds, where they had been exhibiting for some days, and found them just ready to start for York. I was their companion by the railway, therefore, to that ancient and venerable city; and made a note or two on an occurrence of an amusing nature which happened on the way. When we were within a few miles of the town the Indians were suddenly excited and startled by the appearance of a party of fox-hunters, forty or fifty in number, following their pack in full cry, having just crossed the track ahead of the train. This was a subject entirely new to them and unthought of by the Indians; and, knowing that English soldiers all wore red coats, they were alarmed, their first impression being that we had brought them on to hostile ground, and that this was a "war-party" in pursuit of their enemy. They were relieved and excessively amused when I told them it was merely a fox-hunt, and that the gentlemen they saw riding were mostly noblemen and men of great influence and wealth. They watched them intensely until they were out of sight, and made many amusing remarks about them after we had arrived at York. I told them they rode without guns, and the first one in at the death pulled off the tail of the fox and rode into town with it under his hatband. Their laughter was excessive at the idea of "such gentlemen hunting in open fields, and with a whip instead of a gun; and that great chiefs, as I had pronounced them, should be risking their lives, and the limbs of their fine horses, for a poor fox, the flesh of which, even if it were good to eat, was not wanted by such rich people, who had meat enough at home; and the skin of which could not be worth so much trouble, especially when, as everybody knows, it is good for nothing when the tail is pulled off." On our arrival in York one of the first and most often repeated questions which they put was, whether there were any of the "good people," as they now called them, the Friends, living there. I told them it was a place where a great many of them lived, and no doubt many would come to see them, which seemed to please and encourage them very much. Mr. Melody having taken rooms for them near to the York Minster, of which they had a partial view from their windows, their impatience became so great that we sallied out the morning after our arrival to pay the first visit to that grand and venerable pile. The reader has doubtless seen or read of this sublime edifice, and I need not attempt to describe it here. Were it in my power to portray the feelings which agitated the breasts of these rude people when they stood before this stupendous fabric of human hands, and as they passed through its aisles, amid its huge columns, and under its grand arches, I should be glad to do it; but those feelings which they enjoyed in the awful silence, were for none but themselves to know. We all followed the guide, who showed and explained to us all that was worth seeing below, and then showed us the way by which we were to reach the summit of the grand or middle tower, where the whole party arrived after a laborious ascent of 273 steps. We had luckily selected a clear day; and the giddy height from which we gazed upon the town under our feet, and the lovely landscape in the distance all around us, afforded to the Indians a view far more wonderful than their eyes had previously beheld. Whilst we were all engaged in looking upon the various scenes that lay like the lines upon a map beneath us, the old Doctor, with his _propensity_ which has been spoken of before, had succeeded in getting a little higher than any of the rest of the party, by climbing on to the little house erected over the gangway through which we entered upon the roof; and, upon the pinnacle of this, for a while stood smiling down upon the thousands of people who were gathering in the streets. He was at length, however, seen to assume a more conspicuous attitude by raising his head and his eyes towards the sky, and for some moments he devoutly addressed himself to the Great Spirit, whom the Indians always contemplate as "in the heavens, above the clouds." When he had finished this invocation, he slowly and carefully "descended on to the roof, and as he joined his friends he observed that when he was up there "he was nearer to the Great Spirit than he had ever been before." The War-chief excited much merriment by his sarcastic reply, that "it was a pity he did not stay there, for he would never be so near the Great Spirit again." The Doctor had no way of answering this severe retort, except by a silent smile, as, with his head turned away, he gazed on the beautiful landscape beneath him. When we descended from the tower, the Indians desired to advance again to the centre of this grand edifice, where they stood for a few minutes with their hands covering their mouths, as they gazed upon the huge columns around them and the stupendous arches over their heads, and at last came silently away, and I believe inspired with greater awe and respect for the religion of white men than they had ever felt before. Our stay of three days in York was too short for the Indians to make many acquaintances; but at their exhibitions they saw many of the Society of Friends, and these, as in other places, came forward to offer them their hands and invite them to their houses. Amongst the invitations they received was one from the governor of the Castle, who with great kindness conducted us through the various apartments of the prison, explaining the whole of its system and discipline to us. We were shown the various cells for different malefactors, with their inmates in them, which no doubt conveyed to the minds of the Indians new ideas of white men's iniquities, and the justice of civilized laws. When we were withdrawing we were invited to examine a little museum of weapons which had been used by various convicts to commit the horrid deeds for which they had suffered death or transportation. A small room, surrounded by a wire screen, was devoted to these, and as it was unlocked we were invited in, and found one wall of the room completely covered with these shocking records of crime. The turnkey to this room stepped in, and in a spirit of the greatest kindness, with a rod in his hand to point with, commenced to explain them, and of course add to their interest, in the following manner:-- "You see here, gentlemen, the weapons that have been used in the commission of murders by persons who have been tried and hung in this place, or transported for life. That long gun which you see there is the identical gun that Dyon shot his father with. _He was hung._ "That club and iron coulter you see there, gentlemen, were used by two highwaymen, who killed the gatekeeper, near Sheffield, by knocking out his brains, and afterwards robbed him. _They were both hung._ "This club and razor here, gentlemen (you see the blood on the razor now), were used by Thompson, who killed his wife. He knocked her down with this club, and cut her throat with this identical razor. "This leather strap--gentlemen, do you see it? Well, this strap was taken from a calf's neck by Benjamin Holrough, and he hung his father with it. _He was hung here._ "That hedging-bill, razor, and tongs, gentlemen, were the things used by Healy and Terry, who knocked an old woman down, cut her throat, and buried her. _They were hung in this prison._ "Now, gentlemen, we come to that hammer and razor you see there. With that same hammer Mary Crowther knocked her husband down, and then with that razor cut his throat. _She was hung._ "Do you see that club, gentlemen? That is the club with which Turner and Swihill, only nineteen years of age, murdered the bookkeeper near Sheffield. _Both were hung._ "Do you see this short gun, gentlemen? This is the very gun with which Dobson shot his father. _He was hung._ "This hat, gentlemen, with a hole in it, was the hat of Johnson, who was murdered near Sheffield. The hole you see is where the blow was struck that killed him." The Indians, who had looked on these things and listened to these recitals with a curious interest at first, were now becoming a little uneasy, and the old Doctor, who smiled upon several of the first descriptions, now showed symptoms of evident disquiet, retreating behind the party, and towards the door. "Do you see this knife and bloody cravat, gentlemen? With that same knife John James stuck the bailiff through the cravat, and killed him. _He was executed here._ "A fire-poker, gentlemen, with which King murdered his wife near Sheffield. _He was hung here._ "These things, gentlemen--this fork, poker, and bloody shoes--with this poker Hallet knocked his wife down, and stabbed her with the fork; and the shoes have got the blood on them yet. _Hallet was hung._ "That rope there is the one in which Bardsley was hung, who killed his own father. "A bloody axe and poker, gentlemen. With that axe and poker an old woman killed a little boy. She then drowned herself. _She was not executed._ "This shoe-knife, gentlemen, is one that Robert Noll killed his wife with in Sheffield. _He was executed._ "Another knife, with which Rogers killed a man in Sheffield. He ripped his bowels out with it. _He was hung._ "A club, and stone, and hat, gentlemen. With this club and stone Blackburn was murdered, and that was his hat: you see how it is all broken and bloody. This was done by four men. _All hung._ "The hat and hammer here, gentlemen--these belonged to two robbers. One met the other in a wood, and killed him with the hammer. _He was hung._ "That scythe and pitchfork, you see, gentlemen"---- When our guide had thus far explained, and Jeffrey had translated to the Indians, I observed the old Doctor quite outside of the museum-room, and with his robe wrapped close around him, casting his eyes around in all directions, and evidently in great uneasiness. He called for the party to come out, for, said he, "I do not think this is a good place for us to stay in any longer." We all thought it was as well, for the turnkey had as yet not described one-third of his curiosities; so we thanked him for his kindness, and took leave of him and his interesting museum. We were then conducted by the governor's request to the apartments of his family, where he and his kind lady and daughters received the Indians and ourselves with much kindness, having his table prepared with refreshments, and, much to the satisfaction of the Indians (after their fatigue of body as well as of mind), with plenty of the _Queen's chickabobboo_. The sight-seeing of this day and the exhibition at night finished our labours in the interesting town of York, where I have often regretted we did not remain a little longer to avail ourselves of the numerous and kind invitations which were extended to us before we left. After our labours were all done, and the Indians had enjoyed their suppers and their _chickabobboo_, we had a pipe together, and a sort of recapitulation of what we had seen and heard since we arrived. The two most striking subjects of the gossip of this evening were the cathedral and the prison; the one seemed to have filled their minds with astonishment and admiration at the ingenuity and power of civilized man, and the other with surprise and horror at his degradation and wickedness; and evidently with some alarm for the safety of their persons in such a vicinity of vice as they had reason to believe they were in from the evidences they had seen during the day. The poor old Doctor was so anxious for the next morning to dawn, that we might be on our way, that he had become quite nervous and entirely contemplative and unsociable. They had heard such a catalogue of murders and executions explained, though they knew that we had but begun with the list, and saw so many incarcerated in the prison, some awaiting their trial, others who had been convicted and were under sentence of death or transportation, and others again pining in their cells, and weeping for their wives and children (merely because they could not pay the money that they owed), that they became horrified and alarmed; and as it was the first place where they had seen an exhibition of this kind, there was some reason for the poor fellows' opinions that they were in the midst of the wickedest place in the world. They said that, from the grandeur and great number of their churches, they thought they ought to be one of the most honest and harmless people they had been amongst, but instead of that they were now convinced they must be the very worst, and the quicker Mr. Melody made arrangements to be off the better. The Indians had been objects of great interest, and for the three nights of their amusements their room was well filled and nightly increasing; but all arguments were in vain, and we must needs be on the move. I relieved their minds in a measure relative to the instruments of death they had seen and the executions of which they had heard an account, by informing them of a fact that had not occurred to them--that the number of executions mentioned had been spread over a great number of years, and were for crimes committed amongst some hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, occupying a tract of country a great many miles in every direction from York; and also that the poor men imprisoned for debt were from various parts of the country for a great distance around. This seemed to abate their surprise to a considerable degree; still, the first impression was here made, and made by means of their eyes (which they say they never disbelieve, and I am quite sure they will never get rid of it), that York was the "wicked town," as they continued to call it during the remainder of their European travels. I explained to them that other towns had their jails and their gallows--that in London they daily rode in their buss past prison walls, and where the numbers imprisoned were greater than those in York, in proportion to the greater size of the city. Their comments were many and curious on the cruelty of imprisoning people for debt, because they could not pay money. "Why not kill them?" they said; "it would be better, because when a man is dead he is no expense to any one, and his wife can get a husband again, and his little children a father to feed and take care of them; when he is in jail they must starve: when he is once in jail he cannot wish his face to be seen again, and they had better kill them all at once." They thought it easier to die than to live in jail, and seemed to be surprised that white men, so many hundreds and thousands, would submit to it, when they had so many means by which they could kill themselves. They saw convicts in the cells who were to be transported from the country: they inquired the meaning of that, and, when I explained it, they seemed to think that was a good plan, for, said they, "if these people can't get money enough to pay their debts, if they go to another country they need not be ashamed there, and perhaps they will soon make money enough to come back and have their friends take them by the hand again." I told them, however, that they had not understood me exactly--that transportation was only for heinous crimes, and then a man was sent away in irons, and in the country where he went he had to labour several years, or for life, with chains upon him, as a slave. Their ideas were changed at once on this point, and they agreed that it would be better to kill them all at once, or give them weapons and let them do it themselves. While this conversation was going on, the Recorder Jim found here very interesting statistics for his note-book, and he at once conceived the plan of getting Daniel to find out how many people there were that they had seen in the prison locked up in one town; and then, his ideas expanding, how many (if it could be done at so late an hour) there were in all the prisons in London; and then how many white people in all the kingdom were locked up for crimes, and how many because they couldn't pay money. His friend and teacher, Daniel, whose head had become a tolerable gazetteer and statistical table, told him it would be quite easy to find it all ready printed in books and newspapers, and that he would put it all down in his book in a little time. The inquisitive Jim then inquired if there were any poorhouses in York, as in other towns; to which his friend Daniel replied that there were, and also in nearly every town in the kingdom; upon which Jim started the design of adding to the statistical entries in his book the number of people in poorhouses throughout the kingdom. Daniel agreed to do this for him also, which he could easily copy out of a memorandum-book of his own, and also to give him an estimate of the number of people annually transported from the kingdom for the commission of crimes. This all pleased Jim very much, and was amusement for Daniel; but at the same time I was decidedly regretting with Mr. Melody that his good fellows the Indians, in their visit to York, should have got their eyes open to so much of the dark side of civilization, which it might have been better for them that they never had seen. Jim's book was now becoming daily a subject of more and more excitement to him, and consequently of jealousy amongst some of the party, and particularly so with the old Doctor; as Jim was getting more rapidly educated than either of the others, and his book so far advanced as to discourage the Doctor from any essay of the kind himself. Jim that night regretted only one thing which he had neglected to do, and which it was now too late to accomplish--that was, to have measured the length of the cathedral and ascertained the number of steps required to walk around it. He had counted the number of steps to the top of the grand tower, and had intended to have measured the cathedral's length. I had procured some very beautiful engravings of it, however, one of which Daniel arranged in his book, and the length of the building and its height we easily found for him in the pocket Guide. The Doctor, watching with a jealous eye these numerous estimates going into Jim's book, to be referred to (and of course sworn to) when he got home, and probably on various occasions long before, and having learned enough of arithmetic to understand what a wonderful effect a cipher has when placed on the right of a number of figures, he smiled from day to day with a wicked intent on Jim's records, which, if they went back to his tribe in anything like a credible form, would be a direct infringement upon his peculiar department, and materially affect his standing, inasmuch as Jim laid no claims to a knowledge of _medicine_, or to anything more than good eating and drinking, before he left home. However, the Doctor at this time could only meditate and smile, as his stiff hand required some practice with the pen before he could make those little 0's so as to match with others in the book, which was often left carelessly lying about upon their table. This intent was entirely and originally wicked on the part of the old Doctor, because he had not yet, that any one knew of, made any reference to his measure of the giant woman, since he had carefully rolled up his cord and put it away amongst his other estimates, to be taken home to "astonish the natives" on their return. CHAPTER XXIII. Newcastle-on-Tyne--Indians' alarms about jails--Kind visits from Friends--Mrs. A. Richardson--Advice of the Friends--War-Chiefs reply--Liberal presents--Arrive at Sunderland--Kindness of the Friends--All breakfast with Mr. T. Richardson--Indians plant trees in his garden--And the Author also--The Doctor's superstition--Sacrifice--Feast--Illness of the Roman Nose--Indians visit a coalpit--North Shields--A sailors' dinner and a row--Arrive at Edinburgh--A drive--First exhibition there--Visit to Salisbury Crag--To Arthur's Seat--Holyrood House and Castle--The crown of Robert Bruce--The "big gun,"--"Queen Mab"--Curious modes of building--"Flats"--Origin of--Illness of Corsair, the little _pappoose_--The old Doctor speaks--War-chief's speech--A feast of ducks--Indians' remarks upon the government of Scotland--"The swapping of crowns"--The Doctor proposes the crown of Robert Bruce for Prince Albert--Start for Dundee--Indians' liberality--A noble act--Arrival at Dundee--Death of little Corsair--Distress of the Little Wolf and his wife--Curious ceremony--Young men piercing their arms--Indians at Perth--Arrival in Glasgow--Quartered in the Town-hall--The cemetery--The Hunterian Museum--The Doctor's admiration of it--Daily drives--Indians throw money to the poor--Alarm for _Roman Nose_--Two reverend gentlemen talk with the Indians--War-chief's remarks--Greenock--Doctor's regret at leaving. Newcastle-on-Tyne was the next place where we stopped, and when I arrived there I found Mr. Melody and his friends very comfortably lodged, and all in excellent spirits. The Indians, he told me, had been exceedingly buoyant in spirits from the moment they left York, and the old Doctor sang the whole way, even though he had been defeated in his design of riding outside on the railway train, as he had been in the habit of doing on the omnibus in London. I told them I had remained a little behind them in York to enjoy a few hours more of the society of an excellent and kind lady of the Society of Friends,[29] whom they would recollect to have seen in the exhibition room when they had finished their last night's exhibition, who came forward and shook hands in the most affectionate manner, and left gold in their hands as she bade them good bye, and commended them to the care of the Great Spirit. [29] Miss E. Fothergill. I told them that this good lady had only returned from the country on the last evening of their exhibiting in York, and was exceedingly disappointed that she could not have the pleasure of their society at her house. I then sat down and amused them an hour with a beautiful manuscript book, by her own hand, which she had presented to me, containing the portraits of seven Seneca chiefs and braves, who were in England twenty-five years before, and whom she entertained for three weeks in her own house. This interesting work contains also some twenty pages of poetry glowing with piety, and written in a chaste and beautiful style; and an hundred or more pages in prose, giving a full description of the party, their modes, and a history of their success, as they travelled through the kingdom. This was a subject of much pleasure to them, but at the same time increased their regret that they had not seen more of this kind lady before they left the town of York. Their first inquiries after their arrival in Newcastle were whether they would meet any of the "good people" in that town, and whether that was a place where they had prisons and a gallows like those in London and in York. I answered that they would no doubt find many of the Friends there, for I knew several very kind families who would call upon them, and also that the good lady who gave me the book in York had written letters to several of the Friends in Newcastle to call on them; and that, as to the jails, &c., I believed they were much the same. In a sort of council which we held there, as we were in the Indian habit of convening one whenever we were leaving an old lodging or taking possession of a new one, it was very gravely and diffidently suggested by the Doctor, as the desire of the whole party, that they presumed _Chippehola_[30] had money enough left in London (in case they should fail in this section of the country to make enough to pay their debts) to keep them clear from being taken up and treated like white men who can't pay what they owe. I approved this judicious suggestion, and assured them they might feel quite easy as long as they were in the kingdom. I told them I was quite sure they had a good and faithful friend in Mr. Melody, and, if anything happened to him, they would be sure to find me ready to take care of them, and that, if we were both to die, they would find all the English people around them their friends. This seemed to satisfy and to cheer them up, and our few days in Newcastle thus commenced very pleasantly. From their first night's exhibition they all returned to their lodgings with peculiar satisfaction that they had observed a greater number of Friends in the crowd than they had seen in any place before, and many of these had remained until everybody else had gone away, to shake hands and converse with them. They found roast beef and beef-steaks and _chickabobboo_ also, the same as in other places, and altogether there was enough around them here to produce cheerful faces. [30] The Author. I need not describe again to the reader the nature and excitement of the dances, &c., in their exhibitions, which were nightly repeated here as they had been in London; but incidents and results growing out of these amusements were now becoming exceedingly interesting, and as will be found in the sequel of much importance, I trust, to those poor people and their descendants. Very many of the Society of Friends were nightly attending their exhibitions, not so much for the purpose of witnessing or encouraging their war-dances and customs, as for an opportunity of forming an acquaintance with them, with a view to render them in some way an essential good. With this object a letter was addressed to me by Mrs. Anna Richardson (with whom I had formerly corresponded on the subject of the Indians), proposing that a number of the Friends should be allowed to hold a conversation with them in their apartments, on some morning, for the purpose of learning the true state of their minds relative to the subjects of religion and education, and to propose some efforts that might result to their advantage, and that of their nation. Mr. Melody and myself embraced this kind proposal at once, and the Indians all seemed delighted with it when it was made known to them. The morning was appointed, and this kind and truly charitable lady came with fifteen or twenty of her friends, and the Indians listened with patience and apparent pleasure to the Christian advice that was given them by several, and cheerfully answered to the interrogatories which were put to them. The immediate appeal and thanks to the "Great Spirit, who had sent these kind people to them," by the War-chief in his reply, seemed to impress upon the minds of all present the conviction of a high and noble sentiment of religion in the breasts of these people, which required but the light of the Christian revelation. His replies as to the benefits of education were much as he had made them on several occasions before, that, "as for themselves, they were too far advanced in life to think of being benefited by it, but that their children might learn to read and write, and that they should be glad to have them taught to do so." Here seemed to dawn a gleam of hope, which that pious lady, in her conversation and subsequent correspondence with me, often alluded to, as the most favourable omen for the desire which the Friends had of rendering them some lasting benefit. Mr. Melody on this occasion produced a little book printed in the Ioway language, in the missionary school already in existence in the tribe, and also letters which he had just received from the Rev. Mr. Irvin, then conducting the school, giving an encouraging account of it, and hoping that the Indians and himself might return safe, and with means to assist in the noble enterprise. This information was gratifying in the extreme, and all seemed to think that there was a chance of enlightening these benighted people. The heart of this Christian woman reached to the American wilderness in a letter that she directed to this reverend gentleman, believing that there, where were the wives and children of the chiefs and warriors who were travelling, was the place for the efforts of the Society of Friends to be beneficially applied; and thus, I believe, formed the chain from which I feel confident the most fortunate results will flow.[31] [31] See in Appendix (A) to this volume Correspondence, &c., relative to Ioway Mission. Several subsequent interviews were held with the Indians by these kind people, who took them to their houses and schools, and bestowed upon them many tangible proofs of their attachment to them, and anxiety for their welfare. The Indians left Newcastle and these suddenly made friends with great reluctance, and we paid a visit of a couple of days to Sunderland. Here they found also many of the "good people" attending their exhibitions, and received several warm and friendly invitations to their houses. Amongst these kind attentions there was one which they never will forget: they were invited to breakfast at the table of Mr. T. Richardson, in his lovely mansion, with his kind family and some friends, and after the breakfast was over all were invited into his beautiful garden, where a spade was ready, and a small tree prepared for each one to plant and attach his name to. This ceremony amused them very much, and, when they had all done, there was one left for _Chippehola_, who took the spade and completed the interesting ceremony. This had been kindly designed for their amusement, and for the pleasing recollections of his family, by this good man; and with all it went off cheerfully, except with the Doctor, who refused for some time, but was at length induced to take the spade and plant his tree. I observed from the moment that he had done it that he was contemplative, and evidently apprehensive that some bad luck was to come from it--that there was _medicine_ in it, and he was alarmed. He was silent during the rest of the interview, and after they had returned to their rooms he still remained so for some time, when he explained to me that "he feared some one would be sick--some one of those trees would die, and he would much rather they had not been planted." He said "it would be necessary to make a great feast the next day," which I told him would be difficult, as we were to leave at an early hour. This puzzled him very much, as it was so late that, "if they were to try to give it that night, there would not be time for the ducks to be well cooked." They all laughed at him for his superstition, and he got the charm off as well as he could by throwing some tobacco, as a sacrifice, into the fire. We travelled the next day to North Shields, and the gloom that was still evidently hanging over the old man's brow was darkened by the increased illness of the _Roman Nose_, who had been for some weeks slightly ailing, but on that day was attacked for the first time with some fever. The Doctor's alarm was such that he stayed constantly by him, and did not accompany his friend Jim and one or two others with Daniel to the coalpit. This, from the repeated representations of Daniel and their old friend _Bobasheela_, was one of the greatest curiosities in the kingdom, and they were not disappointed in it. In this enterprise I did not accompany them, but from their representations ascertained that they descended more than two thousand feet and then travelled half a mile or so under the sea--that there were fifty horses and mules at that depth under the ground, that never will come up, drawing cars loaded with coal on railways, and six or seven hundred men, women, and children, as black as negroes, and many of these who seldom come up, but sleep there at nights. This scene shocked them even more than the sights they had seen in York, for they seemed to think that the debtors' cells in a prison would be far preferable to the slavery they there saw, of "hundreds of women and children drawing out, as they said, from some narrow places where the horses could not go, little carriages loaded with coal; where the women had to go on their hands and knees through the mud and water, and almost entirely naked, drawing their loads by a strap that was buckled around their waists; their knees and their legs and their feet, which were all naked, were bleeding with cuts from the stones, and their hands also; they drew these loads in the dark, and they had only a little candle to see the way." This surprising scene, which took them hours to describe to their companions, became more surprising when Daniel told them of "the vast number of such mines in various parts of the kingdom, and of the fact that many people in some parts have been born in those mines, and gone to school in them, and spent their lives, without ever knowing how the daylight looked." Daniel reminded them of the hundreds of mines he had pointed out to them while travelling by the railroads, and that they were all under ground, like what they had seen. Here was rich subject for Jim, for another entry in his book, of the statistics of England; and Daniel, always ready, turned to the page in his own note-book, and soon got for Jim's memorandum the sum total of coalpits and mines in the kingdom, and the hundreds of thousands of human _civilized_ beings who were imprisoned in them. It happened, on the second day that we were stopping in North Shields, much to the amusement of the Indians, that there was a sailors' dinner prepared for an hundred or more in the large hall of the hotel where we were lodging; and, from the rooms which the Indians occupied, there was an opportunity of looking through a small window down into their hall, and upon the merry and noisy group around the table. This was a rich treat for the Indians; and, commencing in an amusing and funny manner, it became every moment more and more so, and, finally (when they began to dance and sing and smash the glasses, and at length the tables, and from that to "set-to's," "fisticuffs," and "knockdowns," by the dozens, and, at last, to a general _mélée_, a row, and a fight in the street) one of the most decidedly exciting and spirited scenes they had witnessed in the country. It afforded them amusement also for a long time after the day on which it took place, when they spoke of it as the "great fighting feast." Two days completed our visit to North Shields, and on the next we were in comfortable quarters in Edinburgh. The Indians were greatly delighted with the appearance of the city as they entered it, and more so daily, as they took their omnibus drives around and through the different parts of it. The Doctor, however, who was tending on his patient, _Roman Nose_, seemed sad, and looked as if he had forebodings still of some sad results to flow from planting the trees; but he took his seat upon the bus, with his old joking friend Jim, by the side of the driver, smiling occasionally on whatever he saw amusing, as he was passing through the streets. Their novel appearance created a great excitement in Edinburgh; and our announcements filled our hall with the most respectable and fashionable people. Their dances called forth great applause; and, in the midst of it, the War-chief, so delighted with the beauty of the city, and now by seeing so numerous and fashionable an audience before him, and all applauding, arose to make a speech. As he straightened up, and, wrapping his buffalo robe around him, extended his long right arm, the audience gave him a round of applause, occasioned entirely by the dignified and manly appearance he made when he took the attitude of the orator, and he commenced:-- "My friends, I understand by the great noise you have made with your hands and feet, that something pleases you, and this pleases us, as we are strangers amongst you, and with red skins. (Applause.) "My friends, we have but just arrived in your beautiful city, and we see that you are a different people from the English in London, where we have been. In going into a strange place, amongst strange people, we always feel some fear that our dances and our noise may not please--we are showing you how we dance in our own country, and we believe that is what you wish to see. (Applause and '_How, how, how!_') "My friends, we are delighted with your city, what we have seen of it--we have seen nothing so handsome before--we will try to please you with some more of our dances, and then we will be happy to shake hands with you. ('_How, how, how!_') "This is all I have to say now." (Great applause.) We were now in the most beautiful city in the kingdom, if not one of the most beautiful in the world; and the Indians, as well as ourselves, observed the difference in the manners and appearance of the people. The Indians had been pleased with their reception in the evening, and, in their drive during the day, had been excited by the inviting scenery overtowering the city,--the castle, with its "big gun," gaping over the town--the _Salisbury Crag_, and _Arthur's Seat_--all of which places they were to visit on that day; and, having swallowed their breakfasts and taken their seats in their carriage, seemed to have entered upon a new world of amusement. Their views from, and runs over, these towering peaks afforded them great amusement; and the castle, with its crown of Robert Bruce, and other insignia of royalty--its mammouth gun, and the little room in which King James I. of England was born; and in Holyrood House,--the blood of Rizzio upon the floor, and the bed in which Queen Mary had slept--were all subjects of new and fresh excitement to them. Nor was their amusement less whilst they were riding through the streets, at the constant variety and sudden contrasts--from the low and poverty-stricken rabble of High-street and its vicinity, to the modern and splendid sections of the city--of crossing high bridges over gardens, instead of rivers; of houses built upon the sides of the hills and on rocks; and many other amusing things that they talked about when they got back. To Mr. Melody and Jeffrey also, and to Daniel, all these scenes were new; and the Indians, therefore, had companions and guides enough, and enough, also, to explain to them the meaning of all they saw. I had been in Edinburgh on a former occasion, and was now engaged in looking up and conversing with old friends, whose former kindness now claimed my first attention; and in hunting for one of them, I found his office had been removed to another part of the city; and, making my way towards it as well as I could, I was amused at the instructions given to me when I inquired of a man whom I met in the street, and who, it happened, was acquainted with my friend and his location, and who relieved me instantly from further embarrassment by the following most lucid and simple direction, as he pointed down the street:--"You have only to take the first turning to the right, Sir, and it is the top flat at the bottom." This seemed queer and amusing to me, though not in the least embarrassing, for I had been long enough in Edinburgh before to learn that a "flat" was a "story" or floor; and long enough in London to know that one _end_ of a street is the "top" and the other the "bottom." To a stranger, however, such an answer as the one I received might have been exceedingly bewildering, and increased his difficulties rather than diminished them. The old law maxim of "_Cujus est solum, ejus est usque ad coelum_," would scarcely apply to real estate in the city of Edinburgh; for houses are not only _rented_ by floors or _flats_, but titles, in fee simple and by deed, are given for floor above floor, oftentimes in the same house; a custom that is difficult to account for, unless from the curious fact that so many of the houses in Edinburgh are built so high, by the sides of hills and precipitous ledges, that an adjoining tenant may oftentimes step from the surface of his cultivated fields into the tenth or twelfth story of his neighbour's back windows, and, by this singular mode of conveyance, able to walk into a comfortable dwelling without the expense of building, and without curtailing the area of his arable ground. By thus getting, for a trifle, the fee simple for the upper story, and of course the privilege of building as many stories on the top of it as he should require, when he could afford the means to do it, his neighbour below was called a "flat." The law, which is generally cruel to most flats, relinquished one of its oldest and most sacred maxims, to support the numerous claims of this kind which the side-hills and ledges in the building-grounds of the city had produced; and so numerous were the _flats_, and so frequent the instances of this new sort of tenure, that the term "flat" has become carelessly and erroneously applied to all the floors or stories of buildings in Edinburgh that are to be let or sold separately from the rest of the house. It was arranged that our stay in Edinburgh was to be but for a few days; and, with this view, we had begun to see its sights pretty rapidly during the two first since our arrival. Many fashionable parties were calling on the Indians in their apartments, and leaving them presents; and at their second night's exhibition the room was crowded to great excess with the fashion and nobility of the city. The Indians discovered at once that they never before were in the midst of audiences so intellectual and genteel. There was nothing of low and vulgar appearance in any part of the room; but all had the stamp of refinement and gentility, which stimulated their pride, and they did their utmost. In the midst of their amusements on that evening there was a general call upon me from the ladies, to explain why the little "pappoose in its cradle" was not shown, as announced in the bills; to which I was sorry to reply that it was so ill that it could not be seen. This having been interpreted to the Indians by Jeffrey, and also heard by the Little Wolf's wife, the mother of the child, and then nursing it in the room behind their platform, she suddenly arranged it, sick as it was, in its beautifully ornamented little cradle, and, having slung it upon her back, and thrown her pictured robe around her, walked into the room, to the surprise of the Indians, and to the great satisfaction of the gentlemen as well as the ladies of the whole house. Her appearance was such, when she walked across the platform, that it called forth applause from every quarter. Many were the ladies who advanced from their seats to the platform, to examine so interesting a subject more closely; and many presents were bestowed upon the mother, who was obliged to retire again with it, from the feeble state it was then in. This fine little child, of ten or twelve months old, and the manner in which it was carried in its Indian cradle upon its mother's back, had formed one of the most interesting parts of the exhibition the whole time that the Indians were in London, and since they had left. Its illness now becoming somewhat alarming, with the increasing illness also of the _Roman Nose_, was adding to the old Doctor's alarms, growing out of the _planting of the little trees_, which he had insisted was ominous of something that would happen, but what, he did not attempt to predict. He was daily prescribing and attending his patients, but, being without the roots which he uses in his own country, he was evidently much at a loss; and the ablest advice was procured for both of the patients while in that city. The Doctor, on this occasion, (though somewhat depressed in spirits, owing to his superstitious forebodings about the sick, seeing such a vast concourse of ladies present, and all encouraging him with their applause as he made his boasts in the eagle dance,) made an effort for a _sensation_, as he did on his first night in London. When the dance was done, he advanced to the edge of the platform, and, with his usual quizzical look and smile from under his headdress of buffalo horns and eagle quills, addressed the audience. His speech was translated by Jeffrey, and, though it was highly applauded, fell much short of the effect amongst the ladies which he had produced on former occasions. He sat down somewhat in a disappointed mood, when his cruel companion, Jim, told him that his attempt "was an entire failure, and that he would never take with the ladies in Edinburgh." The old man replied to him that he had better try himself, and, if he would lie flat on his back and make a speech, perhaps _he_ might please the ladies of Edinburgh. After another dance, and amidst the roar of applause, old _Neu-mon-ya_ (the War-chief) arose, and, in the best of his humour, said,-- "My friends, I thank the Great Spirit who conducted us safe across the Great Salt Lake that His eye is still upon us, and that He has led us to your city. No city that we have seen is so beautiful as yours; and we have seen a great deal of it as we have been riding in our carriage to-day. ('_How, how, how!_') "My friends, the Great Spirit has made us with red skins, and, as all our modes of life are different from yours, our dances are quite different, and we are glad that they do not give any offence when we dance them. Our dresses, which are made of skins, are not so fine and beautiful as yours, but they keep us warm, and that we think is the great thing. ('_How, how, how!_' Applause and 'Hear, hear.') "My friends, we have been to-day to see your great fort. We were much pleased with it, and the 'big gun;' we think it a great pity it is broken. We saw the room where the king of England was born, and we feel proud that we have been in it. ('_How, how, how!_' Much laughter.) "My friends, we saw there the crowns of your kings and queens as we were told. This we don't think we quite understand yet, but we think _Chippehola_ will tell us all that,--it may be all right. (Laughter and 'Hear.') "My friends, we went to another great house where we saw many things that pleased us--we saw the bed in which your Queen slept: this was very pleasing to us all; it was much nearer than we got to the Queen of England. (Great laughter.) "My friends, this is all I have to say." ('Bravo!') After this night's exhibition, and the sights of the day which had pleased them so much, there was subject enough for a number of pipes of conversation; and to join them in this Mr. Melody and I had repaired to their room, where we found them in the midst of a grand feast of ducks, which they said it was always necessary to give when they entered a new country, and which in this case they had expended some of their own money in buying. Daniel and Jeffrey were seated with them, and we were obliged to sit down upon the floor, and take each a duck's leg at least, and a glass of the _Queen's chickabobboo_ (champagne), which had been added at the expense of Daniel and Jeffrey, as the ordinary _chickabobboo_ did not answer the object of a feast of that description. After the feast was over, and the War-chief had returned thanks to the Great Spirit, according to their invariable custom, the pipe was lit, and then the gossip for the evening commenced. They had already learned from Daniel that there were jails and poorhouses here as in other places, and were now remarking that they had not yet seen any of the "good people" here, and began to fear they had lost all chance of meeting any of them again. They seemed to be much at a loss to know how it was that here were the crowns and swords of kings and queens, and the houses they had lived in, and the beds they had slept on, and that there are none of them left. They believed, though they were not yet quite certain of it, that this country must have been conquered by England. These inquiries were all answered as nearly as I could explain them; and the result was, that "it was a great pity, in their estimations, that so fine a country and people should not continue to have a king of their own to put on the crown again, instead of leaving it in the castle to be shut up in a dark room." They seemed to think it "very curious that the Scotch people should like to keep the crown for people to look at, when they could not keep the king to wear it;" and they thought "it would be far better to take out the beautiful red and green stones and make watch-seals of them, and melt the gold into sovereigns, so that some of it might get into poor people's pockets, than to keep it where it is, just to be looked at and to be talked of." They thought "the crown was much more beautiful than the one they saw in London belonging to the Queen, and which was kept in the great prison where they saw so many guns, spears, &c."[32] The joker, Jim, thought that "if he were the Queen he should propose to _swap_, for he thought this decidedly the handsomest crown." The old Doctor said, that "if he were the Queen of England he should be very well suited to wear the one they had seen in London, and he would send and get this one very quickly, and also the beautiful sword they saw, for Prince Albert to wear." In this happy and conjectural mood we left them, receiving from Daniel further accounts of the events and history of the country which they had seen so many evidences of during their visits in the early part of the day. [32] The Tower. Our stay in this beautiful city was but four days, contemplating another visit to it in a short time; and at the close of that time the party took a steamer for Dundee, with a view to make a visit of a few days to that town, and afterwards spend a day or two in Perth. I took the land route to Dundee, and, arriving there before the party, had announced their arrival and exhibition to take place on the same evening. An accident however that happened on the steamer compelled it to put back to Edinburgh, and their arrival was delayed for a couple of days. During this voyage there was an occurrence on board of the steamer, which was related to me by Mr. Melody and Daniel, which deserves mention in this place. It seems that on board of the steamer, as a passenger, was a little girl of twelve years of age and a stranger to all on board. When, on their way, the captain was collecting his passage-money on deck, he came to the little girl for her fare, who told him she had no money, but that she expected to meet her father in Dundee, whom she was going to see, and that he would certainly pay her fare if she could find him. The captain was in a great rage, and abused the child for coming on without the money to pay her fare, and said that he should not let her go ashore, but should hold her a prisoner on board, and take her back to Edinburgh with him. The poor little girl was frightened, and cried herself almost into fits. The passengers, of whom there were a great many, all seemed affected by her situation, and began to raise the money amongst them to pay her passage, giving a penny or two apiece, which, when done, amounted to about a quarter of the sum required. The poor little girl's grief and fear still continued, and the old Doctor, standing on deck, wrapped in his robe, and watching all these results, too much touched with pity for her situation, went down in the fore-cabin where the rest of the party were, and, relating the circumstances, soon raised eight shillings, one shilling of which, the Little Wolf, after giving a shilling himself, put into the hand of his little infant, then supposed to be dying, that its dying hand might do one act of charity, and caused it to drop it into the Doctor's hand with the rest. With the money the Doctor came on deck, and, advancing, offered it to the little girl, who was frightened and ran away. Daniel went to the girl and called her up to the Doctor, assuring her there was no need of alarm, when the old Doctor put the money into her hand, and said to her, through the interpreter, and in presence of all the passengers, who were gathering around, "Now go to the cruel captain and pay him the money, and never again be afraid of a man because his skin is red; but be always sure that the heart of a red man is as good and as kind as that of a white man. And when you are in Dundee, where we are all going, if you do not find your father as you wish, and are amongst strangers, come to us, wherever we shall be, and you shall not suffer; you shall have enough to eat, and, if money is necessary, you shall have more." Such acts of kindness as this, and others that have and will be named, that I was a witness to while those people were under my charge, require no further comment than to be made known: they carry their own proof with them that the Doctor was right in saying that "the hearts of red men are as good as those of the whites." As I was in anxious expectation of their arrival, I met the party with carriages when they landed, and I was pained to learn that the babe of the Little Wolf, which he had wrapped and embraced in his arms, was dying, and it breathed its last at the moment they entered the apartments that were prepared for them. My heart was broken to see the agony that this noble fellow was in, embracing his little boy, and laying him down in the last gasp of death, in a foreign land, and amongst strangers. We all wept for the heartbroken parents, and also for the dear little "Corsair," as he was called (from the name of the steamer on which he was born, on the Ohio river in the United States). We had all become attached to the little fellow, and his death caused a gloom amongst the whole party. The old Doctor looked more sad than ever, and evidently beheld the symptoms of _Roman Nose_ as more alarming than they had been. A council was called, as the first step after their arrival, and a pipe was passed around in solemn silence; after which it was asked by the War-chief if I knew of any of the "good people" in that town; to which I answered that "I was a stranger there, and did not know of any one." It seemed it was an occasion on which they felt that it would be an unusual pleasure to meet some of them, as the Little Wolf and his wife had expressed a wish to find some. It occurred then to Mr. Melody that he had a letter to a lady in that town, and, on delivering it, found she was one of that society, and, with another kind friend, she called and administered comfort to these wretched parents in the midst of their distress. They brought the necessary clothes for the child's remains, and, when we had the coffin prepared, laid it out with the kindest hands, and prepared it for the grave; and their other continued and kind offices tended to soothe the anguished breasts of the parents while we remained there. It is a subject of regret to me that I have lost the names of those two excellent ladies, to whom my public acknowledgments are so justly due. After they had laid the remains of the child in the coffin, each of the young men of the party ran a knife through the fleshy part of their left arms, and, drawing a white feather through the wounds, deposited the feathers with the blood on them in the coffin with the body. This done, the father and mother brought all they possessed, excepting the clothes which they had on, and presented to them, according to the custom of their country, and also all the fine presents they had received, their money, trinkets, weapons, &c. This is one of the curious modes of that tribe, and is considered necessary to be conformed to in all cases where a child dies. The parents are bound to give away all they possess in the world. I believe, however, that it is understood that, after a certain time, these goods are returned, and oftentimes with increased treasures attending them. There now came another pang for the heart of this noble fellow, the Little Wolf, and one which seemed to shake his manly frame more than that he had already felt. His child he could not take with him, and the thought of leaving it in a strange burying-ground, and "to be dug up," as he said he knew it would be, seemed to make his misery and that of his wife complete. However, in the midst of his griefs, he suggested that, if it were possible to have it conveyed to their kind friends in Newcastle-on-Tyne, he was sure those "good people," who treated them so kindly, would be glad to bury it in their beautiful burying-ground which he had seen, where it would be at home, and he and his wife should then feel happy. Mr. Melody at once proposed to take it there himself, and attend to its burial, which pleased the parents very much, and he started the next day with it. He was received with the greatest kindness by Mrs. A. Richardson and their other kind friends, who attended to its burial in the society's beautiful cemetery.[33] [33] The reader is referred to the fervent breathing pages of a little periodical, entitled the 'Olive Branch,' for a most feeling and impressive account of the reception of this little child's remains, and its burial in their beautiful cemetery, by the Friends in Newcastle-on-Tyne. Our visit to the delightful little town of Perth was made, where we remained, and the Indians astonished and pleased with their wild and unheard-of modes, for two days. We then were within fifteen miles of Merthyl Castle, the seat of Sir William Drummond Stewart, the well-known and bold traveller of the prairies and Rocky Mountains of America, whose friendly invitation we received to visit his noble mansion, but which I shall long regret came so late that other engagements we had entered into in Edinburgh and Glasgow prevented us from complying with it. Our way was now back, and, having repeated their exhibitions a few nights longer in Edinburgh, and, as before, to crowded and fashionable houses, we commenced upon our visit to the noble city of Glasgow. On our arrival, the party were taken in an omnibus from the station to the town-hall, in which it was arranged their exhibitions were to be given, and in a private room of which the Indians were to lodge. They were pleased with the part of the city they saw as they entered it, and were in good spirits and cheer, and prepared for the few days they were to stop there. The same arrangement was at once made by Mr. Melody, as in other places, to give them their daily ride in an omnibus for their health, and for the purpose of giving them a view of everything to be seen about the town. In their drives about the city of Glasgow there was not so much of the picturesque and change to amuse them as they saw in Edinburgh, yet everything was new and pleasing. The beautiful cemetery attracted their highest admiration of anything they saw, with all the party but the Doctor, whose whole and undivided admiration was withheld from everything else to be centred in the noble Hunterian Museum: the vapour-baths, conservatories, &c., which had before arrested his attention, were all sunk and lost sight of in this. After each and every of his visits to it he returned dejected and cast down with the conviction of his own ignorance and white man's superior skill. He wished very much to see the great man who made all those wonderful preparations of diseases, and the astonishing models in wax, as he would be so proud to offer him his hand; but, being informed that he had been dead for many years, he seemed sad that there was no way of paying him the tribute of his praise. Their exhibitions, which were given nightly, as they had been given in the Egyptian Hall, were nightly explained by me in the same way, and fully and fashionably attended. The same kind of excitement was repeated--speeches were made, and rounds of applause--young ladies falling in love--Indians' talks at night, and their suppers of beef-steaks and _chickabobboo_. Another present of Bibles, equal in number to the number of Indians, was handed on to the platform from an unknown hand, and each one had the Indian name of its owner handsomely written in its front. Scarcely a day or an evening passed but they received more or less Bibles from the hands of the kind and Christian people who were witnessing their amusements or inviting them to their houses; and from the continued access to their stock during their whole career, together with toys, with cloths and knives, and other presents, their baggage was becoming actually of a troublesome size. In taking their daily drives about town they had several times passed through some of the most populous and at the same time impoverished parts of the city; and the great numbers of poor and squalid-looking and barefooted creatures they saw walking in the snow had excited their deepest pity, and they had got in the daily habit of throwing pennies to them as they passed along. The numbers of the ragged poor that they saw there they represented as surpassing all they had seen in their whole travels. They inquired whether there were any poor-houses there, and, being informed that there were a number, and all full, they seemed to be yet even more surprised. They were in the habit daily, until Mr. Melody and myself decided it was best to check it, of each getting some shillings changed into pennies before they started on their ride, to scatter among the poor that they passed. Their generosity became a subject so well known in a few days, that their carriage was followed to their door, where gangs of beggars were stationed great part of the day to get their pennies "when the savages went out." Some pounds of their money they thus threw out into the streets of this great and splendid city, in spite of all we could do to prevent them. Our apprehensions were now becoming very great, and of course very painful, for the fate of the poor _Roman Nose_: he seemed daily to be losing flesh and strength, and one of the most distinguished physicians, who was attending on him, pronounced his disease to be pulmonary consumption. This was the first decided alarm we had about him, and still it was difficult to believe that so fine and healthy a looking man as he appeared but a few months before should be thus rapidly sinking down with such a disease. He was able to be walking and riding about, but was weak, and took no part in the exhibitions. About this time, as I was entering the Indians' room one morning, I met two gentlemen coming down the stairs, who recognised me, and said they had proposed to the interpreter and the Indians to have had a little time with them to talk upon the subjects of religion and education, and to know whether missionaries could not be sent into their country to teach and christianise them; and they were afraid they might not have been understood, for they were answered that the Indians did not wish to see them. At that moment Jeffrey was coming up the stairs, and, as it could not have been him whom they saw, I presumed it might have been Daniel who refused them admittance, as he might have been unable to understand the Indians. Jeffrey told them that they had got almost tired of talking with so many in London, but still they could go up, and the Indians, he thought, would be glad to see them. Mr. Melody happened at the moment to be passing also, and he invited them up. They were introduced to the Indians and their object explained by Jeffrey. The War-chief then said to them, as he was sitting on the floor in a corner of the room, that he didn't see any necessity of their talking at all, for all they would have to say they had heard from much more intelligent-looking men than they were, in London, and in other places, and they had given their answers at full length, which _Chippehola_ had written all down. "Now, my friends," said he, "I will tell you that when we first came over to this country we thought that where you had so many preachers, so many to read and explain the good book, we should find the white people all good and sober people; but as we travel about we find this was all a mistake. When we first came over we thought that white man's religion would make all people good, and we then would have been glad to talk with you, but now we cannot say that we like to do it any more." ('_How, how, how!_' responded all, as Jim, who was then lying on a large table, and resting on one elbow, was gradually turning over on to his back, and drawing up his knees in the attitude of speaking.) The War-chief continued:-- "My friends--I am willing to talk with you if it can do any good to the hundreds and thousands of poor and hungry people that we see in your streets every day when we ride out. We see hundreds of little children with their naked feet in the snow, and we pity them, for we know they are hungry, and we give them money every time we pass by them. In four days we have given twenty dollars to hungry children--we give our money only to children. We are told that the fathers of these children are in the houses where they sell fire-water, and are drunk, and in their words they every moment abuse and insult the Great Spirit. You talk about sending _black-coats_ among the Indians: now we have no such poor children among us; we have no such drunkards, or people who abuse the Great Spirit. Indians dare not do so. They pray to the Great Spirit, and he is kind to them. Now we think it would be better for your teachers all to stay at home, and go to work right here in your own streets, where all your good work is wanted. This is my advice. I would rather not say any more." (To this all responded '_How, how, how!_') Jim had evidently got ready to speak, and showed signs of beginning; but White-cloud spoke to him, and wished him not to say anything. It was decided by these gentlemen at once to be best not to urge the conversation with them; and Mr. Melody explained to them the number of times they had heard and said all that could be said on the subject while in London, and that they were out of patience, and of course a little out of the humour for it. These gentlemen, however, took great interest in them, and handed to each of the chiefs a handsome Bible, impressing upon them the importance of the words of the Great Spirit, which were certainly all contained in them, and which they hoped the Indians might have translated to them. And as I was descending the stairs with them, one of them said to me that he never in his life heard truer remarks, or a lesson that more distinctly and forcibly pointed out the primary duties of his profession. A few days more, the incidents of which I need not name, finished our visit to the city of Glasgow; and an hour or more by the railway, along the banks of the beautiful Clyde, and passing Dumbarton Castle, landed us in the snug little town of Greenock, from which we were to take steamer to Dublin. The Indians gave their dances and other amusements there for three or four evenings before we took leave. They were looked upon there as great curiosities, but scarcely formed any acquaintances or attachments, except in one branch of our concern. All were anxious to leave and be on the way to Dublin, except the Doctor, who thought it was bad policy to leave so quick; and though he got on to the steamer with all the rest, he did it very reluctantly, without assigning any reason for it until we were on the voyage, when he acknowledged to Daniel that the reason why he disliked to leave so soon was, that "one of the little maids in the hotel where they lodged used to come in every night, after all were asleep, and lie by the side of him on his buffalo robe." For this simple acknowledgment all seemed rather to sympathise with the polite old gentleman; but it was now too late for a remedy, for we were near to the desired city of Dublin. CHAPTER XXIV. Arrival in Dublin--Decline of the _Roman Nose_--Exhibition in the Rotunda--Feast of ducks--First drive--Phoenix Park--Stags--Indians' ideas of game-laws and taxes--Annual expenses of British government--National debt--Daniel enters these in Jim's book--Indians called "Irishmen"--Author's reply--Speech of the War-chief--Jim's rapid civilization--New estimates for his book--Daniel reads of "Murders, &c.," in Times newspaper--Jim subscribes for the Times--Petition of 100,000 women--Society of Friends meet the Indians in the Rotunda--Their advice, and present to the chiefs 40_l._--Indians invited to Zoological Gardens--Presented with 36_l._--Indians invited to Trinity College--Conversation with the Rev. Master on religion--Liberal presents--They visit the Archbishop of Dublin--Presents--All breakfast with Mr. Joseph Bewly, a Friend--Kind treatment--Christian advice--Sickness of _Roman Nose_--Various entertainments by the Friends--A curious beggar--Indians' liberality to the poor--Arrival at Liverpool--Rejoicing and feast--Council--_Roman Nose_ placed in an hospital--Arrival in Manchester--Exhibition in Free Trade Hall--Immense platform--Three wigwams--Archery--Ball-play, &c.--Great crowds--_Bobasheela_ arrives--Death of the _Roman Nose_--Forms of burial, &c. In Dublin, where we arrived on the 4th of March, after an easy voyage, comfortable quarters were in readiness for the party, and their breakfast soon upon the table. The Indians, having heard that there were many of "the good people" (the Friends) in Dublin, and having brought letters of introduction to some of them, had been impatient to reach that city; and their wish being successfully and easily accomplished, they now felt quite elated and happy, with apparently but one thing to depress their spirits, which was the continued and increasing illness of the _Roman Nose_. He was gradually losing flesh and strength, and getting now a continual fever, which showed the imminent danger of his condition. He had the ablest medical advice that the city could afford, and we still had some hopes of his recovery. Rooms had been prepared for the exhibitions of the Indians in the Rotunda, and, on the second night after their arrival, they commenced with a respectable audience, and all seemed delighted and surprised with their picturesque effect. There was much applause from the audience, but no speeches from the Indians, owing to their fatigue, or to the fact that they had not yet rode about the city to see anything to speak about. They returned from their exhibition to their apartments, and after their supper they were happy to find that their beef-steaks were good, and that they had found again the _London chickabobboo_. A very amusing scene occurred during the exhibition, which had greatly excited the Indians, though they had but partially understood it, and now called upon me to explain it to them. While speaking of the modes of life of the Ioway Indians, and describing their way of catching the wild horses on the prairies, a dry and quizzical-looking sort of man rose, and, apparently half drunk, excited the hisses of the audience whilst he was holding on to the end of a seat to steady him. It was difficult to get him down, and I desired the audience to listen to what he had to say. "Ee--you'l escuse me, sir, to e--yax e--yif you are ye man woo was lecturing e--year some time see--ynce, e--on ther Yindians and the--r wild e--yorses? --e--(hic)--e--and the--r breathin, he--(hic)--e--in thee--ir noses?" The excessive singularity of this fellow set the whole house in a roar of laughter, and all felt disposed to hear him go on. "Yes," I replied, "I am the same man." "Ee--e--r wal, sir, e--yerts all--(hic), e--yits all gammon, sir, e--yer, y--ers, (hic) yers tried it on two fillies, sir, e--yand--(hic) yand it didn't se--seed, sir." The poor fellow, observing the great amusement of the ladies as he looked around the room was at once disposed to be a little witty, and proceeded--"Ee--(hic)--ye--yer tried it e--yon se--rl _young ladies_, e--yand (hic) se--seded yerry well!" The poor fellow seemed contented with his wit thus far rather than try to proceed further; and he sat down amidst the greatest possible amusement of the audience, many of whom, notwithstanding, did not seem to understand his meaning, when I deemed it necessary to explain that he referred to my account of Indians breaking wild horses by breathing in their noses, which it would seem he had tried in vain, but by experimenting on young ladies he had met with great success.[34] [34] See English experiments in breaking horses by the Indian mode. Appendix B. The Indians had become very much attached to Daniel, who had been so long a companion and fellow-traveller with them, and felt pleasure with him that he was again upon his native soil. He had described to them that they were now in a different country again, and they resolved to have their necessary feast of ducks the next morning for breakfast, so as not to interfere with their drive, in which they were to open their eyes to the beauties of Dublin, when Daniel was to accompany them, and explain all that they saw. They invited him to the feast, and thought it as well to call upon him now as at a future time for the bottle or two of the _Queen's chickabobboo_ (champagne) which he had agreed to produce when he got on to his native shore again. Nothing more of course could be seen until their feast was over, and they were all in their buss as usual, with four horses, which was ready and started off with them at ten o'clock the next morning. The Doctor, in his familiar way, was alongside of the driver, with his buffalo horns and eagle crest, and his shining lance, with his faithful companion Jim by his side, and they caused a prodigious sensation as they were whirled along through the principal streets of Dublin. One may think at first glance that he can appreciate all the excitement and pleasure which the Doctor took in those drives, taking his first survey of the shops and all the curious places he was peeping into as he rode along; but on a little deliberation they will easily see that his enjoyment might have been much greater than the world supposed who were gazing at him, without thinking how much there was under his eye that was novel and exciting to a savage from the wilderness. After passing through several of the principal streets they were driven to the Phoenix Park, where they left their carriage, and, taking a run for a mile or two, felt much relieved and delighted with the exercise. The noble stags that started up and were bounding away before them excited them very much, and they were wishing for their weapons which they had left behind. However, they had very deliberately and innocently agreed to take a regular hunt there in a few days, and have a saddle or two of venison, but wiser Daniel reminding them of the _game-laws_ of this country, of which they had before heard no account, knocked all their sporting plans on the head. Nothing perhaps astonished them since they came into the country more than the idea that a man is liable to severe punishment by the laws, for shooting a deer, a rabbit, or a partridge, or for catching a fish out of a lake or a river, without a licence, for which he must pay a tax to the government, and that then they can only shoot upon certain grounds. The poor fellows at first treated the thing as ridiculous and fabulous; but on being assured that such was the fact, they were overwhelmed with astonishment. "What!" asked one of them, "if a poor man is hungry and sees a fine fish in the water, is he not allowed to spear it out and eat it?" "No," said Daniel, "if he does, he must go to jail, and pay a heavy fine besides. A man is not allowed to keep a gun in his house without paying a tax to the government for it, and if he carries a weapon in his pocket he is liable to a fine." "Why is that?" "Because they are afraid he will kill somebody with it." "What do you call a tax?" said Jim. "Let that alone," said Daniel, "until we get home, and then I will tell you all about it." Here was a new field opening to their simple minds for contemplation upon the beautiful mysteries and glories of civilization, in which a few hours of Daniel's lectures would be sure to enlighten them. They dropped the subject here however, and took their carriage again for the city and their lodgings, laughing excessively as they were returning, and long after they got back, at cabs they were constantly passing, which they insisted on it had got turned around, and were going sideways.[35] When they had returned and finished their first remarks about the curious things they had seen, Daniel began to give them some first ideas about taxes and fines which they had inquired about, and which they did not as yet know the meaning of. He explained also the game-laws, and showed them that in such a country as England, if the government did not protect the game and the fish in such a manner, there would soon be none left, and, as it was preserved in such a way, the government made those who wished to hunt or to fish, pay a sum of money to help meet the expenses of the government, and he explained the many ways in which people pay taxes. "All of this," said he, "goes to pay the expenses of the government, and to support the Queen and royal family." He read to them from a newspaper that the actual cost of supporting the royal family and attendants was 891,000_l._ sterling (4,455,000 dollars) per annum; that the Queen's pin-money (privy purse) is 60,000_l._ (300,000 dollars); the Queen's coachmen, postilions, and footmen 12,550_l._ (62,750 dollars). [35] Only to be appreciated by those who have seen the Dublin "cars." He read from the same paper also that the expenses of the navy were 5,854,851_l._ (being about 29,274,255 dollars) per annum, and that the expenses of the army were still much greater, and that these all together form but a part of the enormous expenses of the government, which must all be raised by taxes in different ways, and that the people must pay all these expenses at last, in paying for what they eat and drink and wear, so much more than the articles are worth, that a little from all may go to the government to pay the government's debts. He also stated that, notwithstanding so much went to the government, the nation was in debt at this time to the amount of 764,000,000_l._ (3,820,000,000 dollars). This was beyond all their ideas of computation, and, as it could not be possibly appreciated by them, Daniel and they had to drop it, as most people do (and as the _country_ probably _will_ before it is paid), as a mystery too large for just comprehension. Jim wanted these estimates down in his book however, thinking perhaps that he might some time be wise enough to comprehend them or find some one that could do it. And when Daniel had put them down, he also made another memorandum underneath them to this effect, and which astonished the Indians very much--"The plate that ornamented the sideboard at the banquet at the Queen's nuptials was estimated at 500,000_l._ (2,500,000 dollars)." By the time their statistics had progressed thus far their dinner was ready, which was a thing much more simple to comprehend, and consequently more pleasing to them; so their note-book was shut, and taxes and game-laws and national debt gave way to roast-beef and _chickabobboo_. Their drive through the city had tended to increase the curiosity to see them, and their exhibition-room on the second night was crowded to excess. This was sure to put the Indians into the best of humour; and seeing in different parts of the room quite a number of Friends, gave them additional satisfaction. In a new country again, and before so full and fashionable an audience, I took unusual pains to explain the objects for which these people had come to this country, their personal appearance, and the modes they were to illustrate. When I had got through, and the Indians were sitting on the platform and smoking their pipe, a man rose in the crowd and said, "That's all gammon, sir!--these people are not Indians. I have seen many Indians, sir, and you can't hoax me!" Here the audience hissed, and raised the cry of "Put him out!--shame!" &c. I stepped forward, and with some difficulty got them silent, and begged they would let the gentleman finish his remarks, because, if they were fairly heard and understood, they might probably add much to the amusements of the evening. So he proceeded: "I know this to be a very great imposition, and I think it is a pity if it is allowed to go on. I have seen too many Indians to be deceived about them. I was at Bombay six years, and after that at Calcutta long enough to know what an Indian is. I know that their hair is always long and black, and not red: I know that these men are _Irishmen_, and painted up in this manner to gull the public. There's one of those fellows I know very well--I have seen him these three years at work in M'Gill's carpenter's shop, and saw him there but a few days ago; so I pronounce them but a raw set, as well as impostors!" When he sat down I prevented the audience from making any further noise than merely laughing, which was excessive all over the room. I said that "to contradict this gentleman would only be to repeat what I had said, and I hoped at least he would remain in the room a few minutes until they would execute one of their dances, that he might give his opinion as to my skill in teaching 'raw recruits' as he called them." The Indians, who had been smoking their pipes all this time without knowing what the delay had been about, now sprang upon their feet and commenced the war-dance; all further thoughts of "imposition" and "raw recruits" were lost sight of here and for the rest of the evening. When their dance was done they received a tremendous roar of applause, and after resting a few minutes the Doctor was on his feet, and evidently trying very hard in a speech to make a sensation (as he had made on the first night in London) among the ladies. Jeffrey interpreted his speech; and although it made much amusement, and was applauded, still it fell very far short of what his eloquence and his quizzical smiles and wit had done on the former occasion. Being apprehensive also of Jim's cruel sarcasms when he should stop, and apparently in hopes, too, of still saying something more witty, he, unfortunately for its whole effect, continued to speak a little too long after he had said his best things; so he sat down (though in applause) rather dissatisfied with himself, and seemed for some time in a sort of study, as if he was trying to recollect what he had said, a _peculiarity possibly_ belonging to Indian orators. When the Doctor had finished, all arose at the sound of the war-whoop given by the War-chief, and they gave with unusual spirit the discovery dance, and after that their favourite, the eagle dance. The finish of this exciting dance brought rounds of deafening applause and "bravo!" in the midst of which the War-chief arose, and, throwing his buffalo robe around him, said,-- "My friends--We see that we are in a new city, a strange place to us, but that we are not amongst enemies, and this gives us great pleasure. ('_How, how, how!_' and 'Hear, hear.') "My friends--It gives me pleasure to see so many smiling faces about us, for we know that when you smile you are not angry; we think you are amused with our dancing. It is the custom in our country always to thank the Great Spirit first. He has been kind to us, and our hearts are thankful that he has allowed us to reach your beautiful city, and to be with you to-night. ('_How, how, how!_') "My friends--Our modes of dancing are different from yours, and you see we don't come to teach you to dance, but merely to show you how the poor Indians dance. We are told that you have your dancing-masters; but the Great Spirit taught us, and we think we should not change our mode. ('_How, how, how!_') "My friends--The interpreter has told us that some one in the room has said we were not Indians--that we were _Irishmen_! Now we are not in any way angry with this man; if we _were_ Irishmen, we might be perhaps. ('Hear, hear.' 'Bravo!') "My friends--We are rather sorry for the man than angry; it is his ignorance, and that is perhaps because he is too far off: let him come nearer to us and examine our skins, our ears, and our noses, full of holes and trinkets--Irishmen don't bore their noses. (Great laughter, and 'Bravo!') "My friends--Tell that man we will be glad to see him and shake hands with him, and he will then be our friend at once." ("Bravo!" and cries of "Go, go!" from every part of the room: "You _must_ go!") The gentleman left his seat upon this in a very embarrassed condition, and, advancing to the platform, shook the War-chief and each one of the party by the hand, and took a seat near to them for the rest of the evening, evidently well pleased with their performances, and well convinced that they were not Irishmen. After this the Indians proceeded by giving several other dances, songs, &c.; and when it was announced that their amusements for the evening were finished, they seated themselves on the edge of the platform to meet those who desired to give them their hands. Half an hour or so was spent in this ceremony, during which time they received many presents, and, what to them was more gratifying, they felt the affectionate hands of a number of the "good people" they were so anxious to meet, and who they saw were taking a deep interest in their behalf already. They returned to their apartments unusually delighted with their reception, and, after their supper and _chickabobboo_, Jim had some dry jokes for the Doctor about his speech; assuring him that he never would "go down" with the Irish ladies--that his speech had been a decided failure--and that he had better hereafter keep his mouth entirely shut. They had much merriment also about the "mistake the poor man had made in calling them Irishmen," and all applauded the War-chief for the manner in which he had answered him in his speech. The Indians in their drive during the morning had observed an unusual number of soldiers in various parts of the city, and, on inquiring of Daniel why there were so many when there was no war and no danger, they learned to their great surprise that this country, like the one they had just left, had been subjugated by England, and that a large military force was necessary to be kept in all the towns to keep the people quiet, and to compel them to pay their taxes to the government. They thought the police were more frequent here also than they had seen them in London, and laughed very much at their carrying clubs to knock men down with. They began to think that the Irish must be very bad people to want so many to watch them with guns and clubs, and laughed at Daniel about the wickedness of his countrymen. He endeavoured to explain to them, however, that, if they had to work as hard as the Irishmen did, and then had their hard earnings mostly all taken away from them, they would require as strong a military force to take care of them as the Irish did. His argument completely brought them over, and they professed perfectly to understand the case; and all said they could see why so many soldiers were necessary. The police, he said, were kept in all the towns, night and day, to prevent people from stealing, from breaking into each other's houses, from fighting, and from knocking each other down and taking away their property. The insatiate Jim then conceived the idea of getting into his book the whole number of soldiers that were required in England, Scotland, and Ireland to keep the people at work in the factories, and to make them pay their taxes; and also the number of police that were necessary in the different cities and towns to keep people all peaceable, and quiet, and honest. Daniel had read to them only a day or two before an article in the 'Times' newspaper, setting forth all these estimates, and, being just the thing he wanted, copied them into his book. The reader sees by this time that, although Jim's looks were against him, as an orator or lecturer, when he should get back to his own country--and also that though his imagination could not take its wings until he was flat upon his back--still that he was, by dint of industry and constant effort, preparing himself with a magazine of facts which were calculated to impress upon the simple minds of the people in his country the strongest proofs of the virtue and superior blessings of civilization. These people had discernment enough to see that such an enormous amount of soldiers and police as their list presented them would not be kept in pay if they were not necessary. And they naturally put the question at once--"What state would the country be in if the military and police were all taken away?" They had been brought to the zenith of civilization that they might see and admire it in its best form; but the world who read will see with me that they were close critics, and _agree_ with me, I think, that it is almost a pity they should be the teachers of such statistics as they are to teach to thousands yet to be taught in the wilderness. As I have shown in a former part of this work, I have long since been opposed to parties of Indians being brought to this country, believing that civilization should be a gradual thing, rather than open the eyes of these ignorant people to all its mysteries at a glance, when the mass of its poverty and vices alarms them, and its luxuries and virtues are at a discouraging distance--beyond the reach of their attainment. Daniel was at this time cutting a slip from the 'Times,' which he read to Jim; and it was decided at once to be an admissible and highly interesting entry to make, and to go by the side of his former estimates of the manufacture and consumption of _chickabobboo_. The article ran thus:--"The consumption of ardent spirits in Great Britain and Ireland in the last year was 29,200,000 gallons, and the Poor Law Commissioners estimate the money annually spent in ardent spirits at 24,000,000_l._ (120,000,000 dollars); and it is calculated that 50,000 drunkards die yearly in England and Ireland, and that one-half of the insanity, two-thirds of the pauperism, and three-fourths of the crimes of the land are the consequences of drunkenness." This, Jim said, was one of the best things he had got down in his book, because he said that the _black-coats_ were always talking so much about the Indians getting drunk, that it would be a good thing for him to have to show; and he said he thought he should be able, when they were about to go home, to get _Chippehola_[36] to write by the side of it that fourteen Ioways were one year in England and never drank any of this _fire-water_, and were never drunk in that time. [36] The Author. Daniel and Jeffrey continued to read (or rather Daniel to read, and Jeffrey to interpret) the news and events in the 'Times,' to which the Indians were all listening with attention. He read several amusing things, and then of a "_Horrid murder!_" _a man had murdered his wife and two little children_. He read the account; and next--"_Brutal Assault on a Female!_"--"_A Father killed by his own Son!_"--"_Murder of an Infant and Suicide of the Mother!_"--"_Death from Starvation!_"--"_Execution of Sarah Loundes for poisoning her Husband!_"--"_Robbery of 150l. Bank of England Notes!_" &c. &c. They had read so many exciting things in one paper, and were but half through the list, when Jim, who had rolled over on his back and drawn up his knees, as if he was going to say something, asked how much was the price of that newspaper; to which Daniel replied that there was one printed each day like that, and the price fivepence each. "Well," said Jim, "I believe everything is in that paper, and I will give you the money to get it for me every day. Go to the man and tell him I want one of every kind he has: I will take them all home with me, and I will some time learn to read them all." A clever idea entered (or originated in) the heavy brain of Jim at this moment. He went to a box in the corner of the room, from which he took out, and arranged on the floor, about twenty handsomely-bound Bibles, when he made this memorable and commercial-like vociferation, in tolerably plain English: "I guess em swap!" He had been much amused with several numbers of 'Punch,' which he had long pored over and packed away for amusement on the prairies; and believing that his plan for "swapping" would enable him to venture boldly, he authorized Daniel to subscribe for Punch also, provided Punch would take Bibles for pay. Daniel assured him that that would be "no go," as he thought Punch would not care about Bibles; but told him that he would at all events have the 'Times' for him every morning, as he wished, and was now going to read to them a very curious thing that he had got his thumb upon, and commenced to read:-- "Lord R. Grosvenor and Mr. Spooner attended yesterday at the Home-office with Sir George Grey to present a memorial to the Queen from the women of England, signed by 100,000, praying that the bill for preventing trading in seduction may pass into a law. The following is a copy of the petition:-- "'TO THE QUEEN. "'We, the undersigned women of Great Britain and Ireland, placed by Divine Providence under the sway of the British Sceptre, which God has committed to your Majesty's hands, most humbly beg leave to make known to our beloved Sovereign the heavy and cruel grievance that oppresses a large portion of the female population of the realm. A system exists, by which not only are undue facilities and temptations held out to the immoral, the giddy, and the poor, to enter upon a life of infamy, degradation, and ruin, but unwary young females and mere children are frequently entrapped, and sold into the hands of profligate libertines. Agents are sent into the towns and villages of the United Kingdom, whose ostensible object is to engage young girls for domestic service, or other female employments, but whose real design is to degrade and ruin them. Female agents are also employed in London and many of our large towns to watch the public conveyances, and decoy the simple and inexperienced into houses of moral pollution and crime, by offers of advice or temporary protection. By such and other means the entrapping of innocent young women is reduced to a regular trade, the existence of which is, in the highest degree, discreditable to the nation. Despite the efforts of right-minded men and of benevolent institutions to suppress, by means of the existing laws, this vile trade in female innocence, thousands of the most helpless of your Majesty's subjects are annually destroyed, both in body and soul. We therefore appeal to your Majesty, beseeching you to extend your Royal protection around the daughters of the poor, by promoting such vigorous laws as the wisdom of your Majesty's counsellors may see good to devise, and thereby deliver your Majesty's fair realm from a system of profligacy so offensive to Almighty God, and so fatal to the personal, social, temporal, and spiritual well-being of the women of England.'" "Fish! fish!" exclaimed Jim, as Daniel finished reading. Some laughed excessively, and the poor Indian women groaned; but Jim, lying still on his back, and of course his ideas circulating freely, roared out again "_Fish! fish! chickabobboo! money! money!_--put that all in my book." Daniel said, "There is no need of that, for it is in your paper, which is all the same, and I will mark a black line around it." "Then be careful not to lose the paper," said Jim, "for I like that very much: I'll show that to the _black-coats_ when I get home." Thus the talk of that night had run to a late hour, and I took leave. The next morning I received two invitations for the Indians, both of which were calculated to give them great pleasure: the one was an invitation to visit the Zoological Gardens, then in their infant but very flourishing state, when the directors very kindly proposed to admit the public by shilling tickets, and to give the receipts to the Indians. This, therefore, was very exciting to their ambition; and the other invitation was equally or more so, as it was from several gentlemen of the Society of Friends, who proposed that, as there were a great many of that society in Dublin, and who all felt a deep interest in the welfare of the Indians, but who had, many of them, a decided objection to attend their war-dances, &c., they should feel glad to meet them at some hour that might be appointed, in their exhibition room, for the purpose of forming an acquaintance with them, and of having some conversation with them on the subject of education, agriculture, &c., with a view to ascertain in what way they could best render them some essential service. This invitation was embraced by the Indians with great pleasure, and at the time appointed they met about one hundred ladies and gentlemen, all of that society, to whom I introduced them by briefly explaining their objects in visiting this country, their modes of life, their costumes, &c. After that, several ladies, as well as gentlemen, asked them questions relative to their religious belief and modes of worship; to all of which the War-chief answered in the most cheerful manner; and, as he constantly replied with appeals to the Great Spirit, who, he said, directed all their hearts, they all saw in him a feeling of reverence for the Great Spirit, which satisfied all that they were endowed with high sentiments of religion and devotion. Mr. Melody here stated that he had just received very interesting and satisfactory letters from the reverend gentlemen conducting a missionary school, which was prospering, in their tribe, parts of which letters he read, and also presented a small book already printed in the Ioway language by a printing-press belonging to the Missionary Society, and now at work at their mission. This gave great satisfaction to the visitors, who saw that these people had friends at home who were doing what they could to enlighten their minds. The friendly feelings of all present were then conveyed to them by several who addressed them in turn, expressing their deep anxiety for their worldly welfare and their spiritual good, and in the kindest and most impressive language exhorted them to temperance, to a knowledge of our Saviour, and to the blessings of education, which lead to it. They impressed upon their minds also the benefits that would flow from the abandonment of their hunters' life and warfare, and the adoption of agricultural pursuits. It was then stated that it was the object of the meeting to make them a present of something more than mere professions of friendship, and desired of me to ascertain what would be most useful and acceptable to them. The question being put to them, the White Cloud replied that "anything they felt disposed to give they would accept with thankfulness, but, as the question had been asked, he should say that _money_ would be preferable to anything else, for it was more easily carried, and when in America, and near their own country, they could buy with it what their wives and little children should most need." It was then proposed that a hat should be passed around, for the purpose, by which the sum of 40_l._ was received, and handed to the chief, to divide between them. Besides this very liberal donation, a number of beautifully-bound Bibles were presented to them, and several very kind and lovely ladies went to the shops, and returned with beautiful shawls and other useful presents for the women and children; and one benevolent gentleman, who had been of the meeting, and whose name I regret that I have forgotten, brought in with his own hands, a large trunk filled with pretty and useful things, which he took pleasure in dividing amongst them, and in presenting the trunk to the wife of the chief. Thus ended this very kind and interesting meeting, which the Indians will never forget, and which went far to strengthen their former belief that the "good people," as they called them, would be everywhere found to be their genuine friends. Their invitation to the Zoological Gardens was for the day following, and they were there highly entertained by the young men who were the founders of that institution. They met in those peculiarly beautiful grounds a great number of the fashionable ladies and gentlemen of Dublin; and, after an hour or two delightfully spent amongst them, received from the treasurer of the institution the sum of 36_l._, that had been taken at the entrance. Nothing could have been more gratefully received than were these two kind presents; nor could anything have afforded them more convincing proofs of the hospitality and kindness of the people they were amongst. The exhibitions at the Rotunda were continued on every evening, and the Indians took their daily ride at ten o'clock in the morning, seeing all that was to be seen in the streets and the suburbs of Dublin, and after their suppers and their _chickabobboo_ enjoyed their jokes and their pipe, whilst they were making their remarks upon the occurrences of the day, and listening to Daniel's readings of the 'Times' newspaper, to which the _Chemokemon_[37] (as they now called him), Jim, had become a subscriber. This boundless source of information and amusement, just now opened to their minds, was engrossing much of their time; and Daniel and Jeffrey were called upon regularly every night, after their suppers, to tell them all that was new and curious in the paper of the day; and Jim desired a daily entry in his book of the number of _murders_ and _robberies_ that appeared in it. All this Daniel, in his kindness, did for him, after reading the description of them; and in this way the ingenious Jim considered he had all things now in good train to enable him to enlighten the Indian races when he should get back to the prairies of his own country. [37] White man. Poor Jim, whose avarice began to dawn with his first steps towards civilization, and who, having his wife with him to add her share of presents to his, and was now getting such an accumulation of Bibles that they were becoming a serious item of luggage, related here a curious anecdote that occurred while he was in the Zoological Gardens:-- The Bibles they had received, and were daily receiving, as "the most valuable presents that could be made them," he had supposed must of course have some considerable intrinsic value; and he felt disposed, as he was now increasing his expenses, by taking the 'Times' newspaper and in other ways, to try the experiment of occasionally selling one of his bibles to increase his funds, and, on starting to go to the gardens, had put one in his pouch to offer to people he should meet in the crowd; and it seems he offered it in many cases, but nobody would buy, but one had been _given_ to him by a lady; so he came home with one more than he took; and he said to us, "I guess em no good--I no sell em, but I get em a heap." A very friendly invitation was received about this time from the President of Trinity College for the party to visit that noble institution, and Mr. Melody and myself took great pleasure in accompanying them there. They were treated there with the greatest possible kindness; and, after being shown through all its parts--its library, museum, &c.--a liberal collection was made for them amongst the reverend gentlemen and their families, and presented to them a few days afterwards. I took the War-chief and several of the party to visit the Archbishop of Dublin and his family, who treated them with much kindness, and presented to each a sovereign, as an evidence of the attachment they felt for them. This unexpected kindness called upon them for some expression of thanks in return; and the War-chief, after offering his hand to the Archbishop, said to him:-- "My friend, as the Great Spirit has moved your heart to be kind to us, I rise up to thank Him first, and then to tell you how thankful we feel to you for what your hand has given us. We are poor, and do not deserve this; but we will keep it, and it will buy food and clothing for our little children. "My friend, we are soon going from here, and we live a great way. We shall never see your face again in this world, but we shall hope that the Great Spirit will allow us to meet in the world that is before us, and where you and I must soon go." The Archbishop seemed much struck with his remarks; and, taking him again by the hand, said to him that he believed they would meet again in the world to come, and, commending them to the care of the Great Spirit, bade them an affectionate farewell. An invitation was awaiting them at this time, also, to breakfast the next morning with Mr. Joseph Bewley, a Friend, and who lived a few miles out of the city. His carriages arrived for them at the hour, and the whole party visited him and his kind family and took their breakfast with them. After the breakfast was over, the chief thanked this kind gentleman for his hospitality and the presents very liberally bestowed; and the party all listened with great attention to the Christian advice which he gave them, recommending to them also to lay down all their weapons of war, and to study the arts of peace. These remarks seemed to have made a deep impression on their minds, for they were daily talking of this kind man and the advice and information he gave them. Having finished our exhibitions by advertisement, but being detained a few days longer in Dublin than we expected by the illness of the _Roman Nose_, an opportunity was afforded the Indians to attend a number of evening parties, to which they were invited by families of the Society of Friends, and treated with the greatest kindness and attention. The Indians had thus formed their notions of the beautiful city of Dublin by riding through it repeatedly in all its parts--by viewing, outside and in, its churches, its colleges, its gardens, and other places of amusement; and of its inhabitants, by meeting them in the exhibition rooms, and in their own houses, at their hospitable boards. They decided that Edinburgh was rather the most beautiful city; that in Glasgow they saw the most ragged and poor; and that in Dublin they met the warmest-hearted and most kind people of any they had seen in the kingdom. In Dublin, as in Glasgow, they had been in the habit of throwing handfuls of pence to the poor; and at length had got them baited, so that gangs of hungry, ragged creatures were daily following their carriage home to their door, and there waiting under their windows for the pence that were often showered down upon their heads. Out of the thousands of beggars that _I_ met while there (and many of whom extracted money from my pocket by their wit or drollery when I was not disposed to give it), there was but one of whom I shall make mention in this place. In my daily walk from my hotel to the Rotunda, there was an old, hardy-looking veteran, who used often to meet me and solicit with great importunity, as I had encouraged him by giving to him once or twice when I first met him. I was walking on that pavement one day with an American friend whom I had met, and, observing this old man coming at some distance ahead of us on the same pavement, I said to my friend, "Now watch the motions of that old fellow as he comes up to beg--look at the expression of his face." When we had got within a few rods of him the old man threw his stomach in, and one knee in an instant seemed out of joint, and his face! oh, most pitiable to look upon. We approached him arm-in-arm, and while coming towards him I put my hand in my pocket as if I was getting out some money, which brought this extraordinary expression from him: "My kind sir, may the gates of Heaven open to receive you!"--(by this time we had got by him, and, seeing that my hand remained stationary in my pocket, as he had turned round and was scowling daggers at me)--"and may you be kicked out the moment you get there!" There is an inveteracy in the Irish begging and wit that shows it to be native and not borrowed; it is therefore more irresistible and more successful than in any other country perhaps in the world. I speak this, however, merely as an opinion of my own, formed on the many instances where the very reasons I assigned for not giving were so ingeniously and suddenly turned into irresistible arguments for giving, that my hand was in my pocket before I was aware of it. The Indians however gave from other motives; not able to appreciate their wit, they had discernment enough to see the wretchedness that existed among the poor people in the lanes and outskirts of the city, and too much pity in their hearts not to try with their money to relieve them; and in that way I fully believe that they gave a very considerable proportion of the money they had received since they entered the city. The symptoms of the poor _Roman Nose_, whose case was now decided to be almost hopeless, were a little more favourable, and it was agreed, with his united wish, that we should start for Liverpool by steamer; and on the morning when we went on board, the Indians were more strongly than ever confirmed in their belief that the Friends were the people who had taken the deepest interest in their welfare, by meeting nearly all they had seen in their numerous visits, down at the wharf, to shake hands with them, and wish them an everlasting farewell! Such proof as this, which brought even tears in their eyes, will be the last to be forgotten by them or by me, and should be the last to be overlooked in the public acknowledgment I am now making. Our voyage across the Channel was easy and pleasant; and amongst the numerous and fashionable people on board, poor Jim had the mortification of trying to test the intrinsic value of his numerous stock of Bibles by occasionally offering one that he carried in his pouch. "I no sell 'em--they no like 'em," was his reply again; and he began to doubt the value of them, which he was greatly disappointed to find they had fixed much above their market-price. On landing at the wharf in Liverpool the Indians recognised the spot where they first set their feet upon English soil, and they raised the yell (not unlike the war-whoop) which is given by war-parties when, returning from battle, they are able to see their own village. This gathered a great crowd in a few moments, that was exceedingly difficult to disperse, and it instilled new ambition and strength into the poor _Roman Nose_, who thought in his weakness that they were near home; but he rallied only to look out and realize that he was too far from his home ever to see it again. Lodgings had been prepared for them, to which they immediately repaired; and, as their sinking companion was so rapidly declining, they were all in sadness, though they tried, poor fellows, to be gay and cheerful. Their exhibitions had been advertised to commence, and they proceeded with them. Before they commenced, however, a feast was made to thank the Great Spirit for having conducted them quite around England to the place from whence they started, and also for the benefit of the health of their fellow-warrior, the _Roman Nose_. A council was also held, when Mr. Melody and I were called in, and by some it was proposed to start for home, and by others to go to Paris and see a King, as they had tried, but in vain, to see the Queen of England. A visit to Paris had been a favourite theme with them for some months past, and all at length joined in the wish to see the King and Queen of France. The most skilful physicians were called to attend the poor _Roman Nose_, and they advised us to place him in an hospital. He was consulted, and, wishing to go, was removed there, where the interpreter, Jeffrey, stayed, and every attention was paid him. A few nights of exhibitions in Liverpool finished our stay in that town, and brought us to an engagement we had made, for four nights, in the Free Trade Hall in Manchester. The Indians saw that their fellow-warrior was to sink to the grave in a few days, and yet, like philosophers, they said it was the will of the Great Spirit, and they must not complain. They said they would give their exhibitions for the four nights, as they were promised to the public, and then stop until their companion was dead and buried; our exhibitions were consequently made to immense crowds on those evenings, and to the same people who had seen the Ojibbeways with such a relish when they first arrived. The different appearance of this tribe, and difference in their modes, made them subjects of new and fresh interest, and no doubt that their exhibitions, if they had been continued, would have been nightly filled for a length of time. They here gave their exhibitions the additional interest of erecting three wigwams into a sort of Indian village on the immense platform, and stationed their targets at the two ends, giving a fair illustration of their skill in archery, as they shot for prizes across the breadth of the immense hall. Their exhibitions gained them much applause here, as in other places, with which they were well pleased, and they had many invitations from kind families in town, but which they declined, as they said they were sad, as one of their number was dying. Thus their amusements in Manchester, and for the kingdom, were finished, and they retired to their private apartments, awaiting the end of the poor _Roman Nose_, which was now daily expected. Mr. Melody and Jeffrey stayed by him, and I went to see him, and so did several of the Indians, on each day until his death. While the Indians were thus resting in their quarters, they were surprised and cheered by the sudden arrival of their old friend, _Bobasheela_, who had just come from Cornwall to see them again before their departure for America, as he supposed, from seeing by the papers that they had arrived in Liverpool. They thus amused themselves from day to day, lying still, not wishing to ride about, or to admit company, or to attend to the invitations from various quarters given to them. Their time was now chiefly taken up in repairing their dresses, &c., in anticipation of going before the King of France, and listening to the amusing and shocking things which Daniel was daily reading in Jim's newspaper, and minuting down in his note-book, as he required. He wished Daniel and his friend _Bobasheela_ to find in his paper, if they could, how many churches there were in England, and how many _black-coats_ (as he called them) there were who were constantly reading the good book and preaching to them. This they could not do at the moment, but _Bobasheela_ told him he could get it all out of a book that had lately been published, and would give it to him the next day. This was done according to promise, and by Daniel recorded in his book. _Bobasheela's_ anxieties were now turned towards the poor suffering _Roman Nose_, and he went to Liverpool to see him, and arrived with some of the Indians just in time to see him breathe his last. Alas! poor, fine fellow! he went down gradually and regularly to the grave; and though amongst strangers and far away from all of the graves of his relatives, he died like a philosopher, and (though not a Christian) not _unlike_ a Christian. He said repeatedly to Jeffrey that he should live but so many days, and afterwards so many hours, and seemed to be perfectly resigned to the change that was to take place. He said that his time had come; he was going to the beautiful hunting-grounds, where he would soon see his friends who had gone before him: he said that when he shut his eyes he could plainly see them, and he felt sure it was only to change the society of his friends here for that of his dear parents and other friends, and he was now anxious to be with them. He said the road might be long, but it did not matter where he started from; the Great Spirit had promised him strength to reach it. He told his friend _Bobasheela_ that in his pouch he would find some money, with which he wished him to buy some of the best vermilion, and, if possible, some green paint, such as _Chippehola_ used to get for him in London, and have them put in his pouch with his flint and steel, and to be sure to be placed in his grave, that he might be able to make his face look well among his friends where he was going. He wished him, and Daniel also, to have his arrows examined in his quiver, and repaired with new and sharp blades, as he recollected that, before he was sick, many of them were injured by shooting at the target, and during his illness others might have been destroyed. He had requested his silver medal, which was given to him by the American government for saving the lives of ten of his defenceless enemies, to be suspended by a blue ribbon over his head while he was sick, that he might see it until he died, and in that position it hung when I was last with him--his eyes were upon it, and his smile, until he drew his last breath. After his death his friend _Bobasheela_, and Jeffrey and the Doctor, laid him in his coffin, and, placing in it, according to the Indian mode, his faithful bow and quiver of arrows, his pipe and tobacco to last him through the "journey he was to perform," having dressed him in all his finest clothes, and painted his face, and placed his bow and quiver and his pouch by his side, and his medal on his breast, the coffin was closed, and his remains were buried, attended by his faithful friends around him, by the officers of the institution, and many citizens, who sympathized in his unlucky fate. Thus ended the career of _No-ho-mun-ya_ (or the Roman Nose), one of the most peaceable and well-disposed and finest men of the party, or of the tribe from which he came. The reader will now contemplate the Indians and their friend _Bobasheela_ again in their private rooms in Manchester, spending a week or so together, smoking their pipes, with their faces painted black, recounting the deeds of the vanished warrior, and recapitulating the events of their tour through England, Scotland, and Ireland, and trying to cheer the view that was ahead of them by drinking _chickabobboo_. These few days passed heavily by, and they soon became anxious to throw off the gloom that was cast over them, by seeing something new, and by resuming the exercise and excitements of the dance. Their thoughts were now on Paris, and I was there making arrangements for their reception. The reader will therefore, with my help, _imagine_ himself across the Channel (and probably for the first time in his life without being sea-sick), and ready to commence, with the Indians and me, amidst new scenes and new scenery, the following chapter. CHAPTER XXV. The Author arrives in Paris--Victoria Hotel--Mr. Melody and his Indians arrive--Doctor missing, and found on the top of the hotel--Alarm of servants--First drive in Paris--Visit to Mr. King, the American ambassador--French _chickabobboo_--M. Vattemare--Indians visit the Hôtel de Ville--Prêfet de police--Magnificent salons--The "big looking-glasses"--The Prêfet's lady--Refreshments and _chickabobboo_--Speech of the War-chief--Reply of the Prêfet--Salle Valentino taken for the exhibition--Daniel arrives with the Collection from London--Indians visit the King in the palace of the Tuileries--Royal personages--Conversation--War-chief presents the calumet--His speech to the King--Eagle-dance--War-dance--Little Wolf presents his tomahawk and whip to the King--His speech--Refreshments and "Queen's _chickabobboo_"--Drinking the King's and Queen's health, and health of the Count de Paris--"Vive le Roi"--Jim's opinion of the King--An Indian's idea of descents--Presents in money from the King--Mode of dividing it--A drive--Ladies leading dogs with strings--The number counted in one drive--The Indians' surprise--An entry for Jim's book--Jim laments the loss of the Times newspaper and _Punch_--He takes Galignani's Messenger--Indians dine at W. Costar's--The Doctor's compliment to a lady's fine voice--Indians visit the Royal Academy of Sciences--Curious reception--M. Arago--Indians' suspicions and alarms--Jim's remarkable speech--Opening of the exhibition in Salle Valentino--Great excitement--Speech of the War-chief--Shaking hands--Public opinion of the Author's Collection. Having long before resolved to take my collection to Paris before returning it to my own country, and the Indians being ambitious to see the King of the French, it was mutually agreed that my whole collection should be opened in Paris, and that their dances and other amusements should for a short time be given in it, as they had been given in London. Under this arrangement, with my wife and my four dear little children, I repaired to Paris as soon as possible, leaving Daniel to ship over and accompany my collection, whilst Mr. Melody conducted his party of Indians. In crossing the Channel, and receding from its shores, as I was seated on the deck of a steamer, I looked back, and, having for the first time nothing else to do, and a little time to reflect upon England, and what I had seen of it in five years, I took out of my pocket my little note-book, where I had entered, not what England is, and what she does (and which all the world knows), but the points in which her modes are different from those in my own country. I would have a few leisure hours to run over these curious entries, and time to reflect upon them, as we sailed along, and I began to read thus:-- "London, 1844. The essential Differences between England and the United States. "The United States much the largest; but England is a great deal older. "New-Yorkers cross the streets diagonally; the Londoners cross them at right angles. "In England the odd pennies are wrapped in a paper, and handed back with 'I thank you, Sir.' "Streets in London have tops and bottoms; in America they have upper and lower ends. "In England a man's wife is 'very bad;' in America, 'very ill;' and in France, 'bien malade.' "Americans 'turn to the _right_ as the law directs;' the English turn to the _left_. "English mutton and babies are much the fattest. "Gooseberries in England much the largest, but not so sweet. "Pigs in the American cities are seen promenading in the streets; in London, only seen hanging by their hind legs. "In England men are 'knocked up;' in America they are 'knocked down.' "'_Top-coats_' are very frequent in England, in America nothing is known higher than an '_over-coat_.' "In the United States a man is 'smart;' in England he is 'clever.' "English ladies are more luscious, but not quite so----" Just when I had read thus far, the steward tapped me on the shoulder and told me that "I was wanted below immediately, for my lady was very ill." I closed my book and ran below, where I found my poor wife and little family all dreadfully sick. I waited on them a while and got sea-sick myself. My musings on England and America were thus broken off; and from the time that we launched forth amidst the clatter upon a French wharf, I had as much as I could do to keep my little children and my luggage together, and all recollections of England and my native country vanished in the confusion and din that was around me in the new world we were entering upon. Custom-houses and railways and diligences have been a thousand times described, and I need say nothing of them, except that we got through them all, and into the _Victoria Hotel_, in Paris, where we found rest, fine beds, kind attentions, and enough to eat. A few days after my arrival in Paris, Mr. Melody made his appearance with his party of Ioways, for whom apartments were prepared in the same hotel, and after much fatigue and vexation the immense hall in Rue St. Honoré (Salle Valentino) was engaged as the place for their future operations. Daniel in the mean time was moving up with the Indian collection of eight tons weight, and in a few days all parties were on the ground, though there was to be some delay in arranging the numerous collection, and in getting the Indians introduced to the King, which was the first object. They had entered the city at a late hour at night, and for several days it had been impossible to attend to the necessary arrangements for driving them about; and they became excessively impatient to be on wheels again, to get a glimpse of the strange and beautiful things which they knew were about them. In the mean time they were taking all the amusement to themselves that they could get, by looking out of the windows; and their red and crested heads in Paris soon drew a crowd together in the streets, and thousands of heads protruding from the windows and house-tops. The Doctor soon found his way to the roof, and from that regaled his eyes, at an early hour, with a bird's-eye view of the boundless mystery and confusion of chimneys and house-tops and domes and spires that were around him. The servants in the house were at first alarmed, and the good landlady smiled at their unexpected appearance; and she roared with laughter when she was informed that the beds were all to be removed from their rooms, that they spread their own robes, and, in preference, slept upon the floor. All in the house, however, got attached to them in a few days, and all went pleasantly on. The first airing they took in Paris was in an omnibus with four, as they had been driven in London; but, to the old Doctor's exceeding chagrin, there was no seat for him to take outside by the side of the driver. He was easily reconciled however to his seat with the rest, and they thus soon had a glance at a number of the principal streets of the city, and were landed at the American Embassy, to pay their first respects to Mr. King, at that time the minister to France. They were received by Mr. King and his niece with great kindness; and after a little conversation, through the interpreter, Mr. King invited them to the table, loaded with cakes and fruit, and offered them a glass of wine, proposing their health, and at the same time telling them that, though he was opposed to encouraging Indians to drink, yet he was quite sure that a glass or two of the _vin rouge_ of the French would not hurt them. The colour of it seemed to cause them to hesitate a moment, while they were casting their eyes around upon me. They understood the nod of my head, and, hearing me pronounce it _chickabobboo_, took the hint and drank it off with great pleasure. Mr. Melody here assured Mr. King of the temperate habits of these people; and I explained to the party the origin and meaning of _chickabobboo_, which pleased them all very much. They partook of a second glass, and also of the cakes and fruit, and took leave, the War-chief having thanked Mr. King and his niece for their kindness, and having expressed his great pleasure at meeting so kind an American gentleman so far from home. The Indians were now in their omnibus again, and Mr. Melody and myself in our carriage, with a kind friend, Mons. A. Vattemare, who had obtained for the Indians an invitation to visit the _Hotel de Ville_, where we were now to drive. In this drive from St. Germain we recrossed the Seine by Pont Neuf, and had a fine view of all the bridges, and the palace of the Tuileries, and the Louvre. The omnibus stopped a moment on the middle of the bridge, and they were much excited by the view. A few minutes more brought us in front of the _Hotel de Ville_, where several thousands of people were assembled; it having been heard in the streets, in all probability, from the servants or police, that a party of savages were to be there at that hour. There was a great outcry when they landed and entered the hall, and the crowd was sure not to diminish whilst they were within. We were all presented to His Excellency the _Prêfet de Police_ by my friend Mons. Vattemare, and received with great kindness, and conducted through all the principal apartments of that noble edifice, which are finished and furnished in the most sumptuous style, and in richness of effect surpassing even the most splendid halls of the palaces of the Tuileries or St. Cloud. The gorgeousness of the carpets on which they stood, and the tapestry that was around them, and the incredible size of the mirrors that were reflecting them in a hundred directions, were subjects till then entirely new to them; and they seemed completely amazed at the splendour with which they were surrounded. From these splendid salons we were conducted into the _salle à manger_, and opportunely where the table was spread and the plates laid for a grand banquet. This was a lucky occurrence, affording us, as well as the Indians, an opportunity of seeing the richness of the plate upon which those elegant affairs are served up, and which but a choice few can ever behold. Retiring from and through this suite of splendid salons, we entered an antechamber, where we were presented to the elegant lady of the _Prêfet_ and several of their friends, who brought us to a table loaded with fruit and cakes and other refreshments, and wine of several sorts and the best in quality. The corks of several bottles of champagne were drawn, and, as the sparkling wine was running, each one smiled as he whispered the word _chickabobboo_. The _Prêfet_ drank their health in a glass of the "_Queen's chickabobboo_" as they called it, and then, with his own hand, presented each a handsome silver medal, and also one to Mr. Melody and myself. The War-chief by this time felt called upon for some acknowledgment on their part for this kind treatment, and, advancing to the _Prêfet_, shook hands with him, and addressed him thus:-- "My friend and father, your kindness to us this day makes our hearts glad, and we thank you for it. We are strangers here, and poor ignorant children from the wilderness. We came here with heavy hearts, having just buried one of our warriors, and your kindness has driven away our sorrow. ('_How, how, how!_') "My father, the splendour of the rooms, and other things you have just shown us, blind our eyes with their brightness, and we now see that white men can do anything. "My father, we were astonished at what we saw in London, where we have been, but we think your village is much the most beautiful. We thank the Great Spirit, who has opened your great house to us to-day, and also your lady, who has been kind to us. "My father, I have done." At the close of his speech the _Prêfet_ assured him of his kindly feelings towards them, and his anxiety for their welfare; and after a general shake of hands we took leave, and descended to the street, and, passing through a dense crowd, took our carriages and drove back to our hotel. Thus ended their first day's drive and visits in Paris, furnishing them with a rich fund for a talk after their dinner and _chickabobboo_, which was to be _vin rouge_ in Paris, instead of ale, which they had been in the habit of drinking in England. Nothing could exceed the exhilarated flow of spirits in which they returned, and the admiration they were expressing of the beauty of the city, and the splendour of the rooms they had been in. They were decided that they should be pleased with Paris; and as Palaces, Kings, and Queens were yet before them, they seemed to be perfectly happy. During their curious remarks on what they had seen, they already were saying that they had seen many thousands of people, and were glad that they saw nobody in rags or begging. They thought the French people all had enough to eat, and _that_, they said, was a great pleasure to them; for it made their hearts sore, when riding out, if they saw poor people, who had nothing to eat, as they had seen in some places. The Indians decided that the houses of Paris were much more beautiful than they had seen in any place; and they thought, from their cheerful looks, that either the people had their debts more paid up than the English people, or else that they had not so much money as to distress their looks for fear of losing it. We were all pleased with the appearance of Paris, and compelled to feel cheerful from the buoyant feelings that were displayed all around us. Like the Indians, I was pleased with the neat and cleanly appearance of the poorest in the streets, and surprised at the beauty and elegance of their houses, which want, in my estimation, but one more embellishment, which it would be quite easy to give, to render the effect of their streets more beautiful than words can describe. That would be, to paint their window-blinds green, which, by contrast, would make the walls appear more white and clean, and break with pleasing variety the white monotony that now prevails throughout. This first day's drive about the city had created a prodigious excitement and curiosity where they had gone, and given to the Indians just peep enough, amidst the beauties of Paris, to create a restlessness on both sides for a more familiar acquaintance, and which it had been thought most prudent to defer until they had made their visit to the Palace, for which their application had been made to the King by the American minister, and to which we were daily expecting a reply. In the mean time, Mr. Melody, and Jeffrey, and the Indians kept quiet, entertaining an occasional party of some American friends, or distinguished, personages, who were sending in their cards, and seeking interviews with them. During all this delay they had enough to amuse them, by talking of what they had already seen, and what they expected they were going to see, and cleaning and preparing their dresses for the great occasion. I, in the mean time, with my man Daniel, and others, was arranging my collection on the walls of the _Salle Valentino_; and, by the kind and friendly aid of Mons. Vattemare, obtaining my licence from the authorities, and also conforming to the other numerous and vexatious forms and ceremonies to be gone through before the opening of my exhibition to public view. The Minister of the Interior had kindly granted an order for the admission of my whole collection into the kingdom, by my paying merely a nominal duty, but there were still forms and delays to submit to in the customs, which were tedious and vexatious, but by the aid of my above-mentioned good friend, they had all been overcome; and my collection was now nearly ready for the public examination, when I received a letter from the American minister, informing me, that "on a certain day, and at a certain hour, His Majesty would see Mr. Catlin and Mr. Melody, with the Ioway Indians, in the Palace of the Tuileries." There was great rejoicing amongst the good fellows when they heard this welcome letter read, and several of them embraced me in their arms, as if I had been the sole cause of it. Their doubts were now at an end: it was certain that they should see the King of France, which, they said, "would be far more satisfactory, and a greater honour, than to have seen the Queen of England." Whatever the poor fellows thought, such was their mode of exultation. "The Ojibbeways," they said, "were subjects of the Queen, but we will be subjects of Louis Philippe." They had yet a few days to prepare, and even without their drives or company they were contented, as the time passed away, and they were preparing for the interview. On the morning of the day for their reception, the long stem of a beautiful pipe had been painted a bright blue, and ornamented with blue ribbons, emblematical of peace, to be presented by the chief to the King. Every article of dress and ornament had been put in readiness; and, as the hour approached, each one came out from his toilet, in a full blaze of colour of various tints, all with their wampum and medals on, with their necklaces of grizly bears' claws, their shields, and bows, and quivers, their lances, and war clubs, and tomahawks, and scalping knives. In this way, in full dress, with their painted buffalo robes wrapped around them, they stepped into the several carriages prepared for them, and all were wheeled into the _Place Carousel_, and put down at the entrance to the Palace. We were met on the steps by half a dozen huge and splendid looking porters, in flaming scarlet livery and powdered wigs, who conducted us in, and being met by one of the King's _aides-de-camp_, we were conducted by him into His Majesty's presence, in the reception hall of the _Tuileries_. The royal party were advancing towards us in the hall, and as we met them, Mr. Melody and myself were presented; and I then introduced the party, each one in person, according to his rank or standing, as the King desired. A sort of _conversazione_ took place there, which lasted for half an hour or more, in which I was called upon to explain their weapons, costumes, &c., and which seemed to afford great amusement to the royal personages assembled around and amongst us, who were--their Majesties the _King_ and the _Queen_, the _Duchess of Orleans_ and _Count de Paris_, the _Princess Adelaide_, the _Prince_ and _Princess de Joinville_, the _Duke_ and _Duchess d'Aumale_, and his _Royal Highness_ the _Duke de Brabant_. His Majesty in the most free and familiar manner (which showed that he had been accustomed to the modes and feelings of Indians) conversed with the chiefs, and said to Jeffrey, "Tell these good fellows that I am glad to see them; that I have been in many of the wigwams of the Indians in America when I was a young man, and they treated me every where kindly, and I love them for it.--Tell them I was amongst the Senecas near Buffalo, and the Oneidas--that I slept in the wigwams of the chiefs--that I was amongst the Shawnees and Delawares on the Ohio; and also amongst the Cherokees and Creeks in Georgia and Tennessee, and saw many other tribes as I descended the Ohio river the whole length, and also the Mississippi to New Orleans, in a small boat, more than fifty years ago." This made the Indians stare, and the women, by a custom of their country, placed their hands over their mouths, as they issued groans of surprise. "Tell them also, Jeffrey, that I am pleased to see their wives and little children they have with them here, and glad also to show them my family, who are now nearly all around me. Tell them, Jeffrey, that _this_ is the Queen; _this lady_ is my sister; _these_ are two of my sons, with their wives; and _these little lads_ [the _Count de Paris_ and the _Duc de Brabant_] are my grandsons; _this one_, if he lives, will be King of the Belgians, and _that one_ King of the French." [Illustration: N^o. 15.] The King then took from his pocket two large gold medals with his own portrait in relief on one side of them, and told me he wished to present them to the two chiefs with his own hand, and wished Jeffrey to explain to them, that after presenting them in that way, he wished them to hand them back to him that he might have a proper inscription engraved on them, when he would return them, and silver medals of equal size to each of the others, with their names engraved upon them. After the medals were thus presented and returned, the War-chief took out from under his robe the beautiful pipe which he had prepared, and advancing towards the King, and holding it with both hands, bent forward and laid it down at his Majesty's feet as a present. Having done so he reached down, and taking it up, placed it in his Majesty's hand (Plate No. 15), and then, assuming his proud attitude of the orator, addressed their Majesties in these words:-- "Great Father and Great Mother,--the Great Spirit, to whom we have a long time prayed for an interview with you, kindly listens to our words to-day and hears what we say. Great Father, you have made to us to-day rich presents, and I rise to return thanks to you for the chief and his warriors and braves who are present; but, before all, it is necessary that we should thank the Great Spirit who has inspired your heart and your hand thus to honour us this day. "Great Father, we shall bear these presents to our country and instruct our children to pronounce the name of him who gave them. "Great Father, when the Indians have anything to say to a great chief, they are in the habit of making some present before they begin. My chief has ordered me to place in your hands this pipe and these strings of wampum as a testimony of the pleasure we have felt in being admitted this day into the presence of your Majesty. "My Great Father and my Great Mother, you see us this day as we are seen in our country with our red skins and our coarse clothes. This day for _you_ is like all other days; for _us_ it is a great day--so great a day that our eyes are blinded with the lustre of it. "Great Father, the chief, myself, and our warriors have for a long time had the desire to come and see the French people, and our Great Father the President of the United States has given us permission to cross the Great Lake. We desired to see the Great Chief of this country, and we now thank the Great Spirit for having allowed us to shake the hand of the Great Chief in his own wigwam. "Great Father, we are happy to tell you that when we arrived in England, we had much joy in meeting our old friend Mr. Catlin, who has lived amongst us and whom we are happy to have here, as he can tell you who we are. "Great Father and Great Mother, we will pray to the Great Spirit to preserve your precious lives; we will pray also that we may return safe to our own village, that we may tell to our children and to our young men what we have seen this day. "My Parents, I have no more to say." When the War-chief had finished his speech, the King told Jeffrey to say that he felt very great pleasure in having seen them, and he hoped that the Great Spirit would guide them safe home to their country, to their wives and little children. The King and Royal Family then took leave; and as they were departing, some one of them being attracted to the Indian drum which Jeffrey had brought in his hand, and had left upon the floor in another part of the room, and inquiring what it was, was told that it was their _drum_ which they had brought with them, supposing it possible they might be called upon to give a dance. This information overtook the King, and he said, "By all means; call the Queen:" and in a few moments the august assembly were all back to witness the dance, for which purpose all parties moved to the _Salle du Bal_. Their Majesties and the ladies were seated, and the Indians all seating themselves in the middle of the floor, commenced moderately singing and beating the drum, preparatory to the Eagle Dance, in which they were in a few moments engaged. During this novel and exciting scene, her Majesty desired me to stand by the side of her to explain the meaning of all its features, which seemed to astonish and amuse her very much. The Doctor led off first in the character (as he called it) of a soaring eagle, sounding his eagle whistle, which he carried in his left hand, with his fan of the eagle's tail, while he was brandishing his lance in the other. At the first pause he instantly stopped, and, in the attitude of an orator, made his boast of an instance where he killed an enemy in single combat, and took his scalp. The Little Wolf, and _Wash-ka-mon-ya_, and others, then sprang upon their feet, and sounding their chattering whistles,[38] and brandishing their polished weapons, gave an indescribable wildness and spirit to the scene. When the dance was finished, the Indians had the pleasure of receiving their Majesties' applause, by the violent clapping of their hands, and afterwards by expressions of their pleasure and admiration, conveyed to them through the interpreter. [38] An ingenious whistle made to imitate the chattering of the soaring eagle, and used in the eagle dance. This was exceedingly gratifying to the poor fellows, who were now seated upon the floor to rest a moment previous to commencing with the war-dance, for which they were preparing their weapons, and in which the Little Wolf was to take the lead. For this, as the drum beat, he threw aside his buffalo robe and sprang upon the floor, brandishing his tomahawk and shield, and sounding the frightful war-whoop, which called his warriors up around him. Nothing could have been more thrilling or picturesque than the scene at that moment presented of this huge and terrible-looking warrior, frowning death and destruction on his brow, as he brandished the very weapons he had used in deadly combat, and, in his jumps and sudden starts, seemed threatening with instant use again! The floors and ceilings of the Palace shook with the weight of their steps, and its long halls echoed and vibrated the shrill-sounding notes of the war-whoop. (Plate No. 16.) In the midst of this dance, the Little Wolf suddenly brandished his tomahawk over the heads of his comrades, and, ordering them to stop, advanced towards the King, and boasting in the most violent exclamations of the manner in which he had killed and scalped a Pawnee warrior, placed in his Majesty's hands his _tomahawk_ and the _whip_ which was attached to his wrist, and then said,-- "My Great Father, you have heard me say that with that _tomahawk_ I have killed a Pawnee warrior, one of the enemies of my tribe; the blade of that tomahawk is still covered with his blood, which you will see. That whip is the same with which I whipped my horse on that occasion. "My Father, since I have come into this country I have learned that peace is better than war, and I '_bury the tomahawk_' in your hands--I fight no more." His Majesty deigned graciously to accept the arms thus presented, after having cordially shaken the hand of the Ioway brave. Their Majesties and attendants then withdrew, taking leave of the Indians in the most gracious and condescending manner, expressing their thanks for the amusement they had afforded them, and their anxiety for their welfare, directing them to be shown into the various apartments of the palace, and then to be conducted to a table of wine and other refreshments prepared for them. We were now in charge of an officer of the household, who politely led us through the various magnificent halls of the Palace, explaining every thing as we passed, and at length introduced us into a room with a long table spread and groaning under its load of the luxuries of the season, and its abundance of the "_Queen's chickabobboo_." These were subjects that required no explanations; and all being seated, each one evinced his familiarity with them by the readiness with which he went to work. The healths of the King and the Queen were drank, and also of the Count de Paris, and the rest of the Royal family. The _chickabobboo_ they pronounced "first-rate;" and another bottle being poured it was drank off, and we took our carriages, and, after a drive of an hour or so about the city, were landed again in our comparatively humble, but very comfortable, apartments. The party returning from the Tuileries found their dinner coming up, and little was said until it was over, and they had drank their _chickabobboo_, and seated themselves upon their buffalo robes, which were spread upon the floor, and lighted the pipe. I have before said that the pipe is almost indispensable with Indians, where there is to be any exertion of the mind in private conversation or public speaking, and that generally but one pipe is used, even in a numerous company, each one drawing a few whiffs through it, and passing it on into the hands of his next neighbour. In this manner they were now seated, and passing the pipe around as I came in, and took a seat with them. They were all quite merry at the moment by trying to sound the "_Vive le Roi!_" which I had taught them at the King's table when they were drinking his Majesty's health. It puzzled them very much, but the adept Jim took it directly, and as the rest found he had got it they seemed quite satisfied, thinking most probably that they could learn it at their pleasure. [Illustration: N^o. 16.] "Well, Jim," said I, "what do you think of the King, Louis Philippe?" He reached for the pipe, and taking a puff or two handed it to the Doctor, and rolling over on to his back, and drawing up his knees, said, "I think he is a great man and a very good man. I believe he is a much greater chief than the Queen of England, and that he governs his people much better, because we don't see so many poor people in the streets--we think that his people all have enough to eat. His wigwam is very grand and very bright, and his _chickabobboo_ the best that we have had. We did not see the King with his fine dress on, but as his servants all around him were beautifully dressed, like gentlemen, we know that the King and Queen must look very elegant when they are in full dress. We saw the King's two sons, and he told us that his grandson was to be the King when he dies--now we don't understand this!" It seemed that his teacher, Daniel, had overlooked the _doctrine of descents_ during their close investigations of the statistics and politics of England, and the poor fellow was yet quite in the dark to know "how a grandson (a mere child) would be taken in case of the King's death, instead of one of his sons, either of whom he said he thought would make a very good king if he would take a trip for a year or two, as his father did, on the Mississippi and Missouri, amongst the different tribes of Indians." This was considered a pretty clever thing for Jim to say, and it raised a laugh amongst the Indians; he was encouraged to go on, and turned his conversation upon the gold and silver medals, with which he was very much pleased. They were delighted with the idea that the King's portrait was on one side, and that he was to have their names engraved on the other; and they were not less delighted when I told them that the gentleman who had come in with me and was now sitting by my side, had come from the King to bear them some other token of his Majesty's attachment to them. The object of his visit being thus made known to them, he turned out into the lap of the chief 500 francs to be divided according to their custom. This of course put a stop to conversations about descents and Palaces, &c., for the time, and all went to counting until it was divided into thirteen parcels, one of which for the interpreter. Jeffrey, however, very kindly surrendered his share, and insisted that they should divide it all amongst themselves. It was accordingly made into twelve parcels, each one, old and young, taking an equal share, according to the Indian mode of dividing in all the tribes I have visited. The War-chief rose and addressed the young man who was commissioned to bear the present to them:-- "My Friend, we have seen your King (our Great Father) this day, and our hearts were made glad that we were allowed to see his face. We now receive the token of his friendship which he has sent through your hands, and our hearts are again glad. ('_How, how, how!_') "My Friend, we wish you to say to the King, our Great Father, that we are thankful for his kindness, and that we shall pray that the Great Spirit may be kind to him and his children. "My Friend, we are all much obliged to you, and we shall be glad to offer you the pipe with us. ('_How, how, how!_')" The pipe was passed a few times around, with some further anecdotes of their visit to the palace, when the messenger arose and took leave of them. In counting the money, Jim had lost his attitude, so there was little more of the sentimental from him, as the conversation was running upon the King's bounty, rather than his greatness, or the splendour of things they had seen during the day. From the liberal additions to their private purse while in Dublin, and by what they were now receiving, they were beginning to feel a little purse proud. Jim was talking of having a _brick house_ to live in when he got home, and the Doctor of heading a war party to go against the _Ojibbeways_. The War-chief told him he had better pay his debts first, and that he had slain enough in his own tribe, without going amongst his enemies for the purpose. The _Little Wolf_ was going to get money enough to buy thirty horses, and lead a war party against his old enemies, the _Pawnees_; but Mr. Melody reminded him that he was to go to war no more, as he had "buried the tomahawk in his Majesty's hands." Thus musing and moralizing on the events of the day, I left them to their conversation and their pipe, to attend, myself, where my presence was necessary, in arranging my collection, and preparing my rooms for their exhibitions. In this I had a real task--a scene of vexation and delay that I should wish never to go through again, and of which a brief account may be of service to any one of my countrymen who may be going to Paris to open a public exhibition; at least, my hints will enable him, if he pays attention to them, to begin at the right time, and at the right end of what he has got to do, and to do it to the best advantage. His first step is, for any exhibition whatever, to make his application to the Prefect of Police for his licence, which is in all cases doubtful, and in all cases also is sure to require two or three weeks for his petition to pass the slow routine of the various offices and hands which it must go through. If it be for any exhibition that can be construed into an interference with the twenty or thirty theatre licences, it may as well not be applied for or thought of, for they will shut it up if opened. It is also necessary to arrange in time with the overseer of the poor, whether he is to take one-eighth or one-fifth of the receipts for the hospitals--for the _hospice_, as he is termed, is placed at the door of all exhibitions in Paris, who carries off one-eighth or one-fifth of the daily receipts every night. It is necessary also, if catalogues are to be sold in the rooms, to lodge one of them at least two weeks before the exhibition is to open in the hands of the Commissaire de Police, that it may pass through the office of the Prefect, and twenty other officers' hands, to be read, and duly decided that there is nothing revolutionary in it; and then to sell them, or to give them away (all the same), it is necessary for the person who is to sell, and who alone _can_ sell them, to apply personally to the Commissaire de Police, and make oath that he was born in France, to give his age and address, &c., &c., before he can take the part that is assigned him. It is then necessary, when the exhibition is announced, to wait until seven or eight guards and police, with muskets and bayonets fixed, enter and unbar the doors, and open them for the public's admission. It is necessary to submit to their friendly care during every day of the exhibition, and to pay each one his wages at night, when they lock up the rooms and put out the lights. In all this, however, though expensive, there is one redeeming feature. These numbers of armed police, at their posts, in front of the door, and in the passage, as well as in the exhibition rooms, give respectability to its appearance, and preserve the strictest order and quiet amongst the company, and keep a constant and vigilant eye to the protection of property. During the time I was engaged in settling these tedious preliminaries, and getting my rooms prepared for their exhibition, the Indians were taking their daily rides, and getting a passing glimpse of most of the out-door scenes of Paris. They were admitting parties of distinguished visitors, who were calling upon them, and occasionally leaving them liberal presents, and passing their evenings upon their buffalo skins, handing around the never-tiring pipe, and talking about the King, and their medals, and curious things they had seen as they had been riding through the streets. The thing which as yet amused the Doctor the most was the great number of women they saw in the streets leading dogs with ribbons and strings. He said he thought they liked their dogs better than they did their little children. In London, he said he had seen some little dogs leading their masters, who were blind, and in Paris they began to think the first day they rode out that one half of the Paris women were blind, but that they had a great laugh when they found that their eyes were wide open, and that instead of their dogs leading them, they were leading their dogs. The Doctor seemed puzzled about the custom of the women leading so many dogs, and although he did not in any direct way censure them for doing it, it seemed to perplex him, and he would sit and smile and talk about it for hours together. He and Jim had, at first, supposed, after they found that the ladies were not blind, that they cooked and ate them, but they were soon corrected in this notion, and always after remained at a loss to know what they could do with them. On one of their drives, the Doctor and Jim, supplied with a pencil and a piece of paper, had amused themselves by counting, from both sides of the omnibus, the number of women they passed, leading dogs in the street, and thus made some amusement with their list when they got home. They had been absent near an hour, and driving through many of the principal streets of the city, and their list stood thus:-- Women leading one little dog 432 Women leading two little dogs 71 Women leading three little dogs 5 Women with big dogs following (no string) 80 Women carrying little dogs 20 Women with little dogs in carriages 31 The poor fellows insisted on it that the above was a correct account, and Jim, in his droll way (but I have no doubt quite honestly), said that "It was not a very good day either." I was almost disposed to question the correctness of their estimate, until I took it into my head to make a similar one, in a walk I was one day taking, from the Place Madeleine, through a part of the Boulevard, Rue St. Honoré, and Rue Rivoli, and a turn in the garden of the Tuileries. I saw so many that I lost my reckoning, when I was actually not a vast way from the list they gave me as above, and quite able to believe that their record was near to the truth. While the amusement was going on about the ladies and the little dogs, Daniel, who had already seen many more of the sights of Paris than I had, told the Indians that there was a _Dog Hospital_ and a _Dog Market_ in Paris, both of them curious places, and well worth their seeing. This amused the Doctor and Jim very much. The Doctor did not care for the _Dog Market_, but the _Hospital_ he _must_ see. He thought the hospital must be a very necessary thing, as there were such vast numbers; and he thought it would be a good thing to have an hospital for their mistresses also. Jim thought more of the market, and must see it in a day or two, for it was about the time that they should give a feast of thanksgiving, and "a _Dog Feast_ was always the most acceptable to the Great Spirit." It was thus agreed all around, that they should make a visit in a few days to the Dog Market and the Dog Hospital. Jim got Daniel to enter the above list in his book as a very interesting record, and ordered him to leave a blank space underneath it, in order to record any thing else they might learn about dogs while in Paris. Poor Jim! he was at this time deeply lamenting the loss of the pleasure he had just commenced to draw from the 'Times' newspaper, for which he had become a subscriber, and his old and amusing friend 'Punch,' which Daniel had been in the habit of entertaining them with, and which he had been obliged to relinquish on leaving England. His friend Daniel, however, who was sure always to be by him, particularly at a late hour in the evenings, relieved him from his trouble by telling him that there was an English paper printed in Paris every day, 'Galignani's Messenger,' which republished nearly all the murders, and rapes, and robberies, &c. from the 'Times;' and also, which would make it doubly interesting, those which were daily occurring in Paris. Jim was now built up again, and as he could already read a few words was the envied of all the party. He was learning with Daniel and Jeffrey a few words in French also, to which the others had not aspired; he, could say quite distinctly "_vive le roi_;" he knew that "_bon jour_" was "good morning," or "how do do?" that "_bon_" was "good," that "_mauvais_" was "bad," and that "very sick" was "_bien malade_." He requested Daniel to get Galignani's paper daily for him, for which he and the Doctor had agreed to pay equal shares. He seemed now quite happy in the opinion that his prospects for civilization were again upon a proper footing, and the old Doctor, who profited equally by all of Daniel's readings, was delighted to lend his purse to share in the expense. Daniel at this moment pulled the last number of Galignani out of his pocket, the first sight of which pleased them very much, and after reading several extracts of _horrid murders_, _highway robberies_, &c., from the 'Times,' he came across a little thing that amused them,--the great number and length of the names of the little Prince of Wales, which he read over thus:-- (The author regrets very much that he took no memorandum of this, but refers the reader to the London papers for it.) There was a hearty laugh by the whole troop when Daniel got through, but when Mr. Melody repeated the name of a poor fellow who used to dress deer skins for a living in the vicinity of _St. Louis_, they all laughed still more heartily, and _Chippehola_ set in and laughed also. He had forgotten a part of this poor fellow's name, but as far as he recollected of his sign board, it ran thus:--"_Haunus, hubbard, lubbard, lamberd, lunk, vandunk, Peter, Jacobus, Lockamore, Lavendolph_, dresses deer skins of all animals, and in all ways, alum dressed." Such was a part of the gossip of an evening, while my days were occupied in preparing my rooms for the admission of the public. During this delay, one of the gentlemen who visited the Indians most frequently, as his native countrymen, was Mr. W. Costar, formerly of New York, but now living in Paris, and whose kind lady invited the whole party to dine at her house. The Indians had expressed the greatest pleasure at meeting this American gentleman in Paris, as if they claimed a sort of kindred to him, and met the invitation as one of great kindness, and the interview as one in which they were to feel much pleasure. They were particularly careful in dressing and preparing for it, and when ready, and the time had arrived, Mr. Melody and I accompanied them to this gentleman's house, where a most sumptuous dinner was served, and besides his accomplished lady and lovely daughters, there were several ladies of distinction and of title, seated, to complete the honours that were to be paid to the Indians. It was a matter of great surprise to all the fashionable guests who were present, that those rude people from the wilderness, used to take their meals from the ground, were so perfectly composed and so much at ease at the table, and managed so well with the knife and fork, and even so gracefully smiled over their glasses of wine when a lady or a gentleman proposed the health of any one. Just before we had finished our dessert, a number of fashionable ladies, the Countess of L----, the Baron and Baroness de G----, and several others who had begun to assemble for the evening soirée, arrived, and were ushered into the dining room, where they had the curiosity of seeing the Indians as they were seated in all their trinkets and ranged around the table; and from the lips of all escaped the instant exclamations of, "Bless me! what a fine and noble-looking set of men they are! How much at ease they seem! Why, those are polished gentlemen," &c. &c. From the dinner table they were invited to the salon, where a large party had gathered, who were delighted with the wild and picturesque appearance of the "Peaux Rouges." The Indians saw some fine dancing and waltzing, and heard some splendid playing on the piano, and singing. The Doctor's complete fascination by the playing and singing of a beautiful young lady was so conspicuous as to become the principal event of the evening, and after he had stood and smiled upon her in profound admiration during her fourth or fifth song, he _amused_ many of the party, and _shocked_ others, by the extraordinary and unexpected, though perfectly just remark, that "her voice was as soft and sweet as that of a wolf!" This startling compliment I must leave for the estimates of the world, mentioning only the two facts, that the Doctor's _totem_ (or _arms_) is the wolf; and that in my travels in the prairies of America I have often thought that the soft, and plaintive, and silvery tones of the howling prairie wolf oftentimes surpassed in sweetness the powers of the human voice. M. Vattemare, in his kind endeavours to promote the interest of the Indians, and that of myself, had obtained an invitation from the Members of the Royal Academy of Sciences for the Indians to visit them at one of their sittings, which was a great honour; but the poor Indians left Paris without ever having been able to learn how or in what way that honour arrived. Messrs. Melody and Vattemare and myself accompanied the whole party to their rooms, and, being ushered and squeezed and pushed into a dense crowd of gentlemen, all standing, and where the Indians were not even offered a seat, they were gazed and scowled at, their heads and arms felt, their looks and capacities criticised like those of wild beasts, without being asked a question, or thanked for the kindness of coming, and where they were offered not even a glass of cold water. The Indians and ourselves were thus eyed and elbowed about in this crowd for half an hour, from which we were all glad to escape, deciding that it was entirely too scientific for us, and a style of politeness that we were not perhaps sufficiently acquainted with duly to appreciate. The various conjectures about the objects of this visit were raised after we got home, and they were as curious as they were numerous. The Indians had reflected upon it with evident surprise, and repeatedly inquired of M. Vattemare and myself for what purpose we had taken them there. M. Vattemare told them that these were the greatest scientific men of the kingdom. This they did not understand, and he then, to explain, said they were the great _medicine men_, the learned doctors, &c. They then took the hint a little better, and decided alarm with it, for they said they recollected to have seen in some of their faces, while examining their heads and arms, decided expressions of anxiety to dissect their limbs and bones, which they now felt quite sure would be the case if any of them should die while in Paris. The War-chief, who seldom had much to say while speaking of the events of the day, very gravely observed on this occasion, that "he had been decidedly displeased, and the chief also, but it would be best to say no more about it, though if any of the party got sick, to take great care what physicians were called to visit them." M. Vattemare, in his kind interest for all parties, here exerted his influence to a little further degree, and persuaded the Indians to believe that those distinguished men, the great philosopher M. Arago and others, who were present, would be their warmest friends, but that with these transcendently great and wise men, their minds and all their time were so engrossed with their profound studies, that they had no time or desire to practise politeness; that they were the eyes which the public used, to look deep into and through all things strange or new that came to Paris; and that the public were after that, polite and civil, in proportion as those learned men should decide that they ought or ought not to be. Jim here took a whiff or two on his pipe, and, turning over on his back and drawing up his knees and clasping his hands across his stomach (Plate No. 17), said-- "We know very well that the King and the Queen and all the royal family are pleased with us, and are our friends, and if that is not enough to make us respected we had better go home. We believe that the King is a much greater man, and a much _better_ man, than any of those we saw there, and better than the whole of them put together. We know that there are many kind people in this great city who will be glad to shake our hands in friendship, and there are others who would like to get our skins, and we think that we saw some such there to-day. We met some kind people yesterday, where we went to dine--we love those people and do not fear them. If we should get sick they would be kind to us, and we think much more of that kind lady and gentleman than we do of all the great doctors we have seen this day--we hope not to see them any more. This is the wish of the chiefs, and of our wives and little children, who are all alarmed about them." This finished the conversation for the present about the learned society, though the impression was one of a most unfavourable kind on their minds, and was a long time in wearing away. [Illustration: N^o. 17.] The time had at length arrived for the opening of my collection and the commencement of the illustrations of the Indians. It had been for some days announced, and the hour had approached. The visitors were admitted into the rooms where my numerous collection of 600 paintings and some thousands of articles of Indian manufactures were subjects of new and curious interest to examine until the audience were mostly assembled, when, at a signal, the Indians all entered the room from an adjoining apartment, advancing to and mounting the platform, in Indian file, in full dress and paint, and armed and equipped as if for a battle-field. They sounded the war-whoop as they came in, and nothing could exceed the thrill of excitement that ran through the crowd in every part of the Hall. There was a rush to see who should get nearest to the platform, and be enabled most closely to scan _"les Sauvages horribles," "les Peaux Rouges," ou "les nouvelles Diables à Paris."_ The chief led the party as they entered the room, and, having ascended the platform, erected the flag of his tribe in the centre, and in a moment the party were all seated around it, and lighting their pipe to take a smoke, whilst I was introducing them and their wives to the audience. This having been done in as brief a time as possible, they finished their pipe and commenced their amusements in Paris by giving the _discovery-dance_. This curious mode forms a part and the commencement of the war-dance, and is generally led off by one of the War-chiefs, who dances forward alone, pretending to be skulking and hunting for the track of his enemy, and when he discovers it he beckons on his warriors, who steal into the dance behind him, and follow him up as he advances, and pretends at length to discover the enemy in the distance, ordering all to be ready for the attack. The Doctor was the one who opened the _bal_ on this occasion, and it was a proud and important moment for him: not that the fate of nations unborn, or the success of their enterprise, depended upon the event, but what to him was perhaps as high an incentive--that his standing with the ladies of Paris would probably be regulated for the whole time they should be there by the sensation he should make at the first dash. He therefore put on his most confident smile as he went into the dance: as he tilted about and pointed out the track where his enemy had gone, he made signs that the enemy had passed by, and then, beckoning up his warriors, pointed him out amongst a group of beautiful ladies who had taken an elevated and conspicuous position in front. He sounded the war-whoop, and all echoed it as he pointed towards the ladies, who screamed, and leapt from their seats, as the Indians' weapons were drawn! Here was an excitement begun, and the old Doctor smiled as he turned his head and his weapons in other directions, and proceeded with the dance. At the end of its first part their feet all came to a simultaneous stop, when the Doctor advanced to the front of the platform, and, brandishing his spear over the heads of the audience, made the most tremendous boast of the manner in which he took a prisoner in a battle with the Pawnees, and drove him home before his horse rather than take his life: he then plunged into the most agitated dance alone, and acting out the whole features of his battle in time to the song and beating of the drum; and at the close, rounds of applause awaited him in every part of the crowd. These the Doctor received with so complaisant a smile of satisfaction, as he bowed his head gracefully inclined on one side, that another and another burst of applause, and another bow and smile, followed; satisfying him that the path was cleared before him. He then shook his rattle of deer's hoofs, and, summoning his warriors, they all united in finishing with full and wild effect this spirited dance. Though in the midst of a dancing country, their mode of dancing was quite new, and was evidently calculated to amuse, from the immense applause that was given them at the end of their first effort. The dancers had now all taken their seats, except the Doctor, who was lingering on his feet, and had passed his spear into his left hand, evidently preparing to push his advantage a little further with the ladies, by making a speech, as soon as silence should be sufficiently restored to enable him to be heard. This little delay might or might not have been a fortunate occurrence for the Doctor, for it afforded Jim an opportunity to remind him how much he had lost by his last two or three speeches, which so completely put him out, that he sat down, apparently well pleased and satisfied with what he had already accomplished. My kind friend M. Vattemare, who had now become a great favourite of the Indians, went forward, and offered them his hand to encourage them, assuring them of the great pleasure the audience were taking, and encouraging them to go on with all the spirit they could, as there were some of the most distinguished people of Paris present--the Minister of the Interior and his lady, the Prêfet de Police, several foreign ambassadors, and a number of the editors of the leading journals, who were taking notes, and would speak about them in the papers the next morning. The _eagle-dance_ was now announced to the audience as the next amusement; and after a brief description of it, the _Little Wolf_ sprang upon his feet, and sounding his eagle whistle, and shaking the eagle's tail in his left hand, while he brandished his tomahawk in his right, he commenced. His fellow-warriors were soon engaged with him, and all excited to the determination to make "a hit." As after the first, they were complimented by rounds of applause, and sat down to their pipe with peculiar satisfaction. The War-chief took the first few whiffs upon it, and, rising, advanced to the front of the platform, and in the most dignified and graceful attitude that the orator could assume, extended his right hand over the heads of the audience, and said-- "My Friends,--It gives us great pleasure to see so many pleasant faces before us to-night, and to learn from your applause that you are amused with our dances. We are but children; we live in the woods, and are ignorant, and you see us here as the Great Spirit made us; and our dances are not like the dances of the French people, whom we have been told dance the best of any people in the world. ('_How, how, how!_' and immense applause.) "My Friends,--We come here not to teach you to dance--(a roar of applause and laughter)--we come here not to teach you anything, for you are a great deal wiser than we, but to show you how we red people look and act in the wilderness, and we shall be glad some nights to go and see how the French people dance. (Great applause and '_How, how, how!_') "My Friends,--We are happy that the Great Spirit has kept us alive and well, and that we have been allowed to see the face of our Great Father your King. We saw him and your good Queen, and the little boy who will be king, and they all treated us with kind hearts, and we feel thankful for it. ('_How, how, how!_') "My Friends,--We have crossed two oceans to come here, and we have seen no village so beautiful as Paris. London, where the _Saganoshes_ live, is a large village, but their wigwams are not so beautiful as those in Paris, and in their streets there are too many people who seem to be very poor and hungry. ('_How, how, how!_') "My Friends,--I have no more to say at present, only, that, when my young men have finished their dances, we shall be glad to shake hands with you all, if you desire it." ("_How, how, how!_") The old man resumed his seat and his pipe amidst a din of applause; and at this moment several trinkets and pieces of money were tossed upon the platform from various parts of the room. After the eagle-dance they strung their bows, and, slinging their quivers upon their backs, commenced shooting at the target for prizes. The hall in which their dances were given was so immensely large that they had a range of 150 feet to throw their arrows at their targets, which formed by no means the least amusing and exciting part of their exhibitions. Their ball-sticks were also taken in hand, and the ball, and their mode of catching and throwing it, beautifully illustrated. After this, and another dance, a general shake of the hands took place, and a promenade of the Indians through the vast space occupied by my collection. They retired from the rooms and the crowd in fine glee, having made their _début_ in Paris, about which they had had great anxiety, somebody having told them that the French people would not be pleased with their dancing, as they danced so well themselves. The Indians being gone, _I_ became the lion, and was asked for in every part of the rooms. The visitors were now examining my numerous works, and all wanted to see me. My friend M. Vattemare was by my side, and kindly presented me to many gentlemen of the press, and others of his acquaintance, in the rooms. There were so many who said they were waiting "for the honour," &c., that I was kept until a very late hour before I could leave the room. There were a number of fellow-artists present, who took pleasure in complimenting me for the manner in which my paintings were executed; and many others for my perseverance and philanthropy in having laboured thus to preserve the memorials of these dying people. I was complimented on all sides, and bowed, and was bowed to, and invited by cards and addresses left for me. So _I_ went home, as well as the Indians, elated with the pleasing conviction that _mine_ was a "hit," as well as _theirs_. The leading journals of the next day were liberal in their comments upon the Indians and my collection, pronouncing my labours of great interest and value, and the exhibition altogether one of the most extraordinary interest ever opened in Paris, and advising all the world to see it.[39] Thus were we started in the way of business after the first night's exhibition, and that after remaining there just one month before we could meet and pass all the necessary forms and get quite ready. [39] See critical notices of the French Press, Appendix to vol. i. p. 239. CHAPTER XXVI. Indians at Madame Greene's party--Their ideas of waltzing--The Doctor's admiration of the young ladies--The King's fête, first of May--Indians in the Palace--Royal Family in the balcony--Grand and sublime scene on the river--Indians in a crowd of nobility in the Duc d'Aumale's apartments--Messenger to Indians' apartments with gold and silver medals--Medals to the women and children--Consequent difficulties--Visit to the Hospital of Invalids--Place Concorde--Column of Luxor--The fountains--Visit to the Triumphal Arch--Jim's description of an ugly woman--Victor Hugo--Madame Georges Sands--Indians visit the Louvre--M. de Cailleux--Baron de Humboldt--Illness of the wife of Little Wolf--A phrenologist visits the Indians--The phrenologist's head examined--Two Catholic priests visit the Indians--Indians visit the Garden of Plants--Alarm of the birds and animals--The "poor prisoner buffalo"--Visit to the _Salle aux Vins_--Astonishment of the Indians--The war-whoop--_Chickabobboo_--Cafés explained--Indians visit _Père la Chaise_--A great funeral--A speech over the grave--Hired mourners--Visit the _School of Medicine_--and "_Dupuytren's Room_"--Excitement of the Doctor--Visit to the _Foundling Hospital_--Astonishment and pity of the Indians--Entries in Jim's note-book, and Doctor's remarks--Visit the _Guillotine_--Indians' ideas of _hanging_ in England, and _beheading_ in France--Curious debate--Visit to the _Dog Market_--Jim's purchase and difficulty--The _Dog Hospital_--Alarm of the "petites malades"--Retreat--_Bobasheela_ arrives from London--Great rejoicing--Jim's comments on the Frenchwomen--The _little foundlings_ and the _little dogs_. Having thus commenced upon our operations in the Salle Valentino, it was thought best to change the lodgings of the Indians to some point more near to the place of their exhibitions, and rooms were at length procured for them in the same building with their hall, and communicating with it. To these apartments they were removed, and arrangements were made for two open carriages to drive them an hour each day for their recreation and amusement. By this arrangement we had the sights of Paris before us, and easily within our reach, to be visited at our leisure. Our exhibitions were given each night from eight to ten, and each afternoon from one to three o'clock; so that they had the mornings for sight-seeing, and their evenings, from ten to twelve, to visit the theatres or parties, whenever they were invited and felt disposed to attend. The first evening-party they were invited to attend in Paris was that of the lady of _Mr. Greene_, the American banker. They were there ushered into a brilliant blaze of lamps, of beauty, and fashion, composed chiefly of Americans, to whom they felt the peculiar attachment of countrymen, though of a different complexion, and anywhere else than across the Atlantic would have been strangers to. They were received with great kindness by this polite and excellent lady and her daughters, and made many pleasing acquaintances in her house. The old Doctor had luckily dressed out his head with his red crest, and left at home his huge head-dress of horns and eagles' quills, which would have been exceedingly unhandy in a _squeeze_, and subjected him to curious remarks amongst the ladies. He had loaded on all his wampum and other ornaments, and smiled away the hours in perfect happiness, as he was fanning himself with the tail of a war-eagle, and bowing his head to the young and beautiful ladies who were helping him to lemonade and _blanc-mange_, and to the young men who were inviting him to the table to take an occasional glass of the "_Queen's chickabobboo_." Their heavy buffalo robes were distressing to them (said the Doctor) in the great heat of the rooms, "but then, as the ladies were afraid of getting paint on their dresses, they did not squeeze so hard against us as they did against the other people in the room, so we did not get so hot as we might have been." It amused the Doctor and Jim very much to see the gentlemen take the ladies by the waist when they were dancing with them, probably never having seen waltzing before. They were pleased also, as the Doctor said, with "the manner in which the ladies showed their beautiful white necks and arms, but they saw several that they thought had better been covered." "The many nice and sweet and frothy little things that the ladies gave them in tea-saucers to eat, with little spoons, were too sweet, and they did not like them much; and in coming away they were sorry they could not find the good lady to thank her, the crowd was so great; but the _chickabobboo_ (champagne), which was very good, was close to the door, and a young man with yellow hair and moustaches kept pouring it out until they were afraid, if they drank any more, some of the poor fellows who were dancing so hard would get none." The scene they witnessed that night was truly very brilliant, and afforded them theme for a number of pipes of gossip after they got home. It has been said, and very correctly, that there is no end to the amusements of Paris, and to the Indians, to whose sight every thing was new and curious, the term, no doubt, more aptly applied than to the rest of the world. Of those never-ending sights there was one now at hand which was promising them and "all the world" a fund of amusement, and the poor fellows were impatient for its arrival. This splendid and all-exciting affair was the King's fête on the 1st of May, his birthday as some style it, though it is not exactly such, it is the day fixed upon as the annual celebration of his birth. This was, of course, a holiday to the Indians, as well as for everybody else, and I resolved to spend the greater part of it with them. Through the aid of some friends I had procured an order to admit the party of Indians into the apartments of the Duke d'Aumale in the Tuileries, to witness the grand concert in front of the Palace, and to see the magnificent fireworks and illumination on the Seine at night. We had the best possible position assigned us in the wing of the Palace, overlooking the river in both directions, up and down, bringing all the bridges of the Seine, the Deputies, and Invalides, and other public buildings, which were illuminated, directly under our eyes. During the day, Mr. Melody, and Jeffrey, and Daniel had taken, as they called it, "a grand drive," to inspect the various places of amusement, and the immense concourse of people assembled in them. Of these, the Barrières, the Champs Elysées, &c., they were obliged to take but a passing glance, for to have undertaken to stop and to mix with the dense crowds assembled in them would have been dangerous, even to their lives, from the masses of people who would have crowded upon them. The Indians themselves were very sagacious on this point, and always judiciously kept at a reasonable distance on such occasions. It was amusement enough for them during the day to ride rapidly about and through the streets, anticipating the pleasure they were to have in the evening, and taking a distant view from their carriages, of the exciting emulation of the _May-pole_, and a glance at the tops of the thousand booths, and "flying ships," and "merry-go-rounds" of the Champs Elysées. At six o'clock we took our carriages and drove to the Tuileries, and, being conducted to the splendid apartments of the Duke d'Aumale, who was then absent from Paris, we had there, from the windows looking down upon the Seine and over the Quartier St. Germain, and the windows in front, looking over the garden of the Tuileries and Place Concorde, the most general and comprehensive view that was to be had from any point that could have been selected. Under our eyes in front, the immense area of the garden of the Tuileries was packed with human beings, forming but one black and dotted mass of some hundreds of thousands who were gathered to listen to the magnificent orchestra of music, and to see and salute with "Vive le Roi!" "Vive la Reine!" and "Vive le Comte de Paris!" the Royal Family as they appeared in the balcony. Though it appeared as if every part of the gardens was filled, there was still a black and moving mass pouring through Rue Rivoli, Rue Castiglione, Rue Royale, and Place Concorde, all concentrating in the garden of the Tuileries. This countless mass of human beings continued to gather until the hour when their Majesties entered the balcony, and then, all hats off, there was a shout as vast and incomputable as the mass itself of "Vive le Roi!--Vive le Roi!--Vive la Reine!--Vive le Comte de Paris!" The King then, with his chapeau in his hand, bowed to the audience in various directions; so did her Majesty the Queen and the little Comte de Paris. The band then struck up the national air, and played several pieces, while the Royal Family were seated in the balcony, and the last golden rays of the sun, that was going behind the Arc de Triomphe, was shining in their faces. Their Majesties then retired as the twilight was commencing, and the vast crowd began to move in the direction of the Seine, the Terrace, and Place Concorde, to witness the grand scene of illumination and "feu d'artifice" that was preparing on the river. As the daylight disappeared, the artificial light commenced to display its various characters, and the Indians began to wonder. This scene was to be entirely new to them, and the reader can imagine better than I can explain what was their astonishment when the King's signal rocket was fired from the Tuileries, and in the next moment the whole river, as it were, in a blaze of liquid fire, and the heavens burst asunder with all their luminaries falling in a chaos of flames and sparkling fire to the earth! The incessant roar and flash of cannons lining the shore of the river, and the explosion of rockets in the air, with the dense columns of white, and yellow, and blue, and blood-red smoke, that were rising from the bed of the river, and all reflected upon the surface of the water, heightened the grandeur of its effect, and helped to make it unlike anything on earth, save what we might imagine to transpire in and over the deep and yawning crater of a huge volcano in the midst of its midnight eruption. This wonderful scene lasted for half an hour, and when the last flash died away, all eyes like our own seemed to turn away from the smoking desolation that seemed to be left below, and the dense mass was dividing and pouring off in streams through the various streets and avenues, some seeking their homes with their little children, and hundreds of thousands of others, to revel away the night amidst the brilliant illuminations and innocent amusements of the Champs Elysées. We turned our eyes at that moment from the scene, and, in turning around, found ourselves blockaded by a phalanx of officers in gold lace and cocked hats, and ladies, attachés of the royal household, Deputies, Peers of France, and other distinguished guests of the Royal Family, who had been viewing the scene from other windows of the Palace, and had now gathered in our rooms to look at "_les Peaux Rouges_." My good friend M. Vattemare was present on this occasion, and of great service to us all, as there were in this crowd the incumbents of several high offices under the Crown, and others of distinction with whom he was acquainted, and to whom he introduced us all, converting the rooms and the crowd in a little time into a splendid soirée, where conversation and refreshments soon made all easy and quite happy. The servants of the Duke's household conducted us into the several apartments, explaining the paintings and other works of art, and also took us into the Duke's bedchamber, where were the portraits of himself and the Duchess, and others of the Royal Family. There was, we learned, in another part of the Palace, a grand _bal_ on that evening, and that accounted for the constant crowds of fashionable ladies and gentlemen who were pouring into our apartments, and who would have continued to do so in all probability for the greater part of the night had we not taken up the line of march, endeavouring to make our way to our carriages on our way home. This was for some time exceedingly difficult, as we had a succession of rooms and halls to pass through before we reached the top of the staircase, all of which were filled with a dense mass of ladies and gentlemen, who had got information that the Ioway Indians were in the Duke's apartments, and were then making their way there to get a peep at them. We crowded and squeezed through this mass as well as we could, and were all laughing at Jim's remarks as we passed along. He thought the people had all left the King and Queen to see the Indians. "Come see Ingins" (said he in English) "at Salle Valentino--see em dance--better go back, see King, see Queen--Ingins no good." Mr. Melody gave the poor fellow the first idea that his words were thrown away, as these people were all French, and did not understand English; so Jim said, "I spose em no buy Bible then?" and began to whistle. We soon descended the grand escalier, and, taking our carriages, were in a few minutes entering the Indians' apartments in Salle Valentino. Jim got home a little provoked, as the Doctor was showing a very handsome eyeglass which had been presented to him: two or three of the women had also received presents in money and trinkets, but Jim's wife, as well as himself, was amongst the neglected or overlooked. He then took out of his pouch and throwing it down upon the table one of his beautiful gilt bound little Bibles, and said, "Me no sell em." "Did you try, Jim?" "Yes, me try em, but me no sell em--folks call em _Onglaise_. Onglaise no good, I guess, I no sell em." Poor Jim! he looked quite chapfallen at the moment, and much more so when Daniel afterwards told him that he ought to have had an auction or other sale of his Bibles before he left England, for the French didn't care much about Bibles, and if they did they wouldn't buy his, for they were in the English language, which they could not read. Jim's regrets were now very great, to think they had so little oversight as to come away without thinking to make some conversion of them into ready cash. Daniel told him, however, that he thought there would be nothing lost on them, as they would sell better in America than they would have sold in England, and he had better pack them away until they went home. The conversation running upon Bibles, Jim was asked, as there was some sympathy expressed for him, how many he and his wife had, to which he replied, "I no know--I guess a heap." It was in a few moments ascertained more correctly from his wife, who had the immediate charge of them, that they had twenty-eight, and the account soon returned from the whole party, that in all they had received about 120 since they arrived in England. They took their suppers, which were ready when they got back, and their _chickabobboo_ (vin rouge) with their pipe, and engaged M. Vattemare for some time to explain the meaning of the many beautiful decorations they had seen worn on the breasts and shoulders of the officers they had met in the palace. The explanations of these things pleased them very much: as to the fireworks, they said that was such great _medicine_ to them, that they did not care about talking on the subject until they had taken more time to think. Just as M. Vattemare and I were about to leave the room, I found Jim and the Doctor interrogating Daniel about the "big guns that spoke so loud: they thought they must have very large mouths to speak so strong," and were anxious to see them. Daniel told them that those which made the loudest noise were at the Hospital of the Invalides, and it was then agreed that they should go there the next day to see them. Jim said they had all been delighted at what Daniel read in his paper about their going before the King and Queen, and that he must be sure to bring the paper at an early hour the next morning, to let them hear what was said about the Indians being in the palace the second time, and in the rooms of the Duke, to see the fireworks. The rest of their evening was taken up in "thinking" on what they had seen, and the next morning, as he had promised, Daniel came in with the paper and read a long account of the amusements of the day and evening, and also of the hundreds of thousands in the crowd who moved along in front of the Duke d'Aumale's apartments to look at the Indians, in preference to look at the King and the Queen. It was decided (as he read) that the crowd was much more dense and remained at a much later hour in front of that wing of the palace than in front of the balcony, where the Royal Family and the orchestra of music were. This pleased them all very much; and after their breakfasts, while they were yet in this cheerful train of feelings, the young man who had brought them the money from the King made his appearance, and I was instantly sent for. On arriving I was informed by him that he had come from his Majesty with the gold and silver medals, to be presented in his Majesty's name to each one individually. This announced, the Indians of course put all other occupations aside, and, being all seated on the floor, at the request of the chief, the medals were called out by the inscriptions on them and presented accordingly. The first presented was a gold medal to White Cloud, the chief: the inscription on the back of it read thus:-- "Donné à _Mu-hu-she-kaw_, par le Roi: 1845." The next presented was to the War-chief--a gold medal of equal size, and inscription in the same form. Silver medals, of equal size with inscriptions, were then presented to all the warriors and women and children. This last part of the list, women and children, seemed to startle them a little. The idea of women and children receiving medals was entirely new to them, and put them quite at a stand. There was no alternative but to take them, and be thankful for them; but it seemed curious enough to them--a subject not to be named, however, until the messenger had departed with their thanks to his Majesty for his kindness. This was done by the War-chief, and the gentleman departed. The old Doctor and _Wa-ton-ye_, the two unmarried men of the party, were the only ones who seemed to show anything like decided dissatisfaction in their faces, though Jim and Little Wolf were fumbling theirs over in their fingers, evidently in a struggle of feeling whether to be dissatisfied or not. The Little Wolf was a warrior of decided note, who had taken several scalps, and his wife had never taken one, and yet her medal was equal to his own; however, by the operation he had got two medals instead of one. Jim felt a little touched, and, though never having done much more in war than his squaw had, was preparing to make a great harangue on the occasion, and even rolled over on his back, and drew up his knees, for the purpose, but, taking the shining metal from his wife's hands, and placing it by the side of his own, he thought they would form a beautiful ornament, both hanging together, symbolic of an affectionate husband and wife, and he was silent. The poor old Doctor, though, who had taken _one prisoner_ certain, and _possibly_ some scalps, and (as the old War-chief had one day told him) undoubtedly "many lives," who could only dangle one medal (having no wife), and that one no better than those given to the women and children, lost all traces of the complaisant smiles that had shone on his face a little time before, and, rising suddenly up, and wrapping his robe around him, he found his way to the house-top, where he stood in silent gaze upon the chimneys and tiles, more suited to the meditations that were running through his troubled mind. _Wa-ton-ye_, in the mean time, with smothered feelings that no one ever heard vent given to, hung his with its tri-coloured ribbon upon a nail in the wall just over his head, and, drawing his buffalo robe quite over him, hid his face, and went to sleep. White Cloud and the War-chief sat during the while, with their families hanging about their shoulders and knees, well pleased, and smiling upon the brightness of his Majesty's familiar features in shining gold, as they turned their medals around in various lights. Theirs were of a more precious metal, and each, from the number of his family with him, became the owner of _three_, instead of _one_, over which the poor Doctor was yet pondering on the house-top, as he stood looking off towards the mountains and prairies. When their carriages were at the door, to make their visit to the _Hôpital des Invalides_, as promised the night before, the Doctor was unwilling to break the charm of his contemplations, and _Wa-ton-ye_ could not be waked, and the rest drove off in good cheer and delight. They hung their medals on their necks, suspended by their tri-coloured ribbons, the meaning of which having been explained to them, and they were soon at the mouths of the huge cannon, whose "big mouths" had "spoken so loudly" the night before. After taking a good look at them, and getting something of their curious history, they entered that wonderful and most noble institution, an honour to the name of its founder and to the country that loves and upholds it, the _Hospital_ of _Invalids_. Nothing on earth could have struck these people as more curious and interesting (a race of warriors themselves) than this institution, with its 3800 venerable inmates, the living victims of battles, wounded, crippled, fed, and clothed, and made happy, the living evidences of the human slaughter that must have taken place in the scenes they had been through. If this scene convinced them of the destructiveness of civilized modes of warfare, it taught them an useful lesson of civilized sympathy for those who are the unfortunate victims of war and carnage. The moral that was drawn from this day's visit was an important one to them, and I took the opportunity, and many others afterwards, to impress it upon their minds. It pleased them to hear that these old veterans, with one leg and one arm, were the very men who were chosen to come to the big guns, and fire them off, on the day of the King's fete--the same guns that they fought around, and over, when they were taking them from the enemies. Returning from the "_Invalides_," our carriages were stopped in Place Concorde for a view of the beautiful fountains playing, which pleased and astonished them, as they do all foreigners who pass. The Egyptian obelisk column of Luxor, of seventy-two feet, in one solid piece of granite, and brought from Egypt to Paris, was shown and explained to them, and our carriage driven to the ground where the _guillotine_ had stood on which the blood of Kings and Queens had been shed, and where the father of Louis Philippe was beheaded. These extraordinary and almost incredible facts of history, and that so recent, filled their minds with amazement, and almost with incredulity. Our drive that day was continued through the broad avenue of the Champs Elysées to the _triumphal arch_ at the Barrière d'Etoile, and our view from the top of it was one of the finest they thought in the world. We were not quite as high as when we were on the tower of the York cathedral, but the scene around us was far more picturesque and enchanting. When we returned we found the old Doctor and _Wa-ton-ye_ seated upon their buffalo robes, and playing at cards, quite in good humour, and their medals put away, as if nothing had happened to put them out. They were much amused at the descriptions of what the others had seen, and particularly so at Jim's description of an ugly woman he saw on top of the Arc de Triomphe, and who followed him around, he said, and looked him in the face until he was frightened. Here the Doctor, who had been out of humour, and was disposed to be a little severe on Jim, replied that "it was laughable for such an ill-looking, big-mouthed fellow as him to be talking about any one's ill looks, and to be alarmed at any one's ugliness, looking out over such a set of features as he had on the lower part of his face." Jim, however, having two medals, took but little notice of the Doctor's severity, but proceeded to tell about the ugly woman he saw. He said, "her eyes had all the time two white rings clear around them, and the end of her nose turning up, as if she had always smelled something bad, had pulled her upper-lip up so high that she could not shut her mouth or cover her teeth. She had two great rows of teeth, and there was black all between them, as if a charge of gunpowder had gone off in her mouth, and her skin was as white as snow, excepting on her cheeks, and there it was quite red, like a rose." "Stop, stop, Jim," said I, "let me write that down before you go any further." But this was all. He said he could not bear to look at her, and therefore he did not examine her any further. He also made some fun about two English ladies, who were up there when they were on the Arc de Triomphe. He said, "he had sat down by the side of the railing with his wife, where these ladies came to them. One of them asked if they could speak English, to which he made no reply, but shook his head. He said they had a great many things to say about him, and one of them wanted to feel his face (his chin, he supposed), to see if he had any beard; and when she did not find any, she said something which he did not understand, but he said it tickled them very much, and then he said she put her hand on his shoulder, which was naked, and took hold of his arm, and said several things, about which they had a great deal of laugh, which he understood, and which he would not like to mention, for his wife did not understand them, and he did not wish her to know what they were laughing about." The hour having approached for their afternoon's exhibition, the conversation was here broken off. I was, however, obliged to delay a few minutes for some account they wished me to give them of the guillotine, which I had spoken of while in the Place Concorde. I briefly described it to them, and they all expressed a wish to go some day and see it, and I promised to take them. The exhibition in the afternoon was attended by many more fashionable ladies and gentlemen than that of the evening; and so many carriages driving up to the door, in a pleasant day, was always sure to put the Doctor into the best of humour, and generally, when he was in such a mood, there would be wit and drollery enough in him, and his good friend Jim, to influence the whole group. They were usually in good spirits, and, when so, were sure to please; and thus were they on that, the first of their morning's entertainments; and it happened luckily, for we had in the rooms some of the most fashionable and literary personages of Paris--amongst these, the famous writers, _Victor Hugo_, _Madame Georges Sands_, and several others, to whom the Indians and myself were personally introduced. The old Doctor was told by M. Vattemare, who was again there, to do his best, and all did their parts admirably well, and much to the astonishment of the ladies, several of which old dames I found had really supposed, until now, that the "_sauvages_" were little more than wild beasts. After the Indians had finished their amusements and retired from the rooms, _I_ was left _lion_ again and "lord of all the visitors were now surveying." Then it was that _my_ embarrassment came, losing in a great measure the pleasure that I could have drawn from the society of such persons who came to praise, by not speaking the French language. However, I had generally the benefit of my friend M. Vattemare or others around me ready to help me through the difficulty. It gave me daily pleasure to find that my works were highly applauded by the press, as well as by personal expressions in the room, and in all the grades of society to which I was then being invited. Our second evening soon approached, and we found the hall fashionably filled again, and of course the Indians, though in a strange country, in good spirits and gratified, as their very appearance while entering the room got them rounds of applause. After their exhibition was over in the usual way I got _my_ applause, and so our mutual efforts were daily and nightly made to instruct and amuse the Parisians, which I shall always flatter myself we did to a considerable extent. While our exhibitions were now in such a train, we were studying how to make the most valuable use of our extra time, by seeing the sights of Paris and its environs. The _Louvre_ was one of the first objects of our attention; and having procured an order from the Director to visit it on a private day, we took an early hour and made our entry into it. We were received by the Director with kindness, and he conducted the party the whole way through the different galleries, pointing out and explaining to them and to us the leading and most interesting things in it. The Director, M. de Cailleux, had invited several of his distinguished friends to meet him on the occasion, and it was to them, as well as to us, interesting to see the Indians under such circumstances, where there was so much to attract their attention and calculated to surprise them. M. Vattemare was with us on this occasion, and of very great service in his introductions and interpretations for us. Amongst the distinguished persons who were present, and to whom I was introduced on the occasion, was the Baron de Humboldt. He accompanied us quite through the rooms of the Louvre, and took a great deal of interest in the Indians, having seen and dealt with so many in the course of his travels. I had much conversation with him, and in a few days after was honoured by him with a private visit to my rooms, when I took great pleasure in explaining the extent and objects of my collection. The view of the Louvre was a great treat to the Indians, who had had but little opportunity before of seeing works of art. In London we thought we had showed them all the sights, but had entirely forgotten the exhibitions of paintings; and I believe the poor fellows had been led to think, before they saw the Louvre, that mine was the greatest collection of paintings in the world. They had a great deal of talk about it when they got home and had lit their pipe. The one great objection they raised to it was, that "it was too long--there were too many things to be seen; so many that they said they had forgotten all the first before they got through, and they couldn't think of them again." There was one impression they got while there, however--that no length of room or number of pictures would easily eradicate from their memories, the immense number of marks of bullets on the columns of the portico, and even inside of the building, shot through the windows in the time of the Revolution of July. This appalling scene was described to them on the spot by M. Vattemare, which opened their eyes to an historical fact quite new to them, and of which they soon taxed him and me for some further account. The poor fellows at this time were beginning to sympathize with the noble fellow the Little Wolf, whose wife had been for some weeks growing ill, and was now evidently declining with symptoms of quick consumption. The buoyant spirits of the good and gallant fellow seemed to be giving way to apprehensions; and although he joined in the amusements, he seemed at times dejected and unhappy. There were days when her symptoms seemed alarming, and then she would rally and be in the room again in all the finery of her dress and trinkets, but was evidently gradually losing strength and flesh, and decided by her physician to be in a rapid decline. She was about this time advised to keep to her chamber and away from the excitement of the exhibition and sight-seeing, in which the rest of the party were daily engaged. By this time the Ioways had made so much noise in Paris that they were engaging the attention of the scientific, the religious, and the ethnologic, as well as the mere curious part of the world, and daily and almost hourly applications were being made to Mr. Melody and myself for private interviews with them for the above purposes. We were disposed to afford every facility in our power in such cases, but in all instances left the Indians to decide who they would and who they would not see. Amongst those applicants there was a phrenologist, who had been thrusting himself into their acquaintance as much as possible in their exhibition rooms, and repeatedly soliciting permission to go to their private rooms to make some scientific examinations and estimates of their heads, to which the Indians had objected, not understanding the meaning or object of his designs. He had become very importunate however, and, having brought them a number of presents at different times, it was agreed at Mr. Melody's suggestion, one day, as the quickest way of getting rid of him, that he should be allowed to come up. We conversed with the Indians, and assured them that there was not the slightest chance of harm, or witchcraft, or anything of the kind about it, and they agreed to let him come in. They had a hearty laugh when he came in, at Jim's wit, who said to him, though in Indian language that he didn't understand, "If you will shut the door now, you will be the ugliest-looking man in the whole room." This was not, of course, translated to the phrenologist, who proceeded with his examinations, and commenced on Jim's head first. Jim felt a little afraid, and considerably embarrassed also, being the first one called upon to undergo an operation which he knew so little about, or what was to be the result of. Stout, and warlike, and courageous as he was, he trembled at the thought of a thing that he could not yet in the least appreciate, and all were looking on and laughing at him for his embarrassment. The phrenologist proceeded, feeling for the bumps around his head, and, stopping once in a while to make his mental deductions, would then run his fingers along again. Jim's courage began to rally a little, seeing that there was to be nothing more than that sort of manipulation, and he relieved himself vastly by turning a little of his wit upon the operator, for a thing that looked to him so exceedingly ridiculous and absurd, by telling him "I don't think you'll find any in my head; we Indians shave a great part of our hair off, and we keep so much oil in the rest of it, that they won't live there: you will find much more in white men's heads, who don't oil their hair." This set the whole party and all of us in a roar, and Jim's head shook so as to embarrass the operator for a little time. When he got through, and entered his estimates in his book, Jim asked him "if he found anything in his head?" to which he replied in the affirmative. Placing his fingers on "_self-esteem_," he said there was great fulness there. "Well," said Jim, "I'm much obliged to you: I'll set my wife to look there by and by. And now," said Jim, "take the old Doctor here: his head is full of em." By this time Jim's jokes had got us all into a roar of laughter, and the Doctor was in the chair, and Jim looking on to see what he could discover. White Cloud thought Jim had cracked his jokes long enough, and as they had all laughed at them, he considered it most respectful now to let the man go through with it. So he finished with the Doctor and then with White Cloud and the War-chief, and when he came to the women they positively declined. Jim, having been rebuked for laughing too much, had stopped suddenly, and, instantly resolving to try his jokes upon the poor man in another mood, assumed, as he easily could, the most treacherous and assassin look that the human face can put on, and asked the phrenologist if he was done, to which he replied "Yes." "Now," said Jim, "we have all waited upon you and given you a fair chance, and I now want you to sit down a minute and let me examine _your_ head;" at the same time drawing his long scalping knife out from his belt, and wiping its blade as he laid it in a chair by the side of him. The phrenologist, having instantly consented, and just taking possession of the chair as he was drawing his knife out, could not well do otherwise than sit still for Jim's operations, though he was evidently in a greater trepidation than he had put Jim into by the first experiment that was made. Jim took the requisite time in his manipulations to crack a few jokes more among his fellow Indians upon the quackery of his patient, and then to let him up, telling him, for the amusement of those around, that "his face looked very pale" (which by the way was the case), "and that he found his head very full of them." The phrenologist was a good-natured sort of man, and, only partially understanding their jokes, was delighted to get off with what he had learned, without losing his scalp-lock, which it would seem as if he had apprehended at one moment to have been in some danger. As he was leaving the room, Daniel came in, announcing that there were two Catholic clergymen in the room below, where they had been waiting half an hour to have some talk with the Indians. "Let them up," says Jim; "I will make a speech to them:" at which the old Doctor sprang up. "There," said he, "there's my robe; lay down quick." The Doctor's wit raised a great laugh, but, when a moment had blown it away, Mr. Melody asked the chief what was his wish, whether to see them or not. "Oh yes," said he (but rather painfully, and with a sigh); "yes, let them come in: we are in a strange country, and we don't wish to make any enemies: let them come up." They were then conducted up and spent half an hour in pleasant conversation with the chiefs, without questioning them about their religion, or urging their own religion upon them. This pleased the Indians very much, and, finding them such pleasant and social good-natured men, they felt almost reluctant to part company with them. Each of them left a handsome Bible as presents, and took affectionate leave. After they had left, the Indians had much talk about them, and were then led to think of "the good people," the Friends, they had seen so many of in England and Ireland, and asked me if they should find any of them in Paris. I told them I thought they would not, at which they were evidently very much disappointed. One of the next sight-seeing expeditions was to the _Jardin des Plantes_, to which our old friend M. Vattemare accompanied us. The animals here, from a difference of training, or other cause, were not quite so much alarmed as they were in the menagerie in London; but when the doctor breathed out the silvery notes of his howling _totem_, the wolf at once answered him in a remote part of the garden. Jim imitated the wild goose, and was answered in an instant by a cackling flock of them. The panthers hissed, and the hyænas were in great distress, and the monkeys also: the eagles chattered and bolted against the sides of their cages, and the parrots lost their voices by squalling, and many of their feathers by fluttering, when the Indians came within their sight. They pitied the poor old and jaded buffalo, as they did in London, he looked so broken-spirited and desolate; and also the deer and the elks; but the bears they said didn't seem to care much about it. They were far more delighted with the skins of animals, reptiles, and fishes in the museum of natural history; and I must say that _I_ was also, considering it the finest collection I ever have seen. The garden of plants was amusement enough for an hour or so, and then to the _Halle aux Vins_ in the immediate neighbourhood. This grand magazine of _chickabobboo_ has been described by many writers, and no doubt seen by many who read, but few have seen the expression of amazement upon the brows of a party of wild Indians from the forest of America, while their eyes were running over the vast and almost boundless lines of 800,000 casks of wine under one roof, and heard the piercing war-whoop echoing and vibrating through their long avenues, raised at the startling information that 20,000,000 of gallons of this are annually drawn out of this to be drunk in the city of Paris; and few of those who heard it knew whether it was raised to set the wine running, or as a note of exultation that they had found a greater fountain of _chickabobboo_ than the brewery they were in, in London. However true the latter was, the first was supposed to have been the design, and it must needs have its effect. A few bottles, in kindness and hospitality cracked, cooled all parched and parching lips, and our faithful timepieces told us our engagement with the public was at hand, and we laid our course again for the _Salle Valentino_. "Oh! what a glorious country," said Jim, as we were rolling along; "there's nothing like that in London: the _chickabobboo_ is better here, and there's more of it too." Poor ignorant fellow! he was not aware that the brewery they saw in London was only one of some dozens, and that the wine in all those casks they had just seen was not quite as delicious as that with which his lips had just been moistened. With their recollections dwelling on the scenes they had witnessed in London, they were naturally drawing comparisons as they were wending their way back; and they had in this mood taken it into their heads that there were no gin-shops in Paris, as they could see none, which was quite mysterious to them, until I explained to them the nature of the cafés, the splendid open shops they were every moment passing, glittering with gold and looking-glasses. They were surprised to learn that the delicious poison was dealt out in these neat "palaces," but which they had not known or suspected the meaning of. They admitted their surprise, and at once decided that "they liked the free, and open, and elegant appearance of them much better than those in London, where they are all shut up in front with great and gloomy doors, to prevent people from looking into them, as if they were ashamed." The cemetery of Père la Chaise was next to be seen as soon as there should be a fine day: that day arrived, and half an hour's drive landed us at its entrance. This wonderful place has been described by many travellers, and therefore needs but a passing notice here. This wilderness of tombs, of houses or boxes of the dead, thrown and jumbled together amidst its gloomy cypress groves and thickets, is perhaps one of the most extraordinary scenes of the kind in the world: beautiful in some respects, and absurd and ridiculous in others, it is still one of the wonders of Paris, and all who see the one must needs visit the other. The scene was one peculiarly calculated to excite and please the Indians. The wild and gloomy and almost endless labyrinths of the little mansions of the dead were pleasing contrasts to their imprisonment within the dry and heated walls of the city; the varied and endless designs that recorded the places and the deeds of the dead were themes of amusement to them, and the subject altogether one that filled their minds with awe, and with admiration of the people who treated their dead with so much respect. We wandered for an hour through its intricate mazes of cypress, examining the tombs of the rich and the poor so closely and curiously grouped together--a type, even in the solitudes of death, of the great Babylon in which their days had been numbered and spent. Whilst we were strolling through the endless mazes of this _sub-rosa_ city, we met an immense concourse of people, evidently bearing the body of some distinguished person to the grave. The pompous display of mourning feathers and fringes, &c., with hired mourners, was matter of some surprise to the Indians; but when a friend of the deceased stepped forward to pronounce an eulogium on his character, recounting his many virtues and heroic deeds, it reminded the Indians forcibly of the custom of their own country, and they all said they liked to see that. We took them to the patched and vandalized tomb of Abelard and Eloisa; but as there was not time for so long a story, it lost its interest to them. They were evidently struck with amazement at the system and beauty of this place, and from that moment decided that they liked the French for the care they took of their old soldiers and the dead. The poor fellows, the Indians, who were now proceeding daily and nightly with their exciting and "astonishing" exhibitions, were becoming so confounded and confused with the unaccountable sights and mysteries of Paris which they were daily visiting, that they began to believe there was no end to the curious and astonishing works of civilized man; and, instead of being any longer startled with excitement and wonder, decided that it would be better to look at everything else as simple and easy to be made by those that know how, and therefore divested of all further curiosity. This they told me they had altogether resolved upon: "they had no doubt there were yet many strange things for them to see in Paris, and they would like to follow me to see them all; but they would look with their eyes only half open, and not trouble us with their surprise and their questions." With these views, and their eyes "half open," then, they still took their daily drives, and Mr. Melody or myself, in constant company, stopping to show them, and to see ourselves, what was yet new and wonderful to be seen. There was still much to be seen in Paris, and the poor Indians were a great way from a complete knowledge of all the tricks and arts of civilization. A drive to the _School of Medicine_ and the _Hôpital des Enfans Trouvés_ was enough for one morning's recreation. The first, with "_Dupuytren's Room_," was enough to open the old Doctor's eyes, and the latter, with its 6000 helpless and parentless infants added to it annually, sufficient to swell the orbs of Jim, and make him feel for his note-book. The School of Medicine, with Dupuytren's Room, forms one of the most surprising sights to be seen in Paris, and yet, save with the Doctor, there seemed to be but little interest excited by the sight. The Doctor's attitude was one of studied dignity and philosophic conceit as he stood before those wonderful preparations, not to be astonished, but to study as a critic, while he fanned himself with his eagle's tail. The expression of his face, which was the whole time unchanged, was one of a peculiar kind, and, as it was not sketched at the time, must be for ever lost. The novel and pitiful sight of the thousands of innocent little creatures in the Foundling Hospital seemed to open the "half-closed eyes" and the hearts of the Indians, notwithstanding the resolutions they had made. When it was explained to them how these little creatures came into the world, and then into this most noble institution, and also that in the last year there had been born in the city of Paris 26,000 children, 9000 of whom were illegitimate, their eyes were surely open to the astounding facts of the vices of civilized society, and of the virtue of civilized governments in building and maintaining such noble institutions for the support of the fatherless and helpless in infancy, as well as for the veterans who have been maimed in the fields of glorious battle. When I told them that, of those thousands of little playful children, not one knew any other parent than the Government, they groaned in sympathy for them, and seemed at a loss to abhor or applaud the most, the sins of man that brought them into the world, or the kind and parental care that was taken of them by the Government of the country. Jim made a sure demand upon Daniel's kindness for the entry of these important facts, which he soon had in round and conspicuous numbers in his note-book, to teach to the "_cruel and relentless Indians_." The sentimentalism and sympathy of the poor old Doctor were touched almost to melancholy by this scene; and in his long and serious cogitations on it he very gravely inquired why the thousands of women leading and petting little dogs in the streets could not be induced to discharge their dogs, and each one take a little child and be its mother? He said, if he were to take a Frenchwoman for his wife, he would rather take her with a little child, even if it were her own, than take her with a little dog. The _guillotine_, which happened to be in our way, and which they had been promised a sight of, they thought was more like a _Mississippi saw-mill_ than anything else they had seen. It drew a murmur or two when explained to them how the victim was placed, and his head rolled off when the knife fell, but seemed to have little further effect upon them except when the actual number was mentioned to them whose heads are there severed from their bodies annually, for their crimes committed in the streets and houses of Paris. Our stay before this awful and bloody machine was but short, and of course their remarks were few, until they got home, and their dinner was swallowed, and their _chickabobboo_, and, reclining on their buffalo robes, the pipe was passing around. Their conversation was then with Daniel, who had been but the day before to see the very same things, and they gained much further information than we did, which he communicated to them. He entered in Jim's book, as he had desired, the numbers of the _illegitimates_ and _foundlings_ of Paris, which seemed to be a valuable addition to his estimates of the blessings of civilization; and also the number of annual victims whose heads roll from the side of the guillotine. His book was then closed, and a curious discussion arose between the Indians and Daniel, whether the gallows, which they had seen in the prisons in England and Ireland, was a preferable mode of execution to that of the guillotine, which they had just been to see. They had no doubt but both of them, or, at least, that one or the other of them was absolutely necessary in the civilized world; but the question was, which was the best. Daniel contended that the punishment which was most ignominious was best, and contended for the gallows, while the Indians thought the guillotine was the best. They thought that death was bad enough, without the Government trying to add to its pang by hanging people up by the neck with a rope, as the Indians hang dogs. From this grave subject, which they did not seem to settle, as there was no umpire, they got upon a somewhat parallel theme, and were quite as seriously engaged, when I was obliged to leave them, whether it would be preferable to be _swallowed whole_ by a whale, or to be _chewed_. Daniel was referring to Scripture for some authority on this subject, by looking into one of Jim's Bibles, when Mr. Melody and I were apprised of an appointment, which prevented us from ever hearing the result. The next promise we had to keep with them was the one that had been made to take them to see the fountain of all the pretty and ugly little dogs and huge mastiffs they saw carried and led through the streets of Paris--the "_Dog Market_." The _Dog Hospital_, being _en route_, was visited first; and though one could scarcely imagine what there could be there that was amusing or droll, still the old Doctor insisted on it that it must be very interesting, and all resolved to go. It was even so, and on that particular occasion was rendered very amusing, when the Doctor entered, with Jim and the rest following. The squalling of "There! there! there!" by the frightened parrots in Cross's Zoological Gardens bore little comparison to the barking and yelling of "les petits pauvres chiens," and the screams of the old ladies--"Ne les effrayez pas, Messieurs, s'il vous plaît! ils sont tous malades--tous malades: pauvres bêtes! pauvres bêtes!" It was soon perceived that the nerves of the poor little "malades," as well as those of the old women their doctors, were too much affected to stand the shock, and it was thought best to withdraw. The old Doctor, getting just a glance at the sick-wards, enough to convince him of the clean comforts these little patients had, and seeing that their physicians were females, and also that the wards were crowded with fashionable ladies looking and inquiring after the health of their little pets, he was quite reluctant to leave the establishment without going fairly in and making his profession known, which he had thought would, at least, command him some respect amongst female physicians. He had some notion for this purpose of going in alone, but sarcastic Jim said the whole fright of the poor dogs had been produced by his appearance; to which the Doctor replied that they only barked because Jim was coming behind him. However, our visit was necessarily thus short, and attention directed to the Dog Market, for which Jim was more eager, as he had a special object. This was a curiosity, to be sure, and well worth seeing; there was every sort of whelp and cur that could be found in Christendom, from the veriest minimum of dog to the stateliest mastiff and Newfoundland; and, at Jim and the Doctor's approach, hundreds of them barked and howled, many broke their strings, some laid upon their backs, and yelled (no doubt, if one could have understood their language) that they never saw before in their lives so ill-looking and frightful a couple, and so alarming a set as those who were following behind them. Jim wanted to buy, and, the business-meaning of his face being discovered, there were all sorts of offers made him, and every kind of pup protruded into his face; but the barking of dogs was such that no one could be heard, and then many a poor dog was knocked flat with a broom, or whatever was handiest, and others were choked, to stop their noise. No one wanted to stand the din of this canine Bedlam longer than was necessary for Jim to make his choice, which the poor fellow was endeavouring to do with the greatest despatch possible. His mode was rather different from the ordinary mode of testing the qualities he was looking for, which was by feeling of the ribs; and having bargained for one that he thought would fit him, the lookers-on were somewhat amused at his choice. He made them understand by his signs that they were going to eat it, when the poor woman screamed out, "Diable! mange pas! mange pas!--venez, venez, ma pauvre bête!" The crowd by this time was becoming so dense that it was thought advisable to be on the move, and off. The Doctor became exceedingly merry at Jim's expense, as he had come away without getting a dog for their Dog Feast, of which they had been for some time speaking. On their return from this day's drive, they met, to their very great surprise, their old friend _Bobasheela_, who had left his business and crossed the Channel to see them once more before they should set sail for America. He said he could not keep away from them long at a time while they were in this country, because he loved them so much. They were all delighted to see him, and told him he was just in time to attend the Dog Feast, which they were going to have the next day. The Doctor told him of Jim's success in buying a dog, and poor Jim was teazed a great deal about his failure. _Bobasheela_ told them all the news about England, and Jim and the Doctor had a long catalogue to give him of their visit to the King--of their medals--their visits to the great fountain of _chickabobboo_ and the _Foundling Hospital_, all of which he told him he had got down in his book. All this delighted _Bobasheela_, until they very imprudently told him that they liked Paris much better than London. They told him that the people in Paris did not teaze them so much about religion; that there were fewer poor people in the streets; and that as yet they had kept all their money, for they had seen nobody poor enough to give it to. Their _chickabobboo_ was very different, but it was about as good. The guillotine they were very well satisfied with, as they considered it much better to cut men's heads off than to hang them up, like dogs, by a rope around the neck. This, and keeping men in prison because they owe money, they considered were the two most cruel things they heard of amongst the English. _Bobasheela_ replied to them that he was delighted to hear of their success, and to learn that they had seen the King, an honour he should himself have been very proud of. He told them that he never had seen the King, but that, while travelling in Kentucky many years ago, he was close upon the heels of the King, and so near him that he slept on the same (not bed, but) floor in a cabin where the King had slept, with his feet to the fire, but a short time before. This was something quite new to the Indians, and, like most of _Bobasheela's_ stories of the Far West, pleased them exceedingly. Jim, who was a _matter-of-fact man_, more than one of fancy and imagination, rather sided with _Bobasheela_, and, turning to his round numbers last added to his book, of "9000 illegitimate children born in Paris in the last year," asked his friend if he could read it, to which he replied "Yes." "Well," said Jim, in broad English, "some _fish_ there, I guess, ha? I no like em Frenchwomen--I no like em: no good! I no like em so many children, no fader!" We all saw by Jim's eye, and by the agitation commencing, that he had some ideas that were coming out, and at the instant he was turning over on to his back, and drawing up his knees, and evidently keeping his eyes fixed on some object on the ceiling of the room, not to lose the chain of his thoughts, and he continued (not in English, for he spoke more easily in his own language), "I do not like the Frenchwomen. I did not like them at first, when I saw them leading so many dogs. I thought then that they had more dogs than children, but I think otherwise now. We believe that those women, who we have seen leading their dogs around with strings, have put their children away to be raised in the great house of the Government, and they get these little dogs to fill their places, and to suck their breasts when they are full of milk." "Hut--tut--tut!" said Melody, "you ill-mannerly fellow! what are you about? You will blow us all up here, Jim, if you utter such sentiments as those. I think the French ladies the finest in the world except the Americans, and if they heard such ideas as those, advanced by us, they would soon drive us out of Paris." "Yes," said Jim (in English again), "yes, I know--I know you like em--may be very good, but you see I no like em!" In his decided dislike, Jim's excitement was too great for his ideas to flow smoothly any further, and Mr. Melody not disposed to push the argument, the subject was dropped, and preparations made for the day exhibition, the hour for which was at hand. CHAPTER XXVII. _La Morgue_--The Catacombs--The Doctor's dream--Their great alarm--Visit to the _Hippodrome_--Jim riding M. Franconi's horse--Indians in the Woods of Boulogne--Fright of the rabbits--Jim and the Doctor at the _Bal Mabille_, Champs Elysées--At the _Masquerade, Grand Opera_--Their opinions and criticisms on them--Frenchwomen at confession in St. Roch--Doctor's ideas of it--Jim's speech--"_Industrious fleas_"--Death of the wife of Little Wolf--Her baptism--Husband's distress--Her funeral in the Madeleine--Her burial in Montmartre--Council held--Indians resolve to return to America--Preparations to depart in a few days--_Bobasheela_ goes to London to ship their boxes to New York--He returns, and accompanies the Indians to Havre--Indians take leave of _Chippehola_ (the Author)--M. Vattemare accompanies them to Havre--Kindly treated by Mr. Winslow, an American gentleman, at Havre--A splendid dinner, and _(Queen's) Chickabobboo_--Indians embark--Taking leave of _Bobasheela_--Illness of the Author's lady--His alarm and distress--Her death--Obituary--Her remains embalmed and sent to New York. After their exhibition was over, and they had taken their dinner and _chickabobboo_ (at the former of which they had had the company of their old friend _Bobasheela_), their pipe was lit, and the conversation resumed about the French ladies, for whom Jim's dislike was daily increasing, and with his dislike, his slanderous propensity. He could not divest his mind of the 9000 illegitimate and abandoned little babies that he had seen, and the affection for dogs, which, instead of _exposing_, they secure with ribbons, and hold one end in their hands, or tie it to their apron-strings. This was a subject so glaring to Jim's imagination, that he was quite fluent upon it at a moment's warning, even when standing up or sitting, without the necessity of resorting to his usual and eccentric attitude. This facility caused him to be more lavish of his abuse, and at every interview in the rooms he seemed to be constantly frowning upon the ladies, and studying some new cause for abusing them, and drawing Mr. Melody and the Doctor into debates when they got back to their own apartments. Such was the nature of the debate he had just been waging, and which he had ended in his usual way, with the last word to himself, "I no care; me no like em." The subject was here changed, however, by Mr. Melody's reminding them that this day was the time they had set to visit the _Morgue_ and the _Catacombs_, for which an order had been procured. These had been the favourite themes for some days; and there had been the greatest impatience expressed to go and see the naked dead bodies of the murdered and _felo-de-ses_ daily stretched out in the one, and the five millions of skulls and other human bones that are laid up like cobhouses under great part of the city. _Bobasheela_ had described to them the wonders of this awful place, which he had been in on a former occasion, and Daniel had read descriptions from books while the Indians had smoked many a pipe; but when the subject was mentioned on this occasion, there were evident proofs instantly shown that some influence had produced a different effect upon their minds, and that they were no longer anxious to go. M. Vattemare, in speaking of the Catacombs a few days before, had said that about a year ago two young men from the West Indies came to Paris, and, getting an order to visit the Catacombs, entered them, and, leaving their guide, strolled so far away that they never got out, and never have been found, but their groans and cries are still often heard under different parts of the city. But the immediate difficulty with the Indians was a dream the Doctor had had the night before, and which he had been relating to them. He had not, he said, dreamed anything about the Catacombs, but he had seen _See-catch-e-wee-be_, the one-eyed wife of the "_fire-eater_" (a sorcerer of their tribe), who had followed his track all the way to the great village of the whites (London), and from that to Paris, where he saw her sitting on a bridge over the water; that she gave him a pair of new mocassins of moose-skin, and told him that the _Gitchee Manitou_ (the Great Spirit) had been very kind in not allowing him and _Wash-ka-mon-ya_ (Jim) to go under the ground in the Great Village of the Whites, in England, and their lives were thereby saved. She then went under an old woman's basket, who was selling apples, and disappeared. He could not understand why he should have such a vision as this the very night before they were to go underground to the Catacombs, unless it was to warn him of the catastrophe that might befall them if they were to make their visit there, as they had designed. They had smoked several pipes upon this information early in the morning, and the chiefs had closely questioned him and also consulted him as their oracle in all such cases, and had unanimously come to the conclusion that these were foreboding prognostications sufficient to decide it to be at least prudent to abandon their project, and thereby be sure to run no hazard.[40] [40] The place they had escaped in the great village of the whites they had been told was a Hell. It had been explained to them, however, that there were several of those places in London, and that they were only _imitations_ of hell, but they seemed to believe that these catacombs (as there were so many millions of the bones of Frenchmen gone into them) might be the real hell of the pale-faces, and it was best to run no risk. Mr. Melody and myself both agreed that their resolve placed them on the safe side at all events, and that we thought them wise in making it if they saw the least cause for apprehension. "They could easily run to the river, however, in their drive, and see the other place, the _Morgue_;" but that could not, on any account, be undertaken, as the two objects had been planned out for the same visit; and, from the Doctor's dream, it did not appear in the least certain in which of the places they were liable to incur the risk, and therefore they thought it best not to go to either. There was a great deal yet to see above ground, and quite as much as they should be able to see in the little time they had yet to remain there, and which would be much pleasanter to look at than white men's bones under ground. Their minds were filled with amazement on this wonderful subject; but their curiosity to see it seemed quite stifled by the Doctor's dream, and the subject for the present was dropped, with a remark from Jim, "that he was not sure but that this accounted for the white people digging up all the Indians' graves on the frontiers, and that their bones were brought here and sold." The Catacombs were thus left for Daniel and myself to stroll through at our leisure, and the Indians were contented with the sketch I made, which, with Daniel's account, put them in possession of the principal features of that extraordinary and truly shocking place. As their visit to the _Catacombs_ and the _Morgue_ was abandoned, we resolved to drive through the Champs Elysées and visit the woods of Boulogne, the favourite drive of the Parisians, and probably the most beautiful in the world. We had been solicited by M. Franconi, of the _Hippodrome_, to enter into an arrangement with him to have the Indians unite in his entertainments three days in the week, where their skill in riding and archery could be seen to great advantage, and for which he would be willing to offer liberal terms. He had invited us to bring the Indians down, at all events, to see the place; and we agreed to make the visit to M. Franconi on our way to the woods of Boulogne. The view was a private one, known only to a few of his friends, who were present, and his own operatic _troupe_. We were very civilly and politely received; and, all walking to the middle of his grand area, he proposed to make us the offer, on condition that the Indians were good riders, which I had already assured him was the case, and which seemed rather difficult for him to believe, as they had so little of civilization about them. As the best proof, however, he proposed to bring out a horse, and let one of them try and show what he could do. This we agreed to at once; and, having told the Indians before we started that we should make no arrangement for them there unless they were pleased with it and preferred it, they had decided, on entering the grounds, that the exercises would be too desperate and fatiguing to them and destructive to their clothes, and therefore not to engage with him. However, the horse was led into the area and placed upon the track for their chariot-races, which is nearly a quarter of a mile in circumference; and, the question being put, "Who will ride?" it was soon agreed that Jim should try it first. "Wal, me try em," said Jim; "me no ride good, but me try em little." He was already prepared, with his shield and quiver upon his back and his long and shining lance in his hand. The horse was held; though, with all its training, it was some time, with its two or three grooms about it, before they could get the frightened creature to stand steady enough for Jim to mount. In the first effort which they thought he was making to get on, they were surprised to find that he was ungirthing the saddle, which he flung upon the ground, and, throwing his buffalo robe across the animal's back and himself astride, the horse dashed off at his highest speed. Jim saw that the animal was used to the track, and, the course being clear, he leaned forward and brandished his lance, and, every time he came round and passed us, sounded a charge in the shrill notes of the war-whoop. The riding was pleasing and surprised M. Franconi exceedingly, and when he thought it was about time to stop he gave his signal for Jim to pull up, but, seeing no slack to the animal's pace, and Jim still brandishing his weapons in the air and sounding the war-whoop as he passed, he became all at once alarmed for the health of his horse. The Indians at this time were all in a roar of laughter, and the old gentleman was placing himself and his men upon the track as Jim came round, with uplifted arms, to try to stop the animal's speed, just finding at that time that Jim had rode in the true prairie style, without using the bridle, and which, by his neglect of it, had got out of his reach, when he would have used it to pull up with. Jim still dashed by them, brandishing his lance as they came in his way: when they retreated and ran to head him in another place, he there passed them also, and passed them and menaced them again and again as he came around. The alarm of the poor old gentleman for the life of his horse became very conspicuous, and, with additional efforts with his men, and a little pulling up by Jim, who had at length found the rein, the poor affrighted and half-dead animal was stopped, and Jim, leaping off, walked to the middle of the area, where we were in a group, laughing to the greatest excess at the fun. The poor horse was near done over, and led away by the grooms, M. Franconi came and merely bade us good-by, and was exceedingly obliged to us. Whether the poor animal died or not we never heard, but Jim was laid up for several days. On asking him why he ran the horse so hard, he said it was the horse's fault, that "it ran away with him the moment he was on its back--that the creature was frightened nearly to death; and he thought, if it preferred running, he resolved to give it running enough." The Doctor told him he acted imprudently in getting on, which had caused all the trouble. "In what way?" inquired Jim. "Why, by letting the animal see that ugly face of yours; if you had hid it till you were on, there would have been no trouble." We were all obliged to laugh at the Doctor's wit; and having taken leave of the polite old gentleman, we were seated in our carriages again for a drive through the woods of Boulogne. In the midst of these wild and truly beautiful grounds the Indians and all got down for a stroll. The native wildness of the forests and jungle seemed in a moment to inspire them with their wild feelings, which had, many of them, long slumbered whilst mingling amidst the crowds of civilization, and away they leapt and bounded among the trees in their wild and wonted amusements. Their shrill yells and the war-whoop were soon lost in the distant thickets which they penetrated, and an hour at least elapsed before they could all be gathered together and prepared to return. Their frightful yells had started up all the rabbits that were unburrowed in the forests; and whilst hundreds were bounding about, and many taking to the open fields for escape, they encompassed one, and with their united screams had scared it to death. This they assured us was the case, as they brought it in by the legs, without the mark of any weapon upon it. Few scenes in Paris, if any, had pleased them more than this, and in their subsequent drives they repeatedly paid their visits to the "woods of Boulogne." On their return home poor Jim lay down, complaining very much of lameness from his hard ride on Franconi's horse, which he knew would prevent him from dancing for some days, as he was getting very stiff, and afraid he would not be well enough to go and see the "Industrious Fleas" (as they were called), where he and the Doctor and Jeffrey had arranged to go with Daniel and several young American acquaintance, who had decided it to be one of the choicest little sights then to be seen in Paris, and which from all accounts is an exhibition of female nudities in living groups, ringing all the changes on attitude and action for the amusement of the lookers-on. There was a great deal of amusing conversation about this very popular exhibition, but in this poor Jim and the Doctor reluctantly submitted to disappointment when Mr. Melody very properly objected to their going to see it. Jim had laid himself on his back at this time, and, not feeling in the best of humour, began in a tirade of abuse of the Frenchwomen, of whom he and the Doctor had seen more perhaps on the previous evening in the _Jardin Mabille_ in the Champs Elysées, and the _masquerade_ in the _Grand Opera House_, than they had seen since they entered Paris. Their enterprise on that evening had taken place after their exhibition had closed, when Jim and the Doctor started with Jeffrey and Daniel and two or three friends who were pledged to take care of them. It was on Sunday evening, when the greatest crowds attend these places, and I have no other account of what they did and what they saw than that they gave me on their return home. They had first gone to the splendid _bal_ in the popular garden, where they were told that the thousand elegant women they saw there dancing were all bad women, and that nearly all of them came to those places alone, as they had nothing to pay, but were all let in free, so as to make the men come who had to pay. This idea had tickled Jim and the Doctor very much, for, although they were from the wilderness, they could look a good way into a thing which was perfectly clear. It was a splendid sight for them, and, after strolling about a while, and seeing all that could be seen, they had turned their attention to the "_Bal Masqué_" in the _Grand Opera_. Here they had been overwhelmed with the splendour of the scene, and astonished at its novelty, and the modes of the women who, Jim said, "were all ashamed to show their faces," and whose strange manoeuvres had added a vast deal to the fund of his objections to Frenchwomen, and which he said had constantly been accumulating ever since he first saw so many of them kissing the ends of little dogs' noses, and pretty little children on their foreheads. His mind here ran upon kissing, of which he had seen some the night before, and which he had often observed in the exhibition rooms and in the streets. He had laughed, he said, to see Frenchmen kiss each other on both cheeks; and he had observed that, when gentlemen kiss ladies, they kiss them on the forehead: he was not quite sure that they would do so in the dark, however. "In London always kiss em on the mouth; ladies kiss em Indians heap, and hug em too: in France ladies no kiss em--no like em--no good." In speaking of the _bal_ in the gardens, "he didn't see anything so very bad in that, but as for the masquerade, he looked upon it as a very immoral thing that so many thousands of ladies should come there and be ashamed to show their faces, and have the privilege of picking out just such men as they liked to go with them, and then take hold of their arms, as he said he repeatedly saw them, and lead them out." Amongst the Indians, he said, they had a custom much like that to be sure, but it was only given once a-year, and it was then only for the young married men to lend their wives to the old ones: this was only one night in the year, and it was a mark of respect that the young married men were willing to pay to the old warriors and chiefs, and the young married women were willing to agree to it because it pleased their husbands. On those occasions, he said, "none are admitted into the ring but old married men, and then the young married woman goes around and touches on the left shoulder the one who she wishes to follow her into the bushes, and she does it without being ashamed and obliged to cover her face." The Doctor's prejudices against the Frenchwomen were nothing near as violent as those of Jim, and yet he said it made him feel very curious when he saw some thousands with their faces all hidden: he said it must be true that they had some object that was bad, or they wouldn't be ashamed and hide their faces. Mr. Melody told Jim and the Doctor, however, that he didn't consider there was so very much harm in it, for these very women had the handiest way in the world to get rid of all their sins. If they happened accidentally or otherwise during the week to do anything that was decidedly naughty or wicked, they went into their churches very early in the morning, where the priest was in a little box with his ear to the window, where the woman kneeled down and told in his ear all the sins she had committed during the week, and she then went away quite happy that, having confessed them to him, he would be sure to have them all forgiven by the Great Spirit. They had a great laugh at this, and all thought that Mr. Melody was quizzing them, until _Bobasheela_ and _Daniel_ both told them it was all true, and if they liked to go with them any morning they would take them into any of the French churches or chapels, where they could see it; and would venture that they would see many of the same women confessing their sins whom they had seen at the _bal_ and the masquerade, and in this way they could tell who had behaved the worst, for the most guilty of them would be sure to be there first. The Doctor seemed evidently to look upon this still with suspicion and doubt; and as the splendid church of _St. Roch_ was nearly opposite to their rooms, and only across the street, it was proposed that the Doctor and Jim should accompany Daniel and their friend _Bobasheela_ immediately there, where in five minutes they could see more or less women at confession, and at the same time a fine sight, one of the most splendid churches in Paris, and the place where the Queen goes on every Sunday to worship. This so excited the party, that they chiefly all arose and walked across the street to take a view of the church and the Frenchwomen confessing their sins into the ears of the priests. They happened to have a fair opportunity of seeing several upon their knees at confession; and the old Doctor had been curious to advance up so near to one, that he said he saw the priest's eyes shining through between the little slats, and then he was convinced, and not before. He said that still it didn't seem right to him, unless the Great Spirit had put those men there for that purpose. He thought it a very nice place for a young girl to tell the priest where she would meet him, and he had a very good chance to see whether she was pretty or not. Jim had by this time studied out an idea or two, and said, he thought that this way of confessing sins aided the _bals_ and _masquerades_ and the _industrious fleas_ very much; and he believed that these were the principal causes of the great number of the poor little deserted and parentless babes they had seen in the hospital where they had been. The hour for the exhibition arriving, the conversation about Paris morals and religion was broken suddenly off, and perhaps at a good time. There were great crowds now daily attending their amusements, and generally applauding enthusiastically, and making the Indians occasional presents. On this occasion the Doctor had made a tremendous boast in the part he was taking in the eagle-dance, for the spirit of which the audience, and particularly the ladies, gave him a great deal of applause, so much so that at the end of the dance his vanity called him out in an off-hand speech about the beauty of the city, &c., and, it being less energetic than the boasts he had just been strutting out, failed to draw forth the applause he was so confidently depending on. He tried sentence after sentence, and, stopping to listen, all were silent. This perplexed and disappointed the Doctor very much, and still he went on, and at length stopped and sat down, admired, but not applauded. His friend Jim was laughing at him as he took his seat, and telling him that if he had barked like a little dog the ladies would have been sure to applaud. To this the Doctor said, "You had better try yourself:" upon which the daring Jim, who professed never to refuse any challenge, sprang upon his feet, and, advancing to the edge of the platform, stood braced out with his brows knitting, and his eyes "in a frenzy rolling," for full two minutes before he began. He then thrust his lance forward in his right hand as far as he could dart it over the heads of the audience, and, coming back to his balance again, he commenced. Of his speech no report was made, but it was short and confined to three or four brief sentences, at the end of which he looked around with the most doleful expression to catch the applause, but there was none. The old Doctor was watching him close, and telling him he had better sit down. In this dilemma he was still standing after all his good ideas had been spent, and each instant, as he continued to stand, making his case worse, he turned upon his heel, and as he was turning around he added, in an irritated manner, this amusing sentence: "You had better go and see the industrious fleas, and then you will applaud!" This made a great laugh amongst the Indians, but of course it was not translated to the audience. He then took his seat, looking exceedingly sober, and, with his pipe, was soon almost lost sight of in the columns of smoke that were rising around him. About this time a very friendly invitation had been given them and us by Colonel Thorn, an American gentleman of great wealth residing in Paris, and all were anticipating much pleasure on the occasion when we were to dine at his house; but, unluckily for the happiness and enjoyment of the whole party, on the morning of the day of our invitation the wife of the Little Wolf suddenly and unexpectedly died. Our engagement to dine was of course broken, and our exhibition and amusements for some days delayed. This sad occurrence threw the party into great distress, but they met the kindness of many sympathising friends, who administered in many ways to their comfort, and joined in attending the poor woman's remains to the grave. Her disease was the consumption of the lungs, and her decline had been rapid, though her death at that time was unexpected. When it was discovered that her symptoms were alarming, a Catholic priest was called in, and she received the baptism a few moments before she breathed her last. Through the kindness of the excellent Curé of the _Madeleine church_, her remains were taken into that splendid temple, and the funeral rites performed over them according to the rules of that church, in the presence of some hundreds who were led there by sympathy and curiosity, and from thence her body was taken to the cemetery of Montmartre, and interred. The poor heartbroken noble fellow, the Little Wolf, shed the tears of bitterest sorrow to see her, from necessity, laid amongst the rows of the dead in a foreign land; and on every day that he afterwards spent in Paris he ordered a cab to take him to the grave, that he could cry over it, and talk to the departed spirit of his wife, as he was leaving some little offering he had brought with him. This was the second time we had seen him in grief; and we, who had been by him in all his misfortunes, admired the deep affection he showed for his little boy, and now for its mother, and at the same time the manly fortitude with which he met the fate that had been decreed to him. On this sad occasion their good friend M. Vattemare showed his kind sympathy for them, and took upon himself the whole arrangements of her funeral, and did all that was in his power to console and soothe the brokenhearted husband in the time of his affliction. He also proposed to have a suitable and appropriate monument erected over her grave, and for its accomplishment procured a considerable sum by subscription, with which, I presume, the monument has, ere this, been erected over her remains. The Little Wolf insisted on it that the exhibition should proceed, as the daily expenses were so very great, and in a few days, to give it all the interest it could have, resumed his part in the dance that he had taken before his misfortune. Owing to letters received about this time from their tribe, and the misfortune that had happened, the Indians were now all getting anxious to start for their own country, and, holding a council on the subject, called Mr. Melody in, and informed him that they had resolved to sleep but six nights more in Paris, and that they should expect him to be ready to start with them after that time. This was a short notice for us, but was according to Indian modes, and there was no way but to conform to it. Mr. Melody had pledged his word to the Government to take care of these people, and to return to their country with them whenever the chiefs should desire it; and I was bound, from my deep interest for them, to assent to whatever regulations Mr. Melody and the chiefs should adopt as the best. This notice came at a time when it was unexpected by me, and I think not anticipated by Mr. Melody, and was therefore unfortunate for us, and probably somewhat, though less so, to them. The very heavy outlays had all been made for their exhibitions, and their audiences were daily increasing. If their exhibitions could have been continued a month or two longer, the avails would have been considerable, and of great service to Mr. Melody, who had the heavy responsibility on his shoulders of taking these people back to their country at his own expense. The closing of their amusements, and positive time of their departure, was now announced, and immense crowds came in within the remaining few days to get the last possible glance at the faces and the curious modes of "_les Peaux Rouges_." The poor fellows enjoyed their interviews with the public to the last, and also their roast beef and beef-steaks and _chickabobboo_. They had much to say in the few days that were left; they quitted their daily drives and sight-seeing, and devoted their time to the pipe and conversation, in a sort of recapitulation of what they had seen and said and done on this side of the Atlantic, and of friends and affairs in their own humble villages, where their thoughts were now roaming. They were counting their cash also, packing away all their things they were to carry, and looking out for the little presents they wished to purchase, to take home to their friends. In all of these occupations they had the constant attention of their old and faithful friends _Bobasheela_ and _Daniel_. In one of their conversations after the funeral of the poor woman, the Doctor and Jim had much to say of the honours paid to her remains by the French people, which the whole party would recollect as long as they lived. They were pleased with and astonished at the beauty and magnificence of the Madeleine church, and wished to get some account of it to carry home to show their people, and thus, besides several engravings of it, Jim's book carried the following entry by my own hand:--"_La Madeleine_, the most splendid temple of worship in Paris, or perhaps in the world; surrounded with 52 Corinthian columns, 60 feet high; south pediment, a bas-relief, representing the Day of Judgment, with the figure of Magdalene at the feet of Christ." As the party were to embark at Havre on their homeward voyage, it became a question how they were to get their numerous trunks and boxes they had left in London, filled with clothes and other articles that they had purchased or received as presents while in England. To relieve them of this difficulty, their friend _Bobasheela_ volunteered to go to London and take all their boxes to Liverpool, and ship them to New York, and was soon on the way. This was a noble and kind act on the part of _Bobasheela_, and it was done with despatch, and he was back in Paris just in time to accompany his friends to Havre. M. Vattemare was in readiness to attend them also; and all their transactions in Paris being brought to a close, and they having taken leave of _Chippehola_ and other friends, started for their native land, with my highest admiration for the sober and respectful manner in which they had conducted themselves while under my direction, and with my most ardent desire for their future success and happiness.[41] [41] I learned from M. Vattemare, on his return, that the party were treated with great friendship by an American gentleman in Havre, Mr. Winslow, who invited them to dine at his house, and bestowed on them liberal presents. They embraced their old friend Bobasheela in their arms on the deck of their vessel, and he sailed for London as their vessel was under weigh for America. The rest of their history is for other historians, and my narrative will continue a little further on events in Paris. Here was about the period at which my dear wife and I had contemplated our return, with our little children, to our native land, where we should have returned in the enjoyment of all the happiness we had anticipated or could have wished, but for the misfortune that had been for some time awaiting me, but not until then duly appreciated, in my own house. Those of my readers who were not familiar with the completeness of my domestic happiness prior to this period of my life, will scarcely know how to sympathize with me, or perhaps to excuse me for adverting to it here. My dear Clara, whom I have introduced to the reader before, who shared with me many of the toils and pleasures of the prairies of the "Far West," and was now meeting with me the mutual enjoyments of the refined and splendid world, had, a few weeks before, in company with a couple of English ladies of her acquaintance, paid a visit to the Mint, from which they all returned indisposed, having taken severe colds by a sudden change from the heated rooms into the chilly atmosphere of the streets. With my dear wife, who was obliged to retire to her room, the disease was discovered in a few days to have attached to her lungs; and although for several weeks she had been suffering very much, and confined to her bed, no serious apprehensions were entertained until about the time that the Indians left, when my whole thoughts and attentions were turned to her, but to discover in a few days that our plans for further mutual happiness in this world were at an end--that her days were nearly numbered, and that her four dear little children were to be committed to my sole care. To those who have felt pangs like mine which followed, I need but merely mention them; and to those who have not felt them, it would be in vain to describe. Her feeble form wasted away; and in her dying moments, with a Christian's hope, she was in the midst of happiness, blessing her dear little children as she committed them to my care and protection. The following obituary notice, penned by a lady of her intimate acquaintance, the reader will excuse me for inserting here, as it is the only record of her, except those engraven on the hearts of those who knew and loved her:-- DIED--On the 28th inst., No. 11 _bis_, Avenue Lord Byron, Paris, Mrs. Clara B. Catlin, the wife of the eminent traveller so distinguished for his researches into Indian history and antiquities of America, and so universally known and respected in Europe and his native country, Geo. Catlin, Esq., from the United States of America. The devoted friends who watched the last moments of this most amiable, interesting woman with intense anxiety, still clung to a faint hope, deceived by a moral energy never surpassed, and the most unruffled serenity of temper, that (had it been the will of Heaven) they might have been permitted to rescue a life so precious--but, alas! this gentle, affectionate, intellectual being was destined never more to revisit the land of her birth, and all that was earthly of so much worth and loveliness has passed away, whilst the immortal spirit has ascended to its kindred skies! "None knew her, but to love her; None named her, but to praise." _Galignani's Messenger, 30th July, 1845._ The reader can imagine something of the gloom that was cast over my house and little family, thus suddenly closed for ever from the smiles and cheer of an affectionate wife and a devoted mother, whose remains were sent back to her native land--not to greet and bring joy to her kindred and anxious friends, from whom she had been five years absent, but to afford them the last glance at her loved features, then to take their place amongst the ranks of the peaceful dead. CHAPTER XXVIII. Eleven Ojibbeway Indians arrive from London--Their exhibitions in the Author's Collection--Portraits and description of--Their amusements--Their pledge to sobriety--_Chickabobboo_ explained to them--Birth of a _Pappoose_--M. Gudin--Indians and the Author dine with him--His kind lady--The Author breakfasts with the Royal Family in the palace at St. Cloud--Two Kings and two Queens at the table--The Author presented to the King and Queen of the Belgians by Louis Philippe, in the salon--Count de Paris--Duc de Brabant--Recollects the Indian pipe and mocassins presented to him by the Author in the Egyptian Hall--Duchess of Orleans--The Princess Adelaide--The King relates anecdotes of his life in America--Washington's farewell address--Losing his dog in the Seneca village--Crossing Buffalo Creek--Descending the Tioga and Susquehana rivers in an Indian canoe, to Wyoming, the Author's native valley--The King desires the Author to arrange his whole Collection in the Louvre for the private views of the Royal Family--He also appoints a day to see the Ojibbeways in the Park, at St. Cloud--Great rejoicing of the Indians--A _dog-feast_--The Indians and the Author dine a second time at M. Gudin's. In the midst of my grief, with my little family around me, with my collection still open, and my lease for the Salle Valentino not yet expired, there suddenly arrived from London a party of eleven _Ojibbeway Indians_, from the region of Lake Huron, in Upper Canada, who had been brought to England by a Canadian, but had since been under the management of a young man from the city of London. They had heard of the great success of the Ioways in Paris, and also of their sudden departure, and were easily prevailed upon to make a visit there. On their arrival, I entered into the same arrangement with them that I had with the two former parties, agreeing with the young man who had charge of them to receive them into my collection, sharing the expenses and receipts as I had done before; he being obligated to pay the Indians a certain sum per month, and bound to return them to London, from whence they came, at his own expense. As my collection was all arranged and prepared, I thought such an arrangement calculated to promote their interest and my own, and in a few days their arrival and exhibitions were announced, they having been quartered in the same apartments which had been occupied by the Ioways before them. [Illustration: N^o. 18.] The following are the names of the party, with their respective ages given (see _Plate No. 18_):-- Age. 1. _Maun-gua-daus_ (a Great Hero)--Chief 41 2. _Say-say-gon_ (the Hail-Storm) 31 3. _Ke-che-us-sin_ (the Strong Rock) 27 4. _Mush-she-mong_ (the King of the Loons) 25 5. _Au-nim-muck-kwah-um_ (the Tempest Bird) 20 6. _A-wun-ne-wa-be_ (the Bird of Thunder) 19 7. _Wau-bud-dick_ (the Elk) 18 8. _U-je-jock_ (the Pelican) 10 9. _Noo-din-no-kay_ (the Furious Storm) 4 10. _Min-nis-sin-noo_ (a Brave Warrior) 3 11. _Uh-wus-sig-gee-zigh-gook-kway_ (Woman of the Upper World)--wife of Chief 38 12. _Pappoose_--born in the Salle Valentino. The chief of this party, _Maun-gua-daus_, was a remarkably fine man, both in his personal appearance and intellectual faculties. He was a half-caste, and, speaking the English language tolerably well, acted as chief and interpreter of the party. The War-chief, _Say-say-gon_, was also a fine and intelligent Indian, full-blooded, and spoke no English. The several younger men were generally good-looking, and exceedingly supple and active, giving great life and excitement to their dances. In personal appearance the party, taken all together, was less interesting than that of the Ioways, yet, at the same time, their dances and other amusements were equally, if not more spirited and beautiful than those of their predecessors. Thus, in the midst of my sorrow, I was commencing anxieties again, and advertised the arrival of the new party, and the commencement of their exhibitions. They began with more limited but respectable audiences, and seemed to please and surprise all who came, by the excitement of their dances and their skill in shooting with the bow and arrows, in the last of which they far surpassed the Ioways. It was impossible, however, by all the advertising that could be done, to move the crowds again that had been excited to see the Ioways; the public seeming to have taken the idea that these were merely an imitation got up to take advantage of their sudden departure. It happened quite curious, that, although the party consisted of eleven when they arrived, about the time of the commencement of their exhibitions the wife of the chief was delivered of a _pappoose_, which was born in the same room where the poor wife of the Little Wolf had died. This occurrence enabled us to announce the party as _twelve_--the same number as the Ioways; which, with the name somewhat similar, furnished very strong grounds for many of the Parisians to believe that they were paying their francs to see their own countrymen aping the Indians of America. It seemed strange that it was so difficult to do away this impression, which operated against them the whole time they were in Paris, though all who saw them but a moment were satisfied and pleased. Their amusements were much like those of the Ioways, but with national differences in the modes of giving them, which were, to the curious, subjects of great interest. The same hours were adopted for their exhibitions--the same vehicles were contracted for, for their daily exercise and sight-seeing--and their guardian, with Daniel, took charge of all their movements on these occasions. Their daily routine therefore was in most respects the same as that of the Ioways, and it would be waste of valuable time here for me to follow them through all. We held the council, as we had done in the other cases, before our arrangements were entered upon, and all was placed upon the condition that they were to conduct themselves soberly, and to drink no spirituous liquors. The temperance pledge was therefore given, after I had explained to them that, with the two other parties, ale in England, and _vin ordinaire_ in France, when taken to a moderate degree, were not included in the term "_spirituous liquors_," and that they would of course, as the other parties had been indulged, have their regular glass at their dinners, and also after their suppers, and before going to bed; and that they would call it, as the others had done, _chickabobboo_. This indulgence seemed to please them very much, and, being at a loss to know the meaning of _chickabobboo_, I took an occasion to give them the history of the word, which they would see was of Ojibbeway origin, and, laughing excessively at the ingenuity of their predecessors, they all resolved to keep up their word, and to be sure at the same time not to drop their custom, of taking the licensed glasses of _chickabobboo_. Amongst the kind friends whom this party made in Paris, one of the best was M. Gudin, the celebrated marine painter, in the employment of the King. This most excellent gentleman and his kind lady were frequent visitors to their exhibitions, and several times invited the whole party and myself to dine at their table, and spend the day in the beautiful grounds around his noble mansion (the "Chateau Beaujon"), and, in its present improved condition, little less than a palace. Not only will the Indians feel bound for life to acknowledge their gratitude to this kind lady and gentleman, but the writer of these notes will feel equally and more so for the kind and unmerited attentions they paid to him during his stay in Paris. It was through the friendly agency of M. Gudin that the King invited my collection to the Louvre, and myself, in company with him, to the royal breakfast-table in the palace at St. Cloud. I take no little satisfaction in recording here these facts, not only for myself, but injustice to one of the most distinguished painters (and one of the best fellows) of the age. On this occasion, the proudest one of my wild and erratic life, we were conducted through several rooms of the palace to the one in which the Royal Family, chiefly all assembled, with their numerous guests, were standing and ready to be seated around a circular table of 15 or 18 feet in diameter, at which, our seats being indicated to us, and the bow of recognition (so far as we were able to recognise acquaintances) having been made, all were seated. This extraordinary occasion of my life was rendered peculiarly memorable and gratifying to me, from the fact that there were two Kings and two Queens at the table, and nearly every member of the Royal Family. The King and Queen of the Belgians, who were at that time on a visit to Paris, with his Royal Highness the little Duc de Brabant, were the unusual Royal guests at the table on the occasion. The number of persons at the table, consisting of the two Royal Families, the King's aides-de-camp, and orderly officers of the palace, with the invited guests, amounted to about 30 in all; and as Kings and Queens and royal families eat exactly like other people, I see nothing further that need be noticed until their Majesties arose and retired to the salon or drawing-room, into which we all followed. I was there met as I entered, in the most gracious and cordial manner by His Majesty, who presented me to the King of the Belgians, who did me the honour to address me in these words:--"I am very happy, Mr. Catlin, to meet a gentleman whose name is familiar to us all, and who has done so much for science, and also for the poor Indians. You know that the Queen, and myself, and the Duc de Brabant were all subscribers to your valuable work, and we have taken great interest in reading it." The two heirs-apparent, the little Count de Paris and His Royal Highness the Duc de Brabant, came to me, and, recognising me, inquired about the Indians. The conversation with her Majesty, and also with the Princess Adelaide, and the Duchess of Orleans, was about the Indians, who they had heard had gone home, and in whom they all seemed to have taken a deep interest. The little Duc de Brabant recollected the small pipe and mocassins I had presented him when he visited my collection in the Egyptian Hall, under the protection of the Hon. Mr. Murray. I had a few minutes' conversation with the King of the Belgians, and also with the graceful and pensive Duchess of Orleans, and our ears were then all turned to the recitals of his Majesty, around whom we had gathered, whilst he was relating several scenes of his early life in America, in company with his two brothers, the Duc de Montpensier and the Count Beaujolais, which it seemed my advent with the Indians had brought up with unusual freshness in his mind. He commented in the most eloquent terms upon the greatness and goodness of General Washington, and told us that he and his brothers were lucky enough to have been present and heard his farewell address in Philadelphia, which he had been in the habit of reflecting upon as one of the most pleasurable and satisfactory incidents of his life. He gave us an amusing account of his horse getting mired in crossing Buffalo Creek, and of his paying a visit to the tribe of Seneca Indians, near to the town of Buffalo, on Lake Erie:-- "Being conducted," said he, "to the village and to the chief's wigwam, I shook hands with the chief, who came and stood by my horse's head, and while some hundreds of men, women, and children were gathering around, I told the chief that I had come to make him a visit of a day or two, to which he replied that he was very glad to see me, and I should be made quite welcome, and treated to the best that he had. He said there would be one condition, however, which was, that he should require me to give him everything I had; he should demand my horse, from which I would dismount, and having given him the bridle, he said, 'I now want your gun, your watch, and all your money; these are indispensable.' "I then, for the first time in my life, began to think that I was completely robbed and plundered; but at the moment when he had got all, and before I had time for more than an instant thought of my awkward condition, he released me from all further alarm by continuing, 'If you have anything else which you wish to be sure to get again, I wish you to let me have it; for whatever you deliver into my hands now you will be sure to find safe when you are about to leave; otherwise I would not be willing to vouch for their safety; for there are some of my people whom we cannot trust to.' "From this moment I felt quite easy, and spent a day or two in their village very pleasantly, and with much amusement. When I was about to leave, my horse was brought to the chief's door and saddled, and all the property I had left in his hands safely restored. "I then mounted my horse, and, having taken leave, and proceeded a short distance on my route, I discovered that I had left my favourite dog, which I had been too much excited and amused to think of, and did not recollect to have seen after I entered their village. "I turned my horse and rode back to the door of the chief's wigwam, and made inquiries for it. The chief said, 'But you did not intrust your dog to my care, did you?' 'No, I did not think of my poor dog at the time.' 'Well then,' said he, 'I can't answer for it. If you had done as I told you, your dog would have been safe. However,' said he, 'we will inquire for it.' At which moment one of his little sons was ordered to run and open a rude pen or cage by the corner of the wigwam, and out leaped my dog, and sprang upon my leg as I was sitting on my horse. I offered the honest chief a reward for his kindness; but he refused to accept it, wishing me to recollect, whenever I was amongst Indians again, to repose confidence in an Indian's word, and feel assured that all the property intrusted to an Indian's care I would be sure to find safe whenever I wanted it again." After reciting this amusing incident, his Majesty described to me the route which he and his brothers took from Buffalo to the falls of Niagara, and thence on horseback to Geneva, a small town at the foot of the Seneca Lake, where they sold their horses, and, having purchased a small boat, rowed it 90 miles to Ithaca, at the head of the lake. From thence they travelled on foot, with their luggage carried on their backs, 30 miles to Tioga, on the banks of the Susquehana, where they purchased a canoe from the Indians, and descended in it that romantic and beautiful river, to a small town called Wilkesbarre, in the valley of Wyoming. From thence, with their knapsacks on their backs, they crossed the Wilkesbarre and Pokono mountains to Easton, and from thence were conveyed in a coach to Philadelphia. I here surprised his Majesty a little, and his listeners, and seemed to add a fresh interest to his narrative, by informing him that I was a native of Wilkesbarre, in the valley of Wyoming, and that while his Majesty was there I was an infant in my mother's arms, only a few months old. He related a number of pleasing recollections of his visit to my native valley, and then gave us an account of an Indian _ball-play_ amongst the Cherokees and Choctaws, where he saw 500 or 600 engaged, during the whole day, before the game was decided; and he pronounced it one of the most exciting and beautiful scenes he had ever beheld. After an hour or so spent in amusing us with the pleasing reminiscences of his wild life in America, he expressed a wish to see my collection, and requested me to place it in a large hall in the Louvre, for the private views of the Royal Family; and also appointed a day and an hour when he would be glad to see the Ojibbeway Indians at St. Cloud, and desired me to accompany them. From the Palace, my friend M. Gudin, at the request of the King, proceeded with me to Paris and to the Louvre, with his Majesty's command to M. de Caillaux, director of the Louvre, to prepare the Salle de Séance for the reception of my collection, which was ordered to be arranged in it. My return from thence to the Indians, with the information that they were to visit the King, created a pleasing excitement amongst them, and, as the reader can easily imagine, great joy and rejoicing. This was an excitement and a piece of good news to the poor fellows that could not be passed over without some signal and unusual notice, and the result was, that a _dog-feast_ was to be the ceremony for the next day. Consequently a dog was procured at an early hour, and, according to the custom of their country, was roasted whole, and, when ready, was partaken of with a due observance of all the forms used in their own country on such occasions, it being strictly a religious ceremony. The same indulgence in seeing the sights of Paris, and of exercise in the open air, was shown to them as to the other party; and the same carriages contracted for, to give them their daily drives; in all of which they were accompanied by their guardian, to whom the sights of Paris were also new and equally entertaining, and they all made the best use of their time in these amusements. Their good friend M. Gudin appointed another day for the whole party to dine at his house, and having a number of distinguished guests at his table, the scene was a very brilliant and merry one. The orator of the party was the chief _Maun-gua-daus_, though on this occasion the War-chief, whose name was _Say-say-gon_ (the Hail-storm), arose at the table and addressed M. Gudin and his lady in a very affectionate manner; thanking them for their kindness to them, who were strangers in Paris and a great way from their homes, and at the same time proposing to give to his friend M. Gudin a new name, saying that, whenever the Indians made a new friend whom they loved very much, they liked to call him by a name that had some meaning to it, and he should hereafter call him by the name of _Ken-ne-wab-a-min_ (the Sun that guides us through the Wilderness). There were several gentlemen of high rank and titles present, and all seemed much entertained with the appearance and conduct of the Indians. CHAPTER XXIX. Indians' visit to the Palace of St. Cloud--The Park--Artificial lake--Royal Family--Prince de Joinville--Recollected seeing the Author and Collection in Washington--King and Queen of Belgians--The _regatta_--The birch-bark canoe and the Prince de Joinville's "Whitehaller"--War-dance--Ball-play--Archery--Dinner prepared for the Indians--M. Gudin and the Author join them--Indians' return--Gossip at night--Their ideas of the King and Royal Family--Messenger from the King, with gold and silver medals and money, to the Indians--The War-chief cures a cancer--Author's Collection in the _Salle de Séance_, in the Louvre--The Indians and the Author dine with M. Passy, Member of Deputies--Kind treatment by himself and lady--King visits the Collection in the Louvre--The Author explains his pictures--Persons present--An hour's visit--The King retires--Second visit of the King and Royal Family to the Collection--The Author's four little children presented to the King--His Majesty relates the anecdote of bleeding himself in America, and his visit to General Washington at Mount Vernon--His descent of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, in a small boat, to New Orleans--Orders the Author to paint fifteen pictures for Versailles. The day, which had arrived, for our visit to the King at St. Cloud, was a pleasant one, and, all the party being ready, we went off in good spirits; and on our arrival our carriages were driven into the Royal Park, and conducted to a lovely spot on the bank of an artificial lake, where there were a considerable number of persons attached to the Court already assembled to see the Indians; and in the lake, at their feet, a beautiful birch-bark canoe from their own tribe, belonging to the Duchess of Orleans, and by the side of it an elegant regatta-boat, belonging to the Prince de Joinville, with "_White Hall_," in large letters, on her sides, showing that she was a native of New York. The Indians had been told that they were to paddle one of their own canoes for the amusement of the Royal Family, but had not as yet dreamed that they were to contend for speed with a full-manned "_White-Haller_," in a trial for speed, before two kings and two queens and all of the Royal Family. Just learning this fact, and seeing the complement of men in blue jackets and tarpaulin hats, in readiness for the contest, they felt somewhat alarmed. However, I encouraged them on, and the appearance of the Royal Family and the King and Queen of the Belgians, in their carriages, at the next moment, changed the subject, and their alarms were apparently forgotten. Their Majesties, and all of the two Royal Families, descended from their carriages, and, gathering around the Indians in a group, listened to each one's name as they were in turn presented. (_Plate No. 19._) Louis Phillipe, and also the King of the Belgians, conversed for some time with the chiefs, while her Majesty and the other ladies seemed more amused with the women, and the little pappoose, in its beautifully embroidered cradle, slung on its mother's back. After this conversation and an examination of their costumes, weapons, &c., the targets were placed, and an exhibition of their skill in archery ensued. And after that, taking up their ball-sticks, "the ball was tossed," and they soon illustrated the surprising mode of catching and throwing the ball with their rackets or "ball-sticks." This illustration being finished, they sounded the war-whoop, and brandished their shields and tomahawks and war-clubs in the war-dance, which their Majesties had expressed a desire to see. (_Plate No. 20._) Every member of the two Royal Families happened to be present, I was told, on this occasion--a very unusual occurrence; and all had descended from their carriages, and grouped in a beautiful lawn, to witness the wild sports of these sons of the forest. I was called upon at that moment to explain the meaning of the war-dance, war-song, war-whoop, &c., for doing which I received the thanks of all the party, which gave me peculiar satisfaction. [Illustration: N^o. 19.] [Illustration: N^o. 20.] The King at this time announced to the chief that he wished to see how they paddled the birch canoe, that he had two American canoes, which they had put into the water; one was a canoe, he said, made of birch-bark by their own tribe, the Ojibbeways, and had belonged to his son, the Duke of Orleans; and the other, now belonging to the Prince de Joinville, was made in the city of New York; and he was anxious to be able to decide which could make the best canoe, the white men or the Indians. The whole party now assembled on the shore, and the sailors and the Indians took their seats in their respective boats, with oars and paddles in hand, and the race soon took place. (_Plate No. 21._) It was a very exciting scene, but it seemed to be regretted by all that the Indians were beaten, but which I think might not have been the case if they had put two in their canoe instead of four, sinking it so deep as to impede its progress; or if they had put two squaws into it instead of the men, as they are in the Indian country much superior to the men in paddling canoes. I had much conversation on this occasion with H.R.H. the Prince de Joinville relative to the Indian modes and his travels in America, when he recollected to have seen me and my collection in Washington city. Whilst these amusements were thus going on, my friend M. Gudin had prepared his canvas and easel near the ground, where he was busily engaged in painting the group, and of which he made a charming picture for the King. These curious and amusing scenes altogether lasted about two hours, after which their Majesties and all took leave, the King, the Queen, and the Duchess of Orleans successively thanking me for the interesting treat I had afforded them. Their carriages were then ordered to drive back empty, and all the royal party were seen strolling amidst the forest towards the Palace. The Indians and ourselves were soon seated in our carriages, and, being driven to a wing of the palace, were informed that a feast was prepared for us, to which we were conducted, and soon found our good friend M. Gudin by our side, who took a seat and joined us in it. The healths of the King and the Queen and the little Count de Paris were drunk in the best of _chickabobboo_, and from that we returned, and all in good glee, to our quarters in the city. The reader by this time knows that this interview afforded the Indians a rich subject for weeks of gossip in their leisure hours, and charged their minds with a burthen of impatience to know what communications there might yet be from the King, as they had heard that gold and silver medals and presents of other descriptions were sent to the Ioways after their interview. They proceeded with their exhibitions, as usual, however, and on the second day after the interview there came a messenger from the King with medals of gold for the two chiefs, and silver ones for each of the others of the party, and also 500 francs in money, which was handed to the head chief, and, as in the former instances, equally divided amongst them. This completed all their anxieties, and finished the grandest epoch of the poor fellows' lives, and of which they will be sure to make their boasts as long as they live, and give me some credit for bringing it about--their presentation to the Kings and Queens of France and Belgium. A curious occurrence took place a few days after this, as I learned on inquiring the object for which two ladies and a gentleman were in daily attendance on the Indians, and occasionally taking the War-chief away for an hour or two in their carriage and bringing him back again. Daniel told me that the young lady, who was one of the party, had dreamed that _Say-say-gon_ could cure a cancer on the face of her father, which had baffled all the skill of the medical faculty and was likely to terminate his life; and in consequence of her dream, the relatives and herself were calling on him to induce him to make the attempt, which he had engaged in, and in their daily drives with him they were taking him to the Garden of Plants and to various parts of the country, where he was searching for a particular kind of herb or root, with which he felt confident he could cure it. [Illustration: N^o. 21.] These visits were continued for some weeks, and I was informed by Daniel and by the Indians that he succeeded in effecting the cure, and that they handsomely rewarded him for it. About this time, my lease expiring, I closed my exhibition, removing my collection to the _Salle de Séance_, in the Louvre, where Daniel and I soon arranged it for the inspection of the King and Royal Family; and it being ready, I met his Majesty in it by appointment to explain its contents to him. The King entered at the hour appointed, with four or five of his orderly officers about him, and, on casting his eyes around the room, his first exclamation was that of surprise at its unexpected extent and picturesque effect. My friend M. Vattemare, and also another friend, Maj. Poore, from the United States, were by my side, and greatly amused and pleased with the remarks made by the King during the interview, relative to my paintings, and also to incidents of his life amongst the Indians of America during his exile. His Majesty soon recognised the picture of an Indian ball-play, and several other scenes he had witnessed on the American frontier, and repeatedly remarked that my paintings all had the strong impress of nature in them, and were executed with much spirit and effect. He seemed pleased and amused with the various Indian manufactures, and particularly with the beautiful Crow wigwam from the Rocky Mountains standing in the middle of the room, the door of which I opened for his Majesty to pass under. After his visit of half an hour he retired, appointing another interview, telling me that the Queen must see the collection with him, and also commanding the director of the Louvre to admit my little children to his presence, having heard of their misfortune of losing their mother, for which he felt much sympathy. At the time appointed, a few days after, I met his Majesty again, with a number of his illustrious friends, in my collection; and after he had taken them around the room awhile to describe familiar scenes which he had met there on his former visit, I continued to explain other paintings and Indian manufactures in the collection. (_Plate No. 22._) In the midst of our tour around the hall his Majesty met something that again reminded him of scenes he had witnessed in his rambling life in the backwoods of America, and he held us still for half an hour during his recitals of them. He described the mode in which he and his two brothers descended the Ohio and Mississippi rivers in an old Mackinaw boat which they purchased at Pittsburg, and in which they made their way amongst snags and sawyers and sandbars to the mouth of the Ohio, six hundred miles, and from that down the still more wild and dangerous current of the Mississippi, one thousand miles, to New Orleans, fifty-two years ago, when nearly the whole shores of these rivers, with their heavy forests, were in their native state, inhabited only by Indians and wild beasts. They lived upon the game and fish they could kill or purchase from the various tribes of Indians they visited along the banks, and slept sometimes in their leaking and rickety boat, or amongst the canebrake, and mosquitos, and alligators, and rattlesnakes on the shores. I took the liberty to ask his Majesty on this occasion whether the story that has been current in the American prints "of an Indian bleeding him" was correct; to which he replied, "No, not exactly; it had been misunderstood. He had bled himself on one occasion in presence of some Indians and a number of country people, when he had been thrown out of his waggon, and carried, much injured, to a country inn; and the people around him, seeing the ease and success with which he did it, supposed him, of course, to be a physician; and when he had sufficiently recovered from his fall to be able to start on his tour again, the neighbours assembled around him and proposed that he should abandon his plan of going farther west; that if he would remain amongst them they would show him much better land than he would find by proceeding on, and they would also elect him county physician, which they stood much in need of, and in which capacity he would meet no opposition. He thanked them for their kindness, assuring them that he was not a physician, and also that he was not in search of lands, and, taking leave, drove off." [Illustration: N^o. 22.] He also gave an account of their visit to General Washington at Mount Vernon, where they remained several days. General Washington gave them directions about the route to follow in the journey they were about to make across the Alleghany Mountains on horseback, and gave them also several letters of introduction to be made use of on their way. While we were thus listening to the narrations of his Majesty, my kind and faithful nurse was approaching from the other end of the room and leading up my little children (_Plate No. 22_), whom he immediately recognised as my little family, and in the most kind and condescending manner took them by their hands and chatted with them in language and sentences suited to their age. His next object was to designate the paintings he wished me to copy and somewhat enlarge, and soon pointed out the number of fifteen, which I was commanded to paint for the palace at Versailles. During the time that my collection was thus remaining in the Louvre many distinguished persons about the Court had access to it, and amongst the number an excellent and kind lady, Madame Passy, the wife of one of the distinguished members of the House of Deputies. This charming lady sought an acquaintance with the Indians also, and, taking a deep interest in their character and situation, invited them all to dine at her house, where they were treated with genuine kindness and liberality, which they will never forget. CHAPTER XXX. The Author leaves his Collection in the Louvre, and arrives with the Indians in Bruxelles--Indians at the soirée of the American Minister in Bruxelles--Author's reception by the King in the Palace--Small-pox among the Indians--Indians unable to visit the Palace--Exhibition closes--Seven sick with small-pox--Death of one of them--His will--A second dies--His will--The rest recover--Faithful attentions of Daniel--The Author accompanies them to Antwerp, and pays their expenses to London on a steamer--Death of the War-chief in London--His will--The Author raises money by subscription and sends to them--Letter from the survivors, in England, to the Author--Drawings by the War-chief--The Author stopped in the streets of London and invited to see the skeleton of the War-chief!--His indignation--Subsequent deaths of four others of this party in England--The three parties of Indians in Europe--Their objects--Their success--Their conduct--Their reception and treatment--Things which they saw and learned--Estimates and statistics of civilized life which they have carried home--Their mode of reasoning from such premises--And the probable results. During the time that my collection was exposed to the exclusive views of the Royal Family and their guests, the Indians were lying still, at my expense, which was by no means a trifling item. The young man whom I said they were under a contract with to pay them so much per month had performed his agreement with them for the two first months, and when the third month's wages became due he declared to them and to me that he could not pay them, nor pay their expenses back to London, as he was obligated to do. These duties then devolved on me, or at least, the Indians having been so long under my control and direction, I assumed them, and told the chiefs I would pay their expenses to London, and probably make something for them on the way, after my exhibition in the Louvre was finished. They were thus lying idle at this time, waiting for me to be at liberty to go with them, and, as I have said, living at my expense. I told them that I designed going by the way of Belgium, and making their exhibitions in Bruxelles, Antwerp, and Ghent for a few weeks, the whole receipts of which, over the expenses, they should have, and I fully believed it would be sufficient to pay their expenses quite home to their own country; and that I would also, as I had promised, pay all their expenses from Paris to London myself. With this design and with these views, leaving my collection in the Louvre, I started with the Indians for Bruxelles, where we arrived the next evening. We were all delighted with the appearance of Bruxelles, and the Indians in fine glee, in the fresh recollections of the honours just paid them in Paris, and the golden prospect which they considered now lay before them. But little did they dream, poor fellows! of the different fate that there awaited them. While resting a few days, preparing for the commencement of their exhibitions, they were kindly invited, with the author, to attend the _soirée_ of the American Minister, Mr. Clemson, where they were ushered into a brilliant and numerous crowd of distinguished and fashionable people, and seemed to be the lions of the evening, admired and complimented by all, and their way was thus paved for the commencement of their exhibitions. I had in the mean time made all the preparations and the necessary outlays for their operations, which they merely began upon, when it became necessary to suspend their exhibitions, owing to one of the number having been taken sick with the small-pox. I had at this time an audience appointed with the King, at the Palace, where I went and was most kindly received and amused in half an hour's conversation with His Majesty about the condition and modes of the American Indians. He expressed the deepest sympathy for them and solicitude for their welfare and protection, and, a few days after my audience, transmitted to me, through one of his ministers, a beautiful gold medal, with an appropriate inscription on it. The nature of the sickness that had now appeared amongst the Indians prevented the contemplated interview at the Palace, and also all communication with the public. It was still hoped by the physicians that a few days would remove all difficulty, but it was destined to be otherwise, for in a few days two others were attacked, and in a day or two more another and another, and at last they were in that pitiable and alarming state that seven of them were on their backs with that awful and (to them) most fatal of all diseases. My position then, as the reader will perceive, was one of a most distressing and painful kind, with my natural sympathy for their race, and now with the whole responsibility for the expenses, lives, and welfare of these poor people on my shoulders, their only friend and protector in a foreign country, as their conductor had left them and returned to London, and my own life in imminent danger whilst I was attending on them. One of these poor fellows died in the course of a few days in their rooms, another died in one of the hospitals to which he was removed, and a third died a few days after they reached London, though he was in good health when he travelled across the Channel. Such were the melancholy results of this awful catastrophe, which the reader will easily see broke up all their plans of exhibitions in Belgium, and ended in the death of three of the finest men of the party. Their sickness in Bruxelles detained me there near two months before the survivors were well enough to travel, during which gloomy time I had opportunity enough to test the fidelity of my man Daniel and his attachment to the Indians, who stayed by them night and day, fearless of his own danger, as he lifted them about in his arms in their loathsome condition both when dead and alive. When the party were well enough to travel I went to Antwerp with them, and placed them on a steamer for London, having paid their fare and given them a little money to cover their first expenses when they should arrive there. I then took leave of them, and returned to my little family in Paris, having been absent near three months, with an expenditure of 350_l._ With the poor fellows who died there seemed to be a presentiment with each, the moment he was broken out with the disease, that he was to die, and a very curious circumstance attended this conviction in each case. The first one, when he found the disease was well identified on him, sat down upon the floor with the next one, his faithful and confiding friend, and, having very deliberately told him he was going to die, unlocked his little trunk, and spreading all his trinkets, money, &c., upon the floor, bequeathed them to his friends, making the other the sole executor of his will, intrusting them all to him, directing him to take them to his country and deliver them with his own hand. As he was intrusting these precious gifts, with his commands, to an Indian, he was certain, poor fellow! that they would be sacredly preserved and delivered, and he then locked his little trunk, and, having given to his friend the key, he turned to his bed, where he seemed composed and ready to die, because, he said, it was the will of the Great Spirit, and he didn't think that the Great Spirit would have selected him unless it was to better his condition in some way. About the time of the death of this young man his confiding and faithful friend was discovered to be breaking out with the disease also, and, seeming to be under a similar conviction, he called _Say-say-gon_ (the War-chief) to him, and, like the other, unlocked _his_ little trunk, and, taking out his medal from the King, and other presents and money, he designated a similar distribution of them amongst his relatives; and trusting to the War-chief to execute his will, he locked his trunk, having taken the last look at his little hard-earned treasures, and, unlocking that of his deceased companion, and designating, as well as he could, the manner in which the verbal instructions had been left with him, gave the key to the War-chief, and begged of him to take charge of the trunk and the presents, and to see them bestowed according to the will of the testator. After this he turned away from his little worldly treasures, and suddenly lost all knowledge of them in the distress of the awful disease that soon terminated his existence. The War-chief was one who escaped the disease in Bruxelles, and, being amongst those whom I took to Antwerp and sent by steamer to London, was at that time in good health and spirits; but letters which I received a few days after their arrival in London informed me that he was there attacked with the same disease, and, most singular to relate, as soon as he discovered the disease breaking out upon his skin, he said that he should die, and, calling the chief _Maun-gua-daus_ to him, he, like the others, opened _his_ trunk, and, willing his gold medal from the hand of Louis Philippe, to his little son, and his other trinkets and money to his wife and other relatives, intrusted the whole to the chief to execute. He then unlocked the trunks of his two friends who were dead, and, as well as he could recollect them, communicated to _Maun-gua-daus_ the nature of the two bequests that had been intrusted to him, and died, leaving the chief to be the bearer of all the little effects they had earned, and sole executor of their three wills. It is a fact which may be of interest to be made known, that all of this party had been vaccinated in their own country, and supposed themselves protected from the disease; and also that the only three full-blooded men of the party died. The other four who had the disease had it in a modified form, and, in all probability, with the three who died, the vaccine matter had not been properly communicated, or, what is more probable, and often the case in the exposed lives they lead, it had in some way been prevented from taking its usual effect. After their misfortunes in Belgium and in London the excellent lady of the American Ambassador in Bruxelles raised, by a subscription, several hundred francs and sent to me in Paris, to which I got other additions in that city, and forwarded to them in England, to assist in paying their expenses back to their own country; and shortly after, and before they embarked for America, I received the following letter from them, which I feel it my duty to myself to insert here, lest any one should be led to believe that I did less than my duty to these unfortunate people:-- "TO GEO. CATLIN, Esq., now in Paris. "_London, Jan. 27, 1846._ "OUR DEAR FRIEND, "We send you our words on paper to let you know that we are thankful for your kindness to us. You have done everything to make us happy while with you in Paris and Belgium; and as all our people know in America that you are indeed their best friend, they will be glad to hear that you have taken us into your kind care whilst we were in a foreign land, and that while you were in a deep affliction with your own family. MAUN-GUA-DAUS, KE-CHE-US-SIN, A-WUN-NE-WA-BE, WAU-BUD-DICK, UH-WUS-SIG-GEE-ZIGH-GOOK-KWAY." The above letter was spontaneous on their part, and written in the hand of _Maun-gua-daus_, the chief, who spoke and wrote the English language very correctly. I was much shocked and distressed to hear of the death of _Say-say-gon_, the War-chief, for he was a remarkably fine Indian, and had become much attached to me. His life, as a warrior and a hunter, had been one of an extraordinary nature, and the principal incidents of it, particularly in the hunting department, he had been for some weeks engaged, just before their disastrous sickness, in illustrating by a series of designs in his rude way, presenting me a portfolio of them, with the story of each, which I wrote down from his own lips as he narrated them. This most amusing and original keepsake, which I shall treasure up as long as I live, and which I regret that the dimensions of this work did not allow me the space to insert, can at all times be seen by the curious of my friends who desire to see it. For the amusement of the reader, however, I have made room for a couple of his drawings, which will convey some idea of their general character, and of the decided cleverness of this good fellow at story-telling and design. The woodcuts are traced from the originals, and are therefore as near fac-similes as I could make them. _Plate No. 23_ represents _Pane-way-ee-tung_, the brother-in-law of _Say-say-gon_, crossing the river Thomas in a bark canoe, who had the following curious and amusing encounter with a bear which he met swimming in the middle of the river. Though the Indian had no other weapon than a paddle, he pursued the bear, and, overtaking it, struck it a blow, upon which it made an effort to climb into the canoe, by which the canoe was upset and the Indian sank under it. He arose to the surface, however, just behind the canoe, which in its progress had passed over him, and, being bottom upwards, the bear had climbed upon it, as seen in the sketch, and, having seen the man sink under it, was feeling under the canoe with his paws in hopes of getting hold of him. The bear, having made no calculation for the progress of the canoe, had not thought of looking behind it for his enemy, but balanced himself with difficulty without being able to look back; and whilst he was thus engaged feeling for his enemy under the canoe the Indian silently swam behind it, and, cautiously pushing it forward with his hand, succeeded in moving it near the shore, where he discovered his friend _Say-say-gon_ hunting with his rifle, who was in waiting for it, and when near enough shot it in the head. _Plate No. 24_ is his illustration of the first interview between white men and the Ojibbeway Indians; his description of it is as follows:-- "_Gitch-ee-gaw-ga-osh_ (the point that remains for ever), who died many snows since, and who was so old that he had smoked with three generations, said that his grandfather, _On-daig_, met the first white man who ever entered an Ojibbeway's wigwam. That white man was a great chief, who wore a red coat. He had many warriors with him, who all came in sight of the village of _On-daig_ (the crow), and, leaving his warriors behind, he walked towards the wigwam of _On-daig_, who came out, with his pipe of peace in one hand, and his war-club in the other. _On-daig_ offered his pipe to the white chief to smoke, who put his sword behind him in one hand, and raised his hat with the other. _On-daig_ never had seen a white man's hat before, and, thinking the white chief was going to strike him with it, drew his war-club. They soon, however, understood each other, and smoked the pipe together." [Illustration: N^o. 23.] [Illustration: N^o. 24.] But a few months after the death of this fine Indian I was on a visit to London, and while walking in Piccadilly was accosted by an old acquaintance, who in our conversation informed me that the skeleton of my old friend the War-chief had been preserved, and he seemed to think it might be an interesting thing for me to see. The struggle between the ebullition of indignation and the quiescence of disgust rendered me for the moment almost unfit for a reply; and I withheld it for a moment, until the poor Indian's ideas of hyænas before described had time to run through my mind, and some other similar reflections, when I calmly replied, "I have no doubt but the skeleton is a subject of interest, but I shall not have time to see it." My friend and I parted here, and I went on through Piccadilly, and I know not where, meditating on the virtues of scientific and mercenary man. I thought of the heroic _Osceola_, who was captured when he was disarmed and was bearing a white flag in his hand; who died a prisoner of war, and whose head was a few months afterwards offered for sale in the city of New York! I thought also of the thousands of Indian graves I had seen on the frontier thrown open by sacrilegious hands for the skulls and trinkets they enclosed, to which the retiring relatives were lurking back to take the last glance of, and to mingle their last tears over, with the horror of seeing the bones of their fathers and children strewed over the ground by hands too averse to labour and too ruthless to cover them again. I was here forcibly struck with the fitness of Jim's remarks about the hyænas, of "their resemblance to _Chemokimons_ or pale-faces," when I told him that they lived by digging up and devouring bodies that had been consigned to the grave. I thought also of the distress of mind of the Little Wolf when he lost his child at Dundee--of his objections to bury it in a foreign land; and also of the double pang with which the fine fellow suffered when dire necessity compelled him to leave the body of his affectionate wife amidst the graves of the thousands whose limbs and bones were no curiosity. And I could thus appreciate the earnestness with which, in his last embrace of me in Paris, he desired me to drive every day in a cab, as he had been in the habit of doing, to the cemetery of Montmartre, to see that no one disturbed the grave of her whom he had loved, but was then to leave; and that I should urge his kind friend M. Vattemare to hasten the completion of the beautiful monument he was getting made, that it might be sure to be erected over her grave before she might be dug up. With regard to the remainder of the party of Ojibbeways whom I have said I had advised to return as soon as possible to their own country, I am grieved to inform the reader that, from letters from several friends in England, I have learned that the chief has persisted in travelling through various parts of the kingdom, making his exhibitions of Indian life during the last year, and has had the singular and lamentable misfortune of burying three of his children and his wife! These, being facts, show a loss of seven out of twelve of that party, affording a shocking argument against the propriety of persons bringing Indians to Europe with a view to making their exhibitions a just or profitable speculation. Three of the former party died while under my direction, as I have described in the foregoing pages; and a noble fine Indian, by the name of _Jock-o-sot_, of the Sac tribe, brought to England by a Mr. Wallace about the same time, was dying, and died on his way home, from causes he met in this country; making the melancholy list of eleven who lost their lives in the space of eighteen months. These are facts which bring the reader's mind, as well as that of the author, to inquire what were the objects of these parties in England--how they came here--and what their success, as well as what will be the results that will probably flow from them. Each of these speculations has undoubtedly been projected by the white men who brought the Indians over, having conceived a plan of employing and taking to Europe such parties, who would be great curiosities in a foreign country, and by their exhibitions enabled to realise a great deal of money. These parties, in each case, have been employed, and induced to come on condition of a certain sum of money to be paid them per month, or so much per year, to be given them on their return to their own country, with the additional advantage of having all their expenses borne, and themselves entitled to all the numerous presents they would receive during their travels. As I have been with each of these parties the greater part of the time while they were making their exhibitions, I feel quite sure that this last condition of their engagements has been strictly kept with them, and that by it the Indians profited to a considerable amount from the kind and charitable hands of people whom they were amusing. But how far they have been benefited by the other conditions of their engagements, after they have returned to their homes, I am unable to tell. As for their reception by the public generally where they have travelled, and their conduct whilst amongst and dealing with the world, it gives me great pleasure, as a living witness, to tender to that public my grateful acknowledgments for the kindness and friendship with which they received those unsophisticated people; and in justice to the Indians, as well as for the satisfaction of those who knew them, to acknowledge the perfect propriety of their conduct and dignity of deportment whilst they were abroad. There were of the three parties thirty-five in all, and I am proud, for the character of the abused race which I am yet advocating, that, for the year and a half that I was daily and hourly in familiarity with them in Europe, I never discovered either of them intoxicated, or in a passion with one another, or with the world. They met the people, and all the wondrous and unaccountable works which their eyes were daily opened to in the enlightened world, with an evenness of temper and apparent ease and familiarity which surprised all who saw them. Their conduct was uniformly decent and respectful, and through their whole tour, whilst abroad, they furnished a striking corroboration of two of the leading traits of their national character, which I have advanced in my former work, of their strict adherance to promises they make, and of their never-ending garrulity and anecdote when, in their little fireside circles, they are out of the embarrassing gaze of the enlightened world, who are wiser than themselves. For these nightly gossips, which generally took place in their private apartments after the labours of the day were done and the pipe was lit, the excitements of the day, and the droll and marvellous things they had seen in their exhibition-room and in the streets of London and Paris, afforded them the endless themes; and of these little sittings I was almost an inseparable member, as will have been seen by many anecdotes entered in the pages which the reader has already passed over. It will be pleasing therefore to the reader, at least to those who felt an interest in those poor people, to learn, that, though they might have been objects of concern and pity whilst making a show of themselves in this country, they were, nevertheless, happy, and in the height of amusements, philosophically enjoying life as they went along; and to those who know me, and feel any anxiety for my welfare, that, although I was aiding them in a mode of living to which I was always opposed, I was happy in their society, and also in the belief that I was rendering them an essential service, although my labours were much less successful as regarded my own pecuniary interest. One of the leading inducements for Indians to enter into such enterprises, and the one which gains the consent of their friends and relations around them, and more particularly is advanced to the world as the plausible motive for taking Indians abroad, is that of enlightening them--of opening their eyes to the length and breadth of civilization, and all the inventions and improvements of enlightened society. These three parties (having met their old friend and advocate abroad, who has introduced them to the highest society of the world--has led them into three palaces, and from those down through every grade of society, and into almost every institution and factory of the continent--whose eyes and whose ears have been opened to most of the information and improvements of this enlightened age, and who have gone back to relate and to apply, in their own country, the knowledge they have gained) will furnish the best argument on record, for or against the propriety of bringing American Indians abroad, as the means of enlightening them and making them suitable teachers of civilization when they go back to the wilderness. And though the pages of this book cannot sum up the results of these visits, which can only be looked up ultimately in the respective tribes to which they have returned, yet a few words more upon the materials with which they have returned, and the author's opinion (in his familiar knowledge of the Indians' mode of reasoning) of their probable results, may not be obtrusive, as a sort of recapitulation of scenes and estimates, with their tendencies, made in the foregoing pages. It is natural, or at least habitual, to suppose that, for the ignorant to learn is always to improve; and that what a savage people can learn amongst civilized society _must be_ for their benefit. But in this view of the case, which would generally be correct, there arises a very fair question how far, for the benefit of the unenlightened parts of the world, it is judicious to acquaint them at a glance, with the whole glare of the lights and shades of civilized life, by opening the eyes of such parties to so many virtues and so many luxuries and refinements so far beyond the possibility of their acquiring, and at the same time to so many vices, to so much poverty and beggary not known in their simple modes of life, to teach to their people and to descant on when they get home; themselves as well as those whom they are teaching, despairing of ever attaining to what they have seen to admire and covet, and unwilling to descend to the degrading vices and poverty which they have seen mixed up in the mysterious and money-making medley of civilization. If I startle the readers, let them reflect for a moment upon what perhaps some of them have never yet exactly appreciated--that a man, to know how his own house looks, must see how the houses of others appear. To know how his own city and country actually look, and how his countrymen act and live, he should see how cities and countries look, and how people act, in other parts of the world. If he will do this, and then leave all civilized countries a while, and the din and clatter, and the struggles for wealth amidst the rags and vices of the community he has lived in, and taste for a time the simple, silent life of the wilderness, he will find, on returning to his home, that he has been raised amongst a variety of vices and follies which he never before had duly appreciated, and will then realise, to a certain degree, the view which the savages take of the scenes in civilized life when they look into the strange medley of human existence in our great towns and cities, where all the contrasts are before their eyes, of rich and poor, equally struggling for wealth or the means of existence. With such eyes were those wild people here to look; and without the cares and hourly and momentary concerns which lead the scrambling, busy world through and across the streets, blinded to what is about them, the poor but entirely independent Indians were daily and hourly scanning from the top of their buss, or the platform of their exhibition-rooms, the scenes, and manners, and expressions that were about them; and though they looked with unenlightened eyes, they saw and correctly appreciated many things in London and Paris which the eyes of Londoners and Parisians scarcely see. They saw their sights and got their estimates and statistics, and in the leisure of their inquisitive and abstracted minds drew deductions which few of the business world have leisure or inclination to make; and with all of these they have gone back to be the illustrators and teachers of civilization in the wilderness. Each one will be a verbal chronicler, as long as he lives, of the events and scenes he witnessed while abroad, and _Wash-ka-mon-ya_ (or Jim), with his smattering of civilization, and his book of entries, which he will find enough to read and translate, will furnish abundance of written evidence for them to comment upon to their nation, who will be looking to them for information of the secret of civilization. The bazaar of toys and trinkets presented to them, with the money and medals which they will open to view in the wilderness, will glitter in the eyes of their people, and, it is to be feared, may be an inducement to others to follow their example. Their _Bibles_ had increased in their various boxes since the last census to more than a hundred and fifty; their _religious tracts_, which they could not read, to some thousands; their _dolls_, in all, to fifty; and other useless toys, to a great number. Then came their _medals_, their _grosses of buttons_, their _beads_, _ribbons_, _brooches_, _fans_, _knives_, _daggers_, _combs_, _pistols_, _shawls_, _blankets_, _handkerchiefs_, _canes_, _umbrellas_, _beaver hats_, _caps_, _coats_, _bracelets_, _pins_, _eye-glasses_, &c. &c.; and then their prints--views of countries they had seen, of _churches_, _cathedrals_, _maps of London and Paris_, _views of bridges_, of _factories_, of _coal-pits_, of _catacombs_, of _Morgues_, &c. &c., to an almost countless number, all to be opened and commented upon, and then scattered, as the first indications of civilization, in the wilderness. These are but mere toys, however, but gewgaws that will be met as matters of course, and soon used up and lost sight of. But Jim's book of the statistics of London, of Paris, and New York, will stand the _Magna Charta_ of his nation, and around it will assemble the wiseacres of the tribe, descanting on and seeking for a solution of the blessings of civilization, as the passing pipe sends off its curling fumes, to future ages, over its astounding and marvellous estimates of civilized _nations_, of _cities_, of _churches_, of _courts of justice_, and _gaols_--of the tens of thousands of civilized people who are in it recorded (to their amazement) as _blind_, as _deaf and dumb_, and _insane_; of _gallows_ and _guillotines_, of _massacres_ and _robberies_, the number of _grog-shops_ and _breweries_, of _coal-pits_, of _tread-mills_ and _foundling hospitals_, of _poorhouses_ and _paupers_, of _beggars_ and _starvation_, of _brothels_, of _prisons for debtors_, of _rapes_, of _bigamy_, of _taxation_, of _game-laws_, of _Christianity_, of _drunkenness_, of _national debt_ and _repudiation_. The estimates of all these subjects have gone to the wilderness, with what the eyes of the Indians saw of the poverty and distress of the civilized world, to be taught to the untaught, and hereafter to be arrayed, if they choose, against the teachings of civilization and Christianity in the Indian communities: a table of the enormous numbers in the civilized world who by their own folly or wickedness drag through lives of pain and misery, leaving their Indian critics, in the richness of their imaginations, to judge of the immense proportion of the enlightened world who, in just retribution, must perish for their crimes and their follies; and in their ignorance, and the violence of their prejudices, to imagine what proportion of them are actually indulged in the comforts of this life, or destined to enjoy the happiness of the world to come. Teaching, I have always thought, should be gradual, and but one thing (or at most but few things) taught at a time. By all who know me and my views, I am known to be, as I am, an advocate of civilization; but of civilization, as it has generally been taught amongst the American Indians, I have a poor opinion; and of the plan I am now treating of, of sending parties to foreign countries to see all that can be seen and learned in civilized life, I have a still poorer opinion, being fully convinced that they learn too much for useful teachers in their own country. The strides that they thus take are too great and too sudden for the slow and gradual steps that can alone bring man from a savage to a civilized state. They require absolutely the reverse of what they will learn from such teachers. They should, with all their natural prejudices against civilized man, be held in ignorance of the actual crime, dissipation, and poverty that belong to the enlightened world, until the honest pioneer, in his simple life, with his plough and his hoe, can wile them into the mode of raising the necessaries of life, which are the first steps from savage to civil, and which they will only take when their prejudices against white men are broken down, which is most effectually done by teaching them the modes of raising their food and acquiring property. I therefore am constrained to give judgment here against the propriety of parties of Indians visiting foreign countries with a view to enlightening their people when they go back; and here also to register my opinion, for which I am daily asked, as to the effects which these visits to Europe will have upon the parties who have been abroad, and what impressions they will make amongst their people when they return. I am sure they saw many things which pleased them and gained their highest admiration, and which they might be benefited by seeing; and also that they saw many others which it would have been decidedly better they had never seen. They have witnessed and appreciated the virtues and blessings, and at the same time the vices and miseries and degradations of civilized life, the latter of which will doubtless have made the deepest impressions upon their minds, and which (not unlike some _more distinguished travellers than themselves_) they will comment and enlarge upon, and about in equal justice to the nation they represent and are endeavouring to instruct. Their tour of a year or two abroad, amidst the mazes and mysteries of civilized life, will rest in their minds like a romantic dream, not to be forgotten, nor to be dreamed over again; their lives too short to aspire to what they have seen to approve, and their own humble sphere in their native wilds so decidedly preferable to the parts of civilized life which they did not admire, that they will probably convert the little money they have made, and their medals and trinkets, into whisky and rum, and drown out, if possible, the puzzling enigma, which, with arguments, the poor fellows have found it more difficult to solve. With this chapter I take leave of my Indian friends; and as the main subject of this work ends with their mission to Europe, the reader finds himself near the end of his task. In taking leave of my red friends, I will be pardoned for repeating what I have before said, that on this side of the Atlantic they invariably did the best they could do; and that, loving them still as I have done, I shall continue to do for them and their race, all the justice that shall be in the power of my future strength to do. CHAPTER XXXI. The Author returns to his little children in Paris--His loss of time and money--The three Indian speculations--His efforts to promote the interests of the Indians, and the persons who brought them to Europe--His advice to other persons wishing to engage in similar enterprises--The Author retires to his atelier, and paints the fifteen pictures for the King--The pleasure of quiet and retirement with his four little children around him--He offers his Indian Collection to the American Government--And sends his memorial to Congress--Bill reported in favour of the purchase--The Author has an interview with the King in the Tuileries--Delivers the fifteen pictures--Subjects of the pictures painted--Conversations with the King--Reflections upon his extraordinary life--The Author's thoughts, while at his easel, upon scenes of his life gone by--And those that were about him, as he strolled, with his little children, through the streets and society of Paris--Distressing and alarming illness of the Author's four little children--Kindness of sympathizing friends--Death of "little George"--His remains sent to New York, and laid by the side of his mother--A father's tears and loneliness--The Author returns with his Collection to London. The commencement of this chapter finds me at my easel, in a comfortable _atelier_ in my own apartments in Paris, where I had retired, with my little children about me, to paint the fifteen pictures for the King, and others for which I had some standing orders. My collection was at this time placed in a magazine in the vicinity of my dwelling, and my faithful man Daniel still continued his charge over it, keeping it in repair, and plying between it and my painting-room when I required models from my collection to work from. The true measure of ordinary happiness I have long believed to be the amount of distress or anxiety we have escaped from; and in this instance I felt, retired from the constant anxieties I had lived under for the last six or seven years, demanding all my time, and holding my hand from my easel, as if I could be happy, even in my grief, with my four dear little children around me, whom their kind mother had but a few months before, in her dying breath, committed to my sole keeping and protection. My house, though there was a gloom about it, had a melancholy charm from its associations, whilst its halls were enlivened by the notes of my little innocents, who were just old enough for my amusement, and too young fully to appreciate the loss they had sustained, and whose little arms were now concentrated about my neck, as the only one to whom they claimed kindred and looked for protection. My dear little namesake, George, and my only boy, then three years and a half old, was my youngest, and, being the only one of my little flock to perpetuate my name, had adopted my painting-room as his constant play-house, and, cronies as we had become there, our mutual enjoyment was as complete as my happiness was, in the dependence I was placing on him for the society of my future days. His first passion, like that of most children, had been for the drum, with which, slung upon his back, with drumsticks in hand, he made my _atelier_ and apartments ring, and never was happier or more proud than when we addressed him as "Tambour Major," by which name he familiarly went, and to which he as promptly answered. Besides the company of this dear little fellow, I had the sweet society of my three little girls, of ten, eight, and six years old, and with all, and the pleasures at my easel, I counted myself in the enjoyments of life that I would have been unwilling for any consideration to part with. I thus painted on, dividing my time between my easel, my little children, and the few friends I had in Paris, resolving and re-resolving to devote the remainder of my life to my art, being in possession of the fullest studies from nature to enable me to illustrate the early history of my country in its various dealings with the Indian tribes of America; and in these labours I also with pleasure resolved to continue my efforts to do justice to their character and their memory. The American Congress was at that time in session, with a surplus revenue in the treasury of more than 12,000,000 of dollars; and, deeming it an auspicious time, I proposed the sale of my collection by my Memorial, to that body, believing there was sympathy enough for the poor Indians in my country, and disposition to preserve all the records of this dying race, to induce the Congress to purchase the collection as connected with the history of the country. I had been stimulated, the whole time whilst making the collection, with the hope that it would be perpetuated on the soil where these ill-fated people have lived and perished; and was constantly encouraged in my labours with the belief that such would be the case. On my Memorial, a Bill was reported by the Joint Committee on the Library, complimenting me in the strongest terms, and recommending its purchase; but, owing to the sudden commencement of the Mexican war at that time, no action was had upon it, and it now remains to be seen whether the Government will take it up again, or whether the collection will be left, because more highly appreciated, in a foreign land. My unavoidable belief still is, that some measure will be adopted for its preservation in my native country, a monument to those people who have bequeathed to the United States all her dominions, and who are rapidly wasting away; though I have fears that the call for it may be too late, either to gratify my ambition to see it perpetuated amongst the records of my country, or to enable me to feel the reward for my hard labour. The Bill reported in the Congress I have taken the liberty to insert here, for the very high compliment it conveys, as well as for the benefit it may in some way afford me by the value therein set upon my works. BILL reported in the AMERICAN CONGRESS, 1846, for the Purchase of CATLIN'S INDIAN GALLERY, July 24th, 1846. Read and laid upon the table. Mr. W. W. CAMPBELL, from the Joint Committee on the Library, made the following REPORT:-- _The Joint Committee on the Library, to whom was referred the Memorial of Mr. Catlin for the purchase of his Gallery of Indian Collections and Paintings; and also the Memorial of American artists abroad, and of American citizens resident in London, respectfully report--_ That of Mr. Catlin, who desires to place, on certain conditions, his extensive collection of Indian portraits, costumes, and other objects of interest connected with Indian life, in the possession of the Government, it is hardly necessary to speak, since his reputation is established throughout this country and Europe. A native of the state of Pennsylvania, his early studies were directed to the law, which, under an impulse of enthusiasm that often marks original genius, he soon abandoned for the pencil, stimulated by desire to give to his country exact and spirited representations of the persons, costumes, ceremonies, and homes of the aboriginal inhabitants of this continent, now retreating and gradually vanishing away before the power of civilization. Nor did he devote himself to his enterprises merely to gratify curiosity and preserve memorials of a bold, independent, and remarkable race of men, but to direct attention to certain lofty traits of their character, and excite, generally, friendly sentiments and efforts for their benefit. In making this collection, he expended eight entire years of his life and 20,000 dollars, and visited, often at great hazard of his personal safety, more than forty different (and most of them remote) tribes. Unaided by public or private patronage, he pursued and effected his object, sustained, as he observes, by the ambition of procuring a full and complete pictorial history of a numerous and interesting race of human beings rapidly sinking into oblivion, and encouraged by the belief that the collection would finally be appropriated and protected by the Government of his own country, as a monument to a race once sole proprietors of this country, but who will soon have yielded it up, and with it probably their existence also, to civilized man. On Mr. Catlin's return from the western prairies, the attention of Congress was, in 1837 and 1838, turned towards his collection, and a resolution for its purchase was moved in the House, and referred to the Committee on Indian Affairs, who, it is understood, expressed in their report an unanimous opinion in favour of the purchase, though the near approach of the close of the session prevented its being submitted for consideration. In transferring his collection to Europe, Mr. Catlin had no intention of alienating it, or changing its nationality and destination; but, by its exhibition, sought to secure support for his family, and obtain means of bringing out his great and expensive work on the Indians--a work which has thrown much light upon their character and customs, and been received with distinguished favour on both sides of the Atlantic. The judgment of our citizens, and that of eminent foreigners, is concurrent in regard to the value of this collection for the illustration of our history, and as a work of art. By desire of the King of France, it now occupies a gallery in the Louvre, and has been highly eulogized by the most distinguished artists and men of science in Paris. A large gold medal has been presented to Mr. Catlin by the King of the Belgians, with a letter expressing a high opinion of his productions. The American artists now in Paris, in a memorial addressed to Congress, urging the importance of securing this collection to our country, say, "Having made ourselves acquainted with the extent and interest of this unique collection, and of its peculiar interest to our country; and also aware of the encouraging offers now made to its proprietor for its permanent establishment in England, as well as the desire generally manifested here to have it added to the historical gallery of Versailles, we have ventured to unite in the joint expression of our anxiety that the members of the present Congress may pass some resolution that may be the means of restoring so valuable a collection to our country, and fixing it among its records. Interesting to our countrymen generally, it is absolutely necessary to American artists. The Italian who wishes to portray the history of Rome finds remnants of her sons in the Vatican; the French artist can study the ancient Gauls in the museums of the Louvre; and the Tower of London is rich in the armour and weapons of the Saxon race. "Your memorialists, therefore, most respectfully trust that Mr. Catlin's collection may be purchased and cherished by the Federal Government, as a nucleus for a national museum, where American artists may freely study that bold race who once held possession of our country, and who are so fast disappearing before the tide of civilization. Without such a collection, few of the glorious pages of our early history can be illustrated, while the use made of it here by French artists, in recording upon canvas the American discoveries of their countrymen in the last century, shows its importance." Your Committee feel the justice of these sentiments of American artists, and also the importance, as suggested in their memorial, of securing, by the purchase of his collection, the future efforts of Mr. Catlin for its enlargement. Let the Government appropriate his collection, and the chief ambition of its author's life will be realized, and he will be enabled, in a few years, to double it in value and extent. The bill which has recently passed the House for the establishment of the Smithsonian Institution provides that there shall belong to it a "gallery of art;" and of course it must be intended that such gallery shall be occupied by works of art. That such works should be principally American, is the obvious dictate of patriotism. No productions, your Committee believe, at present exist, more appropriate to this gallery than those of Mr. Catlin, or of equal importance. Should Congress fail to act on this subject, or decide unfavourably to Mr. Catlin's proposal, he may, notwithstanding his reluctance, be compelled to accept the positive and advantageous offers now made to him in England. The love of art, and respect for those who have cultivated it with success, especially for those who have illustrated, by their productions, the history of their country, have ever been cherished by the most civilized nations. It has been justly observed, that "among the Greeks the arts were not so much objects to promote gratification as of public interest; they were employed as the most powerful stimulants of piety and patriotism, commissioned to confer distinction upon those who were conspicuous for valour, for wisdom, and for virtue. A statue or picture gave celebrity to a city or a state, and a great artist was considered a national ornament--a public benefactor, whom all were bound to honour and reward." Your Committee believe the price of his collection, as named by Mr. Catlin, is moderate, and that a failure to obtain it would occasion deep regret to all the friends of art, and to all Americans who reasonably and justly desire to preserve memorials of the Indian race, or the means by which our future artists and historians may illustrate the great and most interesting events in the early periods and progress of our country. The Committee, therefore, recommend that the bill for the establishment of the Smithsonian Institute be so amended as that provision shall be made therein for the purchase of Mr. Catlin's gallery at the price mentioned by him--namely, sixty-five thousand dollars--payable in annual instalments of ten thousand dollars. _New York Journal of Commerce, Nov. 12th._ When I had completed the pictures ordered by the King, his Majesty graciously granted me an audience in the Palace of the Tuileries to deliver them, on which occasion he met me with great cheerfulness, and, having received from me a verbal description of each picture, he complimented me on the spirit of their execution, and expressed the highest satisfaction with them, and desired me to attach to the back of each a full written description. The dimensions of these paintings were 30 by 36 inches, and the subjects as follow:-- No. 1. An Indian ball-play. 2. A Sioux Council of War. 3. Buffalo-hunt on snow-shoes. 4. _Mah-to-toh-pa_ (the Four Bears), a Mandan chief, full length. 5. A Buffalo-hunt, Sioux. 6. Eagle-dance, and view of Ioway village. 7. _Mah-to-he-ha_ (the Old Bear), a medicine-man of the Mandans. 8. _Wan-ee-ton_, one of the most distinguished chiefs of the Sioux. 9. _Ee-ah-sa-pa_ (the Black Rock), a Sioux chief, full length. 10. _Mu-hu-shee-kaw_ (the White Cloud), Ioway chief. 11. _Shon-ta-ye-ee-ga_ (the Little Wolf), an Ioway warrior. 12. _Wa-tah-we-buck-a-nah_ (the Commanding General), an Ioway boy. 13. _Maun-gua-daus_, an Ojibbeway chief. 14. _Say-say-gon_ (the Hail Storm), an Ojibbeway warrior. 15. _Ah-wun-ne-wa-be_ (the Thunder-bird), Ojibbeway warrior. His Majesty had on several occasions, in former interviews, spoken of the great interest of the scenes of the early history of the French colonies of America, and French explorations and discoveries in those regions, and the subject was now resumed again, as one of peculiar interest, affording some of the finest scenes for the pencil of the artist, which he thought I was peculiarly qualified to illustrate. Additional anecdotes of his rambling life in America were very humorously related; and after the interview I returned to my painting-room, and continued happily engaged at my other pictures, with my familiar sweet smiles and caresses about me. As a painter often works at his easel with a double thought, one upon the subject he is creating upon the canvas, and the other upon the world that is about him, I kept constantly at work, and pleasantly divided my extra thoughts upon the amusing little tricks that were being played around me, and the contemplation of scenes and events of my life gone by. I ran over its table of contents in this way: "My native valley of Wyoming--the days and recollections of my earliest boyhood in it--my ten years in the valley of the _Oc-qua-go_, where I held alternately the plough, my rifle, and fishing-tackle--my five years at the classics--my siege with Blackstone and Coke upon Littleton--my three years' practice of the law in the Courts of Pennsylvania--the five years' practice of my art of portrait-painting in Philadelphia--my eight years spent amongst the Indian tribes of the prairies and Rocky Mountains--and, since that, my eight years spent in the light of the refined and civilized world, where I have been admitted to Palaces, and into the society of Kings, Queens, and Princes--and _now_ at my easel, in my studio, with my dear little babes around me, thanking Him who has blessed me with them, and courage and health, through all the vicissitudes of my chequered life, and now with strength to stand by and support and protect them." I thought also of the King, the wonderful man, with whose benignant and cheerful face I had been so often conversing; whose extraordinary life had been so much more chequered than my own; many of whose early days had been spent on the broad rivers and amongst the dense and gloomy forests of my own country; who, driven by political commotions from his native land, sought an asylum in the United States of America, and there, in the youthful energy of his native character, 52 years ago, crossed and re-crossed the Alleghany Mountains, descended the Ohio river 600 miles in his simple and rickety pirogue, and from the mouth of the Ohio to New Orleans, 1000 miles on the muddy waves of the Mississippi, amidst its dangerous snags and sand-bars, when the banks of those two mighty rivers were inhabited only by savages, whose humble wigwams he entered, and shared their hospitality; who afterwards visited the shores of Lake Erie, and also the Falls of Niagara, before the axe of sacrilegious man had shorn it of its wild and native beauties; who visited the little commencement of the town of Buffalo and the village of the Seneca Indians; who paddled his canoe 90 miles through the Seneca Lake to Ithaca, and from thence travelled by an Indian's path, with his knapsack on his back, to the Susquehana river, which he descended in an Indian canoe to Wyoming, my native valley; and then on foot, with his knapsack again upon his back, crossed the Wilkesbarre and Pokono Mountains to Easton and Philadelphia; and who consequently thus knew, 52 years ago, more of the great western regions of America, and of the modes of its people, than one of a thousand Americans do at the present day. I contemplated the character of this extraordinary man, reared in the luxuries of Palaces, thrown thus into the midst of the vast and dreary forests of the Mississippi, launching his fragile boat and staking his life upon its dangerous waves, and laying his wearied limbs upon its damp and foggy banks at night, amidst the howling wolves and rattlesnakes and mosquitoes; and after that, and all these adventures, called, in the commotions of his country, to mount the throne and wield the sceptre over one of the greatest and most enlightened nations of the earth. I beheld this great man in these strange vicissitudes of life, and France, whose helm he took in the midst of a tempest, now raised to the zenith of her national wealth and glory, after 17 years of uninterrupted peace and prosperity. I contemplated the present wealth and health of that nation and her institutions, her grand internal improvements, and cultivation of science and the arts; and I reflected also, with equal pleasure and surprise, on what I had seen with my own eyes, the _greatness of soul_ of that monarch as he was taking the poor Indians of the forest by the hand in his Palace, and expressing to them the gratitude he never yet had lost sight of, that he bore them for the kindness with which their tribes everywhere treated him when he entered their wigwams, hungry, on the banks of the Mississippi and the great lakes in America. He had the frankness and truthfulness to tell them that "he loved them," for the reasons he had given, and the kindness of heart to convince them of his sincerity in the way that carries the most satisfactory conviction to the mind of an Indian as well as it often does to that of a white man. These contemplations were rapid and often repeated, and there were many more; and they never passed through my mind without compelling me to admire and revere the man whose energy of character and skill have enabled him, with like success, to steer his pirogue amidst the snags of the Mississippi, and at the helm of his nation, to guide her out of the tempest of a revolution, and onward, through a reign of peace and industry, to wealth and power, to which she never before has attained. In the midst of such reflections I often strolled alone in a contemplative mood through the wilderness throngs of the Boulevards--the great central avenue and crossing-place--the _aorta_ of all the circulating world--to gaze upon the endless throng of human beings sweeping by me, bent upon their peculiar avocations of business or of pleasure--of virtue or of vice; contrasting the glittering views about me with the quiet and humble scenes I had witnessed in various parts of my roaming life. In the midst of this sweeping throng, knowing none and unknown, I found I could almost imagine myself in the desert wilderness, with as little to disturb the current of contemplative thoughts as if I were floating down the gliding current of the Missouri in my bark canoe, in silent contemplation of the rocks and forests on its banks. In a different mood, also, I as often left my easel and mingled with the throng, with my little chattering children by my side, forgetting to think, and with eyes like theirs, scanned the thousands and tens of thousands of pretty things displayed in the shops, and whiled away in perfect bliss, as others do, an hour upon the pavements of the Boulevards. The reader has learned, from various books, the features of this splendid scene, with all its life and din and glittering toys, and of Paris, with its endless mysteries, and beauties, and luxuries, and vices, which it is not the province of this work to describe; but from all that he has read he may not yet know how completely he may be lost sight of in the crowds of the Boulevards, and what positive retirement he may find and enjoy, unknowing and unknown, if he wishes to do so, in his apartments in the centre of Paris, where his neighbours are certainly the nearest and most numerous in the world. In London and New York one often thinks it strange that he knows not his neighbours by the side of him; but in Paris, those on the _sides_ are seldom taken into consideration as such, and so little do people know of, or care for, each other's business, that few have any acquaintance with their neighbours ABOVE and BELOW them. The circumscribed limits of the city, and the density of its population, enable the Parisians to make a glittering display in the streets, in the brilliancy and taste of which they no doubt outdo any other people in the world. The close vicinity of its inhabitants, and the facility with which they get into the streets, and the tens of thousands of inducements that tempt them there, tend to the concentration of fashion and gaiety in the principal avenues and arcades, which, in the pleasant evenings of spring and summer, seem converted into splendid and brilliant salons, with the appearance of continuous and elegant soirées. To these scenes all Parisians and all foreigners are alike admitted, to see and enjoy the myriads of sights to be seen in the shop-windows, as well as to most of the splendid collections of works of literature and the arts, which, being under the Government control, are free to the inspection of all who wish to see them. Amidst most of these I have been, like thousands of others, a visitor and admirer for two years, seeking for information and amusement--for study and contemplation--alone; or enjoying them in company with my little children, or travelling friends, for whose aid and amusement I have as often given my time. The reader will here see that I have before me the materials for another book, but as the object of this work is attained, and its limits approached, with my known aversion to travel over frequented ground, I must refer him to other pens than mine for what I might have written had I the room for it, and had it not been written twenty times before. The little bit of my life thus spent in the capital of France, though filled with anxieties and grief, has had its pleasant parts, having seen much to instruct and amuse me, and having also met with, as in London, many warm friends, to whom I shall feel attached as long as I live. In the English society in Paris I met a number of my London friends, where the acquaintance was renewed, with great kindness on their parts, and with much pleasure to myself. I met also many American families residing in Paris; and, added to their numbers, the constant throng of Americans who are passing to and from the classic ground of the East, or making their way across the Atlantic to the French metropolis, and swelling their occasional overflowing and cheerful soirées. At these I saw many of the élite and fashionable of the French, and noticed also, and much to my regret, as well as surprise, that, in the various intercourse I had in different classes, the Americans generally mixed less with the English than the French society. This is probably attributable in a great degree to the passion which English and Americans have, in their flying visits to the city of all novelties, to see and study something new, instead of spending their valuable time with people of their own family and language, whom and whose modes they can see at home. This I deem a pity; and though among the passing travellers the cause is easily applied, and the excuse as easily accepted, yet among the resident English and Americans, of whom there are a great many and fashionable families, there seems a mutual unsocial and studied reserve, which stands in the way of much enjoyment, that I believe lies at the doors of kindred people in a foreign land. My time, however, was so much engrossed with anxieties and grief and my application to my art, that I shared but moderately in the pleasures of any society; and the few observations I have been able to make I have consequently drawn from less intercourse than has been had by many others, who have more fully described than I could do had this book been written for the purpose. My interviews with society in this part of the world, as far as they have been held, have been general, and my observations, I believe, have been unbiassed. And as I mingled with society to see and enjoy, but not to describe, my remarks in this place, on the society and manners of Parisians and people in Paris, must end here, and necessarily be thus brief, to come within the bounds of my intentions in commencing this work. The society which fascinated me most and called for all my idle hours was that of my four dear little children, whose arms, having been for ever torn from the embrace of an affectionate mother, were ready to cling to my neck whenever I quitted the toils of my painting-room. There was a charm in that little circle of society which all the fascinations of the fashionable world could never afford me, and I preferred the simple happiness that was thus sweetly spread around me to the amusements and arts of matured and fashionable life. The days and nights and weeks and months of my life were passing on whilst my house rang with the constant notes of my little girls and my dear little "Tambour Major," producing a glow of happiness in my life, as its hours were thus carolled away, which I never before had attained to. My happiness was here too complete to last long, and, as the sequel will show, like most precious gifts, was too confidently counted on to continue. A sudden change came over this pleasing dream of life; the cheering notes of my little companions were suddenly changed into groans, and my occupations at my easel were at an end. The chirping and chattering in the giddy maze of their little dances were finished, and, having taken to their beds, my occupation was changed to their bedsides, where they were all together writhing in the agonies of disease, and that of so serious a nature as to require all my attention by night and by day, and at length anxieties of the most painful kind, and alarm--of grief, and a broken heart! To those of my readers who have ever set their whole heart upon and identified their existence with that of a darling little boy, and wept for him, it is unnecessary--and to those who have never been blessed with such a gift it would be useless--for me to name the pangs that broke my heart for the fate of my little "Tambour Major," who, in that unlucky hour, thoughtlessly relinquishing all his little toys, laid down with his three little sisters, to run the chances with them, and then to be singled out as he was by the hand of death. In kindness the reader will pardon these few words that flow in tears from the broken and burning heart of a fond father; they take but a line or two, and are the only monument that will be raised to the memory of my dear little George, who lived, in the sweetness of his innocence, to gladden and then to break the heart of his doating parent, the only one while he was living, to appreciate his loveliness, and now the only one to mourn for him. The remains of this dear little fellow were sent to New York, as a lovely flower to be planted by the grave of his mother, and thus were my pleasures and peace in Paris ended. Two idols of my heart had thus vanished from me there, leaving my breast with a _healing_ and a _fresh wound_, to be opened and bleeding together. My _atelier_ had lost all its charms; the _escalier_ also was dreary, for its wonted echoing and enlivening notes had ceased; and the beautiful pavement of the Place Madeleine, which was under my windows, and the daily resort, with his hoop and his drum, of my little "Tambour Major." The Boulevards also, and the Champs Elysées, and the garden of the Tuileries, the scenes of our daily enjoyment, were overcast with a gloom, and I left them all. * * * * * At the time of writing this my heart flies back and daily hovers about the scenes of so many endearing associations, while my hand is at work seeking amusement and forgetfulness at my easel. I have before said that the practice of my art is to be the principal ambition of the rest of my life; and as the beginning of this chapter found me in my _atelier_ in Paris, the end of it leaves me in my _studio_ at _No. 6, Waterloo Place_, in London, with my collection, my thousands of studies, and my little children about me where I shall be hereafter steadily seeking the rational pleasures and benefits I can draw from them; and where my friends and the world who value me or my works may find me without ceremony, and will be greeted, amongst the numerous and curious works in my collection, enumerated in the catalogue which I have given, for the amusement and benefit of the reader, at the end of my first volume. APPENDIX. (A.) _The two following Letters, written from the Ioway Mission on the Upper Missouri, with several others more recently received by Mrs. A. Richardson, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, bear conclusive proof of the sincerity of the Society of Friends, and of the benefit that promises to flow from their well-directed and charitable exertions._ IOWAY INDIANS. EXTRACT OF A LETTER FROM S. M. IRVIN. _Ioway and Sac Mission, May 24th, 1847._ Having a leisure morning, I most cheerfully give a few minutes to my dear friend in England. I have just been thinking, before I took my pen, how very mysterious are the workings of God's providence! Near four years ago, a party of our Ioway Indians started out on what appeared to us to be a wrong and uncalled-for expedition. We dreaded the result, and, so far as our opinion was consulted, it was given against the design, advising rather that they should stay at home, go to labour and economy, and not go to be shown as wild animals. In these notions we thought we were sustained by reason and Scripture, and were at least sincere in our views. We, however, made but little resistance, and when it was determined that they should go we submitted, did what we could for their comfort and success, gave them the parting hand, and commended them to the care of a merciful Providence. They started, spent the winter in St. Louis and New Orleans, associated with bad company, were exceedingly intemperate, and seemed to have grown much worse, which tended to confirm us in the belief of the error and impropriety of such a measure, and our hearts mourned over them. In the spring they went to the eastern part of the United States, and from thence to England. From the latter place we heard of the death of one and another, and of a probability of their going to France, and becoming enchained with the externals of the Catholic religion. Here we thought our opinions were fully confirmed. How can any good result from this? How much harm must ensue to these poor people, and probably through them to their nation! But at this point a ray of light seemed to break forth, and we could see through the dark vista a possibility of good resulting from it. Hitherto we could only trust in the government of God, knowing that He would bring good out of evil, but we could not see by what process it could be accomplished. But we now began to learn that the people of England, particularly the Society of Friends, were taking a warm interest in their welfare, stimulating their minds in favour of industry, economy, and Christianity, and especially guarding them against the pernicious effects of ardent spirits. There the foundation of hope, on rational and tangible principles, commenced. Perhaps the friends of God and his cause in England were to be the honoured instruments of making an indelible impression on the minds of these poor wanderers, and, if so, how well will they be repaid for their pilgrimage, and how happily shall we be disappointed! Next came an affectionate letter from your own hand. This was the second development of the unseen but operating hand of God in carrying on his own work. A young man of ardent piety and devotion to the cause of God was next recommended as a suitable person to come and labour among the Indians as missionary from England. I may say that the whole mystery was now plain. We could now say to each other, God has taken them over to England to send a suitable missionary, whose labours will be, doubtless, blessed to their conversion, and thus we could see how easily God, our _covenant-keeping God_, can foil the designs of Satan. How our hearts did burn within us when we thought of the goodness of God in these things! The original design we could not but look upon as a work of the enemy, got up for the purpose of selfishness and speculation, but now we could see the scale turn, and the pleasing prospect of hailing our young brother as a fellow-helper in this cause more than reconciled us to the hitherto mysterious movement. He came, and, though it was found best under the circumstances to assign him for a time to a different field of labour, still it is the same common cause, whether among the Otoes or Ioways. Very important pecuniary aid, both in money and clothing, was also subsequently received, from which our cause has, in no small degree, been aided and encouraged. Next a helpmate is proposed for our young friend, who is here alone, and toiling against the trials of a new and strange society and manners, and the prejudices of the Indians. God, through suitable instrumentality, conducts the negotiation to a favourable issue; the solitary individual is strengthened to part from her friends and country, is conducted by the hand of God across the dangerous deep, is brought more than 2000 miles, and, by a great variety of hazardous conveyances, almost to the centre of a great continent, and is now safely landed within the walls of this house. Truly may we exclaim, What hath God wrought! But the wonders and cause for gratitude stop not here. Our kind friend, Miss G., is not only here, but already is she engaged, twice or thrice a-day, in instructing the poor little daughters of the forest in needlework and such other instruction as may be suitable, and as yet I see nothing in the way but that she may very soon be able to give every moment of time that she can spare to these little ones. How pleasing will this be! How cheerfully and happily will the hours pass away, and how largely will she be rewarded for all her toil! I have skipped, as you will see, with more than eagle flight, over this narrative, for it furnishes materials enough for an interesting volume. I should like much to dwell upon it, but your mind can carry out the details, and see, as clearly as any other, the lineaments of God's goodness. Miss G. will have so much to say to you, that I am sure she will not know where to commence, and I think she will be about as much puzzled to describe many things so that you can understand. Mr. Bloohm has not yet arrived from the Otoe mission, but we look for him daily. So soon as I heard of Miss G.'s approach, I advised him of it, but he, being about fifty miles from the post-office, may not have received the letter. That you may better understand our relative situations, I will subjoin a rude outline of them with the pen. Miss G. remained some time in St. Louis for Mr. Lowrie, and was afterwards instructed by him to come on to this place, he being prevented, by low water, from calling for her at St. Louis. Last Friday he passed up the Missouri river to the Otoe and Omahaw mission, leaving word that he would be back, at the farthest, by the end of this week. If Mr. Bloohm be able, he will come down with Mr. L., if not before him. As soon as they arrive, we hope to be able to make full arrangements about all our affairs, and you may expect to be informed of all that will interest you in due time. EXTRACT OF A LETTER FROM JANE M. BLOOHM. _Ioway and Sac Mission, May 28th, 1847._ [After giving several interesting particulars of her journey from St. Louis, and arrival at the station, the writer proceeds:--] I feel assured, my dear friend, you would be pleased with this institution. The boarding-house is a most excellent building, three stories high. On the ground floor are the dining-room, kitchen, pantry, milk-house, and two sleeping-rooms. On the second story, the chapel in the centre, from back to front, and on one side the boys' school in front, with two small rooms behind, which Mr. Hamilton occupies. On the other side of the chapel is the girls' school, with two small rooms behind it for Mr. Irvin. The third story has the girls' bedroom, back and front, with a small one off it parted with deals, where I sleep. The boys' on the other side is the same; in the middle is a spare bedroom and Mr. Irvin's study. We rise at five o'clock, and at half-past assemble in the chapel for worship. While there, breakfast is placed on the table, and the bell rings again, when we go down. There are four tables, but not all full at present, as some of the children have left. Mr. Irvin sits at one table with the boys, Mr. Hamilton and his lady (when able) with the girls. Our table is called the family table; there are Mrs. Irvin, their father and mother, Mrs. I.'s two children, Mrs. H.'s eldest girl, the two men, and myself, as also any other strangers. Mr. Irvin's father and mother are two very old people; they intend leaving as soon as Mr. Lowrie comes, old Mr. I. not being able to manage the farm now. At breakfast each child has a pewter plate, with a tin pot turned upside down upon it, a knife and fork, and spoon. As soon as a blessing is asked, they each turn over their tin pot, and those who sit with them at table fill it with milk, and give them corn bread, boiled corn, batten cake (which is much like our pancake), a piece of bacon, and treacle. Of this they all eat as much as they like. Each table is served the same, with the exception that we have coffee for breakfast, and tea for supper. At dinner there is sometimes a little boiled rice, greens, &c., but no other kind of meat than bacon. We dine at half-past twelve, and sup at seven. After supper we all remain, and have worship in the dining-room; sometimes Mr. Hamilton prays and sings in Indian; and, oh! my beloved friend, could you only hear the sweet voices of those dear heathen children, you would be astonished, they sing so well. I do most sincerely hope that the day is not far distant when they shall not only worship Him with the voice, but with the understanding, and in truth. Mr. H. teaches all the children from nine till twelve. After breakfast I take the girls up to make their beds; two and two sleep together; they did it so neatly this morning. When done, they go with me to school to sew or knit till nine, then again after dinner till two, and after five till supper-time, when I assist to wash their hands and faces, and put them to bed. Some of them are very fine children, but I am surprised I am able to go so near them, for they are very dirty; but they seem very fond of me. You will laugh when I say that two or three of them often come running to me, and clasp me round the waist. They wish to teach me to speak their language; they can say a good many English words; they call their teachers father and mother. A few of them are very little. After I put on their nightcaps, and lift them into bed, they all repeat a prayer. You will be surprised when I say I do feel such an interest in them; I do wish these feelings may not only continue, but increase. I feel quite happy, and have never had the least feeling of regret at my coming out, and I trust I never shall. Both Mr. and Mrs. Irvin are most desirous for us to remain here, but that will rest with Mr. Lowrie and P. B. I am willing to go wherever I am of most use. It is a most arduous and responsible office we each hold, from the little I have seen (and it is but little to what I shall see if the Lord spare me). We need the prayers of our dear friends. Oh! forget us not, you, our far distant and beloved friends; entreat our Heavenly Father to give us much of his Spirit, and to us help along. Your old friend _Little Wolf_ came to see me. He said I might give his and his family's love to you. A few more came to welcome me; they are constantly coming about the house. I am just sent for to assist in the ironing, and have had to write this while the irons were heating. There is no mangle here. The children's clothes are washed and repaired every week. _May 31st._--Just as I finished the above on Friday afternoon, the arrival of two gentlemen was announced. They were Mr. Lowrie and my dear P. B. The latter is looking thin, but upon the whole is much better, as also much better than I expected to find him; as for colour, an Indian: but setting aside his Indian complexion, I was glad to see a known face, and to meet a beloved friend; and now, my dear friend, I can call him my beloved husband. The marriage took place on Saturday the 29th, at eight o'clock in the evening, by Mr. Hamilton, in Mr. Irvin's room. Old Mr. and Mrs. Irvin were there, Mr. and Mrs. Irvin junior, Mr. Lowrie, Mr. Melody (who had come to the mission on a visit), and one of the men, who had expressed a wish to be present. Mrs. H. was not strong enough to join us, which I did regret. Mr. Lowrie has settled for us to remain here, at least for some time; P. B. to assist Mr. H. with the boys and other labour, while I take the full charge of the girls. Oh! that we may each have strength to perform these our arduous duties. The old people leave in a few days, when we shall have their room, which is on the ground floor, close by the dining-room. We shall have to sit at table with the children, and should Mr. H. be from home or sick, at any time, we shall have the full charge. We have, one and all, made up our minds to assist each other when it is needful, and I do most sincerely pray that we may be enabled to labour together in the same spirit which was in Christ Jesus. It is His work, it is His cause; and we all, I trust, esteem our privilege great, that we, unworthy as we are, should be permitted to take part in this glorious work. Mr. Lowrie, I believe, intends leaving to-morrow; it will be three weeks before he can reach New York. Mr. Melody left this morning; he speaks highly of the kindness he received while in England, and, I believe, would very well like to pay a second visit. * * * * And now, dear friend, I think I have given you all the intelligence that it is in my power to send at the present time. It is likely that my dear husband may send a note, but he is much occupied, and, I believe, going to St. Joseph with Mr. Lowrie. He joins with me in kindest love to you and Mr. ----, not forgetting all our dear friends, to whom you will be so kind as to present it, and ever believe me to remain Your most affectionate friend, J. M. BLOOHM. APPENDIX. (B.) HORSE-TAMING: _Being an Account of the successful application, in two recent Experiments made in England, of the expeditious method of Taming Horses, as practised by the Red Indians of North America.--Communicated by_ ALEXANDER JOHN ELLIS, B.A., _of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1842._ EXTRACT. The object of the following pages is two-fold: first, to extract the account of the North American Indian method of Horse-taming, as given by Mr. Catlin in his new work, entitled 'Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians,' and to detail certain experiments which have been tried by the direction and in the presence of the Communicator; and, second, to urge gentlemen, farmers, stable-keepers, horse-trainers, horse-breakers, and all others who may be interested in the taming of horses, to try for themselves experiments similar to those here detailed, experiments which are exceedingly easy of trial, and will be found exceedingly important in result. The following is a detail of the experiments witnessed and directed by the Communicator:-- During a visit in the North Riding of Yorkshire, the volumes of Mr. Catlin first fell under the Communicator's observation, and among other passages those just quoted struck him forcibly. Although he scarcely hesitated to comprehend the circumstances there detailed, under a well-known though much-disputed class of phenomena, he was nevertheless anxious to verify them by actual experiment before he attempted to theorize upon them. And he now prefers to give the naked facts to the public, and leave his readers to account for them after their own fashion. It so happened that, while staying with his brother-in-law, F. M., of M---- Park, the Communicator had the pleasure of meeting W. F. W., of B----, a great amateur in all matters relating to horses. In the course of conversation the Communicator mentioned what he had read about horse-taming, and the detail seemed to amuse them, although they evidently discredited the fact. The Communicator begged them to put the matter to the test of experiment, and M., who had in his stables a filly, not yet a year old, who had never been taken out since she had been removed from her dam, in the preceding November, agreed that he would try the experiment upon this filly. The Communicator made a note of the experiments on the very days on which they were tried, and he here gives the substance of what he then wrote down. EXPERIMENT THE FIRST. SUBJECT--_A Filly, not yet a year old, who had never been taken out of the stable since she had been removed from her dam in the preceding November._ _Friday, Feb. 11, 1842._--In the morning W. and M. brought the filly from the stable to the front of M.'s house. The filly was quite wild, and on being first taken out of the stable she bolted, and dragged W., who only held her by a short halter, through a heap of manure. W. changed the halter for a long training halter, which gave him such power over her that he was easily able to bring the little scared thing up to the front of the house. Both M. and W. seemed much amused, and laughingly asked E. (the Communicator) to instruct them in Catlin's method of taming horses. E. did so as well as he could, quoting only from memory. The experiment was not tried very satisfactorily, but rather under disadvantages. The filly was in the open air, many strangers about her, and both the experimenters were seeking rather amusement from the failure than knowledge from the success of their experiment. W. kept hold of the halter, and M., with considerable difficulty, for the filly was very restive and frightened, managed to cover her eyes. He had been smoking just before, and the smoke must have had some effect on his breath. When he covered her eyes, he _blew_ into the nostrils, but afterwards, at E.'s request, he _breathed_; and, as he immediately told E., directly that he began to breathe, the filly, who had very much resisted having her eyes covered and had been very restive, "_stood perfectly still and trembled_." From that time she became very tractable. W. also breathed into her nostrils, and she evidently enjoyed it, and kept putting up her nose to receive the breath. She was exceedingly tractable and well behaved, and very loth to start, however much provoked. The waving of a red handkerchief, and the presenting of a hat to her eyes, while the presenter made a noise inside it, hardly seemed to startle her at all. _Saturday, Feb. 12, 1842._--This morning the filly was again led out to show its behaviour, which was so good as to call forth both astonishment and praise. It was exceedingly tractable, and followed W. about with a loose halter. Attempts were made to frighten it. M. put on a long scarlet Italian cap, and E. flapped a large Spanish cloak during a violent wind before its eyes, and any well broken-in horse would have started much more than did this yearling. EXPERIMENT THE SECOND. SUBJECT--_A Filly, three years old, coming four, and very obstinate; quite unbroken-in._ _Saturday, Feb. 12, 1842._--While the last experiments were being tried on the yearling, W. espied B., a farmer and tenant of M., with several men, at the distance of some fields, trying, most ineffectually, on the old system, to break-in a horse. W. proposed to go down and show him what effect had been produced on the yearling. The rest agreed, and W., M., and E. proceeded towards B., W. leading the yearling. On their way they had to lead her over a brook, which she passed after a little persuasion, _without force_. One of the fields through which she had to pass contained four horses, three of which trotted up and surrounded her, but she did not become in the least degree restive, or desirous of getting loose. When the party arrived at the spot, they found that B. and his men had tied their filly short up to a tree in the corner of a field, one side of which was walled, and the other hedged in. W. now delivered the yearling up to M., and proposed to B. to tame his horse after the new method, or (to use his own phrase) to "puff" it. B., who was aware of the character of his horse, anxiously warned W. not to approach it, cautioning him especially against the fore-feet, asserting that the horse would rear and strike him with the fore-feet, as it had "lamed" his own (B.'s) thigh just before they had come up. W. therefore proceeded very cautiously. He climbed the wall, and came at the horse through the tree, to the trunk of which he clung for some time, that he might secure a retreat in case of need. Immediately upon his touching the halter, the horse pranced about, and finally pulled away with a dogged and stubborn expression, which seemed to bid W. defiance. Taking advantage of this, W. leaned over as far as he could, clinging all the time to the tree with his right hand, and succeeded in breathing into one nostril, without, however, being able to blind the eyes. From that moment all became easy. W., who is very skilful in the management of a horse, coaxed it, and rubbed its face, and breathed from time to time into the nostrils, while the horse offered no resistance. In about ten minutes W. declared his conviction that the horse was subdued; and he then unfastened it, and, to the great and evident astonishment of B. (who had been trying all the morning in vain to gain a mastery over it), led it quietly away with a loose halter. Stopping in the middle of the field, with no one else near, W. quietly walked up to the horse, placed his arm over one eye and his hand over the other, and breathed into the nostrils. It was pleasing to observe how agreeable this operation appeared to the horse, who put up its nose continually to receive the "puff." In this manner W. led the horse through all the fields, in one of which were the four horses already mentioned, who had formerly been the companions of the one just tamed, and who surrounded it, without, however, making it in the least degree restive. At length W. and the horse reached the stable-yard, where they were joined by C. W. C. C., of S---- Hall, and J. B. son of B. the farmer. In the presence of these, M., and E., W. first examined the fore-feet, and then the hind-feet of the horse, who offered no resistance, but, while W. was examining the hind-feet, leant its neck round, and kept nosing W.'s back. He next buckled on a surcingle, and then a saddle, and finally bitted the horse with a rope. During the whole of these operations the horse did not offer the slightest resistance, nor did it flinch in the least degree. All who witnessed the transaction were astonished at the result obtained. The Communicator regrets only that he is not at liberty to publish the names at length. This experiment of bitting was the last that W. tried, since the nature of the country about M---- Park did not admit of ridings being tried with any prospect of safety. The whole experiment lasted about an hour. It should be mentioned that when J. B., to whom W. delivered up the horse, attempted to lead it away, it resisted; whereupon E. recommended J. B. to breathe into its nostrils. He did so, and the horse followed him easily. The next day, B., who is severe and obstinate, began at this horse in the old method, and belaboured it dreadfully, whereupon the horse very sensibly broke away. This result is important, since it shows that the spirit is subdued, not broken. These are all the experiments which the Communicator has as yet had the opportunity of either witnessing or hearing the results of, but they are to him perfectly satisfactory; the more so, that Mr. W., who made the experiments, was himself perfectly ignorant of any process of the kind until informed of it at the actual time of making the experiment. It may be considered over-hasty to publish these experiments in their present crude state, but the Communicator does so with a view to investigation. He will have no opportunity himself of making any experiments, as he is unacquainted with the treatment of horses, and neither owns any nor is likely to be thrown in the way of any unbroken colts. But the experiment is easy for any horse-owner, and would be best made in the stable, where the horse might easily be haltered down so as to offer no resistance. The method would, no doubt, be found efficacious for the subjugation and taming of vicious horses. The readers will, of course, have heard of the celebrated Irish horse-charmers. They never would communicate the secret, nor allow any one to be with them while they were in the stable taming the horse. It is agreed, however, that they approached the head. The Communicator feels sure that the method they employed was analogous to that contained in these pages. Persons have paid high prices for having their horses charmed; they have now an opportunity of charming horses themselves, at a very small expense of time and labour. Half an hour will suffice to subdue the most fiery steed--the wild horse of the prairies of North America. The Communicator has no object but that of benefiting the public in the above communication. The method is not his own, nor has he the merit of having first published it; but he thinks that he is the first who has caused the experiment to be made in England, and the entire success of that experiment induces him to make the present communication, in the hope that he may benefit not only his countrymen by the publication of a simple, easy, and rapid method of performing what was formerly a long, tedious, and difficult process, but also the "puir beasties" themselves, by saving them from the pains and tortures of what is very aptly termed "_breaking_-in." Mr. Catlin, indeed, speaks of the horse's struggles being severe, but they were the struggles of a wild horse, just caught on a prairie, and not of the domestic animal quietly haltered in a stable. The process as now presented is one of great humanity to the horse, as well as ease and economy to the horse-owner. The only objections to it are its novelty and simplicity. Those who have strength of mind to act for themselves, and not to despise any means, however simple or apparently childish, will have cause to rejoice over the great results at which they will arrive. But the great watchword which the Communicator would impress upon his readers is, "Experiment!" Magna est veritas et prævalebit. A. J. E. Note.--_The above experiments, which the Author has supposed might be interesting to some of his readers, have been even more successful than he would have anticipated, having always believed that to bring about the surprising compromise he has so often witnessed by exchanging breath, the animal should be a wild one, and in the last extremity of fear and exhaustion._--THE AUTHOR. THE END. London: Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES and SONS, Stamford Street. Transcriber's Notes Some compound words appeared both with and without a hyphen. They are given as printed. Where a word is hyphenated on a line break, the hyphen is retained if the preponderance of other appearances indicate it was intended. The word 'chickabboboo-ags' (gin palaces) appears both with and without the hyphen as a single word. The following table describes how a variety of textual issues, and resolution. Where variants were most likely printer's errors, they have been corrected, otherwise merely noted. p. viii The "big gun[,]" Removed. p. x The Author breakf[e]asts Removed. p. 29 visiters _sic._ p. 37 "oh, the distress!["] Added. p. 117 relig[i]on Added. p. 155 Newcastle-on[-]Tyne Added. p. 182 to support the Queen and royal family.["] Added. p. 184 when he[,] should stop Removed. p. 197 they had seen in [t]heir numerous visits Added. p. 241 Wa-ton-y[a/e] Corrected. p. 247 were daily engaged[,/.] Corrected. mea[n]ing Added. p. 253 and their questions.["] Added. p. 304 adherance _sic._ p. 305 w[i]th the whole glare Restored. 
7373	----	THE PATH TO ROME By Hilaire Belloc '... AMORE ANTIQUI RITUS, ALTO SUB NUMINE ROMAE' PRAISE OF THIS BOOK To every honest reader that may purchase, hire, or receive this book, and to the reviewers also (to whom it is of triple profit), greeting--and whatever else can be had for nothing. If you should ask how this book came to be written, it was in this way. One day as I was wandering over the world I came upon the valley where I was born, and stopping there a moment to speak with them all--when I had argued politics with the grocer, and played the great lord with the notary-public, and had all but made the carpenter a Christian by force of rhetoric--what should I note (after so many years) but the old tumble-down and gaping church, that I love more than mother-church herself, all scraped, white, rebuilt, noble, and new, as though it had been finished yesterday. Knowing very well that such a change had not come from the skinflint populace, but was the work of some just artist who knew how grand an ornament was this shrine (built there before our people stormed Jerusalem), I entered, and there saw that all within was as new, accurate, and excellent as the outer part; and this pleased me as much as though a fortune had been left to us all; for one's native place is the shell of one's soul, and one's church is the kernel of that nut. Moreover, saying my prayers there, I noticed behind the high altar a statue of Our Lady, so extraordinary and so different from all I had ever seen before, so much the spirit of my valley, that I was quite taken out of myself and vowed a vow there to go to Rome on Pilgrimage and see all Europe which the Christian Faith has saved; and I said, 'I will start from the place where I served in arms for my sins; I will walk all the way and take advantage of no wheeled thing; I will sleep rough and cover thirty miles a day, and I will hear Mass every morning; and I will be present at high Mass in St Peter's on the Feast of St Peter and St Paul.' Then I went out of the church still having that Statue in my mind, and I walked again farther into the world, away from my native valley, and so ended some months after in a place whence I could fulfil my vow; and I started as you shall hear. All my other vows I broke one by one. For a faggot must be broken every stick singly. But the strict vow I kept, for I entered Rome on foot that year in time, and I heard high Mass on the Feast of the Apostles, as many can testify--to wit: Monsignor this, and Chamberlain the other, and the Bishop of _so-and-so--o--polis in partibus infidelium;_ for we were all there together. And why (you will say) is all this put by itself in what Anglo-Saxons call a Foreword, but gentlemen a Preface? Why, it is because I have noticed that no book can appear without some such thing tied on before it; and as it is folly to neglect the fashion, be certain that I read some eight or nine thousand of them to be sure of how they were written and to be safe from generalizing on too frail a basis. And having read them and discovered first, that it was the custom of my contemporaries to belaud themselves in this prolegomenaical ritual (some saying in a few words that they supplied a want, others boasting in a hundred that they were too grand to do any such thing, but most of them baritoning their apologies and chanting their excuses till one knew that their pride was toppling over)--since, I say, it seemed a necessity to extol one's work, I wrote simply on the lintel of my diary, _Praise of this Book,_ so as to end the matter at a blow. But whether there will be praise or blame I really cannot tell, for I am riding my pen on the snaffle, and it has a mouth of iron. Now there is another thing book writers do in their Prefaces, which is to introduce a mass of nincompoops of whom no one ever heard, and to say 'my thanks are due to such and such' all in a litany, as though any one cared a farthing for the rats! If I omit this believe me it is but on account of the multitude and splendour of those who have attended at the production of this volume. For the stories in it are copied straight from the best authors of the Renaissance, the music was written by the masters of the eighteenth century, the Latin is Erasmus' own; indeed, there is scarcely a word that is mine. I must also mention the Nine Muses, the Three Graces; Bacchus, the Maenads, the Panthers, the Fauns; and I owe very hearty thanks to Apollo. Yet again, I see that writers are for ever anxious of their style, thinking (not saying)-- 'True, I used "and which" on page 47, but Martha Brown the stylist gave me leave;' or: 'What if I do end a sentence with a preposition? I always follow the rules of Mr Twist in his "'Tis Thus 'Twas Spoke", Odd's Body an' I do not!' Now this is a pusillanimity of theirs (the book writers) that they think style power, and yet never say as much in their Prefaces. Come, let me do so... Where are you? Let me marshal you, my regiments of words! Rabelais! Master of all happy men! Are you sleeping there pressed into desecrated earth under the doss-house of the Rue St Paul, or do you not rather drink cool wine in some elysian Chinon looking on the Vienne where it rises in Paradise? Are you sleeping or drinking that you will not lend us the staff of Friar John wherewith he slaughtered and bashed the invaders of the vineyards, who are but a parable for the mincing pedants and bloodless thin-faced rogues of the world? Write as the wind blows and command all words like an army! See them how they stand in rank ready for assault, the jolly, swaggering fellows! First come the Neologisms, that are afraid of no man; fresh, young, hearty, and for the most part very long-limbed, though some few short and strong. There also are the Misprints to confuse the enemy at his onrush. Then see upon the flank a company of picked Ambiguities covering what shall be a feint by the squadron of Anachronisms led by old Anachronos himself; a terrible chap with nigglers and a great murderer of fools. But here see more deeply massed the ten thousand Egotisms shining in their armour and roaring for battle. They care for no one. They stormed Convention yesterday and looted the cellar of Good-Manners, who died of fear without a wound; so they drank his wine and are to-day as strong as lions and as careless (saving only their Captain, Monologue, who is lantern-jawed). Here are the Aposiopaesian Auxiliaries, and Dithyramb that killed Punctuation in open fight; Parenthesis the giant and champion of the host, and Anacoluthon that never learned to read or write but is very handy with his sword; and Metathesis and Hendiadys, two Greeks. And last come the noble Gallicisms prancing about on their light horses: cavalry so sudden that the enemy sicken at the mere sight of them and are overcome without a blow. Come then my hearties, my lads, my indefatigable repetitions, seize you each his own trumpet that hangs at his side and blow the charge; we shall soon drive them all before us headlong, howling down together to the Picrocholian Sea. So! That was an interlude. Forget the clamour. But there is another matter; written as yet in no other Preface: peculiar to this book. For without rhyme or reason, pictures of an uncertain kind stand in the pages of the chronicle. Why? _Because it has become so cheap to photograph on zinc._ In old time a man that drew ill drew not at all. He did well. Then either there were no pictures in his book, or (if there were any) they were done by some other man that loved him not a groat and would not have walked half a mile to see him hanged. But now it is so easy for a man to scratch down what he sees and put it in his book that any fool may do it and be none the worse--many others shall follow. This is the first. Before you blame too much, consider the alternative. Shall a man march through Europe dragging an artist on a cord? God forbid! Shall an artist write a book? Why no, the remedy is worse than the disease. Let us agree then, that, if he will, any pilgrim may for the future draw (if he likes) that most difficult subject, snow hills beyond a grove of trees; that he may draw whatever he comes across in order to enliven his mind (for who saw it if not he? And was it not his loneliness that enabled him to see it?), and that he may draw what he never saw, with as much freedom as you readers so very continually see what you never draw. He may draw the morning mist on the Grimsel, six months afterwards; when he has forgotten what it was like: and he may frame it for a masterpiece to make the good draughtsman rage. The world has grown a boy again this long time past, and they are building hotels (I hear) in the place where Acedes discovered the Water of Youth in a hollow of the hill Epistemonoscoptes. Then let us love one another and laugh. Time passes, and we shall soon laugh no longer--and meanwhile common living is a burden, and earnest men are at siege upon us all around. Let us suffer absurdities, for that is only to suffer one another. Nor let us be too hard upon the just but anxious fellow that sat down dutifully to paint the soul of Switzerland upon a fan. When that first Proverb-Maker who has imposed upon all peoples by his epigrams and his fallacious half-truths, his empiricism and his wanton appeals to popular ignorance, I say when this man (for I take it he was a man, and a wicked one) was passing through France he launched among the French one of his pestiferous phrases, _'Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûté'_ and this in a rolling-in-the-mouth self-satisfied kind of a manner has been repeated since his day at least seventeen million three hundred and sixty-two thousand five hundred and four times by a great mass of Ushers, Parents, Company Officers, Elder Brothers, Parish Priests, and authorities in general whose office it may be and whose pleasure it certainly is to jog up and disturb that native slumber and inertia of the mind which is the true breeding soil of Revelation. For when boys or soldiers or poets, or any other blossoms and prides of nature, are for lying steady in the shade and letting the Mind commune with its Immortal Comrades, up comes Authority busking about and eager as though it were a duty to force the said Mind to burrow and sweat in the matter of this very perishable world, its temporary habitation. 'Up,' says Authority, 'and let me see that Mind of yours doing something practical. Let me see Him mixing painfully with circumstance, and botching up some Imperfection or other that shall at least be a Reality and not a silly Fantasy.' Then the poor Mind comes back to Prison again, and the boy takes his horrible Homer in the real Greek (not Church's book, alas!); the Poet his rough hairy paper, his headache, and his cross-nibbed pen; the Soldier abandons his inner picture of swaggering about in ordinary clothes, and sees the dusty road and feels the hard places in his boot, and shakes down again to the steady pressure of his pack; and Authority is satisfied, knowing that he will get a smattering from the Boy, a rubbishy verse from the Poet, and from the Soldier a long and thirsty march. And Authority, when it does this commonly sets to work by one of these formulae: as, in England north of Trent, by the manifestly false and boastful phrase, 'A thing begun is half ended', and in the south by 'The Beginning is half the Battle'; but in France by the words I have attributed to the Proverb-Maker, _'Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûte'._ By this you may perceive that the Proverb-Maker, like every other Demagogue, Energumen, and Disturber, dealt largely in metaphor--but this I need hardly insist upon, for in his vast collection of published and unpublished works it is amply evident that he took the silly pride of the half-educated in a constant abuse of metaphor. There was a sturdy boy at my school who, when the master had carefully explained to us the nature of metaphor, said that so far as he could see a metaphor was nothing but a long Greek word for a lie. And certainly men who know that the mere truth would be distasteful or tedious commonly have recourse to metaphor, and so do those false men who desire to acquire a subtle and unjust influence over their fellows, and chief among them, the Proverb-Maker. For though his name is lost in the great space of time that has passed since he flourished, yet his character can be very clearly deduced from the many literary fragments he has left, and that is found to be the character of a pusillanimous and ill-bred usurer, wholly lacking in foresight, in generous enterprise, and chivalrous enthusiasm--in matters of the Faith a prig or a doubter, in matters of adventure a poltroon, in matters of Science an ignorant Parrot, and in Letters a wretchedly bad rhymester, with a vice for alliteration; a wilful liar (as, for instance, '_The longest way round is the shortest way home_'), a startling miser (as, _'A penny saved is a penny earned'_), one ignorant of largesse and human charity (as, '_Waste not, want not_'), and a shocking boor in the point of honour (as, _'Hard words break no bones'_--he never fought, I see, but with a cudgel). But he had just that touch of slinking humour which the peasants have, and there is in all he said that exasperating quality for which we have no name, which certainly is not accuracy, and which is quite the opposite of judgement, yet which catches the mind as brambles do our clothes, causing us continually to pause and swear. For he mixes up unanswerable things with false conclusions, he is perpetually letting the cat out of the bag and exposing our tricks, putting a colour to our actions, disturbing us with our own memory, indecently revealing corners of the soul. He is like those men who say one unpleasant and rude thing about a friend, and then take refuge from their disloyal and false action by pleading that this single accusation is true; and it is perhaps for this abominable logicality of his and for his malicious cunning that I chiefly hate him: and since he himself evidently hated the human race, he must not complain if he is hated in return. Take, for instance, this phrase that set me writing, _'Ce nest que le premier pas qui coûte'_. It is false. Much after a beginning is difficult, as everybody knows who has crossed the sea, and as for the first _step_ a man never so much as remembers it; if there is difficulty it is in the whole launching of a thing, in the first ten pages of a book, or the first half-hour of listening to a sermon, or the first mile of a walk. The first step is undertaken lightly, pleasantly, and with your soul in the sky; it is the five-hundredth that counts. But I know, and you know, and he knew (worse luck) that he was saying a thorny and catching thing when he made up that phrase. It worries one of set purpose. It is as though one had a voice inside one saying: 'I know you, you will never begin anything. Look at what you might have done! Here you are, already twenty-one, and you have not yet written a dictionary. What will you do for fame? Eh? Nothing: you are intolerably lazy--and what is worse, it is your fate. Beginnings are insuperable barriers to you. What about that great work on The National Debt? What about that little lyric on Winchelsea that you thought of writing six years ago? Why are the few lines still in your head and not on paper? Because you can't begin. However, never mind, you can't help it, it's your one great flaw, and it's fatal. Look at Jones! Younger than you by half a year, and already on the _Evening Yankee_ taking bribes from Company Promoters! And where are you?' &c., &c.--and so forth. So this threat about the heavy task of Beginning breeds discouragement, anger, vexation, irritability, bad style, pomposity and infinitives split from helm to saddle, and metaphors as mixed as the Carlton. But it is just true enough to remain fast in the mind, caught, as it were, by one finger. For all things (you will notice) are very difficult in their origin, and why, no one can understand. _Omne Trinum_: they are difficult also in the shock of maturity and in their ending. Take, for instance, the Life of Man, which is the Difficulty of Birth, the Difficulty of Death, and the Difficulty of the Grand Climacteric. LECTOR. What is the Grand Climacteric? AUCTOR. I have no time to tell you, for it would lead us into a discussion on Astrology, and then perhaps to a question of physical science, and then you would find I was not orthodox, and perhaps denounce me to the authorities. I will tell you this much; it is the moment (not the year or the month, mind you, nor even the hour, but the very second) when a man is grown up, when he sees things as they are (that is, backwards), and feels solidly himself. Do I make myself clear? No matter, it is the Shock of Maturity, and that must suffice for you. But perhaps you have been reading little brown books on Evolution, and you don't believe in Catastrophes, or Climaxes, or Definitions? Eh? Tell me, do you believe in the peak of the Matterhorn, and have you doubts on the points of needles? Can the sun be said truly to rise or set, and is there any exact meaning in the phrase, 'Done to a turn' as applied to omelettes? You know there is; and so also you must believe in Categories, and you must admit differences of kind as well as of degree, and you must accept exact definition and believe in all that your fathers did, that were wiser men than you, as is easily proved if you will but imagine yourself for but one moment introduced into the presence of your ancestors, and ask yourself which would look the fool. Especially must you believe in moments and their importance, and avoid with the utmost care the Comparative Method and the argument of the Slowly Accumulating Heap. I hear that some scientists are already beginning to admit the reality of Birth and Death--let but some brave few make an act of Faith in the Grand Climacteric and all shall yet be well. Well, as I was saying, this Difficulty of Beginning is but one of three, and is Inexplicable, and is in the Nature of Things, and it is very especially noticeable in the Art of Letters. There is in every book the Difficulty of Beginning, the Difficulty of the Turning-Point (which is the Grand Climacteric of a Book)-- LECTOR. What is that in a Book? AUCTOR. Why, it is the point where the reader has caught on, enters into the Book and desires to continue reading it. LECTOR. It comes earlier in some books than in others. AUCTOR. As you say... And finally there is the Difficulty of Ending. LECTOR. I do not see how there can be any difficulty in ending a book. AUCTOR. That shows very clearly that you have never written one, for there is nothing so hard in the writing of a book--no, not even the choice of the Dedication--as is the ending of it. On this account only the great Poets, who are above custom and can snap their divine fingers at forms, are not at the pains of devising careful endings. Thus, Homer ends with lines that might as well be in the middle of a passage; Hesiod, I know not how; and Mr Bailey, the New Voice from Eurasia, does not end at all, but is still going on. Panurge told me that his great work on Conchology would never have been finished had it not been for the Bookseller that threatened law; and as it is, the last sentence has no verb in it. There is always something more to be said, and it is always so difficult to turn up the splice neatly at the edges. On this account there are regular models for ending a book or a Poem, as there are for beginning one; but, for my part, I think the best way of ending a book is to rummage about among one's manuscripts till one has found a bit of Fine Writing (no matter upon what subject), to lead up the last paragraphs by no matter what violent shocks to the thing it deals with, to introduce a row of asterisks, and then to paste on to the paper below these the piece of Fine Writing one has found. I knew a man once who always wrote the end of a book first, when his mind was fresh, and so worked gradually back to the introductory chapter, which (he said) was ever a kind of summary, and could not be properly dealt with till a man knew all about his subject. He said this was a sovran way to write History. But it seems to me that this is pure extravagance, for it would lead one at last to beginning at the bottom of the last page, like the Hebrew Bible, and (if it were fully carried out) to writing one's sentences backwards till one had a style like the London School of Poets: a very horrible conclusion. However, I am not concerned here with the ending of a book, but with its beginning; and I say that the beginning of any literary thing is hard, and that this hardness is difficult to explain. And I say more than this--I say that an interminable discussion of the difficulty of beginning a book is the worst omen for going on with it, and a trashy subterfuge at the best. In the name of all decent, common, and homely things, why not begin and have done with it? It was in the very beginning of June, at evening, but not yet sunset, that I set out from Toul by the Nancy gate; but instead of going straight on past the parade-ground, I turned to the right immediately along the ditch and rampart, and did not leave the fortifications till I came to the road that goes up alongside the Moselle. For it was by the valley of this river that I was to begin my pilgrimage, since, by a happy accident, the valley of the Upper Moselle runs straight towards Rome, though it takes you but a short part of the way. What a good opening it makes for a direct pilgrimage can be seen from this little map, where the dotted line points exactly to Rome. There are two bends which take one a little out of one's way, and these bends I attempted to avoid, but in general, the valley, about a hundred miles from Toul to the source, is an evident gate for any one walking from this part of Lorraine into Italy. And this map is also useful to show what route I followed for my first three days past Epinal and Remiremont up to the source of the river, and up over the great hill, the Ballon d'Alsace. I show the river valley like a trench, and the hills above it shaded, till the mountainous upper part, the Vosges, is put in black. I chose the decline of the day for setting out, because of the great heat a little before noon and four hours after it. Remembering this, I planned to walk at night and in the mornings and evenings, but how this design turned out you shall hear in a moment. I had not gone far, not a quarter of a mile, along my road leaving the town, when I thought I would stop and rest a little and make sure that I had started propitiously and that I was really on my way to Rome; so I halted by a wall and looked back at the city and the forts, and drew what I saw in my book. It was a sight that had taken a firm hold of my mind in boyhood, and that will remain in it as long as it can make pictures for itself out of the past. I think this must be true of all conscripts with regard to the garrison in which they have served, for the mind is so fresh at twenty-one and the life so new to every recruit as he joins it, he is so cut off from books and all the worries of life, that the surroundings of the place bite into him and take root, as one's school does or one's first home. And I had been especially fortunate since I had been with the gunners (notoriously the best kind of men) and not in a big place but in a little town, very old and silent, with more soldiers in its surrounding circle than there were men, women, and children within its useless ramparts. It is known to be very beautiful, and though I had not heard of this reputation, I saw it to be so at once when I was first marched in, on a November dawn, up to the height of the artillery barracks. I remembered seeing then the great hills surrounding it on every side, hiding their menace and protection of guns, and in the south and east the silent valley where the high forests dominate the Moselle, and the town below the road standing in an island or ring of tall trees. All this, I say, I had permanently remembered, and I had determined, whenever I could go on pilgrimage to Rome, to make this place my starting-point, and as I stopped here and looked back, a little way outside the gates, I took in again the scene that recalled so much laughter and heavy work and servitude and pride of arms. I was looking straight at the great fort of St Michel, which is the strongest thing on the frontier, and which is the key to the circle of forts that make up this entrenched camp. One could see little or nothing of its batteries, only its hundreds of feet of steep brushwood above the vineyards, and at the summit a stunted wood purposely planted. Next to it on the left, of equal height, was the hog back of the Cote Barine, hiding a battery. Between the Cote Barine and my road and wall, I saw the rising ground and the familiar Barracks that are called (I know not why) the Barracks of Justice, but ought more properly to be called the Barracks of petty tyrannies and good fellowship, in order to show the philosophers that these two things are the life of armies; for of all the virtues practised in that old compulsory home of mine Justice came second at least if not third, while Discipline and Comradeship went first; and the more I think of it the more I am convinced that of all the suffering youth that was being there annealed and forged into soldiery none can have suffered like the lawyers. On the right the high trees that stand outside the ramparts of the town went dwindling in perspective like a palisade, and above them, here and there, was a roof showing the top of the towers of the Cathedral or of St Gengoult. All this I saw looking backwards, and, when I had noticed it and drawn it, I turned round again and took the road. I had, in a small bag or pocket slung over my shoulder, a large piece of bread, half a pound of smoked ham, a sketch-book, two Nationalist papers, and a quart of the wine of Brule--which is the most famous wine in the neighbourhood of the garrison, yet very cheap. And Brule is a very good omen for men that are battered about and given to despairing, since it is only called Brule on account of its having been burnt so often by Romans, Frenchmen, Burgundians, Germans, Flemings, Huns perhaps, and generally all those who in the last few thousand years have taken a short cut at their enemies over the neck of the Cote Barine. So you would imagine it to be a tumble-down, weak, wretched, and disappearing place; but, so far from this, it is a rich and proud village, growing, as I have said, better wine than any in the garrison. Though Toul stands in a great cup or ring of hills, very high and with steep slopes, and guns on all of them, and all these hills grow wine, none is so good as Brule wine. And this reminds me of a thing that happened in the Manoeuvres of 1891, _quorum pars magna_; for there were two divisions employed in that glorious and fatiguing great game, and more than a gross of guns--to be accurate, a hundred and fifty-six--and of these one (the sixth piece of the tenth battery of the eighth--I wonder where you all are now? I suppose I shall not see you again; but you were the best companions in the world, my friends) was driven by three drivers, of whom I was the middle one, and the worst, having on my Livret the note 'conducteur mediocre'. But that is neither here nor there; the story is as follows, and the moral is that the commercial mind is illogical. When we had gone some way, clattering through the dust, and were well on on the Commercy road, there was a short halt, and during this halt there passed us the largest Tun or Barrel that ever went on wheels. You talk of the Great Tun of Heidelburg, or of those monstrous Vats that stand in cool sheds in the Napa Valley, or of the vast barrels in the Catacombs of Rheims; but all these are built _in situ_ and meant to remain steady, and there is no limit to the size of a Barrel that has not to travel. The point about this enormous Receptacle of Bacchus and cavernous huge Prison of Laughter, was that it could move, though cumbrously, and it was drawn very slowly by stupid, patient oxen, who would not be hurried. On the top of it sat a strong peasant, with a face of determination, as though he were at war with his kind, and he kept on calling to his oxen, 'Han', and 'Hu', in the tones of a sullen challenge, as he went creaking past. Then the soldiers began calling out to him singly, 'Where are you off to, Father, with that battery?' and 'Why carry cold water to Commercy? They have only too much as it is;' and 'What have you got in the little barrelkin, the barrellet, the cantiniere's brandy-flask, the gourd, the firkin?' He stopped his oxen fiercely and turned round to us and said: 'I will tell you what I have here. I have so many hectolitres of Brule wine which I made myself, and which I know to be the best wine there is, and I am taking it about to see if I cannot tame and break these proud fellows who are for ever beating down prices and mocking me. It is worth eight 'scutcheons the hectolitre, that is, eight sols the litre; what do I say? it is worth a Louis a cup: but I will sell it at the price I name, and not a penny less. But whenever I come to a village the innkeeper begins bargaining and chaffering and offering six sols and seven sols, and I answer, "Eight sols, take it or leave it", and when he seems for haggling again I get up and drive away. I know the worth of my wine, and I will not be beaten down though I have to go out of Lorraine into the Barrois to sell it.' So when we caught him up again, as we did shortly after on the road, a sergeant cried as we passed, 'I will give you seven, seven and a quarter, seven and a half', and we went on laughing and forgot all about him. For many days we marched from this place to that place, and fired and played a confused game in the hot sun till the train of sick horses was a mile long, and till the recruits were all as deaf as so many posts; and at last, one evening, we came to a place called Heiltz le Maurupt, which was like heaven after the hot plain and the dust, and whose inhabitants are as good and hospitable as Angels; it is just where the Champagne begins. When we had groomed and watered our horses, and the stable guard had been set, and we had all an hour or so's leisure to stroll about in the cool darkness before sleeping in the barns, we had a sudden lesson in the smallness of the world, for what should come up the village street but that monstrous Barrel, and we could see by its movements that it was still quite full. We gathered round the peasant, and told him how grieved we were at his ill fortune, and agreed with him that all the people of the Barrois were thieves or madmen not to buy such wine for such a song. He took his oxen and his barrel to a very high shed that stood by, and there he told us all his pilgrimage and the many assaults his firmness suffered, and how he had resisted them all. There was much more anger than sorrow in his accent, and I could see that he was of the wood from which tyrants and martyrs are carved. Then suddenly he changed and became eloquent: 'Oh, the good wine! If only it were known and tasted!... Here, give me a cup, and I will ask some of you to taste it, then at least I shall have it praised as it deserves. And this is the wine I have carried more than a hundred miles, and everywhere it has been refused!' There was one guttering candle on a little stool. The roof of the shed was lost up in the great height of darkness; behind, in the darkness, the oxen champed away steadily in the manger. The light from the candle flame lit his face strongly from beneath and marked it with dark shadows. It flickered on the circle of our faces as we pressed round, and it came slantwise and waned and disappeared in the immense length of the Barrel. He stood near the tap with his brows knit as upon some very important task, and all we, gunners and drivers of the battery, began unhooking our mugs and passing them to him. There were nearly a hundred, and he filled them all; not in jollity, but like a man offering up a solemn sacrifice. We also, entering into his mood, passed our mugs continually, thanking him in a low tone and keeping in the main silent. A few linesmen lounged at the door; he asked for their cups and filled them. He bade them fetch as many of their comrades as cared to come; and very soon there was a circulating crowd of men all getting wine of Brule and murmuring their congratulations, and he was willing enough to go on giving, but we stopped when we saw fit and the scene ended. I cannot tell what prodigious measure of wine he gave away to us all that night, but when he struck the roof of the cask it already sounded hollow. And when we had made a collection which he had refused, he went to sleep by his oxen, and we to our straw in other barns. Next day we started before dawn, and I never saw him again. This is the story of the wine of Brule, and it shows that what men love is never money itself but their own way, and that human beings love sympathy and pageant above all things. It also teaches us not to be hard on the rich. I walked along the valley of the Moselle, and as I walked the long evening of summer began to fall. The sky was empty and its deeps infinite; the clearness of the air set me dreaming. I passed the turn where we used to halt when we were learning how to ride in front of the guns, past the little house where, on rare holidays, the boys could eat a matelote, which is fish boiled in wine, and so on to the place where the river is held by a weir and opens out into a kind of lake. Here I waited for a moment by the wooden railing, and looked up into the hills. So far I had been at home, and I was now poring upon the last familiar thing before I ventured into the high woods and began my experience. I therefore took a leisurely farewell, and pondered instead of walking farther. Everything about me conduced to reminiscence and to ease. A flock of sheep passed me with their shepherd, who gave me a good-night. I found myself entering that pleasant mood in which all books are conceived (but none written); I was 'smoking the enchanted cigarettes' of Balzac, and if this kind of reverie is fatal to action, yet it is so much a factor of happiness that I wasted in the contemplation of that lovely and silent hollow many miles of marching. I suppose if a man were altogether his own master and controlled by no necessity, not even the necessity of expression, all his life would pass away in these sublime imaginings. This was a place I remembered very well. The rising river of Lorraine is caught and barred, and it spreads in a great sheet of water that must be very shallow, but that in its reflections and serenity resembles rather a profound and silent mere. The steeps surrounding it are nearly mountainous, and are crowned with deep forests in which the province reposes, and upon which it depends for its local genius. A little village, which we used to call 'St Peter of the Quarries', lies up on the right between the steep and the water, and just where the hills end a flat that was once marshy and is now half fields, half ponds, but broken with luxuriant trees, marks the great age of its civilization. Along this flat runs, bordered with rare poplars, the road which one can follow on and on into the heart of the Vosges. I took from this silence and this vast plain of still water the repose that introduces night. It was all consonant with what the peasants were about: the return from labour, the bleating folds, and the lighting of lamps under the eaves. In such a spirit I passed along the upper valley to the spring of the hills. In St Pierre it was just that passing of daylight when a man thinks he can still read; when the buildings and the bridges are great masses of purple that deceive one, recalling the details of daylight, but when the night birds, surer than men and less troubled by this illusion of memory, have discovered that their darkness has conquered. The peasants sat outside their houses in the twilight accepting the cool air; every one spoke to me as I marched through, and I answered them all, nor was there in any of their salutations the omission of good fellowship or of the name of God. Saving with one man, who was a sergeant of artillery on leave, and who cried out to me in an accent that was very familiar and asked me to drink; but I told him I had to go up into the forest to take advantage of the night, since the days were so warm for walking. As I left the last house of the village I was not secure from loneliness, and when the road began to climb up the hill into the wild and the trees I was wondering how the night would pass. With every step upward a greater mystery surrounded me. A few stars were out, and the brown night mist was creeping along the water below, but there was still light enough to see the road, and even to distinguish the bracken in the deserted hollows. The highway became little better than a lane; at the top of the hill it plunged under tall pines, and was vaulted over with darkness. The kingdoms that have no walls, and are built up of shadows, began to oppress me as the night hardened. Had I had companions, still we would only have spoken in a whisper, and in that dungeon of trees even my own self would not raise its voice within me. It was full night when I had reached a vague clearing in the woods, right up on the height of that flat hill. This clearing was called 'The Fountain of Magdalen'. I was so far relieved by the broader sky of the open field that I could wait and rest a little, and there, at last, separate from men, I thought of a thousand things. The air was full of midsummer, and its mixture of exaltation and fear cut me off from ordinary living. I now understood why our religion has made sacred this season of the year; why we have, a little later, the night of St John, the fires in the villages, and the old perception of fairies dancing in the rings of the summer grass. A general communion of all things conspires at this crisis of summer against us reasoning men that should live in the daylight, and something fantastic possesses those who are foolish enough to watch upon such nights. So I, watching, was cut off. There were huge, vague summits, all wooded, peering above the field I sat in, but they merged into a confused horizon. I was on a high plateau, yet I felt myself to be alone with the immensity that properly belongs to plains alone. I saw the stars, and remembered how I had looked up at them on just such a night when I was close to the Pacific, bereft of friends and possessed with solitude. There was no noise; it was full darkness. The woods before and behind me made a square frame of silence, and I was enchased here in the clearing, thinking of all things. Then a little wind passed over the vast forests of Lorraine. It seemed to wake an indefinite sly life proper to this seclusion, a life to which I was strange, and which thought me an invader. Yet I heard nothing. There were no adders in the long grass, nor any frogs in that dry square of land, nor crickets on the high part of the hill; but I knew that little creatures in league with every nocturnal influence, enemies of the sun, occupied the air and the land about me; nor will I deny that I felt a rebel, knowing well that men were made to work in happy dawns and to sleep in the night, and everything in that short and sacred darkness multiplied my attentiveness and my illusion. Perhaps the instincts of the sentry, the necessities of guard, come back to us out of the ages unawares during such experiments. At any rate the night oppressed and exalted me. Then I suddenly attributed such exaltation to the need of food. 'If we must try this bookish plan of sleeping by day and walking by night,' I thought, 'at least one must arrange night meals to suit it.' I therefore, with my mind still full of the forest, sat down and lit a match and peered into my sack, taking out therefrom bread and ham and chocolate and Brûlé wine. For seat and table there was a heathery bank still full of the warmth and savour of the last daylight, for companions these great inimical influences of the night which I had met and dreaded, and for occasion or excuse there was hunger. Of the Many that debate what shall be done with travellers, it was the best and kindest Spirit that prompted me to this salutary act. For as I drank the wine and dealt with the ham and bread, I felt more and more that I had a right to the road; the stars became familiar and the woods a plaything. It is quite clear that the body must be recognized and the soul kept in its place, since a little refreshing food and drink can do so much to make a man. On this repast I jumped up merrily, lit a pipe, and began singing, and heard, to my inexpressible joy, some way down the road, the sound of other voices. They were singing that old song of the French infantry which dates from Louis XIV, and is called 'Auprès de ma blonde'. I answered their chorus, so that, by the time we met under the wood, we were already acquainted. They told me they had had a forty-eight hours' leave into Nancy, the four of them, and had to be in by roll-call at a place called Villey the Dry. I remembered it after all those years. It is a village perched on the brow of one of these high hills above the river, and it found itself one day surrounded by earthworks, and a great fort raised just above the church. Then, before they knew where they were, they learnt that (1) no one could go in or out between sunset and sunrise without leave of the officer in command; (2) that from being a village they had become the 'buildings situate within Fort No. 18'; (3) that they were to be deluged with soldiers; and (4) that they were liable to evacuate their tenements on mobilization. They had become a fort unwittingly as they slept, and all their streets were blocked with ramparts. A hard fate; but they should not have built their village just on the brow of a round hill. They did this in the old days, when men used stone instead of iron, because the top of a hill was a good place to hold against enemies; and so now, these 73,426 years after, they find the same advantage catching them again to their hurt. And so things go the round. Anyway Villey the Dry is a fort, and there my four brothers were going. It was miles off, and they had to be in by sunrise, so I offered them a pull of my wine, which, to my great joy, they refused, and we parted courteously. Then I found the road beginning to fall, and knew that I had crossed the hills. As the forest ended and the sloping fields began, a dim moon came up late in the east in the bank of fog that masked the river. So by a sloping road, now free from the woods, and at the mouth of a fine untenanted valley under the moon, I came down again to the Moselle, having saved a great elbow by this excursion over the high land. As I swung round the bend of the hills downwards and looked up the sloping dell, I remembered that these heathery hollows were called 'vallons' by the people of Lorraine, and this set me singing the song of the hunters, 'Entends tu dans nos vallons, le Chasseur sonner du clairon,' which I sang loudly till I reached the river bank, and lost the exhilaration of the hills. I had now come some twelve miles from my starting-place, and it was midnight. The plain, the level road (which often rose a little), and the dank air of the river began to oppress me with fatigue. I was not disturbed by this, for I had intended to break these nights of marching by occasional repose, and while I was in the comfort of cities--especially in the false hopes that one got by reading books--I had imagined that it was a light matter to sleep in the open. Indeed, I had often so slept when I had been compelled to it in Manoeuvres, but I had forgotten how essential was a rug of some kind, and what a difference a fire and comradeship could make. Thinking over it all, feeling my tiredness, and shivering a little in the chill under the moon and the clear sky, I was very ready to capitulate and to sleep in bed like a Christian at the next opportunity. But there is some influence in vows or plans that escapes our power of rejudgement. All false calculations must be paid for, and I found, as you will see, that having said I would sleep in the open, I had to keep to it in spite of all my second thoughts. I passed one village and then another in which everything was dark, and in which I could waken nothing but dogs, who thought me an enemy, till at last I saw a great belt of light in the fog above the Moselle. Here there was a kind of town or large settlement where there were ironworks, and where, as I thought, there would be houses open, even after midnight. I first found the old town, where just two men were awake at some cooking work or other. I found them by a chink of light streaming through their door; but they gave me no hope, only advising me to go across the river and try in the new town where the forges and the ironworks were. 'There,' they said, 'I should certainly find a bed.' I crossed the bridge, being now much too weary to notice anything, even the shadowy hills, and the first thing I found was a lot of waggons that belonged to a caravan or fair. Here some men were awake, but when I suggested that they should let me sleep in their little houses on wheels, they told me it was never done; that it was all they could do to pack in themselves; that they had no straw; that they were guarded by dogs; and generally gave me to understand (though without violence or unpoliteness) that I looked as though I were the man to steal their lions and tigers. They told me, however, that without doubt I should find something open in the centre of the workmen's quarter, where the great electric lamps now made a glare over the factory. I trudged on unwillingly, and at the very last house of this detestable industrial slavery, a high house with a gable, I saw a window wide open, and a blonde man smoking a cigarette at a balcony. I called to him at once, and asked him to let me a bed. He put to me all the questions he could think of. Why was I there? Where had I come from? Where (if I was honest) had I intended to sleep? How came I at such an hour on foot? and other examinations. I thought a little what excuse to give him, and then, determining that I was too tired to make up anything plausible, I told him the full truth; that I had meant to sleep rough, but had been overcome by fatigue, and that I had walked from Toul, starting at evening. I conjured him by our common Faith to let me in. He told me that it was impossible, as he had but one room in which he and his family slept, and assured me he had asked all these questions out of sympathy and charity alone. Then he wished me good-night, honestly and kindly, and went in. By this time I was very much put out, and began to be angry. These straggling French towns give no opportunity for a shelter. I saw that I should have to get out beyond the market gardens, and that it might be a mile or two before I found any rest. A clock struck one. I looked up and saw it was from the belfry of one of those new chapels which the monks are building everywhere, nor did I forget to curse the monks in my heart for building them. I cursed also those who started smelting works in the Moselle valley; those who gave false advice to travellers; those who kept lions and tigers in caravans, and for a small sum I would have cursed the whole human race, when I saw that my bile had hurried me out of the street well into the countryside, and that above me, on a bank, was a patch of orchard and a lane leading up to it. Into this I turned, and, finding a good deal of dry hay lying under the trees, I soon made myself an excellent bed, first building a little mattress, and then piling on hay as warm as a blanket. I did not lie awake (as when I planned my pilgrimage I had promised myself I would do), looking at the sky through the branches of trees, but I slept at once without dreaming, and woke up to find it was broad daylight, and the sun ready to rise. Then, stiff and but little rested by two hours of exhaustion, I took up my staff and my sack and regained the road. I should very much like to know what those who have an answer to everything can say about the food requisite to breakfast? Those great men Marlowe and Jonson, Shakespeare, and Spenser before him, drank beer at rising, and tamed it with a little bread. In the regiment we used to drink black coffee without sugar, and cut off a great hunk of stale crust, and eat nothing more till the halt: for the matter of that, the great victories of '93 were fought upon such unsubstantial meals; for the Republicans fought first and ate afterwards, being in this quite unlike the Ten Thousand. Sailors I know eat nothing for some hours--I mean those who turn out at four in the morning; I could give the name of the watch, but that I forget it and will not be plagued to look up technicalities. Dogs eat the first thing they come across, cats take a little milk, and gentlemen are accustomed to get up at nine and eat eggs, bacon, kidneys, ham, cold pheasant, toast, coffee, tea, scones, and honey, after which they will boast that their race is the hardiest in the world and ready to bear every fatigue in the pursuit of Empire. But what rule governs all this? Why is breakfast different from all other things, so that the Greeks called it the best thing in the world, and so that each of us in a vague way knows that he would eat at breakfast nothing but one special kind of food, and that he could not imagine breakfast at any other hour in the day? The provocation to this inquiry (which I have here no time to pursue) lies in the extraordinary distaste that I conceived that morning for Brule wine. My ham and bread and chocolate I had consumed overnight. I thought, in my folly, that I could break my fast on a swig of what had seemed to me, only the night before, the best revivifier and sustenance possible. In the harsh dawn it turned out to be nothing but a bitter and intolerable vinegar. I make no attempt to explain this, nor to say why the very same wine that had seemed so good in the forest (and was to seem so good again later on by the canal) should now repel me. I can only tell you that this heavy disappointment convinced me of a great truth that a Politician once let slip in my hearing, and that I have never since forgotten. _'Man,'_ said the Director of the State, _'man is but the creature of circumstance.'_ As it was, I lit a pipe of tobacco and hobbled blindly along for miles under and towards the brightening east. Just before the sun rose I turned and looked backward from a high bridge that recrossed the river. The long effort of the night had taken me well on my way. I was out of the familiar region of the garrison. The great forest-hills that I had traversed stood up opposite the dawn, catching the new light; heavy, drifting, but white clouds, rare at such an hour, sailed above them. The valley of the Moselle, which I had never thought of save as a half mountainous region, had fallen, to become a kind of long garden, whose walls were regular, low, and cultivated slopes. The main waterway of the valley was now not the river but the canal that fed from it. The tall grasses, the leaves, and poplars bordering the river and the canal seemed dark close to me, but the valley as a whole was vague, a mass of trees with one Lorraine church-tower showing, and the delicate slopes bounding it on either side. Descending from this bridge I found a sign-post, that told me I had walked thirty-two kilometres--which is twenty miles--from Toul; that it was one kilometre to Flavigny, and heaven knows how much to a place called Charmes. The sun rose in the mist that lay up the long even trends of the vale, between the low and level hills, and I pushed on my thousand yards towards Flavigny. There, by a special providence, I found the entertainment and companionship whose lack had left me wrecked all these early hours. As I came into Flavigny I saw at once that it was a place on which a book might easily be written, for it had a church built in the seventeenth century, when few churches were built outside great towns, a convent, and a general air of importance that made of it that grand and noble thing, that primary cell of the organism of Europe, that best of all Christian associations - a large village. I say a book might be written upon it, and there is no doubt that a great many articles and pamphlets must have been written upon it, for the French are furiously given to local research and reviews, and to glorifying their native places: and when they cannot discover folklore they enrich their beloved homes by inventing it. There was even a man (I forget his name) who wrote a delightful book called _Popular and Traditional Songs of my Province,_ which book, after he was dead, was discovered to be entirely his own invention, and not a word of it familiar to the inhabitants of the soil. He was a large, laughing man that smoked enormously, had great masses of hair, and worked by night; also he delighted in the society of friends, and talked continuously. I wish he had a statue somewhere, and that they would pull down to make room for it any one of those useless bronzes that are to be found even in the little villages, and that commemorate solemn, whiskered men, pillars of the state. For surely this is the habit of the true poet, and marks the vigour and recurrent origin of poetry, that a man should get his head full of rhythms and catches, and that they should jumble up somehow into short songs of his own. What could more suggest (for instance) a whole troop of dancing words and lovely thoughts than this refrain from the Tourdenoise-- ... Son beau corps est en terre Son âme en Paradis. Tu ris? Et ris, tu ris, ma Bergère, Ris, ma Bergère, tu ris. That was the way they set to work in England before the Puritans came, when men were not afraid to steal verses from one another, and when no one imagined that he could live by letters, but when every poet took a patron, or begged or robbed the churches. So much for the poets. Flavigny then, I say (for I seem to be digressing), is a long street of houses all built together as animals build their communities. They are all very old, but the people have worked hard since the Revolution, and none of them are poor, nor are any of them very rich. I saw but one gentleman's house, and that, I am glad to say, was in disrepair. Most of the peasants' houses had, for a ground floor, cavernous great barns out of which came a delightful smell of morning -- that is, of hay, litter, oxen, and stored grains and old wood; which is the true breath of morning, because it is the scent that all the human race worth calling human first meets when it rises, and is the association of sunrise in the minds of those who keep the world alive: but not in the wretched minds of townsmen, and least of all in the minds of journalists, who know nothing of morning save that it is a time of jaded emptiness when you have just done prophesying (for the hundredth time) the approaching end of the world, when the floors are beginning to tremble with machinery, and when, in a weary kind of way, one feels hungry and alone: a nasty life and usually a short one. To return to Flavigny. This way of stretching a village all along one street is Roman, and is the mark of civilization. When I was at college I was compelled to read a work by the crabbed Tacitus on the Germans, where, in the midst of a deal that is vague and fantastic nonsense and much that is wilful lying, comes this excellent truth, that barbarians build their houses separate, but civilized men together. So whenever you see a lot of red roofs nestling, as the phrase goes, in the woods of a hillside in south England, remember that all that is savagery; but when you see a hundred white-washed houses in a row along a dead straight road, lift up your hearts, for you are in civilization again. But I continue to wander from Flavigny. The first thing I saw as I came into the street and noted how the level sun stood in a haze beyond, and how it shadowed and brought out the slight irregularities of the road, was a cart drawn by a galloping donkey, which came at and passed me with a prodigious clatter as I dragged myself forward. In the cart were two nuns, each with a scythe; they were going out mowing, and were up the first in the village, as Religious always are. Cheered by this happy omen, but not yet heartened, I next met a very old man leading out a horse, and asked him if there was anywhere where I could find coffee and bread at that hour; but he shook his head mournfully and wished me good-morning in a strong accent, for he was deaf and probably thought I was begging. So I went on still more despondent till I came to a really merry man of about middle age who was going to the fields, singing, with a very large rake over his shoulder. When I had asked him the same question he stared at me a little and said of course coffee and bread could be had at the baker's, and when I asked him how I should know the baker's he was still more surprised at my ignorance, and said, 'By the smoke coming from the large chimney.' This I saw rising a short way off on my right, so I thanked him and went and found there a youth of about nineteen, who sat at a fine oak table and had coffee, rum, and a loaf before him. He was waiting for the bread in the oven to be ready; and meanwhile he was very courteous, poured out coffee and rum for me and offered me bread. It is a matter often discussed why bakers are such excellent citizens and good men. For while it is admitted in every country I was ever in that cobblers are argumentative and atheists (I except the cobbler under Plinlimmon, concerning whom would to heaven I had the space to tell you all here, for he knows the legends of the mountain), while it is public that barbers are garrulous and servile, that millers are cheats (we say in Sussex that every honest miller has a large tuft of hair on the palm of his hand), yet--with every trade in the world having some bad quality attached to it--bakers alone are exempt, and every one takes it for granted that they are sterling: indeed, there are some societies in which, no matter how gloomy and churlish the conversation may have become, you have but to mention bakers for voices to brighten suddenly and for a good influence to pervade every one. I say this is known for a fact, but not usually explained; the explanation is, that bakers are always up early in the morning and can watch the dawn, and that in this occupation they live in lonely contemplation enjoying the early hours. So it was with this baker of mine in Flavigny, who was a boy. When he heard that I had served at Toul he was delighted beyond measure; he told me of a brother of his that had been in the same regiment, and he assured me that he was himself going into the artillery by special enlistment, having got his father's leave. You know very little if you think I missed the opportunity of making the guns seem terrible and glorious in his eyes. I told him stories enough to waken a sentry of reserve, and if it had been possible (with my youth so obvious) I would have woven in a few anecdotes of active service, and described great shells bursting under my horses and the teams shot down, and the gunners all the while impassive; but as I saw I should not be believed I did not speak of such things, but confined myself to what he would see and hear when he joined. Meanwhile the good warm food and the rising morning had done two things; they had put much more vigour into me than I had had when I slunk in half-an-hour before, but at the same time (and this is a thing that often comes with food and with rest) they had made me feel the fatigue of so long a night. I rose up, therefore, determined to find some place where I could sleep. I asked this friend of mine how much there was to pay, and he said 'fourpence'. Then we exchanged ritual salutations, and I took the road. I did not leave the town or village without noticing one extraordinary thing at the far end of it, which was that, whereas most places in France are proud of their town-hall and make a great show of it, here in Flavigny they had taken a great house and written over it ÉCOLE COMMUNALE in great letters, and then they had written over a kind of lean-to or out-house of this big place the words 'Hôtel de ville' in very small letters, so small that I had a doubt for a moment if the citizens here were good republicans--a treasonable thought on all this frontier. Then, a mile onward, I saw the road cross the canal and run parallel to it. I saw the canal run another mile or so under a fine bank of deep woods. I saw an old bridge leading over it to that inviting shade, and as it was now nearly six and the sun was gathering strength, I went, with slumber overpowering me and my feet turning heavy beneath me, along the tow-path, over the bridge, and lay down on the moss under these delightful trees. Forgetful of the penalty that such an early repose would bring, and of the great heat that was to follow at midday, I quickly became part of the life of that forest and fell asleep. When I awoke it was full eight o'clock, and the sun had gained great power. I saw him shining at me through the branches of my trees like a patient enemy outside a city that one watches through the loopholes of a tower, and I began to be afraid of taking the road. I looked below me down the steep bank between the trunks and saw the canal looking like black marble, and I heard the buzzing of the flies above it, and I noted that all the mist had gone. A very long way off, the noise of its ripples coming clearly along the floor of the water, was a lazy barge and a horse drawing it. From time to time the tow-rope slackened into the still surface, and I heard it dripping as it rose. The rest of the valley was silent except for that under-humming of insects which marks the strength of the sun. Now I saw clearly how difficult it was to turn night into day, for I found myself condemned either to waste many hours that ought to be consumed on my pilgrimage, or else to march on under the extreme heat; and when I had drunk what was left of my Brule wine (which then seemed delicious), and had eaten a piece of bread, I stiffly jolted down the bank and regained the highway. In the first village I came to I found that Mass was over, and this justly annoyed me; for what is a pilgrimage in which a man cannot hear Mass every morning? Of all the things I have read about St Louis which make me wish I had known him to speak to, nothing seems to me more delightful than his habit of getting Mass daily whenever he marched down south, but why this should be so delightful I cannot tell. Of course there is a grace and influence belonging to such a custom, but it is not of that I am speaking but of the pleasing sensation of order and accomplishment which attaches to a day one has opened by Mass; a purely temporal, and, for all I know, what the monks back at the ironworks would have called a carnal feeling, but a source of continual comfort to me. Let them go their way and let me go mine. This comfort I ascribe to four causes (just above you will find it written that I could not tell why this should be so, but what of that?), and these causes are: 1. That for half-an-hour just at the opening of the day you are silent and recollected, and have to put off cares, interests, and passions in the repetition of a familiar action. This must certainly be a great benefit to the body and give it tone. 2. That the Mass is a careful and rapid ritual. Now it is the function of all ritual (as we see in games, social arrangements and so forth) to relieve the mind by so much of responsibility and initiative and to catch you up (as it were) into itself, leading your life for you during the time it lasts. In this way you experience a singular repose, after which fallowness I am sure one is fitter for action and judgement. 3. That the surroundings incline you to good and reasonable thoughts, and for the moment deaden the rasp and jar of that busy wickedness which both working in one's self and received from others is the true source of all human miseries. Thus the time spent at Mass is like a short repose in a deep and well-built library, into which no sounds come and where you feel yourself secure against the outer world. 4. And the most important cause of this feeling of satisfaction is that you are doing what the human race has done for thousands upon thousands upon thousands of years. This is a matter of such moment that I am astonished people hear of it so little. Whatever is buried right into our blood from immemorial habit that we must be certain to do if we are to be fairly happy (of course no grown man or woman can really be very happy for long--but I mean reasonably happy), and, what is more important, decent and secure of our souls. Thus one should from time to time hunt animals, or at the very least shoot at a mark; one should always drink some kind of fermented liquor with one's food--and especially deeply upon great feast-days; one should go on the water from time to time; and one should dance on occasions; and one should sing in chorus. For all these things man has done since God put him into a garden and his eyes first became troubled with a soul. Similarly some teacher or ranter or other, whose name I forget, said lately one very wise thing at least, which was that every man should do a little work with his hands. Oh! what good philosophy this is, and how much better it would be if rich people, instead of raining the influence of their rank and spending their money on leagues for this or that exceptional thing, were to spend it in converting the middle-class to ordinary living and to the tradition of the race. Indeed, if I had power for some thirty years I would see to it that people should be allowed to follow their inbred instincts in these matters, and should hunt, drink, sing, dance, sail, and dig; and those that would not should be compelled by force. Now in the morning Mass you do all that the race needs to do and has done for all these ages where religion was concerned; there you have the sacred and separate Enclosure, the Altar, the Priest in his Vestments, the set ritual, the ancient and hierarchic tongue, and all that your nature cries out for in the matter of worship. From these considerations it is easy to understand how put out I was to find Mass over on this first morning of my pilgrimage. And I went along the burning road in a very ill-humour till I saw upon my right, beyond a low wall and in a kind of park, a house that seemed built on some artificial raised ground surrounded by a wall, but this may have been an illusion, the house being really only very tall. At any rate I drew it, and in the village just beyond it I learnt something curious about the man that owned it. For I had gone into a house to take a third meal of bread and wine and to replenish my bottle when the old woman of the house, who was a kindly person, told me she had just then no wine. 'But,' said she, 'Mr So and So that lives in the big house sells it to any one who cares to buy even in the smallest quantities, and you will see his shed standing by the side of the road.' Everything happened just as she had said. I came to the big shed by the park wall, and there was a kind of counter made of boards, and several big tuns and two men: one in an apron serving, and the other in a little box or compartment writing. I was somewhat timid to ask for so little as a quart, but the apron man in the most businesslike way filled my bottle at a tap and asked for fourpence. He was willing to talk, and told me many things: of good years in wine, of the nature of their trade, of the influence of the moon on brewing, of the importance of spigots, and what not; but when I tried to get out of him whether the owner were an eccentric private gentleman or a merchant that had the sense to earn little pennies as well as large ones, I could not make him understand my meaning; for his idea of rank was utterly different from mine and took no account of idleness and luxury and daftness, but was based entirely upon money and clothes. Moreover we were both of us Republicans, so the matter was of no great moment. Courteously saluting ourselves we parted, he remaining to sell wine and I hobbling to Rome, now a little painfully and my sack the heavier by a quart of wine, which, as you probably know, weighs almost exactly two pounds and a half. It was by this time close upon eleven, and I had long reached the stage when some kinds of men begin talking of Dogged Determination, Bull-dog pluck, the stubborn spirit of the Island race and so forth, but when those who can boast a little of the sacred French blood are in a mood of set despair (both kinds march on, and the mobility of either infantry is much the same), I say I had long got to this point of exhaustion when it occurred to me that I should need an excellent and thorough meal at midday. But on looking at my map I found that there was nothing nearer than this town of Charmes that was marked on the milestones, and that was the first place I should come to in the department of the Vosges. It would take much too long to describe the dodges that weary men and stiff have recourse to when they are at the close of a difficult task: how they divide it up in lengths in their minds, how they count numbers, how they begin to solve problems in mental arithmetic: I tried them all. Then I thought of a new one, which is really excellent, and which I recommend to the whole world. It is to vary the road, suddenly taking now the fields, now the river, but only occasionally the turnpike. This last lap was very well suited for such a method. The valley had become more like a wide and shallow trench than ever. The hills on either side were low and exactly even. Up the middle of it went the river, the canal and the road, and these two last had only a field between them; now broad, now narrow. First on the tow-path, then on the road, then on the grass, then back on the tow-path, I pieced out the last baking mile into Charmes, that lies at the foot of a rather higher hill, and at last was dragging myself up the street just as the bell was ringing the noon Angelus; nor, however tedious you may have found it to read this final effort of mine, can you have found it a quarter as wearisome as I did to walk it; and surely between writer and reader there should be give and take, now the one furnishing the entertainment and now the other. The delightful thing in Charmes is its name. Of this name I had indeed been thinking as I went along the last miles of that dusty and deplorable road--that a town should be called 'Charms'. Not but that towns, if they are left to themselves and not hurried, have a way of settling into right names suited to the hills about them and recalling their own fields. I remember Sussex, and as I remember it I must, if only for example, set down my roll-call of such names, as--Fittleworth, where the Inn has painted panels; Amberley in the marshes; delicate Fernhurst, and Ditchling under its hill; Arundel, that is well known to every one; and Climping, that no one knows, set on a lonely beach and lost at the vague end of an impassable road; and Barlton, and Burton, and Duncton, and Coldwatham, that stand under in the shadow and look up at the great downs; and Petworth, where the spire leans sideways; and Timberley, that the floods make into an island; and No Man's Land, where first there breaks on you the distant sea. I never knew a Sussex man yet but, if you noted him such a list, would answer: 'There I was on such and such a day; this I came to after such and such a run; and that other is my home.' But it is not his recollection alone which moves him, it is sound of the names. He feels the accent of them, and all the men who live between Hind-head and the Channel know these names stand for Eden; the noise is enough to prove it. So it is also with the hidden valleys of the lie de France; and when you say Jouy or Chevreuse to a man that was born in those shadows he grows dreamy--yet they are within a walk of Paris. But the wonderful thing about a name like Charmes is that it hands down the dead. For some dead man gave it a keen name proceeding from his own immediate delight, and made general what had been a private pleasure, and, so to speak, bequeathed a poem to his town. They say the Arabs do this; calling one place 'the rest of the warriors', and another 'the end', and another 'the surprise of the horses': let those who know them speak for it. I at least know that in the west of the Cotentin (a sea-garden) old Danes married to Gaulish women discovered the just epithet, and that you have 'St Mary on the Hill' and 'High Town under the Wind' and 'The Borough over the Heath', which are to-day exactly what their name describes them. If you doubt that England has such descriptive names, consider the great Truth that at one junction on a railway where a mournful desolation of stagnant waters and treeless, stonewalled fields threatens you with experience and awe, a melancholy porter is told off to put his head into your carriage and to chant like Charon, 'Change here for Ashton under the Wood, Moreton on the Marsh, Bourton on the Water, and Stow in the Wold.' Charmes does not fulfil its name nor preserve what its forgotten son found so wonderful in it. For at luncheon there a great commercial traveller told me fiercely that it was chiefly known for its breweries, and that he thought it of little account. Still even in Charmes I found one marvellous corner of a renaissance house, which I drew; but as I have lost the drawing, let it go. When I came out from the inn of Charmes the heat was more terrible than ever, and the prospect of a march in it more intolerable. My head hung, I went very slowly, and I played with cowardly thoughts, which were really (had I known it) good angels. I began to look out anxiously for woods, but saw only long whitened wall glaring in the sun, or, if ever there were trees, they were surrounded by wooden palisades which the owners had put there. But in a little time (now I had definitely yielded to temptation) I found a thicket. You must know that if you yield to entertaining a temptation, there is the opportunity presented to you like lightning. A theologian told me this, and it is partly true: but not of Mammon or Belphegor, or whatever Devil it is that overlooks the Currency (I can see his face from here): for how many have yielded to the Desire of Riches and professed themselves very willing to revel in them, yet did not get an opportunity worth a farthing till they died? Like those two beggars that Rabelais tells of, one of whom wished for all the gold that would pay for all the merchandise that had ever been sold in Paris since its first foundation, and the other for as much gold as would go into all the sacks that could be sewn by all the needles (and those of the smallest size) that could be crammed into Notre-Dame from the floor to the ceiling, filling the smallest crannies. Yet neither had a crust that night to rub his gums with. Whatever Devil it is, however, that tempts men to repose--and for my part I believe him to be rather an Aeon than a Devil: that is, a good-natured fellow working on his own account neither good nor ill--whatever being it is, it certainly suits one's mood, for I never yet knew a man determined to be lazy that had not ample opportunity afforded him, though he were poorer than the cure of Maigre, who formed a syndicate to sell at a scutcheon a gross such souls as were too insignificant to sell singly. A man can always find a chance for doing nothing as amply and with as ecstatic a satisfaction as the world allows, and so to me (whether it was there before I cannot tell, and if it came miraculously, so much the more amusing) appeared this thicket. It was to the left of the road; a stream ran through it in a little ravine; the undergrowth was thick beneath its birches, and just beyond, on the plain that bordered it, were reapers reaping in a field. I went into it contentedly and slept till evening my third sleep; then, refreshed by the cool wind that went before the twilight, I rose and took the road again, but I knew I could not go far. I was now past my fortieth mile, and though the heat had gone, yet my dead slumber had raised a thousand evils. I had stiffened to lameness, and had fallen into the mood when a man desires companionship and the talk of travellers rather than the open plain. But (unless I went backward, which was out of the question) there was nowhere to rest in for a long time to come. The next considerable village was Thayon, which is called 'Thayon of the Vosges', because one is nearing the big hills, and thither therefore I crawled mile after mile. But my heart sank. First my foot limped, and then my left knee oppressed me with a sudden pain. I attempted to relieve it by leaning on my right leg, and so discovered a singular new law in medicine which I will propose to the scientists. For when those excellent men have done investigating the twirligigs of the brain to find out where the soul is, let them consider this much more practical matter, that you cannot relieve the pain in one limb without driving it into some other; and so I exchanged twinges in the left knee for a horrible great pain in the right. I sat down on a bridge, and wondered; I saw before me hundreds upon hundreds of miles, painful and exhausted, and I asked heaven if this was necessary to a pilgrimage. (But, as you shall hear, a pilgrimage is not wholly subject to material laws, for when I came to Épinal next day I went into a shop which, whatever it was to the profane, appeared to me as a chemist's shop, where I bought a bottle of some stuff called 'balm', and rubbing myself with it was instantly cured.) Then I looked down from the bridge across the plain, and saw, a long way off beyond the railway, the very ugly factory village of Thayon, and reached it at last, not without noticing that the people were standing branches of trees before their doors, and the little children noisily helping to tread the stems firmly into the earth. They told me it was for the coming of Corpus Christi, and so proved to me that religion, which is as old as these valleys, would last out their inhabiting men. Even here, in a place made by a great laundry, a modern industrial row of tenements, all the world was putting out green branches to welcome the Procession and the Sacrament and the Priest. Comforted by this evident refutation of the sad nonsense I had read in Cities from the pen of intellectuals--nonsense I had known to be nonsense, but that had none the less tarnished my mind--I happily entered the inn, ate and drank, praised God, and lay down to sleep in a great bed. I mingled with my prayers a firm intention of doing the ordinary things, and not attempting impossibilities, such as marching by night, nor following out any other vanities of this world. Then, having cast away all theories of how a pilgrimage should be conducted, and broken five or six vows, I slept steadily till the middle of the morning. I had covered fifty miles in twenty-five hours, and if you imagine this to be but two miles an hour, you must have a very mathematical mind, and know little of the realities of living. I woke and threw my shutters open to the bright morning and the masterful sun, took my coffee, and set out once more towards Epinal, the stronghold a few miles away--delighted to see that my shadow was so short and the road so hot to the feet and eyes. For I said, 'This at least proves that I am doing like all the world, and walking during the day.' It was but a couple of hours to the great garrison. In a little time I passed a battery. Then a captain went by on a horse, with his orderly behind him. Where the deep lock stands by the roadside--the only suggestion of coolness--I first heard the bugles; then I came into the long street and determined to explore Epinal, and to cast aside all haste and folly. There are many wonderful things in Epinal. As, for instance, that it was evidently once, like Paris and Melun and a dozen other strongholds of the Gauls, an island city. For the rivers of France are full of long, habitable islands, and these were once the rallying-places of clans. Then there are the forts which are placed on high hills round the town and make it even stronger than Toul; for Epinal stands just where the hills begin to be very high. Again, it is the capital of a mountain district, and this character always does something peculiar and impressive to a town. You may watch its effect in Grenoble, in little Aubusson, and, rather less, in Geneva. For in such towns three quite different kinds of men meet. First there are the old plain-men, who despise the highlanders and think themselves much grander and more civilized; these are the burgesses. Then there are the peasants and wood-cutters, who come in from the hill-country to market, and who are suspicious of the plain-men and yet proud to depend upon a real town with a bishop and paved streets. Lastly, there are the travellers, who come there to enjoy the mountains and to make the city a base for their excursions, and these love the hill-men and think they understand them, and they despise the plain-men for being so middle-class as to lord it over the hill-men: but in truth this third class, being outsiders, are equally hated and despised by both the others, and there is a combination against them and they are exploited. And there are many other things in which Épinal is wonderful, but in nothing is it more wonderful than in its great church. I suppose that the high Dukes of Burgundy and Lorraine and the rich men from Flanders and the House of Luxemburg and the rest, going to Rome, the centre of the world, had often to pass up this valley of the Moselle, which (as I have said) is a road leading to Rome, and would halt at fipinal and would at times give money for its church; with this result, that the church belongs to every imaginable period and is built anyhow, in twenty styles, but stands as a whole a most enduring record of past forms and of what has pleased the changing mind when it has attempted to worship in stone. Thus the transept is simply an old square barn of rough stone, older, I suppose, than Charlemagne and without any ornament. In its lower courses I thought I even saw the Roman brick. It had once two towers, northern and southern; the southern is ruined and has a wooden roof, the northern remains and is just a pinnacle or minaret too narrow for bells. Then the apse is pure and beautiful Gothic of the fourteenth century, with very tall and fluted windows like single prayers. The ambulatory is perfectly modern, Gothic also, and in the manner that Viollet le Duc in France and Pugin in England have introduced to bring us back to our origins and to remind us of the place whence all we Europeans came. Again, this apse and ambulatory are not perpendicular to the transept, but set askew, a thing known in small churches and said to be a symbol, but surely very rare in large ones. The western door is purely Romanesque, and has Byzantine ornaments and a great deep round door. To match it there is a northern door still deeper, with rows and rows of inner arches full of saints, angels, devils, and flowers; and this again is not straight, but so built that the arches go aslant, as you sometimes see railway bridges when they cross roads at an angle. Finally, there is a central tower which is neither Gothic nor Romanesque but pure Italian, a loggia, with splendid round airy windows taking up all its walls, and with a flat roof and eaves. This some one straight from the south must have put on as a memory of his wanderings. The barn-transept is crumbling old grey stone, the Romanesque porches are red, like Strasburg, the Gothic apse is old white as our cathedrals are, the modern ambulatory is of pure white stone just quarried, and thus colours as well as shapes are mingled up and different in this astonishing building. I drew it from that point of view in the market-place to the north-east which shows most of these contrasts at once, and you must excuse the extreme shakiness of the sketch, for it was taken as best I could on an apple-cart with my book resting on the apples--there was no other desk. Nor did the apple-seller mind my doing it, but on the contrary gave me advice and praise saying such things as-- 'Excellent; you have caught the angle of the apse... Come now, darken the edge of that pillar... I fear you have made the tower a little confused,' and so forth. I offered to buy a few apples off him, but he gave me three instead, and these, as they incommoded me, I gave later to a little child. Indeed the people of Épinal, not taking me for a traveller but simply for a wandering poor man, were very genial to me, and the best good they did me was curing my lameness. For, seeing an apothecary's shop as I was leaving the town, I went in and said to the apothecary-- 'My knee has swelled and is very painful, and I have to walk far; perhaps you can tell me how to cure it, or give me something that will.' 'There is nothing easier,' he said; 'I have here a specific for the very thing you complain of.' With this he pulled out a round bottle, on the label of which was printed in great letters, 'BALM'. 'You have but to rub your knee strongly and long with this ointment of mine,' he said, 'and you will be cured.' Nor did he mention any special form of words to be repeated as one did it. Everything happened just as he had said. When I was some little way above the town I sat down on a low wall and rubbed my knee strongly and long with this balm, and the pain instantly disappeared. Then, with a heart renewed by this prodigy, I took the road again and began walking very rapidly and high, swinging on to Rome. The Moselle above fipinal takes a bend outwards, and it seemed to me that a much shorter way to the next village (which is called Archettes, or 'the very little arches', because there are no arches there) would be right over the hill round which the river curved. This error came from following private judgement and not heeding tradition, here represented by the highroad which closely follows the river. For though a straight tunnel to Archettes would have saved distance, yet a climb over that high hill and through the pathless wood on its summit was folly. I went at first over wide, sloping fields, and some hundred feet above the valley I crossed a little canal. It was made on a very good system, and I recommend it to the riparian owners of the Upper Wye, which needs it. They take the water from the Moselle (which is here broad and torrential and falls in steps, running over a stony bed with little swirls and rapids), and they lead it along at an even gradient, averaging, as it were, the uneven descent of the river. In this way they have a continuous stream running through fields that would otherwise be bare and dry, but that are thus nourished into excellent pastures. Above these fields the forest went up steeply. I had not pushed two hundred yards into its gloom and confusion when I discovered that I had lost my way. It was necessary to take the only guide I had and to go straight upwards wherever the line of greatest inclination seemed to lie, for that at least would take me to a summit and probably to a view of the valley; whereas if I tried to make for the shoulder of the hill (which had been my first intention) I might have wandered about till nightfall. It was an old man in a valley called the Curicante in Colorado that taught me this, if one lost one's way going _upwards_ to make at once along the steepest line, but if one lost it going _downwards_, to listen for water and reach it and follow it. I wish I had space to tell all about this old man, who gave me hospitality out there. He was from New England and was lonely, and had brought out at great expense a musical box to cheer him. Of this he was very proud, and though it only played four silly hymn tunes, yet, as he and I listened to it, heavy tears came into his eyes and light tears into mine, because these tunes reminded him of his home. But I have no time to do more than mention him, and must return to my forest. I climbed, then, over slippery pine needles and under the charged air of those trees, which was full of dim, slanting light from the afternoon sun, till, nearly at the summit, I came upon a clearing which I at once recognized as a military road, leading to what we used to call a 'false battery', that is, a dug-out with embrasures into which guns could be placed but in which no guns were. For ever since the French managed to produce a really mobile heavy gun they have constructed any amount of such auxiliary works between the permanent forts. These need no fixed guns to be emplaced, since the French can use now one such parapet, now another, as occasion serves, and the advantage is that your guns are never useless, but can always be brought round where they are needed, and that thus six guns will do more work than twenty used to do. This false battery was on the brow of the hill, and when I reached it I looked down the slope, over the brushwood that hid the wire entanglements, and there was the whole valley of the Moselle at my feet. As this was the first really great height, so this was the first really great view that I met with on my pilgrimage. I drew it carefully, piece by piece, sitting there a long time in the declining sun and noting all I saw. Archettes, just below; the flat valley with the river winding from side to side; the straight rows of poplar trees; the dark pines on the hills, and the rounded mountains rising farther and higher into the distance until the last I saw, far off to the south-east, must have been the Ballon d'Alsace at the sources of the Moselle--the hill that marked the first full stage in my journey and that overlooked Switzerland. Indeed, this is the peculiar virtue of walking to a far place, and especially of walking there in a straight line, that one gets these visions of the world from hill-tops. When I call up for myself this great march I see it all mapped out in landscapes, each of which I caught from some mountain, and each of which joins on to that before and to that after it, till I can piece together the whole road. The view here from the Hill of Archettes, the view from the Ballon d'Alsace, from Glovelier Hill, from the Weissenstein, from the Brienzer Grat, from the Grimsel, from above Bellinzona, from the Principessa, from Tizzano, from the ridge of the Apennines, from the Wall of Siena, from San Quirico, from Radicofani, from San Lorenzo, from Montefiascone, from above Viterbo, from Roncigleone, and at last from that lift in the Via Cassia, whence one suddenly perceives the City. They unroll themselves all in their order till I can see Europe, and Rome shining at the end. But you who go in railways are necessarily shut up in long valleys and even sometimes by the walls of the earth. Even those who bicycle or drive see these sights but rarely and with no consecution, since roads also avoid climbing save where they are forced to it, as over certain passes. It is only by following the straight line onwards that any one can pass from ridge to ridge and have this full picture of the way he has been. So much for views. I clambered down the hill to Archettes and saw, almost the first house, a swinging board 'At the sign of the Trout of the Vosges', and as it was now evening I turned in there to dine. Two things I noticed at once when I sat down to meat. First, that the people seated at that inn table were of the middle-class of society, and secondly, that I, though of their rank, was an impediment to their enjoyment. For to sleep in woods, to march some seventy miles, the latter part in a dazzling sun, and to end by sliding down an earthy steep into the road, stamps a man with all that this kind of people least desire to have thrust upon them. And those who blame the middle-class for their conventions in such matters, and who profess to be above the care for cleanliness and clothes and social ritual which marks the middle-class, are either anarchists by nature, or fools who take what is but an effect of their wealth for a natural virtue. I say it roundly; if it were not for the punctiliousness of the middle-class in these matters all our civilization would go to pieces. They are the conservators and the maintainers of the standard, the moderators of Europe, the salt of society. For the kind of man who boasts that he does not mind dirty clothes or roughing it, is either a man who cares nothing for all that civilization has built up and who rather hates it, or else (and this is much more common) he is a rich man, or accustomed to live among the rich, and can afford to waste energy and stuff because he feels in a vague way that more clothes can always be bought, that at the end of his vagabondism he can get excellent dinners, and that London and Paris are full of luxurious baths and barber shops. Of all the corrupting effects of wealth there is none worse than this, that it makes the wealthy (and their parasites) think in some way divine, or at least a lovely character of the mind, what is in truth nothing but their power of luxurious living. Heaven keep us all from great riches--I mean from very great riches. Now the middle-class cannot afford to buy new clothes whenever they feel inclined, neither can they end up a jaunt by a Turkish bath and a great feast with wine. So their care is always to preserve intact what they happen to have, to exceed in nothing, to study cleanliness, order, decency, sobriety, and a steady temper, and they fence all this round and preserve it in the only way it can be preserved, to wit, with conventions, and they are quite right. I find it very hard to keep up to the demands of these my colleagues, but I recognize that they are on the just side in the quarrel; let none of them go about pretending that I have not defended them in this book. So I thought of how I should put myself right with these people. I saw that an elaborate story (as, that I had been set upon by a tramp who forced me to change clothes: that I dressed thus for a bet: that I was an officer employed as a spy, and was about to cross the frontier into Germany in the guise of a labourer: that my doctor forbade me to shave--or any other such rhodomontade): I saw, I say, that by venturing upon any such excuses I might unwittingly offend some other unknown canon of theirs deeper and more sacred than their rule on clothes; it had happened to me before now to do this in the course of explanations. So I took another method, and said, as I sat down-- 'Pray excuse this appearance of mine. I have had a most unfortunate adventure in the hills, losing my way and being compelled to sleep out all night, nor can I remain to get tidy, as it is essential that I should reach my luggage (which is at Remiremont) before midnight.' I took great care to pay for my glass of white wine before dinner with a bank-note, and I showed my sketches to my neighbour to make an impression. I also talked of foreign politics, of the countries I had seen, of England especially, with such minute exactitude that their disgust was soon turned to admiration. The hostess of this inn was delicate and courteous to a degree, and at every point attempting to overreach her guests, who, as regularly as she attacked, countered with astonishing dexterity. Thus she would say: 'Perhaps the joint would taste better if it were carved on the table; or do the gentlemen prefer it carved aside?' To which a banker opposite me said in a deep voice: 'We prefer, madam, to have it carved aside.' Or she would put her head in and say: 'I can recommend our excellent beer. It is really preferable to this local wine.' And my neighbour, a tourist, answered with decision: 'Madame, we find your wine excellent. It could not be bettered.' Nor could she get round them on a single point, and I pitied her so much that I bought bread and wine off her to console her, and I let her overcharge me, and went out into the afterglow with her benediction, followed also by the farewells of the middle-class, who were now taking their coffee at little tables outside the house. I went hard up the road to Remiremont. The night darkened. I reached Remiremont at midnight, and feeling very wakeful I pushed on up the valley under great woods of pines; and at last, diverging up a little path, I settled on a clump of trees sheltered and, as I thought, warm, and lay down there to sleep till morning; but, on the contrary, I lay awake a full hour in the fragrance and on the level carpet of the pine needles looking up through the dark branches at the waning moon, which had just risen, and thinking of how suitable were pine-trees for a man to sleep under. 'The beech,' I thought, 'is a good tree to sleep under, for nothing will grow there, and there is always dry beech-mast; the yew would be good if it did not grow so low, but, all in all, pine-trees are the best.' I also considered that the worst tree to sleep under would be the upas tree. These thoughts so nearly bordered on nothing that, though I was not sleepy, yet I fell asleep. Long before day, the moon being still lustrous against a sky that yet contained a few faint stars, I awoke shivering with cold. In sleep there is something diminishes us. This every one has noticed; for who ever suffered a nightmare awake, or felt in full consciousness those awful impotencies which lie on the other side of slumber? When we lie down we give ourselves voluntarily, yet by the force of nature, to powers before which we melt and are nothing. And among the strange frailties of sleep I have noticed cold. Here was a warm place under the pines where I could rest in great comfort on pine needles still full of the day; a covering for the beasts underground that love an even heat--the best of floors for a tired man. Even the slight wind that blew under the waning moon was warm, and the stars were languid and not brilliant, as though everything were full of summer, and I knew that the night would be short; a midsummer night; and I had lived half of it before attempting repose. Yet, I say, I woke shivering and also disconsolate, needing companionship. I pushed down through tall, rank grass, drenched with dew, and made my way across the road to the bank of the river. By the time I reached it the dawn began to occupy the east. For a long time I stood in a favoured place, just above a bank of trees that lined the river, and watched the beginning of the day, because every slow increase of light promised me sustenance. The faint, uncertain glimmer that seemed not so much to shine through the air as to be part of it, took all colour out of the woods and fields and the high slopes above me, leaving them planes of grey and deeper grey. The woods near me were a silhouette, black and motionless, emphasizing the east beyond. The river was white and dead, not even a steam rose from it, but out of the further pastures a gentle mist had lifted up and lay all even along the flanks of the hills, so that they rose out of it, indistinct at their bases, clear-cut above against the brightening sky; and the farther they were the more their mouldings showed in the early light, and the most distant edges of all caught the morning. At this wonderful sight I gazed for quite half-an-hour without moving, and took in vigour from it as a man takes in food and wine. When I stirred and looked about me it had become easy to see the separate grasses; a bird or two had begun little interrupted chirrups in the bushes, a day-breeze broke from up the valley ruffling the silence, the moon was dead against the sky, and the stars had disappeared. In a solemn mood I regained the road and turned my face towards the neighbouring sources of the river. I easily perceived with each laborious mile that I was approaching the end of my companionship with the Moselle, which had become part of my adventure for the last eighty miles. It was now a small stream, mountainous and uncertain, though in parts still placid and slow. There appeared also that which I take to be an infallible accompaniment of secluded glens and of the head waters of rivers (however canalized or even overbuilt they are), I mean a certain roughness all about them and the stout protest of the hill-men: their stone cottages and their lonely paths off the road. So it was here. The hills had grown much higher and come closer to the river-plain; up the gullies I would catch now and then an aged and uncouth bridge with a hut near it all built of enduring stone: part of the hills. Then again there were present here and there on the spurs lonely chapels, and these in Catholic countries are a mark of the mountains and of the end of the riches of a valley. Why this should be so I cannot tell. You find them also sometimes in forests, but especially in the lesser inlets of the sea-coast, and, as I have said, here in the upper parts of valleys in the great hills. In such shrines Mass is to be said but rarely, sometimes but once a year in a special commemoration. The rest of the time they stand empty, and some of the older or simpler, one might take for ruins. They mark everywhere some strong emotion of supplication, thanks, or reverence, and they anchor these wild places to their own past, making them up in memories what they lack in multitudinous life. I broke my fast on bread and wine at a place where the road crosses the river, and then I determined I would have hot coffee as well, and seeing in front of me a village called Rupt, which means 'the cleft' (for there is here a great cleft in the hillside), I went up to it and had my coffee. Then I discovered a singular thing, that the people of the place are tired of making up names and give nothing its peculiar baptism. This I thought really very wonderful indeed, for I have noticed wherever I have been that in proportion as men are remote and have little to distract them, in that proportion they produce a great crop of peculiar local names for every stream, reach, tuft, hummock, glen, copse, and gully for miles around; and often when I have lost my way and asked it of a peasant in some lonely part I have grown impatient as he wandered on about 'leaving on your left the stone we call the Nuggin, and bearing round what some call Holy Dyke till you come to what they call Mary's Ferry'... and so forth. Long-shoremen and the riparian inhabitants of dreadful and lonely rivers near the sea have just such a habit, and I have in my mind's eye now a short stretch of tidal water in which there are but five shoals, yet they all have names, and are called 'The House, the Knowle, Goodman's Plot, Mall, and the Patch.' But here in Rupt, to my extreme astonishment, there was no such universal and human instinct. For I said to the old man who poured me out my coffee under the trellis (it was full morning, the sun was well up, and the clouds were all dappled high above the tops of the mountains): 'Father, what do you call this hill?' And with that I pointed to a very remarkable hill and summit that lie sheer above the village. 'That,' he said, 'is called the hill over above Rupt.' 'Yes, of course,' I said, 'but what is its name?' 'That is its name,' he answered. And he was quite right, for when I looked at my map, there it was printed, 'Hill above Rupt'. I thought how wearisome it would be if this became a common way of doing things, and if one should call the Thames 'the River of London', and Essex 'the North side', and Kent 'the South side'; but considering that this fantastic method was only indulged in by one wretched village, I released myself from fear, relegated such horrors to the colonies, and took the road again. All this upper corner of the valley is a garden. It is bound in on every side from the winds, it is closed at the end by the great mass of the Ballon d'Alsace, its floor is smooth and level, its richness is used to feed grass and pasturage, and knots of trees grow about it as though they had been planted to please the eye. Nothing can take from the sources of rivers their character of isolation and repose. Here what are afterwards to become the influences of the plains are nurtured and tended as though in an orchard, and the future life of a whole fruitful valley with its regal towns is determined. Something about these places prevents ingress or spoliation. They will endure no settlements save of peasants; the waters are too young to be harnessed; the hills forbid an easy commerce with neighbours. Throughout the world I have found the heads of rivers to be secure places of silence and content. And as they are themselves a kind of youth, the early home of all that rivers must at last become--I mean special ways of building and a separate state of living, a local air and a tradition of history, for rivers are always the makers of provinces--so they bring extreme youth back to one, and these upper glens of the world steep one in simplicity and childhood. It was my delight to lie upon a bank of the road and to draw what I saw before me, which was the tender stream of the Moselle slipping through fields quite flat and even and undivided by fences; its banks had here a strange effect of Nature copying man's art: they seemed a park, and the river wound through it full of the positive innocence that attaches to virgins: it nourished and was guarded by trees. There was about that scene something of creation and of a beginning, and as I drew it, it gave me like a gift the freshness of the first experiences of living and filled me with remembered springs. I mused upon the birth of rivers, and how they were persons and had a name--were kings, and grew strong and ruled great countries, and how at last they reached the sea. But while I was thinking of these things, and seeing in my mind a kind of picture of The River Valley, and of men clustering around their home stream, and of its ultimate vast plains on either side, and of the white line of the sea beyond all, a woman passed me. She was very ugly, and was dressed in black. Her dress was stiff and shining, and, as I imagined, valuable. She had in her hand a book known to the French as 'The Roman Parishioner', which is a prayer-book. Her hair was hidden in a stiff cap or bonnet; she walked rapidly, with her eyes on the ground. When I saw this sight it reminded me suddenly, and I cried out profanely, 'Devil take me! It is Corpus Christi, and my third day out. It would be a wicked pilgrimage if I did not get Mass at last.' For my first day (if you remember) I had slept in a wood beyond Mass-time, and my second (if you remember) I had slept in a bed. But this third day, a great Feast into the bargain, I was bound to hear Mass, and this woman hurrying along to the next village proved that I was not too late. So I hurried in her wake and came to the village, and went into the church, which was very full, and came down out of it (the Mass was low and short--they are a Christian people) through an avenue of small trees and large branches set up in front of the houses to welcome the procession that was to be held near noon. At the foot of the street was an inn where I entered to eat, and finding there another man--I take him to have been a shopkeeper--I determined to talk politics, and began as follows: 'Have you any anti-Semitism in your town?' 'It is not my town,' he said, 'but there is anti-Semitism. It flourishes.' 'Why then?' I asked. 'How many Jews have you in your town?' He said there were seven. 'But,' said I, 'seven families of Jews--' 'There are not seven families,' he interrupted; 'there are seven Jews all told. There are but two families, and I am reckoning in the children. The servants are Christians.' 'Why,' said I, 'that is only just and proper, that the Jewish families from beyond the frontier should have local Christian people to wait on them and do their bidding. But what I was going to say was that so very few Jews seem to me an insufficient fuel to fire the anti-Semites. How does their opinion flourish?' 'In this way,' he answered. 'The Jews, you see, ridicule our young men for holding such superstitions as the Catholic. Our young men, thus brought to book and made to feel irrational, admit the justice of the ridicule, but nourish a hatred secretly for those who have exposed their folly. Therefore they feel a standing grudge against the Jews.' When he had given me this singular analysis of that part of the politics of the mountains, he added, after a short silence, the following remarkable phrase-- 'For my part I am a liberal, and would have each go his own way: the Catholic to his Mass, the Jew to his Sacrifice.' I then rose from my meal, saluted him, and went musing up the valley road, pondering upon what it could be that the Jews sacrificed in this remote borough, but I could not for the life of me imagine what it was, though I have had a great many Jews among my friends. I was now arrived at the head of this lovely vale, at the sources of the river Moselle and the base of the great mountain the Ballon d'Alsace, which closes it in like a wall at the end of a lane. For some miles past the hills had grown higher and higher upon either side, the valley floor narrower, the torrent less abundant; there now stood up before me the marshy slopes and the enormous forests of pine that forbid a passage south. Up through these the main road has been pierced, tortuous and at an even gradient mile after mile to the very top of the hill; for the Ballon d'Alsace is so shaped that it is impossible for the Moselle valley to communicate with the Gap of Belfort save by some track right over its summit. For it is a mountain with spurs like a star, and where mountains of this kind block the end of main valleys it becomes necessary for the road leading up and out of the valley to go over their highest point, since any other road over the passes or shoulders would involve a second climb to reach the country beyond. The reason of this, my little map here, where the dark stands for the valley and the light for the high places, will show better than a long description. Not that this map is of the Ballon d'Alsace in particular, but only of the type of hill I mean. Since, in crossing a range, it is usually possible to find a low point suitable for surmounting it, such summit roads are rare, but when one does get them they are the finest travel in the world, for they furnish at one point (that is, at the summit) what ordinary roads going through passes can never give you: a moment of domination. From their climax you look over the whole world, and you feel your journey to be adventurous and your advance to have taken some great definite step from one province and people to another. I would not be bound by the exaggerated zig-zags of the road, which had been built for artillery, and rose at an easy slope. I went along the bed of the dell before me and took the forest by a little path that led straight upward, and when the path failed, my way was marked by the wire of the telegraph that crosses to Belfort. As I rose I saw the forest before me grow grander. The pine branches came down from the trunks with a greater burden and majesty in their sway, the trees took on an appearance of solemnity, and the whole rank that faced me--for here the woods come to an even line and stand like an army arrested upon a downward march -- seemed something unusual and gigantic. Nothing more helped this impression of awe than the extreme darkness beneath those aged growths, and the change in the sky that introduced my entry into the silence and perfume of so vast a temple. Great clouds, so charged with rain that you would have thought them lower than the hills (and yet just missing their tops), came covering me like a tumbled roof and gathered all around; the heat of the day waned suddenly in their shade: it seemed suddenly as though summer was over or as though the mountains demanded an uncertain summer of their own, and shot the sunshine with the chill of their heights. A little wind ran along the grass and died again. As I gained the darkness of the first trees, rain was falling. The silence of the interior wood was enhanced by a bare drip of water from the boughs that stood out straight and tangled I know not how far above me. Its gloom was rendered more tremendous by the half-light and lowering of the sky which the ceiling of branches concealed. Height, stillness, and a sort of expectancy controlled the memories of the place, and I passed silently and lightly between the high columns of the trees from night (as it seemed) through a kind of twilight forward to a near night beyond. On every side the perspective of these bare innumerable shafts, each standing apart in order, purple and fragrant, merged into recesses of distance where all light disappeared, yet as I advanced the slight gloaming still surrounded me, as did the stillness framed in the drip of water, and beneath my feet was the level carpet of the pine needles deadening and making distant every tiny noise. Had not the trees been so much greater and more enduring than my own presence, and had not they overwhelmed me by their regard, I should have felt afraid. As it was I pushed upward through their immovable host in some such catching of the breath as men have when they walk at night straining for a sound, and I felt myself to be continually in a hidden companionship. When I came to the edge of this haunted forest it ceased as suddenly as it had begun. I left behind me such a rank of trees aligned as I had entered thousands of feet below, and I saw before me, stretching shapely up to the sky, the round dome-like summit of the mountain--a great field of grass. It was already evening; and, as though the tall trees had withdrawn their virtue from me, my fatigue suddenly came upon me. My feet would hardly bear me as I clambered up the last hundred feet and looked down under the rolling clouds, lit from beneath by the level light of evening, to the three countries that met at my feet. For the Ballon d'Alsace is the knot of Europe, and from that gathering up and ending of the Vosges you look down upon three divisions of men. To the right of you are the Gauls. I do not mean that mixed breed of Lorraine, silent, among the best of people, but I mean the tree Gauls, who are hot, ready, and born in the plains and in the vineyards. They stand in their old entrenchments on either side of the Saône and are vivacious in battle; from time to time a spirit urges them, and they go out conquering eastward in the Germanics, or in Asia, or down the peninsulas of the Mediterranean, and then they suck back like a tide homewards, having accomplished nothing but an epic. Then on the left you have all the Germanics, a great sea of confused and dreaming people, lost in philosophies and creating music, frozen for the moment under a foreign rigidity, but some day to thaw again and to give a word to us others. They cannot long remain apart from visions. Then in front of you southward and eastward, if you are marching to Rome, come the Highlanders. I had never been among them, and I was to see them in a day; the people of the high hills, the race whom we all feel to be enemies, and who run straight across the world from the Atlantic to the Pacific, understanding each other, not understood by us. I saw their first rampart, the mountains called the Jura, on the horizon, and above my great field of view the clouds still tumbled, lit from beneath with evening. I tired of these immensities, and, feeling now my feet more broken than ever, I very slowly and in sharp shoots of pain dragged down the slope towards the main road: I saw just below me the frontier stones of the Prussians, and immediately within them a hut. To this I addressed myself. It was an inn. The door opened of itself, and I found there a pleasant woman of middle age, but frowning. She had three daughters, all of great strength, and she was upbraiding them loudly in the German of Alsace and making them scour and scrub. On the wall above her head was a great placard which I read very tactfully, and in a distant manner, until she had restored the discipline of her family. This great placard was framed in the three colours which once brought a little hope to the oppressed, and at the head of it in broad black letters were the three words, 'Freedom, Brotherhood, and an Equal Law'. Underneath these was the emblematic figure of a cock, which I took to be the Gallic bird, and underneath him again was printed in enormous italics-- Quand ce coq chantera Ici crédit l'on fera. Which means-- When you hear him crowing Then's the time for owing. Till that day--Pay. While I was still wondering at this epitome of the French people, and was attempting to combine the French military tradition with the French temper in the affairs of economics; while I was also delighting in the memory of the solid coin that I carried in a little leathern bag in my pocket, the hard-working, God-fearing, and honest woman that governs the little house and the three great daughters, within a yard of the frontier, and on the top of this huge hill, had brought back all her troops into line and had the time to attend to me. This she did with the utmost politeness, though cold by race, and through her politeness ran a sense of what Teutons called Duty, which would once have repelled me; but I have wandered over a great part of the world, and I know it now to be a distorted kind of virtue. She was of a very different sort from that good tribe of the Moselle valley beyond the hill; yet she also was Catholic-- (she had a little tree set up before her door for the Corpus Christi: see what religion is, that makes people of utterly different races understand each other; for when I saw that tree I knew precisely where I stood. So once all we Europeans understood each other, but now we are divided by the worst malignancies of nations and classes, and a man does not so much love his own nation as hate his neighbours, and even the twilight of chivalry is mixed up with a detestable patronage of the poor. But as I was saying--) she also was a Catholic, and I knew myself to be with friends. She was moreover not exactly of- what shall I say? the words Celtic and Latin mean nothing-- not of those who delight in a delicate manner; and her good heart prompted her to say, very loudly-- 'What do you want?' 'I want a bed,' I said, and I pulled out a silver coin. 'I must lie down at once.' Then I added, 'Can you make omelettes?' Now it is a curious thing, and one I will not dwell on-- LECTOR. You do nothing but dwell. AUCTOR. It is the essence of lonely travel; and if you have come to this book for literature you have come to the wrong booth and counter. As I was saying: it is a curious thing that some people (or races) jump from one subject to another naturally, as some animals (I mean the noble deer) go by bounds. While there are other races (or individuals--heaven forgive me, I am no ethnologist) who think you a criminal or a lunatic unless you carefully plod along from step to step like a hippopotamus out of water. When, therefore, I asked this family-drilling, house-managing, mountain-living woman whether she could make omelettes, she shook her head at me slowly, keeping her eyes fixed on mine, and said in what was the corpse of French with a German ghost in it, 'The bed is a franc.' 'Motherkin,' I answered, 'what I mean is that I would sleep until I wake, for I have come a prodigious distance and have last slept in the woods. But when I wake I shall need food, for which,' I added, pulling out yet another coin, 'I will pay whatever your charge may be; for a more delightful house I have rarely met with. I know most people do not sleep before sunset, but I am particularly tired and broken.' She showed me my bed then much more kindly, and when I woke, which was long after dusk, she gave me in the living room of the hut eggs beaten up with ham, and I ate brown bread and said grace. Then (my wine was not yet finished, but it is an abominable thing to drink your own wine in another person's house) I asked whether I could have something to drink. 'What you like,' she said. 'What have you?' said I. 'Beer,' said she. 'Anything else?' said I. 'No,' said she. 'Why, then, give me some of that excellent beer.' I drank this with delight, paid all my bill (which was that of a labourer), and said good-night to them. In good-nights they had a ceremony; for they all rose together and curtsied. Upon my soul I believe such people to be the salt of the earth. I bowed with real contrition, for at several moments I had believed myself better than they. Then I went to my bed and they to theirs. The wind howled outside; my boots were stiff like wood and I could hardly take them off; my feet were so martyrized that I doubted if I could walk at all on the morrow. Nevertheless I was so wrapped round with the repose of this family's virtues that I fell asleep at once. Next day the sun was rising in angry glory over the very distant hills of Germany, his new light running between the pinnacles of the clouds as the commands of a conqueror might come trumpeted down the defiles of mountains, when I fearlessly forced my boots on to my feet and left their doors. The morning outside came living and sharp after the gale--almost chilly. Under a scattered but clearing sky I first limped, then, as my blood warmed, strode down the path that led between the trees of the farther vale and was soon following a stream that leaped from one fall to another till it should lead me to the main road, to Belfort, to the Jura, to the Swiss whom I had never known, and at last to Italy. But before I call up the recollection of that hidden valley, I must describe with a map the curious features of the road that lay before me into Switzerland. I was standing on the summit of that knot of hills which rise up from every side to form the Ballon d'Alsace, and make an abrupt ending to the Vosges. Before me, southward and eastward, was a great plain with the fortress of Belfort in the midst of it. This plain is called by soldiers 'the Gap of Belfort', and is the only break in the hill frontier that covers France all the way from the Mediterranean to Flanders. On the farther side of this plain ran the Jura mountains, which are like a northern wall to Switzerland, and just before you reach them is the Frontier. The Jura are fold on fold of high limestone ridges, thousands of feet high, all parallel, with deep valleys, thousands of feet deep, between them; and beyond their last abrupt escarpment is the wide plain of the river Aar. Now the straight line to Rome ran from where I stood, right across that plain of Belfort, right across the ridges of the Jura, and cut the plain of the Aar a few miles to the west of a town called Solothurn or Soleure, which stands upon that river. It was impossible to follow that line exactly, but one could average it closely enough by following the high road down the mountain through Belfort to a Swiss town called Porrentruy or Portrut--so far one was a little to the west of the direct line. From Portrut, by picking one's way through forests, up steep banks, over open downs, along mule paths, and so forth, one could cross the first ridge called the 'Terrible Hill', and so reach the profound gorge of the river Doubs, and a town called St Ursanne. From St Ursanne, by following a mountain road and then climbing some rocks and tracking through a wood, one could get straight over the second ridge to Glovelier. From Glovelier a highroad took one through a gap to Undervelier and on to a town called Moutier or Munster. Then from Munster, the road, still following more or less the line to Rome but now somewhat to the east of it, went on southward till an abrupt turn in it forced one to leave it. Then there was another rough climb by a difficult path up over the last ridge, called the Weissenstein, and from its high edge and summit it was but a straight fall of a mile or two on to Soleure. So much my map told me, and this mixture of roads and paths and rock climbs that I had planned out, I exactly followed, so as to march on as directly as possible towards Rome, which was my goal. For if I had not so planned it, but had followed the highroads, I should have been compelled to zig-zag enormously for days, since these ridges of the Jura are but little broken, and the roads do not rise above the crests, but follow the parallel valleys, taking advantage only here and there of the rare gaps to pass from one to another. Here is a sketch of the way I went, where my track is a white line, and the round spots in it are the towns and villages whose names are written at the side. In this sketch the plains and low valleys are marked dark, and the crests of the mountains left white. The shading is lighter according to the height, and the contour lines (which are very far from accurate) represent, I suppose, about a thousand feet between each, or perhaps a little more; and as for the distance, from the Ballon d'Alsace to Soleure might be two long days' march on a flat road, but over mountains and up rocks it was all but three, and even that was very good going. My first stage was across the plain of Belfort, and I had determined to sleep that night in Switzerland. I wandered down the mountain. A little secret path, one of many, saved me the long windings of the road. It followed down the central hollow of the great cleft and accompanied the stream. All the way for miles the water tumbled in fall after fall over a hundred steps of rock, and its noise mixed with the freshness of the air, and its splashing weighted the overhanging branches of the trees. A little rain that fell from time to time through the clear morning seemed like a sister to the spray of the waterfalls; and what with all this moisture and greenery, and the surrounding silence, all the valley was inspired with content. It was a repose to descend through its leaves and grasses, and find the lovely pastures at the foot of the descent, a narrow floor between the hills. Here there were the first houses of men; and, from one, smoke was already going up thinly into the morning. The air was very pure and cold; it was made more nourishing and human by the presence and noise of the waters, by the shining wet grasses and the beaded leaves all through that umbrageous valley. The shreds of clouds which, high above the calm, ran swiftly in the upper air, fed it also with soft rains from time to time as fine as dew; and through those clear and momentary showers one could see the sunlight. When I had enjoyed the descent through this place for but a few miles, everything changed. The road in front ran straight and bordered--it led out and onwards over a great flat, set here and there with hillocks. The Vosges ended abruptly. Houses came more thickly, and by the ceaseless culture of the fields, by the flat slate roofs, the white-washed walls, and the voices, and the glare, I knew myself to be once more in France of the plains; and the first town I came to was Giromagny. Here, as I heard a bell, I thought I would go up and hear Mass; and I did so, but my attention at the holy office was distracted by the enormous number of priests that I found in the church, and I have wondered painfully ever since how so many came to be in a little place like Giromagny. There were three priests at the high altar, and nearly one for each chapel, and there was such a buzz of Masses going on, beginning and ending, that I am sure I need not have gone without my breakfast in my hurry to get one. With all this there were few people at Mass so early; nothing but these priests going in and out, and continual little bells. I am still wondering. Giromagny is no place for relics or for a pilgrimage, it cures no one, and has nothing of a holy look about it, and all these priests-- LECTOR. Pray dwell less on your religion, and-- AUCTOR. Pray take books as you find them, and treat travel as travel. For you, when you go to a foreign country, see nothing but what you expect to see. But I am astonished at a thousand accidents, and always find things twenty-fold as great as I supposed they would be, and far more curious; the whole covered by a strange light of adventure. And that is the peculiar value of this book. Now, if you can explain these priests--- LECTOR. I can. It was the season of the year, and they were swarming. AUCTOR. So be it. Then if you will hear nothing of what interests me, I see no reason for setting down with minute care what interests you, and I may leave out all mention of the Girl who could only speak German, of the Arrest of the Criminal, and even of the House of Marshal Turenne--- this last something quite exceptionally entertaining. But do not let us continue thus, nor push things to an open quarrel. You must imagine for yourself about six miles of road, and then--then in the increasing heat, the dust rising in spite of the morning rain, and the road most wearisome, I heard again the sound of bugles and the sombre excitement of the drums. It is a thought-provoking thing, this passing from one great garrison to another all the way down the frontier. I had started from the busy order of Toul; I had passed through the silence and peace of all that Moselle country, the valley like a long garden, and I had come to the guns and the tramp of Épinal. I had left Épinal and counted the miles and miles of silence in the forests, I had crossed the great hills and come down into quite another plain draining to another sea, and I heard again all the clamour that goes with soldiery, and looking backward then over my four days, one felt--one almost saw--the new system of fortification, the vast entrenched camps each holding an army, the ungarnished gaps between. As I came nearer to Belfort, I saw the guns going at a trot down a side road, and, a little later, I saw marching on my right, a long way off, the irregular column, the dust and the invincible gaiety of the French line. The sun here and there glinted on the ends of rifle-barrels and the polished pouches. Their heavy pack made their tramp loud and thudding. They were singing a song. I had already passed the outer forts; I had noted a work close to the road; I had gone on a mile or so and had entered the long and ugly suburb where the tramway lines began, when, on one of the ramshackle houses of that burning, paved, and noisy endless street, I saw written up the words, Wine; shut or open. As it is a great rule to examine every new thing, and to suck honey out of every flower, I did not--as some would--think the phrase odd and pass on. I stood stock-still gazing at the house and imagining a hundred explanations. I had never in my life heard wine divided into shut and open wine. I determined to acquire yet one more great experience, and going in I found a great number of tin cans, such as the French carry up water in, without covers, tapering to the top, and standing about three feet high; on these were pasted large printed labels, '30', '40', and '50', and they were brimming with wine. I spoke to the woman, and pointing at the tin cans, said-- 'Is this what you call open wine?' 'Why, yes,' said she. 'Cannot you see for yourself that it is open?' That was true enough, and it explained a great deal. But it did not explain how--seeing that if you leave a bottle of wine uncorked for ten minutes you spoil it--you can keep gallons of it in a great wide can, for all the world like so much milk, milked from the Panthers of the God. I determined to test the prodigy yet further, and choosing the middle price, at fourpence a quart, I said-- 'Pray give me a hap'orth in a mug.' This the woman at once did, and when I came to drink it, it was delicious. Sweet, cool, strong, lifting the heart, satisfying, and full of all those things wine-merchants talk of, bouquet, and body, and flavour. It was what I have heard called a very pretty wine. I did not wait, however, to discuss the marvel, but accepted it as one of those mysteries of which this pilgrimage was already giving me examples, and of which more were to come--(wait till you hear about the brigand of Radicofani). I said to myself-- 'When I get out of the Terre Majeure, and away from the strong and excellent government of the Republic, when I am lost in the Jura Hills to-morrow there will be no such wine as this.' So I bought a quart of it, corked it up very tight, put it in my sack, and held it in store against the wineless places on the flanks of the hill called Terrible, where there are no soldiers, and where Swiss is the current language. Then I went on into the centre of the town. As I passed over the old bridge into the market-place, where I proposed to lunch (the sun was terrible--it was close upon eleven), I saw them building parallel with that old bridge a new one to replace it. And the way they build a bridge in Belfort is so wonderfully simple, and yet so new, that it is well worth telling. In most places when a bridge has to be made, there is an infinite pother and worry about building the piers, coffer-dams, and heaven knows what else. Some swing their bridges to avoid this trouble, and some try to throw an arch of one span from side to side. There are a thousand different tricks. In Belfort they simply wait until the water has run away. Then a great brigade of workmen run down into the dry bed of the river and dig the foundations feverishly, and begin building the piers in great haste. Soon the water comes back, but the piers are already above it, and the rest of the work is done from boats. This is absolutely true. Not only did I see the men in the bed of the river, but a man whom I asked told me that it seemed to him the most natural way to build bridges, and doubted if they were ever made in any other fashion. There is also in Belfort a great lion carved in rock to commemorate the siege of 1870. This lion is part of the precipice under the castle, and is of enormous size--- how large I do not know, but I saw that a man looked quite small by one of his paws. The precipice was first smoothed like a stone slab or tablet, and then this lion was carved into and out of it in high relief by Bartholdi, the same man that made the statue of Liberty in New York Harbour. The siege of 1870 has been fixed for history in yet another way, and one that shows you how the Church works on from one stem continually. For there is a little church somewhere near or in Belfort (I do not know where, I only heard of it) which, a local mason and painter being told to decorate for so much, he amused himself by painting all round it little pictures of the siege--of the cold, and the wounds, and the heroism. This is indeed the way such things should be done, I mean by men doing them for pleasure and of their own thought. And I have a number of friends who agree with me in thinking this, that art should not be competitive or industrial, but most of them go on to the very strange conclusion that one should not own one's garden, nor one's beehive, nor one's great noble house, nor one's pigsty, nor one's railway shares, nor the very boots on one's feet. I say, out upon such nonsense. Then they say to me, what about the concentration of the means of production? And I say to them, what about the distribution of the ownership of the concentrated means of production? And they shake their heads sadly, and say it would never endure; and I say, try it first and see. Then they fly into a rage. When I lunched in Belfort (and at lunch, by the way, a poor man asked me to use _all my influence_ for his son, who was an engineer in the navy, and this he did because I had been boasting of my travels, experiences, and grand acquaintances throughout the world)--when, I say, I had lunched in a workman's cafe at Belfort, I set out again on my road, and was very much put out to find that showers still kept on falling. In the early morning, under such delightful trees, up in the mountains, the branches had given me a roof, the wild surroundings made me part of the out-of-doors, and the rain had seemed to marry itself to the pastures and the foaming beck. But here, on a road and in a town, all its tradition of discomfort came upon me. I was angry, therefore, with the weather and the road for some miles, till two things came to comfort me. First it cleared, and a glorious sun showed me from a little eminence the plain of Alsace and the mountains of the Vosges all in line; secondly, I came to a vast powder-magazine. To most people there is nothing more subtle or pleasing in a powder-magazine than in a reservoir. They are both much the same in the mere exterior, for each is a flat platform, sloping at the sides and covered with grass, and each has mysterious doors. But, for my part, I never see a powder-magazine without being filled at once with two very good feelings--- laughter and companionship. For it was my good fortune, years and years ago, to be companion and friend to two men who were on sentry at a powder-magazine just after there had been some anarchist attempts (as they call them) upon such depots--and for the matter of that I can imagine nothing more luscious to the anarchist than seven hundred and forty-two cases of powder and fifty cases of melinite all stored in one place. And to prevent the enormous noise, confusion, and waste that would have resulted from the over-attraction of this base of operations to the anarchists, my two friends, one of whom was a duty-doing Burgundian, but the other a loose Parisian man, were on sentry that night. They had strict orders to challenge once and then to fire. Now, can you imagine anything more exquisite to a poor devil of a conscript, fagged out with garrison duty and stale sham-fighting, than an order of that kind? So my friends took it, and in one summer night they killed a donkey and wounded two mares, and broke the thin stem of a growing tree. This powder-magazine was no exception to my rule, for as I approached it I saw a round-faced corporal and two round-faced men looking eagerly to see who might be attacking their treasure, and I became quite genial in my mind when I thought of how proud these boys felt, and of how I was of the 'class of ninety, rifled and mounted on its carriage' (if you don't see the point of the allusion, I can't stop to explain it. It was a good gun in its time--now they have the seventy-five that doesn't recoil--_requiescat), _and of how they were longing for the night, and a chance to shoot anything on the sky line. Full of these foolish thoughts, but smiling in spite of their folly, I went down the road. Shall I detail all that afternoon? My leg horrified me with dull pain, and made me fear I should never hold out, I do not say to Rome, but even to the frontier. I rubbed it from time to time with balm, but, as always happens to miraculous things, the virtue had gone out of it with the lapse of time. At last I found a side road going off from the main way, and my map told me it was on the whole a short cut to the frontier. I determined to take it for those few last miles, because, if one is suffering, a winding lane is more tolerable than a wide turnpike. Just as I came to the branching of the roads I saw a cross put up, and at its base the motto that is universal to French crosses-- _Ave Crux Spes Unica._ I thought it a good opportunity for recollection, and sitting down, I looked backward along the road I had come. There were the high mountains of the Vosges standing up above the plain of Alsace like sloping cliffs above a sea. I drew them as they stood, and wondered if that frontier were really permanent. The mind of man is greater than such accidents, and can easily overleap even the high hills. Then having drawn them, and in that drawing said a kind of farewell to the influences that had followed me for so many miles--the solemn quiet, the steady industry, the self-control, the deep woods, of Lorraine--1 rose up stiffly from the bank that had been my desk, and pushed along the lane that ran devious past neglected villages. The afternoon and the evening followed as I put one mile after another behind me. The frontier seemed so close that I would not rest. I left my open wine, the wine I had found outside Belfort, untasted, and I plodded on and on as the light dwindled. I was in a grand wonderment for Switzerland, and I wished by an immediate effort to conquer the last miles before night, in spite of my pain. Also, I will confess to a silly pride in distances, and a desire to be out of France on my fourth day. The light still fell, and my resolution stood, though my exhaustion undermined it. The line of the mountains rose higher against the sky, and there entered into my pilgrimage for the first time the loneliness and the mystery of meres. Something of what a man feels in East England belonged to this last of the plain under the guardian hills. Everywhere I passed ponds and reeds, and saw the level streaks of sunset reflected in stagnant waters. The marshy valley kept its character when I had left the lane and regained the highroad. Its isolation dominated the last effort with which I made for the line of the Jura in that summer twilight, and as I blundered on my whole spirit was caught or lifted in the influence of the waste waters and of the birds of evening. I wished, as I had often wished in such opportunities of recollection and of silence, for a complete barrier that might isolate the mind. With that wish came in a puzzling thought, very proper to a pilgrimage, which was: 'What do men mean by the desire to be dissolved and to enjoy the spirit free and without attachments?' That many men have so desired there can be no doubt, and the best men, whose holiness one recognizes at once, tell us that the joys of the soul are incomparably higher than those of the living man. In India, moreover, there are great numbers of men who do the most fantastic things with the object of thus unprisoning the soul, and Milton talks of the same thing with evident conviction, and the Saints all praise it in chorus. But what is it? For my part I cannot understand so much as the meaning of the words, for every pleasure I know comes from an intimate union between my body and my very human mind, which last receives, confirms, revives, and can summon up again what my body has experienced. Of pleasures, however, in which my senses have had no part I know nothing, so I have determined to take them upon trust and see whether they could make the matter clearer in Rome. But when it comes to the immortal mind, the good spirit in me that is so cunning at forms and colours and the reasons of things, that is a very different story. _That_, I do indeed desire to have to myself at whiles, and the waning light of a day or the curtains of autumn closing in the year are often to me like a door shutting after one, as one comes in home. For I find that with less and less impression from without the mind seems to take on a power of creation, and by some mystery it can project songs and landscapes and faces much more desirable than the music or the shapes one really hears and sees. So also memory can create. But it is not the soul that does this, for the songs, the landscapes, and the faces are of a kind that have come in by the senses, nor have I ever understood what could be higher than these pleasures, nor indeed how in anything formless and immaterial there could be pleasure at all. Yet the wisest people assure us that our souls are as superior to our minds as are our minds to our inert and merely material bodies. I cannot understand it at all. As I was pondering on these things in this land of pastures and lonely ponds, with the wall of the Jura black against the narrow bars of evening--(my pain seemed gone for a moment, yet I was hobbling slowly)--I say as I was considering this complex doctrine, I felt my sack suddenly much lighter, and I had hardly time to rejoice at the miracle when I heard immediately a very loud crash, and turning half round I saw on the blurred white of the twilit road my quart of Open Wine all broken to atoms. My disappointment was so great that I sat down on a milestone to consider the accident and to see if a little thought would not lighten my acute annoyance. Consider that I had carefully cherished this bottle and had not drunk throughout a painful march all that afternoon, thinking that there would be no wine worth drinking after I had passed the frontier. I consoled myself more or less by thinking about torments and evils to which even such a loss as this was nothing, and then I rose to go on into the night. As it turned out I was to find beyond the frontier a wine in whose presence this wasted wine would have seemed a wretched jest, and whose wonderful taste was to colour all my memories of the Mount Terrible. It is always thus with sorrows if one will only wait. So, lighter in the sack but heavier in the heart, I went forward to cross the frontier in the dark. I did not quite know where the point came: I only knew that it was about a mile from Delle, the last French town. I supped there and held on my way. When I guessed that I had covered this mile I saw a light in the windows on my left, a trellis and the marble tables of a cafe. I put my head in at the door and said-- 'Am I in Switzerland?' A German-looking girl, a large heavy man, a Bavarian commercial traveller, and a colleague of his from Marseilles, all said together in varying accents: 'Yes.' 'Why then,' I said, 'I will come in and drink.' This book would never end if I were to attempt to write down so much as the names of a quarter of the extraordinary things that I saw and heard on my enchanted pilgrimage, but let me at least mention the Commercial Traveller from Marseilles. He talked with extreme rapidity for two hours. He had seen all the cities in the world and he remembered their minutest details. He was extremely accurate, his taste was abominable, his patriotism large, his wit crude but continual, and to his German friend, to the host of the inn, and to the blonde serving-girl, he was a familiar god. He came, it seems, once a year, and for a day would pour out the torrent of his travels like a waterfall of guide-books (for he gloried in dates, dimensions, and the points of the compass in his descriptions); then he disappeared for another year, and left them to feast on the memory of such a revelation. For my part I sat silent, crippled with fatigue, trying to forget my wounded feet, drinking stoup after stoup of beer and watching the Phocean. He was of the old race you see on vases in red and black; slight, very wiry, with a sharp, eager, but well-set face, a small, black, pointed beard, brilliant eyes like those of lizards, rapid gestures, and a vivacity that played all over his features as sheet lightning does over the glow of midnight in June. That delta of the Rhone is something quite separate from the rest of France. It is a wedge of Greece and of the East thrust into the Gauls. It came north a hundred years ago and killed the monarchy. It caught the value in, and created, the great war song of the Republic. I watched the Phocean. I thought of a man of his ancestry three thousand years ago sitting here at the gates of these mountains talking of his travels to dull, patient, and admiring northerners, and travelling for gain up on into the Germanics, and I felt the changeless form of Europe under me like a rock. When he heard I was walking to Rome, this man of information turned off his flood into another channel, as a miller will send the racing water into a side sluice, and he poured out some such torrent as this: 'Do not omit to notice the famous view S.E. from the Villa So and So on Monte Mario; visit such and such a garden, and hear Mass in such and such a church. Note the curious illusion produced on the piazza of St Peter's by the interior measurements of the trapezium, which are so many years and so many yards,...' &c., and so forth... exactly like a mill. I meanwhile sat on still silent, still drinking beer and watching the Phocean; gradually suffering the fascination that had captured the villagers and the German friend. He was a very wonderful man. He was also kindly, for I found afterwards that he had arranged with the host to give me up his bed, seeing my weariness. For this, most unluckily, I was never able to thank him, since the next morning I was off before he or any one else was awake, and I left on the table such money as I thought would very likely satisfy the innkeeper. It was broad day, but not yet sunrise (there were watery thin clouds left here and there from the day before, a cold wind drove them) when, with extreme pain, going slowly one step after the other and resting continually, I started for Porrentruy along a winding road, and pierced the gap in the Jura. The first turn cut me off from France, and I was fairly in a strange country. The valley through which I was now passing resembled that of the lovely river Jed where it runs down from the Cheviots, and leads like a road into the secret pastures of the lowlands. Here also, as there, steep cliffs of limestone bounded a very level dale, all green grass and plenty; the plateau above them was covered also with perpetual woods, only here, different from Scotland, the woods ran on and upwards till they became the slopes of high mountains; indeed, this winding cleft was a natural passage through the first ridge of the Jura; the second stood up southward before me like a deep blue storm. I had, as I passed on along this turning way, all the pleasures of novelty; it was quite another country from the governed and ordered France which I had left. The road was more haphazard, less carefully tended, and evidently less used. The milestones were very old, and marked leagues instead of kilometres. There was age in everything. Moss grew along the walls, and it was very quiet under the high trees. I did not know the name of the little river that went slowly through the meadows, nor whether it followed the custom of its French neighbours on the watershed, and was called by some such epithet as hangs to all the waters in that gap of Belfort, that plain of ponds and marshes: for they are called 'the Sluggish', 'the Muddy', or 'the Laggard'. Even the name of the Saone, far off, meant once 'Slow Water'. I was wondering what its name might be, and how far I stood from Porrentruy (which I knew to be close by), when I saw a tunnel across the valley, and I guessed by the trend of the higher hills that the river was about to make a very sharp angle. Both these signs, I had been told, meant that I was quite close to the town; so I took a short cut up through the forest over a spur of hill--a short cut most legitimate, because it was trodden and very manifestly used--and I walked up and then on a level for a mile, along a lane of the woods and beneath small, dripping trees. When this short silence of the forest was over, I saw an excellent sight. There, below me, where the lane began to fall, was the first of the German cities. LECTOR. How 'German'? AUCTOR. Let me explain. There is a race that stretches vaguely, without defined boundaries, from the Baltic into the high hills of the south. I will not include the Scandinavians among them, for the Scandinavians (from whom we English also in part descend) are long-headed, lean, and fierce, with a light of adventure in their pale eyes. But beneath them, I say, there stretches from the Baltic to the high hills a race which has a curious unity. Yes; I know that great patches of it are Catholic, and that other great patches hold varying philosophies; I know also that within them are counted long-headed and round-headed men, dark and fair, violent and silent; I know also that they have continually fought among themselves and called in Welch allies; still I go somewhat by the language, for I am concerned here with the development of a modern European people, and I say that the Germans run from the high hills to the northern sea. In all of them you find (it is not race, it is something much more than race, it is the type of culture) a dreaminess and a love of ease. In all of them you find music. They are those Germans whose countries I had seen a long way off, from the Ballon d'Alsace, and whose language and traditions I now first touched in the town that stood before me. LECTOR. But in Porrentruy they talk French! AUCTOR. They are welcome; it is an excellent tongue. Nevertheless, they are Germans. Who but Germans would so preserve--would so rebuild the past? Who but Germans would so feel the mystery of the hills, and so fit their town to the mountains? I was to pass through but a narrow wedge of this strange and diffuse people. They began at Porrentruy, they ended at the watershed of the Adriatic, in the high passes of the Alps; but in that little space of four days I made acquaintance with their influence, and I owe them a perpetual gratitude for their architecture and their tales. I had come from France, which is full of an active memory of Rome. I was to debouch into those larger plains of Italy, which keep about them an atmosphere of Rome in decay. Here in Switzerland, for four marches, I touched a northern, exterior, and barbaric people; for though these mountains spoke a distorted Latin tongue, and only after the first day began to give me a Teutonic dialect, yet it was evident from the first that they had about them neither the Latin order nor the Latin power to create, but were contemplative and easily absorbed by a little effort. The German spirit is a marvel. There lay Porrentruy. An odd door with Gothic turrets marked the entry to the town. To the right of this gateway a tower, more enormous than anything I remembered to have seen, even in dreams, flanked the approach to the city. How vast it was, how protected, how high, how eaved, how enduring! I was told later that some part of that great bastion was Roman, and I can believe it. The Germans hate to destroy. It overwhelmed me as visions overwhelm, and I felt in its presence as boys feel when they first see the mountains. Had I not been a Christian, I would have worshipped and propitiated this obsession, this everlasting thing. As it was I entered Porrentruy soberly. I passed under its deep gateway and up its steep hill. The moment I was well into the main street, something other of the Middle Ages possessed me, and I began to think of food and wine. I went to the very first small guest-house I could find, and asked them if they could serve me food. They said that at such an early hour (it was not yet ten) they could give me nothing but bread, yesterday's meat, and wine. I said that would do very well, and all these things were set before me, and by a custom of the country I paid before I ate. (A bad custom. Up in the Limousin, when I was a boy, in the noisy valley of the Torrent, on the Vienne, I remember a woman that did not allow me to pay till she had held the bottle up to the light, measured the veal with her finger, and estimated the bread with her eye; also she charged me double. God rest her soul!) I say I paid. And had I had to pay twenty or twenty-three times as much it would have been worth it for the wine. I am hurrying on to Rome, and I have no time to write a georgic. But, oh! my little friends of the north; my struggling, strenuous, introspective, self-analysing, autoscopic, and generally reentrant friends, who spout the 'Hue! Pater, oh! Lenae!' without a ghost of an idea what you are talking about, do you know what is meant by the god? Bacchus is everywhere, but if he has special sites to be ringed in and kept sacred, I say let these be Brule, and the silent vineyard that lies under the square wood by Tournus, the hollow underplace of Heltz le Maurupt, and this town of Porrentruy. In these places if I can get no living friends to help me, I will strike the foot alone on the genial ground, and I know of fifty maenads and two hundred little attendant gods by name that will come to the festival. What a wine! I was assured it would not travel. 'Nevertheless,' said I, 'give me a good quart bottle of it, for I have to go far, and I see there is a providence for pilgrims.' So they charged me fourpence, and I took my bottle of this wonderful stuff, sweet, strong, sufficient, part of the earth, desirable, and went up on my way to Rome. Could this book be infinite, as my voyage was infinite, I would tell you about the shifty priest whom I met on the platform of the church where a cliff overhangs the valley, and of the anarchist whom I met when I recovered the highroad--- he was a sad, good man, who had committed some sudden crime and so had left France, and his hankering for France all those years had soured his temper, and he said he wished there were no property, no armies, and no governments. But I said that we live as parts of a nation, and that there was no fate so wretched as to be without a country of one's own--what else was exile which so many noble men have thought worse than death, and which all have feared? I also told him that armies fighting in a just cause were the happiest places for living, and that a good battle for justice was the beginning of all great songs; and that as for property, a man on his own land was the nearest to God. He therefore not convinced, and I loving and pitying him, we separated; I had not time to preach my full doctrine, but gave him instead a deep and misty glass of cool beer, and pledged him brotherhood, freedom, and an equal law. Then I went on my way, praying God that all these rending quarrels might be appeased. For they would certainly be appeased if we once again had a united doctrine in Europe, since economics are but an expression of the mind and do not (as the poor blind slaves of the great cities think) mould the mind. What is more, nothing makes property run into a few hands but the worst of the capital sins, and you who say it is 'the modern facilities of distribution' are like men who cannot read large print without spectacles; or again, you are like men who should say that their drunkenness was due to their drink, or that arson was caused by matches. But, frankly, do you suppose I came all this way over so many hills to talk economics? Very far from it! I will pray for all poor men when I get to St Peter's in Rome (I should like to know what capital St Peter had in that highly capitalistic first century), and, meanwhile, do you discuss the margin of production while I go on the open way; there are no landlords here, and if you would learn at least one foreign language, and travel but five miles off a railway, you town-talkers, you would find how much landlordism has to do with your 'necessities' and your 'laws'. LECTOR. I thought you said you were not going to talk economics? AUCTOR. Neither am I. It is but the backwash of a wave... Well, then, I went up the open way, and came in a few miles of that hot afternoon to the second ridge of the Jura, which they call 'the Terrible Hill', or 'the Mount Terrible'--and, in truth, it is very jagged. A steep, long crest of very many miles lies here between the vale of Porrentruy and the deep gorge of the Doubs. The highroad goes off a long way westward, seeking for a pass or neck in the chain, but I determined to find a straight road across, and spoke to some wood-cutters who were felling trees just where the road began to climb. They gave me this curious indication. They said-- 'Go you up this muddy track that has been made athwart the woods and over the pastures by our sliding logs' (for they had cut their trunks higher up the mountains), 'and you will come to the summit easily. From thence you will see the Doubs running below you in a very deep and dark ravine.' I thanked them, and soon found that they had told me right. There, unmistakable, a gash in the forest and across the intervening fields of grass, was the run of the timber. When I had climbed almost to the top, I looked behind me to take my last view of the north. I saw just before me a high isolated rock; between me and it was the forest. I saw beyond it the infinite plain of Alsace and the distant Vosges. The cliff of limestone that bounded that height fell sheer upon the tree-tops; its sublimity arrested me, and compelled me to record it. 'Surely,' I said, 'if Switzerland has any gates on the north they are these.' Then, having drawn the wonderful outline of what I had seen, I went up, panting, to the summit, and, resting there, discovered beneath me the curious swirl of the Doubs, where it ran in a dark gulf thousands of feet below. The shape of this extraordinary turn I will describe in a moment. Let me say, meanwhile, that there was no precipice or rock between me and the river, only a down, down, down through other trees and pastures, not too steep for a man to walk, but steeper than our steep downs and fells in England, where a man hesitates and picks his way. It was so much of a descent, and so long, that one looked above the tree-tops. It was a place where no one would care to ride. I found a kind of path, sideways on the face of the mountain, and followed it till I came to a platform with a hut perched thereon, and men building. Here a good woman told me just how to go. I was not to attempt the road to Brune-Farine--that is, 'Whole-Meal Farm'--as I had first intended, foolishly trusting a map, but to take a gully she would show me, and follow it till I reached the river. She came out, and led me steeply across a hanging pasture; all the while she had knitting in her hands, and I noticed that on the levels she went on with her knitting. Then, when we got to the gully, she said I had but to follow it. I thanked her, and she climbed up to her home. This gully was the precipitous bed of a stream; I clanked down it--thousands of feet--warily; I reached the valley, and at last, very gladly, came to a drain, and thus knew that I approached a town or village. It was St Ursanne. The very first thing I noticed in St Ursanne was the extraordinary shape of the lower windows of the church. They lighted a crypt and ran along the ground, which in itself was sufficiently remarkable, but much more remarkable was their shape, which seemed to me to approach that of a horseshoe; I never saw such a thing before. It looked as though the weight of the church above had bulged these little windows out, and that is the way I explain it. Some people would say it was a man coming home from the Crusades that had made them this eastern way, others that it was a symbol of something or other. But I say-- LECTOR. What rhodomontade and pedantry is this talk about the shape of a window? AUCTOR. Little friend, how little you know! To a building windows are everything; they are what eyes are to a man. Out of windows a building takes its view; in windows the outlook of its human inhabitants is framed. If you were the lord of a very high tower overlooking a town, a plain, a river, and a distant hill (I doubt if you will ever have such luck!), would you not call your architect up before you and say-- 'Sir, see that the windows of my house are _tall, narrow, thick_, and have a _round top to them'?_ Of course you would, for thus you would best catch in separate pictures the sunlit things outside your home. Never ridicule windows. It is out of windows that many fall to their deaths. By windows love often enters. Through a window went the bolt that killed King Richard. King William's father spied Arlette from a window (I have looked through it myself, but not a soul did I see washing below). When a mob would rule England, it breaks windows, and when a patriot would save her, he taxes them. Out of windows we walk on to lawns in summer and meet men and women, and in winter windows are drums for the splendid music of storms that makes us feel so masterly round our fires. The windows of the great cathedrals are all their meaning. But for windows we should have to go out-of-doors to see daylight. After the sun, which they serve, I know of nothing so beneficent as windows. Fie upon the ungrateful man that has no window-god in his house, and thinks himself too great a philosopher to bow down to windows! May he live in a place without windows for a while to teach him the value of windows. As for me, I will keep up the high worship of windows till I come to the windowless grave. Talk to me of windows! Yes. There are other things in St Ursanne. It is a little tiny town, and yet has gates. It is full of very old houses, people, and speech. It was founded (or named) by a Bear Saint, and the statue of the saint with his bear is carved on the top of a column in the market-place. But the chief thing about it, so it seemed to me, was its remoteness. The gorge of the Doubs, of which I said a word or two above, is of that very rare shape which isolates whatever may be found in such valleys. It turns right back upon itself, like a very narrow U, and thus cannot by any possibility lead any one anywhere; for though in all times travellers have had to follow river valleys, yet when they come to such a long and sharp turn as this, they have always cut across the intervening bend. Here is the shape of this valley with the high hills round it and in its core, which will show better than description what I mean. The little picture also shows what the gorge looked like as I came down on it from the heights above. In the map the small white 'A' shows where the railway bridge was, and in this map, as in the others, the dark is for the depth and the light is for the heights. As for the picture, it is what one sees when one is coming over the ridge at the north or top of the map, and when one first catches the river beneath one. I thought a good deal about what the Romans did to get through the Mont Terrible, and how they negotiated this crook in the Doubs (for they certainly passed into Gaul through the gates of Porrentruy, and by that obvious valley below it). I decided that they probably came round eastward by Delemont. But for my part, I was on a straight path to Rome, and as that line lay just along the top of the river bend I was bound to take it. Now outside St Ursanne, if one would go along the top of the river bend and so up to the other side of the gorge, is a kind of subsidiary ravine--awful, deep, and narrow--and this was crossed, I could see, by a very high railway bridge. Not suspecting any evil, and desiring to avoid the long descent into the ravine, the looking for a bridge or ford, and the steep climb up the other side, I made in my folly for the station which stood just where the railway left solid ground to go over this high, high bridge. I asked leave of the stationmaster to cross it, who said it was strictly forbidden, but that he was not a policeman, and that I might do it at my own risk. Thanking him, therefore, and considering how charming was the loose habit of small uncentralized societies, I went merrily on to the bridge, meaning to walk across it by stepping from sleeper to sleeper. But it was not to be so simple. The powers of the air, that hate to have their kingdom disturbed, watched me as I began. I had not been engaged upon it a dozen yards when I was seized with terror. I have much to say further on in this book concerning terror: the panic that haunts high places and the spell of many angry men. This horrible affection of the mind is the delight of our modern scribblers; it is half the plot of their insane 'short stories', and is at the root of their worship of what they call 'strength', a cowardly craving for protection, or the much more despicable fascination of brutality. For my part I have always disregarded it as something impure and devilish, unworthy of a Christian. Fear I think, indeed, to be in the nature of things, and it is as much part of my experience to be afraid of the sea or of an untried horse as it is to eat and sleep; but terror, which is a sudden madness and paralysis of the soul, that I say is from hell, and not to be played with or considered or put in pictures or described in stories. All this I say to preface what happened, and especially to point out how terror is in the nature of a possession and is unreasonable. For in the crossing of this bridge there was nothing in itself perilous. The sleepers lay very close together--I doubt if a man could have slipped between them; but, I know not how many hundred feet below, was the flashing of the torrent, and it turned my brain. For the only parapet there was a light line or pipe, quite slender and low down, running from one spare iron upright to another. These rather emphasized than encouraged my mood. And still as I resolutely put one foot in front of the other, and resolutely kept my eyes off the abyss and fixed on the opposing hill, and as the long curve before me was diminished by successive sharp advances, still my heart was caught half-way in every breath, and whatever it is that moves a man went uncertainly within me, mechanical and half-paralysed. The great height with that narrow unprotected ribbon across it was more than I could bear. I dared not turn round and I dared not stop. Words and phrases began repeating themselves in my head as they will under a strain: so I know at sea a man perilously hanging on to the tiller makes a kind of litany of his instructions. The central part was passed, the three-quarters; the tension of that enduring effort had grown intolerable, and I doubted my ability to complete the task. Why? What could prevent me? I cannot say; it was all a bundle of imaginaries. Perhaps at bottom what I feared was sudden giddiness and the fall-- At any rate at this last supreme part I vowed one candle to Our Lady of Perpetual Succour if she would see that all went well, and this candle I later paid in Rome; finding Our Lady of Succour not hung up in a public place and known to all, as I thought She would be, but peculiar to a little church belonging to a Scotchman and standing above his high altar. Yet it is a very famous picture, and extremely old. Well, then, having made this vow I still went on, with panic aiding me, till I saw that the bank beneath had risen to within a few feet of the bridge, and that dry land was not twenty yards away. Then my resolution left me and I ran, or rather stumbled, rapidly from sleeper to sleeper till I could take a deep breath on the solid earth beyond. I stood and gazed back over the abyss; I saw the little horrible strip between heaven and hell--the perspective of its rails. I was made ill by the relief from terror. Yet I suppose railway-men cross and recross it twenty times a day. Better for them than for me! There is the story of the awful bridge of the Mont Terrible, and it lies to a yard upon the straight line--_quid dicam_--the segment of the Great Circle uniting Toul and Rome. The high bank or hillside before me was that which ends the gorge of the Doubs and looks down either limb of the sharp bend. I had here not to climb but to follow at one height round the curve. My way ran by a rather ill-made lane and passed a village. Then it was my business to make straight up the farther wall of the gorge, and as there was wood upon this, it looked an easy matter. But when I came to it, it was not easy. The wood grew in loose rocks and the slope was much too steep for anything but hands and knees, and far too soft and broken for true climbing. And no wonder this ridge seemed a wall for steepness and difficulty, since it was the watershed between the Mediterranean and the cold North Sea. But I did not know this at the time. It must have taken me close on an hour before I had covered the last thousand feet or so that brought me to the top of the ridge, and there, to my great astonishment, was a road. Where could such a road lead, and why did it follow right along the highest edge of the mountains? The Jura with their unique parallels provide twenty such problems. Wherever it led, however, this road was plainly perpendicular to my true route, and I had but to press on my straight line. So I crossed it, saw for a last time through the trees the gorge of the Doubs, and then got upon a path which led down through a field more or less in the direction of my pilgrimage. Here the country was so broken that one could make out but little of its general features, but of course, on the whole, I was following down yet another southern slope, the southern slope of the _third_ chain of the Jura, when, after passing through many glades and along a stony path, I found a kind of gate between two high rocks, and emerged somewhat suddenly upon a wide down studded with old trees and also many stunted yews, and this sank down to a noble valley which lay all before me. The open down or prairie on which I stood I afterwards found to be called the 'Pasturage of Common Right', a very fine name; and, as a gallery will command a great hall, so this field like a platform commanded the wide and fading valley below. It was a very glad surprise to see this sight suddenly unrolled as I stood on the crest of the down. The Jura had hitherto been either lonely, or somewhat awful, or naked and rocky, but here was a true vale in which one could imagine a spirit of its own; there were corn lands and no rocks. The mountains on either side did not rise so high as three thousand feet. Though of limestone they were rounded in form, and the slanting sun of the late afternoon (all the storm had left the sky) took them full and warm. The valley remaining wide and fruitful went on out eastward till the hills became mixed up with brume and distance. As I did not know its name I called it after the village immediately below me for which I was making; and I still remember it as the Valley of Glovelier, and it lies between the third and fourth ridges of the Jura. Before leaving the field I drew what I saw but I was much too tired by the double and prodigious climb of the past hours to draw definitely or clearly. Such as it is, there it is. Then I went down over the smooth field. There is something that distinguishes the rugged from the gracious in landscape, and in our Europe this something corresponds to the use and presence of men, especially in mountainous places. For men's habits and civilization fill the valleys and wash up the base of the hills, making, as it were, a tide mark. Into this zone I had already passed. The turf was trodden fine, and was set firm as it can only become by thousands of years of pasturing. The moisture that oozed out of the earth was not the random bog of the high places but a human spring, caught in a stone trough. Attention had been given to the trees. Below me stood a wall, which, though rough, was not the haphazard thing men pile up in the last recesses of the hills, but formed of chosen stones, and these bound together with mortar. On my right was a deep little dale with children playing in it--and this' I afterwards learned was called a 'combe': delightful memory! All our deeper hollows are called the same at home, and even the Welsh have the word, but they spell it _cwm_; it is their mountain way. Well, as I was saying, everything surrounding me was domestic and grateful, and I was therefore in a mood for charity and companionship when I came down the last dip and entered Glovelier. But Glovelier is a place of no excellence whatever, and if the thought did not seem extravagant I should be for putting it to the sword and burning it all down. For just as I was going along full of kindly thoughts, and had turned into the sign of (I think it was) the 'Sun' to drink wine and leave them my benediction-- LECTOR. Why your benediction? AUCTOR. Who else can give benedictions if people cannot when they are on pilgrimage? Learn that there are three avenues by which blessing can be bestowed, and three kinds of men who can bestow it. (1) There is the good man, whose goodness makes him of himself a giver of blessings. His power is not conferred or of office, but is _inhaerens persona_; part of the stuff of his mind. This kind can confer the solemn benediction, or _Benedictio major_, if they choose; but besides this their every kind thought, word, or action is a _Benedictio generalise_ and even their frowns, curses, angry looks and irritable gestures may be called _Benedictiones minores vel incerti_. I believe I am within the definitions. I avoid heresy. All this is sound theology. I do not smell of the faggot. And this kind of Benedictory Power is the fount or type or natural origin, as it were, of all others. (2) There is the Official of Religion who, in the exercise of his office-- LECTOR. For Heaven's sake-- AUCTOR. Who began it? You protested my power to give benediction, and I must now prove it at length; otherwise I should fall under the accusation of lesser Simony--that is, the false assumption of particular powers. Well, then, there is the Official who _ex officio_, and when he makes it quite clear that it is _qua sponsus_ and not _sicut ut ipse_, can give formal benediction. This power belongs certainly to all Bishops, mitred Abbots, and Archimandrates; to Patriarchs of course, and _a fortiori_ to the Pope. In Rome they will have it that Monsignores also can so bless, and I have heard it debated whether or no the same were not true in some rustic way of parish priests. However this may be, all their power proceeds, not from themselves, but from the accumulation of goodness left as a deposit by the multitudes of exceptionally good men who have lived in times past, and who have now no use for it. (3) Thirdly--and this is my point--any one, good or bad, official or non-official, who is for the moment engaged in an _opusfaustum_ can act certainly as a conductor or medium, and the influence of what he is touching or doing passes to you from him. This is admitted by every one who worships trees, wells, and stones; and indeed it stands to reason, for it is but a branch of the well-known _'Sanctificatio ex loco, opere, tactu vel conditione.'_ I will admit that this power is but vague, slight, tenuous, and dissipatory, still there it is: though of course its poor effect is to that of the _Benedictio major_ what a cat's-paw in the Solent is to a north-east snorter on Lindsey Deeps. I am sorry to have been at such length, but it is necessary to have these things thrashed out once for all. So now you see how I, being on pilgrimage, could give a kind of little creeping blessing to the people on the way, though, as St Louis said to the Hascisch-eaters, _'May it be a long time before you can kiss my bones.'_ So I entered the 'Sun' inn and saw there a woman sewing, a great dull-faced man like an ox, and a youth writing down figures in a little book. I said-- 'Good morning, madam, and sirs, and the company. Could you give me a little red wine?' Not a head moved. True I was very dirty and tired, and they may have thought me a beggar, to whom, like good sensible Christians who had no nonsense about them, they would rather have given a handsome kick than a cup of cold water. However, I think it was not only my poverty but a native churlishness which bound their bovine souls in that valley. I sat down at a very clean table. I notice that those whom the Devil has made his own are always spick and span, just as firemen who have to go into great furnaces have to keep all their gear highly polished. I sat down at it, and said again, still gently-- 'It is, indeed, a fine country this of yours. Could you give me a little red wine?' Then the ox-faced man who had his back turned to me, and was the worst of the lot, said sulkily, not to me, but to the woman-- 'He wants wine.' The woman as sulkily said to me, not looking me in the eyes-- 'How much will you pay?' I said, 'Bring the wine. Set it here. See me drink it. Charge me your due.' I found that this brutal way of speaking was just what was needed for the kine and cattle of this pen. She skipped off to a cupboard, and set wine before me, and a glass. I drank quite quietly till I had had enough, and asked what there was to pay. She said 'Threepence,' and I said 'Too much,' as I paid it. At this the ox-faced man grunted and frowned, and I was afraid; but hiding my fear I walked out boldly and slowly, and made a noise with my stick upon the floor of the hall without. Neither did I bid them farewell. But I made a sign at the house as I left it. Whether it suffered from this as did the house at Dorchester which the man in the boat caused to wither in one night, is more than I can tell. The road led straight across the valley and approached the further wall of hills. These I saw were pierced by one of the curious gaps which are peculiar to limestone ranges. Water cuts them, and a torrent ran through this one also. The road through it, gap though it was, went up steeply, and the further valley was evidently higher than the one I was leaving. It was already evening as I entered this narrow ravine; the sun only caught the tops of the rock-walls. My fatigue was very great, and my walking painful to an extreme, when, having come to a place where the gorge was narrowest and where the two sides were like the posts of a giant's stile, where also the fifth ridge of the Jura stood up beyond me in the further valley, a vast shadow, I sat down wearily and drew what not even my exhaustion could render unremarkable. While I was occupied sketching the slabs of limestone, I heard wheels coming up behind me, and a boy in a waggon stopped and hailed me. What the boy wanted to know was whether I would take a lift, and this he said in such curious French that I shuddered to think how far I had pierced into the heart of the hills, and how soon I might come to quite strange people. I was greatly tempted to get into his cart, but though I had broken so many of my vows one remained yet whole and sound, which was that I would ride upon no wheeled thing. Remembering this, therefore, and considering that the Faith is rich in interpretation, I clung on to the waggon in such a manner that it did all my work for me, and yet could not be said to be actually carrying me. _Distinguo_. The essence of a vow is its literal meaning. The spirit and intention are for the major morality, and concern Natural Religion, but when upon a point of ritual or of dedication or special worship a man talks to you of the Spirit and Intention, and complains of the dryness of the Word, look at him askance. He is not far removed from Heresy. I knew a man once that was given to drinking, and I made up this rule for him to distinguish between Bacchus and the Devil. To wit: that he should never drink what has been made and sold since the Reformation--I mean especially spirits and champagne. Let him (said I) drink red wine and white, good beer and mead--if he could get it--liqueurs made by monks, and, in a word, all those feeding, fortifying, and confirming beverages that our fathers drank in old time; but not whisky, nor brandy, nor sparkling wines, not absinthe, nor the kind of drink called gin. This he promised to do, and all went well. He became a merry companion, and began to write odes. His prose clarified and set, that had before been very mixed and cloudy. He slept well; he comprehended divine things; he was already half a republican, when one fatal day--it was the feast of the eleven thousand virgins, and they were too busy up in heaven to consider the needs of us poor hobbling, polyktonous and betempted wretches of men--I went with him to the Society for the Prevention of Annoyances to the Rich, where a certain usurer's son was to read a paper on the cruelty of Spaniards to their mules. As we were all seated there round a table with a staring green cloth on it, and a damnable gas pendant above, the host of that evening offered him whisky and water, and, my back being turned, he took it. Then when I would have taken it from him he used these words-- 'After all, it is the intention of a pledge that matters;' and I saw that all was over, for he had abandoned definition, and was plunged back into the horrible mazes of Conscience and Natural Religion. What do you think, then, was the consequence? Why, he had to take some nasty pledge or other to drink nothing whatever, and become a spectacle and a judgement, whereas if he had kept his exact word he might by this time have been a happy man. Remembering him and pondering upon the advantage of strict rule, I hung on to my cart, taking care to let my feet still feel the road, and so passed through the high limestone gates of the gorge, and was in the fourth valley of the Jura, with the fifth ridge standing up black and huge before me against the last of the daylight. There were as yet no stars. There, in this silent place, was the little village of Undervelier, and I thanked the boy, withdrew from his cart, and painfully approached the inn, where I asked the woman if she could give me something to eat, and she said that she could in about an hour, using, however, with regard to what it was I was to have, words which I did not understand. For the French had become quite barbaric, and I was now indeed lost in one of the inner places of the world. A cigar is, however, even in Undervelier, a cigar; and the best cost a penny. One of these, therefore, I bought, and then I went out smoking it into the village square, and, finding a low wall, leaned over it and contemplated the glorious clear green water tumbling and roaring along beneath it on the other side; for a little river ran through the village. As I leaned there resting and communing I noticed how their church, close at hand, was built along the low banks of the torrent. I admired the luxuriance of the grass these waters fed, and the generous arch of the trees beside it. The graves seemed set in a natural place of rest and home, and just beyond this churchyard was that marriage of hewn stone and water which is the source of so peculiar a satisfaction; for the church tower was built boldly right out into the stream and the current went eddying round it. But why it is that strong human building when it dips into water should thus affect the mind I cannot say, only I know that it is an emotion apart to see our device and structure where it is most enduring come up against and challenge that element which we cannot conquer, and which has always in it something of danger for men. It is therefore well to put strong mouldings on to piers and quays, and to make an architecture of them, and so it was a splendid thought of the Romans to build their villas right out to sea; so they say does Venice enthrall one, but where I have most noticed this thing is at the Mont St Michel--only one must take care to shut one's eyes or sleep during all the low tide. As I was watching that stream against those old stones, my cigar being now half smoked, a bell began tolling, and it seemed as if the whole village were pouring into the church. At this I was very much surprised, not having been used at any time of my life to the unanimous devotion of an entire population, but having always thought of the Faith as something fighting odds, and having seen unanimity only in places where some sham religion or other glozed over our tragedies and excused our sins. Certainly to see all the men, women, and children of a place taking Catholicism for granted was a new sight, and so I put my cigar carefully down under a stone on the top of the wall and went in with them. I then saw that what they were at was vespers. All the village sang, knowing the psalms very well, and I noticed that their Latin was nearer German than French; but what was most pleasing of all was to hear from all the men and women together that very noble good-night and salutation to God which begins-- _Te, lucis ante terminum._ My whole mind was taken up and transfigured by this collective act, and I saw for a moment the Catholic Church quite plain, and I remembered Europe, and the centuries. Then there left me altogether that attitude of difficulty and combat which, for us others, is always associated with the Faith. The cities dwindled in my imagination, and I took less heed of the modern noise. I went out with them into the clear evening and the cool. I found my cigar and lit it again, and musing much more deeply than before, not without tears, I considered the nature of Belief. Of its nature it breeds a reaction and an indifference. Those who believe nothing but only think and judge cannot understand this. Of its nature it struggles with us. And we, we, when our youth is full on us, invariably reject it and set out in the sunlight content with natural things. Then for a long time we are like men who follow down the cleft of a mountain and the peaks are hidden from us and forgotten. It takes years to reach the dry plain, and then we look back and see our home. What is it, do you think, that causes the return? I think it is the problem of living; for every day, every experience of evil, demands a solution. That solution is provided by the memory of the great scheme which at last we remember. Our childhood pierces through again... But I will not attempt to explain it, for I have not the power; only I know that we who return suffer hard things; for there grows a gulf between us and many companions. We are perpetually thrust into minorities, and the world almost begins to talk a strange language; we are troubled by the human machinery of a perfect and superhuman revelation; we are over-anxious for its safety, alarmed, and in danger of violent decisions. And this is hard: that the Faith begins to make one abandon the old way of judging. Averages and movements and the rest grow uncertain. We see things from within and consider one mind or a little group as a salt or leaven. The very nature of social force seems changed to us. And this is hard when a man has loved common views and is happy only with his fellows. And this again is very hard, that we must once more take up that awful struggle to reconcile two truths and to keep civic freedom sacred in spite of the organization of religion, and not to deny what is certainly true. It is hard to accept mysteries, and to be humble. We are tost as the great schoolmen were tost, and we dare not neglect the duty of that wrestling. But the hardest thing of all is that it leads us away, as by a command, from all that banquet of the intellect than which there is no keener joy known to man. I went slowly up the village place in the dusk, thinking of this deplorable weakness in men that the Faith is too great for them, and accepting it as an inevitable burden. I continued to muse with my eyes upon the ground... There was to be no more of that studious content, that security in historic analysis, and that constant satisfaction of an appetite which never cloyed. A wisdom more imperative and more profound was to put a term to the comfortable wisdom of learning. All the balance of judgement, the easy, slow convictions, the broad grasp of things, the vision of their complexity, the pleasure in their innumerable life--all that had to be given up. Fanaticisms were no longer entirely to be despised, just appreciations and a strong grasp of reality no longer entirely to be admired. The Catholic Church will have no philosophies. She will permit no comforts; the cry of the martyrs is in her far voice; her eyes that see beyond the world present us heaven and hell to the confusion of our human reconciliations, our happy blending of good and evil things. By the Lord! I begin to think this intimate religion as tragic as a great love. There came back into my mind a relic that I have in my house. It is a panel of the old door of my college, having carved on it my college arms. I remembered the Lion and the Shield, _Haec fuit, Haec almae janua sacra domus._ Yes, certainly religion is as tragic as first love, and drags us out into the void away from our dear homes. It is a good thing to have loved one woman from a child, and it is a good thing not to have to return to the Faith. They cook worse in Undervelier than any place I was ever in, with the possible exception of Omaha, Neb. LECTOR. Why do you use phrases like _'possible exception'?_ AUCTOR. Why not? I see that all the religion I have stuck into the book has no more effect on you than had Rousseau upon Sir Henry Maine. You are as full of Pride as a minor Devil. You would avoid the _cliché_ and the commonplace, and the _phrase toute faite_. Why? Not because you naturally write odd prose--contrariwise, left to yourself you write pure journalese; but simply because you are swelled and puffed up with a desire to pose. You want what the Martha Brown school calls 'distinction' in prose. My little friend, I know how it is done, and I find it contemptible. People write their articles at full speed, putting down their unstudied and valueless conclusions in English as pale as a film of dirty wax--sometimes even they dictate to a typewriter. Then they sit over it with a blue pencil and carefully transpose the split infinitives, and write alternative adjectives, and take words away out of their natural place in the sentence and generally put the Queen's English--yes, the Queen's English--on the rack. And who is a penny the better for it? The silly authors get no real praise, not even in the horrible stucco villas where their clique meet on Sundays. The poor public buys the _Marvel_ and gasps at the cleverness of the writing and despairs, and has to read what it can understand, and is driven back to toshy novels about problems, written by cooks. 'The hungry sheep,' as some one says somewhere, 'look up and are not fed;' and the same poet well describes your pipings as being on wretched straw pipes that are 'scrannel'--a good word. Oh, for one man who should write healthy, hearty, straightforward English! Oh, for Cobbett! There are indeed some great men who write twistedly simply because they cannot help it, but _their_ honesty is proved by the mass they turn out. What do you turn out, you higglers and sticklers? Perhaps a bad triolet every six months, and a book of criticism on something thoroughly threadbare once in five years. If I had my way-- LECTOR. I am sorry to have provoked all this. AUCTOR. Not at all! Not at all! I trust I have made myself clear. Well, as I was saying, they cook worse at Undervelier than any place I was ever in, with the possible exception of Omaha, Neb. However, I forgave them, because they were such good people, and after a short and bitter night I went out in the morning before the sun rose and took the Moutier road. The valley in which I was now engaged--the phrase seems familiar--was more or less like an H. That is, there were two high parallel ranges bounding it, but across the middle a low ridge of perhaps a thousand feet. The road slowly climbed this ridge through pastures where cows with deep-toned bells were rising from the dew on the grass, and where one or two little cottages and a village already sent up smoke. All the way up I was thinking of the surfeit of religion I had had the night before, and also of how I had started that morning without bread or coffee, which was a folly. When I got to the top of the ridge there was a young man chopping wood outside a house, and I asked him in French how far it was to Moutier. He answered in German, and I startled him by a loud cry, such as sailors give when they see land, for at last I had struck the boundary of the languages, and was with pure foreigners for the first time in my life. I also asked him for coffee, and as he refused it I took him to be a heretic and went down the road making up verses against all such, and singing them loudly through the forest that now arched over me and grew deeper as I descended. And my first verse was-- Heretics all, whoever you be, In Tarbes or Nimes, or over the sea, You never shall have good words from me. _Caritas non conturbat me._ If you ask me why I put a Latin line at the end, it was because I had to show that it was a song connected with the Universal Fountain and with European culture, and with all that Heresy combats. I sang it to a lively hymn-tune that I had invented for the occasion. I then thought what a fine fellow I was, and how pleasant were my friends when I agreed with them. I made up this second verse, which I sang even more loudly than the first; and the forest grew deeper, sending back echoes-- But Catholic men that live upon wine Are deep in the water, and frank, and fine; Wherever I travel I find it so, _Benedicamus Domino._ There is no doubt, however, that if one is really doing a catholic work, and expressing one's attitude to the world, charity, pity, and a great sense of fear should possess one, or, at least, appear. So I made up this third verse and sang it to suit-- On childing women that are forlorn, And men that sweat in nothing but scorn: That is on all that ever were born, _Miserere Domine._ Then, as everything ends in death, and as that is just what Heretics least like to be reminded of, I ended thus-- To my poor self on my deathbed, And all my dear companions dead, Because of the love that I bore them, _Dona Eis Requiem._ I say 'I ended.' But I did not really end there, for I also wrote in the spirit of the rest a verse of Mea Culpa and Confession of Sin, but I shall not print it here. So my song over and the woods now left behind, I passed up a dusty piece of road into Moutier, a detestable town, all whitewashed and orderly, down under the hills. I was tired, for the sun was now long risen and somewhat warm, and I had walked ten miles, and that over a high ridge; and I had written a canticle and sung it--- and all that without a sup or a bite. I therefore took bread, coffee, and soup in Moutier, and then going a little way out of the town I crossed a stream off the road, climbed a knoll, and, lying under a tree, I slept. I awoke and took the road. The road after Moutier was not a thing for lyrics; it stirred me in no way. It was bare in the sunlight, had fields on either side; and in the fields stood houses. In the houses were articulately-speaking mortal men. There is a school of Poets (I cannot read them myself) who treat of common things, and their admirers tell us that these men raise the things of everyday life to the plane of the supernatural. Note that phrase, for it is a shaft of light through a cloud revealing their disgusting minds. Everyday life! As _La Croix_ said in a famous leading article: _'La Presse?'_ POOH!' I know that everyday life. It goes with sandals and pictures of lean ugly people all just like one another in browny photographs on the wall, and these pictures are called, one 'The House of Life', or another, 'The Place Beautiful', or yet again a third, 'The Lamp of the Valley', and when you complain and shift about uneasily before these pictures, the scrub-minded and dusty-souled owners of them tell you that of course in photographs you lose the marvellous colour of the original. This everyday life has mantelpieces made of the same stuff as cafe-tables, so that by instinct I try to make rings on them with my wine-glass, and the people who suffer this life get up every morning at eight, and the poor sad men of the house slave at wretched articles and come home to hear more literature and more appreciations, and the unholy women do nothing and attend to local government, that is, the oppression of the poor; and altogether this accursed everyday life of theirs is instinct with the four sins crying to heaven for vengeance, and there is no humanity in it, and no simplicity, and no recollection. I know whole quarters of the towns of that life where they have never heard of Virtus or Verecundia or Pietas. LECTOR. Then-- AUCTOR. Alas! alas! Dear Lector, in these houses there is no honest dust. Not a bottle of good wine or bad; no prints inherited from one's uncle, and no children's books by Mrs Barbauld or Miss Edgeworth; no human disorder, nothing of that organic comfort which makes a man's house like a bear's fur for him. They have no debts, they do not read in bed, and they will have difficulty in saving their souls. LECTOR. Then tell me, how would you treat of common things? AUCTOR. Why, I would leave them alone; but if I had to treat of them I will show you how I would do it. Let us have a dialogue about this road from Moutier. LECTOR. By all means. AUCTOR. What a terrible thing it is to miss one's sleep. I can hardly bear the heat of the road, and my mind is empty! LECTOR. Why, you have just slept in a wood! AUCTOR. Yes, but that is not enough. One must sleep at night. LECTOR. My brother often complains of insomnia. He is a policeman. AUCTOR. Indeed? It is a sad affliction. LECTOR. Yes, indeed. AUCTOR. Indeed, yes. LECTOR. I cannot go on like this. AUCTOR. There. That is just what I was saying. One cannot treat of common things: it is not literature; and for my part, if I were the editor even of a magazine, and the author stuck in a string of dialogue, I would not pay him by the page but by the word, and I would count off 5 per cent for epigrams, 10 per cent for dialect, and some quarter or so for those stage directions in italics which they use to pad out their work. So. I will not repeat this experiment, but next time I come to a bit of road about which there is nothing to say, I will tell a story or sing a song, and to that I pledge myself. By the way, I am reminded of something. Do you know those books and stories in which parts of the dialogues often have no words at all? Only dots and dashes and asterisks and interrogations? I wonder what the people are paid for it? If I knew I would earn a mint of money, for I believe I have a talent for it. Look at this-- There. That seems to me worth a good deal more money than all the modern 'delineation of character', and 'folk' nonsense ever written. What verve! What terseness! And yet how clear! LECTOR. Let us be getting on. AUCTOR. By all means, and let us consider more enduring things. After a few miles the road going upwards, I passed through another gap in the hills and-- LECTOR. Pardon me, but I am still ruminating upon that little tragedy of yours. Why was the guardian a duchess? AUCTOR. Well, it was a short play and modern, was it not? LECTOR. Yes. And therefore, of course, you must have a title in it. I know that. I do not object to it. What I want to know is, why a duchess? AUCTOR. On account of the reduction of scale: the concentration of the thing. You see in the full play there would have been a lord, two baronets, and say three ladies, and I could have put suitable words into their mouths. As it was I had to make absolutely sure of the element of nobility without any help, and, as it were, in one startling moment. Do you follow? Is it not art? I cannot conceive why a pilgrimage, an adventure so naturally full of great, wonderful, far-off and holy things should breed such fantastic nonsense as all this; but remember at least the little acolyte of Rheims, whose father, in 1512, seeing him apt for religion, put him into a cassock and designed him for the Church, whereupon the youngling began to be as careless and devilish as Mercury, putting beeswax on the misericords, burning feathers in the censer, and even going round himself with the plate without leave and scolding the rich in loud whispers when they did not put in enough. So one way with another they sent him home to his father; the archbishop thrusting him out of the south porch with his own hands and giving him the Common or Ferial Malediction, which is much the same as that used by carters to stray dogs. When his father saw him he fumed terribly, cursing like a pagan, and asking whether his son were a roysterer fit for the gallows as well as a fool fit for a cassock. On hearing which complaint the son very humbly and contritely said-- 'It is not my fault but the contact with the things of the Church that makes me gambol and frisk, just as the Devil they say is a good enough fellow left to himself and is only moderately heated, yet when you put him into holy water all the world is witness how he hisses and boils.' The boy then taking a little lamb which happened to be in the drawing-room, said-- 'Father, see this little lamb; how demure he is and how simple and innocent, and how foolish and how tractable. Yet observe!' With that he whipped the cassock from his arm where he was carrying it and threw it all over the lamb, covering his head and body; and the lamb began plunging and kicking and bucking and rolling and heaving and sliding and rearing and pawing and most vigorously wrestling with the clerical and hierarchically constraining garment of darkness, and bleating all the while more and more angrily and loudly, for all the world like the great goat Baphomet himself when the witches dance about him on All-hallowe'en. But when the boy suddenly plucked off the cassock again, the lamb, after sneezing a little and finding his feet, became quite gentle once more, and looked only a little confused and dazed. 'There, father,' said the boy, 'is proof to you of how the meekest may be driven to desperation by the shackles I speak of, and which I pray you never lay upon me again.' His father finding him so practical and wise made over his whole fortune and business to him, and thus escaped the very heavy Heriot and Death Dues of those days, for he was a Socage tenant of St Remi in Double Burgage. But we stopped all that here in England by the statute of Uses, and I must be getting back to the road before the dark catches me. As I was saying, I came to a gap in the hills, and there was there a house or two called Gansbrunnen, and one of the houses was an inn. Just by the inn the road turned away sharply up the valley; the very last slope of the Jura, the last parallel ridge, lay straight before me all solemn, dark, and wooded, and making a high feathery line against the noon. To cross this there was but a vague path rather misleading, and the name of the mountain was Weissenstein. So before that last effort which should lead me over those thousands of feet, and to nourish Instinct (which would be of use to me when I got into that impenetrable wood), I turned into the inn for wine. A very old woman having the appearance of a witch sat at a dark table by the little criss-cross window of the dark room. She was crooning to herself, and I made the sign of the evil eye and asked her in French for wine; but French she did not understand. Catching, however, two words which sounded like the English 'White' and 'Red', I said 'Yaw' after the last and nodded, and she brought up a glass of exceedingly good red wine which I drank in silence, she watching me uncannily. Then I paid her with a five-franc piece, and she gave me a quantity of small change rapidly, which, as I counted it, I found to contain one Greek piece of fifty lepta very manifestly of lead. This I held up angrily before her, and (not without courage, for it is hard to deal with the darker powers) I recited to her slowly that familiar verse which the well-known Satyricus Empiricius was for ever using in his now classical attacks on the grammarians; and without any Alexandrian twaddle of accents I intoned to her--and so left her astounded to repentance or to shame. Then I went out into the sunlight, and crossing over running water put myself out of her power. The wood went up darkly and the path branched here and there so that I was soon uncertain of my way, but I followed generally what seemed to me the most southerly course, and so came at last up steeply through a dip or ravine that ended high on the crest of the ridge. Just as I came to the end of the rise, after perhaps an hour, perhaps two, of that great curtain of forest which had held the mountain side, the trees fell away to brushwood, there was a gate, and then the path was lost upon a fine open sward which was the very top of the Jura and the coping of that multiple wall which defends the Swiss Plain. I had crossed it straight from edge to edge, never turning out of my way. It was too marshy to lie down on it, so I stood a moment to breathe and look about me. It was evident that nothing higher remained, for though a new line of wood--firs and beeches--stood before me, yet nothing appeared above them, and I knew that they must be the fringe of the descent. I approached this edge of wood, and saw that it had a rough fence of post and rails bounding it, and as I was looking for the entry of a path (for my original path was lost, as such tracks are, in the damp grass of the little down) there came to me one of those great revelations which betray to us suddenly the higher things and stand afterwards firm in our minds. There, on this upper meadow, where so far I had felt nothing but the ordinary gladness of The Summit, I had a vision. What was it I saw? If you think I saw this or that, and if you think I am inventing the words, you know nothing of men. I saw between the branches of the trees in front of me a sight in the sky that made me stop breathing, just as great danger at sea, or great surprise in love, or a great deliverance will make a man stop breathing. I saw something I had known in the West as a boy, something I had never seen so grandly discovered as was this. In between the branches of the trees was a great promise of unexpected lights beyond. I pushed left and right along that edge of the forest and along the fence that bound it, until I found a place where the pine-trees stopped, leaving a gap, and where on the right, beyond the gap, was a tree whose leaves had failed; there the ground broke away steeply below me, and the beeches fell, one below the other, like a vast cascade, towards the limestone cliffs that dipped down still further, beyond my sight. I looked through this framing hollow and praised God. For there below me, thousands of feet below me, was what seemed an illimitable plain; at the end of that world was an horizon, and the dim bluish sky that overhangs an horizon. There was brume in it and thickness. One saw the sky beyond the edge of the world getting purer as the vault rose. But right up--a belt in that empyrean--ran peak and field and needle of intense ice, remote, remote from the world. Sky beneath them and sky above them, a steadfast legion, they glittered as though with the armour of the immovable armies of Heaven. Two days' march, three days' march away, they stood up like the walls of Eden. I say it again, they stopped my breath. I had seen them. So little are we, we men: so much are we immersed in our muddy and immediate interests that we think, by numbers and recitals, to comprehend distance or time, or any of our limiting infinities. Here were these magnificent creatures of God, I mean the Alps, which now for the first time I saw from the height of the Jura; and because they were fifty or sixty miles away, and because they were a mile or two high, they were become something different from us others, and could strike one motionless with the awe of supernatural things. Up there in the sky, to which only clouds belong and birds and the last trembling colours of pure light, they stood fast and hard; not moving as do the things of the sky. They were as distant as the little upper clouds of summer, as fine and tenuous; but in their reflection and in their quality as it were of weapons (like spears and shields of an unknown array) they occupied the sky with a sublime invasion: and the things proper to the sky were forgotten by me in their presence as I gazed. To what emotion shall I compare this astonishment? So, in first love one finds that _this_ can belong to _me._ Their sharp steadfastness and their clean uplifted lines compelled my adoration. Up there, the sky above and below them, part of the sky, but part of us, the great peaks made communion between that homing creeping part of me which loves vineyards and dances and a slow movement among pastures, and that other part which is only properly at home in Heaven. I say that this kind of description is useless, and that it is better to address prayers to such things than to attempt to interpret them for others. These, the great Alps, seen thus, link one in some way to one's immortality. Nor is it possible to convey, or even to suggest, those few fifty miles, and those few thousand feet; there is something more. Let me put it thus: that from the height of Weissenstein I saw, as it were, my religion. I mean, humility, the fear of death, the terror of height and of distance, the glory of God, the infinite potentiality of reception whence springs that divine thirst of the soul; my aspiration also towards completion, and my confidence in the dual destiny. For I know that we laughers have a gross cousinship with the most high, and it is this contrast and perpetual quarrel which feeds a spring of merriment in the soul of a sane man. Since I could now see such a wonder and it could work such things in my mind, therefore, some day I should be part of it. That is what I felt. This it is also which leads some men to climb mountain-tops, but not me, for I am afraid of slipping down. Then you will say, if I felt all this, why do I draw it, and put it in my book, seeing that my drawings are only for fun? My jest drags down such a memory and makes it ludicrous. Well, I said in my beginning that I would note down whatever most impressed me, except figures, which I cannot draw (I mean figures of human beings, for mathematical figures I can draw well enough), and I have never failed in this promise, except where, as in the case of Porrentruy, my drawing was blown away by the wind and lost--- if anything ever is lost. So I put down here this extraordinary drawing of what I saw, which is about as much like it as a printed song full of misprints is to that same song sung by an army on the march. And I am consoled by remembering that if I could draw infinitely well, then it would become sacrilege to attempt to draw that sight. Moreover, I am not going to waste any more time discussing why I put in this little drawing. If it disturbs your conception of what it was I saw, paste over it a little bit of paper. I have made it small for the purpose; but remember that the paper should be thin and opaque, for thick paper will interfere with the shape of this book, and transparent paper will disturb you with a memory of the picture. It was all full of this, as a man is full of music just after hearing it, that I plunged down into the steep forest that led towards the great plain; then, having found a path, I worked zig-zag down it by a kind of gully that led through to a place where the limestone cliffs were broken, and (so my map told me) to the town of Soleure, which stands at the edge of the plain upon the river Aar. I was an hour or more going down the enormous face of the Jura, which is here an escarpment, a cliff of great height, and contains but few such breaks by which men can pick their way. It was when I was about half-way down the mountain side that its vastness most impressed me. And yet it had been but a platform as it were, from which to view the Alps and their much greater sublimity. This vastness, even of these limestone mountains, took me especially at a place where the path bordered a steep, or rather precipitous, lift of white rock to which only here and there a tree could cling. I was still very high up, but looking somewhat more eastward than before, and the plain went on inimitably towards some low vague hills; nor in that direction could any snow be seen in the sky. Then at last I came to the slopes which make a little bank under the mountains, and there, finding a highroad, and oppressed somewhat suddenly by the afternoon heat of those low places, I went on more slowly towards Soleure. Beside me, on the road, were many houses, shaded by great trees, built of wood, and standing apart. To each of them almost was a little water-wheel, run by the spring which came down out of the ravine. The water-wheel in most cases worked a simple little machine for sawing planks, but in other cases it seemed used for some purpose inside the house, which I could not divine; perhaps for spinning. All this place was full of working, and the men sang and spoke at their work in German, which I could not understand. I did indeed find one man, a young hay-making man carrying a scythe, who knew a little French and was going my way. I asked him, therefore, to teach me German, but he had not taught me much before we were at the gates of the old town and then I left him. It is thus, you will see, that for my next four days or five, which were passed among the German-speaking Swiss, I was utterly alone. This book must not go on for ever; therefore I cannot say very much about Soleure, although there is a great deal to be said about it. It is distinguished by an impression of unity, and of civic life, which I had already discovered in all these Swiss towns; for though men talk of finding the Middle Ages here or there, I for my part never find it, save where there has been democracy to preserve it. Thus I have seen the Middle Ages especially alive in the small towns of Northern France, and I have seen the Middle Ages in the University of Paris. Here also in Switzerland. As I had seen it at St Ursanne, so I found it now at Soleure. There were huge gates flanking the town, and there was that evening a continual noise of rifles, at which the Swiss are for ever practising. Over the church, however, I saw something terribly seventeenth century, namely, Jaweh in great Hebrew letters upon its front. Well, dining there of the best they had to give me (for this was another milestone in my pilgrimage), I became foolishly refreshed and valiant, and instead of sleeping in Soleure, as a wise man would have done, I determined, though it was now nearly dark, to push on upon the road to Burgdorf. I therefore crossed the river Aar, which is here magnificently broad and strong, and has bastions jutting out into it in a very bold fashion. I saw the last colourless light of evening making its waters seem like dull metal between the gloomy banks; I felt the beginnings of fatigue, and half regretted my determination. But as it is quite certain that one should never go back, I went on in the darkness, I do not know how many miles, till I reached some cross roads and an inn. This inn was very poor, and the people had never heard in their lives, apparently, that a poor man on foot might not be able to talk German, which seemed to me an astonishing thing; and as I sat there ordering beer for myself and for a number of peasants (who but for this would have me their butt, and even as it was found something monstrous in me), I pondered during my continual attempts to converse with them (for I had picked up some ten words of their language) upon the folly of those who imagine the world to be grown smaller by railways. I suppose this place was more untouched, as the phrase goes, that is, more living, more intense, and more powerful to affect others, whenever it may be called to do so, than are even the dear villages of Sussex that lie under my downs. For those are haunted by a nearly cosmopolitan class of gentry, who will have actors, financiers, and what not to come and stay with them, and who read the paper, and from time to time address their village folk upon matters of politics. But here, in this broad plain by the banks of the Emmen, they knew of nothing but themselves and the Church which is the common bond of Europe, and they were in the right way. Hence it was doubly hard on me that they should think me such a stranger. When I had become a little morose at their perpetual laughter, I asked for a bed, and the landlady, a woman of some talent, showed me on her fingers that the beds were 50c., 75c., and a franc. I determined upon the best, and was given indeed a very pleasant room, having in it the statue of a saint, and full of a country air. But I had done too much in this night march, as you will presently learn, for my next day was a day without salt, and in it appreciation left me. And this breakdown of appreciation was due to what I did not know at the time to be fatigue, but to what was undoubtedly a deep inner exhaustion. When I awoke next morning it was as it always is: no one was awake, and I had the field to myself, to slip out as I chose. I looked out of the window into the dawn. The race had made its own surroundings. These people who suffocated with laughter at the idea of one's knowing no German, had produced, as it were, a German picture by the mere influence of years and years of similar thoughts. Out of my window I saw the eaves coming low down. I saw an apple-tree against the grey light. The tangled grass in the little garden, the dog-kennel, and the standing butt were all what I had seen in those German pictures which they put into books for children, and which are drawn in thick black lines: nor did I see any reason why tame faces should not appear in that framework. I expected the light lank hair and the heavy unlifting step of the people whose only emotions are in music. But it was too early for any one to be about, and my German garden, _si j'ose m'exprimer ainsi,_ had to suffice me for an impression of the Central Europeans. I gazed at it a little while as it grew lighter. Then I went downstairs and slipped the latch (which, being German, was of a quaint design). I went out into the road and sighed profoundly. All that day was destined to be covered, so far as my spirit was concerned, with a motionless lethargy. Nothing seemed properly to interest or to concern me, and not till evening was I visited by any muse. Even my pain (which was now dull and chronic) was no longer a subject for my entertainment, and I suffered from an uneasy isolation that had not the merit of sharpness and was no spur to the mind. I had the feeling that every one I might see would be a stranger, and that their language would be unfamiliar to me, and this, unlike most men who travel, I had never felt before. The reason being this: that if a man has English thoroughly he can wander over a great part of the world familiarly, and meet men with whom he can talk. And if he has French thoroughly all Italy, and I suppose Spain, certainly Belgium, are open to him. Not perhaps that he will understand what he hears or will be understood of others, but that the order and nature of the words and the gestures accompanying them are his own. Here, however, I, to whom English and French were the same, was to spend (it seemed) whole days among a people who put their verbs at the end, where the curses or the endearments come in French and English, and many of whose words stand for ideas we have not got. I had no room for good-fellowship. I could not sit at tables and expand the air with terrible stories of adventure, nor ask about their politics, nor provoke them to laughter or sadness by my tales. It seemed a poor pilgrimage taken among dumb men. Also I have no doubt that I had experienced the ebb of some vitality, for it is the saddest thing about us that this bright spirit with which we are lit from within like lanterns, can suffer dimness. Such frailty makes one fear that extinction is our final destiny, and it saps us with numbness, and we are less than ourselves. Seven nights had I been on pilgrimage, and two of them had I passed in the open. Seven great heights had I climbed: the Forest, Archettes, the Ballon, the Mont Terrible, the Watershed, the pass by Moutier, the Weissenstein. Seven depths had I fallen to: twice to the Moselle, the gap of Belfort, the gorge of the Doubs, Glovelier valley, the hole of Moutier, and now this plain of the Aar. I had marched 180 miles. It was no wonder that on this eighth day I was oppressed and that all the light long I drank no good wine, met no one to remember well, nor sang any songs. All this part of my way was full of what they call Duty, and I was sustained only by my knowledge that the vast mountains (which had disappeared) would be part of my life very soon if I still went on steadily towards Rome. The sun had risen when I reached Burgdorf, and I there went to a railway station, and outside of it drank coffee and ate bread. I also bought old newspapers in French, and looked at everything wearily and with sad eyes. There was nothing to draw. How can a man draw pain in the foot and knee? And that was all there was remarkable at that moment. I watched a train come in. It was full of tourists, who (it may have been a subjective illusion) seemed to me common and worthless people, and sad into the bargain. It was going to Interlaken; and I felt a languid contempt for people who went to Interlaken instead of driving right across the great hills to Rome. After an hour, or so of this melancholy dawdling, I put a map before me on a little marble table, ordered some more coffee, and blew into my tepid life a moment of warmth by the effort of coming to a necessary decision. I had (for the first time since I had left Lorraine) the choice of two roads; and why this was so the following map will make clear. Here you see that there is no possibility of following the straight way to Rome, but that one must go a few miles east or west of it. From Burgundy one has to strike a point on the sources of the Emmen, and Burgdorf is on the Emmen. Therefore one might follow the Emmen all the way up. But it seemed that the road climbed up above a gorge that way, whereas by the other (which is just as straight) the road is good (it seemed) and fairly level. So I chose this latter Eastern way, which, at the bifurcation, takes one up a tributary of the Emmen, then over a rise to the Upper Emmen again. Do you want it made plainer than that? I should think not. And, tell me--what can it profit you to know these geographical details? Believe me, I write them down for my own gratification, not yours. I say a day without salt. A trudge. The air was ordinary, the colours common; men, animals, and trees indifferent. Something had stopped working. Our energy also is from God, and we should never be proud of it, even if we can cover thirty miles day after day (as I can), or bend a peony in one's hand as could Frocot, the driver in my piece--a man you never knew--or write bad verse very rapidly as can so many moderns. I say our energy also is from God, and we should never be proud of it as though it were from ourselves, but we should accept it as a kind of present, and we should be thankful for it; just as a man should thank God for his reason, as did the madman in the Story of the Rose, who thanked God that he at least was sane though all the rest of the world had recently lost their reason. Indeed, this defaillance and breakdown which comes from time to time over the mind is a very sad thing, but it can be made of great use to us if we will draw from it the lesson that we ourselves are nothing. Perhaps it is a grace. Perhaps in these moments our minds repose... Anyhow, a day without salt. You understand that under (or in) these circumstances-- When I was at Oxford there was a great and terrible debate that shook the Empire, and that intensely exercised the men whom we send out to govern the Empire, and which, therefore, must have had its effect upon the Empire, as to whether one should say 'under these circumstances' or 'in these circumstances'; nor did I settle matters by calling a conclave and suggesting _Quae quum ita sint_ as a common formula, because a new debate arose upon when you should say _sint_ and when you should say _sunt,_ and they all wrangled like kittens in a basket. Until there rose a deep-voiced man from an outlying college, who said, 'For my part I will say that under these circumstances, or in these circumstances, or in spite of these circumstances, or hovering playfully above these circumstances, or-- I take you all for Fools and Pedants, in the Chief, in the Chevron, and in the quarter Fess. Fools absolute, and Pedants lordless. Free Fools, unlanded Fools, and Fools incommensurable, and Pedants displayed and rampant of the Tierce Major. Fools incalculable and Pedants irreparable; indeed, the arch Fool-pedants in a universe of pedantic folly and foolish pedantry, O you pedant-fools of the world!' But by this time he was alone, and thus was this great question never properly decided. Under these circumstances, then (or in these circumstances), it would profit you but little if I were to attempt the description of the Valley of the Emmen, of the first foot-hills of the Alps, and of the very uninteresting valley which runs on from Langnau. I had best employ my time in telling the story of the Hungry Student. LECTOR. And if you are so worn-out and bereft of all emotions, how can you tell a story? AUCTOR. These two conditions permit me. First, that I am writing some time after, and that I have recovered; secondly, that the story is not mine, but taken straight out of that nationalist newspaper which had served me so long to wrap up my bread and bacon in my haversack. This is the story, and I will tell it you. Now, I think of it, it would be a great waste of time. Here am I no farther than perhaps a third of my journey, and I have already admitted so much digression that my pilgrimage is like the story of a man asleep and dreaming, instead of the plain, honest, and straightforward narrative of fact. I will therefore postpone the Story of the Hungry Student till I get into the plains of Italy, or into the barren hills of that peninsula, or among the over-well-known towns of Tuscany, or in some other place where a little padding will do neither you nor me any great harm. On the other hand, do not imagine that I am going to give you any kind of description of this intolerable day's march. If you want some kind of visual Concept (pretty word), take all these little châlets which were beginning and make what you can of them. LECTOR. Where are they? AUCTOR. They are still in Switzerland; not here. They were overnumerous as I maundered up from where at last the road leaves the valley and makes over a little pass for a place called Schangnau. But though it is not a story, on the contrary, an exact incident and the truth--a thing that I would swear to in the court of justice, or quite willingly and cheerfully believe if another man told it to me; or even take as historical if I found it in a modern English history of the Anglo-Saxon Church--though, I repeat, it is a thing actually lived, yet I will tell it you. It was at the very end of the road, and when an enormous weariness had begun to add some kind of interest to this stuffless episode of the dull day, that a peasant with a brutal face, driving a cart very rapidly, came up with me. I said to him nothing, but he said to me some words in German which I did not understand. We were at that moment just opposite a little inn upon the right hand of the road, and the peasant began making signs to me to hold his horse for him while he went in and drank. How willing I was to do this you will not perhaps understand, unless you have that delicate and subtle pleasure in the holding of horses' heads, which is the boast and glory of some rare minds. And I was the more willing to do it from the fact that I have the habit of this kind of thing, acquired in the French manoeuvres, and had once held a horse for no less a person than a General of Division, who gave me a franc for it, and this franc I spent later with the men of my battery, purchasing wine. So to make a long story short, as the publisher said when he published the popular edition of _Pamela,_ I held the horse for the peasant; always, of course, under the implicit understanding that he should allow me when he came out to have a drink, which I, of course, expected him to bring in his own hands. Far from it. I can understand the anger which some people feel against the Swiss when they travel in that country, though I will always hold that it is monstrous to come into a man's country of your own accord, and especially into a country so free and so well governed as is Switzerland, and then to quarrel with the particular type of citizen that you find there. Let us not discuss politics. The point is that the peasant sat in there drinking with his friends for a good three-quarters of an hour. Now and then a man would come out and look at the sky, and cough and spit and turn round again and say something to the people within in German, and go off; but no one paid the least attention to me as I held this horse. I was already in a very angry and irritable mood, for the horse was restive and smelt his stable, and wished to break away from me. And all angry and irritable as I was, I turned around to see if this man were coming to relieve me; but I saw him laughing and joking with the people inside; and they were all looking my way out of their window as they laughed. I may have been wrong, but I thought they were laughing at me. A man who knows the Swiss intimately, and who has written a book upon 'The Drink Traffic: The Example of Switzerland', tells me they certainly were not laughing at me; at any rate, I thought they were, and moved by a sudden anger I let go the reins, gave the horse a great clout, and set him off careering and galloping like a whirlwind down the road from which he had come, with the bit in his teeth and all the storms of heaven in his four feet. Instantly, as you may imagine, all the scoffers came tumbling out of the inn, hullabooling, gesticulating, and running like madmen after the horse, and one old man even turned to protest to me. But I, setting my teeth, grasping my staff, and remembering the purpose of my great journey, set on up the road again with my face towards Rome. I sincerely hope, trust, and pray that this part of my journey will not seem as dull to you as it did to me at the time, or as it does to me now while I write of it. But now I come to think of it, it cannot seem as dull, for I had to walk that wretched thirty miles or so all the day long, whereas you have not even to read it; for I am not going to say anything more about it, but lead you straight to the end. Oh, blessed quality of books, that makes them a refuge from living! For in a book everything can be made to fit in, all tedium can be skipped over, and the intense moments can be made timeless and eternal, and as a poet who is too little known has well said in one of his unpublished lyrics, we, by the art of writing-- Can fix the high elusive hour And stand in things divine. And as for high elusive hours, devil a bit of one was there all the way from Burgdorf to the Inn of the Bridge, except the ecstatic flash of joy when I sent that horse careering down the road with his bad master after him and all his gang shouting among the hollow hills. So. It was already evening. I was coming, more tired than ever, to a kind of little pass by which my road would bring me back again to the Emmen, now nothing but a torrent. All the slope down the other side of the little pass (three or four hundred feet perhaps) was covered by a village, called, if I remember right, Schangnau, and there was a large school on my right and a great number of children there dancing round in a ring and singing songs. The sight so cheered me that I determined to press on up the valley, though with no definite goal for the night. It was a foolish decision, for I was really in the heart of an unknown country, at the end of roads, at the sources of rivers, beyond help. I knew that straight before me, not five miles away, was the Brienzer Grat, the huge high wall which it was my duty to cross right over from side to side. I did not know whether or not there was an inn between me and that vast barrier. The light was failing. I had perhaps some vague idea of sleeping out, but that would have killed me, for a heavy mist that covered all the tops of the hills and that made a roof over the valley, began to drop down a fine rain; and, as they sing in church on Christmas Eve, 'the heavens sent down their dews upon a just man'. But that was written in Palestine, where rain is a rare blessing; there and then in the cold evening they would have done better to have warmed the righteous. There is no controlling them; they mean well, but they bungle terribly. The road stopped being a road, and became like a Californian trail. I approached enormous gates in the hills, high, precipitous, and narrow. The mist rolled over them, hiding their summits and making them seem infinitely lifted up and reaching endlessly into the thick sky; the straight, tenuous lines of the rain made them seem narrower still. Just as I neared them, hobbling, I met a man driving two cows, and said to him the word, 'Guest-house?' to which he said 'Yaw!' and pointed out a clump of trees to me just under the precipice and right in the gates I speak of. So I went there over an old bridge, and found a wooden house and went in. It was a house which one entered without ceremony. The door was open, and one walked straight into a great room. There sat three men playing at cards. I saluted them loudly in French, English, and Latin, but they did not understand me, and what seemed remarkable in an hotel (for it was an hotel rather than an inn), no one in the house understood me--neither the servants nor any one; but the servants did not laugh at me as had the poor people near Burgdorf, they only stood round me looking at me patiently in wonder as cows do at trains. Then they brought me food, and as I did not know the names of the different kinds of food, I had to eat what they chose; and the angel of that valley protected me from boiled mutton. I knew, however, the word Wein, which is the same in all languages, and so drank a quart of it consciously and of a set purpose. Then I slept, and next morning at dawn I rose up, put on my thin, wet linen clothes, and went downstairs. No one was about. I looked around for something to fill my sack. I picked up a great hunk of bread from the dining-room table, and went out shivering into the cold drizzle that was still falling from a shrouded sky. Before me, a great forbidding wall, growing blacker as it went upwards and ending in a level line of mist, stood the Brienzer Grat. To understand what I next had to do it is necessary to look back at the little map on page 105. You will observe that the straight way to Rome cuts the Lake of Brienz rather to the eastward of the middle, and then goes slap over Wetterhorn and strikes the Rhone Valley at a place called Ulrichen. That is how a bird would do it, if some High Pope of Birds lived in Rome and needed visiting, as, for instance, the Great Auk; or if some old primal relic sacred to birds was connected therewith, as, for instance, the bones of the Dodo.... But I digress. The point is that the straight line takes one over the Brienzer Grat, over the lake, and then over the Wetterhorn. That was manifestly impossible. But whatever of it was possible had to be done, and among the possible things was clambering over the high ridge of the Brienzer Grat instead of going round like a coward by Interlaken. After I had clambered over it, however, needs must I should have to take a pass called the Grimsel Pass and reach the Rhone Valley that way. It was with such a determination that I had come here to the upper waters of the Emmen, and stood now on a moist morning in the basin where that stream rises, at the foot of the mountain range that divided me from the lake. The Brienzer Grat is an extraordinary thing. It is quite straight; its summits are, of course, of different heights, but from below they seem even, like a ridge: and, indeed, the whole mountain is more like a ridge than any other I have seen. At one end is a peak called the 'Red Horn', the other end falls suddenly above Interlaken, and wherever you should cut it you would get a section like this, for it is as steep as anything can be short of sheer rock. There are no precipices on it, though there are nasty slabs quite high enough to kill a man--I saw several of three or four hundred feet. It is about five or six thousand feet high, and it stands right up and along the northern shore of the lake of Brienz. I began the ascent. Spongy meads, that soughed under the feet and grew steeper as one rose, took up the first few hundred feet. Little rivulets of mere dampness ran in among the under moss, and such very small hidden flowers as there were drooped with the surfeit of moisture. The rain was now indistinguishable from a mist, and indeed I had come so near to the level belt of cloud, that already its gloom was exchanged for that diffused light which fills vapours from within and lends them their mystery. A belt of thick brushwood and low trees lay before me, clinging to the slope, and as I pushed with great difficulty and many turns to right and left through its tangle a wisp of cloud enveloped me, and from that time on I was now in, now out, of a deceptive drifting fog, in which it was most difficult to gauge one's progress. Now and then a higher mass of rock, a peak on the ridge, would show clear through a corridor of cloud and be hidden again; also at times I would stand hesitating before a sharp wall or slab, and wait for a shifting of the fog to make sure of the best way round. I struck what might have been a loose path or perhaps only a gully; lost it again and found it again. In one place I climbed up a jagged surface for fifty feet, only to find when it cleared that it was no part of the general ascent, but a mere obstacle which might have been outflanked. At another time I stopped for a good quarter of an hour at an edge that might have been an indefinite fall of smooth rock, but that turned out to be a short drop, easy for a man, and not much longer than my body. So I went upwards always, drenched and doubting, and not sure of the height I had reached at any time. At last I came to a place where a smooth stone lay between two pillared monoliths, as though it had been put there for a bench. Though all around me was dense mist, yet I could see above me the vague shape of a summit looming quite near. So I said to myself-- 'I will sit here and wait till it grows lighter and clearer, for I must now be within two or three hundred feet of the top of the ridge, and as anything at all may be on the other side, I had best go carefully and knowing my way.' So I sat down facing the way I had to go and looking upwards, till perhaps a movement of the air might show me against a clear sky the line of the ridge, and so let me estimate the work that remained to do. I kept my eyes fixed on the point where I judged that sky line to lie, lest I should miss some sudden gleam revealing it; and as I sat there I grew mournful and began to consider the folly of climbing this great height on an empty stomach. The soldiers of the Republic fought their battles often before breakfast, but never, I think, without having drunk warm coffee, and no one should attempt great efforts without some such refreshment before starting. Indeed, my fasting, and the rare thin air of the height, the chill and the dampness that had soaked my thin clothes through and through, quite lowered my blood and left it piano, whimpering and irresolute. I shivered and demanded the sun. Then I bethought me of the hunk of bread I had stolen, and pulling it out of my haversack I began to munch that ungrateful breakfast. It was hard and stale, and gave me little sustenance; I still gazed upwards into the uniform meaningless light fog, looking for the ridge. Suddenly, with no warning to prepare the mind, a faint but distinct wind blew upon me, the mist rose in a wreath backward and upward, and I was looking through clear immensity, not at any ridge, but over an awful gulf at great white fields of death. The Alps were right upon me and before me, overwhelming and commanding empty downward distances of air. Between them and me was a narrow dreadful space of nothingness and silence, and a sheer mile below us both, a floor to that prodigious hollow, lay the little lake. My stone had not been a halting-place at all, but was itself the summit of the ridge, and those two rocks on either side of it framed a notch upon the very edge and skyline of the high hills of Brienz. Surprise and wonder had not time to form in my spirit before both were swallowed up by fear. The proximity of that immense wall of cold, the Alps, seen thus full from the level of its middle height and comprehended as it cannot be from the depths; its suggestion of something never changing throughout eternity--yet dead--was a threat to the eager mind. They, the vast Alps, all wrapped round in ice, frozen, and their immobility enhanced by the delicate, roaming veils which (as from an attraction) hovered in their hollows, seemed to halt the process of living. And the living soul whom they thus perturbed was supported by no companionship. There were no trees or blades of grass around me, only the uneven and primal stones of that height. There were no birds in the gulf; there was no sound. And the whiteness of the glaciers, the blackness of the snow-streaked rocks beyond, was glistening and unsoftened. There had come something evil into their sublimity. I was afraid. Nor could I bear to look downwards. The slope was in no way a danger. A man could walk up it without often using his hands, and a man could go down it slowly without any direct fall, though here and there he would have to turn round at each dip or step and hold with his hands and feel a little for his foothold. I suppose the general slope, down, down, to where the green began was not sixty degrees, but have you ever tried looking down five thousand feet at sixty degrees? It drags the mind after it, and I could not bear to begin the descent. However I reasoned with myself. I said to myself that a man should only be afraid of real dangers. That nightmare was not for the daylight. That there was now no mist but a warm sun. Then choosing a gully where water sometimes ran, but now dry, I warily began to descend, using my staff and leaning well backwards. There was this disturbing thing about the gully, that it went in steps, and before each step one saw the sky just a yard or two ahead: one lost the comforting sight of earth. One knew of course that it would only be a little drop, and that the slope would begin again, but it disturbed one. And it is a trial to drop or clamber down, say fourteen or fifteen feet, sometimes twenty, and then to find no flat foothold but that eternal steep beginning again. And this outline in which I have somewhat, but not much, exaggerated the slope, will show what I mean. The dotted line is the line of vision just as one got to a 'step'. The little figure is AUCTOR. LECTOR is up in the air looking at him. Observe the perspective of the lake below, but make no comments. I went very slowly. When I was about half-way down and had come to a place where a shoulder of heaped rock stood on my left and where little parallel ledges led up to it, having grown accustomed to the descent and easier in my mind, I sat down on a slab and drew imperfectly the things I saw: the lake below me, the first forests clinging to the foot of the Alps beyond, their higher slopes of snow, and the clouds that had now begun to gather round them and that altogether hid the last third of their enormous height. Then I saw a steamer on the lake. I felt in touch with men. The slope grew easier. I snapped my fingers at the great devils that haunt high mountains. I sniffed the gross and comfortable air of the lower valleys, I entered the belt of wood and was soon going quite a pace through the trees, for I had found a path, and was now able to sing. So I did. At last I saw through the trunks, but a few hundred feet below me, the highroad that skirts the lake. I left the path and scrambled straight down to it. I came to a wall which I climbed, and found myself in somebody's garden. Crossing this and admiring its wealth and order (I was careful not to walk on the lawns), I opened a little private gate and came on to the road, and from there to Brienz was but a short way along a fine hard surface in a hot morning sun, with the gentle lake on my right hand not five yards away, and with delightful trees upon my left, caressing and sometimes even covering me with their shade. I was therefore dry, ready and contented when I entered by mid morning the curious town of Brienz, which is all one long street, and of which the population is Protestant. I say dry, ready and contented; dry in my clothes, ready for food, contented with men and nature. But as I entered I squinted up that interminable slope, I saw the fog wreathing again along the ridge so infinitely above me, and I considered myself a fool to have crossed the Brienzer Grat without breakfast. But I could get no one in Brienz to agree with me, because no one thought I had done it, though several people there could talk French. The Grimsel Pass is the valley of the Aar; it is also the eastern flank of that great _massif,_ or bulk and mass of mountains called the Bernese Oberland. Western Switzerland, you must know, is not (as I first thought it was when I gazed down from the Weissenstein) a plain surrounded by a ring of mountains, but rather it is a plain in its northern half (the plain of the lower Aar), and in its southern half it is two enormous parallel lumps of mountains. I call them 'lumps', because they are so very broad and tortuous in their plan that they are hardly ranges. Now these two lumps are the Bernese Oberland and the Pennine Alps, and between them runs a deep trench called the valley of the Rhone. Take Mont Blanc in the west and a peak called the Crystal Peak over the Val Bavona on the east, and they are the flanking bastions of one great wall, the Pennine Alps. Take the Diablerets on the west, and the Wetterhorn on the east, and they are the flanking bastions of another great wall, the Bernese Oberland. And these two walls are parallel, with the Rhone in between. Now these two walls converge at a point where there is a sort of knot of mountain ridges, and this point may be taken as being on the boundary between Eastern and Western Switzerland. At this wonderful point the Ticino, the Rhone, the Aar, and the Reuss all begin, and it is here that the simple arrangement of the Alps to the west turns into the confused jumble of the Alps to the east. When you are high up on either wall you can catch the plan of all this, but to avoid a confused description and to help you to follow the marvellous, Hannibalian and never-before-attempted charge and march which I made, and which, alas! ended only in a glorious defeat--to help you to picture faintly to yourselves the mirific and horripilant adventure whereby I nearly achieved superhuman success in spite of all the powers of the air, I append a little map which is rough but clear and plain, and which I beg you to study closely, for it will make it easy for you to understand what next happened in my pilgrimage. The dark strips are the deep cloven valleys, the shaded belt is that higher land which is yet passable by any ordinary man. The part left white you may take to be the very high fields of ice and snow with great peaks which an ordinary man must regard as impassable, unless, indeed, he can wait for his weather and take guides and go on as a tourist instead of a pilgrim. You will observe that I have marked five clefts or valleys. A is that of the _Aar,_ and the little white patch at the beginning is the lake of Brienz. B is that of the _Reuss._ C is that of the _Rhone;_ and all these three are _north_ of the great watershed or main chain, and all three are full of German-speaking people. On the other hand, D is the valley of the _Toccia,_ E of the _Maggia,_ and F of the _Ticino._ All these three are _south_ of the great watershed, and are inhabited by Italian-speaking people. All these three lead down at last to Lake Major, and so to Milan and so to Rome. The straight line to Rome is marked on my map by a dotted line ending in an arrow, and you will see that it was just my luck that it should cross slap over that knot or tangle of ranges where all the rivers spring. The problem was how to negotiate a passage from the valley of the Aar to one of the three Italian valleys, without departing too far from my straight line. To explain my track I must give the names of all the high passes between the valleys. That between A and C is called the _Grimsel;_ that between B and C the _Furka._ That between D and C is the _Gries_ Pass, that between F and C the _Nufenen,_ and that between E and F is not the easy thing it looks on the map; indeed it is hardly a pass at all but a scramble over very high peaks, and it is called the Crystalline Mountain. Finally, on the far right of my map, you see a high passage between B and F. This is the famous St Gothard. The straightest way of all was (1) over the _Grimsel,_ then, the moment I got into the valley of the Rhone (2), up out of it again over the _Nufenen,_ then the moment I was down into the valley of the _Ticino_ (F), up out of it again (3) over the Crystalline to the valley of the _Maggia_ (E). Once in the Maggia valley (the top of it is called the _Val Bavona),_ it is a straight path for the lakes and Rome. There were also these advantages: that I should be in a place very rarely visited--all the guide-books are doubtful on it; that I should be going quite straight; that I should be accomplishing a feat, viz. the crossing of those high passes one after the other (and you must remember that over the Nufenen there is no road at all). But every one I asked told me that thus early in the year (it was not the middle of June) I could not hope to scramble over the Crystalline. No one (they said) could do it and live. It was all ice and snow and cold mist and verglas, and the precipices were smooth--a man would never get across; so it was not worth while crossing the Nufenen Pass if I was to be balked at the Crystal, and I determined on the Gries Pass. I said to myself: 'I will go on over the Grimsel, and once in the valley of the Rhone, I will walk a mile or two down to where the Gries Pass opens, and I will go over it into Italy.' For the Gries Pass, though not quite in the straight line, had this advantage, that once over it you are really in Italy. In the Ticino valley or in the Val Bavona, though the people are as Italian as Catullus, yet politically they count as part of Switzerland; and therefore if you enter Italy thereby, you are not suddenly introduced to that country, but, as it were, inoculated, and led on by degrees, which is a pity. For good things should come suddenly, like the demise of that wicked man, Mr _(deleted by the censor),_ who had oppressed the poor for some forty years, when he was shot dead from behind a hedge, and died in about the time it takes to boil an egg, and there was an end of him. Having made myself quite clear that I had a formed plan to go over the Grimsel by the new road, then up over the Gries, where there is no road at all, and so down into the vale of the Tosa, and having calculated that on the morrow I should be in Italy, I started out from Brienz after eating a great meal, it being then about midday, and I having already, as you know, crossed the Brienzer Grat since dawn. The task of that afternoon was more than I could properly undertake, nor did I fulfil it. From Brienz to the top of the Grimsel is, as the crow flies, quite twenty miles, and by the road a good twenty-seven. It is true I had only come from over the high hills; perhaps six miles in a straight line. But what a six miles! and all without food. Not certain, therefore, how much of the pass I could really do that day, but aiming at crossing it, like a fool, I went on up the first miles. For an hour or more after Brienz the road runs round the base of and then away from a fine great rock. There is here an alluvial plain like a continuation of the lake, and the Aar runs through it, canalized and banked and straight, and at last the road also becomes straight. On either side rise gigantic cliffs enclosing the valley, and (on the day I passed there) going up into the clouds, which, though high, yet made a roof for the valley. From the great mountains on the left the noble rock jutted out alone and dominated the little plain; on the right the buttresses of the main Alps all stood in a row, and between them went whorls of vapour high, high up--just above the places where snow still clung to the slopes. These whorls made the utmost steeps more and more misty, till at last they were lost in a kind of great darkness, in which the last and highest banks of ice seemed to be swallowed up. I often stopped to gaze straight above me, and I marvelled at the silence. It was the first part of the afternoon when I got to a place called Meiringen, and I thought that there I would eat and drink a little more. So I steered into the main street, but there I found such a yelling and roaring as I had never heard before, and very damnable it was; as though men were determined to do common evil wherever God has given them a chance of living in awe and worship. For they were all bawling and howling, with great placards and tickets, and saying, 'This way to the Extraordinary Waterfall; that way to the Strange Cave. Come with me and you shall see the never-to-be-forgotten Falls of the Aar,' and so forth. So that my illusion of being alone in the roots of the world dropped off me very quickly, and I wondered how people could be so helpless and foolish as to travel about in Switzerland as tourists and meet with all this vulgarity and beastliness. If a man goes to drink good wine he does not say, 'So that the wine be good I do not mind eating strong pepper and smelling hartshorn as I drink it,' and if a man goes to read a good verse, for instance, Jean Richepin, he does not say, 'Go on playing on the trombone, go on banging the cymbals; so long as I am reading good verse I am content.' Yet men now go into the vast hills and sleep and live in their recesses, and pretend to be indifferent to all the touts and shouters and hurry and hotels and high prices and abominations. Thank God, it goes in grooves! I say it again, thank God, the railways are trenches that drain our modern marsh, for you have but to avoid railways, even by five miles, and you can get more peace than would fill a nosebag. All the world is my garden since they built railways, and gave me leave to keep off them. Also I vowed a franc to the Black Virgin of La Delivrande (next time I should be passing there) because I was delivered from being a tourist, and because all this horrible noise was not being dinned at me (who was a poor and dirty pilgrim, and no kind of prey for these cabmen, and busmen, and guides and couriers), but at a crowd of drawn, sad, jaded tourists that had come in by a train. Soon I had left them behind. The road climbed the first step upwards in the valley, going round a rock on the other side of which the Aar had cut itself a gorge and rushed in a fall and rapids. Then the road went on and on weary mile after weary mile, and I stuck to it, and it rose slowly all the time, and all the time the Aar went dashing by, roaring and filling the higher valley with echoes. I got beyond the villages. The light shining suffused through the upper mist began to be the light of evening. Rain, very fine and slight, began to fall. It was cold. There met and passed me, going down the road, a carriage with a hood up, driving at full speed. It could not be from over the pass, for I knew that it was not yet open for carriages or carts. It was therefore from a hotel somewhere, and if there was a hotel I should find it. I looked back to ask the distance, but they were beyond earshot, and so I went on. My boots in which I had sworn to walk to Rome were ruinous. Already since the Weissenstein they had gaped, and now the Brienzer Grat had made the sole of one of them quite free at the toe. It flapped as I walked. Very soon I should be walking on my uppers. I limped also, and I hated the wet cold rain. But I had to go on. Instead of flourishing my staff and singing, I leant on it painfully and thought of duty, and death, and dereliction, and every other horrible thing that begins with a D. I had to go on. If I had gone back there was nothing for miles. Before it was dark--indeed one could still read--I saw a group of houses beyond the Aar, and soon after I saw that my road would pass them, going over a bridge. When I reached them I went into the first, saying to myself, 'I will eat, and if I can go no farther I will sleep here.' There were in the house two women, one old, the other young; and they were French-speaking, from the Vaud country. They had faces like Scotch people, and were very kindly, but odd, being Calvinist. I said, 'Have you any beans?' They said, 'Yes.' I suggested they should make me a dish of beans and bacon, and give me a bottle of wine, while I dried myself at their great stove. All this they readily did for me, and I ate heartily and drank heavily, and they begged me afterwards to stop the night and pay them for it; but I was so set up by my food and wine that I excused myself and went out again and took the road. It was not yet dark. By some reflection from the fields of snow, which were now quite near at hand through the mist, the daylight lingered astonishingly late. The cold grew bitter as I went on through the gloaming. There were no trees save rare and stunted pines. The Aar was a shallow brawling torrent, thick with melting ice and snow and mud. Coarse grass grew on the rocks sparsely; there were no flowers. The mist overhead was now quite near, and I still went on and steadily up through the half-light. It was as lonely as a calm at sea, except for the noise of the river. I had overworn myself, and that sustaining surface which hides from us in our health the abysses below the mind--I felt it growing weak and thin. My fatigue bewildered me. The occasional steeps beside the road, one especially beneath a high bridge where a tributary falls into the Aar in a cascade, terrified me. They were like the emptiness of dreams. At last it being now dark, and I having long since entered the upper mist, or rather cloud (for I was now as high as the clouds), I saw a light gleaming through the fog, just off the road, through pine-trees. It was time. I could not have gone much farther. To this I turned and found there one of those new hotels, not very large, but very expensive. They knew me at once for what I was, and welcomed me with joy. They gave me hot rum and sugar, a fine warm bed, told me I was the first that had yet stopped there that year, and left me to sleep very deep and yet in pain, as men sleep who are stunned. But twice that night I woke suddenly, staring at darkness. I had outworn the physical network upon which the soul depends, and I was full of terrors. Next morning I had fine coffee and bread and butter and the rest, like a rich man; in a gilded dining-room all set out for the rich, and served by a fellow that bowed and scraped. Also they made me pay a great deal, and kept their eyes off my boots, and were still courteous to me, and I to them. Then I bought wine of them--the first wine not of the country that I had drunk on this march, a Burgundy--and putting it in my haversack with a nice white roll, left them to wait for the next man whom the hills might send them. The clouds, the mist, were denser than ever in that early morning; one could only see the immediate road. The cold was very great; my clothes were not quite dried, but my heart was high, and I pushed along well enough, though stiffly, till I came to what they call the Hospice, which was once a monk-house, I suppose, but is now an inn. I had brandy there, and on going out I found that it stood at the foot of a sharp ridge which was the true Grimsel Pass, the neck which joins the Bernese Oberland to the eastern group of high mountains. This ridge or neck was steep like a pitched roof--very high I found it, and all of black glassy rock, with here and there snow in sharp, even, sloping sheets just holding to it. I could see but little of it at a time on account of the mist. Hitherto for all these miles the Aar had been my companion, and the road, though rising always, had risen evenly and not steeply. Now the Aar was left behind in the icy glen where it rises, and the road went in an artificial and carefully built set of zig-zags up the face of the cliff. There is a short cut, but I could not find it in the mist. It is the old mule-path. Here and there, however, it was possible to cut off long corners by scrambling over the steep black rock and smooth ice, and all the while the cold, soft mist wisped in and out around me. After a thousand feet of this I came to the top of the Grimsel, but not before I had passed a place where an avalanche had destroyed the road and where planks were laid. Also before one got to the very summit, no short cuts or climbing were possible. The road ran deep in a cutting like a Devonshire lane. Only here the high banks were solid snow. Some little way past the summit, on the first zig-zag down, I passed the Lake of the Dead in its mournful hollow. The mist still enveloped all the ridge-side, and moved like a press of spirits over the frozen water, then--as suddenly as on the much lower Brienzer Grat, and (as on the Brienzer Grat) to the southward and the sun, the clouds lifted and wreathed up backward and were gone, and where there had just been fulness was only an immensity of empty air and a sudden sight of clear hills beyond and of little strange distant things thousands and thousands of feet below. LECTOR. Pray are we to have any more of that fine writing? AUCTOR. I saw there as in a cup things that I had thought (when I first studied the map at home) far too spacious and spread apart to go into the view. Yet here they were all quite contained and close together, on so vast a scale was the whole place conceived. It was the comb of mountains of which I have written; the meeting of all the valleys. There, from the height of a steep bank, as it were (but a bank many thousands of feet high), one looked down into a whole district or little world. On the map, I say, it had seemed so great that I had thought one would command but this or that portion of it; as it was, one saw it all. And this is a peculiar thing I have noticed in all mountains, and have never been able to understand--- namely, that if you draw a plan or section to scale, your mountain does not seem a very important thing. One should not, in theory, be able to dominate from its height, nor to feel the world small below one, nor to hold a whole countryside in one's hand--yet one does. The mountains from their heights reveal to us two truths. They suddenly make us feel our insignificance, and at the same time they free the immortal Mind, and let it feel its greatness, and they release it from the earth. But I say again, in theory, when one considers the exact relation of their height to the distances one views from them, they ought to claim no such effect, and that they can produce that effect is related to another thing--the way in which they exaggerate their own steepness. For instance, those noble hills, my downs in Sussex, when you are upon them overlooking the weald, from Chanctonbury say, feel like this--or even lower. Indeed, it is impossible to give them truly, so insignificant are they; if the stretch of the Weald were made nearly a yard long, Chanctonbury would not, in proportion, be more than a fifth of an inch high! And yet, from the top of Chanctonbury, how one seems to overlook it and possess it all! Well, so it was here from the Grimsel when I overlooked the springs of the Rhone. In true proportion the valley I gazed into and over must have been somewhat like this-- It felt for all the world as deep and utterly below me as this other-- Moreover, where there was no mist, the air was so surprisingly clear that I could see everything clean and sharp wherever I turned my eyes. The mountains forbade any very far horizons to the view, and all that I could see was as neat and vivid as those coloured photographs they sell with bright green grass and bright white snow, and blue glaciers like precious stones. I scrambled down the mountain, for here, on the south side of the pass, there was no snow or ice, and it was quite easy to leave the road and take the old path cutting off the zig-zags. As the air got heavier, I became hungry, and at the very end of my descent, two hundred feet or so above the young Rhone, I saw a great hotel. I went round to their front door and asked them whether I could eat, and at what price. 'Four francs,' they said. 'What!' said I, 'four francs for a meal! Come, let me eat in the kitchen, and charge me one.' But they became rude and obstinate, being used only to deal with rich people, so I cursed them, and went down the road. But I was very hungry. The road falls quite steeply, and the Rhone, which it accompanies in that valley, leaps in little falls. On a bridge I passed a sad Englishman reading a book, and a little lower down, two American women in a carriage, and after that a priest (it was lucky I did not see him first. Anyhow, I touched iron at once, to wit, a key in my pocket), and after that a child minding a goat. Altogether I felt myself in the world again, and as I was on a good road, all down hill, I thought myself capable of pushing on to the next village. But my hunger was really excessive, my right boot almost gone, and my left boot nothing to exhibit or boast of, when I came to a point where at last one looked down the Rhone valley for miles. It is like a straight trench, and at intervals there are little villages, built of most filthy chalets, the said chalets raised on great stones. There are pine-trees up, up on either slope, into the clouds, and beyond the clouds I could not see. I left on my left a village called 'Between the Waters'. I passed through another called 'Ehringen', but it has no inn. At last, two miles farther, faint from lack of food, I got into Ulrichen, a village a little larger than the rest, and the place where I believed one should start to go either over the Gries or Nufenen Pass. In Ulrichen was a warm, wooden, deep-eaved, frousty, comfortable, ramshackle, dark, anyhow kind of a little inn called 'The Bear'. And entering, I saw one of the women whom god loves. She was of middle age, very honest and simple in the face, kindly and good. She was messing about with cooking and stuff, and she came up to me stooping a little, her eyes wide and innocent, and a great spoon in her hand. Her face was extremely broad and flat, and I have never seen eyes set so far apart. Her whole gait, manner, and accent proved her to be extremely good, and on the straight road to heaven. I saluted her in the French tongue. She answered me in the same, but very broken and rustic, for her natural speech was a kind of mountain German. She spoke very slowly, and had a nice soft voice, and she did what only good people do, I mean, looked you in the eyes as she spoke to you. Beware of shifty-eyed people. It is not only nervousness, it is also a kind of wickedness. Such people come to no good. I have three of them now in my mind as I write. One is a Professor. And, by the way, would you like to know why universities suffer from this curse of nervous disease? Why the great personages stammer or have St Vitus' dance, or jabber at the lips, or hop in their walk, or have their heads screwed round, or tremble in the fingers, or go through life with great goggles like a motor car? Eh? I will tell you. It is the punishment of their _intellectual pride,_ than which no sin is more offensive to the angels. What! here are we with the jolly world of God all round us, able to sing, to draw, to paint, to hammer and build, to sail, to ride horses, to run, to leap; having for our splendid inheritance love in youth and memory in old age, and we are to take one miserable little faculty, our one-legged, knock-kneed, gimcrack, purblind, rough-skinned, underfed, and perpetually irritated and grumpy intellect, or analytical curiosity rather (a diseased appetite), and let it swell till it eats up every other function? Away with such foolery. LECTOR. When shall we get on to... AUCTOR. Wait a moment. I say, away with such foolery. Note that pedants lose all proportion. They never can keep sane in a discussion. They will go wild on matters they are wholly unable to judge, such as Armenian Religion or the Politics of Paris or what not. Never do they use one of those three phrases which keep a man steady and balance his mind, I mean the words (1) _After all it is not my business_. (2) Tut! tut! You don't say so! and (3) _Credo in Unum Deum Patrem Omnipotentem, Factorem omnium visibilium atque invisibilium;_ in which last there is a power of synthesis that can jam all their analytical dust-heap into such a fine, tight, and compact body as would make them stare to see. I understand that they need six months' holiday a year. Had I my way they should take twelve, and an extra day on leap years. LECTOR. Pray, pray return to the woman at the inn. AUCTOR. I will, and by this road: to say that on the day of Judgement, when St Michael weighs souls in his scales, and the wicked are led off by the Devil with a great rope, as you may see them over the main porch of Notre Dame (I will heave a stone after them myself I hope), all the souls of the pedants together will not weigh as heavy and sound as the one soul of this good woman at the inn. She put food before me and wine. The wine was good, but in the food was some fearful herb or other I had never tasted before--a pure spice or scent, and a nasty one. One could taste nothing else, and it was revolting; but I ate it for her sake. Then, very much refreshed, I rose, seized my great staff, shook myself and said, 'Now it is about noon, and I am off for the frontier.' At this she made a most fearful clamour, saying that it was madness, and imploring me not to think of it, and running out fetched from the stable a tall, sad, pale-eyed man who saluted me profoundly and told me that he knew more of the mountains than any one for miles. And this by asking many afterwards I found out to be true. He said that he had crossed the Nufenen and the Gries whenever they could be crossed since he was a child, and that if I attempted it that day I should sleep that night in Paradise. The clouds on the mountain, the soft snow recently fallen, the rain that now occupied the valleys, the glacier on the Gries, and the pathless snow in the mist on the Nufenen would make it sheer suicide for him, an experienced guide, and for me a worse madness. Also he spoke of my boots and wondered at my poor coat and trousers, and threatened me with intolerable cold. It seems that the books I had read at home, when they said that the Nufenen had no snow on it, spoke of a later season of the year; it was all snow now, and soft snow, and hidden by a full mist in such a day from the first third of the ascent. As for the Gries, there was a glacier on the top which needed some kind of clearness in the weather. Hearing all this I said I would remain--but it was with a heavy heart. Already I felt a shadow of defeat over me. The loss of time was a thorn. I was already short of cash, and my next money was Milan. My return to England was fixed for a certain date, and stronger than either of these motives against delay was a burning restlessness that always takes men when they are on the way to great adventures. I made him promise to wake me next morning at three o'clock, and, short of a tempest, to try and get me across the Gries. As for the Nufenen and Crystalline passes which I had desired to attempt, and which were (as I have said) the straight line to Rome, he said (and he was right), that let alone the impassability of the Nufenen just then, to climb the Crystal Mountain in that season would be as easy as flying to the moon. Now, to cross the Nufenen alone, would simply land me in the upper valley of the Ticino, and take me a great bend out of my way by Bellinzona. Hence my bargain that at least he should show me over the Gries Pass, and this he said, if man could do it, he would do the next day; and I, sending my boots to be cobbled (and thereby breaking another vow), crept up to bed, and all afternoon read the school-books of the children. They were in French, from lower down the valley, and very Genevese and heretical for so devout a household. But the Genevese civilization is the standard for these people, and they combat the Calvinism of it with missions, and have statues in their rooms, not to speak of holy water stoups. The rain beat on my window, the clouds came lower still down the mountain. Then (as is finely written in the Song of Roland), 'the day passed and the night came, and I slept.' But with the coming of the small hours, and with my waking, prepare yourselves for the most extraordinary and terrible adventure that befell me out of all the marvels and perils of this pilgrimage, the most momentous and the most worthy of perpetual record, I think, of all that has ever happened since the beginning of the world. At three o'clock the guide knocked at my door, and I rose and came out to him. We drank coffee and ate bread. We put into our sacks ham and bread, and he white wine and I brandy. Then we set out. The rain had dropped to a drizzle, and there was no wind. The sky was obscured for the most part, but here and there was a star. The hills hung awfully above us in the night as we crossed the spongy valley. A little wooden bridge took us over the young Rhone, here only a stream, and we followed a path up into the tributary ravine which leads to the Nufenen and the Gries. In a mile or two it was a little lighter, and this was as well, for some weeks before a great avalanche had fallen, and we had to cross it gingerly. Beneath the wide cap of frozen snow ran a torrent roaring. I remembered Colorado, and how I had crossed the Arkansaw on such a bridge as a boy. We went on in the uneasy dawn. The woods began to show, and there was a cross where a man had slipped from above that very April and been killed. Then, most ominous and disturbing, the drizzle changed to a rain, and the guide shook his head and said it would be snowing higher up. We went on, and it grew lighter. Before it was really day (or else the weather confused and darkened the sky), we crossed a good bridge, built long ago, and we halted at a shed where the cattle lie in the late summer when the snow is melted. There we rested a moment. But on leaving its shelter we noticed many disquieting things. The place was a hollow, the end of the ravine--a bowl, as it were; one way out of which is the Nufenen, and the other the Gries. Here it is in a sketch map. The heights are marked lighter and lighter, from black in the valleys to white in the impassable mountains. E is where we stood, in a great cup or basin, having just come up the ravine B. C is the Italian valley of the Tosa, and the neck between it and E is the Gries. D is the valley of the Ticino, and the neck between E and it is the Nufenen. A is the Crystal Mountain. You may take the necks or passes to be about 8000, and the mountains 10,000 or 11,000 feet above the sea. We noticed, I say, many disquieting things. First, all, that bowl or cup below the passes was a carpet of snow, save where patches of black water showed, and all the passes and mountains, from top to bottom, were covered with very thick snow; the deep surface of it soft and fresh fallen. Secondly, the rain had turned into snow. It was falling thickly all around. Nowhere have I more perceived the immediate presence of great Death. Thirdly, it was far colder, and we felt the beginning of a wind. Fourthly, the clouds had come quite low down. The guide said it could not be done, but I said we must attempt it. I was eager, and had not yet felt the awful grip of the cold. We left the Nufenen on our left, a hopeless steep of new snow buried in fog, and we attacked the Gries. For half-an-hour we plunged on through snow above our knees, and my thin cotton clothes were soaked. So far the guide knew we were more or less on the path, and he went on and I panted after him. Neither of us spoke, but occasionally he looked back to make sure I had not dropped out. The snow began to fall more thickly, and the wind had risen somewhat. I was afraid of another protest from the guide, but he stuck to it well, and I after him, continually plunging through soft snow and making yard after yard upwards. The snow fell more thickly and the wind still rose. We came to a place which is, in the warm season, an alp; that is, a slope of grass, very steep but not terrifying; having here and there sharp little precipices of rock breaking it into steps, but by no means (in summer) a matter to make one draw back. Now, however, when everything was still Arctic it was a very different matter. A sheer steep of snow whose downward plunge ran into the driving storm and was lost, whose head was lost in the same mass of thick cloud above, a slope somewhat hollowed and bent inwards, had to be crossed if we were to go any farther; and I was terrified, for I knew nothing of climbing. The guide said there was little danger, only if one slipped one might slide down to safety, or one might (much less probably) get over rocks and be killed. I was chattering a little with cold; but as he did not propose a return, I followed him. The surface was alternately slabs of frozen snow and patches of soft new snow. In the first he cut steps, in the second we plunged, and once I went right in and a mass of snow broke off beneath me and went careering down the slope. He showed me how to hold my staff backwards as he did his alpenstock, and use it as a kind of brake in case I slipped. We had been about twenty minutes crawling over that wall of snow and ice; and it was more and more apparent that we were in for danger. Before we had quite reached the far side, the wind was blowing a very full gale and roared past our ears. The surface snow was whirring furiously like dust before it: past our faces and against them drove the snow-flakes, cutting the air: not falling, but making straight darts and streaks. They seemed like the form of the whistling wind; they blinded us. The rocks on the far side of the slope, rocks which had been our goal when we set out to cross it, had long ago disappeared in the increasing rush of the blizzard. Suddenly as we were still painfully moving on, stooping against the mad wind, these rocks loomed up over as large as houses, and we saw them through the swarming snow-flakes as great hulls are seen through a fog at sea. The guide crouched under the lee of the nearest; I came up close to him and he put his hands to my ear and shouted to me that nothing further could be done--he had so to shout because in among the rocks the hurricane made a roaring sound, swamping the voice. I asked how far we were from the summit. He said he did not know where we were exactly, but that we could not be more than 800 feet from it. I was but that from Italy and I would not admit defeat. I offered him all I had in money to go on, but it was folly in me, because if I had had enough to tempt him and if he had yielded we should both have died. Luckily it was but a little sum. He shook his head. He would not go on, he broke out, for all the money there was in the world. He shouted me to eat and drink, and so we both did. Then I understood his wisdom, for in a little while the cold began to seize me in my thin clothes. My hands were numb, my face already gave me intolerable pain, and my legs suffered and felt heavy. I learnt another thing (which had I been used to mountains I should have known), that it was not a simple thing to return. The guide was hesitating whether to stay in this rough shelter, or to face the chances of the descent. This terror had not crossed my mind, and I thought as little of it as I could, needing my courage, and being near to breaking down from the intensity of the cold. It seems that in a _tourmente_ (for by that excellent name do the mountain people call such a storm) it is always a matter of doubt whether to halt or go back. If you go back through it and lose your way, you are done for. If you halt in some shelter, it may go on for two or three days, and then there is an end of you. After a little he decided for a return, but he told me honestly what the chances were, and my suffering from cold mercifully mitigated my fear. But even in that moment, I felt in a confused but very conscious way that I was defeated. I had crossed so many great hills and rivers, and pressed so well on my undeviating arrow-line to Rome, and I had charged this one great barrier manfully where the straight path of my pilgrimage crossed the Alps--and I had failed! Even in that fearful cold I felt it, and it ran through my doubt of return like another and deeper current of pain. Italy was there, just above, right to my hand. A lifting of a cloud, a little respite, and every downward step would have been towards the sunlight. As it was, I was being driven back northward, in retreat and ashamed. The Alps had conquered me. Let us always after this combat their immensity and their will, and always hate the inhuman guards that hold the gates of Italy, and the powers that lie in wait for men on those high places. But now I know that Italy will always stand apart. She is cut off by no ordinary wall, and Death has all his army on her frontiers. Well, we returned. Twice the guide rubbed my hands with brandy, and once I had to halt and recover for a moment, failing and losing my hold. Believe it or not, the deep footsteps of our ascent were already quite lost and covered by the new snow since our halt, and even had they been visible, the guide would not have retraced them. He did what I did not at first understand, but what I soon saw to be wise. He took a steep slant downward over the face of the snow-slope, and though such a pitch of descent a little unnerved me, it was well in the end. For when we had gone down perhaps 900 feet, or a thousand, in perpendicular distance, even I, half numb and fainting, could feel that the storm was less violent. Another two hundred, and the flakes could be seen not driving in flashes past, but separately falling. Then in some few minutes we could see the slope for a very long way downwards quite clearly; then, soon after, we saw far below us the place where the mountain-side merged easily into the plain of that cup or basin whence we had started. When we saw this, the guide said to me, 'Hold your stick thus, if you are strong enough, and let yourself slide.' I could just hold it, in spite of the cold. Life was returning to me with intolerable pain. We shot down the slope almost as quickly as falling, but it was evidently safe to do so, as the end was clearly visible, and had no break or rock in it. So we reached the plain below, and entered the little shed, and thence looking up, we saw the storm above us; but no one could have told it for what it was. Here, below, was silence, and the terror and raging above seemed only a great trembling cloud occupying the mountain. Then we set our faces down the ravine by which we had come up, and so came down to where the snow changed to rain. When we got right down into the valley of the Rhone, we found it all roofed with cloud, and the higher trees were white with snow, making a line like a tide mark on the slopes of the hills. I re-entered 'The Bear', silent and angered, and not accepting the humiliation of that failure. Then, having eaten, I determined in equal silence to take the road like any other fool; to cross the Furka by a fine highroad, like any tourist, and to cross the St Gothard by another fine highroad, as millions had done before me, and not to look heaven in the face again till I was back after my long detour, on the straight road again for Rome. But to think of it! I who had all that planned out, and had so nearly done it! I who had cut a path across Europe like a shaft, and seen so many strange places!--now to have to recite all the litany of the vulgar; Bellinzona, Lugano, and this and that, which any railway travelling fellow can tell you. Not till Como should I feel a man again... Indeed it is a bitter thing to have to give up one's sword. I had not the money to wait; my defeat had lowered me in purse as well as in heart. I started off to enter by the ordinary gates--not Italy even, but a half-Italy, the canton of the Ticino. It was very hard. This book is not a tragedy, and I will not write at any length of such pain. That same day, in the latter half of it, I went sullenly over the Furka; exactly as easy a thing as going up St James' Street and down Piccadilly. I found the same storm on its summit, but on a highroad it was a different affair. I took no short cuts. I drank at all the inns--at the base, half-way up, near the top, and at the top. I told them, as the snow beat past, how I had attacked and all but conquered the Gries that wild morning, and they took me for a liar; so I became silent even within my own mind. I looked sullenly at the white ground all the way. And when on the far side I had got low enough to be rid of the snow and wind and to be in the dripping rain again, I welcomed the rain, and let it soothe like a sodden friend my sodden uncongenial mind. I will not write of Hospenthal. It has an old tower, and the road to it is straight and hideous. Much I cared for the old tower! The people of the inn (which I chose at random) cannot have loved me much. I will not write of the St Gothard. Get it out of a guide-book. I rose when I felt inclined; I was delighted to find it still raining. A dense mist above the rain gave me still greater pleasure. I had started quite at my leisure late in the day, and I did the thing stolidly, and my heart was like a dully-heated mass of coal or iron because I was acknowledging defeat. You who have never taken a straight line and held it, nor seen strange men and remote places, you do not know what it is to have to go round by the common way. Only in the afternoon, and on those little zig-zags which are sharper than any other in the Alps (perhaps the road is older), something changed. A warm air stirred the dense mist which had mercifully cut me off from anything but the mere road and from the contemplation of hackneyed sights. A hint or memory of gracious things ran in the slight breeze, the wreaths of fog would lift a little for a few yards, and in their clearings I thought to approach a softer and more desirable world. I was soothed as though with caresses and when I began to see somewhat farther and felt a vigour and fulness in the outline of the Trees, I said to myself suddenly-- 'I know what it is! It is the South, and a great part of my blood. They may call it Switzerland still, but I know now that I am in Italy, and this is the gate of Italy lying in groves.' Then and on till evening I reconciled myself with misfortune, and when I heard again at Airolo the speech of civilized men, and saw the strong Latin eyes and straight forms of the Race after all those days of fog and frost and German speech and the north, my eyes filled with tears and I was as glad as a man come home again, and I could have kissed the ground. The wine of Airolo and its songs, how greatly they refreshed me! To see men with answering eyes and to find a salute returned; the noise of careless mouths talking all together; the group at cards, and the laughter that is proper to mankind; the straight carriage of the women, and in all the people something erect and noble as though indeed they possessed the earth. I made a meal there, talking to all my companions left and right in a new speech of my own, which was made up, as it were, of the essence of all the Latin tongues, saying-- _'Ha! Si jo a traversa li montagna no erat facile! Nenni! II san Gottardo? Nil est! pooh! poco! Ma hesterna jo ha voulu traversar in Val Bavona, e credi non ritornar, namfredo, fredo erat in alto! La tourmente ma prise...'_ And so forth, explaining all fully with gestures, exaggerating, emphasizing, and acting the whole matter, so that they understood me without much error. But I found it more difficult to understand them, because they had a regular formed language with terminations and special words. It went to my heart to offer them no wine, but a thought was in me of which you shall soon hear more. My money was running low, and the chief anxiety of a civilized man was spreading over my mind like the shadow of a cloud over a field of corn in summer. They gave me a number of 'good-nights', and at parting I could not forbear from boasting that I was a pilgrim on my way to Rome. This they repeated one to another, and one man told me that the next good halting-place was a town called Faido, three hours down the road. He held up three fingers to explain, and that was the last intercourse I had with the Airolans, for at once I took the road. I glanced up the dark ravine which I should have descended had I crossed the Nufenen. I thought of the Val Bavona, only just over the great wall that held the west; and in one place where a rift (you have just seen its picture) led up to the summits of the hills I was half tempted to go back to Airolo and sleep and next morning to attempt a crossing. But I had accepted my fate on the Gries and the falling road also held me, and so I continued my way. Everything was pleasing in this new valley under the sunlight that still came strongly from behind the enormous mountains; everything also was new, and I was evidently now in a country of a special kind. The slopes were populous, I had come to the great mother of fruits and men, and I was soon to see her cities and her old walls, and the rivers that glide by them. Church towers also repeated the same shapes up and up the wooded hills until the villages stopped at the line of the higher slopes and at the patches of snow. The houses were square and coloured; they were graced with arbours, and there seemed to be all around nothing but what was reasonable and secure, and especially no rich or poor. I noticed all these things on the one side and the other till, not two hours from Airolo, I came to a step in the valley. For the valley of the Ticino is made up of distinct levels, each of which might have held a lake once for the way it is enclosed: and each level ends in high rocks with a gorge between them. Down this gorge the river tumbles in falls and rapids and the road picks its way down steeply, all banked and cut, and sometimes has to cross from side to side by a bridge, while the railway above one overcomes the sharp descent by running round into the heart of the hills through circular tunnels and coming out again far below the cavern where it plunged in. Then when all three--the river, the road, and the railway--- have got over the great step, a new level of the valley opens. This is the way the road comes into the south, and as I passed down to the lower valley, though it was darkening into evening, something melted out of the mountain air, there was content and warmth in the growing things, and I found it was a place for vineyards. So, before it was yet dark, I came into Faido, and there I slept, having at last, after so many adventures, crossed the threshold and occupied Italy. Next day before sunrise I went out, and all the valley was adorned and tremulous with the films of morning. Now all of you who have hitherto followed the story of this great journey, put out of your minds the Alps and the passes and the snows--postpone even for a moment the influence of the happy dawn and of that South into which I had entered, and consider only this truth, that I found myself just out of Faido on this blessed date of God with eight francs and forty centimes for my viaticum and temporal provision wherewith to accomplish the good work of my pilgrimage. Now when you consider that coffee and bread was twopence and a penny for the maid, you may say without lying that I had left behind me the escarpment of the Alps and stood upon the downward slopes of the first Italian stream and at the summit of the entry road with _eight francs ten centimes_ in my pocket--my body hearty and my spirit light, for the arriving sun shot glory into the sky. The air was keen, and a fresh day came radiant over the high eastern walls of the valley. And what of that? Why, one might make many things of it. For instance, eight francs and ten centimes is a very good day's wages; it is a lot to spend in cab fares but little for a _coupé._ It is a heavy price for Burgundy but a song for Tokay. It is eighty miles third-class and more; it is thirty or less first-class; it is a flash in a train _de luxe,_ and a mere fleabite as a bribe to a journalist. It would be enormous to give it to an apostle begging at a church door, but nothing to spend on luncheon. Properly spent I can imagine it saving five or six souls, but I cannot believe that so paltry a sum would damn half an one. Then, again, it would be a nice thing to sing about. Thus, if one were a modern fool one might write a dirge with 'Huit francs et dix centimes' all chanted on one low sad note, and coming in between brackets for a 'motif, and with a lot about autumn and Death--which last, Death that is, people nowadays seem to regard as something odd, whereas it is well known to be the commonest thing in the world. Or one might make the words the Backbone of a triolet, only one would have to split them up to fit it into the metre; or one might make it the decisive line in a sonnet; or one might make a pretty little lyric of it, to the tune of 'Madame la Marquise'-- _'Huit francs et dix centimes, Tra la la, la la la.'_ Or one might put it rhetorically, fiercely, stoically, finely, republicanly into the Heroics of the Great School. Thus-- HERNANI _(with indignation)... dans ces efforts sublimes_'Qu'avez vous à offrir?_' RUY BLAS _(simply) Huit francs et dix centimes!_ Or finally (for this kind of thing cannot go on for ever), one might curl one's hair and dye it black, and cock a dirty slouch hat over one ear and take a guitar and sit on a flat stone by the roadside and cross one's legs, and, after a few pings and pongs on the strings, strike up a Ballad with the refrain-- _Car j'ai toujours huit francs et dix centimes!_ a jocular, sub-sardonic, a triumphant refrain! But all this is by the way; the point is, why was the eight francs and ten centimes of such importance just there and then? For this reason, that I could get no more money before Milan; and I think a little reflection will show you what a meaning lies in that phrase. Milan was nearer ninety miles than eighty miles off. By the strict road it was over ninety. And so I was forced to consider and to be anxious, for how would this money hold out? There was nothing for it but forced marches, and little prospect of luxuries. But could it be done? I thought it could, and I reasoned this way. 'It is true I need a good deal of food, and that if a man is to cover great distances he must keep fit. It is also true that many men have done more on less. On the other hand, they were men who were not pressed for time--I am; and I do not know the habits of the country. Ninety miles is three good days; two very heavy days. Indeed, whether it can be done at all in two is doubtful. But it can be done in two days, two nights, and half the third day. So if I plan it thus I shall achieve it; namely, to march say forty-five miles or more to-day, and to sleep rough at the end of it. My food may cost me altogether three francs. I march the next day twenty-five to thirty, my food costing me another three francs. Then with the remaining two francs and ten centimes I will take a bed at the end of the day, and coffee and bread next morning, and will march the remaining twenty miles or less (as they may be) into Milan with a copper or two in my pocket. Then in Milan, having obtained my money, I will eat.' So I planned with very careful and exact precision, but many accidents and unexpected things, diverting my plans, lay in wait for me among the hills. And to cut a long story short, as the old sailor said to the young fool-- LECTOR. What did the old sailor say to the young fool? AUCTOR. Why, the old sailor was teaching the young fool his compass, and he said--- 'Here we go from north, making round by west, and then by south round by east again to north. There are thirty-two points of the compass, namely, first these four, N., W., S., and E., and these are halved, making four more, viz., NW., S W., SE., and NE. I trust I make myself clear,' said the old sailor. 'That makes eight divisions, as we call them. So look smart and follow. Each of these eight is divided into two symbolically and symmetrically divided parts, as is most evident in the nomenclature of the same,' said the old sailor. 'Thus between N. and NE. is NNE., between NE. and E. is ENE., between E. and SE. is...' 'I see,' said the young fool. The old sailor, frowning at him, continued-- 'Smart you there. Heels together, and note you well. Each of these sixteen divisions is separated quite reasonably and precisely into two. Thus between N. and NNE. we get N. by E.,' said the old sailor; 'and between NNE. and NE. we get NE. by E., and between NE. and ENE. we get NE. by E.,' said the old sailor; 'and between ENE. and E. we get E. by N., and then between E. and ESE. we get...' But here he noticed something dangerous in the young fool's eyes, and having read all his life Admiral Griles' 'Notes on Discipline', and knowing that discipline is a subtle bond depending 'not on force but on an attitude of the mind,' he continued-- 'And so TO CUT A LONG STORY SHORT we come round to the north again.' Then he added, 'It is customary also to divide each of these points into quarters. Thus NNE. 3/4 E. signifies...' But at this point the young fool, whose hands were clasped behind him and concealed a marlin-spike, up and killed the old sailor, and so rounded off this fascinating tale. Well then, to cut a long story short, I had to make forced marches. With eight francs and ten centimes, and nearer ninety than eighty-five miles before the next relief, it was necessary to plan and then to urge on heroically. Said I to myself, 'The thing can be done quite easily. What is ninety miles? Two long days! Who cannot live on four francs a day? Why, lots of men do it on two francs a day.' But my guardian angel said to me, 'You are an ass! Ninety miles is a great deal more than twice forty-five. Besides which' (said he) 'a great effort needs largeness and ease. Men who live on two francs a day or less are not men who attempt to march forty-five miles a day. Indeed, my friend, you are pushing it very close.' 'Well,' thought I, 'at least in such a glorious air, with such Hills all about one, and such a race, one can come to no great harm.' But I knew within me that Latins are hard where money is concerned, and I feared for my strength. I was determined to push forward and to live on little. I filled my lungs and put on the spirit of an attempt and swung down the valley. Alas! I may not linger on that charge, for if I did I should not give you any measure of its determination and rapidity. Many little places passed me off the road on the flanks of that valley, and mostly to the left. While the morning was yet young, I came to the packed little town of Bodio, and passed the eight franc limit by taking coffee, brandy, and bread. There also were a gentleman and a lady in a carriage who wondered where I was going, and I told them (in French) 'to Rome'. It was nine in the morning when I came to Biasca. The sun was glorious, and not yet warm: it was too early for a meal. They gave me a little cold meat and bread and wine, and seven francs stood out dry above the falling tide of my money. Here at Biasca the valley took on a different aspect. It became wider and more of a countryside; the vast hills, receding, took on an appearance of less familiar majesty, and because the trend of the Ticino turned southerly some miles ahead the whole place seemed enclosed from the world. One would have said that a high mountain before me closed it in and rendered it unique and unknown, had not a wide cleft in the east argued another pass over the hills, and reminded me that there were various routes over the crest of the Alps. Indeed, this hackneyed approach to Italy which I had dreaded and despised and accepted only after a defeat was very marvellous, and this valley of the Ticino ought to stand apart and be a commonwealth of its own like Andorra or the Gresivaudan: the noble garden of the Isere within the first gates of the Dauphine. I was fatigued, and my senses lost acuteness. Still I noticed with delight the new character of the miles I pursued. A low hill just before me, jutting out apparently from the high western mountains, forbade me to see beyond it. The plain was alluvial, while copses and wood and many cultivated fields now found room where, higher up, had been nothing but the bed of a torrent with bare banks and strips of grass immediately above them; it was a place worthy of a special name and of being one lordship and a countryside. Still I went on towards that near boundary of the mountain spur and towards the point where the river rounded it, the great barrier hill before me still seeming to shut in the valley. It was noon, or thereabouts, the heat was increasing (I did not feel it greatly, for I had eaten and drunk next to nothing), when, coming round the point, there opened out before me the great fan of the lower valley and the widening and fruitful plain through which the Ticino rolls in a full river to reach Lake Major, which is its sea. Weary as I was, the vision of this sudden expansion roused me and made me forget everything except the sight before me. The valley turned well southward as it broadened. The Alps spread out on either side like great arms welcoming the southern day; the wholesome and familiar haze that should accompany summer dimmed the more distant mountains of the lakes and turned them amethystine, and something of repose and of distance was added to the landscape; something I had not seen for many days. There was room in that air and space for dreams and for many living men, for towns perhaps on the slopes, for the boats of happy men upon the waters, and everywhere for crowded and contented living. History might be in all this, and I remembered it was the entry and introduction of many armies. Singing therefore a song of Charlemagne, I swung on in a good effort to where, right under the sun, what seemed a wall and two towers on a sharp little hillock set in the bosom of the valley showed me Bellinzona. Within the central street of that city, and on its shaded side, I sank down upon a bench before the curtained door of a drinking booth and boasted that I had covered in that morning my twenty-five miles. The woman of the place came out to greet me, and asked me a question. I did not catch it (for it was in a foreign language), but guessing her to mean that I should take something, I asked for vermouth, and seeing before me a strange door built of red stone, I drew it as I sipped my glass and the woman talked to me all the while in a language I could not understand. And as I drew I became so interested that I forgot my poverty and offered her husband a glass, and then gave another to a lounging man that had watched me at work, and so from less than seven francs my money fell to six exactly, and my pencil fell from my hand, and I became afraid. 'I have done a foolish thing,' said I to myself, 'and have endangered the success of my endeavour. Nevertheless, that cannot now be remedied, and I must eat; and as eating is best where one has friends I will ask a meal of this woman.' Now had they understood French I could have bargained and chosen; as it was I had to take what they were taking, and so I sat with them as they all came out and ate together at the little table. They had soup and flesh, wine and bread, and as we ate we talked, not understanding each other, and laughing heartily at our mutual ignorance. And they charged me a franc, which brought my six francs down to five. But I, knowing my subtle duty to the world, put down twopence more, as I would have done anywhere else, for a _pour boire;_ and so with four francs and eighty centimes left, and with much less than a third of my task accomplished I rose, now drowsy with the food and wine, and saluting them, took the road once more. But as I left Bellinzona there was a task before me which was to bring my poverty to the test; for you must know that my map was a bad one, and on a very small scale, and the road from Bellinzona to Lugano has a crook in it, and it was essential to find a short cut. So I thought to myself, 'I will try to see a good map as cheaply as possible,' and I slunk off to the right into a kind of main square, and there I found a proud stationer's shop, such as would deal with rich men only, or tourists of the coarser and less humble kind. I entered with some assurance, and said in French-- 'Sir, I wish to know the hills between here and Lugano, but I am too poor to buy a map. If you will let me look at one for a few moments, I will pay you what you think fit.' The wicked stationer became like a devil for pride, and glaring at me, said-- 'Look! Look for yourself. I do not take pence. I sell maps; I do not hire them!' Then I thought, 'Shall I take a favour from such a man?' But I yielded, and did. I went up to the wall and studied a large map for some moments. Then as I left, I said to him-- 'Sir, I shall always hold in remembrance the day on which you did me this signal kindness; nor shall I forget your courtesy and goodwill.' And what do you think he did at that? Why, he burst into twenty smiles, and bowed and seemed beatified, and said: 'Whatever I can do for my customers and for visitors to this town, I shall always be delighted to do. Pray, sir, will you not look at other maps for a moment?' Now, why did he say this and grin happily like a gargoyle appeased? Did something in my accent suggest wealth? or was he naturally kindly? I do not know; but of this I am sure, one should never hate human beings merely on a first, nor on a tenth, impression. Who knows? This map-seller of Bellinzona may have been a good man; anyhow, I left him as rich as I had found him, and remembering that the true key to a forced march is to break the twenty-four hours into three pieces, and now feeling the extreme heat, I went out along the burning straight road until I found a border of grass and a hedge, and there, in spite of the dust and the continually passing carts, I lay at full length in the shade and fell into the sleep of men against whom there is no reckoning. Just as I forgot the world I heard a clock strike two. I slept for hours beneath that hedge, and when I woke the air was no longer a trembling furnace, but everything about me was wrapped round as in a cloak of southern afternoon, and was still. The sun had fallen midway, and shone in steady glory through a haze that overhung Lake Major, and the wide luxuriant estuary of the vale. There lay before me a long straight road for miles at the base of high hills; then, far off, this road seemed to end at the foot of a mountain called, I believe, Ash Mount or Cinder Hill. But my imperfect map told me that here it went sharp round to the left, choosing a pass, and then at an angle went down its way to Lugano. Now Lugano was not fifteen miles as the crow flies from where I stood, and I determined to cut off that angle by climbing the high hills just above me. They were wooded only on their slopes; their crest and much of their sides were a down-land of parched grass, with rocks appearing here and there. At the first divergent lane I made off eastward from the road and began to climb. In under the chestnut trees the lane became a number of vague beaten paths; I followed straight upwards. Here and there were little houses standing hidden in leaves, and soon I crossed the railway, and at last above the trees I saw the sight of all the Bellinzona valley to the north; and turning my eyes I saw it broaden out between its walls to where the lake lay very bright, in spite of the slight mist, and this mist gave the lake distances, and the mountains round about it were transfigured and seemed part of the mere light. The Italian lakes have that in them and their air which removes them from common living. Their beauty is not the beauty which each of us sees for himself in the world; it is rather the beauty of a special creation; the expression of some mind. To eyes innocent, and first freshly noting our great temporal inheritance--1 mean to the eyes of a boy and girl just entered upon the estate of this glorious earth, and thinking themselves immortal, this shrine of Europe might remain for ever in the memory; an enchanted experience, in which the single sense of sight had almost touched the boundary of music. They would remember these lakes as the central emotion of their youth. To mean men also who, in spite of years and of a full foreknowledge of death, yet attempt nothing but the satisfaction of sense, and pride themselves upon the taste and fineness with which they achieve this satisfaction, the Italian lakes would seem a place for habitation, and there such a man might build his house contentedly. But to ordinary Christians I am sure there is something unnatural in this beauty of theirs, and they find in it either a paradise only to be won by a much longer road to a bait and veil of sorcery, behind which lies great peril. Now, for all we know, beauty beyond the world may not really bear this double aspect; but to us on earth--if we are ordinary men--beauty of this kind has something evil. Have you not read in books how men when they see even divine visions are terrified? So as I looked at Lake Major in its halo I also was afraid, and I was glad to cross the ridge and crest of the hill and to shut out that picture framed all round with glory. But on the other side of the hill I found, to my great disgust, not as I had hoped, a fine slope down leading to Lugano, but a second interior valley and another range just opposite me. I had not the patience to climb this so I followed down the marshy land at the foot of it, passed round the end of the hill and came upon the railway, which had tunnelled under the range I had crossed. I followed the railway for a little while and at last crossed it, penetrated through a thick brushwood, forded a nasty little stream, and found myself again on the main road, wishing heartily I had never left it. It was still at least seven miles to Lugano, and though all the way was downhill, yet fatigue threatened me. These short cuts over marshy land and through difficult thickets are not short cuts at all, and I was just wondering whether, although it was already evening, I dared not rest a while, when there appeared at a turn in the road a little pink house with a yard all shaded over by a vast tree; there was also a trellis making a roof over a plain bench and table, and on the trellis grew vines. 'Into such houses,' I thought, 'the gods walk when they come down and talk with men, and such houses are the scenes of adventures. I will go in and rest.' So I walked straight into the courtyard and found there a shrivelled brown-faced man with kindly eyes, who was singing a song to himself. He could talk a little French, a little English, and his own Italian language. He had been to America and to Paris; he was full of memories; and when I had listened to these and asked for food and drink, and said I was extremely poor and would have to bargain, he made a kind of litany of 'I will not cheat you; I am an honest man; I also am poor,' and so forth. Nevertheless I argued about every item--the bread, the sausage, and the beer. Seeing that I was in necessity, he charged me about three times their value, but I beat him down to double, and lower than that he would not go. Then we sat down together at the table and ate and drank and talked of far countries; and he would interject remarks on his honesty compared with the wickedness of his neighbours, and I parried with illustrations of my poverty and need, pulling out the four francs odd that remained to me, and jingling them sorrowfully in my hand. 'With these,' I said, 'I must reach Milan.' Then I left him, and as I went down the road a slight breeze came on, and brought with it the coolness of evening. At last the falling plateau reached an edge, many little lights glittered below me, and I sat on a stone and looked down at the town of Lugano. It was nearly dark. The mountains all around had lost their mouldings, and were marked in flat silhouettes against the sky. The new lake which had just appeared below me was bright as water is at dusk, and far away in the north and east the high Alps still stood up and received the large glow of evening. Everything else was full of the coming night, and a few stars shone. Up from She town came the distant noise of music; otherwise there was no sound. I could have rested there a long time, letting my tired body lapse into the advancing darkness, and catching in my spirit the inspiration of the silence--had it not been for hunger. I knew by experience that when it is very late one cannot be served in the eating-houses of poor men, and I had not the money or any other. So I rose and shambled down the steep road into the town, and there I found a square with arcades, and in the south-eastern corner of this square just such a little tavern as I required. Entering, therefore, and taking off my hat very low, I said in French to a man who was sitting there with friends, and who was the master, 'Sir, what is the least price at which you can give me a meal?' He said, 'What do you want?' I answered, 'Soup, meat, vegetables, bread, and a little wine.' He counted on his fingers, while all his friends stared respectfully at him and me. He then gave orders, and a very young and beautiful girl set before me as excellent a meal as I had eaten for days on days, and he charged me but a franc and a half. He gave me also coffee and a little cheese, and I, feeling hearty, gave threepence over for the service, and they all very genially wished me a good-night; but their wishes were of no value to me, for the night was terrible. I had gone over forty miles; how much over I did not know. I should have slept at Lugano, but my lightening purse forbade me. I thought, 'I will push on and on; after all, I have already slept, and so broken the back of the day. I will push on till I am at the end of my tether, then I will find a wood and sleep.' Within four miles my strength abandoned me. I was not even so far down the lake as to have lost the sound of the band at Lugano floating up the still water, when I was under an imperative necessity for repose. It was perhaps ten o'clock, and the sky was open and glorious with stars. I climbed up a bank on my right, and searching for a place to lie found one under a tree near a great telegraph pole. Here was a little parched grass, and one could lie there and see the lake and wait for sleep. It was a benediction to stretch out all supported by the dry earth, with my little side-bag for pillow, and to look at the clear night above the hills, and to listen to the very distant music, and to wonder whether or not, in this strange southern country, there might not be snakes gliding about in the undergrowth. Caught in such a skein of influence I was soothed and fell asleep. For a little while I slept dreamlessly. Just so much of my living self remained as can know, without understanding, the air around. It is the life of trees. That under-part, the barely conscious base of nature which trees and sleeping men are sunk in, is not only dominated by an immeasurable calm, but is also beyond all expression contented. And in its very stuff there is a complete and changeless joy. This is surely what the great mind meant when it said to the Athenian judges that death must not be dreaded since no experience in life was so pleasurable as a deep sleep; for being wise and seeing the intercommunion of things, he could not mean extinction, which is nonsense, but a lapse into that under-part of which I speak. For there are gods also below the earth. But a dream came into my sleep and disturbed me, increasing life, and therefore bringing pain. I dreamt that I was arguing, at first easily, then violently, with another man. More and more he pressed me, and at last in my dream there were clearly spoken words, and he said to me, 'You must be wrong, because you are so cold; if you were right you would not be so cold.' And this argument seemed quite reasonable to me in my foolish dream, and I muttered to him, 'You are right, I must be in the wrong. It is very cold...' Then I half opened my eyes and saw the telegraph pole, the trees, and the lake. Far up the lake, where the Italian Frontier cuts it, the torpedo-boats, looking for smugglers, were casting their search-lights. One of the roving beams fell full on me and I became broad awake. I stood up. It was indeed cold, with a kind of clinging and grasping chill that was not to be expressed in degrees of heat, but in dampness perhaps, or perhaps in some subtler influence of the air. I sat on the bank and gazed at the lake in some despair. Certainly I could not sleep again without a covering cloth, and it was now past midnight, nor did I know of any house, whether if I took the road I should find one in a mile, or in two, or in five. And, note you, I was utterly exhausted. That enormous march from Faido, though it had been wisely broken by the siesta at Bellinzona, needed more than a few cold hours under trees, and I thought of the three poor francs in my pocket, and of the thirty-eight miles remaining to Milan. The stars were beyond the middle of their slow turning, and I watched them, splendid and in order, for sympathy, as I also regularly, but slowly and painfully, dragged myself along my appointed road. But in a very short time a great, tall, square, white house stood right on the roadway, and to my intense joy I saw a light in one of its higher windows. Standing therefore beneath, I cried at the top of my voice, 'Hola!' five or six times. A woman put her head out of the window into the fresh night, and said, 'You cannot sleep here; we have no rooms,' then she remained looking out of her window and ready to analyse the difficulties of the moment; a good-natured woman and fat. In a moment another window at the same level, but farther from me, opened, and a man leaned out, just as those alternate figures come in and out of the toys that tell the weather. 'It is impossible,' said the man; 'we have no rooms.' Then they talked a great deal together, while I shouted, _'Quid vis? Non e possibile dormire in la foresta! e troppo fredo! Vis ne me assassinare? Veni de Lugano--e piu--non e possibile ritornare!'_ and so forth. They answered in strophe and antistrophe, sometimes together in full chorus, and again in semichorus, and with variations, that it was impossible. Then a light showed in the chinks of their great door; the lock grated, and it opened. A third person, a tall youth, stood in the hall. I went forward into the breach and occupied the hall. He blinked at me above a candle, and murmured, as a man apologizing 'It is not possible.' Whatever I have in common with these southerners made me understand that I had won, so I smiled at him and nodded; he also smiled, and at once beckoned to me. He led me upstairs, and showed me a charming bed in a clean room, where there was a portrait of the Pope, looking cunning; the charge for that delightful and human place was sixpence, and as I said good-night to the youth, the man and woman from above said good-night also. And this was my first introduction to the most permanent feature in the Italian character. The good people! When I woke and rose I was the first to be up and out. It was high morning. The sun was not yet quite over the eastern mountains, but I had slept, though so shortly yet at great ease, and the world seemed new and full of a merry mind. The sky was coloured like that high metal work which you may see in the studios of Paris; there was gold in it fading into bronze, and above, the bronze softened to silver. A little morning breeze, courageous and steady, blew down the lake and provoked the water to glad ripples, and there was nothing that did not move and take pleasure in the day. The Lake of Lugano is of a complicated shape, and has many arms. It is at this point very narrow indeed, and shallow too; a mole, pierced at either end with low arches, has here been thrown across it, and by this mole the railway and the road pass over to the eastern shore. I turned in this long causeway and noticed the northern view. On the farther shore was an old village and some pleasure-houses of rich men on the shore; the boats also were beginning to go about the water. These boats were strange, unlike other boats; they were covered with hoods, and looked like floating waggons. This was to shield the rowers from the sun. Far off a man was sailing with a little brown sprit-sail. It was morning, and all the world was alive. Coffee in the village left me two francs and two pennies. I still thought the thing could be done, so invigorating and deceiving are the early hours, and coming farther down the road to an old and beautiful courtyard on the left, I drew it, and hearing a bell at hand I saw a tumble-down church with trees before it, and went in to Mass; and though it was a little low village Mass, yet the priest had three acolytes to serve it, and (true and gracious mark of a Catholic country!) these boys were restless and distracted at their office. You may think it trivial, but it was certainly a portent. One of the acolytes had half his head clean shaved! A most extraordinary sight! I could not take my eyes from it, and I heartily wished I had an Omen-book with me to tell me what it might mean. When there were oracles on earth, before Pan died, this sight would have been of the utmost use. For I should have consulted the oracle woman for a Lira--at Biasca for instance, or in the lonely woods of the Cinder Mountain; and, after a lot of incense and hesitation, and wrestling with the god, the oracle would have accepted Apollo and, staring like one entranced, she would have chanted verses which, though ambiguous, would at least have been a guide. Thus: _Matutinus adest ubi Vesper, et accipiens te Saepe recusatum voces intelligit hospes Rusticus ignotas notas, ac flumina tellus Occupat--In sancto tum, tum, stans Aede caveto Tonsuram Hirsuti Capitis, via namque pedestrem Ferrea praeveniens cursum, peregrine, laborem Pro pietate tuâ inceptum frustratur, amore Antiqui Ritus alto sub Numine Romae._ LECTOR. What Hoggish great Participles! AUCTOR. Well, well, you see it was but a rustic oracle at 9 3/4 d. the revelation, and even that is supposing silver at par. Let us translate it for the vulgar: When early morning seems but eve And they that still refuse receive: When speech unknown men understand; And floods are crossed upon dry land. Within the Sacred Walls beware The Shaven Head that boasts of Hair, For when the road attains the rail The Pilgrim's great attempt shall fail. Of course such an oracle might very easily have made me fear too much. The 'shaven head' I should have taken for a priest, especially if it was to be met with 'in a temple'--it might have prevented me entering a church, which would have been deplorable. Then I might have taken it to mean that I should never have reached Rome, which would have been a monstrous weight upon my mind. Still, as things unfolded themselves, the oracle would have become plainer and plainer, and I felt the lack of it greatly. For, I repeat, I had certainly received an omen. The road now neared the end of the lake, and the town called Capo di Lago, or 'Lake-head', lay off to my right. I saw also that in a very little while I should abruptly find the plains. A low hill some five miles ahead of me was the last roll of the mountains, and just above me stood the last high crest, a precipitous peak of bare rock, up which there ran a cog-railway to some hotel or other. I passed through an old town under the now rising heat; I passed a cemetery in the Italian manner, with marble figures like common living men. The road turned to the left, and I was fairly on the shoulder of the last glacis. I stood on the Alps at their southern bank, and before me was Lombardy. Also in this ending of the Swiss canton one was more evidently in Italy than ever. A village perched upon a rock, deep woods and a ravine below it, its houses and its church, all betrayed the full Italian spirit. The frontier town was Chiasso. I hesitated with reverence before touching the sacred soil which I had taken so long to reach, and I longed to be able to drink its health; but though I had gone, I suppose, ten miles, and though the heat was increasing, I would not stop; for I remembered the two francs, and my former certitude of reaching Milan was shaking and crumbling. The great heat of midday would soon be on me, I had yet nearly thirty miles to go, and my bad night began to oppress me. I crossed the frontier, which is here an imaginary line. Two slovenly customs-house men asked me if I had anything dutiable on me. I said No, and it was evident enough, for in my little sack or pocket was nothing but a piece of bread. If they had applied the American test, and searched me for money, then indeed they could have turned me back, and I should have been forced to go into the fields a quarter of a mile or so and come into their country by a path instead of a highroad. This necessity was spared me. I climbed slowly up the long slope that hides Como, then I came down upon that lovely city and saw its frame of hills and its lake below me. These things are not like things seen by the eyes. I say it again, they are like what one feels when music is played. I entered Como between ten and eleven faint for food, and then a new interest came to fill my mind with memories of this great adventure. The lake was in flood, and all the town was water. Como dry must be interesting enough; Como flooded is a marvel. What else is Venice? And here is a Venice at the foot of high mountains, and _all_ in the water, no streets or squares; a fine even depth of three feet and a half or so for navigators, much what you have in the Spitway in London River at low spring tides. There were a few boats about, but the traffic and pleasure of Como was passing along planks laid on trestles over the water here and there like bridges; and for those who were in haste, and could afford it (such as take cabs in London), there were wheelbarrows, coster carts, and what not, pulled about by men for hire; and it was a sight to remember all one's life to see the rich men of Como squatting on these carts and barrows, and being pulled about over the water by the poor men of Como, being, indeed, an epitome of all modern sociology and economics and religion and organized charity and strenuousness and liberalism and sophistry generally. For my part I was determined to explore this curious town in the water, and I especially desired to see it on the lake side, because there one would get the best impression of its being really an aquatic town; so I went northward, as I was directed, and came quite unexpectedly upon the astonishing cathedral. It seemed built of polished marble, and it was in every way so exquisite in proportion, so delicate in sculpture, and so triumphant in attitude, that I thought to myself-- 'No wonder men praise Italy if this first Italian town has such a building as this.' But, as you will learn later, many of the things praised are ugly, and are praised only by certain followers of charlatans. So I went on till I got to the lake, and there I found a little port about as big as a dining-room (for the Italian lakes play at being little seas. They have little ports, little lighthouses, little fleets for war, and little custom-houses, and little storms and little lines of steamers. Indeed, if one wanted to give a rich child a perfect model or toy, one could not give him anything better than an Italian lake), and when I had long gazed at the town, standing, as it seemed, right in the lake, I felt giddy, and said to myself, 'This is the lack of food,' for I had eaten nothing but my coffee and bread eleven miles before, at dawn. So I pulled out my two francs, and going into a little shop, I bought bread, sausage, and a very little wine for fourpence, and with one franc eighty left I stood in the street eating and wondering what my next step should be. It seemed on the map perhaps twenty-five, perhaps twenty-six miles to Milan. It was now nearly noon, and as hot as could be. I might, if I held out, cover the distance in eight or nine hours, but I did not see myself walking in the middle heat on the plain of Lombardy, and even if I had been able I should only have got into Milan at dark or later, when the post office (with my money in it) would be shut; and where could I sleep, for my one franc eighty would be gone? A man covering these distances must have one good meal a day or he falls ill. I could beg, but there was the risk of being arrested, and that means an indefinite waste of time, perhaps several days; and time, that had defeated me at the Gries, threatened me here again. I had nothing to sell or to pawn, and I had no friends. The Consul I would not attempt; I knew too much of such things as Consuls when poor and dirty men try them. Besides which, there was no Consul I pondered. I went into the cool of the cathedral to sit in its fine darkness and think better. I sat before a shrine where candles were burning, put up for their private intentions by the faithful. Of many, two had nearly burnt out. I watched them in their slow race for extinction when a thought took me. 'I will,' said I to myself, 'use these candles for an ordeal or heavenly judgement. The left hand one shall be for attempting the road at the risk of illness or very dangerous failure; the right hand one shall stand for my going by rail till I come to that point on the railway where one franc eighty will take me, and thence walking into Milan:--and heaven defend the right.' They were a long time going out, and they fell evenly. At last the right hand one shot up the long flame that precedes the death of candles; the contest took on interest, and even excitement, when, just as I thought the left hand certain of winning, it went out without guess or warning, like a second-rate person leaving this world for another. The right hand candle waved its flame still higher, as though in triumph, outlived its colleague just the moment to enjoy glory, and then in its turn went fluttering down the dark way from which they say there is no return. None may protest against the voice of the Gods. I went straight to the nearest railway station (for there are two), and putting down one franc eighty, asked in French for a ticket to whatever station that sum would reach down the line. The ticket came out marked Milan, and I admitted the miracle and confessed the finger of Providence. There was no change, and as I got into the train I had become that rarest and ultimate kind of traveller, the man without any money whatsoever-- without passport, without letters, without food or wine; it would be interesting to see what would follow if the train broke down. I had marched 378 miles and some three furlongs, or thereabouts. Thus did I break--but by a direct command--the last and dearest of my vows, and as the train rumbled off, I took luxury in the rolling wheels. I thought of that other medieval and papistical pilgrim hobbling along rather than 'take advantage of any wheeled thing', and I laughed at him. Now if Moroso-Malodoroso or any other Non-Aryan, Antichristian, over-inductive, statistical, brittle-minded man and scientist, sees anything remarkable in one self laughing at another self, let me tell him and all such for their wide-eyed edification and astonishment that I knew a man once that had fifty-six selves (there would have been fifty-seven, but for the poet in him that died young)--he could evolve them at will, and they were very useful to lend to the parish priest when he wished to make up a respectable Procession on Holy-days. And I knew another man that could make himself so tall as to look over the heads of the scientists as a pine-tree looks over grasses, and again so small as to discern very clearly the thick coating or dust of wicked pride that covers them up in a fine impenetrable coat. So much for the moderns. The train rolled on. I noticed Lombardy out of the windows. It is flat. I listened to the talk of the crowded peasants in the train. I did not understand it. I twice leaned out to see if Milan were not standing up before me out of the plain, but I saw nothing. Then I fell asleep, and when I woke suddenly it was because we were in the terminus of that noble great town, which I then set out to traverse in search of my necessary money and sustenance. It was yet but early in the afternoon. What a magnificent city is Milan! The great houses are all of stone, and stand regular and in order, along wide straight streets. There are swift cars, drawn by electricity, for such as can afford them. Men are brisk and alert even in the summer heats, and there are shops of a very good kind, though a trifle showy. There are many newspapers to help the Milanese to be better men and to cultivate charity and humility; there are banks full of paper money; there are soldiers, good pavements, and all that man requires to fulfil him, soul and body; cafés, arcades, mutoscopes, and every sign of the perfect state. And the whole centres in a splendid open square, in the midst of which is the cathedral, which is justly the most renowned in the world. My pilgrimage is to Rome, my business is with lonely places, hills, and the recollection of the spirit. It would be waste to describe at length this mighty capital. The mists and the woods, the snows and the interminable way, had left me ill-suited for the place, and I was ashamed. I sat outside a café, opposite the cathedral, watching its pinnacles of light; but I was ashamed. Perhaps I did the master a hurt by sitting there in his fine great café, unkempt, in such clothes, like a tramp; but he was courteous in spite of his riches, and I ordered a very expensive drink for him also, in order to make amends. I showed him my sketches, and told him of my adventures in French, and he was kind enough to sit opposite me, and to take that drink with me. He talked French quite easily, as it seems do all such men in the principal towns of north Italy. Still, the broad day shamed me, and only when darkness came did I feel at ease. I wandered in the streets till I saw a small eating shop, and there I took a good meal. But when one is living the life of the poor, one sees how hard are the great cities. Everything was dearer, and worse, than in the simple countrysides. The innkeeper and his wife were kindly, but their eyes showed that they had often to suspect men. They gave me a bed, but it was a franc and more, and I had to pay before going upstairs to it. The walls were mildewed, the place ramshackle and evil, the rickety bed not clean, the door broken and warped, and that night I was oppressed with the vision of poverty. Dirt and clamour and inhuman conditions surrounded me. Yet the people meant well. With the first light I got up quietly, glad to find the street again and the air. I stood in the crypt of the cathedral to hear the Ambrosian Mass, and it was (as I had expected) like any other, save for a kind of second _lavabo_ before the Elevation. To read the distorted stupidity of the north one might have imagined that in the Ambrosian ritual the priest put a _non_ before the _credo,_ and _nec's_ at each clause of it, and renounced his baptismal vows at the _kyrie;_ but the Milanese are Catholics like any others, and the northern historians are either liars or ignorant men. And I know three that are both together. Then I set out down the long street that leads south out of Milan, and was soon in the dull and sordid suburb of the Piacenzan way. The sky was grey, the air chilly, and in a little while--alas!--it rained. Lombardy is an alluvial plain. That is the pretty way of putting it. The truth is more vivid if you say that Lombardy is as flat as a marsh, and that it is made up of mud. Of course this mud dries when the sun shines on it, but mud it is and mud it will remain; and that day, as the rain began falling, mud it rapidly revealed itself to be; and the more did it seem to be mud when one saw how the moistening soil showed cracks from the last day's heat. Lombardy has no forests, but any amount of groups of trees; moreover (what is very remarkable), it is all cultivated in fields more or less square. These fields have ditches round them, full of mud and water running slowly, and some of them are themselves under water in order to cultivate rice. All these fields have a few trees bordering them, apart from the standing clumps; but these trees are not very high. There are no open views in Lombardy, and Lombardy is all the same. Irregular large farmsteads stand at random all up and down the country; no square mile of Lombardy is empty. There are many, many little villages; many straggling small towns about seven to eight miles apart, and a great number of large towns from thirty to fifty miles apart. Indeed, this very road to Piacenza, which the rain now covered with a veil of despair, was among the longest stretches between any two large towns, although it was less than fifty miles. On the map, before coming to this desolate place, there seemed a straighter and a better way to Rome than this great road. There is a river called the Lambro, which comes east of Milan and cuts the Piacenzan road at a place called Melegnano. It seemed to lead straight down to a point on the Po, a little above Piacenza. This stream one could follow (so it seemed), and when it joined the Po get a boat or ferry, and see on the other side the famous Trebbia, where Hannibal conquered and Joubert fell, and so make straight on for the Apennine. Since it is always said in books that Lombardy is a furnace in summer, and that whole great armies have died of the heat there, this river bank would make a fine refuge. Clear and delicious water, more limpid than glass, would reflect and echo the restless poplars, and would make tolerable or even pleasing the excessive summer. Not so. It was a northern mind judging by northern things that came to this conclusion. There is not in all Lombardy a clear stream, but every river and brook is rolling mud. In the rain, not heat, but a damp and penetrating chill was the danger. There is no walking on the banks of the rivers; they are cliffs of crumbling soil, jumbled anyhow. Man may, as Pinkerton (Sir Jonas Pinkerton) writes, be master of his fate, but he has a precious poor servant. It is easier to command a lapdog or a mule for a whole day than one's own fate for half-an-hour. Nevertheless, though it was apparent that I should have to follow the main road for a while, I determined to make at last to the right of it, and to pass through a place called 'Old Lodi', for I reasoned thus: 'Lodi is the famous town. How much more interesting must Old Lodi be which is the mothertown of Lodi?' Also, Old Lodi brought me back again on the straight line to Rome, and I foolishly thought it might be possible to hear there of some straight path down the Lambro (for that river still possessed me somewhat). Therefore, after hours and hours of trudging miserably along the wide highway in the wretched and searching rain, after splashing through tortuous Melegnano, and not even stopping to wonder if it was the place of the battle, after noting in despair the impossible Lambro, I came, caring for nothing, to the place where a secondary road branches off to the right over a level crossing and makes for Lodi Vecchio. It was not nearly midday, but I had walked perhaps fifteen miles, and had only rested once in a miserable Trattoria. In less than three miles I came to that unkempt and lengthy village, founded upon dirt and living in misery, and through the quiet, cold, persistent rain I splashed up the main street. I passed wretched, shivering dogs and mournful fowls that took a poor refuge against walls; passed a sad horse that hung its head in the wet and stood waiting for a master, till at last I reached the open square where the church stood, then I knew that I had seen all Old Lodi had to offer me. So, going into an eating-house, or inn, opposite the church, I found a girl and her mother serving, and I saluted them, but there was no fire, and my heart sank to the level of that room, which was, I am sure, no more than fifty-four degrees. Why should the less gracious part of a pilgrimage be specially remembered? In life were remember joy best--that is what makes us sad by contrast; pain somewhat, especially if it is acute; but dulness never. And a book--which has it in its own power to choose and to emphasize--has no business to record dulness. What did I at Lodi Vecchio? I ate; I dried my clothes before a tepid stove in a kitchen. I tried to make myself understood by the girl and her mother. I sat at a window and drew the ugly church on principle. Oh, the vile sketch! Worthy of that Lombard plain, which they had told me was so full of wonderful things. I gave up all hope of by-roads, and I determined to push back obliquely to the highway again--obliquely in order to save time! Nepios! These 'by-roads' of the map turned out in real life to be all manner of abominable tracks. Some few were metalled, some were cart-ruts merely, some were open lanes of rank grass; and along most there went a horrible ditch, and in many fields the standing water proclaimed desolation. IN so far as I can be said to have had a way at all, I lost it. I could not ask my way because my only ultimate goal was Piacenza, and that was far off. I did not know the name of any place between. Two or three groups of houses I passed, and sometimes church towers glimmered through the rain. I passed a larger and wider road than the rest, but obviously not my road; I pressed on and passed another; and by this time, having ploughed up Lombardy for some four hours, I was utterly lost. I no longer felt the north, and, for all I knew, I might be going backwards. The only certain thing was that I was somewhere in the belt between the highroad and the Lambro, and that was little enough to know at the close of such a day. Grown desperate, I clamoured within my mind for a miracle; and it was not long before I saw a little bent man sitting on a crazy cart and going ahead of me at a pace much slower than a walk--the pace of a horse crawling. I caught him up, and, doubting much whether he would understand a word, I said to him repeatedly-- _'La granda via? La via a Piacenza?'_ He shook his head as though to indicate that this filthy lane was not the road. Just as I had despaired of learning anything, he pointed with his arm away to the right, perpendicularly to the road we were on, and nodded. He moved his hand up and down. I had been going north! On getting this sign I did not wait for a cross road, but jumped the little ditch and pushed through long grass, across further ditches, along the side of patches of growing corn, heedless of the huge weight on my boots and of the oozing ground, till I saw against the rainy sky a line of telegraph poles. For the first time since they were made the sight of them gave a man joy. There was a long stagnant pond full of reeds between me and the railroad; but, as I outflanked it, I came upon a road that crossed the railway at a level and led me into the great Piacenzan way. Almost immediately appeared a village. It was a hole called Secugnano, and there I entered a house where a bush hanging above the door promised entertainment, and an old hobbling woman gave me food and drink and a bed. The night had fallen, and upon the roof above me I could hear the steady rain. The next morning--Heaven preserve the world from evil!--it was still raining. LECTOR. It does not seem to me that this part of your book is very entertaining. AUCTOR. I know that; but what am I to do? LECTOR. Why, what was the next point in the pilgrimage that was even tolerably noteworthy? AUCTOR. I suppose the Bridge of Boats. LECTOR. And how far on was that? AUCTOR. About fourteen miles, more or less... I passed through a town with a name as long as my arm, and I suppose the Bridge of Boats must have been nine miles on after that. LECTOR. And it rained all the time, and there was mud? AUCTOR. Precisely. LECTOR. Well, then, let us skip it and tell stories. AUCTOR. With all my heart. And since you are such a good judge of literary poignancy, do you begin. LECTOR. I will, and I draw my inspiration from your style. Once upon a time there was a man who was born in Croydon, and whose name was Charles Amieson Blake. He went to Rugby at twelve and left it at seventeen. He fell in love twice and then went to Cambridge till he was twenty-three. Having left Cambridge he fell in love more mildly, and was put by his father into a government office, where he began at _180_ pounds a year. At thirty-five he was earning 500 pounds a year, and perquisites made 750 pounds a year. He met a pleasant lady and fell in love quite a little compared with the other times. She had 250 pounds a year. That made _1000_ pounds a year. They married and had three children--Richard, Amy, and Cornelia. He rose to a high government position, was knighted, retired at sixty-three, and died at sixty-seven. He is buried at Kensal Green... AUCTOR. Thank you, Lector, that is a very good story. It is simple and full of plain human touches. You know how to deal with the facts of everyday life... It requires a master-hand. Tell me, Lector, had this man any adventures? LECTOR. None that I know of. AUCTOR. Had he opinions? LECTOR. Yes. I forgot to tell you he was a Unionist. He spoke two foreign languages badly. He often went abroad to Assisi, Florence, and Boulogne... He left 7,623 pounds 6s. 8d., and a house and garden at Sutton. His wife lives there still. AUCTOR. Oh! LECTOR. It is the human story... the daily task! AUCTOR. Very true, my dear Lector... the common lot... Now let me tell my story. It is about the Hole that could not be Filled Up. LECTOR. Oh no! Auctor, no! That is the oldest story in the-- AUCTOR. Patience, dear Lector, patience! I will tell it well. Besides which I promise you it shall never be told again. I will copyright it. Well, once there was a Learned Man who had a bargain with the Devil that he should warn the Devil's emissaries of all the good deeds done around him so that they could be upset, and he in turn was to have all those pleasant things of this life which the Devil's allies usually get, to wit a Comfortable Home, Self-Respect, good health, 'enough money for one's rank', and generally what is called 'a happy useful life'--_till_ midnight of All-Hallowe'en in the last year of the nineteenth century. So this Learned Man did all he was required, and daily would inform the messenger imps of the good being done or prepared in the neighbourhood, and they would upset it; so that the place he lived in from a nice country town became a great Centre of Industry, full of wealth and desirable family mansions and street property, and was called in hell 'Depot B' (Depot A you may guess at). But at last toward the 15th of October 1900, the Learned Man began to shake in his shoes and to dread the judgement; for, you see, he had not the comfortable ignorance of his kind, and was compelled to believe in the Devil willy-nilly, and, as I say, he shook in his shoes. So he bethought him of a plan to cheat the Devil, and the day before All-Hallowe'en he cut a very small round hole in the floor of his study, just near the fireplace, right through down to the cellar. Then he got a number of things that do great harm (newspapers, legal documents, unpaid bills, and so forth) and made ready for action. Next morning when the little imps came for orders as usual, after prayers, he took them down into the cellar, and pointing out the hole in the ceiling, he said to them: 'My friends, this little hole is a mystery. It communicates, I believe, with the chapel; but I cannot find the exit. All I know is, that some pious person or angel, or what not, desirous to do good, slips into it every day whatever he thinks may be a cause of evil in the neighbourhood, hoping thus to destroy it' (in proof of which statement he showed them a scattered heap of newspapers on the floor of the cellar beneath the hole). 'And the best thing you can do,' he added, 'is to stay here and take them away as far as they come down and put them back into circulation again. Tut! tut!' he added, picking up a moneylender's threatening letter to a widow, 'it is astonishing how these people interfere with the most sacred rights! Here is a letter actually stolen from the post! Pray see that it is delivered.' So he left the little imps at work, and fed them from above with all manner of evil-doing things, which they as promptly drew into the cellar, and at intervals flew away with, to put them into circulation again. That evening, at about half-past eleven, the Devil came to fetch the Learned Man, and found him seated at his fine great desk, writing. The Learned Man got up very affably to receive the Devil, and offered him a chair by the fire, just near the little round hole. 'Pray don't move,' said the Devil; 'I came early on purpose not to disturb you.' 'You are very good,' replied the Learned Man. 'The fact is, I have to finish my report on Lady Grope's Settlement among our Poor in the Bull Ring--it is making some progress. But their condition is heart-breaking, my dear sir; heart-breaking!' 'I can well believe it,' said the Devil sadly and solemnly, leaning back in his chair, and pressing his hands together like a roof. 'The poor in our great towns, Sir Charles' (for the Learned Man had been made a Baronet), 'the condition, I say, of the--Don't I feel a draught?' he added abruptly. For the Devil can't bear draughts. 'Why,' said the Learned Man, as though ashamed, 'just near your chair there _is_ a little hole that I have done my best to fill up, but somehow it seemed impossible to fill it... I don't know...' The Devil hates excuses, and is above all practical, so he just whipped the soul of a lawyer out of his side-pocket, tied a knot in it to stiffen it, and shoved it into the hole. 'There!' said the Devil contentedly; 'if you had taken a piece of rag, or what not, you might yourself... Hulloa!...' He looked down and saw the hole still gaping, and he felt a furious draught coming up again. He wondered a little, and then muttered: 'It's a pity I have on my best things. I never dare crease them, and I have nothing in my pockets to speak of, otherwise I might have brought something bigger.' He felt in his left-hand trouser pocket, and fished out a pedant, crumpled him carefully into a ball, and stuffed him hard into the hole, so that he suffered agonies. Then the Devil watched carefully. The soul of the pedant was at first tugged as if from below, then drawn slowly down, and finally shot off out of sight. 'This is a most extraordinary thing!' said the Devil. 'It is the draught. It is very strong between the joists,' ventured the Learned Man. 'Fiddle-sticks ends!' shouted the Devil. 'It is a trick! But I've never been caught yet, and I never will be.' He clapped his hands, and a whole host of his followers poured in through the windows with mortgages, Acts of Parliament, legal decisions, declarations of war, charters to universities, patents for medicines, naturalization orders, shares in gold mines, specifications, prospectuses, water companies' reports, publishers' agreements, letters patent, freedoms of cities, and, in a word, all that the Devil controls in the way of hole-stopping rubbish; and the Devil, kneeling on the floor, stuffed them into the hole like a madman. But as fast as he stuffed, the little imps below (who had summoned a number of their kind to their aid also) pulled it through and carted it away. And the Devil, like one possessed, lashed the floor with his tail, and his eyes glared like coals of fire, and the sweat ran down his face, and he breathed hard, and pushed every imaginable thing he had into the hole so swiftly that at last his documents and parchments looked like streaks and flashes. But the loyal little imps, not to be beaten, drew them through into the cellar as fast as machinery, and whirled them to their assistants; and all the poor lost souls who had been pressed into the service were groaning that their one holiday in the year was being filched from them, when, just as the process was going on so fast that it roared like a printing-machine in full blast, the clock in the hall struck twelve. The Devil suddenly stopped and stood up. 'Out of my house,' said the Learned Man; 'out of my house! I've had enough of you, and I've no time for fiddle-faddle! It's past twelve, and I've won!' The Devil, though still panting, smiled a diabolical smile, and pulling out his repeater (which he had taken as a perquisite from the body of a member of Parliament), said, 'I suppose you keep Greenwich time?' 'Certainly!' said Sir Charles. 'Well,' said the Devil, 'so much the worse for you to live in Suffolk. You're four minutes fast, so I'll trouble you to come along with me; and I warn you that any words you now say may be used against...' At this point the Learned Man's patron saint, who thought things had gone far enough, materialized himself and coughed gently. They both looked round, and there was St Charles sitting in the easy chair. 'So far,' murmured the Saint to the Devil suavely, 'so far from being four minutes too early, you are exactly a year too late.' On saying this, the Saint smiled a genial, priestly smile, folded his hands, twiddled his thumbs slowly round and round, and gazed in a fatherly way at the Devil. 'What do you mean?' shouted the Devil. 'What I say,' said St Charles calmly; '1900 is not the last year of the nineteenth century; it is the first year of the twentieth.' 'Oh!' sneered the Devil, 'are you an anti-vaccinationist as well? Now, look here' (and he began counting on his fingers); 'supposing in the year 1 B.C....' 'I never argue,' said St Charles. 'Well, all I know is,' answered the Devil with some heat, 'that in this matter as in most others, thank the Lord, I have on my side all the historians and all the scientists, all the universities, all the...' 'And I,' interrupted St Charles, waving his hand like a gentleman (he is a Borromeo), 'I have the Pope!' At this the Devil gave a great howl, and disappeared in a clap of thunder, and was never seen again till his recent appearance at Brighton. So the Learned Man was saved; but hardly; for he had to spend five hundred years in Purgatory catechizing such heretics and pagans as got there, and instructing them in the true faith. And with the more muscular he passed a knotty time. You do not see the river Po till you are close to it. Then, a little crook in the road being passed, you come between high trees, and straight out before you, level with you, runs the road into and over a very wide mass of tumbling water. It does not look like a bridge, it looks like a quay. It does not rise; it has all the appearance of being a strip of road shaved off and floated on the water. All this is because it passes over boats, as do some bridges over the Rhine. (At Cologne, I believe, and certainly at Kiel--for I once sat at the end of that and saw a lot of sad German soldiers drilling, a memory which later made me understand (1) why they can be out-marched by Latins; (2) why they impress travellers and civilians; (3) why the governing class in Germany take care to avoid common service; (4) why there is no promotion from the ranks; and (5) why their artillery is too rigid and not quick enough. It also showed me something intimate and fundamental about the Germans which Tacitus never understood and which all our historians miss--they are _of necessity_ histrionic. Note I do not say it is a vice of theirs. It is a necessity of theirs, an appetite. They must see themselves on a stage. Whether they do things well or ill, whether it is their excellent army with its ridiculous parade, or their eighteenth-century _sans-soucis_ with avenues and surprises, or their national legends with gods in wigs and strong men in tights, they _must_ be play-actors to be happy and therefore to be efficient; and if I were Lord of Germany, and desired to lead my nation and to be loved by them, I should put great golden feathers on my helmet, I should use rhetorical expressions, spout monologues in public, organize wide cavalry charges at reviews, and move through life generally to the crashing of an orchestra. For by doing this even a vulgar, short, and diseased man, who dabbled in stocks and shares and was led by financiers, could become a hero, and do his nation good.) LECTOR. What is all this? AUCTOR. It is a parenthesis. LECTOR. It is good to know the names of the strange things one meets with on one's travels. AUCTOR. So I return to where I branched off, and tell you that the river Po is here crossed by a bridge of boats. It is a very large stream. Half-way across, it is even a trifle uncomfortable to be so near the rush of the water on the trembling pontoons. And on that day its speed and turbulence were emphasized by the falling rain. For the marks of the rain on the water showed the rapidity of the current, and the silence of its fall framed and enhanced the swirl of the great river. Once across, it is a step up into Piacenza--a step through mud and rain. On my right was that plain where Barbarossa received, and was glorified by, the rising life of the twelfth century; there the renaissance of our Europe saw the future glorious for the first time since the twilight of Rome, and being full of morning they imagined a new earth and gave it a Lord. It was at Roncaglia, I think in spring, and I wish I had been there. For in spring even the Lombard plain they say is beautiful and generous, but in summer I know by experience that it is cold, brutish, and wet. And so in Piacenza it rained and there was mud, till I came to a hotel called the Moor's Head, in a very narrow street, and entering it I discovered a curious thing: the Italians live in palaces: I might have known it. They are the impoverished heirs of a great time; its garments cling to them, but their rooms are too large for the modern penury. I found these men eating in a great corridor, in a hall, as they might do in a palace. I found high, painted ceilings and many things of marble, a vast kitchen, and all the apparatus of the great houses--at the service of a handful of contented, unknown men. So in England, when we have worked out our full fate, happier but poorer men will sit in the faded country-houses (a community, or an inn, or impoverished squires), and rough food will be eaten under mouldering great pictures, and there will be offices or granaries in the galleries of our castles; and where Lord Saxonthorpe (whose real name is Hauptstein) now plans our policy, common Englishmen will return to the simpler life, and there will be dogs, and beer, and catches upon winter evenings. For Italy also once gathered by artifice the wealth that was not of her making. He was a good man, the innkeeper of this palace. He warmed me at his fire in his enormous kitchen, and I drank Malaga to the health of the cooks. I ate of their food, I bought a bottle of a new kind of sweet wine called 'Vino Dolce', and--I took the road. LECTOR. And did you see nothing of Piacenza? AUCTOR. Nothing, Lector; it was raining, and there was mud. I stood in front of the cathedral on my way out, and watched it rain. It rained all along the broad and splendid Emilian Way. I had promised myself great visions of the Roman soldiery passing up that eternal road; it still was stamped with the imperial mark, but the rain washed out its interest, and left me cold. The Apennines also, rising abruptly from the plain, were to have given me revelations at sunset; they gave me none. Their foothills appeared continually on my right, they themselves were veiled. And all these miles of road fade into the confused memory of that intolerable plain. The night at Firenzuola, the morning (the second morning of this visitation) still cold, still heartless, and sodden with the abominable weather, shall form no part of this book. Things grand and simple of their nature are possessed, as you know, of a very subtle flavour. The larger music, the more majestic lengths of verse called epics, the exact in sculpture, the classic drama, the most absolute kinds of wine, require a perfect harmony of circumstance for their appreciation. Whatever is strong, poignant, and immediate in its effect is not so difficult to suit; farce, horror, rage, or what not, these a man can find in the arts, even when his mood may be heavy or disturbed; just as (to take their parallel in wines) strong Beaune will always rouse a man. But that which is cousin to the immortal spirit, and which has, so to speak, no colour but mere light, _that_ needs for its recognition so serene an air of abstraction and of content as makes its pleasure seem rare in this troubled life, and causes us to recall it like a descent of the gods. For who, having noise around him, can strike the table with pleasure at reading the Misanthrope, or in mere thirst or in fatigue praise Chinon wine? Who does not need for either of these perfect things Recollection, a variety of according conditions, and a certain easy Plenitude of the Mind? So it is with the majesty of Plains, and with the haunting power of their imperial roads. All you that have had your souls touched at the innermost, and have attempted to release yourselves in verse and have written trash--(and who know it)--be comforted. You shall have satisfaction at last, and you shall attain fame in some other fashion--perhaps in private theatricals or perhaps in journalism. You will be granted a prevision of complete success, and your hearts shall be filled--but you must not expect to find this mood on the Emilian Way when it is raining. All you that feel youth slipping past you and that are desolate at the approach of age, be merry; it is not what it looks like from in front and from outside. There is a glory in all completion, and all good endings are but shining transitions. There will come a sharp moment of revelation when you shall bless the effect of time. But this divine moment--- it is not on the Emilian Way in the rain that you should seek it. All you that have loved passionately and have torn your hearts asunder in disillusions, do not imagine that things broken cannot be mended by the good angels. There is a kind of splice called 'the long splice' which makes a cut rope seem what it was before; it is even stronger than before, and can pass through a block. There will descend upon you a blessed hour when you will be convinced as by a miracle, and you will suddenly understand the _redintegratio amoris (amoris redintegratio,_ a Latin phrase). But this hour you will not receive in the rain on the Emilian Way. Here then, next day, just outside a town called Borgo, past the middle of morning, the rain ceased. Its effect was still upon the slippery and shining road, the sky was still fast and leaden, when, in a distaste for their towns, I skirted the place by a lane that runs westward of the houses, and sitting upon a low wall, I looked up at the Apennines, which were now plain above me, and thought over my approaching passage through those hills. But here I must make clear by a map the mass of mountains which I was about to attempt, and in which I forded so many rivers, met so many strange men and beasts, saw such unaccountable sights, was imprisoned, starved, frozen, haunted, delighted, burnt up, and finally refreshed in Tuscany--in a word, where I had the most extraordinary and unheard-of adventures that ever diversified the life of man. The straight line to Rome runs from Milan not quite through Piacenza, but within a mile or two of that city. Then it runs across the first folds of the Apennines, and gradually diverges from the Emilian Way. It was not possible to follow this part of the line exactly, for there was no kind of track. But by following the Emilian Way for several miles (as I had done), and by leaving it at the right moment, it was possible to strike the straight line again near a village called Medesano. Now on the far side of the Apennines, beyond their main crest, there happens, most providentially, to be a river called the Serchio, whose valley is fairly straight and points down directly to Rome. To follow this valley would be practically to follow the line to Rome, and it struck the Tuscan plain not far from Lucca. But to get from the Emilian Way over the eastern slope of the Apennines' main ridge and crest, to where the Serchio rises on the western side, is a very difficult matter. The few roads across the Apennines cut my track at right angles, and were therefore useless. In order to strike the watershed at the sources of the Serchio it was necessary to go obliquely across a torrent and four rivers (the Taro, the Parma, the Enza, and the Secchia), and to climb the four spurs that divided them; crossing each nearer to the principal chain as I advanced until, after the Secchia, the next climb would be that of the central crest itself, on the far side of which I should find the Serchio valley. Perhaps in places roads might correspond to this track. Certainly the bulk of it would be mule-paths or rough gullies--how much I could not tell. The only way I could work it with my wretched map was to note the names of towns' or hamlets more or less on the line, and to pick my way from one to another. I wrote them down as follows: Fornovo, Calestano, Tizzano, Colagna--the last at the foot of the final pass. The distance to that pass as the crow flies was only a little more than thirty miles. So exceedingly difficult was the task that it took me over two days. Till I reached Fornovo beyond the Taro, I was not really in the hills. By country roads, picking my way, I made that afternoon for Medesano. The lanes were tortuous; they crossed continual streams that ran from the hills above, full and foaming after the rain, and frothing with the waste of the mountains. I had not gone two miles when the sky broke; not four when a new warmth began to steal over the air and a sense of summer to appear in the earth about me. With the greatest rapidity the unusual weather that had accompanied me from Milan was changing into the normal brilliancy of the south; but it was too late for the sun to tell, though he shone from time to time through clouds that were now moving eastwards more perceptibly and shredding as they moved. Quite tired and desiring food, keen also for rest after those dispiriting days, I stopped, before reaching Medesano, at an inn where three ways met; and there I purposed to eat and spend the night, for the next day, it was easy to see, would be tropical, and I should rise before dawn if I was to save the heat. I entered. The room within was of red wood. It had two tables, a little counter with a vast array of bottles, a woman behind the counter, and a small, nervous man in a strange hat serving. And all the little place was filled and crammed with a crowd of perhaps twenty men, gesticulating, shouting, laughing, quarrelling, and one very big man was explaining to another the virtues of his knife; and all were already amply satisfied with wine. For in this part men do not own, but are paid wages, so that they waste the little they have. I saluted the company, and walking up to the counter was about to call for wine. They had all become silent, when one man asked me a question in Italian. I did not understand it, and attempted to say so, when another asked the same question; then six or seven--and there was a hubbub. And out of the hubbub I heard a similar sentence rising all the time. To this day I do not know what it meant, but I thought (and think) it meant 'He is a Venetian,' or 'He is the Venetian.' Something in my broken language had made them think this, and evidently the Venetians (or a Venetian) were (or was) gravely unpopular here. Why, I cannot tell. Perhaps the Venetians were blacklegs. But evidently a Venetian, or the whole Venetian nation, had recently done them a wrong. At any rate one very dark-haired man put his face close up to mine, unlipped his teeth, and began a great noise of cursing and threatening, and this so angered me that it overmastered my fear, which had till then been considerable. I remembered also a rule which a wise man once told me for guidance, and it is this: 'God disposes of victory, but, as the world is made, when men smile, smile; when men laugh, laugh; when men hit, hit; when men shout, shout; and when men curse, curse you also, my son, and in doubt let them always take the first move.' I say my fear had been considerable, especially of the man with the knife, but I got too angry to remember it, and advancing my face also to this insulter's I shouted, _'Dio Ladro! Dios di mi alma! Sanguinamento! Nombre di Dios! Che? Che vole? Non sono da Venezia io! Sono de Francia! Je m'en fiche da vestra Venezia! Non se vede che non parlar vestra lingua? Che sono forestiere?'_ and so forth. At this they evidently divided into two parties, and all began raging amongst themselves, and some at me, while the others argued louder and louder that there was an error. The little innkeeper caught my arm over the counter, and I turned round sharply, thinking he was doing me a wrong, but I saw him nodding and winking at me, and he was on my side. This was probably because he was responsible if anything happened, and he alone could not fly from the police. He made them a speech which, for all I know, may have been to the effect that he had known and loved me from childhood, or may have been that he knew me for one Jacques of Turin, or may have been any other lie. Whatever lie it was, it appeased them. Their anger went down to a murmur, just like soda-water settling down into a glass. I stood wine; we drank. I showed them my book, and as my pencil needed sharpening the large man lent me his knife for courtesy. When I got it in my hand I saw plainly that it was no knife for stabbing with; it was a pruning-knife, and would have bit the hand that cherished it (as they say of serpents). On the other hand, it would have been a good knife for ripping, and passable at a slash. You must not expect too much of one article. I took food, but I saw that in this parish it was safer to sleep out of doors than in; so in the falling evening, but not yet sunset, I wandered on, not at a pace but looking for shelter, and I found at last just what I wanted: a little shed, with dried ferns (as it seemed) strewed in a corner, a few old sacks, and a broken piece of machinery--though this last was of no use to me. I thought: 'It will be safe here, for I shall rise before day, and the owner, if there is one, will not disturb me.' The air was fairly warm. The place quite dry. The open side looked westward and a little south. The sun had now set behind the Apennines, and there was a deep effulgence in the sky. I drank a little wine, lit a pipe, and watched the west in silence. Whatever was left of the great pall from which all that rain had fallen, now was banked up on the further side of heaven in toppling great clouds that caught the full glow of evening. The great clouds stood up in heaven, separate, like persons; and no wind blew; but everything was full of evening. I worshipped them so far as it is permitted to worship inanimate things. They domed into the pure light of the higher air, inviolable. They seemed halted in the presence of a commanding majesty who ranked them all in order. This vision filled me with a large calm which a travelled man may find on coming to his home, or a learner in the communion of wise men. Repose, certitude, and, as it were, a premonition of glory occupied my spirit. Before it was yet quite dark I had made a bed out of the dry bracken, covered myself with the sacks and cloths, and very soon I fell asleep, still thinking of the shapes of clouds and of the power of God. Next morning it was as I had thought. Going out before it was fully light, a dense mist all around and a clear sky showed what the day was to be. As I reached Medesano the sun rose, and in half-an-hour the air was instinct with heat; within an hour it was blinding. An early Mass in the church below the village prepared my day, but as I took coffee afterwards in a little inn, and asked about crossing the Taro to Fornovo--my first point--to my astonishment they shook their heads. The Taro was impassable. Why could it not be crossed? My very broken language made it difficult for me to understand. They talked _oframi,_ which I thought meant oars; but _rami,_ had I known it, meant the separate branches or streams whereby these torrential rivers of Italy flow through their arid beds. I drew a boat and asked if one could not cross in that (for I was a northerner, and my idea of a river was a river with banks and water in between), but they laughed and said 'No.' Then I made the motion of swimming. They said it was impossible, and one man hung his head to indicate drowning. It was serious. They said to-morrow, or rather next day, one might do it. Finally, a boy that stood by said he remembered a man who knew the river better than any one, and he, if any one could, would get me across. So I took the boy with me up the road, and as we went I saw, parallel to the road, a wide plain of dazzling rocks and sand, and beyond it, shining and silhouetted like an Arab village, the group of houses that was Fornovo. This plain was their sort of river in these hills. The boy said that sometimes it was full and a mile wide, sometimes it dwindled into dirty pools. Now, as I looked, a few thin streams seemed to wind through it, and I could not understand the danger. After a mile or two we came to a spot in the road where a patch of brushwood only separated us from the river-bed. Here the boy bade me wait, and asked a group of peasants whether the guide was in; they said they thought so, and some went up into the hillside with the boy to fetch him, others remained with me, looking at the river-bed and at Fornovo beyond, shaking their heads, and saying it had not been done for days. But I did not understand whether the rain-freshet had passed and was draining away, or whether it had not yet come down from beyond, and I waited for the guide. They brought him at last down from his hut among the hills. He came with great strides, a kindly-looking man, extremely tall and thin, and with very pale eyes. He smiled. They pointed me out to him, and we struck the bargain by holding up three fingers each for three lira, and nodding. Then he grasped his long staff and I mine, we bade farewell to the party, and together we went in silence through thick brushwood down towards the broad river-bed. The stones of it glared like the sands of Africa; Fornovo baked under the sun all white and black; between us was this broad plain of parched shingle and rocks that could, in a night, become one enormous river, or dwindle to a chain of stagnant ponds. To-day some seven narrow streams wandered in the expanse, and again they seemed so easy to cross that again I wondered at the need of a guide. We came to the edge of the first, and I climbed on the guide's back. He went bare-legged into the stream deeper and deeper till my feet, though held up high, just touched the water; then laboriously he climbed the further shore, and I got down upon dry land. It had been but twenty yards or so, and he knew the place well. I had seen, as we crossed, what a torrent this first little stream was, and I now knew the difficulty and understood the warnings of the inn. The second branch was impassable. We followed it up for nearly a mile to where 'an island' (that is, a mass of high land that must have been an island in flood-time, and that had on it an old brown village) stood above the white bed of the river. Just at this 'island' my guide found a ford. And the way he found it is worth telling. He taught me the trick, and it is most useful to men who wander alone in mountains. You take a heavy stone, how heavy you must learn to judge, for a more rapid current needs a heavier stone; but say about ten pounds. This you lob gently into mid-stream. _How,_ it is impossible to describe, but when you do it it is quite easy to see that in about four feet of water, or less, the stone splashes quite differently from the way it does in five feet or more. It is a sure test, and one much easier to acquire by practice than to write about. To teach myself this trick I practised it throughout my journey in these wilds. Having found a ford then, he again took me on his shoulders, but, in mid-stream, the water being up to his breast, his foot slipped on a stone (all the bed beneath was rolling and churning in the torrent), and in a moment we had both fallen. He pulled me up straight by his side, and then indeed, overwhelmed in the rush of water, it was easy to understand how the Taro could drown men, and why the peasants dreaded these little ribbons of water. The current rushed and foamed past me, coming nearly to my neck; and it was icy cold. One had to lean against it, and the water so took away one's weight that at any moment one might have slipped and been carried away. The guide, a much taller man (indeed he was six foot three or so), supported me, holding my arm: and again in a moment we reached dry land. After that adventure there was no need for carrying. The third, fourth, fifth, and sixth branches were easily fordable. The seventh was broad and deep, and I found it a heavy matter; nor should I have waded it but for my guide, for the water bore against me like a man wrestling, and it was as cold as Acheron, the river of the dead. Then on the further shore, and warning him (in Lingua Franca) of his peril, I gave him his wage, and he smiled and thanked me, and went back, choosing his plans at leisure. Thus did I cross the river Taro; a danger for men. Where I landed was a poor man sunning himself. He rose and walked with me to Fornovo. He knew the guide. 'He is a good man,' he said to me of this friend. 'He is as good as a little piece of bread.' 'E vero,' I answered; 'e San Cristophero.' This pleased the peasant; and indeed it was true. For the guide's business was exactly that of St Christopher, except that the Saint took no money, and lived, I suppose, on air. And so to Fornovo; and the heat blinded and confused, and the air was alive with flies. But the sun dried me at once, and I pressed up the road because I needed food. After I had eaten in this old town I was preparing to make for Calestano and to cross the first high spur of the Apennines that separated me from it, when I saw, as I left the place, a very old church; and I stayed a moment and looked at carvings which were in no order, but put in pell-mell, evidently chosen from some older building. They were barbaric, but one could see that they stood for the last judgement of man, and there were the good looking foolish, and there were the wicked being boiled by devils in a pot, and what was most pleasing was one devil who with great joy was carrying off a rich man's gold in a bag. But now we are too wise to believe in such follies, and when we die we take our wealth with us; in the ninth century they had no way of doing this, for no system of credit yet obtained. Then leaving the main road which runs to Pontremoli and at last to Spezzia, my lane climbed up into the hills and ceased, little by little, to be even a lane. It became from time to time the bed of a stream, then nothing, then a lane again, and at last, at the head of the glen, I confessed to having lost it; but I noted a great rock or peak above me for a landmark, and I said to myself-- 'No matter. The wall of this glen before me is obviously the ridge of the spur; the rock must be left to the north, and I have but to cross the ridge by its guidance.' By this time, however, the heat overcame me, and, as it was already afternoon, and as I had used so much of the preceding night for my journey, I remembered the wise custom of hot countries and lay down to sleep. I slept but a little while, yet when I woke the air was cooler. I climbed the side of the glen at random, and on the summit I found, to my disgust, a road. What road could it be? To this day I do not know. Perhaps I had missed my way and struck the main highway again. Perhaps (it is often so in the Apennines) it was a road leading nowhere. At any rate I hesitated, and looked back to judge my direction. It was a happy accident. I was now some 2000 feet above the Taro. There, before me, stood the high strange rock that I had watched from below; all around it and below me was the glen or cup of bare hills, slabs, and slopes of sand and stone calcined in the sun, and, beyond these near things, all the plain of Lombardy was at my feet. It was this which made it worth while to have toiled up that steep wall, and even to have lost my way--to see a hundred miles of the great flat stretched out before me: all the kingdoms of the world. Nor was this all. There were sharp white clouds on the far northern horizon, low down above the uncertain edge of the world. I looked again and found they did not move. Then I knew they were the Alps. Believe it or not, I was looking back to a place of days before: over how many, many miles of road! The rare, white peaks and edges could not deceive me; they still stood to the sunlight, and sent me from that vast distance the memory of my passage, when their snows had seemed interminable and their height so monstrous; their cold such a cloak of death. Now they were as far off as childhood, and I saw them for the last time. All this I drew. Then finding a post directing me to a side road for Calestano, I followed it down and down into the valley beyond; and up the walls of this second valley as the evening fell I heard the noise of the water running, as the Taro had run, a net of torrents from the melting snows far off. These streams I soon saw below me, winding (as those of the Taro had wound) through a floor of dry shingle and rock; but when my road ceased suddenly some hundreds of feet above the bed of the river, and when, full of evening, I had scrambled down through trees to the brink of the water, I found I should have to repeat what I had done that morning and to ford these streams. For there was no track of any kind and no bridge, and Calestano stood opposite me, a purple cluster of houses in the dusk against the farther mountain side. Very warily, lobbing stones as I had been taught, and following up and down each branch to find a place, I forded one by one the six little cold and violent rivers, and reaching the farther shore, I reached also, as I thought, supper, companionship, and a bed. But it is not in this simple way that human life is arranged. What awaited me in Calestano was ill favour, a prison, release, base flattery, and a very tardy meal. It is our duty to pity all men. It is our duty to pity those who are in prison. It is our duty to pity those who are not in prison. How much more is it the duty of a Christian man to pity the rich who cannot ever get into prison? These indeed I do now specially pity, and extend to them my commiseration. What! Never even to have felt the grip of the policeman; to have watched his bold suspicious eye; to have tried to make a good show under examination... never to have heard the bolt grinding in the lock, and never to have looked round at the cleanly simplicity of a cell? Then what emotions have you had, unimprisonable rich; or what do you know of active living and of adventure? It was after drinking some wine and eating macaroni and bread at a poor inn, the only one in the place, and after having to shout at the ill-natured hostess (and to try twenty guesses before I made her understand that I wanted cheese), it was when I had thus eaten and shouted, and had gone over the way to drink coffee and to smoke in a little cafe, that my adventure befell me. In the inn there had been a fat jolly-looking man and two official-looking people with white caps dining at another table. I had taken no notice of them at the time. But as I sat smoking and thinking in the little cafe, which was bright and full of people, I noticed a first danger-signal when I was told sullenly that 'they had no bed; they thought I could get none in the town': then, suddenly, these two men in white caps came in, and they arrested me with as much ease as you or I would hold a horse. A moment later there came in two magnificent fellows, gendarmes, with swords and cocked hats, and moustaches _a l'Abd el Kader,_ as we used to say in the old days; these four, the two gendarmes and two policemen, sat down opposite me on chairs and began cross-questioning me in Italian, a language in which I was not proficient. I so far understood them as to know that they were asking for my papers. 'Niente!' said I, and poured out on the table a card-case, a sketch-book, two pencils, a bottle of wine, a cup, a piece of bread, a scrap of French newspaper, an old _Secolo,_ a needle, some thread, and a flute--but no passport. They looked in the card-case and found 73 lira; that is, not quite three pounds. They examined the sketch-book critically, as behoved southerners who are mostly of an artistic bent: but they found no passport. They questioned me again, and as I picked about for words to reply, the smaller (the policeman, a man with a face like a fox) shouted that he had heard me speaking Italian _currently_ in the inn, and that my hesitation was a blind. This lie so annoyed me that I said angrily in French (which I made as southern as possible to suit them): 'You lie: and you can be punished for such lies, since you are an official.' For though the police are the same in all countries, and will swear black is white, and destroy men for a song, yet where there is a _droit administratif-_ that is, where the Revolution has made things tolerable--you are much surer of punishing your policeman, and he is much less able to do you a damage than in England or America; for he counts as an official and is under a more public discipline and responsibility if he exceeds his powers. Then I added, speaking distinctly, 'I can speak French and Latin. Have you a priest in Calestano, and does he know Latin?' This was a fine touch. They winced, and parried it by saying that the Sindaco knew French. Then they led me away to their barracks while they fetched the Sindaco, and so I was imprisoned. But not for long. Very soon I was again following up the street, and we came to the house of the Sindaco or Mayor. There he was, an old man with white hair, God bless him, playing cards with his son and daughter. To him therefore, as understanding French, I was bidden address myself. I told him in clear and exact idiom that his policemen were fools, that his town was a rabbit-warren, and his prison the only cleanly thing in it; that half-a-dozen telegrams to places I could indicate would show where I had passed; that I was a common tourist, not even an artist (as my sketch-book showed), and that my cards gave my exact address and description. But the Sindaco, the French-speaking Sindaco, understood me not in the least, and it seemed a wicked thing in me to expose him in his old age, so I waited till he spoke. He spoke a word common to all languages, and one he had just caught from my lips. 'Tourist-e?' he said. I nodded. Then he told them to let me go. It was as simple as that; and to this day, I suppose, he passes for a very bilingual Mayor. He did me a service, and I am willing to believe that in his youth he smacked his lips over the subtle flavour of Voltaire, but I fear to-day he would have a poor time with Anatole France. What a contrast was there between the hour when I had gone out of the cafe a prisoner and that when I returned rejoicing with a crowd about me, proclaiming my innocence, and shouting one to another that I was a tourist and had seventy-three lira on my person! The landlady smiled and bowed: she had before refused me a bed! The men at the tables made me a god! Nor did I think them worse for this. Why should I? A man unknown, unkempt, unshaven, in tatters, covered with weeks of travel and mud, and in a suit that originally cost not ten shillings; having slept in leaves and ferns, and forest places, crosses a river at dusk and enters a town furtively, not by the road. He is a foreigner; he carries a great club. Is it not much wiser to arrest such a man? Why yes, evidently. And when you have arrested him, can you do more than let him go without proof, on his own word? Hardly! Thus I loved the people of Calestano, especially for this strange adventure they had given me; and next day, having slept in a human room, I went at sunrise up the mountain sides beyond and above their town, and so climbed by a long cleft the _second_ spur of the Apennines: the spur that separated me from the _third_ river, the Parma. And my goal above the Parma (when I should have crossed it) was a place marked in the map 'Tizzano'. To climb this second spur, to reach and cross the Parma in the vale below, to find Tizzano, I left Calestano on that fragrant morning; and having passed and drawn a little hamlet called Frangi, standing on a crag, I went on up the steep vale and soon reached the top of the ridge, which here dips a little and allows a path to cross over to the southern side. It is the custom of many, when they get over a ridge, to begin singing. Nor did I fail, early as was the hour, to sing in passing this the second of my Apennine summits. I sang easily with an open throat everything that I could remember in praise of joy; and I did not spare the choruses of my songs, being even at pains to imitate (when they were double) the various voices of either part. Now, so much of the Englishman was in me that, coming round a corner of rock from which one first sees Beduzzo hanging on its ledge (as you know), and finding round this corner a peasant sitting at his ease, I was ashamed. For I did not like to be overheard singing fantastic songs. But he, used to singing as a solitary pastime, greeted me, and we walked along together, pointing out to each other the glories of the world before us and exulting in the morning. It was his business to show me things and their names: the great Mountain of the Pilgrimage to the South, the strange rock of Castel-Nuovo; in the far haze the plain of Parma; and Tizzano on its high hill, the ridge straight before me. He also would tell me the name in Italian of the things to hand--my boots, my staff, my hat; and I told him their names in French, all of which he was eager to learn. We talked of the way people here tilled and owned ground, of the dangers in the hills, and of the happiness of lonely men. But if you ask how we understood each other, I will explain the matter to you. In Italy, in the Apennines of the north, there seem to be three strata of language. In the valleys the Italian was pure, resonant, and foreign to me. There dwell the townsmen, and they deal down river with the plains. Half-way up (as at Frangi, at Beduzzo, at Tizzano) I began to understand them. They have the nasal 'n'; they clip their words. On the summits, at last, they speak like northerners, and I was easily understood, for they said not _'vino' _but _'vin';_ not _'duo'_ but _'du'_, and so forth. They are the Gauls of the hills. I told them so, and they were very pleased. Then I and my peasant parted, but as one should never leave a man without giving him something to show by way of token on the Day of Judgement, I gave this man a little picture of Milan, and bade him keep it for my sake. So he went his way, and I mine, and the last thing he said to me was about a _'molinar'_, but I did not know what that meant. When I had taken a cut down the mountain, and discovered a highroad at the bottom, I saw that the river before me needed fording, like all the rest; and as my map showed me there was no bridge for many miles down, I cast about to cross directly, if possible on some man's shoulders. I met an old woman with a heap of grass on her back; I pointed to the river, and said (in Lingua Franca) that I wished to cross. She again used that word _'molinar',_ and I had an inkling that it meant 'miller'. I said to myself-- 'Where there is a miller there is a mill. For _Ubi Petrus ibi Ecclesia._ Where there is a mill there is water; a mill must have motive power:' (a) I must get near the stream; (b) I must look out for the noise and aspect of a mill. I therefore (thanking the grass-bearing woman) went right over the fields till I saw a great, slow mill-wheel against a house, and a sad man standing looking at it as though it were the Procession of God's Providence. He was thinking of many things. I tapped him on the shoulder (whereat he started) and spoke the great word of that valley, _'molinar'_. It opened all the gates of his soul. He smiled at me like a man grown young again, and, beckoning me to follow, led radiantly up the sluice to where it drew from the river. Here three men were at work digging a better entry for the water. One was an old, happy man in spectacles, the second a young man with stilts in his hands, the third was very tall and narrow; his face was sad, and he was of the kind that endure all things and conquer. I said '_Molinar_?'' I had found him. To the man who had brought me I gave 50 c., and so innocent and good are these people that he said _'Pourquoi?'_ or words like it, and I said it was necessary. Then I said to the molinar, _'Quanta?'_ and he, holding up a tall finger, said '_Una Lira'._ The young man leapt on to his stilts, the molinar stooped down and I got upon his shoulders, and we all attempted the many streams of the river Parma, in which I think I should by myself have drowned. I say advisedly--'I should have been drowned.' These upper rivers of the hills run high and low according to storms and to the melting of the snows. The river of Parma (for this torrent at last fed Parma) was higher than the rest. Even the molinar, the god of that valley, had to pick his way carefully, and the young man on stilts had to go before, much higher than mortal men, and up above the water. I could see him as he went, and I could see that, to tell the truth, there was a ford--a rare thing in upper waters, because in the torrent-sources of rivers either the upper waters run over changeless rocks or else over gravel and sand. Now if they run over rocks they have their isolated shallow places, which any man may find, and their deep--evident by the still and mysterious surface, where fish go round and round in the hollows; but no true ford continuous from side to side. So it is in Scotland. And if they run over gravel and sand, then with every storm or 'spate' they shift and change. But here by some accident there ran--perhaps a shelf or rock, perhaps a ruin of a Roman bridge--something at least that was deep enough and solid enough to be a true ford--and that we followed. The molinar--even the molinar--was careful of his way. Twice he waited, waist high, while the man on stilts before us suddenly lost ground and plunged to his feet. Once, crossing a small branch (for the river here, like all these rivers, runs in many arms over the dry gravel), it seemed there was no foothold and we had to cast up and down. Whenever we found dry land, I came off the molinar's back to rest him, and when he took the water again I mounted again. So we passed the many streams, and stood at last on the Tizzanian side. Then I gave a lira to the molinar, and to his companion on stilts 50 c., who said, 'What is this for?' and I said, 'You also helped.' The molinar then, with gesticulations and expression of the eyes, gave me to understand that for this 50 c. the stilt-man would take me up to Tizzano on the high ridge and show me the path up the ridge; so the stilt-man turned to me and said, _'Andiamo' _which means _'Allons'. _But when the Italians say _'Andiamo' _they are less harsh than the northern French who say _'Allans'; _for the northern French have three troubles in the blood. They are fighters; they will for ever be seeking the perfect state, and they love furiously. Hence they ferment twice over, like wine subjected to movement and breeding acidity. Therefore is it that when they say _'Allons'_ it is harsher than _'Andiamo'._ My Italian said to me genially, _'Andiamo_'. The Catholic Church makes men. By which I do not mean boasters and swaggerers, nor bullies nor ignorant fools, who, finding themselves comfortable, think that their comfort will be a boon to others, and attempt (with singular unsuccess) to force it on the world; but men, human beings, different from the beasts, capable of firmness and discipline and recognition; accepting death; tenacious. Of her effects the most gracious is the character of the Irish and of these Italians. Of such also some day she may make soldiers. Have you ever noticed that all the Catholic Church does is thought beautiful and lovable until she comes out into the open, and then suddenly she is found by her enemies (which are the seven capital sins, and the four sins calling to heaven for vengeance) to be hateful and grinding? So it is; and it is the fine irony of her present renovation that those who were for ever belauding her pictures, and her saints, and her architecture, as we praise things dead, they are the most angered by her appearance on this modern field all armed, just as she was, with works and art and songs, sometimes superlative, often vulgar. Note you, she is still careless of art or songs, as she has always been. She lays her foundations in something other, which something other our moderns hate. Yet out of that something other came the art and song of the Middle Ages. And what art or songs have you? She is Europe and all our past. She is returning. _Andiamo._ LECTOR. But Mr _(deleted by the Censor)_ does not think so? AUCTOR. I last saw him supping at the Savoy. _Andiamo._ We went up the hill together over a burnt land, but shaded with trees. It was very hot. I could scarcely continue, so fast did my companion go, and so much did the heat oppress me. We passed a fountain at which oxen drank, and there I supped up cool water from the spout, but he wagged his finger before his face to tell me that this was an error under a hot sun. We went on and met two men driving cattle up the path between the trees. These I soon found to be talking of prices and markets with my guide. For it was market-day. As we came up at last on to the little town--a little, little town like a nest, and all surrounded with walls, and a castle in it and a church--we found a thousand beasts all lowing and answering each other along the highroad, and on into the market square through the gate. There my guide led me into a large room, where a great many peasants were eating soup with macaroni in it, and some few, meat. But I was too exhausted to eat meat, so I supped up my broth and then began diapephradizing on my fingers to show the great innkeeper what I wanted. I first pulled up the macaroni out of the dish, and said, _Fromagio, Pommodoro,_ by which I meant cheese--tomato. He then said he knew what I meant, and brought me that spaghetti so treated, which is a dish for a king, a cosmopolitan traitor, an oppressor of the poor, a usurer, or any other rich man, but there is no spaghetti in the place to which such men go, whereas these peasants will continue to enjoy it in heaven. I then pulled out my bottle of wine, drank what was left out of the neck (by way of sign), and putting it down said, _'Tale, tantum, vino rosso.'_ My guide also said many things which probably meant that I was a rich man, who threw his money about by the sixpence. So the innkeeper went through a door and brought back a bottle all corked and sealed, and said on his fingers, and with his mouth and eyes, 'THIS KIND OF WINE IS SOMETHING VERY SPECIAL.' Only in the foolish cities do men think it a fine thing to appear careless of money. So I, very narrowly watching him out of half-closed eyes, held up my five fingers interrogatively, and said, _'Cinquante?'_ meaning 'Dare you ask fivepence?' At which he and all the peasants around, even including my guide, laughed aloud as at an excellent joke, and said, _'Cinquante, Ho! ho!'_ and dug each other in the ribs. But the innkeeper of Tizzano Val Parmense said in Italian a number of things which meant that I could but be joking, and added (in passing) that a lira made it a kind of gift to me. A lira was, as it were, but a token to prove that it had changed hands: a registration fee: a matter of record; at a lira it was pure charity. Then I said, _'Soixante Dix?'_ which meant nothing to him, so I held up seven fingers; he waved his hand about genially, and said that as I was evidently a good fellow, a traveller, and as anyhow he was practically giving me the wine, he would make it ninepence; it was hardly worth his while to stretch out his hand for so little money. So then I pulled out 80 c. in coppers, and said, _'Tutto',_ which means 'all'. Then he put the bottle before me, took the money, and an immense clamour rose from all those who had been watching the scene, and they applauded it as a ratified bargain. And this is the way in which bargains were struck of old time in these hills when your fathers and mine lived and shivered in a cave, hunted wolves, and bargained with clubs only. So this being settled, and I eager for the wine, wished it to be opened, especially to stand drink to my guide. The innkeeper was in another room. The guide was too courteous to ask for a corkscrew, and I did not know the Italian for a corkscrew. I pointed to the cork, but all I got out of my guide was a remark that the wine was very good. Then I made the emblem and sign of a corkscrew in my sketch-book with a pencil, but he pretended not to understand--such was his breeding. Then I imitated the mode, sound, and gesture of a corkscrew entering a cork, and an old man next to me said '_Tira-buchon'--_a common French word as familiar as the woods of Marly! It was brought. The bottle was opened and we all drank together. As I rose to go out of Tizzano Val Parmense my guide said to me, _'Se chiama Tira-Buchon perche E' lira il buchon'_ And I said to him, _'Dominus Vobiscum'_ and left him to his hills. I took the road downwards from the ridge into the next dip and valley, but after a mile or so in the great heat (it was now one o'clock) I was exhausted. So I went up to a little wooded bank, and lay there in the shade sketching Tizzano Val Parmense, where it stood not much above me, and then I lay down and slept for an hour and smoked a pipe and thought of many things. From the ridge on which Tizzano stands, which is the third of these Apennine spurs, to the next, the fourth, is but a little way; one looks across from one to the other. Nevertheless it is a difficult piece of walking, because in the middle of the valley another ridge, almost as high as the principal spurs, runs down, and this has to be climbed at its lowest part before one can get down to the torrent of the Enza, where it runs with a hollow noise in the depths of the mountains. So the whole valley looks confused, and it appears, and is, laborious. Very high up above in a mass of trees stood the first of those many ruined towers and castles in which the Apennines abound, and of which Canossa, far off and indistinguishable in the haze, was the chief example. It was called 'The Tower of Rugino'. Beyond the deep trench of the Enza, poised as it seemed on its southern bank (but really much further off, in the Secchia valley), stood that strange high rock of Castel-Nuovo, which the peasant had shown me that morning and which was the landmark of this attempt. It seemed made rather by man than by nature, so square and exact was it and so cut off from the other hills. It was not till the later afternoon, when the air was already full of the golden dust that comes before the fall of the evening, that I stood above the Enza and saw it running thousands of feet below. Here I halted for a moment irresolute, and looked at the confusion of the hills. It had been my intention to make a straight line for Collagna, but I could not tell where Collagna lay save that it was somewhere behind the high mountain that was now darkening against the sky. Moreover, the Enza (as I could see down, down from where I stood) was not fordable. It did not run in streams but in one full current, and was a true river. All the scene was wild. I had come close to the central ridge of the Apennines. It stood above me but five or six clear miles away, and on its slopes there were patches and fields of snow which were beginning to glimmer in the diminishing light. Four peasants sat on the edge of the road. They were preparing to go to their quiet homesteads, and they were gathering their scythes together, for they had been mowing in a field. Coming up to these, I asked them how I might reach Collagna. They told me that I could not go straight, as I had wished, on account of the impassable river, but that if I went down the steep directly below me I should find a bridge; that thence a path went up the opposite ridge to where a hamlet, called Ceregio (which they showed me beyond the valley), stood in trees on the crest, and once there (they said) I could be further directed. I understood all their speech except one fatal word. I thought they told me that Ceregio was _half_ the way to Collagna; and what that error cost me you shall hear. They drank my wine, I ate their bread, and we parted: they to go to their accustomed place, and I to cross this unknown valley. But when I had left these grave and kindly men, the echo of their voices remained with me; the deep valley of the Enza seemed lonely, and as I went lower and lower down towards the noise of the river I lost the sun. The Enza was flooded. A rough bridge, made of stout logs resting on trunks of trees that were lashed together like tripods and supported a long plank, was afforded to cross it. But in the high water it did not quite reach to the hither bank. I rolled great stones into the water and made a short causeway, and so, somewhat perilously, I attained the farther shore, and went up, up by a little precipitous path till I reached the hamlet of Ceregio standing on its hill, blessed and secluded; for no road leads in or out of it, but only mule-paths. The houses were all grouped together round a church; it was dim between them; but several men driving oxen took me to a house that was perhaps the inn, though there was no sign; and there in a twilight room we all sat down together like Christians in perfect harmony, and the woman of the house served us. Now when, after this communion, I asked the way to Collagna, they must have thought me foolish, and have wondered why I did not pass the night with them, for they knew how far off Collagna was. But I (by the error in language of which I have told you) believed it to be but a short way off. It was in reality ten miles. The oldest of my companions said he would put me on the way. We went together in the half light by a lane that followed the crest of the hill, and we passed a charming thing, a little white sculpture in relief, set up for a shrine and representing the Annunciation; and as we passed it we both smiled. Then in a few hundred yards we passed another that was the Visitation, and they were gracious and beautiful to a degree, and I saw that they stood for the five joyful mysteries. Then he had to leave me, and he said, pointing to the little shrine: 'When you come to the fifth of these the path divides. Take that to the left, and follow it round the hollow of the mountain: it will become a lane. This lane crosses a stream and passes near a tower. When you have reached the tower it joins a great highroad, and that is the road to Collagna.' And when he indicated the shrines he smiled, as though in apology for them, and I saw that we were of the same religion. Then (since people who will not meet again should give each other presents mutually) I gave him the best of my two pipes, a new pipe with letters carved on it, which he took to be the initials of my name, and he on his part gave me a hedge-rose which he had plucked and had been holding in his fingers. And I continued the path alone. Certainly these people have a benediction upon them, granted them for their simple lives and their justice. Their eyes are fearless and kindly. They are courteous, straight, and all have in them laughter and sadness. They are full of songs, of memories, of the stories of their native place; and their worship is conformable to the world that God made. May they possess their own land, and may their influence come again from Italy to save from jar, and boasting, and ineptitude the foolish, valourless cities, and the garish crowds of shouting men.... And let us especially pray that the revival of the faith may do something for our poor old universities. Already, when I heard all these directions, they seemed to argue a longer road than I had expected. It proved interminable. It was now fully dark; the night was very cold from the height of the hills; a dense dew began to fall upon the ground, and the sky was full of stars. For hours I went on slowly down the lane that ran round the hollow of the wooded mountain, wondering why I did not reach the stream he spoke of. It was midnight when I came to the level, and yet I heard no water, and did not yet see the tower against the sky. Extreme fatigue made it impossible, as I thought, to proceed farther, when I saw a light in a window, and went to it quickly and stood beneath it. A woman from the window called me _Caro mio,_ which was gracious, but she would not let me sleep even in the straw of the barn. I hobbled on in despair of the night, for the necessity of sleep was weighing me down after four high hills climbed that day, and after the rough ways and the heat and the continual marching. I found a bridge which crossed the deep ravine they had told me of. This high bridge was new, and had been built of fine stone, yet it was broken and ruined, and a gap suddenly showed in the dark. I stepped back from it in fear. The clambering down to the stream and up again through the briars to regain the road broke me yet more, and when, on the hill beyond, I saw the tower faintly darker against the dark sky, I went up doggedly to it, fearing faintness, and reaching it where it stood (it was on the highest ground overlooking the Secchia valley), I sat down on a stone beside it and waited for the morning. The long slope of the hills fell away for miles to where, by daylight, would have lain the misty plain of Emilia. The darkness confused the landscape. The silence of the mountains and the awful solemnity of the place lent that vast panorama a sense of the terrible, under the dizzy roof of the stars. Every now and again some animal of the night gave a cry in the undergrowth of the valley, and the great rock of Castel-Nuovo, now close and enormous--bare, rugged, a desert place--added something of doom. The hours were creeping on with the less certain stars; a very faint and unliving grey touched the edges of the clouds. The cold possessed me, and I rose to walk, if I could walk, a little farther. What is that in the mind which, after (it may be) a slight disappointment or a petty accident, causes it to suffer on the scale of grave things? I have waited for the dawn a hundred times, attended by that mournful, colourless spirit which haunts the last hours of darkness; and influenced especially by the great timeless apathy that hangs round the first uncertain promise of increasing light. For there is an hour before daylight when men die, and when there is nothing above the soul or around it, when even the stars fail. And this long and dreadful expectation I had thought to be worst when one was alone at sea in a small boat without wind; drifting beyond one's harbour in the ebb of the outer channel tide, and sogging back at the first flow on the broad, confused movement of a sea without any waves. In such lonely mornings I have watched the Owers light turning, and I have counted up my gulf of time, and wondered that moments could be so stretched out in the clueless mind. I have prayed for the morning or for a little draught of wind, and this I have thought, I say, the extreme of absorption into emptiness and longing. But now, on this ridge, dragging myself on to the main road, I found a deeper abyss of isolation and despairing fatigue than I had ever known, and I came near to turning eastward and imploring the hastening of light, as men pray continually without reason for things that can but come in a due order. I still went forward a little, because when I sat down my loneliness oppressed me like a misfortune; and because my feet, going painfully and slowly, yet gave a little balance and rhythm to the movement of my mind. I heard no sound of animals or birds. I passed several fields, deserted in the half-darkness; and in some I felt the hay, but always found it wringing wet with dew, nor could I discover a good shelter from the wind that blew off the upper snow of the summits. For a little space of time there fell upon me, as I crept along the road, that shadow of sleep which numbs the mind, but it could not compel me to lie down, and I accepted it only as a partial and beneficent oblivion which covered my desolation and suffering as a thin, transparent cloud may cover an evil moon. Then suddenly the sky grew lighter upon every side. That cheating gloom (which I think the clouds in purgatory must reflect) lifted from the valley as though to a slow order given by some calm and good influence that was marshalling in the day. Their colours came back to things; the trees recovered their shape, life, and trembling; here and there, on the face of the mountain opposite, the mists by their movement took part in the new life, and I thought I heard for the first time the tumbling water far below me in the ravine. That subtle barrier was drawn which marks to-day from yesterday; all the night and its despondency became the past and entered memory. The road before me, the pass on my left (my last ridge, and the entry into Tuscany), the mass of the great hills, had become mixed into the increasing light, that is, into the familiar and invigorating Present which I have always found capable of opening the doors of the future with a gesture of victory. My pain either left me, or I ceased to notice it, and seeing a little way before me a bank above the road, and a fine grove of sparse and dominant chestnuts, I climbed up thither and turned, standing to the east. There, without any warning of colours, or of the heraldry that we have in the north, the sky was a great field of pure light, and without doubt it was all woven through, as was my mind watching it, with security and gladness. Into this field, as I watched it, rose the sun. The air became warmer almost suddenly. The splendour and health of the new day left me all in repose, and persuaded or compelled me to immediate sleep. I found therefore in the short grass, and on the scented earth beneath one of my trees, a place for lying down; I stretched myself out upon it, and lapsed into a profound slumber, which nothing but a vague and tenuous delight separated from complete forgetfulness. If the last confusion of thought, before sleep possessed me, was a kind of prayer--and certainly I was in the mood of gratitude and of adoration--this prayer was of course to God, from whom every good proceeds, but partly (idolatrously) to the Sun, which, of all the things He has made, seems, of what we at least can discover, the most complete and glorious. Therefore the first hours of the sunlight, after I had wakened, made the place like a new country; for my mind which received it was new. I reached Collagna before the great heat, following the fine highroad that went dipping and rising again along the mountain side, and then (leaving the road and crossing the little Secchia by a bridge), a path, soon lost in a grassy slope, gave me an indication of my way. For when I had gone an hour or so upwards along the shoulder of the hill, there opened gradually before me a silent and profound vale, hung with enormous woods, and sloping upwards to where it was closed by a high bank beneath and between two peaks. This bank I knew could be nothing else than the central ridge of the Apennines, the watershed, the boundary of Tuscany, and the end of all the main part of my journey. Beyond, the valleys would open on to the Tuscan Plain, and at the southern limit of that, Siena was my mark; from Siena to Rome an eager man, if he is sound, may march in three long days. Nor was that calculation all. The satisfaction of the last lap, of the home run, went with the word Tuscany in my mind; these cities were the approaches and introduction of the end. When I had slept out the heat, I followed the woods upward through the afternoon. They stood tangled and huge, and the mosses under them were thick and silent, because in this last belt of the mountains height and coolness reproduced the north. A charcoal burner was making his furnace; after that for the last miles there was no sound. Even the floor of the vale was a depth of grass, and no torrent ran in it but only a little hidden stream, leafy like our streams at home. At last the steep bank, a wall at the end of the valley, rose immediately above me. It was very steep and bare, desolate with the many stumps of trees that had been cut down; but all its edge and fringe against the sky was the line of a deep forest. After its laborious hundreds of feet, when the forest that crowned it evenly was reached, the Apennines were conquered, the last great range was passed, and there stood no barrier between this high crest and Rome. The hither side of that bank, I say, had been denuded of its trees; the roots of secular chestnuts stood like graves above the dry steep, and had marked my last arduous climb. Now, at the summit, the highest part was a line of cool forest, and the late afternoon mingled with the sanctity of trees. A genial dampness pervaded the earth beneath; grasses grew, and there were living creatures in the shade. Nor was this tenanted wood all the welcome I received on my entry into Tuscany. Already I heard the noise of falling waters upon every side, where the Serchio sprang from twenty sources on the southern slope, and leapt down between mosses, and quarrelled, and overcame great smooth dark rocks in busy falls. Indeed, it was like my own country in the north, and a man might say to himself--'After so much journeying, perhaps I am in the Enchanted Wood, and may find at last the fairy Melisaunde.' A glade opened, and, the trees no longer hiding it, I looked down the vale, which was the gate of Tuscany. There--high, jagged, rapt into the sky--stood such a group of mountains as men dream of in good dreams, or see in the works of painters when old age permits them revelations. Their height was evident from the faint mist and grey of their hues; their outline was tumultuous, yet balanced; full of accident and poise. It was as though these high walls of Carrara, the western boundary of the valley, had been shaped expressly for man, in order to exalt him with unexpected and fantastic shapes, and to expand his dull life with a permanent surprise. For a long time I gazed at these great hills. Then, more silent in the mind through their influence, I went down past the speech and companionship of the springs of the Serchio, and the chestnut trees were redolent of evening all round. Down the bank to where the streams met in one, down the river, across its gaping, ruinous bridge (which some one, generations ago, had built for the rare travellers--there were then no main roads across the Apennine, and perhaps this rude pass was in favour); down still more gently through the narrow upper valley I went between the chestnut trees, and calm went with me for a companion: and the love of men and the expectation of good seemed natural to all that had been made in this blessed place. Of Borda, where the peasants directed me, there is no need to speak, till crossing the Serchio once more, this time on a trestle bridge of wood, I passed by a wider path through the groves, and entered the dear village of Sillano, which looks right into the pure west. And the peaks are guardians all about it: the elder brothers of this remote and secluded valley. An inn received me: a great kitchen full of men and women talking, a supper preparing, a great fire, meat smoking and drying in the ingle-nook, a vast timbered roof going up into darkness: there I was courteously received, but no one understood my language. Seeing there a young priest, I said to him-- _'Pater, habeo linguam latinam, sed non habeo linguam Italicam. Visne mi dare traductionem in istam linguam Toscanam non nullorum verborum?'_ To this he replied, _'Libenter,'_ and the people revered us both. Thus he told me the name for a knife was _cultello;_ for a room, _camera par domire;_ for 'what is it called?' _'come si chiama?';_ for 'what is the road to?' _'quella e la via a...?'_ and other phrases wherein, no doubt, I am wrong; but I only learnt by ear. Then he said to me something I did not understand, and I answered, _'Pol-Hercle!'_ at which he seemed pleased enough. Then, to make conversation, I said, _'Diaconus es?'_ And he answered me, mildly and gravely, _'Presbyter sum.'_ And a little while after he left for his house, but I went out on to the balcony, where men and women were talking in subdued tones. There, alone, I sat and watched the night coming up into these Tuscan hills. The first moon since that waning in Lorraine--(how many nights ago, how many marches!)--hung in the sky, a full crescent, growing into brightness and glory as she assumed her reign. The one star of the west called out his silent companions in their order; the mountains merged into a fainter confusion; heaven and the infinite air became the natural seat of any spirit that watched this spell. The fire-flies darted in the depths of vineyards and of trees below; then the noise of the grasshoppers brought back suddenly the gardens of home, and whatever benediction surrounds our childhood. Some promise of eternal pleasures and of rest deserved haunted the village of Sillano. In very early youth the soul can still remember its immortal habitation, and clouds and the edges of hills are of another kind from ours, and every scent and colour has a savour of Paradise. What that quality may be no language can tell, nor have men made any words, no, nor any music, to recall it--only in a transient way and elusive the recollection of what youth was, and purity, flashes on us in phrases of the poets, and is gone before we can fix it in our minds--oh! my friends, if we could but recall it! Whatever those sounds may be that are beyond our sounds, and whatever are those keen lives which remain alive there under memory--whatever is Youth--Youth came up that valley at evening, borne upon a southern air. If we deserve or attain beatitude, such things shall at last be our settled state; and their now sudden influence upon the soul in short ecstasies is the proof that they stand outside time, and are not subject to decay. This, then, was the blessing of Sillano, and here was perhaps the highest moment of those seven hundred miles--or more. Do not therefore be astonished, reader, if I now press on much more hurriedly to Rome, for the goal is almost between my hands, and the chief moment has been enjoyed, until I shall see the City. Now I cry out and deplore me that this next sixty miles of way, but especially the heat of the days and the dank mists of the night, should have to be told as of a real journey in this very repetitive and sui-similar world. How much rather I wish that being free from mundane and wide-awake (that is to say from perilously dusty) considerations and droughty boredoms, I might wander forth at leisure through the air and visit the regions where everything is as the soul chooses: to be dropped at last in the ancient and famous town of Siena, whence comes that kind of common brown paint wherewith men, however wicked, can produce (if they have but the art) very surprising effects of depth in painting: for so I read of it in a book by a fool, at six shillings, and even that was part of a series: but if you wish to know anything further of the matter, go you and read it, for I will do nothing of the kind. Oh to be free for strange voyages even for a little while! I am tired of the road; and so are you, and small blame to you. Your fathers also tired of the treadmill, and mine of the conquering marches of the Republic. Heaven bless you all! But I say that if it were not for the incredulity and doubt and agnostico-schismatical hesitation, and very cumbersome air of questioning-and-peering-about, which is the bane of our moderns, very certainly I should now go on to tell of giants as big as cedars, living in mountains of precious stones, and drawn to battle by dragons in cars of gold; or of towns where the customs of men were remote and unexpected; of countries not yet visited, and of the gods returning. For though it is permissible, and a pleasant thing (as Bacon says), to mix a little falsehood with one's truth (so St Louis mixed water with his wine, and so does Sir John Growl mix vinegar with his, unless I am greatly mistaken, for if not, how does he give it that taste at his dinners? eh? There, I think, is a question that would puzzle him!) yet is it much more delectable, and far worthier of the immortal spirit of man to soar into the empyrean of pure lying--that is, to lay the bridle on the neck of Pegasus and let him go forward, while in the saddle meanwhile one sits well back, grips with the knee, takes the race, and on the energy of that steed visits the wheeling stars. This much, then, is worth telling of the valley of the Serchio, that it is narrow, garrulous with water brawling, wooded densely, and contained by fantastic mountains. That it has a splendid name, like the clashing of cymbals--Garfagnana; that it leads to the Tuscan plain, and that it is over a day's march long. Also, it is an oven. Never since the early liars first cooked eggs in the sand was there such heat, and it was made hotter by the consciousness of folly, than which there is no more heating thing; for I think that not old Championnet himself, with his Division of Iron, that fought one to three and crushed the aged enormities of the oppressors as we would crush an empty egg, and that found the summer a good time for fighting in Naples, I say that he himself would not have marched men up the Garfagnana in such a sun. Folly planned it, Pride held to it, and the devils lent their climate. Garfagnana! Garfagnana! to have such a pleasant name, and to be what you are! Not that there were not old towers on the steep woods of the Apennine, nor glimpses of the higher peaks; towns also: one castle surrounded by a fringe of humble roofs--there were all these things. But it was an oven. So imagine me, after having passed chapels built into rocks, and things most curious, but the whole under the strain of an intolerable sun, coming, something after midday, to a place called Castel-Nuovo, the first town, for Campogiamo is hardly a town. At Castel-Nuovo I sat upon a bridge and thought, not what good men think (there came into my memory no historical stuff; for all I know, Liberty never went by that valley in arms); no appreciation of beauty filled me; I was indifferent to all save the intolerable heat, when I suddenly recognized the enormous number of bridges that bespattered the town. 'This is an odd thing,' I mused. 'Here is a little worriment of a town up in the hills, and what a powerful lot of bridges!' I cared not a fig for the thousand things I had been told to expect in Tuscany; everything is in a mind, and as they were not in my mind they did not exist. But the bridges, they indeed were worthy of admiration! Here was a horrible little place on a torrent bank. One bridge was reasonable for by it went the road leading south to Lucca and to Rome; it was common honour to let men escape. But as I sat on that main bridge I counted seven others; indeed there must have been a worship of a bridge-god some time or other to account for such a necklace of bridges in such a neglected borough. You may say (I am off hard on the road to Borgo, drooping with the heat, but still going strongly), you may say that is explicable enough. First a thing is useful, you say, then it has to become routine; then the habit, being a habit, gets a sacred idea attached to it. So with bridges: _e.g._ Pontifex; Dervorguilla, our Ballici saint that built a bridge; the devil that will hinder the building of bridges; _cf. _the Porphyry Bridge in the Malay cosmogony; Amershickel, Brueckengebildung im kult-Historischer. Passenmayer; Durât, _Le pont antique, étude sur les origines Toscanes;_ Mr Dacre's _The Command of Bridges in Warfare; Bridges and Empire,_ by Captain Hole, U.S.A. You may say all this; I shall not reply. If the heat has hindered me from saying a word of the fine open valley on the left, of the little railway and of the last of the hills, do you suppose it will permit me to discuss the sanctity of bridges? If it did, I think there is a little question on 'why should habit turn sacred?' which would somewhat confound and pose you, and pose also, for that matter, every pedant that ever went blind and crook-backed over books, or took ivory for horn. And there is an end of it. Argue it with whom you will. It is evening, and I am at Borgo (for if many towns are called Castel-Nuovo so are many called Borgo in Italy), and I desire to be free of interruption while I eat and sleep and reflect upon the error of that march in that heat, spoiling nearly thirty miles of road, losing so many great and pleasurable emotions, all for haste and from a neglect of the Italian night. And as I ate, and before I slept, I thought of that annotated Guide Book which is cried out for by all Europe, and which shall tell blunt truths. Look you out _'Garfagnana, district of, Valley of Serchio'_ in the index. You will be referred to p. 267. Turn to p. 267. You will find there the phrase-- 'One can walk from the pretty little village of Sillano, nestling in its chestnut groves, to the flourishing town of Borgo on the new Bagni railway in a day.' You will find a mark [1] after that phrase. It refers to a footnote. Glance (or look) at the bottom of the page and you will find: [1] But if one does one is a fool. So I slept late and uneasily the insufficient sleep of men who have suffered, and in that uneasy sleep I discovered this great truth: that if in a southern summer you do not rest in the day the night will seem intolerably warm, but that, if you rest in the day, you will find coolness and energy at evening. The next morning with daylight I continued the road to Lucca, and of that also I will say nothing. LECTOR. Why on earth did you write this book? AUCTOR. For my amusement. LECTOR. And why do you suppose I got it? AUCTOR. I cannot conceive... however, I will give up this much, to tell you that at Decimo the mystery of cypress trees first came into my adventure and pilgrimage: of cypress trees which henceforward were to mark my Tuscan road. And I will tell you that there also I came across a thing peculiar (I suppose) to the region of Lucca, for I saw it there as at Decimo, and also some miles beyond. I mean fine mournful towers built thus: In the first storey one arch, in the second two, in the third three, and so on: a very noble way of building. And I will tell you something more. I will tell you something no one has yet heard. To wit, why this place is called Decimo, and why just below it is another little spot called Sexta. LECTOR.... AUCTOR. I know what you are going to say! Do not say it. You are going to say: 'It is because they were at the sixth and tenth milestones from Lucca on the Roman road.' Heaven help these scientists! Did you suppose that I thought it was called Decimo because the people had ten toes? Tell me, why is not every place ten miles out of a Roman town called by such a name? Eh? You are dumb. You cannot answer. Like most moderns you have entirely missed the point. We all know that there was a Roman town at Lucca, because it was called Luca, and if there had been no Roman town the modern town would not be spelt with two _c's._ All Roman towns had milestones beyond them. But why did _this_ tenth milestone from _this_ Roman town keep its name? LECTOR. I am indifferent. AUCTOR. I will tell you. Up in the tangle of the Carrara mountains, overhanging the Garfagnana, was a wild tribe, whose name I forget (unless it were the Bruttii), but which troubled the Romans not a little, defeating them horribly, and keeping the legionaries in some anxiety for years. So when the soldiers marched out north from Luca about six miles, they could halt and smile at each other, and say 'At _Sextant..._ that's all right. All safe so far!' and therefore only a little village grew up at this little rest and emotion. But as they got nearer the gates of the hills they began to be visibly perturbed, and they would say: 'The eighth mile! cheer up!' Then 'The ninth mile! Sanctissima Madonna! Have you seen anything moving on the heights?' But when they got to the _tenth_ milestone, which stands before the very jaws of the defile, then indeed they said with terrible emphasis, _'Ad Decimam!'_ And there was no restraining them: they would camp and entrench, or die in the venture: for they were Romans and stern fellows, and loved a good square camp and a ditch, and sentries and a clear moon, and plenty of sharp stakes, and all the panoply of war. That is the origin of Decimo. For all my early start, the intolerable heat had again taken the ascendant before I had fairly entered the plain. Then, it being yet but morning, I entered from the north the town of Lucca, which is the neatest, the regularest, the exactest, the most fly-in-amber little town in the world, with its uncrowded streets, its absurd fortifications, and its contented silent houses--all like a family at ease and at rest under its high sun. It is as sharp and trim as its own map, and that map is as clear as a geometrical problem. Everything in Lucca is good. I went with a short shadow, creeping when I could on the eastern side of the street to save the sunlight; then I came to the main square, and immediately on my left was the Albergo di Something-or-other, a fine great hotel, but most unfortunately right facing the blazing sky. I had to stop outside it to count my money. I counted it wrong and entered. There I saw the master, who talked French. 'Can you in an hour,' said I, 'give me a meal to my order, then a bed, though it is early day?' This absurd question I made less absurd by explaining to him my purpose. How I was walking to Rome and how, being northern, I was unaccustomed to such heat; how, therefore, I had missed sleep, and would find it necessary in future to walk mainly by night. For I had now determined to fill the last few marches up in darkness, and to sleep out the strong hours of the sun. All this he understood; I ordered such a meal as men give to beloved friends returned from wars. I ordered a wine I had known long ago in the valley of the Saône in the old time of peace before ever the Greek came to the land. While they cooked it I went to their cool and splendid cathedral to follow a late Mass. Then I came home and ate their admirable food and drank the wine which the Burgundians had trodden upon the hills of gold so many years before. They showed me a regal kind of a room where a bed with great hangings invited repose. All my days of marching, the dirty inns, the forests, the nights abroad, the cold, the mists, the sleeplessness, the faintness, the dust, the dazzling sun, the Apennines--all my days came over me, and there fell on me a peaceful weight, as his two hundred years fell upon Charlemagne in the tower of Saragossa when the battle was done; after he had curbed the valley of Ebro and christened Bramimonde. So I slept deeply all day long; and, outside, the glare made a silence upon the closed shutters, save that little insects darted in the outer air. When I woke it was evening. So well had they used me that I paid what they asked, and, not knowing what money remained over, I left their town by the southern gate, crossed the railway and took the road. My way lay under the flank of that mountain whereby the Luccans cannot see Pisa, or the Pisans cannot see Lucca--it is all one to me, I shall not live in either town, God willing; and if they are so eager to squint at one another, in Heaven's name, cannot they be at the pains to walk round the end of the hill? It is this laziness which is the ruin of many; but not of pilgrims, for here was I off to cross the plain of Arno in one night, and reach by morning the mouth and gate of that valley of the Elsa, which same is a very manifest proof of how Rome was intended to be the end and centre of all roads, the chief city of the world, and the Popes' residence--as, indeed, it plainly is to this day, for all the world to deny at their peril, spiritual, geographical, historical, sociological, economic, and philosophical. For if some such primeval and predestinarian quality were not inherent in the City, how, think you, would the valley of the Serchio--the hot, droughty, and baking Garfagnana--lead down pointing straight to Rome; and how would that same line, prolonged across the plain, find fitting it exactly beyond that plain this vale of the Elsa, itself leading up directly towards Rome? I say, nowhere in the world is such a coincidence observable, and they that will not take it for a portent may go back to their rationalism and consort with microbes and make their meals off logarithms, washed down with an exact distillation of the root of minus one; and the peace of fools, that is the deepest and most balmy of all, be theirs for ever and ever. Here again you fall into errors as you read, ever expecting something new; for of that night's march there is nothing to tell, save that it was cool, full of mist, and an easy matter after the royal entertainment and sleep of the princely Albergo that dignifies Lucca. The villages were silent, the moon soon left the sky, and the stars could not show through the fog, which deepened in the hours after midnight. A map I had bought in Lucca made the difficulties of the first part of the road (though there were many cross-ways) easy enough; and the second part, in midnight and the early hours, was very plain sailing, till--having crossed the main line and having, at last, very weary, come up to the branch railway at a slant from the west and north, I crossed that also under the full light--I stood fairly in the Elsa valley and on the highroad which follows the railway straight to Siena. That long march, I say, had been easy enough in the coolness and in the dark; but I saw nothing; my interior thoughts alone would have afforded matter for this part; but of these if you have not had enough in near six hundred miles of travel, you are a stouter fellow than I took you for. Though it was midsummer, the light had come quickly. Long after sunrise the mist dispersed, and the nature of the valley appeared. It was in no way mountainous, but easy, pleasant, and comfortable, bounded by low, rounded hills, having upon them here and there a row of cypresses against the sky; and it was populous with pleasant farms. Though the soil was baked and dry, as indeed it is everywhere in this south, yet little regular streams (or canals) irrigated it and nourished many trees--- but the deep grass of the north was wanting. For an hour or more after sunrise I continued my way very briskly; then what had been the warmth of the early sun turned into the violent heat of day, and remembering Merlin where he says that those who will walk by night must sleep by day, and having in my mind the severe verses of James Bayle, sometime Fellow of St Anne's, that 'in Tuscan summers as a general rule, the days are sultry but the nights are cool' (he was no flamboyant poet; he loved the quiet diction of the right wing of English poetry), and imagining an owlish habit of sleeping by day could be acquired at once, I lay down under a tree of a kind I had never seen; and lulled under the pleasant fancy that this was a picture-tree drawn before the Renaissance, and that I was reclining in some background landscape of the fifteenth century (for the scene was of that kind), I fell asleep. When I woke it was as though I had slept long; but I doubted the feeling. The young sun still low in the sky, and the shadows not yet shortened, puzzled me. I looked at my watch, but the dislocation of habit which night marches produce had left it unwound. It marked a quarter to three, which was absurd. I took the road somewhat stiffly and wondering. I passed several small white cottages; there was no clock in them, and their people were away. At last in a Trattoria, as they served me with food, a woman told me it was just after seven; I had slept but an hour. Outside, the day was intense; already flies had begun to annoy the darkened room within. Through the half-curtained door the road was white in the sun, and the railway ran just beyond. I paid my reckoning, and then, partly for an amusement, I ranged my remaining pence upon the table, first in the shape of a Maltese cross, then in a circle (interesting details!). The road lay white in the sunlight outside, and the railway ran just beyond. I counted the pence and the silver--there was three francs and a little over; I remembered the imperial largesse at Lucca, the lordly spending of great sums, where, now in the pocket of an obsequious man, the pounds were taking care of themselves. I remembered how at Como I had been compelled by poverty to enter the train for Milan. How little was three francs for the remaining twenty-five miles to Siena! The road lay white in the sunlight, and the railway ran just beyond. I remembered the pleasing cheque in the post-office of Siena; the banks of Siena, and the money changers at their counters changing money at the rate of change. 'If one man,' thought I, 'may take five per cent discount on a sum of money in the exchange, may not another man take discount off a walk of over seven hundred miles? May he not cut off it, as his due, twenty-five miserable little miles in the train?' Sleep coming over me after my meal increased the temptation. Alas! how true is the great phrase of Averroes (or it may be Boa-ed-din: anyhow, the Arabic escapes me, but the meaning is plain enough), that when one has once fallen, it is easy to fall again (saving always heavy falls from cliffs and high towers, for after these there is no more falling).... Examine the horse's knees before you buy him; take no ticket-of-leave man into your house for charity; touch no prospectus that has founders' shares, and do not play with firearms or knives and never go near the water till you know how to swim. Oh! blessed wisdom of the ages! sole patrimony of the poor! The road lay white in the sun, and the railway ran just beyond. If the people of Milo did well to put up a statue in gold to the man that invented wheels, so should we also put one up in Portland stone or plaster to the man that invented rails, whose property it is not only to increase the speed and ease of travel, but also to bring on slumber as can no drug: not even poppies gathered under a waning moon. The rails have a rhythm of slight falls and rises... they make a loud roar like a perpetual torrent; they cover up the mind with a veil. Once only, when a number of men were shouting 'POGGI-BON-SI,' like a war-cry to the clank of bronze, did I open my eyes sleepily to see a hill, a castle wall, many cypresses, and a strange tower bulging out at the top (such towers I learned were the feature of Tuscany). Then in a moment, as it seemed, I awoke in the station of Siena, where the railway ends and goes no farther. It was still only morning; but the glare was beyond bearing as I passed through the enormous gate of the town, a gate pierced in high and stupendous walls that are here guarded by lions. In the narrow main street there was full shade, and it was made cooler by the contrast of the blaze on the higher storeys of the northern side. The wonders of Siena kept sleep a moment from my mind. I saw their great square where a tower of vast height marks the guildhall. I heard Mass in a chapel of their cathedral: a chapel all frescoed, and built, as it were, out of doors, and right below the altar-end or choir. I noted how the city stood like a queen of hills dominating all Tuscany: above the Elsa northward, southward above the province round Mount Amiato. And this great mountain I saw also hazily far off on the horizon. I suffered the vulgarities of the main street all in English and American, like a show. I took my money and changed it; then, having so passed not a full hour, and oppressed by weariness, I said to myself: 'After all, my business is not with cities, and already I have seen far off the great hill whence one can see far off the hills that overhang Rome.' With this in my mind I wandered out for a quiet place, and found it in a desolate green to the north of the city, near a huge, old red-brick church like a barn. A deep shadow beneath it invited me in spite of the scant and dusty grass, and in this country no one disturbs the wanderer. There, lying down, I slept without dreams till evening. AUCTOR. Turn to page 94. LECTOR. I have it. It is not easy to watch the book in two places at once; but pray continue. AUCTOR. Note the words from the eighth to the tenth lines. LECTOR. Why? AUCTOR. They will make what follows seem less abrupt. Once there was a man dining by himself at the Cafe Anglais, in the days when people went there. It was a full night, and he sat alone at a small table, when there entered a very big man in a large fur coat. The big man looked round annoyed, because there was no room, and the first man very courteously offered him a seat at his little table. They sat down and ate and talked of several things; among others, of Bureaucracy. The first maintained that Bureaucracy was the curse of France. 'Men are governed by it like sheep. The administrator, however humble, is a despot; most people will even run forward to meet him halfway, like the servile dogs they are,' said he. 'No,' answered the Man in the Big Fur Coat, 'I should say men were governed just by the ordinary human sense of authority. I have no theories. I say they recognize authority and obey it. Whether it is bureaucratic or not is merely a question of form.' At this moment there came in a tall, rather stiff Englishman. He also was put out at finding no room. The two men saw the manager approach him; a few words were passed, and a card; then the manager suddenly smiled, bowed, smirked, and finally went up to the table and begged that the Duke of Sussex might be allowed to share it. The Duke hoped he did not incommode these gentlemen. They assured him that, on the contrary, they esteemed his presence a favour. 'It is our prerogative,' said the Man in the Big Fur Coat, 'to be the host Paris entertaining her Guest.' They would take no denial; they insisted on the Duke's dining with them, and they told him what they had just been discussing. The Duke listened to their theories with some _morgue,_ much _spleen,_ and no little _phlegm,_ but with _perfect courtesy,_ and then, towards the coffee, told them in fluent French with a strong accent, his own opinion. (He had had eight excellent courses; Yquem with his fish, the best Chambertin during the dinner, and a glass of wonderful champagne with his dessert.) He spoke as follows, with a slight and rather hard smile: 'My opinion may seem to you impertinent, but I believe nothing more subtly and powerfully affects men than the aristocratic feeling. Do not misunderstand me,' he added, seeing that they would protest; 'it is not my own experience alone that guides me. All history bears witness to the same truth.' The simple-minded Frenchmen put down this infatuation to the Duke's early training, little knowing that our English men of rank are the simplest fellows in the world, and are quite indifferent to their titles save in business matters. The Frenchmen paid the bill, and they all three went on to the Boulevard. 'Now,' said the first man to his two companions, 'I will give you a practical example of what I meant when I said that Bureaucracy governed mankind.' He went up to the wall of the Credit Lyonnais, put the forefinger of either hand against it, about twenty-five centimetres apart, and at a level of about a foot above his eyes. Holding his fingers thus he gazed at them, shifting them slightly from time to time and moving his glance from one to the other rapidly. A crowd gathered. In a few moments a pleasant elderly, short, and rather fat gentleman in the crowd came forward, and, taking off his hat, asked if he could do anything for him. 'Why,' said our friend, 'the fact is I am an engineer (section D of the Public Works Department) and I have to make an important measurement in connexion with the Apothegm of the Bilateral which runs to-night precisely through this spot. My fingers now mark exactly the concentric of the secondary focus whence the Radius Vector should be drawn, but I find that (like a fool) I have left my Double Refractor in the cafe hard by. I dare not go for fear of losing the place I have marked; yet I can get no further without my Double Refractor.' 'Do not let that trouble you,' said the short, stout stranger; 'I will be delighted to keep the place exactly marked while you run for your instrument.' The crowd was now swelled to a considerable size; it blocked up the pavement, and was swelled every moment by the arrival of the curious. The little fat elderly man put his fingers exactly where the other's had been, effecting the exchange with a sharp gesture; and each watched intently to see that it was right to within a millimetre. The attitude was constrained. The elderly man smiled, and begged the engineer not to be alarmed. So they left him with his two forefingers well above his head, precisely twenty-five centimetres apart, and pressing their tips against the wall of the Credit Lyonnais. Then the three friends slipped out of the crowd and pursued their way. 'Let us go to the theatre,' said the experimenter, 'and when we come back I warrant you will agree with my remarks on Bureaucracy.' They went to hear the admirable marble lines of Corneille. For three hours they were absorbed by the classics, and, when they returned, a crowd, now enormous, was surging all over the Boulevard, stopping the traffic and filled with a noise like the sea. Policemen were attacking it with the utmost energy, but still it grew and eddied; and in the centre--a little respectful space kept empty around him--still stretched the poor little fat elderly man, a pitiable sight. His knees were bent, his head wagged and drooped with extreme fatigue, he was the colour of old blotting-paper; but still he kept the tips of his two forefingers exactly twenty-five centimetres apart, well above his head, and pressed against the wall of the Credit Lyonnais. 'You will not match that with your aristocratic sentiment!' said the author of the scene in pardonable triumph. 'I am not so sure,' answered the Duke of Sussex. He pulled out his watch. 'It is midnight,' he said, 'and I must be off; but let me tell you before we part that you have paid for a most expensive dinner, and have behaved all night with an extravagant deference under the impression that I was the Duke of Sussex. As a fact my name is Jerks, and I am a commercial traveller in the linseed oil line; and I wish you the best of good evenings.' 'Wait a moment,' said the Man in the Big Fur Coat; 'my theory of the Simple Human Sense of Authority still holds. I am a detective officer, and you will both be good enough to follow me to the police station.' And so they did, and the Engineer was fined fifty francs in correctional, and the Duke of Sussex was imprisoned for ten days, with interdiction of domicile for six months; the first indeed under the Prefectorial Decree of the 18th of November 1843, but the second under the law of the 12th germinal of the year VIII. In this way I have got over between twenty and thirty miles of road which were tramped in the dark, and the description of which would have plagued you worse than a swarm of hornets. Oh, blessed interlude! no struggling moon, no mist, no long-winded passages upon the genial earth, no the sense of the night, no marvels of the dawn, no rhodomontade, no religion, no rhetoric, no sleeping villages, no silent towns (there was one), no rustle of trees--just a short story, and there you have a whole march covered as though a brigade had swung down it. A new day has come, and the sun has risen over the detestable parched hillocks of this downward way. No, no, Lector! Do not blame me that Tuscany should have passed beneath me unnoticed, as the monotonous sea passes beneath a boat in full sail. Blame all those days of marching; hundreds upon hundreds of miles that exhausted the powers of the mind. Blame the fiery and angry sky of Etruria, that compelled most of my way to be taken at night. Blame St Augustine, who misled me in his Confessions by talking like an African of 'the icy shores of Italy'; or blame Rome, that now more and more drew me to Herself as She approached from six to five, from five to four, from four to three--now She was but _three_ days off. The third sun after that I now saw rising would shine upon the City. I did indeed go forward a little in the heat, but it was useless. After an hour I abandoned it. It was not so much the sun, though that was intemperate and deadly; it was rather the inhuman aspect of the earth which made me despair. It was as though the soil had been left imperfect and rough after some cataclysm; it reminded me of those bad lands in the west of America, where the desert has no form, and where the crumbling and ashy look of things is more abhorrent than their mere desolation. As soon march through evil dreams! The north is the place for men. Eden was there; and the four rivers of Paradise are the Seine, the Oise, the Thames, and the Arun; there are grasses there, and the trees are generous, and the air is an unnoticed pleasure. The waters brim up to the edges of the fields. But for this bare Tuscany I was never made. How far I had gone I could not tell, nor precisely how much farther San Quirico, the neighbouring town, might be. The imperfect map I had bought at Siena was too minute to give me clear indications. I was content to wait for evening, and then to go on till I found it. An hour or so in the shade of a row of parched and dusty bushes I lay and ate and drank my wine, and smoked, and then all day I slept, and woke a while, and slept again more deeply. But how people sleep and wake, if you do not yet know it after so much of this book you never will. It was perhaps five o'clock, or rather more, when I rose unhappily and took up the ceaseless road. Even the goodness of the Italian nature seemed parched up in those dry hollows. At an inn where I ate they shouted at me, thinking in that way to make me understand; and their voices were as harsh as the grating of metal against stone. A mile farther I crossed a lonely line of railway; then my map told me where I was, and I went wearily up an indefinite slope under the declining sun, and thought it outrageous that only when the light had gone was there any tolerable air in this country. Soon the walls of San Quirico, partly ruinous, stood above the fields (for the smallest places here have walls); as I entered its gate the sun set, and as though the cool, coming suddenly, had a magic in it, everything turned kinder. A church that could wake interest stood at the entry of the town; it had stone lions on its steps, and the pillars were so carved as to resemble knotted ropes. There for the first time I saw in procession one of those confraternities which in Italy bury the dead; they had long and dreadful hoods over their heads, with slits for the eyes. I spoke to the people of San Quirico, and they to me. They were upstanding, and very fine and noble in the lines of the face. On their walls is set a marble tablet, on which it is registered that the people of Tuscany, being asked whether they would have their hereditary Duke or the House of Savoy, voted for the latter by such and such a great majority; and this kind of tablet I afterwards found was common to all these small towns. Then passing down their long street I came, at the farther gate, to a great sight, which the twilight still permitted me to receive in its entirety. For San Quirico is built on the edge of a kind of swell in the land, and here where I stood one looked over the next great wave; for the shape of the view was, on a vast scale, just what one sees from a lonely boat looking forward over a following sea. The trough of the wave was a shallow purple valley, its arid quality hidden by the kindly glimmer of evening; few trees stood in it to break its sweep, and its irregularities and mouldings were just those of a sweep of water after a gale. The crest of the wave beyond was seventeen miles away. It had, as have also such crests at sea, one highest, toppling peak in its long line, and this, against the clear sky, one could see to be marked by buildings. These buildings were the ruined castle and walls of Radicofani, and it lay straight on my way to Rome. It is a strange thing, arresting northern eyes, to see towns thus built on summits up into the sky, and this height seemed the more fantastic because it was framed. A row of cypress trees stood on either side of the road where it fell from San Quirico, and, exactly between these, this high crest, a long way off, was set as though by design. With more heart in me, and tempted by such an outline as one might be by the prospect of adventure, I set out to cross the great bare run of the valley. As I went, the mountain of Amiato came more and more nearly abreast of me in the west; in its foothills near me were ravines and unexpected rocks; upon one of them hung a village. I watched its church and one tall cypress next it, as they stood black against the last of daylight. Then for miles I went on the dusty way, and crossed by old bridges watercourses in which stood nothing but green pools; and the night deepened. It was when I had crossed the greater part of the obscure plain, at its lowest dip and not far from the climb up to Radicofani, that I saw lights shining in a large farmhouse, and though it was my business to walk by night, yet I needed companionship, so I went in. There in a very large room, floored with brick and lit by one candle, were two fine old peasants, with faces like apostles, playing a game of cards. There also was a woman playing with a strong boy child, that could not yet talk: and the child ran up to me. Nothing could persuade the master of the house but that I was a very poor man who needed sleep, and so good and generous was this old man that my protests seemed to him nothing but the excuses and shame of poverty. He asked me where I was going. I said, 'To Rome.' He came out with a lantern to the stable, and showed me there a manger full of hay, indicating that I might sleep in it... His candle flashed upon the great silent oxen standing in rows; their enormous horns, three times the length of what we know in England, filled me with wonder... Well! (may it count to me as gain!), rather than seem to offend him I lay down in that manger, though I had no more desire to sleep than has the flittermouse in our Sussex gloamings; also I was careful to offer no money, for that is brutality. When he had left me I took the opportunity for a little rest, and lay on my back in the hay wide-awake and staring at darkness. The great oxen champed and champed their food with a regular sound; I remembered the steerage in a liner, the noise of the sea and the regular screw, for this it exactly resembled. I considered in the darkness the noble aspect of these beasts as I had seen them in the lantern light, and I determined when I got to Rome to buy two such horns, and to bring them to England and have them mounted for drinking horns--great drinking horns, a yard deep--and to get an engraver to engrave a motto for each. On the first I would have-- King Alfred was in Wantage born He drank out of a ram's horn. Here is a better man than he, Who drinks deeper, as you see. Thus my friends drinking out of it should lift up their hearts and no longer be oppressed with humility. But on the second I determined for a rousing Latin thing, such as men shouted round camp fires in the year 888 or thereabouts; so, the imagination fairly set going and taking wood-cock's flight, snipe-fashion, zigzag and devil-may-care- for-the-rules, this seemed to suit me-- _Salve, cornu cornuum! Cornutorum vis Boûm. Munus excellent Deûm! Gregis o praesidium! Sitis desiderium! Dignum cornuum cornu Romae memor salve tu! Tibi cornuum cornuto--_ LECTOR. That means nothing. AUCTOR. Shut up! _Tibi cornuum cornuto Tibi clamo, te saluto Salve cornu cornuum! Fortunatam da Domunt!_ And after this cogitation and musing I got up quietly, so as not to offend the peasant: and I crept out, and so upwards on to the crest of the hill. But when, after several miles of climbing, I neared the summit, it was already beginning to be light. The bareness and desert grey of the distance I had crossed stood revealed in a colourless dawn, only the Mont' Amiata, now somewhat to the northward, was more gentle, and softened the scene with distant woods. Between it and this height ran a vague river-bed as dry as the stones of a salt beach. The sun rose as I passed under the ruined walls of the castle. In the little town itself, early as was the hour, many people were stirring. One gave me good-morning--a man of singular character, for here, in the very peep of day, he was sitting on a doorstep, idle, lazy and contented, as though it was full noon. Another was yoking oxen; a third going out singing to work in the fields. I did not linger in this crow's nest, but going out by the low and aged southern gate, another deeper valley, even drier and more dead than the last, appeared under the rising sun. It was enough to make one despair! And when I thought of the day's sleep in that wilderness, of the next night's toil through it-- LECTOR. What about the Brigand of Radicofani of whom you spoke in Lorraine, and of whom I am waiting to hear? AUCTOR. What about him? Why, he was captured long ago, and has since died of old age. I am surprised at your interrupting me with such questions. Pray ask for no more tales till we get to the really absorbing story of the Hungry Student. Well, as I was saying, I was in some despair at the sight of that valley, which had to be crossed before I could reach the town of Acquapendente, or Hanging-water, which I knew to lie somewhere on the hills beyond. The sun was conquering me, and I was looking hopelessly for a place to sleep, when a cart drawn by two oxen at about one mile an hour came creaking by. The driver was asleep, his head on the shady side. The devil tempted me, and without one struggle against temptation, nay with cynical and congratulatory feelings, I jumped up behind, and putting my head also on the shady side (there were soft sacks for a bed) I very soon was pleasantly asleep. We lay side by side for hour after hour, and the day rose on to noon; the sun beat upon our feet, but our heads were in the shade and we slept heavily a good and honest sleep: he thinking that he was alone, but I knowing that I was in company (a far preferable thing), and I was right and he was wrong. And the heat grew, and sleep came out of that hot sun more surely than it does out of the night air in the north. But no dreams wander under the noon. From time to time one or the other of us would open our eyes drowsily and wonder, but sleep was heavy on us both, and our minds were sunk in calm like old hulls in the dark depths of the sea where there are no storms. We neither of us really woke until, at the bottom of the hill which rises into Acquapendente, the oxen stopped. This halt woke us up; first me and then my companion. He looked at me a moment and laughed. He seemed to have thought all this while that I was some country friend of his who had taken a lift; and I, for my part, had made more or less certain that he was a good fellow who would do me no harm. I was right, and he was wrong. I knew not what offering to make him to compensate him for this trouble which his heavy oxen had taken. After some thought I brought a cigar out of my pocket, which he smoked with extreme pleasure. The oxen meanwhile had been urged up the slow hill, and it was in this way that we reached the famous town of Acquapendente. But why it should be called famous is more than I can understand. It may be that in one of those narrow streets there is a picture or a church, or one of those things which so attract unbelieving men. To the pilgrim it is simply a group of houses. Into one of these I went, and, upon my soul, I have nothing to say of it except that they furnished me with food. I do not pretend to have counted the flies, though they were numerous; and, even had I done so, what interest would the number have, save to the statisticians? Now as these are patient men and foolish, I heartily recommend them to go and count the flies for themselves. Leaving this meal then, this town and this people (which were all of a humdrum sort), and going out by the gate, the left side of which is made up of a church, I went a little way on the short road to San Lorenzo, but I had no intention of going far, for (as you know by this time) the night had become my day and the day my night. I found a stream running very sluggish between tall trees, and this sight sufficiently reminded me of my own country to permit repose. Lying down there I slept till the end of the day, or rather to that same time of evening which had now become my usual waking hour... And now tell me, Lector, shall I leave out altogether, or shall I give you some description of, the next few miles to San Lorenzo? LECTOR. Why, if I were you I would put the matter shortly and simply, for it is the business of one describing a pilgrimage or any other matter not to puff himself up with vain conceit, nor to be always picking about for picturesque situations, but to set down plainly and shortly what he has seen and heard, describing the whole matter. AUCTOR. But remember, Lector, that the artist is known not only by what he puts in but by what he leaves out. LECTOR. That is all very well for the artist, but you have no business to meddle with such people. AUCTOR. How then would you write such a book if you had the writing of it? LECTOR. I would not introduce myself at all; I would not tell stories at random, nor go in for long descriptions of emotions, which I am sure other men have felt as well as I. I would be careful to visit those things my readers had already heard of (AUCTOR. The pictures! the remarkable pictures! All that is meant by culture! The brown photographs! Oh! Lector, indeed I have done you a wrong!), and I would certainly not have the bad taste to say anything upon religion. Above all, I would be terse. AUCTOR. I see. You would not pile words one on the other, qualifying, exaggerating, conditioning, superlativing, diminishing, connecting, amplifying, condensing, mouthing, and glorifying the mere sound: you would be terse. You should be known for your self-restraint. There should be no verbosity in your style (God forbid!), still less pomposity, animosity, curiosity, or ferocity; you would have it neat, exact, and scholarly, and, above all, chiselled to the nail. A fig (say you), the pip of a fig, for the rambling style. You would be led into no hilarity, charity, vulgarity, or barbarity. Eh! my jolly Lector? You would simply say what you had to say? LECTOR. Precisely; I would say a plain thing in a plain way. AUCTOR. So you think one can say a plain thing in a plain way? You think that words mean nothing more than themselves, and that you can talk without ellipsis, and that customary phrases have not their connotations? You think that, do you? Listen then to the tale of Mr Benjamin Franklin Hard, a kindly merchant of Cincinnati, O., who had no particular religion, but who had accumulated a fortune of six hundred thousand dollars, and who had a horror of breaking the Sabbath. He was not 'a kind husband and a good father,' for he was unmarried; nor had he any children. But he was all that those words connote. This man Hard at the age of fifty-four retired from business, and determined to treat himself to a visit to Europe. He had not been in Europe five weeks before he ran bang up against the Catholic Church. He was never more surprised in his life. I do not mean that I have exactly weighed all his surprises all his life through. I mean that he was very much surprised indeed--and that is all that these words connote. He studied the Catholic Church with extreme interest. He watched High Mass at several places (hoping it might be different). He thought it was what it was not, and then, contrariwise, he thought it was not what it was. He talked to poor Catholics, rich Catholics, middle-class Catholics, and elusive, wellborn, penniless, neatly dressed, successful Catholics; also to pompous, vain Catholics; humble, uncertain Catholics; sneaking, pad-footed Catholics; healthy, howling, combative Catholics; doubtful, shoulder-shrugging, but devout Catholics; fixed, crabbed, and dangerous Catholics; easy, jovial, and shone-upon-by-the-heavenly-light Catholics; subtle Catholics; strange Catholics, and _(quod tibi manifeste absurdum videtur)_ intellectual, _pince-nez,_ jejune, twisted, analytical, yellow, cranky, and introspective Catholics: in fine, he talked to all Catholics. And when I say 'all Catholics' I do not mean that he talked to every individual Catholic, but that he got a good, integrative grip of the Church militant, which is all that the words connote. Well, this man Hard got to know, among others, a certain good priest that loved a good bottle of wine, a fine deep dish of_ poulet à la casserole, _and a kind of egg done with cream in a little platter; and eating such things, this priest said to him one day: 'Mr Hard, what you want is to read some books on Catholicism.' And Hard, who was on the point of being received into the Church as the final solution of human difficulties, thought it would be a very good thing to instruct his mind before baptism. So he gave the priest a note to a bookseller whom an American friend had told him of; and this American friend had said: 'You will find Mr Fingle (for such was the bookseller's name) a hard-headed, honest, business man. He can say a _plain thing in a plain way.'_ 'Here,' said Mr Hard to the priest, 'is ten pounds. Send it to this bookseller Fingle and he shall choose books on Catholicism to that amount, and you shall receive them, and I will come and read them here with you.' So the priest sent the money, and in four days the books came, and Mr Hard and the priest opened the package, and these were the books inside: _Auricular Confession:_ a History. By a Brand Saved from the Burning. _Isabella; or, The Little Female Jesuit._ By 'Hephzibah'. _Elisha MacNab:_ a Tale of the French Huguenots. _England and Rome._ By the Rev. Ebenezer Catchpole of Emmanuel, Birmingham. _Nuns and Nunneries._ By 'Ruth', with a Preface by Miss Carran, lately rescued from a Canadian Convent. _History of the Inquisition._ By Llorente. _The Beast with Seven Heads; or, the Apocalyptical Warning._ _No Truce with the Vatican._ _The True Cause of Irish Disaffection._ _Decline of the Latin Nations._ _Anglo-Saxons the Chosen Race,_ and their connexion with the Ten Lost Tribes: with a map. Finally, a very large book at the bottom of the case called _Giant Pope._ And it was no use asking for the money back or protesting. Mr Fingle was an honest, straightforward man, who said a plain thing in a plain way. They had left him to choose a suitable collection of books on Catholicism, and he had chosen the best he knew. And thus did Mr Hard (who has recently given a hideous font to the new Catholic church at Bismarckville) learn the importance of estimating what words connote. LECTOR. But all that does not excuse an intolerable prolixity? AUCTOR. Neither did I say it did, dear Lector. My object was merely to get you to San Lorenzo where I bought that wine, and where, going out of the gate on the south, I saw suddenly the wide lake of Bolsena all below. It is a great sheet like a sea; but as one knows one is on a high plateau, and as there is but a short dip down to it; as it is round and has all about it a rim of low even hills, therefore one knows it for an old and gigantic crater now full of pure water; and there are islands in it and palaces on the islands. Indeed it was an impression of silence and recollection, for the water lay all upturned to heaven, and, in the sky above me, the moon at her quarter hung still pale in the daylight, waiting for glory. I sat on the coping of a wall, drank a little of my wine, ate a little bread and sausage; but still song demanded some outlet in the cool evening, and companionship was more of an appetite in me than landscape. Please God, I had become southern and took beauty for granted. Anyhow, seeing a little two-wheeled cart come through the gate, harnessed to a ramshackle little pony, bony and hard, and driven by a little, brown, smiling, and contented old fellow with black hair, I made a sign to him and he stopped. This time there was no temptation of the devil; if anything the advance was from my side. I was determined to ride, and I sprang up beside the driver. We raced down the hill, clattering and banging and rattling like a piece of ordnance, and he, my brother, unasked began to sing. I sang in turn. He sang of Italy, I of four countries: America, France, England, and Ireland. I could not understand his songs nor he mine, but there was wine in common between us, and _salami_ and a merry heart, bread which is the bond of all mankind, and that prime solution of ill-ease--I mean the forgetfulness of money. That was a good drive, an honest drive, a human aspiring drive, a drive of Christians, a glorifying and uplifted drive, a drive worthy of remembrance for ever. The moon has shone on but few like it though she is old; the lake of Bolsena has glittered beneath none like it since the Etruscans here unbended after the solemnities of a triumph. It broke my vow to pieces; there was not a shadow of excuse for this use of wheels: it was done openly and wantonly in the face of the wide sky for pleasure. And what is there else but pleasure, and to what else does beauty move on? Not I hope to contemplation! A hideous oriental trick! No, but to loud notes and comradeship and the riot of galloping, and laughter ringing through old trees. Who would change (says Aristippus of Pslinthon) the moon and all the stars for so much wine as can be held in the cup of a bottle upturned? The honest man! And in his time (note you) they did not make the devilish deep and fraudulent bottoms they do now that cheat you of half your liquor. Moreover if I broke my vows (which is a serious matter), and if I neglected to contemplate the heavens (for which neglect I will confess to no one, not even to a postulate sub-deacon; it is no sin; it is a healthy omission), if (I say) I did this, I did what peasants do. And what is more, by drinking wine and eating pig we proved ourselves no Mohammedans; and on such as he is sure of, St Peter looks with a kindly eye. Now, just at the very entry to Bolsena, when we had followed the lovely lake some time, my driver halted and began to turn up a lane to a farm or villa; so I, bidding him good-night, crossed a field and stood silent by the lake and watched for a long time the water breaking on a tiny shore, and the pretty miniatures of waves. I stood there till the stars came out and the moon shone fully; then I went towards Bolsena under its high gate which showed in the darkness, and under its castle on the rock. There, in a large room which was not quite an inn, a woman of great age and dignity served me with fried fish from the lake, and the men gathered round me and attempted to tell me of the road to Rome, while I in exchange made out to them as much by gestures as by broken words the crossing of the Alps and the Apennines. Then, after my meal, one of the men told me I needed sleep; that there were no rooms in that house (as I said, it was not an inn), but that across the way he would show me one he had for hire. I tried to say that my plan was to walk by night. They all assured me he would charge me a reasonable sum. I insisted that the day was too hot for walking. They told me, did these Etruscans, that I need fear no extortion from so honest a man. Certainly it is not easy to make everybody understand everything, and I had had experience already up in the mountains, days before, of how important it is not to be misunderstood when one is wandering in a foreign country, poor and ill-clad. I therefore accepted the offer, and, what was really very much to my regret, I paid the money he demanded. I even so far fell in with the spirit of the thing as to sleep a certain number of hours (for after all, my sleep that day in the cart had been very broken, and instead of resting throughout the whole of the heat I had taken a meal at Acquapendente). But I woke up not long after midnight--perhaps between one and two o'clock--and went out along the borders of the lake. The moon had set; I wish I could have seen her hanging at the quarter in the clear sky of that high crater, dipping into the rim of its inland sea. It was perceptibly cold. I went on the road quite slowly, till it began to climb, and when the day broke I found myself in a sunken lane leading up to the town of Montefiascone. The town lay on its hill in the pale but growing light. A great dome gave it dignity, and a castle overlooked the lake. It was built upon the very edge and lip of the volcano-cup commanding either side. I climbed up this sunken lane towards it, not knowing what might be beyond, when, at the crest, there shone before me in the sunrise one of those unexpected and united landscapes which are among the glories of Italy. They have changed the very mind in a hundred northern painters, when men travelled hither to Rome to learn their art, and coming in by her mountain roads saw, time and again, the set views of plains like gardens, surrounded by sharp mountain-land and framed. The road did not pass through the town; the grand though crumbling gate of entry lay up a short straight way to the right, and below, where the road continued down the slope, was a level of some eight miles full of trees diminishing in distance. At its further side an ample mountain, wooded, of gentle flattened outline, but high and majestic, barred the way to Rome. It was yet another of those volcanoes, fruitful after death, which are the mark of Latium: and it held hidden, as did that larger and more confused one on the rim of which I stood, a lake in its silent crater. But that lake, as I was to find, was far smaller than the glittering sea of Bolsena, whose shores now lay behind me. The distance and the hill that bounded it should in that climate have stood clear in the pure air, but it was yet so early that a thin haze hung over the earth, and the sun had not yet controlled it: it was even chilly. I could not catch the towers of Viterbo, though I knew them to stand at the foot of the far mountain. I went down the road, and in half-an-hour or so was engaged upon the straight line crossing the plain. I wondered a little how the road would lie with regard to the town, and looked at my map for guidance, but it told me little. It was too general, taking in all central Italy, and even large places were marked only by small circles. When I approached Viterbo I first saw an astonishing wall, perpendicular to my road, untouched, the bones of the Middle Ages. It stood up straight before one like a range of cliffs, seeming much higher than it should; its hundred feet or so were exaggerated by the severity of its stones and by their sheer fall. For they had no ornament whatever, and few marks of decay, though many of age. Tall towers, exactly square and equally bare of carving or machicolation, stood at intervals along this forbidding defence and flanked its curtain. Then nearer by, one saw that it was not a huge castle, but the wall of a city, for at a corner it went sharp round to contain the town, and through one uneven place I saw houses. Many men were walking in the roads alongside these walls, and there were gates pierced in them whereby the citizens went in and out of the city as bees go in and out of the little opening in a hive. But my main road to Rome did not go through Viterbo, it ran alongside of the eastern wall, and I debated a little with myself whether I would go in or no. It was out of my way, and I had not entered Montefiascone for that reason. On the other hand, Viterbo was a famous place. It is all very well to neglect Florence and Pisa because they are some miles off the straight way, but Viterbo right under one's hand it is a pity to miss. Then I needed wine and food for the later day in the mountain. Yet, again, it was getting hot. It was past eight, the mist had long ago receded, and I feared delay. So I mused on the white road under the tall towers and dead walls of Viterbo, and ruminated on an unimportant thing. Then curiosity did what reason could not do, and I entered by a gate. The streets were narrow, tortuous, and alive, all shaded by the great houses, and still full of the cold of the night. The noise of fountains echoed in them, and the high voices of women and the cries of sellers. Every house had in it something fantastic and peculiar; humanity had twined into this place like a natural growth, and the separate thoughts of men, both those that were alive there and those dead before them, had decorated it all. There were courtyards with blinding whites of sunlit walls above, themselves in shadow; and there were many carvings and paintings over doors. I had come into a great living place after the loneliness of the road. There, in the first wide street I could find, I bought sausage and bread and a great bottle of wine, and then quitting Viterbo, I left it by the same gate and took the road. For a long while yet I continued under the walls, noting in one place a thing peculiar to the Middle Ages, I mean the apse of a church built right into the wall as the old Cathedral of St Stephen's was in Paris. These, I suppose, enemies respected if they could; for I have noticed also that in castles the chapel is not hidden, but stands out from the wall. So be it. Your fathers and mine were there in the fighting, but we do not know their names, and I trust and hope yours spared the altars as carefully as mine did. The road began to climb the hill, and though the heat increased--for in Italy long before nine it is glaring noon to us northerners (and that reminds me: your fathers and mine, to whom allusion has been made above {as they say in the dull history books--[LECTOR. How many more interior brackets are we to have? Is this algebra? AUCTOR. You yourself, Lector, are responsible for the worst.]} your fathers and mine coming down into this country to fight, as was their annual custom, must have had a plaguy time of it, when you think that they could not get across the Alps till summer-time, and then had to hack and hew, and thrust and dig, and slash and climb, and charge and puff, and blow and swear, and parry and receive, and aim and dodge, and butt and run for their lives at the end, under an unaccustomed sun. No wonder they saw visions, the dear people! They are dead now, and we do not even know their names.)--Where was I? LECTOR. You were at the uninteresting remark that the heat was increasing. AUCTOR. Precisely. I remember. Well, the heat was increasing, but it seemed far more bearable than it had been in the earlier places; in the oven of the Garfagnana or in the deserts of Siena. For with the first slopes of the mountain a forest of great chestnut trees appeared, and it was so cool under these that there was even moss, as though I were back again in my own country where there are full rivers in summer-time, deep meadows, and all the completion of home. Also the height may have begun to tell on the air, but not much, for when the forest was behind me, and when I had come to a bare heath sloping more gently upwards--a glacis in front of the topmost bulwark of the round mountain--- I was oppressed with thirst, and though it was not too hot to sing (for I sang, and two lonely carabinieri passed me singing, and we recognized as we saluted each other that the mountain was full of songs), yet I longed for a bench, a flagon, and shade. And as I longed, a little house appeared, and a woman in the shade sewing, and an old man. Also a bench and a table, and a tree over it. There I sat down and drank white wine and water many times. The woman charged me a halfpenny, and the old man would not talk. He did not take his old age garrulously. It was his business, not mine; but I should dearly have liked to have talked to him in Lingua Franca, and to have heard him on the story of his mountain: where it was haunted, by what, and on which nights it was dangerous to be abroad. Such as it was, there it was. I left them, and shall perhaps never see them again. The road was interminable, and the crest, from which I promised myself the view of the crater-lake, was always just before me, and was never reached. A little spring, caught in a hollow log, refreshed a meadow on the right. Drinking there again, I wondered if I should go on or rest; but I was full of antiquity, and a memory in the blood, or what not, impelled me to see the lake in the crater before I went to sleep: after a few hundred yards this obsession was satisfied. I passed between two banks, where the road had been worn down at the crest of the volcano's rim; then at once, far below, in a circle of silent trees with here and there a vague shore of marshy land, I saw the Pond of Venus: some miles of brooding water, darkened by the dark slopes around it. Its darkness recalled the dark time before the dawn of our saved and happy world. At its hither end a hill, that had once been a cone in the crater, stood out all covered with a dense wood. It was the Hill of Venus. There was no temple, nor no sacrifice, nor no ritual for the Divinity, save this solemn attitude of perennial silence; but under the influence which still remained and gave the place its savour, it was impossible to believe that the gods were dead. There were no men in that hollow; nor was there any memory of men, save of men dead these thousands of years. There was no life of visible things. The mind released itself and was in touch with whatever survives of conquered but immortal Spirits. Thus ready for worship, and in a mood of adoration; filled also with the genius which inhabits its native place and is too subtle or too pure to suffer the effect of time, I passed down the ridge-way of the mountain rim, and came to the edge overlooking that arena whereon was first fought out and decided the chief destiny of the world. For all below was the Campagna. Names that are at the origin of things attached to every cleft and distant rock beyond the spreading level, or sanctified the gleams of rivers. There below me was Veii; beyond, in the Wall of the Apennines, only just escaped from clouds, was Tibur that dignified the ravine at the edge of their rising; that crest to the right was Tusculum, and far to the south, but clear, on a mountain answering my own, was the mother of the City, Alba Longa. The Tiber, a dense, brown fog rolling over and concealing it, was the god of the wide plain. There and at that moment I should have seen the City. I stood up on the bank and shaded my eyes, straining to catch the dome at least in the sunlight; but I could not, for Rome was hidden by the low Sabinian hills. Soracte I saw there--Soracte, of which I had read as a boy. It stood up like an acropolis, but it was a citadel for no city. It stood alone, like that soul which once haunted its recesses and prophesied the conquering advent of the northern kings. I saw the fields where the tribes had lived that were the first enemies of the imperfect state, before it gave its name to the fortunes of the Latin race. Dark Etruria lay behind me, forgotten in the backward of my march: a furnace and a riddle out of which religion came to the Romans--a place that has left no language. But below me, sunlit and easy (as it seemed in the cooler air of that summit), was the arena upon which were first fought out the chief destinies of the world. And I still looked down upon it, wondering. Was it in so small a space that all the legends of one's childhood were acted? Was the defence of the bridge against so neighbouring and petty an alliance? Were they peasants of a group of huts that handed down the great inheritance of discipline, and made an iron channel whereby, even to us, the antique virtues could descend as a living memory? It must be so; for the villages and ruins in one landscape comprised all the first generations of the history of Rome. The stones we admire, the large spirit of the last expression came from that rough village and sprang from the broils of that one plain; Rome was most vigorous before it could speak. So a man's verse, and all he has, are but the last outward appearance, late and already rigid, of an earlier, more plastic, and diviner fire. 'Upon this arena,' I still said to myself, 'were first fought out the chief destinies of the world'; and so, played upon by an unending theme, I ate and drank in a reverie, still wondering, and then lay down beneath the shade of a little tree that stood alone upon that edge of a new world. And wondering, I fell asleep under the morning sun. But this sleep was not like the earlier oblivions that had refreshed my ceaseless journey, for I still dreamt as I slept of what I was to see, and visions of action without thought--pageants and mysteries--surrounded my spirit; and across the darkness of a mind remote from the senses there passed whatever is wrapped up in the great name of Rome. When I woke the evening had come. A haze had gathered upon the plain. The road fell into Ronciglione, and dreams surrounded it upon every side. For the energy of the body those hours of rest had made a fresh and enduring vigour; for the soul no rest was needed. It had attained, at least for the next hour, a vigour that demanded only the physical capacity of endurance; an eagerness worthy of such great occasions found a marching vigour for its servant. In Ronciglione I saw the things that Turner drew; I mean the rocks from which a river springs, and houses all massed together, giving the steep a kind of crown. This also accompanied that picture, the soft light which mourns the sun and lends half-colours to the world. It was cool, and the opportunity beckoned. I ate and drank, asking every one questions of Rome, and I passed under their great gate and pursued the road to the plain. In the mist, as it rose, there rose also a passion to achieve. All the night long, mile after mile, I hurried along the Cassian Way. For five days I had slept through the heat, and the southern night had become my daytime; and though the mist was dense, and though the moon, now past her quarter, only made a vague place in heaven, yet expectation and fancy took more than the place of sight. In this fog I felt with every step of the night march the approach to the goal. Long past the place I had marked as a halt, long past Sette Vene, a light blurred upon the white wreaths of vapour; distant songs and the noise of men feasting ended what had been for many, many hours--for more than twenty miles of pressing forward--an exaltation worthy of the influence that bred it. Then came on me again, after the full march, a necessity for food and for repose. But these things, which have been the matter of so much in this book, now seemed subservient only to the reaching of an end; they were left aside in the mind. It was an inn with trellis outside making an arbour. In the yard before it many peasants sat at table; their beasts and waggons stood in the roadway, though, at this late hour, men were feeding some and housing others. Within, fifty men or more were making a meal or a carousal. What feast or what necessity of travel made them keep the night alive I neither knew nor asked; but passing almost unobserved amongst them between the long tables, I took my place at the end, and the master served me with good food and wine. As I ate the clamour of the peasants sounded about me, and I mixed with the energy of numbers. With a little difficulty I made the master understand that I wished to sleep till dawn. He led me out to a small granary (for the house was full), and showed me where I should sleep in the scented hay. He would take no money for such a lodging, and left me after showing me how the door latched and unfastened; and out of so many men, he was the last man whom I thanked for a service until I passed the gates of Rome. Above the soft bed which the hay made, a square window, unglazed, gave upon the southern night; the mist hardly drifted in or past it, so still was the air. I watched it for a while drowsily; then sleep again fell on me. But as I slept, Rome, Rome still beckoned me, and I woke in a struggling light as though at a voice calling, and slipping out I could not but go on to the end. The small square paving of the Via Cassia, all even like a palace floor, rang under my steps. The parched banks and strips of dry fields showed through the fog (for its dampness did not cure the arid soil of the Campagna). The sun rose and the vapour lifted. Then, indeed, I peered through the thick air--but still I could see nothing of my goal, only confused folds of brown earth and burnt-up grasses, and farther off rare and un-northern trees. I passed an old tower of the Middle Ages that was eaten away at its base by time or the quarrying of men; I passed a divergent way on the right where a wooden sign said 'The Triumphal Way', and I wondered whether it could be the road where ritual had once ordained that triumphs should go. It seemed lonely and lost, and divorced from any approach to sacred hills. The road fell into a hollow where soldiers were manoeuvring. Even these could not arrest an attention that was fixed upon the approaching revelation. The road climbed a little slope where a branch went off to the left, and where there was a house and an arbour under vines. It was now warm day; trees of great height stood shading the sun; the place had taken on an appearance of wealth and care. The mist had gone before I reached the summit of the rise. There, from the summit, between the high villa walls on either side--at my very feet I saw the City. And now all you people whatsoever that are presently reading, may have read, or shall in the future read, this my many-sided but now-ending book; all you also that in the mysterious designs of Providence may not be fated to read it for some very long time to come; you then I say, entire, englobed, and universal race of men both in gross and regardant, not only living and seeing the sunlight, but dead also under the earth; shades, or to come in procession afterwards out of the dark places into the day for a little, swarms of you, an army without end; all you black and white, red, yellow and brown, men, women, children and poets--all of you, wherever you are now, or have been, or shall be in your myriads and deka myriads and hendeka myriads, the time has come when I must bid you farewell-- _Ludisti satis, edisti satis, atque bibisti; Tempus abire tibi est...._ Only Lector I keep by me for a very little while longer with a special purpose, but even he must soon leave me; for all good things come to an end, and this book is coming to an end--has come to an end. The leaves fall, and they are renewed; the sun sets on the Vexin hills, but he rises again over the woods of Marly. Human companionship once broken can never be restored, and you and I shall not meet or understand each other again. It is so of all the poor links whereby we try to bridge the impassable gulf between soul and soul. Oh! we spin something, I know, but it is very gossamer, thin and strained, and even if it does not snap time will at last dissolve it. Indeed, there is a song on it which you should know, and which runs-- [Bar of music] So my little human race, both you that have read this book and you that have not, good-bye in charity. I loved you all as I wrote. Did you all love me as much as I have loved you, by the black stone of Rennes I should be rich by now. Indeed, indeed, I have loved you all! You, the workers, all puffed up and dyspeptic and ready for the asylums; and you, the good-for-nothing lazy drones; you, the strong silent men, who have heads quite empty, like gourds; and you also, the frivolous, useless men that chatter and gabble to no purpose all day long. Even you, that, having begun to read this book, could get no further than page 47, and especially you who have read it manfully in spite of the flesh, I love you all, and give you here and now my final, complete, full, absolving, and comfortable benediction. To tell the truth, I have noticed one little fault about you. I will not call it fatuous, inane, and exasperating vanity or self- absorption; I will put it in the form of a parable. Sit you round attentively and listen, dispersing yourselves all in order, and do not crowd or jostle. Once, before we humans became the good and self-respecting people we are, the Padre Eterno was sitting in heaven with St Michael beside him, and He watched the abyss from His great throne, and saw shining in the void one far point of light amid some seventeen million others, and He said: 'What is that?' And St Michael answered: 'That is the Earth,' for he felt some pride in it. 'The Earth?' said the Padre Eterno, a little puzzled... 'The Earth? ...?... I do not remember very exactly...' 'Why,' answered St Michael, with as much reverence as his annoyance could command, 'surely you must recollect the Earth and all the pother there was in heaven when it was first suggested to create it, and all about Lucifer--' 'Ah!' said the Padre Eterno, thinking twice, 'yes. It is attached to Sirius, and--' 'No, no,' said St Michael, quite visibly put out. 'It is the Earth. The Earth which has that changing moon and the thing called the sea.' 'Of course, of course,' answered the Padre Eterno quickly, 'I said Sirius by a slip of the tongue. Dear me! So that is the Earth! Well, well! It is years ago now... Michael, what are those little things swarming up and down all over it?' 'Those,' said St Michael, 'are Men.' 'Men?' said the Padre Eterno, 'Men... I know the word as well as any one, but somehow the connexion escapes me. Men...' and He mused. St Michael, with perfect self-restraint, said a few things a trifle staccato, defining Man, his dual destiny, his hope of heaven, and all the great business in which he himself had fought hard. But from a fine military tradition, he said nothing of his actions, nor even of his shrine in Normandy, of which he is naturally extremely proud: and well he may be. What a hill! 'I really beg your pardon,' said the Padre Eterno, when he saw the importance attached to these little creatures. 'I am sure they are worthy of the very fullest attention, and' (he added, for he was sorry to have offended) 'how sensible they seem, Michael! There they go, buying and selling, and sailing, driving, and wiving, and riding, and dancing, and singing, and the rest of it; indeed, they are most practical, business-like, and satisfactory little beings. But I notice one odd thing. Here and there are some not doing as the rest, or attending to their business, but throwing themselves into all manner of attitudes, making the most extraordinary sounds, and clothing themselves in the quaintest of garments. What is the meaning of that?' 'Sire!' cried St Michael, in a voice that shook the architraves of heaven, 'they are worshipping You!' 'Oh! they are worshipping _me!_ Well, that is the most sensible thing I have heard of them yet, and I altogether commend them. _Continuez,'_ said the Padre Eterno, _'continuez!'_ And since then all has been well with the world; at least where _Us continuent._ And so, carissimi, multitudes, all of you good-bye; the day has long dawned on the Via Cassia, this dense mist has risen, the city is before me, and I am on the threshold of a great experience; I would rather be alone. Good-bye my readers; good-bye the world. At the foot of the hill I prepared to enter the city, and I lifted up my heart. There was an open space; a tramway: a tram upon it about to be drawn by two lean and tired horses whom in the heat many flies disturbed. There was dust on everything around. A bridge was immediately in front. It was adorned with statues in soft stone, half-eaten away, but still gesticulating in corruption, after the manner of the seventeenth century. Beneath the bridge there tumbled and swelled and ran fast a great confusion of yellow water: it was the Tiber. Far on the right were white barracks of huge and of hideous appearance; over these the Dome of St Peter's rose and looked like something newly built. It was of a delicate blue, but made a metallic contrast against the sky. Then (along a road perfectly straight and bounded by factories, mean houses and distempered walls: a road littered with many scraps of paper, bones, dirt, and refuse) I went on for several hundred yards, having the old wall of Rome before me all this time, till I came right under it at last; and with the hesitation that befits all great actions I entered, putting the right foot first lest I should bring further misfortune upon that capital of all our fortunes. And so the journey ended. It was the Gate of the Poplar--not of the People. (Ho, Pedant! Did you think I missed you, hiding and lurking there?) Many churches were to hand; I took the most immediate, which stood just within the wall and was called Our Lady of the People--(not 'of the Poplar'. Another fall for the learned! Professor, things go ill with you to-day!). Inside were many fine pictures, not in the niminy-piminy manner, but strong, full-coloured, and just. To my chagrin, Mass was ending. I approached a priest and said to him: _'Pater, quando vel a quella hora e la prossimma Missa?'_ _'Ad nonas,'_ said he. _'Pol! Hercle!'_ (thought I), 'I have yet twenty minutes to wait! Well, as a pilgrimage cannot be said to be over till the first Mass is heard in Rome, I have twenty minutes to add to my book.' So, passing an Egyptian obelisk which the great Augustus had nobly dedicated to the Sun, I entered.... LECTOR. But do you intend to tell us nothing of Rome? AUCTOR. Nothing, dear Lector. LECTOR. Tell me at least one thing; did you see the Coliseum? AUCTOR.... I entered a cafe at the right hand of a very long, straight street, called for bread, coffee, and brandy, and contemplating my books and worshipping my staff that had been friends of mine so long, and friends like all true friends inanimate, I spent the few minutes remaining to my happy, common, unshriven, exterior, and natural life, in writing down this LOUD AND FINAL SONG DITHYRAMBIC EPITHALAMIUM OR THRENODY In these boots, and with this staff Two hundred leaguers and a half-- (That means, two and a half hundred leagues. You follow? Not two hundred and one half league.... Well--) Two hundred leaguers and a half Walked I, went I, paced I, tripped I, Marched I, held I, skelped I, slipped I, Pushed I, panted, swung and dashed I; Picked I, forded, swam and splashed I, Strolled I, climbed I, crawled and scrambled, Dropped and dipped I, ranged and rambled; Plodded I, hobbled I, trudged and tramped I, And in lonely spinnies camped I, And in haunted pinewoods slept I, Lingered, loitered, limped and crept I, Clambered, halted, stepped and leapt I; Slowly sauntered, roundly strode I, _And_... (Oh! Patron saints and Angels That protect the four evangels! And you Prophets vel majores Vel incerti, vel minores, Virgines ac confessores Chief of whose peculiar glories Est in Aula Regis stare Atque orare et exorare Et clamare et conclamare Clamantes cum clamoribus Pro nobis peccatoribus.) _Let me not conceal it... Rode I. _ (For who but critics could complain Of 'riding' in a railway train?) _Across the valleys and the high-land, With all the world on either hand. Drinking when I had a mind to, Singing when I felt inclined to; Nor ever turned my face to home Till I had slaked my heart at Rome._ THE END AGAIN LECTOR. But this is dogg-- AUCTOR. Not a word! FINIS 
8593	----	Team NORMANDY: THE SCENERY & ROMANCE OF ITS ANCIENT TOWNS: DEPICTED BY GORDON HOME Part 1. PREFACE This book is not a guide. It is an attempt to convey by pictures and description a clear impression of the Normandy which awaits the visitor. The route described could, however, be followed without covering the same ground for more than five or six miles, and anyone choosing to do this would find in his path some of the richest architecture and scenery that the province possesses. As a means of reviving memories of past visits to Normandy, I may perhaps venture to hope that the illustrations of this book--as far as the reproductions are successful--may not be ineffectual. GORDON HOME EPSOM, _October_ 1905 CONTENTS PREFACE LIST OF COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS LIST OF LINE ILLUSTRATIONS CHAPTER I Some Features of Normandy CHAPTER II By the Banks of the Seine CHAPTER III Concerning Rouen, the Ancient Capital of Normandy CHAPTER IV Concerning the Cathedral City of Evreux and the Road to Bernay CHAPTER V Concerning Lisieux and the Romantic Town of Falaise CHAPTER VI From Argentan to Avranches CHAPTER VII Concerning Mont St Michel CHAPTER VIII Concerning Coutances and Some Parts of the Cotentin CHAPTER IX Concerning St Lo and Bayeux CHAPTER X Concerning Caen and the Coast Towards Trouville CHAPTER XI Some Notes on the History of Normandy LIST OF COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS MONT ST MICHEL FROM THE CAUSEWAY ON THE ROAD BETWEEN CONCHES AND BEAUMONT-LE-ROGER This is typical of the poplar-bordered roads of Normandy. THE CHATEAU GAILLARD FROM THE ROAD BY THE SEINE The village of Le Petit Andely appears below the castle rock, and is partly hidden by the island. The chalk cliffs on the left often look like ruined walls. A TYPICAL REACH OF THE SEINE BETWEEN ROUEN AND LE PETIT ANDELY On one side great chalk cliffs rise precipitously, and on the other are broad flat pastures. THE CHURCH AT GISORS, SEEN FROM THE WALLS OF THE NORMAN CASTLE THE TOUR DE LA GROSSE HORLOGE, ROUEN It is the Belfry of the City, and was commenced in 1389. THE CATHEDRAL AT ROUEN Showing a peep of the Portail de la Calende, and some of the quaint houses of the oldest part of the City. THE CATHEDRAL OF EVREUX SEEN FROM ABOVE On the right, just where the light touches some of the roofs of the houses, the fine old belfry can be seen. A TYPICAL FARMYARD SCENE IN NORMANDY The curious little thatched mushroom above the cart is to be found in most of the Norman farms. THE BRIDGE AT BEAUMONT-LE-ROGER On the steep hill beyond stands the ruined abbey church. IN THE RUE AUX FEVRES, LISIEUX The second tiled gable from the left belongs to the fine sixteenth century house called the Manoir de Francois I. THE CHURCH OF ST JACQUES AT LISIEUX One of the quaint umber fronted houses for which the town is famous appears on the left. FALAISE CASTLE The favourite stronghold of William the Conqueror. THE PORTE DES CORDELIERS AT FALAISE A thirteenth century gateway that overlooks the steep valley of the Ante. THE CHATEAU D'O A seventeenth century manor house surrounded by a wide moat. THE GREAT VIEW OVER THE FORESTS TO THE SOUTH FROM THE RAMPARTS OF DOMFRONT CASTLE Down below can be seen the river Varennes, and to the left of the railway the little Norman Church of Notre-Dame-sur-l'Eau. THE CLOCK GATE, VIRE A VIEW OF MONT ST MICHEL AND THE BAY OF CANCALE FROM THE JARDIN DES PLANTES AT AVRANCHES On the left is the low coast-line of Normandy, and on the right appears the islet of Tombelaine. DISTANT VIEW OF MONT ST MICHEL THE LONG MAIN STREET OF COUTANCES In the foreground is the Church of St Pierre, and in the distance is the Cathedral. THE GREAT WESTERN TOWERS OF THE CHURCH OF NOTRE DAME AT ST LO They are of different dates, and differ in the arcading and other ornament. THE NORMAN TOWERS OF BAYEUX CATHEDRAL ST PIERRE, CAEN OUISTREHAM LIST OF LINE ILLUSTRATIONS THE FORTIFIED FARM NEAR GISORS A SEVENTEENTH CENTURY HOUSE AT ARGENTAN THE OLD MARKET HOUSE AT ECOUCHE ONE OF THE TOWERS IN THE WALLS OF DOMFRONT THE CHËTELET AND LA MERVFILLE AT MONT ST MICHEL The dark opening through the archway on the left is the main entrance to the Abbey. On the right can be seen the tall narrow windows that light the three floors of Abbot Jourdain's great work. AN ANCIENT HOUSE IN THE RUE ST MALO, BAYEUX THE GATEWAY OF THE CHATEAU THE DISUSED CHURCH OF ST NICHOLAS AT CAEN A COURTYARD IN THE RUE DE BAYEUX AT CAEN CHAPTER I Some Features of Normandy Very large ants, magpies in every meadow, and coffee-cups without handles, but of great girth, are some of the objects that soon become familiar to strangers who wander in that part of France which was at one time as much part of England as any of the counties of this island. The ants and the coffee-cups certainly give one a sense of being in a foreign land, but when one wanders through the fertile country among the thatched villages and farms that so forcibly remind one of Devonshire, one feels a friendliness in the landscapes that scarcely requires the stimulus of the kindly attitude of the peasants towards _les anglais_. If one were to change the dark blue smock and the peculiar peaked hat of the country folk of Normandy for the less distinctive clothes of the English peasant, in a very large number of cases the Frenchmen would pass as English. The Norman farmer so often has features strongly typical of the southern counties of England, that it is surprising that with his wife and his daughters there should be so little resemblance. Perhaps this is because the French women dress their hair in such a different manner to those on the northern side of the Channel, and they certainly, taken as a whole, dress with better effect than their English neighbours; or it may be that the similar ideas prevailing among the men as to how much of the face should be shaved have given the stronger sex an artificial resemblance. In the towns there is little to suggest in any degree that the mediaeval kings of England ruled this large portion of France, and at Mont St Michel the only English objects besides the ebb and flow of tourists are the two great iron _michelettes_ captured by the French in 1433. Everyone who comes to the wonderful rock is informed that these two guns are English; but as they have been there for nearly five hundred years, no one feels much shame at seeing them in captivity, and only a very highly specialised antiquary would be able to recognise any British features in them. Everyone, however, who visits Normandy from England with any enthusiasm, is familiar with the essential features of Norman and early pointed architecture, and it is thus with distinct pleasure that the churches are often found to be strikingly similar to some of the finest examples of the earlier periods in England. When we remember that the Norman masons and master-builders had been improving the crude Saxon architecture in England even before the Conquest, and that, during the reigns of the Norman kings, "Frenchmen," as the Saxons called them, were working on churches and castles in every part of our island, it is no matter for surprise to find that buildings belonging to the eleventh, twelfth, and even the thirteenth century, besides being of similar general design, are often covered with precisely the same patterns of ornament. When the period of Decorated Gothic began to prevail towards the end of the thirteenth century, the styles on each side of the Channel gradually diverged, so that after that time the English periods do not agree with those of Normandy. There is also, even in the churches that most resemble English structures, a strangeness that assails one unless familiarity has taken the edge off one's perceptions. Though not the case with all the fine churches and cathedrals of Normandy, yet with an unpleasantly large proportion--unfortunately including the magnificent Church of St Ouen at Rouen--there is beyond the gaudy tinsel that crowds the altars, an untidiness that detracts from the sense of reverence that stately Norman or Gothic does not fail to inspire. In the north transept of St Ouen, some of the walls and pillars have at various times been made to bear large printed notices which have been pasted down, and when out of date they have been only roughly torn off, leaving fragments that soon become discoloured and seriously mar the dignified antiquity of the stone-work. But beyond this, one finds that the great black stands for candles that burn beside the altars are generally streaked with the wax that has guttered from a dozen flames, and that even the floor is covered with lumps of wax--the countless stains of only partially scraped-up gutterings of past offerings. There is also that peculiarly unpleasant smell so often given out by the burning wax that greets one on entering the cool twilight of the building. The worn and tattered appearance of the rush-seated chairs in the churches is easily explained when one sees the almost constant use to which they are put. In the morning, or even as late as six in the evening, one finds classes of boys or girls being catechised and instructed by priests and nuns. The visitor on pushing open the swing door of an entrance will frequently be met by a monotonous voice that echoes through the apparently empty church. As he slowly takes his way along an aisle, the voice will cease, and suddenly break out in a simple but loudly sung Gregorian air, soon joined by a score or more of childish voices; then, as the stranger comes abreast of a side chapel, he causes a grave distraction among the rows of round, closely cropped heads. The rather nasal voice from the sallow figure in the cassock rises higher, and as the echoing footsteps of the person who does nothing but stare about him become more and more distant, the sing-song tune grows in volume once more, and the rows of little French boys are again in the way of becoming good Catholics. In another side chapel the confessional box bears a large white card on which is printed in bold letters, "M. le Cure." He is on duty at the present time, for, from behind the curtained lattices, the stranger hears a soft mumble of words, and he is constrained to move silently towards the patch of blazing whiteness that betokens the free air and sunshine without. The cheerful clatter of the traffic on the cobbles is typical of all the towns of Normandy, as it is of the whole republic, but Caen has reduced this form of noise by exchanging its omnibuses, that always suggested trams that had left the rails, for swift electric trams that only disturb the streets by their gongs. In Rouen, the electric cars, which the Britisher rejoices to discover were made in England--the driver being obliged to read the positions of his levers in English--are a huge boon to everyone who goes sight-seeing in that city. Being swept along in a smoothly running car is certainly preferable to jolting one's way over the uneven paving on a bicycle, but it is only in the largest towns that one has such a choice. Although the only road that is depicted in this book is as straight as any built by the Romans and is bordered by poplars, it is only one type of the great _routes nationales_ that connect the larger towns. In the hilly parts of Normandy the poplar bordered roads entirely disappear, and however straight the engineers may have tried to make their ways, they have been forced to give them a zig-zag on the steep slopes that breaks up the monotony of the great perspectives so often to be seen stretching away for great distances in front and behind. It must not be imagined that Normandy is without the usual winding country road where every bend has beyond it some possibilities in the way of fresh views. An examination of a good road map of the country will show that although the straight roads are numerous, there are others that wind and twist almost as much as the average English turnpike. As a rule, the _route nationale_ is about the same width as most main roads, but it has on either side an equal space of grass. This is frequently scraped off by the cantoniers, and the grass is placed in great piles ready for removal. When these have been cleared away the thoroughfare is of enormous width, and in case of need, regiments could march in the centre with artillery on one side, and a supply train on the other, without impeding one another. Level crossings for railways are more frequent than bridges. The gates are generally controlled by women in the family sort of fashion that one sees at the lodge of an English park where a right-of-way exists, and yet accidents do not seem to happen. The railways of Normandy are those of the Chemin de Fer de l'Ouest, and one soon becomes familiar with the very low platforms of the stations that are raised scarcely above the rails. The porters wear blue smocks and trousers of the same material, secured at the waist by a belt of perpendicular red and black stripes. The railway carriages have always two foot-boards, and the doors besides the usual handles have a second one half-way down the panels presumably for additional security. It is really in the nature of a bolt that turns on a pivot and falls into a bracket. On the doors, the class of the carriages is always marked in heavy Roman numerals. The third-class compartments have windows only in the doors, are innocent of any form of cushions and are generally only divided half-way up. The second and first-class compartments are always much better and will bear comparison with those of the best English railways, whereas the usual third-class compartment is of that primitive type abandoned twenty or more years ago, north of the Channel. The locomotives are usually dirty and black with outside cylinders, and great drum-shaped steam-domes. They seem to do the work that is required of them efficiently, although if one is travelling in a third-class compartment the top speed seems extraordinarily slow. The railway officials handle bicycles with wonderful care, and this is perhaps remarkable when we realize that French railways carry them any distance simply charging a penny for registration. The hotels of Normandy are not what they were twenty years ago. Improvements in sanitation have brought about most welcome changes, so that one can enter the courtyard of most hotels without being met by the aggressive odours that formerly jostled one another for space. When you realize the very large number of English folk who annually pass from town to town in Normandy it may perhaps be wondered why the proprietors of hotels do not take the trouble to prepare a room that will answer to the drawing-room of an English hotel. After dinner in France, a lady has absolutely no choice between a possible seat in the courtyard and her bedroom, for the estaminet generally contains a group of noisy Frenchmen, and even if it is vacant the room partakes too much of the character of a bar-parlour to be suitable for ladies. Except in the large hotels in Rouen I have only found one which boasts of any sort of room besides the estaminet; it was the Hotel des Trois Marie at Argentan. When this defect has been remedied, I can imagine that English people will tour in Normandy more than they do even at the present time. The small washing basin and jug that apologetically appears upon the bedroom washstand has still an almost universal sway, and it is not sufficiently odd to excuse itself on the score of picturesqueness. Under that heading come the tiled floors in the bedrooms, the square and mountainous eiderdowns that recline upon the beds, and the matches that take several seconds to ignite and leave a sulphurous odour that does not dissipate itself for several minutes. CHAPTER II By the Banks of the Seine If you come to Normandy from Southampton, France is entered at the mouth of the Seine and you are at once introduced to some of the loveliest scenery that Normandy possesses. The headland outside Havre is composed of ochreish rock which appears in patches where the grass will not grow. The heights are occupied by no less than three lighthouses only one of which is now in use. As the ship gets closer, a great spire appears round the cliff in the silvery shimmer of the morning haze and then a thousand roofs reflect the sunlight. There are boats from Havre that take passengers up the winding river to Rouen and in this way much of the beautiful scenery may be enjoyed. By this means, however, the country appears as only a series of changing pictures and to see anything of the detail of such charming places as Caudebec, and Lillebonne, or the architectural features of Tancarville Castle and the Abbey of Jumieges, the road must be followed instead of the more leisurely river. Havre with its great docks, its busy streets, and fast electric tramcars that frighten away foot passengers with noisy motor horns does not compel a very long stay, although one may chance to find much interest among the shipping, when such vessels as Mr Vanderbilt's magnificent steam yacht, without a mark on its spotless paint, is lying in one of the inner basins. If you wander up and down some of the old streets by the harbour you will find more than one many-storied house with shutters brightly painted, and dormers on its ancient roof. The church of Notre Dame in the Rue de Paris has a tower that was in earlier times a beacon, and it was here that three brothers named Raoulin who had been murdered by the governor Villars in 1599, are buried. On the opposite side of the estuary of the Seine, lies Honfleur with its extraordinary church tower that stands in the market-place quite detached from the church of St Catherine to which it belongs. It is entirely constructed of timber and has great struts supporting the angles of its walls. The houses along the quay have a most paintable appearance, their overhanging floors and innumerable windows forming a picturesque background to the fishing-boats. Harfleur, on the same side of the river as Havre, is on the road to Tancarville. We pass through it on our way to Caudebec. The great spire of the church, dating from the fifteenth century, rears itself above this ancient port where the black-sailed ships of the Northmen often appeared in the early days before Rollo had forced Charles the Simple (he should have been called "The Straightforward") to grant him the great tract of French territory that we are now about to explore. The Seine, winding beneath bold cliffs on one side and along the edge of flat, rich meadowlands on the other, comes near the magnificent ruin of Tancarville Castle whose walls enclose an eighteenth century chateau. The situation on an isolated chalk cliff one hundred feet high was more formidable a century ago than it is to-day, for then the Seine ran close beneath the forbidding walls, while now it has changed its course somewhat. The entrance to the castle is approached under the shadow of the great circular corner tower that stands out so boldly at one extremity of the buildings, and the gate house has on either side semi-circular towers fifty-two feet in height. Above the archway there are three floors sparingly lighted by very small windows, one to each storey. They point out the first floor as containing the torture chamber, and in the towers adjoining are the hopelessly strong prisons. The iron bars are still in the windows and in one instance the positions of the rings to which the prisoners were chained are still visible. There are still floors in the Eagle's tower that forms the boldest portion of the castle, and it is a curious feature that the building is angular inside although perfectly cylindrical on the exterior. Near the chateau you may see the ruined chapel and the remains of the Salle des Chevaliers with its big fireplace. Then higher than the entrance towers is the Tour Coquesart built in the fifteenth century and having four storeys with a fireplace in each. The keep is near this, but outside the present castle and separated from it by a moat. The earliest parts of the castle all belong to the eleventh century, but so much destruction was wrought by Henry V. in 1417 that the greater part of the ruins belong to a few years after that date. The name of Tancarville had found a place among the great families of England before the last of the members of this distinguished French name lost his life at the battle of Agincourt. The heiress of the family married one of the Harcourts and eventually the possessions came into the hands of Dunois the Bastard of Orleans. From Tancarville there is a road that brings you down to that which runs from Quilleboeuf, and by it one is soon brought to the picturesquely situated little town of Lillebonne, famous for its Roman theatre. It was the capital of the Caletes and was known as Juliabona, being mentioned in the iters of Antoninus. The theatre is so well known that no one has difficulty in finding it, and compared to most of the Roman remains in England, it is well worth seeing. The place held no fewer than three thousand people upon the semi-circular tiers of seats that are now covered with turf. Years ago, there was much stone-work to be seen, but this has largely disappeared, and it is only in the upper portions that many traces of mason's work are visible. A passage runs round the upper part of the theatre and the walls are composed of narrow stones that are not much larger than bricks. The great castle was built by William the Norman, and it was here that he gathered together his barons to mature and work out his project which made him afterwards William the Conqueror. It will be natural to associate the fine round tower of the castle with this historic conference, but unfortunately, it was only built in the fourteenth century. From more than one point of view Lillebonne makes beautiful pictures, its roofs dominated by the great tower of the parish church as well as by the ruins of the castle. We have lost sight of the Seine since we left Tancarville, but a ten-mile run brings us to the summit of a hill overlooking Caudebec and a great sweep of the beautiful river. The church raises its picturesque outline against the rolling white clouds, and forms a picture that compels admiration. On descending into the town, the antiquity and the quaintness of sixteenth century houses greet you frequently, and you do not wonder that Caudebec has attracted so many painters. There is a wide quay, shaded by an avenue of beautiful trees, and there are views across the broad, shining waters of the Seine, which here as in most of its length attracts us by its breadth. The beautiful chalk hills drop steeply down to the water's edge on the northern shores in striking contrast to the flatness of the opposite banks. On the side of the river facing Caudebec, the peninsula enclosed by the windings of the Seine includes the great forest of Brotonne, and all around the town, the steep hills that tumble picturesquely on every side, are richly clothed with woods, so that with its architectural delights within, and its setting of forest, river and hill, Caudebec well deserves the name it has won for itself in England as well as in France. Just off the road to Rouen from Caudebec and scarcely two miles away, is St Wandrille, situated in a charming hollow watered by the Fontanelle, a humble tributary of the great river. In those beautiful surroundings stand the ruins of the abbey church, almost entirely dating from the thirteenth century. Much destruction was done during the Revolution, but there is enough of the south transept and nave still in existence to show what the complete building must have been. In the wonderfully preserved cloister which is the gem of St Wandrille, there are some beautiful details in the doorway leading from the church, and there is much interest in the refectory and chapter house. Down in the piece of country included in a long and narrow loop of the river stand the splendid ruins of the abbey of Jumieges with its three towers that stand out so conspicuously over the richly wooded country. When you get to the village and are close to the ruins of the great Benedictine abbey, you are not surprised that it was at one time numbered amongst the richest and most notable of the monastic foundations. The founder was St Philibert, but whatever the buildings which made their appearance in the seventh century may have been, is completely beyond our knowledge, for Jumieges was situated too close to the Seine to be overlooked by the harrying ship-loads of pirates from the north, who in the year 851 demolished everything. William Longue-Epee, son of Rollo the great leader of these Northmen, curiously enough commenced the rebuilding of the abbey, and it was completed in the year of the English conquest. Nearly the whole of the nave and towers present a splendid example of early Norman architecture, and it is much more inspiring to look upon the fine west front of this ruin than that of St Etienne at Caen which has an aspect so dull and uninspiring. The great round arches of the nave are supported by pillars which have the early type of capital distinguishing eleventh century work. The little chapel of St Pierre adjoining the abbey church is particularly interesting on account of the western portion which includes some of that early work built in the first half of the tenth century by William Longue-Epee. The tombstone of Nicholas Lerour, the abbot who was among the judges by whom the saintly Joan of Arc was condemned to death, is to be seen with others in the house which now serves as a museum. Associated with the same tragedy is another tombstone, that of Agnes Sorel, the mistress of Charles VII., that heartless king who made no effort to save the girl who had given him his throne. Jumieges continued to be a perfectly preserved abbey occupied by its monks and hundreds of persons associated with them until scarcely more than a century ago. It was then allowed to go to complete ruin, and no restrictions seem to have been placed upon the people of the neighbourhood who as is usual under such circumstances, used the splendid buildings as a storehouse of ready dressed stone. Making our way back to the highway, we pass through beautiful scenery, and once more reach the banks of the Seine at the town of Duclair which stands below the escarpment of chalk hills. There are wharves by the river-side which give the place a thriving aspect, for a considerable export trade is carried on in dairy produce. After following the river-side for a time, the road begins to cut across the neck of land between two bends of the Seine. It climbs up towards the forest of Roumare and passes fairly close to the village of St Martin de Boscherville where the church of St George stands out conspicuously on its hillside. This splendid Norman building is the church of the Abbey built in the middle of the eleventh century by Raoul de Tancarville who was William's Chamberlain at the time of the conquest of England. The abbey buildings are now in ruins but the church has remained almost untouched during the eight centuries and more which have passed during which Normandy was often bathed in blood, and when towns and castles were sacked two or three times over. When the forest of Roumare, has been left behind, you come to Canteleu, a little village that stands at the top of a steep hill, commanding a huge view over Rouen, the historic capital of Normandy. You can see the shipping lying in the river, the factories, the spire of the cathedral, and the many church towers as well as the light framework of the modern moving bridge. This is the present day representative of the fantastic mediaeval city that witnessed the tragedy of Joan of Arc's trial and martyrdom. We will pass Rouen now, returning to it again in the next chapter. The river for some distance becomes frequently punctuated with islands. Large extents of forest including those of Rouvray, Bonde and Elbeuf, spread themselves over the high ground to the west. The view from above Elbeuf in spite of its many tall chimney shafts includes such a fine stretch of fertile country that the scene is not easily forgotten. Following the windings of the river through Pont-de-L'Arche and the forest of Louviers we come to that pleasant old town; but although close to the Seine, it stands on the little river Eure. Louviers remains in the memory as a town whose church is more crowded with elaborately carved stone-work than any outside Rouen. There is something rather odd, in the close juxtaposition of the Hotel Mouton d'Argent with its smooth plastered front and the almost overpowering mass of detail that faces it on the other side of the road. There is something curious, too, in the severe plainness of the tower that almost suggests the unnecessarily shabby clothing worn by some men whose wives are always to be seen in the most elaborate and costly gowns. Internally the church shows its twelfth century origin, but all the intricate stone-work outside belongs to the fifteenth century. The porch which is, if possible, richer than the buttresses of the aisles, belongs to the flamboyant period, and actually dates from the year 1496. In the clerestory there is much sixteenth century glass and the aisles which are low and double give a rather unusual appearance. The town contains several quaint and ancient houses, one of them supported by wooden posts projects over the pavement, another at the corner of the Marche des Oeufs has a very rich though battered piece of carved oak at the angle of the walls. It seems as if it had caught the infection of the extraordinary detail of the church porch. Down by the river there are many timber-framed houses with their foundations touching the water, with narrow wooden bridges crossing to the warehouses that line the other side. The Place de Rouen has a shady avenue of limes leading straight down to a great house in a garden beyond which rise wooded hills. Towards the river runs another avenue of limes trimmed squarely on top. These are pleasant features of so many French towns that make up for some of the deficiencies in other matters. We could stay at Louviers for some time without exhausting all its attractions, but ten miles away at the extremity of another deep loop of the Seine there stands the great and historic Chateau-Gaillard that towers above Le Petit-Andely, the pretty village standing invitingly by a cleft in the hills. The road we traverse is that which appears so conspicuously in Turner's great painting of the Chateau-Gaillard. It crosses the bridge close under the towering chalk cliffs where the ruin stands so boldly. There is a road that follows the right bank of the river close to the railway, and it is from there that one of the strangest views of the castle is to be obtained. You may see it thrown up by a blaze of sunlight against the grassy heights behind that are all dark beneath the shadow of a cloud. The stone of the towers and heavily buttressed walls appears almost as white as the chalk which crops out in the form of cliffs along the river-side. An island crowded with willows that overhang the water partially hides the village of Le Petit-Andely, and close at hand above the steep slopes of grass that rise from the roadway tower great masses of gleaming white chalk projecting from the vivid turf as though they were the worn ruins of other castles. The whiteness is only broken by the horizontal lines of flints and the blue-grey shadows that fill the crevices. From the hill above the Chateau there is another and even more striking view. It is the one that appears in Turner's picture just mentioned, and gives one some idea of the magnificent position that Richard Coeur de Lion chose, when in 1197 he decided to build an impregnable fortress on this bend of the Seine. It was soon after his return from captivity which followed the disastrous crusade that Richard commenced to show Philippe Auguste that he was determined to hold his French possessions with his whole strength. Philippe had warned John when the news of the release of the lion-hearted king from captivity had become known, that "the devil was unchained," and the building of this castle showed that Richard was making the most of his opportunities. The French king was, with some justification, furious with his neighbour, for Richard had recently given his word not to fortify this place, and some fierce fighting would have ensued on top of the threats which the monarchs exchanged, but for the death of the English king in 1199. When John assumed the crown of England, however, Philippe soon found cause to quarrel with him, and thus the great siege of the castle was only postponed for three or four years. The French king brought his army across the peninsula formed by the Seine, and having succeeded in destroying the bridge beneath the castle, he constructed one for himself with boats and soon afterwards managed to capture the island, despite its strong fortifications. The leader of the English garrison was the courageous Roger de Lacy, Constable of Chester. From his knowledge of the character of his new king, de Lacy would have expected little assistance from the outside and would have relied upon his own resources to defend Richard's masterpiece. John made one attempt to succour the garrison. He brought his army across the level country and essayed to destroy the bridge of boats constructed by the French. This one effort proving unsuccessful he took no other measures to distract the besieging army, and left Roger de Lacy to the undivided attention of the Frenchmen. Then followed a terrible struggle. The French king succeeded in drawing his lines closer to the castle itself and eventually obtained possession of the outer fortifications and the village of Le Petit-Andely, from which the inhabitants fled to the protection of the castle. The governor had no wish to have all his supplies consumed by non-combatants, and soon compelled these defenceless folk to go out of the protection of his huge walls. At first the besiegers seemed to have allowed the people to pass unmolested, but probably realizing the embarrassment they would have been to the garrison, they altered their minds, and drove most of them back to the castle. Here they gained a reception almost as hostile as that of the enemy, and after being shot down by the arrows of the French they remained for days in a starving condition in a hollow between the hostile lines. Here they would all have died of hunger, but Philippe at last took pity on the terrible plight of these defenceless women and children and old folks, and having allowed them a small supply of provisions they were at last released from their ghastly position. Such a tragedy as this lends terrible pathos to the grassy steeps and hollows surrounding the chateau and one may almost be astonished that such callousness could have existed in these days of chivalry. The siege was continued with rigour and a most strenuous attack was made upon the end of the castle that adjoined the high ground that overlooks the ruins. With magnificent courage the Frenchmen succeeded in mining the walls, and having rushed into the breach they soon made themselves masters of the outer courtyard. Continuing the assault, a small party of intrepid soldiers gained a foothold within the next series of fortifications, causing the English to retreat to the inner courtyard dominated by the enormous keep. Despite the magnificent resistance offered by de Lacy's men the besiegers raised their engines in front of the gate, and when at last they had forced an entry they contrived a feat that almost seems incredible--they cut off the garrison from their retreat to the keep. Thus this most famous of castles fell within half a dozen years of its completion. In the hundred years' war the Chateau-Gaillard was naturally one of the centres of the fiercest fighting, and the pages of history are full of references to the sieges and captures of the fortress, proving how even with the most primitive weapons these ponderous and unscalable walls were not as impregnable as they may have seemed to the builders. Like the abbey of Jumieges, this proud structure became nothing more than a quarry, for in the seventeenth century permission was given to two religious houses, one at Le Petit-Andely and the other at Le Grand-Andely to take whatever stone-work they required for their monastic establishments. Records show how more damage would have been done to the castle but for the frequent quarrels between these two religious houses as to their rights over the various parts of the ruins. When you climb up to the ruined citadel and look out of the windows that are now battered and shapeless, you can easily feel how the heart of the bold Richard must have swelled within him when he saw how his castle dominated an enormous belt of country. But you cannot help wondering whether he ever had misgivings over the unwelcome proximity of the chalky heights that rise so closely above the site of the ruin. We ourselves, are inclined to forget these questions of military strength in the serene beauty of the silvery river flowing on its serpentine course past groups of poplars, rich pastures dotted with cattle, forest lands and villages set amidst blossoming orchards. Down below are the warm chocolate-red roofs of the little town that has shared with the chateau its good and evil fortunes. The church with its slender spire occupies the central position, and it dates from precisely the same years as those which witnessed the advent of the fortress above. The little streets of the town are full of quaint timber-framed houses, and it is not surprising that this is one of the spots by the beautiful banks of the Seine that has attained a name for its picturesqueness. With scarcely any perceptible division Le Grand-Andely joins the smaller village. It stands higher in the valley and is chiefly memorable for its beautiful inn, the Hotel du Grand Cerf. It is opposite the richly ornamented stone-work of the church of Notre Dame and dates chiefly from the sixteenth century. The hall contains a great fireplace, richly ornamented with a renaissance frieze and a fine iron stove-back. The courtyard shows carved timbers and in front the elaborate moulding beneath the eaves is supported by carved brackets. Unlike that old hostelry at Dives which is mentioned in another chapter, this hotel is not over restored, although in the days of a past proprietor the house contained a great number of antiques and its fame attracted many distinguished visitors, including Sir Walter Scott and Victor Hugo. In writing of the hotel I am likely to forget the splendid painted glass in the church, but details of the stories told in these beautiful works of the sixteenth century are given in all good guides. There is a pleasant valley behind Les Andelys running up towards the great plateau that occupies such an enormous area of this portion of Normandy. The scenery as you go along the first part of the valley, through the little village of Harquency with its tiny Norman church, and cottages with thatched roofs all velvety with moss, is very charming. The country is entirely hedge-less, but as you look down upon the rather thirsty-looking valley below the road, the scenery savours much of Kent; the chalky fields, wooded uplands and big, picturesque farms suggesting some of the agricultural districts of the English county. When we join the broad and straight national road running towards Gisors we have reached the tableland just mentioned. There are perhaps, here and there, a group of stately elms, breaking the broad sweep of arable land that extends with no more undulations for many leagues than those of a sheet of old-fashioned glass. The horizon is formed by simply the same broad fields, vanishing in a thin, blue line over the rim of the earth. [Illustration: THE FORTIFIED FARM NEAR GISORS] At Les Thilliers, a small hamlet that, owing to situation at cross-roads figures conspicuously upon the milestones of the neighbourhood, the road to Gisors goes towards the east, and after crossing the valley of the Epte, you run down an easy gradient, passing a fine fortified farm-house with circular towers at each corner of its four sides and in a few minutes have turned into the historic old town of Gisors. It is as picturesque as any place in Normandy with the exception of Mont St Michel. The river Epte gliding slowly through its little canals at the sides of some of the streets, forms innumerable pictures when reflecting the quaint houses and gardens whose walls are generally grown over with creepers. Near the ascent to the castle is one of the washing places where the women let their soap suds float away on the translucent water as they scrub vigorously. They kneel upon a long wooden platform sheltered by a charming old roof supported upon a heavy timber framework that is a picture in itself. If you stay at the Hotel de l'Ecu de France you are quite close to the castle that towers upon its hill right in the middle of the town. Most people who come to Gisors are surprised to find how historic is its castle, and how many have been the conflicts that have taken place around it. The position between Rouen and Paris and on the frontier of the Duchy gave it an importance in the days of the Norman kings that led to the erection of a most formidable stronghold. In the eleventh century, when William Rufus was on the throne of England, he made the place much stronger. Both Henry I. and Henry II. added to its fortifications so that Gisors became in time as formidable a castle as the Chateau Gaillard. During the Hundred Years' War, Gisors, which is often spoken of as the key to Normandy, after fierce struggles had become French. Then again, a determined assault would leave the flag of England fluttering upon its ramparts until again the Frenchmen would contrive to make themselves masters of the place. And so these constant changes of ownership went on until at last about the year 1450, a date which we shall find associated with the fall of every English stronghold in Normandy, Gisors surrendered to Charles VII. and has remained French ever since. The outer baileys are defended by some great towers of massive Norman masonry from which you look all over the town and surrounding country. But within the inner courtyard rises a great mound dominated by the keep which you may still climb by a solid stone staircase. From here the view is very much finer than from the other towers and its commanding position would seem to give the defenders splendid opportunities for tiring out any besieging force. The concierge of the castle, a genial old woman of gipsy-like appearance takes you down to the fearful dungeon beneath one of the great towers on the eastern side, known as the Tour des Prisonniers. Here you may see the carvings in the stone-work executed by some of the prisoners who had been cast into this black abyss. These carvings include representations of crucifixes, St Christopher, and many excellently conceived and patiently wrought figures of other saints. We have already had a fine view of the splendid Renaissance exterior of the church which is dedicated to the Saints Gervais and Protais. The choir is the earliest part of the building. It belongs to the thirteenth century, while the nave and most of the remaining portions date from the fifteenth or sixteenth century. It is a building of intense architectural interest and to some extent rivals the castle in the attention it deserves. CHAPTER III Concerning Rouen, the Ancient Capital of Normandy When whole volumes have been written on Rouen it would be idle to attempt even a fragment of its history in a book of this nature. But all who go to Rouen should know something of its story in order to be able to make the most of the antiquities that the great city still retains. How much we would give to have an opportunity for seeing the Rouen which has vanished, for to-day as we walk along the modern streets there is often nothing to remind us of the centuries crowded with momentous events that have taken place where now the electric cars sweep to and fro and do their best to make one forget the Rouen of mediaeval times. Of course, no one goes to the city expecting to find ancient walls and towers, or a really strong flavour of the middle ages, any more than one expects to obtain such impressions in the city of London. Rouen, however, contains sufficient relics of its past to convey a powerful impression upon the minds of all who have strong imaginations. There is the cathedral which contains the work of many centuries; there is the beautiful and inspiring church of St Ouen; there is the archway of the Grosse Horloge; there is the crypt of the church of St Gervais, that dates from the dim fifth century; and there are still in the narrow streets between the cathedral and the quays along the river-side, many tall, overhanging houses, whose age appears in the sloping wall surfaces and in the ancient timbers that show themselves under the eaves and between the plaster-work. Two of the most attractive views in Rouen are illustrated here. One of them shows the Portail de la Calende of the cathedral appearing at the end of a narrow street of antique, gabled houses, while overhead towers the stupendous fleche that forms the most prominent feature of Rouen. The other is the Grosse Horloge and if there had been space for a third it would have shown something of the interior of the church of St Ouen. The view of the city from the hill of Bon Secours forms another imposing feature, but I think that it hardly equals what we have already seen on the road from Caudebec. When you come out of the railway station known as the _Rive Droite_ a short street leads up to one of the most important thoroughfares, the Rue Jeanne d'Arc. It is perfectly straight and contains nothing in it that is not perfectly modern, but at the highest point you may see a marble tablet affixed to a wall. It bears a representation in the form of a gilded outline of the castle towers as they stood in the time of the Maid of Orleans, and a short distance behind this wall, but approached from another street, there still remains the keep of Rouen's historic castle. The circular tower contains the room which you may see to-day where Joan was brought before her judges and the instruments of torture by which the saintly maiden was to be frightened into giving careless answers to the questions with which she was plied by her clever judges. This stone vaulted room, although restored, is of thrilling interest to those who have studied the history of Joan of Arc, for, as we are told by Mr Theodore Cook in his "Story of Rouen," these are the only walls which are known to have echoed with her voice. Those who have made a careful study of the ancient houses in the older streets of Rouen have been successful in tracing other buildings associated with the period of Joan of Arc's trial. The Rue St Romain, that narrow and not very salubrious thoroughfare that runs between the Rue de la Republique and the west front of the cathedral, has still some of the old canons' lodgings where some of the men who judged Joan of Arc actually lived. Among them, was Canon Guillaume le Desert who outlived all his fellow judges. There is still to be seen the house where lived the architect who designed the palace for Henry V. near Mal s'y Frotte. Mr Cook mentions that he has discovered a record which states that the iron cage in which Joan of Arc was chained by her hands, feet and neck was seen by a workman in this very house. In the quaint and narrow streets that are still existing near the Rue St Romain, many strange-looking houses have survived to the present day. They stand on the site of the earliest nucleus of the present city, and it is in this neighbourhood that one gets most in touch with the Rouen that has so nearly vanished. In this interesting portion of the city you come across the marvellously rich Grosse Horloge already mentioned. A casual glance would give one the impression that the structure was no older than the seventeenth century, but the actual date of its building is 1529, and the clock itself dates from about 1389, and is as old as any in France. The dial you see to-day is brilliantly coloured and has a red centre while the elaborate decoration that covers nearly the whole surface of the walls is freely gilded, giving an exceedingly rich appearance. The two fourteenth century bells, one known as La Rouvel or the Silver Bell on account of the legend that silver coins were thrown into the mould when it was cast, and the other known as Cache-Ribaut, are still in the tower, La Rouvel being still rung for a quarter of an hour at nine o'clock in the evening. It is the ancient Curfew, and the Tower de la Grosse Horloge is nothing more than the historic belfry of Rouen, although one might imagine by the way it stands over the street on an elliptical arch, that it had formed one of the gates of the city. At the foot of the belfry is one of those richly sculptured fountains that are to be seen in two or three places in the older streets. The carving is very much blackened with age, and the detail is not very easily discernible, but a close examination will show that the story of Arethusa, and Alpheus, the river-god, is portrayed. The fountain was given to Rouen by the Duke of Luxembourg early in the eighteenth century. Adjoining the imposing Rue Jeanne d'Arc is the fine Gothic Palais de Justice, part of which was built by Louis XII. in the year 1499, the central portion being added by Leroux, sixteen years later. These great buildings were put up chiefly for the uses of the Echiquier--the supreme court of the Duchy at that time--but it was also to be used as an exchange for merchants who before this date had been in the habit of transacting much of their business in the cathedral. The historic hall where the Echiquier met is still to be seen. The carved oak of the roof has great gilded pendants that stand out against the blackness of the wood-work, and the Crucifixion presented by Louis XII. may be noticed among the portraits in the Chambre du Conseille. The earliest portions of the great cathedral of Notre Dame date from the twelfth century, the north tower showing most palpably the transition from Norman work to the Early French style of Gothic. By the year 1255 when Louis IX. came to Rouen to spend Christmas, the choir, transepts and nave of the cathedral, almost as they may be seen to-day, had been completed. The chapel to St Mary did not make its appearance for some years, and the side _portails_ were only added in the fifteenth century. The elaborate work on the west front belongs to the century following, and although the ideas of modern architects have varied as to this portion of the cathedral, the consensus of opinion seems to agree that it is one of the most perfect examples of the flamboyant style so prevalent in the churches of Normandy. The detail of this masterpiece of the latest phase of Gothic architecture is almost bewildering, but the ornament in every place has a purpose, so that the whole mass of detail has a reposeful dignity which can only have been retained by the most consummate skill. The canopied niches are in many instances vacant, but there are still rows of saints in the long lines of recesses. The rose window is a most perfect piece of work; it is filled with painted glass in which strong blues and crimsons are predominant. Above the central tower known as the Tour de Pierre, that was built partially in the thirteenth century, there rises the astonishing iron spire that is one of the highest in the world. Its weight is enormous despite the fact that it is merely an open framework. The architect of this masterly piece of work whose name was Alavoine seems to have devoted himself with the same intensity as Barry, to whom we owe the Royal Courts of Justice in London, for he worked upon it from 1823, the year following the destruction of the wooden spire by lightning, until 1834, the year of his death. The spire, however, which was commenced almost immediately after the loss of the old one, remained incomplete for over forty years and it was not entirely finished until 1876. The flight of eight hundred and twelve steps that is perfectly safe for any one with steady nerves goes right up inside the spire until, as you look out between the iron framework, Rouen lies beneath your feet, a confused mass of detail cut through by the silver river. The tower of St Romain is on the north side of the cathedral. It was finished towards the end of the fifteenth century, but the lower portion is of very much earlier date for it is the only portion of the cathedral that was standing when Richard I. on his way to the Holy Land knelt before Archbishop Gautier to receive the sword and banner which he carried with him to the Crusade. The Tour de Beurre is on the southern side--its name being originated in connection with those of the faithful who during certain Lents paid for indulgences in order to be allowed to eat butter. It was commenced in 1485, and took twenty-two years to complete. In this great tower there used to hang a famous bell. It was called the Georges d'Amboise after the great Cardinal to whom Rouen owes so much, not only as builder of the tower and the facade, but also as the originator of sanitary reforms and a thousand other benefits for which the city had reason to be grateful. The great bell was no less than 30 feet in circumference, its weight being 36,000 lbs. The man who succeeded in casting it, whose name was Jean Le Machon, seems to have been so overwhelmed at his success that scarcely a month later he died. At last when Louis XVI. came to Rouen, they rang Georges d'Amboise so loudly that a crack appeared, and a few years later, during the Revolution, Le Machon's masterpiece was melted down for cannon. Inside the cathedral there are, besides the glories of the splendid Gothic architecture, the tombs of Henry Plantagenet, the eldest son of Henry II., and Richard I. There are also the beautifully carved miserere seats in the choir which are of particular interest in the way they illustrate many details of daily life in the fifteenth century. The stone figure representing Richard Coeur de Lion lies outside the railings of the sanctuary. The heart of the king which has long since fallen into dust is contained in a casket that is enclosed in the stone beneath the effigy. The figure of Henry Plantagenet is not the original--you may see that in the museum, which contains so many fascinating objects that are associated with the early history of Rouen. The splendid sixteenth century monument of the two Cardinals d'Amboise is to be seen in the Chapelle de la Sainte Vierge. The kneeling figures in the canopied recess represent the two Cardinals--that on the right, which is said to be a very good portrait, represents the famous man who added so much to the cathedral--the one on the left shows his nephew, the second Cardinal Georges d'Amboise. In the middle of the recess there is a fine sculpture showing St George and the Dragon, and most of the other surfaces of the tomb are composed of richly ornamented niches, containing statuettes of saints, bishops, the Virgin and Child, and the twelve Apostles. Another remarkable tomb is that of Louis de Breze, considered to be one of the finest specimens of Renaissance work. It is built in two storeys--the upper one showing a thrilling representation of the knight in complete armour and mounted upon his war-horse, but upon the sarcophagus below he is shown with terrible reality as a naked corpse. The sculptor was possibly Jean Goujon, whose name is sometimes associated with the monument to the two Cardinals, which is of an earlier date. The tomb of Rollo, the founder of the Duchy of Normandy, and the first of the Normans to embrace the Christian religion, lies in a chapel adjoining the south transept. The effigy belongs to the fourteenth century, but the marble tablet gives an inscription which may be translated as follows: "Here lies Rollo, the first Duke and founder and father of Normandy, of which he was at first the terror and scourge, but afterwards the restorer. Baptised in 912 by Francon, Archbishop of Rouen, and died in 917. His remains were at first deposited in the ancient sanctuary, at present the upper end of the nave. The altar having been removed, the remains of the prince were placed here by the blessed Maurille, Archbishop of Rouen in the year 1063." The effigy of William Longsword, Rollo's son, is in another chapel of the nave, that adjoining the north transept. His effigy, like that of his father, dates from the fourteenth century. It is in surroundings of this character that we are brought most in touch with the Rouen of our imaginations. We have already in a preceding chapter seen something of the interior of the church of St Ouen, which to many is more inspiring than the cathedral. The original church belonged to the Abbey of St Ouen, established in the reign of Clothaire I. When the Northmen came sailing up the river, laying waste to everything within their reach, the place was destroyed, but after Rollo's conversion to Christianity the abbey was renovated, and in 1046 a new church was commenced, which having taken about eighty years to complete was almost immediately burnt down. Another fire having taken place a century later, Jean Roussel, who was Abbot in 1318, commenced this present building. It was an enormous work to undertake but yet within twenty-one years the choirs and transepts were almost entirely completed. This great Abbot was buried in the Mary chapel behind the High Altar. On the tomb he is called Marc d'Argent and the date of his death is given as December 7, 1339. After this the building of the church went on all through the century. The man who was master mason in this period was Alexandre Barneval, but he seems to have become jealous of an apprentice who built the rose window that is still such a splendid feature of the north transept, for in a moment of passion he killed the apprentice and for this crime was sentenced to death in the year 1440. St Ouen was completed in the sixteenth century, but the west front as it appears to-day has two spires which made their appearance in recent times. The exterior, however, is not the chief charm of St Ouen; it is the magnificent interior, so huge and yet so inspiring, that so completely satisfies one's ideas of proportion. Wherever you stand, the vistas of arches, all dark and gloomy, relieved here and there by a blaze of coloured glass, are so splendid that you cannot easily imagine anything finer. A notable feature of the aisles is the enormous space of glass covering the outer walls, so that the framework of the windows seems scarcely adequate to support the vaulted roof above. The central tower is supported by magnificent clustered piers of dark and swarthy masonry, and the views of these from the transepts or from the aisles of the nave make some of the finest pictures that are to be obtained in this masterpiece of Gothic architecture. The tower that rises from the north transept belongs, it is believed, to the twelfth century church that was burnt. On the western front it is interesting to find statues of William the Conqueror, Henry II. and Richard Coeur de Lion among other dukes of Normandy, and the most famous Archbishops of Rouen. Besides the cathedral and St Ouen there is the splendid church of St Maclou. Its western front suddenly appears, filling a gap in the blocks of modern shops on the right hand side as you go up the Rue de la Republic. The richness of the mass of carved stone-work arrests your attention, for after having seen the magnificent facade of the cathedral you would think the city could boast nothing else of such extraordinary splendour. The name Maclou comes from Scotland, for it was a member of this clan, who, having fled to Brittany, became Bishop of Aleth and died in 561. Since the tenth century a shrine to his memory had been placed outside the walls of Rouen. The present building was designed by Pierre Robin and it dates from between 1437 and 1520, but the present spire is modern, having replaced the old one about the time of the Revolution. The richly carved doors of the west front are the work of Jean Goujon. The organ loft rests on two columns of black marble, which are also his work; but although the dim interior is full of interest and its rose windows blaze with fifteenth century glass, it is the west front and carved doors that are the most memorable features of the building. In the Place du Marche Vieux you may see the actual spot where Joan of Arc was burnt, a stone on the ground bearing the words "Jeanne Darc, 30 Mai, 1431." To all who have really studied the life, the trial and the death of the Maid of Orleans--and surely no one should visit Rouen without such knowledge--this is the most sacred spot in the city, for as we stand here we can almost hear her words addressed to Cauchon, "It is you who have brought me to this death." We can see her confessor holding aloft the cross and we seem to hear her breathe the Redeemer's name before she expires. 
45567	----	Transcriber's Notes: When italics were used in the original book, the corresponding text has been surrounded by _underscores_. Some presumed printer's errors have been corrected. In particular, punctuation has been normalized and entries in the List of Illustrations and in the Index were altered to match the main text. Further, a single entry in the original List of Illustrations which referred to two distinct maps was split into two entries (SCOTLAND and ENGLAND AND WALES). Other corrections are listed below with the original text (top) and the replacement text (bottom): p. 40 many quaint timbered house many quaint timbered houses p. 95 employe employee p. 249 Wordsworh Wordsworth p. 212 Fort Williams Fort William p. 311 appoach approach p. 350 July 5, 1585 July 5, 1685 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ON OLD-WORLD HIGHWAYS ------------------------------------------------------------------------ _By the Same Author_ British Highways and Byways from a Motor Car THIRD IMPRESSION WITH FORTY-EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS AND TWO MAPS Sixteen Reproductions in Color, and Thirty-two Duogravures 320 Pages, 8vo, Decorated Cloth Price (Boxed), $3.00 ------- In Unfamiliar England With a Motor Car SECOND IMPRESSION WITH SIXTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS AND TWO MAPS Sixteen Reproductions in Color and Forty-eight Duogravures 400 Pages, 8vo, Decorated Cloth Price (Boxed), $3.00 ------- Three Wonderlands of the American West SECOND IMPRESSION WITH FORTY-EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS AND TWO MAPS Sixteen Reproductions in Color and Thirty-two Duogravures 180 Pages, Tall 8vo, Decorated Cloth Price (Boxed) $3.00 Net ------- L. C. PAGE & COMPANY BOSTON ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: THE MOUNTAIN MEADOWS, BAVARIAN TYROL From original painting by the late John MacWhirter, R. A.] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ON OLD-WORLD HIGHWAYS A Book of Motor Rambles in France and Germany and the Record of a Pilgrimage from Land's End to John O'Groats in Britain. BY THOS. D. MURPHY AUTHOR OF "THREE WONDERLANDS OF THE AMERICAN WEST," "BRITISH HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS FROM A MOTOR CAR" AND "IN UNFAMILIAR ENGLAND WITH A MOTOR CAR." WITH SIXTEEN REPRODUCTIONS IN COLORS FROM ORIGINAL PAINTINGS BY EMINENT ARTISTS AND FORTY DUOGRAVURES FROM PHOTOGRAPHS. ALSO MAPS SHOWING ROUTES OF AUTHOR. [Illustration] BOSTON L. C. PAGE & COMPANY PUBLISHERS MDCCCCXIV ------------------------------------------------------------------------ _Copyright, 1914_ BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY (INCORPORATED) ------- _All rights reserved_ ------- First Impression, January, 1914 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Preface I know that of making books of travel there is no limit--they come from the press in a never-ending stream; but no one can say that any one of these is superfluous if it finds appreciative readers, even though they be but few. My chief excuse for the present volume is the success of my previous books of motor travel, which have run through several fair-sized editions. I have had many warmly appreciative letters concerning these from native Englishmen and the books were commended by the Royal Automobile Club Journal as accurate and readable. So I take it that my point of view from the wheel of a motor car interests some people, and I shall feel justified in writing such books so long as this is the case. I know that in some instances I have had to deal with hackneyed subjects; but I have striven for a different viewpoint and I hope I have contributed something worth while in describing even well-known places. On the other hand, I know that I have discovered many delightful nooks and corners in Britain that even the guide-books have overlooked. Besides, I am sure that books of travel have ample justification in the fact that travel itself is one of the greatest of educators and civilizers. It teaches us that we are not the only people--that wisdom shall not die with us alone. It shows us that in some things other people may do better than we are doing and it may enable us to avoid mistakes that others make. In short, it widens our horizon and tones down our self-conceit--or it should do all of this if we keep ears and eyes open when abroad. I make no apology for the fact that the greater bulk of the present volume deals with the Motherland, even if its title does not so indicate. Her romantic charm is as limitless as the sea that encircles her. Even now, after our long journeyings in every corner of the Island, I would not undertake to say to what extent we might still carry our exploration in historic and picturesque Britain. Should one delight in ivy-covered castles, rambling old manors, ruined abbeys, romantic country-seats, haunted houses, great cathedrals and storied churches past numbering, I know not where the limit may be. But I do know that the little party upon whose experiences this book is founded is still far from being satisfied after nearly twenty thousand miles of motoring in the Kingdom, and if I fail to make plain why we still think of the highways and byways of Britain with an undiminished longing, the fault is mine rather than that of my subject. In this book, as in my previous ones, the illustrations play a principal part. The color plates are from originals by distinguished artists and the photographs have been carefully selected and perfectly reproduced. The maps will also be of assistance in following the text. I hope that these valuable adjuncts may make amends for the many literary shortcomings of my text. THOMAS D. MURPHY Red Oak, Iowa, January 1, 1914. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CONTENTS Page I BOULOGNE TO ROUEN 1 II THE CHATEAU DISTRICT 29 III ORLEANS TO THE GERMAN BORDER 45 IV COLMAR TO OBERAMMERGAU 59 V BAVARIA AND THE RHINE 77 VI THE CAPTAIN'S STORY 104 VII A FLIGHT THROUGH THE NORTH 125 VIII THE MOTHERLAND ONCE MORE 145 IX OLD WHITBY 157 X SCOTT COUNTRY AND HEART OF HIGHLANDS 173 XI IN SUTHERLAND AND CAITHNESS 191 XII DOWN THE GREAT GLEN 210 XIII ALONG THE WEST COAST 224 XIV ODD CORNERS OF LAKELAND 246 XV WE DISCOVER DENBIGH 262 XVI CONWAY 279 XVII THE HARDY COUNTRY AND BERRY POMEROY 298 XVIII POLPERRO AND THE SOUTH CORNISH COAST 320 XIX LAND'S END TO LONDON 336 XX THE ENGLISH AND THEIR INSTITUTIONS 355 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS COLOR PLATES Page THE MOUNTAIN MEADOWS, BAVARIAN TYROL Frontispiece SUNSET IN TOURAINE 1 WOODS IN BRITTANY 26 PIER LANE, WHITBY 164 HARVEST TIME, STRATHTAY 180 A HIGHLAND LOCH 188 ACKERGILL HARBOUR, CAITHNESS 204 GLEN AFFRICK, NEAR INVERNESS 208 THE GREAT GLEN, SUNSET 210 "THE COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT" 236 THE FALLEN GIANT--A HIGHLAND STUDY 240 CONWAY CASTLE, NORTH WALES 280 "THE NEW ARRIVAL" 282 KYNANCE COVE, CORNWALL 334 SUNSET NEAR LAND'S END, CORNWALL 336 "A DISTANT VIEW OF THE TOWERS OF WINDSOR" 355 DUOGRAVURES ST. LO FROM THE RIVER 18 A STREET IN ST. MALO 24 CHENONCEAUX--THE ORIENTAL FRONT 32 AMBOISE FROM ACROSS THE LOIRE 34 GRAND STAIRWAY OF FRANCIS I. AT BLOIS 36 PORT DU CROUX--A MEDIEVAL WATCHTOWER AT NEVERS 46 CASTLE AT FUSSEN 66 OBERAMMERGAU 70 ULM AND THE CATHEDRAL 82 GOETHE'S HOUSE--FRANKFORT 86 BINGEN ON THE RHINE 88 CASTLE RHEINSTEIN 90 EHRENFELS ON THE RHINE 92 RUINS OF CASTLE RHEINFELS 94 LUXEMBURG--GENERAL VIEW 102 ST. WULFRAM'S CHURCH--GRANTHAM 150 OLD PEEL TOWER AT DARNICK, NEAR ABBOTSFORD 178 HOTEL, JOHN O'GROATS 200 URQUHART CASTLE, LOCH NESS 214 THE MACDONALD MONUMENT, GLENCOE 220 "McCAIG'S FOLLY," OBAN 224 GLENLUCE ABBEY 242 SWEETHEART ABBEY 244 WORDSWORTH'S BIRTHPLACE--COCKERMOUTH 250 CALDER ABBEY, CUMBERLAND 252 KENDAL CASTLE 258 KENDAL PARISH CHURCH 260 DENBIGH CASTLE--THE ENTRANCE AND KEEP 266 ST. HILARY'S CHURCH, DENBIGH 272 GATE TOWERS RHUDDLAN CASTLE, NORTH WALES 276 PLAS MAWR, CONWAY, HOME OF ROYAL CAMBRIAN ACADEMY 284 INNER COURT, PLAS MAWR, CONWAY 286 CONWAY CASTLE--THE OUTER WALL 292 BERRY POMEROY CASTLE, ENTRANCE TOWERS 312 BERRY POMEROY CASTLE--WALL OF INNER COURT 316 A STREET IN EAST LOOE--CORNWALL 322 POLPERRO, CORNWALL--LOOKING TOWARD THE SEA 324 LANSALLOS CHURCH, POLPERRO 326 A STREET IN FOWEY--CORNWALL 330 PROBUS CHURCH TOWER, CORNWALL 332 MAPS FRANCE AND GERMANY 380 SCOTLAND 388 ENGLAND AND WALES 388 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Through Summer France and The Fatherland ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: SUNSET IN TOURAINE From original painting by Leon Richet] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ On Old-World Highways I BOULOGNE TO ROUEN Our three summer pilgrimages in Britain have left few unexplored corners in the tight little island--we are thinking of new worlds to conquer. Beyond the narrow channel the green hills of France offer the nearest and most attractive field. Certainly it is the most accessible of foreign countries for the motorist in England and every year increasing numbers of English-speaking tourists are seen in the neighboring republic. The service of the Royal Automobile Club, with its usual enterprise and thoroughness, leaves little to be desired in arranging the details of a trip and supplies complete information as to route. An associate membership was accorded me on behalf of the Automobile Club of America, whose card I presented and which serves an American many useful ends in European motordom. Mr. Maroney, the genial touring secretary, at once interested himself in our proposed tour. He undertook to outline a route, to arrange for transportation of our car across the Channel, to provide for duties and licenses and, lastly, to secure a courier-guide familiar with the countries we proposed to invade and proficient in the French and German languages. The necessary guide-books and road-maps are carried in stock by the club and the only charge made is for these. Our proposed route was traced on the map, a typewritten list of towns and distances was made and a day or two later I was advised that a guide had been engaged. Mr Maroney expressed regret that the young men who serve the club regularly in this capacity were already employed, but he had investigated the man secured for us and found him competent and reliable. "Still," said Mr. Maroney with characteristic British caution, "we would feel better satisfied with one of our own men on the job; but it is the best we can do for you under the circumstances." We learned that our guide was a young Englishman of good family, at present in somewhat straitened circumstances, which made him willing to accept any position for which his talents might fit him. He had previously piloted motor parties through France and Italy and spoke four languages with perfect fluency. He had done a lot of knocking about, having recently been in a shipwreck off the coast of South America and having held a captain's commission in the South African War. We therefore called him "the Captain," and I may as well adopt that designation in referring to him in these pages, since his real name would interest no one. He was able to drive the car and declared willingness to do a chauffeur's part in caring for it. The only doubt expressed by Mr. Maroney was that the Captain might "forget his place"--that of a servant--and before long consider himself a member of our party, and with characteristic frankness the touring secretary cautioned our guide in my presence against any such presumption. It is a fine May afternoon when we drive from London to Folkestone to be on hand in time to attend to the formalities for crossing the Channel on the following day. Police traps, we are warned, abound along the road and we proceed quite soberly, taking some four hours for the seventy-five miles including the slow work of getting out of London. The Royal Pavilion Hotel on low ground near the docks is strictly first-class and its rates prove more moderate than we found at its competitors on the cliff. Our car is left at the dock, arrangements for its transport having been made beforehand by the Royal Automobile Club; but we saunter down in the morning to see it loaded. We need not worry about this, for it goes "at the company's risk," a provision which costs us ten shillings extra. It is pushed upon a large platform and a steam crane soon swings it high in the air preparatory to depositing it on the steamer deck. "She's an airship now," said an old salt as the car reached its highest point. "We did fetch over a sure-enough airship last week--belonged to that fellow Paulhan and he's a decentish chap, too; you'd never think he was a Frenchman!"--which would seem to indicate that the entente cordiale had not entirely cleared away prejudice from the mind of our sailor-friend. Our crossing was as comfortable as any Channel crossing could be--which in our case is not saying much, for that green, rushing streak of salt water, the English Channel, always gives us a squeamish feeling, no matter how "smooth" it may be. We are only too glad to get on terra firma in Boulogne and to see our car almost immediately swung to the dock. I had read in a recently published book by a motor tourist of the dreadful ordeal he underwent in securing his license to drive; a stern official sat beside him and put him through all his paces to ascertain if he was competent to pilot a car in France. I was expecting to be compelled to give a similar exhibit, when the Captain came out of the station with driving licenses for both himself and me and announced that we would be ready to proceed as soon as he attached a pair of very indistinct number plates. "But the examination 'pour competence,'" I said. "O," he replied, "I just explained to his nobs that we were in a great hurry and couldn't wait for an examination--and a five-franc piece did the rest." A piece of diplomacy which no doubt left the honest official feeling happier than if I had given him a joy-ride over the cobbles of Boulogne. Filling our tank with "essence," which we learn, after translating some jargon concerning "litres" and "francs," will cost about thirty-five cents per gallon--we strike out on the road to Montreuil. It proves a typical French highway and our first impressions are confirmed later on. The road is broad, with perfect contour and easy grades, running straight away for miles--or should I say kilometers?--and showing every evidence of engineering skill and careful construction. But it is old-fashioned macadam without any binding material. The motor car has torn up the surface and scattered it in loose dust which rises in clouds from our wheels or has been swept away by the wind, leaving the roadbed bare but rough and jagged--a perfect grindstone on rubber tires. The same description applies to nearly all the roads we traversed in France, and no doubt the vast preponderance of them are still in the same state or worse. A movement for re-surfacing the main highways is now in progress and in a few years France will again be at the front, though at this time she is far behind England in the matter of modern automobile roads. The long straight stretches and the absence of police traps in the country make fast time possible--if one is willing to pay the tire bill. Thirty miles an hour is an easy jog and though we left Boulogne after three, we find we have covered one hundred and ten miles at nightfall, including a stop for luncheon. At Montreuil we strike the first and only serious grade, a long, steep hill up which winds the cobble-paved main street of the town--our first experience with the cobble pavement of the provincial towns, of which more anon. A few miles beyond Montreuil the Captain steers us into a narrow byroad which leads into the quaint little fisher town of Berck-sur-Mer and, indeed, the much-abused "quaint" is not misapplied here. The old buildings straggle along the single street, quite devoid of any touch of the picturesque and thronged by people of all degrees. We see many queer four-wheeled vehicles--not much larger than toy wagons--drawn by ponies and donkeys, the drivers lying at full length on their backs, staring at the sky or asleep, their motive power wandering along at its own sweet will. It is indeed ridiculous to see full-grown men riding in such a primitive fashion, but the sight is not unusual. We meet a troop of prawn fishers coming in from the sea--as miserable specimens of humanity as we ever beheld--ragged, bedraggled, bare-headed and bare-footed creatures; many old women among them, prancing along like animated rag-bags. Swinging back into the main highway, we soon reach Abbeville, whose roughly paved streets wind between bare, unattractive buildings. In places malodorous streams run along the streets--practically open sewers, if the smell is any indication. Abbeville affords an example of the terrible cobblestone pavement that we found in nearly all French cities of the second class. The round, uneven stones--in the States we call them "niggerheads"--have probably lain undisturbed for centuries. Besides the natural roughness of such a pavement, there are numerous chuck-holes. No matter how slowly we drive, we bounce and jump over these stones, which strike the tires with sledge-hammer force, sending a series of shivers throughout the car. It is no wonder that such pavements and the grindstone roads often limit the life of tires to a few hundred miles. Out of Abbeville we "hit up" pretty strongly, for it is nearly dark and we plan to reach Rouen for the night. The straight fine road offers temptation to speed, under the circumstances, and our odometer does not vary much from forty miles--when we are suddenly treated to a surprise that makes us more cautious about speeding on French roads at dusk. In a little hollow we strike a ditch six inches deep by two or three feet in width--a "canivau," as they designate it in France--with a terrific jolt which almost threatens the car with destruction. The frame strikes the axles with fearful force; it seems impossible that nothing should be broken. A careful search fails to reveal any apparent damage, though a fractured axle-rod a short time later is undoubtedly a result of the violent blow. It seems strange that an important main road should have such a dangerous defect, though we find many similar cases later; but as we travel no more after dusk, and generally at much more moderate speed, we have no further mishap of the kind. We light our lamps and proceed at a more sober pace to Neufchatel, where we decide to stop for the night at the rather unattractive-looking Lion d'Or. We have reason to congratulate ourselves, for the wayside inn is really preferable to the Angleterre at Rouen and the rates are scarcely half so much. It is a rambling old house, partly surrounding a stable-yard court where the motor is stored for the night. The regular meal time is past, but a plain supper is prepared for us. We are tired enough not to be too critical of our accommodations and the rooms and beds are clean and fairly comfortable. We have breakfast at a long table where the guests all sit together and the fare, while plain, is good. There is nothing of interest in Neufchatel, though its cheese has given it a world-wide fame. It is a market town of four or five thousand people, depending largely on the prosperous country surrounding it. We are early away for Rouen and in course of an hour we come in sight of the cathedral spire, the highest in all France, rising nearly five hundred feet and overtopping Salisbury, the loftiest in England, by almost one hundred feet. At the Captain's recommendation we seek the Hotel Angleterre--which means the Hotel England--a bid, no doubt, for the patronage of the numerous English-speaking tourists who visit the city. There is a deal of dickering before we get settled, for the rates are unreasonably high; but after considerable parley a bargain is made. We enter the diminutive "lift," which holds two persons by a little crowding, but after the first trip we use the stairway to save time. One could not "do" Rouen in the guide-book sense in less than a week--but such is not the object of our present tour. If one brings a motor to France he can hardly afford to let it stand idle to spend several days in any city. We shall see what we can of Rouen in a day and take the road again in the morning. Our first thought is of Jeanne d'Arc and her martyrdom in the old city and our second of the cathedral, in some respects one of the most remarkable in Europe. It is but a stone's throw from our hotel and is consequently our first attraction. The facade is imposing despite its incongruous architectural details and has a world of intricate carving and sculpture, partly concealed by scaffolding, for the church is being restored. The towers flanking the facade are unfinished, both lacking the tall Gothic spire originally planned and, indeed, necessary to give a harmonious effect to the whole. A spire of open iron-work nearly five hundred feet in height replaces the original wooden structure burned by lightning in 1822 and is severely criticised as being out of keeping with the elaborate stone building which it surmounts. Once inside we are overwhelmed by a sense of vastness--the great church is nearly five hundred feet in length, while the transept is a third as wide. The arches of the nave seem almost lost in the dim, softly toned light that streams in from the richly colored windows, some of which date from the twelfth century. If the exterior is incongruous, the interior is indeed a symphony in stone, despite a few jarring notes in the decorations of some of the private chapels. There are many beautiful monuments, mainly to French church dignitaries whom we never heard of and care little about, but the battered gigantic limestone effigy discovered in 1838 is full of fascinating interest, for it represents Richard the Lion-Hearted--the Richard of "Ivanhoe"--whose heart, enclosed in a triple casket of lead, wood and silver, is buried beneath. The figure is nearly seven feet in length and we wonder if this is a true representation of the stature of our childhood's hero, who, "starred with idle glory, came Bearing from leaguered Ascalon The barren splendour of his fame, And, vanquished by an unknown bow, Lies vainly great at Fontevraud." For Richard's body was interred at Fontevraud, near Orleans, with other members of English royalty. Henry II. is also buried in Rouen Cathedral--all indicative that there was a day when English kings regarded Normandy as their home! Another memorial which interests us is dedicated to LaSalle, the great explorer, who was born in Rouen. He was buried, as every schoolboy knows, in the great river which he discovered, but his memory is cherished by his native city as the man who gave the empire of Louisiana to France. Rouen has at least two other churches of first magnitude--St. Ouen and St. Maclou--but we shall have to content ourselves with a cursory glance at their magnificence. The former is declared to be "one of the most beautiful Gothic churches in existence, surpassing the cathedral both in extent and excellence of style." Such is the pronouncement of that final authority on such matters, Herr Baedeker! But, after all, is not Rouen best known to the world because of its connection with the strange figure of Jeanne d'Arc? Indeed, her career savors of myth and legend--not the sober fact of history--and it is hard to conceive of the scene that took place around the fatal spot in the Vieux-Marche, now marked with a large stone bearing the inscription, "Jeanne d'Arc, 30 Mar. 1431." Here a tender young woman whose only crime was an implicit belief that she was divinely inspired, was burned at the stake by order of a reverend bishop who, surrounded by his satellites, approvingly looked on the dreadful scene. And these men were not painted savages, but high dignitaries of Christendom. Much of old Rouen stands to-day as it stood then, but what a vast change has been wrought in humankind! Only a single ruinous tower remains of the castle where the Maid was confined. While imprisoned here she was intimidated by being shown the instruments of torture; but she withstood the callous brutality of her persecutors with fortitude and heroism that baffled them, though it only enraged them the more. We acknowledge the hopelessness of getting any adequate idea of a city of such antiquity and importance in a day and the Captain says we may as well quit trying. He suggests that we take the tram for Bonsecours, situated on the steep hill towering high over the town from the right bank of the river. Here is a modern Catholic cemetery with many handsome tombs and monuments and, in the center, a recently erected memorial to Joan of Arc. This consists of three little temples in the Renaissance style, the central chapel enclosing a marble statue of the Maid. There is a modern church near by whose interior--a solid mass of bright green, red and gold--is the most gorgeous we have seen. The specialty of this church is "votive tablets"--the walls are covered with little marble placards telling what some particular saint has done for the donor in response to a vow. A round charge, the Captain says, is made for each tablet, so that the income of Bonsecours Church must be a good one. But one will not visit Bonsecours to see the church or the memorial, though both are interesting in their way, but for the unmatched view of the city and the Seine Valley, which good authorities pronounce one of the finest panoramas in Europe. From the memorial the whole city lies spread out like a map--so far beneath that the five-hundred-foot spire of Notre Dame is below the level of our vision. The city, with its splendid spires rising amidst the wilderness of streets and house-roofs, fills the valley near at hand and the broad, shining folds of the Seine, with its old bridges and wooded shores, lends a glorious variety to the scene. The view up and down the river is quite unobstructed, covering a beautiful and prosperous valley bounded on either side by the verdant hills of Normandy. This view alone well repays a visit to Bonsecours, whether one's stay in Rouen be short or long. In leaving Rouen we cross the Seine and follow the fine straight road which runs through Pont Audemer to Honfleur on the coast. This was not our prearranged route, but the Captain apparently gravitates toward the sea whenever possible, and he is responsible for the diversion. From Honfleur we follow the narrow road along the coast--its sharp turns, devious windings, short steep hills and the hedgerows which border it in places recalling the byways of Devon and Cornwall. We again come out on the shore at Trouville-sur-Mer, a watering place with an array of imposing hotels. It is not yet the "season" and many of the hotels are closed, but the Belvue, one of the largest, is doing business and we have an elaborate luncheon here which costs more than we like to pay. Out of Trouville our road still pursues the coast, running through a series of resorts and fishing villages until it swings inland for Caen--a quaint, irregular old place which, next to Rouen, declares Baedeker, is the most interesting city in Normandy. We are sorry that many of its show-places are closed to us, for it is Sunday and the churches are not open to tourist inspection. In St. Stephen's we might have seen the tomb of William the Conqueror, though his remains no longer rest beneath it, having been disinterred and scattered by the Huguenots in 1562. Caen has two other great churches--St. Peter's and Trinity, which we can view only from the outside. It is Pentecost Sunday and the streets are thronged with young girls in white who have taken part in confirmation services; we have seen others at many places during the day. It is about the only thing to remind us that it is Sunday, for the shops are open, work is going on in the fields, and road-making is in progress; we note little suspension of week-day activities. The peasants whom we see by the roadside and in the little villages are generally very dirty but seem happy and content. The farm houses are usually unattractive, often with filthy surroundings--muck-heaps in front of the doors--not unlike what we saw in some parts of Ireland. The road from Caen to Bayeux runs as straight as an arrow's flight, broad, level and bordered--as most main roads are in France--by rows of stately trees. We give the motor full rein and the green sunny fields flit joyously past us. What a relief to "open her up" without thought of a policeman behind every bush! Is it any wonder that the oft-trapped Englishman considers France a motorist's paradise? The spires of Bayeux Cathedral soon rise before us and we must content ourselves with the exterior of this magnificent church. Not so with the museum which contains the Bayeux Tapestry, for the lady member of our party is determined to see this famous piece of needlework, willy nilly. The custodian is finally located and we are admitted to view the relic. It is a strip of linen cloth eighteen inches wide and two hundred thirty feet long, embroidered in colored thread with scenes representing the Conquest of England by William of Normandy. It is claimed that the work was done by Queen Matilda and her maidens, though this is disputed by some authorities; but its importance as a contemporary representation of historic events of the time of William I. far outweighs its artistic significance. The main road from Bayeux to St. Lo is one of the most glorious highways in France. It runs through an almost unbroken forest of giant trees for a good part of the distance--a little more than twenty miles--and the sunset sky gleaming through the stately trunks relieves the otherwise somber effect. By happy accident we reach St. Lo at nightfall and turn into the courtyard of the Hotel de Univers, a comfortable-looking old house invitingly close to the roadside. I say by happy accident, for we never planned to stop at St. Lo and but for chance might have remained in ignorance of one of the most charming little cathedral towns in France. Indeed, we feel that St. Lo is ours by right of discovery, for we find but scant mention of it in the guide-books. After an excellent though unpretentious dinner, we sally forth from our inn to view our surroundings in the deepening twilight. The town is situated on the margin of a still little river which wonderfully reflects the ancient vine-covered houses that climb the sharply sloping hillside. The huge bulk of the cathedral looms mysteriously over the town and its soaring twin spires are sharply outlined against the dim moonlit sky. The towers are not exact duplicates, as they appear from a distance, but both exhibit the same general characteristics of Gothic style. The whole scene is one of enchanting beauty; the dull glow of the river, the houses massed on the hillside, with lighted windows gleaming here and there and and crowning all the vast sentinellike form of the cathedral--a scene that would lose half its charm if viewed by the flaunting light of day. And we secretly resolve that we shall have no such disenchantment; we shall steal quietly out of St. Lo in the early morning with never a backward glance. We do not, therefore, see the interior of the church, which has several features of peculiar interest, and we may be pardoned for adopting the description of an English writer: "Notre Dame de Saint-Lo has a very unusual and original plan, widening towards the east and adding another aisle to the north and south ambulatories. On the north side is its chief curiosity, an out-door pulpit, built at the end of the fifteenth century and probably used by Huguenot preachers, to whom a sermon was a sermon, whether preached under a vaulted roof or the open sky. What strikes one most about the interior of the church is its want of light. The nave is absolutely unlighted, having neither tri-forium nor clerestory, and the aisles have only one tier of large windows, whose glass is old and very fine, though in most cases pieced together; the nave piers are massive, with a cluster of three shafts; those of the choir are quite simple, and have one noticeable feature, the absence of capitals, the vault mouldings dying away into the pier." [Illustration: ST. LO FROM THE RIVER] We shall remember our hotel as the best type of the small-town French inn--a simple, old-fashioned house where we had attentive service and a studied effort to please was made by all connected with the place. And not the least of its merits are its moderate charges--less than half we paid at many of the larger places, often for less satisfactory accommodations. Twenty miles westward from St. Lo we come to Coutances, which boasts of a cathedral church of the first magnitude and one of the oldest in Normandy, dating almost in entirety from the thirteenth century. Leaving the main highway a little beyond Coutances, we follow the narrow byroad running about a mile from the coast through Granville, a well-known seaside resort, to Avranches. This road is scarcely more than a winding lane with many sharp little hills, hedge-bordered in places and often overarched by trees--a little like the roads of Southern England, a type not very common in France. South of Granville it closely follows the shore for a few miles, then swings inland for a mile or two, affording only occasional glimpses of the sea. Avranches, from its commanding site on a lofty hill, soon breaks into view, and the Captain suggests luncheon at the Grand Hotel de France et de Londres, which he says is famous in this section. Besides, it is well worth while to ascend the hill for the panorama of St. Michel's Bay, with its cathedral-crowned islet, which may be seen to the best advantage from the town. It is a stiff, winding climb to the summit, but we reach the cobble-paved, vine-embowered court of the hotel just in time for dinner. I suppose the "Londres" was added to the name of the inn with a view of catching the English-speaking trade, which is considerable in Avranches, since the town is the stopping-place of many tourists who visit Mont St. Michel. From the courtyard we are ushered into the dining-room where, after the fashion of country inns in France, a single long table serves all the guests. At the head sits the proprietor, a suave, gray-bearded gentleman who graciously does the courtesies of the table. The meal is quite an elaborate one and there is plenty of old port wine for the bibulously inclined. I might say here that this inclusion of wines without extra charge is a common but not universal practice with the French country inns; generally these liquors are of the cheapest quality, little better than vinegar, and one trial will make the average tourist a teetotaler unless he wishes to order a better grade as an "extra." After the meal our host comes out to wish us "bon voyage" as we depart and we are at a loss to understand his intention when he picks up a small ladder and begins climbing up the wall. We see, however, that a rose-vine bearing a few beautiful blossoms clings to the stones above a window. The old gentleman cuts some of the choicest flowers and presents them, with a gracious bow, to the lady of our party. The new causeway makes Mont St. Michel easily accessible to motorists and affords a splendid view as one approaches the towered and pinnacled rock and the little town that climbs its steep sides. Formerly the tide covered the rough road that led to the mount, much the same as it still covers the approach to the Cornish St. Michael; but the new grade is above high-tide level and the abbey may be reached at any time of the day. It is a wearisome climb to the summit--for the car cannot enter the narrow streets of the town--and for some time we wait the pleasure of the guide, who, being a government official, does not permit himself to be unduly hurried. He speaks only French and but for the Captain's services we should know little of his story. To our half-serious remark that a lift would save visitors some hard work he replies with a shrug, "A lift in Mont St. Michel? It wouldn't be Mont St. Michel any longer!"--a hint of how carefully the atmosphere of mediaevalism is preserved here. The abbey as it stands to-day is largely the result of an extensive restoration begun by the government in 1863. This accounts for the surprisingly perfect condition of much of the building, and it also confirms the wisdom of the undertaking by which a great service has been rendered to architecture. Previous to the restoration the abbey was used as a prison, but it is now chiefly a show-place, though services are regularly conducted in the chapel. Especially noteworthy are the cloisters, a thirteenth-century reproduction, with two hundred and twenty columns of polished granite embedded in the wall and ranged in double arcades, the graceful vaults decorated with exquisite carving and a beautiful frieze. The most notable apartment is the Hall of the Chevaliers, likewise a thirteenth-century replica. The vaulting of solid stone is supported by a triple row of massive columns running the full length of nearly one hundred feet--like ranks of giant tree trunks. There is a beautiful chapel and dungeons and crypts galore, the names of which we made no attempt to remember. Likewise we gave little attention to the historic episodes of the mount, which are not of great importance. The interest of the tourist centers in the remarkably striking effect of the great group of Gothic buildings crowning the rock and in the artistic beauty of the architectural details. Many wonderful views of the sea and of the hills and towns around the bay may be seen to splendid advantage from the terraces and battlements. There are a number of pleasant little tea gardens where one may order light refreshments and in the meanwhile enjoy a most inspiring view of the sea and distant landscape. The little town at the foot of the rock is a quaint old-world place with a single street but a few feet wide. The small population subsists on tourist trade--restaurants and souvenir shops making up the village. Little is doing to-day, as we are in advance of the liveliest season. The greatest number of visitors come on Sunday--a gala day at Mont St. Michel in summer. A rough, stony road takes us to St. Malo and adds considerable wearisome tire trouble to an already strenuous day. We are glad to stop at the Hotel de Univers, even though it is not prepossessing from without. [Illustration: A STREET IN ST. MALO] St. Malo's antiquity and quaintness are its stock in trade, and these, together with its position on a peninsula, with the sea on every hand, make it one of the most popular resorts in France. Steamers from Southampton bring numbers of English visitors--we find no interpreter needed at the hotel. The town is encircled by walls, the greater part recently restored. They are none the less picturesque and the mighty towers at the entrance gateways savor strongly indeed of mediaevalism. In the older part of the town the streets are so narrow and crooked as to exclude motors, the widest not exceeding twenty feet, and there are seldom walks on either side. The houses bordering them show every evidence of age--St. Malo is best described by the often overworked term, "old-world." The huge church--formerly a cathedral--is so hedged in by buildings that it is impossible to get a good view of the exterior or to take a satisfactory photograph. As a result of such crowding it is poorly lighted inside, though it really has an impressive interior. A walk round the walls or ramparts of St. Malo affords a wonderful view of the sea and surrounding country and also many interesting glimpses of queer nooks and corners in the town itself. The bay is finest at full tide, which rises here to the astonishing height of forty-nine feet above low water. There are numerous fortified islands and it is possible to reach some of these on foot when the tide is out. St. Malo was besieged many times during the endless wars between England and France, but owing to its remarkable fortifications was never taken. There is more rough, badly worn road between St. Malo and Rennes, though in the main it is broad and level. Its effect on tires is indeed disheartening--we have run less than a thousand miles since landing and new envelopes are showing signs of dissolution. Part of the game, no doubt, but it is hard to be cheerful losers in such a game, to say the least. Rennes, we find, has other claims to fame than the Dreyfus trial, which is the first distinction that comes to mind. Its public museum and galleries contain one of the best provincial collections in France, and there is an imposing modern cathedral. We have an excellent lunch at the Grand Hotel, though it is a dingy-looking place that would hardly invite a lengthy stop if appearances should be considered. It is not Baedeker's number one and there is doubtless a better hotel in Rennes. The road which we follow in leaving the town is the best we have yet traversed in France; it is broad, straight and newly surfaced, and the thirty or more miles to Chateaubriant are rapidly covered. Here we find an ancient town of a few thousand people, and an enormous old castle partly in ruins, a fit match for Conway or Harlech in Britain. Its square-topped, crenelated towers and long embrasured battlements are quite different from the pointed Gothic style of the usual French chateau. Beyond Chateaubriant the road runs broad and straight for miles through a beautiful and prosperous country. Evidently the land is immensely fertile and tilled with the thoroughness that characterizes French agriculture. The small village is the only discordant note. We pass through several all alike, bare, dirty and uninteresting, quite different from the trim, flower-decked beauty of the English village. And they grow steadily more repulsive as we progress farther inland until, as we near the German border--but the subject is not pleasant enough to anticipate! [Illustration: WOODS IN BRITTANY From original painting by Leon Richet] Angers is a cathedral town of eighty thousand people on the River Maine, two or three miles above its confluence with the Loire. It is of ancient origin, but the French passion for making everything new (according to an English critic) has swept away most of its old-time landmarks save the castle and cathedral. The former was one of the most extensive mediaeval fortresses in all France and is still imposing, despite the fact that several of its original seventeen towers have been razed and its great moat filled up. It is now more massive than picturesque. "It has no beauty, no grace, no detail, nothing to charm or detain you; it is simply very old and very big and it takes its place in your recollections as a perfect specimen of a superannuated feudal stronghold." The huge bastions, girded with iron bands, and the high perpendicular walls springing out of the dark waters of the moat must have made the castle impregnable against any method of assault before the days of artillery. The castle is easily the most distinctive feature of Angers and the one every visitor should see, though I must confess we failed to visit it. We should also have seen the cathedral and museum, but museums consume time and time is the first consideration on a motor tour. Our Hotel, the Grand, though old, is cleanly and pleasant, with high ceilings and broad corridors which have immense full-length mirrors at every turn. The prices for all this magnificence are quite moderate--largely due, no doubt, to the Captain's prearrangement with the manager. The service, however, is a little slack, especially at the table. At Angers we are in the edge of the Chateau District, and as my chapter has already run to considerable length, I shall avail myself of this logical stopping place. The story of the French chateaus has filled many a good-sized volume and may well occupy a separate chapter in this rather hurried record. II THE CHATEAU DISTRICT For more than two hundred miles after leaving Angers we follow a road that may justly be described as one of the most unique and picturesque in France. It seldom takes us out of sight of the shining Loire and most of the way it runs on an embankment directly overlooking the river, affording a panoramic view of the fertile valley which stretches to green hills on either side. The embankment is primarily to confine the waters during freshets, but its broad level top makes an excellent roadbed, which is generally in good condition. A few miles out of Angers we get our first view of the Loire, a majestic river three or four hundred yards in width and in full flow at the present time. Occasional islets add to the beauty of the scene and the landscape on either hand is studded with splendid trees. It is an opulent-looking country and we pass miles of green fields interspersed at times with unbroken stretches of forest. There are several towns and villages on both sides of the river and they are cleaner and better in appearance than those we passed yesterday. Near Tours the country becomes more broken and the hillsides are covered with endless vineyards. In places the clifflike hills rise close to the roadside and these are honeycombed with caves; some are occupied as dwellings by the peasants, but the greater number serve as storage cellars for wine, which is produced in large quantities in this vicinity. These modern "cliff-dwellers" are not so poor as their homes would indicate; there are many well-to-do peasants among them. In fact, the very poor are scarce in rural France; the universal habits of industry and economy have spread prosperity among all classes of people; rough attire and squalid surroundings are seldom indicative of real poverty, as in England. Everybody is engaged in some useful occupation--old women may be seen herding a cow, donkey or geese by the roadside and knitting industriously the while. Tours is one of the most beautiful of the older French provincial cities. We have a fine view of the town from across the Loire as we approach, for it lies on the south side of the river. It is a famous tourist center--perhaps the first objective, after Paris, of the majority of Americans and English, and it has several pretentious hotels. We choose the newest, the Metropole, which proves very satisfactory. Here the Captain's wiles fail to reduce the first-named tariff, for the hotel is full, and we can only guess what the charge might have been if not agreed upon in advance. In defense of his bargaining the Captain tells a story of a previous trip he made with an American party in Italy. English was spoken at a hotel where one of the party asked the rates and the proprietor, assuming that his prospective guests did not understand the language of the country, had a little by-talk with a henchman as to charges and remarked that the tourists, being Americans, would probably stand three or four times the regular rates, which the inn-keeper proceeded to ask. He was greatly chagrinned when the Captain repeated the substance of the conversation he had heard and told the would-be robber that the party would seek accommodations elsewhere. I will let this little digression take the place of descriptive remarks concerning Tours, which has probably been written about more than any other city in France excepting Paris. The cathedral everyone will see; it is especially noteworthy for the facade, which is the best and most ornate example of the so-called Flamboyant style in existence. The great Renaissance towers are comparatively modern and to our mind lack the grace and fitness of the pointed Gothic style. The country about Tours has more to attract the tourist than the city itself, for within a few miles are the famous chateaus which have been exploited by literary travelers of all degrees. But it has lost none of its charm on that account and perhaps every writer has presented to some extent a different viewpoint of its beauty and romance. Touraine is quite unlike any other part of France; its vistas of grayish-green levels, diversified with slim shimmering poplars and flashes of its broad lazy rivers, are quite unique and characteristic. And when such a landscape is dotted with an array of splendid historic palaces such as Blois, Amboise, Chinon, Chaumont and Chenonceaux, it assuredly reaches the height of romantic interest. All of these, it is true, are not within the exact political limits of Touraine, but all are within easy reach of Tours. We make Chenonceaux our objective for the afternoon. It lies a little more than twenty miles east of Tours and the road follows the course of the Cher almost the whole distance. The palace stands directly above the river, supported on massive arches which rest on piles in the bed of the stream. A narrow drawbridge at either end cuts the entrances from the shore, though these bridges were never intended as a means of defense. Chenonceaux was in no sense a military fortress--its memories are of love and jealousy and not of war or assassination. It was built early in the sixteenth century by a receiver of taxes to King Francis, but so much of the public funds went into the work that its projector died in disgrace and his son atoned as best he could by turning the chateau over to the king. [Illustration: CHENONCEAUX--THE ORIENTAL FRONT] And here, in the heart of old France, we come upon another memory of Mary Stuart, for here, with Francis II., she spent her honeymoon--if, indeed, we may style her short loveless marriage a honeymoon--coming direct from Amboise, where she had unwillingly witnessed the awful scenes of the massacre of the Huguenots. What must have been the reveries of the girl-queen at Chenonceaux! In a foreign land, surrounded by a wicked, intriguing court, with scenes of bloodshed and death on every hand and wedded to a hopeless imbecile, foredoomed to early death--surely even the strange beauty of the river palace could not have driven these terrible ghosts from her mind. Chenonceaux has many memories of love and intrigue, for here in 1546 Francis I. and his mistress, the famous Diane of Poitiers, gave a great hunting party; but the heir-apparent, Prince Henry, soon gained the affections of the fair Diane and on his accession to the throne presented her with the chateau, to which she had taken a great fancy. She it was who built the bridgelike hall connecting the castle with the south bank of the river and she otherwise improved the palace and grounds; but on the death of the king, twelve years later, the queen--the terrible Catherine de Medici--compelled Diane to give up Chenonceaux and to betake herself to the older and less attractive Chaumont. The chateau escaped serious injury during the fiery period of the Revolution, but the insurrectionists compelled the then owner, Madame Dupin, to surrender her securities, furniture, priceless paintings and objects of art--the collection of nearly three centuries--and all were destroyed in a bonfire. Chenonceaux is now the property of a wealthy Cuban who has spent a fortune in its restoration and improving the grounds, which accounts for the trim, new appearance of the place. The great avenue leading from the public entrance passes through formal gardens brilliant with flowers and beautified with rare shrubbery and majestic trees. It is a pleasant and romantic place and the considerateness of the owner in opening it to visitors for a trifling fee deserves commendation. [Illustration: AMBOISE FROM ACROSS THE LOIRE] Quite different are the memories of Amboise, the vast, acropolislike pile which towers over the Loire some dozen miles beyond Tours and which we reach early the next day after a delightful run along the broad river. We have kept to the north bank and cross the river into the little village, from which a steep ascent leads to the chateau. The present structure is largely the result of modern restoration, the huge round tower being about all that remains of the ancient castle. This contains a circular inclined plane, up which Emperor Charles V. of the Holy Roman Empire rode on horseback when he visited Francis I. in 1539, and it is possible for a medium-sized automobile to make the ascent to-day. Amboise is chiefly remembered for the awful deeds of Catherine de Medici, who from the balcony overlooking the town watched the massacre, which she personally directed, of twelve hundred Huguenots. With her were the young king, Francis II., and his bride, Mary Stuart, who were compelled to witness the series of horrible executions which were carried out in the presence of the court. The leaders were hung from the iron balconies and others were murdered in the courtyard. They met their fate with stern religious enthusiasm, singing, it is recorded, until death silenced their voices. The direct cause of the massacre was the discovery of a plot on the part of the Huguenot leaders to abduct the young king in order to get him from under the evil influence of his mother. The chateau contains a tomb that alone should make it the shrine of innumerable pilgrims, for here is buried that many-sided genius, Leonardo da Vinci, who died in Amboise in 1519 and whom many authorities regard as the most remarkable man the human race has yet produced. But enough of horrors and tombs; we go out on the balcony, where the old tigress stood in that far-off day, and contemplate the enchanting scene that lies beneath us. Out beyond the blue river a wide peaceful plain stretches to the purple hills in the far distance; just below are the gray roofs of the town and there are glorious vistas up and down the broad stream. This is the memory we should prefer to carry away with us, rather than that of the murderous deeds of Catherine de Medici! On arriving at Blois, twenty miles farther down the river road, thoughts of belated luncheon first engage our minds and the Hotel de Angleterre sounds good, looks good, and proves good, indeed. Its dining-room is a glass-enclosed balcony overhanging the river, which adds a picturesque view to a very excellent meal. The chateau, a vast quadrangular pile surrounding a great court, is but a short distance from the hotel. Only the historic apartments are shown--quite enough, since several hours would be required to make a complete round of the enormous edifice. The castle has passed into the hands of the government and is being carefully restored. It is planned to make it a great museum of art and history and several rooms already contain an important collection. The palace was built at different periods, from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries, and was originally a nobleman's home, but later a residence of the kings of France. [Illustration: GRAND STAIRWAY OF FRANCIS I. AT BLOIS] Inside the court our attention is attracted by the elaborate decorations and carvings of the walls. On one side is a long open gallery supported by richly wrought columns; but most marvelous is the great winding stairway projecting from the wall and open on the inner side. Every inch of this structure--its balconies, its pillars and its huge central column--is wrought over with beautiful images and strange devices, among which the salamander of Francis I. is most noticeable. When we have admired the details of the court to our satisfaction, the guide conducts us through a labyrinth of gorgeously decorated rooms with many magnificent fireplaces and mantels but otherwise quite unfurnished. The apartments of the crafty and cruel Catherine de Medici are especially noteworthy, one of them--her study--having no fewer than one hundred and fifty carved panels which conceal secret crypts and hiding-places. These range from small boxes--evidently for jewels or papers--to a closet large enough for one to hide in. The overshadowing tragic event of Blois--there were a host of minor ones--was the assassination of the Duke of Guise in 1588. Henry III., a weak and vacillating king, was completely dominated by this powerful nobleman, whose fanatical religious zeal led him to establish a league to restore the supremacy of the Catholic religion. The king was forced to proclaim the duke lieutenant-general of the kingdom and to pledge himself to extirpate the heretics; but despite his outward compliance Henry was resolved on vengeance. According to the ideas of the times an objectionable courtier could best be removed by assassination and this the king determined upon. He piously ordered two court priests to pray for the success of his plan and summoned the duke to his presence. Guise was standing before the fire in the great dining-room and though he doubtless suspected his royal master's kind intentions toward him, walked into the next room, where nine of the king's henchmen awaited him. They offered no immediate violence, but followed him into the corridor, where they at once drew swords and fell upon him. Even against such odds the duke, who was a powerful man, made a strong resistance and though repeatedly stabbed, fought his way to the king's room, where he fell at the foot of the royal bed. Henry, when assured that his enemy was really dead, came trembling out of the adjoining room and kicking the corpse, exclaimed, "How big he is; bigger dead than alive!" The next morning the duke's brother, the Cardinal of Lorraine, was also murdered in the castle as he was hastening to obey a summons from the king. There is little suggestion of such horrors in the polished floors and gilded walls that surround us today as we hear the Captain translate the gruesome details from the guide's voluble sentences. We listen only perfunctorily; it all seems unreasonable and unreal as the sun, breaking from the clouds that have prevailed much of the day, floods the great apartments with light. We have not followed this tale of blood and treachery closely; it is only another reminder that cruelty and inhumanity were very common a few centuries ago. There is a minor cathedral in Blois, but the most interesting church is St. Nicholas, formerly a part of the abbey and dating from 1138. Its handsome facade with twin towers is the product of recent restoration. There are also many quaint timbered houses in Blois, dating from the fifteenth century and later, but we pay little attention to them. I hardly know why our enthusiasm for old French houses is so limited, considering how eagerly we sought such bits of antiquity in England. We pursue the river road the rest of the day, though in places it swings several miles from the Loire--or does the Loire swing from the road, which seems arrow-straight everywhere?--and cuts across some lovely rural country. Fields of grain, just beginning to ripen, predominate and there are also green meadows and patches of carmine clover. Crimson poppies and blue cornflowers gleam among the wheat, lending a touch of brilliant color to the billowy fields. The village of Beaugency, which we passed about midway between Tours and Orleans, is one that will arrest the attention of the casual passerby. It is more reminiscent of the castellated small town of England than one often finds in France. It is overshadowed by a huge Norman keep with sheltered, ivy-grown parapets, the sole remaining portion of an eleventh-century castle. The remainder of the present castle was built as a stronghold against the English, only to be taken by them shortly after its completion. The invaders, however, were driven out by the French army under Joan of Arc in 1429. The bridge at Beaugency is the oldest on the Loire, having spanned the river since the thirteenth century. The town has stood several sieges and was the scene of terrible excesses in the religious wars of the sixteenth century, the abbey having been burned by the Protestants in 1567. Towards evening we again come to the river bank and ere long the towers of Orleans break on our view. Despite its great antiquity the city appears quite modern, for it has been so rebuilt that but few of its ancient landmarks remain. Even the cathedral is a modern restoration--almost in toto--and there is scarcely a complete building in the town antedating 1500. The main streets are broad and well-paved and electric trams run on many of them. Our hotel, the Grand Aignan, is rather old-fashioned and somewhat dingy, but it is clean and comfortable and its rates are not exorbitant. There is a modern and more fashionable hotel in the city, but we have learned that second-class inns in cities of medium size are often good and much easier on one's purse. Our first thought, when we begin our after-dinner ramble, is that Orleans should change its name to Jeanne d'Arcville. I know of no other instance where a city of seventy thousand people is so completely dominated by a single name. The statues, the streets, the galleries, museums, churches and shops--all remind one of the immortal Maid who made her first triumphal entry into Orleans in 1429, when the city was hard pressed by the English besiegers. Every postcard and souvenir urged upon the visitor has something to do with the patron saint of the town and, after a little, one falls in with the spirit of the place, rejoicing that the memories of Orleans are only of success and triumph and forgetting Rouen's dark chapter of defeat and death. In the morning we first go to the cathedral--an ornate and imposing church, though one that the critics have dealt with rather roughly. It faces the wide Rue Jeanne d'Arc--again Orleans' charmed name--and it seems to us that the whole vast structure might well be styled a memorial to the immortal Maid of France. The facade is remarkable for its Late-Gothic towers, nearly three hundred feet high, while between them to the rear rises the central spire, some fifty feet higher. There are three great portals beneath massive arches, rising perhaps one-fourth the height of the towers, and above each of these is an immense rose window. Perhaps the design as a whole is not according to the best architectural tenets, but the cathedral seems grand to such unsophisticated critics as ourselves. Being a rather late restoration, it does not show the wear and tear of the ages, like so many of its ancient rivals, and perhaps loses a little charm on this account. The vast vaultlike interior is quite free from obstructions to one's vision and is lighted by windows of beautifully toned modern glass. These depict scenes in the life of Joan of Arc, beginning with the appearance of her heavenly monitors and ending with her martyrdom at the stake. The designing is of remarkably high order and the color toning is much more effective than one often finds in modern glass. There are a number of paintings and images, many of them referring to the career of the now venerated Maid. The usual gaudy chapels and altars of French cathedrals are in evidence, though none are especially interesting. Orleans has several other churches and all pay some tribute to the heroine of the town. A small part of St. Peter's dates from the ninth century, one of the few relics of antiquity to be found in Orleans. The Hotel de Ville, built about 1530, has a beautiful marble figure of Joan in the court, and an equestrian statue of the Maid is in the Grand Salon of the building, representing her horse in the act of trampling a mortally wounded Englishman. Both of these statues are the work of Princess Marie of Orleans--a scion of the old royal family of France. The Hotel de Ville also recalls a memory of Mary Stuart; here in 1560 her boy-husband, Francis II., expired in the arms of his wife, and her career was soon transferred from the French court to its no less troubled and cruel contemporary in Scotland. The town possesses an unusually good museum, which includes a large historical collection, and the gallery contains a number of paintings and sculptures of real merit. Of course one will wish to see the house where the patron saint of the town lodged, and this may be found at No. 37 Rue de Tabour. There is also on the same street the Musee Jeanne d'Arc, which contains a number of relics and paintings relating to the heroine and her times. But for all the worship of Joan of Arc in Orleans, she was not a native of the place and actually spent only a short time within the walls of the old city. The Maid was born in the little village of Domremy in Lorraine, some two hundred miles eastward, where her humble birthplace may still be seen and which we hope to visit when we make our next incursion into France. III ORLEANS TO THE GERMAN BORDER We have no more delightful run in France than our easy jaunt from Orleans to Nevers. We still follow the Loire Valley, though the road only occasionally brings us in sight of the somewhat diminished river. The distance is but ninety-six miles over the most perfect of roads and we proceed leisurely, often pausing to admire the landscapes--beautiful beyond any ability of mine to adequately describe. The roadside resembles a well-kept lawn; it is bordered by endless rows of majestic trees and on either hand are fertile fields which show every evidence of the careful work of the farmer. The silken sheen of bearded wheat and rye is dotted with crimson poppies and starred with pale-blue cornflowers. At times the poppies have gained the mastery and burn like a spot of flame amidst the emerald-green of the fields. Patches of dark-red clover lend another color variation, and here and there are dashes of bright yellow or gleaming white of buttercups and daisies. With such surroundings and on such a clear, exhilarating day our preconceived ideals of the beauty of Summer France suffer no disenchantment. Cosne is an old river town now rather dominated by manufactories and here Pope Pius VII. sojourned when he came to France upon the neighborly invitation of Napoleon I. He stopped at the Hotel du Cerf, but we try the Moderne for luncheon, which proves unusually good. About three o'clock we reach Nevers and a sudden thunder shower determines us to stop for the night at the Hotel de France. Outside it is quite unpretending, though queer ornamental panels between the windows and a roof of moss-green tiles redeem it somewhat from the commonplace. We have no reason to repent our decision, for the rambling old inn is scrupulously clean and the service has the personal touch that indicates the watchful eye of a managing proprietor. We are somewhat surprised to see a white-clad chef very much in evidence about the hotel and even taking a lively interest in guests who have suffered a break-down and are wrestling with their car in the stable-yard garage. We learn that this chef is the proprietor, and his wife, an English woman, is the manageress. The combination is an effective one; English-speaking guests are made very much at home and the excellence of the meals is sufficient proof of the competence of the proprietor-chef. [Illustration: PORT DU CROUX--A MEDIEVAL WATCHTOWER AT NEVERS] Nevers has a cathedral dating in part from the twelfth century, though the elaborate tower with its host of sculptured prophets, apostles and saints was built some three hundred years later. The most notable relic of mediaevalism in the town is the queer old Port du Croux, a fourteenth-century watch-tower which one time formed part of the fortifications. It is a noble example of mediaeval defense--a tall gateway tower with long lancet openings and two pointed turrets flanking the steep, tile-covered roof. The ducal palace and the Hotel de Ville are also interesting old-time structures, though neither is of great historic importance. The history of Nevers is in sharp contrast with the checkered career of its neighbor, Orleans, being quite uneventful and prosaic. It is a quiet place to-day, its chief industry being the potteries, which have been in existence some centuries. The next day, thirty miles on the road to Autun, we experience our first break-down in eighteen thousand miles of motoring in Europe--that is, a break-down that means we must abandon the car for the time. Near the little village of Tamnay-Chatillon an axle-rod breaks and a new one must be made before we can proceed. Our objective point, Dijon, is the nearest place where we will be likely to find facilities for repair and we resolve to go thither by train. We have been so delayed that train-time is past and we shall have to pass the night at the village inn. It is extremely annoying at the time, though in retrospect we are glad of our experience with at least one very small country road-house in France. The inn people spare no effort to make us as comfortable as possible and we have had many worse meals in good-sized cities than is served to us this evening. Our beds, though apparently clean, are not very restful, but we are too weary to be excessively critical. The next morning, leaving the crippled car in the stable-yard, we take the train for Dijon. The Captain carries the broken axle-rod as a pattern and soon after our arrival a workman is shaping a new one from a steel bar. And in this connection I might remark that we found the average French mechanic quick and intelligent, with almost an intuitive understanding of a piece of machinery. Our job proves slower than we anticipated; the work can be done by only one man at a time and it is not completed before midnight of the following day. In the meanwhile we have established ourselves at the Grand Hotel de la Cloche, a pretentious--and, as it proves, a very expensive stopping-place. We have large, well-furnished rooms which afford an outlook upon a small park fronting the hotel. Our enforced leisure allows us considerably more time to look about Dijon than we have been giving to such towns and we endeavor to make the most of it. The town is one of the military centers of France, being defended by no fewer than eight detached forts, and we see numerous companies of soldiers on the streets. The museum, we are assured, is the greatest "object of interest" in the city and, indeed, it comes up to the claims made for it. The municipal art gallery contains possibly the best provincial collection of paintings in France--an endless array of pictures of priceless value, representing the greatest names of French art. There is also a splendid showing of sculpture, occupying five separate rooms. The marble tombs of Philip the Brave and John the Fearless, old-time dukes of Burgundy, are wonderful creations. They were originally in the Church of Chartreuse, destroyed in 1793, when the tombs were removed to the cathedral in a somewhat damaged condition. They were later placed in the museum and restored as nearly as possible to their original state. Both have a multitude of marble statuettes, every one a distinct artistic study--some representing mourners for the deceased--and each little face has some peculiar and characteristic expression of grief. The strong contrast of white and black marbles is relieved by judicious gilding and, altogether, we count these the most elaborate and artistic mediaeval tombs we have seen, if we except the Percy monument at Beverly in England. The museum also has an important archaeological collection, including a number of historical relics found in the vicinity, for the city dates back to Roman times. The showing of coins, gems, vases, ivory, cabinets and jewelry would do credit to any metropolitan museum. And all this in a town of but seventy-five thousand people--which shows how far the French municipalities have advanced in such matters. Dijon is no exception in this regard, though other cities of the class may not quite equal this collection, which I have described in merest outline. Dijon has several churches of the first order, though none of them has any notable distinguishing feature. The Cathedral of St. Benigne is the oldest, dating in its present form from about 1280, though there are portions which go back still farther. It was originally built as an abbey church, but the remainder of the abbatial buildings have disappeared. St. Michael's Church is some four hundred years later than the cathedral, and has, according to the guide-books, a Renaissance facade, though it seems to us to be better described as a Moorish adaptation of the Gothic style. At any rate, it is an inartistic and unattractive structure and illustrates the poor results often attained in too great an effort after the unusual. Notre Dame is about the same date as the cathedral, though it has been so extensively restored as to have quite a new appearance. Its most remarkable feature is its queer statuettes--nearly a hundred little figures contorted into endless expressions and attitudes--which serve as gargoyles. The churches of Dijon are not particularly noteworthy for their interiors and none has especially good windows. Our extended sojourn in the city enables us to visit a number of shops, for which we have heretofore found little time. These are well-stocked and attractive and quite in keeping with a city of the size of Dijon. According to Herr Baedeker, the town is famous "for wine and corn, and its mustard and gingerbread enjoy a wide reputation." The Captain and myself take an early train for Tamnay-Chatillon and have the satisfaction of finding the new axle-rod a perfect fit. We enjoy the open car and the fine road more than ever after our enforced experience with the railway train. The country between Tamnay and Dijon is rolling and the road often winds up or down a great hill for two or three miles at a stretch, always with even and well-engineered gradients that insure an easy climb or a long exhilarating coast. There are many glorious panoramas from the hill-crests--wide reaches of hill and valley, with groves and vineyards and red-tiled villages nestling in wooded vales or lying on the sunny slopes. Most of the towns remain unknown to us by name, but the Captain points out Chateau Chinon clinging to a rather steep hillside and overshadowed by the vast ruined castle which once defended it. A portion of the old wall with three watch-towers still stands--the whole effect being very grim and ancient. Near the town of Pommard the hills are literally "vine-clad,"--vineyards everywhere running up to the very edge of the town. The Hotel St. Louis et de la Poste at Autun does not present a very attractive exterior, but it proves a pleasant surprise and we are hungry enough to do justice to an excellent luncheon, having breakfasted in Dijon at five o'clock. Autun has an unusual cathedral--"a curious building of the transition period"--some parts of which go back as far as the tenth century. The beautiful Gothic spire--the first object to greet our eyes when approaching the town--was built about 1470. Portions of the old fortifications still remain. St. Andrew's Gate, partly a restoration, is an imposing portal pierced by four archways and forms one of the main entrances. There is also the usual museum and Hotel de Ville to be found in all enterprising provincial towns of France. Beyond Autun the character of the country changes again; we come into a less prosperous section, intersected by stone fences which cut the rocky hillsides into small irregular fields. We pass an occasional bare-looking village and one or two ruined chateaus and we remark on the scarcity of ruins in France, so far as we have seen it, as compared with England. A more fertile and thriving country surrounds Dijon, which we reach in the late afternoon. We have had quite enough of Dijon, but we shall remain until morning; an early start should carry us well toward the German frontier before night. We find some terribly rough roads to Gray and Vesoul--macadam which has begun to disintegrate. The country grows quite hilly and while, in the words of the old hymn, "every prospect pleases," we are indeed tempted to add that "only man is vile." For the filthiness of some of the villages and people can only be designated as unspeakable; if I should describe in plain language the conditions we behold, my book might be excluded from the mails! The houses of these miserable little hamlets stretch in single file along both sides of the broad highway. In one end of the house lives the family and in the other the domestic animals--pigs, cows and donkeys. Along the road on each side the muck-piles are almost continuous and reach to the windows of the cottages. Recent rains have flooded the streets with seepage, which covers the road to a depth of two or three inches, and the odors may be imagined--if one feels adequate to such a task. The muck is drained into pools and cisterns from which huge wooden or iron pumps tower above the street. By means of these the malodorous liquid is elevated into wagon-tanks to be hauled away to the fields. And this work is usually done by the women! In fact, women are accorded equal privileges with a vengeance in this part of rural France--they outnumber the men in the fields and no occupation appears too heavy or degraded for them to engage in. We see many of the older ones herding domestic animals--or even geese and ducks--by the roadside. Sometimes it is only a single animal--a cow, donkey, goat or pig--that engages the old crone, who is usually knitting as well. The pigs, no doubt because of their headstrong proclivities, are usually confined by a cord held by their keepers, and with one of these we have an amusing adventure. The pig becomes unruly, heading straight for our car, and only a vigorous application of the brakes prevents disaster to the obstreperous brute. But the guardian of his hogship--who has been hauled around pretty roughly while hanging to the cord--is in a towering rage and screams no end of scathing language at us. "You, too, are pigs," is one of her compliments which the Captain translates, and he says it is just as well to let some of her remarks stand in the original! As we approach Remiremont, where we propose to stop for the night, we enter the great range of hills which form the boundary between France and Germany and which afford many fine vistas. Endless pine forests clothe the hillsides and deep narrow valleys slope away from the road which winds upward along the edges of the hills. Remiremont is a pleasant old frontier town lying along the Moselle River at the base of a fortified hill two thousand feet in height. It is cleaner than the average French town of ten thousand and clear streams of mountain water run alongside many of its streets. The Hotel du Cheval de Bronze seems a solid, comfortable old inn and we turn into the courtyard for our nightly stop. The courtyard immediately adjoins the hotel apartments on the rear and is not entirely free from objectionable odors--our only complaint against the Cheval de Bronze. Our rooms front on the street, the noise being decidedly preferable to the assortment of smells in the rear. The town has nothing to detain one, and is rather unattractive, despite its pleasing appearance from a distance. On the main street near our hotel are the arcades, which have a considerable resemblance to the famous rows of Chester. We are awakened early in the morning by the tramp of a large company of soldiers along the street, for Remiremont, being so near the frontier, is heavily garrisoned. These French soldiers we have seen everywhere, in the towns and on the roads, enough of them to remind us that the country is really a vast military camp. They are rather undersized, as a rule, and their attire is often slouchy and worse for wear. Their bearing seems to us anything but soldierly as they shuffle along the streets. Perhaps we remember this the more because of the contrast we see in Germany a little later. A good authority, however, tells us that the French army is in a fine state of preparedness and would give a good account of itself if called into action. We are early away from Remiremont on a fine road winding among the pine-clad hills. Some sixteen miles out of the town we find a splendid hotel at Gerardmer on a beautiful little lake of the same name in the Vosges Forest, where we should no doubt have had quite different service from the Cheval de Bronze. We have no regrets, however, since Remiremont is worth seeing as a typical small frontier town. At Gerardmer we begin the long climb over the mountain pass which crosses the German border; there are several miles of the ascent and in some places the grades are steep enough to seriously heat the motor. We stop many times on the way and there is a clear little stream by the roadside from which we replenish the water in the heated engine. The air grows cooler and more bracing as we ascend and though it is a fine June day, we see banks of snow along the road. On either side are great pine trees, through which we catch occasional glimpses of wooded hills and verdant valleys lying far beneath us. Despite the cool air, flowers bloom along the road and the ascent, though rather strenuous, is a delightful one. At the summit we come to the customs offices of the two countries, a few yards apart. Here we bid farewell to France and slip across the border into the Fatherland, as its natives so love to call it. A wonderful old official, who seems to embody all the dignity and power of the empire he serves, comes out of the customs house. His flowing gray beard is a full yard long and the stem of his mighty porcelain pipe is still longer. He is clad in a faultless uniform and wears a military cap bespangled with appropriate emblems--altogether, a marvel of that official glory in which the Germans so delight. His functions, however, do not correspond with his personal splendor, for he only officially countersigns our Royal Automobile Club passport, delivers us a pair of number plates and, lastly, collects a fee of some fifteen marks. He gives us a certificate showing that we are now entitled to travel the highways of the empire for two weeks, and should we remain longer we shall have to pay an additional fee on leaving the country. The Captain waves an approved military adieu, to which the official solemnly responds and we set out in search of adventure in the land of the Kaiser. IV COLMAR TO OBERAMMERGAU Had we crossed a sea instead of an imaginary dividing line we could hardly have found a more abrupt change in the characteristics of people and country than we discover when we descend into the broad green valley of the Rhine. We have a series of fine views as we glide down the easy grades and around the sweeping curves of the splendid road that leads from the crest to the wide plain along the river--glimpses of towns and villages lying far beneath, beyond long stretches of wooded hills. On our way we meet peasants driving teams of huge horses hitched to heavy logging wagons. The horses go into a panic at the sight of the car and the drivers seem even more panicky than the brutes; it is quite apparent that the motor is not so common in Germany as in England and France. The province of Alsace, by which we enter Germany, was held by France from the time of Napoleon until 1871, but it never entirely lost its German peculiarities during the French occupation. Its villages and farmhouses are distinctly Teutonic, though the larger towns show more traces of French influence. Colmar, some twenty miles from the border, is the first city--a place of about forty thousand people and interesting to Americans as the birthplace of the sculptor, Bartholdi, who designed the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. It is a substantially built town with an enormous Gothic church and its museum has a famous collection of pictures by early German masters. A few miles from Colmar we come to the Rhine, so famed in German song and story, a green, rushing flood that seems momentarily to threaten the destruction of the pontoon bridge which bears us across. Beyond the river the level but poorly surfaced road leads to Freiburg, a handsome city of about seventy-five thousand people. It is a noted manufacturing town and has an ancient university with about two thousand students. Its cathedral is one of the finest Gothic structures in Germany, the great tower, three hundred and eighty feet in height, being the earliest and most perfect of its kind. The windows of fourteenth-century glass are particularly fine and there are many remarkable paintings of a little later date. The city has other important churches and many beautiful public buildings and monuments. Indeed, Freiburg is a good example of the neatness, cleanliness and civic pride that prevails in most of the larger German cities. It has many excellent hotels and we have a well-served luncheon at the Victoria. We should stop for the day at Freiburg were it not for our unexpected delay at Dijon; we must hasten if we are to reach Oberammergau in time for our reservations. In the three remaining daylight hours we make a swift run to Tuttlingen, some sixty miles eastward, passing several small villages and two good-sized towns, Neustadt and Donaueschingen, on the way. The latter is near the head waters of the Danube, and from here we follow the river to Tuttlingen. We pass through a beautifully wooded country and several inns along the way indicate that this section is a frequented pleasure resort. There are many charming panoramas from the road, which in places swings around the hillsides some distance above the river. Had we known the fate in store for us at Tuttlingen, we should surely have stopped at one of the hotels which we hastily passed in our dash for that town. But we reach it just at dusk--a place of about fifteen thousand people--and turn in rather dubiously at the unattractive Post Hotel. If the Post is a fair sample of the country inns of Germany, the tourist should keep clear of country inns when possible. On entering we meet an assortment of odors not especially conducive to good appetite for the evening meal, and this proves of the kind that requires a good appetite. We are hungry, but not hungry enough to eat the Post's fare with anything like relish and we are haunted by considerable misgivings about the little we do consume. The Post, however, does not lack patronage, though it seems to come mainly from German commercial men who are seeking trade in the thriving town. We are away early in the morning, following a rough, neglected road some dozen miles to Ludwigshaven at the head of Lake Constance, or the Boden See, as the Germans style it. A new highway leading down to the lake shore is not yet open, though nearly ready, and we descend over a temporary road which winds among tree stumps and drops down twenty per cent grades for a couple of miles. We are thankful that we have only the descent to make; I doubt whether our forty-horse engine would ever have pulled us up the "bank," as a Yorkshire man would describe it. But having reached the level of the lake, we find a splendid road closely following the shore for forty miles and affording views of some of the finest and most famous scenery in Europe. In all our journeyings we have had few more glorious runs. The clear balmy June day floods everything with light and color. The lake lies still and blue as the heavens above, and beyond its shining expanse rise the snow-capped forms of the Swiss Alps, their rugged ranks standing sharply against the silvery horizon. At their feet stretches the green line of the shore and above it the dense shadows of the pines that cover the slopes to the snow line. It is a scene of inspiring beauty that one sees to best advantage from the open road. Near at hand green fields stretch to the hills, no great distance away, and the belated fruit-tree blossoms load the air with perfume. Hay-making is in progress in the little fields--women swing the scythes or handle the rakes and pitchforks while staid old cows draw the heavy, awkward carts. There are several pleasant little towns along the shore, rather neater and cleaner than the average German village, though even these are not free from occasional touches of filthiness. Near the center of the lake is Friedrichshafen, a popular resort with numerous hotels. There is a beautiful drive along the lake, bordered with shrubs and trees, and fronting on this is the comfortable-looking Deutsches Haus, surrounded by gardens which extend to the shore. We remember the Deutsches Haus particularly, since on its glass-enclosed veranda we are served with an excellent luncheon. As we resume our journey, feeling at peace with the world, and open up a little on the smooth lakeside road, the Captain exclaims: "If I had all the money I could possibly want, do you know what I'd do? I'd just buy a motor, don't you know, and do nothing on earth but tour about Europe!" And we all agree that under such conditions and on such a day his proposed vocation seems an ideal one. Friedrichshafen, I should have said, was the home of Count Zeppelin of airship fame, and as we passed through the town his immense craft was being made ready for an experimental trip. It was then attracting much attention in Germany and was the precourser of the only line of commercial airships now in existence. Lindau, a small resort built on an island about three hundred yards from the shore, marks the point of our departure from Lake Constance. We enter the town over a narrow causeway which connects it with the main road, but find little to detain us. We climb the steep winding road leading out of the valley and for the remainder of the day our course wends among the foothills of the Bavarian Alps. It proves a delightful run; we witness constantly changing displays of color and glorious effects of light and shadow. Thunder storms are raging in the mountains and at intervals they sweep down and envelop our road in a dash of summer rain. Above us tower the majestic Alps; in places the dazzling whiteness of the snow still lies against the barren rocks or amidst the dense green of the pines, while above the summits roll blue-gray cumulus clouds glowing with vivid lightning or brilliant with occasional bursts of sunshine. Near at hand stretch green meadows of the foothills, variegated with great splashes of blue or yellow flowers as though some giant painter had swept his brush across the landscape. The effect is shown with striking fidelity in the picture by the late John MacWhirter R. A. which I have reproduced, though it is quite impossible on so small a scale to give an adequate idea of the original canvas--much less of the enchanting scene itself. Among the foothills and often well up the mountainsides are the characteristic chalets of Tyrol and an occasional ruined castle crowns some seemingly inaccessible rock. We pass several quaint little towns and many isolated houses, all very different from any we have seen elsewhere. The houses are mostly of plaster and often ornamented with queer designs and pictures in brilliant colors. The people are picturesque, too; the women and girls dress in the peculiar costume of the country; the men wear knitted jackets and knee pants with silver buckles and their peaked hats are often decorated with a feather or two. Our road averages fair, though a few short stretches are desperately bad--this unevenness we have noted in German roads generally. In one place where the rain has been especially heavy we plunge through a veritable quagmire, and we find spots so rough and stony as to make very uncomfortable going. We finally strike the fine highway which follows the River Lech and brings us into the mountain town of Fussen. It is a snug little place of some five thousand people, nestling in a narrow valley through which rushes a swift, emerald-green river. The Bayerischer-Hof proves a pleasant surprise; one of the cleanest, brightest and best-conducted inns we have found anywhere. Our large, well-lighted rooms afford a magnificent view of the snow-capped mountains, which seem only a little distance away. The landlord, a fine-looking, full-bearded native who speaks English fluently, gives the touch of personal attention that one so much appreciates in the often monotonous round of hotel life. To the rear of the hotel is a beer-garden where brilliant lights and good music in the evening attract the guests and townspeople in considerable numbers. Several other American motor parties stop at the hotel and we especially notice one French car because it carries nine people--and it is not a large car, either! The Bayerischer-Hof is first-class in every particular, and we find when we come to depart that the charges are first-class, too. The Captain is exasperated when we are asked sixty cents per gallon for "benzin" and says we will chance doing better on the way--a decision which, as it happens, causes us no little grief and some expense. Fussen has an impressive Gothic castle--a vast, turreted, towered, battlemented affair with gray walls and red-tiled roof which looms over the town from the slope above the river. I fear, though, that the castle is a good deal of a sham, for there are spots where the stucco has fallen from the walls, revealing wooden lath beneath, and while in Fussen they call it a "thirteenth-century" building, Baedeker gives its date as two or three hundred years later. It was never intended as a defensive structure, being originally built as the residence of the Bishop of Augsburg. It is now occupied by the district court and the interior is hardly worth a visit. [Illustration: CASTLE AT FUSSEN] Oberammergau lies over the mountain to the east of Fussen, scarcely ten miles away in a direct line, but to reach it we are compelled to go by the way of Schongau, about four times as far. We pursue a narrow, sinuous mountain road, very muddy in places. We have been warned of one exceptionally bad hill--a twenty-five per cent grade, according to the Royal Automobile Club itinerary--but we give the matter little thought. It proves a straight incline of half a mile and about midway the sharp ascent our motor gasps and comes to a sudden stop. We soon ascertain that the angle is too great for the gasoline to flow from the nearly empty tank, and we regret the Captain's economy at Fussen. A number of peasants gather about us to stare at our predicament, but they show nothing of the amusement that an American crowd would find in such a situation. A woman engages the Captain in conversation and informs us that she is the owner of a good team of horses, which will be the best solution of our difficulties. "Wie viel?" Seventy-five marks, or about eighteen dollars, looks right to her and she sticks to her price, too. Her only response to the Captain's indignant protests is that she keeps a road-house at the top of the hill, where he can find her if he decides we need her services. And she departs in the lordly manner of one who has delivered an ultimatum from which there is no appeal. A peasant tells us that the woman makes a good income fleecing stranded motorists and that the German automobile clubs have published warnings against her. He says that a farmer near by will help us out for the modest sum of ten marks and offers to bring him to the scene; he also consoles us by telling us that five cars besides our own have stalled on the hill during the day. The farmer arrives before long with a spanking big team, which gives us the needed lift, and the grade soon permits the motor to get in its work. We reach Oberammergau about two o'clock, only to find another instance where the Captain's economical tendency has worked to our disadvantage. He had declined to pay the price asked by Cook's agency in London for reservation of rooms and seats for the Passion Play and had arranged for these with a German firm, Shenker & Co. at Freiburg. On inquiring at the office of the concern in the village we find no record of our reservations and no tickets to be had. "Shenker is surely a 'rotter,'" says the Captain, immensely disgusted, and it requires no small effort to find quarters, but we at last secure tiny rooms in a peasant's cottage in the outskirts of the village. Tickets we finally obtain by an earnest appeal at Cook's offices, though at considerable premium. Our quarters are almost primitive in their plainness, but they are tolerably clean; the meals, served in a large dining-hall not far away, are only fair. The people of Oberammergau, our landlord says, face a difficult problem in caring for the Passion Play crowds. These come but once in ten years and during the intervening time visitors to the town are comparatively few. Yet the villagers must care for the great throngs of play years, though many apartments and lodging-houses must stand empty during the interval and the only wonder is that charges are so moderate. The regular population of Oberammergau is less than two thousand, though during the play it presents the appearance of a much larger place. The houses are nearly all of the prevailing Bavarian style, with wide, overhanging eaves and white walls often decorated with brightly colored frescoes. Through the center of the village rushes the Ammer, a clear, swift mountain stream which sometimes works havoc when flooded. The church is modern, but its Moorish tower and rococo decorations do not impress us as especially harmonious and there is little artistic or pleasing in the angular lines of the new theatre. The shops keep open on every day of the week, including Sunday, until nearly midnight. These are filled with carvings, pottery, postcards and endless trinkets for the souvenir-seeking tourist and perhaps yield more profit to the town than the play itself. There are several good-sized inns, but one has no chance of lodging in one of them unless quarters have been engaged months in advance--not very practicable when coming by motor. [Illustration: OBERAMMERGAU] One will best appreciate the magnificent situation of the village from a vantage-point on one of the mountains which encompass the wide green valley on every side. On the loftiest crag of all gleams a tall white cross--surely a fit emblem to first greet the stranger who comes to Oberammergau. In the center of the vale is the village, the clean white-walled houses grouped irregularly about the huge church, which forms the social center of the place. The dense green of the trees, the brighter green of the window-shutters, the red and gray-tile roofs and the swift river cleaving its way through the town, afford a pleasing variety of color to complete the picture. The surrounding green pastures with the herds of cattle are the property of the villagers--nearly every family of this thrifty community is a landholder. The scene is a quiet, peaceful one, such as suits the character of the people who inhabit this lovely vale. And these same villagers, simple and unpretentious as they are, will hardly fail to favorably impress the stranger. The Tyrolese costume is everywhere in evidence and there is a large predominance of full-bearded men, for the play-actors are not allowed to resort to wigs and false whiskers. They exhibit the peculiarities of the Swiss rather than the Germans and their manners and customs are simple and democratic in the extreme. While the head of the community is nominally the burgomaster, the real government is vested in the householders. The freedom from envy and strife is indeed remarkable; quarrels are unknown and very few of the inhabitants are so selfish as to seek for honor or wealth. The greatest distinction that can come to any of them is an important part in the play; yet there is never any contention or bitterness over the allotments. It would be hard to find elsewhere a community more seriously happy, more healthful or morally better than Oberammergau. I shall not write at length of the world-famous play. It has been so well and widely described that I could add but little new. It is interesting as the sole survival of a vast number of mediaeval miracle plays, though it has cast off the coarser features and progressed into a really artistic production. I must first of all plead my own ignorance of the true spirit and marvelous beauty of the play ere I saw it. I thought it the crude production of a community of ignorant peasants who were shrewd enough to turn their religion into a money-making scheme and I freely declared that I would scarcely cross the street to witness it. But when the great chorus of three hundred singers appeared in the prelude that glorious Sunday morning, I began to realize how mistaken I had been. And as the play progressed I was more and more impressed with its solemn sincerity, its artistic staging and its studied harmony of coloring. Indeed, in the last named particular it brought vividly to mind the rich yet subdued tones of Raphael and Michael Angelo, and the effect of the rare old tapestries one occasionally finds in the museums. The tableaux in many cases closely followed some famous picture--as Leonardo DaVinci's "Last Supper" or Rubens' "Descent from the Cross,"--all perfectly carried out in coloring and spirit. The costumes were rich and carefully studied, giving doubtless a true picture of the times of Christ. The acting was the perfection of naturalness and the crude and ridiculous features of the early miracle plays--and, not so very long ago, of the Passion Play itself--have been gradually dropped until scarce a trace of them remains. The devil no longer serves the purpose of the clown, having altogether disappeared; and even the tableau of Jonah and the whale, though given in the printed programs, was omitted, evidently from a sense of its ridiculousness. I found myself strangely affected by the simple story of the play. One indeed might imagine that he saw a real bit of the ancient world were it not for the great steel arches bending above him and the telephone wires stretching across the blue sky over the stage. But I think the best proof of the real human interest of the play is that it held the undivided attention of five thousand spectators for eight long hours on a spring day whose perfect beauty was a strong lure to the open sky. And it did this not only for one day but for weeks, later in the summer requiring an almost continuous daily performance. And, having seen it once, I have no doubt the greater number of spectators would gladly witness it again, for so great a work of art cannot be grasped from a single performance. Of course Oberammergau has not escaped the critics, but I fancy the majority of them are, like myself before our visit to the town, quite ignorant of the facts as well as the true spirit of the people. The commonest charge is that the play is a money-making scheme on the part of the promoters, but the fact is that the people are poor and remain poor. The actual profits from the play are not large and these are devoted to some public work, as the new theatre, the hospital and the good cause of public roads. The salaries paid the players are merely nominal, in no case exceeding a few hundred marks. The only source of private profit comes from the sale of souvenirs and the entertaining of visitors, but this can not be great, considering that the harvest comes only once in a decade. The play is "commercialized" only to the extent of placing it on a paying basis and if this were not the case there could be no performance. The very fear of this charge kept the villagers up to 1910 from placing their tickets and reservations in the hands of Cook and other tourist agencies, though they were finally persuaded to yield in this as an accommodation to the public. The most effective answer to the assertion that the chief end of the play is money-making may be found in the constant refusal of the villagers to produce it elsewhere than in Oberammergau. Offers of fabulous sums from promoters in England and the United States for the production of the play in the large centers of these countries have been steadily refused, and the actors have pursued their humble avocations in their quiet little town quite content with their meager earnings. Nor have they yielded to the temptation to give the play oftener, though it would be immensely profitable if presented every year or even every alternate year. We leave the little mountain-girdled valley with a new conception of its Passion Play and its unique, happy people. The majestic spectacle we have witnessed during our stay will linger with us so long as life shall last and it can never be otherwise than a pleasant and inspiring memory. V BAVARIA AND THE RHINE Munich is sixty miles north of Oberammergau and the road is better than the average of German highways. For some distance out of the village we pursue a winding course among the mountains, which affords some glorious vistas of wooded vales and snow-capped Alps while we descend to the wide plain surrounding Munich. We pass through several sleepy-looking villages, though they prove sufficiently wide-awake to collect a toll of two or three marks for the privilege of traversing their streets. A well-surfaced highway bordered by trees leads us into the broad streets of Munich, where we repair to the Continental Hotel. We remain here several days and have the opportunity of closely observing the Bavarian capital. We unhesitatingly pronounce it the cleanest, most artistic and most substantial city we have ever seen. A number of drives through the main streets and environs reveal little in the nature of slums; even the poorest quarters of the city are solidly built and clean, and next to its beautiful buildings and artistic monuments the cleanliness of Munich seems to us most noteworthy. Perhaps the ladies should be given credit for this--not the members of the women's clubs, who are often supposed to influence civic affairs for the better, but the old women who do the sweeping and scrubbing of the streets, for we see them in every part of the city. This spick-and-span cleanliness of the larger German cities forms a sharp contrast to the filth and squalor of the villages, some of which are even worse than anything we saw in France--but of this more anon. Munich has a population of more than a half million, and having been built within the last century, is essentially modern. It has many notable public buildings, mainly in the German Gothic style--the Rathhaus, with its queer clock which sets a number of life-size automatons in motion every time it strikes the hour, being the most familiar to tourists. The Royal Palace and the National Theatre are splendid structures and the latter is famous for grand opera, in which the Germans take great delight. Munich ranks as an important art capital, having several galleries and museums, among which the Bavarian National and German Museum are the most notable. There are numerous public gardens and parks, all kept with the trim neatness that characterizes the entire city. And one must not forget the beer-gardens, which play so large a part in German life; the whole population frequents these open-air drinking-places, where beer and other refreshments are served at small tables underneath the trees. The best feature of these is the excellent music which is an invariable accompaniment and Munich is famous for its musicians. The most proficient of these think it no detraction to perform in the beer-gardens, which are attended by the best people of all classes; students, artists, professors, business and military men make up a large proportion of the patrons of these resorts. The gardens are conducted by the big brewers and Munich beer is famous the world over. There is comparatively little manufacturing in the city, though we noted one exceptionally large iron foundry and a great engine works. During our stay we took occasion to have our car overhauled at a public garage and were impressed with the intelligence and efficiency of the German mechanics. They were usually large, fine-looking fellows, always good-natured and accommodating. The wages paid them are quite small as compared with those of American mechanics, being about one-third as much. At four o'clock in the afternoon everything stops for a quarter of an hour while the workmen indulge in a pot of beer and a slice or two of black bread. We saw this in a large foundry, where several hundred men were employed and were told that the custom is universal. The Captain, while admitting that most of the German workmen were very good fellows, often treated them in a supercilious manner that I fear sometimes worked against our interests. In fact, the Captain's dislike of everything German was decidedly pronounced and the sight of a company of soldiers usually put him in an ill humor. "I'll have to take a crack at those fellows some time, myself," he would say, in the firm conviction that war between England and Germany was inevitable. He was not put in a better state of feeling towards our Teutonic hosts when he came to pay the bill at the Continental. Through carelessness unusual on his part, he neglected to have an iron-clad understanding when he engaged accommodations and we had to suffer in consequence. He made a vigorous protest without appreciable effect on the suave clerk, who assured us that the rates of the Continental were quite like the laws of the Medes and the Persians. They were high--yes; but only persons of quality were received. Indeed, a princess and a baroness were among the guests at that moment and he hinted that many applicants were turned away because their appearance did not meet the requirements of the Continental. "We just look them over," said the clerk, "and if we don't like them we tell them we are full." All of which the Captain translated to us, though I should judge from his vehemence in replying to the clerk that he used some language which he did not repeat--perhaps it had no equivalent in English. But it was all to no purpose; we paid the bill and were free to get whatever comfort we could from the reflection that we had been fellow-guests with a princess. "I saw her one day," said the Captain. "She was smoking a cigarette in the parlor and I offered her one of mine, which she declined, though she talked with me very civilly for a few minutes." We start rather late in the day with Ulm and Stuttgart as objective points. The weather is fickle and the numerous villages through which we pass would be disgusting enough in the sunshine, but they fairly reek in the drizzling rain. The streets are inches deep in filth and we drive slowly to avoid plastering the car--though the odors would induce us to hasten if it were possible. Along the highroad stretch the low thatched cottages; each one is half stable and the refuse is often piled above the small windows. We dare not think of our plight if a tire should burst as we drive gingerly along, but we fortunately escape such disaster. Everywhere in these villages we see groups of sturdy children--"race suicide" does not trouble Germany, nor does the frightfully insanitary conditions of their homes seem to have affected them adversely. On the contrary, they are fat, healthy-looking rascals who--the Captain declares--scream insulting epithets at us. On all sides, despite the rather inclement weather, we see women in the fields, pulling weeds or using heavy, mattock-shaped hoes. We even see old crones breaking rock for road-work and others engaged in hauling muck from the villages to the fields. Men are more seldom seen at work--what their occupation is we can only surmise. They cannot be caring for the children, all of whom seem to be running the streets. Possibly they are washing the dishes. But, facetiousness aside, it is probable that the millions of young men who are compelled to do army service for three years leave more work for the women at home. The railway traveler in Germany sees little of the conditions I have described in these smaller villages; few of them are on the railroad and the larger towns and tourist centers are usually cleanly. The dominating feature of Ulm is the cathedral, whose vast bulk looms over the gray roofs of the houses crowding closely around it. It is the second largest church in Germany and has one of the finest organs in existence. The great central spire is the loftiest Gothic structure in the world, rising to a height of five hundred and twenty-eight feet, which overtops even Cologne. It has rather a new appearance, as a complete restoration was finished only a few years ago. The cathedral has made Ulm a tourist center and this no doubt accounts for the numerous hotels of the town. We have a very satisfactory luncheon at the Munster, though the charge startles us a little. We cannot help thinking that some of these inns have a special schedule for the man with an automobile--rating him as an American millionaire, who, according to the popular notion in Germany, is endowed with more money than brains. [Illustration: ULM AND THE CATHEDRAL] From Ulm we pursue a poor road along the River Fils to Stuttgart, making slow progress through the numerous villages. The streets are thronged with children who delight in worrying our driver by standing in the road until we are nearly upon them. The Captain often addresses vigorous language to the provoking urchins, only to be answered by an epithet or a grimace. Stuttgart is a clean, well-built city with large commercial enterprises. We see several American flags floating from buildings, for many Stuttgart concerns have branches in the States. It is a famous publishing center and its interest in books is evidenced by its splendid library, which contains more than a half million volumes. Among these is a remarkable collection of bibles, representing eight thousand editions in over one hundred languages. There are the usual museums and galleries to be found in a German city of a quarter of a million people and many fine monuments and memorials grace the streets and parks. The population is largely Protestant, which probably accounts for the absence of a church of the first magnitude. We stop at the old-fashioned Marquardt Hotel, which proves very good and moderate in rates. The next day we cover one hundred and sixty miles of indifferent road to Frankfort, going by the way of Karlsruhe, Heidelberg and Darmstadt. We come across a few stretches of modern macadam, but these aggregate an insignificant proportion of the distance. The villages exhibit the same unattractive characteristics of those we passed yesterday. Many have ancient cobblestone pavements full of chuck-holes; in others the streets are muddy and filthy beyond description. It is Sunday and the people are in their best attire; work is suspended everywhere--quite the opposite of what we saw in France. The country along our route is level and devoid of interest. From Karlsruhe we follow the course of the Rhine, though at some distance from the river itself. We pass through several forests which the government carefully conserves--in favorable contrast with our reckless and wasteful destruction of trees in America. There is much productive land along our way and the fields of wheat and rye are as fine as we have ever seen. But for all this the country lacks the trim, parklike beauty of England and the sleek prosperity and bright color of France. Heidelberg, thirty miles north of Karlsruhe, is a town of nearly fifty thousand people. The university, the oldest and most famous school in the empire, is not so large as many in America, having but sixteen hundred students in all departments. It has, however, an imposing array of buildings, some of these dating from the fourteenth century, when the school was founded. The town is picturesquely situated on the Neckar, which is crossed by a high bridge borne on massive arches. There is a fine view down the river from this bridge and one which we pause to contemplate. From the bridge we also get a good view of the town and the ancient castle which dominates the place from a lofty hill. Ruined castles, we have found, are as rare in Germany, outside the Rhine region, as they are common in England. We reach Frankfort at dusk, more weary than we have been in many a day. The roads have been as trying as any we have traversed in Europe for a like distance, and these, with the cobblestone pavements, have been responsible for an unusual amount of tire trouble, which has not tended to alleviate our weariness or improve our tempers. The Carlton Hotel looks good and proves quite as good as it looks. It is the newest hotel in the city, having been opened within a year by the well-known Ritz-Carlton Corporation. In construction, equipment and service it is up to the highest Continental standard--with prices to correspond. One would require several days to visit the points of interest in Frankfort, but our plans do not admit of much leisurely sightseeing. It is one of the oldest of German cities, its records running back to the time of Charlemagne in 793. We shall have to content ourselves with a drive about the principal streets and an outside view of the most important buildings. Chief among these is the magnificent opera house, the railway station--said to be the finest on the Continent--the library, the Stadel Museum, the "Schauspielhaus," or new theatre, and the municipal buildings. The Cathedral of St. Bartholemew is the oldest church, dating from 1235, but architecturally it does not rank with Cologne or Ulm. The interior has a number of important paintings and frescoes. St. Peter's, the principal Protestant church, is of the modern Renaissance style with an ornate tower two hundred and fifty feet in height. There is one shrine in Frankfort that probably appeals to a greater number of tourists than any of the monumental buildings we have named--the plain old house where the poet Goethe was born in 1749 and where he lived during his earlier years. Goethe occupies a place in German literature analogous only to that of Shakespeare in our own and we may well believe that this house is as much venerated in the Fatherland as the humble structure in Stratford-on-Avon is revered in England. It has been purchased by a patriotic society and restored as nearly as possible to its original condition and now contains a collection of relics connected with the poet--books, original manuscripts, portraits and personal belongings. The custodian shows us about with the officiousness and pride of his race and relates many anecdotes of the great writer, which are duly translated by the Captain. While it is hard for us to become enthusiastic over a German writer about whom we know but little, it is easy to see that the patriotic native might find as much sentiment in the Goethe house as we did in Abbotsford or Alloway. [Illustration: GOETHE'S HOUSE--FRANKFORT] It is only a short run from Frankfort to Mayence, where we begin the famous Rhine Valley trip. We pause for luncheon at the excellent Hotel d'Angleterre, which overlooks the broad river. The city, declares Herr Baedeker, is one of the most interesting of Rheinish towns and certainly one of the oldest, for it has a continuous history from 368, at which time Christianity was already flourishing. It figured extensively in the endless church and civil wars that raged during the middle ages, and was captured by the French in 1689 and 1792. After the latter fall it was ceded to France, which, however, retained it but a few years. Formerly it was one of the most strongly fortified towns in the kingdom, but its walls and forts have been destroyed, though it still is the seat of a garrison of seventy-five hundred soldiers. It has a cathedral of first importance, founded as early as 400, though few traces of the original building can be found. A notable feature is a pair of bronze doors executed in 988, illustrating historic events of that time. But the greatest distinction of Mayence is that Johann Gutenberg, the father of modern printing, was born here near the end of the fourteenth century. At least this is the general opinion of the savants, though there be those who dispute it. However, there is no doubt that he died in the city about 1468; neither is it disputed that he established his first printing shop in Mayence, and did much important work in the town. The famous Gutenberg Bible, a copy of which sold recently for $50,000, was executed here about 1450. A bronze statue of the famous printer by Thorwaldsen stands in front of the cathedral. [Illustration: BINGEN ON THE RHINE] The fifty or sixty miles between Mayence and Coblenz comprise the most picturesque section of the Rhine, so famous in song and legend, and our road closely follows the river for the whole distance. The really impressive scenery begins at Bingen, ten miles west of Mayence, where we enter the Rhine Gorge. On either side of the river rise the clifflike hills--literally vine-covered, for the steep slopes have been terraced and planted with vineyards to the very tops. Our road keeps to the north of the river and is often overhung by rocky walls, while far above we catch glimpses of ivy-clad ruins surmounting the beetling crags. The highway is an excellent one, much above the German average. In places it is bordered by fruit-trees--a common practice in Germany--and we pass men who are picking the luscious cherries. So strong is law and order in the Fatherland, we are told, that these public fruit-trees are never molested and the proceeds are used for road improvement. The day is showery, which to some extent obscures the scenery, though the changeful moods of light and color are not without charm. The great hills with their castles and vineyards are alternately cloud-swept and flooded with sunlight--or, more rarely, hidden by a dashing summer shower. Bingen has gained a wide fame from the old ballad whose melancholy lilt comes quickly to one's mind--though we do not find the simple country village we had imagined. It has about ten thousand people and lies in a little valley on both sides of the Nahe, a small river which joins the Rhine at this point. It is an ancient place, its history running back to Roman times. Slight remains of a Roman fortress still exist, though the site is now occupied by Klopp Castle, which was restored from complete ruin a half century ago. This castle is open to visitors and from its tower one may look down on the town with its gray roofs and huge churches. From Bingen to Coblenz, a distance of about forty miles, the gorge of the Rhine is continuous and we are never out of sight of the vine-covered hills and frequent ruins. Nearly all the ruined castles of Germany center here and we see fit matches for Caerphilly, Richmond or Kenilworth in Britain. In this hurried chronicle I cannot even mention all of these picturesque and often imposing ruins, though a few may be chosen as typical. [Illustration: CASTLE RHEINSTEIN] A short distance from Bingen is Rheinstein, originally built about 1270 and recently restored by Prince Henry as one of his summer residences, though he has visited it, the custodian tells us, but once in two years. A wearisome climb is necessary to reach the castle, which is some two hundred and fifty feet above the road where we leave our car. The mediaeval architecture and furnishings are carried out as closely as possible in the restoration, giving a good idea of the life and state of the old-time barons. There is also an important collection of armor and antiquities relating to German history. In this same vicinity is Ehrenfels, which has stood in ruin nearly three hundred years. Its towers still stand, proud and threatening, though the residential portions are much shattered. Opposite this ruin, on a small island in the river, is the curious "Mouse Tower," where, legend asserts, a cruel archbishop was once besieged and finally devoured by an army of mice and rats, a judgment for causing a number of poor people to be burned in order to get rid of them during a famine. But as the bishop lived about 915 and the tower was built some three hundred years later, his connection with it is certainly mythical and let us hope the rest of the story has no better foundation. The old name, Mausturm (arsenal), no doubt suggested the fiction to some early chronicler. The castles of Sonneck and Falkenburg, dating from the eleventh century, surmount the heights a little farther on our way. These were strongholds of robber-barons who in the middle ages preyed upon the river-borne traffic--their exploits forming the burden of many a ballad and tale. These gentry came to their just deserts about 1300 at the hands of Prince Rudolph, who consigned them to the gallows and destroyed their castles. Sonneck is still in ruins, but Falkenburg has been restored and is now private property. Almost every foot of the Rhine Gorge boasts of some supernatural or heroic tale--as myth-makers the Germans were not behind their contemporaries. We pass the Devil's Ladder, where the fiend once aided an ancient knight--no doubt on the score of personal friendship--to scale the perpendicular cliff to gain the hand of a "ladye fair." A little farther are the Lorelei Rocks, where the sirens enticed the sailors to destruction in the rapids just below. Quite as unfortunate were the seven virgins of Schonburg, who for their prudery were transformed into seven rocky pinnacles not far from the Lorelei--and so on ad infinitum. [Illustration: EHRENFELS ON THE RHINE] A volume would not catalog the legends and superstitions of the Rhine Gorge. At least the Captain so declares and adds that he knows a strange story of the Rhine that an old German once told him in Bingen. At our solicitation he repeats it as we glide slowly along the river road and I have thought it worth recasting for my book. There will be no harm done if it is skipped by the reader who has no taste for such things. It is a little after the style of several German legends of ancient gentry, who sold themselves to the Evil One to gain some greatly desired point--though I always thought these stories reflected on the business sagacity of the Devil in making him pay for something he was bound to get in the end without cost. The story, I find, is long enough to require a chapter of itself and it may appropriately follow this. There are endless small towns along the road, but they are quite free from the untoward conditions I have described in the more retired villages off the track of tourist travel. Boppard, St. Goar Oberwesel and Bornhofen are among the number and each has its storied ruin. Near the last-named are the twin castles of The Brothers, with their legend of love and war which the painstaking Baedeker duly chronicles. Above St. Goar towers the vast straggling ruin of Rheinfels, said to be the most extensive in Germany, which has stood in decay since its capture by the French in 1797. It crowns a barren and almost inaccessible rock which rises nearly four hundred feet above the river. Near Boppard is Marxburg, the only old-time castle which has never been in ruin. It has passed through many vicissitudes and at present serves as a museum of ancient weapons and warlike costumes. As we approach Coblenz we come in sight of the battlemented towers of Stolzenfels rising above the dense forests that cover the great hill on which it stands. The castle is three hundred and ten feet above the river, but the plain square tower rises one hundred and ten feet higher, affording a magnificent outlook. The present structure is modern, having been built in 1842 by the crown prince on the site of an old castle destroyed by the French. It now belongs to the emperor, who opens it to visitors when he is not in residence. It is a splendid edifice and gives some idea of the former magnificence of the ruins we have seen to-day. [Illustration: RUINS OF CASTLE RHEINFELS] Coblenz, at the junction of the Moselle and Rhine, appeals to us as a stopping-place and we turn in at the Monopol--just why I do not know. There are certainly much better hotels in Coblenz than this old-fashioned and rather slack place, though it has the redeeming feature of very moderate charges. The Captain is in very ill humor; he has quarreled with an employee at the garage and as nearly as I can learn, tried to drive the car over him. I feared the outraged Teuton might drop a wrench in our gear-box as a revenge for the rating the Captain gave him--though, fortunately, we experience no such misfortune. Coblenz has about fifty thousand people and while it is a very old city--its name indicating Roman origin--it has little to detain the tourist. An hour's drive about the place will suffice and we especially remember the colossal bronze statue of Emperor William I., which stands on the point of land where the two rivers join--a memorial which Baedeker declares "one of the most impressive personal monuments in the world." The equestrian figure is forty-six feet high and dominates the landscape in all directions, being especially imposing when seen from the river. Just opposite Coblenz is the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, about four hundred feet above the river. A finely engineered road leads to the fort, where a large garrison of soldiers is stationed. Visitors are admitted provided they can satisfy the officials that they are not foreign military men who might spy out the defenses. Our route as planned by the Royal Automobile Club was to take us from Coblenz to Treves by way of the Moselle Valley, but our desire to see the cathedral leads us to follow the Rhine road to Cologne. Mr. Maroney of the Club afterwards told me that we made a mistake, since the scenery and storied ruins of Moselle Valley are quite equal to the Rhine Gorge itself. Cologne one can see any time, but the chance to follow the Moselle by motor does not come every day. We are disappointed in the trip to Cologne, since there is little of the picturesqueness and romantic charm that delighted us on the previous day. The castle of Drachenfels, on a mighty hill rising a thousand feet above the river, is the most famous ruin, but we do not undertake the rather difficult ascent. The far-reaching view from the summit was celebrated by Byron in "Childe Harold." Just opposite is the ruin of Rolandseck, with its pathetic legend of unrequited love and constancy. This castle, tradition says, was built by Roland, a crusader, who returned to find that his affianced bride had given him up as dead and entered a convent. He thereupon built this retreat whence he could look down upon the convent that imprisoned the fair Hildegund. When after some years he heard of her death he never spoke again, but pined away until death overtook him also a short time afterwards. Midway we pass through Bonn, the university town, a clean, modern city of sixty thousand people. The university was founded a century ago and has some three thousand students. Beethoven was born in Bonn in 1770, in a house which now contains a museum relating to the great composer. Our road keeps to the right of the river, which is swollen and dirty yellow from recent rains. We pass many villages with miserable streets--the road in no wise compares with the one we followed yesterday through the Gorge. Altogether, the fifty miles between Coblenz and Cologne has little to make the run worth while. We find ourselves in the narrow, crooked streets of Cologne well before noon and are stopped by--it seems to us--a very officious policeman who tells us we may proceed if we will be careful. This seems ridiculous and the Captain cites it as an example of the itching of every German functionary to show his authority, but later we learn that motors are not allowed on certain streets of Cologne between eleven and two o'clock. Our friend the officer was really showing us a favor on account of our ignorance in permitting us to proceed. We direct our course towards the cathedral, which overshadows everything else in Cologne, and the Savoy Hotel, just opposite, seems the logical place to stop. It proves very satisfactory, though it ranks well down in Baedeker's list. Cologne Cathedral is conceded to be the most magnificent church in the world and a lengthy description would be little but useless repetition of well-known data. We find, however, that to really appreciate the vastness and grandeur of the great edifice one must ascend the towers and view the various details at close range. It is not easy to climb five hundred feet of winding stairs, especially if one is inclined to be a little short-winded, but the effort will be rewarded by a better conception of the building and a magnificent view covering a wide scope of country. We are unfortunate today since a gray mist obscures much of the city beneath us and quite shuts out the more distant landscape. The great twin towers, which rise more than five hundred feet into the sky, were completed only a few years ago. In the period between 1842 and 1880 about five million dollars was expended in carrying out the original plans--almost precisely as they were drawn by the architects nearly seven hundred years ago. The corner-stone was laid in 1248 and construction was carried forward at intervals during the period of seven centuries. Inside, the cathedral is no less impressive than from the exterior. The vaulting, which rises over two hundred feet from the floor, is carried by fifty-six great pillars and the plan is such that one's vision may cover almost the whole interior from a single viewpoint. It is lighted by softly toned windows--mostly modern, though a few date from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and, altogether, the effect is hardly matched by any other church in Christendom. We make no attempt to see the show-places of Cologne during our stay--it would require a week to do this and we shall have to come again. An afternoon about the city gives us some idea of its monuments and notable buildings as well as glimpses of the narrow and often quaint streets of the old town. The next day we are away for Treves and Luxemburg before the "verboten" hour for motor cars. If we missed much fine scenery in the Moselle Valley by coming to Cologne, the loss is partly atoned for by the country we see to-day and the unusually excellent roads. Our route as far as Treves runs a little west of south and diverges some seventy-five miles from the Rhine. It is through a high, rolling country, often somewhat sterile, but we have many glorious views from the upland roads. There are long stretches of hills interspersed with wooded valleys and fields bright with yellow gorse or crimson poppies. There are many grain-fields, though not so opulent-looking as those we saw in the Rhine Valley, and we pass through tracts of fragrant pine forest, which often crowd up to the very roadside. There are many long though usually easy climbs, and again we may glide downward a mile or more with closed throttle and disengaged gears. Much of the way the roadside is bordered with trees and the landscapes remind us more of France than any we have so far seen in Germany. We pass but two or three villages in the one hundred and ten miles between Cologne and Treves; there are numerous isolated farmhouses, rather cleaner and better than we have seen previously. We stop at a country inn in the village of Prun for luncheon, which proves excellent--a pleasant surprise, for the inn is anything but prepossessing in appearance. The guests sit at one long table with the host at the head and evidently the majority are people of the village. Beer and wine are served free with the meal and some of the patrons imbibe an astonishing quantity. This seems to be the universal custom in the smaller inns; in the city hotels wine comes as an extra--no doubt somewhat of a deterrent on its free use. Treves--German Trier--is said to be the oldest town in Germany. The records show that Christianity was introduced here as early as 314 and the place was important in ecclesiastical circles throughout the middle ages. We have a splendid view of the town from the hills as we approach; it lies in the wide plain of the Moselle and its red sandstone walls and numerous towers present a very striking appearance. The cathedral, though not especially imposing, is one of the oldest of German churches--portions of it dating from 528 and the basilica now used as a Protestant church is a restored Roman structure dating from 306. But for all its antiquity Treves seems a pleasant, up-to-date town with well-paved streets--a point which never escapes the notice of the motorist. The surrounding hills are covered with vineyards and the wine trade forms one of the principal enterprises of the place. A few miles from Treves we enter the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg, an independent country, though part of the German Zollverein, which no doubt makes our touring license and number-plates pass current here. It is a tiny state of no more than a thousand square miles, though it has a quarter million people. Luxemburg, where we decide to stop for the night, is the capital. The Grand Hotel Brasseur looks good, though the service proves rather slack and the "cuisine" anything but first-class. Luxemburg is a delight--partly due to its peculiar and picturesque situation, but still more to the quaint buildings and crooked, narrow streets of the older parts and the shattered walls and watchtowers that still encircle it. The more modern portion of the town--which has but twenty thousand inhabitants--is perched on a rocky tableland, three sides of which drop almost precipitously for about two hundred feet to small rivers beneath. The hotels and principal business houses are on the plateau, but the older parts of the town are wedged in the narrow valleys. These are spanned by several high bridges, from one of which we have a delightful viewpoint. It is twilight and the gray houses are merging into the shadows, but the stern towers and broken walls on the heights fling their rugged forms more clearly than ever against the wide band of the sunset horizon. These are the remnants of the fortifications which were condemned to destruction by the Treaty of London in 1876, which guaranteed the neutrality of the Grand Duchy. Only the obsolete portions of the defenses were permitted to stand and these add wonderfully to the romantic beauty of the town. Indeed, the wide panoramas of valley and mountain, of bare, beetling rock and trim park and garden, groups of old trees, huge arched viaducts and the ancient fortifications, form one of the most striking scenes we have witnessed on the Continent. It evidently so impressed the poet Goethe, about one hundred years ago, for a graphic description of Luxemburg may be found in his writings. So charming is the scene that we linger until darkness quite obliterates it and return to our inn feeling that Luxemburg has more of real attractiveness than many of the tourist-thronged cities. [Illustration: LUXEMBURG--GENERAL VIEW] VI THE CAPTAIN'S STORY Friedrich Reinmuth had always been an unsettled and discontented youth; if his days were sad he complained because they were so and if they were prosperous he still found fault. It was not strange that, being of such a nature, he should already have tried many vocations, although yet a young man. At the time of my story he had become a soldier, and while he often fretted and chafed under the rigor of military discipline, he did not find it easy to shift from its shackles as had been his wont in other occupations. By chance he formed a friendship with an old and grizzled comrade, who, although he had served almost two score years in the army, was still hale and strong. The old man had been in the midst of numberless desperate engagements but had always come out of the fray unscathed. Queer stories were whispered about him among his soldier companions, but only whispered, for it was believed, and with reason, that he would take summary vengeance on anyone who crossed his path. He had murdered his own brother in a fit of fury, and to him was also imputed the assassination of the Baron of Reynold, who rebuked the fiery-tempered man on some trifling point; but he had never been brought to justice for any of his crimes. There was a vague rumor that Gottfried Winstedt had sold himself to the devil in return for the power to resist all mortal weapons and to escape all human justice--this it was that made him invulnerable in battle and shielded him from the wrath of the law. But Friedrich in his association with this man for the space of two months had noted little extraordinary about him. He never guessed why the veteran broke an habitual reserve to become his companion until one night when they were conversing on the eve of battle. As they sat moodily together by a waning camp-fire the older man, who had been even more morose than usual during the day, broke the silence. In a melancholy voice he said: "I have somewhat to tell you now, for before the set of tomorrow's sun I will be--God in Heaven, where will I be?--but let it pass; I dare not think of it. My life has been one of unparalleled wickedness; I have committed crimes the very recital of which would appall the most hardened criminal in the Kingdom, but I would not recite them to you if I could, for what would avail the monotonous story of vice and bloodshed for which there is no repentance? You have heard the rumors that these accursed fools have whispered of me--I will not say whether they be true or no. But long foreseeing--yes, foreknowing my fate--I have sought for someone in whom I might confide. I was drawn toward you--I hardly know why--yet I dare not wholly trust in you. Upon one condition, nevertheless, I will commit to you something of vast and curious importance." Friedrich in his amazement was silent and the veteran brought forth from the folds of his faded cloak a small sandalwood box, which he held toward the young man. "I would have you swear," he said, "by all you hold sacred that you will never open this casket except on one condition; it is that you should so desire some earthly thing--wealth, fame, love--that you are willing to barter your eternal welfare to secure it." Something in the old man's manner as well as his words aroused in Friedrich a feeling akin to fear. He took the required oath, mentally resolving that he would throw the mysterious casket in the river on the first opportunity. "Now leave me instantly; I shall never see you again in this world and even I am not so fiendish as to wish to see you in my next--but hark ye, if you ever break the seal out of idle curiosity I will return from the grave to avenge myself on you." Startled by the old man's vehemence, Friedrich hastened to his quarters and strove to sleep. But the strange event of the evening and thoughts of the morrow's conflict, with its danger and perhaps death, drove slumber from his eyes. He tossed about his barrack until the long roll summoned his regiment to the field of battle. The fight raged fiercely and long, and toward evening Friedrich fell, seriously wounded. It was many weeks before he was able to be on his feet again and finding himself totally unfitted by his wound for the profession of arms--and, in fact, for any active occupation--he sadly returned to his native town on the Rhine. Here it chanced there was an old portrait painter of some little renown who took a liking to the unfortunate young soldier and proposed that he study the art; and Friedrich applied himself with such diligence in his new vocation that before long he far excelled his master. Things went prosperously with him. His fame spread beyond the borders of his native town and came to the ears of many of the noble families of the vicinity. He had the good fortune to be patronized by some of these and he transferred the beauty of many a haughty dame and fair damsel to his canvas with unvarying success. Indeed, it is said that more than one of his fair clients looked languishingly at the young artist, whose skill and fame made much amends for humble birth. But Friedrich boasted that he gazed upon the fairest of them unmoved. Ambitious and free-hearted, he thought himself impervious to the wiles of love--a frame of mind he declared indispensible to his art. His success brought him gold as well as fame and but one achievement was needed to complete his triumphs--the patronage of the Herwehes, the noblest and wealthiest of all the great families within leagues of the town. True, the baron and his son were away at present, engaged in the war that still distracted the land, but the lady and her daughter were at home in the magnificent castle which surmounted an eminence far above the Rhine, in full view against the sky from the window of the artist's studio. The fact that the Herwehes withheld their countenance from him was a sore obstacle in the way of Friedrich's ambitions; their influence extended to every class, and many lesser lights, professedly imitators of the noble family, followed their example even in trivial matters. Great was the young artist's satisfaction when one afternoon two ladies descended from a coach (bearing the Herwehe coat-of-arms) which paused in the street before his studio. Both were veiled, but Friedrich had no doubt that his visitors were the baroness and her daughter, whose patronage he so earnestly desired. When both were seated the elder woman, throwing aside her veil, revealed a face that had lost little of its youthful charm, and with a tone of haughty condescension said: "I have seen some of your portraits, Master Reinmuth, and was pleased with them. I wish you, regardless of time and cost, to paint my daughter." By this time Friedrich had to some extent overcome his trepidation and with a profound courtesy replied, "I shall be happy to serve you, My Lady, if you will be good enough to indicate the time and place for the sittings." "Elsa, dearest, what are your wishes?" asked the mother, and in a voice whose tremulous sweetness thrilled the painter, the young woman replied: "Let it be at the castle, my dear mother, tomorrow at this time. I would rather not come to the studio, for I dread the ride over the rough mountain road." "I will be at your service, My Lady," answered Friedrich, and his visitors departed without delay. Friedrich marveled that his thoughts for the remainder of the day--and much of the night--should revert to the demure little figure whose voice had so moved him. Fame bespoke her the fairest of the fair, but it never entered his imaginings that he, a humble portrait painter, could think of the daughter of such an illustrious line but as one of a different order of beings from himself. He had never thought seriously of love; his mistress, he averred, had been fame. True, he had in idle moments dreamed of a being that he might madly adore--and, alas for him, his fancy had become embodied in human form. But why had this maiden so affected him? She had not lifted her veil and had spoken but once, and if her bearing were dignified and her form graceful, he had seen many others no less charming in these respects nor thought of them a second time. If he had analyzed his feelings he would probably have said that the unusual impression was due to the recognition of his talent by the Herwehes. The appointed hour on the morrow found him following the footpath which led to the castle gate--a much shorter though steeper way than the coach road. Intent as he was on his mission, he could not but pause occasionally to view the wonderful scene that spread out beneath him. The cliff on which the many-towered old castle stood almost overhung the blue waters of the Rhine, which here run between rocks of stupendous height. A little farther down the valley, but in full view from his splendid vantage-point, were vineyard-terraced hills interspersed with wooded ravines and luxuriant meadows. The magic touch of early autumn was over it all--a scene of enchanting beauty. On the opposite cliff was an ancient ruin (now entirely vanished) and Friedrich recalled more than one horrible tale about this abandoned place that had blanched his youthful cheeks. At his feet lay the gray roofs and church spires of his native town and perhaps a shadow of a thought of the renown he would one day bring to it flitted through his mind--for on such an errand and such a day what could limit his ambitious musings? He soon found himself at the castle gate and was admitted by the keeper, who knew of his coming. He was ushered into a magnificent apartment and told to await the Lady Elsa's arrival--and the servant added that the baroness was absent, having gone that morning to Coblenz to join her husband. Friedrich, in the few moments he waited, endeavored to compose himself, though feelings of anxiety and curiosity strove with his efforts at indifference; but when the oaken door swung softly open and his fair client stood before him, he started as though he had seen an apparition. Indeed, it flashed on him at once that all the perfection he had imagined, all the beauty of which he had dreamed, stood before him in the warm tints of life, though to his heated fancy she seemed more than a being of flesh and blood. In truth, the kindly eyes, the expressive and delicately moulded face, the flood of dark hair that fell over shapely shoulders, the slender yet gracefully rounded form, and, more than all, that certain nameless and indescribable something that makes a woman beautiful--did not all these proclaim her almost more than mortal to the over-wrought imagination of the young visionary? "Are you ill?" were her first words when her quick eye caught the ghastly pallor of the artist's face and the bewildered look that possessed it. At the sound of her voice he strove desperately to regain his composure. "No, not ill," he said. "I still suffer from a wound I received in the army and the climb up the mountainside somewhat overtaxed my strength." "I am sorry," she replied. "Had I known, I would gladly have come to the studio." The look of sympathetic interest with which she accompanied her words was a poor sedative to the already overmastering passions of the artist, but by a supreme effort he recovered himself to say: "No, no; it is better that I do not pass so much of my time there. I have applied myself too closely of late. Are you ready, lady, for the sitting?" "Yes," said she. "I have been preparing for you. Follow me." She led the way through several magnificent apartments to one even more splendid than the rest. "In this room," she continued, "I would have the portrait painted, and as a setting can you not paint a portion of the room itself?" Friedrich assented in an absent manner and taking up his palette was about to give his fair subject directions to seat herself to the best advantage when he saw she had already done so, with a pose and expression that might have delighted even a dispassionate artist's eye--if, indeed, any eye could gaze dispassionately on the Lady Elsa Herwehe. She had arranged the drapery of her dull-red silken robe so as to display to the best advantage--and yet not ostentatiously--the outlines of her graceful figure, and her dark hair fell in a shadowy mass over her shoulders. Her face bore a listless and far-away expression--was it natural, or only assumed for artistic effect? Friedrich knew not, but it made her seem superhuman. The artist took up his brush but his brain reeled and his hand trembled. "You are surely ill," exclaimed Lady Elsa and would have called a servant, but a gesture from Friedrich detained her. "No, lady, I am not ill"--and losing all control of himself he went madly on--"but I cannot paint the features of an angel. O, Lady Elsa, if it were the last words I should utter I must declare that I love you. The moment I saw you a tenfold fury seized my soul. I never loved before and I cannot stem the torrent now. O, lady, the difference between our stations in life is wide--but, after all, it may soon be otherwise; I have talent and the world will give me fame. This love in a day has become my life and what is mere breath without life? If you scorn me my life is gone"-- The Lady Elsa, who was at first overcome by astonishment, recovered herself to interrupt him. "Peace, you foolish babbler," cried she. "You came to paint my likeness, not to make love to me. If you cannot do your task, cease your useless vaporings and depart. Think you the daughter of an historic line that stretches back to Hengist could throw herself away on a poor portrait painter, the son of an ignorant peasant? Take you to your business or leave me." To Friedrich every word was a dagger-thrust. He seemed about to reply when--as awakening from a dreadful dream--he rushed from the apartment and fled in wild haste down the stony path to the town. Locking himself in his studio he threw himself on the couch in an ecstacy of despair and passed the greater part of the night in sleepless agony. From sheer exhaustion he fell into a troubled slumber towards morning--if such a hideous semi-conscious state may be called slumber. In his dream he saw a host of demons and in their midst a veiled figure at the sight of which his heart leaped, for it seemed the Lady Elsa. She approached and offered him her hand, veiled beneath the folds of her robe; when he had clasped it he stood face to face, not with the lady of his love, but with the sin-hardened and sardonic features of Gottfried Winstedt, the old soldier-comrade whose dreadful fate he had forgotten! With a wild start he awoke and his thoughts immediately flashed to the strange casket the old man had given him. The words of that anomaly of a man came to him with an awful significance: "When thou shalt so desire some earthly thing that thou wouldst barter thine eternal welfare to secure it, thou mayest open this casket." Fearing that his curiosity might some time overcome him and dreading the threat of old Gottfried, he had buried the casket in a lonely spot and quite forgotten it. His dream recalled it to his memory at a time when no price would be too great to pay for the love of Elsa Herwehe. He sprang from his couch and hastened to the secluded corner of his father's garden, where he had buried the mysterious casket in a wrapping of coarse sack-cloth. Returning to his room and carefully barring the doors he opened the box with little difficulty. It contained a roll of manuscript and a single sheet of yellow parchment. Friedrich unrolled this and a small scrap of paper fell at his feet. It bore these words in faded red letters: "Thou who art willing to bear the consequence, read; the incantation on the parchment, if repeated in a solitary spot at midnight, will bring the presence of the Prince of Evil, though thou canst not know the meaning of the words. He will give thee thy desire at the price of thy soul. But beware--thou hast yet the power to recede." Friedrich read these words with a strange fascination, nor did the solemn warning in the slightest degree alter his purpose to seek a conference with the enemy. The parchment bore but a single verse in a strange language, and the artist thrust it in his bosom with a feeling of triumph. A glance at the manuscript showed it the story of Gottfried Winstedt's life, which he contemptuously flung into the grate, saying: "What care I for the doings of the brutal old fool? To-night I will seek the old ruin across the Rhine which stands opposite the Herwehe estate--my future estate, perchance; no one will interrupt my business there!" And he laughed a mirthless laugh that startled even himself, for a hoarse echo seemed to follow it; was it the Fiend or the ghost of Gottfried Winstedt who mocked him? Meanwhile, the Lady Elsa sat in her chamber overcome with surprise at the actions of the artist; annoyed and angry, yet half pitying him, for he was a gallant young fellow, sure to gain the world's applause--and what woman ever found it in her heart to wholly condemn the man who truly loves her? She ordered a servant to restore to Friedrich his painting utensils which he had left in his precipitate flight, but the man returned saying he could not gain admittance to the studio and had left his charge at the door. The following day--the same on which Friedrich had recovered the fatal casket--the baroness returned from Coblenz, accompanied by her eldest son. She inquired as to the progress of the portrait and Elsa in a half careless, yet melancholy tone told her all and even expressed pity for the poor artist. But the haughty noblewoman was highly incensed at the presumption of the young painter and Heinrich, the son, who was present, flew into an uncontrollable fury and swore by all he considered holy that the knave's impudence should be punished. Snatching his sword he left the castle in a great rage. Elsa called to him to desist, but her words were unheeded. She then appealed to her mother: "Will you permit the rash boy to leave in such a passion? You know his fiery temper and he may do that which will cause him grave trouble." "I will not hinder him," replied the baroness. "Let him chastise the churl for his presumption; if we do not make an example of someone, the village tanner will next seek your hand." "And if he did, would I need hear his suit? Why give farther pain to the poor artist, who is already in deepest distress?" "I shall half believe you heard his suit with favor if you urge more in his defense," said the mother petulantly, and Elsa, who knew her moods, sighed and was silent. Meanwhile the wrathful young nobleman pressed on towards the town. The sun had already far declined and flung his low rays on the broad river till it seemed a stream of molten gold. The red and yellow hues of early autumn took on a brighter glow and the town, the distant vineyards and the wooded vales lay in hazy quietude. But little of this beauty engaged the mind of Heinrich Herwehe as he bounded down the mountain path. As he brooded over the insult to his sister his anger, instead of cooling, increased until the fury of his passion was beyond his control. In this mood he came to the outskirts of the town where, to his intense satisfaction, he saw the artist approaching. Friedrich was hastening toward the river and would have taken no notice of the young baron, whom he quite failed to recognize. But he was startled by a fierce oath from Heinrich, who exclaimed: "Ha, you paltry paint-dauber, draw and defend yourself or I will stab you where you stand." "Fool," replied the astonished artist, "who are you that thus accosts me on the highroad?" "That matters not; defend yourself or die." And with these words the impetuous young nobleman rushed upon the object of his wrath. But Friedrich was no insignificant antagonist; he had served in the army and had acquired the tricks of sword-play, and for a contest that required a cool indifference to life or death, his mood was far the better of the two. Little caring what his fate might be and without further words he coolly met the onslaught of his unknown enemy. Such was Heinrich's fury that he quite disregarded caution in his desire to overcome an opponent whom he despised. Such a contest could not be of long duration. In a violent lunge which the artist avoided, the nobleman's foot slipped on the sward and he was transfixed by his adversary's rapier. With scarce a groan he expired and Friedrich, hardly looking at his prostrate foe, exclaimed: "You fool, you have brought your fate upon yourself!" and, as he sheathed his sword, added, "Who you were and why you did so set upon me I cannot conceive, but it matters not; I doubt not that the confessor to whom I go will readily absolve me from this deed." He pursued his lonely way to the river's edge, where he stepped into a small boat and as he moved from the shore he muttered, "O, Elsa, Elsa, he who would give an earthly life for love might be counted a madman; what then of one who seeks to barter eternity for thee?" He soon reached the opposite bank of the river and began the steep ascent to the ruined castle. He beheld, in the gathering twilight, the same romantic scenes that had so thrilled him but two days ago and could scarce believe himself the same man. Darkness was rapidly gathering and by the time he reached the ruin the last glow of sunset had faded from the sky. He crossed the tottering bridge over the empty moat and entered the desolate courtyard. Here, in the uncertain gloom of the lonely ruin, he must wait the coming of midnight and wear away as best he could the ghostly monotony of the passing hours. But his purpose was fixed; his desperation had been only increased by the events of the day, and seating himself on a fragment of the wall he determined to endure whatever came. He heard the great cathedral bell of the distant town toll hour after hour and when midnight drew near he unfalteringly entered the vast deserted hall of state. Here he lighted his small lamp, whose feeble beams struggled fitfully with the shadows of the huge apartment. He drew forth the parchment--he had not mustered courage to look at it since morning--and as the last stroke of the great bell died in the gloom, he muttered the strange language of the incantation. Suddenly there came a rushing sound as of a gust of wind, which extinguished his lamp, and, forgetting that he must repeat the fatal words, he let the parchment fall. The wind whiffed it he knew not whither. No visible shape came before him, but in a moment he felt the awful presence and a voice sepulchral and stony came out of the darkness: "Mortal, who art thou that dost thus summon me? What wilt thou?" Sick with terror and yet determined even to death, Friedrich answered: "And knowest thou not? Men speak thee omniscient. But I can tell thee of my hopeless love--" "Nay, I know all," continued the voice. "Relight thy lamp and I will tell thee how thou mayst gain thy desire." Trembling, Friedrich obeyed and looked wildly about, expecting the visible form of the Fiend, but he saw nothing. Yet he felt the horrid presence and knew that his awful visitant was near at hand. From out of the darkness a heavy iron-clasped book fell at his feet and the voice continued: "Open a vein and sign thy name in the book with blood." Friedrich with changeless determination obeyed and the book disappeared. "Take this gold," said his dreadful monitor, and a heavy bag fell at the artist's feet with a crash, "and I will give thee graces to win the fair one's heart. Repeat the incantation that I may depart." For the first time since it had disappeared Friedrich thought of the fatal parchment and in an agony of horror remembered that it was gone. He would have rushed from the castle but the power of the presence held him immovable. "Fiend," he shrieked, "where is the parchment? Thou knowest; tell me, in God's name!" "Fool, tenfold fool, dost thou call on my archenemy to adjure me? The parchment is naught to me; it was thy business to guard it. I can wait till day-break when I must depart, and with me thou must go." "Fiend," he shrieked, "where is the parchment? I adjure thee"--but the voice was silent and the mighty power still chained its victim to the spot. It were useless to follow the blasphemous ravings of the unfortunate youth, who cursed God and humankind as well as the enemy until the first ray of the rising sun darted through the crumbling arches, when the inexorable power smote him dead and doubtless carried his spirit to the region of the damned. Herwehe Castle--and, indeed, the whole town and countryside--was in a wild uproar on the following morning. The young nobleman had been found murdered, sword in hand, and all knew from the wailing mother the mission on which he had set out the evening before. Friedrich was missing and was instantly accused as the murderer. Companies of furious retainers and villagers scoured the countryside until at last a party searching the old ruin found the object of their wrath. He lay dead upon the floor of the ancient hall of state with only an extinguished lamp near him and, to their amazement, a bag of gold. Various theories were advanced concerning him and his death. The commonly accepted one was that he had stolen the gold and murdered the young nobleman and, being struck with remorse, had ended his life with some subtle poison. But none ever knew the real fate of the poor artist save his old father, who guessed it from reading the manuscript of Gottfried Winstedt, which he found unconsumed in the grate of his son's studio. VII A FLIGHT THROUGH THE NORTH Twenty miles from Luxemburg we come to the French border, where we must pay another fee to the German official who occupies a little house by the roadside and who takes over the number-plates which we received on entering Germany. The French officer, a little farther on, questions us perfunctorily as to whether we have anything dutiable; we have purchased only a few souvenirs and trinkets in Germany and feel free to declare that we have nothing. We suppose our troubles with the customs ended and the Captain, who purchased several bottles of perfume in Cologne--the French are strongly prejudiced against German perfumes--rests easier. But in Longwy, a small town four or five miles from the border, another official professing to represent the customs stops us and is much more insistent than the former, though after opening a hand-bag or two and prying about the car awhile, he reluctantly permits us to proceed. And this is not all, for at the next town a blue-uniformed dignitary holds us up and declares he must go through our baggage in search of contraband articles. A lengthy war of words ensues between this new interloper and the Captain, who finally turns to us and says: "This fellow insists that if we do not give him a list of our purchases in Germany and pay duty, our baggage will be examined in the next town and if we are smuggling anything we'll have to go to jail." This is cheerful news, but our temper is roused by this time and we flatly refuse to give any information to our questioner or to permit him to examine our baggage. He leaves us--with no very complimentary remarks, the Captain says--and we make as quick a "get-away" as possible. We keep a sharp look-out in the next two or three villages, but are not again troubled by the minions of the law. We begin to suspect that the officers were simply local policemen who were trying to frighten us into paying a fee, and we are still of this opinion. After crossing the border we follow a splendid road leading through a rather uninteresting country and a succession of miserable villages, a description of which would be no very pleasant reading. Suffice it to say that their characteristics are the same as those of similar villages we have already written about--if anything, they are dirtier and uglier. They are all small and unimportant, Montmedy, the largest, having only two thousand inhabitants and a considerable garrison. This section was the scene of some of the great events of the war of 1870-71. About noon we come to Sedan, which gave its name to the memorable battle if, indeed, such a one-sided conflict can be called a battle. The Germans simply corralled the French army here with about as much ease as if it were a flock of sheep--but the Captain insists they would have no such "walk-away" to-day. The ancient inn--bearing the pretentious name of Hotel de la Croix d'Or--where we have lunch, endeavors to charge one franc "exchange" on an English sovereign, thereby arousing the Captain's ire, not so much on account of the extortion as for the presumption in questioning an English gold-piece, which ought to pass current wherever the sun shines. He indignantly seeks a bank and tells down French coin to the landlord, along with his compliments delivered in no very conciliatory tone. Sedan is an old and untidy town of about twenty thousand people and aside from its connection with the famous battle has little to interest the tourist. Our route along the river Meuse between Sedan and Mezieres takes us over much of the battlefield, but there is little to-day to remind one of the struggle. Out of Sedan the road is better--a wide, straight, level highway which enables us to make the longest day's run of our entire tour. The country improves in appearance and becomes more like the France of Orleans and Touraine. The day, which began dull and hazy, has cleared away beautifully and the flood of June sunshine shows Summer France at its best. From the upland roads there are far-reaching views, through ranks of stately trees, of green landscapes, flaming here and there with poppy-fields or glowing with patches of yellow gorse. The country is trim and apparently well-tilled; the villages are better and cleaner and the road a very dream for the motorist. At Guise there is a ruined castle of vast extent, its ancient walls still encircling much of the town. Guise was burned by the English under John of Hanehault in 1339, but the redoubtable John could not force the surrender of the castle, which was defended by his own daughter, the wife of a French nobleman then absent. So swift is our progress over the fine straight road that we find ourselves in the streets of St. Quentin while the sun is yet high, but a glance at our odometer tells us we have gone far enough and we turn in at the Hotel de France et d'Angleterre. It is evidently an old house and every nook and corner is cumbered with tawdry bric-a-brac--china, statuettes, candlesticks and a thousand and one articles of the sort. Our apartments are spacious, with much antique furniture, and the high-posted beds prove more comfortable than they look. Mirrors with massive gilt frames stare at us from the walls and heavy chandeliers hang from the ceilings. The price for all this magnificence is quite low, for St. Quentin is in no sense a tourist town and hotel rates have not yet been adjusted for the infrequent motorist. The hotel is well-patronized, apparently by commercial men, who make it a rather lively place. The meals are good and the servants prompt and attentive--superior in this respect to many of the pretentious tourist-thronged hotels. There is nothing to keep us in St. Quentin; in the morning we start out to drive about the town, but the narrow, crooked streets and miserable cobble pavements soon change our determination and we inquire the route to Amiens. It chances that the direct road, running straight as an arrow between the towns, is undergoing repairs and we are advised to take another route. I cannot now trace it on the map, but I am sure the Captain for once became badly mixed and we have a good many miles of the roughest going we found in Europe. We strike a stretch of the cobblestone "pave" which is still encountered in France and ten miles per hour is about the limit. These roads are probably more than a hundred years old. They are practically abandoned except by occasional peasants' carts and their roughness is simply indescribable. As it chances, we have a dozen miles of this "pave" before we reach the main road and we are too occupied with our troubles to look at the country or note the name of the one wretched village we pass. Once in the broad main highway, however, we are delighted with the beauty and color of the country. We pass through wide, unfenced fields of grain, interspersed with the ever-present poppies and blue cornflowers and from the hills we catch glimpses of the distant river. Long before we come to Amiens--shall I say before we come in sight of the city?--we descry the vast bulk of the cathedral rising from the plain below. The surrounding city seems but a soft gray blur, but the noble structure towers above and dominates everything else until we quite forget that there is anything in Amiens but the cathedral. We soon enter an ancient-looking city of some ninety thousand people and make the mistake of choosing the Great Hotel d'la Univers, for, despite its pretentious name, it is dingy and ill-arranged and the service is decidedly slack. Amiens Cathedral is one of the greatest churches of Europe, though the low and inharmonious towers of the facade detract much from the dignity of the exterior. Nor does the high and extremely slender central spire accord well with the general style of the building. The body of the cathedral, divested of spire and towers, would make a fit match for Cologne, which it resembles in plan and dimensions, but it has a more ancient appearance, having undergone little change in six centuries. The delicate sculptures and carvings are stained and weather-worn, but they present that delightful color toning that age alone can give. Inside, a recent writer declares, it is "one vast blaze of light and color coming not only from the clerestory but from the glazed triforium also, the magnificent blue glass typifying the splendor of the heavens"--a pleasing effect, on the whole, though the flood of softly toned light brings out to disadvantage the gaudy ornaments and trinkets of the private chapels so common in French cathedrals. Ruskin advises the visitor, no matter how short his time may be, to devote it, not to the contemplation of arches and piers and colored glass, but to the woodwork of the chancel, which he considers the most beautiful carpenter work of the so-called Flamboyant period. There is also a multitude of sculptured images, some meritorious wall frescoes, and several stained-glass windows dating from the thirteenth century. At the rear is a statue of Peter the Hermit, for the monk who started the great crusading movement of the middle ages was a native of Amiens. All of these things we note in a cursory manner; we recognize that the student might spend hours, if not days, in studying the details of such a mighty structure. But such is not our mood; the truth is, we are a little tired of cathedrals and are not sorry that Amiens is the last for the present. What an array we have seen in our month's tour: Rouen, Orleans, Tours, Dijon, Nevers, Ulm, Mayence, Cologne, Amiens--not to mention a host of lesser lights. We have had a surfeit and we shall doubtless be able to better appreciate what we have seen after a period of reflection, which will also bring a better understanding to our aid should we resume our pilgrimage to these ecclesiastical monuments. There is little besides the cathedral to detain the tourist in Amiens, unless, indeed, he should be fortunate enough to be able to go as leisurely as he likes. Then he would see the Musee, which has a really good collection of pictures and relics, or the library, which is one of the best in French provincial towns. There are some quaint old houses along the river and many odd corners to delight the artistic eye. John Ruskin found enough to keep him in Amiens many days and to fill several pages in his writings. But it would take more than all this to delay us now when we are so near the English shores. If we leave Amiens early enough we may catch the noon Channel boat--we ought to cover the ninety miles to Boulogne in three or four hours. But we find the main road to Abbeville closed and lose our way twice, which, with two deflated tires, puts our plan out of question. Much of the road is distressingly rough and there are many "canivaux" to slacken our speed. We soon decide to take matters easily and cross the Channel on the late afternoon boat. The picturesque old town of Abbeville was one of John Ruskin's favorite sketching grounds. We pass the market-place, which is surrounded by ancient houses with high-pitched gables colored in varied tints of gray, dull-blue and pale-green. The church is cited by Ruskin as one of the best examples of Flamboyant style in France, though the different parts are rather inharmonious and of unequal merit. Abbeville was held by the English for two hundred years and the last possession, except Calais, to be surrendered to France. Here in 1514 Louis of Brittany married Mary Tudor--the beautiful sister of Henry VIII.--only to leave her a widow a few months later. She returned to England and afterwards became the wife of the Duke of Suffolk. It is market-day in Montreuil and the streets are crowded with country people. We stop in the thronged market-place, where a lively scene is being enacted. All kinds of garden produce and fruits are offered for sale and we are importuned to purchase by the enterprising market-women. We find the fruit excellent and inexpensive, and this, with a number of other object lessons in the course of our travels, impressed us with the advantages of the European market plan, which brings fresh produce direct to the consumer at a moderate price. We have most of the afternoon about Boulogne. In starting on our tour a month before we hardly glanced at our landing port, so anxious were we for the country roads; but as we drive about the city now, we are delighted with its antiquity and quaintness. It is still enclosed by walls--much restored, it is true, and so, perhaps, are the unique gateways. The streets are mostly paved with cobbles, which make unpleasant driving and after a short round we deliver the car at the quay. At the Hotel Angleterre we order some strawberries as an "extra" with our luncheon--these being just in season--and we are cheerfully presented with a bill for six francs for a quantity that can be bought in the market-place for ten cents--this in addition to an unusually high charge for the meal. Evidently Boulogne Bonifaces are not in business solely for their health. The town is a frequented summer resort, with a good beach and numerous hotels and lodging-places. It is said to be the most Anglicized town in France--almost everyone we meet seems familiar with English. The Captain suggests that we may be interested in seeing the Casino, one of the licensed gambling-houses allowed in a few French towns. The government gets a good share of the profits, which are very large. We do not care to try our luck on the big wheel, but the Captain has no scruples--winning freely at first, but quitting the loser by a goodly number of francs--a common experience, I suppose. The small boy is not allowed to enter the gambling room, from which minors are rigidly excluded. We have a glorious evening for crossing to Folkestone--the dreaded Channel is on its best behavior. A magnificent sunset gilds the vast expanse of rippling water to the westward and flashes on the white chalk cliffs of the English shore. As we come nearer and nearer we have an increasing sense of getting back home--and England has for us an attractiveness that we did not find in France and Germany. And yet our impressions of these countries were, on the whole, very favorable. France, so far as we saw it, was a beautiful, prosperous country, though there was not for us the romance that so delighted us in England. We missed the ivied ruins and graceful church-towers that lend such a charm to the British landscapes. The highways generally were magnificent, though already showing deterioration in many places. The roads of France require dustless surfacing--oil or asphaltum, similar to the methods extensively used in England. Since the time of our tour steps have been taken in this direction and in time France will have by far the best road-system in the world. Her highways are already broad and perfectly engineered and need only surfacing. About Paris much of the wretched old pave is still in existence, but this will surely be replaced before long. The roads are remarkably direct, radiating from the main towns like the spokes of a wheel, usually taking the shortest cut between two important points. The squalor and filth of the country villages in many sections is an unpleasant revelation to the tourist who has seen only the cities, which are clean and well-improved. But for all this thrift is evident everywhere; nothing is allowed to go to waste; there are no ragged, untilled corners in the fields. Every possible force is utilized. Horses, dogs, oxen, cows, goats and donkeys are all harnessed to loads; indeed, the Captain says there is a proverb in France to the effect that "the pig is the only gentleman," for he alone does not work. The women seem to have more than their share of heavy disagreeable tasks, and this is no doubt another factor in French prosperity. Despite the notion to the contrary, France is evidently a very religious country--in her way. Crucifixes, crosses, shrines, etc. are common along the country roadsides, and churches are the best and most important buildings in the towns and cities. Priests are seen everywhere and apparently have a strong hold on their parishioners. In view of such strong entrenchment, it seems a wonder that the government was able to completely disestablish the church and to require taxation of much of its property. The country policeman, so omnipresent in England, is rarely seen in France, and police traps in rural districts are unknown. Even in towns arrests are seldom made--the rule being to interfere only with motorists who drive "to the danger of the public." One misses the handy fund of information which an English policeman can so readily supply; the few French officials we questioned were apparently neither so intelligent nor accommodating. We were astonished to see so few motor cars in France, and many which we did see were those of touring foreigners. France, for all her lead in the automobile industry, does not have many cars herself. She prefers to sell them to the other fellow and keep the money. The number of cars in France is below the average for each of the states of the Union, and the majority are in Paris and vicinity. French cars almost dominate the English market and many of the taxicabs in London are of French make. We saw a large shipment of these on the wharves at Boulogne. If it were not for our tariff, we may be sure that France would be a serious competitor in the motor-car trade of the United States. There is absolutely no prejudice against the motorist in France and foreigners are warmly welcomed to spend their money. The Frenchman does not travel much--France is good enough for him and he looks on the Americans and Englishmen who throng his country as a financial asset and makes it as easy for them to come as he possibly can. In fact, under present conditions it is easier to tour from one European country to another than it is among our own states--one can arrange with the Royal Automobile Club for all customs formalities and nothing is required except signing a few papers at each frontier. In some respects we noted a strong similarity between France and Germany. The cities of both countries are clean and up-to-date, with museums, galleries, splendid churches and fine public buildings. In both--so far as we saw--the small villages are primitive and filthy in the extreme and in rural districts the heaviest burdens appear to fall on the women. In both countries farming is thoroughly done and every available bit of land is utilized. Each gives intelligent attention to forestry--there are many forests now in their prime, young trees are being grown, and the roadsides are planted with trees. The roads of Germany are far behind those of France; nor does any great interest seem to be taken in highway improvement. Of course the roads are fairly well maintained, but there is apparently no effort to create a system of boulevards such as France possesses. Germany has even fewer motor cars than her neighbor, a much smaller number of automobile tourists enter her borders, and there is more hostility towards them on part of the country people. There are no speed traps, but one is liable to be arrested for fast driving in many towns and cities. The German business-man strikes one more favorably than the Frenchman; he is sturdy, good-looking and alert, and even in a small establishment shows the characteristics that are so rapidly pushing his country to the front in a commercial way. But the greatest difference in favor of Germany--at least so far as outward appearance goes--is to be seen in her soldiery. Soldiers are everywhere--always neat and clean, with faultless uniform and shining accoutrements, marching with a firm, steady, irresistible swing. To the casual observer it would seem that if an army of these soldiers should enter France they could march directly on Paris without serious resistance. But some authorities say that German militarism is a hollow show and that there is more real manhood in the Frenchman. Let us hope the question will not have to be settled again on the field of battle. Perhaps these random impressions which I have been recording are somewhat superficial, but I shall let them stand for what they are worth. On our long summer jaunt through these two great countries we have had many experiences--not all of them pleasant. But we have seen many things and learned much that would have been quite inaccessible to us in the old grooves of travel--thanks to our trusty companion of the wind-shod wheels. And perhaps the best possible proof that we really enjoyed our pilgrimage is a constantly increasing desire to repeat it--with variations--should our circumstances again permit. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Odd Corners of Britain ------------------------------------------------------------------------ VIII THE MOTHERLAND ONCE MORE Back to England--back to England! Next to setting foot in the homeland itself, nothing could have been more welcome to us after our month's exile on the Continent. And I am not saying that we did not enjoy our Continental rambles; that we did the pages of this book amply testify. It seemed to us, however, that for motor touring, England surpasses any other country in many respects. First of all, the roads average vastly better--we remembered with surprise the stories we had heard of the greatly superior roads of France--a delusion entertained by many Englishmen, for that matter. We had also found by personal experience that the better English inns outclass those on the Continent in service and cleanliness and never attempt the overcharges and exactions not uncommon in France and Germany. The second-rate French inn, we are informed on good authority, is more tolerable than the second-rate inn of England. An experienced English motorist told us that since expense was a consideration to him, he generally spent his vacations in France. He declared that there he could put up comfortably and cheaply at the less pretentious inns while he would never think of stopping at English hotels of the same class. I fancy, however, that if one follows Baedeker--our usual guide in such matters--and selects number one among the list, he will find every advantage with the English hotels. And we are sure that the English landscapes are the most beautiful in the world. Everywhere one sees trim, parklike neatness--vistas of well-tilled fields interspersed with great country seats, storied ruins and the ubiquitous church-tower so characteristic of Britain. It is a distinctive church-tower, rising from green masses of foliage such as one seldom sees elsewhere. And where else in a civilized country will one find such trees--splendid, beautifully proportioned trees, standing in solitary majesty in the fields, stretching in impressive ranks along the roadside or clustering in towering groups about some country mansion or village church? And who could be impervious to the charm of the English village? Cleanly, pleasantly situated and often embowered in flowers, it appeals to the artistic sense and affords the sharpest possible contrast to the filthy and malodorous little hamlets of France and Germany. The cities and larger towns of these countries do not suffer any such disadvantage in comparison with places of the same size in England--but we care less for the cities, often avoiding them. In England, we found ourselves among people speaking a common language and far more kindly and considerate towards the stranger within their gates than is common on the Continent. We can dispense with our courier, too, for though he was an agreeable fellow, we enjoy it best alone. So, then, we are glad to be back in Britain and are eager to explore her highways and byways once more. We plan a pilgrimage to John O'Groat's house and of course the Royal Automobile Club is consulted. "We have just worked out a new route to Edinburgh," said Mr. Maroney, "which avoids the cities and a large proportion of police traps as well. You leave the Great North Road at Doncaster and proceed northward by Boroughbridge, Wilton-le-Wear, Corbridge, Jedburgh and Melrose. You will also see some new country, as you are already familiar with the York-Newcastle route." And so we find ourselves at the Red Lion at Hatfield, about twenty miles out of London on the beginning of our northern journey. It is a cleanly, comfortable-looking old house, and though it is well after noon, an excellent luncheon is promptly served--the roadside inns are adapting themselves to the irregular hours of the motorist. Hatfield House--the Salisbury estate--is near the inn, but though we have passed it several times, we have never hit on one of the "open" days, and besides, we have lost a good deal of our ambition for doing palaces; half-forgotten and out-of-the-way places appeal more strongly now. We are soon away on the splendid highway which glistens from a heavy summer shower that fell while we were at luncheon. We proceed soberly, for we have had repeated warnings of police traps along the road. The country is glorious after the dashing rainfall; fields of German clover are in bloom, dashes of dark red amidst the prevailing green; long rows of sweet-scented carmine-flowered beans load the air with a heavy perfume. A little later, when we pass out of the zone of the shower we find hay-making in progress and everything is redolent of the new-mown grasses. Every little while we pass a village and at Stilton--I have written elsewhere of its famous old inn--a dirty urchin runs alongside the car howling, "Police traps! Look out for police traps!" until he receives a copper to reward his solicitude for our welfare. Toward evening we come in sight of Grantham's magnificent spire and we have the pleasantest recollections of the Angel Inn, where we stopped some years previously--we will close the day's journey here. One would never get from the Angel's modest, ivy-clad front any idea of the rambling structure behind it; indeed, I have often wondered how all the labyrinth of floors, apartments and hallways could be crowded behind such a modest facade as that of the Red Lion of Banbury, the Swan of Mansfield or the Angel of Grantham, for example. Such inns are no doubt a heritage of the days when it was necessary to utilize every available inch of space within the city walls. In most cases they are conducted with characteristic English thoroughness and are cleanly and restful, despite their antiquity and the fact that they are closely hedged in by other buildings. As a rule part or all of the old inner court which formerly served as a stable-yard has been adapted as a motor garage. The Angel is said to have been in existence as a hostelry as early as 1208, but the arched gateway opening on the street may be of still earlier date, having probably formed a part of some monastic building. Tradition connects Charles I. with the inn--an English inn of such antiquity would be poor indeed without a legend of the Wanderer--but the claims of the Angel to royal associations go back much farther, for King John is declared to have held his court here in 1213. Richard III. is also alleged to have stopped here and to have signed the death warrant of the Duke of Buckingham at the time. There is record of princely visitors of later dates and it is easy to see that the Angel has had rare distinction--from the English point of view. We remember it, however, not so much for its traditions as for the fact that we are given a private sitting-room in connection with our bed-rooms with no apparent increase in the bill. Our good luck in this particular may have been due to the slack business at the time of our arrival and we could hardly expect to have our accommodations duplicated should we visit the Angel and Royal again. Grantham is a town of nearly twenty thousand people, though it does not so impress the stranger who rambles about its streets. Two or three large factories are responsible for its size, but these have little altered its old-time heart. The center of this is marked by St. Wulfram's Church, one of the noblest parish churches in the Kingdom. Its spire, a shapely Gothic needle of solid stone, rises nearly three hundred feet into the heavens, springing from a massive square tower perhaps half the total height. The building shows nearly all Gothic styles, though the Decorated and Early English predominate. It dates from the thirteenth century and has many interesting monuments and tombstones. Its gargoyles, we agreed, were as curious as any we saw in England; uncanny monsters and queer demons leer upon one from almost any viewpoint. Inside there is a marvelously carved baptismal font and a chained library of the sixteenth century similar to the one in Wimborne Minster. Altogether, St. Wulfram's is one of the notable English country churches, though perhaps among the lesser known. Grantham also possesses an ancient almshouse of striking architecture and a grammar school which once included among its pupils Sir Isaac Newton, who was born at Woolsthorpe Manor, near the town. [Illustration: ST. WULFRAM'S CHURCH--GRANTHAM] Old Whitby appeals to our recollection as worth a second visit and we depart from our prearranged route at Doncaster, reaching York in the late afternoon. It has been a cold, rainy day and we cannot bring ourselves to pass the Station Hotel, though Whitby is but fifty miles farther and might be reached before nightfall. We have previously visited York many times, but have given our time mainly to the show-places and we devote the following forenoon to the shops. There are many interesting book-stalls and no end of antique-stores with many costly curios, such as a Scotch claymore, accompanied by documents to prove that it once belonged to Prince Charlie. The shops, it seemed to us, were hardly up to standard for a city of nearly one hundred thousand. But York, while of first rank as an ecclesiastical seat and famous for its quaint corners and antiquity, is not of great commercial or manufacturing importance. It is a busy railroad center, with hundreds of trains daily, and next to Chester probably attracts a greater number of tourists than any other English provincial town. Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield, Hull, Middlesbrough, Halifax and Huddersfield are all Yorkshire cities with larger population and greater commercial activities. Of English churches we should be inclined to give York Cathedral first place, though viewpoints on such matters are so widely different that this may be disputed by good authorities. In size, striking architecture and beautiful windows, it is certainly not surpassed, though it has not the historical associations of many of its rivals. Whitby is but fifty miles from York. An excellent road runs through a green, prosperous country as far as Pickering--about a score of miles--but beyond this we plunge into the forbidding hills of the bleakest, blackest of English moors. It is too early for the heather-bloom, which will brighten the dreary landscape a few weeks later, and a drizzling rain is falling from lowering clouds. The stony road, with steep grades and sharp turns, requires closest attention and, altogether, it is a run that is pleasant only in retrospect when reviewed from a cozy arm-chair by the evening fire. I am going to write a chapter giving our impressions of Old Whitby which, I hope, will reflect a little of its charm and romance, so we may pass it here. We resume our journey after a pleasant pause in the old town and proceed by Guisborough, Stockton and Darlington to Bishop Auckland, where we again take up our northern route. Bishop Auckland gets its ecclesiastical prefix from the fact that since the time of Edward I. it has been the site of one the palaces of the Bishops of Durham. The present building covers a space of no less than five acres and is surrounded by a park more than a square mile in extent. The palace is splendid and spacious, though very irregular, the result of additions made from time to time in varying architectural styles. It is easy to see how the maintenance of such an establishment--and others besides--keeps the good bishop poor, though his salary is about the same as that of the President of the United States. The town is pleasantly situated on an eminence near the confluence of the river Wear and a smaller stream. About a mile distant, at Escomb, is a church believed to date from the seventh century. It is quite small but very solidly built, the walls tapering upward from the ground, and some of the bricks incorporated in it are clearly of Roman origin, one of them bearing an old Latin inscription. Bishop Auckland marks the western termination of Durham's green fields and fine parks; we descend a steep, rough hill and soon find ourselves on a very bad road leading through a bleak mining country. Tow-Law is the first of several bald, angular villages with scarce a tree or shrub to relieve their nakedness; the streets are thronged with dirty, ragged urchins and slatternly women sit on the doorsteps along the road. The country is disfigured with unsightly buildings and piles of waste from the coal-mines; and the air is loaded with sooty vapors. It is a relief to pass into the picturesque hills of Northumberland, where, even though the road does not improve, there are many charming panoramas of wooded vales with here and there a church-tower, a ruin or a village. Towns on the road are few; we cross the Tyne at Corbridge, where a fine old bridge flings its high stone arches across the wide river. It is the oldest on the Tyne, having braved the floods for nearly two centuries and a half. In 1771 a great flood swept away every other bridge on the river, but this sturdy structure survived to see the era of the motor car. A bridge has existed at this point almost continuously since Roman times, and the Roman piers might have been seen until very recently. The vicinity is noted for Roman remains--sections of the Great Wall and the site of a fortified camp being near at hand. Many relics have been discovered near by and researches are still going on. The village by the bridge is small and unimportant, though it has an ancient church which shows traces of Roman building materials. Most remarkable is the Peel tower in the churchyard, where the parson is supposed to have taken refuge during the frequent Scotch incursions of the border wars. Leaving the bridge we follow the Roman Watling Street, which proceeds in almost a straight line through the hills. It leads through a country famous in song and story; every hill and valley is reminiscent of traditions of the endless border wars in which Northumberland figured so largely and for so many years. Its people, too, were generally adherents of the Stuarts and it was near the village of Woodburn, through which we pass, that the Jacobites attacked the forces of George I., only to meet with crushing defeat, resulting in the ruin of many of the noblest families of the county. A little farther, in the vale of Otterburn, was the scene of the encounter of the retainers of Douglas and Percy, celebrated in many a quaint ballad. In the next few miles are Byrness and Catcleugh, two fine country-seats quite near the roadside, and there is a diminutive but very old church close to the former house. Byrness is the seat of a famous foxhunting squire who keeps a large pack of hounds and pursues the sport with great zeal. The wild, broken country and sparse population are especially favorable to hunting in the saddle. There is no lack of genuine sport, since the wild fox is a menace to lambs and must be relentlessly pursued to the death. Just opposite Catcleugh House a fine lake winds up the valley for nearly two miles. It seems prosaic when we learn that it is an artificial reservoir, affording a water supply for Newcastle-on-Tyne, but it is none the less a charming accessory to the scenery. Beyond this the road runs through almost unbroken solitude until it crosses the crest of the Cheviots and enters the hills of Scotland. IX OLD WHITBY It is a gray, lowering evening when we climb the sharply rising slope to the Royal Hotel to take up our domicile for a short sojourn in Old Whitby. The aspect of the town on a dull wet evening when viewed from behind a broad window-pane is not without its charm, though I may not be competent to reflect that charm in my printed page. It is a study in somber hues, relieved only by the mass of glistening red tiles clustered on the opposite hillside and by an occasional lighted window. The skeleton of the abbey and dark solid bulk of St. Mary's Church are outlined against the light gray of the skies, which, on the ocean side, bend down to a restless sea, itself so gray that you could scarce mark the dividing line were it not for the leaden-colored waves breaking into tumbling masses of white foam. Looking up the narrow estuary into which the Esk discharges its waters, one gets a dim view of the mist-shrouded hills on either side and of numerous small boats and sailing vessels riding at anchor on the choppy waves. It is a wild evening, but we are tempted to undertake a ramble about the town, braving the gusty blasts that sweep through the narrow lanes and the showers of spray that envelop the bridge by which one crosses to the opposite side of the inlet. There is little stirring on the streets and the alleylike lanes are quite deserted. Most of the shops are closed and only the lights streaming from windows of the houses on the hillside give relief to the deepening shadows. The gathering darkness and the increasing violence of the wind deter us from our purpose of climbing the long flight of steps to the summit of the cliff on which the abbey stands and we slowly wend our way back to the hotel. The following morning a marked change has taken place. The mists of the previous evening have been swept away and the intensely blue sky is mottled with white vapory clouds which scurry along before a stiff sea-breeze. The deep indigo blue of the ocean is flecked with masses of white foam rolling landward on the crests of the waves, which break into spray on the rocks and piers. The sea-swell enters the estuary, tossing the numerous fishing smacks which ride at anchor and lending a touch of animation to the scene. The abbey ruin and church, always the dominating feature of East Cliff, stand out clearly against the silvery horizon and present a totally different aspect from that which impressed us last evening. In the searching light of day, the broken arches and tottering walls tell plainly the story of the ages of neglect and plunder that they have undergone and speak unmistakably of a vanished order of things. Last night, shrouded as they were in mysterious shadows, the traces of wreck and ruin were half concealed and it did not require an extraordinarily vivid imagination to picture the great structures as they were in their prime and to re-people them with their ancient habitants, the gray monks and nuns. To-day the red and white flag of St. George is flying from the low square tower of St. Mary's and crowds of Sunday worshipers are ascending the broad flight of stairs. Services have been held continuously in the plain old edifice for seven centuries--its remote situation and lack of anything to attract the looter or enrage the iconoclast kept it safe during the period which desecrated or destroyed so many churches. The history of a town like Whitby is not of much moment to the casual sojourner, who is apt to find himself more attracted by its romance than by sober facts. Still, we are glad to know that the place is very ancient, dating back to Saxon times. It figured in the wars with the Danes and in the ninth century was so devastated as to be almost obliterated for two hundred years. It was not until the reign of Elizabeth that it took rank as a seaport. The chief industry up to the last century was whale-fishing, and a hardy race of sea-faring men was bred in the town, among them Captain Cook, the famous explorer. While fishing was ostensibly the chief means of livelihood of the inhabitants of Whitby, it could hardly have been wholly responsible for the wealth that was enough to attract Robin Hood and his retainers to the town and they did not go away empty-handed by any means. The Abbot of Whitby protected his own coffers by showing the outlaw every courtesy, but Robin was not so considerate of the purses of the townspeople. Probably he felt little compunction at easing the reputed fishermen of their wealth, for he doubtless knew that it was gained by smuggling and it was, after all, only a case of one outlaw fleecing another. The position of the town behind some leagues of sterile moor, traversed by indifferent and even dangerous roads, was especially favorable for such an irregular occupation; and it moreover precluded Whitby from figuring in the great events of the Kingdom, being so far removed from the theatre of action. With the decline of the whale-fisheries, the mining and manufacture of jet began to assume considerable proportion and is to-day one of the industries of the place. This is a bituminous substance--in the finished product, smooth, lustrous and intensely black. It is fashioned into personal ornaments of many kinds and was given a great vogue by Queen Victoria. It is found only in the vicinity of Whitby and is sold the world over, though it has to compete with cheap imitations, usually made of glass. St. Hilda's Abbey is the chief monument of antiquity in Whitby and aside from actual history it has the added interest of being interwoven with the romantic lines of Scott's "Marmion." Situated on the summit of East Cliff, it has been for several centuries the last object to bid farewell to the departing mariner and the first to gladden his eyes on his return. Seldom indeed did the old monks select such a site; they were wont to seek some more sheltered spot on the shore of lake or river--as at Rievaulx, Fountains or Easby. But this abbey was founded under peculiar conditions, for the original was built as far back as 658 in fulfillment of a vow made by King Oswy of Northumbria. In accordance with the spirit of his time, the king made an oath on the verge of a battle with one of his petty neighbors that if God granted him the victory he would found an abbey and that his own daughter, the Lady Hilda, should be first abbess. All traces of this early structure have disappeared, but it was doubtless quite insignificant compared with its successor, for the Saxons never progressed very far in the art of architecture. The fame of Hilda's piety and intelligence attracted many scholars to the abbey, among them Caedmon, "the father of English poetry," who, as the inscription on the stately memorial in St. Mary's churchyard reads, "fell asleep hard by A. D. 680." The death of the good abbess also occurred in the same year. Her successor, Elfleda, governed for a third of a century, after which little record remains. The original abbey was probably destroyed in the Danish wars. It was revived after the Conquest in 1078 by monks of the Benedictine order and gradually a vast pile of buildings was erected on the headland, but of these only the ruined church remains. The great size and splendid design of the church would seem to indicate that in its zenith of power and prosperity Whitby Abbey must have been of first rank. Its active history ended with its dissolution by Henry VIII. Scott in "Marmion" represents the abbey as being under the sway of an abbess in 1513, the date of Flodden, but this is an anachronism, since an abbot ruled it in its last days and the nuns had long before vanished from its cloisters. He was a pretty poor saint in the "days of faith" who did not have several miracles or marvels to his credit and St. Hilda was no exception to the rule. One legend runs that the early inhabitants were pestered by snakes and that the saint prayed that the reptiles be transmuted into stone; and for ages the ammonite shells which abound on the coast and faintly resemble a coiled snake were pointed out as evidence of the efficacy of Hilda's petition. It was also said of the sea-birds that flew over Whitby's towers that "Sinking down on pinions faint, They do their homage to the saint." And an English writer humorously suggests that perhaps "the birds had a certain curiosity to see what was going on in this mixed brotherhood of monks and nuns." The most persistent marvel, however, which was credited by the more superstitious less than a century ago, was that from West Cliff under certain conditions the saint herself, shrouded in white, might be seen standing in one of the windows of the ruin; though it is now clear that the apparition was the result of a peculiar reflection of the sun's rays. The salt sea winds, the driving rain of summer and the wild winter storms have wrought much havoc in the eight hundred years that "High Whitby's cloistered pile" has braved the elements. A little more than fifty years ago the central tower crashed to earth, carrying many of the surrounding arches with it, and the mighty fragments still lie as they fell. The remaining walls and arches are now guarded with the loving care which is being lavished to-day upon the historic ruins of England and one can only regret that the spirit which inspires it was not aroused at least a hundred years ago. St. Mary's, a stone's throw from the abbey, is one of the crudest and least ornate of any of the larger churches which we saw in England. Its lack of architectural graces may be due to the fact that it was originally built--about 1110, by de Percy, Abbot of Whitby--for "the use of the common people of the town," the elaborate abbey church being reserved for the monks. Perhaps the worthy abbot little dreamed that the plain, massive structure which he thought good enough for the laity would be standing, sturdy and strong and still in daily use centuries after his beautiful abbey fane, with its graceful arches, its gorgeous windows and splendid towers had fallen into hopeless ruin. All around the church are blackened old gravestones in the midst of which rises the tall Caedmon Cross, erected but a few years ago. To reach St. Mary's one must ascend the hundred and ninety-nine broad stone steps that lead up the cliff--a task which would test the zeal of many church-goers in these degenerate days. [Illustration: PIER LANE, WHITBY From original painting by J. V. Jelley, exhibited in 1910 Royal Academy] We enjoyed our excursions about the town, for among the network of narrow lanes we came upon many odd nooks and corners and delightful old shops. The fish-market, where the modest catch of local fishermen is sold each day, is on the west side. The scene here is liveliest during the months of August and September, when the great harvest of the sea is brought in at Whitby. It was on the west side, too, that we found Pier Lane after a dint of inquiry--for the little Royal Academy picture which graces these pages had made us anxious to see the original. Many of the natives shook their heads dubiously when we asked for directions, but a friendly policeman finally piloted us to the entrance of the lane. It proved a mere brick-paved passageway near the fish-market, about five or six feet in width, and from the top we caught the faint glimpse of the abbey which the artist has introduced into the picture. It is one of the many byways that intersect the main streets of the town--though these streets themselves are often so narrow and devious as to scarce deserve the adjective I have applied to them. Whitby has no surprises in overhanging gables, carved oak beams, curiously paneled doorways or other bits of artistic architecture such as delight one in Ludlow, Canterbury or Shrewsbury. Everything savors of utility; the oldtime Yorkshire fisherman had no time and little inclination to carve oak and stone for his dwelling. I am speaking of the old Whitby, crowded along the waterside--the new town, with its ostentatious hotels and lodging-houses, extends along the summit of West Cliff and while very necessary, no doubt, it adds nothing to the charm of the place. As an English artist justly observes, "While Whitby is one of the most strikingly picturesque towns in England, it has scarcely any architectural attractions. Its charm does not lie so much in detail as in broad effects"--the effects of the ruin, the red roofs, the fisher-boats, the sea and the old houses, which vary widely under the moods of sun and shade that flit over the place. The words of a writer who notes this variation throughout a typical day are so true to life that I am going to repeat them here: "In the early morning the East Cliff generally appears merely as a pale gray silhouette with a square projection representing the church, and a fretted one the abbey. But as the sun climbs upwards, colour and definition grow out of the haze of smoke and shadows, and the roofs assume their ruddy tones. At midday, when the sunlight pours down upon the medley of houses clustered along the face of the cliff, the scene is brilliantly colored. The predominant note is the red of the chimneys and roofs and stray patches of brickwork, but the walls that go down to the water's edge are green below and full of rich browns above, and in many places the sides of the cottages are coloured with an ochre wash, while above them all the top of the cliff appears covered with grass. On a clear day, when detached clouds are passing across the sun, the houses are sometimes lit up in the strangest fashion, their quaint outlines being suddenly thrown out from the cliff by a broad patch of shadow upon the grass and rocks behind. But there is scarcely a chimney in this old part of Whitby that does not contribute to the mist of blue-gray smoke that slowly drifts up the face of the cliff, and thus, when there is no bright sunshine, colour and detail are subdued in the haze." In St. Mary's churchyard there is another cross besides the stately memorial dedicated to Caedmon that will be pointed out to you--a small, graceful Celtic cross with the inscription: "Here lies the body of Mary Linskill. Born December 13, 1840. Died April 9, 1891. After life's fitful fever she sleeps well Between the Heather and the Northern Sea." If Caedmon was Whitby's first literary idol, Mary Linskill is the last and best loved, for hundreds of Whitby people living to-day knew the gentle authoress personally. She was a native of the town and being early dependent on her own resources, she served an apprenticeship in a milliner's shop and later acted as an amanuensis to a literary gentleman. It was in this position, probably, that she discovered her own capacity for writing and her ability to tell a homely story in a simple, pleasing way. Her first efforts in the way of short stories appeared in "Good Words." Her first novel, "Cleveden," was published in 1876 and many others followed at various intervals. Perhaps the best known are distinctly Whitby stories--"The Haven Under the Hill," and "Between the Heather and the Northern Sea." Her novels in simplicity of plot and quiet sentiment may be compared with those of Jane Austen, though her rank as a writer is far below that of the Hampshire authoress. Her stories show a wealth of imagination and a true artistic temperament, but they are often too greatly dominated by melancholy to be widely popular. Most of them dwell on the infinite capacity of women for self-sacrifice and sometimes the pathetic scenes may be rather overdrawn. There are many beautiful descriptive passages and I quote one from "The Haven Under the Hill," because it sets forth in such a delightful manner the charm of Old Whitby itself: "Everywhere there was the presence of the sea. On the calmest day you heard the low, ceaseless roll of its music as it plashed and swept about the foot of the stern, darkly towering cliffs on either side of the harbour-bar. Everywhere the place was blown through and through with the salt breeze that was 'half an air and half a water,' scented with sea-wrack and laden not rarely with drifting flakes of heavy yeastlike foam. "The rapid growth of the town had been owing entirely to its nearness to the sea. When the making of alum was begun at various points and bays along the coast, vessels were needed for carrying it to London, 'whither,' as an old chronicler tells us, 'nobody belonging to Hild's Haven had ever gone without making their wills.' This was the beginning of the shipbuilding trade, which grew and flourished so vigorously, lending such an interest to the sights and sounds of the place, and finally becoming its very life. What would the old haven have been without the clatter of its carpenters' hammers, the whir of its ropery wheels, the smell of its boiling tar-kettles, the busy stir and hum of its docks and wharves and mast-yards? And where, in the midst of so much labour, could there have been found any time to laugh or to dance, but for the frequent day of pride and rejoicing when the finished ship with her flying flags came slipping slowly from the stocks to the waiting waters, bending and gliding with a grace that gave you as much emotion as if you had watched some conscious thing?... It is a little sad to know that one has watched the launching of the last wooden ship that shall go out with stately masts and rounding sails from the Haven Under the Hill. "Those of the men of the place who were not actually sailors were yet, for the most part, in some way dependent upon the great, changeful, bounteous sea. "It was a beautiful place to have been born in, beautiful with history and poetry and legend--with all manner of memorable and soul-stirring things." The house where Mary Linskill was born, a plain stone structure in the old town, still stands and is the goal of occasional pilgrims who delight in the humbler shrines of letters. It seems indeed appropriate that the old sea town, famous two centuries ago for its shipbuilding trade and hardy mariners, should have given to the world one of its great sea-captains and explorers. A mere lad, James Cook came to Whitby as the apprentice of a shipbuilder. His master's house, where he lived during his apprenticeship, still stands in Grape Lane and bears an antique tablet with the date 1688. Cook's career as an explorer began when he entered the Royal Navy in 1768. He was then forty years of age and had already established a reputation as a daring and efficient captain in the merchant service. He made three famous voyages to the south seas, and as a result of these, Australia and New Zealand are now a part of the British Empire, an achievement which will forever keep his name foremost among the world's great explorers. He lost his life in a fight with the natives of the Sandwich Islands in 1777, a year after the American Declaration of Independence. His mangled remains were buried in the sea whose mysteries he had done so much to subdue. I am sensible that in these random notes I have signally failed to set forth the varied charms of the ancient fisher-town on the Northern Sea, but I have the consolation that all the descriptions and encomiums I have read have the same failing to a greater or less degree. I know that we feel, as we speed across the moorland on the wild windy morning of our departure, that two sojourns in Whitby are not enough; and are already solacing ourselves with the hope that we shall some time make a third visit to the "Haven Under the Hill." X SCOTT COUNTRY AND HEART OF HIGHLANDS So rough and broken is the Northumberland country that we are scarcely aware when we enter the Cheviot Hills, which mark the dividing line between England and Scotland. The road is now much improved; having been recently resurfaced with reddish stone, it presents a peculiar aspect as it winds through the green hills ahead of us, often visible for a considerable distance. It is comparatively unfrequented; there are no villages for many miles and even solitary cottages are rare; one need not worry about speed limits here. Jedburgh is the first town after crossing the border and there are few more majestic ruins in all Scotland than the ancient abbey which looms high over the town. It recalls the pleasantest recollections of our former visit and the wonder is that it does not attract a greater number of pilgrims. We are again in an enchanted land, where every name reminds us of the domain of the Wizard of the North! Here all roads lead to Melrose and Abbotsford, and we remember the George as a comfortable, well-ordered inn, a fit haven for the end of a strenuous day. There are several good hotels in Melrose, made possible by the ceaseless stream of tourists bound to Abbotsford in summertime. We reach the George after the dinner hour, but an excellent supper is prepared for us, served by a canny Scotch waiter clad in a cleaner dress-suit than many of his brethren in British country inns are wont to wear. We have no fault to find with the George except that its beds were not so restful as one might wish after a day on rough roads and its stable-yard garage lacked conveniences. These shortcomings may now be remedied, for the spirit of improvement is strong among the inns of tourist centers in Scotland. The abbey is but a stone's throw from the hotel and one will never weary of it though he come to Melrose for the hundredth time. In delicate artistic touches, in beauty of design and state of preservation as a whole, it is quite unrivalled in Scotland. But for all that Melrose would be as unfrequented as Dundrennan or Arbroath were it not for the mystic spell which the Wizard cast over it in his immortal "Lay," and were it not under the shadow of Abbotsford. Abbotsford! What a lure there is in the very name! In the early morning we are coursing down the shady lane that leads to the stately mansion and reach it just after the opening hour. We are indeed fortunate in avoiding a crowd like that which thronged it on our former visit; we are quite alone and the purchase of a few souvenirs puts us on a friendly footing with the gray-haired custodian. His daily task has become to him a labor of love and he speaks the words, "Sir Walter," with a fervor and reverence such as a religious devotee might utter the name of his patron saint. He shows us many odd corners and relics which we missed before and tells us the story of the house, with every detail of which he is familiar. And, indeed, it is interesting to learn how Scott as a youth admired the situation and as he gained wealth bought the land and began the house. Its construction extended over several years and he had scarcely pronounced it complete and prepared to spend his old age in the home which he almost adored, when the blow fell. Everything was swept away and Scott, the well-to-do country laird, was a pauper. He did not see much of Abbotsford in the few years he had yet to live, though through the consideration of his creditors he remained nominally in possession. His days were devoted to the task of paying a gigantic debt which he conceived himself honor-bound to assume, though he might easily have evaded it by taking advantage of the law. Reflecting--after the lapse of nearly a century--who shall say that the world is not vastly the richer for its heritage of the sublime self-sacrifice, the heroism and flawless integrity of Walter Scott? The Abbotsford we see to-day has been considerably altered and added to since Scott's time, though the rooms shown to visitors remain precisely as he left them. The estate, considerably diminished, is still in possession of the family, the Hon. Mrs. Maxwell-Scott, the great-granddaughter of the author, being the present owner. She is herself of a literary turn and has written "The Making of Abbotsford," an interesting history of the place. The family is not wealthy and it was announced a few years ago that the sale of the estate had become necessary, though, happily, this was avoided. Our guide tells us that the home is usually leased during the "season" each year for three hundred pounds and Americans are oftenest the takers. Both the house and grounds are well-cared-for and we have many glimpses of smooth green lawns and flower gardens from the windows and open doors. The river, too, is near at hand and lends much to the air of enchantment that envelops Abbotsford, for we know how Scott himself loved the "silver stream" so often referred to in his writings. Indeed, as we leave we cannot but feel that our second visit has been even more delightful than our first--despite the novelty of first impressions. On our return, the picturesque old Peel tower at Darnick village catches our eye. It stands in well-kept grounds, the smooth lawn studded with trees and shrubs, and the gray stone walls and towers are shrouded by masses of ivy. It is the most perfect of the few remaining Peel towers in Scotland--little fortress-homes of the less important gentry four or five hundred years ago. These towers were usually built in groups of three, arranged in triangular form, to afford better opportunity for mutual defense against an enemy. Scott in his "Border Antiquities" tells something of these miniature castles: "The smaller gentlemen, whether heads of branches or clans, or of distinct families, inhabited dwellings upon a smaller scale, called Peels or Bastile-houses. They were surrounded by an enclosure, or barmkin, the walls whereof, according to statute, were a yard thick, surrounding a space of at least sixty feet square. Within this outer work the laird built his tower, with its projecting battlements, and usually secured the entrance by two doors, the outer of grated iron, the innermost of oak clenched with nails. The apartments were placed directly over each other, accessible only by a narrow turn-pike stair, easily blocked up or defended." Darnick, as I have intimated, is the best preserved of the towers now in existence, being almost in its original state, and it has very appropriately been adapted as a museum of relics, chiefly of Scottish history, though there is some antique furniture and many curious weapons from abroad. As we follow our guide about the cramped little rooms and up the narrow, twisting stairways, we cannot but think that the place is much more like a jail or prison than a gentleman's home--showing how the disturbed conditions of the country affected domestic life. The caretaker is an unusually communicative Scotchman, well-posted on everything connected with Darnick Tower and its contents, and proves to be not without a touch of sentiment. Taking from the glass case a rare old silver-mounted pistol, he places it in the hands of the small boy of our party. "Now, my lad, ye can always say that ye have held in your ain hands a pistol that was ance carried by bonnie Prince Charlie himsel'." And we all agree that it is no small thing for a boy to be able to say that; it will furnish him with material for many flights of fancy--even if Prince Charlie never saw the pistol. There are also some of Mary Stuart's endless embroideries--we have seen enough of them to stock a good-sized shop, but they may have all been genuine, since the poor queen had nothing else to do for years and years. These are typical of Darnick's treasures, which, with the rare old tower itself, may well claim an hour of the Abbotsford tourist's time. And he may recall that Sir Walter himself was greatly enamored of the old Peel and sought many times to annex it to his estate, but the owner would never sell. [Illustration: OLD PEEL TOWER AT DARNICK, NEAR ABBOTSFORD] "Auld Reekie" has seldom been hospitable to us in the way of weather. Of our many visits--I forget how many--only one or two were favored with sunny skies. The first I well recall, since we came to the old city on our national holiday, only to find the temperature a little above freezing and to encounter a bitter wind that seemed to pierce to the very bone. And again we are watching the rain-drenched city from our hotel window and wondering how we shall best pass such a dull day. We are familiar with the show-places of the town--we have seen the castle, Holyrood, John Knox's house, St. Giles, the galleries, the University, Scott's monument and his town house on Castle Street where "Waverley" was written--all these and many other places of renown have no longer the charm of novelty. We don our rain-proofs and call at the studio of an artist friend, who conducts us to the Academy exhibit, where we discover the beautiful "Harvest Time, Strathtay," which adorns this book. We confess a weakness for antique-shops, especially those where a slender purse stands some show, and our friend leads us to the oddest curio-shop we have seen in our wanderings. It is entered from an out-of-the-way inner court by a dark, narrow flight of stairs and once inside you must pause a moment to get your bearings. For piled everywhere in promiscuous heaps, some of them reaching to the ceiling, is every conceivable article that one might expect to find in such a place, as well as a thousand and one that he would never expect to see. From a dark corner issues the proprietor, an alert, gray-bearded old gentleman who we soon find is an authority in his line and, strange to say, all this endless confusion is order to him, for he has no difficulty in laying his hands on anything he seeks. He shows us about the dimly lighted place, descanting upon his wares, but making little effort to sell them. We are free to select the few articles that strike our fancy--there is no urging and few suggestions on his part; he names the modest price and the deal is completed. When we come to leave we are surprised to find that we have lingered in the queer old shop a couple of hours. [Illustration: HARVEST TIME, STRATHTAY From original painting by Henderson Tarbet. R. S. A. Exhibit, Edinburgh, 1910.] Edinburgh shops, especially on Princes Street, are handsome, large and well-stocked and are only second to the historic shrines with the average tourist. The town is a great publishing center and there are bookstores where the bibliophile might wish to linger indefinitely. Scotch plaids and tartans are much in evidence wherever textiles are sold and jewelers will show you the cairngorm first of all--a yellow quartz-crystal found in the Highland hills. Such things are peculiarly Scotch and of course are in great favor with the souvenir-seeking tourist. The rain ceases towards evening and from our hotel window we have a fine prospect of the city. It is clean and fresh after the heavy drenching and glistens in the declining sun, which shines fitfully through the breaking clouds. There have been many poetical eulogies and descriptions since Burns addressed his lines to "Edina, Scotia's Darling Seat," but W. E. Henley's "From a Window in Princes Street" seems to us most faithfully to give the impression of the city as we see it now: "Above the crags that fade and gloom Starts the bare knee of Arthur's seat: Ridged high against the evening bloom, The Old Town rises, street on street; With lamps bejewelled; straight ahead Like rampired walls the houses lean, All spired and domed and turreted, Sheer to the valley's darkling green; While heaped against the western grey, The Castle, menacing and severe, Juts gaunt into the dying day; And in the silver dusk you hear, Reverberated from crag and scar, Bold bugles blowing points of war." We watch the changing view until the twilight gathers and the lamps begin to appear here and there. We are bound for the heart of the Highlands. Our route is to lead through the "Kingdom of Fife" to Perth and from thence to Braemar, the most famous Scotch inland resort. Having already crossed the Forth at Queensferry, we decide to take the Granton-Burntisland boat, which crosses the estuary some six miles farther east. We find excellent provision for the transport of motor cars and our boat carries three besides our own. Landing at Burntisland, we follow the coast through Kirkcaldy to Largo. The attraction at the latter place is a little antique-shop close by the roadside in the village where two years before we found what we thought astonishing bargains in old silver, and our judgment was confirmed by an Edinburgh silversmith to whom we afterwards showed our purchases. The shopman had little of his wares in sight when we entered, but he kept bringing out article after article from some hidden recess until he had an amazing array before us. There was old silver galore, much of it engraved with armorial devices which the dealer said he had purchased at public auctions where the effects of old families were being turned into cash--not an uncommon occurrence in Britain these days. His prices were much less than those of city shops, and we were so well pleased with our few selections on our first visit that we think it worth while to visit Largo again. The shopman has not forgotten us and our finds are quite as satisfactory as before. And I must say that of all the odds and ends which we have acquired in our twenty-thousand miles of motoring in Europe, our old silver gives us the greatest satisfaction. It is about the safest purchase one can make, since the hall-mark guarantees its genuineness and it has a standard value anywhere. It cannot be bought to advantage in cities or tourist centers, where high prices are always demanded. The same conditions will doubtless prevail in the more remote country villages as the motor car brings an increased number of buyers. From Largo we traverse narrow byroads to Cupar, the county town of Fife. It is substantially built of gray stone and slate, but is not of much historic importance. The surrounding country is well-tilled and prosperous and there are many fine country houses which may occasionally be seen from the highroad. We hasten on to Newburgh and from thence to Perth, where we stop for luncheon at the splendid Station Hotel. The day has so far been clear and cool, but during our stop there comes a sudden dash of summer rain and a sharp drop in temperature--not a very favorable augury of fine weather in the Highlands, whither we are bound. Perth does not detain us, for despite its old-time importance and antiquity, scarce a vestige remains of its once numerous monastery chapels, castles and noblemen's houses. Perhaps the iconoclastic spirit inspired by old John Knox, who preached in Perth, may be partly responsible for this, or it may be as a Scotch writer puts it: "The theory which seems to prevail in the Fair City is that the Acropolis of Athens would be better out of the way if grazing for a few goats could be got on the spot; and the room of the historic buildings was always preferred to their company when any pretext could be found for demolishing them." The home ascribed to Scott's "Fair Maid," restored out of all knowledge, serves the plebian purpose of a bric-a-brac shop and there is nothing but common consent to connect it with the heroine of the novel. The fair maid indeed may have been but a figment of the great writer's imagination, but the sturdy armorer certainly lived in Perth and became famous for the marvelous shirts of mail which he wrought. Our route lies due north from Perth, a broad and smooth highway as far as Blairgowrie, near which is another original of the "Tullyveolan" of "Waverley"--the second or third we have seen. Here we plunge into the Highland hills, following a narrow stone-strewn road which takes us through barren moors and over steep rough hills, on many of which patches of snow still linger, seemingly not very far away. Its presence is felt, too, for the air is uncomfortably chilly. The low-hung clouds seem to threaten more snow and we learn later that snow actually fell during the previous week. For thirty miles there is scarcely a human habitation save one or two little inns which have rather a forlorn look. The road grows steadily worse and the long "hairpin curves" of the road on the famous "Devil's Elbow" will test the climbing abilities of any motor. While we are struggling with the steep, stony slopes and sharp turns of the Devil's Elbow, a driving rain begins and pursues us relentlessly for the rest of the day. The country would be dreary enough in the broad sunshine, but under present conditions it is positively depressing. The huge Invercauld Arms at Braemar is a welcome sight, though it proves none too comfortable; so cold and cheerless is the evening that every part of the hotel except the big assembly room, where a cheerful fire blazes in the ample grate, seems like a refrigerator. The guests complain bitterly of the unseasonable weather and one lady inquires of another, evidently a native: "What in the world do you do here in winter if it is like this in July?" "Do in winter? We sit and hug the fireplace and by springtime we are all just like kippered herring!" Braemar has lost much of the popularity it enjoyed in Victoria's day, when as many as ten thousand people came to the town and vicinity during the Queen's residence at Balmoral, some ten miles away. She was fond of the Highlands and remained several weeks, but King Edward did not share her liking for Balmoral and was an infrequent visitor. The British have the summer-resort habit to a greater extent than any other people and Braemar still has considerable patronage during the season--from June to September. The surroundings are quite picturesque; wooded hills, towering cliffs and dashing streams abound, but one who has seen America would hardly count the scenery remarkable. There is nothing to detain us in Braemar and the next morning finds us early on the road. The day promises fine, though of almost frosty coolness, and the roads in places are muddy enough to remind us of home. Braemar Castle, a quaint, towerlike structure near the town, attracts our attention and we find no difficulty in gaining entrance, for the family is away and the housekeeper is only too anxious to show visitors around in hopes of adding to her income. It proves of little interest, having recently been rebuilt into a summer lodge, the interior being that of an ordinary modern residence. The exterior, however, is very striking and the castle was of some consequence in the endless wars of the Highland clans. A few miles over a road overhung by trees and closely following the brawling Dee brings us in sight of Balmoral. Our first impression is of disappointment, since the castle seems but small compared with our preconceived ideas, formed, of course, from the many pictures we have seen. It has no traditions to attract us and as considerable formality is necessary to gain admission on stated days only, we do not make the attempt. The situation, directly on the river bank, is charming, and the park surrounding the castle is well-groomed. We hie us on to Ballater, a pretty, well-built village occupying a small plateau surrounded by towering hills. But a mile or two from the town is the house where Byron as a boy spent his vacations with his mother, and there are many references in his poems to the mountains and lakes of the vicinity. Lochnagar, which inspired his well-known verses, is said to be the wildest and most imposing, though not the loftiest, of Scotch mountains. It is the predominating peak between Braemar and Ballater. For some miles on each side of Ballater the road runs through pine forests, which evidently yield much of the lumber supply in Britain, for sawmills are quite frequent. The trees are not large and they are not slaughtered after the wholesale manner of American lumbering. [Illustration: A HIGHLAND LOCH From original painting by the late John MacWhirter, R. A.] The Palace Hotel in Aberdeen is well-vouched-for officially--by the Royal Automobile Club, the Automobile Association and an "American Touring Club" which is new to us--and we reckon, from the first mention in Baedeker, that it takes precedence of all others. It is conducted by the Great North of Scotland Railway and is quite excellent in its way, though not cheap or even moderate in rates. At dinner our inquisitive waiter soon learns that we are not new to Aberdeen; we have seen most of the sights, but we have to admit that we have missed the fish-market. "Then ye haven't seen the biggest sight in the old town," said he. "Seven hunder tons of fish are landed every day at the wharves and sold at auction. Get down early in the morning and ye'll aye have a fish story to tell, I'll warrant." And it proves an astonishing sight, to be sure. A great cement wharf a mile or more in length is rapidly being covered with finny tribes of all degrees, sorted and laid in rows according to size. They range from small fish such as sole and bloater to huge monsters such as cod, haddock and turbot, some of which might weigh two or three hundred pounds. It would take a naturalist, or an experienced deep-sea fisherman, to name the endless varieties; it is a hopeless task for us to try to remember the names of even a few of them. The harbor is filled with fishing craft waiting to unload their catch, and when one boat leaves the wharf its place is quickly occupied by another. And this is not all the fish-show of Aberdeen, for herring and mackerel are brought in at another dock. We return to our hotel quite willing to concede our waiter-friend's claim that the tourist who does not see the fish-market misses, if not the "biggest," as he styled it, certainly the most interesting sight in Aberdeen. We linger a few hours about the town, which is one of the cleanest and most substantially built it has been our good fortune to see. It shows to best advantage on a sunny day after a rain, when its mica-sprinkled granite walls glitter in the sun, and its clean, granite-paved streets have an unequalled attractiveness about them. Granite has much to do with Aberdeen's wealth and stateliness, for it is found in unlimited quantities near at hand and quarrying, cutting and polishing forms one of the greatest industries of the place. Civic pride is strong in Aberdeen and there are few cities that have greater justification for such a sentiment, either on account of material improvement or thrifty and intelligent citizens. XI IN SUTHERLAND AND CAITHNESS It is a wild, thinly inhabited section--this strangely named Sutherland--lying a thousand miles nearer the midnight sun than does New York City; but its silver lochs, its clear, dashing streams and its unrivalled vistas of blue ocean and bold, rugged islands and highlands will reward the motorist who elects to brave its stony trails and forbiddingly steep hills. Despite its loneliness and remoteness, it is not without historic and romantic attractions and its sternly simple people widely scattered throughout its dreary wastes in bleak little villages or solitary shepherd cottages, are none the less interesting and pleasant to meet and know. The transient wayfarer can hardly conceive how it is possible for the natives to wrest a living from the barren hills and perhaps it does not come so much from the land as from the cold gray ocean that is everywhere only a little distance away. Fishing is the chief industry of the coast villages, while the isolated huts in the hills are usually the homes of shepherds. The population of Sutherland proper is sparse indeed and one will run miles and miles over the rough trails which serve as roads with rarely a glimpse of human habitation. No railway reaches the interior or the western coast and the venturesome motorist will often find himself amid surroundings where a break-down would surely mean disaster--a hundred miles or more from effective assistance. The precipitous hills and stony roads afford conditions quite favorable to mishap, and for this reason the highways of Sutherland are not frequented by motor cars and probably never will be until a different state of affairs prevails. The Royal Automobile Club, however, has mapped a fairly practicable route, following roughly the coast line of the shire, and with this valuable assistance, we are told, a considerable number of motorists undertake the trip during the course of the summer. The name Sutherland--for the most northerly shire of a country which approaches the midnight sun--strikes one queerly; a Teutonic name for the most distinctly Celtic county in Scotland--both anomalies to puzzle the uninformed. But it was indeed the "land of the south" to the Norsemen who approached Scotland from the north, and landing on the shores of Caithness, they styled the bleak hills to the south as "Sudrland." There was not much to tempt them to the interior, the good harbors of Caithness and the produce of its fertile plains being the objective of these hardy "despots of the sea." The county of Caithness contains the greater part of the tillable land north of Inverness and this, with the extensive fisheries, supports a considerable population. The traveler coming from the south finds a pleasant relief in this wide fertile plain with its farmhouses and villages and its green fields dotted with sleek domestic animals. It was this prosperity that attracted the Norseman in olden days and he it was who gave the name to this county as well as to Sutherland--Caithness, from the "Kati," as the inhabitants styled themselves. We leave the pleasant city of Inverness on a gray misty morning upon--I was going to say--our "Highland tour." But Inverness itself is well beyond the northern limit of the Highland region of Scott and the wayfaring stranger in Scotland to-day can hardly realize that the activities of Rob Roy were mostly within fifty miles of Glasgow. A hundred years ago the country north of the Great Glen was as remote from the center of life in Scotland as though a sea swept between. To-day we think of everything beyond Stirling or Dundee as the "Wild Scottish Highlands," and I may as well adopt this prevailing notion in the tale I have to tell. For the first half hour the splendid road is obscured by a lowering fog which, to our delight, begins to break away just as we come to Cromarty Firth, which we follow for some dozen miles. The victorious sunlight reveals an entrancing scene; on the one hand the opalescent waters of the firth, with the low green hills beyond, and on the other the countryside is ablaze with the yellow broom. Dingwall, at the head of the firth, is a clean, thriving town, quite at variance with our preconceived ideas of the wild Highlands; and a like revelation awaits us at Tain, with its splendid inn where we pause for luncheon on our return a few days later. It is built of rough gray stone and its internal appointments as well as its service are well in keeping with its imposing exterior. But an excellent inn, seemingly out of all proportion to the needs of a town or the surrounding country, need surprise no one in Scotland--such, indeed, is the rule rather than the exception. At Bonar Bridge--the little town no doubt takes its name from the sturdy structure spanning Dornoch Firth--we cross into Sutherland and for the next hundred miles we are seldom out of sight of the sea. An ideal day we have for such a journey; the air is crystal clear, cool and bracing. The unsullied skies meet a still, shimmering sea on one hand and bend in a wide arch over gray-green hills on the other. Before our journey ends cloud effects add to the weird beauty of the scenes that greet our eyes--a play of light and color sweeping across the mottled sky and the quiet ocean. We are enchanted by one particularly glorious view as we speed along the edge of a cliff far above the ocean that frets and chafes beneath; a bank of heavy white clouds is shot through by the crimson rays of the declining sun; it seemingly rests on the surface of the still water and is reflected with startling brilliance in the lucent depths. Every mood of the skies finds a response in the ocean--gray, steely-blue, silver-white, crimson and gold, all prevail in turn--until, as we near our destination, the sky again is clear and the sea glows beneath a cloudless sunset. In a sheltered nook by the ocean, which here ripples at the foot of a bleak hill, sits Golspie, the first village of any note after crossing Dornoch Firth. It has little to entitle it to distinction besides its connection with Dunrobin Castle--the great Gothic pile that looms above it. Dunrobin is the seat of the Duke of Sutherland and Golspie is only the hamlet of retainers and tradesmen that usually attaches itself to a great country seat. It is clean and attractive and its pleasant inn by the roadside at once catches our eye--for our luncheon time is already well past. And there are few country inns that can vie with the Sutherland Arms of Golspie, even in a land famous for excellent country inns. A low, rambling stone building mantled with ivy and climbing roses and surrounded by flowers and green sward, with an air of comfort and coziness all about it, mutely invites the wayfarer to enjoy its hospitality. The interior is equally attractive and there are evidences that the inn is a resort for the fisherman and hunter as well as for the tourist. It is of little consequence that luncheon time is two hours past; the Scottish inn keeps open house all day and the well-stocked kitchen and sideboard stand ready to serve the wayfarer whenever he arrives. The sideboard, with its roast beef, mutton and fowls, would of itself furnish a substantial repast; and when this is supplemented by a salad, two or three vegetables, including the inevitable boiled potatoes, with a tart or pudding for dessert, one would have to be more particular than a hungry motorist to find fault. The landlady personally looks after our needs--which adds still more to the homelikeness of the inn--and as we take our leave we express our appreciation of the entertainment she has afforded us. She plucks a full-blown rose from the vine which clings to the gray walls and gives it to the lady member of our party, saying: "Would you believe that the roses bloom on this wall in December? Indeed, they do, for Golspie is so sheltered by the hills and the climate is so tempered by the ocean currents that we never have really severe weather." And this is nearly a thousand miles north of the latitude of New York City! The day is too far advanced to admit of a visit to Dunrobin Castle, despite the lure of its thousand years of eventful history. It stands on a commanding eminence overlooking the sea, its pinnacled turrets and battlements sharply fretted against the sky. Its style savors of the French chateau, though there are enough old Scottish details to redeem it from the domination of the foreign type, and, altogether, it is one of the stateliest of the homes of the Highland nobility. It has been in the unbroken possession of the present family for nearly a thousand years, having been originally built by Robert, Thane of Sutherland, in 1098. Its isolation no doubt saved it from the endless sieges and consequent ruin that so many ancient strongholds underwent. From Golspie to Wick we are seldom out of sight of the ocean and there are many pleasing vistas from the clifflike hills which the finely engineered road ascends in long sweeping curves. The entire road from Inverness to Wick ranks with the best in Scotland, but beyond--that is another story. The villages along the way are inhabited by fishermen, many of whom speak only Gaelic, and they are always civil towards the stranger. Especially do we notice this when we pass groups of children; they are always smiling and waving welcome in a manner that recalls in sharp contrast the sullen little hoodlums in the French and German towns. The country houses, though small and plain, are clean and solidly built of stone. Many well-bred domestic animals are to be seen, especially sheep. In this connection I recall a conversation I had with a young Montana ranchman whom I met on a train near Chicago. He had just sold his season's wool clip in that city and realized the highest price of the year--and he had imported his stock from Caithness, where he formerly lived. Wick is celebrated for its herring fisheries, upon which nearly the whole population of about twelve thousand is directly or indirectly dependent. It is the largest town north of Inverness and of some commercial importance. The artificial harbor was built at an immense cost and when the fisher fleet is in presents a forest of masts. On Mondays the boats depart for the fishing grounds, most of them remaining out for the week. Some of the boats are of considerable size and a single catch may comprise many tons of herrings. The unsavory work of cleaning and curing is done by women, who come from all parts of the country during the fishing season. Logically, Wick should mark the conclusion of our day's journey, which is of unusual length, and the huge Station Hotel is not uninviting, but we hasten farther, to fare--so far as accommodations are concerned--very considerably worse. John O'Groats is our destination. We have long been fascinated by the odd name at the far northern extremity of the map of Scotland--a fascination increased by the recurrence of the name in Scotch song and story--and it pleases our fancy to pass the night at John O'Groats. A friendly officer assures us that we will find an excellent hotel at our goal and with visions of a well-ordered resort awaiting our arrival we soon cover the dozen or more miles of level though bumpy road between Wick and the Scotch Ultima Thule. The country is green and prosperous--no hint of the rocky hills and barren moors that have greeted us most of the day. A half mile from the tiny village of John O'Groats--a dozen or more low stone huts--we come to the hotel and our spirits sink as we look about us. A small two-story building with an octagonal tower faces the lonely sea and it is soon evident that we are the sole guests for the night. Two unattractive young women apparently constitute the entire force of the inn; they are manageresses, cooks, waitresses, chambermaids and even "porteresses," if I may use such a word, for they proceed to remove our baggage and to carry it to our room. This is in the octagonal tower, fronting on the ocean, and is clean and orderly; but the dinner which our fair hostesses set forth precludes any danger of gormandizing, ravenously hungry though we happen to be. The dining-room occupies the first floor of the octagonal tower, which stands on the supposed site of the original house of John O'Groat, or John de Groote, the Dutchman whose fame is commemorated by a tradition which one must hear as a matter of course if he visits the spot. [Illustration: HOTEL, JOHN O'GROATS] John de Groote, a wealthy Hollander, is supposed to have established himself in Caithness in the time of James IV. to engage in commerce with the natives. As he was a person of importance, he brought with him a number of retainers, who held an annual feast in celebration of their arrival in Scotland. At this there were bickerings and heart-burnings as to who should occupy "the head of the table"--an honor that was made much of in those days. Wise old John de Groote pacified his jealous guests as best he could, assuring them that at their next gathering all should be equally honored and satisfied. He must have been a man of influence, for his enigmatical assurance seems to have been accepted by all. When the eight petty chieftains assembled again they beheld an octagonal house with eight doors and in it was a huge octagonal table with seats at each side for the jealous clansmen and their retainers. As they must enter simultaneously and as no one could possibly be exalted above his fellows, the question of precedence could not arise. And so John O'Groat gave his name to eternal fame--but if this strange domicile ever existed, all trace of it has disappeared, and the question of precedence does not trouble our little party nearly so much as the indifferent dinner, which we make but a poor pretense at eating. One will hardly find a lonelier or more melancholy scene--at least so it seems to us this evening--than the wide sweep of water confronting us when we look seaward from the sandy beach that slopes downward from the inn. Near at hand is a bold headland--the small rocky island of Stroma--while the dim outlines of the southernmost Orkneys rise a few miles away. No ship or sign of life is to be seen except two crab-fishers, who are rowing to the little landing-place. The beach is littered with thousands of dead crabs and masses of seaweed cling to the wreckage scattered along the water line. All is quiet and serene as the nightlong twilight settles down, save for the occasional weird scream of some belated sea-bird. The sun does not set until after nine o'clock and on clear nights one may read print at midnight under the open skies. And it is with an odd feeling, when awakened by the rising sun streaming into our windows, that I find on looking at my watch that the hour of three is just past. At the risk of being set down as heathen by the natives, who observe Sunday even more strictly than their southern brethren, we are early on the road. Our breakfast, hastily prepared by our hostesses, gives us added incentive for severing relations with John O'Groats. We settle our modest score--our inn has the merit of cheapness, at least--act as our own porter--saving a shilling thereby--and soon sally forth on the fine road to Thurso. The glorious morning soon effaces all unpleasant recollections. The road runs for miles in sight of the sea, which shows a gorgeous color effect in the changing light--deep indigo-blue, violet, amethyst, sapphire, all seem to predominate in turn, and the crisp breeze shakes the shimmering surface into millions of jewellike ripples. In sheltered nooks under the beetling crags of the shore the water lies a sheet of dense lapis-lazuli blue such as one sees in pictures but seldom in nature. On the other hand are the green fields, which evidence an unexpected fertility in this far northern land. But the scene changes--almost suddenly. Leaving the low, green meadows of western Caithness, we plunge into the dark, barren hills of Sutherland--a country as lonely and forbidding as any to be found within the four seas that encircle Britain. The road--splendid for a dozen miles out of Thurso--degenerates into a rough, rock-strewn trail that winds among the hills, often with steep grades and sharp turns. At some points where the road branches a weather-worn stone gives an almost illegible direction and at others there is nothing to assist the puzzled traveler. At one of these it seems clear to us that the right-hand road must lead to Tongue, and with some misgiving we take it. There is absolutely no human being in sight--an inquiry is impossible. The road grows so bad that we can scarce distinguish it and at last we catch sight of a shepherd-cottage over the hill. Two elfish children on the hilltop view us with open-mouthed wonder, but in response to our inquiries flee away to the house. The shepherd comes out, Bible in hand; he has no doubt been passing the morning in devotion at his home, since the kirk is too far away for him to attend. "The road to Tongue? Ah, an' it's a peety. Ye have ta'en the wrang turn and the road ye are on leads to--just nowhere." We thank him and carefully pilot our car backward for half a mile to find a practicable place to turn about. [Illustration: ACKERGILL HARBOUR, CAITHNESS From original painting by Henderson Tarbet] We have passed a few little hamlets since we left Thurso--Melvich, Strathy and Bettyhill--each made up of a few stone huts thatched with boughs or underbrush of some kind and though cleanly and decent, their appearance is poverty-stricken in the extreme. At Bettyhill we pass many people laboriously climbing the long hill to the kirk which stands bleakly on the summit--the entire population, old and young, appears to be going to the service. They are a civil, kindly folk, always courteous and obliging in their response to our inquiries, though we think we can detect a latent disapproval of Sunday motoring--only our own guilty consciences, perhaps. They seem sober and staid, even the youngsters--no doubt only the Scotchman's traditional reverence for the Sabbath; though one of the best informed Scotch writers thinks this mood is often temperamental--a logical result of the stern surroundings that these people see every day of their lives. For Mr. T. F. Henderson in his "Scotland of Today" writes of the very country through which we are passing: "With all their dreariness there is something impressive in these long stretches of lonely moorland, something of the same feeling that comes over one, you fancy, in the Sahara. As a stranger you will probably see them in the summertime. There is then the endless weird light of the northern sunrise and sunset, there is the charm of the sunlight; and nature using such magic effects is potent to infuse strange attractions into the wilderness itself. But the infinite gloom of the days of winter, the long periods of darkness, the rain-cloud and the storm-cloud sweeping at their will over the wild moorland without any mountain screen to break the storm! Can you wonder that men who spend their lives amid such scenes become gloomy and taciturn, and that sadness seems inseparable from such surroundings, and poverty inevitably appears twice as cruel and harsh here as elsewhere?" It is well past noon when the blue waters of the Kyle of Tongue flash through the rugged notches of the hills and a few furlongs along the shore bring us to the village of Tongue, with its hospitable inn. Though Tongue is fifty miles from the nearest railway station, enough lovers of the wild come here to make this pleasant, well-ordered inn a possibility. We find it very attractive inside; the July day is fresh and clear but chilly enough to make the fire burning in the diminutive grate in the drawing-room very acceptable to us who have never become really acclimated in Britain. But the same fire is evidently intended to be more ornamental than useful, for the supply of coals is exceedingly limited and they are fed into the grate in homeopathic doses. An Australian lady--who with her husband, we learn later, is on a honeymoon tour of Scotland--is even more sensitive to the chill than ourselves and ends the matter by dumping the contents of the scuttle on the fire and, like Oliver Twist, calling for more. Oliver's request possibly did not create greater consternation among his superiors than this demand dismayed our hostess, for coals might well be sold by troy instead of avoirdupois in Tongue. The supply must come by coast steamer from the English mines and the frequent handling and limited demand send the price skyward. The Australian lady's energetic act insures that the room will be habitable for the rest of the day--though it is easy to see that some of the natives think it heated to suffocation. At dinner our host, a hale, full-bearded Scotchman, sits at the head of the table and carves for his guests in truly patriarchal style. The meal is a satisfying one, well-cooked and served; the linen is snowy white and the silver carefully polished. We find the hotel just as satisfactory throughout; the rooms are clean and well-ordered and the whole place has a homelike air. It is evidently a haven for fishermen during the summer season and these probably constitute the greater number of guests. The entrance hall is garnished with many trophies of rod and gun and, altogether, we may count Tongue Inn a unique and pleasant lodge in a lonely land. The following day--it is our own national holiday--we strike southward through the Sutherland moors. The country is bleak and unattractive, though the road proves better than we expected. For several miles it closely follows the sedgy shores of Loch Loyal, a clear, shimmering sheet of water a mile in width, set in a depression of the moorland hills. The Sutherland lochs have little in their surroundings to please the eye; their greatest charm is in the relief their bright, pellucid waters afford from the monotony of the brown moors. There are many of these lakes, ranging in size from little tarns to Loch Shin--some seventy miles in length. We pass several in course of our morning's run, and cross many clear, dashing streams, but there is little else to attract attention in the forty miles to Bonar Bridge. Lairg is the only village on the way, a group of cottages clustered about an immense hotel which is one of the noted Scotch resorts for fishermen. It is situated at the southern extremity of Loch Shin, where, strange to say, fishing is free--not a common state of affairs with the Scotch lochs. It is famous for its trout and salmon, though it is decidedly lacking in picturesqueness, one writer describing it as "little better than a huge ditch." [Illustration: GLEN AFFRICK, NEAR INVERNESS From original painting by the late John MacWhirter, R. A.] From Bonar Bridge southward we retrace the broad, level road that we followed out of Inverness, and from the opposite direction the green and thriving countryside presents quite a new aspect. We have often remarked that it is seldom a hardship to retrace our way over a road through an interesting country. The different viewpoint is sure to reveal beauties that we have missed before. One cannot complain that the country here lacks attractions--there are many famous excursions to the lochs and glens and one of the most delightful is the ten-mile drive to Glen Affrick, which may be taken from Beauly. Mr. MacWhirter's picture shows a view of the dashing river--and I recall that the great artist, when showing me the original, remarked that if one were asked to guess, he would hardly locate Glen Affrick in the Scotch Highlands, so strongly suggestive of the Dark Continent is the name. XII DOWN THE GREAT GLEN That we had once--under the guidance of that patron saint of tourists, Thos. Cook--made the regulation boat trip down the Caledonian Lakes and Canal, in no wise lessens our eagerness to explore the Great Glen by motor car. On a previous occasion we reluctantly gave up the run from Inverness to Oban because of stories of inconvenient and even dangerous ferries; but recent information from the Royal Automobile Club shows that while only a few attempt the journey, it is entirely practicable. The English motorist, accustomed to perfect roads and adequate ferry service, is likely to magnify deviations from the best conditions, which would be scarcely remarked upon by his American brother, to whom good highways are the exception rather than the rule. And so it chanced that the Great Glen acquired a rather unsavory reputation and only a few Americans or an occasional venturesome native undertook the journey. At the present time, I understand, the road and service have been so improved that no one need hesitate in essaying this delightful trip. [Illustration: THE GREAT GLEN, SUNSET From original painting by Breanski] Mr. George Eyre-Todd, a Scottish author, in a recently published book gives some descriptive and historical information concerning the country we are about to explore: "Glen More na h' Albyn, the Great Glen of Scotland, stretching from the Moray Firth southwestward to the Sound of Mull, cuts the Scottish Highlands in two. For grandeur and variety of scenery--mountain and glen, torrent and waterfall, inland lake and arm of the sea--it far surpasses the Rhine; and though the German river, with its castled crags and clustering mountain-towns, has been enriched by the thronged story of many centuries, its interest even in that respect is fully matched by the legends, superstitions and wild clan memories of this great lake valley of the north. For him who has the key to the interests of the region the long day's sail from Inverness to Oban unrolls a panorama of unbroken charm. "The Caledonian Canal, which links the lakes of this great glen, was a mighty engineering feat in its day. First surveyed by James Watt in 1773, at the instance of the trustees of the forfeited estates, and finally planned by Telford in 1804, it was begun by Government for strategic purposes during the Napoleonic wars, and when finally opened in 1847 had cost no more than a million and a quarter sterling. It has a uniform depth of eighteen feet, and ships of thirty-eight feet beam and a thousand tons burden can sail through it from one side of Scotland to the other. In these peaceful times, however, the canal is very little used. In autumn and spring the brown sails of fishing-boats pass through in flights, and twice a day in summer the palace-steamers of David Macbrayne sweep by between the hills. But for the rest of the time the waters lap the lonely shores, the grey heron feeds at the burn mouths, and sunshine and rain come and go along the great mountainsides, exactly as they did in the days of Culloden or Inverlochy. "The canal at first has the country of Clan Mackintosh, of which Inverness may be considered the capital, on its left. At the same time, down to Fort Augustus, it has the Lovat country on the right. Glengarry, farther down, was the headquarters of the Macdonnells. South of that lies the Cameron country, Lochaber and Lochiel. And below Fort William stretches the Macdonald country. All these clans, in the '45, were disaffected to Government, and followed the rising of Prince Charles Edward." Inverness, with her bracing air and clear river, her beautiful island park, well-stocked shops and wealth of romantic associations, will always tempt one to linger, come as often as he may. It is our fourth stop in the pleasant northern capital; we have tried the principal hotels and we remember the Alexandra most favorably--though one traveler's experiences may not be of great value in such a matter. Individual tastes differ and a year or two may work a great change in an inn for better or worse. Within a dozen miles of Inverness one may find many historic spots. Few will overlook Culloden Moor, with its melancholy cairn and its memories of the final extinguishment of the aspirations of the Stuart line. Not less interesting in a different way is Cawdor Castle, the grim thirteenth-century pile linked to deathless fame in Shakespeare's "Macbeth." There are drives galore to glens and resorts and you will not be permitted to forget the cemetery, in which every citizen of the town seems to take a lugubrious pride. Indeed, it is one of the most beautiful burial grounds in the Kingdom. Crowning a great hill which commands far-reaching views of valley and sea, it lacks nothing that art and loving care can lavish upon it. But Inverness, with all her charm, must not detain us longer. Our journey, following the course of the lakes to Oban, begins in the early morning; the distance is only one hundred and twenty miles, but they tell us we are sure to experience considerable delay at the ferries. It is a dull, misty morning and the drifting fog half hides the rippling river which we follow some miles out of Inverness. By the time we reach the shores of Loch Ness, the sunlight begins to struggle through the mist which has enveloped everything and, to our delight, there is every promise of a glorious day. The lake averages a mile in width and for its entire length of nearly twenty-five miles is never more than a few score yards from the road. It is an undulating and sinuous road and one of the most dangerous in the Kingdom for reckless drivers. Here it turns a sharp, hidden corner; there it drops suddenly down a short, steep declivity into a dark little glade; at times it winds through trees that press too closely to allow vehicles to pass, and again it follows the edge of an abrupt cliff. Such a road cannot be traversed too carefully, but, fortunately, to anyone with an eye for the beauties of nature, there is no incentive to speed. Every mile of the lake presents new aspects--a dark, dull mirror or a glistening sheet of silver, and again a smiling expanse of blue, mottled with reflections of fleecy white clouds. In one place it shows a strange effect of alternating bars of light and shade sweeping from shore to shore, a phenomenon which we are quite unable to understand. About midway an old castle rises above the dark waters which reflect it with all the fidelity of a mirror, for at this point the plummet shows a depth of seven hundred feet. For six hundred years Castle Urquhart has frowned above the lake and about it has gathered a long history of romantic sieges and defenses, fading away into myth and legend. Its sullen picturesqueness furnished a theme for the brush of Sir John Millais, who was a frequent visitor to the Great Glen and an ardent admirer of its scenery. [Illustration: URQUHART CASTLE, LOCH NESS] As we pursue the lakeside road, we find ourselves contrasting our former trip by steamer, and we agree that the motor gives the best realization of the beauties of landscape and loch. There are points of vantage along the shore which afford views far surpassing any to be had from the dead level of the steamer deck; the endless variations of light and color playing over the still surface we did not see from the boat. There may be much of fancy in this; everything to the motor enthusiast seems finer and more enchanting when viewed from that queen of the road--the open car. The old chroniclers have it that St. Columba traversed the Great Glen in 565 A. D. and they declare that he beached his boat near Kilchimien on Loch Ness after having by his preaching and miracles converted the Pictish kings. This is the first record of the introduction of Christianity into the northern Highlands. Fort Augustus marks the southern extremity of Loch Ness and here are the great buildings of St. Benedict's Abbey and School, a famous Catholic college patronized by the sons of the gentry and nobility of that faith. The fort was built by the English a couple of centuries ago as a base of offense against the adherents of the Stuarts in the vicinity, and we may be sure that the fierce Highlanders did not permit the garrison to suffer from inactivity. At this point the road swings across the canal and follows the western shores of Loch Oich and Loch Lochy. We miss the trees which border Loch Ness; here we pass at the foot of high, barren hills over which, to the southward, rises Ben Nevis, the loftiest of Scotch mountains. There is not much of interest until we reach the vicinity of Fort William at the northern end of Loch Linnhe. As we approach the town we catch glimpses of the ivy-clad ruin of Inverlochy, one of the most ancient and romantic of northern Scottish castles. A portion of the structure is supposed to antedate the eighth century and it was long the residence of a line of Pictish kings--kings, indeed, even though their subjects were but a handful of ill-clad marauders. In any event, one of them, King Achaius, was of enough importance to negotiate a treaty with ambassadors sent by Charlemagne. It would be a long story to tell of the sieges and sallies, of the fierce combats and dark tragedies that took place within and about the walls of Inverlochy Castle; for in all its thousand years it saw little of peace or quiet until after the fight at Culloden; and such a story would accord well with the air of grim mystery that seems to hover over the sullen old ruin to-day. Standing on the verge of the still water, its massive round towers outlined against the rocky sides of Ben Nevis, whose snow-flecked summit looms high over it, it seems the very ideal of the home of chivalry, rude and barbarous though it may have been. Fort William, with its enormous hotels, shows the usual characteristics of a Scottish resort town--but the attractions which bring guests to fill such hotels are not apparent to us. More likely these are in the neighborhood rather than in the town itself. We pause here in an endeavor to get some authentic information concerning the ferry at Ballachulish, for our doubts have been considerably aroused about it. The office of the steamship company of David Macbrayne, who controls nearly all the coastwise shipping in North Scotland, seems a likely place and thither we hie ourselves. The canny Scot in charge assures us that the ferry is exceedingly dangerous--that motors are transferred on a row-boat and some day there will be a dreadful accident; he even darkly hints that something of the sort has already occurred. The safe and sane thing to do is to place our car aboard the next canal steamer, which will land us in Oban in the course of five or six hours--and it will cost us only three pounds plus transportation for ourselves. Shall he book us and our car for the boat? His eagerness to close the deal arouses our suspicion--besides, we have done the Caledonian trip by boat before and are not at all partial to the proposed plan. It occurs to us that the proprietor of a nearby garage ought to be as well informed on this matter and more disinterested than Mr. Macbrayne's obsequious representative. "Cars go that way every little while," he says. "Not especially dangerous--never had an accident that I know of." Thus encouraged, we soon cover the dozen miles to the ferry. Our fine weather has vanished and a drizzling rain is falling at intervals. At the ferry we learn that the crossing can be made only at high tide, which means four hours' wait amidst anything but pleasant surroundings. There are two vehicles ahead of us--a motor and a small covered wagon about which two miserably dirty and ragged little youngsters play, regardless of the steady rain. A dejected man and a spiritless woman accompany the wagon and soon respond to our friendly advances. They are selling linoleum made in Aberfeldy--traveling about the country in the wagon, stopping at cottages wherever a bit of their commodity is likely to be in demand. It is a pitiful story of poverty and privation, of days without sales enough to provide food, and of cold, wet nights by the roadside. If the end of the trip finds them even they are well content, but more often they are in debt to the makers of the linoleum. There are thousands of others, they tell us, gaining a precarious living, like themselves, though of course not all selling the same commodity. When they see our annoyance at the delay, they offer to yield us their turn in crossing, which we gladly accept, for it affords an excuse for a gratuity, which we feel our chance acquaintances sorely need. In the meantime the tide is flowing swiftly through the narrow strait which connects Loch Leven with the wide estuary of Loch Linnhe and our boat approaches from the opposite side. Four men are rowing vigorously and as the small craft grates alongside the slippery granite pier, one would never choose it as a fit transport for a heavy motor. It is about twenty feet in length by ten or a dozen wide; two stout planks are placed crosswise and two more form a runway from the sloping landing, and, altogether, the outlook is rather discouraging to anyone so prejudiced in favor of the terra firma as ourselves. We are half tempted to retrace our journey to Fort William, but fortunately, the two young men who have preceded us in a large runabout furnish an object lesson that proves the trick not nearly so difficult as it looks. We follow suit in our turn and our car, by a little careful jockeying, is soon nicely balanced on the planks in the center of the boat. We express surprise that the added weight seems scarcely to affect the displacement of the craft. "O, ay,--she'll carry twelve ton," says one of the men who overhears us. So the two tons of the car is far from the limit, after all. It is a strong pull, well out of the direct line in crossing, for the tide is running like a mill-race and would sweep us many furlongs down the shore were not due allowance made by the rowers. The landing is easier than the embarking, and we are soon away at something more than the lawful pace for Benderloch Station, where another crossing must be made. [Illustration: THE MACDONALD MONUMENT, GLENCOE] We might have wished to take the right-hand road to Glencoe, only a few miles from Ballachulish--mournful Glencoe, with its memories of one of the darkest deeds that stain the none too spotless page of Scottish history. For here the bloody Cumberland, acting upon explicit orders from the English throne, sent a detachment of soldiers under the guise of friends seeking the hospitality of Clan Macdonald, which received them with open arms. The captain of the troop was an uncle of the young chieftain's wife, which served still farther to win the utmost confidence of the unsuspecting clansmen. For two weeks the guests awaited fit opportunity for their dastardly crime, when they murdered their host in the very act of providing for their entertainment and dealt death to all his clan and kin, regardless of age or sex. A few escaped to the hills, only to perish miserably from the rigors of the Scottish midwinter. Such is the sad tale of Glencoe, where to-day a tall granite shaft commemorates the victims of the treacherous deed. A hundred tales might be told of the Great Glen--true tales--did our space permit. Here Bonnie Prince Charlie marshalled his forces and made his last stand in his struggle for the throne of his fathers. In 1745, at Gairlochy, near Fort William, the royal adventurer organized the nucleus of the army which was to capture Edinburgh and throw all the Kingdom into consternation by its incursion into England. Here he planned a battle with General Cope, who avoided the encounter, a move which gave great impetus to the insurrection. Charles was in high feather and passed a night in revelry at Invergarry Castle with the Highland chieftains, who already imagined their leader on the highway to the British throne. Less than a year later the prince again sought Invergarry in his flight from Culloden's fatal field, but he found the once hospitable home of the chief of Glengarry empty and dismantled and so surrounded by enemies that, weary and despairing as he was, he still must hasten on. Two weeks later, after a score of hairbreadth escapes, the royal fugitive left Scotland--as it proved, forever. We did not at the time reflect very deeply on these bits of historic lore; the rain was falling and the winding, slippery road required close attention. Much of the scenery was lost to us, but the gloomy evening was not without its charm. The lake gleamed fitfully through the drifting mists and the brown hills were draped with wavering cloud curtains. Right behind us rose the mighty form of Ben Nevis, on whose summit flecks of snow still lingered. The wildness of the country was accentuated by the forbidding aspect of the weather, but we regretted it the less since our former trip had been under perfect conditions. At Benderloch Station we found a railway motor van and flat car awaiting us, in response to our telephone message from Ballachulish. Our motor was speedily loaded on the car, while we occupied seats in the van, an arrangement provided for motorists by the obliging railway officials. All this special service costs only fifteen or twenty shillings; but no doubt the railroad people established the rate to compete with the ferry across Loch Creran Inlet. They set us down safe and sound on the other side of the estuary, and we soon covered the few remaining miles to Oban, where we needed no one to direct us to the Station Hotel, for we learned on a former visit that it is one of the best-ordered inns in the North Country. XIII ALONG THE WEST COAST The day following our arrival in Oban dawns clear and bright with that indescribable freshness that follows summer rain in the Highlands. We find ourselves loath to leave the pleasant little town, despite the fact that two former visits have somewhat detracted from the novelty of the surroundings. We could never weary of the quiet, land-locked harbor, with its shimmering white sails and ranges of green and purple hills beyond, or of the ivy-clad ruin of Dunolly that overhangs the waters when looking up the bay. The town ascends the steep hill in terraces and a climb to the summit is well rewarded by the splendid view. One also sees at close range the monstrous circular tower which dwarfs everything else in Oban and which one at first imagines must have some great historic significance. But the surmise that it was the work of ancient Romans in an effort to duplicate the Coliseum is dashed when we learn that Oban is scarcely a hundred years old and that "McCaig's Folly" was built after the foundation of the town. An eccentric native conceived the idea of erecting this strange structure "to give employment to his fellow-townsmen" and dissipated a good-sized fortune in the colossal gray-stone pile. Its enormous proportions can only be realized when one stands within the walls, which form an exact circle possibly two hundred feet in diameter and range from fifty to seventy-five feet in height. [Illustration: "McCAIG'S FOLLY," OBAN] While the town itself is modern, the immediate vicinity of Oban does not lack for ancient landmarks. Dunstaffnage, with its traditions of Pictish kings, is antedated by few Scottish castles and Dunolly is one of the most picturesque. Kilchurn and Duarte, though farther away, are easily accessible, and the former, on the tiny islet in Loch Awe, is one of the most beautiful of Scottish ruins. There are few drives that afford greater scenic charm than the circular trip past Loch Feochan and Loch Melfort, returning by Loch Awe, and there is no steamer trip in the Kingdom that excels in glorious scenery and historic interest the eighty-mile excursion to Staffa and Iona. With such attractions it is not strange that Oban is thronged with tourists during the short summer season. But we have "done" nearly everything in our two previous visits and have little excuse to linger. The only road out of the town, except the one by which we came, drops southward through a country we have not yet explored. Brown and barren hills greet us at first, relieved here and there by the glitter of tiny lakes and by green dales with flocks of grazing sheep. A touch of brilliant color is given to the landscape by the great beds of blue and yellow flags, or fleur-de-lis, which cover the marshy spots along the road. For several miles we skirt the shores of Loch Feochan, a tidal lake whose blue-green waters are at their height, making a beautiful picture with the purple hills as a background. The tiny village of Kilninver stands at the inlet of the loch and here the road re-enters the hills; there is a long steady climb up a steep grade ere the summit is reached and in places the narrow road skirts a sharp declivity, sloping away hundreds of feet to the valley beneath. We fortunately escape an unpleasant adventure here; just at the summit we find four men pushing an old-fashioned, high-wheeled car to the top of the grade. It lost its driving-chain, they tell us, and as the brake failed to work, narrowly missed dashing down the hill. Had it gone a rod farther such a catastrophe would surely have occurred; not very pleasant for us to contemplate, since at few places is there more than enough room to pass a vehicle driven with care, let alone one running amuck! The descent is not so abrupt and a long steady coast brings us to the Pass of Melfort, where a swift mountain stream dashes between towering cliffs. We run alongside until we again emerge on the sea-shore, following the rugged coast of Loch Melfort for some miles. The road is rough in places and passes a sparsely populated country with here and there an isolated village, usually harsh and treeless. Kilmartin is the exception--a rather cozy-looking hamlet with a huge old church surrounded by fine trees. In Kilmartin Glen, near by, are numerous prehistoric sculptured stones often visited by antiquarians. Thence to Loch Gilphead the road is first-class; it crosses over the Crinan Canal, through which steamers bound for Oban and Glasgow pass daily. Loch Gilphead is a straggling fishing-town, its docks littered with nets and the harbor crowded with small craft; its inn does not tempt us to pause, though luncheon hour is well past. For twenty miles or more we course along the wooded shores of Loch Fyne, another of the long narrow inlets piercing the west Scottish coast. It is a beautiful run; trees overarch the road and partly conceal the gleaming lake, though at intervals we come upon the shore with an unobstructed view of the rugged hills of the opposite side. Near the head of the lake is Inverary, the pleasant little capital of Argyleshire and as cleanly and well-ordered a village as one will find in Scotland. The Argyle Arms, seemingly much out of proportion to the village, proves a delightful place for our belated luncheon. No doubt the inn is necessary to accommodate the retinues of the distinguished visitors at Inverary Castle, which frequently include members of the royal family, with which the present duke is connected by marriage. The modern castle stands on an eminence overlooking town and loch and a smooth lawn studded with splendid trees slopes to the road. The design is Gothic in style, four-square, with pointed round towers at each corner, and the interior is well in keeping with the magnificence of the outside. The road we follow in leaving Inverary closely hugs the shores of Loch Fyne for some miles and but a short way out of the town passes beneath the ruin of Dunderawe Castle. Rounding the head of the loch, always keeping near the shore, we strike eastward through the range of giant hills that lie between Loch Fyne and Loch Lomond. It is a barren stretch of country; the road is rough and stone-strewn, with many trying grades--dangerous in places; long strenuous climbs heat the motor and interminable winding descents burn the brakes. There is little to relieve the monotony of the wild moorlands save a mountain stream dashing far below the road or a tiny lake set in a hollow of the hills, but never a village or seldom an isolated cottage for miles. Near the summit is a rude seat with the inscription, "Rest and be thankful," erected long ago for the benefit of travelers who crossed the hills on foot. The poet Wordsworth made this journey and described it in one of his sonnets as "Doubling and doubling with laborious walk," ending in a grateful allusion to the resting place. We are glad to see the waters of Loch Lomond, glinting with the gold of the sunset, flash through the trees, for we know that the lake-shore road is good and one of the most beautiful in Scotland. Miles and miles it follows the edge of the island-dotted loch, which broadens rapidly as we course southward. The waters darken to a steel-blue mirror, but the hills beyond are still touched with the last rays of the sun--a glorious scene, not without the element of romance which adds to the pleasure one so often experiences when contemplating Old Scotia's landscapes. It is only by grace of the long twilight that we are able to reach Glasgow by lamp-lighting time. Measured in miles, the day's run was not extraordinary, but much of the road was pretty strenuous and tire trouble has been above normal, so that the comfortable hotel of the metropolis does not come amiss. After a perfunctory round in Glasgow, our thoughts turn toward Ayr; even though we have already made two pilgrimages to Burnsland, the spell is unbroken and still would be though our two visits were two score. We will not follow the Kilmarnock route again, but for the sake of variety will go by Barrhead and Irvine on the sea. It proves a singularly uninteresting road; Barrhead is mean and squalid, the small villages are unattractive, and Irvine is a bleak, coal-shipping town. Irvine would be wholly commonplace had not the poet James Montgomery honored it by making it his birthplace and had not Bobby Burns struggled nearly a year within its confines to earn a livelihood as a flax-dresser. The ill luck that befell nearly all the poet's business ventures pursued him here, for his shop burned to the ground and Irvine lost her now distinguished citizen--though she little knew it then, for Burns was only twenty-two. Perhaps it was a fortunate fire, after all, for had he prospered he might have become more of a business man than poet, and the world be infinitely poorer by the exchange. A colossal statue recently erected commemorates his connection with Irvine and again reminds one how Burns overshadows everything else in the Ayr country. The Station Hotel affords such a convenient and satisfactory stopping-place that we cut short our day's run after completing the forty miles from Glasgow. There is really not much in the town itself to detain the tourist; we wander down the main street and cross the "Twa Brigs;" from the beach we admire the broad bay and the bold rocky "Heads of Ayr" to the south. In the distance are the dim outlines of the Emerald Isle, seen only on the clearest days, and nearer at hand the Isles of Bute and Arran. The town is quite modern; there is considerable manufacturing and ship-building and many of the landmarks of the time of Burns have been obliterated. Fortunate indeed is it that the shrines at Alloway have not shared the same fate--a third visit to these simple memorials may seem superfluous, but we must confess to a longing to see them all again. The birthplace, Kirk Alloway, the monument, the Brig o' Doon and the museum, with its priceless relics of the poet--all have a perennial interest for the admirer of Burns and Scotland. The bare simple room where the poet was born has a wealth of sentiment that attaches to few such places, and I cannot forbear quoting Mr. George Eyre-Todd's little flight of fancy inspired by this same primitive apartment: "One can try," he writes, "to imagine the scene here on the afternoon of that wild winter day when 'a blast o' Januar' win'' was to blow 'Hansel in on Robin.' There would be the goodwife's spinning-wheel set back for the nonce in a dark corner; the leglins, or milking-stools--on which the bright-eyed boy was to sit a few years later--pushed under the deal table; the wooden platters and bowls from which the household ate, arranged in the wall rack, and the few delf dishes appearing in the half-open aumrie or cupboard; while from the rafters overhead hung hanks of yarn of the goodwife's spinning, a braxie ham, perhaps, and the leathern parts of the horses' harness. Then, for the actors in the humble scene, there was a shadowy figure and a faint voice in the deep-set corner bed; the inevitable 'neighbour-woman' setting matters to rights about the wide fireplace in the open chimney; and William Burness himself, whip in hand, hurriedly getting into his heavy riding-coat to face the blast outside. "A glance at the face of the great eight-day clock, a whispered word and a moment's pause as he bends within the shadow of the bed, while the neighbour turns industriously to the fire, and then, with a pale face and some wildness in the eyes, the husband makes off, over the uneven floor of flags, and the door closes after him. In a minute or two the tramp of the hoofs of his galloping mare dies away in the distance, and the women are left, waiting. "Behind him as he turned from his door on that wild day, the farmer would hear the Doon thundering down its glen, and the storm roaring through the woods about the ruin of Alloway Kirk, which his son's wild fancy was afterwards to make the scene of such unearthly revels. The old road to Ayr was narrower and more irregular, between its high hedges, than the present one; and every step of the way had some countryside memory belonging to it. Behind, by its well, where the road rose from the steep river-bank among the trees, stood the thorn 'where Mungo's mither hanged hersel'.' In the park of Cambusdoon an ash tree still marks the cairn 'where hunters fand the murdered bairn.' Farther on, in a cottage garden close by the road, is still to be seen that 'meikle stane, where drucken Chairlie brak's neck bane.' And on the far side of the Rozelle wood, a hundred yards to the left of the present road, was 'the ford where in the snaw the chapman smoor'd.' "As William Burness reached the stream here a singular incident befell him. On the farther side, when he had crossed, he found an old woman sitting. The crone asked him to turn back and carry her over the river, which was much swollen by the rains. This, though he was in anxious haste, he paused and did, and then, dashing a third time through the torrent, sped off on his errand to Ayr. An hour later, on returning to his cottage with the desired attendant, he found to his surprise the gipsy crone seated by his own fireside. She remained in the house till the child was born, and then, it is said, taking the infant in her arms, uttered the prophecy which Burns has turned in his well-known lines: 'He'll ha'e misfortunes great and sma', But aye a heart abune them a', He'll be a credit till us a'; We'll a' be proud o' Robin.' "Shortly afterwards, as if to begin the fulfillment of the carline's prophecy, the storm, rising higher and higher, at length blew down a gable of the dwelling. No one was hurt, however, and the broken gable of a clay 'bigging' was not a thing beyond repair. "Such were the circumstances and such was the scene of the birth of the great peasant-poet. Much change, no doubt, has taken place in the appearance both of the cottage and of the countryside since the twenty-fifth of January in the year 1759; but after all it is the same countryside, and the cottage is on the identical spot. Within these walls one pictures the poet in his childish years: "There, lonely by the ingle-cheek He sat, and eyed the spueing reek That filled wi' hoast-provoking smeek The auld clay biggin', And heard the restless rattons squeak Aboot the riggin'." And in this rude apartment the immortal scene of "The Cotter's Saturday Night" was enacted--and here it occurred to us to ask Mr. Dobson to give us his conception of the family group at worship--how well he has succeeded the accompanying picture shows. We will be pardoned, I am sure, the repetition of the oft-quoted lines in connection with the artist's graphic representation of a scene already familiar the world over. "The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face, They, round the ingle, form a circle wide; The sire turns o'er, with patriarchal grace, The big ha' Bible, ance his father's pride; His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside, His lyart haffets wearing thin and bare; Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide, He wales a portion with judicious care, And, 'Let us worship God!' he says, with solemn air." In this same ingle nook it may be that Burns spent an occasional evening with Highland Mary--for Mary Campbell was for a short time employed as governess in the vicinity, and it is not unlikely that she was a frequent guest at the Burns cottage--a probability that has supplied Mr. Dobson with another of his happiest themes. Associations such as these are more than the scant array of facts given in the guide-books concerning the old cottage, and they give to the bare walls and rude furnishings an atmosphere of romance that no familiarity can dispel. From Alloway our road quickly takes us to the seashore, which we are to follow for many miles. It is a glorious day, fresh and invigorating, the sky tranquil and clear, and the sea mottled with dun and purple mists which are rapidly breaking away and revealing a wide expanse of gently undulating water, beyond which, in the far distance, the stern outlines of Arran and Kintyre gradually emerge. [Illustration: "THE COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT" From original painting by H. J. Dobson, R. S. W.] It is a delightful run along the coast, which is rich in associations and storied ruins. Athwart our first glimpse of the ocean stands the dilapidated bulk of Dunure Castle, an ancient stronghold of the Kennedys, who have stood at the head of the Ayrshire aristocracy since 1466. Indeed, an old-time rhymester declared: "'Twixt Wigton and the town of Ayr, Port-Patrick and the Cruives of Cree, No man may think for to bide there, Unless he court Saint Kennedie." But to-day the traditions of the blue-blooded aristocrats of Ayrshire are superseded by the fame of the peasant-poet and the simple cottage at Alloway outranks all the castles of the Kennedys. We are again reminded of Burns at Kirkoswald, a tiny village a few miles farther on the road; here he spent his seventeenth summer and in the churchyard are the graves of the originals of Tam o' Shanter and Souter Johnnie. We pass in sight of Culzean Castle, a turreted and battlemented pile, standing on the verge of a mighty basaltic cliff beneath which the sea chafes incessantly. It is the seat of the Marquis of Ailsa--one of the Kennedys--built about a century ago, and the curious may visit it on Wednesdays. What Culzean lacks in antiquity is fully supplied by ruinous Turnberry, a scant five miles southward, associated as it is with the name of King Robert Bruce, who may possibly have been born within its walls. Here it was that Bruce, in response to what he thought a prearranged signal fire, made his crossing with a few followers from Arran to attempt the deliverance of his country. The tradition is that the fire was of supernatural origin and that it may still be seen from the shores of Arran on the anniversary of the eventful night. This incident is introduced by Scott into "The Lord of the Isles:" "Now ask you whence that wondrous light, Whose fairy glow beguiled their sight?-- It ne'er was known--yet gray-hair'd eld A superstitious credence held, That never did a mortal hand Wake its broad glare on Carrick strand; Nay, and that on the self-same night When Bruce cross'd o'er, still gleamed the light. Yearly it gleams o'er mount and moor, And glittering wave and crimson'd shore-- But whether beam celestial, lent By Heaven to aid the King's descent, Or fire hell-kindled from beneath, To lure him to defeat and death, Or were but some meteor strange, Of such as oft through midnight range, Startling the traveller late and lone, I know not--and it ne'er was known." Turnberry is very ruinous now and must have been rude and comfortless at its best--another reminder that the peasants of to-day are better housed and have more comforts and conveniences than kings and nobles enjoyed in the romantic times we are wont to dream about. Girvan is the first town of any size which we encounter on leaving Ayr, a quiet trading-place close on the shore. Just opposite is Ailsa Craig, a peculiar rocky island twelve miles away, though it looks much nearer. It seems very like Bass Rock, near Tantallon Castle on the east coast, though really it is higher and vaster, for it rises more than a thousand feet above the sea. It is the home of innumerable sea-birds which wheel in whimpering, screaming myriads about it. A solitary ruin indicates that it was once a human abode, though no authentic record remains concerning it. Southward from Girvan we traverse one of the most picturesque roads in all Scotland. It winds along the sea, which chafes upon huge boulders that at some remote period have tumbled from the stupendous overhanging cliffs. Among the scattered rocks are patches of shell-strewn sand on which the surf falls in silvery cascades as the tide comes rolling landward. Even on this almost windless day the scene is an impressive one and we can only imagine the stern grandeur of a storm hurling the waves against the mighty rocks which dot the coast-line everywhere. Soon the road begins to ascend and rises in sweeping curves to Bennane Head, a bold promontory commanding a wide prospect of the wild shore and sea, with the coast of Ireland some forty miles away--half hidden in the purple haze of distance. It is an inspiring view and one which we contemplate at our leisure--thanks to the motor car, which takes us to such points of vantage and patiently awaits our pleasure--different indeed from the transitory flash from the window of a railway car! A long downward glide takes us into the village of Ballantrae, whose rock-bound harbor is full of fishing-boats. Here the road turns inland some miles and passes through a rich agricultural section. In places apparently the whole population--men, women and children--are employed in digging potatoes, of which there is an enormous yield. Hay harvest is also in progress, often by primitive methods, though in the larger fields modern machinery is used. [Illustration: THE FALLEN GIANT--A HIGHLAND STUDY From original painting by the late John MacWhirter, R. A.] The road brings us again to the coast and a half dozen miles along the shore of Loch Ryan lands us in the streets of Stranraer. It is a modern-looking town and we stop at the King's Arms for luncheon, which proves very satisfactory. There is a daily service of well-appointed steamers from Stranraer to Larne, a distance of some thirty miles, and much the shortest route to Ireland. The peninsula on which Stranraer and Port Patrick are situated is reputed to have the mildest and most salubrious climate in Scotland and the latter place is gaining fame as a resort. There are many great country estates in the vicinity, notably Lochinch, the estate of the Earl of Stair. Near this is Castle Kennedy, which was burned in 1715, but the ruin is still of vast extent, with famous pleasure grounds surrounding it. The motorist may well employ a day in this locality and will be comfortable enough at Stranraer. There is no nobler highway in Scotland than the broad, level and finely engineered road from Stranraer through Castle Douglas to Dumfries. It passes through as beautiful and prosperous a country as we have seen anywhere--and we have seen much of Scotland, too. At Glenluce we make a short detour--though it proves hardly worth while--to see the mere fragment of the old abbey which the neighboring vicar is using as a chicken-roost. It is utterly neglected and we are free to climb over the mouldering walls, but there is no one to pilot us about and tell us the story of the abbey in its prosperous days. And it did have prosperous days, for it was once of great extent and its gardens and orchards were reputed one of the sights of Scotland. Here James IV. and his queen came on one of their journeys some four centuries ago and the record of his donation of four shillings to the gardener still stands--a pretty slim royal tip, it seems to us now. Newton-Stewart is beautifully situated on the River Cree, whose banks we follow to Wigtown Bay, along which the broad white road sweeps in graceful curves. Many country houses crown the green, undulating hills and we catch occasional glimpses of them through the trees--for the parks are all well wooded. The excellent road through Gatehouse and Castle Douglas we cover so rapidly that the sun is still high when we reach Maxwelton. Dumfries, just across the River Nith, is our objective and it occurs to us that there is still time to correct a mistake we made on a previous tour--our failure to see Sweetheart Abbey. It is near the village of New Abbey some ten miles down the river, but on arriving we learn that the abbey is not shown after six o'clock. A visit to the custodian's home, however, secures the key and we have sole possession of the ruin during the quiet twilight hour. [Illustration: GLENLUCE ABBEY] There are many abbey ruins in Scotland--and we have seen the most famous--but it may be the hour of our visit, quite as much as the strange story of Sweetheart, that leaves it with the rosiest memory of them all. In its one-time importance as well as in the beauty of its scattered remnants, it is quite the peer of any of its rivals, but none of these have such an atmosphere of romantic history. For Sweetheart stands forever as a monument of love and constancy, as intimated in its very name. John Baliol of Barnard Castle, Yorkshire, died in 1269, leaving his widow, Countess Devorgilla, to mourn his loss. And truly she did mourn it. There are many monuments to her sorrow--Baliol College, Oxford, Dundrennan Abbey and New Abbey--or Sweetheart, as it is now known. Both of the latter are in Galloway, for Devorgilla was the daughter of the Lord of Galloway and a native of the province. Upon the death of her only sister she became sole heiress to the vast estates of her father and when she became Baliol's widow she was easily the richest subject in all Britain. She survived her husband for twenty-one years, during which time she was engaged principally in benevolent work, visiting many parts of the country. Her husband's heart, embalmed and encased in a silver casket, she constantly carried with her and at her death in 1289 it was entombed upon her breast. She was buried in New Abbey, which she built as a memorial to Baliol and a resting place for her own body. When the abbey was dismantled her tomb was despoiled--but her epitaph still exists in one of the old chronicles: "In Devorgil a sybil sage doth dye as Mary contemplative, as Martha pious. To her, O deign, high King, rest to impart Whom this stone covers, with her husband's heart." Such is the story of the beautiful old abbey, whose roofless and windowless walls rise before us, the harsh outlines hidden by the drooping ivy and softened by the fading light. It is more ruinous and fragmentary than Melrose or Jedburgh, but enough remains to show its pristine artistic beauty and vast extent. The sculptures and other delicate architectural touches were doubtless due to workmen sent by the Vatican, since the Scotch had hardly attained such a degree of skill in 1270. It is wrought in red sandstone, which lent itself peculiarly well to the art of the carver and which, considering its fragile nature, has wonderfully withstood the ravages of time and weather. An extensive restoration is in progress which will arrest further decay and insure that the fine old ruin will continue to delight the visitor for years to come. [Illustration: SWEETHEART ABBEY] There is no one to point out refectory and chapel and other haunts of the ancient monks--but it is just as well. We know Sweetheart's story and that is enough, in the silence and solemnity of the gathering twilight, to make the hour we linger an enchanting one. And yet the feeling of sadness predominates, as we move softly about over the thick carpet of green sward--sadness that this splendid memorial to a life of sacrifice and good works should have fallen into such decay that the very grave of the benevolent foundress should be effaced! The spell is broken when one of our party reminds us that it is growing late; that we may miss the dinner hour at our hotel, and we regretfully bid farewell to Sweetheart Abbey. We are glad that the royal burgh of Dumfries is at the end of the day's journey--an unusually long one for us--for we know that its Station Inn is one of the most comfortable in Scotland. XIV ODD CORNERS OF LAKELAND Who could ever weary of English Lakeland? Who, though he had made a score of pilgrimages thither, could not find new beauties in this enchanted region? And so in our southward run we make a detour from Carlisle to Keswick by the way of Wigton, a new road to us, through a green and pleasant country. We soon find ourselves among the hills and vales of the ill-defined region which common consent designates as the Lake District. Rounding the slopes of Skiddaw--for we have a rather indirect route--we come upon a vantage point which affords a glorious view of Bassenthwaite Water, glittering like a great gem in its setting of forest trees. We have seen the District many times, but never under better conditions than on this clear, shimmering July day. The green wooded vales lying between the bold, barren hills, with here a church-tower or country mansion and there a glint of tarn or river, all combine to make an entrancing scene which stretches clear and distinct to the silvery horizon. We pause a short space to admire it, then glide gently down the slope and along the meandering Derwent into Keswick town. It is the height of the summer season here and the place shows unmistakable marks of the tourist-thronged resort; the Hotel Keswick, where we stop for luncheon, is filled to overflowing. It is the most beautifully located of the many hotels in the town, standing in its own well-cared-for grounds, which are bedecked with flower-beds and shrubbery. The Keswick is evidently a favorite with motorists, for we found many cars besides our own drawn up in front. It is a pleasant, well-conducted inn--everything strictly first-class from the English point of view--with all of which the wayfarer is required to pay prices to correspond. Keswick is anything but the retired village of the time of the poet Southey, whose home, Greta Hall, may be seen on an eminence overlooking the town. As the gateway by which a large proportion of tourists enter the Lake District, and as a resort where a considerable number of visitors--mostly English--come to spend their vacations, it is a lively place for some weeks in midsummer. There is not much of consequence in the town itself or in the immediate vicinity. It is the starting-point, however, for an endless number of excursions, mostly by coach, for the railroad does not enter many parts of the District frequented by tourists. Even wagon-roads are not numerous and the enthusiast who wishes to thoroughly explore the nooks and corners must do much journeying on foot. We have little reason for choosing the coast road in our southern journey through Cumberland, except the very good one that we have never traversed it, while we are familiar with the splendid highway which follows the lakes to Lakeside and over which runs the great course of tourist travel. The roads are not comparable in interest, so greatly does the lake route excel, both in scenic beauty and in literary and historic associations. Still, the dozen miles from Keswick to Cockermouth is a beautiful run, passing around the head of Derwentwater and following for its entire length--some four miles--the western shore of Bassenthwaite Water. The road winds through almost unbroken woodland and we catch only fugitive glimpses of the shimmering water between the thickly crowded trunks that flit between us and the lake. At intervals, however, we swing toward the shore and come into full view of the gleaming surface, beyond which stretches an array of wooded parks, surrounding an occasional country seat. Still beyond rise the stern outlines of Skiddaw, one of the ruggedest and loftiest of the lake country hills--though as a matter of fact, its crest is but three thousand feet above the sea. It is a delightfully quiet road; we meet no other wayfarers and aside from the subdued purr of the motor, there is no sound save the wash of the wavelets over the rocks or the rustle of the summer breeze through the trees. The north end of Bassenthwaite marks the limit of Lakeland for all except the casual tourist, and here a snug little wayside inn, the Pheasant, affords a retreat for solitude-loving disciples of Ike Walton. Cockermouth has little claim to distinction other than the fact that the poet Wordsworth was born here a little more than a century and a half ago. A native of whom we inquire points out the large square gray-stone house, now the residence of a local physician. The swift Derwent flows a few rods to the rear and the flower-garden runs down to the river's edge. The house stands near the highway and is no exception to the harsh, angular lines that characterize the village. It is in no sense a public show-place and we have no intention of disturbing the Sunday-afternoon quiet of the present occupants in an endeavor to see the interior. Wordsworth's connection with the house ceased at the death of his father, when the poet was but a child of fourteen. His young mother--a victim of consumption--had laid down life's burdens some six years earlier, and the orphan children were taken to the home of a relative at Kendal. Perhaps we are the more satisfied to pass the old house with a cursory glance because, if I must confess it, I was never able to arouse in myself any great enthusiasm over the poet Wordsworth or to read his writings except in a desultory way. He never had for me the human interest of Byron, Burns, Tennyson or many other great lights of English literature I might name. We were quite willing to assume the role of intruder at Somersby; we made more than one unsuccessful effort before we saw Newstead, and three pilgrimages to Alloway have not quenched our desire to see it again--but we are conscious of little anxiety to enter the doors of the big square house at Cockermouth. Perhaps we are not alone in such feeling, for pilgrims to the town are few and a well-known English author who has written a delightful volume on the Lake District admits that he paid his first visit to Cockermouth "without once remembering that it was Wordsworth's birthplace!" His objective was the castle, a fine mediaeval pile which overlooks the vale of the Derwent. It is in fair preservation, having been inhabited until quite recently. Like so many Northland fortresses, it has its legend of Mary Stuart, who came here after landing at Workington, a seaport a few miles distant. She had been led by the emissaries of Elizabeth to believe that an appeal to her "sister's" mercy would assure her a safe refuge in England, but she never drew a free breath in all the years she was to live after this act of sadly misplaced confidence. [Illustration: WORDSWORTH'S BIRTHPLACE--COCKERMOUTH, LAKE DISTRICT] "No one," says the writer just referred to, "would wish to go beyond Cockermouth," and though we prove one exception to this rule, it is a fairly safe one for the average tourist, since rougher, steeper and less interesting roads are scarce in England. A fairly good highway runs to Whitehaven, a manufacturing port on the Irish Sea where, according to an English historian, "John Paul Jones, the notorious buccaneer, served his apprenticeship, and he successfully raided the place in 1778, burning three vessels." Not many Americans have visited Whitehaven since, for it is in no sense a tourist town. We pursue its main street southward until it degenerates into a tortuous, hilly lane leading through the bleak Cumberland hills. It roughly follows the coast, though there are only occasional glimpses of the sea which to-day, half shrouded in a silvery haze, shimmers in the subdued sunlight. The road, with its sharp turns and steep grades, is as trying as any we have traversed in England; at times it runs between tall hedges on earthen ridges--an almost tunnellike effect, reminding us of Devon and Cornwall, to which the rough country is not dissimilar. Fortunately, we meet no vehicles--we see only one motor after leaving Whitehaven--but in the vicinity of the villages we keep a close look-out for the Sunday pedestrians who throng the road. Our siren keeps up a pretty steady scream and the natives stare in a manner indicating that a motor is an infrequent spectacle. We pass through several lone, cheerless-looking towns, devoid of any touch of color and wholly lacking the artistic coziness of the Midland villages. Egremont, Bootle, Ravenglass and Broughton are of this type and seemingly as ancient as the hills they nestle among. The ruin of a Norman castle towers above Egremont; shattered, bare and grim, it stands boldly against the evening sky. Yet it is not without its romance, a theme which inspired Wordsworth's "Horn of Egremont Castle." For tradition has it that in days of old there hung above the gate a bugle which would respond to the lips of none but the rightful lord. While the owner and his younger brother were on a crusade in the Holy Land, the latter plotted the death of the Lord of the Castle, bribing a band of villains to drown him in the Jordan. The rascals claim to have done their work and Eustace, with some misgivings, hastens home and assumes the vacant title, though he discreetly avoids any attempt to wind the famous horn. Some time afterwards, while engaged in riotously celebrating his accession, a blast of the dreaded horn tells him that his brother Hubert is not dead, and has come to claim his own. The usurper flees by the "postern gate," but years afterward he returns to be forgiven by Sir Hubert and to expiate his crime by entering a monastery. Wordsworth tells the story in a halting, mediocre way that shows how little his genius was adapted to such a theme. What a pity that the story of Egremont was not told by the Wizard with the dash of "Lochinvar" or the "Wild Huntsman." [Illustration: CALDER ABBEY, CUMBERLAND] There is a fine abbey ruin in the vale of the Calder about a mile from the main road. Calder Abbey was founded in the twelfth century and was second only to Furness in importance in Northwestern England. The beautiful pointed arches supporting the central tower are almost intact and the cloisters and walls of the south transept still stand. Over them all the ivy runs riot, and above them sway the branches of the giant beeches that crowd about the ruin. It is a delightfully secluded nook and in the quiet of a summer evening one could hardly imagine a spot more in harmony with the spirit of monastic peace and retirement. Such is the atmosphere of romance that one does not care to ask the cold facts of the career of Calder Abbey, and, indeed, there is none to answer even if we should ask its story. You would never imagine that Ravenglass, with its single street bordered by unpretentious slate-roofed, whitewashed houses and its harbor, little more than a shifting sand-bar, has a history running back to the Roman occupation, and that it once ranked in importance with Chester and Carlisle. Archaeologists tell us that in Roman times acres of buildings clustered on the then ample harbor, where a good-sized fleet of galleys constantly rode at anchor. Here came the ships of the civilized world to the greatest port of the North Country, bringing olives, anchovies, wines and other luxuries that the Romans had introduced into Britain, and in returning they carried away numbers of the hapless natives to be sold as slaves or impressed into the armies. The harbor has evidently filled with silt to a great extent since that day, scarcely any spot being covered by water at low tide except the channel of the Esk. Many relics have been discovered at Ravenglass, and the older houses of the town are built largely from the ruins of the Roman city. Most remarkable of all are the remains of a villa in an excellent state of preservation, which a good authority pronounces practically the only Roman building in the Kingdom standing above ground save the fragments that have been revealed by excavation. Ravenglass has another unique distinction in the great breeding ground of gulls and terns which almost adjoins the place. Here in early summer myriads of these birds repair to hatch their young, and the spectacle is said to be well worth seeing--and, in fact, does attract many visitors. The breeding season, however, was past at the time of our visit. An English writer, Canon Rawnsley of Carlisle, gives a graphic account of a trip to the queer colony of sea-birds during their nesting time: "Suddenly the silence of the waste was broken by a marvellous sound, and a huge cloud of palpitating wings, that changed from black to white and hovered and trembled against the gray sea or the blue inland hills, swept by overhead. The black-headed gulls had heard of our approach and mightily disapproved of our tresspass upon their sand-blown solitude. "We sat down and the clamour died; the gulls had settled. Creeping warily to the crest of a great billow of sand, we peeped beyond. Below us lay a natural amphitheatre of grey-green grass that looked as if it were starred with white flowers innumerable. We showed our heads and the flowers all took wing, and the air was filled again with sound and intricate maze of innumerable wings. "We approached, and walking with care found the ground cup-marked with little baskets or basket-bottoms roughly woven of tussock grass or sea-bent. Each casket contained from two to three magnificent jewels. These were the eggs we had come so far to see. There they lay--deep brown blotched with purple, light bronze marked with brown, pale green dashed with umber, white shading into blue. All colours and all sizes; some as small as a pigeon's, others as large as a bantam's. Three seemed to be the general complement. In one nest I found four. The nests were so close to one another that I counted twenty-six within a radius of ten yards; and what struck one most was the way in which, instead of seeking shelter, the birds had evidently planned to nest on every bit of rising ground from which swift outlook over the gull-nursery could be obtained. "Who shall describe the uproar and anger with which one was greeted as one stood in the midst of the nests? The black-headed gull swept at one with open beak, and one found oneself involuntarily shading one's face and protecting one's eyes as the savage little sooty-brown heads swooped round one's head. But we were not the only foes they had had to battle with. The carrion crow had evidently been an intruder and a thief; and many an egg which was beginning to be hard set on, had been prey to the black robber's beak. One was being robbed as I stood there in the midst of the hubbub. "Back to the boat we went with a feeling that we owed large apologies to the whole sea-gull race for giving this colony such alarm, and causing such apparent disquietude of heart, and large thanks to the Lord of Muncaster for his ceaseless care of the wild sea-people whom each year he entertains upon his golden dunes." It is growing late as we leave Ravenglass and we wonder where we shall pass the night. There is no road across the rough country to our right and clearly we must follow the coast for many miles until we round the southern point of the hills. Then the wide sand marshes of the Duddon will force us to turn northward several miles until we come to a crossing which will enable us to continue our southward course. Here again a memory of Wordsworth is awakened, for did he not celebrate this valley in his series of "Sonnets to the Duddon?" There is no stopping-place at Bootle or Millom or Broughton, unless it be road-houses of doubtful character and we hasten over the rough narrow roads as swiftly as steep grades and numerous pedestrians will permit. The road for some miles on either side of Broughton is little more than a stony lane which pitches up and down some frightful hills. It is truly strenuous motoring and our run has already been longer than is our wont. The thought of a comfortable inn appeals strongly indeed--we study the map a moment to find to our certain knowledge that nothing of such description is nearer than Furness Abbey, still a good many miles to the south. But the recollection of the splendid ruin is, for the time being, quite overshadowed by our memory of the excellent hotel, which I must confess exerts much the greater attraction. The country beyond Broughton has little of interest, but the road gradually improves until it becomes a broad, well-surfaced highway which enables us to make up for lost time. Shortly after sunset we enter the well-kept park surrounding the abbey and hotel. We have come many miles "out of our way," to be sure, for we are already decided on a northward turn for a last glimpse of Lakeland tomorrow--but, after all, we are not seeking shortest routes. Indeed, from our point of view, we can scarcely go "out of the way" in rural Britain; some of our rarest discoveries have been made unexpectedly when deviating from main-traveled routes. [Illustration: KENDAL CASTLE, "A STERN CASTLE, MOULDERING ON THE BROW OF A GREEN HILL"] On the following day we pursue familiar roads. Passing through Dalton and Ulverston, we ascend the vale of the Leven to Newby Bridge at the southern extremity of Windermere. We cannot resist the temptation to take the Lakeside road to Windermere town, though it carries us several miles farther north. It is surely one of the loveliest of English roads, and we now traverse it the third time--once in the sunlight of a perfect afternoon, once it was gray and showery, and to-day the shadows of the great hills darken the mirrorlike surface, for it is yet early morning. The water is of almost inky blackness, but on the far side it sparkles in the sunlight and the snowy sails of several small craft lend a pleasing relief to its somber hues. The road winds among the trees that skirt the shore and in places we glide beneath the overarching boughs. At times the lake glimmers through the closely standing trunks, and again we come into the open where our vision has full sweep over the gleaming expanse of dark water. We follow the Lakeside road for six miles until we reach the outskirts of the village of Bowness; here a turn to the right leads up a sharp hill and we are soon on the moorland road to Kendal. It shows on our map as a "second-class" road and, indeed, this description was deserved two years before. It is a pleasant surprise to find it smoothly re-surfaced--an excellent highway now, though in its windings across the fells it carries us over some steep grades. On either hand lies a barren and hilly country, which does not improve until we enter the green valley in which the town is situated. It is a charming place, depending now for its prosperity on the stretch of fertile country which surrounds it. Once it had numerous factories, but changing conditions have eradicated most of them excepting the woolen mills, which still operate on a considerable scale. The ancient castle--now a scanty ruin--looms high over the town: "a stern castle, mouldering on the brow of a green hill," as Wordsworth, who lived many years in the vicinity, describes it. It might furnish material for many a romance; here was born Catherine Parr, the queen who was fortunate enough to survive that royal Bluebeard, Henry VIII. It escaped the usual epitaph, "Destroyed by Cromwell," since it had long been in ruin at the time of the Commonwealth. But Cromwell, or his followers, must have been in evidence in Kendal, for in the church is the helmet of Major Robert Philipson--Robin the Devil--who gained fame by riding his horse into this selfsame church during services in search of a Cromwellian officer upon whom he sought to do summary vengeance. The exploits of this bellicose major furnish a groundwork for Scott's "Rokeby." The church is justly the pride of Kendal, being one of the largest in England and of quite unique architecture. It has no fewer than five aisles running parallel with each other and the great breadth of the building, together with its low square tower, gives it a squat appearance, though this is redeemed to some extent by its unique design. A good part of the building is more than seven hundred years old, though considerable additions were made in the fifteenth century. In the tower is a chime of bells celebrated throughout the North Country for their melody, which is greatly enhanced by the echoes from the surrounding hills. [Illustration: KENDAL PARISH CHURCH] Kendal serves as the southernmost gateway of the Lake District, the railway passing through the town to Windermere, and there is also a regular coaching service to the same place. When we resume our journey over the highway to the south we are well out of the confines of English Lakeland and I may as well close this chapter on the lesser known corners of this famous region. XV WE DISCOVER DENBIGH Night finds us in Chester, now so familiar as to become almost commonplace, and we stop at the Grosvenor, for we know it too well to take chances elsewhere. There has been little of consequence on the highway we followed from Kendal, which we left in the early forenoon, if we except the fine old city of Lancaster, where we stopped for lunch. And even Lancaster is so dominated by modern manufactories that it is hard to realize that its history runs back to Roman times. It has but few landmarks left; the castle, with the exception of the keep tower, is modern and used as a county jail--or gaol, as the English have it. St. Mary's Church, a magnificent fifteenth-century structure, crowns the summit of the hill overlooking the city and from which a wide scope of country on one hand and the Irish Sea and Isle of Man on the other may be seen on clear days. Preston, Wigan and Warrington are manufacturing towns stretching along the road at intervals of fifteen or twenty miles and ranging in population around one hundred thousand each. Their outskirts merge into villages and for many miles it was almost as if we traveled through a continuous city. The houses crowd closely on the street, which was often thronged with children, making slow and careful driving imperative. The pavements in the larger towns are excellent and the streets of the villages free from filth--a marked contrast to what we saw on the Continent. Shortly after leaving Warrington we crossed the Manchester Ship Canal, by which ocean-going vessels are able to reach that city. From thence to Chester our run was through a pretty rural section, over an excellent road. Chester is crowded even more than usual. An historical pageant is to take place during the week and many sightseers are already on the ground. Only our previous acquaintance enables us to secure rooms at the Grosvenor, since would-be guests are hourly being turned away. Under such conditions we do not care to linger and after a saunter along the "rows" in the morning we are ready for the road. We have not decided on our route--perhaps we may as well return to London and prepare for the trip to Land's End which we have in mind. A glance at the map shows Conway within easy distance. Few places have exerted so great a fascination for us as the little Welsh town--yes, we will sojourn a day or two in Conway and we may as well go by a route new to us. We will take the road through Mold and Denbigh, though it never occurs to us that either of them deserves more than a passing glance. The first glimpse of Denbigh arouses our curiosity. A vast ivy-mantled ruin surmounts a steep hill rising abruptly from the vale of the Clwyd, while the gray monotone of the slate roofs and stone walls of the old town covers the slopes. The noble bulk and tall spire of the church occupies the foreground and, indeed, as Dr. Samuel Johnson wrote in 1774, "Denbigh is not a mean town," if one may judge by its aspect from a little distance. The first view awakens a lively desire for closer acquaintance and soon we are ascending the long steep street that leads to the castle--for the castle is naturally the first objective of the newcomer in Denbigh. The hill rises five hundred feet above the level of the plain and the ascent, despite its many windings, is steep enough to change the merry hum of our motor to a low determined growl ere we pause before the grim old gateway in the fragment of the keep tower. We are fortunate in finding an intelligent custodian in charge, who hastens to inform us that he himself is an American citizen, having been naturalized during a sojourn in the States. We have reason to be proud of our fellow-countryman, for we have found few of his brethren who could rival him in thorough knowledge of their charges or who were able to tell their stories more entertainingly. There is little left of Denbigh Castle save the remnant of the keep and the outlines of the foundation walls, but these are quite enough to indicate its old-time defensive strength. Of all the scores of British castles we have seen, scarcely another, it seems to us, could have equalled the grim strength of Denbigh in its palmy days. The keep consisted of seven great towers, six of them surrounding a central one, known as the Hall of Judgment. And, indeed, dreadful judgments must have emanated from this gloomy apartment--gloomy in its best days, being almost windowless--for beneath the keep the dungeon is still intact to tell plainer than words the fate of the captives of Denbigh Castle. "Man's inhumanity to man" was near its climax in the mind of the designer who planned this tomblike vault, hewn in the solid rock, shut in by a single iron-bound trap-door and without communication with the outer air save a small passageway some two inches square and several feet in length which opened in the outside wall. Only by standing closely at the tiny aperture was it possible for the inmates to breathe freely, and when there were more than one in the dungeon the unfortunate prisoners took turns at the breathing-hole, as it was styled. The castle was originally of vast extent, its outer wall, which once enclosed the village as well, exceeding one and one-half miles in length; and there was a network of underground passageways and apartments. The complete ruin of the structure is due to havoc wrought with gunpowder after the Restoration. Huge fragments of masonry still lie as they fell; others, crumbled to dust, afford footing for shrubs and even small trees, while yellow and purple wall-flowers and tangled masses of ivy run riot everywhere. The great entrance gateway is intact and, strange to say, a statue of Henry de Lacy, the founder, stands in a niche above the doors, having survived the vicissitudes which laid low the mighty walls and stately towers. This gate was flanked by two immense watchtowers, but only a small part of the western one remains. The remnants, as an English writer has said, "are vast and awful; seldom are such walls seen; the huge fragments that remain of the exterior shell impress the mind vividly with their stupendous strength." Several underground passages have been discovered and one of these led beneath the walls into the town, evidently intended as an avenue of escape for the garrison in last extremity. A number of human skeletons were also unearthed, but as the castle underwent many sieges, these were possibly the remains of defenders who died within the walls. [Illustration: DENBIGH CASTLE--THE ENTRANCE AND KEEP] As we wander about the ruins, our guide has something to tell us of every nook. We hear the sad story of the deep well, now dry, beneath the Goblin Tower, into which the only son of the founder fell to his death, a tragedy that transferred the succession of the lordship to another line; and from the broken battlements there is much to be seen in the green valley below. Yonder was a British camp of prehistoric days, indicated by the earthen mounds still remaining; near by a Roman camp of more recent time, though it was little less than two thousand years ago that the legions of the seven-hilled city marched on yonder plain. Through the notch in the distant hills came the Cromwellians to lay siege to Denbigh Castle, the last fortress in the Kingdom to hold out for King Charles. There was no end of fierce fighting, sallies and assaults for several months in the summer of 1646--and a great exchange of courtesies between General Mytton of the Parliamentary Army and Sir William Salisbury, commanding the castle, who were oldtime friends. There were truces for burial of the dead of both armies, often with military honors on part of the opposing side, but all of this did not mitigate the bitterness with which the contest was waged. The straits of the garrison became terrible indeed, and at last the implacable old governor agreed to deliver the castle to his enemies provided he be given the honors of war and that the consent of the king be secured. His messenger was given safe conduct to visit Charles and the monarch readily absolved his faithful retainer from farther efforts in his behalf. Tradition has it that when the Parliamentarian troops were drawn up within the castle to receive the surrender, the commander gently reminded Colonel Salisbury that the key had not yet been delivered. The bellicose old Cavalier, standing on the Goblin Tower, flung the key to his conqueror with the bitter remark, "The world is yours. Make it your dunghill." But perhaps I have anticipated a little in relating the last great incident in the history of Denbigh Castle first of all, but its interest entitles it to precedence, though the earlier story of the castle is worth telling briefly. There are indications that this commanding site was fortified long before the Normans reared the walls now standing, but if so, there are few authentic details now to be learned. The present castle was built by Henry de Lacy during the latter half of the thirteenth century and was one of the many fortresses erected in Wales during the reign of Edward I. in his systematic attempt to subdue the native chieftains. Of its vicissitudes during the endless wars between the English and Welsh for nearly a century after its foundation, it would not be worth while to write, nor would a list of the various nobles who succeeded to its command be of consequence. Its most notable proprietor and the one who left the greatest impress of his ownership was the famous Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, whom we know best from his connection with Kenilworth. Dudley bought the castle from his patroness, Queen Elizabeth--it had long before her reign reverted to the crown--though there is no record that he ever paid even the first installment of purchase money, and after his death the Queen re-annexed the property on the ground that it had never been paid for. But even if he did not pay for his acquisition, Dudley found many ways to give evidence of his ownership to the people of Denbigh and the surrounding country. His lordship was one of oppression and rapine and he did not halt at any crime to advance his ends and to extort money for his projects. His influence was such that two of the young Salisburys, sons of one of the noblest families in the country, were hanged at Shrewsbury for pulling down one of his lordship's illegal fences! This was only typical of his high-handed proceedings, which were cut short by his sudden death, said to have been caused by drinking poison which he had prepared for another! During his ownership he repaired and added to the castle and began a church on a vast scale--still standing incomplete in ruin. This he hoped would supersede the cathedral at St. Asaph and the only recourse of the good people of that town against Leicester's ambitious schemes was prayer, which doubtless from their point of view seemed wonderfully efficacious when death snatched their oppressor away. There was little of importance in the castle's history during the half century between Leicester's death and the Civil War. Charles I. came here after Rowton Moor and then it was that the bold governor gave his oath not to surrender without the King's command. General Mytton, the victor of Rowton, closely pursued the defeated Royalists and followed Charles to Denbigh, but the monarch, on learning of his enemy's approach, escaped to Scotland, only to be captured a little later. Of the long siege we have already told. The fate of Denbigh Castle was peculiar in that it was not "destroyed by Cromwell," as were most of the ruined fortresses which it was our fortune to see in England. It was held by the Cromwellian army until the Restoration, when a special edict was framed by the Royal Parliament ordering that it be blown up with gunpowder. That the work was well done is mutely testified by the ruins that surround us to-day. For years the fallen walls served the natives as a stone quarry, but of late Denbigh has been seized with the zeal for preservation of things historic now so prevalent in Britain, and the castle is well looked after; decay has been arrested and the grounds are now a public park. A velvety lawn carpets the enclosure and a bowling green occupies the court which once echoed to the tread of armed men and war horses. But we note little evidence of all the stirring scenes enacted on this historic spot. It is an ideal summer day; there is scarce a breath of air to rustle the masses of ivy that cling to the walls; save for the birds that sing in the trees and shrubs, quiet reigns; there are no sightseers but ourselves. From the old keep tower a glorious view greets our eyes. All around lies the green vale of the Clwyd stretching away to blue hills; it is dotted here and there with red-roofed cottages whose walls gleam white as alabaster in the noonday sun. The monotony is further relieved by groups of stately trees which mark the surrounding country seats and by an occasional glint of the lazy river. Our guide points out the near-by village of Tremeirchion, whose name goes back to Roman times--signifying that there was a cavalry station near the spot. A gray house surrounded by trees is Brynbella, so named by Dr. Samuel Johnson, who frequently visited the owner, Mrs. Piozzi, during his residence near Denbigh. Felicia Hemans lived for some time in a cottage to be seen a little farther down the vale and there are traces of the beauties of the Clwyd in her poems. On the outskirts of the town are the ruins of an abbey founded in the reign of Henry III. and within a mile is Whitchurch, which has many curious features, among them a stained-glass window which was buried during the Civil War to save it from the image-smashers. Nor should we forget the little white cottage where Dr. Samuel Johnson lived while compiling his famous dictionary. He was attracted here by the rural quiet of the spot and for several years pursued his colossal task. The house stands in the edge of a fine grove and is shut in by a thickly set hawthorn hedge. A monumental shaft in the neighborhood commemorates the association of the great lexicographer with the spot. [Illustration: ST. HILARY'S CHURCH, DENBIGH. HENRY M. STANLEY WAS BAPTIZED IN THIS CHURCH] But Denbigh has a more recent distinction that will appeal to every schoolboy of the English-speaking world, for here, within a stone's throw of the castle gate, was born Henry M. Stanley, the great explorer. It was not by this name, however, that he was known when as a boy of five he was placed in the workhouse at St. Asaph by his mother's brothers, for it was little John Henry Rowlands who was so cruelly treated by the master. Stanley himself tells in his autobiography the story of this Welsh Dotheboys Hall and also of his escape from the institution after having given a severe thrashing to his oppressor, who was no match for the sturdy youth of sixteen. After many vicissitudes he reached New Orleans as a cabin boy on a merchant ship and was employed by a Henry Morton Stanley, who later adopted him. Of Stanley's career, one of the most varied and remarkable of which there is authentic record, we will not write here; only twice in his life did he visit Denbigh and the last time his mother refused even to see him, alleging that he had been nothing but a roving ne'er-do-well. She had married again--Stanley was but three years old when his father died--and had apparently lost all maternal love for her son, destined to become so famous. It seems to have been the bitterest experience of the explorer's life and he never attempted to see his mother again. Denbigh now deeply regrets that his humble birthplace was pulled down some years ago, but the little church where he was baptized--which ranks next in importance to the birthplace, according to accepted English ideas--still stands, though it is not now used and is very much dilapidated. Our guide, when he has quite exhausted his historic lore and when the "objects of interest" have been pointed out and duly expatiated upon, tells us a story of a certain noble dame of ancient Denbigh which every newcomer needs must hear at least once. Lady Catherine of Beraine was of royal descent, her mother being a cousin of Queen Elizabeth; she was enormously rich and was reputed of great intellectual attainments and force of character. But her fame to-day in her native town rests on none of these things; she is remembered as having had four noble husbands, all local celebrities, two of whom she acquired under, to say the least, very unusual circumstances. The first, a Salisbury, died not long after their marriage and was gathered to his fathers after the most approved fashion of the times. This required that a friend of the deceased escort the widow at the funeral and this--shall I say pleasant?--task fell to Sir Richard Clough, a widower of wealth and renown. Sir Richard's consolation went to very extraordinary length, for before the body of his friend was interred, he had proposed to the widow and been accepted! On the return journey from the tomb, Sir Maurice Wynne approached the lady with a similar proposal, only to find to his chagrin and consternation that he was too late. But he did the next best thing and before he was through had the widow's solemn promise that in case she should be called upon to mourn Sir Richard he should be his friend's successor! Sir Richard considerately died at forty and his gracious widow proved true to her promise. She wedded Maurice Wynne and went to preside over one of the fairest estates in Wales. But this did not end her matrimonial experiences, for Wynne ere long followed his two predecessors to the churchyard and the third-time widow made a fourth venture with Edward Thelwall, a wealthy gentleman of the town. Now while there may be some mythical details in this queer story, its main incidents were actually true, and so numerous are the descendants of the fair Catherine that she is sometimes given the sobriquet of Mam Cymru, the Mother of Wales. An English writer says of her, "Never, surely, was there such a record made by a woman of quality. Herself of royal descent and great possessions and by all accounts of singular mental attraction if not surpassing beauty, she married successively into four of the most powerful houses of North Wales." We thank the custodian for the pains he has taken to inform and entertain us and bid him farewell with the expected gratuity. We slip down the winding road to the market-place, where we pause for a short time to look about the town. We are told that it is one of the best in Northern Wales, both in a business and social way, and it is distinctly Welsh as contrasted with the English domination of Welshpool, Ludlow and Shrewsbury. We see a prosperous-looking class of country folk in the market-place and while English generally prevails, Welsh is spoken by some of the older people. They are well-clad and give evidence of the intelligence and sobriety for which the northern Welshman is noted. The excellent horses on the streets show that the Welsh are as particular about their nags as are their English brethren. We wish that our plans had not been already made--we should like to take up quarters at the Crown or Bull and remain a day or two in Denbigh. But the best we can do now is to pick up a few souvenirs at an old curiosity shop near the market and secretly resolve to come back again. [Illustration: GATE TOWERS RHUDDLAN CASTLE, NORTH WALES] The road out of the town follows the green vale of the Clwyd to St. Asaph and Rhuddlan, both of which have enough interest to warrant a few hours' pause. At St. Asaph we content ourselves with a drive around the cathedral--the smallest in the Kingdom--against which the haughty Leicester directed his designs three centuries ago. Its most conspicuous feature is its huge square tower one hundred feet in height. The St. Asaph who gave his name to the village and cathedral is supposed to have founded a church here as early as the middle of the sixth century, one of the earliest in the Kingdom. Five miles farther down the valley over a fine level road is Rhuddlan Castle. There are few more picturesque ruins in Britain than this huge redstone fortress with its massive round gate-towers, almost completely covered with ivy. Only the outer shell and towers remain; inside is a level plat of green sward that gives no hint of the martial activity within these walls six or seven centuries ago. Rhuddlan was one of the several castles built by Edward I. in his efforts to subdue the Welsh, and here he held his court for three years while engaged in his difficult task. The whole town was a military camp and numbers of the subdued Welsh chieftains and their retainers must have come hither to make the best terms they could with their conqueror. But the ruin is quiet enough under the blue heavens that bend over it to-day--the daws flap lazily above its ancient towers and the smaller songsters chatter and quarrel in the thick ivy. The castle has stood thus ever since it was dismantled by the same General Mytton who forced the surrender of Denbigh. There is much that might engage our time and attention along the twenty miles of roads that skirt the marshes and the sea between Rhuddlan and Conway, but we cannot linger to-day. An hour's run brings us into the little Welsh citadel shortly after noon and we forthwith repair to the Castle Hotel. XVI CONWAY Mr. Moran has given us in his striking picture a somewhat unusual view of the towers of Conway Castle. A better-known aspect of the fine old ruin is shown by the photograph which I have reproduced. Both, however, will serve to emphasize the point which I desire to make--that Conway, when seen from a proper distance, is one of the most picturesque of British castles. The first thing the wayfarer sees when he approaches is this splendid group of crenelated round towers and it is the last object to fade on his vision when he reluctantly turns his feet away from the pleasant old village. And I care not how matter-of-fact and prosaic may be his temperament, he cannot fail to bear away an ineffaceable recollection of the grim beauty of the stately pile. The sea road takes us into the town by the way of the great suspension bridge, whose well-finished modern towers contrast rather unpleasantly with the rugged antiquity of the castle across the river; but the suspension bridge is none the less a work of art and beauty compared with the angular ugliness of the tubular railway structure that parallels it. We pay our modest toll and crossing over the green tide that is now setting strongly up the river, we glide beneath the castle walls into the town. The Castle Hotel we know by previous experience to be one of those most delightful of old-fashioned country inns where one may be comfortable and quite unhampered by excessive formality. Baedeker, it is true, gives the place of honor to the Oakwood Park, a pretentious resort hotel about a mile from the town, but this will hardly appeal to pilgrims like ourselves, who come to Conway to revel in its old-world atmosphere. The Castle, with its rambling corridors, its odd corners and plain though substantial furnishings, is far more to our liking. It stands on the site of Conway's Cistercian Abbey, built by Prince Llewellyn in 1185, all traces of which have now disappeared. As the principal inn of the North Wales art center, its walls are appropriately covered with pictures and sketches--many of them original--and numerous pieces of artistic bric-a-brac are scattered about its hallways and mantels. We notice among the pictures two or three characteristic sketches by Mr. Moran and learn that he was a guest of the inn for several weeks last summer, during which time he painted the picture of the castle which adorns the pages of this book. The impression which he left with the manageress was altogether favorable; she cannot say enough in praise of the courtesy and kindness of her distinguished guest who gave her the much-prized sketches with his compliments. And she is quite familiar with the names and knows something about the work of several well-known British artists--for have they not been guests at the castle from time to time during the summer exhibits? Conway, as we shall see, occupies no small niche in the art world, having an annual exhibition of considerable importance, besides affording endless themes to delight the artistic eye. [Illustration: CONWAY CASTLE, NORTH WALES From original painting by Thos. Moran, N. A.] The immediate objective of the first-time visitor to Conway will be the castle, but this is our third sojourn in the ancient citadel and we shall give the afternoon to Plas Mawr. For, though we are quite as familiar with Plas Mawr as with the castle, the fine old mansion has a new attraction each year in the annual exhibit of the Royal Cambrian Academy and the walls are covered with several hundred pictures, many of them by distinguished British painters. The exhibit is generally acknowledged to be of first rank and usually includes canvases by Royal Academicians as well as the work of members of other distinguished British art societies. That it is not better known and patronized is not due to any lack of genuine merit; rather to the fact that so many tourists are ignorant of its very existence as well as the attractions of the town itself. Such, indeed, was our own case; on our first visit to Conway we contented ourselves with a glimpse of the castle and hastened on our way quite unaware of Plas Mawr and its exhibit. Stupid, of course; we might have learned better from Baedeker; but we thought there was nothing but the castle in Conway and did not trouble to read the fine print of our "vade mecum." A second visit taught us better; the castle one should certainly see--but Plas Mawr and its pictures are worth a journey from the remotest corner of the Kingdom. Indeed, it was in this exhibit that I first became acquainted with the work of Mr. H. J. Dobson of Edinburgh, whose pictures I have had the pleasure of introducing in America. His famous "New Arrival" was perhaps the most-talked-of picture the year of our visit and is surely worth showing herewith as typical of the high quality of the Royal Cambrian exhibit. And, indeed, this severely plain, almost pathetic, little home scene of the olden time might just as appropriately have been located in the environs of Conway. [Illustration: "THE NEW ARRIVAL" From original painting by H. J. Dobson, R. S. W., exhibited in the Royal Cambrian Academy, Plas Mawr, Conway] I have rambled on about Plas Mawr and its pictures to a considerable extent, but I have so far failed to give much idea as to Plas Mawr itself aside from its exhibit. Its name, signifying "the great house," is appropriate indeed, for in the whole Kingdom there are few better examples--at least such as are accessible to the ordinary tourist--of the spacious home of a wealthy country gentleman in the romantic days of Queen Bess. It was planned for the rather ostentatious hospitality of the times and must have enjoyed such a reputation, for it is pretty well established that Queen Elizabeth herself was a guest in the stately house. The Earl of Leicester, as we have seen, had large holdings in North Wales, and was wont to come to Snowdonia on hunting expeditions; Elizabeth and her court accompanied him on one occasion and were quartered in Plas Mawr. Tradition, which has forgotten the exact date of the royal visit, has carefully recorded the rooms occupied by the queen--two of the noblest apartments in the house. The sitting-room has a huge fireplace with the royal arms of England in plaster above the mantel. Adjoining this apartment is the bedroom, beautifully decorated with heraldic devices and lighted with windows of ancient stained glass. But I must hasten to declare that I have no intention of describing in detail the various apartments of the great house. Each one has its own story and nearly all are decorated with richly bossed plaster friezes and ceilings. The circular stairways, the corridors, the narrow passageways and the courtyard are all unique and bring to the mind a host of romantic musings. You are not at all surprised to learn of Plas Mawr's ghostly habitant--it is, on the contrary, just what you expected. I shall not repeat this authentic ghost story; you may find it in the little guide-book of the house if such things appeal to you; and, besides, it is hardly suitable for my pages. It is enough to record that Plas Mawr has its ghost and heavy footfalls may be heard in its vacant rooms by those hardy enough to remain on nights when storms howl about the old gables. And it is these same old "stepped" gables with the queer little towers and tall chimneys that lend such a distinguished air to the exterior of the old house. It would be a dull observer whose eye would not be caught by it, even in passing casually along the street on which it stands. Above the door the date 1576 proves beyond question the year of its completion and shows that it has stood, little changed, for more than three centuries. It was built by one of the Wynne family, which was so distinguished and powerful in North Wales during the reign of Elizabeth. At present it is the private property of Lord Mostyn, but one cannot help feeling that by rights it should belong to the tight little town of Conway, which forms such a perfect setting for this gem of ancient architecture. [Illustration: PLAS MAWR, CONWAY, HOME OF ROYAL CAMBRIAN ACADEMY] But enough of Plas Mawr--though I confess as I write to an intense longing to see it again. We must hie us back to our inn, for the dinner hour is not far off and we are quite ready for the Castle's substantial fare. There is still plenty of time after dinner to saunter about the town and the twilight hours are the best for such a ramble. When the subdued light begins to envelop castle and ancient walls, one may best realize the unique distinction of Conway as a bit of twelfth-century medievalism set bodily down in our workaday modern world. The telegraph poles and wires, the railways and great bridges fade from the scene and we see the ancient town, compassed with its mighty betowered walls and guarded by the frowning majesty of the castle. It is peculiarly the time to ascend the wall and to leisurely walk its entire length. We find it wonderfully solid and well-preserved, though ragged and hung with ivy; grasses carpet its crest in places, yellow and purple wall-flowers cling to its rugged sides, and in one place a sapling has found footing, apparently thriving in its airy habitat. Yet the wall is quite in its original state; the hand of the restorer has hardly touched it, nor does it apparently require anything in the way of repair. How very different is it from the walls of York and Chester, which show clearly enough the recent origin of at least large portions throughout their entire courses. It reaches in places a height of perhaps twenty feet and I should think its thickness at the base nearly as great. In old days it was surmounted by twenty-one watchtowers, all of which still remain in a state of greater or less perfection. Its ancient Moorish-looking gateways still survive, though the massive doors and drawbridges that once shut out the hostile world disappeared long since. We saunter leisurely down the wall toward the river and find much of interest whichever way we turn. The town spreads out beneath us like a map and we can detect, after some effort, its fanciful likeness to the shape of a harp--so dutifully mentioned by the guide-books. Just beneath this we gaze into the back yards of the poorer quarter and see a bevy of dirty little urchins going through endless antics in hope of extracting a copper or two from us--they know us well for tourists at once--who else, indeed, would be on the wall at such a time? A little farther are the rambling gables of Plas Mawr and on the extreme opposite side of the town, the stern yet beautiful towers of the castle are sharply silhouetted against the evening sky. How it all savors of the days of chivalrous eld; the flash of armor from yonder watchtowers, the deep voice of the sentry calling the hour, the gleam of rushlight from the silent windows or the reveille of a Norman bugle, would seem to be all that is required to transport us back to the days of the royal builder of the castle. Or if we choose to turn our gaze outside the walls, we may enjoy one of the finest vistas to be found in the British Isles. Looking down the broad estuary, through which the emerald-green tide is now pouring in full flow toward the sea, one has a panorama of wooded hills on the one hand and the village of Deganwy with the huge bulk of Great Orme's Head as a background on the other; while between these a vast stretch of sunset water loses itself in the distance. [Illustration: INNER COURT, PLAS MAWR, CONWAY] But we are at the north limit of the old wall--for it ends abruptly as it approaches the beach--and we descend to the promenade along the river. There is a boathouse here and a fairly good beach. If it had not so many rivals near at hand, Conway might boast itself as a resort town, but the average summer vacationist cares less for medieval walls and historic castles than for sunny beaches and all the diversions that the seaside resort town usually offers. He limits his stay in Conway to an hour or two and spends his weeks at Llandudno or Colwyn Bay. There are many odd corners that are worth the visitor's attention and one is sure to have them brought to his notice as he rambles about the town. "The smallest house in the Island" is one of them and the little old woman who occupies this curiosity will not let you pass without an opportunity to look in and leave a copper or two in recognition of her trouble. It is a boxlike structure of two floors about four by six feet each, comfortably furnished--to an extent one would hardly think possible in such very contracted quarters. There are many very ancient homes in the town dating from the sixteenth century and perhaps the best known of them--aside from Plas Mawr--is the little "Black Lion" in Castle Street. It is now fitted up as a museum, though its exhibit, I fear, is more an excuse to exact a shilling from the pocket of the tourist than to serve any great archeological end. The interior, however, is worth seeing, as it affords some idea of the domestic life of a well-to-do middle-class merchant of three or four hundred years ago. Another building in the same street is of even earlier date, for the legend, "A. D. 1400," appears in quaint characters above its door. Still another fine Elizabethan home shows the Stanley arms in stained glass--an eagle with outstretched wings swooping down upon a child--but this building, as well as many others in Conway, has been "restored" pretty much out of its original self. I name these particular things merely to show what a wealth of interest the town possesses for the observer who has learned that there is something else besides the castle and who is willing to make a sojourn of two or three days within the hoary walls. The church of St. Mary's has little claim to architectural distinction, but like nearly all the ancient churches of Britain, it has many odd bits of tradition and incident quite peculiar to itself. There is an elaborate baptismal font and a beautiful rood screen dating from the thirteenth century. John Gibson, R. A., the distinguished sculptor, who was born near Conway, is buried in the church and a marble bust has been erected to his memory. Another native buried within the sacred walls is entitled to distinction in quite a different direction, for a tablet over his grave declares: "Here lyeth the body of Nich's Hookes of Conway, Gent. who was ye 41 child of his father William Hookes Esq. and the father of 27 children, who died on the 20 day of Mch. 1637." Surely, if these ancient Welshmen were alive to-day they would be lionized by our anti-race-suicide propagandists! In the chancel there are several elaborate monuments of the Wynne family which exhibit the usual characteristics of old-time British mortuary sculpture. One of these tombs is of circular shape, and interesting from its peculiarity, though none of them shows a high degree of the sculptor's art. Outside, near the south porch, is a curious sun dial erected in 1761, which is carefully graduated to single minutes. Near this is a grave made famous by Wordsworth in his well-known poem, "We are Seven,"--for the poet, as we have learned in our wanderings, was himself something of a traveler and these simple verses remind us of his sojourn in Conway. Their peculiar appeal to almost every tourist is not strange when we recall that scarcely a school-reader of half a century ago omitted them. Conway, as might be expected, has many quaint customs and traditions. One of these, as described by a pleasing writer, may be worth retelling: "At Conway an old ceremony called the 'Stocsio' obtained till the present reign, being observed at Eastertide, when on the Sunday crowds carrying wands of gorse were accustomed to proceed to a small hill outside the town known as Pen twt. There the most recently married man was deputed to read out to a bare-headed audience the singular and immemorial rules that were to prevail in the town on the following day: All men under sixty were to be in the street by six o'clock in the morning; those under forty by four, while youths of twenty or less were forbidden to go to bed at all. Houses were searched, and much rough horse-play was going about. Defaulters were carried to the stocks, and there subjected to a time-honoured and grotesque catechism, calculated to promote much ridicule. Ball-play in the castle, too, was a distinguishing feature of all these ancient fete days." Another carefully preserved tradition relates to the tenure of the castle by the town corporation, which must pay annually a fee of eight shillings sixpence to the crown, and the presentation by way of tribute of a "dish of fish" to the Marquis of Hertford--the titular Earl of Conway--whenever he visits the town. This gave rise to a ludicrous misunderstanding not very long ago. An old guide-book substituted "Mayor of Hereford" for "Marquis of Hertford," and a perusal of this led the former dignitary to formally claim the honor when he was in Conway. The mayor of the ancient burg explained the error to his guest, but went on to say that had sparlings, the peculiar fish for which the Conway River is noted, been in season and obtainable, he would have had great pleasure in presenting a dish of them to the Mayor of Hereford; as it was, it was understood that in default of the sparlings the worthy civic clerk of Conway would treat his illustrious visitor to a bottle of champagne of an especially old and choice vintage. There is no record that the dignitary from Hereford made any objection to the substitution of something "just as good." In leaving the castle until the last, I am conscious that I am violating the precedent set by nearly all who have written of Conway and its attractions, but I have striven--I hope successfully--to show that there is enough in the old town to make a pilgrimage worth while, even if it did not have what is perhaps the most picturesque ruin in the Island. For the superior claims of Conway Castle are best described by the much-abused word, "picturesque." While it has seen stirring times, it did not cut the figure of Denbigh, Harlech or Carnarvon in Welsh history, nor did it equal many others in size and impregnability. But to my mind it is doubtful if any other so completely fulfills the ideal of the towered and battlemented castle of the middle ages. From almost any viewpoint this is apparent, though the view from across the river is well-nigh spoiled by the obtrusively ugly tubular railroad bridge; nor does the more graceful suspension bridge add to it, for that matter. In earlier times the only approach from this direction was by ferry--an "awkward kind of a boat called yr ysgraff," says a local guide-book. The boat seems to have been quite as unmanageable as its name, for on Christmas day, 1806, it capsized, drowning twelve persons. Twenty years later the suspension bridge was ready for use and the tubular bridge followed in 1848. [Illustration: CONWAY CASTLE--THE OUTER WALL] Conway Castle was one of the several fortresses built by the first Edward to complete the conquest of Wales. It was designed by Henry de Elreton, a builder of great repute in his time and also the architect of Carnarvon and Beumaris. The work was conducted under personal command of the king and its completion in 1291 was celebrated by a great fete at Christmastime. As one wanders through the roofless, ivy-clad ruin, carpeted with the green sward that has crept over the debris-covered floors, and contemplates the empty windows open to all the winds of heaven, the fallen walls and crumbling towers, the broken arches--only one of the eight which spanned the great hall remaining--amid all the pathetic evidence of dissolution and decay, it is hard indeed to reconstruct the scene of gay life that must have filled the noble pile in that far-off day. Here the high-spirited and often tyrannical king, accompanied by the queen, almost as ambitious and domineering as himself, had gathered the flower of English knighthood and nobility with their proud dames and brightly liveried retainers to make merry while the monarch was forging the chains to bind the prostrate principality. Here, we may imagine, the revelry of an almost barbarous time and people must have reached its height; and we may thank heaven that the old order of things is as shattered and obsolete as the ruined walls that surround us. As previously intimated, the history of Conway Castle is hardly in accord with its grandeur and importance. Its royal founder soon after its completion found himself closely besieged within its walls by the Welsh and was nearly reduced to an unconditional surrender, when the subsidence of the river made it possible for reinforcements to relieve the situation. A century later Richard II. commanded the troops raised to war in his behalf on the haughty Bolingbroke to assemble at Conway, but the monarch's feebleness and vacillation brought all plans of aggressive action to naught; for he basely abandoned his followers and rushed blindly into his enemy's power. And thus what might have been a historic milestone in the career of the castle degenerated into an unimportant incident. Conway escaped easily during the civil war which sounded the knell of so many feudal castles. The militant Archbishop Williams, whose memorial we may see in the parish church, espoused the side of the king and after his efforts had put everything in shape for defence, he was ordered to turn over the command to Prince Rupert. This procedure on the part of Charles led the warlike churchman to suddenly change his opinion of the justice of the royal cause and he at once joined forces with the Cromwellians. He carried with him a considerable following and personally assisted General Mytton in his operations against both Denbigh and Conway Castles. The latter was first to fall and the good bishop received the thanks of Parliament for his services and also a full pardon for the part he had taken in support of King Charles. He was also able to restore to his followers the valuables which had been hidden in the castle for safe keeping. Conway was another exception to Cromwell's rule of destruction of such feudal fortresses. Perhaps the fact that at the time of its surrender the Royalists were almost everywhere subdued and not likely to be able to reoccupy it, had something to do with this unusual leniency. In any event, the discredit for the destruction of the splendid structure rests with King Charles, who permitted one of his retainers to plunder it of its leaden roof and timbers. These materials were to be sent to Ireland--just for what purpose is not clear--but it does not matter, for the ships carrying the wreckage were all lost in a violent storm. Since that memorable period the old ruin has witnessed two and a half centuries of unbroken peace. Its enemies were no longer battering ram and hostile cannon. The wild storms of winter, the summer rains and the sea winds have expended their forces upon it, only to give it a weird, indescribable beauty such as it never could have possessed in its proudest days. Careful restoration has arrested further decay and insures its preservation indefinitely. It has never figured in song or story to the extent its beauty and romance would lead us to expect, though Owen Rhoscomyl, a native Welshman, has written a stirring novel, "Battlements and Towers," which deals with the castle in civil war days. The story has a historic basis and the graves of the lovers, Dafyd and Morfa, may still be seen in Conway Church. But no Welshman has yet arisen to do for his native land what Scott did for Scotland. The field is fully as rich--surely the struggles of this brave little people were as heroic and full of splendid incident as anything that transpired in Scotch history. But as a venture for letters the field still lies fallow and perhaps the unromantic atmosphere of our present-day progress will always keep it so. In leaving Conway for our fifth sojourn at Ludlow we find ourselves wondering which of these may outrank the other as the gem of all the smaller medieval towns we have visited in Britain. Indeed, we have not answered the query yet, but we are sure the distinction belongs to one or the other. XVII THE HARDY COUNTRY AND BERRY POMEROY It has been said that the traveler who has visited either John O'Groats or Land's End never feels at ease until he has both of these places to his "credit." I should be loath to confess that such a feeling had anything to do with our setting out from London with Land's End as an ill-defined objective, though appearances may indeed favor such an inference. Once before we were within ten miles of the spot and did not feel interested enough to take the few hours for the trip. But now we have spent a night at John O'Groats--and have no very pleasant recollection of it, either--and should we ever tell of our exploit the first question would be, "And did you go to Land's End?" Be that as it may, we find ourselves carefully picking our way through the crowded Oxford street which changes its name a half dozen times before we come out into the Staines Road. We are not in the best of humor, for it was two o'clock when we left our hotel--we had planned to start at nine in the morning! But a refractory magneto in the hands of an English repair man--who had promised it on the day before--was an article we could not very well leave behind. Our itinerary--we never really made one, except in imagination--called for the night at Dorchester. We had previously passed through the pleasant old capital of the "Hardy Country" and felt a longing for a closer acquaintance. But Dorchester is one hundred and thirty miles from London and our usual leisurely jog will never get us there before nightfall--a fact still more apparent when we find nearly an hour has been consumed in covering the dozen miles to Staines. We shall have to open up a little--a resolution that receives a decided chill when a gentlemanly Automobile Association scout, seeing the emblem on our engine hood, salutes us with, "Caution, Sir! Police traps all the way to Basingstoke." We take some chances nevertheless, but slow down when we come to a hedgerow or other suspicious object which we fancy may afford concealment for the despised motor "cop." At Basingstoke a second scout pronounces the way clear to Andover and Salisbury and the fine undulating road offers every opportunity to make up for lost time--and police traps. If the speed limit had been twice twenty miles per hour, I fear we might--but we are not bound to incriminate ourselves! Salisbury's splendid spire--the loftiest and most graceful in all Britain--soon arises athwart the sunset sky and we glide through the tortuous streets of the town as swiftly as seems prudent. The road to Blandford is equally good and just at dusk we enter the village of Puddletown, stretching for half a mile along the roadside. Its name is not prepossessing, but Puddletown has a church that stands to-day as it stood nearly three hundred years ago, for it has not as yet fallen into the hands of the restorer. Its paneled and beamed ceiling of Spanish chestnut, innocent of paint or varnish, its oaken pews which seated the Roundheads and Royalists of Cromwell's day, its old-fashioned pulpit and its queer baptismal font, are those of the country church of nearly three centuries ago. The village is a cozy, beflowered place on a clear little river, whose name, the Puddle, is the only thing to prejudice one against it. Just adjoining Puddletown is Aethelhampton Court, the finest country house in Dorset, which has been inhabited by one family, the Martins, for four hundred years. Darkness is setting in when we drive into the courtyard of the King's Arms in Dorchester. It is a wild, windy evening; rain is threatening and under such conditions the comfortable old house seems an opportune haven indeed. It is a characteristic English inn such as Dickens eulogizes in "Pickwick Papers"--one where "everything looks--as everything always does in all decent English inns--as if the travelers had been expected and their comforts prepared for days beforehand." There is a large, well-furnished sitting-room awaiting us, with bedrooms to match, and the evening meal is ready on a table resplendent with fresh linen and glittering silver. In a cabinet in the corner of the dining-room is an elaborate silver tea-service with the legend, "Used by His August Majesty King Edward VII. when as Prince of Wales he was a guest of the King's Arms, Dorchester, on--" but we have quite forgotten the date. A rather recent and innocent tradition, but perhaps the traveler of two centuries hence may be duly impressed, for the silver service will be there if the King's Arms is still standing. It is an irregular old house, built nobody knows just when, and added to from time to time as occasion required. The lack of design is delightfully apparent; it is a medley of scattered apartments and winding hallways. It would fit perfectly into a Dickens novel--indeed, with the wind howling furiously outside and the rain fitfully lashing the panes we think of the stormy night at the Maypole in "Barnaby Rudge." But it has been a rather trying day and our musings soon fade into pleasant dreams when we are once ensconced in the capacious beds of the King's Arms. One can spend a profitable half day in Dorchester and a much longer time might be consumed in exploring the immediate vicinity. There are two fine churches, All Saints', with a tall slender spire, and St. Peter's, with a square, battlemented tower from which peal the chimes of the town clock. In the latter church is a tomb which may interest the few Americans who come to Dorchester, since beneath it is buried Rev. John White, who took an active part in founding Massachusetts Colony. In 1624 he despatched a company of Dorset men to the new colony, raising money for them, procuring their charter and later sending out as the first governor, John Endicott of Dorchester, who sailed for New England in 1629 in the "George Bona Ventura." In both churches there is an unusual number of effigies and monuments which probably escaped because of Dorchester's friendliness for the Parliamentary cause--but none of them commemorates famous people. Outside St. Peter's there is a statue to William Barnes, the Dorset poet, with an inscription from one of his own poems which illustrates the quaint dialect he employed: "Zoo now I hope his kindly feace Is gone to find a better pleace: But still wi' vo'k a-left behind He'll always be a-kept in mind." The county museum, adjoining the church, contains one of the best provincial collections in England. The vicinity is noted for Roman remains and a number of the most remarkable have found a resting-place here. There are curiosities galore in the shape of medieval implements of torture, among them a pair of heavy leaden weights labeled "Mercy," which a tender-hearted jailer ordered tied to the feet of a man hanged for arson as late as 1836, so he would strangle more quickly. There are relics of Jeffreys' dread court, the chair he used when sentencing the Dorset peasants to transportation and death and the iron spikes on which the heads of the rebels were exposed to blacken in the sun. There is much besides horrors in Dorchester Museum, though I suppose the gruesome and horrible will always get the greater share of attention. And such things are not without their educational and moral value, for they speak eloquently of the progress the human race has made to render such implements of torture only objects of shuddering curiosity. To the admirer of Thomas Hardy, the novelist, Dorchester will always have a peculiar interest, for here the master still lives, much alone, in a little house near the town, his simple life and habits scarcely differentiating him from the humblest Wessex peasant. I say "the novelist," for another Thomas Hardy was also a Dorchester man--the admiral who supported the dying Nelson at Trafalgar. The great writer, however, is known to all the townsmen and is universally admired and revered. Shortly after our visit the people of the town essayed a fete in his honor, the chief feature being two plays adapted from Wessex tales. Mr. Hardy, though in his seventy-second year, followed the rehearsals closely, sitting night after night in a dark corner of the auditorium. A correspondent described him as "a grave, gray little figure with waxed moustache ends and bright vigilant eyes, who rose occasionally to make a suggestion, speaking almost apologetically as if asking a favor." His suggestions usually had to do with the character and effect of word cadences. Nothing could exceed his sensitiveness to the harmonies of speech. "Will you let me see the book, please?" he would say. "I think that sentence does not sound right; I will alter it a little." He also personally arranged the hornpipe dance by shepherds in the cottage where three wayfarers take shelter from a storm. The music was played by a fiddler nearly eighty years old who used to make a living by such rustic merrymakings and who is perhaps the last survivor of the race of fiddlers in Dorset. All the actors belonged to the town. One is a cooper, another a saddler, and there were clerks and solicitors and auctioneers. The producer who designed all the scenery is a monument mason and ex-mayor of Dorchester. It is perhaps too early to predict the place of Thomas Hardy in literature, though there be those who rank him with George Eliot. His home town, which he has given to fame as the Casterbridge of his tales, has no misgivings about the matter and freely ranks him with the immortals. The chilling philosophy of many of his books has not hidden his warm heart from his townsmen, who resent the word "stony" applied to him by an American writer. They say that his unpretentious life, his affability, his consideration for others and his modesty, all teach the lessons of love and hope, and that nothing is farther from his personal character than misanthropy or coldness. The history of Dorchester differs not greatly from that of many other English towns of its class. A Roman station undoubtedly existed here. The town was mentioned in the Doomsday Book and was a village of good size in the reign of Henry VIII. In 1613 it was totally destroyed by fire--a calamity which the citizens declared a "visitacion of God's wrath," to appease which they founded an almshouse and hospital. With business foresight they also established a brewery, the profits from which were expected to maintain the hospital, and the grave records show no intimation of any question whether such a plan might be acceptable to the Deity they sought to placate. Dorchester was strongly for the Parliament in the unpleasantness between Oliver and the king, but its loyalty was not very aggressive, for it surrendered to the royal army with scarcely a show of resistance--the more to its discredit, since it had been elaborately fortified and was well supplied with munitions of war. It suffered severely for its cowardice, for it was taken and retaken many times during the war and its citizens subjected to numberless exactions and indignities. The ascendency of the commonwealth brought Dorchester comparative peace for three or four decades. The next notable event in its career was the coming of Jeffreys the infamous to judge the unfortunate Dorset men who inclined, or were alleged to have inclined, towards the Duke of Monmouth in his ill-starred attempt on the throne of England. To expedite matters, Jeffreys let it be understood that a plea of guilty would predispose him to mercy, but the poor wretches who fell into this trap were sentenced to death or transportation on their own confessions. The charge lodged against most of the unfortunates was that they were "away from their habitacions att the tyme of the rebellion." For more than two centuries after this carnival of death, sanctioned by a corrupt and vengeful government, Dorchester has pursued the paths of unbroken peace and has grown and prospered in a quiet way. The fame of Thomas Hardy attracts many and the roving motor car also brings an increasing number of pilgrims, none of whom go away disappointed. It is a trim old town, still picturesque, though modern improvements are making inroads on its antique quaintness. Its environs are singularly beautiful; the country roads enter the town between ranks of splendid trees and the avenues around the town are bordered with giant limes, sycamores and chestnuts. The River Frome glides quietly past the place through reedy meadows and the smooth green sward covers the ancient Roman amphitheatre which adjoins the town on the south. This is by far the most perfect work of its kind in Britain; it is about two hundred feet in diameter and must have accommodated some twelve thousand spectators. It lies just along the road by which we leave the town and which runs almost due west to Bridport, Lyme Regis and Exeter. For some miles we pursue a sinuous course across the barren country and occasionally encounter forbiddingly steep grades. At Bridport we catch our first glimpse of a placidly blue sea, which frequently flashes through gaps in the hills for the next twenty miles. At Lyme Regis the road pitches down a sharp hill into the town, which covers the slopes of a ravinelike valley. It is a retired little seaside resort, though red roofs of modern villas now contrast somewhat with its rural appearance. No railroad comes within several miles of the place, which has a permanent population of only two thousand. It is not without historic tradition, for here the Duke of Monmouth landed on his ill-fated invasion to which we have already referred. The town was a favorite haunt of Jane Austen and here she located one of the memorable scenes in "Persuasion." It is still a very quiet place--a retreat for those seeking real seclusion and freedom from the formality and turmoil of the larger and more fashionable resorts. Its tiny harbor, encircled by a crescent-shape sweep of cliffs, is almost innocent of craft to-day, though there was a time when it ranked high among the western ports. It is one of those delightful old villages one occasionally finds in England, standing now nearly as they did three centuries ago, while the great world has swept away from them. We wish we might tarry a day in Lyme Regis, but our plans will not permit it now. We climb the precipitously steep, irregular road that takes us out of the place, though we cast many backward glances at the little town and quiet blue-green harbor edged by a scimiterlike strip of silver sand. The Exeter road is much the same as that between Lyme Regis and Dorchester--winding, steep, narrow and rough in places--and the deadly Devonshire hedgerow on a high earthen ridge now shuts out our view of the landscape much of the time. Devon and Cornwall, with the most charming scenery in England, would easily become a great motoring ground if the people would mend the roads and eradicate the hedgerows. At Exeter we stop at the Rougemont for lunch, despite the recollection of pretty high charges on a former occasion. It is one of the best provincial hotels, if it is far from the cheapest. A drizzling rain is falling when we leave the cathedral city for Newton Abbot and Totnes, directly to the south; in the market-place of the first-named town is the stone upon which William III. was proclaimed king after his landing at Brixham. Totnes, seven miles farther, has many quaint old houses with odd piazzas and projecting timbered gables, which give the streets a decidedly antique appearance. Here, too, is another famous stone, the identical one upon which Brutus of Troy first set foot when landing in Britain at a date so remote that it can only be guessed at. Indeed, there be wiseacres who freely declare that the Roman prince never set foot on it at all; but we are in no mood for such scepticism to-day, when cruising about in a steady rain seeking "objects of interest," as the road-book styles them. Of Totnes Castle only the foundations remain, though it must have been a concentric, circular structure like that of Launceston. From its walls on fair days there is a lovely, far-reaching view quite shut out from us by the gray mist that hovers over the valley--a scene described by a writer more fortunate than we as "a rich soft country which stretches far and wide, a land of swelling hills and richly wooded valleys and green corn springing over the red earth. Northwards on the skyline, the Dartmoor hills lie blue and seeming infinitely distant in the light morning haze; while in the opposite direction, one sees a long straight reach of river, set most sweetly among the hills, up which the salt tide is pouring from Dartmouth so rapidly that it grows wider every moment, and the bitter sea air which travels with it from the Channel reaches as far as the battlements on which we stand. Up that reach the Totnes merchants, standing on these old walls, used to watch their argosies sailing with the tide, homeward bound from Italy or Spain, laden with precious wines and spices." But no one who visits Totnes--even though the day be rainy and disagreeable--should fail to see Berry Pomeroy Castle, which common consent declares the noblest ruin in all Devon and Cornwall. We miss the main road to the village of Berry and approach the ruin from the rear by a narrow, muddy lane winding over steep grades through a dense forest. We are not sure whether we are fortunate or otherwise in coming to the shattered haunt of the fierce old de Pomeroys on such a day. Perhaps its grim traditions and its legends of ghostly habitants seem the more realistic under such a lowering sky--and it may be that the gloomy day comports best with the scene of desolation and ruined grandeur which breaks on our vision. The castle was an unusual combination of medieval fortress and palatial dwelling house, the great towers still flanking the entrance suggesting immense defensive strength, as does the situation on the edge of a rocky precipice. The walls are pierced by multitudes of mullioned windows--so many, indeed, an old chronicle records, that it was "a day's work for a servant to open and close the casements." In some details the more modern remnants of the structure remind one of Cowdray Palace--especially the great window groups. Verily, "ruin greenly dwells" at Berry Pomeroy Castle. Ivy mantles every inch of the walls and some fragments, rising tall and slender like chimneys, are green to the very tops. The green sward runs riot over the inner courts and covers fallen masses of debris; great trees, some of them doubtless as old as the castle itself, sway their branches above it; our pictures tell the story, perhaps better than any words, of the rank greenness that seems even more intense in the falling rain. One quite forgets the stirring history of the castle--and it is stirring, for does not tradition record that its one-time owners urged their maddened steeds to spring to death with their riders from the beetling precipice on which the castle stands, rather than to surrender to victorious besiegers?--I say one forgets even this in the rather creepy sensations that come over him when he recalls the ghostly legends of the place. For Berry Pomeroy Castle has one of the most blood-curdling and best authenticated ghost stories that it has been my lot to read. It has a weird interest that warrants retelling here and the reader who has no liking for such things may skip it if he chooses. [Illustration: BERRY POMEROY CASTLE, ENTRANCE TOWERS] "Somewhat more than a century ago, Dr. Walter Farquhar, who was created a baronet in 1796, made a temporary sojourn in Torquay. This physician was quite a young man at that time and had not acquired the reputation which, after his settlement in London, procured him the confidence and even friendship of royalty. One day, during his stay in Devon, he was summoned professionally to Berry Pomeroy Castle, a portion of which building was still occupied by a steward and his wife. The latter was seriously ill, and it was to see her that the physician had been called in. Previous to seeing his patient Dr. Farquhar was shown an outer apartment and requested to remain there until she was prepared to see him. This apartment was large and ill-proportioned; around it ran richly carved panels of oak that age had changed to the hue of ebony. The only light in the room was admitted through the chequered panes of a gorgeously stained window, in which were emblazoned the arms of the former lords of Berry Pomeroy. In one corner, to the right of the wide fireplace, was a flight of dark oaken steps, forming part of a staircase leading apparently to some chamber above; and on these stairs the fading gleams of summer's twilight shone through. "While Dr. Farquhar wondered, and, if the truth be told, chafed at the delay which had been interposed between him and his patient, the door opened, and a richly dressed female entered the apartment. He, supposing her to be one of the family, advanced to meet her. Unheeding him, she crossed the room with a hurried step, wringing her hands and exhibiting by her motions the deepest distress. When she reached the foot of the stairs, she paused for an instant and then began to ascend them with the same hasty step and agitated demeanour. As she reached the highest stair the light fell strongly on her features and displayed a countenance youthful, indeed, and beautiful, but in which vice and despair strove for mastery. 'If ever human face,' to use the doctor's own words, 'exhibited agony and remorse; if ever eye, that index of the soul, portrayed anguish uncheered by hope and suffering without interval; if ever features betrayed that within the wearer's bosom there dwelt a hell, those features and that being were then present to me.' "Before he could make up his mind on the nature of this strange occurrence, he was summoned to the bedside of his patient. He found the lady so ill as to require his undivided attention, and had no opportunity, and in fact no wish, to ask any questions which bore on a different subject to her illness. "But on the following morning, when he repeated his visit and found the sufferer materially better, he communicated what he had witnessed to the husband and expressed a wish for some explanation. The steward's countenance fell during the physician's narrative and at its close he mournfully ejaculated: "'My poor wife! my poor wife!' "'Why, how does this relation affect her?' "'Much, much!' replied the steward, vehemently. 'That it should have come to this! I cannot--cannot lose her! You know not,' he continued in a milder tone, 'the strange, sad history; and--and his lordship is extremely averse to any allusion being ever made to the circumstance or any importance attached to it; but I must and will out with it! The figure which you saw is supposed to represent the daughter of a former baron of Berry Pomeroy, who was guilty of an unspeakable crime in that chamber above us; and whenever death is about to visit the inmates of the castle she is seen wending her way to the scene of her crimes with the frenzied gestures you describe. The day my son was drowned she was observed; and now my wife!' "'I assure you she is better. The most alarming symptoms have given way and all immediate danger is at an end.' "'I have lived in and near the castle thirty years,' was the steward's desponding reply, 'and never knew the omen fail.' "'Arguments on omens are absurd,' said the doctor, rising to take his leave. 'A few days, however, will, I trust, verify my prognostics and see Mrs. S---- recovered.' "They parted, mutually dissatisfied. The lady died at noon. "Years intervened and brought with them many changes. The doctor rose rapidly and deservedly into repute; became the favourite physician and even personal friend of the Prince Regent, was created a baronet, and ranked among the highest authorities in the medical world. "When he was at the zenith of his professional career, a lady called on him to consult him about her sister, whom she described as sinking, overcome and heartbroken by a supernatural appearance. [Illustration: BERRY POMEROY CASTLE--WALL OF INNER COURT] "'I am aware of the apparent absurdity of the details which I am about to give,' she began, 'but the case will be unintelligible to you, Sir Walter, without them. While residing at Torquay last summer, we drove over one morning to visit the splendid remains of Berry Pomeroy Castle. The steward was very ill at the time (he died, in fact, while we were going over the ruins,) and there was some difficulty in getting the keys. While my brother and I went in search of them, my sister was left alone for a few moments in a large room on the ground-floor; and while there--most absurd fancy!--she has persuaded herself she saw a female enter and pass her in a state of indescribable distress. This spectre, I suppose I must call her, horribly alarmed her. Its features and gestures have made an impression, she says, which no time can efface. I am well aware of what you will say, that nothing can possibly be more preposterous. We have tried to rally her out of it, but the more heartily we laugh at her folly, the more agitated and excited does she become. In fact, I fear we have aggravated her disorder by the scorn with which we have treated it. For my own part, I am satisfied her impressions are erroneous, and rise entirely from a depraved state of the bodily organs. We wish for your opinion and are most anxious you should visit her without delay.' "'Madam, I will make a point of seeing your sister immediately; but it is no delusion. This I think it proper to state most positively, and previous to any interview. I, myself, saw the same figure, under somewhat similar circumstances and about the same hour of the day; and I should decidedly oppose any raillery or incredulity being expressed on the subject in your sister's presence.' "Sir Walter saw the young lady next day and after being for a short time under his care she recovered. "Our authority for the above account of how Berry Pomeroy Castle is haunted derived it from Sir Walter Farquhar, who was a man even more noted for his probity and veracity than for his professional attainments, high as they were rated. The story has been told as nearly as possible in Sir Walter's own words." Yonder is the "ghost's walk," along that tottering wall; yonder is the door the apparition is said to enter. If you can stand amidst these deserted ruins on a dark, lowering evening and feel no qualms of nervousness after reading the tale, I think you are quite able to laugh all ghosts to scorn. We have lingered long enough at Berry Pomeroy--we can scarce cover the twenty miles to Plymouth ere darkness sets in. But fortune favors us; at Totnes the rain ceases and a red tinge breaks through the clouds which obscure the western sky. We have a glorious dash over the wet road which winds through some of the loveliest of Devonshire landscapes. Midway, from the hilltop that dominates the vale of the Erme, we get a view of Ivy Bridge, a pleasant village lying along the clear river, half hidden in the purple haze of evening; and just at dusk we glide into the city of the Pilgrim Fathers. XVIII POLPERRO AND THE SOUTH CORNISH COAST We did not search our road-maps for Polperro because of anything the guide-books say about it, for these dismiss it as a "picturesque fishing village on the South Devonshire coast." There are dozens of such villages in Devon and Cornwall, and only those travelers whose feet are directed by some happy chance to Polperro will know how much it outshines all its rivals, if, indeed, there are any worthy to be styled as such. Our interest in the quaint little hamlet was aroused at a London art exhibit, where a well-known English artist showed some three score clever sketches which arrested our attention at once. "I made them last summer during a stay at Polperro," he said in answer to our inquiry. "And where is Polperro, pray?" we asked with visions of Italy or Spain and were taken aback not a little to learn that a Devonshire village afforded subject matter for the sketches. And forthwith Polperro was added to the list of places we must see on our projected Land's End tour. A diligent search of our maps finally revealed the name and showed the distance about twenty miles from Plymouth. The road is steep and winding and there is only a network of narrow lanes for some miles out of the village. We leave Plymouth after a night's sojourn at the Grand Hotel and cross the estuary at the Tor Point ferry, which makes trips at frequent intervals. A flat-bottomed ferry boat, held in place against the strong tides by heavy chains anchored at either end, takes us across for a moderate fare and we set out beneath a lowering sky to explore the rough and difficult but beautiful bit of country stretching along the coast from Plymouth to Fowey Harbor. Indeed, we had in mind to cross the estuary by ferry at the latter place and asked a garage employee about the facilities for so doing. "Hi wouldn't recommend it, sir. Last week a gent with a motor tried it and the boat tipped and let the car into the water. Hi went down to 'elp them get it out and you could just see the top sticking out at low tide." And so we altered our route to go around the estuary--some fifteen miles--rather than chance repeating the exciting experience of our fellow-motorist of the week before. But this is a digression--I had meant to say that there is little to engage our attention for several miles after crossing at Tor Point. The country is studded with rough hills and our route cuts across some of these, a wide outlook often rewarding the steep climb to the summits. We cautiously follow the sinuous road until it pitches sharply down into the ravinelike coomb occupied by the Looes, East and West, according to their position on the river. These villages cling to the steep hills, rising from either side of the river, which we cross by a lichen-covered bridge hung with a multitude of fishing nets. We see a confused medley of houses elbowing one another out into the roadway until their sagging gables nearly meet in places, built apparently with sublime disregard of the points of the compass and without any preconceived plan. Once it was a famous fishing port, but now the industry is conducted on a small scale only and the Looes have to depend largely on vacationists from Plymouth in summertime. We do not linger here, but after crossing the bridge we enter the narrow road that cuts straight across the hills to Polperro. It is a rough, hilly road and the heavy grades shift the gears more than once; but it carries us to splendid vantage-points where we pause to glance at the landscape. There are wide expanses of wooded hills with lovely intersecting valleys, the predominating green dashed with broad splotches of purple heather--the rankest and most brilliant of any we saw in a land famous for its heather! Over all stretches the mottled sky, reflecting its moods on the varied scenes beneath--here a broad belt of sunlight, yonder a drifting shower, for it is one of those fitful days that alternately smiles and weeps. We descend another long hill and enter the lane which runs down the ravine into the main street of Polperro. [Illustration: A STREET IN EAST LOOE--CORNWALL] The main street of Polperro! Was there ever another avenue like it?--a cobble-paved, crooked alley scarce a half dozen feet from curb to curb, too narrow for vehicles of any kind to pass. The natives come out and stare in wonderment at our presumption in driving a motor into Polperro--and we become a little doubtful ourselves when a sharp turn bars our progress near the post office. A man, seeing us hesitate, tells us we cannot very well go farther--a suggestion with which we quite agree--and leaving the car surrounded by a group of wondering children we set out on foot to explore the mysteries of Polperro. I think we can truthfully declare that of all the queer villages we saw in Britain--and it would be a long story to tell of them--no other matched the simple, unpretentious fisher-town of Polperro. No huge hotel with glaring paint, no amusement pier or promenade, none of the earmarks of the conventional resort into which so many fine old towns have--shall I say degenerated?--are to be seen; nothing but the strangest jumble of old stone houses, wedged in the narrow ravinelike valley. So irregularly are they placed, with such a total disregard of straight lines and directions, that it seems, as one writer has remarked, that they might originally have been built on the hillsides at decent distances from each other and by some cataclysm slid down in a solid mass along the river. The streets are little more than footpaths and wind among a hundred odd corners, of which the one shown in our sketch is only typical. We cross the river--at low tide only a shallow stream--by the narrow high-arched bridge, whose odd design and lichen-covered stones are in perfect keeping with the surroundings, and come out on the sea wall that overlooks the tiny harbor. A dozen old salts--dreaming, no doubt, of their active younger days on the blue sea stretching out before them--are roused from their reveries and regard us curiously. Evidently tourists are not an everyday incident in Polperro, and they treat us with the utmost civility, answering our queries in broad Cornish accent that we have to follow closely to understand. A few fishing boats still go out of the town, but its brave old days are past; modern progress, while it has left Polperro quite untouched, has swept away its ancient source of prosperity. Once its harbor was a famous retreat for smugglers, who did a thriving business along the Cornish coast, and it is possible some of these old fellows may have heard their fathers tell thrilling tales of the little craft which slipped into the narrow inlet with contraband cargos; of wrecks and prizes, with spoils of merchandise and gold, so welcome to the needy fisherfolk, and of fierce and often deadly conflicts with the king's officers. [Illustration: POLPERRO, CORNWALL--LOOKING TOWARD THE SEA] The tide is out and a few boats lie helplessly on their sides in the harbor; no doubt the scene is more animated and pleasing when the green water comes swelling up the inlet and fills the river channel, now strewn with considerable unsightly debris. A violent storm driving the ocean into the narrow cleft where the town lies must be a fearsome spectacle to the inhabitants, and fortunately it has been well described by Polperro's historian, who has told a delightful story of the town. "In the time of storm," he writes, "Polperro is a striking scene of bustle and excitement. The noise of the wind as it roars up the coomb, the hoarse rumbling of the angry sea, the shouts of the fishermen engaged in securing their boats, and the screams of the women and children carrying the tidings of the latest disaster, are a peculiarly melancholy assemblage of sounds, especially when heard at midnight. All who can render assistance are out of their beds, helping the sailors and fishermen; lifting the boats out of reach of the sea, or taking the furniture of the ground floors to a place of safety. When the first streak of morning light comes, bringing no cessation of the storm, but only serving to show the devastation it has made, the effect is still more dismal. The wild fury of the waves is a sight of no mean grandeur as it dashes over the peak and falls on its jagged summit, from whence it streams down the sides in a thousand waterfalls and foams at its base. The infuriated sea sweeps over the piers and striking against the rocks and houses on the warren side rebounds towards the strand, and washes fragments of houses and boats into the streets, where the receding tide leaves them strewn in sad confusion." A brisk rain begins as we saunter along the river, and we recall that the car has been left with top down and contents exposed to the weather. We hasten back only to find that some of the fisherfolk have anticipated us--they have drawn the top forward and covered everything from the rain as carefully as we could have done--a thoughtfulness for the stranger in the village that we appreciate all the more for its rarity. And though we left the car surrounded by a group of merry, curious children, not a thing is disturbed. [Illustration: LANSALLOS CHURCH, POLPERRO] The postmaster is principal shopkeeper and from him we learn something of the town and secure a number of pictures which we prize, though pictures are hopelessly inadequate to give any real idea of Polperro. As yet tourist visitors to the village are not numerous, though artists frequently come and are no longer a source of wonderment to the natives. Two plain but comfortable old inns afford fair accommodations for those who wish to prolong their stay. With the increasing vogue of the motor car, Polperro's guests are bound to be on the increase, though few of them will remain longer than an hour or two, since there is little to detain one save the village itself. Lansallos Church is a splendid edifice surrounded by tall trees beneath which are mouldering gravestones upon which one may read queer inscriptions and epitaphs. There is also an ancient water-mill just where the road enters the village, which still does daily duty, its huge overshot wheel turning slowly and clumsily as the clear little moorland stream dashes upon it. No famous man has come forth from the village, but it produced a host of hardy seamen, who, under such leaders as Drake and Nelson, did their full share in maintaining the unbroken naval supremacy of England. And not a few of those who fought so valiantly for their country gained their sea training and developed their hardihood and resourcefulness in the ancient and--in Devon and Cornwall--honorable occupation of smuggling. We follow narrow, hedge-bordered lanes northward for several miles to regain the main road from Liskeard to Lostwithiel; for while we should have preferred the coast route, we have no desire to try conclusions with the ferry at Fowey. The fitful weather has taken another tack and for half an hour we are deluged, the driving rain turning the narrow roads into rivers and making progress exceedingly slow. When we reach the main highway the rain abruptly ceases and the sky again breaks into mottled patches of blue and white, which scatter sunshine and shadow over the fields. The country is intensely green and we are now in a spot which a good authority declares the loveliest inland scenery in Cornwall. It is the pleasant vale of the River Fowey, in the center of which stands the charming old town of Lostwithiel, surrounded by luxuriant pastures which stretch away to the green encircling hills. There is a fourteenth-century bridge in the town which seems sturdy for all its six hundred years of flood and storm; and the church spire, with its richly carved open-work lantern, has been styled "the glory of Cornwall," and we will agree that it is one of the glories of Cornwall, in any event. It shows marks of cannon shot, for considerable fighting raged round the town during the civil war. So narrow and steep is the street that pitches down the hill into Fowey that we leave the car at the top and make the descent on foot. Indeed, the majority of the streets of the town are so narrow and crooked that it is difficult for a vehicle of any size to get about easily. From the hill we have a fine view of the little land-locked harbor, dotted with fishing vessels. It shows to-day a peculiar color effect--dark blue, almost violet, out seaward, while it fades through many variations of greens and blues into pale emerald near the shore. The town is clean and substantial-looking and it must have presented much the same appearance two hundred years ago--no doubt most of the buildings we now see were standing then. It is now a mere fisher village, somewhat larger and not quite so primitive as Polperro, though in the day of smaller ships it contended with Plymouth and Dartmouth for distinction as chief port of Cornwall. It was during its period of prosperity and maritime importance that the two towers, yet standing, were erected to guard the entrance of the harbor. A chain stretched between these made the town almost impregnable from attack by sea. Here the old-time seamen dwelt in security and plotted smuggling expeditions and raids upon the French--gentle occupations which greatly contributed to the prosperity of the town. These profitable trades about the middle of the fifteenth century proved Fowey's undoing. Peace had been declared with France, but the bold sailors went on with their raids and captured French vessels quite regardless of the treaties with that nation. This so incensed King Edward IV. that he caused numerous "leading citizens" of Fowey to be summarily hanged, levied a heavy fine on the town, and handed its ships over to the port of Dartmouth. The last proceeding seems like a grim bit of humor, for Dartmouth sailors were no less offenders against France than their unfortunate neighbors. After this sad experience it was long ere Fowey again held up its head and in the meanwhile it was far distanced by its former rivals. Its sailors, who had wrought many valorous deeds in the English navy, were little heard of afterwards and the rash, foolish action of the king practically wiped out an important port that would still have bred thousands of bold seamen to serve their country. [Illustration: A STREET IN FOWEY--CORNWALL] At the harbor wall a grizzled old fisherman approaches us and politely touching his cap offers to row us to a number of places which he declares we should see. We demur, not being fond of row-boats; he persists in his broad South-Country speech--to give it is past my linguistic powers, though I wish I could--"Pardon me for pushing my trade; it's the only way I have of earning a living now, since I gave up the sea." We think it worth the modest sum he proposes to charge us for a trip to hear him talk and we ask him about himself. "I was a sailor, sir, for more than fifty years and I saw a lot of hardship in my day with nothing to show for it now. It was all right when I was young and fond of roving, but as I grew old it began to pall and I wished I might have been able to lead a different life. But I had to stick to it until I was too old to stand the work, and I got the little boat here which makes me a poor living--there's nothing doing except in summertime and I have to get along as best I can in winter." "Do you own a house?" "Own a house?" he echoed in surprise at our ignorance. "Nobody owns a house here; the squire who lives in the big place on the hill yonder owns the town--and everybody in it. A common man hasn't any chance to own anything in England. It doesn't seem fair and I don't understand it--but we live by it in England--we live by it in England." We divert his bitter reflections by asking him about the town. "Don't forget the old Ship Inn," he said, "and the church--it has the tallest tower in Cornwall. You can see through the big castle on the hill if you get permission. Any famous people?--why, yes--Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch lives here. He's our only titled man and some of his books, they say, tell about Fowey." We thank our sailor friend and repair to the Ship Inn, as he counseled us. They show us the "great Tudor room," the pride of the house--a large beamed and paneled apartment with many black-oak carvings. But the chief end of the Ship to-day appears to be liquor selling, and not being bibulously inclined, we depart for the church. It was built in the reign of Edward IV., just before that monarch dealt the town its death-blow as a port and marked the end of Fowey's prosperity. The timber roof, the carved-oak pulpit and stone baptismal font are all unusually fine and there are some elaborate monuments to old-time dignitaries of the town. Place House, the great castellated palace on the hill, with immense, elaborately carved bow-windows, is the dominating feature of the town. Inside there is some remarkable open timberwork roofing the great hall and much antique paneling and carving. There is also a valuable collection of furniture and objects of art which has accumulated in the four hundred years that the place has belonged to the Treffry family. It is more of a palatial residence than a fortress and it appears never to have suffered seriously from siege or warfare. [Illustration: PROBUS CHURCH TOWER, CORNWALL] We are soon away on the highroad to Truro, which proves good though steep in places. There is a fine medieval church at St. Austell and another at Probus has one of the most striking towers we saw in England. It is of later origin than the main body of the church; some two hundred feet high, and is surmounted by Gothic pinnacles, with carved stone balustrades extending between them. Near the top it is pierced by eight large perpendicular windows, two to each side, and it is altogether a graceful and imposing edifice. Such churches in the poor little towns that cluster about them--no doubt poorer when the churches were built--go to show the store the Cornishmen of early days set by their religion, which led them out of their poverty to rear such stately structures; but it is quite likely that a goodly part of the profits of their old occupations--wrecking, smuggling and piracy--went into these churches as a salve to conscience. Nor is the church-building spirit entirely extinct, as proven by the magnificent towers of Truro Cathedral, of which I shall have more to say anon and which soon breaks into our view. [Illustration: KYNANCE COVE, CORNWALL From original painting by Warne-Browne] As a matter of variation we take the southern route by the way of Helston from Truro to Penzance. This is rougher and has more steep hills than the direct road through Rudruth. Helston is some ten miles north of the Lizard Peninsula, where there is much beautiful coast scenery--especially Kynance Cove. Coming up the road along the coast toward Marazion, one gets a perfect view of the castle-crowned bulk of the Cornish St. Michael's Mount, the seat of the St. Aubyns. In the distance it stands like an immense pyramid against a wide reach of sunset sky, but as we come nearer the towers and battlements of the castle come out weird and strange; in the purple shadows the whole vast pile savors of enchantment. Beyond it shimmers the wide calm of Penzance Harbor--as it chances, dotted with the dark forms of some fifty leviathans of the British navy. For there is to be a great naval review in Penzance the coming week; the king and queen and a host of celebrities are expected. The town is gay with decorations and delirious with expectancy of the big events to come. Graham-White, the famous aviator, is to appear and there are to be many thrilling evolutions and much powder-burning by the royal fleet. Hotels and lodging-houses are crowded to the limit and if we have ever been somewhat dubious whether to try the hospitality of Land's End for the night, it is settled now--we could hardly stay in Penzance unless we camp on the street. It was indeed a bitter disappointment to Penzance that the capricious Cornish weather completely ruined the expected fete. Furious winds and continual rain drove the fleet to the more sheltered Tor Bay and the programme, on a greatly reduced scale, took place there. Aside from the disappointment, the people of the town suffered a heavy loss in the large sums they had spent in anticipation of the event. But Penzance is all unconscious of the fate in store for it; its streets are thronged and it is fairly ablaze with the national colors and elaborate electrical decorations. We thread our way slowly through its streets into the lonely indifferent lane that winds over steep and barren hills to Land's End. XIX LAND'S END TO LONDON The first sight of Land's End Hotel, a low, drab-colored building standing on the bleak headland, is apt to beget in the wayfarer who approaches it at sunset a feeling of regret that he passed through Penzance without stopping for the night. Nor does his regret grow less when he is assigned to ill-furnished rooms with uncomfortable-looking beds--which, I may say, do not belie their looks--or when he sits down to a dinner that is only a slight improvement upon our memorable banquet at John O'Groats. But we did not come to Land's End to find London hotel comforts and conveniences, but for purely sentimental reasons, which should preclude any fault-finding if accommodations are not just to our liking. It was our fancy to spend a night at both Land's End and John O'Groats--and it must be largely imagination that attracts so many tourists to these widely separated localities, since there are surely hundreds of bits of English and Scottish coast more picturesque or imposing than either. [Illustration: SUNSET NEAR LAND'S END, CORNWALL From original painting by Thos. Moran, N. A.] But here we are, in any event, and we go forth in the gray twilight to take note of our surroundings. An old fellow who has been watching us closely since our arrival follows us and in a language that puzzles us a little urges the necessity of his services as guide if we are to see the wonders of Land's End. We are glad enough to have his assistance and he leads us toward the broken cliffs, thrusting their rugged bulk far into the white-capped waves which come rolling landward. The sky and sea are still tinged with the hues of sunset and a faint glow touches the reddish rocks along the shores. It is too late for the inspiring effect shown in Mr. Moran's wonderful picture--had we been an hour earlier we might have beheld such a scene. Subdued purplish hues now prevail and a dark violet-colored sea thunders upon the coast. The wind is blowing--to our notion, a gale, though our old guide calls it a stiff breeze. "A 'igh wind, sir? Wot would you call a wind that piles up the waves so you can't see yonder lighthouse, that's two hundred and fifty feet tall? That's wot I'd call a 'igh wind, sir. And you'd be drenched to the skin in a minute standing where you are." We revise our ideas of high winds accordingly, but a stiff breeze is quite enough for us, especially when the old man urges us to come out upon what seems to us an exceedingly precarious perch--because it is the "last rock in England." It stands almost sheer as a chimney with the sea foaming in indescribable fury some fifty or sixty feet below, and we have to decline, despite our guide's insistence that we are missing the chief sensation of Land's End. It was no doubt this identical spot which so impressed John Wesley, who visited Land's End in 1743, when he made his famous preaching tour in Cornwall. "It was an awful sight," he wrote. "But how will this melt away when God ariseth in judgment. The sea beneath doth indeed boil like a pot. One would indeed think the sea to be hoary! But though they swell, they cannot prevail. He shall set the bounds which they cannot pass!" But the great preacher did not say whether he stood on the "last rock" or not. We follow our guide in a strenuous scramble over the huge rocks to reach particular viewpoints, and, indeed, there are many awe-inspiring vistas of roaring ocean and rock-bound coast. Everywhere the sea attacks the shore in seeming fury, the great foam-crested waves sweeping against the jagged edges and breaking into a deluge of salt spray. "I've seen more than one ship go to pieces on these rocks in winter storms," says our guide. "At the last wreck twenty-seven lives were lost. I recovered one body myself--a fine Spanish-looking gentleman six feet three inches tall," he goes on, with an evident relish for gruesome details. "The winter storms must be terrible, indeed," we venture. "You can't imagine how dreadful," he answers. "I've seen the sea so rough that for three months no boat could reach yonder lighthouse a mile away; but the keeper was lucky to have food and he kept his light shining all the time. It's a dreary, lonely country in winter time, but more people would come if they only knew what an awful sight it is to see the sea washing over these headlands." The same story is told--in more polished language--by a writer who spent the winter in Cornwall and often visited Land's End on stormy nights: "The raving of the wind among the rocks; the dark ocean--exceedingly dark except when the flying clouds were broken and the stars shining in the clear spaces touched the big black incoming waves with a steely gray light; the jagged isolated rocks, on which so many ships have been shattered, rising in awful blackness from the spectral foam that appeared and vanished and appeared again; the multitudinous hoarse sounds of the sea, with throbbing and hollow booming noises in the caverns beneath--all together served to bring back something of the old vanished picture or vision of Bolerium as we first imagine it. The glare from the various lighthouses visible at this point only served to heighten the inexpressibly sombre effect, since shining from a distance they make the gloomy world appear vaster. Down in the south, twenty-five miles away, the low clouds were lit up at short intervals by wide white flashes, as of sheet lightning, from the Lizard light, the most powerful of all lights, the reflection of which may be seen at a distance of sixty or seventy miles at sea. In front of the Land's End promontory, within five miles of it, was the angry red glare from the Longships tower, and further away to the left the white revolving light of the Wolf lighthouse." Darkness has fallen and almost blotted out the wild surroundings save for the gleams which flash from the lighthouses across the somber waters. We wend our way back to our inn to rest as best we may in anything but comfortable beds after an unusually strenuous day; we have traveled but one hundred and twenty miles since leaving Plymouth in the morning, but we have seen so much and had such varied experiences that we have a dim feeling of having come many times as far. A glorious morning gives us the opportunity of seeing the wild coast at its best. A dark blue sea is breaking on the reddish brown rocks and chafing into white foam at their feet. We wander out on the headland to get a farewell glimpse of the scene--for there is little to tempt one to linger at Land's End; you may see it all at a sunset and sunrise. There is no historic ruin on the spot, and surely any thought of the hotel will hasten your departure if you ever had any intention of lingering. Sennan, a forlorn collection of stone huts about a mile from Land's End, is worth noting only as a type of the few tiny villages in the bit of barren country beyond Penzance and St. Ives. There is nothing to catch the artistic eye in these bleak little places; they lack the quaintness of Polperro or St. Ives and the coziness and color of the flower-embowered cottages of Somerset and Hampshire. The isolated farmhouses show the same characteristics and a description by a writer who lived in one of these during the winter months is full of interest: "Life on these small farms is incredibly rough. One may guess what it is like from the outward aspect of such places. Each, it is true, has its own individual character, but they are all pretty much alike in their dreary, naked and almost squalid appearance. Each, too, has its own ancient Cornish name, some of these very fine or very pretty, but you are tempted to rename them in your own mind Desolation Farm, Dreary Farm, Stony Farm, Bleak Farm and Hungry Farm. The farmhouse is a small, low place and invariably built of granite, with no garden or bush or flower about it. The one I stayed at was a couple of centuries old, but no one had ever thought of growing anything, even a marigold, to soften its bare, harsh aspect. The house itself could hardly be distinguished from the outhouses clustered round it. Several times on coming back to the house in a hurry and not exercising proper care I found I had made for the wrong door and got into the cow-house, or pig-house, or a shed of some sort, instead of into the human habitation. The cows and other animals were all about and you came through deep mud into the living-room. The pigs and fowls did not come in but were otherwise free to go where they liked. The rooms were very low; my hair, when I stood erect, just brushed the beams; but the living-room or kitchen was spacious for so small a house, and had the wide old open fireplace still common in this part of the country. Any other form of fireplace would not be suitable when the fuel consists of furze and turf." Such are the towns and farmhouses of this farthest Cornwall to-day--a country once prosperous on account of tin and copper mines which are all now abandoned. I doubt if there is a more poverty-stricken rural section in the Kingdom than Cornwall. I noted in a paper edited by a socialist candidate for the House of Commons a curious outburst over a donation made by the king to the poor of Cornwall, which was accompanied by a little homily from His Majesty on the necessity of the beneficiaries helping themselves. The article is so significant in the light it throws on certain social conditions and as illustrating a greater degree of freedom of speech than is generally supposed to exist in England that I feel it worth quoting: "Although we do not doubt the King's longing to help all his people, we must be forgiven if we refuse to be impressed by his apparent intensity of feeling. Not that we blame the King. In order to feel decently about the poor, one must have 'had some,' so to speak. And we can hardly imagine that King George knows much concerning the objects of his sympathy, when we consider the annual financial circumstances of his own compact little family. In the year that is ending they will have drawn between them the helpful pittance of six hundred thirty-four thousand pounds. This is exclusive of the income of the Prince of Wales, derived from the revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall. And even if this sum has been badly drained by Yuletide beneficence (as faintly threatened in the Church Army donation) the New Year will bring sure replenishment of the royal purse. "We should not have felt called upon to mention these little details were it not for the offensive phrase--'may they show their gratitude by industry and vigorous efforts to help themselves.' How can the poor devils who live in the foetid hovels which dot the Duchy of Cornwall 'help themselves?' Out of their shameful earnings--when they have any earnings--they must first pay toll to the bloated rent-roll of the King's infant son. Out of their constant penury they must help to provide an extravagant Civil List, to enable their Monarch to lecture on self-help at the end of a donation of twenty-five pounds. Help themselves? Show their gratitude? How can they help themselves when the earth was stolen from them before their birth, when their tools of production are owned and controlled by a group of moneyed parasites, when their laws are made and administered by the class which lives on their labours and fattens on their helplessness? Show their gratitude? Heaven have mercy upon us! What have they to be grateful for--these squalid, dependent, but always necessary outcasts of our civilization?" I fear this is pretty much of a digression, though I think an interesting one. Not all of Cornwall shows evidence of such poverty--the country steadily improves as we hasten to the fine old town of Truro and there is much good country beyond. Though we have come but thirty-six miles from Land's End, the indisposition of one of our party makes it advisable to pause in the old Cornish capital, where we may be sure of comfortable quarters at the Red Lion. We find this a commodious, substantial structure, built about two and a half centuries ago, with a fine entrance hall from which a black-oak stairway leads to the upper floors. Its accommodations and service seem to average with the best provincial hotels in towns the size of Truro, and, altogether, the Red Lion is perhaps as good a place to spend a day of enforced idleness as one is likely to come across. The town itself has little enough to interest the stranger, as I found in wandering about for some hours. Even the splendid cathedral lacks antiquity and historic association, for it still wants a few finishing touches. It has been about thirty years in building and more than a million dollars has been expended in the work. The exterior conforms to the best early English traditions, the most striking feature being the three splendid towers--the central one rising to a height of two hundred and fifty feet. The interior is somewhat glaring and bare, owing largely to the absence of stained-glass windows, of which there are only a few. A portion of the old parish church is included in the building and contains a few ancient monuments of little importance. On the whole, Truro Cathedral is a fine example of modern church architecture and proves that the art is not a lost one by any means. I was fortunate in happening to be inside during an organ rehearsal and more majestic and inspiring music I never heard than the solemn melodies which filled the vast vacant building. We are ready for the road after a day's sojourn in Truro, and depart in a steady rain which continues until nightfall. Our road--which we have traversed before--by way of St. Columb Major and Camelford to Launceston, is hilly and heavy and in the pouring rain we make only slow progress. The gray mist envelops the landscape; but it matters little, for the greater part of our road runs between the dirt fences I have described heretofore, which shut out much of the country, even on fine days. St. Columb and Camelford are dreary, angular little towns stretching closely along the highroad, quite unattractive in fine weather and under present conditions positively ugly. Camelford, some say, is the Camelot of the Arthurian romances, but surely no vestige of romance lingers about it to-day. From here we make a wild dash across the moor to Launceston--the rain is falling more heavily and the wind blowing a gale. Our meter seldom registers under forty miles, a pace that lands us quickly at the door of the White Hart; we are damp and cold and the old inn seems a timely haven, indeed. A change of raiment and warm luncheon makes us feel more at peace with the world, but we do not muster courage to venture out in the storm again. Perhaps if we could have foreseen that the following day would be no better, we should have resumed our journey. Indeed, the next morning the storm that drove the fleet away from Penzance was in full sway over Cornwall and a dreary, rain-swept country it was. The road northward to Holsworthy and Great Torrington is little else but a narrow and hilly lane, though as dreary a section as one will find in Cornwall or Devon, and here, also, the hedges intercept our view much of the way. The towns, too, are quite devoid of interest save the fine Perpendicular church which towers over Holsworthy. Bideford, famous in Kingsley's "Westward Ho!" and Barnstaple, with its potteries which produce the cheap but not inartistic "Barum ware," we have visited before and both have much worth seeing. We are now out of the zone of the storm and the weather is more tolerable; we have really been suffering from the cold in midsummer--not an uncommon thing in Britain. There are two first-class old inns at Taunton--on different occasions people of the town had assured us that each was the best--and though Baedeker gives the London the preference and honors it with the much coveted star, we thought the Castle equally good. It is a gray-stone, ivy-covered building near the castle and if our luncheon may be taken as an index, its service is all that can be desired. A little way out of Taunton we notice a monument a short distance from the roadside and easily identify it from pictures which we have seen as the memorial erected to commemorate the victory of King Alfred over the Danes at Sedgemoor. In olden times this whole section was a vast marsh in which was the Isle of Athelney, surrounded by an almost impenetrable morass. The king and a band of faithful followers built a causeway to the island, which served as a retreat while marshalling sufficient force to cope with the invaders. The rally of the Saxons around the intrepid king finally resulted in a signal victory, which broke the Danish power in England. Alfred built an abbey near the spot as a mark of pious gratitude for his success, but scarcely a trace remains of the structure to-day. In the same vicinity is supposed to have occurred the famous incident of King Alfred and the cakes, which he allowed to burn while watching them. Alfred was then in hiding, disguised as a farm laborer, and received a severe berating from the angry housewife for his carelessness. But Sedgemoor is historic in a double sense, for here the conflict occurred between the forces of James II. and the ill-fated Duke of Monmouth, to which we have previously referred. The rebels planned a night attack on the royal army, and, knowing that carelessness and debauchery would prevail in the king's camp on Sunday, they chose that day for the assault. The accidental discharge of a pistol gave warning of the approach of the assailants and they had the farther misfortune to be hopelessly entangled in the deep drainage ditches which then (as now) intersected the valley. The result was a disastrous defeat for the Duke's followers, of whom a thousand were slain. Monmouth himself was discovered by his enemies after two days' search, hiding in a ditch, and was duly executed in London Tower. Some five hundred of his followers--mostly ignorant peasants--were hanged at Taunton and Dorchester by orders of the infamous Jeffreys. This battle, which took place on Sunday, July 5, 1685, was the last of any consequence to be fought on English soil. The historic field to-day is green and prosperous-looking and the only indication that it was once a marshy fen is the ditches which drain its surplus waters. We pass Glastonbury and Wells, which might well detain us had we not visited them previously, for in all England there are few towns richer in tradition and history than the former; and the latter's cathedral no well-informed traveler would wish to miss. Bath, we know from several previous sojourns, affords an unequalled stopping-place for the night and we soon renew acquaintance at the Empire Hotel, where we are now fairly well known. Our odometer shows an unusually long day's run, much of which was under trying conditions of road and weather. This hotel belongs to a syndicate which owns several others, in London and at various resorts throughout the country. A guest who enters into a contract may stay the year round at these hotels for a surprisingly low figure, going from one to the other according to his pleasure--to Folkestone, for instance, if he wishes the seaside, or to London if he inclines towards the metropolis. Many English people of leisure avail themselves of this plan, which, it would seem, has its advantages in somewhat relieving the monotony of life in a single hotel. Though we have been in Bath several times, something has always interfered with our plan to visit the abbey church and we resolve to make amends before we set out Londonward. There are few statelier church edifices in the island--the "Lantern of England," as the guide-books style it, on account of its magnificent windows. These are mainly modern and prove that the art of making stained glass is far from lost, as has sometimes been insisted. So predominating are the windows, in fact, that one writer declares, "It is the beauty of a flower a little overblown, though it has its charms just the same." The most remarkable of all is the great western group of seven splendid windows illustrating biblical subjects in wonderfully harmonious colors. As may be imagined, the interior is unusually well lighted, though the soft color tones prevent any garish effect. The intricate tracery of the fine fan vaulted ceiling is clearly brought out and also the delicate carving on the screen--a modern restoration, by the way. The monuments are tasteless and, in the main, of little importance, though our attention is naturally arrested by a memorial to "William Bingham, Senator of the United States of America," who died at Bath in 1804. The exterior of the abbey--they tell us--has many architectural defects, though these are not apparent to the layman. The walls are supported by flying buttresses and the west front shows curious sculptures representing the angels upon Jacob's ladder. The tower, one hundred and sixty-five feet in height, is a pure example of English Perpendicular and is rather peculiar in that it is oblong rather than square. As we leave the town we cannot but admire its cleanliness and beautiful location. It skirts both banks of the River Avon and is surrounded by an amphitheater of wooded hills. To our notion it is the finest of inland English resort towns and certainly none has a more varied past, nor has any other figured so extensively in literature. It is about one hundred miles from London by road, and is a favorite goal for the motorist from that city. The road to London is a fine broad highway leading through Marlborough and Reading. It proves a splendid farewell run to our third long motor tour through Britain; we have covered in all nearly twenty thousand miles of highways and byways during varying weather. If there has been much sunshine, there have also been weeks of rain and many lowering gloomy days. There is scarce an historic shrine of importance in the Kingdom that has escaped us and we have visited hundreds of odd corners not even mentioned in the guide-books. And, best of all, we have come to know the people and have gained considerable familiarity with their institutions, which has not lessened our respect and admiration for the Motherland. Indeed, I feel that our experience sufficiently warrants a chapter on the English at home--as we saw them--and I make no apology for concluding this book with such. It is not free from criticism, I know, but could an honest observer write more favorably of our own country--if conditions were such that he might tour our populous states as thoroughly as we have done Britain? Our last day on the road fulfills the ideal of English midsummer; the storm has passed, leaving the country fresh and bright; green fields alternate with the waving gold of the ripening harvest, and here and there we pass an old village or a solitary cottage by the roadside--all typical of the rural England we have come to love so much. We drive leisurely over the fine road and linger an hour or two in Marlborough after luncheon at the Ailesbury Arms, whose excellence we have proven on previous occasions. We find an antique-shop here with a store of old silver that rivals our discovery in Largo, and the prices asked are no higher. From Reading we follow the Thames River road, which for some miles skirts the very shore of the historic stream and passes within a distant view of the towers of Windsor, rising in all their romantic majesty against the sunset sky. From Windsor we follow the familiar road to the heart of the teeming metropolis and our third long motor pilgrimage in Summer Britain is at its close. [Illustration: "A DISTANT VIEW OF THE TOWERS OF WINDSOR" From original painting by the late Edward Moran] XX THE ENGLISH AND THEIR INSTITUTIONS One who has spent many months in the United Kingdom, traveling about twenty thousand miles by motor and considerably by train, and who has met and conversed with the common people of every section of the country in the most retired nooks and in metropolitan cities, may, I hope without undue assumption, venture a few remarks on the English people and their institutions. One would be a dull observer indeed if he did not, with the opportunities which we had, see and learn many things concerning present-day Britain. It is the custom of some American writers, even of recent date, to allege that a general dislike of Americans exists in the Kingdom; and it would not be very strange if this should be true, considering the manner in which many Americans conduct themselves while abroad. Our own experience was that such an idea is not well founded. In all our wanderings we saw no evidence whatever of such dislike. In England everyone knows an American at sight and had there been the slightest unfriendliness towards Americans as a class, it would certainly have been apparent to us during such a tour as our own. I think many incidents cited in this as well as in my former books go to prove that the reverse is true, but these incidents are only a fraction of what I might have given. That a certain uncongeniality, due to a difference in temperament and lack of mutual understanding, exists between the average American and the average Englishman, we may freely admit, but it would be wrong to view this as personal dislike of each other. I have no doubt that even this barrier will disappear in time, just as the dislike and jealousy which really did exist a quarter of a century ago have disappeared. Who could now conceive of the situation that moved Nathaniel Hawthorne to write in "Our Old Home" fifty years ago: "An American is not apt to love the English people, on whatever length of acquaintance. I fancy they would value our regard and even reciprocate it in their ungracious way if we could give it to them, in spite of all rebuffs; but they are beset by a curious and inevitable infelicity which compels them, as it were, to keep up what they consider a wholesome feeling of bitterness between themselves and all other nations, especially Americans." Of our own experience, at least, we may speak with authority. As a result of our several sojourns in Britain and extensive journeyings in every part of the Kingdom, we came to have only the kindest regard for the people and greater appreciation of their apparent good will. As we became better informed we were only the more interested in the history and traditions of the Motherland, and we almost came to feel something of the pride and satisfaction that must fill the breast of the patriotic Englishman himself. Nothing will serve more to impress on one the close connection between the two countries than the common literature which one finds everywhere in both; and you will pass scarce a town or village on all the highways and byways of the Old Country that has not its namesake in America. Our impressions as to the fairness and honesty of the English people generally were most favorable. First of all, our dealings with hotels were perhaps the most numerous of our business transactions. Never to my recollection did we inquire in advance the price of accommodations, and I recall scarcely a single instance where we had reason to believe this had been taken advantage of. This was indeed in striking contrast to our experience with innkeepers on the Continent. For an American in possession of a motor to take up quarters in the average French or German hotel without close bargaining and an exact understanding as to charges would soon mean financial ruin to the tourist of moderate means. We could give almost as good report of the many English shopkeepers with whom we dealt--there was no evidence of any attempt to overcharge us on account of being tourists. Nor did I ever have a cab or carriage-driver try to exact more than was coming to him--though of course a small extra fee is always expected--certainly a contrast with New York City, for instance, where it is always hazardous to get into a cab without an iron-clad agreement with the driver. Perhaps the credit for this state of affairs may be due not so much to the honesty of the English Jehus as to a public sentiment which will not tolerate robbery. Nor should I fail to mention that in twenty thousand miles of touring our car was left unguarded hundreds of times with much movable property in it, and during our whole journey we never lost the value of a farthing from theft. It is no new thing to say that the average Englishman is insular--but this became much more to us than mere hearsay before we left the country. The vision of few of the people extends beyond the Island, and we might almost say, beyond an immediate neighborhood. There is a great disinclination to get out of an established groove; outside of certain classes there appears to be little ambition to travel. I know of one intelligent young man of thirty who had never seen salt water--nowhere in England more than a hundred miles distant. I was told that a journey from a country town in Scotland or North England to London is an event in a lifetime with almost any one of the natives. The world beyond the confines of England is vague indeed; Germany, the universal bugbear, is best known and cordially hated, but of America only the haziest notions prevail. Not one in a thousand has any conception of our distances and excepting possibly a dozen cities, one town in America is quite as unknown as another. Akin to this insularity is the lack of enterprise and adaptability everywhere noticeable--a clinging to outworn customs and methods. Since the English vision does not extend to the outer world, but little seems to be expected or even desired of it. There is not the constant desire for improvement, and the eager seeking after some way to do things quicker and better--so characteristic of America--is usually wanting. An American manufacturer will discard even new machinery if something more efficient comes out, but an Englishman only thinks of making his present machine last to the very limit of endurance. A friend told me of a relative of his who boasted that in his mill a steam engine had been running fifty years; it never occurred to the mill-owner that the old engine almost yearly ate up the cost of a new one on account of inefficiency and wasted fuel. Often in garages where I took my car to have it cleaned and oiled, I could not help noting the inefficiency of the workmen. At times I had the engine crank case removed and cleaned and this one little thing gave a painful insight into the methods of the English workman. Nothing could be simpler than removing and replacing the dust shield under the engine--simply snapping six spring catches out of and into position. Yet I have seen one or even two men crawl around under the car for a half hour or more in performing this simple operation. In replacing the oil reservoir and pump I found that nothing would take the place of personal supervision--a cotter pin, gasket or what not would surely be left out to give further trouble. Repairing an American car in a provincial town would be a serious job unless the owner or his driver were able to oversee and direct the work. As I have stated, we left England with decidedly favorable impressions of the country and people; so much so that I doubt not many of our fellow-countrymen would think us unduly prejudiced. But all this did not blind us to the fact that England in many regards is in a distinctly bad way and that a thorough awakening must come if she is to avoid sure decadence. Indeed, there are many, chief among them distinguished Englishmen and colonials, who aver that such decadence has already begun, but there is much difference of opinion as to its cause and as to what may best check its progress. If I were to give my own humble opinion as to the chief disadvantage from which the country suffers and the most depressing influence on national character, I should place feudalism first of all and by this I mean the system of inherited titles, offices and entailed estates. I know that the government of the Kingdom is regarded as one of great efficiency and stability, and I think justly so; and this is often urged by apologists for the feudal system. But the Englishman is slow to learn that just as stable and quite as efficient government may be had without the handicap of outworn medievalism. That the present system seems to work well in England is not due to any inherent merit it may possess, but to the homogeneity of the nation, and to a universal spirit of law-abiding that would insure success for almost any respectable type of government. It does not work well in Ireland and never has; and it has substantially been abandoned in the self-governing colonies. It seems to me, however, that the question as to how the feudal system works in government is of little consequence as compared with its ultimate effect on national character under modern conditions; for it is all out of accord with the spirit of modern progress, and if it ever served a useful purpose, it has well outlived it. One may justly claim that the king and the nobility have really little to do with governing, especially since the abolition of the veto of the House of Lords; that the will of the people finds expression in England quite as strongly as anywhere; but even if we admit this, I cannot see that it offers any argument in favor of feudalism. No one can make a tour of England such as ours and not observe the spirit of servility among the common people due to the inbred reverence for a title. Indeed, there is no feeling in England that all men are born free and equal, or that one man is quite as good as another so long as he behaves himself. A mere title, Sir, Duke, Earl, Lord or what-not, creates at once a different order of being and the toadyism to such titular distinctions is plainly noticeable everywhere. An earl or a duke is at our hotel; he may be a bankrupt, inconsequential fellow, it is true; he may not have a single personal trait to command respect and he may not be engaged in any useful industry. But there is much salaaming and everyone about the place assumes an awe-stricken, menial attitude, merely because the gentleman has the prefix Earl or Duke--there can be no other reason. Is it strange that such a spirit causes the common people to lose self-reliance and yield up their ambition to be anything more than their fathers before them? A proportion of the nobility may be composed of men of character and ability, fitted to occupy positions of authority and public responsibility and the present king may be all that a king should be; but the system is wrong and its effect on English character can hardly fail to have an untoward influence on the nation. I find this view borne out in a guarded way in a book recently published by a prominent colonial official who spent some time in England. He insists that the lack of patriotism, which one can hardly fail to observe, is due to the present social system. He declares that the common people take little interest in national affairs and make no study of problems confronting the government. They expect the so-called "upper classes" to do the governing for them; there is no need to concern themselves over matters that must be settled by a House of Lords in whose choosing they can have no voice. The recruits to the nobility now come almost exclusively from the wealthy class; we often have flung in our faces in England the taunt that there is an aristocracy of wealth in America, and that the pursuit of the Almighty Dollar is the all-prevailing passion. It may be just, in the same general way that I intend these remarks to apply to England, but we can at least retort that our oil, beef, mining and railway magnates cannot purchase a title and found a "family," thus becoming in the public eye a superior class of beings and established as our hereditary rulers. A wealthy brewer may not become "my lord" for a consideration, in any event. A recent American writer makes the curious apology for the House of Lords as a legislative body that it affords the English people the services of the most successful moneyed men in framing laws and that the sons of such men are pretty sure to be practical, well-trained fellows themselves. He also argues that the families usually die out in a few generations, thus introducing new blood continually and forming, in his estimation, a most capable legislative body. The preposterous nature of such statements can best be shown by trying to apply such a system to the United States Senate. If our senators, for instance, were hereditary lords, recruited from the oil, beef, brewing, mining or railway magnates aforementioned, what might the American people expect from them? We complain vigorously if any senator is shown to be influenced by such interests and more than one legislator has found out to his grief that such a connection will not be tolerated. Suppose we had a system that put the principals themselves in a permanent legislative body and invested them with all the glamour of "his grace" or "my lord?" Quite unthinkable--and yet such is the system in Britain. And these self-sacrificing hereditary legislators are no fonder of bearing the real burdens of the country than our own plutocrats are. There is much complaint in England that in the ranks of the nobility are to be found the most flagrant tax dodgers in the Kingdom. Nor does this complaint lack for vigorous utterance--a most hopeful sign of the times, to my notion. But recently a London paper exploited the case of the Marquis of Bute, owner of Cardiff Castle--and most of Cardiff, for that matter--who returned his personal tax at less than a thousand pounds, and that included Cardiff Castle and grounds, which represent literally millions! Yet no man in the Kingdom is better able to afford payment of his just tax than this nobleman. To show the gross injustice of his tax, a comparison was made of the castle with a humble tailor shop in Cardiff, ninety by one hundred and twenty feet, which was taxed at a higher figure! The newspaper in question also declared that this case was typical of tax-dodging lords all over the country. That there is a strong under-current against the feudal system cannot be doubted; we found it everywhere, though at times but half expressed and again only to be inferred, but it exists none the less. Indeed, more recent developments have shown the extent of such sentiment in the overthrow of the veto power of the Lords. This is a great step in advance, though England would be infinitely the gainer if the feudal system were abolished and not merely modified. This antagonism does not extend to royalty--that institution escapes through the popularity of the present king and queen. But the time may come when a weak and unpopular king will turn public sentiment against the very keystone of feudalism and the whole structure is likely to fall. When one recollects the furore that prevailed in England when the former king as Prince of Wales was mixed up with the Baccarat scandals, it is easy to see how much royalty owes its existence to good behavior. At that time doubt was freely expressed as to whether the prince would ever be king of England, but he lived it all down by his subsequent good record. I had many intelligent men admit that "your system of government is right; we shall come to it some time," or words to that effect, and we heard many ill-concealed flings at the nobility. "We are all the property of the nobility," said one intelligent young shopman of whom in the course of conversation we inquired if he owned his home. "No one has any chance to own anything or be anything in England." And in a prayer-book at Stratford Church we found the petition "for the nobility" erased with heavy pencil lines. I give these as typical of many similar instances, but I have no space in this book for discussion of the impressions I record. A volume would be required should I attempt this. I can only set down these random notes without elaborate argument. And yet, what could be more convincing that the social system of England is wrong than the hopelessness we found everywhere and the refrain that we heard oftener than any other, "A common man has no chance in England?" If he is not fortunate or a genius, there is nothing for him. He must either succumb to inevitable mediocrity and poverty or get away to some new country to gain the opportunity of competence and social promotion in any degree. It is to the feudal system that can be charged the astonishing state of affairs in England that makes a gentleman of a person with no occupation--a loafer, we would style him in America--and socially degrades the useful citizen engaged in trade. On this particular phase I will not pass my own comment, but quote from a book, "Wake Up, England," by P. A. Vaile, Premier of New Zealand, lately issued by a London publisher: "There is perhaps nothing in English life so disgusting to a man who has not the scales upon his eyes as the loathsome snobbery of those who profess to despise a man because his income is derived from a trade or business. It is wholly inexcusable and contemptible. Trade, instead of being considered honourable and dignified, is, in the eyes of every snob, a degradation. Unfortunately, snobs in England are not scarce. "The tradesman is himself in a great measure to blame for this, for he accepts humbly as his due the contempt that is meted out to him. Most of those who so freely despise the poor necessary man of trade, have a portion of their savings, when they are lucky enough to have any, invested in some large millinery or pork-butcher's business that has been floated into a limited liability company--yet to them the man who earns their dividends is absolutely outside the pale. "If there is any nation that I know that is hopelessly bourgeois, it is England. Why can we not be manly enough to recognize the fact, to acknowledge and freely admit to ourselves that we are a nation of very commonplace individuals, mostly shopkeepers, that it is the shopkeepers who have made the nation what she is, and that commerce is an occupation worthy of any gentleman instead of being a calling which merits the contempt of the idle, the rich and the foolish?" If such a condition prevails in England, it can surely be chargeable to nothing else than a system which places the stamp of superiority on the idler and puts him in a position where he can assume a patronizing air towards those who are the backbone and mainstay of the nation. Hand in hand with outworn feudalism goes the established church, of which it is really a part and parcel. A state religion of which a none too religious king may be the head, and whose control may fall into the hands of politicians who are frequently without the first qualification of churchmen, is an incongruity at best. If America has proven anything, she has demonstrated that absolute separation is best for both church and state; that true religious freedom and amity can best be conserved by it. But in England the established church is a constant bone of contention; its supercilious, holier-than-thou attitude toward the other churches is the cause of much heart-burning and friction. It has the sanction of the state, the social rank, the great church buildings and the traditions, and forces other Christian denominations into the attitude of the poor and rather shabby relation of a wealthy aristocrat--the wealth in this case not measured merely in money. Class distinction, the curse of England everywhere, is only fomented by the attitude of the established church. In religious matters it is not human nature to concede to anyone else superiority, and not until the Church of England places itself on common ground with its contemporaries, will true fraternity among the different denominations be possible in England as it is rapidly becoming in America. I remember a kindly old gentleman who showed us much courtesy in the English Boston in pointing out to us the places of interest, but who did not fall in with our enthusiasm over the great church. "Ah, yes," he said. "It once belonged to Rome, who grew arrogant and oppressive--and fell; it now belongs to a church that is just as arrogant and would be as much of an oppressor if she dared--and her downfall is just as sure." And the enthusiasm with which he pointed out the plain Wesleyan chapel betrayed his own predilections. That the educational system of England is faulty and inefficient we have the testimony of many leading English educators themselves. The constant interference of the Church of England and the Catholics with the public schools is greatly responsible for the chaos of the educational situation of the country. Conditions in England are such that a most excellent public school system might easily be maintained. The density of population and the perfect roads would make every rural school easily accessible, and there would be distinct advantages not enjoyed by many American communities which have far better schools. But church jealousy, hidebound tradition, and the almost universal inefficiency of English school-teachers, are obstacles hard to overcome. I cannot discuss so great a question in the limits of a short chapter, but the testimony of the most representative English educators may be found in the report of the commission which visited American schools under the guidance of Mr. Alfred Mosely. That England, generally speaking, is better and more efficiently governed than the United States is no proof that its system is as good as our own, or that its possibilities equal ours. It is rather due to the homogeneity of the masses and to a more prevalent respect for law and authority among the people. Justice is surer and swifter when the criminal's offense is once proven in the courts; but the many technicalities and the positive nature of proof required enables a large number of swindlers and rascals to keep at large. Dead-beats will evade debts, irresponsible tenants refuse payment of rents for indefinite periods, and petty swindlers go quite free--all of whom would be given short shrift in America--simply because it is a dangerous matter to risk infringing the "rights of the subject" and thus lay oneself liable to heavy damages should charges fail of proof. The excellence of the British police system is proverbial; in efficiency and honesty of administration it has no parallel in America. Bribery and corruption among policemen are unknown, as Americans sometimes learn to their grief--illustrated by the instance of a rich New Yorker who offered a gold coin to an officer who had held up his motor for speeding. The offender was fined, not only for speeding, but much more heavily for attempted bribery--as it was justly regarded by the court. From the hundreds of policemen of whom we made inquiries--often very stupid, no doubt, to the officer--we never had an answer with the slightest trace of ill nature or impatience. Frequently the officer gave us much assistance in a friendly way and information as to places of interest. The British policeman has no swagger or ostentation about him; he carries no weapon--not even the club so indispensible in the States--yet he will control the riotous crowds more effectively than his American brother; but we should remember that even a riotous English mob has more respect for law than one on our side. He appears to appreciate thoroughly the value of his position to him personally and his dignity as a conserver of law and order, which he represents rather than some ward politician or saloon-keeper. And, speaking of saloons--public houses, they call them in Britain--the drink evil averages worse than in the United States. Three quarters of a billion dollars go directly every year for spirituous liquors and no statistics could show the indirect cost in pauperism, suffering and crime, to say nothing of the deleterious effect on the health of a large portion of the people. In America liquor in the country hotel is an exception, constantly becoming rarer; in England it is the universal rule. Every hotel is quite as much a saloon, in our vernacular, as a house of entertainment for travelers. Women with children in their arms frequent the low-grade drink houses and women as bar-maids serve the liquors. More than once I had to exercise great caution on account of reeling drunken men on the streets of the smaller towns; but we had only hearsay for it that in the slums of Liverpool and London one may find hundreds of women dead drunk. There was much indignation over an insinuation made in parliament against the character of the bar-maids, but it is hard to see how many of these women, surrounded by the influences forced upon them by their vocation, can lead a decent life for any length of time. Surely the drink evil in Great Britain and Ireland is a serious one and deserves far more active measures than are being taken against it. That sentiment is slowly awakening is shown by the fight made for the "licensing bill" which proposed a step, though a distant one, towards repression of the traffic. That the almost world-wide movement against the liquor business will make headway in England is reasonably certain and those who have her welfare at heart will earnestly hope that its progress may be rapid. But in this connection I wish to emphasize that my observations on the liquor question in Britain are broadly general; there are millions of people in the Kingdom to whom they do not apply, and there are whole sections which should be excepted had I space to particularize. North Wales, for instance, has a population that for sobriety and general freedom from the evils of drink will rival any section of similar population anywhere. The mining towns of Southern Wales, however, are quite the reverse in this particular. While Wales is a loyal and patriotic part of the British Empire, there are many ways in which the people are quite distinct and peculiar as compared with native Englishmen. Perhaps the most notable point of difference is consistent opposition to the established church, which has little support in Wales and has been practically forced upon the Welsh people by the British government. Only recently a measure for disestablishment has been entertained in parliament and it is sure to come sooner or later. For the people of Northern Wales we came to have the highest respect and even regard. They were universally kind and courteous and their solicitude for the stranger within their gates seemed to be more than a mere desire to get his money. There is no place in the Kingdom where one may find good accommodations cheaper, barring a half dozen notable resorts in the height of the season. Added to this, the beauty of the country and its romantic and historic interest make a combination of attractions that would long detain one whose time permitted. The foregoing observations about the Welsh are applicable in a greater or less degree to many sections of England and to most of rural Scotland, save that in the latter country hotel expenses will average higher. A word on hotels generally may not come amiss from one whose experience has dealt with several hundreds of them of all classes and degrees, from the country inn to the pretentious resort hotel. It was our practice to seek out the best in every case, since we hardly enjoyed hotel life even under the most favorable conditions; but it was largely saved from monotony by the traditions which have gathered about almost every ancient inn in the Kingdom. One would miss much if he did not visit the old inns such as the Feathers in Ludlow, the Lygon Arms in Broadway, the Great White Horse in Ipswich, the King's Head in Coventry--but I could fill pages with names alone; I would as soon think of missing a historic castle or a cathedral as some of the inns. It is this sentiment that has led me to give the rather extended individual mention accorded in some cases. As a whole, the British hotels are comfortable and well conducted. Outside of London one will find the menus rather restricted and usually quite heavy and substantial from an American point of view. Special dishes are not easily obtained in the country inns and request for them is not at all enthusiastically received. Eggs and bacon--with the latter very nearly answering the specification of ham in America--with fish, usually sole or plaice, and tea or rather bad coffee, is the standard breakfast. Fruit cannot usually be had even in season without prearrangement the evening before, and then only at exorbitant prices. Strawberries, for instance--there are none finer than the English in season--may be selling for sixpence a quart, but you will pay half a crown extra for a lesser quantity served with your breakfast. An assortment of cold meats, usually displayed on the sideboard, forms the basis for luncheon and the very wise native will go to the sideboard and select his own portions. There will sometimes be a hot dish of meat; cabbage and potatoes are the standard vegetables, the latter cooked without seasoning and generally poor. A lettuce salad and cheese, with stewed fruit or a tart, as they style a pastry something similar to an American pie, will complete the meal--at least for one who does not care for liquid refreshments, which may be had in great variety. Dinner in the smaller inns is usually served on the table d'hote plan. A very poor soup, a bit of stale fish--inexcusable in a country surrounded by the sea; an entree, usually a highly seasoned hotch-potch, or chicken and bacon--often a vile combination--followed by some heavy, indigestible "sweet," made the standard evening meal. We finally rebelled against this and had many a lively tilt with the manageress in our efforts to get a plain meal of eggs, tea, bread and butter and perhaps a chop. In some of the resort hotels our demands caused positive consternation and in more than one case had to be taken up with the proprietor himself. The difficulty was chiefly due to the disarrangement of the regime; the table d'hote meal was ready, though often stale and cold, and one waiter by following the fixed routine could serve a dozen people, while our simple wants usually disarranged the whole program, both in kitchen and dining room. It was rare indeed that a mutton chop could be had in the hotel; some one must be sent to the meat shop for it, and any such departure from the fixed order of things jarred the nerves of the whole establishment. It is only fair to state, however, that at some of the fine inns I have especially mentioned there were notable exceptions to these generalizations. The rooms in the country hotel do not average very comfortable; the furniture is scant; they are poorly lighted--if not with candles, a single dim electric bulb or gas light serves the purpose; feather beds, with the odors that these give out in a damp climate, were not uncommon, though flat rebellion against them would often bring out the fact that there were others in the house. Bathing facilities were usually poor, a dirty bathroom or two serving the entire house. Not in a single case did we find running water in the rooms. But with all its drawbacks, the British provincial hotel will probably average as good as may be found in any country, and in motoring one has the option of going on to the next town if conditions seem too bad to be endured. Rates--to tourists--in the better class hotels are not low; yet I would not call them exorbitant as a rule. Two shillings for breakfast, three for luncheon and four to six for dinner may be given as the average, while the charge for rooms can hardly be generalized. Five or six dollars per day per person should cover the hotel expense, including tips. And, speaking of tips, these aggregate no inconsiderable item; a smaller individual amount will give satisfaction than in America, but the number of beneficiaries is so much greater that the total cost is more. Every servant who does anything for you or who ought to do anything, must have a fee--porter, boots, chambermaid, waiter, head waiter, stable man, garage attendant, the man who cleans your car or brings you oil or petrol; in fact, everyone in the hotel except the proprietor or manageress expects from sixpence to half a crown for the day, as the case may be, and it does not pay to withhold it. One subjected to such exactions cannot but view with great concern the increase of the practice of tipping in America; should it ever become so prevalent here at the much higher rate that the American servant requires, traveling would be prohibitive except for millionaires. [Illustration: FRANCE AND GERMANY Outline map showing Author's route on Continent.] INDEX A Abbeville, 7-8, 133. Abbotsford, 173-177. Aberdeen, 188-190. Achaius, King, 217. Ailsa Craig, 239. Alfred, King, 348-349. Alloway, 231-236, 250. Alsace, 59-60. Amboise, 32, 33, 35-36. Amiens, 129-133. Andover, 299. Angel Inn, Grantham, 149-150. Angers, 27-28. Austen, Jane, 308. Autun, 52-53. Avranches, 20-21. Awe, Loch, 225. Ayr, 230-231. B Baliol, John, 243-245. Ballachulish, 217-221, 223. Ballantrae, 240. Ballater, 188. Balmoral Castle, 187-188. Barnes, William, 302-303. Barnstaple, 348. Barrhead, 230. Bartholdi, Frederic, 60. Basingstoke, 299. Bassenthwaite Water, 246, 248-249. Bath, 350-351. Bayerischer-Hof, Fussen, 66-67. Bayeux, 16-17. Beaugency, 40-41. Beethoven, Ludwig, 97. Benderloch Station, 221, 223. Bennane Head, 240. Ben Nevis, 216, 217, 223. Berck-sur-Mer, 6-7. Berry Pomeroy Castle, 311-319. Bettyhill, 204-205. Beauly, 209. Bideford, 347-348. Bingen, 89-91. Bishop Auckland, 153-154. Blairgowrie, 185. Blandford, 300. Blois, 32, 36-40. Bonar Bridge, 194, 208. Bonn, 97. Bonsecours, 13-14. Bootle, 252, 257. Boppard, 93. Bornhofen, 93. Boroughbridge, 147. Boulogne, 4-6, 133, 134-135. Bowness, 259. Braemar, 182, 186-187. Bridport, 308. Broughton, 252, 257-258. Burns, Robert 181, 230-237. Burntisland, 182. Byrness, 156. Byron, Lord, 96, 188. C Caedmon, 162, 164, 168. Caen, 15-16. Caithness, 192-193. Calder Abbey, 253-254. Caledonian Canal, 210-212. Camelford, 346-347. Carlisle, 246. Carlton Hotel, Frankfort, 86. Casino, The, Boulogne, 135. Castle Douglas, 241, 242. Castle Hotel, Conway, 278, 280-281. Catcleugh, 156. Catherine de Medici, 34, 35-36, 38. Catherine of Beraine, Lady, 274. Cawdor Castle, 213. Charles I., 149, 267-268, 270, 295-296. Charles Edward, Prince, 152, 178-179, 212, 221-222. Chateaubriant, 26. Chaumont, 32. Chenonceaux, 32-34. Chester, 262-263. Chinon, 32, 52. Coblenz, 89, 94-96. Cockermouth, 248-251. Colmar, 60. Cologne, 96-99, 125. Constance, Lake, 62-64. Continental Hotel, Munich, 77, 80-81. Conway, 263-264, 278-297. Cook, Capt., 160, 170-171. Cook & Sons, Thos., 69-70, 210. Corbridge, 147, 155. Cosne, 46. Coutances, 20. Crinan Canal, 227. Cromarty Firth, 194. Cromwell, Oliver, 306. Culloden Moor, 212, 213, 217, 222. Culzean Castle, 237. Cupar, 184. D Dalton, 259. Darlington, 153. Darmstadt, 84. Darnick, 177-178. Deganwy, 287. Denbigh, 264-278. Derwentwater, 247, 248. Deutsches Haus, Friedrichshafen, 63-64. Devorgilla, Countess, 243-245. Diane of Poitiers, 33-34. Dickens, Charles, 301. Dijon, 48-53. Dingwall, 194. Dobson, H. J., 235-236, 282. Donaueschingen, 61. Doncaster, 147, 151. Dorchester, 299, 300-307, 350. Dornoch Firth, 194-195. Drachenfels, 96. Duarte, 225. Dudley, Robert, 269-270, 277. Dumfries, 241, 242, 245. Dunderawe Castle, 228. Dunolly, 224, 225. Dunrobin Castle, 195, 197. Dunure Castle, 237. Dunstaffnage, 225. E Edinburgh, 178-182. Edward I., 269, 277, 293. Edward IV., 330, 332. Edward VII., 186, 301. Egremont Castle, 252-253. Ehrenbreitstein, 95-96. Ehrenfels, 91. Elizabeth, Queen, 251, 269, 283. Elreton, Henry de, 293. Endicott, John, 302. English Channel, 2, 4, 133, 135. Escomb, 154. Eyre-Todd, George, 211, 232. Exeter, 308, 309. F Falkenburg Castle, 92. Feochan, Loch, 225-226. Folkestone, 3, 135. Fort Augustus, 212, 216. Fort William, 212, 216-218, 222. Fowey, 321, 328-333. Francis I., 35, 37. Francis II., 33, 35, 44. Frankfort, 84, 86-88. Freiburg, 60-61, 69. Friedrichshafen, 63-64. Furness Abbey, 258. Fussen, 66-68. Fyne, Loch, 227-228. G Gairlochy, 222. Gatehouse, 242. George, I., 156. George V., 343. Gerardmer, 57. Gibson, R. A., John, 289. Gilphead, Loch, 227. Girvan, 239. Glasgow, 229-230. Glastonbury, 350. Glen Affrick, 209. Glencoe, 221. Glengarry, 212. Glenluce, 241-242. Goethe, 87, 103. Golspie, 195-198. Grantham, 149-151. Granton, 182. Grand Hotel de France et de Londres, Avranches, 20-21. Granville, 20. Gray, 53. Great Glen, The, 193, 210-223. Great Orme's Head, 287. Great Torrington, 347. Guisborough, 153. Guise, 128. Guise, Duke of, 38-39. Gutenberg, Johann, 88-89. H Hardy, Thos., 303-305, 307. Hatfield, 147-148. Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 356. Heidelberg, 84-85. Helston, 334. Hemans, Felicia, 272. Henderson, T. F., 205. Henley, W. E., 181. Henry II., England, 12. Henry III., France, 38-39. Henry, VIII., England, 162, 260. Holsworthy, 347. Honfleur, 15. Hotel de France, Nevers, 46-47. Hotel de France et d'Angleterre, St. Quentin, 128-129. Hotel de la Croix d'Or, Sedan, 127. Hotel de Univers, St. Lo, 17, 19. Hotel de Ville, Orleans, 43-44. I Inverary, 228. Invercauld Arms, Braemar, 186. Invergarry, 222. Inverlochy, 212, 216-217. Inverness, 193, 212-213. Iona, 225. Irvine, 230-231. Isle of Athelney, 348. Ivy Bridge, 319. J James II., England, 349. James IV., Scotland, 242. Jeanne d'Arc, 10, 12-13, 41-44. Jedburgh, 147. Jeffreys, Judge, 303, 306-307, 350. John, King, 150. John O'Groats, 147, 199-202, 298, 336. Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 264, 272. Jones, John Paul, 251. K Karlsruhe, 84-85. Kendal, 259-261. Kennedy Castle, 241. Keswick, 246-248. Kilchimien, 216. Kilchurn, 225. Kilmartin, 227. Kilninver, 226. King's Arms, Dorchester, 300-301. Kingsley, Chas., 348. Kintyre, 236. Kirkcaldy, 182. Kirkoswald, 237. Klopp Castle, 90. Knox, John, 179, 184. L Lacy, Henry de, 266, 268. Lairg, 208. Lake District, 246-261. Lancaster, 262. Land's End, 263, 298, 336-341. Lansallos Church, 327. Largo, 182-184. Larne, 241. LaSalle, 12. Launceston, 346-347. Leven, Loch, 219. Lindau, 64. Linnhe, Loch, 216, 219. Linskill, Mary, 167-170. Lion d'Or, Neufchatel, 9. Liskeard, 328. Lochinch, 241. Lochnagar, 188. Lochy, Loch, 216. Loire River, 29, 40. Lomond, Loch, 228-229. London, 3, 352, 354. Longwy, 125. Looes, 322. Lorelei, The, 92. Lostwithiel, 328-329. Loyal, Loch, 207-208. Ludwigshaven, 62. Luxemburg, 99, 101-103, 125. Lyme Regis, 308-309. M Macbrayne Steamship Co., David, 212, 218. MacWhirter, R. A., John, 65, 209. McCaig's Folly, Oban, 224-225. Manchester Ship Canal, 263. Marlborough, 352-353. Marxburg, 94. Mary Stuart, 33, 35, 44, 179, 250-251. Maxwell-Scott, Hon. Mrs., 176. Maxwelton, 242. Mayence, 88-89. Melfort, Loch, 225, 227. Melfort, Pass of, 227. Melrose, 147, 173-174. Melvich, 204. Mezieres, 127. Millais, Sir John, 215. Millom, 257. Monmouth, Duke of, 306, 307, 349. Montgomery, James, 230. Montmedy, 127. Montreuil, 5-6, 134. Mont St. Michel, 20-24. Moran, Thos., 279-281, 337. Moselle River, 94, 96, 99, 101. Mosely, Alfred, 371. Mouse Tower, The, 91-92. Munich, 77-81. Mytton, Gen., 267-268, 270, 278. N Ness, Loch, 214-216. Neufchatel, 8-9. Neustadt, 61. Nevers, 45-47. New Abbey, 242-245. Newburgh, 184. Newby Bridge, 259. Newton Abbot, 309. Newton, Sir Isaac, 151. Newton-Stewart, 242. O Oban, 210, 214, 223-225. Oberammergau, 61, 68-77. Oberwesel, 93. Oich, Loch, 216. Orleans, 40-45. Oswy, King, 161. Oxford, 298. P Palace Hotel, Aberdeen, 188-190. Peel Tower, Darnick, 177-179. Penzance, 334-335, 341, 347. Perth, 182, 184-185. Peter the Hermit, 132. Philipson, Major Robert, 260-261. Pickering, 153. Pius VII., Pope, 46. Plas Mawr, 281-285. Plymouth, 318-319, 321, 329. Polperro, 320-327. Pommard, 52. Pont Audemer, 15. Port Patrick, 237, 241. Preston, 262. Probus, 333. Prun, 100. Puddletown, 300. Q Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur, 332. R Ravenglass, 254-257. Rawnsley, Canon, 255. Reading, 352, 354. Remiremont, 55-57. Rennes, 25-26. Rheinfels, 94. Rhine River, 59-60, 85, 89-96, 99-100. Rheinstein Castle, 91. Rhoscomyl, Owen, 296. Rhuddlan, 276-278. Richard I., 11-12. Richard II., 294. Richard III., 150. Robin Hood, 160. Rolandseck, 96-97. Rouen, 8-15, 42. Royal Automobile Club, 1, 3, 58, 68, 96, 147, 192, 210. Royal Cambrian Academy, 281. Rudruth, 334. Ruskin, John, 131, 133. Ryan, Loch, 240. S St. Asaph, 270, 273, 276-277. St. Austell, 333. St. Benedict's Abbey, 216. St. Columba, 215-216. St. Columb Major, 346. St. Goar, 93-94. St. Hilda's Abbey, Whitby, 161-164. St. Ives, 341. St. Lo, 17-20. St. Malo, 20-24. St. Mary's Church, Conway, 289. St. Mary's Church, Whitby, 157, 159, 162, 164-165, 167. St. Michael's Mount, 22, 334. St. Michel, Mont, 20-24. St. Peter's Church, Dorchester, 302-303. St. Quentin, 128-129. St. Wulfram's Church, Grantham, 149-150. Salisbury, 299-300. Salisbury, Sir Wm., 267-268. Schonburg, 93. Schongau, 68. Scott, Sir Walter, 161, 162, 173-179, 185, 238, 253, 261, 296-297. Sedan, 127-128. Sedgemoor, 348-349. Sennan, 341. Shin, Loch, 208. Ship Inn, Fowey, 332-333. Skiddaw, 246. Sonneck Castle, 92. Southey, Robt., 247. Staffa, 225. Staines, 298, 299. Stanley, Henry M., 273-274. Stilton, 148. Stockton, 153. Stolzenfels Castle, 94. Stranraer, 240-241. Strathy, 204. Stuttgart, 81, 83-84. Sutherland, 191, 193. Sutherland Arms, Golspie, 196-197. Sweetheart Abbey, 242-245. T Tain, 194. Tamnay-Chatillon, 47-48, 51. Taunton, 348, 350. Thorwaldsen, Albert Bertel, 89. Thurso, 203. Tongue, 203-207. Tongue Inn, 206-207. Totnes, 309-311, 318. Tours, 30-32, 35. Tow-Law, 154. Tremeirchion, 272. Treves, 96, 99, 101. Trouville-sur-Mer, 15. Truro, 334, 345-346. Turnberry Castle, 237-239. Tuttlingen, 61-62. Tyne River, 155. U Ulm, 81-83. Ulverston, 259. Urquhart Castle, 215. V Vaile, P. A., 368. Vesoul, 53. Victoria, Queen, 186. Vinci, da, Leonardo, 36. W Warrington, 262-263. Wells, 350. Wesley, John, 338. Whitby, 151, 152-153, 157-172. Whitchurch, 272. Whitehaven, 251. White, Rev. John, 302. Wick, 198-199. Wigan, 262. Wilton-le-Wear, 147. Windermere, 259, 261. William I., England, 15, 17. William I., Germany, 95. William III., England, 310. Windsor Castle, 354. Woolsthorpe Manor, 151. Wordsworth, Wm., 229, 249-250, 252-253, 257, 260, 290. Y York, 151-152. Z Zeppelin, Count, 64. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: SCOTLAND Outline map showing Author's route--in red--as covered in present volume. Route in black refers to previous book--"In Unfamiliar England."] [Illustration: ENGLAND AND WALES] INDEX TO MAP OF ENGLAND AND WALES Green Lines Show Approximate Routes Covered in This Book; Light-Faced Red and Black Lines, Routes Covered by Author's Previous Books, "British Highways and Byways from a Motor Car" and "In Unfamiliar England" A Aberystwith 17 E Alcester 18 M Alnwick 3 M Ambleside 7 J Arundel 25 Q Askrigg 8 L Avebury 21 M B Bakewell 13 M Bamborough 2 M Banbury 19 O Bangor 13 G Barmouth 16 H Barnard Castle 7 M Barnsley 12 N Barnstaple 23 G Bath 22 K Battle Abbey 24 T Bawtry 12 P Beaulieu 24 O Beddgelert 14 G Bedford 18 R Belvoir Castle 15 P Berkeley 20 L Berwick 1 M Bettws-y-Coed 14 H Beverly 10 Q Bexhill 25 T Bideford 24 F Billingshurst 24 R Birtsmorton 18 L Bishop's Castle 17 J Bodiam 23 T Bolton Abbey 10 L Bolton Castle 8 L Boston 14 R Bottisford 14 Q Bournemouth 24 M Bowes 7 L Bowness 8 J Bradford-on-Avon 23 L Brampton 5 K Brecon 19 I Bridgnorth 16 K Bridlington 9 R Brighton 24 S Brington 17 P Bristol 21 K Brixham 27 H Broadway 19 M Brough 7 L Broxborne 19 S Buckingham 19 O Buildwas 16 L Builth 18 H Burnham Thorpe 14 U Bury St. Edmunds 18 U Buxton 13 M Bylands Abbey 8 N C Caerleon 20 K Caerphilly 21 H Caister Castle 15 X Calder Abbey 7 I Cambridge 18 S Camelford 25 E Canterbury 22 V Cardiff 22 I Cardigan 18 E Carlisle 5 J Carmarthen 19 F Carnarvon 13 G Cerne Abbas 24 K Cerrig-y-Druidion 14 I Chagford 25 G Chalfont St. Giles 21 P Chawton 23 P Cheddar 23 K Chelmsford 20 T Cheltenham 19 M Chepstow 21 I Chester 13 I Chesterfield 13 N Chichester 24 Q Chigwell 20 T Chippenham 21 M Chipping Ongar 20 T Chirk 15 J Chorley Wood 20 Q Clovelly 24 F Cockermouth 6 I Colchester 19 T Coniston 8 I Conway 13 H Corfe 26 M Coventry 17 M Cowbridge 22 H Cowes 25 O Coxwold 8 O Cromer 14 W Crowland 16 R D Darfield 11 O Darlington 7 N Dartmouth 27 H Denbigh 13 I Derby 14 M Dereham 16 U Devizes 22 M Dinas Mawddwy 16 H Dolgelly 15 G Doncaster 11 P Dorchester 25 L Dover 23 W Downe 22 S Drayton 14 L Dukeries 13 N Dunster 23 H Durham 6 M E Eastbourne 25 T East Looe 26 F Edgeware 20 P Egremont 7 I Ely 17 S Epsom 22 R Eversley 22 P Evesham 18 M Exeter 25 G F Farnham 23 Q Fishguard 19 D Folkestone 24 V Fotheringhay 16 R Fountains Abbey 9 M Fowey 27 E Freshwater 26 M Furness Abbey 9 I G Gad's Hill 22 S Glastonbury 23 K Glossop 12 M Gloucester 20 L Grantham 15 Q Grasmere 7 I Greenstead Church 20 S Guildford 22 R Guisborough 7 O H Hampton Court 22 R Harborough 16 Q Harlech 15 G Harrogate 10 M Harrow 21 Q Haselmere 23 Q Hastings 24 U Haverfordwest 20 D Haverhill 19 T Haworth 10 L Hay 19 I Helmsley 8 P Hereford 19 K Hexham 4 M Holyhead 12 D Honiton 24 H Howard Castle 9 P Hucknall 14 M Huntingdon 14 Q Hythe 24 V I Ilfracombe 22 G Ilkley 10 M Ipswich 18 V J Jarrow 5 N Jordans 21 P K Kendal 8 K Kenilworth 17 M Keston 22 R Keswick 6 J Kettlewell 9 L King's Lynn 15 T Kirby Hall 17 Q Knaresborough 10 O Knutsford 13 L L Lacock 22 L Land's End 28 A Lamberhurst 23 S Lancaster 9 K Lanercost Priory 5 L Launceston 26 E Leamington 18 O Ledbury 19 K Leeds 10 N Leicester 16 P Lewes 24 R Leyburn 8 M Llangollen 15 J Llandaff 22 H Llandovery 19 G Lincoln 13 Q Lichfield 16 L Liverpool 12 J London 21 R Lostwithiel 26 E Ludlow 17 J Lulworth 26 L Lutterworth 17 P Lymington 25 O Lyme Regis 25 J Lyndhurst 24 M M Maidstone 22 U Malmsbury 21 K Malvern 18 K Manchester 12 L Mansfield 13 O Marazion 28 B Margate 21 W Marlborough 21 N Marney 19 V Midhurst 24 O Middleham 9 L Mildenhall 17 T Monmouth 20 J Monken Hadley 20 R Montgomery 16 J Moreton Hampstead 25 G Much Wenlock 17 L Mundesley 14 X N Neath 21 H Nether Stowey 23 I Netley 24 O Newark 14 P Newcastle 5 M Newcastle-under-Lyme 14 K Newlyn 28 A Newmarket 17 U Newport 21 V Newport 20 O Newstead Abbey 14 O Newtown 17 I Northampton 18 P Nottingham 14 N Norwich 16 W O Olney 19 Q Oswestry 15 I Oundle 17 R Oxford 20 N P Penn's Chapel 4 R Penrith 6 K Penshurst 23 T Penzance 28 B Peterborough 16 R Pevensey 24 S Plymouth 27 F Polperro 27 E Pontefract 11 O Prince Town 26 G R Raby Castle 7 M Raglan 20 I Ravenglass 7 I Reading 22 O Reculver 22 V Retford 13 P Rhuddlan 13 H Richmond 8 M Rievaulx Abbey 9 M Ripon 9 M Ripple 19 L Rochester 22 T Romsey 23 M Ross 19 K Rowton Moor 13 K Ryde 25 P Rye 24 U S Saint Asaph 13 H St. Albans 20 R St. David's 19 B St. Ives 27 B St. Ives 17 S Salisbury 23 L Sandringham Palace 15 U Scarborough 8 R Scrooby 12 O Sedgemoor 23 J Selborne 23 O Settle 9 L Seven Oaks 22 T Sheffield 12 N Sherborne 24 L Shottermill 24 P Shrewsbury 16 J Skipton 10 L Somersby 13 R Southampton 24 M Southwell 14 O Stilton 17 R Stockton 6 O Stoke Poges 21 Q Stokesay Manor 17 K Stratford-on-Avon 18 N Sulgrave 16 P Swansea 20 G T Tadcaster 10 O Tamworth 16 N Taunton 23 J Tavistock 26 F Tewkesbury 19 M Thetford 17 U Tintagel 25 D Tintern 20 J Tong 16 L Torquay 26 H Totnes 26 H Truro 27 C Tunbridge Wells 23 T U Usk 20 I Uttoxeter 15 M Uxbridge 21 Q V Ventnor 26 P W Wakefield 11 N Walsingham 15 V Waltham 20 S Wantage 21 N Wareham 25 L Warrington 11 K Warwick 18 M Wellington 24 I Wells 23 J Wells-next-the-Sea 14 V Westerham 24 R West Looe 27 E Weston-Super-Mare 22 J Whitby 7 P Whittington 14 J Wimborne 24 L Winchelsea 24 T Winchester 23 O Windermere 8 J Windsor 21 P Wokingham 22 P Woodstock 20 N Worcester 18 L Worthing 25 R Wroxeter 16 K Wymondham 17 V Y Yarmouth 16 X Yarmouth 25 N Yeovil 24 K York 10 O ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Books by Thos. D. Murphy ------- Three Wonderlands of the American West (Second Revised Edition) Splendidly illustrated with sixteen reproductions in colors from original paintings by Thos. Moran, N. A. and thirty-two duogravures from photographs, also three maps. 180 pages, tall 8vo. decorated cloth. Price (boxed) $3.00 net. Carriage 30 cents extra. In this volume Mr. Murphy turns to our own country and both text and pictures tell a story that may well engage the attention of any one interested in the beauty and grandeur of natural scenery. The book will come as a revelation to many who have had a vague notion that there may possibly be something worth seeing in America--after one has "done" Europe. The author himself admits of such skepticism before he made the tour described in the book. He says, "I found myself wondering if there could be such an enchanted land as Mr. Moran portrays--such a land of weird mountains, crystal cataracts and emerald rivers all glowing with a riot of coloring that seem more like an iridescent dream than a sober reality." A tour through the three wonderlands gives the answer--neither pen nor picture has ever told half the story. The sixteen illustrations from original paintings by Thomas Moran come nearer, perhaps, than anything excepting a personal visit in presenting to the eyes the true grandeur of the wonderlands described; and these are supplemented by thirty-two splendid photographs, reproduced in duogravure and printed in a rich shade of brown. These features make the book one of the most notable ever coming from the American press, and it will serve the purpose of a guide to intending visitors, as well as a beautiful and appropriate souvenir for those who have visited one or all of the wonderlands so graphically portrayed. British Highways and Byways From a Motor Car (Third Edition) With sixteen illustrations in color from original paintings by noted artists, and thirty-two duogravures from English photographs, also descriptive maps of England and Scotland. 320 pages 8vo, decorated cloth, gilt top. Price (boxed) $3.00. An interesting record of a summer motor tour in Great Britain by an American who took his car with him and drove over some thousands of miles of British roads. The tour includes the cities, towns and villages, the solitary ruins, the literary shrines, every cathedral in the Island and many of the quaintest and most fascinating out-of-the-way places not on the usual route of travel. A book of value to anyone contemplating a tour of Britain or interested in the country and its people. In Unfamiliar England With a Motor Car (Second Edition) A new book on England, with incursions into Ireland and Scotland. Splendidly illustrated with sixteen reproductions in color from original paintings by noted artists, including Moran, Leader, Bowman, Elias, Sherrin and others, and forty-eight duogravures from English photographs, illustrating many of the quaint places visited by the author. Also indexed map of England and Wales and map showing routes in Ireland and Scotland. A chronicle of the extensive wanderings by motor car of an American in rural England and a record of his discoveries in the out-of-the-way corners of the Island; also of delightful incursions into Scotland and Ireland. It is a story redolent with the summer beauty of the loveliest countryside in the world, and is replete with the tales of lonely ruins, quaint old churches, historic manor houses and palaces; it takes one through the leafy byways, into the retired country villages, and to many unfrequented nooks on the seashore. Particularly has the writer sought out the historic shrines in England of especial interest to Americans themselves, and his book is quite a revelation in this respect. The book has much of interest seldom noted in the literature of travel and will please alike the actual traveler or the reader who does his traveling in an easy chair by his own fireside. Of Mr. Murphy's motor travel books dealing with Great Britain, the Royal Automobile Club Journal speaks the following commendatory words: England Through American Eyes A member of the Automobile Club of America, who is also an Individual Associate of the Royal Automobile Club, Mr. Thomas D. Murphy, has for several years past spent two or three months in touring in his car throughout the United Kingdom, and the result has been the publication in America of two books, one entitled, 'British Highways and Byways from a Motor Car,' and the other, 'In Unfamiliar England.' "In the former Mr. Murphy deals, in a most readable and attractive style, with many of the better known places of interest in our country; but in his book entitled 'In Unfamiliar England,' the author describes many out-of-the-way places which are totally unknown to the average English motorist, and even to people who pride themselves upon a knowledge of their own country. A short time ago the Touring Department received an inquiry from a member of the Club concerning an old building in the Eastern Counties; wished to know the exact position of the place, also whether it was open to the public. A diligent search was made through all the usual books of reference, and no trace of it could be discovered. As a last resource Mr. Murphy's book was consulted, and not only was the exact information required obtained, but in addition an excellent illustration of the building was found. It seems curious that the Touring Department should have to consult a book written by an American in order to obtain information about an interesting spot in this country. "The writing of a motoring guide book is a very difficult matter, and the majority are either crammed with information and very unreadable, or else they are written in a very personal manner which becomes rather irritating to the person who wishes to obtain information from them. It is an exceedingly difficult matter to combine road information, historical facts, and interesting legends, in such a manner that the dry sections are not so numerous as to make the book wearisome and the lighter sections not so drawn out as to make the reading matter trivial. We should imagine that it is much easier to write an ordinary novel than a good guide-book of the readable description. Mr. Murphy is one of the few people who can manage this difficult undertaking successfully." SENT POSTPAID ON RECEIPT OF PRICE BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY BOSTON PUBLISHERS 
7879	----	PASSAGES FROM THE FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE VOL. I. PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS IN FRANCE AND ITALY. FRANCE. Hotel de Louvre, January 6th, 1858.--On Tuesday morning, our dozen trunks and half-dozen carpet-bags being already packed and labelled, we began to prepare for our journey two or three hours before light. Two cabs were at the door by half past six, and at seven we set out for the London Bridge station, while it was still dark and bitterly cold. There were already many people in the streets, growing more numerous as we drove city-ward; and, in Newgate Street, there was such a number of market-carts, that we almost came to a dead lock with some of them. At the station we found several persons who were apparently going in the same train with us, sitting round the fire of the waiting-room. Since I came to England there has hardly been a morning when I should have less willingly bestirred myself before daylight; so sharp and inclement was the atmosphere. We started at half past eight, having taken through tickets to Paris by way of Folkestone and Boulogne. A foot-warmer (a long, flat tin utensil, full of hot water) was put into the carriage just before we started; but it did not make us more than half comfortable, and the frost soon began to cloud the windows, and shut out the prospect, so that we could only glance at the green fields--immortally green, whatever winter can do against them--and at, here and there, a stream or pool with the ice forming on its borders. It was the first cold weather of a very mild season. The snow began to fall in scattered and almost invisible flakes; and it seemed as if we had stayed our English welcome out, and were to find nothing genial and hospitable there any more. At Folkestone, we were deposited at a railway station close upon a shingly beach, on which the sea broke in foam, and which J----- reported as strewn with shells and star-fish; behind was the town, with an old church in the midst; and, close, at hand, the pier, where lay the steamer in which we were to embark. But the air was so wintry, that I had no heart to explore the town, or pick up shells with J----- on the beach; so we kept within doors during the two hours of our stay, now and then looking out of the windows at a fishing-boat or two, as they pitched and rolled with an ugly and irregular motion, such as the British Channel generally communicates to the craft that navigate it. At about one o'clock we went on board, and were soon under steam, at a rate that quickly showed a long line of the white cliffs of Albion behind us. It is a very dusky white, by the by, and the cliffs themselves do not seem, at a distance, to be of imposing height, and have too even an outline to be picturesque. As we increased our distance from England, the French coast came more and more distinctly in sight, with a low, wavy outline, not very well worth looking at, except because it was the coast of France. Indeed, I looked at it but little; for the wind was bleak and boisterous, and I went down into the cabin, where I found the fire very comfortable, and several people were stretched on sofas in a state of placid wretchedness. . . . I have never suffered from sea-sickness, but had been somewhat apprehensive of this rough strait between England and France, which seems to have more potency over people's stomachs than ten times the extent of sea in other quarters. Our passage was of two hours, at the end of which we landed on French soil, and found ourselves immediately in the clutches of the custom-house officers, who, however, merely made a momentary examination of my passport, and allowed us to pass without opening even one of our carpet-bags. The great bulk of our luggage had been registered through to Paris, for examination after our arrival there. We left Boulogne in about an hour after our arrival, when it was already a darkening twilight. The weather had grown colder than ever, since our arrival in sunny France, and the night was now setting in, wickedly black and dreary. The frost hardened upon the carriage windows in such thickness that I could scarcely scratch a peep-hole through it; but, from such glimpses as I could catch, the aspect of the country seemed pretty much to resemble the December aspect of my dear native land,--broad, bare, brown fields, with streaks of snow at the foot of ridges, and along fences, or in the furrows of ploughed soil. There was ice wherever there happened to be water to form it. We had feet-warmers in the carriage, but the cold crept in nevertheless; and I do not remember hardly in my life a more disagreeable short journey than this, my first advance into French territory. My impression of France will always be that it is an Arctic region. At any season of the year, the tract over which we passed yesterday must be an uninteresting one as regards its natural features; and the only adornment, as far as I could observe, which art has given it, consists in straight rows of very stiff-looking and slender-stemmed trees. In the dusk they resembled poplar-trees. Weary and frost-bitten,--morally, if not physically,--we reached Amiens in three or four hours, and here I underwent much annoyance from the French railway officials and attendants, who, I believe, did not mean to incommode me, but rather to forward my purposes as far as they well could. If they would speak slowly and distinctly I might understand them well enough, being perfectly familiar with the written language, and knowing the principles of its pronunciation; but, in their customary rapid utterance, it sounds like a string of mere gabble. When left to myself, therefore, I got into great difficulties. . . . It gives a taciturn personage like myself a new conception as to the value of speech, even to him, when he finds himself unable either to speak or understand. Finally, being advised on all hands to go to the Hotel du Rhin, we were carried thither in an omnibus, rattling over a rough pavement, through an invisible and frozen town; and, on our arrival, were ushered into a handsome salon, as chill as a tomb. They made a little bit of a wood-fire for us in a low and deep chimney-hole, which let a hundred times more heat escape up the flue than it sent into the room. In the morning we sallied forth to see the cathedral. The aspect of the old French town was very different from anything English; whiter, infinitely cleaner; higher and narrower houses, the entrance to most of which seeming to be through a great gateway, affording admission into a central court-yard; a public square, with a statue in the middle, and another statue in a neighboring street. We met priests in three-cornered hats, long frock-coats, and knee-breeches; also soldiers and gendarmes, and peasants and children, clattering over the pavements in wooden shoes. It makes a great impression of outlandishness to see the signs over the shop doors in a foreign tongue. If the cold had not been such as to dull my sense of novelty, and make all my perceptions torpid, I should have taken in a set of new impressions, and enjoyed them very much. As it was, I cared little for what I saw, but yet had life enough left to enjoy the cathedral of Amiens, which has many features unlike those of English cathedrals. It stands in the midst of the cold, white town, and has a high-shouldered look to a spectator accustomed to the minsters of England, which cover a great space of ground in proportion to their height. The impression the latter gives is of magnitude and mass; this French cathedral strikes one as lofty. The exterior is venerable, though but little time-worn by the action of the atmosphere; and statues still keep their places in numerous niches, almost as perfect as when first placed there in the thirteenth century. The principal doors are deep, elaborately wrought, pointed arches; and the interior seemed to us, at the moment, as grand as any that we had seen, and to afford as vast an idea of included space; it being of such an airy height, and with no screen between the chancel and nave, as in all the English cathedrals. We saw the differences, too, betwixt a church in which the same form of worship for which it was originally built is still kept up, and those of England, where it has been superseded for centuries; for here, in the recess of every arch of the side aisles, beneath each lofty window, there was a chapel dedicated to some Saint, and adorned with great marble sculptures of the crucifixion, and with pictures, execrably bad, in all cases, and various kinds of gilding and ornamentation. Immensely tall wax candles stand upon the altars of these chapels, and before one sat a woman, with a great supply of tapers, one of which was burning. I suppose these were to be lighted as offerings to the saints, by the true believers. Artificial flowers were hung at some of the shrines, or placed under glass. In every chapel, moreover, there was a confessional,--a little oaken structure, about as big as a sentry-box, with a closed part for the priest to sit in, and an open one for the penitent to kneel at, and speak, through the open-work of the priest's closet. Monuments, mural and others, to long-departed worthies, and images of the Saviour, the Virgin, and saints, were numerous everywhere about the church; and in the chancel there was a great deal of quaint and curious sculpture, fencing in the Holy of Holies, where the High Altar stands. There is not much painted glass; one or two very rich and beautiful rose-windows, however, that looked antique; and the great eastern window which, I think, is modern. The pavement has, probably, never been renewed, as one piece of work, since the structure was erected, and is foot-worn by the successive generations, though still in excellent repair. I saw one of the small, square stones in it, bearing the date of 1597, and no doubt there are a thousand older ones. It was gratifying to find the cathedral in such good condition, without any traces of recent repair; and it is perhaps a mark of difference between French and English character, that the Revolution in the former country, though all religious worship disappears before it, does not seem to have caused such violence to ecclesiastical monuments, as the Reformation and the reign of Puritanism in the latter. I did not see a mutilated shrine, or even a broken-nosed image, in the whole cathedral. But, probably, the very rage of the English fanatics against idolatrous tokens, and their smashing blows at them, were symptoms of sincerer religious faith than the French were capable of. These last did not care enough about their Saviour to beat down his crucified image; and they preserved the works of sacred art, for the sake only of what beauty there was in them. While we were in the cathedral, we saw several persons kneeling at their devotions on the steps of the chancel and elsewhere. One dipped his fingers in the holy water at the entrance: by the by, I looked into the stone basin that held it, and saw it full of ice. Could not all that sanctity at least keep it thawed? Priests--jolly, fat, mean-looking fellows, in white robes--went hither and thither, but did not interrupt or accost us. There were other peculiarities, which I suppose I shall see more of in my visits to other churches, but now we were all glad to make our stay as brief as possible, the atmosphere of the cathedral being so bleak, and its stone pavement so icy cold beneath our feet. We returned to the hotel, and the chambermaid brought me a book, in which she asked me to inscribe my name, age, profession, country, destination, and the authorization under which I travelled. After the freedom of an English hotel, so much greater than even that of an American one, where they make you disclose your name, this is not so pleasant. We left Amiens at half past one; and I can tell as little of the country between that place and Paris, as between Boulogne and Amiens. The windows of our railway carriage were already frosted with French breath when we got into it, and the ice grew thicker and thicker continually. I tried, at various times, to rub a peep-hole through, as before; but the ice immediately shot its crystallized tracery over it again; and, indeed, there was little or nothing to make it worth while to look out, so bleak was the scene. Now and then a chateau, too far off for its characteristics to be discerned; now and then a church, with a tall gray tower, and a little peak atop; here and there a village or a town, which we could not well see. At sunset there was just that clear, cold, wintry sky which I remember so well in America, but have never seen in England. At five we reached Paris, and were suffered to take a carriage to the hotel de Louvre, without any examination of the little luggage we had with us. Arriving, we took a suite of apartments, and the waiter immediately lighted a wax candle in each separate room. We might have dined at the table d'hote, but preferred the restaurant connected with and within the hotel. All the dishes were very delicate, and a vast change from the simple English system, with its joints, shoulders, beefsteaks, and chops; but I doubt whether English cookery, for the very reason that it is so simple, is not better for men's moral and spiritual nature than French. In the former case, you know that you are gratifying your animal needs and propensities, and are duly ashamed of it; but, in dealing with these French delicacies, you delude yourself into the idea that you are cultivating your taste while satisfying your appetite. This last, however, it requires a good deal of perseverance to accomplish. In the cathedral at Amiens there were printed lists of acts of devotion posted on the columns, such as prayers at the shrines of certain saints, whereby plenary indulgences might be gained. It is to be observed, however, that all these external forms were necessarily accompanied with true penitence and religious devotion. Hotel de Louvre, January 8th.--It was so fearfully cold this morning that I really felt little or no curiosity to see the city. . . . Until after one o'clock, therefore, I knew nothing of Paris except the lights which I had seen beneath our window the evening before, far, far downward, in the narrow Rue St. Honore, and the rumble of the wheels, which continued later than I was awake to hear it, and began again before dawn. I could see, too, tall houses, that seemed to be occupied in every story, and that had windows on the steep roofs. One of these houses is six stories high. This Rue St. Honore is one of the old streets in Paris, and is that in which Henry IV. was assassinated; but it has not, in this part of it, the aspect of antiquity. After one o'clock we all went out and walked along the Rue de Rivoli. . . . We are here, right in the midst of Paris, and close to whatever is best known to those who hear or read about it,--the Louvre being across the street, the Palais Royal but a little way off, the Tuileries joining to the Louvre, the Place de la Concorde just beyond, verging on which is the Champs Elysees. We looked about us for a suitable place to dine, and soon found the Restaurant des Echelles, where we entered at a venture, and were courteously received. It has a handsomely furnished saloon, much set off with gilding and mirrors; and appears to be frequented by English and Americans; its carte, a bound volume, being printed in English as well as French. . . . It was now nearly four o'clock, and too late to visit the galleries of the Louvre, or to do anything else but walk a little way along the street. The splendor of Paris, so far as I have seen, takes me altogether by surprise: such stately edifices, prolonging themselves in unwearying magnificence and beauty, and, ever and anon, a long vista of a street, with a column rising at the end of it, or a triumphal arch, wrought in memory of some grand event. The light stone or stucco, wholly untarnished by smoke and soot, puts London to the blush, if a blush could be seen on its dingy face; but, indeed, London is not to be mentioned, nor compared even, with Paris. I never knew what a palace was till I had a glimpse of the Louvre and the Tuileries; never had my idea of a city been gratified till I trod these stately streets. The life of the scene, too, is infinitely more picturesque than that of London, with its monstrous throng of grave faces and black coats; whereas, here, you see soldiers and priests, policemen in cocked hats, Zonaves with turbans, long mantles, and bronzed, half-Moorish faces; and a great many people whom you perceive to be outside of your experience, and know them ugly to look at, and fancy them villanous. Truly, I have no sympathies towards the French people; their eyes do not win me, nor do their glances melt and mingle with mine. But they do grand and beautiful things in the architectural way; and I am grateful for it. The Place de la Concorde is a most splendid square, large enough for a nation to erect trophies in of all its triumphs; and on one side of it is the Tuileries, on the opposite side the Champs Elysees, and, on a third, the Seine, adown which we saw large cakes of ice floating, beneath the arches of a bridge. The Champs Elysees, so far as I saw it, had not a grassy soil beneath its trees, but the bare earth, white and dusty. The very dust, if I saw nothing else, would assure me that I was out of England. We had time only to take this little walk, when it began to grow dusk; and, being so pitilessly cold, we hurried back to our hotel. Thus far, I think, what I have seen of Paris is wholly unlike what I expected; but very like an imaginary picture which I had conceived of St. Petersburg,-- new, bright, magnificent, and desperately cold. A great part of this architectural splendor is due to the present Emperor, who has wrought a great change in the aspect of the city within a very few years. A traveller, if he looks at the thing selfishly, ought to wish him a long reign and arbitrary power, since he makes it his policy to illustrate his capital with palatial edifices, which are, however, better for a stranger to look at, than for his own people to pay for. We have spent to-day chiefly in seeing some of the galleries of the Louvre. I must confess that the vast and beautiful edifice struck me far more than the pictures, sculpture, and curiosities which it contains,-- the shell more than the kernel inside; such noble suites of rooms and halls were those through which we first passed, containing Egyptian, and, farther onward, Greek and Roman antiquities; the walls cased in variegated marbles; the ceilings glowing with beautiful frescos; the whole extended into infinite vistas by mirrors that seemed like vacancy, and multiplied everything forever. The picture-rooms are not so brilliant, and the pictures themselves did not greatly win upon me in this one day. Many artists were employed in copying them, especially in the rooms hung with the productions of French painters. Not a few of these copyists were females; most of them were young men, picturesquely mustached and bearded; but some were elderly, who, it was pitiful to think, had passed through life without so much success as now to paint pictures of their own. From the pictures we went into a suite of rooms where are preserved many relics of the ancient and later kings of France; more relics of the elder ones, indeed, than I supposed had remained extant through the Revolution. The French seem to like to keep memorials of whatever they do, and of whatever their forefathers have done, even if it be ever so little to their credit; and perhaps they do not take matters sufficiently to heart to detest anything that has ever happened. What surprised me most were the golden sceptre and the magnificent sword and other gorgeous relics of Charlemagne,--a person whom I had always associated with a sheepskin cloak. There were suits of armor and weapons that had been worn and handled by a great many of the French kings; and a religious book that had belonged to St. Louis; a dressing-glass, most richly set with precious stones, which formerly stood on the toilet-table of Catherine de' Medici, and in which I saw my own face where hers had been. And there were a thousand other treasures, just as well worth mentioning as these. If each monarch could have been summoned from Hades to claim his own relics, we should have had the halls full of the old Childerics, Charleses, Bourbons and Capets, Henrys and Louises, snatching with ghostly hands at sceptres, swords, armor, and mantles; and Napoleon would have seen, apparently, almost everything that personally belonged to him,--his coat, his cocked hats, his camp-desk, his field-bed, his knives, forks, and plates, and even a lock of his hair. I must let it all go. These things cannot be reproduced by pen and ink. Hotel de Louvre, January 9th.--. . . . Last evening Mr. Fezaudie called. He spoke very freely respecting the Emperor and the hatred entertained against him in France; but said that he is more powerful, that is, more firmly fixed as a ruler, than ever the first Napoleon was. We, who look back upon the first Napoleon as one of the eternal facts of the past, a great bowlder in history, cannot well estimate how momentary and insubstantial the great Captain may have appeared to those who beheld his rise out of obscurity. They never, perhaps, took the reality of his career fairly into their minds, before it was over. The present Emperor, I believe, has already been as long in possession of the supreme power as his uncle was. I should like to see him, and may, perhaps, do--so, as he is our neighbor, across the way. This morning Miss ------, the celebrated astronomical lady, called. She had brought a letter of introduction to me, while consul; and her purpose now was to see if we could take her as one of our party to Rome, whither she likewise is bound. We readily consented, for she seems to be a simple, strong, healthy-humored woman, who will not fling herself as a burden on our shoulders; and my only wonder is that a person evidently so able to take care of herself should wish to have an escort. We issued forth at about eleven, and went down the Rue St. Honore, which is narrow, and has houses of five or six stories on either side, between which run the streets like a gully in a rock. One face of our hotel borders and looks on this street. After going a good way, we came to an intersection with another street, the name of which I forget; but, at this point, Ravaillac sprang at the carriage of Henry IV. and plunged his dagger into him. As we went down the Rue St. Honore, it grew more and more thronged, and with a meaner class of people. The houses still were high, and without the shabbiness of exterior that distinguishes the old part of London, being of light-colored stone; but I never saw anything that so much came up to my idea of a swarming city as this narrow, crowded, and rambling street. Thence we turned into the Rue St. Denis, which is one of the oldest streets in Paris, and is said to have been first marked out by the track of the saint's footsteps, where, after his martyrdom, he walked along it, with his head under his arm, in quest of a burial-place. This legend may account for any crookedness of the street; for it could not reasonably be asked of a headless man that he should walk straight. Through some other indirections we at last found the Rue Bergere, down which I went with J----- in quest of Hottinguer et Co., the bankers, while the rest of us went along the Boulevards, towards the Church of the Madeleine. . . . This business accomplished, J----- and I threaded our way back, and overtook the rest of the party, still a good distance from the Madeleine. I know not why the Boulevards are called so. They are a succession of broad walks through broad streets, and were much thronged with people, most of whom appeared to be bent more on pleasure than business. The sun, long before this, had come out brightly, and gave us the first genial and comfortable sensations which we have had in Paris. Approaching the Madeleine, we found it a most beautiful church, that might have been adapted from Heathenism to Catholicism; for on each side there is a range of magnificent pillars, unequalled, except by those of the Parthenon. A mourning-coach, arrayed in black and silver, was drawn up at the steps, and the front of the church was hung with black cloth, which covered the whole entrance. However, seeing the people going in, we entered along with them. Glorious and gorgeous is the Madeleine. The entrance to the nave is beneath a most stately arch; and three arches of equal height open from the nave to the side aisles; and at the end of the nave is another great arch, rising, with a vaulted half-dome, over the high altar. The pillars supporting these arches are Corinthian, with richly sculptured capitals; and wherever gilding might adorn the church, it is lavished like sunshine; and within the sweeps of the arches there are fresco paintings of sacred subjects, and a beautiful picture covers the hollow of the vault over the altar; all this, besides much sculpture; and especially a group above and around the high altar, representing the Magdalen smiling down upon angels and archangels, some of whom are kneeling, and shadowing themselves with their heavy marble wings. There is no such thing as making my page glow with the most distant idea of the magnificence of this church, in its details and in its whole. It was founded a hundred or two hundred years ago; then Bonaparte contemplated transforming it into a Temple of Victory, or building it anew as one. The restored Bourbons remade it into a church; but it still has a heathenish look, and will never lose it. When we entered we saw a crowd of people, all pressing forward towards the high altar, before which burned a hundred wax lights, some of which were six or seven feet high; and, altogether, they shone like a galaxy of stars. In the middle of the nave, moreover, there was another galaxy of wax candles burning around an immense pall of black velvet, embroidered with silver, which seemed to cover, not only a coffin, but a sarcophagus, or something still more huge. The organ was rumbling forth a deep, lugubrious bass, accompanied with heavy chanting of priests, out of which sometimes rose the clear, young voices of choristers, like light flashing out of the gloom. The church, between the arches, along the nave, and round the altar, was hung with broad expanses of black cloth; and all the priests had their sacred vestments covered with black. They looked exceedingly well; I never saw anything half so well got up on the stage. Some of these ecclesiastical figures were very stately and noble, and knelt and bowed, and bore aloft the cross, and swung the censers in a way that I liked to see. The ceremonies of the Catholic Church were a superb work of art, or perhaps a true growth of man's religious nature; and so long as men felt their original meaning, they must have been full of awe and glory. Being of another parish, I looked on coldly, but not irreverently, and was glad to see the funeral service so well performed, and very glad when it was over. What struck me as singular, the person who performed the part usually performed by a verger, keeping order among the audience, wore a gold-embroidered scarf, a cocked hat, and, I believe, a sword, and had the air of a military man. Before the close of the service a contribution-box--or, rather, a black velvet bag--was handed about by this military verger; and I gave J----- a franc to put in, though I did not in the least know for what. Issuing from the church, we inquired of two or three persons who was the distinguished defunct at whose obsequies we had been assisting, for we had some hope that it might be Rachel, who died last week, and is still above ground. But it proved to be only a Madame Mentel, or some such name, whom nobody had ever before heard of. I forgot to say that her coffin was taken from beneath the illuminated pall, and carried out of the church before us. When we left the Madeleine we took our way to the Place de la Concorde, and thence through the Elysian Fields (which, I suppose, are the French idea of heaven) to Bonaparte's triumphal arch. The Champs Elysees may look pretty in summer; though I suspect they must be somewhat dry and artificial at whatever season,--the trees being slender and scraggy, and requiring to be renewed every few years. The soil is not genial to them. The strangest peculiarity of this place, however, to eyes fresh from moist and verdant England, is, that there is not one blade of grass in all the Elysian Fields, nothing but hard clay, now covered with white dust. It gives the whole scene the air of being a contrivance of man, in which Nature has either not been invited to take any part, or has declined to do so. There were merry-go-rounds, wooden horses, and other provision for children's amusements among the trees; and booths, and tables of cakes, and candy-women; and restaurants on the borders of the wood; but very few people there; and doubtless we can form no idea of what the scene might become when alive with French gayety and vivacity. As we walked onward the Triumphal Arch began to loom up in the distance, looking huge and massive, though still a long way off. It was not, however, till we stood almost beneath it that we really felt the grandeur of this great arch, including so large a space of the blue sky in its airy sweep. At a distance it impresses the spectator with its solidity; nearer, with the lofty vacancy beneath it. There is a spiral staircase within one of its immense limbs; and, climbing steadily upward, lighted by a lantern which the doorkeeper's wife gave us, we had a bird's-eye view of Paris, much obscured by smoke or mist. Several interminable avenues shoot with painful directness right towards it. On our way homeward we visited the Place Vendome, in the centre of which is a tall column, sculptured from top to bottom, all over the pedestal, and all over the shaft, and with Napoleon himself on the summit. The shaft is wreathed round and roundabout with representations of what, as far as I could distinguish, seemed to be the Emperor's victories. It has a very rich effect. At the foot of the column we saw wreaths of artificial flowers, suspended there, no doubt, by some admirer of Napoleon, still ardent enough to expend a franc or two in this way. Hotel de Louvre, January 10th.--We had purposed going to the Cathedral of Notre Dame to-day, but the weather and walking were too unfavorable for a distant expedition; so we merely went across the street to the Louvre. . . . . Our principal object this morning was to see the pencil drawings by eminent artists. Of these the Louvre has a very rich collection, occupying many apartments, and comprising sketches by Annibale Caracci, Claude, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Michel Angelo, Rubens, Rembrandt, and almost all the other great masters, whether French, Italian, Dutch, or whatever else; the earliest drawings of their great pictures, when they had the glory of their pristine idea directly before their minds' eye,-- that idea which inevitably became overlaid with their own handling of it in the finished painting. No doubt the painters themselves had often a happiness in these rude, off-hand sketches, which they never felt again in the same work, and which resulted in disappointment, after they had done their best. To an artist, the collection must be most deeply interesting: to myself, it was merely curious, and soon grew wearisome. In the same suite of apartments, there is a collection of miniatures, some of them very exquisite, and absolutely lifelike, on their small scale. I observed two of Franklin, both good and picturesque, one of them especially so, with its cloud-like white hair. I do not think we have produced a man so interesting to contemplate, in many points of view, as he. Most of our great men are of a character that I find it impossible to warm into life by thought, or by lavishing any amount of sympathy upon them. Not so Franklin, who had a great deal of common and uncommon human nature in him. Much of the time, while my wife was looking at the drawings, I sat observing the crowd of Sunday visitors. They were generally of a lower class than those of week-days; private soldiers in a variety of uniforms, and, for the most part, ugly little men, but decorous and well behaved. I saw medals on many of their breasts, denoting Crimean service; some wore the English medal, with Queen Victoria's head upon it. A blue coat, with red baggy trousers, was the most usual uniform. Some had short-breasted coats, made in the same style as those of the first Napoleon, which we had seen in the preceding rooms. The policemen, distributed pretty abundantly about the rooms, themselves looked military, wearing cocked hats and swords. There were many women of the middling classes; some, evidently, of the lowest, but clean and decent, in colored gowns and caps; and laboring men, citizens, Sunday gentlemen, young artists, too, no doubt looking with educated eyes at these art-treasures, and I think, as a general thing, each man was mated with a woman. The soldiers, however, came in pairs or little squads, accompanied by women. I did not much like any of the French faces, and yet I am not sure that there is not more resemblance between them and the American physiognomy, than between the latter and the English. The women are not pretty, but in all ranks above the lowest they have a trained expression that supplies the place of beauty. I was wearied to death with the drawings, and began to have that dreary and desperate feeling which has often come upon me when the sights last longer than my capacity for receiving them. As our time in Paris, however, is brief and precious, we next inquired our way to the galleries of sculpture, and these alone are of astounding extent, reaching, I should think, all round one quadrangle of the Louvre, on the basement floor. Hall after hall opened interminably before us, and on either side of us, paved and incrusted with variegated and beautifully polished marble, relieved against which stand the antique statues and groups, interspersed with great urns and vases, sarcophagi, altars, tablets, busts of historic personages, and all manner of shapes of marble which consummate art has transmuted into precious stones. Not that I really did feel much impressed by any of this sculpture then, nor saw more than two or three things which I thought very beautiful; but whether it be good or no, I suppose the world has nothing better, unless it be a few world-renowned statues in Italy. I was even more struck by the skill and ingenuity of the French in arranging these sculptural remains, than by the value of the sculptures themselves. The galleries, I should judge, have been recently prepared, and on a magnificent system,--the adornments being yet by no means completed,--for besides the floor and wall-casings of rich, polished marble, the vaulted ceilings of some of the apartments are painted in fresco, causing them to glow as if the sky were opened. It must be owned, however, that the statuary, often time-worn and darkened from its original brilliancy by weather-stains, does not suit well as furniture for such splendid rooms. When we see a perfection of modern finish around them, we recognize that most of these statues have been thrown down from their pedestals, hundreds of years ago, and have been battered and externally degraded; and though whatever spiritual beauty they ever had may still remain, yet this is not made more apparent by the contrast betwixt the new gloss of modern upholstery, and their tarnished, even if immortal grace. I rather think the English have given really the more hospitable reception to the maimed Theseus, and his broken-nosed, broken-legged, headless companions, because flouting them with no gorgeous fittings up. By this time poor J----- (who, with his taste for art yet undeveloped, is the companion of all our visits to sculpture and picture galleries) was wofully hungry, and for bread we had given him a stone,--not one stone, but a thousand. We returned to the hotel, and it being too damp and raw to go to our Restaurant des Echelles, we dined at the hotel. In my opinion it would require less time to cultivate our gastronomic taste than taste of any other kind; and, on the whole, I am not sure that a man would not be wise to afford himself a little discipline in this line. It is certainly throwing away the bounties of Providence, to treat them as the English do, producing from better materials than the French have to work upon nothing but sirloins, joints, joints, steaks, steaks, steaks, chops, chops, chops, chops! We had a soup to-day, in which twenty kinds of vegetables were represented, and manifested each its own aroma; a fillet of stewed beef, and a fowl, in some sort of delicate fricassee. We had a bottle of Chablis, and renewed ourselves, at the close of the banquet, with a plate of Chateaubriand ice. It was all very good, and we respected ourselves far more than if we had eaten a quantity of red roast beef; but I am not quite sure that we were right. . . . Among the relics of kings and princes, I do not know that there was anything more interesting than a little brass cannon, two or three inches long, which had been a toy of the unfortunate Dauphin, son of Louis XVI. There was a map,--a hemisphere of the world,--which his father had drawn for this poor boy; very neatly done, too. The sword of Louis XVI., a magnificent rapier, with a beautifully damasked blade, and a jewelled scabbard, but without a hilt, is likewise preserved, as is the hilt of Henry IV.'s sword. But it is useless to begin a catalogue of these things. What a collection it is, including Charlemagne's sword and sceptre, and the last Dauphin's little toy cannon, and so much between the two! Hotel de Louvre, January 11th.--This was another chill, raw day, characterized by a spitefulness of atmosphere which I do not remember ever to have experienced in my own dear country. We meant to have visited the Hotel des Invalides, but J----- and I walked to the Tivoli, the Place de la Concorde, the Champs Elysees, and to the Place de Beaujou, and to the residence of the American minister, where I wished to arrange about my passport. After speaking with the Secretary of Legation, we were ushered into the minister's private room, where he received me with great kindness. Mr. ------ is an old gentleman with a white head, and a large, florid face, which has an expression of amiability, not unmingled with a certain dignity. He did not rise from his arm-chair to greet me,--a lack of ceremony which I imputed to the gout, feeling it impossible that he should have willingly failed in courtesy to one of his twenty-five million sovereigns. In response to some remark of mine about the shabby way in which our government treats its officials pecuniarily, he gave a detailed account of his own troubles on that score; then expressed a hope that I had made a good thing out of my consulate, and inquired whether I had received a hint to resign; to which I replied that, for various reasons, I had resigned of my own accord, and before Mr. Buchanan's inauguration. We agreed, however, in disapproving the system of periodical change in our foreign officials; and I remarked that a consul or an ambassador ought to be a citizen both of his native country and of the one in which he resided; and that his possibility of beneficent influence depended largely on his being so. Apropos to which Mr. ------ said that he had once asked a diplomatic friend of long experience, what was the first duty of a minister. "To love his own country, and to watch over its interests," answered the diplomatist. "And his second duty?" asked Mr. ------. "To love and to promote the interests of the country to which he is accredited," said his friend. This is a very Christian and sensible view of the matter; but it can scarcely have happened once in our whole diplomatic history, that a minister can have had time to overcome his first rude and ignorant prejudice against the country of his mission; and if there were any suspicion of his having done so, it would be held abundantly sufficient ground for his recall. I like Mr. ------, a good-hearted, sensible old man. J----- and I returned along the Champs Elysees, and, crossing the Seine, kept on our way by the river's brink, looking at the titles of books on the long lines of stalls that extend between the bridges. Novels, fairy-tales, dream books, treatises of behavior and etiquette, collections of bon-mots and of songs, were interspersed with volumes in the old style of calf and gilt binding, the works of the classics of French literature. A good many persons, of the poor classes, and of those apparently well to do, stopped transitorily to look at these books. On the other side of the street was a range of tall edifices with shops beneath, and the quick stir of French life hurrying, and babbling, and swarming along the sidewalk. We passed two or three bridges, occurring at short intervals, and at last we recrossed the Seine by a bridge which oversteps the river, from a point near the National Institute, and reaches the other side, not far from the Louvre. . . . Though the day was so disagreeable, we thought it best not to lose the remainder of it, and therefore set out to visit the Cathedral of Notre Dame. We took a fiacre in the Place de Carousel, and drove to the door. On entering, we found the interior miserably shut off from view by the stagings erected for the purpose of repairs. Penetrating from the nave towards the chancel, an official personage signified to us that we must first purchase a ticket for each grown person, at the price of half a franc each. This expenditure admitted us into the sacristy, where we were taken in charge by a guide, who came down upon us with an avalanche or cataract of French, descriptive of a great many treasures reposited in this chapel. I understood hardly more than one word in ten, but gathered doubtfully that a bullet which was shown us was the one that killed the late Archbishop of Paris, on the floor of the cathedral. [But this was a mistake. It was the archbishop who was killed in the insurrection of 1848. Two joints of his backbone were also shown.] Also, that some gorgeously embroidered vestments, which he drew forth, had been used at the coronation of Napoleon I. There were two large, full-length portraits hanging aloft in the sacristy, and a gold or silver gilt, or, at all events, gilt image of the Virgin, as large as life, standing on a pedestal. The guide had much to say about these, but, understanding him so imperfectly, I have nothing to record. The guide's supervision of us seemed not to extend beyond this sacristy, on quitting which he gave us permission to go where we pleased, only intimating a hope that we would not forget him; so I gave him half a franc, though thereby violating an inhibition on the printed ticket of entrance. We had been much disappointed at first by the apparently narrow limits of the interior of this famous church; but now, as we made our way round the choir, gazing into chapel after chapel, each with its painted window, its crucifix, its pictures, its confessional, and afterwards came back into the nave, where arch rises above arch to the lofty roof, we came to the conclusion that it was very sumptuous. It is the greatest of pities that its grandeur and solemnity should just now be so infinitely marred by the workmen's boards, timber, and ladders occupying the whole centre of the edifice, and screening all its best effects. It seems to have been already most richly ornamented, its roof being painted, and the capitals of the pillars gilded, and their shafts illuminated in fresco; and no doubt it will shine out gorgeously when all the repairs and adornments shall be completed. Even now it gave to my actual sight what I have often tried to imagine in my visits to the English cathedrals,-- the pristine glory of those edifices, when they stood glowing with gold and picture, fresh from the architects' and adorners' hands. The interior loftiness of Notre Dame, moreover, gives it a sublimity which would swallow up anything that might look gewgawy in its ornamentation, were we to consider it window by window, or pillar by pillar. It is an advantage of these vast edifices, rising over us and spreading about us in such a firmamental way, that we cannot spoil them by any pettiness of our own, but that they receive (or absorb) our pettiness into their own immensity. Every little fantasy finds its place and propriety in them, like a flower on the earth's broad bosom. When we emerged from the cathedral, we found it beginning to rain or snow, or both; and, as we had dismissed our fiacre at the door, and could find no other, we were at a loss what to do. We stood a few moments on the steps of the Hotel Dieu, looking up at the front of Notre Dame, with its twin towers, and its three deep-pointed arches, piercing through a great thickness of stone, and throwing a cavern-like gloom around these entrances. The front is very rich. Though so huge, and all of gray stone, it is carved and fretted with statues and innumerable devices, as cunningly as any ivory casket in which relics are kept; but its size did not so much impress me. . . . Hotel de Louvre, January 12th.--This has been a bright day as regards weather; but I have done little or nothing worth recording. After breakfast, I set out in quest of the consul, and found him up a court, at 51 Rue Caumartin, in an office rather smaller, I think, than mine at Liverpool; but, to say the truth, a little better furnished. I was received in the outer apartment by an elderly, brisk-looking man, in whose air, respectful and subservient, and yet with a kind of authority in it, I recognized the vice-consul. He introduced me to Mr. ------, who sat writing in an inner room; a very gentlemanly, courteous, cool man of the world, whom I should take to be an excellent person for consul at Paris. He tells me that he has resided here some years, although his occupancy of the consulate dates only from November last. Consulting him respecting my passport, he gave me what appear good reasons why I should get all the necessary vises here; for example, that the vise of a minister carries more weight than that of a consul; and especially that an Austrian consul will never vise a passport unless he sees his minister's name upon it. Mr. ------ has travelled much in Italy, and ought to be able to give me sound advice. His opinion was, that at this season of the year I had better go by steamer to Civita Veechia, instead of landing at Leghorn, and thence journeying to Rome. On this point I shall decide when the time comes. As I left the office the vice-consul informed me that there was a charge of five francs and some sous for the consul's vise, a tax which surprised me,--the whole business of passports having been taken from consuls before I quitted office, and the consular fee having been annulled even earlier. However, no doubt Mr. ------ had a fair claim to my five francs; but, really, it is not half so pleasant to pay a consular fee as it used to be to receive it. Afterwards I walked to Notre Dame, the rich front of which I viewed with more attention than yesterday. There are whole histories, carved in stone figures, within the vaulted arches of the three entrances in this west front, and twelve apostles in a row above, and as much other sculpture as would take a month to see. We then walked quite round it, but I had no sense of immensity from it, not even that of great height, as from many of the cathedrals in England. It stands very near the Seine; indeed, if I mistake not, it is on an island formed by two branches of the river. Behind it, is what seems to be a small public ground (or garden, if a space entirely denuded of grass or other green thing, except a few trees, can be called so), with benches, and a monument in the midst. This quarter of the city looks old, and appears to be inhabited by poor people, and to be busied about small and petty affairs; the most picturesque business that I saw being that of the old woman who sells crucifixes of pearl and of wood at the cathedral door. We bought two of these yesterday. I must again speak of the horrible muddiness, not only of this part of the city, but of all Paris, so far as I have traversed it to-day. My ways, since I came to Europe, have often lain through nastiness, but I never before saw a pavement so universally overspread with mud-padding as that of Paris. It is difficult to imagine where so much filth can come from. After dinner I walked through the gardens of the Tuileries; but as dusk was coming on, and as I was afraid of being shut up within the iron railing, I did not have time to examine them particularly. There are wide, intersecting walks, fountains, broad basins, and many statues; but almost the whole surface of the gardens is barren earth, instead of the verdure that would beautify an English pleasure-ground of this sort. In the summer it has doubtless an agreeable shade; but at this season the naked branches look meagre, and sprout from slender trunks. Like the trees in the Champs Elysees, those, I presume, in the gardens of the Tuileries need renewing every few years. The same is true of the human race,--families becoming extinct after a generation or two of residence in Paris. Nothing really thrives here; man and vegetables have but an artificial life, like flowers stuck in a little mould, but never taking root. I am quite tired of Paris, and long for a home more than ever. MARSEILLES. Hotel d'Angleterre, January 15th.--On Tuesday morning, (12th) we took our departure from the Hotel de Louvre. It is a most excellent and perfectly ordered hotel, and I have not seen a more magnificent hall, in any palace, than the dining-saloon, with its profuse gilding, and its ceiling, painted in compartments; so that when the chandeliers are all alight, it looks a fit place for princes to banquet in, and not very fit for the few Americans whom I saw scattered at its long tables. By the by, as we drove to the railway, we passed through the public square, where the Bastille formerly stood; and in the centre of it now stands a column, surmounted by a golden figure of Mercury (I think), which seems to be just on the point of casting itself from a gilt ball into the air. This statue is so buoyant, that the spectator feels quite willing to trust it to the viewless element, being as sure that it would be borne up as that a bird would fly. Our first day's journey was wholly without interest, through a country entirely flat, and looking wretchedly brown and barren. There were rows of trees, very slender, very prim and formal; there was ice wherever there happened to be any water to form it; there were occasional villages, compact little streets, or masses of stone or plastered cottages, very dirty and with gable ends and earthen roofs; and a succession of this same landscape was all that we saw, whenever we rubbed away the congelation of our breath from the carriage windows. Thus we rode on, all day long, from eleven o'clock, with hardly a five minutes' stop, till long after dark, when we came to Dijon, where there was a halt of twenty-five minutes for dinner. Then we set forth again, and rumbled forward, through cold and darkness without, until we reached Lyons at about ten o'clock. We left our luggage at the railway station, and took an omnibus for the Hotel de Provence, which we chose at a venture, among a score of other hotels. As this hotel was a little off the direct route of the omnibus, the driver set us down at the corner of a street, and pointed to some lights, which he said designated the Hotel do Provence; and thither we proceeded, all seven of us, taking along a few carpet-bags and shawls, our equipage for the night. The porter of the hotel met us near its doorway, and ushered us through an arch, into the inner quadrangle, and then up some old and worn steps,--very broad, and appearing to be the principal staircase. At the first landing-place, an old woman and a waiter or two received us; and we went up two or three more flights of the same broad and worn stone staircases. What we could see of the house looked very old, and had the musty odor with which I first became acquainted at Chester. After ascending to the proper level, we were conducted along a corridor, paved with octagonal earthen tiles; on one side were windows, looking into the courtyard, on the other doors opening into the sleeping-chambers. The corridor was of immense length, and seemed still to lengthen itself before us, as the glimmer of our conductor's candle went farther and farther into the obscurity. Our own chamber was at a vast distance along this passage; those of the rest of the party were on the hither side; but all this immense suite of rooms appeared to communicate by doors from one to another, like the chambers through which the reader wanders at midnight, in Mrs. Radcliffe's romances. And they were really splendid rooms, though of an old fashion, lofty, spacious, with floors of oak or other wood, inlaid in squares and crosses, and waxed till they were slippery, but without carpets. Our own sleeping-room had a deep fireplace, in which we ordered a fire, and asked if there were not some saloon already warmed, where we could get a cup of tea. Hereupon the waiter led us back along the endless corridor, and down the old stone staircases, and out into the quadrangle, and journeyed with us along an exterior arcade, and finally threw open the door of the salle a manger, which proved to be a room of lofty height, with a vaulted roof, a stone floor, and interior spaciousness sufficient for a baronial hall, the whole bearing the same aspect of times gone by, that characterized the rest of the house. There were two or three tables covered with white cloth, and we sat down at one of them and had our tea. Finally we wended back to our sleeping-rooms,--a considerable journey, so endless seemed the ancient hotel. I should like to know its history. The fire made our great chamber look comfortable, and the fireplace threw out the heat better than the little square hole over which we cowered in our saloon at the Hotel de Louvre. . . . In the morning we began our preparations for starting at ten. Issuing into the corridor, I found a soldier of the line, pacing to and fro there as sentinel. Another was posted in another corridor, into which I wandered by mistake; another stood in the inner court-yard, and another at the porte-cochere. They were not there the night before, and I know not whence nor why they came, unless that some officer of rank may have taken up his quarters at the hotel. Miss M------ says she heard at Paris, that a considerable number of troops had recently been drawn together at Lyons, in consequence of symptoms of disaffection that have recently shown themselves here. Before breakfast I went out to catch a momentary glimpse of the city. The street in which our hotel stands is near a large public square; in the centre is a bronze equestrian statue of Louis XIV.; and the square itself is called the Place de Louis le Grand. I wonder where this statue hid itself while the Revolution was raging in Lyons, and when the guillotine, perhaps, stood on that very spot. The square was surrounded by stately buildings, but had what seemed to be barracks for soldiers,--at any rate, mean little huts, deforming its ample space; and a soldier was on guard before the statue of Louis le Grand. It was a cold, misty morning, and a fog lay throughout the area, so that I could scarcely see from one side of it to the other. Returning towards our hotel, I saw that it had an immense front, along which ran, in gigantic letters, its title,-- HOTEL DE PROVENCE ET DES AMBASSADEURS. The excellence of the hotel lay rather in the faded pomp of its sleeping-rooms, and the vastness of its salle a manger, than in anything very good to eat or drink. We left it, after a poor breakfast, and went to the railway station. Looking at the mountainous heap of our luggage the night before, we had missed a great carpet-bag; and we now found that Miss M------'s trunk had been substituted for it, and, there being the proper number of packages as registered, it was impossible to convince the officials that anything was wrong. We, of course, began to generalize forthwith, and pronounce the incident to be characteristic of French morality. They love a certain system and external correctness, but do not trouble themselves to be deeply in the right; and Miss M------ suggested that there used to be parallel cases in the French Revolution, when, so long as the assigned number were sent out of prison to be guillotined, the jailer did not much care whether they were the persons designated by the tribunal or not. At all events, we could get no satisfaction about the carpet-bag, and shall very probably be compelled to leave Marseilles without it. This day's ride was through a far more picturesque country than that we saw yesterday. Heights began to rise imminent above our way, with sometimes a ruined castle wall upon them; on our left, the rail-track kept close to the hills; on the other side there was the level bottom of a valley, with heights descending upon it a mile or a few miles away. Farther off we could see blue hills, shouldering high above the intermediate ones, and themselves worthy to be called mountains. These hills arranged themselves in beautiful groups, affording openings between them, and vistas of what lay beyond, and gorges which I suppose held a great deal of romantic scenery. By and by a river made its appearance, flowing swiftly in the same direction that we were travelling,--a beautiful and cleanly river, with white pebbly shores, and itself of a peculiar blue. It rushed along very fast, sometimes whitening over shallow descents, and even in its calmer intervals its surface was all covered with whirls and eddies, indicating that it dashed onward in haste. I do not now know the name of this river, but have set it down as the "arrowy Rhone." It kept us company a long while, and I think we did not part with it as long as daylight remained. I have seldom seen hill-scenery that struck me more than some that we saw to-day, and the old feudal towers and old villages at their feet; and the old churches, with spires shaped just like extinguishers, gave it an interest accumulating from many centuries past. Still going southward, the vineyards began to border our track, together with what I at first took to be orchards, but soon found were plantations of olive-trees, which grow to a much larger size than I supposed, and look almost exactly like very crabbed and eccentric apple-trees. Neither they nor the vineyards add anything to the picturesqueness of the landscape. On the whole, I should have been delighted with all this scenery if it had not looked so bleak, barren, brown, and bare; so like the wintry New England before the snow has fallen. It was very cold, too; ice along the borders of streams, even among the vineyards and olives. The houses are of rather a different shape here than, farther northward, their roofs being not nearly so sloping. They are almost invariably covered with white plaster; the farm-houses have their outbuildings in connection with the dwelling,--the whole surrounding three sides of a quadrangle. We travelled far into the night, swallowed a cold and hasty dinner at Avignon, and reached Marseilles sorely wearied, at about eleven o'clock. We took a cab to the Hotel d'Angleterre (two cabs, to be quite accurate), and find it a very poor place. To go back a little, as the sun went down, we looked out of the window of our railway carriage, and saw a sky that reminded us of what we used to see day after day in America, and what we have not seen since; and, after sunset, the horizon burned and glowed with rich crimson and orange lustre, looking at once warm and cold. After it grew dark, the stars brightened, and Miss M------ from her window pointed out some of the planets to the children, she being as familiar with them as a gardener with his flowers. They were as bright as diamonds. We had a wretched breakfast, and J----- and I then went to the railway station to see about our luggage. On our walk back we went astray, passing by a triumphal arch, erected by the Marseillais, in honor of Louis Napoleon; but we inquired our way of old women and soldiers, who were very kind and courteous,--especially the latter,--and were directed aright. We came to a large, oblong, public place, set with trees, but devoid of grass, like all public places in France. In the middle of it was a bronze statue of an ecclesiastical personage, stretching forth his hands in the attitude of addressing the people or of throwing a benediction over them. It was some archbishop, who had distinguished himself by his humanity and devotedness during the plague of 1720. At the moment of our arrival the piazza was quite thronged with people, who seemed to be talking amongst themselves with considerable earnestness, although without any actual excitement. They were smoking cigars; and we judged that they were only loitering here for the sake of the sunshine, having no fires at home, and nothing to do. Some looked like gentlemen, others like peasants; most of them I should have taken for the lazzaroni of this Southern city,--men with cloth caps, like the classic liberty-cap, or with wide-awake hats. There were one or two women of the lower classes, without bonnets, the elder ones with white caps, the younger bareheaded. I have hardly seen a lady in Marseilles; and I suspect, it being a commercial city, and dirty to the last degree, ill-built, narrow-streeted, and sometimes pestilential, there are few or no families of gentility resident here. Returning to the hotel, we found the rest of the party ready to go out; so we all issued forth in a body, and inquired our way to the telegraph-office, in order to send my message about the carpet-bag. In a street through which we had to pass (and which seemed to be the Exchange, or its precincts), there was a crowd even denser, yes, much denser, than that which we saw in the square of the archbishop's statue; and each man was talking to his neighbor in a vivid, animated way, as if business were very brisk to-day. At the telegraph-office, we discovered the cause that had brought out these many people. There had been attempts on the Emperor's life,-- unsuccessful, as they seem fated to be, though some mischief was done to those near him. I rather think the good people of Marseilles were glad of the attempt, as an item of news and gossip, and did not very greatly care whether it were successful or no. It seemed to have roused their vivacity rather than their interest. The only account I have seen of it was in the brief public despatch from the Syndic (or whatever he be) of Paris to the chief authority of Marseilles, which was printed and posted in various conspicuous places. The only chance of knowing the truth with any fulness of detail would be to come across an English paper. We have had a banner hoisted half-mast in front of our hotel to-day as a token, the head-waiter tells me, of sympathy and sorrow for the General and other persons who were slain by this treasonable attempt. J----- and I now wandered by ourselves along a circular line of quays, having, on one side of us, a thick forest of masts, while, on the other, was a sweep of shops, bookstalls, sailors' restaurants and drinking-houses, fruit-sellers, candy-women, and all manner of open-air dealers and pedlers; little children playing, and jumping the rope, and such a babble and bustle as I never saw or heard before; the sun lying along the whole sweep, very hot, and evidently very grateful to those who basked in it. Whenever I passed into the shade, immediately from too warm I became too cold. The sunshine was like hot air; the shade, like the touch of cold steel,--sharp, hard, yet exhilarating. From the broad street of the quays, narrow, thread-like lanes pierced up between the edifices, calling themselves streets, yet so narrow, that a person in the middle could almost touch the houses on either hand. They ascended steeply, bordered on each side by long, contiguous walls of high houses, and from the time of their first being built, could never have had a gleam of sunshine in them,--always in shadow, always unutterably nasty, and often pestiferous. The nastiness which I saw in Marseilles exceeds my heretofore experience. There is dirt in the hotel, and everywhere else; and it evidently troubles nobody,--no more than if all the people were pigs in a pigsty. . . . Passing by all this sweep of quays, J----- and I ascended to an elevated walk, overlooking the harbor, and far beyond it; for here we had our first view of the Mediterranean, blue as heaven, and bright with sunshine. It was a bay, widening forth into the open deep, and bordered with heights, and bold, picturesque headlands, some of which had either fortresses or convents on them. Several boats and one brig were under sail, making their way towards the port. I have never seen a finer sea-view. Behind the town, there seemed to be a mountainous landscape, imperfectly visible, in consequence of the intervening edifices. THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA. Steamer Calabrese, January 17th.--If I had remained at Marseilles, I might have found many peculiarities and characteristics of that Southern city to notice; but I fear that these will not be recorded if I leave them till I touch the soil of Italy. Indeed, I doubt whether there be anything really worth recording in the little distinctions between one nation and another; at any rate, after the first novelty is over, new things seem equally commonplace with the old. There is but one little interval when the mind is in such a state that it can catch the fleeting aroma of a new scene. And it is always so much pleasanter to enjoy this delicious newness than to attempt arresting it, that it requires great force of will to insist with one's self upon sitting down to write. I can do nothing with Marseilles, especially here on the Mediterranean, long after nightfall, and when the steamer is pitching in a pretty lively way. (Later.)--I walked out with J----- yesterday morning, and reached the outskirts of the city, whence we could see the bold and picturesque heights that surround Marseilles as with a semicircular wall. They rise into peaks, and the town, being on their lower slope, descends from them towards the sea with a gradual sweep. Adown the streets that descend these declivities come little rivulets, running along over the pavement, close to the sidewalks, as over a pebbly bed; and though they look vastly like kennels, I saw women washing linen in these streams, and others dipping up the water for household purposes. The women appear very much in public at Marseilles. In the squares and places you see half a dozen of them together, sitting in a social circle on the bottoms of upturned baskets, knitting, talking, and enjoying the public sunshine, as if it were their own household fire. Not one in a thousand of them, probably, ever has a household fire for the purpose of keeping themselves warm, but only to do their little cookery; and when there is sunshine they take advantage of it, and in the short season of rain and frost they shrug their shoulders, put on what warm garments they have, and get through the winter somewhat as grasshoppers and butterflies do,--being summer insects like then. This certainly is a very keen and cutting air, sharp as a razor, and I saw ice along the borders of the little rivulets almost at noonday. To be sure, it is midwinter, and yet in the sunshine I found myself uncomfortably warm, but in the shade the air was like the touch of death itself. I do not like the climate. There are a great number of public places in Marseilles, several of which are adorned with statues or fountains, or triumphal arches or columns, and set out with trees, and otherwise furnished as a kind of drawing-rooms, where the populace may meet together and gossip. I never before heard from human lips anything like this bustle and babble, this thousand-fold talk which you hear all round about you in the crowd of a public square; so entirely different is it from the dulness of a crowd in England, where, as a rule, everybody is silent, and hardly half a dozen monosyllables will come from the lips of a thousand people. In Marseilles, on the contrary, a stream of unbroken talk seems to bubble from the lips of every individual. A great many interesting scenes take place in these squares. From the window of our hotel (which looked into the Place Royale) I saw a juggler displaying his art to a crowd, who stood in a regular square about him, none pretending to press nearer than the prescribed limit. While the juggler wrought his miracles his wife supplied him with his magic materials out of a box; and when the exhibition was over she packed up the white cloth with which his table was covered, together with cups, cards, balls, and whatever else, and they took their departure. I have been struck with the idle curiosity, and, at the same time, the courtesy and kindness of the populace of Marseilles, and I meant to exemplify it by recording how Miss S------ and I attracted their notice, and became the centre of a crowd of at least fifty of them while doing no more remarkable thing than settling with a cab-driver. But really this pitch and swell is getting too bad, and I shall go to bed, as the best chance of keeping myself in an equable state. ROME. 37 Palazzo Larazani, Via Porta Pinciana, January 24th.--We left Marseilles in the Neapolitan steamer Calabrese, as noticed above, a week ago this morning. There was no fault to be found with the steamer, which was very clean and comfortable, contrary to what we had understood beforehand; except for the coolness of the air (and I know not that this was greater than that of the Atlantic in July), our voyage would have been very pleasant; but for myself, I enjoyed nothing, having a cold upon me, or a low fever, or something else that took the light and warmth out of everything. I went to bed immediately after my last record, and was rocked to sleep pleasantly enough by the billows of the Mediterranean; and, coming on deck about sunrise next morning, found the steamer approaching Genoa. We saw the city, lying at the foot of a range of hills, and stretching a little way up their slopes, the hills sweeping round it in the segment of a circle, and looking like an island rising abruptly out of the sea; for no connection with the mainland was visible on either side. There was snow scattered on their summits and streaking their sides a good way down. They looked bold, and barren, and brown, except where the snow whitened them. The city did not impress me with much expectation of size or splendor. Shortly after coming into the port our whole party landed, and we found ourselves at once in the midst of a crowd of cab-drivers, hotel-runnets, and coin missionaires, who assaulted us with a volley of French, Italian, and broken English, which beat pitilessly about our ears; for really it seemed as if all the dictionaries in the world had been torn to pieces, and blown around us by a hurricane. Such a pother! We took a commissionaire, a respectable-looking man, in a cloak, who said his name was Salvator Rosa; and he engaged to show us whatever was interesting in Genoa. In the first place, he took us through narrow streets to an old church, the name of which I have forgotten, and, indeed, its peculiar features; but I know that I found it pre-eminently magnificent,--its whole interior being incased in polished marble, of various kinds and colors, its ceiling painted, and its chapels adorned with pictures. However, this church was dazzled out of sight by the Cathedral of San Lorenzo, to which we were afterwards conducted, whose exterior front is covered with alternate slabs of black and white marble, which were brought, either in whole or in part, from Jerusalem. Within, there was a prodigious richness of precious marbles, and a pillar, if I mistake not, from Solomon's Temple; and a picture of the Virgin by St. Luke; and others (rather more intrinsically valuable, I imagine), by old masters, set in superb marble frames, within the arches of the chapels. I used to try to imagine how the English cathedrals must have looked in their primeval glory, before the Reformation, and before the whitewash of Cromwell's time had overlaid their marble pillars; but I never imagined anything at all approaching what my eyes now beheld: this sheen of polished and variegated marble covering every inch of its walls; this glow of brilliant frescos all over the roof, and up within the domes; these beautiful pictures by great masters, painted for the places which they now occupied, and making an actual portion of the edifice; this wealth of silver, gold, and gems, that adorned the shrines of the saints, before which wax candles burned, and were kept burning, I suppose, from year's end to year's end; in short, there is no imagining nor remembering a hundredth part of the rich details. And even the cathedral (though I give it up as indescribable) was nothing at all in comparison with a church to which the commissionaire afterwards led us; a church that had been built four or five hundred years ago, by a pirate, in expiation of his sins, and out of the profit of his rapine. This last edifice, in its interior, absolutely shone with burnished gold, and glowed with pictures; its walls were a quarry of precious stones, so valuable were the marbles out of which they were wrought; its columns and pillars were of inconceivable costliness; its pavement was a mosaic of wonderful beauty, and there were four twisted pillars made out of stalactites. Perhaps the best way to form some dim conception of it is to fancy a little casket, inlaid inside with precious stones, so that there shall not a hair's-breadth be left unprecious-stoned, and then to conceive this little bit of a casket iucreased to the magnitude of a great church, without losing anything of the excessive glory that was compressed into its original small compass, but all its pretty lustre made sublime by the consequent immensity. At any rate, nobody who has not seen a church like this can imagine what a gorgeous religion it was that reared it. In the cathedral, and in all the churches, we saw priests and many persons kneeling at their devotions; and our Salvator Rosa, whenever we passed a chapel or shrine, failed not to touch the pavement with one knee, crossing himself the while; and once, when a priest was going through some form of devotion, he stopped a few moments to share in it. He conducted us, too, to the Balbi Palace, the stateliest and most sumptuous residence, but not more so than another which he afterwards showed us, nor perhaps than many others which exist in Genoa, THE SUPERB. The painted ceilings in these palaces are a glorious adornment; the walls of the saloons, incrusted with various-colored marbles, give an idea of splendor which I never gained from anything else. The floors, laid in mosaic, seem too precious to tread upon. In the royal palace, many of the floors were of various woods, inlaid by an English artist, and they looked like a magnification of some exquisite piece of Tunbridge ware; but, in all respects, this palace was inferior to others which we saw. I say nothing of the immense pictorial treasures which hung upon the walls of all the rooms through which we passed; for I soon grew so weary of admirable things, that I could neither enjoy nor understand them. My receptive faculty is very limited, and when the utmost of its small capacity is full, I become perfectly miserable, and the more so the better worth seeing are the things I am forced to reject. I do not know a greater misery; to see sights, after such repletion, is to the mind what it would be to the body to have dainties forced down the throat long after the appetite was satiated. All this while, whenever we emerged into the vaultlike streets, we were wretchedly cold. The commissionaire took us to a sort of pleasure-garden, occupying the ascent of a hill, and presenting seven different views of the city, from as many stations. One of the objects pointed out to us was a large yellow house, on a hillside, in the outskirts of Genoa, which was formerly inhabited for six months by Charles Dickens. Looking down from the elevated part of the pleasure-gardens, we saw orange-trees beneath us, with the golden fruit hanging upon them, though their trunks were muffled in straw; and, still lower down, there was ice and snow. Gladly (so far as I myself was concerned) we dismissed the commissionaire, after he had brought us to the hotel of the Cross of Malta, where we dined; needlessly, as it proved, for another dinner awaited us, after our return on board the boat. We set sail for Leghorn before dark, and I retired early, feeling still more ill from my cold than the night before. The next morning we were in the crowded port of Leghorn. We all went ashore, with some idea of taking the rail for Pisa, which is within an hour's distance, and might have been seen in time for our departure with the steamer. But a necessary visit to a banker's, and afterwards some unnecessary formalities about our passports, kept us wandering through the streets nearly all day; and we saw nothing in the slightest degree interesting, except the tomb of Smollett, in the burial-place attached to the English Chapel. It is surrounded by an iron railing, and marked by a slender obelisk of white marble, the pattern of which is many times repeated over surrounding graves. We went into a Jewish synagogue,--the interior cased in marbles, and surrounded with galleries, resting upon arches above arches. There were lights burning at the altar, and it looked very like a Christian church; but it was dirty, and had an odor not of sanctity. In Leghorn, as everywhere else, we were chilled to the heart, except when the sunshine fell directly upon us; and we returned to the steamer with a feeling as if we were getting back to our home; for this life of wandering makes a three days' residence in one place seem like home. We found several new passengers on board, and among others a monk, in a long brown frock of woollen cloth, with an immense cape, and a little black covering over his tonsure. He was a tall figure, with a gray beard, and might have walked, just as he stood, out of a picture by one of the old masters. This holy person addressed me very affably in Italian; but we found it impossible to hold much conversation. The evening was beautiful, with a bright young moonlight, not yet sufficiently powerful to overwhelm the stars, and as we walked the deck, Miss M------ showed the children the constellations, and told their names. J----- made a slight mistake as to one of them, pointing it out to me as "O'Brien's belt!" Elba was presently in view, and we might have seen many other interesting points, had it not been for our steamer's practice of resting by day, and only pursuing its voyage by night. The next morning we found ourselves in the harbor of Civita Vecchia, and, going ashore with our luggage, went through a blind turmoil with custom-house officers, inspectors of passports, soldiers, and vetturino people. My wife and I strayed a little through Civita Vecchia, and found its streets narrow, like clefts in a rock (which seems to be the fashion of Italian towns), and smelling nastily. I had made a bargain with a vetturino to send us to Rome in a carriage, with four horses, in eight hours; and as soon as the custom-house and passport people would let us, we started, lumbering slowly along with our mountain of luggage. We had heard rumors of robberies lately committed on this route; especially of a Nova Scotia bishop, who was detained on the road an hour and a half, and utterly pillaged; and certainly there was not a single mile of the dreary and desolate country over which we passed, where we might not have been robbed and murdered with impunity. Now and then, at long distances, we came to a structure that was either a prison, a tavern, or a barn, but did not look very much like either, being strongly built of stone, with iron-grated windows, and of ancient and rusty aspect. We kept along by the seashore a great part of the way, and stopped to feed our horses at a village, the wretched street of which stands close along the shore of the Mediterranean, its loose, dark sand being made nasty by the vicinity. The vetturino cheated us, one of the horses giving out, as he must have known it would do, half-way on our journey; and we staggered on through cold and darkness, and peril, too, if the banditti were not a myth,-- reaching Rome not much before midnight. I perpetrated unheard-of briberies on the custom-house officers at the gates, and was permitted to pass through and establish myself at Spillman's Hotel, the only one where we could gain admittance, and where we have been half frozen ever since. And this is sunny Italy, and genial Rome! Palazzo Larazani, Via Porta Pinciana, February 3d.--We have been in Rome a fortnight to-day, or rather at eleven o'clock to-night; and I have seldom or never spent so wretched a time anywhere. Our impressions were very unfortunate, arriving at midnight, half frozen in the wintry rain, and being received into a cold and cheerless hotel, where we shivered during two or three days; meanwhile seeking lodgings among the sunless, dreary alleys which are called streets in Rome. One cold, bright day after another has pierced me to the heart, and cut me in twain as with a sword, keen and sharp, and poisoned at point and edge. I did not think that cold weather could have made me so very miserable. Having caught a feverish influenza, I was really glad of being muffled up comfortably in the fever heat. The atmosphere certainly has a peculiar quality of malignity. After a day or two we settled ourselves in a suite of ten rooms, comprehending one flat, or what is called the second piano of this house. The rooms, thus far, have been very uncomfortable, it being impossible to warm them by means of the deep, old-fashioned, inartificial fireplaces, unless we had the great logs of a New England forest to burn in them; so I have sat in my corner by the fireside with more clothes on than I ever wore before, and my thickest great-coat over all. In the middle of the day I generally venture out for an hour or two, but have only once been warm enough even in the sunshine, and out of the sun never at any time. I understand now the force of that story of Diogenes when he asked the Conqueror, as the only favor he could do him, to stand out of his sunshine, there being such a difference in these Southern climes of Europe between sun and shade. If my wits had not been too much congealed, and my fingers too numb, I should like to have kept a minute journal of my feelings and impressions during the past fortnight. It would have shown modern Rome in an aspect in which it has never yet been depicted. But I have now grown somewhat acclimated, and the first freshness of my discomfort has worn off, so that I shall never be able to express how I dislike the place, and how wretched I have been in it; and soon, I suppose, warmer weather will come, and perhaps reconcile me to Rome against my will. Cold, narrow lanes, between tall, ugly, mean-looking whitewashed houses, sour bread, pavements most uncomfortable to the feet, enormous prices for poor living; beggars, pickpockets, ancient temples and broken monuments, and clothes hanging to dry about them; French soldiers, monks, and priests of every degree; a shabby population, smoking bad cigars,--these would have been some of the points of my description. Of course there are better and truer things to be said. . . . It would be idle for me to attempt any sketches of these famous sites and edifices,--St. Peter's, for example,--which have been described by a thousand people, though none of them have ever given me an idea of what sort of place Rome is. . . . The Coliseum was very much what I had preconceived it, though I was not prepared to find it turned into a sort of Christian church, with a pulpit on the verge of the open space. . . . The French soldiers, who keep guard within it, as in other public places in Rome, have an excellent opportunity to secure the welfare of their souls. February 7th.--I cannot get fairly into the current of my journal since we arrived, and already I perceive that the nice peculiarities of Roman life are passing from my notice before I have recorded them. It is a very great pity. During the past week I have plodded daily, for an hour or two, through the narrow, stony streets, that look worse than the worst backside lanes of any other city; indescribably ugly and disagreeable they are, . . . . without sidewalks, but provided with a line of larger square stones, set crosswise to each other, along which there is somewhat less uneasy walking. . . . Ever and anon, even in the meanest streets, --though, generally speaking, one can hardly be called meaner than another,--we pass a palace, extending far along the narrow way on a line with the other houses, but distinguished by its architectural windows, iron-barred on the basement story, and by its portal arch, through which we have glimpses, sometimes of a dirty court-yard, or perhaps of a clean, ornamented one, with trees, a colonnade, a fountain, and a statue in the vista; though, more likely, it resembles the entrance to a stable, and may, perhaps, really be one. The lower regions of palaces come to strange uses in Rome. . . . In the basement story of the Barberini Palace a regiment of French soldiers (or soldiers of some kind [we find them to be retainers of the Barberini family, not French]) seems to be quartered, while no doubt princes have magnificent domiciles above. Be it palace or whatever other dwelling, the inmates climb through rubbish often to the comforts, such as they may be, that await them above. I vainly try to get down upon paper the dreariness, the ugliness, shabbiness, un-home-likeness of a Roman street. It is also to be said that you cannot go far in any direction without coming to a piazza, which is sometimes little more than a widening and enlarging of the dingy street, with the lofty facade of a church or basilica on one side, and a fountain in the centre, where the water squirts out of some fantastic piece of sculpture into a great stone basin. These fountains are often of immense size and most elaborate design. . . . There are a great many of these fountain-shapes, constructed under the orders of one pope or another, in all parts of the city; and only the very simplest, such as a jet springing from a broad marble or porphyry vase, and falling back into it again, are really ornamental. If an antiquary were to accompany me through the streets, no doubt he would point out ten thousand interesting objects that I now pass over unnoticed, so general is the surface of plaster and whitewash; but often I can see fragments of antiquity built into the walls, or perhaps a church that was a Roman temple, or a basement of ponderous stones that were laid above twenty centuries ago. It is strange how our ideas of what antiquity is become altered here in Rome; the sixteenth century, in which many of the churches and fountains seem to have been built or re-edified, seems close at hand, even like our own days; a thousand years, or the days of the latter empire, is but a modern date, and scarcely interests us; and nothing is really venerable of a more recent epoch than the reign of Constantine. And the Egyptian obelisks that stand in several of the piazzas put even the Augustan or Republican antiquities to shame. I remember reading in a New York newspaper an account of one of the public buildings of that city,--a relic of "the olden time," the writer called it; for it was erected in 1825! I am glad I saw the castles and Gothic churches and cathedrals of England before visiting Rome, or I never could have felt that delightful reverence for their gray and ivy-hung antiquity after seeing these so much older remains. But, indeed, old things are not so beautiful in this dry climate and clear atmosphere as in moist England. . . . Whatever beauty there may be in a Roman ruin is the remnant of what was beautiful originally; whereas an English ruin is more beautiful often in its decay than even it was in its primal strength. If we ever build such noble structures as these Roman ones, we can have just as good ruins, after two thousand years, in the United States; but we never can have a Furness Abbey or a Kenilworth. The Corso, and perhaps some other streets, does not deserve all the vituperation which I have bestowed on the generality of Roman vias, though the Corso is narrow, not averaging more than nine paces, if so much, from sidewalk to sidewalk. But palace after palace stands along almost its whole extent,--not, however, that they make such architectural show on the street as palaces should. The enclosed courts were perhaps the only parts of these edifices which the founders cared to enrich architecturally. I think Linlithgow Palace, of which I saw the ruins during my last tour in Scotland, was built, by an architect who had studied these Roman palaces. There was never any idea of domestic comfort, or of what we include in the name of home, at all implicated in such structures, they being generally built by wifeless and childless churchmen for the display of pictures and statuary in galleries and long suites of rooms. I have not yet fairly begun the sight-seeing of Rome. I have been four or five times to St. Peter's, and always with pleasure, because there is such a delightful, summerlike warmth the moment we pass beneath the heavy, padded leather curtains that protect the entrances. It is almost impossible not to believe that this genial temperature is the result of furnace-heat, but, really, it is the warmth of last summer, which will be included within those massive walls, and in that vast immensity of space, till, six months hence, this winter's chill will just have made its way thither. It would be an excellent plan for a valetudinarian to lodge during the winter in St. Peter's, perhaps establishing his household in one of the papal tombs. I become, I think, more sensible of the size of St. Peter's, but am as yet far from being overwhelmed by it. It is not, as one expects, so big as all out of doors, nor is its dome so immense as that of the firmament. It looked queer, however, the other day, to see a little ragged boy, the very least of human things, going round and kneeling at shrine after shrine, and a group of children standing on tiptoe to reach the vase of holy water. . . . On coming out of St. Peter's at my last visit, I saw a great sheet of ice around the fountain on the right hand, and some little Romans awkwardly sliding on it. I, too, took a slide, just for the sake of doing what I never thought to do in Rome. This inclement weather, I should suppose, must make the whole city very miserable; for the native Romans, I am told, never keep any fire, except for culinary purposes, even in the severest winter. They flee from their cheerless houses into the open air, and bring their firesides along with them in the shape of small earthen vases, or pipkins, with a handle by which they carry them up and down the streets, and so warm at least their hands with the lighted charcoal. I have had glimpses through open doorways into interiors, and saw them as dismal as tombs. Wherever I pass my summers, let me spend my winters in a cold country. We went yesterday to the Pantheon. . . . When I first came to Rome, I felt embarrassed and unwilling to pass, with my heresy, between a devotee and his saint; for they often shoot their prayers at a shrine almost quite across the church. But there seems to be no violation of etiquette in so doing. A woman begged of us in the Pantheon, and accused my wife of impiety for not giving her an alms. . . . People of very decent appearance are often unexpectedly converted into beggars as you approach them; but in general they take a "No" at once. February 9th.--For three or four days it has been cloudy and rainy, which is the greater pity, as this should be the gayest and merriest part of the Carnival. I go out but little,--yesterday only as far as Pakenham's and Hooker's bank in the Piazza de' Spagna, where I read Galignani and the American papers. At last, after seeing in England more of my fellow-compatriots than ever before, I really am disjoined from my country. To-day I walked out along the Pincian Hill. . . . As the clouds still threatened rain, I deemed it my safest course to go to St. Peter's for refuge. Heavy and dull as the day was, the effect of this great world of a church was still brilliant in the interior, as if it had a sunshine of its own, as well as its own temperature; and, by and by, the sunshine of the outward world came through the windows, hundreds of feet aloft, and fell upon the beautiful inlaid pavement. . . . Against a pillar, on one side of the nave, is a mosaic copy of Raphael's Transfiguration, fitly framed within a great arch of gorgeous marble; and, no doubt, the indestructible mosaic has preserved it far more completely than the fading and darkening tints in which the artist painted it. At any rate, it seemed to me the one glorious picture that I have ever seen. The pillar nearest the great entrance, on the left of the nave, supports the monument to the Stuart family, where two winged figures, with inverted torches, stand on either side of a marble door, which is closed forever. It is an impressive monument, for you feel as if the last of the race had passed through that door. Emerging from the church, I saw a French sergeant drilling his men in the piazza. These French soldiers are prominent objects everywhere about the city, and make up more of its sight and sound than anything else that lives. They stroll about individually; they pace as sentinels in all the public places; and they march up and down in squads, companies, and battalions, always with a very great din of drum, fife, and trumpet; ten times the proportion of music that the same number of men would require elsewhere; and it reverberates with ten times the noise, between the high edifices of these lanes, that it could make in broader streets. Nevertheless, I have no quarrel with the French soldiers; they are fresh, healthy, smart, honest-looking young fellows enough, in blue coats and red trousers; . . . . and, at all events, they serve as an efficient police, making Rome as safe as London; whereas, without them, it would very likely be a den of banditti. On my way home I saw a few tokens of the Carnival, which is now in full progress; though, as it was only about one o'clock, its frolics had not commenced for the day. . . . I question whether the Romans themselves take any great interest in the Carnival. The balconies along the Corso were almost entirely taken by English and Americans, or other foreigners. As I approached the bridge of St. Angelo, I saw several persons engaged, as I thought, in fishing in the Tiber, with very strong lines; but on drawing nearer I found that they were trying to hook up the branches, and twigs, and other drift-wood, which the recent rains might have swept into the river. There was a little heap of what looked chiefly like willow twigs, the poor result of their labor. The hook was a knot of wood, with the lopped-off branches projecting in three or four prongs. The Tiber has always the hue of a mud-puddle; but now, after a heavy rain which has washed the clay into it, it looks like pease-soup. It is a broad and rapid stream, eddying along as if it were in haste to disgorge its impurities into the sea. On the left side, where the city mostly is situated, the buildings hang directly over the stream; on the other, where stand the Castle of St. Angelo and the Church of St. Peter, the town does not press so imminent upon the shore. The banks are clayey, and look as if the river had been digging them away for ages; but I believe its bed is higher than of yore. February 10th.--I went out to-day, and, going along the Via Felice and the Via delle Quattro Fontane, came unawares to the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, on the summit of the Esquiline Hill. I entered it, without in the least knowing what church it was, and found myself in a broad and noble nave, both very simple and very grand. There was a long row of Ionic columns of marble, twenty or thereabouts on each side, supporting a flat roof. There were vaulted side aisles, and, at the farther end, a bronze canopy over the high altar; and all along the length of the side aisles were shrines with pictures, sculpture, and burning lamps; the whole church, too, was lined with marble: the roof was gilded; and yet the general effect of severe and noble simplicity triumphed over all the ornament. I should have taken it for a Roman temple, retaining nearly its pristine aspect; but Murray tells us that it was founded A. D. 342 by Pope Liberius, on the spot precisely marked out by a miraculous fall of snow, in the month of August, and it has undergone many alterations since his time. But it is very fine, and gives the beholder the idea of vastness, which seems harder to attain than anything else. On the right hand, approaching the high altar, there is a chapel, separated from the rest of the church by an iron paling; and, being admitted into it with another party, I found it most elaborately magnificent. But one magnificence outshone another, and made itself the brightest conceivable for the moment. However, this chapel was as rich as the most precious marble could make it, in pillars and pilasters, and broad, polished slabs, covering the whole walls (except where there were splendid and glowing frescos; or where some monumental statuary or bas-relief, or mosaic picture filled up an arched niche). Its architecture was a dome, resting on four great arches; and in size it would alone have been a church. In the centre of the mosaic pavement there was a flight of steps, down which we went, and saw a group in marble, representing the nativity of Christ, which, judging by the unction with which our guide talked about it, must have been of peculiar sanctity. I hate to leave this chapel and church, without being able to say any one thing that may reflect a portion of their beauty, or of the feeling which they excite. Kneeling against many of the pillars there were persons in prayer, and I stepped softly, fearing lest my tread on the marble pavement should disturb them,--a needless precaution, however, for nobody seems to expect it, nor to be disturbed by the lack of it. The situation of the church, I should suppose, is the loftiest in Rome: it has a fountain at one end, and a column at the other; but I did not pay particular attention to either, nor to the exterior of the church itself. On my return, I turned aside from the Via delle Quattro Fontane into the Via Quirinalis, and was led by it into the Piazza di Monte Cavallo. The street through which I passed was broader, cleanlier, and statelier than most streets in Rome, and bordered by palaces; and the piazza had noble edifices around it, and a fountain, an obelisk, and two nude statues in the centre. The obelisk was, as the inscription indicated, a relic of Egypt; the basin of the fountain was an immense bowl of Oriental granite, into which poured a copious flood of water, discolored by the rain; the statues were colossal,--two beautiful young men, each holding a fiery steed. On the pedestal of one was the inscription, OPUS PHIDIAE; on the other, OPUS PRAXITELIS. What a city is this, when one may stumble, by mere chance,--at a street corner, as it were,--on the works of two such sculptors! I do not know the authority on which these statues (Castor and Pollux, I presume) are attributed to Phidias and Praxiteles; but they impressed me as noble and godlike, and I feel inclined to take them for what they purport to be. On one side of the piazza is the Pontifical Palace; but, not being aware of this at the time, I did not look particularly at the edifice. I came home by way of the Corso, which seemed a little enlivened by Carnival time; though, as it was not yet two o'clock, the fun had not begun for the day. The rain throws a dreary damper on the festivities. February 13th.--Day before yesterday we took J----- and R----- in a carriage, and went to see the Carnival, by driving up and down the Corso. It was as ugly a day, as respects weather, as has befallen us since we came to Rome,--cloudy, with an indecisive wet, which finally settled into a rain; and people say that such is generally the weather in Carnival time. There is very little to be said about the spectacle. Sunshine would have improved it, no doubt; but a person must have very broad sunshine within himself to be joyous on such shallow provocation. The street, at all events, would have looked rather brilliant under a sunny sky, the balconies being hung with bright-colored draperies, which were also flung out of some of the windows. . . . Soon I had my first experience of the Carnival in a handful of confetti, right slap in my face. . . . Many of the ladies wore loose white dominos, and some of the gentlemen had on defensive armor of blouses; and wire masks over the face were a protection for both sexes,--not a needless one, for I received a shot in my right eye which cost me many tears. It seems to be a point of courtesy (though often disregarded by Americans and English) not to fling confetti at ladies, or at non-combatants, or quiet bystanders; and the engagements with these missiles were generally between open carriages, manned with youths, who were provided with confetti for such encounters, and with bouquets for the ladies. We had one real enemy on the Corso; for our former friend Mrs. T------ was there, and as often as we passed and repassed her, she favored us with a handful of lime. Two or three times somebody ran by the carriage and puffed forth a shower of winged seeds through a tube into our faces and over our clothes; and, in the course of the afternoon, we were hit with perhaps half a dozen sugar-plums. Possibly we may not have received our fair share of these last salutes, for J----- had on a black mask, which made him look like an imp of Satan, and drew many volleys of confetti that we might otherwise have escaped. A good many bouquets were flung at our little R-----, and at us generally. . . . This was what is called masking-day, when it is the rule to wear masks in the Corso, but the great majority of people appeared without them. . . . Two fantastic figures, with enormous heads, set round with frizzly hair, came and grinned into our carriage, and J----- tore out a handful of hair (which proved to be sea-weed) from one of their heads, rather to the discomposure of the owner, who muttered his indignation in Italian. . . . On comparing notes with J----- and R-----, indeed with U---- too, I find that they all enjoyed the Carnival much more than I did. Only the young ought to write descriptions of such scenes. My cold criticism chills the life out of it. February 14th.--Friday, 12th, was a sunny day, the first that we had had for some time; and my wife and I went forth to see sights as well as to make some calls that had long been due. We went first to the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, which I have already mentioned, and, on our return, we went to the Piazza di Monte Cavallo, and saw those admirable ancient statues of Castor and Pollux, which seem to me sons of the morning, and full of life and strength. The atmosphere, in such a length of time, has covered the marble surface of these statues with a gray rust, that envelops both the men and horses as with a garment; besides which, there are strange discolorations, such as patches of white moss on the elbows, and reddish streaks down the sides; but the glory of form overcomes all these defects of color. It is pleasant to observe how familiar some little birds are with these colossal statues,--hopping about on their heads and over their huge fists, and very likely they have nests in their ears or among their hair. We called at the Barberini Palace, where William Story has established himself and family for the next seven years, or more, on the third piano, in apartments that afford a very fine outlook over Rome, and have the sun in them through most of the day. Mrs. S---- invited us to her fancy ball, but we declined. On the staircase ascending to their piano we saw the ancient Greek bas-relief of a lion, whence Canova is supposed to have taken the idea of his lions on the monument in St. Peter's. Afterwards we made two or three calls in the neighborhood of the Piazza de' Spagna, finding only Mr. Hamilton Fish and family, at the Hotel d'Europe, at home, and next visited the studio of Mr. C. G. Thompson, whom I knew in Boston. He has very greatly improved since those days, and, being always a man of delicate mind, and earnestly desiring excellence for its own sake, he has won himself the power of doing beautiful and elevated works. He is now meditating a series of pictures from Shakespeare's "Tempest," the sketches of one or two of which he showed us, likewise a copy of a small Madonna, by Raphael, wrought with a minute faithfulness which it makes one a better man to observe. . . . Mr. Thompson is a true artist, and whatever his pictures have of beauty comes from very far beneath the surface; and this, I suppose, is one weighty reason why he has but moderate success. I should like his pictures for the mere color, even if they represented nothing. His studio is in the Via Sistina; and at a little distance on the other side of the same street is William Story's, where we likewise went, and found him at work on a sitting statue of Cleopatra. William Story looks quite as vivid, in a graver way, as when I saw him last, a very young man. His perplexing variety of talents and accomplishments--he being a poet, a prose writer, a lawyer, a painter, a musician, and a sculptor--seems now to be concentrating itself into this latter vocation, and I cannot see why he should not achieve something very good. He has a beautiful statue, already finished, of Goethe's Margaret, pulling a flower to pieces to discover whether Faust loves her; a very type of virginity and simplicity. The statue of Cleopatra, now only fourteen days advanced in the clay, is as wide a step from the little maidenly Margaret as any artist could take; it is a grand subject, and he is conceiving it with depth and power, and working it out with adequate skill. He certainly is sensible of something deeper in his art than merely to make beautiful nudities and baptize them by classic names. By the by, he told me several queer stories of American visitors to his studio: one of them, after long inspecting Cleopatra, into which he has put all possible characteristics of her time and nation and of her own individuality, asked, "Have you baptized your statue yet?" as if the sculptor were waiting till his statue were finished before he chose the subject of it,--as, indeed, I should think many sculptors do. Another remarked of a statue of Hero, who is seeking Leander by torchlight, and in momentary expectation of finding his drowned body, "Is not the face a little sad?" Another time a whole party of Americans filed into his studio, and ranged themselves round his father's statue, and, after much silent examination, the spokesman of the party inquired, "Well, sir, what is this intended to represent?" William Story, in telling these little anecdotes, gave the Yankee twang to perfection. . . . The statue of his father, his first work, is very noble, as noble and fine a portrait-statue as I ever saw. In the outer room of his studio a stone-cutter, or whatever this kind of artisan is called, was at work, transferring the statue of Hero from the plaster-cast into marble; and already, though still in some respects a block of stone, there was a wonderful degree of expression in the face. It is not quite pleasant to think that the sculptor does not really do the whole labor on his statues, but that they are all but finished to his hand by merely mechanical people. It is generally only the finishing touches that are given by his own chisel. Yesterday, being another bright day, we went to the basilica of St. John Lateran, which is the basilica next in rank to St. Peter's, and has the precedence of it as regards certain sacred privileges. It stands on a most noble site, on the outskirts of the city, commanding a view of the Sabine and Alban hills, blue in the distance, and some of them hoary with sunny snow. The ruins of the Claudian aqueduct are close at hand. The church is connected with the Lateran palace and museum, so that the whole is one edifice; but the facade of the church distinguishes it, and is very lofty and grand,--more so, it seems to me, than that of St. Peter's. Under the portico is an old statue of Constantine, representing him as a very stout and sturdy personage. The inside of the church disappointed me, though no doubt I should have been wonderstruck had I seen it a month ago. We went into one of the chapels, which was very rich in colored marbles; and, going down a winding staircase, found ourselves among the tombs and sarcophagi of the Corsini family, and in presence of a marble Pieta very beautifully sculptured. On the other side of the church we looked into the Torlonia Chapel, very rich and rather profusely gilded, but, as it seemed to me, not tawdry, though the white newness of the marble is not perfectly agreeable after being accustomed to the milder tint which time bestows on sculpture. The tombs and statues appeared like shapes and images of new-fallen snow. The most interesting thing which we saw in this church (and, admitting its authenticity, there can scarcely be a more interesting one anywhere) was the table at which the Last Supper was eaten. It is preserved in a corridor, on one side of the tribune or chancel, and is shown by torchlight suspended upon the wall beneath a covering of glass. Only the top of the table is shown, presenting a broad, flat surface of wood, evidently very old, and showing traces of dry-rot in one or two places. There are nails in it, and the attendant said that it had formerly been covered with bronze. As well as I can remember, it may be five or six feet square, and I suppose would accommodate twelve persons, though not if they reclined in the Roman fashion, nor if they sat as they do in Leonardo da Vinci's picture. It would be very delightful to believe in this table. There are several other sacred relics preserved in the church; for instance, the staircase of Pilate's house up which Jesus went, and the porphyry slab on which the soldiers cast lots for his garments. These, however, we did not see. There are very glowing frescos on portions of the walls; but, there being much whitewash instead of incrusted marble, it has not the pleasant aspect which one's eye learns to demand in Roman churches. There is a good deal of statuary along the columns of the nave, and in the monuments of the side aisles. In reference to the interior splendor of Roman churches, I must say that I think it a pity that painted windows are exclusively a Gothic ornament; for the elaborate ornamentation of these interiors puts the ordinary daylight out of countenance, so that a window with only the white sunshine coming through it, or even with a glimpse of the blue Italian sky, looks like a portion left unfinished, and therefore a blotch in the rich wall. It is like the one spot in Aladdin's palace which he left for the king, his father-in-law, to finish, after his fairy architects had exhausted their magnificence on the rest; and the sun, like the king, fails in the effort. It has what is called a porta santa, which we saw walled up, in front of the church, one side of the main entrance. I know not what gives it its sanctity, but it appears to be opened by the pope on a year of jubilee, once every quarter of a century. After our return . . . . I took R----- along the Pincian Hill, and finally, after witnessing what of the Carnival could be seen in the Piazza del Popolo from that safe height, we went down into the Corso, and some little distance along it. Except for the sunshine, the scene was much the same as I have already described; perhaps fewer confetti and more bouquets. Some Americans and English are said to have been brought before the police authorities, and fined for throwing lime. It is remarkable that the jollity, such as it is, of the Carnival, does not extend an inch beyond the line of the Corso; there it flows along in a narrow stream, while in the nearest street we see nothing but the ordinary Roman gravity. February 15th.--Yesterday was a bright day, but I did not go out till the afternoon, when I took an hour's walk along the Pincian, stopping a good while to look at the old beggar who, for many years past, has occupied one of the platforms of the flight of steps leading from the Piazza de' Spagna to the Triniti de' Monti. Hillard commemorates him in his book. He is an unlovely object, moving about on his hands and knees, principally by aid of his hands, which are fortified with a sort of wooden shoes; while his poor, wasted lower shanks stick up in the air behind him, loosely vibrating as he progresses. He is gray, old, ragged, a pitiable sight, but seems very active in his own fashion, and bestirs himself on the approach of his visitors with the alacrity of a spider when a fly touches the remote circumference of his web. While I looked down at him he received alms from three persons, one of whom was a young woman of the lower orders; the other two were gentlemen, probably either English or American. I could not quite make out the principle on which he let some people pass without molestation, while he shuffled from one end of the platform to the other to intercept an occasional individual. He is not persistent in his demands, nor, indeed, is this a usual fault among Italian beggars. A shake of the head will stop him when wriggling towards you from a distance. I fancy he reaps a pretty fair harvest, and no doubt leads as contented and as interesting a life as most people, sitting there all day on those sunny steps, looking at the world, and making his profit out of it. It must be pretty much such an occupation as fishing, in its effect upon the hopes and apprehensions; and probably he suffers no more from the many refusals he meets with than the angler does, when he sees a fish smell at his bait and swim away. One success pays for a hundred disappointments, and the game is all the better for not being entirely in his own favor. Walking onward, I found the Pincian thronged with promenaders, as also with carriages, which drove round the verge of the gardens in an unbroken ring. To-day has been very rainy. I went out in the forenoon, and took a sitting for my bust in one of a suite of rooms formerly occupied by Canova. It was large, high, and dreary from the want of a carpet, furniture, or anything but clay and plaster. A sculptor's studio has not the picturesque charm of that of a painter, where there is color, warmth, and cheerfulness, and where the artist continually turns towards you the glow of some picture, which is resting against the wall. . . . I was asked not to look at the bust at the close of the sitting, and, of course, I obeyed; though I have a vague idea of a heavy-browed physiognomy, something like what I have seen in the glass, but looking strangely in that guise of clay. . . . It is a singular fascination that Rome exercises upon artists. There is clay elsewhere, and marble enough, and heads to model, and ideas may be made sensible objects at home as well as here. I think it is the peculiar mode of life that attracts, and its freedom from the inthralments of society, more than the artistic advantages which Rome offers; and, no doubt, though the artists care little about one another's works, yet they keep each other warm by the presence of so many of them. The Carnival still continues, though I hardly see how it can have withstood such a damper as this rainy day. There were several people-- three, I think--killed in the Corso on Saturday; some accounts say that they were run over by the horses in the race; others, that they were ridden down by the dragoons in clearing the course. After leaving Canova's studio, I stepped into the church of San Luigi de' Francesi, in the Via di Ripetta. It was built, I believe, by Catherine de' Medici, and is under the protection of the French government, and a most shamefully dirty place of worship, the beautiful marble columns looking dingy, for the want of loving and pious care. There are many tombs and monuments of French people, both of the past and present,-- artists, soldiers, priests, and others, who have died in Rome. It was so dusky within the church that I could hardly distinguish the pictures in the chapels and over the altar, nor did I know that there were any worth looking for. Nevertheless, there were frescos by Domenichino, and oil-paintings by Guido and others. I found it peculiarly touching to read the records, in Latin or French, of persons who had died in this foreign laud, though they were not my own country-people, and though I was even less akin to them than they to Italy. Still, there was a sort of relationship in the fact that neither they nor I belonged here. February 17th.--Yesterday morning was perfectly sunny, and we went out betimes to see churches; going first to the Capuchins', close by the Piazza Barberini. ["The Marble Faun" takes up this description of the church and of the dead monk, which we really saw, just as recounted, even to the sudden stream of blood which flowed from the nostrils, as we looked at him.-- ED.] We next went to the Trinita de' Monti, which stands at the head of the steps, leading, in several flights, from the Piazza de' Spagna. It is now connected with a convent of French nuns, and when we rang at a side door, one of the sisterhood answered the summons, and admitted us into the church. This, like that of the Capuchins', had a vaulted roof over the nave, and no side aisles, but rows of chapels instead. Unlike the Capuchins', which was filthy, and really disgraceful to behold, this church was most exquisitely neat, as women alone would have thought it worth while to keep it. It is not a very splendid church, not rich in gorgeous marbles, but pleasant to be in, if it were only for the sake of its godly purity. There was only one person in the nave; a young girl, who sat perfectly still, with her face towards the altar, as long as we stayed. Between the nave and the rest of the church there is a high iron railing, and on the other side of it were two kneeling figures in black, so motionless that I at first thought them statues; but they proved to be two nuns at their devotions; and others of the sisterhood came by and by and joined them. Nuns, at least these nuns, who are French, and probably ladies of refinement, having the education of young girls in charge, are far pleasanter objects to see and think about than monks; the odor of sanctity, in the latter, not being an agreeable fragrance. But these holy sisters, with their black crape and white muslin, looked really pure and unspotted from the world. On the iron railing above mentioned was the representation of a golden heart, pierced with arrows; for these are nuns of the Sacred Heart. In the various chapels there are several paintings in fresco, some by Daniele da Volterra; and one of them, the "Descent from the Cross," has been pronounced the third greatest picture in the world. I never should have had the slightest suspicion that it was a great picture at all, so worn and faded it looks, and so hard, so difficult to be seen, and so undelightful when one does see it. From the Trinita we went to the Santa Maria del Popolo, a church built on a spot where Nero is said to have been buried, and which was afterwards made horrible by devilish phantoms. It now being past twelve, and all the churches closing from twelve till two, we had not time to pay much attention to the frescos, oil-pictures, and statues, by Raphael and other famous men, which are to be seen here. I remember dimly the magnificent chapel of the Chigi family, and little else, for we stayed but a short time; and went next to the sculptor's studio, where I had another sitting for my bust. After I had been moulded for about an hour, we turned homeward; but my wife concluded to hire a balcony for this last afternoon and evening of the Carnival, and she took possession of it, while I went home to send to her Miss S------ and the two elder children. For my part, I took R-----, and walked, by way of the Pincian, to the Piazza del Popolo, and thence along the Corso, where, by this time, the warfare of bouquets and confetti raged pretty fiercely. The sky being blue and the sun bright, the scene looked much gayer and brisker than I had before found it; and I can conceive of its being rather agreeable than otherwise, up to the age of twenty. We got several volleys of confetti. R----- received a bouquet and a sugar-plum, and I a resounding hit from something that looked more like a cabbage than a flower. Little as I have enjoyed the Carnival, I think I could make quite a brilliant sketch of it, without very widely departing from truth. February 19th.--Day before yesterday, pretty early, we went to St. Peter's, expecting to see the pope cast ashes on the heads of the cardinals, it being Ash-Wednesday. On arriving, however, we found no more than the usual number of visitants and devotional people scattered through the broad interior of St. Peter's; and thence concluded that the ceremonies were to be performed in the Sistine Chapel. Accordingly, we went out of the cathedral, through the door in the left transept, and passed round the exterior, and through the vast courts of the Vatican, seeking for the chapel. We had blundered into the carriage-entrance of the palace; there is an entrance from some point near the front of the church, but this we did not find. The papal guards, in the strangest antique and antic costume that was ever seen,--a party-colored dress, striped with blue, red, and yellow, white and black, with a doublet and ruff, and trunk-breeches, and armed with halberds,--were on duty at the gateways, but suffered us to pass without question. Finally, we reached a large court, where some cardinals' red equipages and other carriages were drawn up, but were still at a loss as to the whereabouts of the chapel. At last an attendant kindly showed us the proper door, and led us up flights of stairs, along passages and galleries, and through halls, till at last we came to a spacious and lofty apartment adorned with frescos; this was the Sala Regia, and the antechamber to the Sistine Chapel. The attendant, meanwhile, had informed us that my wife could not be admitted to the chapel in her bonnet, and that I myself could not enter at all, for lack of a dress-coat; so my wife took off her bonnet, and, covering her head with her black lace veil, was readily let in, while I remained in the Sala Regia, with several other gentlemen, who found themselves in the same predicament as I was. There was a wonderful variety of costume to be seen and studied among the persons around me, comprising garbs that have been elsewhere laid aside for at least three centuries,--the broad, plaited, double ruff, and black velvet cloak, doublet, trunk-breeches, and sword of Queen Elizabeth's time,--the papal guard, in their striped and party-colored dress as before described, looking not a little like harlequins; other soldiers in helmets and jackboots; French officers of various uniform; monks and priests; attendants in old-fashioned and gorgeous livery; gentlemen, some in black dress-coats and pantaloons, others in wide-awake hats and tweed overcoats; and a few ladies in the prescribed costume of black; so that, in any other country, the scene might have been taken for a fancy ball. By and by, the cardinals began to arrive, and added their splendid purple robes and red hats to make the picture still more brilliant. They were old men, one or two very aged and infirm, and generally men of bulk and substance, with heavy faces, fleshy about the chin. Their red hats, trimmed with gold-lace, are a beautiful piece of finery, and are identical in shape with the black, loosely cocked beavers worn by the Catholic ecclesiastics generally. Wolsey's hat, which I saw at the Manchester Exhibition, might have been made on the same block, but apparently was never cocked, as the fashion now is. The attendants changed the upper portions of their master's attire, and put a little cap of scarlet cloth on each of their heads, after which the cardinals, one by one, or two by two, as they happened to arrive, went into the chapel, with a page behind each holding up his purple train. In the mean while, within the chapel, we heard singing and chanting; and whenever the voluminous curtains that hung before the entrance were slightly drawn apart, we outsiders glanced through, but could see only a mass of people, and beyond them still another chapel, divided from the hither one by a screen. When almost everybody had gone in, there was a stir among the guards and attendants, and a door opened, apparently communicating with the inner apartments of the Vatican. Through this door came, not the pope, as I had partly expected, but a bulky old lady in black, with a red face, who bowed towards the spectators with an aspect of dignified complaisance as she passed towards the entrance of the chapel. I took off my hat, unlike certain English gentlemen who stood nearer, and found that I had not done amiss, for it was the Queen of Spain. There was nothing else to be seen; so I went back through the antechambers (which are noble halls, richly frescoed on the walls and ceilings), endeavoring to get out through the same passages that had let me in. I had already tried to descend what I now supposed to be the Scala Santa, but had been turned back by a sentinel. After wandering to and fro a good while, I at last found myself in a long, long gallery, on each side of which were innumerable inscriptions, in Greek and Latin, on slabs of marble, built into the walls; and classic altars and tablets were ranged along, from end to end. At the extremity was a closed iron grating, from which I was retreating; but a French gentleman accosted me, with the information that the custode would admit me, if I chose, and would accompany me through the sculpture department of the Vatican. I acceded, and thus took my first view of those innumerable art-treasures, passing from one object to another, at an easy pace, pausing hardly a moment anywhere, and dismissing even the Apollo, and the Laocoon, and the Torso of Hercules, in the space of half a dozen breaths. I was well enough content to do so, in order to get a general idea of the contents of the galleries, before settling down upon individual objects. Most of the world-famous sculptures presented themselves to my eye with a kind of familiarity, through the copies and casts which I had seen; but I found the originals more different than I anticipated. The Apollo, for instance, has a face which I have never seen in any cast or copy. I must confess, however, taking such transient glimpses as I did, I was more impressed with the extent of the Vatican, and the beautiful order in which it is kept, and its great sunny, open courts, with fountains, grass, and shrubs, and the views of Rome and the Campagna from its windows,--more impressed with these, and with certain vastly capacious vases, and two seat sarcophagi,--than with the statuary. Thus I went round the whole, and was dismissed through the grated barrier into the gallery of inscriptions again; and after a little more wandering, I made my way out of the palace. . . . Yesterday I went out betimes, and strayed through some portion of ancient Rome, to the Column of Trajan, to the Forum, thence along the Appian Way; after which I lost myself among the intricacies of the streets, and finally came out at the bridge of St. Angelo. The first observation which a stranger is led to make, in the neighborhood of Roman ruins, is that the inhabitants seem to be strangely addicted to the washing of clothes; for all the precincts of Trajan's Forum, and of the Roman Forum, and wherever else an iron railing affords opportunity to hang them, were whitened with sheets, and other linen and cotton, drying in the sun. It must be that washerwomen burrow among the old temples. The second observation is not quite so favorable to the cleanly character of the modern Romans; indeed, it is so very unfavorable, that I hardly know how to express it. But the fact is, that, through the Forum, . . . . and anywhere out of the commonest foot-track and roadway, you must look well to your steps. . . . If you tread beneath the triumphal arch of Titus or Constantine, you had better look downward than upward, whatever be the merit of the sculptures aloft. . . . After a while the visitant finds himself getting accustomed to this horrible state of things; and the associations of moral sublimity and beauty seem to throw a veil over the physical meannesses to which I allude. Perhaps there is something in the mind of the people of these countries that enables them quite to dissever small ugliness from great sublimity and beauty. They spit upon the glorious pavement of St. Peter's, and wherever else they like; they place paltry-looking wooden confessionals beneath its sublime arches, and ornament them with cheap little colored prints of the crucifixion; they hang tin hearts and other tinsel and trumpery at the gorgeous shrines of the saints, in chapels that are incrusted with gems, or marbles almost as precious; they put pasteboard statues of saints beneath the dome of the Pantheon; in short, they let the sublime and the ridiculous come close together, and are not in the least troubled by the proximity. It must be that their sense of the beautiful is stronger than in the Anglo-Saxon mind, and that it observes only what is fit to gratify it. To-day, which was bright and cool, my wife and I set forth immediately after breakfast, in search of the Baths of Diocletian, and the church of Santa Maria degl' Angeli. We went too far along the Via di Porta Pia, and after passing by two or three convents, and their high garden walls, and the villa Bonaparte on one side, and the villa Torlonia on the other, at last issued through the city gate. Before us, far away, were the Alban hills, the loftiest of which was absolutely silvered with snow and sunshine, and set in the bluest and brightest of skies. We now retraced our steps to the Fountain of the Termini, where is a ponderous heap of stone, representing Moses striking the rock; a colossal figure, not without a certain enormous might and dignity, though rather too evidently looking his awfullest. This statue was the death of its sculptor, whose heart was broken on account of the ridicule it excited. There are many more absurd aquatic devices in Rome, however, and few better. We turned into the Piazza de' Termini, the entrance of which is at this fountain; and after some inquiry of the French soldiers, a numerous detachment of whom appear to be quartered in the vicinity, we found our way to the portal of Santa Maria degl' Angeli. The exterior of this church has no pretensions to beauty or majesty, or, indeed, to architectural merit of any kind, or to any architecture whatever; for it looks like a confused pile of ruined brickwork, with a facade resembling half the inner curve of a large oven. No one would imagine that there was a church under that enormous heap of ancient rubbish. But the door admits you into a circular vestibule, once an apartment of Diocletian's Baths, but now a portion of the nave of the church, and surrounded with monumental busts; and thence you pass into what was the central hall; now, with little change, except of detail and ornament, transformed into the body of the church. This space is so lofty, broad, and airy, that the soul forthwith swells out and magnifies itself, for the sake of filling it. It was Michael Angelo who contrived this miracle; and I feel even more grateful to him for rescuing such a noble interior from destruction, than if he had originally built it himself. In the ceiling above, you see the metal fixtures whereon the old Romans hung their lamps; and there are eight gigantic pillars of Egyptian granite, standing as they stood of yore. There is a grand simplicity about the church, more satisfactory than elaborate ornament; but the present pope has paved and adorned one of the large chapels of the transept in very beautiful style, and the pavement of the central part is likewise laid in rich marbles. In the choir there are several pictures, one of which was veiled, as celebrated pictures frequently are in churches. A person, who seemed to be at his devotions, withdrew the veil for us, and we saw a Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, by Domenichino, originally, I believe, painted in fresco in St. Peter's, but since transferred to canvas, and removed hither. Its place at St. Peter's is supplied by a mosaic copy. I was a good deal impressed by this picture,--the dying saint, amid the sorrow of those who loved him, and the fury of his enemies, looking upward, where a company of angels, and Jesus with them, are waiting to welcome him and crown him; and I felt what an influence pictures might have upon the devotional part of our nature. The nailmarks in the hands and feet of Jesus, ineffaceable, even after he had passed into bliss and glory, touched my heart with a sense of his love for us. I think this really a great picture. We walked round the church, looking at other paintings and frescos, but saw no others that greatly interested us. In the vestibule there are monuments to Carlo Maratti and Salvator Rosa, and there is a statue of St. Bruno, by Houdon, which is pronounced to be very fine. I thought it good, but scarcely worthy of vast admiration. Houdon was the sculptor of the first statue of Washington, and of the bust, whence, I suppose, all subsequent statues have been, and will be, mainly modelled. After emerging from the church, I looked back with wonder at the stack of shapeless old brickwork that hid the splendid interior. I must go there again, and breathe freely in that noble space. February 20th.--This morning, after breakfast, I walked across the city, making a pretty straight course to the Pantheon, and thence to the bridge of St. Angelo, and to St. Peter's. It had been my purpose to go to the Fontana Paolina; but, finding that the distance was too great, and being weighed down with a Roman lassitude, I concluded to go into St. Peter's. Here I looked at Michael Angelo's Pieta, a representation of the dead Christ, in his mother's lap. Then I strolled round the great church, and find that it continues to grow upon me both in magnitude and beauty, by comparison with the many interiors of sacred edifices which I have lately seen. At times, a single, casual, momentary glimpse of its magnificence gleams upon my soul, as it were, when I happen to glance at arch opening beyond arch, and I am surprised into admiration. I have experienced that a landscape and the sky unfold the deepest beauty in a similar way; not when they are gazed at of set purpose, but when the spectator looks suddenly through a vista, among a crowd of other thoughts. Passing near the confessional for foreigners to-day, I saw a Spaniard, who had just come out of the one devoted to his native tongue, taking leave of his confessor, with an affectionate reverence, which--as well as the benign dignity of the good father--it was good to behold. . . . I returned home early, in order to go with my wife to the Barberini Palace at two o'clock. We entered through the gateway, through the Via delle Quattro Fontane, passing one or two sentinels; for there is apparently a regiment of dragoons quartered on the ground-floor of the palace; and I stumbled upon a room containing their saddles, the other day, when seeking for Mr. Story's staircase. The entrance to the picture-gallery is by a door on the right hand, affording us a sight of a beautiful spiral staircase, which goes circling upward from the very basement to the very summit of the palace, with a perfectly easy ascent, yet confining its sweep within a moderate compass. We looked up through the interior of the spiral, as through a tube, from the bottom to the top. The pictures are contained in three contiguous rooms of the lower piano, and are few in number, comprising barely half a dozen which I should care to see again, though doubtless all have value in their way. One that attracted our attention was a picture of "Christ disputing with the Doctors," by Albert Duerer, in which was represented the ugliest, most evil-minded, stubborn, pragmatical, and contentious old Jew that ever lived under the law of Moses; and he and the child Jesus were arguing, not only with their tongues, but making hieroglyphics, as it were, by the motion of their hands and fingers. It is a very queer, as well as a very remarkable picture. But we passed hastily by this, and almost all others, being eager to see the two which chiefly make the collection famous,--Raphael's Fornarina, and Guido's portrait of Beatrice Cenci. These were found in the last of the three rooms, and as regards Beatrice Cenci, I might as well not try to say anything; for its spell is indefinable, and the painter has wrought it in a way more like magic than anything else. . . . It is the most profoundly wrought picture in the world; no artist did it, nor could do it, again. Guido may have held the brush, but he painted "better than he knew." I wish, however, it were possible for some spectator, of deep sensibility, to see the picture without knowing anything of its subject or history; for, no doubt, we bring all our knowledge of the Cenci tragedy to the interpretation of it. Close beside Beatrice Cenci hangs the Fornarina. . . . While we were looking at these works Miss M------ unexpectedly joined us, and we went, all three together, to the Rospigliosi Palace, in the Piazza di Monte Cavallo. A porter, in cocked hat, and with a staff of office, admitted us into a spacious court before the palace, and directed us to a garden on one side, raised as much as twenty feet above the level on which we stood. The gardener opened the gate for us, and we ascended a beautiful stone staircase, with a carved balustrade, bearing many marks of time and weather. Reaching the garden-level, we found it laid out in walks, bordered with box and ornamental shrubbery, amid which were lemon-trees, and one large old exotic from some distant clime. In the centre of the garden, surrounded by a stone balustrade, like that of the staircase, was a fish-pond, into which several jets of water were continually spouting; and on pedestals, that made part of the balusters, stood eight marble statues of Apollo, Cupid, nymphs, and other such sunny and beautiful people of classic mythology. There had been many more of these statues, but the rest had disappeared, and those which remained had suffered grievous damage, here to a nose, there to a hand or foot, and often a fracture of the body, very imperfectly mended. There was a pleasant sunshine in the garden, and a springlike, or rather a genial, autumnal atmosphere, though elsewhere it was a day of poisonous Roman chill. At the end of the garden, which was of no great extent, was an edifice, bordering on the piazza, called the Casino, which, I presume, means a garden-house. The front is richly ornamented with bas-reliefs, and statues in niches; as if it were a place for pleasure and enjoyment, and therefore ought to be beautiful. As we approached it, the door swung open, and we went into a large room on the ground-floor, and, looking up to the ceiling, beheld Guido's Aurora. The picture is as fresh and brilliant as if he had painted it with the morning sunshine which it represents. It could not be more lustrous in its lines, if he had given it the last touch an hour ago. Three or four artists were copying it at that instant, and positively their colors did not look brighter, though a great deal newer than his. The alacrity and movement, briskness and morning stir and glow, of the picture are wonderful. It seems impossible to catch its glory in a copy. Several artists, as I said, were making the attempt, and we saw two other attempted copies leaning against the wall, but it was easy to detect failure in just essential points. My memory, I believe, will be somewhat enlivened by this picture hereafter: not that I remember it very distinctly even now; but bright things leave a sheen and glimmer in the mind, like Christian's tremulous glimpse of the Celestial City. In two other rooms of the Casino we saw pictures by Domenichino, Rubens, and other famous painters, which I do not mean to speak of, because I cared really little or nothing about them. Returning into the garden, the sunny warmth of which was most grateful after the chill air and cold pavement of the Casino, we walked round the laguna, examining the statues, and looking down at some little fishes that swarmed at the stone margin of the pool. There were two infants of the Rospigliosi family: one, a young child playing with a maid and head-servant; another, the very chubbiest and rosiest boy in the world, sleeping on its nurse's bosom. The nurse was a comely woman enough, dressed in bright colors, which fitly set off the deep lines of her Italian face. An old painter very likely would have beautified and refined the pair into a Madonna, with the child Jesus; for an artist need not go far in Italy to find a picture ready composed and tinted, needing little more than to be literally copied. Miss M------ had gone away before us; but my wife and I, after leaving the Palazzo Rospigliosi, and on our way hone, went into the Church of St. Andrea, which belongs to a convent of Jesuits. I have long ago exhausted all my capacity of admiration for splendid interiors of churches, but methinks this little, little temple (it is not more than fifty or sixty feet across) has a more perfect and gem-like beauty than any other. Its shape is oval, with an oval dome, and, above that, another little dome, both of which are magnificently frescoed. Around the base of the larger dome is wreathed a flight of angels, and the smaller and upper one is encircled by a garland of cherubs,--cherub and angel all of pure white marble. The oval centre of the church is walled round with precious and lustrous marble of a red-veined variety interspersed with columns and pilasters of white; and there are arches opening through this rich wall, forming chapels, which the architect seems to have striven hard to make even more gorgeous than the main body of the church. They contain beautiful pictures, not dark and faded, but glowing, as if just from the painter's hands; and the shrines are adorned with whatever is most rare, and in one of them was the great carbuncle; at any rate, a bright, fiery gem as big as a turkey's egg. The pavement of the church was one star of various-colored marble, and in the centre was a mosaic, covering, I believe, the tomb of the founder. I have not seen, nor expect to see, anything else so entirely and satisfactorily finished as this small oval church; and I only wish I could pack it in a large box, and send it home. I must not forget that, on our way from the Barberini Palace, we stopped an instant to look at the house, at the corner of the street of the four fountains, where Milton was a guest while in Rome. He seems quite a man of our own day, seen so nearly at the hither extremity of the vista through which we look back, from the epoch of railways to that of the oldest Egyptian obelisk. The house (it was then occupied by the Cardinal Barberini) looks as if it might have been built within the present century; for mediaeval houses in Rome do not assume the aspect of antiquity; perhaps because the Italian style of architecture, or something similar, is the one more generally in vogue in most cities. February 21st.--This morning I took my way through the Porta del Popolo, intending to spend the forenoon in the Campagna; but, getting weary of the straight, uninteresting street that runs out of the gate, I turned aside from it, and soon found myself on the shores of the Tiber. It looked, as usual, like a saturated solution of yellow mud, and eddied hastily along between deep banks of clay, and over a clay bed, in which doubtless are hidden many a richer treasure than we now possess. The French once proposed to draw off the river, for the purpose of recovering all the sunken statues and relics; but the Romans made strenuous objection, on account of the increased virulence of malaria which would probably result. I saw a man on the immediate shore of the river, fifty feet or so beneath the bank on which I stood, sitting patiently, with an angling rod; and I waited to see what he might catch. Two other persons likewise sat down to watch him; but he caught nothing so long as I stayed, and at last seemed to give it up. The banks and vicinity of the river are very bare and uninviting, as I then saw them; no shade, no verdure,--a rough, neglected aspect, and a peculiar shabbiness about the few houses that were visible. Farther down the stream the dome of St. Peter's showed itself on the other side, seeming to stand on the outskirts of the city. I walked along the banks, with some expectation of finding a ferry, by which I might cross the river; but my course was soon interrupted by the wall, and I turned up a lane that led me straight back again to the Porta del Popolo. I stopped a moment, however, to see some young men pitching quoits, which they appeared to do with a good deal of skill. I went along the Via di Ripetta, and through other streets, stepping into two or three churches, one of which was the Pantheon. . . . There are, I think, seven deep, pillared recesses around the circumference of it, each of which becomes a sufficiently capacious chapel; and alternately with these chapels there is a marble structure, like the architecture of a doorway, beneath which is the shrine of a saint; so that the whole circle of the Pantheon is filled up with the seven chapels and seven shrines. A number of persons were sitting or kneeling around; others came in while I was there, dipping their fingers in the holy water, and bending the knee, as they passed the shrines and chapels, until they reached the one which, apparently, they had selected as the particular altar for their devotions. Everybody seemed so devout, and in a frame of mind so suited to the day and place, that it really made me feel a little awkward not to be able to kneel down along with them. Unlike the worshippers in our own churches, each individual here seems to do his own individual acts of devotion, and I cannot but think it better so than to make an effort for united prayer as we do. It is my opinion that a great deal of devout and reverential feeling is kept alive in people's hearts by the Catholic mode of worship. Soon leaving the Pantheon, a few minutes' walk towards the Corso brought me to the Church of St. Ignazio, which belongs to the College of the Jesuits. It is spacious and of beautiful architecture, but not strikingly distinguished, in the latter particular, from many others; a wide and lofty nave, supported upon marble columns, between which arches open into the side aisles, and at the junction of the nave and transept a dome, resting on four great arches. The church seemed to be purposely somewhat darkened, so that I could not well see the details of the ornamentation, except the frescos on the ceiling of the nave, which were very brilliant, and done in so effectual a style, that I really could not satisfy myself that some of the figures did not actually protrude from the ceiling,--in short, that they were not colored bas-reliefs, instead of frescos. No words can express the beautiful effect, in an upholstery point of view, of this kind of decoration. Here, as at the Pantheon, there were many persons sitting silent, kneeling, or passing from shrine to shrine. I reached home at about twelve, and, at one, set out again, with my wife, towards St. Peter's, where we meant to stay till after vespers. We walked across the city, and through the Piazza de Navona, where we stopped to look at one of Bernini's absurd fountains, of which the water makes but the smallest part,--a little squirt or two amid a prodigious fuss of gods and monsters. Thence we passed by the poor, battered-down torso of Pasquin, and came, by devious ways, to the bridge of St. Angelo; the streets bearing pretty much their weekday aspect, many of the shops open, the market-stalls doing their usual business, and the people brisk and gay, though not indecorously so. I suppose there was hardly a man or woman who had not heard mass, confessed, and said their prayers; a thing which--the prayers, I mean--it would be absurd to predicate of London, New York, or any Protestant city. In however adulterated a guise, the Catholics do get a draught of devotion to slake the thirst of their souls, and methinks it must needs do them good, even if not quite so pure as if it came from better cisterns, or from the original fountain-head. Arriving at St. Peter's shortly after two, we walked round the whole church, looking at all the pictures and most of the monuments, . . . . and paused longest before Guido's "Archangel Michael overcoming Lucifer." This is surely one of the most beautiful things in the world, one of the human conceptions that are imbued most deeply with the celestial. . . . We then sat down in one of the aisles and awaited the beginning of vespers, which we supposed would take place at half past three. Four o'clock came, however, and no vespers; and as our dinner-hour is five, . . . . we at last cane away without hearing the vesper hymn. February 23d.--Yesterday, at noon, we set out for the Capitol, and after going up the acclivity (not from the Forum, but from the opposite direction), stopped to look at the statues of Castor and Pollux, which, with other sculptures, look down the ascent. Castor and his brother seem to me to have heads disproportionately large, and are not so striking, in any respect, as such great images ought to be. But we heartily admired the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, . . . . and looked at a fountain, principally composed, I think, of figures representing the Nile and the Tiber, who loll upon their elbows and preside over the gushing water; and between them, against the facade of the Senator's Palace, there is a statue of Minerva, with a petticoat of red porphyry. Having taken note of these objects, we went to the museum, in an edifice on our left, entering the piazza, and here, in the vestibule, we found various old statues and relics. Ascending the stairs, we passed through a long gallery, and, turning to our left, examined somewhat more carefully a suite of rooms running parallel with it. The first of these contained busts of the Caesars and their kindred, from the epoch of the mightiest Julius downward; eighty-three, I believe, in all. I had seen a bust of Julius Caesar in the British Museum, and was surprised at its thin and withered aspect; but this head is of a very ugly old man indeed,--wrinkled, puckered, shrunken, lacking breadth and substance; careworn, grim, as if he had fought hard with life, and had suffered in the conflict; a man of schemes, and of eager effort to bring his schemes to pass. His profile is by no means good, advancing from the top of his forehead to the tip of his nose, and retreating, at about the same angle, from the latter point to the bottom of his chin, which seems to be thrust forcibly down into his meagre neck,--not that he pokes his head forward, however, for it is particularly erect. The head of Augustus is very beautiful, and appears to be that of a meditative, philosophic man, saddened with the sense that it is not very much worth while to be at the summit of human greatness after all. It is a sorrowful thing to trace the decay of civilization through this series of busts, and to observe how the artistic skill, so requisite at first, went on declining through the dreary dynasty of the Caesars, till at length the master of the world could not get his head carved in better style than the figure-head of a ship. In the next room there were better statues than we had yet seen; but in the last room of the range we found the "Dying Gladiator," of which I had already caught a glimpse in passing by the open door. It had made all the other treasures of the gallery tedious in my eagerness to come to that. I do not believe that so much pathos is wrought into any other block of stone. Like all works of the highest excellence, however, it makes great demands upon the spectator. He must make a generous gift of his sympathies to the sculptor, and help out his skill with all his heart, or else he will see little more than a skilfully wrought surface. It suggests far more than it shows. I looked long at this statue, and little at anything else, though, among other famous works, a statue of Antinous was in the same room. I was glad when we left the museum, which, by the by, was piercingly chill, as if the multitude of statues radiated cold out of their marble substance. We might have gone to see the pictures in the Palace of the Conservatori, and S-----, whose receptivity is unlimited and forever fresh, would willingly have done so; but I objected, and we went towards the Forum. I had noticed, two or three times, an inscription over a mean-looking door in this neighborhood, stating that here was the entrance to the prison of the holy apostles Peter and Paul; and we soon found the spot, not far from the Forum, with two wretched frescos of the apostles above the inscription. We knocked at the door without effect; but a lame beggar, who sat at another door of the same house (which looked exceedingly like a liquor-shop), desired us to follow him, and began to ascend to the Capitol, by the causeway leading from the Forum. A little way upward we met a woman, to whom the beggar delivered us over, and she led us into a church or chapel door, and pointed to a long flight of steps, which descended through twilight into utter darkness. She called to somebody in the lower regions, and then went away, leaving us to get down this mysterious staircase by ourselves. Down we went, farther and farther from the daylight, and found ourselves, anon, in a dark chamber or cell, the shape or boundaries of which we could not make out, though it seemed to be of stone, and black and dungeon-like. Indistinctly, and from a still farther depth in the earth, we heard voices,--one voice, at least,--apparently not addressing ourselves, but some other persons; and soon, directly beneath our feet, we saw a glimmering of light through a round, iron-grated hole in the bottom of the dungeon. In a few moments the glimmer and the voice came up through this hole, and the light disappeared, and it and the voice came glimmering and babbling up a flight of stone stairs, of which we had not hitherto been aware. It was the custode, with a party of visitors, to whom he had been showing St. Peter's dungeon. Each visitor was provided with a wax taper, and the custode gave one to each of us, bidding us wait a moment while he conducted the other party to the upper air. During his absence we examined the cell, as well as our dim lights would permit, and soon found an indentation in the wall, with an iron grate put over it for protection, and an inscription above informing us that the Apostle Peter had here left the imprint of his visage; and, in truth, there is a profile there,--forehead, nose, mouth, and chin,--plainly to be seen, an intaglio in the solid rock. We touched it with the tips of our fingers, as well as saw it with our eyes. The custode soon returned, and led us down the darksome steps, chattering in Italian all the time. It is not a very long descent to the lower cell, the roof of which is so low that I believe I could have reached it with my hand. We were now in the deepest and ugliest part of the old Mamertine Prison, one of the few remains of the kingly period of Rome, and which served the Romans as a state-prison for hundreds of years before the Christian era. A multitude of criminals or innocent persons, no doubt, have languished here in misery, and perished in darkness. Here Jugurtha starved; here Catiline's adherents were strangled; and, methinks, there cannot be in the world another such an evil den, so haunted with black memories and indistinct surmises of guilt and suffering. In old Rome, I suppose, the citizens never spoke of this dungeon above their breath. It looks just as bad as it is; round, only seven paces across, yet so obscure that our tapers could not illuminate it from side to side,-- the stones of which it is constructed being as black as midnight. The custode showed us a stone post, at the side of the cell, with the hole in the top of it, into which, he said, St. Peter's chain had been fastened; and he uncovered a spring of water, in the middle of the stone floor, which he told us had miraculously gushed up to enable the saint to baptize his jailer. The miracle was perhaps the more easily wrought, inasmuch as Jugurtha had found the floor of the dungeon oozy with wet. However, it is best to be as simple and childlike as we can in these matters; and whether St. Peter stamped his visage into the stone, and wrought this other miracle or no, and whether or no he ever was in the prison at all, still the belief of a thousand years and more gives a sort of reality and substance to such traditions. The custode dipped an iron ladle into the miraculous water, and we each of us drank a sip; and, what is very remarkable, to me it seemed hard water and almost brackish, while many persons think it the sweetest in Rome. I suspect that St. Peter still dabbles in this water, and tempers its qualities according to the faith of those who drink it. The staircase descending into the lower dungeon is comparatively modern, there having been no entrance of old, except through the small circular opening in the roof. In the upper cell the custode showed us an ancient flight of stairs, now built into the wall, which used to lead from the Capitol. The whole precincts are now consecrated, and I believe the upper portion, perhaps both upper and lower, are a shrine or a chapel. I now left S------ in the Forum, and went to call on Mr. J. P. K------ at the Hotel d'Europe. I found him just returned from a drive,--a gentleman of about sixty, or more, with gray hair, a pleasant, intellectual face, and penetrating, but not unkindly eyes. He moved infirmly, being on the recovery from an illness. We went up to his saloon together, and had a talk,--or, rather, he had it nearly all to himself,--and particularly sensible talk, too, and full of the results of learning and experience. In the first place, he settled the whole Kansas difficulty; then he made havoc of St. Peter, who came very shabbily out of his hands, as regarded his early character in the Church, and his claims to the position he now holds in it. Mr. K------ also gave a curious illustration, from something that happened to himself, of the little dependence that can be placed on tradition purporting to be ancient, and I capped his story by telling him how the site of my town-pump, so plainly indicated in the sketch itself, has already been mistaken in the city council and in the public prints. February 24th.--Yesterday I crossed the Ponte Sisto, and took a short ramble on the other side of the river; and it rather surprised me to discover, pretty nearly opposite the Capitoline Hill, a quay, at which several schooners and barks, of two or three hundred tons' burden, were moored. There was also a steamer, armed with a large gun and two brass swivels on her forecastle, and I know not what artillery besides. Probably she may have been a revenue-cutter. Returning I crossed the river by way of the island of St. Bartholomew over two bridges. The island is densely covered with buildings, and is a separate small fragment of the city. It was a tradition of the ancient Romans that it was formed by the aggregation of soil and rubbish brought down by the river, and accumulating round the nucleus of some sunken baskets. On reaching the hither side of the river, I soon struck upon the ruins of the theatre of Marcellus, which are very picturesque, and the more so from being closely linked in, indeed, identified with the shops, habitations, and swarming life of modern Rome. The most striking portion was a circular edifice, which seemed to have been composed of a row of Ionic columns standing upon a lower row of Doric, many of the antique pillars being yet perfect; but the intervening arches built up with brickwork, and the whole once magnificent structure now tenanted by poor and squalid people, as thick as mites within the round of an old cheese. From this point I cannot very clearly trace out my course; but I passed, I think, between the Circus Maximus and the Palace of the Caesars, and near the Baths of Caracalla, and went into the cloisters of the Church of San Gregorio. All along I saw massive ruins, not particularly picturesque or beautiful, but huge, mountainous piles, chiefly of brickwork, somewhat tweed-grown here and there, but oftener bare and dreary. . . . All the successive ages since Rome began to decay have done their best to ruin the very ruins by taking away the marble and the hewn stone for their own structures, and leaving only the inner filling up of brickwork, which the ancient architects never designed to be seen. The consequence of all this is, that, except for the lofty and poetical associations connected with it, and except, too, for the immense difference in magnitude, a Roman ruin may be in itself not more picturesque than I have seen an old cellar, with a shattered brick chimney half crumbling down into it, in New England. By this time I knew not whither I was going, and turned aside from a broad, paved road (it was the Appian Way) into the Via Latina, which I supposed would lead to one of the city gates. It was a lonely path: on my right hand extensive piles of ruin, in strange shapes or shapelessness, built of the broad and thin old Roman bricks, such as may be traced everywhere, when the stucco has fallen away from a modern Roman house; for I imagine there has not been a new brick made here for a thousand years. On my left, I think, was a high wall, and before me, grazing in the road . . . . [the buffalo calf of the Marble Faun.--ED.]. The road went boldly on, with a well-worn track up to the very walls of the city; but there it abruptly terminated at an ancient, closed-up gateway. From a notice posted against a door, which appeared to be the entrance to the ruins on my left, I found that these were the remains of Columbaria, where the dead used to be put away in pigeon-holes. Reaching the paved road again, I kept on my course, passing the tomb of the Scipios, and soon came to the gate of San Sebastiano, through which I entered the Campagna. Indeed, the scene around was so rural, that I had fancied myself already beyond the walls. As the afternoon was getting advanced, I did not proceed any farther towards the blue hills which I saw in the distance, but turned to my left, following a road that runs round the exterior of the city wall. It was very dreary and solitary,-- not a house on the whole track, with the broad and shaggy Campagna on one side, and the high, bare wall, looking down over my head, on the other. It is not, any more than the other objects of the scene, a very picturesque wall, but is little more than a brick garden-fence seen through a magnifying-glass, with now and then a tower, however, and frequent buttresses, to keep its height of fifty feet from toppling over. The top was ragged, and fringed with a few weeds; there had been embrasures for guns and eyelet-holes for musketry, but these were plastered up with brick or stone. I passed one or two walled-up gateways (by the by, the Parts, Latina was the gate through which Belisarius first entered Rome), and one of these had two high, round towers, and looked more Gothic and venerable with antique strength than any other portion of the wall. Immediately after this I came to the gate of San Giovanni, just within which is the Basilica of St. John Lateran, and there I was glad to rest myself upon a bench before proceeding homeward. There was a French sentinel at this gateway, as at all the others; for the Gauls have always been a pest to Rome, and now gall her worse than ever. I observed, too, that an official, in citizen's dress, stood there also, and appeared to exercise a supervision over some carts with country produce, that were entering just then. February 25th.--We went this forenoon to the Palazzo Borghese, which is situated on a street that runs at right angles with the Corso, and very near the latter. Most of the palaces in Rome, and the Borghese among them, were built somewhere about the sixteenth century; this in 1590, I believe. It is an immense edifice, standing round the four sides of a quadrangle; and though the suite of rooms comprising the picture-gallery forms an almost interminable vista, they occupy only a part of the ground-floor of one side. We enter from the street into a large court, surrounded with a corridor, the arches of which support a second series of arches above. The picture-rooms open from one into another, and have many points of magnificence, being large and lofty, with vaulted ceilings and beautiful frescos, generally of mythological subjects, in the flat central part of the vault. The cornices are gilded; the deep embrasures of the windows are panelled with wood-work; the doorways are of polished and variegated marble, or covered with a composition as hard, and seemingly as durable. The whole has a kind of splendid shabbiness thrown over it, like a slight coating of rust; the furniture, at least the damask chairs, being a good deal worn, though there are marble and mosaic tables, which may serve to adorn another palace when this one crumbles away with age. One beautiful hall, with a ceiling more richly gilded than the rest, is panelled all round with large looking-glasses, on which are painted pictures, both landscapes and human figures, in oils; so that the effect is somewhat as if you saw these objects represented in the mirrors. These glasses must be of old date, perhaps coeval with the first building of the palace; for they are so much dimmed, that one's own figure appears indistinct in them, and more difficult to be traced than the pictures which cover them half over. It was very comfortless,-- indeed, I suppose nobody ever thought of being comfortable there, since the house was built,--but especially uncomfortable on a chill, damp day like this. My fingers were quite numb before I got half-way through the suite of apartments, in spite of a brazier of charcoal which was smouldering into ashes in two or three of the rooms. There was not, so far as I remember, a single fireplace in the suite. A considerable number of visitors--not many, however--were there; and a good many artists; and three or four ladies among them were making copies of the more celebrated pictures, and in all or in most cases missing the especial points that made their celebrity and value. The Prince Borghese certainly demeans himself like a kind and liberal gentleman, in throwing open this invaluable collection to the public to see, and for artists to carry away with them, and diffuse all over the world, so far as their own power and skill will permit. It is open every day of the week, except Saturday and Sunday, without any irksome restriction or supervision; and the fee, which custom requires the visitor to pay to the custode, has the good effect of making us feel that we are not intruders, nor received in an exactly eleemosynary way. The thing could not be better managed. The collection is one of the most celebrated in the world, and contains between eight and nine hundred pictures, many of which are esteemed masterpieces. I think I was not in a frame for admiration to-day, nor could achieve that free and generous surrender of myself which I have already said is essential to the proper estimate of anything excellent. Besides, how is it possible to give one's soul, or any considerable part of it, to a single picture, seen for the first time, among a thousand others, all of which set forth their own claims in an equally good light? Furthermore, there is an external weariness, and sense of a thousand-fold sameness to be overcome, before we can begin to enjoy a gallery of the old Italian masters. . . . I remember but one painter, Francia, who seems really to have approached this awful class of subjects (Christs and Madonnas) in a fitting spirit; his pictures are very singular and awkward, if you look at them with merely an external eye, but they are full of the beauty of holiness, and evidently wrought out as acts of devotion, with the deepest sincerity; and are veritable prayers upon canvas. . . . I was glad, in the very last of the twelve rooms, to come upon some Dutch and Flemish pictures, very few, but very welcome; Rubens, Rembrandt, Vandyke, Paul Potter, Teniers, and others,--men of flesh and blood, and warm fists, and human hearts. As compared with them, these mighty Italian masters seem men of polished steel; not human, nor addressing themselves so much to human sympathies, as to a formed, intellectual taste. March 1st.--To-day began very unfavorably; but we ventured out at about eleven o'clock, intending to visit the gallery of the Colonna Palace. Finding it closed, however, on account of the illness of the custode, we determined to go to the picture-gallery of the Capitol; and, on our way thither, we stepped into Il Gesu, the grand and rich church of the Jesuits, where we found a priest in white, preaching a sermon, with vast earnestness of action and variety of tones, insomuch that I fancied sometimes that two priests were in the agony of sermonizing at once. He had a pretty large and seemingly attentive audience clustered round him from the entrance of the church, half-way down the nave; while in the chapels of the transepts and in the remoter distances were persons occupied with their own individual devotion. We sat down near the chapel of St. Ignazio, which is adorned with a picture over the altar, and with marble sculptures of the Trinity aloft, and of angels fluttering at the sides. What I particularly noted (for the angels were not very real personages, being neither earthly nor celestial) was the great ball of lapis lazuli, the biggest in the world, at the feet of the First Person in the Trinity. The church is a splendid one, lined with a great variety of precious marbles, . . . . but partly, perhaps, owing to the dusky light, as well as to the want of cleanliness, there was a dingy effect upon the whole. We made but a very short stay, our New England breeding causing us to feel shy of moving about the church in sermon time. It rained when we reached the Capitol, and, as the museum was not yet open, we went into the Palace of the Conservators, on the opposite side of the piazza. Around the inner court of the ground-floor, partly under two opposite arcades, and partly under the sky, are several statues and other ancient sculptures; among them a statue of Julius Caesar, said to be the only authentic one, and certainly giving an impression of him more in accordance with his character than the withered old face in the museum; also, a statue of Augustus in middle age, still retaining a resemblance to the bust of him in youth; some gigantic heads and hands and feet in marble and bronze; a stone lion and horse, which lay long at the bottom of a river, broken and corroded, and were repaired by Michel Angelo; and other things which it were wearisome to set down. We inquired of two or three French soldiers the way into the picture-gallery; but it is our experience that French soldiers in Rome never know anything of what is around them, not even the name of the palace or public place over which they stand guard; and though invariably civil, you might as well put a question to a statue of an old Roman as to one of them. While we stood under the loggia, however, looking at the rain plashing into the court, a soldier of the Papal Guard kindly directed us up the staircase, and even took pains to go with us to the very entrance of the picture-rooms. Thank Heaven, there are but two of them, and not many pictures which one cares to look at very long. Italian galleries are at a disadvantage as compared with English ones, inasmuch as the pictures are not nearly such splendid articles of upholstery; though, very likely, having undergone less cleaning and varnishing, they may retain more perfectly the finer touches of the masters. Nevertheless, I miss the mellow glow, the rich and mild external lustre, and even the brilliant frames of the pictures I have seen in England. You feel that they have had loving care taken of them; even if spoiled, it is because they have been valued so much. But these pictures in Italian galleries look rusty and lustreless, as far as the exterior is concerned; and, really, the splendor of the painting, as a production of intellect and feeling, has a good deal of difficulty in shining through such clouds. There is a picture at the Capitol, the "Rape of Europa," by Paul Veronese, that would glow with wonderful brilliancy if it were set in a magnificent frame, and covered with a sunshine of varnish; and it is a kind of picture that would not be desecrated, as some deeper and holier ones might be, by any splendor of external adornment that could be bestowed on it. It is deplorable and disheartening to see it in faded and shabby plight,--this joyous, exuberant, warm, voluptuous work. There is the head of a cow, thrust into the picture, and staring with wild, ludicrous wonder at the godlike bull, so as to introduce quite a new sentiment. Here, and at the Borghese Palace, there were some pictures by Garofalo, an artist of whom I never heard before, but who seemed to have been a man of power. A picture by Marie Subleyras--a miniature copy from one by her husband, of the woman anointing the feet of Christ--is most delicately and beautifully finished, and would be an ornament to a drawing-room; a thing that could not truly be said of one in a hundred of these grim masterpieces. When they were painted life was not what it is now, and the artists had not the same ends in view. . . . It depresses the spirits to go from picture to picture, leaving a portion of your vital sympathy at every one, so that you come, with a kind of half-torpid desperation, to the end. On our way down the staircase we saw several noteworthy bas-reliefs, and among them a very ancient one of Curtius plunging on horseback into the chasm in the Forum. It seems to me, however, that old sculpture affects the spirits even more dolefully than old painting; it strikes colder to the heart, and lies heavier upon it, being marble, than if it were merely canvas. My wife went to revisit the museum, which we had already seen, on the other side of the piazza; but, being cold, I left her there, and went out to ramble in the sun; for it was now brightly, though fitfully, shining again. I walked through the Forum (where a thorn thrust itself out and tore the sleeve of my talma) and under the Arch of Titus, towards the Coliseum. About a score of French drummers were beating a long, loud roll-call, at the base of the Coliseum, and under its arches; and a score of trumpeters responded to these, from the rising ground opposite the Arch of Constantine; and the echoes of the old Roman ruins, especially those of the Palace of the Caesars, responded to this martial uproar of the barbarians. There seemed to be no cause for it; but the drummers beat, and the trumpeters blew, as long as I was within hearing. I walked along the Appian Way as far as the Baths of Caracalla. The Palace of the Caesars, which I have never yet explored, appears to be crowned by the walls of a convent, built, no doubt, out of some of the fragments that would suffice to build a city; and I think there is another convent among the baths. The Catholics have taken a peculiar pleasure in planting themselves in the very citadels of paganism, whether temples or palaces. There has been a good deal of enjoyment in the destruction of old Rome. I often think so when I see the elaborate pains that have been taken to smash and demolish some beautiful column, for no purpose whatever, except the mere delight of annihilating a noble piece of work. There is something in the impulse with which one sympathizes; though I am afraid the destroyers were not sufficiently aware of the mischief they did to enjoy it fully. Probably, too, the early Christians were impelled by religious zeal to destroy the pagan temples, before the happy thought occurred of converting them into churches. March 3d.--This morning was U----'s birthday, and we celebrated it by taking a barouche, and driving (the whole family) out on the Appian Way as far as the tomb of Cecilia Metella. For the first time since we came to Rome, the weather was really warm,--a kind of heat producing languor and disinclination to active movement, though still a little breeze which was stirring threw an occasional coolness over us, and made us distrust the almost sultry atmosphere. I cannot think the Roman climate healthy in any of its moods that I have experienced. Close on the other side of the road are the ruins of a Gothic chapel, little more than a few bare walls and painted windows, and some other fragmentary structures which we did not particularly examine. U---- and I clambered through a gap in the wall, extending from the basement of the tomb, and thus, getting into the field beyond, went quite round the mausoleum and the remains of the castle connected with it. The latter, though still high and stalwart, showed few or no architectural features of interest, being built, I think, principally of large bricks, and not to be compared to English ruins as a beautiful or venerable object. A little way beyond Cecilia Metella's tomb, the road still shows a specimen of the ancient Roman pavement, composed of broad, flat flagstones, a good deal cracked and worn, but sound enough, probably, to outlast the little cubes which make the other portions of the road so uncomfortable. We turned back from this point and soon re-entered the gate of St. Sebastian, which is flanked by two small towers, and just within which is the old triumphal arch of Drusus,--a sturdy construction, much dilapidated as regards its architectural beauty, but rendered far more picturesque than it could have been in its best days by a crown of verdure on its head. Probably so much of the dust of the highway has risen in clouds and settled there, that sufficient soil for shrubbery to root itself has thus been collected, by small annual contributions, in the course of two thousand years. A little farther towards the city we turned aside from the Appian Way, and came to the site of some ancient Columbaria, close by what seemed to partake of the character of a villa and a farm-house. A man came out of the house and unlocked a door in a low building, apparently quite modern; but on entering we found ourselves looking into a large, square chamber, sunk entirely beneath the surface of the ground. A very narrow and steep staircase of stone, and evidently ancient, descended into this chamber; and, going down, we found the walls hollowed on all sides into little semicircular niches, of which, I believe, there were nine rows, one above another, and nine niches in each row. Thus they looked somewhat like the little entrances to a pigeon-house, and hence the name of Columbarium. Each semicircular niche was about a foot in its semidiameter. In the centre of this subterranean chamber was a solid square column, or pier, rising to the roof, and containing other niches of the same pattern, besides one that was high and deep, rising to the height of a man from the floor on each of the four sides. In every one of the semicircular niches were two round holes covered with an earthen plate, and in each hole were ashes and little fragments of bones,--the ashes and bones of the dead, whose names were inscribed in Roman capitals on marble slabs inlaid into the wall over each individual niche. Very likely the great ones in the central pier had contained statues, or busts, or large urns; indeed, I remember that some such things were there, as well as bas-reliefs in the walls; but hardly more than the general aspect of this strange place remains in my mind. It was the Columbarium of the connections or dependants of the Caesars; and the impression left on me was, that this mode of disposing of the dead was infinitely preferable to any which has been adopted since that day. The handful or two of dry dust and bits of dry bones in each of the small round holes had nothing disgusting in them, and they are no drier now than they were when first deposited there. I would rather have my ashes scattered over the soil to help the growth of the grass and daisies; but still I should not murmur much at having them decently pigeon-holed in a Roman tomb. After ascending out of this chamber of the dead, we looked down into another similar one, containing the ashes of Pompey's household, which was discovered only a very few years ago. Its arrangement was the same as that first described, except that it had no central pier with a passage round it, as the former had. While we were down in the first chamber the proprietor of the spot--a half-gentlemanly and very affable kind of person--came to us, and explained the arrangements of the Columbarium, though, indeed, we understood them better by their own aspect than by his explanation. The whole soil around his dwelling is elevated much above the level of the road, and it is probable that, if he chose to excavate, he might bring to light many more sepulchral chambers, and find his profit in them too, by disposing of the urns and busts. What struck me as much as anything was the neatness of these subterranean apartments, which were quite as fit to sleep in as most of those occupied by living Romans; and, having undergone no wear and tear, they were in as good condition as on the day they were built. In this Columbarium, measuring about twenty feet square, I roughly estimate that there have been deposited together the remains of at least seven or eight hundred persons, reckoning two little heaps of bones and ashes in each pigeon-hole, nine pigeon-holes in each row, and nine rows on each side, besides those on the middle pier. All difficulty in finding space for the dead would be obviated by returning to the ancient fashion of reducing them to ashes,--the only objection, though a very serious one, being the quantity of fuel that it would require. But perhaps future chemists may discover some better means of consuming or dissolving this troublesome mortality of ours. We got into the carriage again, and, driving farther towards the city, came to the tomb of the Scipios, of the exterior of which I retain no very definite idea. It was close upon the Appian Way, however, though separated from it by a high fence, and accessible through a gateway, leading into a court. I think the tomb is wholly subterranean, and that the ground above it is covered with the buildings of a farm-house; but of this I cannot be certain, as we were led immediately into a dark, underground passage, by an elderly peasant, of a cheerful and affable demeanor. As soon as he had brought us into the twilight of the tomb, he lighted a long wax taper for each of us, and led us groping into blacker and blacker darkness. Even little R----- followed courageously in the procession, which looked very picturesque as we glanced backward or forward, and beheld a twinkling line of seven lights, glimmering faintly on our faces, and showing nothing beyond. The passages and niches of the tomb seem to have been hewn and hollowed out of the rock, not built by any art of masonry; but the walls were very dark, almost black, and our tapers so dim that I could not gain a sufficient breadth of view to ascertain what kind of place it was. It was very dark, indeed; the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky could not be darker. The rough-hewn roof was within touch, and sometimes we had to stoop to avoid hitting our heads; it was covered with damps, which collected and fell upon us in occasional drops. The passages, besides being narrow, were so irregular and crooked, that, after going a little way, it would have been impossible to return upon our steps without the help of the guide; and we appeared to be taking quite an extensive ramble underground, though in reality I suppose the tomb includes no great space. At several turns of our dismal way, the guide pointed to inscriptions in Roman capitals, commemorating various members of the Scipio family who were buried here; among them, a son of Scipio Africanus, who himself had his death and burial in a foreign land. All these inscriptions, however, are copies,--the originals, which were really found here, having been removed to the Vatican. Whether any bones and ashes have been left, or whether any were found, I do not know. It is not, at all events, a particularly interesting spot, being such shapeless blackness, and a mere dark hole, requiring a stronger illumination than that of our tapers to distinguish it from any other cellar. I did, at one place, see a sort of frieze, rather roughly sculptured; and, as we returned towards the twilight of the entrance-passage, I discerned a large spider, who fled hastily away from our tapers,--the solitary living inhabitant of the tomb of the Scipios. One visit that we made, and I think it was before entering the city gates, I forgot to mention. It was to an old edifice, formerly called the Temple of Bacchus, but now supposed to have been the Temple of Virtue and Honor. The interior consists of a vaulted hall, which was converted from its pagan consecration into a church or chapel, by the early Christians; and the ancient marble pillars of the temple may still be seen built in with the brick and stucco of the later occupants. There is an altar, and other tokens of a Catholic church, and high towards the ceiling, there are some frescos of saints or angels, very curious specimens of mediaeval, and earlier than mediaeval art. Nevertheless, the place impressed me as still rather pagan than Christian. What is most remarkable about this spot or this vicinity lies in the fact that the Fountain of Egeria was formerly supposed to be close at hand; indeed, the custode of the chapel still claims the spot as the identical one consecrated by the legend. There is a dark grove of trees, not far from the door of the temple; but Murray, a highly essential nuisance on such excursions as this, throws such overwhelming doubt, or rather incredulity, upon the site, that I seized upon it as a pretext for not going thither. In fact, my small capacity for sight-seeing was already more than satisfied. On account of ------ I am sorry that we did not see the grotto, for her enthusiasm is as fresh as the waters of Egeria's well can be, and she has poetical faith enough to light her cheerfully through all these mists of incredulity. Our visits to sepulchral places ended with Scipio's tomb, whence we returned to our dwelling, and Miss M------ came to dine with us. March 10th.--On Saturday last, a very rainy day, we went to the Sciarra Palace, and took U---- with us. It is on the Corso, nearly opposite to the Piazza Colonna. It has (Heaven be praised!) but four rooms of pictures, among which, however, are several very celebrated ones. Only a few of these remain in my memory,--Raphael's "Violin Player," which I am willing to accept as a good picture; and Leonardo da Vinci's "Vanity and Modesty," which also I can bring up before my mind's eye, and find it very beautiful, although one of the faces has an affected smile, which I have since seen on another picture by the same artist, Joanna of Aragon. The most striking picture in the collection, I think, is Titian's "Bella Donna,"--the only one of Titian's works that I have yet seen which makes an impression on me corresponding with his fame. It is a very splendid and very scornful lady, as beautiful and as scornful as Gainsborough's Lady Lyndoch, though of an entirely different type. There were two Madonnas by Guido, of which I liked the least celebrated one best; and several pictures by Garofalo, who always produces something noteworthy. All the pictures lacked the charm (no doubt I am a barbarian to think it one) of being in brilliant frames, and looked as if it were a long, long while since they were cleaned or varnished. The light was so scanty, too, on that heavily clouded day, and in those gloomy old rooms of the palace, that scarcely anything could be fairly made out. [I cannot refrain from observing here, that Mr. Hawthorne's inexorable demand for perfection in all things leads him to complain of grimy pictures and tarnished frames and faded frescos, distressing beyond measure to eyes that never failed to see everything before him with the keenest apprehension. The usual careless observation of people both of the good and the imperfect is much more comfortable in this imperfect world. But the insight which Mr. Hawthorne possessed was only equalled by his outsight, and he suffered in a way not to be readily conceived, from any failure in beauty, physical, moral, or intellectual. It is not, therefore, mere love of upholstery that impels him to ask for perfect settings to priceless gems of art; but a native idiosyncrasy, which always made me feel that "the New Jerusalem," "even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal," "where shall in no wise enter anything that defileth, neither what worketh abomination nor maketh a lie," would alone satisfy him, or rather alone not give him actual pain. It may give an idea of this exquisite nicety of feeling to mention, that one day he took in his fingers a half-bloomed rose, without blemish, and, smiling with an infinite joy, remarked, "This is perfect. On earth a flower only can be perfect."--ED.] The palace is about two hundred and fifty years old, and looks as if it had never been a very cheerful place; most shabbily and scantily furnished, moreover, and as chill as any cellar. There is a small balcony, looking down on the Corso, which probably has often been filled with a merry little family party, in the carnivals of days long past. It has faded frescos, and tarnished gilding, and green blinds, and a few damask chairs still remain in it. On Monday we all went to the sculpture-gallery of the Vatican, and saw as much of the sculpture as we could in the three hours during which the public are admissible. There were a few things which I really enjoyed, and a few moments during which I really seemed to see them; but it is in vain to attempt giving the impression produced by masterpieces of art, and most in vain when we see them best. They are a language in themselves, and if they could be expressed as well any way except by themselves, there would have been no need of expressing those particular ideas and sentiments by sculpture. I saw the Apollo Belvedere as something ethereal and godlike; only for a flitting moment, however, and as if he had alighted from heaven, or shone suddenly out of the sunlight, and then had withdrawn himself again. I felt the Laocoon very powerfully, though very quietly; an immortal agony, with a strange calmness diffused through it, so that it resembles the vast rage of the sea, calm on account of its immensity; or the tumult of Niagara, which does not seem to be tumult, because it keeps pouring on for ever and ever. I have not had so good a day as this (among works of art) since we came to Rome; and I impute it partly to the magnificence of the arrangements of the Vatican,--its long vistas and beautiful courts, and the aspect of immortality which marble statues acquire by being kept free from dust. A very hungry boy, seeing in one of the cabinets a vast porphyry vase, forty-four feet in circumference, wished that he had it full of soup. Yesterday, we went to the Pamfili Doria Palace, which, I believe, is the most splendid in Rome. The entrance is from the Corso into a court, surrounded by a colonnade, and having a space of luxuriant verdure and ornamental shrubbery in the centre. The apartments containing pictures and sculptures are fifteen in number, and run quite round the court in the first piano,--all the rooms, halls, and galleries of beautiful proportion, with vaulted roofs, some of which glow with frescos; and all are colder and more comfortless than can possibly be imagined without having been in them. The pictures, most of them, interested me very little. I am of opinion that good pictures are quite as rare as good poets; and I do not see why we should pique ourselves on admiring any but the very best. One in a thousand, perhaps, ought to live in the applause of men, from generation to generation, till its colors fade or blacken out of sight, and its canvas rots away; the rest should be put in garrets, or painted over by newer artists, just as tolerable poets are shelved when their little day is over. Nevertheless, there was one long gallery containing many pictures that I should be glad to see again under more favorable circumstances, that is, separately, and where I might contemplate them quite undisturbed, reclining in an easy-chair. At one end of the long vista of this gallery is a bust of the present Prince Doria, a smooth, sharp-nosed, rather handsome young man, and at the other end his princess, an English lady of the Talbot family, apparently a blonde, with a simple and sweet expression. There is a noble and striking portrait of the old Venetian admiral, Andrea Doria, by Sebastian del Piombo, and some other portraits and busts of the family. In the whole immense range of rooms I saw but a single fireplace, and that so deep in the wall that no amount of blaze would raise the atmosphere of the room ten degrees. If the builder of the palace, or any of his successors, have committed crimes worthy of Tophet, it would be a still worse punishment for him to wander perpetually through this suite of rooms on the cold floors of polished brick tiles or marble or mosaic, growing a little chiller and chiller through every moment of eternity,-- or, at least, till the palace crumbles down upon him. Neither would it assuage his torment in the least to be compelled to gaze up at the dark old pictures,--the ugly ghosts of what may once have been beautiful. I am not going to try any more to receive pleasure from a faded, tarnished, lustreless picture, especially if it be a landscape. There were two or three landscapes of Claude in this palace, which I doubt not would have been exquisite if they had been in the condition of those in the British National Gallery; but here they looked most forlorn, and even their sunshine was sunless. The merits of historical painting may be quite independent of the attributes that give pleasure, and a superficial ugliness may even heighten the effect; but not so of landscapes. Via Porta, Palazzo Larazani, March 11th.--To-day we called at Mr. Thompson's studio, and . . . . he had on the easel a little picture of St. Peter released from prison by the angel, which I saw once before. It is very beautiful indeed, and deeply and spiritually conceived, and I wish I could afford to have it finished for myself. I looked again, too, at his Georgian slave, and admired it as much as at first view; so very warm and rich it is, so sensuously beautiful, and with an expression of higher life and feeling within. I do not think there is a better painter than Mr. Thompson living,--among Americans at least; not one so earnest, faithful, and religious in his worship of art. I had rather look at his pictures than at any except the very finest of the old masters, and, taking into consideration only the comparative pleasure to be derived, I would not except more than one or two of those. In painting, as in literature, I suspect there is something in the productions of the day that takes the fancy more than the works of any past age,--not greater merit, nor nearly so great, but better suited to this very present time. After leaving him, we went to the Piazza de' Termini, near the Baths of Diocletian, and found our way with some difficulty to Crawford's studio. It occupies several great rooms, connected with the offices of the Villa Negroni; and all these rooms were full of plaster casts and a few works in marble,--principally portions of his huge Washington monument, which he left unfinished at his death. Close by the door at which we entered stood a gigantic figure of Mason, in bag-wig, and the coat, waistcoat, breeches, and knee and shoe buckles of the last century, the enlargement of these unheroic matters to far more than heroic size having a very odd effect. There was a figure of Jefferson on the same scale; another of Patrick Henry, besides a horse's head, and other portions of the equestrian group which is to cover the summit of the monument. In one of the rooms was a model of the monument itself, on a scale, I should think, of about an inch to afoot. It did not impress me as having grown out of any great and genuine idea in the artist's mind, but as being merely an ingenious contrivance enough. There were also casts of statues that seemed to be intended for some other monument referring to Revolutionary times and personages; and with these were intermixed some ideal statues or groups,--a naked boy playing marbles, very beautiful; a girl with flowers; the cast of his Orpheus, of which I long ago saw the marble statue; Adam and Eve; Flora,--all with a good deal of merit, no doubt, but not a single one that justifies Crawford's reputation, or that satisfies me of his genius. They are but commonplaces in marble and plaster, such as we should not tolerate on a printed page. He seems to have been a respectable man, highly respectable, but no more, although those who knew him seem to have rated him much higher. It is said that he exclaimed, not very long before his death, that he had fifteen years of good work still in him; and he appears to have considered all his life and labor, heretofore, as only preparatory to the great things that he was to achieve hereafter. I should say, on the contrary, that he was a man who had done his best, and had done it early; for his Orpheus is quite as good as anything else we saw in his studio. People were at work chiselling several statues in marble from the plaster models,--a very interesting process, and which I should think a doubtful and hazardous one; but the artists say that there is no risk of mischief, and that the model is sure to be accurately repeated in the marble. These persons, who do what is considered the mechanical part of the business, are often themselves sculptors, and of higher reputation than those who employ them. It is rather sad to think that Crawford died before he could see his ideas in the marble, where they gleam with so pure and celestial a light as compared with the plaster. There is almost as much difference as between flesh and spirit. The floor of one of the rooms was burdened with immense packages, containing parts of the Washington monument, ready to be forwarded to its destination. When finished, and set up, it will probably make a very splendid appearance, by its height, its mass, its skilful execution; and will produce a moral effect through its images of illustrious men, and the associations that connect it with our Revolutionary history; but I do not think it will owe much to artistic force of thought or depth of feeling. It is certainly, in one sense, a very foolish and illogical piece of work,--Washington, mounted on an uneasy steed, on a very narrow space, aloft in the air, whence a single step of the horse backward, forward, or on either side, must precipitate him; and several of his contemporaries standing beneath him, not looking up to wonder at his predicament, but each intent on manifesting his own personality to the world around. They have nothing to do with one another, nor with Washington, nor with any great purpose which all are to work out together. March 14th.--On Friday evening I dined at Mr. T. B. Read's, the poet and artist, with a party composed of painters and sculptors,--the only exceptions being the American banker and an American tourist who has given Mr. Read a commission. Next to me at table sat Mr. Gibson, the English sculptor, who, I suppose, stands foremost in his profession at this day. He must be quite an old man now, for it was whispered about the table that he is known to have been in Rome forty-two years ago, and he himself spoke to me of spending thirty-seven years here, before he once returned home. I should hardly take him to be sixty, however, his hair being more dark than gray, his forehead unwrinkled, his features unwithered, his eye undimmed, though his beard is somewhat venerable. . . . He has a quiet, self-contained aspect, and, being a bachelor, has doubtless spent a calm life among his clay and marble, meddling little with the world, and entangling himself with no cares beyond his studio. He did not talk a great deal; but enough to show that he is still an Englishman in many sturdy traits, though his accent has something foreign about it. His conversation was chiefly about India, and other topics of the day, together with a few reminiscences of people in Liverpool, where he once resided. There was a kind of simplicity both in his manner and matter, and nothing very remarkable in the latter. . . . The gist of what he said (upon art) was condemnatory of the Pre-Raphaelite modern school of painters, of whom he seemed to spare none, and of their works nothing; though he allowed that the old Pre-Raphaelites had some exquisite merits, which the moderns entirely omit in their imitations. In his own art, he said the aim should be to find out the principles on which the Greek sculptors wrought, and to do the work of this day on those principles and in their spirit; a fair doctrine enough, I should think, but which Mr. Gibson can scarcely be said to practise. . . . The difference between the Pre-Raphaelites and himself is deep and genuine, they being literalists and realists, in a certain sense, and he a pagan idealist. Methinks they have hold of the best end of the matter. March 18th.--To-day, it being very bright and mild, we set out, at noon, for an expedition to the Temple of Vesta, though I did not feel much inclined for walking, having been ill and feverish for two or three days past with a cold, which keeps renewing itself faster than I can get rid of it. We kept along on this side of the Corso, and crossed the Forum, skirting along the Capitoline Hill, and thence towards the Circus Maximus. On our way, looking down a cross street, we saw a heavy arch, and, on examination, made it out to be the Arch of Janus Quadrifrons, standing in the Forum Boarium. Its base is now considerably below the level of the surrounding soil, and there is a church or basilica close by, and some mean edifices looking down upon it. There is something satisfactory in this arch, from the immense solidity of its structure. It gives the idea, in the first place, of a solid mass constructed of huge blocks of marble, which time can never wear away, nor earthquakes shake down; and then this solid mass is penetrated by two arched passages, meeting in the centre. There are empty niches, three in a row, and, I think, two rows on each face; but there seems to have been very little effort to make it a beautiful object. On the top is some brickwork, the remains of a mediaeval fortress built by the Frangipanis, looking very frail and temporary being brought thus in contact with the antique strength of the arch. A few yards off, across the street, and close beside the basilica, is what appears to be an ancient portal, with carved bas-reliefs, and an inscription which I could not make out. Some Romans were lying dormant in the sun, on the steps of the basilica; indeed, now that the sun is getting warmer, they seem to take advantage of every quiet nook to bask in, and perhaps to go to sleep. We had gone but a little way from the arch, and across the Circus Maximus, when we saw the Temple of Vesta before us, on the hank of the Tiber, which, however, we could not see behind it. It is a most perfectly preserved Roman ruin, and very beautiful, though so small that, in a suitable locality, one would take it rather for a garden-house than an ancient temple. A circle of white marble pillars, much time-worn and a little battered, though but one of them broken, surround the solid structure of the temple, leaving a circular walk between it and the pillars, the whole covered by a modern roof which looks like wood, and disgraces and deforms the elegant little building. This roof resembles, as much as anything else, the round wicker cover of a basket, and gives a very squat aspect to the temple. The pillars are of the Corinthian order, and when they were new and the marble snow-white and sharply carved and cut, there could not have been a prettier object in all Rome; but so small an edifice does not appear well as a ruin. Within view of it, and, indeed, a very little way off, is the Temple of Fortuna Virilis, which likewise retains its antique form in better preservation than we generally find a Roman ruin, although the Ionic pillars are now built up with blocks of stone and patches of brickwork, the whole constituting a church which is fixed against the side of a tall edifice, the nature of which I do not know. I forgot to say that we gained admittance into the Temple of Vesta, and found the interior a plain cylinder of marble, about ten paces across, and fitted up as a chapel, where the Virgin takes the place of Vesta. In very close vicinity we came upon the Ponto Rotto, the old Pons Emilius which was broken down long ago, and has recently been pieced out by connecting a suspension bridge with the old piers. We crossed by this bridge, paying a toll of a baioccho each, and stopped in the midst of the river to look at the Temple of Vesta, which shows well, right on the brink of the Tiber. We fancied, too, that we could discern, a little farther down the river, the ruined and almost submerged piers of the Sublician bridge, which Horatius Cocles defended. The Tiber here whirls rapidly along, and Horatius must have had a perilous swim for his life, and the enemy a fair mark at his head with their arrows. I think this is the most picturesque part of the Tiber in its passage through Rome. After crossing the bridge, we kept along the right bank of the river, through the dirty and hard-hearted streets of Trastevere (which have in no respect the advantage over those of hither Rome), till we reached St. Peter's. We saw a family sitting before their door on the pavement in the narrow and sunny street, engaged in their domestic avocations,--the old woman spinning with a wheel. I suppose the people now begin to live out of doors. We entered beneath the colonnade of St. Peter's and immediately became sensible of an evil odor,--the bad odor of our fallen nature, which there is no escaping in any nook of Rome. . . . Between the pillars of the colonnade, however, we had the pleasant spectacle of the two fountains, sending up their lily-shaped gush, with rainbows shining in their falling spray. Parties of French soldiers, as usual, were undergoing their drill in the piazza. When we entered the church, the long, dusty sunbeams were falling aslantwise through the dome and through the chancel behind it. . . . March 23d.--On the 21st we all went to the Coliseum, and enjoyed ourselves there in the bright, warm sun,--so bright and warm that we were glad to get into the shadow of the walls and under the arches, though, after all, there was the freshness of March in the breeze that stirred now and then. J----- and baby found some beautiful flowers growing round about the Coliseum; and far up towards the top of the walls we saw tufts of yellow wall-flowers and a great deal of green grass growing along the ridges between the arches. The general aspect of the place, however, is somewhat bare, and does not compare favorably with an English ruin both on account of the lack of ivy and because the material is chiefly brick, the stone and marble having been stolen away by popes and cardinals to build their palaces. While we sat within the circle, many people, of both sexes, passed through, kissing the iron cross which stands in the centre, thereby gaining an indulgence of seven years, I believe. In front of several churches I have seen an inscription in Latin, "INDULGENTIA PLENARIA ET PERPETUA PRO CUNCTIS MORTUIS ET VIVIS"; than which, it seems to me, nothing more could be asked or desired. The terms of this great boon are not mentioned. Leaving the Coliseum, we went and sat down in the vicinity of the Arch of Constantine, and J----- and R----- went in quest of lizards. J----- soon caught a large one with two tails; one, a sort of afterthought, or appendix, or corollary to the original tail, and growing out from it instead of from the body of the lizard. These reptiles are very abundant, and J----- has already brought home several, which make their escape and appear occasionally darting to and fro on the carpet. Since we have been here, J----- has taken up various pursuits in turn. First he voted himself to gathering snail-shells, of which there are many sorts; afterwards he had a fever for marbles, pieces of which he found on the banks of the Tiber, just on the edge of its muddy waters, and in the Palace of the Caesars, the Baths of Caracalla, and indeed wherever else his fancy led him; verde antique, rosso antico, porphyry, giallo antico, serpentine, sometimes fragments of bas-reliefs and mouldings, bits of mosaic, still firmly stuck together, on which the foot of a Caesar had perhaps once trodden; pieces of Roman glass, with the iridescence glowing on them; and all such things, of which the soil of Rome is full. It would not be difficult, from the spoil of his boyish rambles, to furnish what would be looked upon as a curious and valuable museum in America. Yesterday we went to the sculpture-galleries of the Vatican. I think I enjoy these noble galleries and their contents and beautiful arrangement better than anything else in the way of art, and often I seem to have a deep feeling of something wonderful in what I look at. The Laocoon on this visit impressed me not less than before; it is such a type of human beings, struggling with an inextricable trouble, and entangled in a complication which they cannot free themselves from by their own efforts, and out of which Heaven alone can help them. It was a most powerful mind, and one capable of reducing a complex idea to unity, that imagined this group. I looked at Canova's Perseus, and thought it exceedingly beautiful, but, found myself less and less contented after a moment or two, though I could not tell why. Afterwards, looking at the Apollo, the recollection of the Perseus disgusted me, and yet really I cannot explain how one is better than the other. I was interested in looking at the busts of the Triumvirs, Antony, Augustus, and Lepidus. The first two are men of intellect, evidently, though they do not recommend themselves to one's affections by their physiognomy; but Lepidus has the strangest, most commonplace countenance that can be imagined,--small-featured, weak, such a face as you meet anywhere in a man of no mark, but are amazed to find in one of the three foremost men of the world. I suppose that it is these weak and shallow men, when chance raises them above their proper sphere, who commit enormous crimes without any such restraint as stronger men would feel, and without any retribution in the depth of their conscience. These old Roman busts, of which there are so many in the Vatican, have often a most lifelike aspect, a striking individuality. One recognizes them as faithful portraits, just as certainly as if the living originals were standing beside them. The arrangement of the hair and beard too, in many cases, is just what we see now, the fashions of two thousand years ago having come round again. March 25th.--On Tuesday we went to breakfast at William Story's in the Palazzo Barberini. We had a very pleasant time. He is one of the most agreeable men I know in society. He showed us a note from Thackeray, an invitation to dinner, written in hieroglyphics, with great fun and pictorial merit. He spoke of an expansion of the story of Blue Beard, which he himself had either written or thought of writing, in which the contents of the several chambers which Fatima opened, before arriving at the fatal one, were to be described. This idea has haunted my mind ever since, and if it had but been my own I am pretty sure that it would develop itself into something very rich. I mean to press William Story to work it out. The chamber of Blue Beard, too (and this was a part of his suggestion), might be so handled as to become powerfully interesting. Were I to take up the story I would create an interest by suggesting a secret in the first chamber, which would develop itself more and more in every successive hall of the great palace, and lead the wife irresistibly to the chamber of horrors. After breakfast, we went to the Barberini Library, passing through the vast hall, which occupies the central part of the palace. It is the most splendid domestic hall I have seen, eighty feet in length at least, and of proportionate breadth and height; and the vaulted ceiling is entirely covered, to its utmost edge and remotest corners, with a brilliant painting in fresco, looking like a whole heaven of angelic people descending towards the floor. The effect is indescribably gorgeous. On one side stands a Baldacchino, or canopy of state, draped with scarlet cloth, and fringed with gold embroidery; the scarlet indicating that the palace is inhabited by a cardinal. Green would be appropriate to a prince. In point of fact, the Palazzo Barberini is inhabited by a cardinal, a prince, and a duke, all belonging to the Barberini family, and each having his separate portion of the palace, while their servants have a common territory and meeting-ground in this noble hall. After admiring it for a few minutes, we made our exit by a door on the opposite side, and went up the spiral staircase of marble to the library, where we were received by an ecclesiastic, who belongs to the Barberini household, and, I believe, was born in it. He is a gentle, refined, quiet-looking man, as well he may be, having spent all his life among these books, where few people intrude, and few cares can come. He showed us a very old Bible in parchment, a specimen of the earliest printing, beautifully ornamented with pictures, and some monkish illuminations of indescribable delicacy and elaboration. No artist could afford to produce such work, if the life that he thus lavished on one sheet of parchment had any value to him, either for what could be done or enjoyed in it. There are about eight thousand volumes in this library, and, judging by their outward aspect, the collection must be curious and valuable; but having another engagement, we could spend only a little time here. We had a hasty glance, however, of some poems of Tasso, in his own autograph. We then went to the Palazzo Galitzin, where dwell the Misses Weston, with whom we lunched, and where we met a French abbe, an agreeable man, and an antiquarian, under whose auspices two of the ladies and ourselves took carriage for the Castle of St. Angelo. Being admitted within the external gateway, we found ourselves in the court of guard, as I presume it is called, where the French soldiers were playing with very dirty cards, or lounging about, in military idleness. They were well behaved and courteous, and when we had intimated our wish to see the interior of the castle, a soldier soon appeared, with a large unlighted torch in his hand, ready to guide us. There is an outer wall, surrounding the solid structure of Hadrian's tomb; to which there is access by one or two drawbridges; the entrance to the tomb, or castle, not being at the base, but near its central height. The ancient entrance, by which Hadrian's ashes, and those of other imperial personages, were probably brought into this tomb, has been walled up,--perhaps ever since the last emperor was buried here. We were now in a vaulted passage, both lofty and broad, which circles round the whole interior of the tomb, from the base to the summit. During many hundred years, the passage was filled with earth and rubbish, and forgotten, and it is but partly excavated, even now; although we found it a long, long and gloomy descent by torchlight to the base of the vast mausoleum. The passage was once lined and vaulted with precious marbles (which are now entirely gone), and paved with fine mosaics, portions of which still remain; and our guide lowered his flaming torch to show them to us, here and there, amid the earthy dampness over which we trod. It is strange to think what splendor and costly adornment were here wasted on the dead. After we had descended to the bottom of this passage, and again retraced our steps to the highest part, the guide took a large cannon-ball, and sent it, with his whole force, rolling down the hollow, arched way, rumbling, and reverberating, and bellowing forth long thunderous echoes, and winding up with a loud, distant crash, that seemed to come from the very bowels of the earth. We saw the place, near the centre of the mausoleum, and lighted from above, through an immense thickness of stone and brick, where the ashes of the emperor and his fellow-slumberers were found. It is as much as twelve centuries, very likely, since they were scattered to the winds, for the tomb has been nearly or quite that space of time a fortress; The tomb itself is merely the base and foundation of the castle, and, being so massively built, it serves just as well for the purpose as if it were a solid granite rock. The mediaeval fortress, with its antiquity of more than a thousand years, and having dark and deep dungeons of its own, is but a modern excrescence on the top of Hadrian's tomb. We now ascended towards the upper region, and were led into the vaults which used to serve as a prison, but which, if I mistake not, are situated above the ancient structure, although they seem as damp and subterranean as if they were fifty feet under the earth. We crept down to them through narrow and ugly passages, which the torchlight would not illuminate, and, stooping under a low, square entrance, we followed the guide into a small, vaulted room,--not a room, but an artificial cavern, remote from light or air, where Beatrice Cenci was confined before her execution. According to the abbe, she spent a whole year in this dreadful pit, her trial having dragged on through that length of time. How ghostlike she must have looked when she came forth! Guido never painted that beautiful picture from her blanched face, as it appeared after this confinement. And how rejoiced she must have been to die at last, having already been in a sepulchre so long! Adjacent to Beatrice's prison, but not communicating with it, was that of her step-mother; and next to the latter was one that interested me almost as much as Beatrice's,--that of Benvenuto Cellini, who was confined here, I believe, for an assassination. All these prison vaults are more horrible than can be imagined without seeing them; but there are worse places here, for the guide lifted a trap-door in one of the passages, and held his torch down into an inscrutable pit beneath our feet. It was an oubliette, a dungeon where the prisoner might be buried alive, and never come forth again, alive or dead. Groping about among these sad precincts, we saw various other things that looked very dismal; but at last emerged into the sunshine, and ascended from one platform and battlement to another, till we found ourselves right at the feet of the Archangel Michael. He has stood there in bronze for I know not how many hundred years, in the act of sheathing a (now) rusty sword, such being the attitude in which he appeared to one of the popes in a vision, in token that a pestilence which was then desolating Rome was to be stayed. There is a fine view from the lofty station over Rome and the whole adjacent country, and the abbe pointed out the site of Ardea, of Corioli, of Veii, and other places renowned in story. We were ushered, too, into the French commandant's quarters in the castle. There is a large hall, ornamented with frescos, and accessible from this a drawing-room, comfortably fitted up, and where we saw modern furniture, and a chess-board, and a fire burning clear, and other symptoms that the place had perhaps just been vacated by civilized and kindly people. But in one corner of the ceiling the abbe pointed out a ring, by which, in the times of mediaeval anarchy, when popes, cardinals, and barons were all by the ears together, a cardinal was hanged. It was not an assassination, but a legal punishment, and he was executed in the best apartment of the castle as an act of grace. The fortress is a straight-lined structure on the summit of the immense round tower of Hadrian's tomb; and to make out the idea of it we must throw in drawbridges, esplanades, piles of ancient marble balls for cannon; battlements and embrasures, lying high in the breeze and sunshine, and opening views round the whole horizon; accommodation for the soldiers; and many small beds in a large room. How much mistaken was the emperor in his expectation of a stately, solemn repose for his ashes through all the coming centuries, as long as the world should endure! Perhaps his ghost glides up and down disconsolate, in that spiral passage which goes from top to bottom of the tomb, while the barbarous Gauls plant themselves in his very mausoleum to keep the imperial city in awe. Leaving the Castle of St. Angelo, we drove, still on the same side of the Tiber, to the Villa Pamfili, which lies a short distance beyond the walls. As we passed through one of the gates (I think it was that of San Pancrazio) the abbe pointed out the spot where the Constable de Bourbon was killed while attempting to scale the walls. If we are to believe Benvenuto Cellini, it was he who shot the constable. The road to the villa is not very interesting, lying (as the roads in the vicinity of Rome often do) between very high walls, admitting not a glimpse of the surrounding country; the road itself white and dusty, with no verdant margin of grass or border of shrubbery. At the portal of the villa we found many carriages in waiting, for the Prince Doria throws open the grounds to all comers, and on a pleasant day like this they are probably sure to be thronged. We left our carriage just within the entrance, and rambled among these beautiful groves, admiring the live-oak trees, and the stone-pines, which latter are truly a majestic tree, with tall columnar stems, supporting a cloud-like density of boughs far aloft, and not a straggling branch between there and the ground. They stand in straight rows, but are now so ancient and venerable as to have lost the formal look of a plantation, and seem like a wood that might have arranged itself almost of its own will. Beneath them is a flower-strewn turf, quite free of underbrush. We found open fields and lawns, moreover, all abloom with anemones, white and rose-colored and purple and golden, and far larger than could be found out of Italy, except in hot-houses. Violets, too, were abundant and exceedingly fragrant. When we consider that all this floral exuberance occurs in the midst of March, there does not appear much ground for complaining of the Roman climate; and so long ago as the first week of February I found daisies among the grass, on the sunny side of the Basilica of St. John Lateran. At this very moment I suppose the country within twenty miles of Boston may be two feet deep with snow, and the streams solid with ice. We wandered about the grounds, and found them very beautiful indeed; nature having done much for them by an undulating variety of surface, and art having added a good many charms, which have all the better effect now that decay and neglect have thrown a natural grace over them likewise. There is an artificial ruin, so picturesque that it betrays itself; weather-beaten statues, and pieces of sculpture, scattered here and there; an artificial lake, with upgushing fountains; cascades, and broad-bosomed coves, and long, canal-like reaches, with swans taking their delight upon them. I never saw such a glorious and resplendent lustre of white as shone between the wings of two of these swans. It was really a sight to see, and not to be imagined beforehand. Angels, no doubt, have just such lustrous wings as those. English swans partake of the dinginess of the atmosphere, and their plumage has nothing at all to be compared to this; in fact, there is nothing like it in the world, unless it be the illuminated portion of a fleecy, summer cloud. While we were sauntering along beside this piece of water, we were surprised to see U---- on the other side. She had come hither with E---- S------ and her two little brothers, and with our R-----, the whole under the charge of Mrs. Story's nursery-maids. U---- and E---- crossed, not over, but beneath the water, through a grotto, and exchanged greetings with us. Then, as it was getting towards sunset and cool, we took our departure; the abbe, as we left the grounds, taking me aside to give me a glimpse of a Columbarium, which descends into the earth to about the depth to which an ordinary house might rise above it. These grounds, it is said, formed the country residence of the Emperor Galba, and he was buried here after his assassination. It is a sad thought that so much natural beauty and long refinement of picturesque culture is thrown away, the villa being uninhabitable during all the most delightful season of the year on account of malaria. There is truly a curse on Rome and all its neighborhood. On our way home we passed by the great Paolina fountain, and were assailed by many beggars during the short time we stopped to look at it. It is a very copious fountain, but not so beautiful as the Trevi, taking into view merely the water-gush of the latter. March 26th.--Yesterday, between twelve and one, our whole family went to the Villa Ludovisi, the entrance to which is at the termination of a street which passes out of the Piazza Barberini, and it is no very great distance from our own street, Via Porta Pinciana. The grounds, though very extensive, are wholly within the walls of the city, which skirt them, and comprise a part of what were formerly the gardens of Sallust. The villa is now the property of Prince Piombini, a ticket from whom procured us admission. A little within the gateway, to the right, is a casino, containing two large rooms filled with sculpture, much of which is very valuable. A colossal head of Juno, I believe, is considered the greatest treasure of the collection, but I did not myself feel it to be so, nor indeed did I receive any strong impression of its excellence. I admired nothing so much, I think, as the face of Penelope (if it be her face) in the group supposed also to represent Electra and Orestes. The sitting statue of Mars is very fine; so is the Arria and Paetus; so are many other busts and figures. By and by we left the casino and wandered among the grounds, threading interminable alleys of cypress, through the long vistas of which we could see here and there a statue, an urn, a pillar, a temple, or garden-house, or a bas-relief against the wall. It seems as if there must have been a time, and not so very long ago,--when it was worth while to spend money and thought upon the ornamentation of grounds in the neighborhood of Rome. That time is past, however, and the result is very melancholy; for great beauty has been produced, but it can be enjoyed in its perfection only at the peril of one's life. . . . For my part, and judging from my own experience, I suspect that the Roman atmosphere, never wholesome, is always more or less poisonous. We came to another and larger casino remote from the gateway, in which the Prince resides during two months of the year. It was now under repair, but we gained admission, as did several other visitors, and saw in the entrance-hall the Aurora of Guercino, painted in fresco on the ceiling. There is beauty in the design; but the painter certainly was most unhappy in his black shadows, and in the work before us they give the impression of a cloudy and lowering morning which is likely enough to turn to rain by and by. After viewing the fresco we mounted by a spiral staircase to a lofty terrace, and found Rome at our feet, and, far off, the Sabine and Alban mountains, some of them still capped with snow. In another direction there was a vast plain, on the horizon of which, could our eyes have reached to its verge, we might perhaps have seen the Mediterranean Sea. After enjoying the view and the warm sunshine we descended, and went in quest of the gardens of Sallust, but found no satisfactory remains of them. One of the most striking objects in the first casino was a group by Bernini,--Pluto, an outrageously masculine and strenuous figure, heavily bearded, ravishing away a little, tender Proserpine, whom he holds aloft, while his forcible gripe impresses itself into her soft virgin flesh. It is very disagreeable, but it makes one feel that Bernini was a man of great ability. There are some works in literature that bear an analogy to his works in sculpture, when great power is lavished a little outside of nature, and therefore proves to be only a fashion,--and not permanently adapted to the tastes of mankind. March 27th.--Yesterday forenoon my wife and I went to St. Peter's to see the pope pray at the chapel of the Holy Sacrament. We found a good many people in the church, but not an inconvenient number; indeed, not so many as to make any remarkable show in the great nave, nor even in front of the chapel. A detachment of the Swiss Guard, in their strange, picturesque, harlequin-like costume, were on duty before the chapel, in which the wax tapers were all lighted, and a prie-dieu was arranged near the shrine, and covered with scarlet velvet. On each side, along the breadth of the side aisle, were placed seats, covered with rich tapestry or carpeting; and some gentlemen and ladies--English, probably, or American--had comfortably deposited themselves here, but were compelled to move by the guards before the pope's entrance. His Holiness should have appeared precisely at twelve, but we waited nearly half an hour beyond that time; and it seemed to me particularly ill-mannered in the pope, who owes the courtesy of being punctual to the people, if not to St. Peter. By and by, however, there was a stir; the guard motioned to us to stand away from the benches, against the backs of which we had been leaning; the spectators in the nave looked towards the door, as if they beheld something approaching; and first, there appeared some cardinals, in scarlet skull-caps and purple robes, intermixed with some of the Noble Guard and other attendants. It was not a very formal and stately procession, but rather straggled onward, with ragged edges, the spectators standing aside to let it pass, and merely bowing, or perhaps slightly bending the knee, as good Catholics are accustomed to do when passing before the shrines of saints. Then, in the midst of the purple cardinals, all of whom were gray-haired men, appeared a stout old man, with a white skull-cap, a scarlet, gold-embroidered cape falling over his shoulders, and a white silk robe, the train of which was borne up by an attendant. He walked slowly, with a sort of dignified movement, stepping out broadly, and planting his feet (on which were red shoes) flat upon the pavement, as if he were not much accustomed to locomotion, and perhaps had known a twinge of the gout. His face was kindly and venerable, but not particularly impressive. Arriving at the scarlet-covered prie-dieu, he kneeled down and took off his white skull-cap; the cardinals also kneeled behind and on either side of him, taking off their scarlet skull-caps; while the Noble Guard remained standing, six on one side of his Holiness and six on the other. The pope bent his head upon the prie-dieu, and seemed to spend three or four minutes in prayer; then rose, and all the purple cardinals, and bishops, and priests, of whatever degree, rose behind and beside him. Next, he went to kiss St. Peter's toe; at least I believe he kissed it, but I was not near enough to be certain; and lastly, he knelt down, and directed his devotions towards the high altar. This completed the ceremonies, and his Holiness left the church by a side door, making a short passage into the Vatican. I am very glad I have seen the pope, because now he may be crossed out of the list of sights to be seen. His proximity impressed me kindly and favorably towards him, and I did not see one face among all his cardinals (in whose number, doubtless, is his successor) which I would so soon trust as that of Pio Nono. This morning I walked as far as the gate of San Paolo, and, on approaching it, I saw the gray sharp pyramid of Caius Cestius pointing upward close to the two dark-brown, battlemented Gothic towers of the gateway, each of these very different pieces of architecture looking the more picturesque for the contrast of the other. Before approaching the gateway and pyramid, I walked onward, and soon came in sight of Monte Testaccio, the artificial hill made of potsherds. There is a gate admitting into the grounds around the hill, and a road encircling its base. At a distance, the hill looks greener than any other part of the landscape, and has all the curved outlines of a natural hill, resembling in shape a headless sphinx, or Saddleback Mountain, as I used to see it from Lenox. It is of very considerable height,--two or three hundred feet at least, I should say,--and well entitled, both by its elevation and the space it covers, to be reckoned among the hills of Rome. Its base is almost entirely surrounded with small structures, which seem to be used as farm-buildings. On the summit is a large iron cross, the Church having thought it expedient to redeem these shattered pipkins from the power of paganism, as it has so many other Roman ruins. There was a pathway up the hill, but I did not choose to ascend it under the hot sun, so steeply did it clamber up. There appears to be a good depth of soil on most parts of Monte Testaccio, but on some of the sides you observe precipices, bristling with fragments of red or brown earthenware, or pieces of vases of white unglazed clay; and it is evident that this immense pile is entirely composed of broken crockery, which I should hardly have thought would have aggregated to such a heap had it all been thrown here,--urns, teacups, porcelain, or earthen,--since the beginning of the world. I walked quite round the hill, and saw, at no great distance from it, the enclosure of the Protestant burial-ground, which lies so close to the pyramid of Caius Cestius that the latter may serve as a general monument to the dead. Deferring, for the present, a visit to the cemetery, or to the interior of the pyramid, I returned to the gateway of San Paolo, and, passing through it, took a view of it from the outside of the city wall. It is itself a portion of the wall, having been built into it by the Emperor Aurelian, so that about half of it lies within and half without. The brick or red stone material of the wall being so unlike the marble of the pyramid, the latter is as distinct, and seems as insulated, as if it stood alone in the centre of a plain; and really I do not think there is a more striking architectural object in Rome. It is in perfect condition, just as little ruined or decayed as on the day when the builder put the last peak on the summit; and it ascends steeply from its base, with a point so sharp that it looks as if it would hardly afford foothold to a bird. The marble was once white, but is now covered with a gray coating like that which has gathered upon the statues of Castor and Pollux on Monte Cavallo. Not one of the great blocks is displaced, nor seems likely to be through all time to come. They rest one upon another, in straight and even lines, and present a vast smooth triangle, ascending from a base of a hundred feet, and narrowing to an apex at the height of a hundred and twenty-five, the junctures of the marble slabs being so close that, in all these twenty centuries, only a few little tufts of grass, and a trailing plant or two, have succeeded in rooting themselves into the interstices. It is good and satisfactory to see anything which, being built for an enduring monument, has endured so faithfully, and has a prospect of such an interminable futurity before it. Once, indeed, it seemed likely to be buried; for three hundred years ago it had become covered to the depth of sixteen feet, but the soil has since been dug away from its base, which is now lower than that of the road which passes through the neighboring gate of San Paolo. Midway up the pyramid, cut in the marble, is an inscription in large Roman letters, still almost as legible as when first wrought. I did not return through the Paolo gateway, but kept onward, round the exterior of the wall, till I came to the gate of San Sebastiano. It was a hot and not a very interesting walk, with only a high bare wall of brick, broken by frequent square towers, on one side of the road, and a bank and hedge or a garden wall on the other. Roman roads are most inhospitable, offering no shade, and no seat, and no pleasant views of rustic domiciles; nothing but the wheel-track of white dust, without a foot path running by its side, and seldom any grassy margin to refresh the wayfarer's feet. April 3d.--A few days ago we visited the studio of Mr. ------, an American, who seems to have a good deal of vogue as a sculptor. We found a figure of Pocahontas, which he has repeated several times; another, which he calls "The Wept of the Wish-ton-Wish," a figure of a smiling girl playing with a cat and dog, and a schoolboy mending a pen. These two last were the only ones that gave me any pleasure, or that really had any merit; for his cleverness and ingenuity appear in homely subjects, but are quite lost in attempts at a higher ideality. Nevertheless, he has a group of the Prodigal Son, possessing more merit than I should have expected from Mr. ------, the son reclining his head on his father's breast, with an expression of utter weariness, at length finding perfect rest, while the father bends his benign countenance over him, and seems to receive him calmly into himself. This group (the plaster-cast standing beside it) is now taking shape out of an immense block of marble, and will be as indestructible as the Laocoon; an idea at once awful and ludicrous, when we consider that it is at best but a respectable production. I have since been told that Mr. ------ had stolen, adopted, we will rather say, the attitude and idea of the group from one executed by a student of the French Academy, and to be seen there in plaster. (We afterwards saw it in the Medici Casino.) Mr. ------ has now been ten years in Italy, and, after all this time, he is still entirely American in everything but the most external surface of his manners; scarcely Europeanized, or much modified even in that. He is a native of ------, but had his early breeding in New York, and might, for any polish or refinement that I can discern in him, still be a country shopkeeper in the interior of New York State or New England. How strange! For one expects to find the polish, the close grain and white purity of marble, in the artist who works in that noble material; but, after all, he handles club, and, judging by the specimens I have seen here, is apt to be clay, not of the finest, himself. Mr. ------ is sensible, shrewd, keen, clever; an ingenious workman, no doubt; with tact enough, and not destitute of taste; very agreeable and lively in his conversation, talking as fast and as naturally as a brook runs, without the slightest affectation. His naturalness is, in fact, a rather striking characteristic, in view of his lack of culture, while yet his life has been concerned with idealities and a beautiful art. What degree of taste he pretends to, he seems really to possess, nor did I hear a single idea from him that struck me as otherwise than sensible. He called to see us last evening, and talked for about two hours in a very amusing and interesting style, his topics being taken from his own personal experience, and shrewdly treated. He spoke much of Greenough, whom he described as an excellent critic of art, but possessed of not the slightest inventive genius. His statue of Washington, at the Capitol, is taken precisely from the Plodian Jupiter; his Chanting Cherubs are copied in marble from two figures in a picture by Raphael. He did nothing that was original with himself To-day we took R-----, and went to see Miss ------, and as her studio seems to be mixed up with Gibson's, we had an opportunity of glancing at some of his beautiful works. We saw a Venus and a Cupid, both of them tinted; and, side by side with them, other statues identical with these, except that the marble was left in its pure whiteness. We found Miss ------ in a little upper room. She has a small, brisk, wide-awake figure, not ungraceful; frank, simple, straightforward, and downright. She had on a robe, I think, but I did not look so low, my attention being chiefly drawn to a sort of man's sack of purple or plum-colored broadcloth, into the side-pockets of which her hands were thrust as she came forward to greet us. She withdrew one hand, however, and presented it cordially to my wife (whom she already knew) and to myself, without waiting for an introduction. She had on a shirt-front, collar, and cravat like a man's, with a brooch of Etruscan gold, and on her curly head was a picturesque little cap of black velvet, and her face was as bright and merry, and as small of feature as a child's. It looked in one aspect youthful, and yet there was something worn in it too. There never was anything so jaunty as her movement and action; she was very peculiar, but she seemed to be her actual self, and nothing affected or made up; so that, for my part, I gave her full leave to wear what may suit her best, and to behave as her inner woman prompts. I don't quite see, however, what she is to do when she grows older, for the decorum of age will not be consistent with a costume that looks pretty and excusable enough in a young woman. Miss ------ led us into a part of the extensive studio, or collection of studios, where some of her own works were to be seen: Beatrice Cenci, which did not very greatly impress me; and a monumental design, a female figure,--wholly draped even to the stockings and shoes,--in a quiet sleep. I liked this last. There was also a Puck, doubtless full of fun; but I had hardly time to glance at it. Miss ------ evidently has good gifts in her profession, and doubtless she derives great advantage from her close association with a consummate artist like Gibson; nor yet does his influence seem to interfere with the originality of her own conceptions. In one way, at least, she can hardly fail to profit,--that is, by the opportunity of showing her works to the throngs of people who go to see Gibson's own; and these are just such people as an artist would most desire to meet, and might never see in a lifetime, if left to himself. I shook hands with this frank and pleasant little person, and took leave, not without purpose of seeing her again. Within a few days, there have been many pilgrims in Rome, who come hither to attend the ceremonies of holy week, and to perform their vows, and undergo their penances. I saw two of them near the Forum yesterday, with their pilgrim staves, in the fashion of a thousand years ago. . . . I sat down on a bench near one of the chapels, and a woman immediately came up to me to beg. I at first refused; but she knelt down by my side, and instead of praying to the saint prayed to me; and, being thus treated as a canonized personage, I thought it incumbent on me to be gracious to the extent of half a paul. My wife, some time ago, came in contact with a pickpocket at the entrance of a church; and, failing in his enterprise upon her purse, he passed in, dipped his thieving fingers in the holy water, and paid his devotions at a shrine. Missing the purse, he said his prayers, in the hope, perhaps, that the saint would send him better luck another time. April 10th.--I have made no entries in my journal recently, being exceedingly lazy, partly from indisposition, as well as from an atmosphere that takes the vivacity out of everybody. Not much has happened or been effected. Last Sunday, which was Easter Sunday, I went with J----- to St. Peter's, where we arrived at about nine o'clock, and found a multitude of people already assembled in the church. The interior was arrayed in festal guise, there being a covering of scarlet damask over the pilasters of the nave, from base to capital, giving an effect of splendor, yet with a loss as to the apparent dimensions of the interior. A guard of soldiers occupied the nave, keeping open a wide space for the passage of a procession that was momently expected, and soon arrived. The crowd was too great to allow of my seeing it in detail; but I could perceive that there were priests, cardinals, Swiss guards, some of them with corselets on, and by and by the pope himself was borne up the nave, high over the heads of all, sitting under a canopy, crowned with his tiara. He floated slowly along, and was set down in the neighborhood of the high altar; and the procession being broken up, some of its scattered members might be seen here and there, about the church,--officials in antique Spanish dresses; Swiss guards, in polished steel breastplates; serving-men, in richly embroidered liveries; officers, in scarlet coats and military boots; priests, and divers other shapes of men; for the papal ceremonies seem to forego little or nothing that belongs to times past, while it includes everything appertaining to the present. I ought to have waited to witness the papal benediction from the balcony in front of the church; or, at least, to hear the famous silver trumpets, sounding from the dome; but J----- grew weary (to say the truth, so did I), and we went on a long walk, out of the nearest city gate, and back through the Janiculum, and, finally, homeward over the Ponto Rotto. Standing on the bridge, I saw the arch of the Cloaca Maxima, close by the Temple of Vesta, with the water rising within two or three feet of its keystone. The same evening we went to Monte Cavallo, where, from the gateway of the Pontifical Palace, we saw the illumination of St. Peter's. Mr. Akers, the sculptor, had recommended this position to us, and accompanied us thither, as the best point from which the illumination could be witnessed at a distance, without the incommodity of such a crowd as would be assembled at the Pincian. The first illumination, the silver one, as it is called, was very grand and delicate, describing the outline of the great edifice and crowning dome in light; while the day was not yet wholly departed. As ------ finally remarked, it seemed like the glorified spirit of the Church, made visible, or, as I will add, it looked as this famous and never-to-be-forgotten structure will look to the imaginations of men, through the waste and gloom of future ages, after it shall have gone quite to decay and ruin: the brilliant, though scarcely distinct gleam of a statelier dome than ever was seen, shining on the background of the night of Time. This simile looked prettier in my fancy than I have made it look on paper. After we had enjoyed the silver illumination a good while, and when all the daylight had given place to the constellated night, the distant outline of St. Peter's burst forth, in the twinkling of an eye, into a starry blaze, being quite the finest effect that I ever witnessed. I stayed to see it, however, only a few minutes; for I was quite ill and feverish with a cold,--which, indeed, I have seldom been free from, since my first breathing of the genial atmosphere of Rome. This pestilence kept me within doors all the next day, and prevented me from seeing the beautiful fireworks that were exhibited in the evening from the platform on the Pincian, above the Piazza del Popolo. On Thursday, I paid another visit to the sculpture-gallery of the Capitol, where I was particularly struck with a bust of Cato the Censor, who must have been the most disagreeable, stubborn, ugly-tempered, pig-headed, narrow-minded, strong-willed old Roman that ever lived. The collection of busts here and at the Vatican are most interesting, many of the individual heads being full of character, and commending themselves by intrinsic evidence as faithful portraits of the originals. These stone people have stood face to face with Caesar, and all the other emperors, and with statesmen, soldiers, philosophers, and poets of the antique world, and have been to them like their reflections in a mirror. It is the next thing to seeing the men themselves. We went afterwards into the Palace of the Conservatori, and saw, among various other interesting things, the bronze wolf suckling Romulus and Remus, who sit beneath her dugs, with open mouths to receive the milk. On Friday, we all went to see the Pope's Palace on the Quirinal. There was a vast hall, and an interminable suite of rooms, cased with marble, floored with marble or mosaics or inlaid wood, adorned with frescos on the vaulted ceilings, and many of them lined with Gobelin tapestry; not wofully faded, like almost all that I have hitherto seen, but brilliant as pictures. Indeed, some of them so closely resembled paintings, that I could hardly believe they were not so; and the effect was even richer than that of oil-paintings. In every room there was a crucifix; but I did not see a single nook or corner where anybody could have dreamed of being comfortable. Nevertheless, as a stately and solemn residence for his Holiness, it is quite a satisfactory affair. Afterwards, we went into the Pontifical Gardens, connected with the palace. They are very extensive, and laid out in straight avenues, bordered with walls of box, as impervious as if of stone,--not less than twenty feet high, and pierced with lofty archways, cut in the living wall. Some of the avenues were overshadowed with trees, the tops of which bent over and joined one another from either side, so as to resemble a side aisle of a Gothic cathedral. Marble sculptures, much weather-stained, and generally broken-nosed, stood along these stately walks; there were many fountains gushing up into the sunshine; we likewise found a rich flower-garden, containing rare specimens of exotic flowers, and gigantic cactuses, and also an aviary, with vultures, doves, and singing birds. We did not see half the garden, but, stiff and formal as its general arrangement is, it is a beautiful place,--a delightful, sunny, and serene seclusion. Whatever it may be to the pope, two young lovers might find the Garden of Eden here, and never desire to stray out of its precincts. They might fancy angels standing in the long, glimmering vistas of the avenues. It would suit me well enough to have my daily walk along such straight paths, for I think them favorable to thought, which is apt to be disturbed by variety and unexpectedness. April 12th.--We all, except R-----, went to-day to the Vatican, where we found our way to the Stanze of Raphael, these being four rooms, or halls, painted with frescos. No doubt they were once very brilliant and beautiful; but they have encountered hard treatment since Raphael's time, especially when the soldiers of the Constable de Bourbon occupied these apartments, and made fires on the mosaic floors. The entire walls and ceilings are covered with pictures; but the handiwork or designs of Raphael consist of paintings on the four sides of each room, and include several works of art. The School of Athens is perhaps the most celebrated; and the longest side of the largest hall is occupied by a battle-piece, of which the Emperor Constantine is the hero, and which covers almost space enough for a real battle-field. There was a wonderful light in one of the pictures,--that of St. Peter awakened in his prison, by the angel; it really seemed to throw a radiance into the hall below. I shall not pretend, however, to have been sensible of any particular rapture at the sight of these frescos; so faded as they are, so battered by the mischances of years, insomuch that, through all the power and glory of Raphael's designs, the spectator cannot but be continually sensible that the groundwork of them is an old plaster wall. They have been scrubbed, I suppose,--brushed, at least,--a thousand times over, till the surface, brilliant or soft, as Raphael left it, must have been quite rubbed off, and with it, all the consummate finish, and everything that made them originally delightful. The sterner features remain, the skeleton of thought, but not the beauty that once clothed it. In truth, the frescos, excepting a few figures, never had the real touch of Raphael's own hand upon them, having been merely designed by him, and finished by his scholars, or by other artists. The halls themselves are specimens of antique magnificence, paved with elaborate mosaics; and wherever there is any wood-work, it is richly carved with foliage and figures. In their newness, and probably for a hundred years afterwards, there could not have been so brilliant a suite of rooms in the world. Connected with them--at any rate, not far distant--is the little Chapel of San Lorenzo, the very site of which, among the thousands of apartments of the Vatican, was long forgotten, and its existence only known by tradition. After it had been walled up, however, beyond the memory of man, there was still a rumor of some beautiful frescos by Fra Angelico, in an old chapel of Pope Nicholas V., that had strangely disappeared out of the palace, and, search at length being made, it was discovered, and entered through a window. It is a small, lofty room, quite covered over with frescos of sacred subjects, both on the walls and ceiling, a good deal faded, yet pretty distinctly preserved. It would have been no misfortune to me, if the little old chapel had remained still hidden. We next issued into the Loggie, which consist of a long gallery, or arcade or colonnade, the whole extent of which was once beautifully adorned by Raphael. These pictures are almost worn away, and so defaced as to be untraceable and unintelligible, along the side wall of the gallery; although traceries of Arabesque, and compartments where there seem to have been rich paintings, but now only an indistinguishable waste of dull color, are still to be seen. In the coved ceiling, however, there are still some bright frescos, in better preservation than any others; not particularly beautiful, nevertheless. I remember to have seen (indeed, we ourselves possess them) a series of very spirited and energetic engravings, old and coarse, of these frescos, the subject being the Creation, and the early Scripture history; and I really think that their translation of the pictures is better than the original. On reference to Murray, I find that little more than the designs is attributed to Raphael, the execution being by Giulio Romano and other artists. Escaping from these forlorn splendors, we went into the sculpture-gallery, where I was able to enjoy, in some small degree, two or three wonderful works of art; and had a perception that there were a thousand other wonders around me. It is as if the statues kept, for the most part, a veil about them, which they sometimes withdraw, and let their beauty gleam upon my sight; only a glimpse, or two or three glimpses, or a little space of calm enjoyment, and then I see nothing but a discolored marble image again. The Minerva Medica revealed herself to-day. I wonder whether other people are more fortunate than myself, and can invariably find their way to the inner soul of a work of art. I doubt it; they look at these things for just a minute, and pass on, without any pang of remorse, such as I feel, for quitting them so soon and so willingly. I am partly sensible that some unwritten rules of taste are making their way into my mind; that all this Greek beauty has done something towards refining me, though I am still, however, a very sturdy Goth. . . . April 15th.--Yesterday I went with J----- to the Forum, and descended into the excavations at the base of the Capitol, and on the site of the Basilica of Julia. The essential elements of old Rome are there: columns, single, or in groups of two or three, still erect, but battered and bruised at some forgotten time with infinite pains and labor; fragments of other columns lying prostrate, together with rich capitals and friezes; the bust of a colossal female statue, showing the bosom and upper part of the arms, but headless; a long, winding space of pavement, forming part of the ancient ascent to the Capitol, still as firm and solid as ever; the foundation of the Capitol itself, wonderfully massive, built of immense square blocks of stone, doubtless three thousand years old, and durable for whatever may be the lifetime of the world; the Arch of Septimius, Severus, with bas-reliefs of Eastern wars; the Column of Phocas, with the rude series of steps ascending on four sides to its pedestal; the floor of beautiful and precious marbles in the Basilica of Julia, the slabs cracked across,--the greater part of them torn up and removed, the grass and weeds growing up through the chinks of what remain; heaps of bricks, shapeless bits of granite, and other ancient rubbish, among which old men are lazily rummaging for specimens that a stranger may be induced to buy,--this being an employment that suits the indolence of a modern Roman. The level of these excavations is about fifteen feet, I should judge, below the present street, which passes through the Forum, and only a very small part of this alien surface has been removed, though there can be no doubt that it hides numerous treasures of art and monuments of history. Yet these remains do not make that impression of antiquity upon me which Gothic ruins do. Perhaps it is so because they belong to quite another system of society and epoch of time, and, in view of them, we forget all that has intervened betwixt them and us; being morally unlike and disconnected with them, and not belonging to the same train of thought; so that we look across a gulf to the Roman ages, and do not realize how wide the gulf is. Yet in that intervening valley lie Christianity, the Dark Ages, the feudal system, chivalry and romance, and a deeper life of the human race than Rome brought to the verge of the gulf. To-day we went to the Colonna Palace, where we saw some fine pictures, but, I think, no masterpieces. They did not depress and dishearten me so much as the pictures in Roman palaces usually do; for they were in remarkably good order as regards frames and varnish; indeed, I rather suspect some of them had been injured by the means adopted to preserve their beauty. The palace is now occupied by the French Ambassador, who probably looks upon the pictures as articles of furniture and household adornment, and does not choose to have squares of black and forlorn canvas upon his walls. There were a few noble portraits by Vandyke; a very striking one by Holbein, one or two by Titian, also by Guercino, and some pictures by Rubens, and other forestieri painters, which refreshed my weary eyes. But--what chiefly interested me was the magnificent and stately hall of the palace; fifty-five of my paces in length, besides a large apartment at either end, opening into it through a pillared space, as wide as the gateway of a city. The pillars are of giallo antico, and there are pilasters of the same all the way up and down the walls, forming a perspective of the richest aspect, especially as the broad cornice flames with gilding, and the spaces between the pilasters are emblazoned with heraldic achievements and emblems in gold, and there are Venetian looking-glasses, richly decorated over the surface with beautiful pictures of flowers and Cupids, through which you catch the gleam of the mirror; and two rows of splendid chandeliers extend from end to end of the hall, which, when lighted up, if ever it be lighted up, now-a-nights, must be the most brilliant interior that ever mortal eye beheld. The ceiling glows with pictures in fresco, representing scenes connected with the history of the Colonna family; and the floor is paved with beautiful marbles, polished and arranged in square and circular compartments; and each of the many windows is set in a great architectural frame of precious marble, as large as the portal of a door. The apartment at the farther end of the hall is elevated above it, and is attained by several marble steps, whence it must have been glorious in former days to have looked down upon a gorgeous throng of princes, cardinals, warriors, and ladies, in such rich attire as might be worn when the palace was built. It is singular how much freshness and brightness it still retains; and the only objects to mar the effect were some ancient statues and busts, not very good in themselves, and now made dreary of aspect by their corroded surfaces,--the result of long burial under ground. In the room at the entrance of the hall are two cabinets, each a wonder in its way,--one being adorned with precious stones; the other with ivory carvings of Michael Angelo's Last Judgment, and of the frescos of Raphael's Loggie. The world has ceased to be so magnificent as it once was. Men make no such marvels nowadays. The only defect that I remember in this hall was in the marble steps that ascend to the elevated apartment at the end of it; a large piece had been broken out of one of them, leaving a rough irregular gap in the polished marble stair. It is not easy to conceive what violence can have done this, without also doing mischief to all the other splendor around it. April 16th.--We went this morning to the Academy of St. Luke (the Fine Arts Academy at Rome) in the Via Bonella, close by the Forum. We rang the bell at the house door; and after a few moments it was unlocked or unbolted by some unseen agency from above, no one making his appearance to admit us. We ascended two or three flights of stairs, and entered a hall, where was a young man, the custode, and two or three artists engaged in copying some of the pictures. The collection not being vastly large, and the pictures being in more presentable condition than usual, I enjoyed them more than I generally do; particularly a Virgin and Child by Vandyke, where two angels are singing and playing, one on a lute and the other on a violin, to remind the holy infant of the strains he used to hear in heaven. It is one of the few pictures that there is really any pleasure in looking at. There were several paintings by Titian, mostly of a voluptuous character, but not very charming; also two or more by Guido, one of which, representing Fortune, is celebrated. They did not impress me much, nor do I find myself strongly drawn towards Guido, though there is no other painter who seems to achieve things so magically and inscrutably as he sometimes does. Perhaps it requires a finer taste than mine to appreciate him; and yet I do appreciate him so far as to see that his Michael, for instance, is perfectly beautiful. . . . In the gallery, there are whole rows of portraits of members of the Academy of St. Luke, most of whom, judging by their physiognomies, were very commonplace people; a fact which makes itself visible in a portrait, however much the painter may try to flatter his sitter. Several of the pictures by Titian, Paul Veronese, and other artists, now exhibited in the gallery, were formerly kept in a secret cabinet in the Capitol, being considered of a too voluptuous character for the public eye. I did not think them noticeably indecorous, as compared with a hundred other pictures that are shown and looked at without scruple;--Calypso and her nymphs, a knot of nude women by Titian, is perhaps as objectionable as any. But even Titian's flesh-tints cannot keep, and have not kept their warmth through all these centuries. The illusion and lifelikeness effervesces and exhales out of a picture as it grows old; and we go on talking of a charm that has forever vanished. From St. Luke's we went to San Pietro in Vincoli, occupying a fine position on or near the summit of the Esquiline mount. A little abortion of a man (and, by the by, there are more diminutive and ill-shapen men and women in Rome than I ever saw elsewhere, a phenomenon to be accounted for, perhaps, by their custom of wrapping the new-born infant in swaddling-clothes), this two-foot abortion hastened before us, as we drew nigh, to summon the sacristan to open the church door. It was a needless service, for which we rewarded him with two baiocchi. San Pietro is a simple and noble church, consisting of a nave divided from the side aisles by rows of columns, that once adorned some ancient temple; and its wide, unencumbered interior affords better breathing-space than most churches in Rome. The statue of Moses occupies a niche in one of the side aisles on the right, not far from the high altar. I found it grand and sublime, with a beard flowing down like a cataract; a truly majestic figure, but not so benign as it were desirable that such strength should be. The horns, about which so much has been said, are not a very prominent feature of the statue, being merely two diminutive tips rising straight up over his forehead, neither adding to the grandeur of the head, nor detracting sensibly from it. The whole force of this statue is not to be felt in one brief visit, but I agree with an English gentleman, who, with a large party, entered the church while we were there, in thinking that Moses has "very fine features,"--a compliment for which the colossal Hebrew ought to have made the Englishman a bow. Besides the Moses, the church contains some attractions of a pictorial kind, which are reposited in the sacristy, into which we passed through a side door. The most remarkable of these pictures is a face and bust of Hope, by Guido, with beautiful eyes lifted upwards; it has a grace which artists are continually trying to get into their innumerable copies, but always without success; for, indeed, though nothing is more true than the existence of this charm in the picture, yet if you try to analyze it, or even look too intently at it, it vanishes, till you look again with more trusting simplicity. Leaving the church, we wandered to the Coliseum, and to the public grounds contiguous to them, where a score and more of French drummers were beating each man his drum, without reference to any rub-a-dub but his own. This seems to be a daily or periodical practice and point of duty with them. After resting ourselves on one of the marble benches, we came slowly home, through the Basilica of Constantine, and along the shady sides of the streets and piazzas, sometimes, perforce, striking boldly through the white sunshine, which, however, was not so hot as to shrivel us up bodily. It has been a most beautiful and perfect day as regards weather, clear and bright, very warm in the sunshine, yet freshened throughout by a quiet stir in the air. Still there is something in this air malevolent, or, at least, not friendly. The Romans lie down and fall asleep in it, in any vacant part of the streets, and wherever they can find any spot sufficiently clean, and among the ruins of temples. I would not sleep in the open air for whatever my life may be worth. On our way home, sitting in one of the narrow streets, we saw an old woman spinning with a distaff; a far more ancient implement than the spinning-wheel, which the housewives of other nations have long since laid aside. April 18th.--Yesterday, at noon, the whole family of us set out on a visit to the Villa Borghese and its grounds, the entrance to which is just outside of the Porta del Popolo. After getting within the grounds, however, there is a long walk before reaching the casino, and we found the sun rather uncomfortably hot, and the road dusty and white in the sunshine; nevertheless, a footpath ran alongside of it most of the way through the grass and among the young trees. It seems to me that the trees do not put forth their leaves with nearly the same magical rapidity in this southern land at the approach of summer, as they do in more northerly countries. In these latter, having a much shorter time to develop themselves, they feel the necessity of making the most of it. But the grass, in the lawns and enclosures along which we passed, looked already fit to be mowed, and it was interspersed with many flowers. Saturday being, I believe, the only day of the week on which visitors are admitted to the casino, there were many parties in carriages, artists on foot, gentlemen on horseback, and miscellaneous people, to whom the door was opened by a custode on ringing a bell. The whole of the basement floor of the casino, comprising a suite of beautiful rooms, is filled with statuary. The entrance hall is a very splendid apartment, brightly frescoed, and paved with ancient mosaics, representing the combats with beasts and gladiators in the Coliseum, curious, though very rudely and awkwardly designed, apparently after the arts had begun to decline. Many of the specimens of sculpture displayed in these rooms are fine, but none of them, I think, possess the highest merit. An Apollo is beautiful; a group of a fighting Amazon, and her enemies trampled under her horse's feet, is very impressive; a Faun, copied from that of Praxiteles, and another, who seems to be dancing, were exceedingly pleasant to look at. I like these strange, sweet, playful, rustic creatures, . . . . linked so prettily, without monstrosity, to the lower tribes. . . . Their character has never, that I know of, been wrought out in literature; and something quite good, funny, and philosophical, as well as poetic, might very likely be educed from them. . . . The faun is a natural and delightful link betwixt human and brute life, with something of a divine character intermingled. The gallery, as it is called, on the basement floor of the casino, is sixty feet in length, by perhaps a third as much in breadth, and is (after all I have seen at the Colonna Palace and elsewhere) a more magnificent hall than I imagined to be in existence. It is floored with rich marble in beautifully arranged compartments, and the walls are almost entirely eased with marble of various sorts, the prevailing kind being giallo antico, intermixed with verd antique, and I know not what else; but the splendor of the giallo antico gives the character to the room, and the large and deep niches along the walls appear to be lined with the same material. Without coming to Italy, one can have no idea of what beauty and magnificence are produced by these fittings up of polished marble. Marble to an American means nothing but white limestone. This hall, moreover, is adorned with pillars of Oriental alabaster, and wherever is a space vacant of precious and richly colored marble it is frescoed with arabesque ornaments; and over the whole is a coved and vaulted ceiling, glowing with picture. There never can be anything richer than the whole effect. As to the sculpture here it was not very fine, so far as I can remember, consisting chiefly of busts of the emperors in porphyry; but they served a good purpose in the upholstery way. There were also magnificent tables, each composed of one great slab of porphyry; and also vases of nero antico, and other rarest substance. It remains to be mentioned that, on this almost summer day, I was quite chilled in passing through these glorious halls; no fireplace anywhere; no possibility of comfort; and in the hot season, when their coolness might be agreeable, it would be death to inhabit them. Ascending a long winding staircase, we arrived at another suite of rooms, containing a good many not very remarkable pictures, and a few more pieces of statuary. Among the latter, is Canova's statue of Pauline, the sister of Bonaparte, who is represented with but little drapery, and in the character of Venus holding the apple in her hand. It is admirably done, and, I have no doubt, a perfect likeness; very beautiful too; but it is wonderful to see how the artificial elegance of the woman of this world makes itself perceptible in spite of whatever simplicity she could find in almost utter nakedness. The statue does not afford pleasure in the contemplation. In one of these upper rooms are some works of Bernini; two of them, Aeneas and Anchises, and David on the point of slinging a stone at Goliath, have great merit, and do not tear and rend themselves quite out of the laws and limits of marble, like his later sculpture. Here is also his Apollo overtaking Daphne, whose feet take root, whose, finger-tips sprout into twigs, and whose tender body roughens round about with bark, as he embraces her. It did not seem very wonderful to me; not so good as Hillard's description of it made me expect; and one does not enjoy these freaks in marble. We were glad to emerge from the casino into the warm sunshine; and, for my part, I made the best of my way to a large fountain, surrounded by a circular stone seat of wide sweep, and sat down in a sunny segment of the circle. Around grew a solemn company of old trees,--ilexes, I believe,-- with huge, contorted trunks and evergreen branches, . . . . deep groves, sunny openings, the airy gush of fountains, marble statues, dimly visible in recesses of foliage, great urns and vases, terminal figures, temples, --all these works of art looking as if they had stood there long enough to feel at home, and to be on friendly and familiar terms with the grass and trees. It is a most beautiful place, . . . . and the Malaria is its true master and inhabitant! April 22d.--We have been recently to the studio of Mr. Brown [now dead], the American landscape-painter, and were altogether surprised and delighted with his pictures. He is a plain, homely Yankee, quite unpolished by his many years' residence in Italy; he talks ungrammatically, and in Yankee idioms; walks with a strange, awkward gait and stooping shoulders; is altogether unpicturesque; but wins one's confidence by his very lack of grace. It is not often that we see an artist so entirely free from affectation in his aspect and deportment. His pictures were views of Swiss and Italian scenery, and were most beautiful and true. One of them, a moonlight picture, was really magical,-- the moon shining so brightly that it seemed to throw a light even beyond the limits of the picture,--and yet his sunrises and sunsets, and noontides too, were nowise inferior to this, although their excellence required somewhat longer study, to be fully appreciated. I seemed to receive more pleasure front Mr. Brown's pictures than from any of the landscapes by the old masters; and the fact serves to strengthen me in the belief that the most delicate if not the highest charm of a picture is evanescent, and that we continue to admire pictures prescriptively and by tradition, after the qualities that first won them their fame have vanished. I suppose Claude was a greater landscape-painter than Brown; but for my own pleasure I would prefer one of the latter artist's pictures,--those of the former being quite changed from what he intended them to be by the effect of time on his pigments. Mr. Brown showed us some drawings from nature, done with incredible care and minuteness of detail, as studies for his paintings. We complimented him on his patience; but he said, "O, it's not patience,--it's love!" In fact, it was a patient and most successful wooing of a beloved object, which at last rewarded him by yielding itself wholly. We have likewise been to Mr. B------'s [now dead] studio, where we saw several pretty statues and busts, and among them an Eve, with her wreath of fig-leaves lying across her poor nudity; comely in some points, but with a frightful volume of thighs and calves. I do not altogether see the necessity of ever sculpturing another nakedness. Man is no longer a naked animal; his clothes are as natural to him as his skin, and sculptors have no more right to undress him than to flay him. Also, we have seen again William Story's Cleopatra,--a work of genuine thought and energy, representing a terribly dangerous woman; quiet enough for the moment, but very likely to spring upon you like a tigress. It is delightful to escape to his creations from this universal prettiness, which seems to be the highest conception of the crowd of modern sculptors, and which they almost invariably attain. Miss Bremer called on us the other day. We find her very little changed from what she was when she came to take tea and spend an evening at our little red cottage, among the Berkshire hills, and went away so dissatisfied with my conversational performances, and so laudatory of my brow and eyes, while so severely criticising my poor mouth and chin. She is the funniest little old fairy in person whom one can imagine, with a huge nose, to which all the rest of her is but an insufficient appendage; but you feel at once that she is most gentle, kind, womanly, sympathetic, and true. She talks English fluently, in a low quiet voice, but with such an accent that it is impossible to understand her without the closest attention. This was the real cause of the failure of our Berkshire interview; for I could not guess, half the time, what she was saying, and, of course, had to take an uncertain aim with my responses. A more intrepid talker than myself would have shouted his ideas across the gulf; but, for me, there must first be a close and unembarrassed contiguity with my companion, or I cannot say one real word. I doubt whether I have ever really talked with half a dozen persons in my life, either men or women. To-day my wife and I have been at the picture and sculpture galleries of the Capitol. I rather enjoyed looking at several of the pictures, though at this moment I particularly remember only a very beautiful face of a man, one of two heads on the same canvas by Vandyke. Yes; I did look with new admiration at Paul Veronese's "Rape of Europa." It must have been, in its day, the most brilliant and rejoicing picture, the most voluptuous, the most exuberant, that ever put the sunshine to shame. The bull has all Jupiter in him, so tender and gentle, yet so passionate, that you feel it indecorous to look at him; and Europa, under her thick rich stuffs and embroideries, is all a woman. What a pity that such a picture should fade, and perplex the beholder with such splendor shining through such forlornness! We afterwards went into the sculpture-gallery, where I looked at the Faun of Praxiteles, and was sensible of a peculiar charm in it; a sylvan beauty and homeliness, friendly and wild at once. The lengthened, but not preposterous ears, and the little tail, which we infer, have an exquisite effect, and make the spectator smile in his very heart. This race of fauns was the most delightful of all that antiquity imagined. It seems to me that a story, with all sorts of fun and pathos in it, might be contrived on the idea of their species having become intermingled with the human race; a family with the faun blood in them, having prolonged itself from the classic era till our own days. The tail might have disappeared, by dint of constant intermarriages with ordinary mortals; but the pretty hairy ears should occasionally reappear in members of the family; and the moral instincts and intellectual characteristics of the faun might be most picturesquely brought out, without detriment to the human interest of the story. Fancy this combination in the person of a young lady! I have spoken of Mr. Gibson's colored statues. It seems (at least Mr. Nichols tells me) that he stains them with tobacco juice. . . . Were he to send a Cupid to America, he need not trouble himself to stain it beforehand. April 25th.--Night before last, my wife and I took a moonlight ramble through Rome, it being a very beautiful night, warm enough for comfort, and with no perceptible dew or dampness. We set out at about nine o'clock, and, our general direction being towards the Coliseum, we soon came to the Fountain of Trevi, full on the front of which the moonlight fell, making Bernini's sculptures look stately and beautiful, though the semicircular gush and fall of the cascade, and the many jets of the water, pouring and bubbling into the great marble basin, are of far more account than Neptune and his steeds, and the rest of the figures. . . . We ascended the Capitoline Hill, and I felt a satisfaction in placing my hand on those immense blocks of stone, the remains of the ancient Capitol, which form the foundation of the present edifice, and will make a sure basis for as many edifices as posterity may choose to rear upon it, till the end of the world. It is wonderful, the solidity with which those old Romans built; one would suppose they contemplated the whole course of Time as the only limit of their individual life. This is not so strange in the days of the Republic, when, probably, they believed in the permanence of their institutions; but they still seemed to build for eternity, in the reigns of the emperors, when neither rulers nor people had any faith or moral substance, or laid any earnest grasp on life. Reaching the top of the Capitoline Hill, we ascended the steps of the portal of the Palace of the Senator, and looked down into the piazza, with the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in the centre of it. The architecture that surrounds the piazza is very ineffective; and so, in my opinion, are all the other architectural works of Michael Angelo, including St. Peter's itself, of which he has made as little as could possibly be made of such a vast pile of material. He balances everything in such a way that it seems but half of itself. We soon descended into the piazza, and walked round and round the statue of Marcus Aurelius, contemplating it from every point and admiring it in all. . . . On these beautiful moonlight nights, Rome appears to keep awake and stirring, though in a quiet and decorous way. It is, in fact, the pleasantest time for promenades, and we both felt less wearied than by any promenade in the daytime, of similar extent, since our residence in Rome. In future, I mean to walk often after nightfall. Yesterday, we set out betimes, and ascended the dome of St. Peter's. The best view of the interior of the church, I think, is from the first gallery beneath the dome. The whole inside of the dome is set with mosaic-work, the separate pieces being, so far as I could see, about half an inch square. Emerging on the roof, we had a fine view of all the surrounding Rome, including the Mediterranean Sea in the remote distance. Above us still rose the whole mountain of the great dome, and it made an impression on me of greater height and size than I had yet been able to receive. The copper ball at the summit looked hardly bigger than a man could lift; and yet, a little while afterwards, U----, J-----, and I stood all together in that ball, which could have contained a dozen more along with us. The esplanade of the roof is, of course, very extensive; and along the front of it are ranged the statues which we see from below, and which, on nearer examination, prove to be roughly hewn giants. There is a small house on the roof, where, probably, the custodes of this part of the edifice reside; and there is a fountain gushing abundantly into a stone trough, that looked like an old sarcophagus. It is strange where the water comes from at such a height. The children tasted it, and pronounced it very warm and disagreeable. After taking in the prospect on all sides we rang a bell, which summoned a man, who directed us towards a door in the side of the dome, where a custode was waiting to admit us. Hitherto the ascent had been easy, along a slope without stairs, up which, I believe, people sometimes ride on donkeys. The rest of the way we mounted steep and narrow staircases, winding round within the wall, or between the two walls of the dome, and growing narrower and steeper, till, finally, there is but a perpendicular iron ladder, by means of which to climb into the copper ball. Except through small windows and peep-holes, there is no external prospect of a higher point than the roof of the church. Just beneath the ball there is a circular room capable of containing a large company, and a door which ought to give access to a gallery on the outside; but the custode informed us that this door is never opened. As I have said, U----, J-----, and I clambered into the copper ball, which we found as hot as an oven; and, after putting our hands on its top, and on the summit of St. Peter's, were glad to clamber down again. I have made some mistake, after all, in my narration. There certainly is a circular balcony at the top of the dome, for I remember walking round it, and looking, not only across the country, but downwards along the ribs of the dome; to which are attached the iron contrivances for illuminating it on Easter Sunday. . . . Before leaving the church we went to look at the mosaic copy of the "Transfiguration," because we were going to see the original in the Vatican, and wished to compare the two. Going round to the entrance of the Vatican, we went first to the manufactory of mosaics, to which we had a ticket of admission. We found it a long series of rooms, in which the mosaic artists were at work, chiefly in making some medallions of the heads of saints for the new church of St. Paul's. It was rather coarse work, and it seemed to me that the mosaic copy was somewhat stiffer and more wooden than the original, the bits of stone not flowing into color quite so freely as paint from a brush. There was no large picture now in process of being copied; but two or three artists were employed on small and delicate subjects. One had a Holy Family of Raphael in hand; and the Sibyls of Guercino and Domenichino were hanging on the wall, apparently ready to be put into mosaic. Wherever great skill and delicacy, on the artists' part were necessary, they seemed quite adequate to the occasion; but, after all, a mosaic of any celebrated picture is but a copy of a copy. The substance employed is a stone-paste, of innumerable different views, and in bits of various sizes, quantities of which were seen in cases along the whole series of rooms. We next ascended an amazing height of staircases, and walked along I know not what extent of passages, . . . . till we reached the picture-gallery of the Vatican, into which I had never been before. There are but three rooms, all lined with red velvet, on which hung about fifty pictures, each one of them, no doubt, worthy to be considered a masterpiece. In the first room were three Murillos, all so beautiful that I could have spent the day happily in looking at either of them; for, methinks, of all painters he is the tenderest and truest. I could not enjoy these pictures now, however, because in the next room, and visible through the open door, hung the "Transfiguration." Approaching it, I felt that the picture was worthy of its fame, and was far better than I could at once appreciate; admirably preserved, too, though I fully believe it must have possessed a charm when it left Raphael's hand that has now vanished forever. As church furniture and an external adornment, the mosaic copy is preferable to the original, but no copy could ever reproduce all the life and expression which we see here. Opposite to it hangs the "Communion of St. Jerome," the aged, dying saint, half torpid with death already, partaking of the sacrament, and a sunny garland of cherubs in the upper part of the picture, looking down upon him, and quite comforting the spectator with the idea that the old man needs only to be quite dead in order to flit away with them. As for the other pictures I did but glance at, and have forgotten them. The "Transfiguration" is finished with great minuteness and detail, the weeds and blades of grass in the foreground being as distinct as if they were growing in a natural soil. A partly decayed stick of wood with the bark is likewise given in close imitation of nature. The reflection of a foot of one of the apostles is seen in a pool of water at the verge of the picture. One or two heads and arms seem almost to project from the canvas. There is great lifelikeness and reality, as well as higher qualities. The face of Jesus, being so high aloft and so small in the distance, I could not well see; but I am impressed with the idea that it looks too much like human flesh and blood to be in keeping with the celestial aspect of the figure, or with the probabilities of the scene, when the divinity and immortality of the Saviour beamed from within him through the earthly features that ordinarily shaded him. As regards the composition of the picture, I am not convinced of the propriety of its being in two so distinctly separate parts,--the upper portion not thinking of the lower, and the lower portion not being aware of the higher. It symbolizes, however, the spiritual short-sightedness of mankind that, amid the trouble and grief of the lower picture, not a single individual, either of those who seek help or those who would willingly afford it, lifts his eyes to that region, one glimpse of which would set everything right. One or two of the disciples point upward, but without really knowing what abundance of help is to be had there. April 27th.--To-day we have all been with Mr. Akers to some studios of painters; first to that of Mr. Wilde, an artist originally from Boston. His pictures are principally of scenes from Venice, and are miracles of color, being as bright as if the light were transmitted through rubies and sapphires. And yet, after contemplating them awhile, we became convinced that the painter had not gone in the least beyond nature, but, on the contrary, had fallen short of brilliancies which no palette, or skill, or boldness in using color, could attain. I do not quite know whether it is best to attempt these things. They may be found in nature, no doubt, but always so tempered by what surrounds them, so put out of sight even while they seem full before our eyes, that we question the accuracy of a faithful reproduction of them on canvas. There was a picture of sunset, the whole sky of which would have outshone any gilded frame that could have been put around it. There was a most gorgeous sketch of a handful of weeds and leaves, such as may be seen strewing acres of forest-ground in an American autumn. I doubt whether any other man has ever ventured to paint a picture like either of these two, the Italian sunset or the American autumnal foliage. Mr. Wilde, who is still young, talked with genuine feeling and enthusiasm of his art, and is certainly a man of genius. We next went to the studio of an elderly Swiss artist, named Mueller, I believe, where we looked at a great many water-color and crayon drawings of scenes in Italy, Greece, and Switzerland. The artist was a quiet, respectable, somewhat heavy-looking old gentleman, from whose aspect one would expect a plodding pertinacity of character rather than quickness of sensibility. He must have united both these qualities, however, to produce such pictures as these, such faithful transcripts of whatever Nature has most beautiful to show, and which she shows only to those who love her deeply and patiently. They are wonderful pictures, compressing plains, seas, and mountains, with miles and miles of distance, into the space of a foot or two, without crowding anything or leaving out a feature, and diffusing the free, blue atmosphere throughout. The works of the English watercolor artists which I saw at the Manchester Exhibition seemed to me nowise equal to these. Now, here are three artists, Mr. Brown, Mr. Wilde, and Mr. Mueller, who have smitten me with vast admiration within these few days past, while I am continually turning away disappointed from the landscapes of the most famous among the old masters, unable to find any charm or illusion in them. Yet I suppose Claude, Poussin, and Salvator Rosa must have won their renown by real achievements. But the glory of a picture fades like that of a flower. Contiguous to Mr. Mueller's studio was that of a young German artist, not long resident in Rome, and Mr. Akers proposed that we should go in there, as a matter of kindness to the young man, who is scarcely known at all, and seldom has a visitor to look at his pictures. His studio comprised his whole establishment; for there was his little bed, with its white drapery, in a corner of the small room, and his dressing-table, with its brushes and combs, while the easel and the few sketches of Italian scenes and figures occupied the foreground. I did not like his pictures very well, but would gladly have bought them all if I could have afforded it, the artist looked so cheerful, patient, and quiet, doubtless amidst huge discouragement. He is probably stubborn of purpose, and is the sort of man who will improve with every year of his life. We could not speak his language, and were therefore spared the difficulty of paying him any compliments; but Miss Shepard said a few kind words to him in German. and seemed quite to win his heart, insomuch that he followed her with bows and smiles a long way down the staircase. It is a terrible business, this looking at pictures, whether good or bad, in the presence of the artists who paint them; it is as great a bore as to hear a poet read his own verses. It takes away all my pleasure in seeing the pictures, and even remakes me question the genuineness of the impressions which I receive from them. After this latter visit Mr. Akers conducted us to the shop of the jeweller Castellani, who is a great reproducer of ornaments in the old Roman and Etruscan fashion. These antique styles are very fashionable just now, and some of the specimens he showed us were certainly very beautiful, though I doubt whether their quaintness and old-time curiousness, as patterns of gewgaws dug out of immemorial tombs, be not their greatest charm. We saw the toilet-case of an Etruscan lady,--that is to say, a modern imitation of it,--with her rings for summer and winter, and for every day of the week, and for thumb and fingers; her ivory comb; her bracelets; and more knick-knacks than I can half remember. Splendid things of our own time were likewise shown us; a necklace of diamonds worth eighteen thousand scudi, together with emeralds and opals and great pearls. Finally we came away, and my wife and Miss Shepard were taken up by the Misses Weston, who drove with them to visit the Villa Albani. During their drive my wife happened to raise her arm, and Miss Shepard espied a little Greek cross of gold which had attached itself to the lace of her sleeve. . . . Pray heaven the jeweller may not discover his loss before we have time to restore the spoil! He is apparently so free and careless in displaying his precious wares,--putting inestimable genes and brooches great and small into the hands of strangers like ourselves, and leaving scores of them strewn on the top of his counter,--that it would seem easy enough to take a diamond or two; but I suspect there must needs be a sharp eye somewhere. Before we left the shop he requested me to honor him with my autograph in a large book that was full of the names of his visitors. This is probably a measure of precaution. April 30th.--I went yesterday to the sculpture-gallery of the Capitol, and looked pretty thoroughly through the busts of the illustrious men, and less particularly at those of the emperors and their relatives. I likewise took particular note of the Faun of Praxiteles, because the idea keeps recurring to me of writing a little romance about it, and for that reason I shall endeavor to set down a somewhat minutely itemized detail of the statue and its surroundings. . . . We have had beautiful weather for two or three days, very warm in the sun, yet always freshened by the gentle life of a breeze, and quite cool enough the moment you pass within the limit of the shade. . . . In the morning there are few people there (on the Pincian) except the gardeners, lazily trimming the borders, or filling their watering-pots out of the marble-brimmed basin of the fountain; French soldiers, in their long mixed-blue surtouts, and wide scarlet pantaloons, chatting with here and there a nursery-maid and playing with the child in her care; and perhaps a few smokers, . . . . choosing each a marble seat or wooden bench in sunshine or shade as best suits him. In the afternoon, especially within an hour or two of sunset, the gardens are much more populous, and the seats, except when the sun falls full upon them, are hard to come by. Ladies arrive in carriages, splendidly dressed; children are abundant, much impeded in their frolics, and rendered stiff and stately by the finery which they wear; English gentlemen and Americans with their wives and families; the flower of the Roman population, too, both male and female, mostly dressed with great nicety; but a large intermixture of artists, shabbily picturesque; and other persons, not of the first stamp. A French band, comprising a great many brass instruments, by and by begins to play; and what with music, sunshine, a delightful atmosphere, flowers, grass, well-kept pathways, bordered with box-hedges, pines, cypresses, horse-chestnuts, flowering shrubs, and all manner of cultivated beauty, the scene is a very lively and agreeable one. The fine equipages that drive round and round through the carriage-paths are another noticeable item. The Roman aristocracy are magnificent in their aspect, driving abroad with beautiful horses, and footmen in rich liveries, sometimes as many as three behind and one sitting by the coachman. May 1st.--This morning, I wandered for the thousandth time through some of the narrow intricacies of Rome, stepping here and there into a church. I do not know the name of the first one, nor had it anything that in Rome could be called remarkable, though, till I came here, I was not aware that any such churches existed,--a marble pavement in variegated compartments, a series of shrines and chapels round the whole floor, each with its own adornment of sculpture and pictures, its own altar with tall wax tapers before it, some of which were burning; a great picture over the high altar, the whole interior of the church ranged round with pillars and pilasters, and lined, every inch of it, with rich yellow marble. Finally, a frescoed ceiling over the nave and transepts, and a dome rising high above the central part, and filled with frescos brought to such perspective illusion, that the edges seem to project into the air. Two or three persons are kneeling at separate shrines; there are several wooden confessionals placed against the walls, at one of which kneels a lady, confessing to a priest who sits within; the tapers are lighted at the high altar and at one of the shrines; an attendant is scrubbing the marble pavement with a broom and water, a process, I should think, seldom practised in Roman churches. By and by the lady finishes her confession, kisses the priest's hand, and sits down in one of the chairs which are placed about the floor, while the priest, in a black robe, with a short, white, loose jacket over his shoulders, disappears by a side door out of the church. I, likewise, finding nothing attractive in the pictures, take my departure. Protestantism needs a new apostle to convert it into something positive. . . . I now found my way to the Piazza Navona. It is to me the most interesting piazza in Rome; a large oblong space, surrounded with tall, shabby houses, among which there are none that seem to be palaces. The sun falls broadly over the area of the piazza, and shows the fountains in it;--one a large basin with great sea-monsters, probably of Bernini's inventions, squirting very small streams of water into it; another of the fountains I do not at all remember; but the central one is an immense basin, over which is reared an old Egyptian obelisk, elevated on a rock, which is cleft into four arches. Monstrous devices in marble, I know not of what purport, are clambering about the cloven rock or burrowing beneath it; one and all of them are superfluous and impertinent, the only essential thing being the abundant supply of water in the fountain. This whole Piazza Navona is usually the scene of more business than seems to be transacted anywhere else in Rome; in some parts of it rusty iron is offered for sale, locks and keys, old tools, and all such rubbish; in other parts vegetables, comprising, at this season, green peas, onions, cauliflowers, radishes, artichokes, and others with which I have never made acquaintance; also, stalls or wheelbarrows containing apples, chestnuts (the meats dried and taken out of the shells), green almonds in their husks, and squash-seeds,--salted and dried in an oven,--apparently a favorite delicacy of the Romans. There are also lemons and oranges; stalls of fish, mostly about the size of smelts, taken from the Tiber; cigars of various qualities, the best at a baioccho and a half apiece; bread in loaves or in small rings, a great many of which are strung together on a long stick, and thus carried round for sale. Women and men sit with these things for sale, or carry them about in trays or on boards on their heads, crying them with shrill and hard voices. There is a shabby crowd and much babble; very little picturesqueness of costume or figure, however, the chief exceptions being, here and there, an old white-bearded beggar. A few of the men have the peasant costume,--a short jacket and breeches of light blue cloth and white stockings,--the ugliest dress I ever saw. The women go bareheaded, and seem fond of scarlet and other bright colors, but are homely and clumsy in form. The piazza is dingy in its general aspect, and very dirty, being strewn with straw, vegetable-tops, and the rubbish of a week's marketing; but there is more life in it than one sees elsewhere in Rome. On one side of the piazza is the Church of St. Agnes, traditionally said to stand on the site of the house where that holy maiden was exposed to infamy by the Roman soldiers, and where her modesty and innocence were saved by miracle. I went into the church, and found it very splendid, with rich marble columns, all as brilliant as if just built; a frescoed dome above; beneath, a range of chapels all round the church, ornamented not with pictures but bas-reliefs, the figures of which almost step and struggle out of the marble. They did not seem very admirable as works of art, none of them explaining themselves or attracting me long enough to study out their meaning; but, as part of the architecture of the church, they had a good effect. Out of the busy square two or three persons had stepped into this bright and calm seclusion to pray and be devout, for a little while; and, between sunrise and sunset of the bustling market-day, many doubtless snatch a moment to refresh their souls. In the Pantheon (to-day) it was pleasant looking up to the circular opening, to see the clouds flitting across it, sometimes covering it quite over, then permitting a glimpse of sky, then showing all the circle of sunny blue. Then would come the ragged edge of a cloud, brightened throughout with sunshine, passing and changing quickly,--not that the divine smile was not always the same, but continually variable through the medium of earthly influences. The great slanting beam of sunshine was visible all the way down to the pavement, falling upon motes of dust, or a thin smoke of incense imperceptible in the shadow. Insects were playing to and fro in the beam, high up toward the opening. There is a wonderful charm in the naturalness of all this, and one might fancy a swarm of cherubs coming down through the opening and sporting in the broad ray, to gladden the faith of worshippers on the pavement beneath; or angels bearing prayers upward, or bringing down responses to them, visible with dim brightness as they pass through the pathway of heaven's radiance, even the many hues of their wings discernible by a trusting eye; though, as they pass into the shadow, they vanish like the motes. So the sunbeam would represent those rays of divine intelligence which enable us to see wonders and to know that they are natural things. Consider the effect of light and shade in a church where the windows are open and darkened with curtains that are occasionally lifted by a breeze, letting in the sunshine, which whitens a carved tombstone on the pavement of the church, disclosing, perhaps, the letters of the name and inscription, a death's-head, a crosier, or other emblem; then the curtain falls and the bright spot vanishes. May 8th.--This morning my wife and I went to breakfast with Mrs. William Story at the Barberini Palace, expecting to meet Mrs. Jameson, who has been in Rome for a month or two. We had a very pleasant breakfast, but Mrs. Jameson was not present on account of indisposition, and the only other guests were Mrs. A------ and Mrs. H------, two sensible American ladies. Mrs. Story, however, received a note from Mrs. Jameson, asking her to bring us to see her at her lodgings; so in the course of the afternoon she called on us, and took us thither in her carriage. Mrs. Jameson lives on the first piano of an old palazzo on the Via di Ripetta, nearly opposite the ferry-way across the Tiber, and affording a pleasant view of the yellow river and the green bank and fields on the other side. I had expected to see an elderly lady, but not quite so venerable a one as Mrs. Jameson proved to be; a rather short, round, and massive personage, of benign and agreeable aspect, with a sort of black skullcap on her head, beneath which appeared her hair, which seemed once to have been fair, and was now almost white. I should take her to be about seventy years old. She began to talk to us with affectionate familiarity, and was particularly kind in her manifestations towards myself, who, on my part, was equally gracious towards her. In truth, I have found great pleasure and profit in her works, and was glad to hear her say that she liked mine. We talked about art, and she showed us a picture leaning up against the wall of the room; a quaint old Byzantine painting, with a gilded background, and two stiff figures (our Saviour and St. Catherine) standing shyly at a sacred distance from one another, and going through the marriage ceremony. There was a great deal of expression in their faces and figures; and the spectator feels, moreover, that the artist must have been a devout man,--an impression which we seldom receive from modern pictures, however awfully holy the subject, or however consecrated the place they hang in. Mrs. Jameson seems to be familiar with Italy, its people and life, as well as with its picture-galleries. She is said to be rather irascible in her temper; but nothing could be sweeter than her voice, her look, and all her manifestations to-day. When we were coming away she clasped my hand in both of hers, and again expressed the pleasure of having seen me, and her gratitude to me for calling on her; nor did I refrain from responding Amen to these effusions. . . . Taking leave of Mrs. Jameson, we drove through the city, and out of the Lateran Gate; first, however, waiting a long while at Monaldini's bookstore in the Piazza de' Spagna for Mr. Story, whom we finally took up in the street, after losing nearly an hour. Just two miles beyond the gate is a space on the green campagna where, for some time past, excavations have been in progress, which thus far have resulted in the discovery of several tombs, and the old, buried, and almost forgotten church or basilica of San Stefano. It is a beautiful spot, that of the excavations, with the Alban hills in the distance, and some heavy, sunlighted clouds hanging above, or recumbent at length upon them, and behind the city and its mighty dome. The excavations are an object of great interest both to the Romans and to strangers, and there were many carriages and a great many visitors viewing the progress of the works, which are carried forward with greater energy than anything else I have seen attempted at Rome. A short time ago the ground in the vicinity was a green surface, level, except here and there a little hillock, or scarcely perceptible swell; the tomb of Cecilia Metella showing itself a mile or two distant, and other rugged ruins of great tombs rising on the plain. Now the whole site of the basilica is uncovered, and they have dug into the depths of several tombs, bringing to light precious marbles, pillars, a statue, and elaborately wrought sarcophagi; and if they were to dig into almost every other inequality that frets the surface of the campagna, I suppose the result might be the same. You cannot dig six feet downward anywhere into the soil, deep enough to hollow out a grave, without finding some precious relic of the past; only they lose somewhat of their value when you think that you can almost spurn them out of the ground with your foot. It is a very wonderful arrangement of Providence that these things should have been preserved for a long series of coming generations by that accumulation of dust and soil and grass and trees and houses over them, which will keep them safe, and cause their reappearance above ground to be gradual, so that the rest of the world's lifetime may have for one of its enjoyments the uncovering of old Rome. The tombs were accessible by long flights of steps going steeply downward, and they were thronged with so many visitors that we had to wait some little time for our own turn. In the first into which we descended we found two tombs side by side, with only a partition wall between; the outer tomb being, as is supposed, a burial-place constructed by the early Christians, while the adjoined and minor one was a work of pagan Rome about the second century after Christ. The former was much less interesting than the latter. It contained some large sarcophagi, with sculpture upon them of rather heathenish aspect; and in the centre of the front of each sarcophagus was a bust in bas-relief, the features of which had never been wrought, but were left almost blank, with only the faintest indications of a nose, for instance. It is supposed that sarcophagi were kept on hand by the sculptors, and were bought ready made, and that it was customary to work out the portrait of the deceased upon the blank face in the centre; but when there was a necessity for sudden burial, as may have been the case in the present instance, this was dispensed with. The inner tomb was found without any earth in it, just as it had been left when the last old Roman was buried there; and it being only a week or two since it was opened, there was very little intervention of persons, though much of time, between the departure of the friends of the dead and our own visit. It is a square room, with a mosaic pavement, and is six or seven paces in length and breadth, and as much in height to the vaulted roof. The roof and upper walls are beautifully ornamented with frescos, which were very bright when first discovered, but have rapidly faded since the admission of the air, though the graceful and joyous designs, flowers and fruits and trees, are still perfectly discernible. The room must have been anything but sad and funereal; on the contrary, as cheerful a saloon, and as brilliant, if lighted up, as one could desire to feast in. It contained several marble sarcophagi, covering indeed almost the whole floor, and each of them as much as three or four feet in length, and two much longer. The longer ones I did not particularly examine, and they seemed comparatively plainer; but the smaller sarcophagi were covered with the most delicately wrought and beautiful bas-reliefs that I ever beheld; a throng of glad and lovely shapes in marble clustering thickly and chasing one another round the sides of these old stone coffins. The work was as perfect as when the sculptor gave it his last touch; and if he had wrought it to be placed in a frequented hall, to be seen and admired by continual crowds as long as the marble should endure, he could not have chiselled with better skill and care, though his work was to be shut up in the depths of a tomb forever. This seems to me the strangest thing in the world, the most alien from modern sympathies. If they had built their tombs above ground, one could understand the arrangement better; but no sooner had they adorned them so richly, and furnished them with such exquisite productions of art, than they annihilated them with darkness. It was an attempt, no doubt, to render the physical aspect of death cheerful, but there was no good sense in it. We went down also into another tomb close by, the walls of which were ornamented with medallions in stucco. These works presented a numerous series of graceful designs, wrought by the hand in the short space of (Mr. Story said it could not have been more than) five or ten minutes, while the wet plaster remained capable of being moulded; and it was marvellous to think of the fertility of the artist's fancy, and the rapidity and accuracy with which he must have given substantial existence to his ideas. These too--all of them such adornments as would have suited a festal hall--were made to be buried forthwith in eternal darkness. I saw and handled in this tomb a great thigh-bone, and measured it with my own; it was one of many such relics of the guests who were laid to sleep in these rich chambers. The sarcophagi that served them for coffins could not now be put to a more appropriate use than as wine-coolers in a modern dining-room; and it would heighten the enjoyment of a festival to look at them. We would gladly have stayed much longer; but it was drawing towards sunset, and the evening, though bright, was unusually cool, so we drove home; and on the way, Mr. Story told us of the horrible practices of the modern Romans with their dead,--how they place them in the church, where, at midnight, they are stripped of their last rag of funeral attire, put into the rudest wooden coffins, and thrown into a trench,--a half-mile, for instance, of promiscuous corpses. This is the fate of all, except those whose friends choose to pay an exorbitant sum to have them buried under the pavement of a church. The Italians have an excessive dread of corpses, and never meddle with those of their nearest and dearest relatives. They have a horror of death, too, especially of sudden death, and most particularly of apoplexy; and no wonder, as it gives no time for the last rites of the Church, and so exposes them to a fearful risk of perdition forever. On the whole, the ancient practice was, perhaps, the preferable one; but Nature has made it very difficult for us to do anything pleasant and satisfactory with a dead body. God knows best; but I wish he had so ordered it that our mortal bodies, when we have done with them, might vanish out of sight and sense, like bubbles. A person of delicacy hates to think of leaving such a burden as his decaying mortality to the disposal of his friends; but, I say again, how delightful it would be, and how helpful towards our faith in a blessed futurity, if the dying could disappear like vanishing bubbles, leaving, perhaps, a sweet fragrance diffused for a minute or two throughout the death-chamber. This would be the odor of sanctity! And if sometimes the evaporation of a sinful soul should leave an odor not so delightful, a breeze through the open windows would soon waft it quite away. Apropos of the various methods of disposing of dead bodies, William Story recalled a newspaper paragraph respecting a ring, with a stone of a new species in it, which a widower was observed to wear upon his finger. Being questioned as to what the gem was, he answered, "It is my wife." He had procured her body to be chemically resolved into this stone. I think I could make a story on this idea: the ring should be one of the widower's bridal gifts to a second wife; and, of course, it should have wondrous and terrible qualities, symbolizing all that disturbs the quiet of a second marriage,--on the husband's part, remorse for his inconstancy, and the constant comparison between the dead wife of his youth, now idealized, and the grosser reality which he had now adopted into her place; while on the new wife's finger it should give pressures, shooting pangs into her heart, jealousies of the past, and all such miserable emotions. By the by, the tombs which we looked at and entered may have been originally above ground, like that of Cecilia Metella, and a hundred others along the Appian Way; though, even in this case, the beautiful chambers must have been shut up in darkness. Had there been windows, letting in the light upon the rich frescos and exquisite sculptures, there would have been a satisfaction in thinking of the existence of so much visual beauty, though no eye had the privilege to see it. But darkness, to objects of sight, is annihilation, as long as the darkness lasts. May 9th.--Mrs. Jameson called this forenoon to ask us to go and see her this evening; . . . . so that I had to receive her alone, devolving part of the burden on Miss Shepard and the three children, all of whom I introduced to her notice. Finding that I had not been farther beyond the walls of Rome than the tomb of Cecilia Metella, she invited me to take a drive of a few miles with her this afternoon. . . . The poor lady seems to be very lame; and I am sure I was grateful to her for having taken the trouble to climb up the seventy steps of our staircase, and felt pain at seeing her go down them again. It looks fearfully like the gout, the affection being apparently in one foot. The hands, by the way, are white, and must once have been, perhaps now are, beautiful. She must have been a perfectly pretty woman in her day,--a blue or gray eyed, fair-haired beauty. I think that her hair is not white, but only flaxen in the extreme. At half past four, according to appointment, I arrived at her lodgings, and had not long to wait before her little one-horse carriage drove up to the door, and we set out, rumbling along the Via Scrofa, and through the densest part of the city, past the theatre of Marcellus, and thence along beneath the Palatine Hill, and by the Baths of Caracalla, through the gate of San Sebastiano. After emerging from the gate, we soon came to the little Church of "Domine, quo vadis?" Standing on the spot where St. Peter is said to have seen a vision of our Saviour bearing his cross, Mrs. Jameson proposed to alight; and, going in, we saw a cast from Michael Angelo's statue of the Saviour; and not far from the threshold of the church, yet perhaps in the centre of the edifice, which is extremely small, a circular stone is placed, a little raised above the pavement, and surrounded by a low wooden railing. Pointing to this stone, Mrs. Jameson showed me the prints of two feet side by side, impressed into its surface, as if a person had stopped short while pursuing his way to Rome. These, she informed me, were supposed to be the miraculous prints of the Saviour's feet; but on looking into Murray, I am mortified to find that they are merely facsimiles of the original impressions, which are treasured up among the relics of the neighboring Basilica of San Sebastiano. The marks of sculpture seemed to me, indeed, very evident in these prints, nor did they indicate such beautiful feet as should have belonged to the hearer of the best of glad tidings. Hence we drove on a little way farther, and came to the Basilica of San Sebastiano, where also we alighted, and, leaning on my arm, Mrs. Jameson went in. It is a stately and noble interior, with a spacious unencumbered nave, and a flat ceiling frescoed and gilded. In a chapel at the left of the entrance is the tomb of St. Sebastian,--a sarcophagus containing his remains, raised on high before the altar, and beneath it a recumbent statue of the saint pierced with gilded arrows. The sculpture is of the school of Bernini,--done after the design of Bernini himself, Mrs. Jameson said, and is more agreeable and in better taste than most of his works. We walked round the basilica, glancing at the pictures in the various chapels, none of which seemed to be of remarkable merit, although Mrs. Jameson pronounced rather a favorable verdict on one of St. Francis. She says that she can read a picture like the page of a book; in fact, without perhaps assuming more taste and judgment than really belong to her, it was impossible not to perceive that she gave her companion no credit for knowing one single simplest thing about art. Nor, on the whole, do I think she underrated me; the only mystery is, how she came to be so well aware of my ignorance on artistical points. In the basilica the Franciscan monks were arranging benches on the floor of the nave, and some peasant children and grown people besides were assembling, probably to undergo an examination in the catechism, and we hastened to depart, lest our presence should interfere with their arrangements. At the door a monk met us, and asked for a contribution in aid of his church, or some other religious purpose. Boys, as we drove on, ran stoutly along by the side of the chaise, begging as often as they could find breath, but were constrained finally to give up the pursuit. The great ragged bulks of the tombs along the Appian Way now hove in sight, one with a farm-house on its summit, and all of them preposterously huge and massive. At a distance, across the green campagna on our left, the Claudian aqueduct strode away over miles of space, and doubtless reached even to that circumference of blue hills which stand afar off, girdling Rome about. The tomb of Cecilia Metella came in sight a long while before we reached it, with the warm buff hue of its travertine, and the gray battlemented wall which the Caetanis erected on the top of its circular summit six hundred years ago. After passing it, we saw an interminable line of tombs on both sides of the way, each of which might, for aught I know, have been as massive as that of Cecilia Metella, and some perhaps still more monstrously gigantic, though now dilapidated and much reduced in size. Mrs. Jameson had an engagement to dinner at half past six, so that we could go but a little farther along this most interesting road, the borders of which are strewn with broken marbles; fragments of capitals, and nameless rubbish that once was beautiful. Methinks the Appian Way should be the only entrance to Rome,--through an avenue of tombs. The day had been cloudy, chill, and windy, but was now grown calmer and more genial, and brightened by a very pleasant sunshine, though great dark clouds were still lumbering up the sky. We drove homeward, looking at the distant dome of St. Peter's and talking of many things,--painting, sculpture, America, England, spiritualism, and whatever else came up. She is a very sensible old lady, and sees a great deal of truth; a good woman, too, taking elevated views of matters; but I doubt whether she has the highest and finest perceptions in the world. At any rate, she pronounced a good judgment on the American sculptors now in Rome, condemning them in the mass as men with no high aims, no worthy conception of the purposes of their art, and desecrating marble by the things they wrought in it. William Story, I presume, is not to be included in this censure, as she had spoken highly of his sculpturesque faculty in our previous conversation. On my part, I suggested that the English sculptors were little or nothing better than our own, to which she acceded generally, but said that Gibson had produced works equal to the antique,--which I did not dispute, but still questioned whether the world needed Gibson, or was any the better for him. We had a great dispute about the propriety of adopting the costume of the day in modern sculpture, and I contended that either the art ought to be given up (which possibly would be the best course), or else should be used for idealizing the man of the day to himself; and that, as Nature makes us sensible of the fact when men and women are graceful, beautiful, and noble, through whatever costume they wear, so it ought to be the test of the sculptor's genius that he should do the same. Mrs. Jameson decidedly objected to buttons, breeches, and all other items of modern costume; and, indeed, they do degrade the marble, and make high sculpture utterly impossible. Then let the art perish as one that the world has done with, as it has done with many other beautiful things that belonged to an earlier time. It was long past the hour of Mrs. Jameson's dinner engagement when we drove up to her door in the Via Ripetta. I bade her farewell with much good-feeling on my own side, and, I hope, on hers, excusing myself, however, from keeping the previous engagement to spend the evening with her, for, in point of fact, we had mutually had enough of one another for the time being. I am glad to record that she expressed a very favorable opinion of our friend Mr. Thompson's pictures. May 12th.--To-day we have been to the Villa Albani, to which we had a ticket of admission through the agency of Mr. Cass (the American Minister). We set out between ten and eleven o'clock, and walked through the Via Felice, the Piazza Barberini, and a long, heavy, dusty range of streets beyond, to the Porta Salara, whence the road extends, white and sunny, between two high blank walls to the gate of the villa, which is at no great distance. We were admitted by a girl, and went first to the casino, along an aisle of overshadowing trees, the branches of which met above our heads. In the portico of the casino, which extends along its whole front, there are many busts and statues, and, among them, one of Julius Caesar, representing him at an earlier period of life than others which I have seen. His aspect is not particularly impressive; there is a lack of chin, though not so much as in the older statues and busts. Within the edifice there is a large hall, not so brilliant, perhaps, with frescos and gilding as those at the Villa Borghese, but lined with the most beautiful variety of marbles. But, in fact, each new splendor of this sort outshines the last, and unless we could pass from one to another all in the same suite, we cannot remember them well enough to compare the Borghese with the Albani, the effect being more on the fancy than on the intellect. I do not recall any of the sculpture, except a colossal bas-relief of Antinous, crowned with flowers, and holding flowers in his hand, which was found in the ruins of Hadrian's Villa. This is said to be the finest relic of antiquity next to the Apollo and the Laocoon; but I could not feel it to be so, partly, I suppose, because the features of Autinous do not seem to me beautiful in themselves; and that heavy, downward look is repeated till I am more weary of it than of anything else in sculpture. We went up stairs and down stairs, and saw a good many beautiful things, but none, perhaps, of the very best and beautifullest; and second-rate statues, with the corroded surface of old marble that has been dozens of centuries under the ground, depress the spirits of the beholder. The bas-relief of Antinous has at least the merit of being almost as white and fresh, and quite as smooth, as if it had never been buried and dug up again. The real treasures of this villa, to the number of nearly three hundred, were removed to Paris by Napoleon, and, except the Antinous, not one of them ever came back. There are some pictures in one or two of the rooms, and among them I recollect one by Perugino, in which is a St. Michael, very devout and very beautiful; indeed, the whole picture (which is in compartments, representing the three principal points of the Saviour's history) impresses the beholder as being painted devoutly and earnestly by a religious man. In one of the rooms there is a small bronze Apollo, supposed by Winckelmann to be an original of Praxiteles; but I could not make myself in the least sensible of its merit. The rest of the things in the casino I shall pass over, as also those in the coffee-house,--an edifice which stands a hundred yards or more from the casino, with an ornamental garden, laid out in walks and flower-plats between. The coffee-house has a semicircular sweep of porch with a good many statues and busts beneath it, chiefly of distinguished Romans. In this building, as in the casino, there are curious mosaics, large vases of rare marble, and many other things worth long pauses of admiration; but I think that we were all happier when we had done with the works of art, and were at leisure to ramble about the grounds. The Villa Albani itself is an edifice separate from both the coffee-house and casino, and is not opened to strangers. It rises, palace-like, in the midst of the garden, and, it is to be hoped, has some possibility of comfort amidst its splendors.--Comfort, however, would be thrown away upon it; for besides that the site shares the curse that has fallen upon every pleasant place in the vicinity of Rome, . . . . it really has no occupant except the servants who take care of it. The Count of Castelbarco, its present proprietor, resides at Milan. The grounds are laid out in the old fashion of straight paths, with borders of box, which form hedges of great height and density, and as even as a brick wall at the top and sides. There are also alleys forming long vistas between the trunks and beneath the boughs of oaks, ilexes, and olives; and there are shrubberies and tangled wildernesses of palm, cactus, rhododendron, and I know not what; and a profusion of roses that bloom and wither with nobody to pluck and few to look at them. They climb about the sculpture of fountains, rear themselves against pillars and porticos, run brimming over the walls, and strew the path with their falling leaves. We stole a few, and feel that we have wronged our consciences in not stealing more. In one part of the grounds we saw a field actually ablaze with scarlet poppies. There are great lagunas; fountains presided over by naiads, who squirt their little jets into basins; sunny lawns; a temple, so artificially ruined that we half believed it a veritable antique; and at its base a reservoir of water, in which stone swans seemed positively to float; groves of cypress; balustrades and broad flights of stone stairs, descending to lower levels of the garden; beauty, peace, sunshine, and antique repose on every side; and far in the distance the blue hills that encircle the campagna of Rome. The day was very fine for our purpose; cheerful, but not too bright, and tempered by a breeze that seemed even a little too cool when we sat long in the shade. We enjoyed it till three o'clock. . . . At the Capitol there is a sarcophagus with a most beautiful bas-relief of the discovery of Achilles by Ulysses, in which there is even an expression of mirth on the faces of many of the spectators. And to-day at the Albani a sarcophagus was ornamented with the nuptials of Peleus and Thetis. Death strides behind every man, to be sure, at more or less distance, and, sooner or later, enters upon any event of his life; so that, in this point of view, they might each and all serve for bas-reliefs on a sarcophagus; but the Romans seem to have treated Death as lightly and playfully as they could, and tried to cover his dart with flowers, because they hated it so much. May 15th.--My wife and I went yesterday to the Sistine Chapel, it being my first visit. It is a room of noble proportions, lofty and long, though divided in the midst by a screen or partition of white marble, which rises high enough to break the effect of spacious unity. There are six arched windows on each side of the chapel, throwing down their light from the height of the walls, with as much as twenty feet of space (more I should think) between them and the floor. The entire walls and ceiling of this stately chapel are covered with paintings in fresco, except the space about ten feet in height from the floor, and that portion was intended to be adorned by tapestries from pictures by Raphael, but, the design being prevented by his premature death, the projected tapestries have no better substitute than paper-hangings. The roof, which is flat at top, and coved or vaulted at the sides, is painted in compartments by Michael Angelo, with frescos representing the whole progress of the world and of mankind from its first formation by the Almighty . . . . till after the flood. On one of the sides of the chapel are pictures by Perugino, and other old masters, of subsequent events in sacred history; and the entire wall behind the altar, a vast expanse from the ceiling to the floor, is taken up with Michael Angelo's summing up of the world's history and destinies in his "Last Judgment." There can be no doubt that while these frescos continued in their perfection, there was nothing else to be compared with the magnificent and solemn beauty of this chapel. Enough of ruined splendor still remains to convince the spectator of all that has departed; but methinks I have seen hardly anything else so forlorn and depressing as it is now, all dusky and dim, even the very lights having passed into shadows, and the shadows into utter blackness; so that it needs a sunshiny day, under the bright Italian heavens, to make the designs perceptible at all. As we sat in the chapel there were clouds flitting across the sky; when the clouds came the pictures vanished; when the sunshine broke forth the figures sadly glimmered into something like visibility,--the Almighty moving in chaos,--the noble shape of Adam, the beautiful Eve; and, beneath where the roof curves, the mighty figures of sibyls and prophets, looking as if they were necessarily so gigantic because the thought within them was so massive. In the "Last Judgment" the scene of the greater part of the picture lies in the upper sky, the blue of which glows through betwixt the groups of naked figures; and above sits Jesus, not looking in the least like the Saviour of the world, but, with uplifted arm, denouncing eternal misery on those whom he came to save. I fear I am myself among the wicked, for I found myself inevitably taking their part, and asking for at least a little pity, some few regrets, and not such a stern denunciatory spirit on the part of Him who had thought us worth dying for. Around him stand grim saints, and, far beneath, people are getting up sleepily out of their graves, not well knowing what is about to happen; many of them, however, finding themselves clutched by demons before they are half awake. It would be a very terrible picture to one who should really see Jesus, the Saviour, in that inexorable judge; but it seems to me very undesirable that he should ever be represented in that aspect, when it is so essential to our religion to believe him infinitely kinder and better towards us than we deserve. At the last day--I presume, that is, in all future days, when we see ourselves as we are--man's only inexorable judge will be himself, and the punishment of his sins will be the perception of them. In the lower corner of this great picture, at the right hand of the spectator, is a hideous figure of a damned person, girdled about with a serpent, the folds of which are carefully knotted between his thighs, so as, at all events, to give no offence to decency. This figure represents a man who suggested to Pope Paul III. that the nudities of the "Last Judgment" ought to be draped, for which offence Michael Angelo at once consigned him to hell. It shows what a debtor's prison and dungeon of private torment men would make of hell if they had the control of it. As to the nudities, if they were ever more nude than now, I should suppose, in their fresh brilliancy, they might well have startled a not very squeamish eye. The effect, such as it is, of this picture, is much injured by the high altar and its canopy, which stands close against the wall, and intercepts a considerable portion of the sprawl of nakedness with which Michael Angelo has filled his sky. However, I am not unwilling to believe, with faith beyond what I can actually see, that the greatest pictorial miracles ever yet achieved have been wrought upon the walls and ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. In the afternoon I went with Mr. Thompson to see what bargain could be made with vetturinos for taking myself and family to Florence. We talked with three or four, and found them asking prices of various enormity, from a hundred and fifty scudi down to little more than ninety; but Mr. Thompson says that they always begin in this way, and will probably come down to somewhere about seventy-five. Mr. Thompson took me into the Via Portoghese, and showed me an old palace, above which rose--not a very customary feature of the architecture of Rome--a tall, battlemented tower. At one angle of the tower we saw a shrine of the Virgin, with a lamp, and all the appendages of those numerous shrines which we see at the street-corners, and in hundreds of places about the city. Three or four centuries ago, this palace was inhabited by a nobleman who had an only son and a large pet monkey, and one day the monkey caught the infant up and clambered to this lofty turret, and sat there with him in his arms grinning and chattering like the Devil himself. The father was in despair, but was afraid to pursue the monkey lest he should fling down the child from the height of the tower and make his escape. At last he vowed that if the boy were safely restored to him he would build a shrine at the summit of the tower, and cause it to be kept as a sacred place forever. By and by the monkey came down and deposited the child on the ground; the father fulfilled his vow, built the shrine, and made it obligatory, on all future possessors of the palace to keep the lamp burning before it. Centuries have passed, the property has changed hands; but still there is the shrine on the giddy top of the tower, far aloft over the street, on the very spot where the monkey sat, and there burns the lamp, in memory of the father's vow. This being the tenure by which the estate is held, the extinguishment of that flame might yet turn the present owner out of the palace. May 21st.--Mamma and I went, yesterday forenoon, to the Spada Palace, which we found among the intricacies of Central Rome; a dark and massive old edifice, built around a court, the fronts giving on which are adorned with statues in niches, and sculptured ornaments. A woman led us up a staircase, and ushered us into a great gloomy hall, square and lofty, and wearing a very gray and ancient aspect, its walls being painted in chiaroscuro, apparently a great many years ago. The hall was lighted by small windows, high upward from the floors, and admitting only a dusky light. The only furniture or ornament, so far as I recollect, was the colossal statue of Pompey, which stands on its pedestal at one side, certainly the sternest and severest of figures, and producing the most awful impression on the spectator. Much of the effect, no doubt, is due to the sombre obscurity of the hall, and to the loneliness in which the great naked statue stands. It is entirely nude, except for a cloak that hangs down from the left shoulder; in the left hand, it holds a globe; the right arm is extended. The whole expression is such as the statue might have assumed, if, during the tumult of Caesar's murder, it had stretched forth its marble hand, and motioned the conspirators to give over the attack, or to be quiet, now that their victim had fallen at its feet. On the left leg, about midway above the ankle, there is a dull, red stain, said to be Caesar's blood; but, of course, it is just such a red stain in the marble as may be seen on the statue of Antinous at the Capitol. I could not see any resemblance in the face of the statue to that of the bust of Pompey, shown as such at the Capitol, in which there is not the slightest moral dignity, or sign of intellectual eminence. I am glad to have seen this statue, and glad to remember it in that gray, dim, lofty hall; glad that there were no bright frescos on the walls, and that the ceiling was wrought with massive beams, and the floor paved with ancient brick. From this anteroom we passed through several saloons containing pictures, some of which were by eminent artists; the Judith of Guido, a copy of which used to weary me to death, year after year, in the Boston Athenaeum; and many portraits of Cardinals in the Spada family, and other pictures, by Guido. There were some portraits, also of the family, by Titian; some good pictures by Guercino; and many which I should have been glad to examine more at leisure; but, by and by, the custode made his appearance, and began to close the shutters, under pretence that the sunshine would injure the paintings,--an effect, I presume, not very likely to follow after two or three centuries' exposure to light, air, and whatever else might hurt them. However, the pictures seemed to be in much better condition, and more enjoyable, so far as they had merit, than those in most Roman picture-galleries; although the Spada Palace itself has a decayed and impoverished aspect, as if the family had dwindled from its former state and grandeur, and now, perhaps, smuggled itself into some out-of-the-way corner of the old edifice. If such be the case, there is something touching in their still keeping possession of Pompey's statue, which makes their house famous, and the sale of which might give them the means of building it up anew; for surely it is worth the whole sculpture-gallery of the Vatican. In the afternoon Mr. Thompson and I went, for the third or fourth time, to negotiate with vetturinos. . . . So far as I know them they are a very tricky set of people, bent on getting as much as they can, by hook or by crook, out of the unfortunate individual who falls into their hands. They begin, as I have said, by asking about twice as much as they ought to receive; and anything between this exorbitant amount and the just price is what they thank heaven for, as so much clear gain. Nevertheless, I am not quite sure that the Italians are worse than other people even in this matter. In other countries it is the custom of persons in trade to take as much as they can get from the public, fleecing one man to exactly the same extent as another; here they take what they can obtain from the individual customer. In fact, Roman tradesmen do not pretend to deny that they ask and receive different prices from different people, taxing them according to their supposed means of payment; the article supplied being the same in one case as in another. A shopkeeper looked into his books to see if we were of the class who paid two pauls, or only a paul and a half for candles; a charcoal-dealer said that seventy baiocchi was a very reasonable sum for us to pay for charcoal, and that some persons paid eighty; and Mr. Thompson, recognizing the rule, told the old vetturino that "a hundred and fifty scudi was a very proper charge for carrying a prince to Florence, but not for carrying me, who was merely a very good artist." The result is well enough; the rich man lives expensively, and pays a larger share of the profits which people of a different system of trade-morality would take equally from the poor man. The effect on the conscience of the vetturino, however, and of tradesmen of all kinds, cannot be good; their only intent being, not to do justice between man and man, but to go as deep as they can into all pockets, and to the very bottom of some. We had nearly concluded a bargain, a day or two ago, with a vetturino to take or send us to Florence, via Perugia, in eight days, for a hundred scudi; but he now drew back, under pretence of having misunderstood the terms, though, in reality, no doubt, he was in hopes of getting a better bargain from somebody else. We made an agreement with another man, whom Mr. Thompson knows and highly recommends, and immediately made it sure and legally binding by exchanging a formal written contract, in which everything is set down, even to milk, butter, bread, eggs, and coffee, which we are to have for breakfast; the vetturino being to pay every expense for himself, his horses, and his passengers, and include it within ninety-five scudi, and five crowns in addition for buon-mano. . . . . May 22d.--Yesterday, while we were at dinner, Mr. ------ called. I never saw him but once before, and that was at the door of our little red cottage in Lenox; he sitting in a wagon with one or two of the Sedgewicks, merely exchanging a greeting with me from under the brim of his straw hat, and driving on. He presented himself now with a long white beard, such as a palmer might have worn as the growth of his long pilgrimages, a brow almost entirely bald, and what hair he has quite hoary; a forehead impending, yet not massive; dark, bushy eyebrows and keen eyes, without much softness in them; a dark and sallow complexion; a slender figure, bent a little with age; but at once alert and infirm. It surprised me to see him so venerable; for, as poets are Apollo's kinsmen, we are inclined to attribute to them his enviable quality of never growing old. There was a weary look in his face, as if he were tired of seeing things and doing things, though with certainly enough still to see and do, if need were. My family gathered about him, and he conversed with great readiness and simplicity about his travels, and whatever other subject came up; telling us that he had been abroad five times, and was now getting a little home-sick, and had no more eagerness for sights, though his "gals" (as he called his daughter and another young lady) dragged him out to see the wonders of Rome again. His manners and whole aspect are very particularly plain, though not affectedly so; but it seems as if in the decline of life, and the security of his position, he had put off whatever artificial polish he may have heretofore had, and resumed the simpler habits and deportment of his early New England breeding. Not but what you discover, nevertheless, that he is a man of refinement, who has seen the world, and is well aware of his own place in it. He spoke with great pleasure of his recent visit to Spain. I introduced the subject of Kansas, and methought his face forthwith assumed something of the bitter keenness of the editor of a political newspaper, while speaking of the triumph of the administration over the Free-Soil opposition. I inquired whether he had seen S------, and he gave a very sad account of him as he appeared at their last meeting, which was in Paris. S------, he thought, had suffered terribly, and would never again be the man he was; he was getting fat; he talked continually of himself, and of trifles concerning himself, and seemed to have no interest for other matters; and Mr. ------ feared that the shock upon his nerves had extended to his intellect, and was irremediable. He said that S------ ought to retire from public life, but had no friend true enough to tell him so. This is about as sad as anything can be. I hate to have S------ undergo the fate of a martyr, because he was not naturally of the stuff that martyrs are made of, and it is altogether by mistake that he has thrust himself into the position of one. He was merely, though with excellent abilities, one of the best of fellows, and ought to have lived and died in good fellowship with all the world. S------ was not in the least degree excited about this or any other subject. He uttered neither passion nor poetry, but excellent good sense, and accurate information on whatever subject transpired; a very pleasant man to associate with, but rather cold, I should imagine, if one should seek to touch his heart with one's own. He shook hands kindly all round, but not with any warmth of gripe; although the ease of his deportment had put us all on sociable terms with him. At seven o'clock we went by invitation to take tea with Miss Bremer. After much search, and lumbering painfully up two or three staircases in vain, and at last going about in a strange circuity, we found her in a small chamber of a large old building, situated a little way from the brow of the Tarpeian Rock. It was the tiniest and humblest domicile that I have seen in Rome, just large enough to hold her narrow bed, her tea-table, and a table covered with books,--photographs of Roman ruins, and some pages written by herself. I wonder whether she be poor. Probably so; for she told us that her expense of living here is only five pauls a day. She welcomed us, however, with the greatest cordiality and lady-like simplicity, making no allusion to the humbleness of her environment (and making us also lose sight of it, by the absence of all apology) any more than if she were receiving us in a palace. There is not a better bred woman; and yet one does not think whether she has any breeding or no. Her little bit of a round table was already spread for us with her blue earthenware teacups; and after she had got through an interview with the Swedish Minister, and dismissed him with a hearty pressure of his hand between both her own, she gave us our tea, and some bread, and a mouthful of cake. Meanwhile, as the day declined, there had been the most beautiful view over the campagna, out of one of her windows; and, from the other, looking towards St. Peter's, the broad gleam of a mildly glorious sunset; not so pompous and magnificent as many that I have seen in America, but softer and sweeter in all its changes. As its lovely hues died slowly away, the half-moon shone out brighter and brighter; for there was not a cloud in the sky, and it seemed like the moonlight of my younger days. In the garden, beneath her window, verging upon the Tarpeian Rock, there was shrubbery and one large tree, softening the brow of the famous precipice, adown which the old Romans used to fling their traitors, or sometimes, indeed, their patriots. Miss Bremer talked plentifully in her strange manner,--good English enough for a foreigner, but so oddly intonated and accented, that it is impossible to be sure of more than one word in ten. Being so little comprehensible, it is very singular how she contrives to make her auditors so perfectly certain, as they are, that she is talking the best sense, and in the kindliest spirit. There is no better heart than hers, and not many sounder heads; and a little touch of sentiment comes delightfully in, mixed up with a quick and delicate humor and the most perfect simplicity. There is also a very pleasant atmosphere of maidenhood about her; we are sensible of a freshness and odor of the morning still in this little withered rose,--its recompense for never having been gathered and worn, but only diffusing fragrance on its stem. I forget mainly what we talked about,--a good deal about art, of course, although that is a subject of which Miss Bremer evidently knows nothing. Once we spoke of fleas,--insects that, in Rome, come home to everybody's business and bosom, and are so common and inevitable, that no delicacy is felt about alluding to the sufferings they inflict. Poor little Miss Bremer was tormented with one while turning out our tea. . . . She talked, among other things, of the winters in Sweden, and said that she liked them, long and severe as they are; and this made me feel ashamed of dreading the winters of New England, as I did before coming from home, and do now still more, after five or six mild English Decembers. By and by, two young ladies came in,--Miss Bremen's neighbors, it seemed,--fresh from a long walk on the campagna, fresh and weary at the same time. One apparently was German, and the other French, and they brought her an offering of flowers, and chattered to her with affectionate vivacity; and, as we were about taking leave, Miss Bremer asked them to accompany her and us on a visit to the edge of the Tarpeian Rock. Before we left the room, she took a bunch of roses that were in a vase, and gave them to Miss Shepard, who told her that she should make her six sisters happy by giving one to each. Then we went down the intricate stairs, and, emerging into the garden, walked round the brow of the hill, which plunges headlong with exceeding abruptness; but, so far as I could see in the moonlight, is no longer quite a precipice. Then we re-entered the house, and went up stairs and down again, through intricate passages, till we got into the street, which was still peopled with the ragamuffins who infest and burrow in that part of Rome. We returned through an archway, and descended the broad flight of steps into the piazza of the Capitol; and from the extremity of it, just at the head of the long graded way, where Castor and Pollux and the old milestones stand, we turned to the left, and followed a somewhat winding path, till we came into the court of a palace. This court is bordered by a parapet, leaning over which we saw the sheer precipice of the Tarpeian Rock, about the height of a four-story house. . . . On the edge of this, before we left the court, Miss Bremer bade us farewell, kissing my wife most affectionately on each cheek, . . . . and then turning towards myself, . . . . she pressed my hand, and we parted, probably never to meet again. God bless her good heart! . . . . She is a most amiable little woman, worthy to be the maiden aunt of the whole human race. I suspect, by the by, that she does not like me half so well as I do her; it is my impression that she thinks me unamiable, or that there is something or other not quite right about me. I am sorry if it be so, because such a good, kindly, clear-sighted, and delicate person is very apt to have reason at the bottom of her harsh thoughts, when, in rare cases, she allows them to harbor with her. To-day, and for some days past, we have been in quest of lodgings for next winter; a weary search, up interminable staircases, which seduce us upward to no successful result. It is very disheartening not to be able to place the slightest reliance on the integrity of the people we are to deal with; not to believe in any connection between their words and their purposes; to know that they are certainly telling you falsehoods, while you are not in a position to catch hold of the lie, and hold it up in their faces. This afternoon we called on Mr. and Mrs. ------ at the Hotel de l'Europe, but found only the former at home. We had a pleasant visit, but I made no observations of his character save such as I have already sufficiently recorded; and when we had been with him a little while, Mrs. Chapman, the artist's wife, Mr. Terry, and my friend, Mr. Thompson, came in. ------ received them all with the same good degree of cordiality that he did ourselves, not cold, not very warm, not annoyed, not ecstatically delighted; a man, I should suppose, not likely to have ardent individual preferences, though perhaps capable of stern individual dislikes. But I take him, at all events, to be a very upright man, and pursuing a narrow track of integrity; he is a man whom I would never forgive (as I would a thousand other men) for the slightest moral delinquency. I would not be bound to say, however, that he has not the little sin of a fretful and peevish habit; and yet perhaps I am a sinner myself for thinking so. May 23d.--This morning I breakfasted at William Story's, and met there Mr. Bryant, Mr. T------ (an English gentleman), Mr. and Mrs. Apthorp, Miss Hosmer, and one or two other ladies. Bryant was very quiet, and made no conversation audible to the general table. Mr. T------ talked of English politics and public men; the "Times" and other newspapers, English clubs and social habits generally; topics in which I could well enough bear my part of the discussion. After breakfast, and aside from the ladies, he mentioned an illustration of Lord Ellenborough's lack of administrative ability,--a proposal seriously made by his lordship in reference to the refractory Sepoys. . . . We had a very pleasant breakfast, and certainly a breakfast is much preferable to a dinner, not merely in the enjoyment, while it is passing, but afterwards. I made a good suggestion to Miss Hosmer for the design of a fountain,--a lady bursting into tears, water gushing from a thousand pores, in literal translation of the phrase; and to call the statue "Niobe, all Tears." I doubt whether she adopts the idea; but Bernini would have been delighted with it. I should think the gush of water might be so arranged as to form a beautiful drapery about the figure, swaying and fluttering with every breath of wind, and rearranging itself in the calm; in which case, the lady might be said to have "a habit of weeping." . . . . Apart, with William Story, he and I talked of the unluckiness of Friday, etc. I like him particularly well. . . . We have been plagued to-day with our preparations for leaving Rome to-morrow, and especially with verifying the inventory of furniture, before giving up the house to our landlord. He and his daughter have been examining every separate article, down even to the kitchen skewers, I believe, and charging us to the amount of several scudi for cracks and breakages, which very probably existed when we came into possession. It is very uncomfortable to have dealings with such a mean people (though our landlord is German),--mean in their business transactions; mean even in their beggary; for the beggars seldom ask for more than a mezzo baioccho, though they sometimes grumble when you suit your gratuity exactly to their petition. It is pleasant to record that the Italians have great faith in the honor of the English and Americans, and never hesitate to trust entire strangers, to any reasonable extent, on the strength of their being of the honest Anglo-Saxon race. This evening, U---- and I took a farewell walk in the Pincian Gardens to see the sunset; and found them crowded with people, promenading and listening to the music of the French baud. It was the feast of Whitsunday, which probably brought a greater throng than usual abroad. When the sun went down, we descended into the Piazza del Popolo, and thence into the Via Ripetta, and emerged through a gate to the shore of the Tiber, along which there is a pleasant walk beneath a grove of trees. We traversed it once and back again, looking at the rapid river, which still kept its mud-puddly aspect even in the clear twilight, and beneath the brightening moon. The great bell of St. Peter's tolled with a deep boom, a grand and solemn sound; the moon gleamed through the branches of the trees above us; and U---- spoke with somewhat alarming fervor of her love for Rome, and regret at leaving it. We shall have done the child no good office in bringing her here, if the rest of her life is to be a dream of this "city of the soul," and an unsatisfied yearning to come back to it. On the other hand, nothing elevating and refining can be really injurious, and so I hope she will always be the better for Rome, even if her life should be spent where there are no pictures, no statues, nothing but the dryness and meagreness of a New England village. JOURNEY TO FLORENCE. Civita Castellana, May 24th.--We left Rome this morning, after troubles of various kinds, and a dispute in the first place with Lalla, our female servant, and her mother. . . . Mother and daughter exploded into a livid rage, and cursed us plentifully,--wishing that we might never come to our journey's end, and that we might all break our necks or die of apoplexy,--the most awful curse that an Italian knows how to invoke upon his enemies, because it precludes the possibility of extreme unction. However, as we are heretics, and certain of damnation therefore, anyhow, it does not much matter to us; and also the anathemas may have been blown back upon those who invoked them, like the curses that were flung out from the balcony of St Peter's during Holy Week and wafted by heaven's breezes right into the faces of some priests who stood near the pope. Next we had a disagreement, with two men who brought down our luggage, and put it on the vettura; . . . . and, lastly, we were infested with beggars, who hung round the carriages with doleful petitions, till we began to move away; but the previous warfare had put me into too stern a mood for almsgiving, so that they also were doubtless inclined to curse more than to bless, and I am persuaded that we drove off under a perfect shower of anathemas. We passed through the Porta del Popolo at about eight o'clock; and after a moment's delay, while the passport was examined, began our journey along the Flaminian Way, between two such high and inhospitable walls of brick or stone as seem to shut in all the avenues to Rome. We had not gone far before we heard military music in advance of us, and saw the road blocked up with people, and then the glitter of muskets, and soon appeared the drummers, fifers, and trumpeters, and then the first battalion of a French regiment, marching into the city, with two mounted officers at their head; then appeared a second and then a third battalion, the whole seeming to make almost an army, though the number on their caps showed them all to belong to one regiment,--the 1st; then came a battery of artillery, then a detachment of horse,--these last, by the crossed keys on their helmets, being apparently papal troops. All were young, fresh, good-looking men, in excellent trim as to uniform and equipments, and marched rather as if they were setting out on a campaign than returning from it; the fact being, I believe, that they have been encamped or in barracks within a few miles of the city. Nevertheless, it reminded me of the military processions of various kinds which so often, two thousand years ago and more, entered Rome over the Flaminian Way, and over all the roads that led to the famous city,--triumphs oftenest, but sometimes the downcast train of a defeated army, like those who retreated before Hannibal. On the whole, I was not sorry to see the Gauls still pouring into Rome; but yet I begin to find that I have a strange affection for it, and so did we all,--the rest of the family in a greater degree than myself even. It is very singular, the sad embrace with which Rome takes possession of the soul. Though we intend to return in a few months, and for a longer residence than this has been, yet we felt the city pulling at our heartstrings far more than London did, where we shall probably never spend much time again. It may be because the intellect finds a home there more than in any other spot in the world, and wins the heart to stay with it, in spite of a good many things strewn all about to disgust us. The road in the earlier part of the way was not particularly picturesque,--the country undulated, but scarcely rose into hills, and was destitute of trees; there were a few shapeless ruins, too indistinct for us to make out whether they were Roman or mediaeval. Nothing struck one so much, in the forenoon, as the spectacle of a peasant-woman riding on horseback as if she were a man. The houses were few, and those of a dreary aspect, built of gray stone, and looking bare and desolate, with not the slightest promise of comfort within doors. We passed two or three locandas or inns, and finally came to the village (if village it were, for I remember no houses except our osteria) of Castel Nuovo di Porta, where we were to take a dejeuner a la fourchette, which was put upon the table between twelve and one. On this journey, according to the custom of travellers in Italy, we pay the vetturino a certain sum, and live at his expense; and this meal was the first specimen of his catering on our behalf. It consisted of a beefsteak, rather dry and hard, but not unpalatable, and a large omelette; and for beverage, two quart bottles of red wine, which, being tasted, had an agreeable acid flavor. . . . The locanda was built of stone, and had what looked like an old Roman altar in the basement-hall, and a shrine, with a lamp before it, on the staircase; and the large public saloon in which we ate had a brick floor, a ceiling with cross-beams, meagrely painted in fresco, and a scanty supply of chairs and settees. After lunch, we wandered out into a valley or ravine near the house, where we gathered some flowers, and J----- found a nest with the young birds in it, which, however, he put back into the bush whence he took it. Our afternoon drive was more picturesque and noteworthy. Soracte rose before us, bulging up quite abruptly out of the plain, and keeping itself entirely distinct from a whole horizon of hills. Byron well compares it to a wave just on the bend, and about to break over towards the spectator. As we approached it nearer and nearer, it looked like the barrenest great rock that ever protruded out of the substance of the earth, with scarcely a strip or a spot of verdure upon its steep and gray declivities. The road kept trending towards the mountain, following the line of the old Flaminian Way, which we could see, at frequent intervals, close beside the modern track. It is paved with large flag-stones, laid so accurately together, that it is still, in some places, as smooth and even as the floor of a church; and everywhere the tufts of grass find it difficult to root themselves into the interstices. Its course is straighter than that of the road of to-day, which often turns aside to avoid obstacles which the ancient one surmounted. Much of it, probably, is covered with the soil and overgrowth deposited in later years; and, now and then, we could see its flag-stones partly protruding from the bank through which our road has been cut, and thus showing that the thickness of this massive pavement was more than a foot of solid stone. We lost it over and over again; but still it reappeared, now on one side of us, now on the other; perhaps from beneath the roots of old trees, or the pasture-land of a thousand years old, and leading on towards the base of Soracte. I forget where we finally lost it. Passing through a town called Rignano, we found it dressed out in festivity, with festoons of foliage along both sides of the street, which ran beneath a triumphal arch, bearing an inscription in honor of a ducal personage of the Massimi family. I know no occasion for the feast, except that it is Whitsuntide. The town was thronged with peasants, in their best attire, and we met others on their way thither, particularly women and girls, with heads bare in the sunshine; but there was no tiptoe jollity, nor, indeed, any more show of festivity than I have seen in my own country at a cattle-show or muster. Really, I think, not half so much. The road still grew more and more picturesque, and now lay along ridges, at the bases of which were deep ravines and hollow valleys. Woods were not wanting; wilder forests than I have seen since leaving America, of oak-trees chiefly; and, among the green foliage, grew golden tufts of broom, making a gay and lovely combination of hues. I must not forget to mention the poppies, which burned like live coals along the wayside, and lit up the landscape, even a single one of them, with wonderful effect. At other points, we saw olive-trees, hiding their eccentricity of boughs under thick masses of foliage of a livid tint, which is caused, I believe, by their turning their reverse sides to the light and to the spectator. Vines were abundant, but were of little account in the scene. By and by we came in sight, of the high, flat table-land, on which stands Civita Castellana, and beheld, straight downward, between us and the town, a deep level valley with a river winding through it; it was the valley of the Treja. A precipice, hundreds of feet in height, falls perpendicularly upon the valley, from the site of Civita Castellana; there is an equally abrupt one, probably, on the side from which we saw it; and a modern road, skilfully constructed, goes winding down to the stream, crosses it by a narrow stone bridge, and winds upward into the town. After passing over the bridge, I alighted, with J----- and R-----, . . . . and made the ascent on foot, along walls of natural rock, in which old Etruscan tombs were hollowed out. There are likewise antique remains of masonry, whether Roman or of what earlier period, I cannot tell. At the summit of the acclivity, which brought us close to the town, our vetturino took us into the carriage again and quickly brought us to what appears to be really a good hotel, where all of us are accommodated with sleeping-chambers in a range, beneath an arcade, entirely secluded from the rest of the population of the hotel. After a splendid dinner (that is, splendid, considering that it was ordered by our hospitable vetturino), U----, Miss Shepard, J-----, and I walked out of the little town, in the opposite direction from our entrance, and crossed a bridge at the height of the table-land, instead of at its base. On either side, we had a view down into a profound gulf, with sides of precipitous rock, and heaps of foliage in its lap, through which ran the snowy track of a stream; here snowy, there dark; here hidden among the foliage, there quite revealed in the broad depths of the gulf. This was wonderfully fine. Walking on a little farther, Soracte came fully into view, starting with bold abruptness out of the middle of the country; and before we got back, the bright Italian moon was throwing a shower of silver over the scene, and making it so beautiful that it seemed miserable not to know how to put it into words; a foolish thought, however, for such scenes are an expression in themselves, and need not be translated into any feebler language. On our walk we met parties of laborers, both men and women, returning from the fields, with rakes and wooden forks over their shoulders, singing in chorus. It is very customary for women to be laboring in the fields. TO TERNI.--BORGHETTO. May 25th.--We were aroused at four o'clock this morning; had some eggs and coffee, and were ready to start between five and six; being thus matutinary, in order to get to Terni in time to see the falls. The road was very striking and picturesque; but I remember nothing particularly, till we came to Borghetto, which stands on a bluff, with a broad valley sweeping round it, through the midst of which flows the Tiber. There is an old castle on a projecting point; and we saw other battlemented fortresses, of mediaeval date, along our way, forming more beautiful ruins than any of the Roman remains to which we have become accustomed. This is partly, I suppose, owing to the fact that they have been neglected, and allowed to mantle their decay with ivy, instead of being cleaned, propped up, and restored. The antiquarian is apt to spoil the objects that interest him. Sometimes we passed through wildernesses of various trees, each contributing a different hue of verdure to the scene; the vine, also, marrying itself to the fig-tree, so that a man might sit in the shadow of both at once, and temper the luscious sweetness of the one fruit with the fresh flavor of the other. The wayside incidents were such as meeting a man and woman borne along as prisoners, handcuffed and in a cart; two men reclining across one another, asleep, and lazily lifting their heads to gaze at us as we passed by; a woman spinning with a distaff as she walked along the road. An old tomb or tower stood in a lonely field, and several caves were hollowed in the rocks, which might have been either sepulchres or habitations. Soracte kept us company, sometimes a little on one side, sometimes behind, looming up again and again, when we thought that we had done with it, and so becoming rather tedious at last, like a person who presents himself for another and another leave-taking after the one which ought to have been final. Honeysuckles sweetened the hedges along the road. After leaving Borghetto, we crossed the broad valley of the Tiber, and skirted along one of the ridges that border it, looking back upon the road that we had passed, lying white behind us. We saw a field covered with buttercups, or some other yellow flower, and poppies burned along the roadside, as they did yesterday, and there were flowers of a delicious blue, as if the blue Italian sky had been broken into little bits, and scattered down upon the green earth. Otricoli by and by appeared, situated on a bold promontory above the valley, a village of a few gray houses and huts, with one edifice gaudily painted in white and pink. It looked more important at a distance than we found it on our nearer approach. As the road kept ascending, and as the hills grew to be mountains, we had taken two additional horses, making six in all, with a man and boy running beside them, to keep them in motion. The boy had two club feet, so inconveniently disposed that it seemed almost inevitable for him to stumble over them at every step; besides which, he seemed to tread upon his ankles, and moved with a disjointed gait, as if each of his legs and thighs had been twisted round together with his feet. Nevertheless, he had a bright, cheerful, intelligent face, and was exceedingly active, keeping up with the horses at their trot, and inciting them to better speed when they lagged. I conceived a great respect for this poor boy, who had what most Italian peasants would consider an enviable birthright in those two club feet, as giving him a sufficient excuse to live on charity, but yet took no advantage of them; on the contrary, putting his poor misshapen hoofs to such good use as might have shamed many a better provided biped. When he quitted us, he asked no alms of the travellers, but merely applied to Gaetano for some slight recompense for his well-performed service. This behavior contrasted most favorably with that of some other boys and girls, who ran begging beside the carriage door, keeping up a low, miserable murmur, like that of a kennel-stream, for a long, long way. Beggars, indeed, started up at every point, when we stopped for a moment, and whenever a hill imposed a slower pace upon us; each village had its deformity or its infirmity, offering his wretched petition at the step of the carriage; and even a venerable, white-haired patriarch, the grandfather of all the beggars, seemed to grow up by the roadside, but was left behind from inability to join in the race with his light-footed juniors. No shame is attached to begging in Italy. In fact, I rather imagine it to be held an honorable profession, inheriting some of the odor of sanctity that used to be attached to a mendicant and idle life in the days of early Christianity, when every saint lived upon Providence, and deemed it meritorious to do nothing for his support. Murray's guide-book is exceedingly vague and unsatisfactory along this route; and whenever we asked Gaetano the name of a village or a castle, he gave some one which we had never heard before, and could find nothing of in the book. We made out the river Nar, however, or what I supposed to be such, though he called it Nera. It flows through a most stupendous mountain-gorge; winding its narrow passage between high hills, the broad sides of which descend steeply upon it, covered with trees and shrubbery, that mantle a host of rocky roughnesses, and make all look smooth. Here and there a precipice juts sternly forth. We saw an old castle on a hillside, frowning down into the gorge; and farther on, the gray tower of Narni stands upon a height, imminent over the depths below, and with its battlemented castle above now converted into a prison, and therefore kept in excellent repair. A long winding street passes through Narni, broadening at one point into a market-place, where an old cathedral showed its venerable front, and the great dial of its clock, the figures on which were numbered in two semicircles of twelve points each; one, I suppose, for noon, and the other for midnight. The town has, so far as its principal street is concerned, a city-like aspect, with large, fair edifices, and shops as good as most of those at Rome, the smartness of which contrasts strikingly with the rude and lonely scenery of mountain and stream, through which we had come to reach it. We drove through Narni without stopping, and came out from it on the other side, where a broad, level valley opened before us, most unlike the wild, precipitous gorge which had brought us to the town. The road went winding down into the peaceful vale, through the midst of which flowed the same stream that cuts its way between the impending hills, as already described. We passed a monk and a soldier,--the two curses of Italy, each in his way,-- walking sociably side by side; and from Narni to Terni I remember nothing that need be recorded. Terni, like so many other towns in the neighborhood, stands in a high and commanding position, chosen doubtless for its facilities of defence, in days long before the mediaeval warfares of Italy made such sites desirable. I suppose that, like Narni and Otricoli, it was a city of the Umbrians. We reached it between eleven and twelve o'clock, intending to employ the afternoon on a visit to the famous falls of Terni; but, after lowering all day, it has begun to rain, and we shall probably have to give them up. Half past eight o'clock.--It has rained in torrents during the afternoon, and we have not seen the cascade of Terni; considerably to my regret, for I think I felt the more interest in seeing it, on account of its being artificial. Methinks nothing was more characteristic of the energy and determination of the old Romans, than thus to take a river, which they wished to be rid of, and fling it over a giddy precipice, breaking it into ten million pieces by the fall. . . . We are in the Hotel delle tre Colonne, and find it reasonably good, though not, so far as we are concerned, justifying the rapturous commendations of previous tourists, who probably travelled at their own charges. However, there is nothing really to be complained of, either in our accommodations or table, and the only wonder is how Gaetano contrives to get any profit out of our contract, since the hotel bills would alone cost us more than we pay him for the journey and all. It is worth while to record as history of vetturino commissary customs, that for breakfast this morning we had coffee, eggs, and bread and butter; for lunch an omelette, some stewed veal, and a dessert of figs and grapes, besides two decanters of a light-colored acid wine, tasting very like indifferent cider; for dinner, an excellent vermicelli soup, two young fowls, fricasseed, and a hind quarter of roast lamb, with fritters, oranges, and figs, and two more decanters of the wine aforesaid. This hotel is an edifice with a gloomy front upon a narrow street, and enterable through an arch, which admits you into an enclosed court; around the court, on each story, run the galleries, with which the parlors and sleeping-apartments communicate. The whole house is dingy, probably old, and seems not very clean; but yet bears traces of former magnificence; for instance, in our bedroom, the door of which is ornamented with gilding, and the cornices with frescos, some of which appear to represent the cascade of Terni, the roof is crossed with carved beams, and is painted in the interstices; the floor has a carpet, but rough tiles underneath it, which show themselves at the margin. The windows admit the wind; the door shuts so loosely as to leave great cracks; and, during the rain to-day, there was a heavy shower through our ceiling, which made a flood upon the carpet. We see no chambermaids; nothing of the comfort and neatness of an English hotel, nor of the smart splendors of an American one; but still this dilapidated palace affords us a better shelter than I expected to find in the decayed country towns of Italy. In the album of the hotel I find the names of more English travellers than of any other nation except the Americans, who, I think, even exceed the former; and, the route being the favorite one for tourists between Rome and Florence, whatever merit the inns have is probably owing to the demands of the Anglo-Saxons. I doubt not, if we chose to pay for it, this hotel would supply us with any luxury we might ask for; and perhaps even a gorgeous saloon and state bedchamber. After dinner, J----- and I walked out in the dusk to see what we could of Terni. We found it compact and gloomy (but the latter characteristic might well enough be attributed to the dismal sky), with narrow streets, paved from wall to wall of the houses, like those of all the towns in Italy; the blocks of paving-stone larger than the little square torments of Rome. The houses are covered with dingy stucco, and mostly low, compared with those of Rome, and inhospitable as regards their dismal aspects and uninviting doorways. The streets are intricate, as well as narrow; insomuch that we quickly lost our way, and could not find it again, though the town is of so small dimensions, that we passed through it in two directions, in the course of our brief wanderings. There are no lamp-posts in Terni; and as it was growing dark, and beginning to rain again, we at last inquired of a person in the principal piazza, and found our hotel, as I expected, within two minutes' walk of where we stood. FOLIGNO. May 26th.--At six o'clock this morning, we packed ourselves into our vettura, my wife and I occupying the coupe, and drove out of the city gate of Terni. There are some old towers near it, ruins of I know not what, and care as little, in the plethora of antiquities and other interesting objects. Through the arched gateway, as we approached, we had a view of one of the great hills that surround the town, looking partly bright in the early sunshine, and partly catching the shadows of the clouds that floated about the sky. Our way was now through the Vale of Terni, as I believe it is called, where we saw somewhat of the fertility of Italy: vines trained on poles, or twining round mulberry and other trees, ranged regularly like orchards; groves of olives and fields of grain. There are interminable shrines in all sorts of situations; some under arched niches, or little penthouses, with a brick-tiled roof, just large enough to cover them; or perhaps in some bit of old Roman masonry, on the wall of a wayside inn, or in a shallow cavity of the natural rock, or high upward in the deep cuts of the road; everywhere, in short, so that nobody need be at a loss when he feels the religious sentiment stir within him. Our way soon began to wind among the hills, which rose steep and lofty from the scanty, level space that lay between; they continually thrust themselves across the passage, and appeared as if determined to shut us completely in. A great hill would put its foot right before us; but, at the last moment, would grudgingly withdraw it, and allow us just room enough to creep by. Adown their sides we discerned the dry beds of mountain torrents, which had lived too fierce a life to let it be a long one. On here and there a hillside or promontory we saw a ruined castle or a convent, looking from its commanding height upon the road, which very likely some robber-knight had formerly infested with his banditti, retreating with his booty to the security of such strongholds. We came, once in a while, to wretched villages, where there was no token of prosperity or comfort; but perhaps there may have been more than we could appreciate, for the Italians do not seem to have any of that sort of pride which we find in New England villages, where every man, according to his taste and means, endeavors to make his homestead an ornament to the place. We miss nothing in Italy more than the neat doorsteps and pleasant porches and thresholds and delightful lawns or grass-plots, which hospitably invite the imagination into a sweet domestic interior. Everything, however sunny and luxuriant may be the scene around, is especially dreary and disheartening in the immediate vicinity of an Italian home. At Strettura (which, as the name indicates, is a very narrow part of the valley) we added two oxen to our horses, and began to ascend the Monte Somma, which, according to Murray, is nearly four thousand feet high where we crossed it. When we came to the steepest part of the ascent, Gaetano, who exercises a pretty decided control over his passengers, allowed us to walk; and we all, with one exception, alighted, and began to climb the mountain on foot. I walked on briskly, and soon left the rest of the party behind, reaching the top of the pass in such a short time that I could not believe it, and kept onward, expecting still another height to climb. But the road began to descend, winding among the depths of the hills as heretofore; now beside the dry, gravelly bed of a departed stream, now crossing it by a bridge, and perhaps passing through some other gorge, that yet gave no decided promise of an outlet into the world beyond. A glimpse might occasionally be caught, through a gap between the hill-tops, of a company of distant mountain-peaks, pyramidal, as these hills are apt to be, and resembling the camp of an army of giants. The landscape was not altogether savage; sometimes a hillside was covered with a rich field of grain, or an orchard of olive-trees, looking not unlike puffs of smoke, from the peculiar line of their foliage; but oftener there was a vast mantle of trees and shrubbery from top to bottom, the golden tufts of the broom shining out amid the verdure, and gladdening the whole. Nothing was dismal except the houses; those were always so, whether the compact, gray lines of village hovels, with a narrow street between, or the lonely farm-house, standing far apart from the road, built of stone, with window-gaps high in the wall, empty of glass; or the half-castle, half-dwelling, of which I saw a specimen or two, with what looked like a defensive rampart, drawn around its court. I saw no look of comfort anywhere; and continually, in this wild and solitary region, I met beggars, just as if I were still in the streets of Rome. Boys and girls kept beside me, till they delivered me into the hands of others like themselves; hoary grandsires and grandmothers caught a glimpse of my approach, and tottered as fast as they could to intercept me; women came out of the cottages, with rotten cherries on a plate, entreating me to buy them for a mezzo baioccho; a man, at work on the road, left his toil to beg, and was grateful for the value of a cent; in short, I was never safe from importunity, as long as there was a house or a human being in sight. We arrived at Spoleto before noon, and while our dejeuner was being prepared, looked down from the window of the inn into the narrow street beneath, which, from the throng of people in it, I judged to be the principal one: priests, papal soldiers, women with no bonnets on their heads; peasants in breeches and mushroom hats; maids and matrons, drawing water at a fountain; idlers, smoking on a bench under the window; a talk, a bustle, but no genuine activity. After lunch we walked out to see the lions of Spoleto, and found our way up a steep and narrow street that led us to the city gate, at which, it is traditionally said, Hannibal sought to force an entrance, after the battle of Thrasymene, and was repulsed. The gateway has a double arch, on the inner one of which is a tablet, recording the above tradition as an unquestioned historical fact. From the gateway we went in search of the Duomo, or cathedral, and were kindly directed thither by an officer, who was descending into the town from the citadel, which is an old castle, now converted into a prison. The cathedral seemed small, and did not much interest us, either by the Gothic front or its modernized interior. We saw nothing else in Spoleto, but went back to the inn and resumed our journey, emerging from the city into the classic valley of the Clitumnus, which we did not view under the best of auspices, because it was overcast, and the wind as chill as if it had the cast in it. The valley, though fertile, and smilingly picturesque, perhaps, is not such as I should wish to celebrate, either in prose or poetry. It is of such breadth and extent, that its frame of mountains and ridgy hills hardly serve to shut it in sufficiently, and the spectator thinks of a boundless plain, rather than of a secluded vale. After passing Le Vene, we came to the little temple which Byron describes, and which has been supposed to be the one immortalized by Pliny. It is very small, and stands on a declivity that falls immediately from the road, right upon which rises the pediment of the temple, while the columns of the other front find sufficient height to develop themselves in the lower ground. A little farther down than the base of the edifice we saw the Clitumnus, so recently from its source in the marble rock, that it was still as pure as a child's heart, and as transparent as truth itself. It looked airier than nothing, because it had not substance enough to brighten, and it was clearer than the atmosphere. I remember nothing else of the valley of Clitumnus, except that the beggars in this region of proverbial fertility are wellnigh profane in the urgency of their petitions; they absolutely fall down on their knees as you approach, in the same attitude as if they were praying to their Maker, and beseech you for alms with a fervency which I am afraid they seldom use before an altar or shrine. Being denied, they ran hastily beside the carriage, but got nothing, and finally gave over. I am so very tired and sleepy that I mean to mention nothing else to-night, except the city of Trevi, which, on the approach from Spoleto, seems completely to cover a high, peaked hill, from its pyramidal tip to its base. It was the strangest situation in which to build a town, where, I should suppose, no horse can climb, and whence no inhabitant would think of descending into the world, after the approach of age should begin to stiffen his joints. On looking back on this most picturesque of towns (which the road, of course, did not enter, as evidently no road could), I saw that the highest part of the hill was quite covered with a crown of edifices, terminating in a church-tower; while a part of the northern side was apparently too steep for building; and a cataract of houses flowed down the western and southern slopes. There seemed to be palaces, churches, everything that a city should have; but my eyes are heavy, and I can write no more about them, only that I suppose the summit of the hill was artificially tenured, so as to prevent its crumbling down, and enable it to support the platform of edifices which crowns it. May 27th.--We reached Foligno in good season yesterday afternoon. Our inn seemed ancient; and, under the same roof, on one side of the entrance, was the stable, and on the other the coach-house. The house is built round a narrow court, with a well of water at bottom, and an opening in the roof at top, whence the staircases are lighted that wind round the sides of the court, up to the highest story. Our dining-room and bedrooms were in the latter region, and were all paved with brick, and without carpets; and the characteristic of the whole was all exceeding plainness and antique clumsiness of fitting up. We found ourselves sufficiently comfortable, however; and, as has been the case throughout our journey, had a very fair and well-cooked dinner. It shows, as perhaps I have already remarked, that it is still possible to live well in Italy, at no great expense, and that the high prices charged to the forestieri at Rome and elsewhere are artificial, and ought to be abated. . . . The day had darkened since morning, and was now ominous of rain; but as soon as we were established, we sallied out to see whatever was worth looking at. A beggar-boy, with one leg, followed us, without asking for anything, apparently only for the pleasure of our company, though he kept at too great a distance for conversation, and indeed did not attempt to speak. We went first to the cathedral, which has a Gothic front, and a modernized interior, stuccoed and whitewashed, looking as neat as a New England meeting-house, and very mean, after our familiarity with the gorgeous churches in other cities. There were some pictures in the chapels, but, I believe, all modern, and I do not remember a single one of them. Next we went, without any guide, to a church attached to a convent of Dominican monks, with a Gothic exterior, and two hideous pictures of Death,--the skeleton leaning on his scythe, one on each side of the door. This church, likewise, was whitewashed, but we understood that it had been originally frescoed all over, and by famous hands; but these pictures, having become much injured, they were all obliterated, as we saw,--all, that is to say, except a few specimens of the best preserved, which were spared to show the world what the whole had been. I thanked my stars that the obliteration of the rest had taken place before our visit; for if anything is dreary and calculated to make the beholder utterly miserable, it is a faded fresco, with spots of the white plaster dotted over it. Our one-legged boy had followed us into the church and stood near the door till he saw us ready to come out, when he hurried on before us, and waited a little way off to see whither we should go. We still went on at random, taking the first turn that offered itself, and soon came to another old church,--that of St. Mary within the Walls,--into which we entered, and found it whitewashed, like the other two. This was especially fortunate, for the doorkeeper informed us that, two years ago, the whole church (except, I suppose, the roof, which is of timber) had been covered with frescos by Pinturicchio, all of which had been ruthlessly obliterated, except a very few fragments. These he proceeded to show us; poor, dim ghosts of what may once have been beautiful,--now so far gone towards nothingness that I was hardly sure whether I saw a glimmering of the design or not. By the by, it was not Pinturicchio, as I have written above, but Giotto, assisted, I believe, by Cimabue, who painted these frescos. Our one-legged attendant had followed us also into this church, and again hastened out of it before us; and still we heard the dot of his crutch upon the pavement, as we passed from street to street. By and by a sickly looking man met us, and begged for "qualche cosa"; but the boy shouted to him, "Niente!" whether intimating that we would give him nothing, or that he himself had a prior claim to all our charity, I cannot tell. However, the beggar-man turned round, and likewise followed our devious course. Once or twice we missed him; but it was only because he could not walk so fast as we; for he appeared again as we emerged from the door of another church. Our one-legged friend we never missed for a moment; he kept pretty near us,--near enough to be amused by our indecision whither to go; and he seemed much delighted when it began to rain, and he saw us at a loss how to find our way back to the hotel. Nevertheless, he did not offer to guide us; but stumped on behind with a faster or slower dot of his crutch, according to our pace. I began to think that he must have been engaged as a spy upon our movements by the police who had taken away my passport at the city gate. In this way he attended us to the door of the hotel, where the beggar had already arrived. The latter again put in his doleful petition; the one-legged boy said not a word, nor seemed to expect anything, and both had to go away without so much as a mezzo baioccho out of our pockets. The multitude of beggars in Italy makes the heart as obdurate as a paving-stone. We left Foligno this morning, and, all ready for us at the door of the hotel, as we got into the carriage, were our friends, the beggar-man and the one-legged boy; the latter holding out his ragged hat, and smiling with as confident an air as if he had done us some very particular service, and were certain of being paid for it, as from contract. It was so very funny, so impudent, so utterly absurd, that I could not help giving him a trifle; but the man got nothing,--a fact that gives me a twinge or two, for he looked sickly and miserable. But where everybody begs, everybody, as a general rule, must be denied; and, besides, they act their misery so well that you are never sure of the genuine article. PERUGIA. May 25th.--As I said last night, we left Foligno betimes in the morning, which was bleak, chill, and very threatening, there being very little blue sky anywhere, and the clouds lying heavily on some of the mountain-ridges. The wind blew sharply right in U----'s face and mine, as we occupied the coupe, so that there must have been a great deal of the north in it. We drove through a wide plain--the Umbrian valley, I suppose--and soon passed the old town of Spello, just touching its skirts, and wondering how people, who had this rich and convenient plain from which to choose a site, could think of covering a huge island of rock with their dwellings,--for Spello tumbled its crooked and narrow streets down a steep descent, and cannot well have a yard of even space within its walls. It is said to contain some rare treasures of ancient pictorial art. I do not remember much that we saw on our route. The plains and the lower hillsides seemed fruitful of everything that belongs to Italy, especially the olive and the vine. As usual, there were a great many shrines, and frequently a cross by the wayside. Hitherto it had been merely a plain wooden cross; but now almost every cross was hung with various instruments, represented in wood, apparently symbols of the crucifixion of our Saviour,--the spear, the sponge, the crown of thorns, the hammer, a pair of pincers, and always St. Peter's cock, made a prominent figure, generally perched on the summit of the cross. From our first start this morning we had seen mists in various quarters, betokening that there was rain in those spots, and now it began to spatter in our own faces, although within the wide extent of our prospect we could see the sunshine falling on portions of the valley. A rainbow, too, shone out, and remained so long visible that it appeared to have made a permanent stain in the sky. By and by we reached Assisi, which is magnificently situated for pictorial purposes, with a gray castle above it, and a gray wall around it, itself on a mountain, and looking over the great plain which we had been traversing, and through which lay our onward way. We drove through the Piazza Grande to an ancient house a little beyond, where a hospitable old lady receives travellers for a consideration, without exactly keeping an inn. In the piazza we saw the beautiful front of a temple of Minerva, consisting of several marble pillars, fluted, and with rich capitals supporting a pediment. It was as fine as anything I had seen at Rome, and is now, of course, converted into a Catholic church. I ought to have said that, instead of driving straight to the old lady's, we alighted at the door of a church near the city gate, and went in to inspect some melancholy frescos, and thence clambered up a narrow street to the cathedral, which has a Gothic front, old enough, but not very impressive. I really remember not a single object that we saw within, but am pretty certain that the interior had been stuccoed and whitewashed. The ecclesiastics of old time did an excellent thing in covering the interiors of their churches with brilliant frescos, thus filling the holy places with saints and angels, and almost with the presence of the Divinity. The modern ecclesiastics do the next best thing in obliterating the wretched remnants of what has had its day and done its office. These frescos might be looked upon as the symbol of the living spirit that made Catholicism a true religion, and glorified it as long as it did live; now the glory and beauty have departed from one and the other. My wife, U----, and Miss Shepard now set out with a cicerone to visit the great Franciscan convent, in the church of which are preserved some miraculous specimens, in fresco and in oils, of early Italian art; but as I had no mind to suffer any further in this way, I stayed behind with J----- and R-----, who we're equally weary of these things. After they were gone we took a ramble through the city, but were almost swept away by the violence of the wind, which struggled with me for my hat, and whirled R----- before it like a feather. The people in the public square seemed much diverted at our predicament, being, I suppose, accustomed to these rude blasts in their mountain-home. However, the wind blew in momentary gusts, and then became more placable till another fit of fury came, and passed as suddenly as before. We walked out of the same gate through which we had entered,--an ancient gate, but recently stuccoed and whitewashed, in wretched contrast to the gray, venerable wall through which it affords ingress,--and I stood gazing at the magnificent prospect of the wide valley beneath. It was so vast that there appeared to be all varieties of weather in it at the same instant; fields of sunshine, tracts of storm,--here the coming tempest, there the departing one. It was a picture of the world on a vast canvas, for there was rural life and city life within the great expanse, and the whole set in a frame of mountains,--the nearest bold and dust-net, with the rocky ledges showing through their sides, the distant ones blue and dim,--so far stretched this broad valley. When I had looked long enough,--no, not long enough, for it would take a great while to read that page,--we returned within the gate, and we clambered up, past the cathedral and into the narrow streets above it. The aspect of everything was immeasurably old; a thousand years would be but a middle age for one of those houses, built so massively with huge stones and solid arches, that I do not see how they are ever to tumble down, or to be less fit for human habitation than they are now. The streets crept between them, and beneath arched passages, and up and down steps of stone or ancient brick, for it would be altogether impossible for a carriage to ascend above the Grand Piazza, though possibly a donkey or a chairman's mule might find foothold. The city seems like a stony growth out of the hillside, or a fossilized city,--so old and singular it is, without enough life and juiciness in it to be susceptible of decay. An earthquake is the only chance of its ever being ruined, beyond its present ruin. Nothing is more strange than to think that this now dead city--dead, as regards the purposes for which men live nowadays--was, centuries ago, the seat and birthplace almost of art, the only art in which the beautiful part of the human mind then developed itself. How came that flower to grow among these wild mountains? I do not conceive, however, that the people of Assisi were ever much more enlightened or cultivated on the side of art than they are at present. The ecclesiastics were then the only patrons; and the flower grew here because there was a great ecclesiastical garden in which it was sheltered and fostered. But it is very curious to think of Assisi, a school of art within, and mountain and wilderness without. My wife and the rest of the party returned from the convent before noon, delighted with what they had seen, as I was delighted not to have seen it. We ate our dejeuner, and resumed our journey, passing beneath the great convent, after emerging from the gate opposite to that of our entrance. The edifice made a very good spectacle, being of great extent, and standing on a double row of high and narrow arches, on which it is built up from the declivity of the hill. We soon reached the Church of St. Mary of the Angels, which is a modern structure, and very spacious, built in place of one destroyed by an earthquake. It is a fine church, opening out a magnificent space in its nave and aisles; and beneath the great dome stands the small old chapel, with its rude stone walls, in which St. Francis founded his order. This chapel and the dome appear to have been the only portions of the ancient church that were not destroyed by the earthquake. The dwelling of St. Francis is said to be also preserved within the church; but we did not see it, unless it were a little dark closet into which we squeezed to see some frescos by La Spagna. It had an old wooden door, of which U---- picked off a little bit of a chip, to serve as a relic. There is a fresco in the church, on the pediment of the chapel, by Overbeck, representing the Assumption of the Virgin. It did not strike me as wonderfully fine. The other pictures, of which there were many, were modern, and of no great merit. We pursued our way, and came, by and by, to the foot of the high hill on which stands Perugia, and which is so long and steep that Gaetano took a yoke of oxen to aid his horses in the ascent. We all, except my wife, walked a part of the way up, and I myself, with J----- for my companion, kept on even to the city gate,--a distance, I should think, of two or three miles, at least. The lower part of the road was on the edge of the hill, with a narrow valley on our left; and as the sun had now broken out, its verdure and fertility, its foliage and cultivation, shone forth in miraculous beauty, as green as England, as bright as only Italy. Perugia appeared above us, crowning a mighty hill, the most picturesque of cities; and the higher we ascended, the more the view opened before us, as we looked back on the course that we had traversed, and saw the wide valley, sweeping down and spreading out, bounded afar by mountains, and sleeping in sun and shadow. No language nor any art of the pencil can give an idea of the scene. When God expressed himself in the landscape to mankind, he did not intend that it should be translated into any tongue save his own immediate one. J----- meanwhile, whose heart is now wholly in snail-shells, was rummaging for them among the stones and hedges by the roadside; yet, doubtless, enjoyed the prospect more than he knew. The coach lagged far behind us, and when it came up, we entered the gate, where a soldier appeared, and demanded my passport. We drove to the Grand Hotel de France, which is near the gate, and two fine little boys ran beside the carriage, well dressed and well looking enough to have been a gentleman's sons, but claiming Gaetano for their father. He is an inhabitant of Perugia, and has therefore reached his own home, though we are still little more than midway to our journey's end. Our hotel proves, thus far, to be the best that we have yet met with. We are only in the outskirts of Perugia; the bulk of the city, where the most interesting churches and the public edifices are situated, being far above us on the hill. My wife, U----, Miss Shepard, and R----- streamed forth immediately, and saw a church; but J-----, who hates them, and I remained behind; and, for my part, I added several pages to this volume of scribble. This morning was as bright as morning could be, even in Italy, and in this transparent mountain atmosphere. We at first declined the services of a cicerone, and went out in the hopes of finding our way to whatever we wished to see, by our own instincts. This proved to be a mistaken hope, however; and we wandered about the upper city, much persecuted by a shabby old man who wished to guide us; so, at last, Miss Shepard went back in quest of the cicerone at the hotel, and, meanwhile, we climbed to the summit of the hill of Perugia, and, leaning over a wall, looked forth upon a most magnificent view of mountain and valley, terminating in some peaks, lofty and dim, which surely must be the Apennines. There again a young man accosted us, offering to guide us to the Cambio or Exchange; and as this was one of the places which we especially wished to see, we accepted his services. By the by, I ought to have mentioned that we had already entered a church (San Luigi, I believe), the interior of which we found very impressive, dim with the light of stained and painted windows, insomuch that it at first seemed almost dark, and we could only see the bright twinkling of the tapers at the shrines; but, after a few minutes, we discerned the tall octagonal pillars of the nave, marble, and supporting a beautiful roof of crossed arches. The church was neither Gothic nor classic, but a mixture of both, and most likely barbarous; yet it had a grand effect in its tinted twilight, and convinced me more than ever how desirable it is that religious edifices should have painted windows. The door of the Cambio proved to be one that we had passed several times, while seeking for it, and was very near the church just mentioned, which fronts on one side of the same piazza. We were received by an old gentleman, who appeared to be a public officer, and found ourselves in a small room, wainscoted with beautifully carved oak, roofed with a coved ceiling, painted with symbols of the planets, and arabesqued in rich designs by Raphael, and lined with splendid frescos of subjects, scriptural and historical, by Perugino. When the room was in its first glory, I can conceive that the world had not elsewhere to show, within so small a space, such magnificence and beauty as were then displayed here. Even now, I enjoyed (to the best of my belief, for we can never feel sure that we are not bamboozling ourselves in such matters) some real pleasure in what I saw; and especially seemed to feel, after all these ages, the old painter's devout sentiment still breathing forth from the religious pictures, the work of a hand that had so long been dust. When we had looked long at these, the old gentleman led us into a chapel, of the same size as the former room, and built in the same fashion, wainscoted likewise with old oak. The walls were also frescoed, entirely frescoed, and retained more of their original brightness than those we had already seen, although the pictures were the production of a somewhat inferior hand, a pupil of Perugino. They seemed to be very striking, however, not the less so, that one of them provoked an unseasonable smile. It was the decapitation of John the Baptist; and this holy personage was represented as still on his knees, with his hands clasped in prayer, although the executioner was already depositing the head in a charger, and the blood was spouting from the headless trunk, directly, as it were, into the face of the spectator. While we were in the outer room, the cicerone who first offered his services at the hotel had come in; so we paid our chance guide, and expected him to take his leave. It is characteristic of this idle country, however, that if you once speak to a person, or connect yourself with him by the slightest possible tie, you will hardly get rid of him by anything short of main force. He still lingered in the room, and was still there when I came away; for, having had as many pictures as I could digest, I left my wife and U---- with the cicerone, and set out on a ramble with J-----. We plunged from the upper city down through some of the strangest passages that ever were called streets; some of them, indeed, being arched all over, and, going down into the unknown darkness, looked like caverns; and we followed one of them doubtfully, till it opened out upon the light. The houses on each side were divided only by a pace or two, and communicated with one another, here and there, by arched passages. They looked very ancient, and may have been inhabited by Etruscan princes, judging from the massiveness of some of the foundation stones. The present inhabitants, nevertheless, are by no means princely,--shabby men, and the careworn wives and mothers of the people,--one of whom was guiding a child in leading-strings through these antique alleys, where hundreds of generations have trod before those little feet. Finally we came out through a gateway, the same gateway at which we entered last night. I ought to have mentioned, in the narrative of yesterday, that we crossed the Tiber shortly before reaching Perugia, already a broad and rapid stream, and already distinguished by the same turbid and mud-puddly quality of water that we see in it at Rome. I think it will never be so disagreeable to me hereafter, now that I find this turbidness to be its native color, and not (like that of the Thames) accruing from city sewers or any impurities of the lowlands. As I now remember, the small Chapel of Santa Maria degl' Angeli seems to have been originally the house of St. Francis. May 29th.--This morning we visited the Church of the Dominicans, where we saw some quaint pictures by Fra Angelico, with a good deal of religious sincerity in them; also a picture of St. Columba by Perugino, which unquestionably is very good. To confess the truth, I took more interest in a fair Gothic monument, in white marble, of Pope Benedict XII., representing him reclining under a canopy, while two angels draw aside the curtain, the canopy being supported by twisted columns, richly ornamented. I like this overflow and gratuity of device with which Gothic sculpture works out its designs, after seeing so much of the simplicity of classic art in marble. We then tried to find the Church of San Pietro in Martire, but without success, although every person of whom we inquired immediately attached himself or herself to us, and could hardly be got rid of by any efforts on our part. Nobody seemed to know the church we wished for, but all directed us to another Church of San Pietro, which contains nothing of interest; whereas the right church is supposed to contain a celebrated picture by Perugino. Finally, we ascended the hill and the city proper of Perugia (for our hotel is in one of the suburbs), and J----- and I set out on a ramble about the city. It was market-day, and the principal piazza, with the neighboring streets, was crowded with people. . . . The best part of Perugia, that in which the grand piazzas and the principal public edifices stand, seems to be a nearly level plateau on the summit of the hill; but it is of no very great extent, and the streets rapidly run downward on either side. J----- and I followed one of these descending streets, and were led a long way by it, till we at last emerged from one of the gates of the city, and had another view of the mountains and valleys, the fertile and sunny wilderness in which this ancient civilization stands. On the right of the gate there was a rude country-path, partly overgrown with grass, bordered by a hedge on one side, and on the other by the gray city wall, at the base of which the track kept onward. We followed it, hoping that it would lead us to some other gate by which we might re-enter the city; but it soon grew so indistinct and broken, that it was evidently on the point of melting into somebody's olive-orchard or wheat-fields or vineyards, all of which lay on the other side of the hedge; and a kindly old woman of whom I inquired told me (if I rightly understood her Italian) that I should find no further passage in that direction. So we turned back, much broiled in the hot sun, and only now and then relieved by the shadow of an angle or a tower. A lame beggar-man sat by the gate, and as we passed him J----- gave him two baiocchi (which he himself had begged of me to buy an orange with), and was loaded with the pauper's prayers and benedictions as we entered the city. A great many blessings can be bought for very little money anywhere in Italy; and whether they avail anything or no, it is pleasant to see that the beggars have gratitude enough to bestow them in such abundance. Of all beggars I think a little fellow, who rode beside our carriage on a stick, his bare feet scampering merrily, while he managed his steed with one hand, and held out the other for charity, howling piteously the while, amused me most. PASSIGNANO. May 29th.--We left Perugia at about three o'clock to-day, and went down a pretty steep descent; but I have no particular recollection of the road till it again began to descend, before reaching the village of Magione. We all, except my wife, walked up the long hill, while the vettura was dragged after us with the aid of a yoke of oxen. Arriving first at the village, I leaned over the wall to admire the beautiful paese ("le bel piano," as a peasant called it, who made acquaintance with me) that lay at the foot of the hill, so level, so bounded within moderate limits by a frame of hills and ridges, that it looked like a green lake. In fact, I think it was once a real lake, which made its escape from its bed, as I have known some lakes to have done in America. Passing through and beyond the village, I saw, on a height above the road, a half-ruinous tower, with great cracks running down its walls, half-way from top to bottom. Some little children had mounted the hill with us, begging all the way; they were recruited with additional members in the village; and here, beneath the ruinous tower, a madman, as it seemed, assaulted us, and ran almost under the carriage-wheels, in his earnestness to get a baioccho. Ridding ourselves of these annoyances, we drove on, and, between five and six o'clock, came in sight of the Lake of Thrasymene, obtaining our first view of it, I think, in its longest extent. There were high hills, and one mountain with its head in the clouds, visible on the farther shore, and on the horizon beyond it; but the nearer banks were long ridges, and hills of only moderate height. The declining sun threw a broad sheen of brightness over the surface of the lake, so that we could not well see it for excess of light; but had a vision of headlands and islands floating about in a flood of gold, and blue, airy heights bounding it afar. When we first drew near the lake, there was but a narrow tract, covered with vines and olives, between it and the hill that rose on the other side. As we advanced, the tract grew wider, and was very fertile, as was the hillside, with wheat-fields, and vines, and olives, especially the latter, which, symbol of peace as it is, seemed to find something congenial to it in the soil stained long ago with blood. Farther onward, the space between the lake and hill grew still narrower, the road skirting along almost close to the water-side; and when we reached the town of Passignano there was but room enough for its dirty and ugly street to stretch along the shore. I have seldom beheld a lovelier scene than that of the lake and the landscape around it; never an uglier one than that of this idle and decaying village, where we were immediately surrounded by beggars of all ages, and by men vociferously proposing to row us out upon the lake. We declined their offers of a boat, for the evening was very fresh and cool, insomuch that I should have liked an outside garment,--a temperature that I had not anticipated, so near the beginning of June, in sunny Italy. Instead of a row, we took a walk through the village, hoping to come upon the shore of the lake, in some secluded spot; but an incredible number of beggar-children, both boys and girls, but more of the latter, rushed out of every door, and went along with us, all howling their miserable petitions at the same moment. The village street is long, and our escort waxed more numerous at every step, till Miss Shepard actually counted forty of these little reprobates, and more were doubtless added afterwards. At first, no doubt, they begged in earnest hope of getting some baiocchi; but, by and by, perceiving that we had determined not to give them anything, they made a joke of the matter, and began to laugh and to babble, and turn heels over head, still keeping about us, like a swarm of flies, and now and then begging again with all their might. There were as few pretty faces as I ever saw among the same number of children; and they were as ragged and dirty little imps as any in the world, and, moreover, tainted the air with a very disagreeable odor from their rags and dirt; rugged and healthy enough, nevertheless, and sufficiently intelligent; certainly bold and persevering too; so that it is hard to say what they needed to fit them for success in life. Yet they begin as beggars, and no doubt will end so, as all their parents and grandparents do; for in our walk through the village, every old woman and many younger ones held out their hands for alms, as if they had all been famished. Yet these people kept their houses over their heads; had firesides in winter, I suppose, and food out of their little gardens every day; pigs to kill, chickens, olives, wine, and a great many things to make life comfortable. The children, desperately as they begged, looked in good bodily ease, and happy enough; but, certainly, there was a look of earnest misery in the faces of some of the old women, either genuine or exceedingly well acted. I could not bear the persecution, and went into our hotel, determining not to venture out again till our departure; at least not in the daylight. My wife and the rest of the family, however, continued their walk, and at length were relieved from their little pests by three policemen (the very images of those in Rome, in their blue, long-skirted coats, cocked chapeaux-bras, white shoulder-belts, and swords), who boxed their ears, and dispersed them. Meanwhile, they had quite driven away all sentimental effusion (of which I felt more, really, than I expected) about the Lake of Thrasymene. The inn of Passignano promised little from its outward appearance; a tall, dark old house, with a stone staircase leading us up from one sombre story to another, into a brick-paved dining-room, with our sleeping-chambers on each side. There was a fireplace of tremendous depth and height, fit to receive big forest-logs, and with a queer, double pair of ancient andirons, capable of sustaining them; and in a handful of ashes lay a small stick of olive-wood,--a specimen, I suppose, of the sort of fuel which had made the chimney black, in the course of a good many years. There must have been much shivering and misery of cold around this fireplace. However, we needed no fire now, and there was promise of good cheer in the spectacle of a man cleaning some lake-fish for our dinner, while the poor things flounced and wriggled under the knife. The dinner made its appearance, after a long while, and was most plentiful, . . . . so that, having measured our appetite in anticipation of a paucity of food, we had to make more room for such overflowing abundance. When dinner was over, it was already dusk, and before retiring I opened the window, and looked out on Lake Thrasymene, the margin of which lies just on the other side of the narrow village street. The moon was a day or two past the full, just a little clipped on the edge, but gave light enough to show the lake and its nearer shores almost as distinctly as by day; and there being a ripple on the surface of the water, it made a sheen of silver over a wide space. AREZZO. May 30th.--We started at six o'clock, and left the one ugly street of Passignano, before many of the beggars were awake. Immediately in the vicinity of the village there is very little space between the lake in front and the ridge of hills in the rear; but the plain widened as we drove onward, so that the lake was scarcely to be seen, or often quite hidden among the intervening trees, although we could still discern the summits of the mountains that rise far beyond its shores. The country was fertile, presenting, on each side of the road, vines trained on fig-trees; wheat-fields and olives, in greater abundance than any other product. On our right, with a considerable width of plain between, was the bending ridge of hills that shut in the Roman army, by its close approach to the lake at Passignano. In perhaps half all hour's drive, we reached the little bridge that throws its arch over the Sanguinetto, and alighted there. The stream has but about a yard's width of water; and its whole course, between the hills and the lake, might well have been reddened and swollen with the blood of the multitude of slain Romans. Its name put me in mind of the Bloody Brook at Deerfield, where a company of Massachusetts men were massacred by the Indians. The Sanguinetto flows over a bed of pebbles; and J----- crept under the bridge, and got one of them for a memorial, while U----, Miss Shepard, and R----- plucked some olive twigs and oak leaves, and made them into wreaths together,--symbols of victory and peace. The tower, which is traditionally named after Hannibal, is seen on a height that makes part of the line of enclosing hills. It is a large, old castle, apparently of the Middle Ages, with a square front, and a battlemented sweep of wall. The town of Torres (its name, I think), where Hannibal's main army is supposed to have lain while the Romans came through the pass, was in full view; and I could understand the plan of the battle better than any system of military operations which I have hitherto tried to fathom. Both last night and to-day, I found myself stirred more sensibly than I expected by the influences of this scene. The old battle-field is still fertile in thoughts and emotions, though it is so many ages since the blood spilt there has ceased to make the grass and flowers grow more luxuriantly. I doubt whether I should feel so much on the field of Saratoga or Monmouth; but these old classic battle-fields belong to the whole world, and each man feels as if his own forefathers fought them. Mine, by the by, if they fought them at all, must have been on the side of Hannibal; for, certainly, I sympathized with him, and exulted in the defeat of the Romans on their own soil. They excite much the same emotion of general hostility that the English do. Byron has written some very fine stanzas on the battle-field,--not so good as others that he has written on classical scenes and subjects, yet wonderfully impressing his own perception of the subject on the reader. Whenever he has to deal with a statue, a ruin, a battle-field, he pounces upon the topic like a vulture, and tears out its heart in a twinkling, so that there is nothing more to be said. If I mistake not, our passport was examined by the papal officers at the last custom-house in the pontifical territory, before we traversed the path through which the Roman army marched to its destruction. Lake Thrasymene, of which we took our last view, is not deep set among the hills, but is bordered by long ridges, with loftier mountains receding into the distance. It is not to be compared to Windermere or Loch Lomond for beauty, nor with Lake Champlain and many a smaller lake in my own country, none of which, I hope, will ever become so historically interesting as this famous spot. A few miles onward our passport was countersigned at the Tuscan custom-house, and our luggage permitted to pass without examination on payment of a fee of nine or ten pauls, besides two pauls to the porters. There appears to be no concealment on the part of the officials in thus waiving the exercise of their duty, and I rather imagine that the thing is recognized and permitted by their superiors. At all events, it is very convenient for the traveller. We saw Cortona, sitting, like so many other cities in this region, on its hill, and arrived about noon at Arezzo, which also stretches up a high hillside, and is surrounded, as they all are, by its walls or the remains of one, with a fortified gate across every entrance. I remember one little village, somewhere in the neighborhood of the Clitumnus, which we entered by one gateway, and, in the course of two minutes at the utmost, left by the opposite one, so diminutive was this walled town. Everything hereabouts bears traces of times when war was the prevalent condition, and peace only a rare gleam of sunshine. At Arezzo we have put up at the Hotel Royal, which has the appearance of a grand old house, and proves to be a tolerable inn enough. After lunch, we wandered forth to see the town, which did not greatly interest me after Perugia, being much more modern and less picturesque in its aspect. We went to the cathedral,--a Gothic edifice, but not of striking exterior. As the doors were closed, and not to be opened till three o'clock, we seated ourselves under the trees, on a high, grassy space surrounded and intersected with gravel-walks,--a public promenade, in short, near the cathedral; and after resting ourselves here we went in search of Petrarch's house, which Murray mentions as being in this neighborhood. We inquired of several people, who knew nothing about the matter; one woman misdirected us, out of mere fun, I believe, for she afterwards met us and asked how we had succeeded. But finally, through ------'s enterprise and perseverance, we found the spot, not a stone's-throw from where we had been sitting. Petrarch's house stands below the promenade which I have just mentioned, and within hearing of the reverberations between the strokes of the cathedral bell. It is two stories high, covered with a light-colored stucco, and has not the slightest appearance of antiquity, no more than many a modern and modest dwelling-house in an American city. Its only remarkable feature is a pointed arch of stone, let into the plastered wall, and forming a framework for the doorway. I set my foot on the doorsteps, ascended them, and Miss Shepard and J----- gathered some weeds or blades of grass that grew in the chinks between the steps. There is a long inscription on a slab of marble set in the front of the house, as is the fashion in Arezzo when a house has been the birthplace or residence of a distinguished man. Right opposite Petrarch's birth-house--and it must have been the well whence the water was drawn that first bathed him--is a well which Boccaccio has introduced into one of his stories. It is surrounded with a stone curb, octagonal in shape, and evidently as ancient as Boccaccio's time. It has a wooden cover, through which is a square opening, and looking down I saw my own face in the water far beneath. There is no familiar object connected with daily life so interesting as a well; and this well or old Arezzo, whence Petrarch had drunk, around which he had played in his boyhood, and which Boccaccio has made famous, really interested me more than the cathedral. It lies right under the pavement of the street, under the sunshine, without any shade of trees about it, or any grass, except a little that grows in the crevices of its stones; but the shape of its stone-work would make it a pretty object in an engraving. As I lingered round it I thought of my own town-pump in old Salem, and wondered whether my townspeople would ever point it out to strangers, and whether the stranger would gaze at it with any degree of such interest as I felt in Boccaccio's well. O, certainly not; but yet I made that humble town-pump the most celebrated structure in the good town. A thousand and a thousand people had pumped there, merely to water oxen or fill their teakettles; but when once I grasped the handle, a rill gushed forth that meandered as far as England, as far as India, besides tasting pleasantly in every town and village of our own country. I like to think of this, so long after I did it, and so far from home, and am not without hopes of some kindly local remembrance on this score. Petrarch's house is not a separate and insulated building, but stands in contiguity and connection with other houses on each side; and all, when I saw them, as well as the whole street, extending down the slope of the hill, had the bright and sunny aspect of a modern town. As the cathedral was not yet open, and as J----- and I had not so much patience as my wife, we left her and Miss Shepard, and set out to return to the hotel. We lost our way, however, and finally had to return to the cathedral, to take a fresh start; and as the door was now open we went in. We found the cathedral very stately with its great arches, and darkly magnificent with the dim rich light coming through its painted windows, some of which are reckoned the most beautiful that the whole world has to show. The hues are far more brilliant than those of any painted glass I saw in England, and a great wheel window looks like a constellation of many-colored gems. The old English glass gets so smoky and dull with dust, that its pristine beauty cannot any longer be even imagined; nor did I imagine it till I saw these Italian windows. We saw nothing of my wife and Miss Shepard; but found afterwards that they had been much annoyed by the attentions of a priest who wished to show them the cathedral, till they finally told him that they had no money with them, when he left them without another word. The attendants in churches seem to be quite as venal as most other Italians, and, for the sake of their little profit, they do not hesitate to interfere with the great purposes for which their churches were built and decorated; hanging curtains, for instance, before all the celebrated pictures, or hiding them away in the sacristy, so that they cannot be seen without a fee. Returning to the hotel, we looked out of the window, and, in the street beneath, there was a very busy scene, it being Sunday, and the whole population, apparently, being astir, promenading up and down the smooth flag-stones, which made the breadth of the street one sidewalk, or at their windows, or sitting before their doors. The vivacity of the population in these parts is very striking, after the gravity and lassitude of Rome; and the air was made cheerful with the talk and laughter of hundreds of voices. I think the women are prettier than the Roman maids and matrons, who, as I think I have said before, have chosen to be very uncomely since the rape of their ancestresses, by way of wreaking a terrible spite and revenge. I have nothing more to say of Arezzo, except that, finding the ordinary wine very bad, as black as ink, and tasting as if it had tar and vinegar in it, we called for a bottle of Monte Pulciano, and were exceedingly gladdened and mollified thereby. INCISA. We left Arezzo early on Monday morning, the sun throwing the long shadows of the trees across the road, which at first, after we had descended the hill, lay over a plain. As the morning advanced, or as we advanced, the country grew more hilly. We saw many bits of rustic life,--such as old women tending pigs or sheep by the roadside, and spinning with a distaff; women sewing under trees, or at their own doors; children leading goats, tied by the horns, while they browse; sturdy, sunburnt creatures, in petticoats, but otherwise manlike, at work side by side with male laborers in the fields. The broad-brimmed, high-crowned hat of Tuscan straw is the customary female head-dress, and is as unbecoming as can possibly be imagined, and of little use, one would suppose, as a shelter from the sun, the brim continually blowing upward from the face. Some of the elder women wore black felt hats, likewise broad-brimmed; and the men wore felt hats also, shaped a good deal like a mushroom, with hardly any brim at all. The scenes in the villages through which we passed were very lively and characteristic, all the population seeming to be out of doors: some at the butcher's shop, others at the well; a tailor sewing in the open air, with a young priest sitting sociably beside him; children at play; women mending clothes, embroidering, spinning with the distaff at their own doorsteps; many idlers, letting the pleasant morning pass in the sweet-do-nothing; all assembling in the street, as in the common room of one large household, and thus brought close together, and made familiar with one another, as they can never be in a different system of society. As usual along the road we passed multitudes of shrines, where the Virgin was painted in fresco, or sometimes represented in bas-reliefs, within niches, or under more spacious arches. It would be a good idea to place a comfortable and shady seat beneath all these wayside shrines, where the wayfarer might rest himself, and thank the Virgin for her hospitality; nor can I believe that it would offend her, any more than other incense, if he were to regale himself, even in such consecrated spots, with the fragrance of a pipe or cigar. In the wire-work screen, before many of the shrines, hung offerings of roses and other flowers, some wilted and withered, some fresh with that morning's dew, some that never bloomed and never faded,--being artificial. I wonder that they do not plant rose-trees and all kinds of fragrant and flowering shrubs under the shrines, and twine and wreathe them all around, so that the Virgin may dwell within a bower of perpetual freshness; at least put flower-pots, with living plants, into the niche. There are many things in the customs of these people that might be made very beautiful, if the sense of beauty were as much alive now as it must have been when these customs were first imagined and adopted. I must not forget, among these little descriptive items, the spectacle of women and girls bearing huge bundles of twigs and shrubs, or grass, with scarlet poppies and blue flowers intermixed; the bundles sometimes so huge as almost to hide the woman's figure from head to heel, so that she looked like a locomotive mass of verdure and flowers; sometimes reaching only half-way down her back, so as to show the crooked knife slung behind, with which she had been reaping this strange harvest-sheaf. A Pre-Raphaelite painter--the one, for instance, who painted the heap of autumnal leaves, which we saw at the Manchester Exhibition--would find an admirable subject in one of these girls, stepping with a free, erect, and graceful carriage, her burden on her head; and the miscellaneous herbage and flowers would give him all the scope he could desire for minute and various delineation of nature. The country houses which we passed had sometimes open galleries or arcades on the second story and above, where the inhabitants might perform their domestic labor in the shade and in the air. The houses were often ancient, and most picturesquely time-stained, the plaster dropping in spots from the old brickwork; others were tinted of pleasant and cheerful lines; some were frescoed with designs in arabesques, or with imaginary windows; some had escutcheons of arms painted on the front. Wherever there was a pigeon-house, a flight of doves were represented as flying into the holes, doubtless for the invitation and encouragement of the real birds. Once or twice I saw a bush stuck up before the door of what seemed to be a wine-shop. If so, it is the ancient custom, so long disused in England, and alluded to in the proverb, "Good wine needs no bush." Several times we saw grass spread to dry on the road, covering half the track, and concluded it to have been cut by the roadside for the winter forage of his ass by some poor peasant, or peasant's wife, who had no grass land, except the margin of the public way. A beautiful feature of the scene to-day, as the preceding day, were the vines growing on fig-trees (?) [This interrogation-mark must mean that Mr. Hawthorne was not sure they were fig-trees.--ED.], and often wreathed in rich festoons from one tree to another, by and by to be hung with clusters of purple grapes. I suspect the vine is a pleasanter object of sight under this mode of culture than it can be in countries where it produces a more precious wine, and therefore is trained more artificially. Nothing can be more picturesque than the spectacle of an old grapevine, with almost a trunk of its own, clinging round its tree, imprisoning within its strong embrace the friend that supported its tender infancy, converting the tree wholly to its own selfish ends, as seemingly flexible natures are apt to do, stretching out its innumerable arms on every bough, and allowing hardly a leaf to sprout except its own. I must not yet quit this hasty sketch, without throwing in, both in the early morning, and later in the forenoon, the mist that dreamed among the hills, and which, now that I have called it mist, I feel almost more inclined to call light, being so quietly cheerful with the sunshine through it. Put in, now and then, a castle on a hilltop; a rough ravine, a smiling valley; a mountain stream, with a far wider bed than it at present needs, and a stone bridge across it, with ancient and massive arches;--and I shall say no more, except that all these particulars, and many better ones which escape me, made up a very pleasant whole. At about noon we drove into the village of Incisa, and alighted at the albergo where we were to lunch. It was a gloomy old house, as much like my idea of an Etruscan tomb as anything else that I can compare it to. We passed into a wide and lofty entrance-hall, paved with stone, and vaulted with a roof of intersecting arches, supported by heavy columns of stuccoed-brick, the whole as sombre and dingy as can well be. This entrance-hall is not merely the passageway into the inn, but is likewise the carriage-house, into which our vettura is wheeled; and it has, on one side, the stable, odorous with the litter of horses and cattle, and on the other the kitchen, and a common sitting-room. A narrow stone staircase leads from it to the dining-room, and chambers above, which are paved with brick, and adorned with rude frescos instead of paper-hangings. We look out of the windows, and step into a little iron-railed balcony, before the principal window, and observe the scene in the village street. The street is narrow, and nothing can exceed the tall, grim ugliness of the village houses, many of them four stories high, contiguous all along, and paved quite across; so that nature is as completely shut out from the precincts of this little town as from the heart of the widest city. The walls of the houses are plastered, gray, dilapidated; the windows small, some of them drearily closed with wooden shutters, others flung wide open, and with women's heads protruding, others merely frescoed, for a show of light and air. It would be a hideous street to look at in a rainy day, or when no human life pervaded it. Now it has vivacity enough to keep it cheerful. People lounge round the door of the albergo, and watch the horses as they drink from a stone trough, which is built against the wall of the house, and filled with the unseen gush of a spring. At first there is a shade entirely across the street, and all the within-doors of the village empties itself there, and keeps up a babblement that seems quite disproportioned even to the multitude of tongues that make it. So many words are not spoken in a New England village in a whole year as here in this single day. People talk about nothing as if they were terribly in earnest, and laugh at nothing as if it were all excellent joke. As the hot noon sunshine encroaches on our side of the street, it grows a little more quiet. The loungers now confine themselves to the shady margin (growing narrower and narrower) of the other side, where, directly opposite the albergo, there are two cafes and a wine-shop, "vendita di pane, vino, ed altri generi," all in a row with benches before them. The benchers joke with the women passing by, and are joked with back again. The sun still eats away the shadow inch by inch, beating down with such intensity that finally everybody disappears except a few passers-by. Doubtless the village snatches this half-hour for its siesta. There is a song, however, inside one of the cafes, with a burden in which several voices join. A girl goes through the street, sheltered under her great bundle of freshly cut grass. By and by the song ceases, and two young peasants come out of the cafe, a little affected by liquor, in their shirt-sleeves and bare feet, with their trousers tucked up. They resume their song in the street, and dance along, one's arm around his fellow's neck, his own waist grasped by the other's arm. They whirl one another quite round about, and come down upon their feet. Meeting a village maid coming quietly along, they dance up and intercept her for a moment, but give way to her sobriety of aspect. They pass on, and the shadow soon begins to spread from one side of the street, which presently fills again, and becomes once more, for its size, the noisiest place I ever knew. We had quite a tolerable dinner at this ugly inn, where many preceding travellers had written their condemnatory judgments, as well as a few their favorable ones, in pencil on the walls of the dining-room. TO FLORENCE. At setting off [from Incisa], we were surrounded by beggars as usual, the most interesting of whom were a little blind boy and his mother, who had besieged us with gentle pertinacity during our whole stay there. There was likewise a man with a maimed hand, and other hurts or deformities; also, an old woman who, I suspect, only pretended to be blind, keeping her eyes tightly squeezed together, but directing her hand very accurately where the copper shower was expected to fall. Besides these, there were a good many sturdy little rascals, vociferating in proportion as they needed nothing. It was touching, however, to see several persons--themselves beggars for aught I know--assisting to hold up the little blind boy's tremulous hand, so that he, at all events, might not lack the pittance which we had to give. Our dole was but a poor one, after all, consisting of what Roman coppers we had brought into Tuscany with us; and as we drove off, some of the boys ran shouting and whining after us in the hot sunshine, nor stopped till we reached the summit of the hill, which rises immediately from the village street. We heard Gaetano once say a good thing to a swarm of beggar-children, who were infesting us, "Are your fathers all dead?"--a proverbial expression, I suppose. The pertinacity of beggars does not, I think, excite the indignation of an Italian, as it is apt to do that of Englishmen or Americans. The Italians probably sympathize more, though they give less. Gaetano is very gentle in his modes of repelling them, and, indeed, never interferes at all, as long as there is a prospect of their getting anything. Immediately after leaving Incisa, we saw the Arno, already a considerable river, rushing between deep banks, with the greenish line of a duck-pond diffused through its water. Nevertheless, though the first impression was not altogether agreeable, we soon became reconciled to this line, and ceased to think it an indication of impurity; for, in spite of it, the river is still to a certain degree transparent, and is, at any rate, a mountain stream, and comes uncontaminated from its source. The pure, transparent brown of the New England rivers is the most beautiful color; but I am content that it should be peculiar to them. Our afternoon's drive was through scenery less striking than some which we had traversed, but still picturesque and beautiful. We saw deep valleys and ravines, with streams at the bottom; long, wooded hillsides, rising far and high, and dotted with white dwellings, well towards the summits. By and by, we had a distant glimpse of Florence, showing its great dome and some of its towers out of a sidelong valley, as if we were between two great waves of the tumultuous sea of hills; while, far beyond, rose in the distance the blue peaks of three or four of the Apennines, just on the remote horizon. There being a haziness in the atmosphere, however, Florence was little more distinct to us than the Celestial City was to Christian and Hopeful, when they spied at it from the Delectable Mountains. Keeping steadfastly onward, we ascended a winding road, and passed a grand villa, standing very high, and surrounded with extensive grounds. It must be the residence of some great noble; and it has an avenue of poplars or aspens, very light and gay, and fit for the passage of the bridal procession, when the proprietor or his heir brings home his bride; while, in another direction from the same front of the palace, stretches an avenue or grove of cypresses, very long, and exceedingly black and dismal, like a train of gigantic mourners. I have seen few things more striking, in the way of trees, than this grove of cypresses. From this point we descended, and drove along an ugly, dusty avenue, with a high brick wall on one side or both, till we reached the gate of Florence, into which we were admitted with as little trouble as custom-house officers, soldiers, and policemen can possibly give. They did not examine our luggage, and even declined a fee, as we had already paid one at the frontier custom-house. Thank heaven, and the Grand Duke! As we hoped that the Casa del Bello had been taken for us, we drove thither in the first place, but found that the bargain had not been concluded. As the house and studio of Mr. Powers were just on the opposite side of the street, I went to it, but found him too much engrossed to see me at the moment; so I returned to the vettura, and we told Gaetano to carry us to a hotel. He established us at the Albergo della Fontana, a good and comfortable house. . . . Mr. Powers called in the evening,--a plain personage, characterized by strong simplicity and warm kindliness, with an impending brow, and large eyes, which kindle as he speaks. He is gray, and slightly bald, but does not seem elderly, nor past his prime. I accept him at once as an honest and trustworthy man, and shall not vary from this judgment. Through his good offices, the next day, we engaged the Casa del Bello, at a rent of fifty dollars a month, and I shall take another opportunity (my fingers and head being tired now) to write about the house, and Mr. Powers, and what appertains to him, and about the beautiful city of Florence. At present, I shall only say further, that this journey from Rome has been one of the brightest and most uncareful interludes of my life; we have all enjoyed it exceedingly, and I am happy that our children have it to look back upon. June 4th.--At our visit to Powers's studio on Tuesday, we saw a marble copy of the fisher-boy holding a shell to his ear, and the bust of Proserpine, and two or three other ideal busts; various casts of most of the ideal statues and portrait busts which he has executed. He talks very freely about his works, and is no exception to the rule that an artist is not apt to speak in a very laudatory style of a brother artist. He showed us a bust of Mr. Sparks by Persico,--a lifeless and thoughtless thing enough, to be sure,--and compared it with a very good one of the same gentleman by himself; but his chiefest scorn was bestowed on a wretched and ridiculous image of Mr. King, of Alabama, by Clark Mills, of which he said he had been employed to make several copies for Southern gentlemen. The consciousness of power is plainly to be seen, and the assertion of it by no means withheld, in his simple and natural character; nor does it give me an idea of vanity on his part to see and hear it. He appears to consider himself neglected by his country,--by the government of it, at least,--and talks with indignation of the byways and political intrigue which, he thinks, win the rewards that ought to be bestowed exclusively on merit. An appropriation of twenty-five thousand dollars was made, some years ago, for a work of sculpture by him, to be placed in the Capitol; but the intermediate measures necessary to render it effective have been delayed; while the above-mentioned Clark Mills-- certainly the greatest bungler that ever botched a block of marble--has received an order for an equestrian statue of Washington. Not that Mr. Powers is made bitter or sour by these wrongs, as he considers them; he talks of them with the frankness of his disposition when the topic comes in his way, and is pleasant, kindly, and sunny when he has done with it. His long absence from our country has made him think worse of us than we deserve; and it is an effect of what I myself am sensible, in my shorter exile: the most piercing shriek, the wildest yell, and all the ugly sounds of popular turmoil, inseparable from the life of a republic, being a million times more audible than the peaceful hum of prosperity and content which is going on all the while. He talks of going home, but says that he has been talking of it every year since he first came to Italy; and between his pleasant life of congenial labor, and his idea of moral deterioration in America, I think it doubtful whether he ever crosses the sea again. Like most exiles of twenty years, he has lost his native country without finding another; but then it is as well to recognize the truth,--that an individual country is by no means essential to one's comfort. Powers took us into the farthest room, I believe, of his very extensive studio, and showed us a statue of Washington that has much dignity and stateliness. He expressed, however, great contempt for the coat and breeches, and masonic emblems, in which he had been required to drape the figure. What would he do with Washington, the most decorous and respectable personage that ever went ceremoniously through the realities of life? Did anybody ever see Washington nude? It is inconceivable. He had no nakedness, but I imagine he was born with his clothes on, and his hair powdered, and made a stately bow on his first appearance in the world. His costume, at all events, was a part of his character, and must be dealt with by whatever sculptor undertakes to represent him. I wonder that so very sensible a man as Powers should not see the necessity of accepting drapery, and the very drapery of the day, if he will keep his art alive. It is his business to idealize the tailor's actual work. But he seems to be especially fond of nudity, none of his ideal statues, so far as I know them, having so much as a rag of clothes. His statue of California, lately finished, and as naked as Venus, seemed to me a very good work; not an actual woman, capable of exciting passion, but evidently a little out of the category of human nature. In one hand she holds a divining-rod. "She says to the emigrants," observed Powers, "'Here is the gold, if you choose to take it.'" But in her face, and in her eyes, very finely expressed, there is a look of latent mischief, rather grave than playful, yet somewhat impish or sprite-like; and, in the other hand, behind her back, she holds a bunch of thorns. Powers calls her eyes Indian. The statue is true to the present fact and history of California, and includes the age-long truth as respects the "auri sacra fames." . . . . When we had looked sufficiently at the sculpture, Powers proposed that we should now go across the street and see the Casa del Bello. We did so in a body, Powers in his dressing-gown and slippers, and his wife and daughters without assuming any street costume. The Casa del Bello is a palace of three pianos, the topmost of which is occupied by the Countess of St. George, an English lady, and two lower pianos are to be let, and we looked at both. The upper one would have suited me well enough; but the lower has a terrace, with a rustic summer-house over it, and is connected with a garden, where there are arbors and a willow-tree, and a little wilderness of shrubbery and roses, with a fountain in the midst. It has likewise an immense suite of rooms, round the four sides of a small court, spacious, lofty, with frescoed ceilings and rich hangings, and abundantly furnished with arm-chairs, sofas, marble tables, and great looking-glasses. Not that these last are a great temptation, but in our wandering life I wished to be perfectly comfortable myself, and to make my family so, for just this summer, and so I have taken the lower piano, the price being only fifty dollars per month (entirely furnished, even to silver and linen). Certainly this is something like the paradise of cheapness we were told of, and which we vainly sought in Rome. . . . To me has been assigned the pleasantest room for my study; and when I like I can overflow into the summer-house or an arbor, and sit there dreaming of a story. The weather is delightful, too warm to walk, but perfectly fit to do nothing in, in the coolness of these great rooms. Every day I shall write a little, perhaps,--and probably take a brief nap somewhere between breakfast and tea,--but go to see pictures and statues occasionally, and so assuage and mollify myself a little after that uncongenial life of the consulate, and before going back to my own hard and dusty New England. After concluding the arrangement for the Casa del Bello, we stood talking a little while with Powers and his wife and daughter before the door of the house, for they seem so far to have adopted the habits of the Florentines as to feel themselves at home on the shady side of the street. The out-of-door life and free communication with the pavement, habitual apparently among the middle classes, reminds me of the plays of Moliere and other old dramatists, in which the street or the square becomes a sort of common parlor, where most of the talk and scenic business of the people is carried on. June 5th.--For two or three mornings after breakfast I have rambled a little about the city till the shade grew narrow beneath the walls of the houses, and the heat made it uncomfortable to be in motion. To-day I went over the Ponte Carraja, and thence into and through the heart of the city, looking into several churches, in all of which I found people taking advantage of the cool breadth of these sacred interiors to refresh themselves and say their prayers. Florence at first struck me as having the aspect of a very new city in comparison with Rome; but, on closer acquaintance, I find that many of the buildings are antique and massive, though still the clear atmosphere, the bright sunshine, the light, cheerful hues of the stucco, and--as much as anything else, perhaps--the vivacious character of the human life in the streets, take away the sense of its being an ancient city. The streets are delightful to walk in after so many penitential pilgrimages as I have made over those little square, uneven blocks of the Roman pavement, which wear out the boots and torment the soul. I absolutely walk on the smooth flags of Florence for the mere pleasure of walking, and live in its atmosphere for the mere pleasure of living; and, warm as the weather is getting to be, I never feel that inclination to sink down in a heap and never stir again, which was my dull torment and misery as long as I stayed in Rome. I hardly think there can be a place in the world where life is more delicious for its own simple sake than here. I went to-day into the Baptistery, which stands near the Duomo, and, like that, is covered externally with slabs of black and white marble, now grown brown and yellow with age. The edifice is octagonal, and on entering, one immediately thinks of the Pantheon,--the whole space within being free from side to side, with a dome above; but it differs from the severe simplicity of the former edifice, being elaborately ornamented with marble and frescos, and lacking that great eye in the roof that looks so nobly and reverently heavenward from the Pantheon. I did little more than pass through the Baptistery, glancing at the famous bronze doors, some perfect and admirable casts of which I had already seen at the Crystal Palace. The entrance of the Duomo being just across the piazza, I went in there after leaving the Baptistery, and was struck anew--for this is the third or fourth visit--with the dim grandeur of the interior, lighted as it is almost exclusively by painted windows, which seem to me worth all the variegated marbles and rich cabinet-work of St. Peter's. The Florentine Cathedral has a spacious and lofty nave, and side aisles divided from it by pillars; but there are no chapels along the aisles, so that there is far more breadth and freedom of interior, in proportion to the actual space, than is usual in churches. It is woful to think how the vast capaciousness within St. Peter's is thrown away, and made to seem smaller than it is by every possible device, as if on purpose. The pillars and walls of this Duomo are of a uniform brownish, neutral tint; the pavement, a mosaic work of marble; the ceiling of the dome itself is covered with frescos, which, being very imperfectly lighted, it is impossible to trace out. Indeed, it is but a twilight region that is enclosed within the firmament of this great dome, which is actually larger than that of St. Peter's, though not lifted so high from the pavement. But looking at the painted windows, I little cared what dimness there might be elsewhere; for certainly the art of man has never contrived any other beauty and glory at all to be compared to this. The dome sits, as it were, upon three smaller domes,--smaller, but still great,--beneath which are three vast niches, forming the transepts of the cathedral and the tribune behind the high altar. All round these hollow, dome-covered arches or niches are high and narrow windows crowded with saints, angels, and all manner of blessed shapes, that turn the common daylight into a miracle of richness and splendor as it passes through their heavenly substance. And just beneath the swell of the great central dome is a wreath of circular windows quite round it, as brilliant as the tall and narrow ones below. It is a pity anybody should die without seeing an antique painted window, with the bright Italian sunshine glowing through it. This is "the dim, religious light" that Milton speaks of; but I doubt whether he saw these windows when he was in Italy, or any but those faded or dusty and dingy ones of the English cathedrals, else he would have illuminated that word "dim" with some epithet that should not chase away the dimness, yet should make it shine like a million of rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and topazes,--bright in themselves, but dim with tenderness and reverence because God himself was shining through them. I hate what I have said. All the time that I was in the cathedral the space around the high altar, which stands exactly under the dome, was occupied by priests or acolytes in white garments, chanting a religious service. After coming out, I took a view of the edifice from a corner of the street nearest to the dome, where it and the smaller domes can be seen at once. It is greatly more satisfactory than St. Peter's in any view I ever had of it,--striking in its outline, with a mystery, yet not a bewilderment, in its masses and curves and angles, and wrought out with a richness of detail that gives the eyes new arches, new galleries, new niches, new pinnacles, new beauties, great and small, to play with when wearied with the vast whole. The hue, black and white marbles, like the Baptistery, turned also yellow and brown, is greatly preferable to the buff travertine of St. Peter's. From the Duomo it is but a moderate street's length to the Piazza del Gran Duca, the principal square of Florence. It is a very interesting place, and has on one side the old Governmental Palace,--the Palazzo Vecchio,--where many scenes of historic interest have been enacted; for example, conspirators have been hanged from its windows, or precipitated from them upon the pavement of the square below. It is a pity that we cannot take as much interest in the history of these Italian Republics as in that of England, for the former is much the more picturesque and fuller of curious incident. The sobriety of the Anglo-Saxon race--in connection, too, with their moral sense--keeps them from doing a great many things that would enliven the page of history; and their events seem to come in great masses, shoved along by the agency of many persons, rather than to result from individual will and character. A hundred plots for a tragedy might be found in Florentine history for one in English. At one corner of the Palazzo Vecchio is a bronze equestrian statue of Cosmo de' Medici, the first Grand Duke, very stately and majestic; there are other marble statues--one of David, by Michael Angelo--at each side of the palace door; and entering the court I found a rich antique arcade within, surrounded by marble pillars, most elaborately carved, supporting arches that were covered with faded frescos. I went no farther, but stepped across a little space of the square to the Loggia di Lanzi, which is broad and noble, of three vast arches, at the end of which, I take it, is a part of the Palazzo Uffizi fronting on the piazza. I should call it a portico if it stood before the palace door; but it seems to have been constructed merely for itself, and as a shelter for the people from sun and rain, and to contain some fine specimens of sculpture, as well antique as of more modern times. Benvenuto Cellini's Perseus stands here; but it did not strike me so much as the cast of it in the Crystal Palace. A good many people were under these great arches; some of whom were reclining, half or quite asleep, on the marble seats that are built against the back of the loggia. A group was reading an edict of the Grand Duke, which appeared to have been just posted on a board, at the farther end of it; and I was surprised at the interest which they ventured to manifest, and the freedom with which they seemed to discuss it. A soldier was on guard, and doubtless there were spies enough to carry every word that was said to the ear of absolute authority. Glancing myself at the edict, however, I found it referred only to the furtherance of a project, got up among the citizens themselves, for bringing water into the city; and on such topics, I suppose there is freedom of discussion. June 7th.--Saturday evening we walked with U---- and J----- into the city, and looked at the exterior of the Duomo with new admiration. Since my former view of it, I have noticed--which, strangely enough, did not strike me before--that the facade is but a great, bare, ugly space, roughly plastered over, with the brickwork peeping through it in spots, and a faint, almost invisible fresco of colors upon it. This front was once nearly finished with an incrustation of black and white marble, like the rest of the edifice; but one of the city magistrates, Benedetto Uguccione, demolished it, three hundred years ago, with the idea of building it again in better style. He failed to do so, and, ever since, the magnificence of the great church has been marred by this unsightly roughness of what should have been its richest part; nor is there, I suppose, any hope that it will ever be finished now. The campanile, or bell-tower, stands within a few paces of the cathedral, but entirely disconnected from it, rising to a height of nearly three hundred feet, a square tower of light marbles, now discolored by time. It is impossible to give an idea of the richness of effect produced by its elaborate finish; the whole surface of the four sides, from top to bottom, being decorated with all manner of statuesque and architectural sculpture. It is like a toy of ivory, which some ingenious and pious monk might have spent his lifetime in adorning with scriptural designs and figures of saints; and when it was finished, seeing it so beautiful, he prayed that it might be miraculously magnified from the size of one foot to that of three hundred. This idea somewhat satisfies me, as conveying an impression how gigantesque the campanile is in its mass and height, and how minute and varied in its detail. Surely these mediaeval works have an advantage over the classic. They combine the telescope and the microscope. The city was all alive in the summer evening, and the streets humming with voices. Before the doors of the cafes were tables, at which people were taking refreshment, and it went to my heart to see a bottle of English ale, some of which was poured foaming into a glass; at least, it had exactly the amber hue and the foam of English bitter ale; but perhaps it may have been merely a Florentine imitation. As we returned home over the Arno, crossing the Ponte di Santa Trinita, we were struck by the beautiful scene of the broad, calm river, with the palaces along its shores repeated in it, on either side, and the neighboring bridges, too, just as perfect in the tide beneath as in the air above,--a city of dream and shadow so close to the actual one. God has a meaning, no doubt, in putting this spiritual symbol continually beside us. Along the river, on both sides, as far as we could see, there was a row of brilliant lamps, which, in the far distance, looked like a cornice of golden light; and this also shone as brightly in the river's depths. The lilies of the evening, in the quarter where the sun had gone down, were very soft and beautiful, though not so gorgeous as thousands that I have seen in America. But I believe I must fairly confess that the Italian sky, in the daytime, is bluer and brighter than our own, and that the atmosphere has a quality of showing objects to better advantage. It is more than mere daylight; the magic of moonlight is somehow mixed up with it, although it is so transparent a medium of light. Last evening, Mr. Powers called to see us, and sat down to talk in a friendly and familiar way. I do not know a man of more facile intercourse, nor with whom one so easily gets rid of ceremony. His conversation, too, is interesting. He talked, to begin with, about Italian food, as poultry, mutton, beef, and their lack of savoriness as compared with our own; and mentioned an exquisite dish of vegetables which they prepare from squash or pumpkin blossoms; likewise another dish, which it will be well for us to remember when we get back to the Wayside, where we are overrun with acacias. It consists of the acacia-blossoms in a certain stage of their development fried in olive-oil. I shall get the receipt from Mrs. Powers, and mean to deserve well of my country by first trying it, and then making it known; only I doubt whether American lard, or even butter, will produce the dish quite so delicately as fresh Florence oil. Meanwhile, I like Powers all the better, because he does not put his life wholly into marble. We had much talk, nevertheless, on matters of sculpture, for he drank a cup of tea with us, and stayed a good while. He passed a condemnatory sentence on classic busts in general, saying that they were conventional, and not to be depended upon as trite representations of the persons. He particularly excepted none but the bust of Caracalla; and, indeed, everybody that has seen this bust must feel the justice of the exception, and so be the more inclined to accept his opinion about the rest. There are not more than half a dozen--that of Cato the Censor among the others--in regard to which I should like to ask his judgment individually. He seems to think the faculty of making a bust an extremely rare one. Canova put his own likeness into all the busts he made. Greenough could not make a good one; nor Crawford, nor Gibson. Mr. Harte, he observed,--an American sculptor, now a resident in Florence,--is the best man of the day for making busts. Of course, it is to be presumed that he excepts himself; but I would not do Powers the great injustice to imply that there is the slightest professional jealousy in his estimate of what others have done, or are now doing, in his own art. If he saw a better man than himself, he would recognize him at once, and tell the world of him; but he knows well enough that, in this line, there is no better, and probably none so good. It would not accord with the simplicity of his character to blink a fact that stands so broadly before him. We asked him what he thought, of Mr. Gibson's practice of coloring his statues, and he quietly and slyly said that he himself had made wax figures in his earlier days, but had left off making them now. In short, he objected to the practice wholly, and said that a letter of his on the subject had been published in the London "Athenaeum," and had given great offence to some of Mr. Gibson's friends. It appeared to me, however, that his arguments did not apply quite fairly to the case, for he seems to think Gibson aims at producing an illusion of life in the statue, whereas I think his object is merely to give warmth and softness to the snowy marble, and so bring it a little nearer to our hearts and sympathies. Even so far, nevertheless, I doubt whether the practice is defensible, and I was glad to see that Powers scorned, at all events, the argument drawn from the use of color by the antique sculptors, on which Gibson relies so much. It might almost be implied, from the contemptuous way in which Powers spoke of color, that he considers it an impertinence on the face of visible nature, and would rather the world had been made without it; for he said that everything in intellect or feeling can be expressed as perfectly, or more so, by the sculptor in colorless marble, as by the painter with all the resources of his palette. I asked him whether he could model the face of Beatrice Cenci from Guido's picture so as to retain the subtle expression, and he said he could, for that the expression depended entirely on the drawing, "the picture being a badly colored thing." I inquired whether he could model a blush, and he said "Yes"; and that he had once proposed to an artist to express a blush in marble, if he would express it in picture. On consideration, I believe one to be as impossible as the other; the life and reality of the blush being in its tremulousness, coming and going. It is lost in a settled red just as much as in a settled paleness, and neither the sculptor nor painter can do more than represent the circumstances of attitude and expression that accompany the blush. There was a great deal of truth in what Powers said about this matter of color, and in one of our interminable New England winters it ought to comfort us to think how little necessity there is for any hue but that of the snow. Mr. Powers, nevertheless, had brought us a bunch of beautiful roses, and seemed as capable of appreciating their delicate blush as we were. The best thing he said against the use of color in marble was to the effect that the whiteness removed the object represented into a sort of spiritual region, and so gave chaste permission to those nudities which would otherwise suggest immodesty. I have myself felt the truth of this in a certain sense of shame as I looked at Gibson's tinted Venus. He took his leave at about eight o'clock, being to make a call on the Bryants, who are at the Hotel de New York, and also on Mrs. Browning, at Casa Guidi. END OF VOL. I. 
8412	----	SEEING EUROPE WITH FAMOUS AUTHORS, VOLUME III FRANCE AND THE NETHERLANDS Selected and Edited, with Introductions, etc., by FRANCIS W. HALSEY Editor of "Great Epochs in American History" Associate Editor of "The World's Famous Orations" and of "The Best of the World's Classics," etc. IN TEN VOLUMES ILLUSTRATED [Illustration: Paris: The Seine and Bridges] Vol. III Part One Introduction to Volumes III and IV France and the Netherlands The tourist bound for France lands either at Cherbourg, Havre, or Boulogne. At Cherbourg, he sees waters in which the "Kearsarge" sank the "Alabama"; at Havre a shelter in which, long before Caesar came to Gaul, ships, with home ports on the Seine, sought safety from the sea; and at Boulogne may recall the invading expedition to England, planned by Napoleon, but which never sailed. From the Roman occupation, many Roman remains have survived in England, but these are far inferior in numbers and in state of preservation to the Roman remains found in France. Marseilles was not only an important Roman seaport, but its earliest foundations date perhaps from Phoenician times, and certainly do from the age when Greeks were building temples at Paestum and Girgenti. Rome got her first foothold in Marseilles as a consequence of the Punic wars; and in 125 B.C. acquired a province (Provincia Romana) reaching from the Alps to the Rhone, and southward to the sea, with Aix as its first capital and Arles its second. Caesar in 58 B.C. found on the Seine a tribe of men called Parisii, whose chief village, Lutetia, stood where now rises Notre Dame. Lutetia afterward became a residence of Roman emperors. Constantius Chlorus spent some time there, guarding the empire from Germans and Britons, while Julian the Apostate built there for himself a palace and extensive baths, of which remains still exist in Paris. In that palace afterward lived Pepin le Bref ("mayor of the palace"), son of Charles Martell, and father of the great Charles. Romans built there an amphitheater seating ten thousand people, of which remains are still visible. Lyons was a great Roman city. Augustus first called it into vigorous life, his wish being to make it "a second Rome." From Lyons a system of roads ran out to all parts of Gaul. Claudius was born there; Caligula made it the political and intellectual capital of Provincia; its people, under an edict of Caracalla, were made citizens of Rome. At Nimes was born the Emperor Antoninus. In Gaul, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian and Domitian were made emperors. At Arles and Nîmes are Roman amphitheaters still regularly put to use for combats between men and wild beasts--but the wild beasts, instead of lions and tigers, are bulls. At Orange is a Roman theater of colossal proportions, in which a company from the Théâtre Français annually presents classical dramas. The magnificent fortress city of Carcassonne has foundation walls that were laid by Romans. Notre Dame of Paris occupies the site of a temple to Jupiter. As with modern England, so with modern France; its people are a mixture of many races. To the southwest, in a remote age, came Iberians from Spain, to Provence, Ligurians from Italy; to the northeast, Germanic tribes; to the northwest, Scandinavians; to the central parts, from the Seine to the Garonne, in the sixth century B.C., Gauls, who soon became the dominant race, and so have remained until this day, masterful and fundamental. When Caesar came, there had grown up in Gaul a martial nobility, leaders of a warlike people, with chieftains whose names are familiar in the mouths and ears of all schoolboys--Aricvistus and Vercingetorix. When Vercingetorix was overthrown at Alesia, Gaul became definitely Roman. For five hundred years it remained loyal to Rome. Within its borders, was established the Pax Romana, and in 250 A.D., under St. Denis, Christianity. When the disintegration of the empire set in five centuries afterward, Gaul was among the first provinces to suffer. With the coming of the Visigoths and Huns from the Black Sea, the Pranks and Bnrgundians from beyond the Rhine, the Roman fall was near, but great battles were first fought in Gaul, battles which rivaled those of Caesar five centuries before. Greatest of all these was the one with Attila, at Chalons, in 451, where thousands perished. When the Roman dominion ended, Rome's one great province in Gaul became seventeen small principalities, and power drifted fast into the hands of a warlike aristocracy. Then a strong man rose in Clovis, who, in 508, made Lutetia his capital, his successors enriching and adorning it. From these beginnings, has been evolved, in twelve hundred years, the great modern state--through Charlemagne and his empire-building, Louis XI. and his work of consolidating feudal principalities into one strong state, through a Hundred Years' War, fierce wars of religion, a long line of Bourbon kings, with their chateaux-building in Touraine and Versailles, the Revolution of 1789, the Napoleonic era, the Republic. An historical land surely is this, and a beautiful land, with her snow-capped mountains of the southeast, her broad vineyards, unrivaled cathedrals, her Roman remains, ancient olive groves, her art, her literature, her people. Belgium and Holland were included in the territory known to Rome as Gaul. Here dwelt a people called the Belgii, and another called the Nervii--that tribal nation whom Cæsar "overcame" on a summer's day, and the same evening, "in his tent," "put on" the mantle that was pierced afterward by daggers in the Senate House. From these lands came the skilled Batavian cavalry, which followed Caesar in pursuit of Pompey and forced Pompey's flight at Pharsalia. From here afterward came other Batavians, who served as the Imperial Guard of Rome from Caasar's time to Vespasian's. In race, as in geographical position, the Netherlands have belonged in part to France, in part to Germany, the interior long remaining Gallic, the frontier Teutonic. From Caesar's time down to the fifth century, the land was Roman. Afterward, in several periods, it was in part, or in whole, included in the domain of France--in Charlemagne's time and after; under Louis XI., who sought, somewhat unsuccessfully, its complete submission; under Louis XIV., who virtually conquered it; under the French Revolution, and during Napoleon's ascendency. On Belgium soil Marlborough fought and won Ramillies, and Wellington Waterloo. Belgium and Holland were for long great centers of European commerce--at Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Amsterdam--rivals of English ports, Holland an ancient adversary of England and her valiant enemy in great wars. A still fiercer struggle came with Spain. Perhaps an even greater conflict than these two has been her never-ending war with the sea. Holland has been called a land enclosed in a fortress reared against the sea. For generations her people have warred with angry waves; but, as Motley has said, they gained an education for a struggle "with the still more savage despotism of man." Let me not forget here Holland's great school of art--comparable only to that of Spain, or even to that of Italy. F. W. H. Contents of Volume III France and the Netherlands--Part One INTRODUCTION TO VOLS. III AND IV--By the Editor. I--Paris The City Beautiful--By Anne Warwick Notre-Dame--By Victor Hugo The Louvre--By Grant Allen The Madeline and Champs Elysées--By Nathaniel Hawthorne The Hotel des Invalides and Napoleon's Tomb--By Augustus J. C. Hare The Palais de Justice and Sainte Chapelle--By Grant Allen The Hotel de Ville and the Conciergerie--By Augustus J. C. Hare Père la Chaise--By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Musée de Cluny--By Grant Allen The Place de la Bastille--By Augustus J. C. Hare The Pantheon and St. Etienne du Mont--By Grant Allen St. Roch--By Augustus J. C. Hare II--The Environs of Paris Versailles--By William Makepeace Thackeray Versailles in 1739--By Thomas Gray Fontainebleau--By Augustus J. C. Hare St. Denis--By Grant Allen Marly-Le-Roi--By Augustus J. C. Hare The Village of Auteuil--By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Two Trianons--By Augustus J. C. Hare Malmaison--By Augustus J. C. Hare St. Germain--By Leitch Ritchie St. Cloud--By Augustus J. C. Hare III--Old Provence The Papal Palace at Avignon--By Charles Dickens The Building of the Great Palace--By Thomas Okey The Walls of Avignon--By Thomas Okey Villeneuve and the Broken Bridge--By Thomas Okey Orange--By Henry James Vaucluse--By Bayard Taylor The Pont du Guard,--Aigues-Mortes--Nîmes--By Henry James Arles and Les Baux--By Henry James IV--Cathedrals and Chateaux Amiens--By Nathaniel Hawthorne Rouen--By Thomas Frognall Dibdin Chartres--By Epiphanius Wilson Rheims--By Epiphanius Wilson (_Cathedrals and Chateaux continued in Vol. IV_) List of Illustrations Volume III Frontispiece Paris: The Seine and Bridges Notre Dame, Paris Portion of the Louvre, Paris Church of the Madeleine, Paris Napoleon's Sarcophagus, Paris The Burial Place of Napoleon, Paris Column and Place Vendóme, Paris Column of July, Paris The Pantheon, Paris The House of the Chamber of Deputies, Paris The Bourse, Paris Interior of the Grand Opera House, Paris Front of the Grand Opera House, Paris The Arc de Triomphe, Paris Arch Erected by Napoleon Near the Louvre, Paris The Church of St. Vincent de Paul, Paris The Church of St. Sulpice, Paris The Picture Gallery of Versailles The Bed-Room of Louis XIV., Versailles The Grand Trianon at Versailles The Little Trianon at Versailles The Bed-Room of Catherine de Medici at Chaumont Marie Antoinette's Dairy at Versailles Tours Saint Denis Havre The Bridge at St. Cloud [Illustration: Notre Dame, Paris] [Illustration: Church of the Madeleine] [Illustration: Portion of the Louvre] [Illustration: Paris: Column and Place Vendome] [Illustration: Burial Place of Napoleon] [Illustration: Napoleon's Sarcophagus] [Illustration: Paris: Column of July in the Place de la Bastille] [Illustration: Pantheon, Paris] [Illustration: House of the Chamber of Deputies] [Illustration: Bourse, Paris] I PARIS The City Beautiful By Anne Warwick [Footnote: From "The Meccas of the World." By permission of the publisher, John Lane. Copyright, 1913.] The most prejudiced will not deny that Paris is beautiful; or that there is about her streets and broad, tree-lined avenues a graciousness at once dignified and gay. Stand, as the ordinary tourist does on his first day, in the flowering square before the Louvre; in the foreground are the fountains and bright tulip-bordered paths of the Tuileries--here a glint of gold, there a soft flash of marble statuary, shining through the trees; in the center the round lake where the children sail their boats. Beyond spreads the wide sweep of the Place de la Concorde, with its obelisk of terrible significance, its larger fountains throwing brilliant jets of spray; and then the trailing, upward vista of the Champs Elysées to the great triumphal arch; yes, even to the most indifferent, Paris is beautiful. To the subtler of appreciation, she is more than beautiful; she is impressive. For behind the studied elegance of architecture, the elaborate simplicity of garden, the carefully lavish use of sculpture and delicate spray, is visible the imagination of a race of passionate creators--the imagination, throughout, of the great artist. One meets it at every turn and corner, down dim passageways, up steep hills, across bridges, along sinuous quays; the masterhand and its "infinite capacity for taking pains." And so marvelously do its manifestations of many periods through many ages combine to enhance one another that one is convinced that the genius of Paris has been perennial; that St. Genevieve, her godmother, bestowed it as an immortal gift when the city was born. From earliest days every man seems to have caught the spirit of the man who came before, and to have perpetuated it; by adding his own distinctive yet always harmonious contribution to the gradual development of the whole. One built a stately avenue; another erected a church at the end; a third added a garden on the other side of the church, and terraces leading up to it; a fourth and fifth cut streets that should give from the remaining two sides into other flowery squares with their fine edifices. And so from every viewpoint, and from every part of the entire city, to-day we have an unbroken series of vistas--each one different and more charming than the last. History has lent its hand to the process, too; and romance--it is not an insipid chain of flowerbeds we have to follow, but the holy warriors of Saint Louis, the roistering braves of Henry the Great, the gallant Bourbons, the ill-starred Bonapartes. These as they passed have left their monuments; it may be only in a crumbling old chapel or ruined tower, but there they are, eloquent of days that are dead, of a spirit that lives forever staunch in the heart of the fervent French people. It comes over one overwhelmingly sometimes, in the midst of the careless gaiety of the modern city, the old, ever-burning spirit of rebellion and savage strife that underlies it all, and that can spring to the surface now on certain memorable days, with a vehemence that is terrifying. Look across the Pont Alexandre, at the serene gold dome of the Invalides, surrounded by its sleepy barracks. Suddenly you are in the fires and awful slaughter of Napoleon's wars. The flower of France is being pitilessly cut down for the lust of one man's ambition; and when that is spent, and the wail of the widowed country pierces heaven with its desolation, a costly asylum is built for the handful of soldiers who are left--and the great Emperor has done his duty! Or you are walking through the Cité, past the court of the Palais de Justice. You glance in, carelessly--memory rushes upon you--and the court flows with blood, "so that men waded through it, up to the knees!" In the tiny stone-walled room yonder, Marie Antoinette sits disdainfully composed before her keepers; tho her face is white with the sounds she hears, as her friends and followers are led out to swell that hideous river of blood. A pretty, artificial city, Paris; good for shopping, and naughty amusements, now and then. History? Oh yes, of course; but all that's so dry and uninspiring, and besides it happened so long ago. Did it? In your stroll along the Rue Royale, among the jewellers' and milliners' shops and Maxim's, glance up at the Madeleine, down at the obelisk in the Place de la Concorde. Little over a hundred years ago, this was the brief distance between life and death for those who one minute were dancing in the "Temple of Victory," the next were laying their heads upon the block of the guillotine. Notre-Dame By Victor Hugo [Footnote: From Hugo's "Notre-Dame de Paris." Translated by A.L. Alger. By permission of Dana, Estes & Co. Copyright, 1888.] The church of Notre-Dame at Paris is doubtless still a sublime and majestic building. But, much beauty as it may retain in its old age, it is not easy to repress a sigh, to restrain our anger, when we mark the countless defacements and mutilations to which men and time have subjected that venerable monument, without respect for Charlemagne, who laid its first stone, or Philip Augustus, who laid its last.... Upon the face of this aged queen of French cathedrals, beside every wrinkle we find a scar. "Tempus edax, homo edacior;" which I would fain translate thus: "Time is blind, but man is stupid." Had we leisure to study with the reader, one by one, the various marks of destruction graven upon the ancient church, the work of Time would be the lesser, the worse that of Men, especially of "men of art," since there are persons who have styled themselves architects during the last two centuries. And first of all, to cite but a few glaring instances, there are assuredly few finer pages in the history of architecture than that facade where the three receding portals with their pointed arches, the carved and denticulated plinth with its twenty-eight royal niches, the huge central rose-window flanked by its two lateral windows as is the priest by his deacon and subdeacon, the lofty airy gallery of trifoliated arcades supporting a heavy platform upon its slender columns, and lastly the two dark and massive towers with their pent-house roofs of slate, harmonious parts of a magnificent whole, one above the other, five gigantic stages, unfold themselves to the eye, clearly and as a whole, with their countless details of sculpture, statuary, and carving, powerfully contributing to the calm grandeur of the whole; as it were, a vast symphony in stone; the colossal work of one man and one nation, one and yet complex, like the Iliad and the old Romance epics, to which it is akin; the tremendous sum of the joint contributions of all the force of an entire epoch, in which every stone reveals, in a hundred forms, the fancy of the workman disciplined by the genius of the artist--a sort of human creation, in brief, powerful and prolific as the Divine creation, whose double characteristics, variety and eternity, it seems to have acquired. And what we say of the façades, we must also say of the whole church; and what we say of the cathedral church of Paris must be said of all the Christian churches of the Middle Ages. Everything is harmonious which springs from spontaneous, logical, and well-proportioned art. To measure a toe, is to measure the giant. Let us return to the façade of Notre-Dame as we see it at the present day, when we make a pious pilgrimage to admire the solemn and mighty cathedral, which, as its chroniclers declare, inspires terror. This façade now lacks three important things: first, the eleven steps which formerly raised it above the level of the ground; next, the lower series of statues which filled the niches over the doors; and lastly, the upper row of the twenty-eight most ancient kings of France, which adorned the gallery of the first story, from Childebert down to Philip Augustus, each holding in his hand "the imperial globe." The stairs were destroyed by Time, which, with slow and irresistible progress, raised the level of the city's soil; but while this flood-tide of the pavements of Paris swallowed one by one the eleven steps which added to the majestic height of the edifice, Time has perhaps given to the church more than it took away, for it is Time which has painted the front with that sober hue of centuries which makes the antiquity of churches their greatest beauty. But who pulled down the two rows of statues? Who left those empty niches? Who carved that new and bastard pointed arch in the very center of the middle door? Who dared to insert that clumsy, tasteless, wooden door, carved in the style of Louis XV., side by side with the arabesques of Biscornette? Who but men, architects, the artists of our day? And if we step into the interior of the edifice, who overthrew that colossal figure of Saint Christopher, proverbial among statues by the same right as the great hall of the palace among halls, as the spire of Strasburg among steeples? And those myriad statues which peopled every space between the columns of the choir and the nave, kneeling, standing, on horseback, men, women, children, kings, bishops, men-at-arms--of stone, of marble, of gold, of silver, of copper, nay even of wax--who brutally swept them away? It was not the hand of Time. And who replaced the old Gothic altar, with its splendid burden of shrines and reliquaries, by that heavy marble sarcophagus adorned with clouds and cherubs, looking like a poor copy of the Val-de-Grâce or the Hôtel des Invalides? Who was stupid enough to fasten that clumsy stone anachronism into the Carlovingian pavement of Hercandus? Was it not Louis XIV., fulfilling the vow of Louis XIII.? And who set cold white panes in place of that stained glass of gorgeous hue, which led the wondering gaze of our fathers to roam uncertain 'twixt the rose-window of the great door and the ogives of the chancel? And what would a precentor of the sixteenth century say if he could see the fine coat of yellow wash with which our Vandal archbishops have smeared their cathedral? He would remember that this was the color with which the executioner formerly painted those buildings judged "infamous;" he would recall the hotel of the Petit-Bourbon, bedaubed with yellow in memory of the Constable's treason; "a yellow of so fine a temper," says Sauval, "and so well laid on, that more than a hundred years have failed to wash out its color." He would fancy that the sacred spot had become accursed, and would turn and flee. And if we climb higher in the cathedral, without pausing to note a thousand barbarous acts of every kind, what has become of that delightful little steeple which rested upon the point of intersection of the transept, and which, no less fragile and no less daring than its neighbor, the spire of the Sainte-Chapelle, (also destroyed), rose yet nearer heaven than the towers, slender, sharp, sonorous, and daintily wrought? An architect of good taste (1787) amputated it, and thought it quite enough to cover the wound with that large leaden plaster which looks like the lid of a stewpan. Thus was the marvelous art of the Middle Ages treated in almost every land, but particularly in France. We find three sorts of injury upon its ruins, these three marring it to different depths; first, Time, which has made insensible breaches here and there, mildewed and rusted the surface everywhere; then, political and religious revolutions, which, blind and fierce by nature, fell furiously upon it, rent its rich array of sculpture and carving, shivered its rose-windows, shattered its necklaces of arabesques and quaint figures, tore down its statues--sometimes because of their crown; lastly, changing fashion, even more grotesque and absurd, from the anarchic and splendid deviations of the Renaissance down to the necessary decline of architecture. Fashion did more than revolutions. Fashion cut into the living flesh, attacked the very skeleton and framework of art; it chopped and hewed, dismembered, slew the edifice, in its form as well as in its symbolism, in its logic no less than in its beauty. But fashion restored, a thing which neither time nor revolution ever pretended to do. Fashion, on the plea of "good taste," impudently adapted to the wounds of Gothic architecture the paltry gewgaws of a day,--marble ribbons, metallic plumes, a veritable leprosy of egg-shaped moldings, of volutes, wreaths, draperies, spirals, fringes, stone flames, bronze clouds, lusty cupids, and bloated cherubs, which began to ravage the face of art in the oratory of Catherine de Medici, and destroyed it, two centuries later, tortured and distorted, in the Dubarry's boudoir. There are thus, to sum up the points to which we have alluded, three sorts of scars now disfiguring Gothic architecture; wrinkles and warts upon the epidermis--these are the work of time; wounds, brutal injuries, bruises, and fractures--these are the work of revolution, from Luther to Mirabeau; mutilations, amputations, dislocations of the frame, "restorations,"--these are the Greek, Roman barbaric work of professors according to Vitruvius and Vignole. Academies have murdered the magnificent art which the Vandals produced. To centuries, to revolutions which at least laid waste with impartiality and grandeur, are conjoined the host of scholastic architects, licensed and sworn, degrading all they touch with the discernment and selection of bad taste, substituting the tinsel of Louis XV. for Gothic lace-work, for the greater glory of the Parthenon. This is the donkey's kick at the dying lion. It is the old oak, decaying at the crown, pierced, bitten and devoured by caterpillars. How different from the time when Robert Cenalis, comparing Notre Dame at Paris to the famous temple of Diana at Ephesus; "so loudly boasted by the ancient pagans," which immortalized Herostratus, held the cathedral of the Gauls to be "more excellent in length, breadth, height, and structure!" Notre Dame at Paris is not, however, what can be called a complete, definite monument, belonging to a class. It is neither a Roman nor a Gothic church. The edifice is not a typical one. It has not, like the abbey at Tournus, the sober massive breadth, the round expansive arch, the icy bareness, the majestic simplicity of those buildings based on the semicircular arch. It is not, like the cathedral at Bourges, the magnificent, airy, multiform, bushy, sturdy, efflorescent product of the pointed arch. It is impossible to class it with that antique order of dark, mysterious, low-studded churches, apparently crusht by the semicircular arch--almost Egyptian, save for the ceiling; all hieroglyphic, all sacerdotal, all symbolic, more loaded in their ornamentation with lozenges and zigzags than with flowers, with flowers than with animals, with animals than with men; less the work of the architect than of the bishop; the first transformation of the art, bearing the deep impress of theocratic and military discipline, taking root in the Lower Empire, and ceasing with William the Conqueror. It is impossible to place our cathedral in that other family of lofty, aerial churches, rich in stained glass and sculpture; of pointed forms and daring attitudes; belonging to the commoners and plain, citizens, as political symbols; free, capricious, lawless, as works of art; the second transformation of architecture, no longer hieroglyphic, unchangeable, sacerdotal, but artistic, progressive, and popular, beginning with the close of the Crusades and ending with Louis XI. Notre Dame at Paris is not of purely Roman race like the former, nor of purely Arab breed like the latter. It is a building of the transition period. The Saxon architect had just reared the pillars of the nave, when the pointed arch, brought back from the Crusades, planted itself as conqueror upon those broad Roman capitals which were never meant to support anything but semicircular arches. The pointed arch, thenceforth supreme, built the rest of the church. And still, inexperienced and shy at first, it swelled, it widened, it restrained itself, and dared not yet shoot up into spires and lancets, as it did later on in so many marvelous cathedrals. It seemed sensible of the close vicinity of the heavy Roman columns. Moreover, these buildings of the transition from Roman to Gothic are no less valuable studies than the pure types. They express a gradation of the art which would otherwise be lost. They represent the ingrafting of the pointed arch upon the semicircular. Notre Dame at Paris, in particular, is a curious example of this variety. Every face, every stone of the venerable monument is a page not only of the history of the country, but also of the history of science and art. Thus, to allude only to leading details, while the little Porte Rouge attains the almost extreme limit of the Gothic refinement of the fifteenth century, the pillars of the nave, in their size and gravity of style, go back to the Carlovingian Abbey of Saint-Germain des Prés. One would say that there was an interval of six centuries between that door and those pillars. Even the Hermetics find among the symbols of the great door a satisfactory epitome of their science, of which the Church of St. Jacques de la Boucherie formed so complete a hieroglyph. Thus, the Roman abbey, the philosopher's church, Gothic art, Saxon art, the clumsy round pillar, which recalls Gregory VII., the hermetic symbolism by which Nicholas Flamel paved the way for Luther, papal unity, schism, Saint-Germain des Prés, Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie, are all confounded, combined and blended in Notre Dame. This central and generative church is a kind of chimera among the old churches of Paris; it has the head of one, the limbs of another, the trunk of a third, something of all. Considering here Christian European architecture only, that younger sister of the grand piles of the Orient, we may say that it strikes the eye as a vast formation divided into three very distinct zones or layers, one resting upon the other; the Roman zone, (the same which is also known according to place, climate, and species, as Lombard, Saxon, and Byzantine. There are the four sister forms of architecture, each having its peculiar character, but all springing from the same principle, the semicircular arch,) the Gothic zone, the zone of the Renaissance, which may be called the Greco-Roman. The Roman stratum, which is the oldest and the lowest, is occupied by the semicircular arch, which reappears, together with the Greek column, in the modern and uppermost stratum of the Renaissance. The painted arch is between the two. The buildings belonging to any one of these three strata are perfectly distinct, uniform, and complete. Such are the Abbey of Jumieges, the Cathedral of Rheims, the Church of the Holy Cross at Orleans. But the three zones are blended and mingled at the edges, like the colors in the solar spectrum. Hence, we have certain complex structures, buildings of gradation and transition, which may be Roman at the base, Gothic in the middle, and Greco-Roman at the top. This is caused by the fact that it took six hundred years to build such a fabric. This variety is rare. The donjon-keep at Étampes is a specimen. But monuments of two formations are more frequent. Such is Notre-Dame at Paris, a structure of the pointed arch, its earliest columns leading directly to that Roman zone, of which the portals of Saint-Denis and the nave of Saint-Germain des Prés are perfect specimens. Such is the charming semi-Gothic chapter-house of Boucherville, where the Roman layer reaches midway. Such is the cathedral of Rouen, which would be wholly Gothic if the tip of its central spire did not dip into the zone of the Renaissance. [Footnote: This part of the spire, which was of timber, happens to be the very part which was burned by lightning in 1823.] However, all these gradations and differences affect the surface only of an edifice. Art has but changed its skin. The construction itself of the Christian church is not affected by them. The interior arrangement, the logical order of the parts, is still the same. Whatever may be the carved and nicely-wrought exterior of a cathedral, we always find beneath it, if only in a rudimentary and dormant state, the Roman basilica. It rises forever from the ground in harmony with the same law. There are invariably two naves intersecting each other in the form of a cross, the upper end being rounded into a chancel or choir; there are always side aisles, for the processions and for chapels, a sort of lateral galleries or walks, into which the principal nave opens by means of the spaces between the columns. This settled, the number of chapels, doors, steeples, and spires may be modified indefinitely, according to the fancy of the century, the people, and the art. The performance of divine service once provided for and assured, architecture acts its own pleasure. Statues, stained glass, rose-windows, arabesques, denticulations, capitals, and bas-reliefs,--it combines all these flowers of the fancy according to the logarithm that suits it best. Hence the immense variety in the exteriors of those structures within which dwell such unity and order. The trunk of the tree is fixt; the foliage is variable. The Louvre By Grant Allen [Footnote: From "Paris."] The Louvre is the noblest monument of the French Renaissance. From the time of St. Louis onward, the French kings began to live more and more in the northern suburb, the town of the merchants, which now assumed the name of La Ville, in contradistinction to the Cité and the Université. Two of their chief residences here were the Bastille and the Hôtel St. Paul, both now demolished--one, on the Place so called; the other, between the Rue St. Antoine and the Quai des Célestins. But from a very early period they also possest a château on the site of the Louvre, and known by the same name, which guarded the point where the wall of Philippe Auguste abutted on the river. François I. decided to pull down this picturesque turreted medieval castle, erected by Philippe Auguste and altered by Charles V. He began the construction in its place of a magnificent Renaissance palace, which has ever since been in course of erection. Its subsequent growth, however, is best explained opposite the building itself, where attention can be duly called to the succession of its salient features. But a visit to the exterior fabric of the Louvre should be preceded by one to St. Germain l'Auxerrois, the parish church, and practically the chapel, of the old Louvre, to which it stood in somewhat the same relation as the Ste. Chapelle to the home of St. Louis. Note, however, that the church was situated just within the ancient wall, while the château lay outside it. The visitor will doubtless be tolerably familiar by this time with some parts at least of the exterior of the Louvre; but he will do well to visit it now systematically, in the order here suggested, so as to gain a clear general idea of its history and meaning.... Begin by understanding distinctly that this court is the real and original Louvre; the rest is mere excresence, intended to unite the main building with the Tuileries, which lay some hundreds of yards to the west of it. Notice, first, that the Palace as a whole, seen from the point where you now stand, is constructed on the old principle of relatively blank external walls, like a castle, with an interior courtyard, on which all the apartments open, and almost all the decoration is lavished. Reminiscences of defense lurk about the Louvre. It can best be understood by comparison with such ornate, yet fortress-like, Italian palaces as the Strozzi at Florence. Notice the four opposite portals, facing the cardinal points, which can be readily shut by means of great doors; while the actual doorways of the various suites of apartments open only into the protected courtyard. This is the origin of the familiar French porte-cochère. Again, the portion of the building that directly faces you as you enter the court from St. Germain is the oldest part, and represents the early Renaissance spirit. It is the most primitive Louvre. Note in particular the central elevated portion, known as a Pavilion, and graced with elegant Caryatides. These Pavilions are lingering reminiscences of the medieval towers. You will find them in the corners and centers of other blocks in the Louvre. They form a peculiarly French Renaissance characteristic. The Palace is here growing out of the Castle. The other three sides of the square are, on the whole, more classical and later. Now across the square directly to the Pavilion de l'Horloge, as it is called, from the clock which adorns it. To your left, on the floor of the court, are two circular white lines, enclosed in a square. These mark the site of the original Château of the Louvre, with its keep, or donjon. François I., who began the existing building, originally intended that his palace should cover the same area. It was he who erected the left wing, which now faces you, marked by the crown and H on its central round gable, placed there by his successor, Henry II., under whom it was completed. To the same king are also due the monograms of H and D (for Diane de Poitiers, his mistress), between the columns of the ground floor. The whole of the Pavilion de l'Horloge, and of this west wing, should be carefully examined in detail as the finest remaining specimen of highly decorated French Renaissance architecture. (But the upper story of the Pavilion, with the Caryatides, is an age later.) Observe even the decoration lavished on the beautiful chimneys. Pierre Lescot was the architect of this earliest wing; the exquisite sculpture is by Jean Goujon, a Frenchman, and the Italian, Paolo Ponzio. Examine much of it. The crossed K's of certain panels stand for Catherine de Médici. The right wing, beyond the Pavilion, was added, in the same style, under Louis XIII., who decided to double the plan of his predecessors, and form the existing Cour du Louvre. The other three sides, in a more classic style, with pediments replacing the Pavilions, and square porticos instead of rounded gables, are for the most part later. The south side, however, as far as the central door, is also by Pierre Lescot. It forms one of the two fronts of the original square first contemplated. The attic story of these three sides was added under Louis XIV., to whom, in the main, is due this Cour du Louvre. A considerable part of Louis XIV.'s decorations bear reference to his representation as "le roi soleil." Now, pass through the Pavilion de l'Horloge (called on its west side Pavilion Sully) into the second of the three courts of the Louvre. To understand this portion of the building, again, you must remember that shortly after the erection of the Old Louvre, Catherine de Médici began to build her palace of the Tuileries, now destroyed, to the west of it. She (and subsequent rulers) designed to unite the Old Louvre with the Tuileries by a gallery which should run along the bank of the river. Of that gallery, Catherine de Médici herself erected a considerable portion, to be described later, and Henri IV., almost completed it. Later on, Napoleon I. conceived the idea of extending a similar gallery along his new Rue de Rivoli, on the north side, so as to enclose the whole space between the Louvre and the Tuileries in one gigantic double courtyard. Napoleon III. carried out his idea. The second court in which you now stand is entirely flanked by buildings of this epoch--the Second Empire. Examine it cursorily as far as the modern statue of Gambetta. Stand or take a seat by the railing of the garden opposite the Pavilion Sully. The part that now faces you forms a portion of the building of François I, and Louis XIII., redecorated in part by Napoleon I. The portions to your right and left are entirely of the age of Napoleon III., built so as to conceal the want of parallelism of the outer portions. Observe their characteristic Pavilions, each bearing its own name inscribed upon it. This recent square, tho quite modern in the character of its sculpture and decoration, is Renaissance in its general architecture, and, when looked back upon from the gardens of the Tuileries, affords a most excellent idea of that stately style, as developed in France under François I. The whole of this splendid plan, however, has been rendered futile by the destruction of the Tuileries, without which the enclosure becomes wholly meaningless. Now, continue westward, pass the Monument of Gambetta, and take a seat on the steps at the base, near the fine figure of Truth. In front of you opens the third square of the Louvre, known as the Place du Carrousel, and formerly enclosed on its west side by the Palace of the Tuileries, which was unfortunately burned down in 1871, during the conflict between the Municipal and National authorities. Its place is now occupied by a garden terrace, the view from which in all directions is magnificent. Fronting you, as you sit, is the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, erected under Napoleon I., by Percier and Fontaine, in imitation of the Arch of Septimius Severus at Rome, and once crowned by the famous bronze Roman horses from St. Mark's at Venice. The arch, designed as an approach to the Tuileries during the period of the classical mania, is too small for its present surroundings, since the removal of the Palace. The north wing, visible to your right, is purely modern, of the age of the First and Second Empire and the Third Republic. The meretricious character of the reliefs in its extreme west portion, erected under the Emperor Napoleon III., and restored after the Commune, is redolent of the spirit of that gaudy period. The south wing, to your left, forms part of the connecting gallery erected by Henri IV., but its architecture is largely obscured by considerable alterations under Napoleon III. Its west pavilion-known as the Pavilion de Flore--is well worth notice. Having thus gained a first idea of the courtyard fronts of the building, continue your walk, still westward, along the south wing as far as the Pavilion de Flore, a remaining portion of the corner edifice which ran into one line with the Palace of the Tuileries. Turn round the corner of the Pavilion to examine the south or river front of the connecting gallery--one of the finest parts of the whole building, but far less known to ordinary visitors than the cold and uninteresting northern line along the Rue de Rivoli. The first portion, as far as the gateways, belongs originally to the age of Henry IV., but it was entirely reconstructed under Napoleon III., whose obtrusive N appears in many places on the gateways and elsewhere. Nevertheless, it still preserves, on the whole, some reminiscence of its graceful Renaissance architecture. Beyond the main gateway (with modern bronze Charioteer of the Sun), flanked by the Pavilions de la Trémoille and de Lesdiguières, we come upon the long Southern Gallery erected by Catherine de Médici, which still preserves almost intact its splendid early French Renaissance decoration. This is one of the noblest portions of the entire building. The N here gives place to H's, and the Renaissance scroll-work and reliefs almost equal those in that portion of the old Louvre which was erected under François I. Sit on a seat on the Quay and examine the sculpture. Notice particularly the splendid Porte Jean Goujon, conspicuous from afar by its gilded balcony. Its crowned H's and coats-of-arms are specially interesting examples of the decorative work of the period. Note also the skill with which this almost flat range is relieved by sculpture and decoration so as to make us oblivious of the want of that variety usually given by jutting portions. The end of this long gallery is formed by two handsome windows with balconies. We there come to the connecting Galérie d'Apollon, of which these windows are the termination, and finally reach once more a portion of Perrault's façade, with its double LL's, erected under Louis XIV., and closely resembling the interior façade of the Cour du Louvre.... The Collections in the Louvre have no such necessary organic connection with Paris itself as Notre Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle, or even those in the rooms at Cluny. They may, therefore, be examined by the visitor at any period of his visit that he chooses. I would advise him, however, whenever he takes them up, to begin with the paintings and then to go on to the Classical and Renaissance Sculpture. The last-named, at least, he should only examine in connection with the rest of Renaissance Paris. Also, while it is unimportant whether he takes first Painting or Sculpture, it is very doubtful that he should take each separately in the chronological order. At least six days--far more, if possible--should be devoted to the Louvre Collections--by far the most important objects to be seen in Paris. Of these, four should be assigned to the Paintings, and one each to the Classical and Renaissance Sculpture. If this is impossible, do not try to see all; see a little thoroughly. Confine yourself, for Painting, to the Salon Carré and Gallery VII., and for Sculpture to the Classical Gallery and to the three Western rooms of the Renaissance collection. The Madeleine and Champs Elysées By Nathaniel Hawthorne [Footnote From "French and Italian Note-Books." By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers of Hawthorne's works, Houghton, Mifflin Co. Copyright, 1871, 1883, 1899.] Approaching the Madeleine, we found it a most beautiful church, that might have been adapted from Heathenism to Catholicism; for on each side there is a range of magnificent pillars, unequalled, except by those of the Parthenon. A mourning coach, arrayed in black and silver, was drawn up at the steps, and the front of the church was hung with black cloth, which covered the whole entrance. However, seeing the people going in, we entered along with them. Glorious and gorgeous is the Madeleine. The entrance to the nave is beneath a most stately arch; and three arches of equal height open from the nave to the side aisles; and at the end of the nave is another great arch, rising, with a vaulted half-dome, over the high altar. The pillars supporting these arches are Corinthian, with richly sculptured capitals; and wherever gilding might adorn the church, it is lavished like sunshine; and within the sweeps of the arches there are fresco paintings of sacred subjects, and a beautiful picture covers the hollow of the vault over the altar; all this, besides much sculpture; and especially a group above and around the high altar, representing the Magdalen smiling down upon angels and archangels, some of whom are kneeling, and shadowing themselves with their heavy marble wings. There is no such thing as making my page glow with the most distant idea of the magnificence of this church, in its details and in its whole. It was founded a hundred or two hundred years ago; then Bonaparte contemplated transforming it into a Temple of Victory, or building it anew as one. The restored Bourbon remade it into a church; but it still has a heathenish look, and will never lose it. When we entered we saw a crowd of people, all pressing forward toward the high altar, before which burned a hundred wax lights, some of which were six or seven feet high; and, altogether, they shone like a galaxy of stars. In the middle of the nave, moreover, there was another galaxy of wax candles burning around an immense pall of black velvet, embroidered with silver, which seemed to cover, not only a coffin, but a sarcophagus, or something still more huge. The organ was rumbling forth a deep, lugubrious bass, accompanied with heavy chanting of priests, out of which sometimes rose the clear, young voices of choristers, like light flashing out of the gloom. The church, between the arches, along the nave, and round the altar, was hung with broad expanses of black cloth; and all the priests had their sacred vestments covered with black. They looked exceedingly well; I never saw anything half so well got up on the stage. Some of these ecclesiastical figures were very stately and noble, and knelt and bowed, and bore aloft the cross, and swung the censers in a way that I liked to see. The ceremonies of the Catholic Church were a superb work of art, or perhaps a true growth of man's religious nature; and so long as men felt their original meaning, they must have been full of awe and glory. Being of another parish, I looked on coldly, but not irreverently, and was glad to see the funeral service so well performed, and very glad when it was over. What struck me as singular, the person who performed the part usually performed by a verger, keeping order among the audience, wore a gold-embroidered scarf, a cocked hat, and, I believe, a sword, and had the air of a military man.... When we left the Madeleine we took our way to the Place de la Concorde, and thence through the Elysian Fields (which, I suppose, are the French idea of heaven) to Bonaparte's triumphal arch. The Champs Elysées may look pretty in summer; tho I suspect they must be somewhat dry and artificial at whatever season.--the trees being slender and scraggy, and requiring to be renewed every few years. The soil is not genial to them. The strangest peculiarity of this place, however, to eyes fresh from moist and verdant England, is, that there is not one blade of grass in all the Elysian Fields, nothing but hard clay, now covered with white dust. It gives the whole scene the air of being a contrivance of man, in which Nature has either not been invited to take any part, or has declined to do so. There were merry-go-rounds, wooden horses, and other provision for children's amusements among the trees; and booths, and tables of cakes, and candy-women; and restaurants on the borders of the wood; but very few people there; and doubtless we can form no idea of what the scene might become when alive with French gayety and vivacity. As we walked onward the Triumphal Arch began to loom up in the distance, looking huge and massive, tho still a long way off. It was not, however, till we stood almost beneath it that we really felt the grandeur of this great arch, including so large a space of the blue sky in its airy sweep. At a distance, it impresses the spectator with its solidity; nearer, with the lofty vacancy beneath it. There is a spiral staircase within one of its immense limbs; and, climbing steadily upward, lighted by a lantern which the door-keeper's wife gave us, we had a bird's eye view of Paris, much obscured by smoke or mist. Several interminable avenues shoot with painful directness right toward it. On our way homeward we visited the Place Vendôme, in the center of which is a tall column, sculptured from top to bottom, all over the pedestal, and all over the shaft, and with Napoleon himself on the summit. The shaft is wreathed round and round about with representations of what, as far as I could distinguish, seemed to be the Emperor's victories. It has a very rich effect. At the foot of the column we saw wreaths of artificial flowers, suspended there, no doubt, by some admirer of Napoleon, still ardent enough to expend a franc or two in this way. The Hôtel des Invalides and Napoleon's Tomb By Augustus J. C. Hare [Footnote: From "Walks In Paris." By arrangement with the publisher, David McKay. Copyright, 1880.] We emerge from the Rue de Grenelle opposite the gardens to the north of the magnificent Hôtel des Invalides, planned by Henri IV., and begun by Louis XIV. in 1671, as a refuge for old soldiers, who, before it was built, had to beg their bread on the streets. The institution is under the management of the Minister of War, and nothing can be more comfortable than the life of its inmates. The number of these is now small; in the time of Napoleon I., when the institution was called the "Temple of Mars," it was enormous. On the terrace in front of the building are a number of cannon, trophies taken in different campaigns. Standing before the hotel is the statue of Prince Eugène. On either side of the entrance are statues of Mars and Minerva by Coustou the younger. In the tympanum of the semicircle over the center of the façade is Louis XIV. on horseback. Behind the façade is a vast courtyard surrounded by open corridors lined with frescoes of the history of France; those of the early history on the left by Bénédict Masson, 1865, have much interest. In the center of the façade opposite the entrance is the statue of Napoleon I. Beneath this is the approach to the Church of St. Louis, built 1671-79, from designs of Libéral Bruant, and in which many banners of victory give an effect of color to an otherwise colorless building.... The Tomb of Napoleon, under the magnificent dome of the Invalides, which was added to the original church by Jules Hardouin Mansart, and is treated as a separate building, is entered from the Place Vauban at the back, or by the left cloister and a court beyond. On entering the vast interior, a huge circular space is seen to open, beneath the cupola painted by Charles de Lafosse and Jouvenet, and, in it, surrounded by caryatides and groups of moldering banners, the huge tomb of Finland granite, given by the Emperor Nicholas. Hither the remains of the great Emperor were brought back from St. Helena by the Prince de Joinville, in 1841, tho Louis Philippe, while adopting this popular measure as regarded the dead, renewed the sentence of exile against the living members of the Bonaparte family. Four smaller cupolas encircle the great dome. In the first, on the right, is the tomb of Joseph Bonaparte. On the left are the tombs of Jerome Bonaparte, with a statue, and of his eldest son and the Princess Catherine of Wurtemberg. The other two cupolas are still empty. Descending the steps behind the splendid baldacchino, we find black-marble tombs of Marshals Duroc and Bertrand guarding the approach to that of Napoleon I. His own words, taken from his will, appear in large letters over the entrance: "I desire my ashes to lie on the shores of the Seine among the people of France whom I loved so deeply." The sentiment, the tomb, and the dome have a unique splendor. A white-marble statue of Napoleon I. by Stuart is in a black-marble chapel. His Austerlitz sword, the crown voted by Cherbourg, and colors taken in his different battles, were formerly shown in a "chapelle ardente." The Palais de Justice and the Sainte Chapelle By Grant Allen [Footnote: From "Paris."] Go along the Rue de Rivoli as far as the Square of the Tour St. Jacques. If driving, alight here. Turn down the Place du Châtelet to your right. In front is the pretty modern fountain of the Châtelet; right, the Thèâtre du Châtelet; left, the Opéra Comique. The bridge which faces you is the Pont-au-Change, so-called from the money-changers' and jewelers' booths which once flanked its wooden predecessor (the oldest in Paris), as they still do the Rialto at Venice, and the Ponte Vecchio at Florence. Stand by the right-hand corner of the bridge before crossing it. In front is the Ile de la Cité. The square, dome-crowned building opposite you to the left is the modern Tribunal de Commerce; beyond it leftward lie the Marché-aux-Fleurs and the long line of the Hôtel-Dieu, above which rise the towers and spire of Notre Dame. In front, to the right, the vast block of buildings broken by towers forms part of the Palais de Justice, the ancient Palace of the French kings, begun by Hugh Capet. The square tower to the left in this block is the Tour de l'Horloge. Next, to the right, come the two round towers of the Conciergerie, known respectively as the Tour de César and the Tour de Montgomery. The one beyond them, with battlements, is the Tour d'Argent. It was in the Conciergerie that Marie Antoinette, Robespierre, and many other victims of the Revolution were imprisoned. These medieval towers, much altered and modernized, are now almost all that remains of the old Palace, which, till after the reign of Louis IX. (St. Louis), formed the residence of the Kings of France. Charles VII. gave it in 1431 to the Parlement or Supreme Court. Ruined by fires and re-building, it now consists for the most part of masses of irregular recent edifices. The main modern façade fronts the Boulevard du Palais. Cross the bridge. The Tour de l'Horloge on your right, at the corner of the Boulevard du Palais, contains the oldest public clock in France (1370). The figures of Justice and Pity by its side were originally designed by Germain Pilon, but are now replaced by copies. Walk round the Palais by the quay along the north branch of the Seine till you come to the Rue de Harlay. Turn there to your left, toward the handsome and imposing modern façade of this side of the Palais de Justice. The interior is unworthy a visit. The Rue de Harlay forms the westernmost end of the original Ile de la Cité. The prow-shaped extremity of the modern island has been artificially produced by embanking the sites of two or three minor islets. The Palace Dauphine, which occupies the greater part of this modern extension, was built in 1608; it still affords a characteristic example of the domestic Paris of the period before Baron Haussmann. Continue along the quay as far as the Pont-Neuf, so as to gain an idea of the extent of the Ile de la Cité in this direction. The center of the Pont-Neuf is occupied by an equestrian statue of Henri IV., first of the Bourbon kings. Its predecessor was erected in 1635, and was destroyed to make cannon during the great Revolution. Louis XVIII. re-erected it. From this point you can gain a clear idea of the two branches of the Seine as they unite at the lower end of the Ile de la Cité. To your right, looking westward, you also obtain a fine view of the Colonnade of the Old Louvre, with the southwestern gallery, and the more modern buildings of the Museum behind it. Now, walk along the southern quay of the island, round the remainder of the Palais de Justice, as far as the Boulevard du Palais. There turn to your left, and go in at the first door of the Palace on the left (undeterred by sentries) into the court of the Sainte Chapelle, the only important relic now remaining of the home of Saint Louis. You may safely neglect the remainder of the building. The thirteenth century was a period of profound religious enthusiasm throughout Europe. Conspicuous among its devout soldiers was Louis IX., afterward canonized as St. Louis. The saintly king purchased from Baldwin, Emperor of Constantinople, the veritable Crown of Thorns, and a fragment of the True Cross--paying for these relics an immense sum of money. Having become possest of such invaluable and sacred objects, Louis desired to have them housed with suitable magnificence. He therefore entrusted Pierre de Montereau with the task of building a splendid chapel (within the precincts of his palace), begun in 1245, and finished three years later, immediately after which the king set out on his Crusade. The monument breathes throughout the ecstatic piety of the mystic king; it was consecrated in 1248, in the name of the Holy Crown and the Holy Cross, by Eudes de Châteauroux, Bishop of Tusculum and papal legate. Three things should be noted about the Sainte Chapelle. (1) It is a chapel, not a church; therefore it consists (practically) of a choir alone, without nave or transepts. (2) It is the domestic Chapel of the Royal Palace. (3) It is, above all things, the Shrine of the Crown of Thorns. These three points must be constantly borne in mind in examining the building. Erected later than Notre-Dame, it represents the pointed style of the middle of the thirteenth century, and is singularly pure and uniform throughout. Secularized at the Revolution, it fell somewhat into decay; but was judiciously restored by Viollet-le-Duc and others. The "Messe Rouge," or "Messe du St. Esprit," is still celebrated here once yearly, on the re-opening of the courts after the autumn vacation, but no other religious services take place in the building. The Crown of Thorns and the piece of the True Cross are now preserved in the Treasury at Notre Dame. Examine the exterior in detail from the court on the south side. More even than most Gothic buildings, the Sainte Chapelle is supported entirely by its massive piers, the wall being merely used for enclosure, and consisting for the most part of lofty windows. As in most French Gothic buildings, the choir terminates in a round apse, whereas English cathedrals have usually a square end. The beautiful light flêche or spire in the center has been restored. Observe the graceful leaden angel, holding a cross, on the summit of the chevet or round apse. To see the facade, stand well back opposite it, where you can observe that the chapel is built in four main stories--those, namely, of the Lower Church or crypt, of the Upper Church, of the great rose window (with later flamboyant tracery), and of the gable-end, partially masked by an open parapet studded with the royal fleurs-de-lis of France. The Crown of Thorns surrounds the two pinnacles which flank the fourth story. The chapel consists of a lower and an upper church. The Lower Church is a mere crypt, which was employed for the servants of the royal family. Its portal has in its tympanum (or triangular space in the summit of the arch) the Coronation of the Virgin, and on its center pillar a good figure of the Madonna and Child. Enter the Lower Church. It is low, and has pillars supporting the floor above. In the polychromatic decoration of the walls and pillars, notice the frequent repetition of the royal lilies of France, combined with the three castles of Castille, in honor of Blanche of Castille, the Mother of St. Louis. Mount to the Upper Chapel (or Sainte Chapelle proper) by the small spiral staircase in the corner. This soaring pile was the oratory where the royal family and court attended service; its gorgeousness bespeaks its origin and nature. It glows like a jewel. First go out of the door and examine the exterior and doorway of the chapel. Its platform was directly approached in early times from the Palace. The center pillar bears a fine figure of Christ. In the tympanum (as over the principal doorway of almost every important church in Paris and in the district) is a relief of the Last Judgment. Below stands St. Michael with his scales, weighing the souls; on either side is depicted the Resurrection, with the Angels of the Last Trump. Above, in the second tier, is Christ, holding up His hands with the marks of the nails, as a sign of mercy to the redeemed: to right and left of Him angels display the Crown of Thorns and the True Cross, to contain which sacred relics the chapel was built. On the extreme left kneels the Blessed Virgin; on the extreme right, Sainte Geneviève. This scene of the Last Judgment was adapted with a few alterations from that above the central west door of Notre Dame, the Crown of Thorns in particular being here significantly substituted for the three nails and spear. The small lozenge reliefs to right and left of the portal are also interesting. Those to the left represent in a very naïve manner God the Father creating the world, sun and moon, light, plants, animals, man, etc. Those to the right give the story of Genesis, Cain and Abel, the Flood, the Ark, Noah's Sacrifice, Noah's Vine, etc., the subjects of all which the visitor can easily recognize, and is strongly recommended to identify for himself. The interior consists almost entirely of large and lofty windows, with magnificent stained glass, in large part ancient. The piers which divide the windows and alone support the graceful vault of the roof, are provided with statues of the twelve apostles, a few of them original. Each bears his well-known symbol. Spell them out if possible. Beneath the windows, in the quatrefoils of the arcade, are enamelled glass mosaics representing the martyrdoms of the saints--followers of Christ, each wearing his own crown of thorns: a pretty conceit wholly in accord with St. Louis's ecstatic type of piety. Conspicuous among them are St. Denis carrying his head, St. Sebastian pierced with arrows, St. Stephen stoned, St. Lawrence on his gridiron, etc. The apse (formerly separated from the body of the building by a rood-screen, now destroyed), contains the vacant base of the high altar, behind which stands an arcaded tabernacle, now empty, in whose shrine were once preserved the Crown of Thorns, the fragment of the True Cross, and other relics. Among them in the later times was included the skull of St. Louis himself in a golden reliquary. Two angels at the summit of the large center arch of the arcade bear a representation of the Crown of Thorns in their hands. Above the tabernacle rises a canopy or baldacchino, approached by two spiral staircases; from its platform St. Louis and his successors, the kings of France, were in the habit of exhibiting with their own hands the actual relics themselves once a year to the faithful. The golden reliquary in which the sacred objects were contained was melted down in the Revolution. The small window with bars to your right, as you face the high altar, was placed there by the superstitious and timid Louis XI., in order that he might behold the elevation of the Host and the sacred relics without being exposed to the danger of assassination. The visitor should also notice the inlaid stone pavement, with its frequent repetition of the fleur-de-lis and the three castles. The whole breathes the mysticism of St. Louis; the lightness of the architecture, the height of the apparently unsupported roof, and the magnificence of the decoration, render this the most perfect ecclesiastical building in Paris. In returning from the chapel, notice on the outside, from the court to the south, the apparently empty and useless porch, supporting a small room, which is the one through whose grated window Louis XI. used to watch the elevation. The Hotel de Ville and the Conciergerie By Augustus J. C. Hare [Footnote: From "Walks In Paris." By arrangement with the publisher, David McKay. Copyright, 1880.] It was Etienne Marcel, Mayor of Paris, who first established the municipal council at the Place de Grève, at that time the only large square in Paris. In July, 1357, he purchased as a Hostel de Ville the Maison aux Piliers, which had been inhabited by Clémence d'Hongrie, widow of Louis le Hutin, and which afterward took the name of Maison du Dauphin from her nephew and heir, Guy, Dauphin de Viennois. In 1532 a new Hôtel de Ville was begun and finished by the architect Marin de la Vallée in the reign of Henri IV. This was so much altered by successive restorations and revolutions that only a staircase, two monumental chimney-pieces in the Salle du Trône, and some sculptured doorways and other details remained from the interior decorations in the old building at the time of its destruction. Till the time of Louis XVI. the history of the Hôtel de Ville was entirely local; after that it became the history of France. It was there that Louis XVI. received the tri-colored cockade from Bailly, Mayor of Paris, July 17, 1789; and there, in the chamber called, from its hangings, Le Cabinet Vert, that Robespierre was arrested, in the name of the Convention, during one of the meetings of the Commune, July 27, 1794. After the fall of Robespierre it was seriously proposed to pull down the Hôtel de Ville, because it had been his last asylum--"Le Louvre de Robespierre." It was only saved by the common-sense of Leonard Bourdon. But most of all, in the popular recollection, is the Hôtel de Ville connected with public fêtes--with those on the second marriage of Napoleon I. (1810), on the entry of Louis XVIII. (1814), on the coronation of Charles X. (1825), on the marriage of the Duke of Orleans (1837), on the visits of different foreign potentates to Napoleon III. Here also was the Republic proclaimed, September 4, 1870. It was in one of the windows of the Hôtel de Ville that Louis Philippe embraced Lafayette (August, 1830) in sight of the people, to evince the union of the July monarchy with the bourgeoisie. On the steps of the building Louis Blanc proclaimed the Republic, February 24,1848. From September 4, 1870, to February 28, 1871, the hôtel was the seat of the "government of the national defense," and from March 19 to May 22, 1871, that of the pretended "Committee of public safety" of the Communists. On May 24 it was burned by its savage defenders, many of whom happily perished in the flames. The Place de l'Hôtel de Ville is so modernized that it retains nothing of the Place de Grève but its terrible historic associations. Among the many fearful executions here, it is only necessary to recall that of Jean Hardi, torn to pieces by four horses (March 30, 1473) on an accusation of trying to poison Louis XI.; that of the Comte de St. Pol (December 19, 1475), long commemorated by a pillar; those of a long list of Protestants, opened by the auto-de-fé of Jacques de Povanes, student of the University, in 1525; that of Nicholas de Salcède, Sieur d'Auvillers, torn to pieces by four horses in the presence of the king and queens, for conspiracy to murder the Duc d'Anjou, youngest son of Catherine de Medici. More terrible still was the execution of Ravaillac (May 27, 1610) murderer of Henri IV. "The executioner cut off his hand with an ax, and threw it and the murderous knife into the fire. His breasts, his arms and his legs were torn with pincers, and boiling oil and melted lead poured into the open wounds. He was then dismembered by four strong horses, which pulled for no less than an entire hour. They dismembered only a corpse. He expired," says L'Estoile, "at the second or third pull." When the executioner had to throw the limbs into the fire that the ashes, according to the sentence, might be flung to the winds, the whole crowd rushed on to claim them. "But," adds the same chronicler, "the people rushed on so impetuously that every mother's son had a piece, even the children, who made fires of them at the corners of the streets." After the capture of the Bastille its brave governor, M. de Launay, was beheaded on the steps of the Hôtel de Ville, and his major, M. de Losme-Salbray, was massacred under the Arcade St. Jean. These were the first victims of the Revolution. Foulon, Intendant du Commerce, suffered here soon afterward, hung from the cords by which a lamp was suspended, whence the expression, which soon resounded in many a popular refrain, of "put the aristocrats to the lantern." * * * * * Two parasite buildings, the Conciergerie, and the Prefecture of Police, are now annexed to the Palais de Justice. The Conciergerie takes its name from the house of the concierge in the time of the royal residence here, who had a right to two chickens a day and to the cinders and ashes of the king's chimney. It has always been a prison, and it was here that the Comte d'Armagnac was murdered, June 12, 1418. Here was made, below the level of the Seine, the prison called La Souricière, from the rats which had the reputation of eating the prisoners alive. The present Conciergerie occupies the lower story of the right wing of the existing Palais de Justice, and extends along the Quai de l'Horloge, as far as the towers of Montgomery and César. It has an entrance on the quay, before which the guillotine-carts received the victims of the Reign of Terror, and another to the right of the great staircase in the Cour d'Honneur. All other associations of the Conciergerie are lost in those which were attached to it by the great Revolution. The cell in which Marie Antoinette suffered her seventy-five days' agony--from August 2 till October 15, when she was condemned--was turned into a chapel of expiation in 1816. The lamp still exists which lighted the august prisoner and enabled her guards to watch her through the night. The door still exists, tho changed in position, which was cut transversely in half and the upper part fixt that the queen might be forced to bend in going out, because she had said that whatever indignities they might inflict upon her they could never force her to bend the head. After her condemnation, Marie Antoinette was not brought back to this chamber. It was a far more miserable cell which saw her write her last touching farewell to Madame Elizabeth. But this was the room in which the Girondins spent their last night, when, as Riouffe, himself in the prison at the time, says, "all during this frightful night their songs sounded and if they stopt singing it was but to talk about their country." The adjoining cell, now used as a sacristy, was the prison of Robespierre. Père la Chaise By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [Footnote: From "Outre Mer." Published by Houghton, Mifflin Co.] The cemetery of Père la Chaise is the Westminster Abbey of Paris. Both are the dwellings of the dead; but in one they repose in green alleys and beneath the open sky--in the other their resting-place is in the shadowy aisle, and beneath the dim arches of an ancient abbey. One is a temple of nature; the other a temple of art. In one, the soft melancholy of the scene is rendered still more touching by the warble of birds and the shade of trees, and the grave receives the gentle visit of the sunshine and the shower; in the other, no sound but the passing footfall breaks the silence of the place; the twilight steals in through high and dusky windows; and the damps of the gloomy vault lie heavy on the heart, and leave their stain upon the moldering tracery of the tomb. Père la Chaise stands just beyond the Barrière d'Aulney, on a hill-side, looking toward the city. Numerous gravel-walks, winding through shady avenues and between marble monuments, lead up from the principal entrance to a chapel on the summit. There is hardly a grave that has not its little inclosure planted with shrubbery; and a thick mass of foliage half conceals each funeral stone. The sighing of the wind, as the branches rise and fall upon it,--the occasional note of a bird among the trees, and the shifting of light and shade upon the tombs beneath, have a soothing effect upon the mind; and I doubt whether any one can enter that inclosure, where repose the dust and ashes of so many great and good men, without feeling the religion of the place steal over him, and seeing something of the dark and gloomy expression pass off from the stern countenance of death. It was near the close of a bright summer afternoon that I visited this celebrated spot for the first time. The object that arrested my attention, on entering, was a monument in the form of a small Gothic chapel, which stands near the entrance, in the avenue leading to the right hand. On the marble couch within are stretched two figures, carved in stone and drest in the antique garb of the Middle Ages. It is the tomb of Abélard and Héloïse. The history of these unfortunate lovers is too well known to need recapitulation; but perhaps it is not so well known how often their ashes were disturbed in the slumber of the grave. Abélard died in the monastery of Saint Marcel, and was buried in the vaults of the church. His body was afterward removed to the convent of the Paraclet, at the request of Héloïse, and at her death her body was deposited in the same tomb. Three centuries they reposed together; after which they were separated to different sides of the church, to calm the delicate scruples of the lady-abbess of the convent. More than a century afterward, they were again united in the same tomb; and when at length the Paraclet was destroyed, their moldering remains were transported to the church of Nogent-sur-Seine. They were next deposited in an ancient cloister at Paris; and now repose near the gateway of the cemetery of Père la Chaise. What a singular destiny was theirs! that, after a life of such passionate and disastrous love,--such sorrows, and tears, and penitence--their very dust should not be suffered to rest quietly in the grave!--that their death should so much resemble their life in its changes and vicissitudes, its partings and its meetings, its inquietudes and its persecutions!--that mistaken zeal should follow them down to the very tomb--as if earthly passion could glimmer, like a funeral lamp, amid the damps of the charnel-house, and "even in their ashes bum their wonted fires!".... Leaving this interesting tomb behind me, I took a pathway to the left, which conducted me up the hill-side. I soon found myself in the deep shade of heavy foliage, where the branches of the yew and willow mingled, interwoven with the tendrils and blossoms of the honeysuckle. I now stood in the most populous part of this city of tombs. Every step awakened a new train of thrilling recollections; for at every step my eye caught the name of some one whose glory had exalted the character of his native land, and resounded across the waters of the Atlantic. Philosophers, historians, musicians, warriors, and poets slept side by side around me; some beneath the gorgeous monument, and some beneath the simple headstone. But the political intrigue, the dream of science, the historical research, the ravishing harmony of sound, the tried courage, the inspiration of the lyre--where are they? With the living, and not with the dead! The right hand has lost its cunning in the grave; but the soul, whose high volitions it obeyed, still lives to reproduce itself in ages yet to come. Among these graves of genius I observed here and there a splendid monument, which had been raised by the pride of family over the dust of men who could lay no claim either to the gratitude or remembrances of posterity. Their presence seemed like an intrusion into the sanctuary of genius. What had wealth to do there? Why should it crowd the dust of the great? That was no thoroughfare of business--no mart of gain! There were no costly banquets there; no silken garments, nor gaudy liveries, nor obsequious attendants!.... I continued my walk through the numerous winding paths, as chance or curiosity directed me. Now I was lost in a little green hollow, overhung with thick-leaved shrubbery, and then came out upon an elevation, from which, through an opening in the trees, the eye caught glimpses of the city, and the little esplanade, at the foot of the hill, where the poor lie buried. There poverty hires its grave, and takes but a short lease of the narrow house. At the end of a few months, or at most of a few years, the tenant is dislodged to give place to another, and he in turn to a third. "Who," says Sir Thomas Browne, "knows the fate of his bones, or how often he is to be buried? Who hath the oracle of his ashes, or whither they are to be scattered?" Yet, even in that neglected corner, the hand of affection had been busy in decorating the hired house. Most of the graves were surrounded with a slight wooden paling, to secure them from the passing footstep; there was hardly one so deserted as not to be marked with its little wooden cross, and decorated with a garland of flowers; and here and there I could perceive a solitary mourner, clothed in black, stooping to plant a shrub on the grave, or sitting in motionless sorrow beside it.... After rambling leisurely about for some time, reading the iscriptions on the various monuments which attracted my curiosity, and giving way to the different reflections they suggested, I sat down to rest myself on a sunken tombstone. A winding gravel-walk, overshaded by an avenue of trees, and lined on both sides with richly sculptured monuments, had gradually conducted me to the summit of the hill, upon whose slope the cemetery stands. Beneath me in the distance, and dim-discovered through the misty and smoky atmosphere of evening, rose the countless roofs and spires of the city. Beyond, throwing his level rays athwart the dusky landscape, sank the broad red sun. The distant murmur of the city rose upon my ear; and the toll of the evening bell came up, mingled with the rattle of the paved street and the confused sounds of labor. What an hour for meditation! What a contrast between the metropolis of the living and the metropolis of the dead!.... Before I left the graveyard the shades of evening had fallen, and the objects around me grown dim and indistinct. As I passed the gateway, I turned to take a parting look. I could distinguish only the chapel on the summit of the hill, and here and there a lofty obelisk of snow-white marble, rising from the black and heavy mass of foliage around, and pointing upward to the gleam of the departed sun, that still lingered in the sky, and mingled with the soft starlight of a summer evening. The Musée de Cluny By Grant Allen [Footnote: From "Paris."] The primitive nucleus of the suburb on the South Side consists of the Roman fortress palace, the "tête du pont" of the Left Bank, now known as the Thermes, owing to the fact that its principal existing remains include only the ruins of the bath or therma. This colossal building, probably erected by Constantius Chlorus, the father of Constantine, covered an enormous area south of the river. After the Frankish conquest, it still remained the residence of the Merwing and Karling kings on the rare occasions when they visited Paris; and it does not seem to have fallen into utter decay till a comparatively late date in the Middle Ages. With the Norman irruptions, however, and the rise of the real French monarchs under Eudes and the Capets, the new sovereigns found it safest to transfer their seat to the Palace on the Island (now the Palais de Justice), and the Roman fortress was gradually dismantled. In 1340 the gigantic ruins came into the hands of the powerful Benedictine Abbey of Cluny, near Mâcon, in Burgundy; and about 1480, the abbots began to erect on the spot a town mansion for themselves, which still bears the name of the Hôtel de Cluny. The letter K, the mark of Charles VIII. (1483-1498), occurs on many parts of the existing building, and fixes its epoch. The house was mostly built by Jaques d'Amboise, abbot, in 1490. The style is late Gothic, with Renaissance features. The abbots, however, seldom visited Paris, and they frequently placed their town house accordingly at the disposition of the kings of France. Mary of England, sister of Henry VIII., and widow of Louis XII., occupied it thus in 1515, soon after its completion. It was usual for the queens of France to wear white as mourning; hence her apartment is still known as the "Chambre de la reine blanche." At the Revolution, when the property of the monasteries was confiscated, the Hôtel de Cluny was sold, and passed at last, in 1833, into the hands of M. du Sommerard, a zealous antiquary, who began the priceless collection of works of art which it contains. He died in 1842, and the Government then bought the house and museum, and united it with the Roman ruin at its back under the title of Musée des Thermes et de l'Hôtel de Cluny. Since that time many further objects have been added to the collection. At Cluny the actual building forms one of the most interesting parts of the sight, and is in itself a museum. It is a charming specimen of a late medieval French mansion; and the works of art it contains are of the highest artistic value.... At least two whole days should be devoted to Cluny--one to the lower and one to the upper floor. Much more, if possible. The Place de la Bastille By Augustus J. C. Hare [Footnote: From "Walks in Paris." By arrangement with the publisher, David McKay. Copyright, 1880.] The south end of the Rue des Tournelles falls into the Place de la Bastille, containing Le Colonne de Juillet, surmounted by a statue of Liberty, and erected 1831-1840. This marks the site of the famous castle-prison of the Bastille, which for four centuries and a half terrified Paris, and which has left a name to the quarter it frowned upon. Hugues Ambriot, Mayor of Paris, built it under Charles V. to defend the suburb which contained the royal palace of St. Paul. Unpopular from the excess of his devotion to his royal master, Aubriot was the first prisoner in his own prison. Perhaps the most celebrated of the long list of after captives were the Connétable de St. Pol and Jacques d'Armagnac, Due de Nemours, taken thence for execution to the Place de Grève under Louis XI., Charles de Gontaut, Due de Biron, executed within the walls of the fortress under Henri IV., and the "Man with the Iron Mask," brought hither mysteriously, September 18, 1698, and who died in the Bastille, November 19, 1703. A thousand engravings show us the Bastille as it was--as a "fort-bastide"--built on the line of the city walls just to the south of the Porte St. Antoine, surrounded by its own moat. It consisted of eight round towers, each bearing a characteristic name, connected by massive walls, ten feet thick, pierced with narrow slits by which the cells were lighted. In the early times it had entrances on three sides, but after 1580 only one, with a drawbridge over the moat on the side toward the river, which led to outer courts and a second drawbridge, and wound by a defended passage to an outer entrance opposite the Rue des Tournelles. Close beside the Bastille, to the north, rose the Porte St. Antoine, approached over the city fosse by its own bridge, at the outer end of which was a triumphal arch built on the return of Henri II. from Poland in 1573. Both gate and arch were restored for the triumphal entry of Louis XIV. in 1667; but the gate (before which Etienne Marcel was killed, July, 1358), was pulled down in 1674. The Bastille was taken by the people, July 14, 1789, and the National Assembly decreed its demolition.... The massive circular pedestal upon which the Colonne de Juillet now rests was intended by Napoleon I. to support a gigantic fountain in the form of an elephant, instead of the column which, after the destruction of the Bastille, the "tiers état" of Paris had asked to erect "à Louis XVI., restaurateur de la liberté publique." It is characteristic of the Parisians that on the very same spot the throne of Louis Philippe was publicly burned, February 24, 1848. The model for the intended elephant existed here till the middle of the reign of Louis Philippe, and is depicted by Victor Hugo as the lodging of "Le petit Gavroche." The Panthéon and St. Etienne-Du-Mont By Grant Allen [Footnote: From "Paris."] The medieval church of Ste. Geneviève, having fallen into decay in the middle of the eighteenth century, Louis XV. determined to replace it by a sumptuous domed edifice in the style of the period. This building, designed by Soufflot, was not completed till the Revolution, when it was immediately secularized as the Panthéon, under circumstances to be mentioned later. The remains of Ste. Geneviève, which had lain temporarily meanwhile in a sumptuous chapel of St. Étienne-du-Mont (the subsidiary church of the monastery) were taken out by the Revolutionists; the medieval shrine, or reliquary (which replaced St. Éloy's), was ruthlessly broken up; and the body of the patroness and preserver of Paris was publicly burned in the Place de Grève. This, however, strange to say, was not quite the end of Ste. Geneviève. A few of her relics were said to have been preserved: some bones, together with a lock of the holy shepherdess's hair, were afterward recovered, and replaced in the sarcophagus they had once occupied. Such at least is the official story; and these relics, now once more enclosed in a costly shrine, still attract thousands of votaries to the chapel of the saint in St. Étienne-du-Mont. The Panthéon, standing in front of the original church, is now a secular burial-place for the great men of France. The remains of Ste. Geneviève still repose at St. Étienne. Thus it is impossible to dissociate the two buildings, which should be visited together; and thus too it happens that the patroness of Paris has now no church in her own city. Local saints are always the most important; this hill and Montmartre are still the holiest places in Paris. Proceed, as far as the garden of the Thermes, as on the excursion to Cluny. Then continue straight up the Boulevard St. Michel. The large edifice visible on the right of the Rue des Écoles to your left, is the new building of the Sorbonne, or University. Further up, at the Place du Sorbonne, the domed church of the same name stands before you. It is the University church, and is noticeable as the earliest true dome erected in Paris. The next corner shows one, right, the Luxembourg garden, and left, the Rue Soufflot, leading up to the Panthéon. The colossal domed temple which replaces the ancient church of Ste. Geneviève was begun by Soufflot, under Louis XV., in imitation of St. Peter's, at Rome. Like all architects of his time, Soufflot sought merely to produce an effect of pagan or "classical" grandeur, peculiarly out of place in the shrine of the shepherdess of Nanterre. Secularized almost immediately on its completion, during the Revolution, the building was destined as the national monument to the great men of France, and the inscription, "Aux Grands Hommes la Patrie Reconnaissante," which it still bears, was then first placed under the sculptures of the pediment. Restored to worship by the Restoration, it was again secularized under the Third Republic in order to admit the burial of Victor Hugo. The building itself, a vast bare barn of the pseudo-classical type, very cold and formal, is worthy of notice merely on account of its immense size and its historic position; but it may be visited to this day with pleasure, not only for some noble modern paintings, but also for the sake of the reminiscences of Ste. Geneviève which it still contains. The tympanum has a group by David d'Angers, representing France distributing wreaths to soldiers, politicians, men of letters, men of science, and artists. The interior is in the shape of a Greek cross (with equal arms). Follow round the walls, beginning from the right. In the right aisle are paintings (modern) looking like frescoes, and representing the preaching of St. Denis, by Galand; and the history of Ste. Geneviève--her childhood, recognition by St. Germain l'Auxerrois, miracles, etc., delicate and elusive works, by Puvis de Chavannes. The paintings of the South Transept represent episodes in the early history of France. Chronologically speaking, they begin from the east central corner. Choir, Death of Ste. Geneviève, and Miracles before her Shrine, by Laurens. Apse of the tribune, fine modern (archaic) mosaic, by Hébert, representing Christ with the Guardian Angel of France, the Madonna, Jean d'Arc, and Ste. Geneviève. Stand under the dome to observe the proportions of the huge, bare, unimpressive building. Left, or Northern Transept, east side, the history of Jeanne d'Arc; she hears the voices; leads the assault at Orleans; assists at the coronation of Charles VII. at Rheims; and is burned at Rouen. West side, St. Louis as a child instructed by Blanche of Castille; administering justice in the Palace; and a captive among the Saracens. North aisle, history of Ste. Geneviève and St. Denis. The building is thus at once the apotheosis of patriotism, and the lasting memorial of the part borne by Christianity in French, and especially Parisian, history. As you descend the steps of the Panthéon, the building that faces you to the left is the Mairie of the 5th Arrondissement; that to the right, the École de Droit. Turn to the right along the north side of the Panthéon. The long, low building which faces you is the Bibliotheque Ste. Geneviève. Nothing now remains of the Abbey of Ste. Geneviève except the tall early Gothic tower seen to the right near the end of the Panthéon, and rising above the modern buildings of the Lycée Henri IV. The singularly picturesque and strangely-mingled church across the little square is St. Étienne-du-Mont, which we now proceed to visit. Stand in the left-hand corner of the Place to examine the facade. The church was begun (1517) as late Gothic; but before it was finished, the Renaissance style had come into fashion, and the architects accordingly jumbled the two in the most charming manner. The incongruity here only adds to the beauty. The quaintly original Renaissance portal bears a dedication to St. Stephen the Protomartyr, beneath which is a relief of his martyrdom, with a Latin inscription, "Stone destroyed the temple of the Lord," i.e., Stephen, "Stone rebuilds it." Right and left of the portal are statues of Sts. Stephen and Geneviève, whose monograms also appear on the doors. In the pediment is the usual representation of the Resurrection and Last Judgment. Above it, the rose window, on either side of which, in accordance with Italian rather than with French custom (showing Italian Renaissance influence) are the Angel of the Annunciation and the Madonna receiving his message. In the third story, a gable-end. Singular tower to the left, with an additional round turret, a relic of the earlier Gothic building. The whole façade (17th century) represents rather late Renaissance than transitional architecture. The interior is the most singular, and in some ways the most picturesque, in Paris--a Gothic church, tricked out in Renaissance finery. The nave is flanked by aisles, which are divided from it by round pillars, capped by a singular balustrade or gallery with low, flat arches, simulating a triforium. The upper arches are round, and the decorations Renaissance; but the vaulting, both of nave and aisles, with its pendant keystones, recalls the Gothic style, as do also most of the windows. Stand near the entrance, in the center of the nave, and look up the church. The most striking feature is the beautiful Renaissance jubé or rood-loft (the only one now left in Paris) which divides the Choir from the body of the building. This rood-loft still bears a crucifix, for the reception of which it was originally intended. On the arch below are two charmingly sculptured Renaissance angels. The rood-loft is flanked by two spiral staircases, which are wholly unique architectural features. Notice also the exquisite pendentive of the roof at the point of intersection of the nave and short false transepts. Now walk up the right aisle. The first chapel is the Baptistery, containing the font and a modern statue of the boy Baptist. Third chapel, St. Antony of Padua. The fourth chapel contains a curious Holy Sepulcher, with quaint life-size terra-cotta figures of the 16th century. Fifth chapel, a gilt châsse. Notice the transepts, reduced to short arms, scarcely, if at all, projecting beyond the chapels. From this point examine the exquisite Renaissance tracery of the rood-screen and staircases. Then pass under the fine Renaissance door, with lovely decorative work, into the ambulatory. The Choir is in large part Gothic, with late flamboyant tracery. The apparent triforium is continued round the ambulatory. The splendid gilded shrine in the second choir-chapel contains the remains of Ste. Geneviève, or what is left of them. Candles burn perpetually around it. Hundreds of votaries here pay their devotions daily to the Patroness of Paris. The shrine, containing what is alleged to be the original sarcophagus of the Saint (more probably of the 13th century) stands under a richly-gilt Gothic tabernacle, adorned with figures legibly named on their pedestals. The stained-glass window behind it has a representation of a processional function with the body of the Saint, showing this church, together with a view of the original church of Ste. Geneviève, the remaining tower, and adjacent houses, historically most interesting. The window beyond the shrine also contains the history of Ste. Geneviève--her childhood, first communion, miracles, distribution of bread during the siege of Paris, conversion of Clovis, death, etc. Indeed the long sojourn of the body of Ste. Geneviève in this church has almost overshadowed its dedication to St. Stephen, several memorials of whom may, however, be recognized by the attentive visitor--among them, a picture of his martyrdom (by Abel de Pujol) near the entrance to the choir. The Protomartyr also stands, with his deacon's robe and palm, in a niche near the door of the sacristy, where left and right are frescoes of his Disputation with the Doctors, and his Martyrdom. The chapel immediately behind the high altar is, as usual, the Lady Chapel. The next contains a good modern window of the Marriage of the Virgin. Examine in detail all the windows; one of the mystic wine-press is very interesting. Votive offerings of the city of Paris to Ste. Geneviève also exist in the ambulatory. Curious frescoes of the martyrdom of the 10,000 Christians on Mount Ararat on the north side. The best view of the choir is obtained from the north side of the ambulatory, opposite the shrine of Ste. Geneviève. In the north aisle notice St. Louis with the Crown of Thorns. Stand again in the center of the nave, near the entrance, and observe the curious inclination of the choir and high altar to one side--here particularly noticeable, and said in every case to represent the droop of the Redeemer's head on the cross. As you emerge from the door, observe the cold and bare side of the Panthéon, contrasted with the internal richness of St. Êtienne. Curious view of the late Gothic portion of the church from the little Place on the north side. Return by the Rue Cujas and Rue St. Jacques, passing the Lycée Ste. Barbe, Lycée Louis-le-Grand, University, and other scholastic buildings, which give a good idea of the character of the quarter. St. Roch By Augustus J. C. Hare [Footnote: From "Walks in Paris." By arrangement with the publisher, David McKay. Copyright, 1880.] Englishmen are often specially imprest with Paris as a city of contrasts, because one side of the principal line of hotels frequented by our countrymen looks down upon the broad, luxurious Rue de Rivoli, all modern gaiety and radiance, while the other side of their courtyards open upon the busy working Rue St. Honoré, lined by the tall, many-windowed houses which have witnessed so many revolutions. They have all the picturesqueness of innumerable balconies, high, slated roofs, with dormer windows, window-boxes full of carnations and bright with crimson flowers through the summer, and they overlook an ever-changing crowd, in great part composed of men in blouses and women in white aprons and caps. Ever since the fourteenth century the Rue St. Honoré has been one of the busiest streets in Paris. It was the gate leading into this street which was attacked by Jeanne d'Arc in 1429. It was the fact that the Cardinal de Bourbon and the Due de Guise had been seen walking together at the Porte St. Honoré that was said to have turned half the moustache of Henri of Navarre suddenly white, from a presentiment of the crime which has become known as the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Here, in 1648, the barricade was raised which gave the signal for all the troubles of the Fronde. It was at No 3--then called L'Auberge des Trois Pigeons--that Ravaillac was lodging when he was waiting to murder Henry IV.; here the first gun was fired in the Revolution of July, 1830, which overturned Charles X.; and here, in the Revolution of 1848, a bloody combat took place between the insurgents and the military. Throughout this street, as Marie Antoinette was first entering Paris, the poissardes brought her bouquets, singing: "La rose est la reine des fleurs. Antoinette est la reine des coeurs." ("The rose is the queen of flowers, Antoinette is the queen of hearts") and here, as she was being taken to the scaffold, they crowded round her execution-cart and shouted: "Madame Veto avait promis De faire égorger tout Paris, Mais son coup a manqué Grâce à nos canonniers; Dansons la carmagnole Au bruit du son Du canon!" ("Madame Veto had promised to have the throat cut of all Paris, but her attempt failed, thanks to our gunners. Let us dance the carmagnole to the music of the cannon's roar!") * * * * * Turning east toward Old Paris, we pass, on the right of the Rue St. Honoré, the Church of St. Roch, of which Louis XIV. laid the foundation-stone in 1633, replacing a chapel built on the site of the Hôtel Gaillon. The church was only finished, from designs of Robert de Cotte, in 1740. The flight of steps which leads to the entrance has many associations. "Before St. Roch," says De Goncourt, "the tumbrel in which was Marie Antoinette, stopt in the midst of howling and hooting. A thousand insults were hurled from the steps of the church as it were with one voice, saluting with filth their queen about to die. She, however, serene and majestic, pardoned the insults by disregarding them." It was from these steps, in front of which an open space then extended to the Tuileries gardens, that Bonaparte ordered the first cannon to be fired upon the royalists who rose against the National Convention, and thus prevented a counter-revolution. Traces of this cannonade of 13 Vendémiaire are still to be seen at the angle of the church and the Rue Neuve St. Roch. II THE ENVIRONS OF PARIS Versailles By William Makepeace Thackeray [Footnote: From "The Paris Sketch Book."] You pass from the railroad station through a long, lonely suburb, with dusty rows of stunted trees on either side, and some few miserable beggars, idle boys, and ragged old women under them. Behind the trees are gaunt, moldy houses; palaces once, where (in the days of the unbought grace of life) the cheap defense of nations gambled, ogled, swindled, intrigued; whence high-born duchesses used to issue, in old times, to act as chambermaids to lovely Du Barri; and mighty princes rolled away, in gilt caroches, hot for the honor of lighting his Majesty to bed, or of presenting his stockings when he rose, or of holding his napkin when he dined. Tailors, chandlers, tinmen, wretched hucksters, and greengrocers, are now established in the mansions of the old peers; small children are yelling at the doors, with mouths besmeared with bread and treacle; damp rags are hanging out of every one of the windows, steaming in the sun; oyster-shells, cabbage-stalks, broken crockery, old papers, lie basking in the same cheerful light. A solitary water-cart goes jingling down the wide pavement, and spirts a feeble refreshment over the dusty, thirty stones. After pacing for some time through such dismal streets, we déboucher on the grande place; and before us lies the palace dedicated to all the glories of France. In the midst of the great lonely plain this famous residence of King Louis looks low and mean--Honored pile! Time was when tall musketeers and gilded body-guards allowed none to pass the gate. Fifty years ago, ten thousand drunken women from Paris broke through the charm; and now a tattered commissioner will conduct you through it for a penny, and lead you up to the sacred entrance of the palace. We will not examine all the glories of France, as here they are portrayed in pictures and marble; catalogs are written about these miles of canvas, representing all the revolutionary battles, from Valmy to Waterloo--all the triumphs of Louis XIV.--all the mistresses of his successor--and all the great men who have flourished since the French empire began. Military heroes are most of these--fierce constables in shining steel, marshals in voluminous wigs, and brave grenadiers in bearskin caps; some dozens of whom gained crowns, principalities, dukedoms; some hundreds, plunder and epaulets; some millions, death in African sands, or in icy Russian plains, under the guidance, and for the good, of that arch-hero, Napoleon. By far the greater part of "all the glories" of France (as of most other countries) is made up of these military men: and a fine satire it is on the cowardice of mankind, that they pay such an extraordinary homage to the virtue called courage; filling their history-books with tales about it, and nothing but it. Let them disguise the place, however, as they will, and plaster the walls with bad pictures as they please, it will be hard to think of any family but one, as one traverses this vast gloomy edifice. It has been humbled to the ground, as a certain palace of Babel was of yore; but it is a monument of fallen pride, not less awful, and would afford matter for a whole library of sermons. The cheap defense of nations expended a thousand millions in the erection of this magnificent dwelling-place. Armies were employed, in the intervals of their warlike labors, to level hills, or pile them up; to turn rivers, and to build aqueducts, and transplant woods, and construct smooth terraces, and long canals. A vast garden grew up in a wilderness, and a stupendous palace in the garden, and a stately city round the palace: the city was peopled with parasites, who daily came to do worship before the creator of these wonders--the Great King. "Only God is great," said courtly Massillon; but next to him, as the prelate thought, was certainly Louis, his vicegerent here upon earth--God's lieutenant-governor of the world--before whom courtiers used to fall on their knees, and shade their eyes, as if the light of his countenance, like the sun, which shone supreme in heaven, the type of him, was too dazzling to bear. Did ever the sun shine upon such a king before, in such a palace?--or, rather, did such a king ever shine upon the sun? When Majesty came out of his chamber, in the midst of his super-human splendors, viz., in his cinnamon-colored coat, embroidered with diamonds; his pyramon of a wig; his red-heeled shoes, that lifted him four inches from the ground, "that he scarcely seemed to touch;" when he came out, blazing upon the dukes and duchesses that waited his rising--what could the latter do but cover their eyes, and wink, and tremble? And did he not himself believe, as he stood there, on his high heels, under his ambrosial periwig, that there was something in him more than man--something above Fate? This, doubtless, was he fain to believe; and if, on very fine days, from his terrace before his gloomy palace of St. Germains, he could catch a glimpse, in the distance, of a certain white spire of St. Denis, where his race lay buried, he would say to his courtiers, with a sublime condescension, "Gentlemen, you must remember that I, too, am mortal." Surely the lords in waiting could hardly think him serious, and vowed that his Majesty always loved a joke. However, mortal or not, the sight of that sharp spire wounded his Majesty's eyes; and is said, by the legend, to have caused the building of the palace of Babel-Versailles. In the year 1681, then, the great king, with bag and baggage--with guards, cooks, chamberlains, mistresses, Jesuits, gentlemen, lackeys, Fénelons, Molières, Lauzuns, Bossuets, Villars, Villeroys, Louvois, Colberts--transported himself to his new palace: the old one being left for James of England and Jaquette his wife, when their time should come. And when the time did come, and James sought his brother's kingdom, it is on record that Louis hastened to receive and console him, and promised to restore, incontinently, those islands from which the canaille had turned him. Between brothers such a gift was a trifle; and the courtiers said to one another reverently, "The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool." There was no blasphemy in the speech; on the contrary, it was gravely said, by a faithful believing man, who thought it no shame to the latter to compare his Majesty with God Almighty. Indeed, the books of the time will give one a strong idea how general was this Louis-worship. I have just been looking at one which was written by an honest Jesuit and protégé of Père la Chaise, who dedicates it to the august Infants of France, which does, indeed, go almost as far in print. He calls our famous monarch "Louis le Grand: 1, l'invincible; 2, le sage; 3, le conquérant; 4, la merveille de son siècle; 5, la terreur de ses ennemis; 6, l'amour de ses peuples; 7, l'arbitre de la paix et de la guerre; 8, l'admiration de l'univers; 9, et digne d'en être le maître; 10, le modèle d'un héros achevè; 11, digne de l'immortalité, et de la vénération de tous les siècles!" A pretty Jesuit declaration, truly, and a good, honest judgment upon the great king! In 30 years more: 1. The invincible had been beaten a vast number of times. 2. The sage was the puppet of an artful old woman, who was the puppet of more artful priests. 3. The conqueror had quite forgotten his early knack of conquering. 5. The terror of his enemies (for 4, the marvel of his age, we pretermit, it being a loose term, that may apply to any person or thing) was now terrified by his enemies in turn. 6. The love of his people was as heartily detested by them as scarcely any other monarch, not even his great-grandson, has been, before or since. 7. The arbiter of peace and war was fain to send superb ambassadors to kick their heels in Dutch shopkeepers' antechambers. 8. Is again a general term. 9. The man fit to be master of the universe was scarcely master of his own kingdom. 10. The finished hero was all but finished, in a very commonplace and vulgar way. And, 11, the man worthy of immortality was just at the point of death, without a friend to soothe or deplore him; only withered old Maintenon to utter prayers at his bedside, and croaking Jesuit to prepare him, with heavens knows what wretched tricks and mummeries, for his appearance in that Great Republic that lies on the other side of the grave. In the course of his fourscore splendid miserable years, he never had but one friend, and he ruined and left her. Poor La Vallière, what a sad tale is yours!... While La Vallière's heart is breaking, the model of a finished hero is yawning; as, on such paltry occasions, a finished hero should. Let her heart break: a plague upon her tears and repentance; what right has she to repent? Away with her to her convent! She goes, and the finished hero never sheds a tear. What a noble pitch of stoicism to have reached! Our Louis was so great, that the little woes of mean people were beyond him; his friends died, his mistresses left him; his children, one by one, were cut off before his eyes, and great Louis is not moved in the slightest degree! As how, indeed, should a god be moved?... Out of the window the king's august head was one day thrust, when old Condé was painfully toiling up the steps of the court below. "Don't hurry yourself, my cousin," cries Magnanimity; "one who has to carry so many laurels can not walk fast." At which all the courtiers, lackeys, mistresses, chamberlains, Jesuits, and scullions, clasp their hands and burst into tears. Men are affected by the tale to this very day. For a century and three-quarters have not all the books that speak of Versailles, or Louis Quatorze, told the story? "Don't hurry yourself, my cousin!" O admirable king and Christian! what a pitch of condescension is here, that the greatest king of all the world should go for to say anything so kind, and really tell a tottering old gentleman, worn out with gout, age, and wounds, not to walk too fast! What a proper fund of slavishness is there in the composition of mankind, that histories like these, should be found to interest and awe them. Till the world's end, most likely, this story will have its place in the history-books, and unborn generations will read it, and tenderly be moved by it. I am sure that Magnanimity went to bed that night, pleased and happy, intimately convinced that he had done an action of sublime virtue, and had easy slumbers and sweet dreams--especially if he had taken a light supper, and not too vehemently attacked his "en cas de nuit." ... The king his successor has not left, at Versailles, half so much occasion for moralizing; perhaps the neigbhboring Parc aux Cerfs would afford better illustrations of his reign. The life of his great grandsire, the Grand Llama of France, seems to have frightened Louis the well-beloved; who understood that loneliness is one of the necessary conditions of divinity, and, being of a jovial, companionable turn, aspired not beyond manhood. Only in the matter of ladies did he surpass his predecessor, as Solomon did David. War he eschewed, as his grandfather bade him; and his simple taste found little in this world to enjoy beyond the mulling of chocolate and the frying of pancakes. Look, here is the room called Laboratoire du Roi, where, with his own hands, he made his mistress's breakfast; here is the little door through which, from her apartments in the upper story, the chaste Du Barri came stealing down to the arms of the weary, feeble, gloomy old man. But of women he was tired long since, and even pancake-frying had palled upon him. What had he to do, after forty years of reign; after having exhausted everything? Every pleasure that Dubois could invent for his hot youth, or cunning Lebel could minister to his old age, was flat and stale; used up to the very dregs; every shilling in the national purse had been squeezed out, by Pompadour and Du Barri and such brilliant ministers of state. He had found out the vanity of pleasure, as his ancestor had discovered the vanity of glory: indeed, it was high time that he should die. And die he did; and round his tomb, as round that of his grandfather before him, the starving people sang a dreadful chorus of curses, which were the only epitaphs for good or for evil that were raised to his memory.... On the 10th of May, 1774, the whole court had assembled at the château; the Oeil de Boeuf was full. The Dauphin had determined to depart as soon as the king had breathed his last. And it was agreed by the people of the stables, with those who watched in the king's room, that a lighted candle should be placed in a window, and should be extinguished as soon as he had ceased to live. The candle was put out. At that signal, guards, pages, and squires, mounted on horseback, and everything was made ready for departure. The Dauphin was with the Dauphiness, waiting together for the news of the king's demise. An immense noise, as of thunder, was heard in the next room; it was the crowd of courtiers, who were deserting the dead king's apartment, in order to pay their court to the new power of Louis XVI. Madame de Noailles entered, and was the first to salute the queen by her title of Queen of France, and begged their Majesties to quit their apartments, to receive the princes and great lords of the court desirous to pay their homage to the new sovereigns. Leaning on her husband's arm, a handkerchief to her eyes, in the most touching attitude, Marie Antoinette received these first visits. On quitting the chamber where the dead king lay, the Due de Villequier bade Mr. Anderville, first surgeon of the king, to open and embalm the body: it would have been certain death to the surgeon. "I am ready, sir," says he; "but while I am operating, you must hold the head of the corpse; your charge demands it." The Duke went away without a word, and the body was neither opened nor embalmed. A few humble domestics and poor workmen watched by the remains, and performed the last offices to their master. The surgeons ordered spirits of wine to be poured into the coffin. They huddled the king's body into a postchaise; and in this deplorable equipage, with an escort of about forty men, Louis, the Well-beloved, was carried, in the dead of night, from Versailles to Saint-Denis, and then thrown into the tombs of the kings of France! If any man is curious, and can get permission, he may mount to the roof of the palace, and see where Louis XVI. used royally to amuse himself by gazing upon the doings of all the towns-people below with a telescope. Behold that balcony, where, one morning, he, his queen, and the little Dauphin stood, with Cromwell Grandison Lafayette by their side, who kissed her Majesty's hand, and protected her; and then, lovingly surrounded by his people, the king got into a coach and came to Paris: nor did his Majesty ride much in coaches after that.... He is said to have been such a smart journeyman blacksmith that he might, if Fate had not perversely placed a crown on his head, have earned a couple of louis every week by the making of locks and keys. Those who will may see the workshop where he employed many useful hours: Madame Elizabeth was at prayers meanwhile; the queen was making pleasant parties with her ladies; Monsieur the Count d'Artois was learning to dance on the tightrope; and Monsieur de Provence was cultivating l'éloquence du billet and studying his favorite Horace. It is said that each member of the august family succeeded remarkably well in his or her pursuits; big Monsieur's little notes are still cited. At a minuet or sillabub, poor Antoinette was unrivaled; and Charles, on the tightrope, was so graceful and so gentil that Madame Saqui might envy him. The time only was out of joint. Oh, curst spite, that ever such harmless creatures as these were bidden to right it! A walk to the little Trianon is both pleasing and moral; no doubt the reader has seen the pretty, fantastical gardens which environ it; the groves and temples; the streams and caverns (whither, as the guide tells you, during the heat of summer, it was the custom of Marie Antoinette to retire with her favorite, Madame de Lamballe): the lake and Swiss village are pretty little toys, moreover; and the cicerone of the place does not fail to point out the different cottages which surround the piece of water, and tell the names of the royal masqueraders who inhabited each. In the long cottage, close upon the lake, dwelt the Seigneur du Village, no less a personage than Louis XV.; Louis XVI., the Dauphin, was the Pailli; near his cottage is that of Monseigneur the Count d'Artois, who was the Miller; opposite lived the Prince de Condé, who enacted the part of Gamekeeper (or, indeed, any other role, for it does not signify much); near him was the Prince de Rohan, who was the Aumonier; and yonder is the pretty little dairy, which was under the charge of the fair Marie Antoinette herself. I forget whether Monsieur the fat Count of Provence took any share of this royal masquerading; but look at the names of the other six actors of the comedy, and it will be hard to find any person for whom Fate had such dreadful visitations in store. Fancy the party, in the days of their prosperity, here gathered at Trianon, and seated under the tall poplars by the lake, discoursing familiarly together: suppose, of a sudden, some conjuring Cagliostro of the time is introduced among them, and foretells to them the woes that are about to come. "You, Monsieur l'Aumonier, the descendant of a long line of princes, the passionate admirer of that fair queen who sits by your side, shall be the cause of her ruin and your own, [Footnote: In the diamond-necklace affair.] and shall die in disgrace and exile. You, son of the Condés, shall live long enough to see your royal race overthrown, and shall die by the hands of a hangman. [Footnote: He was found hanging in his own bed-room.] You, oldest son of St. Louis, shall perish by the executioner's ax; that beautiful head, O Antoinette, the same ruthless blade shall sever." "They shall kill me first," says Lamballe, at the queen's side. "Yes, truly," says the soothsayer, "for Fate prescribes ruin for your mistress and all who love her." [Footnote: Among the many lovers that rumor gave to the Queen, poor Fersen is the most remarkable. He seems to have entertained for her a high and perfectly pure devotion. He was the chief agent in the luckless escape to Varennes; was lurking in Paris during the time of her captivity; and was concerned in the many fruitless plots that were made for her rescue. Fersen lived to be an old man, but died a dreadful and violent death. He was dragged from his carriage by the mob. In Stockholm, and murdered by them.--Author's note.] "And," cries Monsieur d'Artois, "do I not love my sister, too? I pray you not to omit me in your prophecies." To whom Monsieur Cagliostro says, scornfully, "You may look forward to fifty years of life, after most of these are laid in the grave. You shall be a king, but not die one; and shall leave the crown only; not the worthless head that shall wear it. Thrice shall you go into exile; you shall fly from the people, first, who would have no more of you and your race; and you shall return home over half a million of human corpses, that have been made for the sake of you, and of a tyrant as great as the greatest of your family. Again driven away, your bitterest enemy shall bring you back. But the strong limbs of France are not to be chained by such a paltry yoke as you can put on her: you shall be a tyrant, but in will only; and shall have a scepter, but to see it robbed from your hand." "And pray, Sir Conjurer, who shall be the robber?" asked Monsieur the Count d'Artois. This I can not say, for here my dream ended. The fact is, I had fallen asleep on one of the stone benches in the Avenue de Paris, and at this instant was awakened by a whirling of carriages and a great clattering of national guards, lancers, and outriders, in red. His Majesty, Louis Philippe, was going to pay a visit to the palace; which contains several pictures of his own glorious actions, and which has been dedicated, by him, to all the glories of France. Versailles in 1739 By Thomas Gray [Footnote: From a letter to his friend West.] What a huge heap of littleness! It is composed, as it were, of three courts, all open to the eye at once, and gradually diminishing till you come to the royal apartments, which on this side present but half a dozen windows and a balcony. This last is all that can be called a front, for the rest is only great wings. The hue of all this mass is black, dirty red, and yellow; the first proceeding from stone changed by age; the second, from a mixture of brick; and the last, from a profusion of tarnished gilding. You can not see a more disagreeable tout ensemble; and, to finish the matter, it is all stuck over in many places with small busts of a tawny hue between every two windows. We pass through this to go into the garden, and here the case is indeed altered; nothing can be vaster and more magnificent than the back front; before it a very spacious terrace spreads itself, adorned with two large basons; these are bordered and lined (as most of the others) with white marble, with handsome statues of bronze reclined on their edges. From hence you descend a huge flight of steps into a semi-circle formed by woods, that are cut all around into niches, which are filled with beautiful copies of all the famous antique statues in white marble. Just in the midst is the bason of Latona; she and her children are standing on the top of a rock in the middle, on the sides of which are the peasants, some half, some totally changed into frogs, all which throw out water at her in great plenty. From this place runs on the great alley, which brings you into a complete round, where is the bason of Apollo, the biggest in the gardens. He is rising in his car out of the water, surrounded by nymphs and tritons, all in bronze, and finely executed, and these, as they play, raise a perfect storm about him; beyond this is the great canal, a prodigious long piece of water, that terminates the whole. All this you have at one coup d'oeil in entering the garden, which is truly great. I can not say as much of the general taste of the place: everything you behold savors too much of art; all is forced, all is constrained about you; statues and vases sowed everywhere without distinction; sugar loaves and minced pies of yew; scrawl work of box, and little squirting jets-d'eau, besides a great sameness in the walks, can not help striking one at first sight, not to mention the silliest of labyrinths, and all Aesop's fables in water; since these were designed "in usum Delphini" only. Here, then, we walk by moonlight, and hear the ladies and the nightingales sing. Next morning, being Whitsunday, make ready to go to the installation of nine Knights du Saint Esprit. Cambis is one: high mass celebrated with music, great crowd, much incense, King, Queen, Dauphin, Mesdames, Cardinals, and Court: Knights arrayed by his Majesty; reverences before the altar, not bows, but curtsies; stiff hams; much tittering among the ladies; trumpets, kettledrums, and fifes. Fontainebleau By Augustus J. C. Hare [Footnote: From "Days Near Paris."] The golden age of Fontainebleau came with the Renaissance and Francis I., who wished to make Fontainebleau the most glorious palace in the world. "The Escurial!" says Brantôme, "what of that? See how long it was of building? Good workmen like to be quick finished. With our king it was otherwise. Take Fontainebleau and Chambord. When they were projected, when once the plumb-line, and the compass, and the square, and the hammer were on the spot, then in a few years we saw the Court in residence there." Il Rosso was first (1531) employed to carry out the ideas of François I. as to painting, and then Sebastian Serlio was summoned from Bologna in 1541 to fill the place of "surintendant des bastiments et architecte de Fontainebleau." Il Rosso-Giovambattista had been a Florentine pupil of Michelangelo, but refused to follow any master, having, as Vasari says, "a certain inkling of his own." François I. was delighted with him at first, and made him head of all the Italian colony at Fontainebleau, where he was known as "Maitre Roux." But in two years the king was longing to patronize some other genius, and implored Giulio Romano, then engaged on the Palazzo del Té at Mantua, to come to him. The great master refused to come himself, but in his place sent the Bolognese Primaticcio, who became known in France as Le Primatice. The new-comer excited the furious jealousy of Il Rosso, whom he supplanted in favor and popularity, and who, after growing daily more morose, took poison in 1541. Then Primaticcio, who, to humor his rival had been sent into honorable exile (on plea of collecting antiquities at Rome), was summoned back, and destroyed most of Il Rosso's frescoes, replacing them by his own. Those that remain are now painted over, and no works of Il Rosso are still in existence (unless in engravings) except some of his frescoes at Florence. With the Italian style of buildings and decorations, the Italian system of a Court adorned by ladies was first introduced here under François I., and soon became a necessity.... Under François I., his beautiful mistress, the Duchesse d'Étampes--"la plus belle des savantes, et la plus savante des belles," directed all the fêtes. In this she was succeeded, under Henry II., by Diane de Poitiers, whose monogram, interwoven with that of the king, appears in all the buildings of this time, and who is represented as a goddess (Diana) in the paintings of Primaticcio. Under François II., in 1560, by the advice of the queen-mother, an assembly of notables was summoned at Fontainebleau; and here, accompanied by her 150 beautiful maids of honor, Catherine de Medici received the embassy of the Catholic sovereigns sent to demand the execution of the articles of the Council of Trent, and calling for fresh persecution of the reformers. Much as his predecessors had accomplished, Henri IV. did more for the embellishment of Fontainebleau, where the monogram of his mistress, Gabrielle d'Estrées, is frequently seen mingled with that of his wife, Marie de Medici. All the Bourbon kings had a passion for hunting, for which Fontainebleau afforded especial facilities. It was at Fontainebleau that Louis XIII. was born, and that the Maréchal de Biron was arrested. Louis XIII. only lived here occasionally. In the early reign of Louis XIV., the palace was lent to Christina, of Sweden, who had abdicated her throne. It was in one of the private apartments, occupying the site of the ancient Galerie des Cerfs, now destroyed, that she ordered the execution of her chief equerry, Monaldeschi, whom she had convicted of treason. She listened patiently to his excuses, but was utterly unmoved by them and his entreaties for mercy. She provided a priest to confess him, after which he was slowly butchered by blows with a sword on the head and face, as he dragged himself along the floor, his body being defended by a coat of mail.... Even after the creation of the palaces of Versailles and Marly, Louis XIV. continued to make an annual "voyage de Fontainebleau." He compelled his whole court to follow him; if any of his family were ill, and unable to travel by road, he made them come by water; for himself, he slept on the way, either at the house of the Duc d'Antin (son of Mme. de Montespan) or of the Maréchal de Villeroy. It was here that the Grand Dauphin was born, in 1661. Here, also, it was that Mme. de Maintenon first appeared at the councils, and that the king publicly asked her advice as to whether he should accept the throne of Spain for the Duc d' Anjou. Here, also, in 1685, he signed the revocation of the edict of Nantes. The great Condé died in the palace. Louis XV. was married here to Marie Leczinska in 1725; and here the Dauphin, his son, died in 1765. Louis XIV. delighted in Fontainebleau for its hunting facilities. After the Revolution, Napoleon I. restored the château and prepared it for Pius VII. who came to France to crown him, and was here (January 25, 1813) induced to sign the famous Concordat de Fontainebleau, by which he abjured his temporal sovereignty. The chateau which witnessed the abdication of the Pope, also saw that of Napoleon I., who made his touching farewell to the soldiers of the Vielle-Garde in the Cour du Cheval-Blanc, before setting off for Elba.... The Cour du Cheval-Blanc, the largest of the five courts of the palace, took its name from a plaster copy of the horse of Marcus Aurelius at Rome, destroyed 1626. Recently it has been called the Cour des Adieux, on account of the farewell of Napoleon I. in 1814. It was once surrounded by buildings on all sides; one was removed in 1810, and replaced by a grille. The principal façade is composed of five pavilions with high roofs, united by buildings two stories high. The beautiful twisted staircase in front of the central pavilion was executed by Lemercier for Louis XIII., and replaces a staircase by Philbert Delorme. Facing this pavilion, the mass of buildings on the right is the Aile Neuve of Louis XV., built on the site of the Galerie d'Ulysse, to the destruction of the precious works of Primaticcio and Niccolo dell' Abbate, with which it was adorned. Below the last pavilion, near the grille, was the Grotte du Jardin-des-pins, where James V. of Scotland, coming over to marry Magdalen of France, daughter of François I., watched her bathing with her ladies, by the aid of a mirror.... To the west of the Cour du Cheval-Blanc, and communicating with it, is the Cour de la Fontaine, the main front of which is formed by the Galerie de François I. This faces the great tank, into which Gaston d' Orleans, at eight years old, caused one of the courtiers to be thrown, whom he considered to have spoken to him disrespectfully. One side of the Cour de la Fontaine, that toward the Jardin Anglais, is terminated by a pavilion of the time of Louis XV.; the other, formerly decorated with statues is attributed to Serlio. The fountain from which the court takes its name has been often changed; a poor work by Petitot now replaces the grand designs of the time of François I. and Henri IV. Beyond this court we find, on the left, the Porte Dorée, which faces the Chaussée de Maintenon, between the Etang and Parterre; it was built under François I., and decorated by Primaticcio with paintings, restored in 1835. It was by this entrance that Charles V. arrived at the palace in 1539.... A staircase now leads to the first floor, and we enter the apartments of Napoleon I., all furnished in the style of the First Empire. The cabinet de l'Abdication is the place where he resigned his power. His bedroom (containing the bed of Napoleon I., the cradle of the King of Rome, and a cabinet of Marie Louise) leads to the Salle du Conseil, which was the Salon de Famille under Louis Philippe. Its decorations are by Boucher, and are the best of the period. It was in leaving this room that the Maréchal de Biron was arrested under Henri IV., in a cabinet which is now thrown into the adjoining Salle du Trône, (previously the bedroom of the Bourbon kings), dating from Charles IV., but decorated under Louis XIII. A fine portrait by Phillipe de Champaigne represents Louis XIII. It is accompanied by his device in allusion to his vehemence in the extermination of heresy. The adjoining boudoir de Marie Antoinette is a beautiful little room, painted by Barthelemy. The metal work of the windows is said to have been wrought by Louis XVI. himself, who had his workshop here, as at Versailles. The richly decorated Chambre à Coucher de la Reine was inhabited by Marie de Medici, Marie Thérese, Marie Antoinette, Marie Louise, and Marie Amelie. The silk hangings were given by the town of Lyons to Marie Antoinette on her marriage. The Salon de Musique was the Salon du jeu de la Reine, under Marie Antoinette. The ancient Salon de Clorinde, or des Dames d' Honneur, is named from its paintings by Dubois and from the "Gerusalemme Liberata." The Galerie de Diane, built by Napoleon I. and Louis XVIII., replaces the famous frescoed gallery of Henri IV. It is now turned into a library for the use of the town. In the center is a picture of Henri IV. on horseback, by Mauzaise. The Salles des Chasses contain pictures of hunting scenes under Louis XV. We now reach the glorious Galerie d' Henri II. (or Salle des Fêtes), built by François I., and decorated by Henri II. The walnut-wood ceiling and the paneling of the walls are of marvelous richness. Over the chimney is a gigantic H, and the initials of Henri II. are constantly seen interlaced with those of Diane de Poitiers.... The sixty paintings on the walls, including eight large compositions, were executed by Niccolo Dell' Abbate, and are probably the finest decorations of the kind existing in France. The rooms usually shown last are those formerly inhabited by Catherine de Medici and Anne of Austria, and which, under the First Empire, were used by Pius VII., under Louis Philippe, by the Duke and Duchess of Orleans. The most interesting of these are the Chambre à Coucher, which bears the oft-repeated A L (the chiffre of Louis XIII. and Anne of Austria), and in which Pius VII. daily said mass, and the Salon, with its fine tapestry after Giulio Romano. The Galerie des Assiettes, adorned with Sévres china, only dates from Louis Philippe. Hence, by a gallery in the Aile Neuve, hung with indifferent pictures, we may visit the Salle du Theâtre, retaining its arrangements for the emperor, empress, and court. The Gardens, as seen now, are mostly as they were rearranged by Lenôtre for Louis XIV. The most frequented garden is the Parterre, entered from the Place du Cheval-Blanc. In the center of the Jardin Anglais (entered through the Cour de la Fontaine) was the Fontaine Bleau, which is supposed by some to have given a name to the palace. The Etang has a pavilion in the center, where the Czar Peter got drunk. The carp in the pool, overfed with bread by visitors, are said to be, some of them, of immense age. John Evelyn mentions the carp of Fontainebleau, "that come familiarly to hand." The Jardin de l' Orangerie, on the north of the palace, called Jardin des Buis under Francois I., contains a good renaissance portal. To the east of the parterre and the town is the park, which has no beauty, but harmonizes well with the château. Visitors should not fail to drive in the Forest, 80 kilometers in circuit, and, if they return late, may look out for its black huntsman--"le grand veneur." ... The forest was a favorite hunting-ground of the kings of France to a late period. It was here that the Marquis de Tourzel, Grand Provost of France, husband of the governess of the royal children, fractured his skull, his horse bolting against a tree, when hunting with Louis XVI., in November, 1786. The forest is the especial land of French artists, who overrun and possess it in the summer. There are innumerable direction-posts, in which all the red marks--put up by Napoleon III., because so few peasants could read--point to town. St. Denis By Grant Allen [Footnote: From "Paris."] About six miles north of the original Paris stands the great Basilica of St. Denis--the only church in Paris, and I think in France, called by that ancient name, which carries us back at once to the days of the Roman Empire, and in itself bears evidence to the antiquity of the spot as a place of worship. Around it, a squalid modern industrial town has slowly grown up; but the nucleus of the whole place, as the name itself shows, is the body and shrine of the martyred bishop, St. Denis. Among the numerous variants of his legend, the most accepted is that in which the apostle of Paris carries his head to this spot from Montmartre. Others say he was beheaded in Paris and walked to Montmartre, his body being afterward translated to the Abbey; while there are some who see in this legend a survival of the Dionysiac festival and sacrifice of the vine-growers round Paris--Denis--Dionysius--Dionysus. However that may be, a chapel was erected in 275 above the grave of St. Denis, on the spot now occupied by the great Basilica; and later, Ste. Geneviève was instrumental in restoring it. Dagobert I., one of the few Frankish kings who lived much in Paris, built a "basilica" in place of the chapel (630), and instituted by its side a Benedictine Abbey. The church and monastery which possest the actual body of the first bishop and great martyr of Paris formed naturally the holiest site in the neighborhood of the city; and even before Paris became the capital of a kingdom, the abbots were persons of great importance in the Frankish state. The desire to repose close to the grave of a saint was habitual in early times, and even (with the obvious alteration of words) ante-dated Christianity--every wealthy Egyptian desiring in the same way to "sleep with Osiris." Dagobert himself was buried in the church he founded, beside the holy martyr; and in later times this very sacred spot became for the same reason the recognized burial place of the French kings. Dagobert's fane was actually consecrated by the Redeemer Himself, who descended for the purpose by night, with a great multitude of saints and angels. The existing Basilica, tho of far later date, is the oldest church of any importance in the neighborhood of Paris. It was begun by Suger, abbot of the monastery, and sagacious minister of Louis VI. and VII., in 1121. As yet, Paris itself had no great church, Notre-Dame having been commenced some 50 years later. The earliest part of Suger's building is in the Romanesque style; it still retains the round Roman arch and many other Roman constructive features. During the course of the 50 years occupied in building the Basilica, however, the Gothic style was developed; the existing church therefore exhibits both Romanesque and Gothic work, with transitional features between the two, which add to its interest. Architecturally, then, bear in mind, it is in part Romanesque, passing into Gothic. The interior is mostly pure Early Gothic. The neighborhood to Paris, the supremacy of the great saint, and the fact that St. Denis was especially the Royal Abbey, all combined to give it great importance. Under Suger's influence, Louis VI. adopted the oriflamme or standard of St. Denis as the royal banner of France. The Merovingian and Carlovingian kings, to be sure--Germans rather than French--had naturally been buried elsewhere, as at Aix-la-Chapelle, Rheims, and Soissons (tho even of them a few were interred beside the great bishop martyr). But as soon as the Parisian dynasty of the Capets came to the throne, they were almost without exception buried at St. Denis. Hence the abbey came to be regarded at last mainly as the mausoleum of French royalty, and is still too often so regarded by tourists. But tho the exquisite Renaissance tombs of the House of Valois would well deserve a visit on their own account, they are, at St. Denis, but accessories to the great Basilica. Besides the actual tombs, too, many monuments were erected here, in the 13th century (by St. Louis) and afterward, to earlier kings buried elsewhere, some relic of whom, however, the abbey possest and thus honored. Hence several of the existing tombs are of far later date than the kings they commemorate; those of the Valois almost alone are truly contemporary. At the Revolution, the Basilica suffered irreparable losses. The very sacred reliquary containing the severed head of St. Denis was destroyed, and the remains of the martyr and his companions desecrated. The royal bones and bodies were also disinterred and flung into trenches indiscriminately. The tombs of the kings were condemned to destruction, and many (chiefly in metal) were destroyed or melted down, but not a few were saved with difficulty by the exertions of antiquaries, and were placed in the Museum of Monuments at Paris (now the École des Beaux-Arts), of which Alexandre Lenoir was curator. Here, they were greatly hacked about and mutilated, in order to fit them to their new situations. At the Restoration, however, they were sent back to St. Denis, together with many other monuments which had no real place there; but, being housed in the crypt, they were further clipt to suit their fresh surroundings. Finally, when the Basilica was restored under Viollet-le-Duc, the tombs were replaced as nearly as possible in their old positions; but several intruders from elsewhere are still interspersed among them. Louis XVIII. brought back the mingled bones of his ancestors from the common trench and interred them in the crypt. As regards the tombs, again, bear in mind these facts. All the oldest have perished; there are none here that go back much further than the age of St. Louis, tho they often represent personages of earlier periods or dynasties. The best are those of the Renaissance period. These are greatly influenced by the magnificent tomb of Giangaleazzo Visconti at the Certosa di Pavia, near Milan. Especially is this the case with the noble monument of Louis XII., which closely imitates the Italian work. Now, you must remember that Charles VIII. and Louis XII. fought much in Italy, and were masters of Milan; hence this tomb was familiar to them; and their Italian experiences had much to do with the French Renaissance. The Cardinal d'Amboise, Louis's minister, built the Château de Gaillon, and much of the artistic impulse of the time was due to these two. Henceforth recollect that tho François I. is the prince of the Renaissance, Louis XII. and his minister were no mean forerunners.... The interior is most beautiful. The first portion of the church which we enter is a vestibule or Galilee under the side towers and end of the Nave. Compare Durham. It is of the age of Abbot Suger, but already exhibits pointed arches in the upper part. The architecture is solid and massive, but somewhat gloomy. Descend a few steps into the Nave, which is surrounded by single aisles, whose vaulting should be noticed. The architecture of this part, now pure Early Gothic, is extremely lovely. The triforium is delicate and graceful. The windows in the clerestory above it, representing kings and queens, are almost all modern. Notice the great height of the Nave, and the unusual extent to which the triforium and clerestory project above the noble vaulting of the aisles. Note that the triforium itself opens directly to the air, and is supplied with stained-glass windows, seen through its arches. Sit awhile in this light and lofty Nave, in order to take in the beautiful view up the church toward the choir and chevet. Then walk up to the Barrier near the Transepts, where sit again, in order to observe the Choir and Transepts with the staircase which leads to the raised Ambulatory. Observe that the transepts are simple. The ugly stained glass in the windows of their clerestory contains illustrations of the reign of Louis Philippe, with extremely unpicturesque costumes of the period. The architecture of the Nave and Choir, with its light and airy arches and pillars, is of the later 13th century. The reason for this is that Suger's building was thoroughly restored from 1230 onward, in the pure pointed style of that best period. The upper part of the Choir, and the whole of the Nave and Transepts was then rebuilt--which accounts for the gracefulness and airiness of its architecture when contrasted with the dark and heavy vestibule of the age of Suger. Note from this point the arrangement of the Choir, which, to those who do not know Italy, will be quite unfamiliar. As at San Zeno in Verona, San Miniato in Florence, and many other Romanesque churches, the Choir is raised by some steps above the Nave and Transepts; while the Crypt is slightly deprest beneath them. In the Crypt, in such cases, are the actual bodies of the saints buried there; while the Altar stands directly over their tombs in the Choir above it. Marly-Le-Roi By Augustus J. C. Hare [Footnote: From "Days Near Paris."] The tram stops close to the Abreuvoir, a large artificial tank, surrounded by masonry for receiving the surplus water from the fountains in the palace gardens, of which it is now the only remnant. Ascending the avenue on the right, we shall find a road at the top which will lead us, to the left, through delightful woods to the site of the palace. Nothing remains but the walls supporting the wooded terrace. It is difficult to realize the place as it was, for the quincunces of limes which stood between the pavilions on either side of the steep avenue leading to the royal residence, formerly dipt and kept close, are now huge trees, marking still the design of the grounds, but obscuring the views, and, by their great growth, making the main avenue very narrow. St. Simon exaggerates the extravagance of Louis XIV. at Marly, who spent there four and a half million francs between 1679 and 1690, and probably as much or more between 1690 and 1715, perhaps in all ten or twelve millions, which would represent fifty million francs at the present time. Nevertheless the expense of the amusements of Louis XIV. greatly exceeded the whole revenue of Henri IV., and those of the early years of Louis XIII. From the central pavilion in which the flattery of Mansart placed him as the sun, Louis XIV. emerged every morning to visit the occupiers of the twelve smaller pavilions, Les Pavilions des Seigneurs, the constellations, his courtiers, who came out to meet him and swelled his train. These pavilions, arranged on each side of the gardens, stood in double avenues of clipt lime-trees looking upon the garden and its fountains, and leading up to the palace. The device of the sun was carried out in the palace itself, where all the smaller apartments circled round the grand salon, the king and queen having apartments to the back, the dauphin and dauphine to the front, each apartment consisting of an anteroom, bedroom, and sitting-room, and each set being connected with one of the four square saloons, which opened upon the great octagonal hall, of which four faces were occupied by chimney-pieces and four by the doors of the smaller saloons. The central hall occupied the whole height of the edifice, and was lighted from the upper story. The great ambition of every courtier was to be of the Marly circle, and all curried favor with the king by asking to accompany him on his weekly journey to Marly. The Court used to arrive at Marly on a Wednesday and leave it on a Saturday; this was an invariable rule. The king always passed his Sundays at Versailles, which was his parish. ... The leading figure at Marly was Mme. de Maintenon, who occupied the apartments intended for Queen Marie Thérèse, but who led the simplest of lives, bored almost to extinction. She used to compare the carp languishing in the tanks of Marly to herself--"Like me they regret their native mud." ... At first Mme. de Maintenon dined, in the midst of the other ladies in the square salon which separated her apartment from that of the king; but soon she had a special table, to which a very few other ladies, her intimates, came by invitation. Marly was the scene of several of the most tragic events in the life of Louis XIV. "Everything is dead here, there's no life in any thing," wrote the Comtesse de Caylus, niece of Mme. de Maintenon, from Marly to the Princess des Ursins, after the death of the Duchesse de Bourgogne. And, in a few days afterward, Marly was the scene of the sudden death of the Dauphin, Duc de Bourgogne, the beloved pupil of Fénelon. Early in the morning after the death of his wife, he was persuaded, "ill and anguished with the most intimate and bitterest of sorrows," to follow the king to Marly, where he entered his own room by a window on the ground floor. It was also at Marly--"ill-omened Marly"--that the Duc de Berry, the younger grandson of Louis XIV., and husband of the profligate daughter of the Duc d' Orleans--afterward Regent, died, with great suspicion of poison, in 1714. The MS. memorials of Mary Beatrice by a sister of Chaillot, describe how, when Louis XIV. was mourning his beloved grandchildren, and that queen, whom he had always liked and respected, had lost her darling daughter Louisa, she went to visit him at Marly where "they laid aside all Court etiquette, weeping together in their common grief, because, as the Queen said, 'We saw that the aged were left, and that death had swept away the young.'" St. Simon depicts the last walk of the king in the gardens at Marly on August 10, 1715. He went away that evening to Versailles, where he died on September 1. Marly was abandoned during the whole time of the Regency, and was only saved from total destruction in 1717, when the Régent Philippe d'Orléans had ordered its demolition, by the spirited remonstrance of St. Simon.... The great pavilion itself only contained, as we have seen, a very small number of chambers. The querulous Smollett, who visited Marly in 1763, speaks of it as "No more than a pigeon-house in respect to a palace." But it was only intended as the residence of the king. During the repairs necessary in the reign of Louis XV., who built Choisy and never lived at Marly, the cascade which fell behind the great pavilion was removed. Mme. Campan describes the later Marly of Louis XVI., under whom the "Marly journey" had become one of the great burdens and expenses of royal life. The Court of Louis XVI. was here for the last time on June 11, 1789, but in the latter years of Louis XVI., M. de Noailles, governor of St. Germain, was permitted to lend the smaller pavilions furnished to his friends for the summer months. Marly perished with the monarchy, and was sold at the Revolution, when the statues of its gardens were removed to the Tuileries. A cotton mill was for a time established in the royal pavilion; then all the buildings were pulled down and the gardens sold in lots! Still the site is worth visiting. The Grille Royale, now a simple wooden gate between two pillars with vases, opens on the road from St. Germain to Versailles, at the extremity of the Aqueduct of Marly. Passing this, one finds oneself in an immense circular enclosure, the walls of which surround the forest on every side. The Village of Auteuil By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [Footnote: From "Outre-Mer." Published by Houghton, Mifflin Co.] The sultry heat of summer always brings with it, to the idler and the man of leisure, a longing for the leafy shade and the green luxuriance of the country. It is pleasant to interchange the din of the city, the movement of the crowd, and the gossip of society, with the silence of the hamlet, the quiet seclusion of the grove, and the gossip of a woodland brook. It was a feeling of this kind that prompted me, during my residence in the North of France, to pass one of the summer months at Auteuil, the pleasantest of the many little villages that lie in the immediate vicinity of the metropolis. It is situated on the outskirts of the Bois de Boulogne, a wood of some extent, in whose green alleys the dusty city enjoys the luxury of an evening drive, and gentlemen meet in the morning to give each other satisfaction in the usual way. A cross-road, skirted with green hedge-rows, and overshadowed by tall poplars, leads you from the noisy highway of St. Cloud and Versailles to the still retirement of this suburban hamlet. On either side the eye discovers old châteaux amid the trees, and green parks, whose pleasant shades recall a thousand images of La Fontaine, Racine, and Molière; and on an eminence, overlooking the windings of the Seine, and giving a beautiful tho distant view of the domes and gardens of Paris, rises the village of Passy, long the residence of our countrymen Franklin and Count Rumford.... It was to the Bois de Boulogne that I looked for my principal recreation. There I took my solitary walk, morning and evening; or, mounted on a little mouse-colored donkey, paced demurely along the woodland pathway. I had a favorite seat beneath the shadow of a venerable oak, one of the few hoary patriarchs of the wood which had survived the bivouacs of the allied armies. It stood upon the brink of a little glassy pool, whose tranquil bosom was the image of a quiet and secluded life, and stretched its parental arms over a rustic bench, that had been constructed beneath it for the accommodation of the foot-traveler, or, perchance, some idle dreamer like myself. It seemed to look round with a lordly air upon its old hereditary domain, whose stillness was no longer broken by the tap of the martial drum, nor the discordant clang of arms; and, as the breeze whispered among its branches, it seemed to be holding friendly colloquies with a few of its venerable contemporaries, who stooped from the opposite bank of the pool, nodding gravely now and then, and gazing at themselves with a sigh in the mirror below.... I entered, too, with some enthusiasm, into all the rural sports and merrimakes of the village. The holidays were so many little eras of mirth and good feeling; for the French have that happy and sunshine temperament--that merry-go-mad character--which renders all their social meetings scenes of enjoyment and hilarity. I made it a point never to miss any of the fêtes champêtres, or rural dances, at the wood of Boulogne; tho I confess it sometimes gave me a momentary uneasiness to see my rustic throne beneath the oak usurped by a noisy group of girls, the silence and decorum of my imaginary realm broken by music and laughter, and, in a word, my whole kingdom turned topsy-turvy with romping, fiddling, and dancing. But I am naturally, and from principle, too, a lover of all those innocent amusements which cheer the laborer's toil, and, as it were, put their shoulders to the wheel of life, and help the poor man along with his load of cares. Hence I saw with no small delight the rustic swain astride the wooden horse of the carrousel, and the village maiden whirling round and round in its dizzy car; or took my stand on the rising ground that overlooked the dance, an idle spectator in a busy throng. It was just where the village touched the outward border of the wood. There a little area had been leveled beneath the trees, surrounded by a painted rail, with a row of benches inside. The music was placed in a slight balcony, built around the trunk of a large tree in the center; and the lamps, hanging from the branches above, gave a gay, fantastic, and fairy look to the scene. How often in such moments did I recall the lines of Goldsmith, describing those "kinder skies" beneath which "France displays her bright domain," and feel how true and masterly the sketch-- "Alike all ages; dames of ancient days Have led their children through the mirthful maze, And the gray grandsire, skilled in gestic lore, Has frisked beneath the burden of threescore." Nor must I forget to mention the fête patronale--a kind of annual fair, which is held at midsummer, in honor of the patron saint of Auteuil. Then the principal street of the village is filled with booths of every description; strolling players, and rope-dancers, and jugglers, and giants, and dwarfs, and wild beasts, and all kinds of wonderful shows, excite the gaping curiosity of the throng; and in dust, crowds, and confusion, the village rivals the capital itself. Then the goodly dames of Passy descend into the village of Auteuil; then the brewers of Billancourt and the tanners of Sèvres dance lustily under the greenwood tree; and then, too, the sturdy fishmongers of Brétigny and Saint-Yon regale their fat wives with an airing in a swing, and their customers with eels and crawfish.... I found another source of amusement in observing the various personages that daily passed and repassed beneath my window. The character which most of all arrested my attention was a poor blind fiddler, whom I first saw chanting a doleful ballad at the door of a small tavern near the gate of the village. He wore a brown coat, out at elbows, the fragment of a velvet waistcoat, and a pair of tight nankeens, so short as hardly to reach below his calves. A little foraging cap, that had long since seen its best days, set off an open, good-humored countenance, bronzed by sun and wind. He was led about by a brisk, middle-aged woman, in straw hat and wooden shoes; and a little barefooted boy, with clear, blue eyes and flaxen hair, held a tattered hat in his hand, in which he collected eleëmosynary sous. The old fellow had a favorite song, which he used to sing with great glee to a merry, joyous air, the burden of which ran "Chantons l'amour et le plaisir!" I often thought it would have been a good lesson for the crabbed and discontented rich man to have heard this remnant of humanity--poor, blind, and in rags, and dependent upon casual charity for his daily bread, singing in so cheerful a voice the charms of existence, and, as it were, fiddling life away to a merry tune. I was one morning called to my window by the sound of rustic music. I looked out and beheld a procession of villagers advancing along the road, attired in gay dresses, and marching merrily on in the direction of the church. I soon perceived that it was a marriage-festival. The procession was led by a long orang-outang of a man, in a straw hat and white dimity bobcoat, playing on an asthmatic clarionet, from which he contrived to blow unearthly sounds, ever and anon squeaking off at right angles from his tune, and winding up with a grand flourish on the guttural notes. Behind him, led by his little boy, came the blind fiddler, his honest features glowing with all the hilarity of a rustic bridal, and, as he stumbled along, sawing away upon his fiddle till he made all crack again. Then came the happy bridegroom, drest in his Sunday suit of blue, with a large nosegay in his button-hole; and close beside him his blushing bride, with downcast eyes, clad in a white robe and slippers, and wearing a wreath of white roses in her hair. The friends and relatives brought up the procession; and a troop of village urchins came shouting along in the rear, scrambling among themselves for the largess of sous and sugar-plums that now and then issued in large handfuls from the pockets of a lean man in black, who seemed to officiate as master of ceremonies on the occasion. I gazed on the procession till it was out of sight; and when the last wheeze of the clarionet died upon my ear, I could not help thinking how happy were they who were thus to dwell together in the peaceful bosom of their native village, far from the gilded misery and the pestilential vices of the town. On the evening of the same day, I was sitting by the window, enjoying the freshness of the air and the beauty and stillness of the hour, when I heard the distant and solemn hymn of the Catholic burial-service, at first so faint and indistinct that it seemed an illusion. It rose mournfully on the hush of evening--died gradually away--then ceased. Then, it rose again, nearer and more distinct, and soon after a funeral procession appeared, and passed directly beneath my window. It was led by a priest, bearing the banner of the church, and followed by two boys, holding long flambeaux in their hands. Next came a double file of priests in their surplices, with a missal in one hand and a lighted wax taper in the other, chanting the funeral dirge at intervals--now pausing, and then again taking up the mournful burden of their lamentation, accompanied by others, who played upon a rude kind of bassoon, with a dismal and wailing sound. Then followed various symbols of the church, and the bier borne on the shoulders of four men. The coffin was covered with a velvet pall, and a chaplet of white flowers lay upon it, indicating that the deceased was unmarried. A few of the villagers came behind, clad in mourning robes, and bearing lighted tapers. The procession passed slowly along the same street that in the morning had been thronged by the gay bridal company. A melancholy train of thought forced itself home upon my mind. The joys and sorrows of this world are so strikingly mingled! Our mirth and grief are brought so mournfully in contact! We laugh while others weep--and others rejoice when we are sad! The light heart and the heavy walk side by side and go about together! Beneath the same roof are spread the wedding-feast and the funeral-pall! The bridal-song mingles with the burial-hymn! One goes to the marriage-bed, another to the grave; and all is mutable, uncertain, and transitory. It is with sensations of pure delight that I recur to the brief period of my existence which was passed in the peaceful shades of Auteuil. There is one kind of wisdom which we learn from the world, and another kind which can be acquired in solitude only. In cities we study those around us; but in the retirement of the country we learn to know ourselves. [Illustration: Paris: Interior of the Grand Opera House] [Illustration: Paris Front of the Grand Opera House] [Illustration: Arc de Triomphe] [Illustration: Arch Erected by Napoleon, Near the Louvre] [Illustration: Paris: Church of St. Vincent de Paul] [Illustration: Paris: Church of St. Sulpice] [Illustration: Picture Gallery at Versailles] [Illustration: Versailles: Bed-Room of Louis XIV] [Illustration: The Grand Trianon at Versailles] [Illustration: The Little Trianon at Versailles] [Illustration: Bed-Room of Catherine de Medici at Chaumont] [Illustration: Marie Antoinette's Dairy at Versailles] [Illustration: Tours From Turner's "Rivers of France"] [Illustration: Saint Denis From Turner's "Rivers of France"] [Illustration: Havre From Turner's "Rivers of France"] [Illustration: The Bridge of St. Cloud From Turner's "Rivers of France"] The Two Trianons By Augustus J. C. Hare [Footnote: From "Days Near Paris."] The Trianons may be reached in half an hour from the railway station, but the distance is considerable, and a carriage very desirable, considering all the walking inside of the palaces to be accomplished. Carriages take the straight avenue from Bassin de Neptune. The pleasantest way for foot-passengers is to follow the gardens of Versailles as far as the Bassin d'Apollon, and then turn to the right. At the end of the right branch of the grand canal, staircases lead to the park of the Grand Trianon; but these staircases are railed in, and it is necessary to make a détour to the Grille de la Grande Entrée, whence an avenue leads directly to the Grand Trianon, while the Petit Trianon lies immediately to the right, behind the buildings of the Concierge and Corps de Garde. The original palace of the Grand Trianon was a little château built by Louis XIV., in 1670, as a refuge from the fatigues of the Court, on land bought from the monks of St. Genevieve, and belonging to the parish of Trianon. But in 1687 the humble château was pulled down, and the present palace erected by Mansart in its place. Louis XIV. constantly visited the Grand Trianon, with which for many years he was much delighted. But, after 1700, he never slept at Trianon, and, weary of his plaything here, turned all his attention to Marly. Under Louis XV., however, the palace was again frequently inhabited. Being entirely on one floor, the Grand Trianon continued to be a most uncomfortable residence, till subterranean passages for service were added under Louis Philippe, who made great use of the palace. The buildings are without character or distinction. Visitors have to wait in the vestibule till a large party is formed, and are then hurried full speed round the rooms, without being allowed to linger for an instant. The Petit Trianon was built by Gabriel for Louis XV. in the botanical garden which Louis XIV. had formed at the instigation of the Duc d'Ayen. It was intended as a miniature of the Grand Trianon, as that palace had been a miniature of Versailles. The palace was often used by Louis XV., who was here first attacked by the smallpox, of which he died. Louis XVI. gave it to Marie Antoinette, who made its gardens, and whose happiest days were spent here. The Petit Trianon is a very small and very unassuming country house. Mme. de Maintenon describes it in June as "a palace enchanted and perfumed." Its pretty simple rooms are only interesting from their associations. The furniture is mostly of the times of Louis XVI. The stone stair has a handsome iron balustrade; the salons are paneled in white. Here Marie Antoinette st to Mme. Lebrun for the picture in which she is represented with her children. In the dining-room is a secretaire given to Louis XVI. by the States of Burgundy, and portraits of the King and Marie Antoinette. The Cabinet de Travail of the queen was a cabinet given to her on her marriage by the town of Paris; in the Salle de Réception are four pictures by Watteau; the Boudoir has a Sévres bust of the queen; in the Chambre-á-coucher is the queen's bed, and a portrait of the Dauphin by Lebrun. These simple rooms are a standing defense of the queen from the false accusations brought against her at the Revolution as to her extravagance in the furnishing of the Petit Trianon. Speaking of her happy domestic life, Mme. Lebrun says: "I do not believe Queen Marie Antoinette ever allowed an occasion to pass by without saying an agreeable thing to those who had the honor of being near her." Malmaison By Augustus J. C. Hare [Footnote: From "Days Near Paris."] The station is opposite a short avenue, at the end of which on the right, is the principal entrance to Malmaison. A little higher up the road at the right is a gate leading to the park and gardens, freely open to the public, and being sold (1887) in lots by the Stat. There is a melancholy charm in the old house of many recollections--grim, empty, and desolate; approached on this side by a bridge over the dry moat. A short distance off, rather to the left, as you look from the house, is a very pretty little temple--the Temple of Love--with a front of columns of red Givet marble brought from the chateau of Richelieu, and a clear stream bursting from the rocks beneath it. Malmaison is supposed to derive its name from having been inhabited in the XI century by the Norman brigand Odon, and afterward by evil spirits, exorcised by the monks of St. Denis. Josephine bought the villa with its gardens, which had been much praised by Delille, from M. Lecouteulx de Canteleu for 160,000 francs.... Josephine retired to Malmaison at the time of her divorce, and seldom left it afterward.... In 1814, the unhappy Josephine, whose heart was always with Napoleon, was forced to receive a visit from the allied sovereigns at Malmaison, and died of a chill which she caught in doing the honors of her grounds to the Emperor Alexander on May 26, by a water excursion on the pool of Cucufa. After his return from Elba, Napoleon revisited the place.... After the loss of the battle of Waterloo, Napoleon once more retired to Malmaison, then the property of the children of Josephine, Eugene and Hortense. There he passed June 25, 1815, a day of terrible agitation. That evening at five o'clock he put on a brown suit of civilian clothes, tenderly embraced Queen Hortense and the other persons present, gave a long lingering look at the house and gardens connected with his happiest hours, and left them for ever. After the second Restoration Prince Eugène sold Malmaison, removing its gallery of pictures to Munich. There is now nothing remarkable in the desolate rooms, tho the Salle des Maréchaux, the bedroom of Josephine, and the grand salon, with a chimney-piece given by the Pope are pointed out. In later years the house was for some time inhabited by Queen Christina of Spain. It will be a source of European regret if at least the building connected with so many historic souvenirs, and the immediate grounds are not preserved. St. Germain By Leitch Ritchie [Footnote: From "The Rivers of France." Pictures by J. M. W. Turner, R.A. Text by Leitch Ritchie.] The view from the terrace of Saint Germain is one of the finest in France. This view, and a shady walk in the forest behind, are the only attractions of Saint Germain; for the old palace of the kings of France presents the appearance of nothing more than a huge, irregular, unsightly brick building. It is true, a great portion of the walls is of cut stone; but this is the idea which the whole conveys to the spectator. The edifice stands on the site of a chateau built by Louis-le-Gros, which, having been burned down by the English, was thus raised anew from its ruins. Charles V., François II., Henry IV., Louis XIII., and Louis XIV., all exercised their taste upon it, and all added to its general deformity. Near this Henri Quatre built another château, which fell into ruins forty or fifty years ago. These ruins were altogether effaced by Charles X., who had formed the project of raising another structure upon the spot, entirely his own. The project, however, failed, like that of the coup d'etat, but this is of no consequence. The new château exists in various books of travel, written by eye-witnesses, quite as palpably as the enormous bulk of the ancient château. It is a true "castle in Spain." Among the sights to be seen in the palace is the chamber of Mademoiselle de la Vallière, and the trap-door by which she was visited by Louis Quatorze. There are also the chamber and oratory of our James II., who died at Saint Germain, on the 16th September, 1701. The forest of Saint Germain is seven leagues in circumference, pierced in every direction by roads and paths, and containing various edifices that were used as hunting-lodges. This vast wood affords no view, except along the seemingly interminable path in which the spectator stands, the vista of which, carried on with mathematical regularity, terminates in a point. This is the case with all the great forests of France except that of Fontainebleau, where nature is sometimes seen in her most picturesque form. In the more remote and unfrequented parts of Saint Germain, the wild boar still makes his savage lair; and still the loiterer, in these lengthened alleys, is startled by a roebuck or a deer springing across the path.... Independently of the noble satellites attached to the court, the infinite number of official persons made its removal to Saint Germain, or the other royal seats, seem like the emigration of a whole people. Forty-nine physicians, thirty-eight surgeons, six apothecaries, thirteen preachers, one hundred and forty maîtres d'hôtel, ninety ladies of honor to the queen, in the sixteenth century! There were also an usher of the kitchen, a courier de vin (who took the charge of carrying provisions for the king when he went to the chase), a sutler of court, a conductor of the sumpter-horse, a lackey of the chariot, a captain of the mules, an overseer of roasts, a chair-bearer, a palmer (to provide ananches for Easter), a valet of the firewood, a paillassier of the Scotch guard, a yeoman of the mouth, and a hundred more for whose offices we have no names in English. The grand maître d'hôtel was the chief officer of the court. The royal orders came through him; he regulated the expenses; and was, in short, to the rest of the functionaries, what the general is to the army. The maître des requetes was at the head of civil justice; the prevôt de l'hôtel at the head of criminal justice.... When the courtiers presented themselves at the château, some in chariots, some on horseback, with their wives mounted behind them (the ladies all masked), they were subjected to the scrutiny of the captain of the gate. The greater number he compelled to dismount; but the princes and princesses, and a select few who had brevets of entrance, were permitted to ride within the walls. At court the men wore sword and dagger; but to be found with a gun or pistol in the palace, or even in the town, subjected them to a sentence of death. To wear a casque or cuirass was punished with imprisonment. The laws of politeness were equally strict. If one man used insulting words to another, the offense was construed as being given to the king; and the offender was obliged to solicit pardon of his majesty. If one threatened another by clapping his hand to the hilt of his sword, he was to be assommé according to the ordinance; which may either mean knocked down, or soundly mauled--or the two together. If two men came to blows, they were both assommé. A still more serious breach of politeness, however, was the importunity of petitioners. When the king hunted he was accompanied by a hundred pages, two hundred esquires, and often four or five hundred gentlemen; sometimes by the queen and princesses, with their hundreds of ladies and maids of honor, mounted on palfreys saddled with black velvet. St. Cloud By Augustus J. C. Hare [Footnote: From "Days Near Paris."] Very near the station is the Château de St. Cloud, set on fire by the bombs of Mont-Valèrien, in the night of October 13, 1870, and now the most melancholy of ruins. Sufficient, however, remains to indicate the noble character of a building partly due to Jules Hardouin and Mansart. The château is more reddened than blackened by the fire, and the beautiful reliefs of its gables, its statues, and the wrought-iron grilles of its balconies are still perfect. Grass, and even trees, grow in its roofless halls, in one of which the marble pillars and sculptured decorations are seen through the gaps where windows once were. The view from the terrace is most beautiful. The name of St. Cloud comes from a royal saint, who was buried in the collegiate church, pulled down by Marie Antoinette (which stood opposite the modern church), and to whose shrine there is an annual pilgrimage. Clodomir, King of Orleans, son of Clovis, dying in 524, had bequeathed his three sons to the guardianship of his mother Clotilde. Their barbarous uncles, Childebert and Clotaire, coveting their heritage, sent their mother a sword and a pair of scissors, asking her whether she would prefer that they should perish by the one, or that their royal locks should be shorn with the other, and that they should be shut up in a convent. "I would rather see them dead than shaven," replied Clotilde proudly. Two of the princes were then murdered by their uncles, the third, Clodowald, was hidden by some faithful servants, but fright made him cut off his hair with his own hands, and he entered a monastery at a village then called Nogent, but which derived from him the name of St. Clodowald, corrupted into St. Cloud. Clodowald bequeathed the lands of St. Cloud to the bishops of Paris, who had a summer palace here, in which the body of François I. lay in state after his death at Rambouillet. His son, Henri II., built a villa here in the Italian style; and Henri III. came to live here in a villa belonging to the Gondi family, while, with the King of Navarre, he was besieging Paris in 1589. The city was never taken, for at St. Cloud Henri was murdered by Jacques Clément, a monk of the Jacobin convent in Paris, who fancied that an angel had urged him to the deed in a vision.... From this time the house of the banker Jérôme Gondi, one of the Italian adventurers who had followed the fortunes of Catherine de Medici, was an habitual residence of the Court. It became the property of Hervard, Controller of Finances, from whom Louis XIV. bought it for his brother Philippe d'Orléans, enlarged the palace, and employed Lenôtre to lay out the park. Monsieur married the beautiful Henriette d'Angleterre, youngest daughter of Charles I., who died here, June 30, 1670, with strong suspicion of poison. St. Simon affirms the person employed to have confest to Louis XIV., having used it at the instigation of the Chevalier de Lorraine (a favorite of Monsieur), whom Madame had caused to be exiled. One of the finest sermons of Bossuet describes the "disastrous night on which there came as a clap of thunder the astonishing news! 'Madame is dying! Madame is dead!' At the sound of so strange a wo people hurried to St. Cloud from all sides to find panic over all except the heart of the princess." In the following year Monsieur was married again, to the Princess Palatine, when it was believed that his late wife appeared near a fountain in the park, where a servant, sent to fetch water, died of terror. The vision turned out to be a reality--a hideous old woman, who amused herself in this way. "The cowards," she said, "made such grimaces that I nearly died laughing. This evening pleasure paid me for the toil of my hard day." Monsieur gave magnificent fétes to the Court at St. Cloud, added to the palace with great splendor, and caused the great cascade, which Jérôme Gondi had made, to be enlarged and embellished by Mansart. It was at St. Cloud that Monsieur died of an attack of apoplexy, brought on by overeating after his return from a visit to the king at Marly.... The chateau continued to be occupied by Madame, daughter of the Elector, the rude, the original, and satirical Princess Palatine, in whom the modern House of Orleans has its origin, and here she died during the regency of her son.... The Régent d'Orléans, nephew of Louis XIV., received Peter the Great at St. Cloud in 1717. In 1752 his grandson, Louis Philippe d'Orléans, gave at St. Cloud one of the most magnificent fêtes ever seen in France. In 1785 the Due d'Orleans sold St. Cloud for six million francs to Queen Marie Antoinette, who made great alterations in the internal arrangements of the building, where she resided during the early days of the Revolution. It was at St. Cloud that the coup d'état occurred which made Napoleon first-consul. This led him to choose the palace of St. Cloud, which had been the cradle of his power, as his principal residence, and, under the first empire, it was customary to speak of "le cabinet de Saint-Cloud," as previously of "le cabinet de Versailles," and afterward of "le cabinet des Tuileries." Here, in 1805, Napoleon and Josephine assisted at the baptism of the future Napoleon III.... It was also in the palace of St. Cloud that Napoleon I. was married to Marie Louise, April 1, 1810. In this palace of many changes the allied sovereigns met after the fall of the First Empire. Blucher, after his fashion, slept booted and spurred in the bed of Napoleon; and the capitulation of Paris was signed here July 3, 1815. Louis XVIII. and Charles X. both lived much at St. Cloud, and added to it considerably; but here, where Henry IV. had been recognized as King of France and Navarre, Charles X. was forced by the will of the people to abdicate, July 30, 1830. Two years after, Louis Philippe established himself with his family at St. Cloud, and his daughter Clémentine was married to Duke Augustus of Saxe-Coburg in its chapel, April 28, 1843. Like his uncle, Napoleon III. was devoted to St. Cloud, where--"with a light heart"--the declaration of war with Prussia was signed in the library, July, 17, 1870, a ceremony followed by a banquet, during which the "Marseillaise" was played. The doom of St. Cloud was then sealed. On the 13th of the following October the besieged Parisians beheld the volumes of flame rising behind the Bois de Boulogne, which told that St. Cloud, recently occupied by the Prussians, and frequently bombarded in consequence from Mont-Valérien, had been fired by French bombs. The steamer for St. Cloud descends the Seine, passing under the Pont de Solferino, Pont de la Concorde, Pont des Invalides, and Pont d'Alma. Then the Champ de Mars is seen on the left, the Palais du Trocadéro on the right. After the Pont du d'Iéna, Passy is passed on the right, and the Ile des Cygnes on the left. Then comes the Pont de Grenelle, after which Auteuil is passed on the right and Javel on the left. After leaving the Pont-viaduc du Point-du-Jour, the Ile de Billancourt is seen on the left. After the Pont de Billancourt, the steamer passes between the Iles de Billancourt and Séguin to Bas Meudon. III OLD PROVENCE The Papal Palace at Avignon By Charles Dickens [Footnote: From "Pictures From Italy."] There lay before us, that same afternoon, the broken bridge of Avignon, and all the city baking in the sun; yet with an underdone-piecrust, battlemented wall, that never will be brown, tho it bake for centuries. The grapes were hanging in clusters in the streets, and the brilliant oleander was in full bloom everywhere. The streets are old and very narrow, but tolerably clean, and shaded by awnings stretched from house to house. Bright stuffs and handkerchiefs, curiosities, ancient frames of carved wood, old chairs, ghostly tables, saints, virgins, angels, and staring daubs of portraits, being exposed for sale beneath, it was very quaint and lovely. All this was much set off, too, by the glimpses one caught, through a rusty gate standing ajar, of quiet sleepy court-yards, having stately old houses within, as silent as tombs. It was all very like one of the descriptions in the Arabian Nights. The three one-eyed Calenders might have knocked at any one of those doors till the street rang again, and the porter who persisted in asking questions--the man who had the delicious purchases put into his basket in the morning--might have opened it quite naturally. After breakfast next morning, we sallied forth to see the lions. Such a delicious breeze was blowing in, from the north, as made the walk delightful, tho the pavement-stones, and stones of the walls and houses, were far too hot to have a hand laid on them comfortably. We went, first of all, up a rocky height, to the cathedral, where Mass was performing to an auditory very like that of Lyons, namely, several old women, a baby, and a very self-possest dog, who had marked out for himself a little course or platform for exercise, beginning at the altar-rails and ending at the door, up and down which constitutional walk he trotted, during the service, as methodically and calmly, as any old gentleman out of doors. It is a bare old church, and the paintings in the roof are sadly defaced by time and damp weather; but the sun was shining in, splendidly, through the red curtains of the windows, and glittering on the altar furniture; and it looked as bright and cheerful as need be. Hard by the cathedral stands the ancient Palace of the Popes, of which one portion is now a common jail, and another a noisy barrack; while gloomy suites of state apartments, shut up and deserted, mock their own old state and glory, like the embalmed bodies of kings. But we neither went there to see state rooms, nor soldiers' quarters, nor a common jail, tho we dropt some money into a prisoners' box outside, while the prisoners, themselves, looked through the iron bars, high, up, and watched us eagerly. We went to see the ruins of the dreadful rooms in which the Inquisition used to sit. A little, old, swarthy woman, with a pair of flashing black eyes--proof that the world hadn't conjured down the devil within her, tho it had had between sixty and seventy years to do it in--came out of the Barrack Cabaret, of which she was the keeper, with some large keys in her hands, and marshaled us the way that we should go. How she told us, on the way, that she was a Government Officer (concierge du palais apostolique), and had been, for I don't know how many years; and how she had shown these dungeons to princes; and how she was the best of dungeon demonstrators; and how she had resided in the palace from an infant--had been born there, if I recollect right--I needn't relate. But such a fierce, little, rapid, sparkling, energetic she-devil I never beheld. She was alight and flaming, all the time. Her action was violent in the extreme. She never spoke, without stopping expressly for the purpose. She stamped her feet, clutched us by the arms, flung herself into attitudes, hammered against walls with her keys, for mere emphasis: now whispered as if the Inquisition were there still; now shrieked as if she were on the rack herself; and had a mysterious, hag-like way with her forefinger, when approaching the remains of some new horror--looking back and walking stealthily and making horrible grimaces--that might alone have qualified her to walk up and down a sick man's counterpane, to the exclusion of all other figures, through a whole fever. Passing through the courtyard, among groups of idle soldiers, we turned off by a gate, which this She-Goblin unlocked for our admission, and locked again behind us; and entered a narrow court, rendered narrower by fallen stones and heaps of rubbish; part of it choking up the mouth of a ruined subterranean passage, that once communicated (or is said to have done so) with another castle on the opposite bank of the river. Close to this courtyard is a dungeon--we stood within it, in another minute--in the dismal tower of oubliettes, where Rienzi was imprisoned, fastened by an iron chain to the very wall that stands there now, but shut out from the sky which now looks down into it. A few steps brought us to the Cachots, in which the prisoners of the Inquisition were confined for forty-eight hours after their capture, without food or drink, that their constancy might be shaken, even before they were confronted with their gloomy judges. The day has not got in there yet. They are still small cells, shut in by four unyielding, close, hard walls; still profoundly dark; still massively doored and fastened, as of old. Goblin, looking back as I have described, went softly on, into a vaulted chamber, now used as a store-room; once the Chapel of the Holy Office. The place where the tribunal sat, was plain. The platform might have been removed but yesterday. Conceive the parable of the Good Samaritan having been painted on the wall of one of these Inquisition chambers! But it was, and may be traced there yet. High up in the wall, are niches where the faltering replies of the accused were heard and noted down. Many of them had been brought out of the very cell we had just looked into, so awfully; along the same stone passage. We had trodden in their very footsteps. I am gazing round me, with the horror that the place inspires, when Goblin clutches me by the wrist, and lays, not her skinny finger, but the handle of a key, upon her lip. She invites me, with a jerk, to follow her. I do so. She leads me out into a room adjoining--a rugged room, with a funnel-shaped, contracting roof, open at the top, to the bright day, I ask her what it is. She folds her arms,, leers hideously, and stares. I ask again. She glances round, to see that all the little company are there; sits down upon a mound of stones; throws up her arms, and yells out, like a fiend, "La Salle de la Question!" The Chamber of Torture! And the roof was made of that shape to stifle the victim's cries! Oh Goblin, Goblin, let us think of this awhile, in silence. Peace, Goblin! Sit with your short arms crossed on your short legs, upon that heap of stones, for only five minutes, and then flame out again.... A cold air, with an earthy smell, falls upon the face of Monsieur; for she has opened, while speaking, a trap-door in the wall. Monsieur looks in. Downward to the bottom, upward to the top, of a steep, dark lofty tower; very dismal, very dark, very cold. The Executioner of the Inquisition, says Goblin, edging in her head to look down also, flung those who were past all further torturing, down here. "But look! does Monsieur see the black stains on the wall?" A glance, over his shoulder, at Goblin's keen eye, shows Monsieur--and would without the aid of the directing-key--where they are. "What are they?" "Blood!" In October, 1791, when Revolution was at its height here, sixty persons; men and women ("and priests," says Goblin, "priests"); were murdered, and hurled, the dying and the dead, into this dreadful pit, where a quantity of quicklime was tumbled down upon their bodies. Those ghastly tokens of the massacre were soon no more; but while one stone of the strong building in which the deed was done, remains upon another, there they will lie in the memories of men, as plain to see as the splashing of their blood upon the wall is now.... Goblin's finger is lifted; and she steals out again, into the Chapel of the Holy Office. She stops at a certain part of the flooring. Her great effect is at hand. She waits for the rest. She darts at the brave courier, who is explaining something; hits him a sounding rap on the hat with the largest key; and bids him be silent. She assembles us all, round a little trap-door in the floor, as round as grave. "Voilà!" she darts down at the ring, and flings the door open with a crash, in her goblin energy, tho it is no light weight. "Voilà les oubliettes! Voilà les oubliettes! Subterranean! Frightful! Black! Terrible! Deadly! Les oubliettes de l'Inquisition!" My blood ran cold, as I looked from Goblin, down into the vaults, where these forgotten creatures, with recollections of the world outside--of wives, friends, children, brothers--starved to death, and made the stones ring with their unavailing groans. But, the thrill I felt on seeing the accurst wall below, decayed and broken through, and the sun shining in through its gaping wounds, was like a sense of victory and triumph. I felt exalted with the proud delight of living, in these degenerate times, to see it. As if I were the hero of some high achievement! The light in the doleful vaults was typical of the light that has streamed in, on all persecution in God's name, but which is not yet at its noon! It can not look more lovely to a blind man newly restored to sight, than to a traveler who sees it, calmly and majestically, treading down the darkness of that Infernal Well. Goblin, having shown les oubliettes, felt that her great coup was struck. She let the door fall with a crash, and stood upon it with her arms a-kimbo, sniffing prodigiously. When we left the place, I accompanied her into her house, under the outer gateway of the fortress, to buy a little history of the building. Her cabaret, a dark low room, lighted by small windows, sunk in the thick wall--in the softened light, and with its forge-like chimney; its little counter by the door, with bottles, jars, and glasses on it; its household implements are scraps of dress against the wall; and a sober looking woman (she must have a congenial life of it, with Goblin) knitting at the door--looked exactly like a picture by Ostade. I walked round the building on the outside, in a sort of dream, and yet with the delightful sense of having awakened from it, of which the light, down in the vaults, had given, me the assurance. The immense thickness and giddy height of the walls, the enormous strength of the massive towers, the great extent of the building, its gigantic proportions, frowning aspect, and barbarous irregularity, awaken awe and wonder. The recollection of its opposite old uses; an impregnable fortress, a luxurious palace, a horrible prison, a place of torture, the court of the Inquisition; at one and the same time, a house of feasting, fighting, religion, and blood, gives to every stone in its huge form a fearful interest, and imparts new meaning to its incongruities. I could think of little, however, then, or long afterward, but the sun in the dungeons. The palace coming down to be the lounging-place of noisy soldiers, and being forced to echo their rough talk and common oaths, and to have their garments fluttering from its dirty windows, was some reduction of its state, and something to rejoice at; but the day in its cells, and the sky for the roof of its chambers of cruelty--that was its desolation and defeat! If I had seen it in a blaze from ditch to rampart, I should have felt that not that light, nor all the light in all the fire that burns, could waste it, like the sunbeams in its secret council-chamber and its prisons. The Building of the Great Palace By Thomas Oakey [Footnote: From "The Story of Avignon." Published by E.P. Dutton & Co.] It will now be convenient briefly to trace the growth of that remarkable edifice, at once a castle and a cloister, a palace and a prison, which constitutes the chief attraction of Avignon to-day, and which, altho defaced by time and by modern restorers, remains in its massive grandeur a fitting memorial of the great line of pontiffs who have made that little city famous in the annals of Christendom. We have seen that Pope John XXII., having allotted a piece of land to his nephew, Arnaud de Via, for the erection of a new episcopal palace, was content to modify and enlarge the old one for pontifical uses, and that Benedict XII., with characteristic straightforwardness, purchased the new fabric from Arnaud's heirs and, having handed it over to the diocesan authorities, proceeded to transform the old building into a stately and spacious apostolic palace for the head of Christendom. He was moved to this purchase after mature reflection, for it was a matter of urgent importance that the pontiff of the church of Rome should possess a palace of his own at Avignon as long as it might be necessary for him to remain there. The relation between Curia and Episcopate being thus clearly defined, Benedict appointed a compatriot, Pierre Poisson de Mirepoix, master of the works, and, since about two-thirds of the existing palace dates from Benedict's reign, Pierre Poisson may be regarded as its first architect. More, probably, is known of the construction of the papal palace of Avignon than of any other relic of medieval architecture. Thanks to the researches of Father Ehrle, Prefect of the Vatican Library, and other scholars, the sums paid to the contractors, their names, the estimates of quantities, the wages of the chief workmen, and the price of materials, are before us, and we can trace day by day and month by month the progress of the great pile. The whole of the craftsmen, with the exception of the later master painters from Italy and some northern sculptors, were either Avignonais, Gascons or Provençals. The first work undertaken by Pierre was the enlargement of the papal chapel of John XXII. This was doubled in length, and the lavish decorations executed by John's master painter, Friar Pierre Dupuy, were continued on the walls of the added portion; payments for white, green, indigo, vermilion, carmine and other pigments, and for colored tiles, testify to the brilliancy of its interior. Meanwhile work was proceeding on the massy new tower, the Turris Magna, now known as the Tour des Anges, the best preserved of all the old towers. The foundations were laid on April 3, 1335, and it was roofed with lead on March 18, 1337. The basement formed the papal wine-cellar; the ground floor was the treasury, or strong room, where the specie, the jewels, the precious vessels of gold and silver and other valuables were stored; many payments are recorded for locks and bars and bolts for their safe-keeping within the ten-feet-thick walls of the tower. The next great work put in hand was the east wing, which was raised on a space left by John's demolished, or partially demolished, structure. On November 20, 1337, two masons (lapiscidarios), Pierre Folcaud and Jean Chapelier, and a carpenter, Jacques Beyran, all of Avignon, contracted to carry out the plans of a new architect, Bernard Canello, for the completion of Benedict's private apartments, and on the same day Lambert Fabre and Martin Guinaud, housewreckers, were paid eighty-three gold florins on account, for the demolition of the old buildings. This wing, since wholly remodeled by the legates and the modern corps of engineers, comprised the papal Garde Robe, the Garde Meuble, the private kitchen and offices and, on the floor above, the papal dining-room, study and private oratory. The walls were, of course, embattlemented, and in 1337 the most exposed portions of the new buildings were defended by a stout rampart.... The whole ground floor, 110 feet by 33, was occupied by a great reception hall (Camera Paramenti), where distinguished visitors were accorded a first welcome before being admitted to a private audience, or accorded a solemn state reception in consistory, as the import of their embassy demanded. The popes were also used to receive the cardinals there, and two doorkeepers were appointed who must be faithful, virtuous and honest men and sleep in the hall; their office being one of great trust, was highly paid, and they were generally laymen. It was probably in this hall that St. Catherine was received by Clement VI. The Avignon conclaves were held there, for on December 31, 1352, four hundred and fifteen days' and nights' labor were employed in breaking down the walls between the dining-hall and the Camera Paramenti, clearing away the stones and making secret chambers for the lord cardinals, in which chambers were twenty-eight cells.... On September 5, 1339, John's old belfry was pulled down and Jean Mauser de Carnot, who asserted he had excavated 11,300 basketfuls of rubbish, was paid at the rate of twelve deniers the hundred for the work. Evidently these were good times for the basket makers as well as builders. December 22, 1340, three contractors, Isnard and Raymond Durand and Jacques Gasquet, received 1,273 florins for the completed new tower, with its barbicans, battlements and machicoulis, which was on the site and which retained the appellation of the Tour de la Campane, or Bell Tower. The embattlemented and machicolated summit, but not the chastelet, of this mighty tower has recently been restored; its walls are nearly twelve feet thick.... Benedict's last undertaking was the erection of the Tour de Trouillas, next the Tour des Latrines, and on April 20, 1341, sixteen rubbish baskets were bought for the "Saracens that excavated the foundations of the turris nova." The Tour de Trouillas, tallest and stoutest of the keeps of the mighty fortress, is 175 feet high as compared with the 150 feet of the Tour de la Campane, and its walls fifteen feet thick as compared with twelve feet. It should be noted, however, that the latter tower appears the taller owing to the elevated ground whereon, it stands.... Having bought, by private agreement or by arbitration, all the houses adjacent to the palace on the south side, Clement next proceeded to demolish them and on the site to raise the noblest and most beautiful wing of the great palace. This edifice, known to contemporaries as the great new palace, comprised a spacious Chapel and Hall of Justice; and in August 9, 1344, contracts were made for cutting away and leveling the rock above the present Rue Peyrolerie, whereon, by October 21, 1351, the masons had raised their beautiful building. On that day, by order of our lord the pope, one hundred florins were handed over by the papal chamber to Master John of Loubières to distribute among the masters to celebrate the placing of the keystone in the vaulting of the new chapel of the palace and the completion of the said chapel. On All Saints' Day of that same year Clement recited (a month before his death) the first solemn mass in his great new chapel and preached a most eloquent sermon, praising God for the completion of his life's work. The lower hall, most famous of judicial chambers in Christendom and final Court of Appeal in all questions of international and ecclesiastical law, was later in opening. Among the amenities of the old palace were the spacious and lovely gardens on the east, with their clipt hedges, avenues of trees, flower-beds and covered and frescoed walls, all kept fresh and green by channels of water. John maintained a menagerie of lions and other wild and strange beasts; stately peacocks swept proudly along the green swards, for the inventory of 1369 specifies seventeen peacocks, some old and some young, whereof six were white. * * * * * But we have as yet dealt chiefly with the external shell of this mass of architecture which, tall and mighty, raises its once impregnable walls and towers against the sky. The beauty of its interior remains briefly to be touched upon, for the fortress palace had, as Clement left it, some analogy with the great Moorish palace of the Alhambra in that it stood outwardly grim and strong, while within it was a shrine of exquisite and luxurious art. The austere Benedict, who, his biographer tells us, left the walls of the consistory naked, appears to have expended little on the pictorial decorations of the halls and chambers erected during his pontificate; but with the elevation of the luxurious and art-loving Clement VI., a new spirit breathes over the fabric. The stern simplicity and noble strength of his predecessor's work assume an internal vesture of richness and beauty; the walls glow with azure and gold; a legion of Gallic sculptors and Italian painters lavish their art on the embellishment of the palace.... Such, in brief outline, was the progress of the mighty fabric and its internal decoration which the great popes of Avignon raised to be their dwelling-place, their fortress, and the ecclesiastical center of Christendom. Tho shorn of all its pristine beauty and robbed of much of its symmetry, it stands to-day in bulk and majesty, much as it stood at the end of Clement VI.'s reign, when a contemporary writer describes it as a quadrangular edifice, enclosed within high walls and towers and constructed in most noble style, and tho it was all most beautiful to look upon, there were three parts of transcendent beauty: the Audientia, the Capella major, and the terraces: and these were so admirably planned and contrived that peradventure no palace comparable to it was to be found in the whole world. The terraces referred to were those raised over the great chapel, and were formed of stone, bedded in asphalt and laid on a staging of stout oak joists; the view from the terraces was unparalleled for range and beauty. The glowing splendor of frescoed walls was enhanced by gorgeous hangings and tapestries and by the magnificent robes and jewels of popes and cardinals. Crowds of goldsmiths--forty were employed at the papal court--embroiderers and silk mercers, made Avignon famous thoughout Europe. In 1337, 318 florins were paid for eight Paris carpets; in 1343 Clement VI. paid 213 florins for green silk hangings, and 254 florins for carpets adorned with roses; in 1348, 400 gold and silver vessels turned the scales at 862 marks, 5 ounces; in the inventory of 1369, despite the fact that the most precious had been sent to Rome, the gold vessels were weighed out at 1,434 marks, 1 ounce; the silver at 5,525 marks 7 ounces. A cardinal's hat cost from 15 to 40 florins, and in 1348, 150 florins were paid for one piece of scarlet for the pope, and 75 to 100 florins for the garniture of a riding cloak. Clement VI. spent 1,278 florins in the purchase of cloth of gold, woven by the Saracens of Damascus; one payment to Jacopo Malabayla of Arti for summer and winter clothing for the papal household amounted to 6,510 florins, and the same obviously Hebrew merchant received 10,652 florins in 1341 for cloth and ermine and beaver; in 1347 Clement's furrier received 1,080 ermine skins, whereof 430 were used in one cloak, 310 for a mantle, 150 for two hoods, and 88 for nine birettas; in 1351, 2,258 florins went to Tuscany for silk, and 385 for brocade to Venice. The richness of the papal utensils beggars description; jeweled cups, flagons of gold, knife handles of jasper and ivory, forks of mother-of-pearl and gold. A goldsmith in 1382 was paid 14 florins for repairing two of the last-named implements. The flabelli, or processional feather fans, cost 14 florins; Benedict XIII., paid 300 florins for an enameled silver bit; the Golden Roses cost from 100 to 300 florins. Presents of jewels were costly and frequent. Gregory XI. gave 168 pearls, value 179 francs, to the citizens of Avellino; Clement VII. presented the Duke of Burgundy with a ring of gold, worth 335 florins; an aguière of gold and pearls, valued at 1,000 florins, and two tables each over 200 florins. Richer gifts were lavished on sovereign princes. Reliquaries were of prodigious value; the gold cross containing a piece of the true cross at the Célestins weighed fifteen pounds. In 1375 a silver arm for the image of St. Andrew cost over 2,566 florins. The cardinals were equally munificent. The most striking example of lavish splendor is afforded by the State banquet given to Clement V., by the Cardinals Arnaud de Palegrue and Pierre Taillefer in May, 1308. Clement, as he descended from his litter, was received by his hosts and twenty chaplains, who conducted him to a chamber hung with richest tapestries from floor to ceiling; he trod on velvet carpet of triple pile; his state-bed was draped with fine crimson velvet, lined with white ermine; the sheets of silk were embroidered with silver and gold. The table was served by four papal knights and twelve squires, who each received silver girdles and purses filled with gold from the hosts. Fifty cardinals' squires assisted them in serving the banquet, which consisted of nine courses of three plates each--twenty-seven dishes in all. The meats were built up in fantastic form: castles, gigantic stags, boars, horses, etc. After the fourth service, the cardinal offered his holiness a milk-white steed worth 400 florins; two gold rings, jeweled with an enormous sapphire and a no less enormous topaz; and a bowl, worth 100 florins; sixteen cardinal guests and twenty prelates were given rings and jewels, and twelve young clerks of the papal house and twenty-four sergeants-at-arms received purses filled with florins. After the fifth service, a great tower with a font whence gushed forth five sorts of choicest wines was carried in; and a tourney was run during the interval between the seventh and eighth courses. Then followed a concert of sweetest music, and dessert was furnished by two trees--one of silver, bearing rarest fruits of all kinds, and the other loaded with sugared fruits of many colors. Various wines were then served, whereupon the master cooks, with thirty assistants, executed dances before the guests. Clement, by this time, having had enough, retired to his chamber, where, lest he might faint for lack of refreshment during the night, wine and spices were brought to him; the entertainment ended with dances and distractions of many kinds. There is no reason to believe that the Avignon popes, either in their household expenditure or in their personal luxury, were more extravagant than their Roman predecessors or successors. Yet amid all this luxury, strange defects of comfort appear to the modern sense. Windows, as we have seen, were generally covered with wax cloth or linen, carpets were rare, and rushes were strewn on the floors of most of the rooms. From May to November, 1349, more than 300 loads of rushes were supplied for use in the dining-rooms and chambers of the apostolic palace. Subsequently mats were introduced, and in 1352 Pierre de Glotos, mat-maker to the palace of our lord and pope, was paid for 275 cannae of matting for the palace of Avignon and for the palace beyond the Rhone and the new chapel. The Walls of Avignon By Thomas Oakey [Footnote: From "The Story of Avignon." Published by E.P. Dutton & Co.] Intimately associated with the history of the palace of the Popes of Avignon is that of the unparalleled circuit of walls and towers which defended the city from the scourge of organized robber bands during the fourteenth century. The earliest quadrilateral fortifications embraced a relatively small area consisting of the Rocher des Doms and the parishes of St. Agricol, St. Didier, and St. Pierre; these walls, demolished and rebuilt on a more extensive scale in the twelfth century, embraced an area easily traceable on the modern map, from the Porte du Rhone, round the Rues du Limas, Joseph Vernet, des Lices, Philonarde, Campane, Trois Colombes, to the Rocher. It was these fortifications that the Cardinal St. Angelo forced the citizens to raze in 1227. Until the acquisition of Avignon by Clement VI., the city was an open one and only defended by a double fosse. The origin of the papal walls has already been traced, and their subsequent fate may now be briefly given. The assaults of the Rhone proved more destructive than human artillery. The walls and towers having been hastily raised, towers fell by reason of bad foundation, and the upkeep of the fortifications was a continual drain on papal and communal finances. In 1362 an irresistible flood of waters overthrew the Fortes St. Michel and Limbert, and large breaches were often made by these recurring inundations. Moreover, the expansion of the city of old and the need of access to the suburbs involved frequent displacement and opening of new gates. In 1482 the whole system of the defensive works was modified to meet the new situation caused by the introduction of gunpowder. The gates most exposed to attack were further defended by outworks, that of St. Lazare having been fortified during the rule of Giuliano della Rovere by the addition of a powerful bastide, with three round towers, a drawbridge, a new fosse which communicated with the great fosse before the main walls. Other modifications took place during the Huguenot wars. Notwithstanding many repairs during the intervening centuries, the fortifications had, under the second Empire, suffered sad degradation, and at length Viollet-le-Duc was entrusted with their restoration. The famous architect set to work on their southern side and had completed about one-third of the restoration when the disastrous issue of the Franco-Prussian war arrested all further progress until the Third Republic feebly resumed the task. The walls along the Rhone, especially useful in time of flood, were backed with stone, their battlements and machicoulis renewed. The visitor, however, will need no reminder that the present passive aspect of the ramparts conveys but a faint impression of their former state, when a broad and deep fosse, seven feet by twelve, washed their bases, above which they raised their once impregnable curtains full thirty feet. Two of the old gates have been demolished--the Porte de Limbert in 1896, and the Porte de l'Oulle in 1900--the former, many times repaired, was the only existing example of the external aspect of a medieval gate, the latter had been rebuilt in 1786 in the Doric style. A new gate, the Porte Pétrarque, now the Porte de la République, was erected by Viollet-le-Duc when the walls were pierced for the new street; the Porte St. Dominique is also new. These noble mural defenses, three miles in circuit, twice narrowly escaped demolition--at the construction of the railway, when they were saved by a vigorous protest of Prosper Mérimée, and in 1902, when, on the pretext that they blocked the development of the city, the municipality decided to demolish the unrestored portions. Luckily the intervention of a public-spirited Prefect of Vaucluse proved successful, and they were again rescued from the housewrecker's pick. No visitor to Avignon should omit to walk or drive round the famous ramparts. Their stones have been subjected to careful scrutiny by antiquarians and the masons' marks (tacherons)--about 4,500--carefully examined and reduced to about four hundred and fifty types. Opinions differ as to the meaning of these curious signs, but there is little doubt that M. Maire's suggestion is the correct one--the workmen were paid by the piece, and each had his own private mark which he cut on the stones he laid and thus enabled the foreman to check his work. We begin at the Porte du Rhône, and skirt the older part of the walls on the northwest with their different style of corbels and machicoulis. M. Maire has no hesitation in assigning this portion to the time of Clement VI., by reason of the coarser nature of the masons' marks. Turning southwards, we pass the Porte St. Dominique, and reach the Porte St. Roch (formerly the Porte du Chamfleury, and only opened at plague times) and the Porte de la République. We soon note the unrestored portions, the site of the old Porte Limbert, and turn northward to the Porte St. Lazare. Before we reach this gate we may fitly make a digression, and in pious memory of a great Englishman, fare along the Avenue du Cimetière to the grave of John Stuart Mill, who with his wife lies buried within the cemetery under an elder-tree on the right and toward the end of Avenue 2. A plain stone slab bears the well-known inscription to Mrs. Mill's memory--the noblest and most eloquent epitaph ever composed by man for woman. It is pleasant to remember that Mill has left golden opinions of his gentleness and generosity behind him at Avignon. His house, a charming little hermitage approached by an avenue of plane trees not far from the cemetery, was sold in 1905, and a few relics were bought and still are cherished by the rare friends the somewhat self-centered philosopher made in the city. The present owner has preserved the library and study, where the "Essay on Liberty" was written, much as it was in Mill's days. To the peasants who met the tall, bent, spare figure, musing and botanizing along the country lanes and fields, he was known as "Monsieur Émile." Before he left the city on his periodical visits to England, Mill was wont to leave 300 francs with M. Rey, pastor of the Protestant Church in Avignon: two hundred for expenses of public worship; one hundred for the poor, always charging M. Rey to write to England if any further need arose. Mill, a great Englishman of European fame, to the amazement of his French friends, was followed to his last resting-place by no more than five mourners. As we write news comes that the civic authorities have decided to recall to posterity the association of the great thinker with Avignon by giving the name of Stuart Mill to a new boulevard, and that a bust has been unveiled to his memory near the pleasant city he loved so well. Mill was much gratified that his pamphlet on "The Subjection of Women" converted Mistral to the movement for their enfranchisement, and their legal equality with men. Villeneuve and the Broken Bridge By Thomas Oakey [Footnote: From "The Story of Avignon." Published by E.P. Dutton & Co.] The royal city of Villeneuve, altho geographically and politically sundered from Avignon and the County Venaissin, was socially and economically bound up with the papal city. The same reason that to-day impels the rich citizens of Avignon to dot the hills of Languedoc with their summer villas was operative in papal times, and popes and cardinals and prelates loved to build their summer places on the opposite bank of the Rhone. How silent and neglected are the streets of this once wealthy and important city! How degraded its monuments, how faded its glory! In the hot, dusty afternoon, as the cranky old omnibus rattles along the narrow High Street, it appears to awaken echoes in a city of the dead. Making our way northward, we pass the restored seventeenth-century portal of the palace of the sainted Cardinal of Luxembourg; the weather-worn, neglected, late Renaissance portal of the so-called Hôtel de Conti; the ruined Gothic portal of the palace of Cardinal Pierre de Thury, through which we pass to the old court-yard and a chapel subsequently restored and now used as the chapel of the Grey Penitents. We pass many another relic of departed grandeur, and beyond the Place Neuve on our right come upon a great portal which opens on a vaulted passage leading to one of the most bewildering and extraordinary congeries of ruined monastic buildings in France, now inhabited by a population of poor folk--two hundred families, it is said--who, since the Revolution, have settled in the vast buildings of the once famous and opulent Charterhouse of Villeneuve. Founded by Innocent VI., three years after his elevation to the papal chair, and enriched by subsequent endownments, the Charterhouse of the Val de Bénédiction, the second in importance of the Order, grew in wealth and importance during the centuries until it was sacked and sold in small lots during the Revolution to the ancestors of the present occupants. The circuit of its walls was a mile in extent; its artistic treasures were prodigious. The Coronation of the Virgin came thence; the Pietá of Villeneuve, now in the Louvre; the founder's tomb; the high altar of Notre Dame at Villeneuve, and a few other relics, alone survive of its vast possessions. The scene resembles nothing so much as a city ruined by bombardment or earthquake, but how long the wreck will remain in its present picturesque and melancholy condition is difficult to forecast. The state is slowly buying out the owners, and doubtless ere many years are passed the more valuable artistic remains will have been swept and garnished and restored. As we return from the Chartreuse we turn left along the Place Neuve, and climb to the mighty fort of St. André, which occupies the most venerable site in the royal new city, for on the hill where it stands tradition relates that St. Cesarie, Bishop of Arles, was buried, and that there, in the sixth century, the first Benedictines settled. The primitive settlement, destroyed in the ninth century, was extensively rebuilt in 980, and within its walls, churches were dedicated to St. Andrew, St. Michael, and St. Martin. In the twelfth century the rich and powerful monastery, a strongly fortified, self-sufficing community, was held under the counts of Toulouse, and from their overlordship it was subsequently admitted by the counts to be within the territory of the republic of Avignon, whose consuls in 1210 compelled the abbot to demolish his walls and promise never to rebuild them. In 1292 Philip the Fair was permitted to settle a small community there, to whom he accorded in 1293 valuable privileges and the same protection he granted to his good city of Paris. Philip, to whom the position was valuable as a frontier post, erected a castle there, maintained a royal garrison, and the new settlement became known as the New Town (Villeneuve). The walls and towers then raised were rebuilt in 1352 by John the Good, who exacted a toll, known as St. Andrew's penny, for maintenance on all merchandise that passes through the Senechaussée of Beaucaire. Of these majestic ruins, restored in the sixteenth century and again in recent times, the Tour des Masques at the west angle with its simple battlements is the oldest portion, the massive machicolated towers that frown over the main entrance having been raised by John the Good. The ruined ravelin dates back to the seventeenth century. We enter and stroll about the desolate interior, crowned by a tiny Romanesque chapel of the twelfth century, that well deserves its name of Our Lady of the Fair View (Notre Dame de Belvézét), with a graceful apse (restored). From its summit, or from the tall old watch-tower of the monastery, a marvelous view is obtained of the gaping ruins of the Charterhouse of Avignon, the County Venaissin, the Cévennes, Mount Ventoux, and the distant Alps. In the later years of the monarchy a post of artillery was stationed in the fort, and it was from the fire of a battery planted there that a young captain of artillery, one Napoleon Bonaparte, in 1793, overawed the city of Avignon, which was occupied by the Marseillais federalists who had declared against the Convention; and it was with the cannon seized at St. André that Bonaparte marched to Toulon and expelled the English from its harbor. The papal soldiery were ever objects of scorn to the royalists of Villeneuve, who dubbed them "patachines" ("pestacchina," Ital. for slipper), and taunted them with drilling under parasols--a pleasantry repaid by the Italians who hurled the epithet "luzers" (lizards) against the royalists, who were said to pass their time sunning themselves against the hot rocks of Villeneuve. Descending the stately stairway that leads to the foot of the Rocher des Doms, and turning to the left, we soon reach the house of the "gardien du pont," who will admit us to all that remains of the miraculous pontifical structure of the twelfth century. The destructive hand of man and the assaults of the Rhone have dealt hardly with St. Benezet's work. Ruined during the siege of 1226, it was repaired in 1234-37, and in 1349 knit to the papal fortress at the Avignon end. In 1352, when Clement VI. rebuilt four of the arches, it is described as of stone and wood; it was cut during the siege of Benedict XIII., and repaired, or rebuilt, in 1418 and 1430; in 1602 three arches collapsed; in 1633 two more fell, and in 1650 the gaps were bridged by wooden struts and planks, which were carried away in 1670 by ice-floes. Owing to the interminable dispute between the monarchy and the papacy as to liability for its repair, each power claiming jurisdiction over the Rhone, all attempts to preserve it from ruin were abandoned in 1680, when Louis XIV. refused either to allow the legates to take toll for the necesary repairs, or to undertake them himself. Little is known of the original bridge, which consisted of twenty-two semi-circular arches (Viollet-le-Duc gives eighteen), much lower than the present elliptic ones, which date back to the thirteenth century, according to Labaude--or to the fifteenth century, acording to other authorities--when the bridge, having proved too low-pitched, was raised to its present level, and the flood arches over the piles were built. The four subsisting arches were, with the bridge chapel, restored during the last century. The old bridge formed an elbow upstream on the Villeneuve branch of the Rhone. The chapel of St. Nicholas, too, has suffered many vicissitudes. The primitive Romanesque building was raised to the level of the new footway by dividing the nave into two floors and building a flight of steps, supported on a squinch arch, down to what then became the lower chapel. Much battered during the sieges of the palace, it was restored and reconsecrated in 1411 and a century later the Gothic upper apse was added, whose external walls overtop the old nave. In consequence of these modifications the lower chapel has a Gothic nave and a Romanesque apse, whereas the upper chapel has a Gothic apse and a Romanesque nave. The "Pont d'Avignon" is known to every French-speaking child, and with many variants the old "ronde" is sung and danced from the remotest plains of Canada to the valleys of the Swiss Alps. The good folk of Avignon, however, protest that their "rondes" were not danced perilously on the narrow Pont St. Benezet, but under its arches on the green meadows of the Isle de la Barthelasse, and that "Sur" in lieu of "Sous" is due to northern misunderstanding of their sweet Provençal tongue. Orange By Henry James [Footnote: From "A Little Tour In France." By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin Co. Copyright, 1884.] I alighted at Orange to visit a collection of eminently civil monuments. The collection consists of but two objects, but these objects are so fine that I will let the word pass. One of them is a triumphal arch, supposedly of the period of Marcus Aurelius; the other is a fragment, magnificent in its ruin, of a Roman theater. But for these fine Roman remains and for its name, Orange is a perfectly featureless little town, without the Rhone--which, as I have mentioned, is several miles distant--to help it to a physiognomy. It seems one of the oddest things that this obscure French borough--obscure, I mean, in our modern era, for the Gallo-Roman Arausio must have been, judging it by its arches and theater, a place of some importance--should have given its name to the heirs apparent of the throne of Holland, and been borne by a king of England who had sovereign rights over it. During the Middle Ages it formed part of an independent principality; but in 1531 it fell, by the marriage of one of its princesses, who had inherited it, into the family of Nassau. I read in my indispensable Murray that it was made over to France by the treaty of Utrecht. The arch of triumph, which stands a little way out of the town, is rather a pretty than an imposing vestige of the Romans. If it had greater purity of style, one might say of it that it belonged to the same family of monuments as the Maison Carée at Nîmes. It has three passages--the middle much higher than the others--and a very elevated attic. The vaults of the passages are richly sculptured, and the whole monument is covered with friezes and military trophies. This sculpture is rather mixed; much of it is broken and defaced, and the rest seemed to me ugly, tho its workmanship is praised. The arch is at once well preserved and much injured. Its general mass is there, and as Roman monuments go it is remarkably perfect; but it has suffered, in patches, from the extremity of restoration. It is not, on the whole, of absorbing interest. It has a charm, nevertheless, which comes partly from its soft, bright yellow color, partly from a certain elegance of shape, of expression; and on that well-washed Sunday morning, with its brilliant tone, surrounded by its circle of thin poplars, with the green country lying beyond it and a low blue horizon showing through its empty portals, it made, very sufficiently, a picture that hangs itself to one of the lateral hooks of the memory. I can take down the modest composition, and place it before me as I write. I see the shallow, shining puddles in the hard, fair French road; the pale blue sky, diluted by days of rain; the disgarnished autumnal fields; the mild sparkle of the low horizon; the solitary figure in sabots, with a bundle under its arm, advancing along the "chaussée;" and in the middle I see the little ochre-colored monument, which, in spite of its antiquity, looks bright and gay, as everything must look in France of a fresh Sunday morning. It is true that this was not exactly the appearance of the Roman theater, which lies on the other side of the town; a fact that did not prevent me from making my way to it in less than five minutes, through a succession of little streets concerning which I have no observations to record. None of the Roman remains in the south of France are more impressive than this stupendous fragment. An enormous mound rises above the place, which was formerly occupied--I quote from Murray--first by a citadel of the Romans, then by a castle of the princes of Nassau, razed by Louis XIV. Facing this hill a mighty wall erects itself, thirty-six meters high, and composed of massive blocks of dark brown stone, simply laid one on the other; the whole naked, rugged surface of which suggests a natural cliff (say of the Vaucluse order) rather than an effort of human, or even of Roman labor. It is the biggest thing at Orange--it is bigger than all Orange put together--and its permanent massiveness makes light of the shrunken city. The face it presents to the town--the top of it garnished with two rows of brackets, perforated with holes to receive the staves of the "velarium"--bears the traces of more than one tier of ornamental arches; tho how these flat arches were applied, or incrusted, upon the wall, I do not profess to explain. You pass through a diminutive postern--which seems in proportion about as high as the entrance of a rabbit-hutch--into the lodge of the custodian, who introduces you to the interior of the theater. Here the mass of the hill affronts you, which the ingenious Romans treated simply as the material of their auditorium. They inserted their stone seats, in a semicircle, in the slope of the hill, and planted their colossal wall opposite to it. This wall, from the inside, is, if possible, even more imposing. It formed the back of the stage, the permanent scene, and its enormous face was coated with marble. It contains three doors, the middle one being the highest, and having above it, far aloft, a deep niche, apparently intended for an imperial statue. A few of the benches remain on the hillside, which, however, is mainly a confusion of fragments. There is part of a corridor built into the hill, high up, and on the crest are the remnants of the demolished castle. The whole place is a kind of wilderness of ruin; there are scarcely any details; the great feature is the overtopping wall. This wall being the back of the scene, the space left between it and the chord of the semicircle (of the auditorium) which formed the proscenium is rather less than one would have supposed. In other words, the stage was very shallow, and appears to have been arranged for a number of performers standing in a line, like a company of soldiers. There stands the silent skeleton, however, as impressive by what it leaves you to guess and wonder about as by what it tells you. It has not the sweetness, the softness of melancholy, of the theater at Arles; but it is more extraordinary, and one can imagine only tremendous tragedies being enacted there-- "Presenting Thebes' or Pelops' line." At either end of the stage, coming forward, is an immense wing--immense in height, I mean, as it reaches to the top of the scenic wall; the other dimensions are not remarkable. The division to the right, as you face the stage, is pointed out as the green-room; its portentous altitude and the open arches at the top give it the air of a well. The compartment on the left is exactly similar, save that it opens into the traces of other chambers, said to be those of a hippodrome adjacent to the theater. Various fragments are visible which refer themselves plausibly to such an establishment; the greater axis of the hippodrome would appear to have been on a line with the triumphal arch. This is all I saw, and all there was to see, of Orange, which had a very rustic, bucolic aspect, and where I was not even called upon to demand breakfast at the hotel. The entrance of this resort might have been that of a stable of the Roman days. Vaucluse By Bayard Taylor [Footnote: From "Views Afoot." Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons.] This district borders on the desert of the Crau, a vast plain of stones reaching to the mouth of the Rhone and almost entirely uninhabited. We caught occasional glimpses of its sealike waste between the summits of the hills. At length, after threading a high ascent, we saw the valley of the Durance suddenly below us. The sun, breaking through the clouds, shone on the mountain-wall which stood on the opposite side, touching with his glow the bare and rocky precipices that frowned far above the stream. Descending to the valley, we followed its course toward the Rhone with the ruins of feudal "bourgs" crowning the crags above us. It was dusk when we reached the village of Senas tired with the day's march. A landlord standing in his door, on the lookout for customers, invited us to enter in a manner so polite and pressing we could not choose but do so. This is a universal custom with the country innkeepers. In a little village which we passed toward evening there was a tavern with the sign "The Mother of Soldiers." A portly woman whose face beamed with kindness and cheerfulness stood in the door and invited us to stop there for the night. "No, mother," I answered; "we must go much farther to-day." "Go, then," said she, "with good luck, my children! A pleasant journey!" On entering the inn at Senas two or three bronzed soldiers were sitting by the table. My French vocabulary happening to give out in the middle of a consultation about eggs and onion-soup, one of them came to my assistance and addrest me in German. He was from Fulda, in Hesse-Cassel, and had served fifteen years in Africa.... Leaving next morning at daybreak, we walked on before breakfast to Orgon, a little village in a corner of the cliffs which border the Durance, and crossed the muddy river by a suspension bridge a short distance below, to Cavaillon, where the country-people were holding a great market. From this place a road led across the meadow-land to L'Isle, six miles distant. This little town is so named because it is situated on an island formed by the crystal Sorgues, which flows from the fountains of Vaucluse. It is a very picturesque and pretty place. Great mill-wheels, turning slowly and constantly, stand at intervals in the stream, whose grassy banks are now as green as in springtime. We walked along the Sorgues--which is quite as beautiful and worthy to be sung as the Clitumnus--to the end of the village to take the road to Vaucluse. Beside its banks stands the "Hôtel de Petrarque et Laure." Alas that names of the most romantic and impassioned lovers of all history should be desecrated to a sign-post to allure gormandizing tourists! The bare mountain in whose heart lies the poet's solitude now rose before us at the foot of the lofty Mount Ventoux, whose summit of snows extended beyond. We left the river and walked over a barren plain across which the wind blew most drearily. The sky was rainy and dark, and completed the desolateness of the scene, which in nowise heightened our anticipations of the renowned glen. At length we rejoined the Sorgues and entered a little green valley running up into the mountain. The narrowness of the entrance entirely shut out the wind, and, except the rolling of the waters over their pebbly bed, all was still and lonely and beautiful. The sides of the dell were covered with olive trees, and a narrow strip of emerald meadow lay at the bottom. It grew more hidden and sequestered as we approached the little village of Vaucluse. Here the mountain towers far above, and precipices of gray rock many hundred feet high hang over the narrowing glen. On a crag over the village are the remains of a castle; the slope below this, now rugged and stony, was once graced by the cottage and garden of Petrarch. All traces of them have long since vanished, but a simple column bearing the inscription. "A Petrarque" stands beside the Sorgues. We ascended into the defile by a path among the rocks, overshadowed by olives and wild fig-trees, to the celebrated fountains of Vaucluse. The glen seems as if stuck into the mountain's depths by one blow of the enchanter's wand, and just at the end, where the rod might have rested in its downward sweep, is the fathomless well whose over-brimming fulness gives birth to the Sorgues. We climbed up over the mossy rocks and sat down in the grotto beside the dark, still pool. It was the most absolute solitude. The rocks towered above and over us to the height of six hundred feet, and the gray walls of the wild glen below shut out all appearance of life. I leaned over the rock and drank of the blue crystal that grew gradually darker toward the center till it became a mirror and gave back a perfect reflection of the crags above it. There was no bubbling, no gushing up from its deep bosom, but the wealth of sparkling waters continually welled over as from a too-full goblet. It was with actual sorrow that I turned away from the silent spot. I never visited a place to which the fancy clung more suddenly and fondly. There is something holy in its solitude, making one envy Petrarch the years of calm and unsullied enjoyment which blest him there. As some persons whom we pass as strangers strike a hidden chord in our spirits, compelling a silent sympathy with them, so some landscapes have a character of beauty which harmonizes thrillingly with the mood in which we look upon them, till we forget admiration in the glow of spontaneous attachment. They seem like abodes of the beautiful which the soul in its wanderings long ago visited and now recognizes and loves as the home of a forgotten dream. It was thus I felt by the fountains of Vaucluse; sadly and with weary steps I turned away, leaving its loneliness unbroken as before. We returned over the plain in the wind, under the gloomy sky, passed L'Isle at dusk, and after walking an hour with a rain following close behind us stopt at an auberge in Le Thor, where we rested our tired frames and broke our long day's fasting. We were greeted in the morning with a dismal rain and wet roads as we began the march. After a time, however, it poured down in such torrents that we were obliged to take shelter in a remise by the roadside, where a good woman who addrest us in the unintelligible Provençal kindled up a blazing fire. On climbing a long hill when the storm had abated, we experienced a delightful surprise. Below us lay the broad valley of the Rhone, with its meadows looking fresh and spring-like after the rain. The clouds were breaking away; clear blue sky was visible over Avignon, and a belt of sunlight lay warmly along the mountains of Languedoc. Many villages with their tall picturesque towers dotted the landscape, and the groves of green olive enlivened the barrenness of winter. The Pont du Gard--Aigues-Mortes-Nîmes By Henry James [Footnote: From "A Little Tour in France." By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin Co. Copyright, 1884.] It was a pleasure to feel one's self in Provence again--the land where the silver-gray earth is impregnated with the light of the sky. To celebrate the event, as soon as I arrived at Nîmes I engaged a calèche to convey me to the Pont du Gard. The day was yet young, and it was perfectly fair; it appeared well, for a longish drive, to take advantage, without delay, of such security. After I had left the town I became more intimate with that Provençal charm which I had already enjoyed from the window of the train, and which glowed in the sweet sunshine and the white rocks, and lurked in the smoke-puffs of the little olives. The olive-trees in Provence are half the landscape. They are neither so tall, so stout, nor so richly contorted as I have seen them beyond the Alps; but this mild colorless bloom seems the very texture of the country. The road from Nîmes, for a distance of fifteen miles, is superb; broad enough for an army, and as white and firm as a dinner-table. It stretches away over undulations which suggest a kind of harmony; and in the curves it makes through the wide, free country, where there is never a hedge or a wall, and the detail is always exquisite, there is something majestic, almost processional. You are very near (the Pont du Gard) before you see it; the ravine it spans suddenly opens and exhibits the picture. The scene at this point grows extremely beautiful. The ravine is the valley of the Garden, which the road from Nîmes has followed some time without taking account of it, but which, exactly at the right distance from the aqueduct, deepens and expands, and puts on those characteristics which are best suited to give it effect. The gorge becomes romantic, still, and solitary, and, with its white rocks and wild shrubbery, hangs over the clear, colored river, in whose slow course there is here and there a deeper pool. Over the valley, from side to side, and ever so high in the air, stretch the three tiers of the tremendous bridge. They are unspeakably imposing, and nothing could well be more Roman. The hugeness, the solidity, the unexpectedness, the monumental rectitude of the whole thing leave you nothing to say--at the time--and make you stand gazing. You simply feel that it is noble and perfect, that it has the quality of greatness. A road, branching from the highway, descends to the level of the river and passes under one of the arches. This road has a wide margin of grass and loose stones, which slopes upward into the bank of the ravine. You may sit here as long as you please, staring up at the light, strong piers; the spot is extremely natural, tho two or three stone benches have been erected on it. I remained there an hour and got a complete impression; the place was perfectly soundless, and for the time, at least, lonely; the splendid afternoon had begun to fade, and there was a fascination in the object I had come to see. It came to pass that at the same time I discovered in it a certain stupidity, a vague brutality. That element is rarely absent from great Roman work, which is wanting in the nice adaption of the means to the end. The means are always exaggerated; the end is so much more than attained. The Roman rigidity was apt to overshoot the mark, and I suppose a race which could do nothing small is as defective as a race that can do nothing great. Of this Roman rigidity the Pont du Gard is an admirable example. It would be a great injustice, however, not to insist upon its beauty--a kind of manly beauty, that of an object constructed not to please but to serve, and impressive simply from the scale on which it carries out this intention. The number of arches in each tier is different; they are smaller and more numerous as they ascend. The preservation of the thing is extraordinary; nothing has crumbled or collapsed; every feature remains; and the huge blocks of stone, of a brownish-yellow (as if they had been baked by the Provençal sun for eighteen centuries), pile themselves, without mortar or cement, as evenly as the day they were laid together. All this to carry the water of a couple of springs to a little provincial city! The conduit on the top has retained its shape and traces of the cement with which it was lined. When the vague twilight began to gather, the lonely valley seemed to fill itself with the shadow of the Roman name, as if the mighty empire were still as erect as the support of the aqueduct; and it was open to a solitary tourist, sitting there sentimental, to believe that no people has ever been, or will ever be, as great as that, measured, as we measure the greatness of an individual, by the push they gave to what they undertook. The Pont du Gard is one of the three or four deepest impressions they have left; it speaks of them in a manner with which they might have been satisfied.... On my way back to the little inn where I had left my vehicle, I passed the Pont du Gard, and took another look at it. Its great arches made windows for the evening sky, and the rocky ravine, with its dusky cedars and shining river, was lonelier than before. At the inn I swallowed, or tried to swallow, a glass of horrible wine with my coachman; after which, with my team, I drove back to Nîmes in the moonlight. It only added a more solitary whiteness to the constant sheen of the Provençal landscape. * * * * * The weather the next day was equally fair, so that it seemed an imprudence not to make sure of Aigues-Mortes. Nîmes itself could wait; at a pinch, I could attend to Nîmes in the rain. It was my belief that Aigues-Mortes was a little gem, and it is natural to desire that gems should have an opportunity to sparkle. This is an excursion of but a few hours, and there is a little friendly, familiar, dawdling train that will convey you, in time for a noonday breakfast, to the small dead town where the blest Saint Louis twice embarked for the crusades. You may get back to Nîmes for dinner; the run is of about an hour. I found the little journey charming, and looked out of the carriage window, on my right, at the distant Cévennes, covered with tones of amber and blue, and, all around, at vineyards red with the touch of October. The grapes were gone, but the plants had a color of their own. Within a certain distance of Aigues-Mortes they give place to wide salt-marshes, traversed by two canals; and over this expanse the train rumbles slowly upon a narrow causeway, failing for some time, tho you know you are near the object of your curiosity, to bring you to sight of anything but the horizon. Suddenly it appears, the towered and embattled mass, lying so low that the crest of its defences seems to rise straight out of the ground; and it is not till the train stops, close before them that you are able to take the full measure of its walls. Aigues-Mortes stands on the edge of a wide étang, or shallow inlet of the sea, the further side of which is divided by a narrow band of coast from the Gulf of Lyons. Next after Carcassonne, to which it forms an admirable pendant, it is the most perfect thing of the kind in France. It has a rival in the person of Avignon, but the ramparts of Avignon are much less effective. Like Carcassonne, it is completely surrounded with its old fortifications; and if they are far simpler in character (there is but one circle), they are quite as well preserved. The moat has been filled up, and the site of the town might be figured by a billiard-table without pockets. On this absolute level, covered with coarse grass, Aigues-Mortes presents quite the appearance of the walled town that a school-boy draws upon his slate, or that we see in the background of early Flemish pictures--a simple parallelogram, of a contour almost absurdly bare, broken at intervals by angular towers and square holes. Such, literally speaking, is this delightful little city, which needs to be seen to tell its full story. It is extraordinarily pictorial, and if it is a very small sister of Carcassonne, it has at least the essential features of the family. Indeed, it is even more like an image and less like a reality than Carcassonne; for by position and prospect it seems even more detached from the life of the present day. It is true that Aigues-Mortes does a little business; it sees certain bags of salt piled into barges which stand in a canal beside it, and which carry their cargo into actual places. But nothing could well be more drowsy and desultory than this industry as I saw it practised, with the aid of two or three brown peasants and under the eye of a solitary douanier who strolled on the little quay beneath the western wall. "C'est bien plaisant, c'est bien paisible," said this worthy man, with whom I had some conversation; and pleasant and peaceful is the place indeed, tho the former of these epithets may suggest an element of gayety in which Aigues-Mortes is deficient. The sand, the salt, the dull sea-view, surround it with a bright, quiet melancholy. There are fifteen towers and nine gates, five of which are on the southern side, overlooking the water. I walked all round the place three times (it doesn't take long), but lingered most under the southern wall, where the afternoon light slept in the dreamiest, sweetest way. I sat down on an old stone, and looked away to the desolate salt-marshes and still, shining surface of the étang; and, as I did so, reflected that this was a queer little out-of-the-world corner to have been chosen, in the great dominions of either monarch, for that pompous interview which took place, in 1538, between Francis I. and Charles V. It was also not easy to perceive how Louis IX., when in 1248 and 1270 he started for the Holy Land, set his army afloat in such very undeveloped channels. An hour later I purchased in the town a little pamphlet by M. Marius Topin, who undertakes to explain this latter anomaly, and to show that there is water enough in the port, as we may call it by courtesy, to have sustained a fleet of crusaders. I was unable to trace the channel that he points out, but was glad to believe that, as he contends, the sea has not retreated from the town since the thirteenth century. It was comfortable to think that things are not so changed as that. M. Topin indicates that the other French ports of the Mediterranean were not then "disponibles," and that Aigues-Mortes was the most eligible spot for an embarkation. Behind the straight walls and the quiet gates the little town has not crumbled, like the Cité of Carcassonne. It can hardly be said to be alive; but if it is dead it has been very neatly embalmed. The hand of the restorer rests on it constantly; but this artist has not, as at Carcassonne, had miracles to accomplish. The interior is very still and empty, with small stony, whitewashed streets, tenanted by a stray dog, a stray cat, a stray old woman. In the middle is a little place, with two or three cafés decorated by wide awnings--a little place of which the principal feature is a very bad bronze statue of Saint Louis by Pradier. It is almost as bad as the breakfast I had at the inn that bears the name of that pious monarch. You may walk round the enceinte of Aigues-Mortes, both outside and in; but you may not, as at Carcassonne, make a portion of this circuit on the chemin de ronde, the little projecting footway attached to the inner face of the battlements. This footway, wide enough only for a single pedestrian, is in the best order, and near each of the gates a flight of steps leads up to it; but a locked gate, at the top of the steps, makes access impossible, or at least unlawful. Aigues-Mortes, however, has its citadel, an immense tower, larger than any of the others, a little detached, and standing at the northwest angle of the town. I called upon the casernier--the custodian of the walls--and in his absence I was conducted through this big Tour de Constance by his wife, a very mild, meek woman, yellow with the traces of fever and ague--a scourge which, as might be expected in a town whose name denotes "dead waters," enters freely at the nine gates. The Tour de Constance is of extraordinary girth and solidity, divided into three superposed circular chambers, with very fine vaults, which are lighted by embrasures of prodigious depth, converging to windows little larger than loop-holes. The place served for years as a prison to many of the Protestants of the south whom the revocation of the Edict of Nantes had exposed to atrocious penalties, and the annals of these dreadful chambers during the first half of the last century were written in tears and blood. Some of the record cases of long confinement there make one marvel afresh at what man has inflicted and endured. In a country in which a policy of extermination was to be put into practise this horrible tower was an obvious resource. From the battlements at the top, which is surmounted by an old disused lighthouse, you see the little compact rectangular town, which looks hardly bigger than a garden-patch, mapped out beneath you, and follow the plain configuration of its defenses. You take possession of it, and you feel that you will remember it always. * * * * * In general Nîmes is poor; its only treasures are its Roman remains, which are of the first order. The new French fashions prevail in many of its streets; the old houses are paltry, and the good houses are new; while beside my hotel rose a big spick-and-span church, which had the oddest air of having been intended for Brooklyn or Cleveland.... What nobler ornament can there be than the Roman baths at the foot of Mont Cavalier, and the delightful old garden that surrounds them? All that quarter of Nîmes has every reason to be proud of itself; it has been revealed to the world at large by copious photography. A clear, abundant stream gushes from the foot of a high hill (covered with trees and laid out in paths), and is distributed into basins which sufficiently refer themselves to the period that gave them birth--the period that has left its stamp on that pompous Peyrou which we admired at Montpellier. Here are the same terraces and steps and balustrades, and a system of water-works less impressive, perhaps, but very ingenious and charming. The whole place is a mixture of old Rome and of the French eighteenth century; for the remains of the antique baths are in a measure incorporated in the modern fountains. In a corner of this umbrageous precinct stands a small Roman ruin, which is known as a temple of Diana, but was more apparently a nymphaeum, and appears to have had a graceful connection with the adjacent baths. I learn from Murray that this little temple, of the period of Augustus, "was reduced to its present state of ruin in 1577;" the moment at which the towns-people, threatened with a siege by the troops of the crown, partly demolished it, lest it should serve as a cover to the enemy. The remains are very fragmentary, but they serve to show that the place was lovely. I spent half an hour in it on a perfect Sunday morning (it is enclosed by a high grille, carefully tended, and has a warden of its own), and with the help of my imagination tried to reconstruct a little the aspect of things in the Gallo-Roman days. I do wrong, perhaps, to say that I tried; from a flight so deliberate I should have shrunk. But there was a certain contagion of antiquity in the air; and among the ruins of baths and temples, in the very spot where the aqueduct that crosses the Garden in the wondrous manner I had seen discharged itself, the picture of a splendid paganism seemed vaguely to glow. Roman baths--Roman baths; those words alone were a scene. Everything was changed; I was strolling in a jardin français; the bosky slope of the Mont Cavalier (a very modest mountain), hanging over the place, is crowded with a shapeless tower, which is as likely to be of medieval as of antique origin; and yet, as I leaned on the parapet of one of the fountains, where a flight of curved steps (a hemicycle, as the French say) descended into a basin full of dark, cool recesses, where the slabs of the Roman foundations gleam through the clear green water--as in this attitude I surrendered myself to contemplation and reverie, it seemed to me that I touched for a moment the ancient world. Such moments are illuminating, and the light of this one mingles, in my memory, with the dusky greenness of the Jardin de la Fontaine. The fountain proper--the source of all these distributed waters--is the prettiest thing in the world, a reduced copy of Vaucluse. It gushes up at the foot of the Mont Cavalier, at a point where that eminence rises with a certain cliff-like effect, and, like other springs in the same circumstances, appears to issue from the rock with a sort of quivering stillness. I trudge up the Mont Cavalier,--it is a matter of five minutes,--and having committed this cockneyism enhanced it presently by another. I ascended the stupid Tour Magne, the mysterious structure I mentioned a moment ago. The only feature of this dateless tube, except the inevitable collection of photographs to which you are introduced by the doorkeeper, is the view you enjoy from its summit. This view is, of course, remarkably fine but I am ashamed to say I have not the smallest recollection of it; for while I looked into the brilliant spaces of the air I seemed still to see only what I saw in the depths of the Roman baths--the image, disastrously confused and vague, of a vanished world. This world, however, has left at Nîmes a far more considerable memento than a few old stones covered with water-moss. The Roman arena is the rival of those of Verona and of Arles; at a respectful distance it emulates the Colosseum. It is a small Colosseum, if I may be allowed the expression, and is in a much better preservation than the great circus at Rome. This is especially true of the external walls, with their arches, pillars, cornices. I must add that one should not speak of preservation, in regard to the arena at Nîmes, without speaking also of repair. After the great ruin ceased to be despoiled, it began to be protected, and most of its wounds have been drest with new material. These matters concern the archeologist; and I felt here, as I felt afterward at Arles, that one of the profane, in the presence of such a monument, can only admire and hold his tongue. The great impression, on the whole, is an impression of wonder that so much should have survived. What remains at Nîmes, after all dilapidation is estimated, is astounding. I spent an hour in the Arènes on that same sweet Sunday morning, as I came back from the Roman baths, and saw that the corridors, the vaults, the staircases, the external casing, are still virtually there. Many of these parts are wanting in the Colosseum, whose sublimity of size, however, can afford to dispense with detail. The seats at Nîmes, like those at Verona, have been largely renewed; not that this mattered much, as I lounged on the cool surface of one of them, and admired the mighty concavity of the place and the elliptical sky-line, broken by uneven blocks and forming the rim of the monstrous cup--a cup that had been filled with horrors, and yet I made my reflections; I said to myself that tho a Roman arena is one of the most impressive of the works of man, it has a touch of that same stupidity which I ventured to discover in the Pont du Gard. It is brutal; it is monotonous; it is not at all exquisite. The Arènes at Nîmes were arranged for a bull-fight--a form of recreation that, as I was informed, is much dans les habitudes Nîmoises and very common throughout Provence, where (still according to my information) it is the usual pastime of a Sunday afternoon. At Arles and Nîmes it has a characteristic setting, but in the villages the patrons of the game make a circle of carts and barrels, on which the spectators perch themselves. I was surprised at the prevalence, in mild Provence, of the Iberian vice, and hardly know whether it makes the custom more respectable that at Nîmes and Arles the thing is shabbily and imperfectly done. The bulls are rarely killed, and indeed often are bulls only in the Irish sense of the term--being domestic and motherly cows. Such an entertainment of course does not supply to the arena that element of the exquisite which I spoke of as wanting. The exquisite at Nîmes is mainly represented by the famous Maison Carrée. The first impression you receive from this delicate little building, as you stand before it, is that you have already seen it many times. Photographs, engravings, models, medals, have placed it definitely in your eye, so that from the sentiment with which you regard it curiosity and surprise are almost completely, and perhaps deplorably absent. Admiration remains however--admiration of a familiar and even slightly patronizing kind. The Maison Carrée does not overwhelm you; you can conceive it. It is not one of the great sensations of antique art; but it is perfectly felicitous, and, in spite of having been put to all sorts of incongruous uses, marvelously preserved. Its slender columns, its delicate proportions, its charming compactness, seemed to bring one nearer to the century that built it than the great superpositions of arenas and bridges, and give it the interest that vibrates from one age to another when the note of taste is struck. If anything were needed to make this little toy-temple a happy production, the service would be rendered by the second-rate boulevard that conducts to it, adorned with inferior cafés and tobacco-shops. Here, in a respectable recess, surrounded by vulgar habitations, and with the theater, of a classic pretension, opposite, stands the small "square house," so called because it is much longer than it is broad. I saw it first in the evening, in the vague moonlight, which made it look as if it were cast in bronze. Stendhal says, justly, that it has the shape of a playing-card, and he expresses his admiration for it by the singular wish that an "exact copy" of it should be erected in Paris. He even goes as far as to say that in the year 1880 this tribute will have been rendered to its charms; nothing would be more simple, to his mind, than to "have" in that city "le Panthéon de Rome, quelques temples de Grèce." Stendhal found it amusing to write in the character of a commis-voyageur, and sometimes it occurs to his reader that he really was one. Arles and Les Baux By Henry James [Footnote: From "A Little Tour in France." By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin Co. Copyright, 1884.] There are two shabby old inns at Arles, which compete closely for your custom. I mean by this that if you elect to go to the Hôtel du Forum, the Hôtel du Nord, which is placed exactly beside it (at a right angle), watches your arrival with ill-concealed disapproval; and if you take the chances of its neighbor, the Hôtel du Forum seems to glare at you invidiously from all its windows and doors. I forget which of these establishments I selected; whichever it was, I wished very much that it had been the other. The two stand together on the Place des Hommes, a little public square of Arles, which somehow quite misses its effect. As a city, indeed, Arles quite misses its effect in every way; and if it is a charming place, as I think it is, I can hardly tell the reason why. The straight-nosed Arlésiennes account for it in some degree; and the remainder may be charged to the ruins of the arena and the theater. Beyond this, I remember with affection the ill-proportioned little Place des Hommes; not at all monumental, and given over to puddles and to shabby cafés. I recall with tenderness the tortuous and featureless streets, which looked like the streets of a village, and were paved with villainous little sharp stones, making all exercise penitential. Consecrated by association is even a tiresome walk that I took the evening I arrived, with the purpose of obtaining a view of the Rhone. I had been to Arles before, years ago, and it seemed to me that I remembered finding on the banks of the stream some sort of picture. I think that on the evening of which I speak there was a watery moon, which it seemed to me would light up the past as well as the present. But I found no picture, and I scarcely found the Rhone at all. I lost my way, and there was not a creature in the streets to whom I could appeal. Nothing could be more provincial than the situation of Arles at ten o'clock at night. At last I arrived at a kind of embankment, where I could see the great mud-colored stream slipping along in the soundless darkness. It had come on to rain, I know not what had happened to the moon, and the whole place was anything but gay. It was not what I had looked for; what I had looked for was in the irrecoverable past. I groped my way back to the inn over the infernal cailloux, feeling like a discomfited Dogberry. I remember now that this hotel was the one (whichever that may be) which has the fragment of a Gallo-Roman portico inserted into one of its angles. I had chosen it for the sake of this exceptional ornament. It was damp and dark, and the floors felt gritty to the feet; it was an establishment at which the dreadful "gras-double" might have appeared at the table d'hôte, as it had done at Narbonne. Nevertheless, I was glad to get back to it; and nevertheless, too--and this is the moral of my simple anecdote--my pointless little walk (I don't speak of the pavement) suffuses itself, as I look back upon it, with a romantic tone. And in relation to the inn, I suppose I had better mention that I am well aware of the inconsistency of a person who dislikes the modern caravansary, and yet grumbles when he finds a hotel of the superannuated sort, one ought to choose, it would seem, and make the best of either alternative. The two old taverns at Arles are quite unimproved; such as they must have been in the infancy of the modern world, when Stendhal passed that way, and the lumbering diligence deposited him in the Place des Hommes, such in every detail they are to-day. Vieilles auberges de France, one ought to enjoy their gritty floors and greasy windowpanes. Let it be put on record, therefore, that I have been, I won't say less comfortable, but at least less happy, at better inns. To be really historic, I should have mentioned that before going to look for the Rhone I had spent part of the evening on the opposite side of the little place, and that I indulged in this recreation for two definite reasons. One of these was that I had an opportunity of conversing at a café with an attractive young Englishman, whom I had met in the afternoon at Tarascon, and more remotely, in other years, in London; the other was that there sat enthroned behind the counter a splendid mature Arlésienne, whom my companion and I agreed that it was a rare privilege to comtemplate. There is no rule of good manners or morals which makes it improper, at a café to fix one's eyes upon the dame de comptoir; the lady is, in the nature of things, a part of your "consommation." We were therefore free to admire without restriction the handsomest person I had ever seen give change for a five-franc piece. She was a large quiet woman, who would never see forty again; of an intensely feminine type, yet wonderfully rich and robust, and full of a certain physical nobleness. Tho she was not really old, she was antique, and she was very grave, even a little sad. She had the dignity of a Roman empress, and she handled coppers as if they had been stamped with the head of Caesar. I have seen washerwomen in the Trastevere who were perhaps as handsome as she; but even the head-dress of the Roman contadina contributes less to the dignity of the person born to wear it than the sweet and stately Arlesian cap, which sits at once aloft and on the back of the head; which is accompanied with a wide black bow covering a considerable part of the crown; and which, finally, accomodates itself indescribably well to the manner in which the tresses of the front are pushed behind the ears. This admirable dispenser of lumps of sugar has distracted me a little; for I am still not sufficiently historical. Before going to the café I had dined, and before dining I had found time to go and look at the arena. Then it was that I discovered that Arles has no general physiognomy, and, except the delightful little church of Saint Trophimus, no architecture, and that the rugosities of its dirty lanes affect the feet like knife-blades. It was not then, on the other hand, that I saw the arena best. The second day of my stay at Arles I devoted to a pilgrimage to the strange old hill town of Les Baux, the medieval Pompeii, of which I shall give myself the pleasure of speaking. The evening of that day, however (my friend and I returned in time for a late dinner), I wandered among the Roman remains of the place by the light of a magnificent moon, and gathered an impression which has lost little of its silvery glow. The moon of the evening before had been aqueous and erratic; but if on the present occasion it was guilty of any irregularity, the worst it did was only to linger beyond its time in the heavens, in order to let us look at things comfortably. The effect was admirable; it brought back the impression of the way, in Rome itself, on evenings like that, the moonshine rests upon broken shafts and slabs of antique pavement. As we sat in the theater, looking at the two lone columns that survive--part of the decoration of the back of the stage--and at the fragments of ruin around them, we might have been in the Roman forum. The arena at Arles, with its great magnitude, is less complete than that at Nîmes; it has suffered even more the assaults of time and of the children of time, and it has been less repaired. The seats are almost wholly wanting; but the external walls, minus the topmost tier of arches, are massively, ruggedly complete; and the vaulted corridors seem as solid as the day they were built. The whole thing is superbly vast, and as monumental, for a place of light amusement--what is called in America a "variety-show"--as it entered only into the Roman mind to make such establishments. The podium is much higher than at Nîmes, and many of the great white slabs that faced it have been recovered and put into their places. The proconsular box has been more or less reconstructed, and the great converging passages of approach to it are still majestically distinct; so that, as I sat there in the moon-charm stillness, leaning my elbows on the battered parapet of the ring, it was not impossible to listen to the murmurs and shudders, the thick voice of the circus, that died away fifteen hundred years ago. The theater has a voice as well, but it lingers on the ear of time with a different music. The Roman theater at Arles seemed to me one of the most charming and touching ruins I had ever beheld; I took a particular fancy to it. It is less than a skeleton--the arena may be called a skeleton; for it consists only of half a dozen bones. The traces of the row of columns which formed the scene--the permanent back-scene--remain; two marble pillars--I just mentioned them--are upright, with a fragment of their entablature. Before them is the vacant space which was filled by the stage, with the line of the proscenium distinct, marked by a deep groove, imprest upon slabs of stone, which looks as if the bottom of a high screen had been intended to fit into it. The semicircle formed by the seats--half a cup--rises opposite; some of the rows are distinctly marked. The floor, from the bottom of the stage, in the shape of an arc of which the chord is formed by the line of the orchestra, is covered by slabs of colored marble--red, yellow, and green--which, tho terribly battered and cracked to-day, give one an idea of the elegance of the interior. Everything shows that it was on a great scale: the large sweep of its enclosing walls, the massive corridors that passed behind the auditorium, and of which we can still perfectly take the measure. The way in which every seat commanded the stage is a lesson to the architects of our epoch, as also the immense size of the place is a proof of extraordinary power of voice on the part of the Roman actors. It was after we had spent half an hour in the moonshine at the arena that we came on to this more ghostly and more exquisite ruin. The principal entrance was locked, but we effected an easy escalade, scaled a low parapet, and descended into the place behind the scenes. It was as light as day, and the solitude was complete. The two slim columns, as we sat on the broken benches, stood there like a pair of silent actors. What I called touching, just now was the thought that here the human voice, the utterance of a great language, had been supreme. The air was full of intonations and cadences; not of the echo of smashing blows, of riven armor, of howling victims and roaring beasts. The spot is, in short, one of the sweetest legacies of the ancient world; and there seems no profanation in the fact that by day it is open to the good people of Arles, who use it to pass, by no means, in great numbers, from one part of the town to the other; treading the old marble floor, and brushing, if need be, the empty benches. This familiarity does not kill the place again; it makes it, on the contrary, live a little--makes the present and the past touch each other. If I called Les Baux a city, it was not that I was stretching a point in favor of the small spot which to-day contains but a few dozen inhabitants. The history of the place is as extraodinary as its situation. It was not only a city, but a state; not only a state; but an empire; and on the crest of its little mountain called itself sovereign of a territory, or at least of scattered towns and counties, with which its present aspect is grotesquely out of relation. The lords of Les Baux, in a word, were great feudal proprietors; and there was a time during which the island of Sardinia, to say nothing of places nearer home, such as Arles and Marseilles, paid them homage. The chronicle of this old Provençal house has been written, in a style somewhat unctuous and flowery, by M. Jules Canonge. I purchased the little book--a modest pamphlet--at the establishment of the good sisters, just beside the church, in one of the highest part of Les Baux. The sisters have a school for the hardy little Baussenques, whom I heard piping their lessons, while I waited in the cold parlor for one of the ladies to come and speak to me. Nothing could have been more perfect than the manner of this excellent woman when she arrived; yet her small religious house seemed a very out-of-the-way corner of the world. It was spotlessly neat, and the rooms looked as if they had lately been papered and painted; in this respect, at the medieval Pompeii, they were rather a discord. They were, at any rate, the newest, freshest thing at Les Baux. I remember going round to the church, after I had left the good sisters, and to a little quiet terrace, which stands in front of it, ornamented with a few small trees and bordered with a wall, breast-high, over which you look down steep hillsides, off into the air and all about the neighboring country. I remember saying to myself that this little terrace was one of those felicitous nooks which the tourist of taste keeps in his mind as a picture. The church was small and brown and dark, with a certain rustic richness. All this however, is no general description of Les Baux. I am unable to give any coherent account of the place, for the simple reason that it is a mere confusion of ruin. It has not been preserved in lava like Pompeii, and its streets and houses, its ramparts and castle, have become fragmentary, not through the sudden destruction, but through the gradual withdrawal, of a population. It is not an extinguished, but a deserted city; more deserted far than even Carcassonne and Aigues-Mortes, where I found so much entertainment in the grass-grown element. It is of very small extent, and even in the days of its greatness, when its lords entitled themselves counts of Cephalonia and Neophantis, kings of Arles and Vienne, princes of Achaia, and emperors of Constantinople--even at this flourishing period, when, as M. Jules Canonge remarks, "they were able to depress the balance in which the fate of peoples and kings is weighed," the plucky little city contained at the most no more than thirty-six hundred souls. Yet its lords (who, however, as I have said, were able to present a long list of subject towns, most of them, tho a few are renowned, unknown to fame) were seneschals and captains-general of Piedmont and Lombardy, grand admirals of the kingdom of Naples, and its ladies were sought in marriage by half the first princes in Europe. A considerable part of the little narrative of M. Canonge is taken up with the great alliances of the House of Baux, whose fortunes, matrimonial and other, he traces from the eleventh century down to the sixteenth. The empty shells of a considerable number of old houses, many of which must have been superb, the lines of certain steep little streets, the foundations of a castle, and ever so many splendid views, are all that remains to-day of these great titles. To such a list I may add a dozen very polite and sympathetic people, who emerged from the interstices of the desultory little town to gaze at the two foreigners who had driven over from Arles, and whose horses were being baited at the modest inn. The resources of this establishment we did not venture otherwise to test, in spite of the seductive fact that the sign over the door was in the Provençal tongue. This little group included the baker, a rather melancholy young man, in high boots and a cloak, with whom and his companions we had a good deal of conversation. The Baussenques of to-day struck me as a very mild and agreeable race, with a good deal of the natural amenity which, on occasions like this one, the traveler, who is waiting for his horses to be put in or his dinner to be prepared, observes in the charming people who lend themselves to conversation in the hilltowns of Tuscany. The spot where our entertainers at Les Baux congregated was naturally the most inhabited portion of the town; as I say, there were at least a dozen human figures within sight. Presently we wandered away from them, scaled the higher places, seated ourselves among the ruins of the castle, and looked down from the cliff overhanging that portion of the road which I have mentioned as approaching Les Baux from behind. I was unable to trace the configuration of the castle as plainly as the writers who have described it in the guide-books, and I am ashamed to say that I did not even perceive the three great figures of stone (the three Marys, as they are called; the two Marys of Scripture, with Martha), which constitute one of the curiosities of the place, and of which M. Jules Canonge speaks with almost hyperbolical admiration. A brisk shower, lasting some ten minutes, led us to take refuge in a cavity, of mysterious origin, where the melancholy baker presently discovered us, having had the bonne pensée of coming up for us with an umbrella which certainly belonged, in former ages, to one of the Stéphanettes or Berangères commemorated by M. Canonge. His oven, I am afraid, was cold so long as our visit lasted. When the rain was over we wandered down to the little disencumbered space before the inn, through a small labyrinth of obliterated things. They took the form of narrow, precipitous streets, bordered by empty houses, with gaping windows and absent doors, through which we had glimpses of sculptured chimney-pieces and fragments of stately arch and vault. Some of the houses are still inhabited; but most of them are open to the air and weather. Some of them have completely collapsed; others present to the street a front which enables one to judge of the physiognomy of Les Baux in the days of its importance. This importance had pretty well passed away in the early part of the sixteenth century, when the place ceased to be an independent principality, It became--by request of one of its lords, Bernardin des Baux, a great captain of his time--part of the appanage of the kings of France, by whom it was placed under the protection of Arles, which had formerly occupied with regard to it a different position. I know not whether the Arlesians neglected their trust; but the extinction of the sturdy little stronghold is too complete not to have begun long ago. Its memories are buried under its ponderous stones. As ve drove away from it in the gloaming, my friend and I agreed that the two or three hours we had spent there were among the happiest impressions of a pair of tourists very curious in the picturesque. We almost forgot that we were bound to regret that the shortened day left us no time to drive five miles further, above a pass in the little mountains--it had beckoned to us in the morning, when we came in sight of it, almost irresistibly--to see the Roman arch and mausoleum of Saint Remy. To compass this larger excursion (including the visit to Les Baux) you must start from Arles very early in the morning; but I can imagine no more delightful day. IV Cathedrals and Chateaux Amiens By Nathaniel Hawthorne [Footnote: From "French and Italian Note Books." By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin Co. Copyright, 1871, 1883, 1889.] The aspect of the old French town was very different from anything English; whiter, infinitely cleaner; higher and narrower houses, the entrance to most of which seeming to be through a great gateway affording admission into a central court-yard; a public square, with a statue in the middle, and another statue in a neighboring street. We met priests in three-cornered hats, long frock-coats, and knee-breeches; also soldiers and gendarmes, and peasants and children, clattering over the pavements in wooden shoes. It makes a great impression of outlandishness to see the signs over the shop doors in a foreign tongue. If the cold had not been such as to dull my sense of novelty, and make all my perceptions torpid, I should have taken in a set of new impressions, and enjoyed them very much. As it was, I cared little for what I saw, but yet had life enough left to enjoy the Cathedral of Amiens, which has many features unlike those of English cathedrals. It stands in the midst of the cold, white town, and has a high-shouldered look to a spectator accustomed to the minsters of England, which cover a great space of ground in proportion to their height. The impression the latter give is of magnitude and mass; this French Cathedral strikes one as lofty. The exterior is venerable, tho but little time-worn by the action of the atmosphere; and statues still keep their places in numerous niches, almost as perfect as when first placed there in the thirteenth century. The principal doors are deep, elaborately wrought, pointed arches; and the interior seemed to us, at the moment, as grand as any that we had seen, and to afford as vast an idea of included space; it being of such an airy height, and with no screen between the chancel and nave, as in all the English cathedrals. We saw the differences, too, betwixt a church in which the same form of worship for which it was originally built is still kept up, and those of England, where it has been superseded for centuries; for here, in the recess of every arch of the side-aisles, beneath each lofty window, there was a chapel dedicated to some saint, and adorned with great marble sculptures of the crucifixion, and with pictures, execrably bad, in all cases, and various kinds of gilding and ornamentation. Immensely tall wax candles stand upon the altars of these chapels, and before one sat a woman, with a great supply of tapers, one of which was burning. I suppose these were to be lighted as offerings to the saints, by the true believers. Artificial flowers were hung at some of the shrines, or placed under glass. In every chapel, moreover, there was a confessional--a little oaken structure, about as big as a sentry-box, with a closed part for the priest to sit in, and an open one for the penitent to kneel at, and speak through the open-work of the priest's closet. Monuments, mural and others, to long-departed worthies, and images of the Savior, the Virgin, and saints, were numerous everywhere about the church; and in the chancel there was a great deal of quaint and curious sculpture, fencing in the Holy of Holies, where the high altar stands. There is not much painted glass; one or two very rich and beautiful rose-windows, however, that looked antique; and the great eastern window, which, I think, is modern. The pavement has, probably, never been renewed, as one piece of work, since the structure was erected, and is foot-worn by the successive generations, tho still in excellent repair. I saw one of the small, square stones in it, bearing the date of 1597, and no doubt there are a thousand older ones. Rouen By Thomas Frognall Dibdin [Footnote: From "A Bibliographical Tour in France and Germany."] The approach to Rouen is indeed magnificent. I speak of the immediate approach, after you reach the top of a considerable rise, and are stopt by the barriers. You then look down a straight, broad, and strongly paved road, lined with a double row of trees on each side. As the foliage was not thickly set, we could discern, through the delicately clothed branches, the tapering spire of the cathedral, and the more picturesque tower of the Abbaye St. Ouen--with hanging gardens, and white houses, to the left--covering a richly cultivated ridge of hills, which sink, as it were, into the Boulevards, and which is called the Faubourg Cauchoise. To the right, through the trees, you see the River Seine (here of no despicable depth or breadth), covered with boats and vessels in motion, the voice of commerce, and the stir of industry, cheering and animating you as you approach the town. I was told that almost every vessel which I saw (some of them of two hundred, and even of three hundred tons burden) was filled with brandy and wine.... First for the cathedral, for what traveler of taste does not doff his bonnet to the mother-church of the town through which he happens to be traveling, or in which he takes a temporary abode? The west front, always the forte of the architects's skill, strikes you as you go down, or come up, the principal street--La Rue des Carmes--which seems to bisect the town into equal parts. A small open space, which, however, has been miserably encroached upon by petty shops, called the Flower Gardens, is before this western front; so that it has some little breathing room in which to expand its beauties to the wondering eyes of the beholder. In my poor judgment, this western front has very few elevations comparable with it--including even those of Lincoln and York. The ornaments, especially upon the three porches, between the two towers, are numerous, rich, and for the greater part entire, in spite of the Calvinists, the French Revolution, and time. As you enter the cathedral, at the center door, by descending two steps, you are struck with the length and loftiness of the nave, and with the lightness of the gallery which runs along the upper part of it. Perhaps the nave is too narrow for its length. The lantern of the central large tower is beautifully light and striking. It is supported by four massive clustered pillars, about forty feet in circumference; but by casting your eye downward, you are shocked at the tasteless division of the choir from the nave by what is called a Grecian screen; and the interior of the transepts has undergone a like preposterous restoration. The rose windows of the transepts, and that at the west end of the nave, merit your attention and commendation. I could not avoid noticing, to the right, upon entrance, perhaps the oldest side chapel in the cathedral, of a date less ancient than that of the northern tower, and perhaps of the end of the twelfth century. It contains by much the finest specimens of stained glass--of the early part of the sixteenth century. There is also some beautiful stained glass on each side of the chapel of the Virgin, behind the choir; but altho very ancient, it is the less interesting, as not being composed of groups, or of historical subjects. Yet, in this as in almost all the churches which I have seen, frightful devastations have been made among the stained glass windows by the fury of the Revolutionists.... On gazing at this splendid monument of ancient piety and liberality--and with one's mind deeply intent upon the characters of the deceased--let us fancy we hear the sound of the great bell from the southwest tower--called the Amboise Tower--erected, both the bell and the tower, by the uncle and minister of Amboise. Know, my dear friend, that there was once a bell (and the largest in Europe, save one), which used to send forth its sound for three successive centuries from the said tower. This bell was broken about thirty years ago, and destroyed in the ravages of the immediately succeeding years. The southwest tower remains, and the upper part of the central tower, with the whole of the lofty wooden spire--the fruits of the liberality of the excellent men of whom such honorable mention has been made. Considering that this spire is very lofty, and composed of wood, it is surprising that it has not been destroyed by tempest or by lightning. Leaving the cathedral, you pass a beautifully sculptured fountain, of the early time of Francis I., which stands at the corner of the street, to the right; and which, from its central situation, is visited the livelong day for the sake of its limpid waters. Push on a little further, then, turning to the right, you get into a sort of square, and observe the abbey--or rather the west front of it--full in face of you. You gaze, and are first struck with its matchless window: call it rose, or marigold, as you please. I think, for delicacy and richness of ornament, this window is perfectly unrivaled. There is a play of line in the mullions, which, considering their size and strength, may be pronounced quite a masterpiece of art. You approach, regretting the neglected state of the lateral towers, and enter through the large and completely opened center doors, the nave of the abbey. It was toward sunset when we made our first entrance. The evening was beautiful; and the variegated tints of sunbeam, admitted through the stained glass of the window, just noticed, were perfectly enchanting. The window itself, as you look upward, or rather as you fix your eye upon the center of it, from the remote end of the abbey, or the Lady's Chapel, was a perfect blaze of dazzling light; and nave, choir, and side aisles seemed magically illumined. We declared instinctively that the Abbey of St. Ouen could hardly have a rival--certainly not a superior. Let me, however, put in a word for the organ. It is immense, and perhaps larger than that belonging to the cathedral. The tin pipes (like those of the organ in the cathedral) are of their natural color. I paced the pavement beneath, and think that this organ can not be short of forty English feet in length. Indeed, in all the churches which I have yet seen, the organs strike me as being of magnificent dimensions. You should be informed, however, that the extreme length of the interior, from the further end of the chapel of the Virgin, to its opposite western extremity, is about four hundred and fifty English feet; while the height, from the pavement to the roof of the nave, or the choir, is one hundred and eight English feet. The transepts are about one hundred and forty feet in length. The central tower, upon the whole, is not only the grandest tower in Rouen, but there is nothing for its size in our own country that can compare with it. It rises upward of one hundred feet above the roof of the church; and is supported below, or rather within, by four magnificent cluster-pillared bases, each about thirty-two feet in circumference. Its area, at bottom, can hardly be less than thirty-six feet square. The choir is flanked by flying buttresses, which have a double tier of small arches, altogether "marvelous and curious to behold." I could not resist stealing quietly round to the porch of the south transept, and witnessing, in that porch, one of the most chaste, light, and lovely specimens of Gothic architecture which can be contemplated. Indeed, I hardly know anything like it. The leaves of the poplar and ash were beginning to mantle the exterior; and, seen through their green and gay lattice work, the traceries of the porch seemed to assume a more interesting aspect. They are now mending the upper part of the façade with new stone of peculiar excellence--but it does not harmonize with the old work. They merit our thanks, however, for the preservation of what remains of this precious pile. I should remark to you that the eastern and northeastern sides of the abbey of St. Ouen are surrounded with promenades and trees: so that, occasionally, either when walking or sitting upon the benches, within these gardens, you catch one of the finest views imaginable of the abbey. Chartres By Epiphanius Wilson [Footnote: From "The Cathedrals of France." By permission of the author. Copyright, 1900.] For many a mile over the rich cornfields of Beauce, of which ancient district Chartres was once the capital, the spires of Chartres are visible. The river and the hill constitute at Chartres the basis of its strength in long-forgotten warfare; its walls in piping times of peace have been leveled into leafy boulevards, but it may still be entered through one of the antique gates that survive as memorials of its former fortifications. The cathedral itself is one of that group to which belong Amiens, Rheims, Bourges and Notre Dame de Paris. It is noted for its size, magnificence and completeness, and contains in itself, from its crypt to its highest stone, an exemplification of architectural history in France from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries. We may suppose that Christianity was first published in the Beauce province by the same apostles, Savinienus and Potentienius, who had evangelized Sens and the Senones. Their disciple, Aventin (Aventinus), is recognized as the first Bishop of Chartres, and as the builder of the first cathedral which stood on the site of the present building.... The naves, the north and south transept portals, and the choir belong to the thirteenth century, the north tower to the fifteenth, and the magnificent jubé, or screen, which runs round the choir, is evidently sixteenth century style, being an example of that Renaissance employment of Gothic details, of which we find such glorious counterparts at Rouen and Albi. The western façade of Chartres is plain in comparison with those of Amiens or Rheims. The voussures of the three central portals are comparatively shallow. Above them are three lancet windows which resemble windows of the Early English Style. The rose-window, beneath which the lancets are placed, is of great dimensions and effective tracery. The highest story of the front between the towers is screened by a rich arcade, over which rises the gable point. This arcade, or gallery, is intended to break the abruptness with which the pointed roof rises between the two spires. These spires are different in design, the southern tower being much earlier than that at the north. The southern spire, in its austere simplicity and exquisite proportions, is certainly the finest I have seen in France, and can only be paralleled elsewhere by that which rises like a flower-bud almost ready to burst over Salisbury plain. The northern tower is very much more elaborate, and reminded me of those examples with which the traveler becomes so familiar in the many churches of Rouen. The richly crocketed gables, the flying buttresses and pinnacles which run half way up this spire, while they adorn it, seem to stunt the profile and rob it of its towering altitude, just as is the case with the western spires of St. Ouen. Yet this northern tower is considerably higher than the ancient one at the south, being 374 feet high, while the more ancient spire is only 348. The other dimensions of the church are as follows: It is 420 feet long; 110 feet wide; its height from ceiling vault to pavement is 115 feet. The modern tower was built by Louis XII. in 1514, the architect being an inhabitant of Beauce, a certain Jean Texier. The carvings in the west front of the cathedral are examples of the beginning of French sculpture, as it emerges from the severity and rigidity of Byzantine types. The human figures are long, slender, and swathed almost like mummies in their drapery. The faces are strongly individualized and seem to be portraits. While these statues must be attributed to a period previous to the middle of the twelfth century, we see in them the originality of French genius struggling to break away from the fetters of Eastern precedent. Viollet-de-Duc thinks that these faces belong to the type of the ancient Gaul; the flat forehead and raised arch of the eyebrows, the projecting eyes, the long jaws, the peaked and drooping nose, the long upper lip, the wide, closed mouth, the square chin, the long wavy hair are neither German, Roman, or French. There is a blending of firmness, grandeur and refinement in these wonderful countenances, each of them apparently copied from a different model. They are crowned and nimbused as the kings and saints of antique France. A more impressive gallery of illustrious personages is nowhere else to be found. Rheims By Epiphanius Wilson [Footnote: From "The Cathedrals of France." By permission of the author. Copyright, 1900.] French cathedrals have, as it were, a royal character, and this is emphasized especially in the history and architecture of Rheims cathedral, which became, from the time of Philippe Auguste, the church at whose altar the kings of France were crowned. The origin of the Church at Rheims dates from the third century; when we are told Pope Fabian sent into Gaul a band of bishops and teachers. Rheims was chosen as the seat of an episcopal primacy, and it was in the church built by St. Nicaise, or Nicasius, in 401, that Clovis was baptized and crowned in 496. This ancient building, doubtless of simple Roman proportions, was rebuilt in the reign of Louis the Debonair in 822, when Ebon was archbishop. It was completed with a magnificence which vied with the churches of Constantinople, Ravenna and Rome. It was considered in its day the most splendid church in France. Its roof and walls blazed with gilding and many-tinted paintings. Its floors were of marble mosaic. Rich tapestries hung round the choir, and its treasury was filled with masterpieces of the goldsmith and the jeweler. This church continued to be the wonder of Gallic Christianity until the beginning of the thirteenth century, when it was destroyed by fire. It is remarkable to notice in the history of French cathedrals how many of them were rebuilt just at the time when the pointed style, which may be called preeminently the Christian style of architecture, had come to birth almost simultaneously in various countries of Europe. We are obliged to come to the conclusion that the pointed arch was introduced in Germany, France and England by the Crusaders, who had seen it used in the East, and had considered it best fitted for buildings that enshrined the sublime mysteries of the Christian faith. It was in the pointed style, therefore, that the new cathedral of Rheims was built. The name of its architect is not known, but his plan shows that he must have been a man of profound genius. Archbishop Alberic Humbert laid the foundation stone in 1212. The whole province contributed liberally to the work, and in 1242 the building was sufficiently advanced for the celebration of divine service in the choir. The Church of Notre Dame of Rheims would require a volume to describe it completely. The front is perhaps the most elaborate to be found in France. The three vast portals, peopled with statues of colossal size, their arched vaulting covered with saintly and angelic figures, the mighty rose-windows, flanked with pointed openings, crowned with carved tabernacle work, and the great gallery of kings crossing the whole front, just below the peak of the gable, and above all, the two towers pierced by majestic windows and supported at each corner by niches with three open faces, give an impression of richness and brightness and grace, mingled with that indefinable majesty, which is due partly to the vast dimensions, partly to the harmonious proportions of the whole structure. The divisions of the front façade resemble somewhat the same part of the edifice at Amiens, excepting that it is far more florid, and less strict and severe in its main divisions. At Amiens the details are kept in strictest subservience to the structural lines of the edifice. At Rheims it is the magnificent wealth of details that crowds upon the view, the walls and arches are surcharged with statues, with niches, with brackets, pinnacles, tracery, foliage, finials and turrets. The sides of the entrances of the three portals are crowded with colossal statues, thirty-nine in number, representing patriarchs, prophets, kings, bishops, virgins and martyrs. On the trumeau of the central gate is a fine statue of the Virgin Mary; on the sides of this trumeau are bas-reliefs representing the Fall of Man, of whose restoration Mary should be the instrument. It is quite characteristic of a medieval church that we should find, on the lintels and side-posts of these doorways, emblems of agricultural work in the various seasons of the year, as well as different symbols of arts and handicrafts. Amid the carvings of these doorways are the heroes and saints of the Old Testament, types and forerunners of the Messiah, as well as historic scenes, representing the Redemption of the World, the Conversion of the Gentiles, the Resurrection of the Dead, the Last Judgment, the Condemnation of the Wicked, the Reception of the Just into the habitations of the blest. Finally, the Assumption and Coronation of the Blessed Virgin sums up, with an imaginative legend, this series of Christian dogma perpetuated in stone. But the medieval genius is many-sided, and never satisfied with that which is beautiful alone; and this magnificent array of Christian carving would not be complete to the mind of the medieval artist unless he had crowned the angles of his buildings with a series of grotesque gargoyles and allegoric statues, representing the streams that watered the earthly paradise, while at the summit of the roof are niched angles bearing instruments of music. As the rose is a peculiarity of Gothic churches, and from its remarkable shape gives ample room for sculpture in stone, and color in glass, so the rose at Rheims is among the most beautiful examples of the kind, and illustrates the principle that the rose is intended to light up high, remote and shadowy spaces in a long nave or aisle. Above the great rose-window is a pointed arch in whose voussures are ten statues, relating the history of David, while over this arch runs a band of niches, forty-two in number, in which are colossal statues of the kings of France from Clovis to Charles VI. The two portals of the transepts are richly decorated in harmony with the style of the western façade. A graceful spire rises from the eastern part of the roof. It is called "The Angel's spire," from the fact that poised upon its summit is an angel covered with gilt and holding aloft a cross. This turret rises 59 feet above the roof of the church. The church itself is 486 feet in length, and from the vaulting of the roof to the pavement is 125 feet. The towers are 272 feet high. I noticed the church is built in the form of a cross, but the transept is very close to the apse, so that the choir being too confined for the great ceremonies, such as that of royal coronations, which used to take place there, has been extended westward across the transept so as to take up three bays of the nave. There are seven chapels at the east of the church, but none are found in the naves. The plainness of the nave, in comparison with the ornate character of the exterior, is very remarkable, but this plainness detracts nothing from the impressiveness of its long arcades, its towering roof, the noble lines which rise from the ground and support, as it were, on slender sinews of stone, the shadowy ceiling. The rose-windows, four in number, are filled with glass of the thirteenth century, and the tall windows of the chevet and clerestory contain a many colored mosaic of a similar sort. I was particularly struck with the rose-window over the western portal. It represents the Beautiful Vision; the Eternal Father is throned in the central ring of the window, and in the radiating panes is the Hierarchy of Paradise, angels and archangels and all the company of Heaven, while in a wider circumference are grouped the redeemed, contemplating in adoration the majesty of God. I noticed two very interesting tombs in Rheims cathedral. The first was the sarcophagus of Jovinus, the Christian prefect of Rheims, in the fourth century, who protected the church and was originally buried in the Abbey of St. Nicaise, from whence his tomb was brought to the cathedral. It consists of a single block of snowy marble, nine feet long, and four feet high, on which the consular general is represented in a spirited bas-relief mounted on horseback and saving the life of a man from the lion, in whose flank Jovinus has launched his spear. Very fine indeed is the workmanship of this monument. The figures which surround Jovinus are men of handsome countenance, evidently portraits, their dress and arms being finished with the utmost nicety of detail. The figures are about half life-size. The other tomb is that of St. Remigius, a Renaissance work erected by Cardinal Delenoncourt in 1533. It is sumptuous and gaudy rather than beautiful. Twelve statues, full life-size, represent the twelve peers of France, six are the prelates of Rheims, Laon, Langres, Beauvais, Chalons, and Noyon; the six lay peers are the dukes of Burgundy, Normandy and Aquitaine, and the counts of Flanders, Champagne, and Toulouse. The white marble of these somewhat stagey figures is beautifully worked and the effect is imposing. The western wall of the interior is faced with niches, in which the statues seem to emerge from a cloud of gloom. At one time tombs of the most magnificent sort crowded the aisles, enshrining the relics of saints and bishops, but during the raging of the Terror the Revolutionists violated these tombs, seizing their treasures, breaking down with ax and hammer their carvings. But, after all, the church of Notre Dame of Rheims does not seem to have suffered very much loss from the clearing away of these obstructions to the vista of her arcades, which now depend for their solemn beauty upon the simplicity and dignity of their lines and proportions, the effect of their windows, and the religious gloom which lingers in their lofty recesses. 
8594	----	Team NORMANDY: THE SCENERY & ROMANCE OF ITS ANCIENT TOWNS: DEPICTED BY GORDON HOME Part 2. CHAPTER IV Concerning the Cathedral City of Evreux and the Road to Bernay The tolling of the deep-toned bourdon in the cathedral tower reverberates over the old town of Evreux as we pass along the cobbled streets. There is a yellow evening light overhead, and the painted stucco walls of the houses reflect the soft, glowing colour of the west. In the courtyard of the Hotel du Grand Cerf, too, every thing is bathed in this beautiful light and the double line of closely trimmed laurels has not yet been deserted by the golden flood. But Evreux does not really require a fine evening to make it attractive, although there is no town in existence that is not improved under such conditions. With the magnificent cathedral, the belfry, the Norman church of St Taurin and the museum, besides many quaint peeps by the much sub-divided river Iton that flows through the town, there is sufficient to interest one even on the dullest of dull days. Of all the cathedral interiors in Normandy there are none that possess a finer or more perfectly proportioned nave than Evreux, and if I were asked to point out the two most impressive interiors of the churches in this division of France I should couple the cathedral at Evreux with St Ouen at Rouen. It was our own Henry I. who having destroyed the previous building set to work to build a new one and it is his nave that we see to-day. The whole cathedral has since that time been made to reflect the changing ideals of the seven centuries that have passed. The west front belongs entirely to the Renaissance period and the north transept is in the flamboyant style of the fifteenth century so much in evidence in Normandy and so infrequent in England. The central tower with its tall steeple now encased in scaffolding was built in 1470 by Cardinal Balue, Bishop of Evreux and inventor of the fearful wooden cages in one of which the prisoner Dubourg died at Mont St Michel. In most of the windows there is old and richly coloured glass; those in the chancel have stronger tones, but they all transform the shafts of light into gorgeous rainbow effects which stand out in wonderful contrast to the delicate, creamy white of the stone-work. Pale blue banners are suspended in the chancel, and the groining above is coloured on each side of the bosses for a short distance, so that as one looks up the great sweep of the nave, the banners and the brilliant fifteenth century glass appear as vivid patches of colour beyond the uniform, creamy grey on either side. The Norman towers at the west end of the cathedral are completely hidden in the mask of classical work planted on top of the older stone-work in the sixteenth century, and more recent restoration has altered some of the other features of the exterior. At the present day the process of restoration still goes on, but the faults of our grandfathers fortunately are not repeated. Leaving the Place Parvis by the Rue de l'Horloge you come to the great open space in front of the Hotel de Ville and the theatre with the museum on the right, in which there are several Roman remains discovered at Vieil-Evreux, among them being a bronze statue of Jupiter Stator. On the opposite side of the Place stands the beautiful town belfry built at the end of the fifteenth century. There was an earlier one before that time, but I do not know whether it had been destroyed during the wars with the English, or whether the people of Evreux merely raised the present graceful tower in place of the older one with a view to beautifying the town. The bell, which was cast in 1406 may have hung in the former structure, and there is some fascination in hearing its notes when one realises how these same sound waves have fallen on the ears of the long procession of players who have performed their parts within its hearing. A branch of the Iton runs past the foot of the tower in canal fashion; it is backed by old houses and crossed by many a bridge, and helps to build up a suitable foreground to the beautiful old belfry, which seems to look across to the brand new Hotel de Ville with an injured expression. From the Boulevard Chambaudouin there is a good view of one side of the Bishop's palace which lies on the south side of the cathedral, and is joined to it by a gallery and the remains of the cloister. The walls are strongly fortified, and in front of them runs a branch of one of the canals of the Iton, that must have originally served as a moat. Out towards the long straight avenue that runs out of the town in the direction of Caen, there may be seen the Norman church of St Taurin. It is all that is left of the Benedictine abbey that once stood here. Many people who explore this interesting church fail to see the silver-gilt reliquary of the twelfth century that is shown to visitors who make the necessary inquiries. The richness of its enamels and the elaborate ornamentation studded with imitation gems that have replaced the real ones, makes this casket almost unique. Many scenes from the life of the saint are shown in the windows of the choir of the church. They are really most interesting, and the glass is very beautiful. The south door must have been crowded with the most elaborate ornament, but the delicately carved stone-work has been hacked away and the thin pillars replaced by crude, uncarved chunks of stone. There is Norman arcading outside the north transept as well as just above the floor in the north aisle. St Taurin is a somewhat dilapidated and cob-webby church, but it is certainly one of the interesting features of Evreux. Instead of keeping on the road to Caen after reaching the end of the great avenue just mentioned, we turn towards the south and soon enter pretty pastoral scenery. The cottages are almost in every instance thatched, with ridges plastered over with a kind of cobb mud. In the cracks in this curious ridging, grass seeds and all sorts of wild flowers are soon deposited, so that upon the roof of nearly every cottage there is a luxuriant growth of grass and flowers. In some cases yellow irises alone ornament the roofs, and they frequently grow on the tops of the walls that are treated in a similar fashion. A few miles out of Evreux you pass a hamlet with a quaint little church built right upon the roadway with no churchyard or wall of any description. A few broken gravestones of quite recent date litter the narrow, dusty space between the north side of the church and the roadway. Inside there is an untidy aspect to everything, but there are some windows containing very fine thirteenth century glass which the genial old cure shows with great delight, for it is said that they were intended for the cathedral at Evreux, but by some chance remained in this obscure hamlet. The cure also points out the damage done to the windows by _socialistes_ at a recent date. By the roadside towards Conches, there are magpies everywhere, punctuated by yellow hammers and nightingales. The cottages have thatch of a very deep brown colour over the hipped roofs, closely resembling those in the out-of-the-way parts of Sussex. It a beautiful country, and the delightfully situated town of Conches at the edge of its forest is well matched with its surroundings. In the middle of the day the inhabitants seem to entirely disappear from the sunny street, and everything has a placid and reposeful appearance as though the place revelled in its quaintness. Backed by the dense masses of forest there is a sloping green where an avenue of great chestnuts tower above the long, low roof of the timber-framed cattle shelter. On the highest part of the hill stands the castle, whose round, central tower shows above the trees that grow thickly on the slopes of the hill. Close to the castle is the graceful church, and beyond are the clustered roofs of the houses. A viaduct runs full tilt against the hill nearly beneath the church, and then the railway pierces the hill on its way towards Bernay. The tall spire of the church of St Foy is comparatively new, for the whole structure was rebuilt in the fifteenth century, but its stained glass is of exceptional interest. Its richness of colour and the interest of the subjects indicate some unusually gifted artist, and one is not surprised to discover that they were designed by Aldegrevers, who was trained by that great master Albrecht Dyrer. Altogether there are twenty-one of these beautiful windows. Seven occupy the eastern end of the apse and give scenes taken from the life of St Foy. You can reach the castle by passing through the quaint archway of the Hotel de Ville, and then passing through the shady public garden you plunge into the dry moat that surrounds the fortified mound. There is not very much to see but what appears in a distant view of the town, and in many ways the outside groupings of the worn ruin and the church roofs and spire above the houses are better than the scenes in the town itself. The Hotel Croix Blanche is a pleasant little house for dejeuner. Everything is extremely simple and typical of the family methods of the small French inn, where excellent cooking goes along with many primitive usages. The cool salle-a-manger is reached through the general living-room and kitchen, which is largely filled with the table where you may see the proprietor and his family partaking of their own meals. There seems no room to cook anything at all, and yet when you are seated in the next room the daughter of the family, an attractive and neatly dressed girl, gracefully serves the most admirable courses, worthy and perhaps better than what one may expect to obtain in the best hotel in Rouen. There is a road that passes right through the forest of Conches towards Rugles, but that must be left for another occasion if we are to see anything of the charms of Beaumont-le-Roger, the perfectly situated little town that lies half-way between Conches and Bernay. The long street of the town containing some very charming peeps as you go towards the church is really a terrace on the limestone hills that rises behind the houses on the right, and falls steeply on the left. Spaces between the houses and narrow turnings give glimpses of the rich green country down below. From the lower level you see the rocky ridge above clothed in a profusion of trees. The most perfect picture in the town is from the river bank just by the bridge. In the foreground is the mirror-like stream that gives its own rendering of the scene that is built up above it. Leaning upon a parapet of the bridge is a man with a rod who is causing tragedies in the life that teems beneath the glassy surface. Beyond the bridge appear some quaint red roofs with one tower-like house with an overhanging upper storey. Higher up comes the precipitous hill divided into terraces by the huge walls that surround the abbey buildings, and still higher, but much below the highest part of the hill, are the picturesque ruins of the abbey. On the summit of the ridge dominating all are the insignificant remains of the castle built by Roger a la Barbe, whose name survives in that of the town. His family were the founders of the abbey that flourished for several centuries, but finally, about a hundred years ago, the buildings were converted to the uses of a factory! Spinning and weaving might have still been going on but for a big fire that destroyed the whole place. There was, however, a considerably more complete series of buildings left than we can see to-day, but scarcely more than fifty years ago the place was largely demolished for building materials. The view from the river Rille is therefore the best the ruin can boast, for seen from that point the arches rise up against the green background as a stately ruin, and the tangled mass of weeds and debris are invisible. The entrance is most inviting. It is down at the foot of the cliff, and the archway with the steep ascent inside suggests all sorts of delights beyond, as it stands there just by the main street of the town. I was sorry afterwards, that I had accepted that hospitality, for with the exception of a group of merry children playing in an orchard and some big caves hollowed out of the foot of the cliff that rises still higher, I saw nothing but a jungle of nettles. This warning should not, however, suggest that Beaumont-le-Roger is a poor place to visit. Not only is it a charming, I may say a fascinating spot to visit, but it is also a place in which to stay, for the longer you remain there the less do you like the idea of leaving. The church of St Nicholas standing in the main street where it becomes much wider and forms a small Place, is a beautiful old building whose mellow colours on stone-work and tiles glow vividly on a sunny afternoon. There is a great stone wall forming the side of the rocky platform that supports the building and the entrance is by steps that lead up to the west end. The tower belongs to the flamboyant period and high up on its parapet you may see a small statue of Regulus who does duty as a "Jack-smite-the-clock." Just by the porch there leans against a wall a most ponderous grave slab which was made for the tomb of Jehan du Moustier a soldier of the fourteenth century who fought for that Charles of Navarre who was surnamed "The Bad." The classic additions to the western part of the church seem strangely out of sympathy with the gargoyles overhead and the thirteenth century arcades of the nave, but this mixing up of styles is really more incongruous in description than in reality. When you have decided to leave Beaumont-le-Roger and have passed across the old bridge and out into the well-watered plain, the position of the little town suggests that of the village of Pulborough in Sussex, where a road goes downhill to a bridge and then crosses the rich meadowland where the river Arun winds among the pastures in just the same fashion as the Rille. At a bend in the road to Bernay stands the village of Serquigny. It is just at the edge of the forest of Beaumont which we have been skirting, and besides having a church partially belonging to the twelfth century it has traces of a Roman Camp. All the rest of the way to Bernay the road follows the railway and the river Charentonne until the long--and when you are looking out for the hotel--seemingly endless street of Bernay is reached. After the wonderful combination of charms that are flaunted by Beaumont-le-Roger it is possible to grumble at the plainer features of Bernay, but there is really no reason to hurry out of the town for there is much quaint architecture to be seen, and near the Hotel du Lion d'Or there is a house built right over the street resting on solid wooden posts. But more interesting than the domestic architecture are the remains of the abbey founded by Judith of Brittany very early in the eleventh century for it is probably one of the oldest Romanesque remains in Normandy. The church is cut up into various rooms and shops at the choir end, and there has been much indiscriminate ill-treatment of the ancient stone-work. Much of the structure, including the plain round arches and square columns, is of the very earliest Norman period, having been built in the first half of the eleventh century, but in later times classic ornament was added to the work of those shadowy times when the kingdom of Normandy had not long been established. So much alteration in the styles of decoration has taken place in the building that it is possible to be certain of the date of only some portions of the structure. The Hotel de Ville now occupies part of the abbey buildings. At the eastern side of the town stands St Croix, a fifteenth century church with a most spacious interior. There is much beautiful glass dating from three hundred years ago in the windows of the nave and transepts, but perhaps the feature which will be remembered most when other impressions have vanished, will be the finely carved statues belonging to the fourteenth century which were brought here from the Abbey of Bec. The south transept contains a monument to Guillaume Arvilarensis, an abbot of Bec who died in 1418. Upon the great altar which is believed to have been brought from the Abbey of Bec, there are eight marble columns surrounding a small white marble figure of the Child Jesus. Another church at Bernay is that of Notre Dame de la Couture. It has much fourteenth century work and behind the high altar there are five chapels, the centre one containing a copy of the "sacred image" of Notre Dame which stands by the column immediately to the right of the entrance. Much more could be said of these three churches with their various styles of architecture extending from the very earliest period down to the classic work of the seventeenth century. But this is not the place for intricate descriptions of architectural detail which are chiefly useful in books which are intended for carrying from place to place. CHAPTER V Concerning Lisieux and the Romantic Town of Falaise Lisieux is so rich in the curious timber-framed houses of the middle and later ages that there are some examples actually visible immediately outside the railway station whereas in most cases one usually finds an aggregation of uninteresting modern buildings. As you go towards the centre of the town the old houses, which have only been dotted about here and there, join hands and form whole streets of the most romantic and almost stage-like picturesqueness. The narrow street illustrated here is the Rue aux Fevres. Its houses are astonishingly fine, and it forms--especially in the evening--a background suitable for any of the stirring scenes that took place in such grand old towns as Lisieux in medieval days. This street is however, only one of several that reek of history. In the Rue des Boucheries and in the Grande Rue there are lovely overhanging gables and curious timber-framing that is now at any angle but what was originally intended. There is really so much individual quaintness in these houses that they deserve infinitely more than the scurry past them which so frequently is all their attractions obtain. The narrowness and fustiness of the Rue aux Fevres certainly hinder you from spending much time in examining the houses but there are two which deserve a few minutes' individual attention. One which has a very wide gable and the upper floors boarded is believed to be of very great antiquity, dating from as early a period as the thirteenth century. It is numbered thirty-three, and must not be confused with the richly ornamented Manoir de Francois I. The timber work of this house, especially of the two lower floors is covered with elaborate carving including curious animals and quaint little figures, and also the salamander of the royal house. For this reason the photographs sold in the shops label the house "Manoir de la Salamandre." The place is now fast going to ruin--a most pitiable sight and I for one, would prefer to see the place restored rather than it should be allowed to become so hopelessly dilapidated and rotten that the question of its preservation should come to be considered lightly. If the town authorities of Lisieux chose to do so, they could encourage the townsfolk to enrich many of their streets by a judicious flaking off of the plaster which in so many cases tries to hide all the pleasant features of houses that have seen at least three centuries, but this sort of work when in the hands of only partially educated folk is liable to produce a worse state of affairs than if things had been left untouched. An example of what over-restoration can do, may be seen when we reach the beautiful old inn at Dives. The two churches of Lisieux are well fitted to their surroundings, and although St Jacques has no graceful tower or fleche, the quaintness of its shingled belfry makes up for the lack of the more stately towers of St Pierre. Where the stone-work has stopped short the buttresses are roofed with the quaintest semi-circular caps, and over the clock there are two more odd-looking pepper boxes perched upon the steep slope that projects from the square belfry. Over all there is a low pyramidal roof, stained with orange lichen and making a great contrast in colour to the weather-beaten stone-work down below. There are small patches of tiled roofing to the buttresses at the western ends of the aisles and these also add colour to this picturesque building. The great double flight of stone steps which lead to the imposing western door have balustrades filled with flamboyant tracery, but although the church is built up in this way, the floor in the interior is not level, for it slopes gently up towards the east. The building was commenced during the reign of Louis XII. and not finished until nearly the end of the reign of Francois I. It is therefore coeval with that richly carved house in the Rue aux Fevres. Along the sides of the church there project a double row of thirsty-looking gargoyles--the upper ones having their shoulders supported by the mass of masonry supporting the flying buttresses. The interior is richer than the exterior, and you may see on some of the pillars remains of sixteenth century paintings. A picture dating from 1681 occupies a position in the chapel of St Ursin in the south aisle; it shows the relic of the saint being brought to Lisieux in 1055. The wide and sunny Place Thiers is dominated by the great church of St Pierre, which was left practically in its present form in the year 1233. The first church was begun some years before the conquest of England but about a century later it suffered the fate of Bayeux being burnt down in 1136. It was reconstructed soon afterwards and shows to-day the first period of Gothic architecture that became prevalent in Normandy. Only the north tower dates from this period, the other one had to be rebuilt during the reign of Henri III. and the spire only made its appearance in the seventeenth century. The Lady Chapel is of particular interest owing to the statement that it was built by that Bishop of Beauvais who took such a prominent part in the trial of Joan of Arc. The main arches over the big west door are now bare of carving or ornament and the Hotel de Ville is built right up against the north-west corner, but despite this St Pierre has the most imposing and stately appearance, and there are many features such as the curious turrets of the south transept that impress themselves on the memory more than some of the other churches we have seen. Lisieux is one of those cheerful towns that appear always clean and bright under the dullest skies, so that when the sun shines every view seems freshly painted and blazing with colour. The freshness of the atmosphere, too, is seldom tainted with those peculiar odours that some French towns produce with such enormous prodigality, and Lisieux may therefore claim a further point in its favour. It is generally a wide, hedgeless stretch of country that lies between Lisieux and Falaise, but for the first ten miles there are big farm-houses with timber-framed barns and many orchards bearing a profusion of blossom near the roadside. A small farm perched above the road and quite out of sight, invites the thirsty passer-by to turn aside up a steep path to partake of cider or coffee. It is a simple, almost bare room where the refreshment is served, but its quaintness and shadowy coolness are most refreshing. The fireplace has an open hearth with a wood fire which can soon be blown into a blaze by the big bellows that hang against the chimney corner. A table by one of the windows is generally occupied in her spare moments by the farmer's pretty daughter who puts aside her knitting to fetch the cider or to blow up the fire for coffee. They are a most genial family and seem to find infinite delight in plying English folk with questions for I imagine that not many find their way to this sequestered corner among waving trees and lovely orchards. A sudden descent before reaching St Pierre-sur-Dives gives a great view over the level country below where everything is brilliantly green and garden-like. The village first shows its imposing church through the trees of a straight avenue leading towards the village which also possesses a fine Market Hall that must be at least six hundred years old. The church is now undergoing restoration externally, but by dodging the falling cement dust you may go inside, perhaps to be disappointed that there is not more of the Norman work that has been noticed in the southern tower that rises above the entrance. The village, or it should really be called a small town, for its population is over a thousand, has much in it that is attractive and quaint, and it might gain more attention if everyone who passes through its streets were not hurrying forward to Falaise. The country now becomes a great plain, hedgeless, and at times almost featureless. The sun in the afternoon throws the shadows of the roadside trees at right angles, so that the road becomes divided into accurate squares by the thin lines of shadow. The straight run from St Pierre is broken where the road crosses the Dives. It is a pretty spot with a farm, a manor-house and a washing place for women just below the bridge, and then follows more open road and more interminable perspectives cutting through the open plain until, with considerable satisfaction, the great thoroughfare from Caen is joined and soon afterwards a glimpse of the castle greets us as we enter Falaise. There is something peculiarly fascinating about Falaise, for it combines many of the features that are sparingly distributed in other towns. Its position on a hill with deep valleys on all sides, its romantic castle, the two beautiful churches and the splendid thirteenth century gateway, form the best remembered attractions, but beyond these there are the hundred and one pretty groupings of the cottages that crowd both banks of the little river Ante down in the valley under the awe-inspiring castle. Even then, no mention has been made of the ancient fronts that greet one in many of the streets, and the charms of some of the sudden openings between the houses that give views of the steep, wooded hollows that almost touch the main street, have been slighted. A huge cube of solid masonry with a great cylindrical tower alongside perched upon a mass of rock precipitous on two sides is the distant view of the castle, and coming closer, although you can see the buttresses that spring from the rocky foundations, the description still holds good. You should see the fortress in the twilight with a golden suffusion in the sky and strange, purplish shadows on the castle walls. It then has much the appearance of one of those unassailable strongholds where a beautiful princess is lying in captivity waiting for a chivalrous knight who with a band of faithful men will attempt to scale the inaccessible walls. Under some skies, the castle assumes the character of one of Turner's impressions, half real and half imaginary, and under no skies does this most formidable relic of feudal days ever lose its grand and awesome aspect. The entrance is through a gateway, the Porte St. Nicolas, which was built in the thirteenth century. There you are taken in hand by a pleasant concierge who will lead you first of all to the Tour La Reine, where he will point out a great breach in the wall made by Henri IV. when he successfully assaulted the castle after a bombardment with his artillery which he had kept up for a week. This was in 1589, and since then no other fighting has taken place round these grand old walls. The ivy that clings to the ruins and the avenue of limes that leads up to the great keep are full of jackdaws which wheel round the rock in great flights. You have a close view of the great Tour Talbot, and then pass through a small doorway in the northern face of the citadel. Inside, the appearance of the walls reveals the restoration which has taken place within recent years. But this, fortunately, does not detract to any serious extent from the interest of the whole place. Up on the ramparts there are fine views over the surrounding country, and immediately beneath the precipice below nestle the picturesque, browny-red roofs of the lower part of the town. Just at the foot of the castle rock there is still to be seen a tannery which is of rather unusual interest in connection with the story of how Robert le Diable was first struck by the charms of Arlette, the beautiful daughter of a tanner. The Norman duke was supposed to have been looking over the battlements when he saw this girl washing clothes in the river, and we are told that owing to the warmth of the day she had drawn up her dress, so that her feet, which are spoken of as being particularly beautiful were revealed to his admiring gaze. Arlette afterwards became the mother of William the Conqueror, and the room is pointed out in the south-west corner of the keep in which we are asked to believe that the Conqueror of England was born. It is, however, unfortunate for the legend that archaeologists do not allow such an early date for the present castle, and thus we are not even allowed to associate these ramparts with the legend just mentioned. It must have been a strong building that preceded this present structure, for during the eleventh century William the Norman was often obliged to retreat for safety to his impregnable birthplace. The Tour Talbot has below its lowest floor what seems to be a dungeon, but it is said that prisoners were not kept here, the place being used merely for storing food. The gloomy chamber, however, is generally called an oubliette. Above, there are other floors, the top one having been used by the governor of the castle. In the thickness of the wall there is a deep well which now contains no water. One of the rooms in the keep is pointed out as that in which Prince Arthur was kept in confinement, but although it is known that the unfortunate youth was imprisoned in this castle, the selection of the room seems to be somewhat arbitrary. In 1428 the news of Joan of Arc's continued successes was brought to the Earl of Salisbury who was then governor of Falaise Castle, and it was from here that he started with an army to endeavour to stop that triumphal progress. In 1450 when the French completely overcame the numerous English garrisons in the towns of Normandy, Falaise with its magnificent position held out for some time. The defenders sallied out from the walls of the town but were forced back again, and notwithstanding their courage, the town capitulated to the Duke of Alencon's army at almost the same time as Avranches and a dozen other strongly defended towns. We can picture to ourselves the men in glinting head-pieces sallying from the splendid old gateway known as the Port des Cordeliers. It has not lost its formidable appearance even to-day, though as you look through the archway the scene is quiet enough, and the steep flight of outside steps leads up to scenes of quiet domestic life. The windows overlook the narrow valley beneath where the humble roofs of the cottages jostle one another for space. There are many people who visit Falaise who never have the curiosity to explore this unusually pleasing part of the town. In the spring when the lilac bushes add their brilliant colour to the russet brown tiles and soft creams of the stone-work, there are pictures on every side. Looking in the cottages you may see, generally within a few feet of the door, one of those ingenious weaving machines that are worked with a treadle, and take up scarcely any space at all. If you ask permission, the cottagers have not the slightest objection to allowing you to watch them at their work, and when one sees how rapidly great lengths of striped material grow under the revolving metal framework, you wonder that Falaise is not able to supply the demands of the whole republic for this class of material. Just by the Hotel de Ville and the church of La Trinite stands the imposing statue of William the Conqueror. He is mounted on the enormous war-horse of the period and the whole effect is strong and spirited. The most notable feature of the exterior of the church of La Trinite is the curious passage-way that goes underneath the Lady Chapel behind the High Altar. The whole of the exterior is covered with rich carving, crocketed finials, innumerable gargoyles and the usual enriched mouldings of Gothic architecture. The charm of the interior is heightened if one enters in the twilight when vespers are proceeding. There is just sufficient light to show up the tracery of the windows and the massive pointed arches in the choir. A few candles burn by the altar beyond the dark mass of figures forming the congregation. A Gregorian chant fills the building with its solemn tones and the smoke of a swinging censer ascends in the shadowy chancel. Then, as the service proceeds, one candle above the altar seems to suddenly ignite the next, and a line of fire travels all over the great erection surrounding the figure of the Virgin, leaving in its trail a blaze of countless candles that throw out the details of the architecture in strong relief. Soon the collection is made, and as the priest passes round the metal dish, he is followed by the cocked-hatted official whose appearance is so surprising to those who are not familiar with French churches. As the priest passes the dish to each row the official brings his metal-headed staff down upon the pavement with a noisy bang that is calculated to startle the unwary into dropping their money anywhere else than in the plate. In time the bell rings beside the altar, and the priest robed in white and gold elevates the host before the kneeling congregation. Once more the man in the cocked hat becomes prominent as he steps into the open space between the transepts and tolls the big bell in the tower above. Then a smaller and much more cheerful bell is rung, and fearing the arrival of another collecting priest we slip out of the swinging doors into the twilight that has now almost been swallowed up in the gathering darkness. The consecration of the splendid Norman church of St Gervais took place in the presence of Henry I. but there is nothing particularly English in any part of the exterior. The central tower has four tall and deeply recessed arches (the middle ones contain windows) on each side, giving a rich arcaded appearance. Above, rises a tall pointed roof ornamented with four odd-looking dormers near the apex. Every one remarks on their similarity to dovecots and one almost imagines that they must have been built as a place of shelter on stormy days for the great gilded cock that forms the weather vane. The nave is still Norman on the south side, plain round-headed windows lighting the clerestory, but the aisles were rebuilt in the flamboyant period and present a rich mass of ornament in contrast to the unadorned masonry of the nave. The western end until lately had to endure the indignity of having its wall surfaces largely hidden by shops and houses. These have now disappeared, but the stone-work has not been restored, and you may still see a section of the interior of the house that formerly used the west end of the south aisle as one of its walls. You can see where the staircases went, and you may notice also how wantonly these domestic builders cut away the buttresses and architectural enrichments to suit the convenience of their own needs. As you go from the market-place along the street that runs from St Gervais to the suburb of Guibray, the shops on the left are exchanged for a low wall over which you see deep, grassy hollows that come right up to the edge of the street. Two fine houses, white-shuttered and having the usual vacant appearance, stand on steep slopes surrounded by great cedars of Lebanon and a copper beech. The church of Guibray is chiefly Norman--it is very white inside and there is some round-headed arcading in the aisles. The clustered columns of the nave have simple, pointed arches, and there is a carved marble altarpiece showing angels supporting the Virgin who is gazing upwards. The aisles of the chancel are restored Norman, and the stone-work is bright green just above the floor through the dampness that seems to have defied the efforts of the restorers. CHAPTER VI From Argentan to Avranches Between tall poplars whose stems are splotched with grey lichen and whose feet are grown over with browny-green moss, runs the road from Falaise to Argentan, straight and white, with scarcely more than the slightest bend, for the whole eight miles. It is typical of the roads in this part of the country and beyond the large stone four or five kilometres outside Falaise, marking the boundary between Calvados and Orne, and the railway which one passes soon afterwards, there is nothing to break the undulating monotony of the boundless plain. We cannot all hope to have this somewhat dull stretch of country relieved by any exciting event, but I can remember one spring afternoon being overtaken by two mounted gendarmes in blue uniforms, galloping for their very lives. I looked down the road into the cloud of dust raised by the horses' hoofs, but the country on all sides lay calm and deserted, and I was left in doubt as to the reason for this astonishing haste. Half an hour afterwards a group of people appeared in the distance, and on approaching closer, they proved to be the two gendarmes leading their blown horses as they walked beside a picturesque group of apparently simple peasants, the three men wearing the typical soft, baggy cap and blue smock of the country folk. The little group had a gloomy aspect, which was explained when I noticed that the peasants were joined together by a bright steel chain. Evidently something was very much amiss with one of the peaceful villages lying near the road. After a time, at the end of the long white perspective, appear the towers of the great church of St Germain that dominate the town where Henry II. was staying when he made that rash exclamation concerning his "turbulent priest." It was from Argentan that those four knights set out for England and Canterbury to carry out the deed, for which Henry lay in ashes for five weeks in this very place. But there is little at the present time at Argentan to remind one that it is in any way associated with the murder of Becket. The castle that now exists is occupied by the Courts of Justice and was partially built in the Renaissance period. Standing close to it, is an exceedingly tall building with a great gable that suggests an ecclesiastical origin, and on looking a little closer one soon discovers blocked up Gothic windows and others from which the tracery has been hacked. This was the chapel of the castle which has been so completely robbed of its sanctity that it is now cut up into small lodgings, and in one of its diminutive shops, picture post-cards of the town are sold. The ruins of the old castle are not very conspicuous, for in the seventeenth century the great keep was demolished. There is still a fairly noticeable round tower--the Tour Marguerite--which has a pointed roof above its corbels, or perhaps they should be called machicolations. In the Place Henri IV. stands a prominent building that projects over the pavement supported by massive pointed arches, and with this building in the foreground there is one of the best views of St Germain that one can find in the town. Just before coming to the clock that is suspended over the road by the porch of the church, there is a butcher's shop at the street corner that has a piece of oak carving preserved on account of its interest while the rest of the building has been made featureless with even plaster. The carving shows Adam and Eve standing on either side of a formal Tree of Life, and the butcher, who is pleased to find a stranger who notices this little curiosity, tells him with great pride that his house dates from the fifteenth century. The porch of St Germain is richly ornamented, but it takes a second place to the south porch of the church of Notre Dame at Louviers and may perhaps seem scarcely worthy of comment after St Maclou at Rouen. The structure as a whole was commenced in 1424, and the last portion of the work only dates from the middle of the seventeenth century. The vaulting of the nave has a very new and well-kept appearance and the side altars, in contrast to so many of even the large churches, are almost dignified in their somewhat restrained and classic style. The high altar is a stupendous erection of two storeys with Corinthian pillars. Nine long, white, pendant banners are conspicuous on the walls of the chancel. The great altars and the lesser ones that crowd the side chapels are subject to the accumulation of dirt as everything else in buildings sacred or lay, and at certain times of the day, a woman may be seen vigorously flapping the brass candlesticks and countless altar ornaments with a big feather broom. On the north side of the chancel some of the windows have sections of old painted glass, and in one of them there is part of a ship with men in crow's nests backed by clouds, a really vigorous colour scheme. Keeping to the high ground, there is to the south of this church an open Place, and beyond it there are some large barracks, where, on the other side of a low wall may be seen the elaborately prepared steeple-chase for training soldiers to be able to surmount every conceivable form of obstacle. Awkward iron railings, wide ditches, walls of different composition and varying height are frequently scaled, and it is practice of this sort that has made the French soldier famous for the facility with which he can storm fortifications. The river Orne finds its way through the lower part of the town and here there are to be found some of the most pleasing bits of antique domestic architecture. One of the quaintest of these built in 1616 is the galleried building illustrated here, and from a parallel street not many yards off there is a peep of a house that has been built right over the stream which is scarcely less picturesque. [Illustration: A SEVENTEENTH CENTURY HOUSE AT ARGENTAN] The church of St Martin is passed on entering Argentan from Falaise. Its east end crowds right up against the pavement and it is somewhat unusual to find the entrances at this portion of the building. The stained glass in the choir of St Martin is its most noticeable feature--the pictures showing various scenes in the life of Christ. As in all French towns Argentan knows how to decorate on fete days. Coming out of the darkness of the church in the late twilight on one of these occasions, I discovered that the town had suddenly become festooned with a long perspective of arches stretching right away down the leafy avenue that goes out of the town--to the north in one direction, and to St Germain in the other. The arches were entirely composed without a single exception of large crimson-red Chinese lanterns. The effect was astonishingly good, but despite all the decoration, the townsfolk seemed determined to preserve the quiet of the Sabbath, and although there were crowds everywhere, the only noise that broke the stillness was that of the steam round-about that had been erected on a triangular patch of grass. The dark crowds of people illuminated by flaring lights stood in perfect quiet as they watched the great noisy mass of moving animals and boats, occupied almost entirely by children, keep up its perpetual dazzle and roar. The fair--for there were many side-shows--was certainly quieter than any I have witnessed in England. A long, straight road, poplar-bordered and level, runs southwards from Argentan to Mortree, a village of no importance except for the fact that one must pass through it if one wishes to visit the beautiful Chateau d'O. This sixteenth century mansion like so many to be seen in this part of France, is in a somewhat pathetic state of disrepair, but as far as one may see from the exterior, it would not require any very great sum to completely restore the broken stone-work and other signs of decay. These, while perhaps adding to the picturesqueness of the buildings, do not bring out that aspect of carefully preserved antiquity which is the charm of most of the houses of this period in England. The great expanse of water in the moat is very green and covered by large tracts of weed, but the water is supplied by a spring, and fish thrive in it. The approach to the chateau across the moat leads to an arched entrance through which you enter the large courtyard overlooked on three sides by the richly ornamented buildings, the fourth side being only protected from the moat by a low wall. It would be hard to find a more charming spot than this with its views across the moat to the gardens beyond, backed by great masses of foliage. Going on past Mortree the main road will bring one after about eight miles to the old town of Alencon, which has been famed ever since the time of Louis XIV. for the lace which is even at the present day worked in the villages of this neighbourhood, more especially at the hamlet of Damigny. The cottagers use pure linen thread which is worth the almost incredible sum of £100 per lb. They work on parchment from patterns which are supplied by the merchants in Alencon. The women go on from early morning until the light fails, and earn something about a shilling per day! The castle of Alencon, built by Henry I. in the twelfth century, was pulled down with the exception of the keep, by the order of Henry of Navarre, the famous contemporary of Queen Elizabeth. This keep is still in existence, and is now used as a prison. Near it is the Palais de Justice, standing where the other buildings were situated. The west porch of the church of Notre Dame is richly ornamented with elaborate canopies, here and there with statues. One of these represents St John, and it will be seen that he is standing with his face towards the church. A legend states that this position was taken by the statue when the church was being ransacked by Protestants in the sixteenth century. Another road from Argentan is the great _route nationale_ that runs in a fairly direct line to Granville. As one rides out of the town there is a pretty view on looking back, of St Germain standing on the slight eminence above the Orne. Keeping along by that river the road touches it again at the little town of Ecouche. The old market hall standing on massive pillars, is the most attractive feature of the place. Its old tiled roof and half-timbered upper storey remind one forcibly of some of those fortunate old towns in England that have preserved this feature. The church has lost its original nave, and instead, there is a curious barn-like structure, built evidently with a view to economy, being scarcely more than half the height of the original: the vacant space has been very roughly filled up, and the numerous holes and crevices support a fine growth of weeds, and a strong young tree has also taken root in the ramshackle stone work. From the central tower, gargoyles grin above the elaborately carved buttresses and finials in remarkable contrast to the jerry-built addition. [Illustration: THE OLD MARKET HOUSE AT ECOUCHE] Passing through rich country, you leave the valley of the Orne, and on both sides of the road are spread wide and fascinating views over the orchard-clad country that disappears in the distant blue of the horizon. Wonderful patches of shadow, when large clouds are flying over the heavens, fall on this great tract of country and while in dull weather it may seem a little monotonous, in days of sunshine and shade it is full of a haunting beauty that is most remarkable. About seven miles from Argentan one passes Fromentelle, a quiet hamlet full of thatched cottages and curious weathercocks, and then five miles further on, having descended into the valley of the little river Rouvre, Briouze is entered. Here there is a wide and very extensive market-place with another quaint little structure, smaller than the one at Ecouche, but having a curious bell-turret in the centre of the roof. On Monday, which is market day, Briouze presents a most busy scene, and there are plenty of opportunities of studying the genial looking country farmers, their wives, and the large carts in which they drive from the farms. In the midst of the booths, you may see a bronze statue commemorating the "Sapeurs, pompiers" and others of this little place who fell in 1854. Leaving the main road which goes on to Flers, we may take the road to Domfront, which passes through three pretty villages and much pleasant country. Bellau, the first village, is full of quaint houses and charming old-world scenes. The church is right in the middle on an open space without an enclosure of any description. Standing with one's back to this building, there is a pretty view down the road leading to the south, a patch of blue distance appearing in the opening between the old gables. To all those who may wish to either paint or photograph this charming scene, I would recommend avoiding the hour in the afternoon when the children come out of school. I was commencing a drawing one sunny afternoon--it must have been about three o'clock--and the place seemed almost deserted. Indeed, I had been looking for a country group of peasants to fill the great white space of sunny road, when in twos and threes, the juvenile population flooded out towards me. For some reason which I could not altogether fathom, the boys arranged themselves in a long, regular line, occupying exactly one half of the view, the remaining space being filled by an equally long line of little girls. All my efforts failed to induce the children to break up the arrangement they had made. They merely altered their formation by advancing three or four paces nearer with almost military precision. They were still standing in their unbroken rows when I left the village. Passing a curious roadside cross which bears the date 1741 and a long Latin inscription splashed over with lichen, one arrives at La Ferriere aux Etangs, a quaint village with a narrow and steep street containing one conspicuously old, timber-framed house. But it is scarcely necessary to point out individual cottages in this part of Normandy, for wherever one looks, the cottages are covered with thick, purply-grey thatch, and the walls below are of grey wooden framework, filled in with plaster, generally coloured a creamy-white. When there are deep shadows under the eaves and the fruit trees in blossom stand out against the dark thatch, one can easily understand how captivating is the rural charm of this part of Normandy. Gradually the road ascends, but no great views are apparent, although one is right above the beautiful valley of the Varennes, until quite near to Domfront. Then, suddenly there appears an enormous stretch of slightly undulating country to the south and west. As far as one can see, the whole land seems to be covered by one vast forest. But though part of this is real forest-land, much of it is composed of orchards and hedgerow trees, which are planted so closely together that, at a short distance, they assume the aspect of close-growing woods. The first impression of the great stretch of forest-land does not lose its striking aspect, even when one has explored the whole of the town. The road that brings one into the old town runs along a ridge and after passing one of the remains of the old gateways, it rises slightly to the highest part of the mass of rock upon which Domfront is perched. The streets are narrow and parallel to accommodate themselves to the confined space within the walls. At the western end of the granite ridge, and separated from the town by a narrow defile, stands all that is left of the castle--a massive but somewhat shapeless ruin. At the western end of the ramparts, one looks down a precipitous descent to the river Varennes which has by some unusual agency, cut itself a channel through the rocky ridge if it did not merely occupy an existing gap. At the present time, besides the river, the road and railway pass through the narrow gorge. The castle has one of those sites that appealed irresistibly to the warlike barons of the eleventh century. In this case it was William I., Duc de Belleme, who decided to raise a great fortress on this rock that he had every reason to believe would prove an impregnable stronghold, but although only built in 1011, it was taken by Duke William thirty-seven years later, being one of the first brilliant feats by which William the Norman showed his strength outside his own Duchy. A century or more later, Henry II., when at Domfront, received the pope's nuncio by whom a reconciliation was in some degree patched up between the king and Becket. Richard I. is known to have been at the castle at various times. In the sixteenth century, a most thrilling siege was conducted during the period when Catherine de Medicis was controlling the throne. A Royalist force, numbering some seven or eight thousand horse and foot, surrounded this formidable rock which was defended by the Calvinist Comte de Montgommery. With him was another Protestant, Ambroise le Balafre, who had made himself a despot at Domfront, but whose career was cut short by one of Montgommery's men with whom he had quarrelled. They buried him in the little church of Notre-Dame-sur-l'Eau--the wonderfully preserved Norman building that one sees beneath one's feet when standing on the ramparts of the castle. The body, however, was not long allowed to remain there, for when the royal army surrounded the castle they brought out the corpse and hung it in a conspicuous place to annoy the besieged. Like Corfe Castle in England, and many other magnificently fortified strongholds, Domfront was capable of defence by a mere handful. In this case the original garrison consisted of one hundred and fifty, and after many desertions the force was reduced to less than fifty. A great breach had been made by the six pieces of artillery placed on the hill on the opposite side of the gorge, and through this the besiegers endeavoured to enter. The attenuated garrison, with magnificent courage, held the breach after a most desperate and bloody fight. But after all this display of courage, it was found impossible to continue the defence, for by the next morning there were barely more than a dozen men left to fight. Finally Montgommery was obliged to surrender unconditionally, and not long afterwards he was executed in Paris. You may see the breach where this terrible fight took place at the present day, and as you watch the curious effects of the blue shadows falling among the forest trees that stretch away towards the south, you may feel that you are looking over almost the same scene that was gazed upon by the notable figures in history who have made their exits and entrances at Domfront. So little has the church of Notre-Dame-sur-l'Eau altered in its appearance since it was built by the Duc de Belleme that, were he to visit the ruins of his castle, he would marvel no doubt that the men of the nine centuries which have passed, should have consistently respected this sturdy little building. There are traces of aisles having existed, but otherwise the exterior of the church can have seen no change at all in this long period. Inside, however, the crude whitewash, the curious assemblage of enormous seventeenth century gravestones that are leant against the walls, and the terribly jarring almost life-sized crucifix, all give one that feeling of revulsion that is inseparable from an ill-kept place of worship. On the banks of the river outside, women may be seen washing clothes; the sounds of the railway come from the station near by, and overhead, rising above the foliage at its feet, are the broken walls and shattered keep from which we have been gazing. [Illustration: ONE OF THE TOWERS IN THE WALLS OF DOMFRONT] The walls of the town, punctuated by many a quaint tower, have lost their fearsome aspect owing to the domestic uses to which the towers are palpably devoted. One of them appears in the adjoining illustration, and it is typical of the half-dozen or so that still rise above the pretty gardens that are perched along the steep ascent. But though Domfront is full of almost thrilling suggestions of medievalism and the glamour of an ancient town, yet there is a curious lack of picturesque arrangement, so that if one were to be led away by the totally uninteresting photographs that may be seen in the shops, one would miss one of the most unique spots in Normandy. Stretching away towards Flers, there is a tract of green country all ups and downs, but with no distant views except the peep of Domfront that appears a few miles north of the town. Crowning the ridge of the hill is the keep of the castle, resembling a closed fist with the second finger raised, and near it, the bell-cote of the Palais de Justice and the spire of the church break the line of the old houses. Ferns grow by the roadside on every bank, but the cottages and farms are below the average of rustic beauty that one soon demands in this part of France. Flers is a somewhat busy manufacturing town where cotton and thread mills have robbed the place of its charm. At first sight one might imagine the church which bears the date 1870 was of considerably greater age, but inside one is almost astounded at the ramshackle galleries, the white-washed roof of rough boards discoloured by damp, and the general squalor of the place relieved only by a ponderous altar-piece of classic design. The castle is still in good preservation but although it dates from early Norman times, it is chiefly of the sixteenth century. Out in the country again, going westwards, the cottage industry of weaving is apparent in nearly every cottage one sees. The loud click-a-ti-clack--click-a-ti-clack of the looms can be heard on every side as one passes such villages as Landisacq. Everywhere the scenery is exceedingly English, the steep hillsides are often covered with orchards, and the delicate green of the apple-trees in spring-time, half-smothered in pinky-white blossom, gives the country a garden-like aspect. You may see a man harrowing a field on a sudden slope with a cloud of dust blowing up from the dry light soil, and you may hear him make that curious hullaballooing by which the peasants direct their horses, so different from the grunting "way-yup there" of the English ploughman. Coming down a long descent, a great stretch of country to the north that includes the battlefield of Tinchebrai comes into view. It is hard to associate the rich green pastures, smiling orchards, and peaceful cattle, with anything so gruesome as a battle between armies led by brothers. But it was near the little town of Tinchebrai that the two brothers, Henry I., King of England, and Robert Duke of Normandy fought for the possession of Normandy. Henry's army was greatly superior to that of his brother, for he had the valuable help of the Counts of Conches, Breteuil, Thorigny, Mortagne, Montfort, and two or three others as powerful. But despite all this array, the battle for some time was very considerably in Robert's favour, and it was only when Henry, heavily pressed by his brother's brilliant charge, ordered his reserves to envelop the rear, that the great battle went in favour of the English king. Among the prisoners were Robert and his youthful son William, the Counts of Mortain, Estouteville, Ferrieres, and a large number of notable men. Until his death, twenty-seven years later, Henry kept his brother captive in Cardiff Castle, and it has been said that, owing to an effort to escape, Henry was sufficiently lacking in all humane feelings towards his unfortunate brother, to have both his eyes put out. It seems a strange thing that exactly sixty years after the battle of Hastings, a Norman king of England, should conquer the country which had belonged to his father. The old church of St Remy at Tinchebrai, part of which dates from the twelfth century, has been abandoned for a new building, but the inn--the Hotel Lion d'Or--which bears the date 1614, is still in use. Vire, however, is only ten miles off, and its rich mediaeval architecture urges us forward. Standing in the midst of the cobbled street, there suddenly appears right ahead a splendid thirteenth century gateway--the Tour de l'Horloge--that makes one of the richest pictures in Normandy. It is not always one can see the curious old tower thrown up by a blaze of gold in the west, but those who are fortunate enough to see such an effect may get a small suggestion of the scene from the illustration given here. The little painted figure of the Virgin and Child stands in a niche just over the arch, and by it appears the prayer "Marie protege la ville!" One of the charms of Vire is its cleanliness, for I can recall no unpleasant smells having interfered with the pleasure of exploring the old streets. There is a great market on the northern side of the town, open and breezy. It slopes clear away without any intervening buildings to a great expanse of green wooded country, suggestive of some of the views that lie all around one at Avranches. The dark old church of Notre Dame dates mainly from the twelfth century. Houses and small shops are built up against it between the buttresses in a familiar, almost confidential manner, and on the south side, the row of gargoyles have an almost humorous appearance. The drips upon the pavement and shops below were evidently a nuisance, and rain water-spouts, with plain pipes leading diagonally from them, have been attached to each grotesque head, making it seem that the grinning monsters have developed a great and unquenchable thirst. Inside, the church is dark and impressive. There are double rows of pillars in the aisles, and a huge crucifix hangs beneath the tower, thrown up darkly against the chancel, which is much painted and gilded. The remains of the great castle consist of nothing more than part of the tall keep, built eight hundred years ago, and fortunately not entirely destroyed when the rest of the castle came down by the order of Cardinal Richelieu. An exploration of the quaint streets of Vire will reveal two or three ancient gateways, many gabled houses, some of which are timber-framed visually, and most of them are the same beneath their skins of plaster. The houses in one of the streets are connected with the road by a series of wooden bridges across the river, which there forms one of the many pictures to be found in Vire. Mortain is separated from Vire by fifteen miles of exceedingly hilly country, and those who imagine that all the roads in Normandy are the flat and poplar bordered ones that are so often encountered, should travel along this wonderful switch-back. As far as Sourdeval there seems scarcely a yard of level ground--it is either a sudden ascent or a breakneck rush into a trough-like depression. You pass copices of firs and beautiful woods, although in saying beautiful it is in a limited sense, for one seldom finds the really rich woodlands that are so priceless an ornament to many Surrey and Kentish lanes. The road is shaded by tall trees when it begins to descend into the steep rocky gorge of the Cance with its tumbling waterfalls that are a charming feature of this approach to Mortain. High upon the rocks on the left appears an enormous gilded statue of the Virgin, in the grounds of the Abbaye Blanche. Going downwards among the broken sunlight and shadows on the road, Mortain appears, picturesquely perched on a great rocky steep, and in the opening of the valley a blue haze suggests the great expanse of level country towards the south. The big parish church of the town was built originally in 1082 by that Robert of Mortain, who, it will be remembered, was one of the first of the Normans to receive from the victorious William a grant of land in England. The great tower which stands almost detached on the south-west side is remarkable for its enormously tall slit windows, for they run nearly from the ground to the saddle-back roof. The interior of this church is somewhat unusual, the nave and chancel being structurally one, and the aisles are separated by twenty-four circular grey pillars with Corinthian capitals. The plain surfaces of the walls and vaulting are absolutely clean white, picked out with fine black lines to represent stone-work--a scarcely successful treatment of such an interior! On either side of the High Altar stand two great statues representing St Guillaume and St Evroult. To those who wish to "do" all the sights of Mortain there is the Chapel of St Michael, which stands high up on the margin of a great rocky hill, but the building having been reconstructed about fifty years ago, the chief attraction to the place is the view, which in tolerably clear weather, includes Mont St Michel towards which we are making our way. A perfectly straight and fairly level stretch of road brings you to St Hilaire-du-Harcout. On the road one passes two or three large country houses with their solemn and perfectly straight avenues leading directly up to them at right angles from the road. The white jalousies seem always closed, the grass on the lawns seems never cut, and the whole establishments have a pathetically deserted appearance to the passer-by. A feature of this part of the country can scarcely be believed without actually using one's eyes. It is the wooden chimney-stack, covered with oak shingles, that surmounts the roofs of most of the cottages. Where the shingles have fallen off, the cement rubble that fills the space between the oak framing appears, but it is scarcely credible that, even with this partial protection, these chimneys should have survived so many centuries. I have asked the inmates of some of the cottages whether they ever feared a fire in their chimneys, but they seemed to consider the question as totally unnecessary, for some providence seems to have watched over their frail structures. St Hilaire has a brand new church and nothing picturesque in its long, almost monotonous, street. Instead of turning aside at Pontaubault towards Mont St Michel, we will go due north from that hamlet to the beautifully situated Avranches. This prosperous looking town used, at one time, to have a large English colony, but it has recently dwindled to such small dimensions that the English chaplain has an exceedingly small parish. The streets seem to possess a wonderful cleanliness; all the old houses appear to have made way for modern buildings which, in a way, give Avranches the aspect of a watering-place, but its proximity to the sea is more apparent in a map than when one is actually in the town. On one side of the great place in front of the church of Notre Dame des Champs is the Jardin des Plantes. To pass from the blazing sunshine and loose gravel, to the dense green shade of the trees in this delightful retreat is a pleasure that can be best appreciated on a hot afternoon in summer. The shade, however, and the beds of flowers are not the only attractions of these gardens. Their greatest charm is the wonderful view over the shining sands and the glistening waters of the rivers See and Selune that, at low tide, take their serpentine courses over the delicately tinted waste of sand that occupies St Michael's Bay. Out beyond the little wooded promontory that protects the mouth of the See, lies Mont St Michel, a fretted silhouette of flat pearly grey, and a little to the north is Tombelaine, a less pretentious islet in this fairyland sea. Framed by the stems and foliage of the trees, this view is one of the most fascinating in Normandy. One would be content to stay here all through the sultry hours of a summer day, to listen to the distant hum of conversation among white-capped nursemaids, as they sew busily, giving momentary attention to their charges. But Avranches has an historical spot that no student of history, and indeed no one who cares anything for the picturesque events that crowd the pages of the chronicles of England in the days of the Norman kings, may miss. It is the famous stone upon which Henry II. knelt when he received absolution for the murder of Becket at the hands of the papal legate. To reach this stone is, for a stranger, a matter of some difficulty. From the Place by the Jardin des Plantes, it is necessary to plunge down a steep descent towards the railway station, and then one climbs a series of zigzag paths on a high grassy bank that brings one out upon the Place Huet. In one corner, surrounded by chains and supported by low iron posts, is the historic stone. It is generally thickly coated with dust, but the brass plate affixed to a pillar of the doorway is quite legible. These, and a few fragments of carved stone that lie half-smothered in long grass and weeds at a short distance from the railed-in stone, are all that remain of the cathedral that existed in the time of Henry II. It must have been an impressive scene on that Sunday in May 1172, when the papal legate, in his wonderful robes, stood by the north transept door, of which only this fragment remains, and granted absolution to the sovereign, who, kneeling in all humbleness and submission, was relieved of the curse of excommunication which had been laid on him after the tragic affair in the sanctuary at Canterbury. In place of the splendid cathedral, whose nave collapsed, causing the demolition of the whole building in 1799, there is a new church with the two great western towers only carried up to half the height intended for them. From the roadway that runs along the side of the old castle walls in terrace fashion there is another wonderful view of rich green country, through which, at one's feet, winds the river See. Away towards the north-west the road to Granville can be seen passing over the hills in a perfectly straight line. But this part of the country may be left for another chapter. 
8595	----	Team NORMANDY: THE SCENERY & ROMANCE OF ITS ANCIENT TOWNS: DEPICTED BY GORDON HOME Part 3. CHAPTER VII Concerning Mont St Michel So, when their feet were planted on the plain That broaden'd toward the base of Camelot, Far off they saw the silver-misty morn Rolling her smoke about the Royal mount, That rose between the forest and the field. At times the summit of the high city flash'd; At times the spires and turrets half-way down Pricked through the mist; at times the great gate shone Only, that open'd on the field below: Anon, the whole fair city disappeared. Tennyson's _Gareth and Lynette_ "The majestic splendour of this gulf, its strategetic importance, have at all times attracted the attention of warriors." In this quaint fashion commences the third chapter of a book upon Mont St Michel which is to be purchased in the little town. We have already had a glimpse of the splendour of the gulf from Avranches, but there are other aspects of the rock which are equally impressive. They are missed by all those who, instead of going by the picturesque and winding coast-road from Pontaubault, take the straight and dusty _route nationale_ to Pontorson, and then turn to follow the tramway that has in recent years been extended along the causeway to the mount itself. If one can manage to make it a rather late ride along the coast-road just mentioned, many beautiful distant views of Mont St Michel, backed by sunset lights, will be an ample reward. Even on a grey and almost featureless evening, when the sea is leaden-hued, there may, perhaps, appear one of those thin crimson lines that are the last efforts of the setting sun. This often appears just behind the grey and dim rock, and the crimson is reflected in a delicate tinge upon the glistening sands. Tiny rustic villages, with churches humble and unobtrusive, and prominent calvaries, are passed one after the other. At times the farmyards seem to have taken the road into their own hands, for a stone well-head will appear almost in the roadway, and chickens, pigs, and a litter of straw have to be allowed for by those who ride or drive along this rural way. When the rock is still some distance off, the road seems to determine to take a short cut across the sands, but thinking better of it, it runs along the outer margin of the reclaimed land, and there is nothing to prevent the sea from flooding over the road at its own discretion. Once on the broad and solidly constructed causeway, the rock rapidly gathers in bulk and detail. It has, indeed, as one approaches, an almost fantastic and fairy-like outline. Then as more and more grows from the hazy mass, one sees that this remarkable place has a crowded and much embattled loneliness. Two round towers, sturdy and boldly machicolated, appear straight ahead, but oddly enough the wall between them has no opening of any sort, and the stranger is perplexed at the inhospitable curtain-wall that seems to refuse him admittance to the mediaeval delights within. It almost heightens the impression that the place belongs altogether to dreamland, for in that shadowy world all that is most desirable is so often beyond the reach of the dreamer. It is a very different impression that one gains if the steam train has been taken, for its arrival is awaited by a small crowd of vulture-like servants and porters from the hotels. The little crowd treats the incoming train-load of tourists as its carrion, and one has no time to notice whether there is a gateway or not before being swept along the sloping wooden staging that leads to the only entrance. The simple archway in the outer wall leads into the Cour de l'Avancee where those two great iron cannons, mentioned in an earlier chapter, are conspicuous objects. They were captured by the heroic garrison when the English, in 1433, made their last great effort to obtain possession of the rock. Beyond these, one passes through the barbican to the Cour de la Herse, which is largely occupied by the Hotel Poulard Aine. Then one passes through the Porte du Roi, and enters the town proper. The narrow little street is flanked by many an old house that has seen most of the vicissitudes that the little island city has suffered. In fact many of these shops which are now almost entirely given over to the sale of mementoes and books of photographs of the island, are individually of great interest. One of the most ancient in the upper part of the street, is pointed out as that occupied in the fourteenth century by Tiphane de Raguenel, the wife of the heroic Bertrand du Guesclin. It is almost impossible for those who are sensitive in such matters, not to feel some annoyance at the pleasant but persistent efforts of the vendors of souvenirs to induce every single visitor to purchase at each separate shop. To get an opportunity for closely examining the carved oaken beams and architectural details of the houses, one must make at least some small purchase at each trinket store in front of which one is inclined to pause. Perhaps it would even be wise before attempting to look at anything architectural in this quaintest of old-world streets, to go from one end to the other, buying something of trifling cost, say a picture postcard, from each saleswoman. In this way, one might purchase immunity from the over-solicitous shop-keepers, and have the privilege of being able to realise the mediaeval character of the place without constant interruptions. Nearly every visitor to Mont St Michel considers that this historic gem, in its wonderful setting of opalescent sand, can be "done" in a few hours. They think that if they climb up the steps to the museum--a new building made more conspicuous than it need be by a board bearing the word _Musee_ in enormous letters--if they walk along the ramparts, stare for a moment at the gateways, and then go round the abbey buildings with one of the small crowds that the guide pilots through the maze of extraordinary vaulted passages and chambers, that they have done ample justice to this world-famous sight. If the rock had only one-half of its historic and fantastically arranged buildings, it would still deserve considerably more than this fleeting attention paid to it by such a large proportion of the tourists. So many of these poor folk come to Mont St Michel quite willing to learn the reasons for its past greatness, but they do not bring with them the smallest grains of knowledge. The guides, whose knowledge of English is limited to such words as "Sirteenth Senchury" (thirteenth century), give them no clues to the reasons for the existence of any buildings on the island, and quite a large proportion of visitors go away without any more knowledge than they could have obtained from the examination of a good book of photographs. To really appreciate in any degree the natural charms of Mont St Michel, at least one night should be spent on the rock. Having debated between the rival houses of Poularde Aine and Poularde Jeune, and probably decided on the older branch of the family, perhaps with a view to being able to speak of their famous omelettes with enthusiasm, one is conducted to one of the houses or dependences connected with the hotel. If one has selected the Maison Rouge, it is necessary to make a long climb to one's bedroom. The long salle a manger, where dinner is served, is in a tall wedge-like building just outside the Porte du Roi and in the twilight of evening coffee can be taken on the little tables of the cafe that overflows on to the pavement of the narrow street. The cafe faces the head-quarters of the hotel, and is as much a part of it as any of the other buildings which contain the bedrooms. To the stranger it comes as a surprise to be handed a Chinese lantern at bedtime, and to be conducted by one of the hotel servants almost to the top of the tall house just mentioned. Suddenly the man opens a door and you step out into an oppressive darkness. Here the use of the Chinese lantern is obvious, for without some artificial light, the long series of worn stone steps, that must be climbed before reaching the Maison Rouge, would offer many opportunities for awkward falls. The bedrooms in this house, when one has finally reached a floor far above the little street, have a most enviable position. They are all provided with small balconies where the enormous sweep of sand or glistening ocean, according to the condition of the tides, is a sight which will drag the greatest sluggard from his bed at the first hour of dawn. Right away down below are the hoary old houses of the town, hemmed in by the fortified wall that surrounds this side of the island. Then stretching away towards the greeny-blue coast-line is the long line of digue or causeway on which one may see a distant puff of white smoke, betokening the arrival of the early train of the morning. The attaches of the rival hotels are already awaiting the arrival of the early batch of sight-seers. All over the delicately tinted sands there are constantly moving shadows from the light clouds forming over the sea, and blowing freshly from the west there comes an invigorating breeze. Before even the museum can have a real interest for us, we must go back to the early times when Mont St Michel was a bare rock; when it was not even an island, and when the bay of Mont St Michel was covered by the forest of Scissey. It seems that the Romans raised a shrine to Jupiter on the rock, which soon gave to it the name of Mons Jovis, afterwards to be contracted into Mont-Jou. They had displaced some earlier Druidical or other sun-worshippers who had carried on their rites at this lonely spot; but the Roman innovation soon became a thing of the past and the Franks, after their conversion to Christianity, built on the rock two oratories, one to St Stephen and the other to St Symphorian. It was then that the name Mont-Jou was abandoned in favour of Mons-Tumba. The smaller rock, now known as Tombelaine, was called Tumbella meaning the little tomb, to distinguish it from the larger rock. It is not known why the two rocks should have been associated with the word tomb, and it is quite possible that the Tumba may simply mean a small hill. In time, hermits came and built their cells on both the rocks and gradually a small community was formed under the Merovingian Abbey of Mandane. It was about this time, that is in the sixth century, that a great change came over the surroundings of the two rocks. Hitherto, they had formed rocky excrescences at the edge of the low forest-land by which the country adjoining the sea was covered. Gradually the sea commenced a steady encroachment. It had been probably in progress even since Roman times, but its advance became more rapid, and after an earthquake, which occurred in the year 709, the whole of the forest of Scissey was invaded, and the remains of the trees were buried under a great layer of sand. There were several villages in this piece of country, some of whose names have been preserved, and these suffered complete destruction with the forest. A thousand years afterwards, following a great storm and a consequent movement of the sand, a large number of oaks and considerable traces of the little village St Etienne de Paluel were laid bare. The foundations of houses, a well, and the font of a church were among the discoveries made. Just about the time of the innundation, we come to the interesting story of the holy-minded St Aubert who had been made bishop of Avranches. He could see the rock as it may be seen to-day, although at that time it was crowned with no buildings visible at any distance, and the loneliness of the spot seems to have attracted him to retire thither for prayer and meditation. He eventually raised upon the rock a small chapel which he dedicated to Michel the archangel. After this time, all the earlier names disappeared and the island was always known as Mont St Michel. Replacing the hermits of Mandane with twelve canons, the establishment grew and became prosperous. That this was so, must be attributed largely to the astonishing miracles which were supposed to have taken place in connection with the building of the chapel. Two great rocks near the top of the mount, which were much in the way of the builders, were removed and sent thundering down the rocky precipice by the pressure of a child's foot when all the efforts of the men to induce the rock to move had been unavailing. The huge rock so displaced is now crowned by the tiny chapel of St Aubert. The offerings brought by the numerous pilgrims to Mont St Michel gave the canons sufficient means to commence the building of an abbey, and the unique position of the rock soon made it a refuge for the Franks of the western parts of Neustria when the fierce Norman pirates were harrying the country. In this way the village of Mont St Michel made its appearance at the foot of the rock. The contact of the canons with this new population brought some trouble in its wake. The holy men became contaminated with the world, and Richard, Duke of Normandy, replaced them by thirty Benedictines brought from Mont-Cassin. These monks were given the power of electing their own abbot who was invested with the most entire control over all the affairs of the people who dwelt upon the rock. This system of popular election seems to have worked admirably, for in the centuries that followed, the rulers of the community were generally men of remarkable character and great ideals. About fifty years before the Conquest of England by Duke William, the abbot of that time, Hildebert II., commenced work on the prodigious series of buildings that still crown the rock. His bold scheme of building massive walls round the highest point, in order to make a lofty platform whereon to raise a great church, was a work of such magnitude that when he was gathered to his fathers the foundations were by no means complete. Those who came after him however, inspired by the great idea, kept up the work of building with wonderful enthusiasm. Slowly, year by year, the ponderous walls of the crypts and undercrofts grew in the great space which it was necessary to fill. Dark, irregularly built chambers, one side formed of the solid rock and the others composed of the almost equally massive masonry, grouped themselves round the unequal summit of the mount, until at last, towards the end of the eleventh century, the building of the nave of the church was actually in progress. Roger II., the eleventh of the abbots, commenced the buildings that preceded the extraordinary structure known as La Merveille. Soon after came Robert de Torigny, a pious man of great learning, who seems to have worked enthusiastically. He raised two great towers joined by a porch, the hostelry and infirmary on the south side and other buildings on the west. Much of this work has unfortunately disappeared. Torigny's coffin was discovered in 1876 under the north-west part of the great platform, and one may see a representation of the architect-abbot in the clever series of life-like models that have been placed in the museum. The Bretons having made a destructive attack upon the mount in the early years of the thirteenth century and caused much damage to the buildings, Jourdain the abbot of that time planned out "La Merveille," which comprises three storeys of the most remarkable Gothic halls. At the bottom are the cellar and almonry, then comes the Salle des Chevaliers and the dormitory, and above all are the beautiful cloisters and the refectory. Jourdain, however, only lived to see one storey completed, but his successors carried on the work and Raoul de Villedieu finished the splendid cloister in 1228. Up to this time the island was defenceless, but during the abbatiate of Toustain the ramparts and fortifications were commenced. In 1256 the buildings known as Belle-Chaise were constructed. They contained the entrance to the abbey before the chatelet made its appearance. After Toustain came Pierre le Roy who built a tower behind Belle-Chaise and also the imposing-looking chatelet which contains the main entrance to the whole buildings. The fortifications that stood outside this gateway have to some extent disappeared, but what remain are shown in the accompanying illustration. In the early part of the fifteenth century, the choir of the church collapsed, but peace having been declared with England, soon afterwards D'Estouteville was able to construct the wonderful foundations composed of ponderous round columns called the crypt of les Gros-Piliers, and above it there afterwards appeared the splendid Gothic choir. The flamboyant tracery of the windows is filled with plain green leaded glass, and the fact that the recent restoration has left the church absolutely bare of any ecclesiastical paraphernalia gives one a splendid opportunity of studying this splendid work of the fifteenth century. The nave of the church has still to undergo the process of restoration, for at the present time the fraudulent character of its stone-vaulted roof is laid bare by the most casual glance, for at the unfinished edge adjoining the choir one may see the rough lath and plaster which for a long time must have deceived the visitors who have gazed at the lofty roof. The western end of the building is an eighteenth century work, although to glance at the great patches of orange-coloured lichen that spread themselves over so much of the stone-work, it would be easy to imagine that the work was of very great antiquity. In earlier times there were some further bays belonging to the nave beyond the present west front in the space now occupied by an open platform. There is a fine view from this position, but it is better still if one climbs the narrow staircase from the choir leading up to the asphalted walk beneath the flying buttresses. About the middle of the fourteenth century, Tiphaine de Raguenel, the wife of Bertrand du Guesclin, that splendid Breton soldier, came from Pontorson and made her home at Mont St Michel, in order not to be kept as a prisoner by the English. There are several facts recorded that throw light on the character of this noble lady, sometimes spoken of as "The Fair Maid of Dinan." She had come to admire Du Guesclin for his prowess in military matters, and her feeling towards him having deepened, she had no hesitation in accepting his offer of marriage. It appears that Du Guesclin after this most happy event--for from all we are able to discover Tiphaine seems to have shared his patriotic ideals--was inclined to remain at home rather than to continue his gallant, though at times almost hopeless struggle against the English. Although it must have been a matter of great self-renunciation on her part, Tiphaine felt that it would be much against her character for her to have any share in keeping her husband away from the scene of action, and by every means in her power she endeavoured to re-animate his former enthusiasm. In this her success was complete, and resuming his great responsibilities in the French army, much greater success attended him than at any time in the past. Du Guesclin was not a martyr, but he is as much the most striking figure of the fourteenth century as Joan of Arc is of the fifteenth. All through the period of anxiety through which the defenders of the mount had to pass when the Hundred Years' War was in progress, Mont St Michel was very largely helped against sudden attacks by the remarkable vigilance of their great watch-dogs. So valuable for the safety of the Abbey and the little town were these dogs considered that Louis XI. in 1475 allowed the annual sum of twenty-four pounds by Tours-weight towards their keep. The document states that "from the earliest times it has been customary to have and nourish, at the said place, a certain number of great dogs, which are tied up by day, and at night brought outside the enclosure to keep watch till morning." It was during the reign of this same Louis that the military order of chivalry of St Michael was instituted. The king made three pilgrimages to the mount and the first chapter of this great order, which was for a long time looked upon as the most distinguished in France, was held in the Salle des Chevaliers. For a long while Tombelaine, which lies so close to Mont St Michel, was in the occupation of the English, but in the account of the recovery of Normandy from the English, written by Jacques le Bouvier, King of Arms to Charles VII., we find that the place surrendered very easily to the French. We are told that the fortress of Tombelaine was "An exceedingly strong place and impregnable so long as the persons within it have provisions." The garrison numbered about a hundred men. They were allowed to go to Cherbourg where they took ship to England about the same time as the garrisons from Vire, Avranches, Coutances, and many other strongholds which were at this time falling like dead leaves. Le Bouvier at the end of his account of this wonderful break-up of the English fighting force in Normandy, tells us that the whole of the Duchy of Normandy with all the cities, towns, and castles was brought into subjection to the King of France within one year and six days. "A very wonderful thing," he remarks, "and it plainly appears that our Lord God therein manifested His grace, for never was so large a country conquered in so short a time, nor with the loss of so few people, nor with less injury, which is a great merit, honour and praise to the King of France." In the early part of the sixteenth century, Mont St Michel seems to have reached the high-water mark of its glories. After this time a decline commenced and Cardinal le Veneur reduced the number of monks to enlarge his own income. This new cardinal was the first of a series not chosen from the residents on the mount, for after 1523 the system of election among themselves which had answered so well, was abandoned, and this wealthy establishment became merely one of the coveted preferments of the Church. There was no longer that enthusiasm for maintaining and continuing the architectural achievements of the past, for this new series of ecclesiastics seemed to look upon their appointment largely as a sponge which they might squeeze. In Elizabethan times Mont St Michel once more assumed the character of a fortress and had to defend itself against the Huguenots when its resources had been drained by these worldly-minded shepherds, and it is not surprising to find that the abbey which had withstood all the attacks of the English during the Hundred Years' War should often fall into the hands of the protestant armies, although in every case it was re-taken. A revival of the religious tone of the abbey took place early in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, when twelve Benedictine monks from St Maur were installed in the buildings. Pilgrimages once more became the order of the day, but since the days of Louis XI. part of the sub-structure of the abbey buildings had been converted into fearful dungeons, and the day came when the abbey became simply a most remarkable prison. In the time of Louis XV., a Frenchman named Dubourg--a person who has often been spoken of as though he had been a victim of his religious convictions, but who seems to have been really a most reprehensible character--was placed in a wooden cage in one of the damp and gruesome vaults beneath the abbey. Dubourg had been arrested for his libellous writings concerning the king and many important persons in the French court. He existed for a little over a year in the fearful wooden cage, and just before he died he went quite mad, being discovered during the next morning half-eaten by rats. A realistic representation of his ghastly end is given in the museum, but one must not imagine that the grating filling the semi-circular arch is at all like the actual spot where the wretched man lay. The cage itself was composed of bars of wood placed so closely together that Dubourg was not able to put more than his fingers between them. The space inside was only about eight feet high and the width was scarcely greater. The cage itself was placed in a position where moisture dripped on to the miserable prisoner's body, and we can only marvel that he survived this fearful torture for so many months. During the French Revolution the abbey was nothing more than a jail, and it continued to be devoted to this base use until about forty years ago. Since that time, restoration has continued almost unceasingly, for in the prison period nothing was done to maintain the buildings, and there is still much work in hand which the French government who are now in control are most successfully carrying out. These are a few of the thrilling phases of the history of the rock. But what has been written scarcely does the smallest justice to its crowded pages. The only way of being fair to a spot so richly endowed with enthralling events seems to be in stirring the imagination by a preliminary visit, in order that one may come again armed with a close knowledge of all that has taken place since Aubert raised his humble chapel upon the lonely rock. Who does not know that sense of annoyance at being conducted over some historic building by a professional guide who mentions names and events that just whet the appetite and then leave a hungry feeling for want of any surrounding details or contemporary events which one knows would convert the mere "sight" into holy ground. I submit that a French guide, a French hand-book or a poor translation, can do little to relieve this hunger, that Mont St Michel is fully worthy of some preliminary consideration, and that it should not be treated to the contemptuous scurry of a day's trip. The tides that bring the sea across the great sweep of sand surrounding Mont St Michel, are intermittent, and it is possible to remain for a day or two on the island and be able to walk around it dry-shod at any hour. It is only at the really high tides that the waters of the Bay of Cancale give visitors the opportunity of seeing the fantastic buildings reflected in the sea. But although it is safer and much more pleasant to be able to examine every aspect of the rock from a boat, it is possible to walk over the sands and get the same views provided one is aware of the dangers of the quicksands which have claimed too many victims. It is somewhat terrifying that on what appears to be absolutely firm sand, a few taps of the foot will convert two or three yards beneath one's feet into a quaking mass. There is, however, no great danger at the foot of the rocks or fortifications, but to wander any distance away entails the gravest risks unless in company with a native who is fully aware of any dangerous localities. The sands are sufficiently firm to allow those who know the route to drive horses and carts to Tombelaine, but this should not encourage strangers to take any chances, for the fate of the English lady who was swallowed up by the sands in sight of the ramparts and whose body now lies in the little churchyard of the town, is so distressing that any repetition of such tragedies would tend to cast a shade over the glories of the mount. You may buy among the numerous photographs and pictures for sale in the trinket shops, coloured post-cards which show flaming sunsets behind the abbey, but nothing that I have yet seen does the smallest justice to the reality. Standing on the causeway and looking up to the great height of the tower that crowns the highest point, the gilded St Michael with his outspread wings seems almost ready to soar away into the immensity of the canopy of heaven. Through the traceried windows of the chancel of the church, the evening light on the opposite side of the rock glows through the green glass, for from this position the upper windows are opposite to one another and the light passes right through the building. The great mass of curiously simple yet most striking structures that girdle the summit of the rock and form the platform beneath the church, though built at different times, have joined in one consenescence and now present the appearance of one of those cities that dwell in the imagination when reading of "many tower'd Camelot" or the turreted walls of fairyland. Down below these great and inaccessible buildings comes an almost perpendicular drop of rocks, bare except for stray patches of grass or isolated bushes that have taken root in crevices. Then between this and the fortified wall, with its circular bastions, encircling the base of the rock, the roofs of the little town are huddled in picturesque confusion. The necessity of accommodating the modern pilgrims has unfortunately led to the erection of one or two houses that in some measure jar with their mediaeval surroundings. Another unwelcome note is struck by the needlessly aggressive board on the museum which has already been mentioned. However, when a sunset is glowing behind the mount, these modern intrusions are subdued into insignificance, and there is nothing left to disturb the harmony of the scene. A walk round the ramparts reveals an endless series of picturesque groupings of the old houses with their time-worn stone walls, over which tower the chatelet and La Merveille. Long flights of stone steps from the highest part of the narrow street lead up to the main entrance of the abbey buildings. Here, beneath the great archway of the chatelet, sits an old blind woman who is almost as permanent a feature as the masonry on which she sits. Ascending the wide flight of steps, the Salle des Gardes is reached. It is in the lower portion of the building known as Belle-Chaise, mentioned earlier in this chapter. From this point a large portion of the seemingly endless series of buildings are traversed by the visitor, who is conducted by a regular guide. You ascend a great staircase, between massive stone walls spanned by two bridges, the first a strongly built structure of stone, the next a slighter one of wood, and then reach a breezy rampart where great views over the distant coasts spread themselves out. From here you enter the church, its floor now littered with the debris of restoration. Then follow the cloister and the refectory, and down below them on the second floor of the Merveille is the Salle des Chevaliers. Besides the wonderful Gothic halls with their vaulted roofs and perfect simplicity of design, there are the endless series of crypts and dungeons, which leave a very strong impression on the minds of all those whose knowledge of architecture is lean. There is the shadowy crypt of Les Gros Pilliers down below the chancel of the church; there is the Charnier where the holy men were buried in the early days of the abbey; and there is the great dark space filled by the enormous wheel which was worked by the prisoners when Mont St Michel was nothing more than a great jail. It was by this means that the food for the occupants of the buildings was raised from down below. Without knowing it, in passing from one dark chamber to another, the guide takes his little flock of peering and wondering visitors all round the summit of the rock, for it is hard, even for those who endeavour to do so, to keep the cardinal points in mind, when, except for a chance view from a narrow window, there is nothing to correct the impression that you are still on the same side of the mount as the Merveille. At last the perambulation is finished--the dazzling sunshine is once more all around you as you come out to the steep steps that lead towards the ramparts. CHAPTER VIII Concerning Coutances and Some Parts of the Cotentin When at last it is necessary to bid farewell to Mont St Michel, one is not compelled to lose sight of the distant grey silhouette for a long while. It remains in sight across the buttercup fields and sunny pastures on the road to Pontaubault. Then again, when climbing the zig-zag hill towards Avranches the Bay of Mont St Michel is spread out. You may see the mount again from Avranches itself, and then if you follow the coast-road towards Granville instead of the rather monotonous road that goes to its destination with the directness of a gun-shot, there are further views of the wonderful rock and its humble companion Tombelaine. Keeping along this pretty road through the little village of Genets, where you actually touch the ocean, there is much pretty scenery to be enjoyed all the way to the busy town of Granville. It is a watering-place and a port, the two aspects of the town being divided from each other by the great rocky promontory of Lihou. If one climbs up right above the place this conformation is plainly visible, for down below is the stretch of sandy beach, with its frailly constructed concert rooms and cafes sheltering under the gaunt red cliffs, while over the shoulder of the peninsula appears a glimpse of the piers and the masts of sailing ships. There is much that is picturesque in the seaport side of the town, particularly towards evening, when the red and green harbour-lights are reflected in the sea. There are usually five or six sailing ships loading or discharging their cargoes by the quays, and you will generally find a British tramp steamer lying against one of the wharves. The sturdy crocketed spire of the sombre old church of Notre Dame stands out above the long line of shuttered houses down by the harbour. It is a wonderful contrast, this old portion of Granville that surmounts the promontory, to the ephemeral and gay aspect of the watering-place on the northern side. But these sort of contrasts are to be found elsewhere than at Granville, for at Dieppe it is much the same, although the view of that popular resort that is most familiar in England, is the hideous casino and the wide sweep of gardens that occupy the sea-front. Those who have not been there would scarcely believe that the town possesses a castle perched upon towering cliffs, or that its splendid old church of Saint-Jacques is the real glory of the place. Granville cannot boast of quite so much in the way of antiquities, but there is something peculiarly fascinating about its dark church, in which the light seems unable to penetrate, and whose walls assume almost the same tones as the rocks from which the masonry was hewn. I should like to describe the scenery of the twenty miles of country that lie between Granville and Coutances, but I have only passed over it on one occasion. It was nine o'clock in the evening, and the long drawn-out twilight had nearly faded away as I climbed up the long ascent which commences the road to Coutances, and before I had reached the village of Brehal it was quite dark. The road became absolutely deserted, and although one or two people on bicycles passed me about this time, they were carrying no lamps as is the usual custom in France, where the rules governing the use of a _bicyclette_ are so numerous and intricate, but so absolutely ignored. My own lamp seemed to be a grave distraction among the invisible occupants of the roadside meadows, and often much lowing rose up on either side. The hedges would suddenly whirr with countless grasshoppers, although, no doubt, they had been amusing themselves with their monotonous noises for hours. The strange sound seemed to follow me in a most persistent fashion, and then would be merged into the croaking of a vast assemblage of frogs. These sounds, however, carry with them no real menace, however late the hour, but there is something which may almost strike terror into the heart, though it might almost be considered foolish by those who have not experienced a midnight ride in this country. The clipped and shaven trees that in daylight merely appear ridiculous, in the darkness assume an altogether different character. To the vivid imagination, it is easy to see a witch's broom swaying in the wind; a group of curious and distorted stems will suggest a row of large but painfully thin brownies, holding hands as they dance. Every moment, two or three figures of gaunt and lanky witches in spreading skirts will alarm you as they suddenly appear round a corner. When they are not so uncanny in their outlines, the trees will appear like clipped poodles standing upon their hind legs, or they will suddenly assume the character of a grove of palm trees. After a long stretch of this sort of country, it is pleasant to pass through some sleeping village where there are just two or three lighted windows to show that there are still a few people awake besides oneself in this lonely country. I can imagine that the village of Hyenville has some claims to beauty. I know at least that it lies in a valley, watered by the river Sienne, and that the darkness allowed me to see an old stone bridge, with a cross raised above the centre of the parapet. Soon after this I began to descend the hill that leads into Coutances. A bend in the road, as I was rapidly descending, brought into view a whole blaze of lights, and I felt that here at last there were people and hotels, and an end to the ghostly sights of the open country. Then I came to houses, but they were all quite dark, and there was not a single human being in sight. Following this came a choice of streets without a possibility of knowing which one would lead in the direction of the hotel I was hoping to reach; but my perplexity was at length relieved by the advent of a tall youth whose cadaverous features were shown up by the street lamp overhead. He gave his directions clearly enough, but although I followed them carefully right up the hill past the cathedral, I began to think that I had overshot the mark, when another passer-by appeared in the silent street. I found that I was within a few yards of the hotel; but on hurrying forward, I found to my astonishment, that the whole building was completely shut up and no light appeared even within the courtyard. As I had passed the cathedral eleven reverbrating notes had echoed over the town, and it seemed as though Coutances had retired earlier on this night of all nights in order that I might learn to travel at more rational hours. Going inside the courtyard, my anxiety was suddenly relieved by seeing the light of a candle in a stable on the further side; a man was putting up a horse, and he at once volunteered to arouse some one who would find a bedroom. After some shouting to the gallery above, a maid appeared, and a few minutes afterwards mine host himself, clad in a long flannel night robe and protecting a flickering candle-flame with his hand, appeared at a doorway. His long grey beard gave him a most venerable aspect. The note of welcome in his cheery voice was unmistakable and soon the maid who had spoken from the balcony had shown the way up a winding circular staircase to a welcome exchange to the shelter of a haystack which I had begun to fear would be my only resting-place for the night. In the morning, the Hotel d'Angleterre proved to be a most picturesque old hostelry. Galleries ran round three sides of the courtyard, and the circular staircase was enclosed in one of those round towers that are such a distinctive feature of the older type of French inn. The long main street does not always look deserted and in daylight it appeared as sunny and cheerful as one expects to find the chief thoroughfare of a thriving French town. Coutances stands on such a bold hill that the street, almost of necessity, drops precipitously, and the cathedral which ranks with the best in France, stands out boldly from all points of view. It was principally built in the thirteenth century, but a church which had stood in its place two centuries before, had been consecrated by Bishop Geoffrey de Montbray in 1056, in the presence of Duke William, afterwards William I. of England. The two western towers of the present cathedral are not exactly similar, and owing to their curious formation of clustered spires they are not symmetrical. It is for this reason that they are often described as being unpleasing. I am unable to echo such criticism, for in looking at the original ideas that are most plainly manifest in this most astonishing cathedral one seems to be in close touch with the long forgotten builders and architects whose notions of proportion and beauty they contrived to stamp so indelibly upon their masterpiece. From the central tower there is a view over an enormous sweep of country which includes a stretch of the coast, for Coutances is only half a dozen miles from the sea. This central tower rises from a square base at the intersection of the transepts with the nave. It runs up almost without a break in an octagonal form to a parapet ornamented with open quatrefoils. The interior has a clean and fresh appearance owing to the recent restorations and is chiefly remarkable for the balustraded triforium which is continued round the whole church. In many of the windows there is glass belonging to the sixteenth century and some dates as early as the fourteenth century. Besides the cathedral, the long main street of Coutances possesses the churches of St Nicholas and St Pierre. In St Nicholas one may see a somewhat unusual feature in the carved inscriptions dating from early in the seventeenth century which appear on the plain round columns. Here, as in the cathedral, the idea of the balustrade under the clerestory is carried out. The fourteen Stations of the Cross that as usual meet one in the aisles of the nave, are in this church painted with a most unusual vividness and reality, in powerful contrast to so many of these crucifixion scenes to be seen in Roman Catholic churches. The church of St Pierre is illustrated here, with the cathedral beyond, but the drawing does not include the great central tower which is crowned by a pyramidal spire. This church belongs to a later period than the cathedral as one may see by a glance at the classic work in the western tower, for most of the building is subsequent to the fifteenth century. St Pierre and the cathedral form a most interesting study in the development from Early French architecture to the Renaissance; but for picturesqueness in domestic architecture Coutances cannot hold up its head with Lisieux, Vire, or Rouen. There is still a remnant of one of the town gateways and to those who spend any considerable time in the city some other quaint corners may be found. From the western side there is a beautiful view of the town with the great western towers of the cathedral rising gracefully above the quarries in the Bois des Vignettes. Another feature of Coutances is the aqueduct. It unfortunately does not date from Roman times when the place was known as Constantia, for there is nothing Roman about the ivy-clad arches that cross the valley on the western side. From Coutances northwards to Cherbourg stretches that large tract of Normandy which used to be known as the Cotentin. At first the country is full of deep valleys and smiling hills covered with rich pastures and woodland, but as you approach Lessay at the head of an inlet of the sea the road passes over a flat heathy desert. The church at Lessay is a most perfect example of Norman work. The situation is quite pretty, for near by flows the little river Ay, and the roofs are brilliant with orange lichen. The great square tower with its round-headed Norman windows, is crowned with a cupola. With the exception of the windows in the north aisle the whole of the interior is of pure Norman work. There is a double triforium and the round, circular arches rest on ponderous pillars and there is also a typical Norman semi-circular apse. The village, which is a very ancient one, grew round the Benedictine convent established here by one Turstan Halduc in 1040, and there may still be seen the wonderfully picturesque castle with its round towers. Following the estuary of the river from Lessay on a minor road you come to the hamlet of St Germain-sur-Ay. The country all around is flat, but the wide stretches of sand in the inlet have some attractiveness to those who are fond of breezy and open scenery, and the little church in the village is as old as that of Lessay. One could follow this pretty coast-line northwards until the seaboard becomes bold, but we will turn aside to the little town of La Haye-du-Puits. There is a junction here on the railway for Carentan and St Lo, but the place seems to have gone on quite unaltered by this communication with the large centres of population. The remains of the castle, where lived during the eleventh century the Turstan Halduc just mentioned, are to be seen on the railway side of the town. The dungeon tower, picturesquely smothered in ivy, is all that remains of this Norman fortress. The other portion is on the opposite side of the road, but it only dates from the sixteenth century, when it was rebuilt. Turstan had a son named Odo, who was seneschal to William the Norman, and he is known to have received certain important lands in Sussex as a reward for his services. During the next century the owner of the castle was that Richard de la Haye whose story is a most interesting one. He was escaping from Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, when he had the ill luck to fall in with some Moorish pirates by whom he was captured and kept as a slave for some years. He however succeeded in regaining his liberty, and after his return to France, he and his wife, Mathilde de Vernon, founded the Abbey of Blanchelande. The ruins of this establishment are scarcely more than two miles from La Haye du Puits, but they unfortunately consist of little more than some arches of the abbey church and some of the walls of the lesser buildings. Immediately north of La Haye there is some more heathy ground, but it is higher than the country surrounding Lessay. A round windmill, much resembling the ruined structure that stands out conspicuously on the bare tableland of Alderney, is the first of these picturesque features that we have seen in this part of the country. It is worth mention also on account of the fact that it was at St Sauveur-le-Vicomte, only about seven miles distant, that the first recorded windmill was put up in France about the year 1180, almost the same time as the first reference to such structures occurs in England. St Sauveur has its castle now occupied by the hospital. It was given to Sir John Chandos by Edward III. after the Treaty of Bretigny in 1360, and that courageous soldier, who saw so much fighting in France during the Hundred Years War, added much to the fortress which had already been in existence since very early times in the history of the duchy. A road runs from St Sauveur straight towards the sea. It passes the corner of a forest and then goes right down to the low sandy harbour of Port Bail. It is a wonderful country for atmospheric effects across the embanked swamps and sandhills that lie between the hamlet and the sea. One of the two churches has a bold, square tower, dating from the fifteenth century--it now serves as a lighthouse. The harbour has two other lights and, although it can only be entered at certain tides, the little port contrives to carry on a considerable export trade of farm produce, most of it being consumed in the Channel Islands. The railway goes on to its terminus at Cartaret, a nicely situated little seaside village close to the cape of the same name. Here, if you tire of shrimping on the wide stretch of sands, it is possible to desert Normandy by the little steamer that during the summer plies between this point and Gorey in Jersey. Modern influences have given Cartaret a more civilised flavour than it had a few years ago, and it now has something of the aspect of a watering-place. Northwards from Cartaret, a road follows the coast-line two or three miles from the cliffs to Les Pieux. Then one can go on to Flamanville by the cape which takes its name from the village, and there see the seventeenth century moated manor house. Cherbourg, the greatest naval port of France, is not often visited by those who travel in Normandy, for with the exception of the enormous breakwater, there is nothing beyond the sights of a huge dockyard town that is of any note. The breakwater, however, is a most remarkable work. It stands about two miles from the shore, is more than 4000 yards long by 100 yards wide, and has a most formidable appearance with its circular forts and batteries of guns. The church of La Trinite was built during the English occupation and must have been barely finished before the evacuation of the place in 1450. Since that time the post has only been once attacked by the English, and that was as recently as 1758, when Lord Howe destroyed and burnt the forts, shipping and naval stores. Leaving Cherbourg we will take our way southwards again to Valognes, a town which suffered terribly during the ceaseless wars between England and France. In 1346, Edward III. completely destroyed the place. It was captured by the English seventy-one years afterwards and did not again become French until that remarkable year 1450, when the whole of Normandy and part of Guienne was cleared of Englishmen by the victorious French armies under the Count of Clermont and the Duke of Alencon. The Montgommery, whose defeat at Domfront castle has already been mentioned, held Valognes against the Catholic army, but it afterwards was captured by the victorious Henry of Navarre after the battle of Ivry near Evreux. Valognes possesses a good museum containing many Roman relics from the neighbourhood. A short distance from the town, on the east side, lies the village of Alleaume where there remain the ivy-grown ruins of the castle in which Duke William was residing when the news was brought to him of the insurrection of his barons under the Viscount of the Cotentin. It was at this place that William's fool revealed to him the danger in which he stood, and it was from here that he rode in hot haste to the castle of Falaise, a stronghold the Duke seemed to regard as safer than any other in his possession. Still farther southwards lies the town of Carentan, in the centre of a great butter-making district. It is, however, a dull place--it can scarcely be called a city even though it possesses a cathedral. The earliest part of this building is the west front which is of twelfth century work. The spire of the central tower has much the same appearance as those crowning the two western towers at St Lo, but there is nothing about the building that inspires any particular enthusiasm although the tracery of some of the windows, especially of the reticulated one in the south transept, is exceptionally fine. CHAPTER IX Concerning St Lo and Bayeux The richest pasture lands occupy the great butter-making district that lies north of St Lo. The grass in every meadow seems to grow with particular luxuriance, and the sleepy cows that are privileged to dwell in this choice country, show by their complaisant expressions the satisfaction they feel with their surroundings. It is wonderful to lie in one of these sunny pastures, when the buttercups have gilded the grass, and to watch the motionless red and white cattle as they solemnly let the hours drift past them. During a whole sunny afternoon, which I once spent in those pastoral surroundings, I can scarcely remember the slightest movement taking place among the somnolent herd. There was a gentle breeze that made waves in the silky sea of grass and sometimes stirred the fresh green leaves of the trees overhead. The birds were singing sweetly, and the distant tolling of the cathedral bells at Carentan added a richness to the sounds of nature. Imagine this scene repeated a thousand times in every direction and you have a good idea of this strip of pastoral Normandy. About four miles north of St Lo, the main road drops down into the pleasant little village of Pont Hebert and then passes over the Vire where it flows through a lovely vale. In either direction the brimming waters of the river glide between brilliant green meadows, and as it winds away into the distance, the trees become more and more blue and form a charming contrast to the brighter colours near at hand. To come across the peasants of this pretty country in the garb one so frequently sees depicted as the usual dress of Normandy, it is necessary to be there on a Sunday or some fete day. On such days the wonderful frilled caps, that stand out for quite a foot above the head, are seen on every peasant woman. They are always of the most elaborate designs, and it is scarcely necessary to say that they are of a dazzling whiteness. The men have their characteristic dark blue close-fitting coats and the high-crowned cap that being worn on week days is much more frequently in evidence than the remarkable creations worn by the womenfolk. There is a long climb from Pont Hebert to St Lo but there are plenty of pretty cottages scattered along the road, and these with crimson stonecrop on the roofs and may and lilac blossoming in the gardens, are pictures that prevent you from finding the way tedious. At last, from the considerable height you have reached, St Lo, dominated by its great church, appears on a hill scarcely a mile away. The old town, perched upon the flat surface of a mass of rock with precipitous sides, has much the same position as Domfront. But here we are shut in by other hills and there is no unlimited view of green forest-lands. The place, too, has a busy city-like aspect so that the comparison cannot be carried very far. When you have climbed the steep street that leads up through a quaint gateway to the extensive plateau above, you pass through the Rue Thiers and reach one of the finest views of the church. On one side of the street, there are picturesque houses with tiled roofs and curiously clustered chimneys, and beyond them, across a wide gravelly space, rises the majestic bulk of the west front of Notre Dame. From the wide flight of steps that leads to the main entrance, the eye travels upwards to the three deeply-recessed windows that occupy most of the surface of this end of the nave. Then the two great towers, seemingly similar, but really full of individual ornament, rise majestically to a height equal to that of the highest portion of the nave. Then higher still, soaring away into the blue sky above, come the enormous stone spires perforated with great multi-foiled openings all the way to the apex. Both towers belong to the fifteenth century, but they were not built at quite the same time. In the chancel there is a double arcade of graceful pillars without capitals. There is much fine old glass full of beautiful colours that make a curious effect when the sunlight falls through them upon the black and white marble slabs of the floor. Wedged up against the north-west corner of the exterior stands a comparatively modern house, but this incongruous companionship is no strange thing in Normandy, although, as we have seen at Falaise, there are instances in which efforts are being made to scrape off the humble domestic architecture that clings, barnacle-like, upon the walls of so many of the finest churches. On the north side of Notre Dame, there is an admirably designed outside pulpit with a great stone canopy overhead full of elaborate tracery. It overhangs the pavement, and is a noticeable object as you go towards the Place de la Prefecture. On this wide and open terrace, a band plays on Sunday evenings. There are seats under the trees by the stone balustrade from which one may look across the roofs of the lower town filling the space beneath. The great gravelly Place des Beaux-Regards that runs from the western side of the church, is terminated at the very edge of the rocky platform, and looking over the stone parapet you see the Vire flowing a hundred feet below. This view must have been very much finer before warehouses and factory-like buildings came to spoil the river-side scenery, but even now it has qualities which are unique. Facing the west end of the church, the most striking gabled front of the Maison Dieu forms part of one side of the open space. This building may at first appear almost too richly carved and ornate to be anything but a modern reproduction of a mediaeval house, but it has been so carefully preserved that the whole of the details of the front belong to the original time of the construction of the house. The lower portion is of heavy stone-work, above, the floors project one over the other, and the beauty of the timber-framing and the leaded windows is most striking. St Lo teems with soldiers, and it has a town-crier who wears a dark blue uniform and carries a drum to call attention to his announcements. In the lower part of the town, in the Rue des Halles, you may find the corn-market now held in the church that was dedicated to Thomas a Becket. The building was in course of construction when the primate happened to be at St Lo and he was asked to name the saint to whom the church should be dedicated. His advice was that they should wait until some saintly son of the church should die for its sake. Strangely enough he himself died for the privileges of the church, and thus his name was given to this now desecrated house of God. The remains of the fortifications that crown the rock are scarcely noticeable at the present time, and it is very much a matter of regret that the town has, with the exception of the Tour Beaux-Regards, lost the walls and towers that witnessed so many sieges and assaults from early Norman times right up to the days of Henry of Navarre. It was one of the towns that was held by Geoffrey Plantagenet in Stephen's reign, and it was burnt by Edward III. about the same time as Valognes. Then again in the religious wars of the sixteenth century, a most terrific attack was made on St Lo by Matignon who overcame the resistance of the garrison after Colombieres, the leader, had been shot dead upon the ramparts. It is fortunate for travellers in hot weather that exactly half-way between St Lo and Bayeux there lies the shade of the extensive forest of Cerisy through which the main road cuts in a perfectly straight line. At Semilly there is a picturesque calvary. The great wooden cross towers up to a remarkable height so that the figure of our Lord is almost lost among the overhanging trees, and down below a double flight of mossy stone steps leads up to the little walled-in space where the wayfarer may kneel in prayer at the foot of the cross. Onward from this point, the dust and heat of the roadway can become excessive, so that when at last the shade of the forest is reached, its cool glades of slender beech-trees entice you from the glaring sunshine--for towards the middle of the day the roadway receives no suggestion of shadows from the trees on either side. In this part of the country, it is a common sight to meet the peasant women riding their black donkeys with the milk cans resting in panniers on either side. The cans are of brass with spherical bodies and small necks, and are kept brilliantly burnished. The forest left behind, an extensive pottery district is passed through. The tuilleries may be seen by the roadside in nearly all the villages, Naron being entirely given up to this manufacture. Great embankments of dark brown jars show above the hedges, and the furnaces in which the earthenware is baked, are almost as frequent as the cottages. There are some particularly quaint, but absolutely simple patterns of narrow necked jugs that appear for sale in some of the shops at Bayeux and Caen. Soon the famous Norman cathedral with its three lofty spires appears straight ahead. In a few minutes the narrow streets of this historic city are entered. The place has altogether a different aspect to the busy and cheerful St Lo. The ground is almost level, it is difficult to find any really striking views, and we miss the atmosphere of the more favourably situated town. Perhaps it is because of the evil influence of Caen, but certainly Bayeux lacks the cleanliness and absence of smells that distinguishes Coutances and Avranches from some of the other Norman towns. It is, however, rich in carved fronts and timber-framed houses, and probably is the nearest rival to Lisieux in these features. The visitor is inclined to imagine that he will find the tapestry for which he makes a point of including Bayeux in his tour, at the cathedral or some building adjoining it, but this is not the case. It is necessary to traverse two or three small streets to a tree-grown public square where behind a great wooden gateway is situated the museum. As a home for such a priceless relic as this great piece of needlework, the museum seems scarcely adequate. It has a somewhat dusty and forlorn appearance, and although the tapestry is well set out in a long series of glazed wooden cases, one feels that the risks of fire and other mischances are greater here than they would be were the tapestry kept in a more modern and more fire-proof home. Queen Mathilda or whoever may have been either the actual producer or the inspirer of the tapestry must have used brilliant colours upon this great length of linen. During the nine centuries that have passed since the work was completed the linen has assumed the colour of light brown canvas, but despite this, the greens, blues, reds, and buffs of the stitches show out plainly against the unworked background. There is scarcely an English History without a reproduction of one of the scenes portrayed in the long series of pictures, and London has in the South Kensington Museum a most carefully produced copy of the original. Even the chapter-house of Westminster Abbey has its coloured reproductions of the tapestry, so that it is seldom that any one goes to Bayeux without some knowledge of the historic events portrayed in the needlework. There are fifty-eight separate scenes on the 230 feet of linen. They commence with Harold's instructions from Edward the Confessor to convey to William the Norman the fact that he (Harold) is to become king of England. Then follows the whole story leading up to the flight of the English at Senlac Hill. Even if this wonderful piece of work finds a more secure resting-place in Paris, Bayeux will still attract many pilgrims for its cathedral and its domestic architecture compare favourably with many other Norman towns. The misfortunes that attended the early years of the life of the cathedral were so numerous and consistent that the existence of the great structure to-day is almost a matter for surprise. It seems that the first church made its appearance during the eleventh century, and it was in it that Harold unwittingly took that sacred oath on the holy relics, but by some accident the church was destroyed by fire and there is probably nothing left of this earliest building except the crypt. Eleven years after the conquest of England, William was present at Bayeux when a new building built by his half-brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, was consecrated. Ten years after his death, however, this second church was burnt down. They rebuilt it once more a few years later, but a third time a fire wrought much destruction. The portions of the cathedral that survived this century of conflagrations can be seen in the two great western towers, in the arches of the Norman nave, and a few other portions. The rest of the buildings are in the Early French period of pointed architecture, with the exception of the central tower which is partly of the flamboyant period, but the upper portion is as modern as the middle of last century. The spandrels of the nave arcades are covered over with a diaper work of half a dozen or more different patterns, some of them scaly, some representing interwoven basket-work, while others are composed simply of a series of circles, joined together with lines. There are curious little panels in each of these spandrels that are carved with the most quaint and curious devices. Some are strange, Chinese-looking dragons, and some show odd-looking figures or mitred saints. The panel showing Harold taking the oath is modern. There is a most imposing pulpit surmounted by a canopy where a female figure seated on a globe is surrounded by cherubs, clouds (or are they rocks?) and fearful lightning. At a shrine dedicated to John the Baptist, the altar bears a painting in the centre showing the saint's dripping head resting in the charger. Quite close to the west front of the cathedral there stands a house that still bears its very tall chimney dating from mediaeval times. Not far from this there is one of the timber-framed fifteenth century houses ornamented with curious carvings of small figures, and down in the Rue St Malo there is an even richer example of the same type of building. On the other side of the road, nearer the cathedral, a corner house stands out conspicuously. [Illustration: AN ANCIENT HOUSE IN THE RUE ST MALO, BAYEUX] It is shown in the illustration given here and its curious detail makes it one of the most quaint of all the ancient houses in the city. Some of these old buildings date from the year 1450, when Normandy was swept clear of the English, and it is probably owing to the consideration of the leader of the French army that there are any survivals of this time. The Lord of Montenay was leading the Duke of Alencon's troops and with him were Pierre de Louvain, Robert Conigrain and a number of free archers. After they had battered the walls of Bayeux with their cannon for fifteen days, and after they had done much work with mines and trenches, the French were ready for an assault. The King of France, however, and the notables who have been mentioned "had pity for the destruction of the city and would not consent to the assault." Without their orders, however, the troops, whose ardour could not be restrained, attacked in one place, but not having had the advice of their leaders the onslaught was quite indecisive, both sides suffering equally from arrows and culverins. It was soon after this that Matthew Gough, the English leader, was obliged to surrender the city, and we are told that nine hundred of the bravest and the best soldiers of the Duchy of Normandy came out and were allowed to march to Cherbourg. The French lords "for the honour of courtesy" lent some of their horses to carry the ladies and the other gentlewomen, and they also supplied carts to convey the ordinary womenfolk who went with their husbands. "It was," says Jacques le Bouvier, who describes the scene, "a thing pitiful to behold. Some carried the smallest of the children in their arms, and some were led by hand, and in this way the English lost possession of Bayeux." [Illustration: THE GATEWAY OF THE CHATEAU] CHAPTER X Concerning Caen and the Coast Towards Trouville Caen, like mediaeval London, is famed for its bells and its smells. If you climb up to any height in the town you will see at once that the place is crowded with the spires and towers of churches; and, if you explore any of the streets, you are sure to discover how rudimentary are the notions of sanitation in the historic old city. If you come to Caen determined to thoroughly examine all the churches, you must allow at least two or three days for this purpose, for although you might endeavour to "do" the place in one single day, you would remember nothing but the fatigue, and the features of all the churches would become completely confused. My first visit to Caen, several years ago, is associated with a day of sight-seeing commenced at a very early hour. I had been deposited at one of the quays by the steamer that had started at sunrise and had slowly glided along the ten miles of canal from Ouistreham, reaching its destination at about five o'clock. The town seemed thoroughly awake at this time, the weather being brilliantly fine. White-capped women were everywhere to be seen sweeping the cobbled streets with their peculiarly fragile-looking brooms. It was so early by the actual time, however, that it seemed wise to go straight to the hotel and to postpone the commencement of sight-seeing until a more rational hour. My rooms at the hotel, however, were not yet vacated, so that it was impossible to go to my bedroom till eight o'clock. The hotel courtyard, though picturesque, with its three superimposed galleries and its cylindrical tower containing the staircase, was not, at this hour in the morning at least, a place to linger in. It seemed therefore the wisest plan to begin an exploration of some of the adjoining streets to fill the time. After having seen the exterior of three or four churches, the interiors of some others; after having explored a dozen curious courtyards and the upper part of the town, where the Chateau stands, the clocks began to strike seven, although to me it seemed like noon. By half-past eight the afternoon seemed well advanced, and when dejeuner made its appearance at the hotel it seemed as though the day would never cease. I had by this time seen several more churches and interesting old buildings, and my whole senses had become so jaded that I would scarcely have moved a yard to have seen the finest piece of architecture in the whole of Normandy. The circumstances of this day, were, no doubt, exceptional, but I mention them as a warning to those who with a pathetic conscientiousness endeavour to see far more than they can possibly comprehend in the space of a very few hours. It would be far better to spend one's whole time in the great church of the Abbaye aux Hommes, and photograph in one's mind the simplicity of the early Norman structure, than to have a confused recollection of this, St Pierre, the church of the Abbaye aux Darnes and half a dozen others. The galleried hotel I have mentioned was known as the Hotel St Barbe. It is now converted into a warehouse, but no one need regret this for it was more pleasant to look at than to actually stay in. I am glad, personally, to have had this experience; to have seen the country carts, with the blue sheep-skins over the horse collars, drive into the courtyard, and to have watched the servants of the hotel eating their meals at a long table in the open air. There was a Spanish flavour about the place that is not found in the modern hotels. There is no town I have ever known more confusing in its plan than Caen, and, although I have stayed there for nearly a week on one occasion, I am still a little uncertain in which direction to turn for the castle when I am at the church of St Jean. The streets, as a rule, are narrow and have a busy appearance that is noticeable after the quiet of Bayeux. The clatter and noise of the omnibuses has been subdued in recent years by the introduction of electric trams which sweep round the corners with a terrifying speed, for after a long sojourn in the country and quiet little towns one loses the agility and wariness of the town-bred folk. Caen, of course, does not compete with Lisieux for its leading position as the possessor of the largest number of old houses, but it nevertheless can show some quaint carved fronts in the Rue St Pierre and the narrow streets adjoining. At the present time the marks of antiquity are being removed from the beautiful renaissance courtyard of the Bourse near St Pierre. The restoration has been going on for some years, and the steps that lead up to the entrance in one corner of the quadrangle are no longer stained with the blackish-green of a prolonged period of damp. But it is better, however, that this sixteenth century house should assume a fictitious newness rather than fall entirely into disrepair. It was originally the house of one of the wealthy families of Caen named Le Valois, and was known as the Hotel d'Escoville. Another splendid house is the Hotel de la Monnaie built by the famous and princely merchant Etienne Duval, Sieur de Mondrainville, whose great wealth enabled him to get sufficient supplies into Metz to make it possible for the place to hold out during its siege in 1553. In his most admirably written book "Highways and Byways in Normandy," Mr Dearmer gives an interesting sketch of this remarkable man whose success brought him jealous enemies. They succeeded in bringing charges against him for which he was exiled, and at another time he was imprisoned in the castle at Caen until, with great difficulty, he had proved the baseness of the attacks upon his character. Duval was over seventy when he died, being, like Job, wealthy and respected, for he had survived the disasters that had fallen upon him. The gateway of the Chateau is the best and most imposing portion of the fortifications of Caen. The castle being now used as barracks, visitors as a rule are unable to enter, but as the gateway may be seen from outside the deep moat, the rest of the place need not tantalise one. In William the Conqueror's time the castle was being built, and the town walls included the two great abbeys for which Caen is chiefly famous. These two magnificent examples of Norman architecture have been restored with great thoroughness so that the marks of antiquity that one might expect are entirely wanting in both buildings. The exterior of the great church of St Etienne disappoints so many, largely from the fact that the gaunt west front is the only view one really has of the building except from a distance. Inside, services seem to go on at most times of the day, and when you are quietly looking at the mighty nave with its plain, semicircular arches and massive piers, you are suddenly startled by the entry from somewhere of a procession of priests loudly singing some awe-inspiring chant, the guttural tones of the singers echoing through the aisles. Following the clerical party will come a rabble of nuns, children and ordinary laity, and before you have scarcely had time to think a service has commenced, people are kneeling, and if you do not make haste towards the doors a priest will probably succeed in reaching you with a collecting dish in which one is not inclined to place even a sou if the service has hindered the exploration of the church. Owing to the perpetuation of an error in some of the English guides to Normandy, it is often thought that a thigh-bone of the founder of the abbey is still lying beneath the marble slab in the sanctuary, but this is a great mistake, for that last poor relic of William the Conqueror was lost during the Revolution. The whole story of the death, the burial, and the destruction of the tomb and remains of the founder of the abbey are most miserable and even gruesome. William was at Rouen when he died, and we need scarcely remind ourselves of that tragic scene discovered by the clergy when they came to the house not long after the great man had expired. Every one of William's suite had immediately recognised the changed state of affairs now that the inflexible will that had controlled the two kingdoms had been removed, and each, concerned for himself, had betaken himself with indecent haste to England or wherever his presence might be most opportune. In this way, there being no one left to watch the corpse, the Archbishop of Rouen discovered that the house and even the bed had been pillaged, so that the royal body was lying in great disorder until reverently tended by a Norman gentleman named Herluin. Having fulfilled William's wishes and brought the remains to Caen, a stately funeral was arranged. As the procession slowly passed through the narrow streets, however, it was interrupted by an alarm of fire-some of the wooden houses blazing fiercely just when the bier was passing. The flames grew so quickly that in some danger the mournful procession was dispersed and the coffin was only attended by a few monks when the gates of the Abbaye aux Hommes were reached. Eventually the burial ceremonies were in progress beside the open grave within the church, but another interruption ensued. Scarcely had the Bishop of Evreux concluded his address when everybody was startled at hearing the loud voice of Ascelin resounding through the church. He was a well-known man, a burgher, and a possessor of considerable wealth, and it was therefore with considerable anxiety that the clergy heard his claim upon the ground in which they were about to bury William. It was the actual site of a house that had belonged to Ascelin's father, for the dead king had shown no consideration to private claims when he was building the great abbey to appease the wrath of the church. The disturbance having been settled by the payment for the grave of a sum which Ascelin was induced to accept, the proceedings were resumed. But then came the worst scene of all, for it has been recorded that the coffin containing the ponderous body of the king had not been made with sufficient strength, and as it was being lowered into the grave, the boards gave way, and so gruesome was the result that the church was soon emptied. It thus came about that once more in the last phase of all William was deserted except by a few monks. The monument which was raised over the Conqueror's grave, was, however, of a most gorgeous character. It was literally encrusted with precious gems, and it is known that enormous quantities of gold from the accumulated stores of wealth which William had made were used by Otto the goldsmith (sometimes known as Aurifaber) who was entrusted with the production of this most princely tomb. Such a striking object as this could scarcely pass through many centuries in safety, and we find that in the Huguenot wars of the seventeenth century it was largely destroyed and the stone coffin was broken open, the bones being scattered. We only know what became of a thigh-bone which was somehow rescued by a monk belonging to the abbey. He kept it for some time, and in 1642 it was replaced in a new, but much less gorgeous tomb. About one hundred years later, it was moved to another part of the church, but in the Revolution this third tomb was broken into, and the last relic of the Conqueror was lost. Then after some years, the Prefet of Calvados placed upon the site of the desecrated tomb the slab of black marble that still marks the spot. The inscription reads "Hic sepultus est, Invictissimus Guielmus Conquestor, Normanniae Dux et Angliae Rex, Hujusce domus Conditor Qui obit anno MLXXXVII." When Lanfranc had been sent to the Pope by William with a view to making some arrangement by which the King could retain his wife Matilda and at the same time the good offices of the Church, his side of the bargain consisted in undertaking to build two great abbeys at Caen, one for men and one for women. The first we have already been examining, the other is at the eastern side of the town on the hill beyond the castle. It is a more completely Norman building than St Etienne, but its simple, semi-circular arches and round-headed windows contrast strangely with the huge pontifical canopy of draped velvet that is suspended above the altar, and very effectually blocks the view of the Norman apse beyond. The smallness of the windows throughout the building subdues the light within, and thus gives St Trinite a somewhat different character to St Etienne. The capitals of the piers of the arcade are carved with strange-looking monkeys and other designs, and there are chevron mouldings conspicuous in the nave. The tomb of Queen Mathilda is in the choir. Like that of her husband it has been disturbed more than once, so that the marble slab on top is all that remains of the original. Opposite the Place Reine Mathilde stands the desecrated church of St Gilles, one of the numerous beautiful buildings in Caen now in partial ruin and occupied as warehouses, wine-vaults or workshops. They are all worth looking for, and if possible examining inside as well as out, for they include some beautiful flamboyant structures and others of earlier date, such as St Nicholas, illustrated here, which in part dates from Norman times. St Etienne le Vieux, quite close to the Abbaye aux Hommes, is a beautiful building rich in elaborate carving and rows of gargoyles. It was built in the early years of the fifteenth century in place of one which had fallen into ruin when Henry V. besieged Caen. It is still unrestored, and if you peep inside the open doors you will see the interior filled with ladders, boxes, brooms, and a thousand odds and ends, this most beautiful structure being used as a municipal workshop. We have more than once referred to the church of St Pierre, but as yet we have made no reference to its architecture. The tower and graceful spire needs no detailed description, for it appears in the coloured illustration adjoining, and from it one may see what a strikingly perfect structure this is for such an early date as 1308. It is a marvel of construction, for the spire within is hollow, and without any interior framework or supports at all. Although it is so seemingly frail, it was used during the sixteenth century for military purposes, having been selected as a good position for firing upon the castle, and it naturally became a target for the guns inside the fortress. You cannot now see the holes made by the cannon balls, but although they were not repaired for many years the tower remained perfectly stable, as a proof of the excellent work of Nicholas, the Englishman who built it. Unlike the church of the Abbaye aux Dames, St Pierre is brilliantly lit inside by large, traceried windows that let in the light through their painted glass. In the nave the roof is covered with the most elaborate vaulting with great pendants dropping from the centre of each section; but for the most crowded ornament one must examine the chancel and the chapels. The church of St Jean is not conspicuous, but it is notable for two or three features. The western tower is six and a half feet out of perpendicular, the triforium has a noticeable balustrade running all round, and the chancel is longer than the nave. St Sauveur, in the Rue St Pierre is of the same period as St Jean, but its tower if it had been crocketed would have very closely resembled that of St Pierre, and it is chiefly notable for the fact that it is two churches thrown into one--that of St Eustace being joined on to it. Another feature of Caen that is often overlooked is the charm of its old courtyards. Behind some of the rather plain stone fronts, the archways lead into little paved quadrangles that have curious well-heads, rustic outside staircases, and odd-shaped dormer windows on the steep roofs. One of these courtyards behind a house in the Rue de Bayeux is illustrated here, but to do justice to the quaintnesses that are to be revealed, it would have been necessary to give several examples. In the Boulevard St Pierre, where the pavements are shaded by pink horse chestnuts there stands the Tour le Roy. It is the most noticeable remnant of the days when Caen was a walled and strongly fortified city, but as you look at it to-day it seems too much like a good piece of the sham antique to be found at large exhibitions. It is the restoration that is at fault, and not the tower itself, which is really old, and no doubt is in quiet rebellion at the false complexion it is obliged to wear. The view of Caen from across the race-course is a beautiful one, but under some aspects this is quite eclipsed by the wonderful groupings of the church towers seen from the canal as it goes out of the town towards the east. I can remember one particular afternoon when there was a curious mistiness through which the western sunlight passed, turning everything into a strange, dull gold. It was a light that suppressed all that was crude and commercial near at hand and emphasised the medievalism of the place by throwing out spires and towers in softly tinted silhouettes. I love to think of Caen robed in this cloth of gold, and the best I can wish for every one who goes there with the proper motives, is that they may see the place in that same light. On the left, a few miles out of Caen on the road to Creully, stands the Abbaye d'Ardennes where Charles VII. lodged when his army was besieging the city in 1450. The buildings are now used as a farm, and the church is generally stacked with hay and straw up to the triforium. Although they start towards the east, the canal and the river Orne taking parallel courses run generally towards the north, both entering the sea by the village of Ouistreham, the ancient port of Caen. Along the margin of the canal there is a good road, and almost hidden by the long grass outside the tall trees that line the canal on each bank, runs the steam tramway to Cabourg and the coast to the west of the Orne. Except when the fussy little piece of machinery drawing three or four curious, open-sided trams, is actually passing, the tramway escapes notice, for the ground is level and the miniature rails are laid on the ground without any excavating or embanking. The scenery as you go along the tramway, the road, or the canal, is charming, the pastures on either side being exceedingly rich, and the red and white cattle seem to revel in the long grass and buttercups. Heronville, Blainville and other sleepy villages are pleasantly perched on the slight rise on the western side of the canal. Their churches, with red roofs all subdued with lichen into the softest browns, rise above the cottages or farm buildings that surround them in the ideal fashion that is finally repeated at Ouistreham where locks impound the waters of the canal, and a great lighthouse stands out more conspicuously than the church tower. Seen through the framework of closely trimmed trees Ouistreham makes a notable picture. The great Norman church is so exceedingly imposing for such a mere village, that it is easy to understand how, as a port in the Middle Ages, Ouistreham flourished exceedingly. The tramway crosses the canal at Benouville on its way to Cabourg, and leaving the shade of birches and poplars takes its way over the open fields towards the sea. Benouville is best remembered on account of its big chateau with a great classic portico much resembling a section of Waterloo Place perched upon a fine terraced slope. Ranville has an old church tower standing in lonely fashion by itself, and you pass a conspicuous calvary as you go on to the curious little seaside resort known as Le Home-Sur-Mer. The houses are bare and (if one may coin a word) seasidey. Perched here and there on the sandy ridge between the road and the shore, they have scarcely anything more to suggest a garden than the thin wiry grass that contrives to exist in such soil. Down on the wide sandy beach there is an extensive sweep of the coast to be seen stretching from beyond Ouistreham to the bold cliffs of Le Havre. Keeping along the road by the tramway you have been out of sight of the sea, but in a few minutes the pleasant leafiness of Cabourg has been reached. Here everything has the full flavour of a seaside resort, for we find a casino, a long esplanade, hotels, shops and bathing apparatus. It is a somewhat strong dose of modern life after the slumbering old world towns and villages we have been exploring, and it is therefore with great satisfaction that we turn toward the village of Dives lying close at hand. The place possesses a splendid old market hall, more striking perhaps than that of Ecouche and a picturesque inn--the Hotel Guillaume le Conquerant. The building is of stone with tiled roofs, and in the two courtyards there are galleries and much ancient timber-framing, but unfortunately the proprietor has not been content to preserve the place in its natural picturesqueness. He has crowded the exterior, as well as the rooms, with a thousand additions of a meretricious character which detract very much from the charm of the fine old inn and defeat the owner's object, that of making it attractive on account of its age and associations. Madame de Sevigne wrote many of her letters in one of the rooms, but we know that she saw none of the sham antique lamps, the well-head, or the excess of flowers that blaze in the courtyards. On account of its name, the unwary are trapped into thinking that William the Norman--for he had still to defeat Harold--could have frequently been seen strolling about this hostelry, when his forces for invading England were gathering and his fleet of ships were building. This is, of course, a total misapprehension, for the only structure that contains anything that dates back to 1066 is the church. Even this building dates chiefly from the fourteenth century, but there is to be seen, besides the Norman walls, a carved wooden cross that is believed to have been found in the sea, and therefore to have some connection with William's great fleet and its momentous voyage to England. The names of the leading men who accompanied William are engraved upon two marble slabs inside the church, and on the hill above the village a short column put up by M. de Caumont, commemorates the site upon which William is believed to have inspected his forces previous to their embarkation. It is a difficult matter to form any clear idea of the size of this army for the estimates vary from 67,000 to 14,000, and there is also much uncertainty as to the number of ships employed in transporting the host across the channel. The lowest estimates suggest 696 vessels, and there is every reason to believe that they were quite small. The building of so large a fleet of even small boats between the winter and summer of 1066 must have employed an enormous crowd of men, and we may be justified in picturing a very busy scene on the shores of this portion of the coast of Normandy. Duke William's ship, which was named the _Mora_, had been presented to him by his wife Mathilda, and most of the vessels had been built and manned by the Norman barons and prelates, the Bishop of Bayeux preparing no less than a hundred ships. The Conquest of England must have almost been regarded as a holy crusade! When the fleet left the mouth of the river Dives it did not make at once for Pevensey Bay. The ships instead worked along the coast eastwards to the Somme, where they waited until a south wind blew, then the vessels all left the estuary each carrying a light, for it was almost dark. By the next morning the white chalk of Beachy Head was in sight, and at nine o'clock William had landed on English soil. Close to Dives and in sight of the hill on which the Normans were mustered, there is a small watering-place known as Houlgate-sur-mer. The houses are charmingly situated among trees, and the place has in recent years become known as one of those quiet resorts where princes and princesses with their families may be seen enjoying the simple pleasures of the seaside, _incognito_. This fact, of course, gets known to enterprising journalists who come down and photograph these members of the European royal families wherever they can get them in particularly unconventional surroundings. From Houlgate all the way to Trouville the country is wooded and hilly, and in the hollows, where the timber-framed farms with their thatched roofs are picturesquely arranged, there is much to attract the visitor who, wearying of the gaiety of Trouville and its imitators along the coast, wishes to find solitudes and natural surroundings. CHAPTER XI Some Notes on the History of Normandy The early inhabitants of Normandy submitted to the Roman legions under Titurus Sabinus in B.C. 58, only a few years before Caesar's first attempt upon Britain. By their repeated attacks upon Roman territory the Gaulish tribes had brought upon themselves the invasion which, after some stubborn fighting, made their country a province of the Roman Empire. Inter-tribal strife having now ceased, the civilisation of Rome made its way all over the country including that northern portion known as Neustria, much of which from the days of Rollo came to be called Normandy. Traces of the Roman occupation are scattered all over the province, the most remarkable being the finely preserved theatre at Lillebonne, a corruption of Juliabona, mentioned in another chapter. In the second century Rouen, under its Roman name Rotomagos, is mentioned by Ptolemy. It was then merely the capital of the tribe of Velocasses, but in Diocletian's reign it had become not only the port of Roman Paris, but also the most important town in the province. In time the position occupied by Rotomagos became recognised as one having greater strategical advantages than Juliabona, a little further down the river, and this Gallo-Roman precursor of the modern Rouen became the headquarters of the provincial governor. The site of Rotomagos would appear to include the Palais de Justice and the Cathedral of the present day. After the four centuries of Roman rule came the incursions of the savage hordes of northern Europe, and of the great army of Huns, under Attila, who marched through Gaul in A.D. 451. The Romans with their auxiliaries engaged Attila at Chalons--the battle in which fabulous numbers of men are said to have fallen on both sides. The Roman power was soon completely withdrawn from Gaul, and the Franks under Clovis, after the battle of Soissons, made themselves complete masters of the country. In 511 Clovis died. He had embraced Christianity fifteen years before, having been baptised at Rheims, probably through the influence of his wife Clothilda. Then for two hundred and fifty years France was under the Merovingian kings, and throughout much of this period there was very little settled government, Neustria, together with the rest of France, suffering from the lawlessness that prevailed under these "sluggard" kings. Rouen was still the centre of many of the events connected with the history of Neustria. We know something of the story of Hilparik, a king of Neustria, whose brutal behaviour to his various queens and the numerous murders and revenges that darkened his reign, form a most unsavoury chapter in the story of this portion of France. Following this period came the time when France was ruled by the mayors of the palace who, owing to the weakness of the sovereigns, gradually assumed the whole of the royal power. After Charles Martel, the most famous of these mayors, had defeated the Saracens at Tours, came his son Pepin-le-Bref, the father of Charlemagne. Childeric, the last of the Merovingian kings, had been put out of the way in a monastery and Pepin had become the King of France. Charlemagne, however, soon made himself greater still as Emperor of an enormous portion of Europe--France, Italy, and Germany all coming under his rule. At his death Charlemagne divided his empire. His successor Louis le Debonnaire, owing to his easy-going weakness, fell a prey to Charlemagne's other sons, and at his death, Charles the Bald became King of France and the country west of the Rhine. The other portions of the empire falling to Lothaire and the younger Louis. During all this period, France had suffered from endless fighting and the famines that came as an unevitable consequence, and just about this time Neustria suffered still further owing to the incursions of the Danes. Even in Charlemagne's time the black-sailed ships of the Northmen had been seen hovering along the coast near the mouth of the Seine, and it has been said that the great Emperor wept at the sight of some of these awe-inspiring pirates. In the year 841 the Northmen had sailed up the Seine as far as Rouen, but they found little to plunder, for during the reign of the Merovingian kings, the town had been reduced to a mere shadow of its former prosperity. There had been a great fire and a great plague, and its ruin had been rendered complete during the civil strife that succeeded the death of Charlemagne. Wave after wave came the northern invasions led by such men as Bjorn Ironside, and Ragnar Lodbrog. Charles the Bald, fearing to meet these dreaded warriors, bribed them away from the walls of Paris in the year 875. But they came again twelve years afterwards in search of more of the Frenchmen's gold. When Charles the Fat, the German Emperor, became also King of France, he had to suffer for his treacherous murder of a Danish chief, for soon afterwards came the great Rollo with a large fleet of galleys, and Paris was besieged once more. Odo, Count of Paris, held out successfully, but when the king came from Germany with his army, instead of attacking the Danes, he induced them to retire by offering them a bribe of 800 lbs. of silver. Before long Odo became King of France, but after ten years of constant fighting, he died and was succeeded by Charles the Simple. This title does an injustice to his character, for he certainly did more for France than most of his predecessors. Finding the Northmen too firmly established in Neustria to have any hope of successfully driving them out of the country, he made a statesmanlike arrangement with Rollo. The Dane was to do homage to the French king, to abandon his gods Thor, Odin and the rest for Christianity, and in return was to be made ruler of the country between the River Epte and the sea, and westwards as far as the borders of Brittany Rollo was also to be given the hand of the Princess Gisela in marriage. Rouen became the capital of the new Duchy of Normandy, and the old name of Neustria disappeared. The Northmen were not at this time numerous, but they continued to come over in considerable numbers establishing centres such as that of Bayeux, where only Danish was spoken. As in England, this warrior people showed the most astonishing adaptability to the higher civilisation with which they had come into contact, and the new generations that sprang up on French soil added to the vigour and daring of their ancestors the manners and advanced customs of France, although the Northmen continued to be called "The Pirates" for a considerable time. When Rollo died he was succeeded by his son William Longsword, and from an incident mentioned by Mr T.A. Cook in his "Story of Rouen," we can see the attitude of the Normans towards Charles the Simple. He had sent down to Rouen two court gallants to sympathise with the Princess Gisela, his daughter, for the rough treatment she had received at the hands of Rollo, but they were both promptly siezed and hanged in what is now the Place du Marche Vieux. Great stone castles were beginning to appear at all the chief places in Normandy, and when Duke Richard had succeeded Harold Blacktooth we find that the Duchy was assuming an ordered existence internally. The feudal system had then reached its fullest development, and the laws established by Rollo were properly administered. With the accession of Hugh Capet to the throne of France, Normandy had become a most loyal as well as powerful fief of the crown. The tenth century witnessed also an attempt on the part of the serfs of the Duchy to throw off something of the awful grip of the feudal power. These peasants were the descendants of Celts, of Romans, and of Franks, and their efforts to form a representative assembly bear a pathetic resemblance to the movement towards a similar end in Russia of to-day. The representatives of the serfs were treated with the most fearful cruelty and sent back to their villages; but the movement did not fail to have its effects, for the condition of the villains in Normandy was always better than in other parts of France. Broadly speaking, all the successors of Rollo, the first Duke of Normandy, governed the country with wisdom and ability, and although there was more or less constant war, either with the French, who were always hoping to regain the lost province, or with rebellious barons who disputed the authority of the dukes, yet the country progressed steadily and became prosperous. Abbeys and churches that the invaders had laid waste were rebuilt on a larger scale. At Jumieges there are still to be seen some remains of the church that William Longsword began to build for the unfortunate monks who had been left homeless after their abbey had been destroyed by the "Pirates." Richard I., who died in 996, had added to the Cathedral at Rouen, and the abbey of St Ouen prospered greatly in the religious revival that became so widespread during the eleventh century. Duke Richard II. had been assisted on one occasion by Olaf, King of Norway, and before his return to the north that monarch, impressed no doubt by the pomp of the ceremonial, was in 1004 baptised in the cathedral at Rouen. After Richard II. came Robert the Magnificent, who was called also Robert the Devil by the people. It was he, who from the walls of his castle at Falaise, if the legend be true, first saw Arlette the tanner's daughter who afterwards became the Mother of William the Bastard. As a boy William had a perilous life, and it is almost marvellous that he survived to change his appellation to that of "Conqueror." Robert the Magnificent had joined one of the crusades to the Holy Land when William was only seven years old, but before he left Normandy, he had made it known that he wished the boy to succeed him. For twenty years there was civil war between the greater barons and the supporters of the heir, but in the end William showed himself sufficiently strong to establish his power. He won a great battle at Val-es-Dunes where he had been met by the barons led by Guy of Burgundy, and, having taken some of the most formidable fortresses in the Duchy, he turned his attention to his foes outside with equal success. Soon after this William married Mathilda a daughter of Count Baldwin of Flanders, but although by this act he made peace with her country, William soon found himself in trouble with the church. Bishop Mauger, whom he had appointed to the See of Rouen, found fault with the marriage owing to its being within the forbidden degrees of relationship, and the papal sanction having been refused, William only obtained his wishes through the agency of Lanfranc. All his life William appears to have set a stern example of purity in family life, and his relations with the church, from this time to his death, seem to have been most friendly. It was largely due to his religious life as well as the support he gave to the monasteries that William was able to give the colour of a religious crusade to his project for invading England. Harold had slighted the sacredness of the holy relics of the saints of Normandy, and William was to show England that their king's action was not to pass unpunished. In this way the Norman host that assembled at Dives, while the great fleet was being prepared, included many who came from outside William's dominions. After the whole of England had been completely subjugated William had his time and attention largely taken up with affairs in Normandy. His son Robert was soon in open rebellion, and assisted by the French King, Philip I., Robert brought about the death of his father, for it was while devastating a portion of French territory that William received the injury which resulted in his death. Robert then became Duke of Normandy, and there followed those sanguinary quarrels between the three brothers William Rufus, King of England, Henry Beauclerc and Robert. Finally, after his return from Palestine, Robert came to England to endeavour to make peace with his younger brother Henry, who was now king, but the quarrel was not to be settled in this way. Henry, determined to add Normandy to the English crown, crossed the channel with a large army and defeated his brother at Tinchebrai in 1106. With the accession of Stephen to the English throne in 1135, came the long struggle between that king and Maud. When Henry II. married Eleanor of Aquitaine, not only that great province but also Maine and Anjou came under his sway, so that for a time Normandy was only a portion of the huge section of France belonging to the English Crown. During his long reign Henry spent much time in Normandy, and Argentan and Avranches are memorable in connection with the tragedy of Thomas a Becket. During the absence of Richard Coeur-de-Lion in Palestine John became exceedingly friendly with Philip Augustus, the French King, but when Richard was dead he found cause to quarrel with the new English king and, after the fall of the Chateau Gaillard, John soon discovered that he had lost the Duchy of Normandy and had earned for himself the name of "Lackland." From this time, namely, the commencement of the thirteenth century, Normandy belonged to the crown of France although English armies were, until 1450, in frequent occupation of the larger towns and fortresses. 
45336	----	Every attempt has been made to replicate the original as printed. No attempt has been made to correct or normalize the spelling of non-English words. Some typographical errors have been corrected; a list follows the text. The illustrations have been moved from mid-paragraph for ease of reading. (etext transcriber's note) PARIS AND ITS STORY _All rights reserved_ [Illustration: RUE ST. ANTOINE.] PARIS AND ITS STORY BY T. OKEY [Illustration: colophon] ILLUSTRATED BY KATHERINE KIMBALL & O. F. M. WARD 1904 LONDON: J. M. DENT & CO. NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO. "I will not here omit, that I never rail so much against France as to be out of humour with _Paris_; that city has ever had my heart from my infancy; and it has fallen out to me, as of excellent things, that the more of other fine cities I have seen since, the more the beauty of this gains upon my affections. I love it for its own sake, and more for its own native being than the addition of foreign pomp; I love it tenderly even with all its warts and blemishes. I am not a Frenchman but by this great city great in people, great in the felicity or her situation, but above all great and incomparable in variety and diversity of commodities; the glory of France and one of the most noble ornaments of the world." MONTAIGNE. "Quand Dieu eslut nonante et dix royaumes Tot le meillor torna en douce France." COURONNEMENT LOYS. PREFACE The History of Paris, says Michelet, is the history of the French monarchy. The aim of the writer in the following pages has been to narrate the story of the capital city of France on the lines thus indicated, dwelling, however, in the earlier chapters rather more on its legendary aspect than perhaps an austere historical conscience would approve. But it is precisely a familiarity with these romantic stories, which at least are true in impression if not in fact, that the sojourner in Paris will find most useful, translated as they are in sculpture and in painting on the decoration of her architecture both modern and ancient, and implicit in the nomenclature of her ways. Within the limits of time and space allotted for the work no more than an imperfect outline of a vast subject has been possible. The writer has essayed to compose a story of, not a guide to, Paris. Those who desire the latter may be referred to the excellent manuals of Murray, Bædeker and of Grant Allen--the last named being an admirable companion for the artistically-minded traveller. In controversial matter, such, for instance, as the position of the ancient Grand Pont, the writer has adopted the opinions of the most recent authorities. The story of Paris presents a marked contrast with that of an Italian city-state whose rise, culmination and fall may be roundly traced. Paris is yet in the stage of lusty growth. Time after time, like a young giantess, she has burst her cincture of walls, cast off her outworn garments and renewed her armour and vesture. Hers are no grass-grown squares and deserted streets; no ruined splendours telling of pride abased and glory departed; no sad memories of waning cities once the mistresses of sea and land; none of the tears evoked by a great historic tragedy; none of the solemn pathos of decay and death. Paris has more than once tasted the bitterness of humiliation; Norseman, and Briton, Russian and German have bruised her fair body; the dire distress of civic strife has exhausted her strength, but she has always emerged from her trials with marvellous recuperation, more flourishing than before. Since 1871, when the city, crushed under a two-fold calamity of foreign invasion and of internecine war, seemed doomed to bleed away to feeble insignificance, her prosperity has so increased that house rent has doubled and population risen from 1,825,274 in 1870 to 2,714,068 in 1901. The growth of Paris from the settlement of an obscure Gallic tribe to the most populous, the most cultured, the most artistic, the most delightful and seductive of continental cities has been prodigious, yet withal she has maintained her essential unity, her corporate sense and peculiar individuality. Paris, unlike London, has never expatiated to the effacement of her distinctive features and the loss of civic consciousness. The city has still a definite outline and circumference, and over her gates to-day one may read, _Entrée de Paris_. The Parisian is, and always has been, conscious of his citizenship, proud of his city, careful of her beauty, jealous of her reputation. The essentials of Parisian life remain unchanged since mediæval times. Busy multitudes of alert, eager burgesses crowd her streets; ten thousand students stream from the provinces, from Europe, and even from the uttermost parts of the earth, to eat of the bread of knowledge at her University. The old collegiate life is gone, but the arts and sciences are freely taught as of old to all comers; and a lowly peasant lad may carry in his satchel a prime minister's portfolio or the insignia of a president of the republic, even as his mediæval prototype bore a bishop's mitre or a cardinal's hat. The boisterous exuberance of youthful spirits still vents itself in rowdy student life to the scandal of bourgeois placidity, and the poignant self-revelation and gnawing self-reproach of a François Villon find their analogue in the pathetic verse of a Paul Verlaine. Beneath the fair and ordered surface of the normal life of Paris still sleep the fiery passions which, from the days of the Maillotins to those of the Commune, have throughout the crisis of her history ensanguined her streets with the blood of citizens.[1] Let us remember, however, when contrasting the modern history of Paris with that of London, that the questions which have stirred her citizens have been not party but dynastic ones, often complicated and embittered by social and religious principles ploughing deep in the human soul, for which men have cared enough to suffer, and to inflict, death. Those writers who are pleased to trace the permanency of racial traits through the life of a people dwell with satisfaction on passages in ancient authors who describe the Gauls as quick to champion the cause of the oppressed, prone to war, elated by victory, impatient of defeat, easily amenable to the arts of peace, responsive to intellectual culture; terrible, indefatigable orators but bad listeners, so intolerant of their speakers that at tribal gatherings an official charged to maintain silence would march, sword in hand, towards an interrupter, and after a third warning cut off a portion of his dress. If the concurrent testimony of writers, ancient, mediæval and modern, be of any worth, Gallic vanity is beyond dispute. Dante, expressing the prevailing belief of his age, exclaims, "Now, was there ever people so vain as the Sienese! Certes not the French by far."[2] Of their imperturbable gaiety and the avidity for new things we have ample testimony, and the course of this story will demonstrate that France, and more especially Paris, has ever been, from the establishment of Christianity to the birth of the modern world at the Revolution, the parent or the fosterer of ideas, the creator of arts, the soldier of the ideal. She has always evinced a wondrous preventive apprehension of coming changes. The earliest of the western people beyond Rome to adopt Christianity, she had established a monastery near Tours a century and a half before St. Benedict, the founder of Western monasticism, had organised his first community at Subiaco. In the Middle Ages Paris became the intellectual light of the Christian world. From the time of the centralisation of the monarchy at Paris she absorbed in large measure the vital forces of the nation, and all that was greatest in art, science and literature was drawn within her walls until, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, she became the centre of learning, taste and culture in Europe.[3] During the first Empire and the Restoration, after the tempest was stilled and the great heritage of the Revolution taken possession of, an amazing outburst of scientific, artistic and literary activity made Paris the _Ville Lumière_ of Europe. Paris is still the city in Europe where the things of the mind and of taste have most place, where the wheels of life run most smoothly and pleasantly, where the graces and refinements and amenities of social existence, _l'art des plaisirs fins_, are most highly developed and most widely diffused. There is something in the crisp, luminous air of Paris that quickens the intelligence and stimulates the senses. Even the scent of the wood fires as one emerges from the railway station exhilarates the spirit. The poet Heine used to declare that the traveller could estimate his proximity to Paris by noting the increasing intelligence of the people, and that the very bayonets of the soldiers were more intelligent than those elsewhere. Life, even in its more sensuous and material phases, is less gross and coarse,[4] its pleasures more refined than in London. It is impossible to conceive the pit of a London theatre stirred to fury by a misplaced adjective in a poetical drama, or to imagine anything comparable to the attitude of a Parisian audience at the cheap holiday performances at the Français or the Odéon, where the severe classic tragedies of Racine, of Corneille, of Victor Hugo, or the well-worn comedies of Molière or of Beaumarchais are played with small lure of stage upholstery, and listened to with close attention by a popular audience responsive to the exquisite rhythm and grace of phrasing, the delicate and restrained tragic pathos, and the subtle comedy of their great dramatists. To witness a _première_ at the Français is an intellectual feast. The brilliant house; the pit and stalls filled with black-coated critics; the quick apprehension of the points and happy phrases; the universal and excited discussion between the acts; the atmosphere of keen and alert intelligence pervading the whole assembly; the quaint survival of the time-honoured "overture"--three knocks on the boards--dating back to Roman times when the Prologus of the comedy stepped forth and craved the attention of the audience by three taps of his wand; the chief actor's approach to the front of the stage after the play is ended to announce to Mesdames and Messieurs what in these days they have known for weeks before from the press, that "the piece we have had the honour of playing" is by such a one--all combine to make an indelible impression on the mind of the foreign spectator. The Parisian is the most orderly and well-behaved of citizens. The custom of the _queue_ is a spontaneous expression of his love of fairness and order. Even the applause in theatres is organised. A spectacle such as that witnessed at the funeral of Victor Hugo in 1885, the most solemn and impressive of modern times, is inconceivable in London. The whole population (except the Faubourg St. Germain and the clergy) from the poorest labourer to the heads of the State issued forth to file past the coffin of their darling poet, lifted up under the Arc de Triomphe, and by their multitudinous presence honoured his remains borne on a poor bare hearse to their last resting-place in the Panthéon. Amid this vast crowd, mainly composed of labourers, mechanics and the _petite bourgeoisie_, assembled to do homage to the memory of the poet of democracy, scarcely an _agent_ was seen; the people were their own police, and not a rough gesture, not a trace of disorder marred the sublime scene. The Parisian democracy is the most enlightened and the most advanced in Europe, and it is to Paris that the dearest hopes and deepest sympathies of generous spirits will ever go forth in "The struggle, and the daring rage divine for liberty, Of aspirations toward the far ideal, enthusiast dreams of brotherhood." It now remains for the writer to acknowledge his indebtedness to the following among other authorities, which are here enumerated to obviate the necessity for the use of repeated footnotes, and to indicate to readers who may desire to pursue the study of the history of Paris in more detail, some works among the enormous mass of literature on the subject that will repay perusal. For the general history of France the monumental _Histoire de France_ now in course of publication, edited by E. Lavisse; Michelet's _Histoire de France_, _Récits de l'Histoire de France_, and _Procès des Templiers_; Victor Duruy, _Histoire de France_; _Histoire de France racontée par les Contemporains_, edited by B. Zeller; Carl Faulmann, _Illustrirte Geschichte der Buchdruckerkunst_; the Chronicles of Gregory of Tours, Richer, Abbo, Joinville, Villani, Froissart, Antonio Morosini; De Comines; _Géographie Historique_, by A. Guerard; Froude's essay on the Templars; Jeanne d'Arc, Maid of Orleans, by T. Douglas Murray; _Paris sous Philip le Bel_, edited by H. Geraud. For the later Monarchy, the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods, the Histories of Carlyle, Mignet, Michelet and Louis Blanc; the _Origines de la France Contemporaine_, by Taine; the _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. VIII.; the Memoirs of the Duc de St. Simon, of Madame Campan, Madame Vigée-Lebrun, of Camille Desmoulins, Madame Roland, Paul Louis Courier; the _Journal de Perlet_; _Histoire de la Societé Française pendant la Revolution,_ by J. de Goncourt; Goethe's _Die Campagne in Frankreich_, 1792; _Légendes et Archives de la Bastille_, by F. Funck Brentano; Life of Napoleon I., by J. Holland Rose; _L'Europe et la Revolution Française_ by Albert Sorel; _Contemporary American Opinion of the French Revolution_, by C. D. Hazen. For the particular history of Paris, the exhaustive and comprehensive _Histoire de la Ville de Paris_, by the learned Benedictine priests, Michel Félibien and Guy Alexis Lobineau; the so-called _Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris_, edited by L. Lalanne; _Paris Pendant la Domination Anglaise_, by A. Longnon; the more modern _Paris à Travers les Ages_, by M. F. Hoffbauer, E. Fournier and others; the _Topographie Historique du Vieux Paris_, by A. Berty and H. Legrand. Howell's _Familiar Letters_, Coryat's _Crudities_, and Evelyn's _Diary_, contain useful matter. For the chapters on Historical Paris, E. Fournier's _Promenade Historique dans Paris_, _Chronique des Rues de Paris_, _Enigmes des Rues des Paris_; the Marquis de Rochegude's _Guide Pratique à Travers le Vieux Paris_, and the excellent _Nouvel Itinéraire Guide Artistique et Archéologique de Paris_, by C. Normand, now appearing in fascicules published by the _Société des Amis des Monuments Parisiens_, have been largely drawn upon and supplemented by affectionate memories of an acquaintance with the city dating back for more than thirty years, and by notes of pilgrimages, under the guidance of a member of the Positivist Society of Paris, made in 1891 through revolutionary Paris and Versailles. For personal help and information the writer desires to express his obligations to Monsieur Lafenestre, Director of the Louvre: Monsieur L. Bénédite, Director of the Luxembourg; Monsieur G. Redon, architect of the Louvre and the Tuileries; Professor A. Legros; and for help in proof-reading to Mr James Britten. CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE GALLO-ROMAN PARIS 1 CHAPTER II THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS--ST. GENEVIEVE--THE CONVERSION OF CLOVIS--THE MEROVINGIAN DYNASTY 12 CHAPTER III THE CARLOVINGIANS--THE GREAT SIEGE OF PARIS BY THE NORMANS--THE GERMS OF FEUDALISM 29 CHAPTER IV THE RISE OF THE CAPETIAN KINGS AND THE GROWTH OF PARIS 45 CHAPTER V PARIS UNDER PHILIP AUGUSTUS AND ST. LOUIS 61 CHAPTER VI ART AND LEARNING AT PARIS 79 CHAPTER VII THE PARLEMENT--THE STATES-GENERAL--CONFLICT WITH BONIFACE VIII.--THE DESTRUCTION OF THE KNIGHTS-TEMPLARS 103 CHAPTER VIII ETIENNE MARCEL--THE ENGLISH INVASIONS--THE MAILLOTINS--MURDER OF THE DUKE OF ORLEANS--ARMAGNACS AND BURGUNDIANS 117 CHAPTER IX JEANNE D'ARC--PARIS UNDER THE ENGLISH--END OF THE ENGLISH OCCUPATION 131 CHAPTER X LOUIS XI. AT PARIS--THE INTRODUCTION OF PRINTING 138 CHAPTER XI FRANCIS I.--THE RENAISSANCE AT PARIS 145 CHAPTER XII RISE OF THE GUISES--HUGUENOT AND CATHOLIC--THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW 161 CHAPTER XIII HENRY III.--THE LEAGUE--SIEGE OF PARIS BY HENRY IV.--HIS CONVERSION, REIGN, AND ASSASSINATION 175 CHAPTER XIV PARIS UNDER RICHELIEU AND MAZARIN 192 CHAPTER XV THE GRAND MONARQUE--VERSAILLES AND PARIS 209 CHAPTER XVI PARIS UNDER THE REGENCY AND LOUIS XV.--THE BROODING STORM 227 CHAPTER XVII LOUIS XVI.--THE GREAT REVOLUTION--FALL OF THE MONARCHY 243 CHAPTER XVIII EXECUTION OF THE KING--PARIS UNDER THE FIRST REPUBLIC--THE TERROR--NAPOLEON--REVOLUTIONARY AND MODERN PARIS 259 CHAPTER XIX HISTORICAL PARIS--THE CITÉ--THE UNIVERSITY QUARTER--THE VILLE--THE LOUVRE--THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE--THE BOULEVARDS 281 CHAPTER XX THE COMÉDIE FRANÇAISE--THE OPERA--SOME FAMOUS CAFÉS--CONCLUSION 321 INDEX 339 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS LIST OF COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS BY O. F. M. WARD RUE ST. ANTOINE _Frontispiece_ POINT DU JOUR _facing page_ 5 ROMAN BATHS IN MUSÉE DE CLUNY " " 8 BOIS DE BOULOGNE--LAC SUPÉRIEUR " " 19 RUE ST. JACQUES " " 23 ST. JULIEN LE PAUVRE " " 26 PORT DES ORMES " " 37 L'INSTITUT DE FRANCE " " 44 HOTEL GEROUILHAC " " 51 ST. ETIENNE DU MONT AND TOUR DE CLOVIS " " 62 VINCENNES " " 68 RUE DE VENISE " " 77 LA SAINTE CHAPELLE " " 86 THE SEINE FROM PONT DA LA CONCORDE " " 93 LE PETIT PONT " " 100 ILE DE LA CITÉ " " 109 THE SEINE AT ALFORTVILLE " " 117 ON THE QUAI DES GRANDS AUGUSTINS " " 124 NOTRE DAME FROM THE NORTH " " 132 PORCH OF ST. GERMAIN L'AUXERROIS " " 141 RUE ROYALE " " 146 BOULEVARD ST. MICHEL " " 155 LUXEMBOURG GARDENS " " 165 THE LOUVRE--GALERIE D'APOLLON " " 172 ST. GERVAIS " " 178 LUXEMBOURG PALACE " " 181 PLACE DES VOSGES " " 188 PONT ST. MICHEL " " 191 PONT NEUF " " 194 NOTRE DAME " " 207 PLACE DU CARROUSEL " " 211 VERSAILLES--LE TAPIS VERT " " 214 GRAND PALAIS AND PONT ALEXANDRE " " 219 HOTEL DES INVALIDES " " 222 COLONNE VENDÔME " " 230 PLACE DU CHÂTELET AND TOUR ST. JACQUES " " 235 MONT S. GENEVIÈVE FROM L'ILE S. LOUIS " " 238 ST. SULPICE " " 241 MONTMARTRE FROM BUTTES CHAMONT " " 251 PLACE DE LA CONCORDE " " 256 EIFFEL TOWER " " 261 ARC DE TRIOMPHE, PLACE DU CARROUSEL " " 268 THE LOUVRE, EASTERN ENTRANCE " " 274 RUE DROUOT AND SACRÉ COEUR " " 278 VERSAILLES--BASSIN DE NEPTUNE " " 283 THE OBSERVATORY " " 287 THE LOUVRE FROM THE SOUTH-EAST " " 293 ST. EUSTACHE " " 300 THE TROCADERO " " 327 ARC DE TRIOMPHE--PLACE DE L'ETOILE " " 330 IN THE GARDEN OF THE TUILERIES " " 334 REPRODUCTIONS OF PAINTINGS AND SCULPTURE THIRTEENTH CENTURY SCULPTURES FROM ST. DENIS (Restored) 84 OUR LADY OF PARIS. Early Fifteenth Century " " 136 PORTRAIT OF FRANCIS I. JEAN CLOUET " " 150 TRITONS AND NEREIDS FROM THE OLD FONTAINE DES INNOCENTS. JEAN GOUJON " " 166 PORTRAIT OF ELIZABETH OF AUSTRIA, WIFE OF CHARLES IX. FRANÇOIS CLOUET " " 168 CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. French School, Sixteenth Century " " 176 PORTION OF THE EAST FAÇADE OF THE LOUVRE. From BLONDEL'S Drawing, showing PERRAULT'S Base. (_Reproduced by permission of_ M. LAMPUE) " " 220 WINGED VICTORY OF SAMOTHRACE " " 302 ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON. MICHEL COLOMBE " " 302 CARDINAL VIRTUES. GERMAIN PILON " " 304 DIANA AND THE STAG. JEAN GOUJON (_Photogravure_) " " 304 THE BURNING BUSH. NICOLAS FROMENT (_Photogravure_) " " 306 TRIPTYCH OF MOULINS. LE MAÎTRE DE MOULINS " " 308 JUVENAL DES URSINS. FOUQUET " " 308 SHEPHERDS OF ARCADY. POUSSIN " " 310 A SEAPORT. CLAUDE LORRAIN " " 312 LANDING OF CLEOPATRA AT TARSUS. CLAUDE LORRAIN " " 312 THE EMBARKATION FOR THE ISLAND OF CYTHERA WATTEAU " " 314 GRACE BEFORE MEAT. CHARDIN " " 316 MADAME RÉCAMIER. DAVID " " 316 LANDSCAPE. COROT " " 318 LICTORS BRINGING TO BRUTUS THE BODIES OF HIS SONS. DAVID " " 320 THE POND. ROUSSEAU " " 322 THE BINDERS. MILLET " " 324 The majority of the photographs of sculpture have been taken by Messrs. HAWEIS & COLES, while most of the other photographs are reproduced by permission of Messrs. GIRAUDON. LINE ILLUSTRATIONS BY KATHARINE KIMBALL PAGE THE CITÉ 3 REMAINS OF ROMAN AMPHITHEATRE 6 TOWER OF CLOVIS 16 ST. GERMAIN DES PRÉS 26 ST. JULIEN LE PAUVRE 32 ST. GERMAIN L'AUXERROIS 39 WALL OF PHILIPPE AUGUSTE, COUR DE ROUEN 64 LA SAINTE CHAPELLE 70 REFECTORY OF THE CORDELIERS 74 CATHEDRAL OF ST. DENIS 80 NOTRE DAME: PORTAL OF ST. ANNE 82 NOTRE DAME--SOUTHERN SIDE 85 NOTRE DAME AND PETIT PONT 91 TOWER IN RUE NAVARRE IN WHICH CALVIN IS SAID TO HAVE LIVED 94 HÔTEL OF THE PROVOST OF PARIS 96 PALAIS DE JUSTICE, CLOCK TOWER AND CONCIERGERIE 105 PALACE OF THE ARCHBISHOP OF SENS 113 CHAPEL OF FORT VINCENNES 122 TOWER AT THE CORNER OF THE RUE VIEILLE DU TEMPLE AND THE RUE BARBETTE 126 TOWER OF JEAN SANS PEUR 128 CLOISTER OF THE BILLETES, FIFTEENTH CENTURY, RUE DE L'HOMME ARMÉ 135 TOWER OF ST. JACQUES 147 PONT NOTRE DAME 149 CHAPEL, HÔTEL DE CLUNY 151 WEST DOOR OF ST. MERRI 152 TOWER OF ST. ETIENNE DU MONT 153 LA FONTAINE DES INNOCENTS 161 WEST WING OF LOUVRE BY PIERRE LESCOT 163 PETITE GALERIE OF THE LOUVRE 174 HÔTEL DE SULLY 183 PLACE DES VOSGES 188 OLD HOUSES NEAR PONT ST. MICHEL, SHOWING SPIRE OF THE STE. CHAPELLE 190 THE MEDICI FOUNTAIN, LUXEMBOURG GARDENS 196 PONT NEUF 198 THE INSTITUT DE FRANCE 208 RIVER AND PONT ROYAL 225 SOUTH DOOR OF NOTRE DAME 237 INTERIOR OF ST. ETIENNE DU MONT 239 HÔTEL DE VILLE FROM RIVER 279 NOTRE DAME, SOUTH SIDE 282 ST. SÉVERIN 285 TOWER AND COURTYARD OF HOTEL CLUNY 287 OLD ACADEMY OF MEDICINE 289 COUR DU DRAGON 292 ST. GERVAIS 294 PLACE DES VOSGES, MAISON DE VICTOR HUGO 296 ARCHIVES NATIONALES IN HÔTEL SOUBISE, SHOWING TOWERS OF HÔTEL DE CLISSON 298 NEAR THE PONT NEUF 303 ARCHES IN THE COURTYARD OF THE HÔTEL CLUNY 322 _The majority of the three-colour, half-tone and line blocks used in this book have been made by the Graphic Photo-Engraving Co., London._ LIST OF MAPS PLAN OF THE HISTORIC LOUVRE FROM BLONDEL'S DRAWING xxiii MAP OF THE SUCCESSIVE WALLS OF PARIS xxiv PLAN OF PARIS WHEN BESIEGED BY HENRY IV. IN 1590, _facing page_ 175 [Illustration: PLAN OF THE HISTORIC LOUVRE FROM BLONDEL'S DRAWING THE SITE OF THE OLD LOUVRE BEING ADDED.] [Illustration: MAP OF THE SUCCESSIVE WALLS OF PARIS] PARIS AND ITS STORY CHAPTER I GALLO-ROMAN PARIS The mediæval scribe in the fulness of a divinely-revealed cosmogony is wont to begin his story at the creation of the world or at the confusion of tongues, to trace the building of Troy by the descendants of Japheth, and the foundation of his own native city by one of the Trojan princes made a fugitive in Europe by proud Ilion's fall. Such, he was very sure, was the origin of Padua, founded by Antenor and by Priam, son of King Priam, whose grandson, yet another Priam, by his great valour and wisdom became the monarch of a mighty people, called from their fair hair, Galli or Gallici. And of the strong city built on the little island in the Seine who could have been its founder but the ravisher of fair Helen--Sir Paris himself? The naïve etymology of the time was evidence enough. But the modern writer, as he compares the geographical position of the capitals of Europe, is tempted to exclaim, _Cherchez le marchand!_ for he perceives that their unknown founders were dominated by two considerations--facilities for commerce and protection from enemies: and before the era of the Roman roadmakers, commerce meant facilities for water carriage. As the early settlers in Britain sailed up the Thames, they must have observed, where the river's bed begins somewhat to narrow, a hill rising from the continuous expanse of marshes from its mouth, easily defended on the east and west by those fortified posts which, in subsequent times, became the Tower of London and Barnard's Castle. If we scan a map of France, we shall see that the group of islands on and around which Paris now stands, lies in the fruitful basin of the Seine, known as the Isle de France, near the convergence of three rivers; for on the east the Marne and the Oise, and on the south the Yonne, discharge their waters into the main stream on its way to the sea. In ancient times the great line of Phoenician, Greek and Roman commerce followed northwards the valleys of the Rhone and of the Saone, whose upper waters are divided from those of the Yonne only by the plateau of Dijon and the calcareous slopes of Burgundy. The Parisii were thus admirably placed for tapping the profitable commerce of north-west Europe, and by the waters of the Eure, lower down the Seine, were able to touch the fertile valley of the Loire. The northern rivers of Gaul were all navigable by the small boats of the early traders, and, in contrast with the impetuous sweep of the Rhone and the Loire in the south and west, flowed with slow and measured stream:[5] they were rarely flooded, and owing to the normally mild winters, still more rarely blocked by ice. Moreover, the Parisian settlement stood near the rich corn-land of La Beauce, and to the north-east, over the open plain of La Valois, lay the way to Flanders. It was one of the river stations on the line of the Phoenician traders in tin, that most precious and rare of ancient metals, between Marseilles and Britain, and in the early Middle Ages became, with Lyons and Beaucaire, one of the chief fairs of that historic trade route which the main lines of railway traffic still follow to-day. The island now known as the Cité, which the founders of Paris chose for their stronghold, was the largest of the group which lay involved in the many windings of the Seine, and was embraced by a natural moat of deep waters. To north and south lay hills, marshes and forests, and all combined to give it a position equally adapted for defence and for commerce. [Illustration: THE CITÉ.] [Illustration: POINT DU JOUR.] The Parisii were a small tribe of Gauls who were content to place themselves under the protection of the more powerful Senones. Their island city was the home of a prosperous community of shipmen and merchants, but it is not until the Conquest of Gaul by the Romans that Lutetia, for such was its Gallic name, enters the great pageant of written history. It was-- "Armèd Cæsar falcon-eyed,"[6] who saw its great military importance, built a permanent camp there and made it a central _entrepôt_ for food and munitions of war. And when in 52 B.C. the general rising of the tribes under Vercingetorix threatened to scour the Romans out of Gaul and to destroy the whole fabric of Cæsar's ambition, he sent his favourite lieutenant, Labienus, to seize Lutetia where the Northern army of the Gauls was centred. Labienus crossed the Seine at Melun, fixed his camp on a spot near the position of the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, and began the first of the historic sieges for which Paris is so famous. But the Gaulish commander burnt the bridges, fired the city and took up his position on the slopes of the hill of Lutetius (St. Genevieve) in the south, and aimed at crushing his enemy between his own forces and an army advancing from the north. Labienus having learnt that Cæsar was in a tight place, owing to a check at Clermont and the defection of the Eduans, by a masterly piece of engineering recrossed the Seine by night at the Point du Jour, and when the Gauls awoke in the morning they beheld the Roman legions in battle array on the plain of Grenelle beneath. They made a desperate attempt to drive them against the river, but they lost their leader and were almost annihilated by the superior arms and strategy of the Romans. Labienus was able to join his master at Sens, and the irrevocable subjugation of the Gauls soon followed. With the tolerant and enlightened conquerors came the Roman peace, Roman law, Roman roads, the Roman schoolmaster; and a more humane religion abolished the Druidical sacrifices. Lutetia was rebuilt and became a prosperous and, next to Lyons, the most important of Gallo-Roman cities. It lay equidistant from Germany and Britain and at the issue of valleys which led to the upper and lower Rhine. The quarries of Mount Lutetius produced an admirable building stone, kind to work and hardening well under exposure to the air. Its white colour may have won for Paris the name of Leucotia, or the White City, by which it is sometimes called by ancient writers. Cæsar had done his work well, for so completely were the Gauls Romanised, that by the fifth or sixth century their very language had disappeared.[7] But towards the end of the third century three lowly wayfarers were journeying from Rome along the great southern road to Paris, charged by the Pope with a mission fraught with greater issues to Gaul than the Cæsars and all their legions. Let us recall somewhat of the appearance of the city which Dionysius, Rusticus and Eleutherius saw as they neared its suburbs and came down what is now known as the Rue St. Jacques. After passing the arches of the aqueduct, two of which exist to this day, that crossed the valley of Arcueil and brought the waters of Rungis,[8] Paray and Montjean to the baths of the imperial palace, they would discern on the hill of Lutetius to their right the Roman camp, garrison and cemetery. Lower down on its eastern slopes they would catch a glimpse of a great amphitheatre, capable of accommodating 10,000 spectators, part of which was laid bare in 1869 by some excavations made for the Campagnie des Omnibus between the Rues Monge and Linné. Unhappily, the public subscription initiated by the Académie des Inscriptions to purchase the property proved inadequate, and the Company retained possession of the land. In 1883, however, other excavations were undertaken in the Rue de Navarre, which resulted in the discovery of the old aqueduct that drained the amphitheatre, and some other remains, which have been preserved and made into a public park. [Illustration: REMAINS OF ROMAN AMPHITHEATRE.] On their left, where now stands the Lycée St. Louis, would be the theatre of Lutetia, and further on the imposing and magnificent palace of the Cæsars, with its gardens sloping down to the Seine. The turbulent little stream of the Bièvre flowed by the foot of Mons Lutetius on the east, entering the main river opposite the eastern limit of the _civitas_ of Lutetia, gleaming white before them and girdled by Aurelian's wall[9] and the waters of the Seine. A narrow eel-shaped island, subsequently known as the Isle de Galilée,[10] lay between the Isle of the Cité and the southern bank; two islands, the Isles de Notre Dame and des Vaches, divided by a narrow channel to the east, and two small islets, the Isles des Juifs and de Bussy, to the west. Another islet, the Isle de Louviers, lay near the northern bank beyond the two eastern islands. Crossing a wooden bridge, where now stands the Petit Pont, they would enter the forum (Place du Parvis Notre Dame) under a triumphal arch. Here would be the very foyer of the city; a little way to the left the governor's palace and the basilica, or hall of justice;[11] to the right the temple of Jupiter. As they crossed the island they would find it linked to the northern bank by another wooden bridge, replaced by the present Pont Notre Dame.[12] In the distance to the north stood Mons Martis (Montmartre) crowned with the temples of Mars and Mercury, four of whose columns are preserved in the church of St. Pierre; and to the west the aqueduct from Passy bringing its waters to the mineral baths located on the site of the present Palais Royal. A road, now the Rue St. Martin, led to the north; to the east lay the marshy land which is still known as the quarter of the Marais. Denis and his companions preached and taught the new faith unceasingly and met martyrs' deaths. By the mediæval hagiographers St. Denis is invariably confused with Dionysius, the Areopagite, said to have been converted by St. Paul and sent on his mission to France by Pope Clement. In the _Golden Legend_ he is famed to have converted much people to the faith, and "did do make many churches," and at length was brought before the judge who "did do smite off the heads of the three fellows by the temple of Mercury. And anon the body of St. Denis raised himself up and bare his head between his arms, as the angels led him two leagues from the place which is said the hill of the martyrs unto the place where he now resteth by his election and the purveyance of God, when was heard so great and sweet a melody of angels that many that heard it believed in our Lord." In an interesting picture, No. 995 in Room X. of the Louvre, said to have been painted for Jean sans Peur, Duke of Burgundy, by Malouel, and finished at his death in 1415 by Bellechose, St. Denis in bishop's robes is seen kneeling before the block; the headsman raises his axe; one of the saint's companions has already met his fate, the other awaits it resignedly. To the left, St. Denis in prison is receiving the Sacred Host from the hands of Christ. [Illustration: ROMAN BATHS IN MUSÉE DE CLUNY.] The work that Denis and his companions began was more fully achieved in the fourth century by the rude Pannonion soldier, St. Martin, who also evangelised at Paris. He is the best-known of Gallic saints, and the story of his conversion one of the most popular in Christendom. When stationed at Amiens he was on duty one bitter cold day at the city gate, and espied a poor naked beggar asking alms. Soldiers in garrison are notoriously impecunious, and Martin had nothing to give; but drawing his sword he cleaved his mantle in twain, and bestowed half upon the shivering wretch at his feet. That very night the Lord Jesus appeared to him in a dream surrounded by angels, having on His shoulders the half of the cloak which Martin had given to the beggar. Turning to the angels, Jesus said: "Know ye who hath thus arrayed Me? My servant Martin, though yet unbaptised, hath done this." After this vision Martin received baptism and remained steadfast in the faith. At length, desiring to devote himself wholly to Christ, he begged permission to leave the army. The Emperor Julian, who deemed the Christian faith fit only to form souls of slaves, reproached him for his cowardice, for he was yet in the prime of life, being forty years of age. "Put me," exclaimed Martin, "naked and without defence in the forefront of the battle, and armed with the Cross alone I will not fear to face the enemy." Early on the following morning the barbarians submitted to the emperor without striking a blow, and thus was victory vouchsafed to Martin's faith and courage, and he was permitted to leave the army. The illiterate and dauntless soldier became the fiery apostle of the faith, a vigorous iconoclast, throwing down the images of the false gods, breaking their altars in pieces and burning their temples. Of the Roman gods, Mercury, he said, was most difficult to ban, but Jove was merely stupid[13] and brutish, and gave him least trouble. Martin was a democratic saint, of ardent charity and austere devotion. Later in life he founded the monastery of Marmoutier, which grew to be one of the richest in France. His rule was severe; when his monks murmured at the hard fare he bade them remember that cooked herbs and barley bread was the food of the hermits of Africa. "That may be," answered they, "but we cannot live like the angels." On the 16th of March 1711, some workmen, digging a tomb for the archbishop of Paris in the choir of Notre Dame, came upon the walls, six feet below the pavement, of the original Christian basilica over which the modern cathedral is built. In the fabric of these walls the early builders had incorporated the remains of the still earlier temple of Jupiter, which had been destroyed to give place to the Christian church, and among the _débris_ were found the fragments of an altar raised to Jove in the reign of Tiberius Cæsar by the _Nautæ_, a guild of Parisian merchant-shippers, an altar on whose foyer still remained some of the very burnt wood and incense used in the last pagan sacrifice. The mutilated stones, with their rude Gallo-Roman reliefs and inscriptions, may be seen in the Frigidarium of the Thermæ, the old Roman baths by the Hôtel de Cluny, and are among the most interesting of historical documents in Paris. The Corporation of _Nautæ_ who dedicated this altar to Jove, were the origin of the Commune or Civil Council of Paris, and in later time gave way to the provost[14] of the merchants and the sheriffs of that city. Their device was the _Nef_, or ship, which is and has been throughout the ages the arms of Paris, and which to this day may be seen carved on the vaultings of the Roman baths. In the great palace of which these baths formed but a part was enacted that scene so vividly described in the pages of Gibbon, when Julian, after his victories over the Alemanni and the Franks, was acclaimed Augustus by the rebellious troops of Constantius. On a plain outside Paris Julian had admonished the sullen legions, angry at being detached from their victorious and darling commander for service on the Persian frontier, and had urged them to obedience. But at midnight the young Cæsar was awakened by a clamorous and armed multitude besieging the palace, and at early dawn its doors were forced; the reluctant Julian was seized and carried in triumph through the streets to be enthroned and saluted as emperor. He was lifted on a shield, and for diadem, crowned with a military collar. In after life the emperor-philosopher looked back with tender regret to the three winters he spent in Paris before his elevation to the imperial responsibilities and anxieties. He writes of the busy days and meditative nights he passed in his dear Lutetia, with its two wooden bridges, its pure and pleasant waters, its excellent wine. He dwells on the mildness of its climate, where the fig-tree, protected by straw in the winter, grew and fruited. One rigorous season, however, the emperor well remembered[15] when the Seine was blocked by huge masses of ice. Julian, who prided himself on his endurance, at first declined the use of those charcoal fires which to this day are a common and deadly method of supplying heat in Paris. But his rooms were damp and his servants were allowed to introduce them into his sleeping apartment. The Cæsar was almost asphyxiated by the fumes, and his physicians to restore him administered an emetic. Julian in his time was beloved of the Lutetians, for he was a just and tolerant prince whose yoke was easy. He had purged the soil of Gaul from the barbarian invaders, given Lutetia peace and security, and made of it an important, imperial city. His statue, found near Paris, still recalls his memory in the hall of the great baths of the Lutetia he loved so well. The so-called apostasy of this lover of Plato and worshipper of the Sun, who never went to the wars or travelled without dragging a library of Greek authors after him, was a philosophic reaction against the harsh measures,[16] the bloody and treacherous natures of the Christian emperors, and the fierceness of the Arian controversy. The movement was but a back-wash in the stream of history, and is of small importance. Julian's successors, Valentinian and Gratian, reversed his policy but shared his love for the fair city on the Seine, and spent some winters there. Lutetia had now become a rich and cultured Gallo-Roman city. CHAPTER II THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS--ST. GENEVIEVE--THE CONVERSION OF CLOVIS--THE MEROVINGIAN DYNASTY In the Prologue to _Faust_ the Lord of Heaven justifies the existence of the restless, goading spirit of evil by the fact that man's activity is all too prone to flag,-- "_Er liebt sich bald die unbedingte Ruh._"[17] As with men so with empires: riches and inaction are hard to bear. It was not so much a corruption of public morals as a growing slackness and apathy in public life and an intellectual sloth that hastened the fall of the Roman Empire. Owing to the gradual exhaustion of the supply of slaves its economic basis was crumbling away. The ruling class was content to administer rather than to govern and unwilling or incompetent to grapple with the new order of things.[18] For centuries the Gauls had been untrained in arms and habituated to look to the imperial legions for defence against the half-savage races of men, giants in stature and strength, surging like an angry sea against their boundaries. Towards the end of the fourth century Vandals and Burgundians, Suevi and Alemanni, Goth and Hun, treading on each other's heels, burst through the Rhine frontier, destroyed the Roman garrisons and forts, and inundated Gaul. Two of these races stayed to form kingdoms: the Burgundians in the fertile plains of the Rhine; the Visigoths in Aquitaine and North Spain, whose aid the Romans were fain to seek to roll back the hordes of Attila's Huns at Chalons-sur-Marne. This was the last achievement of Roman arms in Gaul, and even that victory was largely due to the courage of the Goths. In the fifth century the confederation of Frankish tribes who had conquered and settled in Belgium saw successive waves of invasion pass by, and determined to have their part in the spoils of Gaul. They soon overran Flanders and the north, and at length under Clovis captured Paris and conquered nearly the whole of Gaul. The end of the fifth century is the beginning of the evil times of Gallic story. That fair land of France, "one of Nature's choicest masterpieces, one of Ceres' chiefest barns for corn, one of Bacchus' prime wine cellars and of Neptune's best salt-pits," became the prey of the barbarian. The whole fabric of civilisation seem doomed to destruction. Gaul had become the richest and most populous of Roman provinces; its learning and literature were noised in Rome; its schools drew students from the mother city herself. But at the end of the sixth century Gregory of Tours deplores the fact that in his time there were neither books, nor readers, nor scholar who could compose in verse or prose, and that only the speech of the rustic was understood. He playfully scolds himself for muddling prepositions and confusing genders and cases, but his duty as a Christian priest is to instruct, not to charm, and so he tells the story of his times in such rustic Latin as he knows. He draws for us a vivid picture of Clovis, the founder of the French monarchy, his savage valour, his astuteness, his regal passion. After the victory over Syagrius, the shadowy king of the Romans, at Soissons, Clovis was met by St. Rémi, who prayed that a vase of great price and wondrous beauty among the spoil might be returned to him. "Follow us," said the king, "to Soissons, where the booty will be shared." Before the division took place Clovis begged that the vase might be accorded to him. His warriors answered: "All, glorious king, is thine." But before the king could grasp the vase, one, jealous and angry, threw his _francisque_[19] at it, exclaiming: "Thou shalt have no more than falls to thy lot." The broken vase was however apportioned to the king, who restored it to the bishop. But Clovis hid the wound in his heart. At the annual review in the Champ de Mars near Paris, the king strode along the line inspecting the weapons of his warriors. He stopped in front of the uncourtly soldier, took his axe from him, complained of its foul state, and flung it angrily on the ground. As the man stooped to pick it up Clovis, with his own axe, cleft his skull in twain, exclaiming: "Thus didst thou to the vase at Soissons." "Even so," says Gregory quaintly, "did he inspire all with great fear." At this point of our story we meet the first of those noble women, heroic and wise, for whom French history is pre-eminent. In the first half of the fifth century St. Germain of Auxerre and St. Lew of Troyes, chosen by the prelates of France "for to go and quench an heresy that was in Great Britain, now called England, came to Nanterre for to be lodged and harboured and the people came against them for to have their benison. Among the people, St. Germain, by the enseignements of the Holy Ghost, espied out the little maid St. Genevieve, and made her come to him, and kissed her head and demanded her name, and whose daughter she was, and the people about her said that her name was Genevieve, and her father Severe, and her mother Geronce, which came unto him, and the holy man said: Is this child yours? They answered: Yea. Blessed be ye, said the holy man, when God hath given to you so noble lineage, know ye for certain that the day of her nativity the angels sang and hallowed great mystery in heaven with great joy and gladness." When on the morn she was brought to him again, he saw in her a sign celestial, commended her to God, and prayed that she would remember him in her orisons, and on his return to Paris, finding her in the city, he commended her to its people. Tidings came that "Attila, the felon knight of Hungary, had enterprised to destroy and waste the parts of France," and the burgesses of Paris for great dread they had, sent their goods into cities more sure. Genevieve caused the good women of the town "to wake in fastings and orisons, and bade the merchants not to remove their goods for the city should have none harm." At first the people hardened their hearts and reviled her, but at St. Germain's prayers they believed in her, and our Lord "for her love did so much that the tyrants approached not Paris, thanks and glory to God and honour to the virgin." At the siege of Paris by Childeric and his Franks, when the people were wasted by sickness and famine, "the holy virgin, that pity constrained, went by the Seine to Arcy and Troyes for to go fetch by ship some victuals. She stilled by her prayers a furious tempest and brought the ships back laden with wheat." When the city was at length captured, King Childeric, although a paynim, saved at her intercession the lives of his prisoners, and one day, to escape her importunate pleadings for the lives of some criminals, fled out of the gates of Paris and shut them behind him. The saint lived to build a church over the tomb of St. Denis and to see Clovis become a Christian. She died in 509, and was buried on the hill of Lutetius, which ever since has borne her name. [Illustration: TOWER OF CLOVIS.] "Her hope," says the _Golden Legend_, from which we have chiefly drawn her story, "was nothing in worldly things, but in heavenly, for she believed in the holy scriptures that saith: Whoso giveth to the poor liveth for availe. The reward which they receive that give to poor people, the Holy Ghost had showed to her long tofore, and therefore she ceased not to weep, to adore and to do works of pity, for she knew well that she was none other in this world but a pilgrim passing." The faithful built a little wooden oratory over her tomb, which Clovis and his wife Clotilde replaced by a great basilica and monastery which became their burial-place. All that now recalls the church, whose length the king measured by the distance he could hurl his axe, is the so-called Tower of Clovis, a thirteenth-century structure in the Rue Clovis. The golden shrine of the saint,[20] which reached thirty feet above the high altar, was confiscated by the Revolutionists to pay their armies, and what remains of her relics is now treasured in the neighbouring church of St. Etienne du Mont. The conversion of Clovis is the capital fact of early French history. His queen Clotilde, niece of the Burgundian king, had long[21] importuned him to declare himself a Christian. He had consented to the baptism of their firstborn, but the infant's death within a week seemed an admonition from his own jealous gods. A second son, however, recovered from grievous sickness at his wife's prayers and this, aided perhaps by a shrewd insight into the trend of events, induced him to lend a more willing ear to the teachers of the new Faith. In 496 the Franks were at death grapple with their German foes at Tolbiac. Clovis, when the fight went against him, invoked the God of the Christians and prayed to be delivered from his enemies. His cry was heard and the advent of the new Lord of Battles was winged with victory. There was a stirring scene that Christmas at Rheims, when Clovis with his two sisters and three thousand of his warriors marched through the streets, all hung with cloth of many colours, into the cathedral which was glittering with innumerable candles and perfumed with incense of divine odour. Clovis was the first to be baptised. "Bend thy neck, gentle Sicamber," cried St. Rémi. "Adore what thou didst burn: burn what thou didst adore." When the bishop was reading the Gospel story of the Passion, the king, thrilled with indignation, cried out: "Ah! had I been there with my Franks I would have avenged the Christ." The conversion of Clovis was a triumph for the Church: in her struggle with the Arian heresy in Gaul, she was now able to enforce the arguments of the pen by the edge of the sword. The enemies of Clovis were the enemies of the Church, and as the representative of the Eastern emperor, she arrayed him, after the defeat of the Arian Goths in the South, in purple and hailed him Consul and Augustus at Tours. Her scribes are tender to his memory, for his Christianity was marked by few signs of grace. He remained the same savage monarch as before, and did not scruple to affirm his dynasty and extend his empire by treachery and by the assassination of his kinsmen. To the Franks, Jesus was but a new and more puissant tribal deity. "Long live the Christ who loves the Franks," writes the author of the prologue to the Salic law; and Clothaire I., when the pangs of death seized him in his villa at Compiègne, cried out, "Who is this God of Heaven that thus allows the greatest kings of the earth to perish?" Nor was their ideal of kingship any loftier. Their kingdom was not a trust, but a possession to be divided among their heirs, and the jealousy and strife excited by the repeated partition among sons, make the history of the Merovingian[22] dynasty a tale of cruelty and treachery whose every page is stained with blood. [Illustration: BOIS DE BOULOGNE--LAC SUPÉRIEUR] In the ninth century a story was current among the people of France which admirably symbolises the fate of the dynasty. One night as Childeric, father of Clovis, lay by the side of Basine, his wife, she awoke him and said, "Arise, O king, look in the courtyard of thy dwelling and tell thy servant what thou shalt see." Childeric arose and saw beasts pass by that seemed like unto lions, unicorns and leopards. He returned to his wife and told her what he had seen. And Basine said to him: "Master, go once again and tell thy servant what thou shalt see." Childeric went forth anew and saw beasts passing by like unto bears and wolves. Having related this to his wife she bade him go forth yet a third time. He now saw dogs and other baser animals rending each other to pieces. Then said Basine to Childeric: "What thou hast seen with thine eyes shall verily come to pass. A son shall be born to us who will be a lion for courage: the sons of our sons shall be like unto leopards and unicorns: they in their turn shall bring forth children like unto bears and wolves for their voracity. The last of those whom thou sawest shall come for the end and destruction of the kingdom." Clovis, in 508, made Paris the official capital of his realm, and at his death in 511 divided his possessions between his four sons--Thierry, Clodomir, Childebert, and Clothaire. Clodomir after a short reign met his death in battle, leaving his children to the guardianship of their grandmother, Clotilde. One day messengers came to her in the palace of the Thermæ from Childebert and Clothaire praying that their nephews might be entrusted to them. Believing they were to be trained in kingly offices that they might succeed their father in due time, Clotilde granted their prayer and two of the children were sent to them in the palace of the Cité. Soon came another messenger, bearing a pair of shears and a naked sword, and Clotilde was bidden to determine the fate of her wards and to choose for them between the cloister and the edge of the sword. An angry exclamation escaped her: "If they are not to be raised to the throne, I would rather see them dead than shorn." The messenger waited to hear no more and hastened back to the two kings. Clothaire then seized the elder of the children and stabbed him under the armpit. The younger, at the sight of his brother's blood, flung himself at Childebert's feet, burst into tears, and cried: "Help me, dear father, let me not die even as my brother." Childebert's heart was softened and he begged for the child's life. Clothaire's only answer was a volley of insults and a threat of death if he protected the victim. Childebert then disintwined the child's tender arms clasping his knees--he was but six years of age--and pushed him to his brother, who drove a dagger into his breast. The tutors and servants of the children were then butchered, and Clothaire rode calmly to his palace, to become at his brother's death, in 558, sole king of the Franks. The third child, Clodoald, owing to the devotion of faithful servants escaped, and was hidden for some time in Provence. Later in life he returned to Paris and built a monastery at a place still known by his name (St. Cloud) about two leagues from the city. Clothaire himself had narrowly escaped assassination when allied with Thierry during the wars with the Thuringians. Thierry invited his brother one day to a conference, having previously hidden some armed men behind the hangings in his tent. But the drapery was too short, and Clothaire as he entered caught sight of the assassins' feet peeping through. He retained his arms and his escort. Thierry invented some fable to explain the interview, embraced his brother and bestowed on him a heavy silver plate. The fruits of kingship were bitter to Clothaire. Ere two years were past his rebellious and adulterous son, Chramm, escaped to Brittany and raised an army against him. Chramm and his allies were defeated, himself, his wife and children captured. Clothaire spared none. Chramm was strangled with a handkerchief, and his wife and children were cast into a peasant's hut which was set on fire and all perished in the flames. Next year the king took cold while hunting near Compiègne, fell sick of a fever and died. Four out of seven sons had survived him, and again the kingdom was divided. Charibert, king of Paris, soon died, and yet again a partition was made among the three survivors. To Siegbert fell Austrasia or Eastern France as far as the Rhine: to Chilperic, Neustria or Western France to the borders of Brittany and the Loire: Gontram's lot was Burgundy. Once more the consuming flames of passion and greed burst forth, this time fanned by the fierce breath of feminine rivalry. Siegbert had married Brunehaut, daughter of the Visigoth king of Spain: Chilperic had espoused her sister, Galowinthe, after repudiating his first wife, Adowere. When the new queen of Neustria came to her throne she found herself the rival of Fredegonde, a common servant, with whom Chilperic had been living. He soon tired of his new wife, a gentle and pliant creature; Fredegonde regained her supremacy and one morning Galowinthe was found strangled in bed. The news came to the court of Austrasia and Brunehaut goaded King Siegbert to avenge her sister's death. Meanwhile Chilperic had married Fredegonde, who quickly compassed the murder of her only rival, the repudiated queen, Adowere. At the intervention of Gontram war was, for a time, averted, and Chilperic, by the judgment of the whole people, made to compensate Brunehaut by the restoration of her sister's dowry. But Chilperic soon drew the sword and civil war again devastated the land. By foreign aid Siegbert captured and spoiled Paris and compelled a peace. Scarcely, however, had the victor dismissed his German allies, when Chilperic fell upon him again. Siegbert now determined to make an end. He entered Paris, and the Neustrians having accepted him as king, he prepared to crush his enemy at Tournay. As he set forth, St. Germain, bishop of Paris, seized his horse's bridle and warned him that the grave he was digging for his brother would swallow him too. It was of no avail. He marched to Vitry and was proclaimed king of Neustria. After the proclamation two messengers desired to see him. As he stood between them listening to their suit he was stabbed on either side by two long poisoned knives: the assassins had been sent by Fredegonde. Chilperic now hastened to Paris and seized the royal treasure. Brunehaut's son, Childebert II., a child of five, was, however, stolen away from the palace in a basket by one of Siegbert's faithful servants and proclaimed king by the warriors. But Fredegonde's tale of blood was not yet complete. She soon learned that Merovée, one of Chilperic's two sons by Adowere, had married Brunehaut. Merovée followed the rest of her victims, and Clovis, the second son, together with a sister of Adowere, next glutted her vengeance. "One day, after leaving the Synod of Paris," writes St. Gregory, "I had bidden King Chilperic adieu and had withdrawn conversing with the bishop of Albi. As we crossed the courtyard of the palace[23] he said: 'Seest thou not what I perceive above this roof?' I answered, 'I see only a second building which the king has had built.' He asked again, 'Seest thou naught else?' I weened he spoke in jest and did but answer--'If thou seest aught else, prithee show it unto me.' Then uttering a deep sigh, he said: 'I see the sword of God's wrath suspended over this house.'" Shortly after this conversation Chilperic having returned from the chase to his royal villa of Chelles, was leaning on the shoulder of one of his companions to descend from his horse, when Landeric, servant of Fredegonde, stabbed him to death. Thirty years were yet to pass before the curtain falls on the acts of the rival queens, their sons and grandsons, but the heart revolts at the details of the wars and lusts of these savage potentates. Gregory begins the fifth book of his _Annals_ by expressing the weariness that falls upon him when he recalls the manifold civil wars of the Franks. [Illustration: RUE ST. JACQUES.] Let us make an end of this part of our story. By her son, Clothaire II., Fredegonde continued to dominate Neustria: Brunehaut ruled over Austrasia and Burgundy through her sons Theodobert II. and Thierry II. Battle and murder had destroyed Brunehaut's children and her children's children until none were left to rule over the realms but herself and the four sons of Thierry II. The nobles, furious at the further tyranny of a cruel and imperious woman, plotted her ruin, and in 613, when Brunehaut, sure of victory, marched with two armies against Clothaire II., she was betrayed to him, her implacable enemy. He reproached her with the death of ten kings, and set her on a camel for three days to be mocked and insulted by the army. The old and fallen queen was then tied to the tail of a horse: the creature was lashed into fury and soon all that remained of the proud queen was a shapeless mass of carrion. The traditional place where Brunehaut met her death is still shown at the corner of the Rue St. Honoré and the Rue de l'Arbre Sec. Thierry's four sons had already been put to death. In 597 her rival Fredegonde, at the height of her prosperity, had died peacefully in bed, full of years, and was buried in the church of St. Vincent (St. Germain des Prés) by the side of Chilperic, her husband, and Clothaire II. became sole monarch of the three kingdoms. Amid all this ruin and desolation, when the four angels of the Euphrates seem to have been loosed on Gaul, one force was silently at work knitting up the ravelled ends of the rent fabric of civilisation and tending a lamp which burned with the promise of ideals nobler far than those which fed the ancient faith and polity. The Christian bishops were everywhere filling the empty curule chairs in the cities and provinces of Gaul. At the end of the sixth century society lived in the Church and by the Church, and the sees of the archbishops and bishops corresponded to the Roman administrative divisions. All that was best in the old Gallo-Roman aristocracy was drawn into her bosom, for she was the one power making for unity and good government. From one end of the land to the other the bishops visited and corresponded with each other. They alone had communion of ideas, common sentiments and common interests. St. Gregory, bishop of Tours, was the son of a senator; St. Germain of Auxerre was a man of noble lineage, who had already exercised high public functions before he was made a bishop. St. Germain of Autun was ever on the move, now in Brittany, now at Paris, now at Arles, to crush heresy, to threaten a barbarian potentate, or to sear the conscience and, if need were, ban the person of a guilty Christian king. The bishop of Trèves, seeing the horses of some royal Frankish envoys grazing in the wheat-fields of the peasants, threatened to excommunicate them if they spoiled the substance of the poor, and himself drove the horses away. By the end of the sixth century two hundred and thirty-eight monastic institutions had been founded in Gaul, and from the sixth to the eighth century, eighty-three churches were built. The monasteries were so many nurseries of the industry, knowledge and learning which had not perished in the barbarian invasions; so many cities of refuge from violence and rapine, where the few who thirsted after righteousness and burned with charity might find shelter and protection. "Every letter traced on paper," said an old abbot, "is a blow to the devil." The ecclesiastical and monastic schools took the place of the destroyed Roman day-schools, and whatever modicum of learning the Frankish courts could boast of, was due to the monks and nuns of their time; for some at least of these potentates when not absorbed in the gratification of their lusts, their vengeance, greed, or ambition, were possessed by nobler instincts. Brunehaut, nurtured in the more cultured atmosphere of the Visigoth court of Spain, protected commerce and kept the Roman roads[24] in repair, founded monasteries and corresponded with Gregory the Great, who commended to her care the safety of his missionaries passing through her dominions to convert the Angles across the straits. Chilperic, whom Gregory of Tours brands as the Herod and Nero of his time, plumed himself on his piety, was concerned at the blasphemies of the Jews, and forced on them conversion or exile at the sword's point. He composed Latin hymns, and discussed the nature of the Trinity with Gregory and the bishop of Albi. He sought to reform the alphabet by the addition of new letters which corresponded to the guttural sounds in the Frankish tongue, and ordered that the old alphabet should be erased from the children's books with pumice stone in all the cities of his kingdom, and the reformed alphabet substituted for it. Among the wives of Clothaire I. was the gentle Radegonde, who turned with horror from the bloody scenes of the palace to live in works of charity with the poor and suffering, and in holy communion with priests and bishops. She was at length consecrated a deaconess by St. Medard, donned the habit of a nun, and founded a convent at Poitiers, where the poet Fortunatus had himself ordained a priest that he might be near her. Radegonde's memory is dear to us in England, for it was a small company of her nuns who settled on the Green Croft by the river bank below Cambridge, and founded a priory whose noble church and monastic buildings were subsequently incorporated in Jesus College when the nunnery was suppressed by Bishop Alcock in 1496. [Illustration: ST. GERMAIN DES PRÉS.] [Illustration: ST. JULIEN LE PAUVRE.] To St. Germain of Autun, made bishop in 555, Paris owes one of her earliest ecclesiastical foundations. His influence over Childebert, king of Paris, was great. He obtained an order that those who refused to destroy pagan idols in their possession were to answer to the king, and when Childebert and his warriors, seized by an irresistible fighting impulse, marched into Spain, and were bought off the siege and sack of Saragossa by the present of the tunic of St. Vincent, he induced the king to found the abbey and church of St. Vincent (St. Germain des Prés), to receive the relic. In Childebert's reign was begun on the site of the present Cathedral of Notre Dame a splendid basilica, so magnificently decorated that it was compared to Solomon's Temple for the beauty and the delicacy of its art. During this great outburst of zeal and devotion another monastery was established and dedicated to St. Vincent, which subsequently became associated with the name of the earlier St. Germain of Auxerre (l'Auxerrois). A curious episode is found in Gregory's _Chronicle_, which is characteristic of the times, and proves that a monastery and church of St. Julien le Pauvre were already in existence. An impostor, claiming to have the relics of St. Vincent and St. Felix, came to Paris, but refused to deposit them with the bishop for verification. He was arrested and searched, and the so-called relics were found to consist of mole's teeth, the bones of mice, some bear's claws and other rubbish. They were flung into the Seine and the impostor was put in prison. Gregory, who was lodging in the monastery of St. Julien le Pauvre, went into the church shortly after midnight to say matins, and found the creature, who had escaped from the bishop's prison, dead drunk on the pavement. He had him dragged away into a corner, but so intolerable was the stench that the pavement was purified with water and sweet smelling herbs. When the bishops, who were at Paris for a synod, met at dinner the next day, the impostor was identified as a fugitive slave of the bishop of Tarbes. At the end of the sixth century we bid adieu to St. Gregory of Tours, gentlest of annalists. Courageous and independent before kings, he had a pitying heart for the poor and suffering, and bewails the loss of many sweet little babes of Christ, during the plague of 580, whom he had warmed at his breast, carried in his arms, and fed tenderly with his hands. Clothaire II. was a pious king in his way, interested in letters, a munificent patron of the Church, but overfond of the chase and inheriting the savage instincts of his race in dealing with enemies. After quelling a Saxon revolt he is said to have killed all the warriors whose stature exceeded the length of his sword. Dagobert the Great, his son, who succeeded him in 628, was the most enlightened and mightiest of the Merovingian kings. He and his favourite minister, St. Eloy, goldsmith and bishop (founder of the convent which long bore his name), are enshrined in the hearts of the people in many a song and ballad:--St. Eloy, with his good humour, his happy countenance, his eloquence, gentleness, modesty, wit, and wide charity; Dagobert, the Solomon of the Franks, the terror of the oppressor, the darling of the poor. The great king was fond of Paris and established himself there when not scouring his kingdom to administer justice or to crush his enemies. He was the second founder of the monastery of St. Denis, which he rebuilt and endowed, and to which he gave much importance by the establishment there of a great fair, which soon drew merchants from all parts of Europe. He was a patron of the arts and employed St. Eloy to make reliquaries[25] for the churches in Paris of such richness and beauty that they were admired of the whole of France. Chaos and misery followed the brilliant reign of Dagobert. In half a century his race had faded into the feeble _rois fainéants_, degenerate by precocious debauchery, some of whom were fathers at fourteen or fifteen years of age and in their graves before they were thirty.[26] In an age when human passions are untamed, the one unpardonable vice in a king is weakness, and soon the incapable, impotent and irresolute Merovingians were thrust aside by a more puissant race. CHAPTER III THE CARLOVINGIANS--THE GREAT SIEGE OF PARIS BY THE NORMANS--THE GERMS OF FEUDALISM At the head of the establishment of every Merovingian chief was his mayor, or major domus, who administered his domains and acted as deputy when his master was non-resident or away at the wars. A similar official of the king's household, the mayor of the palace, likewise presided over the royal council and tribunal in the absence or during the minority of the king. In 622, when Dagobert became king of Austrasia, one Pepin of Landen, known as Pepin le Vieux, was made mayor of the palace and, associated with St. Arnoulf, bishop of Metz, was appointed ward of the young king. A marriage between Pepin's daughter and the son of St. Arnoulf resulted in the birth of Pepin of Heristal, who in the anarchy that followed on Dagobert's death succeeded in crushing Ebroin,[27] the king-maker, mayor of the palace of Neustria. Pepin then seized the royal treasury, installed Thierry III. as king of the Franks and himself as mayor of the palace. Pepin's successor, for the office of mayor had now become hereditary, was Charles Martel, his son by Alfaide, a fair and noble concubine. He it was, who by his valour and address saved Western Europe from the Mussulman at Tours, and made glorious his name in Christendom. At his death, when crossing the Alps to defend the Pope against the Arian Lombards, the leadership of the Franks passed to his sons Carloman and Pepin the Short, of whom the latter, on his brother's retirement to the cloister at the famous Italian Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino, held undivided sway. Charles Martel, although buried with the Frankish kings at St. Denis, was content with the title of Duke of the Franks, and hesitated to proclaim himself king. He, like the other mayors of the palace, ruled through feeble and pensioned puppets when they did not contemptuously leave the throne vacant. In 751 Pepin sent two prelates to sound Pope Zacchary, who, being hard pressed by the Lombards, lent a willing ear to their suit, agreed that he who was king in fact should be made so in name, and authorised Pepin to assume the title of king. Chilperic III., like a discarded toy, was relegated to a monastery at St. Omer, and Pepin the Short anointed at Soissons by St. Boniface, bishop of Mayence, from that sacred "ampul full of chrism" which an angel of Paradise had brought to St. Rémi wherewith to anoint Clovis at Rheims. In the year 754 Stephen III., the first pope who had honoured Paris by his presence, came to ask the reward of his predecessor's favour and was lodged at St. Denis. There he anointed Pepin anew, with his sons Charles and Carloman, and compelled the Frankish chieftains, under pain of excommunication, to swear allegiance to them and their descendants. The city of Lutetia had much changed since the messengers of Pope Fabianus entered five centuries before. On that southern hill where formerly stood the Roman camp and cemetery were now the great basilica and abbey of St. Genevieve. The amphitheatre and probably much of the palace of the Cæsars were in ruins, all stripped of their marbles to adorn the new Christian churches. Extensive abbatial buildings and a church resplendent with marble and gold, on the west, were dedicated to St. Vincent, and were henceforth to be known as St. Germain of the Meadows (_des Prés_), for the saint's body had been translated from the chapel of St. Symphorien in the vestibule to the high altar of the abbey church a few weeks before the pope's arrival at St. Denis. The Cité[28] was still held within the decayed Roman walls, and a wooden bridge, the Petit Pont, crossed the south arm of the Seine. On the site of the old pagan temple to Jupiter by the market-place stood a new and magnificent basilica to Our Lady. The devotion of the _Nautæ_ had been transferred from Apollo to St. Nicholas, patron of shipmen, and Mercury had given place to St. Michael, and to each of those saints oratories were erected. Other churches and oratories adorned the island, dedicated to St. Stephen, St. Gervais, and St. Denis of the Prison (_de la chartre_), built where the saint was imprisoned by the north wall and where, abandoned by his followers, he was visited by his divine Lord, who Himself administered the sacred Host. A nunnery dedicated to St. Eloy, where three hundred pious nuns diffused the odour of Jesus Christ through the whole city, occupied a large site opposite the west front of Notre Dame. Near by stood a hospital, founded and endowed a century before by St. Landry, bishop of Paris, for the sick poor, which soon became known as the Hostel of God (_Hôtel Dieu_). The old Roman palace and basilica had been transformed into the official residence and tribunal of justice of the Frankish kings. On the south bank stood the church and monastery of St. Julien le Pauvre. A new Frankish city was growing on the north bank, bounded on the west by the abbey of St. Vincent le Rond, later known as St. Germain l'Auxerrois, and on the east by the abbey of St. Lawrence. Houses clustered around the four great monasteries, and suburbs were in course of formation. The Cité was still largely inhabited by opulent merchants of Gallo-Roman descent, who were seen riding along the streets in richly-decorated chariots drawn by oxen. [Illustration: ST. JULIEN LE PAUVRE.] King Pepin, after proving himself a valiant champion of orthodoxy by defeating the Arian Lombards, and bestowing Ravenna on the pope in perpetual sovereignty, died at Paris in 768. The kingdom of France was then shared by his sons, Charles and Carloman, and on the latter's death in 771 Charles, surnamed the Great, began his tremendous career during which the interest of the French Monarchy shifts from Paris to Aix-la-Chapelle. Charlemagne during his long reign of nearly half a century was too preoccupied with his noble but ineffectual purpose of cementing by blood and iron the warring races of Europe into a united _populus Christianus_, and establishing, under the dual lordship of emperor and pope, a city of God on earth, to give much attention to Paris. He did, however, spend a few Christmases there, and was present at the dedication of the new church of St. Denis, completed in 775 under Abbot Fulrad. It was a typical Frankish prince whom the Parisians saw enthroned at St. Denis. He had the abundant fair hair, shaven chin and long moustache we see in the traditional pictures of Clovis. Above middle height, with bright piercing eyes and short neck, he impressed all by the majesty of his bearing in spite of a rather shrill and feeble voice and a certain asymmetrical rotundity below the belt. Abbot Fulrad was a sturdy prince and for long disputed the possession of some lands at Plessis with the bishop of Paris. The decision of the case is characteristic of the times. Two champions were deputed to act for the litigants, and met before the Count of Paris[29] in the king's chapel of St. Nicholas in the Palace of the Cité, and a solemn judgment by the Cross was held. While the royal chaplain recited psalms and prayers, the two champions stood forth and held their arms outstretched in the form of a cross. In this trial of endurance the bishop's deputy was the first to succumb. His fainting arms drooped and the abbot won his cause. Paris grew but slowly under the Frankish kings. They lived ill at ease within city walls. Children of the fields and the forest, whose delight was in the chase or in war, they were glad to escape from Paris to their villas at Chelles or Compiègne. But the civil power of the Church grew apace. In the early sixth century one-third of the land of France was held and administered by the monasteries. The abbots of St. Germain des Prés held possession of nearly 90,000 acres of land, mostly arable, in various provinces of France. Their annual revenue amounted to about £24,000 of our money: they ruled over more than 10,000 serfs. From a list of the lands held in the ninth century by the abbey of St. Pierre des Fossés,[30] founded by Clovis II. about eight miles from Paris, and published in the _Trésor des pièces rares ou inédites_, we are able to form some idea of the vast extent of monastic possessions in the city. The names of the various properties whose boundaries touch those of the abbey lands are given. Private owners are mentioned only four times, whereas to ecclesiastical and monastic domains there are no less than ninety references. These monastic settlements were veritable garden cities, where most of our modern fruits, flowers and vegetables were cultivated; where flocks and herds were bred and all kinds of poultry, including pheasants and peacocks, reared. Guilds of craftsmen worked and flourished; markets were held generally on saints' days, and pilgrimages were fostered. Charlemagne was an honest coiner and a protector of foreign traders; he was tolerant of the Jews, the only capitalists of the time, and under him Paris became the "market of the peoples," and Venetian and Syrian merchants sought her shores. In Gallo-Roman days few were the churches outside the cities, but in the great emperor's time every villa[31] is said to have had its chapel or oratory served by a priest. Charlemagne was a zealous patron of such learning as the epoch afforded, and sought out scholars in every land. English, Irish, Scotch, Italian, Goth and Bavarian--all were welcomed. The English scholar Alcuin, master of the Cloister School at York, became his chief adviser and tutor. He would have every child in his empire to know at least his paternoster. Every abbot on election was required to endow the monastery with some books. The choice of authors was not a wide one: the Old and New Testaments; the writings of the Fathers, especially St. Augustine, the emperor's favourite author; Josephus; the works of Bede; some Latin authors, chiefly Virgil; some scraps of Plato translated into Latin--a somewhat exiguous and austere library, but one which reared a noble and valiant line of scholars and statesmen to rule the minds and bridle the savage lusts of the coming generations of men. Under Irish and Anglo-Saxon influences the cramped, minute script of the Merovingian scribes grew in beauty and lucidity: gold and silver and colour illuminated the pages of their books. The golden age of the Roman peace seemed dawning again in a new _Imperium Christianorum_. Towards the end of his reign the old emperor was dining with his court in a seaport town in the south of France, when news came that some strange, black, piratical craft had dared to attack the harbour. They were soon scattered, but the emperor was seen to rise from the table and go to a window, where he stood gazing fixedly at the retreating pirates. Tears trickled down his cheeks and none dared to approach him. At length he turned and said: "Know ye, my faithful servants, wherefore I weep thus bitterly? I fear not these wretched pirates, but I am afflicted that they should dare to approach these shores, and sorely do grieve when I foresee what evil they will work on my sons and on my people." His courtiers deemed they were Breton or Saracen pirates, but the emperor knew better. They were the terrible Northmen, soon to prove a bloodier scourge to Gaul than Hun or Goth or Saracen; and to meet them Charlemagne left an empire distracted by civil war and a nerveless, feeble prince, Louis the Pious, Louis the Forgiving, fitter for the hermit's cell than for the throne and sword of an emperor. In 841 the black boats of the sea-rovers for the first time entered the Seine, and burnt Rouen and Fontenelle. In 845 a fleet of one hundred and twenty vessels swept up its higher waters and on Easter Eve captured, plundered and burnt Paris, sacked its monasteries and churches and butchered their monks and priests. The futile Emperor Charles the Bald bought them off at St. Denis with seven thousand livres of silver, and they went back to their Scandinavian homes gorged with plunder--only to return year by year, increased in numbers and ferocity. Words cannot picture the terror of the citizens and monks when the dread squadrons, with the monstrous dragons carved on their prows, their great sails and three-fold serried ranks of men-of-prey, were sighted. Everyone left his home and sought refuge in flight. The monks hurried off with the bodies of the saints, the relics and treasures of the sanctuary, to hide them in far-away cities. In 852 Charles the Bald's soldiers refused to fight, and for two hundred and eighty-seven days the pirates ravaged the valley of the Seine at their will. Never within memory or tradition were such things known. Rouen, Bayeux, Beauvais, Paris, Meaux, Melun, Chartres, Evreux, were devastated. The islands of the Seine were whitened by the bones of the victims. Similar horrors were wrought along the other rivers of France. Whole districts reverted to paganism. In 858 a body of the freebooters settled on the island of Oissel, below Rouen, and issued forth _en excursion_ to spoil and slay and burn at their pleasure. They made of the once rich city of Paris a cinder heap; the cathedrals of St. Germain des Prés and of St. Denis alone escaped at the cost of immense bribes. Charles ordered two fortresses to be built for the defence of the approaches to the bridges, and continued his feeble policy of paying blackmail. [Illustration: PORT DES ORMES.] In 866 Robert the Strong, Count of Paris, had won the title of the Maccabeus of France, by daring to stand against the fury of the Northmen and to defeat them; but having in the heat of battle with the terrible Hastings taken off his cuirass, he was killed. In 876 began a second period of raids of even greater ferocity under the Norwegian Rollo the Gangr[32] (the walker), a colossus so huge that no horse could be found to bear him. In 884 the whole Christian people seemed doomed to perish. Flourishing cities and monasteries became heaps of smoking ruins; along the roads lay the bodies of priests and laymen, noble and peasant, freeman and serf, women and children and babes at the breast to be devoured of wolves and vultures. The very sanctuaries[33] were become the dens of wild beasts, the haunt of serpents and creeping things. Packs of wolves, three hundred strong, harried Aquitaine. In 885 a great league of pirates--Danes, Normans, Saxons, Britons and renegade French--on their way to ravage the rich cities of Burgundy drew up before Paris; and their leader, Siegfroy, demanded passage to the higher waters. For Paris had now been put in a state of defence, the Roman walls repaired, the bridges fortified and protected by towers on the north and south banks. Bishop Gozlin, in whom great learning was wedded to incomparable fortitude, defied the pirates, warning them that the citizens were determined to resist and to hold Paris for a bulwark to the other cities of France. Paris, forsaken by her kings and emperors for more than a century, scarred and bled by three sieges, was now to become a beacon of hope to the wretched land of France. Of the fourth and most terrible of the Norman sieges of Paris, we have fuller record. A certain monk of St. Germain des Prés, Abbo by name, had endured the siege and was one day sitting in his cell reading his Virgil. Desiring to exercise his Latin, and give an example to other cities, he determined to sing of a great siege with happier issue than that of Troy.[34] Abbo saw the black hulls and horrid prows of the pirates' boats as they turned the arm of the Seine below Paris, seven hundred strong vessels, and many more of lighter build. For two leagues and a half the very waters of the Seine were covered with them, and men asked into what mysterious caves the river had retreated. On November 26th, the attack began at the unfinished tower on the north bank. Three leaders stand eminent among the defenders of the city. Bishop Gozlin, the great warrior priest; his nephew, Abbot Ebles of St. Denis; and Count Eudes (Hugh) of Paris, son of Robert the Strong. The air is darkened with javelins and arrows. The abbot with one shaft spits seven of the besiegers, and mockingly bids their fellows take them to the kitchen to be cooked. Bishop Gozlin is wounded by a javelin early in the attack. On the morrow, reinforced by fresh troops, the assault is renewed, stones are hurled, arrows whistle: the air is filled with groans and cries. The defenders pour down boiling oil and melted wax and pitch. The hair of some of the Normans takes fire: they burn and the Parisians shout--"Jump into the Seine to cool yourselves." One well-aimed millstone, says Abbo, sends the souls of six to hell. The baffled Northmen retire, entrench a camp at St. Germain l'Auxerrois, and prepare rams and other siege artillery. [Illustration: ST. GERMAIN L'AUXERROIS.] Abbo now pauses to bewail the state of France: no lord to rule her, everywhere devastation wrought by fire and sword, God's people paralysed at the advancing phalanx of death, Paris alone tranquil, erect and steadfast in the midst of all their thunderbolts, _polis ut regina micans omnes super urbes_, like a queenly city resplendent above all towns. The second attack begins with redoubled fury. After battering the walls of the north tower, monstrous machines on sixteen wheels are advanced and the besiegers strive to fill the fosse. Trees, shrubs, slaughtered cattle, wounded horses, the very captives slain before the eyes of the besieged, are cast in to fill the void. Bishop Gozlin brings down a Norman chieftain by a well-aimed arrow: his body, too, is flung into the fosse. The enemy cover the plain with their swords and the river with their bucklers. Fireships are loosed against the bridge. In the city women fly to the sanctuaries: they roll their hair in the dust, beat their breasts and rend their faces. They call on St. Germain: "Blessed St. Germain, succour thy servants." The fighters on the walls take up the cry. Bishop Gozlin invokes the Virgin, Mother of the Redeemer, Star of the Sea, bright above all other stars, to save them from the cruel Danes. On February 6th, 886, a sudden flood sweeps away the Petit Pont, and its tower, with twelve defenders, is isolated. With shouts of triumph the Northmen cross the river and surround it. The twelve refuse to yield, and fire is brought. The warriors (a touching detail) fearing lest their falcons be stifled, cut them loose. There is but one vessel wherewith to quench the flames and that soon drops from their hands. The little band rush forth, place themselves against the ruins of the bridge, and prepare to sell their lives dearly--terrible against terrible foes. The walls of the city are lined with their kinsmen and friends impotent to help. The enemies of God, doomed one day to dine at Pluto's cauldron, press upon them. They fight till Phoebus sinks to the depths of the sea, so great is the courage of despair. They are promised their lives if they will yield, are disarmed, then treacherously slain, and their souls fly to heaven. But one, Hervé, of noble bearing and of great beauty, deemed a prince, is spared for ransom. With thunderous voice he refuses to bargain his life for gold, falls unarmed on his foes and is cut to pieces. "These things," writes Monk Abbo, "I saw with mine eyes." He gives the names of the heroic twelve who went to receive the palm of martyrdom. They were exemplars to France and helped to save her by their desperate courage and noble self-sacrifice. Their names are inscribed on a tablet on the wing of the Hôtel Dieu in the Place au Petit Pont: Ermenfroi, Hervé, Herland, Ouacre, Hervi, Arnaud, Seuil, Jobert, Hardre, Guy, Aimard, Gossouin. A temporary relief is afforded by the arrival of Henry of Saxony, sent with supplies by the emperor. Count Eudes sallies forth to meet him, and in his ardent courage outstrips his men, is surrounded and almost slain. The little city is revictualled. Henry returns whence he came, and again the Parisians are left to themselves. On the sixth of April Bishop Gozlin, their shield, their two-edged axe, whose shaft and bow were terrible, passes to the Lord. On May 12th, Eudes steals away to implore further help from the emperor, and as soon as he sees the imperialists on the march returns and cuts his way into Paris, to share the terrors of the siege. Henry the Saxon again appears, but is ambushed and slain and his army melts away. Yet again Paris is abandoned by her emperor and seeks help of heaven. For the waters are low, the besiegers are able to get footing on the island, they set fire to the gates and attack the walls. The body of St. Genevieve is borne about the city, and at night the ghostly figure of St. Germain is seen by the sentinels to pass along the ramparts, sprinkling them with holy water and promising salvation. Charles the Fat, the Lord's anointed, at length appears with a multitude of a hundred tongues and encamps on Montmartre. While the Parisians are preparing to second him in crushing their foes, they learn that the cowardly emperor has bought them off with a bribe and permission to winter in Burgundy, and for the first time they ravage that opulent province. Next year, as Gozlin's successor, Bishop Antheric, was sitting at table with Abbot Ebles, a fearful messenger brought news that the _acephali_[35] were again in sight. Forgetting the repast, the two churchmen seized their weapons, called the city to arms, hastened to the ramparts, and the abbot slew their pilot with a well-aimed shaft. The Normans are terrified, and at length a treaty is made with their leaders, who promised not to ravage the Marne and some even entered Paris. But the ill-disciplined hordes were hard to hold in and bands of brigands, as soon as the ramparts were passed, began to plunder and slew a score of Christian men. The Parisians in their indignation sought out and--_Evax!_ Hurrah!--found five hundred Normans in the city and slew them. But the bishop protected those that took refuge in his palace, instead of killing them as he ought to have done--_potius concidere debens_. For a time Paris had respite. Cowardly Charles the Fat was deposed, and in 887 Count Eudes was acclaimed king of France after his return from Aquitaine, whose duke he had brought to subjection. He counselled a gathering of all the peoples near Paris to make common cause against the Normans. Abbo saw the proud Franks march in with heads erect, the skilful and polished Aquitaines, the Burgundians too prone to flight. But nothing came of it. At the extreme north-east of Paris the Rue du Crimée leads to a group of once barren hills, part of which is now made into the Park of the Buttes Chaumont. Here, by the Mount of the Falcon (Montfaucon[36]) in 892 King Eudes fell upon an army of Northmen, who had come against Paris, and utterly routed them. Antheric, the noble pastor, with his virgin-like face, led three hundred footmen into the fight and slew six hundred of the _acephali_. But Abbo's muse now fails him. Eudes, noble Eudes, is no more worthy of his office, and Christ's sheep are perishing. Where is the ancient prowess of France? Three vices are working her destruction: pride, the sinful charms of Venus (_foeda venustas veneris_) and love of sumptuous garments. Her people are arrayed in purple vesture, and wear cloaks of gold; their loins are cinctured with girdles rich with precious stones. Monk Abbo wearies not of singing, but the deeds of noble Eudes are wanting. All the poet craves is another victory to rejoice Heaven; another defeat of the black host of the enemy. But the noble Eudes was now a king with rebellious vassals. Paris was never captured again, but the _acephali_ were devouring the land. The grim spectres of Famine and Plague made a charnel-house of whole regions of France, while Eudes was fighting the Count of Flanders, a rival king, and the ineffectual emperor, Charles the Simple. He it was who after Eudes' death, by the treaty of St. Claire-sur-Epte in 902, surrendered to the barbarians the fair province, subsequently to be known as Normandy. The new prayer in the Litany, "From the fury of the Northmen, good Lord deliver us," was heard. The dread name of Rollo now vanishes from history to live again in song, and under the title of Robert, assumed from his god-father, he reappears to win a dukedom and a king's daughter. The Normans are broken in to Christianity, law and order; their land becomes one of the most civilized regions of France; the fiercest of church levellers are known as the greatest of church builders in Christendom. They gave their name to a style of Christian architecture in Europe and a line of kings to England,[37] Naples and Sicily. [Illustration: L'INSTITUT DE FRANCE.] The new empire of Charlemagne had endured less than three generations; from its wreck were formed the seven kingdoms of France, Navarre, the two Burgundies, Lorraine, Italy and Germany. The people of France never forgot the lesson of the dark century of the invasions. A subtle change had been operating. The empire had decomposed into kingdoms; the kingdoms were segregating into lordships. Men in their need were attracted to the few strong and dominant lords whose courage and resource afforded them a rallying point and shelter against disintegrating forces: the poor and defenceless huddled for protection to the seigneurs of strongholds which had withstood the floods of barbarians that were devastating the land. The seeds of feudalism were sown in the long winter of the Norman terror. CHAPTER IV THE RISE OF THE CAPETIAN KINGS AND THE GROWTH OF PARIS From 936 to the coronation of Hugh Capet at Noyon in 987, the Carlovingians exercised a slowly decaying power. The real rulers of France were Hugh the Tall and Hugh Capet,[38] grandson and great-grandson of Robert the Strong. Lay abbots of St. Martin of Tours, St. Denis, and St. Germain, Counts of Paris and Dukes of France, they pursued the policy of the mayors of the palace in Merovingian times, accepting the nominal kingship of the degenerate Carlovingians--Louis from overseas, Lothaire, and Louis the Lazy--until the time was ripe to pick up the fallen sceptre. They founded a new line of kings of France which stretches onward through history for a thousand years until the guillotine of the Revolution cut it in twain. It is Hugh Capet whom Dante, following a legend of his time, calls the son of a butcher of Paris, and whom he hears among the weeping souls cleaving to the dust and purging their avarice in the fifth cornice of Purgatory. Their patrimony was a small one--the provinces of the Isle de France, La Brie, La Beauce, Beauvais and Valois; but their sway extended over the land of the Langue d'oil, with its strenuous northern life, _le doux royaume de la France_, the sweet realm of France, cradle of the great French Monarchy and home of art, learning and chivalry. The globe of the earth, symbol of universal empire, gives way to the hand of justice as the emblem of kingship. They were, it is true, little more than seigneurs over other seigneurs, some of whom were almost as powerful as they; but that little, the drop of holy chrism by which they were consecrated of the Church, contained within it a potency of future grandeur. They were the Lord's anointed, supported by the Lord's Vicar on earth: to disobey them was to disobey God. Tribal sovereignty had now given way to territorial sovereignty. Feudal lords and abbots were supreme within their own domains. The people, long forsaken by their emperors, had in their turn forsaken them. In order "not to be at the mercy of all the great ones they surrendered themselves to one of the great ones" and in exchange for protection gave troth and service. Cities, churches and monasteries now assumed a new aspect. Paris had demonstrated the value of a walled city, for the dread Rollo himself had three times assaulted it in vain. During the latter part of the Norman terror, from all parts of North France, monks and nuns and priests had brought their holy relics within its walls as to a city of refuge. Gone were the lines of villas from Gallo-Roman times extending freely into the country. Fortifications were everywhere raised around the dwelling-places of men. The ample spaces within cities were soon to give place to crowded houses and narrow streets. The might of the archbishops, bishops and abbots increased: they sat in the councils of kings and dominated the administration of justice; the moral, social and political life of the country centred around them. Armed with the sword and the cross they held almost absolute sway over their little republics; coined money, levied taxes, disposed of small armies and went to the chase in almost regal state. The land bristled with castles and fortified towns and abbeys, and was parcelled out into territories of varying extent, from great duchies equal to a dozen modern departments, to the small domain just enough to maintain a single knight. The advent of the year 1000 was regarded with universal terror in Christendom. A fear, based on a supposed apocalyptic prophecy that the end of the world was at hand, paralysed all political and social life. Churches were too small to contain the immense throngs of fearful penitents: legacies and donations from conscience-stricken worshippers poured wealth into their treasuries. But once the awe-inspiring night of the vernal equinox that began the year 1000 had passed, and the bright March sun rose again on the fair earth, unconsumed by the wrath of God, the old world "seemed to thrill with new life; the earth cast off her out-worn garments and clothed herself in a rich and white vesture of new churches." Everywhere in Europe, and especially in France, men strove in emulation to build the finest temples to God. The wooden roofs of the Merovingian and Carlovingian basilicas had ill withstood the ravage of war and fire. Stone took the place of wood, the heavy thrust of the roof led to increased mural strength, walls were buttressed, columns thickened. Massive towers of defence, at first round, then polygonal, then square, flanked the west fronts, veritable keeps, where the sacred vessels and relics might be preserved and defended in case of attack. Soon spaces are clamant for decoration, the stone soars into the beauty of Gothic vaulting and tracery, "the solid and lofty shafts ascend and press onward in agile files, and in the sacred gloom are like unto an army of giants that meditate war with invisible powers."[39] The Capets are more intimately associated with the growth of Paris than any of the earlier dynasties, and at no period in French history is the ecclesiastical expansion more marked. Under the long reign of Hugh's son, King Robert the Pious, no less than fourteen monasteries and seven churches were built or rebuilt in or around the city. A new and magnificent palace and hall of Justice, with its royal chapel dedicated to St. Nicholas, rose on the site of the old Roman basilica and palace in the Cité. The king was no less charitable than pious. Troops of the poor and afflicted followed him when he went abroad, and he fed a thousand daily at his table. But notwithstanding his munificent piety, he was early made to feel the power of the Church. His union with Queen Bertha, a cousin of the fourth degree, whom he had married a year before his accession, was condemned by the pope as incestuous, and he was summoned to repudiate her. Robert, who loved his wife dearly, resisted the papal authority, and excommunication and interdict followed.[40] Everyone fled from him; only the servants are said to have remained, who purged with fire all the vessels which were contaminated by the guilty couple's touch. The misery of his people at length subdued the king's spirit, and he cast off his faithful and beloved queen. The beautiful and imperious Constance of Aquitaine, her successor, proved a penitential infliction second only in severity to the anathemas of the Church. Troops of vain and frivolous troubadours from her southern home, in all kinds of foreign and fantastic costumes, invaded the court and shocked the austere piety of the king. He perceived the corrupting influence on the simple manners of the Franks of their licentious songs, lascivious music and dissolute lives, but was powerless to dismiss them. The tyrannous temper of his new consort became the torment of his life. He was forced even to conceal his acts of charity. One day, on returning from prayers, he perceived that his lance by the queen's orders had been adorned with richly chased silver. He looked around his palace and was not long in finding a poor, tattered wretch whom he ordered to search for a tool, and the pair locked themselves in a room. The silver was soon stripped from the lance and the king hastily thrust it into the beggar's wallet and bade him escape before the queen discovered the loss. The poor whom he admitted to his table, despite the angry protests of the queen, at times ill repaid his charity. On one occasion a tassel of gold was cut from his robe, and on the thief being discovered the king simply remarked: "Well, perhaps he has greater need of it than I, may God bless its service to him." The very fringe was sometimes stripped from his cloak as he walked abroad, but he never could be induced to punish any of these poor spoilers of his person. There is, however, an obverse to this ardent piety and noble enthusiasm:--the merciless persecution and spoliation of the Jews and the first executions of heretics[41] recorded in France. In 1022 two priests, one of whom had been the queen's confessor, and eleven laymen were condemned to be burnt at the stake at Orleans for heresy. The king spent nine hours wrestling with them in prayer and argument, but in vain. As the unhappy wretches were being led to execution, Constance leaned forward, savagely struck at her old confessor and gouged out one of his eyes. She was applauded for her zeal. The economic condition of the people was far from satisfactory. Famine and pestilence claimed their victims with appalling frequency, and between 970 and 1040, forty-eight famines and plagues are known to historians; that of 1033 is recounted by the chronicler, Raoul Glaber, with details so ghastly that the heart sickens and the hand faints at their transcription. Slavery existed everywhere: it was regarded as an integral part of the divine order of things. The Church aimed at alleviating the lot of the slave, not at abolishing slavery. At a division of serfs, held in common between the priors of two abbeys in 1087, the children were shared, male and female, without any reference to their parents. Archbishops fulminated against serfs who tried to escape from their lords, quoting the words of the apostle: "Serfs be subject in all things to your masters." A serf was valued at so much money, like a horse or an ox. The serfs of the Church at Paris were sent to the law courts to give evidence for their bishop or prior, or to do battle for them in the event of a judicial duel. The freemen in the eleventh century began to rebel against fighting with a despised serf, and refused the duel, whereupon early in the next century the king and his court decided that the serfs might lawfully testify and fight against freemen, and whoso refused the trial by battle should lose his suit and suffer excommunication. The prelates exchanged serfs, used them as substitutes in times of war, allowed them to marry outside their church or abbey only by special permission and on condition that all children were equally divided between the two proprietors. If a female serf married a freeman he and their children became serfs. Serfs were only permitted to make a will by consent of their master; every favour was paid for and liberty bought at a great price. Whole _bourgades_ were often in a state of serfdom. Merchants even and artizans in towns owed part of their produce to the seigneur. In the eleventh century burgesses as well as serfs and Jews were given to churches, exchanged, sold or left in wills by their seigneurs. The story of mediæval France is the story of the efforts of serf and burgess to win their economic freedom[42] and of her kings to tame the insolence of disobedient vassals and to make their shadowy kingship a real thing. And the story of mediæval France is closed only by the great Revolution. [Illustration: HOTEL GEROUILHAC] The declining years of King Robert were embittered by the impiety of rebellious sons, who were reduced to submission only at the price of a protracted and bloody campaign in Burgundy. The broken-hearted father did not long survive his victory. He died in his palace at Melun in 1031, and the benisons and lamentations of the poor and lowly winged his spirit to its rest. If we may believe some writers, pious King Robert's memory is enshrined in the hymnology of the Church, which he enriched with some beautiful compositions: he was often seen to enter St. Denis in regal habit to lead the choir at matins, and would sometimes challenge the monks to a singing contest; once, it is said, when importuned by his queen to immortalise her name in song, he began, "O Constantia Martyrum!" The delighted Constance heard no further and was satisfied. Scarcely had the grave closed over the dead king at St. Denis when Constance plotted with some of the nobles to place Robert, her youngest and favourite son, on the throne in place of Henry, the rightful heir, who fled to Normandy to implore the aid of Duke Robert. The cultivation of the arts of peace had not enfeebled the fighting powers of the Normans. Robert fell upon the queen's supporters with reckless[43] bravery and crushed them in three decisive battles. Henry gained his crown but at the cost of a big slice of territory which advanced the Norman boundary to within twenty leagues of Paris. The queen survived her humiliation but a short time, and her death at Melun in 1032 and Henry's generosity to his enemies gave peace to the kingdom. In 1053, towards the end of Henry's almost unchronicled reign, an alarming rumour came to Paris. The priests of St. Ermeran at Ratisbon claimed to have possession of the body of St. Denis, which they alleged had been stolen from the abbey in 892 by one Gisalbert. The loss of a province would not have evoked livelier emotion, and Henry at once took measures to convince France and Christendom that the true body was still at St. Denis. Before an immense concourse of bishops, abbots, princes and people, presided over by the king, his brother and the archbishops of Rheims and of Canterbury, the remains of St. Denis and his two companions were solemnly drawn out of the silver coffers in which they had been placed, by Dagobert, together with a nail from the cross and part of the crown of thorns, all locked with two keys in a kind of cupboard richly adorned with gold and precious stones, and preserved in a vault under the high altar. After having been borne in procession they were exposed on the high altar for fifteen days and then restored to their resting-place. The stiff-necked priests of Ratisbon, fortified with a papal bull of 1052, still maintained their claim to the possession of the body, but no diminution was experienced in the devotion either of the French peoples or of strangers of all nations to the relics at St. Denis. The chief architectural event of Henry's reign at Paris was the rebuilding on a more magnificent scale of the Merovingian church and abbey of St. Martin in the Fields (des Champs), whose blackened walls and desolate lands were eloquent of the Norman terror. The buildings stood outside Paris about a mile beyond the Cité on the great Roman road to the north, where St. Martin on his way to Paris healed a leper. The foundation, which soon grew to be one of the wealthiest in France, included a hostel for poor pilgrims endowed by Philip I. with a mill on the Grand Pont, to which the monks added the revenue from an oven.[44] In the eighteenth century, when the monastery was secularised, the abbot was patron of twenty-nine priories, three vicarates and thirty-five parishes, five of which were in Paris. Some of the old building has been incorporated in the existing Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers. The Gothic priory chapel, with its fine twelfth-century choir, is used as a machinery-room, and the refectory, one of the most precious and beautiful creations attributed to Pierre de Montereau, is now a library. Philip I. brought to the indolent habit inherited from his father a depraved and vicious nature. After a regency of eight years he became king at the age of fifteen, and lived to defile his youth and dishonour his manhood by debauchery and adultery, simony and brigandage. Early in his career he followed the evil counsels of his provost Etienne, and purposed the spoliation of the treasury of St. Germain des Prés to pay for his dissolute pleasures. "As the sacrilegious pair," says the chronicler, "drew near the relics, Etienne was smitten with blindness and the terrified Philip fled." Simony filled his gaping purse; bishoprics and other preferments were openly sold to the highest bidder, and one day when an abbot complained that he had been kept waiting while a rich competitor for a bishopric had been admitted, the king answered: "Wait a while until I have made my money of him; I will then accuse him of simony, and you shall have the reversion." Regal irresponsibility led in 1092 to a greater crime. Most popular of the twelfth-century stories sung by the _trouvères_ of North France was that of Tortulf, the Breton outlaw, the Robin Hood of his day, who won by his prowess against the Normans the lordship of rich lands by the Loire, and with his son, Ingelar, founded the famous house of Anjou. In 1092 Foulques de Réchin, lord of Anjou--whose handsome grandson Geoffrey, surnamed Plantagenet from the sprig of broom (_genêt_) he wore in his helmet, was to father a race of English kings--had to wife Bertrarde, fairest of the ladies of France, whose two predecessors had been cast off like vile courtesans. Philip, when on a visit to the count at Tours became inflamed with passion at beholding her, and she was easily induced to elope with him under the promise that she should share his throne. His queen, Bertha, mother of his two children, was pitilessly driven from his bed and imprisoned at Montreuil, and two of his venal bishops were found to bestow the blessings of the Church on the new union. But the thunder of Rome came swift and terrible. Philip laid aside his crown and sceptre, grovelled before the pontiff, and implored forgiveness, but continued to live with his mistress. Next year a new pope excommunicated the guilty pair and laid their kingdom under the ban. The same Council, however, of Clermont, which fulminated against Philip, stirred Christendom to the first crusade, and in the magnificent enthusiasm of the moment Philip was permitted to live outwardly submissive but secretly rebellious. He crowned Bertrarde at Troyes, and lived on his vicious life, while Bertha was dying of a broken heart in her prison at Montreuil. Monkish legends tell of the excommunicated king languishing, a scrofulous wretch, in a deserted court; but there is little doubt that the impious monarch died, tardily repentant, at his palace at Melun, after a reign of nearly half a century. It was a reign void of honour or profit to France. He left his son Louis VI. (the Lusty) a heritage of shame, a kingdom reduced to little more than a baronage over a few _comtés_, whose cities of Paris, Etampes, Orleans and Sens were isolated from royal jurisdiction by insolent and rebellious vassals, one of whom, the Seigneur de Puisset, had inflicted a disgraceful defeat on Philip in 1081. Many of the great seigneurs were but freebooters, living by plunder. The violence and lawlessness of these and other smaller scoundrels, who levied blackmail on merchants and travellers, made commerce almost impossible. Corruption, too, had invaded many of the monasteries and fouled the thrones of bishops, and a dual effort was made by king and Church to remedy the evils of the times. The hierarchy strove to centralise power at Rome that the Church might be purged of wolves in sheep's clothing: the Capetian monarchs to increase their might at Paris in order to subdue insolent and powerful vassals to law and obedience. In 1097 the Duke of Burgundy learned that Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury was about to pass through his territory with a rich escort on his way to Rome. The usual ambush was laid and the party were held up. As the duke hastened to spoil his victims, crying out--"Where is the archbishop?" he turned and saw Anselm, impassive on his horse, gazing sternly at him. In a moment the savage and lawless duke was transformed to a pallid, stammering wretch with downcast eyes, begging permission to kiss the old man's hand and to offer him a noble escort to safeguard him through his territory. It was the moral influence of prelates such as this and monks such as St. Bernard that enabled the hierarchy to enforce the celibacy of the clergy, to cleanse the bishoprics and abbeys, to wrest the privilege of conferring benefices from lay potentates and feudal seigneurs who bartered them for money, and to make and unmake kings. The end of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth centuries saw the culmination of the power of the reformed orders. All over France, religious houses--the Grande Chartreuse, Fontevrault, Cîteaux, Clairvaux--sprang up as if by enchantment. Men and women of all stations and classes flocked to them, a veritable host of the Lord, "adorning the deserts with their holy perfection and solitudes by their purity and righteousness." "How fair a thing it is," exclaims St. Bernard, "to live in perfect unity! One weeps for his sins; another sings praises to the Lord. One teaches the sciences; another prays. One leads the active; another the contemplative, life. One burns with charity; another is prone in humility. Nought is here but the house of God and the very gate of heaven." St. Bernard was the terror of mothers and of wives. His austerity, his loving-kindness,[45] his impetuous will and masterful activity, his absolute faith and remorseless logic, his lyric and passionate eloquence, carried all before him. St. Bernard was the dictator of Christendom; he it was who with pitying gesture as of a kind father, his eyes suffused with tender joy, received Dante from the hands of Beatrice in the highest of celestial spheres, and after singing the beautiful hymn to the Virgin, led him to the heaven of heavens, to the very ecstasy and culmination of beatitude in the contemplation and comprehension of the triune God Himself. But religious no less than seculars are subdued by what they work in. Already in the tenth century Richer complained that the monks of his time were beginning to wear rich ornaments and flowing sleeves, and with their tight-fitting garments[46] looked like harlots rather than monks. In the polluting atmosphere of Philip's reign matters grew worse. St. Bernard denounced the royal abbey of St. Denis as "a house of Satan, a den of thieves." "The walls of the churches of Christ were resplendent with colour but His poor were naked and left to perish; their stones were gilded with the money of the needy and wretched to charm the eyes of the rich." "Bishops dressed like women; the successors of St. Peter rode about on white mules, loaded with gold and precious stones, apparelled in fine silk, surrounded with soldiers and followed by a brilliant train. They were rather the successors of Constantine." In 1095 the task of cleansing the Abbey of St. Maur des Fossés seemed so hopeless, that the abbot resigned in despair rather than imperil his soul, and a more resolute reformer was sought. In 1107 the bishop of Paris was commanded by Rome to proceed to the abbey of St. Eloy and extirpate the evils there flourishing. The nuns, it was reported, had so declined in grace, owing to the proximity of the court and intercourse with the world, that they had lost all sense of shame and lived in open sin, breaking the bonds of common decency. The scandal was so great that the bishop determined to cut them off from the house of the Lord. The abbey was reduced to a priory and given over to the abbot of the now reformed monastery of St. Maur, and its vast lands were parcelled out into several parishes.[47] The rights of the canons of Notre Dame were to be maintained; on St. Eloy's day the abbot of St. Maur was to furnish them with six pigs, two and a half measures of wine and three of fine wheat, and on St. Paul's day with eight sheep, the same quantity of wine, six crowns and one obole. The present Rue de la Cité and the Boulevard du Palais give approximately the east and west boundaries of the suppressed abbey, part of whose site is now occupied by the Prefecture de Police. But the way of the reformer is a hard one. At the Council of Paris, 1074, the abbot of Pontoise was severely ill-treated for supporting, against the majority of the Council, the pope's decrees excluding married clerics from the churches. The reform of the canons of Notre Dame led to exciting scenes. Bishop Stephen of Senlis was sent in 1128 to introduce the new discipline, but the archdeacons and canons, supported by royal favour, resisted, and Bishop Stephen was stripped of his revenues and hastened back to his metropolitan, the archbishop of Sens. The archbishop laid Paris under interdict and the influence of St. Bernard himself was needed to compose the quarrel. On Sunday, August 20, 1133, when returning from a visitation to the abbey of Chelles, the abbot and prior of St. Victor were ambushed and the prior was stabbed. Some years later, in the reign of Louis VII., Pope Eugene III. came to seek refuge in Paris from the troubles excited at Rome by the revolution of Arnold of Brescia. When celebrating mass before the king at the abbey church of St. Genevieve the canons had stretched a rich, silken carpet before the altar on which the pontiff's knees might rest. When the pope retired to the sacristy to disrobe, his officers claimed the carpet, according to usage; the canons and their servants resisted, and there was a bout of fisticuffs and sticks. The king intervened, and anointed majesty himself was struck. A scuffle ensued, during which the carpet was torn to shreds in a tug-of-war between the claimants. Here was urgent need for reform. The pope decided to introduce the new discipline and appointed a fresh set of canons. The dispossessed canons met them with insults and violence, drowned their voices by howling and other indignities, and only ceased on being threatened with the loss of their eyes and other secular penalties. Louis the Lusty was the pioneer of the great French Monarchy. He had none of Philip's indolence, and was ever on the move, hewing his way, sword in hand, through his domains, subduing the violence, and burning and razing the castles of his insolent and disobedient vassals. The famous Suger, abbot of St. Denis, was his wise and firm counsellor, and led the Church to make common cause with him and lend her diocesan militia. It was a poor bald _curé_ who, when all else despaired, led the assault on the keep of the castle of Le Puisset; he seized on a plank of wood, assailed the palisade, calling on the hesitating royal troops to follow him; they were shamed by his bravery and the castle was won. The social revolution known as the enfranchisement of the commons and the growth of towns begins in the reign of Louis VI. The king would have the peasant to till, the monk to pray, and the pilgrim and merchant to travel in peace. He was an itinerant regal justiciary, destroying the nests of brigands, purging the land with fire and sword from tyranny and oppression. Wise in council, of magnificent courage in battle, he was the first of the Capetians to associate the cause of the people with that of the monarchy. They loved him as a valiant soldier-king, destroyer and tamer of feudal tyrants, the protector of the Church, the vindicator of the oppressed. He lifted the sceptre of France from the mire and made of it a symbol of firm and just government. It is in Louis VI.'s reign that we have first mention of the Oriflamme (golden flame) of St. Denis, which took the place of St. Martin's cloak as the royal standard of France. The Emperor Henry V. with a formidable army was menacing France. Louis rallied all his friends to withstand him and went to St. Denis to pray for victory. The abbot took from the altar the standard--famed to have been sent by heaven, and formerly carried by the first liege man of the abbey, the Count de Vexin, when the monastery was in danger of attack--and handed it to the king. The sacred banner was fashioned of silk in the form of a gonfalon, of the colours of fire and gold, and was suspended at the head of a gilded lance. There was a solemn ceremony, the _Remise des corps saints_, at the royal abbey when the king returned with his court to give thanks and to restore the banner to the altar. He carried the relics of the holy martyrs on his shoulders in procession, then replaced them whence they were taken and made oblations. A yet more superb spectacle was given to the Parisians when Pope Innocent II., a refugee from the violence of the anti-papal party at Rome, came to celebrate the Easter mass at St. Denis. The pope and his cardinals were mounted on fair steeds, barons and seigneurs on foot led the pope's white horse by the bridle. As he passed, the Jews presented him with a scroll of the law wrapped in a veil--"May it please God to remove the veil from your hearts," answered the pope. The solemn mass ended, pope and cardinals repaired to the cloisters where tables were spread with the Easter feast. They first partook of the Paschal lamb, reclining on the carpet in the fashion of the ancients, then, rising, took their places at table. After the repast a magnificent procession went its way to Paris, to be met by the whole city with King Louis and Prince Philip at their head. The manner of the young prince's tragic death gives an insight into the state of a mediæval town. He was riding one day for amusement in the streets of Paris, attended by one esquire, when a pig ran between his horse's feet; the lad was thrown and died before the last sacraments could be administered. He was only fourteen years of age, and all France wept for him. The strenuous reign of Louis was marked by a great expansion of Paris, which became more than ever the ordinary dwelling-place of the king and the seat of his government. The market, now known as Les Halles, was established at a place called Champeaux, belonging to St. Denis of the Prison. William of Champeaux founded the great abbey of St. Victor,[48] famed for its sanctity and learning, where Abelard taught and St. Thomas of Canterbury and St. Bernard lodged. At the urgent prayer of his wife Adelaide, the king built a nunnery at Montmartre, and lavishly endowed it with lands, ovens, the house of Guerri, a Lombard money-changer, some shops and a slaughter-house in Paris, and a small _bourg_, still known as Bourg-la-Reine, about five miles south of the city. Certain rights of fishing at Paris, to which Louis VII. added five thousand herrings yearly from the port of Boulogne, were also granted. The churches of Ste. Geneviève la Petite, founded to commemorate the miraculous staying of the plague of the burning sickness (_les ardents_); of St. Jacques de la Boucherie; and of St. Pierre aux Boeufs, so named from the heads of oxen carved on the portal, were also built. CHAPTER V PARIS UNDER PHILIP AUGUSTUS AND ST. LOUIS During the twenty-eight years of the reign of Louis VII. no heir to the crown was born. At length, on the 22nd of August, 1165, Adelaide of Champagne, his third wife, lay in child-bed and excited crowds thronged the palace. The king, "afeared of the number of his daughters and knowing how ardently his people desired a child of the nobler sex," was beside himself with joy when the desire of his heart was held up to him. The chamber was closed, but curious eyes had espied the longed-for heir through an aperture of the door and in a moment the good news was spread abroad. There was a sound of clarions and of bells and the city as by enchantment shone with an aureole of light. An English student roused by the uproar and the glare of what seemed like a great conflagration leapt to the window and beheld two old women hurrying by with lighted tapers. He asked the cause. They answered "God has given us this night a royal heir, by whose hand your king shall suffer shame and ill-hap." This was the birth of Philip le Dieu donné--Philip sent of Heaven--better known as Philip Augustus. Under him and Louis IX. mediæval Paris, faithfully reflecting the fortunes of the French Monarchy, attained its highest development. When Philip Augustus took up the sceptre at fifteen years of age, the little realm of the Isle de France was throttled by a ring of great and practically independent feudatories, and in extent was no larger than half-a-dozen of the eighty-seven departments into which France is now divided. In thirty years Philip had burst through to the sea, subdued the Duke of Burgundy and the great counts, wrested the sovereignty of Normandy, Brittany and Maine from the English Crown, won Poitou and Aquitaine, crushed the emperor and his vassals in the memorable battle of Bouvines, and become one of the greatest of European monarchs. The English king was humiliated by the invasion of his territory by Prince Louis, afterwards Louis VIII., who overran nearly the whole of the east of England, captured Rochester and Winchester, and received the barons' homage at London. The victory of Bouvines evoked that ideal of moral and material and national unity which the later kings of France were to realise. The progress of Philip towards Paris was one long triumph. Peasants and mechanics dropped their tools to gaze on the dread iron Count of Flanders, captive and wounded. The king, who had owed his life to the excellence of his armour,[49] was received in Paris with a frenzy of joy. The whole city came forth to meet him, flowers were strewn in his path, the streets were hung with tapestry, Te Deums sung in all the churches, and for seven days and nights the popular enthusiasm expressed itself in dance, in song and joyous revel. It was the first national event in France. The Count of Flanders was imprisoned in the new fortress of the Louvre, where he lay for thirteen years, with ample leisure to meditate on the fate of rebellious feudatories. "Never after was war waged on King Philip, but he lived in peace." Two vast undertakings make the name of Philip Augustus memorable in Paris--the beginning of the paving of the city and the building of its girdle of walls and towers. [Illustration: ST. ETIENNE DU MONT AND TOUR DE CLOVIS.] One day as Philip stood at the window of his palace, where he was wont to amuse himself by watching the Seine flow by, some carts rattled along the muddy road beneath the window and stirred so foul and overpowering an odour that the king almost fell sick. Next day the provost and the sheriffs and chief citizens were sent for and ordered to set about paving the city with stone. The work was not however completed until the reign of Charles V., a century and a half later. It was done well and lasted till the sixteenth century, when it was replaced by the miserable cobbles, known as the pavement of the League. Whether the city grew much sweeter is doubtful; certainly Paris in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was as evil-smelling as ever. Montaigne, in the second half of the sixteenth century, complains that the acrid smell of the mud of Paris weakened the affection he bore to that fair city, and Howell writes in 1620, "the city is always dirty, and by perpetual motion the mud is beaten into a thick, black and unctuous oil that sticks so that no art can wash it off, and besides the indelible stain it leaves, gives so strong a scent that it may be smelt many miles off, if the wind be in one's face as one comes from the fresh air of the country." [Illustration: WALL OF PHILIPPE AUGUSTE, COUR DE ROUEN.] The great fortified wall of Philip Augustus began at the north-west water-tower, which stood just above the present Pont des Arts, and passed through the quadrangle of the Louvre where a line on the paving marks its course to the Porte St. Honoré, near the Oratoire. It continued northwards by the Rue du Jour to the Porte Montmartre, whose site is marked by a tablet on No. 30 Rue Montmartre. Turning eastward by the Painters' Gate (135 Rue St. Denis) and the Porte St. Martin, near the Rue Grenier St. Lazare, the fortification described a curve in a south-easterly direction by the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, where traces of the wall have been found in the Cour de l'Horloge of the Mont de Piété, and of a tower at No. 57. The line of the wall continued in the same direction by the Lycée Charlemagne, No. 131 Rue St. Antoine, where stood another gate, to the north-east water-tower, known as the Tour Barbeau, which stood near No. 32 Quai des Célestins. The opposite or southern division began at the south-east water-tower, La Tournelle, and the Gate of St. Bernard on the present Quai de la Tournelle, and went southward by the Rues des Fossés, St. Bernard and Cardinal Lemoine, to the Porte St. Victor, near No. 2 Rue des Ecoles. The wall then turned westward by the Rue Clovis, where at No. 7 one of the largest and best-preserved remains may be seen. It enclosed the abbey of St. Geneviève, and the Pantheon stands on the site of the Porte Papale. The south-western angle was turned near the end of the Rue Soufflot and the beginning of the Rue Monsieur le Prince. In a northerly direction it then followed the line of the latter street, crossing the Boulevard St. Germain, and continued by the Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie. In the Cour de Rouen, No. 61 Rue St. André des Arts, an important remnant may be seen with the base of a tower. We may now trace the march of the wall and towers by the Rues Mazarin and Guénégaud, where at No. 29 other fragments exist, to the south-west water-tower, the notorious Tour de Nesle[50] whose site is occupied by the Hôtel des Monnaies. The passage of the Seine was blocked by chains, which were drawn at night from tower to tower and fixed on boats and piles. The wall was twenty years building and was completed in 1211. It was eight feet thick, pierced by twenty-four gates and fortified by about five hundred towers. Much of the land it enclosed was not built upon; the _marais_ (marshes) on the north bank were drained and cultivated and became market and fruit gardens. The moated château of the Louvre, another of Philip's great buildings, stood outside the wall and commanded the valley route to Paris. It was at once a fortress, a palace and a prison. Parts of two wings of the structure are incorporated in the present palace of the Louvre, and the site of the remaining wings, the massive keep and the towers are marked out on the pavement of the quadrangle. Many are the stories of the great king's wisdom. One day, entering the chapter-house of Notre Dame during the election of a bishop, Philip seized a crozier and passing along the assembled canons thrust it into the hands of one of lean and poor aspect, saying: "Here, take this, that you may wax fat like your brethren." His jester once claimed to be of his family through their common father Adam, and complained that the heritage had been badly divided. "Well," said the king, "come to me to-morrow and I will restore what is due to thee." Next day, in the presence of his court, he handed the jester a farthing, saying: "Here is thy just portion. When I shall have shared my wealth with each of thy brothers, barely a farthing will remain to me." One of the royal bailiffs coveted the land of a poor knight, who refused to sell. The knight at length died, and the widow proving equally stubborn, the bailiff went to the market-place, hired two porters whom he dressed decently, and repaired with them by night to the cemetery where the dead chevalier lay buried. His body was drawn from the tomb and held upright while the bailiff abjured it to agree before the two witnesses to a sale of the land. "Silence gives consent," said the bailiff, and placed a coin in the corpse's hand. The tomb was closed and the land seized on the morrow, despite the widow's protests. On the case being brought before the judgment-seat of Philip in the palace of the Cité, the two porters bore witness to the sale. The king, suspecting the truth, led one of the witnesses aside and bade him recite a paternoster. While the man was murmuring the prayer the king was heard of all the court loudly saying: "Yes, that is so: you speak truly." The recital over, the king assured him of pardon, and returning to the second witness, admonished him also not to lie, for his friend had revealed all as truly as if he had said a paternoster. The second witness confessed. The bailiff, praying for mercy, fell prostrate before the king, who condemned the guilty man to banishment for life, and ordered the whole of his possessions to be escheated to the poor widow. Of the impression that the Paris of Philip Augustus made on a provincial visitor, we are able, fortunately, to give some account. "I am at Paris," writes Guy of Bazoches, about the end of the twelfth century, "in this royal city, where the abundance of nature's gifts not only retains those that dwell there but invites and attracts those who are afar off. Even as the moon surpasses the stars in brightness, so does this city, the seat of royalty, exalt her proud head above all other cities. She is placed in the bosom of a delicious valley, in the centre of a crown of hills, which Ceres and Bacchus enrich with their gifts. The Seine, that proud river which comes from the east, flows there through wide banks and with its two arms surrounds an island which is the head, the heart, and the marrow of the whole city. Two suburbs extend to right and left, even the lesser of which would rouse the envy of many another city. These suburbs communicate with the island by two stone bridges; the Grand Pont towards the north in the direction of the English sea, and the Petit Pont which looks towards the Loire. The former bridge, broad, rich, commercial, is the centre of a fervid activity, and innumerable boats surround it laden with merchandise and riches. The Petit Pont belongs to the dialecticians, who pace up and down disputing. In the island adjacent to the king's palace, which dominates the whole town, the palace of philosophy is seen where study reigns alone as sovereign, a citadel of light and immortality." After Louis VIII.'s brief reign of three years, there rises to the throne of France one of the gentlest and noblest of the sons of men, a prince indeed, who, amid all the temptations of absolute power maintained a spotless life, and at death laid down an earthly crown to assume a fairer and an imperishable diadem among the saints in heaven. All that was best in mediævalism--its desire for peace and order and justice; its fervent piety, its passion to effect unity among Christ's people and to wrest the Holy Land from the pollution of the infidel; its enthusiasm for learning and for the things of the mind; its love of beauty--all are personified in the life of St. Louis. The young prince was eleven years of age when his father died. During his minority he was nurtured in learning and piety[51] by his mother, Blanche of Castile, whose devotion to her son, and firm and wise regency were a fitting prelude to the reign of a saintly king. Even after he attained his majority, Louis always sought his mother's counsel and was ever respectful and submissive to her will. When the news of her death reached him in the Holy Land, he went to his oratory, fell on his knees before the altar, submissive to the will of God, and cried out with tears in his eyes, that he had loved the queen, "his most dear lady and mother, beyond all mortal creatures." The king's conception of his office was summed up in two words--_Gouverner bien_. "Fair son," said he one day to Prince Louis, his heir, "I pray thee win the affection of thy people. Verily, I would rather that a Scotchman came from Scotland and ruled the kingdom well and loyally than that thou shouldst govern it ill." Joinville tells with charming simplicity how the king after hearing mass in the chapel at Vincennes was wont to walk in the woods for refreshment and then, sitting at the foot of an old oak tree, would listen to the plaints of his poorer people without let of usher or other official and administer justice to them. At other times, clothed in a tunic of camlet, a surcoat of wool (_tiretaine_) without sleeves, a mantle of black taffety, and a hat with a peacock's plume, he would walk with his Council in the garden of his palace in the Cité, and on the people crowding round him, would call for a carpet to be spread on the ground, on which he would sit, surrounded with his councillors, and judge the poor diligently. So rigidly just was the good king that he would not lie even to the Saracens. On his return from the crusade, being pressed by his Council to leave a stranded ship, he called the mariners to him and asked them if they would abandon the vessel if it were charged with merchandise. All replied that they would risk their lives rather than forsake the ship. "Then," said the king, "why am I asked to abandon it?" "Sire," they answered, "your royal person and your queen and children cannot be valued in money nor weighed in the balance against our lives." "Well," said the king, "I have heard your counsel and that of my lords: now hear mine. If I leave this ship there will remain on board five hundred men, each of whom loves his life as dearly as I do mine, and who, perchance, will never see their fatherland again. Therefore will I rather put my person and my wife and children in God's hands than do hurt to so much people." [Illustration: VINCENNES.] In 1238 the king was profoundly shocked by the news that the crown of thorns was a forfeited pledge at Venice for an unpaid loan advanced by some Venetian merchants to the Emperor Baldwin of Constantinople. Louis paid the debt,[52] redeemed the pledge, and secured the relic for Paris. The king met his envoys at Sens, and barefooted, himself carried the sacred treasure enclosed in three caskets, one of wood, one of silver and one of gold, to Paris. The procession took eight days to reach the city, and so great were the multitudes who thronged to see it, that a large platform was raised in a field outside the walls, from which several prelates exposed it in turn to the veneration of the people. Thence it was taken to the cathedral of Notre Dame, the king dressed in a simple tunic, and barefoot still carrying the relic. From the cathedral it was transferred to the royal chapel of St. Nicholas within the precincts of the palace. A year later the Emperor Baldwin was constrained to part with other relics, including a piece of the true cross, the blade of the lance and the sponge of the Passion. To enshrine them and the crown of thorns the chapel of St. Nicholas was demolished and the beautiful Sainte-Chapelle built in its place. The upper chapel was dedicated to the relics; the lower to the Blessed Virgin. On solemn festivals the king would himself expose the relics to the people. Louis was zealous in his devotion and for a time attended matins in the new chapel at midnight, until, suffering much headache in consequence, he was persuaded to have the office celebrated in the early morning before prime. His piety, however, was by no means austere: he had all the French gaiety of heart, dearly loved a good story, and was excellent company at table, where he loved to sit conversing with Robert de Sorbon, his chaplain. "It is a bad thing," he said one day to Joinville, "to take another man's goods, because _rendre_ (to restore) is so difficult, that even to pronounce the word makes the tongue sore by reason of the r's in it." [Illustration: LA SAINTE CHAPELLE.] At another time they were talking of the duties of a layman towards Jews and Infidels. "Let me tell you a story," said St. Louis. "The monks of Cluny once arranged a great conference between some learned clerks and Jews. When the conference opened, an old knight who for love of Christ was given bread and shelter at the monastery, approached the abbot and begged leave to say the first word. The abbot, after some protest against the irregularity, was persuaded to grant permission, and the knight, leaning on his stick, requested that the greatest scholar and rabbi among the Jews might be brought before him. 'Master,' said the knight, 'do you believe that the Blessed Virgin Mary gave birth to Jesus and held Him at her breast, and that she is the Virgin Mother of God?' The Jew answered that he believed it not at all. 'Then,' said the knight, 'fool that thou art to have entered God's house and His church, and thou shalt pay for it.' Thereupon he lifted his stick, smote the rabbi under the ear and felled him to the ground. The terrified Jews fled, carrying their master with them, and so," said St. Louis, "ended the conference. And I tell you, let none but a great clerk dispute: the business of a layman when he hears the Christian religion defamed is to defend it with his sharp sword and thrust his weapon into the miscreant's body as far as it will go." Louis, however, did not apply the moral in practice. Although severe in exacting tribute from the Jews, he spent much money in converting them and held many of their orphan children at the font. To others he gave pensions, which became a heavy financial burden to himself and his successors. He was stern with blasphemers, whose lips he caused to be branded with a hot iron. "I have heard him say," writes Joinville, "with his own mouth, that he would he were marked with a red-hot iron himself if thereby he could banish all oaths and blasphemy from his kingdom. Full twenty-two years have I been in his company, and never have I heard him swear or blaspheme God or His holy Mother or any Saint, howsoever angry he may have been: and when he would affirm anything, he would say, 'Verily it is so, or verily it is not so.' Before going to bed he would call his children around him and recite the fair deeds and sayings of ancient princes and kings, praying that they would remember them for good ensample; for unjust and wicked princes lost their kingdoms through pride and avarice and rapine." The good king essayed to deal with some social evils at court, but in vain:[53] he could only give the example of a pure and chaste life. When he was in the east he heard of a Saracen lord of Egypt who caused all the best books of philosophy to be transcribed for the use of young men, and he determined to do the like for the youth of Paris. Scribes were sent to copy the Scriptures and the writings of the Fathers, preserved in various abbeys in France. He had a convenient and safe place built at the treasury of the Sainte-Chapelle, where he housed the books. Scholars had free access to them, and he himself was wont in his leisure time to shut himself up there for study, reading rather the Holy Fathers than the writings of the best doctors of his own time. Louis was a steadfast friend to the religious orders. On his return from the Holy Land he brought with him six monks from Mount Carmel and established them on the north bank of the Seine, near the present Quai des Celestins; they were subsequently transferred to the University quarter, on a site now occupied by the Marché aux Carmes. The prior of the Grande Chartreuse was also prayed to spare a few brothers to found a house in Paris; four were sent, and the king endowed them with his Château de Vauvert, including extensive lands and vineyards. The château was reputed to be haunted by evil spirits, and the street leading thither as late as the last century was known as the Rue d'Enfer. Louis began a great church for them, and the eight cells, each with its three rooms and garden, were increased to thirty before the end of his reign; in later times the order became one of the richest in Paris and occupied a vast expanse of land to the south of the Luxembourg. The fine series of paintings illustrating the life of St. Bruno, by Le Sueur, now in the Louvre, was executed for the smaller cloister of the monastery. The Grands Augustins were established on the south bank of the Seine, near the present Pont Neuf, and the Serfs de la Vierge, known later as the Blancs Manteaux, from their white cloaks, in the Marais. They were subsequently amalgamated with the Guillelmites, or the Hermits of St. William, and at no. 14 of the street of that name some remains of their monastery may yet be seen. The church of the Blancs Manteaux, rebuilt in the seventeenth century, also exists in the street of that name. [Illustration: REFECTORY OF THE CORDELIERS.] In 1217 the first of the Preaching Friars were seen at Paris. On the 12th of September seven friars, among whom were Laurence the Englishman and a brother of St. Dominic, established themselves in a house near the _parvis_ of Notre Dame. In 1218 the University gave them a home near St. Genevieve, opposite the church of St. Etienne des Grez (St. Stephen of the Greeks), and in the following year, when St. Dominic came to Paris, the brothers had increased to thirty. The saint himself drew up the plans of their monastery in the Rue St. Jacques, and always cherished a particular affection for the Paris house. Their church was opened in 1220, and being dedicated to St. Jacques, the Dominicans were known as Jacobins all over France. St. Louis endowed them with a school; they soon became one of the most powerful and opulent of the religious orders, and their church, a burial-place for kings and princes. The Friars Minor soon followed. St. Francis himself, in his deep affection for France, had determined to go to Paris and found a house of his order, but being dissuaded by his friend, Cardinal Ugolin, sent in 1216 a few of his disciples. These early friars, true _poverelli di Dio_, would accept no endowment of house or money, and supporting themselves by their hands, carried their splendid devotion among the poor, the outcast, and the lepers of Paris. In 1230 the Cordeliers, as they were called,[54] accepted the _loan_ of a house near the walls in the south-western part of the city. St. Louis built them a church, and left them at his death part of his library and a large sum of money.[55] They too became rich and powerful and their church one of the largest and most magnificent in Paris. St. Bonaventure and Duns Scotus taught at their school of theology. Their monastery in the sixteenth century was the finest and most spacious in Paris, with cells for a hundred friars and a vast refectory, which still exists. The king also founded the hospital for 300 blind beggars, known as the Quinze-Vingts (15 × 20) now in the Rue de Charenton, and left them an annual _rente_ of thirty _livres parisis_, that every inmate might have a mess of good pottage at his meals. Until Cardinal de Rohan, of diamond-necklace fame, effected the sale of the buildings in 1779 to a syndicate of speculators, an act of jobbery which brought his eminence a handsome commission, the hospital was situated between the Palais Royal and the Louvre. Originally it was a night shelter, whither the poor blind might repair after their long quest in the streets of Paris. The king subsequently gave them a dress on which Philip le Bel ordered a _fleur-de-lys_ to be embroidered, that they might be known as the "king's poor folk." They were privileged to place collecting-boxes and to beg inside the churches. Since, however, the differences in the relative opulence of churches was great, the right to beg in certain of the richer ones was put up to auction every year, and those who promised to pay the highest premium to the funds of the hospital were adjudicated the privilege of begging there. This curious arrangement was in full vigour until the latter half of the eighteenth century, when the foundation was removed. Twelve blind brothers and twelve seeing brothers--husbands of blind women who were lodged there on condition that they served as leaders through the streets--had a share in the management of the institution. Luxury seems to have sometimes invaded the hostel, for in 1579 a royal decree forbade the sale of wine to the brethren and denounced the blasphemy with which their conversation was often tainted. In 1631 they were forbidden to use stuffs other than serge or cloth for their garments, or to use velvet for ornament. The establishment of the abbey of St. Antoine, of the Friars of the Holy Cross and of the Sisters of St. Bega or Béguines, were also due to the king's piety, and the whole city was surrounded with religious houses. "Even as a scribe," says an old writer, "who hath written his book illuminates it with gold and silver, so did the king illumine his kingdom with the great quantity of the houses of God that he built." Louis was, however, firm in his resistance to ecclesiastical arbitrariness. The prelates complained to him on one occasion that Christianity was going to the dogs, because no one feared their excommunications, and prayed that he would order his sergeants to lend the secular arm to enforce their authority. "Yes," answered the king, "if you will give me the particulars of each case that I may judge if your sentence be just." They objected that that appertained to the ecclesiastical courts, but Louis was inflexible, and they remained unsatisfied. Many were the king's benefactions to the great hospital of Paris, the Hôtel Dieu. Rules, dating from 1217, for the treatment of the sick poor were elaborated in his reign with admirable forethought. The sick, after confession and communion, were to be put to bed and treated as if they were the masters of the house. They were to be daily served with food before the nursing friars and sisters, and all that they desired was to be freely given if it could be obtained and were not prejudicial to their recovery. If the sickness were dangerous the patient was to be set apart and to be tended with especial solicitude. The sick were never to be left unguarded and even to be kept seven days after they were healed, lest they should suffer a relapse. The friars and sisters were to eat twice a day: the sick whenever they had need. A nurse who struck a patient was excommunicated. In later times, lax management and the decline of piety which came with the religious and political changes of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries made reform urgent, and in 1505 the Parliament appointed a committee of eight _bourgeois clercs_ to control the receipts. The buildings were much increased in 1636, but were never large enough, and in 1655 the priory of St. Julien was united to the hospital. "As many as 6000 patients," says Félibien, writing in 1725, "have been counted there at one time, five or six in one bed." No limitations of age or sex or station or religion or country were set. Everybody was received, and in Félibien's time the upkeep amounted to 500,000 livres per annum. The old Hôtel Dieu was situated to the south of Notre Dame, and stood there until rebuilt on its present site in 1878. The king was ever solicitous for the earthly weal of his subjects and made an unpopular peace with England against the advice of his Council. "Sirs," he protested, "the land I give to the king of England I give without being held to do so, that I may awaken love between his children and mine who are cousins germain." [Illustration: RUE DE VENISE.] Louis sought diligently over all the land for the _grand sage homme_ who would prove an honest and fearless judge, punishing the wicked without regard to rank or riches;[56] and what he exacted of his officers he practised himself. He punished his own brother, the Count of Artois, for having forced a sale of land on an unwilling man, and ordered him to make restitution. He inflicted a tremendous fine on the Sire de Coucy, one of the most powerful of his barons, for having hanged three young fellows for poaching. The whole of the baronage appealed against the sentence, but the king was inexorable. As Joinville was on his way to join ship at Marseilles for the crusade in Palestine, he passed a ruined château:--it had been razed to the ground as a warning to tyrannous seigneurs, who robbed and spoiled merchants and pilgrims. Louis forbade the judicial duel in civil cases; he instituted the Royal Watch to police the streets of Paris; he registered and confirmed the charters of the hundred crafts of Paris and gave many privileges to the great trade guilds. In 1720 the king put on a second time the crusader's badge, "the dear remembrance of his dying Lord," and met his death in the ill-fated expedition to Tunis. Louis was so feeble when he left that Joinville carried him from the Hôtel of the Count of Auxerre to the Franciscan monastery (the Cordeliers), where the old friends and fellow-warriors in the Holy Land parted for ever. When stricken with the plague the dying king was laid on a couch strewn with ashes. He called his son, the Count of Alençon, to him and gave wise and touching counsel, and, after holy communion, he recited the seven penitential psalms, invoked "Monseigneurs St. James and St. Denis and Madame St. Genevieve," crossed his hands on his heart, gazed towards heaven and rendered his soul to his Creator. _Piteuse chouse est et digne de pleurer le trépassement de ce saint prince_, says Joinville, to whom the story was told by the king's son--"A piteous thing it is and worthy of tears the passing away of this holy prince." The bones of the dead king, from which the flesh[57] had been removed by boiling, were sent for burial to St. Denis, which he had chosen for the place of his sepulture. The Sieur de Joinville,[58] his friend and companion, from whose priceless memoirs we have chiefly drawn, ends his story thus:--"I make known to all readers of this little book that the things which I say I have seen and heard of the king are true and steadfastly shall they believe them. And the other things of which I testify but by hearsay, take them in a good sense if it please you, praying God that by the prayers of Monseigneur St. Louis it may please Him to give us those things that He knoweth to be necessary as well for our bodies as for our souls. Amen." King Louis was tall of stature, with a spare and graceful figure; his face was of angelic sweetness, with eyes as of a dove, and crowned with abundant fair hair. As he grew older he became somewhat bald and held himself slightly bent. "Never," says Joinville, when describing a charge led by the king, which turned the tide of battle, "saw I so fair an armed man. He seemed to sit head and shoulders above all his knights. His helmet of gold was most fair to see, and a sword of Allemain was in his hand. Four times I saw him put his body in danger of death to save hurt to his people." CHAPTER VI ART AND LEARNING AT PARIS Two epoch-making developments--the creation of Gothic architecture and the rise of the university--synchronise with the period covered by the reigns of Philip Augustus and St. Louis, and may now fitly be considered. [Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF ST. DENIS.] The memory of the Norman terror had long passed from men's minds. The Isle de France had been purged of robber lords, and with peace and security, wealth and population had increased. The existing churches were becoming too small for the faithful and new and fairer temples replaced the old: the massive square towers, the heavy walls and thick pillars of the Norman builders blossomed into grace and light and beauty. Already in the beginning of the twelfth century the church of St. Denis was in urgent need of extension. On festival days so great were the crowds pressing to view the relics that many people had been trodden under foot, and Abbot Suger determined to build a larger and nobler church. St. Denis is an edifice of profound interest to the traveller. In the west façade (1140) we may see the round Norman arch side by side with the pointed Gothic, and the choir completed in 1144 was the earliest example of a Gothic apse. But Suger's structure was nearly destroyed by fire in 1219, and the upper part of the choir, the nave and transepts, were rebuilt in 1231 in the pure Gothic of the time. Great was the enthusiasm of the people as the new temple rose. Noble and burgess, freeman and serf, harnessed themselves like beasts of burden to the ropes and drew the stone from the quarry. All would lend their aid in raising the new house of God and of His holy martyrs, and the burial-place of their kings. In 1161 Maurice de Sully, a peasant's son, who had risen to become bishop of Paris, determined to erect a great minster in the place of Childebert's basilica, which was no longer adequate to the demands of the time. The old church of St. Stephen[59] and many houses were demolished together with the cathedral, and a new street, called Notre Dame, was made. Sully devoted the greater part of his life and private resources to the work. The king, the pope, seigneurs, guilds of merchants and private persons, vied with each other in making gifts. Two years were spent in digging the foundations, and in 1163 Pope Alexander III. is said to have laid the first stone. In 1182, the choir being finished, the papal legate consecrated the high altar. At Sully's death, in 1196, the walls of the nave were erect and partly roofed. The transepts and nave were completed in 1235. [Illustration: NOTRE DAME: PORTAL OF ST. ANNE.] In 1218 an ingenious and sacrilegious thief, climbing to the roof to haul up the silver candlesticks from the altar by a noose in a rope, set fire to the altar cloth, and the choir was seriously injured. Sully's work had been Romanesque in style, and choir and apse were now rebuilt in the new style, to harmonise with the remainder of the church. The builders have preserved some of the best of the Romanesque twelfth-century work in the portal of St. Anne's, under the south tower, and the magnificent iron hinges of old St. Stephen's were used for its doors. The chapels round the apse and the twenty-eight figures of the royal benefactors from Childebert I. to Philip Augustus, on the west front, were not completed until the end of the thirteenth century. The choir of St. Germain des Prés and the exquisite little church of St. Julien le Pauvre were built at the end of the twelfth century, and the beautiful refectory of St. Martin des Champs was created about 1220. But the culmination of Gothic art is reached in the wondrous sanctuary that St. Louis built for the crown of thorns, "the most precious piece of Gothic," says Ruskin, "in Northern Europe." Michelet saw a whole world of religion and poetry--tears of piety, mystic ecstasy, the mysteries of divine love--expressed in the marvellous little church, in the fragile and precious paintings of its windows.[60] The narrow cell with an aperture looking on the reliquary, which St. Louis used as an oratory, is still shown. The work was completed in three years, and has been so admirably restored by Viollet-le-Duc that the visitor may gaze to-day on this pure and peerless gem almost as St. Louis left it, for the gorgeous interior faithfully reproduces the mediæval colour and gold. During the Revolution it was used as an granary and then as a club. It narrowly escaped destruction, and men now living can remember seeing the old notices on the porch of the lower chapel--_Propriété nationale à vendre_. Only once a year, when the "red mass" is said at the opening of the Law Courts in November, is the church used; and all that remains of the relics has long been transferred to the treasury of Notre Dame. The old Quinze-Vingts, the Chartreux, the Cordeliers, St. Croix de la Bretonnerie, St. Catherine, the Blancs Manteaux, the Mathurins and other masterpieces of the Gothic builders have all disappeared. Gothic architecture was eminently a product of the Isle de France. The thirteenth century rivals the finest period of Greek art for purity, simplicity, nobility and accurate science of construction. Imagination was chastened by knowledge, but not systematised into rigid rules. Each master solved his problem in his own way, and the result was a charm and a variety, a fertility of invention, never surpassed in the history of art. Early French sculpture is a direct descendant of Greek art, which made its way into France by the Phoenician trade route. French artists achieved a perfection in the representation of the human form which anticipated by a generation the work of the Pisani in Italy, for the statues on the west front of Chartres Cathedral (1150-1160) are carved with a naturalness and grace which the Italian masters never surpassed, and the marvellously mature and beautiful thirteenth-century silver-gilt figure of a king, in high relief, found in 1902 immured in an old house at Bourges and exhibited in 1904 among the Primitifs Français at the Louvre, was wrought more than a century before the birth of Donatello. Some fragments of the old sculptures that adorned St. Denis and other twelfth- and thirteenth-century churches may still be found in the museums of Paris. The influence of the French architects, as Emile Bertaux has demonstrated in the first volume of his _Art dans l'Italie Meridionale_, extended far beyond the limits of France, and is clearly traceable in the fine hunting-palace, erected for Frederic II. in the thirteenth century, at Castello del Monte, near Andria, in Apulia. But the names of those who created these wonderful productions no man knoweth; the great masterpieces of the thirteenth century are anonymous. Jean de Chelles, one of the masons of Notre Dame, has left his name on the south portal and the date, Feb. 12, 1257, on which it was begun, "in honour of the holy Mother of Christ," but nothing is known of him. The Sainte-Chapelle is commonly attributed to Pierre de Montereau, but the attribution is a mere guess. [Illustration: 13TH CENTURY SCULPTURES FROM ST. DENIS (RESTORED).] [Illustration: NOTRE DAME--SOUTHERN SIDE.] Nor did the love of beauty during this marvellous age express itself solely in architecture. If we were asked to specify one trait which more than any other characterises the "dark ages" and differentiates them from modern times, we should be tempted to say, love of brightness and colour. Within and without, the temples of God were resplendent with silver and gold, with purple and crimson and blue; the saintly figures and solemn legends on their porches, the capitals, the columns, the groins of the vaultings were lustrous with colour and gold. Each window was a complex of jewelled splendour: the pillars and walls were painted or draped with lovely tapestries and gorgeous banners: the shrines and altars glittered with precious stones--jasper and sardius and chalcedony, sapphire and emerald, chrysolite and beryl, topaz and amethyst and pearl. The Church illuminated her sacred books with exquisite painting, bound them with precious fabrics, and clasped them with silver and gold; the robes of her priests and ministrants were rich with embroideries. So insensible, so atrophied to colour have the eyes of moderns grown amid their drab surroundings, that the aspect of a building wherein skilful hands have in some small degree essayed to realise the splendour of the past dazes the beholder; a sense of pain rather than of delight possesses him and he averts his gaze. [Illustration: LA SAINTE CHAPELLE.] Nor were the churches of those early times anything more than an exquisite expression of what men were surrounded by in their daily lives and avocations. The houses[61] and oratories of noble and burgess were rich with ivories exquisitely carved, with sculptures and paintings, tapestry and enamels: the very utensils of common domestic use were beautiful. Men did not prate of art: they wrought in love and simplicity. The very word art, as denoting a product of human activity different from the ordinary daily tasks of men, was unknown. If painting was an art, even so was carpentry. A mason was an artist: so was a shoemaker. Astronomy and grammar were arts: so was spinning. Apothecaries and lawyers were artists: so was a tailor. Dante uses the word _artista_ as denoting a workman or craftsman, and when he wishes to emphasise the degeneracy of the citizens of his time as compared with those of the old Florentine race, he does so by saying that in those days their blood ran pure even _nell' ultimo artista_ (in the commonest workman). Let us be careful how we speak of these ages as "dark"; at least there were "retrievements out of the night." Already before the tenth century the basilica of St. Germain des Prés was known as St. Germain _le doré_ (the golden), from its glowing refulgence, and St. Bernard declaimed against the resplendent colour and gold in the churches of his time. Never since the age of Pericles has so great an effusion of beauty descended on the earth as during the wondrous thirteenth century in the Isle de France and especially in Paris.[62] We pass from the enthusiasm of art to that of learning. From earliest times, schools, free to the poor, had been attached to every great abbey and cathedral in France. At the end of the eleventh century four were eminent at Paris: the schools of St. Denis, where the young princes and nobles were educated; of the Parvis Notre Dame, for the training of young _clercs_,[63] the famous _Scola Parisiaca_, referred to by Abelard; of St. Genevieve; and of St. Victor, founded by William of Champeaux. The fame of this teacher drew multitudes of young men from the provinces to Paris, among whom there came, about 1100, Peter Abelard, scion of a noble family of Nantes. By his wit, erudition and dialectical subtlety he soon eclipsed his master's fame and was appointed to a chair of philosophy in the school of Notre Dame. William of Champeaux, jealous of his young rival, compassed his dismissal, and after teaching for a while at Melun, Abelard returned to Paris and opened a school on Mont St. Genevieve, whither crowds of students followed him. So great was the fame of this brilliant lecturer and daring thinker that his school was filled with eager listeners from all countries of Europe, even from Rome herself. Abelard was proud and ambitious, and the highest prizes of an ecclesiastical and scholastic career seemed within his grasp. But Fulbert, canon of Notre Dame, had a niece, accomplished and passing fair, Héloïse by name, who was an enthusiastic admirer of the great teacher. It was proposed that Abelard should enter the canon's house as her tutor, and Fulbert's avarice made the proposition an acceptable one. Abelard, like Arnault Daniel, was a good craftsman in his mother tongue, a facile master of _versi d'amore_, which he would sing with a voice wondrously sweet and supple. Now Abelard was thirty-eight years of age: Héloïse seventeen. _Amor al cor gentil ratio s'apprende_,[64] and Minerva was not the only goddess who presided over their meetings. For a time Fulbert was blind, but scandal cleared his eyes and Abelard was expelled from the house. Héloïse followed and took refuge with her lover's sister in Brittany, where a child, Astrolabe, was born. Peacemakers soon intervened and a secret marriage was arranged, which took place early one morning at Paris, Fulbert being present. But the lovers continued to meet; scandal was again busy and Fulbert published the marriage. Héloïse, that the master's advancement in the Church might not be marred, gave the lie to her uncle and fled to the nuns of Argenteuil. Fulbert now plotted a dastardly revenge. By his orders Abelard was surprised in his bed, and the mutilation which, according to Eusebius, Origen performed on himself, was violently inflicted on the great teacher. All ecclesiastical preferment was thus rendered canonically impossible: Abelard became the talk of Paris, and in bitter humiliation retired to the abbey of St. Denis. Before he made his vows, however, he required of Héloïse that she should take the veil. The heart-broken creature reproached him for his disloyalty, and repeating the lines which Lucan puts into the mouth of Cornelia weeping for Pompey's death, burst into tears and consented to take the veil. A savage punishment was inflicted by the ecclesiastical courts on Fulbert's ruffians, who were made to suffer the _lex talionis_ and the loss of their eyes: the canon's property was confiscated. The great master, although forbidden to open a school at St. Denis, was importuned by crowds of young men not to let his talents waste, and soon a country house near by was filled with so great a company of scholars that food could not be found for them. But enemies were vigilant and relentless, and he had shocked the timid by doubting the truth of the legend that Dionysius the Areopagite had come to France. In 1124 certain of Abelard's writings on the Trinity were condemned, and he took refuge at Nogent-sur-Seine, near Troyes, under the patronage of the Count of Champagne. He retired to a hermitage of thatch and reeds, the famous Paraclete, but even there students flocked to him, and young nobles were glad to live on coarse bread and lie on straw, that they might taste of wisdom, the bread of the angels. Again his enemies set upon him. He surrendered the Paraclete to Héloïse and a small sisterhood, and accepted the abbotship of St. Gildes in his own Brittany. A decade passed, and again he was seen in Paris. His enemies now determined to silence him. St. Bernard, the dictator of Christendom, denounced his writings. Abelard appealed for a hearing, and the two champions met in St. Stephen's church at Sens before the king, the hierarchy and a brilliant and expectant audience. Abelard, the ever-victorious knight-errant of disputation, stood forth, eager for the fray, but St. Bernard simply rose and read out seventeen propositions from his opponent's works, which he declared to be heretical. Abelard in disgust left the lists, and was condemned unheard to perpetual silence. The pope, to whom he appealed, confirmed the sentence, and the weary soldier of the mind, old and heart-broken, retired to Cluny. He gave up the struggle, was reconciled to his opponents, and died absolved by the pope near Chalons in 1142. His ashes were sent to Héloïse, and twenty years later she was laid beside him at the Paraclete. A well-known path, worn by generations of unhappy lovers, leads to a monument in Père-la-Chaise Cemetery at Paris which marks the last resting-place of Abelard and Héloïse, whose remains were transferred there in 1817. It is commonly believed that Abelard's school on Mont St. Genevieve was the origin of the Latin Quarter in Paris, but the migration to the south had probably begun before Abelard came, and was rather due to the overcrowding of the episcopal schools. Teachers and scholars began to swarm to the new quarter over the bridge where quiet, purer air and better accommodation were found. Ordinances of Bishop Gilbert, 1116, and Stephen, 1124, transcribed by Félibien, make this clear. So disturbed were the canons by the numbers of students in the cloister, that _externes_ were to be no longer admitted, nor other schools allowed on the north side where the canons lodged. The growing importance of the new schools, which tended to the advantage of the abbey of St. Genevieve, soon alarmed the bishops, and the theologians were ordered to lecture only between the two bridges (the Petit and Grand Ponts.) But it was Abelard's brilliant career that attracted like a lodestar the youth of Europe to Paris, and made that city the "oven where the intellectual bread of the world was baked." Providence, it was said, had given Empire to Germany, Priestcraft to Italy, Learning to France. What a constellation of great names glows in the spiritual firmament of Paris: William of Champeaux, Peter Lombard, Maurice de Sully, Pierre de Chartreux, Abelard, Gilbert[65] l'Universel, John of Salisbury, Adrian IV., St. Thomas of Canterbury. Small wonder that the youth of the twelfth century sought the springs of learning at Paris! [Illustration: NOTRE DAME AND PETIT PONT.] [Illustration: THE SEINE FROM PONT DE LA CONCORDE.] There was no discipline or college life among the earliest students. Each master, having obtained his license from the bishop's chancellor, rented a room at his own cost, and taught what he knew--even, it was sometimes complained, what he did not know. We read of one Adam du Petit Pont, who, in the twelfth century, expounded Aristotle in the back-room of a house on the bridge amid the cackle of cocks and hens, whose _clientèle_ had many a vituperative contest with the fish-fags of the neighbourhood. The students grouped themselves according to nationalities, and with their masters held meetings in any available cloister, refectory, or church. When funds were needed, a general levy was made; any balance that remained was spent in a festive gathering in the nearest tavern. The aggregation of thousands of young men, some of whom were cosmopolitan vagabonds, gave rise to many evils. Complaints are frequent among the citizens of the depredations and immoralities of riotous _clercs_, who lived by their wits or by their nimble fingers, or by reciting or singing licentious ballads: the _paouvres escolliers_, whose miserable estate, temptations, debauchery, ignoble pleasures, remorse and degradation have been so pathetically sung by François Villon, master of arts, poet, bohemian, burglar and homicide. The richer scholars often indulged in excesses, and of the vast majority who were poor, some died of hunger. It was the spectacle of half-starving _clercs_ begging for bread that evoked the compassion of pious founders of colleges, which originally were simply hostels for needy scholars. On the return of Louis VII. from a pilgrimage to Becket's shrine, his brother Robert founded about 1180 the church of St. Thomas of Canterbury and a hostel for fifteen students, who, in 1217, were endowed with a chapel of their own, dedicated to St. Nicholas, and were then known as the poor scholars of St. Nicholas.[66] In the same year a London merchant, passing through Paris on his return from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, was touched by the sight of some starving students begging their bread. He founded a hostel for eighteen poor scholars at the Hôtel Dieu, who in return for lodging and maintenance were to perform the last Christian rites to the friendless dead. This was the college of the Dix-huit, afterwards absorbed in the Sorbonne. In 1200 Etienne Belot and his wife, burgesses of Paris, founded a hostel for thirteen poor scholars who were known as the _bons enfants_. In all, some dozen colleges were in being when St. Louis came to the throne. In 1253, St. Louis' almoner, Robert of Cerbon or Sorbon, a poor Picardy village, founded[67] a modest college of theology, and obtained from Blanche of Castile a small house above the palace of the Thermæ. Here he was able to maintain a few poor scholars of theology and to facilitate their studies. Friends came to his aid and soon sixteen were accommodated, to whom others, able to maintain themselves, were added. In 1269 a papal bull confirmed the establishment of the _pauvres maistres estudiants_ in the faculty of theology at Paris. Even when enriched by later founders it was still called _la pauvre Sorbonne_. By the renown of their erudition, the doctors of the Sorbonne were the great court of appeal in the Middle Ages in matters of theology, and the Sorbonne became synonymous with the university. Some of the hostels were on a larger scale. The college of Cardinal Lemoine, founded in 1302 by the papal legate, housed sixty students in arts and forty in theology. Most were paying residents, but a number of _bourses_ (scholarships) were provided for those whose incomes were below a certain amount. Each _boursier_ was given daily two loaves of white bread of twelve ounces, "the common weight in the windows of Paris bakers." In 1304, Jeanne of Navarre, wife of Philip the Fair, founded the college of Navarre for seventy poor scholars, twenty in grammar, thirty in philosophy, and twenty in theology. The maintenance fund seems, however, to have been inadequate or mismanaged, for we soon read of the scholars of the college walking the streets of Paris every morning crying--"Bread, bread, good people, for the poor scholars of Madame of Navarre!" [Illustration: TOWER IN RUE NALETTE IN WHICH CALVIN IS SAID TO HAVE LIVED.] Some forty colleges were in existence by the end of the fourteenth century and had increased to fifty by the end of the fifteenth; in the seventeenth, Evelyn gives their number as sixty-five. In Félibien's time some had disappeared, for in his map (1725) forty-four colleges only are marked. Nearly the whole of these colleges clustered around the slopes of Mont St. Genevieve, which at length became that Christian Athens that Charlemagne dreamt of. Each college had its own rules. Generally students were required to attend matins (in summer at 3 a.m., winter at 4), mass, vespers and compline. When the curfew of Notre Dame sounded, they retired to their dormitories. Leave to sleep out was granted only in very exceptional cases. Tennis was allowed, cards and dice were forbidden. The college of Montaigue, which housed eighty-two poor scholars in memory of the twelve apostles and seventy disciples, was reformed in the fifteenth century; so severe was the discipline that the college became the terror of the youth of Paris, and fathers were wont to sober their libertine sons by threatening to make _capetes_[68] of them. This was Calvin's college, where he was known as the "accusative," from his austere piety. To obtain admission to the college of Cluny (1269) the scholar must pass an entrance examination. He then spent two years at logic, three at metaphysics, two in Biblical studies; he held weekly disputations and preached every fortnight in French; he was interrogated every evening by the president on his studies during the day. If students evinced no aptitude for learning they were dismissed; if only moderate progress were made, the secular duties of the college devolved upon them. It was the foundation of these colleges which organised themselves, about 1200, into powerful corporations of masters and scholars (_universitates magistrorum et scholiarum_) that gave the university its definite character. When the term "university" first came into use is unknown. It is met with in the statutes (1215) which, among other matters, define the limits of age for teaching. A master in the arts must not lecture under twenty-one; of theology under thirty-five. Every master must undergo an examination as to qualification and moral fitness at the Episcopal Chancellor's court. Early in the twelfth century the four faculties of Law, Medicine, Arts and Theology were formed and the national groups reduced to four: French, Picards, Normans and English.[69] Each group elected its own officers, and in 1245 at latest the _Quatre Nations_ were meeting in the church of St. Julien le Pauvre[70] to choose a common head or rector, who soon superseded the chancellor as head of the university. The rectors in process of time exercised almost sovereign authority in the Latin Quarter. They ruled a population of ten thousand masters and students, who were exempt from civic jurisdiction. In 1200 some German students ill-treated an innkeeper who had insulted their servant. The provost of Paris and some armed citizens attacked the students' houses and blood was shed, whereupon the masters of the schools complained to the king, who was fierce in his anger, and ordered the provost and his accomplices to be cast into prison, their houses demolished and vines uprooted. The provost was given the choice of imprisonment for life or the ordeal by water. Then followed a series of ordinances which abolished secular jurisdiction over the students and made them subject to ecclesiastical courts alone. [Illustration: HÔTEL OF THE PROVOST OF PARIS.] In the reign of Philip le Bel a provost of Paris dared to hang a scholar. The rector immediately closed all classes until reparation was made, and on the Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin the _curés_ of Paris assembled and went in procession, bearing a cross and holy water to the provost's house, against which each cast a stone, crying, in a loud voice--"Make honourable reparation, thou cursed Satan, to thy mother Holy Church, whose privileges thou hast injured, or suffer the fate of Dathan and Abiram." The king dismissed his provost, caused ample compensation to be made, and the schools were reopened. In 1404 some pages belonging to the royal chamberlain brutally spurred their horses through a procession of scholars wending to the church of St. Catherine. They were stoned by the angry scholars, whereupon they drew sword and attacked them, pursuing them even into the church. The rector demanded satisfaction, but the chamberlain, Charles de Savoisy, was a court functionary, and nothing was done. The rector then closed all the schools and the king ordered the Parlement to do instant justice. The sentence was an exemplary one. The chamberlain's house was to be demolished, an annuity of one hundred livres to be paid for the maintenance of five chaplaincies under the patronage of the university, a thousand livres compensation to be paid to the injured scholars and a like sum to the university. Three of the chamberlain's men were to do penance in their shirts, torch in hand, before the churches of St. Genevieve, St. Catherine and St. Sévérin, to suffer a whipping at the cross roads, and to be banished for three years. In 1406 permission was given for the house to be rebuilt, but the university resisted the decree and only gave way one hundred and twelve years later, on condition that the terms of the original condemnation and sentence were inscribed on the new house. The famous Prés aux Clercs (Clerks' Meadow) was the theatre of many a fight with the powerful abbots of St. Germain des Prés. From earliest times the students had been wont to take the air in the meadow, which lay between the monastery and the river, and soon claimed the privilege as an acquired right. In 1192 the inhabitants of the monastic suburb resented their insolence, and a free fight ensued, in which several scholars were wounded and one was killed. The rector inculpated the abbot, and each appealed to Rome, with what result is unknown. After nearly a century of strained relations and minor troubles the abbots in 1278 had walls and other buildings erected on the way to the meadow. The scholars met in force and demolished them. The abbot, who was equal to the occasion, rang his bells, called his vassals to arms and sent a force to seize the gates of the city that gave on the suburb, to prevent reinforcements reaching the scholars. His retainers then attacked the rioters, killed several and wounded many. The rector complained to the papal legate and threatened to close the schools if reparation were not made and justice done within fifteen days, whereupon the legate ordered the provost of the monastery to be expelled for five years. The royal council forced the abbot to exile ten of his vassals, to endow two chantries for the repose of the souls of slain _clercs_ and compensate their fathers by fines of two hundred and four hundred livres respectively, and to pay the rector two hundred livres to be distributed among poor scholars. The rector claimed right of jurisdiction over the parchments exposed for sale in Paris and its neighbourhood, and attended with his sworn experts the great Fair of Landry at St. Denis, instituted in 877. The students accompanied him with much uproar. At this season the Landry gifts were made by the students to the masters, consisting of a lemon larded with pieces of gold or silver in a crystal glass. The ceremony was accompanied by the sound of drums and musical instruments and was followed by a holiday. Innumerable were the complaints on this and other occasions of the rowdyism of the scholars, their practical jokes and dissolute habits. Many circumstances contributed to make Paris the capital of the intellectual world in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. France has ever been the home of great enthusiasms and has not feared "to follow where airy voices lead." The conception and enforcement of a Truce of God (_Trève de Dieu_) whereby all acts of hostility in private or public wars ceased during certain days of the week or on church festivals; the noble ideal of Christian chivalry; the first crusade--all had their origin in France. The crusaders carried the prestige of the French name and diffused the French idiom over Europe. It was a French monk preaching in France who gave voice to the general enthusiasm; a French pope approved his impassioned oration; a French shout "_Dieu le veut_" became the crusader's war-cry. The conquest of the Holy Land was organised by the French, its first Christian king was a French knight, its laws were indited in French, and to this day every Christian in the East is a Frank whatever tongue he may speak. In the thirteenth century Brunetto Latini wrote his most famous work, the _Livres dou Trésor_, in French, because it was _la parleure plus delitable, il plus commune à toutes gens_ ("the most delightful of languages and the most common to all peoples.") Martin da Canale composed his story of Venice in French for the same reason, and Marco Polo dictated his travels in French in a Genoese prison. When St. Francis was sending the brothers to establish the order in distant lands, he himself chose France, but was dissuaded by his friend, Cardinal Ugolin. "When inebriated with love and compassion for Christ," says the writer of the _Speculum_, "and overflowing with sweetest melody of the Spirit, ofttimes would he find utterance in the French tongue; the strains of the divine whisperings which his ear had caught he would express in a French song of joyous exultation, and making the gestures of one playing a viol, he would sing in French of our Lord Jesus Christ." Never in the history of civilisation were men possessed with such passion for the spiritual life or such faith in the reasoning faculty as in the thirteenth century in Paris. The holiest mysteries were analysed and defined; everywhere was a search for new things. Conservative Churchmen became alarmed and complained of disputants and blasphemers exercising their wits at every street corner. The four camel-loads of manuscripts, the works and commentaries of Aristotle, brought by the Jews from Spain--a monstrous and mutilated version translated from Greek into Arabic and from Arabic into Latin--became the battle-ground of the schools. The Church at first forbade the study of Aristotle, then by the genius of Aquinas, Christianised and absorbed him. His works became a kind of intellectual tennis-ball bandied between the Averroists, who carried their teachings to a logical consequence, and the more orthodox followers of Aquinas. For three years the faculty was torn asunder by the rival factions. Siger of Brabant, whose eternal light Dante saw refulgent amid other doctors of the Church in the heaven of the Sun, was an Averroist; Siger-- "Che leggendo nel vico degli strami Sillogizzò invidiosi veri."[71] The Rue du Fouarre (Straw), where Siger taught and perhaps Dante studied, was the street of the Masters of the Arts. Every house in it was a school. It still exists, though wholly modernised, opposite the foot of the Petit Pont. Its name has been derived from the straw spread on the floor of the schools or on which the students sat, but there is little doubt that Benvenuto da Imola's[72] explanation, that it was so named from a hay and straw market held there, is the correct one. [Illustration: LE PETIT PONT.] The wonderful thirteenth century saw the meridian glory of the university. It was the age of the great Aristotelian schoolmen who all taught at Paris--Albertus Magnus, St. Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus and Roger Bacon, their candid critic, who carried the intellectual curiosity of the age beyond the tolerance of his Franciscan superiors and twice suffered disciplinary measures at Paris. In the fourteenth century the university was as renowned as ever. Among many tributes from great scholars we choose that of Richard de Bury, bishop of Durham, who in his _Philobiblon_ writes: "O Holy God of gods in Zion, what a mighty stream of pleasure made glad our hearts whenever we had leisure to visit Paris, the Paradise of the world, and to linger there; where the days seemed ever few for the greatness of our love! There are delightful libraries more aromatic than stores of spicery; there are luxuriant parks of all manners of volumes; there are Academic meads shaken by the tramp of scholars; there are lounges of Athens; walks of the Peripatetics; peaks of Parnassus; and porches of the Stoics. There is seen the surveyor of all arts and sciences Aristotle, to whom belongs all that is most excellent in doctrine, so far as relates to this passing sublunary world; there Ptolemy measures epicycles and eccentric apogees and the nodes of the planets by figures and numbers; there Paul reveals the mysteries; there his neighbour Dionysius arranges and distinguishes the hierarchies; there the virgin Carmentis reproduces in Latin characters all that Cadmus collected in Phoenician letters; there indeed opening our treasures and unfastening our purse-strings we scattered money with joyous heart and purchased inestimable books with mud and sand." In 1349 the number of professors (_maistres-regents_) on the rolls was 502: in 1403 they had increased to 709, to which must be added more than 200 masters of theology and canon law. "The University," wrote Pope Alexander IV. in a papal bull, "is to the Church what the tree of life was to the earthly Paradise, a fruitful source of all learning, diffusing its wisdom over the whole universe; there the mind is enlightened and ignorance banished and Jesus Christ gives to His spouse an eloquence which confounds all her enemies." But already decadence had set in. The multiplication and enrichment of colleges proved fatal to the old democratic vigour and equality. Some colleges pretended to superiority and the movement lost its unity. Scholasticism had done its work and no new movement took its place. Teachers lost all originality and did but ruminate and comment on the works of their great predecessors. Schools declined in numbers and scholars in attendance. Ordinances were needed to correct the abuses covered by the title of scholar. The Jacobin and Cordelier teachers, moreover, had exhausted much life from the university; but its fame continued, and Luther in his early conflicts with the papacy appealed against the pope to the university. But it made the fatal blunder of opposing the Reform and the Renaissance, instead of absorbing them, and the interest of those great movements centres around the college of France. CHAPTER VII THE PARLEMENT--THE STATES-GENERAL--CONFLICT WITH BONIFACE VIII.--THE DESTRUCTION OF THE KNIGHTS-TEMPLARS The court of Philip III., pitiful scion of a noble king, is associated with a dramatic judicial murder at Paris. Among the late-repentant souls temporarily exiled from purification who crowd around Dante at the foot of the Mont of Purgatory is that of Pierre de la Brosse, "severed from its body through hatred and envy and not for any sin committed." Unhappy Pierre was St. Louis' chamberlain and had been present at his death. He filled the same high office under his son, became his favourite minister and all-powerful at court. In 1276 the king's eldest son by his first queen died under suspicion of poison. The second queen, sister of the Duke of Brabant, being envious of Pierre's ascendency, began insidiously to abuse the king's ear. Pierre met the queen's move by clandestinely spreading a report that the prince was sacrificed to secure the succession to her own offspring. The king was then persuaded by the queen's friends to consult a famous prophetess, who declared her innocent, and Pierre's death was plotted by the queen, her brother of Brabant, and some discontented and jealous nobles. One morning Paris was startled by the arrest of the omnipotent minister, who was tried before a commission packed by his enemies, and hanged on 30th June 1278, by the common hangman, at the gibbet on Montfaucon, in the presence of the Duke of Brabant and others of his enemies. The popular belief was that he had been accused of an attempt on the queen's chastity: actually his destruction had been compassed by a charge of treason, based on some forged letters. The tragic end of Pierre de la Brosse excited universal interest and discussion. Benvenuto da Imola says that Dante, when in Paris, diligently sought out the truth and convinced himself of the great minister's innocence. A prince of far different calibre was the Fourth Philip, surnamed the Fair, who grappled with and humiliated the great pontiff, Boniface VIII.--the most resolute upholder of the papacy in her claim to universal secular supremacy--and thus achieved a task which had baffled the mighty emperors themselves; a prince who, in Dante's grim metaphor, scourged the shameless harlot of Rome from head to foot, and dragged her to do his will in France. [Illustration: PALAIS DE JUSTICE, CLOCK TOWER AND CONCIERGERIE.] Philip's reign is remarkable for the establishment of the Parlement and the first convocation of the States-General in Paris. From earliest times of the Monarchy, the kings had dispensed justice, surrounded by the chief Churchmen and nobles of the land, thus constituting an ambulatory tribunal, which was held wherever the sovereign might happen to be. In 1302 Philip fixed the tribunal at Paris, restricted it to judicial functions, and housed it in his palace of the Cité, which, in 1431, when the kings ceased to dwell there, became the Palais de Justice. The palace was rebuilt by Philip. A vast hall, divided by a row of columns adorned with statues of the kings of France, and said to have been the most spacious and most beautiful Gothic chamber in France, with other courts and offices, accommodated the Parlement. The tribunal was at first composed of twenty-six councillors or judges, of whom thirteen were lawyers, presided over by the royal chancellor. It sat twice yearly for periods of two months, and consisted of three chambers or courts.[73] The nobles who at first sat among the lay members gradually ceased to attend owing to a sense of their legal inefficiency, and the Parlement became at length a purely legal body. During the imprisonment of the French king, John the Good, in England, the Parlement[74] sat _en permanence_, and henceforth became the _cour souveraine et capitale_ of the kingdom. The purity of its members was maintained by severest penalties. In 1336 one of the presidents was convicted of receiving bribes and hanged. Twelve years later the falsification of some depositions was punished with the same severity, and in 1545 a corrupt chancellor was fined 100,000 livres, degraded, and imprisoned for five years. The chief executive officer of the Parlement, known as the Concierge, appointed the bailiffs of the court and had extensive local jurisdiction over dishonest merchants and craftsmen, whose goods he could burn. His official residence, known as the Conciergerie, subsequently became a prison, and so remains to this day. The entrance flanked by the two ancient _tours de César et d'Argent_, is one of the most familiar objects in Paris. There the Count of Armagnac was assassinated and the cells are still shown where Marie Antoinette, Madame Roland, Danton, Robespierre, and many of the chief victims of the Terror were lodged before their execution. The same year (1302) saw the ripening of Philip's long quarrel with Pope Boniface VIII. and the first meeting of the States-General. The king knew he had embarked on a struggle in which the mightiest potentates had been worsted: he determined to appeal to the patriotism of all classes of his subjects and fortify himself on the broad basis of such popular opinion as then existed. The meeting of the States-General after the burning of the papal bull in Paris on the memorable Sunday of 11th February 1302, made an epoch in French history. For the first time members of the _Tiers Etat_ (the Third Estate, or Commons), sat beside the two privileged orders of clergy and nobles, and were recognised as one of the legitimate orders of the realm. The assembly was convoked to meet in Notre Dame on the 10th of April. The question was the old one which had rent Christendom asunder for centuries: Was the pope to be supreme over the princes and peoples of the earth in secular as well as in spiritual matters? The utmost enthusiasm prevailed, and though the prelates spoke with a somewhat timid voice the assembled members swore to risk their lives and property rather than sacrifice the honour of the crown and their own liberties to the insolent usurpation of the pope. Excommunication followed, but the king had ordered all the passes from Italy to be guarded, so that no papal letter or messenger should enter France. "Boniface, who," says Villani, the Florentine chronicler, "was proud and scornful, and bold to attempt every great deed, magnanimous and puissant, replied by announcing the publication of a bull deposing the king from his throne and releasing his subjects from their allegiance." Philip, at an assembly in the garden of the palace in the Cité, and in presence of the chief ecclesiastical, religious and lay authorities, again laid his case before the people and read an appeal against the pope to a future Council of the Church. The bull of deposition was to be promulgated on 8th September. On 7th September, while the aged pope was peacefully resting at his native city of Anagni, Guillaume de Nogaret, bearing the royal banner of France, Sciarra Colonna and other disaffected Italian nobles, with three hundred horsemen, flung themselves into Anagni, crying--"Death to Pope Boniface." The papal palace was unguarded; at the first alarm the cardinals fled and hid themselves, and all but a few faithful servants forsook their master. The defenceless pope believed that his hour was come, but, writes Villani, "Great-souled and valiant as he was, he said, 'Since like Jesus Christ I must be taken by treachery and suffer death, at least I will die like a pope.' He commanded his servants to robe him in the mantle of Peter, to place the crown of Constantine on his head and the keys and crozier in his hands." He ascended the papal throne and calmly waited. Guillaume, Sciarra and the other leaders burst into the apartment, sword in hand, uttering the foulest of insults; but awed and cowed by the indomitable old pontiff, who stood erect in appalling majesty, their weapons dropped and none durst lay a hand upon him. They set a guard outside the room and proceeded to loot the palace. For three days the grand old pontiff--he was eighty-six years of age--remained a prisoner, until the people of Anagni rallied and rescued him, and he returned to Rome. In a month the humiliated Boniface died of a broken heart, and before two years were passed his successor in Peter's chair, Pope Clement V., revoked all his bulls and censures, expunged them from the papal register, solemnly condemned his memory and restored the Colonna family to all their honours. Dante, who hated Boniface as cordially as Philip did, and cast him into hell, was yet revolted at the cruelty of the "new Pilate, who had carried the fleur-de-lys into Anagni, who made Christ captive, mocked Him a second time, renewed the gall and vinegar, and slew Him between two living thieves." But the "new Pilate was not yet sated." The business at Anagni had only been effected _spendendo molta moneta_; the disastrous battle of Courtrai and the inglorious Flemish wars had exhausted the royal treasury; the debasement of the coinage had availed nought, and Philip turned his lustful eyes on a once powerful lay order, whose wealth and pride were the talk of Christendom. [Illustration: ILE DE LA CITÉ.] After the capture of Jerusalem and the establishment there of a Christian kingdom, pilgrims flocked to the holy places. Soon, however, piteous stories reached Jerusalem of the cruel spoliation and murder of unarmed pilgrims on their journey from the coast by hordes of roving lightly-armed Bedouins, against whom the heavily-armed Franks were powerless. The evil was growing well-nigh intolerable when, in 1118, two young French nobles, Hugh of Payens and Godfrey of St. Omer, with other seven youths of highest birth, bound themselves into a lay community, with the object of protecting the pilgrims' way. They took the usual vow of poverty, charity and obedience; St. Bernard drew up their Rule--and we may be sure it was austere enough--pope and patriarch confirmed it. Their garb was a mantle of purest white linen with a red cross embroidered on the shoulder. The order was housed in a wing of the king's palace, which was built on the site of Solomon's Temple, hard by the Holy Sepulchre, and its members called themselves the Poor Soldiers of Christ and of Solomon's Temple. Their banner, half of black, half of white, was inscribed with the device "_non nobis Domine_." Their battle-cry "Beauceant," and their seal, two figures on horseback, have not been satisfactorily interpreted--the latter probably portrays a knight riding away with a rescued pilgrim. Soon the little band of nine was joined by hundreds of devoted youths from rich and noble families; endowments to provide them with arms and horses and servants flowed in, and thus was formed the most famous, the purest and the most heroic body of warriors the world has ever seen. Hugh de Payens had gathered three hundred Knights-Templars around him at Jerusalem: in five years nearly every one had been slain in battle. But enthusiasm filled the ranks faster than they were mowed down: none ever surrendered and the order paid no money for ransom. When hemmed in by overwhelming numbers, they fought till the last man fell, or died, a wounded captive, in the hands of the Saracens. Of the twenty-two Grand Masters seven were killed in battle, five died of wounds, and one of voluntary starvation in the hands of the infidel. When Acre was lost, and the last hold of the Christians in the Holy Land was wrested from them, only ten Knights-Templars of the five hundred who fought there escaped to Cyprus. They chose Jacques de Molay for Grand Master, replenished their treasury and renewed their members; but their mission was gone for ever. The order was exempt from episcopal jurisdiction and subject to the pope alone: its wealth, courage and devotion were rusting for lack of employment. Boniface VIII., with that grandeur and daring which make of him despite his faults, so magnificent a figure in history, conceived the idea of uniting them with the other military orders--the Hospitallers and the Teutonic Knights--and making of the united orders an invincible army to enforce on Europe the decrees of a benevolent and theocratic despotism. They soon became suspected and hated by bishops and kings alike, and at length were betrayed by the papacy itself to their enemies. In 1304, a pair of renegade Templars,[75] who for their crimes were under sentence of imprisonment for life in the prison at Toulouse, sought an introduction to the king, and promised in return for their liberty to give information of certain monstrous crimes and sacrileges of common and notorious occurrence in the order. Depositions were taken and sent to the king's creature, Pope Clement V. Some communication passed between them, but no action was taken and the matter seemed to have lapsed. About a year after these events the pope wrote an affectionate letter to Jacques de Molay, inviting him to bring the treasure of the order and his chief officers to France, to confer with himself and the king respecting a new crusade. Jacques and his companions, suspecting nothing, came and were received by pope and king with great friendliness: the treasure, twelve mules' load of gold and silver, was stored in the vaults of the great fortress of the Templars at Paris. Some rumours reached de Molay of the delation made by the Toulousian prisoners, but the pope reassured him in an interview, April 1307, and lulled him into security. On 14th September of the same year all the royal officers of the realm were ordered to hold themselves armed for secret service on 12th October, and sealed letters were handed to them to be opened on that night. At dawn on the 13th, all the Templars in France were arrested in their beds and flung into the episcopal gaols, and the bishops then proceeded to "examine" the prisoners. One hundred and forty were dealt with in Paris, the centre of the order. The charges and a confession of their truth by the Grand Master were read to them: denial, they were told, was useless; liberty would be the reward of confession, imprisonment the penalty of denial. [Illustration: PALACE OF THE ARCHBISHOP OF SENS.] A few confessed and were set free. The remainder were "examined." Starvation and torture of the most incredible ferocity did their work. Thirty-six died under torture in Paris, and many others in other places: most of the remainder confessed to anything the inquisitors required. The pope, warned by the growing feeling in Europe, now became alarmed, and the next act in the drama opens at Paris, where a papal commission sat at the Abbey of St. Genevieve, to hear what the Templars had to say in their defence. All were invited to give evidence and promised immunity in the name of the pope. Hundreds came to Paris to defend their order,[76] but having been made to understand by the bishops that they would be burned as heretics if they retracted their confessions, they held back for a time until solemnly assured by the papal commissioners that they had nothing to fear, and might freely speak. Ponzardus de Gysiaco, preceptor of Payens, then came forward and disclosed the atrocious means used to extort confessions, and said if he were so tortured again he would confess anything that were demanded of him. He would face death, however horrible, even by boiling and fire, in defence of his order, but long-protracted and agonising torture was beyond human endurance. He was sent back to confinement and the warders were bidden to see that he suffered naught for what he had said. The rugged old master, Jacques de Molay, scarred by honourable wounds, the marks of many a battle with the infidel, was brought before the court and his alleged confession was read to him. He was stupefied, and swore that if his enemies were not priests he would know how to deal with them. A second time he was examined and preposterous charges of unnatural crimes were preferred against the order by the king's chancellor, Guillaume de Nogaret. They were drawn from a chronicle at St. Denis, and based on certain statements alleged to have been made by Saladin, Sultan of Babylon (Egypt). Again he was stupefied, and declared he had never heard of such things. And now the Templars' courage rose. Two hundred and thirty-one came forward, emaciated, racked and torn; among them one poor wretch was carried in, whose feet had been burnt off by slow fires. Nearly all protested that the confessions had been wrung from them by torture, that their accusers were perjurers, and that they would maintain the purity of their order _usque ad mortem_ ("even unto death"). Many complained that they were poor, illiterate soldiers, neither able to pay for legal defence nor to comprehend the charges indicted in Latin against them. When the commissioners went to interrogate twenty Templars detained in the abbey of St. Genevieve, a written petition was handed to them by the prisoners, with a prayer to the papal notaries to correct the bad Latin. It was Philip's turn now to be alarmed, but the prelates were equal to the crisis. The archbishop of Sens, metropolitan of Paris and brother of the king's chief adviser, convoked a provincial court at his palace in Paris, and condemned to the stake fifty-four of the Knights who had retracted their confessions. On the 10th of May the papal commissioners were appealed to: they expressed their sorrow that the episcopal court was beyond their jurisdiction, but would consider what might be done. Short time was allowed them. The stout-hearted archbishop was not a man to show weakness; he went steadily on with his work, and in spite of appeals from the papal judges for delay, the fifty-four were led forth on the afternoon of the 12th[77] to the open country outside the Porte St. Antoine, near the convent of St. Antoine des Champs, and slowly roasted to death. They bore their fate with the constancy of martyrs, each protesting his innocence with his last breath, and declaring that the charges alleged against the order were false. Two days later, six more were sent to the stake at the Place de Grève. In spite of threats, the prelates went on with their grim work of terror. Many of the bravest Templars still gave the lie to their traducers, but the majority were cowed: further confessions were obtained, and the pope was satisfied. The proudest, bravest and richest order in Christendom was crushed or scattered to the four corners of the world. Their vast estates were nominally confiscated to the Knights Hospitallers; but our "most dear brother in Christ, Philip the king, although he was not moved by avarice nor intended the appropriation of the Templars' goods"[78] had to be compensated for the expense of the prosecution. The treasure of the order failed to satisfy the exorbitant claims of the crown, and the Hospitallers were said to have been impoverished rather than enriched by the transfer. The last act was yet to come. On 11th March 1314, a great stage was erected in the _parvis_ of Notre Dame, and there, in chairs of state, sat the pope's envoy, a cardinal, the archbishop of Sens, and other officers of Christ's Church on earth. The Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, and three preceptors were exposed to the people, their alleged confession and the papal bull suppressing the order, and condemning them to imprisonment for life, were read by the cardinal. But, to the amazement of his Eminence, when the clauses specifying the enormities to which the accused had confessed were being recited, the veteran Master and the preceptor of Normandy rose, and in loud voices, heard of all the people, repudiated the confession, and declared that they were wholly guiltless, and ready to suffer death. They had not long to wait. Hurried counsel was held with the king, and that same night Jacques de Molay and the preceptor of Normandy were brought to a little island on the Seine, known as the Isle of the Trellises,[79] and burnt to death, protesting their innocence to the last. "God pays debts, but not in money." An Italian chronicler relates that the Master, while expiring in the flames, solemnly cited pope and king to meet him before the judgment-seat of God. In less than forty days Clement V. lay dead: in eight months Philip IV. was thrown by his horse and went to his account. Seven centuries later the grisly fortress of the Templars opened its portals, and the last of the unbroken line of the kings of France, Louis XVI., was led forth to a bloody death. Those who would read the details of the dramatic examination at Paris before the papal commissioners, may do so in the minutes published by Michelet.[80] The great historian declares that a study of the evidence shook his belief in the Templars' innocence, and that if he were writing his history again, he must needs alter his attitude towards them. Such is not the impression left on the mind of the present writer. Moreover it has been pointed out that there is a suspicious identity in the various groups of testimonies, corresponding to the episcopal courts whence such testimonies came. The royal officers, after the severest search, could find not a single compromising document in the Templars' houses: nothing but a few account books, works of devotion and copies of St. Bernard's Rule. There were undoubtedly unworthy and vicious knights among the fifteen thousand Templars belonging to the order, but the charges brought against them are too monstrous for belief. The call which they had responded to so nobly, however, had long ceased. They were wealthy, proud and self-absorbed. Sooner or later they must infallibly have gone the way of all organisations which have outlived their use and purpose. It is the infamy of their violent destruction for which pope and king must answer at the bar of history. [Illustration: THE SEINE AT ALFORTVILLE.] CHAPTER VIII ETIENNE MARCEL--THE ENGLISH INVASIONS--THE MAILLOTINS--MURDER OF THE DUKE OF ORLEANS--ARMAGNACS AND BURGUNDIANS With the three sons of Philip who successively became kings of France, the direct line of the Capetian dynasty ends: with the accession of Philip VI. in 1328, the house of Valois opens the sad century of the English wars--a period of humiliation and defeat, of rebellious and treacherous princes, civil strife, famine and plague, illumined only by the heroism of a peasant-girl, who, when king and nobles were sunk in shameless apathy or sullen despair, saved France from utter extinction. Pope after pope sought to make peace, but in vain: _Hui sont en paix, demain en guerre_ ("to-day peace, to-morrow war") was the normal and inevitable situation until the English had wholly subjected France or the French driven the English to their natural boundary of the Channel. Never since the days of Charlemagne had the French Monarchy been so powerful as when the Valois came to the throne: in less than a generation Crecy and Poitiers had made the English name a terror in France, and a French king, John the Good, was led captive to England. Once again, as in the dark Norman times, Paris rose and determined to save herself. Etienne Marcel, provost of the merchants, whose statue now stands near the site of the Maison aux Piliers, the old Hostel de Ville which he bought for the citizens of Paris, became the leader of the movement. The Dauphin,[81] who had assumed the title of Lieutenant-General, convoked the States-General at Paris, but he was forced by Marcel and his party to grant some urgent reforms, and a Committee of National Defence was organised by the provost, who became virtually dictator of Paris. The Dauphin fled to Compiègne to rally the nobles. During the ensuing anarchy the poor, dumb, starving serfs of France, in their hopeless misery and despair, rose in insurrection and swept like a flame over the land. Froissart, who writes from the distorted stories told him by the seigneurs, has woefully exaggerated the atrocities of the _Jacquerie_.[82] There was much arson and pillage, but barely thirty of the nobles are known to have perished. Of the merciless vengeance taken by the seigneurs there is ample confirmation. The wretched peasants were easily out-manoeuvred and killed like rats by the mail-clad nobles and their men-at-arms; so many were butchered in the market-place of Meaux that weariness stayed the arms of the slaughterers, and fire completed their work. Twenty thousand are estimated to have perished between the Seine and the Marne. Meanwhile the Dauphin was marching on Paris: Marcel had seized the Louvre, repaired and extended the wall of Paris, and raised an army. The provost turned for support to the _Jacques_, and on their suppression essayed to win over King Charles of Navarre, whose aid would decide the issue. Plot and counterplot followed. On 31st July 1358, Marcel was inspecting the gates of Paris, and at the Bastille[83] St. Denis ordered the keys to be given up to the treasurer of the king of Navarre, who was with him. The guards refused, and Jean Maillart, Marcel's sheriff and bosom friend, leapt on his horse, rode to the Halles, and crying;--"_Au roi, au roi, mont-joie St. Denis_," called the king's friends to arms, and hastened to intercept the provost at the Bastille St. Antoine. Marcel was holding the keys in his hand when they arrived. "Stephen, Stephen!" cried Maillart, "what dost thou here at this hour?" "I am here," answered the provost, "to guard the city whose governor I am." "_Par Dieu_," retorted Maillart, "thou art here for no good," and turning to his followers, said, "Behold the keys which he holds to the destruction of the city." Each gave the other the lie. "Good people," protested Marcel, "why would you do me ill? All I wrought was for your good as well as mine." Maillart for answer smote at him, crying, "Traitor, _à mort, à mort_!" There was a stubborn fight, and Maillart felled the provost by a blow with his axe; six of the provost's companions were slain, and the remainder haled to prison. Next day the Dauphin entered Paris in triumph, and the popular leaders were executed on the Place de Grève. The provost's body was dragged to the court of the church of St. Catherine du Val des Ecoliers, where it lay naked that it might be seen of all: after a long exposure it was cast into the Seine. All the reforms were revoked by the king, but the remembrance of the time when the merchants and people of Paris had dared to speak to their royal lord face to face of justice and good government, was never obliterated. Meanwhile the land was a prey to anarchy. Law there was none. Bands of _routiers_, or organised brigands, English and French, ravaged and pillaged without let or hindrance. Eustache d'Aubrecicourt, with 10,000 men-at-arms, raided Champagne at his will and held a dozen fortresses. The peasants posted sentinels in the church towers while they worked in the fields, and took refuge by night in boats moored in the rivers. The English invasion of 1359 resembled a huge picnic or hunting expedition. The king of England and his barons brought their hunters, falcons, dogs and fishing tackle. They marched leisurely to Bourg-la-Reine, less than two leagues from Paris, pillaged the surrounding country and turned to Chartres, where tempest and sickness forced Edward III. to come to terms. After the treaty of Bretigny, in 1360, the Parisians saw their good King John again, who was ransomed for a sum equal to about ten million pounds of present-day value. The memory of this and other enormous ransoms exacted by the English endured for centuries, and when a Frenchman had paid his creditors he would say,--_j'ai payé mes Anglais_.[84] ("I have paid my English.") A magnificent reception was accorded to the four English barons who came to sign the Peace at Paris. They were taken to the Sainte-Chapelle and shown the fairest relics and richest jewels in the world, and each was given a spine from the crown of thorns, which he deemed the noblest jewel that could be presented to him. In 1364, after sowing dragons' teeth in France by bestowing in appanage the duchy of Burgundy on his youngest son Philip the Bold, King John the Good returned to captivity and death at London in chivalrous atonement for the breaking of parole by his second son, Louis of Anjou, who had been interned at Calais as a hostage under the treaty of 1360. The Dauphin, now Charles V., by careful statesmanship succeeded in restoring order to the kingdom and to its finances[85] and in winning some successes against the English. The dread companies of _routiers_, after defeating and slaying Jacques de Bourbon and capturing one hundred French chevaliers, were bribed by Pope Innocent VI. to pass into Lombardy, or induced to follow du Guesclin, the national hero of the wars against the English, in a crusade against Pedro the Cruel in Spain. In 1370 the English camp fires were again seen outside Paris: Charles refused battle and allowed them to ravage the suburbs with impunity. Before the army left, an English knight swore he would joust at the gates of the city, and spurred lance in hand against them. As he turned to ride back, a big butcher lifted his pole-axe, smote the knight on the neck and felled him; four others battered him to death, "their blows," says Froissart, "falling on his armour like strokes on an anvil." By wise counsel rather than by war Charles won back much of his dismembered country. He was a great builder and patron of the arts. He employed Raymond of the Temple, his "beloved mason," to transform the Louvre into a sumptuous palace with apartments for himself and his queen, the princes of the blood and the officers of the royal household. Each suite of apartments was furnished with a private chapel, those of the king and queen being carved with much "art and patience." A gallery was built for the minstrels and players of instruments. A great garden was planted towards the Rue St. Honoré on the north, and the old wall of Philip Augustus on the east, in which were an "Hôtel des Lions," or collection of wild beasts, and a tennis court, where the king and princes played. The palace accounts still exist, with details of payments for "wine for the stone-cutters which the king our lord gave them when he came to view the works." Jean Callow and Geoffrey le Febre were paid for planting squares of strawberries, hyssop, sage, lavender, balsam, violets, and for making paths, weeding and carrying away stones and filth; others were paid for planting bulbs of lilies, double red roses and other good herbs. The first royal library was founded by Charles, and Peter the Cage-maker was employed to protect the library windows from birds and other beasts by trellises of wire. An interesting payment of six francs in gold, made to Jacqueline, widow of a mason "because she is poor and helpless and her husband met his death in working for the king at the Louvre," demonstrates that royal custom had anticipated modern legislation. [Illustration: CHAPEL OF FORT VINCENNES] Charles surrendered his palace in the Cité to the Parlement, and erected an immense palace (known as the Hôtel St. Paul) in the east of Paris, outside the old wall, where he could entertain the whole of the princes of the blood and their suites. It was an irregular group of exquisite Gothic mansions and chapels, furnished with sumptuous magnificence and surrounded by tennis courts, falconries, menageries, delightful and spacious gardens--a _hostel solennel des grands esbattements_ ("a solemn palace of great delights.") This royal city within a city covered a vast space, now roughly bounded by the Rue St. Paul, the river, the Rue de l'Arsenal and the Rue St. Antoine. Charles VII. was the last king who dwelt there; the buildings fell to ruin, and between 1519 and 1551 were gradually sold. No vestige of this palace of delight now remains, nothing but the memory of it in a few street names,--the streets of the Fair Trellis, of the Lions of St. Paul, of the Garden of St. Paul, and of the Cherry Orchard. To Charles V. is also due the beautiful chapel of Vincennes and the completion of Etienne Marcel's wall. This fourth enclosure, began at the Tour de Billi, which stood at the angle formed by the Gare de l'Arsenal and the Seine, extended north by the Boulevard Bourdon, the Place de la Bastille, and the line of the inner Boulevards to the Porte St. Denis; it then turned south-west by the old Porte Montmartre, the Place des Victoires and across the garden of the Palais Royal to the Tour de Bois, opposite the present Pont du Carrousel. It was fortified by a double moat and square towers. The south portion was never begun. To defend the Porte St. Antoine, Charles laid the foundation of the Bastille of sinister fame--ever a hateful memory to the citizens, for it was completed by the royal provost when the provost of the merchants had been suppressed by Charles VI. in 1383. "Woe to the nation whose king is a child!" During the minority and reign of Charles VI. France lay prostrate under a hail of evils that menaced her very existence, and Paris was reduced to the profoundest misery and humiliation. The breath had not left the old king's body before his elder brother, the Count of Anjou, who was hiding in an adjacent room, hastened to seize the royal treasure and the contents of the public exchequer. No regent had been appointed, and the four royal dukes, the young king's uncles of Anjou, Burgundy, Bourbon, and Berri, began to strive for power. In 1382 Anjou, who had been suffered to hold the regency, sought to enforce an unpopular tax on the merchants of Paris. The people revolted, armed themselves with the loaded clubs (_maillotins_) stored in the Hôtel de Ville for use against the English, attacked the royal officers and opened the prisons. The court temporised, promised to remit the tax and to grant an amnesty; but with odious treachery caused the leaders of the movement to be seized, put them in sacks and flung them at dead of night into the Seine. The angry Parisians now barricaded their streets and closed their gates against the king. Negotiations followed and by payment of 100,000 francs to the Duke of Anjou the citizens were promised immunity and the king and his uncles entered the city. But the court nursed its vengeance, and after the victory over the Flemings at Rosebecque the king and his uncles with a powerful force marched on Paris. The Parisians, 20,000 strong, stood drawn up in arms at Montmartre to meet him. They were asked who were their chiefs and if the Constable de Clisson might enter Paris. "None other chiefs have we," they answered "than the king and his lords: we are ready to obey their orders." "Good people of Paris," said the Constable on his arrival at their camp, "what meaneth this? meseems you would fight against your king." They replied that their purpose was but to show the king the puissance of his good city of Paris. "'Tis well," said the Constable, "if you would see the king return to your homes and put aside your arms." On the morrow, 11th January 1383, the king and his court, with 12,000 men-at-arms, appeared at the Porte St. Denis, and there stood the provost of the merchants with the chief citizens in new robes, holding a canopy of cloth of gold. The king, with a fierce glance, ordered them back. The gates were unhinged and flung down: the royal army entered as in a conquered city. A terrible vengeance ensued. The President of the Parlement and other civil officers, with three hundred prominent citizens, were arrested and cast into prison. In vain was the royal clemency entreated by the Duchess of Orleans, the rector of the university and chief citizens all clothed in black. The bloody diurnal work of the executioner began and continued until a general pardon was granted on March 1st on payment of an enormous fine. The liberties of the city met the same fate. The provostship of the merchants, and all the privileges of the Parisians, were suppressed, and the hateful taxes reimposed. Never had the heel of despotism ground them down so mercilessly. [Illustration: ON THE QUAI DES GRANDS AUGUSTINS.] After cruelty and debauchery came madness. As Charles one sultry August day was riding in the forest of le Mans he suddenly drew his sword, wounded some of his escort and attacked the Duke of Orleans. The demented king was seized by the Duke of Burgundy and carried senseless and bound into the city. In 1393, when he had somewhat recovered, a grand masked ball was given to celebrate the wedding of one of the ladies of honour who was a widow. The marriage of a widow was always the occasion of riotous mirth, and the king disguised himself and five of his courtiers as satyrs. They were sewed up in tight-fitting vestments of linen, which were coated with resin and pitch and covered with rough tow; on their heads they wore hideous masks. While the ladies of the court were celebrating the marriage the king and his companions rushed in howling like wolves and indulged in the most uncouth gestures and jokes. The Duke of Orleans, drawing too near with a torch to discover their identity, set fire to the tow and in a second they were enveloped in so many shirts of Nessus. Unable to fling off their blazing dresses they madly ran hither and thither, suffering the most excruciating agony and uttering piteous cries. The king happened to be near the young Duchess of Berri who, with admirable presence of mind, flung her robe over him and rescued him from the flames. One knight saved himself by plunging into a large tub of water in the kitchen, one died on the spot, two died on the second day, another lingered for three days in awful torment. The horror of the scene[86] so affected Charles that his madness returned more violently than ever. [Illustration: TOWER AT THE CORNER OF THE RUE VIEILLE DU TEMPLE AND THE RUE BARBETTE.] The bitterness of the avuncular factions was now intensified. The House of Burgundy by marriage and other means had grown to be one of the most powerful in Europe and was at bitter enmity with the House of Orleans. At the death of Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, his son Jean sans Peur, sought to assume his father's supremacy as well as his title: the Duke of Orleans, strong in the queen's support, determined to foil his purpose. Each fortified his hôtel in Paris and assembled an army. Friends, however, intervened; they were reconciled, and in November 1407 the two dukes attended mass at the Church of the Grands Augustins, took the Holy Sacrament and dined together. As Jean rose from table the Duke of Orleans placed the Order of the Porcupine round his neck; swore _bonne amour et fraternité_, and they kissed each other with tears of joy. On 23rd November a forged missive was handed to the Duke of Orleans, requiring his attendance on the queen at the Hôtel St. Paul, whither he often went to visit her. He set forth, attended only by two squires and five servants carrying torches. It was a sombre night, and as the unsuspecting prince rode up the Rue Vieille du Temple behind his little escort, humming a tune and playing with his glove, a band of assassins fell upon him from the shadow of the postern La Barbette,[87] crying "_à mort, à mort_," and he was hacked to death. Then issued from a neighbouring house at the sign of Our Lady, a tall figure concealed in a red cloak, lantern in hand, who gazed at the mutilated corpse. "_C'est bien_," said he, "let's away." They set fire to the house to divert attention and escaped. Four months before, Jean sans Peur had hired the house on the pretext of storing provisions, and for two weeks a score of assassins had been concealed there, biding their time. On the morrow, Jean with the other princes went to asperse the dead body with holy water in the church of the Blancs Manteaux, and as he drew nigh, exclaiming against the foul murder, blood is said to have issued from the wounds. At the funeral Jean held a corner of the pall, but his guilt was an open secret, and though he braved it out for a time he was forced to flee to his lands in Flanders for safety. In a few months, however, he was back in force at Paris, and a doctor of the Sorbonne pleaded an elaborate justification of the deed before the assembled princes, nobles, clergy and citizens at the Hôtel St. Paul. The poor demented king was made to declare publicly that he bore no ill-will to his dear cousin of Burgundy and later, on the failure of a conspiracy of revenge by the queen and the Orleans party, to grant full pardon for a deed "committed for the welfare of the kingdom." The cutting of the Rue Etienne Marcel has exposed the strong machicolated tower still bearing the arms of Burgundy (two planes and a plumb line), which Jean sans Peur built to fortify the Hôtel de Bourgogne, as a defence and refuge against the Orleans faction and the people of Paris. The Orleans family had for arms a knotted stick, with the device "_Je l'ennuis_": the Burgundian arms with the motto, "_Je le tiens_," implied that the knotted stick was to be planed and levelled. The arrival of Jean sans Peur, and the fortification of his hôtel were the prelude to civil war, for the Orleanists and their allies had rallied to the Count of Armagnac, whose daughter the new Duke of Orleans had married, and fortified themselves in their stronghold on the site now occupied by the Palais Royal. The Armagnacs, for so the Orleanists were now called, thirsted for revenge, and for five years Paris was the scene of frightful atrocities as each faction gained the upper hand and took a bloody vengeance on its rivals. At length the infamous policy of an alliance with the English was resorted to. The temptation was too great for the English king, and in 1415 Henry V. met the French army, composed almost entirely of the Armagnacs, at Agincourt, and inflicted on it a defeat more disastrous than Crecy or Poitiers. The famous oriflamme of St. Denis passed from history in that fatal year of 1415. The Count of Armagnac hurried to Paris, seized the mad king and the Dauphin, and held the capital. [Illustration: TOWER OF JEAN SANS PEUR.] In 1417 the English returned under Henry V. The Burgundians had promised neutrality, and the defeated Armagnacs were forced in their need to "borrow[88] of the saints." But hateful memories clung to them in Paris and they were betrayed. On the night of 29th May 1418, the son of an ironmonger on the Petit Pont, who had charge of the wicket of the Porte St. Germain, crept into his father's room and stole the keys while he slept. The gate was then opened to the Burgundians, who seized the person of the helpless and imbecile king. Some Armagnacs escaped, bearing the dauphin with them, and the remainder were flung into prison. The Burgundian partisans in the city, among whom was the powerful corporation of the butchers and fleshers, now rose, and on Sunday, 14th June, ran to the prisons. Before dawn fifteen hundred Armagnacs were indiscriminately butchered under the most revolting circumstances. The count himself perished, and a strip of his skin was carried about Paris in mockery of the white scarf of the Armagnacs. Jean sans Peur and Queen Isabella[89] entered the city, amid the acclamation of the people, and soon after a second massacre followed, in spite of Jean's efforts to prevent it. He was now master of Paris, but the Armagnacs were swarming in the country around and the English marching without let on the city. In these straits he sought a reconciliation with the dauphin and his Armagnac counsellors at Melun, on 11th July 1419. On 10th September a second conference was arranged, and duke and dauphin, each with ten attendants, met in a wicker enclosure on the bridge at Montereau. Jean doffed his cap and knelt to the dauphin, but before he could rise was felled by a blow from an axe and stabbed to death.[90] In 1521 a monk at Dijon showed the skull of Jean sans Peur to Francis I., and pointing to a hole made by the assassin's axe, said: "Sire, it was through this hole that the English entered France." On receipt of the news of his father's murder, the new Duke of Burgundy, Philip le Bon, thirsting for vengeance, flung himself into the arms of the English, and by the treaty of Troyes on May 20, 1420, Henry V. was given a French princess to wife and the reversion of the crown of France, which, after Charles' death, was to be united ever more to that of England. But the French crown never circled Henry's brow: on August 31, 1422, he lay dead at Vincennes. He was buried with great pomp in the royal abbey of St. Denis, leaving an infant son of nine months to inherit the dual monarchy. Within a few weeks of Henry's death the hapless king of France was entombed under the same roof; a royal herald cried "for God's pity on the soul of the most high and most excellent Charles, king of France, our natural sovereign lord," and in the next breath hailed "Henry of Lancaster, by the grace of God, king of France and of England, our sovereign lord." All the royal officers reversed their maces, wands and swords as a token that their functions were at an end. At the next festival the Duke of Bedford was seen in the Sainte Chapelle of the palace of St. Louis, exhibiting the crown of thorns to the people as Regent of France, and a statue of Henry V. of England was raised in the great hall, following on the line of the kings of France from Pharamond to Charles. CHAPTER IX JEANNE D'ARC--PARIS UNDER THE ENGLISH--END OF THE ENGLISH OCCUPATION The occupation of Paris by the English was the darkest hour in French history, yet amid the universal misery and dejection the treaty of Troyes was hailed with joy. When the two kings entered Paris after its signature, the whole way from the Porte St. Denis to Notre Dame was filled with people crying, "_Noël, noël!_" The university, the parlement, the queen-mother, the whole of North France, from Brittany and Normandy to Flanders, from the Channel to the line of the Loire, accepted the situation, and the Duke of Burgundy, most powerful of the royal princes, was a friend of the English. Yet a few French hearts beat true. While the regent Duke of Bedford was entering Paris, a handful of knights unfurled the royal banner at Melun, crying--"Long live King Charles, seventh of the name, by the grace of God king of France!" And what a pitiful incarnation of national independence was this to whom the devoted sons of France were now called to rally!--a feeble youth of nineteen, indolent, licentious, mocked at by the triumphant English as the "little king of Bourges." The story of the resurrection of France at the call of an untutored village girl is one of the most enthralling dramas of history. When all men had despaired; when the cruelty, ambition and greed of the princes of France had wrought her destruction; when the miserable dauphin at Chinon was prepared to seek safety by an ignominious flight to Spain or Scotland; when Orleans, the key to the southern provinces, was about to fall into English hands--the means of salvation were revealed in the ecstatic visions of a simple peasant maid. With that divine inspiration vouchsafed alone to faith and fervent love, she saw with piercing insight the essential things to be done. The siege of Orleans must be raised and the dauphin anointed king at Rheims. "The originality of the Maid," says Michelet, "and the cause of her success was her good sense amid all her enthusiasm and exaltation." We may not here narrate the story of those miraculous three months of the year 1429 (27th April-16th July), which saw the relief of Orleans, the victories of Jargeau, of Patay (where invincible Talbot was made prisoner), of the surrender of ill-omened Troyes and of the solemn coronation at Rheims. Jeanne deemed her mission over after Rheims, but to her ill-hap was persuaded to follow the royal army after the retreat of the English from Senlis, and on 23rd August she occupied St. Denis. She declared at her trial that her voices told her to remain at St. Denis, but that the lords made her attack Paris. On the 8th September the assault was made, but it was foiled by the king's apathy, the incapacity and bitter jealousy of his counsellors, and the action of double-faced Burgundy. In the afternoon Jeanne, while sounding the depth of the fosse with her lance,[91] was wounded by an arrow in the thigh. She remained till late evening, when she was carried away to St. Denis, at whose shrine she hung up her arms--her mysterious sword from St. Catherine de Fierbois and her banner of pure white, emblazoned with the fleur-de-lys and the figure of the Saviour, with the device "Jesu Maria." [Illustration: NOTRE DAME FROM THE NORTH] Six months later, while Charles was sunk in sloth at the château of Sully, Jeanne was captured by the Burgundians at the siege of Compiègne, and her enemies closed on her like bloodhounds. The university and the Inquisition wrangled for her body, but English gold bought her from her Burgundian captors and sent her to a martyr's death at Rouen. Those who would read the sad record of her trial may do so in the pages of Mr Douglas Murray's translation of the minutes of the evidence, and may assist in imagination at the eighteen days' forensic baiting of the hapless child (she was but nineteen years of age), whose lucid simplicity broke through the subtle web of theological chicanery which was spun to entrap her by the most cunning of the Sorbonne doctors. A summary of Jeanne's answers was sent to "Our Mother, the University of Paris." The condemnation was a foregone conclusion[92] and after a forced retractation, the virgin saviour of France was led to her doom in the market-place of Rouen. As she passed the lines of English soldiers, their eyes flashing fierce hatred upon her, a cry escaped her, "O Rouen, Rouen, must I then die here?" With her last breath she protested that her voices had not deceived her and were of God; and calling on "Jesus!" her head sank in the flames. "We are lost," said an English spectator; "we have burnt a saint!" Some contemporary letters from Venetian merchants in the cities of France have recently been published, which give valuable testimony to the sympathy evoked among foreign residents by the career of Jeanne the Maid. To them she was a _zentil anzolo_, "a gentle angel sent of God to save the good land of France, the most noble country in the world, which having purged its sins and pride God snatched from the brink of utter destruction. For even as by a woman, our Lady St. Mary, He saved the human race, so by this young maiden pure and spotless He hath saved the fairest pearl of Christendom." "The English burnt her," says one of the merchants, writing from Bruges, "thinking that fortune would turn in their favour, but may it please Christ the Lord that the contrary befall them!" And so in truth it happened. Disaster after disaster wrecked the English cause; the Duke of Bedford died, Philip of Burgundy and Charles were reconciled and Queen Isabella went to a dishonoured grave. The English were driven out of Paris, and in 1453, of all the "large and ample empery" of France, won at the cost of a hundred years of bloodshed and cruel devastation, a little strip of land at Calais and Guines alone remained to the English crown. Charles, who with despicable cowardice had suffered the heroic Maid to be done to death by the English without a thought of intervention, was moved to call for a tardy reparation of the atrocious injustice at Rouen; and a quarter of a century after the Te Deum sung in Notre Dame for her capture, another, a very different scene, was witnessed in the cathedral. "The case for her rehabilitation," says Mr Murray, "was solemnly opened there, and the mother and brothers of the Maid came before the court to present their humble petition for a revision of her sentence, demanding only 'the triumph of truth and justice.' The court heard the request with some emotion. When Isabel d'Arc threw herself at the feet of the Commissioners, showing the papal rescript and weeping aloud, so many joined in the petition that at last, we are told, it seemed that one great cry for justice broke from the multitude." The story of Paris under the English is a melancholy one. Despite the rigid justice and enlightened policy of Bedford's regency they failed to win the affection of the Parisians. Rewards to political friends, punishments and confiscations inflicted on the disaffected, the riotous and homicidal conduct of some of the English garrison, the depression in commerce and depreciation of property brought their inevitable consequences--a growing hatred of the English name.[93] The chapter of Notre Dame was compelled to sell the gold vessels from the treasury. Hundreds of houses were abandoned by their owners, who were unable to meet the charges upon them. In 1427 by a royal instrument the rent of the Maison des Singes was reduced from twenty-six livres to fourteen, "seeing the extreme diminution of rents." [Illustration: CLOISTER OF THE BILLETES, FIFTEENTH CENTURY, RUE DE L'HOMME ARMÉ.] Some curious details of life in Paris under the English have come down to us. By a royal pardon granted to Guiot d'Eguiller, we learn that he and four other servants of the Duke of Bedford, and of our "late very dear and very beloved aunt the Duchess of Bedford whom God pardon," were drinking one night at ten o'clock in a tavern where hangs the sign of _L'Homme Armé_.[94] Hot words arose between them and some other tipplers, to wit, Friars Robert, Peter and William of the Blancs Manteaux, who were disguised as laymen and wearing swords. Friar Robert lost his temper and struck at the servants with his naked sword. The friar, owing to the strength of the wine or to inexperience in the use of secular weapons, cut off the leg of a dog instead of hitting his man; the friars then ran away, pursued by three of the servants--Robin the Englishman, Guiot d'Eguiller and one Guillaume. The fugitive friars took refuge in a deserted house in the Rue du Paradis (now des Francs Bourgeois), and threw stones at their pursuers. There was a fight, during which Guillaume lost his stick and snatching Guiot's sword struck at Friar Robert through the door of the house. He only gave one "_cop_," but it was enough, and there was an end of Friar Robert. A certain Gilles, a _povre homme laboureur_, went to amuse himself at a game of tennis in the hostelry kept by Guillaume Sorel, near the Porte St. Honoré, and fell a-wrangling with Sorel's wife concerning some lost tennis balls. Madame Sorel clutched him by the hair and tore out some handfuls. Gilles seized her by the hood, disarranged her coif, so that it fell about her shoulders, "and in his anger cursed God our Creator." This came to the bishop's ears, and Gilles was cast for blasphemy into the bishop's oven, as the episcopal prison was called, where he lay in great misery. He was examined and released on promising to offer a wax candle of two pounds' weight before the image of our Lady of Paris at the entrance of the choir of Notre Dame. Many of the religious foundations had suffered by the wars, for in 1426 the glovers of Paris were authorised to re-establish the guild of the blessed St. Anne, founded by some good people, smiths and ironmongers, which during the wars and mutations of the last twenty years had come to an end. In 1427, "our well-beloved, the money-changers of the Grand Pont in our good town of Paris were permitted to found a guild in the church of St. Bartholomew in honour of our Creator and His very glorious Mother and St. Matthew their patron." In 1430 was granted the humble supplication of the shoemakers, who desired to found a confraternity to celebrate mass in the chapel at Notre Dame, dedicated to "the blessed and glorious martyrs, Monseigneur Crispin the Great, and Monseigneur Crispin the Less, who in this life were shoemakers." [Illustration: OUR LADY OF PARIS--EARLY FIFTEENTH CENTURY.] The fifteen years of English rule at Paris came to a close in 1446. In 1443 a goldsmith was at _déjeuner_ with a baker and a shoemaker, and they fell a-talking of the state of trade, of the wars and of the poverty of the people of Paris. The goldsmith[95] grumbled loudly and said that his craft was the poorest of all; people must have shoes and bread, but none could afford to employ a goldsmith. Then, thinking no evil, he said that good times would never return in Paris until there were a French king, the university full again, and the Parlement obeyed as in former times. Whereupon Jean Trolet, the shoemaker, added that things could not last in their present state, and that if there were only five hundred men who would agree to begin a revolution, they would soon find thousands leagued with them. The general unrest which this incident illustrates soon burst forth in plot after plot, and on 13th April, 1446, the Porte St. Jacques was opened by some citizens to the Duke of Richement, Constable of France, who, with 2000 knights and squires, entered the city and, to the cry of _Ville gagnée_! the fleur-de-lys waved again from the ramparts of Paris. The English garrison under Lord Willoughby fortified themselves in the Bastille of St. Antoine but capitulated after two days. Bag and baggage, out they marched, circled the walls as far as the Louvre, and embarked for Rouen amid the execrations of the people. Never again did an English army enter Paris until the allies marched in after Waterloo in 1815. CHAPTER X LOUIS XI. AT PARIS--THE INTRODUCTION OF PRINTING Six centuries have failed to efface from the memory of the French people the misery and devastation wrought by the hundred years' wars, as travellers in rural France will know. Paris saw little of Charles who, after the temporary activity excited by the expulsion of the English, had sunk into his habitual torpor, and his bondage to women. In 1461 the wretched monarch, morbid and half-demented, died of a malignant disease, all the time haunted by fears of poison and filial treachery. The people named him Charles _le bien servi_ (the well-served), for small indeed was the praise due to him for the great deliverance. When the new king, Louis XI., quitted his asylum at the Burgundian court to be crowned at Rheims and to repair to St. Denis, he was shocked by the contrast between the rich cities and plains of Flanders and the miserable aspect of the country he traversed--ruined villages, fields that were so many deserts, starving creatures clothed in rags, and looking as if they had just escaped from dungeons. The "Universal Spider," as the Duke of Burgundy called Louis, was ever on the move about France, riding on his mule from dawn to eve. "Our king," says De Comines, "used to dress so ill that worse could not be--often wearing bad cloth and a shabby hat with a leaden image stuck in it." When he entered Abbeville with the magnificent Duke of Burgundy, the people said "_Benedicite!_ is that a king of France? Why, his horse and clothes together are not worth twenty francs!" A Venetian ambassador was amazed to see the most mighty and most Christian king take his dinner in a tavern on the market-place of Tours, after hearing mass in the cathedral. It is not within our province to describe in detail the successful achievement of Louis' policy of concentrating the whole government in himself as absolute sovereign of France by the overthrow of feudalism and the subjection of the great nobles with their almost royal power and state. His indomitable will, his consummate patience, his profound knowledge of human motives and passions, his cynical indifference to means, make him one of the most remarkable of the kings of France. In 1465, menaced by a coalition of nobles, the so-called League of the Public Good, Louis hastened to the capital. Letters expressing his tender affection for his dear city of Paris preceded him--he was coming to confide to them his queen and hoped-for heir; rather than lose his Paris, which he loved beyond all cities of the world, he would sacrifice half his kingdom. But the Parisians at first were sullen and would not be wooed, for they remembered his refusal to accord them some privileges granted to other cities. The university declined to arm her scholars, Church and Parlement were hostile. The idle, vagabond _clercs_ of the Palais and the Cité composed coarse gibes and satirical songs and ballads against his person. Louis, however, set himself with his insinuating grace of speech to win the favour of the Parisians. He chose six members from the Burgesses, six from the Parlement and six from the university, to form his Council. With daring confidence, he decided to arm Paris. A levy of every male able to bear arms between sixteen and sixty years of age was made, and the citizen army was reviewed near St. Antoine des Champs, in the presence of the king and queen. From 60,000 to 80,000 men, half of them well-armed, marched past, with sixty-seven banners of the trades guilds, not counting those of the municipal officers, the Parlement and the university. The nobles were checkmated, and they were glad to accede to a treaty which gave them ample spoils and Louis, time to recover himself. The "Public Good" was barely mentioned. The king refused to occupy the palace of the Louvre and chose to dwell in the new Hôtel des Tournelles, near the Porte St. Antoine, built for the Duke of Bedford and subsequently presented to Louis when Dauphin by his royal father; for thither a star led him one evening as he left Notre Dame. Often would he issue _en bourgeois_ from the Tournelles to sup with his gossips in Paris. The institution of the mid-day Angelus, in 1472, was due to Louis' devotion to the Virgin. He ordained that the great bell of Notre Dame should be rung at noon as a signal that the good people of Paris should recite the Ave Maria. When in Paris scarcely a day passed without the king being seen at mass, and at leaving he always gave an offering. In 1475, Louis' old enemy, the Duke of Burgundy, was seeking an alliance with Edward IV. of England, and once more a mighty army entered France to reassert the claims of the English kings to the French crown. Louis, by his usual policy of flattery and bribery, succeeded in leading Edward to negotiate. If he had had to meet in the flesh the lion rampant on the English king's escutcheon, he could not have taken ampler precautions. A bridge was built over the Somme, near Amiens, "and in the middle thereof was a strong trellis of wood such as is made for cages of lions, and the holes between the bars were no larger than a man could put his arm through." On either side of this cage the monarchs and a score of courtiers met and conversed. Louis had divided his enemies; each in turn was cajoled and bribed, and the "Hucksters' Peace" was concluded. [Illustration: PORCH OF ST. GERMAIN L'AUXERROIS] "When King Louis," says De Comines, "retired from the interview he spake with me by the way and said he found the English king too ready to visit Paris, which thing was not pleasing to him. The king was a handsome man and very fond of women; he might find some affectionate mistress there, who would speak him so many fair words that she would make him desire to return; his predecessor had come too often to Paris and Normandy, and he did not like his company this side the sea, but beyond the sea he was glad to have him for friend and brother." De Comines was informed next day by some English that the peace had been made by the Holy Ghost, for a white dove was seen resting on the king of England's tent during the interview, and for no noise soever would she move; "but," said a sceptical Gascon gentleman, "it simply happened to have rained during the day, and the dove settled on the tent which was highest to dry her wings in the sun." Louis had long desired to punish the Count of St. Pol for treachery, and as a result of a treaty with Charles of Burgundy, in 1475, had him at length in the Bastille. Soon on a scaffold in the Place de Grève his head rolled from his body, and a column of stone twelve feet high erected where he fell, gave terrible warning to traitorous princes, however mighty; for the count was Constable of France, the king's brother-in-law, a member of the Imperial House of Luxemburg, and connected with many of the sovereign families of Europe. Two years later another noble victim, the Duke of Nemours, fell into the king's power and saw the inside of one of Louis' iron cages in the Bastille. The king, who had learnt that the chains had been removed from the prisoner's legs, commanded his jailer not to let him budge from his cage except to be tortured (_gehenné_) and the duke wrote a piteous letter, praying for clemency and signing himself _le pauvre Jacques_. In vain: him, too, the headsman's axe sent to his account. The news of the humiliating Peace of Peronne, after the king had committed the one great folly of his career by gratuitously placing himself in Charles the Bold's power,[96] was received by the Parisians with many gibes. The royal herald proclaimed at sound of trumpet by the crossways of Paris: "Let none be bold or daring enough to say anything opprobrious against the Duke of Burgundy, either by word of mouth, by writing, by signs, paintings, roundelays, ballads, songs or gestures." On the same day a commission seized all the magpies and jackdaws in Paris, whether caged or otherwise, which were to be registered according to their owners, with all the pretty words that the said birds could repeat and that had been taught them: the pretty word that these chattering birds had been taught to say was "Peronne." Louis' abasement at Peronne was, however, amply avenged by the battle of Granson, when the mighty host of "invincible" Charles was overwhelmed by the Switzers in 1476. A year later, the whole fabric of Burgundian ambition was shattered and the great duke lay a mutilated and frozen corpse before the walls of Nancy. Louis' joy at the destruction of his enemy was boundless. The great provinces of Burgundy, of Anjou, of Maine, Provence, Alençon and Guienne soon fell under the sovereignty of France, whose boundaries now touched the Alps. But in the very culmination of his success Louis was struck down by paralysis, and though he rallied for a time the end was near. Haunted by fear of treachery, he immured himself in the gloomy fortress of Plessis. The saintly Francesco da Calabria, relics from Florence, from Rome, the Holy Oil from Rheims, turtles from Cape Verde Islands--all were powerless; the arch dissembler must now face the ineluctable prince of the dark realms, who was not to be bribed or cajoled even by kings. When at last the king took to his bed, his physician, Jacques Cottier, told him that most surely his hour was come. Louis made his confession, gave much political counsel and some orders to be observed by _le Roi_, as he now called his son, and spoke, says De Comines, "as dryly as if he had never been ill. And after so many fears and suspicions Our Lord wrought a miracle and took him from this miserable world in great health of mind and understanding. Having received all the sacraments and suffering no pain and always speaking to within a paternoster of his death, he gave orders for his sepulture. May the Lord have his soul and receive him in the realm of Paradise!" It was in Louis' reign that the art of printing was introduced into Paris. As early as 1458 the master of the mint had been sent to Mainz to learn something of the new art, but without success. In 1463, Fust and his partner, Schöffer, had brought some printed books to Paris, but the books were confiscated and the partners were driven out of the city, owing to the jealousy of the powerful corporation of the scribes and booksellers, who enjoyed a monopoly from the Sorbonne of the sale of books in Paris; and in 1474 Louis paid an indemnity of 2500 crowns to Schöffer for the confiscation of his books and for the trouble he had taken to introduce printed books into his capital. In 1470, at the invitation of two doctors of the Sorbonne, Guillaume Fichet and Jean de la Puin, Ulmer Gering of Constance and two other Swiss printers set up a press near Fichet's rooms in the Sorbonne. In 1473 a press was at work at the sign of the Soleil d'Or (Golden Sun), in the Rue St. Jacques, under the management of two Germans, Peter Kayser, Master of Arts, and John Stohl, assisted by Ulmer Gering. In 1483 the last-named removed to the Rue de la Sorbonne, where the doctors granted to him and his new partner, Berthold Rumbolt of Strassburg, a lease for the term of their lives. They retained their sign of the Soleil d'Or, which long endured as a guarantee of fine printing. The earliest works had been printed in beautiful Roman type, but unable to resist the favourite Gothic introduced from Germany, Gering was led to adopt it towards the year 1480, and the Roman was soon superseded. From 1480 to 1500 we meet with many French printers' names: Antoine Vérard, Du Pré, Cailleau, Martineau, Pigouchet--clearly proving that the art had then been successfully transplanted. The re-introduction of Roman characters about 1500 was due to the famous house of the Estiennes, whose admirable editions of the Latin and Greek classics are the delight of bibliophiles. Robert Estienne was wont to hang proof sheets of his Greek and Latin classics outside his shop, offering a reward to any passer-by who pointed out a misprint or corrupt reading. Their famous house was the meeting-place of scholars and patrons of literature. Francis I. and his sister Margaret of Angoulême, authoress of the Heptameron, were seen there, and legend says that the king was once kept waiting by the scholar-printer while he finished correcting a proof. All the Estienne household, even the children, conversed in Latin, and the very servants are said to have grown used to it. In 1563 Francis I. remitted 30,000 livres of taxes to the printers of Paris, as an act of grace to the professors of an art that seemed rather divine than human. But in spite of royal favour printing was a poor career. The second Henry Estienne, who composed a Greek-Latin lexicon, died in poverty at a hospital in Lyons; the last of the family, the third Robert Estienne, met a similar miserable end at the Hôtel Dieu in Paris. So great was the re-action in the university against the violence of the Lutherans and the daring of the printers, that in 1534 all the presses were ordered to be closed. In 1537 no book was allowed to be printed without permission of the Sorbonne, and in 1556 an order was made, it is said at the instance of Diane de Poitiers, that a copy in vellum of every book printed by royal privilege should be deposited at the royal library. After Gering's death the forty presses then working in Paris were reduced to twenty-four, in order that every printer might have sufficient work to live by and not be tempted by poverty to print prohibited books or execute cheap and inferior printing. CHAPTER XI FRANCIS I.--THE RENAISSANCE AT PARIS The advent of the printing-press and the opening of a Greek lectureship by Gregory Tyhernas and Hermonymus of Sparta at the Sorbonne warns us that we are at the end of an epoch. With the accession of Charles VIII. and the beginning of the Italian wars a new era is inaugurated. Gothic architecture had reached its final development and structural perfection, in the flowing lines of the flamboyant style.[97] Painting and sculpture, both in subject, matter and style, assume a new aspect. The diffusion of ancient literature and the discovery of a new world, open wider horizons to men's minds, and human thought and human activity are directed towards other, and not always nobler, ideals. Mediævalism passes away and Paris begins to clothe herself in a new vesture of stone. The Paris of the fifteenth century was a triple city of narrow, crooked, unsavoury streets, of overhanging timbered houses, "thick as ears of corn in a wheat-field," from which emerged the innumerable spires and towers of her churches and palaces and colleges. In the centre was the legal and ecclesiastical Cité, with its magnificent Palais de Justice; its cathedral and a score of fair churches enclosed in the island, which resembled a great ship moored to the banks of the Seine by five bridges all crowded with houses. One of the most curious characteristics of Old Paris was the absence of any view of the river, for a man might traverse its streets and bridges without catching a glimpse of the Seine. The portal of the Petit Châtelet at the end of the Petit Pont opened on the university and learned district on the south bank of the Seine, with its fifty colleges and many churches clustering about the slopes of the mount of St. Genevieve, which was crowned by the great Augustine abbey and church founded by Clovis. Near by stood the two great religious houses and churches of the Dominicans and Franciscans (Jacobins and Cordeliers), the Carthusian monastery and its scores of little gardens, the lesser monastic buildings and, outside the walls, the vast Benedictine abbatial buildings and suburb of St. Germain des Prés, with its stately church of three spires, its fortified walls, its pillory and its permanent lists, where judicial duels were fought. On the north bank lay the busy, crowded industrial and commercial district known as the Ville, with its forty-four churches, the hôtels of the rich merchants and bankers, the fortified palaces of the nobles, all enclosed by the high walls and square towers of Charles the Fifth's fortifications, and defended at east and west by the Bastille of St. Antoine and the Louvre. To the east stood the Hôtel St. Paul, a royal city within a city, with its manifold princely dwellings and fair gardens and pleasaunces sloping down to the Seine; hard by to the north was the Duke of Bedford's Hôtel des Tournelles, with its memories of the English domination. At the west, against the old Louvre, were, among others, the hôtels of the Constable of Bourbon and the Duke of Alençon, and out in the fields beyond, the smoking kilns of the Tuileries (tile factories). [Illustration: RUE ROYALE.] [Illustration: TOWER OF ST. JACQUES.] North and east and west of the municipal centre, the Maison des Piliers, or old Hôtel de Ville on the Place de Grève, was a maze of streets filled with the various crafts of Paris. The tower of St. Jacques de la Boucherie, as yet unfinished, emerged from the butchers' and skinners' shops and slaughter-houses, which at the Rue des Lombards met the clothiers and furriers; the cutlers and the basketmakers were busy in streets now swept away to give place to the Avenue Victoria. Painters, glass-workers and colour merchants, grocers and druggists, made bright and fragrant the Rue de la Verrerie, weavers' shuttles rattled in the Rue de la Tixanderie (now swallowed up in the Rue de Rivoli); curriers and tanners plied their evil-smelling crafts in the Rue (now Quai) de la Mégisserie, and bakers crowded along the Rue St. Honoré. The Rue des Juifs sheltered the ancestral traffic of the children of Abraham. At the foot of the Pont au Change, on which were the shops of the goldsmiths and money-lenders, stood the grim thirteenth-century fortress of the Châtelet, the municipal guardhouse and prison; further on stood the episcopal prison, or _Four de l'Evêque_ (the bishop's oven). Round the Châtelet was a congeries of narrow, crooked lanes, haunts of ill-fame, where robbers lurked and vice festered. A little to the north were the noisy market-place of the Halles and the cemetery of the Innocents with its piles of skulls, and its vaulted arcade painted (1424) with the Dance of Death. Further north stood the immense abbey of St. Martin in the Fields, with its cloister and gardens and, a little to the west, the grisly fortress of the Knights-Templars. This is the Paris conjured from the past with such magic art by Victor Hugo in "Notre Dame," and gradually to be swept away in the next centuries by the Renaissance, pseudo-classic and Napoleonic builders and destroyers, until to-day scarcely a wrack is left behind. With the Italian campaigns of Charles VIII. and of the early Valois-Orleans kings, France enters the arena of European politics, wrestles with the mighty Emperor Charles V. and embarks on a career of transalpine conquest. But in Italy, conquering France was herself conquered by the charm of Italian art, Italian climate and Italian landscape. When Charles VIII. returned from his expedition to Naples he brought with him a collection of pictures, tapestry, and sculptures in marble and porphyry, that weighed thirty-five tons; by him and his successors Italian builders, Domenico da Cortona and Fra Giocondo, were employed. The latter rebuilt the Petit Pont and after the destruction of the last wooden Pont Notre Dame in 1499--when the whole structure, with its houses and shops, fell with a fearful crash into the river--he was employed to replace it with a stone bridge, which was completed in 1507. This, too, was lined with tall, gabled houses of stone, seventeen each side, their façades decorated with medallions of the kings of France, which alternated with fine Renaissance statues of male and female figures bearing baskets of fruit and flowers on their heads. These houses were the first in Paris to be numbered, odd numbers on one side, even on the other, and were the first to be demolished when, on the eve of the Revolution, Louis XVI. ordered the bridge to be cleared. [Illustration: PONT NOTRE DAME.] Worthy Friar Giocondo wrought well, for the bridge still exists, though refaced and altered. Louis XII., with his own hand, entreated Leonardo da Vinci to come to France, and his great minister, the Cardinal of Amboise, employed Solario at the château of Gaillon.[98] But the French Renaissance is indissolubly associated with Francis I., who in 1515 inherited a France welded into a compact[99] and absolute monarchy, inhabited by a prosperous and loyal people, for the twelfth Louis had been a good and wise ruler, who to the amazement of his people returned to them the balance of a tax levied to meet the cost of the Genoese Expedition, which had been overestimated, saying, "It will be more fruitful in their hands than in mine." Commerce had so expanded that it was said that for every merchant seen in Paris in former times there were, in his reign, fifty. Louis introduced the cultivation of maize and the mulberry into France, and so rigid was his justice that poultry ran about the open fields without risk. It was the accrued wealth of his reign, and the love inspired by "Louis, father of his people,"[100] that supported the magnificence, the luxury and the extravagance of Francis I., the patron of the Italian Renaissance. The architectural creations of the new art were first seen in Touraine, in the royal palaces of Blois and Chambord, and other princely and noble chateaux along the luscious and sunny valleys of the Loire. Italian architecture was late in making itself felt in Paris, where the native art made stubborn resistance. [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF FRANCIS I. JEAN CLOUET.] The story of the state entry of Francis I. into Paris after the death of Louis XII. is characteristic. Clothed in a gorgeous suit of armour and mounted on a barbed charger, accoutred in white and cloth of silver, the young king would not remain under the royal canopy, but pricked his steed and made it prance and rear that he might display his horsemanship, his fine figure and his dazzling costume before the ladies. "Born between two adoring women," says Michelet, "the king was all his life a spoilt child." Money flowed through his hands like water[101] to gratify his ambition, his passions and his pleasures. Doubtless his interviews with Da Vinci at Amboise, where he spent much of his time in the early years of his reign, fired that enthusiasm for art, especially for painting, which never wholly left him; for the veteran artist, although old and paralysed in the right hand, was otherwise in possession of all his incomparable faculties. [Illustration: CHAPEL, HÔTEL DE CLUNY.] The question as to the existence of an indigenous school of painting before the Italian artistic invasion is still a subject of acrimonious discussion among critics; there is none, however, as to its existence in the plastic arts. The old French tradition died hard, and not before it had stamped upon Italian Renaissance architecture the impress of its native genius and adapted it to the requirements of French life and climate. The Hôtel de Cluny, finished in 1490, still remains to exemplify the beauty of the native French domestic architecture modified by the new style. The Hôtel de Ville, designed by Dom. da Cortona and submitted to Francis in 1532, is dominated by the French style, and it was not until nearly a century after the first Italian Expedition that the last Gothic builders were superseded. The fine Gothic church of St. Merri was begun as late as 1520 and not finished till 1612, and the transitional churches of St. Etienne and St. Eustache remind one, by the mingling of Gothic and Renaissance features, of the famous metamorphosis of Agnel and Cianfa in Dante's Inferno, and one is tempted to exclaim, _Ome come ti muti! Vedi che già non sei nè duo nè uno!_[102] [Illustration: WEST DOOR OF ST. MERRI.] [Illustration: TOWER OF ST. ETIENNE DU MONT.] After the death of Da Vinci Francis never succeeded in retaining a first-rate painter in his service. Andrea del Sarto and Paris Bordone did little more than pay passing visits, and the famous school of Fontainebleau was founded by Rosso and Primaticcio, two decadent followers of Michel Angelo. The adventures of that second-rate artist and first-rate bully, Benvenuto Cellini, at Paris, form one of the most piquant episodes in artistic autobiography. After a gracious welcome from the king he was offered an annual retaining fee of three hundred crowns. He at once dismissed his two apprentices and left in a towering rage, only returning on being offered the same appointments that had been enjoyed by Leonardo da Vinci--seven hundred crowns a year, and payment for every finished work. The Petit Tour de Nesle was assigned to Cellini and his pupils as a workshop, the king assuring him that force would be needed to evict the possessor, adding, "Take great care you are not assassinated." On complaining to the king of the difficulties he met with and the insults offered to him on attempting to gain possession, he was answered: "If you are the Benvenuto I have heard of, live up to your reputation; I give you full leave." Cellini took the hint, armed himself, his servants and two apprentices, and frightened the occupants and rival claimants out of their wits. It was at this Tour de Nesle that the king paid Cellini a surprise visit with his mistress Madame d'Estampes, his sister Margaret of Valois, the Dauphin and his wife, Catherine de' Medici, the Cardinal of Lorraine, Henry II. of Navarre, and a numerous train of courtiers. The artist and his merry men were at work on the famous silver statue of Jupiter for Fontainebleau, and amid the noise of the hammering the king entered unperceived. Cellini had the torso of the statue in his hand, and at that moment a French lad who had caused him some little displeasure had felt the weight of the master's foot, which sent him flying against the king. But Cellini had done a bad day's work by violently evicting a servant of Madame d'Estampes from the Tower, and the injured lady and Primaticcio, her _protégé_, decided to work his ruin. When Cellini arrived at Fontainebleau with the statue, the king ordered it to be placed in the grand gallery decorated by Rosso. Primaticcio had just arranged there the casts which he had been commissioned to bring from Rome, and Cellini saw what was meant--his own work was to be eclipsed by the splendour of the masterpieces of ancient art. "Heaven help me!" cried he, "this is indeed to fall against the pikes!" Now the god held the globe of the earth in the left hand, the thunderbolt in the right. Cellini contrived to thrust a portion of a large wax candle as a torch between the flames of the bolt, and set the statue up on its gilded pedestal. Madame entertained the king late at table, hoping that he would either forget or see the work in a bad light; but when the king entered the gallery late at night, followed by his courtiers, "which by God's grace was my salvation," says Cellini, the statue was illuminated by a flood of light from the torch which so enhanced its beauty that the king was ravished with delight, and expressed himself in ecstatic praise, declaring the statue to be more beautiful and more marvellous than any of the antique casts around. His enemies were thus discomfited, and on Madame d'Estampes endeavouring to depreciate the work, she was grossly mocked by the artist in a very characteristic and quite untranscribable way. Benvenuto was more than ever patronised by the king, who did him the great honour of accosting him as _mon ami_, and approving his scheme for the fortification of Paris. The artist often remembered with pleasure the four years he spent with the _gran re Francesco_ at Paris. "The French are remembered in Italy only by the graves they left there," said De Comines, and once again the Italian campaigns ended in disaster. At the defeat of Pavia, in 1525--the Armageddon of the French in Italy--the efforts and sacrifices of three reigns were lost and the _gran re_ went captive to the king of Spain in Madrid, whence he issued, stained by perjury and three years later, signed "the moral annihilation of France in Europe," at Cambray. [Illustration: BOULEVARD ST. MICHEL.] During the tranquil intervals that ensued on this rude awakening from dreams of an Italian Empire, and the third and fourth wars with the emperor, the king was able to give effect to a project that had long been dear to him. "Come," says Michelet, "in the still, dark night, climb the Rue St. Jacques, in the early winter's morning. See you yon lights? Men, even old men, mingled with children, are hurrying, a folio under one arm, in the other an iron candlestick. Do they turn to the right? No, the old Sorbonne is yet sleeping snug in her warm sheets. The crowd is going to the Greek schools. Athens is at Paris. That man with the fine beard in majestic ermine is a descendant of emperors--Jean Lascaris; that other doctor is Alexander, who teaches Hebrew." The schools they were pressing to were those of the Royal College of France. Already in 1517 Erasmus had been offered a salary of a thousand francs a year, with promise of further increment, to undertake the direction of the college, but declined to leave his patron the emperor. The prime movers in the great scheme were the king's confessor, Guillaume Parvi, and the famous Grecian, Guillaume Budé, who in 1530 was himself induced to undertake the task which Erasmus had declined. Twelve professors were appointed in Greek, Hebrew, mathematics, philosophy, rhetoric and medicine, each of the twelve with a salary of two hundred gold crowns (about £80), and the dignity of royal councillors. The king's vast scheme of a great college and magnificent chapel, with a revenue of 50,000 crowns for the maintenance (_nourriture_) of six hundred scholars, where the most famous doctors in Christendom should offer gratuitous teaching in all the sciences and learned languages, was never executed. Too much treasure had been wasted in Italy, and it was not till the reign of Louis XIII. that it was partially carried out. The first stone was laid in 1610, but the college as we now see it was not completed till 1770; before the construction the professors taught in the colleges of Treguier and Cambray. Chairs were founded for Arabic by Henry III., for surgery, anatomy and botany by Henry IV., and for Syrian by Louis XIV. Little is changed to-day; the placards, so familiar to students in Paris, announcing the lectures, are indited in French instead of in Latin as of old; the lectures are still free to all, and the most famous scholars of the day teach there, but in French and not in Latin.[103] How dramatic are the contrasts of history! While the new learning was organising itself amid the pomp of royal patronage, while the young Calvin was sitting at the feet of its professors and the Lutheran heresy germinating at Paris, Ignatius Loyola, an obscure Spanish soldier and gentleman of thirty-seven years of age, was sitting--a strange mature figure--among the boisterous young students at the College of St. Barbara, patiently preparing himself for dedication to the service of the menaced Church of Rome; and in 1534, on the festival of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, a little group of six companions met around the fervent student, in the crypt of the old church at Montmartre, and decided to found on the holy hill of St. Denis' martyrdom the first house of the Society of Jesus. In 1528, says the writer of the so-called _Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris_, the king began to pull down the great tower of the Louvre, in order to transform the château into a _logis de plaisance_, "yet was it great pity for the castle was very fair and high and strong, and a most proper prison to hold great men." The tall, massive keep, which darkened the royal apartments in the south wing, was the tower here meant, and after some four months' work, and an expenditure of 2500 livres, the grim pile, with its centuries of history, was cleared away. Small progress, however, had been made with the restoration of the old château up to the year 1539, when the heavy cost of preparing the west wing for the reception of the Emperor Charles V., induced Francis to consider a plan which involved the replacement of the whole fabric by a palace in the new Renaissance style. In 1546 Pierre Lescot was appointed architect without salary, but given the office of almoner to the king, and made lay abbot of Clermont. Pierre Lescot was an admirable artist, who has left us some of the finest examples of early French Renaissance architecture in Paris. But Francis lived only to see the great scheme begun, most of Lescot's work being done under Henry II. From the same anonymous writer we learn something of Parisian life in the reign of Francis I. One day a certain Monsieur Cruche, a popular poet and playwright, was performing moralities and novelties on a platform in the Place Maubert, and among them a farce, "funny enough to make half a score men die of laughter, in which the said Cruche, holding a lantern, feigned to perceive the doings of a hen and a salamander."[104] The amours of the king with the daughter of a councillor of the Parlement, named Lecoq, were only too plainly satirised. But it is ill jesting with kings. A few nights later, Monsieur Cruche was visited by eight disguised courtiers, who treated him to a supper in a tavern at the sign of the Castle in the Rue de la Juiverie, and induced him to play the farce before them. When the unhappy player came to the first scene, he was set upon by the king's friends, stripped and beaten almost to death with thongs. They were about to put him in a sack and throw him into the Seine, when poor Cruche, crying piteously, discovered his priestly tonsure, and thus escaped. Public festivities were held with incredible magnificence. When the English envoys entered Paris in 1518, there was the finest triumph ever seen. The king, the royal princes, five cardinals and a train of lords and dukes and counts, with a gorgeous military pageant, met them and conducted them to Notre Dame, whose interior was almost hidden under decorations of tapestry and of cloth of silver and of gold. A pavilion of cloth of gold, embroidered with the royal salamander, _moult riche et fort triomphante_, supported by four columns of solid silver, was erected, and was so large that some of the masonry between the choir and the high altar had to be removed to give it place. The banquet by night at the Bastille was the most solemn and sumptuous ever seen; the whole courtyard was draped and the edifice lighted by ten thousand torches; words fail to describe the triumph of the meats and table decorations. The feast ended at midnight and was followed by dances of moriscos attired in cloth of silver and of gold, by jousts and princely gifts. The extravagance of Francis was prodigious; a Venetian ambassador estimated the annual ordinary expenses of the court at 1,500,000[105] crowns; another describes the people as "eaten to the bone by taxes." Cellini declares that the king on his travels was accompanied by a train of 12,000 horse. After the defeat at Pavia, the king became excessively pious. By trumpet cry at the crossways, games--quoits, tennis, contre-boulle--were prohibited on Sundays; children were forbidden to sing along the streets, going to and from school. Blasphemers[106] were to be severely punished. In 1527 a notary was burned alive in the Place de Grève for a great blasphemy of our Lord and His holy Mother. In June of the next year some Lutherans struck down and mutilated an image of the Virgin and Child at a street corner near St. Gervais; the king was so grieved and angry that he wept violently, and offered a reward of one hundred gold crowns, but the offenders could not be found. Daily processions came from the churches to the spot, and all the religious orders, clothed in their habits, followed, "singing with such great fervour and reverence, that it was fair to see." The rector and doctors, masters and bachelors, scholars of the university, and children with lighted tapers, went there in great reverence. On Corpus Christi day the street was draped and a fair canopy stretched over the statue. The king himself walked in procession, bearing a white taper, his head uncovered in _moult gran révérence_; hautboys, clarions and trumpets played melodiously. Cardinals, prelates, great seigneurs and nobles, each with his taper of white wax, followed, with the royal archers of the guard in their train. On the morrow a procession from all the parishes of Paris, with banners, relics and crucifixes, accompanied by the king and nobles, brought a new and fair image of silver, two feet in height, which the king had caused to be made. Francis himself ascended a ladder and placed it where the other image had stood, then kissed it and descended with tears in his eyes. Thrice he kneeled and prayed, the bishop of Lisieux, his almoner, reciting fair orisons and lauds to the honour of the glorious Virgin and her image. Again the trumpets, clarions and hautboys played the _Ave Regina cælorum_, and the king, the cardinal of Louvain, and all the nobles presented their tapers to the Virgin. Next day the Parlement, the provost and sheriffs, came and put an iron trellis round the silver image for fear of robbers.[107] Never were judicial and ecclesiastical punishments so cruel and recurrent as during the period of the Renaissance. It is a common error to suppose that judicial cruelty reached its culmination in the Middle Ages. Punishments are described with appalling iteration in the pages we are following. The Place de Grève was the scene of mutilations, tortures, hangings and quarterings of criminals and traitors, the king and his court sometimes looking on. Coiners of false money were boiled alive at the pig-market; robbers and assassins were broken on the wheel and left to linger in slow agony (_tant qu'ils pourraient languir_). The Lutherans were treated like vermin, and to harbour them, to possess or print or translate one of their books, meant a fiery death. In 1525 a young Lutheran student was put in a tumbril and brought before the churches of Notre Dame and St. Genevieve, crying mercy from God and Mary and St. Genevieve; he was then taken to the Place Maubert, where, after his tongue had been pierced, he was strangled and burnt. A _gendarme_ of the Duke of Albany was burnt at the pig-market for having sown Lutheran errors in Scotland; before his execution his servant was whipped and mutilated before him at the cart-tail, but was pardoned on recantation. On Corpus Christi day, 1532, a great procession was formed, the king and provost walking bare-headed to witness the burning of six Lutherans--a scene often repeated. The Fountain of the Innocents, the Halles, the Temple, the end of the Pont St. Michel, the Place Maubert, and the Rue St. Honoré were indifferently chosen for these ghastly scenes. Almost daily the fires burnt. A woman was roasted to death for eating flesh on Fridays. In 1535, so savage were the persecutions, that Pope Paul III., with that gentleness which almost invariably has characterised Rome in dealing with heresy, wrote to Francis protesting against the horrible and execrable punishments inflicted on the Lutherans, and warned him that although he acted from good motives, yet he must remember that God the Creator, when in this world, used mercy rather than rigorous justice, and that it was a cruel death to burn a man alive; he therefore prayed and required the king to appease the fury and rigour of his justice and adopt a policy of mercy and pardon. This noble protest was effective, and some clemency was afterwards shown. But in 1547 the fanatical king, a mass of physical and moral corruption, soured and gloomy, went to his end amid the barbarities wreaked on the unhappy Vaudois Protestants. The cries of three thousand of his butchered subjects and the smoke from the ruins of twenty-five towns and hamlets were the incense of his spirit's flight. [Illustration: LA FONTAINE DES INNOCENTS.] CHAPTER XII RISE OF THE GUISES--HUGUENOT AND CATHOLIC--THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW "Beware of Montmorency and curb the power of the Guises," was the counsel of the dying Francis to his son. Henry II., dull and heavy-witted that he was, neglected the advice, and the Guises flourished in the sun of royal favour. The first Duke of Guise and founder of his renowned house was Claude, a poor cadet of René II., Duke of Lorraine. He succeeded in allying by marriage his eldest son and successor, Francis, to the House of Bourbon; his second son, Charles, became Cardinal of Lorraine, and his daughter, wife to James V. of Scotland. Duke Francis, by his military genius and wise statesmanship; Charles, by his learning and subtle wit, exalted their house to the lofty eminence it enjoyed during the stirring period that now opens. In 1558, after the disastrous defeat of Montmorency at St. Quentin, when Paris lay at the mercy of the Spanish and English armies, the duke was recalled from Italy and made Lieutenant-General of the realm. By a short and brilliant campaign, he expelled the English from Calais, and recovered in three weeks the territory held by them for more than two hundred years. Francis gained an unbounded popularity, and rose to the highest pinnacle of success; but short time was left to his royal master wherein to enjoy a reflected glory. On the 27th June 1559, lists were erected across the Rue St. Antoine, between the Tournelles and the Bastille. The peace with Spain, and the double marriage of the king's daughter to Philip II. of Spain and of his sister to the Duke of Savoy, were to be celebrated by a magnificent tournament in which the king, proud of his strength and bodily address, was to hold the field with the Duke of Guise and the princes against all comers. For three days the king distinguished himself by his triumphant prowess, and at length challenged the Duke of Montgomery, captain of the Scottish Guards; the captain prayed to be excused, but the king insisted and the course was run. Several lances were broken, but in the last encounter the stout captain failed to lower his shivered lance quickly enough, and the broken truncheon struck the royal visor, lifted it and penetrated the king's eye. Henry fell senseless and was carried to the palace of the Tournelles, where he died after an agony of eleven days. Fifteen years later, Montgomery was captured fighting with the Huguenots, and beheaded on the Place de Grève while Catherine de' Medici looked on "_pour goûter_," says Félibien quaintly, "_le plaisir de se voir vangée de la mort de son mary_." The tower in the interior of the Palais de Justice, where the unhappy Scottish noble was imprisoned after his capture, was known as the Tour Montgomery, until demolished in the reign of Louis XVI. There was, however, little love lost between Henry's queen, Catherine de' Medici, and her royal husband, who had long neglected her for the maturer charms of his mistress, Diane de Poitiers. [Illustration: WEST WING OF LOUVRE BY PIERRE LESCOT.] Henry saw Lescot's admirable design for the reconstruction of the west wing of the Louvre completed. The architect had associated a famous sculptor, Jean Goujon, with him, who executed the beautiful figures in low relief which still adorn the quadrangle front between the Pavilion de l'Horloge and the south-west angle, and the noble Caryatides, which support the musicians' gallery in the Salle Basse, or Salle des Fêtes, now known as the Salle des Caryatides. The agreement, dated 5th September 1550, awards forty-six livres each for the four plaster models and eighty crowns each for the four carved figures. Lescot preserved the external wall of the old château as the kernel of his new wing, and the enormous strength of the original building of Philip Augustus may be estimated by the fact that the embrasures of each of the five casements of the first floor looking westwards now serve as offices. So _grandement satisfait_ was Henry with the perfection of Lescot's work, that he determined to continue it along the remaining three wings, that the court of the Louvre might be a _cour non-pareille_. The south wing was, however, only begun when his tragic death occurred, and the present inconsequent and huge fabric is the work of a whole tribe of architects, whose intermittent activities extended over the reigns of nine French sovereigns. Lescot and Goujon were also associated in the construction of the most beautiful Renaissance fountain in Paris, the Fontaine des Innocents, which formerly stood against the old church of the Innocents at the corner of the Rue aux Fers. Pajou added a fourth side in 1786, when the fountain was removed to the Square des Innocents. It was while working on one of the figures of this fountain that Jean Goujon is said to have been shot as a Huguenot during the massacre of St. Bartholomew. [Illustration: LUXEMBOURG GARDENS.] Europe was now in travail of a new era, and unhappy France reeled under the tempest of the Reformation. A daring spirit of enquiry and of revolt challenged every principle on which the social fabric had been based, and the only refuge in the coming storm in France was the Monarchy. Never had its power been more absolute. The king's will was law--a harbour of safety, indeed, if he were strong and wise and virtuous: a veritable quicksand, if feeble and vicious. And to pilot the state of France in these stormy times, Henry II. left a sickly progeny of four princes, miserable puppets, whose favours were disputed for thirty years by ambitious and fanatical nobles, queens and courtesans. Francis II., a poor creature of sixteen years, the slave of his wife Marie Stuart and of the Guises, was called king of France for seventeen months. He it was who sat daily by Mary in the royal garden, on the terrace at Amboise overlooking the Loire, and, surrounded by his brothers and the ladies of the court, gazed at the revolting and merciless executions of the Protestant conspirators,[108] who, under the Prince of Condé, had plotted to destroy the Guises and to free the king from their influence. It was the first act in a horrible drama, a dread pursuivant of the civil and religious wars in France. The stake was a high one, for the victory of the reformers would sound the death-knell of the Catholic cause in Europe. There is little reason to doubt that the queen-mother, Catherine de' Medici, who now emerges into prominence, was genuinely sincere in her disapproval of the horrors of Amboise, and in her efforts to bring milder counsels to bear in dealing with the Huguenots; but the fierce passions roused by civil and religious hatred were uncontrollable. When the Huguenot noble, Villemongis, was led to the scaffold at Amboise, he dipped his hands in the blood of his slaughtered comrades, and, lifting them to heaven, cried: "Lord, behold the blood of Thy children; Thou wilt avenge them." A savage lust for blood among the Christian sectaries on either side, drawing its stimulus from the records of the ferocity of semi-barbarian Jewish tribes, smothered the gentle voice of Jesus, and during thirty years was never slaked. Treachery and assassination were the interludes of plots and battles. In 1563 the Duke of Guise was shot by a fanatical Huguenot with a pistol loaded with poisoned balls. In 1569, when the Protestant leader, Admiral Coligny, was surprised and attacked by the forces of the Duke of Anjou, Prince Condé, although wounded in the arm, hastened to his succour. As the prince passed on, his leg was broken by a kick from a vicious horse. Still charging forward, he cried: "Remember how a Louis of Bourbon goes to battle for Christ and Fatherland!" His horse was killed, himself captured; as he was handing over his sword to his captors, the Baron de Montesquieu, "_brave et vaillant gentilhomme_," says Brantôme, arrived on the scene, and, on learning what was passing, exclaimed, "_Mort Dieu!_ kill him! kill him!" and blew out Condé's brains with a pistol. The body of the heroic Bourbon was then tied on an ass, and a mocking epitaph set upon it:-- "L'an mil cinq soixante neuf, Entre Jarnac et Château neuf; Fut porté mort sur une ânesse, Cil qui voulait ôter la messe." The defeated Protestants were, however, soon roused to enthusiasm by the arrival of Jeanne of Navarre at their camp, leading her son Henry by one hand and the eldest son of Condé by the other. "Here," cried the widowed queen, "are two orphans I confide to you; two leaders that God has given you." One of these orphans was to become Henry IV. of France. [Illustration: TRITONS AND NEREIDS FROM THE OLD FONTAINE DES INNOCENTS. JEAN GOUJON.] The treaty of St. Germain, which has so often been charged on Catherine as an act of perfidy, was rather an imperative necessity, if respite were to be had from the misery into which the land had fallen. Its conditions were honourably carried out, and Catholic excesses were impartially and severely repressed. Charles IX., who was now twenty years of age, began to assert his independence of the queen-mother and of the Guises,[109] and his first movement was in the direction of conciliation. The young king offered the hand of his sister, Princess Marguerite, to Henry of Navarre, and received Coligny and Jeanne of Navarre with much honour at court. Pressure was brought to bear upon him, but, pope or no pope, the king said he was determined to conclude the marriage. The Catholic party, and especially Paris, were furious. The capital, with the provost, the Parlement, the university, the prelates, the religious orders, had always been hostile to the Huguenots. The people could with difficulty be restrained at times from assuming the office of executioners as Protestants were led to the stake. Any one who did not uncover as he passed the image of the Virgin at the street corners, or who omitted to bend the knee as the Host was carried by, was attacked as a Lutheran. When the heralds published the peace with the Huguenots at the crossways of Paris, filth and mud were thrown at them, and they went in danger of their lives: now Coligny and his Huguenots were holding their heads high in Paris, proud and insolent, and the heretic prince of Navarre was to wed the king's sister. Jeanne of Navarre died soon after her arrival at court,[110] but the alliance was hurried on. The betrothal took place in the Louvre, and, on Sunday, 17th August 1572, a high daïs was erected outside Notre Dame for the celebration of the marriage. When the ceremony had been performed by the Cardinal de Bourbon, Henry conducted his bride to the choir of the cathedral, and went walking in the bishop's garden while mass was sung. The office ended, he returned and led his wife to the bishop's palace to dinner, and a magnificent state supper at the Louvre concluded this momentous day. Three days of balls, masquerades and tourneys followed, amid the murmuring of a sullen populace. These were the _noces vermeilles_--the red nuptials--of Marguerite of France and Henry of Navarre. Meanwhile Catherine and Coligny had differed on a matter of foreign policy, and the king, bent on freeing himself from his mother's yoke, openly favoured the Huguenot leader. Catherine, terrified at the result of her own work, determined to regain her ascendency, and she conspired with her third son, the Prince of Anjou (later Henry III.), to destroy and have done with the Protestants. Coligny had often been warned of the danger he would run in Paris, but the stout old soldier knew no fear, and came to take part in the festivities of the wedding. The sounds of revelry had barely died away when Coligny, who was returning from the Louvre to his hotel, walking slowly and reading a petition, was fired at from a window as he passed the cloister of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, and wounded in the arm. He stopped and noted the house whence the shot came: it was the house of the preceptor of the Duke of Guise. The king was playing at tennis when the news came to him: he flung down his racquet, exclaiming, "What! shall I never be in peace? must I suffer new trouble every day?" and went moody and pensive to his chamber. In a few moments Prince Condé and Henry of Navarre burst in, uttering indignant protests, and begged permission to leave Paris. Charles assured them he would do justice, and that they might safely remain. In the afternoon the king, his mother and the princes, went to visit the admiral. The king asked to be left alone in the wounded man's chamber, remained a long time with him, and protested that though the wound was his friend's, the grief was his own, and he swore to avenge him. [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF ELIZABETH OF AUSTRIA, WIFE OF CHARLES IX. FRANÇOIS CLOUET.] Coligny once again was warned by his friends to beware of the court, but he refused to distrust the king. Many and conflicting are the reports of what followed. We shall not be accused of any Protestant bias if we base our story mainly on that of the two learned Benedictines[111] who are responsible for five solid tomes of the _Histoire de la Ville de Paris_. On the morrow of the attempt on Coligny's life, the queen-mother invited Charles and his brother of Anjou to walk, after dinner, in the garden of her new palace in the Tuileries: they were joined by the chief Catholic leaders, and a grand council was held. The queen dwelt on the perilous situation of the monarchy and the Catholic cause, and urged that now was the time to act: Coligny lay wounded; Navarre and Condé were in their power at the Louvre; for ten Huguenots in Paris the Catholics could oppose a thousand armed men; rid France of the Huguenot chiefs and a formidable evil were averted. Her course was approved, but the leaders shrank from including the two princes of Navarre and Condé: they were to be given their choice--recantation or death. By order of the king 12,000 arquebusiers were placed along the river and the streets, and arms were carried into the Louvre. The admiral's friends, alarmed at the sinister preparations, protested to Charles but were reassured and told to take Cosseins and fifty arquebusiers to guard his house. The provost of Paris was then summoned by the Duke of Guise and ordered to arm and organise the citizens and proceed to the Hôtel de Ville at midnight. The king, Guise said, would not lose so fair an opportunity of exterminating the Huguenots. The Catholic citizens were to tie a piece of white linen on their left arm and place a white cross in their caps that they might be recognised by their friends. At midnight the windows of their houses were to be illuminated by torches, and at the first sound of the great bell at the Palais de Justice the bloody work was to begin. Midnight drew near. Catherine was not sure of the king, and repaired to his chamber with Anjou and her councillors to fix his wavering purpose; she heaped bitter reproaches upon him, worked on his fears with stories of a vast Huguenot conspiracy and hinted that cowardice prevented him from seizing the fairest opportunity that God had ever offered, to free himself from his enemies. She repeated an Italian prelate's vicious epigram: "_Che pietà lor ser crudel, che crudeltà, lor ser pietosa_,"[112] and concluded by threatening to leave the court with the Duke of Anjou rather than witness the destruction of the Catholic cause. Charles, who had listened sullenly, was stung by the taunt of cowardice and broke into a delirium of passion; he called for the death of every Huguenot in France, that none might be left to reproach him afterwards. Catherine gave him no time for farther vacillation. The great bell of St. Germain l'Auxerrois was rung, and at two in the morning of Sunday, St. Bartholomew's Day, 24th August 1572, the Duke of Guise and his followers issued forth to do their Sabbath morning's work. Cosseins saw his leader coming and knew what was expected of him. Coligny's door was forced, his servants were poignarded, and Besme, a German in the service of Guise, followed by others, burst into the admiral's room. The old man stood erect in his _robe de chambre_, facing his murderers. "Art thou the admiral?" demanded Besme. "I am he," answered Coligny with unfaltering voice and, gazing steadily at the naked sword pointed at his breast, added, "Young man, thou shouldst show more respect to my white hairs; yet canst thou shorten but little my brief life." For answer he was pierced by Besme's sword and stabbed to death by his companions. Guise stood waiting in the street below and the body was flung down to him from the window. He wiped the blood from the old man's face, looked at it, and said, "It is he!" Spurning the body with his foot he cried, "Courage, soldiers! we have begun well; now for the others, the king commands it. "Meanwhile the bell of the Palais de Justice, answering that of St. Germain, was booming forth its awful summons, and the citizens hastened to perform their part. Some passing the body of Coligny cut off the head and took it to the king and queen, others mutilated the trunk, which, after being dragged about the streets for three days, was hanged by the feet on the gibbet at Montfaucon, where Charles and Catherine are said to have come to gaze on it. All the Huguenot nobles dwelling near the admiral were pitilessly murdered, and a similar carnage took place at the Louvre. Marguerite, the young bride of Navarre, in her Memoirs, tells of the horrors of that morning, how, when half-asleep, a wounded Huguenot nobleman rushed into her chamber, pursued by four archers, and flung himself on her bed imploring protection. A captain of the guard entered, from whom she gained his life. She entreated the captain to lead her to her sister's room, and as she fled thither, more dead than alive, another fugitive was hewn down by a hallebardier only three paces from her; she fell fainting in the captain's arms. Meanwhile Charles, the queen-mother, and Henry of Anjou, after the violent scene in the king's chamber, had lain down for two hours' rest and then went to a window which overlooked the _basse-cour_ of the Louvre, to see the "beginning of the executions." If we may believe Henry's story, they had not been there long before the sound of a pistol shot filled them with dread and remorse, and a messenger was sent to bid Guise to spare the admiral and to stay the whole undertaking; but the nobleman who had been sent returned saying that Guise had told him it was too late: the admiral was dead, and the executions had begun all over the city. A dozen Protestant nobles of the suites of Condé and Navarre, who had taken refuge in the Louvre, were seized; one was even dragged from a sick-bed: all were taken to the courtyard and hewn in pieces by the Swiss guards under the eyes of Charles, who cried: "Let none escape." Meantime the Catholic leaders had been scouring the streets on horseback, shouting to the people that a Huguenot conspiracy to murder the king had been discovered, and that it was the king's wish that all the Huguenots should be destroyed. A list of the Huguenots in Paris had been prepared and all their houses marked. None was spared. Old and young, women and children, were pitilessly butchered. All that awful Sunday the orgy of slaughter and pillage went on; every gate of the city had been closed and the keys brought to the king. Night fell and the carnage was not stayed. Two days yet and two nights the city was a prey to the ministers of death, and some Catholics, denounced by personal enemies, were involved in the massacre. The resplendent August sun, the fair sky and serene atmosphere were held to be a divine augury, and a whitethorn in the cemetery of the Innocents blooming out of season was hailed as a miracle and a visible token from God that the Catholic religion was to blossom again by the destruction of the Huguenots. A famous professor at the university was flung out of a window by the scholars, his body insulted and dragged in the mud. The murders did not wholly cease until 17th September. Various were the estimates of the slain--20,000, 5,000, 2,000. A goldsmith named Cruce went about displaying his robust arm and boasting that he had accounted for 400 Huguenots. The streets, the front of the Louvre, the public places were blocked by dead bodies; tumbrils[113] were hired to throw them into the Seine, which literally for days ran red with blood. The princes of Navarre and Condé saw the privacy of their chambers violated by a posse of archers on St. Bartholomew's morning; they were forced to dress and were haled before the king, who, with a fierce look and glaring eyes, swore at them, reproached them for waging war upon him, and ordered them to change their religion. On their refusal he grew furious with rage, and by dint of threats wrung from them a promise to go to mass. [Illustration: THE LOUVRE--GALERIE D'APOLLON.] Charles is said to have stood at a window in the Petite Galerie of the Louvre and to have fired across the river with a long arquebus on some Huguenots who, being lodged on the southern side, had escaped massacre, and were riding up to learn what was passing. The statement is much canvassed by authorities. It is at least permissible to doubt the assertion, since the first floor[114] of the Petite Galerie, where the king is traditionally believed to have placed himself, was not in existence before the time of Henry IV. If the ground floor be meant, a further difficulty arises from the fact that the southern end was not furnished with a window in Charles IX.'s time. On the 26th of August the king boldly avowed responsibility before the Parlement for measures which he alleged had been necessary to suppress a Huguenot insurrection aiming at the assassination of himself and the royal family and the destruction of the Catholic religion in France. The ears of the Catholic princes of Europe and of the pope were abused by this specious lie; they believed that the Catholic cause had been saved from ruin; the so-called victory was hailed with transports of joy, and a medal was struck in Rome to celebrate the defeat of the Huguenots.[115] Similar horrors were enacted in the chief provincial towns. Some few governors, to their honour, declined to carry out the orders of the court, and the public executioner at Troyes refused to take part in the butchery, protesting that his office was not to kill untried persons. At Angers some of the rich Huguenots were imprisoned and their property confiscated by order of Henry of Anjou. "Monseigneur, we can make more than 150,000 francs out of them," wrote his agent. Such was the massacre of St. Bartholomew. The death-roll of the victims is known to the Recording Angel alone. It was a tremendous folly no less than an indelible crime, for it steeled the heart of every Protestant to avenge his slaughtered brethren. [Illustration: PETITE GALERIE OF THE LOUVRE.] Many of the Huguenot leaders escaped from Paris while the soldiers sent to despatch them were pillaging, and the flames of civil strife burst forth fiercer than ever. The court had prepared for massacre, not for war; and while the king was receiving the felicitations of the courts of Spain and Rome, he was forced by the Peace of La Rochelle to concede liberty of conscience to the Protestants and to restore their sequestered estates and offices. After two years of agony of mind and remorse, Charles IX. lay dying of consumption, abandoned by all save his faithful Huguenot nurse. The blood flowing from his nostrils seemed a token of God's wrath; and moaning "Ah! _ma mie_, what bloodshed! what murders! I am lost! I am lost!" the poor crowned wretch passed to his account. He had not yet reached his twenty-fourth year. [Illustration: PLAN OF PARIS WHEN BESIEGED BY HENRY IV. IN 1590.] CHAPTER XIII HENRY III.--THE LEAGUE--SIEGE OF PARIS BY HENRY IV.--HIS CONVERSION, REIGN AND ASSASSINATION When the third of Catherine's sons, having resigned the sovereignty of Poland, was being consecrated at Rheims, the crown is said to have twice slipped from his head, the insentient diadem itself shrinking in horror from the brow of a prince destined to pollute it with deeper shame. Treacherous and bloody, Henry mingled grovelling piety with debauchery, and made of the court a veritable Alsatia, where paid assassins who stabbed from behind and _mignons_ who struck to the face, were part of the train of every prince. The king's _mignons_, with their insolent bearing, their extravagant and effeminate dress, their hair powdered and curled, their neck ruffles so broad that their heads resembled the head of John the Baptist on a charger,--gambling, blaspheming swashbucklers--were hateful alike to Huguenot and Catholic. Less than four years after St. Bartholomew the Peace of 1576 gave the Huguenots all they had ever demanded or hoped for. In 1582 died the Duke of Alençon, Catherine's last surviving son and heir to the throne; Henry gave no hope of posterity and the Catholic party were confronted by the possibility of the sceptre of St. Louis descending to a relapsed heretic. A tremendous wave of feeling ran through France, and a Holy League was formed to meet the danger, with the Duke of Guise as leader. The king tried in vain to win some of the Huguenot and League partisans by the solemn institution of the Order of the Holy Ghost,[116] in the church of the Augustinians, to commemorate his elevation to the thrones of Poland and France on the day of Pentecost. The people were equally recalcitrant. When Henry entered Paris after the campaign of 1587, they shouted for their idol, the Balafré,[117] crying, "Saul has slain his thousands but David his tens of thousands." The king in his jealousy and disgust forbade Guise to enter Paris; Guise coolly ignored the command, and a few months later arrived at the head of a formidable train of nobles, amid the joyous acclamation of the people, who greeted him with chants of "_Hosannah, Filio David!_" Angry scenes followed. The duke sternly called his master to duty, and warned him to take vigorous measures against the Huguenots or lose his crown; the king, pale with anger, dismissed him and prepared to strike. [Illustration: CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. FRENCH SCHOOL, 16TH CENTURY.] On the night of the 11th May a force of Royal Guards and 4000 Swiss mercenaries entered Paris, but the Parisians, with that genius for insurrection which has always characterised them, were equal to the occasion. The sixteen sections of the city met; in the morning the people were under arms; and barricades and chains blocked the streets. The St. Antoine section, ever to the front, stood up to the king's Guards and to the Swiss advancing to occupy their quarter, defeated them, and with exultant cries rushed to threaten the Louvre itself. Henry was forced to send his mother to treat with the duke; she returned with terms that meant a virtual abdication. Henry took horse and fled, vowing he would come back only through a breach in the walls. But Guise was supreme in Paris, and the pitiful monarch was soon forced to yield; he signed the terms of his own humiliation, and went to Blois to meet Guise and the States-General with bitterness in his heart, brooding over his revenge. Visitors to Blois will recall the scene of the tragic end of Guise, the incidents of which the official guardians of the château are wont to recite with dramatic gesture. Fearless and impatient of warnings, the great captain fell into the trap prepared for him; he was done to death in the king's chamber, like a lion caught in the toils. Henry, who had heard mass and prayed that God would be gracious to him and permit the success of his enterprise, hastened to his mother, now aged and dying. "Madame," said he, "I have killed the king of Paris and am become once more king of France."[118] The Cardinal of Lorraine, separated from the king's chamber only by a partition, paled as he heard his nephew's struggles. "Yes," said his warder, "the king has some accounts to settle with you." Next morning the old cardinal was led out and hacked to pieces. The two bodies were burnt and the ashes scattered to the winds to prevent their being worshipped as relics. It was Christmas Eve of 1588. The stupid crime brought its inevitable consequences-- "Revenge and hate bring forth their kind, Like the foul cubs their parents are." Paris and the Leaguers were stung to fury; the Sorbonne declared the king deposed; the pope banned him and a popular preacher called for another bloodletting. Henry, in a final act of shame and despair, flung himself into the king of Navarre's arms, and on the 30th July 1589, the two Henrys encamped at St. Cloud and threatened Paris with an army of 40,000 men. On the morrow Jacques Clement, a young Dominican friar, after preparing himself by fasting, prayer and holy communion, left Paris with a forged letter for the king, reached the camp and asked for a private interview. While Henry was reading the letter the friar snatched a dagger from his sleeve and mortally stabbed him. He lingered until 2nd August, and after pronouncing Henry of Navarre his lawful successor and bidding his Council swear allegiance to the new dynasty, the last of the thirteen Valois kings passed to his doom. Catherine de' Medici had already preceded him, burdened with the anathemas of the Cardinal of Bourbon. The people of Paris swore that if her body were brought to St. Denis they would fling it to the shambles or into the Seine, and a famous theologian, preaching at St. Bartholomew's church, declared to the faithful that he knew not if it were right to pray God for her soul, but that if they cared to give her in charity a Pater or an Ave they might do so for what it was worth. This was the reward of her thirty years of devoted toil, of vigils and of plots to further the Catholic cause. Not until a quarter of a century had passed were her ashes laid beside those of her husband in the rich Renaissance tomb, which still exists, in the royal church of St. Denis. When the news of the king's death reached Paris, the Duchess of Montpensier, whom he had threatened to burn alive when he entered, leapt into her carriage and drove through the streets crying, "Good news, friends! Good news! The tyrant is dead!" Jacques Clement, who had been cut to pieces by the king's Guards, was worshipped as a martyr, and his mother rewarded for having given birth to the saviour of France. [Illustration: ST. GERVAIS.] Henry of Navarre, unable to carry on the siege with a divided army, directed his course for Normandy. The exultant Parisians proclaimed the Cardinal of Bourbon king, under the title of Charles X., and the Duke of Mayenne, with a large army, marched forth to give battle to Henry. So confident were the Leaguers of victory, that their leaders hired windows along the Rue St. Antoine, to witness the return of the duke bringing the "Bearnais"[119] dead or a prisoner. Henry did indeed return, but it was after a victorious campaign. He captured the Faubourg St. Jacques, and fell upon the abbey of St. Germain des Prés while the astonished monks were preparing to sing mass. Henry seized the monastery, climbed the steeple of the church and gazed on Paris. He refreshed his troops, suffered them to pillage the city south of the Seine, and turned to the west to fix his capital at Tours. In 1590 he won at Ivry on the Eure, about fifty miles south of Rouen, the brilliant victory over the armies of the League and of Spain which Macaulay has popularised in a stirring poem. The village ever since has been known as Ivry-la-Bataille. The road to Paris was now open, and the city endured another and most terrible siege. The Leaguers fought and suffered with the utmost constancy. Reliquaries were melted down for money, church bells for cannon. The clergy and religious orders were caught by the military enthusiasm. The bishop of Senlis and the prior of the Carthusians, two valiant Maccabees, were seen, crucifix in one hand, and a pike in the other, leading a procession of armed priests, monks and scholars through the streets. Friars from the mendicant orders were among them, their habits tucked up, hoods thrown back, casques on their heads and cuirasses on their breasts. All marched sword by side, dagger in girdle, musket on shoulder, the strangest army of the church militant ever seen. As they passed the Pont Notre Dame the papal legate was crossing in his carriage, and was asked to stop and give his blessing. After this benediction a salvo of musketry was called for, and some of the host of the Lord, forgetting that their muskets were loaded with ball, killed a papal officer and wounded a servant of the ambassador of Spain. [Illustration: LUXEMBOURG PALACE.] Four months the Parisians endured starvation and all the attendant horrors of a siege, the incidents of which, as described by contemporaries, are so ghastly that the pen recoils from transcribing them. At length, when they were at the last extremity, the Duke of Parma arrived with a Spanish army, forced Henry to raise the siege, and revictualled the city. After war, anarchy. In November 1591 it was discovered that secret letters were passing between Brizard, an officer in the service of the Duke of Mayenne in Paris, and a royalist at St. Denis. The sections demanded Brizard's instant execution, and on his discharge by the Parlement the _curé_ of St. Jacques fulminated against that body and declared that cold steel must be tried (_faut jouer des couteaux_). A secret revolutionary committee of ten was appointed, and a _papier rouge_ or list of suspects in all the districts of Paris was drawn up under three categories: P. (_pendus_), those to be hung; D. (_dagués_), those to be poignarded; C. (_chassés_), those to be expelled. On the night of the 15th November a meeting was held at the house of the _curé_ of St. Jacques, and in the morning the president of the Parlement, Brisson, was seized and dragged to the Petit Châtelet, where a revolutionary tribunal, in black cloaks, on which were sewn large red crosses, condemned him to death. Meanwhile two councillors of the Parlement, Larcher and Tardif, had been seized, the latter by the _curé_ of St. Cosme, and haled to the Châtelet. All three were dragged to a room, and the executioner was forced to hang them from a beam. The bodies were then stripped, an inscription was hung about their necks, and they were suspended from the gallows in the Place de Grève. The sections believed that Paris would rise: they only shocked the more orderly citizens. The Duke of Mayenne, who was at Lyons, on the receipt of the news hastened to Paris, temporised a while and, when sure of support, seized four of the most dangerous leaders of the sections and hanged them without trial in the Salle basse of the Louvre. All save the more violent partisans were now weary of the strife. The Leaguers themselves were divided. The sections aimed at a theocratic democracy; another party favoured the Duke of Mayenne; a third, the Duke of Guise; a fourth, the Infanta of Spain. It was decided to convoke the States-General at Paris. They met at the Louvre in 1593, and a conference was arranged with Henry's supporters at Suresnes. Crowds flocked there, crying, "Peace, peace; blessed be they who bring it; cursed they who prevent it." Henry knew the supreme moment was come. France was still profoundly Catholic; he must choose between his religion and France. He chose to heal his country's wounds and perhaps to save her very existence. Learned theologians were deputed to confer with him at Paris, whom he astonished and confounded by his knowledge of Scripture; they declared that they had never met a heretic better able to defend his cause. But on 23rd July 1573, he professed himself convinced, and the same evening wrote to his mistress, Gabrielle d'Estrées, that he had spoken with the bishops, and that a hundred anxieties were making St. Denis hateful to him. "On Sunday," he adds, "I am to take the perilous leap. _Bonjour_, my heart; come to me early to-morrow. It seems a year since I saw you. A million times I kiss the fair hands of my angel and the mouth of my dear mistress." On Sunday, under the great portal of St. Denis, the archbishop of Bourges sat enthroned in a chair covered with white damask and embroidered with the arms of France and of Navarre. He was attended by many prelates and the prior and monks of St. Denis, and the cross and the book of the Gospels were held before him. Henry drew nigh. "Who are you?" demanded the archbishop. "I am the king." "What do you ask?" "I wish to be received in the bosom of the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church." "Is it your will?" "Yes, I will and desire it." Henry then knelt and made profession of his faith, kissed the prelate's ring, received his blessing and was led to the choir, where he knelt before the high altar and repeated his profession of faith on the holy Gospels amid cries of "_Vive le roi!_" The clerical extremists in Paris anathematised all concerned. Violent _curés_ again donned their armour, children were baptised and mass was sung by cuirassed priests. The _curé_ of St. Cosme seized a partisan, and with other fanatics of the League hastened to the Latin Quarter to raise the university. But the people were heartsick of the whole business; and when Henry entered Paris after his coronation at Chartres, resplendent in velvet robes embroidered with gold and seated on his dapple grey charger, his famous helmet with its white plumes ever in his hand saluting the ladies at the windows, he was hailed with shouts of joy. Shops were reopened, the artisan took up his tools and the merchant went to his counter with a sigh of relief. A general amnesty was proclaimed, and the Spanish garrison were allowed to depart with their arms. As they filed out of the Porte St. Denis in heavy rain, three thousand strong, the king was sitting at a window above the gates. "Remember me to your master," he cried, "but do not return." On the morrow the provost and sheriffs and chief citizens came to the Louvre bearing presents of sweetmeats, sugar-plums and malmsey wine. "Yesterday I received your hearts, to-day I receive your sweets," the king remarked; all were charmed by his wit, his forbearance and generosity. The stubborn university was last to give way, but when the doctors of theology learnt that Henry had touched for the king's evil and that many had been cured, they too were convinced. Paris, "well worth a mass," was wooed and won. The memorable Edict of Nantes established liberty of worship and political equality for the Protestants. The war with Spain was brought to a successful issue, and Henry, with his minister the Duke of Sully, probably the greatest financial genius France has ever known, by wise and firm statesmanship lifted the country from bankruptcy to prosperity and contentment. [Illustration: HÔTEL DE SULLY.] Henry, like one of his predecessors, had of _bastards et bastardes une moult belle compagnie_, but as yet no legitimate heir. A divorce from Marguerite of Valois and a politic marriage with the pope's niece, Marie de' Medici,[120] gave him a magnificent dowry, an additional bond to the papacy, and several children. Henri Quatre, hero of Voltaire's famous epic, is the most popular and romantic figure in the gallery of French kings. His statue on the Pont Neuf was spared for a while by the revolutionists, who made every passer-by in a carriage alight and bow to it. Born among the mountains, Henry was patient of fatigue and hardships. In good or evil fortune his gaiety of heart never failed him. Brave and generous, courteous and witty, he endeared himself to all his subjects, save a few fanatics, and won a desperate cause by sheer personal magic and capacity. Like all his race, Henry was susceptible to the charms of the daughters of Eve, but, unlike his descendants, he never sacrificed France to their tears and wiles. When the question of the succession was urgent he thought of marrying Gabrielle d'Estrées, whom he had created Duchess of Beaufort. But Sully opposed the union, and the impatient Gabrielle sought her royal lover, and used all her powers of fascination to compass the dismissal of the great minister. Henry, however, stood firm, and Gabrielle burst into passionate reproaches. It was of no avail. "Let me tell you," answered Henry, calmly, "if I must choose between you and the duke, I would sooner part with ten mistresses such as you than one faithful servant such as he." In 1610 the king was making great preparations for a war with Austria, and, on the 14th May, desiring to consult Sully, who was unwell in his rooms at the Arsenal, he determined to spare him the fatigue of travelling to the Louvre, and to drive to the Arsenal. With much foreboding the king had agreed to the coronation of Marie de' Medici, which had been celebrated at St. Denis with great pomp. The ceremony was attended by two sinister incidents. The Gospel for the day, taken from Mark x., included the answer of Jesus to the Pharisees who tempted Him by asking--"Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife?"--the Gospel was hurriedly changed. And when the usual largesse of gold and silver pieces was thrown to the crowd not a voice cried, "_Vive le roi_," or "_Vive la reine_." That night the king tossed restless on his bed, pursued by evil dreams. On the morrow his counsellors begged him to defer his journey, but nineteen plots to assassinate him had already failed: he gently put aside their warnings, and repeated his favourite maxim that fear had no place in a generous heart. It was a warm day, and the king entered his open carriage, attended by the Dukes of Epernon and Montbazon and five other courtiers; a number of _valets de pied_ followed him. In the narrow Rue de la Ferronnerie the carriage was stopped by a block in the traffic, and the servants were sent round by the cemetery of the Innocents. While the king was listening to the reading of a letter by the Duke of Epernon, one Francis Ravaillac, who had been watching his opportunity for twelve months, placed his foot on a wheel of the coach, leaned forward, and plunged a knife into the king's breast. Before he could be seized he pulled out the fatal steel and doubled his thrust, piercing him to the heart. "_Je suis blessé_," cried Henry, and never spoke again. The widened Rue de la Ferronnerie still exists; the tragedy took place opposite the present no. 3. The regicide was seized, and all the tortures that the most refined cruelty could invent were inflicted upon him. He was dragged to the Place de Grève, his right hand cut off and, with the fatal knife, flung into the flames; the flesh was torn from his arms, breast and legs; melted lead and boiling oil were poured into the wounds. Horses were then tied to each of his four limbs, and were lashed for an hour, when at length the body was torn to pieces and burnt to ashes. Some writers have inculpated the Jesuits for the murder, but it may more reasonably be attributed to the fury of a crazy fanatic. Certain it is that Henry's heart was given to the Jesuits for the church of their college of la Flèche, which was founded by him. The first Bourbon king has left his impress on the architecture of Paris. Small progress had been made during the reign of Henry II.'s three sons with their father's plans for the rebuilding of the Louvre. The work had been continued along the river front after Lescot's death in 1578 by Baptiste du Cercan, and Catherine de' Medici had erected the gallery on the south, known as the Petite Galerie--a ground-floor building with a terrace on top, intended for a meeting-place and promenade and not for residence; she had also begun the palace of the Tuileries in 1564, but abandoned it on being warned by her astrologer, Ruggieri, that she should die under the ruins of a house near St. Germain.[121] Henry, soon after he had entered Paris, elaborated a vast scheme for finishing the Tuileries, demolishing the churches of St. Thomas and St. Nicholas, quadrupling the size of the old Louvre and joining the two palaces by continuing the Grande Galerie, already begun by Catherine, to the west. Towards the east the hôtels d'Alençon, de Bourbon and the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois were to be demolished, and a great open space was to be levelled between the new east front of the Louvre and the Pont Neuf. At Henry's accession Catherine's architects, Philibert de l'Orme and Jean Bullant, had completed the superb domed central pavilion of the Tuileries, with its two contiguous galleries, and begun the end pavilions. The gardens, with the famous maze or _dedalus_ and Palissy's beautiful grotto, had been completed in 1476, and for some years were a favourite promenade for Catherine and her court. Henry's plans were so far carried out that on New Year's day, 1608, he could walk along the Grande Galerie to the Pavilion de Flore at the extreme west of the river front, and enter the south wing of the Tuileries which had been extended to meet it. The Pavilion de Flore thus became the angle of junction between the two palaces. An upper floor was imposed on the Petite Galerie, and adorned with paintings representing the kings of France. Henry intended the ground floor of the Grande Galerie for the accommodation of painters, sculptors, goldsmiths, tapestry weavers, smiths, and other craftsmen. The quadrangle, however, remained as the last Valois had left it--half Renaissance, half Gothic--and the north-east and south-east towers of the original château were still standing to be drawn by Sylvestre towards the middle of the seventeenth century. Domenico da Cortona's unfinished Hôtel de Ville was taken in hand after more than half-a-century and practically completed.[122] The larger, north portion of the Pont Neuf was built, the two islets west of the Cité were incorporated with the island to form the Place Dauphine and the ground that now divides the two sections of the bridge--a new street, the Rue Dauphine, being cut through the garden of the Augustins and the ruins of the college of St. Denis. The Place Royale (now des Vosges) was built, that charming relic of seventeenth and eighteenth century fashionable Paris, where Molière's _Précieuses_ lived. [Illustration: PLACE DES VOSGES.] [Illustration: PLACE DES VOSGES.] How different is the present aspect of this once courtly square! Here noble gentlemen in dazzling armour jousted, while, from the windows of each of the thirty-five pavilions, gentle dames and demoiselles smiled gracious guerdon to their cavaliers. Around the bronze statue of Louis XIII., proudly erect on the noble horse cast by Daniello da Volterra, in the middle of the gardens, fine ladies were carried in their sedan-chairs and angry gallants fought out their quarrels. And now on the scene of these brilliant revels, peaceful inhabitants of the east of Paris sun themselves and children play. Bronze horse and royal rider went to the melting pot of the Revolution to be forged into the cannon that defeated and humbled the allied kings of Europe, and a feeble marble equestrian statue, erected under the Restoration, occupies its place. Henry also partly rebuilt the Hôtel Dieu, created new streets, and widened others.[123] New fountains and quays were built; the Porte du Temple was reopened, and the Porte des Tournelles constructed. Unhappily, some of the old wooden bridges remained, and on Sunday, 22nd December 1596, the Pont aux Meuniers (Miller's Bridge), just below the Pont au Change, suddenly collapsed, with all its shops and houses, and sixty persons perished. They were not much regretted, for most of them had enriched themselves by the plunder of Huguenots, and during the troubles of the League. The bridge was rebuilt of wood, at the cost of the captain of the corps of archers, and as the houses were painted each with the figure of a bird, the new bridge was known as the Pont aux Oiseaux (Bridge of Birds). It spanned the river from the end of the Rue St. Denis and the arch of the Grand Châtelet to the Tour de l'Horloge of the Palais de Justice. In 1621, however, it and the Pont au Change were consumed by fire in a few hours and, in 1639, the two wooden bridges were replaced by a bridge of stone, the Pont au Change, which stood until rebuilt in 1858. It was in Henry's reign that the Penitents, a regularised order of reformed Franciscan Tertiaries, were established at Picpus, a small village south-east of the Porte St. Antoine, and the friars became known to the Parisians as the Picpuses. The buildings are now occupied by the nuns of the Sacré Coeur, whose church contains a much venerated statuette of the Virgin, which, in Henry's reign, stood over the portal of the Capucin convent in the Rue St. Honoré. Readers of _Les Misérables_ will remember that it was over the high walls of this convent that Jean Valjean escaped with Cosette from his pursuers. At the end of the garden lie buried in the cemetery of Picpus the victims of the Revolution who were guillotined on the Place du Trône Renversé (now du Trône). [Illustration: OLD HOUSES NEAR PONT ST. MICHEL, SHOWING SPIRE OF THE STE. CHAPELLE.] [Illustration: PONT ST. MICHEL.] We are able to give the impression which the Paris of Henri Quatre made on an English traveller, a friend of Ben Johnson and author of _Coryat's Crudities, hastily gobbled up in five months' Travell_. The first objects that met Coryat's eye are characteristic. As he travelled along the St. Denis road he passed "seven[124] faire pillars of freestone at equal distances, each with an image of St. Denis and his two companions, and a little this side of Paris was the fairest gallows I ever saw, built on Montfaucon, which consisted of fourteene fair pillars of freestone." He notes "the fourteene gates of Paris, the goodly buildings, mostly of fair, white stone and"--a detail always unpleasantly impressed on travellers--"the evil-smelling streets, which are the dirtiest and the most stinking I ever saw in any city in my life. Lutetia! well dothe it brooke being so called from the Latin word _lutum_, which signifieth dirt." Coryat was impressed by the bridges--"the goodly bridge of white freestone nearly finished (the Pont Neuf); a famous bridge that far exceedeth this, having one of the fairest streets in Paris called our Ladies street; the bridge of Exchange where the goldsmiths live; St. Michael's bridge, and the bridge of Birds." He admires the "Via Jacobea, full of bookesellers' faire shoppes, most plentifully furnished with bookes, and the fair building, very spacious and broad, where the Judges sit in the Palais de Justice, the roofs sumptuously gilt and embossed, with an exceeding multitude of great, long bosses hanging downward." Coryat next visited the fine quadrangle of the Louvre, whose outside was exquisitely wrought with festoons, and decked with many stately pillars and images. From Queen Mary's bedroom he went to a room[125] "which excelleth not only all that are now in the world but also all that were since the creation thereof, even a gallery, a perfect description whereof would require a large volume, with a roofe of most glittering and admirable beauty. Yea, so unspeakably fair is it that a man can hardly comprehend it in his mind that hath not seen it with his bodily eyes." The Tuileries gardens were the finest he ever beheld for length of delectable walks. Next day Coryat saw the one thing above all he desired to see, "that most rare ornament of learning Isaac Casaubon," who told him to observe "a certain profane, superstitious ceremony of the papists--a bedde carried after a very ethnicall manner, or rather a canopy in the form of a bedde, under which the Bishop of the city, with certain priests, carry the Sacrament. The procession of Corpus Christi," he adds, "though the papists esteemed it very holy, was methinks very pitiful. The streets were sumptuously adorned with paintings and rich cloth of arras, the costliest they could provide, the shews of Our Lady street being so hyperbolical in pomp that it exceedeth all the rest by many degrees. Upon public tables in the streets they exposed rich plate as ever I saw in my life, exceeding costly goblets and what not tending to pomp; and on the middest of the tables stood a golden crucifix and divers other gorgeous images. Following the clergy, in capes exceeding rich, came many couples of little singing choristers, which, pretty innocent punies, were so egregiously deformed that moved great pity in any relenting spectator, being so clean shaved round about their heads that a man could perceive no more than the very rootes of their hair." At the royal suburb Coryat saw "St. Denis, his head enclosed in a wonderful, rich helmet, beset with exceeding abundant pretious stones," but the skull itself he "beheld not plainly, only the forepart through a pretty, crystall glass, and by light of a wax candle." CHAPTER XIV PARIS UNDER RICHELIEU AND MAZARIN Louis XIII. was nine years of age when he came to the throne in 1610. For a time the regent, Marie de' Medici, was content to suffer the great Sully to hold office, but soon favouritism and the greed of princes, to the ill-hap of France, drove him in the prime of life from Paris into the retirement of his château of Villebon, and a feeble and venal Florentine, Concini, took his place. The Prince of Condé, now a Catholic, the Duke of Mayenne, and a pack of nobles who professed solicitude for the wrongs of the _pauvre peuple_, fell upon the royal treasury like hounds on their quarry. The court, to meet their demands, neglected to pay the poor annuitants of the Hôtel de Ville, and this was the only result to the _pauvre peuple_. In 1614, so critical was the financial situation, that the States-General were called to meet in the Salle Bourbon,[126] but to little purpose. Recriminations were bandied between the noblesse and the Tiers Etat. The insolence of the former was intolerable. One member of the Tiers was thrashed by a noble and could obtain no redress. The clergy refused to bear any of the public burdens. The orator of the Tiers, speaking on his knees according to usage, warned the court that despair might make the people conscious that a soldier was none other than a peasant bearing arms, and that when the vine-dresser took up the arquebus he might one day cease to be the anvil and become the hammer. But there was no thought for the common weal; each order wrangled for its own privileges, and their meeting-place was closed on the pretext that the hall was wanted for a royal ballet. No protest was raised, and the States-General never met again until the fateful meeting at Versailles, in 1789, when a similar pretext was tried, with very different consequences. Among the clergy, however, sat a young priest of twenty-nine years of age, chosen for their orator, Armand Duplessis de Richelieu, who made rapid strides to fame. In 1616 the nobles were once more in arms, and Condé was again bought off. The helpless court was in pitiful straits and the country drifting to civil war, when Richelieu, who, meanwhile, had been made a royal councillor and minister for foreign affairs, took the Condé business in hand. He had the prince arrested in the Louvre itself and flung into the Bastille; the noble blackmailers were declared guilty of treason, and three armies marched against them. The triumph of the court seemed assured, when Louis XIII., now sixteen years of age, suddenly freed himself from tutelage, and with the help of the favourite companion of his pastimes, Albert de Luynes, son of a soldier of fortune, determined to rid himself of Concini. The all-powerful Florentine, on 24th April 1617, was crossing the bridge that spanned the fosse of the Louvre when the captain of the royal Guards, who was accompanied by a score of gentlemen, touched him on the shoulder and told him he was the king's prisoner. "I, a prisoner!" exclaimed Concini, moving his hand towards his sword. Before he could utter another word he fell dead, riddled with pistol shots; Louis appeared at a window, and all the Louvre resounded with cries of "_Vive le roi!_" Concini's wife, to whom he owed his ascendency over the queen-mother, was accused of sorcery, beheaded and burnt on the Place de Grève; Marie was packed off to Blois and Richelieu exiled to his bishopric of Luçon. De Luynes, enriched by the confiscated wealth of the Concini, now became supreme, only to demonstrate a pitiful incapacity. The nobles had risen and were rallying round Marie; the Protestants were defying the state; but Luynes was impotent, and soon went to a dishonoured grave, leaving chaos behind him. [Illustration: PONT NEUF.] Richelieu's star was now in the ascendant. The king drew near to his mother and both turned to the one man who seemed able to knit together the distracted state. A cardinal's hat was obtained for him from Rome, and the illustrious churchman ruled France for eighteen years. Everything went down before his commanding genius, his iron will and his indefatigable industry. "I reflect long," said he, "before making a decision, but once my mind is made up, I go straight to the goal. I mow down all before me, and cover all with my scarlet robe." The Huguenots, backed by the English, aimed at founding an independent republic: Richelieu captured La Rochelle[127] and wiped them out as a political party. The great nobles sought to divide power with the crown: he demolished their fortresses, made them bow their necks to the royal yoke or chopped off their heads. They defied the king's edict against duelling: the Count of Bouteville, the most notorious duellist of his time, and the Count of Les Chapelles were sent to the scaffold for having defiantly fought duels in the Place Royale in open noonday, at which the Marquis of Buffy was killed. The execution made a profound impression, for the count was a Montmorency, and the Condés, the Orleans, the Montmorencys and all the most powerful nobles brought pressure to bear on the king and swore that the sentence should never be carried out. But Richelieu was firm as a tower. "It is an infamous thing," he told the king, "to punish the weak alone; they cast no baleful shade: we must keep discipline by striking down the mighty." Richelieu crushed the Parlement and revolutionised the provincial administrations. He maintained seven armies in the field, and two navies on the seas at one and the same time. He added four provinces to France--Alsace, Lorraine, Artois and Rousillon, humiliated Austria and exalted his country to the proud position of dominant factor in European politics. He foiled plot after plot and crushed rebellion. The queen-mother, Gaston Duke of Orleans her second son and heir to the throne, the Marquis of Cinq-Mars the king's own favourite--each tried a fall with the great minister, but was thrown and punished with pitiless severity. Marie herself was driven to exile--almost poverty--at Brussels, and died a miserable death at Cologne. The despicable Gaston, who twice betrayed his friends to save his own skin, was watched, and when the queen, Anne of Austria, gave birth to a son after twenty years of marriage, he was deprived of his dignities and possessions and interned at Blois. The Marquis of Cinq-Mars, and the last Duke of Montmorency, son and grandson of two High Constables of France, felt the stroke of the headsman's axe. In 1642, when the mighty cardinal had attained the highest pinnacle of success and fame, a mortal disease declared itself. His physicians talked the usual platitudes of hope, but he would have none of them, and sent for the _curé_ of St. Eustache. "Do you pardon your enemies?" the priest asked. "I have none, save those of the state," replied the dying cardinal, and, pointing to the Host, exclaimed, "There is my judge." "At my entry to office," he wrote to Louis XIII. in his political testament, "your Majesty divided the powers of the state with the Huguenots; the great nobles demeaned themselves as if they were not your subjects; the governors of provinces acted as independent sovereigns. In a word, the majesty of the crown was degraded to the lowest depths of debasement and was hardly recognisable at all." We have seen how the cardinal changed all that; yet Louis heard of his death without emotion, and simply remarked--"Well, a great politician has gone." In six months his royal master was gone too. Louis has one claim to distinction; he was the first king of France since St. Louis who lived a clean life. [Illustration: THE MEDICI FOUNTAIN, LUXEMBOURG GARDENS.] Paris, under Marie de' Medici and Richelieu, saw many and important changes. In 1612 a new Jacobin monastery was founded in the Rue St. Honoré for the reformed Dominicans, destined to be later the theatre of Robespierre's triumphs and to house the great Jacobin revolutionary club.[128] In the same year the queen-regent bought a château and garden from the Duke of Piney-Luxembourg, and commissioned her architect, Solomon Debrosse, to build a new palace in the style of the Pitti at Florence. The work was begun in 1615, and resulted in the picturesque but somewhat Gallicised Italian palace which, after descending to Gaston of Orleans and his daughter the Grande Mademoiselle, ends a chequered career as palace, prison, house of peers, socialist-meeting place by becoming the respectable and dull Senate-house of the third Republic. The beautiful Renaissance gardens have suffered but few changes; adorned with Debrosse's picturesque fountain, they form one of the most charming parks in Paris. The same architect was employed to restore the old Roman aqueduct of Arceuil and finished his work in 1624. In 1614 the equestrian statue in bronze of Henry IV., designed by Giovanni da Bologna, and presented to Marie by Cosimo II. of Tuscany, reached Paris after many vicissitudes and was set up on the Pont Neuf by Pierre de Fouqueville, who carved for it a beautiful pedestal of marble, whereon were inscribed the most signal events and victories of Henry's reign. This priceless statue was melted down for cannon during the Revolution, and for years its site was occupied by a _café_. In 1818, during the Restoration, another statue of Henry IV., by Lemot, cast from the melted figure of Napoleon I. on the top of the Vendôme column, was erected where it now stands. The founder, who was an imperialist, is said to have avenged the emperor by placing pamphlets attacking the Restoration in the horse's belly. In the seventeenth century the Pont Neuf was one of the busiest centres of Parisian life. Streams of coaches and multitudes of foot-passengers passed by. Booths of all kinds displayed their wares; quacks, mountebanks, ballad-singers and puppet-shows, drew crowds of listeners. Evelyn describes the footway as being three to four feet higher than the road; and at the foot of the bridge, says the traveller, is a water-house, "whereon, at a great height, is the story of our Saviour and the Woman of Samaria pouring water out of a bucket. Above is a very rare dyall of several motions with a chime. The water is conveyed by huge wheels, pumps and other engines, from the river beneath." This was the famous Château d'Eau, or La Samaritaine, erected in 1608 to pump water from the Seine and distribute it to the Louvre and the Tuileries palaces. The timepiece was an _industrieuse horloge_, which told the hours, days, and months. [Illustration: PONT NEUF.] In 1624 Henry the Fourth's great scheme for enlarging and completing the Louvre was committed by Richelieu to his architect, Jacques Lemercier, and the first stone of the Pavilion de l'Horloge was laid on 28th June by the king. Lemercier was great enough and modest enough to adopt his predecessor's design, and having erected the pavilion, continued Lescot's west wing northwards, turned the north-west angle and carried the north wing to about a fourth of its designed extent. The Pavilion de l'Horloge thus became the central feature of the west wing, which was exactly doubled in extent. The south-east and north-east towers of the eastern wing of the old Gothic Louvre, however, remained intact, and even as late as 1650 Sylvestre's drawing shows us the south-east tower still standing and the east wing only partly demolished. Lemercier also designed a grand new palace for the cardinal north of the Rue St. Honoré, which was completed in 1636. Richelieu's passion for the drama led him to include two theatres as part of his scheme: a small one to hold about six hundred spectators, and a larger one, which subsequently became the opera-house, capacious enough to seat three thousand. Magnificent galleries, painted by Philippe de Champaigne and other artists, represented the chief events in the cardinal's reign, and were hung with the portraits of the great men of France. The courts were adorned with carvings of ships' prows and anchors, symbolising the cardinal's function as Grand Master of Navigation; spacious gardens, with an avenue of chestnut trees, which cost 300,000 francs to train, added to its splendours. In this palace the great minister--busy with a yet vaster scheme for building an immense Place Ducale, north of the palace--passed away leaving its stately magnificence to the king, whose widow, Anne of Austria, inhabited it during the regency with her sons, Louis XIV. and Philip Duke of Orleans, the founder of the Bourbon-Orleans family. The famous architect, François Mansard, was employed by her to extend the Palais Royal as it was then called, which subsequently became infamous as the scene of the orgies of Philip's son during his regency. The buildings were further extended by Philip Egalité, who destroyed the superb plantation of chestnut trees and erected shops along the sides of the gardens, which as _cafés_ and gambling-saloons became a haunt of fashionable vice and dissipation in the late eighteenth century. The gardens of the royal palaces had always been open to well-dressed citizens, but notices forbade entrance to beggars, servants, and all ill-clad persons under pain of imprisonment, the carcan, and other graver penalties. Egalité, however, to win popularity, opened his gardens without restriction, and they soon became the forum of the revolutionary agitation. Here Camille Desmoulins declaimed his impassioned orations and called Paris to arms. The gambling-hells, of which there were over three hundred, survived the Revolution, and Blucher and many an officer of the allied armies lost immense sums there. The Palais Royal became subsequently the residence of the Orleans family, and now serves as the meeting-place of the Conseil d'Etat. In the early seventeenth century nine lovers of literature associated themselves for the purpose of holding a friendly symposium, where they discoursed of books, and read and criticised each other's compositions; the meetings were followed by a modest repast and a peripatetic discussion. The masterful cardinal, who would rule the French language as well as the state, called the nine together, and in 1635 organised them into an Académie Française, whose function should be to perfect and watch over the purity of the French tongue. The Parlement granted letters-patent, limited the number of academicians to forty, and required them to take cognisance of French authors and the French language alone. The original nine, however, were far from gratified, and always regretted the "golden age" of early days. Richelieu established the Jardin des Plantes for the use of medical students, where demonstrations in botany were given; he rebuilt the college and church of the Sorbonne where his monument,[129] a masterpiece of sculpture by Girardon from Lebrun's designs, may still be seen. He cheapened the postal service,[130] established the Royal Press at the Louvre which in twenty years published seventy Greek, Latin, Italian and French classics. He issued the first political weekly gazette in France, was a liberal patron of men of letters and of artists, and saw the birth and fostered the growth of the great period of French literary and artistic supremacy. Another of Henry the Fourth's plans for the aggrandisement of Paris was carried out by the indefatigable minister. As early as 867 the bishops of Paris had been confirmed by royal charter in their possession of the two islands east of the Cité, the Isle Notre Dame and Isle aux Vaches. From time immemorial these had been used as timber-yards, and in 1616 the chapter of the cathedral was induced to treat with Christophe Marie, contractor for the bridges of France and others, who agreed to fill in the channel,[131] which separated the islands; to cover them with broad streets of houses and quays, and to build certain bridges; but expressly contracted never to fill up the arm of the Seine between the Isle Notre Dame, and the Cité. The first stone of the new bridge which was to connect the islands with the north bank was laid by Louis XIII. in 1614 and named Pont Marie, after the contractor. In 1664 a church, dedicated to St. Louis, was begun on the site of an earlier chapel by Levau, but not completed until 1726 by Donat. The new quarter soon attracted the attention of rich financiers, civic officers, merchants and lawyers, some of whose hôtels were designed by Levau, and decorated by Lebrun and Leseur. Madame Pompadour's brother lived there; the Duke of Lauzan, husband of the Grande Mademoiselle, lived in his hôtel on the Quai d'Anjou (No. 17); Voltaire lived with Madame du Châtelet in the Hôtel Lambert (No. 1 Quai d'Anjou). To the _précieuses_ of Molière's time the Isle St. Louis (for so it was called) became the Isle de Delos, around whose quays the gallants and ladies of the period were wont to promenade at nightfall. _The Isle_, as it is now familiarly known, is one of the most peaceful quarters of Paris, and has a strangely provincial aspect to the traveller who paces its quiet streets. In 1622 Paris was raised from its subjection to the Metropolitan of Sens, and became for the first time the seat of an archbishopric; the diocese was made to correspond to the old territories of the Parisii. Among the many evils attendant on a monarchy, which Samuel recited to the children of Israel, that of the possibility of a regency might well have found place. Louis XIV. was less than five years of age when his father died, and once again the great nobles turned the difficulties of the situation to their own profit. The queen-regent, Anne of Austria, had retained in office Cardinal Mazarin, Richelieu's faithful disciple, chosen by him to continue the traditions of his policy. The new cardinal-minister, scion of an old Sicilian family, was a typical Italian; he had none of his predecessor's virile energy and directness of purpose, but ruled by his subtle wit and cool, calculating patience. "Time and I," was his device. He was an excellent judge of men, and profoundly distrusted "the unlucky," always satisfying himself that a man was "lucky," before he employed him. Conscious of his foreign origin, Mazarin hesitated to take strong measures, and advised a policy of conciliation with the disaffected nobles. Anne filled their pockets, and for a time the whole language of the court is said to have consisted of the five little words "_La reine est si bonne_." But the ambitious courtiers soon aimed at higher game, and a plot was discovered to assassinate the foreign cardinal. The Duke of Beaufort, chief conspirator, a son of the Duke of Vendôme, and grandson of Henry IV., by Gabrielle d'Estrées, was imprisoned in the keep at Vincennes, and his associates interned at their châteaux. The finances which Richelieu had left in so flourishing a condition were soon exhausted by the lavish benevolence of the court, and were unhappily in the hands of Emery (a clever but cynical official, who had formerly been a fraudulent bankrupt), whose rigorous exactions and indifference to public feeling aroused the indignation of the whole nation. In 1646 23,800 defaulters lay rotting in the jails, and an attempt to enforce an odious tax on all merchandise entering Paris led to an explosion of popular wrath. The Parlement, by the re-assertion of its claims to refuse the registration of an obnoxious decree of the crown, made itself the champion of public justice. The four sovereign courts of the Parlement met in the hall of St. Louis, and refused to register the tax. "The Parlement growled," said the Cardinal de Retz, "and the people awoke and groped about for laws and found none." Anne was furious and made the boy-king hold a "bed[132] of justice" to enforce the registration of the decree. But the Parlement stood firm, declared itself the guardian of the public and private weal, claiming even to reform abuses and to discuss and vote on schemes of taxation. So critical was the situation that the court was forced to bend, and to postpone the humiliation of the Parlement to a more convenient season. The glorious issue of the campaigns of Condé against the Houses of Spain and Austria seemed to offer a fitting occasion. On 26th August 1648, while a Te Deum was being sung at Notre Dame for the victory of Lens, and a grand trophy of seventy-three captured flags was displayed to the people, three of the most stubborn members of the Parlement were arrested. One escaped, but while the venerable Councillor Broussel was being hustled into a carriage, a cry was raised, which stirred the whole of Paris to insurrection. In the excitement a street porter was shot by a captain of the Guards, the Marquis of Meilleraye, and the next morning the court, aroused by cries of "Liberty and Broussel," found the streets of Paris barricaded and the citizens in arms, even children of five or six years carrying poignards. De Retz, the suffragan archbishop of Paris, came in his robes to entreat Anne to appease the people, but was snubbed for his pains. "It is a revolt," the queen cried, "to imagine a revolt possible; these are silly tales of those who desire it: the king will enforce order." De Retz, angry and insulted, left to join the insurrection and to become its leader. The venerable president of the Parlement, Molé, and the whole body of members next repaired to the Palais Royal with no better success: the queen's only answer was a gibe. As they returned crestfallen from the Palais Royal they were driven back by the infuriated people, who threatened them with death, and clamoured for Broussel's release or Mazarin as a hostage. Nearly all the councillors fled, but the president, with exalted courage, faced them and, answering gravely, as if in his judgment-seat, said, "If you kill me, all my needs will be six feet of earth": he strode on with calm self-possession, amid a shower of missiles and threats, to the hall of St. Louis. The echo of Cromwell's triumph in England, however, seemed to have reached the Palais Royal, and the queen-regent was at length induced to treat. The demands of the people were granted and Broussel was liberated, amid scenes of tumultuous joy. In February of the next year the regency made an effort to reassert its authority. The queen and the royal princes left Paris for the palace of St. Germain and gathered an army under Condé: the Parlement taxed themselves heavily, tried their hands at organising a citizen militia, and allied themselves with the popular Duke of Beaufort, now at liberty, and leader of a troop of brilliant but giddy young nobles. The Bastille was captured by the Parlement, and the university promised its support and a subsidy. This was the origin of the civil war of the Fronde, one of the most extraordinary contests in history; its name is derived from the puerile street fights with slings of the printers' devils and schoolboys of Paris. The incidents of the war read like scenes in a comic opera. A hundred thousand armed citizens were besieged by eight thousand soldiers. The evolution of a burlesque form of cavalry, called the corps of the _Portes Cochères_, formed by a conscription of one horseman for every house with a carriage gate, became the derision of the royal army. They issued forth, beplumed and beribboned, and fled back to the city, amid the execrations of the people, at the sight of a handful of troops. Every defeat--and the Parisians were always defeated--formed a subject for songs and mockery. Councils of war were held in taverns, and De Retz was seen at a sitting of the Parlement in the hall of St. Louis with a poignard sticking out of his pocket: "There is the archbishop's prayer-book," said the people. The more public-spirited members of the Parlement soon, however, tired of the folly. Mazarin won over De Retz by the offer of a cardinal's hat, and a compromise was effected with the court, which returned to Paris in April 1649. The people were still bitter against Mazarin, and invaded the Palais de Justice, demanding the cardinal's signature to the treaty, that it might be burned by the common hangman. Successful generals are bad masters, and the jackboot was now supreme at court. Soon Condé's insolent bearing and extravagant demands, and the vanity of his _entourage_ of young nobles, dubbed _petits maîtres_, became intolerable: he was arrested at the Louvre and sent to the keep at Vincennes. But Mazarin, thinking himself secure, delayed the promised reward to De Retz, who joined the disaffected friends of Condé: and the court, again foiled, was forced to release Condé, surrender the two princes, and exile the hated Mazarin, who, none the less, ruled the storm by his subtle policy from Cologne. Condé, disgusted alike with queen and Parlement, now fled to the south, and raised the standard of rebellion. [Illustration: NOTRE DAME.] The second phase of the wars of the Fronde became a more serious matter. Turenne, won over by the court, was given command of the royal forces and moved against Condé. The two armies, after indecisive battles, raced to Paris and fought for its possession outside the Porte St. Antoine. The Frondeurs occupied what is now the Faubourg St. Antoine: the royalists the heights of Charonne to the east. It was a stubborn and bloody contest. The armies were led by the two greatest captains of the age, and fought under the eyes of their king, who with the queen-mother watched the struggle from the eminence now crowned by the cemetery of Père la Chaise. "I have seen not one Condé to-day, but a dozen," cried Turenne, as victory inclined to the Royalists. The last word was, however, with the Duke of Orleans: while he sat hesitating in the Luxembourg, the Grande Mademoiselle ordered the guns of the Bastille to be turned against Turenne, and the citizens opened the gates to Condé. Again his incorrigible insolence and brutality made Paris too hot for him, and with the disaffected princes he returned to Flanders to seek help from his country's enemies. It was a fatal mistake, and Mazarin was not slow to turn it to advantage. He prudently retired while public feeling was won over to the young king, who was soon entreated by the Parlement and citizens to return to Paris. When the time was ripe, Mazarin had the Duke of Orleans interned at Blois, Condé was condemned to death _in contumacio_: De Retz was sent to Vincennes. Ten councillors of the Parlement were imprisoned or degraded, and in three months Mazarin returned to Paris with the pomp and equipage of a sovereign. It was the end of the Fronde, and of the attempt of the Parlement, a venal body[133] devoid of representative basis, to imitate the functions of the English House of Commons. The crown emerged from the contest more absolute than before, and Louis never forgot the days when he was a fugitive with his mother, and driven to lie on a hard mattress at the palace of St. Germain. In 1655 the Parlement of Paris met to prepare remonstrances against a royal edict: the young king heard of it while hunting at Vincennes, made his way to the hall of St. Louis booted[134] and spurred, rated the councillors and dissolved the sitting. The years following on the internal peace were a period of triumphant foreign war and diplomacy. Mazarin achieved his purpose of marrying the Infanta of Spain to his royal master; he added to and confirmed Richelieu's territorial gains and guided France at last to triumph over the Imperial House of Austria. On 9th March 1661, after handing Louis a code of instructions for future guidance and commending his ministers to the royal favour, the great Italian, "whose heart was French if his tongue were not," confronted death at Vincennes with firmness and courage. Mazarin was, however, a costly servant, who bled his adopted country to satisfy his love for the arts and splendours of life, to furnish dowries to his nieces, and to exalt his family. His vast palace (now the Bibliothèque Nationale), with its library of 35,000 volumes, was furnished with princely splendour. He left 2,000,000 livres to found a college for the gratuitous education of sixty sons of gentlemen from the four provinces--Spanish, Italian, German and Flemish--recently added to the crown, in order that French culture and grace might be diffused among them; they were to be taught the use of arms, horsemanship, dancing, Christian piety and _belles-lettres_. A vast domed edifice was raised on the site of the Tour de Nesle, and became famous as the college of the Four Nations. It was subsequently expropriated and given by the Convention to the five learned academies of France, and is now known as the Institut de France. [Illustration: THE INSTITUT DE FRANCE.] CHAPTER XV THE GRAND MONARQUE--VERSAILLES AND PARIS The century of Louis XIV., whose triumphs have been so extravagantly celebrated by Voltaire, saw the culmination and declension of French military glory, literary splendour, and regal magnificence. Never did king of France inherit a more capable and patriotic generation of public servants, trained as they had been under the two greatest administrators the land had ever seen; never did king grasp the sceptre with more absolute and unquestioned power. "_L'Etat c'est moi_," if not Louis' words, were at least his guiding principle. Gone were the times of cardinal dictators. When the ministers came after Mazarin's death to ask the king whom they should now address themselves to, the answer came like a thunderbolt: "To me!" and the Secretary for War, with affrighted visage, hastened to the queen-mother, who only laughed. Alone among his colleagues Mazarin knew his king, and warned them that there was enough stuff in Louis to make four kings and one honest man. What brilliant constellations of great men cast their fair influences over the birth of Louis XIV.! "Sire," said Mazarin, when dying "I owe you all--but I can partially acquit myself by leaving you Colbert." Austere Colbert was a merchant's son of Rheims; his Atlantean shoulders bore the burden of five modern ministries; his vehement industry, admirable science and sterling honesty created order out of financial chaos and found the sinews of war for an army of 300,000 men before the Peace of Ryswick and 450,000 for the war of the Spanish succession; he initiated, nurtured and perfected French industries; he created a navy that crushed the combined English and Dutch fleets off Beachy Head, swept the Channel for weeks, burnt English ports, carried terror into English homes, and for a time paralysed English commerce. Louvois, his colleague, organised an army that made his master the arbiter of Europe; Condé and Turenne were its victorious captains. Vauban, greatest of military engineers, captured towns in war and made them impregnable in peace; fortified 333 cities and places, and shared with Louvois the invention of the combined musket and bayonet, the deadliest weapon of war as yet contrived. De Lionne, by masterly diplomacy, prepared and cemented the conquests of victorious generals. Supreme in arts of peace were Corneille, Molière, Racine, La Fontaine, Lebrun, Claude Lorrain, Puget, Mansard, and Perrault. We shall learn in the sequel what the Grand Monarque did with this unparalleled inheritance. None of the great ones of the earth is so intimately known to us as the magnificent histrion, whose tinselled grandeur and pompous egoism has been laid bare by the Duke of St. Simon, prince of memoirists. Never has the frippery of a court been shrivelled by such fierce and consuming light glaring like a fiery sun on its meretricious splendours. And what a court it is! What a gilded crowd of princes and paramours, harlots and bastards, struts, fumes, intrigues through the Memoirs of the Duke of St. Simon! By a few strokes of his pen he etches for us, in words that bite like acid, the fools and knaves, the wife-beaters and adulterers, the cardsharpers and gamesters, the grovelling sycophants with their petty struggles for precedence or favour, their slang, their gluttony and drunkenness, their moral and physical corruption. [Illustration: PLACE DU CARROUSEL.] External grandeur and regal presence,[135] a profound belief in his divinely-appointed despotism, and in earlier years a capacity for work rare among his predecessors, the lord of France certainly possessed. "He had a grand mien," says St. Simon, "and looked a veritable king of the bees." Much has been made of Louis' incomparable grace and respectful courtesy to women; but the courtesy of a king who doffs his hat to every serving wench yet contrives a staircase to facilitate the debauching of his queen's maids-of-honour, and exacts of his mistresses and the ladies of his court submission to his will and pleasure, even under the most trying of physical disabilities, is at least wanting in consistency. The king's mental equipment was less than mediocre; he was barely able to read and write, was ignorant of the commonest facts of history, and fell into the grossest blunders in public. Like all small-minded men, Louis was jealous of superior merit and preferred mediocrity rather than genius in his ministers. Small wonder that his reign ended in shame and disaster. On the 6th of June 1662, the young king, notwithstanding much public misery consequent on two years of bad harvests, organised a magnificent carrousel (tilting) in the garden that fronted the Tuileries. Five companies of nobles, each led by the king or one of the princes, were arrayed in gorgeous costumes as Romans, Persians, Turks, Armenians and Savages. Louis, who of course led the Romans, was followed by a superb train of many squires, twenty-four pages, fifty horses each led by two grooms, and fifty footmen dressed as lictors, carrying gilded fasces. The royal princes headed similar processions. So great was the display of jewels that all the precious stones in the world seemed brought together; so richly were the costumes of the knights and the trappings of the horses embroidered with gold and silver that the cloth beneath could barely be seen. The king and the princes rode by with a prodigious quantity of diamonds and rubies glittering on their costumes and equipages; an immense amphitheatre afforded seats for a multitude of spectators, and in a smaller pavilion, richly gilded, sat the two queens of France, the queen of England, and the royal princesses. The first day was spent in tilting at Medusa heads and heads of Moors: the second at rings. Louis is said to have greatly distinguished himself by his skill. Maria Theresa, his young queen, distributed the prizes, and the garden was afterwards named the Place du Carrousel. Louis, however, hated Paris, for his forced exile during the troubles of the Fronde rankled in his memory. Nor were the associations of St. Germain any more pleasant. A lover of the chase and all too prone to fall into the snares of "fair, fallacious looks and venerial trains," the retirement of his father's hunting lodge at Versailles, away from the prying eyes and mocking tongues of the Parisians, early attracted him. There he was wont to meet his mistress, Madame de la Vallière, and there he determined to erect a vast pleasure-palace and gardens. The small château, built by Lemercier in the early half of the seventeenth century, was handed over to Levau in 1668, who, carefully respecting his predecessor's work in the Cour de Marbre, constructed two immense wings, which were added to by J. H. Mansard, as the requirements of the court grew. The palace stood in the midst of a barren, sandy plain, but Louis' pride demanded that Nature herself should bend to his will, and an army of artists, engineers and gardeners was concentrated there, who at the sacrifice of incredible wealth and energy, had so far advanced the work that the king was able to come into residence in 1682. In spite of seas of reservoirs fed by costly hydraulic machinery at Marly, which lifted the waters of the Seine to an aqueduct that led to Versailles, the supply was deemed inadequate, and orders were given to divert the river Eure between Chartres and Maintenon to the gardens of the palace. For years an army of thirty thousand men were employed in this one task, at a cost of money and human life greater than that of many a campaign. So heavy was the mortality in the camp that it was forbidden to speak of the sick, and above all of the dead, who were carried away in cartloads by night for burial. All that remains of this cruel folly are a few ruins at Maintenon. After the failure of this scheme, subterranean water-courses were contrived. The _plaisir du roi_ must be sated at any cost, and at length a magnificent garden was created, filled with a population of statues and adorned with gigantic fountains. Soon the king tired of the bustle and noise of Versailles, and a miserable and swampy site at Marly, the haunt of toads and serpents and creeping things, was transformed into a splendid hermitage. Hills were levelled, great trees brought from Compiègne, most of which soon died and were as quickly replaced; fish-ponds, adorned by exquisite paintings, were made and unmade; woods were metamorphosed into lakes, where the king and a select company of courtiers disported themselves in gondolas; cascades refreshed their ears in summer heat. Precious paintings, statues and costly furniture charmed the eye inside the hermitage--and all to receive the king and his intimates from Wednesday to Saturday on a few occasions in the year. St. Simon writes of what he saw, and estimates that Marly cost more than Versailles.[136] Nothing remains to-day of all this splendour: it was neglected by Louis' successors and sold in lots during the Revolution. After a life of wanton licentiousness, Louis, at the age of forty, was captivated by the mature charms of a widow of forty-three, a colonial adventuress of noble descent, who after the death of her husband, the crippled comic poet Scarron, became governess to the king's illegitimate children by Madame de Montespan. Soon after the death of the queen Maria Theresa, the widow Scarron, known to history as Madame de Maintenon, was secretly married to her royal lover, who for the remainder of his life was her docile slave. At the famous military manoeuvres at Compiègne after the Peace of Ryswick, organised to display the resources of the country and to enable the court to witness the circumstance of a great siege, Louis was seen, hat in hand, bending over Madame de Maintenon's sedan-chair, which stood at a coign of vantage on the ramparts, explaining to her the various movements of the troops. "I could describe the scene," says St. Simon, "as clearly forty years hence as I do now." An _aide-de-camp_, approaching from below to ask the king's orders, was dumbfoundered by the sight and could scarcely stammer out his message. The effect on the soldiers was indescribable: every one asked what that chair meant over which the king was bending uncovered. [Illustration: VERSAILLES--LE TAPIS VERT.] A narrow bigot in matters of religion and completely under the influence of fanatics, Madame de Maintenon persuaded Louis that a crusade against heresy would be a fitting atonement for his past sins. In 1681 she writes, "The king is seriously thinking of his salvation and of that of his subjects, and if God spares him to us there will soon be but one religion in his kingdom." Colbert, who had always stood by the Protestants, died (1683) in disfavour, protesting that if he had done for God what he had done for the king, he would have been saved ten times over. At first political pressure and money were tried; a renegade Protestant was given control of a "conversion fund," and six livres were paid for each convert. Children were seduced from their parents; brutal dragoons were quartered on Protestant families, and as a result many of the wretched people submitted. "Every post," wrote Madame de Maintenon, "brings tidings which fill the king with joy; conversions take place daily by thousands." Thousands too, proved stubborn, and on 22nd October 1685, the first blow was struck. By the revocation of the Edict of Nantes the charter of Protestant liberties was destroyed, and those who had given five out of ten marshals to France, including the great Turenne, were denied the right of civil existence. Whole cities were depopulated; tens of thousands (for the Huguenots had long ceased to exist as a political force) of law-abiding citizens expatriated themselves and carried their industries to enrich foreign lands.[137] Many pastors were martyred, and drummers were stationed at the foot of the scaffold to drown their exhortations to the spectators. Let us not say persecution is ineffective; Duruy estimates the Calvinist population of France before the revocation of the Edict at 1,000,000: in 1870 at 15,000 to 18,000. On the whole, the measure was approved by the nation; Racine, La Fontaine, the great Jansenist Arnault, as well as Bossuet and Massillon, applauded. The king was hailed a second Constantine, and believed he had revived the times of the apostles. But the consequences to France were far-reaching and disastrous. In less than two months the Catholic James II. of England was a discrowned fugitive, and the Calvinist William of Orange, the inveterate enemy of France, sat in his place; England's pensioned neutrality was turned to bitter hostility, and every Protestant power in Europe stirred to fierce resentment. Seven years of war followed, which exhausted the immense resources of France; seven years,[138] rich in glory perhaps, but lean years indeed to the dumb millions who paid the cost in blood and money. "Nearly the tenth part of the nation," writes Vauban, after the Peace of Ryswick, "is reduced to beggary; of the nine other parts, five are little removed from the same condition; three-tenths are very straitened; the remaining tenth counts no more than a hundred thousand, of which not ten thousand may be classed as very well off" (_fort à l'aise_.) Three short years of peace and recuperation ensued, when the acceptance of the crown of Spain by Louis' grandson, Philip of Anjou, in spite of Maria Theresa's solemn renunciation for herself and her posterity of all claim to the Spanish succession, roused all the old jealousy of France and brought her secular enemy, the House of Austria, to a new coalition against her. Woe to the nation whose king is thrall to women. The manner in which this momentous step was taken is characteristic of Louis. Two councils were held in Madame de Maintenon's room; her advice was asked by the king; and apparently turned the scale in favour of acceptance. "For a hundred years," says Taine, "from 1672 to 1774, every time a king of France made war it was by pique or vanity, by family or private interest, or by condescension to a woman." Still more amazing is the fact that, for years, the court of Madrid was ruled by a Frenchwoman, Madame des Ursins, the _camerera major_ of Philip's queen, who made and unmade ministers, controlled all public appointments, and even persuaded the French ambassador to submit all dispatches to her before sending them to France. Madame de Maintenon was equally omnipotent at Versailles; she decided what letters should or should not be shown to the king, kept back disagreeable news, and held everybody in the hollow of her hand, from humblest subject to most exalted minister. This was the atmosphere from which men were sent to meet the new and more potent combination of States that opposed the Spanish succession. Chamillart, a pitiful creature of Madame de Maintenon's, sat in Colbert's place. Gone were Turenne and Condé and Luxembourg; the armies of the descendant of St. Louis were led by the Duke of Vendôme, a foul lecher, whose inhuman vices went far to justify the gibe of Mephistopheles that men use their reason "_um thierischer als jedes Thier zu sein_." The victories of the Duke of Marlborough and of Prince Eugene spread consternation at court. When, in 1704, the news of Blenheim oozed out at Versailles, the king's grief was piteous to see. Scarce a noble family but had one of its members killed, wounded, or a prisoner. Two years later came the defeat of Ramillies, to be followed in three months by the disaster at Turin. The balls and masquerades and play at Marly went merrily on; but at news of the defeat of Oudenarde and the fall of Lille, even the reckless courtiers were subdued, and for a month gambling and even conversation ceased. At the sound of an approaching horseman they ran hither and thither, with fear painted on their cheeks. Wildest schemes for raising money were tried; a large sum was wasted on mining for gold in the Pyrenees; taxes were levied on baptisms and marriages. Sums raised for the relief of the poor and the maintenance of highways were expropriated, and the wretched peasants were forced to repair the roads without payment, some dying of starvation at their work. The coinage was debased. King and courtiers, with ill-grace, sent their plate to the mint. A plan for the recapture of Lille was mooted, in which Louis was to take part, but, for lack of money, the king's ladies were not to accompany him to the seat of war as they had hitherto done.[139] The expedition was to remain a secret; but the infatuated Louis could withhold nothing from Madame de Maintenon, and she never rested until she had foiled the whole scheme and disgraced Chamillart, who had concealed the preparations from her. The court had now grown so accustomed to defeats that Malplaquet was hailed as half a victory; but, in 1710, so desperate was the condition of the treasury, that a financial and social _débâcle_ was imminent. The Dauphin, on leaving the opera at Paris, had been assailed by crowds of women shouting, "Bread! bread!" He only escaped by throwing them money and promises, and never dared show his face in Paris again. To appease the people, the poor were set to level the boulevard near St. Denis, and were paid in doles of bread--bad bread. Even this failed them one morning, and a woman who made some disturbance was dragged to the pillory by the archers of the watch. An angry mob released her, and proceeded to raid the bakers' shops. The ugly situation was saved only by the firmness and sagacity of the popular Marshal Boufflers. Another turn of the financial screw was now meditated, and, as the taxes had already "drawn all the blood from his subjects, and squeezed out their very marrow," the conscience of the lord of France was troubled. His Jesuit confessor, Le Tellier, promised to consult the Sorbonne, whose learned doctors decided that, since all the wealth of his subjects rightly belonged to the king, he only took what was his own. [Illustration: GRAND PALAIS AND PONT ALEXANDRE.] Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the quarrel between the Jansenists and the Jesuits concerning subtle doctrinal differences had grown acute through the publication of Pascal's immortal _Lettres Provinciales_, and by Quesnel's _Réflexions Morales_ which the Jesuits had succeeded in subjecting to papal condemnation. In 1709, Le Tellier induced his royal penitent[140] to decree the destruction of one of the two Jansenist establishments, and Port Royal des Champs, between Versailles and Chevreuse, rendered famous by the piety and learning of Arnault, Pascal and Nicolle, was doomed. On the night of 28th October 1709, the convent was surrounded by Gardes Françaises and Suisses, and on the following morning the chief of the police, with a posse of archers of the watch entered, produced a _lettre de cachet_, and gave the nuns a quarter of an hour to prepare for deportation. The whole of the sisters were then brutally expelled, "_comme on enlève les créatures prostituées d'un lieu infâme_," says St. Simon, and scattered among other religious houses in all directions. The friends of the buried were bidden to exhume their dead, and all unclaimed bodies were flung into a neighbouring cemetery, where dogs fought for them as for carrion. The church was profaned, and all the conventual buildings were razed like houses of regicides; the materials were sold in lots, and not one stone was left on another; the very ground was ploughed up and sown, "not, it is true with salt," adds St. Simon, and that was the only favour shown. Two years after the scene at Port Royal, amid the heartless gaiety of the court, the Angel of Death was busy in Louis' household. On 14th April 1711, the old king's only lawful son, the Grand Dauphin, expired; on 12th February 1712, the second Dauphiness, the sweet and gentle Adelaide of Savoy, the king's darling, died of a malignant fever; six days later the Duke of Burgundy, her husband, was struck down; on 8th March, the Duke of Brittany, their eldest child, followed them. Three Dauphins had gone to the vaults of St. Denis in less than a year; mother, father, son, had died in twenty-four days--a sweep of Death's scythe, enough to touch even the hearts of courtiers. In a few days the king gave orders for the usual play to begin at Marly, and the dice rattled while the bodies of the Dauphin and Dauphiness lay yet unburied. Well may St. Simon exclaim, "Are these princes made like other men?" In 1712, some successes in Flanders enabled Louis to negotiate the Peace of Utrecht. France retained her old boundaries, and a Bourbon remained on the throne of Spain; but she was debased from her proud position of arbiter of Europe, and the substantial profits of the war went to England[141] and Austria. In May 1714, the Duke of Berri, son of the Grand Dauphin, died, and the sole direct heir to the throne was now the king's great-grandson, the Duke of Anjou, a sickly child of five years. On September 1715, the Grand Monarque made a calm and an edifying end to his long reign of seventy-two years, declaring that he owed no man restitution, and trusted in God's mercy for what he owed to the realm. He called the young child, who was soon to be Louis XV., to his bedside, and apparently without any sense of incongruity, exhorted him to remember his God, to cherish peace, to avoid extravagance, and study the welfare of his people. After receiving the last sacraments he repeated the prayers for the dying in a firm voice and, calling on God's aid, passed peacefully away. None but his official attendants, his priest and physicians, saw the end: two days before, Madame de Maintenon had given away all her furniture, and retired to St. Cyr. The demolition of what remained of mediæval Paris proceeded apace during Louis XIV.'s lifetime, and, at his death, the architectural features of its streets were substantially those of the older Paris of to-day. Colbert had taken up the costly legacy of the unfinished Louvre before the petrified banalities of Versailles and Marly had engulfed their millions, and, in 1660, the Hôtel de Bourbon was given over to the housebreakers to make room for the new east wing of the palace. So vigorously did they set to work that when Molière, whose company performed there three days a week in alternation with the Italian opera, came for the usual performance, he found the theatre half demolished. He applied to the king, who granted him the temporary use of Richelieu's theatre in the Palais Royal, and his first performance there was given on 20th January 1661. [Illustration: PORTION OF THE EAST FAÇADE OF THE LOUVRE FROM BLONDEL'S DRAWING, SHOWING PERRAULT'S BASE.] Levau was employed to carry on Lemercier's work on the Louvre, and had succeeded in completing the north wing and the river front when Colbert stayed further progress and ordered him to prepare a model in wood of his proposed east wing. Levau was stupefied, for he had elaborated with infinite study a design for this portion of the palace, which he regarded as of supreme importance, and which he hoped would crown his work. He had already laid the foundations and erected the scaffolding when the order came. Levau made his model, and a number of architects were invited to criticise it: they did, and unanimously condemned it. Competitive designs were then submitted to Colbert, who took advantage of Poussin's residence at Rome to send them to the great Italian architects for their judgment. The Italians delivered a sweeping and general condemnation, and Poussin advised that Bernini should be employed to design a really noble building. Louis was delighted by the suggestion, and the loan of the architect of the great colonnade of St. Peter's was entreated of the pope by the king's own hand. Bernini came to Paris where he was treated like a prince, and drew up a scheme of classic grandeur. Levau's work on the east front was destroyed, and in October 1665, Bernini's foundations were begun. The new design, however, ignored the exigencies of existing work and of internal convenience, and gave opportunities for criticisms and intrigue, which the French architects, forgetting for the moment all domestic rivalry, were not slow to make the most of. The offended Italian left to winter in Rome, and was never seen in Paris again. A munificent gift of 3000 gold louis and a pension of 12,000 livres solaced his pride. Among the designs originally submitted to Colbert was one which had not been sent to Rome. It was the work of an amateur, Claude Perrault, a physician by profession, whose brother, Charles Perrault, was chief clerk in the Office of Works. This was now brought forth, and a commission, consisting of Levau, Lebrun, and Claude Perrault, appointed to report on its practicability. Levau promptly produced his own discarded designs, which won Lebrun's approval, and both were submitted to the king for a final decision. Louis was fascinated by the stately classicism of Perrault's design, and this was adopted. "Architecture must be in a bad state," said his rivals, "since it is put in the hands of a physician." The new wing was raised and found to be seventy-two feet too long, whereupon the whole of Levau's river front was masked by a new façade, rendered necessary to correct the mistake, if mistake it were, and the whole south wing[142] is in consequence much thicker than any of the others which enclose the great quadrangle. Poor Levau is said to have died of vexation and grief. Even to this day the north-east end of Perrault's façade projects un-symmetrically beyond the line of the north front. Perrault's work has been much criticised and much praised. It evoked Fergusson's ecstatic admiration, and is eulogised by another critic as one of the finest pieces of architecture in any age. Strangely enough, neither of these ever saw, nor has anyone yet seen, more than a partial and stunted realisation of Perrault's design (which involved a broad and deep fosse), for, as the accompanying reproduction of a drawing by Blondel demonstrates, the famous east front of the Louvre is like a giant buried up to the knees, and the present first-floor windows were an afterthought, their places having been designed as niches to hold statues. The exactitude of Blondel's elevations was finally proved in 1903 by the admirable insight of the present architect of the Louvre, Monsieur G. Redon, who was led to undertake the excavations which brought to light a section of Perrault's decorated basement, by noticing that the windows of the ground floor evidently implied a lower order beneath. This basement, seven and a half metres in depth, now buried, was in Perrault's scheme designed to be exposed by a fosse of some fifteen to twenty metres in width, and the whole elevation and symmetry of the wing would have immensely gained by the carrying out of his plans. [Illustration: HOTEL DES INVALIDES.] The construction, begun in 1665 was, however, interrupted in 1676, owing to the king's abandonment of Paris. Colbert strenuously protested against the neglect of the Louvre, and warned his master not to squander his millions away from Paris and suffer posterity to measure his grandeur by the ell of Versailles. It availed nothing. In 1670, 1,627,293 livres were allotted to the Louvre; in 1672 the sum had fallen to 58,000 livres; in 1676 to 42,082; in 1680 the subsidies practically ceased, and the great palace was utterly neglected until 1754 when Perrault's work was feebly continued by Gabriel and Soufflot. Two domed churches in the south of Paris--the Val de Grâce and St. Louis of the Invalides--were also erected during Louis XIV.'s lifetime. Among the many vows made by Anne of Austria during her twenty-two years' unfruitful marriage was one made in the sanctuary of the nunnery of the Val de Grâce, to build there a magnificent church to God's glory if she were vouchsafed a Dauphin. At length, on 1st April 1645, the proud queen was able to lead the future king, a boy of seven years, to lay the first stone. The church was designed by F. Mansard on the model of St. Peter's at Rome, and was finished by Lemercier and others. The thirteenth-century nunnery had been transferred to Paris from Val Profond in 1624, and was liberally patronised by Anne. A refuge had been founded as early as Henry IV.'s reign in an old abbey in the Faubourg St. Marcel, for old and disabled soldiers. Louis XIV., the greatest creator of _invalides_ France had seen, determined in 1670 to extend the foundation, and erect a vast hospital, capable of accommodating his aged, crippled or infirm soldiers. Bruant and J. H. Mansard[143] among other architects were employed to raise the vast pile of buildings which, when completed, are said to have been capable of housing 7,000 men. A church dedicated to St. Louis was comprehended in the scheme, and, in 1680, a second Eglise Royale was erected, whose gilded dome is so conspicuous an object in south Paris; the Eglise Royale, which Mansard designed, was subsequently added to the church of St. Louis, and became its choir. Louis XIV., anticipating Napoleon's maxim that war must support war, raised the funds needed for the foundation by ingeniously requiring all ordinary and extraordinary treasurers of war to retain two deniers[144] on every livre that passed through their hands. The old city gates of the Tournelle, Poissonnière (or St. Anne), St. Martin, St. Denis, the Temple, St. Jacques, St. Victor, were demolished, and triumphal arches, which still remain, erected to mark the sites of the Portes St. Denis and St. Martin. Another arch, of St. Antoine, was designed to surpass all existing or ancient monuments of the kind, and many volumes were written concerning the language in which the inscription should be composed, but the devouring maw of Versailles had to be filled, and the arch was never completed. The king for whose glory the monument was to be raised, cared so little for it, that he suffered it to be pulled down. [Illustration: RIVER AND PONT ROYAL.] Many new streets[145] were made, and others widened, among them the ill-omened Rue de la Ferronnerie. The northern ramparts were levelled and planted with trees from the Porte St. Antoine in the east to the Porte St. Honoré in the west, and in 1704 it was decided to continue the planting in the south round the Faubourg St. Germain. The Place Louis le Grand (now Vendôme), and the Place des Victoires were created; the river embankments were renewed and extended, and a fine stone Pont Royal by J. H. Mansard, the most beautiful of the existing bridges of Paris, was built to replace the old wooden structure that led from the St. Germain quarter to the Tuileries. This in its turn had replaced a ferry (_bac_) established by the Guild of Ferrymen, to transport the stone needed for the construction of the Tuileries, and the street which leads to the bridge still bears the name of the Rue du Bac. The Isle Louviers was acquired by the Ville, and the evil-smelling tanneries and dye-houses that disfigured the banks of the Seine between the Grève and the Châtelet were cleared away; many new fountains embellished the city, and ten new pumps increased the supply of water. The poorer quarters were, however, little changed from their old insanitary condition. A few years later Rousseau, fresh from Turin, was profoundly disappointed by the streets of Paris as he entered the city by the Faubourg St. Marceau. "I had imagined," he writes, "a city as fair as it was great, and of a most imposing aspect, whose superb streets were lined with palaces of marble and of gold. I saw only filthy, evil-smelling, mean streets, ugly houses black with dirt, a general air of uncleanness and of poverty, beggars and carters, old clothes shops and tisane sellers." It is now time to ask what had been done with the magnificent inheritance which the fourteenth Louis had entered upon at the opening of his reign: he left to his successor a France crushed by an appalling debt of 2,400,000,000 livres; a noblesse and an army in bondage to money-lenders; public officials and fund-holders unpaid, trade paralysed, and the peasants in some provinces so poor that even straw was lacking for them to lie upon, many crossing the frontiers in search of a less miserable lot. Scarcity of bread made disease rampant at Paris, and as many as 4,500 sick poor were counted at one time in the Hôtel Dieu alone. Louis left a court that "sweated hypocrisy through every pore," and an example of licentious and unclean living and cynical disregard of every moral obligation, which ate like a cancer into the vitals of the aristocracy. CHAPTER XVI PARIS UNDER THE REGENCY AND LOUIS XV.--THE BROODING STORM Under the regency of the profligate Philip of Orleans, a profounder depth was sounded. The vices of Louis' court were at least veiled by a certain regal dignity, and the Grand Monarque was always keenly sensitive, and at times nobly responsive, to any attack upon the honour of France; but under the regent, libertinage and indifference to national honour were flagrant and shameless. The Abbé Dubois, a minister worthy of his prince, was, says St. Simon, "a mean-looking, thin little man, with the face of a ferret, in whom every vice fought for mastery." This creature profaned the seat of Richelieu and Colbert, and rose to fill a cardinal's chair. The revenues of seven abbeys fed his pride and luxury, and his annual income was estimated at 1,534,000 livres, including his bribe from the English Government. His profanity was such that he was advised to economise time by employing an extra clerk to do his swearing for him, and during a fatal operation, rendered necessary by a shameful disease, he went to his account blaspheming and gnashing his teeth in rage at his physicians. Visitors to Venice whose curiosity may have led them into the church of S. Moisè, will remember to have seen there a monument to a famous Scotchman--John Law. This is the last home of an outlaw, a gambler, and an adventurer, who, by his amazing skill and effrontery, plunged the regency into a vortex of speculation, and for a time controlled the finances of France. He persuaded the regent that by a liberal issue of paper money he might wipe out the accumulated national deficit of 100,000,000 livres, revive trade and industry, and inaugurate a financial millennium. In 1718 Law's Bank, after a short and brilliant career as a private venture, was converted into the Banque Royale, and by the artful flotation of a gigantic trading speculation called the Mississippi Company, the bank-notes and company shares were so manipulated that the latter were inflated to twenty times their nominal value. The whole city of Paris seethed in a ferment of speculation. The premises of the Banque Royale in the Rue Quincampoix were daily besieged by a motley crowd of princes, nobles, fine ladies, courtesans, generals, prelates, priests, bourgeois and servants. A hunchback made a fortune by lending his back as a desk; lacqueys became masters in a day, and a _parvenu_ footman, by force of habit, jumped up behind his own carriage in a fit of abstraction. The inevitable catastrophe came at the end of 1719. The Prince of Conti was observed taking away three cartloads of silver in exchange for his paper. A panic ensued, every holder sought to realise, and the colossal fabric came down with a crash, involving thousands of families in ruin and despair. Law, after bravely trying to save the situation and narrowly escaping being torn in pieces, fled to poverty and death at Venice, and the financial state of France was worse than before. Law was not, however, absolutely a quack; there was a seed of good in his famous system of mobilising credit, and the temporary stimulus it gave to trade permanently influenced mercantile practices in Europe. In 1723, Louis XV. reached his legal majority. The regent became chief minister, and soon paid the penalty of his career of debauchery, leaving as his successor the Duke of Bourbon, degenerate scion of the great Condé and one of the chief speculators in the Mississippi bubble. A perilous lesson had two years before been instilled into the mind of the young Louis. After his recovery from an illness, an immense concourse of people had assembled at a _fête_ given in the gardens of the Tuileries palace; enormous crowds filled every inch of the Place du Carrousel and the gardens; the windows and even the roofs of the houses were alive with people crying "_Vive le roi!_" Marshal Villeroi led the little lad of eleven to a window, showed him the sea of exultant faces turned towards him, and exclaimed, "Sire, all this people is yours; all belongs to you. Show yourself to them, and satisfy them; you are the master of all." The Infanta of Spain, at four years of age, had been betrothed to the young king, and in 1723 was sent to Paris to be educated for her exalted future. She was lodged in the Petite Galerie of the Louvre, over the garden still known as the Garden of the Infanta,[146] and after three years of exile the homesick little maid was returned to Madrid; for Louis' weak health made it imperative that a speedy marriage should be contracted if the succession to the throne were to be assured. The choice finally fell on the daughter of Stanislaus Leczynski, a deposed king of Poland and a pensioner of France. Voltaire relates that the poor discrowned queen was sitting with her daughter Marie in their little room at Wissembourg when the father, bursting in, fell on his knees, crying, "Let us thank God, my child!" "Are you then recalled to Poland?" asked Marie. "Nay, daughter, far better," answered Stanislaus, "you are the queen of France." A magnificent wedding at Fontainebleau, exalted gentle, pious Marie from poverty to the richest queendom in Europe; to a life of cruel neglect and almost intolerable insult. The immoral Duke of Bourbon was followed by Cardinal Fleury, and at length France experienced a period of honest administration, which enabled the sorely-tried land to recover some of its wonted elasticity. The Cardinal was, however, dominated by the Jesuits, and both Protestants and Jansenists felt their cruel hand. During the persecution of the Jansenists in 1782 a deacon, named Pâris, died and was canonised by the popular voice. Miracles were said to have been wrought at his sepulchre in the cemetery of St. Médard; fanatics flung themselves down on the tomb and writhed in horrible convulsions. So great was the excitement and disorder that the Archbishop of Paris denounced the miracles as the work of Satan, and the Government ordered the cemetery to be closed. The next morning a profane inscription was found over the entrance to the cemetery:-- "_De par le roi défense à Dieu_ _De faire miracle en ce lieu._"[147] [Illustration: COLONNE VENDOME.] Before Louis sank irrevocably into the slothful indulgence that stained his later years, he was stirred to essay a kingly _rôle_ by Madame de Chateauroux, the youngest of four sisters who had successively been his mistresses. She fired his indolent imagination by appeals to the memory of his glorious ancestors, and the war of the Austrian succession being in progress, Louis set forth with the army of the great Marshal Saxe for Metz, where in August 1744 he was stricken down by a violent fever, and in an access of piety was induced to dismiss his mistress and return to his abused queen. As he lay on the brink of death, given up by his physicians and prepared for the end by the administration of the last sacraments, a royal phrase admirably adapted to capture the imagination of a gallant people came from his lips. "Remember," he said to Marshal Noailles, "remember that when Louis XIII. was being carried to the grave, the Prince of Condé won a battle for France." The agitation of the Parisians as the king hovered between life and death was indescribable. The churches were thronged with sobbing people praying for his recovery; when the courtiers came with news that he was out of danger they were borne shoulder high in triumph through the streets, and fervent thanksgiving followed in all the churches. People hailed him as Louis le Bien-Aimé (the Well-Beloved); even the callous heart of the king was pierced by their loyalty and he cried, "What have I done to deserve such love?" So easy was it to win the affection of his warm-hearted people. The brilliant victories of Marshal Saxe, and the consequent Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, brought some years of prosperity to France. Wealth increased; Paris became more than ever a centre of intellectual splendour and social refinement, where the arts administered to luxurious ease. But it was a period of regal licentiousness unparalleled even in the history of France. Louis XIV. at least exacted good breeding and wit in his mistresses, but his descendant enslaved himself to the commonest and most abandoned of women. For twenty years the destinies of the French people, and the whole patronage of the Government, the right to succeed to the most sacred and exalted offices in the Church, were bartered and intrigued for in the chamber of a harlot and procuress. Under the influence of the Pompadours and the Du Barrys a crowned _roué_ allowed the state to drift into financial, military and civil[148] disaster. "Authentic proofs exist," says Taine, "demonstrating that Madame de Pompadour cost Louis XV. a sum equal to about seventy-two millions of present value (£2,880,000)." She would examine the plans of campaign of her marshals in her boudoir, and mark with patches (_mouches_) the places to be defended or attacked. Such was the foolish extravagance of the court that to raise money recourse was had to an attempted taxation of the clergy, which the prelates successfully resisted; the old quarrel with the Jansenists was revived, and soon Church and Crown were convulsed by an agitation that shook society to its very base. During the popular ferment the king was attacked in 1757 by a crack-brained fanatic named Damiens, who scratched him with a penknife as he was entering his coach at Versailles. The poor crazy wretch, who at most deserved detention in an asylum, was first subjected to a cruel judicial torture, then taken to the Place de Grève, where he was lacerated with red-hot pincers and, after boiling lead had been poured into the wounds, his quivering body was torn to pieces by four horses, and the fragments burned to ashes. A few years later the long-suffering Jansenists were avenged with startling severity. The Jesuits, to their honour be it said, shocked by the infamies of the royal seraglio in the Parc aux Cerfs, made use of their ascendency at court to awaken in the king's mind some sense of decency: they did but add the bitter animosity of Madame de Pompadour to the existing hostility of the Parlement of Paris. Louis, urged by his minister the Duke of Choiseul, and by the arts of his mistress, abandoned the Jesuits to their enemies; the Parlement suppressed the Society in France, secularised its members and confiscated its property. The closing years of the Well-Beloved's reign were years of unmitigated ignominy and disaster to France. Her rich Indian conquests were muddled away, and the gallant Dupleix died broken-hearted and in misery at Paris. Canada was lost. During the Seven Years' War the incapacity and administrative corruption of Madame de Pompadour's favourites made them the laughing-stock of Paris. In 1770 the Duke of Choiseul refused to tolerate the vile Du Barry, whom we may see in Madame Campan's Memoirs sitting on the arm of Louis' chair at a council of state, playing her monkey tricks to amuse the old sultan, snatching sealed orders from his hand and making the foolish monarch chase her round the council chamber. She swore to ruin the duke and, aided by a cabal of Jesuit sympathisers and noble intriguers, succeeded in compassing his dismissal. The Parlement of Paris paid for its temerity; it and the whole of the parlements in France were suppressed, and seven hundred magistrates exiled by _lettres de cachet_. Every patriotic Frenchman now felt the gathering storm. Madame Campan writes that twenty years before the crash came it was common talk in her father's house (he was employed in the Foreign Office) that the old monarchy was rapidly sinking and a great change at hand. Indeed, the writing on the wall was not difficult to read. The learned and virtuous Malesherbes and many another distinguished member of the suppressed parlements warned the king of the dangers menacing the crown, but so sunk was its wearer in bestial stupefaction that he only murmured: "Well, it will last my time," and with his flatterers and strumpets uttered the famous words--"_Après nous le déluge_." So lost to all sense of honour was Louis, that he soiled his hands with bribes from tax-farmers who ground the faces of the poor, and became a large shareholder in an infamous syndicate of capitalists that bought up the corn of France in order to export it and then import it at enormous profit. This abominable _Pacte de Famine_ created two artificial famines in France; its authors battened on the misery of the people, and for any who lifted their voices against it the Bastille yawned. In 1768 the poor abused, injured and neglected queen, Marie Leczynski died. The court went from bad to worse: void of all dignity, all gaiety, all wit and all elegance, it drifted to its doom. Six years passed, and Louis was smitten by confluent small-pox and a few poor women were left to perform the last offices on the mass of pestiferous corruption that once was the fifteenth Louis of France.[149] None could be found to embalm the corpse, and spirits of wine were poured into the coffin which was carried to St. Denis without pomp and amid the half-suppressed curses of the people. Before the breath had left the body, a noise as of thunder was heard approaching the chamber of the Dauphin and Marie Antoinette: it was the sound of the courtiers hastening to grovel before the new king and queen. Warned that they had now inherited the awful legacy of the French monarchy, they flung themselves in tears on their knees, and exclaimed--"O God, guide and protect us! We are too young to govern." [Illustration: PLACE DU CHÂTELET AND TOUR ST. JACQUES.] The degradation of the monarchy during the reign is reflected in the condition of the royal palace in the capital. Henry IV.'s great scheme, which Louis XIII. had inherited and furthered, included a colossal equestrian statue, which was to stand on a rocky pedestal in the centre of a new Place, before the east front of the Louvre, but the regency revoked the scheme, and for thirty years nothing was done. It had even been proposed under the ministry of Cardinal Fleury to pull the whole structure down and sell the site. The neglect of the palace during these years is almost incredible. Perrault's fine façade was hidden by the half-demolished walls of the Hôtels de Longueville, de Villequier, and de Bourbon. The east wing itself was unroofed on the quadrangle side and covered with rotting boarding. Perrault's columns on the outer façade were unchannelled, the capitals unfinished, the portal unsculptured, and the post-office stabled its horses along the whole of the wing from the middle entrance to the north angle. The royal apartments of Anne of Austria in the Petite Galerie were used as stables; so, too, were the halls where now is housed the collection of Renaissance sculpture. The Infanta's garden was a yard where grooms exercised their horses: a colony of poor artists and court attendants were lodged in the upper floors, and over most of the great halls entresols were constructed to increase this kind of accommodation. The building was described as a huge caravanserai, where each one lodged and worked as he chose, and over which might have been placed the legend, "_Ici on loge à pied et à cheval_." Worse still, an army of squatters, ne'er-do-weels, bankrupts and defaulting debtors took refuge in the wooden sheds left by the contractors, or built others--a miserable gangrene of hovels--against the east façade. Perrault's base had been concealed by rubbish and apparently forgotten. Stove-pipes issued from the broken windows of the upper floors, the beautiful stone-work was blackened by smoke, cracked by frost and soiled by rusting iron clamps; the quadrangle was a chaos of uncut stone, rubbish and filth, in the centre of which, where the king's statue was designed to stand, the royal architect had built himself a large house; a mass of mean houses encumbered the Carrousel, and the almost ruined church of St. Nicholas was a haunt of beggars. Such a grievous eyesore was the building that the provost in 1751 offered, in the name of the citizens, to repair and complete the palace if a part were assigned to them as an Hôtel de Ville. In 1754 Madame de Pompadour's brother had been appointed Commissioner of Works, and Louis was persuaded to authorise the repair and completion of the Louvre. Gabriel being made architect set about his work by clearing out the squatters and the accumulated rubbish in the quadrangle, and evicting the occupants of the stables. The ruins of the Hôtels de Longueville, de Villequier, and de Bourbon were demolished, grass plots laid before Perrault's east front, which was restored and for the first time made visible. The west front, giving on the quadrangle, was then repaired and the third order nearly completed, when funds were exhausted and it was left unroofed. An epigram, put into the mouth of the king of Denmark, who visited Paris in 1768, tersely describes the condition of the palace at this time:-- "J'ai vu le Louvre et son enceinte immense, Vaste palais qui depuis deux cent ans, Toujours s'achève et toujours se commence. Deux ouvriers, manoeuvres fainéants, Hâtent très lentement ces riches bâtiments Et sont payés quand on y pense.[150]" [Illustration: SOUTH DOOR OF NOTRE DAME.] During Louis XVI.'s reign little or nothing was done. Soufflot was making feeble efforts to complete Perrault's north front when the Revolution came to arrest his work. So lost to reverence and devoid of artistic sentiment were the official architects of this period, that a sacrilege worse than any wrought by revolutionists was perpetrated at the instance of the canons of Notre Dame. Louis XIV. had begun the vandalism by demolishing the beautiful old Gothic high altar and replacing it by a huge, ponderous anachronism in marble, on whose foundation stone, laid in 1699, was placed an inscription to the effect that Louis the Great, son of Louis the Just, having subdued heresy, established the true religion in his realm and ended wars gloriously by land and sea, built the altar to fulfil the vow of his father, and dedicated it to the God of Arms and Master of Peace and Victory under the invocation of the Holy Virgin, patroness and protector of his States. Many of the fine old Gothic tombs of marble and bronze in the church, the monuments of six centuries, were destroyed. But to the reign of Louis the Well-Beloved was reserved the crowning infamy: in 1741 the glorious old stained-glass windows, rivalling those of Chartres in richness, were destroyed by Levreil and replaced by grisaille with yellow _fleur-de-lys_ ornamentation. Happily the replacing of the rose windows was deemed too expensive, and they escaped destruction. The famous colossal statue of St. Christopher, the equestrian monument of Philip le Bel, and a popular statue of the Virgin, were broken down by these clerical iconoclasts. In 1771 the canons instructed Soufflot to throw down the pillar of the central porch, with its beautiful statue of Christ, to make room for their processions to enter. The priceless sculpture of the tympanum was cut through to make a loftier and wider entrance, and the whole symmetry of the west front was grievously destroyed.[151] This hideous architectural deformity remained until a son of the Revolution, Viollet-le-Duc, restored the portal to its original form. After the havoc wrought at Notre Dame, Soufflot's energies were diverted to the holy mount of St. Genevieve. Louis XV. had attributed his recovery at Metz to the intercession of the saint, and in 1754, when the abbot complained to the king of the almost ruined condition of the abbey church, he found a sympathetic listener. Soufflot and the chapter, who shared the prevalent contempt of Gothic, decided to abandon the venerable old pile, with its millennial associations of the patron saint of Paris, and to build a grand domed classic temple on the abbey lands to the west. Funds for the sacred work were raised by levying a tax on public lotteries. The old church, with the exception of the tower, was finally demolished in 1802, when the rude stone coffin which had held the body of St. Genevieve until it was burnt by revolutionary fanatics, was transferred to St. Etienne du Mont. [Illustration: MONT S. GENEVIÈVE FROM L'ILE S. LOUIS.] [Illustration: INTERIOR OF ST. ETIENNE DU MONT.] On 6th September 1764, the crypt of the new St. Genevieve being completed, the Well-Beloved laid the first stone of the church. Scarcely was the scaffolding removed after thirteen years of constructive labour, and the expenditure of sixteen millions of livres, when it became necessary to call in Soufflot's pupil Rondelet, to shore up the walls and strengthen the columns which had proved too weak to sustain the weight of the huge cupola. Before the temple was consecrated the Revolutionists came, and noting its monumental aspect used it with admirable fitness as a Panthéon Français for the remains of their heroes; the dome designed to cover the relics of St. Genevieve soared over the ashes of Voltaire, Mirabeau, Rousseau and Marat. Thrice has this unlucky fane been the prize of Christian and Revolutionary reactionaries. In 1806 Napoleon I. restored it to Christian worship, and in 1822 the famous inscription--"_Aux grands Hommes la Patrie reconnaissante_" ("A grateful country to her great men")--was removed by Louis XVIII., and replaced by a dedication to God and St. Genevieve; in 1830 Louis Philippe, the citizen king, transferred it to secular and monumental uses, and restored the former inscription; in 1851 the perjured Prince-President Napoleon, while the streets of Paris were yet red with the blood of his victims, again surrendered it to the Catholic Church; in 1885 it was reconverted to a national Walhalla for the reception of Victor Hugo's remains. The Pantheon has the most magnificent situation and, except the new church of the Sacré Coeur, is the most dominant building in Paris. Its dome, seen from nearly every eminence commanding the city, has a certain stately, almost noble, aspect; but the spacious interior, despite the efforts of the artists of the third Republic, is chilling to the spectator. It has few historical or religious associations, and it is devoid of human sentiment. The choice of painters to decorate the interior was an amazing act of official insensibility. The most discordant artistic temperaments were let loose on the devoted building. Puvis de Chavannes, the only painter among them who grasped the limitation of mural art, has painted with restraint and noble simplicity incidents in the life of St. Genevieve, and Jean Paul Laurens is responsible for a splendid but incongruous representation of her death. A St. Denis, scenes in the lives of Clovis, Charlemagne, St. Louis, and Jeanne d'Arc, by Bonnat, Blanc, Levy, Cabanel and Lenepveu, are all excellent work of the kind so familiar to visitors at the Salon, but are lacking in harmony and in inspiration. The angel appearing to Jeanne d'Arc seems to have been modelled from a _figurante_ at the opera. [Illustration: ST. SULPICE] In 1618 the Grande Salle of the Palais de Justice, the finest of its kind in Europe, decorated by Fra Giocondo, was gutted by fire, and its rich stained glass, its double vaultings resplendent with blue and gold, its long line of the statues of the kings of France from Pharamond to Henry IV., were utterly destroyed. Debrosse, who built the new Salle in 1622, left a noble and harmonious Renaissance chamber, which, again restored after the fire of 1776, endured until its destruction by fire during the Commune. The old palace was clung to by a population of hucksters, whose shops and booths huddled round the building. The Grande Salle, far different from the present bare Salle des Pas Perdus, was itself a busy mart, booksellers especially predominating, most of whom had stations there, much as we see them to-day, round the Odéon theatre. Every pillar had its bookseller's shop. Verard's address was--"At the image of St. John the Evangelist, before Notre Dame de Paris, and at the first pillar in the Grande Salle of the Palais de Justice, before the Chapelle where they sing the mass for Messieurs of the Parlement." Gilles Couteau's address was--"The Two Archers in the Rue de la Juiverie and at the third pillar at the Palais." In the Galerie Mercière (now the Galerie Marchande) at the top of the stairway ascending from the Cour du Mai, lines of shops displayed fans, gloves, slippers and other dainty articles of feminine artillery. The further Galeries were also invaded by the traders, who were not finally evicted until 1842. Much rebuilding and restoration were again needed after the great fire of 1776, and the old flight of steps of the Cour du Mai, at the foot of which criminals were branded and books condemned by the Parlement were burnt, was replaced by the present fine stairway. The Grande Chambre (now the Tribunal de Première Instance) entered from the Grande Salle, was renamed the Salle d'Egalité by the Revolutionists, and used for the sittings of the Revolutionary Tribunal. As the dread work increased, a second court was opened in the Salle St. Louis, renamed the Salle de Liberté! Here Danton was tried, whose puissant voice penetrated to the opposite side of the Seine. It was through Debrosse's restored Grande Salle that the Girondins trooped after condemnation to the new prisoners' chapel, built after the fire, and passed the night there, hymning the Revolution and discoursing of the Fatherland before they issued by the nine steps, unchanged to-day, on the right in the Cour du Mai, to the fatal tumbrils awaiting them. The pseudo-classic church of St. Sulpice, begun in 1665 and not completed until 1777, is a monument of the degraded taste of this unhappy time. At least three architects, Gamart, Levau and the Italian Servandoni, are responsible for this monstrous pile, whose towers have been aptly compared by Victor Hugo to two big clarionets. The building has, however, a certain _puissante laideur_, as Michelet said of Danton, and is imposing from its very mass, but it is dull and heavy and devoid of all charm and imagination. Nothing exemplifies more strikingly the mutation of taste that has taken place since the eighteenth century than the fact that this church is the only one mentioned by Gibbon in the portion of his autobiography which refers to his first visit to Paris, where it is distinguished as "one of the noblest structures in Paris." CHAPTER XVII LOUIS XVI.--THE GREAT REVOLUTION--FALL OF THE MONARCHY Crowned vice was now succeeded by crowned folly. The grandson of Louis XV., a well-meaning but weak and foolish youth, and his thoughtless, pleasure-loving queen, were confronted by state problems that would have taxed the genius of a Richelieu in the maturity of his powers. Injustice, misery, oppression, discontent, were clamant and almost universal; taxes had doubled since the death of Louis XIV.; there were 30,000 beggars in Paris alone. The penal code was of inhuman ferocity; law was complicated, ruinous and partial and national credit so low that loans could be obtained only against material pledges and at interest five times as great as that paid by England. Wealthy bishops and abbots[152] and clergy, noblesse and royal officials were wholly exempt from the main incidents of taxation; for personal and land taxes, tithes and forced labour, were exacted from the common people alone. No liberty of worship, nor of thought: Protestants were condemned to the galleys by hundreds; booksellers met the same fate. Authors and books were arbitrarily sent by _lettres de cachet_ to the Bastille. Yet in spite of all repression a generation of daring, witty, emancipated thinkers in Paris were elaborating a weapon of scientific, rationalistic and liberal doctrine that cut at the very roots of the old _régime_. And while France was in travail of the palingenesis of the modern world, the futile king was trifling with his locks and keys and colouring maps, the queen playing at shepherdesses at Trianon or performing before courtiers, officers and equerries the _rôles_ of Rosina in the _Barbier de Seville_ and of Colette in the _Devin du Village_, the latter composed by the democratic philosopher, whose _Contrat Social_ was to prove the Gospel of the Revolution.[153] Jean Jacques Rousseau, the solitary self-centred Swiss engraver and musician, has described for us in words that will bear translation how an ineffaceable impression of the sufferings of the people was burnt into his memory, and the germs of an unquenchable hatred of their oppressors were sown in his breast. Journeying on foot between Paris and Lyons he was one day diverted from his path by the beauty of the landscape, and wandered about, seeking in vain to discover his way. "At length," he writes, "weary and dying of thirst and hunger I entered a peasant's house, not a very attractive one, but the only one I could see. I imagined that here as in Switzerland every inhabitant of easy means would be able to offer hospitality. I entered and begged that I might have dinner by paying for it. The peasant handed me some skim milk and coarse barley bread, saying that was all he had. The milk seemed delicious and I ate the bread, straw and all, but it was not very satisfying to one exhausted by fatigue. The man scrutinised me and judged by my appetite the truth of the story I had told. Suddenly, after saying that he perceived I was a good, honest youth and not there to spy upon him he opened a trap door, descended and returned speedily with some good wheaten bread, a ham appetising but rather high, and a bottle of wine which rejoiced my heart more than all the rest. He added a good thick omelette and I enjoyed a dinner such as those alone who travel on foot can know. When it came to paying, his anxiety and fears again seized him; he would have none of my money and pushed it aside, exceedingly troubled, nor could I imagine what he was afraid of. At last he uttered with a shudder the terrible words '_commis, rats de cave_' ("assessors, cellar rats"). He made me understand that he hid the wine because of the _aides_,[154] and the bread because of the _tailles_[155] and that he would be a ruined man if it were supposed that he was not dying of hunger. That man, although fairly well-off, dared not eat the bread earned by the sweat of his brow, and could only escape ruin by pretending to be as miserable as those he saw around him. I issued forth from that house indignant as well as affected, deploring the lot of that fair land where nature had lavished all her gifts only to become the spoil of barbarous tax-farmers (_publicans_)." The elder Mirabeau has told how he saw a bailiff cut off the hand of a peasant woman who had clung to her kitchen utensils when distraint was made on her poor possessions for dues exacted by the tax-farmer. It is related in Madame Campan's _Memoirs_ that Louis XV., hunting one day in the forest of Senard, about fifteen miles south of Paris, met a man on horseback carrying a coffin. "Whither are you carrying that coffin?" asked the king. "To the village of ----." "Is it for a man or a woman?" "For a man." "What did he die of?" "Hunger," bluntly returned the villager. The king spurred his horse and said no more. "But though the gods see clearly, they are slow In marking when a man, despising them, Turns from their worship to the scorn of fools." Half a century had elapsed since that meal in the peasant's house and the royal colloquy with the villager in the forest of Senard, when the Nemesis that holds sleepless vigil over the affairs of men stirred her pinions and, like a strong angel with glittering sword, prepared to avenge the wrongs of a people whose rulers had outraged every law, human and divine, by which human society is held together. King, nobles, and prelates had a supreme and an awful choice. They might have led and controlled the Revolution: they chose to oppose it, and were broken into shivers as a potter's vessel. After the memorable cannonade at Valmy, a knot of defeated German officers gathered in rain and wind moodily around the circle where they durst not kindle the usual camp-fire. In the morning the army had talked of nothing but spitting and devouring the whole French nation: in the evening everyone went about alone; nobody looked at his neighbour, or if he did, it was but to curse and swear. "At last," says Goethe, "I was called upon to speak, for I had been wont to enliven and amuse the troop with short sayings. This time I said, 'From this day forth, and from this place, a new era begins in the history of the world and you can all say that you were present at its birth.'" This is not the place to write the story of the French Revolution. Those who would read the tremendous drama may be referred to the pages of Carlyle. As a formal history, that work of transcendent genius may be open to criticism. Indeed to the present writer the magnificent and solemn prosody seems to partake of the nature of a Greek chorus--the comment of an idealised spectator, assuming that the hearer has the drama unfolding before his eyes. Recent researches have supplemented and modified our knowledge. It is no longer possible to accept the more revolting representations of the misery[156] of the French peasantry as true of the whole of France, for France before the Revolution was an assemblage of many provinces of varying social conditions, subjected to varying administrative laws. Nor can we accept Carlyle's portraiture of Robespierre as history, after Louis Blanc's great work. So far from Robespierre having been the bloodthirsty protagonist of the later Terror, it was precisely his determination to make an end of the more savage excesses of the extreme Terrorists and to chastise their more furious pro-consuls, such as Carrier and Fouché, that brought about his ruin. It was men like Collot d'Herbois, Billaud Varenne and Barrère, the bloodiest of the Terrorists, who, to save their own skins, united to cast the odium of the later excesses on Robespierre, and to overthrow him. During the forty-five days that preceded his withdrawal from the sittings of the Committee of Public Safety, 577 persons were guillotined: during the forty-five days that succeeded, 1285 went to their doom. Of the twelve decrees that have been discovered signed by Robespierre during the four last decades, only one had any relation to the system of terror. But whatever defects there be in Carlyle, his readers will at least understand the significance of the Revolution, and why it is that the terrible, but temporary excesses which stained its progress have been so unduly magnified by reactionary politicians, while the cruelties of the White Terror[157] are passed by. Few of the buildings associated with the Revolution remain at Paris. The Salle du Manège, the Feuillants and Jacobin clubs were swept away by Napoleon's Rue de Rivoli. But at Versailles little is changed; the broad Avenue de Paris, once filled with double uninterrupted files of brilliant equipages, racing with furious speed from morning to evening along the five leagues between Versailles and Paris, is now silent and deserted. Here, outside the gates of the château were seen in 1775 that vast "multitude in wide-spread wretchedness, with their sallow faces, squalor and winged raggedness, presenting in legible, hieroglyphic writing their petition of grievances, and for answer two were hanged on a new gallows forty feet high." Here the traveller may see at the corner of the Rue St. Martin in the Avenue de Paris, that Hôtel des Menus Plaisirs, where the States-General sat, 5th May 1789, and where the Commons took the bit in their mouths by declaring themselves the National Assembly, whether the two privileged orders sat with them or not, and decided to set about the task of regenerating France. Here under the elm trees on the Paris road stood the Deputies in the drizzling rain when they found the doors of the hall closed, by royal order, against them, while giggling courtiers looked mockingly on. We may trace their footsteps as they angrily paced to the Rue St. François; we may stand in the very tennis-court whose walls echoed to the solemn oath sworn by their 700 voices never to separate until they had given a constitution to France. Hard by, in the Rue Satory, is the church of St. Louis, where they met the next day on finding the court retained for a tennis-party by the king's brother, the Count of Artois. We may return to the Menus Plaisirs, where the king's messenger, de Brézé, ordering them to disperse after the famous royal sitting, heard Mirabeau's leonine voice bidding him go back to his master and tell him that they were there by the people's will, and that nothing but the force of bayonets should drive them forth.[158] We may enter the royal apartments, the famous ante-room of the OEil de Boeuf with its oval ox-eyed windows, the king's bed-chamber, and the council hall; we may look on the foolish faces of the later Bourbons, of the princesses his daughters whom Louis XV. dubbed Rag, Tatter, Snip, and Pig. In the opera-house built for Mesdames Pompadour and Du Barry, we may recall that mad scene of 1st October, when the officers of the bodyguard, having invited their comrades of the Regiment of Flanders to a dinner on the stage, were shaking the roof with cries of "_Vive le roi!_" while the orchestra played the air, "_O Richard! O mon roi! l'univers t'abandonne_," the king suddenly appeared in the royal box facing them, leading the queen, who bore the Dauphin in her arms. Then was the air repeated, and amid a scene of wild enthusiasm the royal family were rapturously acclaimed with clapping of hands and deafening shouts of "_Vive le roi! Vive la reine! Vive le dauphin!_" Ladies distributed white cockades, the Bourbon colour, and the tricolor was trodden underfoot. Intoxicated soldiers danced under the king's balcony, and next morning it was discussed at a breakfast given at the hôtel of the bodyguards whether they should march against the National Assembly. And this within three months of the taking of the Bastille and when Paris was in the grip of famine! The news of the mad orgy goaded the people to fury, and on 5th October an insurrectionary army of 10,000 women advanced on Versailles and encamped on the vast open space in front of the gates. As we stand in the Cour de Marbre, we may lift our eyes to that balcony of the first floor where, on 6th October, Marie Antoinette stood bravely forth, holding her two children by the hand and confronting the vociferating people. At their cry, "No children!" she gently pushed the little Dauphin and his sister back into the room, and with folded arms, for she at least lacked not courage, gazed calmly at them in regal dignity, to be answered by shouts of "_Vive la reine!_" It was the last time she trod the palace of Versailles. The same day king, queen and children went their way amid that strange procession to Paris, the women crying: "We need not die of hunger now. Here are the baker, the baker's wife and the baker's boy." The palace of the Tuileries was hastily prepared for their reception and for the first time Louis XVI. entered its gates. Camille Desmoulins has described in his Memoirs how on 11th July he was lifted on a table in front of the Café Foy, in the garden of the Palais Royal, and delivered that short but pregnant oration which preceded the capture of the Bastille on the 14th, warning the people that a St. Bartholomew of patriots was contemplated, and that the Swiss and German troops in the Champ de Mars were ready for the butchery. As the crowd rushed to the Hôtel de Ville, shouting "To arms!" they were charged by the Prince de Lambesc at the head of a German regiment, and the first blood of the Revolution in Paris was shed. The Bastille, like the monarchy, was the victim of its past sins. That grisly fortress, with the jaws of its cannon opening on the most populous quarter of Paris, and its sinister memories of the Man in the Iron Mask,[159] embodied in the popular mind all that was hateful in the old _régime_, though it had long ceased to be more than occasionally used as a state prison. If we would restore its aspect we must imagine the houses at the ends of the Rue St. Antoine and the Boulevard Henri IV. away and the huge mass erect on their site and on the lines marked in white stone on the present Place de la Bastille. A great portal, always open by day, yawned on the Rue St. Antoine and gave access to the first quadrangle which was lined with shops: then came a second gate, with entrances for carriages and for foot passengers, each with its drawbridge. Beyond these a second quadrangle was entered, to the right of which stood the Governor's house and an armoury. Another double portal gave entrance across the old fosse once fed by the waters of the Seine, to the prison fortress itself, with its eight tall blackened towers and its crenelated ramparts. [Illustration: MONTMARTRE FROM BUTTES CHAUMONT.] The Bastille, first used in Richelieu's time as a permanent state prison, was filled under Louis XIV. with Jansenists and Protestants, who were thus separated from the prisoners of the common jails; and, later, under Louis XV. by a whole population of obnoxious pamphleteers and champions of philosophy. Books as well as their authors were incarcerated, and released when considered no longer dangerous; the tomes of famous _Encyclopédie_ spent some years there. From the opening of the eighteenth century the horrible, dark and damp dungeons, half underground and sometimes flooded, formerly inhabited by the lowest type of criminals, were reserved as temporary cells for insubordinate prisoners, and since the accession of Louis XVI. they were no more used. The Bastille during the reigns of the three later Louis was the most comfortable prison in Paris, and detention there rather than in the other prisons was often sought for and granted as a favour; the prisoners might furnish their rooms, have their own libraries and food. In the middle of the seventeenth century certain rooms were furnished at the king's expense for those who were without means. The rooms were warmed, the prisoners well fed, and sums varying from three francs to thirty-five francs per day, according to condition,[160] were allotted for their maintenance. A considerable amount of personal liberty was allowed to many and indemnities were in later years paid to those who had been unjustly detained. But a prison where men are confined indefinitely without trial and at a king's arbitrary pleasure is none the less intolerable, however its bars be gilded. Prisoners were sometimes forgotten, and letters are extant from Louvois and other ministers, asking the governor to report how many years certain prisoners had been detained, and if he remembered what they were charged with. In Louis XIV.'s reign 2228 persons were incarcerated there; in Louis XV.'s, 2567. From the accession of Louis XVI. to the destruction of the prison the number had fallen to 289. Seven were found there when the fortress was captured--four accused of forgery, two insane; one, the Count of Solages, accused of a monstrous crime, was detained there to spare the feelings of his family. The Bastille, some time before its fall, was already under sentence of demolition, and various schemes for its disposal were before the court. One project was to destroy seven of the towers, leaving the eighth standing in a dilapidated state. On the site of the seven a pedestal formed of chains and bolts from the dungeons and gates was to bear a statue of Louis XVI. in the attitude of a liberator, pointing with outstretched hand towards the remaining tower in ruins. But Louis XVI. was always too late, and the Place de la Bastille, with its column raised to those who fell in the Revolution of July, 1830, now recalls the second and final triumph of the people over the Bourbon kings. Some stones of the Bastille were, however, built into the new Pont Louis Seize, subsequently called Pont de la Revolution and now known as Pont de la Concorde: others were sold to speculators and were retailed at prices so high that people complained that Bastille stones were as dear as the best butcher's meat. Models of the Bastille, dominoes, inkstands, boxes and toys of all kinds were made of the material and had a ready sale all over France. Far to the west and on the opposite side of the Seine is the immense area of the Champ de Mars, where, on the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, was enacted the fairest scene of the Revolution. The whole population of Paris, with their marvellous instinct of order and co-operation, spontaneously set to work to dig the vast amphitheatre which was to accommodate the 100,000 representatives of France, and 400,000 spectators, all united in an outburst of fraternal love and hope to swear allegiance to the new Constitution before the altar of the Fatherland. The king had not yet lost the affection of his people. As he came to view the marvellous scene an improvised bodyguard of excavators, bearing spades, escorted him about. When he was swearing the oath to the Constitution, the queen, standing on a balcony of the _Ecole militaire_, lifted up the dauphin as if to associate him in his father's pledge. Suddenly the rain which had marred the great festival ceased, the sun burst forth and flooded in a splendour of light, the altar, Bishop Talleyrand, his four hundred clergy, and the king with upraised hand. The solemn music of the _Te Deum_ mingled with the wild pæan of joy and enthusiasm that burst from half a million throats. The unconscionable folly, the feeble-minded vacillation and miserable trickery by which this magnificent popularity was muddled away is one of the saddest tragedies in the stories of kings. The people, with unerring instinct, had fixed on the queen as one of the chief obstacles to what might have been a peaceful revolution. Neither Marie Antoinette nor Louis Capet comprehended the tremendous significance of the forces they were playing with--the resolute and invincible determination of a people of twenty-six millions to emancipate itself from the accumulated and intolerable wrongs of centuries. The despatches and opinions of American ambassadors during this period are of inestimable value. The democratic Thomas Jefferson, reviewing in later years the course of events, declared that had there been no queen there would have been no revolution. Governor Morris, whose anti-revolutionary and conservative leanings made him the friend and confidant of the royal family, writes to Washington on January 1790: "If only the reigning prince were not the small beer character he is, and even only tolerably watchful of events, he would regain his authority," but "what would you have," he continues scornfully, "from a creature who, in his situation, eats, drinks and sleeps well, and laughs, and is as merry a grig as lives. He must float along on the current of events and is absolutely a cypher." But the court would not forego its crooked ways. "The queen is even more imprudent," Morris writes in 1791, "and the whole court is given up to petty intrigues worthy only of footmen and chambermaids." Moreover, in its amazing ineptitude, the monarchy had already toyed with republicanism by lending active military support to the revolutionists in America, at a cost to the already over-burdened treasury of 1,200,000,000 livres. The American ambassador, Benjamin Franklin, was crowned at court with laurel as the apostle of liberty, and in the very palace of Versailles medallions of Franklin were sold, bearing the inscription: "_Eripui coelo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis_" ("I have snatched the lightning from heaven and the sceptre from tyrants"). The revolutionary song, _Ça ira, ça ira_ ("That will go, that will go"), owes its origin to Franklin's invariable response to inquiries as to the progress of the American revolutionary movement. There was explosive material enough in France to make playing with celestial fire perilous, and while the political atmosphere was heavy with the threatening change, thousands of French soldiers returned saturated with enthusiasm and sympathy for the American revolution. Already before the Feast of the Federation the queen had been in secret correspondence with the _émigrés_ at Turin and at Coblenz who were conspiring to throttle the nascent liberty of France. Plots had been hatched to carry off the royal family. Madame Campan relates that the queen made her read a confidential letter from the Empress Catherine of Russia, concluding with these words: "Kings ought to proceed in their career undisturbed by the cries of the people, as the moon pursues her course unimpeded by the howling of dogs." Mirabeau was already in the pay of the monarchy; soon after the return of the court to St. Cloud the queen had a secret interview with him in the park, and boasted to Madame Campan how she had flattered the great tribune. As early as December 1790 the court had been in secret communication with the foreigner. Louis' brother, the Count of Artois (afterwards Charles X.), with the queen's and king's approval, had made a secret treaty with the house of Hapsburg, the hereditary enemy of France, by which the sovereigns of Austria, Prussia and Spain agreed to cross the frontier at a given signal, and close on France with an army a hundred thousand strong. It was an act of impious treachery, and the beginning of the doom of the French monarchy. Yet if but some glimmer of intelligence and courage had characterised the preparations for the flight of the royal family to join the armed forces waiting to receive them near the frontier, their lives at least had been saved. The incidents of the four months' "secret" preparations to leave the Tuileries as described by Madame Campan read like scenes in a comic opera. The disguised purchases of elaborate wardrobes of underlinen and gowns; the making of a dressing-case of "enormous size, fitted with many and various articles from a warming-pan to a silver porringer"; the packing of the diamonds; the building of the new _berline_, that huge, lumbering Noah's ark which was to bear them swiftly away! The story of the pretended flight of the Russian baroness and her family; the start delayed by the queen turning into the Carrousel instead of into the Rue de l'Echelle, where the king and her children were awaiting her in the glass coach; the colossal folly of the whole business has been told by Carlyle in one of the most dramatic chapters in history. The Assembly declared on hearing of Louis' flight that the government of the country was unaffected and that the executive power remained in the hand of the ministers. After voting a levy of three hundred thousand National Guards to meet the threatened invasion, they passed calmly to the discussion of the new Penal Code. The king returned to Paris through an immense and silent multitude. "Whoever applauds the king," said placards in the street, "shall be thrashed; whoever insults him, hung." The idea of a republic as a practical issue of the situation was now for the first time put forward by the extremists, but met with little sympathy, and a Republican demonstration in the Champ de Mars was suppressed by the Assembly by martial law at the cost of many lives. Owing to the aversion felt by Marie Antoinette to Lafayette, who with affectionate loyalty more than once had risked his popularity and life to serve the crown, the court made the fatal mistake of opposing his election to the mayoralty of Paris and paved the way for the triumph of Petion and of the Dantonists. To the famous manifesto of Pilnitz by the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia in August 1791, calling on the sovereigns of Europe to support them in an armed intervention to restore the rights and prerogatives of the French king, the Assembly replied that, while they must regard as enemies those who tolerated hostile preparations against France, they offered good neighbourship, the amity of a free and puissant country to the nations of Europe. They desired no conquests and would respect the laws and constitutions of others if they evinced the same respect towards those of France: if the German princes favoured military preparations directed against the French, the French would carry among them, not fire and sword, but liberty. "_Let them ponder on the consequences of an awakening of the nations._" Meanwhile the Assembly renewed some laws of the _ancien régime_ against _émigrés_, who were threatened with the confiscation of their property without prejudice to the rights of their wives and children and lawful creditors if they did not return within a definite time. The foreign monarchies reasserted the lawfulness of their acts and war became inevitable. [Illustration: PLACE DE LA CONCORDE] At the news of the first defeats the king added to his amazing tale of follies by vetoing the formation of a camp near Paris and by turning a deaf ear to the earnest entreaties of the brave, loyal and sagacious Dumouriez and accepting his resignation. He sent a secret agent with confidential instructions to the _émigrés_ and the coalesced monarchies, and when Lafayette, after the first demonstration against the Tuileries, hastened to Paris and strove to stir the ill-fated king to resolute action he was coldly received, and with bitterness in his heart returned to his army at the frontier. The ill-starred proclamation[161] of the Duke of Brunswick completed the destruction of the monarchy. While the French were smarting under defeat and stung by the knowledge that their natural defender, the king, was leagued with their enemies, this foreign commander warned a high-spirited and gallant nation that he was come to restore Louis XVI. to his authority, and threatened to treat as rebellious any town that opposed his march, to shoot all persons taken with arms in their hands, and in the event of any insult being offered to the royal family to take exemplary and memorable vengeance by delivering up the city of Paris to military execution and complete demolition. When the proclamation reached Paris at the end of July 1792, it sounded the death knell of the king and the triumph of the Republicans. Paris was now to become, in Goethe's phrase, the centre of the "world whirlwind"--a storm centre launching forth thunderbolts of terror. After the Assembly had twice refused to bring the king to trial, the extremists were able to organise and direct an irresistible wave of popular indignation towards the Tuileries, and on 10th August the palace was stormed. While a band of brave and devoted Swiss guards was being cut to pieces in hundreds, the feeble and futile king had fled to the Assembly and was sitting safely with his wife and children in a box behind the president's chair. Thorwaldsen's monument to the fallen Swiss, carved in the granite rock at Lucerne, recalls that piteous scene at the Tuileries when these poor Republican mercenaries, true to their salt, stood faithful unto death in defence of an empty palace. No room for compromise now. The printed trial of Charles I. was everywhere sold and read. "This," people said, "was how the English dealt with an impossible king and became a free nation." Old and new were in death-grapple, and the lives of many victims, for the people lost heavily,[162] had sealed the cause of the Revolution with a bloody consecration. Unhappily, the city of Paris, like all great towns in times of scarcity (and since 1780 scarcity had become almost permanent), had been invaded by numbers of starving vagabonds--the dregs that always rise to the surface in periods of political convulsion, ready for any villainy. When news came of the capture of Verdun, of the indecent joy of the courtiers, and that the road to Paris was open to the avenging army of Prussians, the horrors of the Armagnac massacres were renewed during four September days at the prisons of Paris, while the revolutionary ministry and the Assembly averted their gaze and, to their everlasting shame, abdicated their powers. The September massacres were the application by a minority of desperate and savage revolutionists of the _ultima ratio_ of kings to a desperate situation. The tragedy of King Louis is the tragedy of a feeble prince called to rule in a tremendous crisis where weakness and well-meaning folly are the fatalest of crimes. How pathetic are the incidents of the penalty of wrong! The dreadful heritage of the sins of the later French monarchy had fallen on the head of one of the best-intentioned and least guilty, though most foolish and feeblest of men. On 21st September 1792 royalty was formally abolished, and on the 22nd, when "the equinoctional sun marked the equality of day and night in the heavens," civil equality was proclaimed by the representatives of France. CHAPTER XVIII EXECUTION OF THE KING--PARIS UNDER THE FIRST REPUBLIC--THE TERROR--NAPOLEON--REVOLUTIONARY AND MODERN PARIS An inscription opposite No. 230 Rue de Rivoli indicates the site of the old Salle du Manége, or Riding School, of the Tuileries, where the destinies of modern France were debated. Three Assemblies--the Constituent, the Legislative and the prodigious National Convention--filled its long, poorly-furnished amphitheatre, decorated with the tattered flags captured from the Prussians and Austrians, from 7th November 1789 to 9th May 1795. There, on Wednesday, 16th January 1793, began the solemn judgment of Louis XVI. by 721 representatives of the people of France. The sitting opened at ten o'clock in the morning, but not till eight in the evening did the procession of deputies begin, as the roll was called, to ascend the tribune, and utter their word of doom. All that long winter's night, and all the ensuing short winter's day, the fate of a king trembled in the balance as the judgment, death--banishment: banishment--death, with awful alternation echoed through the hall. Amid the speeches of the deputies was heard the chatter of fashionable women in the boxes, pricking with pins on cards the votes for and against death, and eating ices and oranges brought to them by friendly deputies. Above, in the public tribunes, sat women of the people, greeting the words of the deputies with coarse gibes. Betting went on outside. At every entrance cries hoarse and shrill were heard of hawkers selling "The Trial of Charles I." Time-serving Philip Egalité, Duke of Orleans, voted _la mort_, but failed to save his skin. An Englishman was there--Thomas Paine, author of the _Rights of Man_ and deputy for Calais. His voice was raised for clemency, for temporary detention, and banishment after the peace. "My vote is that of Paine," cried a member, "his authority is final for me." One deputy was carried from a sick-bed to cast his vote in the scale of mercy; others slumbering on the benches were awakened and gave their votes of death between two yawns. At length, by eight o'clock on the evening of the 17th, exactly twenty-four hours after the voting began, the President rose to read the result. "A silence most august and terrible reigns in the Assembly as President Vergniaud rises and pronounces the sentence 'Death' in the name of the French nation." The details of the voting as given in the _Journal de Perlet_, 18th January 1793, are as follows: "Of the 745 members one had died, six were sick, two absent without cause, eleven absent on commission, four abstained from voting. The absolute majority was therefore 361. Three hundred and sixty-six voted for death, three hundred and nineteen for detention and banishment, two for the galleys, twenty-four for death with various reservations, eight for death with stay of execution until after the peace, two for delay with power of commutation." Three Protestant ministers and eighteen Catholic priests voted for death. Louis' defenders were there and asked to be heard: they were admitted to the honours of the sitting. At eleven o'clock the weary business of thirty-seven hours was ended, only, however, to be resumed the next morning, for yet another vote must decide between delay or summary execution. Again the voice of Paine was heard pleading for mercy, but without avail. At three o'clock on Sunday morning the final voting was over. Six hundred and ninety members were present, of whom three hundred and eighty voted for death within twenty-four hours. [Illustration: EIFFEL TOWER.] To the guillotine on the fatal Place de la Révolution, formerly Place Louis XV., the very scene of a terrible panic at his wedding festivities which cost the lives of hundreds of sightseers, the sixteenth Louis of France was led on the morning of 21st January 1793. As he turned to address the people, Santerre ordered the drums to beat--it was the echo of the drums reverberating through history which had smothered the cries of the Protestant martyrs sent to the scaffold by the fourteenth Louis a century before. This was the beginning of that _année terrible_, into which was crowded the most stupendous struggle in modern history. Threatened by the monarchies of Europe, who were united in an unholy crusade to crush the Revolution, France, in the tremendous words of Danton, flung to the coalesced kings the head of a king as gage of battle. A colossal energy, an unquenchable devotion were evoked by the supreme crisis, and directed by a committee of nine inexperienced young civilians, sitting in a room of the Tuileries at Paris, to whom later Carnot, an engineer officer, was added. "The whole Republic," they proclaimed, "is a great besieged city: let France be a vast camp. Every age is called to defend the liberty of the Fatherland. The young men will fight: the married will forge arms. Women will make clothes and tents: children will tear old linen for lint. Old men shall be carried to the market-place to inflame the courage of all." In twenty-four hours 60,000 men were enrolled; in two months fourteen armies organised. Saltpetre for powder failed; it was torn from the bowels of the earth. Steel, too, and bronze were lacking: iron railings were transmuted into swords, and church bells and royal statues into cannon. Paris became a vast armourer's shop. Smithy fires in hundreds roared and anvils clanged in the open places--one hundred and forty at the Invalides, fifty-four at the Luxembourg. The women sang as they worked:-- "Cousons, filons, cousons bien, V'là des habits de notre fabrique Pour l'hiver qui vient. Soldats de la Patrie Vous ne manquerez de rien."[163] The smiths chanted to the rhythm of their strokes:-- "Forgeons, forgeons, forgeons bien!" On the new standards waving in the breeze ran the legend: "The French people risen against Tyrants." Toulon was in the hands of the English; Lyons in revolt. With enemies in her camp, with one arm tied by the insurrection in La Vendée, the Revolution hurled her ragged and despised _sans-culottes_, shod in pasteboard or straw bands, mantled in a piece of matting skewered above their shoulders, against her enemies. How vain is the wisdom of the great! Burke thought that the Revolution had expunged France in a political sense out of the system of Europe, and his opinion was shared by every statesman in Europe, but before the year closed the proud and magnificently accoutred armies of kings were scattered over the borders, civil war was crushed at home, the Revolution triumphant. The Convention fixed the day of victory. It ordered its generals to end the war of La Vendée by 20th October: by the 17th four defeats had been inflicted on the insurgents, and 60,000 men, women and children were driven over the Loire. Soon the "dwarfish, ragged _sans-culottes_, the small, black-looking Marseillaise dressed in rags of every colour," whom Goethe saw tramping out of Mayence "as if the goblin king had opened his mountains and sent forth his lively host of dwarfs," had forced Prussia, the arch-champion of monarchy, to make peace and leave its Rhine provinces in the hands of regicides. Meanwhile terror reigned in Paris. In the frenzy of mortal strife the Revolution struck out blindly and cut down friend as well as foe; the innocent with the guilty. At least the guillotine fell swiftly and mercifully. Gone were the days of the wheel, the rack, the boiling lead and the stake. Under the _ancien régime_ the torture of _accused_ persons was one of the sights shown to foreigners in Paris. Evelyn, when visiting the city in 1651, was taken to see the torture of an _alleged_ thief in the Châtelet, who was "wracked in an extraordinary manner, so that they severed the fellow's joints in miserable sort." Then, failing to extort a confession, "they increased the extension and torture, and then placing a horne in his mouth, such as they drench horses with, poured two buckets of water down, so that it prodigiously swelled him." There was another "malefactor" to be dealt with, but the traveller had seen enough, and he leaves reflecting that it represented to him "the intolerable sufferings which our Blessed Saviour must needs undergo when His body was hanging with all its weight upon the nailes of the Crosse." Too much prominence has been given by historians to the dramatic and violent activities of the men of '93, to the exclusion of acts of peaceful and constructive statesmanship. Among the 11,210 decrees issued by the National Convention in Paris from September '92 to October '95, the following are cited by Louis Blanc:-- That _maisons nationales_ be opened where children should be fed, housed and taught gratuitously. That primary schools be established throughout the Republic, and that three progressive stages of education be established embracing all that a man and a citizen should know. That each Department should possess a Central School. That a Normal School at Paris should teach the art of teaching. That special schools be established for the study of the sciences, Oriental languages, the veterinary art, rural economy and antiquities. It appointed a Commission to examine and report upon works relating to the moral and physical education of children and opened a competition for the composing of elementary books. It systematised the teaching of the French language. It ordered an inventory to be taken of collections of works of art. It fulminated against the degradation of public monuments. It founded national rewards for great discoveries. It gave lavish help to artists and savants. It offered a prize for the perfecting of the art of spinning. It ordered the publication of a translation of Bacon's works found among the papers of one of the condemned on the 9th of Thermidor. It decided that scientific voyages should be organised at the expense of the State, and that the Republic be charged with the maintenance of artists sent to Rome. It decreed the adoption, began the discussion, and voted the most important articles of the civil code. It inaugurated the telegraph and the decimal system, established the uniformity of weights and measures, the bureau of longitudes, reformed the calendar, instituted the Grand Livre, increased and completed the Museum of Natural History, opened the Museum of the Louvre, created the Conservatoire of the Arts and Crafts, the Conservatoire of Music, the Polytechnic School and the Institute. The truly great work of education initiated by the Convention can only be appreciated by recalling its previous condition. The old colleges were utterly neglected. In such as survived, little more than Latin (and that inefficiently) and a few scraps of history were taught. The natural sciences were wholly neglected; the children of the noblesse were educated by private tutors, and only in showy accomplishments. Madame Campan relates that the Princess Louise had not even mastered the alphabet at twelve years of age. The Convention abolished negro slavery in the French colonies, and Wilberforce reminded a hostile House of Commons that infidel and anarchic France had given example to Christian England in the work of emancipation. In 1793 it was reported to the Convention that the aged Goldoni had been in receipt of a pension from the _ancien régime_ and was now dependent on the slender resources of a compassionate nephew: the Convention at once decreed as an act of justice and beneficence that the pension of 4000 livres should be renewed, and all arrears paid up. This is but one of many acts of grace and succour among the records of the Convention. The same day, 7th February, an artist of Toulouse was awarded 3000 livres. It is curious to read in the journals of early '93 how fully assured the revolutionists were of the sympathy of England, "that proud and generous nation, whose name alone, like that of Rome, evokes ideas of liberty and independence," their appeals to the English nation, whose example they had followed, not to allow the quarrels of kings to embroil them in a conflict fatal to humanity. At the meetings of the Jacobins, flags of England, America and France were unfurled, with cries of "_Vivent les trois peuples libres_." The closing months of '95 were sped with those whiffs of grape shot from the Pont Royal and the Rue St. Honoré, that shattered the last attempt, this time by the Royalists, at government by insurrection. The Convention closed its stupendous career, and five Directors of the Republic met in a room furnished with an old table, a sheet of paper and an ink-bottle, and set about organising France for a normal and progressive national life. But Europe had by her fatuous interference with the internal affairs of France sown dragons' teeth indeed. A nation of armed men had sprung forth, nursing hatred of monarchy and habituated to victory. "_Eh, bien, mes enfants_," cried a French general before an engagement when provisions were wanting to afford a meal for his troops, "we will breakfast after the victory." But militarism invariably ends in autocracy. The author of those whiffs of grape shot was appointed in 1796 Commander-in-Chief of the army of Italy, and a new and sinister complexion was given to the policy of the Republic. "Soldiers," cries Napoleon, "you are half-starved and almost naked; the Government owes you much but can do nothing for you. Your patience, your courage do you honour, but win for you neither glory nor profit. I am about to lead you into the most fertile plains of the world; you will find there great cities and rich provinces; there you will reap honour, glory and riches. Soldiers of Italy, will you lack courage?" This frank appeal to the baser motives that sway men's minds, this open avowal of a personal ambition, was the beginning of the end of Jacobinism in France. Soon the wealth of Italy streamed into the bare coffers of the Directory:--20,000,000 of francs from Lombardy, 12,000,000 from Parma and Modena, 35,000,000 from the Papal States, an equally large sum from Tuscany; one hundred finest horses of Lombardy to the five Directors, "to replace the sorry nags that now draw your carriages"; convoys of priceless manuscripts and sculpture and pictures to adorn the galleries of Paris. So persistent were these raids on the collections of art in Italy that Napoleon is known there to this day as _il gran ladrone_. The chief duty of the new French officials in Italy, said Lucien Bonaparte, is to supervise the packing of pictures and statues for Paris. No less than 5233 of these works of art were confiscated by the Allies in 1815, and returned to their former owners. In less than a decade the rusty old stage properties and the baubles of monarchy were furbished anew, sacred oil from the little phial of Rheims anointed the brow of a new dynast, and a Roman Pontiff blessed the crown with which a once poor, pensioned, disaffected Corsican patriot crowned himself lord of France in Notre Dame. The old pomposities of a court came strutting back to their places:--Arch Chancellors, Grand Electors, Constables, Grand Almoners, Grand Chamberlains, Grand Marshals of the Palace, Masters of the Horse, Masters of the Hounds, Madame Mère and a bevy of Imperial Highnesses with their ladies-in-waiting. Only one thing was wanting, as a Jacobin bitterly remarked--the million of men who were slain to end all that mummery. The fascinating story of how this amazing transformation was effected cannot be told here. The magician who wrought it was possessed of a soaring, visionary imagination, of a mental instrument of incomparable force and efficiency, of an iron will, a prodigious intellectual activity, and a piercing insight into the conditions of material success, rarely, if ever before, united in the same degree in one man. Napoleon Bonaparte was of ancient, patrician Florentine blood, and perchance the descendant of one of those of Fiesole-- "In cui riviva la sementa santa Di quei Romani che vi rimaser quando Fu fatto il nido di malizia tanta."[164] He cherished a particular affection for Italy, and, so far as his personal aims allowed, treated her generously. His descent into Lombardy awakened the slumbering sense of Italian nationality. In more senses than one, says Mr Bolton King, the historian of Italian unity, Napoleon was the founder of modern Italy. The reason of Napoleon's success in France is not far to seek. Two streams of effort are clearly traceable through the Revolution. The earlier thinkers, such as Montesquieu, Voltaire, D'Alembert, Diderot and the Encyclopedists, whose admiration for England was unbounded, aimed at reforming the rotten state of France on the basis of the English parliamentary and monarchical system. It was a middle-class movement for the assertion of its interests in the state and for political freedom. The aim of the Jacobin minority, inspired by the doctrines of the _Contrat Social_ of Rousseau, was to found a democratic state based on the principle of the sovereignty of the people. If the French crown and the monarchies of Europe had allowed the peaceful evolution of national tendencies, the Constitutional reformers would have triumphed, but in their folly they tried to sweep back the tide, with the result we have seen. For when everything is put to the touch, when victory is the price of self-sacrifice, it is the idealist who comes to the front. As the nineteenth century prophet Mazzini taught, men will lay down their lives for principles but not for interests. Let us not forget that it was the Jacobin minority which saved the people of France. Led astray by their old guides, abandoned in a dark and trackless waste, their heads girt with horror, menaced by destruction on every side, they groped, wandering hither and thither seeking an outlet in vain. At length a voice was heard, confident, thrilling as a trumpet call: "Lo this is the way! follow, and ye shall emerge and conquer!" It may not have been the best way, but it was a way and they followed. [Illustration: ARC DE TRIOMPHE--PLACE DU CARROUSEL.] It is easy enough to pour scorn on the _Contrat Social_ as a political philosophy, but an ideal, a faith, a dogma are necessary to evoke enthusiasm, the contempt of material things and of death itself. These the _Contrat Social_ gave. Its consuming passion for social justice, its ideal of a state founded on the sovereignty of the people became the gospel of the time. Men and women conned its pages by heart and slept with the book under their pillows. Napoleon himself in his early Jacobin days was saturated with its doctrines, and in later times astutely used its phrases as shibboleths to cloak his acts of despotism. But in that terrible revolutionary decade the Jacobins had spent their lives and their energies. A profound weariness of the long and severe tension, and a yearning for a return to orderly civil life came over men's minds. The masses were still sincerely attached to the Catholic faith; the middle-classes hailed with relief the advent of the strong man who proved himself able to crush faction; the peasants were won by a champion of the Revolution who made impossible the return of the evil days of the _ancien régime_ and guaranteed them the possession of the confiscated _émigré_ and ecclesiastical lands; the army idolised the great captain who promised them glory and profit; the Church rallied to an autocrat who restored the hierarchy. Moreover, the brilliancy of Napoleon's military genius was balanced by an all-embracing political sagacity. The chief administrative decrees of the Convention, especially those relating to education and the civil and penal codes, were welded into form by ceaseless energy. Everything he touched was indeed degraded from the Republican ideal, but he drove things through and imposed his own superhuman activity into his subordinates, and became one of the chief builders of modern France. "The gigantic entered into our very habits of thought," said one of his ministers. But his efforts to maintain the stupendous twenty years' duel with the combined forces of England and the continental monarchies, and his own over-weening ambition, broke him at length, and he fell to fret away his life caged in a lonely island in mid-Atlantic. The new ideas were none the less revolutionary of social life. The salon, that eminently French institution, soon felt their power. The charming irresponsible gaiety and frivolity of the old _régime_ gave place to more serious preoccupation with political movements. The fusing power of Rousseau's genius had melted all hearts; the solvent wit of Voltaire and the precise science of the Encyclopedists were a potent force even among the courtiers themselves. The centre of social life shifted from Versailles to Paris and the salons gained what the court lost. Fine ladies had the latest pamphlet of Siéyès read to them at their toilette, and maids caught up the new phrases from their mistresses' lips. Did a young gallant enter a salon excusing himself for being late by saying, "I have just been proposing a motion at the club," every fair eye sparkled with interest. A deputy was a social lion, and a box for the National Assembly exchanged for one at the opera at a premium of six livres. Speeches were rehearsed at the salons and action determined. Chief of the hostesses was Madame[165] Necker: at her crowded receptions might be seen Abbé Siéyès, the architect of Constitutions; Condorcet, the philosopher; Talleyrand, the patriotic bishop; Madame de Stäel, with her strong, coarse face and masculine voice and gestures. More intimate were the Tuesday suppers at which a dozen chosen guests held earnest communion. Madame de Beauharnais was noted for her excellent table, and her Tuesday and Thursday dinners: at her rooms the masters of literature and music had been wont to meet. Now came Buffon the naturalist; Bailly of Tennis Court oath fame; Clootz, the friend of humanity. The widow of Helvetius, with her many memories of Franklin, welcomed Volney, author of the _Ruins of Empires_, and Chamfort, the candid critic of Academicians. At the salon of Madame Pancroute, Barrère, the glib orator of the Revolution, was the chief figure. Julie Talma was famed for her literary and artistic circle. Here Marie Joseph Chenier, the revolutionary dramatic poet of the Comédie Française, declaimed his couplets. Here came Vergniaud, the eloquent chief of the ill-fated Gironde; Greuze, the painter; Roland, the stern and minatory minister, who spoke bitter words, composed by his wife, to the king; Lavoisier, the chemist, who begged that the axe might be stayed while he completed some experiments, and was told that the Republic had no need of chemists. Madame du Deffand, whose hotel in the Rue des Quatre Fils still exists, welcomed Voltaire, D'Alembert, Montesquieu and the Encyclopedists. In the street, the great open-air salon of the people, was a feverish going to and fro. Here were the tub-thumpers of the Revolution holding forth at every public place; the strident voices of ballad-singers at the street corners; hawkers of the latest pamphlets hot from the Quai des Augustins; the sellers of journals crying the _Père Duchesne_, _L'Ami du Peuple_, the _Jean Bart_, the _Vieux Cordelier_. Crowds gathered round Bassett's famous shop for caricature at the corner of the Rue St. Jacques and the Rue des Mathurins. The walls of Paris were a mass of variegated placards and proclamations. The charming signs of the old _régime_ the Pomme rouge, the Rose Blanche, the Ami du Coeur, the Gracieuse, the Trois Fleurs-de-lys couronnées gave place to the "Necker," the "National Assembly," the "Tiers," the "Constitution"--these, too, soon to be effaced by more Republican appellations. For on the abolition of the monarchy and the inauguration of the Religion of Nature, the words "royal" and "saint" disappear from the revolutionary vocabulary. A new calendar is promulgated: streets and squares are renamed: rues des Droits de l'Homme, de la Revolution, des Piques de la Lois, efface the old landmarks. We must now say Rue Honoré, not St. Honoré, and Mont Marat for Montmartre. Naturalists had written of the queen bee: away with the hated word! She is now named of all good patriots the _abeille pondeuse_, the egg-laying bee. No more emblems on playing cards of king, queen, and knave: allegorical figures of Genius, Liberty and Equality take their places, and since Law alone is above them all, Patriotism, as it flings down its biggest card, shall cry no longer, "Ace of trumps," but "Law of trumps," and "Genius of trumps." Furniture is of Spartan simplicity. The people lie down on patriotic beds and eat and drink from patriotic mugs and platters. Silver buckles are needed by the national war chest: shoes shall now be clasped by patriotic buckles of copper. The monarchial "_vous_" (you) shall give place to "_toi_" (thou); and "monsieur" and "madame" to "_citoyen_" and "_citoyenne_." The formal subscriptions to letters, "Your humble servant," "Your obedient servant," shall no more recall the old days of class subjection; we write now "Your fellow citizen," "Your friend," "Your equal." Every house bears an inscription, giving the names and ages of the occupants, decorated with patriotic colours of red, white and blue, with figures of the Gallic cock and the _bonnet rouge_. Over every public building runs the legend, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity or Death"--it is even seen over the cages of the wild beasts at the Jardin des Plantes. Nowhere did the revolutionary ploughshare cut deeper than among the clergy and the religious orders. Nearly forty monasteries and convents were suppressed in Paris, and strange scenes were those when the troops of monks and friars issued forth to secular life, some crying, "_Vive Jesus le Roi et la Revolution_," for the new ideas had penetrated even the cloister. The barbers' shops were invaded, and strange figures were seen smoking their pipes along the Boulevards. Some went to the wars; others, especially the Benedictines, appealed for teaching appointments; many, faithful to their vows, went forth to poverty, misery and death. The nuns and sisters gave more trouble, and the scenes that attended their expulsion and that of the non-juring clergy burned deep into the memories of the pious. "What do they take from me?" cried the _curé_ of St. Marguerite in his farewell sermon. "My cure? All that I have is yours, and it is you they despoil. My life? I am eighty-four years of age, and what of life remains to me is not worth the sacrifice of my principles." Descending the pulpit the venerable priest passed through a sobbing congregation to a garret in one of the Faubourgs. There were but few, however, who imitated the dignified protest of the _curé_ of St. Marguerite. Many a pulpit rang with fiery denunciations, which recalled the savage fanaticism of the league. Some of the younger clergy and a few of the bishops were on the side of the early Revolutionists. The Abbé Fouchet was the Peter the Hermit of the crusade for Liberty, and so popular were his sermons in Notre Dame that a seat there fetched twenty-four sous. But the corruption and apostasy of the hierarchy as a whole, and their betrayal of the people, had borne its acrid fruit of popular contempt and hostility, resulting in the monstrous profanation of Notre Dame and other churches of Paris by the fanatics of the worship of Nature and the puerile Deistic theatricalities of Robespierre's Feasts of the Supreme Being. Compromise became impossible and the Revolutionists found arrayed against them the most universal and the deepest of human sentiments, the strongest cementing force in civil life. Less than eight years after Robespierre's solemn comedy of the _Etre Suprème_ all the hierarchy of the old religion returned--sixty archbishops and bishops, and an army of priests. A gorgeous Easter Mass in Notre Dame celebrated the re-establishment of the Catholic faith by Napoleon, the heir of the Revolution. It is not within the scope of the present work to deal with the later annals of France. Superficial students of her modern history have freely charged her with political irresponsibility and fickleness; no charge could be less warranted by facts. For a thousand years her people were loyal and faithful subjects of a monarchy, and endured for a century and a half an infliction of misgovernment, oppression and grinding taxation such as probably no other European people would have tolerated. With touching fidelity and indomitable steadfastness the French people have cherished the principles of the Great Revolution, in whose name they swept the shams and wrongs of the _ancien régime_ away. There is a profounder truth than perhaps Alphonse Karr imagined in his famous epigram, _Plus ça change plus c'est la même chose_. Every political upheaval of the nineteenth century in Paris has been at bottom an effort to realise the revolutionary ideals of political freedom and social equality in the face of external violence or internal corruption and treachery. Twice the hated Bourbons were re-imposed on the people of Paris by the bayonets of the foreigner; twice they rose and chased them away. A compromise followed--that of a citizen king, Louis Philippe of Orleans, once a Jacobin doorkeeper and a soldier of the Revolution, who had fought valiantly at Valmy and Jemappes. But he too identified himself with reactionary ministers, and became a fugitive to England, the bourne of deposed kings. The Second Republic which followed grew distrustful of the people and disfranchised at one stroke 3,000,000 citizens: one of the causes of the success of the _coup d'état_ of Napoleon III. was an astute edict which restored universal suffrage. During the negation of political rectitude and decency which characterised the period of the Second Empire a little band of Republicans refused to bow the knee to the new pinchbeck Cæsar, and, inspired by Victor Hugo, their fiery poet and seer, whose _Châtiments_ have the passionate intensity of an Isaiah, braved exile, poverty, calumny and flattery. They "stooped into a dark, tremendous sea of doubt, pressed God's lamp to their breasts and emerged" to witness a sad and bitter day of reckoning, when the corruption and vice of the Second Empire were swallowed up in shame and disaster at Sedan. The Third Republic, with admirable energy and patriotism, rose to save the self-respect of France. The first and Imperial war, up to Sedan, was over in a month; the second national and popular war endured for five months. [Illustration: THE LOUVRE--EASTERN ENTRANCE.] Dynastic and ecclesiastical ambition die hard, and the new Republic has had to weather many a storm in her career of a third of a century. Carducci in a fine poem has imagined Letizia, mother of the Bonapartes, a wandering shade haunting the desolate house at Ajaccio and recalling the tragic fate of her children:--a Corsican Niobe standing on her threshold and fiercely stretching forth her arms to the savage Ocean, calling, calling, that from America, from Britain, from burning Africa, some one of her tragic progeny may come to find a haven in her breast. But the assegais of South African savages laid low the last hope of the Imperialists, and it may reasonably be predicted that neither the shades nor the living descendants of Bonaparte or Bourbon will ever trouble again the internal peace of France nor her people be ruled by one "regnant by right divine and luck o' the pillow." Throughout the whole land a profound desire of peace possesses men's minds[166] and a firm determination to effect a material and moral recuperation from the disasters of the Empire. Two facts in modern France have impressed the present writer in his travels since 1870--the extraordinary number of new schools that have been raised and staffed throughout the length and breadth of the land and the wonderful activity of the Catholic church as shown by new churches and foundations. The beneficent results of the Great Revolution have leavened the whole world. In no small degree may it be said of France that by her stripes we have been healed. With true insight the Revolutionists perceived that liberty is the one essential element of national progress-- "When liberty goes out of a place it is not the first to go, Nor the second or third to go, It waits for all the rest to go, it is the last." But the great work is yet incomplete. Political liberty and equality have been won. A more tremendous task awaits the peoples of the old and new worlds alike--to achieve industrial emancipation and inaugurate a reign of social justice. And we know that Paris will have no small part in the solution of this problem. * * * * * It now remains to consider the impress which this stormy period left on the architecture of Paris. We have seen that the Convention assigned the royal Palace of the Louvre for the home of a national museum. The neglect of the fabric, however, continued. Already Marat had appropriated four of the royal presses and their accessories for the _Ami du Peuple_, and the types founded for Louis XIV. were used to print the diatribes of the fiercest advocate of the Terror. All along the south façade, print and cook shops were seen, and small huckstering went on unheeded. In 1794 the ground floor of the Petite Galerie was used as a Bourse. On the Place du Carrousel, and the site of the Squares du Louvre were a mass of mean houses which remained even to comparatively recent times. In 1805 the masterful will and all-embracing activity of Napoleon were directed to the improvement of Paris, which he determined to make the most beautiful capital in the world. His architects, Percier and Fontaine, were set to work on the Louvre, and yet another vast plan was elaborated for completing the Palace. A northern wing, corresponding to Henry IV.'s south wing, was to be built eastwards along the new Rue de Rivoli, from the Pavilion de Marsan at the north end of the Tuileries; the Carrousel was to be traversed by a building, separating the two palaces, designed to house the National Library, the learned Societies and other bodies. Of this ambitious plan, however, all that was carried out was a portion of the Rue de Rivoli façade, from the Pavilion de Marsan to the Pavilion de Rohan, which latter was finished under the Restoration. Some external decorative work was carried out on the south façade. Perrault's Colonnade was restored, the four façades of the quadrangle were completed, and a new bridge to lead to the "Palace of the Arts" was built. Little or nothing was done to further Napoleon's plan until the Republic of 1848 decreed the completion of the north façade, which was actually achieved under the Second Empire by Visconti in 1857, who built other structures, each with three courts, inside the great space enclosed by the north and south wings to correct their want of parallelism. Later (1862-1868), Henry the Fourth's long gallery and the Pavilions de Flore and Lesdiguières were rebuilt, and smaller galleries were added to those giving on the Cour des Tuileries. After the disastrous fire which destroyed the Tuileries in 1871, the Third Republic restored the Pavilions de Flore and de Marsan. But the vicissitudes of this wonderful pile of architecture are not yet ended. The discovery of Perrault's base at the east and of Lemercier's at the north, will inevitably lead to their proximate disclosure. Ample space remains at the east for the excavation of a wide and deep fosse, which would expose the wing to view as Perrault intended it; but on the Rue de Rivoli side the problem is more difficult, and probably a narrow fosse, or _saut de loup_, will be all that space will allow there. Napoleon I.'s new streets near the Tuileries and the Louvre soon became the fashionable quarter of Paris. The Italian arcades and every street name recalled a former victory of the Consulate in Italy and Egypt. The military glories of a revolutionary empire, which at one time transcended the limits of that of Charlemagne; which crashed through the shams of the old world and toppled in the dust their imposing but hollow state, were wrought in bronze on the Vendôme Column, cast from the cannon captured from every nation in Europe. The Triumphal Arch of the Carrousel, crowned by the bronze horses from St. Mark's at Venice; the majestic Triumphal Arch of the Etoile--a partially achieved project--all paraded the Emperor's fame. Of more practical utility were the quays built along the south bank of the Seine; the bridges of Austerlitz and Jena, which latter Blücher would have blown up had Wellington permitted it. The erection of the new church of the Madeleine, begun in 1764, had been interrupted by the Revolution, and in 1806, Napoleon ordered that it should be completed as a Temple of Glory. The Restoration transformed it to a Catholic church, which was finally completed under Louis Philippe in 1842. It is now the most fashionable place of worship in Paris. Napoleon drove sixty new streets through Paris, cleared away the posts that marked off the footways, began the raised pavements and kerbs, and ordered the drainage to be diverted from the gutters in the centre of the roadway. The Restoration erected two basilicas--Notre Dame de Lorette and St. Vincent de Paul--the latter made famous by Flandrin's masterly frescoes, painted on a gold ground around the nave and choir. The Expiatory Chapel raised to the memory of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette on the site of the old cemetery of the Madeleine--where they lay, until transferred to St. Denis, in one red burial with the brave Swiss Guards who vainly spent their lives for them--is now threatened with demolition. Three new bridges--of the Invalids, the Archevêché and Arcole--were added, and fifty-five new streets. Under the citizen king, Napoleon's Arch of Triumph of the Etoile was completed, and the Columns of Luxor, on the Place de la Concorde, and of July on the Place de la Bastille, were raised. It was the period of the admirable architectural restorations of Viollet le Duc. The great architect has described how his passion for Gothic was stirred when, taken as a boy to Notre Dame, the rose window of the south seized upon his imagination. While gazing at it the organ began to play, and he thought that the music came from the window--the shrill, high notes from the light colours, the solemn, bass notes from the dark and more subdued hues. It was a reverent and admiring spirit such as this which inspired the famous architect's loving treatment of the Gothic restoration in Paris and all over France. To him more than to any other artist we owe the preservation of such masterpieces as Notre Dame and the Sainte Chapelle. But the great changes which have made modern Paris were effected under the Second Empire. In 1854, when the Haussemannisation of the city began, the Paris of the First Empire and of the Restoration remained essentially unaltered. It was a city of a few grand streets and of many mean ones. Pavements were still rare, and drainage was imperfect. In a few years the whole aspect was changed. Twenty-two new boulevards and avenues were created. Streets of appalling uniformity and directness were ploughed through Paris in all directions. "Nothing is more brutal than a straight line," says Victor Hugo, and there is little of interest in the monotonous miles of dreary coincidence which constitute the architectural legacy of the Second Empire. [Illustration: RUE DROUET AND SACRÉ COEUR.] [Illustration: HOTEL DE VILLE FROM RIVER.] The sad task of the Third Republic has been to heal the wounds and cover up the destruction wrought by the Civil War of 1871. The chief architectural creations of the Third Republic are the Hôtel de Ville, the new Sorbonne, the Trocadero, and the completion of the magnificent and colossal temple, rich with precious marble and stone of every kind, which, at a cost of £10,000,000 sterling, has been raised to the Muses at the end of the Avenue de l'Opéra. The Church, too, has lavished her millions on the mighty basilica of the Sacré Coeur, which dominates Paris from the heights of Montmartre. But some of the glory of past ages remains hidden away in corners of the city; some has been recovered from the vandalism of iconoclastic eighteenth-century architects, canons, revolutionists and nineteenth-century prefects. Let us now wander awhile about the great city and refresh our memories of her dramatic past by beholding somewhat of the interest and beauty which have been preserved to us; for "to be in Paris itself, amid the full, delightful fragrance of those dainty visible things which Huguenots despised--that, surely, were the sum of good fortune!" CHAPTER XIX HISTORICAL PARIS--THE CITÉ--THE UNIVERSITY QUARTER--THE VILLE--THE LOUVRE--THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE--THE BOULEVARDS [Illustration: NOTRE DAME, SOUTH SIDE.] There are few spots in Europe where so many associations are crowded together as on the little island of the Cité in Paris. In Gallo-Roman times it was, as we have seen, even smaller, three islets having been incorporated with it since the thirteenth century. Some notion of the changes that have swept over its soil may be conceived on scanning Félibien's 1725 map, where no less than eighteen churches are marked, scarce a wrack of which now remains on the island. We must imagine the old mediæval Cité as a labyrinth of crooked and narrow streets, with the present broad Parvis of Notre Dame of much smaller extent encumbered with shops and at a lower level. Thirteen steps led up to the Cathedral, and the Bishop's gallows stood facing them. Against the north tower leaned the Baptistry (St. Jean le Rond) and St. Denis du Pas against the apse. St. Pierre aux Boeufs, whose façade has been transferred to St. Severin's on the south bank, stood at the east corner, St. Christopher at the west corner of the present Hôtel Dieu which covers the site of eleven streets and three churches. The old twelfth-century hospital, demolished in 1878, occupied the whole space, south of the Parvis between the present Petit Pont and the Pont au Double. It possessed its own bridge, the Pont St. Charles, over which the buildings stretched, and joined the annexe (1606), which still exists on the opposite side of the river. Behind Notre Dame in mediæval times was an open space of waste land, the Motte aux Papelards, where the servants of the Cathedral disported themselves. To the east and north-east stood the cloisters and canons' dwellings, a veritable city within a city, with four gates and fifty-one houses. Canon Fulbert's house stood on the site of No. 10 Rue Chanoinesse, and at No. 9 Quai aux Fleurs an inscription marks the site of the house of Heloise and Abelard. The Rue and Pont d'Arcole have cleared away the old church of St. Landry and the port of that name, where up to the reign of Louis XIII. a market was held, at which foundling children from the hospital on the Parvis could be bought for thirty sous. The scandal was abolished by the efforts of the gentle St. Vincent de Paul, Anne of Austria's confessor. Until comparatively recent times the church of St. Marine was used as a joiner's workshop, and one of the chapels of the Madeleine, the parish church of the water-sellers, served as a wine merchant's store! And where are the Sanctuaries of Ste. Geneviève des Ardents, St. Pierre aux Liens, St. Denis de la Chartre, St. Germain le Vieux, St. Aignan, Ste. Croix, St. Symphorien, St. Martial, St. Bartholomew, and the church of the Barnabites, which replaced that of St. Anne, which replaced the old abbey church of St. Eloy, all clustering around their parent church of Our Lady, like nuns under their patroness' mantle? Some remains of the pavement of St. Aignan's, with the almost effaced lineaments and inscriptions on the flat tombstones of those, now forgotten, who in their day were doubtless famous churchmen, may be seen in the court of No. 26 Rue Chanoinesse; but the only ancient buildings that rest on the old Cité are Notre Dame and some portions of the Palais, including the Sainte Chapelle. Not a street retains its old aspect. The clock tower of the Palais dates from 1849, and the face of Germain Pilon's famous clock has been re-carved. The Quai de l'Horloge, once named of the _morfondus_ (chilled), because of its cold, northern, sunless aspect, where Madame Roland spent her childhood in her father's house, has been widened and lowered. There, at least, is a fine relic of old Paris, the picturesque, mediæval towers of the Conciergerie, in olden times the principal entrance to the Palace. A fifteenth-century tower called of Dagobert, in the Rue Chanoinesse, is shown to travellers by the courtesy of Messieurs Allez Frères, and marks the site of the old port of St. Landry. [Illustration: VERSAILLES--BASSIN DE NEPTUNE.] If the traveller will place himself on the Pont Royal or on the Pont du Carrousel, and look towards the Cité when the tall buildings, the spire of the Sainte Chapelle and the massive grey towers of Notre Dame are ruddy with the setting sun, he will enjoy a scene of beauty not easily surpassed in Europe. Across the picture, somewhat marred by the unlovely Pont des Arts, marches the procession of the arches of the Pont Neuf with their graceful curves. Below is the little green patch of garden and the cascade of the weir; in the centre the bronze horse with its royal rider, almost hidden by the trees, stands facing the site of the old garden of the Palais, now the Place Dauphine, where St. Louis sat on a carpet judging his people, and whence Philip the Fair watched the flames that were consuming the Grand Master and his companion of the Knights Templars. To the left are the picturesque mediæval towers of the Conciergerie and the tall roof of the belfry of the Palais. Around all are the embracing waters of the Seine breaking the light with their thousand facets. The island, when seen from the east as one sails down the river, is not less imposing, for the great mother church of Notre Dame, with the graceful buttresses of the apse like folded pinions, seems to brood over the whole Cité. * * * * * As we turn southwards from the Cité across the Petit Pont we see the old Roman road, now Rue St. Jacques, rising before us, and on the annexe of the Hôtel Dieu, in the Place du Petit Pont, are inscribed their names[167] who nearly twelve centuries ago dared-- "For that sweet motherland which gave them birth, Nobly to do, nobly to die." [Illustration: ST. SÉVERIN.] [Illustration: THE OBSERVATORY.] To left and right are two of the most interesting churches in Paris--St. Julien le Pauvre, where the University held its first sittings, and St. Séverin, built on the site of the oratory of Childebert I., where St. Cloud was shorn and took his vows. Both churches were destroyed by the Normans. The former was rebuilt in the twelfth century, the latter from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. The portal of St. Séverin has been, as we have already mentioned, transferred from the thirteenth-century church of St. Pierre aux Boeufs, in the Cité. Two small lions in relief, between which the _curés_ of the church in olden times are said to have exercised justice, have been replaced on either side of the north door of the tower. This beautiful Gothic temple, with its magnificent stained glass, was used during the Revolution as a powder magazine. Hard by, in the picturesque old Rue de la Parchmenerie, two houses, Nos. 6 and 7, were once the property of the canons of Norwich Cathedral, who maintained a number of scholars there. Turning out of this street, the Rue Boutebrie, was in olden times the Rue des Enlumineurs (illuminators), famous for those who practised the art "_che alluminare chiamato è in Parisi_." A street (Rue Dante), which bears the name of the great poet, from whom this line is taken, leads to the Rue du Fouarre (Straw Street), in one of whose colleges the author of the _Divina Commedia_ probably sat as scholar. The houses are all modernised, and the name alone remains. Southwards again, the Rue des Anglais reminds us that there the English scholars lived; and to the east is the Place Maubert, of dread memories, for there were burnt many a Protestant martyr, and the famous printer-philosopher, Etienne Dolet, whose statue in bronze stands on the Place. Yet further south, near the site of the old Carmelite monastery in the Rue des Carmes, stood, at No. 15, the Italian College (Collége des Lombards). Much of this "hostel of the poor Italian scholars of the charity of Our Lady," as rebuilt in 1681 by the efforts of two Irish priests, Michael Kelly and Patrick Moggin, still remains, including the chapel, and is occupied by a Catholic Workmen's Club. It formerly gave shelter to forty Irish missionary priests and an equal number of poor Irish scholars. Some idea of the vast extent of the ancient foundation will be gained by walking round to the Rue de la Montagne, where the principal portal may be seen. If we turn westwards by the Rue des Ecoles, we shall pass the famous Collége de France, and soon reach the Hôtel de Cluny, and the remains of the Roman palace and baths. The ruins and ground were purchased by the Abbots of Cluny in 1340, and the present beautiful late Gothic mansion was completed for them in 1490. It was often let by the abbots, and was occupied by James V. of Scotland when he came to Paris in 1536 to celebrate his marriage with Magdalen, daughter of Francis I. In the frigidarium of the baths are the remains of the altar to Jupiter found under Notre Dame, a statue of the Emperor Julian, and many a relic of Roman Paris. [Illustration: TOWER AND COURTYARD OF HOTEL CLUNY.] The abbots' delightful old mansion is filled with a rich collection of mediæval statues, altar paintings, wood carvings, ivories, reliquaries, stained glass, tapestries (among them the Lady and Unicorn series, the finest ever wrought), embroideries and textile fabrics, enamels and goldsmiths' work--all of wondrous beauty and interest. The rooms themselves, with their fine Renaissance chimney-pieces, where on winter days wood fires, fragrant and genial, burn, are not the least charming part of the museum. Many of the objects (about 11,000) exhibited are uncatalogued, and the old catalogue, long out of date, might well be classed among the antiquities. South of the Cluny are the vast buildings of the new Sorbonne, the modern University of Paris, where some 12,000 students are gratuitously taught. The vestibule, grand staircase and amphitheatre are of noble and impressive architecture, and adorned with mural paintings, among which Puvis de Chavannes' great decorative composition in the amphitheatre is of chiefest interest. The paintings of the vestibule illustrate scenes in the history of the University of Paris. Of Richelieu's Sorbonne, the chapel alone exists to-day: all the remainder has been swept away, together with the north cloister and church of St. Benoist, where François Villon assassinated his rival Chermoyé. We are now on Mont St. Genevieve, crowned by the Panthéon, below which, at No. 14 Rue Soufflot, an inscription marks the site of the Dominican monastery, where Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas taught. To the north is the extensive library of St. Genevieve, on the site of the Collége Montaigue. Behind are the church of St. Etienne du Mont the burial-place of Racine and Pascal, with its beautiful _jubé_, or choir screen, and the Lycée Henri IV., enclosing the tower of Clovis, all that remains of the fine old abbey church of St. Genevieve. Hard by is the Rue Descartes, where stood the college of Navarre, which was demolished to give place to the Ecole Polytechnique. Farther south, the Rue de Navarre leads to the ruins of the great Roman amphitheatre. [Illustration: OLD ACADEMY OF MEDICINE.] West of the Boulevard St. Michel are the fine modern buildings of the Ecole de Médecine, which, from 1369 to the times of Louis XV., was situated further eastwards in the Rue de la Bûcherie, where (No. 13) some remains of the old hall of the Faculty may yet be seen. It was here that an anatomical and surgical theatre was built in 1617. The old Franciscan refectory (No. 15 Rue de l'Ecole de Médecine) is all that remains of the great monastery of the Cordeliers. Here the body of Marat was laid on an altar, after his assassination by Charlotte Corday in a house on whose site his statue stands. The refectory is now used as a pathological museum for medical students. The famous revolutionary club of the Cordeliers, where the gentler rhetoric of Camille Desmoulins vied with the thunderous declamation of Danton to stir Republican fervour, met in the Hall of Theology. At No. 5 are some remains of the school of surgery, or Guild of St. Cosimo and St. Damian, founded by St. Louis; adjacent stood the church of St. Cosimo (St. Cosme), famous for the fiery zeal of its _curé_ during the times of the League. The surgeons were by their charter compelled to give professional assistance to the poor every Monday, and in 1561 the _curé_ and churchwardens of St. Cosme obtained a papal bull authorising them to erect in their church a suitable consulting hall for the accommodation of poor patients. In 1694 the surgeons built an anatomical theatre of their own at St. Cosme, which was enlarged in 1710. The buildings are now used as a school of decorative art. The magnificent Franciscan church, where many a queen of France lay buried, stood on the site of the present Place de l'Ecole de Médecine. South of these is the Luxembourg Palace, whose charming Renaissance gardens, unhappily, owing to the erection of the Observatory in 1672, reduced by more than one-third of their former extent, are the delight of the Parisians of the south bank of the Seine. The old Orangery, restored and enlarged, is used as a public museum of contemporary French art, chiefly painting and sculpture. Here are exhibited the works of modern artists which have been deemed worthy of acquisition by the State. They display great talent and technical skill, but the visitor will leave, impressed by few works of great distinction. The English traveller will, however, be envious of a collection whose catholicity embraces examples of the work of two great modern masters, Londoners by option--Legros and Whistler. Any impression of modern French painting that may be left on the mind of the visitor by an inspection of the examples hung in the Luxembourg should however be supplemented and corrected by a visit to the decorative works in the great public edifices, such as the Hôtel de Ville, the Sorbonne, the Panthéon, and the churches of Paris. North of the Museum loom the massive gloomy towers of the church of St. Sulpice, which contains, among much mediocre painting, a chapel to the right of the entrance adorned by some of Delacroix's finest work. Still further northward is the old abbey church of St. Germain des Prés. But before entering we may cross the Rue de Rennes and visit (No. 50) the picturesque Cour du Dragon, so-called from the eighteenth-century figure of the dragon over the portal. At the end of this curious courtyard, paved as old Paris was paved, with the gutter in the centre of the street, will be seen two interesting old towers enclosing stairways. [Illustration: COUR DU DRAGON.] [Illustration: THE LOUVRE FROM THE SOUTH-EAST.] The grey pile of St. Germain des Prés, the burial-place of the Merovingian kings, once refulgent with gold and colour, has been wholly restored; but on the west porch, over the main entrance, a well-preserved, Romanesque relief of the Last Supper may be noted. The admirable frescoes in the interior by Flandrin are among the noblest achievements of modern French art. Part of the Abbots' Palace of the sixteenth century is left standing in the Rue de l'Abbaye, but of all the fortress-monastery, with its immense domain of lands and cloisters, walls and towers, over which those puissant lords held sway, only a memory remains: the walls were razed in the seventeenth century and replaced by artizans' houses. The Rue du Four recalls the old feudal oven. Lower down the Rue Bonaparte is the little visited but most interesting Ecole des Beaux Arts, once the monastery of the Petits Augustins, now rich in examples of early Renaissance architecture and other artistic treasures. It is a great teaching centre, and trains some fifteen hundred students in sculpture, painting and architecture. Westward of this, the artists' quarter of Paris, is the select and aristocratic, but dull Faubourg St. Germain--the noble Faubourg--where many of the descendants of the noblesse who escaped from the wreck of their order during the Revolution, dwell in petulant isolation and haughty aversion from the Third Republic and all its ways. Further westward are the great hospital and church of the Invalides, with Napoleon's majestic monument, and the military school of the Champ de Mars. * * * * * Two parallel historic roads named of St. Martin and St. Denis cut northwards through the masses of habitations that crowd the northern bank of the Seine. The former was the great Roman street, leading to the provinces of the north: the latter, the Grande Chaussée de Monseigneur St. Denis, led to the shrine of the patron saint and martyr of Lutetia. Along this, the richest and finest street of mediæval Paris, the kings of France and Henry V. of England passed in solemn state to Notre Dame. Four gates, whose sites are known in each of these two streets, mark the successive stages of the growth of the city. In 1141 a sloping bank of sand (_grève_), a little to the east of the Rue St. Martin and facing the old port of the _Naut_ at St. Landry on the island of the Cité, was ceded by royal charter to the burgesses of Paris for a payment of seventy livres. "It is void of houses," says the charter, "and is called the _gravia_, and is situated where the old market-place (_vetus forum_) existed." This was the origin of the famous Place de Grève where throbbed the very heart of civic, commercial and industrial Paris. Here Etienne Marcel purchased for the Hôtel de Ville the Maison aux Piliers (House of the Pillars), a long, low building, whose upper floor was supported by columns. Here every revolutionary and democratic movement has been organised from the days of Marcel to those of the Communes of 1789--when the last Provost of the Merchants met his death--and of 1871, when Domenico da Cortona's fine Renaissance hotel was destroyed by fire. [Illustration: ST. GERVAIS.] The place of sand was much smaller in olden times, and from 1310, when Philip the Fair burned three heretics, to July 1830, when the last murderer was hung there, has soaked up the blood of many a famous enemy of State and Church and of innumerable notorious and obscure criminals. A permanent gibbet stood there and a market cross. Every St. John's eve--the church and cloister of St. Jean stood behind the Hôtel de Ville--a great bonfire was lighted in the Place de Grève, fireworks were let off, and a salvo of artillery celebrated the festival. When the relations between Crown and Commune were felicitous the king himself would take part in the _fête_ and fired the pile with a torch of white wax which was decorated with crimson velvet. A royal supper and ball in the Grande Salle concluded the revels. Not infrequently the ashes at the stake where a poor wretch had met his doom were scarcely cool before the joyous flames and fireworks of the Feu de St. Jean burst forth. The very day after the execution of the Count of Bouteville the people were dancing round the fires of St. John. The Place was often flooded by the Seine until the embankment was built in 1675. The present Hôtel de Ville, completed in 1882, is one of the finest modern edifices in Europe. [Illustration: PLACE DES VOSGES, MAISON DE VICTOR HUGO.] To the east of the hotel stands the church of St. Gervais, whose façade by Debrosse (1617) "is regarded," says Félibien (1725), "as a masterpiece of art by the best architectural authorities" ("_les plus intelligens en architecture_"). The church, which has been several times rebuilt, occupies the site of the old sixth-century building, near which stood the elm tree where suitors waited for justice to be done by the early kings. "_Attendre sous l'orme_" ("To wait under the elm") is still a proverbial expression for waiting till Doomsday. To the east of the Rue St. Martin is the quarter of the Marais (marsh) at whose eastern limit a group of street names recalls the royal palace-city of St. Paul. At the south of the Rue du Figuier, on the Place de l'Ave Maria, stands the Hôtel of the Archbishops of Sens, and near by, in the Passage Charlemagne, is the Hôtel of the royal Provost of Paris. As we cross the Rue St. Antoine to the old Place Royale (des Vosges), we may note at No. 21 the Hôtel de Mayenne--where the chamber still exists in which the leaders of the League met and decided to assassinate Henry III.--and at No. 62, the Hôtel de Sully, where Henry the Fourth's great minister and, later, Turgot dwelt. The Place Royale occupies the site of the palace of the Tournelles built for the Duke of Bedford during the English occupation, near which Henry II. lost his life in the fatal tournament. The palace became hateful to Catherine de' Medici, and she had it demolished. The site was subsequently used as a horse market, and there three mignons of Henry III. fought their bloody duel with three bullies of the Duke of Guise. The architecture of Henry IV. Place is little changed; the king's and queen's pavilions stood south and north; Richelieu occupied the present No. 21, and at No. 6 dwelt Marshal Lavardin, who was sitting in the coach when his royal master, Henry IV., was stabbed. Later this house was occupied by Victor Hugo, and is now maintained as a museum of much interest to lovers of the darling poet of nineteenth-century Paris. A little to the west, in the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, is the Hôtel Carnarvalet, built in 1544 by Jean Bullant, the architect of the Tuileries, to the design of Pierre Lescot. Jean Goujon carved, among other decorative works, the fine reliefs of the four Seasons in the quadrangle where now stands a bronze statue of Louis XIV. by Coyzevox, brought from the old Hôtel de Ville. In this noble Renaissance mansion, enlarged by F. Mansard and others, lived for twenty years Madame de Sévigné, queen of letter writers, and her _Carnarvalette_, as she lovingly called it, is now the civic museum of Paris, devoted to objects illustrating the history of the city. It is especially rich in exhibits bearing on the Great Revolution. Passing along the Rue des Francs Bourgeois we may note (No. 38) an old inscription which marks the scene of the assassination of the Duke of Orleans by Jean sans Peur. At the north corner of the Rue des Archives is the entrance to the National Archives, housed in the fine pseudo-classical Hôtel de Soubise, constructed in 1704 on the site of the Hôtel of the Constable de Clisson, of which the old Gothic (restored) portal exists in the Rue des Archives. It was at the Hôtel de Clisson that Charles VI., after his terrible vengeance on the revolted burgesses, agreed to remit further punishment, and for a time the mansion was known as the Hôtel des Grâces. [Illustration: ARCHIVES NATIONALES IN HÔTEL SOUBISE, SHOWING TOWERS OF HÔTEL DE CLISSON.] Lower down the Rue des Archives are the Rue de l'Homme Armé and the fifteenth-century cloisters of the monastery of the Billettes, founded at the end of the thirteenth century to commemorate the miracle of the sacred Host, which had defied the efforts of the Jew Jonathan to destroy it by steel, fire and boiling. The chapel, built in 1294 on the site of the Jew's house, was rebuilt in 1754, and is now used as a Protestant church. The miraculous Host was preserved as late as Félibien's time in St. Jean en Grève, and carried annually in procession on the octave of Corpus Christi. At the north end of the Rue des Archives is the site, now a square and a market, of the grisly old fortress of the Knights Templars, whose walls and towers and round church were still standing a century ago. The enclosure was a famous place of refuge for insolvent debtors and political offenders, and sheltered Rousseau in 1765 when a _lettre de cachet_ was issued for his arrest. In the gloomy keep, which was not destroyed until 1811, were imprisoned the royal family of France after the abandonment of the Tuileries on 10th August 1792. The old market of the Temple, the centre of the _petites industries_ of Paris, is being demolished as we write. West of this is the huge Museum of the Arts and Crafts (Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers), on the site of the abbatial buildings and lands of St. Martin of the Fields, still preserving in its structure the beautiful thirteenth-century church and refectory of the Abbey. As we turn southwards again by the Rue St. Martin we shall pass on our left one of the most curious remains of old Paris, the narrow Rue de Venise, a veritable mediæval street formerly known as the Ruelle des Usuriers, the home of the Law speculators where men almost rent each other in pieces in their mad scramble for fortune. At No. 27, the corner of the Rue Quincampoix, is the famous old inn of the Epée de Bois, now A l'Arrivée de Venise, where De Horn, a member of a princely German family, and two gentlemen assassinated and robbed a financier in open day, and were broken alive on the wheel in the Place de Grève. Marivaux and L. Racine are said, with other wits, to have frequented the old inn, and Mazarin granted letters-patent to a company of dancing masters, who met there under the management of the Roi des Violins. From these modest beginnings grew the National Academy of Dancing. At the south end of the Rue St. Martin rises the beautiful flamboyant Gothic tower, all that remains of the great church of St. Jacques de la Boucherie. This fine monument of the past was saved by the good sense of the architect Giraud, who, when it was sold to the housebreakers during the Revolution, inserted a clause in the warrant of sale exempting the tower from demolition; it was used as a lead foundry, and twice narrowly escaped destruction by fire. Purchased later by the city it seemed safe at last, but in 1853 the prolongation of the Rue de Rivoli again threatened its existence; luckily, however, the line of the new street passed by on the north. The statue of Pascal, under the vaulting, reminds the traveller that the great thinker conducted some of his barometrical experiments on the summit, and the nineteen statues in the niches mostly represent the patron saints of the various crafts that settled under its shadow. On the Place du Châtelet, at the foot of the Pont au Change, stood the massive Grand Châtelet, originally built by Louis the Lusty near the site of the old fortress, which, during the Norman invasions defended the approach to the Grand Pont as the Petit Châtelet did the approach to the Petit Pont on the south. The Grand Châtelet, demolished in 1802, was the official seat and prison of the Provost of Paris, where he held his criminal court and organised the city watch. The Column and Fountain of Victory which now stand in the Place commemorate the victories of Napoleon in Egypt and Italy. [Illustration: S. EUSTACHE.] Nowhere in Paris has the housebreaker's pick been plied with greater vigour than in the parallelogram enclosed by the Boulevard de Sebastopol, the Rues Etienne Marcel and du Louvre, and the Seine. The site of the immense necropolis of the Innocents[168] is now partly occupied by the Square des Innocents adorned by Lescot's fountain. A curious early fifteenth-century story is associated with this charnel house. One morning the wife of Adam de la Gonesse and her niece, two _bourgeoises_ of Paris, went abroad to have a little flutter and eat two sous' worth of tripe in a new inn. On their way they met Dame Tifaigne the milliner, who recommended the tavern of the "Maillez," where the wine was excellent. Thither they went and drank not wisely but too well. When fifteen sous had already been spent, they determined to make a day of it and ordered roast goose with hot cakes. After further drinking, gauffres, cheese, peeled almonds, pears, spices and walnuts were called for and the feast ended in songs. When the "bad quarter of an hour" came they had not enough money to pay, and parted with some of their finery to meet the score. At midnight they left the inn dancing and singing,-- "Amours au vireli m'en vois." The streets of Paris, however, at midnight were unsafe even for sober ladies, and these soon fell among thieves, were stripped of the rest of their clothing, then taken up for dead by the watch and flung into the mortuary in the Cemetery of the Innocents; but to the terror of the gravedigger were found lying outside the next morning singing,-- "Druin, Druin, ou es allez? Apporte trois harens salez Et un pot de vin du plus fort." The huge piles of skulls and human remains that grinned from under the gable roof of the gallery painted with the Dance of Death were in 1786 carted away to the catacombs under Paris, formed by the old Gallo-Roman quarrymen as they quarried the stone used to build Lutetia. An immense area of picturesque Halles and streets:--the Halle aux Draps; the Marché des Herboristes, with their mysterious stores of simples and healing herbs and leeches; the Marché aux Pommes de Terre et aux Oignons; the butter and cheese markets; the fish market; the queer old Rue de la Tonnellerie, under whose shabby porticoes, sellers of rags, old clothes, iron and furniture, crowded against the bread market; the Marché des Prouvaires, beloved of thrifty housewives--all are swallowed up by the vast modern structure of iron and glass, known as Les Halles. The Halle au Blé, or corn market, last to disappear, was built on the site of the Hôtel de la Reine which Catherine de' Medici had erected when frightened from the Tuileries by her astrologer Ruggieri. The site is now occupied by the Bourse de Commerce. One curious decorated and channelled column, however, which conceals a stairway used by Catherine and her Italian familiar when they ascended to the roof to consult the stars, was preserved and made into a fountain in 1812. It still stands against the new Bourse in the Rue de Viarmes. North of the Halles the small Rue Pirouette recalls the old revolving pillory of the Halles, and yet further north, between Nos. 100 and 102 Rue Réamur, a dingy old passage leads to the Cour des Miracles, which Victor Hugo has made famous in _Notre Dame_. There, too, was the gambling hell kept by Jean Dubarry, paramour of Jeanne Vaubernier, who was the daughter of a monk and became the famous mistress of Louis XV. She was married by Louis to Guillaume, brother of Jean Dubarry, to give her some standing at court. [Illustration: WINGED VICTORY OF SAMOTHRACE.] [Illustration: ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON. MICHEL COLOMBE.] At the south angle of the Rue Montmartre the majestic transitional church of St. Eustache towers over the Halles. We descend the Rue Vauvilliers, formerly of the Four (oven) St. Honoré, in which two of the houses still display old painted signs: others retain their quaint appellations--The Sheep's Trotter, The Golden Sun, The Cat and Ball. Turning westward by the Rue St. Honoré, we shall find at the corner of the Rue de l'Arbre Sec the fine fountain of the Croix du Trahoir erected in the reign of Francis I. and rebuilt by Soufflot in 1775: here tradition places the cruel death of Queen Brunehaut. Lower down, where the street intersects the Rue de Rivoli, an inscription on the corner house to the left marks the site of the Hôtel de Montbazan, where Coligny was assassinated, and yet lower down the Rue de l'Arbre Sec we note the Hôtel des Mousquetaires, the dwelling of the famous D'Artagnan of Dumas' _Trois Mousquetaires_, opposite the apse of the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois. After examining the interior of the church, especially the beautiful fifteenth-century Chambre des Archives, and the porch of the same date, we are brought face to face with the principal entrance to the Louvre. [Illustration: NEAR THE PONT NEUF.] No other edifice in the world forms so vast a treasure house of rich and varied works of art as the great Palace of the Louvre whose growth we have traced in our story. The nucleus of the gallery of paintings was formed by Francis I. and the Renaissance princes at the palace of Fontainebleau, where the canvases at the beginning of the seventeenth century had reached nearly 200. Colbert, during the reign of Louis XIV. by the purchase of the Mazarin and other collections, added 647 paintings and nearly 6000 drawings in ten years. In 1681 the Cabinet du Roi, for so the collection of royal pictures was called, was transferred to the Louvre. They soon, however, followed their owner to Versailles, but some hundred were subsequently returned to Paris, where they might be inspected at the Luxembourg Palace by the public on Wednesdays and Saturdays. In 1709 Bailly, the keeper of the king's cabinet, took an inventory of the paintings and they were found to number 2376. In 1757 all were again returned to Versailles, and it was not until 1793, when the National Convention, on Barrère's motion, took the matter in hand, that they were restored to the Parisians and, together with the works of art removed from the suppressed churches and monasteries, formed the famous picture gallery of the Louvre, which was formally opened to the public on the first anniversary of the memorable 10th of August. Napoleon's spoils from Italian and other European galleries, which almost choked the Louvre during his reign, were reduced in 1815 by the return of 5233 works of art to their original owners, under English supervision. During the removal of the pictures British sentries were stationed along the galleries, and British soldiers stood under arms on the Quadrangle and the Place du Carrousel to protect the workmen. Subsequent gifts and private legacies have since added priceless collections, the latest, that of Thomy-Thierry, endowing the Museum with numerous examples of the Barbizon school. [Illustration: CARDINAL VIRTUES. GERMAIN PILON.] [Illustration: _Diana and the Stag._] The ground floor, devoted to the plastic arts, contains in its antique section many excellent Greco-Roman works, but relatively few of pure Greek workmanship. Among those few are the beautiful reliefs in the Salle Grecque and, in the Salle de la Vénus de Milo, the best-known and most-admired example of Greek statues in Europe, which gives its name to the hall. It was to this exquisite creation of idealised womanhood that the poet Heine dragged himself in May 1848 to take leave of the lovely idols of his youth, before he lay, never to raise himself again, on his mattress-grave in the Rue d'Amsterdam. "As I entered the noble hall," he writes, "where the most blessed goddess of beauty, our dear Lady of Milo, stands on her pedestal, I well-nigh broke down and lay at her feet sobbing so piteously that even a heart of stone must be moved to compassion. And the goddess gazed at me compassionately, yet withal so comfortless as who should say, 'Dost thou not see that I have no arms and cannot help thee?'" It was a God with arms that poor Heine needed. An early work of a nobler and more virile type meets the visitor as he mounts the staircase to the Picture Gallery--the Victory of Samothrace, one of the grandest examples of pure Greek art in its finer period. Magnificent as the collection of antique sculpture is, the little-visited Musée des Sculptures du Moyen âge, et de la Renaissance will be found of greater importance to the student of French art. Here are examples, few but admirable, of the growth of French sculpture from the tenth to the sixteenth century contrasted with some masterpieces of the Italian sculptors, including Michael Angelo's so-called Slaves, being actually two of the Virtues wrought for the tomb of Pope Julius II. An interesting thirteenth-century coloured statue of Childebert from St. Germain des Prés, and a beautiful Death of the Virgin from the St. Jacques de la Boucherie, later in style, are especially interesting. Michel Colombe's fine relief of St. George and the Dragon; Germain Pilon's Theological Virtues from the church of the Célestins, and the Cardinal Virtues in wood from St. Etienne du Mont; Jean Goujon's Nymphs of the Seine, and Diana and the Stag, will illustrate the stubborn resistance made by the characteristic native school of sculpture against, and its gradual yielding to, the foreign influence of the Italian Renaissance. The gradual decline of French sculpture during the seventeenth century, its utter degradation in the reign of Louis XV., and signs of its recovery in the revolutionary epoch, may be traced in the Musée des Sculptures modernes. [Illustration: _The Burning Bush._] The last edition (1903) of the _Summary Catalogue_ of the pictures in the Louvre contains the titles of 2984 works, apart from decorative ceiling and mural paintings. The visitor must therefore needs make choice of his own favourite schools or masters, for, if he were to devote but one minute to a cursory examination of each exhibit, twenty-five visits of two hours each would be needed to view the whole collection. The pictures bear evidence of the period during which they were amassed, for they are rich in examples of the later Italian and Netherland schools and relatively poor in those of the pre-Raphaelite masters. But among the latter is Fra Angelico's Coronation of the Virgin, which Vasari declared must have been painted by the hand of one of the blessed spirits or angels represented in the picture, so unspeakably sweet and delightful were their forms, so gentle and delicate their mien, so glorious their colouration. "Even so," he adds, "and not otherwise, must they be in heaven, and never do I gaze on this picture without discovering fresh beauties, and never do I withdraw my eyes from it sated with seeing." Every phase in Raphael's development, from the Peruginesque to the Roman periods, may be studied in the Louvre. No gallery in Europe--not excepting the Accademia of Venice--can approach the Louvre in the wealth of its Titians, and the same might almost be said of its Veroneses. It contains the most famous portrait in the world--Da Vinci's Monna Lisa--and some exquisite examples of Luini's fresco and easel works. Among the rich collections of Tuscan and other Italian masters, we may mention two charming frescoes by Botticelli. In no gallery outside Spain are the Spanish artists, especially Murillo, so well represented, and magnificent examples of the later Flemings, Rubens and Van Dyck, adorn its walls. Among the latter master's works is the Charles I. (No. 1967), bought for the boudoir of Madame Dubarry by Louis XV. on the fiction that it was a family picture, since the page holding the horse was named Barry. Michelet, in his _History of the Revolution_, says that he never visited the Louvre without staying to muse before this famous historic canvas.[169] Among the later Dutch masters, most of whom are adequately represented, are some masterpieces by Rembrandt; of the Germans, Holbein is seen at his best in some superb portraits. But the student of French history and lover of French art will infallibly be drawn to the works of the native French schools, and especially to those of the earlier masters. For the extraordinary collection of French Primitifs of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, exhibited at Paris in 1904, and the publication of Dimier's[170] uncompromising and powerful defence of those critics, who, like himself, deny the existence of any indigenous French school of painting whatsoever, have concentrated the attention of the artistic world on this passionately debated controversy. The writer well remembers, some twenty years since, being impressed by certain characteristic traits in the few examples of early French painting hung in the Louvre, and desiring the opportunity of a wider field of observation. Such opportunity has at length been given. Now, while it is quite true that most of the examples of the so-called Franco-Flemish school exhibited in the Pavilion de Marsan would pass, and have passed, unquestioned when seen among a collection of Flemish paintings, yet when massed together, they do display more or less well-defined extra-Flemish and extra-Italian characteristics--a modern feeling for nature and an intimate realism in the treatment of landscape, a freer, more supple and more vivacious drawing of the human figure--that produce a cumulative effect which is almost irresistible, and may be reasonably explained by the theory of a school of painters expressing independent local feeling and genius. We include, of course, the illuminated MSS. exhibited in the Bibliothèque Nationale and the Books of Hours at Chantilly by Fouquet and by Pol de Limbourg and his brothers. The latter, by some authorities, are believed to have been the nephews of Malouel, and to have studied their art at Paris. The theory of the existence of a national French school, analogous to the _post_-revolutionary school of painting, is, of course, untenable, for France, as a nation, can scarcely be said to have existed, in the wider sense of the term, before the end of Louis XI.'s reign. When that monarch came to the throne Paris and North France had been sorely exhausted by the century of the English wars; Burgundy was an independent state; Provence, with its capital Aix, and Avignon were independent counties, ruled by the Counts of Provence and the Pope. A more rational classification into schools would perhaps, as Dimier has hinted, follow the lines of racial division--French and Teutonic. For many of the Flemish artists were French in race, as, for instance, Roger Van der Weyden, who was known to Italians as Rogerus Gallicus, and called himself Roger de la Pasture. [Illustration: LE MAITRE DE MOULINS. TRIPTYCH OF MOULINS.] [Illustration: JUVENAL DES URSINS. FOUQUET.] The two great schools of Christian painting in Europe were born, grew and flourished in the free cities of Flanders in the north, and in the free cities of Italy in the south. French masters, working in the provincial centres of Tours, Dijon, Moulins, Aix and Avignon, were inevitably subdued by the dominant and powerful masters of the north and south, and how far they succeeded in impressing a local and racial individuality on their works is, and long will be, a fruitful theme for constructive artistic criticism. The famous triptych of Moulins, now with many other works attributed to the painter of the Bourbons, known as the Maître de Moulins, who was working between 1480 and 1500, has long been accepted as a work by Ghirlandaio. The well-known painting at the Glasgow Museum, a Prince of Cleves, with his patron saint, St. Victor of Paris, now assigned to the Maître de Moulins, was recently exhibited among the Flemish paintings at Bruges, and has long been attributed to Hugo Van der Goes. The Burning Bush, given to Nicolas Fromont, has been with equal confidence classed as a Flemish work, and even ascribed to Van Eyck; and the Triumph of the Virgin, from Villeneuve-les-Avignon, now on irrefragable evidence assigned to Enguerrand Charonton, has been successively attributed to Van Eyck and Van der Meire. Even if all the paintings which the patriotic bias of enthusiastic critics has attributed to French masters, known or unknown, be accepted, the continuity is broken by many gaps, which can only be filled by assuming, after the fashion of biologists, the existence of "missing links." Further researches will doubtless elucidate this fascinating controversy. Among the French Primitifs[171] possessed by the Louvre may be mentioned the Martyrdom of St. Denis, and a Pietà, Nos. 995 and 996, attributed wholly or in part to Malouel, who was working about 1400 for Jean sans Peur at Dijon. A Pietà (No. 998), now attributed to the school of Paris of the late fifteenth century, contains an interesting representation of the Louvre, the abbey of St. Germain des Prés and of Montmartre, and has been ascribed to a pupil of Van Eyck, and later to an Italian painter named Fabrino. By Fouquet (about 1415-1480), the best known of the early French masters, there are portraits of Juvenal des Ursins and Charles VII. Two works (Nos. 1004 and 1005), the portraits of Pierre II., Duke of Bourbon, and of Anne of Beaujean, catalogued under unknown masters, are now assigned by many critics to the Maître de Moulins.[172] Nicholas Froment, who was working about 1480-1500, is represented by admirable portraits (No. 304 _a._), of Good King René and Jeanne de Laval, his second wife. Jean Perréal, believed by M. Hulin to be identical with the Maître de Moulins, is also represented by a Virgin and Child between two Donors (No. 1048). The later master, of Flemish birth, known as Jean Clouet, a painter of great delicacy, simplicity and charm, who died between 1540 and 1541, having spent twenty-five years as court painter of France; his brother, Clouet of Navarre; and his son, François Clouet, who was his assistant during the ten later years of his life, are all more or less doubtfully represented. Nos. 126 and 127, portraits of Francis I., are attributed to Jean Clouet, or Jehannet as this elusive personality is sometimes known; Nos. 128 and 129, two admirable portraits of Charles IX. and his queen Elizabeth of Austria, to François Clouet; No. 134, a portrait of Louis de St. Gellais, is ascribed to Clouet of Navarre. Other portraits executed at this period will be found on the walls, and are of profound interest to the student of French history. [Illustration: SHEPHERDS OF ARCADY. POUSSIN.] The two years' sojourn in France of Solario, at the invitation of the Cardinal d'Amboise, of Da Vinci at the solicitation of Louis XII., and the foundation of the school of Fontainebleau by Rosso and Primaticcio, mark the eclipse of whatever schools of French painting were then existing, for the grand manner and dramatic power of the Italians, fostered by royal patronage, carried all before them. Of Rosso, known to the French as Maître Roux, the Louvre has a Pietà and a classical subject--The Challenge of the Pierides (Nos. 1485 and 1486). Primaticcio is represented by some admirable drawings. But the sterility of the Fontainebleau school may be inferred from the fact that when Marie de' Medici desired to have the Luxembourg decorated with the events in the life of Henry IV., her late husband, she was compelled to apply to a foreigner--Rubens. Of Vouet (1590-1649), who is important as the leader of the new French school of the seventeenth century, the Louvre has some dozen examples, among them being his masterpiece (No. 971)--The Presentation at the Temple. Bestowing a passing attention on the lesser masters, and pausing to appreciate the works of the three brothers Le Nain, who stand pre-eminent for the healthy, sturdy simplicity of their peasant types and scenes of lowly life, we turn to Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), the greatest of the seventeenth-century masters, who spent the whole of his artistic career in Rome save two unhappy years (1640-1642) at the French court, which his simple habits and artistic conscience made intolerable to him. His exalted and lucid conceptions, admirable art and fertility of invention may be adequately appreciated at the Louvre alone, which holds nearly fifty examples of his work. The beautiful and pathetic Shepherds of Arcady (No. 734) is generally regarded as his masterpiece. A group of shepherds in the fulness of health and beauty are arrested in their enjoyment of life by the warning inscription on a tomb--"_Et in arcadia ego_" ("I, too, once lived in Arcady"). Equally rich is the Louvre in works of Vouet's pupil, Lesueur (1617-1655), one of the twelve ancients of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. No greater contrast could be imagined to the frank paganism of Poussin than the works of this fervently religious and tender artist, whose famous series from the life of St. Bruno is now placed in Room XII. His careful application to this monumental task may be estimated by the fact that 146 preliminary studies are preserved in the cabinet of drawings in the Louvre. The decorative skill, fertility and industry of his contemporary and fellow-pupil Lebrun (1617-1690), whom Louis XIV. loved to patronise, may perhaps be better appreciated at Versailles, but the Louvre displays the celebrated series of the Life of Alexander, executed for the Gobelins, and some score of his other works. His less talented rival, Mignard (1612-1695), also a pupil of Vouet, is seen at his best in the frescoes of the dome[173] of the Val de Grâce, but the oppressive influence of the Italian eclectics is all too evident in his style. He excelled in portraiture, and the visitor will not fail to remark the portraits of Madame de Maintenon, and of the Grand Dauphin with his wife and children. Louis XIV., who sat to him many times, one day, towards the end of his life, asked, "Do you find me changed?" "Sire," answered the courtly painter, "I only perceive a few more victories on your brow." We may now observe the more grave and virile style of Philippe de Champaigne of Brussels (1602-1674), who settled in Paris at nineteen years of age, and may fairly be classed among the French school. His intimate association with the austere and pious Jansenists of Port Royal is traceable in the Last Supper (No. 1928), and in his masterpiece, the portraits of Mother Catherine Agnes Arnauld and his own daughter, Sister Catherine (No. 1934), painted for the famous convent. He is perhaps better known for his portraits of Richelieu. Claude Lorrain (1600-1682), the best known and most appreciated of the seventeenth-century masters, and the greatest of the early landscape painters, is seen in sixteen examples. [Illustration: LANDING OF CLEOPATRA AT TARSUS. CLAUDE LORRAIN.] [Illustration: A SEAPORT. CLAUDE LORRAIN.] Rarely has the numbing and corrupting influence of royal patronage of art been more clearly demonstrated than in the group of painters who interpreted the hollow state, the sensuality and the more pleasant vices of the courts of Louis XIV., of the Regency, and of Louis XV. But among them, yet not of them, Watteau (1641-1721) stands alone--Watteau the melancholy youth from French Flanders, who invented a new manner of painting, and became known as the _Peintre des Scènes Galantes_. These scenes of coquetry, frivolity and amorous dalliance, with their patched, powdered and scented ladies and gallants, toying with life in a land where, like that of the Lotus Eaters, it seems always afternoon, he clothes with a refined and delicate vesture of grace and fascination. He has a poetic touch for landscape and a tender, pathetic sense of the tears in mortal things which make him akin to Virgil in literature, for over the languorous and swooning air and sun-steeped glades the coming tempest lours. His success, as Walter Pater suggests, in painting these vain and perishable graces of the drawing-room and garden comedy of life with the delicate odour of decay which rises from the soil, was probably due to the fact that he despised them. The whole age of the Revolution lies between these irresponsible and gay courtiers in the _scènes galantes_ of Watteau and the virile peasant scenes in the "epic of toil" painted by Millet. Among the dozen paintings by Watteau in the Louvre may be especially noted his Academy picture, the Embarkation for Cythera (No. 982). His pupils, Pater and Lancret, imitated his style, but were unable to soar to the higher plane of their master's idealising spirit. The eminent portrait painter, Rigaud (1659-1743), whose admirable Louis XIV. (No. 781) has been called "a page of history," is represented by fifteen works, among them his masterpiece, the portrait of Bossuet (No. 783). A page of history too is the flaunting sensuality of Boucher (1703-1770) and of Fragonard (1732-1806), who lavished facile talents and ignoble industry in the service of the depraved boudoir tastes of the Pompadours and Du Barrys that ruled at Versailles. Productions of these artists in the Louvre are numerous and important. A somewhat feeble protest against the prevailing vulgarity and debasement of contemporary art was made by Chardin (1699-1779) and by the super-sentimental Greuze (1725-1805) in their portrayal of scenes of simple domestic life, of which many examples may be noted in the Louvre. But from the studio of Boucher there issued towards the end of the century the virile and revolutionary figure of David (1748-1825), who burst like a thunderstorm from the corrupt artistic atmosphere of the age, sweetening and bracing French art for half a century. The successive phases of this somewhat theatrical but potent genius may be followed in the Louvre from the Horatii (No. 189) and the Brutus (No. 191)--the revolutionary flavour of which saved the painter's life during the Terror--to the later glorifications of Napoleonic splendours. The candelabrum in David's best-known work, the portrait of Madame Récamier, is said to have been painted by his pupil Ingres (1780-1867), a commanding personality of the _post_-revolutionary epoch. To him and to his master is due the tradition of correct and honest drawing which ever since has characterised the modern French school of painting. Besides La Source, the most famous figure drawing of the school, the Louvre possesses many of his portraits and subject paintings. To appreciate duly the artist's power, however, the drawings in the Salle des desseins d'Ingres should be studied. No master has evoked more reverence and admiration among students. More than once Professor Legros has told the writer of the thrill of emotion that passed through him and all his fellow-students when they saw the aged master enter the Ecole des Beaux Arts at Paris. Flandrin, the chief religious painter of the school, is poorly represented in the Louvre, and must be studied in the churches of St. Germain des Prés and St. Vincent de Paul. [Illustration: THE EMBARKATION FOR THE ISLAND OF CYTHERA. WATTEAU.] A two-fold study of absorbing interest to the artistic mind may be prosecuted in the Louvre--the development of the modern Romantic school of French painters from Gericault's famous Raft of the Medusa, painted in 1819, through the works of Delacroix and Delaroche; and the revival of landscape painting, under the stimulus of the English artists Bonnington and Constable, by Rousseau (1812-1867), the all-father of the modern French landscape school, and the little band of enthusiasts that grouped themselves around him at Barbizon. Corot, Daubigny, Diaz, Troyon and the grand and solemn Millet, once despised and rejected of men, have now won fame and appreciation. No princely patronage shone upon them nor smoothed their path; they wrought out the beauty of their souls under the hard discipline of poverty and in loving and awful communion with nature. They have revealed to the modern world new tones of colour in the air and the forest and the plain, and a new sense of the pathos and beauty in simple lives and common things. The artistic treasures we have thus briefly and summarily reviewed form but a part of the inestimable possessions of the Louvre. Collections of drawings; ivories; reliquaries and sanctuary vessels; pottery; jewellery; furniture (among which is the famous _bureau du roi_, the most wonderful piece of cabinet work in Europe); bronzes; Greek, Egyptian, Assyrian, Chaldean and Persian antiquities (including the unique and magnificent frieze of the archers from the palace of Darius I.), all are crowded with objects of interest and beauty, even to the inexpert visitor. Of the gorgeous palace of the Tuileries, with its inharmonious but picturesque façade, stretching across the western limit of the Louvre from the Pavilion de Flore to the Pavilion de Marsan, not one stone is left on another. We remember it after its fiery purgation by the Commune in 1871, a gaunt shell blackened and ruined, fitting emblem of the wreck which the enthroned wantonness and corruption of the Second Empire had made of France. [Illustration: GRACE BEFORE MEAT. CHARDIN.] [Illustration: MADAME RECAMIER. DAVID.] North of the Louvre is the Palais Royal, once the gayest, now the dullest scene in Paris. This quarter of Richelieu and of Mazarin drew to itself the wealth and fashion of the city in its migration westward from the Marais during the times of Louis XIII. and of the Regency of Anne of Austria. Nearly all the princely hotels that crowded the district have long since given place to commercial houses and shops. The mansions of the two great ministers remain as the Conseil d'Etat and the Bibliothèque Nationale, but all that is left of the immense Hôtel de Colbert in the Rue Vivienne is a name--the Passage Colbert. The same is true of the vast area of lands and buildings of the convent of the Filles de St. Thomas, of which the present Bourse and the Place before it only occupy a part. At the corner, however, of the Rue des Petits Champs and St. Anne the fine double façade of the Hôtel erected by Lulli with money borrowed from Molière may be seen, bearing the great musician's coat-of-arms--a design of trumpets, lyres and cymbals. Further west, Napoleon's Rues de Castiglione and de la Paix, the Regent Street of Paris, run south and north from the Place Vendôme, intended by its creator Louvois to be the most spacious in the city. A monumental parallelogram of public offices was to enclose the Place, but Versailles engulfed the king's resources and the ambitious scheme was whittled down, the area much reduced, and the site and foundations of the new buildings were handed over to the Ville. What the Allies failed to do in 1814 the Commune succeeded in doing in 1871, and the boastful Column of Vendôme, a pitiful plagiarism of Trajan's Column at Rome, was laid in the dust, only however to be raised again by the Third Republic in 1875. The Rue Castiglione leads down to the Terrace of the Feuillants overlooking the Tuileries gardens, all that is left of the famous monastery and grounds where Lafayette's club of constitutional reformers met. The beautiful gardens remain much as Le Notre designed them for Louis XIV., and every spring the orange trees, some of them dating back it is said to the time of Francis I., are brought forth from the orangery to adorn the central avenue, and the gardens become vocal with many voices of children at their games--French children with their gentle humour and sweet, refined play. Right and left of the central avenue, the two marble exhedræ may still be seen which were erected in 1793 for the elders who presided over the floral celebrations of the month of Germinal by the children of the Republic. The Place Louis XV (now de la Concorde), with its setting of pavilions adorned with groups of statuary representing the chief cities of France, was created by Gabriel in 1763-1772 on the site of a dreary, marshy waste used as a depot for marble. The Place was adorned in 1763 with an equestrian statue of Louis XV., elevated on a pedestal which was decorated at the corners by statues of the cardinal virtues. Mordant couplets, two of which we transcribe, affixed on the base, soon expressed the judgment of the Parisians:-- "_O la belle statue! O le beau piédestal!_ _Les vertus sont à pied, le vice est à cheval._"[174] "_Il est ici come à Versailles_ _Il est sans coeur et sans entrailles._"[175] After the fall of the monarchy the Place was known as the Place de la Revolution, and in 1792, Louis XV. with the other royal simulacra in bronze having been forged into the cannon that thundered against the allied kings of Europe, a plaster statue of Liberty was erected, at whose side the guillotine mowed down king and queen, revolutionist and aristocrat in one bloody harvest of death, ensanguining the very figure of the goddess herself, who looked on with cold and impassive mien. She too fell, and in her place stood a _fascis_ of eighty-three spears, symbolising the unity of the eighty-three departments of France. In 1795 the Directory changed the name to Place de la Concorde, and again in 1799 a seated statue of Liberty holding a globe was set up. In the hollow globe a pair of wild doves built their nest--a futile augury, for in 1801 Liberty II. was broken in pieces, and the model for a tall granite column erected in its place by Napoleon I. One year passed and this too disappeared. After the Restoration, among the other inanities came, in 1816, a second statue of Louis XV., and the Place resumed its original name. Ten years later an expiatory monument to Louis XVI. was begun, only to be swept away with other Bourbon lumber by the July Revolution of 1830. At length the famous obelisk from Luxor, after many vicissitudes, was elevated in 1836 where it now stands. [Illustration: LANDSCAPE. COROT.] The Place as we behold it dates from 1854, when the deep fosses which surrounded it in Louis XV.'s time, and which were responsible for the terrible disaster that attended the wedding festivities of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, were filled up, and other improvements and embellishments effected. The vast space and magnificent vistas enjoyed from this square are among the finest urban spectacles in Europe. To the north, on either side of the broad Rue Royale which opens to the Madeleine, stand Gabriel's fine edifices (now the Ministry of Marine and the Cercle de la Rue Royale), designed to accommodate foreign ambassadors. To the south is the Palais Bourbon, now the Chamber of Deputies; to the east are the gardens of the Tuileries, and to the west is the stately Grande Avenue of the Champs Elysées rising to the colossal Arch of Triumph crowning the eminence of the Place de l'Etoile. As our eyes travel along the famous avenue, memories of the military glories and of the threefold humiliation of Imperial France crowd upon us. For down its ample way there marched in 1814 and 1815 two hostile and conquering armies to occupy Paris, and in 1871 the immense vault of the Arc de Triomphe, an arch of greater magnitude than any raised to Roman Cæsars, echoed to the shouts of another exultant foreign host, mocking as they strode beneath it at the names of German defeats inscribed on its stones. And on the very Place de la Concorde, German hussars waltzed in pairs to the brazen music of a Uhlan band, while a line of French sentries across the entrance to the Tuileries gardens gazed sullenly on. To the south of the Champs Elysées is the Cours de la Reine, planted by Catherine de' Medici, for two years the most fashionable carriage drive in Paris. The charming Maison François I. brought from Moret, stone by stone, in 1826 stands re-erected at the further corner of the Cours. To the north, in the Cours de Gabriel, a fine gilded grille, surmounted with the arms of the Republic, gives access to the Elysée, the official residence of the President. It was once Madame Pompadour's favourite house in Paris, and the piece of land she appropriated from the public to round off her gardens is still retained in its grounds. In the Avenue Montaigne (once the Allée des Veuves, a retired walk used by widows during their term of seclusion) Nos. 51 and 53 stand on the site of the notorious Bal Mabille,[176] the temple of the bacchanalia of the gay world of the Second Empire. In 1764 the Champs Elysées ended at Chaillot, an old feudal property which Louis XI. gave to Phillipe de Comines in 1450, and which in 1651 sheltered the unhappy widow of Charles I. Here Catherine de' Medici built a château, but château and a nunnery of the Filles de Sainte Marie, founded by the English queen, disappeared in 1790. As we descend the Rue de Chaillot and pass the Trocadero we see across the Pont de Jéna the gilded dome of the Invalides and the vast field of Mars, the scene of the Feast of Pikes, and now encumbered by the relics of four World's Fairs. [Illustration: LICTORS BRINGING TO BRUTUS THE BODIES OF HIS SONS. DAVID.] The Paris we have rapidly surveyed is, mainly, enclosed by the inner boulevards, which correspond to the ramparts of Louis XIII. on the north demolished by his successor between 1676 and 1707, and the line of the Philip Augustus wall and the Boulevard St. Germain on the south. Beyond this historic area are the outer boulevards which mark the octroi wall of Louis XVI.; further yet are the Thiers wall and fortifications of 1841. Within these wider boundaries is the greater Paris of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, of profound concern to the economical and social student, but of minor interest to the ordinary traveller. The vogue of the brilliant and gay inner boulevards of the north bank so familiar to the foreigner in Paris is of comparatively recent growth. In the early nineteenth century the boulevard from the Place de la Madeleine to the Rue Cambon was almost deserted by day and dangerous by night--a vast waste, the proceeds of the confiscated lands of the Filles de la Conception. About the same time the fashionable cafés were migrating from the Palais Royal to the Boulevard des Italiens, south of which was built the Theatre of the Comédie Italienne, afterwards known as the Opéra Comique. Its façade was turned away from the boulevard lest the susceptible artists should be confounded with the ordinary "comediens of the boulevard." From the Boulevard Montmartre to the Boulevard St. Martin followed lines of private hotels, villas, gardens and convent walls. A great mound which separated the Boulevard St. Martin from the Boulevard du Temple still existed, and was not cleared away until 1853. From 1760 to 1862 the Boulevard du Temple was a centre of pleasure and amusement, where charming suburban houses and pretty gardens alternated with cheap restaurants, hotels, theatres, cafés, marionette shows, circuses, tight-rope dancers, waxworks, and cafés-chantants. In 1835, so lurid were the dramas played there, that the boulevard was popularly known as the _Boulevard du Crime_. But the expression of the dramatic and musical genius and social life of the Parisians in their higher forms is of sufficient importance to merit a concluding chapter. CHAPTER XX THE COMÉDIE FRANÇAISE--THE OPÉRA--SOME FAMOUS CAFÉS--CONCLUSION As early as 1341 the Rue des Jongleurs was inhabited by minstrels, mimes and players. They were men of tender heart, for in 1331 two jongleurs, Giacomo of Pistoia and Hugues of Lorraine, were touched by beholding a paralysed woman forsaken by the way, and determined to found a refuge for the sick poor: they hired a room and furnished it with some beds, but being unable to provide funds for maintenance, their warden collected alms from the charitable. In 1332, at a meeting of the Jongleurs of Paris, Giacomo and Hugues were present, and urged the claims of the poor upon their fellows. The players decided to found a guild with a hospital and church dedicated to St. Julian of the Minstrels,[177] but the Bishop of Paris, doubting their financial powers, required a certain sum to be paid within four years, in order to endow a chaplaincy and to compensate the _curé_ of St. Merri. The players more than fulfilled their promise; their capitulary was confirmed by pope and king, and in 1343 they elected William the Flute Player and Henry of Mondidier as administrators; the servants of the Muses were therefore of no small importance in the fourteenth century. As early as 1398 the Confraternity of the Passion is known to have existed, and so charmed the people of Paris by its Passion Plays that the hour of vespers was advanced to allow the faithful time to attend the representations, which lasted from 1.30 to 5 o'clock without any interval. In 1548 the Confraternity was performing at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, the old mansion of Jean Sans Peur, for it was then forbidden to play the mystery of the Passion any more, and limited to profane, decent and lawful pieces, which were not to begin before 3 o'clock. From 1566 to 1676 the Comedians of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, as they were then called, continued their performances, and many ordinances were needed to purify the stage, to prevent licentious pieces and the use of words of _double entente_. Competitive companies performed at the Hôtel de Cluny, and in the Rue Michel le Comte, in those days a narrow street which became so blocked by carriages and horses during the performances that the inhabitants complained of being unable to reach their houses, and of suffering much from thieves and footpads. It was at the Hôtel de Bourgogne that the masterpieces of Corneille and Racine--_Le Cid_, _Andromaque_ and _Phèdre_--were first performed. [Illustration: THE POND. ROUSSEAU.] [Illustration: ARCHES IN THE COURTYARD OF THE HÔTEL CLUNY.] At No. 12 Rue Mazarine an inscription marks the site of the Tennis Court of the Métayers near the fosses of the old Porte de Nesle, where in 1643 a cultured young fellow, Jean Baptiste Poquelin, better known as Molière, son of a prosperous tradesman of Paris, having associated himself with the Béjart family of comedians, opened the _Illustre Théâtre_. The venture met with small success, for soon Molière crossed the Seine and migrated to the Port St. Paul. Thence he returned to the Faubourg St. Germain and rented the Tennis Court of the Croix Blanche. Ill fortune still followed him, for in 1645, unable to pay his candlemaker, the illustrious player saw the inside of the debtors' prison at the Petit Châtelet, and the company must needs borrow money to release their director. In 1646 the players left for the Provinces and were not seen again in Paris for twelve years. The theatre of those days was innocent of stage upholstery, the exiguous decorations being confined to some hangings of faded tapestry on the stage and a few tallow candles with tin reflectors. A chandelier holding four candles hung from the roof and was periodically lowered and drawn up again during the performance; any spectator near by snuffed the candles with his fingers. The orchestra consisted of a flute and a drum, or two violins. The play began at two o'clock; the charges for entrance were twopence half-penny for a standing place in the pit, fivepence for a seat. On 24th October 1658 Molière, having won distinguished patronage, was honoured by a royal command to play Corneille's _Nicodème_ before the court at the Louvre. After the play was ended Molière prayed to be allowed to perform a little piece of his own--_Le Docteur Amoureux_--and so much amused Louis XIV. that the players were commanded to settle at Paris and permitted to use the theatre of the Hôtel de Bourbon three days a week in alternation with the comedians of the opera. Here it was that the first essentially French comedy, _Les Précieuses Ridicules_, was performed with such success that after the second performance the prices were doubled. During the first performance an old playgoer is said to have risen and exclaimed, "_Courage! Molière, voilà de la bonne comédie!_" After the demolition of the Hôtel de Bourbon, the players were settled in Richelieu's theatre at the Palais Royal, where they performed for the first time on 20th January 1661. During this period of transition Molière was again invited to play before the king in the Salle des Gardes (Caryatides) at the Louvre, and so keen was the interest in the new _bonne comédie_ that the almost dying Mazarin had his chair dragged into the hall that he might be present. In 1665 the king appointed Molière _valet du roi_ at a salary of a thousand livres, subsidised the company to the amount of seven thousand livres a year, and they were thenceforth known as the "Troupe du Roi." Free from pecuniary anxiety, the great dramatist wrote his masterpieces, _Le Misanthrope_, _Tartuffe_, _L'Avare_, _Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme_, and _Les Femmes Savantes_. [Illustration: MILLET. THE BINDERS.] In 1673, after Molière's death, the Troupe du Roi joined the players of the Marais and rented the famous Théâtre Guénégaud in the old Tennis Court of La Bouteille which had been fitted up for the first performances of French opera in 1671-1672. The united companies played there until 1680, when the long-standing jealousy which had existed between the Troupe du Roi and the players of the Hôtel de Bourgogne was finally dissipated by the fusion of the two companies to form the Comédie Française. For nine years the famous Comédie used the Théâtre Guénégaud, whose site may be seen marked with an inscription at 42 Rue Mazarine. In 1689 the players were evicted from the Théâtre Guénégaud, owing to the machinations of the Jansenists at the Collége Mazarin, and rented the Tennis Court de l'Etoile near the Boulevard St. Germain, now No. 14 Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie, which they opened on 18th April 1689 by a performance of _Phèdre_ and _Le Médecin malgré lui_. Here the Comédie Française remained until 1770. In 1781 they were playing at the Théâtre de la Nation (now Odéon.)[178] In 1787 a theatre was built in the Rue Richelieu for the _Variétés Amusantes_, or the _Palais Variétés_, where the new Théâtre Français[179] now stands, a little to the west of Richelieu's theatre of the Palais Cardinal, whose site is indicated by an inscription at the corner of the Rues de Valois and St. Honoré. Soon the passions evoked by the Revolutionary movement were felt on the boards, and the staid old Comédie Française was rent by rival factions. The performance of Chenier's patriotic tragedy, _Charles IX._, on 4th November 1789, was made a political demonstration, and the pit acclaimed Talma with frantic applause as he created the _rôle_ of Charles IX., and the days of St. Bartholomew were acted on the stage. The bishops tried to stop the performances, and priests refused absolution to those of their penitents who went to see them. The Royalists among the Comedians replied by playing a loyalist repertory, _Cinna_ and _Athalie_, amid shouts from the pit for _William Tell_ and the _Death of Cæsar_, and Molière's famous house became an arena where political factions strove for mastery. Men went to the theatre armed as to a battle. Every couplet fired the passions of the audience, the boxes crying, "_Vive le roi!_" to be answered by the hoarse voices of the pit, "_Vive la nation!_" Shouts were raised for the busts of Voltaire and of Brutus: they were brought from the foyer and placed on the stage. The very kings of shreds and patches on the boards came to blows and the Roman toga concealed a poignard. For a time "idolatry" triumphed at the Nation, but Talma and the patriots at length won. A reconciliation was effected, and at a performance of the _Taking of the Bastille_, on 8th January 1791, Talma addressed the audience saying that they had composed their differences. Naudet, the Royalist champion, was recalcitrant, and amid furious shouts from the pit, "On your knees, citizen!" at length gave way, embraced Talma with ill-grace, and on the ensuing nights the Revolutionary repertory, _The Conquest of Liberty_, _Rome Saved_, and _Brutus_ held the boards. The court took their revenge at the opera where the boxes called for the airs, "O Richard, O mon roi," and "Règne sur un peuple fidèle," while the king, queen and dauphin appeared in the box amid shouts of "_Vive le roi!_" On 13th January of the same year the restrictions on the opening of playhouses were revoked, and by November no less than seventy-eight theatres were registered on the books of the Hôtel de Ville. The Théâtre Français became the Théâtre de la Republique, and during the early months of '93, when the fate of the monarchy hung in the balance, the most popular piece was _Catherine_, or _The Farmer's Fair Wife_ (_La belle Fermière_). _Fénelon_, a new tragedy, was often played, and on 6th February citizen Talma acted Othello for his benefit performance. In the stormy year of 1830, when the July Revolution made an end for ever of the Bourbon cause in France, the Comédie Française was again a scene of fierce and bitter strife. _Hernani_, a drama in verse, had been accepted from the pen of Victor Hugo, the brilliant and exuberant master of a new Romantic school of poets, who had determined to emancipate themselves from the traditions, which had long since hardened into literary dogmas, of the Classical school of the siècle de Louis Quatorze. On the night of the first performance each side, Romanticists and Classicists, had packed the theatre with their partisans, and the air was charged with feeling. The curtain rose, but less than two lines were uttered before the pent-up passions of the audience burst forth:-- "DONA JOSEFA--'Serait-ce déjà lui? C'est bien à l'escalier Dérobé----'" [Illustration: THE TROCADERO.] The last word had not passed the actress's lips when a howl of execration rose from the devotees of Racine, outraged by the author's heresy in permitting an adjective to stray into the second line of the verse. The Romanticists, led by Théophile Gautier, answered in withering blasphemies, and soon the pit became a pandemonium of warring factions. Night after night the literary sects renewed their contests, and the representations, as Victor Hugo said, became battles rather than performances. The year 1830 was the '93 of the Romantic school, but the passions it evoked have long since been calmed, and _Hernani_ and _Le Roi s'Amuse_, which latter was suppressed by the Government of Louis Philippe after the first performance, have taken their place in the classic repertory of the Théâtre Français beside the tragedies of Racine and Corneille. A curious development of dramatic art runs parallel to the movement we have traced. One of the earliest Corporations of Paris was that of the famous Basoche,[180] or law-clerks and practitioners, at the Palais de Justice, who were organised in a little realm of their own, subject to the superior power of the Parlement. The Basoche had its own king (_roi de la Basoche_), chancellor, masters, almoners, secretaries, treasurers and a number of minor officials, made its own laws and punished offenders. It had its own money, seal, and arms composed of an escritoire on a field _fleur-de-lisé_, surmounted by a casque and morion. It had, moreover, jurisdiction over the _farces_, _sottises_ and _moralités_ played by its members before the public. The clerks of the Basoche organised processions and plays for public festivals, and were compensated for out-of-pocket expenses if for any reason the celebrations were cancelled by the Parlement. If the date, 6th January 1482, of one of these performances in the Grande Salle of the Palais de Justice, so vividly described by Victor Hugo in _Notre Dame_, be correct, the prohibition by the Parlement in 1477, renewed in 1478, of any performances of _farce_, _sottise_, or _moralité_ by the king of the Basoche in the Palais or the Châtelet, or elsewhere in public, under pain of a whipping with withies and banishment, must have been soon withdrawn. In 1538 the Basoche was ordered to deliver to the Parlement any plays they proposed to perform, that they might be examined and emended (_visités et reformés_) and to act in public, only such plays as had been approved by the court. The clerks of the Basoche were clothed in yellow and blue taffety, and, on extraordinary occasions, in gorgeous costumes varying according to the company to which they belonged. Each captain had the form and style of his company's dress painted on vellum, and whoso desired to join signed his name beneath, and agreed to be subject to a fine of ten crowns if he made default. In 1528 a famous trial took place before the Parlement on the occasion of an appeal by one of the clerks against the chancellor of the Basoche, who had seized his cloak in payment of a fine and costs. After many pleadings by celebrated lawyers, the case was referred back to the king of the Basoche, with instructions that he was to treat his subjects amiably. The treasurers of the Basoche were charged with the cost of the annual planting of the May tree in the Cour du Mai of the Palais. Towards the end of May the procession of the Basoche wended its way to the Forest of Bondy, where halt was made under the _Orme aux harangues_ (elm of the speeches). Here their procureur made an oration, and demanded from the officer of woods and forests two trees of his own choice in the king's name, which were carried to Paris amid much playing of drums and fifes and trumpets. On the last Saturday in May the ceremony of the planting took place in the court of the palace, the preceding year's tree, standing to the right of the entrance, was felled and removed, and the more flourishing of the two brought from the forest was planted in its stead. Anne of Austria, to whom Molière dedicated one of his plays, was so devoted an admirer of the theatre that even during the period of court mourning for her royal husband she was unable to renounce her favourite pleasure and witnessed the plays at the Palais Royal concealed behind her ladies. Mazarin, courtier that he was, flattered her passion for the drama by introducing a company of Italian opera-singers, who in 1647 performed _La Finta Pazza_ at the Hôtel de Bourbon. The new entertainment met with instant success, and the French were spurred to emulation by the music and voices of the foreign performers. Anne's music masters, Lambert and Cambert, set to music a piece written by the Abbé Perrin, who was attached to the court of the Duke of Orleans, and this musical comedy was performed with brilliant success before the young king at Vincennes. Encouraged by Mazarin, Perrin and Cambert joined the Marquis of Sourdeac, a clever mechanician, and obtained permission in 1669 to open an Academy of Music, for so the new venture was called, and works were performed which vied in attraction with those of the Italians. Perrin now obtained the sole privilege of producing operas in Paris and other French towns, and in 1671-1672 we find the _entrepreneurs_ giving performances of _Pomone_ among other "_Comédies Françaises en Musique_" in the theatre of the Hôtel de Guénégaud. Perrin having disagreed with his partners, the privilege of performing opera was next transferred to a young Italian musician named Lulli, who had entered the service of Mademoiselle (daughter of the Duke of Orleans) as a kitchen boy, but having developed an extraordinary aptitude for the violin was put under a master, and became one of the greatest performers of the day. He entered the king's service, won the protection of Madame de Montespan, and so charmed Louis by his talents that his fortune was assured. Lulli's works were first given at the Tennis Court of Bel-air, in the Rue Vaugirard, and a clause having been inserted in the charter permitting the nobles of the court to take part in the representations without derogation, a performance of _Love and Bacchus_ was given before the king in which the Duke of Monmouth was associated with seven French nobles. When Molière's company of comedians left the theatre of the Palais Royal in 1673, Lulli's "Academy" was established in their place, and the Palais Royal Theatre became the Royal Opera House until 1787, with an interval caused by the rebuilding after the fire of 1763. In 1697 the Italians were forbidden to perform any more in Paris, and French opera enjoyed a monopoly of royal favour, until the Regent recalled the Italians in 1716. The Académie de Musique, or French Opera, subsequently migrated to the Salle d'Opéra, at the Hôtel Louvois, on the site of the present Square Louvois. It was in this house that the Duke of Berri was assassinated in 1820. The Government decreed the demolition of the building, and an opera house was hurriedly erected in the Rue Lepelletier. This inconvenient, stuffy Hall of the Muses, so familiar to the older generation of opera-goers, was at length superseded by the present luxurious temple in 1874. [Illustration: ARC DE TRIOMPHE.] The early French operas were of the nature of elaborate ballets, based invariably on mythological subjects, and, indeed, the ballet up to recent times, when the reforming influence of Wagner's music-dramas made itself felt, has always formed the more important part of every operatic performance. Only when the curtain rose on the _scènes de ballet_ did chatter cease, for as Taine remarked, "_Le public ne se trouve émoustillé que par le ballet_" ("The public only brightens up at the ballet"), and the traditional habit of Society was expressed in the formula, "_On n'écoute que le ballet_" ("One only listens to the ballet"). Molière wrote a tragédie-ballet, a pastorale heroique, a pastorale comique, and eight comédies-ballets, in one of which, _Le Sicilian_, the king himself, the Marquis of Villeroi and other courtiers performed with Molière and his daughter. In 1681 the permission already given to the princes and other nobles to take part in the ballets without derogation was extended to the ladies of the court, who in that year performed the _Triomphe de l'Amour_. The innovation proved most successful, and soon affected the public stage, where, as at the court, up to that period male performers alone were tolerated. Mdlle. de la Fontaine was the first of the famous _danseuses_ of the Paris opera, and her portrait, with those of some score of her successors, still adorn the _foyer de la danse_. The opera was a social rather than a musical function, and the old _foyer_, until the fall of the Second Empire, was the favourite meeting-place during the season of royal and distinguished personages, courtiers, ministers, ambassadors, and, indeed, of all French society of the male persuasion. Such was the passion for the opera during the reign of Louis XVI. that fashionable devotees would journey from Brussels to Paris in time to see the curtain rise and return to Brussels when the performance was over, travelling all night. * * * * * "In fair weather or foul," says Diderot in the opening lines of the _Neveu de Rameau_ "it is my custom, towards five in the evening, to stroll about the Palais Royal, where I muse silently on politics, love, taste or philosophy. If the weather be too cold or wet, I take refuge in the Café de la Régence, and there I amuse myself by watching the chess players; for Paris is the one place in the world, and the Café de la Régence the one place in Paris, where chess is played perfectly." The Café Procope and the Régence have been termed the Adam and Eve of the cafés of Paris. The former was the first coffee-house seen there, and was opened by one Gregory of Aleppo and a Sicilian, Procopio by name, shortly before the Comédie Française was transferred in 1689 to its new house in the present Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie. The famous café, where, too, ices were first sold, was situated opposite the theatre, and at once became a kind of ante-chamber to the Comédie, crowded with actors and dramatic authors, among whom were seen Voltaire, Crébillon and Piron. The Café de la Place du Palais Royal, the original apellation of the Régence, was founded shortly after the Procope, and became the favourite haunt of literary men, and especially of chess-players. Here the author of _Gil Blas_ beheld, in a vast salon brilliant with lustres and mirrors, a score of silent and grave personages, _pousseurs de bois_ (wood-shovers), playing at chess on marble tables, surrounded by others watching the games, amid a silence so profound that the movement of the pieces could alone be heard. If, however, we may credit a description of the famous hall of the chequer-board published in _Fraser's Magazine_, December 1840, the tempers of the players must have suffered a distressing deterioration since the times of Le Sage, for when the author of the article entered the café, in the winter of 1839, his ears were assailed by a "roar like that of the Regent's Park beast show at feeding-time." So great was the renown of the Parisian players that strangers from the four corners of the earth--Poles, Turks, Moors and Hindoos--made journeys to the Café de la Régence as to an arena where victory was esteemed final and complete. Not even on the Rialto of Venice, says the writer in _Fraser's_, in its most famous time, could so great a mixture of garbs and tongues be met. Here, among other literary monarchs who visited the café, came Voltaire and D'Alembert. Jean Jacques Rousseau, dressed as an Armenian, drew such crowds that the proprietor was forced to appeal for police protection, and the eccentric philosopher, while absorbed in play, was furtively sketched by St. Aubin. Here came, _incogniti_, the Emperor Joseph of Austria, brother of Marie Antoinette, and Emperor Paul of Russia, the latter betraying his imperial quality by tossing to the waiter a golden louis he had won by betting on a game. The café was the favourite resort of Robespierre, a devoted chess-player, who lived close by in the Rue St. Honoré (No. 398), and of the young Napoleon Bonaparte when waiting on fortune in Paris. The latter is said to have been a rough, impatient player, and a bad loser. Hats were kept on to economise space, and on a winter Sunday afternoon a chair was worth a monarch's ransom: when a champion player entered, hats were raised, and fifty challengers leapt from their seats to offer a game. So proud was the proprietor of the distinction conferred on his café, that long after Rousseau's and Voltaire's deaths he would call to the waiter, "Serve Jean Jacques!" "Look to Voltaire!" if any customers sat down at the tables where the famous philosophers had been wont to sit. While the big game of political chess was being enacted in the streets of Paris during the three days of July 1830, the players of the café are said to have calmly pushed their wooden pieces undisturbed by the fighting outside, during which the front of the building was injured. The original café no longer exists, for in 1852 the Régence was removed from the Place du Palais Royal to the Rue St. Honoré. Last year the writer was startled by an amazing exuviation of the somewhat faded café, which had assumed a new decoration of most brilliant and approved modernity; it now vies in splendour with the cafes of the Boulevards. A few chess-players still linger on and are relegated to a recessed room. Shortly after the foundation of the Régence another café was opened by Widow Marion on the old Carrefour de l'Opéra, where the Academicians gathered and discussed of matters affecting the French language. At Guadot's, on the Place de l'Ecole, was heard the clank of spur and sabre. Soon every phase of Parisian social life found its appropriate coffee-house, and by the end of the eighteenth century some nine hundred cafés were established in the city. But this new development was regarded with small favour by the Government, always suspicious of any form of social and intellectual activity. Politics were forbidden, and spies haunted the precincts of the chief cafés. Ill fared the man, however distinguished, whose political feelings overmastered his prudence, for an invidious phrase was not infrequently the password to the Bastille. It was difficult even to discuss philosophy, and the lovers of wisdom who met at Procope's were reduced to inventing a jargon for its principal terms--Monsieur l'Etre for God, Javotte for Religion and Margot for the Soul--to put spies off the scent, not always with success. No newspapers were provided until the Revolutionary time, when the _Gazette_ or the _Journal_ became more important than the coffee: the cafés of the Palais Royal were then transformed into so many political clubs, where every table served as a rostrum of fiery declamation, for the agitated and eventful summer of 1789 was a rainy one, to the good fortune of the Palais Royal houses. No. 46 Rue Richelieu stands on the site of the Café de Foy, the senior and most famous of them, founded in 1700. It extended through to the gardens of the Palais Royal, and in early times its proprietor was the only one permitted to place chairs and tables on the terrace. There, in the afternoon, would sit the finely-apparelled sons of Mars, and other gay dogs of the period, with their scented perukes, amber vinaigrettes, silver-hilted swords and gold-headed canes, quizzing the passers-by. In summer evenings, after the conclusion of the opera at 8.30., the _bonne compagnie_ in full dress would stroll under the great overarching trees of the _grand allée_, or sit at the cafés listening to open-air performers, sometimes remaining on moonlight nights as late as 2 a.m. Between 1770 and 1780 the favourite promenade was the scene of violent conflicts between the partisans of Gluck and Piccini, and many a duel was recorded between the champions of the rival musical factions. [Illustration: IN THE GARDEN OF THE TUILERIES.] It was from one of the tables of the Café Foy that Camille Desmoulins sounded the war-cry of the Revolution. Every day a special courier from Versailles brought the bulletins of the National Assembly, which were read publicly amid clamorous interjections. Spies found their office a perilous one, for, if discovered, they were ducked in the basins of the fountains, and, when feeling grew more bitter, risked meeting a violent death. Later the Café Foy made a complete _volte-face_, raised its ices to twenty sous and grew Royalist in tone. Its frequenters came armed with sword-sticks and loaded canes, raised their hats when the king's name was uttered, and one evil day planted a gallows outside the café, painted with the national colours. The excited patriots stormed the house, expelled the Royalists and disinfected the salon with gin. During the occupation of Paris by the allies many a fatal duel between the foreign officers and the Imperialists was initiated there. Later, Horace Vernet painted a swallow on the ceiling, which attracted many visitors; the dramatists and artists of the Théâtre Français freely patronised the house, and among them might be often seen the huge figure of the most prodigious master of modern romantic fiction, Alexandre Dumas. The extremer section of the Revolutionists frequented the Café Corazza, still extant, which soon became a minor Jacobins, where, after the club was closed, the excited orators continued their discussions: Chabot, Collot d'Herbois and other terrorists met there. The Café Valois was patronised by the Feuillants, and so excited the ire of the Fédérés, who met at the Caveau, that one day they issued forth, assailed their opponents' stronghold and burned the copies of the _Journal de Paris_ found there. The old Café Procope in the south of Paris became the Café Zoppi, where the "zealous children of triumphant Liberty" assembled, and where the "Friends of the Revolution and of Humanity," on the news of Franklin's death, covered the lustres with crape and affixed his bust, crowned with oak leaves, outside the door. A legend told of the great American's death, and the words "_vir Deus_" were inscribed beneath the bust. Every day at five o'clock the _habitués_ formed themselves into a club in the salon decorated with statues of Mucius Scevola and Mirabeau, passed resolutions, sent protesting deputations to Royalist editors, and every evening made _autos da fé_ of their publications outside the café. When war was declared they subscribed to purchase a case of muskets as an offering to the Fatherland. Self-regarding citizens, the _Société des Amis de la Loi_, who desired to eat and drink in peace far from political storms, met in the Café de Flore, near the Porte St. Denis, until the Jacobins applied the scriptural maxim--He who is not for us is against us--and they were forced to take sides. Every partizan had his café; Hebertists, Fayettists, Maratists, Dantonists and Robespierrists, all gathered where their friends were known to meet. In the early nineteenth century on the displacement of the favourite promenade of Parisian _flaneurs_ from the Palais Royal to the Boulevard des Italiens, the proprietors of cafés and restaurants followed. A group of young fellows entered one evening a small _cabaret_ near the Comédie Italienne (now Opéra Comique), found the wine to their taste and the cuisine excellent. They praised host and fare to their friends, and the modest _cabaret_ developed into the Café Anglais, most famous of epicurean temples, frequented during the Second Empire by kings and princes, to whom alone the haughty proprietor would devote personal care. The sumptuous cafés Tortoni founded in 1798 and de Paris opened 1822 have long since passed away. So has the Café Hardy, whose proprietor invented _dejeûners à la fourchette_, although its rival and neighbour, the Café Riche, still exists. "One must be very Hardy to dine at Riche's, and very Riche to dine at Hardy's," was the celebrated _mot_ of an old gourmand of the First Empire. During the early times of the Third Republic the Café Fronton was crowded almost daily by prominent politicians, Gambetta, Spuller, Naquet and others, while the Imperialists, under Cassagnac, met at the Café de la Paix in the Place de l'Opéra, which was dubbed the Boulevard de l'Isle d'Elbe. Many others of the celebrated cafés of the boulevards have disappeared or suffered a transformation into the more popular Brasseries or Tavernes of which so many, alternating with the theatres, restaurants and dazzling shops that line the most-frequented evening promenade of Paris, invite the thirsty or leisurely pleasure-seeker of to-day. Nowhere may the traveller gain a better impression of the essential gaiety and sociability of the Parisian temperament than by sitting outside a café on the boulevards on a public festival and observing his neighbours and the passers-by--their imperturbable good humour; their easy manners; their simple enjoyments; their quick intelligence, alert gait and expressive gestures; the wonderful skill of the women in dress. The glittering halls of pleasure that appeal to so many travellers, the Bohemian cafés of the outer boulevards, the Folies Bergères, the Moulins Rouges, the Bals Bullier, with their meretricious and vulgar attractions, frequented by the more facile daughters of Lutetia, "whose havoc of virtue is measured by the length of their laundresses' bills," as a genial satirist of their sex has phrased it--all these manifestations of _la vie_, so unutterably dull and sordid, are of small concern to the cultured traveller. The intimate charm and spirit of Paris will be heard and felt by him not amid the whirlwind of these saturnalia largely maintained by the patronage of foreign visitors, but rather in the smaller voices that speak from the inmost Paris which we have essayed to describe. Nor can we bid more fitting adieu to our readers than by translating Goethe's words to Eckermann: "Think of the city of Paris where all the best of the realms of nature and art in the whole earth are open to daily contemplation, a world-city where the crossing of every bridge or every square recalls a great past, and where at every street corner a piece of history has been unfolded." INDEX A Abbey Lands, their extent, 34 Abbeys, their need of reform, 56 Abbo, his story of the siege of Paris, 38-43 Abbots, their varied powers, 34 Abelard, comes to Paris, 87; his school at St. Denis, 88; death of, 89 Abelard and Heloise, their house, 282 Académie Française, origin of, 200 Adam du Petit Pont, 90 Aignan's, St., remains of, 283 Amboise, Cardinal d', employs Solario, 149 Amphitheatre, Roman, 288 Anagni, humiliation of Boniface VIII. at, 107 Angelico, Fra, painting by, at Louvre, 306 Angelo's, Michael, slaves, 305 _Année terrible_, the, 261 Anselm, St., his moral force, 54 Antheric, Bishop, his courage, 42 Antoinette, Marie, her courage, 249; her sinister influence, 253, 254 Arches, triumphal, 224, 277, 278 Aristotle, his works at Paris, 99 Armagnac and Burgundian factions, their origin, 127 Armagnacs, massacre of, 129 Assembly, National, the, its patriotism, 248, 256 Attila, 13, 15 Austrasia, kingdom of, 21 Austria, Anne of, her regency, 202 Averroists at Paris, 100 B Ballet, importance of the, 330 Bal Mabille, site of, 319 Baptistry, the, 281 Barbarian invasions, 12 Barrère, 270 Barry, Mme. du, 232, 248, 302 Bartholomew, St., massacre of, 168-172 Basine and Childeric, story of, 19 Basoche, Corporation of, 327; players of, 327 Bastille, foundation of, 123; banquet at, 158; captured by the Parlement, 204; story of, 250-252 Bazoches, Guy of, his impression of Paris, 66 Bedford, Duke of, Regent at Paris, 130 Bernard, St., his commanding genius, 55; denounces Abelard, 89; draws up Rule of Knights-Templars, 108 Bernini, his design for the Louvre, 221 Billettes, monastery of, 299 Bishops and abbots, their administrative powers, 23, 24, 46 Boniface VIII., his contest with Philip the Fair, 106, 107; his grandeur of soul, 107, 109 Booksellers at Paris, 190 Bordone, Paris, 152 Botticelli, frescoes at Louvre, 307 Boucher, 313 Boulevards, the, 320 Bourbon, Hôtel de, 186, 192; plays at, 323 Bourg-la-Reine, 60; English at, 119 Bourgogne, Hôtel de, comedians of, 322 Bouvines, victory of, its consequences, 62 Bridges, approaches to, fortified, 36 British sentries at Louvre, 304 Brosse, Pierre de la, his death, 103 Broussel, arrested and set free, 203, 204 Brunehaut, her career and death, 21, 23, 24 Brunswick, Duke of, his proclamation, 257 Bullant, Jean, builds Tuileries, 186 Burgundians, the, 12 Burgundy, Dukes of, 125 Burke, his political nescience, 262 Bury, Richard de, at Paris, 101 Bussy, the island of, 6 C Cafés at Paris, their introduction and growth, 331-333; their importance in revolutionary times, 334-336 Calvin, 94; at Collége de France, 156 Campan, Mme., her memoirs, 233, 245 Capet, Hugh, his coronation, 45; founds Capetian dynasty, 45 Capets, growth of Paris under, 47 Carlyle, his history of the Revolution, 246, 247 Carmelites, their establishment at Paris, 72 Carnarvalet, Hôtel de, 297 Carnot, 261 Carrousel, the, 211; arch of, 277 Carthusians, their establishment at Paris, 72 Caryatides, Salle des, 164 Castiglione, Rue de, 316 Castile, Blanche of, 67 Catacombs, the, 302 Catholic hierarchy re-established in Paris, 273 Cellini, Benvenuto, at Paris and Fontainebleau, 152-154 Cerceau, Baptiste du, continues Lescot's Louvre, 186 Champaigne, Phil. de, 312 Champeaux, William of, 87 Champs Elysées, 319 Chardin, 314 Charlemagne at Paris, 33; the Northmen, 35; his patronage of learning, 35 Charles of Burgundy, his defeat by Swiss, 142 Charles I., effect of his trial on the revolutionists, 257-259 Charles V., builds the Hôtel St. Paul, 121; his library, 121; his love of gardens, 121; his wise statesmanship, 121; wall of, 122 Charles VI., his minority, 123; his madness, 124; saved from fire, 125; his death and burial, 130 Charles VII., his acclamation as king at Melun, 131; his death, 138 Charles VIII., his Italian campaign, 148 Charles IX., 166, 167; his vacillation, 169; doubtful story of his firing on Huguenots, 173; his death, 174 Charonton, attribution of paintings to, 309 Chateauroux, Mme. de, her appeal to Louis XV., 230 Châtelet, the Grand, 147, 300 Châtelet, the Petit, 146, 300 Chavannes, Puvis de, 246, 288 Chénier, M. J., the revolutionary dramatist, 270 Chess players at Paris, 331-333 Chilperic, marriage with Galowinthe, 21; his murder, 22; his reformed alphabet, 25 Chramm, his defeat and death, 20 Christian hierarchy, its efforts to purify the Church, 54 Church, the, its civilising genius, 24; its growing civil power, 34 Church building, expansion of, 47 Cinq-Mars, his execution, 195 Cité, the island of, 2; two islets joined to, 187; its associations, 281 Clement, Jacques, assassinates Henry III., 177 Clement V., Pope, and the Templars, 110 Clergy, attempted taxation of, 231; non-jurors, their expulsion, 272 Clisson, Hôtel de, 297 Clock tower, the, 283 Clodomir, murder of his sons by Childebert and Clothaire, 19, 20 Clothaire, his escape from assassination, 20; his death, 21 Cloud, St., foundation of monastery of, 20 Clouet, François, 310 Clouet, Jean, 310 Clouet de Navarre, 310 Clovis, 13, 15; conversion of, 17; baptism of, 18; his cruelty, 18; makes Paris his capital, 19; tower of, 288 Cluny, college of, 94 Cluny, Hôtel de, 151, 287, 322 _Code civil_, the, 264, 269 Colbert, his administrative genius, 209 Colbert, Hôtel, 316 Coligny, Admiral, his attempted assassination, 168; his murder, 170; site of his house, 303 Colleges, decadence of, 101 Collége de France, foundation of, 155 Colombe, Michel, 305 Comèdie Française, the old, 324; its origin, 324; political factions at, 325; literary factions at, 326 Commune, the, 293 Conciergerie, the, 106, 283 Concini, 192; his death, 193 Concorde, place de la, 317, 318 Condé the Great, his insolence, 205, 206 Condé, Prince of, his plot to destroy the Guises, 165; his death, 166 Condorcet, 269 Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, 52, 299 _Contrat Social_, the, its influence, 268 Convention, the, abolishes slavery, 264; its constructive measures, 263, 264 Cordeliers, refectory of, 288 Corot, 315 Coryat, his impressions of Paris, 189 Cosme, St., 290 Cosme, St., _curé_ of, his revolutionary zeal, 180, 181 Crown, the, its absolutism, 206 Cruce slays 400 Huguenots, 172 D Dagobert the Great, 27, 28, 29 Damiens, his attack on Louis XV., 232; his horrible torture, 232 Danes, invasions of, 35 _Danseuses_, their introduction into opera, 331 Dante, his use of _artista_, 86; at Paris, 100 Danton, 261; his trial, 241 D'Artagnan, his dwelling, 303 Daubigny, 315 Dauphin, origin of title, 117, _note_ David, his genius, 314 Delacroix, paintings of, at St. Sulpice, 291; and Louvre, 314 Delaroche, 314 Denis, St., abbey of, 28 Denis, St., church of, 15; building of new church of, 79 Denis, St., de la Chartre, 31 Denis, St., du Pas, 281 Denis, St., story of, 7; body of exposed, 51 Denis, St., Rue, 293 Deputies, Chamber of, 318 Desmoulins, Camille, his revolutionary oration, 249 Diaz, 315 Diderot at Café de la Régence, 331 Dimier, his views on French School of Paintings, 307 Dionysius and his companions, their mission to Paris, 5 Discipline, collegiate, 93, 94 Dix-huit, College of, 92 Dolet, Etienne, his statue, 286 Domenico da Cortona, 148; designs Hôtel de Ville, 151 Dominicans, their establishment at Paris, 73 Dragon, Cour du, 291 Dubois, Abbé, his wealth and depravity, 227 Duke of Orleans, his murder, 126 E Ebles, Abbot, his courage, 38, 41 Ecclesiastical architecture, development of, 47 Ecole des Beaux Arts, 291 Edict of Nantes, 182; revocation of, 214; approved by eminent Churchmen, 215; effect in Europe, 215 Education, state of, before Revolution, 264 Egalité, Philip, 199; his vote, 259 Eloy, St., abbey of, 31, 56, 57 Eloy, St., bishop and goldsmith, 28 Elysée, the, 319 _Émigrés_, the, 254, 256 Empire, the Second, streets of, 278 Encyclopedists, their aims, 267 English, the, at Paris, 120, 135, 136; evacuate Paris, 137; expelled from Calais, 162 Estampes, Madame d', 153, 154 Estiennes, the, 143, 144 Estrées, Gabrielle d', 181 Etienne du Mont, St., 17, 151, 288 Etoile, arch of, 277, 278 Eudes, Count, 38, 41, 42 Eugene III., Pope, at Paris, 57 Eustache, St., church of, 151, 303 Evelyn, witnesses torture of accused prisoners, 262 F Ferronnerie, Rue de la, 185 Feudalism, origin of, 44 Flamboyant, not a debasement of Gothic, 145, _note_ Flandrin, frescoes by, at St. Germain des Prés, 291 Fleury, Cardinal, his honest administration, 229 Flore, Pavilion de, 186 Fontainebleau, school of, 152 Fontaine des Innocents, 164 Fouarre, Rue du, 100 Fouquet, 310 Foy, Café, 249 Fragonnard, 313 France, her greatness under Richelieu, 195 Francis I., his entry into Paris, 150; the Renaissance, 150; his magnificent hospitality, 157; life at Paris under, 157; his access of piety, 158, 159; his death, 160 Francis II. at Amboise, 165 Francis, St., his love of the French tongue, 99 Franciscans, their establishment at Paris, 73 Franklin, Benjamin, at Versailles, 254 Franks, the, 13 Fredegonde, her cruelty and death, 21-23 French language, its universality, 99 French people, their desire for peace, 274 Fromont, Nicholas, 309 Fronde, the, 204 Fronde, the second, 205; defeat of, 206 Fulbert, Canon, his house, 282 Fulrad, Abbot, completes Church of St. Denis, 33 G Galilée, the island of, 6 Genevieve, St., her story, 14, 15; monastery of, 17; shrine of, 17; abbey of, 30; Templars at, 111 Geneviève, Ste., la Petite, 60 Gericault, his Raft of the Medusa, 314 Germain, St., of Auxerre, 14, 27 Germain, St., l'Auxerrois, 31, 303 Germain, St., of Autun, 24, 25 Germain, St., des Prés, 23; captured by Henry IV., 178; church of, 291 Germain, St., Faubourg, 293 Gervais, St., church of, 31, 295 Gibbon at Paris, 242 Giocondo, Fra, rebuilds Petit Pont and Pont Notre Dame, 148 Girondins, their condemnation, 241 Goethe, his speech at Valmy, 246; his description of the revolutionary army, 262 Goldoni assisted by the Convention, 264 Gothic art of the thirteenth century, 84 Goths, the, 12, 13 Goujon, Jean, his work at the Louvre, 164, 306; decorates the Fontaine des Innocents, 164; reliefs by, at the Carnavalet, 297 Gozlin, his patriotism and courage, 37, 38, 40, 41 Grande Galerie, the, 186, 191 Gregory, St., of Tours, 13, 22 Greuze, 314 Grève, Place de, 293 Guénégaud, Théâtre, 324 Guise, Duke Francis of, shot by a Huguenot, 165 Guise, Duke Henry of, his popularity at Paris, 176; his assassination, 177 Guises, rise of the, 161 H Halles, les, 59, 148, 302 Halle aux Vins, 60, _note_ Hawkers, 259, 270 Heine and the Venus de Milo, 305 Héloïse and Abelard, loves of, 88; their grave at Paris, 89 Henry I., son of Robert the Pious, his accession, 51 Henry II., his death, 162 Henry III., his coronation, 175; his assassination, 177 Henry IV., his conversion, 181; his patriotism, 181, 184; his divorce, 182; his assassination, 185; his architectural achievements, 187; his statue, 197 Henry V. of England, 128; death and burial of, 130 Henry V. and Charles VI., entry into Paris, 131 Heretics, first execution of, 49 Hervé and his eleven companions, their heroism, 40, 41 Hierarchy, the, its unpopularity, 272 Holbein, 307 Homme Armé, Rue de l', 135, 297 Horloge, Pavilion de l', 198 Host, miracle of sacred, 299 Hôtel Dieu, foundation of, 31; rules of, 76; site of, 281 Hôtel St Paul, 121 Hôtel des Tournelles, 140, 146 Hôtel de Ville, 279, 293, 295 Hugh (Eudes), Count, his heroism, 38, 41, 42 Hugo, Victor, his exile and return, 274; his house, 297 Huguenots, hostility of Parisians to, 167 I Infanta, Garden of, 229; betrothed to Louis XV., 229 Ingres, 314 Innocent II., Pope, at Paris, 59 Innocents, Cemetery of, 148 Innocents, Square des, 301 Institut, the, 207 Invalides, Hôpital des, 223 Irish College, 286 Italian College, 286 Ivry, battle of, 179 J Jacobins, 197; their aims, 267; their supreme service to France, 268 Jacquerie, the, 118 Jacques de la Boucherie, St., 60, 300 Jacques, St., Rue, 5, 284 Jansenists and Jesuits, 218, 230 Jardin des Plantes, 200 Jean, St., Feu de, 295 Jean sans Peur, 125; tower of, 127; his assassination, 130; inscription, 297 Jeanne d'Arc, saviour of France, 131, 132; wounded at siege of Paris, 132; her capture, trial and execution, 132, 133; her rehabilitation at Notre Dame, 134 Jefferson and Marie Antoinette, 253 Jesuits, their suppression, 232 Jews at Paris, their treatment, 34, 49, 59 John the Good, 104, 117; at Paris, 119 Jongleurs, their charity, 321 Judicial penalties at Paris, 159 Juifs, les, the Island of, 6 Julian, the Emperor, his love of Paris, 10 Julian, St., of the minstrels, 321 Julien le Pauvre, St., 27; rebuilding of, 81; church of, 284 Jupiter, altar to, 9, 287; temple of, 7 K Knights-Templars, their foundation, 108; their heroism, 109; their arrest and torture, 110, 111; their destruction, 112, 116; site of their fortress, 299 L Lafayette, his loyalty, 256 Landry, St., fair of, 98; gifts by scholars, 98; port of, 282, 283 Latini Brunetto, 99 Laurens, J. P., paintings at Luxembourg and Panthéon, 48, _note_, 240 Law, John, his financial scheme, 227, 228 League, the, 175; its ecclesiastical army, 179 Leaguers, their triumph, 176; their violence, 181 Lebrun, 312 Leczynski, Marie, her marriage to Louis XV., 229; her death, 233 Legros, 290 Lemercier continues the Louvre, 198; designs Palais Cardinal, 199 Lemoine, Cardinal, college of, 93 Lescot, Pierre, designs new Louvre, 157; designs Fontaine des Innocents, 164 Lesueur, 311 Levau, his suspension, 221 Lorrain, Claude, 312 Lorraine, Cardinal of, 177 Louis VI. chastises rebellious vassals, 54; pioneer of the monarchy, 58 Louis VII., 60; birth of an heir, 61 Louis VIII. invades England, 62 Louis XI., his shabby dress, 138; his policy, 139; at Paris, 139, 140; meets Edward IV. of England, 140; institutes the Angelus, 140; his death, 142 Louis XII. invites Leonardo da Vinci to France, 149; his wise rule, 149, 150 Louis XIII., his accession, 192; his _coup d'état_, 193 Louis XIV., his accession, 209; his small attainments, 211; his hatred of Paris, 212; court of, 210, 211, 219; secret marriage with Mme. Scarron, 213; death of his heirs, 219; his death, 220; state of France and Paris at end of his reign, 226; his vandalism, 236 Louis XV., his majority, 228; his sickness and recovery, 231; his vicious life, 231; his disastrous reign, 233, 234; his death, 233 Louis XVI., his accession, 243; state of Paris under, 243; his vacillation, 253; intrigues with foreign courts, 254; his trial and sentence, 259, 260; execution of, 261 Louis Philippe, 273 Louis, St., his early youth, 67; his love of justice, 67, 77; redeems the crown of thorns, 68; his views on the treatment of Jews and infidels, 69; builds the Sainte Chapelle, 69; his hatred of blasphemy, 71; his death, 77 Louviers, the island of, 6 Louvois and Vauban, inventors of bayonet, 210 Louvre, building of, 62; its position, 65; demolition of keep, 156; west wing completed, 164; continued by Lemercier, 198; continued by Levau, 220; Perrault, base of, 222; neglect of, by Louis XIV., 223; and by Louis XV., 234; repair of, 235; during the Revolution, 275; under Napoleon I., 276; under Napoleon III., 276; paintings in, 304; sculpture in, 305, 306 Loyola, Ignatius, founds Society of Jesus at Paris, 156 Luini, 307 Lulli, his musical genius, 329 Lulli, Hôtel, 316 Lutetia, its origin, 3 Lutetius, hill of, 4 Lutherans, their violence and iconomachy, 158; persecution of, 159, 160 Luxembourg, palace and gardens of, 197, 290; museum of, 290 Luxor, Column of, 278 Luynes, his rise and fall, 193, 194 M Madeleine, the, 277 Maillotins, the, 123 Maintenon, Mme. de, her ascendency over Louis XIV., 213, 214, 216, 217; the Protestants and, 214 Malouel, 309 Manége, Salle du, 259 Mansard, François, extends Palais Royal, 199 Marais, the, 7, 65, 295 Marat, his body at the Cordeliers, 288; site of his house, 289 Marcel, Etienne, buys the Maison aux Piliers, 117; his power at Paris, 118; accused of treachery, 119; his statue, 117; his death, 118, 119 Marcel, Etienne, Rue, 127 Marlborough, Duke of, his victories, 216 Marly, hermitage of, 213 Marmoutier, monastery of, 9 Mars, Champ de, 252 Martel, Charles, birth of, 29 Martin, St., des Champs, rebuilding of, 52 Martin, St., story of, 8 Martin, St., Rue, 293 Mary Stuart, at Amboise, 165 Massacres of September, 258 Maur, St., des Fossés, 34 May Tree, planting of, in Cour du Mai, 328 Mayenne, Hôtel de, 295 Mazarin, Cardinal, his cautious policy, 202; his unpopularity, 205; his triumph, 206; his death, 207 Mazzini, his teaching, 268 Medici, Catherine de', her rise to importance, 165; her plot against the Huguenots, 168, 169; her death and unpopularity, 178; remains of her hôtel, 302 Medici, Marie de', marriage with Henry IV., 182; her coronation, 184; her disgrace and death, 195 Médicine, Ecole de, 288 Merri, St., church of, 151 Meuniers, Pont des, collapse of, 188 Michel le Comte, Rue, plays in, 322 Mignard, 312 Millet, 313, 315 Miracles, Cour des, 302 Molay, Jacques de, 109-111 Molé, President, his courage, 204 Molière, imprisoned for debt, 323; opens _l'Illustre Théâtre_, 323; his success at court, 323 Monasteries, their increase, 24; suppression of, at Paris, 272 Monastic settlements, 34 Monks and nuns, their declining morals, 55, 56 Monks, their science and learning, 24 Montaigne, College of, 94 Montfaucon, 103; its "fair gallows," 189 Montgomery, Duke of, kills Henry II., 162 Montmartre, 7; nunnery of, 60 Montmorency, his execution, 195 Morris, Governor, his estimate of Louis XVI., 253 Moulins, Maître de, 309, 310 N Nain, Le, the brothers, 311 Napoleon I., his policy, 265; his raids on Italy, 266; crowns himself at Notre Dame, 266; his genius, 267; secret of his power, 268; his plans for the Louvre, 276; his new streets, 277; his tomb, 293 Napoleon III., his _coup d'état_, 274 Nautæ, guild of the, 9 Navarre, college of, 93 Navarre, Henry of, affianced to Princess Marguerite, 167; his marriage festivities, 167 Navarre, Jeanne de, 166; her death at Court, 167 Necker, Mme., her salon, 269 Nemours, Duke of, executed at Paris, 141 Neustria, kingdom of, 21 Nicholas, St., chapel of, 31, 33; scholars of, 92 Nobles, the, their rapacity, 192 _Noces Vermeilles_, the, 168 Nogaret, Guillaume de, 107 Normans, the, settle in France, 43 Notre Dame, church of, 9, 26, 281; rebuilding of, 81; English envoys at, 157; clerical iconoclasts of, 236; worship of Nature at, 272 Notre Dame, the island of, 6 O Odéon, Théâtre de l', 325 OEil de Boeuf, the, 248 Oiseaux, Pont aux, consumed by fire, 189 Opera, French, rise of, 329 Opera house, the, 279, 330 Opera, Italian, introduced to Paris, 329 Orders, the reformed, 55 Oriflamme, the, its first use as royal standard, 58; its disappearance, 128 Orleans, Philip of, his regency, 227 Orme, Philibert de l', 186 P Paine, Thomas, his votes for mercy, 259, 260 Paix, Rue de la, 316 Palais Cardinal, Théâtre du, its site, 325 Palais of the Cité rebuilt, 104; surrendered to Parlement, 121 Palais de Justice injured by fire, 240; booksellers at, 240, 241; Revolutionary tribunal at, 241 Palais Royal, 199, 200, 315; revolutionists at, 249; theatre of, 324 Palissy, Bernard, his grotto, 186 Panthéon, its vicissitudes, 238-240 Paraclete, the, 89 Paris, its geographical situation, 1, 2; its capture by the Romans, 4; the White City, 4; arms of, 9; Julian proclaimed emperor at, 10; siege of, by Childeric, 15; the market of the peoples, 34; siege of, by Normans, 37; a city of refuge, 46; under interdict, 57; growth of, under Louis VI., 59; under English rule, 135; in the fifteenth century, 145; crafts of, 146, 147; siege of, by Henry III. and Henry of Navarre, 177; siege of, by Henry IV., 179; under Richelieu, 196, 197; made an archbishopric, 202; Turenne and Condé fight for, 206; misery at, 217; under Louis XIV., 220; Louis XVI. and court returns to, 249; an armourer's shop, 261; life at, during the Revolution, 269; school of, at Louvre, 309 Parisian women at Versailles, 249 Parisians, their chastisement by Charles VI., 123, 124; their fidelity to the revolutionary ideals, 273 Parisii, the, 3 Parlement, the, 104, 106; councillors of, hanged by the sections, 180; councillors arrested, 203; its public spirit, 203; its humiliation by Louis XIV., 206; suppression of, 233 Pascal, his statue, 300 Passion, confraternity of, 321 Passion plays, their success, 322 Paul III., Pope, his humane protest against persecution of Lutherans, 160 Pavia, defeat of, 154 Pepin of Heristal, 29; of Landen, 29; the Short, becomes king of France, 30 Père la Chaise, 206 Peronne, peace of, 141 Perrault, Claude, his design for the Louvre accepted, 221; his east façade, 222, 276 Perréal, 310 Petite Galerie, the, 173, 187 Petit Pont, the, 6; Place du, 284 Philip Augustus, his birth and accession, 61; his conquests, 62; pavement of, 63; wall of, 63-65; his wisdom, 65 Philip I., his depravity and adultery, 52, 53; his excommunication and death, 53, 54 Philip III., 103 Philip VI., 117 Philip le Bon, Duke of Burgundy, sides with the English, 130 Philip the Fair, 104; conflict with Boniface VIII., 106-108; destroys Templars, 110-115; his death, 115 Picpus, village of, 189 Pierre aux Boeufs, St., 60, 281 Pierre, St., des Fossés, 34 Pilon, Germain, 305 Place Royale, 187, 296, 297 Playing cards, revolutionary, 271 Poitiers, Diane de, 144, 162 Pol, St., Count of, executed at Paris, 141 Pompadour, Mme. de, her power, 231, 232 Pont au Change rebuilt, 189 Pont Marie, 201 Pont Neuf, 197, 284 Pont Notre Dame, 7 Pont Royal, 224 Portes Cochères, corps of, 204 Port Royal, destruction of, 218 Poussin, 311 Prés aux Clercs, the, 97 Primaticcio, 152, 153, 311 Primitifs, at Louvre, 308 Printing, introduction of, at Paris, 143; at the Louvre, 200 Provost of Merchants, 9; last of, 293 Provost of Paris, his hotel, 295 Public good, league of, 139 Q Quatre Nations, the, 95 Quinze-vingts, establishment of, at Paris, 74 R Radegonde, St., her piety, 25; nuns of, at Cambridge, 25 Raphael, 306 Ravaillac, assassin of Henry IV., his cruel torture, 185 Rectors, their power, 95, 98 Reformation, the, 164 Rembrandt, 307 Rémi, St., 13 Republic, the second, 274 Republic, the third, its patriotism, 274; architecture of, 278 Restoration, the, architecture of, 277 Retz, Cardinal de, 203; joins the insurrection, 204, 205 Revolutionary, Committee of the League, 180 Revolution, the, its triumph, 262; its results, 275; Place de la, 317 Revolutionists, their attitude towards England, 265 Richelieu, his rise to fame, 193, 194; his firmness, 194; his death, 195; second founder of Sorbonne, 200; his tomb at the Sorbonne, 200 Rigaud, 313 Robert the Pious, his excommunication, 48; his charity, 48; repudiates his queen, 47, 48; marries Constance of Aquitaine, 48 Robert the Strong, 37 Robespierre and the Terror, 246, 247; his feast of the _Etre Suprème_, 273; at chess, 333 Rochelle, la, capture of, 194 Roland, 270 Roland, Mme., 283 Rollo, 37, 43 Roman amphitheatre, the, 5 Roman aqueduct, the, 5 Roman Empire, exhaustion of, 12 Rosso, 152, 311 Rousseau, his impressions of Paris, 226; his journey from Paris to Lyons, 244 Rousseau, Théodore, 315 Royalty, abolition of, 258 Royale, place, 187, 296, 297 Rubens, 307 Ryswick, peace of, 215 S Sacre Coeur, church of, 240, 279 Sainte Chapelle, the, 69, 82, 83 Samaritaine, la, 198 Sarto, Andrea del, 152 Saxe, Marshall, his victories, 231 Scholars, their lack of discipline, 90; their festive meetings, 91; their depravity, 92; poor, at Paris, 92; defence of, by king, 97 Schoolman, the, 100 Sculpture, Greek, at Louvre, 305; mediæval and renaissance, at Louvre, 305 Sections, the, 176, 180; their defeat, 180 Sens, Archbishop of, and Templars, 112; his palace, 295 Serfdom, 49 Serfs, their condition, 49, 50 Séverin, St., church of, 284, 286 Sévigné, Mme. de, 297 Siegbert, marriage with Brunehaut, 21 Siéyès, Abbé, 269 Siger, at Paris, 100 Signs, old, at Paris, 303 Simon, St., Duke of, his memoirs, 210 Soissons, the vase of, 13 Sorbon, Robert of, founds the Sorbonne, 92 Sorbonne, introduction of painting at, 143; Greek lectureship at, 145; the new, 288 Soubise, Hôtel de, 297 Soufflot builds Panthéon, 238; mutilates west front of Notre Dame, 238 Staël, Mme. de, 270 States-General, establishment of, 104; convoked by Dauphin, 117; meet at the Louvre, 180; at the Hôtel de Bourbon, 192; at Versailles, 247 Stephen, St., church of, 31 Stephen III., Pope, at Paris, 30 Street names, revolutionary, 271 Streets, old, at Paris, 286, 299 Suger, Abbot, 58; builds new St. Denis, 79 Sully, Duke of, 182, 184; his enforced retirement, 192; Hôtel de, 295 Sully, Maurice de, builds cathedral of Notre Dame, 81 Sulpice, St., church of, 241, 242, 291 Surgery, school of, 290 Swiss Guards, their devotion and courage, 257 T Talleyrand, Bishop, 270 Talma, Julie, 270 Talma, 326 Tax farmers, their brutality, 245 Tennis-court oath, 248 Terror, the white, 247, _note_ Terror, the, at Paris, 262 Theatre, the early, 323 Thermæ, the, 9, 10 Tiberius Cæsar, discovery of altar to, 9 Tiers Etat, at Notre Dame, 106; its humiliation, 192 Titian, 306 Trône, place du, 189 Troyes, treaty of, 130 Troyon, 315 Truce of God, 98 Tuileries, the, 186; secret flight of royal family from, 255; attack on, 257; palace and gardens of, 315, 316 Turenne, his defeat at Paris, 205, 206 U University, first use of term, 95 Ursins, Mme. des, her power in Spain, 216 Utrecht, peace of, 219 V Vaches, isle des, 6 Val de Grâce, church of, 223 Vallière, Mme. de la, 212 Van Dyck, 307 Vasari, his appreciation of Fra Angelico, 306 Vauban, his military science, 210; his estimate of the national resources, 215 Vendôme, Duke of, his depravity, 216 Vendôme, place and column of, 316 Venetian merchants at Paris, 34; their sympathy with Jeanne d'Arc, 133 Venise, Rue de, 299 Vergniaud, 260, 270 Veronese, 306 Versailles, château of, 212; cost of, 213, _note_; opera house, scene at, 248; the revolution at, 247 Victoires, Notre Dame des, 194, _note_ Victor, St., prior of, stabbed, 57; abbey of, 60 Ville, the, 146, 147 Vinci, da, his Monna Lisa at Louvre, 306 Viollet le Duc, his love of Gothic, 278 Voltaire, his solvent wit, 269, 270 Volterra, Daniele da, his statue of Louis XIII., 187 Vosges, Place des, 187 Vouet, 311 W Wall, the Roman, 6 Watteau, his manner of painting, 313; works by, at Louvre, 313 Whistler, 290 THE END _Colston & Coy., Limited, Printers, Edinburgh._ * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [1] "_Faudra recommencer_" ("We must begin again"), said, to the present writer in 1871, a Communist refugee bearing a great scar on his face from a wound received fighting at the barricades. [2] _Inf._ XXIX. 121-123. A French commentator consoles himself by reflecting that the author of the _Divina Commedia_ is far more vituperative when dealing with certain Italian peoples, whom he designates as hogs, curs, wolves and foxes. [3] Cobbett, comparing the relative intellectual culture of the British Isles and of France between the years 1600 and 1787, found that of the writers on the arts and sciences who were distinguished by a place in the _Universal, Historical, Critical and Bibliographical Dictionary_ one hundred and thirty belonged to England, Scotland and Ireland, and six hundred and seventy-six to France. [4] "Nous cuisinons même l'amour."--TAINE. [5] The Seine takes five hours to flow through the seven miles of modern Paris. [6] "_Cesare armato con gli occhi grifani._"--_Inferno_, iv. 123. [7] Of some 10,000 ancient inscriptions found in Gaul, only twenty are in Celtic, and less than thirty words of Celtic origin now remain in the French language. [8] The water supply of Paris is even now partly derived from these sources, and flows along the old repaired Roman aqueduct. [9] Traces of the Gallo-Roman wall have been discovered, and are marked across the roadway opposite No. 6 Rue de la Colombe. [10] The Isle de Galilée was joined to the Cité during the thirteenth century. [11] In 1848 some remains were found of the old halls of this building, and of its columns, worn by the ropes of the boatmen who used to moor their craft to them. [12] The exact position of this bridge is much disputed by authorities, some of whom would locate it on the site of the present Pont au Change. The balance of probabilities seems to us in favour of the position given in the text. [13] "_Jovem brutum atque hebetem._" [14] Not to be confounded with the Royal Provost, a king's officer, who replaced the Carlovingian counts and Capetian viscounts. [15] The present writer recalls a similar glacial epoch in Paris during the early eighties, when the Seine was frozen over at Christmas time. [16] By the law of 350 A.D. it was a capital offence to sacrifice to or honour the old gods. The persecuted had become persecutors. Boissier, _La Fin du Paganisme_. [17] "He soon hugs himself in unconditioned ease." [18] To protect home producers against the competition of the Gallic wine and olive growers, Roman statesmen could conceive nothing better than the stupid expedient of prohibiting the culture of the vine and olive in Gaul. [19] The favourite arm of the Franks, a short battle-axe, used as a missile or at close quarters. [20] Her figure was a favourite subject for the sculptors of Christian churches. She usually bears a taper in her hand and a devil is seen peering over her shoulder. This symbolises the miraculous relighting of the taper after the devil had extinguished it. The taper was long preserved at Notre Dame. [21] If we may believe Gregory of Tours, her arguments were vituperative rather than convincing. "Your Jupiter," said she, "is _omnium stuprorum spurcissimus perpetrator_." [22] Merovée, second of the kings of the Salic Franks, was fabled to be the issue of Clodio's wife and a sea monster. [23] The palace in the Cité, where now stands the Palais de Justice. [24] Roads in the Arrondissement of Amiens and Mondidier in Picardy are still known as Chaussées Brunehautes. [25] The works of art traditionally ascribed to St. Eloy are many. He is reported to have made a golden throne set with stones (or rather two thrones, for he used his material so honestly and economically). He was made master of the mint and thirteen pieces of money are known which bear his name. He decorated the tombs of St. Martin and St. Denis, and constructed reliquaries for St. Germain, Notre Dame, and other churches. [26] Five of them died between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six. [27] It was during this struggle that St. Leger, bishop of Autun, whose name is dear to English sportsmen, one of the most popular of saints in his time, was imprisoned, blinded and subsequently beheaded by Ebrion's orders in 678. [28] The term Cité (_civitas_) was given to the old Roman part of many French towns. [29] The Carlovingians had been careful to abolish the office of mayor of the palace. [30] St. Pierre was subsequently enriched by the possession of the body of St. Maur, brought thither in the Norman troubles by fugitive monks from Anjou, and the monastery is better known to history under the name of St. Maur des Fossés. The entrails of our own Henry V. were buried there. Rabelais, before its secularisation, was one of its canons, and Catherine de Medicis once possessed a château on its site. Monastery and château no longer exist. [31] The villa of those days was a vast domain, part dwelling, part farm, part game preserve. [32] The remains of the great Viking's castle are still shown at Aalesund, in Norway. [33] When Allan Barbetorte, after the recovery of Nantes, went to give thanks to God in the cathedral, he was compelled to cut his way, sword in hand, through thorns and briers. [34] It must be admitted, however, that the poet's uncouth diction is anything but Virgilian. [35] Abbo's favourite epithet. They were without a head, for they knew not Christ, the Head of Mankind. [36] In the Middle Ages and down to 1761 Montfaucon had a sinister reputation. There stood the gallows of Paris, a great stone gibbet with its three rows of chains, near the old Barrière du Combat, where the present Rue de la Grange aux Belles abuts on the Boulevard de la Villette. [37] William the Conqueror was also known as William the Builder. [38] The surname Capet is said to have originated in the _capet_ or hood of the abbot's mantle which Hugh wore as lay abbot of St. Martin's, having laid aside the crown after his coronation. [39] Carducci. _In una Chiesa gotica._ [40] A dramatic representation of the delivery of the papal bull, painted by Jean Paul Laurens, hangs in the museum of the Luxembourg. [41] It must be remembered that heresy was the solvent anti-social force of the age, and was regarded with the same feelings of abhorrence as anarchist doctrines are regarded by modern statesmen. [42] The Rue des Francs Bourgeois in Paris reminds us that there dwelt those who were free to move without the consent of their feudal superiors. [43] It was the conduct of this campaign that won for Robert the title of Robert the Devil. [44] The possession of an oven was a lucrative monopoly in mediæval times. The writer knows of a village in South Italy where this curious privilege is still possessed by the parish priest, who levies a small indemnity of a few loaves, made specially of larger size, for each use of the oven. [45] He was said to be "kind even to Jews." [46] The indignant scribe is most precise: they walked abroad _artatis clunibus et protensis natibus_. [47] The reformers always discover the nunneries to be so much more corrupt than the monasteries, but it is a little suspicious that in every case the former are expropriated to the latter. The abbot of St. Maur evidently had some qualms concerning the expropriation of St. Eloy, and wished to restore it to the bishop. [48] The abbey was suppressed at the time of the Revolution, and the site is now occupied by the Halle aux Vins. [49] In the ardour of the fight the king found himself surrounded by the enemy's footmen, was unhorsed, and while they were vainly seeking for a vulnerable spot in his armour some French knights had time to rescue him. [50] Jeanne de Bourgogne, queen of Philip le Long, lived at the Hôtel de Nesle, and is said to have seduced scholars by night into the tower, had them tied in sacks and flung into the Seine. If we may believe Villon, this was the queen-- "Qui commanda que Buridan Fust jetté en ung sac en Seine." Legend adds that the schoolman, made famous by his thesis, that if an ass were placed equidistant between two bundles of hay of equal attraction he would die of hunger before he could resolve to eat either, was saved by his disciples, who placed a barge, loaded with straw, below the tower to break his fall. [51] She was wont to say to her son--"I would rather see thee die than commit a mortal sin." [52] By a subtle irony, part of the money was derived from the tribute of the Jews of Paris. [53] In the catalogue of the Acts of Francis I., quoted by Lavisse, is an order to pay the Dames des Filles de Joie, which follow the court, forty-five livres tournois for their payments, due for the month of May 1540, as it has been the custom to do from most ancient times (_de toute ancienneté_.) [54] On account of the cord they wore round their habit. [55] St. Louis loved the Franciscans, and in the _Fioretti_ a beautiful story is told how the king, in the guise of a pilgrim, visiting Brother Giles at Perugia, knelt with the good friar in the embrace of fervent affection for a great space of time in silence. They parted without speaking a word. [56] The sale or the provostship of Paris was abolished and a man of integrity, Etienne Boileau, appointed with adequate emoluments. So completely was this once venal office rehabilitated, that no seigneur regarded the post as beneath him. [57] It was buried in the church of Monreale at Palermo. [58] Joinville was a brave and tender knight; he tells us that before starting to join the crusaders at Marseilles he called all his friends and household before him, and prayed that if he had wronged any one of them he would declare it and reparation should be made. After a severe penance he was assoiled, and as he set forth, durst not turn back his eyes lest his heart should be melted at leaving his fair château of Joinville and his two children whom he loved so dearly. [59] The relics were transferred to a new church of St. Stephen (St. Etienne du Mont), built by the abbot of St. Genevieve as a parish church for his servants and tenants. [60] The early glass-workers were particularly fond of their beautiful red. "Wine of the colour of the glass windows of the Sainte-Chapelle," was a popular locution of the time. [61] Brunetto Latini, in the thirteenth century contrasted the high towers and grim stone walls of the fortress-palaces of the Italian nobles with the large, spacious and painted houses of the French, their rooms adorned _pour avoir joie et delit_ (to have joy and delight) and surrounded with orchards and gardens. [62] Another delusion of moderns is that there was an absence of personal cleanliness in those ages. In the census of the inhabitants of Paris, who in 1292 were subject to the Taille, there are inscribed the names of no less than twenty-six proprietors of public baths: a larger proportion to population than exists to-day. [63] Hence the name of _clerc_ applied to any student, even if a layman. [64] "Love is quickly caught in gentle heart." [65] Afterwards bishop of London. [66] The two churches still existed in the eighteenth century and stood on the site of the southern Cours Visconti and Lefuel of the present Louvre. [67] The actual originator was, however, the queen's physician, Robert de Douai, who left a sum of money which formed the nucleus of the foundation. [68] The Montaigue scholars were called _capetes_ from their peculiar _cape fermée_, or cloak, such as Masters of Arts used to wear. The Bibliothèque St. Genevieve occupies the site of the college. [69] The Rue des Anglais still exists in the Latin Quarter. [70] This interesting twelfth-century building will be found in the Rue St. Julien le Pauvre, and is now used as a Uniat Greek church. [71] Par. X. 136. "Who lecturing in Straw St. deduced truths that brought him hatred." [72] Benvenuto was certainly in France and possibly in Paris during the fourteenth century. At any rate he would be familiar with Parisian students, many of whom were Italians. [73] In the seventeenth century the councillors had increased to one hundred and twenty and the courts to seven. [74] The term "Parlement" was originally applied to the transaction of the common business of a monastic establishment after the conclusion of the daily chapter. [75] The contemporary chronicler, Villani, says of one of these scoundrels that he "was named Nosso Dei, one of our Florentines, a man filled with every vice." [76] The indictment covers seven quarto pages. The charges may be briefly classified as blasphemy, heresy, spitting and trampling on the crucifix, obscene and secret rites, and unnatural crimes. [77] There is a significant entry on page 273 of the published trial: _in ista pagina nihil est scriptum_. The empty page tells of the moment when the papal commissioners, having heard that the fifty-four had been burned, suspended the sitting. [78] _Nihil sibi appropriare intendebat._ [79] Or the isle of the Jews, which, with its sister islet of Bussy, were subsequently joined to the island of the Cité, and now form the Place Dauphine and the land that divides the Pont Neuf. Philip watched the fires from his palace garden. [80] It is to be hoped that some English scholar will do for these most important records, the earliest report of any great criminal trial which we possess, what Mr T. Douglas Murray has done for the Trial and Rehabilitation of Joan of Arc. [81] During John the Good's reign, the province of Dauphiny had been added to the French crown, and the king's eldest son took the title of Dauphin. [82] So called from the familiar appellation "Jacques Bonhomme," applied half in contempt, half in jest, by the seigneurs to the peasants who served them in the wars. [83] The bastilles were fortified castles before the chief gates of Paris. [84] Howell mentions the locution in a letter dated 1654. [85] Charles taxed and borrowed heavily. Even the members of his household were importuned for loans, however small. His cook lent him frs. 67.50. [86] The scene is quaintly illustrated in an illuminated copy of Froissart in the British Museum. [87] The scene of the assassination is marked by an escutcheon and an inscription. [88] They melted down the reliquaries in the Paris churches. [89] In 1417 Charles, returning from a visit to the queen at the castle of Vincennes, met the Chevalier Bois-Burdon going thither. He ordered his arrest, and under torture a confession reflecting on the queen's honour was extorted. Bois-Burdon was sewn in a sack and dropped into the Seine. The queen was banished to Tours, and her jewels and treasures confiscated. Furious with the king and the Armagnac faction, she made common cause with the Duke of Burgundy. [90] A portrait of Jean sans Peur exists in the Louvre, No. 1002. [91] An equestrian statue in bronze stands at the south end of the Rue des Pyramides, a few hundred yards from the spot where the Maid fell before the Porte St. Honoré. [92] The faculty of Theology declared her sold to the devil, impious to her parents, stained with Christian blood. The faculty of Law decreed her deserving of punishment, but only if she were obstinate and of sound mind. [93] In 1421 and 1422 the people of Paris had seen Henry V. and his French consort sitting in state at the Louvre, surrounded by a brilliant throng of princes, prelates and barons. Hungry crowds watched the sumptuous banquet and then went away fasting, for nothing was offered them. "It was not so in the former times under our kings," they murmured, "then there was open table kept, and servants distributed the meats and wine even of the king himself." [94] Part of the Rue de l'Homme Armé still exists. [95] The fifteenth-century goldsmiths of Paris: Loris, the Hersants, and Jehan Gallant, were famed throughout Europe. [96] The reader will hardly need to be reminded that this amazing folly forms one of the principal episodes in Scott's _Quentin Durward_. [97] Flamboyant windows were a natural, technical development of Gothic. The aim of the later builders was to facilitate the draining away of the water which the old mullioned windows used to retain. [98] One of the façades of this remarkable building may be seen in the courtyard of the Beaux Arts at Paris. [99] Brittany was incorporated with the Monarchy 1491. [100] The good king's portrait by an Italian sculptor may be seen in the Louvre, Room VII., and on his monument in St. Denis he kneels beside his beloved and _chère Bretonne_, Anne of Brittany, whose loss he wept for eight days and nights. [101] "He was well named after St. Francis, because of the holes in his hands," said a Sorbonne doctor. [102] "Ah! me, how thou art changed! See, thou art neither two nor one." [103] Travellers to Paris in the days of King Francis had cause to remember gratefully that monarch's solicitude, for a maximum of charges was fixed, and an order made that every hotel-keeper should affix his prices outside the door, that extortion might be avoided. Among other maxima, the price of a pair of sheets, to "sleep not more than five persons," was to be five deniers (a penny). [104] The salamander was figured on the royal arms of Francis. [105] About £600,000 in present-day value. [106] For the first offence a fine; for the second, the lips to be cloven; for the third, the tongue pierced; for the fourth, death. [107] The image was stolen in 1545 and replaced by one of wood. This was struck down in 1551, and the bishop of Paris substituted for it one of marble. [108] One thousand two hundred are said to have suffered death during the month of vengeance. [109] Henry of Guise had succeeded to the dukedom after his father's assassination. [110] Suspicions of poison were entertained by the Huguenots. Jeanne, in a letter to the Marquis de Beauvais, complained that holes were made in her rooms that she might be spied upon. [111] Félibien and Lobïneau, 1725. [112] "That to show pity was to be cruel to them: to be cruel to them was to show pity." [113] The municipality gave presents of money to the archers who had taken part in the massacre, to the watermen who prevented the Huguenots from crossing the Seine, and to grave-diggers for having buried in eight days about 1,100 bodies. [114] Now known as the Galerie d'Apollon. [115] _Ugonottorum strages._ Inscription on the obverse of the medal. [116] Examples of magnificent costumes of the order may be seen in the Cluny Museum. [117] The Duke of Guise was so called from his face being scarred by a wound received at the battle of Dolmans. [118] The king had premonitions of a violent end. One day, after keeping Easter at Negeon with great devotion, he suddenly returned to the Louvre and ordered all the lions, bears, bulls, and other wild animals he kept there for baiting by dogs, to be shot. He had dreamt that he was set upon and eaten by wild beasts. [119] So called derisively, because he was born and brought up in the poor province of Bearn, in the Pyrenees. [120] Her majesty, we learn from the _Mémoires_ of L'Estoile, was of a rich figure, stout, fine eyes and complexion. She used no paint, powder or other _vilanie_. [121] The new palace was situated in the parish of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, the parish church of the Louvre. [122] The north tower was left only partially constructed, and was finished by Louis XIII. [123] By a curious coincidence the widening of the Rue de la Ferronnerie had been ordered just before the king was assassinated. [124] They marked the seven resting-places of the saint as he journeyed to St. Denis after his martyrdom. [125] The Grande Galerie. [126] In the Hôtel de Bourbon, east of the old Louvre, sometimes known as the Petit Bourbon. [127] The church of Notre Dame des Victoires commemorates the victory. [128] The Marché St. Honoré now occupies its site. [129] In 1793 the tomb was desecrated, and the head removed from the body, but in 1863, as an inscription tells, the head was recovered by the historian Duruy, and after seventy years reunited to the trunk. [130] A letter from Paris to Lyons was taxed at two sous: it now costs three. [131] The Rue Poulletier marks the line of the old channel between the islands. [132] So named from the wooden seat, or _couche de bois_, covered with rich stuff embroidered with _fleur-de-lys_, on which the king sat when he attended a meeting of the Parlement. [133] One of the schemes of Francis I. to raise money had been to offer the benches to the highest bidders, and under the law of 1604 the office of councillor became a hereditary property on payment to the court of one-sixtieth of its value. Moreover, the Parlement was but a local body, one among several others in the provinces. [134] The added indignity of the whip is an invention of Voltaire. [135] Louis used, however, to stilt his low stature by means of thick pads in his boots. [136] Taine, basing his calculation on a MS. bound with the monogram of Mansard, estimated the cost of Versailles in modern equivalent at about 750,000,000 francs (£30,000,000 sterling.) [137] The writer, whose youth was passed among the descendants of the Huguenot silk-weavers of Spitalfields, has indelible memories of their sterling character and admirable industry. [138] Marshal Luxembourg was dubbed the _Tapissier de Notre Dame_ (the upholsterer of Notre Dame), from the number of captured flags he sent to the cathedral. [139] In a previous campaign the king had taken his queen and two mistresses with him in one coach. The peasants used to amuse themselves by coming to see the "three queens." [140] When the Duke of Orleans was about to start for Spain, the king asked whom he had chosen to accompany him. Orleans mentioned, among others, Fontpertius. "What, nephew!" exclaimed Louis, "a Jansenist!" "So far from being a Jansenist," replied Orleans, "he doesn't even believe in God." "Oh, if that is so," said the king, "I see no reason why he should not go." [141] Among the privileges granted to England was the monopoly of supplying the Spanish Colonies with negro slaves. [142] Levau's south façade was not completely hidden by Perrault's screen, for the roofs of the end and central pavilions emerged from behind it until they were destroyed by Gabriel in 1755. [143] Jules Hardouin, the younger Mansard, was a nephew and pupil of François Mansard, who assumed his uncle's name. The latter was the inventor of the Mansard roof. [144] The sixth part of a sou. [145] Twelve alone were added to the St. Honoré quarter by levelling the Hill of St. Roch and clearing away accumulated rubbish. [146] It extended as far as the entrance to the quadrangle opposite the Pont des Arts. A double line of trees, north and south, enclosed a Renaissance garden of elaborate design, and a charming _bosquet_, or wood, filled the eastern extremity. [147] "By order of the king, God is forbidden to work miracles in this place." [148] In 1753 between 20th January and 20th February two hundred persons died of want (_misère_) in the Faubourg St. Antoine. [149] Some conception of the insanitary condition of the court may be formed by the fact that fifty persons were struck down there by this loathsome disease during the king's illness. [150] "I have seen the Louvre and its huge enclosure, a vast palace which for two hundred years is always being finished and always begun. Two workmen, lazy hodmen, speed very slowly those rich buildings, and are paid when they are thought of." [151] The aspect of the west front with Soufflot's "improvements" is well seen in _Les Principaux Monuments Gothiques de l'Europe_, published in Brussels, 1843. [152] Taine estimates the revenues of thirty-three abbots in terms of modern values at from 140,000 to 480,000 francs (£5600 to £19,200). Twenty-seven abbesses enjoyed revenues nearly as large. [153] The score of Rousseau's opera is still preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale. [154] The Excise duty. [155] Personal and land-taxes paid by the humbler classes alone. [156] It is difficult, however, to read the sober and irrefutable picture of their miserable condition, given in the famous Books II. and V. of Taine's _Ancien Régime_, without deep emotion. [157] After the Thermidorian reaction in 1795, ninety-seven Jacobins were massacred by the royalists at Lyons on 5th May; thirty at Aix on 11th May. Similar horrors were enacted at Avignon, Arles, and Marseilles, and at other places in the south. [158] When de Brézé reported this to the king, he seemed vexed, and answered petulantly, "Well, if they won't go they must be left there." [159] A whole library has been written concerning the identity of this famous prisoner. There is little doubt that the mask was of velvet and not of iron, and that the mysterious captive who died on 19th November 1703 in the Bastille was Count Mattioli of Bologna, who was secretly arrested for having betrayed the confidence of Louis XIV. [160] Only five francs were allowed for a bourgeois, a man of letters was granted ten; a Marshal of France obtained the maximum. [161] It was composed by one of the _émigrés_, M. de Limon, approved by the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia, and signed, against his better judgment, by the Duke of Brunswick. [162] The numbers have been variously estimated from 100 to 5000 killed on the popular side. [163] "Sew we, spin we, sew we well, behold the coats we have made for the winter that is coming. Soldiers of the Fatherland, ye shall want for nothing." [164] _Inferno._ XV. 76-78.--"In whom lives again the seed of those Romans who remained there when the nest (Florence) of so much wickedness was made." [165] Mdlle. Curchod, for whom Gibbon "sighed as a lover." [166] "We could rouse no enthusiasm," said the head of a State Department to the writer at the time of the Fashoda incident, "even for a war for the recovery of Alsace and Lorraine, much less against England." [167] _See_ p. 41. [168] According to Sir Thomas Browne, bodies soon consumed there. "'Tis all one to lie in St. Innocents' churchyard as in the sands of Egypt, ready to be anything, in the ecstasy of being ever, and as content with six feet as the _moles_ of Adrianus."--_Urn Burial_, p. 351. [169] The picture subsequently found its way to the apartments of Louis XVI., and followed him from Versailles to Paris. The attitude of this ill-fated monarch towards his advisers, says Michelet, was much influenced by a fixed idea that Charles I. lost his head for having made war on his people, and that James II. lost his crown for having abandoned them. [170] _French Painting in the Sixteenth Century_, by L. Dimier. London, 1904. [171] The picture, Une Dame présentée par la Madeleine, attributed to the Maître de Moulins at the Exhibition of Primitifs in the Pavilion de Marsan has now been acquired by the Louvre. [172] M. Lafenestre, the Director of the Louvre, informs the writer that he sees no sufficient reason at present for modifying the traditional attributions of the pictures loaned by the Louvre to the Exhibition of the Primitifs in the Pavilion de Marsan. [173] One of the few non-dramatic compositions of Molière is an eulogistic poem on Mignard's decoration of this dome. [174] "O the fair statue! O the fair pedestal! The Virtues are on foot: Vice is on horseback." [175] "He is here as at Versailles Without heart and without bowels." [176] A description of this and of other public balls of the Second Empire will be found in Taine's _Notes sur Paris_, which has been translated into English. [177] In 1664 we find _Guilliaume roy des Ménéstriers_, the viol players and masters of dancing, acting in the name of the foundation against the usurpations of the Fathers of the Christian Doctrine. In 1720 the title of the church was confirmed by royal decree as St. Julian of the Minstrels. The church and the street of the minstrels were swept away to make the Rue Rambuteau. [178] It became the second Théâtre Français in 1819. [179] It became the Théâtre Français in 1799, and was burnt down in 1900. [180] The word is derived from basilica, a law court. * * * * * Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: the insigna of a president=> the insigna of a president {pg vii} counseller=> counsellor {pg 58} sublety=> subtlety {pg 87} in French story=> in French history {pg 131} Ville gagneé=> Ville gagnée {pg 137} facades=> façades {pg 149} soldier and gentlemen=> soldier and gentleman {pg 156} statemanship=> statemanship {pg 161} was flung out of window=> was flung out of a window {pg 172} chateâu=> château {pg 176} St. Medard=> St. Médard {pg 230} la Patrie reconnaisante=> la Patrie reconnaissante {pg 239} Galerie Merciere=> Galerie Mercière {pg 241} detention there rather in=> detention there rather than in {pg 251} sleep well=> sleeps well {pg 253} Champ du Mars=> Champ de Mars {pg 255} Place de la Revolution=> Place de la Révolution {pg 260} north facade=> north façade {pg 276} joiner's workship=> joiner's workshop {pg 283} famous D'Artagan=> famous D'Artagnan {pg 303} Place du Carrouels=> Place du Carrousel {pg 304} Salle de la Venus de Milo=> Salle de la Vénus de Milo {pg 305} Sculptures du Moyen age=> Sculptures du Moyen âge {pg 305} Montmatre=> Montmartre {pg 320} Le Médecin malgre lui=> Le Médecin malgré lui {pg 325} Montmarte=> Montmartre {index} 
6164	----	THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS BY RICHARD JEFFERIES My thanks are due to those editors who have so kindly permitted me to reprint the following pages:--"The Field-Play" appeared in _Time_; "Bits of Oak Bark" and "The Pageant of Summer" in _Longman's Magazine_; "Meadow Thoughts" and "Mind under Water" in _The Graphic_; "Clematis Lane," "Nature near Brighton," "Sea, Sky, and Down," "January in the Sussex Woods," and "By the Exe" in _The Standard_; "Notes on Landscape Painting," in _The Magazine of Art_; "Village Miners," in _The Gentleman's Magazine_; "Nature and the Gamekeeper," "The Sacrifice to Trout," "The Hovering of the Kestrel," and "Birds Climbing the Air," in _The St. James's Gazette_; "Sport and Science," in _The National Review_; "The Water-Colley," in _The Manchester Guardian_; "Country Literature," "Sunlight in a London Square," "Venice in the East End," "The Pigeons at the British Museum," and "The Plainest City in Europe," in _The Pall Mall Gazette_. RICHARD JEFFERIES CONTENTS THE PAGEANT OF SUMMER THE FIELD PLAY: I. UPTILL-A-THORN II. RURAL DYNAMITE BITS OF OAK BARK: I. THE ACORN-GATHERER II. THE LEGEND OF A GATEWAY III. A ROMAN BROOK MEADOW THOUGHTS CLEMATIS LANE NATURE NEAR BRIGHTON SEA, SKY, AND DOWN JANUARY IN THE SUSSEX WOODS BY THE EXE THE WATER-COLLEY NOTES ON LANDSCAPE PAINTING VILLAGE MINERS MIND UNDER WATER SPORT AND SCIENCE NATURE AND THE GAMEKEEPER THE SACRIFICE TO TROUT THE HOVERING OF THE KESTREL BIRDS CLIMBING THE AIR COUNTRY LITERATURE: I. THE AWAKENING. II. SCARCITY OF BOOKS III. THE VILLAGER'S TASTE IN READING IV. PLAN OF DISTRIBUTION SUNLIGHT IN A LONDON SQUARE VENICE IN THE EAST END. THE PIGEONS AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM THE PLAINEST CITY IN EUROPE THE PAGEANT OF SUMMER I Green rushes, long and thick, standing up above the edge of the ditch, told the hour of the year as distinctly as the shadow on the dial the hour of the day. Green and thick and sappy to the touch, they felt like summer, soft and elastic, as if full of life, mere rushes though they were. On the fingers they left a green scent; rushes have a separate scent of green, so, too, have ferns, very different to that of grass or leaves. Rising from brown sheaths, the tall stems enlarged a little in the middle, like classical columns, and heavy with their sap and freshness, leaned against the hawthorn sprays. From the earth they had drawn its moisture, and made the ditch dry; some of the sweetness of the air had entered into their fibres, and the rushes--the common rushes--were full of beautiful summer. The white pollen of early grasses growing on the edge was dusted from them each time the hawthorn boughs were shaken by a thrush. These lower sprays came down in among the grass, and leaves and grass-blades touched. Smooth round stems of angelica, big as a gun-barrel, hollow and strong, stood on the slope of the mound, their tiers of well-balanced branches rising like those of a tree. Such a sturdy growth pushed back the ranks of hedge parsley in full white flower, which blocked every avenue and winding bird's-path of the bank. But the "gix," or wild parsnip, reached already high above both, and would rear its fluted stalk, joint on joint, till it could face a man. Trees they were to the lesser birds, not even bending if perched on; but though so stout, the birds did not place their nests on or against them. Something in the odour of these umbelliferous plants, perhaps, is not quite liked; if brushed or bruised they give out a bitter greenish scent. Under their cover, well shaded and hidden, birds build, but not against or on the stems, though they will affix their nests to much less certain supports. With the grasses that overhung the edge, with the rushes in the ditch itself, and these great plants on the mound, the whole hedge was wrapped and thickened. No cunning of glance could see through it; it would have needed a ladder to help any one look over. It was between the may and the June roses. The may-bloom had fallen, and among the hawthorn boughs were the little green bunches that would feed the redwings in autumn. High up the briars had climbed, straight and towering while there was a thorn, or an ash sapling, or a yellow-green willow to uphold them, and then curving over towards the meadow. The buds were on them, but not yet open; it was between the may and the rose. As the wind, wandering over the sea, takes from each wave an invisible portion, and brings to those on shore the ethereal essence of ocean, so the air lingering among the woods and hedges--green waves and billows--became full of fine atoms of summer. Swept from notched hawthorn leaves, broad-topped oak-leaves, narrow ash sprays and oval willows; from vast elm cliffs and sharp-taloned brambles under; brushed from the waving grasses and stiffening corn, the dust of the sunshine was borne along and breathed. Steeped in flower and pollen to the music of bees and birds, the stream of the atmosphere became a living thing. It was life to breathe it, for the air itself was life. The strength of the earth went up through the leaves into the wind. Fed thus on the food of the Immortals, the heart opened to the width and depth of the summer--to the broad horizon afar, down to the minutest creature in the grass, up to the highest swallow. Winter shows us Matter in its dead form, like the Primary rocks, like granite and basalt--clear but cold and frozen crystal. Summer shows us Matter changing into life, sap rising from the earth through a million tubes, the alchemic power of light entering the solid oak; and see! it bursts forth in countless leaves. Living things leap in the grass, living things drift upon the air, living things are coming forth to breathe in every hawthorn bush. No longer does the immense weight of Matter--the dead, the crystallised--press ponderously on the thinking mind. The whole office of Matter is to feed life--to feed the green rushes, and the roses that are about to be; to feed the swallows above, and us that wander beneath them. So much greater is this ween and common rush than all the Alps. Fanning so swiftly, the wasp's wings are but just visible as he passes; did he pause, the light would be apparent through their texture. On the wings of the dragon-fly as he hovers an instant before he darts there is a prismatic gleam. These wing textures are even more delicate than the minute filaments on a swallow's quill, more delicate than the pollen of a flower. They are formed of matter indeed, but how exquisitely it is resolved into the means and organs of life! Though not often consciously recognised, perhaps this is the great pleasure of summer, to watch the earth, the dead particles, resolving themselves into the living case of life, to see the seed-leaf push aside the clod and become by degrees the perfumed flower. From the tiny mottled egg come the wings that by-and-by shall pass the immense sea. It is in this marvellous transformation of clods and cold matter into living things that the joy and the hope of summer reside. Every blade of grass, each leaf, each separate floret and petal, is an inscription speaking of hope. Consider the grasses and the oaks, the swallows, the sweet blue butterfly--they are one and all a sign and token showing before our eyes earth made into life. So that my hope becomes as broad as the horizon afar, reiterated by every leaf, sung on every bough, reflected in the gleam of every flower. There is so much for us yet to come, so much to be gathered, and enjoyed. Not for you and me, now, but for our race, who will ultimately use this magical secret for their happiness. Earth holds secrets enough to give them the life of the fabled Immortals. My heart is fixed firm and stable in the belief that ultimately the sunshine and the summer, the flowers and the azure sky, shall become, as it were, interwoven into man's existence. He shall take from all their beauty and enjoy their glory. Hence it is that a flower is to me so much more than stalk and petals. When I look in the glass I see that every line in my face means pessimism; but in spite of my face--that is my experience--I remain an optimist. Time with an unsteady hand has etched thin crooked lines, and, deepening the hollows, has cast the original expression into shadow. Pain and sorrow flow over us with little ceasing, as the sea-hoofs beat on the beach. Let us not look at ourselves but onwards, and take strength from the leaf and the signs of the field. He is indeed despicable who cannot look onwards to the ideal life of man. Not to do so is to deny our birthright of mind. The long grass flowing towards the hedge has reared in a wave against it. Along the hedge it is higher and greener, and rustles into the very bushes. There is a mark only now where the footpath was; it passed close to the hedge, but its place is traceable only as a groove in the sorrel and seed-tops. Though it has quite filled the path, the grass there cannot send its tops so high; it has left a winding crease. By the hedge here stands a moss-grown willow, and its slender branches extend over the sward. Beyond it is an oak, just apart from the bushes; then the ground gently rises, and an ancient pollard ash, hollow and black inside, guards an open gateway like a low tower. The different tone of green shows that the hedge is there of nut-trees; but one great hawthorn spreads out in a semicircle, roofing the grass which is yet more verdant in the still pool (as it were) under it. Next a corner, more oaks, and a chestnut in bloom. Returning to-this spot an old apple tree stands right out in the meadow like an island. There seemed just now the tiniest twinkle of movement by the rushes, but it was lost among the hedge parsley. Among the grey leaves of the willow there is another flit of motion; and visible now against the sky there is a little brown bird, not to be distinguished at the moment from the many other little brown birds that are known to be about. He got up into the willow from the hedge parsley somehow, without being seen to climb or fly. Suddenly he crosses to the tops of the hawthorn and immediately flings himself up into the air a yard or two, his wings and ruffled crest making a ragged outline; jerk, jerk, jerk, as if it were with the utmost difficulty he could keep even at that height. He scolds, and twitters, and chirps, and all at once sinks like a stone into the hedge and out of sight as a stone into a pond. It is a whitethroat; his nest is deep in the parsley and nettles. Presently he will go out to the island apple tree and back again in a minute or two; the pair of them are so fond of each other's affectionate company they cannot remain apart. Watching the line of the hedge, about every two minutes, either near at hand or yonder a bird darts out just at the level of the grass, hovers a second with labouring wings, and returns as swiftly to the cover. Sometimes it is a flycatcher, sometimes a greenfinch, or chaffinch, now and then a robin, in one place a shrike, perhaps another is a redstart. They are fly-fishing all of them, seizing insects from the sorrel tips and grass, as the kingfisher takes a roach from the water. A blackbird slips up into the oak and a dove descends in the corner by the chestnut tree. But these are not visible together, only one at a time and with intervals. The larger part of the life of the hedge is out of sight. All the thrush-fledglings, the young blackbirds, and finches are hidden, most of them on the mound among the ivy, and parsley, and rough grasses, protected too by a roof of brambles. The nests that still have eggs are not, like the nests of the early days of April, easily found; they are deep down in the tangled herbage by the shore of the ditch, or far inside the thorny thickets which then looked mere bushes, and are now so broad. Landrails are running in the grass concealed as a man would be in a wood; they have nests and eggs on the ground for which you may search in vain till the mowers come. Up in the corner a fragment of white fur and marks of scratching show where a doe has been preparing for a litter. Some well-trodden runs lead from mound to mound; they are sandy near the hedge where the particles have been carried out adhering to the rabbits' feet and fur. A crow rises lazily from the upper end of the field, and perches in the chestnut. His presence, too, was unsuspected. He is there by far too frequently. At this season the crows are always in the mowing-grass, searching about, stalking in winding tracks from furrow to furrow, picking up an egg here and a foolish fledgling that has wandered from the mound yonder. Very likely there may be a moorhen or two slipping about under cover of the long grass; thus hidden, they can leave the shelter of the flags and wander a distance from the brook. So that beneath the surface of the grass and under the screen of the leaves there are ten times more birds than are seen. Besides the singing and calling, there is a peculiar sound which is only heard in summer. Waiting quietly to discover what birds are about, I become aware of a sound in the very air. It is not the midsummer hum which will soon be heard over the heated hay in the valley and over the cooler hills alike. It is not enough to be called a hum, and does but just tremble at the extreme edge of hearing. If the branches wave and rustle they overbear it; the buzz of a passing bee is so much louder it overcomes all of it that is in the whole field. I cannot, define it, except by calling the hours of winter to mind--they are silent; you hear a branch crack or creak as it rubs another in the wood, you hear the hoar-frost crunch on the grass beneath your feet, but the air is without sound in itself. The sound of summer is everywhere--in the passing breeze, in the hedge, in the broad branching trees, in the grass as it swings; all the myriad particles that together make the summer are in motion. The sap moves in the trees, the pollen is pushed out from grass and flower, and yet again these acres and acres of leaves and square miles of grass blades--for they would cover acres and square miles if reckoned edge to edge--are drawing their strength from the atmosphere. Exceedingly minute as these vibrations must be, their numbers perhaps may give them a volume almost reaching in the aggregate to the power of the ear. Besides the quivering leaf, the swinging grass, the fluttering bird's wing, and the thousand oval membranes which innumerable insects whirl about, a faint resonance seems to come from the very earth itself. The fervour of the sunbeams descending in a tidal flood rings on the strung harp of earth. It is this exquisite undertone, heard and yet unheard, which brings the mind into sweet accordance with the wonderful instrument of nature. By the apple tree there is a low bank, where the grass is less tall and admits the heat direct to the ground; here there are blue flowers--bluer than the wings of my favourite butterflies--with white centres--the lovely bird's-eyes, or veronica. The violet and cowslip, bluebell and rose, are known to thousands; the veronica is overlooked. The ploughboys know it, and the wayside children, the mower and those who linger in fields, but few else. Brightly blue and surrounded by greenest grass, imbedded in and all the more blue for the shadow of the grass, these growing butterflies' wings draw to themselves the sun. From this island I look down into the depth of the grasses. Red sorrel spires--deep drinkers of reddest sun wine--stand the boldest, and in their numbers threaten the buttercups. To these in the distance they give the gipsy-gold tint--the reflection of fire on plates of the precious metal. It will show even on a ring by firelight; blood in the gold, they say. Gather the open marguerite daisies, and they seem large--so wide a disc, such fingers of rays; but in the grass their size is toned by so much green. Clover heads of honey lurk in the bunches and by the hidden footpath. Like clubs from Polynesia the tips of the grasses are varied in shape: some tend to a point--the foxtails--some are hard and cylindrical; others, avoiding the club shape, put forth the slenderest branches with fruit of seed at the ends, which tremble as the air goes by. Their stalks are ripening and becoming of the colour of hay while yet the long blades remain green. Each kind is repeated a hundred times, the foxtails are succeeded by foxtails, the narrow blades by narrow blades, but never become monotonous; sorrel stands by sorrel, daisy flowers by daisy. This bed of veronica at the foot of the ancient apple has a whole handful of flowers, and yet they do not weary the eye. Oak follows oak and elm ranks with elm, but the woodlands are pleasant; however many times reduplicated, their beauty only increases. So, too, the summer days; the sun rises on the same grasses and green hedges, there is the same blue sky, but did we ever have enough of them? No, not in a hundred years! There seems always a depth, somewhere, unexplored, a thicket that has not been seen through, a corner full of ferns, a quaint old hollow tree, which may give us something. Bees go by me as I stand under the apple, but they pass on for the most part bound on a long journey, across to the clover fields or up to the thyme lands; only a few go down into the mowing-grass. The hive bees are the most impatient of insects; they cannot bear to entangle their wings beating against grasses or boughs. Not one will enter a hedge. They like an open and level surface, places cropped by sheep, the sward by the roadside, fields of clover, where the flower is not deep under grass. II It is the patient humble-bee that goes down into the forest of the mowing-grass. If entangled, the humble-bee climbs up a sorrel stem and takes wing, without any sign of annoyance. His broad back with tawny bar buoyantly glides over the golden buttercups. He hums to himself as he goes, so happy is he. He knows no skep, no cunning work in glass receives his labour, no artificial saccharine aids him when the beams of the sun are cold, there is no step to his house that he may alight in comfort; the way is not made clear for him that he may start straight for the flowers, nor are any sown for him. He has no shelter if the storm descends suddenly; he has no dome of twisted straw well thatched and tiled to retreat to. The butcher-bird, with a beak like a crooked iron nail, drives him to the ground, and leaves him pierced with a thorn; but no hail of shot revenges his tortures. The grass stiffens at nightfall (in autumn), and he must creep where he may, if possibly he may escape the frost. No one cares for the humble-bee. But down to the flowering nettle in the mossy-sided ditch, up into the tall elm, winding in and out and round the branched buttercups, along the banks of the brook, far inside the deepest wood, away he wanders and despises nothing. His nest is under the rough grasses and the mosses of the mound; a mere tunnel beneath the fibres and matted surface. The hawthorn overhangs it, the fern grows by, red mice rustle past. It thunders, and the great oak trembles; the heavy rain drops through the treble roof of oak and hawthorn and fern. Under the arched branches the lightning plays along, swiftly to and fro, or seems to, like the swish of a whip, a yellowish-red against the green; a boom! a crackle as if a tree fell from the sky. The thick grasses are bowed, the white florets of the wild parsley are beaten down, the rain hurls itself, and suddenly a fierce blast tears the green oak leaves and whirls them out into the fields; but the humble-bee's home, under moss and matted fibres, remains uninjured. His house at the root of the king of trees, like a cave in the rock, is safe. The storm passes and the sun comes out, the air is the sweeter and the richer for the rain, like verses with a rhyme; there will be more honey in the flowers. Humble he is, but wild; always in the field, the wood; always by the banks and thickets; always wild and humming to his flowers. Therefore I like the humble-bee, being, at heart at least, for ever roaming among the woodlands and the hills and by the brooks. In such quick summer storms the lightning gives the impression of being far more dangerous than the zigzag paths traced on the autumn sky. The electric cloud seems almost level with the ground and the livid flame to rush to and fro beneath the boughs as the little bats do in the evening. Caught by such a cloud, I have stayed under thick larches at the edge of plantations. They are no shelter, but conceal one perfectly. The wood-pigeons come home to their nest trees; in larches they seem to have permanent nests, almost like rooks. Kestrels, too, come home to the wood. Pheasants crow, but not from fear--from defiance, in fear they scream. The boom startles them, and they instantly defy the sky. The rabbits quietly feed on out in the field between the thistles and rushes that so often grow in woodside pastures, quietly hopping to their favourite places, utterly heedless how heavy the echoes may be in the hollows of the wooded hills. Till the rain comes they take no heed whatever, but then make for shelter. Blackbirds often make a good deal of noise; but the soft turtle-doves coo gently, let the lightning be as savage as it will. Nothing has the least fear. Man alone, more senseless than a pigeon, put a god in vapour; and to this day, though the printing press has set a foot on every threshold, numbers bow the knee when they hear the roar the timid dove does not heed. So trustful are the doves, the squirrels, the birds of the branches, and the creatures of the field. Under their tuition let us rid ourselves of mental terrors, and face death itself as calmly as they do the livid lightning; so trustful and so content with their fate, resting in themselves and unappalled. If but by reason and will I could reach the godlike calm and courage of what we so thoughtlessly call the timid turtle-dove, I should lead a nearly perfect life. The bark of the ancient apple tree under which I have been standing is shrunken like iron which has been heated and let cool round the rim of a wheel. For a hundred years the horses have rubbed against it while feeding in the aftermath. The scales of the bark are gone or smoothed down and level, so that insects have no hiding-place. There are no crevices for them, the horsehairs that were caught anywhere have been carried away by birds for their nests. The trunk is smooth and columnar, hard as iron. A hundred times the mowing-grass has grown up around it, the birds have built their nests, the butterflies fluttered by, and the acorns dropped from the oaks. It is a long, long time, counted by artificial hours or by the seasons, but it is longer still in another way. The greenfinch in the hawthorn yonder has been there since I came out, and all the time has been happily talking to his love. He has left the hawthorn indeed, but only for a minute or two, to fetch a few seeds, and comes back each time more full of song-talk than ever. He notes no slow movement of the oak's shadow on the grass; it is nothing to him and his lady dear that the sun, as seen from his nest, is crossing from one great bough of the oak to another. The dew even in the deepest and most tangled grass has long since been dried, and some of the flowers that close at noon will shortly fold their petals. The morning airs, which breathe so sweetly, come less and less frequently as the heat increases. Vanishing from the sky, the last fragments of cloud have left an untarnished azure. Many times the bees have returned to their hives, and thus the index of the day advances. It is nothing to the green-finches; all their thoughts are in their song-talk. The sunny moment is to them all in all. So deeply are they rapt in it that they do not know whether it is a moment or a year. There is no clock for feeling, for joy, for love. And with all their motions and stepping from bough to bough, they are not restless; they have so much time, you see. So, too, the whitethroat in the wild parsley; so, too, the thrush that just now peered out and partly fluttered his wings as he stood to look. A butterfly comes and stays on a leaf--a leaf much warmed by the sun--and shuts his wings. In a minute he opens them, shuts them again, half wheels round, and by-and-by--just when he chooses, and not before--floats away. The flowers open, and remain open for hours, to the sun. Hastelessness is the only word one can make up to describe it; there is much rest, but no haste. Each moment, as with the greenfinches, is so full of life that it seems so long and so sufficient in itself. Not only the days, but life itself lengthens in summer. I would spread abroad my arms and gather more of it to me, could I do so. All the procession of living and growing things passes. The grass stands up taller and still taller, the sheaths open, and the stalk arises, the pollen clings till the breeze sweeps it. The bees rush past, and the resolute wasps; the humble-bees, whose weight swings them along. About the oaks and maples the brown chafers swarm; and the fern-owls at dusk, and the blackbirds and jays by day, cannot reduce their legions while they last. Yellow butterflies, and white, broad red admirals, and sweet blues; think of the kingdom of flowers which is theirs! Heavy moths burring at the edge of the copse; green, and red, and gold flies: gnats, like smoke, around the tree-tops; midges so thick over the brook, as if you could haul a netful; tiny leaping creatures in the grass; bronze beetles across the path; blue dragonflies pondering on cool leaves of water-plantain. Blue jays flitting, a magpie drooping across from elm to elm; young rooks that have escaped the hostile shot blundering up into the branches; missel thrushes leading their fledglings, already strong on the wing, from field to field. An egg here on the sward dropped by a starling; a red ladybird creeping, tortoise-like, up a green fern frond. Finches undulating through the air, shooting themselves with closed wings, and linnets happy with their young. Golden dandelion discs--gold and orange--of a hue more beautiful, I think, than the higher and more visible buttercup. A blackbird, gleaming, so black is he, splashing in the runlet of water across the gateway. A ruddy kingfisher swiftly drawing himself as you might draw a stroke with a pencil, over the surface of the yellow buttercups, and away above the hedge. Hart's-tongue fern, thick with green, so green as to be thick with its colour, deep in the ditch under the shady hazel boughs. White meadow-sweet lifting its tiny florets, and black-flowered sedges. You must push through the reed grass to find the sword-flags; the stout willow-herbs will not be trampled down, but resist the foot like underwood. Pink lychnis flowers behind the withy stoles, and little black moorhens swim away, as you gather it, after their mother, who has dived under the water-grass, and broken the smooth surface of the duckweed. Yellow loosestrife is rising, thick comfrey stands at the very edge; the sandpipers run where the shore is free from bushes. Back by the underwood the prickly and repellent brambles will presently present us with fruit. For the squirrels the nuts are forming, green beechmast is there--green wedges under the spray; up in the oaks the small knots, like bark rolled up in a dot, will be acorns. Purple vetches along the mounds, yellow lotus where the grass is shorter, and orchis succeeds to orchis. As I write them, so these things come--not set in gradation, but like the broadcast flowers in the mowing-grass. Now follows the gorse, and the pink rest-harrow, and the sweet lady's-bedstraw, set as it were in the midst of a little thorn-bush. The broad repetition of the yellow clover is not to be written; acre upon acre, and not one spot of green, as if all the green had been planed away, leaving only the flowers to which the bees come by the thousand from far and near. But one white campion stands in the midst of the lake of yellow. The field is scented as though a hundred hives of honey had been emptied on it. Along the mound by it the bluebells are seeding, the hedge has been cut and the ground is strewn with twigs. Among those seeding bluebells and dry twigs and mosses I think a titlark has his nest, as he stays all day there and in the oak over. The pale clear yellow of charlock, sharp and clear, promises the finches bushels of seed for their young. Under the scarlet of the poppies the larks run, and then for change of colour soar into the blue. Creamy honeysuckle on the hedge around the cornfield, buds of wild rose everywhere, but no sweet petal yet. Yonder, where the wheat can climb no higher up the slope, are the purple heath-bells, thyme and flitting stonechats. The lone barn shut off by acres of barley is noisy with sparrows. It is their city, and there is a nest in every crevice, almost under every tile. Sometimes the partridges run between the ricks, and when the bats come out of the roof, leverets play in the waggon-track. At even a fern-owl beats by, passing close to the eaves whence the moths issue. On the narrow waggon-track which descends along a coombe and is worn in chalk, the heat pours down by day as if an invisible lens in the atmosphere focussed the sun's rays. Strong woody knapweed endures it, so does toadflax and pale blue scabious, and wild mignonette. The very sun of Spain burns and burns and ripens the wheat on the edge of the coombe, and will only let the spring moisten a yard or two around it; but there a few rushes have sprung, and in the water itself brooklime with blue flowers grows so thickly that nothing but a bird could find space to drink. So down again from this sun of Spain to woody coverts where the wild hops are blocking every avenue, and green-flowered bryony would fain climb to the trees; where grey-flecked ivy winds spirally about the red rugged bark of pines, where burdocks fight for the footpath, and teazle-heads look over the low hedges. Brake-fern rises five feet high; in some way woodpeckers are associated with brake, and there seem more of them where it flourishes. If you count the depth and strength of its roots in the loamy sand, add the thickness of its flattened stem, and the width of its branching fronds, you may say that it comes near to be a little tree. Beneath where the ponds are bushy mare's-tails grow, and on the moist banks jointed pewterwort; some of the broad bronze leaves of water-weeds seem to try and conquer the pond and cover it so firmly that a wagtail may run on them. A white butterfly follows along the waggon-road, the pheasants slip away as quietly as the butterfly flies, but a jay screeches loudly and flutters in high rage to see us. Under an ancient garden wall among matted bines of trumpet convolvulus, there is a hedge-sparrow's nest overhung with ivy on which even now the last black berries cling. There are minute white flowers on the top of the wall, out of reach, and lichen grows against it dried by the sun till it looks ready to crumble. By the gateway grows a thick bunch of meadow geranium, soon to flower; over the gate is the dusty highway road, quiet but dusty, dotted with the innumerable footmarks of a flock of sheep that has passed. The sound of their bleating still comes back, and the bees driven up by their feet have hardly had time to settle again on the white clover beginning to flower on the short roadside sward. All the hawthorn leaves and briar and bramble, the honeysuckle, too, is gritty with the dust that has been scattered upon it. But see--can it be? Stretch a hand high, quick, and reach it down; the first, the sweetest, the dearest rose of June. Not yet expected, for the time is between the may and the roses, least of all here in the hot and dusty highway; but it is found--the first rose of June. Straight go the white petals to the heart; straight the mind's glance goes back to how many other pageants of summer in old times When perchance the sunny days were even more sunny; when the stilly oaks were full of mystery, lurking like the Druid's mistletoe in the midst of their mighty branches. A glamour in the heart came back to it again from every flower; as the sunshine was reflected from them so the feeling in the heart returned tenfold. To the dreamy summer haze love gave a deep enchantment, the colours were fairer, the blue more lovely in the lucid sky. Each leaf finer, and the gross earth enamelled beneath the feet. A sweet breath on the air, a soft warm hand in the touch of the sunshine, a glance in the gleam of the rippled waters, a whisper in the dance of the shadows. The ethereal haze lifted the heavy oaks and they were buoyant on the mead, the rugged bark was chastened and no longer rough, each slender flower beneath them again refined. There was a presence everywhere though unseen, on the open hills, and not shut out under the dark pines. Dear were the June roses then because for another gathered. Yet even dearer now with so many years as it were upon the petals; all the days that have been before, all the heart-throbs, all our hopes lie in this opened bud. Let not the eyes grow dim, look not back but forward; the soul must uphold itself like the sun. Let us labour to make the heart grow larger as we become older, as the spreading oak gives more shelter. That we could but take to the soul some of the greatness and the beauty of the summer! Still the pageant moves. The song-talk of the finches rises and sinks like the tinkle of a waterfall. The greenfinches have been by me all the while. A bullfinch pipes now and then further up the hedge where the brambles and thorns are thickest. Boldest of birds to look at, he is always in hiding. The shrill tone of a goldfinch came just now from the ash branches, but he has gone on. Every four or five minutes a chaffinch sings close by, and another fills the interval near the gateway. There are linnets somewhere, but I cannot from the old apple tree fix their exact place. Thrushes have sung and ceased; they will begin again in ten minutes. The blackbirds do not cease; the note tittered by a blackbird in the oak yonder before it can drop is taken up by a second near the top of the field, and ere it falls is caught by a third on the left-hand side. From one of the topmost boughs of an elm there fell the song of a willow warbler for awhile; one of the least of birds, he often seeks the highest branches of the highest tree. A yellowhammer has just flown from a bare branch in the gateway, where he has been perched and singing a full hour. Presently he will commence again, and as the sun declines will sing him to the horizon, and then again sing till nearly dusk. The yellowhammer is almost the longest of all the singers; he sits and sits and has no inclination to move. In the spring he sings, in the summer he sings, and he continues when the last sheaves are being carried from the wheat field. The redstart yonder has given forth a few notes, the whitethroat flings himself into the air at short intervals and chatters, the shrike calls sharp and determined, faint but shrill calls descend from the swifts in the air These descend, but the twittering notes of the swallows do not reach so far--they are too high to-day. A cuckoo has called by the brook, and now fainter from a greater distance. That the titlarks are singing I know, but not within hearing from here; a dove, though, is audible, and a chiffchaff has twice passed. Afar beyond the oaks at the top of the field dark specks ascend from time to time, and after moving in wide circles for awhile descend again to the corn. These must be larks; but their notes are not powerful enough to reach me, though they would were it not for the song in the hedges, the hum of innumerable insects, and the ceaseless "crake, crake" of landrails. There are at least two landrails in the mowing-grass; one of them just now seemed coming straight towards the apple tree, and I expected in a minute to see the grass move, when the bird turned aside and entered the tufts and wild parsley by the hedge. Thence the call has come without a moment's pause, "crake, crake," till the thick hedge seems filled with it. Tits have visited the apple tree over my head, a wren has sung in the willow, or rather on a dead branch projecting lower down than the leafy boughs, and a robin across under the elms in the opposite hedge. Elms are a favourite tree of robins--not the upper branches, but those that grow down the trunk, and are the first to have leaves in spring. The yellowhammer is the most persistent individually, but I think the blackbirds when listened to are the masters of the fields. Before one can finish another begins, like the summer ripples succeeding behind each other, so that the melodious sound merely changes its position. Now here, now in the corner, then across the field, again in the distant copse, where it seems about to sink, when it rises again almost at hand. Like a great human artist, the blackbird makes no effort, being fully conscious that his liquid tone cannot be matched. He utters a few delicious notes, and carelessly quits the green stage of the oak till it pleases him to sing again. Without the blackbird, in whose throat the sweetness of the green fields dwells, the days would be only partly summer. Without the violet all the bluebells and cowslips could not make a spring, and without the blackbird even the nightingale would be but half welcome. It is not yet noon, these songs have been ceaseless since dawn; this evening, after the yellowhammer has sung the sun down, when the moon rises and the faint stars appear, still the cuckoo will call, and the grasshopper lark, the landrail's "crake, crake" will echo from the mound, a warbler or a blackcap will utter his notes, and even at the darkest of the summer night the swallows will hardly sleep in their nests. As the morning sky grows blue, an hour before the sun, up will rise the larks singing and audible now, the cuckoo will recommence, and the swallows will start again on their tireless journey. So that the songs of the summer birds are as ceaseless as the sound of the waterfall which plays day and night. I cannot leave it; I must stay under the old tree in the midst of the long grass, the luxury of the leaves, and the song in the very air. I seem as if I could feel all the glowing life the sunshine gives and the south wind calls to being. The endless grass, the endless leaves, the immense strength of the oak expanding, the unalloyed joy of finch and blackbird; from all of them I receive a little. Each gives me something of the pure joy they gather for themselves. In the blackbird's melody one note is mine; in the dance of the leaf shadows the formed maze is for me, though the motion is theirs; the flowers with a thousand faces have collected the kisses of the morning. Feeling with them, I receive some, at least, of their fulness of life. Never could I have enough; never stay long enough--whether here or whether lying on the shorter sward under the sweeping and graceful birches, or on the thyme-scented hills. Hour after hour, and still not enough. Or walking the footpath was never long enough, or my strength sufficient to endure till the mind was weary. The exceeding beauty of the earth, in her splendour of life, yields a new thought with every petal. The hours when the mind is absorbed by beauty are the only hours when we really live, so that the longer we can stay among these things so much the more is snatched from inevitable Time. Let the shadow advance upon the dial-I can watch it with equanimity while it is there to be watched. It is only when the shadow is _not_ there, when the clouds of winter cover it, that the dial is terrible. The invisible shadow goes on and steals from us. But now, while I can see the shadow of the tree and watch it slowly gliding along the surface of the grass, it is mine. These are the only hours that are not wasted--these hours that absorb the soul and fill it with beauty. This is real life, and all else is illusion, or mere endurance. Does this reverie of flowers and waterfall and song form an ideal, a human ideal, in the mind? It does; much the same ideal that Phidias sculptured of man and woman filled with a godlike sense of the violet fields of Greece, beautiful beyond thought, calm as my turtle-dove before the lurid lightning of the unknown. To be beautiful and to be calm, without mental fear, is the ideal of nature. If I cannot achieve it, at least I can think it. THE FIELD-PLAY I UPTILL-A-THORN "Save the nightingale alone; She, poor bird, as all forlorn, Lean'd her breast uptill a thorn." --_Passionate Pilgrim._ She pinned her torn dress with a thorn torn from the bushes through which she had scrambled to the hay-field. The gap from the lane was narrow, made more narrow by the rapid growth of summer; her rake caught in an ash-spray, and in releasing it she "ranted" the bosom of her print dress. So soon as she had got through she dropped her rake on the hay, searched for a long, nail-like thorn, and thrust it through, for the good-looking, careless hussy never had any provision of pins about her. Then, taking a June rose which pricked her finger, she put the flower by the "rant", or tear, and went to join the rest of the hay-makers. The blood welled up out of the scratch in the finger more freely than would have been supposed from so small a place. She put her lips to it to suck it away, as folk do in all quarters of the earth yet discovered, being one of those instinctive things which come without teaching. A red dot of blood stained her soft white cheek, for, in brushing back her hair with her hand, she forgot the wounded finger. With red blood on her face, a thorn and a rose in her bosom, and a hurt on her hand, she reached the chorus of rakers. The farmer and the sun are the leading actors, and the hay-makers are the chorus, who bear the burden of the play. Marching, each a step behind the other, and yet in a row, they presented a slanting front, and so crossed the field, turning the "wallows." At the hedge she took her place, the last in the row. There were five men and eight women; all flouted her. The men teased her for being late again at work; she said it was so far to come. The women jeered at her for tearing her dress--she couldn't get through a "thornin'" hedge right. There was only one thing she could do, and that was to "make a vool of zum veller" (make a fool of some fellow). Dolly did not take much notice, except that her nervous temperament showed slight excitement in the manner she used her rake, now turning the hay quickly, now missing altogether, then catching the teeth of the rake in the buttercup-runners. The women did not fail to tell her how awkward she was. By-and-by Dolly bounced forward, and, with a flush on her cheek, took the place next to the men. They teased her too, you see, but there was no spiteful malice in their tongues. There are some natures which, naturally meek, if much condemned, defy that condemnation, and willingly give it ground of justification by open guilt. The women accused her of too free a carriage with the men; she replied by seeking their company in the broad glare of the summer day. They laughed loudly, joked, but welcomed her; they chatted with her gaily; they compelled her to sip from their ale as they paused by the hedge. By noon there was a high colour on her cheeks; the sun, the exercise, the badinage had brought it up. So fair a complexion could not brown even in summer, exposed to the utmost heat. The beams indeed did heighten the hue of her cheeks a little, but it did not shade to brown. Her chin and neck were wholly untanned, white and soft, and the blue veins roamed at their will. Lips red, a little full perhaps; teeth slightly prominent but white and gleamy as she smiled. Dark brown hair in no great abundance, always slipping out of its confinement and straggling, now on her forehead, and now on her shoulders, like wandering bines of bryony. The softest of brown eyes under long eyelashes; eyes that seemed to see everything in its gentlest aspect, that could see no harm anywhere. A ready smile on the face, and a smile in the form. Her shape yielded so easily at each movement that it seemed to smile as she walked. Her nose was the least pleasing feature--not delicate enough to fit with the complexion, and distinctly upturned, though not offensively. But it was not noticed; no one saw anything beyond the laughing lips, the laughing shape, the eyes that melted so near to tears. The torn dress, the straggling hair, the tattered shoes, the unmended stocking, the straw hat split, the mingled poverty and carelessness--perhaps rather dreaminess--disappeared when once you had met the full untroubled gaze of those beautiful eyes. Untroubled, that is, with any ulterior thought of evil or cunning; they were as open as the day, the day which you can make your own for evil or good. So, too, like the day, was she ready to the making. No stability; now fast in motion; now slow; now by fits and starts; washing her face to-day, her hands to-morrow. Never going straight, even along the road; talking with the waggoner, helping a child to pick watercress, patting the shepherd's dog, finding a flower, and late every morning at the hay-field. It was so far to come, she said; no doubt it was, if these stoppings and doublings were counted in. No character whatever, no more than the wind; she was like a well-hung gate swinging to a touch; like water yielding to let a reed sway; like a singing-flame rising and falling to a word, and even to an altered tone of voice. A word pushed her this way; a word pushed her that. Always yielding, sweet, and gentle. Is not this the most seductive of all characters in women? Had they left her alone, would it have been any different? Those bitter, coarse, feminine tongues which gave her the name of evil, and so led her to openly announce that, as she had the name, she would carry on the game. That is an old country saying, "Bear the name, carry the game." If you have the name of a poacher, then poach; you will be no worse off and you will have the pleasure of the poaching. It is a serious matter, indeed, to give any one a bad name, more especially a sensitive, nervous, beautiful girl. Under the shady oaks at luncheon the men all petted her and flattered her in their rude way, which, rude as it was, had the advantage of admitting of no mistake. Two or three more men strolled up from other fields, luncheon in hand and eating as they came, merely to chat with her. One was a mower--a powerful fellow, big boned, big everywhere, and heavy fisted; his chest had been open since four o'clock that morning to the sun, and was tanned like his face. He took her in his mighty arms and kissed her before them all; not one dared move, for the weight of that bone-smashing fist was known. Big Mat drank, as all strong men do; he fought; beyond that there was nothing against him. He worked hard, and farmers are only too glad of a man who will work. He was rather a favourite with the master, and trusted. He kissed her twice, and then went back to his work of mowing, which needs more strength than any other country labour--a mower is to a man what a dray-horse is to a horse. They lingered long over the luncheon under the shady oaks, with the great blue tile of the sky overhead, and the sweet scent of hay around them. They lingered so long, that young Mr. Andrew came to start them again, and found Dolly's cheeks all aglow. The heat and the laughter had warmed them; her cheeks burned, in contrast to her white, pure forehead--for her hat was off--and to the cool shade of the trees. She lingered yet a little longer chatting with Mr. Andrew--lingered a full half-hour--and when they parted, she had given him a rose from the hedge. Young Mr. Andrew was but half a farmer's son; he was destined for a merchant's office in town; he had been educated for it, and was only awaiting the promised opening. He was young, but no yokel; too knowing of town cunning and selfish hardness to entangle himself. Yet those soft brown eyes, that laughing shape; Andrew was very young and so was she, and the summer sun burned warm. The blackbirds whistled the day away, and the swallows sought their nests under the eaves. The curved moon hung on the sky as the hunter's horn on the wall. Timid Wat--the hare--came ambling along the lane, and almost ran against two lovers in a recess of the bushes by an elm. Andrew, Andrew! these lips are too sweet for you; get you to your desk--that smiling shape, those shaded, soft brown eyes, let them alone. Be generous--do not awaken hopes you can never, never fulfil. The new-mown hay is scented yet more sweetly in the evening--of a summer's eve it is always too soon to go home. The blackbirds whistled again, big Mat slew the grass from the rising to the going down of the sun--moon-daisies, sorrel, and buttercups lay in rows of swathe as he mowed. I wonder whether the man ever thought, as he reposed at noontide on a couch of grass under the hedge? Did he think that those immense muscles, that broad, rough-hewn plank of a chest of his, those vast bones encased in sinewy limbs--being flesh in its fulness--ought to have more of this earth than mere common men, and still more than thin-faced people--mere people, not men--in black coats? Did he dimly claim the rights of strength in his mind, and arrogate to himself the prerogatives of arbitrary kings? Who knows what big processes of reasoning, dim and big, passed through his mind in the summer days? Did he conclude he had a right to take what others only asked or worked for? The sweet scent of the new-mown hay disappeared, the hay became whiter, the ricks rose higher, and were topped and finished. Hourly the year grew drier and sultry, as the time of wheat-harvest approached. Sap of spring had dried away; dry stalk of high summer remained, browned with heat. Mr. Andrew (in the country the son is always called by his Christian name, with the prefix Master or Mr.) had been sent for to London to fill the promised lucrative berth. The reapers were in the corn--Dolly tying up; big Mat slashing at the yellow stalks. Why the man worked so hard no one could imagine, unless it was for pure physical pleasure of using those great muscles. Unless, indeed, a fire, as it were, was burning in his mind, and drove him to labour to smother it, as they smother fires by beating them. Dolly was happier than ever--the gayest of the gay. She sang, she laughed, her white, gleaming teeth shone in the sunshine; it was as if she had some secret which enabled her to defy the taunts and cruel, shameless words hurled at her, like clods of earth, by the other women. Gay she was, as the brilliant poppies who, having the sun as their own, cared for nothing else. Till suddenly, just before the close of harvest, Dolly and Mat were missing from the field. Of course their absence was slanderously connected, but there was no known ground for it. Big Mat was found intoxicated at the tavern, from which he never moved for a fortnight, spending in one long drain of drink the lump of money his mighty arms had torn from the sun in the burning hours of work. Dolly was ill at home; sometimes in her room, sometimes downstairs; but ill, shaky and weak--ague they called it. There were dark circles round her eyes, her chin drooped to her breast; she wrapped herself in a shawl in all the heat. It was some time before even the necessity of working brought her forth again, and then her manner was hurried and furtive; she would begin trembling all of a minute, and her eyes filled quickly. By degrees the autumn advanced, and the rooks followed the ploughman. Dolly gradually recovered something of her physical buoyancy; her former light-heartedness never returned. Sometimes an incident would cause a flash of the old gaiety, only for her to sink back into subdued quietness. The change was most noticeable in her eyes; soft and tender still, brown and velvety, there was a deep sadness in them--the longer she looked at you, the more it was visible. They seemed as if her spirit had suffered some great wrong; too great for redress, and that could only be borne in silence. How beautiful are beautiful eyes! Not from one aspect only, as a picture is, where the light falls rightly on it--the painter's point of view--they vary to every and any aspect. The orb rolls to meet the changing circumstance, and is adjusted to all. But a little inquiry into the mechanism of the eyes will indicate how wondrously they are formed. Science has dispelled many illusions, broken many dreams; but here, in the investigation of the eye, it has added to our marvelling interest. The eye is still like the work of a magician: it is physically divine. Besides the liquid flesh which delights the beholder, there is then the retina, the mysterious nerve which receives a thousand pictures on one surface and confuses none; and further, the mystery of the brain, which reproduces them at will, twenty years, yes threescore years and ten, afterwards. Perhaps of all physical things, the eye is most beautiful, most divine. Her eyes were still beautiful, but subdued and full of a great wrong. What that wrong was became apparent in the course of time. Dolly had to live with Mat, and, unhappily, not as his wife. Next harvest there was a child wrapped in a red shawl with her in the field, placed under the shocks while she worked. Her brother Bill talked and threatened--of what avail was it? The law gave no redress, and among men in these things, force is master still. There were none who could meet big Mat in fight. Something seemed to burn in Mat like fire. Now he worked, and now he drank, but the drink which would have killed another did him no injury. He grew and flourished upon it, more bone, more muscle, more of the savage nature of original man. But there was something within on fire. Was he not satisfied even yet? Did he arrogate yet further prerogatives of kings?--prerogatives which even kings claim no longer. One day, while in drink, his heavy fist descended--he forgot his might; he did not check it, like Ulysses in the battle with Irus--and Dolly fell. When they lifted her up, one eye was gone. It was utterly put out, organically destroyed; no skill, no money, no loving care could restore it. The soft, brown velvet, the laugh, the tear gone for ever. The divine eye was broken--battered as a stone might be. The exquisite structure which reflected the trees and flowers, and took to itself the colour of the summer sky, was shapeless. In the second year, Mr. Andrew came down, and one day met her in the village. He did not know her. The stoop, the dress which clothed, but responded to no curve, the sunken breast, and the sightless eye, how should he recognise these? This ragged, plain, this ugly, repellent creature--he did not know her. She spoke; Mr. Andrew hastily fumbled in his pocket, fetched out half-a-crown, gave it, and passed on quickly. How fortunate that he had not entangled himself! Meantime, Mat drank and worked harder than ever, and became more morose, so that no one dared cross him, yet as a worker he was trusted by the farmer. Whatever it was, the fire in him burned deeper, and to the very quick. The poppies came and went once more, the harvest moon rose yellow and ruddy, all the joy of the year proceeded, but Dolly was like a violet over which a waggon-wheel had rolled. The thorn had gone deep into her bosom. II RURAL DYNAMITE In the cold North men eat bread of fir-bark; in our own fields the mouse, if pressed for food in winter, will gnaw the bark of sapling trees. Frost sharpens the teeth like a file, and hunger is keener than frost. If any one used to more fertile scenes had walked across the barren meads Mr. Roberts rented as the summer declined, he would have said that a living could only be gained from them as the mouse gains it in frost-time. By sharp-set nibbling and paring; by the keenest frost-bitten meanness of living; by scraping a little bit here, and saving another trifle yonder, a farmer might possibly get through the year. At the end of each year he would be rather worse off than before, descending a step annually. He must nibble like a frost-driven mouse to merely exist. So poor was the soil, that the clay came to the surface, and in wet weather a slip of the foot exposed it--the heel cut through the veneer of turf into the cold, dead, moist clay. Nothing grew but rushes. Every time a horse moved over the marshy land his hoof left deep holes which never again filled up, but remained the year through, now puddles, full of rain water, and now dry holes. The rain made the ground a swamp; the sun cracked it as it does paint. Who could pay rent for such a place?--for rushes, flags, and water. Yet it was said, with whisper and nod, that the tenant, Mr. Roberts, was a warm man as warm men go after several years of bad seasons, falling prices, and troubles of all kinds. For one thing, he hopped, and it is noted among country folk, that, if a man hops, he generally accumulates money. Mr. Roberts hopped, or rather dragged his legs from rheumatics contracted in thirty years' hardest of hard labour on that thankless farm. Never did any man labour so continually as he, from the earliest winter dawn when the blackbird, with puffed feathers, still tried to slumber in the thornbush, but could not for cold, on till the latest summer eve, after the white barn owl had passed round the fir copse. Both with his hands, and with his eyes, now working, now watching, the man ceased not, and such was his dogged pertinacity that, like the mouse, he won a living. He did more, he saved. At what price? At the price of a fireless life: I mean without cheer, by denial of everything which renders human life superior to that of the rabbit in his burrow. No wife, no children, no niece, or any woman to see to his comforts; no comfort and no pleasure; a bare house and rheumatism. Bill, his principal labourer, Dolly's brother, slept with him in the same bed, master and man, a custom common in old times, long since generally disused. Yet Mr. Roberts was not without some humanism, if such a word may be used; certainly he never gave away a penny, but as certainly he cheated no man. He was upright in conduct, and not unpleasant in manner. He could not have been utterly crabbed for this one labourer, Bill, to stay with him five-and-twenty years. This was the six-and-twentieth year they had dwelt there together in the gaunt, grey, lonely house, with woods around them, isolated from the world, and without a hearth. A hearth is no hearth unless a woman sit by it. This six-and-twentieth year, the season then just ended, had been the worst of the series; rain had spoiled the hay, increased the payment of wages by lengthening the time of hay-making; ruin, he declared, stared him in the face; he supposed at last he must leave the tenancy. And now the harvest was done, the ricks thatched with flags from the marsh (to save straw), the partridges were dispersed, the sportsmen having broken up the coveys, the black swifts had departed--they built every year in the grey stone slates on the lonely house--and nothing was left to be done but to tend the cattle morning and evening, to reflect on the losses, and to talk ceaselessly of the new terror which hung over the whole district. It was rick-burning. Probably, gentlemen in London, who "sit at home at ease," imagine rick-burning a thing of the past, impossible since insurance robbed the incendiary of his sting, unheard of and extinct. Nothing of the kind. That it is not general is true, still to this day it breaks out in places, and rages with vehemence, placing the countryside under a reign of terror. The thing seems inexplicable, but it is a fact; the burning of ricks and farm-sheds every now and then, in certain localities, reaches the dimensions of a public disaster. One night from the garret window, Mr. Roberts, and Bill, his man, counted five fires visible at once. One was in full sight, not a mile distant, two behind the wood, above which rose the red glow, the other two dimly illumined the horizon on the left like a rising moon. While they watched in the dark garret the rats scampered behind them, and a white barn owl floated silently by. They counted up fourteen fires that had taken place since the beginning of the month, and now there were five together. Mr. Roberts did not sleep that night. Being so near the woods and preserves it was part of the understanding that he should not keep a gun--he took a stout staff, and went out to his hayricks, and there stayed till daylight. By ten o'clock he was trudging into the town; his mind had been half-crazed with anxiety for his ricks; he was not insured, he had never insured, just to save the few shillings it cost, such was the nibbling by which he lived. He had struggled hard and kept the secret to himself--of the non-insurance--he foresaw that if known he should immediately suffer. But at the town the insurance agent demurred to issue a policy. The losses had been so heavy, there was no knowing how much farther the loss might extend, for not the slightest trace of the incendiary had yet been discovered, notwithstanding the reward offered, and this was a new policy. Had it been to add to an old one, had Mr. Roberts insured in previous years, it would have been different. He could not do it on his own responsibility, he must communicate with the head office; most likely they would do it, but he must have their authority. By return of post he should know. Mr. Roberts trudged home again, with the misery of two more nights confronting him; two more nights of exposure to the chance of utter ruin. If those ricks were burned, the savings--the nibblings of his life--were gone. This intense, frost-bitten economy, by which alone he had been able to prosper, now threatened to overwhelm him with destruction. There is nothing that burns so resolutely as a hayrick; nothing that catches fire so easily. Children are playing with matches; one holds the ignited match till, it scorches the fingers, and then drops it. The expiring flame touches three blades of dry grass, of hay fallen from the rick, these flare immediately; the flame runs along like a train of gun-powder, rushes up the side of the rick, singeing it as a horse's coat is singed, takes the straw of the thatch which blackens into a hole, cuts its way through, the draught lifts it up the slope of the thatch, and in five minutes the rick is on fire irrecoverably. Unless beaten out at the first start, it is certain to go on. A spark from a pipe, dropped from the mouth of a sleeping man, will do it. Once well alight, and the engines may come at full speed, one five miles, one eight, two ten; they may pump the pond dry, and lay hose to the distant brook--it is in vain. The spread of the flames may be arrested, but not all the water that can be thrown will put out the rick. The outside of the rick where the water strikes it turns black, and dense smoke arises, but the inside core continues to burn till the last piece is charred. All that can be done is to hastily cut away that side of the rick--if any remains--yet untouched, and carry it bodily away. A hayrick will burn for hours, one huge mass of concentrated, glowing, solid fire, not much flame, but glowing coals, so that the farmer may fully understand, may watch and study and fully comprehend the extent of his loss. It burns itself from a square to a dome, and the red dome grows gradually smaller till its lowest layer of ashes strews the ground. It burns itself as it were in blocks: the rick was really homogeneous; it looks while aglow as if it had been constructed of large bricks or blocks of hay. These now blackened blocks dry and crumble one by one till the dome sinks. Under foot the earth is heated, so intense is the fire; no one can approach, even on the windward side, within a pole's length. A widening stream of dense white smoke flows away upwards, flecked with great sparks, blackening the elms, and carrying flakes of burning hay over outhouses, sheds, and farmsteads. Thus from the clouds, as it seems, drops further destruction. Nothing in the line of the wind is safe. Fine impalpable ashes drift and fall like rain half a mile away. Sometimes they remain suspended in the air for hours, and come down presently when the fire is out, like volcanic dust drifting from the crater. This dust lies soft and silky on the hand. By the burning rick, the air rushing to the furnace roars aloud, coming so swiftly as to be cold; on one side intense heat, on the other cold wind. The pump, pump, swing, swing of the manual engines; the quick, short pant of the steam fire-engine; the stream and hiss of the water; shouts and answers; gleaming brass helmets; frightened birds; crowds of white faces, whose frames are in shadow; a red glow on the black, wet mud of the empty pond; rosy light on the walls of the homestead, crossed with vast magnified shadows; windows glistening; men dragging sail-like tarpaulins and rick cloths to cover the sheds; constables upright and quiet, but watchful, standing at intervals to keep order; if by day, the strangest mixture of perfect calm and heated anxiety, the smoke bluish, the floating flakes visible as black specks, the flames tawny, pigeons fluttering round, cows grazing in idol-like indifference to human fears. Ultimately, rows of flattened and roughly circular layers of blackened ashes, whose traces remain for months. This is dynamite in the hands of the village ruffian. This hay, or wheat, or barley, not only represents money; it represents the work of an entire year, the sunshine of a whole summer; it is the outcome of man's thought and patient labour, and it is the food of the helpless cattle. Besides the hay, there often go with it buildings, implements, waggons, and occasionally horses are suffocated. Once now and then the farmstead goes. Now, has not the farmer, even if covered by insurance, good reason to dread this horrible incendiarism? It is a blow at his moral existence as well as at his pecuniary interests. Hardened indeed must be that heart that could look at the old familiar scene, blackened, fire-spilt, trodden, and blotted, without an inward desolation. Boxes and barrels of merchandise in warehouses can be replaced, but money does not replace the growth of nature. Hence the brutality of it--the blow at a man's heart. His hay, his wheat, his cattle, are to a farmer part of his life; coin will not replace them. Nor does the incendiary care if the man himself, his house, home, and all perish at the same time. It is dynamite in despite of insurance. The new system of silos--burying the grass when cut at once in its green state, in artificial caves--may much reduce the risk of fire if it comes into general use. These fire invasions almost always come in the form of an epidemic; not one but three, five, ten, fifteen fires follow in quick succession. Sometimes they last through an entire winter, though often known to take place in summer, directly after harvest. Rarely does detection happen; to this day half these incendiary fires are never followed by punishment. Yet it is noted that they generally occur within a certain radius; they are all within six, or seven, or eight miles, being about the distance that a man or two bent on evil could compass in the night time. But it is not always night; numerous fires are started in broad daylight. Stress of winter weather, little food, and clothing, and less fuel at home have been put forward as causes of a chill desperation, ending in crime. On the contrary, these fires frequently occur when labourers' pockets are full, just after they have received their harvest wages. Bread is not at famine prices; hard masters are not specially selected for the gratification of spite; good masters suffer equally. What then is the cause? There is none but that bitter, bitter feeling which I venture to call the dynamite disposition, and which is found in every part of the civilised world; in Germany, Italy, France, and our own mildly ruled England. A brooding, morose, concentrated hatred of those who possess any kind of substance or comfort; landlord, farmer, every one. An unsparing vendetta, a merciless shark-like thirst of destructive vengeance; a monomania of battering, smashing, crushing, such as seizes the Lancashire weaver, who kicks his woman's brains out without any special reason for dislike, mingled with and made more terrible by this unchangeable hostility to property and those who own it. No creed, no high moral hopes of the rights of man and social regeneration, no true sans culottism even, nothing at all but set teeth and inflated nostrils; blow up, burn, smash, annihilate! A disposition or character which is not imaginary but a fact, as proved abundantly by the placing of rails and iron chairs on lines to upset trains, by the dynamite explosions at Government offices, railway stations, and even at newspaper offices, the sending of letters filled with explosives, firing dynamite in trout streams just to destroy the harmless fish; a character which in the country has hitherto manifested itself in the burning of ricks and farm buildings. Science is always putting fresh power into the hands of this class. In cities they have partly awakened to the power of knowledge; in the country they still use the match. If any one thinks that there is no danger in England because there are no deep-seated causes of discontent, such as foreign rule, oppressive enactments, or conscription, I can assure him that he is wofully mistaken. This class needs no cause at all; prosperity cannot allay its hatred, and adversity does not weaken it. It is certainly unwise to the last degree to provoke this demon, to control which as yet no means have been found. You cannot arrest the invisible; you cannot pour Martini-Henry bullets into a phantom. How are you going to capture people who blow themselves into atoms in order to shatter the frame of a Czar? In its dealings with the lower class this generation is certainly far from wise. Never was the distinction so sharp between the poor--the sullen poor who stand scornful and desperate at the street corners--and the well-to-do. The contrast now extends to every one who can afford a black coat. It is not confined to the millionaire. The contrast is with every black coat. Those who only see the drawing-room side of society, those who move, too, in the well-oiled atmosphere of commercial offices, are quite ignorant of the savage animosity which watches them to and fro the office or the drawing-room from the street corner. Question it is if any mediaeval soldiery bursting abroad in Sinigaglia were so brutal as is the street rough, that blot and hideous product of modern civilisation. How easy it is to point to the sobriety and the good sense of the working class and smile in assumed complacency! What have the sober mass of the working class to do with it? No more than you or I, or the Rothschilds, or dukes of blood royal. There the thing is, and it requires no great sagacity to see that the present mode of dealing with it is a failure and likely to be worse. If you have gunpowder, you should not put it under hydraulic pressure. You should not stir it up and hold matches to it to see if it is there. That is what prosecutions and imprisonments on charges of atheism and so on do. It is stirring up the powder and trying it with a match. Nor should you put it under hydraulic pressure, which is now being done all over the country, under the new laws which force every wretch who enters a workhouse for a night's shelter to stay there two nights; under the cold-blooded cruelty which, in the guise of science, takes the miserable quarter of a pint of ale from the lips of the palsied and decrepit inmates; which puts the imbecile--even the guiltless imbecile--on what is practically bread and water. Words fail me to express the cruelty and inhumanity of this crazed legislation. Sometimes we see a complacent paragraph in the papers, penned by an official doubtless, congratulating the public that the number relieved under the new regulations has dropped from, say, six hundred to a hundred and fifty. And what, oh blindest of the blind, do you imagine has become of the remaining four hundred and fifty? Has your precious folly extinguished them? Are they dead? No, indeed. All over the country, hydraulic pressure, in the name of science, progress, temperance, and similar perverted things, is being put on the gunpowder--or the dynamite, if you like--of society. Every now and then some individual member of the Army of Wretches turns and becomes the Devil of modern civilisation. Modern civilisation has put out the spiritual Devil and produced the Demon of Dynamite. Let me raise a voice, in pleading for more humane treatment of the poor--the only way, believe me, by which society can narrow down and confine the operations of this new Devil. A human being is not a dog, yet is treated worse than a dog. Force these human dogs to learn to read with empty stomachs--stomachs craving for a piece of bread while education is crammed into them. In manhood, if unfortunate, set them to break stones. If imbecility supervene give them bread and water. In helpless age give them the cup of cold water. This is the way to breed dynamite. And then at the other end of the scale let your Thames Embankment Boulevard be the domain of the street rough; let your Islington streets be swept by bands of brutes; let the well dressed be afraid to venture anywhere unless in the glare of gas and electric light! Manufacture it in one district, and give it free scope and play in another. Yet never was there an age in which the mass of society, from the titled to the cottager, was so full of real and true humanity, so ready to start forward to help, so imbued with the highest sentiments. The wrong is done in official circles. No steel-clad baron of Norman days, no ruthless red-stockinged cardinal, with the Bastile in one hand and the tumbril in the other, ever ruled with so total an absence of Heart as the modern "official," the Tyrants of the nineteenth century; whose rods are hobbies in the name of science miscalled, in the name of temperance perverted, in the name of progress backwards, in the name of education without food. It is time that the common-sense of society at large rose in revolution against it. Meantime dynamite. This is a long digression: suppose while you have been reading it that Mr. Roberts has passed one of the two terrible nights, his faithful Bill at one end of the rickyard and himself at the other. The second night they took up their positions in the same manner as soon as it was dark. There was no moon, and the sky was overcast with those stationary clouds which often precede a great storm, so that the darkness was marked, and after they had parted a step or two they lost sight of each other. Worn with long wakefulness, and hard labour during the day, they both dropped asleep at their posts. Mr. Roberts awoke from the dead vacancy of sleep to the sensation of a flash of light crossing his eyelids, and to catch a glimpse of a man's neck with a red necktie illuminated by flame like a Rembrandt head in the centre of shadow. He leaped forward literally yelling--the incendiary he wholly forgot--his rick! his rick! He beat the side of the rick with his stick, and as it had but just caught he beat the flame out. Then he dropped senseless on the ground. Bill, awakened by Roberts' awful yell or shriek of excitement, started to his feet, heard a man rushing by in the darkness, and hurled his heavy stick in that direction. By the thud which followed and a curse, he knew it had hit the object, but not with sufficient force to bring the scoundrel down. The fellow escaped; Bill went to his master and lifted him up; how he got Roberts home he did not know, but it was hours before Roberts could speak. Towards sunrise he recovered, and would go immediately to assure himself that the ricks were safe. Then they found a man's hat--Bill's stick had knocked it off--and by that hat and the red necktie the incendiary was brought to justice. The hat was big Mat's; he always wore a red necktie. Big Mat made no defence; he was simply stolidly indifferent to the whole proceedings. The only statement he made was that he had not fired four of the ricks, and he did not know who had done so. Example is contagious; some one had followed the dynamite lead, detection never took place, but the fires ceased. Mat, of course, went for the longest period of penal servitude the law allotted. I should say that he did not himself know why he did it. That intense, brooding moroseness, that wormwood hatred, does not often understand itself. So much the more dangerous is it; no argument, no softening influence can reach it. Faithful Bill, who had served Mr. Roberts almost all his life, and who probably would have served him till the end, received a money reward from the insurance office for his share in detecting the incendiary. This reward ruined him--killed him. Golden sovereigns in his pocket destroyed him. He went on the drink; he drank, and was enticed to drink, till in six weeks he died in the infirmary of the workhouse. Mat being in the convict prison, and Dolly near to another confinement, she could not support herself; she was driven to the same workhouse in which her brother had but just died. I am not sure, but believe that pseudo-science, the Torturer of these days, denied her the least drop of alcohol during her travail. If it did permit one drop, then was the Torturer false to his creed. Dolly survived, but utterly broken, hollow-chested, a workhouse fixture. Still, so long as she could stand she had to wash in the laundry; weak as she was, they weakened her still further with steam and heat, and labour. Washing is hard work for those who enjoy health and vigour. To a girl, broken in heart and body, it is a slow destroyer. Heat relaxes all the fibres; Dolly's required bracing. Steam will soften wood and enable the artificer to bend it to any shape. Dolly's chest became yet more hollow; her cheek-bones prominent; she bent to the steam. This was the girl who had lingered in the lane to help the boy pick watercress, to gather a flower, to listen to a thrush, to bask in the sunshine. Open air and green fields were to her life itself. Heart miseries are always better borne in the open air. How just, how truly scientific, to shut her in a steaming wash-house! The workhouse was situated in a lovely spot, on the lowest slope of hills, hills covered afar with woods. Meads at hand, corn-fields farther away, then green slopes over which broad cloud-shadows glided slowly. The larks sang in spring, in summer the wheat was golden, in autumn the distant woods were brown and red and yellow. Had you spent your youth in those fields, had your little drama of life been enacted in them, do you not think that you would like at least to gaze out at them from the windows of your prison? It was observed that the miserable wretches were always looking out of the windows in this direction. The windows on that side were accordingly built up and bricked in that they might not look out. BITS OF OAK BARK I THE ACORN-GATHERER Black rooks, yellow oak leaves, and a boy asleep at the foot of the tree. His head was lying on a bulging root close to the stem: his feet reached to a small sack or bag half full of acorns. In his slumber his forehead frowned--they were fixed lines, like the grooves in the oak bark. There was nothing else in his features attractive or repellent: they were such as might have belonged to a dozen hedge children. The set angry frown was the only distinguishing mark--like the dents on a penny made by a hobnail boot, by which it can be known from twenty otherwise precisely similar. His clothes were little better than sacking, but clean, tidy, and repaired. Any one would have said, "Poor, but carefully tended." A kind heart might have put a threepenny-bit in his clenched little fist, and sighed. But that iron set frown on the young brow would not have unbent even for the silver. Caw! Caw! The happiest creatures in the world are the rooks at the acorns. It is not only the eating of them, but the finding: the fluttering up there and hopping from branch to branch, the sidling out to the extreme end of the bough, and the inward chuckling when a friend lets his acorn drop tip-tap from bough to bough. Amid such plenty they cannot quarrel or fight, having no cause of battle, but they can boast of success, and do so to the loudest of their voices. He who has selected a choice one flies with it as if it were a nugget in his beak, out to some open spot of ground, followed by a general Caw! This was going on above while the boy slept below. A thrush looked out from the hedge, and among the short grass there was still the hum of bees, constant sun-worshippers as they are. The sunshine gleamed on the rooks' black feathers overhead, and on the sward sparkled from hawkweed, some lotus and yellow weed, as from a faint ripple of water. The oak was near a corner formed by two hedges, and in the angle was a narrow thorny gap. Presently an old woman, very upright, came through this gap carrying a faggot on her shoulder and a stout ash stick in her hand. She was very clean, well dressed for a labouring woman, hard of feature, but superior in some scarcely defined way to most of her class. The upright carriage had something to do with it, the firm mouth, the light blue eyes that looked every one straight in the face. Possibly these, however, had less effect than her conscious righteousness. Her religion lifted her above the rest, and I do assure you that it was perfectly genuine. That hard face and cotton gown would have gone to the stake. When she had got through the gap she put the faggot down in it, walked a short distance out into the field, and came back towards the boy, keeping him between her and the corner. Caw! said the rooks, Caw! Caw! Thwack, thwack, bang, went the ash stick on the sleeping boy, heavily enough to have broken his bones. Like a piece of machinery suddenly let loose, without a second of dubious awakening and without a cry, he darted straight for the gap in the corner. There the faggot stopped him, and before he could tear it away the old woman had him again, thwack, thwack, and one last stinging slash across his legs as he doubled past her. Quick as the wind as he rushed he picked up the bag of acorns and pitched it into the mound, where the acorns rolled down into a pond and were lost--a good round shilling's worth. Then across the field without his cap, over the rising ground, and out of sight. The old woman made no attempt to hold him, knowing from previous experience that it was useless, and would probably result in her own overthrow. The faggot, brought a quarter of a mile for the purpose, enabled her, you see, to get two good chances at him. A wickeder boy never lived: nothing could be done with the reprobate. He was her grandson--at least, the son of her daughter, for he was not legitimate. The man drank, the girl died, as was believed, of sheer starvation: the granny kept the child, and he was now between ten and eleven years old. She had done and did her duty, as she understood it. A prayer-meeting was held in her cottage twice a week, she prayed herself aloud among them, she was a leading member of the sect. Neither example, precept, nor the rod could change that boy's heart. In time perhaps she got to beat him from habit rather than from any particular anger of the moment, just as she fetched water and filled her kettle, as one of the ordinary events of the day. Why did not the father interfere? Because if so he would have had to keep his son: so many shillings a week the less for ale. In the garden attached to the cottage there was a small shed with a padlock, used to store produce or wood in. One morning, after a severe beating, she drove the boy in there and locked him in the whole day without food. It was no use, he was as hardened as ever. A footpath which crossed the field went by the cottage, and every Sunday those who were walking to church could see the boy in the window with granny's Bible open before him. There he had to sit, the door locked, under terror of stick, and study the page. What was the use of compelling him to do that? He could not read. "No," said the old woman, "he won't read, but I makes him look at his book." The thwacking went on for some time, when one day the boy was sent on an errand two or three miles, and for a wonder started willingly enough. At night he did not return, nor the next day, nor the next, and it was as clear as possible that he had run away. No one thought of tracking his footsteps, or following up the path he had to take, which passed a railway, brooks, and a canal. He had run away, and he might stop away: it was beautiful summer weather, and it would do him no harm to stop out for a week. A dealer who had business in a field by the canal thought indeed that he saw something in the water, but he did not want any trouble, nor indeed did he know that some one was missing. Most likely a dead dog; so he turned his back and went to look again at the cow he thought of buying. A barge came by, and the steerswoman, with a pipe in her mouth, saw something roll over and come up under the rudder: the length of the barge having passed over it. She knew what it was, but she wanted to reach the wharf and go ashore and have a quart of ale. No use picking it up, only make a mess on deck, there was no reward--"Gee-up! Neddy." The barge went on, turning up the mud in the shallow water, sending ripples washing up to the grassy meadow shores, while the moorhens hid in the flags till it was gone. In time a labourer walking on the towing-path saw "it," and fished it out, and with it a slender ash sapling, with twine and hook, a worm still on it. This was why the dead boy had gone so willingly, thinking to fish in the "river," as he called the canal. When his feet slipped and he fell in, his fishing-line somehow became twisted about his arms and legs, else most likely he would have scrambled out, as it was not very deep. This was the end; nor was he even remembered. Does any one sorrow for the rook, shot, and hung up as a scarecrow? The boy had been talked to, and held up as a scarecrow all his life: he was dead, and that is all. As for granny, she felt no twinge: she had done her duty. II THE LEGEND OF A GATEWAY A great beech tree with a white mark some way up the trunk stood in the mound by a gate which opened into a lane. Strangers coming down the lane in the dusk often hesitated before they approached this beech. The white mark looked like a ghostly figure emerging from the dark hedge and the shadow of the tree. The trunk itself was of the same hue at that hour as the bushes, so that the whiteness seemed to stand out unsupported. So perfect was the illusion that even those who knew the spot well, walking or riding past and not thinking about it, started as it suddenly came into sight. Ploughboys used to throw flints at it, as if the sound of the stone striking the tree assured them that it was really material. Some lichen was apparently the cause of this whiteness: the great beech indeed was known to be decaying and was dotted with knot-holes high above. The gate was rather low, so that any one could lean with arms over the top bar. At one time a lady used to be very frequently seen just inside the gate, generally without a hat, for the homestead was close by. Sometimes a horse, saddled and bridled, but without his rider, was observed to be fastened to the gate, and country people, being singularly curious and inquisitive, if they chanced to go by always peered through every opening in the hedge till they had discerned where the pair were walking among the cowslips. More often a spaniel betrayed them, especially in the evening, for while the courting was proceeding he amused himself digging with his paws at the rabbit-holes in the mound. The folk returning to their cottages at even smiled and looked meaningly at each other if they heard a peculiarly long and shrill whistle, which was known to every one as Luke's signal. Some said that it was heard every evening: no matter how far Luke had to ride in the day, his whistle was sure to be heard towards dusk. Luke was a timber-dealer, or merchant, a calling that generally leads to substantial profit as wealth is understood in country places. He bought up likely timber all over the neighbourhood: he had wharves on the canal, and yards by the little railway station miles away. He often went up to "Lunnon," but if it was ninety miles, he was sure to be back in time to whistle. If he was not too busy the whistle used to go twice a day, for when he started off in the morning, no matter where he had to go to, that lane was the road to it. The lane led everywhere. Up in the great beech about eleven o'clock on spring mornings there was always a wood-pigeon. The wood-pigeon is a contemplative sort of bird, and pauses now and then during the day to consider over his labours in filling his crop. He came again about half-past four, but it was at eleven that his visit to the beech was usually noticed. From the window in the lady's own room the beech and the gate could be seen, and as that was often Luke's time she frequently sat upstairs with the window open listening for the sound of hoofs, or the well-known whistle. She saw the wood-pigeon on so many occasions that at last she grew to watch for the bird, and when he went up into the tree, put down her work or her book and walked out that way. Secure in the top of the great beech, and conscious that it was spring, when guns are laid aside, the wood-pigeon took no heed of her. There is nothing so pleasant to stroll among as cowslips. This mead was full of them, so much so that a little way in front the surface seemed yellow. They had all short stalks; this is always the case where these flowers grow very thickly, and the bells were a pale and somewhat lemon colour. The great cowslips with deep yellow and marked spots grow by themselves in bunches in corners or on the banks of brooks. Here a man might have mown acres of cowslips, pale but sweet. Out of their cups the bees hummed as she walked amongst them, a closed book in her hand, dreaming. She generally returned with Luke's spaniel beside her, for whether his master came or not the knowing dog rarely missed his visit, aware that there was always something good for him. One morning she went dreaming on like this through the cowslips, past the old beech and the gate, and along by the nut-tree hedge. It was very sunny and warm, and the birds sang with all their might, for there had been a shower at dawn, which always set their hearts atune. At least eight or nine of them were singing at once, thrush and blackbird, cuckoo (afar off), dove, and greenfinch, nightingale, robin and loud wren, and larks in the sky. But, unlike all other music, though each had a different voice and the notes crossed and interfered with each other, yet they did not jangle, but produced the sweetest sounds. The more of them that sang together, the sweeter the music. It is true they all had one thought of love at heart, and that perhaps brought about the concord. She did not expect to see Luke that morning, knowing that he had to get some felled trees removed from a field, the farmer wishing them taken away before the mowing-grass grew too high, and as the spot was ten or twelve miles distant he had to start early. Not being so much on the alert, she fell deeper perhaps into reverie, which lasted till she reached the other side of the field, when the spaniel rushed out of the hedge and leaped up to be noticed, quite startling her. At the same moment she thought she heard the noise of hoofs in the lane--it might be Luke--and immediately afterwards there came his long, shrill, and peculiar whistle from the gate under the beech. She ran as fast as she could, the spaniel barking beside her, and was at the gate in two or three minutes, but Luke was not there. Nor was he anywhere in the lane--she could see up and down it over the low gate. He must have gone on up to the homestead, not seeing her. At the house, however, she found they had not seen him. He had not called. A little hurt that he should have galloped on so hastily, she set about some household affairs, resolved to think no more of him that morning, and to give him a frown when he came in the evening. But he did not come in the evening; it was evident he was detained. Luke's trees were lying in the long grass beside a copse, and the object was to get them out of the field, across the adjacent railway, and to set them down in a lane, on the sward, whence he could send for them at leisure. The farmer was very anxious to get them out of the grass, and Luke did his best to oblige him. When Luke arrived at the spot, having for once ridden straight there, he found that almost all the work was done, and only one tree remained. This they were getting up on the timber-carriage, and Luke dismounted and assisted. While it was on the timber-carriage, he said, as it was the last, they could take it along to the wharf. The farmer had come down to watch how the work got on, and with him was his little boy, a child of five or six. When the boy saw the great tree fixed, he cried to be mounted on it for a ride, but as it was so rough they persuaded him to ride on one of the horses instead. As they all approached the gate at the level crossing, a white gate with the words in long black letters, "To be kept Locked," they heard the roar of the morning express and stayed for it to go by. So soon as the train had passed, the gate was opened and the horses began to drag the carriage across. As they strained at the heavy weight, the boy found the motion uncomfortable and cried out, and Luke, always kind-hearted, went and held him on. Whether it was the shouting at the team, the cracking of the whip, the rumbling of the wheels, or what, was never known; but suddenly the farmer, who had crossed the rail, screamed, "The goods!" Round the curve by the copse, and till then hidden by it, swept a goods train, scarce thirty yards away. Luke might have saved himself, but the boy! He snatched the child from the horse, hurled him--literally hurled him--into the father's arms, and in the instant was a shapeless mass. The scene is too dreadful for further description. This miserable accident happened, as the driver of the goods train afterwards stated, at exactly eight minutes past eleven o'clock. It was precisely at that time that Luke's lady, dreaming among the cowslips, heard the noise of hoofs, and his long, shrill, and peculiar whistle at the gate beneath the beech. She was certain of the time, for these reasons: first, she had seen the wood-pigeon go up into the beech just before she started out; secondly, she remembered nodding to an aged labourer who came up to the house every morning at that hour for his ale; thirdly, it would take a person walking slowly eight or ten minutes to cross that side of the mead; and, fourthly, when she came back to the house to see if Luke was there, the clock pointed to a quarter past, and was known to be a little fast. Without a doubt she had heard the well-known whistle, apparently coming from the gate beneath the beech exactly at the moment poor Luke was dashed to pieces twelve miles away. III A ROMAN BROOK The brook has forgotten me, but I have not forgotten the brook. Many faces have been mirrored since in the flowing water, many feet have waded in the sandy shallow. I wonder if any one else can see it in a picture before the eyes as I can, bright, and vivid as trees suddenly shown at night by a great flash of lightning. All the leaves and branches and the birds at roost are visible during the flash. It is barely a second; it seems much longer. Memory, like the lightning, reveals the pictures in the mind. Every curve, and shore, and shallow is as familiar now as when I followed the winding stream so often. When the mowing-grass was at its height, you could not walk far beside the bank; it grew so thick and strong and full of umbelliferous plants as to weary the knees. The life as it were of the meadows seemed to crowd down towards the brook in summer, to reach out and stretch towards the life-giving water. There the buttercups were taller and closer together, nails of gold driven so thickly that the true surface was not visible. Countless rootlets drew up the richness of the earth like miners in the darkness, throwing their petals of yellow ore broadcast above them. With their fulness of leaves the hawthorn bushes grow larger--the trees extend farther--and thus overhung with leaf and branch, and closely set about by grass and plant, the brook disappeared only a little way off, and could not have been known from a mound and hedge. It was lost in the plain of meads--the flowers alone saw its sparkle. Hidden in those bushes and tall grasses, high in the trees and low on the ground, there were the nests of happy birds. In the hawthorns blackbirds and thrushes built, often overhanging the stream, and the fledglings fluttered out into the flowery grass. Down among the stalks of the umbelliferous plants, where the grasses were knotted together, the nettle-creeper concealed her treasure, having selected a hollow by the bank so that the scythe should pass over. Up in the pollard ashes and willows here and there wood-pigeons built. Doves cooed in the little wooded enclosures where the brook curved almost round upon itself. If there was a hollow in the oak a pair of starlings chose it, for there was no advantageous nook that was not seized on. Low beside the willow stoles the sedge-reedlings built; on the ledges of the ditches, full of flags, moor-hens made their nests. After the swallows had coursed long miles over the meads to and fro, they rested on the tops of the ashes and twittered sweetly. Like the flowers and grass, the birds were drawn towards the brook. They built by it, they came to it to drink; in the evening a grasshopper-lark trilled in a hawthorn bush. By night crossing the footbridge a star sometimes shone in the water underfoot. At morn and even the peasant girls came down to dip; their path was worn through the mowing-grass, and there was a flat stone let into the bank as a step to stand on. Though they were poorly habited, without one line of form or tint of colour that could please the eye, there is something in dipping water that is Greek--Homeric--something that carries the mind home to primitive times. Always the little children came with them; they too loved the brook like the grass and birds. They wanted to see the fishes dart away and hide in the green flags: they flung daisies and buttercups into the stream to float and catch awhile at the flags, and float again and pass away, like the friends of our boyhood, out of sight. Where there was pasture roan cattle came to drink, and horses, restless horses, stood for hours by the edge under the shade of ash trees. With what joy the spaniel plunged in, straight from the bank out among the flags--you could mark his course by seeing their tips bend as he brushed them swimming. All life loved the brook. Far down away from roads and hamlets there was a small orchard on the very bank of the stream, and just before the grass grew too high to walk through I looked in the enclosure to speak to its owner. He was busy with his spade at a strip of garden, and grumbled that the hares would not let it alone, with all that stretch of grass to feed on. Nor would the rooks; and the moor-hens ran over it, and the water-rats burrowed; the wood-pigeons would have the peas, and there was no rest from them all. While he talked and talked, far from the object in hand, as aged people will, I thought how the apple tree in blossom before us cared little enough who saw its glory. The branches were in bloom everywhere, at the top as well as at the side; at the top where no one could see them but the swallows. They did not grow for human admiration: that was not their purpose; that is our affair only--we bring the thought to the tree. On a short branch low down the trunk there hung the weather-beaten and broken handle of an earthenware vessel; the old man said it was a jug, one of the old folks' jugs--he often dug them up. Some were cracked, some nearly perfect; lots of them had been thrown out to mend the lane. There were some chips among the heap of weeds yonder. These fragments were the remains of Anglo-Roman pottery. Coins had been found--half a gallon of them--the children had had most. He took one from his pocket, dug up that morning; they were of no value, they would not ring. The labourers tried to get some ale for them, but could not; no one would take the little brass things. That was all he knew of the Caesars: the apples were in fine bloom now, weren't they? Fifteen centuries before there had been a Roman station at the spot where the lane crossed the brook. There the centurions rested their troops after their weary march across the downs, for the lane, now bramble-grown and full of ruts, was then a Roman road. There were villas, and baths, and fortifications; these things you may read about in books. They are lost now in the hedges, under the flowering grass, in the ash copses, all forgotten in the lane, and along the footpath where the June roses will bloom after the apple blossom has dropped. But just where the ancient military way crosses the brook there grow the finest, the largest, the bluest, and most lovely forget-me-nots that ever lover gathered for his lady. The old man, seeing my interest in the fragments of pottery, wished to show me something of a different kind lately discovered. He led me to a spot where the brook was deep, and had somewhat undermined the edge. A horse trying to drink there had pushed a quantity of earth into the stream, and exposed a human skeleton lying within a few inches of the water. Then I looked up the stream and remembered the buttercups and tall grasses, the flowers that crowded down to the edge; I remembered the nests, and the dove cooing; the girls that came down to dip, the children that cast their flowers to float away. The wind blew the loose apple bloom and it fell in showers of painted snow. Sweetly the greenfinches were calling in the trees: afar the voice of the cuckoo came over the oaks. By the side of the living water, the water that all things rejoiced in, near to its gentle sound, and the sparkle of sunshine on it, had lain this sorrowful thing. MEADOW THOUGHTS The old house stood by the silent country road, secluded by many a long, long mile, and yet again secluded within the great walls of the garden. Often and often I rambled up to the milestone which stood under an oak, to look at the chipped inscription low down--"To London, 79 Miles." So far away, you see, that the very inscription was cut at the foot of the stone, since no one would be likely to want that information. It was half hidden by docks and nettles, despised and unnoticed. A broad land this seventy-nine miles--how many meadows and corn-fields, hedges and woods, in that distance?--wide enough to seclude any house, to hide it, like an acorn in the grass. Those who have lived all their lives in remote places do not feel the remoteness. No one else seemed to be conscious of the breadth that separated the place from the great centre, but it was, perhaps, that consciousness which deepened the solitude to me. It made the silence more still; the shadows of the oaks yet slower in their movement; everything more earnest. To convey a full impression of the intense concentration of Nature in the meadows is very difficult--everything is so utterly oblivious of man's thought and man's heart. The oaks stand--quiet, still--so still that the lichen loves them. At their feet the grass grows, and heeds nothing. Among it the squirrels leap, and their little hearts are as far away from you or me as the very wood of the oaks. The sunshine settles itself in the valley by the brook, and abides there whether we come or not. Glance through the gap in the hedge by the oak, and see how concentrated it is--all of it, every blade of grass, and leaf, and flower, and living creature, finch or squirrel. It is mesmerised upon itself. Then I used to feel that it really was seventy-nine miles to London, and not an hour or two only by rail, really all those miles. A great, broad province of green furrow and ploughed furrow between the old house and the city of the world. Such solace and solitude seventy-nine miles thick cannot be painted; the trees cannot be placed far enough away in perspective. It is necessary to stay in it like the oaks to know it. Lime-tree branches overhung the corner of the garden-wall, whence a view was easy of the silent and dusty road, till overarching oaks concealed it. The white dust heated by the sunshine, the green hedges, and the heavily massed trees, white clouds rolled together in the sky, a footpath opposite lost in the fields, as you might thrust a stick into the grass, tender lime leaves caressing the cheek, and silence. That is, the silence of the fields. If a breeze rustled the boughs, if a greenfinch called, if the cart-mare in the meadow shook herself, making the earth and air tremble by her with the convulsion of her mighty muscles, these were not sounds, they were the silence itself. So sensitive to it as I was, in its turn it held me firmly, like the fabled spells of old time. The mere touch of a leaf was a talisman to bring me under the enchantment, so that I seemed to feel and know all that was proceeding among the grass-blades and in the bushes. Among the lime trees along the wall the birds never built, though so close and sheltered. They built everywhere but there. To the broad coping-stones of the wall under the lime boughs speckled thrushes came almost hourly, sometimes to peer out and reconnoitre if it was safe to visit the garden, sometimes to see if a snail had climbed up the ivy. Then they dropped quietly down into the long strawberry patch immediately under. The cover of strawberries is the constant resource of all creeping things; the thrushes looked round every plant and under every leaf and runner. One toad always resided there, often two, and as you gathered a ripe strawberry you might catch sight of his black eye watching you take the fruit he had saved for you. Down the road skims an eave-swallow, swift as an arrow, his white back making the sun-dried dust dull and dingy; he is seeking a pool for mortar, and will waver to and fro by the brook below till he finds a convenient place to alight. Thence back to the eave here, where for forty years he and his ancestors built in safety. Two white butterflies fluttering round each other rise over the limes, once more up over the house, and soar on till their white shows no longer against the illumined air. A grasshopper calls on the sward by the strawberries, and immediately fillips himself over seven leagues of grass-blades. Yonder a line of men and women file across the field, seen for a moment as they pass a gateway, and the hay changes from hay-colour to green behind them as they turn the under but still sappy side upwards. They are working hard, but it looks easy, slow, and sunny. Finches fly out from the hedgerow to the overturned hay. Another butterfly, a brown one, floats along the dusty road--the only traveller yet. The white clouds are slowly passing behind the oaks, large puffed clouds, like deliberate loads of hay, leaving little wisps and flecks behind them caught in the sky. How pleasant it would be to read in the shadow! There is a broad shadow on the sward by the strawberries cast by a tall and fine-grown American crab tree. The very place for a book; and although I know it is useless, yet I go and fetch one and dispose myself on the grass. I can never read in summer out-of-doors. Though in shadow the bright light fills it, summer shadows are broadest daylight. The page is so white and hard, the letters so very black, the meaning and drift not quite intelligible, because neither eye nor mind will dwell upon it. Human thoughts and imaginings written down are pale and feeble in bright summer light. The eye wanders away, and rests more lovingly on greensward and green lime leaves. The mind wanders yet deeper and farther into the dreamy mystery of the azure sky. Once now and then, determined to write down that mystery and delicious sense while actually in it, I have brought out table and ink and paper, and sat there in the midst of the summer day. Three words, and where is the thought? Gone. The paper is so obviously paper, the ink so evidently ink, the pen so stiff; all so inadequate. You want colour, flexibility, light, sweet low sound--all these to paint it and play it in music, at the same time you want something that will answer to and record in one touch the strong throb of life and the thought, or feeling, or whatever it is that goes out into the earth and sky and space, endless as a beam of light. The very shade of the pen on the paper tells you how utterly hopeless it is to express these things. There is the shade and the brilliant gleaming whiteness; now tell me in plain written words the simple contrast of the two. Not in twenty pages, for the bright light shows the paper in its common fibre-ground, coarse aspect, in its reality, not as a mind-tablet. The delicacy and beauty of thought or feeling is so extreme that it cannot be inked in; it is like the green and blue of field and sky, of veronica flower and grass blade, which in their own existence throw light and beauty on each other, but in artificial colours repel. Take the table indoors again, and the book; the thoughts and imaginings of others are vain, and of your own too deep to be written. For the mind is filled with the exceeding beauty of these things, and their great wondrousness and marvel. Never yet have I been able to write what I felt about the sunlight only. Colour and form and light are as magic to me. It is a trance. It requires a language of ideas to convey it. It is ten years since I last reclined on that grass plot, and yet I have been writing of it as if it was yesterday, and every blade of grass is as visible and as real to me now as then. They were greener towards the house, and more brown-tinted on the margin of the strawberry bed, because towards the house the shadow rested longest. By the strawberries the fierce sunlight burned them. The sunlight put out the books I brought into it just as it put out the fire on the hearth indoors. The tawny flames floating upwards could not bite the crackling sticks when the full beams came pouring on them. Such extravagance of light overcame the little fire till it was screened from the power of the heavens. So here in the shadow of the American crab tree the light of the sky put out the written pages. For this beautiful and wonderful light excited a sense of some likewise beautiful and wonderful truth, some unknown but grand thought hovering as a swallow above. The swallows hovered and did not alight, but they were there. An inexpressible thought quivered in the azure overhead; it could not be fully grasped, but there was a sense and feeling of its presence. Before that mere sense of its presence the weak and feeble pages, the small fires of human knowledge, dwindled and lost meaning. There was something here that was not in the books. In all the philosophies and searches of mind there was nothing that could be brought to face it, to say, This is what it intends, this is the explanation of the dream. The very grass-blades confounded the wisest, the tender lime leaf put them to shame, the grasshopper derided them, the sparrow on the wall chirped his scorn. The books were put out, unless a screen were placed between them and the light of the sky--that is, an assumption, so as to make an artificial mental darkness. Grant some assumptions--that is, screen off the light--and in that darkness everything was easily arranged, this thing here, and that yonder. But Nature grants no assumptions, and the books were put out. There is something beyond the philosophies in the light, in the grass-blades, the leaf, the grasshopper, the sparrow on the wall. Some day the great and beautiful thought which hovers on the confines of the mind will at last alight. In that is hope, the whole sky is full of abounding hope. Something beyond the books, that is consolation. The little lawn beside the strawberry bed, burned brown there, and green towards the house shadow, holds how many myriad grass-blades? Here they are all matted together, long, and dragging each other down. Part them, and beneath them are still more, overhung and hidden. The fibres are intertangled, woven in an endless basket-work and chaos of green and dried threads. A blamable profusion this; a fifth as many would be enough; altogether a wilful waste here. As for these insects that spring out of it as I press the grass, a hundredth part of them would suffice. The American crab tree is a snowy mount in spring; the flakes of bloom, when they fall, cover the grass with a film--a bushel of bloom, which the wind takes and scatters afar. The extravagance is sublime. The two little cherry trees are as wasteful; they throw away handfuls of flower; but in the meadows the careless, spendthrift ways of grass and flower and all things are not to be expressed. Seeds by the hundred million float with absolute indifference on the air. The oak has a hundred thousand more leaves than necessary, and never hides a single acorn. Nothing utilitarian--everything on a scale of splendid waste. Such noble, broadcast, open-armed waste is delicious to behold. Never was there such a lying proverb as "Enough is as good as a feast." Give me the feast; give me squandered millions of seeds, luxurious carpets of petals, green mountains of oak leaves. The greater the waste, the greater the enjoyment--the nearer the approach to real life. Casuistry is of no avail; the fact is obvious; Nature flings treasures abroad, puffs them with open ups along on every breeze, piles up lavish layers of them in the free open air, packs countless numbers together in the needles of a fir tree. Prodigality and superfluity are stamped on everything she does. The ear of wheat returns a hundredfold the grain from which it grew. The surface of the earth offers to us far more than we can consume--the grains, the seeds, the fruits, the animals, the abounding products are beyond the power of all the human race to devour. They can, too, be multiplied a thousandfold. There is no natural lack. Whenever there is lack among us it is from artificial causes, which intelligence should remove. From the littleness, and meanness, and niggardliness forced upon us by circumstances, what a relief to turn aside to the exceeding plenty of Nature! There are no bounds to it, there is no comparison to parallel it, so great is this generosity. No physical reason exists why every human being should not have sufficient, at least, of necessities. For any human being to starve, or even to be in trouble about the procuring of simple food, appears, indeed, a strange and unaccountable thing, quite upside down, and contrary to sense, if you do but consider a moment the enormous profusion the earth throws at our feet. In the slow process of time, as the human heart grows larger, such provision, I sincerely trust, will be made that no one need ever feel anxiety about mere subsistence. Then, too, let there be some imitation of this open-handed generosity and divine waste. Let the generations to come feast free of care, like my finches on the seeds of the mowing-grass, from which no voice drives them. If I could but give away as freely as the earth does! The white-backed eave-swallow has returned many, many times from the shallow drinking-place by the brook to his half-built nest. Sometimes the pair of them cling to the mortar they have fixed under the eave, and twitter to each other about the progress of the work. They dive downwards with such velocity when they quit hold that it seems as if they must strike the ground, but they shoot up again, over the wall and the lime trees. A thrush has been to the arbour yonder twenty times; it is made of crossed laths, and overgrown with "tea-plant," and the nest is inside the lath-work. A sparrow has visited the rose-tree by the wall--the buds are covered with aphides. A brown tree-creeper has been to the limes, then to the cherries, and even to a stout lilac stem. No matter how small the tree, he tries all that are in his way. The bright colours of a bullfinch were visible a moment just now, as he passed across the shadows farther down the garden under the damson trees and into the bushes. The grasshopper has gone past and along the garden-path, his voice is not heard now; but there is another coming. While I have been dreaming, all these and hundreds out in the meadow have been intensely happy. So concentrated on their little work in the sunshine, so intent on the tiny egg, on the insect captured on the grass-tip to be carried to the eager fledglings, so joyful in listening to the song poured out for them or in pouring it forth, quite oblivious of all else. It is in this intense concentration that they are so happy. If they could only live longer!--but a few such seasons for them--I wish they could live a hundred years just to feast on the seeds and sing and be utterly happy and oblivious of everything but the moment they are passing. A black line has rushed up from the espalier apple yonder to the housetop thirty times at least. The starlings fly so swiftly and so straight that they seem to leave a black line along the air. They have a nest in the roof, they are to and fro it and the meadow the entire day, from dawn till eve. The espalier apple, like a screen, hides the meadow from me, so that the descending starlings appear to dive into a space behind it. Sloping downwards the meadow makes a valley; I cannot see it, but know that it is golden with buttercups, and that a brook runs in the groove of it. Afar yonder I can see a summit beyond where the grass swells upwards to a higher level than this spot. There are bushes and elms whose height is decreased by distance on the summit, horses in the shadow of the trees, and a small flock of sheep crowded, as is their wont, in the hot and sunny gateway. By the side of the summit is a deep green trench, so it looks from here, in the hill-side: it is really the course of a streamlet worn deep in the earth. I can see nothing between the top of the espalier screen and the horses under the elms on the hill. But the starlings go up and down into the hollow space, which is aglow with golden buttercups, and, indeed, I am looking over a hundred finches eagerly searching, sweetly calling, happy as the summer day. A thousand thousand grasshoppers are leaping, thrushes are labouring, filled with love and tenderness, doves cooing--there is as much joy as there are leaves on the hedges. Faster than the starling's flight my mind runs up to the streamlet in the deep green trench beside the hill. Pleasant it was to trace it upwards, narrowing at every ascending step, till the thin stream, thinner than fragile glass, did but merely slip over the stones. A little less and it could not have run at all, water could not stretch out to greater tenuity. It smoothed the brown growth on the stones, stroking it softly. It filled up tiny basins of sand and ran out at the edges between minute rocks of flint. Beneath it went under thickest brooklime, blue flowered, and serrated water-parsnips, lost like many a mighty river for awhile among a forest of leaves. Higher up masses of bramble and projecting thorn stopped the explorer, who must wind round the grassy mound. Pausing to look back a moment there were meads under the hill with the shortest and greenest herbage, perpetually watered, and without one single buttercup, a strip of pure green among yellow flowers and yellowing corn. A few hollow oaks on whose boughs the cuckoos stayed to call, two or three peewits coursing up and down, larks singing, and for all else silence. Between the wheat and the grassy mound the path was almost closed, burdocks and brambles thrust the adventurer outward to brush against the wheat-ears. Upwards till suddenly it turned, and led by steep notches in the bank, as it seemed down to the roots of the elm trees. The clump of elms grew right over a deep and rugged hollow; their branches reached out across it, roofing in the cave. Here was the spring, at the foot of a perpendicular rock, moss-grown low down, and overrun with creeping ivy higher. Green thorn bushes filled the chinks and made a wall to the well, and the long narrow hart's-tongue streaked the face of the cliff. Behind the thick thorns hid the course of the streamlet, in front rose the solid rock, upon the right hand the sward came to the edge--it shook every now and then as the horses in the shade of the elms stamped their feet--on the left hand the ears of wheat peered over the verge. A rocky cell in concentrated silence of green things. Now and again a finch, a starling, or a sparrow would come meaning to drink--athirst from the meadow or the cornfield--and start and almost entangle their wings in the bushes, so completely astonished that any one should be there. The spring rises in a hollow under the rock imperceptibly, and without bubble or sound. The fine sand of the shallow basin is undisturbed--no tiny water-volcano pushes up a dome of particles. Nor is there any crevice in the stone, but the basin is always full and always running over. As it slips from the brim a gleam of sunshine falls through the boughs and meets it. To this cell I used to come once now and then on a summer's day, tempted, perhaps, like the finches, by the sweet cool water, but drawn also by a feeling that could not be analysed. Stooping, I lifted the water in the hollow of my hand--carefully, lest the sand might be disturbed--and the sunlight gleamed on it as it slipped through ray fingers. Alone in the green-roofed cave, alone with the sunlight and the pure water, there was a sense of something more than these. The water was more to me than water, and the sun than sun. The gleaming rays on the water in my palm held me for a moment, the touch of the water gave me something from itself. A moment, and the gleam was gone, the water flowing away, but I had had them. Beside the physical water and physical light I had received from them their beauty; they had communicated to me this silent mystery. The pure and beautiful water, the pure, clear, and beautiful light, each had given me something of their truth. So many times I came to it, toiling up the long and shadowless bill in the burning sunshine, often carrying a vessel to take some of it home with me. There was a brook, indeed but this was different, it was the spring; it was taken home as a beautiful flower might be brought. It is not the physical water, it is the sense or feeling that it conveys. Nor is it the physical sunshine; it is the sense of inexpressible beauty which it brings with it. Of such I still drink, and hope to do so still deeper. CLEMATIS LANE Wild clematis grew so thickly on one side of the narrow lane that the hedge seemed made of it. Trailing over the low bushes, the leaves hid the hawthorn and bramble, so that the hedge was covered with clematis leaf and flower. The innumerable pale flowers gave out a faint odour, and coloured the sides of the highway. Rising up the hazel rods and taller hawthorn, the tendrils hung downwards and suspended the flowers overhead. Across the field, where a hill rose and was dotted with bushes--these bushes, too, were concealed by clematis, and though the flowers were so pale, their numbers tinted the slope. A cropped nut-tree hedge, again, low, but five or six yards thick, was bound together by the bines of the same creeping plant, twisting in and out, and holding it together. No care or art could have led it over the branches in so graceful a manner; the lane was festooned for the triumphal progress of the waggons laden with corn. Here and there, on the dry bank over which the clematis projected like an eave, there stood tall campanulas, their blue bells as large as the fingerstall of a foxglove. The slender purple spires of the climbing vetch were lifted above the low hushes to which it clung; there were ferns deeper in the hedge, and yellow bedstraw by the gateways. A few blackberries were ripe, but the clematis seemed to have overcome the brambles, and spoilt their yield. Nuts, reddened at the tip, were visible on the higher hazel boughs; they were ripe, but difficult to get at. Leaving the lane by a waggon track--a gipsy track through a copse--there were large bunches of pale-red berries hanging from the wayfaring trees, or wild viburnum, and green and red berries of bryony wreathed among the branches. The bryony leaves had turned, some were pale buff already. Among the many berries of autumn those of the wayfaring tree may be known by their flattened shape, as if the sides had been pressed in like a flask. The bushes were not high enough for shadow, and the harvest sun was hot between them. The track led past the foot of a steep headland of the Downs, which could not be left without an ascent. Dry and slippery, the short grass gave no hold to the feet, and it was necessary to step in the holes cut through the turf for the purpose. Pushed forward from the main line of the Downs, the buff headland projected into the Weald, as headlands on the southern side of the range project into the sea. Towards the summit the brow came out somewhat, and even the rude steps in the turf were not much assistance in climbing this almost perpendicular wall of sward. Above the brow the ascent became easy; these brows raised steeper than the general slope are often found on the higher hills. A circular entrenchment encloses the summit, but the rampart has much sunk, and is in places levelled. Here it was pleasant to look back upon the beech woods at the foot of the great Downs, and far over the endless fields of the Weald or plain. Thirty fields could be counted in succession, one after the other, like irregular chess-squares, some corn, some grass, and these only extended to the first undulation, where the woods hid the fields behind them. But beyond these, in reality, succeeded another series of fields to the second undulation, and still a third series to the farthest undulation visible. Yet farther there was a faint line of hills, a dark cloud-like bank in the extreme distance. To the right and to the left were similar views. Reapers were at work in the wheat below, but already much of the corn had been carried, and the hum of a threshing engine came up from the ricks. A woodpecker called loudly in the beech wood; a "wish-wish" in the air overhead was caused by the swift motion of a wood-pigeon passing from "holt" to "hurst," from copse to copse. On the dry short turf of the hill-top even the shadow of a swallow was visible as he flew but a few yards high. In a little hollow where the rougher grasses grew longer a blue butterfly fluttered and could not get out. He was entangled with his own wings, he could not guide himself between the grass tops; his wings fluttered and carried him back again. The grass was like a net to him, and there he fluttered till the wind lifted him out, and gave him the freedom of the hills. One small green orchis stood in the grass, alone; the harebells were many. It is curious that, if gathered, in a few hours (if pressed between paper) they become a deeper blue than when growing. Another butterfly went over, large and velvety, flying head to the wind, but unable to make way against it, and so carried sidelong across the current. From the summit of the hill he drifted out into the air five hundred feet above the flowers of the plain. Perhaps it was a peacock; for there was a peacock-butterfly in Clematis Lane. The harebells swung, and the dry tips of the grass bent to the wind which came over the hills from the sea, but from which the sun had dried the sea-moisture, leaving it twice refined--once by the passage above a hundred miles of wave and foam and again by the grasses and the hills, which forced the current to a higher level, where the sunbeams dried it. Twice refined, the air was strong and pure, sweet like the scent of a flower. If the air at the sea-beach is good, that of the hills above the sea is at least twice as good, and twice as strengthening. It possesses all the virtue of the sea air without the moisture which ultimately loosens the joints, and seems to penetrate to the very nerves. Those who desire air and quick recovery should go to the hills, where the wind has a scent of the sunbeams. In the short time since ascending the slope the definition of the view has changed. At first it was clear indeed, and no one would have supposed there was any mist. But now suddenly every hill stands out sharp and definite; the scattered hawthorn bushes are distinct; the hills look higher than before. From about the woods an impalpable bluish mistiness that was there just now has been blown away. The yellow squares of stubble--just cleared--far below are whiter and look drier. I think it is the air that tints everything. This fresh stratum now sweeping over has altered the appearance of the country and given me a new scene. The invisible air, as if charged with colour, has spread another tone broadly over the landscape. Omitting no detail, it has worked out afresh every little bough of the scattered hawthorn bushes, and made each twig distinct. It is the air that tints everything. While I have been thinking, a flock of sheep has stolen quietly into the space enclosed by the entrenchment. With the iron head of his crook placed against his breast, and the handle aslant to the ground, the shepherd leans against it, and looks down upon the reapers. He is a young man, and has a bright intelligent expression on his features. Alone with his sheep so many hours, he is glad of some one to talk to, and points out to me the various places in view. The copses that cover the slopes of the hills he calls "holts"; there are three or four within a short distance. His crook is not a Pyecombe crook (for the best crooks used to be made at Pyecombe, a little Down hamlet), but he has another, which was made from a Pyecombe pattern. The village craftsman, whose shepherd's crooks were sought for all along the South Downs, is no more, and he has left no one able to carry on his work. He had an apprentice, but the apprentice has taken to another craft, and cannot make crooks. The Pyecombe crook has a curve or semicircle, and then opens straight; the straight part starts at a tangent from the semicircle. How difficult it is to describe so simple a matter as a shepherd's crook! In some way or other this Pyecombe form is found more effective for capturing sheep, but it is not so easy to make. The crook he held in his hand opened with an elongated curve. It appeared very small beside the ordinary crooks; this, he said, was an advantage, as it would hold a lamb. Another he showed me had the ordinary hook; this was bought at Brighton. The curve was too big, and a sheep could get its leg out; besides which, the iron was soft, and when a sheep was caught the iron bent and enlarged, and so let the sheep go. The handles were of hazel: one handle was straight, smooth, and the best in appearance--but he said it was weak; the other handle, which was crooked and rough-looking, was twice as strong. They used hazel rods for handles--ash rods were apt to "fly," i.e. break. Wages were now fifteen shillings a week. The "farm hands"--elsewhere labourers--had fifteen shillings a week, and paid one shilling and sixpence a week for their cottages. The new cottages that had been built were two shillings and sixpence a week. They liked the old cottages best, not only because they were cheaper, but because they had larger gardens attached. It seemed that the men were fairly satisfied with their earnings; just then, of course, they were receiving much more for harvest work, such as tying up after the reaping machine at seven shillings and sixpence per acre. Clothes were the heaviest item of expenditure, especially where there was a family and the children were not old enough to earn anything. Except that he said "wid" for with--"wid" this, instead of with this--he scarcely mispronounced a word, speaking as distinctly and expressing himself as clearly as any one could possibly do. The briskness of manner, quick apprehension, and directness of answer showed a well-trained mind. The Sussex shepherd on this lonely hill was quite the equal of any man in his rank of life, and superior in politeness to many who move in more civilised places. He left me to fetch some wattles, called flakes in other counties; a stronger sort of hurdles. Most of the reaping is now done by machine, still there were men cutting wheat by hand at the foot of the hill. They call their reaphooks swaphooks, or swophooks, and are of opinion that although the machine answers well and clears the ground quickly when the corn stands up, if it is beaten down the swaphook is preferable. The swaphook is the same as the fagging-hook of other districts. Every hawthorn bush now bears its red berries, or haws; these are called "hog-hazels." In the west they are called "peggles." "Sweel" is an odd Sussex word, meaning to singe linen. People who live towards the hills (which are near the coast) say that places farther inland are more "uperds "--up the country--up towards Tunbridge, for instance. The grasshoppers sang merrily round me as I sat on the sward; the warm sun and cloudless sky and the dry turf pleased them. Though cloudless, the wind rendered the warmth pleasant, so that the sunbeams, from which there was no shade, were not oppressive. The grasshoppers sang, the wind swept through the grass and swung the harebells, the "drowsy hum" of the threshing engine rose up from the plain; the low slumberous melody of harvest time floated in the air. An hour had gone by imperceptibly before I descended the slope to Clematis Lane. Out in the stubble where the wheat had just been cut, down amongst the dry short stalks of straw, were the light-blue petals of the grey field veronica. Almost the very first of field flowers in the earliest days of spring, when the rain drives over the furrow, and hail may hap at any time, here it was blooming again in the midst of the harvest. Two scenes could scarcely be more dissimilar than the wet and stormy hours of the early year, and the dry, hot time of harvest; the pale blue veronica, with one white petal, flourished in both, true and faithful. The gates beside the lane were not gates at all, but double draw-bars framed together, so that the gate did not open on a hinge, but had to be drawn out of the mortices. Looking over one of these grey and lichened draw-bars in a hazel hedge there were the shocks of wheat standing within the field, and on them a flock of rooks helping themselves freely. Lower in the valley, where there was water, the tall willow-herbs stood up high as the hedges. On the banks of a pool water-plantains had sent up stalks a yard high, branched, and each branch bearing its three-petalled flower. In a copse near the stems of cow-parsnip stood quite seven feet, drawn up by the willow bushes--these great plants are some of the largest that grow in the country. Goatsbeard grew by the wayside; it is like the dandelion, but has dark spots in the centre of the disc, and the flower shuts at noon. The wild carrots were forming their "birds' nests"--so soon as the flowering is over the umbel closes into the shape of a cup or bird's nest. The flower of the wild carrot is white; it is made up of numerous small separate florets on an umbel, and in the centre of these tiny florets is a deep crimson one. Getting down towards the sea and the houses now I found a shrub of henbane by the dusty road, dusty itself, grey-green, and draggled; I call it a shrub, though a plant because of its shrub-like look. The flowers were over--they are a peculiar colour, dark and green veined and red, there is no exact term for it, but you may know the plant by the leaves, which, if crushed, smell like those of the black currant. This is one of the old English medicinal plants still in use. The figs were ripening fast in an orchard; the fig trees are frequently grown between apple trees, which shelter them, and some of the fruit was enclosed in muslin bags to protect it. The fig orchards along the coast suggest thoughts of Italy and the ancient Roman galleys which crossed the sea to the Sussex ports. There is a curious statement in a classic author, to the effect that a letter written by Julius Caesar, when in Britain, on the Kalends of September, reached Rome on the fourth day before the Kalends of October, showing how long a letter was being carried from the South Coast to the centre of Italy, nineteen centuries ago. NATURE NEAR BRIGHTON "As wild as a hawk" is a proverbial comparison, but kestrels venture into the outskirts of Brighton, and even right over the town. Not long since one was observed hovering above a field which divides part of Brighton from Hove. The bird had hardly settled himself and obtained his balance, when three or four rooks who were passing deliberately changed their course to attack him. Moving with greater swiftness, the kestrel escaped their angry but clumsy assaults; still they drove him from the spot, and followed him eastwards over the town till out of sight--now wheeling round, and now doing their utmost to rise higher and get the advantage of him. Kestrels appear rather numerous in this vicinity. Those who have driven round Brighton and Hove must have noticed the large stables which have been erected for the convenience of gentlemen residing in streets where stabling at the rear of the house is impracticable. Early in the year a kestrel began to haunt one of these large establishments, notwithstanding that it was much frequented, carriages driving in and out constantly, hunters taken to and fro, and in despite of the neighbourhood being built over with villas. There was a piece of waste ground by the building where, on a little tree, the hawk perched day after clay. Then, beating round, he hovered over the gardens of the district, often above the public roads and over a large tennis lawn. His farthest sweep seemed to be to the Sussex County Cricket field and then back again. Day after day he went his rounds for weeks together, through the stormy times of the early months, passing several times a day, almost as regularly as the postman. He showed no fear, hovering close to the people in the roads or working in their gardens. All his motions could be observed with facility--the mode of hovering, which he accomplished easily, whether there was a gale or a perfect calm; indeed, his ways could be noted as well as if it had been by the side of the wildest copse. One morning he perched on a chimney; the house was not occupied, but the next to it was, and there were builders' workmen engaged on the opposite side of the road; so that the wild hawk, if unmolested, would soon become comparatively tame. When the season became less rigorous, and the breeding time approached, the kestrel was seen no more; having flown for the copses between the Downs or in the Weald. The power of hovering is not so wonderful as that of soaring, which the hawks possess, but which is also exhibited by seagulls. On a March morning two gulls came up from the sea, and as they neared the Downs began to soar. It was necessary to fix the gaze on one, as the eyes cannot follow two soaring birds at once. This gull, having spread his wings wide, swept up the dean, or valley, with great speed, and, turning a large circle, rose level with the hill. Round again he came, rising spirally--a spiral with a diameter varying from a furlong to a quarter of a mile, sometimes wider--and was now high overhead. Turn succeeded turn, up, up, and this without a single movement of the wings, which were held extended and rigid. The edge of the wing on the outer side was inclined to the horizon--one wing elevated, the other depressed--as the bird leaned inwards like a train going round a curve. The plane of the wings glided up the air as, with no apparent diminution of speed from friction, the bird swiftly ascended. Fourteen times the bird swept round, never so much as moving his wings, till now the gaze could no longer distinguish his manner of progress. The white body was still perceptible, but the wings were indistinct. Up to that height the gull had not assisted his ascent by flapping, or striking the air in any way. The original impulse, and some hitherto unexplained elasticity or property of air, had sufficed to raise him, in apparent defiance of the retardation of friction, and of the drag of gravitation. This power of soaring is the most wonderful of the various problems of flight being accomplished without effort; and yet, according to our preconceived ideas, there must be force somewhere to cause motion. There was a moderate air moving at the time, but it must be remembered that if a wind assists one way it retards the other. [Footnote: See the paper on "Birds Climbing the Air"] Hawks can certainly soar in the calmest weather. One day I saw a weasel cross a road in Hove, close to a terrace of houses. It is curious that a seagull can generally be observed opposite the Aquarium; when there is no seagull elsewhere along the whole Brighton front there is often one there. Young gulls occasionally alight on the roof, or are blown there. Once now and then a porpoise may be seen sunning himself off a groyne; barely dipping himself, and rolling about at the surface, the water shines like oil as it slips off his back. The Brighton rooks are house birds, like sparrows, and perch on the roofs or chimneys--there are generally some on the roof of the Eglise Reformee Francaise, a church situated in a much-frequented part. It is amusing to see a black rook perched on a red tile chimney, with the smoke coming up around him, and darkening with soot his dingy plumage. They take every scrap thrown out, like sparrows, and peck bones if they find them. The builders in Brighton appear to have somewhat overshot the mark, to judge from the number of empty houses, and, indeed, it is currently reported that it will be five years before the building speculation recovers itself. Upon these empty houses, the hoardings, and scaffold-poles, the rooks perch exactly as if they were trees in a hedgerow, waiting with comic gravity to pounce on anything in the gardens or on the lawns. They are quite aware when it is Sunday--on week-days they keep at a fair distance from workmen; on Sundays they drop down in places where at other times they do not dare to venture, so that a glove might be thrown out of window among them. In winter and spring there are rooks everywhere; as summer advances, most leave the town for the fields. A marked sign of spring in Brighton is the return of the wheatears; they suddenly appear in the waste places by the houses in the first few days of April. Wheatears often run a considerable distance on the sward very swiftly, usually stopping on some raised spot of the turf. Meadow-pipits are another spring bird here; any one going up the Dyke Road in early spring will observe a little brown bird singing in the air much like a lark, but more feebly. He only rises to a certain height, and then descends in a slanting direction, singing, to the ground. The meadow-pipit is, apparently, uncertain where he shall come down, wandering and irregular on his course. Many of them finish their song in the gardens of the Convent of the Sacred Heart, which seem to be a refuge to birds. At least, the thrushes sing there sweetly--yellowhammers, too--on the high wall. There is another resort of birds, opposite the Convent, on the Stanford Estate, on which persons are warned not to shoot or net small birds. A little shrubbery there in April and May is full of thrushes, blackbirds, and various finches, happily singing, and busy at their nests. Here the birds sing both sides of the highway, despite the reproach that Brighton is bare of trees; they pass from the shrubbery to and from the Convent gardens. It is to be wished that these notices not to shoot or net small birds were more frequently seen. Brighton is still a bird-catching centre, and before the new close season commences acres of ground are covered with the nets of the bird-catchers. Pity they could not be confined a little while in the same manner as they confine their miserable feathery victims (in cages just to fit the bird, say six inches square) in cells where movement or rest would be alike impossible. Yet goldfinches are still to be seen close to the town; they are fond of the seeds which they find wherever there is a waste place, and on the slopes of unfinished roads. Each unoccupied house, and many occupied, has its brood of starlings; a starling the other day was taking insects from the surface of a sheep pond on the hill, flying out to the middle of the pond and snatching the insects from the water During the long weeks of rain and stormy weather in the spring of 1883, the Downs looked dreary indeed; open, unsheltered, the grass so short as scarcely to be called grass wet and slippery. But a few glimpses of sunshine soon brought a change. Where the furze bushes had been cut down, the stems of furze began to shoot, looking at a little distance like moss on the ground. Among these there were broad violet patches--scentless violets, nothing to gather, but pleasant to see--colouring the earth. Presently the gorse flowered, miles of it, and the willow wrens sang plaintively among it. The brightest bird on the Downs was then the stonechat. Perched on a dead thistle, his blackest of black heads, the white streak by his neck, and the brilliance of his colouring contrasted with the yellow gorse around. In the hedges on the northern slopes of the Downs, towards the Weald, or plain, the wayfaring tree grows in large shrubs, blooming among the thorns. The banks by Brighton in early spring are purple with the flowers of ground ivy, which flowers with exceptional freedom. One bank, or waste spot, that was observed was first of all perfectly purple with ground ivy; by degrees these flowers faded, and the spot became a beautiful blue with veronica, or bird's-eye; then, again, these disappeared, and up came the larger daisies on stalks a foot high, whose discs touched each other from end to end of the bank. Here was a succession of flowers as if designed, one taking the other's place. Meantime the trifolium appeared like blood spilt among the grass. The thin, chalky soil of Sussex is singularly favourable to poppies and charlock--the one scarlet, the other a sharp yellow; they cover acres. Wild pansies flowered on the hillside fallows, high up among the wind, where the notes of the cuckoo came faint from the wood in the Weald beneath. The wind threw back the ringing notes, but every now and then, as the breeze ebbed, they came, having travelled a full mile against the current of air. There is no bird with so powerful a voice as the cuckoo; his cry can be heard almost as far as a clarion. The wild pansies were very thick--little yellow petals streaked with black lines. In a western county the cottagers call them "Loving Idols," which may perhaps be a distortion of the name they bore in Shakespeare's time--"Love in Idleness." It appears as if the rabbits on the chalk are of a rather greyish hue, perceptibly less sandy in colour than those living in meadows on low ground. Though Brighton is bare of trees, there is a large wood at a short distance. It is principally of beech. In this particular wood there is a singular absence of the jays which elsewhere make so much noise. Early in the spring there did not seem a jay in it. They make their appearance in the nesting season and are then trapped. A thrush's nest with eggs in it having been found, a little platform of sticks is built before the nest and a trap placed on it. The jay is so fond of eggs he cannot resist these; he alights on the platform in front of the nest, and is so captured. The bait of an egg will generally succeed in drawing a jay to his destruction. A good deal of poaching goes on about Brighton at Christmas time, when the coverts are full of game. The Downs as they trend along the coast now recede and now approach, now sink in deans, then rise abruptly, topped with copses which, like Lancing Clump, are visible many miles both at sea and on land. Between them and the beach there lies a rich alluvial belt, narrow and flat, much of which appears to have been reclaimed by drainage from the condition of marsh, and which, in fact, presents a close similitude to the fens. Here, in the dykes, the aquatic grasses reach a great height, and the flowering rush grows. It is said that this land is sought after among agriculturists, and that those who occupy it have escaped better than the majority from the pressure of bad seasons. Somewhat away from the present coast-line, where the hills begin--perhaps the sea came as far inland once--may be found ancient places, still ports, with histories running back into the mythic period. Passing through such a place on a sunny day in the earlier part of the year, the extreme quiet and air of silence were singularly opposite to the restlessness of the great watering-place near. It was but a few steps out into the wooded country. Yellow wallflowers grew along the high wall, and flowered against the sky; swallows flew to and fro the warm space sheltered from the wind, beneath them. In the lane a blackbird was so occupied among the arums at the roots of the trees that he did not stir till actually obliged. Blackbirds and thrushes are fond of searching about where the arums grow thickest. In the park a clump of tall aspens gleamed like silk in the sunshine. The calls of moorhens came up from a lake in a deep valley near, beeches grow down the steep slope to the edge of the water, and the wind which rippled it drew in a strong draught up the hill. From that height the glance saw to the bottom of the clear water, to which the waves and the wind gave a translucent green. The valley winds northward, curving like a brook, and in the trough a narrow green band of dark grass follows the windings, a pathlike ribbon as deeply coloured as a fairy ring, and showing between the slopes of pale turf. On this side are copses of beech, and on that of fir; the fir copses are encircled by a loose hedge of box, fading and yellowish, while the larch tops were filled with sweet and tender green. Like the masts and yards of a ship, which are gradually hidden as the sails are set, so these green sails unfurling concealed the tall masts and taper branches of the fir. Afar the great hills were bare, wind-swept and dry. The glass-green river wound along the plain, and the sea bloomed blue under the sun, blue by the distant shore, darkening like a level cloud where a dim ship marked the horizon. A blue sky requires greensward and green woods--the sward is pale and the woods are slow; the cuckoo calls for his leaves. Farther along the edge of the valley the beeches thicken, and the turf is covered by the shrunken leaves of last year. Empty hulls of beechmast crunch under foot, the brown beech leaves have drifted a foot deep against the trunk of a felled tree. Beech leaves lie at rest in the cover of furze, sheltered from the wind; suddenly a little cloud of earth rises like dust as a startled cock pheasant scrambles on his wings with a scream. A hen follows, and rises steadily in a long-drawn slanting line till near the tops of the beeches, then rockets sharp up over the highest branches, and descends in a wide sweeping curve along the valley. In the glade among the beeches the furze has grown straight up ten feet high, like, sapling trees, and flowers at the top, golden bloom on a dry pole. There are more pheasants in the furze, so that, not to disturb them, it is best to walk round and not enter it. Every now and then there is a curious, half-finished note among the trees--yuc, yuc. This great hawthorn has a twisted stem; the wood winds round itself in a spiral. The bole of a beech in the sunshine h spotted like a trout by the separate shadows of its first young leaves. Tall bushes--almost trees--of blackthorn are in full white flower; the dark, leafless boughs make it appear the whiter. Among the blackthorn several tits are busy, searching about on the twigs, and pecking into the petals; calling loudly as they do so. A willow-wren is peering into the bloom too, but silent for the moment. The blackthorn is much lichened, the lichen which is built into the domed nest of the long-tailed titmouse. Yuc--yuc, again. Stalks of spurge, thickening towards the top, and then surrounded with leaves, and above these dull yellow-green flowers, grow in shrub-like bunches in more open ground. Among the shrunken leaves on the turf here and there are the white flowers of the barren strawberry. A green woodpecker starts from a tree, and can be watched between the trunks as he flies; his bright colour marks him. Presently, on rounding some furze, he rises again, this time from the ground, and goes over the open glade; flying, the green woodpecker appears a larger bird than would be supposed if seen when still. He has been among the beeches all the time, and it was his "Yuc, yuc" which we heard. Where the woodpecker is heard and seen, there the woods are woods and wild--a sense of wildness accompanies his presence. Across the valley the straight shadows of firs rise up the slope, all drawn in the same direction, parallel on the sward. Far in a hollow of the rounded hill a herd of deer are resting; the plain lies beneath them, and beyond it the sea. Though they rest in a hollow the green hill is open above and below them; they do not dread the rifle, but if they did they would be safe there. Returning again through the woods, there are some bucks lying on a pleasant sunny slope. Almost too idle to rise, they arch their backs, and stretch their legs, as much as to say, Why trouble us? The wind rushes through the trees, and draws from them strange sounds, now a groan, now almost a shriek, as the boughs grind against each other and wear the bark away. From a maple a twisted ivy basket hangs filled with twigs, leaves, and tree dust, big as three rooks' nests. Only recently a fine white-tailed eagle was soaring over the woods, he may have followed the line of the sea down from the Hebrides. Up from the sea comes the wind, drawing swifter between the beech trunks, resting a little in the sunny glades, On again into the woods. The glass-green river yonder coloured by the wind runs on seaward, there are thin masts of ships visible at its mouth miles away, the wind whistles in their shrouds; beyond the blue by the shore, far, far distant on the level cloud, the dim ship has sailed along the horizon. It dries the pale grass, and rustles the restless shrunken leaves on the ground; it dries the grey lichen on the beech trunks; it swings the fledglings in the rooks' nests, and carries the ringdove on a speedier wing. Blackbirds whistle all around, the woods are full of them; willow-wrens plaintively sing in the trees; other birds call--the dry wind mingles their notes. It is a hungry wind--it makes a wanderer as hungry as Robin Hood; it drives him back to the houses, and there by a doorstep lies a heap of buck's-horns thrown down like an armful of wood. SEA, SKY, AND DOWN In the cloudless January sky the sun at noonday appears high above the southern horizon, and there is a broad band of sky between it and the line of the sea. This sense of the sun's elevation is caused by the level plain of water, which affords no contrast. Inland the hills rise up, and even at midday the sun in winter does not seem much above their ridges. But here by the shore the sun hangs high, and does not look as if he descended so low in his winter curve. There is little wind, and the wavelets swing gently rather than roll, illumined both in their hollows and on their crests with a film of silver. Three or four miles away a vessel at anchor occasionally sways, and at each movement flashes a bright gleam from her wet side like a mirror. White gulls hawk to and fro by the strand, darting on floating fragments and rising again; their plumage is snowy white in the sunshine. Brown nets lie on the pebbles; brown nets are stretched from the mastheads of the smacks to the sea-wall; brown and deeply wrinkled sails are hoisted to dry in the sun and air. The broad red streaks on the smacks' sides stand out distinctly among the general pitchy hues of gunwales and great coils of rope. Men in dull yellow tan frocks are busy round about among them, some mending nets some stooping over a boat turned bottom upwards, upon which a patch is being placed. It needs at least three or four men to manage this patch properly. These tan frocks vary from a dull yellow to a copperish red colour. A golden vane high overhead points to the westward, and the dolphin, with open mouth, faces the light breeze. Under the groynes there is shadow as in summer; once and again the sea runs up and breaks on the beach, and the foam, white as the whitest milk, hisses as it subsides among the pebbles; it effervesces and bubbles at the brim of the cup of the sea. Farther along the chalk cliffs stand up clear and sharp, the green sea beneath, and the blue sky above them. There is a light and colour everywhere, the least fragment of colour is brought out, even the worn red tiles washed smooth by the tides and rolled over and over among the pebbles, the sea gleams, and there is everything of summer but the heat. Reflected in the plate-glass windows of the street the sea occupies the shop front, covering over the golden bracelets and jewellery with a moving picture of the silvery waves. The day is lengthened by the light, and dark winter driven away, till, the sun's curve approaching the horizon, misty vapours begin to thicken in the atmosphere where they had not been suspected. The tide is out, and for miles the foam runs in on the level sands, forming a long succession of graceful curves marked with a white edge. As the sun sinks, the wet sands are washed with a brownish yellow, the colour of ripe wheat if it could be supposed liquid. The sunset, which has begun with pale hues, flushes over a rich violet, soon again overlaid with orange, and succeeded in its turn by a deep red glow--a glow which looks the deeper the more it is gazed at, like a petal of peony. There are no fair faces in the street now, they are all brunettes, fair complexions and dark skins are alike tinted by the sunset; they are all swarthy. On the sea a dull redness reaches away and is lost in the vapour on the horizon; eastwards great vapours, tinged rosy, stand up high in the sky, and seem to drift inland, carrying the sunset with them; presently the atmosphere round the houses is filled with a threatening light, like a great fire reflected over the housetops. It fades, and there is nothing left but a dark cloud at the western horizon, tinted blood-red along its upper edge. Next morning the sun rises, a ball of orange amid streaks of scarlet. But sometimes the sunset takes other order than this, and after the orange there appears a rayed scarlet crown, such as one sees on old coins--rays of scarlet shoot upward from a common centre above where the sun went down. Sometimes, instead of these brilliant hues, there is the most delicate shading of pearly greys and nameless silver tints, such tints as might be imagined were the clouds like feathers, the art of which is to let the under hue shine through the upper layer of the plumage. Though not so gaudy or at first so striking, these pearl-greys, and silvers, and delicate interweaving of tints are really as wonderful, being graduated and laid on with a touch no camel's hair can approach. Sometimes, again, the sunset shows a burnished sky, like the surface of old copper burnt or oxidised--the copper tinted with rose, or with rose and violet. During the prevalence of the scarlet and orange hues, the moon, then young, shining at the edge of the sunset, appeared faintly green and people remarked how curious a green moon looked on a blue sky, for it was just where the sunset vapour melted into the upper sky. At the same moment the gas-lamps burned green--rows and rows of pale green lights. As the sunset faded both the moon and gas-lamps took their proper hue; hence it appeared as if the change of colour were due to contrast. The gas-lamps had looked greenish several evenings before the new moon shone, and in their case there can be no doubt the tint was contrast merely. One night, some hours after sunset, and long after the last trace of it had disappeared, the moon was sailing through light white clouds, which only partly concealed her, and was surrounded by the ordinary prismatic halo. But outside this halo there was a green circle, a broad green band, very distinct--a pale emerald green. Beautiful and interesting as these sunsets have been, I cannot subscribe to the opinion that they surpass all that have been observed; for I distinctly remember sunsets equally brilliant, and some even more so, which occurred not so very long ago. To those who are in the habit of observing out-of-door phenomena a beautiful sunset is by no means uncommon. Sometimes the sea disappears under the haze of the winter's day: it is fine, but hazy, and from the hills, looking southwards, the sea seems gone, till, the sun breaking out, two or three horizontal streaks reflected suddenly reveal its surface. Another time the reflection of the sun's rays takes the form of a gigantic and exaggerated hour-glass; by the shore the reflection widens out, narrows as it recedes to a mere path, and again at the horizon widens and fills a mile or more. Then at the horizon the lighted sea seems raised above the general level. Rain is approaching, and then by the beach the sea becomes yellowish, beyond that green, and a hard blue at the horizon; there is one lovely streak of green on the right; in front a broad spot of sunlight where the clouds have parted. The wind sings, and a schooner is working rapidly out to windward for more room. During changeable weather the sky between the clouds occasionally takes a pale yellow hue, like that of the tinted paper used for drawing. This colour is opaque, and evidently depends upon the presence of thin vapour. It is seen when the wind is in the act of changing its direction, and the clouds, arrested in their march, are thrown out of rank. That which was the side becomes the rear of the cloud, and is banked up by the sudden pressure. Clouds coming in from the sea are met with a land wind, and so diverted. The effect of mist on the sea in the dark winter days is to increase distances, so that a ship at four or five miles appears hull down, and her shadowy sails move in vapour almost as thick as the canvas. At evening there is no visible sunset, but presently the whole sky, dull and gloomy, is suffused with a redness, not more in one part than another, but over the entire heavens. So in the clouded mornings, a deep red hue fills the whole dome. But if the sun rises clear, the rays light up the yellow sand of the quarries inland, the dark brown ploughed fields, and the black copses where many a bud is sleeping and waiting for the spring. A haze lies about the Downs and softens their smooth outline as in summer, if you can but face the bleak wind which never rests up there. The outline starts on the left hand fairly distinguished against the sky. As it sweeps round, it sinks, and is lost in the bluish haze; gradually it rises again, and is visible on the right, where the woods stand leafless on the ridge. Or the vapour settles down thicker, and the vast expanse becomes gloomy in broad day. The formless hills loom round about, the roads and marks of civilisation seem blotted out, it may be some absolute desert for aught that appears. An immense hollow filled with mist lies underneath. Presently the wind drifts the earth-cloud along, and there by a dark copse are three or four horsemen eagerly seeking a way through the plantation. They are two miles distant, but as plainly visible as if you could touch them. By-and-by one finds a path, and in single file the troop rides into the wood. On the other side there is a long stretch of open ploughed field, and about the middle of it little white dots close together, sweeping along as if the wind drove them. Horsemen are galloping on the turf at the edge of the arable, which is doubtless heavy going. The troop that has worked through the wood labours hard to overtake; the vapour follows again, and horsemen and hounds are lost in the abyss. On a ridge closer at hand, and above the mist, stand two conical wheat ricks sharply defined--all that a draughtsman could seize on. Still, even in winter there is about the hills the charm of outline, and the uncertain haze produces some of the effects of summer, but it is impossible to stay and admire, the penetrating wind will permit of nothing except hard exercise. Looking back now and then, the distant hollows are sometimes visible and sometimes filled; great curtains of mist sweep along illumined by the sunlight above them; the woods are now brown, now dark, and now faintly blue, as the light changes. Over the range-and down in the valley where the hursts or woods are situated, surrounded by meads and cornfields, there are other notes of colour to be found. In the leafless branches of the oak sometimes the sunshine plays on the bark of the smaller boughs, and causes a sense of light and colour among them. The slender boughs of the birch, too, reflect the sunshine as if polished. Beech leaves still adhere to the lower branches, spots of bright brown among the grey and ash tint of the underwood. If a woodpecker passes, his green plumage gleams the more from the absence of the abundant foliage which partly conceals even him in summer. The light-coloured wood-pigeons show distinctly against the dark firs; the golden crest of the tiny wren is to be seen in the furze or bramble. All broader effects of colour must in winter be looked for in the atmosphere, as the light changes, as the mist passes, as the north wind brings down a blackness, or the gust dries up the furrow; as the colour of the air alters, for it is certain that the air is often full of colour. To the atmosphere we must look for all broader effects. Specks of detail may be sometimes discerned, one or two in a walk, as the white breasts of the lapwings on the dark ploughed ridges; yellow oat-straw by the farm, still retaining the golden tint of summer; if fortunate, a blue kingfisher by the brook, and always dew flashing emerald and ruby. JANUARY IN THE SUSSEX WOODS The lost leaves measure our years; they are gone as the days are gone, and the bare branches silently speak of a new year, slowly advancing to its buds, its foliage, and fruit. Deciduous trees associate with human life as this yew never can. Clothed in its yellowish-green needles, its tarnished green, it knows no hope or sorrow; it is indifferent to winter, and does not look forward to summer. With their annual loss of leaves, and renewal, oak and elm and ash and beech seem to stand by us and to share our thoughts. There is no wind at the edge of the wood, and the few flakes of snow that fall from the overcast sky flutter as they drop, now one side higher and then the other, as the leaves did in the still hours of autumn. The delicacy of the outer boughs of the great trees visible against the dark background of cloud is as beautiful in its own way as the massed foliage of summer. Each slender bough is drawn out to a line; line follows line as shade grows under the pencil, but each of these lines is separate. Great boles of beech, heavy timber at the foot, thus end at their summits in the lightest and most elegant pencilling. Where the birches are tall, sometimes the number and closeness of these bare sprays causes a thickening almost as if there were leaves there. The leaves, in fact, when they come, conceal the finish of the trees; they give colour, but they hide the beautiful structure under them. Each tree at a distance is recognisable by its particular lines; the ash, for instance, grows with its own marked curve. Some flakes of snow have remained on this bough of spruce, pure white on dull green. Sparingly dispersed, the snow can be seen falling far ahead between the trunks; indeed, the white dots appear to increase the distance the eye can penetrate; it sees farther because there is something to catch the glance. Nothing seems left for food in the woods for bird or animal. Some ivy berries and black privet berries remain, a few haws may be found; for the rest, it is gone; the squirrels have had the nuts, the acorns were taken by the jays, rooks, and pheasants. Bushels of acorns, too, were collected by hand as food for the fallow deer in the park. A great fieldfare rises, like a lesser pigeon; fieldfares often haunt the verge of woods, while the redwing thrushes go out into the meadows. It can scarcely be doubted that both these birds come over to escape the keener cold of the winters in Norway, or that the same cause drives the blackbirds hither. In spring we listen to Norwegian songs--the blackbird and the thrush that please us so much, if not themselves of Scandinavian birth, have had a Scandinavian origin. Any one walking about woods like these in January can understand how, where there are large flocks of birds, they must find the pressure of numbers through the insufficiency of food. They go then to seek a warmer climate and more to eat; more particularly probably for sustenance. The original and simple theory that the majority of birds migrate for food or warmth is not overthrown by modern observations. That appears to be the primary impulse, though others may be traced or reasonably imagined. To suppose, as has been put forward, that birds are endowed with a migratory instinct for the express purpose of keeping down their numbers, in order, that is, that they may perish in crossing the sea, is really too absurd for serious consideration. If that were the end in view, it would be most easily obtained by keeping them at home, where snow would speedily starve them. On the contrary, it will appear to any one who walks about woods and fields that migration is essential to the preservation of these creatures. By migration, in fact, the species is kept in existence, and room is found for life. Apart from the necessity of food, movement and change is one of the most powerful agencies in renewing health. This we see in our own experience; the condition of the air is especially important, and it is well within reasonable supposition that some birds and animals may wish to avoid certain states of atmosphere. There is, too, the question of moulting and change of plumage, and the possibility that this physiological event may influence the removal to a different climate. Birds migrate principally for food and warmth; secondly, on account of the pressure of numbers (for in good seasons they increase very fast); thirdly, for the sake of health; fourthly, for sexual reasons; fifthly, from the operation of a kind of prehistoric memory; sixthly, from choice. One or other of these causes will explain almost every case of migration. Birds are lively and intellectual, imaginative and affectionate creatures, and all their movements are not dictated by mere necessity. They love the hedge and bush where they were born, they return to the same tree, or the same spot under the eave. On the other hand, they like to roam about the fields and woods, and some of them travel long distances during the day. When the pleasurable cares of the nest are concluded, it is possible that they may in some cases cross the sea solely for the solace of change. Variety of food is itself a great pleasure. By prehistoric memory is meant the unconscious influence of ancient habit impressed upon the race in times when the conformation of land and sea and the conditions of life were different. No space is left for a mysterious agency; migration is purely natural, and acts for the general preservation. Try to put yourself in a bird's place, and you will see that migration is very natural indeed. If at some future period of the world's history men should acquire the art of flying, there can be no doubt that migration would become the custom, and whole nations would change their localities. Man has, indeed, been always a migratory animal. History is little beyond the record of migrations, how one race moved on and overcame the race in front of it. In ancient days lots were cast as to who should migrate, and those chosen by this conscription left their homes that the rest remaining might have room and food. Checking the attempted migration of the Helvetii was the beginning of Caesar's exploits. What men do only at intervals birds do frequently, having greater freedom of movement. Who can doubt that the wild fowl come south because the north is frozen over? The Laplander and the reindeer migrate together; the Tartars migrate all the year through, crossing the steppes in winding and devious but fixed paths, paths settled for each family, and kept without a map, though invisible to strangers. It is only necessary to watch the common sparrow. In spring his merry chirp and his few notes of song are heard on the roof or in the garden; here he spends his time till the broods are reared and the corn is ripe. Immediately he migrates into the fields. By degrees he is joined by those left behind to rear second broods, and at last the stubble is crowded with sparrows, such flocks no one would believe possible unless they had seen them. He has migrated for food, for his food changes with the season, being mainly insects in spring, and grain and seeds in autumn. Something may, I venture to think, in some cases of migration, be fairly attributed to the influence of a desire for change, a desire springing from physiological promptings for the preservation of health. I am personally subject twice a year to the migratory impulse. I feel it in spring and autumn, say about March, when the leaves begin to appear, and again as the corn is carried, and most strongly as the fields are left in stubble. I have felt it every year since boyhood, often so powerfully as to be quite unable to resist it. Go I must, and go I do, somewhere; if I do not I am soon unwell. The general idea of direction is southerly, both spring and autumn; no doubt the reason is because this is a northern country. Some little green stays on the mounds where the rabbits creep and nibble the grasses. Cinquefoil remains green though faded, and wild parsley the freshest looking of all; plantain leaves are found under shelter of brambles, and the dumb nettles, though the old stalks are dead, have living leaves at the ground. Grey-veined ivy trails along, here and there is a frond of hart's-tongue fern, though withered at the tip, and greenish grey lichen grows on the exposed stumps of trees. These together give a green tint to the mound, which is not so utterly devoid of colour as the season of the year might indicate. Where they fail, brown brake fern fills the spaces between the brambles; and in a moist spot the bunches of rushes are composed half of dry stalks, and half of green. Stems of willow-herb, four feet high, still stand, and tiny long-tailed tits perch sideways on them. Above, on the bank, another species of willow-herb has died down to a short stalk, from which springs a living branch, and at its end is one pink flower. A dandelion is opening on the same sheltered bank; farther on the gorse is sprinkled with golden spots of bloom. A flock of greenfinches starts from the bushes, and their colour shows against the ruddy wands of the osier-bed over which they fly. The path winds round the edge of the wood, where a waggon track goes up the hill; it is deeply grooved at the foot of the hill. These tracks wear deeply into the chalk just where the ascent begins. The chalk adheres to the shoes like mortar, and for some time after one has left it each footstep leaves a white mark on the turf. On the ridge the low trees and bushes have an outline like the flame of a candle in a draught--the wind has blown them till they have grown fixed in that shape. In an oak across the ploughed field a flock of wood-pigeons have settled; on the furrows there are chaffinches, and larks rise and float a few yards farther away. The snow has ceased, and though there is no wind on the surface, the clouds high above have opened somewhat, not sufficient for the sun to shine, but to prolong the already closing afternoon a few minutes. If the sun shines to-morrow morning the lark will soar and sing, though it is January, and the quick note of the chaffinch will be heard as he perches on the little branches projecting from the trunks of trees below the great boughs. Thrushes sing every mild day in December and January, entirely irrespective of the season, also before rain. A curious instance of a starling having a young brood at this time of the year, recently recorded, seems to suggest that birds are not really deceived by the passing mildness of a few days, but are obliged to prepare nests, finding themselves in a condition to require them. The cause, in short, is physiological, and not the folly of the bird. This starling had had two previous broods, one in October, and now again in December-January. The starling was not, therefore, deceived by the chance of mild weather; her own bodily condition led her to the nest, and had she been a robin or thrush she would have built one instead of resorting to a cranny. It is certain that individuals among birds and animals do occasionally breed at later periods than is usual for the generality of their species. Exceptionally prolific individuals among birds continue to breed into the winter. They are not egregiously deceived any more than we are by a mild interval; the nesting is caused by their individual temperament. The daylight has lingered on longer than expected, but now the gloom of the short January evening is settling down fast in the wood. The silent and motionless trees rise out of a mysterious shadow, which fills up the spaces between their trunks. Only above, where their delicate outer branches are shown against the dark sky, is there any separation between them. Somewhere in the deep shadow of the underwood a blackbird calls "ching, ching" before he finally settles himself to roost. In the yew the lesser birds are already quiet, sheltered by the evergreen spray; they have also sought the ivy-grown trunks. "Twit, twit," sounds high overhead as one or two belated little creatures, scarcely visible, pass quickly for the cover of the furze on the hill. The short January evening is of but a few minutes' duration; just now it was only dusky, and already the interior of the wood is impenetrable to the glance. There rises a loud though distant clamour of rooks and daws, who have restlessly moved in their roost-trees. Darkness is almost on them, yet they cannot quite settle. The cawing and dawing rises to a pitch, and then declines; the wood is silent, and it is suddenly night. BY THE EXE The whortleberry bushes are almost as thick as the heather in places on the steep, rocky hills that overlook the Exe. Feeding on these berries when half ripe is said to make the heath poults thin (they are acid), so that a good crop of whortleberries is not advantageous to the black game. Deep in the hollow the Exe winds and bends, finding a crooked way among the ruddy rocks. Sometimes an almost inaccessible precipice rises on one shore, covered with firs and ferns, which no one can gather; while on the other is a narrow but verdant strip of mead. Coming down in flood from the moors the Exe will not wait to run round its curves, but rushes across the intervening corner, and leaves behind, as it subsides, a mass of stones, flat as slates or scales, destroying the grass. But the fly-fisherman seeks the spot because the water is swift at the angle of the stream and broken by a ledge of rock. He can throw up stream--the line falls soft as silk on the slow eddy below the rock, and the fly is drawn gently towards him across the current. When a natural fly approaches the surface of running water, and flutters along just above it, it encounters a light air, which flows in the same direction as the stream. Facing this surface breeze, the fly cannot progress straight up the river, but is carried sideways across it. This motion the artificial fly imitates; a trout takes it, and is landed on the stones. He is not half a pound, yet in the sunshine has all the beauty of a larger fish. Spots of cochineal and gold dust, finely mixed together, dot his sides; they are not red nor yellow exactly, as if gold dust were mixed with some bright red. A line is drawn along his glistening greenish side, and across this there are faintly marked lozenges of darker colour, so that in swimming past he would appear barred. There are dark spots on the head between the eyes, the tail at its lower and upper edges is pinkish; his gills are bright scarlet. Proportioned and exquisitely shaped, he looks like a living arrow, formed to shoot through the water. The delicate little creature is finished in every detail, painted to the utmost minutiae, and carries a wonderful store of force, enabling him to easily surmount the rapids. Exe and Earle are twin streams, parted only by a ridge of heather-grown moor. The Earle rises near a place called Simons' Bath, about which there is a legend recalling the fate of Captain Webb. There is a pool at Simons' Bath, in which is a small whirlpool. The stream running in does not seem of much strength; but the eddy is sufficient to carry a dog down. By report the eddy is said to be unfathomable. A long time since a man named Simons thought he could swim through the whirlpool, much as Captain Webb thought he could float down the rapids of Niagara; only in this case Simons relied on the insignificant character of the eddy. He made the attempt, was sucked down and drowned, and hence the spot has been since known as Simons' Bath. So runs the tradition in the neighbourhood, varied in details by different narrators, but not so apocryphal, perhaps, as the story of the two giants, or demons, who amused themselves one day throwing stones, to see which could throw farthest. Their stones were huge boulders; the first pitched his pebble across the Bristol Channel into Wales; the second's foot slipped, and his boulder dropped on Exmoor, where it is known as White Stones to this day. The antiquarians refer Simons' Bath to one Sigmund, but the country-side tradition declares it was named from a man who was drowned. Exe and Earle presently mingle their streams by pleasant oak woods. At the edge of one of these woods the trench, in the early summer, was filled with ferns, so that, instead of thorns and brambles, the wood was fenced with their green fronds. Among these ferns were some buttercups, at least so they looked in passing; but a slight difference of appearance induced me to stop, and on getting across the trench the buttercups were found to be yellow Welsh poppies. The petals are larger than those of the buttercup, and a paler yellow, without the metallic burnish of the ranunculus. In the centre is the seed vessel, somewhat like an urn; indeed, the yellow poppy resembles the scarlet field poppy, though smaller in width of petal and much more local in habitat. So concealed were the stalks by the ferns that the flowers appeared to grow on their fronds. On the mounds grew corn marigolds, so brilliantly yellow that they seemed to shine in the sunlight, and on a wall moth-mullein flowered high above the foxgloves. It was curious to hear the labouring people say, "There's the guckoo," when the cuckoo cried. They said he called "guckoo"; so cuckoo sounded to their ears. There are numbers of birds of prey in the oak woods which everywhere grow on the slopes of the Exmoor hills. The keeper who wishes to destroy a whole brood of jays (which take the eggs of game) waits till the young birds are fledged. He then catches one, or wounds it, and, hiding himself in the bushes, pinches it till the bird cries "scaac, scaac." At the sound the old birds come, and are shot as they approach. The fledglings could, of course, be easily destroyed; the object is to get at the wary old jays, and prevent their returning next year. Now and then a buzzard is shot, and if it be only wounded the gunner conceals himself and pinches it till it calls, when the bird's partner presently appears, and is also killed. Stoats are plentiful. They have their young in burrows, or in holes and crevices among the stones, which are found in quantities in the woods. As any one passes such a heap of stones the young stoats peep from the crevices and cry "yac, yac," like barking, and so betray their presence. Three or four traps are set in a circle round the spot, baited with pieces of rabbit, in which the old stoats are soon caught. The young stoats in a day or two, not being fed, come out of the stones, and are shot, or knocked on the head. The woods are always on the sheltered slopes of the hills, the moors on the summits are bare of trees; yet it would seem that trees once grew there, trunks of oak being occasionally dug up from the peat. Both the peaty turf and the heather are used for fuel; the heather is pulled up, the turf cut with a particular kind of spade, heart-shaped and pointed, not unlike the traditional spade used by the gravedigger in "Hamlet," but with a very long curved handle. Vipers are sometimes encountered among the heather where it is sandy. A viper will sometimes wind itself round the stem of a thorn bush, and thus, turning its head in every direction, defy a dog. Whichever side the dog approaches, the viper turns its venomous head. Dogs frequently kill them, and are sometimes bitten, generally in the face, when the dog's head swells in a few minutes to twice its natural size. Salad oil is the remedy relied on, and seldom known to fail. The effect of anger on the common snake is marked. The skin, if the creature is annoyed, becomes bristly and colder; sometimes there is a strong snake-like smell emitted. It is singular that the goat-sucker, or fern owl, often stuffed when shot and preserved in glass cases, does not keep; the bird looks draggled and falling to pieces. So many of them are like this. Some of the labouring people who work by the numerous streamlets say that the wagtail dives, goes right under water like a diver now and then--a circumstance I have not noticed myself. There is a custom of serving up water-cress with roast fowl; it is also sometimes boiled like a garden vegetable. Sometimes a man will take cider with his tea--a cup of tea one side and a mug of cider on the other. The German bands, who wander even into these extreme parts of the country, always ask for cider, which they say reminds them of their own wines at home--like hock, or Rhenish. Though the junction of Earle and Exe is a long way from the sea (as the Exe winds), salmon come far up above that to the moors. Salmon-fishing is preserved, but poachers take them at night with gaffs. There are water-bailiffs, who keep a good look-out, or think they do, but occasionally find heads of salmon nailed to their doors in derision. The missel-thrush is called the "holm-screech." The missel-thrushes, I know, have a difficulty to defend their young against crows; but last spring I found a jackdaw endeavouring to get at a missel-thrush's nest. The old birds were screeching loudly, and trying to drive the jackdaw away. The chaffinch appears to be called "woodfinch," at least the chaffinch answered nearest to the bird described to me as a "woodfinch." In another county it is called the piefinch. One summer evening I was under a wood by the Exe. The sun had set, and from over the wooded hill above bars of golden and rosy cloud stretched out across the sky. The rooks came slowly home to roost, disappearing over the wood, and at the same time the herons approached in exactly the opposite direction, flying from Devon into Somerset, and starting out to feed as the rooks returned home. The first heron sailed on steadily at a great height, uttering a loud "caak, caak" at intervals. In a few minutes a second followed, and "caak, caak" sounded again over the river valley. The third was flying at a less height, and as he came into sight over the line of the wood he suddenly wheeled round, and, holding his immense wings extended, dived as a rook will downwards through the air. He twisted from side to side like a coin partly spun round by the finger and thumb, as he came down, rushing through the air head first. The sound of his great vanes pressing and dividing the air was plainly audible. He looked unable to manage his descent; but at the right moment he recovered his balance, and rose a little up into a tree on the summit, drawing his long legs into the branches behind him. The fourth heron fetched a wide circle, and so descended into the wood; two more passed on over the valley--altogether six herons in about a quarter of an hour. They intended, no doubt, to wait in the trees till it was dusky, and then to go down and fish in the river. Herons are called cranes, and heronies are craneries. A determined sportsman, who used to eat every heron he could shoot in revenge for their ravages among the trout, at last became suspicious, and examining one, found in it the remains of a rat and of a toad, after which he did not eat any more. Another sportsman found a heron in the very act of gulping down a good-sized trout, which stuck in the gullet. He shot the heron and got the trout, which was not at all injured, only marked on each side where the beak had cut it. The fish was cooked and eaten. This summer evening the bars of golden and rosy cloud gradually lost their bright colour, but retained some purple in the vapour for a long time. If the red sunset clouds turn black, the country people say it will rain; if any other colour, it will be fine. The path from the river led beside the now dusky moor, and the curlew's weird whistle came out of the increasing darkness. Wild as the curlew is in early summer (when there are young birds), he will fly up within a short distance of the wayfarer, whistling, and alight on the burnt, barren surface of the moor. There he stalks to and fro, grey and upright. He looks a large bird so close. His head nods at each step, and every now and then his long bill, curved like a sabre, takes something from the ground. But he is not feeding, he is watching you. He utters his strange, crying whistle from time to time, which draws your attention from the young birds. By these rivers of the west otters are still numerous, and are regularly hunted. Besides haunting the rivers, they ascend the brooks, and even the smallest streamlets, and are often killed a long way from the larger waters. There are three things to be chiefly noticed in the otter--first, the great width of the upper nostril; secondly, the length and sharpness of the hold-fast teeth; and, thirdly, the sturdiness and roundness of the chest or barrel, expressive of singular strength. The upper nostril is so broad that when the mouth is open the lower jaw appears but a third of its width--a mere narrow streak of jaw, dotted, however, with the sharpest teeth. This distension of the upper jaw and narrowness of the lower gives the impression of relentless ferocity. His teeth are somewhat cat-like, and so is his manner of biting. He forces his teeth to meet through whatever he takes hold of, but then immediately repeats the bite somewhere else, not holding what he has, but snapping again and again like a cat, so that his bite is considered even worse than that of the badger. Now and then, in the excitement of the hunt, a man will put his hand into the hole occupied by the otter to draw him out. If the huntsman sees this there is some hard language used, for if the otter chance to catch the hand, he might so crush and mangle it that it would be useless for life. Nothing annoys the huntsman more than anything of this kind. The otter's short legs are deceptive; it does not look as if a creature so low down could be very serious to encounter or difficult to kill. His short legs are, in fact, an addition to his strength, which is perhaps greater than that of any other animal of proportionate size. He weighs nearly as heavy as a fox, and is even as hard to kill fairly. Unless speared, or knocked heavily on the head, the otter-hounds can rarely kill him in the water; when driven to land at last or to a shallow he is often rather crushed and pressed to death than anything else, and the skin sometimes has not got a single toothmark in it. Not a single hound has succeeded in biting through, but there is a different story to tell on the other side. A terrier has his jaw loose and it has to be bound up, such a crushing bite has he had. There are torn shoulders, necks, and limbs, and specks of blood on the nostrils and coats of the other hounds. A full-grown otter fights like a lion in the water; if he gets in a hole under the bank where it is hollow, called a "hover," he has to be thrust out with a pole. He dives under the path of his enemies as they yelp in the water, and as he goes attacks one from beneath, seizes him by the leg, and drags him down, and almost drowns him before he will let go. The air he is compelled to emit from his lungs as he travels across to another retreat shows his course on the surface, and by the bubbles he is tracked as he goes deep below. He tries up the stream, and finds at the place where a ledge of rocks crosses it eight or ten men armed with long staves standing waiting for him. If there was but one deep place at the side of the ledge of rocks he could beat them still and slip by, but the water is low for want of rain, and he is unable to do so. He turns and tries at the sides of the river lower down. Behind matted roots, and under the bank, with a rocky fragment at one side, he faces his pursuers. The hounds are snapped at as they approach in front. He cannot be struck with a staff from above because the bank covers him. Some one must wade across and strike him with a pole till he moves, or carry a terrier or two and pitch them in the hole, half above and half under water. Next he tries the other bank, then baffles all by doubling, till some one spies his nostril as he comes up to breathe. The rocky hill at hand resounds with the cries of the hounds, the sharp bark of the terriers, the orders of the huntsman, and the shouts of the others. There are ladies in the mead by the river's edge watching the hunt. Met in every direction, the otter swims down stream; there are no rocks there, he knows, but as he comes he finds a net stretched across. He cannot go down the river for the net, nor up it for the guarded ledge of rocks; he is enclosed in a pool without a chance of escape from it, and all he can do is to prolong the unequal contest to the last moment. Now he visits his former holes or "hovers," to be again found out; now he rests behind rocky fragments, now dives and doubles or eludes all for a minute by some turn. So long as his wind endures or he is not wounded he can stop in the water, and so long as he is in the water he can live. But by degrees he is encircled; some wade in and cut off his course; hounds stop him one way and men the other, till, finally forced to land or to the shallow, he is slain. His webbed feet are cut off and given as trophies to the ladies who are present. The skin varies in colour--sometimes a deep brown, sometimes fawn. The otter is far wilder than the fox; for the fox a home is found and covers are kept for him, even though he makes free with the pheasants; but the otter has no home except the river and the rocky fastnesses beside it. No creature could be more absolutely wild, depending solely upon his own exertions for existence. Of olden time he was believed to be able to scent the fish in the water at a considerable distance, as a hound scents a fox, and to go straight to them. If he gets among a number he will kill many more than he needs. For this reason he has been driven by degrees from most of the rivers in the south where he used to be found, but still exists in Somerset and Devon. Not even in otter-hunting does he get the same fair play as the fox. No one strikes a fox or puts a net across his course. That, however, is necessary, but it is time that a strong protest was made against the extermination of the otter in rivers like the Thames, where he is treated as a venomous cobra might be on land; The truth is the otter is a most interesting animal and worth preservation, even at the cost of what he eats. There is a great difference between keeping the number of otters down by otter-hunting within reasonable limits and utterly exterminating them. Hunting the otter in Somerset is one thing, exterminating them in the Thames another, and I cannot but feel a sense of deep regret when I hear of fresh efforts towards this end. In the home counties, and, indeed, in many other counties, the list of wild creatures is already short enough, and is gradually decreasing, and the loss of the otter would be serious. This animal is one of the few perfectly wild creatures that have survived without any protection from the ancient forest days. Despite civilisation, it still ventures, occasionally, within a few miles of London, and well inside that circle in which London takes its pleasure. It would be imagined that its occurrence so near the metropolis would be recorded with pride; instead of which, no sooner is the existence of an otter suspected than gun and trap are eagerly employed for its destruction. I cannot but think that the people of London at large, if aware of these facts, would disapprove of the attempt to exterminate one of the most remarkable members of their fauna. They should look upon the inhabitants of the river as peculiarly their own. Some day, perhaps, they will take possession of the fauna and flora within a certain compass of their city. Every creature that could be kept alive within such a circle would be a gain, especially to the Thames, that well-head of the greatest city in the world. I marvel that they permit the least of birds to be shot upon its banks. Nothing at present is safe, not so much as a reed-sparrow, not even the martins that hover over the stormy reaches. Where is the kingfisher? Where are the water-fowl? Where soon will be the water-lilies? But if London extended its strong arm, how soon would every bush be full of bird-life, and the osier-beds and eyots the haunt of wild creatures! At this moment, it appears, so bitter is the enmity to the otter, that a reward is set on his head, and as much as two guineas is sometimes paid for the destruction of a full-grown one. Perhaps the following list of slaughter may call attention to the matter:--Three killed by Harlingham Weir in three years. On the 22nd of January, at East Molesey, opposite the Gallery at Hampton Court, in a field, a fine otter was shot, weighing twenty-six pounds, and measuring fifty-two inches. On the 26th of January 1884, a small otter was killed at Thames Ditton. Both these were close to London from a sporting or natural history point of view. In February or March 1884, an otter was killed at Cliefden Springs, Maidenhead; it measured fifty-one inches. Here, then, are six in a short period, and it is not a complete list; I have a distinct memory of one caught in a trap by Molesey Weir within the last two or three years, and then beaten to death with a spade. THE WATER-COLLEY The sweet grass was wet with dew as I walked through a meadow in Somerset to the river. The cuckoo sang, the pleasanter perhaps because his brief time was nearly over, and all pleasant things seem to have a deeper note as they draw towards an end. Dew and sweet green grass were the more beautiful because of the knowledge that the high hills around were covered by sun-dried, wiry heather. River-side mead, dew-laden grass, and sparkling stream were like an oasis in the dry desert. They refreshed the heart to look upon as water refreshes the weary. The shadows were more marked and defined than they are as day advances, the hues of the flowers brighter, for the dew was to shadow and flower as if the colours of the artist were not yet dry. Humblebees went down with caution into the long grass, not liking to wet their wings. Butterflies and the brilliant moths of a hot summer's morn alight on a dry heated footpath till the dew is gone. A great rock rising from the grass by the river's edge alone looked arid, and its surface already heated, yet it also cast a cool shadow. By a copse, two rabbits--the latest up of all those which had sported during the night--stayed till I came near, and then quietly moved in among the ferns and foxgloves. In the narrowest part of the wood between the hedge and the river a corncrake called his loudest "crake, crake," incessantly. The cornncrake or landrail is difficult even to see, so closely does he conceal himself in the tall grasses, and his call echoed and re-echoed deceives those who try to find him. Yet by great patience and watchful skilfulness the corncrake is sometimes caught by hand. If tracked, and if you can see him--the most difficult part--you can put your hand on him. Now and then a corncrake is caught in the same way by hand while sitting on her nest on the ground. It is not, however, as easy as it reads. Walking through the grass, and thinking of the dew and the beautiful morning sunshine, I scarcely noticed the quantity of cuckoo-flowers, or cardamine, till presently it occurred to me that it was very late in the season for cuckoo-flowers and stooping I picked one, and in the act saw it was an orchis--the early purple. The meadow was coloured, or rather tinted, with the abundance of the orchis, palest of pale pink, dotted with red, the small narrow leaves sometimes with black spots. They grew in the pasture everywhere, from the river's side in the deep valley to the top of the hill by the wood. As soon as the surface of the river was in sight I stood and watched, but no ripple or ring of wavelets appeared; the trout were not feeding. The water was so low that the river consisted of a series of pools, connected by rapids descending over ledges of stones and rocky fragments. Illumined to the very bottom, every trout was visible, even those under the roots of trees and the hollow of the bank. A cast with the fly there was useless; the line would be seen; there was no ripple to hide it. As the trout, too, were in the pools, it might be concluded that those worth taking had fed, and only the lesser fish would be found in the eddies, where they are permitted by the larger fish to feed after they have finished. Experience and reason were all against the attempt, yet so delightful is the mere motion and delicate touch of the fly-line on the water that I could not but let myself enjoy that at least. The slender lancewood rod swayed, the line swished through the air, and the fly dropped a few inches too high up the rapid among the stones--I had meant it to fall farther across in the dark backwater at the foot of the fall. The swift rush of the current carried the fly instantly downwards, but not so quick as to escape a troutlet; he took it, and was landed immediately. But to destroy these under-sized fish was not sport, and as at that moment a water-colley passed I determined to let the trout alone, and observe his ways. Colley means a blackbird; water-colley, the water-blackbird or water-ousel--called the dipper in the North. In districts where the bird is seldom seen it is occasionally shot and preserved as a white blackbird. But in flight and general appearance the water-colley is almost exactly like a starling with a white neck. His colour is not black or brown--it is a rusty, undecided brown, at a distance something the colour of a young starling, and he flies in a straight line, and yet clumsily, as a young starling does. His very cry, too, sounds immature, pettish, and unfinished, as if from a throat not capable of a full note. There are usually two together, and they pass and re-pass all day as you fish, but if followed are not to be observed without care. I came on the colley too suddenly the first time, at a bend of the river; he was beneath the bank towards me, and flew out from under my feet, so that I did not see him till he was on the wing. Away he flew with a call like a young bird just tumbled out of its nest, following the curves of the stream. Presently I saw him through an alder bush which hid me; he was perched on a root of alder under the opposite bank. Worn away by the stream the dissolved earth had left the roots exposed, the colley was on one of them; in a moment he stepped on to the shore under the hollow, and was hidden behind the roots under a moss-grown stole. When he came out he saw me, and stopped feeding. He bobbed himself up and down as he perched on the root in the oddest manner, bending his legs so that his body almost touched his perch, and rising again quickly, this repeated in quick succession as if curtsying. This motion with him is a sign of uncertainty--it shows suspicion; after he had bobbed to me ten times, off he went. I found him next on a stone in the middle of the river; it stood up above the surface of a rapid connecting two pools. Like the trout, the colley always feeds at the rapids, and flies as they swim, from fall to fall. He was bobbing up and down, his legs bent, and his rusty brown body went up and down, but as I was hidden by a hedge he pained confidence, suspended his curtsying, and began to feed. First he looked all round the stone, and then stepped to another similar island in the midst of the rushing water, pushing his head over the edge into it. Next he stepped into the current, which, though shallow, looked strong enough to sweep him away. The water checked against him rose to the white mark on his breast. He waded up the rapid, every now and then thrusting his head completely under the water; sometimes he was up to his neck, sometimes not so deep; now and then getting on a stone, searching right and left as he climbed the cascade. The eddying water shot by his slender legs, but he moved against it easily, and soon ascended the waterfall. At the summit a second colley flew past, and he rose and accompanied his friend. Upon a ledge of rock I saw him once more, but there was no hedge to hide me, and he would not feed; he stood and curtsied, and at the moment of bobbing let his wings too partly down, his tail drooping at the same time. Calling in an injured tone, as if much annoyed, he flew, swept round the meadow, and so to the river behind me. His friend followed. On reaching the river at a safe distance down, he skimmed along the surface like a kingfisher. They find abundance of insect life among the stones at the falls, and everywhere in shallow water. Some accuse them of taking the ova of trout, and they are shot at trout nurseries; but it is doubtful if they are really guilty, nor can they do any appreciable injury in an open stream, not being in sufficient numbers. It is the birds and other creatures peculiar to the water that render fly-fishing so pleasant; were they all destroyed, and nothing left but the mere fish, one might as well stand and fish in a stone cattle-trough. I hope all true lovers of sport will assist in preserving rather than in killing them. NOTES ON LANDSCAPE PAINTING I The earth has a way of absorbing things that are placed upon it, of drawing from them their stiff individuality of newness, and throwing over them something of her own antiquity. As the furrow smooths and brightens the share, as the mist eats away the sharpness of the iron angles, so, in a larger manner, the machines sent forth to conquer the soil are conquered by it, become a part of it, and as natural as the old, old scythe and reaping-hook. Thus already the new agriculture has grown hoar. The oldest of the modern implements is the threshing-machine, which is historic, for it was once the cause of rural war. There are yeomanry men still living who remember how they rode about at night after the rioters, guided by the blazing bonfires kindled to burn the new-fangled things. Much blood--of John Barleycorn--was spilt in that campaign; and there is many a farmer yet hearty who recollects the ale-barrels being rolled up into the rickyards and there broached in cans and buckets, that the rebels, propitiated with plentiful liquor, might forbear to set fire to the ricks or sack the homestead. Such memories read strange to the present generation, proving thereby that the threshing-machine has already grown old. It is so accepted that the fields would seem to lack something if it were absent. It is as natural as the ricks: things grow old so soon in the fields. On the fitful autumn breeze, with brown leaves whirling and grey grass rustling in the hedges, the hum of the fly-wheel sounds afar, travelling through the mist which hides the hills. Sometimes the ricks are in the open stubble, up the Down side, where the wind comes in a long, strong rush, like a tide, carrying away the smoke from the funnel in a sweeping trail; while the brown canvas, stretched as a screen, flaps and tears, and the folk at work can scarce hear each other speak, any more than you can by the side of the sea. Vast atmospheric curtains--what else can you call them?--roll away, opening a view of the stage of hills a moment, and, closing again, reach from heaven to earth around. The dark sky thickens and lowers as if it were gathering thunder, as women glean wheatears in their laps. It is not thunder; it is as if the wind grew solid and hurled itself--as a man might throw out his clenched fist--at the hill. The inclined plane of the mist-clouds again reflects a grey light, and, as if swept up by the fierce gale, a beam of sunshine comes. You see it first long, as it is at an angle; then overhead it shortens, and again lengthens after it has passed, somewhat like the spoke of a wheel. In the second of its presence a red handkerchief a woman wears on the ricks stands out, the brass on the engine glows, the water in the butt gleams, men's faces brighten, the cart-horse's coat looks glossy, the straw a pleasant yellow. It is gone, and lights up the backs of the sheep yonder as it runs up the hill swifter than a hare. Swish! The north wind darkens the sky, and the fly-wheel moans in the gloom; the wood-pigeons go a mile a minute on the wind, hardly using their wings; the brown woods below huddle together, rounding their shoulders to the blast; a great air-shadow, not mist, a shadow of thickness in the air looms behind a tiled roof in the valley. The vast profound is full of the rushing air. These are days of autumn; but earlier than this, when the wheat that is now being threshed was ripe, the reaping-machine went round and round the field, beginning at the outside by the hedges. Red arms, not unlike a travelling windmill on a small scale, sweep the corn as it is cut and leave it spread on the ground. The bright red fans, the white jacket of the man driving, the brown and iron-grey horses, and yellow wheat are toned--melted together at their edges--with warm sunlight. The machine is lost in the corn, and nothing is visible but the colours, and the fact that it is the reaping, the time of harvest, dear to man these how many thousand years! There is nothing new in it; it is all old as the hills. The straw covers over the knives, the rims of the wheels sink into pimpernel, convolvulus, veronica; the dry earth powders them, and so all beneath is concealed. Above the sunlight (and once now and then the shadow of a tree) throws its mantle over, and, like the hand of an enchanter softly waving, surrounds it with a charm. So the cranks, and wheels, and knives, and mechanism do not exist--it was a machine in the workshop, but it is not a machine in the wheat-field. For the wheat-field you see is very, very old, and the air is of old time, and the shadow, the flowers, and the sunlight, and that which moves among them becomes of them. The solitary reaper alone in the great field goes round and round, the red fans striking beside him, alone with the sunlight, and the blue sky, and the distant hills; and he and his reaper are as much of the corn-field as the long-forgotten sickle or the reaping-hook. The sharp rattle of the mowing-machine disturbs the corncrake in the meadow. Crake! crake! for many a long day since the grass began to grow fast in April till the cowslips flowered, and white parsley flourished like a thicket, blue scabious came up, and yonder the apple trees drop their bloom. Crake! crake! nearly day and night; but now the rattle begins, and the bird must take refuge in the corn. Like the reaper, the mowing-machine is buried under the swathe it cuts, and flowers fall over it--broad ox-eye daisies and red sorrel. Upon the hedge June roses bloom; blackbirds whistle in the oaks; now and again come the soft hollow notes of the cuckoo. Angles and wheels, cranks and cogs, where are they? They are lost; it is not these we see, but the flowers and the pollen on the grass. There is an odour of new-made hay; there is the song of birds, and the trees are beautiful. As for the drill in spring-time, it is ancient indeed, and ancients follow it--aged men stepping after over the clods, and watching it as if it were a living thing, that the grains may fall each in its appointed place. Their faces, their gait, nay, the very planting of their heavy shoes' stamp on the earth, are full of the importance of this matter. On this the year depends, and the harvest, and all our lives, that the sowing be accomplished in good order, as is meet. Therefore they are in earnest, and do not turn aside to gaze at strangers, like those do who hoe, being of no account. This is a serious matter, needing men of days, little of speech, but long of experience. So the heavy drill, with its hanging rows of funnels, travels across the field well tended, and there is not one who notes the deep azure of the March sky above the elms. Still another step, tracing the seasons backwards, brings in the steam-plough. When the spotted arum leaves unfold on the bank, before the violets or the first celandine, while the "pussies" hang on the hazel, the engines roll into the field, pressing the earth into barred ruts. The massive wheels leave their imprint, the footsteps of steam, behind them. By the hedges they stand, one on either side, and they hold the field between them with their rope of iron. Like the claws of some prehistoric monster, the shares rout up the ground; the solid ground is helpless before them; they tear and rend it. One engine is under an oak, dark yet with leafless boughs, up through which the black smoke rises; the other overtops a low hedge, and is in full profile. By the panting, and the humming, and the clanking as the drum revolves, by the smoke hanging in the still air, by the trembling of the monster as it strains and tugs, by the sense of heat, and effort, and pent-up energy bubbling over in jets of steam that struggle through crevices somewhere, by the straightened rope and the jerking of the plough as it comes, you know how mighty is the power that thus in narrow space works its will upon the earth. Planted broadside, its four limbs--the massive wheels--hold the ground like a wrestler drawing to him the unwilling opponent. Humming, panting, trembling, with stretched but irresistible muscles, the iron creature conquers, and the plough approaches. All the field for the minute seems concentrated in this thing of power. There are acres and acres, scores of acres around, but they are surface only. This is the central spot: they are nothing, mere matter. This is force--Thor in another form. If you are near you cannot take your eyes off the sentient iron, the wrestler straining. But now the plough has come over, and the signal given reverses its way. The lazy monotonous clanking as the drum unwinds on this side, the rustling of the rope as it is dragged forth over the clods, the quiet rotation of the fly-wheel--these sounds let the excited thought down as the rotating fly-wheel works off the maddened steam. The combat over, you can look round. It is the February summer that comes, and lasts a week or so between the January frosts and the east winds that rush through the thorns. Some little green is even now visible along the mound where seed-leaves are springing up. The sun is warm, and the still air genial, the sky only dotted with a few white clouds. Wood-pigeons are busy in the elms, where the ivy is thick with ripe berries. There is a feeling of spring and of growth; in a day or two we shall find violets; and listen, how sweetly the larks are singing! Some chase each other, and then hover fluttering above the hedge. The stubble, whitened by exposure to the weather, looks lighter in the sunshine, and the distant view is softened by haze. A water-tank approaches, and the cart-horse steps in the pride of strength. The carter's lad goes to look at the engine and to wonder at the uses of the gauge. All the brazen parts gleam in the bright sun, and the driver presses some waste against the piston now it works slowly, till it shines like polished silver. The red glow within, as the furnace-door is opened, lights up the lad's studious face beneath like sunset. A few brown leaves yet cling to one bough of the oak, and the rooks come over cawing happily in the unwonted warmth. The low hum and the monotonous clanking, the rustling of the wire rope, give a sense of quiet. Let us wander along the hedge, and look for signs of spring. This is to-day. To-morrow, if we come, the engines are half hidden from afar by driving sleet and scattered snow-flakes fleeting aslant the field. Still sternly they labour in the cold and gloom. A third time you may find them, in September or bright October, with acorns dropping from the oaks, the distant sound of the gun, and perhaps a pheasant looking out from the corner. If the moon be full and bright they work on an hour or so by her light, and the vast shadows of the engines are thrown upon the stubble. II Among the meadows the buttercups in spring are as innumerable as ever and as pleasant to look upon. The petal of the buttercup has an enamel of gold; with the nail you may scrape it off, leaving still a yellow ground, but not reflecting the sunlight like the outer layer. From the centre the golden pollen covers the fingers with dust like that from the wing of a butterfly. In the bunches of grass and by the gateways the germander speedwell looks like tiny specks of blue stolen, like Prometheus' fire, from the summer sky. When the mowing-grass is ripe the heads of sorrel are so thick and close that at a little distance the surface seems as if sunset were always shining red upon it. From the spotted orchis leaves in April to the honeysuckle-clover in June, and the rose and the honeysuckle itself, the meadow has changed in nothing that delights the eye. The draining, indeed, has made it more comfortable to walk about on, and some of the rougher grasses have gone from the furrows, diminishing at the same time the number of cardamine flowers; but of these there are hundreds by the side of every tiny rivulet of water, and the aquatic grasses flourish in every ditch. The meadow-farmers, dairymen, have not grubbed many hedges--only a few, to enlarge the fields, too small before, by throwing two into one. So that hawthorn and blackthorn, ash and willow, with their varied hues of green in spring, briar and bramble, with blackberries and hips later on, are still there as in the old, old time. Bluebells, violets, cowslips--the same old favourite flowers--may be found on the mounds or sheltered near by. The meadow-farmers have dealt mercifully with the hedges, because they know that for shade in heat and shelter in storm the cattle resort to them. The hedges--yes, the hedges, the very synonym of Merry England--are yet there, and long may they remain. Without hedges England would not be England. Hedges, thick and high, and full of flowers, birds, and living creatures, of shade and flecks of sunshine dancing up and down the bark of the trees--I love their very thorns. You do not know how much there is in the hedges. We have still the woods, with here and there a forest, the beauty of the hills, and the charm of winding brooks. I never see roads, or horses, men, or anything when I get beside a brook. There is the grass, and the wheat, the clouds, the delicious sky, and the wind, and the sunlight which falls on the heart like a song. It is the same, the very same, only I think it is brighter and more lovely now than it was twenty years ago. Along the footpath we travel slowly; you cannot walk fast very long in a footpath; no matter how rapidly at first, you soon lessen your pace, and so country people always walk slowly. The stiles--how stupidly they are put together. For years and years every one who has passed them, as long as man can remember, has grumbled at them; yet there they are still, with the elms reaching high above, and cows gazing over--cows that look so powerful, but so peacefully yield the way. They are a better shape than the cattle of the ancient time, less lanky, and with fewer corners; the lines, to talk in yachtsman's language, are finer. Roan is a colour that contrasts well with meadows and hedges. The horses are finer, both cart-horse and nag. Approaching the farmsteads, there are hay-ricks, but there are fewer corn-ricks. Instead of the rows on rows, like the conical huts of a savage town, there are but a few, sometimes none. So many are built in the fields and threshed there "to rights," as the bailiff would say. It is not needful to have them near home or keep them, now the threshing-machine has stayed the flail and emptied the barns. Perhaps these are the only two losses to those who look at things and mete them with the eye--the corn-ricks and the barns. The corn-ricks were very characteristic, but even now you may see plenty if you look directly after harvest. The barns are going by degrees, passing out of the life of farming; let us hope that some of them will be converted into silos, and so saved. At the farmsteads themselves there are considerations for and against. On the one hand, the house and the garden is much tidier, less uncouth; there are flowers, such as geraniums, standard roses, those that are favourites in towns; and the unsightly and unhealthy middens and pools of muddy water have disappeared from beside the gates. But the old flowers and herbs are gone, or linger neglected in corners, and somehow the gentle touch of time has been effaced. The house has got a good deal away from farming. It is on the farm, but disconnected. It is a residence, not a farmhouse. Then you must consider that it is more healthy, sweeter, and better for those who live in it. From a little distance the old effect is obtainable. One thing only I must protest against, and that is the replacing of tiles with slates. The old red tiles of the farmhouses are as natural as leaves; they harmonise with the trees and the hedges, the grass, the wheat, and the ricks. But slates are wrong. In new houses, even farmhouses, it does not matter so much; the owners cannot be found fault with for using the advantages of modern times. On old houses where tiles were once, to put slates is an offence, nothing less. Every one who passes exclaims against it. Tiles tone down and become at home; they nestle together, and look as if you could be happily drowsy and slumber under them. They are to a house what leaves are to a tree, and leaves turn reddish or brown in the autumn. Upon the whole, with the exception of the slates--the hateful slates--the farmsteads are improved, for they have lost a great deal that was uncouth and even repulsive, which was slurred over in old pictures or omitted, but which was there. The new cottages are ugly with all their ornamentation; their false gables, impossible porches, absurd windows, are distinctly repellent. They are an improvement in a sanitary sense, and we are all glad of that, but we cannot like the buildings. They are of no style or time; only one thing is certain about them--they are _not_ English. Fortunately there are plenty of old cottages, hundreds of them (they show little or no sign of disappearing), and these can be chosen instead. The villages are to outward appearance much as they used to be, but the people are very different. In manners, conversation, and general tone there is a great change. It is, indeed, the people who have altered more than the surface of the country. Hard as the farmer may work, and plough and sow with engine and drill, the surface of the land does not much vary; but the farmer himself and the farmer's man are quite another race to what they were. Perhaps it was from this fact that the impression grew up that modern agriculture has polished away all the distinctive characteristics of the country. But it has not done so any more than it has removed the hills. The truth is, as I have endeavoured to explain, innovations so soon become old in the fields. The ancient earth covers them with her own hoar antiquity, and their newness disappears. They have already become so much a part of the life of the country that it seems as if they had always been there, so easily do they fit in, so easily does the eye accept them. Intrinsically there is nothing used in modern agriculture less symmetrical than what was previously employed. The flails were the simplest of instruments, and were always seen with the same accompaniment--the interior of a barn. The threshing-machine is certainly not less interesting; it works in the open air, often with fine scenic surroundings, and the number of people with it impart vivacity. In reaping with the reaping-hook there were more men in the wheat, but the reaping-machine is not without colour. Scythes are not at all pleasant things; the mowing-machine is at least no worse. As for the steam-plough, it is very interesting to watch. All these fit in with trees and hedges, fields and woods, as well, and in some cases in a more striking manner than the old instruments. The surface of the ground presents more varied colours even than before, and the sunlight produces rich effects. Nor have all the ancient aspects disappeared as supposed--quite the reverse. In the next field to the steam-plough the old ploughs drawn by horses may be seen at work, and barns still stand, and the old houses. In hill districts oxen are yet yoked to the plough, the scythe and reaping-hook are often seen at work, and, in short, the old and the new so shade and blend together that you can hardly say where one begins and the other ends. That there are many, very many things concerning agriculture and country life whose disappearance is to be regretted I have often pointed out, and having done so, I feel that I can with the more strength affirm that in its natural beauty the country is as lovely now as ever. It is, I venture to think, a mistake on the part of some who depict country scenes on canvas that they omit these modern aspects, doubtless under the impression that to admit them would impair the pastoral scene intended to be conveyed. So many pictures and so many illustrations seem to proceed upon the assumption that steam-plough and reaping-machine do not exist, that the landscape contains nothing but what it did a hundred years ago. These sketches are often beautiful, but they lack the force of truth and reality. Every one who has been fifty miles into the country, if only by rail, knows while looking at them that they are not real. You feel that there is something wanting, you do not know what. That something is the hard, perhaps angular fact which at once makes the sky above it appear likewise a fact. Why omit fifty years from the picture? That is what it usually means--fifty years left out; and somehow we feel as we gaze that these fields and these skies are not of our day. The actual fields, the actual machines, the actual men and women (how differently dressed to the conventional pictorial costumes!) would prepare the mind to see and appreciate the colouring, the design, the beauty--what, for lack of a better expression, may be called the soul of the picture--far more than forgotten, and nowadays even impossible accessories. For our sympathy is not with them, but with the things of our own time. VILLAGE MINERS "Right so, the hunter takes his pony which has been trained for the purpose, and stalks the deer behind him; the pony feeds towards the herd, so that they do not mind his approach, and when within a hundred yards, the hunter kneels down in the grass and fixes his iron rest or fork in the ground. He rests his Winchester rifle in the fork, and aims under the pony (which stands quite still) at his game. He generally kills one dead at the first shot, and wounds two or three more, firing rapidly after the first discharge so as to get as many shots as possible before the herd is out of range." So writes a friend in the wilds of Texas, adding that the hides fetch a few dollars. "Right so, departed Sir Launcelot."... "Right so, Sir Launcelot, his father, dressed his spear."... "Right so, he heard a voice that said;"--so runs the phrase in the "Mort d'Arthur," that ancient history of the Round Table, which was published nearly four hundred years ago. The coincidence of phrase indicates some resemblance in the circumstances, though so wide apart in time and distance. In England, in those old days, men lived in the woods and forests--out-of-doors--and were occupied with manual works. They had no opportunities of polishing their discourse, or their literary compositions. At this hour, in remote parts of the great continent of America, the pioneers of modern civilisation may be said to live amid medieval surroundings. The vast forests and endless prairies give a romance to common things. Sometimes pathos and sometimes humour arises in the log-cabin, and when the history of these simple but deeply human incidents comes to be told in this country, we are moved by the strange piquancy of event and language. From the new sounds and scenes, these Anglo-Saxons hewing a way through pine and hemlock now, as their ancestors hewed a way into England, have added fresh words and phrases to our common tongue. These words are not slang, they are pure primeval language. They express the act, or the scene, or the circumstance, as exactly as if it was painted in sound. For instance, the word "crack" expresses the noise of a rifle; say "crack," and you have the very sound; say "detonation," and it gives no ear-picture at all. Such a word is "ker-chunk." Imagine a huge log of timber falling from rock to rock, or a wounded opossum out of a tree, the word expresses the sound. There are scores of such examples, and it is these pure primitive words which put so much force into the narratives of American pathos and humour. Now, the dwellers in our own villages and country places in their way make use of just such expressions, that is, of words which afford the ear a picture of the act or circumstance, hieroglyphs of sound, and often, both in language and character, exhibit a close parallelism with the Californian miners. Country people say "fall" for autumn; "fall" is the usual American term for that season, and fall is most appropriate for the downward curve of time, the descent of the leaf. A slender slip of womanhood in the undeveloped period is alluded to in the villages as a "slickit" of a girl. "Slickit" means thin, slender, a piece that might be whittled off a stick with a knife, not a shaving, for a shaving curls, but a "slickit," a long thin slice. If any one be carving awkwardly with the left wrist doubled under, the right arm angularly extended, and the knife sawing at a joint, our village miners and country Californians call it "cack-" or "cag-handed." Cag-handed is worse than back-handed; it means awkward, twisted, and clumsy. You may see many a cag-handed person hacking at a fowl. Hamlet folk are very apt to look a gift horse in the mouth, and if any one should receive a present not so large as expected, it would be contemptuously described as a "footy" little thing. "Footy" pronounced with a sneering expression of countenance conveys a sense of despicableness, even to those who do not know its exact definition, which may be taken as mean. Suppose a bunch of ripe nuts high up and almost out of reach; by dint of pressing into the bushes, pulling at the bough, and straining on tiptoe, you may succeed in "scraambing" it down. "Scraambing," or "scraambed," with a long accent on the aa, indicates the action of stretching and pulling downwards. Though somewhat similar in sound, it has no affinity with scramble; people scramble for things which have been thrown on the ground. In getting through hedges the thorns are apt to "limm" one's clothes, tearing a jagged hole in the coat. Country children are always "limming" their clothes to pieces; "limm," or "limb," expresses a ragged tear. Recently, fashion set the example of ladies having their hair shorn as short as men. It is quite common to see young ladies, the backs of whose heads are polled, all the glory of hair gone, no plait, no twist, but all cut close and somewhat rough. If a village Californian were to see this he would say, "they got their hair hogged off." "Hogged" means cut off short so as to stand up like bristles. Ponies often have hogs' manes; all the horses in the Grecian sculpture have their manes hogged. In bitter winter weather the servants in the dairies who have much to do with buckets of water, and spend the morning in splashing--for dairies need much of that kind of thing--sometimes find that the drops have frozen as they walk, and discover that their aprons are fringed with "daglets," _i.e._ icicles. Thatched roofs are always hung with "daglets" in frost; thatch holds a certain amount of moisture, as of mist, and this drips during the day and so forms stalactites of ice, often a foot or more in length. "Clout" is a "dictionary word," a knock on the head, but it is pronounced differently here; they say a "clue" in the head. Stuttering and stammering each express well-known conditions of speech, but there is another not recognised in dictionary language. If a person has been made a butt of, laughed at, joked, and tormented till he hesitates and fumbles as it were with his words, he is said to be in a state of "hacka." "Hacka" is to have to think a minute before he can say what he wants to. "Simmily" is a word of little interest, being evidently a mere provincialism and distortion of "seemingly," as "summat" of "something," or "somewhat," indifferently. Occasionally a person is seized with a giggling fit, laughs on the least, or without any, provocation--a rather idiotic state--which he is quite conscious of but cannot stop. Presently some one will ask, "Have you found a wicker's nest?" which is a biting sarcasm, though the precise meaning seems uncertain, unless it bears some relation to mare's nest. Mares wicker, so do goats; giggling is wickering. The first work a boy does is to go out with a clapper, or his own strong voice, to scare birds from the corn all day; this we call bird-keeping, but the lads themselves, with an appreciation of the other side of the case, call it bird-starving. Forage is often used in a general sense of food, or in the more particular sense of green food, as clover, or vetches. Fodder, on the other hand, indicates dry food, such as hay; the labourers go twice a day in winter to fodder the cattle, that is, to carry them their hay. Many of these labourers before they start out to work, in their own words, "fodder" their boots. Some fine soft hay is pushed into the boots, forming a species of sock. Should either of them have a clumsy pair, they say his boots are like a seed-lip, which is a vessel like a basket used in sowing corn, and would be a very loose fit. They have not yet forgotten the ancient superstition about Easter Sunday, and the girls will not go out without a new ribbon at least; they must have something new on that day, if the merest trifle. The backwoodsmen have found out many ways of curing cuts, wounds, bruises and injuries, rough methods, but effectual, and use the herbs and leaves much as their English forefathers did a century ago. For the most part in villages the knowledge and use of herbs has died out, and there are not many who resort to them. Elder-flower ointment, however, keeps its ground, and is, I think, still made for sale in the shops of towns. But the true country elder-flower ointment contains a little piece of adder's-tongue fern, which is believed to confer magical virtue. So curious a plant may naturally have had a mysterious value attached to it in old times. It is the presence of this touch of home-lore in the recipe which makes the product so different from the "ointment of the apothecary," manufactured by scale and weight and prosaic rule. Upon some roofs the houseleek still grows, though it is now often torn away as injurious. Where it grows it is usually on outhouses attached to the main building, sloping lean-tos. It does not present so glowing an appearance as the stonecrop, which now and then flourishes on houses, and looks like a brilliant golden cushion against the red tiles. The houseleek, however, is a singular plant, worthy of examination; it has an old-world look, as if it had survived beyond its date into the nineteenth century. It hides in odd places and gables like a relic of witchcraft, and a black cat and an aged woman with a crutch-handled stick would be its appropriate owner. The houseleek is still used for the cure of wounds and cuts. A leaf--the leaves are rather like portions of the plant than mere leaves--is bruised to pulp, and the juice and some of the pulp mixed with cream. They say it is efficacious. They call it "silgreen." In old English singreen means evergreen. Silgreen and singreen seem close congeners. Possibly sil or sin may be translated "through" as much as "ever," for the leaf of the plant is thick, and green all through, if broken like a tough cake. I think I would rather use it than the tobacco juice which the mowers and reapers are now so fond of applying to the cuts they frequently get. They appear to have quite forsaken the ancient herbal remedies, as the sickle-herb, knotted figwort, and so on. Tobacco juice does not seem a nice thing for a bleeding wound; probably it gets well rather in spite of it than because of it. If any one wanted a tonic in old farmhouses, it used to be the custom, and till quite lately, to put a nail in sherry, making an iron wine, which was believed to be very restorative. Now, one of the recent additions to the wine merchants' lists is a sherry from Australia, Tintara, which is recommended on account of its having been extracted from grapes growing on an ironstone soil. So the old things come up again in another form. There are scores of iron tonics of various kinds sold in the shops; possibly the nail in sherry was almost as good. Those who did not care to purchase sherry, put their nail in cider. A few odd names of plants may yet be heard among the labourers, such as "loving-andrews" for the blue meadow geranium; "loggerums" for the hard knapweed, and also for the scabious; "Saturday night's pepper" for the spurge, which grows wild in gardens; and there is a weed called "good-neighbour," but as to which it is I am ignorant. The spotted-leaf orchis flowers, which grow in moist and shady meads, lifting their purplish heads among the early spring grass, are called by the children "gran'fer goslings." To express extreme lack--as of money--they will say their purses are as bare as a toad is of feathers. In these days it is the fashion to praise mattresses and to depreciate the feather-bed. Nothing so healthy as a mattress, nothing so good in every way. Mattresses are certainly cheaper, and there it ends. I maintain that no modern invention approaches the feather-bed. People try to persuade me to eat the coarsest part of flour--actually the rejected part--and to sleep on a mattress; that is to say, to go back about twenty thousand years in civilisation. But I decline. Having some acquaintance with wheat, I prefer the fine white flour, which is the very finest of all the products of the earth; having slept on all sorts of beds, sitting on a pole, lying on turf leaning against a tree, and so forth, no one will ever persuade me that any couch is equal to a feather-bed. But should any desire a yet cheaper mattress than those advertised, I can put them in the way to obtain it. Among my hamlet Californians it is not unusual to find beds in use stuffed with the "hucks" of oats, _i.e._ the chaff. Like the backwoodsmen, they have to make shift with what they can get. Their ancestors steamed their arrows so as to soften the wood, when it was bound to a rigid rod and hung up in the chimney to dry perfectly straight. The modern cottager takes a stout stick and boils it in the pot till it becomes flexible. He then bends it into the shape of a hook, ties it with string in that curve, and suspends it in his chimney corner to dry crooked. This crooked stick is the fagging hook used to pull the wheat towards the reaper with the left hand, while he cuts it with the reap-hook in the right. Suppose some one wavers and cannot make up his mind. Now he will do this and now he will do that, uncertain and unstable, putting his hand to the plough and removing it again, my Californian at home would call him "wivel-minded." "Wivelly" means undecided, wavering, not to be depended on. It sounds like it. If the labourer gets his clothes soaked, he says they are "sobbled." The sound of boots or dress saturated with rain very nearly approximates to sobbled. But "gaamze" is the queerest word, perhaps, of all--it is to smear as with grease. Beans are said to be "cherky," which means dry. Doubtless the obese old gentleman in Boccaccio who was cured of his pains--the result of luxurious living--by a diet which forced him to devour beans for very hunger, did think them dry and cherky. They have come up again now in the shape of lentils, which are nothing but beans. It is not generally known that Boccaccio was the inventor of the bean cure. Cat's claws are notoriously apt to scratch. Should a savage cat tear out a piece of flesh from the hand, she is said to "dawk" it out. "Dawk" expresses a ferocious dab and tear combined. A sharp iron nail unseen might "dawk" the skin off an unwary hand. In ancient days when women quarrelled and fought, they are said to have "dawked" fragments from each other's faces with their finger-nails. Such incidents are now obsolete. It has often been pointed out that many names of places are reduplications. New layers of population, Saxon, Dane, or Norman, added their words with the same meaning to the former term. There is a hill called "Up-at-a-Peak." "Up" itself signifies high, as in the endless examples in which it forms the first syllable. "Peak," of course, is point. This is a modern reduplication, not an archaeological one. If any one hacks and haws in speaking, it is called "hum-dawing." Some very prominent persons of the present day are much given to "hum-dawing," which is often a species of conversational hedging. Are "horse-stepple" and "stabbling" purely provincial, or known in towns? "Stepple" is the mark or step of a horse; "stabbling" is poaching up the turf or ground from continual movement of feet, whether human, equine, or otherwise. The ground near gateways in fields is often "stabbled" to such a degree in wet weather as to appear impassable. A piece of wood falling into water, gradually absorbs the liquid into its pores, and swells. The same thing happens in wet weather to gates and even doors; the wood swells, so that if they fitted at all tightly before, they can then scarcely be opened. Anything that swells in this manner by absorption is said to "plim." A sponge does not "plim"; it is not apparently larger when full of water than previously, and it is still limp. To "plim" up implies a certain amount of enlargement, and consequent tightness or firmness. Snow-flakes are called "blossoms." The word snow-flake is unknown. A big baby is always a thing to be proud of, and you may hear an enthusiastic aunt describing the weight and lumpiness of the youngster, and winding up with the declaration, "He's a regular nitch." A chump of wood, short, thick, and heavy, is said to be a "nitch," but it seems gone out of use a good deal for general weights, and to be chiefly used in speaking of infants. There is a word of somewhat similar sound common among the fishermen of the south coast. Towards the stern of a fishing smack there is a stout upright post with a fork at the top, into which fork the mast is lowered while they are engaged with the nets at sea. It is called the "mitch," or "match," but though I mention it as similar in sound, I do not think it has any other affinity. Of old time, crab-apples were usually planted in or near rickyards or elsewhere close to farmhouses. The custom is now gone out; no crab-apples are planted, and so in course of years there will be but few. Crab-apple is not nearly so plentiful as anciently, either in hedges or enclosures. The juice of the crab-apple, varges, used to be valued as a cure for sprains. The present generation can hardly understand that there was a time when matches were not known. To such a period must be traced the expression still common in out-of-the-way places, of a "handful of fire." A cottager who found her fire out would go to a neighbour and bring home some live embers to light up again. When the fire chances to be nearly out, the expression is still heard both in cottages and farmhouses, "There is hardly a handful of fire." Such a mere handful is of course easily "douted." An extinguisher "douts" a candle; the heel of a boot "douts" a match thrown down. But the exact definition of "dout" is to smother, or extinguish by beating. In the days when wood fires were universal, as the wood burned, quantities of a fine white powder or ash collected, which at intervals, when the servant cleaned the hearth, was swept up into a corner. At night, if any embers remained glowing, a few shovelfuls of this heap of white ash were thrown over them before retiring, and so the fire was "douted." To smother with such ashes precisely conveys the meaning of "dout." Incipient fires in grass, straw, or other material, are often beaten out as with bushes; this too is "douting." Stick your heels in the ground, arch your spine, and drag with all your might at a rope, and then you would be said to "scaut." Horses going uphill, or straining to draw a heavily laden waggon through a mud hole, "scaut" and tug. At football there is a good deal of "scauting." The axle of a wheelbarrow revolving without grease, and causing an ear-piercing sound, is said to be giving forth a "scrupeting" noise. What can be more explicit, and at the same time so aggravating, as to be told that you are a "mix-muddle"? A person who mixes up his commissions may feel a little abashed. A person who muddles his affairs may not be altogether proud of his achievements. But to be a mix-muddle, to both mix and muddle, to morally fumble without tact, and display a totally imbecile wandering; I shall get mixed myself if I try to describe such a state. Mixed in this sense is American too. Take a duster, dexterously swing it, and remove a fleck of dust from a table or books, and you will understand the verb to "flirk," which is nearly the same as to flick. "Pansherds" are "potsherds." Here is a country recipe for discovering whether a lover is faithful or not. Take a laurel leaf, scratch his name on it, or the initials, and put it in the bosom of the dress. If it turns brown, he is true; if not, he'll deceive you. The character of a girl, according to the following couplets, is to be learned from the colour of her eyes:-- "Brown eyes, beauty, Do your mother's duty. Blue eyes--pick-a-pie, Lie a-bed and tell a lie. Grey eyes--greediness, Gobble all the world up." The interpretation is, that brown eyes indicate a gentle and dutiful disposition. Blue eyes show three guilty tendencies--to pick-a-pie, that is, to steal; to lie a-bed, that is, to be idle; and to tell a lie. As for grey eyes, their selfish greediness and ambition could not be contented with less than the whole world. No one but a woman could have composed this scandal on the sex. Sometimes the green lanes are crossed by gates, over which the trees in the hedges each side form a leafy arch. On the top bar of such a gate, rustic lovers often write love messages to their ladies, with a fragment of chalk. Unable from some cause or other to keep the appointed rendezvous, they leave a few explanatory words in conspicuous white letters, so that the gate answers the same purpose as the correspondence column in the daily papers. When a gate is not available, they thrust a stick in the ground near the footpath, split the upper end, and place a piece of paper in it with the message. The hamlet forge is not yet quite extinct, and the blacksmith's hammer sounds among the oaks. He frequently has to join two pieces of iron together, say to lengthen a rod. He places both ends in the fire, heats them to a certain point, and then presses the one against the other. By this simple means of touching they unite, the metal becomes one almost like a chemical union, and so complete is it, that, with a little polishing to remove the marks of fire, the join is not perceptible to an ordinary eye. This is the most perfect way of joining metal, and when accomplished, the pieces are said to be "butt-shut." The word has passed from the forge into conversation, and the expression is often heard, "That won't butt-shut." If any one be telling a tale, or giving an account of something of which his hearers are incredulous, they say it will not butt-shut--one part of the story will not agree and dovetail with the rest; there is a break in the continuity of the evidence, which does not unite and make one rod. Such a term is true miners' language. Indeed, the American backwoodsmen, miners, and so on, are really only English farmers and labourers transplanted to a freer and larger life. MIND UNDER WATER The thud, thud of a horse's hoof does not alarm fish. Basking in the sun under the bank, a jack or pike lying close to the surface of the water will remain unmoved, however heavy the sound may be. The vibrations reach the fish in several ways. There is what we should ourselves call the noise as conveyed by the air, and which in the case of a jack actually at the surface may be supposed to reach him direct. Next there is the vibration passing through the water, which is usually pronounced to be a good medium. Lastly, there is the bodily movement of the substance of the water. When the bank is hard and dry this latter amounts only to a slight shaking, but it frequently happens that the side of a brook or pond is soft, and "gives" under a heavy weight. Sometimes the edge is even pushed into the water, and the brook in a manner squeezed. You can see this when cattle walk by the margin the grassy edge is pushed out, and in a minute way they may be said to contract the stream. It is in too small a degree to have the least apparent effect upon the water, but it is different with the sense of hearing, which is so delicate that the bodily movement thus caused may be reasonably believed to be very audible indeed to the jack. The wire fences which are now so much used round shrubberies and across parks give a very good illustration of the conveyance of sound. Strung tight by a spanner, the strands of twisted wire resemble a stringed instrument. If you place your hand on one of the wires and get a friend to strike it with his stick, say, thirty or forty yards away, you will distinctly feel it vibrate. If the ear is held close enough you will hear it, vibration and sound being practically convertible terms. To the basking jack three such wires extend, and when the cart-horse in the meadow puts down his heavy hoof he strikes them all at once. Yet, though fish are so sensitive to sound, the jack is not in the least alarmed, and there can be little doubt that he knows what it is. A whole herd of cattle feeding and walking about does not disturb him, but if the light step--light in comparison--of a man approach, away he goes. Poachers, therefore, unable to disguise their footsteps, endeavour to conceal them, and by moving slowly to avoid vibrating the earth, and through it the water. In poaching, the intelligence of the man is backed against the intelligence of the fish or animal, and the poacher tries to get himself into the ways of the creature he means to snare. That is what really takes place as seen by us as lookers-on; to the poacher himself, in nine out of ten cases, it is merely an acquired knack learned from watching others, and improved by practice. But to us, as lookers-on, this is what occurs: the man fits himself to the ways of the creature, and for the time it becomes a struggle between them. It is the same with the Red Indians, and the white trappers and hunters in wild regions, who depend much more on their knowledge of the ways and habits of the fur-bearing animals than upon their skill with the rifle. A man may be an excellent shot with gun or rifle, and yet be quite incapable of coping on comparatively equal terms with wild creatures. He is a sportsman, depending on skill, quick sight, and ready hand--not a hunter. Perhaps the nearest approach to it in legitimate, English sport is in fly-fishing and salmon fishing, when the sportsman relies upon his own unassisted efforts. Deer-stalking, where the sportsman has to reckon on the wind, and its curious twists and turns in valleys and round rocks, would be a very near approach to it did the stalker stalk alone. But all this work is usually done for him by an attendant, a native Highlander; and this man really does pit his intelligence against that of the stag. The Highlander actually is a Red Indian, or hunter, and in this sense struggles with the wild animal. The poacher is the hunter on illegitimate ground, and with arts which it has been mutually agreed shall not be employed. Considered in this sense it is interesting to observe to what extent the intelligence even of a fish reaches--and I think upon reflection it will be found that the fish is as clever as any creature could be in its position. I deny altogether that the cold-blooded fish--looked on with contempt so far as its intellectual powers are concerned--is stupid, or slow to learn. On the contrary, fish are remarkably quick, not only under natural conditions, but quick at accommodating themselves to altered circumstances which they could not foresee, and the knowledge how to meet which could not have been inherited. The basking jack is not alarmed at the cart-horse's hoofs, but remains quiet, let them come down with ever so heavy a thud. He has observed that these vibrations never cause him any injury. He hears them at all periods of the day and night, often with long intervals of silence and with every possible variation. Never once has the sound been followed by injury or by anything to disturb his peace. So the rooks have observed that passing trains are harmless, and will perch on the telegraph wires or poles over the steam of the roaring locomotive. Observation has given them confidence. Thunder of wheels and immense weight in motion, the open furnace and glaring light, the faces at the long tier of windows--all these terrors do not ruffle a feather. A little boy with a wooden clapper can set a flock in retreat immediately. Now the rooks could not have acquired this confidence in the course of innumerable generations; it is not hereditary; it is purely what we understand by intelligence. Why are the rooks afraid of the little boy with the clapper? Because they have noticed his hostile intent. Why is the basking jack off the instant he hears the light step of a man? He has observed that after this step there have often followed attempts to injure him; a stone has been flung at him, a long pole thrust into the water; he has been shot at, or felt the pinch of a wire. He remembers this, and does not wait for the attempt to be repeated, but puts himself into safety. If he did not realise that it was a man--and a possible enemy--he would not trouble. The object consequently of the tricks of the poacher is to obliterate himself. If you can contrive to so move, and to so conduct yourself that the fish shall not recognise you as his enemy, you can do much as you please with him, and in varying degrees it is the same with animals. Think a moment by what tokens a fish recognises a man. First, his light, and, compared with other animals, brisk step--a two-step instead of a four-step, remember; two feet, not four hoofs. There is a difference at once in the rhythm of the noise. Four hoofs can by no possibility produce the same sound, or succession of sounds, as is made even by four feet--that is, by two men. The beats are not the same. Secondly, by his motions, and especially the brisk motions of the arms. Thirdly, by this briskness itself; for most animals, except man, move with a slow motion--paradox as it may seem--even when they are going along fast. With them it is usually repose in action. Fourthly, and this is rather curious--experience seems to show that fish, and animals and birds certainly, recognise man by his hat or cap, to which they have a species of superstitious dislike. Hats are generally of a different hue to the rest of the suit, for one thing; and it was noted, a century ago, that wild creatures have a particular objection to a black hat. A covering to the head at all is so Opposite to their own ideas that it arouses suspicion, for we must remember that animals look on our clothes as our skin. To have a black skin over the hair of the head is somewhat odd. By all these signs a fish knows a man immediately, and as certainly as any creature moving on land would know him. There is no instinctive or hereditary fear of man at all--it is acquired by observation (which a thousand facts demonstrate); so that we are quite justified in believing that a fish really does notice some or all of these attributes of its enemy. What the poacher or wild hunter has to do is to conceal these attributes. To hide the two-step, he walks as slowly as possible, not putting the foot down hard, but feeling the ground first, and gradually pressing it. In this way progress may be made without vibration. The earth is not shaken, and does not communicate the sound to the water. This will bring him to the verge of the place where the fish is basking. Very probably not only fish, but animals and some birds hear as much by the vibration of the earth as by the sound travelling in the atmosphere, and depend as much upon their immediate perception of the slightest tremor of the earth as upon recognition by the ear in the manner familiar to ourselves. When rabbits, for instance, are out feeding in the grass, it is often possible to get quite close to them by walking in this way, extremely slowly, and carefully placing the foot by slow degrees upon the ground. The earth is then merely pressed, and not stepped upon at all, so that there is no jar. By doing this I have often moved up within gunshot of rabbits without the least aid from cover. Once now and then I have walked across a field straight at them. Something, however, depends on the direction of the wind, for then the question of scent comes in. To some degree it is the same with hares. It is certainly the case with birds, as wood-pigeons, a flock of them, will remain feeding only just the other side of the hedge; but, if you stamp the earth, will rise instantly. So will rooks, though they will not fly far if you are not armed. Partridges certainly secure themselves by their attention to the faint tremor of the ground. Pheasants do so too, and make off, running through the underwood long before any one is in sight. The most sensitive are landrails, and it is difficult to get near them, for this reason. Though the mowing-grass must conceal an approaching person from them as it conceals them from him, these birds change their positions, no matter how quietly he walks. Let him be as cunning as he will, and think to cut off corners and cross the land-rail's retreat, the bird baffles him nine times in ten. That it is advised of the direction the pursuer takes by the vibration of the surface is at least probable. Other birds sit, and hope to escape by remaining still, till they detect the tremor coming direct towards them, when they rise. Rain and dry weather change the susceptibility of the surface to vibrate, and may sometimes in part account for the wildness or apparent tameness of birds and animals. Should any one doubt the existence of such tremors, he has only to lie on the ground with his ear near the surface; but, being unused to the experiment, he will at first only notice the heavier sounds, as of a waggon or a cart-horse. In recent experiments with most delicate instruments devised to show the cosmic vibration of the earth, the movements communicated to it by the tides, or by the "pull" of the sun and moon, it has been found almost impossible as yet to carry out the object, so greatly are these movements obscured by the ceaseless and inexplicable vibrations of the solid earth. There is nothing unreasonable in the supposition that, if an instrument can be constructed to show these, the ears of animals and birds--living organisms, and not iron and steel--should be able to discover the tremors of the surface. The wild hunter can still further check or altogether prevent observation by moving on hands and knees, when his weight is widely distributed. In the particular instance of a fish he endeavours to come to the margin of the water at the rear of the fish, whose eyes are so placed that it can see best in front. When he has arrived at the margin, and has to rear himself up, if from hands and knees, or, if already upright, when he commences his work, he tries to conceal his arms, or, rather, to minimise their peculiar appearance as much as practicable by keeping them close to his sides. All this time I am supposing that you are looking at the poacher from the fish. To a fish or any wild animal the arms of a man are suspicious. No other creature that they know possesses these singular appurtenances, which move in almost any direction, and yet have nothing to do with locomotion. You may be sure that this great difference in the anatomical construction of a man is recognised by all wild animals once they are compelled for their own safety to observe him. Arms are so entirely opposite to all the varieties of limb possessed by the varieties of living creatures. Can you put yourselves in the position of either of these creatures--moving on all-fours, on wings, or by the aid of a membraneous tail and fins, and without arms, and imagine how strange the arms of a man must look? Suppose yourself with your arms tucked to your sides under the fur of an animal; something of the idea may be gathered by putting on a cloak without sleeves or armholes. At once it will be apparent how helpless all creatures are in comparison with man. It is true that apes are an exception; yet their arms are also legs, and they are deficient in the power of the thumb. Man may be defined as an animal with arms. While the creatures of the field or the water have no cause to fear him they do not observe him, but the moment they learn that he is bent on their destruction they watch him narrowly, and his arms are, above all, the part which alarms them. To them these limbs are men's weapons--his tusks, and tusks which strike and wound afar. From these proceed an invisible force which can destroy where it would seem the intervening distance alone would afford safety. The sharp shot, the keen hook, the lacerating wire, the spear--everything which kills or wounds, comes in some manner or other from the arms, down to the stone or the primitive knob-kerrie. Consequently animals, birds, and fishes not only in our own, but in the wildest countries, have learned to watch and to dread man's arms. He raises his arms, and in an instant there shoots forth a bright flash of flame, and before the swift wings can beat the air again the partridge is dashed to the ground. So long as a gun is carried under the arm--that is, with the arms close to the sides--many birds will let the sportsman approach. Rabbits will do the same. Rabbits have one advantage (and perhaps only one): being numerous and feeding out by daylight, all kinds of experiments can be tried on them, while hares are not so easily managed. Suppose a rabbit feeding, and any one with a gun creeping up beside the hedge, while the gun is kept down and the arms down the rabbit remains still; the instant the arms are lifted to point the gun, up he sits, or off he goes. You have only to point your arm at a rook, without any gun, to frighten him. Bird-keepers instinctively raise their arms above their heads, when shouting, to startle birds. Every creature that has ever watched man knows that his arms are dangerous. The poacher or wild hunter has to conceal his arms by reducing their movements to a minimum, and by conducting those movements as slowly as possible. To thoroughly appreciate the importance which animals of all kinds put on the motions of the upper limbs, and to put one's self quite in their position, one has only to recall to mind the well-known trick of the Australian bushrangers. "Bail up!" is their order when they suddenly produce their revolvers; "Bail up!" they shout to the clerks of the bank they are about to sack, to the inmates of a house, or to the travellers they meet on the road. "Hold your arms above your head" is the meaning; and, if it is not immediately obeyed, they fire. They know that every man has a pistol in his pocket or belt; but he cannot use it if compelled to keep his arms high over his head. One or more of the band keep a sharp look-out on the upheld arms while the rest plunder; and, if any are lowered--bang! Like the animals, they know the extreme danger to be apprehended from movements of the human arms. So long as the human arms are "bailed" (though in this case in an opposite direction, i.e. held down), animals are not afraid. Could they make us "bail up," we should be helpless to injure them. Moving his arms as gently as possible, with the elbows close to his sides, the poacher proceeds to slowly push his rod and wire loop towards the basking jack. If he were going to shoot partridges at roost on the ground, he would raise his gun in an equally slow and careful manner. As a partridge is a small bird, and stands at about a shilling in the poacher's catalogue, he does not care to risk a shot at one, but likes to get several at once. This he can do in the spring, when the birds have paired and remain so near together, and again in the latter part of the summer, when the coveys are large, not having yet been much broken up by the sportsmen. These large coveys, having enjoyed an immunity from disturbance all through the summer, wandering at their own will among clover and corn, are not at all difficult to approach, and a shot at them through a gap in a hedge will often bring down four or five. Later on the poacher takes them at roost. They roost on the ground in a circle, heads outwards, much in the same position as the eggs of a lapwing. The spot is marked; and at night, having crept up near enough, the poacher fires at the spot itself rather than at the birds, with a gun loaded with a moderate charge of powder, but a large quantity of shot, that it may spread wide. On moderately light nights he can succeed at this game. It is in raising the arms to point the gun that the risk of alarming the birds has to be met; and so with a hare sitting in a form in daytime. Lift your arms suddenly, and away she goes; keep your arms still, and close to your side, and she will sit till you have crept up actually to her very side, and can pounce on her if you choose. Sometimes, where fish have not been disturbed by poachers, or loafers throwing stones and otherwise annoying them, they will not heed a passer-by, whose gentle walk or saunter does not affright them with brisk emotion, especially if the saunterer, on espying them, in no degree alters his pace or changes his manner. That wild creatures immediately detect a change of manner, and therefore of mood, any one may demonstrate for himself They are as quick to see it as the dog, who is always with his master, and knows by the very way he puts a book on the table what temper he is in. When a book goes with a bang on the table the dog creeps under it. Wild creatures, too, catch their manners from man. Walk along a lane with your hands in your pockets, and you will see twice as much of the birds and animals, because they will not set themselves to steadfastly watch you. A quick movement sets wings quickly beating. I have noticed that even horses in stables do not like visitors with jerky, brisk, angular ways of moving. A stranger entering in a quiet, easy manner is not very objectionable, but if he comes in in a bustling, citizen-like style, it is quite probable that one or other horse will show a wicked white corner in his eye. It roughs them up the wrong way. Especially all wild creatures dislike the shuffling, mincing step so common in towns. That alone will disturb everything. Indeed, I have often thought that a good and successful wild hunter--like the backwoods man, or the sportsman in African bush or Indian jungle--is really made as much by his feet as his eyes or hands. Unconsciously he feels with his feet; they come to know the exact time to move, whether a long or short stride be desirable, and where to put down, not to rustle or cause a cracking sound, and accommodate themselves to the slope of the ground, touching it and holding it like hands. A great many people seem to have no feet; they have boots, but no feet. They stamp or clump, or swing their boots along and knock the ground at every step; this matters not in most callings, but if a man wish to become what I have called a wild hunter, he must let his feet learn. He must walk with hands in his boots. Now and then a person walks like this naturally, and he will come in and tell you that he has seen a fish basking, a partridge, a hare, or what not, when another never gets near anything. This is where they have not been much disturbed by loafers, who are worse than poachers. As a rule, poachers are intermittent in their action, and they do not want to disturb the game, as it makes it wild and interferes with their profits. Loafers are not intermittent--they are always about, often in gangs, and destroy others' sports without having any themselves. Near large towns there are places where the fish have to be protected with hurdles thrown across the stream on poles, that the stones and brickbats hurled by every rascal passing may not make their very life a burden. A rural poacher is infinitely preferable. The difference in the ways of fish when they have been much disturbed and when they have been let alone is at at once discerned. No sooner do you approach a fish who has been much annoyed and driven than he strikes, and a quick-rotating curl on the surface shows with what vehemence his tail was forced against it. In other places, if a fish perceives you, he gives himself so slight a propulsion that the curl hardly rises, and you can see him gliding slowly into the deeper or overshadowed water. If in terror he would go so quickly as to be almost invisible. In places where the fish have been much disturbed the poacher, or any one who desires to watch their habits, has to move as slowly as the hands of a clock, and even then they will scarcely bear the very sight of a man, sometimes not at all. The least briskness of movement would send them into the depths out of sight. Cattle, to whom they are accustomed, walk slowly, and so do horses left to themselves in the meads by water. The slowest man walking past has quicker, perhaps because shorter, movements than those of cattle and horses, so that, even when bushes intervene and conceal his form, his very ways often proclaim him. Most people will only grant a moderate degree of intelligence to fish, linking coldness of blood to narrowness of intellect, and convinced that there can be but little brain in so small a compass as its head. That the jack can compete with the dog, of course, is out of the question: but I am by no means prepared to admit that fish are so devoid of sense as supposed. Not long since an experiment was tried with a jack, an account of which appeared in the papers. The jack was in a tank, and after awhile the tank was partly divided by inserting a plate of glass. He was then hunted round, and notes taken of the number of times he bumped his head against the plate of glass, and how long it took him to learn that there was something to obstruct his path. Further statistics were kept as to the length of his memory when he had learnt the existence of the glass--that is, to see if he would recollect it several days afterwards. The fish was some time learning the position of the glass; and then, if much alarmed, he would forget its position and dash against it. But he did learn it, and retained his memory some while. It seems to me that this was a very hard and unfair test. The jack had to acquire the idea of something transparent, and yet hard as wood. A moment's thought will show how exactly opposite the qualities of glass are to anything either this particular fish or his ancestors could have met with--no hereditary intelligence to aid him, no experience bearing, however slightly, upon the subject. Accustomed all his life to transparent water, he had also been accustomed to find it liquid, and easily parted. Put suddenly face to face with the transparent material which repelled him, what was he to think? Much the same effect would be produced if you or I, having been accustomed, of course, all our lives, to the fluidity of air, which opens for our passage, were opposed by a solid block of transparent atmosphere. Imagine any one running for a train, and striking his head with all his might against such a block. He would rise, shake himself together, and endeavour to pursue his journey, and be again repelled. More than likely he would try three times before he became convinced that it really was something in the air itself which stopped him. Then he would thrust with his stick and feel, more and more astounded every moment, and scarcely able to believe his own senses. During the day, otherwise engaged, he would argue himself into the view that he had made a mistake, and determine to try again, though more cautiously. But so strong is habit that if a cause for alarm arose, and he started running, he might quite probably go with tremendous force up to the solid block of transparent air, to be hurled back as the jack was. These are no mere suppositions, for quite recently I heard of a case which nearly parallels the conduct of the jack. A messenger was despatched by rail to a shop for certain articles, and was desired to return by a certain time. The parcel was made up, the man took it, heard an engine whistle, turned to run, and in his haste dashed himself right through a plate-glass window into the street. He narrowly escaped decapitation, as the great pieces of glass fell like the knife of a guillotine. Cases of people injuring themselves by walking against plate-glass are by no means uncommon; when the mind is preoccupied it takes much the same place as the plate of glass in the water and the jack. Authorities on mythology state that some Oriental nations had not arrived at the conception of a fluid heaven--of free space; they thought the sky was solid, like a roof. The fish was very much in the same position. The reason why fish swim round and round in tanks, and do not beat themselves against the glass walls, is evidently because they can see where the water ends. A distinction is apparent between it and the air outside; but when the plate of glass was put inside the tank the jack saw water beyond it, or through it. I never see a fish in a tank without remembering this experiment and the long train of reflections it gives rise to. To take a fish from his native brook, and to place him suddenly in the midst of such, to him, inconceivable conditions, is almost like watching the actual creation of mind. His mind has to be created anew to meet it, and that it did ultimately meet the conditions shows that even the fish--the cold-blooded, the narrow-brained--is not confined to the grooves of hereditary knowledge alone, but is capable of wider and novel efforts. I thought the jack came out very well indeed from the trial, and I have mentioned the matter lest some should think I have attributed too much intelligence to fish. Other creatures besides fish are puzzled by glass. One day I observed a robin trying to get in at the fanlight of a hall door. Repeatedly he struck himself against it, beat it with his wings, and struggled to get through the pane. Possibly there was a spider inside which tempted him; but allowing that temptation, it was remarkable that the robin should so strive in vain. Always about houses, he must have had experience of the properties of glass, and yet forgot it so soon. His ancestors for many generations must have had experience of glass, still it did not prevent him making many trials. The slowness of the jack to learn the impenetrable nature of the glass plate and its position is not the least indication of lack of intelligence. In daily life we constantly see people do things they have observed injure them, and yet, in spite of experience, go and do the same again. The glass experiment proves to me that the jack, like all other creatures, really has a latent power of intelligence beyond that brought into play by the usual circumstances of existence. Consider the conditions under which the jack exists--the jack we have been approaching so carefully. His limits are the brook, the ponds it feeds, and the ditches that enter it. He can only move a short distance up the stream because there is a high hatch, nor can he go far down because of a mill; if he could, the conditions would be much the same; but, as a matter of fact, the space he has at his command is not much. The running water, the green flags, the lesser fishes, the water-rats, the horses and cattle on the bank--these are about all the things that he is likely to be interested in. Of these only the water, the lesser fishes, the flags, and the bottom or sides of the brook, are actually in his touch and complete understanding. As he is unable to live out of water, the horse on the bank, in whose very shadow he sometimes lies, might be a mile away for aught it concerns him. By no possible means can he discover anything about it. The horse may be itself nothing more than a shadow, unless in a shallow place he steps in and splashes. Night and day he knows, the cool night, and the sunbeams in which he basks; but he has no way of ascertaining the nature of anything outside the water. Centuries spent in such conditions could add but little to his experience. Does he hear the stream running past him? Do the particles of water, as they brush his sides and fins, cause a sound, as the wind by us? While he lurks beneath a weed in the still pool, suddenly a shoal of roach rush by with a sound like a flock of birds whose wings beat the air. The smooth surface of the still water appears to cover an utter silence, but probably to the fish there are ceaseless sounds. Water-fowl feeding in the weedy corners, whose legs depend down into the water and disturb it; water-rats diving and running along the bottom; water-beetles moving about; eels in the mud; the lower parts of flags and aquatic grasses swinging as the breeze ruffles their tips; the thud, thud of a horse's hoofs, and now and then the more distant roll of a hay-laden waggon. And thunder--how does thunder sound under the surface? It seems reasonable to suppose that fish possess a wide gamut of hearing since their other senses are necessarily somewhat curtailed, and that they are peculiarly sensitive to vibratory movements is certain from the destruction a charge of dynamite causes if exploded under water. Even in the deep sea the discharge of a torpedo will kill thousands of herrings. They are as it were killed by noise. So that there are grounds for thinking that my quiet jack in the pool, under the bank of the brook, is most keenly alive by his sense of hearing to things that are proceeding both out and in the water. More especially, no doubt, of things in the water itself. With all this specialised power of hearing he is still circumscribed and limited to the groove of the brook. The birds fly from field to field, from valley to mountain, and across the sea. Their experience extends to whole countries, and their opportunities are constant. How much more fortunate in this respect than the jack! A small display of intelligence by the fish is equivalent to a large display by the bird. When the jack has been much disturbed no one can do more than obtain a view of him, however skilfully he may conceal himself. The least sign of further proceedings will send the jack away; sometimes the mere appearance of the human form is sufficient. If less suspicious, the rod with the wire attached--or if you wish to make experiments, the rod without the wire--can be placed in the water, and moved how you choose. SPORT AND SCIENCE Kingfisher Corner was the first place I made for when, as a lad, I started from home with my gun. The dew of September lies long on the grass, and by the gateway I often noticed wasps that had spent the night in the bunches, numbed and chilled, crawling up the blades bent into an arch by the weight of the drops. Thence they got on the gate, where, too, the flies congregated at that time in the morning; for while it was still cool at the surface on the ground, the dry wood soon absorbed the heat of the sun. This warmth brought them to life again, and after getting well charged with it, the insects flew off to any apples they could discover. These heavy dews, as the summer declines, keep the grass fresh and green, and maintain the leaves on hedge and tree; yet they do not reach the earth, which remains dry. It is a different dew to the spring dew, or acts in another manner: the spring dews moisten the earth, and from the arable lands as the sun shines forth you may see the vapour rise and drift along the surface, like the smoke of a gun on a damp day. The mottled geometrical giant spiders find their webs thick with this September dew, which seems as if a little unctuous. Stepping through the gateway with the morning sun behind me, I saw at each step a fresh circle of dewdrops gleam, some ruby, some emerald, some brightly white, at the same distance in front. The angle of refraction advanced as I moved; there was a point at which the dewdrop shot back a brilliant ray, and then became invisible, or appeared a mere drop of dull water. By moonlight there is thus formed a semicircle of light on the grass, which continually moves before you; it is a halo on the grass-tips. I noticed this as a boy, and tried all sorts of experiments respecting it, but never met with any mention of it in books till quite lately, in Benvenuto Cellini's "Autobiography." He says, "There appeared a resplendent light over my head, which has displayed itself conspicuously to all I have thought proper to show it to, but those were very few. This shining light is to be seen in the morning over my shadow till two o'clock in the afternoon, and it appears to the greatest advantage when the grass is moist with dew; it is likewise visible in the evening at sunset. This phenomenon I took notice of in Paris, because the air is exceedingly clear in that climate, so that I could distinguish it there much plainer than in Italy, where mists are much more frequent; but I can still see it even here, and show it to others, though not to the same advantage as in France." Benvenuto thought this one of the most extraordinary things that had happened to him; and records it after a wonderful dream, as if it, too, were supernatural. It is, however, possible that some eyes are so constituted as not to be able to see this phenomenon in their own case; at least, I have sometimes tried in vain to get other people to see it. I should not have noticed it had I not been about at all hours with my gun as a boy. It is much more visible by moonlight, when the rabbits' white tails go dot, dot, lightly over the grass, and you are just as likely to shoot at their shadows as at their bodies. As the scythe of the mower mows a swathe before him, so the semicircle of light moves in front over the dew, and the grass appears another tint, as it does after a roller has passed. In a scientific publication not long since, a letter was published describing what the writer supposed was indeed something extraordinary. He had seen a fragment of rainbow--a square piece, as it were--by itself in the sky, some distance to one side of the sun. In provincial papers such letters may often be found, and even, until lately, in papers issued in London; now with accurate accounts of an ordinary halo about the sun, now with a description of a prismatic cloud round the moon, and one day some one discovered that there were two currents of air, as the clouds went in two directions. Now, it is clear enough that none of these writers had ever been out with a gun or a rod; I mean out all day, and out in the full sense of the phrase. They had read books of science; from their language they were thoroughly educated, and felt a deep interest in natural phenomena. Yet what a marvel was here made out of the commonest incidents of the sky! Halos about the sun happen continually; the prismatic band or cloud about the moon is common; so is the detached rainbow; as for the two currents of air, the clouds often travel in three directions, occasionally in four. These incidents are no more surprising to a sportsman than the sunset. I saw them, as a boy, almost day by day, and recorded the meteors in the evening. It seems to me that I used to see scores of meteors of various degrees of brightness. Once the path, the woods, the fields, and the distant hills were lit as if with a gigantic electric light; I was so interested in tracing the well-known scene so suddenly made apparent in the darkness that it was not for some seconds I thought of looking for the bolide, but even then I was in time to see it declining just before extinction. Others who have been out with their guns have, of course, seen exactly the same things; I do not mention them to claim for myself any special powers of observation, but as instances of the way in which sport brings one in contact with nature. Other sportsmen, too, must have smiled at the marvel made of such appearances by clever and well-educated, but indoor, people. This very spring (1883), as I walked about a town in the evening, I used to listen to find if I could hear any one mention the zodiacal light, which, just after sunset, was distinctly visible for a fortnight at a time. It was more than usually distinct, a perfect cone, reaching far up into the sky among the western stars. No one seemed to observe it, though it faced them evening after evening. Here was an instance in the opposite direction--a curious phenomenon, even now rather the subject of hypothesis than of demonstration, entirely overlooked. The common phenomenon made a marvel, and the unexplained phenomenon unnoticed. Both in the eyes of a thoughtful person are equally wonderful; but that point of view is apart from my present object, which is to show that sport trains the eye. As a boy, roving about the hedges with my gun, it was my especial delight to see Mercury, because one of the great astronomers had never seen that planet, and because in all the books it was stated as difficult to see. The planet was favourably situated, and I used to see it constantly after sunset then, pale, and but just outside the sunset glow, only a little way above the distant hills. Now it is curious, to remark in passing, that as the sun sets behind a hill the slope of the hill towards you is often obscured by his light. It appears a luminous misty surface, rosy-tinted, and this luminous mist hides the trees upon it, so that the slope is apparently nothing but a broad sweep of colour; while those hills opposite the sun, even if twice as distant, are so clearly defined that the smallest object is evident upon them. Sometimes, instead of the mist on the western hill, there is a blood-like purple almost startling in its glory of light. There have been few things I have read of, or studied, which in some manner or other I have not seen illustrated in this country while out in the fields. It is said that in the Far West, on the level prairies, when the snow covers them, you see miles and miles away, a waggon stopping; you hurry on, and in half a day's journey overtake it, to find the skull of an ox--so greatly has distance and the mirage of the snow magnified its apparent size. But a few days since I saw some rooks on the telegraph wires against a bright sky, but as I approached they flew and resolved into starlings, so much had the brilliant light deceived me. A hare sometimes, on the open ground, looks at a distance, in the sunny days of May when hares are often abroad in daylight, as big as a good-sized dog, and, except by the leap and the absence of visible tail, can hardly be told from a dog. The bamboo fishing-rods, if you will glance at the bamboo itself as you fish, seem the most singular of growths. There is no wood in the hedge like it, neither ash, hazel, oak, sapling, nor anything; it is thoroughly foreign, almost unnatural. The hard knots, the hollow stem, the surface glazed so as to resist a cut with a knife and nearly turn the steel--this is a tropical production alone. But while working round the shore presently you come to the sedges, and by the sedges stands a bunch of reeds. A reed is a miniature bamboo, the same shape, the same knots, and glazy surface; and on reference to any intelligent work of botany, it appears that they both belong to the same order of inward-growing Endogens, so that a few moments bestowed on the reed by the waters give a clear idea of the tropical bamboo, and make the singular foreign production home-like and natural. I found, while I was shooting every day, that the reeds, and ferns, and various growths through which I pushed my way, explained to me the jungles of India, the swamps of Central Africa, and the backwoods of America; all the vegetation of the world. Representatives exist in our own woods, hedges, and fields, or by the shore of inland waters. It was the same with flowers. I think I am scientifically accurate in saying that every known plant has a relative of the same species or genus, growing wild in this country. The very daisy, the commonest of all, contains a volume of botany; so do the heaths, and the harebells that hang so heavily under the weight of the September dew. The horse-tails by the shore carry the imagination further back into the prehistoric world when relations of these plants flourished as trees. The horse-tails by ponds are generally short, about a foot or eighteen inches high, more or less, but in ditches occasionally there are specimens of the giant horse-tail as high as the waistcoat, with a stem as thick as a walking-stick. This is a sapling from which the prehistoric tree can readily be imagined. From our southern woods the wild cat has been banished, but still lives in the north as an English representative of that ferocious feline genus which roams in tropical forests. We still have the deer, both wild and in parks. Then there are the birds, and these, in the same manner as plants, represent the inhabitants of the trackless wilds abroad. Happily the illustration fails mostly in reptiles, which need not be regretted; but even these, in their general outline as it were, are presented. It has long been one of my fancies that this country is an epitome of the natural world, and that if any one has come really into contact with its productions, and is familiar with them, and what they mean and represent, then he has a knowledge of all that exists on the earth. It holds good even of Australia; for palaeontologists produce fossil remains of marsupials or kangaroos. As for the polar conditions, when going round for snipes I constantly saw these in miniature. The planing action of ice was shown in the ditches, where bridges of ice had been formed; these slipping, with a partial thaw, smoothed the grasses and mars of teazles in the higher part of the slope, and then lower down, as the pressure increased, cut away the earth, exposing the roots of grasses, and sometimes the stores of acorns laid up by mice. Frozen again in the night, the glacier stayed, and crumbling earth, leaves, fibres, acorns, and small dead boughs fell on it. Slipping on as the wind grew warmer, it carried these with it and deposited them fifty yards from where they originated. This is exactly the action of a glacier. The ice-mist was often visible over the frozen water-meadows, where I went for duck, teal, and at intervals a woodcock in the adjacent mounds. But it was better seen in the early evening over a great pond, a mile or more long; where, too, the immense lifting power of water was exemplified, as the merest trickle of a streamlet flowing in by-and-by forced up the thick ice in broad sheets weighing hundreds of tons. Then, too, breathing-holes formed just as they are described in the immense lakes of North America, Lakes Superior or Michigan, and in the ice of the Polar circle. These were never frozen over, and attracted wild-fowl. In August, when there were a few young ducks about, the pond used to remind me in places of the tropical lakes we heard so much of after the explorers got through the portentous continent, on account of the growth of aquatic weeds, the quantity and extent of which no one would credit who had not seen them. No wonder the explorers could not get through the papyrus-grown rivers and lakes, for a boat could hardly be forced through these. Acres upon acres of weeds covered the place, some coming up from a depth of twelve feet. Some fish are chiefly on the feed in the morning, and any one who has the courage to get up at five will find them ravenous. We often visited the place a little after that hour. A swim was generally the first thing, and I mention a swim because it brings me to the way in which this mere pond illustrated the great ocean which encircles the world. For it is well known that the mighty ocean is belted with currents, the cold water of the Polar seas seeking the warmth of the Equator, and the warm water of the Equator floating--like the Gulf Stream--towards the Pole, floating because (I think I am right) the warm water runs on the surface. The favourite spot for swimming in our pond was in such a position that a copse cast a wide piece of water there into deep shadow all the morning up till ten o'clock at least. At six in the morning this did not matter, all the water was of much the same temperature; having been exposed to the night everywhere, it was cold of course. But after ten the thing was different; by that time the hot reaper's sun had warmed the surface of the open water on which the rays fell almost from the moment the sun rose. Towards eleven o'clock the difference in temperature was marked; but those who then came to bathe, walking along the shore or rowing, dipped their hands in and found the water warm, and anticipated that it would be equally so at the bathing-place. So it was at the surface, for the warm water had begun to flow in, and the cold water out, rather deeper, setting up, in fact, an exact copy of the current of the ocean, the shadowed part by the copse representing the Polar area. Directly any one began to swim he found the difference, the legs went down into cold water, and in many cases cramp ensued with alarming results and danger. Down to the chest it was warm, quite warm, while the feet were very cold. Not much imagination is needed to conceive the effect on persons not used to rough bathing, and even a strong man might suffer. People insisted that these chills and cramps were caused by cold springs rising at the bottom, and could not be argued out of that belief. As a matter of fact there was not a single spring over the whole extent of the bottom. That part in particular was often dry, not from dry weather, but as the water of the pond was drawn away. Let it rain as much as it would, no spring ever broke up there. The cold currents were produced by the shadow of the copse, and, had the trees been felled, would have disappeared. That would have been like letting the sun of the Equator shine on the Polar seas. After a storm of wind the lee shore was marked with a dark-green line of weeds and horse-tails, torn up and drifted across, which had been thrown up by the little breakers beyond the usual level of the water. A mass of other weeds and horse-tails, boughs and leaves, remained floating; and now was seen a reversal of the habits of fishes. Every one knows that fishes seek the windward shore in a breeze for the insects blown in; but now, while the gale, though subsiding, still rippled the water, the best place to fish was on the lee shore, just at the edge of the drifted weeds. Various insects probably were there washed away from the green raft to which they had clung. The water being often lowered by drawing hatches, the level changed frequently; and as storms of wind happened at different levels, so there were several little raised beaches showing where the level had been, formed of washed gravel and stones--the counterpart, in fact, of the raised beaches of the geologists. When the water was almost all drawn off, then there was a deep winding channel in the mud of the bottom, along which trickled a little streamlet which fed the pond. The sun hardening the mud, it was possible by-and-by to walk to the edge of the channel, where it could be seen that the streamlet ran five or six feet deep between precipitous banks of mud. Near where the stream first entered the pond the deposit was much deeper, for this five feet of alluvium had, in fact, been brought down by one small brook in the course of little more than fifty years. The pond had been formed fifty years previously, but already in so short a period, geologically speaking, all that end was silting up, and the little brook was making a delta, and a new land was rising from the depths of the wave. This is exactly what has happened on an immensely larger scale in the history of the earth, and any one who had seen it, and knew the circumstances, could comprehend the enormous effects produced in geological time by rivers like the Ganges, the Amazon, or Nile. Going by with a gun so frequently, one could not help noticing these things, and remembering them when reading Lyell's "Geology," or Maury's book on the sea, or the innumerable treatises bearing on the same interesting questions. Whether en route for the rabbit-ground, or looking for water-fowl, or later for snipe, I never passed by without finding something, often a fragment of fossil washed from the gravel or sand by the last storm. NATURE AND THE GAMEKEEPER The changes in the fauna of the inland counties brought about by the favour shown to certain species are very remarkable. The alterations caused by the preservation of pheasants have reached their limit. No further effects are likely to be produced, even if pheasant-preserving should be carried to a still greater extent, which itself is improbable. One creature at least, the pine-marten, has been exterminated over Southern England, and is now only to be seen--in the stuffed state--in museums. It may be roughly described as a large tree-weasel, and was shot down on account of its habit of seizing pheasants at roost. The polecat is also practically extinct, though occasional specimens are said to occur. These two animals could not be allowed to exist in any preserve. But it is in the list of birds that the change is most striking. Eagles are gone: if one is seen it is a stray from Scotland or Wales; and so are the buzzards, except from the moors. Falcons are equally rare: the little merlin comes down from the north now and then, but the peregrine falcon as a resident or regular visitor is extinct. The hen-harrier is still shot at intervals; but the large hawks have ceased out of the daily life, as it were, of woods and fields. Horned owls are becoming rare; even the barn-owl has all but disappeared from some districts, and the wood-owl is local. The raven is extinct--quite put out. The birds are said to exist near the sea-coast; but it is certain that any one may walk over inland country for years without seeing one. These, being all more or less birds of prey, could not but be excluded from pheasant-covers. All these birds, however, would probably resume their ancient habitations in the course of five-and-twenty years if permitted to do so. They exist plentifully at no great distance--judged as such strong flyers judge distance; and if they found that they were unmolested they would soon come back from the extremities of the land. But even more remarkable than the list of birds driven away is the list of those creatures, birds and animals, which have stood their ground in spite of traps, guns, and dogs. Stoats and weasels are always shot when seen, they are frequently trapped, and in every manner hunted to the death and their litters destroyed--the last the most effectual method of extermination. But in spite of the unceasing enmity directed against them, stoat and weasel remain common. They still take their share of game, both winged and ground. Stoat and weasel will not be killed out. As they are both defenceless creatures, and not even swift of foot, being easily overtaken in the open, their persistent continuance is curious. If any reason can be assigned for it, it must be because they spend much of their time in buries, where they are comparatively safe, and because they do not confine themselves to woods, but roam cornfields and meadows. Certainly, if man has tried to exterminate any creature, he has tried his hardest to get rid of these two, and has failed. It is even questionable whether their numbers show any appreciable diminution. Kept down to the utmost in one place, they flourish in another. Kestrel and sparrowhawk form a parallel among winged creatures. These two hawks have been shot, trapped, and their eggs destroyed unsparingly: they remain numerous just the same. Neither of them choose inaccessible places for their eyries; neither of them rear large broods. The sparrowhawk makes a nest in a tree, often in firs; the kestrel lays in old rooks', crows', or magpies' nests. Both the parents are often shot on or near the nest, and the eggs broken. Sometimes the young are permitted to grow large enough to fly, and are then shot down after the manner of rook-shooting. Nevertheless kestrels are common, and sparrowhawks, if not quite so numerous, are in no degree uncommon. Perhaps the places of those killed are supplied by birds from the great woods, moors, and mountains of the north. A third instance is the crow. Hated by all gamekeepers, and sportsmen, by farmers, and every one who has anything to do with country life, the crow survives. Cruel tyrant as he is to every creature smaller than himself, not a voice is raised in his favour. Yet crows exist in considerable numbers. Shot off in some places, they are recruited again from others where there is less game preservation. The case of the crow, however, is less striking than that of the two hawks; because the crow is a cosmopolitan bird, and if every specimen in the British Isles were destroyed to-day, there would be an influx from abroad in a very short time. The crow is, too, partly a sea-coast feeder, and so escapes. Still, to any one who knows how determined is the hostility to his race shown by all country people, his existence in any number must be considered remarkable. His more powerful congener the raven, as has been pointed out, is practically extinct in southern counties, and no longer attacks the shepherd's weakly lambs. Why, then, does the crow live on? Wherever a pair of ravens do exist the landowner generally preserves them now, as interesting representatives of old times. They are taken care of; people go to see them; the appearance of eggs in the nest is recorded. But the raven does not multiply. Barn-owls live on, though not in all districts. Influenced by the remonstrance of naturalists, many gentlemen have stopped the destruction of owls; but a custom once established is not easily put an end to. Jays and magpies have also been subjected to a bitter warfare of extermination. Magpies are quite shot off some places; in others they exist sparingly; here and there they may be found in fair numbers. Occasionally their nests are preserved--indeed, the growing tendency is to spare. Still, they have been shot off rigorously, and have survived it. So have jays. In large woods--particularly where there is much fir--jays are so numerous that to destroy them seems almost impossible. Another bird that has defied the gun and trap is the green woodpecker, which used to be killed for alleged destruction of timber. Woodpeckers are not now so ceaselessly killed, though the old system of slaying them is common enough. They have defied not only gun and trap, but the cunning noose placed at the mouth of their holes. Twenty creatures, furred and feathered, have undergone severe persecution since the extension of pheasant-covers, and of these the first nine have more or less succumbed--namely, pine-marten, polecat, eagle, buzzard, falcon, kite, horned owl, harrier, and raven. The remaining eleven have survived--namely, stoat, weasel, rat, crow, kestrel, sparrowhawk, brown and barn owl, jay, magpie, and woodpecker. Pheasants of themselves are not responsible for all this warfare and all these changes; but the pheasant-cover means more than pheasants, or rather has done. Rabbits required even more protection from furred enemies; the head of rabbits kept up in many places practically paid the keeper's wages. This warfare in its fiercest form may be roughly said to be coeval with the invention of the percussion gun, and to have raged now for over half a century. The resistance, therefore, of the various species has been fairly tested, and we may reasonably conclude that no further disappearance will take place, unless by the destruction of woods themselves. One new bird only has been introduced into England since the pheasant--the red-legged partridge which seems to be fairly established in some districts, not to the entire satisfaction of sportsmen. One new bird has also been introduced into Scotland--in this case a re-introduction. The magnificent capercailzie is now flourishing again in the north, to the honour of those who laboured for its restoration. In these notes I have not included attempts at acclimatisation, as that of the wild turkey from North America, which has partly succeeded. Beavers, too, have been induced to resume possession of their ancient streams under careful supervision, but they are outside present consideration. While England has thus lost some species and suffered a diminution of several, other countries have been supplied from our streams and woods and hedgerows. England has sent the sparrow to the United States and Australia; also the nightingale, rabbit, salmon, trout, and sweet-briar. It is quite open to argument that pheasant-covers have saved as well as destroyed. Wood-pigeons could scarcely exist in such numbers without the quiet of preserved woods to breed in; nor could squirrels. Nor can the rarity of such birds as the little bearded tit be charged on game. The great bustard, the crane, and bittern have been driven away by cultivation. The crane, possibly, has deserted us wilfully; since civilisation in other countries has not destroyed it. And then the fashion of making natural history collections has much extended of recent years: so much so, that many blame too ardent collectors for the increasing rarity of birds like the crossbill, waxwing, hoopoe, golden oriole, and others which seem to have once visited this country more commonly than at present. THE SACRIFICE TO TROUT How much the breeding of pheasants has told upon the existence of other creatures in fur and feathers I have already shown; and much the same thing is true of the preservation of trout. There is this difference, however: that while the pheasant has now produced its utmost effect, the alterations due to trout are increasing. Trout are now so highly and so widely preserved that the effect cannot but be felt. Their preservation in the numbers now considered necessary entails the destruction of some and the banishment of other creatures. The most important of these is the otter. Guns, dogs, traps set under water so as not to be scented; all modes of attack are pressed into the service, and it is not often that he escapes. When traces of an otter were found, a little while since, in the Kennet--he had left his mark on the back of a trout--the fact was recorded with as much anxiety as if a veritable wolf had appeared. With such animosity has the otter been hunted that he is becoming one of the rarest of wild animals here in the south. He is practically extinct on the majority of southern streams, and has been almost beaten off the Thames itself. But the otter is not likely to be exterminated in the sense that the wolf has been. Otters will be found elsewhere in England long after the last of them has disappeared from the south. Next the pike must be ousted from trout-streams. Special nets have been invented by which pike can be routed from their strongholds. Much hunting about quickens the intelligence of the pike to such a degree that he cannot be secured in the ordinary manner; he baffles the net by keeping close to the bank, behind stones, or by retiring to holes under roots. Perch have to go as well as pike; and then comes the turn of birds. Herons, kingfishers, moorhens, coots, grebes, ducks, teal, various divers, are all proscribed on behalf of trout. Herons are regarded as most injurious to a fishery. As was observed a century ago, a single heron will soon empty a pond or a stretch of brook. As their long necks give them easy command of a wide radius in spying round them, it is rather difficult to shoot them with a shot-gun; but with the small-bore rifles now made no heron is safe. They are generally shot early in the morning. Were it not for the fact that herons nest like rooks, and that heronries are valued appurtenances in parks, they would soon become scarce. Kingfishers prey on smaller fish, but are believed to eat almost as many as herons. Kingfishers resort in numbers to trout nurseries, which are as traps for them: and there they are more than decimated. Owls are known to take fish occasionally, and are therefore shot. The greatest loss sustained in fisheries takes place in the spawning season, and again when the fry are about. Some students of fish-life believe that almost all wild-fowl will swallow the ova and fry of trout. It must be understood that I am not here entering into the question whether all these are really so injurious; I am merely giving a list of the "dogs with a bad name." Moorhens and coots are especially disliked because they are on or near the water day and night, and can clear off large quantities of fry. Grebes (di-dappers or dabchicks) are similar in habit, but less destructive because fewer. Ducks are ravenous devourers; teal are equally hated. The various divers which occasionally visit the streams are also guilty. Lastly, the swan is a well-known trout-pirate. Besides these, the two kinds of rat--land and water--have a black mark against them. Otter, pike, perch, heron, kingfisher, owl, moorhen, coot, grebe, diver, wild-duck, swan, teal, dipper, land-rat, and water-rat--altogether sixteen creatures--are killed in order that one may flourish. Although none of these, even in the south of England--except the otter--has yet been excluded, the majority of them are so thinned down as to be rarely seen unless carefully sought. To go through the list: otters are practically excluded; the pike is banished from trout streams but is plentiful in others; so too with perch; herons, much reduced in numbers; owls, reduced; kingfishers, growing scarce; coots, much less numerous because not permitted to nest; grebes, reduced; wild-duck, seldom seen in summer, because not permitted to nest; teal, same; swan, not permitted on fisheries unless ancient rights protect it; divers, never numerous, now scarcer; moorhens, still fairly plentiful because their ranks are constantly supplied from moats and ponds where they breed under semi-domestic conditions. The draining of marsh-lands and levels began the exile of wild-fowl; and now the increasing preservation of trout adds to the difficulties under which these birds strive to retain a hold upon inland waters. The Thames is too long and wide for complete exclusion; but it is surprising how few moorhens even are to be seen along the river. Lesser rivers are still more empty, as it were, of life. The great osier-beds still give shelter to some, but not nearly so many as formerly. Up towards the spring-heads, where the feeders are mere runlets, the scarcity of wild-fowl has long been noticed. Hardly a wild-duck is now seen; one or two moorhens or a dabchick seem all. Coots have quite disappeared in some places: they are shot on ponds, having an ill reputation for the destruction of the fry of coarse or pond fish, as well as of trout. Not all these changes, indeed, are attributable to trout alone; but the trout holds a sort of official position and leads the van. Other southern rivers, with the exception of the Thames, are for the most part easily preserved. They run through cultivated country, with meadows or cornfields, woods or copses, and rarely far through open, unenclosed land. A stranger, and without permission, would often find it difficult to walk half a mile along the bank of such a stream as this. Consequently, if it is desired to preserve it, the riparian owners can do so to the utmost, and the water-fowl considered injurious to fish can as easily be kept down. It is different in the north, for instance, where the streams have a background of moors, mountains, tarns, and lakes. In these their fastnesses birds find some security. From the coast they are also recruited; while on our southern coasts it is a source of lament that wild-fowl are not nearly so plentiful as formerly. Of course in winter it often happens that a flock of wild-fowl alight in passing; but how long do they stay? The real question is, how many breed? Where trout are carefully preserved, very few indeed; so that it is evident trout are making as much difference as the pheasants. Trout preservation has become much more extended since the fish has been studied and found to be easily bred. Advertisements are even put forward recommending people to keep trout instead of poultry, since they can be managed with certainty. It seems reasonable, therefore, to suppose that the influence of trout on wild creatures will continue to extend for some time yet. Already where trout preservation has been carefully carried out it has produced a visible impression upon their ranks. In ten years, if it were abandoned, most of these creatures would be plentiful again on the waters from which they have been driven; I should myself be very glad to see many of them back again. But if preservation has excluded many creatures, it has also saved many. Badgers, in all probability, would be extinct--really extinct, like the wolf--were it not for the seclusion of covers. Without the protection which hunting affords them, foxes would certainly have disappeared. The stag and fallow-deer are other examples; so, too, the wild white cattle maintained in a few parks. In a measure the rook owes its existence to protection; for although naturalists have pointed out its usefulness, the rook is no favourite with agriculturists. Woodcocks, again, are protected, and are said to have increased, though it is open to question if their increased numbers may not be due to other causes. Cultivation banishes wild geese and snipe, but adds to the numbers of small birds, I fancy, and very probably to the number of mice. When the country was three-fourths champaign--open, unenclosed, and uncultivated--it cannot be supposed that so many grain-eating birds found sustenance as now. The subject is capable of much development Enough, however, has been said to show that Nature at present is under artificial restraints; but her excluded creatures are for the most part ready to return if ever those restraints are removed. THE HOVERING OF THE KESTREL There has lately been some discussion about the hovering of kestrels: the point being whether the bird can or cannot support itself in the air while stationary, without the assistance of one or more currents of air. The kestrel is the commonest hawk in the southern parts of England, so that many opportunities occur to observe his habits; and there ought not to be any doubt in the matter. It is even alleged that it will go far to decide the question of the possibility of flight or of the construction of an aerial machine. Without entering into this portion of the discussion, let us examine the kestrel's habits. This hawk has a light easy flight, usually maintaining an altitude a little lower than the tallest elms, but higher than most trees. He will keep this particular altitude for hours together, and sweep over miles of country, with only occasional variations--excluding, of course, descents for the purpose of taking mice. It is usually at this height that a kestrel hovers, though he is capable of doing it a much greater elevation. As he comes gliding through the atmosphere, suddenly he shoots up a little (say, roughly, two or three feet), and then stops short. His tail, which is broader than it looks, is bent slightly downwards; his wings beat the air, at the first glance, just as if he was progressing. Sometimes he seems to oscillate to one side, sometimes to the other; but these side movements do not amount to any appreciable change of position. If there be little or no wind (note this) he remains beating the air, to the eye at least perfectly stationary, perhaps as much as half a minute or more. He then seems to slip forward about half a yard, as if a pent-up force was released, but immediately recovers himself and hovers again. This alternate hovering and slipping forward may be repeated two or three times: it seems to depend on the bird's judgment as to the chance of prey. If he does not think a mouse is to be had, at the first slip he allows himself to proceed. If the spot be likely, or (what is still more tempting) if it is near a place where he has taken prey previously, he will slip and bring up several times. Now and then he will even fetch a half-circle when his balance or impetus (or both) is quite exhausted, and to return to the same spot and recommence. But this is not often, as a rule, after two or three slips he proceeds on his voyage. He will repeat the same round day after day, if undisturbed, and, if the place be at all infested with mice, he will come to it three or four times a day. There is, therefore, every chance of watching him, if you have once found his route. Should he spy a mouse, down he comes, quick but steady, and very nearly straight upon it. But kestrels do not always descend upon prey actually in view. Unless I am much mistaken, they now and then descend in a likely spot and watch like a cat for a minute or two for mice or beetles. For rest they always seek a tree. Now, having briefly sketched his general manner, let us return and examine the details. In the first place, he usually rises slightly, with outstretched wings, as if about to soar at the moment of commencing hovering. The planes of the wings are then inclined, and meet the air. At the instant of stopping, the tail is depressed. It appears reasonable to conjecture that the slight soaring is to assist the tail in checking his onward course, and to gain a balance. Immediately the wings beat rapidly, somewhat as they do in ordinary flight but with a more forward motion, and somewhat as birds do when about to perch on an awkward ledge, as a swallow at an incomplete nest under an eave. The wings look more, in front, as if attached to his neck. In an exaggerated way ducks beat the air like this, with no intention of rising at all, merely to stretch their wings. The duck raises himself as he stands on the ground, stretches himself to his full height, and flaps his wings horizontally. The kestrel's wings strike downwards and a very little forwards, for his natural tendency is to slip forwards, and the object of slightly reversing his vanes is to prevent this and yet at the same time to support him. His shape is such that if he were rigid with outstretched wings he would glide ahead, just as a ship in a calm slowly forges ahead because of her lines, which are drawn for forward motion. The kestrel's object is to prevent his slip forwards, and the tail alone will not do it. It is necessary for him to "stroke" the air in order to keep up at all; because the moment he pauses gravitation exercises a force much greater than when he glides. While hovering there are several forces balanced: first, the original impetus onwards; secondly, that of the depressed tail dragging and stopping that onward course; thirdly, that of the wing beating downwards; and fourthly, that of the wing a very little reversed beating forwards, like backing water with a scull. When used in the ordinary way the shape of the wing causes it to exert a downward and a backward pressure. His slip is when he loses balance: it is most obviously a loss of balance; he quite oscillates sometimes when it occurs; and now and then I have seen a kestrel unable to catch himself, and obliged to proceed some distance before he could hover again. Occasionally, in the slip he loses a foot or so of elevation, but not always. While actually hovering, his altitude does not vary an inch. All and each of these movements and the considerations to which they give rise show conclusively that the act of hovering is nothing more or less than an act of balancing; and when he has his balance he will rest a moment with outstretched wings kept still. He uses his wings with just sufficient force neither to rise nor fall, and prevents progress by a slightly different stroke. The next point is, Where does he hover? He hovers any and everywhere, without the slightest choice. He hovers over meadows, cornfields; over the tops of the highest downs, sometimes at the very edge of a precipice or above a chalk quarry; over gardens, waste ground; over the highway; over summer and other ricks and thatched sheds, from which he sometimes takes his prey; over stables, where mice abound. He has no preference for one side of a hedge or grove, and cares not the least on which the wind blows. His hovering is entirely determined by his judgment as to the chance of prey. I have seen a kestrel hover over every variety of dry ground that is to be found. Next, as to the wind. If any one has read what has preceded upon his manner of preserving his balance, it must be at once apparent that, supposing a kestrel were hovering in a calm and a wind arose, he would at once face it, else his balance could not be kept. Even on the ground almost all birds face the wind by choice; but the hovering kestrel has no choice. He must hover facing the wind, or it would upset him: just as you may often see a rook flung half aback by a sudden gust. Hence has arisen the supposition that a kestrel cannot hover without a wind. The truth is, he can hover in a perfect calm, and no doubt could do so in a room if it were large enough. He requires no current of any kind, neither a horizontal breeze nor an ascending current. A kestrel can and does hover in the dead calm of summer days, when there is not the faintest breath of wind. He will and does hover in the still, soft atmosphere of early autumn, when the gossamer falls in showers, coming straight down as if it were raining silk. If you puff up a ball of thistledown it will languish on your breath and sink again to the sward. The reapers are sweltering in the wheat, the keeper suffocates in the wood, the carter walks in the shadow cast by his load of corn, the country-side stares all parched and cracked and gasps for a rainy breeze. The kestrel hovers just the same. Could he not do so, a long calm would half starve him, as that is his manner of preying. Having often spent hours in trees for the purpose of a better watch upon animals and birds, I can vouch for it that ascending currents are not frequent--rare, in fact, except in a gale. In a light air or calm there is no ascending current, or it is imperceptible and of no use to the kestrel. Such currents, when they do exist, are very local; but the kestrel's hover is not local: he can hover anywhere. He can do it in the face of a stiff gale, and in a perfect calm. The only weather he dislikes is heavy thunder, rain, or hail, during which he generally perches on a tree; but he can hover in all ordinary rain. He effects it by sheer power and dexterity of wing. Therefore if the fact has any bearing upon the problem of flight, the question of currents may be left out altogether. His facing the wind is, as has been pointed out, only a proof that he is keeping his balance. The kestrel is not the only bird that hovers. The sparrowhawk can. So can all the finches, more or less, when taking seeds from a plant which will not bear their weight or which they cannot otherwise get at; also when taking insects on the wing. Sparrows do the same. Larks hover in their mating season uttering a short song, not the same as when they soar. Numerous insects can hover: the great dragon-fly will stop dead short in his rapid flight, and stay suspended till it suits him to advance. None of these require any current or wind. I do not think that hovering requires so much strength of wing or such an exercise of force as when birds rise almost straight up. Snipes do it, and woodcocks; so also pheasants, rocketing with tremendous effort; so also a sparrow in a confined court, rising almost straight to the slates. Evidently this needs great power. Hovering is very interesting; but not nearly so mysterious as at least one other power possessed by birds. BIRDS CLIMBING THE AIR Two hawks come over the trees, and, approaching each other, rise higher into the air. They wheel about for a little without any apparent design, still rising, when one ceases to beat the air with his wings, stretches them to their full length, and seems to lean aside. His impetus carries him forward and upward, at the same time in a circle, something like a skater on one foot. Revolving round a centre, he rises in a spiral, perhaps a hundred yards across; screwing upwards, and at each turn ascending half the diameter of the spiral. When he begins this it appears perfectly natural, and nothing more than would necessarily result if the wings were held outstretched and one edge of the plane slightly elevated. The impulse of previous flight, the beat of strong pinions, and the swing and rush of the bird evidently suffice for two or three, possibly for four or five, winding movements, after which the retarding effects of friction and gravitation ought, according to theory, to gradually bring the bird to a stop. But up goes the hawk, round and round like a woodpecker climbing a tree; only the hawk has nothing tangible into which to stick his claws and to rest his tail against. Those winding circles must surely cease; his own weight alone must stop him, and those wide wings outstretched must check his course. Instead of which the hawk rises as easily as at first, and without the slightest effort--no beat of wing or flutter, without even a slip or jerk, easily round and round. His companion does the same; often, perhaps always, revolving the opposite way, so as to face the first. It is a fascinating motion to watch. The graceful sweeping curl holds the eye: it is a line of beauty, and draws the glance up into the heights of the air. The darker upper part of one is usually visible at the same time as the lighter under part of the other, and as the dark wheels again the sunlight gleams on the breast and under wing. Sometimes they take regular curves, ascending in an equal degree with each; each curve representing an equal height gained perpendicularly. Sometimes they sweep round in wide circles, scarcely ascending at all. Again, suddenly one will shoot up almost perpendicularly, immediately followed by the other. Then they will resume the regular ascent. Up, like the woodpecker round a tree, till now the level of the rainy scud which hurries over in wet weather has long been past; up till to the eye it looks as if they must soon attain to the flecks of white cloud in the sunny sky to-day. They are in reality far from that elevation; but their true height is none the less wonderful. Resting on the sward, I have watched them go up like this through a lovely morning atmosphere till they seemed about to actually enter the blue, till they were smaller in appearance than larks at their highest ascent, till the head had to be thrown right back to see them. This last circumstance shows how perpendicularly they ascend, winding round a line drawn straight up. At their very highest they are hardly visible, except when the under wing and breast passes and gleams in the light. All this is accomplished with outstretched wings held at full length, without flap, or beat, or any apparent renewal of the original impetus. If you take a flat stone and throw it so that it will spin, it will go some way straight, then rise, turn aside, describe a half-circle, and fall. If the impetus kept in it, it would soar like the hawk, but this does not happen. A boomerang acts much in the same manner, only more perfectly: yet, however forcibly thrown, the impetus soon dies out of a boomerang. A skater gets up his utmost speed, suddenly stands on one foot, and describes several circles; but in two minutes comes to a standstill, unless he "screws," or works his skate, and so renews the impulse. Even at his best he only goes round, and does not raise his weight an inch from the ice. The velocity of a bullet rapidly decreases, and a ball shot from an express rifle, and driven by a heavy charge, soon begins to droop. When these facts are duly considered, it will soon be apparent what a remarkable feat soaring really is. The hawk does not always ascend in a spiral, but every now and then revolves in a circle--a flat circle--and suddenly shoots up with renewed rapidity. Whether this be merely sportive wantonness or whether it is a necessity, is impossible to determine; but to me it does not appear as if the hawk did it from necessity. It has more the appearance of variation: just as you or I might walk fast at one moment and slowly at another, now this side of the street and now the other. A shifting of the plane of the wings would, however, in all probability, give some impetus: the question is, would it be sufficient? I have seen hawks go up in sunny and lovely weather--in fact, they seem to prefer still, calm weather; but, considering the height to which they attain, no one can positively assert that they do or do not utilise a current. If they do, they may be said to sail (a hawk's wings are technically his sails) round half the circle with the wind fair and behind, and then meet it the other half of the turn, using the impetus they have gained to surmount the breeze as they breast it. Granting this mechanical assistance, it still remains a wonderful feat, since the nicest adjustment must be necessary to get the impetus sufficient to carry the birds over the resistance. They do not drift, or very little. My own impression is that a hawk can soar in a perfectly still atmosphere. If there is a wind he uses it; but it is quite as much an impediment as an aid. If there is no wind he goes up with the greater ease and to the greater height, and will of choice soar in a calm. The spectacle of a weight--for of course the hawk has an appreciable weight--apparently lifting itself in the face of gravitation and overcoming friction, is a very striking one. When an autumn leaf parts on a still day from the twig, it often rotates and travels some distance from the tree, falling reluctantly and with pauses and delays in the air. It is conceivable that if the leaf were animated and could guide its rotation, it might retard its fall for a considerable period of time, or even rise higher than the tree. COUNTRY LITERATURE I THE AWAKENING Four hundred years after the first printed book was sent out by Caxton the country has begun to read. An extraordinary reflection that twelve generations should pass away presenting the impenetrable front of indifference to the printing-press! The invention which travelled so swiftly from shore to shore till the remote cities of Mexico, then but lately discovered, welcomed it, for four centuries failed to enter the English counties. This incredible delay must not be supposed to be due to any exceptional circumstances or to inquisitorial action. The cause is found in the agricultural character itself. There has never been any difficulty in obtaining books in the country other than could be surmounted with patience. It is the peculiarity of knowledge that those who really thirst for it always get it. Books certainly came down in some way or other to Stratford-on-Avon, and the great mind that was growing there somehow found a means of reading them. Long, long before, when the printed page had not been dreamed of, the Grecian student, listening at the school, made his notes on oyster-shells and blade-bones. But here the will was wanting. There was no prejudice, for no people admired learning more than the village people, or gave it more willing precedence. It was simple indifference, which was mistaken for a lack of intelligence, but it was most certainly nothing of the kind. How great, then, must be the change when at last, after four hundred years, the country begins to read! To read everything and anything! The cottagers in faraway hamlets, miles from a railway station, read every scrap of printed paper that drifts across their way, like leaves in autumn. The torn newspapers in which the grocer at the market town wraps up their weekly purchases, stained with tallow or treacle, are not burned heedlessly. Some paragraph, some fragment of curious information, is gathered from the pieces. The ploughman at his luncheon reads the scrap of newspaper in which his bread-and-cheese was packed for him. Men read the bits of paper in which they carry their screws of tobacco. The stone-pickers in spring in the meadows, often women, look at the bits of paper scattered here and there before putting them in their baskets. A line here and a line yonder, one to-day, one to-morrow, in time make material equal to a book. All information in our day filters through the newspapers. There is no subject you can name of which you may not get together a good body of knowledge, often superior, because more recent, than that contained in the best volumes, by watching the papers and cutting out the paragraphs that relate to it. No villager does that, but this ceaseless searching for scraps comes to something like the same thing in a more general manner. London newspapers come now to the village and hamlet in all sorts of ways. Some by post, others by milk-cart, by carrier, by travellers; for country folk travel now, and invariably bring back papers bought at the railway bookstalls. After these have been read by the farmers and upper sort of people who purchased them, the fragments get out through innumerable channels to the cottages. The regular labourers employed on the farm often receive them as presents, and take nothing more gladly. If any one wishes to make a cottager a little present to show friendly remembrance, the best thing to send is a bundle of newspapers, especially, of course, if they are illustrated, which will be welcomed, and not a corner of the contents slurred over. Nothing is so contrary to fact as the common opinion that the agricultural labourer and his family are stupid and unintelligent. In truth, there are none who so appreciate information and they are quite capable of understanding anything that may be sent them in print. London papers of various descriptions come to the villages now in greatly increased numbers, probably fifteen or twenty for one that formerly arrived, and all these, or some portion of each, are nearly sure to be ultimately perused by some cottager. At the inns and beer-houses there is now usually a daily paper, unless the distance is farther than general to a station, and then there are weeklies with summaries of everything. So that the London press is accessible at the meanest beer-house, and well bethumbed and besmeared the blackened sheets are, with holes where clumsy fingers have gone through. The shepherd in his hut in the lambing season, when the east wind blows and he needs shelter, is sure to have a scrap of newspaper with him to pore over in the hollow of the windy downs. In summer he reads in the shade of the firs while his sheep graze on the slope beneath. The little country stations are often not stations at all in the urban idea of such a convenience, being quite distant from any town, and merely gathering together the traffic from cross-roads. But the porters and men who work there at times get a good many newspapers, and these, after looking at them themselves, they take or send up to their relatives in the village five or six miles away. Everybody likes to tell another the news; and now that there is such a village demand for papers, to pass on a paper is like passing the news, and gives a pleasure to donor and recipient. So that papers which in days gone by would have stopped where they first arrived now travel on and circulate. If you had given a cottager a newspaper a few years since he would have been silent and looked glum. If you give him one now he says, "Thank you," briskly. He and his read anything and everything; and as he walks beside the waggon he will pick up a scrap of newspaper from the roadside and pore over it as he goes. Girls in service send home papers from London; so do the lads when from home--and so many are away from home now. Papers come from Australia and America; the latter are especial favourites on account of the oddities with which the editors fill the corners. No one ever talks of the Continent in agricultural places; you hear nothing of France or Germany; nothing of Paris or Vienna, which are not so very distant in these days of railways, if distance be measured by miles. London and London news is familiar enough--they talk of London and of the United States or Australia, but particularly of the United States. The Continent does not exist to them; but the United States is a sort of second home, and the older men who have not gone sigh and say, "If I had 'a emigrated, now you see, I should 'a done well." There must be an immense increase in the number of papers passing through country post-offices. That the United States papers do come there is no doubt, for they are generally taken up by the cottage people to the farmhouses to show where the young fellows are who have left the place. But the remarkable fact is not in the increase of the papers, but in the growth of the desire to read them--the demand of the country for something to read. In cottages of the better sort years ago you used to find the most formal of old prints or coloured pictures on the walls, stiff as buckram, unreal, badly executed, and not always decent. The favourites now are cuttings from the _Illustrated London News_ or the _Graphic_, with pictures from which many cottages in the farthest away of the far country are hung round. Now and then one may be entered which is perfectly papered with such illustrations. These pictures in themselves play no inconsiderable part in educating the young, whose eyes become accustomed to correct representations of scenes in distant places, and who learn as much about such places and things as they could do without personally going. Besides which, the picture being found there is evidence that at fourth or fifth, or it may be the tenth hand, the paper itself must have got there, and if it got there it was read. The local press has certainly trebled in recent times, as may be learned by reference to any newspaper list and looking at the dates. The export, so to say, of type, machines, rollers, and the material of printing from London to little country places has equally grown. Now, these are not sent out for nothing, but are in effect paid for by the pennies collected in the crooked lanes and byways of rural districts. Besides the numerous new papers, there are the old-established ones whose circulation has enlarged. Altogether, the growth of the local country press is as remarkable in its way as was the expansion of the London press after the removal of the newspaper stamp. This is conclusive evidence of the desire to read, for a paper is a thing unsaleable unless some one wants to read it. They are for the most part weeklies, and their primary object is the collection of local information; but they one and all have excerpts from London publications, often very well selected, and quite amusing if casually caught up by persons who may have fancied they knew something of London, current gossip, and the world at large. For you must go from home to learn the news; and if you go into a remote hamlet and take up the local paper you are extremely likely to light on some paragraph skilfully culled which will make an impression on you. It is with these excerpts that the present argument is chiefly concerned, the point being that they are important influences in the spread of general information. After the local gossip has been looked at the purchasers of these prints are sure to turn to these pieces, which serve them and theirs the most of the week to absorb. II SCARCITY OF BOOKS Some little traffic in books, or rather pamphlets, goes on now in rural places through the medium of pedlars. There are not so many pedlars as was once the case, and those that remain are not men of such substance as their predecessors who travelled on foot with jewellery, laces, watches, and similar articles. The packmen who walk round the villages for tradesmen are a different class altogether: the pedlar does not confine himself to one district, and he sells for his own profit. In addition to the pins and ribbons, Birmingham jewellery, dream-books, and penny ballads, the pedlar now produces a bundle of small books, which are practically pamphlets, though in more convenient form than the ancient quartos. They are a miscellaneous lot, from fifty to one hundred and fifty pages; little monographs on one subject, tales, and especially such narratives as are drawn up and printed after a great calamity like the loss of the _Atalanta_. It is a curious fact that country people are much attracted to the sea, and the story of a shipwreck known to be true easily tempts the sixpences from their pockets. Dream-books and ballads sell as they always did sell, but for the rest the pedlar's bundle has nothing in it, as a rule, more pernicious than may be purchased at any little shop. Romantic novelettes, reprints of popular and really clever stories, numbers of semi-religious essays and so on--some only stitched and without a wrapper--make up the show he spreads open before the cottage door or the servants at the farmhouse. Often the gipsy women, whose vans go slowly along the main roads while they make expeditions to the isolated houses in the fields, bring with them very similar bundles of publications. The sale of books has thus partly supplanted that of clothes-pegs and trumpery finery. Neither pedlars nor gipsies would carry such articles as books unless there was a demand for them, and they thereby demonstrate the growth of the disposition to read. There are no other persons engaged in circulating books in the actual country than these. In the windows of petty shops in villages it is common to see a local newspaper displayed as a sign that it is sold there; and once now and then, but not often, a few children's story-books, rather dingy, may be found. But the keepers of such shops are not awake to the new condition of things; very likely they cannot read themselves, and it does not occur to them that the people now growing up may have different feelings to those that were general in their own young days. In this inability to observe the change they are not alone. If it was explained to them, again, they would not know how to set about getting in a suitable stock; they would not know what to choose nor where to buy cheaply. Somebody would have to do it all for them. Practically, therefore, in the actual country there are no other traders distributing cheap books than pedlars and gipsy women. Coming in thence to those larger villages which possess a market and are called towns--often only one long street--there is generally a sort of curiosity shop, kept perhaps by a cobbler, a carver and gilder, or brazier, where odds and ends, as old guns and pistols, renovated umbrellas, a stray portmanteau, rusty fenders, and so forth, are for sale. Inside the window are a few old books, with the brown and faded gilt covers so common in days gone by, and on market days these are put outside on the window-sill, or perhaps a plank on trestles forming a bookstall. The stray customers have hardly any connection with the growing taste for reading, being people a little outside the general run--gentlemen with archaeological or controversial tendencies, who never pass a dingy cover without going as far as the title-page--visitors, perhaps, at houses in the neighbourhood wandering round to look at an ancient gateway or sun-dial left from monastic days. Villagers beginning to read do not care for this class of work; like children, they look for something more amusing, and want something to wonder at for their money. At the post-office there is often an assortment of cheap stationery on sale, for where one cottager wrote a letter a few years ago ten write them now. But the shopkeeper--most likely a grocer or storekeeper of some kind--knows nothing of books, and will tell you, if you ask him, that he never sells any or has any orders. How should he sell any, pray, when he does not put the right sort into his window? He does not think people read: he is occupied with moist sugar. So that in these places literature is at a standstill. Proceeding onwards to the larger market town, which really is a town, perhaps a county town, or at least with a railway station, here one or two stationers may be found. One has a fair trade almost entirely with the middle-class people of the town; farmers when they drive in call for stationery, or for books if there is a circulating library, as there usually is. The villagers do not come to this shop; they feel that it is a little above them, and they are shy of asking for three pennyworth of writing-paper and envelopes. If they look in at the window in passing they see many well-bound books from 5s. to 10s., some of the more reputable novels, and educational manuals. The first they cannot afford; for the second they have not yet acquired the taste; the last repel them. This bookseller, though of course quite of a different stamp, and a man of business, would probably also declare that the villagers do not read. They do not come to him, and he is too busy to sit down and think about it. The other stationer's is a more humble establishment, where they sell cheap toys, Berlin wool, the weekly London papers with tales in them, and so on. The villagers who get as far as this more central town call here for their cheap stationery, their weekly London novelette, or tin trumpets for the children. But here, again, they do not order books, and rarely buy those displayed, for exactly the same reason as in the lesser village towns. The shopkeeper does not understand what they want, and they cannot tell him. They would know if they saw it; but till they see it they do not know themselves. There is no medium between the villager who wants to read and the books he would like. There is no machinery between the villager who wants to read and the London publisher. The villager is in utter ignorance of the books in the publisher's warehouse in London. The villager who has just begun to read is in a position almost incomprehensible to a Londoner. The latter has seen books, books, books from boyhood always around him. He cannot walk down a street, enter an omnibus, go on a platform without having books thrust under his eyes. Advertisements a yard high glare at him from every hoarding, railway arch, and end-house facing a thoroughfare. In tunnels underground, on the very roofs above, book advertisements press upon his notice. It is impossible to avoid seeing them, even if he would. Books are everywhere--at home, at the reading-room, on the way to business; and on his return it is books, books, books. He buys a weekly paper, and book advertisements, book reviews, occupy a large part of it. Buy what sort of print he will--and he is always buying some sort from mere habit--books are pushed on him. If he is at all a student, or takes an interest--and what educated Londoner does not?--in some political, scientific, or other question, he is constantly on the watch for publications bearing upon it. He subscribes to or sees a copy of one or other of the purely literary papers devoted to the examination of books, and has not the slightest difficulty in finding what he wants; the reviews tell him precisely the thing he requires to know, whether the volume will suit him or not. The reading Londoner is thus in constant contact with the publisher, as much as if the publisher spoke to him across the breakfast table. But the villager has never heard the publisher's name; the villager never sees a literary review; he has never heard, or, if so, so casually as not to remember, the name of any literary paper describing books. When he gets hold of a London paper, the parts which attract him are certainly not the advertisements; if he sees a book advertised there, it is by chance. Besides which, the advertisements in London papers are, from necessity of cost, only useful to those who frequently purchase books or have some reason for keeping an eye on those that appear. There are thousands of books on publishers' shelves which have been advertised, of course, but are not now ever put in the papers. So that when the villager gets a London paper, as he does now much more frequently, the advertisements, if he sees them, are not designed for his eye and do not attract him. He never sees a gaudy poster stuck on the side of the barn; there are no glazed frames with advertisements in the sheds or hung on the trees; the ricks are not covered, like the walls of the London railway stations, with book advertisements, nor are they conspicuous on the waggons as they are on the omnibuses. When he walks down the village there are no broad windows piled with books higher than his head--books with the backs towards him, books with the ornamented cover towards him, books temptingly open at an illustration: nothing of the sort. There is not a book to be seen. Some few books are advertised in the local press and receive notices--only a few, and these generally of a class too expensive for him. Books of real value are usually dear when first published. If he goes to a stationer's, as already pointed out, for a few sheets of writing paper and a packet of envelopes, he sees nothing displayed there to tempt him. Lastly, he hears no talking about books. Perhaps the most effective of all advertisements in selling a book is conversation. If people hear other people continually alluding to, or quoting, or arguing about a book, they say, "We must have it;" and they do have it. Conversation is the very life of literature. Now, the villager never hears anybody talk about a book. III THE VILLAGER'S TASTE IN READING The villager could not even write down what he would like to read, not yet having reached the stage when the mind turns inwards to analyse itself. If you unexpectedly put a boy with a taste for reading in a large library and leave him to himself, he is at a loss which way to turn or what to take from the shelves. He proceeds by experiment, looking at cover after cover, half pulling out one, turning over a few leaves of another, peeping into this, and so on, till something seizes his imagination, when he will sit down on the steps at once instead of walking across the room to the luxurious easy-chair. The world of books is to the villager far more unknown than to the boy in the library, who has the books before him, while the villager looks into vacancy. What the villager would like can only be gathered from a variety of little indications which hint at the unconscious wishes of his mind. First, the idea that he would require something easy and simple like a horn-book or primer must be dismissed. Villagers are not so simple by any means. Nor do they need something written in the plainest language, specially chosen, as words of one syllable are for children. What is designed for the village must not be written down to it. The village will reject rice and corn-flour--it will only accept strong meat. The subject must be strong, the manner strong, and the language powerful. Like the highest and most cultured minds--for extremes meet--the intelligence of the villagers naturally approves the best literature. Those authors whose works have a world-wide reputation (though totally unknown by name in hamlets sixty miles from London) would be the most popular. Their antiquity matters nothing; they would be new in the hamlet. When a gentleman furnishes a library he chooses representative authors--what are called library-books--first, forming a solid groundwork to the collection. These are the very volumes the country would like. Every one when first exploring the world of books, and through them the larger world of reality, is attracted by travels and voyages. These are peculiarly interesting to country people, to whom the idea of exploration is natural. Reading such a book is like coming to a hill and seeing a fresh landscape spread out before them. There are no museums in the villages to familiarise them with the details of life in distant parts of the earth, so that every page as it is turned over brings something new. They understand the hardships of existence, hard food, exposure, the struggle with the storm, and can enter into the anxieties and privations of the earlier voyagers searching out the coast of America. They would rather read these than the most exciting novels. If they could get geography, without degrees of longitude, geography, or rather ethnography, which deals with the ways of the inhabitants, they would be delighted. All such facts being previously unknown come with the novelty of fiction. Sport, where it battles with the tigers of India, the lions of Africa, or the buffalo in America--with large game--is sure to be read with interest. There does not appear to be much demand for history, other than descriptions of great battles, not for history in the modern sense. A good account of a battle, of the actual fighting without the political movements that led to it, is eagerly read. Almost perhaps more than all these the wonders of science draw country readers. If a little book containing an intelligible and non-technical description of the electric railway were offered in the villages, it would be certain to sell. But it must not be educational in tone, because they dislike to feel that they are being taught, and they are repelled by books which profess to show the reader how to do this or that. Technical books are unsuitable; and as for the goody-goody, it is out of the question. Most of the reading-rooms started in villages by well-meaning persons have failed from the introduction of goody-goody. These are the principal subjects which the villager would select or avoid had he the opportunity to make a choice. As it is, he has to take what chance brings him, and often to be content with nothing, because he does not know what to ask for. If any one ever takes up the task of supplying the country with the sound and thoroughly first-class literature for which it is now ready, he will at least have the certain knowledge that he is engaged in a most worthy propaganda--with the likelihood of a large pecuniary reward. Such profits must of necessity be slow in the beginning, as they are in all new businesses, but they would also be slow in working off. It is a peculiarity of the country to be loyal. If country people believe in a bank, for instance--and they always believe in the first bank that comes among them--they continue to believe, and no effort whatever is necessary to keep the connection. It will be generations in dying out. So with a newspaper, so with an auctioneer--with everything. That which comes first is looked on with suspicion and distrust for a time, people are chary of having anything to do with it; but by-and-by they deal, and, having once dealt, always deal. They remain loyal; competition is of no use, the old name is the one believed in. Whoever acquires a name for the supply of the literature the country wants will retain that name for three-quarters of a century, and with a minimum of labour. At the same time the extent of country is so large that there is certainly room for several without clashing. In working out a scheme for such a supply, it may be taken for granted that books intended for the villages must be cheap. When we consider the low prices at which reprinted books, the copyrights of which have expired, are now often met with, there really seems no difficulty in this. Sixpence, a shilling, eighteenpence; nothing must be more than two shillings, and a shilling should be the general maximum. For a shilling how many clever little books are on sale on London bookstalls! If so, why should not other books adapted to the villager's wishes be on sale at a similar price in the country? Something might, perhaps, be learned in this direction from the American practice. Books in America are often sold for a few cents; good-sized books too. Thousands of books are sold in France at a franc--twopence less than the maximum of a shilling. The paper is poor, the printing nothing to boast of, the binding merely paper, but the text is there. All the villager wants is the text. Binding, the face of the printing, the quality of the paper--to these outside accidents he is perfectly indifferent. If the text only is the object, a book can be produced cheaply. On first thoughts, it appeared that much might be effected in the way of reprinting extracts from the best authors, little handbooks which could be sold at a few pence. Something, indeed, might be done in this way. But upon the whole I think that as a general rule extracts are a mistake. There is nothing so unsatisfactory as an extract. You cannot supply the preceding part nor the following with success. The extract itself loses its force and brilliance because the mind has not been prepared to perceive it by the gradual approach the author designed. It is like a face cut out of a large picture. The face may be pretty, but the meaning is lost. Such fragments of Shakspeare, for instance, as one sometimes still meets with reprinted in this way strike the mind like a fragment of rock hurled at one's head. They stun with rugged grandeur. As a rule, extracts, then, are a mistake--not as a rigid rule, but as a general principle. It would be better for the village reader to have a few books complete as to text, no matter how poorly printed, or how coarsely got up, than numerous partial reprints which lead the thoughts nowhere. There must be no censorship, nothing kept back. The weakness and narrowness of mind which still exists--curious relic of the past--among some otherwise worthy classes who persist in thinking no one must read what they dislike, must not be permitted to domineer the village bookstall. There must be absolute freedom, or the villager will turn away. His mind, though open to receive, is robust like his body, and will not accept shackles. The propaganda should be of the best productions of the highest intellects, independent of creed and party. A practical difficulty arises from the copyrights; you cannot reprint a book of which the copyright still exists without injury to the original publisher and the author. But there are many hundred books of the very best order of which the copyright has expired, and which can be reprinted without injury to any one. Then there are the books which it may be presumed would be compiled on purpose for the object in view when once the scheme was in working order. Thirdly, it is probable that many living authors when about publishing a volume would not object to an arrangement for a production in cheap form after a reasonable time. So that there is no such difficulty here but that it might be overcome. IV PLAN OF DISTRIBUTION When you have got your village library ready, how is it to be sold? How is it to be distributed and placed in the hands of the people? How are these people to be got at? They are scattered far apart, and not within sound of trumpet. Travellers, indeed, could be sent round, but travellers cost money. There is the horse and the man to attend to it, turnpikes, repairs, hotels--all the various expenses so well known in business. Each traveller could only call on a certain number of cottages and country houses per day, comparatively a small number, for they are often at long distances from each other; possibly he might find the garden gate locked and the people in the field. At the best after a long day's work he would only have sold a few dozen cheap books, and his inn bill would cover the profit upon them. Reduced thus to the rigid test of figures, the chance of success vanishes. But so, too, does the chance of success in any enterprise if looked at in this fashion. It must be borne in mind that the few copies of a cheap book sold in a day by a single traveller would not represent the ultimate possible return. The traveller prepares the ground which may yield a hundredfold afterwards. He awakens the demand and shows how it can be supplied. He teaches the villager what he wants, and how to get it. He lays the foundation of business in the future. The few pence he actually receives are the forerunners of pounds. Nothing can be accomplished without preliminary outlay. But conceding that the regulation traveller is a costly instrument, and putting that method upon one side for the present, there are other means available. There is the post. The post is a far more powerful disseminator in the country than in town. A townsman picks up twenty letters, snatches the envelopes open, and casts them aside. The letters delivered in the country have marvellously multiplied, but still country people do not treat letters offhand. The arrival of a letter or two is still an event; it is read twice or three times, put in the pocket, and looked at again. Suburban residents receive circulars by every other post of every kind and description, and cast them contemptuously aside. In the country the delivery of a circular is not so treated. It is certain to be read. Nothing may come of it, but it is certain to be looked over, and more than once. It will be left on the table, or be folded up and put on the mantelpiece: it will not be destroyed. Country people have not yet got into the habit which may be called slur-reading. They really read. The circulars at present delivered in the country are counted by ones and twos where suburban residents get scores and fifties. Almost the only firms who have found out the value of circulars in the country are the great drapery establishments, and their enterprise is richly rewarded. The volume of business thus transacted and brought to the London house by the circular is enormous. There are very few farmhouses in the country which do not contribute orders once or twice a year. Very many families get all their materials in this way, far cheaper, better, and more novel than those on sale in the country towns. Here, then, is a powerful lever ready to the hand of the publisher. Every circular sent to a country house will be read--not slurred--and will ultimately yield a return. Cottagers never receive a circular at all. If a circular came to a cottage by post it would be read and re-read, folded up neatly, and preserved. After a time--for an advertisement is exactly like seed sown in the ground--something would be done. Some incident would happen, and it would be remembered that there was something about it in the circular--some book that dealt with the subject. There is business directly. The same post that brought the original circular, distributing knowledge of books, can bring the book itself. Those who understand the importance attached by country people, and especially by cottagers, to anything that comes by post, will see the use of the circular, which must be regarded as the most effective means of reaching the rural population. Next in value to the circular is the poster. The extent to which posters are used in London, which contains a highly educated population, is proof sufficient of its utility as a disseminator. But in the country the poster has never yet been resorted to as an aid to the bookseller. The auctioneers have found out its importance, and their bills are freely dispersed in every nook and corner. There are no keener men, and they know from experience that it is the cheapest way of advertising sales. Their posters are everywhere--on walls, gate-posts, sign-posts, barns, in the bars of wayside inns. The local drapers in the market towns resort to the poster when they have a sale at "vastly reduced" prices, sending round the bill-sticker to remote hamlets and mere settlements of two or three houses. They, too, know its value, and that by it customers are attracted from the most outlying places. People in villages and hamlets pass the greater part of their time out-of-doors and are in no hurry, so that if in walking down the road to or from their work they see a bill stuck upon a wall, they invariably stop to read it. People on the London railway platforms rather blink the posters displayed around them: they would rather avoid them, though they cannot altogether. It is just the reverse in the hamlet, where the inhabitants lead such monotonous lives, and have so little excitement that a fresh poster is a good subject for conversation. No matter where you put a poster, somebody will read it, and it is only next in value to the circular, appealing to the public as the circular appeals to the individual. Here are two methods of reaching the country and of disseminating a knowledge of books other than the employment of expensive travellers. Even if travellers be called in, circular and poster should precede their efforts. There is then the advertisement column of the local press. The local press has never been used for the advertisement of such books as are suitable to country readers, certainly not for the class hitherto chiefly borne in view and for convenience designated villager. The reason why such books have not been advertised in the local press is probably because the authors and publishers had no idea of the market that exists in the country. For the most part readers in town and the suburbs only glance at the exciting portions of papers, and then cast them aside. Readers in the villages read every line from the first column to the last, from the title to the printer's address. The local papers are ploughed steadily through, just as the horses plough the fields, and every furrow conscientiously followed from end to end, advertisements and all. The brewer's, the grocer's, the draper's, the ironmonger's advertisements (market-town tradesmen), which have been there month after month, are all read, and the slightest change immediately noted. If there were any advertisement of books suitable to their taste it would be read in exactly the same manner. But in advertising for country people one fact must be steadily borne in mind--that they are slow to act; that is, the advertisement must be permanent. A few insertions are forgotten before those who have seen them have made up their minds to purchase. When an advertisement is always there, by-and-by the thought suggested acts on the will, and the stray coin is invested--it may be six months after the first inclination arose. The procrastination of country people is inexplicable to hurrying London men. But it is quite useless to advertise unless it is taken into account. If permanent, an advertisement in the local press will reach its mark. It is this permanency which gives another value to the circular and the poster; the circular is folded up and preserved to be looked at again like a book of reference; the poster remains on the dry wall of the barn, and the ink is legible months after it was first put up. Having now informed the hamlets of the books which are in existence, if complete success is desired, the next step should be to put specimens of those books before the eyes of the residents. To read of them, to know that they exist, and then to actually see them--as Londoners see them in every street--is a logical process leading to purchases. As already pointed out, there are little shops in every village and hamlet where the local paper can be obtained which would gladly expose books for sale if the offer were made to them. The same remark applies to the shops in the market towns. These, too, require to be supplied; they require the thing explained to them, and they would at once try it. Finally, let a traveller once now and then come along, and call at these shops to wake up and stir the business and change the face of the counter. Let him while in the hamlet also call at as many houses and cottages as he can manage in a few hours, leaving circulars--always circulars--behind him. There would then be a complete system of supply. SUNLIGHT IN A LONDON SQUARE [Footnote: The sunlight and the winds enter London, and the life of the fields is there too, if you will but see it.] There are days now and again when the summer broods in Trafalgar Square; the flood of light from a cloudless sky gathers and grows, thickening the air; the houses enclose the beams as water is enclosed in a cup. Sideways from the white-painted walls light is reflected; upwards from the broad, heated pavement in the centre light and heat ascend; from the blue heaven it presses downwards. Not only from the sun--one point--but from the entire width of the visible blue the brilliant stream flows. Summer is enclosed between the banks of houses--all summer's glow and glory of exceeding brightness. The blue panel overhead has but a stray fleck of cloud, a Cupid drawn on the panel in pure white, but made indefinite by distance. The joyous swallows climb high into the illuminated air till the eye, daunted by the glow, can scarce detect their white breasts as they turn. Slant shadows from the western side give but a margin of contrast; the rays are reflected through them, and they are only shadows of shadows. At the edges their faint sloping lines are seen in the air, where a million motes impart a fleeting solidity to the atmosphere. A pink-painted front, the golden eagle of the great West, golden lettering, every chance strip and speck of colour is washed in the dazzling light, made clear and evident. The hands and numerals of the clock yonder are distinct and legible, the white dial-plate polished; a window suddenly opened throws a flash across the square. Eastwards the air in front of the white walls quivers, heat and light reverberating visibly, and the dry flowers on the window-sills burn red and yellow in the glare. Southwards green trees, far down the street, stand, as it seems, almost at the foot of the chiselled tower of Parliament--chiselled in straight lines and perpendicular grooves, each of which casts a shadow into itself. Again, the corners advanced before the main wall throw shadows on it, and the hollow casements draw shadows into their cavities. Thus, in the bright light against the blue sky the tower pencils itself with a dark crayon, and is built, not of stone, but of light and shadow. Flowing lines of water rise and fall from the fountains in the square, drooping like the boughs of a weeping ash, drifted a little to one side by an imperceptible air, and there sprinkling the warm pavement in a sparkling shower. The shower of finely divided spray now advances and now retreats, as the column of water bends to the current of air, or returns to its upright position. By a pillared gateway there is a group in scarlet, and from time to time other groups in scarlet pass and repass within the barrack-court. A cream-tinted dress, a pink parasol--summer hues--go by in the stream of dark-clothed people; a flower fallen on the black water of a river. Either the light subdues the sound, or perhaps rather it renders the senses slumberous and less sensitive, but the great sunlit square is silent--silent, that is, for the largest city on earth. A slumberous silence of abundant light, of the full summer day, of the high flood of summer hours whose tide can rise no higher. A time to linger and dream under the beautiful breast of heaven, heaven brooding and descending in pure light upon man's handiwork. If the light shall thus come in, and of its mere loveliness overcome every aspect of dreariness, why shall not the light of thought, and hope--the light of the soul--overcome and sweep away the dust of our lives? I stood under the portico of the National Gallery in the shade looking southwards, across the fountains and the lions, towards the green trees under the distant tower. Once a swallow sang in passing on the wing, garrulous still as in the time of old Rome and Augustan Virgil. From the high pediments dropped the occasional chatter of sparrows and the chirp of their young in the roofs. The second brood, they were late; they would not be in time for the harvest and the fields of stubble. A flight of blue pigeons rose from the central pavement to the level line of the parapet of the western houses. A starling shot across the square, swift, straight, resolute. I looked for the swifts, but they had gone, earliest of all to leave our sky for distant countries. Away in the harvest field the reaper, pausing in his work, had glanced up at the one stray fleck of cloud in the sky, which to my fancy might be a Cupid on a blue panel, and seeing it smiled in the midst of the corn, wiping his blackened face, for he knew it meant dry weather. Heat, and the dust of the straw, the violent labour had darkened his face from brown almost to blackness--a more than swarthiness, a blackness. The stray cloud was spreading out in filaments, each thread drawn to a fineness that ended presently in disappearance. It was a sign to him of continued sunshine and the prosperity of increased wages. The sun from whose fiery brilliance I escaped into the shadow was to him a welcome friend; his neck was bare to the fierceness of the sun. His heart was gladdened because the sky promised him permission to labour till the sinews of his fingers stiffened in their crooked shape (as they held the reaping-hook), and he could hardly open them to grasp the loaf he had gained. So men laboured of old time, whether with plough or sickle or pruning-hook, in the days when Augustan Virgil heard the garrulous swallow, still garrulous. An endless succession of labour, under the brightness of summer, under the gloom of winter; to my thought it is a sadness even in the colour and light and glow of this hour of sun, this ceaseless labour, repeating the furrow, reiterating the blow, the same furrow, the same stroke--shall we never know how to lighten it, how to live with the flowers, the swallows, the sweet delicious shade, and the murmur of the stream? Not the blackened reaper only, but the crowd whose low hum renders the fountain inaudible, the nameless and unknown crowd of this immense city wreathed round about the central square. I hope that at some time, by dint of bolder thought and freer action, the world shall see a race able to enjoy it without stint, a race able to enjoy the flowers with which the physical world is strewn, the colours of the garden of life. To look backwards with the swallow there is sadness, to-day with the fleck of cloud there is unrest; but forward, with the broad sunlight, there is hope. Except you see these colours, and light, and tones, except you see the blue heaven over the parapet, you know not, you cannot feel, how great are the possibilities of man. At my back, within the gallery, there is many a canvas painted under Italian skies, in glowing Spain, in bright Southern France. There are scenes lit with the light that gleams on orange grove and myrtle; these are faces tinted with the golden hue that floats in southern air. But yet, if any one impartial will stand here outside, under the portico, and forgetting that it is prosaic London, will look at the summer enclosed within the square, and acknowledge it for itself as it is, he must admit that the view--light and colour, tone and shade--is equal to the painted canvas, is full, as it were, to the brim of interest, suggestion, and delight. Before the painted canvas you stand with prepared mind; you have come to see Italy, you are educated to find colour, and the poetry of tone. Therefore you see it, if it is there. Here in the portico you are unprepared, uneducated; no one has ever given a thought of it. But now trace out the colour and the brightness; gaze up into the sky, watch the swallows, note the sparkle of the fountain, observe the distant tower chiselled with the light and shade. Think, then, of the people, not as mere buyers and sellers, as mere counters, but as human beings--beings possessed of hearts and minds, full of the passions and the hopes and fears which made the ancient poets great merely to record. These are the same passions that were felt in antique Rome, whose very name is a section of human life. There is colour in these lives now as then. VENICE IN THE EAST END The great red bowsprit of an Australian clipper projects aslant the quay. Stem to the shore, the vessel thrusts an outstretched arm high over the land, as an oak in a glade pushes a bare branch athwart the opening. This beam is larger than an entire tree divested of its foliage, such trees, that is, as are seen in English woods. The great oaks might be bigger at the base where they swell and rest themselves on a secure pedestal. Five hundred years old an oak might measure more at six feet, at eight, or ten feet from the ground; after five hundred years, that is, of steady growth. But if even such a monarch were taken, and by some enormous mechanic power drawn out, and its substance elongated into a tapering spar, it would not be massive enough to form this single beam. Where it starts from the stem of the vessel it is already placed as high above the level of the quay as it is from the sward to the first branch of an oak. At its root it starts high overhead, high enough for a trapeze to be slung to it upon which grown persons could practise athletic exercises. From its roots, from the forward end of the deck, the red beam rises at a regular angle, diminishing in size with altitude till its end in comparison with the commencement may be called pointed, though in reality blunt. To the pointed end it would be a long climb; it would need a ladder. The dull red of the vast beam is obscured by the neutral tint of the ropes which are attached to it; colour generally gives a sense of lightness by defining shape, but this red is worn and weatherbeaten, rubbed and battered, so that its uncertain surface adds to the weight of the boom. It hangs, an immense arm thrust across the sky; it is so high it is scarcely noticed in walking under it; it is so great and ponderous, and ultra in size, that the eye and mind alike fail to estimate it. For it is a common effect of great things to be overlooked. A moderately large rock, a moderately large house, is understood and mentally put down, as it were, at a certain figure, but the immense--which is beyond the human--cannot enter the organs of the senses. The portals of the senses are not wide enough to receive it; you must turn your back on it and reflect, and add a little piece of it to another little piece, and so build up your understanding. Human things are small; you live in a large house, but the space you actually occupy is very inconsiderable; the earth itself, great as it is, is overlooked, it is too large to be seen. The eye is accustomed to the little, and cannot in a moment receive the immense. Only by slow comparison with the bulk of oak trees, by the height of a trapeze, by the climbing of a ladder, can I convey to my mind a true estimate and idea of this gigantic bowsprit. It would be quite possible to walk by and never see it because of its size, as one walks by bridges or travels over a viaduct without a thought. The vessel lies with her bowsprit projecting over the quay, moored as a boat run ashore on the quiet sandy beach of a lake, not as a ship is generally placed with her broadside to the quay wall or to the pier. Her stern is yonder--far out in the waters of the dock, too far to concern us much as we look from the verge of the wall. Access to the ship is obtained by a wooden staging running out at the side; instead of the ship lying beside the pier, a pier has been built out to fit to the ship. This plan, contrary to preconceived ideas, is evidently founded on good reason, for if such a vessel were moored broadside to the quay how much space would she take up? There would be, first, the hull itself say eighty yards, and then the immense bowsprit. Two or three such ships would, as it were, fill a whole field of water; they would fill a whole dock; it would not require many to cover a mile. By placing each stem to the quay they only occupy a space equal to their breadth instead of to their length. This arrangement, again, tends to deceive the eye; you might pass by, and, seeing only the bow, casually think there was nothing particular in it. Everything here is on so grand a scale that the largest component part is diminished; the quay, broad enough to build several streets abreast; the square, open stretches of gloomy water; and beyond these the wide river. The wind blows across these open spaces in a broad way--not as it comes in sudden gusts around a street corner, but in a broad open way, each puff a quarter of a mile wide. The view of the sky is open overhead, masts do not obstruct the upward look; the sunshine illumines or the cloud-shadows darken hundreds of acres at once. It is a great plain; a plain of enclosed waters, built in and restrained by the labour of man, and holding upon its surface fleet upon fleet, argosy upon argosy. Masts to the right, masts to the left, masts in front, masts yonder above the warehouses; masts in among the streets as steeples appear amid roofs; masts across the river hung with drooping half-furled sails; masts afar down thin and attenuated, mere dark straight lines in the distance. They await in stillness the rising of the tide. It comes, and at the exact moment--foreknown to a second--the gates are opened, and the world of ships moves outwards to the stream. Downwards they drift to the east, some slowly that have as yet but barely felt the pull of the hawser, others swiftly, and the swifter because their masts cross and pass the masts of inward-bound ships ascending. Two lines of masts, one raking one way, the other the other, cross and puzzle the eye to separate their weaving motion and to assign the rigging to the right vessel. White funnels aslant, dark funnels, red funnels rush between them; white steam curls upwards; there is a hum, a haste, almost a whirl, for the commerce of the world is crowded into the hour of the full tide. These great hulls, these crossing masts a-rake, the intertangled rigging, the background of black barges drifting downwards, the lines and ripple of the water as the sun comes out, if you look too steadily, daze the eyes and cause a sense of giddiness. It is so difficult to realise so much mass--so much bulk--moving so swiftly, and in so intertangled a manner; a mighty dance of thousands of tons--gliding, slipping, drifting onwards, yet without apparent effort. Thousands upon thousands of tons go by like shadows, silently, as if the ponderous hulls had no stability or weight; like a dream they float past, solid and yet without reality. It is a giddiness to watch them. This happens, not on one day only, not one tide, but at every tide and every day the year through, year after year. The bright summer sun glows upon it; the red sun of the frosty hours of winter looks at it from under the deepening canopy of vapour the blasts of the autumnal equinox howl over the vast city and whistle shrilly in the rigging; still at every tide the world of ships moves out into the river. Why does not a painter come here and place the real romance of these things upon canvas, as Venice has been placed? Never twice alike, the changing atmosphere is reflected in the hue of the varnished masts, now gleaming, now dull, now dark. Till it has been painted, and sung by poet, and described by writers, nothing is human. Venice has been made human by poet, painter, and dramatist, yet what was Venice to this--this the Fact of our own day? Two of the caravels of the Doge's fleet, two of Othello's strongest war-ships, could scarcely carry the mast of my Australian clipper. At a guess it is four feet through; it is of iron, tubular; there is room for a winding spiral staircase within it; as for its height, I will not risk a guess at it. Could Othello's war-ships carry it they would consider it a feat, as the bringing of the Egyptian obelisk to London was thought a feat. The petty ripples of the Adriatic, what were they? This red bowsprit at its roots is high enough to suspend a trapeze; at its head a ladder would be required to mount it from the quay; yet by-and-by, when the tide at last comes, and its time arrives to move outwards in the dance of a million tons, this mighty bowsprit, meeting the Atlantic rollers in the Bay of Biscay, will dip and bury itself in foam under the stress of the vast sails aloft. The forty-feet billows of the Pacific will swing these three or four thousand or more tons, this giant hull which must be moored even stem to shore, up and down and side to side as a handful in the grasp of the sea. Now, each night as the clouds part, the north star looks down upon the deck; then, the Southern Cross will be visible in the sky, words quickly written, but half a globe apart. What was there in Venice to arouse thoughts such as spring from the sight of this red bowsprit? In two voyages my Australian clipper shall carry as much merchandise as shall equal the entire commerce of Venice for a year. Yet it is not the volume, not the bulk only; cannot you see the white sails swelling, and the proud vessel rising to the Pacific billows, the north star sinking, and the advent of the Southern Cross; the thousand miles of ocean without land around, the voyage through space made visible as sea, the far, far south, the transit around a world? If Italian painters had had such things as these to paint, if poets of old time had had such things as these to sing, do you imagine they would have been contented with crank caravels and tales thrice told already? They had eyes to see that which was around them. Open your eyes and see those things which are around us at this hour. THE PIGEONS AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM The front of the British Museum stands in the sunlight clearly marked against the firm blue of the northern sky. The blue appears firm as if solid above the angle of the stonework, for while looking towards it--towards the north--the rays do not come through the azure, which is therefore colour without life. It seems nearer than the southern sky, it descends and forms a close background to the building; as you approach you seem to come nearer to the blue surface rising at its rear. The dark edges of sloping stone are distinct and separate, but not sharp; the hue of the stone is toned by time and weather, and is so indefinite as to have lost its hardness. Those small rounded bodies upon the cornice are pigeons resting in the sun, so motionless and neutral-tinted that they might be mistaken for some portion of the carving. A double gilt ring, a circle in a circle, at the feet of an allegorical figure gleams brightly against the dark surface. The sky already seems farther away seen between the boles of stone, perpetual shade dwells in their depth, but two or three of the pigeons fluttering down are searching for food on the sunlit gravel at the bottom of the steps. To them the building is merely a rock, pierced with convenient caverns; they use its exterior for their purpose, but penetrate no farther. With air and light, the sunlit gravel, the green lawn between it and the outer railings--with these they are concerned, and with these only. The heavy roll of the traffic in Oxford Street, audible here, is nothing to them; the struggle for money does not touch them, they let it go by. Nor the many minds searching and re-searching in the great Library, this mental toil is no more to them than the lading of the waggons in the street. Neither the tangible product nor the intellectual attainment is of any value--only the air and light. There are idols in the galleries within upon whose sculptured features the hot Eastern sun shone thousands of years since. They were made by human effort, however mistaken, and they were the outcome of human thought and handiwork. The doves fluttered about the temples in those days, full only of the air and light. They fluttered about the better temples of Greece and round the porticos where philosophy was born. Still only the light, the sunlight, the air of heaven. We labour on and think, and carve our idols and the pen never ceases from its labour; but the lapse of the centuries has left us in the same place. The doves who have not laboured nor travailed in thought possess the sunlight. Is not theirs the preferable portion? The shade deepens as I turn from the portico to the hall and vast domed house of books. The half-hearted light under the dome is stagnant and dead. For it is the nature of light to beat and throb; it has a pulse and undulation like the swing of the sea. Under the trees in the woodlands it vibrates and lives; on the hills there is a resonance of light. It beats against every leaf, and, thrown back, beats again; it is agitated with the motion of the grass blades; you can feel it ceaselessly streaming on your face. It is renewed and fresh every moment, and never twice do you see the same ray. Stayed and checked by the dome and book-built walls, the beams lose their elasticity, and the ripple ceases in the motionless pool. The eyes, responding, forget to turn quickly, and only partially see. Deeper thought and inspiration quit the heart, for they can only exist where the light vibrates and communicates its tone to the soul. If any imagine they shall find thought in many books, certainly they will be disappointed. Thought dwells by the stream and sea, by the hill and in the woodland, in the sunlight and free wind, where the wild dove haunts. Walls and roof shut it off as they shut off the undulation of light. The very lightning cannot penetrate here. A murkiness marks the coming of the cloud, and the dome becomes vague, but the fierce flash is shorn to a pale reflection, and the thunder is no more than the rolling of a heavier truck loaded with tomes. But in closing out the sky, with it is cut off all that the sky can tell you with its light, or in its passion of storm. Sitting at these long desks and trying to read, I soon find that I have made a mistake; it is not here I shall find that which I seek. Yet the magic of books draws me here time after time, to be as often disappointed. Something in a book tempts the mind as pictures tempt the eye; the eye grows weary of pictures, but looks again. The mind wearies of books, yet cannot forget that once when they were first opened in youth they gave it hope of knowledge. Those first books exhausted, there is nothing left but words and covers. It seems as if all the books in the world--really books--can be bought for L10. Man's whole thought is purchaseable at that small price, for the value of a watch, of a good dog. For the rest it is repetition and paraphrase. The grains of wheat were threshed out and garnered two thousand years since. Except the receipts of chemists, except specifications for the steam-engine, or the electric motor, there is nothing in these millions of books that was not known at the commencement of our era. Not a thought has been added. Continual threshing has widened out the heap of straw and spread it abroad, but it is empty. Nothing will ever be found in it. Those original grains of true thought were found beside the stream, the sea, in the sunlight, at the shady verge of woods. Let us leave this beating and turning over of empty straw; let us return to the stream and the hills; let us ponder by night in view of the stars. It is pleasant to go out again into the portico under the great columns. On the threshold I feel nearer knowledge than when within. The sun shines, and southwards above the houses there is a statue crowning the summit of some building. The figure is in the midst of the light; it stands out clear and white as if in Italy. The southern blue is luminous--the beams of light flow through it--the air is full of the undulation and life of light. There is rest in gazing at the sky: a sense that wisdom does exist and may be found, a hope returns that was taken away among the books. The green lawn is pleasant to look at, though it is mown so ruthlessly. If they would only let the grass spring up, there would be a thought somewhere entangled in the long blades as a dewdrop sparkles in their depths. Seats should be placed here, under the great columns or by the grass, so that one might enjoy the sunshine after books and watch the pigeons. They have no fear of the people, they come to my feet, but the noise of a door heavily swinging-to in the great building alarms them; they rise and float round, and return again. The sunlight casts a shadow of the pigeon's head and neck upon his shoulder; he turns his head, and the shadow of his beak falls on his breast. Iridescent gleams of bronze and green and blue play about his neck; blue predominates. His pink feet step so near, the red round his eye is visible. As he rises vertically, forcing his way in a straight line upwards, his wings almost meet above his back and again beneath the body; they are put forth to his full stroke. When his flight inclines and becomes gradually horizontal, the effort is less and the wing tips do not approach so closely. They have not laboured in mental searching as we have; they have not wasted their time looking among empty straw for the grain that is not there. They have been in the sunlight. Since the days of ancient Greece the doves have remained in the sunshine; we who have laboured have found nothing. In the sunshine, by the shady verge of woods, by the sweet waters where the wild dove sips, there alone will thought be found. THE PLAINEST CITY IN EUROPE The fixed perspective of Paris neither elongates nor contracts with any change of atmosphere, so that the apparent distance from one point to another remains always the same. Reduced to the simplest elements the street architecture of Paris consists of two parallel lines, which to the eye appear to gradually converge. In sunshine and shade the sides of the street approach in an unvarying ratio; a cloud goes over, and the lines do not soften; brilliant light succeeds, and is merely light--no effect accompanies it. The architecture conquers, and is always architecture; it resists the sun, the air, the rain, being without expression. The geometry of the street can never be forgotten. Moving along it you have merely advanced so far along a perspective, between the two lines which tutors rule to teach drawing. By-and-by, when you reach the other end and look back, the perspective is accurately reversed. This is now the large end of the street, and that which has been left the small. The houses seen from this end present precisely the same facade as they did at starting, so that were it not for the sense of weariness from walking it would be easy to imagine that no movement had taken place. Each house is exactly the same height as the next, the windows are of the same pattern, the wooden outer blinds the same shape; the line of the level roof runs along straight and unbroken, the chimneys are either invisible or insignificant. Nothing projects, no bow window, balcony, or gable; the surface is as flat as well can be. From parapet to pavement the wall descends plumb, and the glance slips along it unchecked. Each house is exactly the same colour as the next, white; the wooden outer blinds are all the same colour, a dull grey; in the windows there are no visible red, or green, or tapestry curtains, mere sashes. There are no flowers in the windows to catch the sunlight. The upper storeys have the air of being uninhabited, as the windows have no curtains whatever, and the wooden blinds are frequently closed. Two flat vertical surfaces, one on each side of the street, each white and grey, extend onwards and approach in mathematical ratio. That is a Parisian street. Go on now to the next street, and you find precisely the same conditions repeated--the streets that cross are similar, those that radiate the same. Some are short, others long, some wide, some narrow; they are all geometry and white paint. The vast avenues, a rifle-shot across, such as the Avenue de l'Opera, differ only in width and in the height of the houses. The monotony of these gigantic houses is too great to be expressed. Then across the end of the avenue they throw some immense facade--some public building, an opera-house, a palace, a ministry, anything will do--in order that you shall see nothing but Paris. Weary of the gigantic monotony of the gigantic houses, exactly alike, your eye shall not catch a glimpse of some distant cloud rising like a snowy mountain (as Japanese artists show the top of Fusiyama); you shall not see the breadth of the sky, nor even any steeple, tower, dome, or gable; you shall see nothing but Paris; the avenue is wide enough for the Grand Army to march down, but the exit to the eye is blocked by this immense meaningless facade drawn across it. No doubt it is executed in the "highest style"; in effect it appears a repetition of windows, columns, and doorways exactly alike, all quite meaningless, for the columns support nothing, like the fronts sold in boxes of children's toy bricks. Perhaps on the roof there is some gilding, and you ask yourself the question why it is there. These facades, of which there are so many, vary in detail; in effect they are all the same, an utter weariness to the eye. Every fresh day's research into the city brings increasing disappointment, a sense of the childish, of feebleness, and weakness exhibited in public, as if they had built in sugar for the top of a cake. The level ground will not permit of any advantage of view; there are none of those sudden views so common and so striking in English towns. Everything is planed, smoothed, and set to an oppressive regularity. Turning round a corner one comes suddenly on a pillar of a dingy, dull hue, whose outline bulges unpleasantly. In London you would shrug your shoulders, mutter "hideous!" and pass on. This is the famous Vendome Column. As for the Column of July, it is so insignificant, so silly (no other word expresses it so well), that a second glance is carefully avoided. The Hotel de Ville, a vast white building, is past description, it is so plain and so repellent in its naked glaring assertion. From about old Notre Dame they have removed every medieval outwork which had grown up around and rendered it lifelike; it now rises perpendicular and abrupt from the white surface of the square. Unless you had been told that it was the Notre Dame of Victor Hugo you would not look at its exterior twice. The interior is another matter. In external form Notre Dame cannot enter into competition with Canterbury. The barrack-like Hotel des Invalides, the tomb of Napoleon--was ever a tomb so miserably lacking in all that should inspire a reverential feeling? The marble tub in which the urn is sunk, the gilded chapel, and the yellow windows--could anything be more artificial and less appropriate? They jar on the senses, they insult the torn flags which were carried by the veterans at Austerlitz, and which now droop, never again to be unfurled to the wind of battle. The tiny Seine might as well flow in a tunnel, being bridged so much. There remains but the Arc de Triomphe, the only piece of architecture in all modern Paris worth a second look. Even this is spoiled by the same intolerable artificiality. The ridiculous sculpture on the face, the figures blowing trumpets, and, above all, the group on the summit, which the tongue of man cannot describe, so utterly hideous is it, destroy the noble lines of the arch, if any one is so imprudent as to approach near it. Receding down the Avenue Friedland--somewhat aslant--the chestnut trees presently conceal the side sculpture; and then by tilting one's hat so that the brim shall hide the group on the summit, it is possible to admire the proportions of the Arc. In the Tuileries gardens there is a spot where distance obliterates the sculpture, and the projecting bough of an elm conceals the group on the top. Here the arch appears noble; but it is no longer French; it is now merely a copy of a Roman original, which any of our own architects could erect for us in Hyde Park. For the most part the vaunted Boulevards are but planted with planes, the least pleasing of trees, whose leaves present an unvarying green, till they drop a dead brown; and the horse-chestnuts in the Champs Elysees are set in straight lines to repeat the geometry of the streets. Thus central Paris has no character. It is without individuality and expressionless. Suppose you said, "The human face is really very irregular; it requires shaping. This nose projects; here, let us flatten it to the level of the cheek. This mouth curves at the corners; let us cut it straight. These eyebrows arch; make them straight. This colour is too flesh-like; bring white paint. Besides, the features move, they laugh, they assume sadness; this is wrong. Here, divide the muscles, that they may hence forth remain in unvarying rigidity." That is what has been done to Paris. It is made straight; it is idealised after Euclid; it is stiff, wearisome, and feeble. Lastly, it has no expression. The distances as observed at the commencement remain always the same, partly because of the obtrusive geometry and the monotony, partly because of the whiteness, and partly because of the peculiarity of the atmosphere, for which of course the Parisian is not responsible, but should have remembered in building. Advantage might surely have been taken of so clear an air in some manner. The colour and tone, the light and shade, the change and variety of London are entirely wanting; in short, Paris is the plainest city in Europe. 
8936	----	HOLIDAYS In EASTERN FRANCE. By M. BETHAM-EDWARDS. [Illustration: CHÂTEAU OF MONTBÉLIARD] [Illustration: ORNANS--VALLEY OF THE LOUE (The Country of the Painter Courbet.)] PREFACE. "Travelling in France without hotels, or guide-books," might, with very little exaggeration, be chosen as a title to this volume, which is, indeed, the record of one visit after another among charming French people, and in delightful places, out of the ordinary track of the tourist. Alike in the valley of the Marne--amongst French Protestants at Montbéliard--at Besançon amid the beautiful scenery of the Doubs--at Lons-le-Saunier, from whence so many interesting excursions were made into the Jura--in the very heart of the Jura highlands--at Champagnole, Morez, and St. Claude, it was my good fortune to see everything under unique and most favourable auspices, to be no tourist indeed, but a guest, welcomed at every stage, and pioneered from place to place by educated ladies and gentlemen delighted to do the honours of their native place. Thus it came about that I saw, not only places, but people, and not only one class, but all, peasant and proprietor, Protestant and Catholic, the _bourgeoisie_ of the towns, the mountaineers of the highlands, the schoolmaster, the pastor, the curé. Wherever I went, moreover, I felt that I was breaking new ground, the most interesting country I visited being wholly unfamiliar to the general run of tourists, for instance, the charming pastoral scenery of Seine and Marne, the picturesque valleys of the Doubs and the Loue, and the environs of Montbéliard and Besançon, the grand mountain fastnesses, close-shut valleys, or _combes_, the solitary lakes, cascades, and torrent rivers of the Jura. Many of the most striking spots described in these pages are not even mentioned in Murray, whilst the difficulty of communication renders them comparatively unknown to the French themselves, only a few artists having as yet found them out. Ornans--Courbet's birth and favourite abiding place, in the valley of the Loue--is one of these. St. Hippolyte, near Montbéliard, is another, and a dozen more might be named equally beautiful, and, as yet, equally unknown. New lines of railway, however, are to be opened within the next few years in several directions, and thus the delightful scenery of Franche-Comté will, ere long, be rendered accessible to all. For the benefit of those travellers who are undaunted by difficulties, and prefer to go off the beaten track even at the risk of encountering discomforts, I have reprinted, with many additions, the following notes of visits and travel in the most interesting part of Eastern France, which, in part, originally appeared in "Frazer's Magazine," 1878. In a former work, "Western France," I treated of a part of France which was ultra-Catholic; in this one I was chiefly among the more Protestant districts of the whole country, and it may be interesting to many to compare the two. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. The Valley of the Marne CHAPTER II. Noisiel: the City of Chocolate CHAPTER III. Provins and Troyes CHAPTER IV. Among French Protestants at Montbéliard CHAPTER V. St. Hippolyte, Morteau, and the Swiss Borderland CHAPTER VI. Besançon and its Environs CHAPTER VII. Ornans, Courbet's Country, and the Valley of the Loue CHAPTER VIII. Salins, Arbois, and the Wine Country of the Jura CHAPTER IX. Lons-le-Saunier CHAPTER X. Champagnole and Morez CHAPTER XI. St. Claude: the Bishopric in the Mountains CHAPTER XII. Nantua and the Church of Brou APPENDIX. Itineraries.--Outlines of Franc-Comtois History. Notes on the Geology of the Jura Index HOLIDAYS IN EASTERN FRANCE. CHAPTER I. THE VALLEY OF THE MARNE. How delicious to escape from the fever heat and turmoil of Paris during the Exhibition to the green banks and sheltered ways of the gently undulating Marne! With what delight we wake up in the morning to the noise, if noise it can be called, of the mower's scythe, the rustle of acacia leaves, and the notes of the stock-dove, looking back as upon a nightmare to the horn of the tramway conductor, and the perpetual grind of the stone-mason's saw. Yes! to quit Paris at a time of tropic heat, and nestle down in some country resort is, indeed, like exchanging Dante's lower circle for Paradise. The heat has followed us here, but with a screen of luxuriant foliage ever between us and the burning blue sky, and with a breeze rippling the leaves always, no one need complain. With the cocks and the hens, and the birds and the bees, we are all up and stirring betimes; there are dozens of cool nooks and corners if we like to spend the morning out of doors, and do not feel enterprising enough to set out on an exploring expedition by diligence or rail. After the midday meal everyone takes a siesta, as a matter of course, waking up between four and five o'clock for a ramble; wherever we go we find lovely prospects. Quiet little rivers and canals winding in between lofty lines of poplars, undulating pastures and amber cornfields, picturesque villages crowned by a church spire here and there, wide sweeps of highly cultivated land interspersed with rich woods, vineyards, orchards and gardens--all these make up the scenery familiarized to us by some of the most characteristic of French painters. Just such tranquil rural pictures have been portrayed over and over again by Millet, Corot, Daubigny, and in this very simplicity often lies their charm. No costume or grandiose outline is here as in Brittany, no picturesque poverty, no poetic archaisms; all is rustic and pastoral, but with the rusticity and pastoralness of every day. We are in the midst of one of the wealthiest and best cultivated regions of France moreover, and, when we penetrate below the surface, we find that in manner and customs, as well as dress and outward appearance, the peasant and agricultural population, generally, differ no little from their remote country-people, the Bretons. In this famous cheese-making country, the "Fromage de Brie" being the speciality of these rich dairy farms, there is no superstition, hardly a trace of poverty, and little that can be called poetic. The people are wealthy, laborious, and progressive. The farmers' wives, however hard they may work at home, wear the smartest of Parisian bonnets and gowns when paying visits. I was going to say when at church, but nobody does go here! It is a significant fact that in the fairly well to do educated district, where newspapers are read by the poorest, where well-being is the rule, poverty the exception, the church is empty on Sunday, and the priest's authority is _nil_. The priests may preach against abstinence from church in the pulpits, and may lecture their congregation in private, no effect is thereby produced. Church-going has become out of date among the manufacturers of Brie cheese. They amuse themselves on Sundays by taking walks with their children, the _pater-familias_ bathes in the river, the ladies put on their gala dresses and pay visits, but they omit their devotions. Some of these tenant-farmers, many of the farms being hired on lease, possessors of small farms hiring more land, are very rich, and one of our neighbours whose wealth had been made by the manufacture of Brie cheese lately gave his daughter a 100,000 francs, £40,000, as a dowry. The wedding breakfast took place at the Grand Hotel, Paris, and a hundred guests were invited to partake of a sumptuous collation. But in spite of fine clothes and large dowries, farmers' wives and daughters still attend to the dairies, and, when they cease to do so, doubtless farming in Seine et Marne will no longer be the prosperous business we find it. It is delightful to witness the wide-spread well-being of this highly-farmed region. "There is no poverty here," my host tells me, "and this is why life is so pleasant." True enough, wherever you go, you find well-dressed, contented-looking people, no rags, no squalor, no pinched want. Poverty is an accident of rare occurrence, and not a normal condition, everyone being able to get plenty of work and good pay. The habitual look of content written upon every face is very striking. It seems as if in this land of Goshen, life were no burden, but matter of satisfaction only, if not of thankfulness. Class distinction can hardly be said to exist; there are employers and employed, masters and servants, of course, but the line of demarcation is lightly drawn, and we find an easy familiarity wholly free from impoliteness, much less vulgarity, existing between them. That automatic demureness characterizing English servants in the presence of their employers, is wholly unknown here. There are households with us where the servants might all be mutes for any signs of animation they give, but here they take part in what is going on, and exchange a word and a smile with every member of the household, never dreaming that it should be otherwise. One is struck too here by the good looks, intelligence, and trim appearance of the children, who, it is plain, are well cared for. The houses have vines and sweet peas on the wall, flowers in the window, and altogether a look of comfort and ease found nowhere in Western France. The Breton villages are composed of mere hovels, where pigs, cows, and poultry live in close proximity to their owners, a dung-hill stands before every front door, and, to get indoors and out, you have always to cross a pool of liquid manure. Here order and cleanliness prevail, with a diffusion of well-being, hardly, I should say, to be matched out of America. Travellers who visit France again and again, as much out of sympathy with its people's institutions as from a desire to see its monuments and outward features, will find ample to reward them in Seine et Marne. On every side we have evidence of the tremendous natural resources and indefatigable laboriousness of the people. There is one point here, as elsewhere in France, which strikes an agriculturist with astonishment, and that is the abundance of trees standing amid cornfields and miscellaneous crops, also the interminable plantation of poplars that can be seen on every side, apparently without any object. But the truth is, the planting of apple and pear trees in fields is no extravagance, rather an economy, the fruit they produce exceeding in value the corn they damage, whilst the puzzling line of poplars growing beside canals and rivers is the work of the Government, every spare bit of ground belonging to the State being planted with them for the sake of the timber. The crops are splendid partly owing to the soil, and partly to the advanced system of agriculture. You may see exposed for sale, in little towns, the newest American agricultural implements, whilst the great diversity of products speaks volumes for the enterprise of the farmers. As you stroll along, now climbing, now descending this pleasantly undulated country, you may see growing in less than an acre, a patch of potatoes here, a vineyard there, on one side a bit of wheat, oats, rye, and barley, with fruit-trees casting abundant shadow over all; on the other Indian corn, clover and mangel-wurzel in the green state, recently planted for autumn fodder; further on a poppy field, three weeks ago in full flower, now having full pods ready for gathering--the opium poppy being cultivated for commerce here--all these and many more are found close together, and near them many a lovely little glen, copse, and ravine, recalling Scotland and Wales, while the open hill-sides show broad belts of pasture, corn and vineyard. You may walk for miles through what seems one vast orchard, only, instead of turf, rich crops are growing under the trees. This is indeed the orchard of France, on which we English folk largely depend for our summer fruits. A few days ago the black-currant trees were being stripped for the benefit of Parisian lovers of _cassis_, a liqueur in high repute. We encounter on our walks carts laden with plums packed in baskets and barrels on their way to Covent Garden. Later on, it will be the peach and apricot crops that are gathered for exportation. Later still, apples, walnuts, and pears; the village not far from our own sends fruit to the Paris markets valued at 1,000,000 francs annually, and the entire valley of the Marne is unequalled throughout France for fruitfulness and abundance. But the traveller must settle down in some delicious retreat in the valley of the Marne to realize the interest and charm of such a country as this. And he must above all things be a fairly good pedestrian, for, though a land of Goshen flowing with milk and honey, it is not a land of luxuries, and carriages, good, bad, or indifferent, are difficult to be got. A countless succession of delightful prospects is offered to the persevering explorer, who, each day, strikes out in an entirely different direction. I have always been of opinion that the best way to see a country is to make a halt in some good central point for weeks at a time, and from thence "excursionize." By these means, much fatigue is avoided, and the two chief drawbacks to the pleasure of travel, namely, hotels and perpetual railway travel, are avoided as much as possible. Seine et Marne, if not one of the most picturesque regions in France, abounds in those quiet charms that grow upon the sympathetic traveller. It is not a land of marvels and pictorial attractions like Brittany. There is no costume, no legendary romance, no stone array of Carnac to entice the stranger, but, on the other hand, the lover of nature, in her more subdued aspects, and the archaeologist also, will find ample to repay them. It is not my intention to give a history of the ancient cities and towns visited during my stay, or, indeed, to offer an itinerary, or any other kind of information so amply provided for us in English and foreign Handbooks. My object is merely to relate my own experiences in this and other Eastern regions of France, for, if these are not worth having, no réchauffé_ of facts, gleaned here and there, can be so; and I also intend only to quote other authors when they are inaccessible to the general reader. With regard, therefore, to the history of the _département_ of Seine et Marne, constructed, in 1790, from the province of Brie, also from the Ile de France, and the so called Gâtinois Français, I will say a few words. Although it only boasts of two important historical monuments, namely, the Cathedral of Meaux and the Château of Fontainebleau; scattered about the country are noteworthy remains of different epochs, Celtic, Roman, Merovingian, mediaeval; none, perhaps, of paramount importance, but all interesting to the archaeologist and the artist. Such remains as those of the Merovingian crypt at Jouarre, and the various monuments of Provins, well repay the traveller who visits these places on purpose, whilst, as he zig-zags here and there, he will find many a village church of quaint exterior and rich Gothic decoration within. Fontainebleau, being generally included in a visit to Paris, I do not attempt to describe, but prefer to lead the traveller a little off the ordinary track, on which, indeed, he wants no guide but Murray and Joanne. My rallying point was a pleasant country-house at Couilly, offering easy opportunity of studying agriculture and rural life, as well as of making excursions by road and rail. Couilly itself is charming. The canal, winding its way between thick lines of poplar trees towards Meaux, you may follow in the hottest day of summer without fatigue. The river, narrow and sleepy, yet so picturesquely curling amid green slopes and tangled woods, is another delightful stroll; then there are broad, richly wooded hills rising above these, and shady side-paths leading from hill to valley, with alternating vineyards, orchards, pastures, and cornfields on either side. Couilly lies in the heart of the cheese-making country, part of the ancient province of Brie from which this famous cheese is named. The Comté of Brie became part of the French kingdom on the occasion of the marriage of Jeanne of Navarre with Philip-le-Bel in 1361, and is as prosperous as it is picturesque. It also possesses historic interest. Within a stone's throw of our garden wall once stood a famous convent of Bernardines, called Pont-aux-Dames. Here Madame du Barry, the favourite of Louis XV., was exiled after his death; on the outbreak of the Revolution, she flew to England, having first concealed, somewhere in the Abbey grounds, a valuable case of diamonds. The Revolution went on its way, and Madame du Barry might have ended her unworthy career in peace had not a sudden fit of cupidity induced her to return to Couilly when the Terror was at its acmé, in quest of her diamonds. The Committee of Public Safety got hold of Madame du Barry, and she mounted the guillotine in company of her betters, showing a pusillanimity that befitted such a career. What became of the diamonds, history does not say. The Abbey of Pont-aux-Dames has long since been turned to other purposes, but the beautiful old-fashioned garden still remains as it was. Couilly, like most of the ancient villages in Seine et Marne, possesses a church of an early period, though unequal in interest to those of its neighbours. It is also full of reminiscences of the last Franco-German war. My friend's house was occupied by the German commander and his staff, who, however, committed no depredations beyond carrying off the bed-quilts and blankets, a pardonable offence considering the excessive cold of that terrible winter. Not far off, on a high hill, is a farm-house, known as the Maison Blanche, in which Jules Favre gave utterance to the memorable words: "Not an inch of our territory--not a stone of our fortresses," when in conference with Bismarck and Moltke in 1870. It is said that a peasant who showed them the way meditated assassinating all three, and was only prevented by the fear of his village being made the scene of vengeance. Already, German tourists are finding their way back to these country resorts, and the sound of the German tongue is no longer unbearable to French ears. It is to be hoped that this outward reconciliation of the two nationalities may mean something deeper, and that the good feeling may increase. The diligence passes our garden gate early in the morning, and in an hour and a half takes us to Meaux, former capital of the province of La Brie, bishopric of the famous Bossuet, and one of the early strongholds of the Reformation. The neighbouring country, _pays Meldois_ as it is called, is one vast fruit and vegetable garden, bringing in enormous returns. From our vantage ground, for, of course, we get outside the vehicle, we survey the shifting landscape, wood and valley and plain, soon seeing the city with its imposing Cathedral, flashing like marble, high above the winding river and fields of green and gold on either side. I know nothing that gives the mind an idea of fertility and wealth more than this scene, and it is no wonder that the Prussians, in 1871, here levied a heavy toll; their sojourn at Meaux having cost the inhabitants not less than a million and a half of francs. All now is peace and prosperity, and here, as in the neighbouring towns, rags, want, and beggary are not found. The evident well-being of all classes is delightful to behold. Meaux, with its shady boulevards and pleasant public gardens, must be an agreeable place to live in, nor would intellectual resources be wanting. We strolled into the spacious town library, open, of course, to all strangers, and could wish for no better occupation than to con the curious old books and the manuscripts that it contains. One incident amused me greatly. The employé, having shown me the busts adorning the walls of the principal rooms, took me into a side closet, where, ignominiously put out of sight, were the busts of Charles the Tenth and Louis-Philippe. "But," said our informant, "we have more busts in the garret. The Emperor Napoleon III., the Empress and the Prince Imperial!" Naturally enough, on the proclamation of the Republic, these busts were considered at least supererogatory, and it is to be hoped they will stay where they are. The Evêché, or Bishop's Palace, is the principal sight at Meaux. It is full of historic associations, besides being very curious in itself. Here have slept many noteworthy personages, Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette when on their return from Varennes, June 24th, 1791, Napoleon in 1814, Charles X. in 1828, later, General Moltke in 1870, who said upon that occasion, "In three days, or a week at most, we shall be in Paris;" not counting on the possibilities of a siege. The room occupied by the unfortunate Louis XVI and his little son, still bears the name of "La Chambre du Roi," and cannot be entered without sadness. The gardens, designed by Le Nôtre, are magnificent and very quaint, as quaint and characteristic, perhaps, as any of the same period; a broad, open, sunny flower-garden below, above terraced walks so shaded with closely-planted plane trees that the sun can hardly penetrate them on this July day. These green walks, where the nightingale and the oriole were singing, were otherwise as quiet as the Evêché itself; but the acmé of quiet and solitude was only to be found in the avenue of yews, called Bossuet's Walk. Here it is said the great orator used to pace backwards and forwards when composing his famous discourses, like another celebrated French writer, Balzac, wholly secluding himself from the world whilst thus occupied. A little garden-house in which he ate and slept leads out of this delightful walk, a cloister of greenery, the high square-cut walls of yew shutting out everything but the sky. What would some of us give for such a retreat as this! an ideal of perfect tranquillity and isolation from the outer world that might have satisfied the soul of Schopenhauer himself. But the good things of life are not equally divided. The present Bishop, an octogenarian, who has long been quite blind, would perhaps prefer to hear more echoes from without. It happened that in one party was a little child of six, who, with the inquisitiveness of childhood, followed the servant in-doors, whilst the rest waited at the door for permission to visit the palace. "I hear the footsteps of a child" said the old man, and bidding his young visitor approach, he gave him sugar-plums, kisses, and finally his blessing. Very likely the innocent prattling of the child was as welcome to the old man as the sweetmeats to the little one on his knee. The terraces of the Episcopal garden cross the ancient walls of the city, and underneath the boulevards afford a promenade almost as pleasant. It must be admitted that much more pains are taken in France to embellish provincial towns with shady walks and promenades than in England. The tiniest little town in Seine et Marne has its promenades, that is to say, an open green space and avenues with benches for the convenience of passers-by. We cannot, certainly, sit out of doors as much as our French neighbours in consequence of our more changeable climate, but might not pleasant public squares and gardens, with bands playing gratuitously on certain evenings in the week in country towns, entice customers from the public-house? The traveller is shown the handsome private residences of rich Meldois, where in the second week of September, 1870, were lodged the Emperor of Germany, the Prince Frederick Charles, and Prince Bismarck. Meaux, if one of the most prosperous, is also one of the most liberal of French cities, and has been renowned for its charity from early times. In the thirteenth century there were no fewer than sixty Hôtels-Dieu, as well as hospitals for lepers in the diocese, and at the present day it is true to its ancient traditions, being abundantly supplied with hospitals, &c. Half-an-hour from Meaux by railway is the pretty little town of La Ferté-sous-Jouarre, coquettishly perched on the Marne, and not yet rendered unpoetic by the hum and bustle of commerce. Here, even more than at Meaux, the material well-being of all classes is especially striking. You see the women sitting in their little gardens at needle-work, the children trotting off to school, the men busied in their respective callings, but all as it should be, no poverty, no dirt, no drunkenness, no discontent; cheerfulness, cleanliness, and good clothes are evidently everybody's portion. Yet it is eminently a working population; there are no fashionable ladies in the streets, no nursery-maids with over-dressed charges on the public walks; the men wear blue blouses, the women cotton gowns, all belonging to one class, and have no need to envy any others. Close to the railway-station is a little house, where I saw an instance of the comfort enjoyed by these unpretentious citizens of this thrifty little town. The landlord, a particularly intelligent and well-mannered person, was waiting upon his customers in a blue cotton coat, and the landlady was as busy as could be in the kitchen. Both were evidently accustomed to plenty of hard work, yet when she took me over the house in order to show her accommodation for tourists, I found their own rooms furnished with Parisian elegance. There were velvet sofas and chairs, white-lace curtains, polished floors, mirrors, hanging wardrobes, a sumptuous little bassinette for baby, and adjoining, as charming a room for their elder daughter--a teacher in a day-school--as any heiress to a large fortune could desire. This love of good furniture and in-door comfort generally, seemed to me to speak much, not only for the taste, but the moral tone of the family. Evidently to these good people the home meant everything dearest to their hearts. You would not find extravagance in food or dress among them, or most likely any other but this: they work hard, they live frugally, but, when the day's toil is done, they like to have pretty things around them, and not only to repose but to enjoy. La Ferté-sous-Jouarre is the seat of a large manufacture of millstones, which are exported to all parts of the world, and it is a very thriving little place. Large numbers of Germans are brought hither by commerce, and now live again among their French neighbours as peacefully as before the war. The attraction for tourists is, however, the twin-town of Jouarre, reached by a lovely drive of about an hour from the little town. Leaving the river, you ascend gradually, gaining at every step a richer and wider prospect; below the blue river, winding between green banks, above a lofty ridge of wooded hill, with hamlets dotted here and there amid the yellow corn and luxuriant foliage. It is a bit of Switzerland, and has often been painted by French artists. I can fancy no more attractive field for a landscape-painter than this, who, provided he could endure the perpetual noise of the stone-yards, would find no lack of creature comforts. The love of flowers and flower-gardens, so painfully absent in the West of France, is here conspicuous. There are flowers everywhere, and some of the little gardens give evidence of great skill and care. Jouarre is perched upon an airy green eminence, a quiet old-world town, with an enormous convent in the centre, where some scores of cloistered nuns have shut themselves up for the glory of God. There they live, these Bernardines, as they are called, as much in prison as if they were the most dangerous felons ever brought to justice; and a prison-house, indeed, the convent looks with its high walls, bars, and bolts. I had a little talk with the sister in charge of the porter's lodge, and she took me into the church, pointing to the high iron rails barring off the cloistered nuns, with that imbecile self-satisfaction as much inseparable from her calling as her unwholesome dress. "There is one young English lady here," she said, "formerly a Protestant; she is twenty-one, and only the other day took the perpetual vows." I wondered, as I looked up at the barred windows, how long this kind of Suttee would be permitted in happy France, or, indeed, in any other country, and whether in the life-time of that foolish English girl the doors would be opened and she would be compelled to live and labour in the world like any other rational being. This dreary prison-house, erected not in the interests of justice and society, but in order to pacify cupidity on one side and fanaticism on the other, afforded a painful contrast to the cheerful, active life outside. Close to the convent is one of the most curious monuments in the entire department of Seine et Marne, namely, the famous Merovingian Crypt, described by French archaeologists in the "Bulletin Monumental" and elsewhere. It is well known that during the Merovingian epoch, and under Charlemagne, long journeys were often undertaken in order to procure marbles and other building materials for the Christian churches. Thus only can we account for the splendid columns of jasper, porphyry, and other rare marbles of which this crypt is composed. The capitals of white marble, in striking contrast to the deep reds, greens, and other colours of the columns, are richly carved with acanthus leaves, scrolls, and other classic patterns, without doubt the whole having originally decorated some Pagan temple. The chapel containing the crypt is said to have been founded in the seventh century, and speaks much for the enthusiasm and artistic spirit animating its builders. There is considerable elegance in these arches, also in the sculptured tombs of different epochs, which, like the crypt, have been preserved so wonderfully until the present time. Other archaeological treasures are here, notably the so-called "Pierre des Sonneurs de Jouarre," or Stone of the Jouarre Bell-ringers, a quaint design representing two bell-ringers at their task, with a legend underneath, dating from the fourteenth century. It must be mentioned that the traveller's patience may undergo a trial here. When I arrived at Jouarre, M. le Curé and the sacristan were both absent, and as no one else possessed the key of the crypt, my chance of seeing it seemed small. However, some one obligingly set out on a voyage of discovery, and finally the sacristan's wife was found in a neighbouring harvest-field, and she bustled up, delighted to show everything; amongst other antiquities some precious skulls and bones of Saints are kept under lock and key in the sacristy, and only exposed on fête days. In the middle ages, Jouarre possessed an important abbey, which was destroyed during the Great Revolution. There are also in a lovely little island, in the river close to the town, remains of a feudal castle where Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette halted on their way to Paris after their capture at Varennes. No one, however, need to have archaeological tastes in order to visit these little towns; alike scenery and people are charming, and the tourist is welcomed as a guest rather than a customer. But whether at Jouarre, or anywhere else, he who knows most will see most, every day the dictum of the great Lessing being illustrated in travel: "Wer viel weisst hat viel zu sorgen--" "Who knows much has much to look after." The mere lover of the picturesque, who cares nothing for French history, literature, and institutions, old or new, will get a superb landscape here, and nothing more. Our resting place at Couilly, where, sheltered by acacia trees, we hardly feel the tropical heat of July, is an admirable starting point for excursions, each interesting in a different way. The striking contrast with the homely ease and well to do _terre-à-terre_ about us is the princely château of the Rothschilds at Ferrières, which none should miss seeing on any account whatever. With princely liberality also, Baron Rothschild admits anyone to his fairy-land who takes the trouble to write for permission, and however much we may have been thinking of King Solomon, Haroun al Raschid, and the thousand and one nights, we shall not be disappointed. The very name of Rothschild fills us with awe and bewilderment! We prepare ourselves to be dazzled with gold and gems, to tread on carpets gorgeous as peacock's tails, softer than eider-down, to pass through jasper and porphyry columns into regal halls where the acmé of splendour can go no farther, where the walls are hung with rich tapestries, where every chair looks like a throne, and where on all sides mirrors reflect the treasures collected from different parts of the world, and we are not disappointed. Quitting the railway at the cheerful and wealthy little town of Lagny, we drive past handsome country-houses, and well-kept flower-gardens, then gradually ascend a road winding amid hill and valley to the château, a graceful structure in white marble, or so it seems, proudly commanding the wide landscape. The flower-gardens are a blaze of colours, and the orange trees give delicious fragrance as we ascend the terrace, ascend being hardly the word applicable to steps sloping so easily upwards, so nicely adjusted to the human foot that climbing Mont Blanc, under the same circumstances, would be accomplished without fatigue. It is impossible to give any idea of the different kinds of magnificence that greet us on every side, now a little Watteau-like boudoir, having for background sky-blue satin and roses; now a dining-hall, sombre, gorgeous, and majestic as that of a Spanish palace; now we are transported to Persia, China, and Japan, the next we find ourselves amid unspeakable treasures of Italian and other marbles. To come down to practical details, it might be suggested to the generous owner of this noble treasure-home of art that the briefest possible catalogue of his choicest treasures would unspeakably oblige his visitors. There is hardly a piece of furniture that is not interesting, alike from an historic and artistic point of view, whilst some are _chefs-d'oeuvre_ both in design and execution, and dazzlingly rich in material. Among these may be mentioned a pair of chimney ornaments, thickly hung with pendants of precious stones, a piano--which belonged to Marie Antoinette--the case of which is formed of tortoiseshell, richly decorated with gold; an inlaid cabinet, set with emeralds, sapphires, and other jewels; another composed of precious stones; chairs and couches crowned with exquisite tapestry of the Louis Quinze period; some rare specimens of old cloisonné work, also of Florentine mosaics--these forming a small part of this magnificent museum. The striking feature is the great quantity and variety of rich marbles in every part. One of the staircases is entirely formed of different kinds of rare marble, the effect being extra-ordinarily imposing. Elsewhere, a room is divided by Corinthian columns of jasper and porphyry, and on every side are displayed a wealth and splendour in this respect quite unique. Without doubt, nothing lends such magnificence to interiors as marbles, but they require the spaciousness and princeliness of such a château to be displayed to advantage. Next in importance, as a matter of mere decoration, must be cited the tapestries of which there is a rare and valuable collection, chiefly in the hall, so called, where they are arrayed about the running gallery surmounting the pictures. What this hall must be worth would perhaps sound fabulous on paper, but it is here that some of the most precious treasures are found; cabinets of ivory, ebony, gems, gold, and silver, and the pictures alone represent a princess's dowry. Examples of some of the greatest masters are here: Velasquez, Rembrandt, Rubens, Claude Lorraine, the Caracci, Bordone, Reynolds, lastly among moderns, Ingres and Hippolyte Flandrin. Much might be said about these pictures, if space permitted, but they alone are worth making the journey from Paris or Couilly to see. We find a very pleasing Murillo and some exquisite little specimens of the early German school in other parts of the château, although the gems of the collection are undoubtedly the Bordones, Rembrandts, and Reynoldses. But the _crème de la crème_ of Baron Rothschild's treasures is not to be found in this sumptuous hall, in spite of tapestries, pictures, marbles and rare furniture, nor in the state _salon_, but in the dining-room, a marvellously rich and gorgeous apartment, where the wealth of gold and splendid colours is toned down, and the eye is rather refreshed than dazzled by the whole. On the walls, reaching from base to ceiling, are hung a series of paintings on leather, known as the _Cuirs de Cordoue_, leather paintings of Cordova. They are historic and allegorical subjects, and are painted in rich colours with a great abundance of gold on a dark background, the general effect being that of a study in gold and brown. As good luck would have it, immediately after my visit to Ferrières, I happened to hear of the Baron Davillier's learned little treatise on this ancient leather-work, or _Guadamaciles_, variously called _cuir d'or, cuirs dorés, cuirs basanés_, &c. The history of these artistic varieties is so curious, that I will give it in as few words as possible. Guadamacil, a Spanish word, signifying painted leather, is supposed to have its origin in the city of Ghadamès, Sahara, where M. Duveyrier the eminent French explorer, was making scientific inquiries in 1860. The Kadi knowing M. Duveyrier's interest in all that concerned the history of this city in the desert, drew his attention to the following passage in the geographical work of a learned Tunisian, dating from the sixth century of the Hegira, that is to say, the twelfth of our era. "Ghadamès--from this city come the painted leathers or Ghadamesien." M. Duveyrier accepted this etymology of the word as the most natural, seeing that the Moors of Spain, and especially of Cordova, had constant intercourse with the inhabitants of North Africa, and would naturally receive these with other artistic curiosities. The Arab dictionary of Freytag confirms M. Duveyrier's etymology, the author thus describing Ghadamès--"Nomen oppidi in Africa, unde pelles gudsamiticae appellatae sunt." Whatever its origin, we find the fabrication of these _guadamaciles_ very flourishing at Cordova in the sixteenth century. The preparation of sheep and goat-skins for artistic purposes was a source of considerable commercial wealth to this city, and they were largely exported to various parts of Europe and India. A writer of that period describes the glowing effect of the Cordovan streets tapestried with the richly gilt and painted skins hung out to dry before packing; whilst Cervantes is supposed to have one in his mind, when thus describing the heroine of one of his plays, "Enter Hortigosa, wearing a _guadamacile_, &c." Rabelais also alludes to the subject in Pantagruel:--"De la peau de ces moutons seront faictes les beaux maroquins, lesquels on vendra pour maroquins Turquins ou de Montelimart, ou de Hespaigne." The guadamaciles, although leather-work was fabricated in several cities of France, also of Italy and Belgium, ever remained a speciality of Spain, Seville, Barcelona, Lerida, Ciudad-Real, and Valladolid bearing the palm after Cordova. Such works are characterized by elaborateness, splendour of colour and richness of detail. The curious may consult the _Recherches sur le Cuir doré, anciennement appelé Cuir basané_, by M. de la Quérière, also M. Jacquemart's _Histoire du Mobilier_, in which is found a very exact representation of a specimen, probably Italian. The art decayed in Spain after the expulsion of the Moors in 1610, but was introduced in various parts of France by some of the exiled artists, and it may be said to have died out in France about the end of the last century. Señor Riaño's handbook to the Spanish collection in the South Kensington Museum gives a list with details of the specimens there exhibited, numbering upwards of twenty panels and borders for furniture. These are chiefly seventeenth century work-tables, exceedingly interesting and valuable. All lovers of art, furniture, and decoration generally can but echo M. Davilliers' hope that the art of painting and stamping on leather may be ere long revived at Cordova. So much for the artistic treat in store for those art-lovers who find their way to the Château of Ferrières, where none will fail to add to his previous stock of knowledge. Art-lovers cannot study the exquisite design, elaborate workmanship, and splendid materials of the furniture, decoration, and general fittings up of such a palace without some sadness. How little that is new and modern can here be compared with the old, whether we regard mere carpentry detail or solidity! This is strikingly illustrated in the Japanese cloisonné work of which there are some choice specimens. Two refinements of civilization will amuse the stranger; the first is a railway in miniature from kitchens to dining-rooms, by means of which the dishes are conveyed to the latter with the utmost possible dispatch. The temper indeed of these happy diners should be ineffably serene, considering that they can never be ruffled by soups or fish coming to table one degree less hot than the most epicurean palate could desire. Luxury can go no farther, unless, which may be invented some day, a patent appetite and digesting apparatus were supplied, enabling host and guests to sit down every day to the feasts spread before them with undiminished relish and perfect impunity. The second amusing, or rather surprising, fact is that of the luxurious, though I venture to say somewhat floridly decorated ladies smoking room? Were we dreaming? Or was it our informant who was but half awake or in error? I believe not, and that the elegant and princely Château de Ferrières thus acknowledges the fact of lady smokers! CHAPTER II. NOISIEL: THE CITY OF CHOCOLATE. When not disposed to go far a-field in search of pleasure or instruction, we find plenty to interest us close at hand. Even in this quiet little village there is always something going on, a _fête patronale_, a ball, a prize-distribution, or other local event. The Ecole Communale for both boys and girls has just closed for the holidays, so last Sunday--the season in July--the prizes were given away with much ceremony. A tent was decorated with tricolour flags, evergreens, and garlands, the village band escorted thither the Mayor and Corporation, marching them in with a spirited air, the entire community having turned out to see. I had already witnessed a prize-distribution in the heart of Anjou, but how different from this! Here at Couilly it was difficult to believe that the fashionable Parisian toilettes around us belonged to the wives of small farmers, who all the week were busy in their dairies, whilst the young ladies of all ages, from five to fifteen, their daughters, might have appeared at the Lady Mayoress's ball at Guildhall, so smart were they in their white muslin frocks and blue and pink sashes and hair-knots. A few mob-caps among the old women and blue blouses among the men were seen, but the assemblage, as a whole, might be called a fashionable one--whilst at Anjou, exactly the same class presented the homeliest appearance, all the female part of it wearing white _coiffes_ and plain stuff gowns, the men blue blouses and sabots. Nor was the difference less striking in other respects. These sons and daughters of rich tenant-farmers, peasant proprietors, or even day-labourers, are far ahead of the young people in Anjou, and each would be considered a wonder in benighted Brittany. They are, in fact, quite accomplished, not only learning singing, drawing and other accomplishments, but are able to take part in dramatic entertainments. Two performances were given by the boys, two by the girls, a little play being followed by a recitation; and I must say I never heard anything of the kind in a village-school in England. These children acquitted themselves of their parts remarkably well, especially the girls, and their accuracy, pure accent, and delivery generally, spoke volumes for the training they had received; of awkwardness there was not a trace. Of course there were speeches from the Mayor, M. le Curé, and others, also music and singing, and a large number of excellent books were distributed, each recipient being at the same time crowned with a wreath of artificial flowers. It is to be hoped that ere many years, thanks to the new law enforcing compulsory education, the excellent education these children receive will be the portion of every boy and girl in France, and that an adult unable to read and write--the rule, not the exception, among the rural population in Brittany--will be unheard of. A friend of mine from Nantes recently took with her to Paris a young Breton maidservant, who had been educated by the "Bonnes Soeurs," that is to say the nuns. What was the poor girl's astonishment to find that in Paris everybody was so far accomplished as to be able to read and write? Her surprise would have been greater still, had she witnessed the acquirements of these little Couilly girls, many of them, like herself, daughters of small peasant farmers. It must be mentioned, for the satisfaction of those who regard the progress of education with some concern, that the elegant bonnets and dresses I speak of are laid aside on week days, and that nowhere in France do people work harder than here. But when not at work they like to wear good clothes and read the newspapers as well as their neighbours. Take our laundress, for instance, an admirable young woman, who gets up clothes to perfection, and who on Sunday exchanges her cotton gown and apron for the smartest of Parisian costumes. The amount of underclothes these countrywomen possess is sometimes enormous, and they pride themselves upon the largest possible quantity, a great part of which is of course laid by. They count their garments not by dozens but by scores, and can thus afford to wait for the quarterly washing-day, as they often do. It must be also mentioned that cleanliness is uniformly found throughout these flourishing villages, and, in most, hot and cold public baths. Dirt is rare--I might almost say unknown--also rags, neither of which as yet we have seen throughout our long walks and drives, except in the case of a company of tramps we encountered one day. Drunkenness is also comparatively absent, in some places we might say absolutely. As we make further acquaintance with these favoured regions, we might suppose that here, at least, the dreams of Utopians had come true, and that poverty, squalor, and wretchedness were banished for ever. The abundant crops around us are apportioned out to all, and the soil, which, if roughly cultivated according to English notions, yet bears marvellously, is not the heritage of one or two, but of the people. The poorest has his bit of land, to which he adds from time to time by the fruit of his industry, and though tenant-farming is carried on largely, owing to the wealth and enterprize of the agricultural population, the tenant-farmers almost always possess land of their own, and they hire more in order to save money for future purchases. Of course they could only make tenant-farming pay by means of excessive economy and laboriousness, as the rents are high, but in these respects they are not wanting. The fertility of the soil is not more astonishing than the variety of produce we find here, though pasturage and cheese-making are their chief occupations, and fruit crops are produced in other parts. We find, as has been before mentioned, fruit-trees everywhere, corn, fruit, and vegetables all growing with unimaginable luxuriance. The pastures are also very fine, but we see no cattle out to graze; the harvest work requires all hands, and, as there are no fences between field and meadow, there is no one to tend them. The large heap of manure being dried up by the sun in the midst of the farm-yard, has a look of unthriftiness, whilst the small, dark, and ill-ventilated dairies make us wonder that the manufacture of the famous Brie cheese should be the profitable thing it is. At one farm we visited, we saw thirty-six splendid Normandy cows, the entire milk produce of which was used for cheese-making. Yet nothing could be worse than the dairy arrangements from a hygienic point of view, and the absolute cleanliness requisite for dairy work was wanting. These Brie cheeses are made in every farm, small or great, and large quantities are sent to the Meaux market on Saturdays, where the sale alone reaches the sum of five or six millions of francs yearly. The process is a very simple one, and is of course perpetually going on. Our hostess, at one of the larger and more prosperous of these farms, showed us everything, and regaled us abundantly with the fresh milk warm from the cow. Here we saw an instance of the social metamorphosis taking place in these progressive districts. The mistress of the house, a bright clever woman, occupied all day with the drudgery of the farm-house, is fairly educated; and, though now neatly dressed in plain cotton gown, on Sunday dresses like any other lady for the promenade. Her mother, still clinging to the past custom, appeared in short stuff petticoat, wooden shoes, and yellow-handkerchief wrapped round her head; while the children, who, in due time, will be trained to toil like their neighbours, are now being well taught in the village school. These people are wealthy, and may be taken as types of the farming class here, though many of the so called _cultivateurs_, or proprietors, farming their own land, live in much easier style; the men managing the business, the ladies keeping the house, and the work of the farm being left to labourers. The rent of good land is about fifty shillings an acre, and wages, in harvest time, four francs with board. The farms, while large in comparison with anything found in Brittany and Anjou, are small, measured by our scale, being from fifty to two or three hundred acres. Steam-threshing has long been in use here; but, of course, not generally, as the smaller patches of corn only admit of the old system; and the corn is so ripe that it is often threshed on the field immediately after the cutting; the harvesting process is rapid; we often see only one or two labourers, whether men or women, on a single patch. But there is no waiting, as a rule, for fine weather to cart away the corn, and masters and men work with a will. We must, indeed, watch a harvest from beginning to end to realise the laboriousness of a farmer's life here. Upon one occasion, when visiting a farm of a hundred and thirty acres, we found the farmer and his mother, rich people, both hard at work in the field, the former casting away straw--the corn being threshed by machinery on the field--the latter tying it up. The look of cheerfulness animating all faces was delightful to behold. The farmer's countenance beamed with satisfaction, and, one may be sure, not without good cause. The farmhouse and buildings are spacious and handsome, and, as is generally the case here, were surrounded by a high wall, having a large court in the centre, where a goodly number of geese, turkeys, and poultry were disporting themselves. There we found only a few cows, but they were evidently very productive from the quantity of cheeses found in the dairy.[Footnote: The curious in agriculture never need fear to ask a question or two of these flourishing farmers and farmeresses of Seine et Marne. Busy as they are, they are never too busy to be courteous, and are always ready to show any part of the premises to strangers.] Sheep are not kept here largely, and grazing bullocks still less. The farmer, therefore, relies chiefly on his dairy, next on his corn and fruit crops, and, as bad seasons are rare, both these seldom fail him. But these pleasant villages have generally some other interest besides their rich harvest and picturesque sites. In some of the smallest, you may find exquisite little churches, such as La Chapelle-sur-Crécy, a veritable cathedral in miniature. Crécy was once an important place with ninety-nine towers and double ramparts, traces of which still remain. A narrow stream runs at the back of the town, and quaint enough are the little houses perched beside it, each with its garden and tiny drawbridge, drawn at night, the oddest sights of which a sketcher might make something. A sketcher, indeed, must be a happy person here, so many quiet subjects offering themselves at every turn. Many of these village churches date from the thirteenth century, and are alike picturesque within and without, their spires and gabled towers giving these leading characters to the landscape. Nowhere in France do you find prettier village churches, not a few ranking among the historic monuments of the country. Here and there are châteaux with old-fashioned gardens and noble avenues, and we have only to ask permission at the porter's lodge, to walk in and enjoy them at leisure. In one of these the lady of the house, who was sitting out of doors, kindly beckoned us to enter, and we had the pleasure of listening, under some splendid oaks, to the oriole's song, and of seeing a little cluster of Eucalyptus trees, two surprises we had not looked for. The oriole, a well known and beautiful American bird, also a songster that may be compared to the nightingale, is indeed no stranger here, and, having once heard and seen him, you cannot mistake him for any other bird. His song is an invariable prognostic of rain, as we discover on further acquaintance. The _Eucalyptus Globulus_, or blue gum tree, a native of Australia, and now so successfully acclimatized in Algeria, the Cape, the Riviera, and other countries, is said to flourish in the region of the olive only; but we were assured by the lady of the house that it bears the frost of these northern regions. I confess I thought her plantations looked rather sickly, and considering that the climate is like that of Paris, subject to short spells of severe cold in winter and sudden changes, I doubt much in the experiment. But the health-giving, fever-destroying Eucalyptus is not needed in this well-wooded healthy country, and the splendid foliage of acacia, walnut, oaks, and birch leaves nothing to desire either in the matter of shade or ornament. A lover of trees, birds, and whispering breezes will say that here at least is a corner of the Happy Fields of Homer, or the Islands of the Blest described by Hesiod. Nowhere is summer to be more revelled in, more amply tasted, than in these rustic villages, where creature comforts yet abound, and nowhere is the _dolce far niente_ so easily induced. Why should we be at the trouble of undertaking a hot, dusty railway journey in search of Gaelic tombs, Gothic churches, or Merovingian remains when we have the essence of deliciousness at our very door?--waving fields of ripe corn, amid which the reapers in twos and threes are at work--picturesque figures that seemed to have walked out of Millet's canvas--lines of poplars along the curling river, beyond hills covered with woods, a clustering village, or a château, here and there. This is the picture, partially screened by noble acacia trees, that I have from my window, accompanied by the music of waving barley and wheat, dancing leaves, and chaffinches, tame as canaries, singing in the branches. About a mile off is the little village of Villiers, which is even prettier than our own, and which of course artists have long ago found out. The wayside inn near the bridge, crossing the little river Morin, bears witness to the artistic popularity of this quiet spot. The panels of the parlour are covered with sketches, some in oil, some in water-colour, souvenirs with which visitors have memorialized their stay. Some of these hasty effects are very good, and the general effect is heightened by choice old pottery, tastefully arranged above. Villiers-sur-Morin would be an admirable summer resort for an artist fond of hanging woods, running streams, and green pastures, and a dozen more possessing the same attraction lie close at hand. But, though within so easy a distance of Paris, life is homely, and fastidious travellers must keep to the beaten tracks and high roads where good hotels are to be found. When he goes into the by-ways, a way-side inn is all that he must expect, and, if there is no _diligence_, a lift in the miller's or baker's cart; the farmers' wives driving to market with their cheese and butter are always willing to give the stranger a seat, but money must not be offered in return for such obligingness. We must never forget that, if these country folks are laborious, and perhaps sordid, in their thriftiness, they are proud, and refuse to be paid for what costs them nothing. The same characteristic is very generally found in France. Fishing is the principal amusement here, and shared by both sexes. What the Marne and the Morin contain in the way of booty, we hardly know; but it is certain that more cunning fish, whether perch, tench, or bream, never existed, and are not, "by hook or by crook," to be caught. Wherever we go, we find anglers sitting patiently by these lovely green banks, and certainly the mere prospect they have before them--clear water reflecting water-mill and lofty poplar trees and shelving banks now a tangle of wild flowers--is enough to make such indolence agreeable. But, after days and days of fruitless waiting for the prey that always eludes them, we do wonder at such persistence. Is nothing then ever caught in these pleasant streams, will ask the inquiring reader? Well, yes, I have seen served at table perch the size of very small herrings, which it is the French fashion to take between the fingers daintily, and, holding by head and tail, nibble as children bite an apple. Whether indeed these little fish are caught by the angler, I know not; but this is certainly the way they are eaten--if inelegant, _honi soit qui mal y pense_. Next to fishing, the favourite pastime here is swimming, also indulged in largely by the gentler sex. The pedestrian, in his ramble along winding river and canal, will be sure to surprise a group of water-nymphs sporting in the water, their bathing costumes being considered quite a sufficient guarantee against ill-natured comment. The men are more careless of appearance, and, if they can get a good bathing place tolerably hidden from the world, take their bath or swim in nature's dress. In all these river-side towns and villages are public baths, swimming schools, and doubtless the prevailing love of water in these parts may partly account for the healthful looks and fine physiques of the population. In fact, people are as clean here as they are the reverse in Brittany, and the blue linen clothes, invariably worn by the men, are constantly in the wash, and are as cool, comfortable and cleanly as it is possible to conceive. English folks have yet to learn how to dress themselves healthfully and appropriately in hot weather, and here they might take a hint. But no matter how enamoured of green fields and woodland walks, we must tear ourselves away for a day to see the famous "Chocolate city" of M. Menier, the modern marvel _par excellence_ of the county, and, as a piece of the most perfect organization it is possible to conceive, one of the wonders of the world. M. Menier has undoubtedly arrived at making the best chocolate that ever rejoiced the palate; he has achieved far greater things than this, in giving us one of the happiest and most delightful social pictures that ever charmed the heart. Such things must be seen to be realized, but I will as briefly as possible give an account of what I saw. Again, we make the pretty little town of Lagny our starting point, and, having passed a succession of scattered farm-houses and wide corn-fields, we come gradually upon a miniature town, built in red and white; so coquettishly, airily, daintily placed is the City of Chocolate amid orchards and gardens, that, at first sight, a spectator is inclined to take it rather for a settlement of such dreamers as assembled together at Brook Farm to poetize, philosophize, and make love, than of artizans engaged in the practical business of life. This long street of charming cottages, having gardens around and on either side, is planted with trees, so that in a few years' time it will form as pleasant a promenade as the Parisian boulevards. We pass along, admiring the abundance of flowers everywhere, and finally reach a large open square around which are a congeries of handsome buildings, all like the dwelling houses, new, cheerful, and having trees and benches in front. This is the heart of the "Cité," to be described by-and-by, consisting of Co-operative Stores, Schools, Libraries, &c.; beyond, stands the château of M. Menier, surrounded by gardens, and before us the manufactory. The air is here fragrant, not with roses and jessamine, but with the grateful aroma of chocolate, reminding us that we are indeed in a city, if not literally a pile, of cocoa, yet owing its origin to the products of that wonderful tree, or rather to the ingenuity by which its resources have been turned to such account. The works are built on the river Marne, and, having seen two vast hydraulic machines, we enter a lift with the intelligent foreman deputed to act as guide, and ascend to the topmost top of the many storied, enormous building in which the cocoa berry is metamorphosed into the delicious compound known as Chocolate Menier. This is a curious experience, and the reverse of most other intellectual processes, since here, instead of mounting the ladder of knowledge gradually, we find ourselves placed on a pinnacle of ignorance, from which we descend by degrees, finding ourselves enlightened when we at last touch the ground. Our aërial voyage accomplished, we see process the first, namely, the baking of the berry, this, of course, occupying a vast number of hands, all men, on account of the heat and laboriousness required in the operation. Descending a story, we find the cocoa berry already in a fair way to become edible, and giving out an odour something like chocolate; here the process consists in sorting and preparing the vast masses of cocoa for grinding. Lower still, we find M. Menier's great adjunct in the fabrication of chocolate, namely, sugar, coming into play, and no sooner are sugar and cocoa put together than the compound becomes chocolate in reality. Lower still, we find processes of refining and drying going on, an infinite number being required before the necessary firmness is attained. Lower still, we come to a very hot place indeed, but, like all the other vast compartments of the manufactory, as well ventilated, spacious, and airy as is possible to conceive, the workman's inconvenience from the heat being thereby reduced to a minimum. Here it is highly amusing to watch the apparently intelligent machines which divide the chocolate into half-pound lumps, the process being accomplished with incredible swiftness. Huge masses of chocolate in this stage awaiting the final preparation are seen here and there, all destined at last to be put half a pound at a time into a little baking tin, and to be baked like a hot cross bun, the name of Menier being stamped on at the same time. A good deal of manipulation is necessary in this process; but we must go down a stage lower to see the dexterity and swiftness with which the chief manual tasks in the fabrication of chocolate are performed. Here women are chiefly employed, and their occupation is to envelope the half-pound cakes of chocolate in three papers, first silver, next white, and finally sealing it up in the well-known yellow cover familiar to all of us. These feminine fingers work so fast, and with such marvellous precision, that, if the intricate pieces of machinery we have just witnessed seemed gifted with human intelligence and docility, on the other hand the women at work in this department appeared like animated machines; no blundering, no halting, no alteration of working pace. Their fluttering fingers, indeed, worked with beautiful promptitude and regularity, and as everybody in M. Menier's City of Chocolate is well-dressed and cheerful, there was nothing painful in the monotony of their toil or unremitting application. On the same floor are the packing departments, where we see the cases destined for all parts of the world. Thus quickly and easily we have descended the ladder of learning, and have acquired some faint notion of the way in which the hard, brown, tasteless cocoa berry is transformed into one of the most agreeable and wholesome compounds as yet invented for our delectation. Of course, many intermediate processes have had to be passed by, also many interesting features in the organization of the various departments; these, to be realized, must be seen. There are one or two points, however, I will mention. In the first place, when we consider the enormous duty on sugar, and the fact that chocolate, like jam, is composed half of sugar and half of berry, we are at first at a loss to understand how chocolate-making can bring in such large returns as it must do--in the first place, to have made M. Menier a millionaire, in the second, to enable him to carry out his philanthropic schemes utterly regardless of cost. But we must remember that there is but one Chocolate Menier in the world, and that in spite of the enormous machinery at work, night and day, working day and Sunday, supply can barely keep pace with demand. A staff of night-workers are always at rest in the day-time, in order to keep the machinery going at work, and, to my regret, I learned that the work-shops are not closed on Sundays. M. Menier's work-people doubtless get ample holidays, but the one day's complete rest out of the seven, the portion of all with us, is denied them. By far the larger portion of the Chocolate Menier is consumed in France, where, as in England and America, it stands unrivalled. M. Menier may therefore be said to possess a monopoly, and, seeing how largely he lavishes his ample wealth on others, none can grudge him such good fortune. Having witnessed the transformation of one of the most unpromising looking berries imaginable into the choicest of sweetmeats, the richest of the cups "that cheer but not inebriate;" lastly, one of the best and most nourishing of the lighter kinds of food--we have to witness a transformation more magical still, namely, the hard life of toil made easy, the drudgery of mechanical labour lightened, the existence of the human machine made hopeful, healthful, reasonable, and happy. Want, squalor, disease, and drunkenness have been banished from the City of Chocolate, and thrift, health, and prosperity reign in their stead. Last of all, ignorance has vanished also, a thorough education being the happy portion of every child born within its precincts. Our first visit was to what is called the "Ecole Gardienne," or infant school--like the rest kept up entirely at M. Menier's expense--and herein, the grandest gift of organization is seen, perhaps, more strikingly than anywhere. These children, little trotting things from three to five years old, have a large playground, open in summer and covered in winter, and a spacious school-room, in which they receive little lessons in singing, A B C, and so on. Instead of being perched on high benches without backs, and their legs dangling, as is the case in convent schools for the poor, they have delightful little low easy-chairs and tables accommodated to their size, each little wooden chair, with backs, having seats for two, so that, instead of being crowded and disturbing each other, the children sit in couples with plenty of room and air, and in perfect physical comfort. No hollow chests, no bent backs, no crookedness here. Happy and comfortable as princes these children sit in their chairs, having their feet on the floor, and their backs where they ought to be, namely, as a support. Leading out of the school-room are two small rooms, where we saw a pleasant sight; a dozen cots, clean and cosy as it is possible to conceive, on which rosy, sturdy boys and girls of a year old were taking their midday sleep. We next went into the girls' school, which is under the charge of a certificated mistress, and where children remain till thirteen or fourteen years of age, receiving exactly the same education as the boys, and without a fraction of cost to the parents. The course of study embraces all branches of elementary knowledge, with needlework, drawing, history, singing and book-keeping. Examinations are held and certificates of progress awarded. We found the girls taking a lesson in needle-work--the only point in which their education differs from that of the boys--and the boys at their drawing class; the school-rooms are lofty, well-aired, and admirably arranged. Adjoining the schools is the library, open to all members of the community, and where many helps to adult study are afforded. On the other side of the pleasant green square, so invitingly planted with trees, stand the Cooperative Stores, which are, of course, an important feature in the organization of the community. Here meat, groceries, and other articles of daily domestic consumption are sold at low prices, and of the best possible quality: the membership, of course, being the privilege of the thrifty and the self-denying, who belong to the Association by payment. I did not ask if intoxicating drinks were sold on the premises, for such an inquiry would have been gratuitous. The cheerful, tidy, healthful looks of the population proclaimed their sobriety, and some excellent _sirop de groseille_ offered me in the cottage of the foreman who acted as guide, showed that such delicious drinks are made at home as to necessitate no purchases abroad. There is also a Savings' Bank, which all are invited to patronize; six and a half per cent being the incentive held out to those economisers on a small scale. But neither the school, nor the Co-operative Store, nor the Savings' Bank can make the working man's life what it should be without the home, and it is with the home that alike M. Menier's philanthropy and organization attain the acmé. These dwellings, each block containing two, are admirably arranged, with two rooms on the ground-floor, two above, a capital cellar and office, and last, but not least, a garden. The workman pays a hundred and twenty francs, rather less than five pounds, a year for this accommodation, which it is hardly necessary to say is the portion of very few artizans in France, or elsewhere. The _Cité_, as it is called, being close to the works, they can go home to meals, and, though the women are largely employed in the manufactory, the home need not be neglected. It was delightful to witness my cicerone's pleasure in his home. He was a workman of superior order, and though, as he informed me, of no great education, yet possessed of literary and artistic tastes. The little parlour was as comfortable a room as any reasonable person could desire. There were books on the shelves, and pictures over the mantelpiece. Among these, were portraits of Thiers, Gambetta, and M. Menier, for all of whom their owner expressed great admiration. "Ah!" he said, "I read the newspaper and I know a little history, but in my time education was not thought of. These children here have now the chance of being whatever they like." He showed me his garden, every inch of which was made use of--fruit, flowers, and vegetables growing luxuriantly on this well-selected site. The abundance of flowers was particularly striking, especially to those familiar with certain districts in France, where the luxury of a flower is never indulged in; M. Menier himself must have as strong a passion for gardening as for philanthropy, judging from the enormous gardens adjoining his handsome château, and perhaps his love of flowers--always a most humanizing taste--has set the example. These brilliant _parterres_, whether seen in the vast domains of the master or the humble homesteads of the men, delightfully break the red and white uniformity of the City of Chocolate, flowers above, around, on every side. There is also a profusion of fruit and vegetables, land quite recently laid under cultivation soon yielding returns in this favoured spot. Before quitting Noisiel we must remark that M. Menier possesses cocoa and sugar plantations in the Southern States of America, and is thus enabled to fabricate the best possible chocolate at the lowest possible price. The cocoa-berry, sugar, and essence of vanilla alone form the ingredients of this delicious compound, which for the most part is made of one quality only. The amount of water power used daily, the quantity of material consumed and chocolate manufactured, the entire consumption throughout France, all these are interesting statistics, and are found elsewhere--my object being a graphic description of M. Menier's "Chocolaterie", and nothing further. The interest to general readers and writers consists not so much in such facts as these as in the astonishing completeness of the manufactory as a piece of organization, and the great social and moral well-being of which it is made the channel. Something more than mere business talent and philanthropy is necessary to combine the material and moral forces we find at work here. M. Menier must have gone into every practical detail, not only of hygiene and domestic economy, but of education, to have put into working order so admirable a scheme as his; and by living among his work-people he is enabled to watch the result of his efforts. The handsome château, with its magnificent garden in close proximity to the "Cité", preaches a daily text, which we may be sure is more effective than any amount of words. By his own capacity and exertions M. Menier has realized the splendid fortune he now uses so philanthropically, and equally by this same capacity and exertion only can his working men lift themselves in the social scale. The children educated at Noisiel will have their fortune in their own hands, since in France fortune and the highest social distinctions are within reach of all; and, in thus educating her future citizens, the great chocolate manufacturer is fulfilling the part not only of a philanthropist but of a true patriot. The French nation now recognise the fact, long since evident to outsiders, that the last great contest between France and Germany was a struggle less between two vast armed forces than between instruction and alertness on the one hand, and ignorance and indolence on the other. Now that French youth is urged and compelled to put its shoulder to the wheel, and duty before pleasure, none can despair of the future of France. Wherever I go, in whatever corner of the world I henceforth taste the renowned Chocolate Menier, I shall be reminded of something which will lend additional sweetness and flavour to it. I shall recall a community of working people whose toil is lightened and elevated, whose daily portion is made hopeful, reasonable, and happy, by an ever-active sympathy and benevolence rarely found allied. More lessons than one will be carried away by the least and most instructed visitor of the flourishing little City of Chocolate on the banks of the Marne. Church-going in this rich country is at all times a dreary affair, but especially just now, when partly from the harvest work going on all Sunday, and partly from lack of devotion, both Catholic and Protestant places of worship are all but empty. For there is a strong Protestant element here, dating from the epoch of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and in the neighbouring village of Quincey are a Protestant Church and school. One Sunday morning I set off with two friends to attend service in the latter, announced to take place at eleven o'clock, but on arriving found the "Temple" locked, and not a sign of any coming ceremonial. Being very hungry, after the long walk through cornfields and vineyards, I went to a little baker's shop in search of a roll, and there realized the hospitable spirit of these good Briards. The mistress of the shop very kindly invited me into a little back room, and regaled me with excellent household bread, Brie cheese, and the wine of the country, refusing to be paid for her refreshments. This little meal finished, I rejoined my friends at the church, which was now open, and, in company of half a dozen school-children, we quietly waited to see what would eventually take place. By-and-by, one or two peasant-folks dropped in, picturesque old men and women, the latter in black and blue dresses and mob-caps. Then the schoolmaster appeared, and we were informed that it being the first Sunday in the month, the pastor had to do duty in an adjoining parish, according to custom, and that the schoolmaster would read the prayers and lessons instead. A psalm was sung, portions of Scripture and short prayers were read, another straggler or two joining the little congregation as the service went on. The schoolmaster, who officiated, played the harmonium and sang exceedingly well, finally read a brief exposition on the portion of Scripture read, whereupon after further singing we broke up. It was pleasant to find that the children, who looked particularly intelligent, were in such good hands. These country pastors, like the priests, receive very small pay from the State. How these isolated communities can keep up their schools seems astonishing, and speaks well for the zeal animating the Protestant body in France. As all the schools are now closed in consequence of the harvest, we could not see the children at work. In the afternoon I went to the parish church of Couilly, whilst vespers were going on. If the little Protestant assemblage I had just before witnessed was touching, this was almost painful, and might have afforded an artist an admirable subject for a picture. Sitting on a high stool, with his back to the congregation, consisting of three old women, was the priest, on either side the vergers, one in white stole, the other in purple robe and scarlet cap, all these chanting in loud monotonous tones, and of course in Latin, now and then the harmonium giving a faint accompaniment. On either side of these automatic figures were rows of little boys in scarlet and white, who from time to time made their voices heard also. As a background to this strange scene, was the loveliest little Gothic interior imaginable, the whiteness of aisle and transept being relieved by the saffron-coloured ribs of the arches and columns; the Church of Couilly being curious without and beautiful within, like many other parish churches here. After a time, one of the vergers blew out the three wax lights on a side altar, and all three retired, each scurrying away in different directions with very little show of reverence. How different from the crowded churches in Brittany, where, whether at mass or vespers, hardly standing-room is to be found! How long Catholicism will hold its sway over the popular mind there depends, of course, greatly on the priests themselves, who, if ignorant and coarse-mannered, at least set their flocks a better example in the matter of morals than here. The less said about this subject the better; French priests are, whichever way we regard them, objects of commiseration, but there can be no doubt that the indifference shown to religion in the flourishing _département_ of Seine et Marne has been brought about by the priests themselves and their open disregard of decorum. Their shortcomings in this respect are not hidden, and their domestic lives an open book which all who run may read. Some of them, however, occupy their time very harmlessly and profitably in gardening and beekeeping, their choicest fruits and vegetables, like those of their neighbours, going to England. We went one day, carrying big baskets with us, to visit the curé of a neighbouring village famous for his green-gages, and certainly the little _presbytère_ looked very inviting with its vine-covered walls and luxuriant flower-gardens. The curé, who told us he had been gardening that morning from four till six o'clock, received us very courteously, yet in a business-like way, and immediately took us to his fruit and vegetable garden some way off. Here we found the greatest possible profusion and evidence of skilful gardening. The fruit-trees were laden, there were Alpine strawberries with their bright red fruit, currants, melons, apricots, &c., and an equal variety of vegetables. Not an inch of ground was wasted, nor were flowers wanting for adornment and the bees--splendid double sun-flowers, veritable little suns of gold, garden mallows, gladiolas and others; a score and more of hives completed the picture which its owner contemplated with natural pride. "You have only just given your orders in time, ladies," he said; "all my green-gages are to be gathered forthwith for the English market. Ah! those English! those English! they take everything! our best fruit--and the island of Cyprus!" Whereupon I ventured to rejoin that, at least if we robbed our French neighbours of their best fruit, our money found its way into the grower's pocket. Of course these large purchases in country places make home produce dearer for the inhabitants; but as the English agents pay a higher price than others, the peasants and farmers hail their appearance with delight. The fruit has to ripen on its way, and to enjoy a green-gage, or melon, to the full, we must taste it here. In the autumn the fine pears imported to Covent Garden from these villages sometimes fetch nine sous, four-pence halfpenny each, this being the whole-sale price. No wonder that in retail we have to pay so much. The curé in question makes a good deal by his bees, and the honey of these parts is first-rate. On the whole, small as is their pay, these parish priests cannot be badly off, seeing that they get extra money by their garden produce, and largely, also, by baptismal and other church fees. Then of course it must be remembered that nothing is expected of them in the way of charity, as is the case with our clergy. "Nous recevons toujours, nous ne donnons jamais," was the reply of a French bishop on being asked an alms by some benevolent lady for a _protégé_. Scattered throughout these fertile and prosperous regions are ancient towns, some of which are reached by separate little lines of railway, others are accessible by road only. Coulommiers is one of these, and though there is nothing attractive about it, except a most picturesque old church and a very pretty public walk by the winding river, it is worth making the two hours' drive across country for the sake of the scenery. As there is no direct communication with Couilly, and no possibility of hiring a carriage at this busy season, I gladly accepted a neighbour's offer of a seat in his "trap," a light spring-cart with capital horse. He was a tradesman of the village, and, like the rest of the world here, wore the convenient and cleanly blue cotton trousers and blue blouse of the country. The third spare seat was occupied by a neighbouring notary, the two men discussing metaphysics, literature, and the origin of things, on their way. We started at seven o'clock in the morning, and lovely indeed looked the wide landscape in the tender light--valley, and winding river, and wooded ridge being soon exchanged for wide open spaces covered with corn and autumn crops. Farming here is carried on extensively, some of these rich farms numbering several hundred acres. The farm-house and buildings, surrounded with a high stone wall, are few and far between, and the separate crops cover much larger tracts than here. It was market-day at Coulommiers, and we passed by many farmers and farmeresses jogging to market, the latter with their fruit and vegetables, eggs and butter, in comfortable covered carts. Going to market in France means, indeed, what it did with us a hundred years ago; yet the farmers and farmers' wives looked the picture of prosperity. In some cases, fashion had so far got the better of tradition, that the reins were handled by a smart-looking lady in hat and feathers and fashionable dress, but for the most part by toil-embrowned homely women, with a coloured handkerchief twisted round their heads and no pretention to gentility. The men, one and all, wore blue blouses, and were evidently accustomed to hard work, but for all that it was easy to see that they were possessed both of means and intelligence. Like the rest of the Briard population, they are fine fellows, tall, with regular features and frank good-humoured countenances. Some of these farmers and millers give enormous dowries to their daughters. A million francs is sometimes heard of, and in our own immediate neighbourhood we heard of several rustic heiresses who would have a hundred thousand. Many a farmer, tenant-farmer, too, who toils with his men, has, irrespective of his earnings as a farmer, capital bringing in several thousand francs yearly; in fact, some of them are in receipt of what is considered a fair income for an English curate or vicar, but they work all the same. At Coulommiers, there is nothing to see but a fine old church with an imposing tower, rising from the centre of the town. I went inside, and, though the doors stood wide open, found it empty, except for a little market-girl, who, having deposited her basket, was bent, not on prayer, but on counting her money. In Brittany, on market-days, there is never a lack of pious worshippers; here it is not so, the good folks of Seine et Marne evidently being inclined to materialism. The interior of this picturesque church is very quaintly coloured, and, as a whole, it is well worth seeing. Like many other towns in these parts, Coulommiers dates from an ancient period, and long belonged to the English crown. Ravaged during the Hundred Years' War, the religious wars and the troubles of the League, nothing to speak of remains of its old walls and towers of defence. Indeed, except for the drive thither across country, and the fruit and cheese markets, it possesses no temptations for the traveller. Market-day is a sight for a painter. The show of melons alone makes a subject; the weather-beaten market-women, with gay coloured handkerchief twisted round their heads, their blue gowns, the delicious colour and lovely form of the fruit, all this must be seen. Here and there were large pumpkins, cut open to show the ripe red pulp, with abundance of purple plums, apples and pears just ripening, and bright yellow apricots. It was clear _les Anglais_ had not carried off all the fruit! At Coulommiers, as elsewhere, you may search in vain for rags, dirt, or a sign of beggary. Every one is rich, independent, and happy. CHAPTER III. PROVINS AND TROYES. Few travellers in this part of Eastern France turn off the Great Mulhouse line of railway to visit the ancient city of Provins, yet none with a love of the picturesque can afford to pass it by. Airily, nay, coquettishly perched on its smiling, green eminence, and still possessed of an antique stateliness, in striking contrast with the busy little trim town that has sprung up at his feet, Provins captivates the beholder by virtue alike of its uniqueness and poetic charm; I can think of nothing in my various travels at all like this little Acropolis of Brie and Champagne, whether seen in a distance in the railway, or from the ramparts that still encircle it as in the olden time. It is indeed a gem; miniature Athens of a mediaeval princedom, that although on a small scale boasted of great power and splendour; tiny Granada of these Eastern provinces, bearing ample evidence of past literary and artistic glories! You quit the main line at Longueville, and in a quarter of an hour come upon a vast panorama, crowned by the towers and dome of the still proud, defiant-looking little city of Provins, according to some writers the Agedincum of Caesar's Commentaries, according to others more ancient still. It is mentioned in the capitularies of Charlemagne, and in the Middle Ages was the important and flourishing capital of Basse-Brie and residence of the Counts of Champagne. Under Thibault VI., called Le Chansonnier, Provins reached its apogee of prosperity, numbering at that epoch 80,000 souls. Like most other towns in these parts, it suffered greatly in the Hundred Years' War, being taken by the English in 1432, and retaken from them in the following year. It took part in the League, but submitted to Henry IV. in 1590, and from that time gradually declined; at present it numbers about 7,000 inhabitants only. The rich red rose, commonly called Provence rose, is in reality the rose of Provins, having been introduced here by the Crusaders from the Holy Land. Gardens of the Provins rose may still be found at Provins, though they are little cultivated now for commercial purpose; Provence, the land of the Troubadours, has therefore no claim whatever upon rose lovers, who are indebted instead to the airy little Acropolis of Champagne. Thus much for the history of the place, which has been chronicled by two gifted citizens of modern time, Opoix and Bourquelot. It is difficult to give any idea of the citadel, so imposingly commanding the wide valleys and curling rivers at its foot. Leaving the Ville Basse, we climb for a quarter of an hour to find all the remarkable monuments of Provins within a stone's throw--the College, formerly Palace of the Counts of Champagne, the imposing Tour de César, the Basilica of St. Quiriace with its cupola, the famous _Grange aux Dîmes_, the ancient fountain, lastly, the ruined city and gates and walls, called the Ville Haute. All these are close together, but conspicuously towering over the rest are the dome of St. Quiriace, and the picturesque, many pinnacled stronghold vulgarly known as Caesar's Tower. These two crown, not only the ruins, but the entire landscape, for miles around with magnificent effect. The tower itself, in reality having nothing to do with its popular name whatever, but the stronghold of the place built by one of the Counts of Champagne, is a picturesque object, with graceful little pinnacles connected by flying buttresses at each corner, and pointed tower surmounting all, from which now waves proudly the Tricolour flag of the French Republic. A deaf and dumb girl leads visitors through a little flower-garden into the interior, and takes them up the winding stone staircase to see the cells in which Louis d'Outremer and others are said to have been confined. For my own part, I prefer neither to go to the top and bottom of things, neither to climb the Pyramids nor to penetrate into the Mammoth caves of Kentucky. It is much more agreeable, and much less fatiguing, to view everything from the level, and this fine old structure, called Caesar's Tower, is no exception to the rule. Nothing can be more picturesque than its appearance from the broken ground around, above, and below, and no less imposing is the quaint straggling indescribable old church of St. Quiriace close by, now a mere patchwork of different epochs, but in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries one of the most remarkable religious monuments in Brie and Champagne. Here was baptized Thibault VI., the song-maker, the lover of art, the patron of letters, and the importer into Europe of the famous Provence rose; of Thibault's poetic creations an old chronicler wrote: "C'était les plus belles chansons, les plus délectables et mélodieuses qui oncques fussent ouïses en chansons et instruments, et il les fit écrire en la salle de Provins et en celle de Troyes." Close to this ancient church is the former palace of Thibault, now a "Collége Communal," for classic and secondary instruction. Unfortunately the director had gone off for his holiday taking the keys, with him--travellers never being looked for here--so that we could not see the interior and chapel. It is superbly situated, commanding from the terrace a wide view of surrounding country. Perhaps, however, the most curious relics of ancient Provins are the vast and handsome subterranean chambers and passages which are not only found in the _Grange aux Dîmes_ literally Tithe-Barn, but also under many private dwellings of ancient date. Those who love to penetrate into the hovels of the earth may here visit cave after cave, and subterranean chamber after chamber; some of these were of course used for the storage and introduction of supplies in time of war and siege, others may have served as crypts, for purposes of religious ceremony, also a harbour of refuge for priests and monks, lastly as workshops. Provins may therefore be called not only a town but a triple city, consisting, first, of the old; secondly, of the new; lastly, of the underground. Captivating, from an artistic and antiquarian point of view, as are the first and last, all lovers of progress will not fail to give some time to the modern part, not, however, omitting the lovely walls round the ramparts, before quitting the region of romance for plain matter of fact. Here you have unbroken solitude and a wide expanse of open country; you also get a good idea of the commanding position of Provins. A poetic halo still lingers round the rude times of Troubadour and Knight, but fortunately no such contrast can now be found--at least in France--as there existed between court and people, lord and vassal. The princelings of Brie and Champagne, who lived so jollily and regally in this capital of Provins, knew how to grind down the people to the uttermost, and levied toll-tax upon every imaginable pretext. The Jew had to pay them for his heresy, the assassin for his crime, the peasant for his produce, the artizan for his right to pursue a handicraft. Now all is good feeling, peace, and prosperity in this modern town, where alike are absent signs of great wealth or great poverty. As yet I am still in a region without a beggar. Provins affords an excellent example of that spirit of decentralization so usual in France, and unhappily so rare among ourselves. Here in a country town, numbering between seven and eight thousand inhabitants only, we find all the resources of a capital on a small scale; Public Library, Museum, Theatre, learned societies. The Library contains some curious MSS. and valuable books. The Theatre was built by one of the richest and most generous citizens of Provins, M. Gamier, who may be said to have consecrated his ample fortune to the embellishment and advancement of his native town. Space does not permit of an enumeration of the various acts of beneficence by which he has won the lasting gratitude of his fellow-townsmen; and on his death the charming villa he now inhabits, with its gardens, library, art and scientific collections, are to become the property of the town. The Rue Victor Garnier has been appropriately named after this public-spirited gentleman. There are relics of antiquity to be found in the modern town also; nor have I given anything like a complete account of what is to be found in the old. No one who takes the trouble to diverge from the beaten track in order to visit this interesting little city--Weimar of the Troubadours--will be disappointed. I may add, by the way, that the _Hôtel de la Boule d'Or_, though homely, is comfortable, and that in this out of the way corner the English traveller is invited to partake of the famous "Bière de Bass." From Provins to Troyes is a three hours' journey by rail; and at Troyes, no matter how impatient the tourist may be to breathe the air of the mountains, he must stop awhile. Here there is so much to see in the way of antiquities that several days might be spent profitably and pleasantly, but for the hotels, of which I have little favourable to say. "Dear and dirty," is the verdict I must pass on the one recommended to me as the best; the fastidious traveller will do well, therefore, so to arrange his journey as to reach Troyes at early morning, and start off again at night; though, of course, such an arrangement will only allow of a hasty glimpse of the various treasures offered to him. Take the churches, for instance. Besides the Cathedral, there are six old churches, each of which has some especial interest, and all deserve to be seen in detail. Then there are picturesque mediaeval houses, one of the first libraries in France, a museum, picture-gallery, &c. The town itself is cheerful, with decorative bits of window-gardening, hanging dormers, abundance of flowers growing everywhere, and much life animating its old and new quarters. The Cathedral, which rises grandly from the monotonous fields of Champagne, just as Ely towers above the flat plains of our Eastern counties, is also seen to great advantage from the quays, though, when approached nearly, you find it hemmed in with narrow streets. Its noble towers, surmounted by airy pinnacles, and its splendid façade, delight the eye no less than the interior--gem of purest architecture blazing from end to end with rich old stained glass. No light here penetrates through the common medium, and the effect is magical; the superb rose and lancet windows, not dazzling, rather captivating the vision with the hues of the rainbow, being made up, as it seems, with no commoner materials than sapphire, emerald, ruby, topaz, amethyst, all these in the richest imaginable profusion. Other interiors are more magnificent in architectural display, none are lovelier than this, and there is nothing to mar the general harmony, no gilding or artificial flowers, no ecclesiastical trumpery, no meretricious decoration. We find here the glorious art of painting on glass in its perfection, and some of the finest in the Cathedral, as well as in other churches here, are the work of a celebrated Troyen, Linard Gonthier. A sacristan is always at hand to exhibit the treasury, worth, so it is said, some millions of francs, and which is to be commended to all lovers of jewels and old lace. The latter, richest old guipure, cannot be inspected by an amateur, or, indeed, a woman, without pangs. Such treasures as these, if not appropriated to their proper use, namely dress and decoration, should, at least, be exhibited in the Town Museum, where they might be seen and studied by the artistic. There are dozens of yards of this matchless guipure, but, of course, few eyes are ever rejoiced by the sight of it; and as I turned from one treasure to another, gold and silver ecclesiastical ornaments, carved ivory coffers, enamels, cameos, embroideries, inlaid reliquaries and tapestries, I was reminded of a passage in Victor Hugo's last poem--_Le Pape_--wherein the Pope of his imagination, thus makes appeal to the Cardinals and Bishops in conclave: "Prêtre, à qui donc as-tu pris tes richesses? Aux pauvres. Quand l'or s'enfle dans ton sac, Dieu dans ton coeur décroit; Apprends qu'on est sans pain et sache qu'on a froid. Les jeunes filles vont rôdant le soir dans l'ombre, Tes rochets, tes chasubles, aux topazes sans nombre, Ta robe en l'Orient doré s'épanouit, Sont de spectres qui sont noirs et vivant la nuit. Que te sert d'empiler sur des planches d'armoires, Du velours, du damas, du satin, de la moire, D'avoir des bonnets d'or et d'emplir des tiroirs Des chapes qu'on dirait couvertes de miroirs? Oh! pauvres, que j'entends râler, forçats augustes, Tous ces trésors, chez vous sacrés, chez nous sont injustes; Ce diamant qui met à la mitre un éclair, Cette émeraude me semble errer toute la mer, Ces resplendissements sombres de pierreries, C'est votre sang ... ... Brodés d'or, cousus d'or, chaussés d'or, coiffés d'or, Nous avons des saints Jeans et des saintes Maries, Que nous emmaillottons dans des verroteries, Nous dépensons Golconde à vêtir le néant, ... Prêtres, votre richesse est un crime flagrant. Vos erreurs sont-ils méchants? Non, vos têtes sont dûres, Frères, j'avais aussi sur moi ce tas d'ordures, Des perles, des onyx, des saphirs, des rubis, Oui, j'avais sur moi, partout, sur mes habits, Sur mon âme; mais j'ai vidé bien vite Chez les pauvres." The sacristan exhibited a tooth of St. Peter and skulls of the saints, but these are treasures we can look on without envy. This little Museum--as, indeed, the Treasury may be called--exposed at the Paris Exhibition of 1867 one of its richest objects, the reliquary of St. Bernard and St. Malachi, a chef-d'oeuvre of the twelfth century; but as some of the jewels were stolen upon that occasion, nothing this year, very naturally, found its way from Troyes Cathedral to the Trocadéro. Close to the Cathedral are the Town Library, Museum, and Picture Gallery, the two first well worth careful inspection. The famous Library has largely contributed to the historic galleries of the Trocadéro; but, nevertheless, many exquisite specimens of binding, printing, and illuminating remain; whilst the windows are adorned with most curious and beautiful old glass paintings from the hand of the gifted Linard Gonthier before mentioned. It is hardly necessary to say that strangers are admitted to all the privileges of the reading-room without any form whatever. The library contains a hundred and some odd thousand volumes, besides between two and three thousand rare MSS. The present population of Troyes is forty thousand; and I am not aware of any small town in England so well off in the matter of books. The Museum is divided into several sections, and, though of recent date, it possesses some interesting and valuable collections. Near the Library and Museum is the most beautiful old church in Troyes, St. Urbain, but as it is unfortunately in the hands of the restorer, we can see nothing of the interior, and the splendid Gothic façade is partly hidden by scaffolding. The traveller may next proceed on a voyage of discovery, coming upon the picturesque Hôtel de Ville; quaint relics of mediaeval architecture, and half a dozen old churches, all noteworthy from some point of view. It is impossible to do more than suggest the rewards that await such an explorer. Troyes, like Angers and Poitiers, abounds in architectural treasures and historical souvenirs; and all these cities cannot be visited too soon. Restoration and renovation are here, as elsewhere, the order of the day, and every year takes something from their character and charm. Two objects, particularly striking amongst so many, shall be mentioned only, as no mere description can convey any idea of the whole. The first is the entrance hall of the Hôtel Vauluisant, the features of which should be photographed for the benefit of art-schools and art-decorators generally. The first is a magnificent oak ceiling; the second, a Renaissance chimney piece in carved wood, no less magnificent. The solidity, richness of design, and workmanship of both ceiling and mantel-piece afford an invaluable lesson to artists, whilst beholders can but examine them without a feeling of sadness. How little we have in modern art-furniture and decoration to be compared with such an achievement: Here we find that cost, labour, and display went for nothing, and artistic perfection alone was aimed at. Not far from the Hôtel Vauluisant is Ste. Madeleine, the most ancient church in Troyes, originally Gothic, but now, what with dilapidations and restorations, a curious medley of all various styles. To its architecture, however, the traveller will pay little heed, his whole attention being at once transferred to the famous jubé, or rood-loft, or what passes by that name. Bather let me call it a curtain of rare lace cut out in marble, a screen of transparent ivory, a light stalactite roof of some fairy grotto! On entering, you see nothing but this airy piece of work, one of the daintiest, richest creations of the period, the achievement of Juan Gualde in the sixteenth century. The proportions of the interior seem to diminish, and we cannot help fancying that the church was built for the rood-loft, rather than the rood-loft for the church, so dwarfed is the latter by comparison. The centre aisle is indeed bridged over by a piece of stone-carving, so exquisite in design, so graceful in detail, so airy and fanciful in conception, that we are with difficulty brought to realize its size and solidity. This unique rood-loft measures over six yards in depth, is proportionately long, and is symmetrical in every part, yet it looks as if a breath were only needed to disperse its delicate galleries, hanging arcades, and miniature vaults, gorgeous painted windows forming the background--jewels flashing through a veil of guipure. English travellers may be reminded that Shakespeare's favourite hero, Henry V., was married to Katherine of France in the ancient church of St. Jean at Troyes, now the oldest congeries of different kinds of architecture. The betrothal took place before the high altar of Troyes Cathedral. Lovers of old stained glass must visit St. Nizier and other old churches here; all possess some peculiar interest either within or without. Troyes--from the standard weight of which we have our Troy weight--is the birth-place of many illustrious men. Mignard the painter, Girardon, sculptor, whose monument to Richelieu in the church of the Sorbonne will not fail to be visited by English travellers, and of the famous painter on glass, Linard Gonthier, who had engraved on his tomb that he awaited the Last Day, "Sans peur d'être écrasé." Among minor accomplishments of the Troyen of to-day, it may be mentioned that nowhere throughout all France--land _par excellence_ of good washing and clear-starching--is linen got up to such perfection as at Troyes. The _Blanchisserie Troyenne_ is unhappily an art unknown in England. It is curious that, much as cleanliness is thought of among ourselves, we are content to wear linen washed and ironed so execrably as we do. Clean linen in England means one thing, in France another; and no French maid or waiter would put on the half-washed, half-ironed linen we aristocratic insulars wear so complacently. Here indeed is a field for female enterprize! From Troyes to Belfort is a journey best made by night-mail express, as there is little to see on the way; nor need Belfort--famous for its heroic defence under Danfert, and its rescue from Prussian grasp by the no less heroic pleadings of Thiers--detain the traveller. It is pleasant to find here, as at Troyes, a Rue Thiers, and to see Thiers' portrait in every window. If there is one memory universally adored and respected throughout France, it is that of the "petit bourgeois." No one who gets a glimpse of Belfort with its double ramparts and commanding position, will wonder at Thiers' pertinacity on the one hand, and Bismarck's reluctance on the other. Fortunately the "petit bourgeois" gained his point, and the preservation of Belfort to France was the one drop of comfort in that sea of misery. CHAPTER IV. AMONG FRENCH PROTESTANTS AT MONTBÉLIARD Half-an-hour's railway journey brings me to the quaint little town of Montbéliard in the Department of Le Doubs, whose friends' friends give me hearty welcome, and I feel in an hour as much at home as if I had known it all my life. My friends had procured me a little lodging, rather, I should say, a magnificent _appartement_, consisting of spacious sitting and bedroom, for which I pay one franc a-day. It must not be supposed that Montbéliard is wanting in elegancies, or that the march of refinement is not found here. The fact is, the character of the people is essentially amiable, accommodating, and disinterested, and it never enters into their heads to ask more for their wares, simply because they could get it, or to make capital out of strangers. A franc a day is what is paid in these parts by lodgers, chiefly officers, and no more would be asked of the wealthiest or unwariest. You find the same spirit animating all classes, tradesmen, hotel-keepers, and others, and doubtless this is to be traced to several causes. In the first place, Montbéliard is one of the most enlightened, best educated, and most Protestant _départements_ of all France. Le Doubs, part of the ancient Franche-Comté, is so Protestant, indeed, that in some towns and villages the Catholics are considerably in the minority, as is even the case still at Montbéliard. So late as the French Revolution, the Comté of this name belonged to Würtemberg, having passed over to that house by marriage in the fourteenth century. In 1792, however, it became amalgamated with the French Kingdom, and fortunately escaped annexation in the last Franco-German War. Protestantism early took root here, the Anabaptist Doctrine especially, and in the present day Montbéliard numbers several Protestant and only one Catholic church; the former belonging severally to the Reformed Church, the Lutheran, Anabaptists, also two or three so-called _Oratoires_, or Chapels of Ease, built and supported by private individuals. We find here the tables strangely turned, and in France the unique spectacle of four Protestant pastors to one Catholic priest! At one time the Protestant body numbered two-thirds of the entire population, now the proportion is somewhat less. This still strong Protestant leaven, and the long infiltration of German manners and customs has doubtless greatly modified the character of the inhabitants, who, whether belonging to the one denomination or the other, live side by side harmoniously. We find a toleration here absolutely unknown in most parts of France, and a generally diffused enlightenment equally wanting where Catholicism dominates. Brittany and Franche-Comté (including the Departments of Le Doubs, Haute Saône, and Jura), offer a striking contrast; in the first we find the priest absolute, and consequently superstition, ignorance, dirt, and prejudice the prevailing order of the day; in the last we have a Protestant spirit of inquiry and rationalistic progress, consequently instruction making vast strides on every side, freedom from bigotry, and freedom alike from degrading spiritual bondage and fanaticism. In the highly instructive map published by the French Minister of Instruction, Franche-Comté is marked white and Brittany black, thus denoting the antipodes of intellectual enlightenment and darkness to be found in the two countries. Here, indeed, we find ourselves in a wholly different world, so utterly has a spirit of inquiry revolutionized Eastern France, so long has her Western province been held in the grip of the priest. Furthermore, we have evidence of the zeal animating all classes with respect to education on every side, whilst it is quite delightful to converse with a Montbéliardais, no matter to which sect he belongs, so unprejudiced, instructed, and liberal-minded are these citizens of a town neither particularly important, flourishing, nor fortunate. For nine months Montbéliard had to support the presence of the enemy, and though the Prussian soldiery behaved very well here, the amiable, lively little town was almost ruined. It is no less patriotic than enlightened; republican ideas being as firmly implanted here as any where in France. You see portraits of M. Thiers and Gambetta everywhere, and only good Republican journals on the booksellers' stalls. It would be interesting to know how many copies of the half-penny issue of _La République Française_ are sold here daily; and whereas in certain parts of France the women read nothing except the _Semaine Religieuse_ and the _Petit Journal_, here they read the high-class newspapers, reviews, and are conversant with what is going on in the political and literary world at home and abroad. Indeed, the contrast is amazing between female education, so called, in ultra-Catholic and ultra-Protestant France. In Brittany, where the young ladies are educated by the nuns, you never see or hear of a book. The very name of literature is a dead letter, and the upper classes are no better instructed than the lower. In Franche-Comté, girls of all ranks are well educated, young ladies of fortune going in for their _brevet_, or certificate, as well as those who have their bread to win. They are often familiar with the German and English languages, and above all are thoroughly conversant with their own literature, as well as book-keeping, arithmetic, French history, elementary science, &c. This little town of eight thousand inhabitants possesses an intellectual atmosphere in which it is possible to breathe. Wherever you go you find books in plenty and of the best kind, and this difference is especially noteworthy among women. I find the young ladies of Montbéliard as familiar with the works of Currer Bell and Mrs. Gaskell as among ourselves. Miss Yonge is also a favourite, and unlike a large class of novel-readers in England, standard works are not neglected by them for fiction. No matter at what time you enter the public library here, you are sure to find ladies of all ages coming to change their books, the contents of this library, be it remembered, consisting chiefly of French classics. The mingled homeliness, diffusion of intelligence and aesthetic culture seen here, remind me of certain little German cities and towns. People living on very modest means find money for books, whereas in certain parts of France no such expenditure is ever thought of, whilst dress and outward show are much less considered. Naturally, this diffusion of culture raises the tone of conversation and society generally, and its influence is seen in various ways. Music is cultivated assiduously, not only by women of the better ranks, but by both sexes of all, especially among the work-people. The Musical Society of Montbéliard consists of a very respectable orchestra indeed, and is composed of amateurs, mostly young men, recruited from the working as well as middle classes. This Society gives open-air concerts on Sunday afternoons, and one evening in the week, to the great delectation of the multitude, who upon these occasions turn out of doors _en masse_ to enjoy the music and the company of their neighbours. The "Société d'Émulation" is another instance of the stimulus given to scientific, literary, and artistic pursuits by a Protestant spirit of inquiry. This Society was founded in 1852 by a few _savants_, in order to develope the public taste for science, art, and letters. It now numbers two hundred and forty-three members, and has been instrumental in founding a museum containing upwards of eighty thousand archaeological specimens, besides botanical, and geological, and other collections. It is particularly rich in this first respect, few provincial museums having such complete illustrations of the pre-historic and also Gallo-Roman periods. The flint, bronze, and iron epochs are here largely represented, some of the large leaf-shaped flint instruments being particularly beautiful specimens. The excavations at Mandeure--a short drive from Montbéliard--the Epomanduoduum of the Romans--have afforded a precious collection of interesting objects, pottery, small bronze groups of figures, ornaments, terra-cottas, &c.; at Mandeure are to be seen the ruins of the ancient city, amphitheatre, baths, tombs, the vestiges of a temple, and other remains; but excavations are still going on under the direction of the learned President of the "Société d'Émulation," M. Fabre, and further treasure-trove is looked for. This charming little museum, so tastefully arranged in the old Halles, by M. Fabre, is open on Sunday afternoon on payment of two sous, but in order to promote a love of science among the young, schools are admitted gratuitously, and within the last ten weeks of summer thirty-nine teachers, and seven hundred and forty-eight pupils of both sexes, had availed themselves of the privilege. During the Prussian occupation in 1870-71, a sum of 323,950 francs was exacted from the town, and the museum and library, after being valued at a considerable sum, were seized as pledges of payment. Seals were set on the collections, and Prussian soldiery guarded the treasures which had been collected with so much zeal and sacrifice. The sum was not paid, but the library and museum were not forfeited, to the satisfaction of all. There is a charming little Theatre also at the back of the Hôtel-de-Ville, where occasional representations by good Parisian companies are given. The decorations are by the hand of one of the artists who decorated the Grand Opera in Paris. He happened to be at Montbéliard, and, taking a kindly interest in the town, offered to do it for a nominal price. Years passed and the promise was forgotten, but, on being reminded of it, the artist, with true French chivalry, redeemed his word, and the decorations of the Montbéliard Theatre are really a magnificent monument of artistic liberality. Montbéliard is as sociable as it is advanced, and one introductory letter from a native of the friendly little town, long since settled in Paris, opened all hearts to me. Everyone is helpful, agreeable, and charming. My evenings are always spent at one pleasant house or another, where music, tea, and conversation lend wings to the cheerful hours. The custom of keeping the _veillée_, familiar to readers of the gifted Franc-Comtois writer, Charles Nodier, is common here among all classes, people quitting their homes after their early supper--for, according to German habit, we dine at noon and sup at seven here--to enjoy the society of their neighbours. Delightful recollections did I carry away of many a _veillée_, and of one in particular, where a dozen friends and their English guest assembled in the summer-house of a suburban garden, there to discuss art, music, literature, and politics, over ices and other good things despatched from the town. We had looked forward to a superb moonlight night with poetic effects of river, château, and bridges flooded in silvery light--we had torrents of rain instead, being threatened with what is a phenomenon of no rare occurrence here, namely, an inundation. Situated on the confluence of two rivers, the Allaine and the Lusine, Montbéliard is a quaint, and homely little Venice in miniature, sure to be flooded once or twice a year, when people have to pay visits and carry on their daily avocation in miniature gondolas. It takes, however, more than minor misfortunes such as these to damp French geniality and good nature, and when our soirée came to an end, everyone returned home well fortified with umbrellas, cloaks, and goloshes in the best possible humour. Sometimes these _veillées_ will be devoted to declamation and story-telling, one or two of the party reading aloud a play or poem, or reciting for the benefit of the rest. In the bitter winter nights this sociable custom is not laid aside, even ladies with their lanterns braving the snow in order to enjoy a little society. Music is the chief out-of-door recreation during the summer months, the military band of the garrison largely contributing to the general amusement. It is astonishing how French good-humour and light-heartedness help to lighten the hardest lot! We find the hours of toil enormously long here, and economies practised among the better classes of which few English people have any conception. Yet life is made the best of, and everything in the shape of a distraction is seized upon with avidity. Although eminently a Protestant town, shops are open all day long on Sundays, when more business seems to be done than at any other time. The shutters are no sooner put up, however, than everyone goes out for a walk or a visit, and gets as much enjoyment as he can. Only the rich and exceeding well-to-do people keep servants, others content themselves with a charwoman who comes in for two hours a day, and is paid ten or twelve francs a month, many ladies, by birth and education, living on small means, doing all the lighter household work, marketing, &c., themselves, whilst the small shopkeeping class, who with us must invariably have a wretched drudge, called a maid-of-all-work, never dream of getting anyone to cook or clean for them. As a matter of course, all this is done by the family, no matter how well educated may be its members. We must always bear in mind that the general well-being and easy circumstances of the French middle classes is greatly owing to their freedom from shams. Toil is not regarded as a degradation, and the hateful word "gentility" is not found in their vocabulary. Thus it comes about that you find a mixture of homeliness, comfort, and solidity of fortune, rarely the case in England. Take my landlady as an example, a charming person, who keeps a straw-hat and umbrella shop, whose sister is a _repasseuse_, or clear-starcher, and whose married brother has also a hat-shop next door. These people do all the work that is to be done themselves, yet in similar circumstances in England would be sure to have maids-of-all-work, nursery-maids, and the rest of it. They have plenty of good furniture, supplies of household and personal linen that would set up a shop, and the children of the brother receive the best possible education he can obtain for them. The elder girl has just returned from Belfort with her first diploma, and is to be sent to Germany to learn German. She has, nevertheless, acquired a knowledge of what all women should know, can cook, clean, cut out and make clothes, &c., and, when she becomes herself a wife and mother, will doubtless exercise all these accomplishments in order to give her children as good an education as she possesses herself. All the family have laid by ample savings. More might be said about the easy intercourse and geniality of this little town, did space permit. I will pass on to add that though extremely picturesque, with its flower-gardens running down to the water's edge, tiny bridges, hanging roofs, curling rivers, and lastly circling green hills and superb old château crowning all, there is little here to detain the tourist. The case is very different with those travellers who are bent upon studying French life under its various aspects, for they will find at Montbéliard a wholly new phase. Much in domestic life reminds us of South Germany, yet no place is more eminently French. The type of physiognomy is frank and animated, fair, and even red hair is common, whilst the stature is above the average, and the general physique gives an idea of strength, character, and health. The Montbéliardins are courteous, but proud and prone rather to bestow than accept favours. Amiability and real goodness of heart especially characterize them. As a seat of some special manufactures, musical-boxes and clocks being among the chief, it possesses importance; there are also cotton mills, tanneries, foundries, &c. The fabrication of clocks by machinery is a curious process, the precision and apparent intelligence of the machines being as agreeable to contemplate as the reverse is humiliating: namely, the spectacle of men, women, and children being converted into automatons by unremitting mechanical labour. The length of the day's work here is prodigious, consisting of twelve sometimes fourteen hours, and the occupation extremely unwholesome, owing to the smell of the oil and the perpetual noise of machinery. The pay is low, beginning at three francs and reaching to four or four and a half a day. We may blame the artizan class for improvidence, insobriety, and many other failings, but none who calmly compare the life of a clock-maker, for instance, condemned to spend twelve hours of the twenty-four in this laborious, unwholesome, and ill-remunerated labour, with that of the better classes, can wonder at his discontent. If he seeks to better his position by means of strikes, socialistic schemes, or other violent means, at least we must grant that it is only natural, till some other should offer themselves. It is to be hoped that the hours of labour will soon be shortened in a part of France so advanced in other respects, and meantime artizans here are better off than elsewhere. All round the town you find so-called _cités ouvrières_, built on the model of those of Mulhouse; little streets of cheerful cottages, each with its bit of flower and vegetable-garden, where at least the workman has something to call a home after his day's labour. These artizan quarters are well or ill-kept, of course, according to the thrift or slovenliness of the tenants; some are charming, but at their worst they are a vast improvement upon the close, ill-ventilated quarters to be found in towns. They are also much cheaper, about £5 a year being charged for both house and garden, whereas, even in a little town like Montbéliard, accommodation is dear and difficult to be had. In fact, without these villages the question of house-room would be as much of a problem here for the workman as among our own rural population; no doubt the heads of firms who have built cheerful and ornamental little rows of English-like cottages for their workpeople were actuated at the same time chiefly by philanthropic motives, but they found it absolutely necessary to take some steps in the matter. Various efforts are being made to raise the status of the mechanic by means of lectures, reading-rooms, and recreation, but, whilst the hours of labour remain what we find them, little good can be effected. A devoted lady, who has spent her whole life in her native town, has done much for the female part of the manufacturing population by means of free night-schools, free library, chiefly for the young, Sunday afternoon classes for the teaching of cutting-out and needle-work, and recreation combined, gratuitous laundries, and other philanthropic schemes. These efforts of Mademoiselle Rosalie Morel, a lay-woman, have been seconded by those of a Protestant deaconess in another direction, the latter devoting herself to nursing and the teaching of hygiene and sanitary science. In the matter of cleanliness, therefore, these good people are not left in the dark as in benighted Brittany, where dirt is not preached against as it ought to be in the pulpit. Mademoiselle Morel's free laundries, in other words a scheme set on foot for the purpose of teaching the poorest classes what clean linen should be, have doubtless effected much good, and on the whole cleanliness is the rule here, and the public hot and cold baths much frequented by all. In spite, however, of the animation and _bonhomie_ of this little town, there is a dark side to social life, and in the train of intemperance and unthrift among the manufacturing population, we find squalor and immorality. After several weeks' sojourn in that Utopia of all socialistic dreamers--a land without a beggar!--I found myself here, once more, in the domains of mendicity, though it is not to be found to any great extent. The custom of putting out infants to nurse is, fortunately, unfrequent in these parts, and, as a natural consequence, infant mortality is not above the average. The _cités ouvrières_ are to be thanked for this, and the nearness of the home to the factory enables the baby to be brought to its mother for nourishment, and in our visit to the clock manufactory before spoken of, we saw mothers nursing their infants on the spot. Nearer Paris, you constantly encounter infants three day's old being dispatched with their foster-mother into some country place, there to be brought up by hand, in other words, to die; but here it is not so. We find on a small scale at Montbéliard that contrast between wealth and poverty seen in England, but wholly absent from the rural districts of France. The aristocracy of the place here is composed of the wealthy manufacturing class, and by little and little Parisian luxuries are finding their way into this remote region. Until within quite recent date, for instance, there was no such thing as a stand for hackney carriages here; now it has become the fashion to take drives in fine weather. In our walks and drives in the neighbourhood, we encounter handsome waggonettes and open carriages with a pair of horses, rarely seen in the purely agricultural districts. In every way, habits of life have become modified by the rapid rise of a commercial aristocracy; and, as a natural consequence, we find much more social distinction than in those parts of France where no such class exists. Yet a stranger, who should study French manners and customs for the first time, would find the principle of equality existing in a degree unknown in England. Can anything be more absurd than the differences of rank that divide the population of our provincial towns? The same thing is seen in the country, where the clergyman holds aloof from the village doctor, the farmer from the shopkeeper, both these from the village schoolmaster, and where, indeed, everybody thinks himself better than his neighbour. We have, in English provincial towns, schools for the professional classes, schools for the children of farmers, of wholesale shopkeepers, of small retail tradesmen; lastly, schools for the "people," and you no more expect to find a rich man's child attending the latter than a chimney-sweep's son at the Grammar School. In French country towns all this is simplified by the École Communale, at which boys and girls respectively, no matter what their parents' calling or means, receive precisely the same education; after the École Communale, comes the Collége, where a liberal education is afforded to boys, and pupils study for the examination of _Bachelier-ès-Lettres et Sciences_, but are not prepared as at the Lycées for the "Doctorate-in-Law." There is no other school here for primary instruction of both sexes but the Communal School, Protestant and Catholic, whither all the children, rich and poor, patrician and prolétaire, go as a matter of course. The politeness of the French working-classes may be partly accounted for in the association of all ranks in early life. Convent, or other schools, for young ladies, do not exist at Montbéliard, and those who study for the first and second diploma are generally prepared at Belfort and Besançon, where the examinations are held. There is also here an École Normale, training school for teachers; also a Protestant training school, noted for its excellence. On the whole, for a town of eight thousand inhabitants, Montbéliard must be considered rich in educational and intellectual resources. Much of the farming in these parts is tenant-farming on a fair scale, i.e., fifty to two or three hundred acres. In the case of small peasant properties, which, of course, exist also, the land is usually not divided on the death of the father, the eldest son purchasing the shares of his brothers and sisters. More on the subject of agriculture will be said further on, there being nothing particularly striking about the two tenant-farms I visited with friends in the immediate proximity of the town. The first, though not a model farm, is considered a good specimen of farming on a large scale, the size being two hundred and fifty acres, hired at a rental of fifty francs per hectare, or about a pound per acre. The premises are large and handsome, and cleanly, according to a French agricultural standard, and, as usual, with a large heap of manure drying up in the sun. Here we found thirty-five splendid Normandy and other cows, entirely kept for milking, the milk being all sent to Montbéliard, with a small number of bullocks, horses and pigs. The land looks poor, and gives no evidence of scientific farming, though very few improvements are made, new agricultural methods and implements introduced, and thus the resources of the land developed. The farmer's wife and daughters were all hard at work, and the farmer busy with his men in the fields. Close to the farm-house, which we found spacious and comfortable, is the handsome villa of the owner, who has thus an opportunity of seeing for himself how things go. If tenant-farming does not pay in England, it certainly can only do so in France by means of a laboriousness and economy of which we have hardly an idea. Work, indeed, means one thing with us, and quite another with our French neighbour. It is on market-day that the country folks and their wares are to be seen to the best advantage; and housekeepers supply themselves with butter, fruit, vegetables and haberdashery, all being very cheap; peaches sixpence a pound, melons two or three sous each, and so on in proportion. One fruit may puzzle strangers, it is the red berry of the cultivated service berry tree, and makes excellent preserve. In spite, however, of the low prices of garden and orchard produce, everyone complains that the cost of living has greatly risen even here since the war, and that many provisions are as dear as in Paris. Yet, as far as I can judge, Montbéliard is still a place in which, if you cannot live on nothing a year, you can live on next to nothing, and not uncomfortably either. And now, before turning "to fresh fields and pastures new," a word must be said about the illustrious name that will ever be linked with Montbéliard. Many a hasty traveller alights at the railway station for the purpose of seeing the noble monument of David d'Angers, and the antiquated humble dwelling bearing the proud inscription: "Ici naquit George Cuvier." The bronze statue of the great anatomist stands out in bold relief before the Hôtel-de-Ville, the profile being turned towards the house in which he first saw the light, the full face fronting the large Protestant Church built in 1602, a century and a half before his birth. The proximity is a happy one, for was it not by virtue of Protestantism, no matter how imperfectly manifested, that Cuvier was enabled to pursue his inquiries with such magnificent results? Two centuries before, he might, like Galileo, have had to choose between martyrdom or scientific apostasy. The great Montbéliardais--whose brain weighed more than that of any human being ever known--is represented with a pen in one hand, a scroll in the other, on which is drawn the anatomy of the human frame. He wears the long, full frock coat of the period, its ample folds having the effect of drapery. David d'Angers has achieved no nobler work than this statue. The College of Montbéliard, called after its greatest citizen, was founded a few years ago, and is one of the first objects seen on quitting the railway station of the Rue Cuvier. English tourists do not often turn aside from the Swiss route to visit the quieter beauties of the Department of the Doubs, and residents here regret the absence of travellers, which, of course, tells upon the hotels. No one has a word to say in favour of anything we are likely to meet with on our journey throughout the length or breadth of Franche Comté. When it is as much of a recreation ground with us as Switzerland, doubtless everything will change, but nothing daunted we pursue our journey. The only way to see this country to perfection is to hire a carriage for the day, and retain it as long as you please. The railway does not penetrate into the most picturesque regions, and the diligence is slow and inconvenient. Accordingly, having had an itinerary written out for us by friends who had gone over every inch of the ground, mostly on foot, I set off with an enterprising lady, a native of these parts, for a few days' drive in the most romantic scenery of the Doubs, southward of Montbéliard, and in the direction of Switzerland. So well is the road marked out for us that we want neither "Joanne" nor "Murray," and we have, moreover, procured the services of a coachman who has been familiarized with the country by thirty years' experience. Thus far, therefore, we have nothing to desire but fine weather, which has been very rare since my arrival; tempests, showers, and downpours being the order of the day. However, choosing one morning of unusual promise, we start off at seven o'clock, prepared for the best or the worst; a description of the superb pine-forests and romantic valleys of the Doubs being reserved for the next chapter. CHAPTER V. ST. HIPPOLYTE, MORTEAU, AND THE SWISS BORDERLAND. I never understood, till I travelled with French friends, why hotels in France should be so bad, but the reason is to be sought in that amiability, _laisser faire_, call it by what name we will, that characteristic which distinguishes our neighbours on the other side of La Manche. We English, who perpetually travel, growl and grumble at discomfort till, by force of persistent fault-finding, we bring about reformation in hotels and travelling conveniences generally--whereas the French, partly from a dislike of making themselves disagreeable, partly from the feeling that they are not likely to go over the same ground again, leave things as they find them, to the great disadvantage of those who follow. The French, indeed, travel so little for mere pleasure that, whenever they do so, they think it useless to make a fuss about what seems to them a part and parcel of the journey. Thus it happens that, wherever you go off the beaten tracks in France, you find the hotels as bad as they can well be, and your French fellow-traveller takes the dirt, noise, and discomfort generally much as a matter of course. I am sorry that I can say little for the hotels we found throughout our four days' drive in the most romantic scenery of the Doubs, for the people are so amiable, obliging, and more titan moderate in their charges, that one feels inclined to forgive anything. Truth must be told, however, and so, for once, I will only add that the tourist must here be prepared for the worst in the matter of accommodation, whilst too much praise cannot be accorded to the general desire to please, and absolute incapacity of these good people to impose on the stranger. It must also be explained that as the mere tourist is a rare phenomenon in these remote parts, the hotels are not arranged in order to meet his wants, but those of the _commis-voyageur_, or commercial traveller, who is the chief and best customer of innkeepers all over the country. You meet no one else at the table-d'hôte but the _commis-voyageurs_, and it must not be supposed that they are in any way objectionable company. They quietly sit out the various courses, then retire to the billiard-room, and they are particularly polite to ladies. Throughout the journey we were on the borders of Switzerland, the thinnest possible partition dividing the land of cleanliness, order, and first-rate accommodation from that of dirt, noise, and discomfort; yet so rigid is the demarcation that no sooner do you put foot on Swiss ground than you find the difference. Quite naturally, English travellers keep on the other side of the border, and only a stray one now and then crosses it. Our little calèche and horse left much to desire, but the good qualities of our driver made up for everything. He was a fine old man, with a face worthy of a Roman Emperor, and, having driven all over the country for thirty years, knew it well, and found friends everywhere. Although wearing a blue cotton blouse, he was in the best sense of the word a gentleman, and we were somewhat astonished to find him seated opposite to us at our first _table-d'hôte_ breakfast. We soon saw that he well deserved the respect shown him; quiet, polite, dignified, he was the last person in the world to abuse his privileges, never dreaming of familiarity. The extreme politeness shown towards the working classes here by all in a superior social station doubtless accounts for the good manners we find among them. My fellow-traveller, the widow of a French officer, never dreamed of accosting our good Eugène without the preliminary Monsieur, and did not feel herself at all aggrieved at having him for her _vis-à-vis_ at meals. Eugène, like the greater part of his fellow-countrymen, is proud and economical, and, in order not to become dependent upon his children, or charity, in his old age, had already with his savings bought a house and garden. It is impossible to give any idea of the thrift and laboriousness of the better order of working classes here. Soon after quitting Montbéliard we began to ascend, and for the rest of the day were climbing, gradually exchanging the region of corn-fields and vineyards for that of the pine. From Montbéliard to St. Hippolyte is a superb drive of about five hours, amid wild gorges, grandiose rocks that have here taken every imaginable form--rampart, citadel, fortress, tower, all trellised and tasselled with the brightest green; and narrow mountains, valleys, here called "combes"--delicious little emerald islands shut in by towering heights on every side. The mingled wildness and beauty of the scenery reach their culminating point at St. Hippolyte, a pretty little town with picturesque church, superbly situated at the foot of three mountain gorges and the confluence of the Doubs with the Dessoubre, the latter river here turning off in the direction of Fuans. Here we halt for breakfast, and in two hours' time are again ascending, looking down from a tremendous height at the town, incomparably situated in the very heart of these solitary passes and ravines. Our road is a wonderful bit of achievement, curling as it does around what below appear unapproachable precipices, and from the beginning of our journey to the end, we never ceased admiring it. This famous road was constructed with many others in Louis Philippe's time, and must have done great things for the progress of the country. Excepting an isolated little château here and there, and an occasional diligence and band of cantonniers, all is solitary, and the solitariness and grandeur increase as we leave the region of rocks and ravines to enter that of the pine--still getting higher and higher. From St. Hippolyte to our next halting place, Maîche, the road only quits one pine-forest to enter another, our way now being perfectly solitary, no herdsman's hut in sight, no sound of bird or animal, nothing to break the silence. Some of these trees are of great height--their sombre foliage at this season of the year being relieved by an abundance of light brown cones, which give them the appearance of gigantic Christmas trees hung with golden gifts. Glorious as is the scenery we had lately passed, hoary rocks clothed with richest green, verdant slopes, valleys, and mountain sides all glowing in the sunshine--the majestic gloom and isolation of the pine-forests appeal more to the imagination, and fill the mind with deeper delight. Next to the sea, the pine-forest, to my thinking, is the sublimest of nature's handiworks. Nothing can lessen, nothing can enlarge such grandeur as we have here. Sea and pine-forest are the same, alike in thunder-cloud or under a serene sky--summer and winter, lightning and rain--we can hardly add by a hairbreadth to the profundity of the impression they produce. Maîche might conveniently be made a summer resort, and I can fancy nothing healthier and pleasanter than such a sojourn around these fragrant pines. The hotel, too, from what we saw of it, pleased us greatly, and the landlady, like most of the people we have to do with in these parts, was all kindness, obligingness, and good-nature. In large cities and cosmopolitan hotels, a traveller is Number one, two, or three, as the case may be and nothing more. Here, host and hostess interest themselves in all their visitors, and regard them as human beings. The charges moreover are so trifling that, in undertaking a journey of this kind, hotel expenses need hardly count at all--the real cost is the carriage. From Maîche to Le Russey, our halting place for the night, is a distance of three hours only, during which we are still in the pine-woods. Le Russey possesses no attractions, except a quaint and highly artistic monument to the memory of one of her children, a certain Jesuit missionary, whose imposing statue, cross in hand, is conspicuously placed above the public fountain. We cannot have too many of these local monuments, unfortunately rarer in England than in France. They lend character to provincial towns, and keep up a spirit of patriotism and emulation among the people. The little town of Le Russey should, if possible, be halted at for an hour or two only, the hotels are dirty and uncomfortable; we fared worse there than I ever remember to have fared in France--which is saying a good deal! Next morning we were off at eight o'clock; our road, now level for the most part, leading us through very different scenery from that of the day before, monotonous open country, mostly pasturage, with lines of pine and fir against the horizon--in many places were rocky wastes, hardly affording scant herbage for the cattle. Much of this scenery reminded me of the Fell district or North Wales, but by degrees we entered upon a far more interesting region. We were now close to Switzerland, and the landscape already wore a Swiss look. There is nothing prettier in a quiet way than this Swiss borderland, reached after a long stretch of dreary country; here we have grace without severity, beauty without gloom, pastoral hills and dales alive with the tinkling of cattle-bells, and pleasingly diversified with villages scattered here and there; a church spire rising above the broad-roofed, white-washed châlets on every side, undulating green pastures, in some places shut in by pine-clad ridges, in others by smiling green hills. We see patches of corn still too green to cut, also bits of beet-root, maize, hemp, and potatoes; the chief produce of these parts is of course that of the dairy, the "Beurre de Montagne," being famous in these parts. Throughout our journey we have never lost sight of the service-berry tree; the road from Maîche to Morteau is indeed planted with them, and nothing can be handsomer than the clusters of bright red, coral-like berries we have on every side. The hedges show also the crimson-tasselled fruit of the barberry, no less ornamental than the service-berry tree. It is evident the greatest possible care is taken of these wayside plantations, and in a few years' time the road will present the appearance of a boulevard. At La Chenalotte, a hamlet half way between Le Russey and Morteau, enterprising pedestrians, may alight and take a two hours' walk by a mountain path to the Falls of the Doubs; but as the roads were very bad on account of the late heavy rains, we prefer to drive on to the little hamlet of Les Pargots, beyond Morteau, and from thence reach the falls by means of a boat, traversing the lake of Les Brenets and the basin of the Doubs. The little Swiss village of Les Brenets is coquettishly perched on a green hill commanding the lake, and we are now indeed on Swiss ground, being within a few miles only of Chaux de Fonds, and a short railway journey of Neufchatel and Pontarlier. We trust ourselves to the care of an experienced boatwoman, and are soon in a fairy-like scene, a long sheet of limpid water surrounded by verdant ridges, amid which peep châlets here and there, and velvety pastures slope down to the water's edge; all is here tenderness, loveliness, and peace. As we glide from the lake to the basins, the scenery takes a severer character, and there is sublimity in these gigantic walls of rock rising sheer from the silvery lakelike sheets of water, each successive one seeming to us more beautiful and romantic than the last. Perfect solitude reigns here, for so precipitous and steep are these fortress-like rocks that there is no "coigne of vantage," even for the mountain goat, not the tiniest path from summit to base, no single break in the shelving masses, some of which take the weirdest forms. Seen as we first saw them with a brilliant blue sky overhead, no shadow on the gold green verdure, these exquisite little lakes--twin pearls on a string--afford the daintiest, most delightful spectacle; but a leaden sky and a driving wind turn this scene of enchantment into gloom and monotony, as we find on our way back. The serene beauty of the lake, and the imposing aspect of these rock-shut basins give an ascending scale of beauty, and the climax is reached when, having glided in and out from the first to the last, we alight, climb a mountain path, and behold far below at our feet, amid a deafening roar, the majestic Falls of the Doubs. Such things are indescribable; but to come from the sublime to the ludicrous, I would advise future travellers not to follow our example in respect of a woman-boatman. The good woman, who acted as guide to the Falls could not hold her tongue for a single moment, and her loud inharmonious tittle-tattle put us in ill-humour for the rest of the day. When you make a long journey to see such a phenomenon as this, you should see it alone, or, at least, in perfect quiet. We had come opportunely for the Falls, however, the enormous quantity of rain that had fallen within the last few weeks having greatly augmented their volume. It was as if no river, but a sea were leaping from its prison here, rejoiced to leave its rocky home and follow its own wild way. The profound impression created by such a scene as this, to my thinking, lies chiefly in the striking contrast we have here before us--a vast eddy of snow-white foam, the very personification of impetuous movement, also of lightness, sparkling whiteness, with a background of pitchy black rock, still, immoveable, changeless, as the heavens above. As we stood thus lost, peering down at the silvery whirlpools and its sombre environment, we were bedewed with a light mist, spray sent upward by the frothing waters. Our terrible female Cerberus gabbled on, and so to be rid of her we descended. There is a Restaurant on the French, also on the Swiss side of the basin we had just crossed, and we chose the latter, not with particular success. Very little we got either to eat or drink, and a very long while we had to wait for it, but at last we had dined, and again embarked to cross the basin and lake. In the meantime the weather had entirely changed, and, instead of a glowing blue sky and bright sun, we had hovering clouds and high winds, making our boatwoman's task difficult in the extreme. However she continued to clear one little promontory after another, and, when once out of the closely confined basins on to the more open lake, all was as easy as possible. We found the Hôtel Gimbard at Morteau a vast improvement upon that of Le Russey, and woke up refreshed next morning after having well supped and well slept, to find, alas! thunder, lightning, and torrents of rain the order of the day. The programme had been to turn off at Morteau in the direction of Fuans and the picturesque banks of the Dessoubre, reaching St. Hippolyte at night, but with great reluctance we were now obliged to give up this round. From Morteau to St. Hippolyte is a day's journey, only to be made by starting at eight in the morning, and there are not even decent wayside inns. So we patiently waited till the storm was over, and as by that time it was past midday, there was nothing to do but drive leisurely back to Maîche. More fortunate travellers than ourselves, in the matter of weather, however, are particularly recommended the other route. Maîche is a good specimen of the large, flourishing villages, or _bourgs_, found in these parts, and a greater contrast with those of Brittany cannot be conceived. There you find no upper or middle-class element, no progress, little communication with the outer world; some of the towns even, St. Pol de Léon, for instance, being literally asleep. Here all is life, bustle, and animation, and, though we are now amid a Catholic community, order and comparative cleanliness prevail. Some of the cottage gardens are quite charming, and handsome modern homes in large numbers denote the existence of rich _bourgeois_ families, as is also the case in the villages near Montbéliard. The commune of Maîche has large revenues, especially in forest lands, and we can thus account for the really magnificent _cure_, or _presbytère_, the residence of the curé, also the imposing Hôtel-de-Ville, and new costly decoration of the church. There is evidently money for everything, and the curé of Maîche must be a happy person, contrasting his position favorably with that of his fellow-curés in the Protestant villages around Montbéliard. The down-hill drive from our airy eminence amid the pine-forests was even more striking than our ascent two days before; and we naturally got over the ground in less than half the time. It is a pity such delightful scenery as this should not be made more accessible to travellers by a first rate inn. There are several hotels at Maîche, also at St. Hippolyte and Pont de Roide, but they are adapted rather to the wants of the _commis-voyageur_ than the tourist. Yet there is a friendliness, a bonhomie, and disinterestedness about the hotel-keepers, which would soon disappear were Franche Comté turned into a little Switzerland. At the table-d'hôte dinner, the master of the house always presides and looks after the guests, waiters there are none; sometimes the plates are changed by the landlady, who also superintends the kitchen, sometimes by the landlord, sometimes by a guest, and shortcomings are always made up for by general geniality. Everyone knows everyone, and the dinner is a meeting of old friends. All this will soon be changed with the new line of railway to lead from Besançon by way of St. Hippolyte and Morteau into Switzerland, and future travellers will be able to see this beautiful country with very little fatigue. As yet Franche Comté is an unknown region, and the sight of an English tourist is of rare occurrence. When we leave Pont de Roïde, we once more enter the region of Protestantism, every village possessing a Protestant as well as a Catholic Church. The drive to Blamont is charming--a bit of Devonshire, with green lanes, dells, and glades, curling streams and smooth pastures. Blamont itself is romantically situated, crossing a verdant mountain side, its twin spires (Protestant and Catholic) rising conspicuously above the scattered villages; beyond these, the low mountain range of Blamont. We have been all this time, be it remembered, geographically speaking in the Jura, though departmentally in the Doubs, the succession of rocks and mountains passed through forming part of the Jura range which vanishes in the green slopes of Blamont. The next village, Glaye, is hardly less picturesque, and indeed all this neighbourhood would afford charming excursions for the pedestrian. The rest of our drive lay through an open, fairly-cultivated plain with little manufacturing colonies, thickly scattered among the rural population. In many cases the tall black chimneys spoil the pastoralness of the scene. It was with extreme regret I took farewell of the friendly little Protestant town of Montbéliard, soon after this journey. I had entered it a few weeks before, a stranger, I quitted it amid the good wishes, hand-clasps, and affectionate farewells of a dozen kind friends. Two hours' railway journey, through a beautiful country, brought me to Besançon, where, as at Montbéliard, I received the warmest welcome, and felt at home at once. CHAPTER VI. BESANÇON AND ITS ENVIRONS. The hotels at Besançon have the reputation of being the worst in all France, but my kind friends would not let me try them. I found myself, therefore, all at once in the midst of all kinds of home comforts, domesticities, and distractions, with delightful cicerones in host and hostess, and charming little companions in their two children. This is the poetry of travel; thus to journey from one place to another, provided with introductory letters which open hearts and doors at every stage, and make each one the inauguration of a new friendship. I wish I could subjoin an illustration of "How I travelled through Franche-Comté," for my exploration of these regions was a succession of pic-nics--host, hostess, their English guest, Swiss nurse-maid, and two little fair-haired boys, being cosily packed in an open carriage; on the seat beside the driver, a huge basket, suggesting creature comforts, the neck of a wine bottle, and the spout of a tea-pot being conspicuous above the other contents. This is indeed the way I saw the beautiful valley of the Doubs, and not only the country round about Besançon, but the border-land of Switzerland and Savoy. The weather--we are in the first days of September--is perfect. The children, aged respectively eighteen months and three years and odd, are the best little travellers in the world, always going to sleep when convenient to their elders, and at other times quietly enjoying the shifting landscape; in fact, there is nothing to mar our enjoyment of regions as lovely as any it has ever been my good fortune to witness. In consequence of the bad character of the Besançon hotels, even French tourists seldom break their journey here; but, on the opening of the new railway line into Switzerland, joining Besançon, Ornans, and Morteau, new and better hotels are sure to spring up. At present, wherever we go, we never, by any chance, meet the ubiquitous English traveller with his Murray, and my friends here say that, during a several years' residence in Besançon, they have never even yet seen such an apparition! Yet Franche-Comté, at present a _terra incognita_ of tourists, abounds in all kinds of beauty; the sublime, the gracious, the grandiose, and the pastoral, rock, vast panoramas, mountain and valley, all are here; and all as free from the trace of the English and American tourist as the garden of Eden before Eve's trespass! Besides these quieter beauties are some rare natural phenomena, such as the _Glacière de la Grâce Dieu_, near Baume-les-Dames, and the famous Osselle grottoes, both of which may be reached by railway. We preferred, however, the open carriages the basket and the tea-pot, and accordingly set off for the latter one superb morning in the highest spirits, which nothing occurred to mar. Quitting this splendid environment of Besançon, we drive for three hours amid the lovely valley of the Doubs, delighted at every bend of the road with some new feature in the landscape; then choosing a sheltered slope, unpacked our basket, lunched _al fresco_, with the merriest spirits, and the heartiest appetite. Never surely did the renowned Besançon _pâtés_ taste better, never did the wine of its warm hill-sides prove of a pleasanter flavour! The children sported on the turf like little Loves, the air was sweet with the perfume of new-made hay. The birds sang overhead, and beyond our immediate pavilion of greenery, lay the curling blue river and smiling green hills. Leaving the children to sleep under the trees, and the horse to feed at a neighbouring mill--there is no kind of wayside inn here, so we have to beg a little hay from the miller or a farmer--we follow a little lad, provided with matches and candles to the entrance of the famous grottoes. Outside the sugar-loaf hill, so marvellously channelled and cased with stalactite formation, has nothing remarkable--it is a mere green height, and nothing more. Inside, however, as strange a spectacle meets our eyes as it is possible to conceive. To see these caves in detail, you must spend an hour or two in the bowels of the earth, but we were contented with half that time, for this underground promenade is a very chilly one, as in some places we were ankle deep in water. Each provided with a candle, we now follow our youthful guide, who was accompanied by a dog, as familiar as himself with the windings of these sombre subterranean palaces, for palaces they might be called. Sometimes the stalactite roofs are lofty, sometimes we have to bend our heads in order to pass from one vaulted chamber to another; here we have a superb column supporting an arch; here a pillar in course of formation, everywhere the strangest, most fantastic architecture, an architecture moreover that is the work of ages; one petrifying drop after another doing its apportioned work, column, arch, and roof being formed by a process so slow that the life-time of a human being hardly counts in the calculation. There is something sublime in the contemplation of this steady persistence of Nature, this undeviating march to a goal; and as we gaze upon the embryo stages of the petrifaction, stalagmite patiently lifting itself upward, stalactite as patiently bending down to the remote but inevitable union, we might almost fancy them sentient agents in the marvellous transformation. The stamens of a passion-flower do not more eagerly, as it seems, coil upwards to embrace the pistil; the beautiful stamina flower of the _Vallisneria spiralis_ does not more determinately seek its mate than these crystal pendants covet union with their fellows below. Their perpetual bridals are accomplished after countless cycles of time, whilst meantime in the sunlit world outside, the faces of whole continents are being changed, and entire civilizations are formed and overthrown. The feeble light projected by our four candles in these gloomy yet majestic chambers was not so feeble as to obscure the insignificant names of hundreds of individuals scrawled here and there. The great German philosopher Schopenhauer is at pains philosophically to explain the foolish propensity of travellers to perpetuate their names, or as it so seems to them. The Pyramids or Kentucky Caves do not impress their minds at all, but to see their own illustrious names John Brown and Tom Smith cut upon them, does seem a very interesting and important fact. The bones of the Cave bear and other gigantic animals have been formed here; but the principal tenants of these antique vaults are now the bats, forming huge black clusters in the roof. There is something eerie in their cries, but they are more alarmed than alarming; the lights disturbing them not a little. Pleasant after even this short adventure into the regions of the nether-world, was the return to sunshine, green trees, the children, and the tea-pot! After calling it into requisition, we set off homewards, reaching Besançon just as the moon made its appearance, a large silver disc above the purple hills; and the next day, good luck still following us, we had a drive and pic-nic in the opposite direction, this time with a less ambitious programme. In fact, we were merely accepting a neighbour's invitation to a friendly dinner out of doors, a few miles from Besançon. This pic-nic is a fair sample of Franche-Comté hospitality; not only friends were invited but their guests, babies, servants, and "all that was in their house," the various parties being collected by the host in a waggonette. It was Sunday, and though I am here still in a strictly Protestant atmosphere, host and guests being Protestants, it was pleasant to find none of the Puritanism characterizing some sections of the Reformed Church in France. The Protestant pastor, indeed, to whose eloquent discourse I had listened that morning, was of the party; and it is quite a matter of course here to spend Sunday afternoons thus sociably and healthfully. The meeting-place was a rustic spot much resorted to by Bisontins on holidays, and easily reached from the little station of Roche on the railway line to Belfort. A winding path through a wood leads to the so-called Acier Springs, which, since the Roman epoch, have continued to supply Besançon with the delicious water we find here in such abundance. We have just such bits of wood, waterfalls, and mountains in North Wales, but seldom in September such unbroken sunshine to make a pic-nic exactly what it should be. It was warm enough for July, and young and old could disport themselves on the turf in perfect security. As the afternoon wore on, numerous pleasure-parties, mostly belonging to the working-classes, found their way to the same pleasant spot, all amply provided with baskets of wine and provisions. Some went further in search of a little glade they could have to themselves, others took possession of nooks and corners in the open space where we tad just before dined so merrily. It was amusing to see how little attention these good people paid to us, or any other outsiders. Two or three of the women, fearing to tear their Sunday gowns in the wood, coolly took them off, hung them on the trees near, and as coolly re-made their toilette when their woodland rambles were over. The train to Rôche certainly brought in a goodly contingent of pic-nic parties that afternoon and when about four o'clock we prepared to return home, the place was beginning to wear a very animated appearance. The moon had risen ere we reached our destination, and, seen in the tender summer twilight, the valley of the Doubs looked even more beautiful than in the glowing sunshine of mid-day. There is no monotony in these vine-clad hills, rugged mountain sides wooded from peak to base, close shut valleys, and bright blue winding rivers; whether seen under the dropping shadows of a shifting sky, or under the glow of sunset, their quiet beauties delight the eye of the mere spectator and commend themselves to the artist. Perhaps no Department in France is richer in rivers than Le Doubs, every landscape has its bit of river, rivulet or canal. To get an idea of the commanding position of Besançon, we must climb one of these lofty green heights, that of _Notre Dame des Buis_, for instance, an hour's drive from the town. Having reached a sharp eminence, crowned by a chapel and covered with box-wood, we obtain a splendid view of the natural and artificial defences which make Besançon, strategically speaking, one of the strongest positions in France. Caesar, in his 'Commentaries' speaks almost with enthusiasm of the admirable [Footnote: "Oppidum maximum Sequauorum, naturâ loci, sic muniebatur ut magnam ad ducendum bellum daret facultatem: propterea quod flumen Dubis ut circino circumductum, pene totum oppidum cingit; reliquum spatium [quod non est amplius pedum DC. quà flumen intermittit,] mons continet magna altitudine, ita ut radices ejus montis ex utrâ parte ripae fluminis continguat." _De Bello Gallico_, Lib. I., chap, xxxviii. A marvellous bit of accurate description this, and to be commended to writers of guide-books.] position of Vesontio, the capital of the Sequani, and, when he became master of it, the defeat of Vercingetorix was a mere matter of time. But what would the great general have said, could be have seen his citadel thus dwarfed into insignificance by Vauban's magnificent fortifications? and what would be Vauban's amazement could he behold the stupendous works of modern strategists? Beyond these proudly-cresting heights, every peak bristling with its defiant fort, stretches a vast panorama; the mountain chains of the Jura, the Vosges, the snow-capped Swiss Alps, the plains of Burgundy, all these lie under our eye, clearly defined in the transparent atmosphere of this summer afternoon. The campanula white and blue, with abundance of lovely tinted deep orange potentills and rich carmine dianthus, were growing at our feet, with numerous other wild flowers. The pretty pink mallow, cultivated in gardens, grows everywhere, but not so luxuriantly here as about Morteau, and the serviceberry and barberry have almost disappeared. This is indeed a paradise for botanists, but their travels should be made earlier in the year. The walks and drives in the neighbourhood of Besançon are countless, but that to the little valley of the. World's End, "Le Bout du Monde," must on no account be omitted. Again we follow the limpid waters of the winding Doubs; on one side hanging vineyards and orchards, on the other lines of poplars, above these dimpled green hills and craggy peaks are reflected in the still transparent water. We reach the pretty village of Beurre after a succession of landscapes, "l'un plus joli que l'autre," as our French neighbours say, and then come suddenly upon a tiny valley shut in by lofty rocks, aptly called the World's End of these parts, since here the most adventuresome pedestrian must retrace his steps--no possibility of scaling these mountain-walls, from which a cascade falls so musically; no outlet from these impregnable walls into the pastoral country on the other side. We must go back by the way we have come, first having penetrated to the heart of the valley by a winding path, and watched the silvery waters tumble down from the grey rocks that seem to touch the blue sky overhead. The great charm of these landscapes is the abundance of water to be found everywhere, and no less delightful is the sight of springs, fountains, and pumps in every village. Besançon is noted for its handsome fountains, some of which are real works of art, but the tiniest hamlets in the neighbourhood, and, indeed, throughout the whole department of the Doubs, are as well supplied as the city itself. We know what an aristocratic luxury good water is in many an English village, and how too often the poor have no pure drinking water within reach at all; here they have close at hand enough and to spare of the purest and best, and not only their share of that, but of the good things of the earth as well, a bit of vegetable and fruit-garden, a vineyard, and, generally speaking, a little house of their own. Here, as a rule, everybody possesses something, and the working watchmakers have, most of them, their suburban gardens, to which they resort on Sundays and holidays. Besançon is very rich in suburban retreats, and nothing can be more enticing than the cottages and villas nestled so cosily along the vine-clad hills that surround it on every side. It is, above all, rich in public walks and promenades, one of these, the Promenade Chamart--a corruption of Champ de Mars--possessing some of the finest plane trees in Europe--a gigantic bit of forest on the verge of this city--of wonderful beauty and stateliness. These veteran trees vary in height from thirty to thirty-five yards. The Promenade Micaud, so called after its originator, Mayor of Besançon, in 1842, winds along the river-side, and affords lovely views at every turn. Then there are so-called "squares" in the heart of the town, where military bands play twice a week, and nursemaids and their charges spend the afternoons. Perhaps no city of its size in all France, Besançon numbers only sixty thousand inhabitants, is better off in this respect, whilst it is so enriched by vine-clad hills and mountains that the country peeps in everywhere. Considered from all points of view it is a very attractive place to live in, and possesses all the resources of the capital on a small scale; an excellent theatre, free art schools, and an academy of arts, literary, scientific and artistic societies, museums, picture galleries, lastly, one of the finest public libraries in France, of which a word or two more later on. First of all something must be said of the city itself, which is especially interesting to the archaeologist and historian, and is very little frequented by English tourists. Alternately Roman, Burgundian, Arlesian, Anglo-French, and Spanish, Besançon has seen extraordinary vicissitudes. In the twelfth century it was constituted a free city or Commune, and was not incorporated into the French kingdom till the reign of Louis XIV. Traces of these various occupations remain, and as we enter in at one gate and pass out of another, we have each successive chapter of its history suggested to us in the noble Porte Noire or Roman triumphal arch; the ancient cathedral first forming a Roman basilica; the superb semi-Italian, semi-Spanish Palais Granvelle, the Hôtel-de-Ville with its handsome sixteenth century façade; the Renaissance council chamber in magnificently carved oak of the Palais de Justice--all these stamp the city with the seal of different epochs, and lend majesty to the modern, handsome town into which the Besançon of former times has been transformed. The so-called _Porte Taillée_ a Roman gate hewn out of the solid rock, forms an imposing entry to the city, the triumphal arch before mentioned leading to the Cathedral only. Here most picturesquely stand the columns and other fragments of the Roman theatre excavated by the learned librarian, M. Castan, a few years back. The Archbishop allows no one to see the art-treasures contained in the archiepiscopal palace, among which is a fine Paul Veronese; but the Cathedral is fortunately open, and there the art-lovers may rejoice in perhaps one of the most beautiful Fra Bartolomeos in the world, unfortunately hung too high to be well seen. Exteriorly the Cathedral offers little interest, but the interior is very gorgeous--a dazzling display of gold ornaments, stained glass, pictures, mosaics, and ecclesiastical riches of all kinds. The other churches of Besançon are not interesting, architecturally speaking, though picturesque, especially St. Pierre, with its clock-tower conspicuously seen from every part of the town. The archaeological museum is considered the best arranged, as also, in some respects, it is the richest in France, and contains some wonderfully beautiful things, notably the Celtic collection found at Alaise, in the Department of the Jura--supposed by some authorities to be the Alesia of Julius Caesar, whilst others have decided in favour of Alise Sainte Reine, in Auvergne, where a statue has been raised to the noble Vercingetorix. There are also Gallo-Roman objects of great interest and beauty collected from Mandeure _(Epanuoduorum)_ and other parts of Franche-Comté. Such collections must be studied in detail to be appreciated, and I only mention them as affording another illustration of the principle of decentralization carried on in France--each city and town being enriched and embellished, as far as possible, and made a centre artistic, scientific, and literary. The museum contains amongst other things a curious collection of old watches, the speciality of Besançon, of which more will be said hereafter. But what was my astonishment and delight, as I sauntered by the little cases under the window containing coins, medals, and antiquities of various kinds, to come suddenly upon a label bearing the inscription:-- "La Montre de Vergniaud." There it lay, the little gold watch of the great Girondin orator, choicest, most precious relic of the Revolution, historic memento unrivalled for interest and romantic associations! Vergniaud's watch! The very words take one's breath away, yet there it was, close under my eyes. All those of my readers who are well acquainted with the history of the Revolution in detail, will remember the Last Banquet of the Girondins, that memorable meeting together of the martyrs of liberty, each one condemned to die next morning for his political creed. The Girondins ruthlessly swept away, the last barrier removed between principle and passion, and the Revolutionary tide was free to work destruction at its will; of these, Vergniaud was undoubtedly the greatest, and anything and everything connected with him has a magic interest. After the banquet, which was held with much state and ceremony in a hall of the Conciergerie, now shown to travellers, the twenty-seven Girondins discoursed in Platonic fashion upon the subjects nearest their hearts, namely, the future of Republican ideas and the immortality of the soul. This solemn symposium brought to an end, each occupied himself differently, some in making their last testament, others in deep thought, one in calm sleep; and it was during the interval that Vergniaud with a pin scratched inside the case of his elegant little gold watch the name of _Adèle_, and having done this he handed it to a trustworthy gaoler to be delivered next day. A few hours later his head had fallen on the guillotine, but his last request was duly delivered to the Adèle for whom he designed it, a little girl of thirteen who was to have become his wife. She became in due time a happy wife and mother, and bequeathed Vergniaud's historic watch to a friend, who generously bestowed it upon the Besançon Museum. Charles Nodier, in his "Dernier Banquet des Girondins," gives an eloquent history of this watch, which most likely he saw and handled as a youth. Vergniaud is undoubtedly one of the most striking and imposing figures in the Revolution, and everything concerning him is of deepest interest. His lofty soul, no more than any other of that epoch, could foresee how the French Republic would be established peaceably and friendly after torrents of blood and crimes and errors unspeakable. The picture-galleries, arranged in fine handsome rooms adjoining, contain several _chefs d'oeuvre_ amid a fairly representative collection of French art. The fine Albert Dürer--an altarpiece in wood--the Moro portraits, the Bronzino--Descent from the Cross--all veritable gems, lastly the portrait of Cardinal Granvelle by Titian. This is a noble work; there are also two canvases attributed to Velasquez, "Galileo," and a "Mathematician." Seeing that Besançon was under Spanish protection during the great painter's lifetime, and that all kinds of art-treasures were amassed by the Granvelles in their superb palace, it might well happen that works of Velasquez should have found their way here. Authorities must decide on the genuineness of these two real works of art. Under the same roof is the free art-school for students of both sexes, which is one of the most flourishing institutes of the town, and dates from the year 1794. In the second year of study, drawing is taught from the living model, and every facility is thus afforded to those unable to pursue their studies in Paris, or pay the expense of a private study. There is also a free music-school and technical schools, both gratuitous, and open to both sexes. Nor must we forget the Academy of Science and Belles Lettres, which not only affords complete scientific and literary instruction gratuitously to the poor student, but also courses of lectures open to the general public from October till June. These lectures may be compared to the Winter series of our Royal Institution, (alas! the privilege of the rich and at least well-to-do only!) and, besides offering a rare intellectual treat to lovers of science and letters generally, are of the greatest possible use to needy students. Indeed, so liberal is the City of Besançon in this respect that any lad who has been lucky enough to get a nomination to the Lycée, may here pass his examination for the Bachelier-ès-Lettres and ès-Science without a farthing of costs. Again I may remark, as far as I know, no English town of 60,000 inhabitants, more or less, offers anything like the same advantages in the matter of higher instruction to those who cannot afford to pay for it; but perhaps my English critics will reply that those who cannot pay the cost of Royal Institution or other lectures are unreasonable to expect scientific instruction, or recreation, to which argument I have nothing to say. The fact remains, as everyone who lives in France knows well enough, that we have nothing to be compared to the free Academies, free art and music schools found there so largely, and which have received considerable development of late years. Many of these date from the great Revolution, when the highest instruction was not considered too good for the people. The superior taste, technical skill, and general intelligence of French workmen are due to those causes, and, of course, chiefly to the accessibility of museums, libraries, art-collections, &c. on Sundays. No matter which of these you may happen to visit on a Sunday, you are sure to find that soldiers, artisans and peasants curiously inspecting the treasures displayed to view--even dry geological and archaeological collections attracting their attention. It is impossible to have anything to do with the French working classes, and not observe the effect of this artistic culture, and here and there throughout this work I have adduced instances in point. We have nothing in England to be compared to the general filtration of artistic ideas, by means of gratuitous art and technical instruction, and the opening on Sunday of all art and literary collections. But after all it is the watchmaking school, or, École d'Horlogerie that will perhaps most interest and instruct the traveller here, and he should by no means neglect to visit it; however short his stay may be. Watchmaking is, as is well known, the speciality of Besançon, and dates as an important branch of industry from the year 1793. The National Convention is to be thanked for the foundation of the first "horlogerie," having invited to Besançon the refugee watchmakers of Chaux de Fonds and Locle, who had been prescribed for their adherence to the Republican idea. By a decree of the Convention, these exiles were accorded succour, after which the Committee declared watchmaking in the Department of the Doubs to be a national institution. Many hundred thousand watches are made here annually, and it has been computed that, out of every hundred watches in the French market, eighty-six come from Besançon. In the year 1873, 353,764 watches were made, representing a capital of fifteen millions of francs, and the trade increases annually. The watchmaking school located in the picturesque old _Grenier_, or public granary of the city, numbers over a hundred pupils of both sexes, and is of course gratuitous. The Besançon watches are noted for their elegance and cheapness, being sold at prices which would surprise eminent London watchmakers. Many working watchmakers on a small scale, are here, who, by dint of great economy, contrive to purchase a bit of garden and summer house outside the town, whither they go on Sundays and holidays to breathe the fresh air, and cultivate their flowers and vegetables. But the majority are capitalists on a large scale, as at Montbéliard, and I fear the workman's hours here are as long as at the latter place. The length of the day's labour in France is appalling, the one blot on a bright picture of thrift, independence, and a general well-being. Delightful hours may be spent in the Public Library, one of the richest of provincial France, which is also, like the charming little library of Weimar, a museum as well. The most superb of these bibliographical treasures were amassed by the Keeper of the Seals of Charles the Fifth, Perrenot de Granvelle, and afterwards bequeathed by the Abbé Brisot, into whose possession they had fallen, to the town of Besançon. Among them are some splendid manuscripts from the library of Mathias Corvinus, King of Hungary, and a vast collection of choice Aldines bound in the costliest manner. No less than 1,200 volumes of the sixteenth century are here, amongst these several specimens of topography printed in Franche-Comté. Lovers of rare MSS., old books, and old bindings, have here a feast, indeed, and are generously allowed access to all. Like most other important, libraries in France, it is under the management of a man of learning and distinction; M. Castan, the present librarian, is the author of some valuable works relating to his native province and to his archaeological labours. Besançon is mainly indebted not only for the excavations, which have filled its museums with treasures, but for the imposing Roman remains which adorn its streets. Besides its bibliographical collections, the library contains a vast number of coins, medallions, busts, engravings, and portraits relating to the history of Franche-Comté, many of which are highly interesting. The busts, portraits, and relics of such noble Franc-Comtois as have won a European reputation--George Cuvier, for instance, whose brain weighed more than that of any human being ever known; Victor Hugo, whose works are familiar to readers in all languages; Charles Fourier, who saw in the Phalanstery, or, Associated Home, a remedy for the crying social evils of the age, and who, in spite of many aberrations, is entitled to the gratitude of mankind for his efforts on behalf of education, and the elevation of the laborious classes; Proudhon, whose famous dictum, "La propriété c'est le vol," has become the watchword of a certain school of Socialists, which even the iron despotism of Russia and Germany cannot keep down; Charles Nodier, charming _littérateur_, who, at the age of twenty-one, was the author of the first satire ever published against the first Napoleon, "La Napoléone," which formulated the indignation of the Republican party, and a noble roll-call of artists, authors, savants, soldiers, and men of science. Noteworthy in this treasure-house of Franc-Comtois history is the fine marble statue of Jouffroy by Pradier. Jouffroy, of whom his native province may well be proud, disputes with Fulton the honour of first having applied steam to the purposes of navigation. His efforts, made on the river Doubs and the Saône in 1776 and 1783, failed for the want of means to carry out his ideas in full, but the Academy of Science acknowledged his claim to the discovery in 1840. The Besançon Library, indeed, whether considered as such _pur et simple_, or a museum, is full of interest and instruction, and deserves a lengthened visit. The collection of works on art, architecture, and archaeology bequeathed to the city by Paris, architect and designer to Louis XVI., is a very rich one and there is also a cabinet of medals numbering ten thousand pieces. Besançon also boasts of several learned societies, one of which founded in the interests of scientific inquiry so far back as 1840, "La Société d'Émulation du Doubs," numbers five hundred and odd members. One of the most interesting features in the ancient city is its connection with Spain, and what has been termed the golden age of Franche-Comté under the Emperor Charles the Fifth. It will be remembered that Franche-Comté formed a part of the dowry of Margaret, daughter of the Emperor Maximilian of Austria, and it was under her protectorate during her life-time and reverted to her nephew Charles the Fifth on his accession to the crowns of Spain, Austria, the Low Countries, and Burgundy. His minister, Perrenot de Granvelle, born at Ornans, infused new intellectual and artistic life into the place he ruled as a prince. His stately Italian palace, still one of the handsomest monuments of Besançon, was filled with pictures, statues, books, and precious manuscripts, and the stimulus thus given to literature and the fine arts was followed by a goodly array of artists, thinkers, and writers. The learned Gilbert Cousin, secretary of Erasmus, Prévost, pupil of Raffaelle, Goudinel of Besançon, the master of Palestrina, creator of popular music, the lettered family of Chifflet, and many others, shed lustre on this splendid period; while not only Besançon but Lons-le-Saunier, Arbois, and other small towns bear evidence of Spanish influence on architecture and the arts. In the most out of the way places may be found _chefs-d'oeuvre_ dating from the protectorate of Margaret and the Emperor, and it is such scattered treasure-trove that makes travelling in out of the way places in Franche-Comté so fruitful to the art-lover in various fields. The most salient feature of social life at Besançon is its Catholicism, the place literally swarming with priests, and soldiers, to the great detriment of public morality. The Protestants, nevertheless, hold their own here, and even gain ground, witness the Protestant Church established within the last ten years at Arbois by the Consistory of Besançon. They have also succeeded in founding a hospital here for the sick and aged poor, which is the greatest possible boon. Up till that time, this section of the community had been received in the municipal hospital under the management of the nuns, who, of course, did all in their power to worry their patients into Catholicism. We know what happens when a hospital is under the charge of nuns, and it can easily be understood that many of these poor people preferred to embrace a crucifix than forego their broth when half dead of exhaustion. Some would go through a mock conversion, others would endure a martyrdom till the last; but the position alike of weak and obstinate was unbearable. Now there is a home, not only for the indigent sick and aged, but for those who can afford to pay a small sum for being well looked after; and it is delightful to witness the home-like ease and comfort everywhere. The poor people welcomed their pastor, who accompanied me on my visit, not only as a priest but as a friend, and it was easy to see how they enjoyed a little talk with Madame, and the prattle of the children. The large shady hospital garden overlooking the town is much resorted to in fine weather, and everywhere we found cheerful faces. It is hardly necessary to say that this admirable work needs money. The Catholic clergy, of course, regard any step in advance on the part of the Protestants with abhorrence, and do a little bit of persecution whenever opportunity offers. Thus, as perhaps may not be known to all my readers, the parish burial-ground in France is open by the law to all sects and denominations indiscriminately; Protestant, Jew, Mahometan, or Brahmin may here find a resting-place in spite of M. le Curé. Such is the law, and an admirable law it is, but the law means one thing to a Catholic and another to a Protestant There is no Protestant burial-ground in Besançon or the neighbouring villages, so that everyone is buried in the town and parish cemetery; but, as mayors of small country towns and villages often happen not to know the law, the curé tries to circumvent his enemy at the last. Accordingly, when the time of burial comes, a Protestant pastor may be kept waiting for hours in consequence of this wilful obstinacy; supposing that the mayor is under clerical influence, useless to argue "La loi est avec nous;" curé and mayor persist, and at the last moment the unfortunate pastor has to telegraph to the Préfet, who, whether clerical or not, knows the law, and is obliged to follow it, and consequently sends an authorization which ends the matter. This is very blind on the part of the clericals, for it naturally turns the Protestants into martyrs. It happened in a little village, not far from Besançon, that, after a scene of this kind, all the village population turned into the cemetery, and, by the time the Préfet's order came, the Protestant pastor had a large audience for his discourse over the grave. "C'est si consolant chez les Protestants, l'enterrement des morts," people were heard to say, and let us hope that the curé and the mayor were punished for their folly by a few conversions among their flocks to Protestantism. A mediaeval writer, François de Belleforest, thus describes Besançon:-- "Si par l'antiquité, continuée en grandeur, la bénédiction de Dieu se cognoit en une lieu, il n'y a ville ni cité en toutes les Gaules qui ayt plus grande occasion de remarquer la faveur de Dieu, en soy que la cité dont nous avions prise le discours. Car, en premier lieu, elle est assise en aussi bonne et riche assiette que ville du monde; estant entouré de riches costeaux et vignobles, et de belles et hautes fôrets, ayant la rivière du Doux qui passe par le millieu, et enclost pour le plupart d'icelle, estant bien, d'ailleurs fort bien approvisionée. Les fruicts y sont aussi bons, et y a aussi bonne commodité de venaison et de gibier en ceste ville, qu'en autre qu'on sceut choisir. Et puis ce qu'elle est à la cheultes des montagnes, on la tient pour le grenier commun du comté de Bourgogne, comme jadis Sicile estait de l'Itaile. Et s'il était question d'estimer la vertu d'un peuple, qui s'est longtemps maintenu libre sans ployer la gantelet, ni rien perdu de sa réputation, on peut, à bon droit, faire cas de ceste cité. Et certes de tout temps ceste brave cité a esté enviée des tyrans, pour en usurper la domination. Et il n'y a ni eu ni menaces, ni allêchement qui ayent sceu esbranler les nobles et libres coeurs besançonnais, pour quicter aucune chose de leurs libertez, quelques couleurs de grandeur et de richesses qu'on leur ayt mis audevant pour se laisser annexer au comté de Bourgogne, et avoir un parlément, et se mettre auxpieds ce qu'il ont aux mains." CHAPTER VII ORNANS, COURBET'S COUNTRY, AND THE VALLEY OF THE LOUE. Let the reader now follow me to Ornans, Courbet's birth and favourite abiding place, and the lovely Valley of the Loue. This is the excursion _par excellence_ from Besançon, and may be made in two ways, either on foot, occupying three or four days, decidedly the most advantageous for those who can do it, or by carriage in a single day, starting very early in the morning, and telegraphing for relays at Ornans the previous afternoon. This is how we managed it, starting at five, and reaching home soon after eight at night. The children accompanied us, and I must say, better fellow-travellers I never had than these mites of sixteen months and three and a-half years. When tired of looking at the cows, oxen, goats, horses and poultry, we passed on the road, they would amuse themselves for an hour by quietly munching a roll, and, when that occupation at last came to an end, they would go to sleep, waking up just as happy as before. Here I will mention that the great amiability of the French character is no more strongly manifested than in this habit of always having their little children about them. As neither day nor night nurseries exist in France, and head-nurses are equally unheard of, young children are always with their parents. Thus, if visitors call, and papa and mamma happen to be engaged in interesting conversation with them, no attention will be paid to the perpetual noise and interruption of little toddling things, whose place is naturally there. I have heard an animated political discussion go on whilst a boy of two and a half was hammering with a hammer on a wooden box; and no kind of notice was taken by his elders. Such a practice, of course, could only be made tolerable by excessive good-nature, but there is no doubt that our own system is better both for parents and children. Ornans is not only extremely picturesque in itself, but interesting as the birth and favourite abiding place of the famous painter Courbet; it is also a starting place for the Valley of the Loue, and the source of this beautiful little river, the last only to be seen in fine, dry weather, on account of the steepness and slipperiness of the road. The climate of Franche-Comté is unfortunately very much like our own, being excessively changeable, rainy, blowy, sunny, all in a breath. To-day's unclouded sunshine is no guarantee of fine weather to-morrow, and although, as a rule, September is the finest month of the year here, it was very variable during my stay, with alternations of rain and chilliness. Fine days had to be waited for and seized upon with avidity, whilst the temperature is liable to great and sudden variations. Ornans we reach after a drive of three hours, amid hills luxuriantly draped with vines and craggy peaks clothed with verdure, here and there wide sketches of velvety green pasture with cattle feeding, haymakers turning over the autumn hay. Everywhere we find haymakers at work, and picturesque figures they are. Ornans is lovely, and no wonder that Courbet was so fond of it. Nestled in a deep valley of green rocks and vineyards, and built on the banks of the transparent Loue, its quaint spire rising from the midst, it commends itself alike to artist, naturalist, and angler. These old-world houses reflected in the river are marvellously paintable, and the scene, as we saw it after a heavy rain, glowed in the brightest and warmest light. Courbet's house is situated, not on the river, but by the roadside, on the outskirts of the town, fronting the river and the bright green terraced hills above. It is a low, one-storied house, embosomed in greenery, very rural, pretty, and artistic. In the dining-room we were shown a small statue of the painter by his own hand, giving one rather the idea of a country-squire or sporting farmer than a great artist, and his house--which is not shown to strangers--is full of interesting reminiscences of its owner. In the kitchen is a splendid Renaissance chimney-piece in sculptured marble, fit for the dining-hall of a Rothschild. This, Courbet found in some old château near, and, artist-like, transferred it to his cottage. On the walls of the studio are two frescoes he painted in his happier days, before he helped to overthrow the Vendôme Column, and thus forfeited the good feeling of his fellow-townsmen. Ornans is clerical to the backbone, and will it be believed?--after this unfortunate affair of the Vendôme Column, an exquisite statue, with which Courbet had decorated the public fountain, was thrown down, of course at clerical instigation. Morteau, it must be supposed, being more enlightened, rescued the dishonoured statue, and it now adorns the public fountain of that village. It is, indeed, impossible to give any idea of the vindictive spirit with which poor Courbet was treated by his native village, and, seeing how much he loved it, it must have galled him deeply. We were allowed to wander at will over the house and straggling gardens, having friends in the present occupants, but the house still belongs to the Courbet family, and is not otherwise to be seen. All this time I was listening, with no little edification, to the remarks of our young driver, who took the keenest interest in Courbet and art generally. He told me, as an instance of the strong feeling existing against Courbet after the events of the Commune, that, upon one occasion when the painter had been drinking a toast with a friend in a café, he had no sooner quitted the place than a young officer sprang up and dashed the polluted glass to the ground, shattering it into a dozen pieces. "No one shall henceforth drink out of a glass used by that man," he said, and doubtless he was only echoing the popular sentiment. Ornans is the birthplace of the princely Perronet de Granvelle (father of the Cardinal whose portrait by Titian adorns the picture-gallery of Besançon), and whose munificent patronage of arts and letters turned that city into a little Florence during the Spanish régime. In the church is seen the plain red marble sarcophagus of his parents, also a carved reading desk and several pictures presented to the church by his son, the Cardinal. There is a curious old Spanish house in the town, a relic of the same epoch. Ornans is celebrated for its cherry orchards and fabrications of Kirsch, also for Absinthe, and its wines. Everywhere you see cherry orchards and artificial terraces for the vines as on the Rhine, not a ledge of hill side being wasted. Gruyère cheese, so called, is also made here, and there are besides several manufactures, nail-forges, wire-drawing mills, and tile-kilns. But none of these interfere with the pastoralness of the scenery, and no wonder that this attracts French artists in the summer time. Lovely walks and drives abound, and the magnificence of the forest trees has been made familiar to us by the landscapes of Courbet, whose name will ever be associated with this quaint village in the Valley of the Loue. We are now on the high road from Ornans to Pontarlier, and are passing some of the wealthiest little communities in Franche-Comté, Montgesoye, Vuillafans, Lods, all most picturesque to behold, and important centres of industry. Iron foundries, kirsch distilleries, chemical works, and other manufactures maintain these rustic populations, and such isolated little nuclei of trade will doubtless take extraordinary development when the line of railway from Besançon to Pontarlier, by way of Ornans, is completed. At present it is one of the few places that may be described as out of the world, and a veritable paradise for the lover of quiet and rusticity. If we proceed further on the Monthier road, the aspect changes, and we find ourselves in the winding close-shut valley, the narrow turbulent little streams of deepest green tossing over its rocky bed amid hanging vineyards and lofty cliffs. Soon, however, the vine, the oak, the beech, and the ash tree disappear, and we have instead the sombre pine and fir only. Monthier is perched on a hill-side amid grandiose mountains, and is hardly less picturesque than Ornans, though not nearly so enticing. In fact it is a trifle dirty when visited in detail, though charming, viewed from the high road above. Here we sat down to an excellent dinner at one end of the _salle-à-manger_; at the other was a long table where a number of peasant farmers, carters, and graziers--it was fair day--were faring equally well: our driver was amongst them, and all were as quiet and well-behaved as possible, but given to spit on the floor, "as is their nature to." The charges were very low, the food good, the wine sour as vinegar, and the people obliging in the extreme. The hotels in these parts are very much on a par with caravanserais in Algeria; bells, fire-places, and other necessities of civilized life are unknown, the bed-rooms are often reached by an outside staircase only, and afford such accommodation we should not think luxurious for a stable-boy in England, and these often, moreover, adjoin a noisy upper _salle-à-manger_, where eating, and drinking, and talking go on all day long. After having stopped to look at the beautiful old wood carvings in the church, we continue our way, climbing the mountain road towards Pontarlier; hardly knowing which to admire most, the deep-lying valley at our feet, where the little imprisoned river curls with a noise as of thunder, making miniature cascades at every step, or the limestone rocks of majestic shape towering above on the other side. One of them, the so-called _Roche de Hautepierre_, is nearly nine hundred yards high; the road all the time zigzags wonderfully around the mountain sides, a stupendous piece of engineering which cost the originator his life. Soon after passing the tunnel cut in the rock, we saw an inscription telling how the engineer, while engaged in taking his measurements, lost his footing and was precipitated into the awful ravine below. The road itself was opened in 1845, and is mainly due to the public spirit of the inhabitants of Ornans. Franche-Comté is rich in zig-zagging mountain roads of daring construction, and none are more wonderful than this. As we crawl at a snail's pace between rocks and ravine, silvery grey masses towering against the glowing purple sky, deepest green fastnesses below that make us giddy to behold, all is still but for the sea-like war of the little river as it pours down impetuously from its mountain home. The heavy rain of the previous night unfortunately prevents us from following it to its source, a delightful excursion in tolerably dry weather, but impracticable after a rain-fall. By far the best, way is to sleep at Monthier and visit the source on foot, but fatigue may be avoided by taking a carriage from Pontarlier. Between Monthier and the source of the Loue is a bit of wild romantic scenery known as the _Combes de Nouaille_, home of the Franc-Comtois elf, or fairy, called _la Vouivre_. _Combe_, it must be explained, means a straight, narrow valley lying between two mountains, and Charles Nodier remarks: "is very French, and is perfectly intelligible in any part of the country, but has been omitted in the Dictionary of the Academy, because there is no _combe_ at the Tuileries, the Champs Elysées or the Luxembourg!" These close winding _combes_ form one of the most characteristic and picturesque features of Franc-Comtois scenery. Leaving the more adventuresome part of this journey therefore to travellers luckier in respect of weather than ourselves, we turn our horses' heads towards Ornans, where we rest for coffee and a little chat with friends. As we set out for Besançon, a splendid glow of sunset lights up Courbet's birth and favourite abiding place, clothing in richest gold the hills and hanging woods he portrayed with so much vigour and poetic feeling. The glories of the sinking sun lingered long, and, when the last crimson rays faded, a full pearly moon rose in the clear heavens, lighting us on our way. A few days after this delightful excursion, I left Besançon, as I had done Montbéliard, amid the heartiest leave-takings, and the last recollection I brought away from the venerable town is of two little fair-haired boys, whose faces were lifted to mine for a farewell kiss in the railway station. CHAPTER VIII. SALINS, ARBOIS, AND THE WINE COUNTRY OF THE JURA. Hardly has the traveller quitted Besançon in the direction of Lons-le-Saunier ere he finds himself amid wholly different scenery; all is now on a bolder, vaster scale, desolate sweeps of rocky plain, shelving mountain sides, bits of scant herbage alternating with vineyards, the golden foliage lending wondrous lustre to the otherwise arid landscapes, the rocks rising higher and higher as we go--such are the features that announce the Jura. We have left the gentler beauties of the Doubs behind us, and are now in one of the most romantic and picturesque regions of all France. Salins, perhaps the only cosmopolitan town that the Jura can be said to possess, since hither English and other tourists flock in the summer season, is superbly situated--a veritable fairy princess guarded by monster dragons! Four tremendous mountain peaks protect it on every side, towering above the little town with imposing aspect; and it is no less strongly defended by art, each of these mountain tops being crested with fortifications. Salins bears indeed a formidable front to the enemy, and no wonder the Prussians could not take it. Strategically, of course, its position is most important, as a glance at the map will show. It is in itself a wonderful little place from its "assiette," as the French say; and wherever you go you find wild natural beauty, while the brisk mountain air is delightful to breathe, and the transparent atmosphere lends an extra glow to every feature of the scene. At Salins too we find ourselves in a land of luxuries, _i.e._, clean floors, chamber-maids, bells, sofas, washing basins and other items in hygiene and civilization not worth mentioning. The Hôtel des Messageries is very pleasant, and here, as in the more primitive regions before described, you are received rather as a guest to be made much of than as a foreigner to be imposed upon. This charming _bonhomie_, found among all classes, is apt to take the form of gossip overmuch, which is sometimes wearisome. The Franc-Comtois, I must believe, are the greatest talkers in the world, and any chance listener to be caught by the button is not easily let go. Yet a considerable amount of volubility is pardoned when people are so amiable and obliging. Mendicity is forbidden in the Jura as in the Department of the Doubs, and there is little real pinching poverty to be found among the rural population, though of course a laboriousness and economy unknown among our own. In the most part, the vine-grower and fabricator of Gruyère cheese, so called, is well-to-do and independent, and here indeed, the soil is the property of the people. The Salins season ends on the 15th of September, when the magnificent hydropathic establishment is closed, and only a few stray visitors remain. The Salins waters are said to be much more efficacious than those of Kreuznach in Prussia, which they much resemble; and the nature of the soil is shown by its deep crimson hue. If the tonic qualities of these mountain springs are invaluable, it must be admitted that they are done ample justice to, for never surely were so many public fountains to be found in a town of the same size. A charming monograph might be devoted to the public fountains of Franche-Comté, and those of Salins are especially meritorious as works of art. How many there are, I cannot say, but at least half-a-dozen are interesting as monuments, notably the charming life-size bronze figure of a Vintager, by the gifted Salinois sculptor, Max Claudel, ornamenting one, the fine torso surmounting another, and of which the history is mysterious, the group of swans adorning a third, and so on; at every turn the stranger coming upon some street ornament of this kind, whilst the perpetual sound of running water is delightful to the ear. I shall never recall the Jura without this cool, pleasant, dripping noise, as much a part of it as its brisk air and dazzling blue sky. There is a good deal to see at Salins; the _salines_, or salt-works, the old church of St. Anatole with its humorous wood-carvings, the exquisite Bruges tapestries in the Museum, the ancient gateways of the city, the quaint Renaissance statue of St. Maurice in the church of that name--wooden figure of a soldier-peasant on horseback--and lastly the forts and the superb panoramas to be obtained from them. This little straggling town, of not more than six thousand and odd inhabitants, possesses a public library of ten thousand volumes, a natural history museum, and a theatre, and other resources. It is eminently Catholic, but I was glad to find that the thin edge of the Protestant wedge is being driven in there, a Protestant service being now held once a month, and this will doubtless soon develop into some regular organization. Protestantism means cleanliness, education, and domestic morality, and Catholicism the reverse; so no wonder that the more enlightened mayors and municipalities are inclined to look upon these quiet invasions with favour. As I narrate my progress through the Jura, it will be seen that I found Protestantism everywhere making head against the enemy. Perhaps the most beautiful excursion to be made from Salins is to the little town of Nans, and the source of the River Lison, a two hours' drive amid scenery of alternating loveliness and grandeur--vines everywhere as we climb upwards, our road curling round the mountain-sides, as a ribbon twisted round a sugar-loaf, and then having wound in and out jagged peaks covered with light foliage and abrupt slopes clad with vines, we come to the sombre pine-forests, passing from one forest to another, the air blowing upon us with sudden keenness. No sooner do we emerge from these gloomy precincts than we come upon the pretty little village of Nans, smiling and glowing in a warm sunlit valley, and most enticing to us after the sombreness and chilliness of the mountain-tops. Although anything but a _gourmand_ myself, I will mention for the benefit of those who really care for good things, that we found a most wonderful dinner awaiting us in the homely little _auberge_ at which we alighted--hare, salmon, trout, prawns, and all kinds of local confectionery, were here supplied at the modest price of ten francs and a half, the cook of the establishment being the landlady herself, and the entire staff consisting of two old women. One of these was drafted off to guide me to the source, and off we set on our walk, at once leaving the warm open valley for the mountain world. On and on we went, the mountain closing upon us and shutting out more and more of the glowing blue heavens, till we came to a stand. From these rocky fastnesses, here forbidding further progress, the River Lison has its source; above they show a silvery grey surface against the emerald of the valleys and the sapphire of the sky, but below the huge clefts, from which we are soon to see the river issue forth exultingly, they are black as night. A few steps onward and we were in sight of the source, and no words can convey its imposingness, or the sense of contrast forced upon the mind--the pitchy, ebon cavern from which flashes the river in silvery whiteness, tumbling in a dozen cascades down glistening black rocks, and across pebbly beds, and along gold-green pastures. We explored the inner part of this strange rock-bed; the little River Lison, springing from its dark cavernous home, leaping forth with wild exultation into the light, pursuing its way under all kinds of difficulties, growing broader and broader as it goes, till a wide, sunlit river, it flows onward and onward, finally reaching the sea, reminded me, as I gazed, of a lovely thought emerging from the thinker's brain, which, after obstacles and hindrances innumerable, at last, refreshing all as it goes, reaches the open light of universal truth. Behind the source, and reached by a winding path cut in the rocks, is a lofty chasm, from the summit of which another mountain stream falls with beautiful effect; and no less impressive and curious are the so-called _Grottes des Sarrazins_, a little further off, huge caverns shutting in a little lake, and where the river rushes with a sound of thunder. On the steep mountain path, leading to the chasm just mentioned, we found hellebore growing in abundance, also the winter-cherry, its vermillion-hued capsules glowing through the green. The brilliant red berry of the white bream-tree also lends colour to the wayside hedge, as well as the deep rose-coloured fruit of the barberry. Flowers also grow in abundance; and in the town their cultivation seems a passion. Some gardens contain sun-flowers, or little else, others are full of zinnias, flowering mallow trees, and balsams. There is no gardening aimed at, in our sense of the word, but simply abundance of colour; the flowers are planted anyhow and grow anyhow, the result being ornamental in the extreme. There is a pottery, or _faiencerie_; of two hundred years standing at Nans, and some of the wares are very pretty and artistic. The chief characteristics of the Nans ware, or _cailloutage_, is its creamy, highly-glazed surface, on which are painted, by hand, flowers, birds, and arabesques in brilliant colours, and in more or less elaborate styles. Attempts are also made to imitate the well-known Strasburg ware, of which great quantities are found in these parts, chiefly at sales in old houses. The Strasburg ware is known by its red flowers--chiefly roses and tulips--on a creamy ground, also elaborate arabesques in deep purple. If we take up a specimen, we find the ornamentation done at random, and, in fact, the artist was compelled to this method of working in order to conceal the imperfections of the porcelain. The Nans ware--very like the _faiencerie_ of Salins--commends itself alike for form and design, and the working potters employed there will be found full of information, which they are very ready to impart. One of them, with whom I fell into conversation, had just returned from the Paris Exhibition, and expressed himself with enthusiasm concerning the English ceramic galleries, of which, indeed, we may be proud. It is impossible to exaggerate the beauty of Salins, and its stately environment of rock and vine-clad peak, especially seen on such a September day as this I describe, when the sky is of warmest blue, and the air so transparent, fresh, and exhilarating that merely to breathe is a pleasure. Nor are the people less striking than their mountain home. Dark hair, rich complexions, regular features, an animated expression, are the portion of most, especially of the women, whilst all wear a look of cheerfulness and health. No rags, no poverty, no squalor; and the abundance of natural resources brings the good things of life within reach of all. At the unpretending hotel, the cookery would not discredit the Hôtel de Bristol itself, everything being of the best. I was served with a little bird which I ate with great innocence, and no little relish, supposing it to be a snipe, but, on asking what it was, I found, to my horror, the wretches had served up a thrush! I am sorry to say a tremendous slaughter of migratory birds goes on at this time of the year; not only thrushes, but larks, linnets, and other sweet little songsters supplying the general dinner table. The thrushes feed largely on grapes, which lend them a delicious flavour when cooked, and for which nefarious practice on their part they are said to be destroyed. I was assured that a thrush will eat two bunches of grapes a day, and so they are killed by the hundreds of thousands, and sold for three half-pence each, or sometimes a franc per dozen. Thrushes, moreover, are considered game, and occasionally the gendarmes succeed in catching a poacher, but so mixed are one's feelings in dealing with this question that it is impossible to know whether to sympathise with the unfortunate wine-grower whom the thrush robs of his two bunches of grapes per day, the poacher who is caught and heavily fined for catching it, or with the bird itself. No one who has Browning's charming lines by heart on the thrush in an "English garden in Spring," will ever quietly sit down to such a repast, and, whenever I could, I lectured the people on this slaughter of singing birds for the dinner table, I fear to no purpose. Leaving the gourmand--whose proclivities, by the way, are much encouraged throughout every stage of his journey in the Franche-Comté--let me advise the curious to study the beautiful interior of the church of St. Anatole dominating the town, also the equestrian statue of St. Maurice in the church of that name. The effect of this bit of supreme realism is almost ludicrous. The good old saint looks like some worthy countryman trotting off to market, and not at all like a holy martyr of the church. In the Museum is seen a medallion portrait of Courbet, to which my cicerone pointed with an expression, of horror, as that of "the artist who pulled down the Vendôme column." My next stage was Arbois, a little town travellers should see on account of its charming situation in the winding valley, or "Cluse," of the Cuisance. Nothing can be prettier, or give a greater idea of prosperity, than these rich vine-yards sloping on all sides, the grapes purpling in spite of much bad weather; orchards with their ripening fruit; fields of maize, the seed now bursting the pod, and of buckwheat now in full flower, the delicate pink and white blossom of which is so poetically called by Michelet "la neige d'été." No serenity, no grandeur here, all is verdure, dimples, smiles; abundance of rich foliage and pasture, abundance also of clear limpid water, taking every form, springs, cascades, rivulets, the little river Cuisance winding in and out amid vineyards and pastures over its rocky bed. You must follow this charming babbling river along the narrow valley to its twin sources in tangled glen and rock; the road winding between woods, vine-yards, and fantastic crags. The _cluse_, a narrow valley, is just paradisiacal, a bit of Eden made up of smooth pastures, rippling water, hanging woods, and golden glens, all this bright afternoon sparkling amid dew and sunshine. At one of these river sources, you see the tufa in course of formation in the river bed; in the other, the reverse process takes place, the tufa there being dissolved. Both sites are poetic and lovely in the extreme. I was sorry to hear of the devastation committed here by the _oïdium_, or vine blight, and the dreaded _phylloxera_, which has already ruined thousands, causing a loss of just half the amount of the German war indemnity. This redoubtable foe is not many leagues off! Measures are taken against the _phylloxera_, as against an invading army, but, at present, no remedy has been discovered; and, meantime, many once rich and happy wine-growers are reduced to beggary. It was heart-breaking to gaze on the sickly appearance of the vines already attacked by the _oïdium_, and to hear the harrowing accounts of the misery caused by an enemy more redoubtable still. Arbois, though so charming to look at, is far from being a little Eden. It is eminently a Catholic place; atheism and immorality abound; bigotry among the women, scepticism among the men, a looseness in domestic morality among all classes characterize the population, whilst we need no information on the subject of dissipation generally. The numbers of _cafés_ and _cabarets_ speak volumes. There is, of course, in this townling, of not six thousand souls, a theatre, which is greatly resorted to. One old church has been turned into a theatre at Arbois, and another into the Halles, a third into the Hôtel-de-Ville, a desecration we Protestants can but behold with aversion. Protestantism is a young and tender plant as yet in Arbois, the church and school, or so called _culte_, dating from ten years back only. The congregation consists of about fifty persons, all belonging to the poorer classes, and the position of a pastor there must be a sad one. He is constantly importuned for help, which, out of his slender income, he can ill afford to bestow, and he is surrounded by spies, detractors, and adversaries on every side. That clericalism dominates here, we need not be told. The booksellers' shops are filled with tracts about the miracles of Lourdes, rosaries, and rubrics; the streets swarm with nuns, Jesuits, and Frères Ignorantins. If you ask an intelligent lad of twelve if he can read and write, he shakes his head and says no. The town itself, which might be so attractive if a little attention were paid to hygienic and sanitary matters, is neglected and dirty. The people are talkative and amiable, and are richly endowed by nature, especially in the mathematical faculty. It is said that every peasant in these parts is a born mathematician, and curiously enough the distinguished names of Arbois are those of military engineers and lawyers, notably Generals David, Delort, and Baudrand, and the celebrated jurisconsult Courvoisier. Here, as in other towns of Franche-Comté, traces of the Spanish occupation remain in the street architecture, the arcades and picture-galleries lending character. Arbois, after Salins, is like an April glimpse of sunshine following a black thunder-cloud, so contrasted is the grace of the one with the severity of the other. Tourists never come here, and in these wayside inns the master acts as waiter and porter, the mistress as cook; they give you plenty of good food, for which they hardly like to receive anything at all, talk to you as if you were an old friend during your stay, and, at your departure, are ready to embrace you out of pure cordiality. Something must be said about the famous Arbois wine, of which Henry the Fourth of France wrote to his friend the Duke of Mayenne upon their reconciliation:--"I have some Arbois wine in my cellar, of which I send you two bottles, for I am sure you will not dislike it." These wines, both red and yellow, find their way to connoisseurs in Paris, but are chiefly grown for home-consumption. There are several kinds, and the stranger in these regions must taste both the red and the yellow of various ages and qualities to judge of their merits. I drank some of the latter thirty years old, and certainly even to one to whom the pleasures of the palate are indifferent, it tasted much as nectar might be supposed to do on Mount Olympus. The grapes are dried on straw before making this yellow wine, and the process is a very delicate and elaborate one. How wonderful it seems to find friends and welcomes in these unfrequented regions! Up till the moment of my departure from Arbois, a little town few English travellers have even heard of, I had been engaged in earnest friendly talk with a Protestant pastor, and also with a schoolmaster and Scripture reader from the heart of the Jura; and no sooner did I arrive at Lons-le-Saunier than I found myself as much at home in two charming family circles as if I had known them all my life. Amid the first of these I was compelled to accept hospitality, and at once took my place at the hospitable family board opposite two little curly heads, boy and girl; while, an hour or two after my arrival, I was sitting in the old-fashioned artistically furnished drawing-room of a Franche-Comté Catholic family, father, mother, son and young married daughter, all welcoming me as an old friend. This was not in the cheerful little town of Lons-le-Saunier itself, but in a neighbouring village to which I drove at once, for I knew that I had been expected several days before. Fruits, liqueurs, preserves, cakes, I know not what other good things were brought out to me, and after an hour or two delightfully spent in music and conversation, I left, promising to spend a long day with my kind friends before continuing my journey. It is impossible to give any idea of Franche-Comté hospitality; you are expected to taste of everything, and your pockets are crammed with the good things you cannot eat. I had fortunately no experience of hotels here, but a glance I got at the first in the place, when calling there for letters, was far from inspiring confidence. A detachment of troops was passing through the town, and large numbers of officers were lodged in the hotel, turning it into a scene of indescribable confusion. The food is said to be first rate, but the rooms looked dirty and uninviting, and the noise was enough to drive anyone out of his wits. How refreshing to find myself in this quiet Presbytère on the outskirts of the town, no noise except the occasional pattering of little feet and happy sound of children's voices, almost absolute quiet indeed from morning to night! My window looks upon a charming hill clothed with vineyards, and, immediately underneath, the large straggling garden of the Presbytère. The little church adjoins the house, and the school is also under the same roof, while the schoolmaster takes his place as a guest at the family table of the pastor. All is harmony, quiet enjoyment, and peaceful domestic life. Ah! what a different thing is the existence of a Catholic priest from that of a Protestant pastor! On the one side, we find selfishness, sensuality, and enforced isolation from the purifying influences of home and the domestic affections; a life out of harmony with the holiest instincts of human nature, and by the force of circumstances, detrimental not only to the individual himself, but to society at large--on the other, a high standard of social and domestic virtue, a career of persistent self-denial, simplicity, and dignified obedience to the natural laws and exigencies of society, a life indeed edifying to all, and, by virtue of its unselfishness, uplifting to the individual. No one who knows French life intimately can fail to be struck by the comparison between the two, and painful it is to think how the one is the rule, and the other the exception, in this favoured land of France! CHAPTER IX. LONS-LE-SAUNIER. Lons-le-Saunier, capital or chef-lieu of the Department of the Jura is charmingly situated amid undulating vine-covered hills, westward, stretching the vast plain of La Bresse, eastward and southward, the Jura range, dimpled heights changing the lofty mountain ranges into distance. The town known to the Romans as _Ledo Salinarius_ and fortified under their auspices, also a fortified town in the Middle Ages, is dominated by four hills, conspicuously rising above its undulating environment, and each of these offers a superb view from the top. My first walk was to the height of Mont-ciel, _Mons Coelius_ of the Romans, north of the town, and a delightful walk it is, leading us upward between vineyards to a broad open space planted with fine trees, and sufficiently large to afford camping ground for soldiers. From this summit we gain a wonderful prospect, vineyard, hill, and valley, with villages dotted here and there, picturesque mediaeval castles crowning many epochs, and far away the vast plain stretching from the Jura to Burgundy, and the majestic mountain ranges bounding on either side the east horizon. This walk is so easy that our little companion of four years old could make it without fatigue, and there are many others equally delightful, and not more fatiguing. We rested for awhile on the hill top eating grapes, then slowly descended, stopping on our way to enter the chapel of the Jesuits and school-buildings, both commanding a splendid site on the wooded incline. There were of course women in the confessionals, and painted images of saints and miracle-workers in abundance, before which people were kneeling with tiny images hugged to their breasts, like the pagans of old. Image worship, indeed, idolatry in the purest form, is carried on to a tremendous extent here, witness the number of images exposed for sale in the shop-windows. But the excursion to be made from Lons-le-Saunier is that to the wonderful rock-shut valley and old Abbey of Baume, Baume-les-Messieurs, as it is called, to distinguish it from the town of Baume-les-Dames, near Besançon. This is reached by a delightful drive of an hour and a half, or easily on foot by good pedestrians, and is on no account to be omitted. We, of course, take the former course, having two little fellow-travellers, aged respectively four and two and a half years old, who, perched on our knees, are as much delighted as ourselves with the beauty of everything. We soon reach the top of the valley, a deep, narrow, rock-enclosed valley or gorge, and, leaving our carriage, prepare to descend on foot. At first sight, the zig-zag path along what appears to be the perpendicular side of these steep, lofty rocks, appears perilous, not to say impracticable, but it is neither one nor the other. This mountain stair-case, called the Échelles de Baume, may be descended in all security by sure-footed people not given to giddiness; our driver, leaving his quiet horse for a time, shoulders one child, my companion shoulders another, I followed with the basket, and in twenty minutes we are safely landed at the base of the cliffs we had just quitted, not yet quite knowing how we had got there! These rocky walls, shutting in the valley, or _combe_, as it is called, so closely that seldom any ray of sunshine can penetrate, are very lofty, and encircle it from end to end with majestic effect. It is, indeed, a winding little islet of green, threaded by a silvery stream, and rendered naturally impregnable by fortress-like rocks. We rest on the turf for a while, whilst the children munch their cakes and admire the noise of the mill opposite to us, and the dazzling waters of the source, pouring little cascades from the dark mountain-side into the valley. The grottoes and stalactite caverns of this _combe_ are curious alike within and without, and in their inmost recesses is a small lake, the depth of which has never yet been sounded. Both lake and stalactite caves, however, can only be seen at certain seasons of the year, and then with difficulty. The tiny river issuing from the cleft is called the Seille, and very lovely is the deep, narrow valley of emerald green through which it murmurs so musically. The mountain gorge opens by little and little as we proceed, showing velvety pastures where little herdsmen and herdswomen are keeping their cows; goats, black and white, browse on the steep rocks as securely as flies on a ceiling, and abundance of trees grow by the road-side. The valley winds for half a mile to the straggling village of Baume, and there the stupendous natural fortifications of cliff and rock come to an end. Nothing finer in the way of scenery is to be found throughout the Jura than this, and it is quite peculiar, being unlike any other mountain conformation I have ever seen, whilst the narrow winding valley of soft gold-green is in beautiful contrast with the rugged grandeur, not to say savageness, of its environment. The buildings of this once important Abbey of Baume are now turned into a farm-house, but enough remains to bespeak the former magnificence of this most aristocratic monastery, [Footnote: Consult Roussel's "Dictionnaire de Franche-Comté" on the subject. It is very voluminous, but like any other work on Franche-Comté, may be consulted in the public library of Lons-le-Saunier without trouble or formality.] to which none could be admitted without furnishing proof of pure degree of nobility on both the paternal and maternal sides. Adjoining the Abbey is the Church, which possesses at least one _chef-d'oeuvre_ in its _retable_. This altar-piece of wood appears to belong to the fifteenth century, and is in the form of a triptych, the wings being enriched within and without by paintings in excellent preservation. The interior is divided into six compartments, in which are represented the various scenes of the life and passion of Christ. The various figures are finely sculptured, and covered with gold. Other paintings by the same artist decorate the walls of the Church. One tomb, that of an abbé of Baume, is very beautiful, being ornamented with seven small statuettes of weeping monks, who occupy little gothic niches. The expression and attitude of these figures are touching in the extreme. All these monuments are highly interesting, and worthy of being studied in detail. The Church is disfigured by not a few modern frivolities and vulgarities. Many objects illustrating the pre-historic and most ancient periods of French history have been found at Baume; bronze weapons and ornaments, Gallo-Roman relics, tombs, statuettes, &c., whilst a Roman camp, the largest in the Jura, has been traced on the summit of the rocks. This was destined to protect the road from Lyons to the Rhine, and occupied the height known as Mount Sermus. Baume shared the fate of most other ecclesiastical establishments in the iconoclastic period of the French Revolution, and when we consider what the pitch of popular fury was then, we are rather tempted to wonder that anything was left, rather than that so many treasures were destroyed. Our way home lay through the picturesque valley of the Seille, and past many places celebrated for their wines or antiquities. Vines, maize, buckwheat, potatoes, and hay covered the hillside and the plain, whilst poplar and fruit trees gave abundant shadow. We pass Voiteur, with its ruins; Château Châlon, ancient Celtic _oppidum_, renowned for its wines, like Tokay, 'véritable Madère sec Français, généreux,' the Château du Pin, massive donjon perched on a hill, and still habitable, where Henry IV. sojourned, and other picturesque and interesting sites, reaching home before dusk. In fine weather the inhabitants of Lons-le-Saunier frequently make pic-nic parties to Baume, breakfasting in the valley, but, alas! fine pic-nic weather is as rare in Franche-Comté as in England this year, and autumn, always sets in early; already the mornings and evenings are really cold, and a fire would be a luxury. We do, however, get a fine day now and then, with a few hours of warm sunshine, and I had one of these for a visit to my friends living in the neighbourhood, whom I have before mentioned. This little village in question is captivatingly situated at the foot of the first Jura range, about a mile from Lons-le-Saunier. As I have before said, throughout this entire journey, whenever I have spoken of a mountain it must be understood to mean a mountain of the Jura chain, which begins here, and only ends at Belfort, where you enter the region of the Vosges, and all along consists of the same limestone formation, only here and there a vein of granite being found. My friend's house is delightful, standing in the midst of orchards, gardens, and vines, the fine rugged peak called Mont d'Orient--of which he is the owner--rising above. On a glorious day like this, we, of course, all set off for the mountain-top, and a wonderfully beautiful climb it was, amid vineyards, pastures, and groves of walnut trees. The grapes here are, alas! attacked in many places by the blight _oïdium_, and this year the season has been so wet and cold, that as they must be gathered after the first white frost, they have no chance of ripening. As a natural result, the year's wine will be sour, and sold at a considerable loss to the growers. We stopped on our way to taste the grapes here and there, but as yet none are ripe, though we are in the last days of September. After steadily climbing for an hour, we reached the mountain-top, and sat down to enjoy the view, having in sight on one side the immense plain stretching from the Jura to the hills of the Côte d'Or, on the other, in very clear weather, the Jura range and the top of Mont Blanc. Never shall I forget this charming walk with my host, his son, and daughter, all three able to give me any information I was in need of concerning their beloved Franche-Comté. As we returned home by another way through lovely little woods, dells, and glades, we encountered more than one sportsman in blue blouse, who got into the covert of the wood as fast as he could, in quest of thrushes. "A poacher," my host said, shrugging his shoulders. "Mais que voulez-vous; il y en a tant." Poaching is carried on so largely that very little game is to be had; the severe penalties inflicted by the law having little deterrent effect. My host told me much of interest concerning the peasants and their ways. The land here belongs to the people, but the rural population is not wealthy, as in Seine et Marne and other regions. The bad vine seasons often ruin the farmer, and much improvidence prevails. In many places the proprietor of a vineyard hires small patches of land to cultivate, but that avidity in making purchases found elsewhere does not exist here. Land is cheap, but labour very dear, and the peasant therefore mistrusts such investments of capital, if he possesses any; and the liability to the failure in the vine crops necessarily checks enterprise in that direction. On our return, we found an excellent _goûter_, as these afternoon collations are called, substitutes, in fact, for our four o'clock tea. We drank each other's health after the old fashion with the celebrated Arbois wine, called _le vin de Paille_, from the process the grape goes through, being dried in straw before fermentation. This _vin de Paille_ has an exquisite flavour and is very costly and rare, even in these parts, being chiefly grown by amateurs for themselves. It is clear as crystal, and yellow as gold. Sorry indeed was I to quit these kind and charming friends with whom I would gladly have spent many a day. They had so much to show me--antique furniture, a collection of old French faïence, sketches in oils, the work of my host himself, books on the history of Franche-Comté, collections, geological and archaeological, bearing on the history of the country; last, but not least, my hostess--admirable type of the well-bred Catholic châtelaine of former days--was an accomplished musician, ready to delight her guest with selections from Chopin and Schubert, and other favorite composers. But, however reluctantly on both sides, our adieux had to be made, a promise being exacted from me to visit Franche-Comté ere long again. I shall carry away no more agreeable recollection of Eastern France than this pleasant country home and its occupants in the Jura, father, mother, young son and daughter, all vying with each other in making my visit pleasant and profitable. It is touching to be so welcomed, so taken leave of in the midst of a remote foreign place, all the more so when there was no Protestantism and Republicanism, only natural liking and a community of tastes, to bring us together! French Protestants welcome us English folks--presumably Protestants too--as their kindred, but let it not be supposed that even in the heart of Catholic regions like this, we are now generally regarded with abhorrence as aliens from the true faith--culture, high tastes, and tolerance naturally go hand in hand. In order to get a good idea of the scenery here the plain must be visited as well as the mountains, and very beautiful it is as seen from such eminences as those occupied by the Châteaux de l'Etoile and Arlay; both excursions to be accomplished in a long afternoon, even with a halt for _goûter_ at the former place, its owners being friends of my host and hostess. This modern château occupies the site of the old, and commands wide views on every side, in the far distance the valley of the Saône and the mountains of the Côte d'Or, with the varied, richly wooded plain at our feet. The Bresse, as this is called, is not healthy for the most part, and the population suffer from marsh fever, but it is well cultivated and very productive; vines grow sparsely in the plain, the chief crops consisting of corn, maize, beetroot, hemp, &c. A curious feature of farming in the Bresse is the number of artificial ponds which are seen in different directions. These ponds are allowed to remain for four years, and are then filled up, producing very rich crops. In the meantime a good deal of fish is thus procured. The land is parcelled out into small farms, the property of small peasant proprietors, as in the vineyard regions of the Jura. After having admired one prospect after another, hill and valley, wood and pine forest, far off mountain ranges and wide purple plain, we were of course not permitted to go away without tasting the famous wine for which the _Etoile_ is celebrated, and other good things. Useless it is to protest upon these occasions, not only once, but twice and even thrice you are compelled, in spite of remonstrances, to partake, and glasses are touched after the old fashion. We then quitted our kind host and hostess of this airy perch, and continued our journey, still in the Plains, to Arlay, a village. dominated by the majestic ruins of an old feudal castle, standing in the midst of fine old trees worthy of an English park. Arlay was built in the ninth century by Gérard de Boussillon, and now belongs to the Prince d'Aremberg whose handsome modern château lies at its foot. The Prince of Aremberg is one of the largest landowners in France, and we were told had not visited this splendid possession for ten years. Many other no less interesting excursions are to be made from Lons-le-Saunier, but I am a belated traveller, overtaken by autumn rains and chills, and must hasten on my way. September and October are often glorious months in the Jura, but it is safest to come sooner, and then picnics innumerable can be made, and fine weather relied upon from day to day. The town itself is cheerful, but offers little of interest to the tourist, beyond the _salines_, or salt-works, which, however, are on a much smaller scale than at Salins, and one or two other objects of interest. A curious feature in its architecture are the arcades in the streets, similar to those at Arbois, and some other old towns in Franche-Comté, relics of the Spanish occupation. There is also an unmistakeable Spanish element to be found in the population, witness the black eyes, and hair, and dark rich complexions of a type common enough here, yet quite distinct from that of the true French stock. The people as a rule are well-made, stalwart, and good-looking, polite to strangers, and very voluble in conversation. If the antiquities of Lons-le-Saunier are insignificant, no one can fail, however, to be struck with the handsome public buildings, chiefly modern, which are on a scale quite magnificent for a town of only eleven thousand inhabitants. The hospital, the caserne, or barracks, the lycée, the école normale, the bank, all these are large enough and magnificent enough, one would suppose, for any but the largest provincial towns; the streets are spacious, and the so-called Grande Place, in the centre of the town, is adorned by a fine statue of General Lecourbe, where formerly stood a statue of Pichegru; this was presented by Charles X. to the municipality in 1826, and broken by the townspeople in 1830. The gardens of the hospital are adorned by a bust of the great anatomist, Bichat, whose birth-place, like that of Homer, is disputed. Bourg-en-Bresse disputes the honour with Lons-le-Saunier, and Bourg possesses the splendid monument to Bichat's memory by David d'Angers. The museum is worth visiting, less for the sake of its archaeological collection than its sculptural gallery, chiefly consisting of works by a contemporary native artist, Perrault. One of the prettiest strolls in the neighbourhood of this most "spazierlich" town, as the Germans say, _i.e._, a town to be enjoyed by pedestrians, is the old little village of Montaigu, which is reached after half an hour's climb among the vineyards. As we mount, we get a magnificent panorama to our right, the plain of La Bresse, to-day blue and dim as a summer sea; to our left, the Jura range, dark purple shadows here and there flecking the green mountain sides; the pretty little town of Lons-le-Saunier at our feet. On this bright September day everything is glowing and beautiful; the air is fresh and invigorating, and the sun still hot enough to ripen the grapes which we see on every side. Montaigu, however, is not visited for the sake of these lovely prospects so much as its celebrity as a birth-place. This little hamlet and former fortress, perched on a mountain top, is, perhaps, little changed in outward appearance since a soldier-poet, destined to revolutionise France with a song, was born there a hundred years ago. The immortal, inimitable _Marseillaise_, which electrified every French man, woman, or child then, and stirs the calmest with profound emotion now, is, indeed, the Revolution incorporated into poetry, and the words and music of the young soldier, Rouget de Lisle, have played a more important part in history than any other in any age or nation. Alas! the _Marseillaise_ has been sadly misappropriated since, and cannot be heard by those who know French history without pain; yet it has played a glorious part, and, doubtless, contributed to many a victory when France saw itself beset with enemies on every side in its first and greatest struggle for liberty. It is not to be expected in a country so priest-ridden as this, that a statue to Rouget de Lisle should be erected in his native town; but surely an inscription, merely stating the fact, might be placed on the house wherein he first saw the light. There is nothing to distinguish it from any other, except a solid iron gateway through which we looked into a little court-yard, and upon a modest yet well-to-do _bourgeois_ dwelling of the olden time. The entire village street has an antiquated look, and the red roof tops, with corner pieces for letting off the snow, which falls abundantly here, are picturesque, if not suggestive of comfort. On our way back to the town, we found all the beauty and fashion of Lons-le-Saunier collected on the promenade of La Chevalerie to hear the military band, which, as usual in French towns, plays on Sunday afternoons. This same promenade is famous in history, for here it was, on the 31st May, 1815, that Marshal Ney, having decided upon going over to the army of the Emperor Napoleon, summoned his troops, and issued the famous proclamation beginning with the words: "La cause des Bourbons est à jamais perdue." Ney deceived himself, as well as the Royalists, and was shot soon after the final overthrow at Waterloo. There is no lack of pleasant walks inside the town as well as in the environs, whilst, perhaps, no other of its size possesses so many cafés and cabarets. In fact, Lons-le-Saunier is a place where amusement is the order of the day, and, of course, possesses its theatre, museum, and public library; the first, perhaps, being much more popular than the two latter. "Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow you die," is the maxim of the light-hearted, we must even say frivolous population. While the men amuse themselves in the cafés, the women go to the confessional, and no matter at what hour you enter a church, you are sure to find them thus occupied. The Jesuits have established a large training-school here, _une maison de noviciat_, so called; and conventual institutions abound, as at Arbois. Just beyond the pleasant garden of the Presbytère is a large building of cloistered nuns, wretched women, belonging to the upper ranks of society, who have shut themselves up to mortify the flesh and practise all kinds of puerilities for the glory of the church. All the handsome municipal institutions, large hospitals, orphanages, asylums for the aged, &c., are in the hands of the nuns and priests, and woe betide the unfortunate Protestant who is driven to seek such shelter! The same battle occurs here over Protestant interments as in other parts of Franche-Comté. In some cases it is necessary for the préfets to send gendarmes, and have the law carried out by force; the village mayors being generally uneducated men, mere tools of the curés. After the idyllic pictures I have drawn of other parts of France, I am reluctantly obliged to draw a very different picture of society here. The army and the celibate clergy, the soldier and the priest--such are the demoralizing elements that undermine domestic morality and family life in garrison, priest-ridden towns like this. Drink and debauchery fill the prisons, and the taint of immorality is not limited to one class alone. How can it be otherwise? seeing that while the heads of families openly profess unbelief, and deride their priests, they permit their wives and daughters to go to confession, and confide their children to the spiritual teachers they profess to abhor? This point was clearly brought out by the Père Hyacinthe in one of his recent discourses in Paris, and his words struck home. Next to the celibate priesthood, it is the army that brings about such a state of things. Householders in Lons-le-Saunier will tell you that, no matter whether their female servants be young, middle-aged, or old, they have to bar and bolt their doors at night as if against marauding Arabs in remote settlements of Algeria. Even when these precautions are taken, the sound of whistling outside the kitchen door at nightfall will often indicate the presence of loafers on their evil quest. In the rural districts domestic morality is at a very low ebb also, and on the whole there is much to be done here by both reformer and educationalist. I left Lons-le-Saunier early on a bright September morning, the children being lifted, still drowsy, out of their little beds to bid their English friend good-bye. Several diligences start simultaneously from the _Bureau des Messageries_ here for different places in the heart of the Jura, so that tourists cannot do better than make this a starting place. No matter what direction they take, they will find themselves landed in the midst of glorious mountain scenery, and romantic little towns and valleys, unknown to the majority of the travelling world. This is the charm of travelling in these parts. The tourist is breaking virgin soil wherever he goes, and if he has to rough it at every stage, at least he receives substantial reward. My route, marked out for me beforehand by experienced _Jurassiens_, lay by way of Champagnole and Morez to St. Claude, the ancient little bishopric in the heart of the Jura highlands, thence to Nantua, thus zig-zagging right through the country. CHAPTER X. CHAMPAGNOLE AND MOREZ. On quitting Lons-le-Saunier for Champagnole, our way led through rich tracts of vineyard; but no sooner were we fairly among the mountains than the vine disappeared altogether, and scant culture and pastures took its place. We also soon perceive the peculiar characteristics of the Jura range, which so essentially distinguish it from the Alps. These mountains do not take abrupt shapes of cones and sugar-loaves, but stretch out in vast sweeps with broad summits and lateral ridges, features readily seized, and lending to the landscape its most salient characteristics. Not only are we entering the region of lofty mountains and deep valleys, but of numerous industrial centres, also the land of mediaeval warfare and legend, whence arose the popular saying: "Comtois, rends-toi, Nenni, ma foi." Our journey, of four hours, takes us through a succession of grandiose and charming prospects, and lonely little villages, at which we pick up letters, and drop numbers of _Le Petit Journal_, probably all the literature they get. Gorge, crag, lake and ravine, valley, river, and cascade, pine forests crowning sombre ridges, broad hill-sides alive with the tinkling of cattle bells, pastoral scenes separating frowning peaks, all these we have to rejoice the eye and much more. The beautiful Lake of Challin, we only see in the distance, though most enticingly inviting nearer inspection, and all this valley of the Ain might, indeed, detain the tourist several days. The river Ain has its source near Champagnole, and flows through a broad beautiful valley southwards, but the only way to get an idea of the geography of the place is to climb a mountain, maps avail little. On alighting at the Hôtel Dumont, the sight of an elegant landlady, in spotless white morning gown, was re-assuring, and when I was conducted to a bedroom with bells, clean floors, proper washing apparatus, and other comforts, my heart quite leapt. There is nothing to see at Champagnole but the saw-mills, the "click, click" of which you hear at every turn. Saw-making by machinery is the principal industry here, and is worth inspecting. But if the town itself is uninteresting, it offers a variety of delicious walks and drives, and must be a very healthy summer resort, being five hundred yards above the level of the plain. I went a little way on the road to Les Planches, and nothing could be more solemnly beautiful than the black pines pricking against the deep blue sky, and the golden light playing on the ferns and pine-stems below; before us, a vista of deep gorge and purple mountain chain, on either side the solemn serried lines of the forest. The good pedestrian should follow this road to Les Planches, as splendid a walk as any in the Jura. No less delightful, though in a different way, is the winding walk by the river. The Ain here rushes past with a torrent like thunder, and rolls and tosses over a stony bed, having on either side green slopes and shady ways. Those travellers, like myself, contented with a bit of modest mountaineering, will delight in the three hours' climb of Mount Rivol, a broad pyramidal mountain, eight hundred yards in height, dominating the town. A very beautiful walk is this for fairly good walkers, and though the sun is intense, the air is sharp and penetrating. On our way, we find plenty of ripe wild mulberries with which to refresh ourselves, and abundance of the blue-fringed gentian to delight our eyes. So steep are these mountain sides, that it is like scaling a wall, but after an hour and a half we are rewarded by finding ourselves on the top; a broad plateau covering many acres richly cultivated, with farm-buildings in the centre. Here we enjoy one of those magnificent panoramas so plentiful in the Jura, and which must be seen to be realized. On one side we have the verdant valley of the Ain, the river flowing gently through green fields and softly dimpled hills; on another, Andelot with its bridge and the lofty rocks bristling round Salins; on the third side, the road leading to Pontarlier amid pine-forest and limestone crags, and above this, a sight more majestic still, namely, the vast parallel ranges of the Jura, deepest purple, crested in the far away distance with a silvery peak whose name takes our very breath away. We are gazing on Mont Blanc! a sight as grandiose and inspiring as the distant glimpse of the Pyramids from Cairo! We would fain have lingered long before this glorious picture, but the air was too cold to admit of a halt after our heating walk in the blazing sun. The great drawback to travelling in the Jura, indeed, is this terrible fickleness of climate. As a rule, even thus early in the autumn, you are obliged to make several toilettes a day, putting on winter clothes when you get up, and towards mid-day exchanging them for the lightest summer attire till sunset, when again you need the warmest clothing. Winter sets in very early here, there is no spring, properly speaking; five months of fine warm weather have to be set against seven of frost and snow; yet in spite of the bitterness and long duration of these winters, little or no provision seems to be made against the cold. There are no carpets, curtains, and generally no fire-places in the bedrooms, all is cold, cool, and bare as in Egypt, and many are approached from without. The people must enjoy a wonderful vigour of health and robustness of constitution, or they could not resist such hardships as these, and what a Jura winter is, makes one shudder to think of. Snow lies often twelve feet deep on the road, and journeys are performed by sledges, as in Russia. I took the _diligence_ from Champagnole to Morez, and it is as yet the only ill-advised thing I have done on this journey. The fact is, and intending travellers should note it, that there are only three modes of travelling in these parts, firstly, by hiring a private carriage and telegraphing for relays; secondly, by accomplishing short stages on foot, by far the most agreeable method for hardy pedestrians, or thirdly, to give up the most interesting spots altogether. The _diligence_ must not be taken into account as a means of locomotion at all, for as there is no competition, and French people are much too amiable or indifferent to make complaints, the truth must be told, that the so-called _Messageries du Jura_ are about as badly managed as can possibly be. Unfortunate travellers are not only so cramped that they arrive at their destination more dead than alive, but even in the _coupé_ they see nothing of the country. Thus the glorious bit of country we passed through from Champagnole to Morez was entirely lost on me, simply because the _diligence_ is not a public conveyance, but an instrument of torture. The so-called _coupé_ was so small, warm and low, that the three unfortunate occupants of it, a stout gentleman, a nun, and myself, were so closely wedged in that we could not stir a limb, whilst the narrow slice of landscape before us was hidden by the driver and two other passengers, all three of whom smoked incessantly. There were several equally unfortunate travellers packed in the body of the carriage, and others outside on the top of the luggage, all arriving at their destination feeling much as if they had been subjected to the bastinado! Nothing could be worse, and whilst the heat was intense for the first part of the journey, the latter part was bitterly cold, yet it was impossible to move one's arm in order to draw on a wrap. Cold, heat, cramp, and dejection are the portion of those who trust themselves to the accursed _Messageries du Jura_. My sufferings were alleviated by the nun, who managed to extract some fruit from her basket and handed me a pear and a peach. I had said so many hard things about nuns during my life, that I hesitated, but the fleshly temptation was too strong, and I greedily accepted the drop of water held out in the desert. To my great relief afterwards, I found that my companion was not occupied in cooking up theology for the detriment of others, but in the far more innocent task of making soups and sauces. In fact, she was cook to the establishment to which she belonged, and a very homely, excellent soul she seemed. She turned from her pears and peaches to her prayer-book and rosary with equal delectation. It was harrowing to think that during these five hours we were passing through some of the most romantic scenery of the Jura, yet all we could do, by occasionally stretching out our necks, was to get a glance at the lovely lakes, pine-topped heights, deep gorges, gigantic cliffs towering to the sky, adorable little cascades springing from silvery mountain-sides, gold-green table-lands lying between hoary peaks; everything delightful was there, could we but see! Meantime, we had been climbing ever since we quitted Champagnole, and at one point marked by a stone, were a thousand yards above the sea-level. The little villages perched on the mountain-tops that we were passing through, are all seats of industry; clock manufactories, _fromageries_, or cheese-farms on a large scale, and so on. The population indeed depends, not upon agriculture, but upon industries for support, and many of the wares fabricated in these isolated Jura villages find their way all over the world. From St. Laurent, where we stopped to change horses, the traveller who is indifferent to cramps, bruises and contortions, may exchange _diligences_, and instead of taking the shorter and straighter road to St. Claude, may follow the more picturesque route by way of the wonderful little lake of Grandvaux, shut in by mountains, and peopled with fish of all kinds, water-hens, and other wild birds. We are now in the wildest and most grandiose region of the Jura, and whichever road we take is sure to lead us through grand scenery. But much as I had heard of the savage beauty of Grandvaux, further subjection to the torture we were thus enduring was not to be thought of, so we went straight on to Morez, after the tremendous ascent I have just described, our road curving quickly downwards, and coming all at once on the long straggling little town, framed in by lofty mountains on every side. Next morning was Sunday, and I went in search of the Protestant school-house, where I knew a kind welcome awaited me. I was delighted to find a new handsome building, standing conspicuously in a pleasant garden, over the doors, engraved in large letters, "Culte et Ecole Evangélique." The sound of childrens' voices told me that some kind of lesson or prayer was going on, so I waited in the garden till the doors opened and a dozen neatly dressed boys and girls poured out. Then I went in, and found the wife of the schoolmaster and scripture-reader, a sweet young woman, who, in her husband's absence, had been holding a Bible class. She showed me over the place, and an exquisitely clean quiet little room she had prepared for me, but as I had arrived rather late on the night before, I had taken a room at the hotel, which was neither noisy nor uncomfortable. We spent the afternoon together, and as we walked along the beautiful mountain road that superb September Sunday, many interesting things she told me of her husband's labours in their isolated mountain home. Protestantism is indeed here a tender plant, exposed to the cold blast of adverse winds, but if it takes healthy root, well will it be for the social, moral, and intellectual advancement of the people. We must never lose sight of the fact that, putting theology out of the question, Protestantism means morality, hygiene, instruction, and above all, a high standard of truth and family life; and on these grounds, if on no other, all really concerned in the future and well-being of France must wish it God-speed. This is not the place for a comparison between Protestantism and Catholicism, even as social influences, but one thing I must insist upon, namely, that it is only necessary to live among French Protestants and compare what we find there with what we find among their Catholic neighbours, to feel how uncompromisingly the first are the promoters of progress, and the latter its adversaries. The position of Morez is heavenly beautiful, but the town itself hideous. Nature having put the finishing touch to her choice handiwork, man has come in to mar and spoil the whole. The mountains, clothed with brightest green, rise grandly towards the sky, but all along the narrow gorge of the Bienne, in which Morez lies, stand closely compacted masses of many storied manufactories and congeries of dark, unattractive houses. There is hardly a garden, a _châlet_, or villa to redeem the prevailing, crushing ugliness; yet, for all that, if you can once get over the profound sadness induced by this strange contrast, nothing can be more delightful and exhilarating than the mountain environment of this little seat of industry. Morez, indeed, is a black diamond set in richest gold. The place abounds in cafés, and on this Sunday afternoon, when all the manufactories are closed, the cafés are full to overflowing, and on the lovely suburban road, winding above the mountains, we meet few working-men with their families enjoying a walk. The cabaret absorbs them all. The working hours here are terribly long; from five o'clock in the morning till seven at night, the bulk of the population are at their posts, men, women, and young people--children, I was going to say--but fortunately public opinion is stepping in to prevent the abuse of juvenile labour so prevalent, and good laws on the subject will, it is hoped, ere long be enacted. The wages are low, three or four francs a-day being the maximum, and as the cost of living is high here, it is only by the conjoint labours of all the members of a household that it can be kept together. Squalor and unthrift abound, and there are no founders of _cités ouvrières_ to make the workman's home what it should be. He is badly housed as well as being badly paid, and no wonder that the café and the cabaret are seized upon as the only recreations for what leisure he gets. It is quite worth while--for those travellers who ever stay a whole week anywhere--to stay a week here in order to see the curious industries which feed the entire population of the town and neighbouring villages, and are known all over the commercial world. The chief objects of manufacture are spectacle-glasses, spits, clocks, nails, electro-plate, drawn-wire, shop-plates in iron and enamel, files, and dish-covers; but of these the three first are by far the most important. Several hundred thousand spectacle glasses and clocks, and sixty thousand spits, are fabricated here yearly, and all three branches of industry afford curious matter for inquiry. Thus the first of spectacle-making, or _lunetterie_, resolves itself into a scientific study of noses! it will easily be seen that the manufacturer of spectacles on a grand scale must take into account the physiognomies of the different nations which import his wares. A long-nosed people will require one shaped pair of spectacles, an aquilline-nosed another, a _nez retroussé_ a third; and accordingly we find that spectacles nicely adjusted to such peculiarities are fabricated, one kind supplying the American, a second the Spanish, a third the English market, and so on. So wonderfully quick is the process that a pair of spectacles can be made for three-halfpence! The clocks made by machinery at Morez are chiefly of the cheap kind, but wear well, and are to be found in almost every cottage in France. The prices vary from ten to twenty francs, and are thus within reach of the poorest. A more expensive kind are found in churches, public offices, schools, railway-stations, and manufactories, not only in France, but in remote quarters of the world. Spain largely imports these elegant inexpensive clocks fabricated in the heart of the Jura, and they find their way to China! Each separate part has its separate workshop, and the whole is a marvellous exhibition of dexterity, quickness, and apt division of labour. A large manufactory of electrotype plate, modelled on those of England, notably the Elkington ware, has been founded here within recent years, and is very flourishing, exporting on a vast scale to remote countries. There is a manufactory of electric clocks, also of recent date. All day long, therefore, the solemn silence of these mountains is broken by the noise of mill-wheels and rushing waters, and if it is the manufactories that feed the people, it is the rivers that feed the manufactories. The Jura, indeed, may be said to depend on its running streams and rivers for its wealth, each and all a Pactolus in its way, flowing over sands of gold. Nowhere has water power been turned to better account than at Morez, where a very Ariel, it is forced by that all-omnipotent Prospero man, the machine-maker, to do his behests, here turning a wheel, there flowing into the channels prepared for it, and on every side dispensing riches and civilization. Delightful and refreshing it is to get beyond reach of these never-resting mill-wheels, and follow the mountain-torrent and the rushing streams to their home, where they are at liberty and untamed. Innumerable delicious haunts are to be found in the neighbourhood of Morez, also exhilarating panoramas of the Jura and Switzerland from the mountain-tops. There is nothing to be called agriculture, for in our gradual ascent we have alternately left behind us the vine, corn, maize, walnuts and other fruit trees, reaching the zone of the gentian, the box-tree, the larch, and the pine. These apparently arid limestone slopes and summits, however, have velvety patches here and there, and such scattered pastures are a source of almost incredible wealth. The famous Jura cheese, Gruyère so called, is made in the isolated chalets perched on the crest of a ravine, and nestled in the heart of a valley, which for the seven winter months are abandoned, and throughout the other five swarm like bee-hives with industrious workers. As soon as the snow melts, the peasants return to the mountains, but in winter all is silent, solitary, and enveloped in an impenetrable veil of snow. The very high-roads are imperceptible then, and the village sacristan rings the church bells in order to guide the belated traveller to his home. My friend, the schoolmaster's wife, found me agreeable travelling companions for the three hours' drive to St. Claude, which we made in a private carriage, in order to see the country. Very nice people they were, Catholics belonging to the _petite bourgeoisie_, and much useful information they gave me about things and people in their native province. The weather is perfect, with a warm south wind, a bright blue sky, and feathery clouds subduing the dazzling heavens. We get a good notion of the Jura in its sterner and more arid aspect during this zig-zag drive, first mounting, then descending. Far away, the brown bare mountain ridges rise against the clear heavens, whilst just below we see steep wooded crags dipping into a gorge where the little river Bienne curls on its impetuous way. There are no less than three parallel roads at different levels from Morez to St. Claude, and curious it was from our airy height--we had chosen the highest--to survey the others, the one cut along the mountain flank midway, the other winding deep down close to the river-side. These splendid roads are kept in order by the Communes, which are often rich in this Department, possessing large tracts of forest. I never anywhere saw roads so magnificently kept, and, of course, this acids greatly to the comfort of travellers. Were the roads bad, indeed, what would become of them? After climbing for an hour we suddenly begin to descend, our road sweeping round the mountain sides with tremendous curves for about two hours or more, when all of a sudden we seemed to swoop down upon St. Claude, the little bishopric in the heart of the mountains. The effect was magical. We appeared to have been plunged from the top of the world to the bottom! In fact, you go up and down such tremendous heights in the Jura that I should think it must be much like travelling in a balloon. CHAPTER XI. ST. CLAUDE: THE BISHOPRIC IN THE MOUNTAINS. I was prepared to be fascinated with St. Claude, to find it wholly unique and bewitching, to greet it with enthusiasm, and bid it farewell with regret. It has been described so glowingly by different writers--alike its history, site, and natural features are so curious and poetic, such a flavour of antiquity clings to it, that perhaps no other town in the Jura is approached with equal expectation. Nor can any preconceived notion of the attractiveness of St. Claude, however high, be disappointed, if visited in fine weather. It is really a marvellous place, and takes the strangest hold on the imagination. The antique city, so superbly encased with lofty mountains, is as proud as it is singular, depending on its own resources, and not putting on a smile to attract the stranger. Were a magician to sweep away these humming wheels, hammering mill-stones, gloomy warehouses, and put smiling pleasure-grounds and coquettish villas in their place, St. Claude might become as fashionable a resort as the most favourite Swiss or Italian haunts. But in its present condition it does not lay itself out to please, and the town is built in the only way building was possible, up and down, on the edge of the cliffs here, in the depths of a hollow there, zig-zag, just anyhow. High mountains hem it round, and two rivers run in their deep beds alongside the irregular streets, a superb suspension bridge spanning the Valley of the Tacon, a depth of fifty yards. Higher up, a handsome viaduct spans the Valley of La Bienne, on either side of these two stretch clusters of houses, some sloping one way, some another, with picturesque effect. To find your way in these labyrinthine streets, alleys, and terraces is no easy matter, whilst at every turn you come upon the sound of wheels, betokening some manufactory of the well-known, widely imported St. Claude ware, consisting chiefly of turnery, carved and inlaid toys, and fancy articles in wood, bone, ivory, stag's horn, &c. Small hanging gardens are seen wherever a bit of soil is to be had, whilst the town also possesses a fine avenue of old trees turned into a public promenade. St. Claude is really wonderful, and the more you see of it the more you are fascinated. Though far from possessing the variety of artistic fountains of Salins, several here are very pretty and ornamental--notably one surrounded with the most captivating little Loves in bronze, riding dolphins. The sight and sound of rippling water everywhere are delicious; rivers and fountains, fountains and rivers, everywhere! whilst the summer-like heat of mid-day makes both all the more refreshing. St. Claude has everything--the frowning mountain-crests of Salins, the pine-clad fastnesses of Champagnole, the romantic mountain walls of Morez, sublimity, grace, picturesqueness, grandeur, all are here, and all at this season of the year embellished by the crimson and amber tints of autumn. What lovely things did I see during an hour and a half's walk to the so-called Pont du Diable! Taking one winding mountain road of many, and following the clear winding deep green river, though high above it, I came to a scene as wild, beautiful, and solitary as the mind can picture, above bare grey cliffs, lower down fairy-like little lawns of brightest green, deeper down still, the river making a dozen cascades over its stony bed, and round about the glorious autumn foliage, under a cloudless sky. All the way I had heard, mingled with the roar of the impetuous river, the sound of mill-wheels, and I passed I know not how many manufactories, most of which lie so deep down in the heart of the gorges that they do not spoil the scenery. The ugly blot is hidden, or at least inconspicuous. As I turn back, I have on one side a vast velvety slope, sweeping from mountain to river, terrace upon terrace of golden-green pasture, where a dozen little girls are keeping their kine; on the other steep limestone precipices, all a tangle of brushwood, with only here and there a bit of scant pasturage. The air is transparent and reviving, a south wind caresses us as we go, nothing can be more heavenly beautiful. The blue gentian grows everywhere, and, as I pursue my way, the peasant-folks I meet with pause to say good-day and stare. They evidently find in me an outlandish look, and are quite unaccustomed to the sight of strangers. I had pleasant acquaintances provided for me here by my friend, the schoolmaster's wife at Morez, and a very agreeable glimpse I thus obtained of French middle-class life; Catholic life, moreover, but free alike from bigotry and intolerance. Very light-hearted, lively, and well-informed were these companions of my walks at St. Claude, among them a government official, his young wife, sister, and another relation, who delighted in showing me everything. We set off one lovely afternoon for what turned out to be a four hours' walk, but not a moment too long, seeing the splendour of weather and scenery, and the amiability of my companions. We took a road that led from the back of the Cathedral by the Valley of the Tacon, a little river that has its rise in the mountain near, and falls into the Flumen close by. It is necessary to take this walk to the falls of the Flumen in order to realize fully the wonderful site of St. Claude, and the amazing variety of the surrounding scenery. Every turn we take of the upward curling road gives us a new and more beautiful picture. The valley grows deeper and deeper, the mountains on either side higher and higher, little chalets peeping amid the grey and the green, here perched on an apparently unapproachable mountain-top, there in the inmost recess of some rocky dell. As we get near the falls, we are reaching one of the most romantic points of view in all the Jura, and one of the most striking I have ever seen, so imposingly do the mountains close around us as we enter the gorge, so lovely the scene shut in by the impenetrable natural wall; for within the framework of rock, peak, and precipice are little farms, gardens, and orchards--gems of dazzling green bathed in ripest sunshine, pine-forests frowning close above these islets of luxuriance and cultivation, dells, glades, and open, lawny spaces between the ramparts of fantastically formed crags and solitary peaks, a scene recalling Kabylia, in the Atlas mountains, but unlike anything except itself. All was still, except for the roar of the tiny river and the occasional sound of timber sliding from some mountain slope into the valley below. The timber is thus transported in these parts, the woodman cutting the planks on some convenient ledge of rock, then letting it find its way to the bottom as best it can. All day long you see the trunk-cutters at work on their airy perches, now bright stairs of gold-green turf, soon to be enveloped in impenetrable masses of snow, and hear the falling planks. As we climb, we are overtaken by two timber carts, and the drivers, peasant-folks from the mountains, are old acquaintances of my companions, and suggest that the ladies should mount. We gladly do so, to the great satisfaction of the peasants, who on no account would themselves add to their horses' burden. It would have been an affront to offer these good people anything in return for their kindness. They were delighted to chat behind with Monsieur, whilst their horses, sure-footed as mules, made their way beside the winding precipice. These peasants had intelligent, good countenances, and were excellent types of the Jura mountaineer. Having passed a tunnel cut through the rock, we soon reached the head of the valley, the end of the world, as it seems, so high, massive, and deep is the formidable mountain wall hemming it in, from whose sides the little river Tacon takes a tremendous leap into the green valley below; and not one leap, but a dozen, the several cascades uniting in a stream that meanders towards St. Claude. Before us, high above the falls, seeming to hang on a perpendicular chain of rocks, is a cluster of saw-mills. It is not more the variety of form in this scene here than the variety of colour and tone that makes it so wonderful. Everywhere the eye rests on some different outline, colour, or combination. Would that space permitted of a detailed account here of all else that I saw in this ancient little bishopric in the mountains! St. Claude, indeed, deserves a chapter, nay, a small volume to itself; there is its history to begin with, which dates from the earliest Christian epoch in France; then its industries, each so curious in its details; lastly, the marvellous natural features of its position, a wholly unique little city is this, compared by Lamartine to Zarclé in the forests of Lebanon, and described by other Franche-Comté writers in equally glowing terms. The famous Abbey of St. Claude was visited by Louis XI in order to fulfil a vow still mysterious in history. This was under the _régime_ of its eighty-sixth Abbot, Peter Morel, but, after a period of almost unequalled glory and magnificence, fire, pillage, and other misfortunes visited it from time to time, till the suppression of the Abbey in 1798. I went into the Cathedral with two charming young married ladies, whose acquaintance I had made during my stay, and, leaving them devoutly on their knees, inspected the beautiful and quaint stalls in carved wood of the choir; these are worth a day's study, and unfortunately are not to be had in photography, for some reason or other no photographs being permitted. Here the spirit of the Renaissance has had full play, and you find comedy mixed with pathos, practical good sense with Biblical solemnity, quaintness, beauty, grace, drollery, all in one. The middle statues in bold relief are those of the early Kings of France and the Abbots of St. Claude, besides many noteworthy saints and martyrs, among these St. Denis with his head in his hand, St. Sebastian pierced with arrows, and others. The upper series, on a smaller scale, represents allegorical subjects, some of which are treated in a curiously homely and practical manner, for instance, the figure of Adam holding the apple in his hand with a look as much as to say, "This is what has ruined me;" Eve, in the next compartment, looks somewhat nonchalant, rather a coquette than a penitent. In some of these Biblical scenes the figures are naively dressed in mediaeval garb, but many of them have great beauty and pathos. The under-pieces of the seats, cornices, and sides are decorated with all kinds of drolleries, and not a few coarse subjects, such as a man catching hold of a pig by its tail, faces ludicrously distorted, three heads in one, a dog setting its back at a wild boar, &c. One corner-piece represents the first Abbots of St. Claude building the Abbey, and comical little devils perched on trees pelting them with stones. The whole is a wonderful piece of work, full of originality, strength, and real artistic feeling. The triptych, imputed to Holbein, may well be his work. The sacristan's little son took me to the upper chapel, where it hangs quite lost upon those below. It is as beautiful as its altarpiece in wood; the three central compartments filled with large figures of the Abbot of St. Claude and his Apostles; below, on a small scale, the Last Supper, and other subjects, treated in a masterly manner. The colours are still bright, though the whole is in a terribly dirty state, and below the central figure is a coronal of the loveliest little cherub heads. Unfortunately, no photograph is to be had of this triptych, and it is hung in a very obscure place. These two works of art, each a gem in its way, are all that remains of the once puissant and magnificent Abbey of St. Claude. Having completed a leisurely inspection, I quietly took a chair behind my companions, for fear of disturbing their devotions. I found, however, that these were over long ago, and that, though in a devout position, they were discussing fashion and gossip as a matter of course! Twice, during my visits to the Cathedral, I had found thirty Dominicans at vespers, and I was informed afterwards that these were poor students who were maintained and prepared for the office of teachers at the expense of a rich young Abbé of St. Claude. It happened that I fell into conversation with this young Abbé in a photographic shop, and found him very agreeable and instructed. It seems a pity he could not find some better means of employing his fortune. In that same photograph shop were hung photographs of the Pope and Grambetta, side by side, the shop-keeper acting, I presume, on the principle of one of George Eliot's characters, who had to vote "as a family man." Doubtless, being the father of a family, this stationer felt it expedient to be agreeable to both parties, Clerical and Republican. St. Claude, like the other towns I have passed through in the heart of the Jura, is eminently Republican, and a very intelligent workman told me that Catholic parents were compelled to send their children to the lay Communal Schools, instead of to the Frères Ignorantins, because with the latter they learn nothing. Many of these Frères Ignorantins I saw here, and graceless figures they are. One can but pity them, for as lay instruction is fast superseding clerical, what will soon be their _raison d'être?_ There is no Protestant organization at St. Claude, but most likely it will soon come. English Protestants must never forget that money is sorely needed by the struggling Protestant communities in France; and that, without money, schools, hospitals, and churches cannot be built. At present, as I have before mentioned, trade is at a low ebb, but the projected railway connecting St. Claude with Nantua will give new development to its industries, and also throw open a new and beautiful pleasure-ground to travellers. My friends entrusted me to the care of an intelligent workman in order to see the manufactures of the "articles de St. Claude," viz.: pipes, toys, inlaid work, and carved objects in bone, ivory, &c. We saw small blocks of the so called _bois de bruyère_, as they come straight from the Pyrenees, which are cut about the length of pipes, and are worked up partly by hand and partly by machinery. Women, girls, and children are largely employed with the turning lathes, and in many other processes; I saw a woman polishing handles of the toys known as cup and ball; also box-wood tops being turned, and rules and measures being made; the thin blades of folding rules are made with marvellous rapidity, as had need to be the case, seeing how low is the price at which these and other goods of this kind are sold by the gross for foreign markets. Having gone through the various workshops of a large manufactory, my companion conducted me to see the handwork done at home. We found a young artist, for so we must call him, at work in a clean little room opening into a garden, and much he told us of interest. He said that he could only earn five francs a day, and this by dint of hard work, carving two dozen pipes a day, at the rate of two and a half francs per dozen. These vine-leaves, flowers, arabesques, and other patterns are done with marvellous swiftness and dexterity, and entirely according to the fancy of the moment, and for his artistic education he had paid high. All the best workmen, he told me, were going to Paris in order to get better pay and shorter hours of labour. Strikes here are out of the question, as there are no Trades' Unions and associations in order to raise the price of labour. Meantime wages decrease, and the cost of living augments. A gloomy picture he drew of trade prospects at St. Claude, that is to say, from the workman's point of view. The arts of turnery, inlaid work, carving in wood and ivory, have long been peculiar to St. Claude, though when first they were introduced is not exactly known. First of all, it was the box-wood of the Jura that these rustic artists put into requisition, then buffalo and stags' horns, lastly, ivory, vegetable ivory, and foreign woods. The part of the box-wood used chiefly is an intermediate part between the root and the stem called _la loupe_, or _racine de bruyère_; whilst the red wood used for pipes is the root of a heath common in the Pyrenees, which has the peculiar quality of resisting heat, and is free from odour or taste. So great is the division of labour in the manufacture of the St. Claude wares that it is said there are three thousand different processes in turnery alone! A child's top, even though of the simplest, goes through a great number of stages before being finished for the markets. Chaplets are also manufactured largely, and is the earliest branch of industry, dating from the Middle Ages. Snuff-boxes in inlaid wood, ivory, and bone are made in great quantities, also rules and measures, spectacle cases, napkin rings, salad spoons and forks, and other articles of the kind. Four-fifths of the St. Claude wares are exported; an especial kind of pipes being made expressly for the English market. It is stated that, during the general Exhibition at Hyde Park in 1862, many Frenchmen brought home, as English curiosities, the elegantly carved pipes of St. Claude! The United States of America also import great quantities of these pipes. In the last American war, there was hardly a soldier who did not possess a pipe manufactured in the little city in the Jura mountains. There is also another branch of industry more fascinating still, which is peculiar to St. Claude and the neighbouring village of Septmoncel; but, perhaps, I am indiscreet in speaking of it, so dire is the temptation it holds out to the traveller. As you stroll along these quiet streets, your eyes are attracted here and there by open boxes of what appears, at first sight, to be large beads, but which are in reality gems and precious stones; amethysts, emeralds, sapphires, topazes, and diamonds, lie here in dazzling little heaps, and if you are a connoisseur in such matters, and have not spent all your money on the way, you may carry home with you one of the most delightful of all souvenirs to be set at pleasure. Diamond polishing and gem-cutting are largely carried on here, but form, more especially, the industry of Septmoncel, a little village in the mountains, a few miles distant from St. Claude. Several thousand souls depend for daily bread on this delicate occupation, which none know how long has been peculiar to the inhabitants of Septmoncel, and their monopoly is only rivalled by the diamond polishers of Amsterdam. These ateliers are well worth visiting. Besides diamonds and precious stones, rock crystal, and various kinds of imitations, and paste jewellery are here worked up; also jasper, agate, malachite, cornelian, lapis-lazuli, jet, &c. The work is done by the piece, and the whole family of the lapidary is generally employed. A journey of political propaganda had just been accomplished in these mountain regions, and the well-known writer Jean Macé, accompanied by some leading Republicans, among these Victor Poupin, editor of the useful little series of works called L'Instruction Républicaine and La Bibliothèque Démocratique. At St. Claude the occasion was turned into a general fête; the place was decorated with tri-coloured flags, a banquet was held, and the whole proceedings passed off to the satisfaction of all but the curés. In one of the little mountain towns, the curé preached in the pulpit against the sous-préfet and his wife, because, upon one of these occasions, before taking part in the Republican fête, they did not attend mass. Travelling in the Jura will, doubtless, one day be made easy and pleasant, and, perhaps, become the fashion. As it is, in spite of the glorious weather, no tourist is seen here, and the diligence to Nantua was almost empty. It is a superb drive of five or six hours by the valley of the Bienne and Oyonnaz, a little town which is the seat of an important comb-manufactory. Keeping by the river, here so intensely clear that every pebble may be seen in the water, we gradually quit the severer characteristics of the Jura for its milder and more smiling aspects. Traversing a savage gorge, we soon come to the marble quarries of Chassal and Molinges, also, at the former place, ochre quarries. The red and yellow marbles of the Jura, so richly veined and ornamental, will, doubtless, constitute a great source of wealth in the Department as soon as there are improved means of transport. In that rich marble region, we find only box trees and other dwarf shrubs, with abundance of romantic little cascades, grottoes, rivulets, and mountain springs. All this bit of country, indeed, is most interesting, picturesquely, industrially, and geologically, and on this perfect day, the second of October, every feature is beautified by the weather; large cumuli dropping violet shadows on the hills, deep ravines showing intensest purple, golden mists veiling the verdant valleys. We are soon in a pastoral country, and, as we pass châlets perched on some far off ridge, little girls run down from the mountain sides with letters in their hands, which the conductor drops into his little box attached to the diligence. We are, in fact, the travelling post-office. How laborious the life of the peasant-farmer is here, we may judge from the hard work being done by the women and girls. In some cases, they guide the team whilst the man behind holds the plough, in others they are digging up potatoes, or gathering in their little crop of maize. All the women seem to be out of doors and sunburnt, toil-worn looking creatures they are, though they wear an expression of contentment, or rather resignation. The potato crop, on which these rural populations so largely depend for winter food, is fortunately good and abundant, and little else but potato and maize seem to be grown here. The villages we pass through have a dirty and neglected appearance; but beggars are nowhere encountered, and, at the entrance of each, we see the inscription, "Mendicity is forbidden in the Department of the Jura." CHAPTER XII. NANTUA AND THE CHURCH OF BRON. It was evening when we reached the little railway-station of La Cluse, and exquisite indeed was the twilight drive to Nantua. The crimson glories of sunset were still flaming in the west, and reflected in the limpid lake, whilst a silvery crescent moon rose slowly above the dark purple mountains framing in the picture. A delicious scene this, and wonderfully contrasted to the sombre splendour of St. Claude, tenderest _allegro_ after stateliest _adagio maestoso_, droppings of pearly rain after heavy thunder-claps. Nantua must be seen from above its interesting Romanesque old church to be appreciated. It lies at the end of a mountain gorge, black with pines from summit to base, the transparent fairy-like lake opening beyond, shut in with violet hills. No less delightful is the walk to La Cluse alongside the lake, an umbrageous avenue, the shadows of which are grateful this hot June-like October day. Through a light screen of foliage you look across the blue waters upon bluer hills, and still bluer sky. Nantua, in spite of its smiling appearance, is inevitably doomed one day to destruction, Straight over against the town impends a huge mass of loosened rock, which, so authorities predict, must sooner or later slide down, crushing any thing with which it comes in contact. People point to the enemy with nonchalance, saying, "Yes, the rock will certainly fall at some time or other, and destroy a great part of the town, but not perhaps in our time." Be this as it may, the gigantic fragment of rock hanging so menacingly over Nantua, is a curious object of contemplation. I fell into conversation with two nuns belonging to the Order of St. Charles, and I wish I could delineate the hideousness of their costumes, and the unmitigated ugliness of their general appearance. Their dress consisted of a plain black gown with round cape and close fitting hood, on each side of which projected black gauze flaps extended on wires, shading their withered, ill-favoured countenances, and making them look indeed more like female inquisitors, ogres, or Witches of Endor than human beings. I never saw human nature made so uninviting, and I could fancy the terror inspired by these awful figures, with their bat-like flaps, in the tender minds of the little children entrusted to their care. It was edifying to hear these holy women discourse upon the Paris Exhibition, which it is hardly necessary to say the clerical party throughout France was bound to consider a failure. Alike the highest and the lowest, bishop and parish priest, were determined in their own minds that the Exhibition, as a display of rehabilitated France under a Republican Government, should fail altogether, and come to some conspicuously bad end. The very reverse had happened, yet here were two women of age, experience, and some intelligence coolly talking of this terrible failure of the Exhibition, financially and otherwise, the bad effect upon trade generally, and so forth. I take the railway from Bourg to La Cluse, a mile from the town, and a marvellous piece of railway engineering is this short journey, veritable Alpine ascent in a railway-carriage, scaling perpendicular mountain sides by means of the steam-engine! The train curls round the mountain as the Jura roads are made to do, high above an awful gorge, in the midst of which runs the River Ain, emerald-green irradiated by diamond-like flashes of cascade and torrent. When we have accomplished this aerial bit of travel--it is very like being up in a balloon--we suddenly lose alike mountain, river, and ravine, all the world of enchantment in which I had been living for weeks past, to find ourselves in the region of prose and common-place! In other words, we were in the wide, highly cultivated plain of La Bresse. At Bourg-en-Bresse I halted, as everyone else must do, in order to see its famous Church of Brou. The Church was built in consequence of a vow made by Margaret of Burgundy, that if her husband, Philibert the Second, Duke of Savoy, was healed from injuries received in the hunt, she would erect a church and found a monastery of the Order of St. Bénoît. The Duke recovered, but his wife died before accomplishing her work, which was, however, carried out by her daughter-in-law, Margaret of Austria, wife of Philibert le Beau. She summoned for this purpose all the best artists of the time to Bourg, and the church begun in 1506 was finished in 1532, under the direction of Loys von Berghem. This spirited and imperious Margaret of Austria, known as Margot la Flamande, played an important part in history, as readers of Michelet's eloquent seventh volume know. She adored her second husband, the handsome Philibert, and owed all her life a grudge against France, on account of having been, as a child, promised in marriage to Charles VIII., and afterwards supplanted for political reasons by the no less imperious Anne of Brittany. Aunt and first instructress of Charles V., King of Spain and Emperor of Germany, she is regarded by Michelet as the founder of the House of Austria, and one of the chief agents in humiliating France by means of the Treaty of Cambrai. Margaret of Austria, Anne of Brittany, Louise of Savoy, mother of Francis I., writes the historian, "cousant, filant, lisant, ces trois fatales Parques ont tissu les maux de l'Europe" (sewing, spinning, reading, these three fatal Parcae were the misfortune of Europe), and the student of French history will follow the career of all three with interest after the clue here given them. Margaret, bitter, vindictive, and designing, seems to have had one poetic thread in her life only, namely, her passion for her husband, whose beauty lives in marble before us. The Church of Brou--magnificent case for these gems of monumental art--cost seven millions of francs, and the combined labours of the best living architects and artists of the time, may be considered as the last efflorescence of Gothic architecture, for the spirit of the Renaissance was already making itself felt. It is less, however, the church, in spite of its rich exterior and elegant proportions, that travellers will come to see than the exquisite mausoleum of the choir, each deserving a chapter to itself. You quit the quiet old-fashioned town of Bourg, and after a walk of twenty minutes, come suddenly on the church, standing in the suburb, or as it seems, indeed, in the open country. A sacristan is at hand to unlock the door of the choir, but it is best to give him his fee in advance, and tell him to return in an hour; generally speaking, other strangers are coming and going, in which case such a precaution is not necessary, but it is impossible to enjoy this artistic treat with a guide hovering about you, doling out pieces of stale information, and impatiently awaiting to be paid. The choir is screened off from the nave by a rich, although somewhat heavy rood-loft, and great is the contrast between the two portions of the church; in the first, all is subdued, quiet in tone, and refreshing; in the last, the eye is troubled by too much light, there is no stained glass to soften down the brilliant sunshine of this fine October day, and, although the architectural proportions of the entire building are graceful and on a vast scale, the beholder is much less delighted than he ought to be on this account. In fact the effect is dazzling; but how different are our sensations when once on the other side of the richly sculptured rood-loft! Here the impression is one of peerless beauty, without a shadow of disillusion or the slightest drawback to aesthetic enjoyment, except one, and that very trifling. These three mausoleums are so well defended against possible iconoclasts that the thick, closely set iron bars almost prevent us from seeing the lower part of the three tombs, and, in two cases, these are as interesting as any. Surely in the present day such measures are unnecessary! It may be mentioned that the church and tombs narrowly escaped destruction during the great Revolution, and the world is indebted for their safety to the public spirit of one of the civil authorities, who filled the interior with hay, securely fastened the doors, and put outside the conspicuous inscription: _Propriété Nationale_. But for these prompt measures, the beautiful and unique treasures contained in the Church of Brou would, without doubt, have shared the fate of so many others during that awful epoch. The three tombs are those of Philibert le Beau, Duke of Savoy, of Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, his mother, and of Margaret of Austria, his wife. They are chiselled in Carrara marble, and are the combined work of Michel Colomb, Jean Perreal, called Jean de Paris, and Conrad Meyt. [Footnote: Consult on this subject "Monographie de l'Eglise de Brou," par MM. Didron et Dupasquier.] The central tomb is that of Philibert, who, like his wife, is represented twice, the upper figure that of the Duke when alive, the lower delineating death. This monument is perhaps the most splendid of all, although there are especial beauties to be found in the other two, and each is deserving of long and careful study. Above, therefore, we have the Prince in all the glory of life and pomp of state; below, in the cold bareness and nakedness of death, a contrast highly artistic and touching at the same time. The iron rails already alluded to only hide the lower division of the tomb, so that we see the upper part in all its splendour. The Prince, wearing his ducal cap and dress, reposes on a couch, the cushion supporting his head being covered with delicate sculptures, his feet resting on a lion recumbent, his hands clasped, his face slightly turned towards Margaret of Austria, his wife. On each side, little lovely naked boys, geniuses, loves, cherubs--call them what we will--support his helmet and gloves, and charming statuettes after the same dainty pattern stand at each corner of the sarcophagus supporting his shield and various pieces of armour. Underneath, on a slab of black marble, lies the figure of the dead Prince, the finely modelled limbs only partially draped, the long hair curling round the bare shoulder, the beautiful face turned, as in the first instance, towards the image of his wife--pose, expression, design, all combining to make up an exquisite whole. This second figure is a master-piece, and no less masterly are the Sibyls and other figures which surround it, each statuette deserving the most careful study, each, in fact, a little gem. The frame-work of this noble monument is of rich Gothic design, too elaborate, perhaps, to please the fastidious critic, but deliciously imaginative, and finished as far as artistic finish can go. To the right of the Prince is the tomb of Marguerite of Burgundy, his mother, a hardly less sumptuous piece of work than the first, and superbly framed in by Gothic decorative sculptures, statuettes, arabesques, flowers, and heraldic designs. The little mourning figures or _pleureuses_, each in its graceful niche, are wonderfully beautiful, and for the most part veiled, whilst the artist's fancy has been allowed to run riot in the ornamentation surrounding them. The Princess wears her long ducal mantle and crown, and at her feet reposes a superb greyhound. The third tomb, that of Marguerite of Austria, the wife of Philibert, is in some respects the richest of the three, being almost bewildering in elaborateness of detail and abundance of ornament. It is divided into two compartments; in the upper, we have the living figure of a beautiful woman in the flower of life, richly dressed; in the lower, we have the same after death, the long hair rippling in curls to her waist, the slender feet showing from under the drapery, the expression that of majestic calm and solemnity. We have here the simplicity and nakedness of death in close proximity with the gorgeousness and magnificence of art--art under one of its most sumptuous aspects, art in its fullest and most poetic moods. All thoughtful observers must come to the conclusion that lovely and artistic as is the frame-work of this last figure, each tiniest detail being a marvel both of design and execution, it is, perhaps, not quite in harmony with the rest. It is, indeed, somewhat overcharged with ornament. Be this as it may, the mausoleums in the Church of Brou will ever remain in the memory as one of those exquisite and unique art experiences that form an epoch in our inner history. For what, indeed, avails art at all, if it is a thing of minor importance in life, a half joy, a half consolation, a second or inferior impression to be effaced by anything new that comes in our way? It was pitiable to see parties of two or three French tourists rush into the choir with the sacristan, spend five minutes in glancing at the treasures before them, then hurry away, not dreaming of what they have failed to see, only dimly conscious of having seen something. It is curious that in 1856 the lead coffins containing the remains of Philibert and the two Duchesses were discovered in a crypt under that part of the choir where the mausoleums stand. The inscriptions on all three were perfectly legible, and left no doubt as to identity; the skeletons were placed in new coffins, and re-interred with religious ceremony. Other crypts were discovered, but these had evidently been spoliated. Before quitting these mausoleums and their exquisite possessions of _pleureuses_, geniuses, Sibyls, and the rest, it may be worth while to remind the reader that, according to the most learned of the Romans, there were ten Sibyls, _viz.:_--1. Persica, 2. Libyssa, 3. Delphica, 4. Cumaea, 5. Erythraea, 6. Samia, 7. Cumana, who brought the book to Tarquin, 8. Hellespontica, 9. Phrygia, 10. Tiburs, by name Albunea, worshipped at Tiber as a goddess. Thus Varro categorizes the Sibyls, and besides these we hear of a Hebrew, a Chaldaean, a Babylonian, an Egyptian, a Sardian Sibyl, and some others. Other writers considerably reduce this number, three being that most usually accepted, and Salmasius, the most learned man that ever lived, summed up the various theories concerning these mysterious beings with the words: "There is nothing on which ancient writers more widely differ than as to the age, number, and country of the Sibyls." There is little to see in the Church of Brou besides these mausoleums, and nothing in Bourg itself, except the fine bronze statue to Bichat, by David d'Angers. The great anatomist is represented in the act of oscultation, the patient being a child, standing between his knees. It is a monument alike worthy of the artist and his subject, another instance of that dignified realism for which David d'Angers was so remarkable. There is, however, some doubt as to Bichat's birth-place; Lons-le-Saunier, as I have before mentioned, contesting the honour with Bourg. On the principle that two monuments to a great man are better than none at all, each place claims the honour. The night mail-express from Geneva whirled me in about ten hours to Paris, and the next morning I found myself in what, after the matchless atmosphere of the Jura, seemed murkiness, although the day was fine and the sky cloudless. I had thus, with hardly an important deviation from the plan originally laid down, accomplished my journey in Eastern France, but with a success, in one respect, impossible to anticipate. Accustomed as I am to French amiability and hospitality, I was yet unprepared for such a reception as that accorded to me throughout every stage of my travels. All hearts were open to me; everyone wanted to do the honours of his beloved "patrie"--using the word in its local rather than national sense--to be serviceable, kind, accommodating. Thus it happened that my holiday rambles in Franche-Comté were so far novel, that they may be said to have been accomplished without hotels or guidebooks; for the most part, my time being spent in friends' houses, and my itineraries being the best possible, namely, the oral information of interested natives of every place I passed through. This is, indeed, the way in which all countries, and especially France, should be seen, for, without a sympathetic knowledge of her people and their ways of life, we lose the most interesting feature in French travel. Travellers who only see the outside of things in foreign countries, indeed, may be compared to those who gaze upon a skeleton, instead of the living form, warm with life, sympathy, and beauty. Old France, as studied in her glorious monuments, whether Gallic, Merovingian, Mediaeval, or Renaissance, pales in interest before the New, that France which alone has taught the world the lesson of Equality, and is teaching us every day what misfortunes may be overcome by a noble people, inspired with true patriotism, allied to democratic feeling. In Republican France, now, who can doubt? and I am all the more thankful here to be able to bear witness to the unanimity, prosperity, and marvellous development found in the different strata of French social life. There are, without doubt, blots on this bright picture; but none can deny that the more we learn to know France the more we admire and love her, and that, if the richest and most beautiful country in the world, it is also the one in which happiness and well-being are most generally diffused. We are accustomed to regard France in the light of a parable to other nations, but, if her sorrows and retributions have taught them much, at least her successes and triumphs have taught them more. She has lately shown herself greater even in the hour of her prosperity than in that of evil fortune, the highest praise to be accorded alike to nations as to individuals. Honour then to all who have helped in bringing about these great results, whether in the humblest or loftiest walks of life, and may I be the means of inducing scores of travellers to follow in my footsteps, and judge for themselves whether I have drawn too glowing a picture! Of one thing they may be certain--namely, that they will be welcomed wherever they go, if led thither in a sympathetic spirit, although, perhaps, not many may have the like good fortune with myself, each stage of my journey being marked by delightful acquaintances and friendships, binding me still closer to La Belle France and her glorious Republic! APPENDIX. ITINERARIES.--OUTLINES OF FRANC-COMTOIS HISTORY. NOTES ON THE GEOLOGY OF THE JURA. For the benefit of pedestrians, and these will most enjoy the country I have described, I adjoin some itineraries, more detailed than I was enabled to make my own. Hardy travellers will be well satisfied, in most instances, with the wayside inns they will find, and one advantage of travelling in Franche-Comté--at least, up to the present time--is its inexpensiveness. The chief outlay is in carriage hire, and those who can endure the diligence, or, better still, can accomplish most of their journeys on foot, where the railway is not available, will not only see the country to the best advantage, but at a very trifling cost. The excursions, or rather group of excursions, here mentioned, are such as may be accomplished in a few days from the town given as a starting point. I. Besançon to Alaise and the valley of Nans. Departure by way of the _route de Beure._ The river Loue is crossed at Cléron. From Amancey ascend the plateau above Coulans, where a view is obtained of the _oppidum_ of Alaise (supposed by some authorities to be the Alesia of Julius Caesar). Descend to the mill of Chiprey, follow the right bank of the Lison to Nans. At Nans, visit the Grotte Sarrazine, the source of the Lison, and the Pont du Diable. Ascend the fortress of St. Agne for the sake of the panorama; ancient dwellings of the Gauls to be seen at Châtillon, also tombs at Fouré, see also the Cascade of the Gour de Couche, the Col de la Langutine, descend by way of the Taudeur to the plain of Myon, bounding the western side of the Alesia, _i.e._, the Alesia of some authorities. II. Luxeuil (Luxovium) in Haute Saône. Celebrated from the ancient times for its ferruginous springs. Here visit the Roman remains, mediaeval houses, the town for the sake of the view. Make excursions into the valleys of the Vosges. III. Vesoul and Gray, departure from Besançon by way of the charming valley of Ognon. See the Château de la Roche, turned into a school of agriculture, the sculptures in Vesoul church, its old streets, and pretty gardens. Visit the Port sur Saône (Portus Abucinus). At Gray visit the Hôtel de Ville, the house of Simon d'Ancier, maître-d'hôtel of the Connétable de Bourbon. Visit the Abbey of Pesmes which contains some fine Renaissance work, the ancient Abbey of Acey, the Château de Balançon, Marnay, ancient domain of the Joinvilles, Ruffey--Roman city destroyed by the Vandals. IV. From Besançon to Pontanier (Abiolica)--a beautiful bit of railway. The Doubs is crossed twice, when views are obtained of Arguel and Montferrand, and the modern châteaux of Torpes and Thoraise. The Loue is crossed at Mouchard; fine view of the ruins of Vaugrenant. After leaving Mouchard, the traveller enjoys a succession of vast prospects of the vineyard region of the Jura--Aiglepierre, Marnoz, Arbois, &c. After the vines, come the pinewoods and the splendid forest of Joux. After the pinewoods generally come the peat-fields, or _tourbières_, of Chaux d'Arlier, traversed by two rivers which here meet, the Doubs and the Drugeon. Lastly, Pontarlier is reached, eight hundred and seventy yards above the level of the sea, anciently a confederation of nineteen villages, called _la baroichage_. V. From Besançon to Dôle. Four routes are here open to the traveller; 1st. The Roman road leading formerly from Vesontio to Cabillorum; 2nd. the _route de Paris_; 3rd. the railway--Dijon line; 4th. the canal, from the Rhône to the Rhine. All these ways of communication follow the valley of the Doubs. The great forges of Fraisans, and the Roman station of Crusinia, are to be seen on the way. To the right of this is a huge mass of granite in the midst of the Jurassic formation. Dôle is the second city in Franche-Comté, and houses are to be seen there. The public library is also worth a visit. VI. The fortress of Joux and the Swiss routes. Two fortresses protect the Swiss frontiers, Joux and Larmont. The former merits a visit. The cells are seen in which Toussaint l'Ouverture, Mirabeau, the poet Kleist, and other illustrious prisoners were confined. In the neighbourhood of Joux are high mountain peaks from which magnificent views are to be had. Many interesting excursions to be made in this neighbourhood. VII. The Falls of the Doubs, Morteau, and Montbenoît. Start from Morteau, visit the Falls and Lakes, also the _Cols de Roches_. Proceed to Montbenoît by the river Doubs. See the splendid rock at Entreroches. The church of Montbenoît is one of the historic monuments of France; here are to be seen statuettes and sculptures in wood, the work of Florentine artists in the sixteenth century, employed by the Abbé Carondelet, friend of Raphael and Erasmus. VIII. Baume-les-Dames. By rail and road from Besançon or Montbéliard, passing the picturesque valley of the Doubs, rich in charming landscape and historic associations. Ruins of the Châteaux of Montfaucon and Vaite, to be seen on the way. At Baume-les-Daines, visit the ancient Abbey Church, now turned into a public granary, also the valley of the Cuisancin, last, the Glacière de la Grâce-Dieu, a natural phenomenon of great beauty and interest. IX. From Andelot to Orgelet. The railway takes you to Champagnole. From thence take a carriage to the Source of the Ain, and Les Planches, visiting by the way the church of Sirod. Drive also to Nozeroy and the valley of Miége, and visit the parish church, which is full of statuettes. Thence proceed to St. Laurent by way of the fall of the Lemme, the Lake of Bonlieu, and the ruins of the Chartreuse. From Morez ascend the fortress of the Rousses, and follow the road to Dôle, by the valley des Dappes; splendid views of Switzerland. From St. Claude is a public conveyance to Orgelet, Roman ruins (ville d'Antres) to be seen on the way, also the Chartreuse of Vaucleuse, and the Château of the Tour-de-Meix. Railway at Orgelet. * * * * * These Itineraries can be varied almost _ad infinitum_, and we only give an indication of the variety of walks and drives to be found in this most "spazierlich" country. The knapsack tourists, of course, have always the advantage in every way. As a rule, no one ever reads anything when travelling, but, for the benefit of those conscientious travellers who like to do things systematically, I will mention one or two books that may usefully supplement Murray or Joanne. Two of these, to be picked up on the way, are really school-books, but are so crammed full of information, and so entertaining, that no tourist in Franche-Comté can afford to pass them by. The first, "La Franche-Comté et le pays de Montbéliard," is a succinct and admirably digested little history of the country. Its author, M. Castan, the learned librarian of Besançon, gives, in a small compass, what is not easy to get at elsewhere, enough, indeed, of history for all ordinary purposes. A second and no less admirable compendium of information for travellers in the Jura, is the, so-called, "Lectures Jurassiennes," a little work compiled for elementary schools, but in reality "Half-hours with the best Franc-Comtois authors," who treat of the general features, products, climate, &c., of the Jura, as well as of the people; their legendary lore, habits of life, and general characteristics. A delightful little volume this, giving passages from Lamartine, who just missed being a native of the Jura himself, from Xavier Marinier, author of "Souvenirs of Franche-Comté," and from Charles Nodier, that gifted and charming writer, to whom the very name of his native province was a magic spell, awakening all kinds of joyous and glowing recollections. Those who find amusement in a popular historical novel may consult "Le Médecin des Pauvres," in which they will find delineations of the most romantic scenery of the Jura, interspersed with thrilling incidents. For botanists, there is an admirable Handbook, in two volumes, "La Flore Jurassienne," to be found in every town by the way; lastly, for special information, "Roussel's Dictionnaire Géographique, Historique, et Statistique;" these two last may be consulted in any local library by the way. Students of geology will find useful information in Joanne's little "Géographies Départementales." Excellent maps are to be had everywhere. Real lovers of literature, however, will content themselves with the delightful writings of Charles Nodier, and to this fascinating story-teller I am indebted, not only for many delightful hours in my study, but for the pleasure of travelling in Franche-Comté myself, and afterwards introducing it to my country-people. Of him, poet, novelist, as of a critic, naturalist, philologist, essayist, still more illustrious writer of our own, it might be said, "Nihil tetigit quod non ornavit." The history of Franche-Comté, which M. Castan gives in a nutshell, may be greatly simplified by following his division into periods. Beginning therefore from the earliest period down to the present time. The following are the principal facts, simplified by this historic arrangement. 1st Period. Sequanian. 115-147 B.C.--The province successively called Sequania, Haute Bourgogne, Comté de Bourgogne and Franche-Comté--of which the larger portion actually forms the three Departments of the Jura, Haute Saône, and the Doubs--was early recognized as one of the most important strategical and natural divisions of ancient Gaul. The Sequani, by way of rewarding them for their aid against the Cimbri and Teutons, were received as friends and allies of the Roman people. When Caesar entered upon his conquests, he found two rival parties in Gaul, the Aedui and the Sequani, the latter, being oppressed by Ariovistus, besought his aid. Caesar vanquished Ariovistus, and took up his winter-quarters in the Sequanian territory, 56 B.C. The general rising of Gaul was quelled after seven years' struggle, and the surrender of the heroic Auvergnat chief, Vercingetorix, at Alesia--according to some authorities, Alaise in Franche-Comté, to others, Alise la Reine, in Auvergne. This happened in 47 B.C. (see Julius Caesar's "Gallic War.") II. Roman Period, 47 B.C. 407 A.D. The Roman Emperors now attempted, in so far as possible, to denationalize the ancient kingdom of the Gauls, transforming not only laws and language, but manners and customs. Roman gods took the place of so-called Druidic rites. Roman roads spread like a net-work throughout the country, sumptuous edifices were erected at Vesontio (Besançon), and Epomanduodarum (Maudeure, Doubs). The thermal and ferruginous springs of Luxovium (Luxueil), and Salinae (Salins), attracted the Roman world of fashion. Wines of the Jura found their way to luxurious tables of Rome and Athens. The brave Sabinus made an attempt to shake off the Roman yoke, and his virtuous and heroic wife, by her devotion, shines among the heroines of her country. (See Thierry's "Histoire des Gaulois.") Besançon was made capital of Sequania, and embellished, under the reign of Marcus Aurelius with amphitheatre, forum, triumphal arch, theatre, &c. Christianity made its first appearance in the country. Two emissaries of Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, suffered martyrdom in the Theatre of Besançon, 212 A.D. Sequania, including the present Franche-Comté, was created a military province, under the title of _Provincia Maxima Sequanorum_. Under Constantine, Christian churches were built in many places, and the Basilica, now the Cathedral of Besançon, begun. III. Burgundian Period, 407-534. The Burgundians, having aided the Romans to free the Sequanian territory from the Huns under Attila, settled there, 435-471; the land being divided among them and its former owners. Monasteries were first founded about this time, notably the Abbey of Condat, now St. Claude. Gondioc, King of the Burgundians, owned the actual countries now included in Franche-Comté; besides Burgundy, La Bresse, Savoy, Dauphiné, and Provence. The Franks seized the kingdom from the descendants of Gondioc after a Burgundian occupation of two hundred years. IV. Frankish Period, 534-711. The ancient territory of Gondioc was now divided among the descendants of Clovis, who built many monasteries and abbeys, among these Baume-les-Dames, and that of Luxueil, Haute Saône. On the death of Charles Martel, a new division took place, and Burgundy, including Franche-Comté, fell to the lot of Pépin le Bref. V. Carlovingian Period, 741-879. Under Charlemagne, the clergy rose to pre-eminent importance, and great privileges were accorded to religious foundations, &c. VI. Feudal Period, 879-1038. Three hosts of invaders ravaged the country, the Normans, the Germans, and the Huns. The kingdom of Burgundy, including Franche-Comté, was incorporated with the German Empire in the early part of the eleventh century. VII. Sacerdotal Period, 1038-1148. A darker and more troublous time hardly appears in French history. The petty sovereigns of the different principalities into which Franche-Comté had been divided were engaged in perpetual struggles with their spiritual chiefs. Hugh, Archbishop of Besançon, ruled with kingly authority. Ten Cistercian Abbeys were founded. Land was cleared in the most solitary places for the purpose of building monasteries, notably at Morteau and Mouthe. Béatrix, heiress of Count Raimond III, was shut up in a tower by her uncle, and liberated by Frederic Barbarossa. VIII. German Period, 1148-1248. Frederic Barbarossa having married Béatrix, Franche-Comté became an appanage of the German Empire. The Château of Dole was made the imperial residence and the seat of Government. On the death of the Emperor and Béatrix, the heritage of Franche-Comté was contested by Count Otho I. and Etienne d'Auxonne. Successive wars between the rival families ravaged the country for many years. IX. Communal Period, 1248-1330. Jean de Châlons, to whom the heritage had accrued, granted charters of disenfranchisement to many towns, Salins, Ornans, and others. The Commune of Besançon was definitely founded, and it became an independent city, under the protectorate of the German Empire. Otho IV., Emperor of Germany, made over the country to Philippe le Bel, King of France, who, after five years, subdued the refractory Franc-Comtois, and greatly benefited the country by the introduction of French customs and forms of legislation. Jeanne, daughter of Philippe le Bel, peacefully governed the province for five years, and introduced the manufacture of cloth at Gray. In 1330, Franche-Comté fell to the share of the eldest daughter of Jeanne, married to the Duke of Burgundy. X. Anglo-French Period, 1330-1384. After the treaty of Bretigny, the _Grandes Compagniez_ ravaged Franche-Comté, but were driven back. The nobility entered into an alliance with England, the English King wishing to marry one of his sons with the heiress presumptive of Franche-Comté, great-grand-daughter of the Countess Jeanne. On the negotiations being broken off, the Comtois nobility waged war with England on the side of the French King. It was at this time that the title of Franche-Comté came into use, in order to distinguish the province from that of Burgundy. XI. Ducal Period, 1381-1477. The Count-Dukes, being engaged in conflict with the clergy and rival nobility, sought the favour of the _bourgeoisie_ by according privileges and titles of nobility. The Comté de Montbéliard passed as a dowry to the house of Würtemberg in 1397, and remained an appanage of that kingdom till the French Revolution. The power of the aristocracy was considerably diminished at this time, and feudalism broken down by the establishment of the Roman law. XII. Austrian period, 1477-1556. On the death of Charles le Téméraire, Louis XI. occupied Franche-Comté with a military force, also Burgundy, under the pretext of defending the rights of Marie of Burgundy, daughter of Charles. On the marriage of this princess with Maximilian of Austria, the French were expelled from Franche-Comté. Louis XI., however, re-occupied it; Vesoul, Gray, and Dôle were pillaged and burnt. On the death of that King, his successor, Charles VIII., was recognised as sovereign of Franche-Comté by virtue of his proposed marriage with Marguérite, daughter of Marie of Burgundy, wife of Maximilian. He married, however, Anne of Brittany, instead, and the Franc-Comtois thus considered themselves freed from their allegiance to the French crown. Besançon opened its gates to Maximilian, and, in a treaty concluded between the French King and the Emperor, Burgundy reverted to the former, whilst Franche-Comté remained in the hands of the latter. The territorial dowry of Marguérite passed to her brother Philip, afterwards King of Spain (and father to the celebrated Charles the Fifth), who died, aged twenty-eight. Marguérite then became Regent of Franche-Comté. Under her rule, Protestantism made its first appearance in the provinces. The peasants of Montbéliard, joining the German bands, made raids upon religious houses. Charles the Fifth, on assuming the reins of Government after his aunt Marguérite, continued her policy, and his Keeper of the Seals, the princely Perronet de Granvelle, inaugurated at Besançon, by his splendid patronage of arts and letters, what has justly been called the "Golden Age of Franche-Comté." XIII. Spanish Period, 1556-1674. Philip II., son of Charles the Fifth, established the Inquisition in Franche-Comté. His reign was a long series of calamities. Henry IV., King of France, marched a large army into the country, but after levying contributions on Besançon, and the smaller towns of the Jura, he signed a treaty, according neutrality to the provinces, and retired (1595). Later, Richelieu sent three armies respectively, into the Saône, the Doubs, and the Jura. St. Claude and Pontarlier were burnt, and the inhabitants destroyed by fire and sword. A great emigration took place, no less than twelve thousand families fleeing to Rome alone. Excepting the four principal towns, Besançon, Salins, Dôle, and Gray, the country was almost depopulated. Orders were given to mow down the unripe harvests, in order to subdue the people by famine. At Richelieu's death, neutrality was again accorded to the province, on condition of forty thousand crowns being paid yearly to the crown of France, and French garrisons being maintained at Joux and other places. In the words of a French writer of the period, "The country, at this time, resembled a desert." On the peace of Westphalia, Besançon lost its autonomy, being again placed under the dominion of Spain. Louis XIV. however, having married the daughter of Philip IV. of Spain, claimed Franche-Comté as the dowry of his wife. The great Condé was dispatched on a mission of conquest, the King, in person, headed a besieging army at Gray, and in fifteen days the entire province submitted. By the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, Franche-Comté again reverted to Spain, and again had to be conquered. On the declaration of war against France by Spain, the German Empire, Holland, and Lorraine, it put itself on the defensive. The armies of Louis XIV. overran the country. Besançon capitulated, and the King celebrated a Te Deum of victory in the Cathedral of that town in 1674. It may not be generally known that the Porte St. Martin, in Paris, was erected as a triumphal arch to commemorate this victory. On its principal façade are the words: _Ludovico Magno. Vesontione Sequanisque bis capti_. Here the history of Franche-Comté may be said to end, henceforth being merged in that of France. Brief as are these outlines, they will give the reader some idea of the vicissitudes this province has undergone from the earliest times until now; and further details can easily be found elsewhere. From whichever point we may regard it, historically, geographically, or artistically, Franche-Comté must be set down as one of the most interesting portions of France, and none should undertake to visit it without some preconceived notion of what they are going to see. The Jura is interesting geologically, its series of rocks, of the same age and general lithological structure as the oolitic formations of England, being known as the Jurassic formation. The Jura range is composed of a peculiar kind of limestone abounding in caves, containing stalactital formations and the remains of extinct animals. The highest peak of the Jura rises to 8000 feet. Naturally it is divided into three regions, the plain, the mountain, and the vineyard. The climate, as in most mountainous countries, is rude, winter lasting eight months, on an average with enormous quantities of snow. More than a fourth of the territory is covered with forests, that of La Chaux being one of the finest in France. In the winter the wolves are driven by hunger to the very doors of the villages. The flora of the Jura possesses some singularities, and is especially rich in many districts. INDEX. Arbois. Arlay. Baume-les-Dames. Baume-les-Messieurs. Belfort. Bienne, Valley of the. Blamont. Bourg-en-Bresse. Brênets, Les. Champagnole. Chateau Châlon. Cluse, La. Couilly. Crécy. Cuisance, Source of the. Doubs, Falls of the. Ferrières. Ferté, La. Flumen, The. Fuans. Glaye. Lagny. Lison, Source of the. Lons-le-Saunier. Loue, Valley of the. Maîche. Mandeure. Meaux. Montaigu. Montbéliard. Mont-ciel. Montgesoye. Mont-Rivel. Morez. Morteau. Mouthier. Nans. Nantua. Noisiel. Ornans. Osselle, Grottoes of. Oyonnax. Pargots, Les. Pont de Roîde. Provins. Russey, Le. Saint Claude. Saint Hippolyte. Saint Laurent. Salins. Septmoncel. Troyes. Villiers. Voiteur. Vuillafans. ERRATA. _for_ Philip-le-Bel _read_ Philippe-le-Bel " custom _read_ costume " Agedincum _read_ Agendicum " Montbéliardins _read_ Montbéliardais " Cerberus _read_ Charon " Academies, _read_ Academies, Libraries, " Monthier _read_ Mouthier " Monthier _read_ Mouthier " bream-tree _read_ beam-tree " serenity _read_ severity " Mount Rivol _read_ Mount Rivel " Bron _read_ Brou " Bourg to La Cluse _read_ La Cluse to Bourg " Marguerite _read_ Margaret " Marguerite _read_ Margaret 
7881	----	PASSAGES FROM THE FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE VOL. I. PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS IN FRANCE AND ITALY. FRANCE. Hotel de Louvre, January 6th, 1858.--On Tuesday morning, our dozen trunks and half-dozen carpet-bags being already packed and labelled, we began to prepare for our journey two or three hours before light. Two cabs were at the door by half past six, and at seven we set out for the London Bridge station, while it was still dark and bitterly cold. There were already many people in the streets, growing more numerous as we drove city-ward; and, in Newgate Street, there was such a number of market-carts, that we almost came to a dead lock with some of them. At the station we found several persons who were apparently going in the same train with us, sitting round the fire of the waiting-room. Since I came to England there has hardly been a morning when I should have less willingly bestirred myself before daylight; so sharp and inclement was the atmosphere. We started at half past eight, having taken through tickets to Paris by way of Folkestone and Boulogne. A foot-warmer (a long, flat tin utensil, full of hot water) was put into the carriage just before we started; but it did not make us more than half comfortable, and the frost soon began to cloud the windows, and shut out the prospect, so that we could only glance at the green fields--immortally green, whatever winter can do against them--and at, here and there, a stream or pool with the ice forming on its borders. It was the first cold weather of a very mild season. The snow began to fall in scattered and almost invisible flakes; and it seemed as if we had stayed our English welcome out, and were to find nothing genial and hospitable there any more. At Folkestone, we were deposited at a railway station close upon a shingly beach, on which the sea broke in foam, and which J----- reported as strewn with shells and star-fish; behind was the town, with an old church in the midst; and, close, at hand, the pier, where lay the steamer in which we were to embark. But the air was so wintry, that I had no heart to explore the town, or pick up shells with J----- on the beach; so we kept within doors during the two hours of our stay, now and then looking out of the windows at a fishing-boat or two, as they pitched and rolled with an ugly and irregular motion, such as the British Channel generally communicates to the craft that navigate it. At about one o'clock we went on board, and were soon under steam, at a rate that quickly showed a long line of the white cliffs of Albion behind us. It is a very dusky white, by the by, and the cliffs themselves do not seem, at a distance, to be of imposing height, and have too even an outline to be picturesque. As we increased our distance from England, the French coast came more and more distinctly in sight, with a low, wavy outline, not very well worth looking at, except because it was the coast of France. Indeed, I looked at it but little; for the wind was bleak and boisterous, and I went down into the cabin, where I found the fire very comfortable, and several people were stretched on sofas in a state of placid wretchedness. . . . . I have never suffered from sea-sickness, but had been somewhat apprehensive of this rough strait between England and France, which seems to have more potency over people's stomachs than ten times the extent of sea in other quarters. Our passage was of two hours, at the end of which we landed on French soil, and found ourselves immediately in the clutches of the custom-house officers, who, however, merely made a momentary examination of my passport, and allowed us to pass without opening even one of our carpet-bags. The great bulk of our luggage had been registered through to Paris, for examination after our arrival there. We left Boulogne in about an hour after our arrival, when it was already a darkening twilight. The weather had grown colder than ever, since our arrival in sunny France, and the night was now setting in, wickedly black and dreary. The frost hardened upon the carriage windows in such thickness that I could scarcely scratch a peep-hole through it; but, from such glimpses as I could catch, the aspect of the country seemed pretty much to resemble the December aspect of my dear native land,--broad, bare, brown fields, with streaks of snow at the foot of ridges, and along fences, or in the furrows of ploughed soil. There was ice wherever there happened to be water to form it. We had feet-warmers in the carriage, but the cold crept in nevertheless; and I do not remember hardly in my life a more disagreeable short journey than this, my first advance into French territory. My impression of France will always be that it is an Arctic region. At any season of the year, the tract over which we passed yesterday must be an uninteresting one as regards its natural features; and the only adornment, as far as I could observe, which art has given it, consists in straight rows of very stiff-looking and slender-stemmed trees. In the dusk they resembled poplar-trees. Weary and frost-bitten,--morally, if not physically,--we reached Amiens in three or four hours, and here I underwent much annoyance from the French railway officials and attendants, who, I believe, did not mean to incommode me, but rather to forward my purposes as far as they well could. If they would speak slowly and distinctly I might understand them well enough, being perfectly familiar with the written language, and knowing the principles of its pronunciation; but, in their customary rapid utterance, it sounds like a string of mere gabble. When left to myself, therefore, I got into great difficulties. . . . . It gives a taciturn personage like myself a new conception as to the value of speech, even to him, when he finds himself unable either to speak or understand. Finally, being advised on all hands to go to the Hotel du Rhin, we were carried thither in an omnibus, rattling over a rough pavement, through an invisible and frozen town; and, on our arrival, were ushered into a handsome salon, as chill as a tomb. They made a little bit of a wood-fire for us in a low and deep chimney-hole, which let a hundred times more heat escape up the flue than it sent into the room. In the morning we sallied forth to see the cathedral. The aspect of the old French town was very different from anything English; whiter, infinitely cleaner; higher and narrower houses, the entrance to most of which seeming to be through a great gateway, affording admission into a central court-yard; a public square, with a statue in the middle, and another statue in a neighboring street. We met priests in three-cornered hats, long frock-coats, and knee-breeches; also soldiers and gendarmes, and peasants and children, clattering over the pavements in wooden shoes. It makes a great impression of outlandishness to see the signs over the shop doors in a foreign tongue. If the cold had not been such as to dull my sense of novelty, and make all my perceptions torpid, I should have taken in a set of new impressions, and enjoyed them very much. As it was, I cared little for what I saw, but yet had life enough left to enjoy the cathedral of Amiens, which has many features unlike those of English cathedrals. It stands in the midst of the cold, white town, and has a high-shouldered look to a spectator accustomed to the minsters of England, which cover a great space of ground in proportion to their height. The impression the latter gives is of magnitude and mass; this French cathedral strikes one as lofty. The exterior is venerable, though but little time-worn by the action of the atmosphere; and statues still keep their places in numerous niches, almost as perfect as when first placed there in the thirteenth century. The principal doors are deep, elaborately wrought, pointed arches; and the interior seemed to us, at the moment, as grand as any that we had seen, and to afford as vast an idea of included space; it being of such an airy height, and with no screen between the chancel and nave, as in all the English cathedrals. We saw the differences, too, betwixt a church in which the same form of worship for which it was originally built is still kept up, and those of England, where it has been superseded for centuries; for here, in the recess of every arch of the side aisles, beneath each lofty window, there was a chapel dedicated to some Saint, and adorned with great marble sculptures of the crucifixion, and with pictures, execrably bad, in all cases, and various kinds of gilding and ornamentation. Immensely tall wax candles stand upon the altars of these chapels, and before one sat a woman, with a great supply of tapers, one of which was burning. I suppose these were to be lighted as offerings to the saints, by the true believers. Artificial flowers were hung at some of the shrines, or placed under glass. In every chapel, moreover, there was a confessional,--a little oaken structure, about as big as a sentry-box, with a closed part for the priest to sit in, and an open one for the penitent to kneel at, and speak, through the open-work of the priest's closet. Monuments, mural and others, to long-departed worthies, and images of the Saviour, the Virgin, and saints, were numerous everywhere about the church; and in the chancel there was a great deal of quaint and curious sculpture, fencing in the Holy of Holies, where the High Altar stands. There is not much painted glass; one or two very rich and beautiful rose-windows, however, that looked antique; and the great eastern window which, I think, is modern. The pavement has, probably, never been renewed, as one piece of work, since the structure was erected, and is foot-worn by the successive generations, though still in excellent repair. I saw one of the small, square stones in it, bearing the date of 1597, and no doubt there are a thousand older ones. It was gratifying to find the cathedral in such good condition, without any traces of recent repair; and it is perhaps a mark of difference between French and English character, that the Revolution in the former country, though all religious worship disappears before it, does not seem to have caused such violence to ecclesiastical monuments, as the Reformation and the reign of Puritanism in the latter. I did not see a mutilated shrine, or even a broken-nosed image, in the whole cathedral. But, probably, the very rage of the English fanatics against idolatrous tokens, and their smashing blows at them, were symptoms of sincerer religious faith than the French were capable of. These last did not care enough about their Saviour to beat down his crucified image; and they preserved the works of sacred art, for the sake only of what beauty there was in them. While we were in the cathedral, we saw several persons kneeling at their devotions on the steps of the chancel and elsewhere. One dipped his fingers in the holy water at the entrance: by the by, I looked into the stone basin that held it, and saw it full of ice. Could not all that sanctity at least keep it thawed? Priests--jolly, fat, mean-looking fellows, in white robes--went hither and thither, but did not interrupt or accost us. There were other peculiarities, which I suppose I shall see more of in my visits to other churches, but now we were all glad to make our stay as brief as possible, the atmosphere of the cathedral being so bleak, and its stone pavement so icy cold beneath our feet. We returned to the hotel, and the chambermaid brought me a book, in which she asked me to inscribe my name, age, profession, country, destination, and the authorization under which I travelled. After the freedom of an English hotel, so much greater than even that of an American one, where they make you disclose your name, this is not so pleasant. We left Amiens at half past one; and I can tell as little of the country between that place and Paris, as between Boulogne and Amiens. The windows of our railway carriage were already frosted with French breath when we got into it, and the ice grew thicker and thicker continually. I tried, at various times, to rub a peep-hole through, as before; but the ice immediately shot its crystallized tracery over it again; and, indeed, there was little or nothing to make it worth while to look out, so bleak was the scene. Now and then a chateau, too far off for its characteristics to be discerned; now and then a church, with a tall gray tower, and a little peak atop; here and there a village or a town, which we could not well see. At sunset there was just that clear, cold, wintry sky which I remember so well in America, but have never seen in England. At five we reached Paris, and were suffered to take a carriage to the hotel de Louvre, without any examination of the little luggage we had with us. Arriving, we took a suite of apartments, and the waiter immediately lighted a wax candle in each separate room. We might have dined at the table d'hote, but preferred the restaurant connected with and within the hotel. All the dishes were very delicate, and a vast change from the simple English system, with its joints, shoulders, beefsteaks, and chops; but I doubt whether English cookery, for the very reason that it is so simple, is not better for men's moral and spiritual nature than French. In the former case, you know that you are gratifying your animal needs and propensities, and are duly ashamed of it; but, in dealing with these French delicacies, you delude yourself into the idea that you are cultivating your taste while satisfying your appetite. This last, however, it requires a good deal of perseverance to accomplish. In the cathedral at Amiens there were printed lists of acts of devotion posted on the columns, such as prayers at the shrines of certain saints, whereby plenary indulgences might be gained. It is to be observed, however, that all these external forms were necessarily accompanied with true penitence and religious devotion. Hotel de Louvre, January 8th.--It was so fearfully cold this morning that I really felt little or no curiosity to see the city. . . . . Until after one o'clock, therefore, I knew nothing of Paris except the lights which I had seen beneath our window the evening before, far, far downward, in the narrow Rue St. Honore, and the rumble of the wheels, which continued later than I was awake to hear it, and began again before dawn. I could see, too, tall houses, that seemed to be occupied in every story, and that had windows on the steep roofs. One of these houses is six stories high. This Rue St. Honore is one of the old streets in Paris, and is that in which Henry IV. was assassinated; but it has not, in this part of it, the aspect of antiquity. After one o'clock we all went out and walked along the Rue de Rivoli. . . . . We are here, right in the midst of Paris, and close to whatever is best known to those who hear or read about it,--the Louvre being across the street, the Palais Royal but a little way off, the Tuileries joining to the Louvre, the Place de la Concorde just beyond, verging on which is the Champs Elysees. We looked about us for a suitable place to dine, and soon found the Restaurant des Echelles, where we entered at a venture, and were courteously received. It has a handsomely furnished saloon, much set off with gilding and mirrors; and appears to be frequented by English and Americans; its carte, a bound volume, being printed in English as well as French. . . . . It was now nearly four o'clock, and too late to visit the galleries of the Louvre, or to do anything else but walk a little way along the street. The splendor of Paris, so far as I have seen, takes me altogether by surprise: such stately edifices, prolonging themselves in unwearying magnificence and beauty, and, ever and anon, a long vista of a street, with a column rising at the end of it, or a triumphal arch, wrought in memory of some grand event. The light stone or stucco, wholly untarnished by smoke and soot, puts London to the blush, if a blush could be seen on its dingy face; but, indeed, London is not to be mentioned, nor compared even, with Paris. I never knew what a palace was till I had a glimpse of the Louvre and the Tuileries; never had my idea of a city been gratified till I trod these stately streets. The life of the scene, too, is infinitely more picturesque than that of London, with its monstrous throng of grave faces and black coats; whereas, here, you see soldiers and priests, policemen in cocked hats, Zonaves with turbans, long mantles, and bronzed, half-Moorish faces; and a great many people whom you perceive to be outside of your experience, and know them ugly to look at, and fancy them villanous. Truly, I have no sympathies towards the French people; their eyes do not win me, nor do their glances melt and mingle with mine. But they do grand and beautiful things in the architectural way; and I am grateful for it. The Place de la Concorde is a most splendid square, large enough for a nation to erect trophies in of all its triumphs; and on one side of it is the Tuileries, on the opposite side the Champs Elysees, and, on a third, the Seine, adown which we saw large cakes of ice floating, beneath the arches of a bridge. The Champs Elysees, so far as I saw it, had not a grassy soil beneath its trees, but the bare earth, white and dusty. The very dust, if I saw nothing else, would assure me that I was out of England. We had time only to take this little walk, when it began to grow dusk; and, being so pitilessly cold, we hurried back to our hotel. Thus far, I think, what I have seen of Paris is wholly unlike what I expected; but very like an imaginary picture which I had conceived of St. Petersburg,-- new, bright, magnificent, and desperately cold. A great part of this architectural splendor is due to the present Emperor, who has wrought a great change in the aspect of the city within a very few years. A traveller, if he looks at the thing selfishly, ought to wish him a long reign and arbitrary power, since he makes it his policy to illustrate his capital with palatial edifices, which are, however, better for a stranger to look at, than for his own people to pay for. We have spent to-day chiefly in seeing some of the galleries of the Louvre. I must confess that the vast and beautiful edifice struck me far more than the pictures, sculpture, and curiosities which it contains,-- the shell more than the kernel inside; such noble suites of rooms and halls were those through which we first passed, containing Egyptian, and, farther onward, Greek and Roman antiquities; the walls cased in variegated marbles; the ceilings glowing with beautiful frescos; the whole extended into infinite vistas by mirrors that seemed like vacancy, and multiplied everything forever. The picture-rooms are not so brilliant, and the pictures themselves did not greatly win upon me in this one day. Many artists were employed in copying them, especially in the rooms hung with the productions of French painters. Not a few of these copyists were females; most of them were young men, picturesquely mustached and bearded; but some were elderly, who, it was pitiful to think, had passed through life without so much success as now to paint pictures of their own. From the pictures we went into a suite of rooms where are preserved many relics of the ancient and later kings of France; more relics of the elder ones, indeed, than I supposed had remained extant through the Revolution. The French seem to like to keep memorials of whatever they do, and of whatever their forefathers have done, even if it be ever so little to their credit; and perhaps they do not take matters sufficiently to heart to detest anything that has ever happened. What surprised me most were the golden sceptre and the magnificent sword and other gorgeous relics of Charlemagne,--a person whom I had always associated with a sheepskin cloak. There were suits of armor and weapons that had been worn and handled by a great many of the French kings; and a religious book that had belonged to St. Louis; a dressing-glass, most richly set with precious stones, which formerly stood on the toilet-table of Catherine de' Medici, and in which I saw my own face where hers had been. And there were a thousand other treasures, just as well worth mentioning as these. If each monarch could have been summoned from Hades to claim his own relics, we should have had the halls full of the old Childerics, Charleses, Bourbons and Capets, Henrys and Louises, snatching with ghostly hands at sceptres, swords, armor, and mantles; and Napoleon would have seen, apparently, almost everything that personally belonged to him,--his coat, his cocked hats, his camp-desk, his field-bed, his knives, forks, and plates, and even a lock of his hair. I must let it all go. These things cannot be reproduced by pen and ink. Hotel de Louvre, January 9th.--. . . . Last evening Mr. Fezaudie called. He spoke very freely respecting the Emperor and the hatred entertained against him in France; but said that he is more powerful, that is, more firmly fixed as a ruler, than ever the first Napoleon was. We, who look back upon the first Napoleon as one of the eternal facts of the past, a great bowlder in history, cannot well estimate how momentary and insubstantial the great Captain may have appeared to those who beheld his rise out of obscurity. They never, perhaps, took the reality of his career fairly into their minds, before it was over. The present Emperor, I believe, has already been as long in possession of the supreme power as his uncle was. I should like to see him, and may, perhaps, do--so, as he is our neighbor, across the way. This morning Miss ------, the celebrated astronomical lady, called. She had brought a letter of introduction to me, while consul; and her purpose now was to see if we could take her as one of our party to Rome, whither she likewise is bound. We readily consented, for she seems to be a simple, strong, healthy-humored woman, who will not fling herself as a burden on our shoulders; and my only wonder is that a person evidently so able to take care of herself should wish to have an escort. We issued forth at about eleven, and went down the Rue St. Honore, which is narrow, and has houses of five or six stories on either side, between which run the streets like a gully in a rock. One face of our hotel borders and looks on this street. After going a good way, we came to an intersection with another street, the name of which I forget; but, at this point, Ravaillac sprang at the carriage of Henry IV. and plunged his dagger into him. As we went down the Rue St. Honore, it grew more and more thronged, and with a meaner class of people. The houses still were high, and without the shabbiness of exterior that distinguishes the old part of London, being of light-colored stone; but I never saw anything that so much came up to my idea of a swarming city as this narrow, crowded, and rambling street. Thence we turned into the Rue St. Denis, which is one of the oldest streets in Paris, and is said to have been first marked out by the track of the saint's footsteps, where, after his martyrdom, he walked along it, with his head under his arm, in quest of a burial-place. This legend may account for any crookedness of the street; for it could not reasonably be asked of a headless man that he should walk straight. Through some other indirections we at last found the Rue Bergere, down which I went with J----- in quest of Hottinguer et Co., the bankers, while the rest of us went along the Boulevards, towards the Church of the Madeleine. . . . . This business accomplished, J----- and I threaded our way back, and overtook the rest of the party, still a good distance from the Madeleine. I know not why the Boulevards are called so. They are a succession of broad walks through broad streets, and were much thronged with people, most of whom appeared to be bent more on pleasure than business. The sun, long before this, had come out brightly, and gave us the first genial and comfortable sensations which we have had in Paris. Approaching the Madeleine, we found it a most beautiful church, that might have been adapted from Heathenism to Catholicism; for on each side there is a range of magnificent pillars, unequalled, except by those of the Parthenon. A mourning-coach, arrayed in black and silver, was drawn up at the steps, and the front of the church was hung with black cloth, which covered the whole entrance. However, seeing the people going in, we entered along with them. Glorious and gorgeous is the Madeleine. The entrance to the nave is beneath a most stately arch; and three arches of equal height open from the nave to the side aisles; and at the end of the nave is another great arch, rising, with a vaulted half-dome, over the high altar. The pillars supporting these arches are Corinthian, with richly sculptured capitals; and wherever gilding might adorn the church, it is lavished like sunshine; and within the sweeps of the arches there are fresco paintings of sacred subjects, and a beautiful picture covers the hollow of the vault over the altar; all this, besides much sculpture; and especially a group above and around the high altar, representing the Magdalen smiling down upon angels and archangels, some of whom are kneeling, and shadowing themselves with their heavy marble wings. There is no such thing as making my page glow with the most distant idea of the magnificence of this church, in its details and in its whole. It was founded a hundred or two hundred years ago; then Bonaparte contemplated transforming it into a Temple of Victory, or building it anew as one. The restored Bourbons remade it into a church; but it still has a heathenish look, and will never lose it. When we entered we saw a crowd of people, all pressing forward towards the high altar, before which burned a hundred wax lights, some of which were six or seven feet high; and, altogether, they shone like a galaxy of stars. In the middle of the nave, moreover, there was another galaxy of wax candles burning around an immense pall of black velvet, embroidered with silver, which seemed to cover, not only a coffin, but a sarcophagus, or something still more huge. The organ was rumbling forth a deep, lugubrious bass, accompanied with heavy chanting of priests, out of which sometimes rose the clear, young voices of choristers, like light flashing out of the gloom. The church, between the arches, along the nave, and round the altar, was hung with broad expanses of black cloth; and all the priests had their sacred vestments covered with black. They looked exceedingly well; I never saw anything half so well got up on the stage. Some of these ecclesiastical figures were very stately and noble, and knelt and bowed, and bore aloft the cross, and swung the censers in a way that I liked to see. The ceremonies of the Catholic Church were a superb work of art, or perhaps a true growth of man's religious nature; and so long as men felt their original meaning, they must have been full of awe and glory. Being of another parish, I looked on coldly, but not irreverently, and was glad to see the funeral service so well performed, and very glad when it was over. What struck me as singular, the person who performed the part usually performed by a verger, keeping order among the audience, wore a gold-embroidered scarf, a cocked hat, and, I believe, a sword, and had the air of a military man. Before the close of the service a contribution-box--or, rather, a black velvet bag--was handed about by this military verger; and I gave J----- a franc to put in, though I did not in the least know for what. Issuing from the church, we inquired of two or three persons who was the distinguished defunct at whose obsequies we had been assisting, for we had some hope that it might be Rachel, who died last week, and is still above ground. But it proved to be only a Madame Mentel, or some such name, whom nobody had ever before heard of. I forgot to say that her coffin was taken from beneath the illuminated pall, and carried out of the church before us. When we left the Madeleine we took our way to the Place de la Concorde, and thence through the Elysian Fields (which, I suppose, are the French idea of heaven) to Bonaparte's triumphal arch. The Champs Elysees may look pretty in summer; though I suspect they must be somewhat dry and artificial at whatever season,--the trees being slender and scraggy, and requiring to be renewed every few years. The soil is not genial to them. The strangest peculiarity of this place, however, to eyes fresh from moist and verdant England, is, that there is not one blade of grass in all the Elysian Fields, nothing but hard clay, now covered with white dust. It gives the whole scene the air of being a contrivance of man, in which Nature has either not been invited to take any part, or has declined to do so. There were merry-go-rounds, wooden horses, and other provision for children's amusements among the trees; and booths, and tables of cakes, and candy-women; and restaurants on the borders of the wood; but very few people there; and doubtless we can form no idea of what the scene might become when alive with French gayety and vivacity. As we walked onward the Triumphal Arch began to loom up in the distance, looking huge and massive, though still a long way off. It was not, however, till we stood almost beneath it that we really felt the grandeur of this great arch, including so large a space of the blue sky in its airy sweep. At a distance it impresses the spectator with its solidity; nearer, with the lofty vacancy beneath it. There is a spiral staircase within one of its immense limbs; and, climbing steadily upward, lighted by a lantern which the doorkeeper's wife gave us, we had a bird's-eye view of Paris, much obscured by smoke or mist. Several interminable avenues shoot with painful directness right towards it. On our way homeward we visited the Place Vendome, in the centre of which is a tall column, sculptured from top to bottom, all over the pedestal, and all over the shaft, and with Napoleon himself on the summit. The shaft is wreathed round and roundabout with representations of what, as far as I could distinguish, seemed to be the Emperor's victories. It has a very rich effect. At the foot of the column we saw wreaths of artificial flowers, suspended there, no doubt, by some admirer of Napoleon, still ardent enough to expend a franc or two in this way. Hotel de Louvre, January 10th.--We had purposed going to the Cathedral of Notre Dame to-day, but the weather and walking were too unfavorable for a distant expedition; so we merely went across the street to the Louvre. . . . . . Our principal object this morning was to see the pencil drawings by eminent artists. Of these the Louvre has a very rich collection, occupying many apartments, and comprising sketches by Annibale Caracci, Claude, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Michel Angelo, Rubens, Rembrandt, and almost all the other great masters, whether French, Italian, Dutch, or whatever else; the earliest drawings of their great pictures, when they had the glory of their pristine idea directly before their minds' eye,-- that idea which inevitably became overlaid with their own handling of it in the finished painting. No doubt the painters themselves had often a happiness in these rude, off-hand sketches, which they never felt again in the same work, and which resulted in disappointment, after they had done their best. To an artist, the collection must be most deeply interesting: to myself, it was merely curious, and soon grew wearisome. In the same suite of apartments, there is a collection of miniatures, some of them very exquisite, and absolutely lifelike, on their small scale. I observed two of Franklin, both good and picturesque, one of them especially so, with its cloud-like white hair. I do not think we have produced a man so interesting to contemplate, in many points of view, as he. Most of our great men are of a character that I find it impossible to warm into life by thought, or by lavishing any amount of sympathy upon them. Not so Franklin, who had a great deal of common and uncommon human nature in him. Much of the time, while my wife was looking at the drawings, I sat observing the crowd of Sunday visitors. They were generally of a lower class than those of week-days; private soldiers in a variety of uniforms, and, for the most part, ugly little men, but decorous and well behaved. I saw medals on many of their breasts, denoting Crimean service; some wore the English medal, with Queen Victoria's head upon it. A blue coat, with red baggy trousers, was the most usual uniform. Some had short-breasted coats, made in the same style as those of the first Napoleon, which we had seen in the preceding rooms. The policemen, distributed pretty abundantly about the rooms, themselves looked military, wearing cocked hats and swords. There were many women of the middling classes; some, evidently, of the lowest, but clean and decent, in colored gowns and caps; and laboring men, citizens, Sunday gentlemen, young artists, too, no doubt looking with educated eyes at these art-treasures, and I think, as a general thing, each man was mated with a woman. The soldiers, however, came in pairs or little squads, accompanied by women. I did not much like any of the French faces, and yet I am not sure that there is not more resemblance between them and the American physiognomy, than between the latter and the English. The women are not pretty, but in all ranks above the lowest they have a trained expression that supplies the place of beauty. I was wearied to death with the drawings, and began to have that dreary and desperate feeling which has often come upon me when the sights last longer than my capacity for receiving them. As our time in Paris, however, is brief and precious, we next inquired our way to the galleries of sculpture, and these alone are of astounding extent, reaching, I should think, all round one quadrangle of the Louvre, on the basement floor. Hall after hall opened interminably before us, and on either side of us, paved and incrusted with variegated and beautifully polished marble, relieved against which stand the antique statues and groups, interspersed with great urns and vases, sarcophagi, altars, tablets, busts of historic personages, and all manner of shapes of marble which consummate art has transmuted into precious stones. Not that I really did feel much impressed by any of this sculpture then, nor saw more than two or three things which I thought very beautiful; but whether it be good or no, I suppose the world has nothing better, unless it be a few world-renowned statues in Italy. I was even more struck by the skill and ingenuity of the French in arranging these sculptural remains, than by the value of the sculptures themselves. The galleries, I should judge, have been recently prepared, and on a magnificent system,--the adornments being yet by no means completed,--for besides the floor and wall-casings of rich, polished marble, the vaulted ceilings of some of the apartments are painted in fresco, causing them to glow as if the sky were opened. It must be owned, however, that the statuary, often time-worn and darkened from its original brilliancy by weather-stains, does not suit well as furniture for such splendid rooms. When we see a perfection of modern finish around them, we recognize that most of these statues have been thrown down from their pedestals, hundreds of years ago, and have been battered and externally degraded; and though whatever spiritual beauty they ever had may still remain, yet this is not made more apparent by the contrast betwixt the new gloss of modern upholstery, and their tarnished, even if immortal grace. I rather think the English have given really the more hospitable reception to the maimed Theseus, and his broken-nosed, broken-legged, headless companions, because flouting them with no gorgeous fittings up. By this time poor J----- (who, with his taste for art yet undeveloped, is the companion of all our visits to sculpture and picture galleries) was wofully hungry, and for bread we had given him a stone,--not one stone, but a thousand. We returned to the hotel, and it being too damp and raw to go to our Restaurant des Echelles, we dined at the hotel. In my opinion it would require less time to cultivate our gastronomic taste than taste of any other kind; and, on the whole, I am not sure that a man would not be wise to afford himself a little discipline in this line. It is certainly throwing away the bounties of Providence, to treat them as the English do, producing from better materials than the French have to work upon nothing but sirloins, joints, joints, steaks, steaks, steaks, chops, chops, chops, chops! We had a soup to-day, in which twenty kinds of vegetables were represented, and manifested each its own aroma; a fillet of stewed beef, and a fowl, in some sort of delicate fricassee. We had a bottle of Chablis, and renewed ourselves, at the close of the banquet, with a plate of Chateaubriand ice. It was all very good, and we respected ourselves far more than if we had eaten a quantity of red roast beef; but I am not quite sure that we were right. . . . . Among the relics of kings and princes, I do not know that there was anything more interesting than a little brass cannon, two or three inches long, which had been a toy of the unfortunate Dauphin, son of Louis XVI. There was a map,--a hemisphere of the world,--which his father had drawn for this poor boy; very neatly done, too. The sword of Louis XVI., a magnificent rapier, with a beautifully damasked blade, and a jewelled scabbard, but without a hilt, is likewise preserved, as is the hilt of Henry IV.'s sword. But it is useless to begin a catalogue of these things. What a collection it is, including Charlemagne's sword and sceptre, and the last Dauphin's little toy cannon, and so much between the two! Hotel de Louvre, January 11th.--This was another chill, raw day, characterized by a spitefulness of atmosphere which I do not remember ever to have experienced in my own dear country. We meant to have visited the Hotel des Invalides, but J----- and I walked to the Tivoli, the Place de la Concorde, the Champs Elysees, and to the Place de Beaujou, and to the residence of the American minister, where I wished to arrange about my passport. After speaking with the Secretary of Legation, we were ushered into the minister's private room, where he received me with great kindness. Mr. ------ is an old gentleman with a white head, and a large, florid face, which has an expression of amiability, not unmingled with a certain dignity. He did not rise from his arm-chair to greet me,--a lack of ceremony which I imputed to the gout, feeling it impossible that he should have willingly failed in courtesy to one of his twenty-five million sovereigns. In response to some remark of mine about the shabby way in which our government treats its officials pecuniarily, he gave a detailed account of his own troubles on that score; then expressed a hope that I had made a good thing out of my consulate, and inquired whether I had received a hint to resign; to which I replied that, for various reasons, I had resigned of my own accord, and before Mr. Buchanan's inauguration. We agreed, however, in disapproving the system of periodical change in our foreign officials; and I remarked that a consul or an ambassador ought to be a citizen both of his native country and of the one in which he resided; and that his possibility of beneficent influence depended largely on his being so. Apropos to which Mr. ------ said that he had once asked a diplomatic friend of long experience, what was the first duty of a minister. "To love his own country, and to watch over its interests," answered the diplomatist. "And his second duty?" asked Mr. ------. "To love and to promote the interests of the country to which he is accredited," said his friend. This is a very Christian and sensible view of the matter; but it can scarcely have happened once in our whole diplomatic history, that a minister can have had time to overcome his first rude and ignorant prejudice against the country of his mission; and if there were any suspicion of his having done so, it would be held abundantly sufficient ground for his recall. I like Mr. ------, a good-hearted, sensible old man. J----- and I returned along the Champs Elysees, and, crossing the Seine, kept on our way by the river's brink, looking at the titles of books on the long lines of stalls that extend between the bridges. Novels, fairy-tales, dream books, treatises of behavior and etiquette, collections of bon-mots and of songs, were interspersed with volumes in the old style of calf and gilt binding, the works of the classics of French literature. A good many persons, of the poor classes, and of those apparently well to do, stopped transitorily to look at these books. On the other side of the street was a range of tall edifices with shops beneath, and the quick stir of French life hurrying, and babbling, and swarming along the sidewalk. We passed two or three bridges, occurring at short intervals, and at last we recrossed the Seine by a bridge which oversteps the river, from a point near the National Institute, and reaches the other side, not far from the Louvre. . . . . Though the day was so disagreeable, we thought it best not to lose the remainder of it, and therefore set out to visit the Cathedral of Notre Dame. We took a fiacre in the Place de Carousel, and drove to the door. On entering, we found the interior miserably shut off from view by the stagings erected for the purpose of repairs. Penetrating from the nave towards the chancel, an official personage signified to us that we must first purchase a ticket for each grown person, at the price of half a franc each. This expenditure admitted us into the sacristy, where we were taken in charge by a guide, who came down upon us with an avalanche or cataract of French, descriptive of a great many treasures reposited in this chapel. I understood hardly more than one word in ten, but gathered doubtfully that a bullet which was shown us was the one that killed the late Archbishop of Paris, on the floor of the cathedral. [But this was a mistake. It was the archbishop who was killed in the insurrection of 1848. Two joints of his backbone were also shown.] Also, that some gorgeously embroidered vestments, which he drew forth, had been used at the coronation of Napoleon I. There were two large, full-length portraits hanging aloft in the sacristy, and a gold or silver gilt, or, at all events, gilt image of the Virgin, as large as life, standing on a pedestal. The guide had much to say about these, but, understanding him so imperfectly, I have nothing to record. The guide's supervision of us seemed not to extend beyond this sacristy, on quitting which he gave us permission to go where we pleased, only intimating a hope that we would not forget him; so I gave him half a franc, though thereby violating an inhibition on the printed ticket of entrance. We had been much disappointed at first by the apparently narrow limits of the interior of this famous church; but now, as we made our way round the choir, gazing into chapel after chapel, each with its painted window, its crucifix, its pictures, its confessional, and afterwards came back into the nave, where arch rises above arch to the lofty roof, we came to the conclusion that it was very sumptuous. It is the greatest of pities that its grandeur and solemnity should just now be so infinitely marred by the workmen's boards, timber, and ladders occupying the whole centre of the edifice, and screening all its best effects. It seems to have been already most richly ornamented, its roof being painted, and the capitals of the pillars gilded, and their shafts illuminated in fresco; and no doubt it will shine out gorgeously when all the repairs and adornments shall be completed. Even now it gave to my actual sight what I have often tried to imagine in my visits to the English cathedrals,-- the pristine glory of those edifices, when they stood glowing with gold and picture, fresh from the architects' and adorners' hands. The interior loftiness of Notre Dame, moreover, gives it a sublimity which would swallow up anything that might look gewgawy in its ornamentation, were we to consider it window by window, or pillar by pillar. It is an advantage of these vast edifices, rising over us and spreading about us in such a firmamental way, that we cannot spoil them by any pettiness of our own, but that they receive (or absorb) our pettiness into their own immensity. Every little fantasy finds its place and propriety in them, like a flower on the earth's broad bosom. When we emerged from the cathedral, we found it beginning to rain or snow, or both; and, as we had dismissed our fiacre at the door, and could find no other, we were at a loss what to do. We stood a few moments on the steps of the Hotel Dieu, looking up at the front of Notre Dame, with its twin towers, and its three deep-pointed arches, piercing through a great thickness of stone, and throwing a cavern-like gloom around these entrances. The front is very rich. Though so huge, and all of gray stone, it is carved and fretted with statues and innumerable devices, as cunningly as any ivory casket in which relics are kept; but its size did not so much impress me. . . . . Hotel de Louvre, January 12th.--This has been a bright day as regards weather; but I have done little or nothing worth recording. After breakfast, I set out in quest of the consul, and found him up a court, at 51 Rue Caumartin, in an office rather smaller, I think, than mine at Liverpool; but, to say the truth, a little better furnished. I was received in the outer apartment by an elderly, brisk-looking man, in whose air, respectful and subservient, and yet with a kind of authority in it, I recognized the vice-consul. He introduced me to Mr. ------, who sat writing in an inner room; a very gentlemanly, courteous, cool man of the world, whom I should take to be an excellent person for consul at Paris. He tells me that he has resided here some years, although his occupancy of the consulate dates only from November last. Consulting him respecting my passport, he gave me what appear good reasons why I should get all the necessary vises here; for example, that the vise of a minister carries more weight than that of a consul; and especially that an Austrian consul will never vise a passport unless he sees his minister's name upon it. Mr. ------ has travelled much in Italy, and ought to be able to give me sound advice. His opinion was, that at this season of the year I had better go by steamer to Civita Veechia, instead of landing at Leghorn, and thence journeying to Rome. On this point I shall decide when the time comes. As I left the office the vice-consul informed me that there was a charge of five francs and some sous for the consul's vise, a tax which surprised me,--the whole business of passports having been taken from consuls before I quitted office, and the consular fee having been annulled even earlier. However, no doubt Mr. ------ had a fair claim to my five francs; but, really, it is not half so pleasant to pay a consular fee as it used to be to receive it. Afterwards I walked to Notre Dame, the rich front of which I viewed with more attention than yesterday. There are whole histories, carved in stone figures, within the vaulted arches of the three entrances in this west front, and twelve apostles in a row above, and as much other sculpture as would take a month to see. We then walked quite round it, but I had no sense of immensity from it, not even that of great height, as from many of the cathedrals in England. It stands very near the Seine; indeed, if I mistake not, it is on an island formed by two branches of the river. Behind it, is what seems to be a small public ground (or garden, if a space entirely denuded of grass or other green thing, except a few trees, can be called so), with benches, and a monument in the midst. This quarter of the city looks old, and appears to be inhabited by poor people, and to be busied about small and petty affairs; the most picturesque business that I saw being that of the old woman who sells crucifixes of pearl and of wood at the cathedral door. We bought two of these yesterday. I must again speak of the horrible muddiness, not only of this part of the city, but of all Paris, so far as I have traversed it to-day. My ways, since I came to Europe, have often lain through nastiness, but I never before saw a pavement so universally overspread with mud-padding as that of Paris. It is difficult to imagine where so much filth can come from. After dinner I walked through the gardens of the Tuileries; but as dusk was coming on, and as I was afraid of being shut up within the iron railing, I did not have time to examine them particularly. There are wide, intersecting walks, fountains, broad basins, and many statues; but almost the whole surface of the gardens is barren earth, instead of the verdure that would beautify an English pleasure-ground of this sort. In the summer it has doubtless an agreeable shade; but at this season the naked branches look meagre, and sprout from slender trunks. Like the trees in the Champs Elysees, those, I presume, in the gardens of the Tuileries need renewing every few years. The same is true of the human race,--families becoming extinct after a generation or two of residence in Paris. Nothing really thrives here; man and vegetables have but an artificial life, like flowers stuck in a little mould, but never taking root. I am quite tired of Paris, and long for a home more than ever. MARSEILLES. Hotel d'Angleterre, January 15th.--On Tuesday morning, (12th) we took our departure from the Hotel de Louvre. It is a most excellent and perfectly ordered hotel, and I have not seen a more magnificent hall, in any palace, than the dining-saloon, with its profuse gilding, and its ceiling, painted in compartments; so that when the chandeliers are all alight, it looks a fit place for princes to banquet in, and not very fit for the few Americans whom I saw scattered at its long tables. By the by, as we drove to the railway, we passed through the public square, where the Bastille formerly stood; and in the centre of it now stands a column, surmounted by a golden figure of Mercury (I think), which seems to be just on the point of casting itself from a gilt ball into the air. This statue is so buoyant, that the spectator feels quite willing to trust it to the viewless element, being as sure that it would be borne up as that a bird would fly. Our first day's journey was wholly without interest, through a country entirely flat, and looking wretchedly brown and barren. There were rows of trees, very slender, very prim and formal; there was ice wherever there happened to be any water to form it; there were occasional villages, compact little streets, or masses of stone or plastered cottages, very dirty and with gable ends and earthen roofs; and a succession of this same landscape was all that we saw, whenever we rubbed away the congelation of our breath from the carriage windows. Thus we rode on, all day long, from eleven o'clock, with hardly a five minutes' stop, till long after dark, when we came to Dijon, where there was a halt of twenty-five minutes for dinner. Then we set forth again, and rumbled forward, through cold and darkness without, until we reached Lyons at about ten o'clock. We left our luggage at the railway station, and took an omnibus for the Hotel de Provence, which we chose at a venture, among a score of other hotels. As this hotel was a little off the direct route of the omnibus, the driver set us down at the corner of a street, and pointed to some lights, which he said designated the Hotel do Provence; and thither we proceeded, all seven of us, taking along a few carpet-bags and shawls, our equipage for the night. The porter of the hotel met us near its doorway, and ushered us through an arch, into the inner quadrangle, and then up some old and worn steps,--very broad, and appearing to be the principal staircase. At the first landing-place, an old woman and a waiter or two received us; and we went up two or three more flights of the same broad and worn stone staircases. What we could see of the house looked very old, and had the musty odor with which I first became acquainted at Chester. After ascending to the proper level, we were conducted along a corridor, paved with octagonal earthen tiles; on one side were windows, looking into the courtyard, on the other doors opening into the sleeping-chambers. The corridor was of immense length, and seemed still to lengthen itself before us, as the glimmer of our conductor's candle went farther and farther into the obscurity. Our own chamber was at a vast distance along this passage; those of the rest of the party were on the hither side; but all this immense suite of rooms appeared to communicate by doors from one to another, like the chambers through which the reader wanders at midnight, in Mrs. Radcliffe's romances. And they were really splendid rooms, though of an old fashion, lofty, spacious, with floors of oak or other wood, inlaid in squares and crosses, and waxed till they were slippery, but without carpets. Our own sleeping-room had a deep fireplace, in which we ordered a fire, and asked if there were not some saloon already warmed, where we could get a cup of tea. Hereupon the waiter led us back along the endless corridor, and down the old stone staircases, and out into the quadrangle, and journeyed with us along an exterior arcade, and finally threw open the door of the salle a manger, which proved to be a room of lofty height, with a vaulted roof, a stone floor, and interior spaciousness sufficient for a baronial hall, the whole bearing the same aspect of times gone by, that characterized the rest of the house. There were two or three tables covered with white cloth, and we sat down at one of them and had our tea. Finally we wended back to our sleeping-rooms,--a considerable journey, so endless seemed the ancient hotel. I should like to know its history. The fire made our great chamber look comfortable, and the fireplace threw out the heat better than the little square hole over which we cowered in our saloon at the Hotel de Louvre. . . . . In the morning we began our preparations for starting at ten. Issuing into the corridor, I found a soldier of the line, pacing to and fro there as sentinel. Another was posted in another corridor, into which I wandered by mistake; another stood in the inner court-yard, and another at the porte-cochere. They were not there the night before, and I know not whence nor why they came, unless that some officer of rank may have taken up his quarters at the hotel. Miss M------ says she heard at Paris, that a considerable number of troops had recently been drawn together at Lyons, in consequence of symptoms of disaffection that have recently shown themselves here. Before breakfast I went out to catch a momentary glimpse of the city. The street in which our hotel stands is near a large public square; in the centre is a bronze equestrian statue of Louis XIV.; and the square itself is called the Place de Louis le Grand. I wonder where this statue hid itself while the Revolution was raging in Lyons, and when the guillotine, perhaps, stood on that very spot. The square was surrounded by stately buildings, but had what seemed to be barracks for soldiers,--at any rate, mean little huts, deforming its ample space; and a soldier was on guard before the statue of Louis le Grand. It was a cold, misty morning, and a fog lay throughout the area, so that I could scarcely see from one side of it to the other. Returning towards our hotel, I saw that it had an immense front, along which ran, in gigantic letters, its title,-- HOTEL DE PROVENCE ET DES AMBASSADEURS. The excellence of the hotel lay rather in the faded pomp of its sleeping-rooms, and the vastness of its salle a manger, than in anything very good to eat or drink. We left it, after a poor breakfast, and went to the railway station. Looking at the mountainous heap of our luggage the night before, we had missed a great carpet-bag; and we now found that Miss M------'s trunk had been substituted for it, and, there being the proper number of packages as registered, it was impossible to convince the officials that anything was wrong. We, of course, began to generalize forthwith, and pronounce the incident to be characteristic of French morality. They love a certain system and external correctness, but do not trouble themselves to be deeply in the right; and Miss M------ suggested that there used to be parallel cases in the French Revolution, when, so long as the assigned number were sent out of prison to be guillotined, the jailer did not much care whether they were the persons designated by the tribunal or not. At all events, we could get no satisfaction about the carpet-bag, and shall very probably be compelled to leave Marseilles without it. This day's ride was through a far more picturesque country than that we saw yesterday. Heights began to rise imminent above our way, with sometimes a ruined castle wall upon them; on our left, the rail-track kept close to the hills; on the other side there was the level bottom of a valley, with heights descending upon it a mile or a few miles away. Farther off we could see blue hills, shouldering high above the intermediate ones, and themselves worthy to be called mountains. These hills arranged themselves in beautiful groups, affording openings between them, and vistas of what lay beyond, and gorges which I suppose held a great deal of romantic scenery. By and by a river made its appearance, flowing swiftly in the same direction that we were travelling,--a beautiful and cleanly river, with white pebbly shores, and itself of a peculiar blue. It rushed along very fast, sometimes whitening over shallow descents, and even in its calmer intervals its surface was all covered with whirls and eddies, indicating that it dashed onward in haste. I do not now know the name of this river, but have set it down as the "arrowy Rhone." It kept us company a long while, and I think we did not part with it as long as daylight remained. I have seldom seen hill-scenery that struck me more than some that we saw to-day, and the old feudal towers and old villages at their feet; and the old churches, with spires shaped just like extinguishers, gave it an interest accumulating from many centuries past. Still going southward, the vineyards began to border our track, together with what I at first took to be orchards, but soon found were plantations of olive-trees, which grow to a much larger size than I supposed, and look almost exactly like very crabbed and eccentric apple-trees. Neither they nor the vineyards add anything to the picturesqueness of the landscape. On the whole, I should have been delighted with all this scenery if it had not looked so bleak, barren, brown, and bare; so like the wintry New England before the snow has fallen. It was very cold, too; ice along the borders of streams, even among the vineyards and olives. The houses are of rather a different shape here than, farther northward, their roofs being not nearly so sloping. They are almost invariably covered with white plaster; the farm-houses have their outbuildings in connection with the dwelling,--the whole surrounding three sides of a quadrangle. We travelled far into the night, swallowed a cold and hasty dinner at Avignon, and reached Marseilles sorely wearied, at about eleven o'clock. We took a cab to the Hotel d'Angleterre (two cabs, to be quite accurate), and find it a very poor place. To go back a little, as the sun went down, we looked out of the window of our railway carriage, and saw a sky that reminded us of what we used to see day after day in America, and what we have not seen since; and, after sunset, the horizon burned and glowed with rich crimson and orange lustre, looking at once warm and cold. After it grew dark, the stars brightened, and Miss M------ from her window pointed out some of the planets to the children, she being as familiar with them as a gardener with his flowers. They were as bright as diamonds. We had a wretched breakfast, and J----- and I then went to the railway station to see about our luggage. On our walk back we went astray, passing by a triumphal arch, erected by the Marseillais, in honor of Louis Napoleon; but we inquired our way of old women and soldiers, who were very kind and courteous,--especially the latter,--and were directed aright. We came to a large, oblong, public place, set with trees, but devoid of grass, like all public places in France. In the middle of it was a bronze statue of an ecclesiastical personage, stretching forth his hands in the attitude of addressing the people or of throwing a benediction over them. It was some archbishop, who had distinguished himself by his humanity and devotedness during the plague of 1720. At the moment of our arrival the piazza was quite thronged with people, who seemed to be talking amongst themselves with considerable earnestness, although without any actual excitement. They were smoking cigars; and we judged that they were only loitering here for the sake of the sunshine, having no fires at home, and nothing to do. Some looked like gentlemen, others like peasants; most of them I should have taken for the lazzaroni of this Southern city,--men with cloth caps, like the classic liberty-cap, or with wide-awake hats. There were one or two women of the lower classes, without bonnets, the elder ones with white caps, the younger bareheaded. I have hardly seen a lady in Marseilles; and I suspect, it being a commercial city, and dirty to the last degree, ill-built, narrow-streeted, and sometimes pestilential, there are few or no families of gentility resident here. Returning to the hotel, we found the rest of the party ready to go out; so we all issued forth in a body, and inquired our way to the telegraph-office, in order to send my message about the carpet-bag. In a street through which we had to pass (and which seemed to be the Exchange, or its precincts), there was a crowd even denser, yes, much denser, than that which we saw in the square of the archbishop's statue; and each man was talking to his neighbor in a vivid, animated way, as if business were very brisk to-day. At the telegraph-office, we discovered the cause that had brought out these many people. There had been attempts on the Emperor's life,-- unsuccessful, as they seem fated to be, though some mischief was done to those near him. I rather think the good people of Marseilles were glad of the attempt, as an item of news and gossip, and did not very greatly care whether it were successful or no. It seemed to have roused their vivacity rather than their interest. The only account I have seen of it was in the brief public despatch from the Syndic (or whatever he be) of Paris to the chief authority of Marseilles, which was printed and posted in various conspicuous places. The only chance of knowing the truth with any fulness of detail would be to come across an English paper. We have had a banner hoisted half-mast in front of our hotel to-day as a token, the head-waiter tells me, of sympathy and sorrow for the General and other persons who were slain by this treasonable attempt. J----- and I now wandered by ourselves along a circular line of quays, having, on one side of us, a thick forest of masts, while, on the other, was a sweep of shops, bookstalls, sailors' restaurants and drinking-houses, fruit-sellers, candy-women, and all manner of open-air dealers and pedlers; little children playing, and jumping the rope, and such a babble and bustle as I never saw or heard before; the sun lying along the whole sweep, very hot, and evidently very grateful to those who basked in it. Whenever I passed into the shade, immediately from too warm I became too cold. The sunshine was like hot air; the shade, like the touch of cold steel,--sharp, hard, yet exhilarating. From the broad street of the quays, narrow, thread-like lanes pierced up between the edifices, calling themselves streets, yet so narrow, that a person in the middle could almost touch the houses on either hand. They ascended steeply, bordered on each side by long, contiguous walls of high houses, and from the time of their first being built, could never have had a gleam of sunshine in them,--always in shadow, always unutterably nasty, and often pestiferous. The nastiness which I saw in Marseilles exceeds my heretofore experience. There is dirt in the hotel, and everywhere else; and it evidently troubles nobody,--no more than if all the people were pigs in a pigsty. . . . . Passing by all this sweep of quays, J----- and I ascended to an elevated walk, overlooking the harbor, and far beyond it; for here we had our first view of the Mediterranean, blue as heaven, and bright with sunshine. It was a bay, widening forth into the open deep, and bordered with heights, and bold, picturesque headlands, some of which had either fortresses or convents on them. Several boats and one brig were under sail, making their way towards the port. I have never seen a finer sea-view. Behind the town, there seemed to be a mountainous landscape, imperfectly visible, in consequence of the intervening edifices. THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA. Steamer Calabrese, January 17th.--If I had remained at Marseilles, I might have found many peculiarities and characteristics of that Southern city to notice; but I fear that these will not be recorded if I leave them till I touch the soil of Italy. Indeed, I doubt whether there be anything really worth recording in the little distinctions between one nation and another; at any rate, after the first novelty is over, new things seem equally commonplace with the old. There is but one little interval when the mind is in such a state that it can catch the fleeting aroma of a new scene. And it is always so much pleasanter to enjoy this delicious newness than to attempt arresting it, that it requires great force of will to insist with one's self upon sitting down to write. I can do nothing with Marseilles, especially here on the Mediterranean, long after nightfall, and when the steamer is pitching in a pretty lively way. (Later.)--I walked out with J----- yesterday morning, and reached the outskirts of the city, whence we could see the bold and picturesque heights that surround Marseilles as with a semicircular wall. They rise into peaks, and the town, being on their lower slope, descends from them towards the sea with a gradual sweep. Adown the streets that descend these declivities come little rivulets, running along over the pavement, close to the sidewalks, as over a pebbly bed; and though they look vastly like kennels, I saw women washing linen in these streams, and others dipping up the water for household purposes. The women appear very much in public at Marseilles. In the squares and places you see half a dozen of them together, sitting in a social circle on the bottoms of upturned baskets, knitting, talking, and enjoying the public sunshine, as if it were their own household fire. Not one in a thousand of them, probably, ever has a household fire for the purpose of keeping themselves warm, but only to do their little cookery; and when there is sunshine they take advantage of it, and in the short season of rain and frost they shrug their shoulders, put on what warm garments they have, and get through the winter somewhat as grasshoppers and butterflies do,--being summer insects like then. This certainly is a very keen and cutting air, sharp as a razor, and I saw ice along the borders of the little rivulets almost at noonday. To be sure, it is midwinter, and yet in the sunshine I found myself uncomfortably warm, but in the shade the air was like the touch of death itself. I do not like the climate. There are a great number of public places in Marseilles, several of which are adorned with statues or fountains, or triumphal arches or columns, and set out with trees, and otherwise furnished as a kind of drawing-rooms, where the populace may meet together and gossip. I never before heard from human lips anything like this bustle and babble, this thousand-fold talk which you hear all round about you in the crowd of a public square; so entirely different is it from the dulness of a crowd in England, where, as a rule, everybody is silent, and hardly half a dozen monosyllables will come from the lips of a thousand people. In Marseilles, on the contrary, a stream of unbroken talk seems to bubble from the lips of every individual. A great many interesting scenes take place in these squares. From the window of our hotel (which looked into the Place Royale) I saw a juggler displaying his art to a crowd, who stood in a regular square about him, none pretending to press nearer than the prescribed limit. While the juggler wrought his miracles his wife supplied him with his magic materials out of a box; and when the exhibition was over she packed up the white cloth with which his table was covered, together with cups, cards, balls, and whatever else, and they took their departure. I have been struck with the idle curiosity, and, at the same time, the courtesy and kindness of the populace of Marseilles, and I meant to exemplify it by recording how Miss S------ and I attracted their notice, and became the centre of a crowd of at least fifty of them while doing no more remarkable thing than settling with a cab-driver. But really this pitch and swell is getting too bad, and I shall go to bed, as the best chance of keeping myself in an equable state. ROME. 37 Palazzo Larazani, Via Porta Pinciana, January 24th.--We left Marseilles in the Neapolitan steamer Calabrese, as noticed above, a week ago this morning. There was no fault to be found with the steamer, which was very clean and comfortable, contrary to what we had understood beforehand; except for the coolness of the air (and I know not that this was greater than that of the Atlantic in July), our voyage would have been very pleasant; but for myself, I enjoyed nothing, having a cold upon me, or a low fever, or something else that took the light and warmth out of everything. I went to bed immediately after my last record, and was rocked to sleep pleasantly enough by the billows of the Mediterranean; and, coming on deck about sunrise next morning, found the steamer approaching Genoa. We saw the city, lying at the foot of a range of hills, and stretching a little way up their slopes, the hills sweeping round it in the segment of a circle, and looking like an island rising abruptly out of the sea; for no connection with the mainland was visible on either side. There was snow scattered on their summits and streaking their sides a good way down. They looked bold, and barren, and brown, except where the snow whitened them. The city did not impress me with much expectation of size or splendor. Shortly after coming into the port our whole party landed, and we found ourselves at once in the midst of a crowd of cab-drivers, hotel-runnets, and coin missionaires, who assaulted us with a volley of French, Italian, and broken English, which beat pitilessly about our ears; for really it seemed as if all the dictionaries in the world had been torn to pieces, and blown around us by a hurricane. Such a pother! We took a commissionaire, a respectable-looking man, in a cloak, who said his name was Salvator Rosa; and he engaged to show us whatever was interesting in Genoa. In the first place, he took us through narrow streets to an old church, the name of which I have forgotten, and, indeed, its peculiar features; but I know that I found it pre-eminently magnificent,--its whole interior being incased in polished marble, of various kinds and colors, its ceiling painted, and its chapels adorned with pictures. However, this church was dazzled out of sight by the Cathedral of San Lorenzo, to which we were afterwards conducted, whose exterior front is covered with alternate slabs of black and white marble, which were brought, either in whole or in part, from Jerusalem. Within, there was a prodigious richness of precious marbles, and a pillar, if I mistake not, from Solomon's Temple; and a picture of the Virgin by St. Luke; and others (rather more intrinsically valuable, I imagine), by old masters, set in superb marble frames, within the arches of the chapels. I used to try to imagine how the English cathedrals must have looked in their primeval glory, before the Reformation, and before the whitewash of Cromwell's time had overlaid their marble pillars; but I never imagined anything at all approaching what my eyes now beheld: this sheen of polished and variegated marble covering every inch of its walls; this glow of brilliant frescos all over the roof, and up within the domes; these beautiful pictures by great masters, painted for the places which they now occupied, and making an actual portion of the edifice; this wealth of silver, gold, and gems, that adorned the shrines of the saints, before which wax candles burned, and were kept burning, I suppose, from year's end to year's end; in short, there is no imagining nor remembering a hundredth part of the rich details. And even the cathedral (though I give it up as indescribable) was nothing at all in comparison with a church to which the commissionaire afterwards led us; a church that had been built four or five hundred years ago, by a pirate, in expiation of his sins, and out of the profit of his rapine. This last edifice, in its interior, absolutely shone with burnished gold, and glowed with pictures; its walls were a quarry of precious stones, so valuable were the marbles out of which they were wrought; its columns and pillars were of inconceivable costliness; its pavement was a mosaic of wonderful beauty, and there were four twisted pillars made out of stalactites. Perhaps the best way to form some dim conception of it is to fancy a little casket, inlaid inside with precious stones, so that there shall not a hair's-breadth be left unprecious-stoned, and then to conceive this little bit of a casket iucreased to the magnitude of a great church, without losing anything of the excessive glory that was compressed into its original small compass, but all its pretty lustre made sublime by the consequent immensity. At any rate, nobody who has not seen a church like this can imagine what a gorgeous religion it was that reared it. In the cathedral, and in all the churches, we saw priests and many persons kneeling at their devotions; and our Salvator Rosa, whenever we passed a chapel or shrine, failed not to touch the pavement with one knee, crossing himself the while; and once, when a priest was going through some form of devotion, he stopped a few moments to share in it. He conducted us, too, to the Balbi Palace, the stateliest and most sumptuous residence, but not more so than another which he afterwards showed us, nor perhaps than many others which exist in Genoa, THE SUPERB. The painted ceilings in these palaces are a glorious adornment; the walls of the saloons, incrusted with various-colored marbles, give an idea of splendor which I never gained from anything else. The floors, laid in mosaic, seem too precious to tread upon. In the royal palace, many of the floors were of various woods, inlaid by an English artist, and they looked like a magnification of some exquisite piece of Tunbridge ware; but, in all respects, this palace was inferior to others which we saw. I say nothing of the immense pictorial treasures which hung upon the walls of all the rooms through which we passed; for I soon grew so weary of admirable things, that I could neither enjoy nor understand them. My receptive faculty is very limited, and when the utmost of its small capacity is full, I become perfectly miserable, and the more so the better worth seeing are the things I am forced to reject. I do not know a greater misery; to see sights, after such repletion, is to the mind what it would be to the body to have dainties forced down the throat long after the appetite was satiated. All this while, whenever we emerged into the vaultlike streets, we were wretchedly cold. The commissionaire took us to a sort of pleasure-garden, occupying the ascent of a hill, and presenting seven different views of the city, from as many stations. One of the objects pointed out to us was a large yellow house, on a hillside, in the outskirts of Genoa, which was formerly inhabited for six months by Charles Dickens. Looking down from the elevated part of the pleasure-gardens, we saw orange-trees beneath us, with the golden fruit hanging upon them, though their trunks were muffled in straw; and, still lower down, there was ice and snow. Gladly (so far as I myself was concerned) we dismissed the commissionaire, after he had brought us to the hotel of the Cross of Malta, where we dined; needlessly, as it proved, for another dinner awaited us, after our return on board the boat. We set sail for Leghorn before dark, and I retired early, feeling still more ill from my cold than the night before. The next morning we were in the crowded port of Leghorn. We all went ashore, with some idea of taking the rail for Pisa, which is within an hour's distance, and might have been seen in time for our departure with the steamer. But a necessary visit to a banker's, and afterwards some unnecessary formalities about our passports, kept us wandering through the streets nearly all day; and we saw nothing in the slightest degree interesting, except the tomb of Smollett, in the burial-place attached to the English Chapel. It is surrounded by an iron railing, and marked by a slender obelisk of white marble, the pattern of which is many times repeated over surrounding graves. We went into a Jewish synagogue,--the interior cased in marbles, and surrounded with galleries, resting upon arches above arches. There were lights burning at the altar, and it looked very like a Christian church; but it was dirty, and had an odor not of sanctity. In Leghorn, as everywhere else, we were chilled to the heart, except when the sunshine fell directly upon us; and we returned to the steamer with a feeling as if we were getting back to our home; for this life of wandering makes a three days' residence in one place seem like home. We found several new passengers on board, and among others a monk, in a long brown frock of woollen cloth, with an immense cape, and a little black covering over his tonsure. He was a tall figure, with a gray beard, and might have walked, just as he stood, out of a picture by one of the old masters. This holy person addressed me very affably in Italian; but we found it impossible to hold much conversation. The evening was beautiful, with a bright young moonlight, not yet sufficiently powerful to overwhelm the stars, and as we walked the deck, Miss M------ showed the children the constellations, and told their names. J----- made a slight mistake as to one of them, pointing it out to me as "O'Brien's belt!" Elba was presently in view, and we might have seen many other interesting points, had it not been for our steamer's practice of resting by day, and only pursuing its voyage by night. The next morning we found ourselves in the harbor of Civita Vecchia, and, going ashore with our luggage, went through a blind turmoil with custom-house officers, inspectors of passports, soldiers, and vetturino people. My wife and I strayed a little through Civita Vecchia, and found its streets narrow, like clefts in a rock (which seems to be the fashion of Italian towns), and smelling nastily. I had made a bargain with a vetturino to send us to Rome in a carriage, with four horses, in eight hours; and as soon as the custom-house and passport people would let us, we started, lumbering slowly along with our mountain of luggage. We had heard rumors of robberies lately committed on this route; especially of a Nova Scotia bishop, who was detained on the road an hour and a half, and utterly pillaged; and certainly there was not a single mile of the dreary and desolate country over which we passed, where we might not have been robbed and murdered with impunity. Now and then, at long distances, we came to a structure that was either a prison, a tavern, or a barn, but did not look very much like either, being strongly built of stone, with iron-grated windows, and of ancient and rusty aspect. We kept along by the seashore a great part of the way, and stopped to feed our horses at a village, the wretched street of which stands close along the shore of the Mediterranean, its loose, dark sand being made nasty by the vicinity. The vetturino cheated us, one of the horses giving out, as he must have known it would do, half-way on our journey; and we staggered on through cold and darkness, and peril, too, if the banditti were not a myth,-- reaching Rome not much before midnight. I perpetrated unheard-of briberies on the custom-house officers at the gates, and was permitted to pass through and establish myself at Spillman's Hotel, the only one where we could gain admittance, and where we have been half frozen ever since. And this is sunny Italy, and genial Rome! Palazzo Larazani, Via Porta Pinciana, February 3d.--We have been in Rome a fortnight to-day, or rather at eleven o'clock to-night; and I have seldom or never spent so wretched a time anywhere. Our impressions were very unfortunate, arriving at midnight, half frozen in the wintry rain, and being received into a cold and cheerless hotel, where we shivered during two or three days; meanwhile seeking lodgings among the sunless, dreary alleys which are called streets in Rome. One cold, bright day after another has pierced me to the heart, and cut me in twain as with a sword, keen and sharp, and poisoned at point and edge. I did not think that cold weather could have made me so very miserable. Having caught a feverish influenza, I was really glad of being muffled up comfortably in the fever heat. The atmosphere certainly has a peculiar quality of malignity. After a day or two we settled ourselves in a suite of ten rooms, comprehending one flat, or what is called the second piano of this house. The rooms, thus far, have been very uncomfortable, it being impossible to warm them by means of the deep, old-fashioned, inartificial fireplaces, unless we had the great logs of a New England forest to burn in them; so I have sat in my corner by the fireside with more clothes on than I ever wore before, and my thickest great-coat over all. In the middle of the day I generally venture out for an hour or two, but have only once been warm enough even in the sunshine, and out of the sun never at any time. I understand now the force of that story of Diogenes when he asked the Conqueror, as the only favor he could do him, to stand out of his sunshine, there being such a difference in these Southern climes of Europe between sun and shade. If my wits had not been too much congealed, and my fingers too numb, I should like to have kept a minute journal of my feelings and impressions during the past fortnight. It would have shown modern Rome in an aspect in which it has never yet been depicted. But I have now grown somewhat acclimated, and the first freshness of my discomfort has worn off, so that I shall never be able to express how I dislike the place, and how wretched I have been in it; and soon, I suppose, warmer weather will come, and perhaps reconcile me to Rome against my will. Cold, narrow lanes, between tall, ugly, mean-looking whitewashed houses, sour bread, pavements most uncomfortable to the feet, enormous prices for poor living; beggars, pickpockets, ancient temples and broken monuments, and clothes hanging to dry about them; French soldiers, monks, and priests of every degree; a shabby population, smoking bad cigars,--these would have been some of the points of my description. Of course there are better and truer things to be said. . . . . It would be idle for me to attempt any sketches of these famous sites and edifices,--St. Peter's, for example,--which have been described by a thousand people, though none of them have ever given me an idea of what sort of place Rome is. . . . . The Coliseum was very much what I had preconceived it, though I was not prepared to find it turned into a sort of Christian church, with a pulpit on the verge of the open space. . . . . The French soldiers, who keep guard within it, as in other public places in Rome, have an excellent opportunity to secure the welfare of their souls. February 7th.--I cannot get fairly into the current of my journal since we arrived, and already I perceive that the nice peculiarities of Roman life are passing from my notice before I have recorded them. It is a very great pity. During the past week I have plodded daily, for an hour or two, through the narrow, stony streets, that look worse than the worst backside lanes of any other city; indescribably ugly and disagreeable they are, . . . . without sidewalks, but provided with a line of larger square stones, set crosswise to each other, along which there is somewhat less uneasy walking. . . . . Ever and anon, even in the meanest streets, --though, generally speaking, one can hardly be called meaner than another,--we pass a palace, extending far along the narrow way on a line with the other houses, but distinguished by its architectural windows, iron-barred on the basement story, and by its portal arch, through which we have glimpses, sometimes of a dirty court-yard, or perhaps of a clean, ornamented one, with trees, a colonnade, a fountain, and a statue in the vista; though, more likely, it resembles the entrance to a stable, and may, perhaps, really be one. The lower regions of palaces come to strange uses in Rome. . . . . In the basement story of the Barberini Palace a regiment of French soldiers (or soldiers of some kind [we find them to be retainers of the Barberini family, not French]) seems to be quartered, while no doubt princes have magnificent domiciles above. Be it palace or whatever other dwelling, the inmates climb through rubbish often to the comforts, such as they may be, that await them above. I vainly try to get down upon paper the dreariness, the ugliness, shabbiness, un-home-likeness of a Roman street. It is also to be said that you cannot go far in any direction without coming to a piazza, which is sometimes little more than a widening and enlarging of the dingy street, with the lofty facade of a church or basilica on one side, and a fountain in the centre, where the water squirts out of some fantastic piece of sculpture into a great stone basin. These fountains are often of immense size and most elaborate design. . . . . There are a great many of these fountain-shapes, constructed under the orders of one pope or another, in all parts of the city; and only the very simplest, such as a jet springing from a broad marble or porphyry vase, and falling back into it again, are really ornamental. If an antiquary were to accompany me through the streets, no doubt he would point out ten thousand interesting objects that I now pass over unnoticed, so general is the surface of plaster and whitewash; but often I can see fragments of antiquity built into the walls, or perhaps a church that was a Roman temple, or a basement of ponderous stones that were laid above twenty centuries ago. It is strange how our ideas of what antiquity is become altered here in Rome; the sixteenth century, in which many of the churches and fountains seem to have been built or re-edified, seems close at hand, even like our own days; a thousand years, or the days of the latter empire, is but a modern date, and scarcely interests us; and nothing is really venerable of a more recent epoch than the reign of Constantine. And the Egyptian obelisks that stand in several of the piazzas put even the Augustan or Republican antiquities to shame. I remember reading in a New York newspaper an account of one of the public buildings of that city,--a relic of "the olden time," the writer called it; for it was erected in 1825! I am glad I saw the castles and Gothic churches and cathedrals of England before visiting Rome, or I never could have felt that delightful reverence for their gray and ivy-hung antiquity after seeing these so much older remains. But, indeed, old things are not so beautiful in this dry climate and clear atmosphere as in moist England. . . . . Whatever beauty there may be in a Roman ruin is the remnant of what was beautiful originally; whereas an English ruin is more beautiful often in its decay than even it was in its primal strength. If we ever build such noble structures as these Roman ones, we can have just as good ruins, after two thousand years, in the United States; but we never can have a Furness Abbey or a Kenilworth. The Corso, and perhaps some other streets, does not deserve all the vituperation which I have bestowed on the generality of Roman vias, though the Corso is narrow, not averaging more than nine paces, if so much, from sidewalk to sidewalk. But palace after palace stands along almost its whole extent,--not, however, that they make such architectural show on the street as palaces should. The enclosed courts were perhaps the only parts of these edifices which the founders cared to enrich architecturally. I think Linlithgow Palace, of which I saw the ruins during my last tour in Scotland, was built, by an architect who had studied these Roman palaces. There was never any idea of domestic comfort, or of what we include in the name of home, at all implicated in such structures, they being generally built by wifeless and childless churchmen for the display of pictures and statuary in galleries and long suites of rooms. I have not yet fairly begun the sight-seeing of Rome. I have been four or five times to St. Peter's, and always with pleasure, because there is such a delightful, summerlike warmth the moment we pass beneath the heavy, padded leather curtains that protect the entrances. It is almost impossible not to believe that this genial temperature is the result of furnace-heat, but, really, it is the warmth of last summer, which will be included within those massive walls, and in that vast immensity of space, till, six months hence, this winter's chill will just have made its way thither. It would be an excellent plan for a valetudinarian to lodge during the winter in St. Peter's, perhaps establishing his household in one of the papal tombs. I become, I think, more sensible of the size of St. Peter's, but am as yet far from being overwhelmed by it. It is not, as one expects, so big as all out of doors, nor is its dome so immense as that of the firmament. It looked queer, however, the other day, to see a little ragged boy, the very least of human things, going round and kneeling at shrine after shrine, and a group of children standing on tiptoe to reach the vase of holy water. . . . . On coming out of St. Peter's at my last visit, I saw a great sheet of ice around the fountain on the right hand, and some little Romans awkwardly sliding on it. I, too, took a slide, just for the sake of doing what I never thought to do in Rome. This inclement weather, I should suppose, must make the whole city very miserable; for the native Romans, I am told, never keep any fire, except for culinary purposes, even in the severest winter. They flee from their cheerless houses into the open air, and bring their firesides along with them in the shape of small earthen vases, or pipkins, with a handle by which they carry them up and down the streets, and so warm at least their hands with the lighted charcoal. I have had glimpses through open doorways into interiors, and saw them as dismal as tombs. Wherever I pass my summers, let me spend my winters in a cold country. We went yesterday to the Pantheon. . . . . When I first came to Rome, I felt embarrassed and unwilling to pass, with my heresy, between a devotee and his saint; for they often shoot their prayers at a shrine almost quite across the church. But there seems to be no violation of etiquette in so doing. A woman begged of us in the Pantheon, and accused my wife of impiety for not giving her an alms. . . . . People of very decent appearance are often unexpectedly converted into beggars as you approach them; but in general they take a "No" at once. February 9th.--For three or four days it has been cloudy and rainy, which is the greater pity, as this should be the gayest and merriest part of the Carnival. I go out but little,--yesterday only as far as Pakenham's and Hooker's bank in the Piazza de' Spagna, where I read Galignani and the American papers. At last, after seeing in England more of my fellow-compatriots than ever before, I really am disjoined from my country. To-day I walked out along the Pincian Hill. . . . . As the clouds still threatened rain, I deemed it my safest course to go to St. Peter's for refuge. Heavy and dull as the day was, the effect of this great world of a church was still brilliant in the interior, as if it had a sunshine of its own, as well as its own temperature; and, by and by, the sunshine of the outward world came through the windows, hundreds of feet aloft, and fell upon the beautiful inlaid pavement. . . . . Against a pillar, on one side of the nave, is a mosaic copy of Raphael's Transfiguration, fitly framed within a great arch of gorgeous marble; and, no doubt, the indestructible mosaic has preserved it far more completely than the fading and darkening tints in which the artist painted it. At any rate, it seemed to me the one glorious picture that I have ever seen. The pillar nearest the great entrance, on the left of the nave, supports the monument to the Stuart family, where two winged figures, with inverted torches, stand on either side of a marble door, which is closed forever. It is an impressive monument, for you feel as if the last of the race had passed through that door. Emerging from the church, I saw a French sergeant drilling his men in the piazza. These French soldiers are prominent objects everywhere about the city, and make up more of its sight and sound than anything else that lives. They stroll about individually; they pace as sentinels in all the public places; and they march up and down in squads, companies, and battalions, always with a very great din of drum, fife, and trumpet; ten times the proportion of music that the same number of men would require elsewhere; and it reverberates with ten times the noise, between the high edifices of these lanes, that it could make in broader streets. Nevertheless, I have no quarrel with the French soldiers; they are fresh, healthy, smart, honest-looking young fellows enough, in blue coats and red trousers; . . . . and, at all events, they serve as an efficient police, making Rome as safe as London; whereas, without them, it would very likely be a den of banditti. On my way home I saw a few tokens of the Carnival, which is now in full progress; though, as it was only about one o'clock, its frolics had not commenced for the day. . . . . I question whether the Romans themselves take any great interest in the Carnival. The balconies along the Corso were almost entirely taken by English and Americans, or other foreigners. As I approached the bridge of St. Angelo, I saw several persons engaged, as I thought, in fishing in the Tiber, with very strong lines; but on drawing nearer I found that they were trying to hook up the branches, and twigs, and other drift-wood, which the recent rains might have swept into the river. There was a little heap of what looked chiefly like willow twigs, the poor result of their labor. The hook was a knot of wood, with the lopped-off branches projecting in three or four prongs. The Tiber has always the hue of a mud-puddle; but now, after a heavy rain which has washed the clay into it, it looks like pease-soup. It is a broad and rapid stream, eddying along as if it were in haste to disgorge its impurities into the sea. On the left side, where the city mostly is situated, the buildings hang directly over the stream; on the other, where stand the Castle of St. Angelo and the Church of St. Peter, the town does not press so imminent upon the shore. The banks are clayey, and look as if the river had been digging them away for ages; but I believe its bed is higher than of yore. February 10th.--I went out to-day, and, going along the Via Felice and the Via delle Quattro Fontane, came unawares to the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, on the summit of the Esquiline Hill. I entered it, without in the least knowing what church it was, and found myself in a broad and noble nave, both very simple and very grand. There was a long row of Ionic columns of marble, twenty or thereabouts on each side, supporting a flat roof. There were vaulted side aisles, and, at the farther end, a bronze canopy over the high altar; and all along the length of the side aisles were shrines with pictures, sculpture, and burning lamps; the whole church, too, was lined with marble: the roof was gilded; and yet the general effect of severe and noble simplicity triumphed over all the ornament. I should have taken it for a Roman temple, retaining nearly its pristine aspect; but Murray tells us that it was founded A. D. 342 by Pope Liberius, on the spot precisely marked out by a miraculous fall of snow, in the month of August, and it has undergone many alterations since his time. But it is very fine, and gives the beholder the idea of vastness, which seems harder to attain than anything else. On the right hand, approaching the high altar, there is a chapel, separated from the rest of the church by an iron paling; and, being admitted into it with another party, I found it most elaborately magnificent. But one magnificence outshone another, and made itself the brightest conceivable for the moment. However, this chapel was as rich as the most precious marble could make it, in pillars and pilasters, and broad, polished slabs, covering the whole walls (except where there were splendid and glowing frescos; or where some monumental statuary or bas-relief, or mosaic picture filled up an arched niche). Its architecture was a dome, resting on four great arches; and in size it would alone have been a church. In the centre of the mosaic pavement there was a flight of steps, down which we went, and saw a group in marble, representing the nativity of Christ, which, judging by the unction with which our guide talked about it, must have been of peculiar sanctity. I hate to leave this chapel and church, without being able to say any one thing that may reflect a portion of their beauty, or of the feeling which they excite. Kneeling against many of the pillars there were persons in prayer, and I stepped softly, fearing lest my tread on the marble pavement should disturb them,--a needless precaution, however, for nobody seems to expect it, nor to be disturbed by the lack of it. The situation of the church, I should suppose, is the loftiest in Rome: it has a fountain at one end, and a column at the other; but I did not pay particular attention to either, nor to the exterior of the church itself. On my return, I turned aside from the Via delle Quattro Fontane into the Via Quirinalis, and was led by it into the Piazza di Monte Cavallo. The street through which I passed was broader, cleanlier, and statelier than most streets in Rome, and bordered by palaces; and the piazza had noble edifices around it, and a fountain, an obelisk, and two nude statues in the centre. The obelisk was, as the inscription indicated, a relic of Egypt; the basin of the fountain was an immense bowl of Oriental granite, into which poured a copious flood of water, discolored by the rain; the statues were colossal,--two beautiful young men, each holding a fiery steed. On the pedestal of one was the inscription, OPUS PHIDIAE; on the other, OPUS PRAXITELIS. What a city is this, when one may stumble, by mere chance,--at a street corner, as it were,--on the works of two such sculptors! I do not know the authority on which these statues (Castor and Pollux, I presume) are attributed to Phidias and Praxiteles; but they impressed me as noble and godlike, and I feel inclined to take them for what they purport to be. On one side of the piazza is the Pontifical Palace; but, not being aware of this at the time, I did not look particularly at the edifice. I came home by way of the Corso, which seemed a little enlivened by Carnival time; though, as it was not yet two o'clock, the fun had not begun for the day. The rain throws a dreary damper on the festivities. February 13th.--Day before yesterday we took J----- and R----- in a carriage, and went to see the Carnival, by driving up and down the Corso. It was as ugly a day, as respects weather, as has befallen us since we came to Rome,--cloudy, with an indecisive wet, which finally settled into a rain; and people say that such is generally the weather in Carnival time. There is very little to be said about the spectacle. Sunshine would have improved it, no doubt; but a person must have very broad sunshine within himself to be joyous on such shallow provocation. The street, at all events, would have looked rather brilliant under a sunny sky, the balconies being hung with bright-colored draperies, which were also flung out of some of the windows. . . . . Soon I had my first experience of the Carnival in a handful of confetti, right slap in my face. . . . . Many of the ladies wore loose white dominos, and some of the gentlemen had on defensive armor of blouses; and wire masks over the face were a protection for both sexes,--not a needless one, for I received a shot in my right eye which cost me many tears. It seems to be a point of courtesy (though often disregarded by Americans and English) not to fling confetti at ladies, or at non-combatants, or quiet bystanders; and the engagements with these missiles were generally between open carriages, manned with youths, who were provided with confetti for such encounters, and with bouquets for the ladies. We had one real enemy on the Corso; for our former friend Mrs. T------ was there, and as often as we passed and repassed her, she favored us with a handful of lime. Two or three times somebody ran by the carriage and puffed forth a shower of winged seeds through a tube into our faces and over our clothes; and, in the course of the afternoon, we were hit with perhaps half a dozen sugar-plums. Possibly we may not have received our fair share of these last salutes, for J----- had on a black mask, which made him look like an imp of Satan, and drew many volleys of confetti that we might otherwise have escaped. A good many bouquets were flung at our little R-----, and at us generally. . . . . This was what is called masking-day, when it is the rule to wear masks in the Corso, but the great majority of people appeared without them. . . . . Two fantastic figures, with enormous heads, set round with frizzly hair, came and grinned into our carriage, and J----- tore out a handful of hair (which proved to be sea-weed) from one of their heads, rather to the discomposure of the owner, who muttered his indignation in Italian. . . . . On comparing notes with J----- and R-----, indeed with U---- too, I find that they all enjoyed the Carnival much more than I did. Only the young ought to write descriptions of such scenes. My cold criticism chills the life out of it. February 14th.--Friday, 12th, was a sunny day, the first that we had had for some time; and my wife and I went forth to see sights as well as to make some calls that had long been due. We went first to the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, which I have already mentioned, and, on our return, we went to the Piazza di Monte Cavallo, and saw those admirable ancient statues of Castor and Pollux, which seem to me sons of the morning, and full of life and strength. The atmosphere, in such a length of time, has covered the marble surface of these statues with a gray rust, that envelops both the men and horses as with a garment; besides which, there are strange discolorations, such as patches of white moss on the elbows, and reddish streaks down the sides; but the glory of form overcomes all these defects of color. It is pleasant to observe how familiar some little birds are with these colossal statues,--hopping about on their heads and over their huge fists, and very likely they have nests in their ears or among their hair. We called at the Barberini Palace, where William Story has established himself and family for the next seven years, or more, on the third piano, in apartments that afford a very fine outlook over Rome, and have the sun in them through most of the day. Mrs. S---- invited us to her fancy ball, but we declined. On the staircase ascending to their piano we saw the ancient Greek bas-relief of a lion, whence Canova is supposed to have taken the idea of his lions on the monument in St. Peter's. Afterwards we made two or three calls in the neighborhood of the Piazza de' Spagna, finding only Mr. Hamilton Fish and family, at the Hotel d'Europe, at home, and next visited the studio of Mr. C. G. Thompson, whom I knew in Boston. He has very greatly improved since those days, and, being always a man of delicate mind, and earnestly desiring excellence for its own sake, he has won himself the power of doing beautiful and elevated works. He is now meditating a series of pictures from Shakespeare's "Tempest," the sketches of one or two of which he showed us, likewise a copy of a small Madonna, by Raphael, wrought with a minute faithfulness which it makes one a better man to observe. . . . . Mr. Thompson is a true artist, and whatever his pictures have of beauty comes from very far beneath the surface; and this, I suppose, is one weighty reason why he has but moderate success. I should like his pictures for the mere color, even if they represented nothing. His studio is in the Via Sistina; and at a little distance on the other side of the same street is William Story's, where we likewise went, and found him at work on a sitting statue of Cleopatra. William Story looks quite as vivid, in a graver way, as when I saw him last, a very young man. His perplexing variety of talents and accomplishments--he being a poet, a prose writer, a lawyer, a painter, a musician, and a sculptor--seems now to be concentrating itself into this latter vocation, and I cannot see why he should not achieve something very good. He has a beautiful statue, already finished, of Goethe's Margaret, pulling a flower to pieces to discover whether Faust loves her; a very type of virginity and simplicity. The statue of Cleopatra, now only fourteen days advanced in the clay, is as wide a step from the little maidenly Margaret as any artist could take; it is a grand subject, and he is conceiving it with depth and power, and working it out with adequate skill. He certainly is sensible of something deeper in his art than merely to make beautiful nudities and baptize them by classic names. By the by, he told me several queer stories of American visitors to his studio: one of them, after long inspecting Cleopatra, into which he has put all possible characteristics of her time and nation and of her own individuality, asked, "Have you baptized your statue yet?" as if the sculptor were waiting till his statue were finished before he chose the subject of it,--as, indeed, I should think many sculptors do. Another remarked of a statue of Hero, who is seeking Leander by torchlight, and in momentary expectation of finding his drowned body, "Is not the face a little sad?" Another time a whole party of Americans filed into his studio, and ranged themselves round his father's statue, and, after much silent examination, the spokesman of the party inquired, "Well, sir, what is this intended to represent?" William Story, in telling these little anecdotes, gave the Yankee twang to perfection. . . . . The statue of his father, his first work, is very noble, as noble and fine a portrait-statue as I ever saw. In the outer room of his studio a stone-cutter, or whatever this kind of artisan is called, was at work, transferring the statue of Hero from the plaster-cast into marble; and already, though still in some respects a block of stone, there was a wonderful degree of expression in the face. It is not quite pleasant to think that the sculptor does not really do the whole labor on his statues, but that they are all but finished to his hand by merely mechanical people. It is generally only the finishing touches that are given by his own chisel. Yesterday, being another bright day, we went to the basilica of St. John Lateran, which is the basilica next in rank to St. Peter's, and has the precedence of it as regards certain sacred privileges. It stands on a most noble site, on the outskirts of the city, commanding a view of the Sabine and Alban hills, blue in the distance, and some of them hoary with sunny snow. The ruins of the Claudian aqueduct are close at hand. The church is connected with the Lateran palace and museum, so that the whole is one edifice; but the facade of the church distinguishes it, and is very lofty and grand,--more so, it seems to me, than that of St. Peter's. Under the portico is an old statue of Constantine, representing him as a very stout and sturdy personage. The inside of the church disappointed me, though no doubt I should have been wonderstruck had I seen it a month ago. We went into one of the chapels, which was very rich in colored marbles; and, going down a winding staircase, found ourselves among the tombs and sarcophagi of the Corsini family, and in presence of a marble Pieta very beautifully sculptured. On the other side of the church we looked into the Torlonia Chapel, very rich and rather profusely gilded, but, as it seemed to me, not tawdry, though the white newness of the marble is not perfectly agreeable after being accustomed to the milder tint which time bestows on sculpture. The tombs and statues appeared like shapes and images of new-fallen snow. The most interesting thing which we saw in this church (and, admitting its authenticity, there can scarcely be a more interesting one anywhere) was the table at which the Last Supper was eaten. It is preserved in a corridor, on one side of the tribune or chancel, and is shown by torchlight suspended upon the wall beneath a covering of glass. Only the top of the table is shown, presenting a broad, flat surface of wood, evidently very old, and showing traces of dry-rot in one or two places. There are nails in it, and the attendant said that it had formerly been covered with bronze. As well as I can remember, it may be five or six feet square, and I suppose would accommodate twelve persons, though not if they reclined in the Roman fashion, nor if they sat as they do in Leonardo da Vinci's picture. It would be very delightful to believe in this table. There are several other sacred relics preserved in the church; for instance, the staircase of Pilate's house up which Jesus went, and the porphyry slab on which the soldiers cast lots for his garments. These, however, we did not see. There are very glowing frescos on portions of the walls; but, there being much whitewash instead of incrusted marble, it has not the pleasant aspect which one's eye learns to demand in Roman churches. There is a good deal of statuary along the columns of the nave, and in the monuments of the side aisles. In reference to the interior splendor of Roman churches, I must say that I think it a pity that painted windows are exclusively a Gothic ornament; for the elaborate ornamentation of these interiors puts the ordinary daylight out of countenance, so that a window with only the white sunshine coming through it, or even with a glimpse of the blue Italian sky, looks like a portion left unfinished, and therefore a blotch in the rich wall. It is like the one spot in Aladdin's palace which he left for the king, his father-in-law, to finish, after his fairy architects had exhausted their magnificence on the rest; and the sun, like the king, fails in the effort. It has what is called a porta santa, which we saw walled up, in front of the church, one side of the main entrance. I know not what gives it its sanctity, but it appears to be opened by the pope on a year of jubilee, once every quarter of a century. After our return . . . . . I took R----- along the Pincian Hill, and finally, after witnessing what of the Carnival could be seen in the Piazza del Popolo from that safe height, we went down into the Corso, and some little distance along it. Except for the sunshine, the scene was much the same as I have already described; perhaps fewer confetti and more bouquets. Some Americans and English are said to have been brought before the police authorities, and fined for throwing lime. It is remarkable that the jollity, such as it is, of the Carnival, does not extend an inch beyond the line of the Corso; there it flows along in a narrow stream, while in the nearest street we see nothing but the ordinary Roman gravity. February 15th.--Yesterday was a bright day, but I did not go out till the afternoon, when I took an hour's walk along the Pincian, stopping a good while to look at the old beggar who, for many years past, has occupied one of the platforms of the flight of steps leading from the Piazza de' Spagna to the Triniti de' Monti. Hillard commemorates him in his book. He is an unlovely object, moving about on his hands and knees, principally by aid of his hands, which are fortified with a sort of wooden shoes; while his poor, wasted lower shanks stick up in the air behind him, loosely vibrating as he progresses. He is gray, old, ragged, a pitiable sight, but seems very active in his own fashion, and bestirs himself on the approach of his visitors with the alacrity of a spider when a fly touches the remote circumference of his web. While I looked down at him he received alms from three persons, one of whom was a young woman of the lower orders; the other two were gentlemen, probably either English or American. I could not quite make out the principle on which he let some people pass without molestation, while he shuffled from one end of the platform to the other to intercept an occasional individual. He is not persistent in his demands, nor, indeed, is this a usual fault among Italian beggars. A shake of the head will stop him when wriggling towards you from a distance. I fancy he reaps a pretty fair harvest, and no doubt leads as contented and as interesting a life as most people, sitting there all day on those sunny steps, looking at the world, and making his profit out of it. It must be pretty much such an occupation as fishing, in its effect upon the hopes and apprehensions; and probably he suffers no more from the many refusals he meets with than the angler does, when he sees a fish smell at his bait and swim away. One success pays for a hundred disappointments, and the game is all the better for not being entirely in his own favor. Walking onward, I found the Pincian thronged with promenaders, as also with carriages, which drove round the verge of the gardens in an unbroken ring. To-day has been very rainy. I went out in the forenoon, and took a sitting for my bust in one of a suite of rooms formerly occupied by Canova. It was large, high, and dreary from the want of a carpet, furniture, or anything but clay and plaster. A sculptor's studio has not the picturesque charm of that of a painter, where there is color, warmth, and cheerfulness, and where the artist continually turns towards you the glow of some picture, which is resting against the wall. . . . . I was asked not to look at the bust at the close of the sitting, and, of course, I obeyed; though I have a vague idea of a heavy-browed physiognomy, something like what I have seen in the glass, but looking strangely in that guise of clay. . . . . It is a singular fascination that Rome exercises upon artists. There is clay elsewhere, and marble enough, and heads to model, and ideas may be made sensible objects at home as well as here. I think it is the peculiar mode of life that attracts, and its freedom from the inthralments of society, more than the artistic advantages which Rome offers; and, no doubt, though the artists care little about one another's works, yet they keep each other warm by the presence of so many of them. The Carnival still continues, though I hardly see how it can have withstood such a damper as this rainy day. There were several people-- three, I think--killed in the Corso on Saturday; some accounts say that they were run over by the horses in the race; others, that they were ridden down by the dragoons in clearing the course. After leaving Canova's studio, I stepped into the church of San Luigi de' Francesi, in the Via di Ripetta. It was built, I believe, by Catherine de' Medici, and is under the protection of the French government, and a most shamefully dirty place of worship, the beautiful marble columns looking dingy, for the want of loving and pious care. There are many tombs and monuments of French people, both of the past and present,-- artists, soldiers, priests, and others, who have died in Rome. It was so dusky within the church that I could hardly distinguish the pictures in the chapels and over the altar, nor did I know that there were any worth looking for. Nevertheless, there were frescos by Domenichino, and oil-paintings by Guido and others. I found it peculiarly touching to read the records, in Latin or French, of persons who had died in this foreign laud, though they were not my own country-people, and though I was even less akin to them than they to Italy. Still, there was a sort of relationship in the fact that neither they nor I belonged here. February 17th.--Yesterday morning was perfectly sunny, and we went out betimes to see churches; going first to the Capuchins', close by the Piazza Barberini. ["The Marble Faun" takes up this description of the church and of the dead monk, which we really saw, just as recounted, even to the sudden stream of blood which flowed from the nostrils, as we looked at him.-- ED.] We next went to the Trinita de' Monti, which stands at the head of the steps, leading, in several flights, from the Piazza de' Spagna. It is now connected with a convent of French nuns, and when we rang at a side door, one of the sisterhood answered the summons, and admitted us into the church. This, like that of the Capuchins', had a vaulted roof over the nave, and no side aisles, but rows of chapels instead. Unlike the Capuchins', which was filthy, and really disgraceful to behold, this church was most exquisitely neat, as women alone would have thought it worth while to keep it. It is not a very splendid church, not rich in gorgeous marbles, but pleasant to be in, if it were only for the sake of its godly purity. There was only one person in the nave; a young girl, who sat perfectly still, with her face towards the altar, as long as we stayed. Between the nave and the rest of the church there is a high iron railing, and on the other side of it were two kneeling figures in black, so motionless that I at first thought them statues; but they proved to be two nuns at their devotions; and others of the sisterhood came by and by and joined them. Nuns, at least these nuns, who are French, and probably ladies of refinement, having the education of young girls in charge, are far pleasanter objects to see and think about than monks; the odor of sanctity, in the latter, not being an agreeable fragrance. But these holy sisters, with their black crape and white muslin, looked really pure and unspotted from the world. On the iron railing above mentioned was the representation of a golden heart, pierced with arrows; for these are nuns of the Sacred Heart. In the various chapels there are several paintings in fresco, some by Daniele da Volterra; and one of them, the "Descent from the Cross," has been pronounced the third greatest picture in the world. I never should have had the slightest suspicion that it was a great picture at all, so worn and faded it looks, and so hard, so difficult to be seen, and so undelightful when one does see it. From the Trinita we went to the Santa Maria del Popolo, a church built on a spot where Nero is said to have been buried, and which was afterwards made horrible by devilish phantoms. It now being past twelve, and all the churches closing from twelve till two, we had not time to pay much attention to the frescos, oil-pictures, and statues, by Raphael and other famous men, which are to be seen here. I remember dimly the magnificent chapel of the Chigi family, and little else, for we stayed but a short time; and went next to the sculptor's studio, where I had another sitting for my bust. After I had been moulded for about an hour, we turned homeward; but my wife concluded to hire a balcony for this last afternoon and evening of the Carnival, and she took possession of it, while I went home to send to her Miss S------ and the two elder children. For my part, I took R-----, and walked, by way of the Pincian, to the Piazza del Popolo, and thence along the Corso, where, by this time, the warfare of bouquets and confetti raged pretty fiercely. The sky being blue and the sun bright, the scene looked much gayer and brisker than I had before found it; and I can conceive of its being rather agreeable than otherwise, up to the age of twenty. We got several volleys of confetti. R----- received a bouquet and a sugar-plum, and I a resounding hit from something that looked more like a cabbage than a flower. Little as I have enjoyed the Carnival, I think I could make quite a brilliant sketch of it, without very widely departing from truth. February 19th.--Day before yesterday, pretty early, we went to St. Peter's, expecting to see the pope cast ashes on the heads of the cardinals, it being Ash-Wednesday. On arriving, however, we found no more than the usual number of visitants and devotional people scattered through the broad interior of St. Peter's; and thence concluded that the ceremonies were to be performed in the Sistine Chapel. Accordingly, we went out of the cathedral, through the door in the left transept, and passed round the exterior, and through the vast courts of the Vatican, seeking for the chapel. We had blundered into the carriage-entrance of the palace; there is an entrance from some point near the front of the church, but this we did not find. The papal guards, in the strangest antique and antic costume that was ever seen,--a party-colored dress, striped with blue, red, and yellow, white and black, with a doublet and ruff, and trunk-breeches, and armed with halberds,--were on duty at the gateways, but suffered us to pass without question. Finally, we reached a large court, where some cardinals' red equipages and other carriages were drawn up, but were still at a loss as to the whereabouts of the chapel. At last an attendant kindly showed us the proper door, and led us up flights of stairs, along passages and galleries, and through halls, till at last we came to a spacious and lofty apartment adorned with frescos; this was the Sala Regia, and the antechamber to the Sistine Chapel. The attendant, meanwhile, had informed us that my wife could not be admitted to the chapel in her bonnet, and that I myself could not enter at all, for lack of a dress-coat; so my wife took off her bonnet, and, covering her head with her black lace veil, was readily let in, while I remained in the Sala Regia, with several other gentlemen, who found themselves in the same predicament as I was. There was a wonderful variety of costume to be seen and studied among the persons around me, comprising garbs that have been elsewhere laid aside for at least three centuries,--the broad, plaited, double ruff, and black velvet cloak, doublet, trunk-breeches, and sword of Queen Elizabeth's time,--the papal guard, in their striped and party-colored dress as before described, looking not a little like harlequins; other soldiers in helmets and jackboots; French officers of various uniform; monks and priests; attendants in old-fashioned and gorgeous livery; gentlemen, some in black dress-coats and pantaloons, others in wide-awake hats and tweed overcoats; and a few ladies in the prescribed costume of black; so that, in any other country, the scene might have been taken for a fancy ball. By and by, the cardinals began to arrive, and added their splendid purple robes and red hats to make the picture still more brilliant. They were old men, one or two very aged and infirm, and generally men of bulk and substance, with heavy faces, fleshy about the chin. Their red hats, trimmed with gold-lace, are a beautiful piece of finery, and are identical in shape with the black, loosely cocked beavers worn by the Catholic ecclesiastics generally. Wolsey's hat, which I saw at the Manchester Exhibition, might have been made on the same block, but apparently was never cocked, as the fashion now is. The attendants changed the upper portions of their master's attire, and put a little cap of scarlet cloth on each of their heads, after which the cardinals, one by one, or two by two, as they happened to arrive, went into the chapel, with a page behind each holding up his purple train. In the mean while, within the chapel, we heard singing and chanting; and whenever the voluminous curtains that hung before the entrance were slightly drawn apart, we outsiders glanced through, but could see only a mass of people, and beyond them still another chapel, divided from the hither one by a screen. When almost everybody had gone in, there was a stir among the guards and attendants, and a door opened, apparently communicating with the inner apartments of the Vatican. Through this door came, not the pope, as I had partly expected, but a bulky old lady in black, with a red face, who bowed towards the spectators with an aspect of dignified complaisance as she passed towards the entrance of the chapel. I took off my hat, unlike certain English gentlemen who stood nearer, and found that I had not done amiss, for it was the Queen of Spain. There was nothing else to be seen; so I went back through the antechambers (which are noble halls, richly frescoed on the walls and ceilings), endeavoring to get out through the same passages that had let me in. I had already tried to descend what I now supposed to be the Scala Santa, but had been turned back by a sentinel. After wandering to and fro a good while, I at last found myself in a long, long gallery, on each side of which were innumerable inscriptions, in Greek and Latin, on slabs of marble, built into the walls; and classic altars and tablets were ranged along, from end to end. At the extremity was a closed iron grating, from which I was retreating; but a French gentleman accosted me, with the information that the custode would admit me, if I chose, and would accompany me through the sculpture department of the Vatican. I acceded, and thus took my first view of those innumerable art-treasures, passing from one object to another, at an easy pace, pausing hardly a moment anywhere, and dismissing even the Apollo, and the Laocoon, and the Torso of Hercules, in the space of half a dozen breaths. I was well enough content to do so, in order to get a general idea of the contents of the galleries, before settling down upon individual objects. Most of the world-famous sculptures presented themselves to my eye with a kind of familiarity, through the copies and casts which I had seen; but I found the originals more different than I anticipated. The Apollo, for instance, has a face which I have never seen in any cast or copy. I must confess, however, taking such transient glimpses as I did, I was more impressed with the extent of the Vatican, and the beautiful order in which it is kept, and its great sunny, open courts, with fountains, grass, and shrubs, and the views of Rome and the Campagna from its windows,--more impressed with these, and with certain vastly capacious vases, and two seat sarcophagi,--than with the statuary. Thus I went round the whole, and was dismissed through the grated barrier into the gallery of inscriptions again; and after a little more wandering, I made my way out of the palace. . . . . Yesterday I went out betimes, and strayed through some portion of ancient Rome, to the Column of Trajan, to the Forum, thence along the Appian Way; after which I lost myself among the intricacies of the streets, and finally came out at the bridge of St. Angelo. The first observation which a stranger is led to make, in the neighborhood of Roman ruins, is that the inhabitants seem to be strangely addicted to the washing of clothes; for all the precincts of Trajan's Forum, and of the Roman Forum, and wherever else an iron railing affords opportunity to hang them, were whitened with sheets, and other linen and cotton, drying in the sun. It must be that washerwomen burrow among the old temples. The second observation is not quite so favorable to the cleanly character of the modern Romans; indeed, it is so very unfavorable, that I hardly know how to express it. But the fact is, that, through the Forum, . . . . and anywhere out of the commonest foot-track and roadway, you must look well to your steps. . . . . If you tread beneath the triumphal arch of Titus or Constantine, you had better look downward than upward, whatever be the merit of the sculptures aloft. . . . . After a while the visitant finds himself getting accustomed to this horrible state of things; and the associations of moral sublimity and beauty seem to throw a veil over the physical meannesses to which I allude. Perhaps there is something in the mind of the people of these countries that enables them quite to dissever small ugliness from great sublimity and beauty. They spit upon the glorious pavement of St. Peter's, and wherever else they like; they place paltry-looking wooden confessionals beneath its sublime arches, and ornament them with cheap little colored prints of the crucifixion; they hang tin hearts and other tinsel and trumpery at the gorgeous shrines of the saints, in chapels that are incrusted with gems, or marbles almost as precious; they put pasteboard statues of saints beneath the dome of the Pantheon; in short, they let the sublime and the ridiculous come close together, and are not in the least troubled by the proximity. It must be that their sense of the beautiful is stronger than in the Anglo-Saxon mind, and that it observes only what is fit to gratify it. To-day, which was bright and cool, my wife and I set forth immediately after breakfast, in search of the Baths of Diocletian, and the church of Santa Maria degl' Angeli. We went too far along the Via di Porta Pia, and after passing by two or three convents, and their high garden walls, and the villa Bonaparte on one side, and the villa Torlonia on the other, at last issued through the city gate. Before us, far away, were the Alban hills, the loftiest of which was absolutely silvered with snow and sunshine, and set in the bluest and brightest of skies. We now retraced our steps to the Fountain of the Termini, where is a ponderous heap of stone, representing Moses striking the rock; a colossal figure, not without a certain enormous might and dignity, though rather too evidently looking his awfullest. This statue was the death of its sculptor, whose heart was broken on account of the ridicule it excited. There are many more absurd aquatic devices in Rome, however, and few better. We turned into the Piazza de' Termini, the entrance of which is at this fountain; and after some inquiry of the French soldiers, a numerous detachment of whom appear to be quartered in the vicinity, we found our way to the portal of Santa Maria degl' Angeli. The exterior of this church has no pretensions to beauty or majesty, or, indeed, to architectural merit of any kind, or to any architecture whatever; for it looks like a confused pile of ruined brickwork, with a facade resembling half the inner curve of a large oven. No one would imagine that there was a church under that enormous heap of ancient rubbish. But the door admits you into a circular vestibule, once an apartment of Diocletian's Baths, but now a portion of the nave of the church, and surrounded with monumental busts; and thence you pass into what was the central hall; now, with little change, except of detail and ornament, transformed into the body of the church. This space is so lofty, broad, and airy, that the soul forthwith swells out and magnifies itself, for the sake of filling it. It was Michael Angelo who contrived this miracle; and I feel even more grateful to him for rescuing such a noble interior from destruction, than if he had originally built it himself. In the ceiling above, you see the metal fixtures whereon the old Romans hung their lamps; and there are eight gigantic pillars of Egyptian granite, standing as they stood of yore. There is a grand simplicity about the church, more satisfactory than elaborate ornament; but the present pope has paved and adorned one of the large chapels of the transept in very beautiful style, and the pavement of the central part is likewise laid in rich marbles. In the choir there are several pictures, one of which was veiled, as celebrated pictures frequently are in churches. A person, who seemed to be at his devotions, withdrew the veil for us, and we saw a Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, by Domenichino, originally, I believe, painted in fresco in St. Peter's, but since transferred to canvas, and removed hither. Its place at St. Peter's is supplied by a mosaic copy. I was a good deal impressed by this picture,--the dying saint, amid the sorrow of those who loved him, and the fury of his enemies, looking upward, where a company of angels, and Jesus with them, are waiting to welcome him and crown him; and I felt what an influence pictures might have upon the devotional part of our nature. The nailmarks in the hands and feet of Jesus, ineffaceable, even after he had passed into bliss and glory, touched my heart with a sense of his love for us. I think this really a great picture. We walked round the church, looking at other paintings and frescos, but saw no others that greatly interested us. In the vestibule there are monuments to Carlo Maratti and Salvator Rosa, and there is a statue of St. Bruno, by Houdon, which is pronounced to be very fine. I thought it good, but scarcely worthy of vast admiration. Houdon was the sculptor of the first statue of Washington, and of the bust, whence, I suppose, all subsequent statues have been, and will be, mainly modelled. After emerging from the church, I looked back with wonder at the stack of shapeless old brickwork that hid the splendid interior. I must go there again, and breathe freely in that noble space. February 20th.--This morning, after breakfast, I walked across the city, making a pretty straight course to the Pantheon, and thence to the bridge of St. Angelo, and to St. Peter's. It had been my purpose to go to the Fontana Paolina; but, finding that the distance was too great, and being weighed down with a Roman lassitude, I concluded to go into St. Peter's. Here I looked at Michael Angelo's Pieta, a representation of the dead Christ, in his mother's lap. Then I strolled round the great church, and find that it continues to grow upon me both in magnitude and beauty, by comparison with the many interiors of sacred edifices which I have lately seen. At times, a single, casual, momentary glimpse of its magnificence gleams upon my soul, as it were, when I happen to glance at arch opening beyond arch, and I am surprised into admiration. I have experienced that a landscape and the sky unfold the deepest beauty in a similar way; not when they are gazed at of set purpose, but when the spectator looks suddenly through a vista, among a crowd of other thoughts. Passing near the confessional for foreigners to-day, I saw a Spaniard, who had just come out of the one devoted to his native tongue, taking leave of his confessor, with an affectionate reverence, which--as well as the benign dignity of the good father--it was good to behold. . . . . I returned home early, in order to go with my wife to the Barberini Palace at two o'clock. We entered through the gateway, through the Via delle Quattro Fontane, passing one or two sentinels; for there is apparently a regiment of dragoons quartered on the ground-floor of the palace; and I stumbled upon a room containing their saddles, the other day, when seeking for Mr. Story's staircase. The entrance to the picture-gallery is by a door on the right hand, affording us a sight of a beautiful spiral staircase, which goes circling upward from the very basement to the very summit of the palace, with a perfectly easy ascent, yet confining its sweep within a moderate compass. We looked up through the interior of the spiral, as through a tube, from the bottom to the top. The pictures are contained in three contiguous rooms of the lower piano, and are few in number, comprising barely half a dozen which I should care to see again, though doubtless all have value in their way. One that attracted our attention was a picture of "Christ disputing with the Doctors," by Albert Duerer, in which was represented the ugliest, most evil-minded, stubborn, pragmatical, and contentious old Jew that ever lived under the law of Moses; and he and the child Jesus were arguing, not only with their tongues, but making hieroglyphics, as it were, by the motion of their hands and fingers. It is a very queer, as well as a very remarkable picture. But we passed hastily by this, and almost all others, being eager to see the two which chiefly make the collection famous,--Raphael's Fornarina, and Guido's portrait of Beatrice Cenci. These were found in the last of the three rooms, and as regards Beatrice Cenci, I might as well not try to say anything; for its spell is indefinable, and the painter has wrought it in a way more like magic than anything else. . . . . It is the most profoundly wrought picture in the world; no artist did it, nor could do it, again. Guido may have held the brush, but he painted "better than he knew." I wish, however, it were possible for some spectator, of deep sensibility, to see the picture without knowing anything of its subject or history; for, no doubt, we bring all our knowledge of the Cenci tragedy to the interpretation of it. Close beside Beatrice Cenci hangs the Fornarina. . . . . While we were looking at these works Miss M------ unexpectedly joined us, and we went, all three together, to the Rospigliosi Palace, in the Piazza di Monte Cavallo. A porter, in cocked hat, and with a staff of office, admitted us into a spacious court before the palace, and directed us to a garden on one side, raised as much as twenty feet above the level on which we stood. The gardener opened the gate for us, and we ascended a beautiful stone staircase, with a carved balustrade, bearing many marks of time and weather. Reaching the garden-level, we found it laid out in walks, bordered with box and ornamental shrubbery, amid which were lemon-trees, and one large old exotic from some distant clime. In the centre of the garden, surrounded by a stone balustrade, like that of the staircase, was a fish-pond, into which several jets of water were continually spouting; and on pedestals, that made part of the balusters, stood eight marble statues of Apollo, Cupid, nymphs, and other such sunny and beautiful people of classic mythology. There had been many more of these statues, but the rest had disappeared, and those which remained had suffered grievous damage, here to a nose, there to a hand or foot, and often a fracture of the body, very imperfectly mended. There was a pleasant sunshine in the garden, and a springlike, or rather a genial, autumnal atmosphere, though elsewhere it was a day of poisonous Roman chill. At the end of the garden, which was of no great extent, was an edifice, bordering on the piazza, called the Casino, which, I presume, means a garden-house. The front is richly ornamented with bas-reliefs, and statues in niches; as if it were a place for pleasure and enjoyment, and therefore ought to be beautiful. As we approached it, the door swung open, and we went into a large room on the ground-floor, and, looking up to the ceiling, beheld Guido's Aurora. The picture is as fresh and brilliant as if he had painted it with the morning sunshine which it represents. It could not be more lustrous in its lines, if he had given it the last touch an hour ago. Three or four artists were copying it at that instant, and positively their colors did not look brighter, though a great deal newer than his. The alacrity and movement, briskness and morning stir and glow, of the picture are wonderful. It seems impossible to catch its glory in a copy. Several artists, as I said, were making the attempt, and we saw two other attempted copies leaning against the wall, but it was easy to detect failure in just essential points. My memory, I believe, will be somewhat enlivened by this picture hereafter: not that I remember it very distinctly even now; but bright things leave a sheen and glimmer in the mind, like Christian's tremulous glimpse of the Celestial City. In two other rooms of the Casino we saw pictures by Domenichino, Rubens, and other famous painters, which I do not mean to speak of, because I cared really little or nothing about them. Returning into the garden, the sunny warmth of which was most grateful after the chill air and cold pavement of the Casino, we walked round the laguna, examining the statues, and looking down at some little fishes that swarmed at the stone margin of the pool. There were two infants of the Rospigliosi family: one, a young child playing with a maid and head-servant; another, the very chubbiest and rosiest boy in the world, sleeping on its nurse's bosom. The nurse was a comely woman enough, dressed in bright colors, which fitly set off the deep lines of her Italian face. An old painter very likely would have beautified and refined the pair into a Madonna, with the child Jesus; for an artist need not go far in Italy to find a picture ready composed and tinted, needing little more than to be literally copied. Miss M------ had gone away before us; but my wife and I, after leaving the Palazzo Rospigliosi, and on our way hone, went into the Church of St. Andrea, which belongs to a convent of Jesuits. I have long ago exhausted all my capacity of admiration for splendid interiors of churches, but methinks this little, little temple (it is not more than fifty or sixty feet across) has a more perfect and gem-like beauty than any other. Its shape is oval, with an oval dome, and, above that, another little dome, both of which are magnificently frescoed. Around the base of the larger dome is wreathed a flight of angels, and the smaller and upper one is encircled by a garland of cherubs,--cherub and angel all of pure white marble. The oval centre of the church is walled round with precious and lustrous marble of a red-veined variety interspersed with columns and pilasters of white; and there are arches opening through this rich wall, forming chapels, which the architect seems to have striven hard to make even more gorgeous than the main body of the church. They contain beautiful pictures, not dark and faded, but glowing, as if just from the painter's hands; and the shrines are adorned with whatever is most rare, and in one of them was the great carbuncle; at any rate, a bright, fiery gem as big as a turkey's egg. The pavement of the church was one star of various-colored marble, and in the centre was a mosaic, covering, I believe, the tomb of the founder. I have not seen, nor expect to see, anything else so entirely and satisfactorily finished as this small oval church; and I only wish I could pack it in a large box, and send it home. I must not forget that, on our way from the Barberini Palace, we stopped an instant to look at the house, at the corner of the street of the four fountains, where Milton was a guest while in Rome. He seems quite a man of our own day, seen so nearly at the hither extremity of the vista through which we look back, from the epoch of railways to that of the oldest Egyptian obelisk. The house (it was then occupied by the Cardinal Barberini) looks as if it might have been built within the present century; for mediaeval houses in Rome do not assume the aspect of antiquity; perhaps because the Italian style of architecture, or something similar, is the one more generally in vogue in most cities. February 21st.--This morning I took my way through the Porta del Popolo, intending to spend the forenoon in the Campagna; but, getting weary of the straight, uninteresting street that runs out of the gate, I turned aside from it, and soon found myself on the shores of the Tiber. It looked, as usual, like a saturated solution of yellow mud, and eddied hastily along between deep banks of clay, and over a clay bed, in which doubtless are hidden many a richer treasure than we now possess. The French once proposed to draw off the river, for the purpose of recovering all the sunken statues and relics; but the Romans made strenuous objection, on account of the increased virulence of malaria which would probably result. I saw a man on the immediate shore of the river, fifty feet or so beneath the bank on which I stood, sitting patiently, with an angling rod; and I waited to see what he might catch. Two other persons likewise sat down to watch him; but he caught nothing so long as I stayed, and at last seemed to give it up. The banks and vicinity of the river are very bare and uninviting, as I then saw them; no shade, no verdure,--a rough, neglected aspect, and a peculiar shabbiness about the few houses that were visible. Farther down the stream the dome of St. Peter's showed itself on the other side, seeming to stand on the outskirts of the city. I walked along the banks, with some expectation of finding a ferry, by which I might cross the river; but my course was soon interrupted by the wall, and I turned up a lane that led me straight back again to the Porta del Popolo. I stopped a moment, however, to see some young men pitching quoits, which they appeared to do with a good deal of skill. I went along the Via di Ripetta, and through other streets, stepping into two or three churches, one of which was the Pantheon. . . . . There are, I think, seven deep, pillared recesses around the circumference of it, each of which becomes a sufficiently capacious chapel; and alternately with these chapels there is a marble structure, like the architecture of a doorway, beneath which is the shrine of a saint; so that the whole circle of the Pantheon is filled up with the seven chapels and seven shrines. A number of persons were sitting or kneeling around; others came in while I was there, dipping their fingers in the holy water, and bending the knee, as they passed the shrines and chapels, until they reached the one which, apparently, they had selected as the particular altar for their devotions. Everybody seemed so devout, and in a frame of mind so suited to the day and place, that it really made me feel a little awkward not to be able to kneel down along with them. Unlike the worshippers in our own churches, each individual here seems to do his own individual acts of devotion, and I cannot but think it better so than to make an effort for united prayer as we do. It is my opinion that a great deal of devout and reverential feeling is kept alive in people's hearts by the Catholic mode of worship. Soon leaving the Pantheon, a few minutes' walk towards the Corso brought me to the Church of St. Ignazio, which belongs to the College of the Jesuits. It is spacious and of beautiful architecture, but not strikingly distinguished, in the latter particular, from many others; a wide and lofty nave, supported upon marble columns, between which arches open into the side aisles, and at the junction of the nave and transept a dome, resting on four great arches. The church seemed to be purposely somewhat darkened, so that I could not well see the details of the ornamentation, except the frescos on the ceiling of the nave, which were very brilliant, and done in so effectual a style, that I really could not satisfy myself that some of the figures did not actually protrude from the ceiling,--in short, that they were not colored bas-reliefs, instead of frescos. No words can express the beautiful effect, in an upholstery point of view, of this kind of decoration. Here, as at the Pantheon, there were many persons sitting silent, kneeling, or passing from shrine to shrine. I reached home at about twelve, and, at one, set out again, with my wife, towards St. Peter's, where we meant to stay till after vespers. We walked across the city, and through the Piazza de Navona, where we stopped to look at one of Bernini's absurd fountains, of which the water makes but the smallest part,--a little squirt or two amid a prodigious fuss of gods and monsters. Thence we passed by the poor, battered-down torso of Pasquin, and came, by devious ways, to the bridge of St. Angelo; the streets bearing pretty much their weekday aspect, many of the shops open, the market-stalls doing their usual business, and the people brisk and gay, though not indecorously so. I suppose there was hardly a man or woman who had not heard mass, confessed, and said their prayers; a thing which--the prayers, I mean--it would be absurd to predicate of London, New York, or any Protestant city. In however adulterated a guise, the Catholics do get a draught of devotion to slake the thirst of their souls, and methinks it must needs do them good, even if not quite so pure as if it came from better cisterns, or from the original fountain-head. Arriving at St. Peter's shortly after two, we walked round the whole church, looking at all the pictures and most of the monuments, . . . . and paused longest before Guido's "Archangel Michael overcoming Lucifer." This is surely one of the most beautiful things in the world, one of the human conceptions that are imbued most deeply with the celestial. . . . . We then sat down in one of the aisles and awaited the beginning of vespers, which we supposed would take place at half past three. Four o'clock came, however, and no vespers; and as our dinner-hour is five, . . . . we at last cane away without hearing the vesper hymn. February 23d.--Yesterday, at noon, we set out for the Capitol, and after going up the acclivity (not from the Forum, but from the opposite direction), stopped to look at the statues of Castor and Pollux, which, with other sculptures, look down the ascent. Castor and his brother seem to me to have heads disproportionately large, and are not so striking, in any respect, as such great images ought to be. But we heartily admired the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, . . . . and looked at a fountain, principally composed, I think, of figures representing the Nile and the Tiber, who loll upon their elbows and preside over the gushing water; and between them, against the facade of the Senator's Palace, there is a statue of Minerva, with a petticoat of red porphyry. Having taken note of these objects, we went to the museum, in an edifice on our left, entering the piazza, and here, in the vestibule, we found various old statues and relics. Ascending the stairs, we passed through a long gallery, and, turning to our left, examined somewhat more carefully a suite of rooms running parallel with it. The first of these contained busts of the Caesars and their kindred, from the epoch of the mightiest Julius downward; eighty-three, I believe, in all. I had seen a bust of Julius Caesar in the British Museum, and was surprised at its thin and withered aspect; but this head is of a very ugly old man indeed,--wrinkled, puckered, shrunken, lacking breadth and substance; careworn, grim, as if he had fought hard with life, and had suffered in the conflict; a man of schemes, and of eager effort to bring his schemes to pass. His profile is by no means good, advancing from the top of his forehead to the tip of his nose, and retreating, at about the same angle, from the latter point to the bottom of his chin, which seems to be thrust forcibly down into his meagre neck,--not that he pokes his head forward, however, for it is particularly erect. The head of Augustus is very beautiful, and appears to be that of a meditative, philosophic man, saddened with the sense that it is not very much worth while to be at the summit of human greatness after all. It is a sorrowful thing to trace the decay of civilization through this series of busts, and to observe how the artistic skill, so requisite at first, went on declining through the dreary dynasty of the Caesars, till at length the master of the world could not get his head carved in better style than the figure-head of a ship. In the next room there were better statues than we had yet seen; but in the last room of the range we found the "Dying Gladiator," of which I had already caught a glimpse in passing by the open door. It had made all the other treasures of the gallery tedious in my eagerness to come to that. I do not believe that so much pathos is wrought into any other block of stone. Like all works of the highest excellence, however, it makes great demands upon the spectator. He must make a generous gift of his sympathies to the sculptor, and help out his skill with all his heart, or else he will see little more than a skilfully wrought surface. It suggests far more than it shows. I looked long at this statue, and little at anything else, though, among other famous works, a statue of Antinous was in the same room. I was glad when we left the museum, which, by the by, was piercingly chill, as if the multitude of statues radiated cold out of their marble substance. We might have gone to see the pictures in the Palace of the Conservatori, and S-----, whose receptivity is unlimited and forever fresh, would willingly have done so; but I objected, and we went towards the Forum. I had noticed, two or three times, an inscription over a mean-looking door in this neighborhood, stating that here was the entrance to the prison of the holy apostles Peter and Paul; and we soon found the spot, not far from the Forum, with two wretched frescos of the apostles above the inscription. We knocked at the door without effect; but a lame beggar, who sat at another door of the same house (which looked exceedingly like a liquor-shop), desired us to follow him, and began to ascend to the Capitol, by the causeway leading from the Forum. A little way upward we met a woman, to whom the beggar delivered us over, and she led us into a church or chapel door, and pointed to a long flight of steps, which descended through twilight into utter darkness. She called to somebody in the lower regions, and then went away, leaving us to get down this mysterious staircase by ourselves. Down we went, farther and farther from the daylight, and found ourselves, anon, in a dark chamber or cell, the shape or boundaries of which we could not make out, though it seemed to be of stone, and black and dungeon-like. Indistinctly, and from a still farther depth in the earth, we heard voices,--one voice, at least,--apparently not addressing ourselves, but some other persons; and soon, directly beneath our feet, we saw a glimmering of light through a round, iron-grated hole in the bottom of the dungeon. In a few moments the glimmer and the voice came up through this hole, and the light disappeared, and it and the voice came glimmering and babbling up a flight of stone stairs, of which we had not hitherto been aware. It was the custode, with a party of visitors, to whom he had been showing St. Peter's dungeon. Each visitor was provided with a wax taper, and the custode gave one to each of us, bidding us wait a moment while he conducted the other party to the upper air. During his absence we examined the cell, as well as our dim lights would permit, and soon found an indentation in the wall, with an iron grate put over it for protection, and an inscription above informing us that the Apostle Peter had here left the imprint of his visage; and, in truth, there is a profile there,--forehead, nose, mouth, and chin,--plainly to be seen, an intaglio in the solid rock. We touched it with the tips of our fingers, as well as saw it with our eyes. The custode soon returned, and led us down the darksome steps, chattering in Italian all the time. It is not a very long descent to the lower cell, the roof of which is so low that I believe I could have reached it with my hand. We were now in the deepest and ugliest part of the old Mamertine Prison, one of the few remains of the kingly period of Rome, and which served the Romans as a state-prison for hundreds of years before the Christian era. A multitude of criminals or innocent persons, no doubt, have languished here in misery, and perished in darkness. Here Jugurtha starved; here Catiline's adherents were strangled; and, methinks, there cannot be in the world another such an evil den, so haunted with black memories and indistinct surmises of guilt and suffering. In old Rome, I suppose, the citizens never spoke of this dungeon above their breath. It looks just as bad as it is; round, only seven paces across, yet so obscure that our tapers could not illuminate it from side to side,-- the stones of which it is constructed being as black as midnight. The custode showed us a stone post, at the side of the cell, with the hole in the top of it, into which, he said, St. Peter's chain had been fastened; and he uncovered a spring of water, in the middle of the stone floor, which he told us had miraculously gushed up to enable the saint to baptize his jailer. The miracle was perhaps the more easily wrought, inasmuch as Jugurtha had found the floor of the dungeon oozy with wet. However, it is best to be as simple and childlike as we can in these matters; and whether St. Peter stamped his visage into the stone, and wrought this other miracle or no, and whether or no he ever was in the prison at all, still the belief of a thousand years and more gives a sort of reality and substance to such traditions. The custode dipped an iron ladle into the miraculous water, and we each of us drank a sip; and, what is very remarkable, to me it seemed hard water and almost brackish, while many persons think it the sweetest in Rome. I suspect that St. Peter still dabbles in this water, and tempers its qualities according to the faith of those who drink it. The staircase descending into the lower dungeon is comparatively modern, there having been no entrance of old, except through the small circular opening in the roof. In the upper cell the custode showed us an ancient flight of stairs, now built into the wall, which used to lead from the Capitol. The whole precincts are now consecrated, and I believe the upper portion, perhaps both upper and lower, are a shrine or a chapel. I now left S------ in the Forum, and went to call on Mr. J. P. K------ at the Hotel d'Europe. I found him just returned from a drive,--a gentleman of about sixty, or more, with gray hair, a pleasant, intellectual face, and penetrating, but not unkindly eyes. He moved infirmly, being on the recovery from an illness. We went up to his saloon together, and had a talk,--or, rather, he had it nearly all to himself,--and particularly sensible talk, too, and full of the results of learning and experience. In the first place, he settled the whole Kansas difficulty; then he made havoc of St. Peter, who came very shabbily out of his hands, as regarded his early character in the Church, and his claims to the position he now holds in it. Mr. K------ also gave a curious illustration, from something that happened to himself, of the little dependence that can be placed on tradition purporting to be ancient, and I capped his story by telling him how the site of my town-pump, so plainly indicated in the sketch itself, has already been mistaken in the city council and in the public prints. February 24th.--Yesterday I crossed the Ponte Sisto, and took a short ramble on the other side of the river; and it rather surprised me to discover, pretty nearly opposite the Capitoline Hill, a quay, at which several schooners and barks, of two or three hundred tons' burden, were moored. There was also a steamer, armed with a large gun and two brass swivels on her forecastle, and I know not what artillery besides. Probably she may have been a revenue-cutter. Returning I crossed the river by way of the island of St. Bartholomew over two bridges. The island is densely covered with buildings, and is a separate small fragment of the city. It was a tradition of the ancient Romans that it was formed by the aggregation of soil and rubbish brought down by the river, and accumulating round the nucleus of some sunken baskets. On reaching the hither side of the river, I soon struck upon the ruins of the theatre of Marcellus, which are very picturesque, and the more so from being closely linked in, indeed, identified with the shops, habitations, and swarming life of modern Rome. The most striking portion was a circular edifice, which seemed to have been composed of a row of Ionic columns standing upon a lower row of Doric, many of the antique pillars being yet perfect; but the intervening arches built up with brickwork, and the whole once magnificent structure now tenanted by poor and squalid people, as thick as mites within the round of an old cheese. From this point I cannot very clearly trace out my course; but I passed, I think, between the Circus Maximus and the Palace of the Caesars, and near the Baths of Caracalla, and went into the cloisters of the Church of San Gregorio. All along I saw massive ruins, not particularly picturesque or beautiful, but huge, mountainous piles, chiefly of brickwork, somewhat tweed-grown here and there, but oftener bare and dreary. . . . . All the successive ages since Rome began to decay have done their best to ruin the very ruins by taking away the marble and the hewn stone for their own structures, and leaving only the inner filling up of brickwork, which the ancient architects never designed to be seen. The consequence of all this is, that, except for the lofty and poetical associations connected with it, and except, too, for the immense difference in magnitude, a Roman ruin may be in itself not more picturesque than I have seen an old cellar, with a shattered brick chimney half crumbling down into it, in New England. By this time I knew not whither I was going, and turned aside from a broad, paved road (it was the Appian Way) into the Via Latina, which I supposed would lead to one of the city gates. It was a lonely path: on my right hand extensive piles of ruin, in strange shapes or shapelessness, built of the broad and thin old Roman bricks, such as may be traced everywhere, when the stucco has fallen away from a modern Roman house; for I imagine there has not been a new brick made here for a thousand years. On my left, I think, was a high wall, and before me, grazing in the road . . . . [the buffalo calf of the Marble Faun.--ED.]. The road went boldly on, with a well-worn track up to the very walls of the city; but there it abruptly terminated at an ancient, closed-up gateway. From a notice posted against a door, which appeared to be the entrance to the ruins on my left, I found that these were the remains of Columbaria, where the dead used to be put away in pigeon-holes. Reaching the paved road again, I kept on my course, passing the tomb of the Scipios, and soon came to the gate of San Sebastiano, through which I entered the Campagna. Indeed, the scene around was so rural, that I had fancied myself already beyond the walls. As the afternoon was getting advanced, I did not proceed any farther towards the blue hills which I saw in the distance, but turned to my left, following a road that runs round the exterior of the city wall. It was very dreary and solitary,-- not a house on the whole track, with the broad and shaggy Campagna on one side, and the high, bare wall, looking down over my head, on the other. It is not, any more than the other objects of the scene, a very picturesque wall, but is little more than a brick garden-fence seen through a magnifying-glass, with now and then a tower, however, and frequent buttresses, to keep its height of fifty feet from toppling over. The top was ragged, and fringed with a few weeds; there had been embrasures for guns and eyelet-holes for musketry, but these were plastered up with brick or stone. I passed one or two walled-up gateways (by the by, the Parts, Latina was the gate through which Belisarius first entered Rome), and one of these had two high, round towers, and looked more Gothic and venerable with antique strength than any other portion of the wall. Immediately after this I came to the gate of San Giovanni, just within which is the Basilica of St. John Lateran, and there I was glad to rest myself upon a bench before proceeding homeward. There was a French sentinel at this gateway, as at all the others; for the Gauls have always been a pest to Rome, and now gall her worse than ever. I observed, too, that an official, in citizen's dress, stood there also, and appeared to exercise a supervision over some carts with country produce, that were entering just then. February 25th.--We went this forenoon to the Palazzo Borghese, which is situated on a street that runs at right angles with the Corso, and very near the latter. Most of the palaces in Rome, and the Borghese among them, were built somewhere about the sixteenth century; this in 1590, I believe. It is an immense edifice, standing round the four sides of a quadrangle; and though the suite of rooms comprising the picture-gallery forms an almost interminable vista, they occupy only a part of the ground-floor of one side. We enter from the street into a large court, surrounded with a corridor, the arches of which support a second series of arches above. The picture-rooms open from one into another, and have many points of magnificence, being large and lofty, with vaulted ceilings and beautiful frescos, generally of mythological subjects, in the flat central part of the vault. The cornices are gilded; the deep embrasures of the windows are panelled with wood-work; the doorways are of polished and variegated marble, or covered with a composition as hard, and seemingly as durable. The whole has a kind of splendid shabbiness thrown over it, like a slight coating of rust; the furniture, at least the damask chairs, being a good deal worn, though there are marble and mosaic tables, which may serve to adorn another palace when this one crumbles away with age. One beautiful hall, with a ceiling more richly gilded than the rest, is panelled all round with large looking-glasses, on which are painted pictures, both landscapes and human figures, in oils; so that the effect is somewhat as if you saw these objects represented in the mirrors. These glasses must be of old date, perhaps coeval with the first building of the palace; for they are so much dimmed, that one's own figure appears indistinct in them, and more difficult to be traced than the pictures which cover them half over. It was very comfortless,-- indeed, I suppose nobody ever thought of being comfortable there, since the house was built,--but especially uncomfortable on a chill, damp day like this. My fingers were quite numb before I got half-way through the suite of apartments, in spite of a brazier of charcoal which was smouldering into ashes in two or three of the rooms. There was not, so far as I remember, a single fireplace in the suite. A considerable number of visitors--not many, however--were there; and a good many artists; and three or four ladies among them were making copies of the more celebrated pictures, and in all or in most cases missing the especial points that made their celebrity and value. The Prince Borghese certainly demeans himself like a kind and liberal gentleman, in throwing open this invaluable collection to the public to see, and for artists to carry away with them, and diffuse all over the world, so far as their own power and skill will permit. It is open every day of the week, except Saturday and Sunday, without any irksome restriction or supervision; and the fee, which custom requires the visitor to pay to the custode, has the good effect of making us feel that we are not intruders, nor received in an exactly eleemosynary way. The thing could not be better managed. The collection is one of the most celebrated in the world, and contains between eight and nine hundred pictures, many of which are esteemed masterpieces. I think I was not in a frame for admiration to-day, nor could achieve that free and generous surrender of myself which I have already said is essential to the proper estimate of anything excellent. Besides, how is it possible to give one's soul, or any considerable part of it, to a single picture, seen for the first time, among a thousand others, all of which set forth their own claims in an equally good light? Furthermore, there is an external weariness, and sense of a thousand-fold sameness to be overcome, before we can begin to enjoy a gallery of the old Italian masters. . . . . I remember but one painter, Francia, who seems really to have approached this awful class of subjects (Christs and Madonnas) in a fitting spirit; his pictures are very singular and awkward, if you look at them with merely an external eye, but they are full of the beauty of holiness, and evidently wrought out as acts of devotion, with the deepest sincerity; and are veritable prayers upon canvas. . . . . I was glad, in the very last of the twelve rooms, to come upon some Dutch and Flemish pictures, very few, but very welcome; Rubens, Rembrandt, Vandyke, Paul Potter, Teniers, and others,--men of flesh and blood, and warm fists, and human hearts. As compared with them, these mighty Italian masters seem men of polished steel; not human, nor addressing themselves so much to human sympathies, as to a formed, intellectual taste. March 1st.--To-day began very unfavorably; but we ventured out at about eleven o'clock, intending to visit the gallery of the Colonna Palace. Finding it closed, however, on account of the illness of the custode, we determined to go to the picture-gallery of the Capitol; and, on our way thither, we stepped into Il Gesu, the grand and rich church of the Jesuits, where we found a priest in white, preaching a sermon, with vast earnestness of action and variety of tones, insomuch that I fancied sometimes that two priests were in the agony of sermonizing at once. He had a pretty large and seemingly attentive audience clustered round him from the entrance of the church, half-way down the nave; while in the chapels of the transepts and in the remoter distances were persons occupied with their own individual devotion. We sat down near the chapel of St. Ignazio, which is adorned with a picture over the altar, and with marble sculptures of the Trinity aloft, and of angels fluttering at the sides. What I particularly noted (for the angels were not very real personages, being neither earthly nor celestial) was the great ball of lapis lazuli, the biggest in the world, at the feet of the First Person in the Trinity. The church is a splendid one, lined with a great variety of precious marbles, . . . . but partly, perhaps, owing to the dusky light, as well as to the want of cleanliness, there was a dingy effect upon the whole. We made but a very short stay, our New England breeding causing us to feel shy of moving about the church in sermon time. It rained when we reached the Capitol, and, as the museum was not yet open, we went into the Palace of the Conservators, on the opposite side of the piazza. Around the inner court of the ground-floor, partly under two opposite arcades, and partly under the sky, are several statues and other ancient sculptures; among them a statue of Julius Caesar, said to be the only authentic one, and certainly giving an impression of him more in accordance with his character than the withered old face in the museum; also, a statue of Augustus in middle age, still retaining a resemblance to the bust of him in youth; some gigantic heads and hands and feet in marble and bronze; a stone lion and horse, which lay long at the bottom of a river, broken and corroded, and were repaired by Michel Angelo; and other things which it were wearisome to set down. We inquired of two or three French soldiers the way into the picture-gallery; but it is our experience that French soldiers in Rome never know anything of what is around them, not even the name of the palace or public place over which they stand guard; and though invariably civil, you might as well put a question to a statue of an old Roman as to one of them. While we stood under the loggia, however, looking at the rain plashing into the court, a soldier of the Papal Guard kindly directed us up the staircase, and even took pains to go with us to the very entrance of the picture-rooms. Thank Heaven, there are but two of them, and not many pictures which one cares to look at very long. Italian galleries are at a disadvantage as compared with English ones, inasmuch as the pictures are not nearly such splendid articles of upholstery; though, very likely, having undergone less cleaning and varnishing, they may retain more perfectly the finer touches of the masters. Nevertheless, I miss the mellow glow, the rich and mild external lustre, and even the brilliant frames of the pictures I have seen in England. You feel that they have had loving care taken of them; even if spoiled, it is because they have been valued so much. But these pictures in Italian galleries look rusty and lustreless, as far as the exterior is concerned; and, really, the splendor of the painting, as a production of intellect and feeling, has a good deal of difficulty in shining through such clouds. There is a picture at the Capitol, the "Rape of Europa," by Paul Veronese, that would glow with wonderful brilliancy if it were set in a magnificent frame, and covered with a sunshine of varnish; and it is a kind of picture that would not be desecrated, as some deeper and holier ones might be, by any splendor of external adornment that could be bestowed on it. It is deplorable and disheartening to see it in faded and shabby plight,--this joyous, exuberant, warm, voluptuous work. There is the head of a cow, thrust into the picture, and staring with wild, ludicrous wonder at the godlike bull, so as to introduce quite a new sentiment. Here, and at the Borghese Palace, there were some pictures by Garofalo, an artist of whom I never heard before, but who seemed to have been a man of power. A picture by Marie Subleyras--a miniature copy from one by her husband, of the woman anointing the feet of Christ--is most delicately and beautifully finished, and would be an ornament to a drawing-room; a thing that could not truly be said of one in a hundred of these grim masterpieces. When they were painted life was not what it is now, and the artists had not the same ends in view. . . . . It depresses the spirits to go from picture to picture, leaving a portion of your vital sympathy at every one, so that you come, with a kind of half-torpid desperation, to the end. On our way down the staircase we saw several noteworthy bas-reliefs, and among them a very ancient one of Curtius plunging on horseback into the chasm in the Forum. It seems to me, however, that old sculpture affects the spirits even more dolefully than old painting; it strikes colder to the heart, and lies heavier upon it, being marble, than if it were merely canvas. My wife went to revisit the museum, which we had already seen, on the other side of the piazza; but, being cold, I left her there, and went out to ramble in the sun; for it was now brightly, though fitfully, shining again. I walked through the Forum (where a thorn thrust itself out and tore the sleeve of my talma) and under the Arch of Titus, towards the Coliseum. About a score of French drummers were beating a long, loud roll-call, at the base of the Coliseum, and under its arches; and a score of trumpeters responded to these, from the rising ground opposite the Arch of Constantine; and the echoes of the old Roman ruins, especially those of the Palace of the Caesars, responded to this martial uproar of the barbarians. There seemed to be no cause for it; but the drummers beat, and the trumpeters blew, as long as I was within hearing. I walked along the Appian Way as far as the Baths of Caracalla. The Palace of the Caesars, which I have never yet explored, appears to be crowned by the walls of a convent, built, no doubt, out of some of the fragments that would suffice to build a city; and I think there is another convent among the baths. The Catholics have taken a peculiar pleasure in planting themselves in the very citadels of paganism, whether temples or palaces. There has been a good deal of enjoyment in the destruction of old Rome. I often think so when I see the elaborate pains that have been taken to smash and demolish some beautiful column, for no purpose whatever, except the mere delight of annihilating a noble piece of work. There is something in the impulse with which one sympathizes; though I am afraid the destroyers were not sufficiently aware of the mischief they did to enjoy it fully. Probably, too, the early Christians were impelled by religious zeal to destroy the pagan temples, before the happy thought occurred of converting them into churches. March 3d.--This morning was U----'s birthday, and we celebrated it by taking a barouche, and driving (the whole family) out on the Appian Way as far as the tomb of Cecilia Metella. For the first time since we came to Rome, the weather was really warm,--a kind of heat producing languor and disinclination to active movement, though still a little breeze which was stirring threw an occasional coolness over us, and made us distrust the almost sultry atmosphere. I cannot think the Roman climate healthy in any of its moods that I have experienced. Close on the other side of the road are the ruins of a Gothic chapel, little more than a few bare walls and painted windows, and some other fragmentary structures which we did not particularly examine. U---- and I clambered through a gap in the wall, extending from the basement of the tomb, and thus, getting into the field beyond, went quite round the mausoleum and the remains of the castle connected with it. The latter, though still high and stalwart, showed few or no architectural features of interest, being built, I think, principally of large bricks, and not to be compared to English ruins as a beautiful or venerable object. A little way beyond Cecilia Metella's tomb, the road still shows a specimen of the ancient Roman pavement, composed of broad, flat flagstones, a good deal cracked and worn, but sound enough, probably, to outlast the little cubes which make the other portions of the road so uncomfortable. We turned back from this point and soon re-entered the gate of St. Sebastian, which is flanked by two small towers, and just within which is the old triumphal arch of Drusus,--a sturdy construction, much dilapidated as regards its architectural beauty, but rendered far more picturesque than it could have been in its best days by a crown of verdure on its head. Probably so much of the dust of the highway has risen in clouds and settled there, that sufficient soil for shrubbery to root itself has thus been collected, by small annual contributions, in the course of two thousand years. A little farther towards the city we turned aside from the Appian Way, and came to the site of some ancient Columbaria, close by what seemed to partake of the character of a villa and a farm-house. A man came out of the house and unlocked a door in a low building, apparently quite modern; but on entering we found ourselves looking into a large, square chamber, sunk entirely beneath the surface of the ground. A very narrow and steep staircase of stone, and evidently ancient, descended into this chamber; and, going down, we found the walls hollowed on all sides into little semicircular niches, of which, I believe, there were nine rows, one above another, and nine niches in each row. Thus they looked somewhat like the little entrances to a pigeon-house, and hence the name of Columbarium. Each semicircular niche was about a foot in its semidiameter. In the centre of this subterranean chamber was a solid square column, or pier, rising to the roof, and containing other niches of the same pattern, besides one that was high and deep, rising to the height of a man from the floor on each of the four sides. In every one of the semicircular niches were two round holes covered with an earthen plate, and in each hole were ashes and little fragments of bones,--the ashes and bones of the dead, whose names were inscribed in Roman capitals on marble slabs inlaid into the wall over each individual niche. Very likely the great ones in the central pier had contained statues, or busts, or large urns; indeed, I remember that some such things were there, as well as bas-reliefs in the walls; but hardly more than the general aspect of this strange place remains in my mind. It was the Columbarium of the connections or dependants of the Caesars; and the impression left on me was, that this mode of disposing of the dead was infinitely preferable to any which has been adopted since that day. The handful or two of dry dust and bits of dry bones in each of the small round holes had nothing disgusting in them, and they are no drier now than they were when first deposited there. I would rather have my ashes scattered over the soil to help the growth of the grass and daisies; but still I should not murmur much at having them decently pigeon-holed in a Roman tomb. After ascending out of this chamber of the dead, we looked down into another similar one, containing the ashes of Pompey's household, which was discovered only a very few years ago. Its arrangement was the same as that first described, except that it had no central pier with a passage round it, as the former had. While we were down in the first chamber the proprietor of the spot--a half-gentlemanly and very affable kind of person--came to us, and explained the arrangements of the Columbarium, though, indeed, we understood them better by their own aspect than by his explanation. The whole soil around his dwelling is elevated much above the level of the road, and it is probable that, if he chose to excavate, he might bring to light many more sepulchral chambers, and find his profit in them too, by disposing of the urns and busts. What struck me as much as anything was the neatness of these subterranean apartments, which were quite as fit to sleep in as most of those occupied by living Romans; and, having undergone no wear and tear, they were in as good condition as on the day they were built. In this Columbarium, measuring about twenty feet square, I roughly estimate that there have been deposited together the remains of at least seven or eight hundred persons, reckoning two little heaps of bones and ashes in each pigeon-hole, nine pigeon-holes in each row, and nine rows on each side, besides those on the middle pier. All difficulty in finding space for the dead would be obviated by returning to the ancient fashion of reducing them to ashes,--the only objection, though a very serious one, being the quantity of fuel that it would require. But perhaps future chemists may discover some better means of consuming or dissolving this troublesome mortality of ours. We got into the carriage again, and, driving farther towards the city, came to the tomb of the Scipios, of the exterior of which I retain no very definite idea. It was close upon the Appian Way, however, though separated from it by a high fence, and accessible through a gateway, leading into a court. I think the tomb is wholly subterranean, and that the ground above it is covered with the buildings of a farm-house; but of this I cannot be certain, as we were led immediately into a dark, underground passage, by an elderly peasant, of a cheerful and affable demeanor. As soon as he had brought us into the twilight of the tomb, he lighted a long wax taper for each of us, and led us groping into blacker and blacker darkness. Even little R----- followed courageously in the procession, which looked very picturesque as we glanced backward or forward, and beheld a twinkling line of seven lights, glimmering faintly on our faces, and showing nothing beyond. The passages and niches of the tomb seem to have been hewn and hollowed out of the rock, not built by any art of masonry; but the walls were very dark, almost black, and our tapers so dim that I could not gain a sufficient breadth of view to ascertain what kind of place it was. It was very dark, indeed; the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky could not be darker. The rough-hewn roof was within touch, and sometimes we had to stoop to avoid hitting our heads; it was covered with damps, which collected and fell upon us in occasional drops. The passages, besides being narrow, were so irregular and crooked, that, after going a little way, it would have been impossible to return upon our steps without the help of the guide; and we appeared to be taking quite an extensive ramble underground, though in reality I suppose the tomb includes no great space. At several turns of our dismal way, the guide pointed to inscriptions in Roman capitals, commemorating various members of the Scipio family who were buried here; among them, a son of Scipio Africanus, who himself had his death and burial in a foreign land. All these inscriptions, however, are copies,--the originals, which were really found here, having been removed to the Vatican. Whether any bones and ashes have been left, or whether any were found, I do not know. It is not, at all events, a particularly interesting spot, being such shapeless blackness, and a mere dark hole, requiring a stronger illumination than that of our tapers to distinguish it from any other cellar. I did, at one place, see a sort of frieze, rather roughly sculptured; and, as we returned towards the twilight of the entrance-passage, I discerned a large spider, who fled hastily away from our tapers,--the solitary living inhabitant of the tomb of the Scipios. One visit that we made, and I think it was before entering the city gates, I forgot to mention. It was to an old edifice, formerly called the Temple of Bacchus, but now supposed to have been the Temple of Virtue and Honor. The interior consists of a vaulted hall, which was converted from its pagan consecration into a church or chapel, by the early Christians; and the ancient marble pillars of the temple may still be seen built in with the brick and stucco of the later occupants. There is an altar, and other tokens of a Catholic church, and high towards the ceiling, there are some frescos of saints or angels, very curious specimens of mediaeval, and earlier than mediaeval art. Nevertheless, the place impressed me as still rather pagan than Christian. What is most remarkable about this spot or this vicinity lies in the fact that the Fountain of Egeria was formerly supposed to be close at hand; indeed, the custode of the chapel still claims the spot as the identical one consecrated by the legend. There is a dark grove of trees, not far from the door of the temple; but Murray, a highly essential nuisance on such excursions as this, throws such overwhelming doubt, or rather incredulity, upon the site, that I seized upon it as a pretext for not going thither. In fact, my small capacity for sight-seeing was already more than satisfied. On account of ------ I am sorry that we did not see the grotto, for her enthusiasm is as fresh as the waters of Egeria's well can be, and she has poetical faith enough to light her cheerfully through all these mists of incredulity. Our visits to sepulchral places ended with Scipio's tomb, whence we returned to our dwelling, and Miss M------ came to dine with us. March 10th.--On Saturday last, a very rainy day, we went to the Sciarra Palace, and took U---- with us. It is on the Corso, nearly opposite to the Piazza Colonna. It has (Heaven be praised!) but four rooms of pictures, among which, however, are several very celebrated ones. Only a few of these remain in my memory,--Raphael's "Violin Player," which I am willing to accept as a good picture; and Leonardo da Vinci's "Vanity and Modesty," which also I can bring up before my mind's eye, and find it very beautiful, although one of the faces has an affected smile, which I have since seen on another picture by the same artist, Joanna of Aragon. The most striking picture in the collection, I think, is Titian's "Bella Donna,"--the only one of Titian's works that I have yet seen which makes an impression on me corresponding with his fame. It is a very splendid and very scornful lady, as beautiful and as scornful as Gainsborough's Lady Lyndoch, though of an entirely different type. There were two Madonnas by Guido, of which I liked the least celebrated one best; and several pictures by Garofalo, who always produces something noteworthy. All the pictures lacked the charm (no doubt I am a barbarian to think it one) of being in brilliant frames, and looked as if it were a long, long while since they were cleaned or varnished. The light was so scanty, too, on that heavily clouded day, and in those gloomy old rooms of the palace, that scarcely anything could be fairly made out. [I cannot refrain from observing here, that Mr. Hawthorne's inexorable demand for perfection in all things leads him to complain of grimy pictures and tarnished frames and faded frescos, distressing beyond measure to eyes that never failed to see everything before him with the keenest apprehension. The usual careless observation of people both of the good and the imperfect is much more comfortable in this imperfect world. But the insight which Mr. Hawthorne possessed was only equalled by his outsight, and he suffered in a way not to be readily conceived, from any failure in beauty, physical, moral, or intellectual. It is not, therefore, mere love of upholstery that impels him to ask for perfect settings to priceless gems of art; but a native idiosyncrasy, which always made me feel that "the New Jerusalem," "even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal," "where shall in no wise enter anything that defileth, neither what worketh abomination nor maketh a lie," would alone satisfy him, or rather alone not give him actual pain. It may give an idea of this exquisite nicety of feeling to mention, that one day he took in his fingers a half-bloomed rose, without blemish, and, smiling with an infinite joy, remarked, "This is perfect. On earth a flower only can be perfect."--ED.] The palace is about two hundred and fifty years old, and looks as if it had never been a very cheerful place; most shabbily and scantily furnished, moreover, and as chill as any cellar. There is a small balcony, looking down on the Corso, which probably has often been filled with a merry little family party, in the carnivals of days long past. It has faded frescos, and tarnished gilding, and green blinds, and a few damask chairs still remain in it. On Monday we all went to the sculpture-gallery of the Vatican, and saw as much of the sculpture as we could in the three hours during which the public are admissible. There were a few things which I really enjoyed, and a few moments during which I really seemed to see them; but it is in vain to attempt giving the impression produced by masterpieces of art, and most in vain when we see them best. They are a language in themselves, and if they could be expressed as well any way except by themselves, there would have been no need of expressing those particular ideas and sentiments by sculpture. I saw the Apollo Belvedere as something ethereal and godlike; only for a flitting moment, however, and as if he had alighted from heaven, or shone suddenly out of the sunlight, and then had withdrawn himself again. I felt the Laocoon very powerfully, though very quietly; an immortal agony, with a strange calmness diffused through it, so that it resembles the vast rage of the sea, calm on account of its immensity; or the tumult of Niagara, which does not seem to be tumult, because it keeps pouring on for ever and ever. I have not had so good a day as this (among works of art) since we came to Rome; and I impute it partly to the magnificence of the arrangements of the Vatican,--its long vistas and beautiful courts, and the aspect of immortality which marble statues acquire by being kept free from dust. A very hungry boy, seeing in one of the cabinets a vast porphyry vase, forty-four feet in circumference, wished that he had it full of soup. Yesterday, we went to the Pamfili Doria Palace, which, I believe, is the most splendid in Rome. The entrance is from the Corso into a court, surrounded by a colonnade, and having a space of luxuriant verdure and ornamental shrubbery in the centre. The apartments containing pictures and sculptures are fifteen in number, and run quite round the court in the first piano,--all the rooms, halls, and galleries of beautiful proportion, with vaulted roofs, some of which glow with frescos; and all are colder and more comfortless than can possibly be imagined without having been in them. The pictures, most of them, interested me very little. I am of opinion that good pictures are quite as rare as good poets; and I do not see why we should pique ourselves on admiring any but the very best. One in a thousand, perhaps, ought to live in the applause of men, from generation to generation, till its colors fade or blacken out of sight, and its canvas rots away; the rest should be put in garrets, or painted over by newer artists, just as tolerable poets are shelved when their little day is over. Nevertheless, there was one long gallery containing many pictures that I should be glad to see again under more favorable circumstances, that is, separately, and where I might contemplate them quite undisturbed, reclining in an easy-chair. At one end of the long vista of this gallery is a bust of the present Prince Doria, a smooth, sharp-nosed, rather handsome young man, and at the other end his princess, an English lady of the Talbot family, apparently a blonde, with a simple and sweet expression. There is a noble and striking portrait of the old Venetian admiral, Andrea Doria, by Sebastian del Piombo, and some other portraits and busts of the family. In the whole immense range of rooms I saw but a single fireplace, and that so deep in the wall that no amount of blaze would raise the atmosphere of the room ten degrees. If the builder of the palace, or any of his successors, have committed crimes worthy of Tophet, it would be a still worse punishment for him to wander perpetually through this suite of rooms on the cold floors of polished brick tiles or marble or mosaic, growing a little chiller and chiller through every moment of eternity,-- or, at least, till the palace crumbles down upon him. Neither would it assuage his torment in the least to be compelled to gaze up at the dark old pictures,--the ugly ghosts of what may once have been beautiful. I am not going to try any more to receive pleasure from a faded, tarnished, lustreless picture, especially if it be a landscape. There were two or three landscapes of Claude in this palace, which I doubt not would have been exquisite if they had been in the condition of those in the British National Gallery; but here they looked most forlorn, and even their sunshine was sunless. The merits of historical painting may be quite independent of the attributes that give pleasure, and a superficial ugliness may even heighten the effect; but not so of landscapes. Via Porta, Palazzo Larazani, March 11th.--To-day we called at Mr. Thompson's studio, and . . . . he had on the easel a little picture of St. Peter released from prison by the angel, which I saw once before. It is very beautiful indeed, and deeply and spiritually conceived, and I wish I could afford to have it finished for myself. I looked again, too, at his Georgian slave, and admired it as much as at first view; so very warm and rich it is, so sensuously beautiful, and with an expression of higher life and feeling within. I do not think there is a better painter than Mr. Thompson living,--among Americans at least; not one so earnest, faithful, and religious in his worship of art. I had rather look at his pictures than at any except the very finest of the old masters, and, taking into consideration only the comparative pleasure to be derived, I would not except more than one or two of those. In painting, as in literature, I suspect there is something in the productions of the day that takes the fancy more than the works of any past age,--not greater merit, nor nearly so great, but better suited to this very present time. After leaving him, we went to the Piazza de' Termini, near the Baths of Diocletian, and found our way with some difficulty to Crawford's studio. It occupies several great rooms, connected with the offices of the Villa Negroni; and all these rooms were full of plaster casts and a few works in marble,--principally portions of his huge Washington monument, which he left unfinished at his death. Close by the door at which we entered stood a gigantic figure of Mason, in bag-wig, and the coat, waistcoat, breeches, and knee and shoe buckles of the last century, the enlargement of these unheroic matters to far more than heroic size having a very odd effect. There was a figure of Jefferson on the same scale; another of Patrick Henry, besides a horse's head, and other portions of the equestrian group which is to cover the summit of the monument. In one of the rooms was a model of the monument itself, on a scale, I should think, of about an inch to afoot. It did not impress me as having grown out of any great and genuine idea in the artist's mind, but as being merely an ingenious contrivance enough. There were also casts of statues that seemed to be intended for some other monument referring to Revolutionary times and personages; and with these were intermixed some ideal statues or groups,--a naked boy playing marbles, very beautiful; a girl with flowers; the cast of his Orpheus, of which I long ago saw the marble statue; Adam and Eve; Flora,--all with a good deal of merit, no doubt, but not a single one that justifies Crawford's reputation, or that satisfies me of his genius. They are but commonplaces in marble and plaster, such as we should not tolerate on a printed page. He seems to have been a respectable man, highly respectable, but no more, although those who knew him seem to have rated him much higher. It is said that he exclaimed, not very long before his death, that he had fifteen years of good work still in him; and he appears to have considered all his life and labor, heretofore, as only preparatory to the great things that he was to achieve hereafter. I should say, on the contrary, that he was a man who had done his best, and had done it early; for his Orpheus is quite as good as anything else we saw in his studio. People were at work chiselling several statues in marble from the plaster models,--a very interesting process, and which I should think a doubtful and hazardous one; but the artists say that there is no risk of mischief, and that the model is sure to be accurately repeated in the marble. These persons, who do what is considered the mechanical part of the business, are often themselves sculptors, and of higher reputation than those who employ them. It is rather sad to think that Crawford died before he could see his ideas in the marble, where they gleam with so pure and celestial a light as compared with the plaster. There is almost as much difference as between flesh and spirit. The floor of one of the rooms was burdened with immense packages, containing parts of the Washington monument, ready to be forwarded to its destination. When finished, and set up, it will probably make a very splendid appearance, by its height, its mass, its skilful execution; and will produce a moral effect through its images of illustrious men, and the associations that connect it with our Revolutionary history; but I do not think it will owe much to artistic force of thought or depth of feeling. It is certainly, in one sense, a very foolish and illogical piece of work,--Washington, mounted on an uneasy steed, on a very narrow space, aloft in the air, whence a single step of the horse backward, forward, or on either side, must precipitate him; and several of his contemporaries standing beneath him, not looking up to wonder at his predicament, but each intent on manifesting his own personality to the world around. They have nothing to do with one another, nor with Washington, nor with any great purpose which all are to work out together. March 14th.--On Friday evening I dined at Mr. T. B. Read's, the poet and artist, with a party composed of painters and sculptors,--the only exceptions being the American banker and an American tourist who has given Mr. Read a commission. Next to me at table sat Mr. Gibson, the English sculptor, who, I suppose, stands foremost in his profession at this day. He must be quite an old man now, for it was whispered about the table that he is known to have been in Rome forty-two years ago, and he himself spoke to me of spending thirty-seven years here, before he once returned home. I should hardly take him to be sixty, however, his hair being more dark than gray, his forehead unwrinkled, his features unwithered, his eye undimmed, though his beard is somewhat venerable. . . . . He has a quiet, self-contained aspect, and, being a bachelor, has doubtless spent a calm life among his clay and marble, meddling little with the world, and entangling himself with no cares beyond his studio. He did not talk a great deal; but enough to show that he is still an Englishman in many sturdy traits, though his accent has something foreign about it. His conversation was chiefly about India, and other topics of the day, together with a few reminiscences of people in Liverpool, where he once resided. There was a kind of simplicity both in his manner and matter, and nothing very remarkable in the latter. . . . . The gist of what he said (upon art) was condemnatory of the Pre-Raphaelite modern school of painters, of whom he seemed to spare none, and of their works nothing; though he allowed that the old Pre-Raphaelites had some exquisite merits, which the moderns entirely omit in their imitations. In his own art, he said the aim should be to find out the principles on which the Greek sculptors wrought, and to do the work of this day on those principles and in their spirit; a fair doctrine enough, I should think, but which Mr. Gibson can scarcely be said to practise. . . . . The difference between the Pre-Raphaelites and himself is deep and genuine, they being literalists and realists, in a certain sense, and he a pagan idealist. Methinks they have hold of the best end of the matter. March 18th.--To-day, it being very bright and mild, we set out, at noon, for an expedition to the Temple of Vesta, though I did not feel much inclined for walking, having been ill and feverish for two or three days past with a cold, which keeps renewing itself faster than I can get rid of it. We kept along on this side of the Corso, and crossed the Forum, skirting along the Capitoline Hill, and thence towards the Circus Maximus. On our way, looking down a cross street, we saw a heavy arch, and, on examination, made it out to be the Arch of Janus Quadrifrons, standing in the Forum Boarium. Its base is now considerably below the level of the surrounding soil, and there is a church or basilica close by, and some mean edifices looking down upon it. There is something satisfactory in this arch, from the immense solidity of its structure. It gives the idea, in the first place, of a solid mass constructed of huge blocks of marble, which time can never wear away, nor earthquakes shake down; and then this solid mass is penetrated by two arched passages, meeting in the centre. There are empty niches, three in a row, and, I think, two rows on each face; but there seems to have been very little effort to make it a beautiful object. On the top is some brickwork, the remains of a mediaeval fortress built by the Frangipanis, looking very frail and temporary being brought thus in contact with the antique strength of the arch. A few yards off, across the street, and close beside the basilica, is what appears to be an ancient portal, with carved bas-reliefs, and an inscription which I could not make out. Some Romans were lying dormant in the sun, on the steps of the basilica; indeed, now that the sun is getting warmer, they seem to take advantage of every quiet nook to bask in, and perhaps to go to sleep. We had gone but a little way from the arch, and across the Circus Maximus, when we saw the Temple of Vesta before us, on the hank of the Tiber, which, however, we could not see behind it. It is a most perfectly preserved Roman ruin, and very beautiful, though so small that, in a suitable locality, one would take it rather for a garden-house than an ancient temple. A circle of white marble pillars, much time-worn and a little battered, though but one of them broken, surround the solid structure of the temple, leaving a circular walk between it and the pillars, the whole covered by a modern roof which looks like wood, and disgraces and deforms the elegant little building. This roof resembles, as much as anything else, the round wicker cover of a basket, and gives a very squat aspect to the temple. The pillars are of the Corinthian order, and when they were new and the marble snow-white and sharply carved and cut, there could not have been a prettier object in all Rome; but so small an edifice does not appear well as a ruin. Within view of it, and, indeed, a very little way off, is the Temple of Fortuna Virilis, which likewise retains its antique form in better preservation than we generally find a Roman ruin, although the Ionic pillars are now built up with blocks of stone and patches of brickwork, the whole constituting a church which is fixed against the side of a tall edifice, the nature of which I do not know. I forgot to say that we gained admittance into the Temple of Vesta, and found the interior a plain cylinder of marble, about ten paces across, and fitted up as a chapel, where the Virgin takes the place of Vesta. In very close vicinity we came upon the Ponto Rotto, the old Pons Emilius which was broken down long ago, and has recently been pieced out by connecting a suspension bridge with the old piers. We crossed by this bridge, paying a toll of a baioccho each, and stopped in the midst of the river to look at the Temple of Vesta, which shows well, right on the brink of the Tiber. We fancied, too, that we could discern, a little farther down the river, the ruined and almost submerged piers of the Sublician bridge, which Horatius Cocles defended. The Tiber here whirls rapidly along, and Horatius must have had a perilous swim for his life, and the enemy a fair mark at his head with their arrows. I think this is the most picturesque part of the Tiber in its passage through Rome. After crossing the bridge, we kept along the right bank of the river, through the dirty and hard-hearted streets of Trastevere (which have in no respect the advantage over those of hither Rome), till we reached St. Peter's. We saw a family sitting before their door on the pavement in the narrow and sunny street, engaged in their domestic avocations,--the old woman spinning with a wheel. I suppose the people now begin to live out of doors. We entered beneath the colonnade of St. Peter's and immediately became sensible of an evil odor,--the bad odor of our fallen nature, which there is no escaping in any nook of Rome. . . . . Between the pillars of the colonnade, however, we had the pleasant spectacle of the two fountains, sending up their lily-shaped gush, with rainbows shining in their falling spray. Parties of French soldiers, as usual, were undergoing their drill in the piazza. When we entered the church, the long, dusty sunbeams were falling aslantwise through the dome and through the chancel behind it. . . . . March 23d.--On the 21st we all went to the Coliseum, and enjoyed ourselves there in the bright, warm sun,--so bright and warm that we were glad to get into the shadow of the walls and under the arches, though, after all, there was the freshness of March in the breeze that stirred now and then. J----- and baby found some beautiful flowers growing round about the Coliseum; and far up towards the top of the walls we saw tufts of yellow wall-flowers and a great deal of green grass growing along the ridges between the arches. The general aspect of the place, however, is somewhat bare, and does not compare favorably with an English ruin both on account of the lack of ivy and because the material is chiefly brick, the stone and marble having been stolen away by popes and cardinals to build their palaces. While we sat within the circle, many people, of both sexes, passed through, kissing the iron cross which stands in the centre, thereby gaining an indulgence of seven years, I believe. In front of several churches I have seen an inscription in Latin, "INDULGENTIA PLENARIA ET PERPETUA PRO CUNCTIS MORTUIS ET VIVIS"; than which, it seems to me, nothing more could be asked or desired. The terms of this great boon are not mentioned. Leaving the Coliseum, we went and sat down in the vicinity of the Arch of Constantine, and J----- and R----- went in quest of lizards. J----- soon caught a large one with two tails; one, a sort of afterthought, or appendix, or corollary to the original tail, and growing out from it instead of from the body of the lizard. These reptiles are very abundant, and J----- has already brought home several, which make their escape and appear occasionally darting to and fro on the carpet. Since we have been here, J----- has taken up various pursuits in turn. First he voted himself to gathering snail-shells, of which there are many sorts; afterwards he had a fever for marbles, pieces of which he found on the banks of the Tiber, just on the edge of its muddy waters, and in the Palace of the Caesars, the Baths of Caracalla, and indeed wherever else his fancy led him; verde antique, rosso antico, porphyry, giallo antico, serpentine, sometimes fragments of bas-reliefs and mouldings, bits of mosaic, still firmly stuck together, on which the foot of a Caesar had perhaps once trodden; pieces of Roman glass, with the iridescence glowing on them; and all such things, of which the soil of Rome is full. It would not be difficult, from the spoil of his boyish rambles, to furnish what would be looked upon as a curious and valuable museum in America. Yesterday we went to the sculpture-galleries of the Vatican. I think I enjoy these noble galleries and their contents and beautiful arrangement better than anything else in the way of art, and often I seem to have a deep feeling of something wonderful in what I look at. The Laocoon on this visit impressed me not less than before; it is such a type of human beings, struggling with an inextricable trouble, and entangled in a complication which they cannot free themselves from by their own efforts, and out of which Heaven alone can help them. It was a most powerful mind, and one capable of reducing a complex idea to unity, that imagined this group. I looked at Canova's Perseus, and thought it exceedingly beautiful, but, found myself less and less contented after a moment or two, though I could not tell why. Afterwards, looking at the Apollo, the recollection of the Perseus disgusted me, and yet really I cannot explain how one is better than the other. I was interested in looking at the busts of the Triumvirs, Antony, Augustus, and Lepidus. The first two are men of intellect, evidently, though they do not recommend themselves to one's affections by their physiognomy; but Lepidus has the strangest, most commonplace countenance that can be imagined,--small-featured, weak, such a face as you meet anywhere in a man of no mark, but are amazed to find in one of the three foremost men of the world. I suppose that it is these weak and shallow men, when chance raises them above their proper sphere, who commit enormous crimes without any such restraint as stronger men would feel, and without any retribution in the depth of their conscience. These old Roman busts, of which there are so many in the Vatican, have often a most lifelike aspect, a striking individuality. One recognizes them as faithful portraits, just as certainly as if the living originals were standing beside them. The arrangement of the hair and beard too, in many cases, is just what we see now, the fashions of two thousand years ago having come round again. March 25th.--On Tuesday we went to breakfast at William Story's in the Palazzo Barberini. We had a very pleasant time. He is one of the most agreeable men I know in society. He showed us a note from Thackeray, an invitation to dinner, written in hieroglyphics, with great fun and pictorial merit. He spoke of an expansion of the story of Blue Beard, which he himself had either written or thought of writing, in which the contents of the several chambers which Fatima opened, before arriving at the fatal one, were to be described. This idea has haunted my mind ever since, and if it had but been my own I am pretty sure that it would develop itself into something very rich. I mean to press William Story to work it out. The chamber of Blue Beard, too (and this was a part of his suggestion), might be so handled as to become powerfully interesting. Were I to take up the story I would create an interest by suggesting a secret in the first chamber, which would develop itself more and more in every successive hall of the great palace, and lead the wife irresistibly to the chamber of horrors. After breakfast, we went to the Barberini Library, passing through the vast hall, which occupies the central part of the palace. It is the most splendid domestic hall I have seen, eighty feet in length at least, and of proportionate breadth and height; and the vaulted ceiling is entirely covered, to its utmost edge and remotest corners, with a brilliant painting in fresco, looking like a whole heaven of angelic people descending towards the floor. The effect is indescribably gorgeous. On one side stands a Baldacchino, or canopy of state, draped with scarlet cloth, and fringed with gold embroidery; the scarlet indicating that the palace is inhabited by a cardinal. Green would be appropriate to a prince. In point of fact, the Palazzo Barberini is inhabited by a cardinal, a prince, and a duke, all belonging to the Barberini family, and each having his separate portion of the palace, while their servants have a common territory and meeting-ground in this noble hall. After admiring it for a few minutes, we made our exit by a door on the opposite side, and went up the spiral staircase of marble to the library, where we were received by an ecclesiastic, who belongs to the Barberini household, and, I believe, was born in it. He is a gentle, refined, quiet-looking man, as well he may be, having spent all his life among these books, where few people intrude, and few cares can come. He showed us a very old Bible in parchment, a specimen of the earliest printing, beautifully ornamented with pictures, and some monkish illuminations of indescribable delicacy and elaboration. No artist could afford to produce such work, if the life that he thus lavished on one sheet of parchment had any value to him, either for what could be done or enjoyed in it. There are about eight thousand volumes in this library, and, judging by their outward aspect, the collection must be curious and valuable; but having another engagement, we could spend only a little time here. We had a hasty glance, however, of some poems of Tasso, in his own autograph. We then went to the Palazzo Galitzin, where dwell the Misses Weston, with whom we lunched, and where we met a French abbe, an agreeable man, and an antiquarian, under whose auspices two of the ladies and ourselves took carriage for the Castle of St. Angelo. Being admitted within the external gateway, we found ourselves in the court of guard, as I presume it is called, where the French soldiers were playing with very dirty cards, or lounging about, in military idleness. They were well behaved and courteous, and when we had intimated our wish to see the interior of the castle, a soldier soon appeared, with a large unlighted torch in his hand, ready to guide us. There is an outer wall, surrounding the solid structure of Hadrian's tomb; to which there is access by one or two drawbridges; the entrance to the tomb, or castle, not being at the base, but near its central height. The ancient entrance, by which Hadrian's ashes, and those of other imperial personages, were probably brought into this tomb, has been walled up,--perhaps ever since the last emperor was buried here. We were now in a vaulted passage, both lofty and broad, which circles round the whole interior of the tomb, from the base to the summit. During many hundred years, the passage was filled with earth and rubbish, and forgotten, and it is but partly excavated, even now; although we found it a long, long and gloomy descent by torchlight to the base of the vast mausoleum. The passage was once lined and vaulted with precious marbles (which are now entirely gone), and paved with fine mosaics, portions of which still remain; and our guide lowered his flaming torch to show them to us, here and there, amid the earthy dampness over which we trod. It is strange to think what splendor and costly adornment were here wasted on the dead. After we had descended to the bottom of this passage, and again retraced our steps to the highest part, the guide took a large cannon-ball, and sent it, with his whole force, rolling down the hollow, arched way, rumbling, and reverberating, and bellowing forth long thunderous echoes, and winding up with a loud, distant crash, that seemed to come from the very bowels of the earth. We saw the place, near the centre of the mausoleum, and lighted from above, through an immense thickness of stone and brick, where the ashes of the emperor and his fellow-slumberers were found. It is as much as twelve centuries, very likely, since they were scattered to the winds, for the tomb has been nearly or quite that space of time a fortress; The tomb itself is merely the base and foundation of the castle, and, being so massively built, it serves just as well for the purpose as if it were a solid granite rock. The mediaeval fortress, with its antiquity of more than a thousand years, and having dark and deep dungeons of its own, is but a modern excrescence on the top of Hadrian's tomb. We now ascended towards the upper region, and were led into the vaults which used to serve as a prison, but which, if I mistake not, are situated above the ancient structure, although they seem as damp and subterranean as if they were fifty feet under the earth. We crept down to them through narrow and ugly passages, which the torchlight would not illuminate, and, stooping under a low, square entrance, we followed the guide into a small, vaulted room,--not a room, but an artificial cavern, remote from light or air, where Beatrice Cenci was confined before her execution. According to the abbe, she spent a whole year in this dreadful pit, her trial having dragged on through that length of time. How ghostlike she must have looked when she came forth! Guido never painted that beautiful picture from her blanched face, as it appeared after this confinement. And how rejoiced she must have been to die at last, having already been in a sepulchre so long! Adjacent to Beatrice's prison, but not communicating with it, was that of her step-mother; and next to the latter was one that interested me almost as much as Beatrice's,--that of Benvenuto Cellini, who was confined here, I believe, for an assassination. All these prison vaults are more horrible than can be imagined without seeing them; but there are worse places here, for the guide lifted a trap-door in one of the passages, and held his torch down into an inscrutable pit beneath our feet. It was an oubliette, a dungeon where the prisoner might be buried alive, and never come forth again, alive or dead. Groping about among these sad precincts, we saw various other things that looked very dismal; but at last emerged into the sunshine, and ascended from one platform and battlement to another, till we found ourselves right at the feet of the Archangel Michael. He has stood there in bronze for I know not how many hundred years, in the act of sheathing a (now) rusty sword, such being the attitude in which he appeared to one of the popes in a vision, in token that a pestilence which was then desolating Rome was to be stayed. There is a fine view from the lofty station over Rome and the whole adjacent country, and the abbe pointed out the site of Ardea, of Corioli, of Veii, and other places renowned in story. We were ushered, too, into the French commandant's quarters in the castle. There is a large hall, ornamented with frescos, and accessible from this a drawing-room, comfortably fitted up, and where we saw modern furniture, and a chess-board, and a fire burning clear, and other symptoms that the place had perhaps just been vacated by civilized and kindly people. But in one corner of the ceiling the abbe pointed out a ring, by which, in the times of mediaeval anarchy, when popes, cardinals, and barons were all by the ears together, a cardinal was hanged. It was not an assassination, but a legal punishment, and he was executed in the best apartment of the castle as an act of grace. The fortress is a straight-lined structure on the summit of the immense round tower of Hadrian's tomb; and to make out the idea of it we must throw in drawbridges, esplanades, piles of ancient marble balls for cannon; battlements and embrasures, lying high in the breeze and sunshine, and opening views round the whole horizon; accommodation for the soldiers; and many small beds in a large room. How much mistaken was the emperor in his expectation of a stately, solemn repose for his ashes through all the coming centuries, as long as the world should endure! Perhaps his ghost glides up and down disconsolate, in that spiral passage which goes from top to bottom of the tomb, while the barbarous Gauls plant themselves in his very mausoleum to keep the imperial city in awe. Leaving the Castle of St. Angelo, we drove, still on the same side of the Tiber, to the Villa Pamfili, which lies a short distance beyond the walls. As we passed through one of the gates (I think it was that of San Pancrazio) the abbe pointed out the spot where the Constable de Bourbon was killed while attempting to scale the walls. If we are to believe Benvenuto Cellini, it was he who shot the constable. The road to the villa is not very interesting, lying (as the roads in the vicinity of Rome often do) between very high walls, admitting not a glimpse of the surrounding country; the road itself white and dusty, with no verdant margin of grass or border of shrubbery. At the portal of the villa we found many carriages in waiting, for the Prince Doria throws open the grounds to all comers, and on a pleasant day like this they are probably sure to be thronged. We left our carriage just within the entrance, and rambled among these beautiful groves, admiring the live-oak trees, and the stone-pines, which latter are truly a majestic tree, with tall columnar stems, supporting a cloud-like density of boughs far aloft, and not a straggling branch between there and the ground. They stand in straight rows, but are now so ancient and venerable as to have lost the formal look of a plantation, and seem like a wood that might have arranged itself almost of its own will. Beneath them is a flower-strewn turf, quite free of underbrush. We found open fields and lawns, moreover, all abloom with anemones, white and rose-colored and purple and golden, and far larger than could be found out of Italy, except in hot-houses. Violets, too, were abundant and exceedingly fragrant. When we consider that all this floral exuberance occurs in the midst of March, there does not appear much ground for complaining of the Roman climate; and so long ago as the first week of February I found daisies among the grass, on the sunny side of the Basilica of St. John Lateran. At this very moment I suppose the country within twenty miles of Boston may be two feet deep with snow, and the streams solid with ice. We wandered about the grounds, and found them very beautiful indeed; nature having done much for them by an undulating variety of surface, and art having added a good many charms, which have all the better effect now that decay and neglect have thrown a natural grace over them likewise. There is an artificial ruin, so picturesque that it betrays itself; weather-beaten statues, and pieces of sculpture, scattered here and there; an artificial lake, with upgushing fountains; cascades, and broad-bosomed coves, and long, canal-like reaches, with swans taking their delight upon them. I never saw such a glorious and resplendent lustre of white as shone between the wings of two of these swans. It was really a sight to see, and not to be imagined beforehand. Angels, no doubt, have just such lustrous wings as those. English swans partake of the dinginess of the atmosphere, and their plumage has nothing at all to be compared to this; in fact, there is nothing like it in the world, unless it be the illuminated portion of a fleecy, summer cloud. While we were sauntering along beside this piece of water, we were surprised to see U---- on the other side. She had come hither with E---- S------ and her two little brothers, and with our R-----, the whole under the charge of Mrs. Story's nursery-maids. U---- and E---- crossed, not over, but beneath the water, through a grotto, and exchanged greetings with us. Then, as it was getting towards sunset and cool, we took our departure; the abbe, as we left the grounds, taking me aside to give me a glimpse of a Columbarium, which descends into the earth to about the depth to which an ordinary house might rise above it. These grounds, it is said, formed the country residence of the Emperor Galba, and he was buried here after his assassination. It is a sad thought that so much natural beauty and long refinement of picturesque culture is thrown away, the villa being uninhabitable during all the most delightful season of the year on account of malaria. There is truly a curse on Rome and all its neighborhood. On our way home we passed by the great Paolina fountain, and were assailed by many beggars during the short time we stopped to look at it. It is a very copious fountain, but not so beautiful as the Trevi, taking into view merely the water-gush of the latter. March 26th.--Yesterday, between twelve and one, our whole family went to the Villa Ludovisi, the entrance to which is at the termination of a street which passes out of the Piazza Barberini, and it is no very great distance from our own street, Via Porta Pinciana. The grounds, though very extensive, are wholly within the walls of the city, which skirt them, and comprise a part of what were formerly the gardens of Sallust. The villa is now the property of Prince Piombini, a ticket from whom procured us admission. A little within the gateway, to the right, is a casino, containing two large rooms filled with sculpture, much of which is very valuable. A colossal head of Juno, I believe, is considered the greatest treasure of the collection, but I did not myself feel it to be so, nor indeed did I receive any strong impression of its excellence. I admired nothing so much, I think, as the face of Penelope (if it be her face) in the group supposed also to represent Electra and Orestes. The sitting statue of Mars is very fine; so is the Arria and Paetus; so are many other busts and figures. By and by we left the casino and wandered among the grounds, threading interminable alleys of cypress, through the long vistas of which we could see here and there a statue, an urn, a pillar, a temple, or garden-house, or a bas-relief against the wall. It seems as if there must have been a time, and not so very long ago,--when it was worth while to spend money and thought upon the ornamentation of grounds in the neighborhood of Rome. That time is past, however, and the result is very melancholy; for great beauty has been produced, but it can be enjoyed in its perfection only at the peril of one's life. . . . . For my part, and judging from my own experience, I suspect that the Roman atmosphere, never wholesome, is always more or less poisonous. We came to another and larger casino remote from the gateway, in which the Prince resides during two months of the year. It was now under repair, but we gained admission, as did several other visitors, and saw in the entrance-hall the Aurora of Guercino, painted in fresco on the ceiling. There is beauty in the design; but the painter certainly was most unhappy in his black shadows, and in the work before us they give the impression of a cloudy and lowering morning which is likely enough to turn to rain by and by. After viewing the fresco we mounted by a spiral staircase to a lofty terrace, and found Rome at our feet, and, far off, the Sabine and Alban mountains, some of them still capped with snow. In another direction there was a vast plain, on the horizon of which, could our eyes have reached to its verge, we might perhaps have seen the Mediterranean Sea. After enjoying the view and the warm sunshine we descended, and went in quest of the gardens of Sallust, but found no satisfactory remains of them. One of the most striking objects in the first casino was a group by Bernini,--Pluto, an outrageously masculine and strenuous figure, heavily bearded, ravishing away a little, tender Proserpine, whom he holds aloft, while his forcible gripe impresses itself into her soft virgin flesh. It is very disagreeable, but it makes one feel that Bernini was a man of great ability. There are some works in literature that bear an analogy to his works in sculpture, when great power is lavished a little outside of nature, and therefore proves to be only a fashion,--and not permanently adapted to the tastes of mankind. March 27th.--Yesterday forenoon my wife and I went to St. Peter's to see the pope pray at the chapel of the Holy Sacrament. We found a good many people in the church, but not an inconvenient number; indeed, not so many as to make any remarkable show in the great nave, nor even in front of the chapel. A detachment of the Swiss Guard, in their strange, picturesque, harlequin-like costume, were on duty before the chapel, in which the wax tapers were all lighted, and a prie-dieu was arranged near the shrine, and covered with scarlet velvet. On each side, along the breadth of the side aisle, were placed seats, covered with rich tapestry or carpeting; and some gentlemen and ladies--English, probably, or American--had comfortably deposited themselves here, but were compelled to move by the guards before the pope's entrance. His Holiness should have appeared precisely at twelve, but we waited nearly half an hour beyond that time; and it seemed to me particularly ill-mannered in the pope, who owes the courtesy of being punctual to the people, if not to St. Peter. By and by, however, there was a stir; the guard motioned to us to stand away from the benches, against the backs of which we had been leaning; the spectators in the nave looked towards the door, as if they beheld something approaching; and first, there appeared some cardinals, in scarlet skull-caps and purple robes, intermixed with some of the Noble Guard and other attendants. It was not a very formal and stately procession, but rather straggled onward, with ragged edges, the spectators standing aside to let it pass, and merely bowing, or perhaps slightly bending the knee, as good Catholics are accustomed to do when passing before the shrines of saints. Then, in the midst of the purple cardinals, all of whom were gray-haired men, appeared a stout old man, with a white skull-cap, a scarlet, gold-embroidered cape falling over his shoulders, and a white silk robe, the train of which was borne up by an attendant. He walked slowly, with a sort of dignified movement, stepping out broadly, and planting his feet (on which were red shoes) flat upon the pavement, as if he were not much accustomed to locomotion, and perhaps had known a twinge of the gout. His face was kindly and venerable, but not particularly impressive. Arriving at the scarlet-covered prie-dieu, he kneeled down and took off his white skull-cap; the cardinals also kneeled behind and on either side of him, taking off their scarlet skull-caps; while the Noble Guard remained standing, six on one side of his Holiness and six on the other. The pope bent his head upon the prie-dieu, and seemed to spend three or four minutes in prayer; then rose, and all the purple cardinals, and bishops, and priests, of whatever degree, rose behind and beside him. Next, he went to kiss St. Peter's toe; at least I believe he kissed it, but I was not near enough to be certain; and lastly, he knelt down, and directed his devotions towards the high altar. This completed the ceremonies, and his Holiness left the church by a side door, making a short passage into the Vatican. I am very glad I have seen the pope, because now he may be crossed out of the list of sights to be seen. His proximity impressed me kindly and favorably towards him, and I did not see one face among all his cardinals (in whose number, doubtless, is his successor) which I would so soon trust as that of Pio Nono. This morning I walked as far as the gate of San Paolo, and, on approaching it, I saw the gray sharp pyramid of Caius Cestius pointing upward close to the two dark-brown, battlemented Gothic towers of the gateway, each of these very different pieces of architecture looking the more picturesque for the contrast of the other. Before approaching the gateway and pyramid, I walked onward, and soon came in sight of Monte Testaccio, the artificial hill made of potsherds. There is a gate admitting into the grounds around the hill, and a road encircling its base. At a distance, the hill looks greener than any other part of the landscape, and has all the curved outlines of a natural hill, resembling in shape a headless sphinx, or Saddleback Mountain, as I used to see it from Lenox. It is of very considerable height,--two or three hundred feet at least, I should say,--and well entitled, both by its elevation and the space it covers, to be reckoned among the hills of Rome. Its base is almost entirely surrounded with small structures, which seem to be used as farm-buildings. On the summit is a large iron cross, the Church having thought it expedient to redeem these shattered pipkins from the power of paganism, as it has so many other Roman ruins. There was a pathway up the hill, but I did not choose to ascend it under the hot sun, so steeply did it clamber up. There appears to be a good depth of soil on most parts of Monte Testaccio, but on some of the sides you observe precipices, bristling with fragments of red or brown earthenware, or pieces of vases of white unglazed clay; and it is evident that this immense pile is entirely composed of broken crockery, which I should hardly have thought would have aggregated to such a heap had it all been thrown here,--urns, teacups, porcelain, or earthen,--since the beginning of the world. I walked quite round the hill, and saw, at no great distance from it, the enclosure of the Protestant burial-ground, which lies so close to the pyramid of Caius Cestius that the latter may serve as a general monument to the dead. Deferring, for the present, a visit to the cemetery, or to the interior of the pyramid, I returned to the gateway of San Paolo, and, passing through it, took a view of it from the outside of the city wall. It is itself a portion of the wall, having been built into it by the Emperor Aurelian, so that about half of it lies within and half without. The brick or red stone material of the wall being so unlike the marble of the pyramid, the latter is as distinct, and seems as insulated, as if it stood alone in the centre of a plain; and really I do not think there is a more striking architectural object in Rome. It is in perfect condition, just as little ruined or decayed as on the day when the builder put the last peak on the summit; and it ascends steeply from its base, with a point so sharp that it looks as if it would hardly afford foothold to a bird. The marble was once white, but is now covered with a gray coating like that which has gathered upon the statues of Castor and Pollux on Monte Cavallo. Not one of the great blocks is displaced, nor seems likely to be through all time to come. They rest one upon another, in straight and even lines, and present a vast smooth triangle, ascending from a base of a hundred feet, and narrowing to an apex at the height of a hundred and twenty-five, the junctures of the marble slabs being so close that, in all these twenty centuries, only a few little tufts of grass, and a trailing plant or two, have succeeded in rooting themselves into the interstices. It is good and satisfactory to see anything which, being built for an enduring monument, has endured so faithfully, and has a prospect of such an interminable futurity before it. Once, indeed, it seemed likely to be buried; for three hundred years ago it had become covered to the depth of sixteen feet, but the soil has since been dug away from its base, which is now lower than that of the road which passes through the neighboring gate of San Paolo. Midway up the pyramid, cut in the marble, is an inscription in large Roman letters, still almost as legible as when first wrought. I did not return through the Paolo gateway, but kept onward, round the exterior of the wall, till I came to the gate of San Sebastiano. It was a hot and not a very interesting walk, with only a high bare wall of brick, broken by frequent square towers, on one side of the road, and a bank and hedge or a garden wall on the other. Roman roads are most inhospitable, offering no shade, and no seat, and no pleasant views of rustic domiciles; nothing but the wheel-track of white dust, without a foot path running by its side, and seldom any grassy margin to refresh the wayfarer's feet. April 3d.--A few days ago we visited the studio of Mr. ------, an American, who seems to have a good deal of vogue as a sculptor. We found a figure of Pocahontas, which he has repeated several times; another, which he calls "The Wept of the Wish-ton-Wish," a figure of a smiling girl playing with a cat and dog, and a schoolboy mending a pen. These two last were the only ones that gave me any pleasure, or that really had any merit; for his cleverness and ingenuity appear in homely subjects, but are quite lost in attempts at a higher ideality. Nevertheless, he has a group of the Prodigal Son, possessing more merit than I should have expected from Mr. ------, the son reclining his head on his father's breast, with an expression of utter weariness, at length finding perfect rest, while the father bends his benign countenance over him, and seems to receive him calmly into himself. This group (the plaster-cast standing beside it) is now taking shape out of an immense block of marble, and will be as indestructible as the Laocoon; an idea at once awful and ludicrous, when we consider that it is at best but a respectable production. I have since been told that Mr. ------ had stolen, adopted, we will rather say, the attitude and idea of the group from one executed by a student of the French Academy, and to be seen there in plaster. (We afterwards saw it in the Medici Casino.) Mr. ------ has now been ten years in Italy, and, after all this time, he is still entirely American in everything but the most external surface of his manners; scarcely Europeanized, or much modified even in that. He is a native of ------, but had his early breeding in New York, and might, for any polish or refinement that I can discern in him, still be a country shopkeeper in the interior of New York State or New England. How strange! For one expects to find the polish, the close grain and white purity of marble, in the artist who works in that noble material; but, after all, he handles club, and, judging by the specimens I have seen here, is apt to be clay, not of the finest, himself. Mr. ------ is sensible, shrewd, keen, clever; an ingenious workman, no doubt; with tact enough, and not destitute of taste; very agreeable and lively in his conversation, talking as fast and as naturally as a brook runs, without the slightest affectation. His naturalness is, in fact, a rather striking characteristic, in view of his lack of culture, while yet his life has been concerned with idealities and a beautiful art. What degree of taste he pretends to, he seems really to possess, nor did I hear a single idea from him that struck me as otherwise than sensible. He called to see us last evening, and talked for about two hours in a very amusing and interesting style, his topics being taken from his own personal experience, and shrewdly treated. He spoke much of Greenough, whom he described as an excellent critic of art, but possessed of not the slightest inventive genius. His statue of Washington, at the Capitol, is taken precisely from the Plodian Jupiter; his Chanting Cherubs are copied in marble from two figures in a picture by Raphael. He did nothing that was original with himself To-day we took R-----, and went to see Miss ------, and as her studio seems to be mixed up with Gibson's, we had an opportunity of glancing at some of his beautiful works. We saw a Venus and a Cupid, both of them tinted; and, side by side with them, other statues identical with these, except that the marble was left in its pure whiteness. We found Miss ------ in a little upper room. She has a small, brisk, wide-awake figure, not ungraceful; frank, simple, straightforward, and downright. She had on a robe, I think, but I did not look so low, my attention being chiefly drawn to a sort of man's sack of purple or plum-colored broadcloth, into the side-pockets of which her hands were thrust as she came forward to greet us. She withdrew one hand, however, and presented it cordially to my wife (whom she already knew) and to myself, without waiting for an introduction. She had on a shirt-front, collar, and cravat like a man's, with a brooch of Etruscan gold, and on her curly head was a picturesque little cap of black velvet, and her face was as bright and merry, and as small of feature as a child's. It looked in one aspect youthful, and yet there was something worn in it too. There never was anything so jaunty as her movement and action; she was very peculiar, but she seemed to be her actual self, and nothing affected or made up; so that, for my part, I gave her full leave to wear what may suit her best, and to behave as her inner woman prompts. I don't quite see, however, what she is to do when she grows older, for the decorum of age will not be consistent with a costume that looks pretty and excusable enough in a young woman. Miss ------ led us into a part of the extensive studio, or collection of studios, where some of her own works were to be seen: Beatrice Cenci, which did not very greatly impress me; and a monumental design, a female figure,--wholly draped even to the stockings and shoes,--in a quiet sleep. I liked this last. There was also a Puck, doubtless full of fun; but I had hardly time to glance at it. Miss ------ evidently has good gifts in her profession, and doubtless she derives great advantage from her close association with a consummate artist like Gibson; nor yet does his influence seem to interfere with the originality of her own conceptions. In one way, at least, she can hardly fail to profit,--that is, by the opportunity of showing her works to the throngs of people who go to see Gibson's own; and these are just such people as an artist would most desire to meet, and might never see in a lifetime, if left to himself. I shook hands with this frank and pleasant little person, and took leave, not without purpose of seeing her again. Within a few days, there have been many pilgrims in Rome, who come hither to attend the ceremonies of holy week, and to perform their vows, and undergo their penances. I saw two of them near the Forum yesterday, with their pilgrim staves, in the fashion of a thousand years ago. . . . . I sat down on a bench near one of the chapels, and a woman immediately came up to me to beg. I at first refused; but she knelt down by my side, and instead of praying to the saint prayed to me; and, being thus treated as a canonized personage, I thought it incumbent on me to be gracious to the extent of half a paul. My wife, some time ago, came in contact with a pickpocket at the entrance of a church; and, failing in his enterprise upon her purse, he passed in, dipped his thieving fingers in the holy water, and paid his devotions at a shrine. Missing the purse, he said his prayers, in the hope, perhaps, that the saint would send him better luck another time. April 10th.--I have made no entries in my journal recently, being exceedingly lazy, partly from indisposition, as well as from an atmosphere that takes the vivacity out of everybody. Not much has happened or been effected. Last Sunday, which was Easter Sunday, I went with J----- to St. Peter's, where we arrived at about nine o'clock, and found a multitude of people already assembled in the church. The interior was arrayed in festal guise, there being a covering of scarlet damask over the pilasters of the nave, from base to capital, giving an effect of splendor, yet with a loss as to the apparent dimensions of the interior. A guard of soldiers occupied the nave, keeping open a wide space for the passage of a procession that was momently expected, and soon arrived. The crowd was too great to allow of my seeing it in detail; but I could perceive that there were priests, cardinals, Swiss guards, some of them with corselets on, and by and by the pope himself was borne up the nave, high over the heads of all, sitting under a canopy, crowned with his tiara. He floated slowly along, and was set down in the neighborhood of the high altar; and the procession being broken up, some of its scattered members might be seen here and there, about the church,--officials in antique Spanish dresses; Swiss guards, in polished steel breastplates; serving-men, in richly embroidered liveries; officers, in scarlet coats and military boots; priests, and divers other shapes of men; for the papal ceremonies seem to forego little or nothing that belongs to times past, while it includes everything appertaining to the present. I ought to have waited to witness the papal benediction from the balcony in front of the church; or, at least, to hear the famous silver trumpets, sounding from the dome; but J----- grew weary (to say the truth, so did I), and we went on a long walk, out of the nearest city gate, and back through the Janiculum, and, finally, homeward over the Ponto Rotto. Standing on the bridge, I saw the arch of the Cloaca Maxima, close by the Temple of Vesta, with the water rising within two or three feet of its keystone. The same evening we went to Monte Cavallo, where, from the gateway of the Pontifical Palace, we saw the illumination of St. Peter's. Mr. Akers, the sculptor, had recommended this position to us, and accompanied us thither, as the best point from which the illumination could be witnessed at a distance, without the incommodity of such a crowd as would be assembled at the Pincian. The first illumination, the silver one, as it is called, was very grand and delicate, describing the outline of the great edifice and crowning dome in light; while the day was not yet wholly departed. As ------ finally remarked, it seemed like the glorified spirit of the Church, made visible, or, as I will add, it looked as this famous and never-to-be-forgotten structure will look to the imaginations of men, through the waste and gloom of future ages, after it shall have gone quite to decay and ruin: the brilliant, though scarcely distinct gleam of a statelier dome than ever was seen, shining on the background of the night of Time. This simile looked prettier in my fancy than I have made it look on paper. After we had enjoyed the silver illumination a good while, and when all the daylight had given place to the constellated night, the distant outline of St. Peter's burst forth, in the twinkling of an eye, into a starry blaze, being quite the finest effect that I ever witnessed. I stayed to see it, however, only a few minutes; for I was quite ill and feverish with a cold,--which, indeed, I have seldom been free from, since my first breathing of the genial atmosphere of Rome. This pestilence kept me within doors all the next day, and prevented me from seeing the beautiful fireworks that were exhibited in the evening from the platform on the Pincian, above the Piazza del Popolo. On Thursday, I paid another visit to the sculpture-gallery of the Capitol, where I was particularly struck with a bust of Cato the Censor, who must have been the most disagreeable, stubborn, ugly-tempered, pig-headed, narrow-minded, strong-willed old Roman that ever lived. The collection of busts here and at the Vatican are most interesting, many of the individual heads being full of character, and commending themselves by intrinsic evidence as faithful portraits of the originals. These stone people have stood face to face with Caesar, and all the other emperors, and with statesmen, soldiers, philosophers, and poets of the antique world, and have been to them like their reflections in a mirror. It is the next thing to seeing the men themselves. We went afterwards into the Palace of the Conservatori, and saw, among various other interesting things, the bronze wolf suckling Romulus and Remus, who sit beneath her dugs, with open mouths to receive the milk. On Friday, we all went to see the Pope's Palace on the Quirinal. There was a vast hall, and an interminable suite of rooms, cased with marble, floored with marble or mosaics or inlaid wood, adorned with frescos on the vaulted ceilings, and many of them lined with Gobelin tapestry; not wofully faded, like almost all that I have hitherto seen, but brilliant as pictures. Indeed, some of them so closely resembled paintings, that I could hardly believe they were not so; and the effect was even richer than that of oil-paintings. In every room there was a crucifix; but I did not see a single nook or corner where anybody could have dreamed of being comfortable. Nevertheless, as a stately and solemn residence for his Holiness, it is quite a satisfactory affair. Afterwards, we went into the Pontifical Gardens, connected with the palace. They are very extensive, and laid out in straight avenues, bordered with walls of box, as impervious as if of stone,--not less than twenty feet high, and pierced with lofty archways, cut in the living wall. Some of the avenues were overshadowed with trees, the tops of which bent over and joined one another from either side, so as to resemble a side aisle of a Gothic cathedral. Marble sculptures, much weather-stained, and generally broken-nosed, stood along these stately walks; there were many fountains gushing up into the sunshine; we likewise found a rich flower-garden, containing rare specimens of exotic flowers, and gigantic cactuses, and also an aviary, with vultures, doves, and singing birds. We did not see half the garden, but, stiff and formal as its general arrangement is, it is a beautiful place,--a delightful, sunny, and serene seclusion. Whatever it may be to the pope, two young lovers might find the Garden of Eden here, and never desire to stray out of its precincts. They might fancy angels standing in the long, glimmering vistas of the avenues. It would suit me well enough to have my daily walk along such straight paths, for I think them favorable to thought, which is apt to be disturbed by variety and unexpectedness. April 12th.--We all, except R-----, went to-day to the Vatican, where we found our way to the Stanze of Raphael, these being four rooms, or halls, painted with frescos. No doubt they were once very brilliant and beautiful; but they have encountered hard treatment since Raphael's time, especially when the soldiers of the Constable de Bourbon occupied these apartments, and made fires on the mosaic floors. The entire walls and ceilings are covered with pictures; but the handiwork or designs of Raphael consist of paintings on the four sides of each room, and include several works of art. The School of Athens is perhaps the most celebrated; and the longest side of the largest hall is occupied by a battle-piece, of which the Emperor Constantine is the hero, and which covers almost space enough for a real battle-field. There was a wonderful light in one of the pictures,--that of St. Peter awakened in his prison, by the angel; it really seemed to throw a radiance into the hall below. I shall not pretend, however, to have been sensible of any particular rapture at the sight of these frescos; so faded as they are, so battered by the mischances of years, insomuch that, through all the power and glory of Raphael's designs, the spectator cannot but be continually sensible that the groundwork of them is an old plaster wall. They have been scrubbed, I suppose,--brushed, at least,--a thousand times over, till the surface, brilliant or soft, as Raphael left it, must have been quite rubbed off, and with it, all the consummate finish, and everything that made them originally delightful. The sterner features remain, the skeleton of thought, but not the beauty that once clothed it. In truth, the frescos, excepting a few figures, never had the real touch of Raphael's own hand upon them, having been merely designed by him, and finished by his scholars, or by other artists. The halls themselves are specimens of antique magnificence, paved with elaborate mosaics; and wherever there is any wood-work, it is richly carved with foliage and figures. In their newness, and probably for a hundred years afterwards, there could not have been so brilliant a suite of rooms in the world. Connected with them--at any rate, not far distant--is the little Chapel of San Lorenzo, the very site of which, among the thousands of apartments of the Vatican, was long forgotten, and its existence only known by tradition. After it had been walled up, however, beyond the memory of man, there was still a rumor of some beautiful frescos by Fra Angelico, in an old chapel of Pope Nicholas V., that had strangely disappeared out of the palace, and, search at length being made, it was discovered, and entered through a window. It is a small, lofty room, quite covered over with frescos of sacred subjects, both on the walls and ceiling, a good deal faded, yet pretty distinctly preserved. It would have been no misfortune to me, if the little old chapel had remained still hidden. We next issued into the Loggie, which consist of a long gallery, or arcade or colonnade, the whole extent of which was once beautifully adorned by Raphael. These pictures are almost worn away, and so defaced as to be untraceable and unintelligible, along the side wall of the gallery; although traceries of Arabesque, and compartments where there seem to have been rich paintings, but now only an indistinguishable waste of dull color, are still to be seen. In the coved ceiling, however, there are still some bright frescos, in better preservation than any others; not particularly beautiful, nevertheless. I remember to have seen (indeed, we ourselves possess them) a series of very spirited and energetic engravings, old and coarse, of these frescos, the subject being the Creation, and the early Scripture history; and I really think that their translation of the pictures is better than the original. On reference to Murray, I find that little more than the designs is attributed to Raphael, the execution being by Giulio Romano and other artists. Escaping from these forlorn splendors, we went into the sculpture-gallery, where I was able to enjoy, in some small degree, two or three wonderful works of art; and had a perception that there were a thousand other wonders around me. It is as if the statues kept, for the most part, a veil about them, which they sometimes withdraw, and let their beauty gleam upon my sight; only a glimpse, or two or three glimpses, or a little space of calm enjoyment, and then I see nothing but a discolored marble image again. The Minerva Medica revealed herself to-day. I wonder whether other people are more fortunate than myself, and can invariably find their way to the inner soul of a work of art. I doubt it; they look at these things for just a minute, and pass on, without any pang of remorse, such as I feel, for quitting them so soon and so willingly. I am partly sensible that some unwritten rules of taste are making their way into my mind; that all this Greek beauty has done something towards refining me, though I am still, however, a very sturdy Goth. . . . . April 15th.--Yesterday I went with J----- to the Forum, and descended into the excavations at the base of the Capitol, and on the site of the Basilica of Julia. The essential elements of old Rome are there: columns, single, or in groups of two or three, still erect, but battered and bruised at some forgotten time with infinite pains and labor; fragments of other columns lying prostrate, together with rich capitals and friezes; the bust of a colossal female statue, showing the bosom and upper part of the arms, but headless; a long, winding space of pavement, forming part of the ancient ascent to the Capitol, still as firm and solid as ever; the foundation of the Capitol itself, wonderfully massive, built of immense square blocks of stone, doubtless three thousand years old, and durable for whatever may be the lifetime of the world; the Arch of Septimius, Severus, with bas-reliefs of Eastern wars; the Column of Phocas, with the rude series of steps ascending on four sides to its pedestal; the floor of beautiful and precious marbles in the Basilica of Julia, the slabs cracked across,--the greater part of them torn up and removed, the grass and weeds growing up through the chinks of what remain; heaps of bricks, shapeless bits of granite, and other ancient rubbish, among which old men are lazily rummaging for specimens that a stranger may be induced to buy,--this being an employment that suits the indolence of a modern Roman. The level of these excavations is about fifteen feet, I should judge, below the present street, which passes through the Forum, and only a very small part of this alien surface has been removed, though there can be no doubt that it hides numerous treasures of art and monuments of history. Yet these remains do not make that impression of antiquity upon me which Gothic ruins do. Perhaps it is so because they belong to quite another system of society and epoch of time, and, in view of them, we forget all that has intervened betwixt them and us; being morally unlike and disconnected with them, and not belonging to the same train of thought; so that we look across a gulf to the Roman ages, and do not realize how wide the gulf is. Yet in that intervening valley lie Christianity, the Dark Ages, the feudal system, chivalry and romance, and a deeper life of the human race than Rome brought to the verge of the gulf. To-day we went to the Colonna Palace, where we saw some fine pictures, but, I think, no masterpieces. They did not depress and dishearten me so much as the pictures in Roman palaces usually do; for they were in remarkably good order as regards frames and varnish; indeed, I rather suspect some of them had been injured by the means adopted to preserve their beauty. The palace is now occupied by the French Ambassador, who probably looks upon the pictures as articles of furniture and household adornment, and does not choose to have squares of black and forlorn canvas upon his walls. There were a few noble portraits by Vandyke; a very striking one by Holbein, one or two by Titian, also by Guercino, and some pictures by Rubens, and other forestieri painters, which refreshed my weary eyes. But--what chiefly interested me was the magnificent and stately hall of the palace; fifty-five of my paces in length, besides a large apartment at either end, opening into it through a pillared space, as wide as the gateway of a city. The pillars are of giallo antico, and there are pilasters of the same all the way up and down the walls, forming a perspective of the richest aspect, especially as the broad cornice flames with gilding, and the spaces between the pilasters are emblazoned with heraldic achievements and emblems in gold, and there are Venetian looking-glasses, richly decorated over the surface with beautiful pictures of flowers and Cupids, through which you catch the gleam of the mirror; and two rows of splendid chandeliers extend from end to end of the hall, which, when lighted up, if ever it be lighted up, now-a-nights, must be the most brilliant interior that ever mortal eye beheld. The ceiling glows with pictures in fresco, representing scenes connected with the history of the Colonna family; and the floor is paved with beautiful marbles, polished and arranged in square and circular compartments; and each of the many windows is set in a great architectural frame of precious marble, as large as the portal of a door. The apartment at the farther end of the hall is elevated above it, and is attained by several marble steps, whence it must have been glorious in former days to have looked down upon a gorgeous throng of princes, cardinals, warriors, and ladies, in such rich attire as might be worn when the palace was built. It is singular how much freshness and brightness it still retains; and the only objects to mar the effect were some ancient statues and busts, not very good in themselves, and now made dreary of aspect by their corroded surfaces,--the result of long burial under ground. In the room at the entrance of the hall are two cabinets, each a wonder in its way,--one being adorned with precious stones; the other with ivory carvings of Michael Angelo's Last Judgment, and of the frescos of Raphael's Loggie. The world has ceased to be so magnificent as it once was. Men make no such marvels nowadays. The only defect that I remember in this hall was in the marble steps that ascend to the elevated apartment at the end of it; a large piece had been broken out of one of them, leaving a rough irregular gap in the polished marble stair. It is not easy to conceive what violence can have done this, without also doing mischief to all the other splendor around it. April 16th.--We went this morning to the Academy of St. Luke (the Fine Arts Academy at Rome) in the Via Bonella, close by the Forum. We rang the bell at the house door; and after a few moments it was unlocked or unbolted by some unseen agency from above, no one making his appearance to admit us. We ascended two or three flights of stairs, and entered a hall, where was a young man, the custode, and two or three artists engaged in copying some of the pictures. The collection not being vastly large, and the pictures being in more presentable condition than usual, I enjoyed them more than I generally do; particularly a Virgin and Child by Vandyke, where two angels are singing and playing, one on a lute and the other on a violin, to remind the holy infant of the strains he used to hear in heaven. It is one of the few pictures that there is really any pleasure in looking at. There were several paintings by Titian, mostly of a voluptuous character, but not very charming; also two or more by Guido, one of which, representing Fortune, is celebrated. They did not impress me much, nor do I find myself strongly drawn towards Guido, though there is no other painter who seems to achieve things so magically and inscrutably as he sometimes does. Perhaps it requires a finer taste than mine to appreciate him; and yet I do appreciate him so far as to see that his Michael, for instance, is perfectly beautiful. . . . . In the gallery, there are whole rows of portraits of members of the Academy of St. Luke, most of whom, judging by their physiognomies, were very commonplace people; a fact which makes itself visible in a portrait, however much the painter may try to flatter his sitter. Several of the pictures by Titian, Paul Veronese, and other artists, now exhibited in the gallery, were formerly kept in a secret cabinet in the Capitol, being considered of a too voluptuous character for the public eye. I did not think them noticeably indecorous, as compared with a hundred other pictures that are shown and looked at without scruple;--Calypso and her nymphs, a knot of nude women by Titian, is perhaps as objectionable as any. But even Titian's flesh-tints cannot keep, and have not kept their warmth through all these centuries. The illusion and lifelikeness effervesces and exhales out of a picture as it grows old; and we go on talking of a charm that has forever vanished. From St. Luke's we went to San Pietro in Vincoli, occupying a fine position on or near the summit of the Esquiline mount. A little abortion of a man (and, by the by, there are more diminutive and ill-shapen men and women in Rome than I ever saw elsewhere, a phenomenon to be accounted for, perhaps, by their custom of wrapping the new-born infant in swaddling-clothes), this two-foot abortion hastened before us, as we drew nigh, to summon the sacristan to open the church door. It was a needless service, for which we rewarded him with two baiocchi. San Pietro is a simple and noble church, consisting of a nave divided from the side aisles by rows of columns, that once adorned some ancient temple; and its wide, unencumbered interior affords better breathing-space than most churches in Rome. The statue of Moses occupies a niche in one of the side aisles on the right, not far from the high altar. I found it grand and sublime, with a beard flowing down like a cataract; a truly majestic figure, but not so benign as it were desirable that such strength should be. The horns, about which so much has been said, are not a very prominent feature of the statue, being merely two diminutive tips rising straight up over his forehead, neither adding to the grandeur of the head, nor detracting sensibly from it. The whole force of this statue is not to be felt in one brief visit, but I agree with an English gentleman, who, with a large party, entered the church while we were there, in thinking that Moses has "very fine features,"--a compliment for which the colossal Hebrew ought to have made the Englishman a bow. Besides the Moses, the church contains some attractions of a pictorial kind, which are reposited in the sacristy, into which we passed through a side door. The most remarkable of these pictures is a face and bust of Hope, by Guido, with beautiful eyes lifted upwards; it has a grace which artists are continually trying to get into their innumerable copies, but always without success; for, indeed, though nothing is more true than the existence of this charm in the picture, yet if you try to analyze it, or even look too intently at it, it vanishes, till you look again with more trusting simplicity. Leaving the church, we wandered to the Coliseum, and to the public grounds contiguous to them, where a score and more of French drummers were beating each man his drum, without reference to any rub-a-dub but his own. This seems to be a daily or periodical practice and point of duty with them. After resting ourselves on one of the marble benches, we came slowly home, through the Basilica of Constantine, and along the shady sides of the streets and piazzas, sometimes, perforce, striking boldly through the white sunshine, which, however, was not so hot as to shrivel us up bodily. It has been a most beautiful and perfect day as regards weather, clear and bright, very warm in the sunshine, yet freshened throughout by a quiet stir in the air. Still there is something in this air malevolent, or, at least, not friendly. The Romans lie down and fall asleep in it, in any vacant part of the streets, and wherever they can find any spot sufficiently clean, and among the ruins of temples. I would not sleep in the open air for whatever my life may be worth. On our way home, sitting in one of the narrow streets, we saw an old woman spinning with a distaff; a far more ancient implement than the spinning-wheel, which the housewives of other nations have long since laid aside. April 18th.--Yesterday, at noon, the whole family of us set out on a visit to the Villa Borghese and its grounds, the entrance to which is just outside of the Porta del Popolo. After getting within the grounds, however, there is a long walk before reaching the casino, and we found the sun rather uncomfortably hot, and the road dusty and white in the sunshine; nevertheless, a footpath ran alongside of it most of the way through the grass and among the young trees. It seems to me that the trees do not put forth their leaves with nearly the same magical rapidity in this southern land at the approach of summer, as they do in more northerly countries. In these latter, having a much shorter time to develop themselves, they feel the necessity of making the most of it. But the grass, in the lawns and enclosures along which we passed, looked already fit to be mowed, and it was interspersed with many flowers. Saturday being, I believe, the only day of the week on which visitors are admitted to the casino, there were many parties in carriages, artists on foot, gentlemen on horseback, and miscellaneous people, to whom the door was opened by a custode on ringing a bell. The whole of the basement floor of the casino, comprising a suite of beautiful rooms, is filled with statuary. The entrance hall is a very splendid apartment, brightly frescoed, and paved with ancient mosaics, representing the combats with beasts and gladiators in the Coliseum, curious, though very rudely and awkwardly designed, apparently after the arts had begun to decline. Many of the specimens of sculpture displayed in these rooms are fine, but none of them, I think, possess the highest merit. An Apollo is beautiful; a group of a fighting Amazon, and her enemies trampled under her horse's feet, is very impressive; a Faun, copied from that of Praxiteles, and another, who seems to be dancing, were exceedingly pleasant to look at. I like these strange, sweet, playful, rustic creatures, . . . . linked so prettily, without monstrosity, to the lower tribes. . . . . Their character has never, that I know of, been wrought out in literature; and something quite good, funny, and philosophical, as well as poetic, might very likely be educed from them. . . . . The faun is a natural and delightful link betwixt human and brute life, with something of a divine character intermingled. The gallery, as it is called, on the basement floor of the casino, is sixty feet in length, by perhaps a third as much in breadth, and is (after all I have seen at the Colonna Palace and elsewhere) a more magnificent hall than I imagined to be in existence. It is floored with rich marble in beautifully arranged compartments, and the walls are almost entirely eased with marble of various sorts, the prevailing kind being giallo antico, intermixed with verd antique, and I know not what else; but the splendor of the giallo antico gives the character to the room, and the large and deep niches along the walls appear to be lined with the same material. Without coming to Italy, one can have no idea of what beauty and magnificence are produced by these fittings up of polished marble. Marble to an American means nothing but white limestone. This hall, moreover, is adorned with pillars of Oriental alabaster, and wherever is a space vacant of precious and richly colored marble it is frescoed with arabesque ornaments; and over the whole is a coved and vaulted ceiling, glowing with picture. There never can be anything richer than the whole effect. As to the sculpture here it was not very fine, so far as I can remember, consisting chiefly of busts of the emperors in porphyry; but they served a good purpose in the upholstery way. There were also magnificent tables, each composed of one great slab of porphyry; and also vases of nero antico, and other rarest substance. It remains to be mentioned that, on this almost summer day, I was quite chilled in passing through these glorious halls; no fireplace anywhere; no possibility of comfort; and in the hot season, when their coolness might be agreeable, it would be death to inhabit them. Ascending a long winding staircase, we arrived at another suite of rooms, containing a good many not very remarkable pictures, and a few more pieces of statuary. Among the latter, is Canova's statue of Pauline, the sister of Bonaparte, who is represented with but little drapery, and in the character of Venus holding the apple in her hand. It is admirably done, and, I have no doubt, a perfect likeness; very beautiful too; but it is wonderful to see how the artificial elegance of the woman of this world makes itself perceptible in spite of whatever simplicity she could find in almost utter nakedness. The statue does not afford pleasure in the contemplation. In one of these upper rooms are some works of Bernini; two of them, Aeneas and Anchises, and David on the point of slinging a stone at Goliath, have great merit, and do not tear and rend themselves quite out of the laws and limits of marble, like his later sculpture. Here is also his Apollo overtaking Daphne, whose feet take root, whose, finger-tips sprout into twigs, and whose tender body roughens round about with bark, as he embraces her. It did not seem very wonderful to me; not so good as Hillard's description of it made me expect; and one does not enjoy these freaks in marble. We were glad to emerge from the casino into the warm sunshine; and, for my part, I made the best of my way to a large fountain, surrounded by a circular stone seat of wide sweep, and sat down in a sunny segment of the circle. Around grew a solemn company of old trees,--ilexes, I believe,-- with huge, contorted trunks and evergreen branches, . . . . deep groves, sunny openings, the airy gush of fountains, marble statues, dimly visible in recesses of foliage, great urns and vases, terminal figures, temples, --all these works of art looking as if they had stood there long enough to feel at home, and to be on friendly and familiar terms with the grass and trees. It is a most beautiful place, . . . . and the Malaria is its true master and inhabitant! April 22d.--We have been recently to the studio of Mr. Brown [now dead], the American landscape-painter, and were altogether surprised and delighted with his pictures. He is a plain, homely Yankee, quite unpolished by his many years' residence in Italy; he talks ungrammatically, and in Yankee idioms; walks with a strange, awkward gait and stooping shoulders; is altogether unpicturesque; but wins one's confidence by his very lack of grace. It is not often that we see an artist so entirely free from affectation in his aspect and deportment. His pictures were views of Swiss and Italian scenery, and were most beautiful and true. One of them, a moonlight picture, was really magical,-- the moon shining so brightly that it seemed to throw a light even beyond the limits of the picture,--and yet his sunrises and sunsets, and noontides too, were nowise inferior to this, although their excellence required somewhat longer study, to be fully appreciated. I seemed to receive more pleasure front Mr. Brown's pictures than from any of the landscapes by the old masters; and the fact serves to strengthen me in the belief that the most delicate if not the highest charm of a picture is evanescent, and that we continue to admire pictures prescriptively and by tradition, after the qualities that first won them their fame have vanished. I suppose Claude was a greater landscape-painter than Brown; but for my own pleasure I would prefer one of the latter artist's pictures,--those of the former being quite changed from what he intended them to be by the effect of time on his pigments. Mr. Brown showed us some drawings from nature, done with incredible care and minuteness of detail, as studies for his paintings. We complimented him on his patience; but he said, "O, it's not patience,--it's love!" In fact, it was a patient and most successful wooing of a beloved object, which at last rewarded him by yielding itself wholly. We have likewise been to Mr. B------'s [now dead] studio, where we saw several pretty statues and busts, and among them an Eve, with her wreath of fig-leaves lying across her poor nudity; comely in some points, but with a frightful volume of thighs and calves. I do not altogether see the necessity of ever sculpturing another nakedness. Man is no longer a naked animal; his clothes are as natural to him as his skin, and sculptors have no more right to undress him than to flay him. Also, we have seen again William Story's Cleopatra,--a work of genuine thought and energy, representing a terribly dangerous woman; quiet enough for the moment, but very likely to spring upon you like a tigress. It is delightful to escape to his creations from this universal prettiness, which seems to be the highest conception of the crowd of modern sculptors, and which they almost invariably attain. Miss Bremer called on us the other day. We find her very little changed from what she was when she came to take tea and spend an evening at our little red cottage, among the Berkshire hills, and went away so dissatisfied with my conversational performances, and so laudatory of my brow and eyes, while so severely criticising my poor mouth and chin. She is the funniest little old fairy in person whom one can imagine, with a huge nose, to which all the rest of her is but an insufficient appendage; but you feel at once that she is most gentle, kind, womanly, sympathetic, and true. She talks English fluently, in a low quiet voice, but with such an accent that it is impossible to understand her without the closest attention. This was the real cause of the failure of our Berkshire interview; for I could not guess, half the time, what she was saying, and, of course, had to take an uncertain aim with my responses. A more intrepid talker than myself would have shouted his ideas across the gulf; but, for me, there must first be a close and unembarrassed contiguity with my companion, or I cannot say one real word. I doubt whether I have ever really talked with half a dozen persons in my life, either men or women. To-day my wife and I have been at the picture and sculpture galleries of the Capitol. I rather enjoyed looking at several of the pictures, though at this moment I particularly remember only a very beautiful face of a man, one of two heads on the same canvas by Vandyke. Yes; I did look with new admiration at Paul Veronese's "Rape of Europa." It must have been, in its day, the most brilliant and rejoicing picture, the most voluptuous, the most exuberant, that ever put the sunshine to shame. The bull has all Jupiter in him, so tender and gentle, yet so passionate, that you feel it indecorous to look at him; and Europa, under her thick rich stuffs and embroideries, is all a woman. What a pity that such a picture should fade, and perplex the beholder with such splendor shining through such forlornness! We afterwards went into the sculpture-gallery, where I looked at the Faun of Praxiteles, and was sensible of a peculiar charm in it; a sylvan beauty and homeliness, friendly and wild at once. The lengthened, but not preposterous ears, and the little tail, which we infer, have an exquisite effect, and make the spectator smile in his very heart. This race of fauns was the most delightful of all that antiquity imagined. It seems to me that a story, with all sorts of fun and pathos in it, might be contrived on the idea of their species having become intermingled with the human race; a family with the faun blood in them, having prolonged itself from the classic era till our own days. The tail might have disappeared, by dint of constant intermarriages with ordinary mortals; but the pretty hairy ears should occasionally reappear in members of the family; and the moral instincts and intellectual characteristics of the faun might be most picturesquely brought out, without detriment to the human interest of the story. Fancy this combination in the person of a young lady! I have spoken of Mr. Gibson's colored statues. It seems (at least Mr. Nichols tells me) that he stains them with tobacco juice. . . . . Were he to send a Cupid to America, he need not trouble himself to stain it beforehand. April 25th.--Night before last, my wife and I took a moonlight ramble through Rome, it being a very beautiful night, warm enough for comfort, and with no perceptible dew or dampness. We set out at about nine o'clock, and, our general direction being towards the Coliseum, we soon came to the Fountain of Trevi, full on the front of which the moonlight fell, making Bernini's sculptures look stately and beautiful, though the semicircular gush and fall of the cascade, and the many jets of the water, pouring and bubbling into the great marble basin, are of far more account than Neptune and his steeds, and the rest of the figures. . . . . We ascended the Capitoline Hill, and I felt a satisfaction in placing my hand on those immense blocks of stone, the remains of the ancient Capitol, which form the foundation of the present edifice, and will make a sure basis for as many edifices as posterity may choose to rear upon it, till the end of the world. It is wonderful, the solidity with which those old Romans built; one would suppose they contemplated the whole course of Time as the only limit of their individual life. This is not so strange in the days of the Republic, when, probably, they believed in the permanence of their institutions; but they still seemed to build for eternity, in the reigns of the emperors, when neither rulers nor people had any faith or moral substance, or laid any earnest grasp on life. Reaching the top of the Capitoline Hill, we ascended the steps of the portal of the Palace of the Senator, and looked down into the piazza, with the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in the centre of it. The architecture that surrounds the piazza is very ineffective; and so, in my opinion, are all the other architectural works of Michael Angelo, including St. Peter's itself, of which he has made as little as could possibly be made of such a vast pile of material. He balances everything in such a way that it seems but half of itself. We soon descended into the piazza, and walked round and round the statue of Marcus Aurelius, contemplating it from every point and admiring it in all. . . . . On these beautiful moonlight nights, Rome appears to keep awake and stirring, though in a quiet and decorous way. It is, in fact, the pleasantest time for promenades, and we both felt less wearied than by any promenade in the daytime, of similar extent, since our residence in Rome. In future, I mean to walk often after nightfall. Yesterday, we set out betimes, and ascended the dome of St. Peter's. The best view of the interior of the church, I think, is from the first gallery beneath the dome. The whole inside of the dome is set with mosaic-work, the separate pieces being, so far as I could see, about half an inch square. Emerging on the roof, we had a fine view of all the surrounding Rome, including the Mediterranean Sea in the remote distance. Above us still rose the whole mountain of the great dome, and it made an impression on me of greater height and size than I had yet been able to receive. The copper ball at the summit looked hardly bigger than a man could lift; and yet, a little while afterwards, U----, J-----, and I stood all together in that ball, which could have contained a dozen more along with us. The esplanade of the roof is, of course, very extensive; and along the front of it are ranged the statues which we see from below, and which, on nearer examination, prove to be roughly hewn giants. There is a small house on the roof, where, probably, the custodes of this part of the edifice reside; and there is a fountain gushing abundantly into a stone trough, that looked like an old sarcophagus. It is strange where the water comes from at such a height. The children tasted it, and pronounced it very warm and disagreeable. After taking in the prospect on all sides we rang a bell, which summoned a man, who directed us towards a door in the side of the dome, where a custode was waiting to admit us. Hitherto the ascent had been easy, along a slope without stairs, up which, I believe, people sometimes ride on donkeys. The rest of the way we mounted steep and narrow staircases, winding round within the wall, or between the two walls of the dome, and growing narrower and steeper, till, finally, there is but a perpendicular iron ladder, by means of which to climb into the copper ball. Except through small windows and peep-holes, there is no external prospect of a higher point than the roof of the church. Just beneath the ball there is a circular room capable of containing a large company, and a door which ought to give access to a gallery on the outside; but the custode informed us that this door is never opened. As I have said, U----, J-----, and I clambered into the copper ball, which we found as hot as an oven; and, after putting our hands on its top, and on the summit of St. Peter's, were glad to clamber down again. I have made some mistake, after all, in my narration. There certainly is a circular balcony at the top of the dome, for I remember walking round it, and looking, not only across the country, but downwards along the ribs of the dome; to which are attached the iron contrivances for illuminating it on Easter Sunday. . . . . Before leaving the church we went to look at the mosaic copy of the "Transfiguration," because we were going to see the original in the Vatican, and wished to compare the two. Going round to the entrance of the Vatican, we went first to the manufactory of mosaics, to which we had a ticket of admission. We found it a long series of rooms, in which the mosaic artists were at work, chiefly in making some medallions of the heads of saints for the new church of St. Paul's. It was rather coarse work, and it seemed to me that the mosaic copy was somewhat stiffer and more wooden than the original, the bits of stone not flowing into color quite so freely as paint from a brush. There was no large picture now in process of being copied; but two or three artists were employed on small and delicate subjects. One had a Holy Family of Raphael in hand; and the Sibyls of Guercino and Domenichino were hanging on the wall, apparently ready to be put into mosaic. Wherever great skill and delicacy, on the artists' part were necessary, they seemed quite adequate to the occasion; but, after all, a mosaic of any celebrated picture is but a copy of a copy. The substance employed is a stone-paste, of innumerable different views, and in bits of various sizes, quantities of which were seen in cases along the whole series of rooms. We next ascended an amazing height of staircases, and walked along I know not what extent of passages, . . . . till we reached the picture-gallery of the Vatican, into which I had never been before. There are but three rooms, all lined with red velvet, on which hung about fifty pictures, each one of them, no doubt, worthy to be considered a masterpiece. In the first room were three Murillos, all so beautiful that I could have spent the day happily in looking at either of them; for, methinks, of all painters he is the tenderest and truest. I could not enjoy these pictures now, however, because in the next room, and visible through the open door, hung the "Transfiguration." Approaching it, I felt that the picture was worthy of its fame, and was far better than I could at once appreciate; admirably preserved, too, though I fully believe it must have possessed a charm when it left Raphael's hand that has now vanished forever. As church furniture and an external adornment, the mosaic copy is preferable to the original, but no copy could ever reproduce all the life and expression which we see here. Opposite to it hangs the "Communion of St. Jerome," the aged, dying saint, half torpid with death already, partaking of the sacrament, and a sunny garland of cherubs in the upper part of the picture, looking down upon him, and quite comforting the spectator with the idea that the old man needs only to be quite dead in order to flit away with them. As for the other pictures I did but glance at, and have forgotten them. The "Transfiguration" is finished with great minuteness and detail, the weeds and blades of grass in the foreground being as distinct as if they were growing in a natural soil. A partly decayed stick of wood with the bark is likewise given in close imitation of nature. The reflection of a foot of one of the apostles is seen in a pool of water at the verge of the picture. One or two heads and arms seem almost to project from the canvas. There is great lifelikeness and reality, as well as higher qualities. The face of Jesus, being so high aloft and so small in the distance, I could not well see; but I am impressed with the idea that it looks too much like human flesh and blood to be in keeping with the celestial aspect of the figure, or with the probabilities of the scene, when the divinity and immortality of the Saviour beamed from within him through the earthly features that ordinarily shaded him. As regards the composition of the picture, I am not convinced of the propriety of its being in two so distinctly separate parts,--the upper portion not thinking of the lower, and the lower portion not being aware of the higher. It symbolizes, however, the spiritual short-sightedness of mankind that, amid the trouble and grief of the lower picture, not a single individual, either of those who seek help or those who would willingly afford it, lifts his eyes to that region, one glimpse of which would set everything right. One or two of the disciples point upward, but without really knowing what abundance of help is to be had there. April 27th.--To-day we have all been with Mr. Akers to some studios of painters; first to that of Mr. Wilde, an artist originally from Boston. His pictures are principally of scenes from Venice, and are miracles of color, being as bright as if the light were transmitted through rubies and sapphires. And yet, after contemplating them awhile, we became convinced that the painter had not gone in the least beyond nature, but, on the contrary, had fallen short of brilliancies which no palette, or skill, or boldness in using color, could attain. I do not quite know whether it is best to attempt these things. They may be found in nature, no doubt, but always so tempered by what surrounds them, so put out of sight even while they seem full before our eyes, that we question the accuracy of a faithful reproduction of them on canvas. There was a picture of sunset, the whole sky of which would have outshone any gilded frame that could have been put around it. There was a most gorgeous sketch of a handful of weeds and leaves, such as may be seen strewing acres of forest-ground in an American autumn. I doubt whether any other man has ever ventured to paint a picture like either of these two, the Italian sunset or the American autumnal foliage. Mr. Wilde, who is still young, talked with genuine feeling and enthusiasm of his art, and is certainly a man of genius. We next went to the studio of an elderly Swiss artist, named Mueller, I believe, where we looked at a great many water-color and crayon drawings of scenes in Italy, Greece, and Switzerland. The artist was a quiet, respectable, somewhat heavy-looking old gentleman, from whose aspect one would expect a plodding pertinacity of character rather than quickness of sensibility. He must have united both these qualities, however, to produce such pictures as these, such faithful transcripts of whatever Nature has most beautiful to show, and which she shows only to those who love her deeply and patiently. They are wonderful pictures, compressing plains, seas, and mountains, with miles and miles of distance, into the space of a foot or two, without crowding anything or leaving out a feature, and diffusing the free, blue atmosphere throughout. The works of the English watercolor artists which I saw at the Manchester Exhibition seemed to me nowise equal to these. Now, here are three artists, Mr. Brown, Mr. Wilde, and Mr. Mueller, who have smitten me with vast admiration within these few days past, while I am continually turning away disappointed from the landscapes of the most famous among the old masters, unable to find any charm or illusion in them. Yet I suppose Claude, Poussin, and Salvator Rosa must have won their renown by real achievements. But the glory of a picture fades like that of a flower. Contiguous to Mr. Mueller's studio was that of a young German artist, not long resident in Rome, and Mr. Akers proposed that we should go in there, as a matter of kindness to the young man, who is scarcely known at all, and seldom has a visitor to look at his pictures. His studio comprised his whole establishment; for there was his little bed, with its white drapery, in a corner of the small room, and his dressing-table, with its brushes and combs, while the easel and the few sketches of Italian scenes and figures occupied the foreground. I did not like his pictures very well, but would gladly have bought them all if I could have afforded it, the artist looked so cheerful, patient, and quiet, doubtless amidst huge discouragement. He is probably stubborn of purpose, and is the sort of man who will improve with every year of his life. We could not speak his language, and were therefore spared the difficulty of paying him any compliments; but Miss Shepard said a few kind words to him in German. and seemed quite to win his heart, insomuch that he followed her with bows and smiles a long way down the staircase. It is a terrible business, this looking at pictures, whether good or bad, in the presence of the artists who paint them; it is as great a bore as to hear a poet read his own verses. It takes away all my pleasure in seeing the pictures, and even remakes me question the genuineness of the impressions which I receive from them. After this latter visit Mr. Akers conducted us to the shop of the jeweller Castellani, who is a great reproducer of ornaments in the old Roman and Etruscan fashion. These antique styles are very fashionable just now, and some of the specimens he showed us were certainly very beautiful, though I doubt whether their quaintness and old-time curiousness, as patterns of gewgaws dug out of immemorial tombs, be not their greatest charm. We saw the toilet-case of an Etruscan lady,--that is to say, a modern imitation of it,--with her rings for summer and winter, and for every day of the week, and for thumb and fingers; her ivory comb; her bracelets; and more knick-knacks than I can half remember. Splendid things of our own time were likewise shown us; a necklace of diamonds worth eighteen thousand scudi, together with emeralds and opals and great pearls. Finally we came away, and my wife and Miss Shepard were taken up by the Misses Weston, who drove with them to visit the Villa Albani. During their drive my wife happened to raise her arm, and Miss Shepard espied a little Greek cross of gold which had attached itself to the lace of her sleeve. . . . . Pray heaven the jeweller may not discover his loss before we have time to restore the spoil! He is apparently so free and careless in displaying his precious wares,--putting inestimable genes and brooches great and small into the hands of strangers like ourselves, and leaving scores of them strewn on the top of his counter,--that it would seem easy enough to take a diamond or two; but I suspect there must needs be a sharp eye somewhere. Before we left the shop he requested me to honor him with my autograph in a large book that was full of the names of his visitors. This is probably a measure of precaution. April 30th.--I went yesterday to the sculpture-gallery of the Capitol, and looked pretty thoroughly through the busts of the illustrious men, and less particularly at those of the emperors and their relatives. I likewise took particular note of the Faun of Praxiteles, because the idea keeps recurring to me of writing a little romance about it, and for that reason I shall endeavor to set down a somewhat minutely itemized detail of the statue and its surroundings. . . . . We have had beautiful weather for two or three days, very warm in the sun, yet always freshened by the gentle life of a breeze, and quite cool enough the moment you pass within the limit of the shade. . . . . In the morning there are few people there (on the Pincian) except the gardeners, lazily trimming the borders, or filling their watering-pots out of the marble-brimmed basin of the fountain; French soldiers, in their long mixed-blue surtouts, and wide scarlet pantaloons, chatting with here and there a nursery-maid and playing with the child in her care; and perhaps a few smokers, . . . . choosing each a marble seat or wooden bench in sunshine or shade as best suits him. In the afternoon, especially within an hour or two of sunset, the gardens are much more populous, and the seats, except when the sun falls full upon them, are hard to come by. Ladies arrive in carriages, splendidly dressed; children are abundant, much impeded in their frolics, and rendered stiff and stately by the finery which they wear; English gentlemen and Americans with their wives and families; the flower of the Roman population, too, both male and female, mostly dressed with great nicety; but a large intermixture of artists, shabbily picturesque; and other persons, not of the first stamp. A French band, comprising a great many brass instruments, by and by begins to play; and what with music, sunshine, a delightful atmosphere, flowers, grass, well-kept pathways, bordered with box-hedges, pines, cypresses, horse-chestnuts, flowering shrubs, and all manner of cultivated beauty, the scene is a very lively and agreeable one. The fine equipages that drive round and round through the carriage-paths are another noticeable item. The Roman aristocracy are magnificent in their aspect, driving abroad with beautiful horses, and footmen in rich liveries, sometimes as many as three behind and one sitting by the coachman. May 1st.--This morning, I wandered for the thousandth time through some of the narrow intricacies of Rome, stepping here and there into a church. I do not know the name of the first one, nor had it anything that in Rome could be called remarkable, though, till I came here, I was not aware that any such churches existed,--a marble pavement in variegated compartments, a series of shrines and chapels round the whole floor, each with its own adornment of sculpture and pictures, its own altar with tall wax tapers before it, some of which were burning; a great picture over the high altar, the whole interior of the church ranged round with pillars and pilasters, and lined, every inch of it, with rich yellow marble. Finally, a frescoed ceiling over the nave and transepts, and a dome rising high above the central part, and filled with frescos brought to such perspective illusion, that the edges seem to project into the air. Two or three persons are kneeling at separate shrines; there are several wooden confessionals placed against the walls, at one of which kneels a lady, confessing to a priest who sits within; the tapers are lighted at the high altar and at one of the shrines; an attendant is scrubbing the marble pavement with a broom and water, a process, I should think, seldom practised in Roman churches. By and by the lady finishes her confession, kisses the priest's hand, and sits down in one of the chairs which are placed about the floor, while the priest, in a black robe, with a short, white, loose jacket over his shoulders, disappears by a side door out of the church. I, likewise, finding nothing attractive in the pictures, take my departure. Protestantism needs a new apostle to convert it into something positive. . . . . I now found my way to the Piazza Navona. It is to me the most interesting piazza in Rome; a large oblong space, surrounded with tall, shabby houses, among which there are none that seem to be palaces. The sun falls broadly over the area of the piazza, and shows the fountains in it;--one a large basin with great sea-monsters, probably of Bernini's inventions, squirting very small streams of water into it; another of the fountains I do not at all remember; but the central one is an immense basin, over which is reared an old Egyptian obelisk, elevated on a rock, which is cleft into four arches. Monstrous devices in marble, I know not of what purport, are clambering about the cloven rock or burrowing beneath it; one and all of them are superfluous and impertinent, the only essential thing being the abundant supply of water in the fountain. This whole Piazza Navona is usually the scene of more business than seems to be transacted anywhere else in Rome; in some parts of it rusty iron is offered for sale, locks and keys, old tools, and all such rubbish; in other parts vegetables, comprising, at this season, green peas, onions, cauliflowers, radishes, artichokes, and others with which I have never made acquaintance; also, stalls or wheelbarrows containing apples, chestnuts (the meats dried and taken out of the shells), green almonds in their husks, and squash-seeds,--salted and dried in an oven,--apparently a favorite delicacy of the Romans. There are also lemons and oranges; stalls of fish, mostly about the size of smelts, taken from the Tiber; cigars of various qualities, the best at a baioccho and a half apiece; bread in loaves or in small rings, a great many of which are strung together on a long stick, and thus carried round for sale. Women and men sit with these things for sale, or carry them about in trays or on boards on their heads, crying them with shrill and hard voices. There is a shabby crowd and much babble; very little picturesqueness of costume or figure, however, the chief exceptions being, here and there, an old white-bearded beggar. A few of the men have the peasant costume,--a short jacket and breeches of light blue cloth and white stockings,--the ugliest dress I ever saw. The women go bareheaded, and seem fond of scarlet and other bright colors, but are homely and clumsy in form. The piazza is dingy in its general aspect, and very dirty, being strewn with straw, vegetable-tops, and the rubbish of a week's marketing; but there is more life in it than one sees elsewhere in Rome. On one side of the piazza is the Church of St. Agnes, traditionally said to stand on the site of the house where that holy maiden was exposed to infamy by the Roman soldiers, and where her modesty and innocence were saved by miracle. I went into the church, and found it very splendid, with rich marble columns, all as brilliant as if just built; a frescoed dome above; beneath, a range of chapels all round the church, ornamented not with pictures but bas-reliefs, the figures of which almost step and struggle out of the marble. They did not seem very admirable as works of art, none of them explaining themselves or attracting me long enough to study out their meaning; but, as part of the architecture of the church, they had a good effect. Out of the busy square two or three persons had stepped into this bright and calm seclusion to pray and be devout, for a little while; and, between sunrise and sunset of the bustling market-day, many doubtless snatch a moment to refresh their souls. In the Pantheon (to-day) it was pleasant looking up to the circular opening, to see the clouds flitting across it, sometimes covering it quite over, then permitting a glimpse of sky, then showing all the circle of sunny blue. Then would come the ragged edge of a cloud, brightened throughout with sunshine, passing and changing quickly,--not that the divine smile was not always the same, but continually variable through the medium of earthly influences. The great slanting beam of sunshine was visible all the way down to the pavement, falling upon motes of dust, or a thin smoke of incense imperceptible in the shadow. Insects were playing to and fro in the beam, high up toward the opening. There is a wonderful charm in the naturalness of all this, and one might fancy a swarm of cherubs coming down through the opening and sporting in the broad ray, to gladden the faith of worshippers on the pavement beneath; or angels bearing prayers upward, or bringing down responses to them, visible with dim brightness as they pass through the pathway of heaven's radiance, even the many hues of their wings discernible by a trusting eye; though, as they pass into the shadow, they vanish like the motes. So the sunbeam would represent those rays of divine intelligence which enable us to see wonders and to know that they are natural things. Consider the effect of light and shade in a church where the windows are open and darkened with curtains that are occasionally lifted by a breeze, letting in the sunshine, which whitens a carved tombstone on the pavement of the church, disclosing, perhaps, the letters of the name and inscription, a death's-head, a crosier, or other emblem; then the curtain falls and the bright spot vanishes. May 8th.--This morning my wife and I went to breakfast with Mrs. William Story at the Barberini Palace, expecting to meet Mrs. Jameson, who has been in Rome for a month or two. We had a very pleasant breakfast, but Mrs. Jameson was not present on account of indisposition, and the only other guests were Mrs. A------ and Mrs. H------, two sensible American ladies. Mrs. Story, however, received a note from Mrs. Jameson, asking her to bring us to see her at her lodgings; so in the course of the afternoon she called on us, and took us thither in her carriage. Mrs. Jameson lives on the first piano of an old palazzo on the Via di Ripetta, nearly opposite the ferry-way across the Tiber, and affording a pleasant view of the yellow river and the green bank and fields on the other side. I had expected to see an elderly lady, but not quite so venerable a one as Mrs. Jameson proved to be; a rather short, round, and massive personage, of benign and agreeable aspect, with a sort of black skullcap on her head, beneath which appeared her hair, which seemed once to have been fair, and was now almost white. I should take her to be about seventy years old. She began to talk to us with affectionate familiarity, and was particularly kind in her manifestations towards myself, who, on my part, was equally gracious towards her. In truth, I have found great pleasure and profit in her works, and was glad to hear her say that she liked mine. We talked about art, and she showed us a picture leaning up against the wall of the room; a quaint old Byzantine painting, with a gilded background, and two stiff figures (our Saviour and St. Catherine) standing shyly at a sacred distance from one another, and going through the marriage ceremony. There was a great deal of expression in their faces and figures; and the spectator feels, moreover, that the artist must have been a devout man,--an impression which we seldom receive from modern pictures, however awfully holy the subject, or however consecrated the place they hang in. Mrs. Jameson seems to be familiar with Italy, its people and life, as well as with its picture-galleries. She is said to be rather irascible in her temper; but nothing could be sweeter than her voice, her look, and all her manifestations to-day. When we were coming away she clasped my hand in both of hers, and again expressed the pleasure of having seen me, and her gratitude to me for calling on her; nor did I refrain from responding Amen to these effusions. . . . . Taking leave of Mrs. Jameson, we drove through the city, and out of the Lateran Gate; first, however, waiting a long while at Monaldini's bookstore in the Piazza de' Spagna for Mr. Story, whom we finally took up in the street, after losing nearly an hour. Just two miles beyond the gate is a space on the green campagna where, for some time past, excavations have been in progress, which thus far have resulted in the discovery of several tombs, and the old, buried, and almost forgotten church or basilica of San Stefano. It is a beautiful spot, that of the excavations, with the Alban hills in the distance, and some heavy, sunlighted clouds hanging above, or recumbent at length upon them, and behind the city and its mighty dome. The excavations are an object of great interest both to the Romans and to strangers, and there were many carriages and a great many visitors viewing the progress of the works, which are carried forward with greater energy than anything else I have seen attempted at Rome. A short time ago the ground in the vicinity was a green surface, level, except here and there a little hillock, or scarcely perceptible swell; the tomb of Cecilia Metella showing itself a mile or two distant, and other rugged ruins of great tombs rising on the plain. Now the whole site of the basilica is uncovered, and they have dug into the depths of several tombs, bringing to light precious marbles, pillars, a statue, and elaborately wrought sarcophagi; and if they were to dig into almost every other inequality that frets the surface of the campagna, I suppose the result might be the same. You cannot dig six feet downward anywhere into the soil, deep enough to hollow out a grave, without finding some precious relic of the past; only they lose somewhat of their value when you think that you can almost spurn them out of the ground with your foot. It is a very wonderful arrangement of Providence that these things should have been preserved for a long series of coming generations by that accumulation of dust and soil and grass and trees and houses over them, which will keep them safe, and cause their reappearance above ground to be gradual, so that the rest of the world's lifetime may have for one of its enjoyments the uncovering of old Rome. The tombs were accessible by long flights of steps going steeply downward, and they were thronged with so many visitors that we had to wait some little time for our own turn. In the first into which we descended we found two tombs side by side, with only a partition wall between; the outer tomb being, as is supposed, a burial-place constructed by the early Christians, while the adjoined and minor one was a work of pagan Rome about the second century after Christ. The former was much less interesting than the latter. It contained some large sarcophagi, with sculpture upon them of rather heathenish aspect; and in the centre of the front of each sarcophagus was a bust in bas-relief, the features of which had never been wrought, but were left almost blank, with only the faintest indications of a nose, for instance. It is supposed that sarcophagi were kept on hand by the sculptors, and were bought ready made, and that it was customary to work out the portrait of the deceased upon the blank face in the centre; but when there was a necessity for sudden burial, as may have been the case in the present instance, this was dispensed with. The inner tomb was found without any earth in it, just as it had been left when the last old Roman was buried there; and it being only a week or two since it was opened, there was very little intervention of persons, though much of time, between the departure of the friends of the dead and our own visit. It is a square room, with a mosaic pavement, and is six or seven paces in length and breadth, and as much in height to the vaulted roof. The roof and upper walls are beautifully ornamented with frescos, which were very bright when first discovered, but have rapidly faded since the admission of the air, though the graceful and joyous designs, flowers and fruits and trees, are still perfectly discernible. The room must have been anything but sad and funereal; on the contrary, as cheerful a saloon, and as brilliant, if lighted up, as one could desire to feast in. It contained several marble sarcophagi, covering indeed almost the whole floor, and each of them as much as three or four feet in length, and two much longer. The longer ones I did not particularly examine, and they seemed comparatively plainer; but the smaller sarcophagi were covered with the most delicately wrought and beautiful bas-reliefs that I ever beheld; a throng of glad and lovely shapes in marble clustering thickly and chasing one another round the sides of these old stone coffins. The work was as perfect as when the sculptor gave it his last touch; and if he had wrought it to be placed in a frequented hall, to be seen and admired by continual crowds as long as the marble should endure, he could not have chiselled with better skill and care, though his work was to be shut up in the depths of a tomb forever. This seems to me the strangest thing in the world, the most alien from modern sympathies. If they had built their tombs above ground, one could understand the arrangement better; but no sooner had they adorned them so richly, and furnished them with such exquisite productions of art, than they annihilated them with darkness. It was an attempt, no doubt, to render the physical aspect of death cheerful, but there was no good sense in it. We went down also into another tomb close by, the walls of which were ornamented with medallions in stucco. These works presented a numerous series of graceful designs, wrought by the hand in the short space of (Mr. Story said it could not have been more than) five or ten minutes, while the wet plaster remained capable of being moulded; and it was marvellous to think of the fertility of the artist's fancy, and the rapidity and accuracy with which he must have given substantial existence to his ideas. These too--all of them such adornments as would have suited a festal hall--were made to be buried forthwith in eternal darkness. I saw and handled in this tomb a great thigh-bone, and measured it with my own; it was one of many such relics of the guests who were laid to sleep in these rich chambers. The sarcophagi that served them for coffins could not now be put to a more appropriate use than as wine-coolers in a modern dining-room; and it would heighten the enjoyment of a festival to look at them. We would gladly have stayed much longer; but it was drawing towards sunset, and the evening, though bright, was unusually cool, so we drove home; and on the way, Mr. Story told us of the horrible practices of the modern Romans with their dead,--how they place them in the church, where, at midnight, they are stripped of their last rag of funeral attire, put into the rudest wooden coffins, and thrown into a trench,--a half-mile, for instance, of promiscuous corpses. This is the fate of all, except those whose friends choose to pay an exorbitant sum to have them buried under the pavement of a church. The Italians have an excessive dread of corpses, and never meddle with those of their nearest and dearest relatives. They have a horror of death, too, especially of sudden death, and most particularly of apoplexy; and no wonder, as it gives no time for the last rites of the Church, and so exposes them to a fearful risk of perdition forever. On the whole, the ancient practice was, perhaps, the preferable one; but Nature has made it very difficult for us to do anything pleasant and satisfactory with a dead body. God knows best; but I wish he had so ordered it that our mortal bodies, when we have done with them, might vanish out of sight and sense, like bubbles. A person of delicacy hates to think of leaving such a burden as his decaying mortality to the disposal of his friends; but, I say again, how delightful it would be, and how helpful towards our faith in a blessed futurity, if the dying could disappear like vanishing bubbles, leaving, perhaps, a sweet fragrance diffused for a minute or two throughout the death-chamber. This would be the odor of sanctity! And if sometimes the evaporation of a sinful soul should leave an odor not so delightful, a breeze through the open windows would soon waft it quite away. Apropos of the various methods of disposing of dead bodies, William Story recalled a newspaper paragraph respecting a ring, with a stone of a new species in it, which a widower was observed to wear upon his finger. Being questioned as to what the gem was, he answered, "It is my wife." He had procured her body to be chemically resolved into this stone. I think I could make a story on this idea: the ring should be one of the widower's bridal gifts to a second wife; and, of course, it should have wondrous and terrible qualities, symbolizing all that disturbs the quiet of a second marriage,--on the husband's part, remorse for his inconstancy, and the constant comparison between the dead wife of his youth, now idealized, and the grosser reality which he had now adopted into her place; while on the new wife's finger it should give pressures, shooting pangs into her heart, jealousies of the past, and all such miserable emotions. By the by, the tombs which we looked at and entered may have been originally above ground, like that of Cecilia Metella, and a hundred others along the Appian Way; though, even in this case, the beautiful chambers must have been shut up in darkness. Had there been windows, letting in the light upon the rich frescos and exquisite sculptures, there would have been a satisfaction in thinking of the existence of so much visual beauty, though no eye had the privilege to see it. But darkness, to objects of sight, is annihilation, as long as the darkness lasts. May 9th.--Mrs. Jameson called this forenoon to ask us to go and see her this evening; . . . . so that I had to receive her alone, devolving part of the burden on Miss Shepard and the three children, all of whom I introduced to her notice. Finding that I had not been farther beyond the walls of Rome than the tomb of Cecilia Metella, she invited me to take a drive of a few miles with her this afternoon. . . . . The poor lady seems to be very lame; and I am sure I was grateful to her for having taken the trouble to climb up the seventy steps of our staircase, and felt pain at seeing her go down them again. It looks fearfully like the gout, the affection being apparently in one foot. The hands, by the way, are white, and must once have been, perhaps now are, beautiful. She must have been a perfectly pretty woman in her day,--a blue or gray eyed, fair-haired beauty. I think that her hair is not white, but only flaxen in the extreme. At half past four, according to appointment, I arrived at her lodgings, and had not long to wait before her little one-horse carriage drove up to the door, and we set out, rumbling along the Via Scrofa, and through the densest part of the city, past the theatre of Marcellus, and thence along beneath the Palatine Hill, and by the Baths of Caracalla, through the gate of San Sebastiano. After emerging from the gate, we soon came to the little Church of "Domine, quo vadis?" Standing on the spot where St. Peter is said to have seen a vision of our Saviour bearing his cross, Mrs. Jameson proposed to alight; and, going in, we saw a cast from Michael Angelo's statue of the Saviour; and not far from the threshold of the church, yet perhaps in the centre of the edifice, which is extremely small, a circular stone is placed, a little raised above the pavement, and surrounded by a low wooden railing. Pointing to this stone, Mrs. Jameson showed me the prints of two feet side by side, impressed into its surface, as if a person had stopped short while pursuing his way to Rome. These, she informed me, were supposed to be the miraculous prints of the Saviour's feet; but on looking into Murray, I am mortified to find that they are merely facsimiles of the original impressions, which are treasured up among the relics of the neighboring Basilica of San Sebastiano. The marks of sculpture seemed to me, indeed, very evident in these prints, nor did they indicate such beautiful feet as should have belonged to the hearer of the best of glad tidings. Hence we drove on a little way farther, and came to the Basilica of San Sebastiano, where also we alighted, and, leaning on my arm, Mrs. Jameson went in. It is a stately and noble interior, with a spacious unencumbered nave, and a flat ceiling frescoed and gilded. In a chapel at the left of the entrance is the tomb of St. Sebastian,--a sarcophagus containing his remains, raised on high before the altar, and beneath it a recumbent statue of the saint pierced with gilded arrows. The sculpture is of the school of Bernini,--done after the design of Bernini himself, Mrs. Jameson said, and is more agreeable and in better taste than most of his works. We walked round the basilica, glancing at the pictures in the various chapels, none of which seemed to be of remarkable merit, although Mrs. Jameson pronounced rather a favorable verdict on one of St. Francis. She says that she can read a picture like the page of a book; in fact, without perhaps assuming more taste and judgment than really belong to her, it was impossible not to perceive that she gave her companion no credit for knowing one single simplest thing about art. Nor, on the whole, do I think she underrated me; the only mystery is, how she came to be so well aware of my ignorance on artistical points. In the basilica the Franciscan monks were arranging benches on the floor of the nave, and some peasant children and grown people besides were assembling, probably to undergo an examination in the catechism, and we hastened to depart, lest our presence should interfere with their arrangements. At the door a monk met us, and asked for a contribution in aid of his church, or some other religious purpose. Boys, as we drove on, ran stoutly along by the side of the chaise, begging as often as they could find breath, but were constrained finally to give up the pursuit. The great ragged bulks of the tombs along the Appian Way now hove in sight, one with a farm-house on its summit, and all of them preposterously huge and massive. At a distance, across the green campagna on our left, the Claudian aqueduct strode away over miles of space, and doubtless reached even to that circumference of blue hills which stand afar off, girdling Rome about. The tomb of Cecilia Metella came in sight a long while before we reached it, with the warm buff hue of its travertine, and the gray battlemented wall which the Caetanis erected on the top of its circular summit six hundred years ago. After passing it, we saw an interminable line of tombs on both sides of the way, each of which might, for aught I know, have been as massive as that of Cecilia Metella, and some perhaps still more monstrously gigantic, though now dilapidated and much reduced in size. Mrs. Jameson had an engagement to dinner at half past six, so that we could go but a little farther along this most interesting road, the borders of which are strewn with broken marbles; fragments of capitals, and nameless rubbish that once was beautiful. Methinks the Appian Way should be the only entrance to Rome,--through an avenue of tombs. The day had been cloudy, chill, and windy, but was now grown calmer and more genial, and brightened by a very pleasant sunshine, though great dark clouds were still lumbering up the sky. We drove homeward, looking at the distant dome of St. Peter's and talking of many things,--painting, sculpture, America, England, spiritualism, and whatever else came up. She is a very sensible old lady, and sees a great deal of truth; a good woman, too, taking elevated views of matters; but I doubt whether she has the highest and finest perceptions in the world. At any rate, she pronounced a good judgment on the American sculptors now in Rome, condemning them in the mass as men with no high aims, no worthy conception of the purposes of their art, and desecrating marble by the things they wrought in it. William Story, I presume, is not to be included in this censure, as she had spoken highly of his sculpturesque faculty in our previous conversation. On my part, I suggested that the English sculptors were little or nothing better than our own, to which she acceded generally, but said that Gibson had produced works equal to the antique,--which I did not dispute, but still questioned whether the world needed Gibson, or was any the better for him. We had a great dispute about the propriety of adopting the costume of the day in modern sculpture, and I contended that either the art ought to be given up (which possibly would be the best course), or else should be used for idealizing the man of the day to himself; and that, as Nature makes us sensible of the fact when men and women are graceful, beautiful, and noble, through whatever costume they wear, so it ought to be the test of the sculptor's genius that he should do the same. Mrs. Jameson decidedly objected to buttons, breeches, and all other items of modern costume; and, indeed, they do degrade the marble, and make high sculpture utterly impossible. Then let the art perish as one that the world has done with, as it has done with many other beautiful things that belonged to an earlier time. It was long past the hour of Mrs. Jameson's dinner engagement when we drove up to her door in the Via Ripetta. I bade her farewell with much good-feeling on my own side, and, I hope, on hers, excusing myself, however, from keeping the previous engagement to spend the evening with her, for, in point of fact, we had mutually had enough of one another for the time being. I am glad to record that she expressed a very favorable opinion of our friend Mr. Thompson's pictures. May 12th.--To-day we have been to the Villa Albani, to which we had a ticket of admission through the agency of Mr. Cass (the American Minister). We set out between ten and eleven o'clock, and walked through the Via Felice, the Piazza Barberini, and a long, heavy, dusty range of streets beyond, to the Porta Salara, whence the road extends, white and sunny, between two high blank walls to the gate of the villa, which is at no great distance. We were admitted by a girl, and went first to the casino, along an aisle of overshadowing trees, the branches of which met above our heads. In the portico of the casino, which extends along its whole front, there are many busts and statues, and, among them, one of Julius Caesar, representing him at an earlier period of life than others which I have seen. His aspect is not particularly impressive; there is a lack of chin, though not so much as in the older statues and busts. Within the edifice there is a large hall, not so brilliant, perhaps, with frescos and gilding as those at the Villa Borghese, but lined with the most beautiful variety of marbles. But, in fact, each new splendor of this sort outshines the last, and unless we could pass from one to another all in the same suite, we cannot remember them well enough to compare the Borghese with the Albani, the effect being more on the fancy than on the intellect. I do not recall any of the sculpture, except a colossal bas-relief of Antinous, crowned with flowers, and holding flowers in his hand, which was found in the ruins of Hadrian's Villa. This is said to be the finest relic of antiquity next to the Apollo and the Laocoon; but I could not feel it to be so, partly, I suppose, because the features of Autinous do not seem to me beautiful in themselves; and that heavy, downward look is repeated till I am more weary of it than of anything else in sculpture. We went up stairs and down stairs, and saw a good many beautiful things, but none, perhaps, of the very best and beautifullest; and second-rate statues, with the corroded surface of old marble that has been dozens of centuries under the ground, depress the spirits of the beholder. The bas-relief of Antinous has at least the merit of being almost as white and fresh, and quite as smooth, as if it had never been buried and dug up again. The real treasures of this villa, to the number of nearly three hundred, were removed to Paris by Napoleon, and, except the Antinous, not one of them ever came back. There are some pictures in one or two of the rooms, and among them I recollect one by Perugino, in which is a St. Michael, very devout and very beautiful; indeed, the whole picture (which is in compartments, representing the three principal points of the Saviour's history) impresses the beholder as being painted devoutly and earnestly by a religious man. In one of the rooms there is a small bronze Apollo, supposed by Winckelmann to be an original of Praxiteles; but I could not make myself in the least sensible of its merit. The rest of the things in the casino I shall pass over, as also those in the coffee-house,--an edifice which stands a hundred yards or more from the casino, with an ornamental garden, laid out in walks and flower-plats between. The coffee-house has a semicircular sweep of porch with a good many statues and busts beneath it, chiefly of distinguished Romans. In this building, as in the casino, there are curious mosaics, large vases of rare marble, and many other things worth long pauses of admiration; but I think that we were all happier when we had done with the works of art, and were at leisure to ramble about the grounds. The Villa Albani itself is an edifice separate from both the coffee-house and casino, and is not opened to strangers. It rises, palace-like, in the midst of the garden, and, it is to be hoped, has some possibility of comfort amidst its splendors.--Comfort, however, would be thrown away upon it; for besides that the site shares the curse that has fallen upon every pleasant place in the vicinity of Rome, . . . . it really has no occupant except the servants who take care of it. The Count of Castelbarco, its present proprietor, resides at Milan. The grounds are laid out in the old fashion of straight paths, with borders of box, which form hedges of great height and density, and as even as a brick wall at the top and sides. There are also alleys forming long vistas between the trunks and beneath the boughs of oaks, ilexes, and olives; and there are shrubberies and tangled wildernesses of palm, cactus, rhododendron, and I know not what; and a profusion of roses that bloom and wither with nobody to pluck and few to look at them. They climb about the sculpture of fountains, rear themselves against pillars and porticos, run brimming over the walls, and strew the path with their falling leaves. We stole a few, and feel that we have wronged our consciences in not stealing more. In one part of the grounds we saw a field actually ablaze with scarlet poppies. There are great lagunas; fountains presided over by naiads, who squirt their little jets into basins; sunny lawns; a temple, so artificially ruined that we half believed it a veritable antique; and at its base a reservoir of water, in which stone swans seemed positively to float; groves of cypress; balustrades and broad flights of stone stairs, descending to lower levels of the garden; beauty, peace, sunshine, and antique repose on every side; and far in the distance the blue hills that encircle the campagna of Rome. The day was very fine for our purpose; cheerful, but not too bright, and tempered by a breeze that seemed even a little too cool when we sat long in the shade. We enjoyed it till three o'clock. . . . . At the Capitol there is a sarcophagus with a most beautiful bas-relief of the discovery of Achilles by Ulysses, in which there is even an expression of mirth on the faces of many of the spectators. And to-day at the Albani a sarcophagus was ornamented with the nuptials of Peleus and Thetis. Death strides behind every man, to be sure, at more or less distance, and, sooner or later, enters upon any event of his life; so that, in this point of view, they might each and all serve for bas-reliefs on a sarcophagus; but the Romans seem to have treated Death as lightly and playfully as they could, and tried to cover his dart with flowers, because they hated it so much. May 15th.--My wife and I went yesterday to the Sistine Chapel, it being my first visit. It is a room of noble proportions, lofty and long, though divided in the midst by a screen or partition of white marble, which rises high enough to break the effect of spacious unity. There are six arched windows on each side of the chapel, throwing down their light from the height of the walls, with as much as twenty feet of space (more I should think) between them and the floor. The entire walls and ceiling of this stately chapel are covered with paintings in fresco, except the space about ten feet in height from the floor, and that portion was intended to be adorned by tapestries from pictures by Raphael, but, the design being prevented by his premature death, the projected tapestries have no better substitute than paper-hangings. The roof, which is flat at top, and coved or vaulted at the sides, is painted in compartments by Michael Angelo, with frescos representing the whole progress of the world and of mankind from its first formation by the Almighty . . . . till after the flood. On one of the sides of the chapel are pictures by Perugino, and other old masters, of subsequent events in sacred history; and the entire wall behind the altar, a vast expanse from the ceiling to the floor, is taken up with Michael Angelo's summing up of the world's history and destinies in his "Last Judgment." There can be no doubt that while these frescos continued in their perfection, there was nothing else to be compared with the magnificent and solemn beauty of this chapel. Enough of ruined splendor still remains to convince the spectator of all that has departed; but methinks I have seen hardly anything else so forlorn and depressing as it is now, all dusky and dim, even the very lights having passed into shadows, and the shadows into utter blackness; so that it needs a sunshiny day, under the bright Italian heavens, to make the designs perceptible at all. As we sat in the chapel there were clouds flitting across the sky; when the clouds came the pictures vanished; when the sunshine broke forth the figures sadly glimmered into something like visibility,--the Almighty moving in chaos,--the noble shape of Adam, the beautiful Eve; and, beneath where the roof curves, the mighty figures of sibyls and prophets, looking as if they were necessarily so gigantic because the thought within them was so massive. In the "Last Judgment" the scene of the greater part of the picture lies in the upper sky, the blue of which glows through betwixt the groups of naked figures; and above sits Jesus, not looking in the least like the Saviour of the world, but, with uplifted arm, denouncing eternal misery on those whom he came to save. I fear I am myself among the wicked, for I found myself inevitably taking their part, and asking for at least a little pity, some few regrets, and not such a stern denunciatory spirit on the part of Him who had thought us worth dying for. Around him stand grim saints, and, far beneath, people are getting up sleepily out of their graves, not well knowing what is about to happen; many of them, however, finding themselves clutched by demons before they are half awake. It would be a very terrible picture to one who should really see Jesus, the Saviour, in that inexorable judge; but it seems to me very undesirable that he should ever be represented in that aspect, when it is so essential to our religion to believe him infinitely kinder and better towards us than we deserve. At the last day--I presume, that is, in all future days, when we see ourselves as we are--man's only inexorable judge will be himself, and the punishment of his sins will be the perception of them. In the lower corner of this great picture, at the right hand of the spectator, is a hideous figure of a damned person, girdled about with a serpent, the folds of which are carefully knotted between his thighs, so as, at all events, to give no offence to decency. This figure represents a man who suggested to Pope Paul III. that the nudities of the "Last Judgment" ought to be draped, for which offence Michael Angelo at once consigned him to hell. It shows what a debtor's prison and dungeon of private torment men would make of hell if they had the control of it. As to the nudities, if they were ever more nude than now, I should suppose, in their fresh brilliancy, they might well have startled a not very squeamish eye. The effect, such as it is, of this picture, is much injured by the high altar and its canopy, which stands close against the wall, and intercepts a considerable portion of the sprawl of nakedness with which Michael Angelo has filled his sky. However, I am not unwilling to believe, with faith beyond what I can actually see, that the greatest pictorial miracles ever yet achieved have been wrought upon the walls and ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. In the afternoon I went with Mr. Thompson to see what bargain could be made with vetturinos for taking myself and family to Florence. We talked with three or four, and found them asking prices of various enormity, from a hundred and fifty scudi down to little more than ninety; but Mr. Thompson says that they always begin in this way, and will probably come down to somewhere about seventy-five. Mr. Thompson took me into the Via Portoghese, and showed me an old palace, above which rose--not a very customary feature of the architecture of Rome--a tall, battlemented tower. At one angle of the tower we saw a shrine of the Virgin, with a lamp, and all the appendages of those numerous shrines which we see at the street-corners, and in hundreds of places about the city. Three or four centuries ago, this palace was inhabited by a nobleman who had an only son and a large pet monkey, and one day the monkey caught the infant up and clambered to this lofty turret, and sat there with him in his arms grinning and chattering like the Devil himself. The father was in despair, but was afraid to pursue the monkey lest he should fling down the child from the height of the tower and make his escape. At last he vowed that if the boy were safely restored to him he would build a shrine at the summit of the tower, and cause it to be kept as a sacred place forever. By and by the monkey came down and deposited the child on the ground; the father fulfilled his vow, built the shrine, and made it obligatory, on all future possessors of the palace to keep the lamp burning before it. Centuries have passed, the property has changed hands; but still there is the shrine on the giddy top of the tower, far aloft over the street, on the very spot where the monkey sat, and there burns the lamp, in memory of the father's vow. This being the tenure by which the estate is held, the extinguishment of that flame might yet turn the present owner out of the palace. May 21st.--Mamma and I went, yesterday forenoon, to the Spada Palace, which we found among the intricacies of Central Rome; a dark and massive old edifice, built around a court, the fronts giving on which are adorned with statues in niches, and sculptured ornaments. A woman led us up a staircase, and ushered us into a great gloomy hall, square and lofty, and wearing a very gray and ancient aspect, its walls being painted in chiaroscuro, apparently a great many years ago. The hall was lighted by small windows, high upward from the floors, and admitting only a dusky light. The only furniture or ornament, so far as I recollect, was the colossal statue of Pompey, which stands on its pedestal at one side, certainly the sternest and severest of figures, and producing the most awful impression on the spectator. Much of the effect, no doubt, is due to the sombre obscurity of the hall, and to the loneliness in which the great naked statue stands. It is entirely nude, except for a cloak that hangs down from the left shoulder; in the left hand, it holds a globe; the right arm is extended. The whole expression is such as the statue might have assumed, if, during the tumult of Caesar's murder, it had stretched forth its marble hand, and motioned the conspirators to give over the attack, or to be quiet, now that their victim had fallen at its feet. On the left leg, about midway above the ankle, there is a dull, red stain, said to be Caesar's blood; but, of course, it is just such a red stain in the marble as may be seen on the statue of Antinous at the Capitol. I could not see any resemblance in the face of the statue to that of the bust of Pompey, shown as such at the Capitol, in which there is not the slightest moral dignity, or sign of intellectual eminence. I am glad to have seen this statue, and glad to remember it in that gray, dim, lofty hall; glad that there were no bright frescos on the walls, and that the ceiling was wrought with massive beams, and the floor paved with ancient brick. From this anteroom we passed through several saloons containing pictures, some of which were by eminent artists; the Judith of Guido, a copy of which used to weary me to death, year after year, in the Boston Athenaeum; and many portraits of Cardinals in the Spada family, and other pictures, by Guido. There were some portraits, also of the family, by Titian; some good pictures by Guercino; and many which I should have been glad to examine more at leisure; but, by and by, the custode made his appearance, and began to close the shutters, under pretence that the sunshine would injure the paintings,--an effect, I presume, not very likely to follow after two or three centuries' exposure to light, air, and whatever else might hurt them. However, the pictures seemed to be in much better condition, and more enjoyable, so far as they had merit, than those in most Roman picture-galleries; although the Spada Palace itself has a decayed and impoverished aspect, as if the family had dwindled from its former state and grandeur, and now, perhaps, smuggled itself into some out-of-the-way corner of the old edifice. If such be the case, there is something touching in their still keeping possession of Pompey's statue, which makes their house famous, and the sale of which might give them the means of building it up anew; for surely it is worth the whole sculpture-gallery of the Vatican. In the afternoon Mr. Thompson and I went, for the third or fourth time, to negotiate with vetturinos. . . . . So far as I know them they are a very tricky set of people, bent on getting as much as they can, by hook or by crook, out of the unfortunate individual who falls into their hands. They begin, as I have said, by asking about twice as much as they ought to receive; and anything between this exorbitant amount and the just price is what they thank heaven for, as so much clear gain. Nevertheless, I am not quite sure that the Italians are worse than other people even in this matter. In other countries it is the custom of persons in trade to take as much as they can get from the public, fleecing one man to exactly the same extent as another; here they take what they can obtain from the individual customer. In fact, Roman tradesmen do not pretend to deny that they ask and receive different prices from different people, taxing them according to their supposed means of payment; the article supplied being the same in one case as in another. A shopkeeper looked into his books to see if we were of the class who paid two pauls, or only a paul and a half for candles; a charcoal-dealer said that seventy baiocchi was a very reasonable sum for us to pay for charcoal, and that some persons paid eighty; and Mr. Thompson, recognizing the rule, told the old vetturino that "a hundred and fifty scudi was a very proper charge for carrying a prince to Florence, but not for carrying me, who was merely a very good artist." The result is well enough; the rich man lives expensively, and pays a larger share of the profits which people of a different system of trade-morality would take equally from the poor man. The effect on the conscience of the vetturino, however, and of tradesmen of all kinds, cannot be good; their only intent being, not to do justice between man and man, but to go as deep as they can into all pockets, and to the very bottom of some. We had nearly concluded a bargain, a day or two ago, with a vetturino to take or send us to Florence, via Perugia, in eight days, for a hundred scudi; but he now drew back, under pretence of having misunderstood the terms, though, in reality, no doubt, he was in hopes of getting a better bargain from somebody else. We made an agreement with another man, whom Mr. Thompson knows and highly recommends, and immediately made it sure and legally binding by exchanging a formal written contract, in which everything is set down, even to milk, butter, bread, eggs, and coffee, which we are to have for breakfast; the vetturino being to pay every expense for himself, his horses, and his passengers, and include it within ninety-five scudi, and five crowns in addition for buon-mano. . . . . . May 22d.--Yesterday, while we were at dinner, Mr. ------ called. I never saw him but once before, and that was at the door of our little red cottage in Lenox; he sitting in a wagon with one or two of the Sedgewicks, merely exchanging a greeting with me from under the brim of his straw hat, and driving on. He presented himself now with a long white beard, such as a palmer might have worn as the growth of his long pilgrimages, a brow almost entirely bald, and what hair he has quite hoary; a forehead impending, yet not massive; dark, bushy eyebrows and keen eyes, without much softness in them; a dark and sallow complexion; a slender figure, bent a little with age; but at once alert and infirm. It surprised me to see him so venerable; for, as poets are Apollo's kinsmen, we are inclined to attribute to them his enviable quality of never growing old. There was a weary look in his face, as if he were tired of seeing things and doing things, though with certainly enough still to see and do, if need were. My family gathered about him, and he conversed with great readiness and simplicity about his travels, and whatever other subject came up; telling us that he had been abroad five times, and was now getting a little home-sick, and had no more eagerness for sights, though his "gals" (as he called his daughter and another young lady) dragged him out to see the wonders of Rome again. His manners and whole aspect are very particularly plain, though not affectedly so; but it seems as if in the decline of life, and the security of his position, he had put off whatever artificial polish he may have heretofore had, and resumed the simpler habits and deportment of his early New England breeding. Not but what you discover, nevertheless, that he is a man of refinement, who has seen the world, and is well aware of his own place in it. He spoke with great pleasure of his recent visit to Spain. I introduced the subject of Kansas, and methought his face forthwith assumed something of the bitter keenness of the editor of a political newspaper, while speaking of the triumph of the administration over the Free-Soil opposition. I inquired whether he had seen S------, and he gave a very sad account of him as he appeared at their last meeting, which was in Paris. S------, he thought, had suffered terribly, and would never again be the man he was; he was getting fat; he talked continually of himself, and of trifles concerning himself, and seemed to have no interest for other matters; and Mr. ------ feared that the shock upon his nerves had extended to his intellect, and was irremediable. He said that S------ ought to retire from public life, but had no friend true enough to tell him so. This is about as sad as anything can be. I hate to have S------ undergo the fate of a martyr, because he was not naturally of the stuff that martyrs are made of, and it is altogether by mistake that he has thrust himself into the position of one. He was merely, though with excellent abilities, one of the best of fellows, and ought to have lived and died in good fellowship with all the world. S------ was not in the least degree excited about this or any other subject. He uttered neither passion nor poetry, but excellent good sense, and accurate information on whatever subject transpired; a very pleasant man to associate with, but rather cold, I should imagine, if one should seek to touch his heart with one's own. He shook hands kindly all round, but not with any warmth of gripe; although the ease of his deportment had put us all on sociable terms with him. At seven o'clock we went by invitation to take tea with Miss Bremer. After much search, and lumbering painfully up two or three staircases in vain, and at last going about in a strange circuity, we found her in a small chamber of a large old building, situated a little way from the brow of the Tarpeian Rock. It was the tiniest and humblest domicile that I have seen in Rome, just large enough to hold her narrow bed, her tea-table, and a table covered with books,--photographs of Roman ruins, and some pages written by herself. I wonder whether she be poor. Probably so; for she told us that her expense of living here is only five pauls a day. She welcomed us, however, with the greatest cordiality and lady-like simplicity, making no allusion to the humbleness of her environment (and making us also lose sight of it, by the absence of all apology) any more than if she were receiving us in a palace. There is not a better bred woman; and yet one does not think whether she has any breeding or no. Her little bit of a round table was already spread for us with her blue earthenware teacups; and after she had got through an interview with the Swedish Minister, and dismissed him with a hearty pressure of his hand between both her own, she gave us our tea, and some bread, and a mouthful of cake. Meanwhile, as the day declined, there had been the most beautiful view over the campagna, out of one of her windows; and, from the other, looking towards St. Peter's, the broad gleam of a mildly glorious sunset; not so pompous and magnificent as many that I have seen in America, but softer and sweeter in all its changes. As its lovely hues died slowly away, the half-moon shone out brighter and brighter; for there was not a cloud in the sky, and it seemed like the moonlight of my younger days. In the garden, beneath her window, verging upon the Tarpeian Rock, there was shrubbery and one large tree, softening the brow of the famous precipice, adown which the old Romans used to fling their traitors, or sometimes, indeed, their patriots. Miss Bremer talked plentifully in her strange manner,--good English enough for a foreigner, but so oddly intonated and accented, that it is impossible to be sure of more than one word in ten. Being so little comprehensible, it is very singular how she contrives to make her auditors so perfectly certain, as they are, that she is talking the best sense, and in the kindliest spirit. There is no better heart than hers, and not many sounder heads; and a little touch of sentiment comes delightfully in, mixed up with a quick and delicate humor and the most perfect simplicity. There is also a very pleasant atmosphere of maidenhood about her; we are sensible of a freshness and odor of the morning still in this little withered rose,--its recompense for never having been gathered and worn, but only diffusing fragrance on its stem. I forget mainly what we talked about,--a good deal about art, of course, although that is a subject of which Miss Bremer evidently knows nothing. Once we spoke of fleas,--insects that, in Rome, come home to everybody's business and bosom, and are so common and inevitable, that no delicacy is felt about alluding to the sufferings they inflict. Poor little Miss Bremer was tormented with one while turning out our tea. . . . . She talked, among other things, of the winters in Sweden, and said that she liked them, long and severe as they are; and this made me feel ashamed of dreading the winters of New England, as I did before coming from home, and do now still more, after five or six mild English Decembers. By and by, two young ladies came in,--Miss Bremen's neighbors, it seemed,--fresh from a long walk on the campagna, fresh and weary at the same time. One apparently was German, and the other French, and they brought her an offering of flowers, and chattered to her with affectionate vivacity; and, as we were about taking leave, Miss Bremer asked them to accompany her and us on a visit to the edge of the Tarpeian Rock. Before we left the room, she took a bunch of roses that were in a vase, and gave them to Miss Shepard, who told her that she should make her six sisters happy by giving one to each. Then we went down the intricate stairs, and, emerging into the garden, walked round the brow of the hill, which plunges headlong with exceeding abruptness; but, so far as I could see in the moonlight, is no longer quite a precipice. Then we re-entered the house, and went up stairs and down again, through intricate passages, till we got into the street, which was still peopled with the ragamuffins who infest and burrow in that part of Rome. We returned through an archway, and descended the broad flight of steps into the piazza of the Capitol; and from the extremity of it, just at the head of the long graded way, where Castor and Pollux and the old milestones stand, we turned to the left, and followed a somewhat winding path, till we came into the court of a palace. This court is bordered by a parapet, leaning over which we saw the sheer precipice of the Tarpeian Rock, about the height of a four-story house. . . . . On the edge of this, before we left the court, Miss Bremer bade us farewell, kissing my wife most affectionately on each cheek, . . . . and then turning towards myself, . . . . she pressed my hand, and we parted, probably never to meet again. God bless her good heart! . . . . She is a most amiable little woman, worthy to be the maiden aunt of the whole human race. I suspect, by the by, that she does not like me half so well as I do her; it is my impression that she thinks me unamiable, or that there is something or other not quite right about me. I am sorry if it be so, because such a good, kindly, clear-sighted, and delicate person is very apt to have reason at the bottom of her harsh thoughts, when, in rare cases, she allows them to harbor with her. To-day, and for some days past, we have been in quest of lodgings for next winter; a weary search, up interminable staircases, which seduce us upward to no successful result. It is very disheartening not to be able to place the slightest reliance on the integrity of the people we are to deal with; not to believe in any connection between their words and their purposes; to know that they are certainly telling you falsehoods, while you are not in a position to catch hold of the lie, and hold it up in their faces. This afternoon we called on Mr. and Mrs. ------ at the Hotel de l'Europe, but found only the former at home. We had a pleasant visit, but I made no observations of his character save such as I have already sufficiently recorded; and when we had been with him a little while, Mrs. Chapman, the artist's wife, Mr. Terry, and my friend, Mr. Thompson, came in. ------ received them all with the same good degree of cordiality that he did ourselves, not cold, not very warm, not annoyed, not ecstatically delighted; a man, I should suppose, not likely to have ardent individual preferences, though perhaps capable of stern individual dislikes. But I take him, at all events, to be a very upright man, and pursuing a narrow track of integrity; he is a man whom I would never forgive (as I would a thousand other men) for the slightest moral delinquency. I would not be bound to say, however, that he has not the little sin of a fretful and peevish habit; and yet perhaps I am a sinner myself for thinking so. May 23d.--This morning I breakfasted at William Story's, and met there Mr. Bryant, Mr. T------ (an English gentleman), Mr. and Mrs. Apthorp, Miss Hosmer, and one or two other ladies. Bryant was very quiet, and made no conversation audible to the general table. Mr. T------ talked of English politics and public men; the "Times" and other newspapers, English clubs and social habits generally; topics in which I could well enough bear my part of the discussion. After breakfast, and aside from the ladies, he mentioned an illustration of Lord Ellenborough's lack of administrative ability,--a proposal seriously made by his lordship in reference to the refractory Sepoys. . . . . We had a very pleasant breakfast, and certainly a breakfast is much preferable to a dinner, not merely in the enjoyment, while it is passing, but afterwards. I made a good suggestion to Miss Hosmer for the design of a fountain,--a lady bursting into tears, water gushing from a thousand pores, in literal translation of the phrase; and to call the statue "Niobe, all Tears." I doubt whether she adopts the idea; but Bernini would have been delighted with it. I should think the gush of water might be so arranged as to form a beautiful drapery about the figure, swaying and fluttering with every breath of wind, and rearranging itself in the calm; in which case, the lady might be said to have "a habit of weeping." . . . . Apart, with William Story, he and I talked of the unluckiness of Friday, etc. I like him particularly well. . . . . We have been plagued to-day with our preparations for leaving Rome to-morrow, and especially with verifying the inventory of furniture, before giving up the house to our landlord. He and his daughter have been examining every separate article, down even to the kitchen skewers, I believe, and charging us to the amount of several scudi for cracks and breakages, which very probably existed when we came into possession. It is very uncomfortable to have dealings with such a mean people (though our landlord is German),--mean in their business transactions; mean even in their beggary; for the beggars seldom ask for more than a mezzo baioccho, though they sometimes grumble when you suit your gratuity exactly to their petition. It is pleasant to record that the Italians have great faith in the honor of the English and Americans, and never hesitate to trust entire strangers, to any reasonable extent, on the strength of their being of the honest Anglo-Saxon race. This evening, U---- and I took a farewell walk in the Pincian Gardens to see the sunset; and found them crowded with people, promenading and listening to the music of the French baud. It was the feast of Whitsunday, which probably brought a greater throng than usual abroad. When the sun went down, we descended into the Piazza del Popolo, and thence into the Via Ripetta, and emerged through a gate to the shore of the Tiber, along which there is a pleasant walk beneath a grove of trees. We traversed it once and back again, looking at the rapid river, which still kept its mud-puddly aspect even in the clear twilight, and beneath the brightening moon. The great bell of St. Peter's tolled with a deep boom, a grand and solemn sound; the moon gleamed through the branches of the trees above us; and U---- spoke with somewhat alarming fervor of her love for Rome, and regret at leaving it. We shall have done the child no good office in bringing her here, if the rest of her life is to be a dream of this "city of the soul," and an unsatisfied yearning to come back to it. On the other hand, nothing elevating and refining can be really injurious, and so I hope she will always be the better for Rome, even if her life should be spent where there are no pictures, no statues, nothing but the dryness and meagreness of a New England village. JOURNEY TO FLORENCE. Civita Castellana, May 24th.--We left Rome this morning, after troubles of various kinds, and a dispute in the first place with Lalla, our female servant, and her mother. . . . . Mother and daughter exploded into a livid rage, and cursed us plentifully,--wishing that we might never come to our journey's end, and that we might all break our necks or die of apoplexy,--the most awful curse that an Italian knows how to invoke upon his enemies, because it precludes the possibility of extreme unction. However, as we are heretics, and certain of damnation therefore, anyhow, it does not much matter to us; and also the anathemas may have been blown back upon those who invoked them, like the curses that were flung out from the balcony of St Peter's during Holy Week and wafted by heaven's breezes right into the faces of some priests who stood near the pope. Next we had a disagreement, with two men who brought down our luggage, and put it on the vettura; . . . . and, lastly, we were infested with beggars, who hung round the carriages with doleful petitions, till we began to move away; but the previous warfare had put me into too stern a mood for almsgiving, so that they also were doubtless inclined to curse more than to bless, and I am persuaded that we drove off under a perfect shower of anathemas. We passed through the Porta del Popolo at about eight o'clock; and after a moment's delay, while the passport was examined, began our journey along the Flaminian Way, between two such high and inhospitable walls of brick or stone as seem to shut in all the avenues to Rome. We had not gone far before we heard military music in advance of us, and saw the road blocked up with people, and then the glitter of muskets, and soon appeared the drummers, fifers, and trumpeters, and then the first battalion of a French regiment, marching into the city, with two mounted officers at their head; then appeared a second and then a third battalion, the whole seeming to make almost an army, though the number on their caps showed them all to belong to one regiment,--the 1st; then came a battery of artillery, then a detachment of horse,--these last, by the crossed keys on their helmets, being apparently papal troops. All were young, fresh, good-looking men, in excellent trim as to uniform and equipments, and marched rather as if they were setting out on a campaign than returning from it; the fact being, I believe, that they have been encamped or in barracks within a few miles of the city. Nevertheless, it reminded me of the military processions of various kinds which so often, two thousand years ago and more, entered Rome over the Flaminian Way, and over all the roads that led to the famous city,--triumphs oftenest, but sometimes the downcast train of a defeated army, like those who retreated before Hannibal. On the whole, I was not sorry to see the Gauls still pouring into Rome; but yet I begin to find that I have a strange affection for it, and so did we all,--the rest of the family in a greater degree than myself even. It is very singular, the sad embrace with which Rome takes possession of the soul. Though we intend to return in a few months, and for a longer residence than this has been, yet we felt the city pulling at our heartstrings far more than London did, where we shall probably never spend much time again. It may be because the intellect finds a home there more than in any other spot in the world, and wins the heart to stay with it, in spite of a good many things strewn all about to disgust us. The road in the earlier part of the way was not particularly picturesque,--the country undulated, but scarcely rose into hills, and was destitute of trees; there were a few shapeless ruins, too indistinct for us to make out whether they were Roman or mediaeval. Nothing struck one so much, in the forenoon, as the spectacle of a peasant-woman riding on horseback as if she were a man. The houses were few, and those of a dreary aspect, built of gray stone, and looking bare and desolate, with not the slightest promise of comfort within doors. We passed two or three locandas or inns, and finally came to the village (if village it were, for I remember no houses except our osteria) of Castel Nuovo di Porta, where we were to take a dejeuner a la fourchette, which was put upon the table between twelve and one. On this journey, according to the custom of travellers in Italy, we pay the vetturino a certain sum, and live at his expense; and this meal was the first specimen of his catering on our behalf. It consisted of a beefsteak, rather dry and hard, but not unpalatable, and a large omelette; and for beverage, two quart bottles of red wine, which, being tasted, had an agreeable acid flavor. . . . . The locanda was built of stone, and had what looked like an old Roman altar in the basement-hall, and a shrine, with a lamp before it, on the staircase; and the large public saloon in which we ate had a brick floor, a ceiling with cross-beams, meagrely painted in fresco, and a scanty supply of chairs and settees. After lunch, we wandered out into a valley or ravine near the house, where we gathered some flowers, and J----- found a nest with the young birds in it, which, however, he put back into the bush whence he took it. Our afternoon drive was more picturesque and noteworthy. Soracte rose before us, bulging up quite abruptly out of the plain, and keeping itself entirely distinct from a whole horizon of hills. Byron well compares it to a wave just on the bend, and about to break over towards the spectator. As we approached it nearer and nearer, it looked like the barrenest great rock that ever protruded out of the substance of the earth, with scarcely a strip or a spot of verdure upon its steep and gray declivities. The road kept trending towards the mountain, following the line of the old Flaminian Way, which we could see, at frequent intervals, close beside the modern track. It is paved with large flag-stones, laid so accurately together, that it is still, in some places, as smooth and even as the floor of a church; and everywhere the tufts of grass find it difficult to root themselves into the interstices. Its course is straighter than that of the road of to-day, which often turns aside to avoid obstacles which the ancient one surmounted. Much of it, probably, is covered with the soil and overgrowth deposited in later years; and, now and then, we could see its flag-stones partly protruding from the bank through which our road has been cut, and thus showing that the thickness of this massive pavement was more than a foot of solid stone. We lost it over and over again; but still it reappeared, now on one side of us, now on the other; perhaps from beneath the roots of old trees, or the pasture-land of a thousand years old, and leading on towards the base of Soracte. I forget where we finally lost it. Passing through a town called Rignano, we found it dressed out in festivity, with festoons of foliage along both sides of the street, which ran beneath a triumphal arch, bearing an inscription in honor of a ducal personage of the Massimi family. I know no occasion for the feast, except that it is Whitsuntide. The town was thronged with peasants, in their best attire, and we met others on their way thither, particularly women and girls, with heads bare in the sunshine; but there was no tiptoe jollity, nor, indeed, any more show of festivity than I have seen in my own country at a cattle-show or muster. Really, I think, not half so much. The road still grew more and more picturesque, and now lay along ridges, at the bases of which were deep ravines and hollow valleys. Woods were not wanting; wilder forests than I have seen since leaving America, of oak-trees chiefly; and, among the green foliage, grew golden tufts of broom, making a gay and lovely combination of hues. I must not forget to mention the poppies, which burned like live coals along the wayside, and lit up the landscape, even a single one of them, with wonderful effect. At other points, we saw olive-trees, hiding their eccentricity of boughs under thick masses of foliage of a livid tint, which is caused, I believe, by their turning their reverse sides to the light and to the spectator. Vines were abundant, but were of little account in the scene. By and by we came in sight, of the high, flat table-land, on which stands Civita Castellana, and beheld, straight downward, between us and the town, a deep level valley with a river winding through it; it was the valley of the Treja. A precipice, hundreds of feet in height, falls perpendicularly upon the valley, from the site of Civita Castellana; there is an equally abrupt one, probably, on the side from which we saw it; and a modern road, skilfully constructed, goes winding down to the stream, crosses it by a narrow stone bridge, and winds upward into the town. After passing over the bridge, I alighted, with J----- and R-----, . . . . and made the ascent on foot, along walls of natural rock, in which old Etruscan tombs were hollowed out. There are likewise antique remains of masonry, whether Roman or of what earlier period, I cannot tell. At the summit of the acclivity, which brought us close to the town, our vetturino took us into the carriage again and quickly brought us to what appears to be really a good hotel, where all of us are accommodated with sleeping-chambers in a range, beneath an arcade, entirely secluded from the rest of the population of the hotel. After a splendid dinner (that is, splendid, considering that it was ordered by our hospitable vetturino), U----, Miss Shepard, J-----, and I walked out of the little town, in the opposite direction from our entrance, and crossed a bridge at the height of the table-land, instead of at its base. On either side, we had a view down into a profound gulf, with sides of precipitous rock, and heaps of foliage in its lap, through which ran the snowy track of a stream; here snowy, there dark; here hidden among the foliage, there quite revealed in the broad depths of the gulf. This was wonderfully fine. Walking on a little farther, Soracte came fully into view, starting with bold abruptness out of the middle of the country; and before we got back, the bright Italian moon was throwing a shower of silver over the scene, and making it so beautiful that it seemed miserable not to know how to put it into words; a foolish thought, however, for such scenes are an expression in themselves, and need not be translated into any feebler language. On our walk we met parties of laborers, both men and women, returning from the fields, with rakes and wooden forks over their shoulders, singing in chorus. It is very customary for women to be laboring in the fields. TO TERNI.--BORGHETTO. May 25th.--We were aroused at four o'clock this morning; had some eggs and coffee, and were ready to start between five and six; being thus matutinary, in order to get to Terni in time to see the falls. The road was very striking and picturesque; but I remember nothing particularly, till we came to Borghetto, which stands on a bluff, with a broad valley sweeping round it, through the midst of which flows the Tiber. There is an old castle on a projecting point; and we saw other battlemented fortresses, of mediaeval date, along our way, forming more beautiful ruins than any of the Roman remains to which we have become accustomed. This is partly, I suppose, owing to the fact that they have been neglected, and allowed to mantle their decay with ivy, instead of being cleaned, propped up, and restored. The antiquarian is apt to spoil the objects that interest him. Sometimes we passed through wildernesses of various trees, each contributing a different hue of verdure to the scene; the vine, also, marrying itself to the fig-tree, so that a man might sit in the shadow of both at once, and temper the luscious sweetness of the one fruit with the fresh flavor of the other. The wayside incidents were such as meeting a man and woman borne along as prisoners, handcuffed and in a cart; two men reclining across one another, asleep, and lazily lifting their heads to gaze at us as we passed by; a woman spinning with a distaff as she walked along the road. An old tomb or tower stood in a lonely field, and several caves were hollowed in the rocks, which might have been either sepulchres or habitations. Soracte kept us company, sometimes a little on one side, sometimes behind, looming up again and again, when we thought that we had done with it, and so becoming rather tedious at last, like a person who presents himself for another and another leave-taking after the one which ought to have been final. Honeysuckles sweetened the hedges along the road. After leaving Borghetto, we crossed the broad valley of the Tiber, and skirted along one of the ridges that border it, looking back upon the road that we had passed, lying white behind us. We saw a field covered with buttercups, or some other yellow flower, and poppies burned along the roadside, as they did yesterday, and there were flowers of a delicious blue, as if the blue Italian sky had been broken into little bits, and scattered down upon the green earth. Otricoli by and by appeared, situated on a bold promontory above the valley, a village of a few gray houses and huts, with one edifice gaudily painted in white and pink. It looked more important at a distance than we found it on our nearer approach. As the road kept ascending, and as the hills grew to be mountains, we had taken two additional horses, making six in all, with a man and boy running beside them, to keep them in motion. The boy had two club feet, so inconveniently disposed that it seemed almost inevitable for him to stumble over them at every step; besides which, he seemed to tread upon his ankles, and moved with a disjointed gait, as if each of his legs and thighs had been twisted round together with his feet. Nevertheless, he had a bright, cheerful, intelligent face, and was exceedingly active, keeping up with the horses at their trot, and inciting them to better speed when they lagged. I conceived a great respect for this poor boy, who had what most Italian peasants would consider an enviable birthright in those two club feet, as giving him a sufficient excuse to live on charity, but yet took no advantage of them; on the contrary, putting his poor misshapen hoofs to such good use as might have shamed many a better provided biped. When he quitted us, he asked no alms of the travellers, but merely applied to Gaetano for some slight recompense for his well-performed service. This behavior contrasted most favorably with that of some other boys and girls, who ran begging beside the carriage door, keeping up a low, miserable murmur, like that of a kennel-stream, for a long, long way. Beggars, indeed, started up at every point, when we stopped for a moment, and whenever a hill imposed a slower pace upon us; each village had its deformity or its infirmity, offering his wretched petition at the step of the carriage; and even a venerable, white-haired patriarch, the grandfather of all the beggars, seemed to grow up by the roadside, but was left behind from inability to join in the race with his light-footed juniors. No shame is attached to begging in Italy. In fact, I rather imagine it to be held an honorable profession, inheriting some of the odor of sanctity that used to be attached to a mendicant and idle life in the days of early Christianity, when every saint lived upon Providence, and deemed it meritorious to do nothing for his support. Murray's guide-book is exceedingly vague and unsatisfactory along this route; and whenever we asked Gaetano the name of a village or a castle, he gave some one which we had never heard before, and could find nothing of in the book. We made out the river Nar, however, or what I supposed to be such, though he called it Nera. It flows through a most stupendous mountain-gorge; winding its narrow passage between high hills, the broad sides of which descend steeply upon it, covered with trees and shrubbery, that mantle a host of rocky roughnesses, and make all look smooth. Here and there a precipice juts sternly forth. We saw an old castle on a hillside, frowning down into the gorge; and farther on, the gray tower of Narni stands upon a height, imminent over the depths below, and with its battlemented castle above now converted into a prison, and therefore kept in excellent repair. A long winding street passes through Narni, broadening at one point into a market-place, where an old cathedral showed its venerable front, and the great dial of its clock, the figures on which were numbered in two semicircles of twelve points each; one, I suppose, for noon, and the other for midnight. The town has, so far as its principal street is concerned, a city-like aspect, with large, fair edifices, and shops as good as most of those at Rome, the smartness of which contrasts strikingly with the rude and lonely scenery of mountain and stream, through which we had come to reach it. We drove through Narni without stopping, and came out from it on the other side, where a broad, level valley opened before us, most unlike the wild, precipitous gorge which had brought us to the town. The road went winding down into the peaceful vale, through the midst of which flowed the same stream that cuts its way between the impending hills, as already described. We passed a monk and a soldier,--the two curses of Italy, each in his way,-- walking sociably side by side; and from Narni to Terni I remember nothing that need be recorded. Terni, like so many other towns in the neighborhood, stands in a high and commanding position, chosen doubtless for its facilities of defence, in days long before the mediaeval warfares of Italy made such sites desirable. I suppose that, like Narni and Otricoli, it was a city of the Umbrians. We reached it between eleven and twelve o'clock, intending to employ the afternoon on a visit to the famous falls of Terni; but, after lowering all day, it has begun to rain, and we shall probably have to give them up. Half past eight o'clock.--It has rained in torrents during the afternoon, and we have not seen the cascade of Terni; considerably to my regret, for I think I felt the more interest in seeing it, on account of its being artificial. Methinks nothing was more characteristic of the energy and determination of the old Romans, than thus to take a river, which they wished to be rid of, and fling it over a giddy precipice, breaking it into ten million pieces by the fall. . . . . We are in the Hotel delle tre Colonne, and find it reasonably good, though not, so far as we are concerned, justifying the rapturous commendations of previous tourists, who probably travelled at their own charges. However, there is nothing really to be complained of, either in our accommodations or table, and the only wonder is how Gaetano contrives to get any profit out of our contract, since the hotel bills would alone cost us more than we pay him for the journey and all. It is worth while to record as history of vetturino commissary customs, that for breakfast this morning we had coffee, eggs, and bread and butter; for lunch an omelette, some stewed veal, and a dessert of figs and grapes, besides two decanters of a light-colored acid wine, tasting very like indifferent cider; for dinner, an excellent vermicelli soup, two young fowls, fricasseed, and a hind quarter of roast lamb, with fritters, oranges, and figs, and two more decanters of the wine aforesaid. This hotel is an edifice with a gloomy front upon a narrow street, and enterable through an arch, which admits you into an enclosed court; around the court, on each story, run the galleries, with which the parlors and sleeping-apartments communicate. The whole house is dingy, probably old, and seems not very clean; but yet bears traces of former magnificence; for instance, in our bedroom, the door of which is ornamented with gilding, and the cornices with frescos, some of which appear to represent the cascade of Terni, the roof is crossed with carved beams, and is painted in the interstices; the floor has a carpet, but rough tiles underneath it, which show themselves at the margin. The windows admit the wind; the door shuts so loosely as to leave great cracks; and, during the rain to-day, there was a heavy shower through our ceiling, which made a flood upon the carpet. We see no chambermaids; nothing of the comfort and neatness of an English hotel, nor of the smart splendors of an American one; but still this dilapidated palace affords us a better shelter than I expected to find in the decayed country towns of Italy. In the album of the hotel I find the names of more English travellers than of any other nation except the Americans, who, I think, even exceed the former; and, the route being the favorite one for tourists between Rome and Florence, whatever merit the inns have is probably owing to the demands of the Anglo-Saxons. I doubt not, if we chose to pay for it, this hotel would supply us with any luxury we might ask for; and perhaps even a gorgeous saloon and state bedchamber. After dinner, J----- and I walked out in the dusk to see what we could of Terni. We found it compact and gloomy (but the latter characteristic might well enough be attributed to the dismal sky), with narrow streets, paved from wall to wall of the houses, like those of all the towns in Italy; the blocks of paving-stone larger than the little square torments of Rome. The houses are covered with dingy stucco, and mostly low, compared with those of Rome, and inhospitable as regards their dismal aspects and uninviting doorways. The streets are intricate, as well as narrow; insomuch that we quickly lost our way, and could not find it again, though the town is of so small dimensions, that we passed through it in two directions, in the course of our brief wanderings. There are no lamp-posts in Terni; and as it was growing dark, and beginning to rain again, we at last inquired of a person in the principal piazza, and found our hotel, as I expected, within two minutes' walk of where we stood. FOLIGNO. May 26th.--At six o'clock this morning, we packed ourselves into our vettura, my wife and I occupying the coupe, and drove out of the city gate of Terni. There are some old towers near it, ruins of I know not what, and care as little, in the plethora of antiquities and other interesting objects. Through the arched gateway, as we approached, we had a view of one of the great hills that surround the town, looking partly bright in the early sunshine, and partly catching the shadows of the clouds that floated about the sky. Our way was now through the Vale of Terni, as I believe it is called, where we saw somewhat of the fertility of Italy: vines trained on poles, or twining round mulberry and other trees, ranged regularly like orchards; groves of olives and fields of grain. There are interminable shrines in all sorts of situations; some under arched niches, or little penthouses, with a brick-tiled roof, just large enough to cover them; or perhaps in some bit of old Roman masonry, on the wall of a wayside inn, or in a shallow cavity of the natural rock, or high upward in the deep cuts of the road; everywhere, in short, so that nobody need be at a loss when he feels the religious sentiment stir within him. Our way soon began to wind among the hills, which rose steep and lofty from the scanty, level space that lay between; they continually thrust themselves across the passage, and appeared as if determined to shut us completely in. A great hill would put its foot right before us; but, at the last moment, would grudgingly withdraw it, and allow us just room enough to creep by. Adown their sides we discerned the dry beds of mountain torrents, which had lived too fierce a life to let it be a long one. On here and there a hillside or promontory we saw a ruined castle or a convent, looking from its commanding height upon the road, which very likely some robber-knight had formerly infested with his banditti, retreating with his booty to the security of such strongholds. We came, once in a while, to wretched villages, where there was no token of prosperity or comfort; but perhaps there may have been more than we could appreciate, for the Italians do not seem to have any of that sort of pride which we find in New England villages, where every man, according to his taste and means, endeavors to make his homestead an ornament to the place. We miss nothing in Italy more than the neat doorsteps and pleasant porches and thresholds and delightful lawns or grass-plots, which hospitably invite the imagination into a sweet domestic interior. Everything, however sunny and luxuriant may be the scene around, is especially dreary and disheartening in the immediate vicinity of an Italian home. At Strettura (which, as the name indicates, is a very narrow part of the valley) we added two oxen to our horses, and began to ascend the Monte Somma, which, according to Murray, is nearly four thousand feet high where we crossed it. When we came to the steepest part of the ascent, Gaetano, who exercises a pretty decided control over his passengers, allowed us to walk; and we all, with one exception, alighted, and began to climb the mountain on foot. I walked on briskly, and soon left the rest of the party behind, reaching the top of the pass in such a short time that I could not believe it, and kept onward, expecting still another height to climb. But the road began to descend, winding among the depths of the hills as heretofore; now beside the dry, gravelly bed of a departed stream, now crossing it by a bridge, and perhaps passing through some other gorge, that yet gave no decided promise of an outlet into the world beyond. A glimpse might occasionally be caught, through a gap between the hill-tops, of a company of distant mountain-peaks, pyramidal, as these hills are apt to be, and resembling the camp of an army of giants. The landscape was not altogether savage; sometimes a hillside was covered with a rich field of grain, or an orchard of olive-trees, looking not unlike puffs of smoke, from the peculiar line of their foliage; but oftener there was a vast mantle of trees and shrubbery from top to bottom, the golden tufts of the broom shining out amid the verdure, and gladdening the whole. Nothing was dismal except the houses; those were always so, whether the compact, gray lines of village hovels, with a narrow street between, or the lonely farm-house, standing far apart from the road, built of stone, with window-gaps high in the wall, empty of glass; or the half-castle, half-dwelling, of which I saw a specimen or two, with what looked like a defensive rampart, drawn around its court. I saw no look of comfort anywhere; and continually, in this wild and solitary region, I met beggars, just as if I were still in the streets of Rome. Boys and girls kept beside me, till they delivered me into the hands of others like themselves; hoary grandsires and grandmothers caught a glimpse of my approach, and tottered as fast as they could to intercept me; women came out of the cottages, with rotten cherries on a plate, entreating me to buy them for a mezzo baioccho; a man, at work on the road, left his toil to beg, and was grateful for the value of a cent; in short, I was never safe from importunity, as long as there was a house or a human being in sight. We arrived at Spoleto before noon, and while our dejeuner was being prepared, looked down from the window of the inn into the narrow street beneath, which, from the throng of people in it, I judged to be the principal one: priests, papal soldiers, women with no bonnets on their heads; peasants in breeches and mushroom hats; maids and matrons, drawing water at a fountain; idlers, smoking on a bench under the window; a talk, a bustle, but no genuine activity. After lunch we walked out to see the lions of Spoleto, and found our way up a steep and narrow street that led us to the city gate, at which, it is traditionally said, Hannibal sought to force an entrance, after the battle of Thrasymene, and was repulsed. The gateway has a double arch, on the inner one of which is a tablet, recording the above tradition as an unquestioned historical fact. From the gateway we went in search of the Duomo, or cathedral, and were kindly directed thither by an officer, who was descending into the town from the citadel, which is an old castle, now converted into a prison. The cathedral seemed small, and did not much interest us, either by the Gothic front or its modernized interior. We saw nothing else in Spoleto, but went back to the inn and resumed our journey, emerging from the city into the classic valley of the Clitumnus, which we did not view under the best of auspices, because it was overcast, and the wind as chill as if it had the cast in it. The valley, though fertile, and smilingly picturesque, perhaps, is not such as I should wish to celebrate, either in prose or poetry. It is of such breadth and extent, that its frame of mountains and ridgy hills hardly serve to shut it in sufficiently, and the spectator thinks of a boundless plain, rather than of a secluded vale. After passing Le Vene, we came to the little temple which Byron describes, and which has been supposed to be the one immortalized by Pliny. It is very small, and stands on a declivity that falls immediately from the road, right upon which rises the pediment of the temple, while the columns of the other front find sufficient height to develop themselves in the lower ground. A little farther down than the base of the edifice we saw the Clitumnus, so recently from its source in the marble rock, that it was still as pure as a child's heart, and as transparent as truth itself. It looked airier than nothing, because it had not substance enough to brighten, and it was clearer than the atmosphere. I remember nothing else of the valley of Clitumnus, except that the beggars in this region of proverbial fertility are wellnigh profane in the urgency of their petitions; they absolutely fall down on their knees as you approach, in the same attitude as if they were praying to their Maker, and beseech you for alms with a fervency which I am afraid they seldom use before an altar or shrine. Being denied, they ran hastily beside the carriage, but got nothing, and finally gave over. I am so very tired and sleepy that I mean to mention nothing else to-night, except the city of Trevi, which, on the approach from Spoleto, seems completely to cover a high, peaked hill, from its pyramidal tip to its base. It was the strangest situation in which to build a town, where, I should suppose, no horse can climb, and whence no inhabitant would think of descending into the world, after the approach of age should begin to stiffen his joints. On looking back on this most picturesque of towns (which the road, of course, did not enter, as evidently no road could), I saw that the highest part of the hill was quite covered with a crown of edifices, terminating in a church-tower; while a part of the northern side was apparently too steep for building; and a cataract of houses flowed down the western and southern slopes. There seemed to be palaces, churches, everything that a city should have; but my eyes are heavy, and I can write no more about them, only that I suppose the summit of the hill was artificially tenured, so as to prevent its crumbling down, and enable it to support the platform of edifices which crowns it. May 27th.--We reached Foligno in good season yesterday afternoon. Our inn seemed ancient; and, under the same roof, on one side of the entrance, was the stable, and on the other the coach-house. The house is built round a narrow court, with a well of water at bottom, and an opening in the roof at top, whence the staircases are lighted that wind round the sides of the court, up to the highest story. Our dining-room and bedrooms were in the latter region, and were all paved with brick, and without carpets; and the characteristic of the whole was all exceeding plainness and antique clumsiness of fitting up. We found ourselves sufficiently comfortable, however; and, as has been the case throughout our journey, had a very fair and well-cooked dinner. It shows, as perhaps I have already remarked, that it is still possible to live well in Italy, at no great expense, and that the high prices charged to the forestieri at Rome and elsewhere are artificial, and ought to be abated. . . . . The day had darkened since morning, and was now ominous of rain; but as soon as we were established, we sallied out to see whatever was worth looking at. A beggar-boy, with one leg, followed us, without asking for anything, apparently only for the pleasure of our company, though he kept at too great a distance for conversation, and indeed did not attempt to speak. We went first to the cathedral, which has a Gothic front, and a modernized interior, stuccoed and whitewashed, looking as neat as a New England meeting-house, and very mean, after our familiarity with the gorgeous churches in other cities. There were some pictures in the chapels, but, I believe, all modern, and I do not remember a single one of them. Next we went, without any guide, to a church attached to a convent of Dominican monks, with a Gothic exterior, and two hideous pictures of Death,--the skeleton leaning on his scythe, one on each side of the door. This church, likewise, was whitewashed, but we understood that it had been originally frescoed all over, and by famous hands; but these pictures, having become much injured, they were all obliterated, as we saw,--all, that is to say, except a few specimens of the best preserved, which were spared to show the world what the whole had been. I thanked my stars that the obliteration of the rest had taken place before our visit; for if anything is dreary and calculated to make the beholder utterly miserable, it is a faded fresco, with spots of the white plaster dotted over it. Our one-legged boy had followed us into the church and stood near the door till he saw us ready to come out, when he hurried on before us, and waited a little way off to see whither we should go. We still went on at random, taking the first turn that offered itself, and soon came to another old church,--that of St. Mary within the Walls,--into which we entered, and found it whitewashed, like the other two. This was especially fortunate, for the doorkeeper informed us that, two years ago, the whole church (except, I suppose, the roof, which is of timber) had been covered with frescos by Pinturicchio, all of which had been ruthlessly obliterated, except a very few fragments. These he proceeded to show us; poor, dim ghosts of what may once have been beautiful,--now so far gone towards nothingness that I was hardly sure whether I saw a glimmering of the design or not. By the by, it was not Pinturicchio, as I have written above, but Giotto, assisted, I believe, by Cimabue, who painted these frescos. Our one-legged attendant had followed us also into this church, and again hastened out of it before us; and still we heard the dot of his crutch upon the pavement, as we passed from street to street. By and by a sickly looking man met us, and begged for "qualche cosa"; but the boy shouted to him, "Niente!" whether intimating that we would give him nothing, or that he himself had a prior claim to all our charity, I cannot tell. However, the beggar-man turned round, and likewise followed our devious course. Once or twice we missed him; but it was only because he could not walk so fast as we; for he appeared again as we emerged from the door of another church. Our one-legged friend we never missed for a moment; he kept pretty near us,--near enough to be amused by our indecision whither to go; and he seemed much delighted when it began to rain, and he saw us at a loss how to find our way back to the hotel. Nevertheless, he did not offer to guide us; but stumped on behind with a faster or slower dot of his crutch, according to our pace. I began to think that he must have been engaged as a spy upon our movements by the police who had taken away my passport at the city gate. In this way he attended us to the door of the hotel, where the beggar had already arrived. The latter again put in his doleful petition; the one-legged boy said not a word, nor seemed to expect anything, and both had to go away without so much as a mezzo baioccho out of our pockets. The multitude of beggars in Italy makes the heart as obdurate as a paving-stone. We left Foligno this morning, and, all ready for us at the door of the hotel, as we got into the carriage, were our friends, the beggar-man and the one-legged boy; the latter holding out his ragged hat, and smiling with as confident an air as if he had done us some very particular service, and were certain of being paid for it, as from contract. It was so very funny, so impudent, so utterly absurd, that I could not help giving him a trifle; but the man got nothing,--a fact that gives me a twinge or two, for he looked sickly and miserable. But where everybody begs, everybody, as a general rule, must be denied; and, besides, they act their misery so well that you are never sure of the genuine article. PERUGIA. May 25th.--As I said last night, we left Foligno betimes in the morning, which was bleak, chill, and very threatening, there being very little blue sky anywhere, and the clouds lying heavily on some of the mountain-ridges. The wind blew sharply right in U----'s face and mine, as we occupied the coupe, so that there must have been a great deal of the north in it. We drove through a wide plain--the Umbrian valley, I suppose--and soon passed the old town of Spello, just touching its skirts, and wondering how people, who had this rich and convenient plain from which to choose a site, could think of covering a huge island of rock with their dwellings,--for Spello tumbled its crooked and narrow streets down a steep descent, and cannot well have a yard of even space within its walls. It is said to contain some rare treasures of ancient pictorial art. I do not remember much that we saw on our route. The plains and the lower hillsides seemed fruitful of everything that belongs to Italy, especially the olive and the vine. As usual, there were a great many shrines, and frequently a cross by the wayside. Hitherto it had been merely a plain wooden cross; but now almost every cross was hung with various instruments, represented in wood, apparently symbols of the crucifixion of our Saviour,--the spear, the sponge, the crown of thorns, the hammer, a pair of pincers, and always St. Peter's cock, made a prominent figure, generally perched on the summit of the cross. From our first start this morning we had seen mists in various quarters, betokening that there was rain in those spots, and now it began to spatter in our own faces, although within the wide extent of our prospect we could see the sunshine falling on portions of the valley. A rainbow, too, shone out, and remained so long visible that it appeared to have made a permanent stain in the sky. By and by we reached Assisi, which is magnificently situated for pictorial purposes, with a gray castle above it, and a gray wall around it, itself on a mountain, and looking over the great plain which we had been traversing, and through which lay our onward way. We drove through the Piazza Grande to an ancient house a little beyond, where a hospitable old lady receives travellers for a consideration, without exactly keeping an inn. In the piazza we saw the beautiful front of a temple of Minerva, consisting of several marble pillars, fluted, and with rich capitals supporting a pediment. It was as fine as anything I had seen at Rome, and is now, of course, converted into a Catholic church. I ought to have said that, instead of driving straight to the old lady's, we alighted at the door of a church near the city gate, and went in to inspect some melancholy frescos, and thence clambered up a narrow street to the cathedral, which has a Gothic front, old enough, but not very impressive. I really remember not a single object that we saw within, but am pretty certain that the interior had been stuccoed and whitewashed. The ecclesiastics of old time did an excellent thing in covering the interiors of their churches with brilliant frescos, thus filling the holy places with saints and angels, and almost with the presence of the Divinity. The modern ecclesiastics do the next best thing in obliterating the wretched remnants of what has had its day and done its office. These frescos might be looked upon as the symbol of the living spirit that made Catholicism a true religion, and glorified it as long as it did live; now the glory and beauty have departed from one and the other. My wife, U----, and Miss Shepard now set out with a cicerone to visit the great Franciscan convent, in the church of which are preserved some miraculous specimens, in fresco and in oils, of early Italian art; but as I had no mind to suffer any further in this way, I stayed behind with J----- and R-----, who we're equally weary of these things. After they were gone we took a ramble through the city, but were almost swept away by the violence of the wind, which struggled with me for my hat, and whirled R----- before it like a feather. The people in the public square seemed much diverted at our predicament, being, I suppose, accustomed to these rude blasts in their mountain-home. However, the wind blew in momentary gusts, and then became more placable till another fit of fury came, and passed as suddenly as before. We walked out of the same gate through which we had entered,--an ancient gate, but recently stuccoed and whitewashed, in wretched contrast to the gray, venerable wall through which it affords ingress,--and I stood gazing at the magnificent prospect of the wide valley beneath. It was so vast that there appeared to be all varieties of weather in it at the same instant; fields of sunshine, tracts of storm,--here the coming tempest, there the departing one. It was a picture of the world on a vast canvas, for there was rural life and city life within the great expanse, and the whole set in a frame of mountains,--the nearest bold and dust-net, with the rocky ledges showing through their sides, the distant ones blue and dim,--so far stretched this broad valley. When I had looked long enough,--no, not long enough, for it would take a great while to read that page,--we returned within the gate, and we clambered up, past the cathedral and into the narrow streets above it. The aspect of everything was immeasurably old; a thousand years would be but a middle age for one of those houses, built so massively with huge stones and solid arches, that I do not see how they are ever to tumble down, or to be less fit for human habitation than they are now. The streets crept between them, and beneath arched passages, and up and down steps of stone or ancient brick, for it would be altogether impossible for a carriage to ascend above the Grand Piazza, though possibly a donkey or a chairman's mule might find foothold. The city seems like a stony growth out of the hillside, or a fossilized city,--so old and singular it is, without enough life and juiciness in it to be susceptible of decay. An earthquake is the only chance of its ever being ruined, beyond its present ruin. Nothing is more strange than to think that this now dead city--dead, as regards the purposes for which men live nowadays--was, centuries ago, the seat and birthplace almost of art, the only art in which the beautiful part of the human mind then developed itself. How came that flower to grow among these wild mountains? I do not conceive, however, that the people of Assisi were ever much more enlightened or cultivated on the side of art than they are at present. The ecclesiastics were then the only patrons; and the flower grew here because there was a great ecclesiastical garden in which it was sheltered and fostered. But it is very curious to think of Assisi, a school of art within, and mountain and wilderness without. My wife and the rest of the party returned from the convent before noon, delighted with what they had seen, as I was delighted not to have seen it. We ate our dejeuner, and resumed our journey, passing beneath the great convent, after emerging from the gate opposite to that of our entrance. The edifice made a very good spectacle, being of great extent, and standing on a double row of high and narrow arches, on which it is built up from the declivity of the hill. We soon reached the Church of St. Mary of the Angels, which is a modern structure, and very spacious, built in place of one destroyed by an earthquake. It is a fine church, opening out a magnificent space in its nave and aisles; and beneath the great dome stands the small old chapel, with its rude stone walls, in which St. Francis founded his order. This chapel and the dome appear to have been the only portions of the ancient church that were not destroyed by the earthquake. The dwelling of St. Francis is said to be also preserved within the church; but we did not see it, unless it were a little dark closet into which we squeezed to see some frescos by La Spagna. It had an old wooden door, of which U---- picked off a little bit of a chip, to serve as a relic. There is a fresco in the church, on the pediment of the chapel, by Overbeck, representing the Assumption of the Virgin. It did not strike me as wonderfully fine. The other pictures, of which there were many, were modern, and of no great merit. We pursued our way, and came, by and by, to the foot of the high hill on which stands Perugia, and which is so long and steep that Gaetano took a yoke of oxen to aid his horses in the ascent. We all, except my wife, walked a part of the way up, and I myself, with J----- for my companion, kept on even to the city gate,--a distance, I should think, of two or three miles, at least. The lower part of the road was on the edge of the hill, with a narrow valley on our left; and as the sun had now broken out, its verdure and fertility, its foliage and cultivation, shone forth in miraculous beauty, as green as England, as bright as only Italy. Perugia appeared above us, crowning a mighty hill, the most picturesque of cities; and the higher we ascended, the more the view opened before us, as we looked back on the course that we had traversed, and saw the wide valley, sweeping down and spreading out, bounded afar by mountains, and sleeping in sun and shadow. No language nor any art of the pencil can give an idea of the scene. When God expressed himself in the landscape to mankind, he did not intend that it should be translated into any tongue save his own immediate one. J----- meanwhile, whose heart is now wholly in snail-shells, was rummaging for them among the stones and hedges by the roadside; yet, doubtless, enjoyed the prospect more than he knew. The coach lagged far behind us, and when it came up, we entered the gate, where a soldier appeared, and demanded my passport. We drove to the Grand Hotel de France, which is near the gate, and two fine little boys ran beside the carriage, well dressed and well looking enough to have been a gentleman's sons, but claiming Gaetano for their father. He is an inhabitant of Perugia, and has therefore reached his own home, though we are still little more than midway to our journey's end. Our hotel proves, thus far, to be the best that we have yet met with. We are only in the outskirts of Perugia; the bulk of the city, where the most interesting churches and the public edifices are situated, being far above us on the hill. My wife, U----, Miss Shepard, and R----- streamed forth immediately, and saw a church; but J-----, who hates them, and I remained behind; and, for my part, I added several pages to this volume of scribble. This morning was as bright as morning could be, even in Italy, and in this transparent mountain atmosphere. We at first declined the services of a cicerone, and went out in the hopes of finding our way to whatever we wished to see, by our own instincts. This proved to be a mistaken hope, however; and we wandered about the upper city, much persecuted by a shabby old man who wished to guide us; so, at last, Miss Shepard went back in quest of the cicerone at the hotel, and, meanwhile, we climbed to the summit of the hill of Perugia, and, leaning over a wall, looked forth upon a most magnificent view of mountain and valley, terminating in some peaks, lofty and dim, which surely must be the Apennines. There again a young man accosted us, offering to guide us to the Cambio or Exchange; and as this was one of the places which we especially wished to see, we accepted his services. By the by, I ought to have mentioned that we had already entered a church (San Luigi, I believe), the interior of which we found very impressive, dim with the light of stained and painted windows, insomuch that it at first seemed almost dark, and we could only see the bright twinkling of the tapers at the shrines; but, after a few minutes, we discerned the tall octagonal pillars of the nave, marble, and supporting a beautiful roof of crossed arches. The church was neither Gothic nor classic, but a mixture of both, and most likely barbarous; yet it had a grand effect in its tinted twilight, and convinced me more than ever how desirable it is that religious edifices should have painted windows. The door of the Cambio proved to be one that we had passed several times, while seeking for it, and was very near the church just mentioned, which fronts on one side of the same piazza. We were received by an old gentleman, who appeared to be a public officer, and found ourselves in a small room, wainscoted with beautifully carved oak, roofed with a coved ceiling, painted with symbols of the planets, and arabesqued in rich designs by Raphael, and lined with splendid frescos of subjects, scriptural and historical, by Perugino. When the room was in its first glory, I can conceive that the world had not elsewhere to show, within so small a space, such magnificence and beauty as were then displayed here. Even now, I enjoyed (to the best of my belief, for we can never feel sure that we are not bamboozling ourselves in such matters) some real pleasure in what I saw; and especially seemed to feel, after all these ages, the old painter's devout sentiment still breathing forth from the religious pictures, the work of a hand that had so long been dust. When we had looked long at these, the old gentleman led us into a chapel, of the same size as the former room, and built in the same fashion, wainscoted likewise with old oak. The walls were also frescoed, entirely frescoed, and retained more of their original brightness than those we had already seen, although the pictures were the production of a somewhat inferior hand, a pupil of Perugino. They seemed to be very striking, however, not the less so, that one of them provoked an unseasonable smile. It was the decapitation of John the Baptist; and this holy personage was represented as still on his knees, with his hands clasped in prayer, although the executioner was already depositing the head in a charger, and the blood was spouting from the headless trunk, directly, as it were, into the face of the spectator. While we were in the outer room, the cicerone who first offered his services at the hotel had come in; so we paid our chance guide, and expected him to take his leave. It is characteristic of this idle country, however, that if you once speak to a person, or connect yourself with him by the slightest possible tie, you will hardly get rid of him by anything short of main force. He still lingered in the room, and was still there when I came away; for, having had as many pictures as I could digest, I left my wife and U---- with the cicerone, and set out on a ramble with J-----. We plunged from the upper city down through some of the strangest passages that ever were called streets; some of them, indeed, being arched all over, and, going down into the unknown darkness, looked like caverns; and we followed one of them doubtfully, till it opened out upon the light. The houses on each side were divided only by a pace or two, and communicated with one another, here and there, by arched passages. They looked very ancient, and may have been inhabited by Etruscan princes, judging from the massiveness of some of the foundation stones. The present inhabitants, nevertheless, are by no means princely,--shabby men, and the careworn wives and mothers of the people,--one of whom was guiding a child in leading-strings through these antique alleys, where hundreds of generations have trod before those little feet. Finally we came out through a gateway, the same gateway at which we entered last night. I ought to have mentioned, in the narrative of yesterday, that we crossed the Tiber shortly before reaching Perugia, already a broad and rapid stream, and already distinguished by the same turbid and mud-puddly quality of water that we see in it at Rome. I think it will never be so disagreeable to me hereafter, now that I find this turbidness to be its native color, and not (like that of the Thames) accruing from city sewers or any impurities of the lowlands. As I now remember, the small Chapel of Santa Maria degl' Angeli seems to have been originally the house of St. Francis. May 29th.--This morning we visited the Church of the Dominicans, where we saw some quaint pictures by Fra Angelico, with a good deal of religious sincerity in them; also a picture of St. Columba by Perugino, which unquestionably is very good. To confess the truth, I took more interest in a fair Gothic monument, in white marble, of Pope Benedict XII., representing him reclining under a canopy, while two angels draw aside the curtain, the canopy being supported by twisted columns, richly ornamented. I like this overflow and gratuity of device with which Gothic sculpture works out its designs, after seeing so much of the simplicity of classic art in marble. We then tried to find the Church of San Pietro in Martire, but without success, although every person of whom we inquired immediately attached himself or herself to us, and could hardly be got rid of by any efforts on our part. Nobody seemed to know the church we wished for, but all directed us to another Church of San Pietro, which contains nothing of interest; whereas the right church is supposed to contain a celebrated picture by Perugino. Finally, we ascended the hill and the city proper of Perugia (for our hotel is in one of the suburbs), and J----- and I set out on a ramble about the city. It was market-day, and the principal piazza, with the neighboring streets, was crowded with people. . . . . The best part of Perugia, that in which the grand piazzas and the principal public edifices stand, seems to be a nearly level plateau on the summit of the hill; but it is of no very great extent, and the streets rapidly run downward on either side. J----- and I followed one of these descending streets, and were led a long way by it, till we at last emerged from one of the gates of the city, and had another view of the mountains and valleys, the fertile and sunny wilderness in which this ancient civilization stands. On the right of the gate there was a rude country-path, partly overgrown with grass, bordered by a hedge on one side, and on the other by the gray city wall, at the base of which the track kept onward. We followed it, hoping that it would lead us to some other gate by which we might re-enter the city; but it soon grew so indistinct and broken, that it was evidently on the point of melting into somebody's olive-orchard or wheat-fields or vineyards, all of which lay on the other side of the hedge; and a kindly old woman of whom I inquired told me (if I rightly understood her Italian) that I should find no further passage in that direction. So we turned back, much broiled in the hot sun, and only now and then relieved by the shadow of an angle or a tower. A lame beggar-man sat by the gate, and as we passed him J----- gave him two baiocchi (which he himself had begged of me to buy an orange with), and was loaded with the pauper's prayers and benedictions as we entered the city. A great many blessings can be bought for very little money anywhere in Italy; and whether they avail anything or no, it is pleasant to see that the beggars have gratitude enough to bestow them in such abundance. Of all beggars I think a little fellow, who rode beside our carriage on a stick, his bare feet scampering merrily, while he managed his steed with one hand, and held out the other for charity, howling piteously the while, amused me most. PASSIGNANO. May 29th.--We left Perugia at about three o'clock to-day, and went down a pretty steep descent; but I have no particular recollection of the road till it again began to descend, before reaching the village of Magione. We all, except my wife, walked up the long hill, while the vettura was dragged after us with the aid of a yoke of oxen. Arriving first at the village, I leaned over the wall to admire the beautiful paese ("le bel piano," as a peasant called it, who made acquaintance with me) that lay at the foot of the hill, so level, so bounded within moderate limits by a frame of hills and ridges, that it looked like a green lake. In fact, I think it was once a real lake, which made its escape from its bed, as I have known some lakes to have done in America. Passing through and beyond the village, I saw, on a height above the road, a half-ruinous tower, with great cracks running down its walls, half-way from top to bottom. Some little children had mounted the hill with us, begging all the way; they were recruited with additional members in the village; and here, beneath the ruinous tower, a madman, as it seemed, assaulted us, and ran almost under the carriage-wheels, in his earnestness to get a baioccho. Ridding ourselves of these annoyances, we drove on, and, between five and six o'clock, came in sight of the Lake of Thrasymene, obtaining our first view of it, I think, in its longest extent. There were high hills, and one mountain with its head in the clouds, visible on the farther shore, and on the horizon beyond it; but the nearer banks were long ridges, and hills of only moderate height. The declining sun threw a broad sheen of brightness over the surface of the lake, so that we could not well see it for excess of light; but had a vision of headlands and islands floating about in a flood of gold, and blue, airy heights bounding it afar. When we first drew near the lake, there was but a narrow tract, covered with vines and olives, between it and the hill that rose on the other side. As we advanced, the tract grew wider, and was very fertile, as was the hillside, with wheat-fields, and vines, and olives, especially the latter, which, symbol of peace as it is, seemed to find something congenial to it in the soil stained long ago with blood. Farther onward, the space between the lake and hill grew still narrower, the road skirting along almost close to the water-side; and when we reached the town of Passignano there was but room enough for its dirty and ugly street to stretch along the shore. I have seldom beheld a lovelier scene than that of the lake and the landscape around it; never an uglier one than that of this idle and decaying village, where we were immediately surrounded by beggars of all ages, and by men vociferously proposing to row us out upon the lake. We declined their offers of a boat, for the evening was very fresh and cool, insomuch that I should have liked an outside garment,--a temperature that I had not anticipated, so near the beginning of June, in sunny Italy. Instead of a row, we took a walk through the village, hoping to come upon the shore of the lake, in some secluded spot; but an incredible number of beggar-children, both boys and girls, but more of the latter, rushed out of every door, and went along with us, all howling their miserable petitions at the same moment. The village street is long, and our escort waxed more numerous at every step, till Miss Shepard actually counted forty of these little reprobates, and more were doubtless added afterwards. At first, no doubt, they begged in earnest hope of getting some baiocchi; but, by and by, perceiving that we had determined not to give them anything, they made a joke of the matter, and began to laugh and to babble, and turn heels over head, still keeping about us, like a swarm of flies, and now and then begging again with all their might. There were as few pretty faces as I ever saw among the same number of children; and they were as ragged and dirty little imps as any in the world, and, moreover, tainted the air with a very disagreeable odor from their rags and dirt; rugged and healthy enough, nevertheless, and sufficiently intelligent; certainly bold and persevering too; so that it is hard to say what they needed to fit them for success in life. Yet they begin as beggars, and no doubt will end so, as all their parents and grandparents do; for in our walk through the village, every old woman and many younger ones held out their hands for alms, as if they had all been famished. Yet these people kept their houses over their heads; had firesides in winter, I suppose, and food out of their little gardens every day; pigs to kill, chickens, olives, wine, and a great many things to make life comfortable. The children, desperately as they begged, looked in good bodily ease, and happy enough; but, certainly, there was a look of earnest misery in the faces of some of the old women, either genuine or exceedingly well acted. I could not bear the persecution, and went into our hotel, determining not to venture out again till our departure; at least not in the daylight. My wife and the rest of the family, however, continued their walk, and at length were relieved from their little pests by three policemen (the very images of those in Rome, in their blue, long-skirted coats, cocked chapeaux-bras, white shoulder-belts, and swords), who boxed their ears, and dispersed them. Meanwhile, they had quite driven away all sentimental effusion (of which I felt more, really, than I expected) about the Lake of Thrasymene. The inn of Passignano promised little from its outward appearance; a tall, dark old house, with a stone staircase leading us up from one sombre story to another, into a brick-paved dining-room, with our sleeping-chambers on each side. There was a fireplace of tremendous depth and height, fit to receive big forest-logs, and with a queer, double pair of ancient andirons, capable of sustaining them; and in a handful of ashes lay a small stick of olive-wood,--a specimen, I suppose, of the sort of fuel which had made the chimney black, in the course of a good many years. There must have been much shivering and misery of cold around this fireplace. However, we needed no fire now, and there was promise of good cheer in the spectacle of a man cleaning some lake-fish for our dinner, while the poor things flounced and wriggled under the knife. The dinner made its appearance, after a long while, and was most plentiful, . . . . so that, having measured our appetite in anticipation of a paucity of food, we had to make more room for such overflowing abundance. When dinner was over, it was already dusk, and before retiring I opened the window, and looked out on Lake Thrasymene, the margin of which lies just on the other side of the narrow village street. The moon was a day or two past the full, just a little clipped on the edge, but gave light enough to show the lake and its nearer shores almost as distinctly as by day; and there being a ripple on the surface of the water, it made a sheen of silver over a wide space. AREZZO. May 30th.--We started at six o'clock, and left the one ugly street of Passignano, before many of the beggars were awake. Immediately in the vicinity of the village there is very little space between the lake in front and the ridge of hills in the rear; but the plain widened as we drove onward, so that the lake was scarcely to be seen, or often quite hidden among the intervening trees, although we could still discern the summits of the mountains that rise far beyond its shores. The country was fertile, presenting, on each side of the road, vines trained on fig-trees; wheat-fields and olives, in greater abundance than any other product. On our right, with a considerable width of plain between, was the bending ridge of hills that shut in the Roman army, by its close approach to the lake at Passignano. In perhaps half all hour's drive, we reached the little bridge that throws its arch over the Sanguinetto, and alighted there. The stream has but about a yard's width of water; and its whole course, between the hills and the lake, might well have been reddened and swollen with the blood of the multitude of slain Romans. Its name put me in mind of the Bloody Brook at Deerfield, where a company of Massachusetts men were massacred by the Indians. The Sanguinetto flows over a bed of pebbles; and J----- crept under the bridge, and got one of them for a memorial, while U----, Miss Shepard, and R----- plucked some olive twigs and oak leaves, and made them into wreaths together,--symbols of victory and peace. The tower, which is traditionally named after Hannibal, is seen on a height that makes part of the line of enclosing hills. It is a large, old castle, apparently of the Middle Ages, with a square front, and a battlemented sweep of wall. The town of Torres (its name, I think), where Hannibal's main army is supposed to have lain while the Romans came through the pass, was in full view; and I could understand the plan of the battle better than any system of military operations which I have hitherto tried to fathom. Both last night and to-day, I found myself stirred more sensibly than I expected by the influences of this scene. The old battle-field is still fertile in thoughts and emotions, though it is so many ages since the blood spilt there has ceased to make the grass and flowers grow more luxuriantly. I doubt whether I should feel so much on the field of Saratoga or Monmouth; but these old classic battle-fields belong to the whole world, and each man feels as if his own forefathers fought them. Mine, by the by, if they fought them at all, must have been on the side of Hannibal; for, certainly, I sympathized with him, and exulted in the defeat of the Romans on their own soil. They excite much the same emotion of general hostility that the English do. Byron has written some very fine stanzas on the battle-field,--not so good as others that he has written on classical scenes and subjects, yet wonderfully impressing his own perception of the subject on the reader. Whenever he has to deal with a statue, a ruin, a battle-field, he pounces upon the topic like a vulture, and tears out its heart in a twinkling, so that there is nothing more to be said. If I mistake not, our passport was examined by the papal officers at the last custom-house in the pontifical territory, before we traversed the path through which the Roman army marched to its destruction. Lake Thrasymene, of which we took our last view, is not deep set among the hills, but is bordered by long ridges, with loftier mountains receding into the distance. It is not to be compared to Windermere or Loch Lomond for beauty, nor with Lake Champlain and many a smaller lake in my own country, none of which, I hope, will ever become so historically interesting as this famous spot. A few miles onward our passport was countersigned at the Tuscan custom-house, and our luggage permitted to pass without examination on payment of a fee of nine or ten pauls, besides two pauls to the porters. There appears to be no concealment on the part of the officials in thus waiving the exercise of their duty, and I rather imagine that the thing is recognized and permitted by their superiors. At all events, it is very convenient for the traveller. We saw Cortona, sitting, like so many other cities in this region, on its hill, and arrived about noon at Arezzo, which also stretches up a high hillside, and is surrounded, as they all are, by its walls or the remains of one, with a fortified gate across every entrance. I remember one little village, somewhere in the neighborhood of the Clitumnus, which we entered by one gateway, and, in the course of two minutes at the utmost, left by the opposite one, so diminutive was this walled town. Everything hereabouts bears traces of times when war was the prevalent condition, and peace only a rare gleam of sunshine. At Arezzo we have put up at the Hotel Royal, which has the appearance of a grand old house, and proves to be a tolerable inn enough. After lunch, we wandered forth to see the town, which did not greatly interest me after Perugia, being much more modern and less picturesque in its aspect. We went to the cathedral,--a Gothic edifice, but not of striking exterior. As the doors were closed, and not to be opened till three o'clock, we seated ourselves under the trees, on a high, grassy space surrounded and intersected with gravel-walks,--a public promenade, in short, near the cathedral; and after resting ourselves here we went in search of Petrarch's house, which Murray mentions as being in this neighborhood. We inquired of several people, who knew nothing about the matter; one woman misdirected us, out of mere fun, I believe, for she afterwards met us and asked how we had succeeded. But finally, through ------'s enterprise and perseverance, we found the spot, not a stone's-throw from where we had been sitting. Petrarch's house stands below the promenade which I have just mentioned, and within hearing of the reverberations between the strokes of the cathedral bell. It is two stories high, covered with a light-colored stucco, and has not the slightest appearance of antiquity, no more than many a modern and modest dwelling-house in an American city. Its only remarkable feature is a pointed arch of stone, let into the plastered wall, and forming a framework for the doorway. I set my foot on the doorsteps, ascended them, and Miss Shepard and J----- gathered some weeds or blades of grass that grew in the chinks between the steps. There is a long inscription on a slab of marble set in the front of the house, as is the fashion in Arezzo when a house has been the birthplace or residence of a distinguished man. Right opposite Petrarch's birth-house--and it must have been the well whence the water was drawn that first bathed him--is a well which Boccaccio has introduced into one of his stories. It is surrounded with a stone curb, octagonal in shape, and evidently as ancient as Boccaccio's time. It has a wooden cover, through which is a square opening, and looking down I saw my own face in the water far beneath. There is no familiar object connected with daily life so interesting as a well; and this well or old Arezzo, whence Petrarch had drunk, around which he had played in his boyhood, and which Boccaccio has made famous, really interested me more than the cathedral. It lies right under the pavement of the street, under the sunshine, without any shade of trees about it, or any grass, except a little that grows in the crevices of its stones; but the shape of its stone-work would make it a pretty object in an engraving. As I lingered round it I thought of my own town-pump in old Salem, and wondered whether my townspeople would ever point it out to strangers, and whether the stranger would gaze at it with any degree of such interest as I felt in Boccaccio's well. O, certainly not; but yet I made that humble town-pump the most celebrated structure in the good town. A thousand and a thousand people had pumped there, merely to water oxen or fill their teakettles; but when once I grasped the handle, a rill gushed forth that meandered as far as England, as far as India, besides tasting pleasantly in every town and village of our own country. I like to think of this, so long after I did it, and so far from home, and am not without hopes of some kindly local remembrance on this score. Petrarch's house is not a separate and insulated building, but stands in contiguity and connection with other houses on each side; and all, when I saw them, as well as the whole street, extending down the slope of the hill, had the bright and sunny aspect of a modern town. As the cathedral was not yet open, and as J----- and I had not so much patience as my wife, we left her and Miss Shepard, and set out to return to the hotel. We lost our way, however, and finally had to return to the cathedral, to take a fresh start; and as the door was now open we went in. We found the cathedral very stately with its great arches, and darkly magnificent with the dim rich light coming through its painted windows, some of which are reckoned the most beautiful that the whole world has to show. The hues are far more brilliant than those of any painted glass I saw in England, and a great wheel window looks like a constellation of many-colored gems. The old English glass gets so smoky and dull with dust, that its pristine beauty cannot any longer be even imagined; nor did I imagine it till I saw these Italian windows. We saw nothing of my wife and Miss Shepard; but found afterwards that they had been much annoyed by the attentions of a priest who wished to show them the cathedral, till they finally told him that they had no money with them, when he left them without another word. The attendants in churches seem to be quite as venal as most other Italians, and, for the sake of their little profit, they do not hesitate to interfere with the great purposes for which their churches were built and decorated; hanging curtains, for instance, before all the celebrated pictures, or hiding them away in the sacristy, so that they cannot be seen without a fee. Returning to the hotel, we looked out of the window, and, in the street beneath, there was a very busy scene, it being Sunday, and the whole population, apparently, being astir, promenading up and down the smooth flag-stones, which made the breadth of the street one sidewalk, or at their windows, or sitting before their doors. The vivacity of the population in these parts is very striking, after the gravity and lassitude of Rome; and the air was made cheerful with the talk and laughter of hundreds of voices. I think the women are prettier than the Roman maids and matrons, who, as I think I have said before, have chosen to be very uncomely since the rape of their ancestresses, by way of wreaking a terrible spite and revenge. I have nothing more to say of Arezzo, except that, finding the ordinary wine very bad, as black as ink, and tasting as if it had tar and vinegar in it, we called for a bottle of Monte Pulciano, and were exceedingly gladdened and mollified thereby. INCISA. We left Arezzo early on Monday morning, the sun throwing the long shadows of the trees across the road, which at first, after we had descended the hill, lay over a plain. As the morning advanced, or as we advanced, the country grew more hilly. We saw many bits of rustic life,--such as old women tending pigs or sheep by the roadside, and spinning with a distaff; women sewing under trees, or at their own doors; children leading goats, tied by the horns, while they browse; sturdy, sunburnt creatures, in petticoats, but otherwise manlike, at work side by side with male laborers in the fields. The broad-brimmed, high-crowned hat of Tuscan straw is the customary female head-dress, and is as unbecoming as can possibly be imagined, and of little use, one would suppose, as a shelter from the sun, the brim continually blowing upward from the face. Some of the elder women wore black felt hats, likewise broad-brimmed; and the men wore felt hats also, shaped a good deal like a mushroom, with hardly any brim at all. The scenes in the villages through which we passed were very lively and characteristic, all the population seeming to be out of doors: some at the butcher's shop, others at the well; a tailor sewing in the open air, with a young priest sitting sociably beside him; children at play; women mending clothes, embroidering, spinning with the distaff at their own doorsteps; many idlers, letting the pleasant morning pass in the sweet-do-nothing; all assembling in the street, as in the common room of one large household, and thus brought close together, and made familiar with one another, as they can never be in a different system of society. As usual along the road we passed multitudes of shrines, where the Virgin was painted in fresco, or sometimes represented in bas-reliefs, within niches, or under more spacious arches. It would be a good idea to place a comfortable and shady seat beneath all these wayside shrines, where the wayfarer might rest himself, and thank the Virgin for her hospitality; nor can I believe that it would offend her, any more than other incense, if he were to regale himself, even in such consecrated spots, with the fragrance of a pipe or cigar. In the wire-work screen, before many of the shrines, hung offerings of roses and other flowers, some wilted and withered, some fresh with that morning's dew, some that never bloomed and never faded,--being artificial. I wonder that they do not plant rose-trees and all kinds of fragrant and flowering shrubs under the shrines, and twine and wreathe them all around, so that the Virgin may dwell within a bower of perpetual freshness; at least put flower-pots, with living plants, into the niche. There are many things in the customs of these people that might be made very beautiful, if the sense of beauty were as much alive now as it must have been when these customs were first imagined and adopted. I must not forget, among these little descriptive items, the spectacle of women and girls bearing huge bundles of twigs and shrubs, or grass, with scarlet poppies and blue flowers intermixed; the bundles sometimes so huge as almost to hide the woman's figure from head to heel, so that she looked like a locomotive mass of verdure and flowers; sometimes reaching only half-way down her back, so as to show the crooked knife slung behind, with which she had been reaping this strange harvest-sheaf. A Pre-Raphaelite painter--the one, for instance, who painted the heap of autumnal leaves, which we saw at the Manchester Exhibition--would find an admirable subject in one of these girls, stepping with a free, erect, and graceful carriage, her burden on her head; and the miscellaneous herbage and flowers would give him all the scope he could desire for minute and various delineation of nature. The country houses which we passed had sometimes open galleries or arcades on the second story and above, where the inhabitants might perform their domestic labor in the shade and in the air. The houses were often ancient, and most picturesquely time-stained, the plaster dropping in spots from the old brickwork; others were tinted of pleasant and cheerful lines; some were frescoed with designs in arabesques, or with imaginary windows; some had escutcheons of arms painted on the front. Wherever there was a pigeon-house, a flight of doves were represented as flying into the holes, doubtless for the invitation and encouragement of the real birds. Once or twice I saw a bush stuck up before the door of what seemed to be a wine-shop. If so, it is the ancient custom, so long disused in England, and alluded to in the proverb, "Good wine needs no bush." Several times we saw grass spread to dry on the road, covering half the track, and concluded it to have been cut by the roadside for the winter forage of his ass by some poor peasant, or peasant's wife, who had no grass land, except the margin of the public way. A beautiful feature of the scene to-day, as the preceding day, were the vines growing on fig-trees (?) [This interrogation-mark must mean that Mr. Hawthorne was not sure they were fig-trees.--ED.], and often wreathed in rich festoons from one tree to another, by and by to be hung with clusters of purple grapes. I suspect the vine is a pleasanter object of sight under this mode of culture than it can be in countries where it produces a more precious wine, and therefore is trained more artificially. Nothing can be more picturesque than the spectacle of an old grapevine, with almost a trunk of its own, clinging round its tree, imprisoning within its strong embrace the friend that supported its tender infancy, converting the tree wholly to its own selfish ends, as seemingly flexible natures are apt to do, stretching out its innumerable arms on every bough, and allowing hardly a leaf to sprout except its own. I must not yet quit this hasty sketch, without throwing in, both in the early morning, and later in the forenoon, the mist that dreamed among the hills, and which, now that I have called it mist, I feel almost more inclined to call light, being so quietly cheerful with the sunshine through it. Put in, now and then, a castle on a hilltop; a rough ravine, a smiling valley; a mountain stream, with a far wider bed than it at present needs, and a stone bridge across it, with ancient and massive arches;--and I shall say no more, except that all these particulars, and many better ones which escape me, made up a very pleasant whole. At about noon we drove into the village of Incisa, and alighted at the albergo where we were to lunch. It was a gloomy old house, as much like my idea of an Etruscan tomb as anything else that I can compare it to. We passed into a wide and lofty entrance-hall, paved with stone, and vaulted with a roof of intersecting arches, supported by heavy columns of stuccoed-brick, the whole as sombre and dingy as can well be. This entrance-hall is not merely the passageway into the inn, but is likewise the carriage-house, into which our vettura is wheeled; and it has, on one side, the stable, odorous with the litter of horses and cattle, and on the other the kitchen, and a common sitting-room. A narrow stone staircase leads from it to the dining-room, and chambers above, which are paved with brick, and adorned with rude frescos instead of paper-hangings. We look out of the windows, and step into a little iron-railed balcony, before the principal window, and observe the scene in the village street. The street is narrow, and nothing can exceed the tall, grim ugliness of the village houses, many of them four stories high, contiguous all along, and paved quite across; so that nature is as completely shut out from the precincts of this little town as from the heart of the widest city. The walls of the houses are plastered, gray, dilapidated; the windows small, some of them drearily closed with wooden shutters, others flung wide open, and with women's heads protruding, others merely frescoed, for a show of light and air. It would be a hideous street to look at in a rainy day, or when no human life pervaded it. Now it has vivacity enough to keep it cheerful. People lounge round the door of the albergo, and watch the horses as they drink from a stone trough, which is built against the wall of the house, and filled with the unseen gush of a spring. At first there is a shade entirely across the street, and all the within-doors of the village empties itself there, and keeps up a babblement that seems quite disproportioned even to the multitude of tongues that make it. So many words are not spoken in a New England village in a whole year as here in this single day. People talk about nothing as if they were terribly in earnest, and laugh at nothing as if it were all excellent joke. As the hot noon sunshine encroaches on our side of the street, it grows a little more quiet. The loungers now confine themselves to the shady margin (growing narrower and narrower) of the other side, where, directly opposite the albergo, there are two cafes and a wine-shop, "vendita di pane, vino, ed altri generi," all in a row with benches before them. The benchers joke with the women passing by, and are joked with back again. The sun still eats away the shadow inch by inch, beating down with such intensity that finally everybody disappears except a few passers-by. Doubtless the village snatches this half-hour for its siesta. There is a song, however, inside one of the cafes, with a burden in which several voices join. A girl goes through the street, sheltered under her great bundle of freshly cut grass. By and by the song ceases, and two young peasants come out of the cafe, a little affected by liquor, in their shirt-sleeves and bare feet, with their trousers tucked up. They resume their song in the street, and dance along, one's arm around his fellow's neck, his own waist grasped by the other's arm. They whirl one another quite round about, and come down upon their feet. Meeting a village maid coming quietly along, they dance up and intercept her for a moment, but give way to her sobriety of aspect. They pass on, and the shadow soon begins to spread from one side of the street, which presently fills again, and becomes once more, for its size, the noisiest place I ever knew. We had quite a tolerable dinner at this ugly inn, where many preceding travellers had written their condemnatory judgments, as well as a few their favorable ones, in pencil on the walls of the dining-room. TO FLORENCE. At setting off [from Incisa], we were surrounded by beggars as usual, the most interesting of whom were a little blind boy and his mother, who had besieged us with gentle pertinacity during our whole stay there. There was likewise a man with a maimed hand, and other hurts or deformities; also, an old woman who, I suspect, only pretended to be blind, keeping her eyes tightly squeezed together, but directing her hand very accurately where the copper shower was expected to fall. Besides these, there were a good many sturdy little rascals, vociferating in proportion as they needed nothing. It was touching, however, to see several persons--themselves beggars for aught I know--assisting to hold up the little blind boy's tremulous hand, so that he, at all events, might not lack the pittance which we had to give. Our dole was but a poor one, after all, consisting of what Roman coppers we had brought into Tuscany with us; and as we drove off, some of the boys ran shouting and whining after us in the hot sunshine, nor stopped till we reached the summit of the hill, which rises immediately from the village street. We heard Gaetano once say a good thing to a swarm of beggar-children, who were infesting us, "Are your fathers all dead?"--a proverbial expression, I suppose. The pertinacity of beggars does not, I think, excite the indignation of an Italian, as it is apt to do that of Englishmen or Americans. The Italians probably sympathize more, though they give less. Gaetano is very gentle in his modes of repelling them, and, indeed, never interferes at all, as long as there is a prospect of their getting anything. Immediately after leaving Incisa, we saw the Arno, already a considerable river, rushing between deep banks, with the greenish line of a duck-pond diffused through its water. Nevertheless, though the first impression was not altogether agreeable, we soon became reconciled to this line, and ceased to think it an indication of impurity; for, in spite of it, the river is still to a certain degree transparent, and is, at any rate, a mountain stream, and comes uncontaminated from its source. The pure, transparent brown of the New England rivers is the most beautiful color; but I am content that it should be peculiar to them. Our afternoon's drive was through scenery less striking than some which we had traversed, but still picturesque and beautiful. We saw deep valleys and ravines, with streams at the bottom; long, wooded hillsides, rising far and high, and dotted with white dwellings, well towards the summits. By and by, we had a distant glimpse of Florence, showing its great dome and some of its towers out of a sidelong valley, as if we were between two great waves of the tumultuous sea of hills; while, far beyond, rose in the distance the blue peaks of three or four of the Apennines, just on the remote horizon. There being a haziness in the atmosphere, however, Florence was little more distinct to us than the Celestial City was to Christian and Hopeful, when they spied at it from the Delectable Mountains. Keeping steadfastly onward, we ascended a winding road, and passed a grand villa, standing very high, and surrounded with extensive grounds. It must be the residence of some great noble; and it has an avenue of poplars or aspens, very light and gay, and fit for the passage of the bridal procession, when the proprietor or his heir brings home his bride; while, in another direction from the same front of the palace, stretches an avenue or grove of cypresses, very long, and exceedingly black and dismal, like a train of gigantic mourners. I have seen few things more striking, in the way of trees, than this grove of cypresses. From this point we descended, and drove along an ugly, dusty avenue, with a high brick wall on one side or both, till we reached the gate of Florence, into which we were admitted with as little trouble as custom-house officers, soldiers, and policemen can possibly give. They did not examine our luggage, and even declined a fee, as we had already paid one at the frontier custom-house. Thank heaven, and the Grand Duke! As we hoped that the Casa del Bello had been taken for us, we drove thither in the first place, but found that the bargain had not been concluded. As the house and studio of Mr. Powers were just on the opposite side of the street, I went to it, but found him too much engrossed to see me at the moment; so I returned to the vettura, and we told Gaetano to carry us to a hotel. He established us at the Albergo della Fontana, a good and comfortable house. . . . . Mr. Powers called in the evening,--a plain personage, characterized by strong simplicity and warm kindliness, with an impending brow, and large eyes, which kindle as he speaks. He is gray, and slightly bald, but does not seem elderly, nor past his prime. I accept him at once as an honest and trustworthy man, and shall not vary from this judgment. Through his good offices, the next day, we engaged the Casa del Bello, at a rent of fifty dollars a month, and I shall take another opportunity (my fingers and head being tired now) to write about the house, and Mr. Powers, and what appertains to him, and about the beautiful city of Florence. At present, I shall only say further, that this journey from Rome has been one of the brightest and most uncareful interludes of my life; we have all enjoyed it exceedingly, and I am happy that our children have it to look back upon. June 4th.--At our visit to Powers's studio on Tuesday, we saw a marble copy of the fisher-boy holding a shell to his ear, and the bust of Proserpine, and two or three other ideal busts; various casts of most of the ideal statues and portrait busts which he has executed. He talks very freely about his works, and is no exception to the rule that an artist is not apt to speak in a very laudatory style of a brother artist. He showed us a bust of Mr. Sparks by Persico,--a lifeless and thoughtless thing enough, to be sure,--and compared it with a very good one of the same gentleman by himself; but his chiefest scorn was bestowed on a wretched and ridiculous image of Mr. King, of Alabama, by Clark Mills, of which he said he had been employed to make several copies for Southern gentlemen. The consciousness of power is plainly to be seen, and the assertion of it by no means withheld, in his simple and natural character; nor does it give me an idea of vanity on his part to see and hear it. He appears to consider himself neglected by his country,--by the government of it, at least,--and talks with indignation of the byways and political intrigue which, he thinks, win the rewards that ought to be bestowed exclusively on merit. An appropriation of twenty-five thousand dollars was made, some years ago, for a work of sculpture by him, to be placed in the Capitol; but the intermediate measures necessary to render it effective have been delayed; while the above-mentioned Clark Mills-- certainly the greatest bungler that ever botched a block of marble--has received an order for an equestrian statue of Washington. Not that Mr. Powers is made bitter or sour by these wrongs, as he considers them; he talks of them with the frankness of his disposition when the topic comes in his way, and is pleasant, kindly, and sunny when he has done with it. His long absence from our country has made him think worse of us than we deserve; and it is an effect of what I myself am sensible, in my shorter exile: the most piercing shriek, the wildest yell, and all the ugly sounds of popular turmoil, inseparable from the life of a republic, being a million times more audible than the peaceful hum of prosperity and content which is going on all the while. He talks of going home, but says that he has been talking of it every year since he first came to Italy; and between his pleasant life of congenial labor, and his idea of moral deterioration in America, I think it doubtful whether he ever crosses the sea again. Like most exiles of twenty years, he has lost his native country without finding another; but then it is as well to recognize the truth,--that an individual country is by no means essential to one's comfort. Powers took us into the farthest room, I believe, of his very extensive studio, and showed us a statue of Washington that has much dignity and stateliness. He expressed, however, great contempt for the coat and breeches, and masonic emblems, in which he had been required to drape the figure. What would he do with Washington, the most decorous and respectable personage that ever went ceremoniously through the realities of life? Did anybody ever see Washington nude? It is inconceivable. He had no nakedness, but I imagine he was born with his clothes on, and his hair powdered, and made a stately bow on his first appearance in the world. His costume, at all events, was a part of his character, and must be dealt with by whatever sculptor undertakes to represent him. I wonder that so very sensible a man as Powers should not see the necessity of accepting drapery, and the very drapery of the day, if he will keep his art alive. It is his business to idealize the tailor's actual work. But he seems to be especially fond of nudity, none of his ideal statues, so far as I know them, having so much as a rag of clothes. His statue of California, lately finished, and as naked as Venus, seemed to me a very good work; not an actual woman, capable of exciting passion, but evidently a little out of the category of human nature. In one hand she holds a divining-rod. "She says to the emigrants," observed Powers, "'Here is the gold, if you choose to take it.'" But in her face, and in her eyes, very finely expressed, there is a look of latent mischief, rather grave than playful, yet somewhat impish or sprite-like; and, in the other hand, behind her back, she holds a bunch of thorns. Powers calls her eyes Indian. The statue is true to the present fact and history of California, and includes the age-long truth as respects the "auri sacra fames." . . . . When we had looked sufficiently at the sculpture, Powers proposed that we should now go across the street and see the Casa del Bello. We did so in a body, Powers in his dressing-gown and slippers, and his wife and daughters without assuming any street costume. The Casa del Bello is a palace of three pianos, the topmost of which is occupied by the Countess of St. George, an English lady, and two lower pianos are to be let, and we looked at both. The upper one would have suited me well enough; but the lower has a terrace, with a rustic summer-house over it, and is connected with a garden, where there are arbors and a willow-tree, and a little wilderness of shrubbery and roses, with a fountain in the midst. It has likewise an immense suite of rooms, round the four sides of a small court, spacious, lofty, with frescoed ceilings and rich hangings, and abundantly furnished with arm-chairs, sofas, marble tables, and great looking-glasses. Not that these last are a great temptation, but in our wandering life I wished to be perfectly comfortable myself, and to make my family so, for just this summer, and so I have taken the lower piano, the price being only fifty dollars per month (entirely furnished, even to silver and linen). Certainly this is something like the paradise of cheapness we were told of, and which we vainly sought in Rome. . . . . To me has been assigned the pleasantest room for my study; and when I like I can overflow into the summer-house or an arbor, and sit there dreaming of a story. The weather is delightful, too warm to walk, but perfectly fit to do nothing in, in the coolness of these great rooms. Every day I shall write a little, perhaps,--and probably take a brief nap somewhere between breakfast and tea,--but go to see pictures and statues occasionally, and so assuage and mollify myself a little after that uncongenial life of the consulate, and before going back to my own hard and dusty New England. After concluding the arrangement for the Casa del Bello, we stood talking a little while with Powers and his wife and daughter before the door of the house, for they seem so far to have adopted the habits of the Florentines as to feel themselves at home on the shady side of the street. The out-of-door life and free communication with the pavement, habitual apparently among the middle classes, reminds me of the plays of Moliere and other old dramatists, in which the street or the square becomes a sort of common parlor, where most of the talk and scenic business of the people is carried on. June 5th.--For two or three mornings after breakfast I have rambled a little about the city till the shade grew narrow beneath the walls of the houses, and the heat made it uncomfortable to be in motion. To-day I went over the Ponte Carraja, and thence into and through the heart of the city, looking into several churches, in all of which I found people taking advantage of the cool breadth of these sacred interiors to refresh themselves and say their prayers. Florence at first struck me as having the aspect of a very new city in comparison with Rome; but, on closer acquaintance, I find that many of the buildings are antique and massive, though still the clear atmosphere, the bright sunshine, the light, cheerful hues of the stucco, and--as much as anything else, perhaps--the vivacious character of the human life in the streets, take away the sense of its being an ancient city. The streets are delightful to walk in after so many penitential pilgrimages as I have made over those little square, uneven blocks of the Roman pavement, which wear out the boots and torment the soul. I absolutely walk on the smooth flags of Florence for the mere pleasure of walking, and live in its atmosphere for the mere pleasure of living; and, warm as the weather is getting to be, I never feel that inclination to sink down in a heap and never stir again, which was my dull torment and misery as long as I stayed in Rome. I hardly think there can be a place in the world where life is more delicious for its own simple sake than here. I went to-day into the Baptistery, which stands near the Duomo, and, like that, is covered externally with slabs of black and white marble, now grown brown and yellow with age. The edifice is octagonal, and on entering, one immediately thinks of the Pantheon,--the whole space within being free from side to side, with a dome above; but it differs from the severe simplicity of the former edifice, being elaborately ornamented with marble and frescos, and lacking that great eye in the roof that looks so nobly and reverently heavenward from the Pantheon. I did little more than pass through the Baptistery, glancing at the famous bronze doors, some perfect and admirable casts of which I had already seen at the Crystal Palace. The entrance of the Duomo being just across the piazza, I went in there after leaving the Baptistery, and was struck anew--for this is the third or fourth visit--with the dim grandeur of the interior, lighted as it is almost exclusively by painted windows, which seem to me worth all the variegated marbles and rich cabinet-work of St. Peter's. The Florentine Cathedral has a spacious and lofty nave, and side aisles divided from it by pillars; but there are no chapels along the aisles, so that there is far more breadth and freedom of interior, in proportion to the actual space, than is usual in churches. It is woful to think how the vast capaciousness within St. Peter's is thrown away, and made to seem smaller than it is by every possible device, as if on purpose. The pillars and walls of this Duomo are of a uniform brownish, neutral tint; the pavement, a mosaic work of marble; the ceiling of the dome itself is covered with frescos, which, being very imperfectly lighted, it is impossible to trace out. Indeed, it is but a twilight region that is enclosed within the firmament of this great dome, which is actually larger than that of St. Peter's, though not lifted so high from the pavement. But looking at the painted windows, I little cared what dimness there might be elsewhere; for certainly the art of man has never contrived any other beauty and glory at all to be compared to this. The dome sits, as it were, upon three smaller domes,--smaller, but still great,--beneath which are three vast niches, forming the transepts of the cathedral and the tribune behind the high altar. All round these hollow, dome-covered arches or niches are high and narrow windows crowded with saints, angels, and all manner of blessed shapes, that turn the common daylight into a miracle of richness and splendor as it passes through their heavenly substance. And just beneath the swell of the great central dome is a wreath of circular windows quite round it, as brilliant as the tall and narrow ones below. It is a pity anybody should die without seeing an antique painted window, with the bright Italian sunshine glowing through it. This is "the dim, religious light" that Milton speaks of; but I doubt whether he saw these windows when he was in Italy, or any but those faded or dusty and dingy ones of the English cathedrals, else he would have illuminated that word "dim" with some epithet that should not chase away the dimness, yet should make it shine like a million of rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and topazes,--bright in themselves, but dim with tenderness and reverence because God himself was shining through them. I hate what I have said. All the time that I was in the cathedral the space around the high altar, which stands exactly under the dome, was occupied by priests or acolytes in white garments, chanting a religious service. After coming out, I took a view of the edifice from a corner of the street nearest to the dome, where it and the smaller domes can be seen at once. It is greatly more satisfactory than St. Peter's in any view I ever had of it,--striking in its outline, with a mystery, yet not a bewilderment, in its masses and curves and angles, and wrought out with a richness of detail that gives the eyes new arches, new galleries, new niches, new pinnacles, new beauties, great and small, to play with when wearied with the vast whole. The hue, black and white marbles, like the Baptistery, turned also yellow and brown, is greatly preferable to the buff travertine of St. Peter's. From the Duomo it is but a moderate street's length to the Piazza del Gran Duca, the principal square of Florence. It is a very interesting place, and has on one side the old Governmental Palace,--the Palazzo Vecchio,--where many scenes of historic interest have been enacted; for example, conspirators have been hanged from its windows, or precipitated from them upon the pavement of the square below. It is a pity that we cannot take as much interest in the history of these Italian Republics as in that of England, for the former is much the more picturesque and fuller of curious incident. The sobriety of the Anglo-Saxon race--in connection, too, with their moral sense--keeps them from doing a great many things that would enliven the page of history; and their events seem to come in great masses, shoved along by the agency of many persons, rather than to result from individual will and character. A hundred plots for a tragedy might be found in Florentine history for one in English. At one corner of the Palazzo Vecchio is a bronze equestrian statue of Cosmo de' Medici, the first Grand Duke, very stately and majestic; there are other marble statues--one of David, by Michael Angelo--at each side of the palace door; and entering the court I found a rich antique arcade within, surrounded by marble pillars, most elaborately carved, supporting arches that were covered with faded frescos. I went no farther, but stepped across a little space of the square to the Loggia di Lanzi, which is broad and noble, of three vast arches, at the end of which, I take it, is a part of the Palazzo Uffizi fronting on the piazza. I should call it a portico if it stood before the palace door; but it seems to have been constructed merely for itself, and as a shelter for the people from sun and rain, and to contain some fine specimens of sculpture, as well antique as of more modern times. Benvenuto Cellini's Perseus stands here; but it did not strike me so much as the cast of it in the Crystal Palace. A good many people were under these great arches; some of whom were reclining, half or quite asleep, on the marble seats that are built against the back of the loggia. A group was reading an edict of the Grand Duke, which appeared to have been just posted on a board, at the farther end of it; and I was surprised at the interest which they ventured to manifest, and the freedom with which they seemed to discuss it. A soldier was on guard, and doubtless there were spies enough to carry every word that was said to the ear of absolute authority. Glancing myself at the edict, however, I found it referred only to the furtherance of a project, got up among the citizens themselves, for bringing water into the city; and on such topics, I suppose there is freedom of discussion. June 7th.--Saturday evening we walked with U---- and J----- into the city, and looked at the exterior of the Duomo with new admiration. Since my former view of it, I have noticed--which, strangely enough, did not strike me before--that the facade is but a great, bare, ugly space, roughly plastered over, with the brickwork peeping through it in spots, and a faint, almost invisible fresco of colors upon it. This front was once nearly finished with an incrustation of black and white marble, like the rest of the edifice; but one of the city magistrates, Benedetto Uguccione, demolished it, three hundred years ago, with the idea of building it again in better style. He failed to do so, and, ever since, the magnificence of the great church has been marred by this unsightly roughness of what should have been its richest part; nor is there, I suppose, any hope that it will ever be finished now. The campanile, or bell-tower, stands within a few paces of the cathedral, but entirely disconnected from it, rising to a height of nearly three hundred feet, a square tower of light marbles, now discolored by time. It is impossible to give an idea of the richness of effect produced by its elaborate finish; the whole surface of the four sides, from top to bottom, being decorated with all manner of statuesque and architectural sculpture. It is like a toy of ivory, which some ingenious and pious monk might have spent his lifetime in adorning with scriptural designs and figures of saints; and when it was finished, seeing it so beautiful, he prayed that it might be miraculously magnified from the size of one foot to that of three hundred. This idea somewhat satisfies me, as conveying an impression how gigantesque the campanile is in its mass and height, and how minute and varied in its detail. Surely these mediaeval works have an advantage over the classic. They combine the telescope and the microscope. The city was all alive in the summer evening, and the streets humming with voices. Before the doors of the cafes were tables, at which people were taking refreshment, and it went to my heart to see a bottle of English ale, some of which was poured foaming into a glass; at least, it had exactly the amber hue and the foam of English bitter ale; but perhaps it may have been merely a Florentine imitation. As we returned home over the Arno, crossing the Ponte di Santa Trinita, we were struck by the beautiful scene of the broad, calm river, with the palaces along its shores repeated in it, on either side, and the neighboring bridges, too, just as perfect in the tide beneath as in the air above,--a city of dream and shadow so close to the actual one. God has a meaning, no doubt, in putting this spiritual symbol continually beside us. Along the river, on both sides, as far as we could see, there was a row of brilliant lamps, which, in the far distance, looked like a cornice of golden light; and this also shone as brightly in the river's depths. The lilies of the evening, in the quarter where the sun had gone down, were very soft and beautiful, though not so gorgeous as thousands that I have seen in America. But I believe I must fairly confess that the Italian sky, in the daytime, is bluer and brighter than our own, and that the atmosphere has a quality of showing objects to better advantage. It is more than mere daylight; the magic of moonlight is somehow mixed up with it, although it is so transparent a medium of light. Last evening, Mr. Powers called to see us, and sat down to talk in a friendly and familiar way. I do not know a man of more facile intercourse, nor with whom one so easily gets rid of ceremony. His conversation, too, is interesting. He talked, to begin with, about Italian food, as poultry, mutton, beef, and their lack of savoriness as compared with our own; and mentioned an exquisite dish of vegetables which they prepare from squash or pumpkin blossoms; likewise another dish, which it will be well for us to remember when we get back to the Wayside, where we are overrun with acacias. It consists of the acacia-blossoms in a certain stage of their development fried in olive-oil. I shall get the receipt from Mrs. Powers, and mean to deserve well of my country by first trying it, and then making it known; only I doubt whether American lard, or even butter, will produce the dish quite so delicately as fresh Florence oil. Meanwhile, I like Powers all the better, because he does not put his life wholly into marble. We had much talk, nevertheless, on matters of sculpture, for he drank a cup of tea with us, and stayed a good while. He passed a condemnatory sentence on classic busts in general, saying that they were conventional, and not to be depended upon as trite representations of the persons. He particularly excepted none but the bust of Caracalla; and, indeed, everybody that has seen this bust must feel the justice of the exception, and so be the more inclined to accept his opinion about the rest. There are not more than half a dozen--that of Cato the Censor among the others--in regard to which I should like to ask his judgment individually. He seems to think the faculty of making a bust an extremely rare one. Canova put his own likeness into all the busts he made. Greenough could not make a good one; nor Crawford, nor Gibson. Mr. Harte, he observed,--an American sculptor, now a resident in Florence,--is the best man of the day for making busts. Of course, it is to be presumed that he excepts himself; but I would not do Powers the great injustice to imply that there is the slightest professional jealousy in his estimate of what others have done, or are now doing, in his own art. If he saw a better man than himself, he would recognize him at once, and tell the world of him; but he knows well enough that, in this line, there is no better, and probably none so good. It would not accord with the simplicity of his character to blink a fact that stands so broadly before him. We asked him what he thought, of Mr. Gibson's practice of coloring his statues, and he quietly and slyly said that he himself had made wax figures in his earlier days, but had left off making them now. In short, he objected to the practice wholly, and said that a letter of his on the subject had been published in the London "Athenaeum," and had given great offence to some of Mr. Gibson's friends. It appeared to me, however, that his arguments did not apply quite fairly to the case, for he seems to think Gibson aims at producing an illusion of life in the statue, whereas I think his object is merely to give warmth and softness to the snowy marble, and so bring it a little nearer to our hearts and sympathies. Even so far, nevertheless, I doubt whether the practice is defensible, and I was glad to see that Powers scorned, at all events, the argument drawn from the use of color by the antique sculptors, on which Gibson relies so much. It might almost be implied, from the contemptuous way in which Powers spoke of color, that he considers it an impertinence on the face of visible nature, and would rather the world had been made without it; for he said that everything in intellect or feeling can be expressed as perfectly, or more so, by the sculptor in colorless marble, as by the painter with all the resources of his palette. I asked him whether he could model the face of Beatrice Cenci from Guido's picture so as to retain the subtle expression, and he said he could, for that the expression depended entirely on the drawing, "the picture being a badly colored thing." I inquired whether he could model a blush, and he said "Yes"; and that he had once proposed to an artist to express a blush in marble, if he would express it in picture. On consideration, I believe one to be as impossible as the other; the life and reality of the blush being in its tremulousness, coming and going. It is lost in a settled red just as much as in a settled paleness, and neither the sculptor nor painter can do more than represent the circumstances of attitude and expression that accompany the blush. There was a great deal of truth in what Powers said about this matter of color, and in one of our interminable New England winters it ought to comfort us to think how little necessity there is for any hue but that of the snow. Mr. Powers, nevertheless, had brought us a bunch of beautiful roses, and seemed as capable of appreciating their delicate blush as we were. The best thing he said against the use of color in marble was to the effect that the whiteness removed the object represented into a sort of spiritual region, and so gave chaste permission to those nudities which would otherwise suggest immodesty. I have myself felt the truth of this in a certain sense of shame as I looked at Gibson's tinted Venus. He took his leave at about eight o'clock, being to make a call on the Bryants, who are at the Hotel de New York, and also on Mrs. Browning, at Casa Guidi. END OF VOL. I. PASSAGES FROM THE FRENCH AND ITALIAN NOTE-BOOKS OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE VOL. II. PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS IN FRANCE AND ITALY. FLORENCE (Continued). June 8th.--I went this morning to the Uffizi gallery. The entrance is from the great court of the palace, which communicates with Lung' Arno at one end, and with the Grand Ducal Piazza at the other. The gallery is in the upper story of the palace, and in the vestibule are some busts of the princes and cardinals of the Medici family,--none of them beautiful, one or two so ugly as to be ludicrous, especially one who is all but buried in his own wig. I at first travelled slowly through the whole extent of this long, long gallery, which occupies the entire length of the palace on both sides of the court, and is full of sculpture and pictures. The latter, being opposite to the light, are not seen to the best advantage; but it is the most perfect collection, in a chronological series, that I have seen, comprehending specimens of all the masters since painting began to be an art. Here are Giotto, and Cimabue, and Botticelli, and Fra Angelico, and Filippo Lippi, and a hundred others, who have haunted me in churches and galleries ever since I have been in Italy, and who ought to interest me a great deal more than they do. Occasionally to-day I was sensible of a certain degree of emotion in looking at an old picture; as, for example, by a large, dark, ugly picture of Christ hearing the cross and sinking beneath it, when, somehow or other, a sense of his agony, and the fearful wrong that mankind did (and does) its Redeemer, and the scorn of his enemies, and the sorrow of those who loved him, came knocking at any heart and got entrance there. Once more I deem it a pity that Protestantism should have entirely laid aside this mode of appealing to the religious sentiment. I chiefly paid attention to the sculpture, and was interested in a long series of busts of the emperors and the members of their families, and some of the great men of Rome. There is a bust of Pompey the Great, bearing not the slightest resemblance to that vulgar and unintellectual one in the gallery of the Capitol, altogether a different cast of countenance. I could not judge whether it resembled the face of the statue, having seen the latter so imperfectly in the duskiness of the hall of the Spada Palace. These, I presume, are the busts which Mr. Powers condemns, from internal evidence, as unreliable and conventional. He may be right,--and is far more likely, of course, to be right than I am,--yet there certainly seems to be character in these marble faces, and they differ as much among themselves as the same number of living faces might. The bust of Caracalla, however, which Powers excepted from his censure, certainly does give stronger assurance of its being an individual and faithful portrait than any other in the series. All the busts of Caracalla--of which I have seen many--give the same evidence of their truth; and I should like to know what it was in this abominable emperor that made him insist upon having his actual likeness perpetuated, with all the ugliness of its animal and moral character. I rather respect him for it, and still more the sculptor, whose hand, methinks, must have trembled as he wrought the bust. Generally these wicked old fellows, and their wicked wives and daughters, are not so hideous as we might expect. Messalina, for instance, has small and pretty features, though with rather a sensual development of the lower part of the face. The busts, it seemed to me, are usually superior as works of art to those in the Capitol, and either better preserved or more thoroughly restored. The bust of Nero might almost be called handsome here, though bearing his likeness unmistakably. I wish some competent person would undertake to analyze and develop his character, and how and by what necessity--with all his elegant tastes, his love of the beautiful, his artist nature--he grew to be such a monster. Nero has never yet had justice done him, nor have any of the wicked emperors; not that I suppose them to have been any less monstrous than history represents them; but there must surely have been something in their position and circumstances to render the terrible moral disease which seized upon them so generally almost inevitable. A wise and profound man, tender and reverent of the human soul, and capable of appreciating it in its height and depth, has a great field here for the exercise of his powers. It has struck me, in reading the history of the Italian republics, that many of the tyrants, who sprung up after the destruction of their liberties, resembled the worst of the Roman emperors. The subject of Nero and his brethren has often perplexed me with vain desires to come at the truth. There were many beautiful specimens of antique, ideal sculpture all along the gallery,--Apollos, Bacchuses, Venuses, Mercurys, Fauns,--with the general character of all of which I was familiar enough to recognize them at a glance. The mystery and wonder of the gallery, however, the Venus de' Medici, I could nowhere see, and indeed was almost afraid to see it; for I somewhat apprehended the extinction of another of those lights that shine along a man's pathway, and go out in a snuff the instant he comes within eyeshot of the fulfilment of his hopes. My European experience has extinguished many such. I was pretty well contented, therefore, not to find the famous statue in the whole of my long journey from end to end of the gallery, which terminates on the opposite side of the court from that where it commences. The ceiling, by the by, through the entire length, is covered with frescos, and the floor paved with a composition of stone smooth and polished like marble. The final piece of sculpture, at the end of the gallery, is a copy of the Laocoon, considered very fine. I know not why, but it did not impress me with the sense of mighty and terrible repose--a repose growing out of the infinitude of trouble-- that I had felt in the original. Parallel with the gallery, on both sides of the palace-court, there runs a series of rooms devoted chiefly to pictures, although statues and bas-reliefs are likewise contained in some of them. I remember an unfinished bas-relief by Michael Angelo of a Holy Family, which I touched with my finger, because it seemed as if he might have been at work upon it only an hour ago. The pictures I did little more than glance at, till I had almost completed again the circuit of the gallery, through this series of parallel rooms, and then I came upon a collection of French and Dutch and Flemish masters, all of which interested me more than the Italian generally. There was a beautiful picture by Claude, almost as good as those in the British National Gallery, and very like in subject; the sun near the horizon, of course, and throwing its line of light over the ripple of water, with ships at the strand, and one or two palaces of stately architecture on the shore. Landscapes by Rembrandt; fat Graces and other plump nudities by Rubens; brass pans and earthen pots and herrings by Terriers and other Dutchmen; none by Gerard Douw, I think, but several by Mieris; all of which were like bread and beef and ale, after having been fed too long on made dishes. This is really a wonderful collection of pictures; and from first, to last--from Giotto to the men of yesterday--they are in admirable condition, and may be appreciated for all the merit that they ever possessed. I could not quite believe that I was not to find the Venus de' Medici; and still, as I passed from one room to another, my breath rose and fell a little, with the half-hope, half-fear, that she might stand before me. Really, I did not know that I cared so much about Venus, or any possible woman of marble. At last, when I had come from among the Dutchmen, I believe, and was looking at some works of Italian artists, chiefly Florentines, I caught a glimpse of her through the door of the next room. It is the best room of the series, octagonal in shape, and hung with red damask, and the light comes down from a row of windows, passing quite round, beneath an octagonal dome. The Venus stands somewhat aside from the centre of the room, and is surrounded by an iron railing, a pace or two from her pedestal in front, and less behind. I think she might safely be left to the reverence her womanhood would win, without any other protection. She is very beautiful, very satisfactory; and has a fresh and new charm about her unreached by any cast or copy. The line of the marble is just so much mellowed by time, as to do for her all that Gibson tries, or ought to try to do for his statues by color, softening her, warming her almost imperceptibly, making her an inmate of the heart, as well as a spiritual existence. I felt a kind of tenderness for her; an affection, not as if she were one woman, but all womanhood in one. Her modest attitude, which, before I saw her I had not liked, deeming that it might be an artificial shame, is partly what unmakes her as the heathen goddess, and softens her into woman. There is a slight degree of alarm, too, in her face; not that she really thinks anybody is looking at her, yet the idea has flitted through her mind, and startled her a little. Her face is so beautiful and intellectual, that it is not dazzled out of sight by her form. Methinks this was a triumph for the sculptor to achieve. I may as well stop here. It is of no use to throw heaps of words upon her; for they all fall away, and leave her standing in chaste and naked grace, as untouched as when I began. She has suffered terribly by the mishaps of her long existence in the marble. Each of her legs has been broken into two or three fragments, her arms have been severed, her body has been broken quite across at the waist, her head has been snapped off at the neck. Furthermore, there have been grievous wounds and losses of substance in various tender parts of her person. But on account of the skill with which the statue has been restored, and also because the idea is perfect and indestructible, all these injuries do not in the least impair the effect, even when you see where the dissevered fragments have been reunited. She is just as whole as when she left the hands of the sculptor. I am glad to have seen this Venus, and to have found her so tender and so chaste. On the wall of the room, and to be taken in at the same glance, is a painted Venus by Titian, reclining on a couch, naked and lustful. The room of the Venus seems to be the treasure-place of the whole Uffizi Palace, containing more pictures by famous masters than are to be found in all the rest of the gallery. There were several by Raphael, and the room was crowded with the easels of artists. I did not look half enough at anything, but merely took a preliminary taste, as a prophecy of enjoyment to come. As we were at dinner to-day, at half past three, there was a ring at the door, and a minute after our servant brought a card. It was Mr. Robert Browning's, and on it was written in pencil an invitation for us to go to see them this evening. He had left the card and gone away; but very soon the bell rang again, and he had come back, having forgotten to give his address. This time he came in; and he shook hands with all of us, children and grown people, and was very vivacious and agreeable. He looked younger and even handsomer than when I saw him in London, two years ago, and his gray hairs seemed fewer than those that had then strayed into his youthful head. He talked a wonderful quantity in a little time, and told us--among other things that we should never have dreamed of--that Italian people will not cheat you, if you construe them generously, and put them upon their honor. Mr. Browning was very kind and warm in his expressions of pleasure at seeing us; and, on our part, we were all very glad to meet him. He must be an exceedingly likable man. . . . . They are to leave Florence very soon, and are going to Normandy, I think he said, for the rest of the summer. The Venus de' Medici has a dimple in her chin. June 9th.--We went last evening, at eight o'clock, to see the Brownings; and, after some search and inquiry, we found the Casa Guidi, which is a palace in a street not very far from our own. It being dusk, I could not see the exterior, which, if I remember, Browning has celebrated in song; at all events, Mrs. Browning has called one of her poems "Casa Guidi Windows." The street is a narrow one; but on entering the palace, we found a spacious staircase and ample accommodations of vestibule and hall, the latter opening on a balcony, where we could hear the chanting of priests in a church close by. Browning told us that this was the first church where an oratorio had ever been performed. He came into the anteroom to greet us, as did his little boy, Robert, whom they call Pennini for fondness. The latter cognomen is a diminutive of Apennino, which was bestowed upon him at his first advent into the world because he was so very small, there being a statue in Florence of colossal size called Apennino. I never saw such a boy as this before; so slender, fragile, and spirit-like,--not as if he were actually in ill health, but as if he had little or nothing to do with human flesh and blood. His face is very pretty and most intelligent, and exceedingly like his mother's. He is nine years old, and seems at once less childlike and less manly than would befit that age. I should not quite like to be the father of such a boy, and should fear to stake so much interest and affection on him as he cannot fail to inspire. I wonder what is to become of him,--whether he will ever grow to be a man,--whether it is desirable that he should. His parents ought to turn their whole attention to making him robust and earthly, and to giving him a thicker scabbard to sheathe his spirit in. He was born in Florence, and prides himself on being a Florentine, and is indeed as un-English a production as if he were native of another planet. Mrs. Browning met us at the door of the drawing-room, and greeted us most kindly,--a pale, small person, scarcely embodied at all; at any rate, only substantial enough to put forth her slender fingers to be grasped, and to speak with a shrill, yet sweet, tenuity of voice. Really, I do not see how Mr. Browning can suppose that he has an earthly wife any more than an earthly child; both are of the elfin race, and will flit away from him some day when he least thinks of it. She is a good and kind fairy, however, and sweetly disposed towards the human race, although only remotely akin to it. It is wonderful to see how small she is, how pale her cheek, how bright and dark her eyes. There is not such another figure in the world; and her black ringlets cluster down into her neck, and make her face look the whiter by their sable profusion. I could not form any judgment about her age; it may range anywhere within the limits of human life or elfin life. When I met her in London at Lord Houghton's breakfast-table, she did not impress me so singularly; for the morning light is more prosaic than the dim illumination of their great tapestried drawing-room; and besides, sitting next to her, she did not have occasion to raise her voice in speaking, and I was not sensible what a slender voice she has. It is marvellous to me how so extraordinary, so acute, so sensitive a creature can impress us, as she does, with the certainty of her benevolence. It seems to me there were a million chances to one that she would have been a miracle of acidity and bitterness. We were not the only guests. Mr. and Mrs. E------, Americans, recently from the East, and on intimate terms with the Brownings, arrived after us; also Miss F. H------, an English literary lady, whom I have met several times in Liverpool; and lastly came the white head and palmer-like beard of Mr. ------ with his daughter. Mr. Browning was very efficient in keeping up conversation with everybody, and seemed to be in all parts of the room and in every group at the same moment; a most vivid and quick-thoughted person, logical and common-sensible, as, I presume, poets generally are in their daily talk. Mr. ------, as usual, was homely and plain of manner, with an old-fashioned dignity, nevertheless, and a remarkable deference and gentleness of tone in addressing Mrs. Browning. I doubt, however, whether he has any high appreciation either of her poetry or her husband's, and it is my impression that they care as little about his. We had some tea and some strawberries, and passed a pleasant evening. There was no very noteworthy conversation; the most interesting topic being that disagreeable and now wearisome one of spiritual communications, as regards which Mrs. Browning is a believer, and her husband an infidel. Mr. ------ appeared not to have made up his mind on the matter, but told a story of a successful communication between Cooper the novelist and his sister, who had been dead fifty years. Browning and his wife had both been present at a spiritual session held by Mr. Hume, and had seen and felt the unearthly hands, one of which had placed a laurel wreath on Mrs. Browning's head. Browning, however, avowed his belief that these hands were affixed to the feet of Mr. Hume, who lay extended in his chair, with his legs stretched far under the table. The marvellousness of the fact, as I have read of it, and heard it from other eye-witnesses, melted strangely away in his hearty gripe, and at the sharp touch of his logic; while his wife, ever and anon, put in a little gentle word of expostulation. I am rather surprised that Browning's conversation should be so clear, and so much to the purpose at the moment, since his poetry can seldom proceed far without running into the high grass of latent meanings and obscure allusions. Mrs. Browning's health does not permit late hours, so we began to take heave at about ten o'clock. I heard her ask Mr. ------ if he did not mean to revisit Europe, and heard him answer, not uncheerfully, taking hold of his white hair, "It is getting rather too late in the evening now." If any old age can be cheerful, I should think his might be; so good a man, so cool, so calm, so bright, too, we may say. His life has been like the days that end in pleasant sunsets. He has a great loss, however, or what ought to be a great loss,--soon to be encountered in the death of his wife, who, I think, can hardly live to reach America. He is not eminently an affectionate man. I take him to be one who cannot get closely home to his sorrow, nor feel it so sensibly as he gladly would; and, in consequence of that deficiency, the world lacks substance to him. It is partly the result, perhaps, of his not having sufficiently cultivated his emotional nature. His poetry shows it, and his personal intercourse, though kindly, does not stir one's blood in the least. Little Pennini, during the evening, sometimes helped the guests to cake and strawberries; joined in the conversation, when he had anything to say, or sat down upon a couch to enjoy his own meditations. He has long curling hair, and has not yet emerged from his frock and short hose. It is funny to think of putting him into trousers. His likeness to his mother is strange to behold. June 10th.--My wife and I went to the Pitti Palace to-day; and first entered a court where, yesterday, she had seen a carpet of flowers, arranged for some great ceremony. It must have been a most beautiful sight, the pavement of the court being entirely covered by them, in a regular pattern of brilliant lines, so as really to be a living mosaic. This morning, however, the court had nothing but its usual stones, and the show of yesterday seemed so much the more inestimable as having been so evanescent. Around the walls of the court there were still some pieces of splendid tapestry which had made part of yesterday's magnificence. We went up the staircase, of regally broad and easy ascent, and made application to be admitted to see the grand-ducal apartments. An attendant accordingly took the keys, and ushered us first into a great hall with a vaulted ceiling, and then through a series of noble rooms, with rich frescos above and mosaic floors, hung with damask, adorned with gilded chandeliers, and glowing, in short, with more gorgeousness than I could have imagined beforehand, or can now remember. In many of the rooms were those superb antique cabinets which I admire more than any other furniture ever invented; only these were of unexampled art and glory, inlaid with precious stones, and with beautiful Florentine mosaics, both of flowers and landscapes,--each cabinet worth a lifetime's toil to make it, and the cost a whole palace to pay for it. Many of the rooms were covered with arras, of landscapes, hunting-scenes, mythological subjects, or historical scenes, equal to pictures in truth of representation, and possessing an indescribable richness that makes them preferable as a mere adornment of princely halls and chambers. Some of the rooms, as I have said, were laid in mosaic of stone and marble, otherwise in lovely patterns of various woods; others were covered with carpets, delightful to tread upon, and glowing like the living floor of flowers which my wife saw yesterday. There were tables, too, of Florentine mosaic, the mere materials of which--lapis lazuli, malachite, pearl, and a hundred other precious things--were worth a fortune, and made a thousand times more valuable by the artistic skill of the manufacturer. I toss together brilliant words by the handful, and make a rude sort of patchwork, but can record no adequate idea of what I saw in this suite of rooms; and the taste, the subdued splendor, so that it did not shine too high, but was all tempered into an effect at once grand and soft,--this was quite as remarkable as the gorgeous material. I have seen a very dazzling effect produced in the principal cabin of an American clipper-ship quite opposed to this in taste. After making the circuit of the grand-ducal apartments, we went into a door in the left wing of the palace, and ascended a narrow flight of stairs,--several tortuous flights indeed,--to the picture-gallery. It fills a great many stately halls, which themselves are well worth a visit for the architecture and frescos; only these matters become commonplace after travelling through a mile or two of them. The collection of pictures--as well for their number as for the celebrity and excellence of many of them--is the most interesting that I have seen, and I do not yet feel in a condition, nor perhaps ever shall, to speak of a single one. It gladdened my very heart to find that they were not darkened out of sight, nor apparently at all injured by time, but were well kept and varnished, brilliantly framed, and, no doubt, restored by skilful touches if any of them needed it. The artists and amateurs may say what they like; for my part, I know no drearier feeling than that inspired by a ruined picture,--ruined, that is, by time, damp, or rough treatment,--and I would a thousand times rather an artist should do his best towards reviving it, than have it left in such a condition. I do not believe, however, that these pictures have been sacrilegiously interfered with; at all events, I saw in the masterpieces no touch but what seemed worthy of the master-hand. The most beautiful picture in the world, I am convinced, is Raphael's "Madonna della Seggiola." I was familiar with it in a hundred engravings and copies, and therefore it shone upon one as with a familiar beauty, though infinitely more divine than I had ever seen it before. An artist was copying it, and producing certainly something very like a fac-simile, yet leaving out, as a matter of course, that mysterious something that renders the picture a miracle. It is my present opinion that the pictorial art is capable of something more like magic, more wonderful and inscrutable in its methods, than poetry or any other mode of developing the beautiful. But how does this accord with what I have been saying only a minute ago? How then can the decayed picture of a great master ever be restored by the touches of an inferior hand? Doubtless it never can be restored; but let some devoted worshipper do his utmost, and the whole inherent spirit of the divine picture may pervade his restorations likewise. I saw the "Three Fates" of Michael Angelo, which were also being copied, as were many other of the best pictures. Miss Fanny Howorth, whom I met in the gallery, told me that to copy the "Madonna della Seggiola," application must be made five years beforehand, so many are the artists who aspire to copy it. Michael Angelo's Fates are three very grim and pitiless old women, who respectively spin, hold, and cut the thread of human destiny, all in a mood of sombre gloom, but with no more sympathy than if they had nothing to do with us. I remember seeing an etching of this when I was a child, and being struck, even then, with the terrible, stern, passionless severity, neither loving us nor hating us, that characterizes these ugly old women. If they were angry, or had the least spite against human kind, it would render them the more tolerable. They are a great work, containing and representing the very idea that makes a belief in fate such a cold torture to the human soul. God give me the sure belief in his Providence! In a year's time, with the advantage of access to this magnificent gallery, I think I might come to have some little knowledge of pictures. At present I still know nothing; but am glad to find myself capable, at least, of loving one picture better than another. I cannot always "keep the heights I gain," however, and after admiring and being moved by a picture one day, it is within my experience to look at it the next as little moved as if it were a tavern-sign. It is pretty much the same with statuary; the same, too, with those pictured windows of the Duomo, which I described so rapturously a few days ago. I looked at them again the next morning, and thought they would have been hardly worthy of my eulogium, even had all the separate windows of the cathedral combined their narrow lights into one grand, resplendent, many-colored arch at the eastern end. It is a pity they are so narrow. England has many a great chancel-window that, though dimmer in its hues, dusty, and perhaps made up of heterogeneous fragments, eclipses these by its spacious breadth. From the gallery, I went into the Boboli Gardens, which are contiguous to the palace; but found them too sunny for enjoyment. They seem to consist partly of a wilderness; but the portion into which I strayed was laid out with straight walks, lined with high box-hedges, along which there was only a narrow margin of shade. I saw an amphitheatre, with a wide sweep of marble seat around it, enclosing a grassy space, where, doubtless, the Medici may have witnessed splendid spectacles. June 11th.--I paid another visit to the Uffizi gallery this morning, and found that the Venus is one of the things the charm of which does not diminish on better acquaintance. The world has not grown weary of her in all these ages; and mortal man may look on her with new delight from infancy to old age, and keep the memory of her, I should imagine, as one of the treasures of spiritual existence hereafter. Surely, it makes me more ready to believe in the high destinies of the human race, to think that this beautiful form is but nature's plan for all womankind, and that the nearer the actual woman approaches it, the more natural she is. I do not, and cannot think of her as a senseless image, but as a being that lives to gladden the world, incapable of decay and death; as young and fair to-day as she was three thousand years ago, and still to be young and fair as long as a beautiful thought shall require physical embodiment. I wonder how any sculptor has had the impertinence to aim at any other presentation of female beauty. I mean no disrespect to Gibson or Powers, or a hundred other men who people the world with nudities, all of which are abortions as compared with her; but I think the world would be all the richer if their Venuses, their Greek Slaves, their Eves, were burnt into quicklime, leaving us only this statue as our image of the beautiful. I observed to-day that the eyes of the statue are slightly hollowed out, in a peculiar way, so as to give them a look of depth and intelligence. She is a miracle. The sculptor must have wrought religiously, and have felt that something far beyond his own skill was working through his hands. I mean to leave off speaking of the Venus hereafter, in utter despair of saying what I wish; especially as the contemplation of the statue will refine and elevate my taste, and make it continually more difficult to express my sense of its excellence, as the perception of it grows upon one. If at any time I become less sensible of it, it will be my deterioration, not any defect in the statue. I looked at many of the pictures, and found myself in a favorable mood for enjoying them. It seems to me that a work of art is entitled to credit for all that it makes us feel in our best moments; and we must judge of its merits by the impression it then makes, and not by the coldness and insensibility of our less genial moods. After leaving the Uffizi Palace, . . . . I went into the Museum of Natural History, near the Pitti Palace. It is a very good collection of almost everything that Nature has made,--or exquisite copies of what she has made,--stones, shells, vegetables, insects, fishes, animals, man; the greatest wonders of the museum being some models in wax of all parts of the human frame. It is good to have the wholeness and summed-up beauty of woman in the memory, when looking at the details of her system as here displayed; for these last, to the natural eye, are by no means beautiful. But they are what belong only to our mortality. The beauty that makes them invisible is our immortal type, which we shall take away with us. Under glass cases, there were some singular and horribly truthful representations, in small wax figures, of a time of pestilence; the hasty burial, or tossing into one common sepulchre, of discolored corpses,--a very ugly piece of work, indeed. I think Murray says that these things were made for the Grand Duke Cosmo; and if so, they do him no credit, indicating something dark and morbid in his character. June 13th.--We called at the Powers's yesterday morning to leave R----- there for an hour or two to play with the children; and it being not yet quite time for the Pitti Palace, we stopped into the studio. Soon Mr. Powers made his appearance, in his dressing-gown and slippers and sculptor's cap, smoking a cigar. . . . . He was very cordial and pleasant, as I have always found him, and began immediately to be communicative about his own works, or any other subject that came up. There were two casts of the Venus de' Medici in the rooms, which he said were valuable in a commercial point of view, being genuine casts from the mould taken from the statue. He then gave us a quite unexpected but most interesting lecture on the Venus, demonstrating it, as he proceeded, by reference to the points which he criticised. The figure, he seemed to allow, was admirable, though I think he hardly classes it so high as his own Greek Slave or Eva; but the face, he began with saying, was that of an idiot. Then, leaning on the pedestal of the cast, he continued, "It is rather a bold thing to say, isn't it, that the sculptor of the Venus de' Medici did not know what he was about?" Truly, it appeared to me so; but Powers went on remorselessly, and showed, in the first place, that the eye was not like any eye that Nature ever made; and, indeed, being examined closely, and abstracted from the rest of the face, it has a very queer look,--less like a human eye than a half-worn buttonhole! Then he attacked the ear, which, he affirmed and demonstrated, was placed a good deal too low on the head, thereby giving an artificial and monstrous height to the portion of the head above it. The forehead met with no better treatment in his hands, and as to the mouth, it was altogether wrong, as well in its general make as in such niceties as the junction of the skin of the lips to the common skin around them. In a word, the poor face was battered all to pieces and utterly demolished; nor was it possible to doubt or question that it fell by its own demerits. All that could be urged in its defence--and even that I did not urge--being that this very face had affected me, only the day before, with a sense of higher beauty and intelligence than I had ever then received from sculpture, and that its expression seemed to accord with that of the whole figure, as if it were the sweetest note of the same music. There must be something in this; the sculptor disregarded technicalities, and the imitation of actual nature, the better to produce the effect which he really does produce, in somewhat the same way as a painter works his magical illusions by touches that have no relation to the truth if looked at from the wrong point of view. But Powers considers it certain that the antique sculptor had bestowed all his care on the study of the human figure, and really did not know how to make a face. I myself used to think that the face was a much less important thing with the Greeks, among whom the entire beauty of the form was familiarly seen, than with ourselves, who allow no other nudity. After annihilating the poor visage, Powers showed us his two busts of Proserpine and Psyche, and continued his lecture by showing the truth to nature with which these are modelled. I freely acknowledge the fact; there is no sort of comparison to be made between the beauty, intelligence, feeling, and accuracy of representation in these two faces and in that of the Venus de' Medici. A light--the light of a soul proper to each individual character--seems to shine from the interior of the marble, and beam forth from the features, chiefly from the eyes. Still insisting upon the eye, and hitting the poor Venus another and another and still another blow on that unhappy feature, Mr. Powers turned up and turned inward and turned outward his own Titanic orb,--the biggest, by far, that ever I saw in mortal head,--and made us see and confess that there was nothing right in the Venus and everything right in Psyche and Proserpine. To say the truth, their marble eyes have life, and, placing yourself in the proper position towards them, you can meet their glances, and feel them mingle with your own. Powers is a great man, and also a tender and delicate one, massive and rude of surface as he looks; and it is rather absurd to feel how he impressed his auditor, for the time being, with his own evident idea that nobody else is worthy to touch marble. Mr. B------ told me that Powers has had many difficulties on professional grounds, as I understood him, and with his brother artists. No wonder! He has said enough in my hearing to put him at swords' points with sculptors of every epoch and every degree between the two inclusive extremes of Phidias and Clark Mills. He has a bust of the reigning Grand Duchess of Tuscany, who sat to him for it. The bust is that of a noble-looking lady; and Powers remarked that royal personages have a certain look that distinguishes them from other people, and is seen in individuals of no lower rank. They all have it; the Queen of England and Prince Albert have it; and so likewise has every other Royalty, although the possession of this kingly look implies nothing whatever as respects kingly and commanding qualities. He said that none of our public men, whatever authority they may have held, or for whatever length of time, possess this look, but he added afterwards that Washington had it. Commanders of armies sometimes have it, but not in the degree that royal personages do. It is, as well as I could make out Powers's idea, a certain coldness of demeanor, and especially of eye, that surrounds them with an atmosphere through which the electricity of human brotherhood cannot pass. From their youth upward they are taught to feel themselves apart from the rest of mankind, and this manner becomes a second nature to them in consequence, and as a safeguard to their conventional dignity. They put themselves under glass, as it were (the illustration is my own), so that, though you see them, and see them looking no more noble and dignified than other mortals, nor so much so as many, still they keep themselves within a sort of sanctity, and repel you by an invisible barrier. Even if they invite you with a show of warmth and hospitality, you cannot get through. I, too, recognize this look in the portraits of Washington; in him, a mild, benevolent coldness and apartness, but indicating that formality which seems to have been deeper in him than in any other mortal, and which built up an actual fortification between himself and human sympathy. I wish, for once, Washington could come out of his envelopment and show us what his real dimensions were. Among other models of statues heretofore made, Powers showed us one of Melancholy, or rather of Contemplation, from Milton's "Penseroso"; a female figure with uplifted face and rapt look, "communing with the skies." It is very fine, and goes deeply into Milton's thought; but, as far as the outward form and action are concerned, I remember seeing a rude engraving in my childhood that probably suggested the idea. It was prefixed to a cheap American edition of Milton's poems, and was probably as familiar to Powers as to myself. It is very remarkable how difficult it seems to be to strike out a new attitude in sculpture; a new group, or a new single figure. One piece of sculpture Powers exhibited, however, which was very exquisite, and such as I never saw before. Opening a desk, he took out something carefully enclosed between two layers of cotton-wool, on removing which there appeared a little baby's hand most delicately represented in the whitest marble; all the dimples where the knuckles were to be, all the creases in the plump flesh, every infantine wrinkle of the soft skin being lovingly recorded. "The critics condemn minute representation," said Powers; "but you may look at this through a microscope and see if it injures the general effect." Nature herself never made a prettier or truer little hand. It was the hand of his daughter,--"Luly's hand," Powers called it,--the same that gave my own such a frank and friendly grasp when I first met "Luly." The sculptor made it only for himself and his wife, but so many people, he said, had insisted on having a copy, that there are now forty scattered about the world. At sixty years, Luly ought to have her hand sculptured again, and give it to her grandchildren with the baby's hand of five months old. The baby-hand that had done nothing, and felt only its mother's kiss; the old lady's hand that had exchanged the love-pressure, worn the marriage-ring, closed dead eyes,--done a lifetime's work, in short. The sentiment is rather obvious, but true nevertheless. Before we went away, Powers took us into a room apart--apparently the secretest room he had--and showed us some tools and machinery, all of his own contrivance and invention. "You see I am a bit of a Yankee," he observed. This machinery is chiefly to facilitate the process of modelling his works, for--except in portrait-busts--he makes no clay model as other sculptors do, but models directly in the plaster; so that instead of being crumbled, like clay, the original model remains a permanent possession. He has also invented a certain open file, which is of great use in finishing the surface of the marble; and likewise a machine for making these files and for punching holes through iron, and he demonstrated its efficiency by punching a hole through an iron bar, with a force equivalent to ten thousand pounds, by the mere application of a part of his own weight. These inventions, he says, are his amusement, and the bent of his nature towards sculpture must indeed have been strong, to counteract, in an American, such a capacity for the contrivance of steam-engines. . . . . I had no idea of filling so many pages of this journal with the sayings and characteristics of Mr. Powers, but the man and his talk are fresh, original, and full of bone and muscle, and I enjoy him much. We now proceeded to the Pitti Palace, and spent several hours pleasantly in its saloons of pictures. I never enjoyed pictures anywhere else as I do in Florence. There is an admirable Judith in this gallery by Allori; a face of great beauty and depth, and her hand clutches the head of Holofernes by the hair in a way that startles the spectator. There are two peasant Madonnas by Murillo; simple women, yet with a thoughtful sense of some high mystery connected with the baby in their arms. Raphael grows upon me; several other famous painters--Guido, for instance--are fading out of my mind. Salvator Rosa has two really wonderful landscapes, looking from the shore seaward; and Rubens too, likewise on a large scale, of mountain and plain. It is very idle and foolish to talk of pictures; yet, after poring over them and into them, it seems a pity to let all the thought excited by them pass into nothingness. The copyists of pictures are very numerous, both in the Pitti and Uffizi galleries; and, unlike sculptors, they appear to be on the best of terms with one another, chatting sociably, exchanging friendly criticism, and giving their opinions as to the best mode of attaining the desired effects. Perhaps, as mere copyists, they escape the jealousy that might spring up between rival painters attempting to develop original ideas. Miss Howorth says that the business of copying pictures, especially those of Raphael, is a regular profession, and she thinks it exceedingly obstructive to the progress or existence of a modern school of painting, there being a regular demand and sure sale for all copies of the old masters, at prices proportioned to their merit; whereas the effort to be original insures nothing, except long neglect, at the beginning of a career, and probably ultimate failure, and the necessity of becoming a copyist at last. Some artists employ themselves from youth to age in nothing else but the copying of one single and selfsame picture by Raphael, and grow at last to be perfectly mechanical, making, I suppose, the same identical stroke of the brush in fifty successive pictures. The weather is very hot now,--hotter in the sunshine, I think, than a midsummer day usually is in America, but with rather a greater possibility of being comfortable in the shade. The nights, too, are warm, and the bats fly forth at dusk, and the fireflies quite light up the green depths of our little garden. The atmosphere, or something else, causes a sort of alacrity in my mind and an affluence of ideas, such as they are; but it does not thereby make me the happier. I feel an impulse to be at work, but am kept idle by the sense of being unsettled with removals to be gone through, over and over again, before I can shut myself into a quiet room of my own, and turn the key. I need monotony too, an eventless exterior life, before I can live in the world within. June 15th.--Yesterday we went to the Uffizi gallery, and, of course, I took the opportunity to look again at the Venus de' Medici after Powers's attack upon her face. Some of the defects he attributed to her I could not see in the statue; for instance, the ear appeared to be in accordance with his own rule, the lowest part of it being about in a straight line with the upper lip. The eyes must be given up, as not, when closely viewed, having the shape, the curve outwards, the formation of the lids, that eyes ought to have; but still, at a proper distance, they seemed to have intelligence in them beneath the shadow cast by the brow. I cannot help thinking that the sculptor intentionally made every feature what it is, and calculated them all with a view to the desired effect. Whatever rules may be transgressed, it is a noble and beautiful face,--more so, perhaps, than if all rules had been obeyed. I wish Powers would do his best to fit the Venus's figure (which he does not deny to be admirable) with a face which he would deem equally admirable and in accordance with the sentiment of the form. We looked pretty thoroughly through the gallery, and I saw many pictures that impressed me; but among such a multitude, with only one poor mind to take note of them, the stamp of each new impression helps to obliterate a former one. I am sensible, however, that a process is going on, and has been ever since I came to Italy, that puts me in a state to see pictures with less toil, and more pleasure, and makes me more fastidious, yet more sensible of beauty where I saw none before. It is the sign, I presume, of a taste still very defective, that I take singular pleasure in the elaborate imitations of Van Mieris, Gerard Douw, and other old Dutch wizards, who painted such brass pots that you can see your face in them, and such earthen pots that they will surely hold water; and who spent weeks and months in turning a foot or two of canvas into a perfect microscopic illusion of some homely scene. For my part, I wish Raphael had painted the "Transfiguration" in this style, at the same time preserving his breadth and grandeur of design; nor do I believe that there is any real impediment to the combination of the two styles, except that no possible space of human life could suffice to cover a quarter part of the canvas of the "Transfiguration" with such touches as Gerard Douw's. But one feels the vast scope of this wonderful art, when we think of two excellences so far apart as that of this last painter and Raphael. I pause a good while, too, before the Dutch paintings of fruit and flowers, where tulips and roses acquire an immortal bloom, and grapes have kept the freshest juice in them for two or three hundred years. Often, in these pictures, there is a bird's-nest, every straw perfectly represented, and the stray feather, or the down that the mother-bird plucked from her bosom, with the three or four small speckled eggs, that seem as if they might be yet warm. These pretty miracles have their use in assuring us that painters really can do something that takes hold of us in our most matter-of-fact moods; whereas, the merits of the grander style of art may be beyond our ordinary appreciation, and leave us in doubt whether we have not befooled ourselves with a false admiration. Until we learn to appreciate the cherubs and angels that Raphael scatters through the blessed air, in a picture of the "Nativity," it is not amiss to look at, a Dutch fly settling on a peach, or a bumblebee burying himself in a flower. It is another token of imperfect taste, no doubt, that queer pictures and absurd pictures remain in my memory, when better ones pass away by the score. There is a picture of Venus, combing her son Cupid's head with a small-tooth comb, and looking with maternal care among his curls; this I shall not forget. Likewise, a picture of a broad, rubicund Judith by Bardone,--a widow of fifty, of an easy, lymphatic, cheerful temperament, who has just killed Holofernes, and is as self-complacent as if she had been carving a goose. What could possibly have stirred up this pudding of a woman (unless it were a pudding-stick) to do such a deed! I looked with much pleasure at an ugly, old, fat, jolly Bacchus, astride on a barrel, by Rubens; the most natural and lifelike representation of a tipsy rotundity of flesh that it is possible to imagine. And sometimes, amid these sensual images, I caught the divine pensiveness of a Madonna's face, by Raphael, or the glory and majesty of the babe Jesus in her arm, with his Father shining through him. This is a sort of revelation, whenever it comes. This morning, immediately after breakfast, I walked into the city, meaning to make myself better acquainted with its appearance, and to go into its various churches; but it soon grew so hot, that I turned homeward again. The interior of the Duomo was deliciously cool, to be sure,--cool and dim, after the white-hot sunshine; but an old woman began to persecute me, so that I came away. A male beggar drove me out of another church; and I took refuge in the street, where the beggar and I would have been two cinders together, if we had stood long enough on the sunny sidewalk. After my five summers' experience of England, I may have forgotten what hot weather is; but it does appear to me that an American summer is not so fervent as this. Besides the direct rays, the white pavement throws a furnace-heat up into one's face; the shady margin of the street is barely tolerable; but it is like going through the ordeal of fire to cross the broad bright glare of an open piazza. The narrow streets prove themselves a blessing at this season, except when the sun looks directly into them; the broad eaves of the houses, too, make a selvage of shade, almost always. I do not know what becomes of the street-merchants at the noontide of these hot days. They form a numerous class in Florence, displaying their wares--linen or cotton cloth, threads, combs, and all manner of haberdashery--on movable counters that are borne about on wheels. In the shady morning, you see a whole side of a street in a piazza occupied by them, all offering their merchandise at full cry. They dodge as they can from shade to shade; but at last the sunshine floods the whole space, and they seem to have melted away, leaving not a rag of themselves or what they dealt in. Cherries are very abundant now, and have been so ever since we came here, in the markets and all about the streets. They are of various kinds, some exceedingly large, insomuch that it is almost necessary to disregard the old proverb about making two bites of a cherry. Fresh figs are already spoken of, though I have seen none; but I saw some peaches this morning, looking as if they might be ripe. June 16th.--Mr. and Mrs. Powers called to see us last evening. Mr. Powers, as usual, was full of talk, and gave utterance to a good many instructive and entertaining ideas. As one instance of the little influence the religion of the Italians has upon their morals, he told a story of one of his servants, who desired leave to set up a small shrine of the Virgin in their room--a cheap print, or bas-relief, or image, such as are sold everywhere at the shops --and to burn a lamp before it; she engaging, of course, to supply the oil at her own expense. By and by, her oil-flask appeared to possess a miraculous property of replenishing itself, and Mr. Powers took measures to ascertain where the oil came from. It turned out that the servant had all the time been stealing the oil from them, and keeping up her daily sacrifice and worship to the Virgin by this constant theft. His talk soon turned upon sculpture, and he spoke once more of the difficulty imposed upon an artist by the necessity of clothing portrait statues in the modern costume. I find that he does not approve either of nudity or of the Roman toga for a modern statue; neither does he think it right to shirk the difficulty--as Chantrey did in the case of Washington --by enveloping him in a cloak; but acknowledges the propriety of taking the actual costume of the age and doing his best with it. He himself did so with his own Washington, and also with a statue that he made of Daniel Webster. I suggested that though this costume might not appear ridiculous to us now, yet, two or three centuries hence, it would create, to the people of that day, an impossibility of seeing the real man through the absurdity of his envelopment, after it shall have entirely grown out of fashion and remembrance; and Webster would seem as absurd to them then as he would to us now in the masquerade of some bygone day. It might be well, therefore, to adopt some conventional costume, never actual, but always graceful and noble. Besides, Webster, for example, had other costumes than that which he wore in public, and perhaps it was in those that he lived his most real life; his dressing-gown, his drapery of the night, the dress that he wore on his fishing-excursions; in these other costumes he spent three fourths of his time, and most probably was thus arrayed when he conceived the great thoughts that afterwards, in some formal and outside mood, he gave forth to the public. I scarcely think I was right, but am not sure of the contrary. At any rate, I know that I should have felt much more sure that I knew the real Webster, if I had seen him in any of the above-mentioned dresses, than either in his swallow-tailed coat or frock. Talking of a taste for painting and sculpture, Powers observed that it was something very different and quite apart from the moral sense, and that it was often, perhaps generally, possessed by unprincipled men of ability and cultivation. I have had this perception myself. A genuine love of painting and sculpture, and perhaps of music, seems often to have distinguished men capable of every social crime, and to have formed a fine and hard enamel over their characters. Perhaps it is because such tastes are artificial, the product of cultivation, and, when highly developed, imply a great remove from natural simplicity. This morning I went with U---- to the Uffizi gallery, and again looked with more or less attention at almost every picture and statue. I saw a little picture of the golden age, by Zucchero, in which the charms of youths and virgins are depicted with a freedom that this iron age can hardly bear to look at. The cabinet of gems happened to be open for the admission of a privileged party, and we likewise went in and saw a brilliant collection of goldsmiths' work, among which, no doubt, were specimens from such hands as Benvenuto Cellini. Little busts with diamond eyes; boxes of gems; cups carved out of precious material; crystal vases, beautifully chased and engraved, and sparkling with jewels; great pearls, in the midst of rubies; opals, rich with all manner of lovely lights. I remember Benvenuto Cellini, in his memoirs, speaks of manufacturing such playthings as these. I observed another characteristic of the summer streets of Florence to-day; tables, movable to and fro, on wheels, and set out with cool iced drinks and cordials. June 17th.--My wife and I went, this morning, to the Academy of Fine Arts, and, on our way thither, went into the Duomo, where we found a deliciously cool twilight, through which shone the mild gleam of the painted windows. I cannot but think it a pity that St. Peter's is not lighted by such windows as these, although I by no means saw the glory in them now that I have spoken of in a record of my former visit. We found out the monument of Giotto, a tablet, and portrait in bas-relief, on the wall, near the entrance of the cathedral, on the right hand; also a representation, in fresco, of a knight on horseback, the memorial of one John Rawkwood, close by the door, to the left. The priests were chanting a service of some kind or other in the choir, terribly inharmonious, and out of tune. . . . . On reaching the Academy, the soldier or policeman at the entrance directed us into the large hall, the walls of which were covered on both sides with pictures, arranged as nearly as possible in a progressive series, with reference to the date of the painters; so that here the origin and procession of the art may be traced through the course of, at least, two hundred years. Giotto, Cimabue, and others of unfamiliar names to me, are among the earliest; and, except as curiosities, I should never desire to look once at them, nor think of looking twice. They seem to have been executed with great care and conscientiousness, and the heads are often wrought out with minuteness and fidelity, and have so much expression that they tell their own story clearly enough; but it seems not to have been the painter's aim to effect a lifelike illusion, the background and accessories being conventional. The trees are no more like real trees than the feather of a pen, and there is no perspective, the figure of the picture being shadowed forth on a surface of burnished gold. The effect, when these pictures, some of them very large, were new and freshly gilded, must have been exceedingly brilliant, and much resembling, on an immensely larger scale, the rich illuminations in an old monkish missal. In fact, we have not now, in pictorial ornament, anything at all comparable to what their splendor must have been. I was most struck with a picture, by Fabriana Gentile, of the Adoration of the Magi, where the faces and figures have a great deal of life and action, and even grace, and where the jewelled crowns, the rich embroidered robes, and cloth of gold, and all the magnificence of the three kings, are represented with the vividness of the real thing: a gold sword-hilt, for instance, or a pair of gold spurs, being actually embossed on the picture. The effect is very powerful, and though produced in what modern painters would pronounce an unjustifiable way, there is yet pictorial art enough to reconcile it to the spectator's mind. Certainly, the people of the Middle Ages knew better than ourselves what is magnificence, and how to produce it; and what a glorious work must that have been, both in its mere sheen of burnished gold, and in its illuminating art, which shines thus through the gloom of perhaps four centuries. Fra Angelico is a man much admired by those who have a taste for Pre-Raphaelite painters; and, though I take little or no pleasure in his works, I can see that there is great delicacy of execution in his heads, and that generally he produces such a Christ, and such a Virgin, and such saints, as he could not have foreseen, except in a pure and holy imagination, nor have wrought out without saying a prayer between every two touches of his brush. I might come to like him, in time, if I thought it worth while; but it is enough to have an outside perception of his kind and degree of merit, and so to let him pass into the garret of oblivion, where many things as good, or better, are piled away, that our own age may not stumble over them. Perugino is the first painter whose works seem really worth preserving for the genuine merit that is in them, apart from any quaintness and curiosity of an ancient and new-born art. Probably his religion was more genuine than Raphael's, and therefore the Virgin often revealed herself to him in a loftier and sweeter face of divine womanhood than all the genius of Raphael could produce. There is a Crucifixion by him in this gallery, which made me partly feel as if I were a far-off spectator,--no, I did not mean a Crucifixion, but a picture of Christ dead, lying, with a calm, sweet face, on his mother's knees ["a Pieta"]. The most inadequate and utterly absurd picture here, or in any other gallery, is a head of the Eternal Father, by Carlo Dolce; it looks like a feeble saint, on the eve of martyrdom, and very doubtful how he shall be able to bear it; very finely and prettily painted, nevertheless. After getting through the principal gallery we went into a smaller room, in which are contained a great many small specimens of the old Tuscan artists, among whom Fra Angelico makes the principal figure. These pictures are all on wood, and seem to have been taken from the shrines and altars of ancient churches; they are predellas and triptychs, or pictures on three folding tablets, shaped quaintly, in Gothic peaks or arches, and still gleaming with backgrounds of antique gold. The wood is much worm-eaten, and the colors have often faded or changed from what the old artists meant then to be; a bright angel darkening into what looks quite as much like the Devil. In one of Fra Angelico's pictures,--a representation of the Last Judgment,--he has tried his saintly hand at making devils indeed, and showing them busily at work, tormenting the poor, damned souls in fifty ghastly ways. Above sits Jesus, with the throng of blessed saints around him, and a flow of tender and powerful love in his own face, that ought to suffice to redeem all the damned, and convert the very fiends, and quench the fires of hell. At any rate, Fra Angelico had a higher conception of his Saviour than Michael Angelo. June 19th.--This forenoon we have been to the Church of St. Lorenzo, which stands on the site of an ancient basilica, and was itself built more than four centuries ago. The facade is still an ugly height of rough brickwork, as is the case with the Duomo, and, I think, some other churches in Florence; the design of giving them an elaborate and beautiful finish having been delayed from cycle to cycle, till at length the day for spending mines of wealth on churches is gone by. The interior had a nave with a flat roof, divided from the side aisles by Corinthian pillars, and, at the farther end, a raised space around the high altar. The pavement is a mosaic of squares of black and white marble, the squares meeting one another cornerwise; the pillars, pilasters, and other architectural material is dark brown or grayish stone; and the general effect is very sombre, especially as the church is somewhat dimly lighted, and as the shrines along the aisles, and the statues, and the monuments of whatever kind, look dingy with time and neglect. The nave is thickly set with wooden seats, brown and worn. What pictures there are, in the shrines and chapels, are dark and faded. On the whole, the edifice has a shabby aspect. On each side of the high altar, elevated on four pillars of beautiful marble, is what looks like a great sarcophagus of bronze. They are, in fact, pulpits, and are ornamented with mediaeval bas-reliefs, representing scenes in the life of our Saviour. Murray says that the resting-place of the first Cosmo de' Medici, the old banker, who so managed his wealth as to get the posthumous title of "father of his country," and to make his posterity its reigning princes,--is in front of the high altar, marked by red and green porphyry and marble, inlaid into the pavement. We looked, but could not see it there. There were worshippers at some of the shrines, and persons sitting here and there along the nave, and in the aisles, rapt in devotional thought, doubtless, and sheltering themselves here from the white sunshine of the piazzas. In the vicinity of the choir and the high altar, workmen were busy repairing the church, or perhaps only making arrangements for celebrating the great festival of St. John. On the left hand of the choir is what is called the old sacristy, with the peculiarities or notabilities of which I am not acquainted. On the right hand is the new sacristy, otherwise called the Capella dei Depositi, or Chapel of the Buried, built by Michael Angelo, to contain two monuments of the Medici family. The interior is of somewhat severe and classic architecture, the walls and pilasters being of dark stone, and surmounted by a dome, beneath which is a row of windows, quite round the building, throwing their light down far beneath, upon niches of white marble. These niches are ranged entirely around the chapel, and might have sufficed to contain more than all the Medici monuments that the world would ever care to have. Only two of these niches are filled, however. In one of them sits Giuliano de' Medici, sculptured by Michael Angelo,--a figure of dignity, which would perhaps be very striking in any other presence than that of the statue which occupies the corresponding niche. At the feet of Giuliano recline two allegorical statues, Day and Night, whose meaning there I do not know, and perhaps Michael Angelo knew as little. As the great sculptor's statues are apt to do, they fling their limbs abroad with adventurous freedom. Below the corresponding niche, on the opposite side of the chapel, recline two similar statues, representing Morning and Evening, sufficiently like Day and Night to be their brother and sister; all, in truth, having sprung from the same father. . . . . But the statue that sits above these two latter allegories, Morning and Evening, is like no other that ever came from a sculptor's hand. It is the one work worthy of Michael Angelo's reputation, and grand enough to vindicate for him all the genius that the world gave him credit for. And yet it seems a simple thing enough to think of or to execute; merely a sitting figure, the face partly overshadowed by a helmet, one hand supporting the chin, the other resting on the thigh. But after looking at it a little while the spectator ceases to think of it as a marble statue; it comes to life, and you see that the princely figure is brooding over some great design, which, when he has arranged in his own mind, the world will be fain to execute for him. No such grandeur and majesty has elsewhere been put into human shape. It is all a miracle; the deep repose, and the deep life within it. It is as much a miracle to have achieved this as to make a statue that would rise up and walk. The face, when one gazes earnestly into it, beneath the shadow of its helmet, is seen to be calmly sombre; a mood which, I think, is generally that of the rulers of mankind, except in moments of vivid action. This statue is one of the things which I look at with highest enjoyment, but also with grief and impatience, because I feel that I do not come at all which it involves, and that by and by I must go away and leave it forever. How wonderful! To take a block of marble, and convert it wholly into thought, and to do it through all the obstructions and impediments of drapery; for there is nothing nude in this statue but the face and hands. The vest is the costume of Michael Angelo's century. This is what I always thought a sculptor of true genius should be able to do,--to show the man of whatever epoch, nobly and heroically, through the costume which he might actually have worn. The statue sits within a square niche of white marble, and completely fills it. It seems to me a pity that it should be thus confined. At the Crystal Palace, if I remember, the effect is improved by a free surrounding space. Its naturalness is as if it came out of the marble of its own accord, with all its grandeur hanging heavily about it, and sat down there beneath its weight. I cannot describe it. It is like trying to stop the ghost of Hamlet's father, by crossing spears before it. Communicating with the sacristy is the Medicean Chapel, which was built more than two centuries ago, for the reception of the Holy Sepulchre; arrangements having been made about that time to steal this most sacred relic from the Turks. The design failing, the chapel was converted by Cosmo II. into a place of sepulture for the princes of his family. It is a very grand and solemn edifice, octagonal in shape, with a lofty dome, within which is a series of brilliant frescos, painted not more than thirty years ago. These pictures are the only portion of the adornment of the chapel which interferes with the sombre beauty of the general effect; for though the walls are incrusted, from pavement to dome, with marbles of inestimable cost, and it is a Florentine mosaic on a grander scale than was ever executed elsewhere, the result is not gaudy, as in many of the Roman chapels, but a dark and melancholy richness. The architecture strikes me as extremely fine; each alternate side of the octagon being an arch, rising as high as the cornice of the lofty dome, and forming the frame of a vast niche. All the dead princes, no doubt, according to the general design, were to have been honored with statues within this stately mausoleum; but only two--those of Ferdinand I. and Cosmo II.--seem to have been placed here. They were a bad breed, and few of them deserved any better monument than a dunghill; and yet they have this grand chapel for the family at large, and yonder grand statue for one of its most worthless members. I am glad of it; and as for the statue, Michael Angelo wrought it through the efficacy of a kingly idea, which had no reference to the individual whose name it bears. In the piazza adjoining the church is a statue of the first Cosmo, the old banker, in Roman costume, seated, and looking like a man fit to hold authority. No, I mistake; the statue is of John de' Medici, the father of Cosmo, and himself no banker, but a soldier. June 21st.--Yesterday, after dinner, we went, with the two eldest children, to the Boboli Gardens. . . . . We entered by a gate, nearer to our house than that by the Pitti Palace, and found ourselves almost immediately among embowered walks of box and shrubbery, and little wildernesses of trees, with here and there a seat under an arbor, and a marble statue, gray with ancient weather-stains. The site of the garden is a very uneven surface, and the paths go upward and downward, and ascend, at their ultimate point, to a base of what appears to be a fortress, commanding the city. A good many of the Florentines were rambling about the gardens, like ourselves: little parties of school-boys; fathers and mothers, with their youthful progeny; young men in couples, looking closely into every female face; lovers, with a maid or two attendant on the young lady. All appeared to enjoy themselves, especially the children, dancing on the esplanades, or rolling down the slopes of the hills; and the loving pairs, whom it was rather embarrassing to come upon unexpectedly, sitting together on the stone seat of an arbor, with clasped hands, a passionate solemnity in the young man's face, and a downcast pleasure in the lady's. Policemen, in cocked hats and epaulets, cross-belts, and swords, were scattered about the grounds, but interfered with nobody, though they seemed to keep an eye on all. A sentinel stood in the hot sunshine, looking down over the garden from the ramparts of the fortress. For my part, in this foreign country, I have no objection to policemen or any other minister of authority; though I remember, in America, I had an innate antipathy to constables, and always sided with the mob against law. This was very wrong and foolish, considering that I was one of the sovereigns; but a sovereign, or any number of sovereigns, or the twenty-millionth part of a sovereign, does not love to find himself, as an American must, included within the delegated authority of his own servants. There is a sheet of water somewhere in the Boboli Gardens, inhabited by swans; but this we did not see. We found a smaller pond, however, set in marble, and surrounded by a parapet, and alive with a multitude of fish. There were minnows by the thousand, and a good many gold-fish; and J-----, who had brought some bread to feed the swans, threw in handfuls of crumbs for the benefit of these finny people. They seemed to be accustomed to such courtesies on the part of visitors; and immediately the surface of the water was blackened, at the spot where each crumb fell, with shoals of minnows, thrusting one another even above the surface in their eagerness to snatch it. Within the depths of the pond, the yellowish-green water--its hue being precisely that of the Arno-- would be reddened duskily with the larger bulk of two or three gold-fishes, who finally poked their great snouts up among the minnows, but generally missed the crumb. Beneath the circular margin of the pond, there are little arches, into the shelter of which the fish retire, when the noonday sun burns straight down into their dark waters. We went on through the garden-paths, shadowed quite across by the high walls of box, and reached an esplanade, whence we had a good view of Florence, with the bare brown ridges on the northern side of the Arno, and glimpses of the river itself, flowing like a street, between two rows of palaces. A great way off, too, we saw some of the cloud-like peaks of the Apennines, and, above them, the clouds into which the sun was descending, looking quite as substantial as the distant mountains. The city did not present a particularly splendid aspect, though its great Duomo was seen in the middle distance, sitting in its circle of little domes, with the tall campanile close by, and within one or two hundred yards of it, the high, cumbrous bulk of the Palazzo Vecchio, with its lofty, machicolated, and battlemented tower, very picturesque, yet looking exceedingly like a martin-box, on a pole. There were other domes and towers and spires, and here and there the distinct shape of an edifice; but the general picture was of a contiguity of red earthen roofs, filling a not very broad or extensive valley, among dry and ridgy hills, with a river-gleam lightening up the landscape a little. U---- took out her pencil and tablets, and began to sketch the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio; in doing which, she immediately became an object of curiosity to some little boys and larger people, who failed not, under such pretences as taking a grasshopper off her dress, or no pretence at all, to come and look over her shoulder. There is a kind of familiarity among these Florentines, which is not meant to be discourteous, and ought to be taken in good part. We continued to ramble through the gardens, in quest of a good spot from which to see the sunset, and at length found a stone bench, on the slope of a hill, whence the entire cloud and sun scenery was fully presented to us. At the foot of the hill were statues, and among them a Pegasus, with wings outspread; and, a little beyond, the garden-front of the Pitti Palace, which looks a little less like a state-prison here, than as it fronts the street. Girls and children, and young men and old, were taking their pleasure in our neighborhood; and, just before us, a lady stood talking with her maid. By and by, we discovered her to be Miss Howorth. There was a misty light, streaming down on the hither side of the ridge of hills, that was rather peculiar; but the most remarkable thing was the shape into which the clouds gathered themselves, after the disappearance of the sun. It was like a tree, with a broad and heavy mass of foliage, spreading high upward on the sky, and a dark and well-defined trunk, which rooted itself on the verge of the horizon. This morning we went to the Pitti Palace. The air was very sultry, and the pavements, already heated with the sun, made the space between the buildings seem like a close room. The earth, I think, is too much stoned out of the streets of an Italian city,--paved, like those of Florence, quite across, with broad flagstones, to the line where the stones of the houses on each side are piled up. Thunder rumbled over our heads, however, and the clouds were so dark that we scarcely hoped to reach the palace without feeling the first drops of the shower. The air still darkened and darkened, so that by the time we arrived at the suite of picture-rooms the pictures seemed all to be changed to Rembrandts; the shadows as black as midnight, with only some highly illuminated portions gleaming out. The obscurity of the atmosphere made us sensible how splendid is the adornment of these saloons. For the gilded cornices shone out, as did the gilding of the arches and wreathed circles that divide the ceiling into compartments, within which the frescos are painted, and whence the figures looked dimly down, like gods out of a mysterious sky. The white marble sculptures also gleamed from their height, where winged cupids or cherubs gambolled aloft in bas-reliefs; or allegoric shapes reclined along the cornices, hardly noticed, when the daylight comes brightly into the window. On the walls, all the rich picture-frames glimmered in gold, as did the framework of the chairs, and the heavy gilded pedestals of the marble, alabaster, and mosaic tables. These are very magnificent saloons; and since I have begun to speak of their splendor, I may as well add that the doors are framed in polished, richly veined marble, and the walls hung with scarlet damask. It was useless to try to see the pictures. All the artists engaged in copying laid aside their brushes; and we looked out into the square before the palace, where a mighty wind sprang up, and quickly raised a prodigious cloud of dust. It hid the opposite side of the street, and was carried, in a great dusky whirl, higher than the roofs of the houses, higher than the top of the Pitti Palace itself. The thunder muttered and grumbled, the lightning now and then flashed, and a few rain-drops pattered against the windows; but, for a long time, the shower held off. At last it came down in a stream, and lightened the air to such a degree that we could see some of the pictures, especially those of Rubens, and the illuminated parts of Salvator Rosa's, and, best of all, Titian's "Magdalen," the one with golden hair clustering round her naked body. The golden hair, indeed, seemed to throw out a glory of its own. This Magdalen is very coarse and sensual, with only an impudent assumption of penitence and religious sentiment, scarcely so deep as the eyelids; but it is a splendid picture, nevertheless, with those naked, lifelike arms, and the hands that press the rich locks about her, and so carefully permit those voluptuous breasts to be seen. She a penitent! She would shake off all pretence to it as easily as she would shake aside that clustering hair. . . . . Titian must have been a very good-for-nothing old man. I looked again at Michael Angelo's Fates to-day; but cannot satisfactorily make out what he meant by them. One of them--she who holds the distaff--has her mouth open, as if uttering a cry, and might be fancied to look somewhat irate. The second, who holds the thread, has a pensive air, but is still, I think, pitiless at heart. The third sister looks closely and coldly into the eyes of the second, meanwhile cutting the thread with a pair of shears. Michael Angelo, if I may presume to say so, wished to vary the expression of these three sisters, and give each a different one, but did not see precisely how, inasmuch as all the fatal Three are united, heart and soul, in one purpose. It is a very impressive group. But, as regards the interpretation of this, or of any other profound picture, there are likely to be as many interpretations as there are spectators. It is very curious to read criticisms upon pictures, and upon the same face in a picture, and by men of taste and feeling, and to find what different conclusions they arrive at. Each man interprets the hieroglyphic in his own way; and the painter, perhaps, had a meaning which none of them have reached; or possibly he put forth a riddle, without himself knowing the solution. There is such a necessity, at all events, of helping the painter out with the spectator's own resources of feeling and imagination, that you can never be sure how much of the picture you have yourself made. There is no doubt that the public is, to a certain extent, right and sure of its ground, when it declares, through a series of ages, that a certain picture is a great work. It is so; a great symbol, proceeding out of a great mind; but if it means one thing, it seems to mean a thousand, and, often, opposite things. June 27th.--I have had a heavy cold and fever almost throughout the past week, and have thereby lost the great Florentine festivity, the Feast of St. John, which took place on Thursday last, with the fireworks and illuminations the evening before, and the races and court ceremonies on the day itself. However, unless it were more characteristic and peculiar than the Carnival, I have not missed anything very valuable. Mr. Powers called to see me one evening, and poured out, as usual, a stream of talk, both racy and oracular in its character. Speaking of human eyes, he observed that they did not depend for their expression upon color, nor upon any light of the soul beaming through them, nor any glow of the eyeball, nor upon anything but the form and action of the surrounding muscles. He illustrates it by saying, that if the eye of a wolf, or of whatever fiercest animal, could be placed in another setting, it would be found capable of the utmost gentleness of expression. "You yourself," said he, "have a very bright and sharp look sometimes; but it is not in the eye itself." His own eyes, as I could have sworn, were glowing all the time he spoke; and, remembering how many times I have seemed to see eyes glow, and blaze, and flash, and sparkle, and melt, and soften; and how all poetry is illuminated with the light of ladies' eyes; and how many people have been smitten by the lightning of an eye, whether in love or anger, it was difficult to allow that all this subtlest and keenest fire is illusive, not even phosphorescent, and that any other jelly in the same socket would serve as well as the brightest eye. Nevertheless, he must be right; of course he must, and I am rather ashamed ever to have thought otherwise. Where should the light come from? Has a man a flame inside of his head? Does his spirit manifest itself in the semblance of flame? The moment we think of it, the absurdity becomes evident. I am not quite sure, however, that the outer surface of the eye may not reflect more light in some states of feeling than in others; the state of the health, certainly, has an influence of this kind. I asked Powers what he thought of Michael Angelo's statue of Lorenzo de' Medici. He allowed that its effect was very grand and mysterious; but added that it owed this to a trick,--the effect being produced by the arrangement of the hood, as he called it, or helmet, which throws the upper part of the face into shadow. The niche in which it sits has, I suppose, its part to perform in throwing a still deeper shadow. It is very possible that Michael Angelo may have calculated upon this effect of sombre shadow, and legitimately, I think; but it really is not worthy of Mr. Powers to say that the whole effect of this mighty statue depends, not on the positive efforts of Michael Angelo's chisel, but on the absence of light in a space of a few inches. He wrought the whole statue in harmony with that small part of it which he leaves to the spectator's imagination, and if he had erred at any point, the miracle would have been a failure; so that, working in marble, he has positively reached a degree of excellence above the capability of marble, sculpturing his highest touches upon air and duskiness. Mr. Powers gave some amusing anecdotes of his early life, when he was a clerk in a store in Cincinnati. There was a museum opposite, the proprietor of which had a peculiar physiognomy that struck Powers, insomuch that he felt impelled to make continual caricatures of it. He used to draw them upon the door of the museum, and became so familiar with the face, that he could draw them in the dark; so that, every morning, here was this absurd profile of himself, greeting the museum-man when he came to open his establishment. Often, too, it would reappear within an hour after it was rubbed out. The man was infinitely annoyed, and made all possible efforts to discover the unknown artist, but in vain; and finally concluded, I suppose, that the likeness broke out upon the door of its own accord, like the nettle-rash. Some years afterwards, the proprietor of the museum engaged Powers himself as an assistant; and one day Powers asked him if he remembered this mysterious profile. "Yes," said he, "did you know who drew them?" Powers took a piece of chalk, and touched off the very profile again, before the man's eyes. "Ah," said he, "if I had known it at the time, I would have broken every bone in your body!" Before he began to work in marble, Powers had greater practice and success in making wax figures, and he produced a work of this kind called "The Infernal Regions," which he seemed to imply had been very famous. He said he once wrought a face in wax which was life itself, having made the eyes on purpose for it, and put in every hair in the eyebrows individually, and finished the whole with similar minuteness; so that, within the distance of a foot or two, it was impossible to tell that the face did not live. I have hardly ever before felt an impulse to write down a man's conversation as I do that of Mr. Powers. The chief reason is, probably, that it is so possible to do it, his ideas being square, solid, and tangible, and therefore readily grasped and retained. He is a very instructive man, and sweeps one's empty and dead notions out of the way with exceeding vigor; but when you have his ultimate thought and perception, you feel inclined to think and see a little further for yourself. He sees too clearly what is within his range to be aware of any region of mystery beyond. Probably, however, this latter remark does him injustice. I like the man, and am always glad to encounter the mill-stream of his talk. . . . . Yesterday he met me in the street (dressed in his linen blouse and slippers, with a little bit of a sculptor's cap on the side of his head), and gave utterance to a theory of colds, and a dissertation on the bad effects of draughts, whether of cold air or hot, and the dangers of transfusing blood from the veins of one living subject to those of another. On the last topic, he remarked that, if a single particle of air found its way into the veins, along with the transfused blood, it caused convulsions and inevitable death; otherwise the process might be of excellent effect. Last evening, we went to pass the evening with Miss Blagden, who inhabits a villa at Bellosguardo, about a mile outside of the walls. The situation is very lofty, and there are good views from every window of the house, and an especially fine one of Florence and the hills beyond, from the balcony of the drawing-room. By and by came Mr. Browning, Mr. Trollope, Mr. Boott and his young daughter, and two or three other gentlemen. . . . . Browning was very genial and full of life, as usual, but his conversation has the effervescent aroma which you cannot catch, even if you get the very words that seem to be imbued with it. He spoke most rapturously of a portrait of Mrs. Browning, which an Italian artist is painting for the wife of an American gentleman, as a present from her husband. The success was already perfect, although there had been only two sittings as yet, and both on the same day; and in this relation, Mr. Browning remarked that P------, the American artist, had had no less than seventy-three sittings of him for a portrait. In the result, every hair and speck of him was represented; yet, as I inferred from what he did not say, this accumulation of minute truths did not, after all, amount to the true whole. I do not remember much else that Browning said, except a playful abuse of a little King Charles spaniel, named Frolic, Miss Blagden's lap-dog, whose venerable age (he is eleven years old) ought to have pleaded in his behalf. Browning's nonsense is of very genuine and excellent quality, the true babble and effervescence of a bright and powerful mind; and he lets it play among his friends with the faith and simplicity of a child. He must be an amiable man. I should like him much, and should make him like me, if opportunities were favorable. I conversed principally with Mr. Trollope, the son, I believe, of the Mrs. Trollope to whom America owes more for her shrewd criticisms than we are ever likely to repay. Mr. Trollope is a very sensible and cultivated man, and, I suspect, an author: at least, there is a literary man of repute of this name, though I have never read his works. He has resided in Italy eighteen years. It seems a pity to do this. It needs the native air to give life a reality; a truth which I do not fail to take home regretfully to myself, though without feeling much inclination to go back to the realities of my own. We had a pleasant cup of tea, and took a moonlight view of Florence from the balcony. . . . . June 28th.--Yesterday afternoon, J----- and I went to a horse-race, which took place in the Corso and contiguous line of streets, in further celebration of the Feast of St. John. A crowd of people was already collected, all along the line of the proposed race, as early as six o'clock; and there were a great many carriages driving amid the throng, open barouches mostly, in which the beauty and gentility of Florence were freely displayed. It was a repetition of the scene in the Corso at Rome, at Carnival time, without the masks, the fun, and the confetti. The Grand Duke and Duchess and the Court likewise made their appearance in as many as seven or eight coaches-and-six, each with a coachman, three footmen, and a postilion in the royal livery, and attended by a troop of horsemen in scarlet coats and cocked hats. I did not particularly notice the Grand Duke himself; but, in the carriage behind him, there sat only a lady, who favored the people along the street with a constant succession of bows, repeated at such short intervals, and so quickly, as to be little more than nods; therefore not particularly graceful or majestic. Having the good fortune, to be favored with one of these nods, I lifted my hat in response, and may therefore claim a bowing acquaintance with the Grand Duchess. She is a Bourbon of the Naples family, and was a pale, handsome woman, of princely aspect enough. The crowd evinced no enthusiasm, nor the slightest feeling of any kind, in acknowledgment of the presence of their rulers; and, indeed, I think I never saw a crowd so well behaved; that is, with so few salient points, so little ebullition, so absolutely tame, as the Florentine one. After all, and much contrary to my expectations, an American crowd has incomparably more life than any other; and, meeting on any casual occasion, it will talk, laugh, roar, and be diversified with a thousand characteristic incidents and gleams and shadows, that you see nothing of here. The people seems to have no part even in its own gatherings. It comes together merely as a mass of spectators, and must not so much as amuse itself by any activity of mind. The race, which was the attraction that drew us all together, turned out a very pitiful affair. When we had waited till nearly dusk, the street being thronged quite across, insomuch that it seemed impossible that it should be cleared as a race-course, there came suddenly from every throat a quick, sharp exclamation, combining into a general shout. Immediately the crowd pressed back on each side of the street; a moment afterwards, there was a rapid pattering of hoofs over the earth with which the pavement was strewn, and I saw the head and back of a horse rushing past. A few seconds more, and another horse followed; and at another little interval, a third. This was all that we had waited for; all that I saw, or anybody else, except those who stood on the utmost verge of the course, at the risk of being trampled down and killed. Two men were killed in this way on Thursday, and certainly human life was never spent for a poorer object. The spectators at the windows, to be sure, having the horses in sight for a longer time, might get a little more enjoyment out of the affair. By the by, the most picturesque aspect of the scene was the life given to it by the many faces, some of them fair ones, that looked out from window and balcony, all along the curving line of lofty palaces and edifices, between which the race-course lay; and from nearly every window, and over every balcony, was flung a silken texture, or cloth of brilliant line, or piece of tapestry or carpet, or whatever adornment of the kind could be had, so as to dress up the street in gala attire. But, the Feast of St. John, like the Carnival, is but a meagre semblance of festivity, kept alive factitiously, and dying a lingering death of centuries. It takes the exuberant mind and heart of a people to keep its holidays alive. I do not know whether there be any populace in Florence, but I saw none that I recognized as such, on this occasion. All the people were respectably dressed and perfectly well behaved; and soldiers and priests were scattered abundantly among the throng. On my way home, I saw the Teatro Goldoni, which is in our own street, lighted up for a representation this Sunday evening. It shocked my New England prejudices a little. Thus forenoon, my wife and I went to the Church of Santa Croce, the great monumental deposit of Florentine worthies. The piazza before it is a wide, gravelled square, where the liberty of Florence, if it really ever had any genuine liberty, came into existence some hundreds of years ago, by the people's taking its own rights into its hands, and putting its own immediate will in execution. The piazza has not much appearance of antiquity, except that the facade of one of the houses is quite covered with ancient frescos, a good deal faded and obliterated, yet with traces enough of old glory to show that the colors must have been well laid on. The front of the church, the foundation of which was laid six centuries ago, is still waiting for its casing of marbles, and I suppose will wait forever, though a carpenter's staging is now erected before it, as if with the purpose of doing something. The interior is spacious, the length of the church being between four and five hundred feet. There is a nave, roofed with wooden cross-beams, lighted by a clere-story and supported on each side by seven great pointed arches, which rest upon octagonal pillars. The octagon seems to be a favorite shape in Florence. These pillars were clad in yellow and scarlet damask, in honor of the Feast of St. John. The aisles, on each side of the nave, are lighted with high and somewhat narrow windows of painted glass, the effect of which, however, is much diminished by the flood of common daylight that comes in through the windows of the clere-story. It is like admitting too much of the light of reason and worldly intelligence into the mind, instead of illuminating it wholly through a religious medium. The many-hued saints and angels lose their mysterious effulgence, when we get white light enough, and find we see all the better without their help. The main pavement of the church is brickwork; but it is inlaid with many sepulchral slabs of marble, on some of which knightly or priestly figures are sculptured in bas-relief. In both of the side aisles there are saintly shrines, alternating with mural monuments, some of which record names as illustrious as any in the world. As you enter, the first monument, on your right is that of Michael Angelo, occupying the ancient burial-site of his family. The general design is a heavy sarcophagus of colored marble, with the figures of Sculpture, Painting, and Architecture as mourners, and Michael Angelo's bust above, the whole assuming a pyramidal form. You pass a shrine, within its framework of marble pillars and a pediment, and come next to Dante's monument, a modern work, with likewise its sarcophagus, and some huge, cold images weeping and sprawling over it, and an unimpressive statue of Dante sitting above. Another shrine intervenes, and next you see the tomb of Alfieri, erected to his memory by the Countess of Albany, who pays, out of a woman's love, the honor which his country owed him. Her own monument is in one of the chapels of the transept. Passing the next shrine you see the tomb of Macchiavelli, which, I think, was constructed not many years after his death. The rest of the monuments, on this side of the church, commemorate people of less than world-wide fame; and though the opposite side has likewise a monument alternating with each shrine, I remember only the names of Raphael Morghen and of Galileo. The tomb of the latter is over against that of Michael Angelo, being the first large tomb on the left-hand wall as you enter the church. It has the usual heavy sarcophagus, surmounted by a bust of Galileo, in the habit of his time, and is, of course, duly provided with mourners in the shape of Science or Astronomy, or some such cold-hearted people. I wish every sculptor might be at once imprisoned for life who shall hereafter chisel an allegoric figure; and as for those who have sculptured them heretofore, let them be kept in purgatory till the marble shall have crumbled away. It is especially absurd to assign to this frozen sisterhood of the allegoric family the office of weeping for the dead, inasmuch as they have incomparably less feeling than a lump of ice, which might contrive to shed a tear if the sun shone on it. But they seem to let themselves out, like the hired mourners of an English funeral, for the very reason that, having no interest in the dead person, nor any affections or emotions whatever, it costs them no wear and tear of heart. All round both transepts of the church there is a series of chapels, into most of which we went, and generally found an inscrutably dark picture over the altar, and often a marble bust or two, or perhaps a mediaeval statue of a saint or a modern monumental bas-relief in marble, as white as new-fallen snow. A chapel of the Bonapartes is here, containing memorials of two female members of the family. In several chapels, moreover, there were some of those distressing frescos, by Giotto, Cimabue, or their compeers, which, whenever I see them,--poor, faded relics, looking as if the Devil had been rubbing and scrubbing them for centuries, in spite against the saints,--my heart sinks and my stomach sickens. There is no other despondency like this; it is a new shade of human misery, akin to the physical disease that comes from dryrot in a wall. These frescos are to a church what dreary, old remembrances are to a mind; the drearier because they were once bright: Hope fading into Disappointment, Joy into Grief, and festal splendor passing into funereal duskiness, and saddening you all the more by the grim identity that you find to exist between gay things and sorrowful ones. Only wait long enough, and they turn out to be the very same. All the time we were in the church some great religious ceremony had been going forward; the organ playing and the white-robed priests bowing, gesticulating, and making Latin prayers at the high altar, where at least a hundred wax tapers were burning in constellations. Everybody knelt, except ourselves, yet seemed not to be troubled by the echoes of our passing footsteps, nor to require that we should pray along with them. They consider us already lost irrevocably, no doubt, and therefore right enough in taking no heed of their devotions; not but what we took so much heed, however, as to give the smallest possible disturbance. By and by we sat down in the nave of the church till the ceremony should be concluded; and then my wife left me to go in quest of yet another chapel, where either Cimabue or Giotto, or both, have left some of their now ghastly decorations. While she was gone I threw my eyes about the church, and came to the conclusion that, in spite of its antiquity, its size, its architecture, its painted windows, its tombs of great men, and all the reverence and interest that broods over them, it is not an impressive edifice. Any little Norman church in England would impress me as much, and more. There is something, I do not know what, but it is in the region of the heart, rather than in the intellect, that Italian architecture, of whatever age or style, never seems to reach. Leaving the Santa Croce, we went next in quest of the Riccardi Palace. On our way, in the rear of the Grand Ducal Piazza, we passed by the Bargello, formerly the palace of the Podesta of Florence, and now converted into a prison. It is an immense square edifice of dark stone, with a tall, lank tower rising high above it at one corner. Two stone lions, symbols of the city, lash their tails and glare at the passers-by; and all over the front of the building windows are scattered irregularly, and grated with rusty iron bars; also there are many square holes, which probably admit a little light and a breath or two of air into prisoners' cells. It is a very ugly edifice, but looks antique, and as if a vast deal of history might have been transacted within it, or have beaten, like fierce blasts, against its dark, massive walls, since the thirteenth century. When I first saw the city it struck me that there were few marks of antiquity in Florence; but I am now inclined to think otherwise, although the bright Italian atmosphere, and the general squareness and monotony of the Italian architecture, have their effect in apparently modernizing everything. But everywhere we see the ponderous Tuscan basements that never can decay, and which will look, five hundred years hence, as they look now; and one often passes beneath an abbreviated remnant of what was once a lofty tower, perhaps three hundred feet high, such as used to be numerous in Florence when each noble of the city had his own warfare to wage; and there are patches of sculpture that look old on houses, the modern stucco of which causes them to look almost new. Here and there an unmistakable antiquity stands in its own impressive shadow; the Church of Or San Michele, for instance, once a market, but which grew to be a church by some inherent fitness and inevitable consecration. It has not the least the aspect of a church, being high and square, like a mediaeval palace; but deep and high niches are let into its walls, within which stand great statues of saints, masterpieces of Donatello, and other sculptors of that age, before sculpture began to be congealed by the influence of Greek art. The Riccardi Palace is at the corner of the Via Larga. It was built by the first Cosmo de' Medici, the old banker, more than four centuries ago, and was long the home of the ignoble race of princes which he left behind him. It looks fit to be still the home of a princely race, being nowise dilapidated nor decayed externally, nor likely to be so, its high Tuscan basement being as solid as a ledge of rock, and its upper portion not much less so, though smoothed into another order of stately architecture. Entering its court from the Via Larga, we found ourselves beneath a pillared arcade, passing round the court like a cloister; and on the walls of the palace, under this succession of arches, were statues, bas-reliefs, and sarcophagi, in which, first, dead Pagans had slept, and then dead Christians, before the sculptured coffins were brought hither to adorn the palace of the Medici. In the most prominent place was a Latin inscription of great length and breadth, chiefly in praise of old Cosino and his deeds and wisdom. This mansion gives the visitor a stately notion of the life of a commercial man in the days when merchants were princes; not that it seems to be so wonderfully extensive, nor so very grand, for I suppose there are a dozen Roman palaces that excel it in both these particulars. Still, we cannot but be conscious that it must have been, in some sense, a great man who thought of founding a homestead like this, and was capable of filling it with his personality, as the hand fills a glove. It has been found spacious enough, since Cosmo's time, for an emperor and a pope and a king, all of whom have been guests in this house. After being the family mansion of the Medici for nearly two centuries, it was sold to the Riccardis, but was subsequently bought of then by the government, and it is now occupied by public offices and societies. After sufficiently examining the court and its antiquities, we ascended a noble staircase that passes, by broad flights and square turns, to the region above the basement. Here the palace is cut up and portioned off into little rooms and passages, and everywhere there were desks, inkstands, and men, with pens in their fingers or behind their ears. We were shown into a little antique chapel, quite covered with frescos in the Giotto style, but painted by a certain Gozzoli. They were in pretty good preservation, and, in fact, I am wrong in comparing them to Giotto's works, inasmuch as there must have been nearly two hundred years between the two artists. The chapel was furnished with curiously carved old chairs, and looked surprisingly venerable within its little precinct. We were next guided into the grand gallery, a hall of respectable size, with a frescoed ceiling, on which is represented the blue sky, and various members of the Medici family ascending through it by the help of angelic personages, who seem only to have waited for their society to be perfectly happy. At least, this was the meaning, so far as I could make it out. Along one side of the gallery were oil-pictures on looking-glasses, rather good than otherwise; but Rome, with her palaces and villas, takes the splendor out of all this sort of thing elsewhere. On our way home, and on our own side of the Ponte Vecchio, we passed the Palazzo Guicciardini, the ancient residence of the historian of Italy, who was a politic statesman of his day, and probably as cruel and unprincipled as any of those whose deeds he has recorded. Opposite, across the narrow way, stands the house of Macchiavelli, who was his friend, and, I should judge, an honester man than he. The house is distinguished by a marble tablet, let into the wall, commemorative of Macchiavelli, but has nothing antique or picturesque about it, being in a continuous line with other smooth-faced and stuccoed edifices. June 30th.--Yesterday, at three o'clock P. M., I went to see the final horse-race of the Feast of St. John, or rather to see the concourse of people and grandees whom it brought together. I took my stand in the vicinity of the spot whence the Grand Duke and his courtiers view the race, and from this point the scene was rather better worth looking at than from the street-corners whence I saw it before. The vista of the street, stretching far adown between two rows of lofty edifices, was really gay and gorgeous with the silks, damasks, and tapestries of all bright hues, that flaunted from windows and balconies, whence ladies looked forth and looked down, themselves making the liveliest part of the show. The whole capacity of the street swarmed with moving heads, leaving scarce room enough for the carriages, which, as on Sunday, passed up and down, until the signal for the race was given. Equipages, too, were constantly arriving at the door of the building which communicates with the open loggia, where the Grand Ducal party sit to see and to be seen. Two sentinels were standing at the door, and presented arms as each courtier or ambassador, or whatever dignity it might be, alighted. Most of them had on gold-embroidered court-dresses; some of them had military uniforms, and medals in abundance at the breast; and ladies also came, looking like heaps of lace and gauze in the carriages, but lightly shaking themselves into shape as they went up the steps. By and by a trumpet sounded, a drum beat, and again appeared a succession of half a dozen royal equipages, each with its six horses, its postilion, coachman, and three footmen, grand with cocked hats and embroidery; and the gray-headed, bowing Grand Duke and his nodding Grand Duchess as before. The Noble Guard ranged themselves on horseback opposite the loggia; but there was no irksome and impertinent show of ceremony and restraint upon the people. The play-guard of volunteer soldiers, who escort the President of the United States in his Northern progresses, keep back their fellow-citizens much more sternly and immitigably than the Florentine guard kept back the populace from its despotic sovereign. This morning J----- and I have been to the Uffizi gallery. It was his first visit there, and he passed a sweeping condemnation upon everything he saw, except a fly, a snail-shell, a caterpillar, a lemon, a piece of bread, and a wineglass, in some of the Dutch pictures. The Venus de' Medici met with no sort of favor. His feeling of utter distaste reacted upon me, and I was sensible of the same weary lack of appreciation that used to chill me through, in my earlier visits to picture-galleries; the same doubt, moreover, whether we do not bamboozle ourselves in the greater part of the admiration which we learn to bestow. I looked with some pleasure at one of Correggio's Madonnas in the Tribune,--no divine and deep-thoughted mother of the Saviour, but a young woman playing with her first child, as gay and thoughtless as itself. I looked at Michael Angelo's Madonna, in which William Ware saw such prophetic depth of feeling; but I suspect it was one of the many instances in which the spectator sees more than the painter ever dreamed of. Straying through the city, after leaving the gallery, we went into the Church of Or San Michele, and saw in its architecture the traces of its transformation from a market into a church. In its pristine state it consisted of a double row of three great open arches, with the wind blowing through them, and the sunshine falling aslantwise into them, while the bustle of the market, the sale of fish, flesh, or fruit went on within, or brimmed over into the streets that enclosed them on every side. But, four or five hundred years ago, the broad arches were built up with stone-work; windows were pierced through and filled with painted glass; a high altar, in a rich style of pointed Gothic, was raised; shrines and confessionals were set up; and here it is, a solemn and antique church, where a man may buy his salvation instead of his dinner. At any rate, the Catholic priests will insure it to him, and take the price. The sculpture within the beautifully decorated niches, on the outside of the church, is very curious and interesting. The statues of those old saints seem to have that charm of earnestness which so attracts the admirers of the Pre-Raphaelite painters. It appears that a picture of the Virgin used to hang against one of the pillars of the market-place while it was still a market, and in the year 1291 several miracles were wrought by it, insomuch that a chapel was consecrated for it. So many worshippers came to the shrine that the business of the market was impeded, and ultimately the Virgin and St. Michael won the whole space for themselves. The upper part of the edifice was at that time a granary, and is still used for other than religious purposes. This church was one spot to which the inhabitants betook themselves much for refuge and divine assistance during the great plague described by Boccaccio. July 2d.--We set out yesterday morning to visit the Palazzo Buonarotti, Michael Angelo's ancestral home. . . . . It is in the Via Ghibellina, an ordinary-looking, three-story house, with broad-brimmed eaves, a stuccoed front, and two or three windows painted in fresco, besides the real ones. Adown the street, there is a glimpse of the hills outside of Florence. The sun shining heavily directly upon the front, we rang the door-bell, and then drew back into the shadow that fell from the opposite side of the street. After we had waited some time a man looked out from an upper window, and a woman from a lower one, and informed us that we could not be admitted now, nor for two or three months to come, the house being under repairs. It is a pity, for I wished to see Michael Angelo's sword and walking-stick and old slippers, and whatever other of his closest personalities are to be shown. . . . . We passed into the Piazza of the Grand Duke, and looked into the court of the Palazzo Vecchio, with its beautifully embossed pillars; and, seeing just beyond the court a staircase of broad and easy steps, we ascended it at a venture. Upward and upward we went, flight after flight of stairs, and through passages, till at last we found an official who ushered us into a large saloon. It was the Hall of Audience. Its heavily embossed ceiling, rich with tarnished gold, was a feature of antique magnificence, and the only one that it retained, the floor being paved with tiles and the furniture scanty or none. There were, however, three cabinets standing against the walls, two of which contained very curious and exquisite carvings and cuttings in ivory; some of them in the Chinese style of hollow, concentric balls; others, really beautiful works of art: little crucifixes, statues, saintly and knightly, and cups enriched with delicate bas-reliefs. The custode pointed to a small figure of St. Sebastian, and also to a vase around which the reliefs seemed to assume life. Both these specimens, he said, were by Benvenuto Cellini, and there were many others that might well have been wrought by his famous hand. The third cabinet contained a great number and variety of crucifixes, chalices, and whatever other vessels are needed in altar service, exquisitely carved out of amber. They belong to the chapel of the palace, and into this holy closet we were now conducted. It is large enough to accommodate comfortably perhaps thirty worshippers, and is quite covered with frescos by Ghirlandaio in good preservation, and with remnants enough of gilding and bright color to show how splendid the chapel must have been when the Medicean Grand Dukes used to pray here. The altar is still ready for service, and I am not sure that some of the wax tapers were not burning; but Lorenzo the Magnificent was nowhere to be seen. The custode now led us back through the Hall of Audience into a smaller room, hung with pictures chiefly of the Medici and their connections, among whom was one Carolina, an intelligent and pretty child, and Bianca Capella. There was nothing else to show us, except a very noble and most spacious saloon, lighted by two large windows at each end, coming down level with the floor, and by a row of windows on one side just beneath the cornice. A gilded framework divides the ceiling into squares, circles, and octagons, the compartments of which are filled with pictures in oil; and the walls are covered with immense frescos, representing various battles and triumphs of the Florentines. Statues by Michael Angelo, John of Bologna, and Bandinello, as well historic as ideal, stand round the hall, and it is really a fit theatre for the historic scenes of a country to be acted in. It was built, moreover, with the idea of its being the council-hall of a free people; but our own little Faneuil, which was meant, in all simplicity, to be merely a spot where the townspeople should meet to choose their selectmen, has served the world better in that respect. I wish I had more room to speak of this vast, dusky, historic hall. [This volume of journal closes here.] July 4th 1858.--Yesterday forenoon we went to see the Church of Santa Maria Novella. We found the piazza, on one side of which the church stands, encumbered with the amphitheatrical ranges of wooden seats that had been erected to accommodate the spectators of the chariot-races, at the recent Feast of St. John. The front of the church is composed of black and white marble, which, in the course of the five centuries that it has been built, has turned brown and yellow. On the right hand, as you approach, is a long colonnade of arches, extending on a line with the facade, and having a tomb beneath every arch. This colonnade forms one of the enclosing walls of a cloister. We found none of the front entrances open, but on our left, in a wall at right angles with the church, there was an open gateway, approaching which, we saw, within the four-sided colonnade, an enclosed green space of a cloister. This is what is called the Chiostro Verde, so named from the prevailing color of the frescos with which the walls beneath the arches are adorned. This cloister is the reality of what I used to imagine when I saw the half-ruinous colonnades connected with English cathedrals, or endeavored to trace out the lines along the broken wall of some old abbey. Not that this extant cloister, still perfect and in daily use for its original purposes, is nearly so beautiful as the crumbling ruin which has ceased to be trodden by monkish feet for more than three centuries. The cloister of Santa Maria has not the seclusion that is desirable, being open, by its gateway, to the public square; and several of the neighbors, women as well as men, were loitering within its precincts. The convent, however, has another and larger cloister, which I suppose is kept free from interlopers. The Chiostro Verde is a walk round the four sides of a square, beneath an arched and groined roof. One side of the walk looks upon an enclosed green space with a fountain or a tomb (I forget which) in the centre; the other side is ornamented all along with a succession of ancient frescos, representing subjects of Scripture history. In the days when the designs were more distinct than now, it must have been a very effective way for a monk to read Bible history, to see its personages and events thus passing visibly beside him in his morning and evening walks. Beneath the frescos on one side of the cloistered walk, and along the low stone parapet that separates it from the grass-plat on the other, are inscriptions to the memory of the dead who are buried underneath the pavement. The most of these were modern, and recorded the names of persons of no particular note. Other monumental slabs were inlaid with the pavement itself. Two or three Dominican monks, belonging to the convent, passed in and out, while we were there, in their white habits. After going round three sides, we came to the fourth, formed by the wall of the church, and heard the voice of a priest behind a curtain that fell down before a door. Lifting it aside, we went in, and found ourselves in the ancient chapter-house, a large interior formed by two great pointed arches crossing one another in a groined roof. The broad spaces of the walls were entirely covered with frescos that are rich even now, and must have glowed with an inexpressible splendor, when fresh from the artists' hands, five hundred years ago. There is a long period, during which frescos illuminate a church or a hall in a way that no other adornment can; when this epoch of brightness is past, they become the dreariest ghosts of perished magnificence. . . . . This chapter-house is the only part of the church that is now used for the purposes of public worship. There are several confessionals, and two chapels or shrines, each with its lighted tapers. A priest performed mass while we were there, and several persons, as usual, stepped in to do a little devotion, either praying on their own account, or uniting with the ceremony that was going forward. One man was followed by two little dogs, and in the midst of his prayers, as one of the dogs was inclined to stray about the church, he kept snapping his fingers to call him back. The cool, dusky refreshment of these holy places, affording such a refuge from the hot noon of the streets and piazzas, probably suggests devotional ideas to the people, and it may be, when they are praying, they feel a breath of Paradise fanning them. If we could only see any good effects in their daily life, we might deem it an excellent thing to be able to find incense and a prayer always ascending, to which every individual may join his own. I really wonder that the Catholics are not better men and women. When we had looked at the old frescos, . . . . we emerged into the cloister again, and thence ventured into a passage which would have led us to the Chiostro Grande, where strangers, and especially ladies, have no right to go. It was a secluded corridor, very neatly kept, bordered with sepulchral monuments, and at the end appeared a vista of cypress-trees, which indeed were but an illusory perspective, being painted in fresco. While we loitered along the sacristan appeared and offered to show us the church, and led us into the transept on the right of the high altar, and ushered us into the sacristy, where we found two artists copying some of Fra Angelico's pictures. These were painted on the three wooden leaves of a triptych, and, as usual, were glorified with a great deal of gilding, so that they seemed to float in the brightness of a heavenly element. Solomon speaks of "apples of gold in pictures of silver." The pictures of Fra Angelico, and other artists of that age, are really pictures of gold; and it is wonderful to see how rich the effect, and how much delicate beauty is attained (by Fra Angelico at least) along with it. His miniature-heads appear to me much more successful than his larger ones. In a monkish point of view, however, the chief value of the triptych of which I am speaking does not lie in the pictures, for they merely serve as the framework of some relics, which are set all round the edges of the three leaves. They consist of little bits and fragments of bones, and of packages carefully tied up in silk, the contents of which are signified in Gothic letters appended to each parcel. The sacred vessels of the church are likewise kept in the sacristy. . . . . Re-entering the transept, our guide showed us the chapel of the Strozzi family, which is accessible by a flight of steps from the floor of the church. The walls of this chapel are covered with frescos by Orcagna, representing around the altar the Last Judgment, and on one of the walls heaven and the assembly of the blessed, and on the other, of course, hell. I cannot speak as to the truth of the representation; but, at all events, it was purgatory to look at it. . . . . We next passed into the choir, which occupies the extreme end of the church behind the great square mass of the high altar, and is surrounded with a double row of ancient oaken seats of venerable shape and carving. The choir is illuminated by a threefold Gothic window, full of richly painted glass, worth all the frescos that ever stained a wall or ceiling; but these walls, nevertheless, are adorned with frescos by Ghirlandaio, and it is easy to see must once have made a magnificent appearance. I really was sensible of a sad and ghostly beauty in many of the figures; but all the bloom, the magic of the painter's touch, his topmost art, have long ago been rubbed off, the white plaster showing through the colors in spots, and even in large spaces. Any other sort of ruin acquires a beauty proper to its decay, and often superior to that of its pristine state; but the ruin of a picture, especially of a fresco, is wholly unredeemed; and, moreover, it dies so slowly that many generations are likely to be saddened by it. We next saw the famous picture of the Virgin by Cimabue, which was deemed a miracle in its day, . . . . and still brightens the sombre walls with the lustre of its gold ground. As to its artistic merits, it seems to me that the babe Jesus has a certain air of state and dignity; but I could see no charm whatever in the broad-faced Virgin, and it would relieve my mind and rejoice my spirit if the picture were borne out of the church in another triumphal procession (like the one which brought it there), and reverently burnt. This should be the final honor paid to all human works that have served a good office in their day, for when their day is over, if still galvanized into false life, they do harm instead of good. . . . . The interior of Santa Maria Novella is spacious and in the Gothic style, though differing from English churches of that order of architecture. It is not now kept open to the public, nor were any of the shrines and chapels, nor even the high altar itself, adorned and lighted for worship. The pictures that decorated the shrines along the side aisles have been removed, leaving bare, blank spaces of brickwork, very dreary and desolate to behold. This is almost worse than a black oil-painting or a faded fresco. The church was much injured by the French, and afterwards by the Austrians, both powers having quartered their troops within the holy precincts. Its old walls, however, are yet stalwart enough to outlast another set of frescos, and to see the beginning and the end of a new school of painting as long-lived as Cimabue's. I should be sorry to have the church go to decay, because it was here that Boccaccio's dames and cavaliers encountered one another, and formed their plan of retreating into the country during the plague. . . . . At the door we bought a string of beads, with a small crucifix appended, in memory of the place. The beads seem to be of a grayish, pear-shaped seed, and the seller assured us that they were the tears of St. Job. They were cheap, probably because Job shed so many tears in his lifetime. It being still early in the day, we went to the Uffizi gallery, and after loitering a good while among the pictures, were so fortunate as to find the room of the bronzes open. The first object that attracted us was John of Bologna's Mercury, poising himself on tiptoe, and looking not merely buoyant enough to float, but as if he possessed more than the eagle's power of lofty flight. It seems a wonder that he did not absolutely fling himself into the air when the artist gave him the last touch. No bolder work was ever achieved; nothing so full of life has been done since. I was much interested, too, in the original little wax model, two feet high, of Benvenuto Cellini's Perseus. The wax seems to be laid over a wooden framework, and is but roughly finished off. . . . . In an adjoining room are innumerable specimens of Roman and Etruscan bronzes, great and small. A bronze Chimera did not strike me as very ingeniously conceived, the goat's head being merely an adjunct, growing out of the back of the monster, without possessing any original and substantive share in its nature. The snake's head is at the end of the tail. The object most really interesting was a Roman eagle, the standard of the Twenty-fourth Legion, about the size of a blackbird. July 8th.--On the 6th we went to the Church of the Annunziata, which stands in the piazza of the same name. On the corner of the Via dei Servi is the palace which I suppose to be the one that Browning makes the scene of his poem, "The Statue and the Bust," and the statue of Duke Ferdinand sits stately on horseback, with his face turned towards the window, where the lady ought to appear. Neither she nor the bust, however, was visible, at least not to my eyes. The church occupies one side of the piazza, and in front of it, as likewise on the two adjoining sides of the square, there are pillared arcades, constructed by Brunelleschi or his scholars. After passing through these arches, and still before entering the church itself, you come to an ancient cloister, which is now quite enclosed in glass as a means of preserving some frescos of Andrea del Sarto and others, which are considered valuable. Passing the threshold of the church, we were quite dazzled by the splendor that shone upon us from the ceiling of the nave, the great parallelograms of which, viewed from one end, look as if richly embossed all over with gold. The whole interior, indeed, has an effect of brightness and magnificence, the walls being covered mostly with light-colored marble, into which are inlaid compartments of rarer and richer marbles. The pillars and pilasters, too, are of variegated marbles, with Corinthian capitals, that shine just as brightly as if they were of solid gold, so faithfully have they been gilded and burnished. The pavement is formed of squares of black and white marble. There are no side aisles, but ranges of chapels, with communication from one to another, stand round the whole extent of the nave and choir; all of marble, all decorated with pictures, statues, busts, and mural monuments; all worth, separately, a day's inspection. The high altar is of great beauty and richness, . . . . and also the tomb of John of Bologna in a chapel at the remotest extremity of the church. In this chapel there are some bas-reliefs by him, and also a large crucifix, with a marble Christ upon it. I think there has been no better sculptor since the days of Phidias. . . . . The church was founded by seven gentlemen of Florence, who formed themselves into a religious order called "Servants of Mary." Many miraculous cures were wrought here; and the church, in consequence, was so thickly hung with votive offerings of legs, arms, and other things in wax, that they used to tumble upon people's heads, so that finally they were all cleared out as rubbish. The church is still, I should imagine, looked upon as a place of peculiar sanctity; for while we were there it had an unusual number of kneeling worshippers, and persons were passing from shrine to shrine all round the nave and choir, praying awhile at each, and thus performing a pilgrimage at little cost of time and labor. One old gentleman, I observed, carried a cushion or pad, just big enough for one knee, on which he carefully adjusted his genuflexions before each altar. An old woman in the choir prayed alternately to us and to the saints, with most success, I hope, in her petitions to the latter, though certainly her prayers to ourselves seemed the more fervent of the two. When we had gone entirely round the church, we came at last to the chapel of the Annunziata, which stands on the floor of the nave, on the left hand as we enter. It is a very beautiful piece of architecture,--a sort of canopy of marble, supported upon pillars; and its magnificence within, in marble and silver, and all manner of holy decoration, is quite indescribable. It was built four hundred years ago, by Pietro de' Medici, and has probably been growing richer ever since. The altar is entirely of silver, richly embossed. As many people were kneeling on the steps before it as could find room, and most of them, when they finished their prayers, ascended the steps, kissed over and over again the margin of the silver altar, laid their foreheads upon it, and then deposited an offering in a box placed upon the altar's top. From the dulness of the chink in the only case when I heard it, I judged it to be a small copper coin. In the inner part of this chapel is preserved a miraculous picture of the "Santissima Annunziata," painted by angels, and held in such holy repute that forty thousand dollars have lately been expended in providing a new crown for the sacred personage represented. The picture is now veiled behind a curtain; and as it is a fresco, and is not considered to do much credit to the angelic artists, I was well contented not to see it. We found a side door of the church admitting us into the great cloister, which has a walk of intersecting arches round its four sides, paved with flat tombstones, and broad enough for six people to walk abreast. On the walls, in the semicircles of each successive arch, are frescos representing incidents in the lives of the seven founders of the church, and all the lower part of the wall is incrusted with marble inscriptions to the memory of the dead, and mostly of persons who have died not very long ago. The space enclosed by the cloistered walk, usually made cheerful by green grass, has a pavement of tombstones laid in regular ranges. In the centre is a stone octagonal structure, which at first I supposed to be the tomb of some deceased mediaeval personage; but, on approaching, I found it a well, with its bucket hanging within the curb, and looking as if it were in constant use. The surface of the water lay deep beneath the deepest dust of the dead people, and thence threw up its picture of the sky; but I think it would not be a moderate thirst that would induce me to drink of that well. On leaving the church we bought a little gilt crucifix. . . . . On Sunday evening I paid a short visit to Mr. Powers, and, as usual, was entertained and instructed with his conversation. It did not, indeed, turn upon artistical subjects; but the artistic is only one side of his character, and, I think, not the principal side. He might have achieved valuable success as an engineer and mechanician. He gave a dissertation on flying-machines, evidently from his own experience, and came to the conclusion that it is impossible to fly by means of steam or any other motive-power now known to man. No force hitherto attained would suffice to lift the engine which generated it. He appeared to anticipate that flying will be a future mode of locomotion, but not till the moral condition of mankind is so improved as to obviate the bad uses to which the power might be applied. Another topic discussed was a cure for complaints of the chest by the inhalation of nitric acid; and he produced his own apparatus for that purpose, being merely a tube inserted into a bottle containing a small quantity of the acid, just enough to produce the gas for inhalation. He told me, too, a remedy for burns accidentally discovered by himself; viz., to wear wash-leather, or something equivalent, over the burn, and keep it constantly wet. It prevents all pain, and cures by the exclusion of the air. He evidently has a great tendency to empirical remedies, and would have made a natural doctor of mighty potency, possessing the shrewd sense, inventive faculty, and self-reliance that such persons require. It is very singular that there should be an ideal vein in a man of this character. This morning he called to see me, with intelligence of the failure of the new attempt to lay the electric cable between England and America; and here, too, it appears the misfortune might have been avoided if a plan of his own for laying the cable had been adopted. He explained his process, and made it seem as practicable as to put up a bell-wire. I do not remember how or why (but appositely) he repeated some verses, from a pretty little ballad about fairies, that had struck his fancy, and he wound up his talk with some acute observations on the characters of General Jackson and other public men. He told an anecdote, illustrating the old general's small acquaintance with astronomical science, and his force of will in compelling a whole dinner-party of better instructed people than himself to succumb to him in an argument about eclipses and the planetary system generally. Powers witnessed the scene himself. He thinks that General Jackson was a man of the keenest and surest intuitions, in respect to men and measures, but with no power of reasoning out his own conclusions, or of imparting them intellectually to other persons. Men who have known Jackson intimately, and in great affairs, would not agree as to this intellectual and argumentative deficiency, though they would fully allow the intuitive faculty. I have heard General Pierce tell a striking instance of Jackson's power of presenting his own view of a subject with irresistible force to the mind of the auditor. President Buchanan has likewise expressed to me as high admiration of Jackson as I ever heard one man award to another. Surely he was a great man, and his native strength, as well of intellect as character, compelled every man to be his tool that came within his reach; and the more cunning the individual might be, it served only to make him the sharper tool. Speaking of Jackson, and remembering Raphael's picture of Pope Julius II., the best portrait in the whole world, and excellent in all its repetitions, I wish it had been possible for Raphael to paint General Jackson! Referring again to General Jackson's intuitions, and to Powers's idea that he was unable to render a reason to himself or others for what he chose to do, I should have thought that this very probably might have been the case, were there not such strong evidence to the contrary. The highest, or perhaps any high administrative ability is intuitive, and precedes argument, and rises above it. It is a revelation of the very thing to be done, and its propriety and necessity are felt so strongly that very likely it cannot be talked about; if the doer can likewise talk, it is an additional and gratuitous faculty, as little to be expected as that a poet should be able to write an explanatory criticism on his own poem. The English overlook this in their scheme of government, which requires that the members of the national executive should be orators, and the readiest and most fluent orators that can be found. The very fact (on which they are selected) that they are men of words makes it improbable that they are likewise men of deeds. And it is only tradition and old custom, founded on an obsolete state of things, that assigns any value to parliamentary oratory. The world has done with it, except as an intellectual pastime. The speeches have no effect till they are converted into newspaper paragraphs; and they had better be composed as such, in the first place, and oratory reserved for churches, courts of law, and public dinner-tables. July 10th.--My wife and I went yesterday forenoon to see the Church of San Marco, with which is connected a convent of Dominicans. . . . . The interior is not less than three or four hundred years old, and is in the classic style, with a flat ceiling, gilded, and a lofty arch, supported by pillars, between the nave and choir. There are no side aisles, but ranges of shrines on both sides of the nave, each beneath its own pair of pillars and pediments. The pavement is of brick, with here and there a marble tombstone inlaid. It is not a magnificent church; but looks dingy with time and apparent neglect, though rendered sufficiently interesting by statues of mediaeval date by John of Bologna and other old sculptors, and by monumental busts and bas-reliefs: also, there is a wooden crucifix by Giotto, with ancient gilding on it; and a painting of Christ, which was considered a wonderful work in its day. Each shrine, or most of them, at any rate, had its dark old picture, and there is a very old and hideous mosaic of the Virgin and two saints, which I looked at very slightly, with the purpose of immediately forgetting it. Savonarola, the reforming monk, was a brother of this convent, and was torn from its shelter, to be subsequently hanged and burnt in the Grand Ducal Piazza. A large chapel in the left transept is of the Salviati family, dedicated to St. Anthony, and decorated with several statues of saints, and with some old frescos. When we had more than sufficiently examined these, the custode proposed to show us some frescos of Fra Angelico, and conducted us into a large cloister, under the arches of which, and beneath a covering of glass, he pointed to a picture of St. Dominic kneeling at the Cross. There are two or three others by the angelic friar in different parts of the cloister, and a regular series, filling up all the arches, by various artists. Its four-sided, cloistered walk surrounds a square, open to the sky as usual, and paved with gray stones that have no inscriptions, but probably are laid over graves. Its walls, however, are incrusted, and the walk itself is paved with monumental inscriptions on marble, none of which, so far as I observed, were of ancient date. Either the fashion of thus commemorating the dead is not ancient in Florence, or the old tombstones have been removed to make room for new ones. I do not know where the monks themselves have their burial-place; perhaps in an inner cloister, which we did not see. All the inscriptions here, I believe, were in memory of persons not connected with the convent. A door in the wall of the cloister admitted us into the chapter-house, its interior moderately spacious, with a roof formed by intersecting arches. Three sides of the walls were covered with blessed whitewash; but on the fourth side, opposite to the entrance, was a great fresco of the Crucifixion, by Fra Angelico, surrounded with a border or pictured framework, in which are represented the heads of saints, prophets, and sibyls, as large as life. The cross of the Saviour and those of the thieves were painted against a dark red sky; the figures upon them were lean and attenuated, evidently the vague conceptions of a man who had never seen a naked figure. Beneath, was a multitude of people, most of whom were saints who had lived and been martyred long after the Crucifixion; and some of these had wounds from which gilded rays shone forth, as if the inner glory and blessedness of the holy men blazed through them. It is a very ugly picture, and its ugliness is not that of strength and vigor, but of weakness and incompetency. Fra Angelico should have confined himself to miniature heads, in which his delicacy of touch and minute labor often produce an excellent effect. The custode informed us that there were more frescos of this pious artist in the interior of the convent, into which I might be allowed admittance, but not my wife. I declined seeing them, and heartily thanked heaven for my escape. Returning through the church, we stopped to look at a shrine on the right of the entrance, where several wax candles were lighted, and the steps of which were crowded with worshippers. It was evidently a spot of special sanctity, and, approaching the steps, we saw, behind a gilded framework of stars and protected by glass, a wooden image of the Saviour, naked, covered with spots of blood, crowned with thorns, and expressing all the human wretchedness that the carver's skill could represent. The whole shrine, within the glass, was hung with offerings, as well of silver and gold as of tinsel and trumpery, and the body of Christ glistened with gold chains and ornaments, and with watches of silver and gold, some of which appeared to be of very old manufacture, and others might be new. Amid all this glitter the face of pain and grief looked forth, not a whit comforted. While we stood there, a woman, who had been praying, arose from her knees and laid an offering of a single flower upon the shrine. The corresponding arch, on the opposite side of the entrance, contained a wax-work within a large glass case, representing the Nativity. I do not remember how the Blessed Infant looked, but the Virgin was gorgeously dressed in silks, satins, and gauzes, with spangles and ornaments of all kinds, and, I believe, brooches of real diamonds on her bosom. Her attire, judging from its freshness and newness of glitter, might have been put on that very morning. July 13th.--We went for the second time, this morning, to the Academy of Fine Arts, and I looked pretty thoroughly at the Pre-Raphaelite pictures, few of which are really worth looking at nowadays. Cimabue and Giotto might certainly be dismissed, henceforth and forever, without any detriment to the cause of good art. There is what seems to me a better picture than either of these has produced, by Bonamico Buffalmacco, an artist of about their date or not long after. The first real picture in the series is the "Adoration of the Magi," by Gentile da Fabriano, a really splendid work in all senses, with noble and beautiful figures in it, and a crowd of personages, managed with great skill. Three pictures by Perugino are the only other ones I cared to look at. In one of these, the face of the Virgin who holds the dead Christ on her knees has a deeper expression of woe than can ever have been painted since. After Perugino the pictures cease to be interesting; the art came forward with rapid strides, but the painters and their productions do not take nearly so much hold of the spectator as before. They all paint better than Giotto and Cimabue,--in some respects better than Perugino; but they paint in vain, probably because they were not nearly so much in earnest, and meant far less, though possessing the dexterity to express far more. Andrea del Sarto appears to have been a good painter, yet I always turn away readily from his pictures. I looked again, and for a good while, at Carlo Dolce's portrait of the Eternal Father, for it is a miracle and masterpiece of absurdity, and almost equally a miracle of pictorial art. It is the All-powerless, a fair-haired, soft, consumptive deity, with a mouth that has fallen open through very weakness. He holds one hand on his stomach, as if the wickedness and wretchedness of mankind made him qualmish; and he is looking down out of Heaven with an expression of pitiable appeal, or as if seeking somewhere for assistance in his heavy task of ruling the universe. You might fancy such a being falling on his knees before a strong-willed man, and beseeching him to take the reins of omnipotence out of his hands. No wonder that wrong gets the better of right, and that good and ill are confounded, if the Supreme Head were as here depicted; for I never saw, and nobody else ever saw, so perfect a representation of a person burdened with a task infinitely above his strength. If Carlo Dolce had been wicked enough to know what he was doing, the picture would have been most blasphemous,--a satire, in the very person of the Almighty, against all incompetent rulers, and against the rickety machine and crazy action of the universe. Heaven forgive me for such thoughts as this picture has suggested! It must be added that the great original defect in the character as here represented is an easy good-nature. I wonder what Michael Angelo would have said to this painting. In the large, enclosed court connected with the Academy there are a number of statues, bas-reliefs, and casts, and what was especially interesting, the vague and rude commencement of a statue of St. Matthew by Michael Angelo. The conceptions of this great sculptor were so godlike that he seems to have been discontented at not likewise possessing the godlike attribute of creating and embodying them with an instantaneous thought, and therefore we often find sculptures from his hand left at the critical point of their struggle to get out of the marble. The statue of St. Matthew looks like the antediluvian fossil of a human being of an epoch when humanity was mightier and more majestic than now, long ago imprisoned in stone, and half uncovered again. July 16th.--We went yesterday forenoon to see the Bargello. I do not know anything more picturesque in Florence than the great interior court of this ancient Palace of the Podesta, with the lofty height of the edifice looking down into the enclosed space, dark and stern, and the armorial bearings of a long succession of magistrates carved in stone upon the walls, a garland, as it were, of these Gothic devices extending quite round the court. The best feature of the whole is the broad stone staircase, with its heavy balustrade, ascending externally from the court to the iron-grated door in the second story. We passed the sentinels under the lofty archway that communicates with the street, and went up the stairs without being questioned or impeded. At the iron-grated door, however, we were met by two officials in uniform, who courteously informed us that there was nothing to be exhibited in the Bargello except an old chapel containing some frescos by Giotto, and that these could only be seen by making a previous appointment with the custode, he not being constantly on hand. I was not sorry to escape the frescos, though one of them is a portrait of Dante. We next went to the Church of the Badia, which is built in the form of a Greek cross, with a flat roof embossed and once splendid with now tarnished gold. The pavement is of brick, and the walls of dark stone, similar to that of the interior of the cathedral (pietra serena), and there being, according to Florentine custom, but little light, the effect was sombre, though the cool gloomy dusk was refreshing after the hot turmoil and dazzle of the adjacent street. Here we found three or four Gothic tombs, with figures of the deceased persons stretched in marble slumber upon them. There were likewise a picture or two, which it was impossible to see; indeed, I have hardly ever met with a picture in a church that was not utterly wasted and thrown away in the deep shadows of the chapel it was meant to adorn. If there is the remotest chance of its being seen, the sacristan hangs a curtain before it for the sake of his fee for withdrawing it. In the chapel of the Bianco family we saw (if it could be called seeing) what is considered the finest oil-painting of Fra Filippo Lippi. It was evidently hung with reference to a lofty window on the other side of the church, whence sufficient light might fall upon it to show a picture so vividly painted as this is, and as most of Fra Filippo Lippi's are. The window was curtained, however, and the chapel so dusky that I could make out nothing. Several persons came in to say their prayers during the little time that we remained in the church, and as we came out we passed a good woman who sat knitting in the coolness of the vestibule, which was lined with mural tombstones. Probably she spends the day thus, keeping up the little industry of her fingers, slipping into the church to pray whenever a devotional impulse swells into her heart, and asking an alms as often as she sees a person of charitable aspect. From the church we went to the Uffizi gallery, and reinspected the greater part of it pretty faithfully. We had the good fortune, too, again to get admittance into the cabinet of bronzes, where we admired anew the wonderful airiness of John of Bologna's Mercury, which, as I now observed, rests on nothing substantial, but on the breath of a zephyr beneath him. We also saw a bronze bust of one of the Medici by Benvenuto Cellini, and a thousand other things the curiosity of which is overlaid by their multitude. The Roman eagle, which I have recorded to be about the size of a blackbird, I now saw to be as large as a pigeon. On our way towards the door of the gallery, at our departure, we saw the cabinet of gems open, and again feasted our eyes with its concentrated brilliancies and magnificences. Among them were two crystal cups, with engraved devices, and covers of enamelled gold, wrought by Benvenuto Cellini, and wonderfully beautiful. But it is idle to mention one or two things, when all are so beautiful and curious; idle, too, because language is not burnished gold, with here and there a brighter word flashing like a diamond; and therefore no amount of talk will give the slightest idea of one of these elaborate handiworks. July 27th.--I seldom go out nowadays, having already seen Florence tolerably well, and the streets being very hot, and myself having been engaged in sketching out a romance [The Marble Faun.--ED.], which whether it will ever come to anything is a point yet to be decided. At any rate, it leaves me little heart for journalizing and describing new things; and six months of uninterrupted monotony would be more valuable to me just now, than the most brilliant succession of novelties. Yesterday I spent a good deal of time in watching the setting out of a wedding party from our door; the bride being the daughter of an English lady, the Countess of ------. After all, there was nothing very characteristic. The bridegroom is a young man of English birth, son of the Countess of St. G------, who inhabits the third piano of this Casa del Bello. The very curious part of the spectacle was the swarm of beggars who haunted the street all day; the most wretched mob conceivable, chiefly women, with a few blind people, and some old men and boys. Among these the bridal party distributed their beneficence in the shape of some handfuls of copper, with here and there a half-paul intermixed; whereupon the whole wretched mob flung themselves in a heap upon the pavement, struggling, lighting, tumbling one over another, and then looking up to the windows with petitionary gestures for more and more, and still for more. Doubtless, they had need enough, for they looked thin, sickly, ill-fed, and the women ugly to the last degree. The wedding party had a breakfast above stairs, which lasted till four o'clock, and then the bridegroom took his bride in a barouche and pair, which was already crammed with his own luggage and hers. . . . . He was a well-looking young man enough, in a uniform of French gray with silver epaulets; more agreeable in aspect than his bride, who, I think, will have the upper hand in their domestic life. I observed that, on getting into the barouche, he sat down on her dress, as he could not well help doing, and received a slight reprimand in consequence. After their departure, the wedding guests took their leave; the most noteworthy person being the Pope's Nuncio (the young man being son of the Pope's Chamberlain, and one of the Grand Duke's Noble Guard), an ecclesiastical personage in purple stockings, attended by two priests, all of whom got into a coach, the driver and footmen of which wore gold-laced cocked hats and other splendors. To-day I paid a short visit to the gallery of the Pitti Palace. I looked long at a Madonna of Raphael's, the one which is usually kept in the Grand Duke's private apartments, only brought into the public gallery for the purpose of being copied. It is the holiest of all Raphael's Madonnas, with a great reserve in the expression, a sense of being apart, and yet with the utmost tenderness and sweetness; although she drops her eyelids before her like a veil, as it were, and has a primness of eternal virginity about the mouth. It is one of Raphael's earlier works, when he mixed more religious sentiment with his paint than afterwards. Perugino's pictures give the impression of greater sincerity and earnestness than Raphael's, though the genius of Raphael often gave him miraculous vision. July 28th.--Last evening we went to the Powers's, and sat with them on the terrace, at the top of the house, till nearly ten o'clock. It was a delightful, calm, summer evening, and we were elevated far above all the adjacent roofs, and had a prospect of the greater part of Florence and its towers, and the surrounding hills, while directly beneath us rose the trees of a garden, and they hardly sent their summits higher than we sat. At a little distance, with only a house or two between, was a theatre in full action, the Teatro Goldoni, which is an open amphitheatre, in the ancient fashion, without any roof. We could see the upper part of the proscenium, and, had we been a little nearer, might have seen the whole performance, as did several boys who crept along the tops of the surrounding houses. As it was, we heard the music and the applause, and now and then an actor's stentorian tones, when we chose to listen. Mrs. P------ and my wife, U---- and Master Bob, sat in a group together, and chatted in one corner of our aerial drawing-room, while Mr. Powers and myself leaned against the parapet, and talked of innumerable things. When the clocks struck the hour, or the bells rang from the steeples, as they are continually doing, I spoke of the sweetness of the Florence bells, the tones of some of them being as if the bell were full of liquid melody, and shed it through the air on being upturned. I had supposed, in my lack of musical ear, that the bells of the Campanile were the sweetest; but Mr. Powers says that there is a defect in their tone, and that the bell of the Palazzo Vecchio is the most melodious he ever heard. Then he spoke of his having been a manufacturer of organs, or, at least, of reeds for organs, at one period of his life. I wonder what he has not been! He told me of an invention of his in the musical line, a jewsharp with two tongues; and by and by he produced it for my inspection. It was carefully kept in a little wooden case, and was very neatly and elaborately constructed, with screws to tighten it, and a silver centre-piece between the two tongues. Evidently a great deal of thought had been bestowed on this little harp; but Mr. Powers told me that it was an utter failure, because the tongues were apt to interfere and jar with one another, although the strain of music was very sweet and melodious-- as he proved, by playing on it a little--when everything went right. It was a youthful production, and he said that its failure had been a great disappointment to him at the time; whereupon I congratulated him that his failures had been in small matters, and his successes in great ones. We talked, furthermore, about instinct and reason, and whether the brute creation have souls, and, if they have none, how justice is to be done them for their sufferings here; and Mr. Powers came finally to the conclusion that brutes suffer only in appearance, and that God enjoys for them all that they seem to enjoy, and that man is the only intelligent and sentient being. We reasoned high about other states of being; and I suggested the possibility that there might be beings inhabiting this earth, contemporaneously with us, and close beside us, but of whose existence and whereabout we could have no perception, nor they of ours, because we are endowed with different sets of senses; for certainly it was in God's power to create beings who should communicate with nature by innumerable other senses than those few which we possess. Mr. Powers gave hospitable reception to this idea, and said that it had occurred to himself; and he has evidently thought much and earnestly about such matters; but is apt to let his idea crystallize into a theory, before he can have sufficient data for it. He is a Swedenborgian in faith. The moon had risen behind the trees, while we were talking, and Powers intimated his idea that beings analogous to men--men in everything except the modifications necessary to adapt them to their physical circumstances--inhabited the planets, and peopled them with beautiful shapes. Each planet, however, must have its own standard of the beautiful, I suppose; and probably his sculptor's eye would not see much to admire in the proportions of an inhabitant of Saturn. The atmosphere of Florence, at least when we ascend a little way into it, suggests planetary speculations. Galileo found it so, and Mr. Powers and I pervaded the whole universe; but finally crept down his garret-stairs, and parted, with a friendly pressure of the hand. VILLA MONTANTO. MONTE BENI. August 2d.--We had grown weary of the heat of Florence within the walls, . . . . there being little opportunity for air and exercise except within the precincts of our little garden, which, also, we feared might breed malaria, or something akin to it. We have therefore taken this suburban villa for the two next months, and, yesterday morning, we all came out hither. J----- had preceded us with B. P------. The villa is on a hill called Bellosguardo, about a mile beyond the Porta Romana. Less than half an hour's walk brought us, who were on foot, to the iron gate of our villa, which we found shut and locked. We shouted to be let in, and while waiting for somebody to appear, there was a good opportunity to contemplate the external aspect of the villa. After we had waited a few minutes, J----- came racing down to the gate, laughing heartily, and said that Bob and he had been in the house, but had come out, shutting the door behind them; and as the door closed with a springlock, they could not get in again. Now as the key of the outer gate as well as that of the house itself was in the pocket of J-----'s coat, left inside, we were shut out of our own castle, and compelled to carry on a siege against it, without much likelihood of taking it, although the garrison was willing to surrender. But B. P------ called in the assistance of the contadini who cultivate the ground, and live in the farm-house close by; and one of them got into a window by means of a ladder, so that the keys were got, the gates opened, and we finally admitted. Before examining any other part of the house, we climbed to the top of the tower, which, indeed, is not very high, in proportion to its massive square. Very probably, its original height was abbreviated, in compliance with the law that lowered so many of the fortified towers of noblemen within the walls of Florence. . . . . The stairs were not of stone, built in with the original mass of the tower, as in English castles, but of now decayed wood, which shook beneath us, and grew more and more crazy as we ascended. It will not be many years before the height of the tower becomes unattainable. . . . . Near at hand, in the vicinity of the city, we saw the convent of Monte Olivetto, and other structures that looked like convents, being built round an enclosed square; also numerous white villas, many of which had towers, like that we were standing upon, square and massive, some of them battlemented on the summit, and others apparently modernized for domestic purposes. Among them U---- pointed out Galileo's tower, whither she made an excursion the other day. It looked lower than our own, but seemed to stand on a higher elevation. We also saw the duke's villa, the Poggio, with a long avenue of cypresses leading from it, as if a funeral were going forth. And having wasted thus much of description on the landscape, I will finish with saying that it lacked only water to be a very fine one. It is strange what a difference the gleam of water makes, and how a scene awakens and comes to life wherever it is visible. The landscape, moreover, gives the beholder (at least, this beholder) a sense of oppressive sunshine and scanty shade, and does not incite a longing to wander through it on foot, as a really delightful landscape should. The vine, too, being cultivated in so trim a manner, does not suggest that idea of luxuriant fertility, which is the poetical notion of a vineyard. The olive-orchards have a pale and unlovely hue. An English view would have been incomparably richer in its never-fading green; and in my own country, the wooded hills would have been more delightful than these peaks and ridges of dreary and barren sunshine; and there would have been the bright eyes of half a dozen little lakes, looking heavenward, within an extent like that of the Val d' Arno. By and by mamma's carriage came along the dusty road, and passed through the iron gateway, which we had left open for her reception. We shouted down to her and R-----, and they waved their handkerchiefs upward to us; and, on my way down, I met R----- and the servant coming up through the ghostly rooms. The rest of the day we spent mostly in exploring the premises. The house itself is of almost bewildering extent, insomuch that we might each of us have a suite of rooms individually. I have established myself on the ground-floor, where I have a dressing-room, a large vaulted saloon, hung with yellow damask, and a square writing-study, the walls and ceilings of the two latter apartments being ornamented with angels and cherubs aloft in fresco, and with temples, statues, vases, broken columns, peacocks, parrots, vines, and sunflowers below. I know not how many more saloons, anterooms, and sleeping-chambers there are on this same basement story, besides an equal number over them, and a great subterranean establishment. I saw some immense jars there, which I suppose were intended to hold oil; and iron kettles, for what purpose I cannot tell. There is also a chapel in the house, but it is locked up, and we cannot yet with certainty find the door of it, nor even, in this great wilderness of a house, decide absolutely what space the holy precincts occupy. Adjoining U----'s chamber, which is in the tower, there is a little oratory, hung round with sacred prints of very ancient date, and with crucifixes, holy-water vases, and other consecrated things; and here, within a glass case, there is the representation of an undraped little boy in wax, very prettily modelled, and holding up a heart that looks like a bit of red sealing-wax. If I had found him anywhere else I should have taken him for Cupid; but, being in an oratory, I presume him to have some religious signification. In the servants' room a crucifix hung on one side of the bed, and a little vase for holy water, now overgrown with a cobweb, on the other; and, no doubt, all the other sleeping-apartments would have been equally well provided, only that their occupants were to be heretics. The lower floor of the house is tolerably furnished, and looks cheerful with its frescos, although the bare pavements in every room give an impression of discomfort. But carpets are universally taken up in Italy during summer-time. It must have been an immense family that could have ever filled such a house with life. We go on voyages of discovery, and when in quest of any particular point, are likely enough to fetch up at some other. This morning I had difficulty in finding my way again to the top of the tower. One of the most peculiar rooms is constructed close to the tower, under the roof of the main building, but with no external walls on two sides! It is thus left open to the air, I presume for the sake of coolness. A parapet runs round the exposed sides for the sake of security. Some of the palaces in Florence have such open loggias in their upper stories, and I saw others on our journey hither, after arriving in Tuscany. The grounds immediately around the house are laid out in gravel-walks, and ornamented with shrubbery, and with what ought to be a grassy lawn; but the Italian sun is quite as little favorable to beauty of that kind as our own. I have enjoyed the luxury, however, almost for the first time since I left my hill-top at the Wayside, of flinging myself at full length on the ground without any fear of catching cold. Moist England would punish a man soundly for taking such liberties with her greensward. A podere, or cultivated tract, comprising several acres, belongs to the villa, and seems to be fertile, like all the surrounding country. The possessions of different proprietors are not separated by fences, but only marked out by ditches; and it seems possible to walk miles and miles, along the intersecting paths, without obstruction. The rural laborers, so far as I have observed, go about in their shirt-sleeves, and look very much like tanned and sunburnt Yankees. Last night it was really a work of time and toil to go about making our defensive preparations for the night; first closing the iron gate, then the ponderous and complicated fastenings of the house door, then the separate barricadoes of each iron-barred window on the lower floor, with a somewhat slighter arrangement above. There are bolts and shutters, however, for every window in the house, and I suppose it would not be amiss to put them all in use. Our garrison is so small that we must depend more upon the strength of our fortifications than upon our own active efforts in case of an attack. In England, in an insulated country house, we should need all these bolts and bars, and Italy is not thought to be the safer country of the two. It deserves to be recorded that the Count Montanto, a nobleman, and seemingly a man of property, should deem it worth while to let his country seat, and reside during the hot months in his palace in the city, for the consideration of a comparatively small sum a month. He seems to contemplate returning hither for the autumn and winter, when the situation must be very windy and bleak, and the cold death-like in these great halls; and then, it is to be supposed, he will let his palace in town. The Count, through the agency of his son, bargained very stiffly for, and finally obtained, three dollars in addition to the sum which we at first offered him. This indicates that even a little money is still a matter of great moment in Italy. Signor del Bello, who, I believe, is also a nobleman, haggled with us about some cracked crockery at our late residence, and finally demanded and received fifty cents in compensation. But this poor gentleman has been a spendthrift, and now acts as the agent of another. August 3d.--Yesterday afternoon William Story called on me, he being on a day or two's excursion from Siena, where he is spending the summer with his family. He was very entertaining and conversative, as usual, and said, in reply to my question whether he were not anxious to return to Cleopatra, that he had already sketched out another subject for sculpture, which would employ him during next winter. He told me, what I was glad to hear, that his sketches of Italian life, intended for the "Atlantic Monthly," and supposed to be lost, have been recovered. Speaking of the superstitiousness of the Italians, he said that they universally believe in the influence of the evil eye. The evil influence is supposed not to be dependent on the will of the possessor of the evil eye; on the contrary, the persons to whom he wishes well are the very ones to suffer by it. It is oftener found in monks than in any other class of people; and on meeting a monk, and encountering his eye, an Italian usually makes a defensive sign by putting both hands behind him, with the forefingers and little fingers extended, although it is a controverted point whether it be not more efficacious to extend the hand with its outspread fingers towards the suspected person. It is considered an evil omen to meet a monk on first going out for the day. The evil eye may be classified with the phenomena of mesmerism. The Italians, especially the Neapolitans, very generally wear amulets. Pio Nono, perhaps as being the chief of all monks and other religious people, is supposed to have an evil eye of tenfold malignancy; and its effect has been seen in the ruin of all schemes for the public good so soon as they are favored by him. When the pillar in the Piazza de' Spagna, commemorative of his dogma of the Immaculate Conception, was to be erected, the people of Rome refused to be present, or to have anything to do with it, unless the pope promised to abstain from interference. His Holiness did promise, but so far broke his word as to be present one day while it was being erected, and on that day a man was killed. A little while ago there was a Lord Clifford, an English Catholic nobleman, residing in Italy, and, happening to come to Rome, he sent his compliments to Pio Nono, and requested the favor of an interview. The pope, as it happened, was indisposed, or for some reason could not see his lordship, but very kindly sent him his blessing. Those who knew of it shook their heads, and intimated that it would go ill with his lordship now that he had been blessed by Pio Nono, and the very next day poor Lord Clifford was dead! His Holiness had better construe the scriptural injunction literally, and take to blessing his enemies. I walked into town with J------ this morning, and, meeting a monk in the Via Furnace, I thought it no more than reasonable, as the good father fixed his eyes on me, to provide against the worst by putting both hands behind me, with the forefingers and little fingers stuck out. In speaking of the little oratory connected with U----'s chamber, I forgot to mention the most remarkable object in it. It is a skull, the size of life (or death). . . . . This part of the house must be very old, probably coeval with the tower. The ceiling of U----'s apartment is vaulted with intersecting arches; and adjoining it is a very large saloon, likewise with a vaulted and groined ceiling, and having a cushioned divan running all round the walls. The windows of these rooms look out on the Val d' Arno. The apartment above this saloon is of the same size, and hung with engraved portraits, printed on large sheets by the score and hundred together, and enclosed in wooden frames. They comprise the whole series of Roman emperors, the succession of popes, the kings of Europe, the doges of Venice, and the sultans of Turkey. The engravings bear different dates between 1685 and thirty years later, and were executed at Rome. August 4th.--We ascended our tower yesterday afternoon to see the sunset. In my first sketch of the Val d' Arno I said that the Arno seemed to hold its course near the bases of the hills. I now observe that the line of trees which marks its current divides the valley into two pretty equal parts, and the river runs nearly east and west. . . . . At last, when it was growing dark, we went down, groping our way over the shaky staircases, and peeping into each dark chamber as we passed. I gratified J----- exceedingly by hitting my nose against the wall. Reaching the bottom, I went into the great saloon, and stood at a window watching the lights twinkle forth, near and far, in the valley, and listening to the convent bells that sounded from Monte Olivetto, and more remotely still. The stars came out, and the constellation of the Dipper hung exactly over the Val d' Arno, pointing to the North Star above the hills on my right. August 12th.--We drove into town yesterday afternoon, with Miss Blagden, to call on Mr. Kirkup, an old Englishman who has resided a great many years in Florence. He is noted as an antiquarian, and has the reputation of being a necromancer, not undeservedly, as he is deeply interested in spirit-rappings, and holds converse, through a medium, with dead poets and emperors. He lives in an old house, formerly a residence of the Knights Templars, hanging over the Arno, just as you come upon the Ponte Vecchio; and, going up a dark staircase and knocking at a door on one side of the landing-place, we were received by Mr. Kirkup. He had had notice of our visit, and was prepared for it, being dressed in a blue frock-coat of rather an old fashion, with a velvet collar, and in a thin waistcoat and pantaloons fresh from the drawer; looking very sprucely, in short, and unlike his customary guise, for Miss Blagden hinted to us that the poor gentleman is generally so untidy that it is not quite pleasant to take him by the hand. He is rather low of stature, with a pale, shrivelled face, and hair and beard perfectly white, and the hair of a particularly soft and silken texture. He has a high, thin nose, of the English aristocratic type; his eyes have a queer, rather wild look, and the eyebrows are arched above them, so that he seems all the time to be seeing something that strikes him with surprise. I judged him to be a little crack-brained, chiefly on the strength of this expression. His whole make is delicate, his hands white and small, and his appearance and manners those of a gentleman, with rather more embroidery of courtesy than belongs to an Englishman. He appeared to be very nervous, tremulous, indeed, to his fingers' ends, without being in any degree disturbed or embarrassed by our presence. Finally, he is very deaf; an infirmity that quite took away my pleasure in the interview, because it is impossible to say anything worth while when one is compelled to raise one's voice above its ordinary level. He ushered us through two or three large rooms, dark, dusty, hung with antique-looking pictures, and lined with bookcases containing, I doubt not, a very curious library. Indeed, he directed my attention to one case, and said that he had collected those works, in former days, merely for the sake of laughing at them. They were books of magic and occult sciences. What he seemed really to value, however, were some manuscript copies of Dante, of which he showed us two: one, a folio on parchment, beautifully written in German text, the letters as clear and accurately cut as printed type; the other a small volume, fit, as Mr. Kirkup said, to be carried in a capacious mediaeval sleeve. This also was on vellum, and as elegantly executed as the larger one; but the larger had beautiful illuminations, the vermilion and gold of which looked as brilliant now as they did five centuries ago. Both of these books were written early in the fourteenth century. Mr. Kirkup has also a plaster cast of Dante's face, which he believes to be the original one taken from his face after death; and he has likewise his own accurate tracing from Giotto's fresco of Dante in the chapel of the Bargello. This fresco was discovered through Mr. Kirkup's means, and the tracing is particularly valuable, because the original has been almost destroyed by rough usage in drawing out a nail that had been driven into the eye. It represents the profile of a youthful but melancholy face, and has the general outline of Dante's features in other portraits. Dante has held frequent communications with Mr. Kirkup through a medium, the poet being described by the medium as wearing the same dress seen in the youthful portrait, but as hearing more resemblance to the cast taken from his dead face than to the picture from his youthful one. There was a very good picture of Savonarola in one of the rooms, and many other portraits, paintings, and drawings, some of them ancient, and others the work of Mr. Kirkup himself. He has the torn fragment of an exquisite drawing of a nude figure by Rubens, and a portfolio of other curious drawings. And besides books and works of art, he has no end of antique knick-knackeries, none of which we had any time to look at; among others some instruments with which nuns used to torture themselves in their convents by way of penance. But the greatest curiosity of all, and no antiquity, was a pale, large-eyed little girl, about four years old, who followed the conjurer's footsteps wherever he went. She was the brightest and merriest little thing in the world, and frisked through those shadowy old chambers, among the dead people's trumpery, as gayly as a butterfly flits among flowers and sunshine. The child's mother was a beautiful girl named Regina, whose portrait Mr. Kirkup showed us on the wall. I never saw a more beautiful and striking face claiming to be a real one. She was a Florentine, of low birth, and she lived with the old necromancer as his spiritual medium. He showed us a journal, kept during her lifetime, and read from it his notes of an interview with the Czar Alexander, when that potentate communicated to Mr. Kirkup that he had been poisoned. The necromancer set a great value upon Regina, . . . . and when she died he received her poor baby into his heart, and now considers it absolutely his own. At any rate, it is a happy belief for him, since he has nothing else in the world to love, and loves the child entirely, and enjoys all the bliss of fatherhood, though he must have lived as much as seventy years before he began to taste it. The child inherits her mother's gift of communication with the spiritual world, so that the conjurer can still talk with Regina through the baby which she left, and not only with her, but with Dante, and any other great spirit that may choose to visit him. It is a very strange story, and this child might be put at once into a romance, with all her history and environment; the ancient Knight Templar palace, with the Arno flowing under the iron-barred windows, and the Ponte Vecchio, covered with its jewellers' shops, close at hand; the dark, lofty chambers with faded frescos on the ceilings, black pictures hanging on the walls, old books on the shelves, and hundreds of musty antiquities, emitting an odor of past centuries; the shrivelled, white-bearded old man, thinking all the time of ghosts, and looking into the child's eyes to seek them; and the child herself, springing so freshly out of the soil, so pretty, so intelligent, so playful, with never a playmate save the conjurer and a kitten. It is a Persian kitten, and lay asleep in a window; but when I touched it, it started up at once in as gamesome a mood as the child herself. The child looks pale, and no wonder, seldom or never stirring out of that old palace, or away from the river atmosphere. Miss Blagden advised Mr. Kirkup to go with her to the seaside or into the country, and he did not deny that it might do her good, but seemed to be hampered by an old man's sluggishness and dislike of change. I think he will not live a great while, for he seems very frail. When he dies the little girl will inherit what property he may leave. A lady, Catharine Fleeting, an Englishwoman, and a friend of Mr. Kirkup, has engaged to take her in charge. She followed us merrily to the door, and so did the Persian kitten, and Mr. Kirkup shook hands with us, over and over again, with vivacious courtesy, his manner having been characterized by a great deal of briskness throughout the interview. He expressed himself delighted to have met one (whose books he had read), and said that the day would be a memorable one to him,--which I did not in the least believe. Mr. Kirkup is an intimate friend of Trelawny, author of "Adventures of a Younger Son," and, long ago, the latter promised him that, if he ever came into possession of the family estate, he would divide it with him. Trelawny did really succeed to the estate, and lost no time in forwarding to his friend the legal documents, entitling him to half of the property. But Mr. Kirkup declined the gift, as he himself was not destitute, and Trelawny had a brother. There were two pictures of Trelawny in the saloons, one a slight sketch on the wall, the other a half-length portrait in a Turkish dress; both handsome, but indicating no very amiable character. It is not easy to forgive Trelawny for uncovering dead Byron's limbs, and telling that terrible story about them,--equally disgraceful to himself, be it truth or a lie. It seems that Regina had a lover, and a sister who was very disreputable It rather adds than otherwise to the romance of the affair,--the idea that this pretty little elf has no right whatever to the asylum which she has found. Her name is Imogen. The small manuscript copy of Dante which he showed me was written by a Florentine gentleman of the fourteenth century, one of whose ancestors the poet had met and talked with in Paradise. August 19th.--Here is a good Italian incident, which I find in Valery. Andrea del Castagno was a painter in Florence in the fifteenth century; and he had a friend, likewise a painter, Domenico of Venice. The latter had the secret of painting in oils, and yielded to Castagno's entreaties to impart it to him. Desirous of being the sole possessor of this great secret, Castagno waited only the night to assassinate Domenico, who so little suspected his treachery, that he besought those who found him bleeding and dying to take him to his friend Castagno, that he might die in his arms. The murderer lived to be seventy-four years old, and his crime was never suspected till he himself revealed it on his death-bed. Domenico did actually die in Castagno's arms. The death scene would have been a good one for the latter to paint in oils. September 1st.--Few things journalizable have happened during the last month, because Florence and the neighborhood have lost their novelty; and furthermore, I usually spend the whole day at home, having been engaged in planning and sketching out a romance. I have now done with this for the present, and mean to employ the rest of the time we stay here chiefly in revisiting the galleries, and seeing what remains to be seen in Florence. Last Saturday, August 28th, we went to take tea at Miss Blagden's, who has a weekly reception on that evening. We found Mr. Powers there, and by and by Mr. Boott and Mr. Trollope came in. Miss ------ has lately been exercising her faculties as a spiritual writing-medium; and, the conversation turning on that subject, Mr. Powers related some things that he had witnessed through the agency of Mr. Home, who had held a session or two at his house. He described the apparition of two mysterious hands from beneath a table round which the party were seated. These hands purported to belong to the aunt of the Countess Cotterel, who was present, and were a pair of thin, delicate, aged, lady-like hands and arms, appearing at the edge of the table, and terminating at the elbow in a sort of white mist. One of the hands took up a fan and began to use it. The countess then said, "Fan yourself as you used to do, dear aunt"; and forthwith the hands waved the fan back and forth in a peculiar manner, which the countess recognized as the manner of her dead aunt. The spirit was then requested to fan each member of the party; and accordingly, each separate individual round the table was fanned in turn, and felt the breeze sensibly upon his face. Finally, the hands sank beneath the table, I believe Mr. Powers said; but I am not quite sure that they did not melt into the air. During this apparition, Mr. Home sat at the table, but not in such a position or within such distance that he could have put out or managed the spectral hands; and of this Mr. Powers satisfied himself by taking precisely the same position after the party had retired. Mr. Powers did not feel the hands at this time, but he afterwards felt the touch of infant hands, which were at the time invisible. He told of many of the wonders, which seem to have as much right to be set down as facts as anything else that depends on human testimony. For example, Mr. K------, one of the party, gave a sudden start and exclamation. He had felt on his knee a certain token, which could have been given him only by a friend, long ago in his grave. Mr. Powers inquired what was the last thing that had been given as a present to a deceased child; and suddenly both he and his wife felt a prick as of some sharp instrument, on their knees. The present had been a penknife. I have forgotten other incidents quite as striking as these; but, with the exception of the spirit-hands, they seemed to be akin to those that have been produced by mesmerism, returning the inquirer's thoughts and veiled recollections to himself, as answers to his queries. The hands are certainly an inexplicable phenomenon. Of course, they are not portions of a dead body, nor any other kind of substance; they are impressions on the two senses, sight and touch, but how produced I cannot tell. Even admitting their appearance,--and certainly I do admit it as freely and fully as if I had seen them myself,--there is no need of supposing them to come from the world of departed spirits. Powers seems to put entire faith in the verity of spiritual communications, while acknowledging the difficulty of identifying spirits as being what they pretend to be. He is a Swedenborgian, and so far prepared to put faith in many of these phenomena. As for Home, Powers gives a decided opinion that he is a knave, but thinks him so organized, nevertheless, as to be a particularly good medium for spiritual communications. Spirits, I suppose, like earthly people, are obliged to use such instruments as will answer their purposes; but rather than receive a message from a dead friend through the organism of a rogue or charlatan, methinks I would choose to wait till we meet. But what most astonishes me is the indifference with which I listen to these marvels. They throw old ghost stories quite into the shade; they bring the whole world of spirits down amongst us, visibly and audibly; they are absolutely proved to be sober facts by evidence that would satisfy us of any other alleged realities; and yet I cannot force my mind to interest myself in them. They are facts to my understanding, which, it might have been anticipated, would have been the last to acknowledge them; but they seem not to be facts to my intuitions and deeper perceptions. My inner soul does not in the least admit them; there is a mistake somewhere. So idle and empty do I feel these stories to be, that I hesitated long whether or no to give up a few pages of this not very important journal to the record of them. We have had written communications through Miss ------ with several spirits; my wife's father, mother, two brothers, and a sister, who died long ago, in infancy; a certain Mary Hall, who announces herself as the guardian spirit of Miss ------; and, queerest of all, a Mary Runnel, who seems to be a wandering spirit, having relations with nobody, but thrusts her finger into everybody's affairs. My wife's mother is the principal communicant; she expresses strong affection, and rejoices at the opportunity of conversing with her daughter. She often says very pretty things; for instance, in a dissertation upon heavenly music; but there is a lack of substance in her talk, a want of gripe, a delusive show, a sentimental surface, with no bottom beneath it. The same sort of thing has struck me in all the poetry and prose that I have read from spiritual sources. I should judge that these effusions emanated from earthly minds, but had undergone some process that had deprived them of solidity and warmth. In the communications between my wife and her mother, I cannot help thinking that (Miss ------ being unconsciously in a mesmeric state) all the responses are conveyed to her fingers from my wife's mind. . . . . We have tried the spirits by various test questions, on every one of which they have failed egregiously. Here, however, the aforesaid Mary Runnel comes into play. The other spirits have told us that the veracity of this spirit is not to be depended upon; and so, whenever it is possible, poor Mary Runnel is thrust forward to bear the odium of every mistake or falsehood. They have avowed themselves responsible for all statements signed by themselves, and have thereby brought themselves into more than one inextricable dilemma; but it is very funny, where a response or a matter of fact has not been thus certified, how invariably Mary Runnel is made to assume the discredit of it, on its turning out to be false. It is the most ingenious arrangement that could possibly have been contrived; and somehow or other, the pranks of this lying spirit give a reality to the conversations which the more respectable ghosts quite fail in imparting. The whole matter seems to me a sort of dreaming awake. It resembles a dream, in that the whole material is, from the first, in the dreamer's mind, though concealed at various depths below the surface; the dead appear alive, as they always do in dreams; unexpected combinations occur, as continually in dreams; the mind speaks through the various persons of the drama, and sometimes astonishes itself with its own wit, wisdom, and eloquence, as often in dreams; but, in both cases, the intellectual manifestations are really of a very flimsy texture. Mary Runnel is the only personage who does not come evidently from dream-land; and she, I think, represents that lurking scepticism, that sense of unreality, of which we are often conscious, amid the most vivid phantasmagoria of a dream. I should be glad to believe in the genuineness of these spirits, if I could; but the above is the conclusion to which my soberest thoughts tend. There remains, of course, a great deal for which I cannot account, and I cannot sufficiently wonder at the pigheadedness both of metaphysicians and physiologists, in not accepting the phenomena, so far as to make them the subject of investigation. In writing the communications, Miss ------ holds the pencil rather loosely between her fingers; it moves rapidly, and with equal facility whether she fixes her eyes on the paper or not. The handwriting has far more freedom than her own. At the conclusion of a sentence, the pencil lays itself down. She sometimes has a perception of each word before it is written; at other times, she is quite unconscious what is to come next. Her integrity is absolutely indubitable, and she herself totally disbelieves in the spiritual authenticity of what is communicated through her medium. September 3d.--We walked into Florence yesterday, betimes after breakfast, it being comfortably cool, and a gray, English sky; though, indeed, the clouds had a tendency to mass themselves more than they do on an overcast English day. We found it warmer in Florence, but, not inconveniently so, even in the sunniest streets and squares. We went to the Uffizi gallery, the whole of which with its contents is now familiar to us, except the room containing drawings; and our to-day's visit was especially to them. The door giving admittance to them is the very last in the gallery; and the rooms, three in number, are, I should judge, over the Loggia de' Lanzi, looking on the Grand Ducal Piazza. The drawings hang on the walls, framed and glazed; and number, perhaps, from one to two hundred in each room; but this is only a small portion of the collection, which amounts, it is said, to twenty thousand, and is reposited in portfolios. The sketches on the walls are changed, from time to time, so as to exhibit all the most interesting ones in turn. Their whole charm is artistic, imaginative, and intellectual, and in no degree of the upholstery kind; their outward presentment being, in general, a design hastily shadowed out, by means of colored crayons, on tinted paper, or perhaps scratched rudely in pen and ink; or drawn in pencil or charcoal, and half rubbed out; very rough things, indeed, in many instances, and the more interesting on that account, because it seems as if the artist had bestirred himself to catch the first glimpse of an image that did but reveal itself and vanish. The sheets, or sometimes scraps of paper, on which they are drawn, are discolored with age, creased, soiled; but yet you are magnetized by the hand of Raphael, Michael Angelo, Leonardo, or whoever may have jotted down those rough-looking master-touches. They certainly possess a charm that is lost in the finished picture; and I was more sensible of forecasting thought, skill, and prophetic design, in these sketches than in the most consummate works that have been elaborated from them. There is something more divine in these; for I suppose the first idea of a picture is real inspiration, and all the subsequent elaboration of the master serves but to cover up the celestial germ with something that belongs to himself. At any rate, the first sketch is the more suggestive, and sets the spectator's imagination at work; whereas the picture, if a good one, leaves him nothing to do; if bad, it confuses, stupefies, disenchants, and disheartens him. First thoughts have an aroma and fragrance in them, that they do not lose in three hundred years; for so old, and a good deal more, are some of these sketches. None interested me more than some drawings, on separate pieces of paper, by Perugino, for his picture of the mother and friends of Jesus round his dead body, now at the Pitti Palace. The attendant figures are distinctly made out, as if the Virgin, and John, and Mary Magdalen had each favored the painter with a sitting; but the body of Jesus lies in the midst, dimly hinted with a few pencil-marks. There were several designs by Michael Angelo, none of which made much impression on me; the most striking was a very ugly demon, afterwards painted in the Sistine Chapel. Raphael shows several sketches of Madonnas,--one of which has flowered into the Grand Duke's especial Madonna at the Pitti Palace, but with a different face. His sketches were mostly very rough in execution; but there were two or three designs for frescos, I think, in the Vatican, very carefully executed; perhaps because these works were mainly to be done by other hands than his own. It seems to one that the Pre-Raphaelite artists made more careful drawings than the later ones; and it rather surprised me to see how much science they possessed. We looked at few other things in the gallery; and, indeed, it was not one of the days when works of art find me impressible. We stopped a little while in the Tribune, but the Venus de' Medici seemed to me to-day little more than any other piece of yellowish white marble. How strange that a goddess should stand before us absolutely unrecognized, even when we know by previous revelations that she is nothing short of divine! It is also strange that, unless when one feels the ideal charm of a statue, it becomes one of the most tedious and irksome things in the world. Either it must be a celestial thing or an old lump of stone, dusty and time-soiled, and tiring out your patience with eternally looking just the same. Once in a while you penetrate through the crust of the old sameness, and see the statue forever new and immortally young. Leaving the gallery we walked towards the Duomo, and on our way stopped to look at the beautiful Gothic niches hollowed into the exterior walls of the Church of San Michele. They are now in the process of being cleaned, and each niche is elaborately inlaid with precious marbles, and some of them magnificently gilded; and they are all surmounted with marble canopies as light and graceful as frost-work. Within stand statues, St. George, and many other saints, by Donatello and others, and all taking a hold upon one's sympathies, even if they be not beautiful. Classic statues escape you with their slippery beauty, as if they were made of ice. Rough and ugly things can be clutched. This is nonsense, and yet it means something. . . . . The streets were thronged and vociferative with more life and outcry than usual. It must have been market-day in Florence, for the commerce of the streets was in great vigor, narrow tables being set out in them, and in the squares, burdened with all kinds of small merchandise, such as cheap jewelry, glistening as brightly as what we had just seen in the gem-room of the Uffizi; crockery ware; toys, books, Italian and French; silks; slippers; old iron; all advertised by the dealers with terribly loud and high voices, that reverberated harshly from side to side of the narrow streets. Italian street-cries go through the head; not that they are so very sharp, but exceedingly hard, like a blunt iron bar. We stood at the base of the Campanile, and looked at the bas-reliefs which wreathe it round; and, above them, a row of statues; and from bottom to top a marvellous minuteness of inlaid marbles, filling up the vast and beautiful design of this heaven-aspiring tower. Looking upward to its lofty summit,--where angels might alight, lapsing downward from heaven, and gaze curiously at the bustle of men below,--I could not but feel that there is a moral charm in this faithful minuteness of Gothic architecture, filling up its outline with a million of beauties that perhaps may never be studied out by a single spectator. It is the very process of nature, and no doubt produces an effect that we know not of. Classic architecture is nothing but an outline, and affords no little points, no interstices where human feelings may cling and overgrow it like ivy. The charm, as I said, seems to be moral rather than intellectual; for in the gem-room of the Uffizi you may see fifty designs, elaborated on a small scale, that have just as much merit as the design of the Campanile. If it were only five inches long, it might be a case for some article of toilet; being two hundred feet high, its prettiness develops into grandeur as well as beauty, and it becomes really one of the wonders of the world. The design of the Pantheon, on the contrary, would retain its sublimity on whatever scale it might be represented. Returning homewards, we crossed the Ponte Vecchio, and went to the Museum of Natural History, where we gained admittance into the rooms dedicated to Galileo. They consist of a vestibule, a saloon, and a semicircular tribune, covered with a frescoed dome, beneath which stands a colossal statue of Galileo, long-bearded, and clad in a student's gown, or some voluminous garb of that kind. Around the tribune, beside and behind the statue, are six niches,--in one of which is preserved a forefinger of Galileo, fixed on a little gilt pedestal, and pointing upward, under a glass cover. It is very much shrivelled and mummy-like, of the color of parchment, and is little more than a finger-bone, with the dry skin or flesh flaking away from it; on the whole, not a very delightful relic; but Galileo used to point heavenward with this finger, and I hope has gone whither he pointed. Another niche contains two telescopes, wherewith he made some of his discoveries; they are perhaps a yard long, and of very small calibre. Other astronomical instruments are displayed in the glass cases that line the rooms; but I did not understand their use any better than the monks, who wished to burn Galileo for his heterodoxy about the planetary system. . . . . After dinner I climbed the tower. . . . . Florence lay in the sunshine, level, compact, and small of compass. Above the tiled roofs rose the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, the loftiest and the most picturesque, though built, I suppose, with no idea of making it so. But it attains, in a singular degree, the end of causing the imagination to fly upward and alight on its airy battlements. Near it I beheld the square mass of Or San Michele, and farther to the left the bulky Duomo and the Campanile close beside it, like a slender bride or daughter; the dome of San Lorenzo too. The Arno is nowhere visible. Beyond, and on all sides of the city, the hills pile themselves lazily upward in ridges, here and there developing into a peak; towards their bases white villas were strewn numerously, but the upper region was lonely and bare. As we passed under the arch of the Porta Romana this morning, on our way into the city, we saw a queer object. It was what we at first took for a living man, in a garb of light reddish or yellowish red color, of antique or priestly fashion, and with a cowl falling behind. His face was of the same hue, and seemed to have been powdered, as the faces of maskers sometimes are. He sat in a cart, which he seemed to be driving into the Deity with a load of earthen jars and pipkins, the color of which was precisely like his own. On closer inspection, this priestly figure proved to be likewise an image of earthenware, but his lifelikeness had a very strange and rather ghastly effect. Adam, perhaps, was made of just such red earth, and had the complexion of this figure. September 7th.--I walked into town yesterday morning, by way of the Porta San Frediano. The gate of a city might be a good locality for a chapter in a novel, or for a little sketch by itself, whether by painter or writer. The great arch of the gateway, piercing through the depth and height of the massive masonry beneath the battlemented summit; the shadow brooding below, in the immense thickness of the wall and beyond it, the vista of the street, sunny and swarming with life; outside of the gate, a throng of carts, laden with fruits, vegetables, small flat barrels of wine, waiting to be examined by the custom-house officers; carriages too, and foot-passengers entering, and others swarming outward. Under the shadowy arch are the offices of the police and customs, and probably the guard-room of the soldiers, all hollowed out in the mass of the gateway. Civil officers loll on chairs in the shade, perhaps with an awning over their heads. Where the sun falls aslantwise under the arch a sentinel, with musket and bayonet, paces to and fro in the entrance, and other soldiers lounge close by. The life of the city seems to be compressed and made more intense by this barrier; and on passing within it you do not breathe quite so freely, yet are sensible of an enjoyment in the close elbowing throng, the clamor of high voices from side to side of the street, and the million of petty sights, actions, traffics, and personalities, all so squeezed together as to become a great whole. The street by which I entered led me to the Carraja Bridge; crossing which, I kept straight onward till I came to the Church of Santa Maria Novella. Doubtless, it looks just the same as when Boccaccio's party stood in a cluster on its broad steps arranging their excursion to the villa. Thence I went to the Church of St. Lorenzo, which I entered by the side door, and found the organ sounding and a religious ceremony going forward. It is a church of sombre aspect, with its gray walls and pillars, but was decked out for some festivity with hangings of scarlet damask and gold. I sat awhile to rest myself, and then pursued my way to the Duomo. I entered, and looked at Sir John Hawkwood's painted effigy, and at several busts and statues, and at the windows of the chapel surrounding the dome, through which the sunshine glowed, white in the outer air, but a hundred-hued splendor within. I tried to bring up the scene of Lorenzo de' Medici's attempted assassination, but with no great success; and after listening a little while to the chanting of the priests and acolytes, I went to the Bank. It is in a palace of which Raphael was the architect, in the Piazza Gran Duca. I next went, as a matter of course, to the Uffizi gallery, and, in the first place, to the Tribune, where the Venus de' Medici deigned to reveal herself rather more satisfactorily than at my last visit. . . . . I looked into all the rooms, bronzes, drawings, and gem-room; a volume might easily be written upon either subject. The contents of the gem-room especially require to be looked at separately in order to convince one's self of their minute magnificences; for, among so many, the eye slips from one to another with only a vague outward sense that here are whole shelves full of little miracles, both of nature's material and man's workmanship. Greater [larger] things can be reasonably well appreciated with a less scrupulous though broader attention; but in order to estimate the brilliancy of the diamond eyes of a little agate bust, for instance, you have to screw your mind down to them and nothing else. You must sharpen your faculties of observation to a point, and touch the object exactly on the right spot, or you do not appreciate it at all. It is a troublesome process when there are a thousand such objects to be seen. I stood at an open window in the transverse corridor, and looked down upon the Arno, and across at the range of edifices that impend over it on the opposite side. The river, I should judge, may be a hundred or a hundred and fifty yards wide in its course between the Ponte alle Grazie and the Ponte Vecchio; that is, the width between strand and strand is at least so much. The river, however, leaves a broad margin of mud and gravel on its right bank, on which water-weeds grow pretty abundantly, and creep even into the stream. On my first arrival in Florence I thought the goose-pond green of the water rather agreeable than otherwise; but its hue is now that of unadulterated mud, as yellow as the Tiber itself, yet not impressing me as being enriched with city sewerage like that other famous river. From the Ponte alle Grazie downward, half-way towards the Ponte Vecchio, there is an island of gravel, and the channel on each side is so shallow as to allow the passage of men and horses wading not overleg. I have seen fishermen wading the main channel from side to side, their feet sinking into the dark mud, and thus discoloring the yellow water with a black track visible, step by step, through its shallowness. But still the Arno is a mountain stream, and liable to be tetchy and turbulent like all its kindred, and no doubt it often finds its borders of hewn stone not too far apart for its convenience. Along the right shore, beneath the Uffizi and the adjacent buildings, there is a broad paved way, with a parapet; on the opposite shore the edifices are built directly upon the river's edge, and impend over the water, supported upon arches and machicolations, as I think that peculiar arrangement of buttressing arcades is called. The houses are picturesquely various in height, from two or three stories to seven; picturesque in hue likewise,--pea-green, yellow, white, and of aged discoloration,--but all with green blinds; picturesque also in the courts and galleries that look upon the river, and in the wide arches that open beneath, intended perhaps to afford a haven for the household boat. Nets were suspended before one or two of the houses, as if the inhabitants were in the habit of fishing out of window. As a general effect, the houses, though often palatial in size and height, have a shabby, neglected aspect, and are jumbled too closely together. Behind their range the city swells upward in a hillside, which rises to a great height above, forming, I believe, a part of the Boboli Gardens. I returned homewards over the Ponte Vecchio, which is a continuous street of ancient houses, except over the central arch, so that a stranger might easily cross the river without knowing it. In these small, old houses there is a community of goldsmiths, who set out their glass cases, and hang their windows with rings, bracelets, necklaces, strings of pearl, ornaments of malachite and coral, and especially with Florentine mosaics; watches, too, and snuff-boxes of old fashion or new; offerings for shrines also, such as silver hearts pierced with swords; an infinity of pretty things, the manufacture of which is continually going on in the little back-room of each little shop. This gewgaw business has been established on the Ponte Vecchio for centuries, although, long since, it was an art of far higher pretensions than now. Benvenuto Cellini had his workshop here, probably in one of these selfsame little nooks. It would have been a ticklish affair to be Benvenuto's fellow-workman within such narrow limits. Going out of the Porta Romana, I walked for some distance along the city wall, and then, turning to the left, toiled up the hill of Bellosguardo, through narrow zigzag lanes between high walls of stone or plastered brick, where the sun had the fairest chance to frizzle me. There were scattered villas and houses, here and there concentrating into a little bit of a street, paved with flag-stones from side to side, as in the city, and shadowed quite across its narrowness by the height of the houses. Mostly, however, the way was inhospitably sunny, and shut out by the high wall from every glimpse of a view, except in one spot, where Florence spread itself before my eyes, with every tower, dome, and spire which it contains. A little way farther on my own gray tower rose before me, the most welcome object that I had seen in the course of the day. September 10th.--I went into town again yesterday, by way of the Porta San Frediano, and observed that this gate (like the other gates of Florence, as far as I have observed) is a tall, square structure of stone or brick, or both, rising high above the adjacent wall, and having a range of open loggie in the upper story. The arch externally is about half the height of the structure. Inside, towards the town, it rises nearly to the roof. On each side of the arch there is much room for offices, apartments, storehouses, or whatever else. On the outside of the gate, along the base, are those iron rings and sockets for torches, which are said to be the distinguishing symbol of illustrious houses. As contrasted with the vista of the narrow, swarming street through the arch from without, the view from the inside might be presented with a glimpse of the free blue sky. I strolled a little about Florence, and went into two or three churches; into that of the Annunziata for one. I have already described this church, with its general magnificence, and it was more magnificent than ever to-day, being hung with scarlet silk and gold-embroidery. A great many people were at their devotions, thronging principally around the Virgin's shrine. I was struck now with the many bas-reliefs and busts in the costume of their respective ages, and seemingly with great accuracy of portraiture, in the passage leading from the front of the church into the cloisters. The marble was not at all abashed nor degraded by being made to assume the guise of the mediaeval furred robe, or the close-fitting tunic with elaborate ruff, or the breastplate and gorget, or the flowing wig, or whatever the actual costume might be; and one is sensible of a rectitude and reality in the affair, and respects the dead people for not putting themselves into an eternal masquerade. The dress of the present day will look equally respectable in one or two hundred years. The Fair is still going on, and one of its principal centres is before this church, in the Piazza of the Annunziata. Cloth is the chief commodity offered for sale, and none of the finest; coarse, unbleached linen and cotton prints for country-people's wear, together with yarn, stockings, and here and there an assortment of bright-colored ribbons. Playthings, of a very rude fashion, were also displayed; likewise books in Italian and French; and a great deal of iron-work. Both here and in Rome they have this odd custom of offering rusty iron implements for sale, spread out on the pavements. There was a good deal of tinware, too, glittering in the sunshine, especially around the pedestal of the bronze statue of Duke Ferdinand, who curbs his horse and looks down upon the bustling piazza in a very stately way. . . . . The people attending the fair had mostly a rustic appearance; sunburnt faces, thin frames; no beauty, no bloom, no joyousness of young or old; an anxious aspect, as if life were no easy or holiday matter with them; but I should take them to be of a kindly nature, and reasonably honest. Except the broad-brimmed Tuscan hats of the women, there was no peculiarity of costume. At a careless glance I could very well have mistaken most of the men for Yankees; as for the women, there is very little resemblance between them and ours,--the old being absolutely hideous, and the young ones very seldom pretty. It was a very dull crowd. They do not generate any warmth among themselves by contiguity; they have no pervading sentiment, such as is continually breaking out in rough merriment from an American crowd; they have nothing to do with one another; they are not a crowd, considered as one mass, but a collection of individuals. A despotic government has perhaps destroyed their principle of cohesion, and crumbled them to atoms. Italian crowds are noted for their civility; possibly they deserve credit for native courtesy and gentleness; possibly, on the other hand, the crowd has not spirit and self-consciousness enough to be rampant. I wonder whether they will ever hold another parliament in the Piazza of Santa Croce! I paid a visit to the gallery of the Pitti Palace. There is too large an intermixture of Andrea del Sarto's pictures in this gallery; everywhere you see them, cold, proper, and uncriticisable, looking so much like first-rate excellence, that you inevitably quarrel with your own taste for not admiring them. . . . . It was one of the days when my mind misgives me whether the pictorial art be not a humbug, and when the minute accuracy of a fly in a Dutch picture of fruit and flowers seems to me something more reliable than the master-touches of Raphael. The gallery was considerably thronged, and many of the visitors appeared to be from the country, and of a class intermediate between gentility and labor. Is there such a rural class in Italy? I saw a respectable-looking man feeling awkward and uncomfortable in a new and glossy pair of pantaloons not yet bent and creased to his natural movement. Nothing pleased me better to-day than some amber cups, in one of the cabinets of curiosities. They are richly wrought, and the material is as if the artist had compressed a great deal of sunshine together, and when sufficiently solidified had moulded these cups out of it and let them harden. This simile was suggested by ------. Leaving the palace, I entered the Boboli Gardens, and wandered up and down a good deal of its uneven surface, through broad, well-kept edges of box, sprouting loftily, trimmed smoothly, and strewn between with cleanly gravel; skirting along plantations of aged trees, throwing a deep shadow within their precincts; passing many statues, not of the finest art, yet approaching so near it, as to serve just as good a purpose for garden ornament; coming now and then to the borders of a fishpool, or a pond, where stately swans circumnavigated an island of flowers;--all very fine and very wearisome. I have never enjoyed this garden; perhaps because it suggests dress-coats, and such elegant formalities. September 11th.--We have heard a good deal of spirit matters of late, especially of wonderful incidents that attended Mr. Home's visit to Florence, two or three years ago. Mrs. Powers told a very marvellous thing; how that when Mr. Home was holding a seance in her house, and several persons present, a great scratching was heard in a neighboring closet. She addressed the spirit, and requested it not to disturb the company then, as they were busy with other affairs, promising to converse with it on a future occasion. On a subsequent night, accordingly, the scratching was renewed, with the utmost violence; and in reply to Mrs. Powers's questions, the spirit assured her that it was not one, but legion, being the ghosts of twenty-seven monks, who were miserable and without hope! The house now occupied by Powers was formerly a convent, and I suppose these were the spirits of all the wicked monks that had ever inhabited it; at least, I hope that there were not such a number of damnable sinners extant at any one time. These ghostly fathers must have been very improper persons in their lifetime, judging by the indecorousness of their behavior even after death, and in such dreadful circumstances; for they pulled Mrs. Powers's skirts so hard as to break the gathers. . . . . It was not ascertained that they desired to have anything done for their eternal welfare, or that their situation was capable of amendment anyhow; but, being exhorted to refrain from further disturbance, they took their departure, after making the sign of the cross on the breast of each person present. This was very singular in such reprobates, who, by their own confession, had forfeited all claim to be benefited by that holy symbol: it curiously suggests that the forms of religion may still be kept up in purgatory and hell itself. The sign was made in a way that conveyed the sense of something devilish and spiteful; the perpendicular line of the cross being drawn gently enough, but the transverse one sharply and violently, so as to leave a painful impression. Perhaps the monks meant this to express their contempt and hatred for heretics; and how queer, that this antipathy should survive their own damnation! But I cannot help hoping that the case of these poor devils may not be so desperate as they think. They cannot be wholly lost, because their desire for communication with mortals shows that they need sympathy, therefore are not altogether hardened, therefore, with loving treatment, may be restored. A great many other wonders took place within the knowledge and experience of Mrs. P------. She saw, not one pair of hands only, but many. The head of one of her dead children, a little boy, was laid in her lap, not in ghastly fashion, as a head out of the coffin and the grave, but just as the living child might have laid it on his mother's knees. It was invisible, by the by, and she recognized it by the features and the character of the hair, through the sense of touch. Little hands grasped hers. In short, these soberly attested incredibilities are so numerous that I forget nine tenths of them, and judge the others too cheap to be written down. Christ spoke the truth surely, in saying that men would not believe, "though one rose from the dead." In my own case, the fact makes absolutely no impression. I regret such confirmation of truth as this. Within a mile of our villa stands the Villa Columbaria, a large house, built round a square court. Like Mr. Powers's residence, it was formerly a convent. It is inhabited by Major Gregorie, an old soldier of Waterloo and various other fights, and his family consists of Mrs. ------, the widow of one of the Major's friends, and her two daughters. We have become acquainted with the family, and Mrs. ------, the married daughter, has lent us a written statement of her experiences with a ghost, who has haunted the Villa Columbaria for many years back. He had made Mrs. ------ aware of his presence in her room by a sensation of extreme cold, as if a wintry breeze were blowing over her; also by a rustling of the bed-curtains; and, at such times, she had a certain consciousness, as she says, that she was not ALONE. Through Mr. Home's agency, the ghost was enabled to explain himself, and declared that he was a monk, named Giannane, who died a very long time ago in Mrs. ------'s present bedchamber. He was a murderer, and had been in a restless and miserable state ever since his death, wandering up and down the house, but especially haunting his own death-chamber and a staircase that communicated with the chapel of the villa. All the interviews with this lost spirit were attended with a sensation of severe cold, which was felt by every one present. He made his communications by means of table-rapping, and by the movements of chairs and other articles, which often assumed an angry character. The poor old fellow does not seem to have known exactly what he wanted with Mrs. ------, but promised to refrain from disturbing her any more, on condition that she would pray that he might find some repose. He had previously declined having any masses said for his soul. Rest, rest, rest, appears to be the continual craving of unhappy spirits; they do not venture to ask for positive bliss: perhaps, in their utter weariness, would rather forego the trouble of active enjoyment, but pray only for rest. The cold atmosphere around this monk suggests new ideas as to the climate of Hades. If all the afore-mentioned twenty-seven monks had a similar one, the combined temperature must have been that of a polar winter. Mrs. ------ saw, at one time, the fingers of her monk, long, yellow, and skinny; these fingers grasped the hands of individuals of the party, with a cold, clammy, and horrible touch. After the departure of this ghost other seances were held in her bedchamber, at which good and holy spirits manifested themselves, and behaved in a very comfortable and encouraging way. It was their benevolent purpose, apparently, to purify her apartments from all traces of the evil spirit, and to reconcile her to what had been so long the haunt of this miserable monk, by filling it with happy and sacred associations, in which, as Mrs. ------ intimates, they entirely succeeded. These stories remind me of an incident that took place at the old manse, in the first summer of our marriage. . . . . September 17th.--We walked yesterday to Florence, and visited the church of St. Lorenzo, where we saw, for the second time, the famous Medici statues of Michael Angelo. I found myself not in a very appreciative state, and, being a stone myself, the statue of Lorenzo was at first little more to me than another stone; but it was beginning to assume life, and would have impressed me as it did before if I had gazed long enough. There was a better light upon the face, under the helmet, than at my former visit, although still the features were enough overshadowed to produce that mystery on which, according to Mr. Powers, the effect of the statue depends. I observe that the costume of the figure, instead of being mediaeval, as I believe I have stated, is Roman; but, be it what it may, the grand and simple character of the figure imbues the robes with its individual propriety. I still think it the greatest miracle ever wrought in marble. We crossed the church and entered a cloister on the opposite side, in quest of the Laurentian Library. Ascending a staircase we found an old man blowing the bellows of the organ, which was in full blast in the church; nevertheless he found time to direct us to the library door. We entered a lofty vestibule, of ancient aspect and stately architecture, and thence were admitted into the library itself; a long and wide gallery or hall, lighted by a row of windows on which were painted the arms of the Medici. The ceiling was inlaid with dark wood, in an elaborate pattern, which was exactly repeated in terra-cotta on the pavement beneath our feet. Long desks, much like the old-fashioned ones in schools, were ranged on each side of the mid aisle, in a series from end to end, with seats for the convenience of students; and on these desks were rare manuscripts, carefully preserved under glass; and books, fastened to the desks by iron chains, as the custom of studious antiquity used to be. Along the centre of the hall, between the two ranges of desks, were tables and chairs, at which two or three scholarly persons were seated, diligently consulting volumes in manuscript or old type. It was a very quiet place, imbued with a cloistered sanctity, and remote from all street-cries and rumble of the city,--odorous of old literature,--a spot where the commonest ideas ought not to be expressed in less than Latin. The librarian--or custode he ought rather to be termed, for he was a man not above the fee of a paul--now presented himself, and showed us some of the literary curiosities; a vellum manuscript of the Bible, with a splendid illumination by Ghirlandaio, covering two folio pages, and just as brilliant in its color as if finished yesterday. Other illuminated manuscripts--or at least separate pages of them, for the volumes were kept under glass, and not to be turned over--were shown us, very magnificent, but not to be compared with this of Ghirlandaio. Looking at such treasures I could almost say that we have left behind us more splendor than we have kept alive to our own age. We publish beautiful editions of books, to be sure, and thousands of people enjoy them; but in ancient times the expense that we spread thinly over a thousand volumes was all compressed into one, and it became a great jewel of a book, a heavy folio, worth its weight in gold. Then, what a spiritual charm it gives to a book to feel that every letter has been individually wrought, and the pictures glow for that individual page alone! Certainly the ancient reader had a luxury which the modern one lacks. I was surprised, moreover, to see the clearness and accuracy of the chirography. Print does not surpass it in these respects. The custode showed us an ancient manuscript of the Decameron; likewise, a volume containing the portraits of Petrarch and of Laura, each covering the whole of a vellum page, and very finely done. They are authentic portraits, no doubt, and Laura is depicted as a fair-haired beauty, with a very satisfactory amount of loveliness. We saw some choice old editions of books in a small separate room; but as these were all ranged in shut bookcases, and as each volume, moreover, was in a separate cover or modern binding, this exhibition did us very little good. By the by, there is a conceit struggling blindly in my mind about Petrarch and Laura, suggested by those two lifelike portraits, which have been sleeping cheek to cheek through all these centuries. But I cannot lay hold of it. September 21st.--Yesterday morning the Val d' Arno was entirely filled with a thick fog, which extended even up to our windows, and concealed objects within a very short distance. It began to dissipate itself betimes, however, and was the forerunner of an unusually bright and warm day. We set out after breakfast and walked into town, where we looked at mosaic brooches. These are very pretty little bits of manufacture; but there seems to have been no infusion of fresh fancy into the work, and the specimens present little variety. It is the characteristic commodity of the place; the central mart and manufacturing locality being on the Ponte Vecchio, from end to end of which they are displayed in cases; but there are other mosaic shops scattered about the town. The principal devices are roses,--pink, yellow, or white,--jasmines, lilies of the valley, forget-me-nots, orange blossoms, and others, single or in sprigs, or twined into wreaths; parrots, too, and other birds of gay plumage,-- often exquisitely done, and sometimes with precious materials, such as lapis lazuli, malachite, and still rarer gems. Bracelets, with several different, yet relative designs, are often very beautiful. We find, at different shops, a great inequality of prices for mosaics that seemed to be of much the same quality. We went to the Uffizi gallery, and found it much thronged with the middle and lower classes of Italians; and the English, too, seemed more numerous than I have lately seen them. Perhaps the tourists have just arrived here, starting at the close of the London season. We were amused with a pair of Englishmen who went through the gallery; one of them criticising the pictures and statues audibly, for the benefit of his companion. The critic I should take to be a country squire, and wholly untravelled; a tall, well-built, rather rough, but gentlemanly man enough; his friend, a small personage, exquisitely neat in dress, and of artificial deportment, every attitude and gesture appearing to have been practised before a glass. Being but a small pattern of a man, physically and intellectually, he had thought it worth while to finish himself off with the elaborateness of a Florentine mosaic; and the result was something like a dancing-master, though without the exuberant embroidery of such persons. Indeed, he was a very quiet little man, and, though so thoroughly made up, there was something particularly green, fresh, and simple in him. Both these Englishmen were elderly, and the smaller one had perfectly white hair, glossy and silken. It did not make him in the least venerable, however, but took his own character of neatness and prettiness. He carried his well-brushed and glossy hat in his hand in such a way as not to ruffle its surface; and I wish I could put into one word or one sentence the pettiness, the minikinfinical effect of this little man; his self-consciousness so lifelong, that, in some sort, he forgot himself even in the midst of it; his propriety, his cleanliness and unruffledness; his prettiness and nicety of manifestation, like a bird hopping daintily about. His companion, as I said, was of a completely different type; a tall, gray-haired man, with the rough English face, a little tinted with port wine; careless, natural manner, betokening a man of position in his own neighborhood; a loud voice, not vulgar, nor outraging the rules of society, but betraying a character incapable of much refinement. He talked continually in his progress through the gallery, and audibly enough for us to catch almost everything he said, at many yards' distance. His remarks and criticisms, addressed to his small friend, were so entertaining, that we strolled behind him for the sake of being benefited by them; and I think he soon became aware of this, and addressed himself to us as well as to his more immediate friend. Nobody but an Englishman, it seems to me, has just this kind of vanity,--a feeling mixed up with scorn and good-nature; self-complacency on his own merits, and as an Englishman; pride at being in foreign parts; contempt for everybody around him; a rough kindliness towards people in general. I liked the man, and should be glad to know him better. As for his criticism, I am sorry to remember only one. It was upon the picture of the Nativity, by Correggio, in the Tribune, where the mother is kneeling before the Child, and adoring it in an awful rapture, because she sees the eternal God in its baby face and figure. The Englishman was highly delighted with this picture, and began to gesticulate, as if dandling a baby, and to make a chirruping sound. It was to him merely a representation of a mother fondling her infant. He then said, "If I could have my choice of the pictures and statues in the Tribune, I would take this picture, and that one yonder" (it was a good enough Enthronement of the Virgin by Andrea del Sarto) "and the Dancing Faun, and let the rest go." A delightful man; I love that wholesome coarseness of mind and heart, which no education nor opportunity can polish out of the genuine Englishman; a coarseness without vulgarity. When a Yankee is coarse, he is pretty sure to be vulgar too. The two critics seemed to be considering whether it were practicable to go from the Uffizi to the Pitti gallery; but "it confuses one," remarked the little man, "to see more than one gallery in a day." (I should think so,--the Pitti Palace tumbling into his small receptacle on the top of the Uffizi.) "It does so," responded the big man, with heavy emphasis. September 23d.--The vintage has been going on in our podere for about a week, and I saw a part of the process of making wine, under one of our back windows. It was on a very small scale, the grapes being thrown into a barrel, and crushed with a sort of pestle; and as each estate seems to make its own wine, there are probably no very extensive and elaborate appliances in general use for the manufacture. The cider-making of New England is far more picturesque; the great heap of golden or rosy apples under the trees, and the cider-mill worked by a circumgyratory horse, and all agush with sweet juice. Indeed, nothing connected with the grape-culture and the vintage here has been picturesque, except the large inverted pyramids in which the clusters hang; those great bunches, white or purple, really satisfy my idea both as to aspect and taste. We can buy a large basketful for less than a paul; and they are the only things that one can never devour too much of--and there is no enough short of a little too much without subsequent repentance. It is a shame to turn such delicious juice into such sour wine as they make in Tuscany. I tasted a sip or two of a flask which the contadini sent us for trial,-- the rich result of the process I had witnessed in the barrel. It took me altogether by surprise; for I remembered the nectareousness of the new cider which I used to sip through a straw in my boyhood, and I never doubted that this would be as dulcet, but finer and more ethereal; as much more delectable, in short, as these grapes are better than puckery cider apples. Positively, I never tasted anything so detestable, such a sour and bitter juice, still lukewarm with fermentation; it was a wail of woe, squeezed out of the wine-press of tribulation, and the more a man drinks of such, the sorrier he will be. Besides grapes, we have had figs, and I have now learned to be very fond of them. When they first began to appear, two months ago, they had scarcely any sweetness, and tasted very like a decaying squash: this was an early variety, with purple skins. There are many kinds of figs, the best being green-skinned, growing yellower as they ripen; and the riper they are, the more the sweetness within them intensifies, till they resemble dried figs in everything, except that they retain the fresh fruit-flavor; rich, luscious, yet not palling. We have had pears, too, some of them very tolerable; and peaches, which look magnificently, as regards size and downy blush, but, have seldom much more taste than a cucumber. A succession of fruits has followed us, ever since our arrival in Florence:--first, and for a long time, abundance of cherries; then apricots, which lasted many weeks, till we were weary of them; then plums, pears, and finally figs, peaches, and grapes. Except the figs and grapes, a New England summer and autumn would give us better fruit than any we have found in Italy. Italy beats us I think in mosquitoes; they are horribly pungent little satanic particles. They possess strange intelligence, and exquisite acuteness of sight and smell,--prodigious audacity and courage to match it, insomuch that they venture on the most hazardous attacks, and get safe off. One of them flew into my mouth, the other night, and sting me far down in my throat; but luckily I coughed him up in halves. They are bigger than American mosquitoes; and if you crush them, after one of their feasts, it makes a terrific bloodspot. It is a sort of suicide--at least, a shedding of one's own blood--to kill them; but it gratifies the old Adam to do it. It shocks me to feel how revengeful I am; but it is impossible not to impute a certain malice and intellectual venom to these diabolical insects. I wonder whether our health, at this season of the year, requires that we should be kept in a state of irritation, and so the mosquitoes are Nature's prophetic remedy for some disease; or whether we are made for the mosquitoes, not they for us. It is possible, just possible, that the infinitesimal doses of poison which they infuse into us are a homoeopathic safeguard against pestilence; but medicine never was administered in a more disagreeable way. The moist atmosphere about the Arno, I suppose, produces these insects, and fills the broad, ten-mile valley with them; and as we are just on the brim of the basin, they overflow into our windows. September 25th.--U---- and I walked to town yesterday morning, and went to the Uffizi gallery. It is not a pleasant thought that we are so soon to give up this gallery, with little prospect (none, or hardly any, on my part) of ever seeing it again. It interests me and all of us far more than the gallery of the Pitti Palace, wherefore I know not, for the latter is the richer of the two in admirable pictures. Perhaps it is the picturesque variety of the Uffizi--the combination of painting, sculpture, gems, and bronzes--that makes the charm. The Tribune, too, is the richest room in all the world; a heart that draws all hearts to it. The Dutch pictures, moreover, give a homely, human interest to the Uffizi; and I really think that the frequency of Andrea del Santo's productions at the Pitti Palace--looking so very like masterpieces, yet lacking the soul of art and nature--have much to do with the weariness that comes from better acquaintance with the latter gallery. The splendor of the gilded and frescoed saloons is perhaps another bore; but, after all, my memory will often tread there as long as I live. What shall we do in America? Speaking of Dutch pictures, I was much struck yesterday, as frequently before, with a small picture by Teniers the elder. It seems to be a pawnbroker in the midst of his pledges; old earthen jugs, flasks, a brass kettle, old books, and a huge pile of worn-out and broken rubbish, which he is examining. These things are represented with vast fidelity, yet with bold and free touches, unlike the minute, microscopic work of other Dutch masters; and a wonderful picturesqueness is wrought out of these humble materials, and even the figure and head of the pawnbroker have a strange grandeur. We spent no very long time at the Uffizi, and afterwards crossed the Ponte alle Grazie, and went to the convent of San Miniato, which stands on a hill outside of the Porta San Gallo. A paved pathway, along which stand crosses marking stations at which pilgrims are to kneel and pray, goes steeply to the hill-top, where, in the first place, is a smaller church and convent than those of San Miniato. The latter are seen at a short distance to the right, the convent being a large, square battlemented mass, adjoining which is the church, showing a front of aged white marble, streaked with black, and having an old stone tower behind. I have seen no other convent or monastery that so well corresponds with my idea of what such structures were. The sacred precincts are enclosed by a high wall, gray, ancient, and luxuriously ivy-grown, and lofty and strong enough for the rampart of a fortress. We went through the gateway and entered the church, which we found in much disarray, and masons at work upon the pavement. The tribune is elevated considerably above the nave, and accessible by marble staircases; there are great arches and a chapel, with curious monuments in the Gothic style, and ancient carvings and mosaic works, and, in short, a dim, dusty, and venerable interior, well worth studying in detail. . . . . The view of Florence from the church door is very fine, and seems to include every tower, dome, or whatever object emerges out of the general mass. September 28th.--I went to the Pitti Palace yesterday, and to the Uffizi to-day, paying them probably my last visit, yet cherishing an unreasonable doubt whether I may not see them again. At all events, I have seen them enough for the present, even what is best of them; and, at the same time, with a sad reluctance to bid them farewell forever, I experience an utter weariness of Raphael's old canvas, and of the time-yellowed marble of the Venus de' Medici. When the material embodiment presents itself outermost, and we perceive them only by the grosser sense, missing their ethereal spirit, there is nothing so heavily burdensome as masterpieces of painting and sculpture. I threw my farewell glance at the Venus de' Medici to-day with strange insensibility. The nights are wonderfully beautiful now. When the moon was at the full, a few nights ago, its light was an absolute glory, such as I seem only to have dreamed of heretofore, and that only in my younger days. At its rising I have fancied that the orb of the moon has a kind of purple brightness, and that this tinge is communicated to its radiance until it has climbed high aloft and sheds a flood of white over hill and valley. Now that the moon is on the wane, there is a gentler lustre, but still bright; and it makes the Val d' Arno with its surrounding hills, and its soft mist in the distance, as beautiful a scene as exists anywhere out of heaven. And the morning is quite as beautiful in its own way. This mist, of which I have so often spoken, sets it beyond the limits of actual sense and makes it ideal; it is as if you were dreaming about the valley,--as if the valley itself were dreaming, and met you half-way in your own dream. If the mist were to be withdrawn, I believe the whole beauty of the valley would go with it. Until pretty late in the morning, we have the comet streaming through the sky, and dragging its interminable tail among the stars. It keeps brightening from night to night, and I should think must blaze fiercely enough to cast a shadow by and by. I know not whether it be in the vicinity of Galileo's tower, and in the influence of his spirit, but I have hardly ever watched the stars with such interest as now. September 29th.--Last evening I met Mr. Powers at Miss Blagden's, and he talked about his treatment, by our government in reference, to an appropriation of twenty-five thousand dollars made by Congress for a statue by him. Its payment and the purchase of the statue were left at the option of the President, and he conceived himself wronged because the affair was never concluded. . . . . As for the President, he knows nothing of art, and probably acted in the matter by the advice of the director of public works. No doubt a sculptor gets commissions as everybody gets public employment and emolument of whatever kind from our government, not by merit or fitness, but by political influence skilfully applied. As Powers himself observed, the ruins of our Capitol are not likely to afford sculptures equal to those which Lord Elgin took from the Parthenon, if this be the system under which they are produced. . . . . I wish our great Republic had the spirit to do as much, according to its vast means, as Florence did for sculpture and architecture when it was a republic; but we have the meanest government and the shabbiest, and--if truly represented by it--we are the meanest and shabbiest people known in history. And yet the less we attempt to do for art the better, if our future attempts are to have no better result than such brazen troopers as the equestrian statue of General Jackson, or even such naked respectabilities as Greenough's Washington. There is something false and affected in our highest taste for art; and I suppose, furthermore, we are the only people who seek to decorate their public institutions, not by the highest taste among them, but by the average at best. There was also at Miss Blagden's, among other company, Mr. ------, an artist in Florence, and a sensible man. I talked with him about Home, the medium, whom he had many opportunities of observing when the latter was in these parts. Mr. ------ says that Home is unquestionably a knave, but that he himself is as much perplexed at his own preternatural performances as any other person; he is startled and affrighted at the phenomena which he produces. Nevertheless, when his spiritual powers fall short, he does his best to eke them out with imposture. This moral infirmity is a part of his nature, and I suggested that perhaps if he were of a firmer and healthier moral make, if his character were sufficiently sound and dense to be capable of steadfast principle, he would not have possessed the impressibility that fits him for the so-called spiritual influences. Mr. ------ says that Louis Napoleon is literally one of the most skilful jugglers in the world, and that probably the interest he has taken in Mr. Home was caused partly by a wish to acquire his art. This morning Mr. Powers invited me to go with him to the Grand Duke's new foundry, to see the bronze statue of Webster which has just been cast from his model. It is the second cast of the statue, the first having been shipped some months ago on board of a vessel which was lost; and, as Powers observed, the statue now lies at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean somewhere in the vicinity of the telegraphic cable. We were received with much courtesy and emphasis by the director of the foundry, and conducted into a large room walled with bare, new brick, where the statue was standing in front of the extinct furnace: a majestic Webster indeed, eight feet high, and looking even more colossal than that. The likeness seemed to me perfect, and, like a sensible man, Powers' has dressed him in his natural costume, such as I have seen Webster have on while making a speech in the open air at a mass meeting in Concord,--dress-coat buttoned pretty closely across the breast, pantaloons and boots,--everything finished even to a seam and a stitch. Not an inch of the statue but is Webster; even his coat-tails are imbued with the man, and this true artist has succeeded in showing him through the broadcloth as nature showed him. He has felt that a man's actual clothes are as much a part of him as his flesh, and I respect him for disdaining to shirk the difficulty by throwing the meanness of a cloak over it, and for recognizing the folly of masquerading our Yankee statesman in a Roman toga, and the indecorousness of presenting him as a brassy nudity. It would have been quite as unjustifiable to strip him to his skeleton as to his flesh. Webster is represented as holding in his right hand the written roll of the Constitution, with which he points to a bundle of fasces, which he keeps from falling by the grasp of his left, thus symbolizing him as the preserver of the Union. There is an expression of quiet, solid, massive strength in the whole figure; a deep, pervading energy, in which any exaggeration of gesture would lessen and lower the effect. He looks really like a pillar of the state. The face is very grand, very Webster stern and awful, because he is in the act of meeting a great crisis, and yet with the warmth of a great heart glowing through it. Happy is Webster to have been so truly and adequately sculptured; happy the sculptor in such a subject, which no idealization of a demigod could have supplied him with. Perhaps the statue at the bottom of the sea will be cast up in some future age, when the present race of man is forgotten, and if so, that far posterity will look up to us as a grander race than we find ourselves to be. Neither was Webster altogether the man he looked. His physique helped him out, even when he fell somewhat short of its promise; and if his eyes had not been in such deep caverns their fire would not have looked so bright. Powers made me observe how the surface of the statue was wrought to a sort of roughness instead of being smoothed, as is the practice of other artists. He said that this had cost him great pains, and certainly it has an excellent effect. The statue is to go to Boston, and I hope will be placed in the open air, for it is too mighty to be kept under any roof that now exists in America. . . . . After seeing this, the director showed us some very curious and exquisite specimens of castings, such as baskets of flowers, in which the most delicate and fragile blossoms, the curl of a petal, the finest veins in a leaf, the lightest flower-spray that ever quivered in a breeze, were perfectly preserved; and the basket contained an abundant heap of such sprays. There were likewise a pair of hands, taken actually from life, clasped together as they were, and they looked like parts of a man who had been changed suddenly from flesh to brass. They were worn and rough and unhandsome hands, and so very real, with all their veins and the pores of the skin, that it was shocking to look at them. A bronze leaf, cast also from the life, was as curious and more beautiful. Taking leave of Powers, I went hither and thither about Florence, seeing for the last time things that I have seen many times before: the market, for instance, blocking up a line of narrow streets with fruit-stalls, and obstreperous dealers crying their peaches, their green lemons, their figs, their delicious grapes, their mushrooms, their pomegranates, their radishes, their lettuces. They use one vegetable here which I have not known so used elsewhere; that is, very young pumpkins or squashes, of the size of apples, and to be cooked by boiling. They are not to my taste, but the people here like unripe things,--unripe fruit, unripe chickens, unripe lamb. This market is the noisiest and swarmiest centre of noisy and swarming Florence, and I always like to pass through it on that account. I went also to Santa Croce, and it seemed to me to present a longer vista and broader space than almost any other church, perhaps because the pillars between the nave and aisles are not so massive as to obstruct the view. I looked into the Duomo, too, and was pretty well content to leave it. Then I came homeward, and lost my way, and wandered far off through the white sunshine, and the scanty shade of the vineyard walls, and the olive-trees that here and there branched over them. At last I saw our own gray battlements at a distance, on one side, quite out of the direction in which I was travelling, so was compelled to the grievous mortification of retracing a great many of my weary footsteps. It was a very hot day. This evening I have been on the towertop star-gazing, and looking at the comet, which waves along the sky like an immense feather of flame. Over Florence there was an illuminated atmosphere, caused by the lights of the city gleaming upward into the mists which sleep and dream above that portion of the valley, as well as the rest of it. I saw dimly, or fancied I saw, the hill of Fiesole on the other side of Florence, and remembered how ghostly lights were seen passing thence to the Duomo on the night when Lorenzo the Magnificent died. From time to time the sweet bells of Florence rang out, and I was loath to come down into the lower world, knowing that I shall never again look heavenward from an old tower-top in such a soft calm evening as this. Yet I am not loath to go away; impatient rather; for, taking no root, I soon weary of any soil in which I may be temporarily deposited. The same impatience I sometimes feel or conceive of as regards this earthly life. . . . . I forgot to mention that Powers showed me, in his studio, the model of the statue of America, which he wished the government to buy. It has great merit, and embodies the ideal of youth, freedom, progress, and whatever we consider as distinctive of our country's character and destiny. It is a female figure, vigorous, beautiful, planting its foot lightly on a broken chain, and pointing upward. The face has a high look of intelligence and lofty feeling; the form, nude to the middle, has all the charms of womanhood, and is thus warmed and redeemed out of the cold allegoric sisterhood who have generally no merit in chastity, being really without sex. I somewhat question whether it is quite the thing, however, to make a genuine woman out of an allegory we ask, Who is to wed this lovely virgin? and we are not satisfied to banish her into the realm of chilly thought. But I liked the statue, and all the better for what I criticise, and was sorry to see the huge package in which the finished marble lies bundled up, ready to be sent to our country,--which does not call for it. Mr. Powers and his two daughters called to take leave of us, and at parting I expressed a hope of seeing him in America. He said that it would make him very unhappy to believe that he should never return thither; but it seems to me that he has no such definite purpose of return as would be certain to bring itself to pass. It makes a very unsatisfactory life, thus to spend the greater part of it in exile. In such a case we are always deferring the reality of life till a future moment, and, by and by, we have deferred it till there are no future moments; or, if we do go back, we find that life has shifted whatever of reality it had to the country where we deemed ourselves only living temporarily; and so between two stools we come to the ground, and make ourselves a part of one or the other country only by laying our bones in its soil. It is particularly a pity in Powers's case, because he is so very American in character, and the only convenience for him of his Italian residence is, that here he can supply himself with marble, and with workmen to chisel it according to his designs. SIENA. October 2d.--Yesterday morning, at six o'clock, we left our ancient tower, and threw a parting glance--and a rather sad one--over the misty Val d' Arno. This summer will look like a happy one in our children's retrospect, and also, no doubt, in the years that remain to ourselves; and, in truth, I have found it a peaceful and not uncheerful one. It was not a pleasant morning, and Monte Morello, looking down on Florence, had on its cap, betokening foul weather, according to the proverb. Crossing the suspension-bridge, we reached the Leopoldo railway without entering the city. By some mistake,--or perhaps because nobody ever travels by first-class carriages in Tuscany,--we found we had received second-class tickets, and were put into a long, crowded carriage, full of priests, military men, commercial travellers, and other respectable people, facing one another lengthwise along the carriage, and many of them smoking cigars. They were all perfectly civil, and I think I must own that the manners of this second-class would compare favorably with those of an American first-class one. At Empoli, about an hour after we started, we had to change carriages, the main train proceeding to Leghorn. . . . . My observations along the road were very scanty: a hilly country, with several old towns seated on the most elevated hill-tops, as is common throughout Tuscany, or sometimes a fortress with a town on the plain at its base; or, once or twice, the towers and battlements of a mediaeval castle, commanding the pass below it. Near Florence the country was fertile in the vine and olive, and looked as unpicturesque as that sort of fertility usually makes it; not but what I have come to think better of the tint of the olive-leaf than when I first saw it. In the latter part of our journey I remember a wild stream, of a greenish hue, but transparent, rushing along over a rough bed, and before reaching Siena we rumbled into a long tunnel, and emerged from it near the city. . . . . We drove up hill and down (for the surface of Siena seems to be nothing but an irregularity) through narrow old streets, and were set down at the Aquila Nera, a grim-looking albergo near the centre of the town. Mrs. S------ had already taken rooms for us there, and to these we were now ushered up the highway of a dingy stone staircase, and into a small, brick-paved parlor. The house seemed endlessly old, and all the glimpses that we caught of Siena out of window seemed more ancient still. Almost within arm's reach, across a narrow street, a tall palace of gray, time-worn stone clambered skyward, with arched windows, and square windows, and large windows and small, scattered up and down its side. It is the Palazzo Tolomei, and looks immensely venerable. From the windows of our bedrooms we looked into a broader street, though still not very wide, and into a small piazza, the most conspicuous object in which was a column, hearing on its top a bronze wolf suckling Romulus and Remus. This symbol is repeated in other parts of the city, and scours to indicate that the Sienese people pride themselves in a Roman origin. In another direction, over the tops of the houses, we saw a very high tower, with battlements projecting around its summit, so that it was a fortress in the air; and this I have since found to be the Palazzo Publico. It was pleasant, looking downward into the little old piazza and narrow streets, to see the swarm of life on the pavement, the life of to-day just as new as if it had never been lived before; the citizens, the priests, the soldiers, the mules and asses with their panniers, the diligence lumbering along, with a postilion in a faded crimson coat bobbing up and down on the off-horse. Such a bustling scene, vociferous, too, with various street-cries, is wonderfully set off by the gray antiquity of the town, and makes the town look older than if it were a solitude. Soon Mr. and Mrs. Story came, and accompanied us to look for lodgings. They also drove us about the city in their carriage, and showed us the outside of the Palazzo Publico, and of the cathedral and other remarkable edifices. The aspect of Siena is far more picturesque than that of any other town in Italy, so far as I know Italian towns; and yet, now that I have written it, I remember Perugia, and feel that the observation is a mistake. But at any rate Siena is remarkably picturesque, standing on such a site, on the verge and within the crater of an extinct volcano, and therefore being as uneven as the sea in a tempest; the streets so narrow, ascending between tall, ancient palaces, while the side streets rush headlong down, only to be threaded by sure-footed mules, such as climb Alpine heights; old stone balconies on the palace fronts; old arched doorways, and windows set in frames of Gothic architecture; arcades, resembling canopies of stone, with quaintly sculptured statues in the richly wrought Gothic niches of each pillar;--everything massive and lofty, yet minutely interesting when you look at it stone by stone. The Florentines, and the Romans too, have obliterated, as far as they could, all the interest of their mediaeval structures by covering them with stucco, so that they have quite lost their character, and affect the spectator with no reverential idea of age. Here the city is all overwritten with black-letter, and the glad Italian sun makes the effect so much the stronger. We took a lodging, and afterwards J----- and I rambled about, and went into the cathedral for a moment, and strayed also into the Piazza del Campo, the great public square of Siena. I am not in the mood for further description of public places now, so shall say a word or two about the old palace in which we have established ourselves. We have the second piano, and dwell amid faded grandeur, having for our saloon what seems to have been a ball-room. It is ornamented with a great fresco in the centre of the vaulted ceiling, and others covering the sides of the apartment, and surrounded with arabesque frameworks, where Cupids gambol and chase one another. The subjects of the frescos I cannot make out, not that they are faded like Giotto's, for they are as fresh as roses, and are done in an exceedingly workmanlike style; but they are allegories of Fame and Plenty and other matters, such as I could never understand. Our whole accommodation is in similar style,--spacious, magnificent, and mouldy. In the evening Miss S------ and I drove to the railway, and on the arrival of the train from Florence we watched with much eagerness the unlading of the luggage-van. At last the whole of our ten trunks and tin bandbox were produced, and finally my leather bag, in which was my journal and a manuscript book containing my sketch of a romance. It gladdened my very heart to see it, and I shall think the better of Tuscan promptitude and accuracy for so quickly bringing it back to me. (It was left behind, under one of the rail-carriage seats.) We find all the public officials, whether of railway, police, or custom-house, extremely courteous and pleasant to encounter; they seem willing to take trouble and reluctant to give it, and it is really a gratification to find that such civil people will sometimes oblige you by taking a paul or two aside. October 3d.--I took several strolls about the city yesterday, and find it scarcely extensive enough to get lost in; and if we go far from the centre we soon come to silent streets, with only here and there an individual; and the inhabitants stare from their doors and windows at the stranger, and turn round to look at him after he has passed. The interest of the old town would soon be exhausted for the traveller, but I can conceive that a thoughtful and shy man might settle down here with the view of making the place a home, and spend many years in a sombre kind of happiness. I should prefer it to Florence as a residence, but it would be terrible without an independent life in one's own mind. U---- and I walked out in the afternoon, and went into the Piazza del Campo, the principal place of the city, and a very noble and peculiar one. It is much in the form of an amphitheatre, and the surface of the ground seems to be slightly scooped out, so that it resembles the shallow basin of a shell. It is thus a much better site for an assemblage of the populace than if it were a perfect level. A semicircle or truncated ellipse of stately and ancient edifices surround the piazza, with arches opening beneath them, through which streets converge hitherward. One side of the piazza is a straight line, and is occupied by the Palazzo Publico, which is a most noble and impressive Gothic structure. It has not the mass of the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence, but is more striking. It has a long battlemented front, the central part of which rises eminent above the rest, in a great square bulk, which is likewise crowned with battlements. This is much more picturesque than the one great block of stone into which the Palazzo Vecchio is consolidated. At one extremity of this long front of the Palazzo Publico rises a tower, shooting up its shaft high, high into the air, and bulging out there into a battlemented fortress, within which the tower, slenderer than before, climbs to a still higher region. I do not know whether the summit of the tower is higher or so high as that of the Palazzo Vecchio; but the length of the shaft, free of the edifice, is much greater, and so produces the more elevating effect. The whole front of the Palazzo Publico is exceedingly venerable, with arched windows, Gothic carvings, and all the old-time ornaments that betoken it to have stood a great while, and the gray strength that will hold it up at least as much longer. At one end of the facade, beneath the shadow of the tower, is a grand and beautiful porch, supported on square pillars, within each of which is a niche containing a statue of mediaeval sculpture. The great Piazza del Campo is the market-place of Siena. In the morning it was thronged with booths and stalls, especially of fruit and vegetable dealers; but as in Florence, they melted away in the sunshine, gradually withdrawing themselves into the shadow thrown from the Palazzo Publico. On the side opposite the palace is an antique fountain of marble, ornamented with two statues and a series of bas-reliefs; and it was so much admired in its day that its sculptor received the name "Del Fonte." I am loath to leave the piazza and palace without finding some word or two to suggest their antique majesty, in the sunshine and the shadow; and how fit it seemed, notwithstanding their venerableness, that there should be a busy crowd filling up the great, hollow amphitheatre, and crying their fruit and little merchandises, so that all the curved line of stately old edifices helped to reverberate the noise. The life of to-day, within the shell of a time past, is wonderfully fascinating. Another point to which a stranger's footsteps are drawn by a kind of magnetism, so that he will be apt to find himself there as often as he strolls out of his hotel, is the cathedral. It stands in the highest part of the city, and almost every street runs into some other street which meanders hitherward. On our way thither, U---- and I came to a beautiful front of black and white marble, in somewhat the same style as the cathedral; in fact, it was the baptistery, and should have made a part of it, according to the original design, which contemplated a structure of vastly greater extent than this actual one. We entered the baptistery, and found the interior small, but very rich in its clustered columns and intersecting arches, and its frescos, pictures, statues, and ornaments. Moreover, a father and mother had brought their baby to be baptized, and the poor little thing, in its gay swaddling-clothes, looked just like what I have seen in old pictures, and a good deal like an Indian pappoose. It gave one little slender squeak when the priest put the water on its forehead, and then was quiet again. We now went round to the facade of the cathedral. . . . . It is of black and white marble, with, I believe, an intermixture of red and other colors; but time has toned them down, so that white, black, and red do not contrast so strongly with one another as they may have done five hundred years ago. The architecture is generally of the pointed Gothic style, but there are likewise carved arches over the doors and windows, and a variety which does not produce the effect of confusion,--a magnificent eccentricity, an exuberant imagination flowering out in stone. On high, in the great peak of the front, and throwing its colored radiance into the nave within, there is a round window of immense circumference, the painted figures in which we can see dimly from the outside. But what I wish to express, and never can, is the multitudinous richness of the ornamentation of the front: the arches within arches, sculptured inch by inch, of the deep doorways; the statues of saints, some making a hermitage of a niche, others standing forth; the scores of busts, that look like faces of ancient people gazing down out of the cathedral; the projecting shapes of stone lions,--the thousand forms of Gothic fancy, which seemed to soften the marble and express whatever it liked, and allow it to harden again to last forever. But my description seems like knocking off the noses of some of the busts, the fingers and toes of the statues, the projecting points of the architecture, jumbling them all up together, and flinging them down upon the page. This gives no idea of the truth, nor, least of all, can it shadow forth that solemn whole, mightily combined out of all these minute particulars, and sanctifying the entire space of ground over which this cathedral-front flings its shadow, or on which it reflects the sun. A majesty and a minuteness, neither interfering with the other, each assisting the other; this is what I love in Gothic architecture. We went in and walked about; but I mean to go again before sketching the interior in my poor water-colors. October 4th.--On looking again at the Palazzo Publico, I see that the pillared portal which I have spoken of does not cover an entrance to the palace, but is a chapel, with an altar, and frescos above it. Bouquets of fresh flowers are on the altar, and a lamp burns, in all the daylight, before the crucifix. The chapel is quite unenclosed, except by an openwork balustrade of marble, on which the carving looks very ancient. Nothing could be more convenient for the devotions of the crowd in the piazza, and no doubt the daily prayers offered at the shrine might be numbered by the thousand,--brief, but I hope earnest,--like those glimpses I used to catch at the blue sky, revealing so much in an instant, while I was toiling at Brook Farm. Another picturesque thing about the Palazzo Publico is a great stone balcony quaintly wrought, about midway in the front and high aloft, with two arched windows opening into it. After another glimpse at the cathedral, too, I realize how utterly I have failed in conveying the idea of its elaborate ornament, its twisted and clustered pillars, and numberless devices of sculpture; nor did I mention the venerable statues that stand all round the summit of the edifice, relieved against the sky,--the highest of all being one of the Saviour, on the topmost peak of the front; nor the tall tower that ascends from one side of the building, and is built of layers of black and white marble piled one upon another in regular succession; nor the dome that swells upward close beside this tower. Had the cathedral been constructed on the plan and dimensions at first contemplated, it would have been incomparably majestic; the finished portion, grand as it is, being only what was intended for a transept. One of the walls of what was to have been the nave is still standing, and looks like a ruin, though, I believe, it has been turned to account as the wall of a palace, the space of the never-completed nave being now a court or street. The whole family of us were kindly taken out yesterday, to dine and spend the day at the Villa Belvedere with our friends Mr. and Mrs. Story. The vicinity of Siena is much more agreeable than that of Florence, being cooler, breezier, with more foliage and shrubbery both near at hand and in the distance; and the prospect, Mr. Story told us, embraces a diameter of about a hundred miles between hills north and south. The Villa Belvedere was built and owned by an Englishman now deceased, who has left it to his butler, and its lawns and shrubbery have something English in their character, and there was almost a dampness in the grass, which really pleased me in this parched Italy. Within the house the walls are hung with fine old-fashioned engravings from the pictures of Gainsborough, West, and other English painters. The Englishman, though he had chosen to live and die in Italy, had evidently brought his native tastes and peculiarities along with him. Mr. Story thinks of buying this villa: I do not know but I might be tempted to buy it myself if Siena were a practicable residence for the entire year; but the winter here, with the bleak mountain-winds of a hundred miles round about blustering against it, must be terribly disagreeable. We spent a very pleasant day, turning over books or talking on the lawn, whence we could behold scenes picturesque afar, and rich vineyard glimpses near at hand. Mr. Story is the most variously accomplished and brilliant person, the fullest of social life and fire, whom I ever met; and without seeming to make an effort, he kept us amused and entertained the whole day long; not wearisomely entertained neither, as we should have been if he had not let his fountain play naturally. Still, though he bubbled and brimmed over with fun, he left the impression on me that . . . . there is a pain and care, bred, it may be, out of the very richness of his gifts and abundance of his outward prosperity. Rich, in the prime of life, . . . . and children budding and blossoming around him as fairly as his heart could wish, with sparkling talents,--so many, that if he choose to neglect or fling away one, or two, or three, he would still have enough left to shine with,--who should be happy if not he? . . . . Towards sunset we all walked out into the podere, pausing a little while to look down into a well that stands on the verge of the lawn. Within the spacious circle of its stone curb was an abundant growth of maidenhair, forming a perfect wreath of thickly clustering leaves quite round, and trailing its tendrils downward to the water which gleamed beneath. It was a very pretty sight. Mr. Story bent over the well and uttered deep, musical tones, which were reverberated from the hollow depths with wonderful effect, as if a spirit dwelt within there, and (unlike the spirits that speak through mediums) sent him back responses even profounder and more melodious than the tones that awakened them. Such a responsive well as this might have been taken for an oracle in old days. We went along paths that led from one vineyard to another, and which might have led us for miles across the country. The grapes had been partly gathered, but still there were many purple or white clusters hanging heavily on the vines. We passed cottage doors, and saw groups of contadini and contadine in their festal attire, and they saluted us graciously; but it was observable that one of the men generally lingered on our track to see that no grapes were stolen, for there were a good many young people and children in our train, not only our own, but some from a neighboring villa. These Italian peasants are a kindly race, but, I doubt, not very hospitable of grape or fig. There was a beautiful sunset, and by the time we reached the house again the comet was already visible amid the unextinguished glow of daylight. A Mr. and Mrs. B------, Scotch people from the next villa, had come to see the Storys, and we sat till tea-time reading, talking, William Story drawing caricatures for his children's amusement and ours, and all of us sometimes getting up to look at the comet, which blazed brighter and brighter till it went down into the mists of the horizon. Among the caricatures was one of a Presidential candidate, evidently a man of very malleable principles, and likely to succeed. Late in the evening (too late for little Rosebud) we drove homeward. The streets of old Siena looked very grim at night, and it seemed like gazing into caverns to glimpse down some of the side streets as we passed, with a light burning dimly at the end of them. It was after ten when we reached home, and climbed up our gloomy staircase, lighted by the glimmer of some wax moccoli which I had in my pocket. October 5th.--I have been two or three times into the cathedral; . . . . the whole interior is of marble, in alternate lines of black and white, each layer being about eight inches in width and extending horizontally. It looks very curiously, and might remind the spectator of a stuff with horizontal stripes. Nevertheless, the effect is exceedingly rich, these alternate lines stretching away along the walls and round the clustered pillars, seen aloft, and through the arches; everywhere, this inlay of black and white. Every sort of ornament that could be thought of seems to have been crammed into the cathedral in one place or another: gilding, frescos, pictures; a roof of blue, spangled with golden stars; a magnificent wheel-window of old painted glass over the entrance, and another at the opposite end of the cathedral; statues, some of marble, others of gilded bronze; pulpits of carved marble; a gilded organ; a cornice of marble busts of the popes, extending round the entire church; a pavement, covered all over with a strange kind of mosaic work in various marbles, wrought into marble pictures of sacred subjects; immense clustered pillars supporting the round arches that divide the nave from the side aisles; a clere-story of windows within pointed arches;--it seemed as if the spectator were reading an antique volume written in black-letter of a small character, but conveying a high and solemn meaning. I can find no way of expressing its effect on me, so quaint and venerable as I feel this cathedral to be in its immensity of striped waistcoat, now dingy with five centuries of wear. I ought not to say anything that might detract from the grandeur and sanctity of the blessed edifice, for these attributes are really uninjured by any of the Gothic oddities which I have hinted at. We went this morning to the Institute of the Fine Arts, which is interesting as containing a series of the works of the Sienese painters from a date earlier than that of Cimabue. There is a dispute, I believe, between Florence and Siena as to which city may claim the credit of having originated the modern art of painting. The Florentines put forward Cimabue as the first artist, but as the Sienese produce a picture, by Guido da Siena, dated before the birth of Cimabue, the victory is decidedly with them. As to pictorial merit, to my taste there is none in either of these old painters, nor in any of their successors for a long time afterwards. At the Institute there are several rooms hung with early productions of the Sienese school, painted before the invention of oil-colors, on wood shaped into Gothic altar-pieces. The backgrounds still retain a bedimmed splendor of gilding. There is a plentiful use of red, and I can conceive that the pictures must have shed an illumination through the churches where they were displayed. There is often, too, a minute care bestowed on the faces in the pictures, and sometimes a very strong expression, stronger than modern artists get, and it is very strange how they attained this merit while they were so inconceivably rude in other respects. It is remarkable that all the early faces of the Madonna are especially stupid, and all of the same type, a sort of face such as one might carve on a pumpkin, representing a heavy, sulky, phlegmatic woman, with a long and low arch of the nose. This same dull face continues to be assigned to the Madonna, even when the countenances of the surrounding saints and angels are characterized with power and beauty, so that I think there must have been some portrait of this sacred personage reckoned authentic, which the early painters followed and religiously repeated. At last we came to a picture by Sodoma, the most illustrious representative of the Sienese school. It was a fresco; Christ bound to the pillar, after having been scourged. I do believe that painting has never done anything better, so far as expression is concerned, than this figure. In all these generations since it was painted it must have softened thousands of hearts, drawn down rivers of tears, been more effectual than a million of sermons. Really, it is a thing to stand and weep at. No other painter has done anything that can deserve to be compared to this. There are some other pictures by Sodoma, among them a Judith, very noble and admirable, and full of a profound sorrow for the deed which she has felt it her mission to do. Aquila Nera, October 7th.--Our lodgings in Siena had been taken only for five days, as they were already engaged after that period; so yesterday we returned to our old quarters at the Black Eagle. In the forenoon J----- and I went out of one of the gates (the road from it leads to Florence) and had a pleasant country walk. Our way wound downward, round the hill on which Siena stands, and gave us views of the Duomo and its campanile, seemingly pretty near, after we had walked long enough to be quite remote from them. Sitting awhile on the parapet of a bridge, I saw a laborer chopping the branches off a poplar-tree which he had felled; and, when it was trimmed, he took up the large trunk on one of his shoulders and carried it off, seemingly with ease. He did not look like a particularly robust man; but I have never seen such an herculean feat attempted by an Englishman or American. It has frequently struck me that the Italians are able to put forth a great deal of strength in such insulated efforts as this; but I have been told that they are less capable of continued endurance and hardship than our own race. I do not know why it should be so, except that I presume their food is less strong than ours. There was no other remarkable incident in our walk, which lay chiefly through gorges of the hills, winding beneath high cliffs of the brown Siena earth, with many pretty scenes of rural landscape; vineyards everywhere, and olive-trees; a mill on its little stream, over which there was an old stone bridge, with a graceful arch; farm-houses; a villa or two; subterranean passages, passing from the roadside through the high banks into the vineyards. At last we turned aside into a road which led us pretty directly to another gate of the city, and climbed steeply upward among tanneries, where the young men went about with their well-shaped legs bare, their trousers being tucked up till they were strictly breeches and nothing else. The campanile stood high above us; and by and by, and very soon, indeed, the steep ascent of the street brought us into the neighborhood of the Piazza del Campo, and of our own hotel. . . . . From about twelve o'clock till one, I sat at my chamber window watching the specimens of human life as displayed in the Piazza Tolomei. [Here follow several pages of moving objects.] . . . . Of course, a multitude of other people passed by, but the curiousness of the catalogue is the prevalence of the martial and religious elements. The general costume of the inhabitants is frocks or sacks, loosely made, and rather shabby; often, shirt-sleeves; or the coat hung over one shoulder. They wear felt hats and straw. People of respectability seem to prefer cylinder hats, either black or drab, and broadcloth frock-coats in the French fashion; but, like the rest, they look a little shabby. Almost all the women wear shawls. Ladies in swelling petticoats, and with fans, some of which are highly gilded, appear. The people generally are not tall, but have a sufficient breadth of shoulder; in complexion, similar to Americans; bearded, universally. The vehicle used for driving is a little gig without a top; but these are seldom seen, and still less frequently a cab or other carriages. The gait of the people has not the energy of business or decided purpose. Everybody appears to lounge, and to have time for a moment's chat, and a disposition to rest, reason or none. After dinner I walked out of another gate of the city, and wandered among some pleasant country lanes, bordered with hedges, and wearing an English aspect; at least, I could fancy so. The vicinity of Siena is delightful to walk about in; there being a verdant outlook, a wide prospect of purple mountains, though no such level valley as the Val d' Arno; and the city stands so high that its towers and domes are seen more picturesquely from many points than those of Florence can be. Neither is the pedestrian so cruelly shut into narrow lanes, between high stone-walls, over which he cannot get a glimpse of landscape. As I walked by the hedges yesterday I could have fancied that the olive-trunks were those of apple-trees, and that I was in one or other of the two lands that I love better than Italy. But the great white villas and the farm-houses were unlike anything I have seen elsewhere, or that I should wish to see again, though proper enough to Italy. October 9th.--Thursday forenoon, 8th, we went to see the Palazzo Publico. There are some fine old halls and chapels, adorned with ancient frescos and pictures, of which I remember a picture of the Virgin by Sodoma, very beautiful, and other fine pictures by the same master. The architecture of these old rooms is grand, the roofs being supported by ponderous arches, which are covered with frescos, still magnificent, though faded, darkened, and defaced. We likewise saw an antique casket of wood, enriched with gilding, which had once contained an arm of John the Baptist,--so the custode told us. One of the halls was hung with the portraits of eight popes and nearly forty cardinals, who were natives of Siena. I have done hardly any other sight-seeing except a daily visit to the cathedral, which I admire and love the more the oftener I go thither. Its striped peculiarity ceases entirely to interfere with the grandeur and venerable beauty of its impression; and I am never weary of gazing through the vista of its arches, and noting continually something that I had not seen before in its exuberant adornment. The pavement alone is inexhaustible, being covered all over with figures of life-size or larger, which look like immense engravings of Gothic or Scriptural scenes. There is Absalom hanging by his hair, and Joab slaying him with a spear. There is Samson belaboring the Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. There are armed knights in the tumult of battle, all wrought with wonderful expression. The figures are in white marble, inlaid with darker stone, and the shading is effected by means of engraved lines in the marble, filled in with black. It would be possible, perhaps, to print impressions from some of these vast plates, for the process of cutting the lines was an exact anticipation of the modern art of engraving. However, the same thing was done--and I suppose at about the same period--on monumental brasses, and I have seen impressions or rubbings from those for sale in the old English churches. Yesterday morning, in the cathedral, I watched a woman at confession, being curious to see how long it would take her to tell her sins, the growth of a week perhaps. I know not how long she had been confessing when I first observed her, but nearly an hour passed before the priest came suddenly from the confessional, looking weary and moist with perspiration, and took his way out of the cathedral. The woman was left on her knees. This morning I watched another woman, and she too was very long about it, and I could see the face of the priest behind the curtain of the confessional, scarcely inclining his ear to the perforated tin through which the penitent communicated her outpourings. It must be very tedious to listen, day after day, to the minute and commonplace iniquities of the multitude of penitents, and it cannot be often that these are redeemed by the treasure-trove of a great sin. When her confession was over the woman came and sat down on the same bench with me, where her broad-brimmed straw hat was lying. She seemed to be a country woman, with a simple, matronly face, which was solemnized and softened with the comfort that she had obtained by disburdening herself of the soil of worldly frailties and receiving absolution. An old woman, who haunts the cathedral, whispered to her, and she went and knelt down where a procession of priests were to pass, and then the old lady begged a cruzia of me, and got a half-paul. It almost invariably happens, in church or cathedral, that beggars address their prayers to the heretic visitor, and probably with more unction than to the Virgin or saints. However, I have nothing to say against the sincerity of this people's devotion. They give all the proof of it that a mere spectator can estimate. Last evening we all went out to see the comet, which then reached its climax of lustre. It was like a lofty plume of fire, and grew very brilliant as the night darkened. October 10th.--This morning, too, we went to the cathedral, and sat long listening to the music of the organ and voices, and witnessing rites and ceremonies which are far older than even the ancient edifice where they were exhibited. A good many people were present, sitting, kneeling, or walking about,--a freedom that contrasts very agreeably with the grim formalities of English churches and our own meeting-houses. Many persons were in their best attire; but others came in, with unabashed simplicity, in their old garments of labor, sunburnt women from their toil among the vines and olives. One old peasant I noticed with his withered shanks in breeches and blue yarn stockings. The people of whatever class are wonderfully tolerant of heretics, never manifesting any displeasure or annoyance, though they must see that we are drawn thither by curiosity alone, and merely pry while they pray. I heartily wish the priests were better men, and that human nature, divinely influenced, could be depended upon for a constant supply and succession of good and pure ministers, their religion has so many admirable points. And then it is a sad pity that this noble and beautiful cathedral should be a mere fossil shell, out of which the life has died long ago. But for many a year yet to come the tapers will burn before the high altar, the Host will be elevated, the incense diffuse its fragrance, the confessionals be open to receive the penitents. I saw a father entering with two little bits of boys, just big enough to toddle along, holding his hand on either side. The father dipped his fingers into the marble font of holy water,--which, on its pedestals, was two or three times as high as those small Christians, --and wetted a hand of each, and taught them how to cross themselves. When they come to be men it will be impossible to convince those children that there is no efficacy in holy water, without plucking up all religious faith and sentiment by the roots. Generally, I suspect, when people throw off the faith they were born in, the best soil of their hearts is apt to cling to its roots. Raised several feet above the pavement, against every clustered pillar along the nave of the cathedral, is placed a statue of Gothic sculpture. In various places are sitting statues of popes of Sienese nativity, all of whom, I believe, have a hand raised in the act of blessing. Shrines and chapels, set in grand, heavy frames of pillared architecture, stand all along the aisles and transepts, and these seem in many instances to have been built and enriched by noble families, whose arms are sculptured on the pedestals of the pillars, sometimes with a cardinal's hat above to denote the rank of one of its members. How much pride, love, and reverence in the lapse of ages must have clung to the sharp points of all this sculpture and architecture! The cathedral is a religion in itself, --something worth dying for to those who have an hereditary interest in it. In the pavement, yesterday, I noticed the gravestone of a person who fell six centuries ago in the battle of Monte Aperto, and was buried here by public decree as a meed of valor. This afternoon I took a walk out of one of the city gates, and found the country about Siena as beautiful in this direction as in all others. I came to a little stream flowing over into a pebbly bed, and collecting itself into pools, with a scanty rivulet between. Its glen was deep, and was crossed by a bridge of several lofty and narrow arches like those of a Roman aqueduct. It is a modern structure, however. Farther on, as I wound round along the base of a hill which fell down upon the road by precipitous cliffs of brown earth, I saw a gray, ruined wall on the summit, surrounded with cypress-trees. This tree is very frequent about Siena, and the scenery is made soft and beautiful by a variety of other trees and shrubbery, without which these hills and gorges would have scarcely a charm. The road was thronged with country people, mostly women and children, who had been spending the feast-day in Siena; and parties of boys were chasing one another through the fields, pretty much as boys do in New England of a Sunday, but the Sienese lads had not the sense of Sabbath-breaking like our boys. Sunday with these people is like any other feast-day, and consecrated cheerful enjoyment. So much religious observance, as regards outward forms, is diffused through the whole week that they have no need to intensify the Sabbath except by making it gladden the other days. Returning through the same gate by which I had come out, I ascended into the city by a long and steep street, which was paved with bricks set edgewise. This pavement is common in many of the streets, which, being too steep for horses and carriages, are meant only to sustain the lighter tread of mules and asses. The more level streets are paved with broad, smooth flag-stones, like those of Florence,--a fashion which I heartily regret to change for the little penitential blocks of Rome. The walls of Siena in their present state, and so far as I have seen them, are chiefly brick; but there are intermingled fragments of ancient stone-work, and I wonder why the latter does not prevail more largely. The Romans, however,--and Siena had Roman characteristics,--always liked to build of brick, a taste that has made their ruins (now that the marble slabs are torn off) much less grand than they ought to have been. I am grateful to the old Sienese for having used stone so largely in their domestic architecture, and thereby rendered their city so grimly picturesque, with its black palaces frowning upon one another from arched windows, across narrow streets, to the height of six stories, like opposite ranks of tall men looking sternly into one another's eyes. October 11th.--Again I went to the cathedral this morning, and spent an hour listening to the music and looking through the orderly intricacies of the arches, where many vistas open away among the columns of the choir. There are five clustered columns on each side of the nave; then under the dome there are two more arches, not in a straight line, but forming the segment of a circle; and beyond the circle of the dome there are four more arches, extending to the extremity of the chancel. I should have said, instead of "clustered columns" as above, that there are five arches along the nave supported by columns. This cathedral has certainly bewitched me, to write about it so much, effecting nothing with my pains. I should judge the width of each arch to be about twenty feet, and the thickness of each clustered pillar is eight; or ten more, and the length of the entire building may be between two and three hundred feet; not very large, certainly, but it makes an impression of grandeur independent of size. . . . . I never shall succeed even in reminding myself of the venerable magnificence of this minster, with its arches, its columns, its cornice of popes' heads, its great wheel windows, its manifold ornament, all combining in one vast effect, though many men have labored individually, and through a long course of time, to produce this multifarious handiwork and headwork. I now took a walk out of the city. A road turned immediately to the left as I emerged from the city, and soon proved to be a rustic lane leading past several villas and farm-houses. It was a very pleasant walk, with vineyards and olive-orchards on each side, and now and then glimpses of the towers and sombre heaped-up palaces of Siena, and now a rural seclusion again; for the hills rise and the valleys fall like the swell and subsidence of the sea after a gale, so that Siena may be quite hidden within a quarter of a mile of its wall, or may be visible, I doubt not, twenty miles away. It is a fine old town, with every promise of health and vigor in its atmosphere, and really, if I could take root anywhere, I know not but it could as well be here as in another place. It would only be a kind of despair, however, that would ever make me dream of finding a home in Italy; a sense that I had lost my country through absence or incongruity, and that earth is not an abiding-place. I wonder that we Americans love our country at all, it having no limits and no oneness; and when you try to make it a matter of the heart, everything falls away except one's native State; neither can you seize hold of that unless you tear it out of the Union, bleeding and quivering. Yet unquestionably, we do stand by our national flag as stoutly as any people in the world, and I myself have felt the heart throb at sight of it as sensibly as other men. I think the singularity of our form of government contributes to give us a kind of patriotism, by separating us from other nations more entirely. If other nations had similar institutions,--if England, especially, were a democracy,--we should as readily make ourselves at home in another country as now in a new State. October 12th.--And again we went to the cathedral this forenoon, and the whole family, except myself, sketched portions of it. Even Rosebud stood gravely sketching some of the inlaid figures of the pavement. As for me, I can but try to preserve some memorial of this beautiful edifice in ill-fitting words that never hit the mark. This morning visit was not my final one, for I went again after dinner and walked quite round the whole interior. I think I have not yet mentioned the rich carvings of the old oaken seats round the choir, and the curious mosaic of lighter and darker woods, by which figures and landscapes are skilfully represented on the backs of some of the stalls. The process seems to be the same as the inlaying and engraving of the pavement, the material in one case being marble, in the other wood. The only other thing that I particularly noticed was, that in the fonts of holy water at the front entrance, marble fish are sculptured in the depths of the basin, and eels and shellfish crawling round the brim. Have I spoken of the sumptuous carving of the capitals of the columns? At any rate I have left a thousand beauties without a word. Here I drop the subject. As I took my parting glance the cathedral had a gleam of golden sunshine in its far depths, and it seemed to widen and deepen itself, as if to convince me of my error in saying, yesterday, that it is not very large. I wonder how I could say it. After taking leave of the cathedral, I found my way out of another of the city gates, and soon turned aside into a green lane. . . . . Soon the lane passed through a hamlet consisting of a few farm-houses, the shabbiest and dreariest that can be conceived, ancient, and ugly, and dilapidated, with iron-grated windows below, and heavy wooden shutters on the windows above,--high, ruinous walls shutting in the courts, and ponderous gates, one of which was off its hinges. The farm-yards were perfect pictures of disarray and slovenly administration of home affairs. Only one of these houses had a door opening on the road, and that was the meanest in the hamlet. A flight of narrow stone stairs ascended from the threshold to the second story. All these houses were specimens of a rude antiquity, built of brick and stone, with the marks of arched doors and windows where a subsequent generation had shut up the lights, or the accesses which the original builders had opened. Humble as these dwellings are,--though large and high compared with rural residences in other countries,--they may very probably date back to the times when Siena was a warlike republic, and when every house in its neighborhood had need to be a fortress. I suppose, however, prowling banditti were the only enemies against whom a defence would be attempted. What lives must now be lived there,--in beastly ignorance, mental sluggishness, hard toil for little profit, filth, and a horrible discomfort of fleas; for if the palaces of Italy are overrun with these pests, what must the country hovels be! . . . . We are now all ready for a start to-morrow. RADICOFANI. October 13th.--We arranged to begin our journey at six. . . . . It was a chill, lowering morning, and the rain blew a little in our faces before we had gone far, but did not continue long. The country soon lost the pleasant aspect which it wears immediately about Siena, and grew very barren and dreary. Then it changed again for the better, the road leading us through a fertility of vines and olives, after which the dreary and barren hills came back again, and formed our prospect throughout most of the day. We stopped for our dejeuner a la fourchette at a little old town called San Quirico, which we entered through a ruined gateway, the town being entirely surrounded by its ancient wall. This wall is far more picturesque than that of Siena, being lofty and built of stone, with a machicolation of arches running quite round its top, like a cornice. It has little more than a single street, perhaps a quarter of a mile long, narrow, paved with flag-stones in the Florentine fashion, and lined with two rows of tall, rusty stone houses, without a gap between them from end to end. The cafes were numerous in relation to the size of the town, and there were two taverns,--our own, the Eagle, being doubtless the best, and having three arched entrances in its front. Of these, the middle one led to the guests' apartments, the one on the right to the barn, and that on the left to the stable, so that, as is usual in Italian inns, the whole establishment was under one roof. We were shown into a brick-paved room on the first floor, adorned with a funny fresco of Aurora on the ceiling, and with some colored prints, both religious and profane. . . . . As we drove into the town we noticed a Gothic church with two doors of peculiar architecture, and while our dejeuner was being prepared we went to see it. The interior had little that was remarkable, for it had been repaired early in the last century, and spoilt of course; but an old triptych is still hanging in a chapel beside the high altar. It is painted on wood, and dates back beyond the invention of oil-painting, and represents the Virgin and some saints and angels. Neither is the exterior of the church particularly interesting, with the exception of the carving and ornaments of two of the doors. Both of them have round arches, deep and curiously wrought, and the pillars of one of the two are formed of a peculiar knot or twine in stone-work, such as I cannot well describe, but it is both ingenious and simple. These pillars rest on two nondescript animals, which look as much like walruses as anything else. The pillars of the other door consist of two figures supporting the capitals, and themselves standing on two handsomely carved lions. The work is curious, and evidently very ancient, and the material a red freestone. After lunch, J----- and I took a walk out of the gate of the town opposite to that of our entrance. There were no soldiers on guard, as at city gates of more importance; nor do I think that there is really any gate to shut, but the massive stone gateway still stands entire over the empty arch. Looking back after we had passed through, I observed that the lofty upper story is converted into a dove-cot, and that pumpkins were put to ripen in some open chambers at one side. We passed near the base of a tall, square tower, which is said to be of Roman origin. The little town is in the midst of a barren region, but its immediate neighborhood is fertile, and an olive-orchard, venerable of aspect, lay on the other side of the pleasant lane with its English hedges, and olive-trees grew likewise along the base of the city wall. The arched machicolations, which I have before mentioned, were here and there interrupted by a house which was built upon the old wall or incorporated into it; and from the windows of one of then I saw ears of Indian corn hung out to ripen in the sun, and somebody was winnowing grain at a little door that opened through the wall. It was very pleasant to see the ancient warlike rampart thus overcome with rustic peace. The ruined gateway is partly overgrown with ivy. Returning to our inn, along the street, we saw ------ sketching one of the doors of the Gothic church, in the midst of a crowd of the good people of San Quirico, who made no scruple to look over her shoulder, pressing so closely as hardly to allow her elbow-room. I must own that I was too cowardly to come forward and take my share of this public notice, so I turned away to the inn and there awaited her coming. Indeed, she has seldom attempted to sketch without finding herself the nucleus of a throng. VITERBO. The Black Eagle, October 14th.--Perhaps I had something more to say of San Quirico, but I shall merely add that there is a stately old palace of the Piccolomini close to the church above described. It is built in the style of the Roman palaces, and looked almost large enough to be one of them. Nevertheless, the basement story, or part of it, seems to be used as a barn and stable, for I saw a yoke of oxen in the entrance. I cannot but mention a most wretched team of vettura-horses which stopped at the door of our albergo: poor, lean, downcast creatures, with deep furrows between their ribs; nothing but skin and bone, in short, and not even so much skin as they should have had, for it was partially worn off from their backs. The harness was fastened with ropes, the traces and reins were ropes; the carriage was old and shabby, and out of this miserable equipage there alighted an ancient gentleman and lady, whom our waiter affirmed to be the Prefect of Florence and his wife. We left San Quirico at two o'clock, and followed an ascending road till we got into the region above the clouds; the landscape was very wide, but very dreary and barren, and grew more and more so till we began to climb the mountain of Radicofani, the peak of which had been blackening itself on the horizon almost the whole day. When we had come into a pretty high region we were assailed by a real mountain tempest of wind, rain, and hail, which pelted down upon us in good earnest, and cooled the air a little below comfort. As we toiled up the mountain its upper region presented a very striking aspect, looking as if a precipice had been smoothed and squared for the purpose of rendering the old castle on its summit more inaccessible than it was by nature. This is the castle of the robber-knight, Ghino di Tacco, whom Boccaccio introduces into the Decameron. A freebooter of those days must have set a higher value on such a rock as this than if it had been one mass of diamond, for no art of mediaeval warfare could endanger him in such a fortress. Drawing yet nearer, we found the hillside immediately above us strewn with thousands upon thousands of great fragments of stone. It looked as if some great ruin had taken place there, only it was too vast a ruin to have been the dismemberment and dissolution of anything made by man. We could now see the castle on the height pretty distinctly. It seemed to impend over the precipice; and close to the base of the latter we saw the street of a town on as strange and inconvenient a foundation as ever one was built upon. I suppose the inhabitants of the village were dependants of the old knight of the castle; his brotherhood of robbers, as they married and had families, settled there under the shelter of the eagle's nest. But the singularity is, how a community of people have contrived to live and perpetuate themselves so far out of the reach of the world's help, and seemingly with no means of assisting in the world's labor. I cannot imagine how they employ themselves except in begging, and even that branch of industry appears to be left to the old women and the children. No house was ever built in this immediate neighborhood for any such natural purpose as induces people to build them on other sites. Even our hotel, at which we now arrived, could not be said to be a natural growth of the soil; it had originally been a whim of one of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany,--a hunting-palace,--intended for habitation only during a few weeks of the year. Of all dreary hotels I ever alighted at, methinks this is the most so; but on first arriving I merely followed the waiter to look at our rooms, across stone-paved basement-halls dismal as Etruscan tombs; up dim staircases, and along shivering corridors, all of stone, stone, stone, nothing but cold stone. After glancing at these pleasant accommodations, my wife and I, with J-----, set out to ascend the hill and visit the town of Radicofani. It is not more than a quarter of a mile above our hotel, and is accessible by a good piece of road, though very steep. As we approached the town, we were assailed by some little beggars; but this is the case all through Italy, in city or solitude, and I think the mendicants of Radicofani are fewer than its proportion. We had not got far towards the village, when, looking back over the scene of many miles that lay stretched beneath us, we saw a heavy shower apparently travelling straight towards us over hill and dale. It seemed inevitable that it should soon be upon us, so I persuaded my wife to return to the hotel; but J----- and I kept onward, being determined to see Radicofani with or without a drenching. We soon entered the street; the blackest, ugliest, rudest old street, I do believe, that ever human life incrusted itself with. The first portion of it is the overbrimming of the town in generations subsequent to that in which it was surrounded by a wall; but after going a little way we came to a high, square tower planted right across the way, with an arched gateway in its basement story, so that it looked like a great short-legged giant striding over the street of Radicofani. Within the gateway is the proper and original town, though indeed the portion outside of the gate is as densely populated, as ugly, and as ancient, as that within. The street was very narrow, and paved with flag-stones not quite so smooth as those of Florence; the houses are tall enough to be stately, if they were not so inconceivably dingy and shabby; but, with their half-dozen stories, they make only the impression of hovel piled upon hovel,--squalor immortalized in undecaying stone. It was now getting far into the twilight, and I could not distinguish the particularities of the little town, except that there were shops, a cafe or two, and as many churches, all dusky with age, crowded closely together, inconvenient stifled too in spite of the breadth and freedom of the mountain atmosphere outside the scanty precincts of the street. It was a death-in-life little place, a fossilized place, and yet the street was thronged, and had all the bustle of a city; even more noise than a city's street, because everybody in Radicofani knows everybody, and probably gossips with everybody, being everybody's blood relation, as they cannot fail to have become after they and their forefathers have been shut up together within the narrow walls for many hundred years. They looked round briskly at J----- and me, but were courteous, as Italians always are, and made way for us to pass through the throng, as we kept on still ascending the steep street. It took us but a few minutes to reach the still steeper and winding pathway which climbs towards the old castle. After ascending above the village, the path, though still paved, becomes very rough, as if the hoofs of Ghino di Tacco's robber cavalry had displaced the stones and they had never been readjusted. On every side, too, except where the path just finds space enough, there is an enormous rubbish of huge stones, which seems to have fallen from the precipice above, or else to have rained down out of the sky. We kept on, and by and by reached what seemed to have been a lower outwork of the castle on the top; there was the massive old arch of a gateway, and a great deal of ruin of man's work, beside the large stones that here, as elsewhere, were scattered so abundantly. Within the wall and gateway just mentioned, however, there was a kind of farm-house, adapted, I suppose, out of the old ruin, and I noticed some ears of Indian corn hanging out of a window. There were also a few stacks of hay, but no signs of human or animal life; and it is utterly inexplicable to me, where these products of the soil could have come from, for certainly they never grew amid that barrenness. We had not yet reached Ghino's castle, and, being now beneath it, we had to bend our heads far backward to see it rising up against the clear sky while we were now in twilight. The path upward looked terribly steep and rough, and if we had climbed it we should probably have broken our necks in descending again into the lower obscurity. We therefore stopped here, much against J-----'s will, and went back as we came, still wondering at the strange situation of Radicofani; for its aspect is as if it had stepped off the top of the cliff and lodged at its base, though still in danger of sliding farther down the hillside. Emerging from the compact, grimy life of its street, we saw that the shower had swept by, or probably had expended itself in a region beneath us, for we were above the scope of many of the showery clouds that haunt a hill-country. There was a very bright star visible, I remember, and we saw the new moon, now a third towards the full, for the first time this evening. The air was cold and bracing. But I am excessively sleepy, so will not describe our great dreary hotel, where a blast howled in an interminable corridor all night. It did not seem to have anything to do with the wind out of doors, but to be a blast that had been casually shut in when the doors were closed behind the last Grand Duke who came hither and departed, and ever since it has been kept prisoner, and makes a melancholy wail along the corridor. The dreamy stupidity of this conceit proves how sleepy I am. SETTE VENE. October 15th.--We left Radicofani long before sunrise, and I saw that ceremony take place from the coupe of the vettura for the first time in a long while. A sunset is the better sight of the two. I have always suspected it, and have been strengthened in the idea whenever I have had an opportunity of comparison. Our departure from Radicofani was most dreary, except that we were very glad to get away; but, the cold discomfort of dressing in a chill bedroom by candlelight, and our uncertain wandering through the immense hotel with a dim taper in search of the breakfast-room, and our poor breakfast of eggs, Italian bread, and coffee,--all these things made me wish that people were created with roots like trees, so they could not befool themselves with wandering about. However, we had not long been on our way before the morning air blew away all our troubles, and we rumbled cheerfully onward, ready to encounter even the papal custom-house officers at Ponte Centino. Our road thither was a pretty steep descent. I remember the barren landscape of hills, with here and there a lonely farm-house, which there seemed to be no occasion for, where nothing grew. At Ponte Centino my passport was examined, and I was invited into an office where sat the papal custom-house officer, a thin, subtle-looking, keen-eyed, sallow personage, of aspect very suitable to be the agent of a government of priests. I communicated to him my wish to pass the custom-house without giving the officers the trouble of examining my luggage. He inquired whether I had any dutiable articles, and wrote for my signature a declaration in the negative; and then he lifted a sand-box, beneath which was a little heap of silver coins. On this delicate hint I asked what was the usual fee, and was told that fifteen pauls was the proper sum. I presume it was entirely an illegal charge, and that he had no right to pass any luggage without examination; but the thing is winked at by the authorities, and no money is better spent for the traveller's convenience than these fifteen pauls. There was a papal military officer in the room, and he, I believe, cheated me in the change of a Napoleon, as his share of the spoil. At the door a soldier met me with my passport, and looked as if he expected a fee for handing it to me; but in this he was disappointed. After I had resumed my seat in the coupe, the porter of the custom-house--a poor, sickly-looking creature, half dead with the malaria of the place--appeared, and demanded a fee for doing nothing to my luggage. He got three pauls, and looked but half contented. This whole set of men seem to be as corrupt as official people can possibly be; and yet I hardly know whether to stigmatize them as corrupt, because it is not their individual delinquency, but the operation of a regular system. Their superiors know what men they are, and calculate upon their getting a living by just these means. And, indeed, the custom-house and passport regulations, as they exist in Italy, would be intolerable if there were not this facility of evading them at little cost. Such laws are good for nothing but to be broken. We now began to ascend again, and the country grew fertile and picturesque. We passed many mules and donkeys, laden with a sort of deep firkin on each side of the saddle, and these were heaped up with grapes, both purple and white. We bought some, and got what we should have thought an abundance at small price, only we used to get twice as many at Montanto for the same money. However, a Roman paul bought us three or four pounds even here. We still ascended, and came soon to the gateway of the town of Acquapendente, which stands on a height that seems to descend by natural terraces to the valley below. . . . . French soldiers, in their bluish-gray coats and scarlet trousers, were on duty at the gate, and one of them took my passport and the vetturino's, and we then drove into the town to wait till they should be vised. We saw but one street, narrow, with tall, rusty, aged houses, built of stone, evil smelling; in short, a kind of place that would be intolerably dismal in cloudy England, and cannot be called cheerful even under the sun of Italy. . . . . Priests passed, and burly friars, one of whom was carrying a wine-barrel on his head. Little carts, laden with firkins of grapes, and donkeys with the same genial burden, brushed passed our vettura, finding scarce room enough in the narrow street. All the idlers of Acquapendente--and they were many--assembled to gaze at us, but not discourteously. Indeed, I never saw an idle curiosity exercised in such a pleasant way as by the country-people of Italy. It almost deserves to be called a kindly interest and sympathy, instead of a hard and cold curiosity, like that of our own people, and it is displayed with such simplicity that it is evident no offence is intended. By and by the vetturino brought his passport and my own, with the official vise, and we kept on our way, still ascending, passing through vineyards and olives, and meeting grape-laden donkeys, till we came to the town of San Lorenzo Nuovo, a place built by Pius VI. as the refuge for the people of a lower town which had been made uninhabitable by malaria. The new town, which I suppose is hundreds of years old, with all its novelty shows strikingly the difference between places that grow up and shape out their streets of their own accord, as it were, and one that is built on a settled plan of malice aforethought. This little rural village has gates of classic architecture, a spacious piazza, and a great breadth of straight and rectangular streets, with houses of uniform style, airy and wholesome looking to a degree seldom seen on the Continent. Nevertheless, I must say that the town looked hatefully dull and ridiculously prim, and, of the two, I had rather spend my life in Radicofani. We drove through it, from gate to gate, without stopping, and soon came to the brow of a hill, whence we beheld, right beneath us, the beautiful lake of Bolsena; not exactly at our feet, however, for a portion of level ground lay between, haunted by the pestilence which has depopulated all these shores, and made the lake and its neighborhood a solitude. It looked very beautiful, nevertheless, with a sheen of a silver mid a gray like that of steel as the wind blew and the sun shone over it; and, judging by my own feelings, I should really have thought that the breeze from its surface was bracing and healthy. Descending the hill, we passed the ruins of the old town of San Lorenzo, of which the prim village on the hill-top may be considered the daughter. There is certainly no resemblance between parent and child, the former being situated on a sort of precipitous bluff, where there could have been no room for piazzas and spacious streets, nor accessibility except by mules, donkeys, goats, and people of Alpine habits. There was an ivy-covered tower on the top of the bluff, and some arched cavern mouths that looked as if they opened into the great darkness. These were the entrances to Etruscan tombs, for the town on top had been originally Etruscan, and the inhabitants had buried themselves in the heart of the precipitous bluffs after spending their lives on its summit. Reaching the plain, we drove several miles along the shore of the lake, and found the soil fertile and generally well cultivated, especially with the vine, though there were tracks apparently too marshy to be put to any agricultural purpose. We met now and then a flock of sheep, watched by sallow-looking and spiritless men and boys, who, we took it for granted, would soon perish of malaria, though, I presume, they never spend their nights in the immediate vicinity of the lake. I should like to inquire whether animals suffer from the bad qualities of the air. The lake is not nearly so beautiful on a nearer view as it is from the hill above, there being no rocky margin, nor bright, sandy beach, but everywhere this interval of level ground, and often swampy marsh, betwixt the water and the hill. At a considerable distance from the shore we saw two islands, one of which is memorable as having been the scene of an empress's murder, but I cannot stop to fill my journal with historical reminiscences. We kept onward to the town of Bolsena, which stands nearly a mile from the lake, and on a site higher than the level margin, yet not so much so, I should apprehend, as to free it from danger of malaria. We stopped at an albergo outside of the wall of the town, and before dinner had time to see a good deal of the neighborhood. The first aspect of the town was very striking, with a vista into its street through the open gateway, and high above it an old, gray, square-built castle, with three towers visible at the angles, one of them battlemented, one taller than the rest, and one partially ruined. Outside of the town-gate there were some fragments of Etruscan ruin, capitals of pillars and altars with inscriptions; these we glanced at, and then made our entrance through the gate. There it was again,--the same narrow, dirty, time-darkened street of piled-up houses which we have so often seen; the same swarm of ill-to-do people, grape-laden donkeys, little stands or shops of roasted chestnuts, peaches, tomatoes, white and purple figs; the same evidence of a fertile land, and grimy poverty in the midst of abundance which nature tries to heap into their hands. It seems strange that they can never grasp it. We had gone but a little way along this street, when we saw a narrow lane that turned aside from it and went steeply upward. Its name was on the corner,--the Via di Castello,--and as the castle promised to be more interesting than anything else, we immediately began to ascend. The street--a strange name for such an avenue--clambered upward in the oddest fashion, passing under arches, scrambling up steps, so that it was more like a long irregular pair of stairs than anything that Christians call a street; and so large a part of it was under arches that we scarcely seemed to be out of doors. At last U----, who was in advance, emerged into the upper air, and cried out that we had ascended to an upper town, and a larger one than that beneath. It really seemed like coming up out of the earth into the midst of the town, when we found ourselves so unexpectedly in upper Bolsena. We were in a little nook, surrounded by old edifices, and called the Piazza del Orologio, on account of a clock that was apparent somewhere. The castle was close by, and from its platform there was a splendid view of the lake and all the near hill-country. The castle itself is still in good condition, and apparently as strong as ever it was as respects the exterior walls; but within there seemed to be neither floor nor chamber, nothing but the empty shell of the dateless old fortress. The stones at the base and lower part of the building were so massive that I should think the Etrurians must have laid them; and then perhaps the Romans built a little higher, and the mediaeval people raised the battlements and towers. But we did not look long at the castle, our attention being drawn to the singular aspect of the town itself, which--to speak first of its most prominent characteristic--is the very filthiest place, I do believe, that was ever inhabited by man. Defilement was everywhere; in the piazza, in nooks and corners, strewing the miserable lanes from side to side, the refuse of every day, and of accumulated ages. I wonder whether the ancient Romans were as dirty a people as we everywhere find those who have succeeded them; for there seems to have been something in the places that have been inhabited by Romans, or made famous in their history, and in the monuments of every kind that they have raised, that puts people in mind of their very earthliness, and incites them to defile therewith whatever temple, column, ruined palace, or triumphal arch may fall in their way. I think it must be an hereditary trait, probably weakened and robbed of a little of its horror by the influence of milder ages; and I am much afraid that Caesar trod narrower and fouler ways in his path to power than those of modern Rome, or even of this disgusting town of Bolsena. I cannot imagine anything worse than these, however. Rotten vegetables thrown everywhere about, musty straw, standing puddles, running rivulets of dissolved nastiness,--these matters were a relief amid viler objects. The town was full of great black hogs wallowing before every door, and they grunted at us with a kind of courtesy and affability as if the town were theirs, and it was their part to be hospitable to strangers. Many donkeys likewise accosted us with braying; children, growing more uncleanly every day they lived, pestered us with begging; men stared askance at us as they lounged in corners, and women endangered us with slops which they were flinging from doorways into the street. No decent words can describe, no admissible image can give an idea of this noisome place. And yet, I remember, the donkeys came up the height loaded with fruit, and with little flat-sided barrels of wine; the people had a good atmosphere--except as they polluted it themselves--on their high site, and there seemed to be no reason why they should not live a beautiful and jolly life. I did not mean to write such an ugly description as the above, but it is well, once for all, to have attempted conveying an idea of what disgusts the traveller, more or less, in all these Italian towns. Setting aside this grand characteristic, the upper town of Bolsena is a most curious and interesting place. It was originally an Etruscan city, the ancient Volsinii, and when taken and destroyed by the Romans was said to contain two thousand statues. Afterwards the Romans built a town upon the site, including, I suppose, the space occupied by the lower city, which looks as if it had brimmed over like Radicofani, and fallen from the precipitous height occupied by the upper. The latter is a strange confusion of black and ugly houses, piled massively out of the ruins of former ages, built rudely and without plan, as a pauper would build his hovel, and yet with here and there an arched gateway, a cornice, a pillar, that might have adorned a palace. . . . . The streets are the narrowest I have seen anywhere,--of no more width, indeed, than may suffice for the passage of a donkey with his panniers. They wind in and out in strange confusion, and hardly look like streets at all, but, nevertheless, have names printed on the corners, just as if they were stately avenues. After looking about us awhile and drawing half-breaths so as to take in the less quantity of gaseous pollution, we went back to the castle, and descended by a path winding downward from it into the plain outside of the town-gate. It was now dinner-time, . . . . and we had, in the first place, some fish from the pestiferous lake; not, I am sorry to say, the famous stewed eels which, Dante says, killed Pope Martin, but some trout. . . . . By the by, the meal was not dinner, but our midday colazione. After despatching it, we again wandered forth and strolled round the outside of the lower town, which, with the upper one, made as picturesque a combination as could be desired. The old wall that surrounds the lower town has been appropriated, long since, as the back wall of a range of houses; windows have been pierced through it; upper chambers and loggie have been built upon it; so that it looks something like a long row of rural dwellings with one continuous front or back, constructed in a strange style of massive strength, contrasting with the vines that here and there are trained over it, and with the wreaths of yellow corn that hang from the windows. But portions of the old battlements are interspersed with the line of homely chambers and tiled house-tops. Within the wall the town is very compact, and above its roofs rises a rock, the sheer, precipitous bluff on which stands the upper town, whose foundations impend over the highest roof in the lower. At one end is the old castle, with its towers rising above the square battlemented mass of the main fortress; and if we had not seen the dirt and squalor that dwells within this venerable outside, we should have carried away a picture of gray, grim dignity, presented by a long past age to the present one, to put its mean ways and modes to shame. ------ sat diligently sketching, and children came about her, exceedingly unfragrant, but very courteous and gentle, looking over her shoulders, and expressing delight as they saw each familiar edifice take its place in the sketch. They are a lovable people, these Italians, as I find from almost all with whom we come in contact; they have great and little faults, and no great virtues that I know of; but still are sweet, amiable, pleasant to encounter, save when they beg, or when you have to bargain with them. We left Bolsena and drove to Viterbo, passing the gate of the picturesque town of Montefiascone, over the wall of which I saw spires and towers, and the dome of a cathedral. I was sorry not to taste, in its own town, the celebrated est, which was the death-draught of the jolly prelate. At Viterbo, however, I called for some wine of Montefiascone, and had a little straw-covered flask, which the waiter assured us was the genuine est-wine. It was of golden color, and very delicate, somewhat resembling still champagne, but finer, and requiring a calmer pause to appreciate its subtle delight. Its good qualities, however, are so evanescent, that the finer flavor became almost imperceptible before we finished the flask. Viterbo is a large, disagreeable town, built at the foot of a mountain, the peak of which is seen through the vista of some of the narrow streets. There are more fountains in Viterbo than I have seen in any other city of its size, and many of them of very good design. Around most of them there were wine-hogsheads, waiting their turn to be cleansed and rinsed, before receiving the wine of the present vintage. Passing a doorway, J----- saw some men treading out the grapes in a great vat with their naked feet. Among the beggars here, the loudest and most vociferous was a crippled postilion, wearing his uniform jacket, green, faced with red; and he seemed to consider himself entitled still to get his living from travellers, as having been disabled in the way of his profession. I recognized his claim, and was rewarded with a courteous and grateful bow at our departure. . . . . To beggars--after my much experience both in England and Italy--I give very little, though I am not certain that it would not often be real beneficence in the latter country. There being little or no provision for poverty and age, the poor must often suffer. Nothing can be more earnest than their entreaties for aid; nothing seemingly more genuine than their gratitude when they receive it. They return you the value of their alms in prayers, and say, "God will accompany you." Many of them have a professional whine, and a certain doleful twist of the neck and turn of the head, which hardens my heart against them at once. A painter might find numerous models among them, if canvas had not already been more than sufficiently covered with their style of the picturesque. There is a certain brick-dust colored cloak worn in Viterbo, not exclusively by beggars, which, when ragged enough, is exceedingly artistic. ROME. 68 Piazza Poli, October 17th.--We left Viterbo on the 15th, and proceeded, through Monterosi, to Sette Verse. There was nothing interesting at Sette Verse, except an old Roman bridge, of a single arch, which had kept its sweep, composed of one row of stones, unbroken for two or more thousand years, and looked just as strong as ever, though gray with age, and fringed with plants that found it hard to fix themselves in its close crevices. The next day we drove along the Cassian Way towards Rome. It was a most delightful morning, a genial atmosphere; the more so, I suppose, because this was the Campagna, the region of pestilence and death. I had a quiet, gentle, comfortable pleasure, as if, after many wanderings, I was drawing near Rome, for, now that I have known it once, Rome certainly does draw into itself my heart, as I think even London, or even little Concord itself, or old sleepy Salem, never did and never will. Besides, we are to stay here six months, and we had now a house all prepared to receive us; so that this present approach, in the noontide of a genial day, was most unlike our first one, when we crept towards Rome through the wintry midnight, benumbed with cold, ill, weary, and not knowing whither to betake ourselves. Ah! that was a dismal tine! One thing, however, that disturbed even my present equanimity a little was the necessity of meeting the custom-house at the Porta del Popolo; but my past experience warranted me in believing that even these ogres might be mollified by the magic touch of a scudo; and so it proved. We should have escaped any examination at all, the officer whispered me, if his superior had not happened to be present; but, as the case stood, they took down only one trunk from the top of the vettura, just lifted the lid, closed it again, and gave us permission to proceed. So we came to 68 Piazza Poli, and found ourselves at once at home, in such a comfortable, cosey little house, as I did not think existed in Rome. I ought to say a word about our vetturino, Constantino Bacci, an excellent and most favorable specimen of his class; for his magnificent conduct, his liberality, and all the good qualities that ought to be imperial, S----- called him the Emperor. He took us to good hotels, and feasted us with the best; he was kind to us all, and especially to little Rosebud, who used to run by his side, with her small white hand in his great brown one; he was cheerful in his deportment, and expressed his good spirits by the smack of his whip, which is the barometer of a vetturino's inward weather; he drove admirably, and would rumble up to the door of an albergo, and stop to a hair's-breadth just where it was most convenient for us to alight; he would hire postilions and horses, where other vetturini would take nothing better than sluggish oxen, to help us up the hilly roads, so that sometimes we had a team of seven; he did all that we could possibly require of him, and was content and more, with a buon mono of five scudi, in addition to the stipulated price. Finally, I think the tears had risen almost to his eyelids when we parted with him. Our friends, the Thompsons, through whose kindness we procured this house, called to see us soon after our arrival. In the afternoon, I walked with Rosebud to the Medici Gardens, and on our way thither, we espied our former servant, Lalla, who flung so many and such bitter curses after us, on our departure from Rome, sitting at her father's fruit-stall. Thank God, they have not taken effect. After going to the Medici, we went to the Pincian Gardens, and looked over into the Borghese grounds, which, methought, were more beautiful than ever. The same was true of the sky, and of every object beneath it; and as we came homeward along the Corso, I wondered at the stateliness and palatial magnificence of that noble street. Once, I remember, I thought it narrow, and far unworthy of its fame. In the way of costume, the men in goat-skin breeches, whom we met on the Campagna, were very striking, and looked like Satyrs. October 21st.--. . . . I have been twice to St. Peter's, and was impressed more than at any former visit by a sense of breadth and loftiness, and, as it were, a visionary splendor and magnificence. I also went to the Museum of the Capitol; and the statues seemed to me more beautiful than formerly, and I was not sensible of the cold despondency with which I have so often viewed them. Yesterday we went to the Corsini Palace, which we had not visited before. It stands in the Trastevere, in the Longara, and is a stately palace, with a grand staircase, leading to the first floor, where is situated the range of picture-rooms. There were a good many fine pictures, but none of them have made a memorable impression on my mind, except a portrait by Vandyke, of a man in point-lace, very grand and very real. The room in which this picture hung had many other portraits by Holbein, Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens, and other famous painters, and was wonderfully rich in this department. In another, there was a portrait of Pope Julius II., by Raphael, somewhat differing from those at the Pitti and the Uffizi galleries in Florence, and those I have seen in England and Paris; thinner, paler, perhaps older, more severely intellectual, but at least, as high a work of art as those. The palace has some handsome old furniture, and gilded chairs, covered with leather cases, possibly relics of Queen Christina's time, who died here. I know not but the most curious object was a curule chair of marble, sculptured all out of one piece, and adorned with bas-reliefs. It is supposed to be Etruscan. It has a circular back, sweeping round, so as to afford sufficient rests for the elbows; and, sitting down in it, I discovered that modern ingenuity has not made much real improvement on this chair of three or four thousand years ago. But some chairs are easier for the moment, yet soon betray you, and grow the more irksome. We strolled along Longara, and found the piazza of St. Peter's full of French soldiers at their drill. . . . . We went quite round the interior of the church, and perceiving the pavement loose and broken near the altar where Guido's Archangel is placed, we picked up some bits of rosso antico and gray marble, to be set in brooches, as relics. We have the snuggest little set of apartments in Rome, seven rooms, including an antechamber; and though the stairs are exceedingly narrow, there is really a carpet on them,--a civilized comfort, of which the proudest palaces in the Eternal City cannot boast. The stairs are very steep, however, and I should not wonder if some of us broke our noses down them. Narrowness of space within doors strikes us all rather ludicrously, yet not unpleasantly, after being accustomed to the wastes and deserts of the Montanto Villa. It is well thus to be put in training for the over-snugness of our cottage in Concord. Our windows here look out on a small and rather quiet piazza, with an immense palace on the left hand, and a smaller yet statelier one on the right, and just round the corner of the street, leading out of our piazza, is the Fountain of Trevi, of which I can hear the plash in the evening, when other sounds are hushed. Looking over what I have said of Sodoma's "Christ Bound," at Sierra, I see that I have omitted to notice what seems to me one of its most striking characteristics,--its loneliness. You feel as if the Saviour were deserted, both in heaven and earth; the despair is in him which made him say, "My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Even in this extremity, however, he is still Divine, and Sodoma almost seems to have reconciled the impossibilities of combining an omnipresent divinity with a suffering and outraged humanity. But this is one of the cases in which the spectator's imagination completes what the artist merely hints at. Mr. ------, the sculptor, called to see us, the other evening, and quite paid Powers off for all his trenchant criticisms on his brother artists. He will not allow Powers to be an artist at all, or to know anything of the laws of art, although acknowledging him to be a great bust-maker, and to have put together the Greek Slave and the Fisher-Boy very ingeniously. The latter, however (he says), is copied from the Apollino in the Tribune of the Uzi; and the former is made up of beauties that had no reference to one another; and he affirms that Powers is ready to sell, and has actually sold, the Greek Slave, limb by limb, dismembering it by reversing the process of putting it together,--a head to one purchaser, an arm or a foot to another, a hand to a third. Powers knows nothing scientifically of the human frame, and only succeeds in representing it as a natural bone-doctor succeeds in setting a dislocated limb by a happy accident or special providence. (The illustration was my own, and adopted by Mr. ------.) Yet Mr. ------ seems to acknowledge that he did succeed. I repeat these things only as another instance how invariably every sculptor uses his chisel and mallet to smash and deface the marble-work of every other. I never heard Powers speak of Mr. ------, but can partly imagine what he would have said. Mr. ------ spoke of Powers's disappointment about the twenty-five-thousand-dollar appropriation from Congress, and said that he was altogether to blame, inasmuch as he attempted to sell to the nation for that sum a statue which, to Mr. ------'s certain knowledge, he had already offered to private persons for a fifth part of it. I have not implicit faith in Mr. ------'s veracity, and doubt not Powers acted fairly in his own eyes. October 23d.--I am afraid I have caught one of the colds which the Roman air continually affected me with last winter; at any rate, a sirocco has taken the life out of me, and I have no spirit to do anything. This morning I took a walk, however, out of the Porta Maggiore, and looked at the tomb of the baker Eurysaces, just outside of the gate,--a very singular ruin covered with symbols of the man's trade in stone-work, and with bas-reliefs along the cornice, representing people at work, making bread. An inscription states that the ashes of his wife are likewise reposited there, in a bread-basket. The mausoleum is perhaps twenty feet long, in its largest extent, and of equal height; and if good bakers were as scarce in ancient Rome as in the modern city, I do not wonder that they were thought worthy of stately monuments. None of the modern ones deserve any better tomb than a pile of their own sour loaves. I walked onward a good distance beyond the gate alongside of the arches of the Claudian aqueduct, which, in this portion of it, seems to have had little repair, and to have needed little, since it was built. It looks like a long procession, striding across the Campagna towards the city, and entering the gate, over one of its arches, within the gate, I saw two or three slender jets of water spurting from the crevices; this aqueduct being still in use to bring the Acqua Felice into Rome. Returning within the walls, I walked along their inner base, to the Church of St. John Lateran, into which I went, and sat down to rest myself, being languid and weary, and hot with the sun, though afraid to trust the coolness of the shade. I hate the Roman atmosphere; indeed, all my pleasure in getting back--all my home-feeling--has already evaporated, and what now impresses me, as before, is the languor of Rome,--its weary pavements, its little life, pressed down by a weight of death. Quitting St. John Lateran, I went astray, as I do nine times out of ten in these Roman intricacies, and at last, seeing the Coliseum in the vista of a street, I betook myself thither to get a fresh start. Its round of stones looked vast and dreary, but not particularly impressive. The interior was quite deserted; except that a Roman, of respectable appearance, was making a pilgrimage at the altars, kneeling and saying a prayer at each one. Outside of the Coliseum, a neat-looking little boy came and begged of me; and I gave him a baiocco, rather because he seemed to need it so little than for any other reason. I observed that he immediately afterwards went and spoke to a well-dressed man, and supposed that the child was likewise begging of him. I watched the little boy, however, and saw that, in two or three other instances, after begging of other individuals, he still returned to this well-dressed man; the fact being, no doubt, that the latter was fishing for baiocci through the medium of his child,--throwing the poor little fellow out as a bait, while he himself retained his independent respectability. He had probably come out for a whole day's sport; for, by and by, he went between the arches of the Coliseum, followed by the child, and taking with him what looked like a bottle of wine, wrapped in a handkerchief. November 2d.--The weather lately would have suited one's ideal of an English November, except that there have been no fogs; but of ugly, hopeless clouds, chill, shivering winds, drizzle, and now and then pouring rain, much more than enough. An English coal-fire, if we could see its honest face within doors, would compensate for all the unamiableness of the outside atmosphere; but we might ask for the sunshine of the New Jerusalem, with as much hope of getting it. It is extremely spirit-crushing, this remorseless gray, with its icy heart; and the more to depress the whole family, U---- has taken what seems to be the Roman fever, by sitting down in the Palace of the Caesars, while Mrs. S----- sketched the ruins. . . . . [During four months of the illness of his daughter, Mr. Hawthorne wrote no word of Journal.--ED.] February 27th, 1859.--For many days past, there have been tokens of the coming Carnival in the Corso and the adjacent streets; for example, in the shops, by the display of masks of wire, pasteboard, silk, or cloth, some of beautiful features, others hideous, fantastic, currish, asinine, huge-nosed, or otherwise monstrous; some intended to cover the whole face, others concealing only the upper part, also white dominos, or robes bedizened with gold-lace and theatric splendors, displayed at the windows of mercers or flaunting before the doors. Yesterday, U---- and I came along the Corso, between one and two o'clock, after a walk, and found all these symptoms of impending merriment multiplied and intensified; . . . . rows of chairs, set out along the sidewalks, elevated a foot or two by means of planks; great baskets, full of confetti, for sale in the nooks and recesses of the streets; bouquets of all qualities and prices. The Corso was becoming pretty well thronged with people; but, until two o'clock, nobody dared to fling as much as a rosebud or a handful of sugar-plums. There was a sort of holiday expression, however, on almost everybody's face, such as I have not hitherto seen in Rome, or in any part of Italy; a smile gleaming out, an aurora of mirth, which probably will not be very exuberant in its noontide. The day was so sunny and bright that it made this opening scene far more cheerful than any day of the last year's carnival. As we threaded our way through the Corso, U---- kept wishing she could plunge into the fun and uproar as J----- would, and for my own part, though I pretended to take no interest in the matter, I could have bandied confetti and nosegays as readily and as riotously as any urchin there. But my black hat and grave talma would have been too good a mark for the combatants, . . . . so we went home before a shot was fired. . . . . March 7th.--I, as well as the rest of the family, have followed up the Carnival pretty faithfully, and enjoyed it as well, or rather better than could have been expected; principally in the street, as a more looker-on,--which does not let one into the mystery of the fun,--and twice from a balcony, where I threw confetti, and partly understood why the young people like it so much. Certainly, there cannot well be a more picturesque spectacle in human life, than that stately, palatial avenue of the Corso, the more picturesque because so narrow, all hung with carpets and Gobelin tapestry, and the whole palace-heights alive with faces; and all the capacity of the street thronged with the most fantastic figures that either the fancies of folks alive at this day are able to contrive, or that live traditionally from year to year. . . . . The Prince of Wales has fought manfully through the Carnival with confetti and bouquets, and U---- received several bouquets from him, on Saturday, as her carriage moved along. March 8th.--I went with U---- to Mr. Motley's balcony, in the Corso, and saw the Carnival from it yesterday afternoon; but the spectacle is strangely like a dream, in respect to the difficulty of retaining it in the mind and solidifying it into a description. I enjoyed it a good deal, and assisted in so far as to pelt all the people in cylinder hats with handfuls of confetti. The scene opens with a long array of cavalry, who ride through the Corso, preceded by a large band, playing loudly on their brazen instruments. . . . . There were some splendid dresses, particularly contadina costumes of scarlet and gold, which seem to be actually the festal attire of that class of people, and must needs be so expensive that one must serve for a lifetime, if indeed it be not an inheritance. . . . . March 9th.--I was, yesterday, an hour or so among the people on the sidewalks of the Corso, just on the edges of the fun. They appeared to be in a decorous, good-natured mood, neither entering into the merriment, nor harshly repelling; and when groups of maskers overflowed among them, they received their jokes in good part. Many women of the lower class were in the crowd of bystanders; generally broad and sturdy figures, clad evidently in their best attire, and wearing a good many ornaments; such as gold or coral beads and necklaces, combs of silver or gold, heavy ear-rings, curiously wrought brooches, perhaps cameos or mosaics, though I think they prefer purely metallic work to these. One ornament very common among them is a large bodkin, which they stick through their hair. It is usually of silver, but sometimes it looks like steel, and is made in the shape of a sword,--a long Spanish thrusting sword, for example. Dr. Franco told us a story of a woman of Trastevere, who was addressed rudely at the Carnival by a gentleman; she warned him to desist, but as he still persisted, she drew the bodkin from her hair, and stabbed him to the heart. By and by I went to Mr. Motley's balcony, and looked down on the closing scenes of the Carnival. Methought the merry-makers labored harder to be mirthful, and yet were somewhat tired of their eight play-days; and their dresses looked a little shabby, rumpled, and draggled; but the lack of sunshine--which we have had on all the preceding days--may have produced this effect. The wheels of some of the carriages were wreathed round and spoked with green foliage, making a very pretty and fanciful appearance, as did likewise the harnesses of the horses, which were trimmed with roses. The pervading noise and uproar of human voices is one of the most effective points of the matter; but the scene is quite indescribable, and its effect not to be conceived without both witnessing and taking part in it. If you merely look at it, it depresses you; if you take even the slightest share in it, you become aware that it has a fascination, and you no longer wonder that the young people, at least, take such delight in plunging into this mad river of fun that goes roaring between the narrow limits of the Corso. As twilight came on, the moccoli commenced, and as it grew darker the whole street twinkled with lights, which would have been innumerable if every torch-bearer had not been surrounded by a host of enemies, who tried to extinguish his poor little twinkle. It was a pity to lose so much splendor as there might have been; but yet there was a kind of symbolism in the thought that every one of those thousands of twinkling lights was in charge of somebody, who was striving with all his might to keep it alive. Not merely the street-way, but all the balconies and hundreds of windows were lit up with these little torches; so that it seemed as if the stars had crumbled into glittering fragments, and rained down upon the Corso, some of them lodging upon the palace-fronts, some falling on the ground. Besides this, there were gas-lights burning with a white flame; but this illumination was not half so interesting as that of the torches, which indicated human struggle. All this time there were myriad voices shouting, "SENZA MOCCOLO!" and mingling into one long roar. We, in our balcony, carried on a civil war against one another's torches, as is the custom of human beings, within even the narrowest precincts; but after a while we grew tired, and so did the crowd, apparently; for the lights vanished, one after another, till the gas-lights--which at first were an unimportant part of the illumination--shone quietly out, overpowering the scattered twinkles of the moccoli. They were what the fixed stars are to the transitory splendors of human life. Mr. Motley tells me, that it was formerly the custom to have a mock funeral of harlequin, who was supposed to die at the close of the Carnival, during which he had reigned supreme, and all the people, or as many as chose, bore torches at his burial. But this being considered an indecorous mockery of Popish funereal customs, the present frolic of the moccoli was instituted,--in some sort, growing out of it. All last night, or as much of it as I was awake, there was a noise of song and of late revellers in the streets; but to-day we have waked up in the sad and sober season of Lent. It is worthy of remark, that all the jollity of the Carnival is a genuine ebullition of spirit, without the aid of wine or strong drink. March 11th.--Yesterday we went to the Catacomb of St. Calixtus, the entrance to which is alongside of the Appian Way, within sight of the tomb of Cecilia Metella. We descended not a very great way under ground, by a broad flight of stone steps, and, lighting some wax tapers, with which we had provided ourselves, we followed the guide through a great many intricate passages, which mostly were just wide enough for me to touch the wall on each side, while keeping my elbows close to my body; and as to height, they were from seven to ten feet, and sometimes a good deal higher It was rather picturesque, when we saw the long line of our tapers, for another large party had joined us, twinkling along the dark passage, and it was interesting to think of the former inhabitants of these caverns. . . . . In one or two places there was the round mark in the stone or plaster, where a bottle had been deposited. This was said to have been the token of a martyr's burial-place, and to have contained his blood. After leaving the Catacomb, we drove onward to Cecilia Metella's tomb, which we entered and inspected. Within the immensely massive circular substance of the tomb was a round, vacant space, and this interior vacancy was open at the top, and had nothing but some fallen stones and a heap of earth at the bottom. On our way home we entered the Church of "Domine, quo vadis," and looked at the old fragment of the Appian Way, where our Saviour met St. Peter, and left the impression of his feet in one of the Roman paving-stones. The stone has been removed, and there is now only a fac-simile engraved in a block of marble, occupying the place where Jesus stood. It is a great pity they had not left the original stone; for then all its brother-stones in the pavement would have seemed to confirm the truth of the legend. While we were at dinner, a gentleman called and was shown into the parlor. We supposed it to be Mr. May; but soon his voice grew familiar, and my wife was sure it was General Pierce, so I left the table, and found it to be really he. I was rejoiced to see him, though a little saddened to see the marks of care and coming age, in many a whitening hair, and many a furrow, and, still more, in something that seemed to have passed away out of him, without leaving any trace. His voice, sometimes, sounded strange and old, though generally it was what it used to be. He was evidently glad to see me, glad to see my wife, glad to see the children, though there was something melancholy in his tone, when he remarked what a stout boy J----- had grown. Poor fellow! he has neither son nor daughter to keep his heart warm. This morning I have been with him to St. Peter's, and elsewhere about the city, and find him less changed than he seemed to be last night; not at all changed in heart and affections. We talked freely about all matters that came up; among the rest, about the project--recognizable by many tokens--for bringing him again forward as a candidate for the Presidency next year. He appears to be firmly resolved not again to present himself to the country, and is content to let his one administration stand, and to be judged by the public and posterity on the merits of that. No doubt he is perfectly sincere; no doubt, too, he would again be a candidate, if a pretty unanimous voice of the party should demand it. I retain all my faith in his administrative faculty, and should be glad, for his sake, to have it fully rccognized; but the probabilities, as far as I can see, do not indicate for him another Presidential term. March 15th.--This morning I went with my wife and Miss Hoar to Miss Hosmer's studio, to see her statue of Zenobia. We found her in her premises, springing about with a bird-like action. She has a lofty room, with a skylight window; it was pretty well warmed with a stove, and there was a small orange-tree in a pot, with the oranges growing on it, and two or three flower-shrubs in bloom. She herself looked prettily, with her jaunty little velvet cap on the side of her head, whence came clustering out, her short brown curls; her face full of pleasant life and quick expression; and though somewhat worn with thought and struggle, handsome and spirited. She told us that "her wig was growing as gray as a rat." There were but very few things in the room; two or three plaster busts, a headless cast of a plaster statue, and a cast of the Minerva Medica, which perhaps she had been studying as a help towards the design of her Zenobia; for, at any rate, I seemed to discern a resemblance or analogy between the two. Zenobia stood in the centre of the room, as yet unfinished in the clay, but a very noble and remarkable statue indeed, full of dignity and beauty. It is wonderful that so brisk a woman could have achieved a work so quietly impressive; and there is something in Zenobia's air that conveys the idea of music, uproar, and a great throng all about her; whilst she walks in the midst of it, self-sustained, and kept in a sort of sanctity by her native pride. The idea of motion is attained with great success; you not only perceive that she is walking, but know at just what tranquil pace she steps, amid the music of the triumph. The drapery is very fine and full; she is decked with ornaments; but the chains of her captivity hang from wrist to wrist; and her deportment--indicating a soul so much above her misfortune, yet not insensible to the weight of it--makes these chains a richer decoration than all her other jewels. I know not whether there be some magic in the present imperfect finish of the statue, or in the material of clay, as being a better medium of expression than even marble; but certainly I have seldom been more impressed by a piece of modern sculpture. Miss Hosmer showed us photographs of her Puck--which I have seen in the marble--and likewise of the Will-o'-the-Wisp, both very pretty and fanciful. It indicates much variety of power, that Zenobia should be the sister of these, which would seem the more natural offspring of her quick and vivid character. But Zenobia is a high, heroic ode. . . . . On my way up the Via Babuino, I met General Pierce. We have taken two or three walks together, and stray among the Roman ruins, and old scenes of history, talking of matters in which he is personally concerned, yet which are as historic as anything around us. He is singularly little changed; the more I see him, the more I get him back, just such as he was in our youth. This morning, his face, air, and smile were so wonderfully like himself of old, that at least thirty years are annihilated. Zenobia's manacles serve as bracelets; a very ingenious and suggestive idea. March 18th.--I went to the sculpture-gallery of the Capitol yesterday, and saw, among other things, the Venus in her secret cabinet. This was my second view of her: the first time, I greatly admired her; now, she made no very favorable impression. There are twenty Venuses whom I like as well, or better. On the whole, she is a heavy, clumsy, unintellectual, and commonplace figure; at all events, not in good looks to-day. Marble beauties seem to suffer the same occasional eclipses as those of flesh and blood. We looked at the Faun, the Dying Gladiator, and other famous sculptures; but nothing had a glory round it, perhaps because the sirocco was blowing. These halls of the Capitol have always had a dreary and depressing effect upon me, very different from those of the Vatican. I know not why, except that the rooms of the Capitol have a dingy, shabby, and neglected look, and that the statues are dusty, and all the arrangements less magnificent than at the Vatican. The corroded and discolored surfaces of the statues take away from the impression of immortal youth, and turn Apollo [The Lycian Apollo] himself into an old stone; unless at rare intervals, when he appears transfigured by a light gleaming from within. March 23d.--I am wearing away listlessly these last precious days of my abode in Rome. U----'s illness is disheartening, and by confining ------, it takes away the energy and enterprise that were the spring of all our movements. I am weary of Rome, without having seen and known it as I ought, and I shall be glad to get away from it, though no doubt there will be many yearnings to return hereafter, and many regrets that I did not make better use of the opportunities within my grasp. Still, I have been in Rome long enough to be imbued with its atmosphere, and this is the essential condition of knowing a place; for such knowledge does not consist in having seen every particular object it contains. In the state of mind in which I now stand towards Rome, there is very little advantage to be gained by staying here longer. And yet I had a pleasant stroll enough yesterday afternoon, all by myself, from the Corso down past the Church of St. Andrea della Valle,-- the site where Caesar was murdered,--and thence to the Farnese Palace, the noble court of which I entered; thence to the Piazza Cenci, where I looked at one or two ugly old palaces, and fixed on one of them as the residence of Beatrice's father; then past the Temple of Vesta, and skirting along the Tiler, and beneath the Aventine, till I somewhat unexpectedly came in sight of the gray pyramid of Caius Cestius. I went out of the city gate, and leaned on the parapet that encloses the pyramid, advancing its high, unbroken slope and peak, where the great blocks of marble still fit almost as closely to one another as when they were first laid; though, indeed, there are crevices just large enough for plants to root themselves, and flaunt and trail over the face of this great tomb; only a little verdure, however, over a vast space of marble, still white in spots, but pervadingly turned gray by two thousand years' action of the atmosphere. Thence I came home by the Caelian, and sat down on an ancient flight of steps under one of the arches of the Coliseum, into which the sunshine fell sidelong. It was a delightful afternoon, not precisely like any weather that I have known elsewhere; certainly never in America, where it is always too cold or too hot. It, resembles summer more than anything which we New-Englanders recognize in our idea of spring, but there was an indescribable something, sweet, fresh, gentle, that does not belong to summer, and that thrilled and tickled my heart with a feeling partly sensuous, partly spiritual. I go to the Bank and read Galignani and the American newspapers; thence I stroll to the Pincian or to the Medici Gardens; I see a good deal of General Pierce, and we talk over his Presidential life, which, I now really think, he has no latent desire nor purpose to renew. Yet he seems to have enjoyed it while it lasted, and certainly he was in his element as an administrative man; not far-seeing, not possessed of vast stores of political wisdom in advance of his occasions, but endowed with a miraculous intuition of what ought to be done just at the time for action. His judgment of things about him is wonderful, and his Cabinet recognized it as such; for though they were men of great ability, he was evidently the master-mind among them. None of them were particularly his personal friends when he selected them; they all loved him when they parted; and he showed me a letter, signed by all, in which they expressed their feelings of respect and attachment at the close of his administration. There was a noble frankness on his part, that kept the atmosphere always clear among them, and in reference to this characteristic Governor Marcy told him that the years during which he had been connected with his Cabinet had been the happiest of his life. Speaking of Caleb Cushing, he told me that the unreliability, the fickleness, which is usually attributed to him, is an actual characteristic, but that it is intellectual, not moral. He has such comprehensiveness, such mental variety and activity, that, if left to himself, he cannot keep fast hold of one view of things, and so cannot, without external help, be a consistent man. He needs the influence of a more single and stable judgment to keep him from divergency, and, on this condition, he is a most inestimable coadjutor. As regards learning and ability, he has no superior. Pierce spoke the other day of the idea among some of his friends that his life had been planned, from a very early period, with a view to the station which he ultimately reached. He smiled at the notion, said that it was inconsistent with his natural character, and that it implied foresight and dexterity beyond what any mortal is endowed with. I think so too; but nevertheless, I was long and long ago aware that he cherished a very high ambition, and that, though he might not anticipate the highest things, he cared very little about inferior objects. Then as to plans, I do not think that he had any definite ones; but there was in him a subtle faculty, a real instinct, that taught him what was good for him,--that is to say, promotive of his political success,--and made him inevitably do it. He had a magic touch, that arranged matters with a delicate potency, which he himself hardly recognized; and he wrought through other minds so that neither he nor they always knew when and how far they were under his influence. Before his nomination for the Presidency I had a sense that it was coming, and it never seemed to me an accident. He is a most singular character; so frank, so true, so immediate, so subtle, so simple, so complicated. I passed by the tower in the Via Portoghese to-day, and observed that the nearest shop appears to be for the sale of cotton or linen cloth. . . . . The upper window of the tower was half open; of course, like all or almost all other Roman windows, it is divided vertically, and each half swings back on hinges. . . . . Last week a fritter-establishment was opened in our piazza. It was a wooden booth erected in the open square, and covered with canvas painted red, which looked as if it had withstood much rain and sunshine. In front were three great boughs of laurel, not so much for shade, I think, as ornament. There were two men, and their apparatus for business was a sort of stove, or charcoal furnace, and a frying-pan to place over it; they had an armful or two of dry sticks, some flour, and I suppose oil, and this seemed to be all. It was Friday, and Lent besides, and possibly there was some other peculiar propriety in the consumption of fritters just then. At all events, their fire burned merrily from morning till night, and pretty late into the evening, and they had a fine run of custom; the commodity being simply dough, cut into squares or rhomboids, and thrown into the boiling oil, which quickly turned them to a light brown color. I sent J----- to buy some, and, tasting one, it resembled an unspeakably bad doughnut, without any sweetening. In fact, it was sour, for the Romans like their bread, and all their preparations of flour, in a state of acetous fermentation, which serves them instead of salt or other condiment. This fritter-shop had grown up in a night, like Aladdin's palace, and vanished as suddenly; for after standing through Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, it was gone on Monday morning, and a charcoal-strewn place on the pavement where the furnace had been was the only memorial of it. It was curious to observe how immediately it became a lounging-place for idle people, who stood and talked all day with the fritter-friers, just as they might at any old shop in the basement, of a palace, or between the half-buried pillars of the Temple of Minerva, which had been familiar to them and their remote grandfathers. April 14th.--Yesterday afternoon I drove with Mr. and Mrs. Story and Mr. Wilde to see a statue of Venus, which has just been discovered, outside of the Porta Portese, on the other side of the Tiber. A little distance beyond the gate we came to the entrance of a vineyard, with a wheel-track through the midst of it; and, following this, we soon came to a hillside, in which an excavation had been made with the purpose of building a grotto for keeping and storing wine. They had dug down into what seemed to be an ancient bathroom, or some structure of that kind, the excavation being square and cellar-like, and built round with old subterranean walls of brick and stone. Within this hollow space the statue had been found, and it was now standing against one of the walls, covered with a coarse cloth, or a canvas bag. This being removed, there appeared a headless marble figure, earth-stained, of course, and with a slightly corroded surface, but wonderfully delicate and beautiful, the shape, size, and attitude, apparently, of the Venus de' Medici, but, as we all thought, more beautiful than that. It is supposed to be the original, from which the Venus de' Medici was copied. Both arms were broken off, but the greater part of both, and nearly the whole of one hand, had been found, and these being adjusted to the figure, they took the well-known position before the bosom and the middle, as if the fragmentary woman retained her instinct of modesty to the last. There were the marks on the bosom and thigh where the fingers had touched; whereas in the Venus de' Medici, if I remember rightly, the fingers are sculptured quite free of the person. The man who showed the statue now lifted from a corner a round block of marble, which had been lying there among other fragments, and this he placed upon the shattered neck of the Venus; and behold, it was her head and face, perfect, all but the nose! Even in spite of this mutilation, it seemed immediately to light up and vivify the entire figure; and, whatever I may heretofore have written about the countenance of the Venus de' Medici, I here record my belief that that head has been wrongfully foisted upon the statue; at all events, it is unspeakably inferior to this newly discovered one. This face has a breadth and front which are strangely deficient in the other. The eyes are well opened, most unlike the buttonhole lids of the Venus de' Medici; the whole head is so much larger as to entirely obviate the criticism that has always been made on the diminutive head of the De' Medici statue. If it had but a nose! They ought to sift every handful of earth that has been thrown out of the excavation, for the nose and the missing hand and fingers must needs be there; and, if they were found, the effect would be like the reappearance of a divinity upon earth. Mutilated as we saw her, it was strangely interesting to be present at the moment, as it were, when she had just risen from her long burial, and was shedding the unquenchable lustre around her which no eye had seen for twenty or more centuries. The earth still clung about her; her beautiful lips were full of it, till Mr. Story took a thin chip of wood and cleared it away from between them. The proprietor of the vineyard stood by; a man with the most purple face and hugest and reddest nose that I ever beheld in my life. It must have taken innumerable hogsheads of his thin vintage to empurple his face in this manner. He chuckled much over the statue, and, I suppose, counts upon making his fortune by it. He is now awaiting a bid from the Papal government, which, I believe, has the right of pre-emption whenever any relics of ancient art are discovered. If the statue could but be smuggled out of Italy, it might command almost any price. There is not, I think, any name of a sculptor on the pedestal, as on that of the Venus de' Medici. A dolphin is sculptured on the pillar against which she leans. The statue is of Greek marble. It was first found about eight days ago, but has been offered for inspection only a day or two, and already the visitors come in throngs, and the beggars gather about the entrance of the vineyard. A wine shop, too, seems to have been opened on the premises for the accommodation of this great concourse, and we saw a row of German artists sitting at a long table in the open air, each with a glass of thin wine and something to eat before him; for the Germans refresh nature ten times to other persons once. How the whole world might be peopled with antique beauty if the Romans would only dig! April 19th.--General Pierce leaves Rome this morning for Venice, by way of Ancona, and taking the steamer thence to Trieste. I had hoped to make the journey along with him; but U----'s terrible illness has made it necessary for us to continue here another mouth, and we are thankful that this seems now to be the extent of our misfortune. Never having had any trouble before that pierced into my very vitals, I did not know what comfort there might be in the manly sympathy of a friend; but Pierce has undergone so great a sorrow of his own, and has so large and kindly a heart, and is so tender and so strong, that he really did the good, and I shall always love him the better for the recollection of his ministrations in these dark days. Thank God, the thing we dreaded did not come to pass. Pierce is wonderfully little changed. Indeed, now that he has won and enjoyed--if there were any enjoyment in it--the highest success that public life could give him, he seems more like what he was in his early youth than at any subsequent period. He is evidently happier than I have ever known him since our college days; satisfied with what he has been, and with the position in the country that remains to him, after filling such an office. Amid all his former successes,--early as they came, and great as they were,--I always perceived that something gnawed within him, and kept him forever restless and miserable. Nothing he won was worth the winning, except as a step gained toward the summit. I cannot tell how early he began to look towards the Presidency; but I believe he would have died an unhappy man without it. And yet what infinite chances there seemed to be against his attaining it! When I look at it in one way, it strikes me as absolutely miraculous; in another, it came like an event that I had all along expected. It was due to his wonderful tact, which is of so subtle a character that he himself is but partially sensible of it. I have found in him, here in Rome, the whole of my early friend, and even better than I used to know him; a heart as true and affectionate, a mind much widened and deepened by his experience of life. We hold just the same relation to each other as of yore, and we have passed all the turning-off places, and may hope to go on together still the same dear friends as long as we live. I do not love him one whit the less for having been President, nor for having done me the greatest good in his power; a fact that speaks eloquently in his favor, and perhaps says a little for myself. If he had been merely a benefactor, perhaps I might not have borne it so well; but each did his best for the other as friend for friend. May 15th.--Yesterday afternoon we went to the Barberini picture-gallery to take a farewell look at the Beatrice Cenci, which I have twice visited before since our return from Florence. I attempted a description of it at my first visit, more than a year ago, but the picture is quite indescribable and unaccountable in its effect, for if you attempt to analyze it you can never succeed in getting at the secret of its fascination. Its peculiar expression eludes a straightforward glance, and can only be caught by side glimpses, or when the eye falls upon it casually, as it were, and without thinking to discover anything, as if the picture had a life and consciousness of its own, and were resolved not to betray its secret of grief or guilt, though it wears the full expression of it when it imagines itself unseen. I think no other such magical effect can ever have been wrought by pencil. I looked close into its eyes, with a determination to see all that there was in them, and could see nothing that might not have been in any young girl's eyes; and yet, a moment afterwards, there was the expression--seen aside, and vanishing in a moment--of a being unhumanized by some terrible fate, and gazing at me out of a remote and inaccessible region, where she was frightened to be alone, but where no sympathy could reach her. The mouth is beyond measure touching; the lips apart, looking as innocent as a baby's after it has been crying. The picture never can be copied. Guido himself could not have done it over again. The copyists get all sorts of expression, gay, as well as grievous; some copies have a coquettish air, a half-backward glance, thrown alluring at the spectator, but nobody ever did catch, or ever will, the vanishing charm of that sorrow. I hated to leave the picture, and yet was glad when I had taken my last glimpse, because it so perplexed and troubled me not to be able to get hold of its secret. Thence we went to the Church of the Capuchins, and saw Guido's Archangel. I have been several times to this church, but never saw the picture before, though I am familiar with the mosaic copy at St. Peter's, and had supposed the latter to be an equivalent representation of the original. It is nearly or quite so as respects the general effect; but there is a beauty in the archangel's face that immeasurably surpasses the copy,--the expression of heavenly severity, and a degree of pain, trouble, or disgust, at being brought in contact with sin, even for the purpose of quelling and punishing it. There is something finical in the copy, which I do not find in the original. The sandalled feet are here those of an angel; in the mosaic they are those of a celestial coxcomb, treading daintily, as if he were afraid they would be soiled by the touch of Lucifer. After looking at the Archangel we went down under the church, guided by a fleshy monk, and saw the famous cemetery, where the dead monks of many centuries back have been laid to sleep in sacred earth from Jerusalem. . . . . FRANCE. Hotel des Colonies, Marseilles, May 29th, Saturday.--Wednesday was the day fixed for our departure from Rome, and after breakfast I walked to the Pincian, and saw the garden and the city, and the Borghese grounds, and St. Peter's in an earlier sunlight than ever before. Methought they never looked so beautiful, nor the sky so bright and blue. I saw Soracte on the horizon, and I looked at everything as if for the last time; nor do I wish ever to see any of these objects again, though no place ever took so strong a hold of my being as Rome, nor ever seemed so close to me and so strangely familiar. I seem to know it better than my birthplace, and to have known it longer; and though I have been very miserable there, and languid with the effects of the atmosphere, and disgusted with a thousand things in its daily life, still I cannot say I hate it, perhaps might fairly own a love for it. But life being too short for such questionable and troublesome enjoyments, I desire never to set eyes on it again. . . . . . . . . We traversed again that same weary and dreary tract of country which we passed over in a winter afternoon and night on our first arrival in Rome. It is as desolate a country as can well be imagined, but about midway of our journey we came to the sea-shore, and kept very near it during the rest of the way. The sight and fragrance of it were exceedingly refreshing after so long an interval, and U---- revived visibly as we rushed along, while J----- chuckled and contorted himself with ineffable delight. We reached Civita Vecchia in three or four hours, and were there subjected to various troubles. . . . . All the while Miss S------ and I were bothering about the passport, the rest of the family sat in the sun on the quay, with all kinds of bustle and confusion around them; a very trying experience to U---- after the long seclusion and quiet of her sick-chamber. But she did not seem to suffer from it, and we finally reached the steamer in good condition and spirits. . . . . I slept wretchedly in my short and narrow berth, more especially as there was an old gentleman who snored as if he were sounding a charge; it was terribly hot too, and I rose before four o'clock, and was on deck amply in time to watch the distant approach of sunrise. We arrived at Leghorn pretty early, and might have gone ashore and spent the day. Indeed, we had been recommended by Dr. Franco, and had fully purposed to spend a week or ten days there, in expectation of benefit to U----'s health from the sea air and sea bathing, because he thought her still too feeble to make the whole voyage to Marseilles at a stretch. But she showed herself so strong that we thought she would get as much good from our three days' voyage as from the days by the sea-shore. Moreover, . . . . we all of us still felt the languor of the Roman atmosphere, and dreaded the hubbub and crazy confusion of landing at an Italian port. . . . . So we lay in the harbor all day without stirring from the steamer. . . . . It would have been pleasant, however, to have gone to Pisa, fifteen miles off, and seen the leaning tower; but, for my part, I have arrived at that point where it is somewhat pleasanter to sit quietly in any spot whatever than to see whatever grandest or most beautiful thing. At least this was my mood in the harbor of Leghorn. From the deck of the steamer there were many things visible that might have been interesting to describe: the boats of peculiar rig, and covered with awning; the crowded shipping; the disembarkation of horses from the French cavalry, which were lowered from steamers into gondolas or lighters, and hung motionless, like the sign of the Golden Fleece, during the transit, only kicking a little when their feet happened to graze the vessel's side. One horse plunged overboard, and narrowly escaped drowning. There was likewise a disembarkation of French soldiers in a train of boats, which rowed shoreward with sound of trumpet. The French are concentrating a considerable number of troops at this point. Our steamer was detained by order of the French government to take on board despatches; so that, instead of sailing at dusk, as is customary, we lay in the harbor till seven of the next morning. A number of young Sardinian officers, in green uniform, came on board, and a pale and picturesque-looking Italian, and other worthies of less note,--English, American, and of all races,--among them a Turk with a little boy in Christian dress; also a Greek gentleman with his young bride. At the appointed time we weighed anchor for Genoa, and had a beautiful day on the Mediterranean, and for the first time in my life I saw the real dark blue of the sea. I do not remember noticing it on my outward voyage to Italy. It is the most beautiful hue that can be imagined, like a liquid sky; and it retains its lustrous blue directly under the side of the ship, where the water of the mid-Atlantic looks greenish. . . . . We reached Genoa at seven in the afternoon. . . . . Genoa looks most picturesquely from the sea, at the foot of a sheltering semicircle of lofty hills; and as we lay in the harbor we saw, among other interesting objects, the great Doria Palace, with its gardens, and the cathedral, and a heap and sweep of stately edifices, with the mountains looking down upon he city, and crowned with fortresses. The variety of hue in the houses, white, green, pink, and orange, was very remarkable. It would have been well to go ashore here for an hour or two and see the streets, --having already seen the palaces, churches, and public buildings at our former visit,--and buy a few specimens of Genoa goldsmiths' work; but I preferred the steamer's deck, so the evening passed pleasantly away; the two lighthouses at the entrance of the port kindled up their fires, and at nine o'clock the evening gun thundered from the fortress, and was reverberated from the heights. We sailed away at eleven, and I was roused from my first sleep by the snortings and hissings of the vessel as she got under way. At Genoa we took on board some more passengers, an English nobleman with his lady being of the number. These were Lord and Lady J------, and before the end of our voyage his lordship talked to me of a translation of Tasso in which he is engaged, and a stanza or two of which he repeated to me. I really liked the lines, and liked too the simplicity and frankness with which he spoke of it to me a stranger, and the way be seemed to separate his egotism from the idea which he evidently had that he is going to make an excellent translation. I sincerely hope it may be so. He began it without any idea of publishing it, or of ever bringing it to a conclusion, but merely as a solace and occupation while in great trouble during an illness of his wife, but he has gradually come to find it the most absorbing occupation he ever undertook; and as Mr. Gladstone and other high authorities give him warm encouragement, he now means to translate the entire poem, and to publish it with beautiful illustrations, and two years hence the world may expect to see it. I do not quite perceive how such a man as this--a man of frank, warm, simple, kindly nature, but surely not of a poetical temperament, or very refined, or highly cultivated--should make a good version of Tasso's poems; but perhaps the dead poet's soul may take possession of this healthy organization, and wholly turn him to its own purposes. The latter part of our voyage to-day lay close along the coast of France, which was hilly and picturesque, and as we approached Marseilles was very bold and striking. We steered among rocky islands, rising abruptly out of the sea, mere naked crags, without a trace of verdure upon them, and with the surf breaking at their feet. They were unusual specimens of what hills would look like without the soil, that is to them what flesh is to a skeleton. Their shapes were often wonderfully fine, and the great headlands thrust themselves out, and took such lines of light and shade that it seemed like sailing through a picture. In the course of the afternoon a squall came up and blackened the sky all over in a twinkling; our vessel pitched and tossed, and a brig a little way from us had her sails blown about in wild fashion. The blue of the sea turned as black as night, and soon the rain began to spatter down upon us, and continued to sprinkle and drizzle a considerable time after the wind had subsided. It was quite calm and pleasant when we entered the harbor of Marseilles, which lies at the foot of very fair hills, and is set among great cliffs of stone. I did not attend much to this, however, being in dread of the difficulty of landing and passing through the custom-house with our twelve or fourteen trunks and numberless carpet-bags. The trouble vanished into thin air, nevertheless, as we approached it, for not a single trunk or bag was opened, and, moreover, our luggage and ourselves were not only landed, but the greater part of it conveyed to the railway without any expense. Long live Louis Napoleon, say I. We established ourselves at the Hotel des Colonies, and then Mss S------, J-----, and I drove hither and thither about Marseilles, making arrangements for our journey to Avignon, where we mean to go to-day. We might have avoided a good deal of this annoyance; but travellers, like other people, are continually getting their experience just a little too late. It was after nine before we got back to the hotel and took our tea in peace. AVIGNON. Hotel de l'Europe, June 1st.--I remember nothing very special to record about Marseilles; though it was really like passing from death into life, to find ourselves in busy, cheerful, effervescing France, after living so long between asleep and awake in sluggish Italy. Marseilles is a very interesting and entertaining town, with its bold surrounding heights, its wide streets,--so they seemed to us after the Roman alleys,--its squares, shady with trees, its diversified population of sailors, citizens, Orientals, and what not; but I have no spirit for description any longer; being tired of seeing things, and still more of telling myself about them. Only a young traveller can have patience to write his travels. The newest things, nowadays, have a familiarity to my eyes; whereas in their lost sense of novelty lies the charm and power of description. On Monday (30th May), though it began with heavy rain, we set early about our preparations for departure, . . . . and, at about three, we left the Hotel des Colonies. It is a very comfortable hotel, though expensive. The Restaurant connected with it occupies the enclosed court-yard and the arcades around it; and it was a good amusement to look down from the surrounding gallery, communicating with our apartments, and see the fashion and manner of French eating, all the time going forward. In sunny weather a great awning is spread over the whole court, across from the upper stories of the house. There is a grass-plat in the middle, and a very spacious and airy dining-saloon is thus formed. Our railroad carriage was comfortable, and we found in it, besides two other Frenchwomen, two nuns. They were very devout, and sedulously read their little books of devotion, repeated prayers under their breath, kissed the crucifixes which hung at their girdles, and told a string of beads, which they passed from one to the other. So much were they occupied with these duties, that they scarcely looked at the scenery along the road, though, probably, it is very rare for them to see anything outside of their convent walls. They never failed to mutter a prayer and kiss the crucifix whenever we plunged into a tunnel. If they glanced at their fellow-passengers, it was shyly and askance, with their lips in motion all the time, like children afraid to let their eyes wander from their lesson-book. One of them, however, took occasion to pull down R-----'s dress, which, in her frisky movements about the carriage, had got out of place, too high for the nun's sense of decorum. Neither of them was at all pretty, nor was the black stuff dress and white muslin cap in the least becoming, neither were their features of an intelligent or high-bred stamp. Their manners, however, or such little glimpses as I could get of them, were unexceptionable; and when I drew a curtain to protect one of them from the sun, she made me a very courteous gesture of thanks. We had some very good views both of sea and hills; and a part of our way lay along the banks of the Rhone. . . . . By the by, at the station at Marseilles I bought the two volumes of the "Livre des Merveilles," by a certain author of my acquaintance, translated into French, and printed and illustrated in very pretty style. Miss S------ also bought them, and, in answer to her inquiry for other works by the same author, the bookseller observed that "she did not think Monsieur Nathaniel had published anything else." The Christian name deems to be the most important one in France, and still more especially in Italy. We arrived at Avignon, Hotel de l'Europe, in the dusk of the evening. . . . . The lassitude of Rome still clings to us, and I, at least, feel no spring of life or activity, whether at morn or eve. In the morning we found ourselves very pleasantly situated as regards lodgings. The gallery of our suite of rooms looks down as usual into an enclosed court, three sides of which are formed by the stone house and its two wings, and the third by a high wall, with a gateway of iron between two lofty stone pillars, which, for their capitals, have great stone vases, with grass growing in them, and hanging over the brim. There is a large plane-tree in one corner of the court, and creeping plants clamber up trellises; and there are pots of flowers and bird-cages, all of which give a very fresh and cheerful aspect to the enclosure. The court is paved with small round stones; the omnibus belonging to the hotel, and all the carriages of guests drive into it; and the wide arch of the stable-door opens under the central part of the house. Nevertheless, the scene is not in all respects that of a stable-yard; for gentlemen and ladies come from the salle a manger and other rooms, and stand talking in the court, or occupy chairs and seats there; children play about; the hostess or her daughter often appears and talks with her guests or servants; dogs lounge, and, in short, the court might well enough be taken for the one scene of a classic play. The hotel seems to be of the first class, though such would not be indicated, either in England or America, by thus mixing up the stable with the lodgings. I have taken two or three rambles about the town, and have climbed a high rock which dominates over it, and gives a most extensive view from the broad table-land of its summit. The old church of Avignon --as old as the times of its popes, and older--stands close beside this mighty and massive crag. We went into it, and found it a dark old place, with broad, interior arches, and a singularly shaped dome; a venerable Gothic and Grecian porch, with ancient frescos in its arched spaces; some dusky pictures within; an ancient chair of stone, formerly occupied by the popes, and much else that would have been exceedingly interesting before I went to Rome. But Rome takes the charm out of an inferior antiquity, as well as the life out of human beings. This forenoon J----- and I have crossed the Rhone by a bridge, just the other side of one of the city gates, which is near our hotel. We walked along the riverside, and saw the ruins of an ancient bridge, which ends abruptly in the midst of the stream; two or three arches still making tremendous strides across, while the others have long ago been crumbled away by the rush of the rapid river. The bridge was originally founded by St. Benezet, who received a Divine order to undertake the work, while yet a shepherd-boy, with only three sous in his pocket; and he proved the authenticity of the mission by taking an immense stone on his shoulder, and laying it for the foundation. There is still an ancient chapel midway on the bridge, and I believe St. Benezet lies buried there, in the midst of his dilapidated work. The bridge now used is considerably lower down the stream. It is a wooden suspension-bridge, broader than the ancient one, and doubtless more than supplies its place; else, unquestionably, St. Benezet would think it necessary to repair his own. The view from the inner side of this ruined structure, grass-grown and weedy, and leading to such a precipitous plunge into the swift river, is very picturesque, in connection with the gray town and above it, the great, massive bulk of the cliff, the towers of the church, and of a vast old edifice, shapeless, ugly, and venerable, which the popes built and occupied as their palace, many centuries ago. . . . . After dinner we all set out on a walk, in the course of which we called at a bookseller's shop to show U---- an enormous cat, which I had already seen. It is of the Angora breed, of a mottled yellow color, and is really a wonder; as big and broad as a tolerably sized dog, very soft and silken, and apparently of the gentlest disposition. I never imagined the like, nor felt anything so deeply soft as this great beast. Its master seems very fond and proud of it; and, great favorite as the cat is, she does not take airs upon herself, but is gently shy and timid in her demonstrations. We ascended the great Rocher above the palace of the popes, and on our way looked into the old church, which was so dim in the decline of day that we could not see within the dusky arches, through which the chapels communicated with the nave. Thence we pursued our way up the farther ascent, and, standing on the edge of the precipice,--protected by a parapet of stone, and in other places by an iron railing,--we could look down upon the road that winds its dusky track far below, and at the river Rhone, which eddies close beside it. This is indeed a massive and lofty cliff, and it tumbles down so precipitously that I could readily have flung myself from the bank, and alighted on my head in the middle of the river. The Rhone passes so near its base that I threw stones a good way into its current. We talked with a man of Avignon, who leaned over the parapet near by, and he was very kind in explaining the points of view, and told us that the river, which winds and doubles upon itself so as to look like at least two rivers, is really the Rhone alone. The Durance joins with it within a few miles below Avignon, but is here invisible. Hotel de l'Europe, June 2d.--This morning we went again to the Duomo of the popes; and this time we allowed the custode, or sacristan, to show us the curiosities of it. He led us into a chapel apart, and showed us the old Gothic tomb of Pope John XXII., where the recumbent statue of the pope lies beneath one of those beautiful and venerable canopies of stone which look at once so light and so solemn. I know not how many hundred years old it is, but everything of Gothic origin has a faculty of conveying the idea of age; whereas classic forms seem to have nothing to do with time, and so lose the kind of impressiveness that arises from suggestions of decay and the past. In the sacristy the guide opened a cupboard that contained the jewels and sacred treasures of the church, and showed a most exquisite figure of Christ in ivory, represented as on a cross of ebony; and it was executed with wonderful truth and force of expression, and with great beauty likewise. I do not see what a full-length marble statue could have had that was lacking in this little ivory figure of hardly more than a foot high. It is about two centuries old, by an unknown artist. There is another famous ivory statuette in Avignon which seems to be more celebrated than this, but can hardly be superior. I shall gladly look at it if it comes in my way. Next to this, the prettiest thing the man showed us was a circle of emeralds, in one of the holy implements; and then he exhibited a little bit or a pope's skull; also a great old crozier, that looked as if made chiefly of silver, and partly gilt; but I saw where the plating of silver was worn away, and betrayed the copper of its actual substance. There were two or three pictures in the sacristy, by ancient and modern French artists, very unlike the productions of the Italian masters, but not without a beauty of their own. Leaving the sacristy, we returned into the church, where U---- and J----- began to draw the pope's old stone chair. There is a beast, or perhaps more than one, grotesquely sculptured upon it; the seat is high and square, the back low and pointed, and it offers no enticing promise to a weary man. The interior of the church is massively picturesque, with its vaulted roof, and a stone gallery, heavily ornamented, running along each side of the nave. Each arch of the nave gives admittance to a chapel, in all of which there are pictures, and sculptures in most of them. One of these chapels is of the time of Charlemagne, and has a vaulted roof of admirable architecture, covered with frescos of modern date and little merit. In an adjacent chapel is the stone monument of Pope Benedict, whose statue reposes on it, like many which I have seen in the cathedral of York and other old English churches. In another part we saw a monument, consisting of a plain slab supported on pillars; it is said to be of a Roman or very early Christian epoch. In another chapel was a figure of Christ in wax, I believe, and clothed in real drapery; a very ugly object. Also, a figure reposing under a slab, which strikes the spectator with the idea that it is really a dead person enveloped in a shroud. There are windows of painted glass in some of the chapels; and the gloom of the dimly lighted interior, especially beneath the broad, low arches, is very impressive. While we were there some women assembled at one of the altars, and went through their acts of devotion without the help of a priest; one and another of them alternately repeating prayers, to which the rest responded. The murmur of their voices took a musical tone, which was reverberated by the vaulted arches. U---- and I now came out; and, under the porch, we found an old woman selling rosaries, little religious books, and other holy things. We bought two little medals of the Immaculate Virgin, one purporting to be of silver, the other of gold; but as both together cost only two or three sous, the genuineness of the material may well be doubted. We sat down on the steps, of a crucifix which is placed in front of the church, and the children began to draw the porch, of which I hardly know whether to call the architecture classic or Gothic (as I said before); at all events it has a venerable aspect, and there are frescos within its arches by Simone Memmi. . . . . The popes' palace is contiguous to the church, and just below it, on the hillside. It is now occupied as barracks by some regiments of soldiers, a number of whom were lounging before the entrance; but we passed the sentinel without being challenged, and addressed ourselves to the concierge, who readily assented to our request to be shown through the edifice. A French gentleman and lady, likewise, came with similar purpose, and went the rounds along with us. The palace is such a confused heap and conglomeration of buildings, that it is impossible to get within any sort of a regular description. It is a huge, shapeless mass of architecture; and if it ever had any pretence to a plan, it has lost it in the modern alterations. For instance, an immense and lofty chapel, or rather church, has had two floors, one above the other, laid at different stages of its height; and the upper one of these floors, which extends just where the arches of the vaulted root begin to spring from the pillars, is ranged round with the beds of one of the regiments of soldiers. They are small iron bedsteads, each with its narrow mattress, and covered with a dark blanket. On some of them lay or lounged a soldier; other soldiers were cleaning their accoutrements; elsewhere we saw parties of them playing cards. So it was wherever we went among those large, dingy, gloomy halls and chambers, which, no doubt, were once stately and sumptuous, with pictures, with tapestry, and all sorts of adornment that the Middle Ages knew how to use. The windows threw a sombre light through embrasures at least two feet thick. There were staircases of magnificent breadth. We were shown into two small chapels, in different parts of the building, both containing the remains of old frescos wofully defaced. In one of them was a light, spiral staircase of iron, built in the centre of the room as a means of contemplating the frescos, which were said to be the work of our old friend Giotto. . . . . Finally, we climbed a long, long, narrow stair, built in the thickness of the wall, and thus gained access to the top of one of the towers, whence we saw the noblest landscapes, mountains, plains, and the Rhone, broad and bright, winding hither and thither, as if it had lost its way. Beneath our feet was the gray, ugly old palace, and its many courts, just as void of system and as inconceivable as when we were burrowing through its bewildering passages. No end of historical romances might be made out of this castle of the popes; and there ought to be a ghost in every room, and droves of them in some of the rooms; for there have been murders here in the gross and in detail, as well hundreds of years ago, as no longer back than the French Revolution, when there was a great massacre in one of the courts. Traces of this bloody business were visible in actual stains on the wall only a few years ago. Returning to the room of the concierge, who, being a little stiff with age, had sent an attendant round with us, instead of accompanying us in person, he showed us a picture of Rienzi, the last of the Roman tribunes, who was once a prisoner here. On a table, beneath the picture, stood a little vase of earthenware containing some silver coin. We took it as a hint, in the customary style of French elegance, that a fee should be deposited here, instead of being put into the hand of the concierge; so the French gentleman deposited half a franc, and I, in my magnificence, twice as much. Hotel de l'Europe, June 6th.--We are still here. . . . . I have been daily to the Rocher des Dons, and have grown familiar with the old church on its declivity. I think I might become attached to it by seeing it often. A sombre old interior, with its heavy arches, and its roof vaulted like the top of a trunk; its stone gallery, with ponderous adornments, running round three sides. I observe that it is a daily custom of the old women to say their prayers in concert, sometimes making a pilgrimage, as it were, from chapel to chapel. The voice of one of them is heard running through the series of petitions, and at intervals the voices of the others join and swell into a chorus, so that it is like a river connecting a series of lakes; or, not to use so gigantic a simile, the one voice is like a thread, on which the beads of a rosary are strung. One day two priests came and sat down beside these prayerful women, and joined in their petitions. I am inclined to hope that there is something genuine in the devotion of these old women. The view from the top of the Rocker des Dons (a contraction of Dominis) grows upon me, and is truly magnificent; a vast mountain-girdled plain, illuminated by the far windings and reaches of the Rhone. The river is here almost as turbid as the Tiber itself; but, I remember, in the upper part of its course the waters are beautifully transparent. A powerful rush is indicated by the swirls and eddies of its broad surface. Yesterday was a race day at Avignon, and apparently almost the whole population and a great many strangers streamed out of the city gate nearest our hotel, on their way to the race-course. There were many noticeable figures that might come well into a French picture or description; but only one remains in my memory,--a young man with a wooden leg, setting off for the course--a walk of several miles, I believe--with prodigious courage and alacrity, flourishing his wooden leg with an air and grace that seemed to render it positively flexible. The crowd returned towards sunset, and almost all night long, the streets and the whole air of the old town were full of song and merriment. There was a ball in a temporary structure, covered with an awning, in the Place d'Horloge, and a showman has erected his tent and spread forth his great painted canvases, announcing an anaconda and a sea-tiger to be seen. J----- paid four sous for admittance, and found that the sea-tiger was nothing but a large seal, and the anaconda altogether a myth. I have rambled a good deal about the town. Its streets are crooked and perplexing, and paved with round pebbles for the most part, which afford more uncomfortable pedestrianism than the pavement of Rome itself. It is an ancient-looking place, with some large old mansions, but few that are individually impressive; though here and there one sees an antique entrance, a corner tower, or other bit of antiquity, that throws a venerable effect over the gray commonplace of past centuries. The town is not overclean, and often there is a kennel of unhappy odor. There appear to have been many more churches and devotional establishments under the ancient dominion of the popes than have been kept intact in subsequent ages; the tower and facade of a church, for instance, form the front of a carpenter's shop, or some such plebeian place. The church where Laura lay has quite disappeared, and her tomb along with it. The town reminds me of Chester, though it does not in the least resemble it, and is not nearly so picturesque. Like Chester, it is entirely surrounded by a wall; and that of Avignon--though it has no delightful promenade on its top, as the wall of Chester has--is the more perfectly preserved in its mediaeval form, and the more picturesque of the two. J----- and I have once or twice walked nearly round it, commencing from the gate of Ouelle, which is very near our hotel. From this point it stretches for a considerable distance along by the river, and here there is a broad promenade, with trees, and blocks of stone for seats; on one side "the arrowy Rhone," generally carrying a cooling breeze along with it; on the other, the gray wall, with its battlements and machicolations, impending over what was once the moat, but which is now full of careless and untrained shrubbery. At intervals there are round towers swelling out from the wall, and rising a little above it. After about half a mile along the river-side the wall turns at nearly right angles, and still there is a wide road, a shaded walk, a boulevard; and at short distances are cafes, with their little round tables before the door, or small shady nooks of shrubbery. So numerous are these retreats and pleasaunces that I do not see how the little old town can support them all, especially as there are a great many cafes within the walls. I do not remember seeing any soldiers on guard at the numerous city gates, but there is an office in the side of each gate for levying the octroi, and old women are sometimes on guard there. This morning, after breakfast, J----- and I crossed the suspension-bridge close by the gate nearest our hotel, and walked to the ancient town of Villeneuve, on the other side of the Rhone. The first bridge leads to an island, from the farther side of which another very long one, with a timber foundation, accomplishes the passage of the other branch of the Rhone. There was a good breeze on the river, but after crossing it we found the rest of the walk excessively hot. This town of Villeneuve is of very ancient origin, and owes its existence, it is said, to the famous holiness of a female saint, which gathered round her abode and burial-place a great many habitations of people who reverenced her. She was the daughter of the King of Saragossa, and I presume she chose this site because it was so rocky and desolate. Afterwards it had a long mediaeval history; and in the time of the Avignon popes, the cardinals, regretful of their abandoned Roman villas, built pleasure-houses here, so that the town was called Villa Nueva. After they had done their best, it must have seemed to these poor cardinals but a rude and sad exchange for the Borghese, the Albani, the Pamfili Doria, and those other perfectest results of man's luxurious art. And probably the tradition of the Roman villas had really been kept alive, and extant examples of them all the way downward from the times of the empire. But this Villeneuve is the stoniest, roughest town that can be imagined. There are a few large old houses, to be sure, but built on a line with shabby village dwellings and barns, and so presenting little but samples of magnificent shabbiness. Perhaps I might have found traces of old splendor if I had sought for them; but, not having the history of the place in my mind, I passed through its scrambling streets without imagining that Princes of the Church had once made their abode here. The inhabitants now are peasants, or chiefly such; though, for aught I know, some of the French noblesse may burrow in these palaces that look so like hovels. A large church, with a massive tower, stands near the centre of the town; and, of course, I did not fail to enter its arched door,--a pointed arch, with many frames and mouldings, one within another. An old woman was at her devotions, and several others came in and knelt during my stay there. It was quite an interesting interior; a long nave, with six pointed arches on each side, beneath which were as many chapels. The walls were rich with pictures, not only in the chapels, but up and down the nave, above the arches. There were gilded virgins, too, and much other quaint device that produced an effect that I rather liked than otherwise. At the end of the church, farthest from the high altar, there were four columns of exceedingly rich marble, and a good deal more of such precious material was wrought into the chapels and altars. There was an old stone seat, also, of some former pope or prelate. The church was dim enough to cause the lamps in the shrines to become points of vivid light, and, looking from end to end, it was a long, venerable, tarnished, Old World vista, not at all tampered with by modern taste. We now went on our way through the village, and, emerging from a gate, went clambering towards the castle of St. Andre, which stands, perhaps, a quarter of a mile beyond it. This castle was built by Philip le Bel, as a restraint to the people of Avignon in extending their power on this side of the Rhone. We happened not to take the most direct way, and so approached the castle on the farther side and were obliged to go nearly round the hill on which it stands, before striking into the path which leads to its gate. It crowns a very bold and difficult hill, directly above the Rhone, opposite to Avignon,--which is so far off that objects are not minutely distinguishable,--and looking down upon the long, straggling town of Villeneuve. It must have been a place of mighty strength, in its day. Its ramparts seem still almost entire, as looked upon from without, and when, at length, we climbed the rough, rocky pathway to the entrance, we found the two vast round towers, with their battlemented summits and arched gateway between them, just as perfect as they could have been five hundred or more years ago. Some external defences are now, however, in a state of ruin; and there are only the remains of a tower, that once arose between the two round towers, and was apparently much more elevated than they. A little in front of the gate was a monumental cross of stone; and in the arch, between the two round towers, were two little boys at play; and an old woman soon showed herself, but took no notice of us. Casting our eyes within the gateway, we saw what looked a rough village street, betwixt old houses built ponderously of stone, but having far more the aspect of huts than of castle-hails. They were evidently the dwellings of peasantry, and people engaged in rustic labor; and no doubt they have burrowed into the primitive structures of the castle, and, as they found convenient, have taken their crumbling materials to build barns and farm-houses. There was space and accommodation for a very considerable population; but the men were probably at work in the fields, and the only persons visible were the children aforesaid, and one or two old women bearing bundles of twigs on their backs. They showed no curiosity respecting us, and though the wide space included within the castle-rampart seemed almost full of habitations ruinous or otherwise, I never found such a solitude in any ruin before. It contrasts very favorably in this particular with English castles, where, though you do not find rustic villages within the warlike enclosure, there is always a padlocked gate, always a guide, and generally half a dozen idle tourists. But here was only antiquity, with merely the natural growth of fungous human life upon it. We went to the end of the castle court and sat down, for lack of other shade, among some inhospitable nettles that grew close to the wall. Close by us was a great gap in the ramparts,--it may have been a breach which was once stormed through; and it now afforded us an airy and sunny glimpse of distant hills. . . . . J----- sketched part of the broken wall, which, by the by, did not seem to me nearly so thick as the walls of English castles. Then we returned through the gate, and I stopped, rather impatiently, under the hot sun, while J----- drew the outline of the two round towers. This done, we resumed our way homeward, after drinking from a very deep well close by the square tower of Philip le Bel. Thence we went melting through the sunshine, which beat upward as pitilessly from the white road as it blazed downwards from the sky. . . . . GENEVA. Hotel d'Angleterre, June 11th.--We left Avignon on Tuesday, 7th, and took the rail to Valence, where we arrived between four and five, and put up at the Hotel de la Poste, an ancient house, with dirty floors and dirt generally, but otherwise comfortable enough. . . . . Valence is a stately old town, full of tall houses and irregular streets. We found a cathedral there, not very large, but with a high and venerable interior, a nave supported by tall pillars, from the height of which spring arches. This loftiness is characteristic of French churches, as distinguished from those of Italy. . . . . We likewise saw, close by the cathedral, a large monument with four arched entrances meeting beneath a vaulted roof; but, on inquiry of an old priest and other persons, we could get no account of it, except that it was a tomb, and of unknown antiquity. The architecture seemed classic, and yet it had some Gothic peculiarities, and it was a reverend and beautiful object. Had I written up my journal while the town was fresh in my remembrance, I might have found much to describe; but a succession of other objects have obliterated most of the impressions I have received here. Our railway ride to Valence was intolerably hot. I have felt nothing like it since leaving America, and that is so long ago that the terrible discomfort was just as good as new. . . . . We left Valence at four, and came that afternoon to Lyons, still along the Rhone. Either the waters of this river assume a transparency in winter which they lose in summer, or I was mistaken in thinking them transparent on our former journey. They are now turbid; but the hue does not suggest the idea of a running mud-puddle, as the water of the Tiber does. No streams, however, are so beautiful in the quality of their waters as the clear, brown rivers of New England. The scenery along this part of the Rhone, as we have found all the way from Marseilles, is very fine and impressive; old villages, rocky cliffs, castellated steeps, quaint chateaux, and a thousand other interesting objects. We arrived at Lyons at five o'clock, and went to the Hotel de l'Univers, to which we had been recommended by our good hostess at Avignon. The day had become showery, but J----- and I strolled about a little before nightfall, and saw the general characteristics of the place. Lyons is a city of very stately aspect, hardly inferior to Paris; for it has regular streets of lofty houses, and immense squares planted with trees, and adorned with statues and fountains. New edifices of great splendor are in process of erection; and on the opposite side of the Rhone, where the site rises steep and high, there are structures of older date, that have an exceedingly picturesque effect, looking down upon the narrow town. The next morning I went out with J----- in quest of my bankers, and of the American Consul; and as I had forgotten the directions of the waiter of the hotel, I of course went astray, and saw a good deal more of Lyons than I intended. In my wanderings I crossed the Rhone, and found myself in a portion of the city evidently much older than that with which I had previously made acquaintance; narrow, crooked, irregular, and rudely paved streets, full of dingy business and bustle,--the city, in short, as it existed a century ago, and how much earlier I know not. Above rises that lofty elevation of ground which I before noticed; and the glimpses of its stately old buildings through the openings of the street were very picturesque. Unless it be Edinburgh, I have not seen any other city that has such striking features. Altogether unawares, immediately after crossing the bridge, we came upon the cathedral; and the grand, time-blackened Gothic front, with its deeply arched entrances, seemed to me as good as anything I ever saw,--unexpectedly more impressive than all the ruins of Rome. I could but merely glance at its interior; so that its noble height and venerable space, filled with the dim, consecrated light of pictured windows, recur to me as a vision. And it did me good to enjoy the awfulness and sanctity of Gothic architecture again, after so long shivering in classic porticos. . . . . We now recrossed the river. . . . . The Frank methods and arrangements in matters of business seem to be excellent, so far as effecting the proposed object is concerned; but there is such an inexorable succession of steel-wrought forms, that life is not long enough for so much accuracy. The stranger, too, goes blindfold through all these processes, not knowing what is to turn up next, till, when quite in despair, he suddenly finds his business mysteriously accomplished. . . . . We left Lyons at four o'clock, taking the railway for Geneva. The scenery was very striking throughout the journey; but I allowed the hills, deep valleys, high impending cliffs, and whatever else I saw along the road, to pass from me without an ink-blot. We reached Geneva at nearly ten o'clock. . . . . It is situated partly on low, flat ground, bordering the lake, and behind this level space it rises by steep, painfully paved streets, some of which can hardly be accessible by wheeled carriages. The prosperity of the town is indicated by a good many new and splendid edifices, for commercial and other purposes, in the vicinity of the lake; but intermixed with these there are many quaint buildings of a stern gray color, and in a style of architecture that I prefer a thousand times to the monotony of Italian streets. Immensely high, red roofs, with windows in them, produce an effect that delights me. They are as ugly, perhaps, as can well be conceived, but very striking and individual. At each corner of these ancient houses frequently is a tower, the roof of which rises in a square pyramidal form, or, if the tower be round, in a round pyramidal form. Arched passages, gloomy and grimy, pass from one street to another. The lower town creeps with busy life, and swarms like an ant-hill; but if you climb the half-precipitous streets, you find yourself among ancient and stately mansions, high roofed, with a strange aspect of grandeur about them, looking as if they might still be tenanted by such old magnates as dwelt in them centuries ago. There is also a cathedral, the older portion exceedingly fine; but it has been adorned at some modern epoch with a Grecian portico,--good in itself, but absurdly out of keeping with the edifice which it prefaces. This being a Protestant country, the doors were all shut,--an inhospitality that made me half a Catholic. It is funny enough that a stranger generally profits by all that is worst for the inhabitants of the country where he himself is merely a visitor. Despotism makes things all the pleasanter for the stranger. Catholicism lends itself admirably to his purposes. There are public gardens (one, at least) in Geneva. . . . . Nothing struck me so much, I think, as the color of the Rhone, as it flows under the bridges in the lower town. It is absolutely miraculous, and, beautiful as it is, suggests the idea that the tubs of a thousand dyers have emptied their liquid indigo into the stream. When once you have conquered and thrust out this idea, it is an inexpressible delight to look down into this intense, brightly transparent blue, that hurries beneath you with the speed of a race-horse. The shops of Geneva are very tempting to a traveller, being full of such little knick-knacks as he would be glad to carry away in memory of the place: wonderful carvings in wood and ivory, done with exquisite taste and skill; jewelry that seems very cheap, but is doubtless dear enough, if you estimate it by the solid gold that goes into its manufacture; watches, above all things else, for a third or a quarter of the price that one pays in England, looking just as well, too, and probably performing the whole of a watch's duty as uncriticisably. The Swiss people are frugal and inexpensive in their own habits, I believe, plain and simple, and careless of ornament; but they seem to reckon on other people's spending a great deal of money for gewgaws. We bought some of their wooden trumpery, and likewise a watch for U----. . . . . Next to watches, jewelry, and wood-carving, I should say that cigars were one of the principal articles of commerce in Geneva. Cigar-shops present themselves at every step or two, and at a reasonable rate, there being no duties, I believe, on imported goods. There was no examination of our trunks on arrival, nor any questions asked on that score. VILLENEUVE. Hotel de Byron, June 12th.--Yesterday afternoon we left Geneva by a steamer, starting from the quay at only a short distance from our hotel. The forenoon had been showery; but the suit now came out very pleasantly, although there were still clouds and mist enough to give infinite variety to the mountain scenery. At the commencement of our voyage the scenery of the lake was not incomparably superior to that of other lakes on which I have sailed, as Lake Windermere, for instance, or Loch Lomond, or our own Lake Champlain. It certainly grew more grand and beautiful, however, till at length I felt that I had never seen anything worthy to be put beside it. The southern shore has the grandest scenery; the great hills on that side appearing close to the water's edge, and after descending, with headlong slope, directly from their rocky and snow-streaked summits down into the blue water. Our course lay nearer to the northern shore, and all our stopping-places were on that side. The first was Coppet, where Madame de Stael or her father, or both, were either born or resided or died, I know not which, and care very little. It is a picturesque village, with an old church, and old, high-roofed, red-tiled houses, the whole looking as if nothing in it had been changed for many, many years. All these villages, at several of which we stopped momentarily, look delightfully unmodified by recent fashions. There is the church, with its tower crowned by a pyramidal roof, like an extinguisher; then the chateau of the former lord, half castle and half dwelling-house, with a round tower at each corner, pyramid topped; then, perhaps, the ancient town-house or Hotel de Ville, in an open paved square; and perhaps the largest mansion in the whole village will have been turned into a modern inn, but retaining all its venerable characteristics of high, steep sloping roof, and antiquated windows. Scatter a delightful shade of trees among the houses, throw in a time-worn monument of one kind or another, swell out the delicious blue of the lake in front, and the delicious green of the sunny hillside sloping up and around this closely congregated neighborhood of old, comfortable houses, and I do not know what more I can add to this sketch. Often there was an insulated house or cottage, embowered in shade, and each seeming like the one only spot in the wide world where two people that had good consciences and loved each other could spend a happy life. Half-ruined towers, old historic castles, these, too, we saw. And all the while, on the other side of the lake, were the high hills, sometimes dim, sometimes black, sometimes green, with gray precipices of stone, and often snow-patches, right above the warm sunny lake whereon we were sailing. We passed Lausanne, which stands upward, on the slope of the hill, the tower of its cathedral forming a conspicuous object. We mean to visit this to-morrow; so I may pretermit further mention of it here. We passed Vevay and Clarens, which, methought, was particularly picturesque; for now the hills had approached close to the water on the northern side also, and steep heights rose directly above the little gray church and village; and especially I remember a rocky cliff which ascends into a rounded pyramid, insulated from all other peaks and ridges. But if I could perform the absolute impossibility of getting one single outline of the scene into words, there would be all the color wanting, the light, the haze, which spiritualizes it, and moreover makes a thousand and a thousand scenes out of that single one. Clarens, however, has still another interest for me; for I found myself more affected by it, as the scene of the love of St. Preux and Julie, than I have often been by scenes of poetry and romance. I read Rousseau's romance with great sympathy, when I was hardly more than a boy; ten years ago, or thereabouts, I tried to read it again without success; but I think, from my feeling of yesterday, that it still retains its hold upon my imagination. Farther onward, we saw a white, ancient-looking group of towers, beneath a mountain, which was so high, and rushed so precipitately down upon this pile of building as quite to dwarf it; besides which, its dingy whiteness had not a very picturesque effect. Nevertheless, this was the Castle of Chillon. It appears to sit right upon the water, and does not rise very loftily above it. I was disappointed in its aspect, having imagined this famous castle as situated upon a rock, a hundred, or, for aught I know, a thousand feet above the surface of the lake; but it is quite as impressive a fact--supposing it to be true--that the water is eight hundred feet deep at its base. By this time, the mountains had taken the beautiful lake into their deepest heart; they girdled it quite round with their grandeur and beauty, and, being able to do no more for it, they here withheld it from extending any farther; and here our voyage came to an end. I have never beheld any scene so exquisite; nor do I ask of heaven to show me any lovelier or nobler one, but only to give me such depth and breadth of sympathy with nature, that I may worthily enjoy this. It is beauty more than enough for poor, perishable mortals. If this be earth, what must heaven be! It was nearly eight o'clock when we arrived; and then we had a walk of at least a mile to the Hotel Byron. . . . . I forgot to mention that in the latter part of our voyage there was a shower in some part of the sky, and though none of it fell upon us, we had the benefit of those gentle tears in a rainbow, which arched itself across the lake from mountain to mountain, so that our track lay directly under this triumphal arch. We took it as a good omen, nor were we discouraged, though, after the rainbow had vanished, a few sprinkles of the shower came down. We found the Hotel Byron very grand indeed, and a good one too. There was a beautiful moonlight on the lake and hills, but we contented ourselves with looking out of our lofty window, whence, likewise, we had a sidelong glance at the white battlements of Chillon, not more than a mile off, on the water's edge. The castle is wofully in need of a pedestal. If its site were elevated to a height equal to its own, it would make a far better appearance. As it now is, it looks, to speak profanely of what poetry has consecrated, when seen from the water, or along the shore of the lake, very like an old whitewashed factory or mill. This morning I walked to the Castle of Chillon with J-----, who sketches everything he sees, from a wildflower or a carved chair to a castle or a range of mountains. The morning had sunshine thinly scattered through it; but, nevertheless, there was a continual sprinkle, sometimes scarcely perceptible, and then again amounting to a decided drizzle. The road, which is built along on a little elevation above the lake shore, led us past the Castle of Chillon; and we took a side-path, which passes still nearer the castle gate. The castle stands on an isthmus of gravel, permanently connecting it with the mainland. A wooden bridge, covered with a roof, passes from the shore to the arched entrance; and beneath this shelter, which has wooden walls as well as roof and floor, we saw a soldier or gendarme who seemed to act as warder. As it sprinkled rather more freely than at first, I thought of appealing to his hospitality for shelter from the rain, but concluded to pass on. The castle makes a far better appearance on a nearer view, and from the land, than when seen at a distance, and from the water. It is built of stone, and seems to have been anciently covered with plaster, which imparts the whiteness to which Byron does much more than justice, when he speaks of "Chillon's snow-white battlements." There is a lofty external wall, with a cluster of round towers about it, each crowned with its pyramidal roof of tiles, and from the central portion of the castle rises a square tower, also crowned with its own pyramid to a considerably greater height than the circumjacent ones. The whole are in a close cluster, and make a fine picture of ancient strength when seen at a proper proximity; for I do not think that distance adds anything to the effect. There are hardly any windows, or few, and very small ones, except the loopholes for arrows and for the garrison of the castle to peep from on the sides towards the water; indeed, there are larger windows at least in the upper apartments; but in that direction, no doubt, the castle was considered impregnable. Trees here and there on the land side grow up against the castle wall, on one part of which, moreover, there was a green curtain of ivy spreading from base to battlement. The walls retain their machicolations, and I should judge that nothing had been [altered], nor any more work been done upon the old fortress than to keep it in singularly good repair. It was formerly a castle of the Duke of Savoy, and since his sway over the country ceased (three hundred years at least), it has been in the hands of the Swiss government, who still keep some arms and ammunition there. We passed on, and found the view of it better, as we thought, from a farther point along the road. The raindrops began to spatter down faster, and we took shelter under an impending precipice, where the ledge of rock had been blasted and hewn away to form the road. Our refuge was not a very convenient and comfortable one, so we took advantage of the partial cessation of the shower to turn homeward, but had not gone far when we met mamma and all her train. As we were close by the castle entrance, we thought it advisable to seek admission, though rather doubtful whether the Swiss gendarme might not deem it a sin to let us into the castle on Sunday. But he very readily admitted us under his covered drawbridge, and called an old man from within the fortress to show us whatever was to be seen. This latter personage was a staid, rather grim, and Calvinistic-looking old worthy; but he received us without scruple, and forthwith proceeded to usher us into a range of most dismal dungeons, extending along the basement of the castle, on a level with the surface of the lake. First, if I remember aright, we came to what he said had been a chapel, and which, at all events, looked like an aisle of one, or rather such a crypt as I have seen beneath a cathedral, being a succession of massive pillars supporting groined arches,--a very admirable piece of gloomy Gothic architecture. Next, we came to a very dark compartment of the same dungeon range, where he pointed to a sort of bed, or what might serve for a bed, hewn in the solid rock, and this, our guide said, had been the last sleeping-place of condemned prisoners on the night before their execution. The next compartment was still duskier and dismaller than the last, and he bade us cast our eyes up into the obscurity and see a beam, where the condemned ones used to be hanged. I looked and looked, and closed my eyes so as to see the clearer in this horrible duskiness on opening them again. Finally, I thought I discerned the accursed beam, and the rest of the party were certain that they saw it. Next beyond this, I think, was a stone staircase, steep, rudely cut, and narrow, down which the condemned were brought to death; and beyond this, still on the same basement range of the castle, a low and narrow [corridor] through which we passed and saw a row of seven massive pillars, supporting two parallel series of groined arches, like those in the chapel which we first entered. This was Bonnivard's prison, and the scene of Byron's poem. The arches are dimly lighted by narrow loopholes, pierced through the immensely thick wall, but at such a height above the floor that we could catch no glimpse of land or water, or scarcely of the sky. The prisoner of Chillon could not possibly have seen the island to which Byron alludes, and which is a little way from the shore, exactly opposite the town of Villeneuve. There was light enough in this long, gray, vaulted room, to show us that all the pillars were inscribed with the names of visitors, among which I saw no interesting one, except that of Byron himself, which is cut, in letters an inch long or more, into one of the pillars next to that to which Bonnivard was chained. The letters are deep enough to remain in the pillar as long as the castle stands. Byron seems to have had a fancy for recording his name in this and similar ways; as witness the record which I saw on a tree of Newstead Abbey. In Bonnivard's pillar there still remains an iron ring, at the height of perhaps three feet from the ground. His chain was fastened to this ring, and his only freedom was to walk round this pillar, about which he is said to have worn a path in the stone pavement of the dungeon; but as the floor is now covered with earth or gravel, I could not satisfy myself whether this be true. Certainly six years, with nothing else to do in them save to walk round the pillar, might well suffice to wear away the rock, even with naked feet. This column, and all the columns, were cut and hewn in a good style of architecture, and the dungeon arches are not without a certain gloomy beauty. On Bonnivard's pillar, as well as on all the rest, were many names inscribed; but I thought better of Byron's delicacy and sensitiveness for not cutting his name into that very pillar. Perhaps, knowing nothing of Bonnivard's story, he did not know to which column he was chained. Emerging from the dungeon-vaults, our guide led us through other parts of the castle, showing us the Duke of Savoy's kitchen, with a fireplace at least twelve feet long; also the judgment-hall, or some such place, hung round with the coats of arms of some officers or other, and having at one end a wooden post, reaching from floor to ceiling, and having upon it the marks of fire. By means of this post, contumacious prisoners were put to a dreadful torture, being drawn up by cords and pulleys, while their limbs were scorched by a fire underneath. We also saw a chapel or two, one of which is still in good and sanctified condition, and was to be used this very day, our guide told us, for religious purposes. We saw, moreover, the Duke's private chamber, with a part of the bedstead on which he used to sleep, and be haunted with horrible dreams, no doubt, and the ghosts of wretches whom he had tortured and hanged; likewise the bedchamber of his duchess, that had in its window two stone seats, where, directly over the head of Bonnivard, the ducal pair might look out on the beautiful scene of lake and mountains, and feel the warmth of the blessed sun. Under this window, the guide said, the water of the lake is eight hundred feet in depth; an immense profundity, indeed, for an inland lake, but it is not very difficult to believe that the mountain at the foot of which Chillon stands may descend so far beneath the water. In other parts of the lake and not distant, more than nine hundred feet have been sounded. I looked out of the duchess's window, and could certainly see no appearance of a bottom in the light blue water. The last thing that the guide showed us was a trapdoor, or opening, beneath a crazy old floor. Looking down into this aperture we saw three stone steps, which we should have taken to be the beginning of a flight of stairs that descended into a dungeon, or series of dungeons, such as we had already seen. But inspecting them more closely, we saw that the third step terminated the flight, and beyond was a dark vacancy. Three steps a person would grope down, planting his uncertain foot on a dimly seen stone; the fourth step would be in the empty air. The guide told us that it used to be the practice to bring prisoners hither, under pretence of committing them to a dungeon, and make them go down the three steps and that fourth fatal one, and they would never more be heard of; but at the bottom of the pit there would be a dead body, and in due time a mouldy skeleton, which would rattle beneath the body of the next prisoner that fell. I do not believe that it was anything more than a secret dungeon for state prisoners whom it was out of the question either to set at liberty or bring to public trial. The depth of the pit was about forty-five feet. Gazing intently down, I saw a faint gleam of light at the bottom, apparently coming from some other aperture than the trap-door over which we were bending, so that it must have been contemplated to supply it with light and air in such degree as to support human life. U---- declared she saw a skeleton at the bottom; Miss S------ thought she saw a hand, but I saw only the dim gleam of light. There are two or three courts in the castle, but of no great size. We were now led across one of them, and dismissed out of the arched entrance by which we had come in. We found the gendarme still keeping watch on his roofed drawbridge, and as there was the same gentle shower that had been effusing itself all the morning, we availed ourselves of the shelter, more especially as there were some curiosities to examine. These consisted chiefly of wood-carvings,--such as little figures in the national costume, boxes with wreaths of foliage upon them, paper knives, the chamois goat, admirably well represented. We at first hesitated to make any advances towards trade with the gendarme because it was Sunday, and we fancied there might be a Calvinistic scruple on his part about turning a penny on the Sabbath; but from the little I know of the Swiss character, I suppose they would be as ready as any other men to sell, not only such matters, but even their own souls, or any smaller--or shall we say greater--thing on Sunday or at any other time. So we began to ask the prices of the articles, and met with no difficulty in purchasing a salad spoon and fork, with pretty bas-reliefs carved on the handles, and a napkin-ring. For Rosebud's and our amusement, the gendarme now set a musical-box a-going; and as it played a pasteboard figure of a dentist began to pull the tooth of a pasteboard patient, lifting the wretched simulacrum entirely from the ground, and keeping him in this horrible torture for half an hour. Meanwhile, mamma, Miss Shepard, U----, and J----- sat down all in a row on a bench and sketched the mountains; and as the shower did not cease, though the sun most of the time shone brightly, they were kept actual prisoners of Chillon much longer than we wished to stay. We took advantage of the first cessation,--though still the drops came dimpling into the water that rippled against the pebbles beneath the bridge,--of the first partial cessation of the shower, to escape, and returned towards the hotel, with this kindliest of summer rains falling upon us most of the way In the afternoon the rain entirely ceased, and the weather grew delightfully radiant, and warmer than could well be borne in the sunshine. U---- and I walked to the village of Villeneuve, --a mile from the hotel,--and found a very commonplace little old town of one or two streets, standing on a level, and as uninteresting as if there were not a hill within a hundred miles. It is strange what prosaic lines men thrust in amid the poetry of nature. . . . . Hotel de l'Angleterre, Geneva, June 14th.--Yesterday morning was very fine, and we had a pretty early breakfast at Hotel Byron, preparatory to leaving it. This hotel is on a magnificent scale of height and breadth, its staircases and corridors being the most spacious I have seen; but there is a kind of meagreness in the life there, and a certain lack of heartiness, that prevented us from feeling at home. We were glad to get away, and took the steamer on our return voyage, in excellent spirits. Apparently it had been a cold night in the upper regions, for a great deal more snow was visible on some of the mountains than we had before observed; especially a mountain called "Diableries" presented a silver summit, and broad sheets and fields of snow. Nothing ever can have been more beautiful than those groups of mighty hills as we saw them then, with the gray rocks, the green slopes, the white snow-patches and crests, all to be seen at one glance, and the mists and fleecy clouds tumbling, rolling, hovering about their summits, filling their lofty valleys, and coming down far towards the lower world, making the skyey aspects so intimate with the earthly ones, that we hardly knew whether we were sojourning in the material or spiritual world. It was like sailing through the sky, moreover, to be borne along on such water as that of Lake Leman,--the bluest, brightest, and profoundest element, the most radiant eye that the dull earth ever opened to see heaven withal. I am writing nonsense, but it is because no sense within my mind will answer the purpose. Some of these mountains, that looked at no such mighty distance, were at least forty or fifty miles off, and appeared as if they were near neighbors and friends of other mountains, from which they were really still farther removed. The relations into which distant points are brought, in a view of mountain scenery, symbolize the truth which we can never judge within our partial scope of vision, of the relations which we bear to our fellow-creatures and human circumstances. These mighty mountains think that they have nothing to do with one another, each seems itself its own centre, and existing for itself alone; and yet to an eye that can take them all in, they are evidently portions of one grand and beautiful idea, which could not be consummated without the lowest and the loftiest of them. I do not express this satisfactorily, but have a genuine meaning in it nevertheless. We passed again by Chillon, and gazed at it as long as it was distinctly visible, though the water view does no justice to its real picturesqueness, there being no towers nor projections on the side towards the lake, nothing but a wall of dingy white, with an indentation that looks something like a gateway. About an hour and a half brought us to Ouchy, the point where passengers land to take the omnibus to Lausanne. The ascent from Ouchy to Lausanne is a mile and a half, which it took the omnibus nearly half an hour to accomplish. We left our shawls and carpet-bags in the salle a manger of the Hotel Faucon, and set forth to find the cathedral, the pinnacled tower of which is visible for a long distance up and down the lake. Prominent as it is, however, it is by no means very easy to find it while rambling through the intricate streets and declivities of the town itself, for Lausanne is the town, I should fancy, in all the world the most difficult to go directly from one point to another. It is built on the declivity of a hill, adown which run several valleys or ravines, and over these the contiguity of houses extends, so that the communication is kept up by means of steep streets and sometimes long weary stairs, which must be surmounted and descended again in accomplishing a very moderate distance. In some inscrutable way we at last arrived at the cathedral, which stands on a higher site than any other in Lausanne. It has a very venerable exterior, with all the Gothic grandeur which arched mullioned windows, deep portals, buttresses, towers, and pinnacles, gray with a thousand years, can give to architecture. After waiting awhile we obtained entrance by means of an old woman, who acted the part of sacristan, and was then showing the church to some other visitors. The interior disappointed us; not but what it was very beautiful, but I think the excellent repair that it was in, and the Puritanic neatness with which it is kept, does much towards effacing the majesty and mystery that belong to an old church. Every inch of every wall and column, and all the mouldings and tracery, and every scrap of grotesque carving, had been washed with a drab mixture. There were likewise seats all up and down the nave, made of pine wood, and looking very new and neat, just such seats as I shall see in a hundred meeting-houses (if ever I go into so many) in America. Whatever might be the reason, the stately nave, with its high-groined roof, the clustered columns and lofty pillars, the intersecting arches of the side-aisles, the choir, the armorial and knightly tombs that surround what was once the high altar, all produced far less effect than I could have thought beforehand. As it happened, we had more ample time and freedom to inspect this cathedral than any other that we have visited, for the old woman consented to go away and leave us there, locking the door behind her. The others, except Rosebud, sat down to sketch such portions as struck their fancy; and for myself, I looked at the monuments, of which some, being those of old knights, ladies, bishops, and a king, were curious from their antiquity; and others are interesting as bearing memorials of English people, who have died at Lausanne in comparatively recent years. Then I went up into the pulpit, and tried, without success, to get into the stone gallery that runs all round the nave; and I explored my way into various side apartments of the cathedral, which I found fitted up with seats for Sabbath schools, perhaps, or possibly for meetings of elders of the Church. I opened the great Bible of the church, and found it to be a French version, printed at Lille some fifty years ago. There was also a liturgy, adapted, probably, to the Lutheran form of worship. In one of the side apartments I found a strong box, heavily clamped with iron, and having a contrivance, like the hopper of a mill, by which money could be turned into the top, while a double lock prevented its being abstracted again. This was to receive the avails of contributions made in the church; and there were likewise boxes, stuck on the ends of long poles, wherewith the deacons could go round among the worshippers, conveniently extending the begging-box to the remotest curmudgeon among them all. From the arrangement of the seats in the nave, and the labels pasted or painted on them, I judged that the women sat on one side and the men on the other, and the seats for various orders of magistrates, and for ecclesiastical and collegiate people, were likewise marked out. I soon grew weary of these investigations, and so did Rosebud and J-----, who essayed to amuse themselves with running races together over the horizontal tombstones in the pavement of the choir, treading remorselessly over the noseless effigies of old dignitaries, who never expected to be so irreverently treated. I put a stop to their sport, and banished them to different parts of the cathedral; and by and by, the old woman appeared again, and released us from durance. . . . . While waiting for our dejeuner, we saw the people dining at the regular table d'hote of the hotel, and the idea was strongly borne in upon me, that the professional mystery of a male waiter is a very unmanly one. It is so absurd to see the solemn attentiveness with which they stand behind the chairs, the earnestness of their watch for any crisis that may demand their interposition, the gravity of their manner in performing some little office that the guest might better do for himself, their decorous and soft steps; in short, as I sat and gazed at them, they seemed to me not real men, but creatures with a clerical aspect, engendered out of a very artificial state of society. When they are waiting on myself, they do not appear so absurd; it is necessary to stand apart in order to see them properly. We left Lausanne--which was to us a tedious and weary place--before four o'clock. I should have liked well enough to see the house of Gibbon, and the garden in which he walked, after finishing "The Decline and Fall"; but it could not be done without some trouble and inquiry, and as the house did not come to see me, I determined not to go and see the house. There was, indeed, a mansion of somewhat antique respectability, near our hotel, having a garden and a shaded terrace behind it, which would have answered accurately enough to the idea of Gibbon's residence. Perhaps it was so; far more probably not. Our former voyages had been taken in the Hirondelle; we now, after broiling for some time in the sunshine by the lakeside, got on board of the Aigle, No. 2. There were a good many passengers, the larger proportion of whom seemed to be English and American, and among the latter a large party of talkative ladies, old and young. The voyage was pleasant while we were protected from the sun by the awning overhead, but became scarcely agreeable when the sun had descended so low as to shine in our faces or on our backs. We looked earnestly for Mont Blanc, which ought to have been visible during a large part of our course; but the clouds gathered themselves hopelessly over the portion of the sky where the great mountain lifted his white peak; and we did not see it, and probably never shall. As to the meaner mountains, there were enough of them, and beautiful enough; but we were a little weary, and feverish with the heat. . . . . I think I had a head-ache, though it is so unusual a complaint with me, that I hardly know it when it comes. We were none of us sorry, therefore, when the Eagle brought us to the quay of Geneva, only a short distance from our hotel. . . . . To-day I wrote to Mr. Wilding, requesting him to secure passages for us from Liverpool on the 15th of next month, or 1st of August. It makes my heart thrill, half pleasantly, half otherwise; so much nearer does this step seem to bring that home whence I have now been absent six years, and which, when I see it again, may turn out to be not my home any longer. I likewise wrote to Bennoch, though I know not his present address; but I should deeply grieve to leave England without seeing him. He and Henry Bright are the only two men in England to whom I shall be much grieved to bid farewell; but to the island itself I cannot bear to say that word as a finality. I shall dreamily hope to come back again at some indefinite time; rather foolishly perhaps, for it will tend to take the substance out of my life in my own land. But this, I suspect, is apt to be the penalty of those who stay abroad and stay too long. HAVRE. Hotel Wheeler, June 22d.--We arrived at this hotel last evening from Paris, and find ourselves on the borders of the Petit Quay Notre Dame, with steamers and boats right under our windows, and all sorts of dock-business going on briskly. There are barrels, bales, and crates of goods; there are old iron cannon for posts; in short, all that belongs to the Wapping of a great seaport. . . . . The American partialities of the guests [of this hotel] are consulted by the decorations of the parlor, in which hang two lithographs and colored views of New York, from Brooklyn and from Weehawken. The fashion of the house is a sort of nondescript mixture of Frank, English, and American, and is not disagreeable to us after our weary experience of Continental life. The abundance of the food is very acceptable in comparison with the meagreness of French and Italian meals; and last evening we supped nobly on cold roast beef and ham, set generously before us, in the mass, instead of being doled out in slices few and thin. The waiter has a kindly sort of manner, and resembles the steward of a vessel rather than a landsman; and, in short, everything here has undergone a change, which might admit of very effective description. I may now as well give up all attempts at journalizing. So I shall say nothing of our journey across France from Geneva. . . . . To-night, we shall take our departure in a steamer for Southampton, whence we shall go to London; thence, in a week or two, to Liverpool; thence to Boston and Concord, there to enjoy--if enjoyment it prove--a little rest and a sense that we are at home. [More than four months were now taken up in writing "The Marble Faun," in great part at the seaside town of Redcar, Yorkshire, Mr. Hawthorne having concluded to remain another year in England, chiefly to accomplish that romance. In Redcar, where he remained till September or October, he wrote no journal, but only the book. He then went to Leamington, where he finished "The Marble Faun" in March, and there is a little journalizing soon after leaving Redcar.--ED.] ENGLAND. Leamington, November 14th, 1859.--J---- and I walked to Lillington the other day. Its little church was undergoing renovation when we were here two years ago, and now seems to be quite renewed, with the exception of its square, gray, battlemented tower, which has still the aspect of unadulterated antiquity. On Saturday J----- and I walked to Warwick by the old road, passing over the bridge of the Avon, within view of the castle. It is as fine a piece of English scenery as exists anywhere,-- the quiet little river, shadowed with drooping trees, and, in its vista, the gray towers and long line of windows of the lordly castle, with a picturesquely varied outline; ancient strength, a little softened by decay. . . . . The town of Warwick, I think, has been considerably modernized since I first saw it. The whole of the central portion of the principal street now looks modern, with its stuccoed or brick fronts of houses, and, in many cases, handsome shop windows. Leicester Hospital and its adjoining chapel still look venerably antique; and so does a gateway that half bestrides the street. Beyond these two points on either side it has a much older aspect. The modern signs heighten the antique impression. February 5th, 1860.--Mr. and Mrs. Bennoch are staying for a little while at Mr. B------'s at Coventry, and Mr. B------ called upon us the other day, with Mr. Bennoch, and invited us to go and see the lions of Coventry; so yesterday U---- and I went. It was not my first visit, therefore I have little or nothing to record, unless it were to describe a ribbon-factory into which Mr. B------ took us. But I have no comprehension of machinery, and have only a confused recollection of an edifice of four or five stories, on each floor of which were rows of huge machines, all busy with their iron hands and joints in turning out delicate ribbons. It was very curious and unintelligible to me to observe how they caused different colored patterns to appear, and even flowers to blossom, on the plain surface of a ribbon. Some of the designs were pretty, and I was told that one manufacturer pays 500 pounds annually to French artists (or artisans, for I do not know whether they have a connection with higher art) merely for new patterns of ribbons. The English find it impossible to supply themselves with tasteful productions of this sort merely from the resources of English fancy. If an Englishman possessed the artistic faculty to the degree requisite to produce such things, he would doubtless think himself a great artist, and scorn to devote himself to these humble purposes. Every Frenchman is probably more of an artist than one Englishman in a thousand. We ascended to the very roof of the factory, and gazed thence over smoky Coventry, which is now a town of very considerable size, and rapidly on the increase. The three famous spires rise out of the midst, that of St. Michael being the tallest and very beautiful. Had the day been clear, we should have had a wide view on all sides; for Warwickshire is well laid out for distant prospects, if you can only gain a little elevation from which to see them. Descending from the roof, we next went to see Trinity Church, which has just come through an entire process of renovation, whereby much of its pristine beauty has doubtless been restored; but its venerable awfulness is greatly impaired. We went into three churches, and found that they had all been subjected to the same process. It would be nonsense to regret it, because the very existence of these old edifices is involved in their being renewed; but it certainly does deprive them of a great part of their charm, and puts one in mind of wigs, padding, and all such devices for giving decrepitude the aspect of youth. In the pavement of the nave and aisles there are worn tombstones, with defaced inscriptions, and discolored marbles affixed against the wall; monuments, too, where a mediaeval man and wife sleep side by side on a marble slab; and other tombs so old that the inscriptions are quite gone. Over an arch, in one of the churches, there was a fresco, so old, dark, faded, and blackened, that I found it impossible to make out a single figure or the slightest hint of the design. On the whole, after seeing the churches of Italy, I was not greatly impressed with these attempts to renew the ancient beauty of old English minsters; it would be better to preserve as sedulously as possible their aspect of decay, in which consists the principal charm. . . . . On our way to Mr. B------'s house, we looked into the quadrangle of a charity-school and old men's hospital, and afterwards stepped into a large Roman Catholic church, erected within these few years past, and closely imitating the mediaeval architecture and arrangements. It is strange what a plaything, a trifle, an unserious affair, this imitative spirit makes of a huge, ponderous edifice, which if it had really been built five hundred years ago would have been worthy of all respect. I think the time must soon come when this sort of thing will be held in utmost scorn, until the lapse of time shall give it a claim to respect. But, methinks, we had better strike out any kind of architecture, so it be our own, however wretched, than thus tread back upon the past. Mr. B------ now conducted us to his residence, which stands a little beyond the outskirts of the city, on the declivity of a hill, and in so windy a spot that, as he assured me, the very plants are blown out of the ground. He pointed to two maimed trees whose tops were blown off by a gale two or three years since; but the foliage still covers their shortened summits in summer, so that he does not think it desirable to cut them down. In America, a man of Mr. B------'s property would take upon himself the state and dignity of a millionaire. It is a blessed thing in England, that money gives a man no pretensions to rank, and does not bring the responsibilities of a great position. We found three or four gentlemen to meet us at dinner,--a Mr. D------ and a Mr. B------, an author, having written a book called "The Philosophy of Necessity," and is acquainted with Emerson, who spent two or three days at his house when last in England. He was very kindly appreciative of my own productions, as was also his wife, next to whom I sat at dinner. She talked to me about the author of "Adam Bede," whom she has known intimately all her life. . . . . Miss Evans (who wrote "Adam Bede") was the daughter of a steward, and gained her exact knowledge of English rural life by the connection with which this origin brought her with the farmers. She was entirely self-educated, and has made herself an admirable scholar in classical as well as in modern languages. Those who knew her had always recognized her wonderful endowments, and only watched to see in what way they would develop themselves. She is a person of the simplest manners and character, amiable and unpretending, and Mrs. B------ spoke of her with great affection and respect. . . . . Mr. B------, our host, is an extremely sensible man; and it is remarkable how many sensible men there are in England,--men who have read and thought, and can develop very good ideas, not exactly original, yet so much the product of their own minds that they can fairly call them their own. February 18th.--. . . . This present month has been somewhat less dismal than the preceding ones; there have been some sunny and breezy days when there was life in the air, affording something like enjoyment in a walk, especially when the ground was frozen. It is agreeable to see the fields still green through a partial covering of snow; the trunks and branches of the leafless trees, moreover, have a verdant aspect, very unlike that of American trees in winter, for they are covered with a delicate green moss, which is not so observable in summer. Often, too, there is a twine of green ivy up and down the trunk. The other day, as J----- and I were walking to Whitnash, an elm was felled right across our path, and I was much struck by this verdant coating of moss over all its surface,--the moss plants too minute to be seen individually, but making the whole tree green. It has a pleasant effect here, where it is the natural aspect of trees in general; but in America a mossy tree-trunk is not a pleasant object, because it is associated with damp, low, unwholesome situations. The lack of foliage gives many new peeps and vistas, hereabouts, which I never saw in summer. March 17th.--J----- and I walked to Warwick yesterday forenoon, and went into St. Mary's Church, to see the Beauchamp chapel. . . . . On one side of it were some worn steps ascending to a confessional, where the priest used to sit, while the penitent, in the body of the church, poured his sins through a perforated auricle into this unseen receptacle. The sexton showed us, too, a very old chest which had been found in the burial vault, with some ancient armor stored away in it. Three or four helmets of rusty iron, one of them barred, the last with visors, and all intolerably weighty, were ranged in a row. What heads those must have been that could bear such massiveness! On one of the helmets was a wooden crest--some bird or other--that of itself weighed several pounds. . . . . April 23d.--We have been here several weeks. . . . . Had I seen Bath earlier in my English life, I might have written many pages about it, for it is really a picturesque and interesting city. It is completely sheltered in the lap of hills, the sides of the valley rising steep and high from the level spot on which it stands, and through which runs the muddy little stream of the Avon. The older part of the town is on the level, and the more modern growth--the growth of more than a hundred years--climbs higher and higher up the hillside, till the upper streets are very airy and lofty. The houses are built almost entirely of Bath stone, which in time loses its original buff color, and is darkened by age and coal-smoke into a dusky gray; but still the city looks clean and pure as compared with most other English towns. In its architecture, it has somewhat of a Parisian aspect, the houses having roofs rising steep from their high fronts, which are often adorned with pillars, pilasters, and other good devices, so that you see it to be a town built with some general idea of beauty, and not for business. There are Circuses, Crescents, Terraces, Parades, and all such fine names as we have become familiar with at Leamington, and other watering-places. The declivity of most of the streets keeps them remarkably clean, and they are paved in a very comfortable way, with large blocks of stone, so that the middle of the street is generally practicable to walk upon, although the sidewalks leave no temptation so to do, being of generous width. In many alleys, and round about the abbey and other edifices, the pavement is of square flags, like those of Florence, and as smooth as a palace floor. On the whole, I suppose there is no place in England where a retired man, with a moderate income, could live so tolerably as at Bath; it being almost a city in size and social advantages; quite so, indeed, if eighty thousand people make a city,--and yet having no annoyance of business nor spirit of worldly struggle. All modes of enjoyment that English people like may be had here; and even the climate is said to be milder than elsewhere in England. How this may be, I know not; but we have rain or passing showers almost every day since we arrived, and I suspect the surrounding hills are just about of that inconvenient height, that keeps catching clouds, and compelling them to squeeze out their moisture upon the included valley. The air, however, certainly is preferable to that of Leamington. . . . . There are no antiquities except the abbey, which has not the interest of many other English churches and cathedrals. In the midst of the old part of the town stands the house which was formerly Beau Nash's residence, but which is now part of the establishment of an ale-merchant. The edifice is a tall, but rather mean-looking, stone building, with the entrance from a little side court, which is so cumbered with empty beer-barrels as hardly to afford a passage. The doorway has some architectural pretensions, being pillared and with some sculptured devices--whether lions or winged heraldic monstrosities I forget--on the pediment. Within, there is a small entry, not large enough to be termed a hall, and a staircase, with carved balustrade, ascending by angular turns and square landing-places. For a long course of years, ending a little more than a century ago, princes, nobles, and all the great and beautiful people of old times, used to go up that staircase, to pay their respects to the King of Bath. On the side of the house there is a marble slab inserted, recording that here he resided, and that here he died in 1767, between eighty and ninety years of age. My first acquaintance with him was in Smollett's "Roderick Random," and I have met him in a hundred other novels. His marble statue is in a niche at one end of the great pump-room, in wig, square-skirted coat, flapped waistcoat, and all the queer costume of the period, still looking ghost-like upon the scene where he used to be an autocrat. Marble is not a good material for Beau Nash, however; or, if so, it requires color to set him off adequately. . . . . It is usual in Bath to see the old sign of the checker-board on the doorposts of taverns. It was originally a token that the game might be played there, and is now merely a tavern-sign. LONDON. 31 Hertford Street, Mayfair, May 16th, 1860.--I came hither from Bath on the 14th, and am staying with my friends, Mr. and Mrs. Motley. I would gladly journalize some of my proceedings, and describe things and people; but I find the same coldness and stiffness in my pen as always since our return to England. I dined with the Motleys at Lord Dufferin's, on Monday evening, and there met, among a few other notable people, the Honorable Mrs. Norton, a dark, comely woman, who doubtless was once most charming, and still has charms, at above fifty years of age. In fact, I should not have taken her to be greatly above thirty, though she seems to use no art to make herself look younger, and talks about her time of life, without any squeamishness. Her voice is very agreeable, having a sort of muffled quality, which is excellent in woman. She is of a very cheerful temperament, and so has borne a great many troubles without being destroyed by them. But I can get no color into my sketch, so shall leave it here. London, May 17th. [From a letter.]--Affairs succeed each other so fast, that I have really forgotten what I did yesterday. I remember seeing my dear friend, Henry Bright, and listening to him, as we strolled in the Park, and along the Strand. To-day I met at breakfast Mr. Field Talfourd, who promises to send you the photograph of his portrait of Mr. Browning. He was very agreeable, and seemed delighted to see me again. At lunch, we had Lord Dufferin, the Honorable Mrs. Norton, and Mr. Sterling (author of the "Cloister Life of Charles V."), with whom we are to dine on Sunday. You would be stricken dumb, to see how quietly I accept a whole string of invitations, and what is more, perform my engagements without a murmur. A German artist has come to me with a letter of introduction, and a request that I will sit to him for a portrait in bas-relief. To this, likewise, I have assented! subject to the condition that I shall have my leisure. The stir of this London life, somehow or other, has done me a wonderful deal of good, and I feel better than for months past. This is strange, for if I had my choice, I should leave undone almost all the things I do. I have had time to see Bennoch only once. [This closes the European Journal. After Mr. Hawthorne's return to America, he published "Our Old Home," and began a new romance, of which two chapters appeared in the Atlantic Monthly. But the breaking out of the war stopped all imaginative work with him, and all journalizing, until 1862, when he went to Maine for a little excursion, and began another journal, from which I take one paragraph, giving a slight note of his state of mind at an interesting period of his country's history. --ED.] West Gouldsborough, August 15th, 1862.--It is a week ago, Saturday, since J----- and I reached this place, . . . . Mr. Barney S. Hill's. At Hallowell, and subsequently all along the route, the country was astir with volunteers, and the war is all that seems to be alive, and even that doubtfully so. Nevertheless, the country certainly shows a good spirit, the towns offering everywhere most liberal bounties, and every able-bodied man feels an immense pull and pressure upon him to go to the war. I doubt whether any people was ever actuated by a more genuine and disinterested public spirit; though, of course, it is not unalloyed with baser motives and tendencies. We met a train of cars with a regiment or two just starting for the South, and apparently in high spirits. Everywhere some insignia of soldiership were to be seen,-- bright buttons, a red stripe down the trousers, a military cap, and sometimes a round-shouldered bumpkin in the entire uniform. They require a great deal to give them the aspect of soldiers; indeed, it seems as if they needed to have a good deal taken away and added, like the rough clay of a sculptor as it grows to be a model. The whole talk of the bar-rooms and every other place of intercourse was about enlisting and the war, this being the very crisis of trial, when the voluntary system is drawing to an end, and the draft almost immediately to commence. END OF VOL. II. 
8505	----	Team NORMANDY: THE SCENERY & ROMANCE OF ITS ANCIENT TOWNS: DEPICTED BY GORDON HOME PREFACE This book is not a guide. It is an attempt to convey by pictures and description a clear impression of the Normandy which awaits the visitor. The route described could, however, be followed without covering the same ground for more than five or six miles, and anyone choosing to do this would find in his path some of the richest architecture and scenery that the province possesses. As a means of reviving memories of past visits to Normandy, I may perhaps venture to hope that the illustrations of this book--as far as the reproductions are successful--may not be ineffectual. GORDON HOME EPSOM, _October_ 1905 CONTENTS PREFACE LIST OF COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS LIST OF LINE ILLUSTRATIONS CHAPTER I Some Features of Normandy CHAPTER II By the Banks of the Seine CHAPTER III Concerning Rouen, the Ancient Capital of Normandy CHAPTER IV Concerning the Cathedral City of Evreux and the Road to Bernay CHAPTER V Concerning Lisieux and the Romantic Town of Falaise CHAPTER VI From Argentan to Avranches CHAPTER VII Concerning Mont St Michel CHAPTER VIII Concerning Coutances and Some Parts of the Cotentin CHAPTER IX Concerning St Lo and Bayeux CHAPTER X Concerning Caen and the Coast Towards Trouville CHAPTER XI Some Notes on the History of Normandy LIST OF COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS MONT ST MICHEL FROM THE CAUSEWAY ON THE ROAD BETWEEN CONCHES AND BEAUMONT-LE-ROGER This is typical of the poplar-bordered roads of Normandy. THE CHATEAU GAILLARD FROM THE ROAD BY THE SEINE The village of Le Petit Andely appears below the castle rock, and is partly hidden by the island. The chalk cliffs on the left often look like ruined walls. A TYPICAL REACH OF THE SEINE BETWEEN ROUEN AND LE PETIT ANDELY On one side great chalk cliffs rise precipitously, and on the other are broad flat pastures. THE CHURCH AT GISORS, SEEN FROM THE WALLS OF THE NORMAN CASTLE THE TOUR DE LA GROSSE HORLOGE, ROUEN It is the Belfry of the City, and was commenced in 1389. THE CATHEDRAL AT ROUEN Showing a peep of the Portail de la Calende, and some of the quaint houses of the oldest part of the City. THE CATHEDRAL OF EVREUX SEEN FROM ABOVE On the right, just where the light touches some of the roofs of the houses, the fine old belfry can be seen. A TYPICAL FARMYARD SCENE IN NORMANDY The curious little thatched mushroom above the cart is to be found in most of the Norman farms. THE BRIDGE AT BEAUMONT-LE-ROGER On the steep hill beyond stands the ruined abbey church. IN THE RUE AUX FEVRES, LISIEUX The second tiled gable from the left belongs to the fine sixteenth century house called the Manoir de Francois I. THE CHURCH OF ST JACQUES AT LISIEUX One of the quaint umber fronted houses for which the town is famous appears on the left. FALAISE CASTLE The favourite stronghold of William the Conqueror. THE PORTE DES CORDELIERS AT FALAISE A thirteenth century gateway that overlooks the steep valley of the Ante. THE CHATEAU D'O A seventeenth century manor house surrounded by a wide moat. THE GREAT VIEW OVER THE FORESTS TO THE SOUTH FROM THE RAMPARTS OF DOMFRONT CASTLE Down below can be seen the river Varennes, and to the left of the railway the little Norman Church of Notre-Dame-sur-l'Eau. THE CLOCK GATE, VIRE A VIEW OF MONT ST MICHEL AND THE BAY OF CANCALE FROM THE JARDIN DES PLANTES AT AVRANCHES On the left is the low coast-line of Normandy, and on the right appears the islet of Tombelaine. DISTANT VIEW OF MONT ST MICHEL THE LONG MAIN STREET OF COUTANCES In the foreground is the Church of St Pierre, and in the distance is the Cathedral. THE GREAT WESTERN TOWERS OF THE CHURCH OF NOTRE DAME AT ST LO They are of different dates, and differ in the arcading and other ornament. THE NORMAN TOWERS OF BAYEUX CATHEDRAL ST PIERRE, CAEN OUISTREHAM LIST OF LINE ILLUSTRATIONS THE FORTIFIED FARM NEAR GISORS A SEVENTEENTH CENTURY HOUSE AT ARGENTAN THE OLD MARKET HOUSE AT ECOUCHE ONE OF THE TOWERS IN THE WALLS OF DOMFRONT THE CHËTELET AND LA MERVFILLE AT MONT ST MICHEL The dark opening through the archway on the left is the main entrance to the Abbey. On the right can be seen the tall narrow windows that light the three floors of Abbot Jourdain's great work. AN ANCIENT HOUSE IN THE RUE ST MALO, BAYEUX THE GATEWAY OF THE CHATEAU THE DISUSED CHURCH OF ST NICHOLAS AT CAEN A COURTYARD IN THE RUE DE BAYEUX AT CAEN CHAPTER I Some Features of Normandy Very large ants, magpies in every meadow, and coffee-cups without handles, but of great girth, are some of the objects that soon become familiar to strangers who wander in that part of France which was at one time as much part of England as any of the counties of this island. The ants and the coffee-cups certainly give one a sense of being in a foreign land, but when one wanders through the fertile country among the thatched villages and farms that so forcibly remind one of Devonshire, one feels a friendliness in the landscapes that scarcely requires the stimulus of the kindly attitude of the peasants towards _les anglais_. If one were to change the dark blue smock and the peculiar peaked hat of the country folk of Normandy for the less distinctive clothes of the English peasant, in a very large number of cases the Frenchmen would pass as English. The Norman farmer so often has features strongly typical of the southern counties of England, that it is surprising that with his wife and his daughters there should be so little resemblance. Perhaps this is because the French women dress their hair in such a different manner to those on the northern side of the Channel, and they certainly, taken as a whole, dress with better effect than their English neighbours; or it may be that the similar ideas prevailing among the men as to how much of the face should be shaved have given the stronger sex an artificial resemblance. In the towns there is little to suggest in any degree that the mediaeval kings of England ruled this large portion of France, and at Mont St Michel the only English objects besides the ebb and flow of tourists are the two great iron _michelettes_ captured by the French in 1433. Everyone who comes to the wonderful rock is informed that these two guns are English; but as they have been there for nearly five hundred years, no one feels much shame at seeing them in captivity, and only a very highly specialised antiquary would be able to recognise any British features in them. Everyone, however, who visits Normandy from England with any enthusiasm, is familiar with the essential features of Norman and early pointed architecture, and it is thus with distinct pleasure that the churches are often found to be strikingly similar to some of the finest examples of the earlier periods in England. When we remember that the Norman masons and master-builders had been improving the crude Saxon architecture in England even before the Conquest, and that, during the reigns of the Norman kings, "Frenchmen," as the Saxons called them, were working on churches and castles in every part of our island, it is no matter for surprise to find that buildings belonging to the eleventh, twelfth, and even the thirteenth century, besides being of similar general design, are often covered with precisely the same patterns of ornament. When the period of Decorated Gothic began to prevail towards the end of the thirteenth century, the styles on each side of the Channel gradually diverged, so that after that time the English periods do not agree with those of Normandy. There is also, even in the churches that most resemble English structures, a strangeness that assails one unless familiarity has taken the edge off one's perceptions. Though not the case with all the fine churches and cathedrals of Normandy, yet with an unpleasantly large proportion--unfortunately including the magnificent Church of St Ouen at Rouen--there is beyond the gaudy tinsel that crowds the altars, an untidiness that detracts from the sense of reverence that stately Norman or Gothic does not fail to inspire. In the north transept of St Ouen, some of the walls and pillars have at various times been made to bear large printed notices which have been pasted down, and when out of date they have been only roughly torn off, leaving fragments that soon become discoloured and seriously mar the dignified antiquity of the stone-work. But beyond this, one finds that the great black stands for candles that burn beside the altars are generally streaked with the wax that has guttered from a dozen flames, and that even the floor is covered with lumps of wax--the countless stains of only partially scraped-up gutterings of past offerings. There is also that peculiarly unpleasant smell so often given out by the burning wax that greets one on entering the cool twilight of the building. The worn and tattered appearance of the rush-seated chairs in the churches is easily explained when one sees the almost constant use to which they are put. In the morning, or even as late as six in the evening, one finds classes of boys or girls being catechised and instructed by priests and nuns. The visitor on pushing open the swing door of an entrance will frequently be met by a monotonous voice that echoes through the apparently empty church. As he slowly takes his way along an aisle, the voice will cease, and suddenly break out in a simple but loudly sung Gregorian air, soon joined by a score or more of childish voices; then, as the stranger comes abreast of a side chapel, he causes a grave distraction among the rows of round, closely cropped heads. The rather nasal voice from the sallow figure in the cassock rises higher, and as the echoing footsteps of the person who does nothing but stare about him become more and more distant, the sing-song tune grows in volume once more, and the rows of little French boys are again in the way of becoming good Catholics. In another side chapel the confessional box bears a large white card on which is printed in bold letters, "M. le Cure." He is on duty at the present time, for, from behind the curtained lattices, the stranger hears a soft mumble of words, and he is constrained to move silently towards the patch of blazing whiteness that betokens the free air and sunshine without. The cheerful clatter of the traffic on the cobbles is typical of all the towns of Normandy, as it is of the whole republic, but Caen has reduced this form of noise by exchanging its omnibuses, that always suggested trams that had left the rails, for swift electric trams that only disturb the streets by their gongs. In Rouen, the electric cars, which the Britisher rejoices to discover were made in England--the driver being obliged to read the positions of his levers in English--are a huge boon to everyone who goes sight-seeing in that city. Being swept along in a smoothly running car is certainly preferable to jolting one's way over the uneven paving on a bicycle, but it is only in the largest towns that one has such a choice. Although the only road that is depicted in this book is as straight as any built by the Romans and is bordered by poplars, it is only one type of the great _routes nationales_ that connect the larger towns. In the hilly parts of Normandy the poplar bordered roads entirely disappear, and however straight the engineers may have tried to make their ways, they have been forced to give them a zig-zag on the steep slopes that breaks up the monotony of the great perspectives so often to be seen stretching away for great distances in front and behind. It must not be imagined that Normandy is without the usual winding country road where every bend has beyond it some possibilities in the way of fresh views. An examination of a good road map of the country will show that although the straight roads are numerous, there are others that wind and twist almost as much as the average English turnpike. As a rule, the _route nationale_ is about the same width as most main roads, but it has on either side an equal space of grass. This is frequently scraped off by the cantoniers, and the grass is placed in great piles ready for removal. When these have been cleared away the thoroughfare is of enormous width, and in case of need, regiments could march in the centre with artillery on one side, and a supply train on the other, without impeding one another. Level crossings for railways are more frequent than bridges. The gates are generally controlled by women in the family sort of fashion that one sees at the lodge of an English park where a right-of-way exists, and yet accidents do not seem to happen. The railways of Normandy are those of the Chemin de Fer de l'Ouest, and one soon becomes familiar with the very low platforms of the stations that are raised scarcely above the rails. The porters wear blue smocks and trousers of the same material, secured at the waist by a belt of perpendicular red and black stripes. The railway carriages have always two foot-boards, and the doors besides the usual handles have a second one half-way down the panels presumably for additional security. It is really in the nature of a bolt that turns on a pivot and falls into a bracket. On the doors, the class of the carriages is always marked in heavy Roman numerals. The third-class compartments have windows only in the doors, are innocent of any form of cushions and are generally only divided half-way up. The second and first-class compartments are always much better and will bear comparison with those of the best English railways, whereas the usual third-class compartment is of that primitive type abandoned twenty or more years ago, north of the Channel. The locomotives are usually dirty and black with outside cylinders, and great drum-shaped steam-domes. They seem to do the work that is required of them efficiently, although if one is travelling in a third-class compartment the top speed seems extraordinarily slow. The railway officials handle bicycles with wonderful care, and this is perhaps remarkable when we realize that French railways carry them any distance simply charging a penny for registration. The hotels of Normandy are not what they were twenty years ago. Improvements in sanitation have brought about most welcome changes, so that one can enter the courtyard of most hotels without being met by the aggressive odours that formerly jostled one another for space. When you realize the very large number of English folk who annually pass from town to town in Normandy it may perhaps be wondered why the proprietors of hotels do not take the trouble to prepare a room that will answer to the drawing-room of an English hotel. After dinner in France, a lady has absolutely no choice between a possible seat in the courtyard and her bedroom, for the estaminet generally contains a group of noisy Frenchmen, and even if it is vacant the room partakes too much of the character of a bar-parlour to be suitable for ladies. Except in the large hotels in Rouen I have only found one which boasts of any sort of room besides the estaminet; it was the Hotel des Trois Marie at Argentan. When this defect has been remedied, I can imagine that English people will tour in Normandy more than they do even at the present time. The small washing basin and jug that apologetically appears upon the bedroom washstand has still an almost universal sway, and it is not sufficiently odd to excuse itself on the score of picturesqueness. Under that heading come the tiled floors in the bedrooms, the square and mountainous eiderdowns that recline upon the beds, and the matches that take several seconds to ignite and leave a sulphurous odour that does not dissipate itself for several minutes. CHAPTER II By the Banks of the Seine If you come to Normandy from Southampton, France is entered at the mouth of the Seine and you are at once introduced to some of the loveliest scenery that Normandy possesses. The headland outside Havre is composed of ochreish rock which appears in patches where the grass will not grow. The heights are occupied by no less than three lighthouses only one of which is now in use. As the ship gets closer, a great spire appears round the cliff in the silvery shimmer of the morning haze and then a thousand roofs reflect the sunlight. There are boats from Havre that take passengers up the winding river to Rouen and in this way much of the beautiful scenery may be enjoyed. By this means, however, the country appears as only a series of changing pictures and to see anything of the detail of such charming places as Caudebec, and Lillebonne, or the architectural features of Tancarville Castle and the Abbey of Jumieges, the road must be followed instead of the more leisurely river. Havre with its great docks, its busy streets, and fast electric tramcars that frighten away foot passengers with noisy motor horns does not compel a very long stay, although one may chance to find much interest among the shipping, when such vessels as Mr Vanderbilt's magnificent steam yacht, without a mark on its spotless paint, is lying in one of the inner basins. If you wander up and down some of the old streets by the harbour you will find more than one many-storied house with shutters brightly painted, and dormers on its ancient roof. The church of Notre Dame in the Rue de Paris has a tower that was in earlier times a beacon, and it was here that three brothers named Raoulin who had been murdered by the governor Villars in 1599, are buried. On the opposite side of the estuary of the Seine, lies Honfleur with its extraordinary church tower that stands in the market-place quite detached from the church of St Catherine to which it belongs. It is entirely constructed of timber and has great struts supporting the angles of its walls. The houses along the quay have a most paintable appearance, their overhanging floors and innumerable windows forming a picturesque background to the fishing-boats. Harfleur, on the same side of the river as Havre, is on the road to Tancarville. We pass through it on our way to Caudebec. The great spire of the church, dating from the fifteenth century, rears itself above this ancient port where the black-sailed ships of the Northmen often appeared in the early days before Rollo had forced Charles the Simple (he should have been called "The Straightforward") to grant him the great tract of French territory that we are now about to explore. The Seine, winding beneath bold cliffs on one side and along the edge of flat, rich meadowlands on the other, comes near the magnificent ruin of Tancarville Castle whose walls enclose an eighteenth century chateau. The situation on an isolated chalk cliff one hundred feet high was more formidable a century ago than it is to-day, for then the Seine ran close beneath the forbidding walls, while now it has changed its course somewhat. The entrance to the castle is approached under the shadow of the great circular corner tower that stands out so boldly at one extremity of the buildings, and the gate house has on either side semi-circular towers fifty-two feet in height. Above the archway there are three floors sparingly lighted by very small windows, one to each storey. They point out the first floor as containing the torture chamber, and in the towers adjoining are the hopelessly strong prisons. The iron bars are still in the windows and in one instance the positions of the rings to which the prisoners were chained are still visible. There are still floors in the Eagle's tower that forms the boldest portion of the castle, and it is a curious feature that the building is angular inside although perfectly cylindrical on the exterior. Near the chateau you may see the ruined chapel and the remains of the Salle des Chevaliers with its big fireplace. Then higher than the entrance towers is the Tour Coquesart built in the fifteenth century and having four storeys with a fireplace in each. The keep is near this, but outside the present castle and separated from it by a moat. The earliest parts of the castle all belong to the eleventh century, but so much destruction was wrought by Henry V. in 1417 that the greater part of the ruins belong to a few years after that date. The name of Tancarville had found a place among the great families of England before the last of the members of this distinguished French name lost his life at the battle of Agincourt. The heiress of the family married one of the Harcourts and eventually the possessions came into the hands of Dunois the Bastard of Orleans. From Tancarville there is a road that brings you down to that which runs from Quilleboeuf, and by it one is soon brought to the picturesquely situated little town of Lillebonne, famous for its Roman theatre. It was the capital of the Caletes and was known as Juliabona, being mentioned in the iters of Antoninus. The theatre is so well known that no one has difficulty in finding it, and compared to most of the Roman remains in England, it is well worth seeing. The place held no fewer than three thousand people upon the semi-circular tiers of seats that are now covered with turf. Years ago, there was much stone-work to be seen, but this has largely disappeared, and it is only in the upper portions that many traces of mason's work are visible. A passage runs round the upper part of the theatre and the walls are composed of narrow stones that are not much larger than bricks. The great castle was built by William the Norman, and it was here that he gathered together his barons to mature and work out his project which made him afterwards William the Conqueror. It will be natural to associate the fine round tower of the castle with this historic conference, but unfortunately, it was only built in the fourteenth century. From more than one point of view Lillebonne makes beautiful pictures, its roofs dominated by the great tower of the parish church as well as by the ruins of the castle. We have lost sight of the Seine since we left Tancarville, but a ten-mile run brings us to the summit of a hill overlooking Caudebec and a great sweep of the beautiful river. The church raises its picturesque outline against the rolling white clouds, and forms a picture that compels admiration. On descending into the town, the antiquity and the quaintness of sixteenth century houses greet you frequently, and you do not wonder that Caudebec has attracted so many painters. There is a wide quay, shaded by an avenue of beautiful trees, and there are views across the broad, shining waters of the Seine, which here as in most of its length attracts us by its breadth. The beautiful chalk hills drop steeply down to the water's edge on the northern shores in striking contrast to the flatness of the opposite banks. On the side of the river facing Caudebec, the peninsula enclosed by the windings of the Seine includes the great forest of Brotonne, and all around the town, the steep hills that tumble picturesquely on every side, are richly clothed with woods, so that with its architectural delights within, and its setting of forest, river and hill, Caudebec well deserves the name it has won for itself in England as well as in France. Just off the road to Rouen from Caudebec and scarcely two miles away, is St Wandrille, situated in a charming hollow watered by the Fontanelle, a humble tributary of the great river. In those beautiful surroundings stand the ruins of the abbey church, almost entirely dating from the thirteenth century. Much destruction was done during the Revolution, but there is enough of the south transept and nave still in existence to show what the complete building must have been. In the wonderfully preserved cloister which is the gem of St Wandrille, there are some beautiful details in the doorway leading from the church, and there is much interest in the refectory and chapter house. Down in the piece of country included in a long and narrow loop of the river stand the splendid ruins of the abbey of Jumieges with its three towers that stand out so conspicuously over the richly wooded country. When you get to the village and are close to the ruins of the great Benedictine abbey, you are not surprised that it was at one time numbered amongst the richest and most notable of the monastic foundations. The founder was St Philibert, but whatever the buildings which made their appearance in the seventh century may have been, is completely beyond our knowledge, for Jumieges was situated too close to the Seine to be overlooked by the harrying ship-loads of pirates from the north, who in the year 851 demolished everything. William Longue-Epee, son of Rollo the great leader of these Northmen, curiously enough commenced the rebuilding of the abbey, and it was completed in the year of the English conquest. Nearly the whole of the nave and towers present a splendid example of early Norman architecture, and it is much more inspiring to look upon the fine west front of this ruin than that of St Etienne at Caen which has an aspect so dull and uninspiring. The great round arches of the nave are supported by pillars which have the early type of capital distinguishing eleventh century work. The little chapel of St Pierre adjoining the abbey church is particularly interesting on account of the western portion which includes some of that early work built in the first half of the tenth century by William Longue-Epee. The tombstone of Nicholas Lerour, the abbot who was among the judges by whom the saintly Joan of Arc was condemned to death, is to be seen with others in the house which now serves as a museum. Associated with the same tragedy is another tombstone, that of Agnes Sorel, the mistress of Charles VII., that heartless king who made no effort to save the girl who had given him his throne. Jumieges continued to be a perfectly preserved abbey occupied by its monks and hundreds of persons associated with them until scarcely more than a century ago. It was then allowed to go to complete ruin, and no restrictions seem to have been placed upon the people of the neighbourhood who as is usual under such circumstances, used the splendid buildings as a storehouse of ready dressed stone. Making our way back to the highway, we pass through beautiful scenery, and once more reach the banks of the Seine at the town of Duclair which stands below the escarpment of chalk hills. There are wharves by the river-side which give the place a thriving aspect, for a considerable export trade is carried on in dairy produce. After following the river-side for a time, the road begins to cut across the neck of land between two bends of the Seine. It climbs up towards the forest of Roumare and passes fairly close to the village of St Martin de Boscherville where the church of St George stands out conspicuously on its hillside. This splendid Norman building is the church of the Abbey built in the middle of the eleventh century by Raoul de Tancarville who was William's Chamberlain at the time of the conquest of England. The abbey buildings are now in ruins but the church has remained almost untouched during the eight centuries and more which have passed during which Normandy was often bathed in blood, and when towns and castles were sacked two or three times over. When the forest of Roumare, has been left behind, you come to Canteleu, a little village that stands at the top of a steep hill, commanding a huge view over Rouen, the historic capital of Normandy. You can see the shipping lying in the river, the factories, the spire of the cathedral, and the many church towers as well as the light framework of the modern moving bridge. This is the present day representative of the fantastic mediaeval city that witnessed the tragedy of Joan of Arc's trial and martyrdom. We will pass Rouen now, returning to it again in the next chapter. The river for some distance becomes frequently punctuated with islands. Large extents of forest including those of Rouvray, Bonde and Elbeuf, spread themselves over the high ground to the west. The view from above Elbeuf in spite of its many tall chimney shafts includes such a fine stretch of fertile country that the scene is not easily forgotten. Following the windings of the river through Pont-de-L'Arche and the forest of Louviers we come to that pleasant old town; but although close to the Seine, it stands on the little river Eure. Louviers remains in the memory as a town whose church is more crowded with elaborately carved stone-work than any outside Rouen. There is something rather odd, in the close juxtaposition of the Hotel Mouton d'Argent with its smooth plastered front and the almost overpowering mass of detail that faces it on the other side of the road. There is something curious, too, in the severe plainness of the tower that almost suggests the unnecessarily shabby clothing worn by some men whose wives are always to be seen in the most elaborate and costly gowns. Internally the church shows its twelfth century origin, but all the intricate stone-work outside belongs to the fifteenth century. The porch which is, if possible, richer than the buttresses of the aisles, belongs to the flamboyant period, and actually dates from the year 1496. In the clerestory there is much sixteenth century glass and the aisles which are low and double give a rather unusual appearance. The town contains several quaint and ancient houses, one of them supported by wooden posts projects over the pavement, another at the corner of the Marche des Oeufs has a very rich though battered piece of carved oak at the angle of the walls. It seems as if it had caught the infection of the extraordinary detail of the church porch. Down by the river there are many timber-framed houses with their foundations touching the water, with narrow wooden bridges crossing to the warehouses that line the other side. The Place de Rouen has a shady avenue of limes leading straight down to a great house in a garden beyond which rise wooded hills. Towards the river runs another avenue of limes trimmed squarely on top. These are pleasant features of so many French towns that make up for some of the deficiencies in other matters. We could stay at Louviers for some time without exhausting all its attractions, but ten miles away at the extremity of another deep loop of the Seine there stands the great and historic Chateau-Gaillard that towers above Le Petit-Andely, the pretty village standing invitingly by a cleft in the hills. The road we traverse is that which appears so conspicuously in Turner's great painting of the Chateau-Gaillard. It crosses the bridge close under the towering chalk cliffs where the ruin stands so boldly. There is a road that follows the right bank of the river close to the railway, and it is from there that one of the strangest views of the castle is to be obtained. You may see it thrown up by a blaze of sunlight against the grassy heights behind that are all dark beneath the shadow of a cloud. The stone of the towers and heavily buttressed walls appears almost as white as the chalk which crops out in the form of cliffs along the river-side. An island crowded with willows that overhang the water partially hides the village of Le Petit-Andely, and close at hand above the steep slopes of grass that rise from the roadway tower great masses of gleaming white chalk projecting from the vivid turf as though they were the worn ruins of other castles. The whiteness is only broken by the horizontal lines of flints and the blue-grey shadows that fill the crevices. From the hill above the Chateau there is another and even more striking view. It is the one that appears in Turner's picture just mentioned, and gives one some idea of the magnificent position that Richard Coeur de Lion chose, when in 1197 he decided to build an impregnable fortress on this bend of the Seine. It was soon after his return from captivity which followed the disastrous crusade that Richard commenced to show Philippe Auguste that he was determined to hold his French possessions with his whole strength. Philippe had warned John when the news of the release of the lion-hearted king from captivity had become known, that "the devil was unchained," and the building of this castle showed that Richard was making the most of his opportunities. The French king was, with some justification, furious with his neighbour, for Richard had recently given his word not to fortify this place, and some fierce fighting would have ensued on top of the threats which the monarchs exchanged, but for the death of the English king in 1199. When John assumed the crown of England, however, Philippe soon found cause to quarrel with him, and thus the great siege of the castle was only postponed for three or four years. The French king brought his army across the peninsula formed by the Seine, and having succeeded in destroying the bridge beneath the castle, he constructed one for himself with boats and soon afterwards managed to capture the island, despite its strong fortifications. The leader of the English garrison was the courageous Roger de Lacy, Constable of Chester. From his knowledge of the character of his new king, de Lacy would have expected little assistance from the outside and would have relied upon his own resources to defend Richard's masterpiece. John made one attempt to succour the garrison. He brought his army across the level country and essayed to destroy the bridge of boats constructed by the French. This one effort proving unsuccessful he took no other measures to distract the besieging army, and left Roger de Lacy to the undivided attention of the Frenchmen. Then followed a terrible struggle. The French king succeeded in drawing his lines closer to the castle itself and eventually obtained possession of the outer fortifications and the village of Le Petit-Andely, from which the inhabitants fled to the protection of the castle. The governor had no wish to have all his supplies consumed by non-combatants, and soon compelled these defenceless folk to go out of the protection of his huge walls. At first the besiegers seemed to have allowed the people to pass unmolested, but probably realizing the embarrassment they would have been to the garrison, they altered their minds, and drove most of them back to the castle. Here they gained a reception almost as hostile as that of the enemy, and after being shot down by the arrows of the French they remained for days in a starving condition in a hollow between the hostile lines. Here they would all have died of hunger, but Philippe at last took pity on the terrible plight of these defenceless women and children and old folks, and having allowed them a small supply of provisions they were at last released from their ghastly position. Such a tragedy as this lends terrible pathos to the grassy steeps and hollows surrounding the chateau and one may almost be astonished that such callousness could have existed in these days of chivalry. The siege was continued with rigour and a most strenuous attack was made upon the end of the castle that adjoined the high ground that overlooks the ruins. With magnificent courage the Frenchmen succeeded in mining the walls, and having rushed into the breach they soon made themselves masters of the outer courtyard. Continuing the assault, a small party of intrepid soldiers gained a foothold within the next series of fortifications, causing the English to retreat to the inner courtyard dominated by the enormous keep. Despite the magnificent resistance offered by de Lacy's men the besiegers raised their engines in front of the gate, and when at last they had forced an entry they contrived a feat that almost seems incredible--they cut off the garrison from their retreat to the keep. Thus this most famous of castles fell within half a dozen years of its completion. In the hundred years' war the Chateau-Gaillard was naturally one of the centres of the fiercest fighting, and the pages of history are full of references to the sieges and captures of the fortress, proving how even with the most primitive weapons these ponderous and unscalable walls were not as impregnable as they may have seemed to the builders. Like the abbey of Jumieges, this proud structure became nothing more than a quarry, for in the seventeenth century permission was given to two religious houses, one at Le Petit-Andely and the other at Le Grand-Andely to take whatever stone-work they required for their monastic establishments. Records show how more damage would have been done to the castle but for the frequent quarrels between these two religious houses as to their rights over the various parts of the ruins. When you climb up to the ruined citadel and look out of the windows that are now battered and shapeless, you can easily feel how the heart of the bold Richard must have swelled within him when he saw how his castle dominated an enormous belt of country. But you cannot help wondering whether he ever had misgivings over the unwelcome proximity of the chalky heights that rise so closely above the site of the ruin. We ourselves, are inclined to forget these questions of military strength in the serene beauty of the silvery river flowing on its serpentine course past groups of poplars, rich pastures dotted with cattle, forest lands and villages set amidst blossoming orchards. Down below are the warm chocolate-red roofs of the little town that has shared with the chateau its good and evil fortunes. The church with its slender spire occupies the central position, and it dates from precisely the same years as those which witnessed the advent of the fortress above. The little streets of the town are full of quaint timber-framed houses, and it is not surprising that this is one of the spots by the beautiful banks of the Seine that has attained a name for its picturesqueness. With scarcely any perceptible division Le Grand-Andely joins the smaller village. It stands higher in the valley and is chiefly memorable for its beautiful inn, the Hotel du Grand Cerf. It is opposite the richly ornamented stone-work of the church of Notre Dame and dates chiefly from the sixteenth century. The hall contains a great fireplace, richly ornamented with a renaissance frieze and a fine iron stove-back. The courtyard shows carved timbers and in front the elaborate moulding beneath the eaves is supported by carved brackets. Unlike that old hostelry at Dives which is mentioned in another chapter, this hotel is not over restored, although in the days of a past proprietor the house contained a great number of antiques and its fame attracted many distinguished visitors, including Sir Walter Scott and Victor Hugo. In writing of the hotel I am likely to forget the splendid painted glass in the church, but details of the stories told in these beautiful works of the sixteenth century are given in all good guides. There is a pleasant valley behind Les Andelys running up towards the great plateau that occupies such an enormous area of this portion of Normandy. The scenery as you go along the first part of the valley, through the little village of Harquency with its tiny Norman church, and cottages with thatched roofs all velvety with moss, is very charming. The country is entirely hedge-less, but as you look down upon the rather thirsty-looking valley below the road, the scenery savours much of Kent; the chalky fields, wooded uplands and big, picturesque farms suggesting some of the agricultural districts of the English county. When we join the broad and straight national road running towards Gisors we have reached the tableland just mentioned. There are perhaps, here and there, a group of stately elms, breaking the broad sweep of arable land that extends with no more undulations for many leagues than those of a sheet of old-fashioned glass. The horizon is formed by simply the same broad fields, vanishing in a thin, blue line over the rim of the earth. [Illustration: THE FORTIFIED FARM NEAR GISORS] At Les Thilliers, a small hamlet that, owing to situation at cross-roads figures conspicuously upon the milestones of the neighbourhood, the road to Gisors goes towards the east, and after crossing the valley of the Epte, you run down an easy gradient, passing a fine fortified farm-house with circular towers at each corner of its four sides and in a few minutes have turned into the historic old town of Gisors. It is as picturesque as any place in Normandy with the exception of Mont St Michel. The river Epte gliding slowly through its little canals at the sides of some of the streets, forms innumerable pictures when reflecting the quaint houses and gardens whose walls are generally grown over with creepers. Near the ascent to the castle is one of the washing places where the women let their soap suds float away on the translucent water as they scrub vigorously. They kneel upon a long wooden platform sheltered by a charming old roof supported upon a heavy timber framework that is a picture in itself. If you stay at the Hotel de l'Ecu de France you are quite close to the castle that towers upon its hill right in the middle of the town. Most people who come to Gisors are surprised to find how historic is its castle, and how many have been the conflicts that have taken place around it. The position between Rouen and Paris and on the frontier of the Duchy gave it an importance in the days of the Norman kings that led to the erection of a most formidable stronghold. In the eleventh century, when William Rufus was on the throne of England, he made the place much stronger. Both Henry I. and Henry II. added to its fortifications so that Gisors became in time as formidable a castle as the Chateau Gaillard. During the Hundred Years' War, Gisors, which is often spoken of as the key to Normandy, after fierce struggles had become French. Then again, a determined assault would leave the flag of England fluttering upon its ramparts until again the Frenchmen would contrive to make themselves masters of the place. And so these constant changes of ownership went on until at last about the year 1450, a date which we shall find associated with the fall of every English stronghold in Normandy, Gisors surrendered to Charles VII. and has remained French ever since. The outer baileys are defended by some great towers of massive Norman masonry from which you look all over the town and surrounding country. But within the inner courtyard rises a great mound dominated by the keep which you may still climb by a solid stone staircase. From here the view is very much finer than from the other towers and its commanding position would seem to give the defenders splendid opportunities for tiring out any besieging force. The concierge of the castle, a genial old woman of gipsy-like appearance takes you down to the fearful dungeon beneath one of the great towers on the eastern side, known as the Tour des Prisonniers. Here you may see the carvings in the stone-work executed by some of the prisoners who had been cast into this black abyss. These carvings include representations of crucifixes, St Christopher, and many excellently conceived and patiently wrought figures of other saints. We have already had a fine view of the splendid Renaissance exterior of the church which is dedicated to the Saints Gervais and Protais. The choir is the earliest part of the building. It belongs to the thirteenth century, while the nave and most of the remaining portions date from the fifteenth or sixteenth century. It is a building of intense architectural interest and to some extent rivals the castle in the attention it deserves. CHAPTER III Concerning Rouen, the Ancient Capital of Normandy When whole volumes have been written on Rouen it would be idle to attempt even a fragment of its history in a book of this nature. But all who go to Rouen should know something of its story in order to be able to make the most of the antiquities that the great city still retains. How much we would give to have an opportunity for seeing the Rouen which has vanished, for to-day as we walk along the modern streets there is often nothing to remind us of the centuries crowded with momentous events that have taken place where now the electric cars sweep to and fro and do their best to make one forget the Rouen of mediaeval times. Of course, no one goes to the city expecting to find ancient walls and towers, or a really strong flavour of the middle ages, any more than one expects to obtain such impressions in the city of London. Rouen, however, contains sufficient relics of its past to convey a powerful impression upon the minds of all who have strong imaginations. There is the cathedral which contains the work of many centuries; there is the beautiful and inspiring church of St Ouen; there is the archway of the Grosse Horloge; there is the crypt of the church of St Gervais, that dates from the dim fifth century; and there are still in the narrow streets between the cathedral and the quays along the river-side, many tall, overhanging houses, whose age appears in the sloping wall surfaces and in the ancient timbers that show themselves under the eaves and between the plaster-work. Two of the most attractive views in Rouen are illustrated here. One of them shows the Portail de la Calende of the cathedral appearing at the end of a narrow street of antique, gabled houses, while overhead towers the stupendous fleche that forms the most prominent feature of Rouen. The other is the Grosse Horloge and if there had been space for a third it would have shown something of the interior of the church of St Ouen. The view of the city from the hill of Bon Secours forms another imposing feature, but I think that it hardly equals what we have already seen on the road from Caudebec. When you come out of the railway station known as the _Rive Droite_ a short street leads up to one of the most important thoroughfares, the Rue Jeanne d'Arc. It is perfectly straight and contains nothing in it that is not perfectly modern, but at the highest point you may see a marble tablet affixed to a wall. It bears a representation in the form of a gilded outline of the castle towers as they stood in the time of the Maid of Orleans, and a short distance behind this wall, but approached from another street, there still remains the keep of Rouen's historic castle. The circular tower contains the room which you may see to-day where Joan was brought before her judges and the instruments of torture by which the saintly maiden was to be frightened into giving careless answers to the questions with which she was plied by her clever judges. This stone vaulted room, although restored, is of thrilling interest to those who have studied the history of Joan of Arc, for, as we are told by Mr Theodore Cook in his "Story of Rouen," these are the only walls which are known to have echoed with her voice. Those who have made a careful study of the ancient houses in the older streets of Rouen have been successful in tracing other buildings associated with the period of Joan of Arc's trial. The Rue St Romain, that narrow and not very salubrious thoroughfare that runs between the Rue de la Republique and the west front of the cathedral, has still some of the old canons' lodgings where some of the men who judged Joan of Arc actually lived. Among them, was Canon Guillaume le Desert who outlived all his fellow judges. There is still to be seen the house where lived the architect who designed the palace for Henry V. near Mal s'y Frotte. Mr Cook mentions that he has discovered a record which states that the iron cage in which Joan of Arc was chained by her hands, feet and neck was seen by a workman in this very house. In the quaint and narrow streets that are still existing near the Rue St Romain, many strange-looking houses have survived to the present day. They stand on the site of the earliest nucleus of the present city, and it is in this neighbourhood that one gets most in touch with the Rouen that has so nearly vanished. In this interesting portion of the city you come across the marvellously rich Grosse Horloge already mentioned. A casual glance would give one the impression that the structure was no older than the seventeenth century, but the actual date of its building is 1529, and the clock itself dates from about 1389, and is as old as any in France. The dial you see to-day is brilliantly coloured and has a red centre while the elaborate decoration that covers nearly the whole surface of the walls is freely gilded, giving an exceedingly rich appearance. The two fourteenth century bells, one known as La Rouvel or the Silver Bell on account of the legend that silver coins were thrown into the mould when it was cast, and the other known as Cache-Ribaut, are still in the tower, La Rouvel being still rung for a quarter of an hour at nine o'clock in the evening. It is the ancient Curfew, and the Tower de la Grosse Horloge is nothing more than the historic belfry of Rouen, although one might imagine by the way it stands over the street on an elliptical arch, that it had formed one of the gates of the city. At the foot of the belfry is one of those richly sculptured fountains that are to be seen in two or three places in the older streets. The carving is very much blackened with age, and the detail is not very easily discernible, but a close examination will show that the story of Arethusa, and Alpheus, the river-god, is portrayed. The fountain was given to Rouen by the Duke of Luxembourg early in the eighteenth century. Adjoining the imposing Rue Jeanne d'Arc is the fine Gothic Palais de Justice, part of which was built by Louis XII. in the year 1499, the central portion being added by Leroux, sixteen years later. These great buildings were put up chiefly for the uses of the Echiquier--the supreme court of the Duchy at that time--but it was also to be used as an exchange for merchants who before this date had been in the habit of transacting much of their business in the cathedral. The historic hall where the Echiquier met is still to be seen. The carved oak of the roof has great gilded pendants that stand out against the blackness of the wood-work, and the Crucifixion presented by Louis XII. may be noticed among the portraits in the Chambre du Conseille. The earliest portions of the great cathedral of Notre Dame date from the twelfth century, the north tower showing most palpably the transition from Norman work to the Early French style of Gothic. By the year 1255 when Louis IX. came to Rouen to spend Christmas, the choir, transepts and nave of the cathedral, almost as they may be seen to-day, had been completed. The chapel to St Mary did not make its appearance for some years, and the side _portails_ were only added in the fifteenth century. The elaborate work on the west front belongs to the century following, and although the ideas of modern architects have varied as to this portion of the cathedral, the consensus of opinion seems to agree that it is one of the most perfect examples of the flamboyant style so prevalent in the churches of Normandy. The detail of this masterpiece of the latest phase of Gothic architecture is almost bewildering, but the ornament in every place has a purpose, so that the whole mass of detail has a reposeful dignity which can only have been retained by the most consummate skill. The canopied niches are in many instances vacant, but there are still rows of saints in the long lines of recesses. The rose window is a most perfect piece of work; it is filled with painted glass in which strong blues and crimsons are predominant. Above the central tower known as the Tour de Pierre, that was built partially in the thirteenth century, there rises the astonishing iron spire that is one of the highest in the world. Its weight is enormous despite the fact that it is merely an open framework. The architect of this masterly piece of work whose name was Alavoine seems to have devoted himself with the same intensity as Barry, to whom we owe the Royal Courts of Justice in London, for he worked upon it from 1823, the year following the destruction of the wooden spire by lightning, until 1834, the year of his death. The spire, however, which was commenced almost immediately after the loss of the old one, remained incomplete for over forty years and it was not entirely finished until 1876. The flight of eight hundred and twelve steps that is perfectly safe for any one with steady nerves goes right up inside the spire until, as you look out between the iron framework, Rouen lies beneath your feet, a confused mass of detail cut through by the silver river. The tower of St Romain is on the north side of the cathedral. It was finished towards the end of the fifteenth century, but the lower portion is of very much earlier date for it is the only portion of the cathedral that was standing when Richard I. on his way to the Holy Land knelt before Archbishop Gautier to receive the sword and banner which he carried with him to the Crusade. The Tour de Beurre is on the southern side--its name being originated in connection with those of the faithful who during certain Lents paid for indulgences in order to be allowed to eat butter. It was commenced in 1485, and took twenty-two years to complete. In this great tower there used to hang a famous bell. It was called the Georges d'Amboise after the great Cardinal to whom Rouen owes so much, not only as builder of the tower and the facade, but also as the originator of sanitary reforms and a thousand other benefits for which the city had reason to be grateful. The great bell was no less than 30 feet in circumference, its weight being 36,000 lbs. The man who succeeded in casting it, whose name was Jean Le Machon, seems to have been so overwhelmed at his success that scarcely a month later he died. At last when Louis XVI. came to Rouen, they rang Georges d'Amboise so loudly that a crack appeared, and a few years later, during the Revolution, Le Machon's masterpiece was melted down for cannon. Inside the cathedral there are, besides the glories of the splendid Gothic architecture, the tombs of Henry Plantagenet, the eldest son of Henry II., and Richard I. There are also the beautifully carved miserere seats in the choir which are of particular interest in the way they illustrate many details of daily life in the fifteenth century. The stone figure representing Richard Coeur de Lion lies outside the railings of the sanctuary. The heart of the king which has long since fallen into dust is contained in a casket that is enclosed in the stone beneath the effigy. The figure of Henry Plantagenet is not the original--you may see that in the museum, which contains so many fascinating objects that are associated with the early history of Rouen. The splendid sixteenth century monument of the two Cardinals d'Amboise is to be seen in the Chapelle de la Sainte Vierge. The kneeling figures in the canopied recess represent the two Cardinals--that on the right, which is said to be a very good portrait, represents the famous man who added so much to the cathedral--the one on the left shows his nephew, the second Cardinal Georges d'Amboise. In the middle of the recess there is a fine sculpture showing St George and the Dragon, and most of the other surfaces of the tomb are composed of richly ornamented niches, containing statuettes of saints, bishops, the Virgin and Child, and the twelve Apostles. Another remarkable tomb is that of Louis de Breze, considered to be one of the finest specimens of Renaissance work. It is built in two storeys--the upper one showing a thrilling representation of the knight in complete armour and mounted upon his war-horse, but upon the sarcophagus below he is shown with terrible reality as a naked corpse. The sculptor was possibly Jean Goujon, whose name is sometimes associated with the monument to the two Cardinals, which is of an earlier date. The tomb of Rollo, the founder of the Duchy of Normandy, and the first of the Normans to embrace the Christian religion, lies in a chapel adjoining the south transept. The effigy belongs to the fourteenth century, but the marble tablet gives an inscription which may be translated as follows: "Here lies Rollo, the first Duke and founder and father of Normandy, of which he was at first the terror and scourge, but afterwards the restorer. Baptised in 912 by Francon, Archbishop of Rouen, and died in 917. His remains were at first deposited in the ancient sanctuary, at present the upper end of the nave. The altar having been removed, the remains of the prince were placed here by the blessed Maurille, Archbishop of Rouen in the year 1063." The effigy of William Longsword, Rollo's son, is in another chapel of the nave, that adjoining the north transept. His effigy, like that of his father, dates from the fourteenth century. It is in surroundings of this character that we are brought most in touch with the Rouen of our imaginations. We have already in a preceding chapter seen something of the interior of the church of St Ouen, which to many is more inspiring than the cathedral. The original church belonged to the Abbey of St Ouen, established in the reign of Clothaire I. When the Northmen came sailing up the river, laying waste to everything within their reach, the place was destroyed, but after Rollo's conversion to Christianity the abbey was renovated, and in 1046 a new church was commenced, which having taken about eighty years to complete was almost immediately burnt down. Another fire having taken place a century later, Jean Roussel, who was Abbot in 1318, commenced this present building. It was an enormous work to undertake but yet within twenty-one years the choirs and transepts were almost entirely completed. This great Abbot was buried in the Mary chapel behind the High Altar. On the tomb he is called Marc d'Argent and the date of his death is given as December 7, 1339. After this the building of the church went on all through the century. The man who was master mason in this period was Alexandre Barneval, but he seems to have become jealous of an apprentice who built the rose window that is still such a splendid feature of the north transept, for in a moment of passion he killed the apprentice and for this crime was sentenced to death in the year 1440. St Ouen was completed in the sixteenth century, but the west front as it appears to-day has two spires which made their appearance in recent times. The exterior, however, is not the chief charm of St Ouen; it is the magnificent interior, so huge and yet so inspiring, that so completely satisfies one's ideas of proportion. Wherever you stand, the vistas of arches, all dark and gloomy, relieved here and there by a blaze of coloured glass, are so splendid that you cannot easily imagine anything finer. A notable feature of the aisles is the enormous space of glass covering the outer walls, so that the framework of the windows seems scarcely adequate to support the vaulted roof above. The central tower is supported by magnificent clustered piers of dark and swarthy masonry, and the views of these from the transepts or from the aisles of the nave make some of the finest pictures that are to be obtained in this masterpiece of Gothic architecture. The tower that rises from the north transept belongs, it is believed, to the twelfth century church that was burnt. On the western front it is interesting to find statues of William the Conqueror, Henry II. and Richard Coeur de Lion among other dukes of Normandy, and the most famous Archbishops of Rouen. Besides the cathedral and St Ouen there is the splendid church of St Maclou. Its western front suddenly appears, filling a gap in the blocks of modern shops on the right hand side as you go up the Rue de la Republic. The richness of the mass of carved stone-work arrests your attention, for after having seen the magnificent facade of the cathedral you would think the city could boast nothing else of such extraordinary splendour. The name Maclou comes from Scotland, for it was a member of this clan, who, having fled to Brittany, became Bishop of Aleth and died in 561. Since the tenth century a shrine to his memory had been placed outside the walls of Rouen. The present building was designed by Pierre Robin and it dates from between 1437 and 1520, but the present spire is modern, having replaced the old one about the time of the Revolution. The richly carved doors of the west front are the work of Jean Goujon. The organ loft rests on two columns of black marble, which are also his work; but although the dim interior is full of interest and its rose windows blaze with fifteenth century glass, it is the west front and carved doors that are the most memorable features of the building. In the Place du Marche Vieux you may see the actual spot where Joan of Arc was burnt, a stone on the ground bearing the words "Jeanne Darc, 30 Mai, 1431." To all who have really studied the life, the trial and the death of the Maid of Orleans--and surely no one should visit Rouen without such knowledge--this is the most sacred spot in the city, for as we stand here we can almost hear her words addressed to Cauchon, "It is you who have brought me to this death." We can see her confessor holding aloft the cross and we seem to hear her breathe the Redeemer's name before she expires. CHAPTER IV Concerning the Cathedral City of Evreux and the Road to Bernay The tolling of the deep-toned bourdon in the cathedral tower reverberates over the old town of Evreux as we pass along the cobbled streets. There is a yellow evening light overhead, and the painted stucco walls of the houses reflect the soft, glowing colour of the west. In the courtyard of the Hotel du Grand Cerf, too, every thing is bathed in this beautiful light and the double line of closely trimmed laurels has not yet been deserted by the golden flood. But Evreux does not really require a fine evening to make it attractive, although there is no town in existence that is not improved under such conditions. With the magnificent cathedral, the belfry, the Norman church of St Taurin and the museum, besides many quaint peeps by the much sub-divided river Iton that flows through the town, there is sufficient to interest one even on the dullest of dull days. Of all the cathedral interiors in Normandy there are none that possess a finer or more perfectly proportioned nave than Evreux, and if I were asked to point out the two most impressive interiors of the churches in this division of France I should couple the cathedral at Evreux with St Ouen at Rouen. It was our own Henry I. who having destroyed the previous building set to work to build a new one and it is his nave that we see to-day. The whole cathedral has since that time been made to reflect the changing ideals of the seven centuries that have passed. The west front belongs entirely to the Renaissance period and the north transept is in the flamboyant style of the fifteenth century so much in evidence in Normandy and so infrequent in England. The central tower with its tall steeple now encased in scaffolding was built in 1470 by Cardinal Balue, Bishop of Evreux and inventor of the fearful wooden cages in one of which the prisoner Dubourg died at Mont St Michel. In most of the windows there is old and richly coloured glass; those in the chancel have stronger tones, but they all transform the shafts of light into gorgeous rainbow effects which stand out in wonderful contrast to the delicate, creamy white of the stone-work. Pale blue banners are suspended in the chancel, and the groining above is coloured on each side of the bosses for a short distance, so that as one looks up the great sweep of the nave, the banners and the brilliant fifteenth century glass appear as vivid patches of colour beyond the uniform, creamy grey on either side. The Norman towers at the west end of the cathedral are completely hidden in the mask of classical work planted on top of the older stone-work in the sixteenth century, and more recent restoration has altered some of the other features of the exterior. At the present day the process of restoration still goes on, but the faults of our grandfathers fortunately are not repeated. Leaving the Place Parvis by the Rue de l'Horloge you come to the great open space in front of the Hotel de Ville and the theatre with the museum on the right, in which there are several Roman remains discovered at Vieil-Evreux, among them being a bronze statue of Jupiter Stator. On the opposite side of the Place stands the beautiful town belfry built at the end of the fifteenth century. There was an earlier one before that time, but I do not know whether it had been destroyed during the wars with the English, or whether the people of Evreux merely raised the present graceful tower in place of the older one with a view to beautifying the town. The bell, which was cast in 1406 may have hung in the former structure, and there is some fascination in hearing its notes when one realises how these same sound waves have fallen on the ears of the long procession of players who have performed their parts within its hearing. A branch of the Iton runs past the foot of the tower in canal fashion; it is backed by old houses and crossed by many a bridge, and helps to build up a suitable foreground to the beautiful old belfry, which seems to look across to the brand new Hotel de Ville with an injured expression. From the Boulevard Chambaudouin there is a good view of one side of the Bishop's palace which lies on the south side of the cathedral, and is joined to it by a gallery and the remains of the cloister. The walls are strongly fortified, and in front of them runs a branch of one of the canals of the Iton, that must have originally served as a moat. Out towards the long straight avenue that runs out of the town in the direction of Caen, there may be seen the Norman church of St Taurin. It is all that is left of the Benedictine abbey that once stood here. Many people who explore this interesting church fail to see the silver-gilt reliquary of the twelfth century that is shown to visitors who make the necessary inquiries. The richness of its enamels and the elaborate ornamentation studded with imitation gems that have replaced the real ones, makes this casket almost unique. Many scenes from the life of the saint are shown in the windows of the choir of the church. They are really most interesting, and the glass is very beautiful. The south door must have been crowded with the most elaborate ornament, but the delicately carved stone-work has been hacked away and the thin pillars replaced by crude, uncarved chunks of stone. There is Norman arcading outside the north transept as well as just above the floor in the north aisle. St Taurin is a somewhat dilapidated and cob-webby church, but it is certainly one of the interesting features of Evreux. Instead of keeping on the road to Caen after reaching the end of the great avenue just mentioned, we turn towards the south and soon enter pretty pastoral scenery. The cottages are almost in every instance thatched, with ridges plastered over with a kind of cobb mud. In the cracks in this curious ridging, grass seeds and all sorts of wild flowers are soon deposited, so that upon the roof of nearly every cottage there is a luxuriant growth of grass and flowers. In some cases yellow irises alone ornament the roofs, and they frequently grow on the tops of the walls that are treated in a similar fashion. A few miles out of Evreux you pass a hamlet with a quaint little church built right upon the roadway with no churchyard or wall of any description. A few broken gravestones of quite recent date litter the narrow, dusty space between the north side of the church and the roadway. Inside there is an untidy aspect to everything, but there are some windows containing very fine thirteenth century glass which the genial old cure shows with great delight, for it is said that they were intended for the cathedral at Evreux, but by some chance remained in this obscure hamlet. The cure also points out the damage done to the windows by _socialistes_ at a recent date. By the roadside towards Conches, there are magpies everywhere, punctuated by yellow hammers and nightingales. The cottages have thatch of a very deep brown colour over the hipped roofs, closely resembling those in the out-of-the-way parts of Sussex. It a beautiful country, and the delightfully situated town of Conches at the edge of its forest is well matched with its surroundings. In the middle of the day the inhabitants seem to entirely disappear from the sunny street, and everything has a placid and reposeful appearance as though the place revelled in its quaintness. Backed by the dense masses of forest there is a sloping green where an avenue of great chestnuts tower above the long, low roof of the timber-framed cattle shelter. On the highest part of the hill stands the castle, whose round, central tower shows above the trees that grow thickly on the slopes of the hill. Close to the castle is the graceful church, and beyond are the clustered roofs of the houses. A viaduct runs full tilt against the hill nearly beneath the church, and then the railway pierces the hill on its way towards Bernay. The tall spire of the church of St Foy is comparatively new, for the whole structure was rebuilt in the fifteenth century, but its stained glass is of exceptional interest. Its richness of colour and the interest of the subjects indicate some unusually gifted artist, and one is not surprised to discover that they were designed by Aldegrevers, who was trained by that great master Albrecht Dyrer. Altogether there are twenty-one of these beautiful windows. Seven occupy the eastern end of the apse and give scenes taken from the life of St Foy. You can reach the castle by passing through the quaint archway of the Hotel de Ville, and then passing through the shady public garden you plunge into the dry moat that surrounds the fortified mound. There is not very much to see but what appears in a distant view of the town, and in many ways the outside groupings of the worn ruin and the church roofs and spire above the houses are better than the scenes in the town itself. The Hotel Croix Blanche is a pleasant little house for dejeuner. Everything is extremely simple and typical of the family methods of the small French inn, where excellent cooking goes along with many primitive usages. The cool salle-a-manger is reached through the general living-room and kitchen, which is largely filled with the table where you may see the proprietor and his family partaking of their own meals. There seems no room to cook anything at all, and yet when you are seated in the next room the daughter of the family, an attractive and neatly dressed girl, gracefully serves the most admirable courses, worthy and perhaps better than what one may expect to obtain in the best hotel in Rouen. There is a road that passes right through the forest of Conches towards Rugles, but that must be left for another occasion if we are to see anything of the charms of Beaumont-le-Roger, the perfectly situated little town that lies half-way between Conches and Bernay. The long street of the town containing some very charming peeps as you go towards the church is really a terrace on the limestone hills that rises behind the houses on the right, and falls steeply on the left. Spaces between the houses and narrow turnings give glimpses of the rich green country down below. From the lower level you see the rocky ridge above clothed in a profusion of trees. The most perfect picture in the town is from the river bank just by the bridge. In the foreground is the mirror-like stream that gives its own rendering of the scene that is built up above it. Leaning upon a parapet of the bridge is a man with a rod who is causing tragedies in the life that teems beneath the glassy surface. Beyond the bridge appear some quaint red roofs with one tower-like house with an overhanging upper storey. Higher up comes the precipitous hill divided into terraces by the huge walls that surround the abbey buildings, and still higher, but much below the highest part of the hill, are the picturesque ruins of the abbey. On the summit of the ridge dominating all are the insignificant remains of the castle built by Roger a la Barbe, whose name survives in that of the town. His family were the founders of the abbey that flourished for several centuries, but finally, about a hundred years ago, the buildings were converted to the uses of a factory! Spinning and weaving might have still been going on but for a big fire that destroyed the whole place. There was, however, a considerably more complete series of buildings left than we can see to-day, but scarcely more than fifty years ago the place was largely demolished for building materials. The view from the river Rille is therefore the best the ruin can boast, for seen from that point the arches rise up against the green background as a stately ruin, and the tangled mass of weeds and debris are invisible. The entrance is most inviting. It is down at the foot of the cliff, and the archway with the steep ascent inside suggests all sorts of delights beyond, as it stands there just by the main street of the town. I was sorry afterwards, that I had accepted that hospitality, for with the exception of a group of merry children playing in an orchard and some big caves hollowed out of the foot of the cliff that rises still higher, I saw nothing but a jungle of nettles. This warning should not, however, suggest that Beaumont-le-Roger is a poor place to visit. Not only is it a charming, I may say a fascinating spot to visit, but it is also a place in which to stay, for the longer you remain there the less do you like the idea of leaving. The church of St Nicholas standing in the main street where it becomes much wider and forms a small Place, is a beautiful old building whose mellow colours on stone-work and tiles glow vividly on a sunny afternoon. There is a great stone wall forming the side of the rocky platform that supports the building and the entrance is by steps that lead up to the west end. The tower belongs to the flamboyant period and high up on its parapet you may see a small statue of Regulus who does duty as a "Jack-smite-the-clock." Just by the porch there leans against a wall a most ponderous grave slab which was made for the tomb of Jehan du Moustier a soldier of the fourteenth century who fought for that Charles of Navarre who was surnamed "The Bad." The classic additions to the western part of the church seem strangely out of sympathy with the gargoyles overhead and the thirteenth century arcades of the nave, but this mixing up of styles is really more incongruous in description than in reality. When you have decided to leave Beaumont-le-Roger and have passed across the old bridge and out into the well-watered plain, the position of the little town suggests that of the village of Pulborough in Sussex, where a road goes downhill to a bridge and then crosses the rich meadowland where the river Arun winds among the pastures in just the same fashion as the Rille. At a bend in the road to Bernay stands the village of Serquigny. It is just at the edge of the forest of Beaumont which we have been skirting, and besides having a church partially belonging to the twelfth century it has traces of a Roman Camp. All the rest of the way to Bernay the road follows the railway and the river Charentonne until the long--and when you are looking out for the hotel--seemingly endless street of Bernay is reached. After the wonderful combination of charms that are flaunted by Beaumont-le-Roger it is possible to grumble at the plainer features of Bernay, but there is really no reason to hurry out of the town for there is much quaint architecture to be seen, and near the Hotel du Lion d'Or there is a house built right over the street resting on solid wooden posts. But more interesting than the domestic architecture are the remains of the abbey founded by Judith of Brittany very early in the eleventh century for it is probably one of the oldest Romanesque remains in Normandy. The church is cut up into various rooms and shops at the choir end, and there has been much indiscriminate ill-treatment of the ancient stone-work. Much of the structure, including the plain round arches and square columns, is of the very earliest Norman period, having been built in the first half of the eleventh century, but in later times classic ornament was added to the work of those shadowy times when the kingdom of Normandy had not long been established. So much alteration in the styles of decoration has taken place in the building that it is possible to be certain of the date of only some portions of the structure. The Hotel de Ville now occupies part of the abbey buildings. At the eastern side of the town stands St Croix, a fifteenth century church with a most spacious interior. There is much beautiful glass dating from three hundred years ago in the windows of the nave and transepts, but perhaps the feature which will be remembered most when other impressions have vanished, will be the finely carved statues belonging to the fourteenth century which were brought here from the Abbey of Bec. The south transept contains a monument to Guillaume Arvilarensis, an abbot of Bec who died in 1418. Upon the great altar which is believed to have been brought from the Abbey of Bec, there are eight marble columns surrounding a small white marble figure of the Child Jesus. Another church at Bernay is that of Notre Dame de la Couture. It has much fourteenth century work and behind the high altar there are five chapels, the centre one containing a copy of the "sacred image" of Notre Dame which stands by the column immediately to the right of the entrance. Much more could be said of these three churches with their various styles of architecture extending from the very earliest period down to the classic work of the seventeenth century. But this is not the place for intricate descriptions of architectural detail which are chiefly useful in books which are intended for carrying from place to place. CHAPTER V Concerning Lisieux and the Romantic Town of Falaise Lisieux is so rich in the curious timber-framed houses of the middle and later ages that there are some examples actually visible immediately outside the railway station whereas in most cases one usually finds an aggregation of uninteresting modern buildings. As you go towards the centre of the town the old houses, which have only been dotted about here and there, join hands and form whole streets of the most romantic and almost stage-like picturesqueness. The narrow street illustrated here is the Rue aux Fevres. Its houses are astonishingly fine, and it forms--especially in the evening--a background suitable for any of the stirring scenes that took place in such grand old towns as Lisieux in medieval days. This street is however, only one of several that reek of history. In the Rue des Boucheries and in the Grande Rue there are lovely overhanging gables and curious timber-framing that is now at any angle but what was originally intended. There is really so much individual quaintness in these houses that they deserve infinitely more than the scurry past them which so frequently is all their attractions obtain. The narrowness and fustiness of the Rue aux Fevres certainly hinder you from spending much time in examining the houses but there are two which deserve a few minutes' individual attention. One which has a very wide gable and the upper floors boarded is believed to be of very great antiquity, dating from as early a period as the thirteenth century. It is numbered thirty-three, and must not be confused with the richly ornamented Manoir de Francois I. The timber work of this house, especially of the two lower floors is covered with elaborate carving including curious animals and quaint little figures, and also the salamander of the royal house. For this reason the photographs sold in the shops label the house "Manoir de la Salamandre." The place is now fast going to ruin--a most pitiable sight and I for one, would prefer to see the place restored rather than it should be allowed to become so hopelessly dilapidated and rotten that the question of its preservation should come to be considered lightly. If the town authorities of Lisieux chose to do so, they could encourage the townsfolk to enrich many of their streets by a judicious flaking off of the plaster which in so many cases tries to hide all the pleasant features of houses that have seen at least three centuries, but this sort of work when in the hands of only partially educated folk is liable to produce a worse state of affairs than if things had been left untouched. An example of what over-restoration can do, may be seen when we reach the beautiful old inn at Dives. The two churches of Lisieux are well fitted to their surroundings, and although St Jacques has no graceful tower or fleche, the quaintness of its shingled belfry makes up for the lack of the more stately towers of St Pierre. Where the stone-work has stopped short the buttresses are roofed with the quaintest semi-circular caps, and over the clock there are two more odd-looking pepper boxes perched upon the steep slope that projects from the square belfry. Over all there is a low pyramidal roof, stained with orange lichen and making a great contrast in colour to the weather-beaten stone-work down below. There are small patches of tiled roofing to the buttresses at the western ends of the aisles and these also add colour to this picturesque building. The great double flight of stone steps which lead to the imposing western door have balustrades filled with flamboyant tracery, but although the church is built up in this way, the floor in the interior is not level, for it slopes gently up towards the east. The building was commenced during the reign of Louis XII. and not finished until nearly the end of the reign of Francois I. It is therefore coeval with that richly carved house in the Rue aux Fevres. Along the sides of the church there project a double row of thirsty-looking gargoyles--the upper ones having their shoulders supported by the mass of masonry supporting the flying buttresses. The interior is richer than the exterior, and you may see on some of the pillars remains of sixteenth century paintings. A picture dating from 1681 occupies a position in the chapel of St Ursin in the south aisle; it shows the relic of the saint being brought to Lisieux in 1055. The wide and sunny Place Thiers is dominated by the great church of St Pierre, which was left practically in its present form in the year 1233. The first church was begun some years before the conquest of England but about a century later it suffered the fate of Bayeux being burnt down in 1136. It was reconstructed soon afterwards and shows to-day the first period of Gothic architecture that became prevalent in Normandy. Only the north tower dates from this period, the other one had to be rebuilt during the reign of Henri III. and the spire only made its appearance in the seventeenth century. The Lady Chapel is of particular interest owing to the statement that it was built by that Bishop of Beauvais who took such a prominent part in the trial of Joan of Arc. The main arches over the big west door are now bare of carving or ornament and the Hotel de Ville is built right up against the north-west corner, but despite this St Pierre has the most imposing and stately appearance, and there are many features such as the curious turrets of the south transept that impress themselves on the memory more than some of the other churches we have seen. Lisieux is one of those cheerful towns that appear always clean and bright under the dullest skies, so that when the sun shines every view seems freshly painted and blazing with colour. The freshness of the atmosphere, too, is seldom tainted with those peculiar odours that some French towns produce with such enormous prodigality, and Lisieux may therefore claim a further point in its favour. It is generally a wide, hedgeless stretch of country that lies between Lisieux and Falaise, but for the first ten miles there are big farm-houses with timber-framed barns and many orchards bearing a profusion of blossom near the roadside. A small farm perched above the road and quite out of sight, invites the thirsty passer-by to turn aside up a steep path to partake of cider or coffee. It is a simple, almost bare room where the refreshment is served, but its quaintness and shadowy coolness are most refreshing. The fireplace has an open hearth with a wood fire which can soon be blown into a blaze by the big bellows that hang against the chimney corner. A table by one of the windows is generally occupied in her spare moments by the farmer's pretty daughter who puts aside her knitting to fetch the cider or to blow up the fire for coffee. They are a most genial family and seem to find infinite delight in plying English folk with questions for I imagine that not many find their way to this sequestered corner among waving trees and lovely orchards. A sudden descent before reaching St Pierre-sur-Dives gives a great view over the level country below where everything is brilliantly green and garden-like. The village first shows its imposing church through the trees of a straight avenue leading towards the village which also possesses a fine Market Hall that must be at least six hundred years old. The church is now undergoing restoration externally, but by dodging the falling cement dust you may go inside, perhaps to be disappointed that there is not more of the Norman work that has been noticed in the southern tower that rises above the entrance. The village, or it should really be called a small town, for its population is over a thousand, has much in it that is attractive and quaint, and it might gain more attention if everyone who passes through its streets were not hurrying forward to Falaise. The country now becomes a great plain, hedgeless, and at times almost featureless. The sun in the afternoon throws the shadows of the roadside trees at right angles, so that the road becomes divided into accurate squares by the thin lines of shadow. The straight run from St Pierre is broken where the road crosses the Dives. It is a pretty spot with a farm, a manor-house and a washing place for women just below the bridge, and then follows more open road and more interminable perspectives cutting through the open plain until, with considerable satisfaction, the great thoroughfare from Caen is joined and soon afterwards a glimpse of the castle greets us as we enter Falaise. There is something peculiarly fascinating about Falaise, for it combines many of the features that are sparingly distributed in other towns. Its position on a hill with deep valleys on all sides, its romantic castle, the two beautiful churches and the splendid thirteenth century gateway, form the best remembered attractions, but beyond these there are the hundred and one pretty groupings of the cottages that crowd both banks of the little river Ante down in the valley under the awe-inspiring castle. Even then, no mention has been made of the ancient fronts that greet one in many of the streets, and the charms of some of the sudden openings between the houses that give views of the steep, wooded hollows that almost touch the main street, have been slighted. A huge cube of solid masonry with a great cylindrical tower alongside perched upon a mass of rock precipitous on two sides is the distant view of the castle, and coming closer, although you can see the buttresses that spring from the rocky foundations, the description still holds good. You should see the fortress in the twilight with a golden suffusion in the sky and strange, purplish shadows on the castle walls. It then has much the appearance of one of those unassailable strongholds where a beautiful princess is lying in captivity waiting for a chivalrous knight who with a band of faithful men will attempt to scale the inaccessible walls. Under some skies, the castle assumes the character of one of Turner's impressions, half real and half imaginary, and under no skies does this most formidable relic of feudal days ever lose its grand and awesome aspect. The entrance is through a gateway, the Porte St. Nicolas, which was built in the thirteenth century. There you are taken in hand by a pleasant concierge who will lead you first of all to the Tour La Reine, where he will point out a great breach in the wall made by Henri IV. when he successfully assaulted the castle after a bombardment with his artillery which he had kept up for a week. This was in 1589, and since then no other fighting has taken place round these grand old walls. The ivy that clings to the ruins and the avenue of limes that leads up to the great keep are full of jackdaws which wheel round the rock in great flights. You have a close view of the great Tour Talbot, and then pass through a small doorway in the northern face of the citadel. Inside, the appearance of the walls reveals the restoration which has taken place within recent years. But this, fortunately, does not detract to any serious extent from the interest of the whole place. Up on the ramparts there are fine views over the surrounding country, and immediately beneath the precipice below nestle the picturesque, browny-red roofs of the lower part of the town. Just at the foot of the castle rock there is still to be seen a tannery which is of rather unusual interest in connection with the story of how Robert le Diable was first struck by the charms of Arlette, the beautiful daughter of a tanner. The Norman duke was supposed to have been looking over the battlements when he saw this girl washing clothes in the river, and we are told that owing to the warmth of the day she had drawn up her dress, so that her feet, which are spoken of as being particularly beautiful were revealed to his admiring gaze. Arlette afterwards became the mother of William the Conqueror, and the room is pointed out in the south-west corner of the keep in which we are asked to believe that the Conqueror of England was born. It is, however, unfortunate for the legend that archaeologists do not allow such an early date for the present castle, and thus we are not even allowed to associate these ramparts with the legend just mentioned. It must have been a strong building that preceded this present structure, for during the eleventh century William the Norman was often obliged to retreat for safety to his impregnable birthplace. The Tour Talbot has below its lowest floor what seems to be a dungeon, but it is said that prisoners were not kept here, the place being used merely for storing food. The gloomy chamber, however, is generally called an oubliette. Above, there are other floors, the top one having been used by the governor of the castle. In the thickness of the wall there is a deep well which now contains no water. One of the rooms in the keep is pointed out as that in which Prince Arthur was kept in confinement, but although it is known that the unfortunate youth was imprisoned in this castle, the selection of the room seems to be somewhat arbitrary. In 1428 the news of Joan of Arc's continued successes was brought to the Earl of Salisbury who was then governor of Falaise Castle, and it was from here that he started with an army to endeavour to stop that triumphal progress. In 1450 when the French completely overcame the numerous English garrisons in the towns of Normandy, Falaise with its magnificent position held out for some time. The defenders sallied out from the walls of the town but were forced back again, and notwithstanding their courage, the town capitulated to the Duke of Alencon's army at almost the same time as Avranches and a dozen other strongly defended towns. We can picture to ourselves the men in glinting head-pieces sallying from the splendid old gateway known as the Port des Cordeliers. It has not lost its formidable appearance even to-day, though as you look through the archway the scene is quiet enough, and the steep flight of outside steps leads up to scenes of quiet domestic life. The windows overlook the narrow valley beneath where the humble roofs of the cottages jostle one another for space. There are many people who visit Falaise who never have the curiosity to explore this unusually pleasing part of the town. In the spring when the lilac bushes add their brilliant colour to the russet brown tiles and soft creams of the stone-work, there are pictures on every side. Looking in the cottages you may see, generally within a few feet of the door, one of those ingenious weaving machines that are worked with a treadle, and take up scarcely any space at all. If you ask permission, the cottagers have not the slightest objection to allowing you to watch them at their work, and when one sees how rapidly great lengths of striped material grow under the revolving metal framework, you wonder that Falaise is not able to supply the demands of the whole republic for this class of material. Just by the Hotel de Ville and the church of La Trinite stands the imposing statue of William the Conqueror. He is mounted on the enormous war-horse of the period and the whole effect is strong and spirited. The most notable feature of the exterior of the church of La Trinite is the curious passage-way that goes underneath the Lady Chapel behind the High Altar. The whole of the exterior is covered with rich carving, crocketed finials, innumerable gargoyles and the usual enriched mouldings of Gothic architecture. The charm of the interior is heightened if one enters in the twilight when vespers are proceeding. There is just sufficient light to show up the tracery of the windows and the massive pointed arches in the choir. A few candles burn by the altar beyond the dark mass of figures forming the congregation. A Gregorian chant fills the building with its solemn tones and the smoke of a swinging censer ascends in the shadowy chancel. Then, as the service proceeds, one candle above the altar seems to suddenly ignite the next, and a line of fire travels all over the great erection surrounding the figure of the Virgin, leaving in its trail a blaze of countless candles that throw out the details of the architecture in strong relief. Soon the collection is made, and as the priest passes round the metal dish, he is followed by the cocked-hatted official whose appearance is so surprising to those who are not familiar with French churches. As the priest passes the dish to each row the official brings his metal-headed staff down upon the pavement with a noisy bang that is calculated to startle the unwary into dropping their money anywhere else than in the plate. In time the bell rings beside the altar, and the priest robed in white and gold elevates the host before the kneeling congregation. Once more the man in the cocked hat becomes prominent as he steps into the open space between the transepts and tolls the big bell in the tower above. Then a smaller and much more cheerful bell is rung, and fearing the arrival of another collecting priest we slip out of the swinging doors into the twilight that has now almost been swallowed up in the gathering darkness. The consecration of the splendid Norman church of St Gervais took place in the presence of Henry I. but there is nothing particularly English in any part of the exterior. The central tower has four tall and deeply recessed arches (the middle ones contain windows) on each side, giving a rich arcaded appearance. Above, rises a tall pointed roof ornamented with four odd-looking dormers near the apex. Every one remarks on their similarity to dovecots and one almost imagines that they must have been built as a place of shelter on stormy days for the great gilded cock that forms the weather vane. The nave is still Norman on the south side, plain round-headed windows lighting the clerestory, but the aisles were rebuilt in the flamboyant period and present a rich mass of ornament in contrast to the unadorned masonry of the nave. The western end until lately had to endure the indignity of having its wall surfaces largely hidden by shops and houses. These have now disappeared, but the stone-work has not been restored, and you may still see a section of the interior of the house that formerly used the west end of the south aisle as one of its walls. You can see where the staircases went, and you may notice also how wantonly these domestic builders cut away the buttresses and architectural enrichments to suit the convenience of their own needs. As you go from the market-place along the street that runs from St Gervais to the suburb of Guibray, the shops on the left are exchanged for a low wall over which you see deep, grassy hollows that come right up to the edge of the street. Two fine houses, white-shuttered and having the usual vacant appearance, stand on steep slopes surrounded by great cedars of Lebanon and a copper beech. The church of Guibray is chiefly Norman--it is very white inside and there is some round-headed arcading in the aisles. The clustered columns of the nave have simple, pointed arches, and there is a carved marble altarpiece showing angels supporting the Virgin who is gazing upwards. The aisles of the chancel are restored Norman, and the stone-work is bright green just above the floor through the dampness that seems to have defied the efforts of the restorers. CHAPTER VI From Argentan to Avranches Between tall poplars whose stems are splotched with grey lichen and whose feet are grown over with browny-green moss, runs the road from Falaise to Argentan, straight and white, with scarcely more than the slightest bend, for the whole eight miles. It is typical of the roads in this part of the country and beyond the large stone four or five kilometres outside Falaise, marking the boundary between Calvados and Orne, and the railway which one passes soon afterwards, there is nothing to break the undulating monotony of the boundless plain. We cannot all hope to have this somewhat dull stretch of country relieved by any exciting event, but I can remember one spring afternoon being overtaken by two mounted gendarmes in blue uniforms, galloping for their very lives. I looked down the road into the cloud of dust raised by the horses' hoofs, but the country on all sides lay calm and deserted, and I was left in doubt as to the reason for this astonishing haste. Half an hour afterwards a group of people appeared in the distance, and on approaching closer, they proved to be the two gendarmes leading their blown horses as they walked beside a picturesque group of apparently simple peasants, the three men wearing the typical soft, baggy cap and blue smock of the country folk. The little group had a gloomy aspect, which was explained when I noticed that the peasants were joined together by a bright steel chain. Evidently something was very much amiss with one of the peaceful villages lying near the road. After a time, at the end of the long white perspective, appear the towers of the great church of St Germain that dominate the town where Henry II. was staying when he made that rash exclamation concerning his "turbulent priest." It was from Argentan that those four knights set out for England and Canterbury to carry out the deed, for which Henry lay in ashes for five weeks in this very place. But there is little at the present time at Argentan to remind one that it is in any way associated with the murder of Becket. The castle that now exists is occupied by the Courts of Justice and was partially built in the Renaissance period. Standing close to it, is an exceedingly tall building with a great gable that suggests an ecclesiastical origin, and on looking a little closer one soon discovers blocked up Gothic windows and others from which the tracery has been hacked. This was the chapel of the castle which has been so completely robbed of its sanctity that it is now cut up into small lodgings, and in one of its diminutive shops, picture post-cards of the town are sold. The ruins of the old castle are not very conspicuous, for in the seventeenth century the great keep was demolished. There is still a fairly noticeable round tower--the Tour Marguerite--which has a pointed roof above its corbels, or perhaps they should be called machicolations. In the Place Henri IV. stands a prominent building that projects over the pavement supported by massive pointed arches, and with this building in the foreground there is one of the best views of St Germain that one can find in the town. Just before coming to the clock that is suspended over the road by the porch of the church, there is a butcher's shop at the street corner that has a piece of oak carving preserved on account of its interest while the rest of the building has been made featureless with even plaster. The carving shows Adam and Eve standing on either side of a formal Tree of Life, and the butcher, who is pleased to find a stranger who notices this little curiosity, tells him with great pride that his house dates from the fifteenth century. The porch of St Germain is richly ornamented, but it takes a second place to the south porch of the church of Notre Dame at Louviers and may perhaps seem scarcely worthy of comment after St Maclou at Rouen. The structure as a whole was commenced in 1424, and the last portion of the work only dates from the middle of the seventeenth century. The vaulting of the nave has a very new and well-kept appearance and the side altars, in contrast to so many of even the large churches, are almost dignified in their somewhat restrained and classic style. The high altar is a stupendous erection of two storeys with Corinthian pillars. Nine long, white, pendant banners are conspicuous on the walls of the chancel. The great altars and the lesser ones that crowd the side chapels are subject to the accumulation of dirt as everything else in buildings sacred or lay, and at certain times of the day, a woman may be seen vigorously flapping the brass candlesticks and countless altar ornaments with a big feather broom. On the north side of the chancel some of the windows have sections of old painted glass, and in one of them there is part of a ship with men in crow's nests backed by clouds, a really vigorous colour scheme. Keeping to the high ground, there is to the south of this church an open Place, and beyond it there are some large barracks, where, on the other side of a low wall may be seen the elaborately prepared steeple-chase for training soldiers to be able to surmount every conceivable form of obstacle. Awkward iron railings, wide ditches, walls of different composition and varying height are frequently scaled, and it is practice of this sort that has made the French soldier famous for the facility with which he can storm fortifications. The river Orne finds its way through the lower part of the town and here there are to be found some of the most pleasing bits of antique domestic architecture. One of the quaintest of these built in 1616 is the galleried building illustrated here, and from a parallel street not many yards off there is a peep of a house that has been built right over the stream which is scarcely less picturesque. [Illustration: A SEVENTEENTH CENTURY HOUSE AT ARGENTAN] The church of St Martin is passed on entering Argentan from Falaise. Its east end crowds right up against the pavement and it is somewhat unusual to find the entrances at this portion of the building. The stained glass in the choir of St Martin is its most noticeable feature--the pictures showing various scenes in the life of Christ. As in all French towns Argentan knows how to decorate on fete days. Coming out of the darkness of the church in the late twilight on one of these occasions, I discovered that the town had suddenly become festooned with a long perspective of arches stretching right away down the leafy avenue that goes out of the town--to the north in one direction, and to St Germain in the other. The arches were entirely composed without a single exception of large crimson-red Chinese lanterns. The effect was astonishingly good, but despite all the decoration, the townsfolk seemed determined to preserve the quiet of the Sabbath, and although there were crowds everywhere, the only noise that broke the stillness was that of the steam round-about that had been erected on a triangular patch of grass. The dark crowds of people illuminated by flaring lights stood in perfect quiet as they watched the great noisy mass of moving animals and boats, occupied almost entirely by children, keep up its perpetual dazzle and roar. The fair--for there were many side-shows--was certainly quieter than any I have witnessed in England. A long, straight road, poplar-bordered and level, runs southwards from Argentan to Mortree, a village of no importance except for the fact that one must pass through it if one wishes to visit the beautiful Chateau d'O. This sixteenth century mansion like so many to be seen in this part of France, is in a somewhat pathetic state of disrepair, but as far as one may see from the exterior, it would not require any very great sum to completely restore the broken stone-work and other signs of decay. These, while perhaps adding to the picturesqueness of the buildings, do not bring out that aspect of carefully preserved antiquity which is the charm of most of the houses of this period in England. The great expanse of water in the moat is very green and covered by large tracts of weed, but the water is supplied by a spring, and fish thrive in it. The approach to the chateau across the moat leads to an arched entrance through which you enter the large courtyard overlooked on three sides by the richly ornamented buildings, the fourth side being only protected from the moat by a low wall. It would be hard to find a more charming spot than this with its views across the moat to the gardens beyond, backed by great masses of foliage. Going on past Mortree the main road will bring one after about eight miles to the old town of Alencon, which has been famed ever since the time of Louis XIV. for the lace which is even at the present day worked in the villages of this neighbourhood, more especially at the hamlet of Damigny. The cottagers use pure linen thread which is worth the almost incredible sum of £100 per lb. They work on parchment from patterns which are supplied by the merchants in Alencon. The women go on from early morning until the light fails, and earn something about a shilling per day! The castle of Alencon, built by Henry I. in the twelfth century, was pulled down with the exception of the keep, by the order of Henry of Navarre, the famous contemporary of Queen Elizabeth. This keep is still in existence, and is now used as a prison. Near it is the Palais de Justice, standing where the other buildings were situated. The west porch of the church of Notre Dame is richly ornamented with elaborate canopies, here and there with statues. One of these represents St John, and it will be seen that he is standing with his face towards the church. A legend states that this position was taken by the statue when the church was being ransacked by Protestants in the sixteenth century. Another road from Argentan is the great _route nationale_ that runs in a fairly direct line to Granville. As one rides out of the town there is a pretty view on looking back, of St Germain standing on the slight eminence above the Orne. Keeping along by that river the road touches it again at the little town of Ecouche. The old market hall standing on massive pillars, is the most attractive feature of the place. Its old tiled roof and half-timbered upper storey remind one forcibly of some of those fortunate old towns in England that have preserved this feature. The church has lost its original nave, and instead, there is a curious barn-like structure, built evidently with a view to economy, being scarcely more than half the height of the original: the vacant space has been very roughly filled up, and the numerous holes and crevices support a fine growth of weeds, and a strong young tree has also taken root in the ramshackle stone work. From the central tower, gargoyles grin above the elaborately carved buttresses and finials in remarkable contrast to the jerry-built addition. [Illustration: THE OLD MARKET HOUSE AT ECOUCHE] Passing through rich country, you leave the valley of the Orne, and on both sides of the road are spread wide and fascinating views over the orchard-clad country that disappears in the distant blue of the horizon. Wonderful patches of shadow, when large clouds are flying over the heavens, fall on this great tract of country and while in dull weather it may seem a little monotonous, in days of sunshine and shade it is full of a haunting beauty that is most remarkable. About seven miles from Argentan one passes Fromentelle, a quiet hamlet full of thatched cottages and curious weathercocks, and then five miles further on, having descended into the valley of the little river Rouvre, Briouze is entered. Here there is a wide and very extensive market-place with another quaint little structure, smaller than the one at Ecouche, but having a curious bell-turret in the centre of the roof. On Monday, which is market day, Briouze presents a most busy scene, and there are plenty of opportunities of studying the genial looking country farmers, their wives, and the large carts in which they drive from the farms. In the midst of the booths, you may see a bronze statue commemorating the "Sapeurs, pompiers" and others of this little place who fell in 1854. Leaving the main road which goes on to Flers, we may take the road to Domfront, which passes through three pretty villages and much pleasant country. Bellau, the first village, is full of quaint houses and charming old-world scenes. The church is right in the middle on an open space without an enclosure of any description. Standing with one's back to this building, there is a pretty view down the road leading to the south, a patch of blue distance appearing in the opening between the old gables. To all those who may wish to either paint or photograph this charming scene, I would recommend avoiding the hour in the afternoon when the children come out of school. I was commencing a drawing one sunny afternoon--it must have been about three o'clock--and the place seemed almost deserted. Indeed, I had been looking for a country group of peasants to fill the great white space of sunny road, when in twos and threes, the juvenile population flooded out towards me. For some reason which I could not altogether fathom, the boys arranged themselves in a long, regular line, occupying exactly one half of the view, the remaining space being filled by an equally long line of little girls. All my efforts failed to induce the children to break up the arrangement they had made. They merely altered their formation by advancing three or four paces nearer with almost military precision. They were still standing in their unbroken rows when I left the village. Passing a curious roadside cross which bears the date 1741 and a long Latin inscription splashed over with lichen, one arrives at La Ferriere aux Etangs, a quaint village with a narrow and steep street containing one conspicuously old, timber-framed house. But it is scarcely necessary to point out individual cottages in this part of Normandy, for wherever one looks, the cottages are covered with thick, purply-grey thatch, and the walls below are of grey wooden framework, filled in with plaster, generally coloured a creamy-white. When there are deep shadows under the eaves and the fruit trees in blossom stand out against the dark thatch, one can easily understand how captivating is the rural charm of this part of Normandy. Gradually the road ascends, but no great views are apparent, although one is right above the beautiful valley of the Varennes, until quite near to Domfront. Then, suddenly there appears an enormous stretch of slightly undulating country to the south and west. As far as one can see, the whole land seems to be covered by one vast forest. But though part of this is real forest-land, much of it is composed of orchards and hedgerow trees, which are planted so closely together that, at a short distance, they assume the aspect of close-growing woods. The first impression of the great stretch of forest-land does not lose its striking aspect, even when one has explored the whole of the town. The road that brings one into the old town runs along a ridge and after passing one of the remains of the old gateways, it rises slightly to the highest part of the mass of rock upon which Domfront is perched. The streets are narrow and parallel to accommodate themselves to the confined space within the walls. At the western end of the granite ridge, and separated from the town by a narrow defile, stands all that is left of the castle--a massive but somewhat shapeless ruin. At the western end of the ramparts, one looks down a precipitous descent to the river Varennes which has by some unusual agency, cut itself a channel through the rocky ridge if it did not merely occupy an existing gap. At the present time, besides the river, the road and railway pass through the narrow gorge. The castle has one of those sites that appealed irresistibly to the warlike barons of the eleventh century. In this case it was William I., Duc de Belleme, who decided to raise a great fortress on this rock that he had every reason to believe would prove an impregnable stronghold, but although only built in 1011, it was taken by Duke William thirty-seven years later, being one of the first brilliant feats by which William the Norman showed his strength outside his own Duchy. A century or more later, Henry II., when at Domfront, received the pope's nuncio by whom a reconciliation was in some degree patched up between the king and Becket. Richard I. is known to have been at the castle at various times. In the sixteenth century, a most thrilling siege was conducted during the period when Catherine de Medicis was controlling the throne. A Royalist force, numbering some seven or eight thousand horse and foot, surrounded this formidable rock which was defended by the Calvinist Comte de Montgommery. With him was another Protestant, Ambroise le Balafre, who had made himself a despot at Domfront, but whose career was cut short by one of Montgommery's men with whom he had quarrelled. They buried him in the little church of Notre-Dame-sur-l'Eau--the wonderfully preserved Norman building that one sees beneath one's feet when standing on the ramparts of the castle. The body, however, was not long allowed to remain there, for when the royal army surrounded the castle they brought out the corpse and hung it in a conspicuous place to annoy the besieged. Like Corfe Castle in England, and many other magnificently fortified strongholds, Domfront was capable of defence by a mere handful. In this case the original garrison consisted of one hundred and fifty, and after many desertions the force was reduced to less than fifty. A great breach had been made by the six pieces of artillery placed on the hill on the opposite side of the gorge, and through this the besiegers endeavoured to enter. The attenuated garrison, with magnificent courage, held the breach after a most desperate and bloody fight. But after all this display of courage, it was found impossible to continue the defence, for by the next morning there were barely more than a dozen men left to fight. Finally Montgommery was obliged to surrender unconditionally, and not long afterwards he was executed in Paris. You may see the breach where this terrible fight took place at the present day, and as you watch the curious effects of the blue shadows falling among the forest trees that stretch away towards the south, you may feel that you are looking over almost the same scene that was gazed upon by the notable figures in history who have made their exits and entrances at Domfront. So little has the church of Notre-Dame-sur-l'Eau altered in its appearance since it was built by the Duc de Belleme that, were he to visit the ruins of his castle, he would marvel no doubt that the men of the nine centuries which have passed, should have consistently respected this sturdy little building. There are traces of aisles having existed, but otherwise the exterior of the church can have seen no change at all in this long period. Inside, however, the crude whitewash, the curious assemblage of enormous seventeenth century gravestones that are leant against the walls, and the terribly jarring almost life-sized crucifix, all give one that feeling of revulsion that is inseparable from an ill-kept place of worship. On the banks of the river outside, women may be seen washing clothes; the sounds of the railway come from the station near by, and overhead, rising above the foliage at its feet, are the broken walls and shattered keep from which we have been gazing. [Illustration: ONE OF THE TOWERS IN THE WALLS OF DOMFRONT] The walls of the town, punctuated by many a quaint tower, have lost their fearsome aspect owing to the domestic uses to which the towers are palpably devoted. One of them appears in the adjoining illustration, and it is typical of the half-dozen or so that still rise above the pretty gardens that are perched along the steep ascent. But though Domfront is full of almost thrilling suggestions of medievalism and the glamour of an ancient town, yet there is a curious lack of picturesque arrangement, so that if one were to be led away by the totally uninteresting photographs that may be seen in the shops, one would miss one of the most unique spots in Normandy. Stretching away towards Flers, there is a tract of green country all ups and downs, but with no distant views except the peep of Domfront that appears a few miles north of the town. Crowning the ridge of the hill is the keep of the castle, resembling a closed fist with the second finger raised, and near it, the bell-cote of the Palais de Justice and the spire of the church break the line of the old houses. Ferns grow by the roadside on every bank, but the cottages and farms are below the average of rustic beauty that one soon demands in this part of France. Flers is a somewhat busy manufacturing town where cotton and thread mills have robbed the place of its charm. At first sight one might imagine the church which bears the date 1870 was of considerably greater age, but inside one is almost astounded at the ramshackle galleries, the white-washed roof of rough boards discoloured by damp, and the general squalor of the place relieved only by a ponderous altar-piece of classic design. The castle is still in good preservation but although it dates from early Norman times, it is chiefly of the sixteenth century. Out in the country again, going westwards, the cottage industry of weaving is apparent in nearly every cottage one sees. The loud click-a-ti-clack--click-a-ti-clack of the looms can be heard on every side as one passes such villages as Landisacq. Everywhere the scenery is exceedingly English, the steep hillsides are often covered with orchards, and the delicate green of the apple-trees in spring-time, half-smothered in pinky-white blossom, gives the country a garden-like aspect. You may see a man harrowing a field on a sudden slope with a cloud of dust blowing up from the dry light soil, and you may hear him make that curious hullaballooing by which the peasants direct their horses, so different from the grunting "way-yup there" of the English ploughman. Coming down a long descent, a great stretch of country to the north that includes the battlefield of Tinchebrai comes into view. It is hard to associate the rich green pastures, smiling orchards, and peaceful cattle, with anything so gruesome as a battle between armies led by brothers. But it was near the little town of Tinchebrai that the two brothers, Henry I., King of England, and Robert Duke of Normandy fought for the possession of Normandy. Henry's army was greatly superior to that of his brother, for he had the valuable help of the Counts of Conches, Breteuil, Thorigny, Mortagne, Montfort, and two or three others as powerful. But despite all this array, the battle for some time was very considerably in Robert's favour, and it was only when Henry, heavily pressed by his brother's brilliant charge, ordered his reserves to envelop the rear, that the great battle went in favour of the English king. Among the prisoners were Robert and his youthful son William, the Counts of Mortain, Estouteville, Ferrieres, and a large number of notable men. Until his death, twenty-seven years later, Henry kept his brother captive in Cardiff Castle, and it has been said that, owing to an effort to escape, Henry was sufficiently lacking in all humane feelings towards his unfortunate brother, to have both his eyes put out. It seems a strange thing that exactly sixty years after the battle of Hastings, a Norman king of England, should conquer the country which had belonged to his father. The old church of St Remy at Tinchebrai, part of which dates from the twelfth century, has been abandoned for a new building, but the inn--the Hotel Lion d'Or--which bears the date 1614, is still in use. Vire, however, is only ten miles off, and its rich mediaeval architecture urges us forward. Standing in the midst of the cobbled street, there suddenly appears right ahead a splendid thirteenth century gateway--the Tour de l'Horloge--that makes one of the richest pictures in Normandy. It is not always one can see the curious old tower thrown up by a blaze of gold in the west, but those who are fortunate enough to see such an effect may get a small suggestion of the scene from the illustration given here. The little painted figure of the Virgin and Child stands in a niche just over the arch, and by it appears the prayer "Marie protege la ville!" One of the charms of Vire is its cleanliness, for I can recall no unpleasant smells having interfered with the pleasure of exploring the old streets. There is a great market on the northern side of the town, open and breezy. It slopes clear away without any intervening buildings to a great expanse of green wooded country, suggestive of some of the views that lie all around one at Avranches. The dark old church of Notre Dame dates mainly from the twelfth century. Houses and small shops are built up against it between the buttresses in a familiar, almost confidential manner, and on the south side, the row of gargoyles have an almost humorous appearance. The drips upon the pavement and shops below were evidently a nuisance, and rain water-spouts, with plain pipes leading diagonally from them, have been attached to each grotesque head, making it seem that the grinning monsters have developed a great and unquenchable thirst. Inside, the church is dark and impressive. There are double rows of pillars in the aisles, and a huge crucifix hangs beneath the tower, thrown up darkly against the chancel, which is much painted and gilded. The remains of the great castle consist of nothing more than part of the tall keep, built eight hundred years ago, and fortunately not entirely destroyed when the rest of the castle came down by the order of Cardinal Richelieu. An exploration of the quaint streets of Vire will reveal two or three ancient gateways, many gabled houses, some of which are timber-framed visually, and most of them are the same beneath their skins of plaster. The houses in one of the streets are connected with the road by a series of wooden bridges across the river, which there forms one of the many pictures to be found in Vire. Mortain is separated from Vire by fifteen miles of exceedingly hilly country, and those who imagine that all the roads in Normandy are the flat and poplar bordered ones that are so often encountered, should travel along this wonderful switch-back. As far as Sourdeval there seems scarcely a yard of level ground--it is either a sudden ascent or a breakneck rush into a trough-like depression. You pass copices of firs and beautiful woods, although in saying beautiful it is in a limited sense, for one seldom finds the really rich woodlands that are so priceless an ornament to many Surrey and Kentish lanes. The road is shaded by tall trees when it begins to descend into the steep rocky gorge of the Cance with its tumbling waterfalls that are a charming feature of this approach to Mortain. High upon the rocks on the left appears an enormous gilded statue of the Virgin, in the grounds of the Abbaye Blanche. Going downwards among the broken sunlight and shadows on the road, Mortain appears, picturesquely perched on a great rocky steep, and in the opening of the valley a blue haze suggests the great expanse of level country towards the south. The big parish church of the town was built originally in 1082 by that Robert of Mortain, who, it will be remembered, was one of the first of the Normans to receive from the victorious William a grant of land in England. The great tower which stands almost detached on the south-west side is remarkable for its enormously tall slit windows, for they run nearly from the ground to the saddle-back roof. The interior of this church is somewhat unusual, the nave and chancel being structurally one, and the aisles are separated by twenty-four circular grey pillars with Corinthian capitals. The plain surfaces of the walls and vaulting are absolutely clean white, picked out with fine black lines to represent stone-work--a scarcely successful treatment of such an interior! On either side of the High Altar stand two great statues representing St Guillaume and St Evroult. To those who wish to "do" all the sights of Mortain there is the Chapel of St Michael, which stands high up on the margin of a great rocky hill, but the building having been reconstructed about fifty years ago, the chief attraction to the place is the view, which in tolerably clear weather, includes Mont St Michel towards which we are making our way. A perfectly straight and fairly level stretch of road brings you to St Hilaire-du-Harcout. On the road one passes two or three large country houses with their solemn and perfectly straight avenues leading directly up to them at right angles from the road. The white jalousies seem always closed, the grass on the lawns seems never cut, and the whole establishments have a pathetically deserted appearance to the passer-by. A feature of this part of the country can scarcely be believed without actually using one's eyes. It is the wooden chimney-stack, covered with oak shingles, that surmounts the roofs of most of the cottages. Where the shingles have fallen off, the cement rubble that fills the space between the oak framing appears, but it is scarcely credible that, even with this partial protection, these chimneys should have survived so many centuries. I have asked the inmates of some of the cottages whether they ever feared a fire in their chimneys, but they seemed to consider the question as totally unnecessary, for some providence seems to have watched over their frail structures. St Hilaire has a brand new church and nothing picturesque in its long, almost monotonous, street. Instead of turning aside at Pontaubault towards Mont St Michel, we will go due north from that hamlet to the beautifully situated Avranches. This prosperous looking town used, at one time, to have a large English colony, but it has recently dwindled to such small dimensions that the English chaplain has an exceedingly small parish. The streets seem to possess a wonderful cleanliness; all the old houses appear to have made way for modern buildings which, in a way, give Avranches the aspect of a watering-place, but its proximity to the sea is more apparent in a map than when one is actually in the town. On one side of the great place in front of the church of Notre Dame des Champs is the Jardin des Plantes. To pass from the blazing sunshine and loose gravel, to the dense green shade of the trees in this delightful retreat is a pleasure that can be best appreciated on a hot afternoon in summer. The shade, however, and the beds of flowers are not the only attractions of these gardens. Their greatest charm is the wonderful view over the shining sands and the glistening waters of the rivers See and Selune that, at low tide, take their serpentine courses over the delicately tinted waste of sand that occupies St Michael's Bay. Out beyond the little wooded promontory that protects the mouth of the See, lies Mont St Michel, a fretted silhouette of flat pearly grey, and a little to the north is Tombelaine, a less pretentious islet in this fairyland sea. Framed by the stems and foliage of the trees, this view is one of the most fascinating in Normandy. One would be content to stay here all through the sultry hours of a summer day, to listen to the distant hum of conversation among white-capped nursemaids, as they sew busily, giving momentary attention to their charges. But Avranches has an historical spot that no student of history, and indeed no one who cares anything for the picturesque events that crowd the pages of the chronicles of England in the days of the Norman kings, may miss. It is the famous stone upon which Henry II. knelt when he received absolution for the murder of Becket at the hands of the papal legate. To reach this stone is, for a stranger, a matter of some difficulty. From the Place by the Jardin des Plantes, it is necessary to plunge down a steep descent towards the railway station, and then one climbs a series of zigzag paths on a high grassy bank that brings one out upon the Place Huet. In one corner, surrounded by chains and supported by low iron posts, is the historic stone. It is generally thickly coated with dust, but the brass plate affixed to a pillar of the doorway is quite legible. These, and a few fragments of carved stone that lie half-smothered in long grass and weeds at a short distance from the railed-in stone, are all that remain of the cathedral that existed in the time of Henry II. It must have been an impressive scene on that Sunday in May 1172, when the papal legate, in his wonderful robes, stood by the north transept door, of which only this fragment remains, and granted absolution to the sovereign, who, kneeling in all humbleness and submission, was relieved of the curse of excommunication which had been laid on him after the tragic affair in the sanctuary at Canterbury. In place of the splendid cathedral, whose nave collapsed, causing the demolition of the whole building in 1799, there is a new church with the two great western towers only carried up to half the height intended for them. From the roadway that runs along the side of the old castle walls in terrace fashion there is another wonderful view of rich green country, through which, at one's feet, winds the river See. Away towards the north-west the road to Granville can be seen passing over the hills in a perfectly straight line. But this part of the country may be left for another chapter. CHAPTER VII Concerning Mont St Michel So, when their feet were planted on the plain That broaden'd toward the base of Camelot, Far off they saw the silver-misty morn Rolling her smoke about the Royal mount, That rose between the forest and the field. At times the summit of the high city flash'd; At times the spires and turrets half-way down Pricked through the mist; at times the great gate shone Only, that open'd on the field below: Anon, the whole fair city disappeared. Tennyson's _Gareth and Lynette_ "The majestic splendour of this gulf, its strategetic importance, have at all times attracted the attention of warriors." In this quaint fashion commences the third chapter of a book upon Mont St Michel which is to be purchased in the little town. We have already had a glimpse of the splendour of the gulf from Avranches, but there are other aspects of the rock which are equally impressive. They are missed by all those who, instead of going by the picturesque and winding coast-road from Pontaubault, take the straight and dusty _route nationale_ to Pontorson, and then turn to follow the tramway that has in recent years been extended along the causeway to the mount itself. If one can manage to make it a rather late ride along the coast-road just mentioned, many beautiful distant views of Mont St Michel, backed by sunset lights, will be an ample reward. Even on a grey and almost featureless evening, when the sea is leaden-hued, there may, perhaps, appear one of those thin crimson lines that are the last efforts of the setting sun. This often appears just behind the grey and dim rock, and the crimson is reflected in a delicate tinge upon the glistening sands. Tiny rustic villages, with churches humble and unobtrusive, and prominent calvaries, are passed one after the other. At times the farmyards seem to have taken the road into their own hands, for a stone well-head will appear almost in the roadway, and chickens, pigs, and a litter of straw have to be allowed for by those who ride or drive along this rural way. When the rock is still some distance off, the road seems to determine to take a short cut across the sands, but thinking better of it, it runs along the outer margin of the reclaimed land, and there is nothing to prevent the sea from flooding over the road at its own discretion. Once on the broad and solidly constructed causeway, the rock rapidly gathers in bulk and detail. It has, indeed, as one approaches, an almost fantastic and fairy-like outline. Then as more and more grows from the hazy mass, one sees that this remarkable place has a crowded and much embattled loneliness. Two round towers, sturdy and boldly machicolated, appear straight ahead, but oddly enough the wall between them has no opening of any sort, and the stranger is perplexed at the inhospitable curtain-wall that seems to refuse him admittance to the mediaeval delights within. It almost heightens the impression that the place belongs altogether to dreamland, for in that shadowy world all that is most desirable is so often beyond the reach of the dreamer. It is a very different impression that one gains if the steam train has been taken, for its arrival is awaited by a small crowd of vulture-like servants and porters from the hotels. The little crowd treats the incoming train-load of tourists as its carrion, and one has no time to notice whether there is a gateway or not before being swept along the sloping wooden staging that leads to the only entrance. The simple archway in the outer wall leads into the Cour de l'Avancee where those two great iron cannons, mentioned in an earlier chapter, are conspicuous objects. They were captured by the heroic garrison when the English, in 1433, made their last great effort to obtain possession of the rock. Beyond these, one passes through the barbican to the Cour de la Herse, which is largely occupied by the Hotel Poulard Aine. Then one passes through the Porte du Roi, and enters the town proper. The narrow little street is flanked by many an old house that has seen most of the vicissitudes that the little island city has suffered. In fact many of these shops which are now almost entirely given over to the sale of mementoes and books of photographs of the island, are individually of great interest. One of the most ancient in the upper part of the street, is pointed out as that occupied in the fourteenth century by Tiphane de Raguenel, the wife of the heroic Bertrand du Guesclin. It is almost impossible for those who are sensitive in such matters, not to feel some annoyance at the pleasant but persistent efforts of the vendors of souvenirs to induce every single visitor to purchase at each separate shop. To get an opportunity for closely examining the carved oaken beams and architectural details of the houses, one must make at least some small purchase at each trinket store in front of which one is inclined to pause. Perhaps it would even be wise before attempting to look at anything architectural in this quaintest of old-world streets, to go from one end to the other, buying something of trifling cost, say a picture postcard, from each saleswoman. In this way, one might purchase immunity from the over-solicitous shop-keepers, and have the privilege of being able to realise the mediaeval character of the place without constant interruptions. Nearly every visitor to Mont St Michel considers that this historic gem, in its wonderful setting of opalescent sand, can be "done" in a few hours. They think that if they climb up the steps to the museum--a new building made more conspicuous than it need be by a board bearing the word _Musee_ in enormous letters--if they walk along the ramparts, stare for a moment at the gateways, and then go round the abbey buildings with one of the small crowds that the guide pilots through the maze of extraordinary vaulted passages and chambers, that they have done ample justice to this world-famous sight. If the rock had only one-half of its historic and fantastically arranged buildings, it would still deserve considerably more than this fleeting attention paid to it by such a large proportion of the tourists. So many of these poor folk come to Mont St Michel quite willing to learn the reasons for its past greatness, but they do not bring with them the smallest grains of knowledge. The guides, whose knowledge of English is limited to such words as "Sirteenth Senchury" (thirteenth century), give them no clues to the reasons for the existence of any buildings on the island, and quite a large proportion of visitors go away without any more knowledge than they could have obtained from the examination of a good book of photographs. To really appreciate in any degree the natural charms of Mont St Michel, at least one night should be spent on the rock. Having debated between the rival houses of Poularde Aine and Poularde Jeune, and probably decided on the older branch of the family, perhaps with a view to being able to speak of their famous omelettes with enthusiasm, one is conducted to one of the houses or dependences connected with the hotel. If one has selected the Maison Rouge, it is necessary to make a long climb to one's bedroom. The long salle a manger, where dinner is served, is in a tall wedge-like building just outside the Porte du Roi and in the twilight of evening coffee can be taken on the little tables of the cafe that overflows on to the pavement of the narrow street. The cafe faces the head-quarters of the hotel, and is as much a part of it as any of the other buildings which contain the bedrooms. To the stranger it comes as a surprise to be handed a Chinese lantern at bedtime, and to be conducted by one of the hotel servants almost to the top of the tall house just mentioned. Suddenly the man opens a door and you step out into an oppressive darkness. Here the use of the Chinese lantern is obvious, for without some artificial light, the long series of worn stone steps, that must be climbed before reaching the Maison Rouge, would offer many opportunities for awkward falls. The bedrooms in this house, when one has finally reached a floor far above the little street, have a most enviable position. They are all provided with small balconies where the enormous sweep of sand or glistening ocean, according to the condition of the tides, is a sight which will drag the greatest sluggard from his bed at the first hour of dawn. Right away down below are the hoary old houses of the town, hemmed in by the fortified wall that surrounds this side of the island. Then stretching away towards the greeny-blue coast-line is the long line of digue or causeway on which one may see a distant puff of white smoke, betokening the arrival of the early train of the morning. The attaches of the rival hotels are already awaiting the arrival of the early batch of sight-seers. All over the delicately tinted sands there are constantly moving shadows from the light clouds forming over the sea, and blowing freshly from the west there comes an invigorating breeze. Before even the museum can have a real interest for us, we must go back to the early times when Mont St Michel was a bare rock; when it was not even an island, and when the bay of Mont St Michel was covered by the forest of Scissey. It seems that the Romans raised a shrine to Jupiter on the rock, which soon gave to it the name of Mons Jovis, afterwards to be contracted into Mont-Jou. They had displaced some earlier Druidical or other sun-worshippers who had carried on their rites at this lonely spot; but the Roman innovation soon became a thing of the past and the Franks, after their conversion to Christianity, built on the rock two oratories, one to St Stephen and the other to St Symphorian. It was then that the name Mont-Jou was abandoned in favour of Mons-Tumba. The smaller rock, now known as Tombelaine, was called Tumbella meaning the little tomb, to distinguish it from the larger rock. It is not known why the two rocks should have been associated with the word tomb, and it is quite possible that the Tumba may simply mean a small hill. In time, hermits came and built their cells on both the rocks and gradually a small community was formed under the Merovingian Abbey of Mandane. It was about this time, that is in the sixth century, that a great change came over the surroundings of the two rocks. Hitherto, they had formed rocky excrescences at the edge of the low forest-land by which the country adjoining the sea was covered. Gradually the sea commenced a steady encroachment. It had been probably in progress even since Roman times, but its advance became more rapid, and after an earthquake, which occurred in the year 709, the whole of the forest of Scissey was invaded, and the remains of the trees were buried under a great layer of sand. There were several villages in this piece of country, some of whose names have been preserved, and these suffered complete destruction with the forest. A thousand years afterwards, following a great storm and a consequent movement of the sand, a large number of oaks and considerable traces of the little village St Etienne de Paluel were laid bare. The foundations of houses, a well, and the font of a church were among the discoveries made. Just about the time of the innundation, we come to the interesting story of the holy-minded St Aubert who had been made bishop of Avranches. He could see the rock as it may be seen to-day, although at that time it was crowned with no buildings visible at any distance, and the loneliness of the spot seems to have attracted him to retire thither for prayer and meditation. He eventually raised upon the rock a small chapel which he dedicated to Michel the archangel. After this time, all the earlier names disappeared and the island was always known as Mont St Michel. Replacing the hermits of Mandane with twelve canons, the establishment grew and became prosperous. That this was so, must be attributed largely to the astonishing miracles which were supposed to have taken place in connection with the building of the chapel. Two great rocks near the top of the mount, which were much in the way of the builders, were removed and sent thundering down the rocky precipice by the pressure of a child's foot when all the efforts of the men to induce the rock to move had been unavailing. The huge rock so displaced is now crowned by the tiny chapel of St Aubert. The offerings brought by the numerous pilgrims to Mont St Michel gave the canons sufficient means to commence the building of an abbey, and the unique position of the rock soon made it a refuge for the Franks of the western parts of Neustria when the fierce Norman pirates were harrying the country. In this way the village of Mont St Michel made its appearance at the foot of the rock. The contact of the canons with this new population brought some trouble in its wake. The holy men became contaminated with the world, and Richard, Duke of Normandy, replaced them by thirty Benedictines brought from Mont-Cassin. These monks were given the power of electing their own abbot who was invested with the most entire control over all the affairs of the people who dwelt upon the rock. This system of popular election seems to have worked admirably, for in the centuries that followed, the rulers of the community were generally men of remarkable character and great ideals. About fifty years before the Conquest of England by Duke William, the abbot of that time, Hildebert II., commenced work on the prodigious series of buildings that still crown the rock. His bold scheme of building massive walls round the highest point, in order to make a lofty platform whereon to raise a great church, was a work of such magnitude that when he was gathered to his fathers the foundations were by no means complete. Those who came after him however, inspired by the great idea, kept up the work of building with wonderful enthusiasm. Slowly, year by year, the ponderous walls of the crypts and undercrofts grew in the great space which it was necessary to fill. Dark, irregularly built chambers, one side formed of the solid rock and the others composed of the almost equally massive masonry, grouped themselves round the unequal summit of the mount, until at last, towards the end of the eleventh century, the building of the nave of the church was actually in progress. Roger II., the eleventh of the abbots, commenced the buildings that preceded the extraordinary structure known as La Merveille. Soon after came Robert de Torigny, a pious man of great learning, who seems to have worked enthusiastically. He raised two great towers joined by a porch, the hostelry and infirmary on the south side and other buildings on the west. Much of this work has unfortunately disappeared. Torigny's coffin was discovered in 1876 under the north-west part of the great platform, and one may see a representation of the architect-abbot in the clever series of life-like models that have been placed in the museum. The Bretons having made a destructive attack upon the mount in the early years of the thirteenth century and caused much damage to the buildings, Jourdain the abbot of that time planned out "La Merveille," which comprises three storeys of the most remarkable Gothic halls. At the bottom are the cellar and almonry, then comes the Salle des Chevaliers and the dormitory, and above all are the beautiful cloisters and the refectory. Jourdain, however, only lived to see one storey completed, but his successors carried on the work and Raoul de Villedieu finished the splendid cloister in 1228. Up to this time the island was defenceless, but during the abbatiate of Toustain the ramparts and fortifications were commenced. In 1256 the buildings known as Belle-Chaise were constructed. They contained the entrance to the abbey before the chatelet made its appearance. After Toustain came Pierre le Roy who built a tower behind Belle-Chaise and also the imposing-looking chatelet which contains the main entrance to the whole buildings. The fortifications that stood outside this gateway have to some extent disappeared, but what remain are shown in the accompanying illustration. In the early part of the fifteenth century, the choir of the church collapsed, but peace having been declared with England, soon afterwards D'Estouteville was able to construct the wonderful foundations composed of ponderous round columns called the crypt of les Gros-Piliers, and above it there afterwards appeared the splendid Gothic choir. The flamboyant tracery of the windows is filled with plain green leaded glass, and the fact that the recent restoration has left the church absolutely bare of any ecclesiastical paraphernalia gives one a splendid opportunity of studying this splendid work of the fifteenth century. The nave of the church has still to undergo the process of restoration, for at the present time the fraudulent character of its stone-vaulted roof is laid bare by the most casual glance, for at the unfinished edge adjoining the choir one may see the rough lath and plaster which for a long time must have deceived the visitors who have gazed at the lofty roof. The western end of the building is an eighteenth century work, although to glance at the great patches of orange-coloured lichen that spread themselves over so much of the stone-work, it would be easy to imagine that the work was of very great antiquity. In earlier times there were some further bays belonging to the nave beyond the present west front in the space now occupied by an open platform. There is a fine view from this position, but it is better still if one climbs the narrow staircase from the choir leading up to the asphalted walk beneath the flying buttresses. About the middle of the fourteenth century, Tiphaine de Raguenel, the wife of Bertrand du Guesclin, that splendid Breton soldier, came from Pontorson and made her home at Mont St Michel, in order not to be kept as a prisoner by the English. There are several facts recorded that throw light on the character of this noble lady, sometimes spoken of as "The Fair Maid of Dinan." She had come to admire Du Guesclin for his prowess in military matters, and her feeling towards him having deepened, she had no hesitation in accepting his offer of marriage. It appears that Du Guesclin after this most happy event--for from all we are able to discover Tiphaine seems to have shared his patriotic ideals--was inclined to remain at home rather than to continue his gallant, though at times almost hopeless struggle against the English. Although it must have been a matter of great self-renunciation on her part, Tiphaine felt that it would be much against her character for her to have any share in keeping her husband away from the scene of action, and by every means in her power she endeavoured to re-animate his former enthusiasm. In this her success was complete, and resuming his great responsibilities in the French army, much greater success attended him than at any time in the past. Du Guesclin was not a martyr, but he is as much the most striking figure of the fourteenth century as Joan of Arc is of the fifteenth. All through the period of anxiety through which the defenders of the mount had to pass when the Hundred Years' War was in progress, Mont St Michel was very largely helped against sudden attacks by the remarkable vigilance of their great watch-dogs. So valuable for the safety of the Abbey and the little town were these dogs considered that Louis XI. in 1475 allowed the annual sum of twenty-four pounds by Tours-weight towards their keep. The document states that "from the earliest times it has been customary to have and nourish, at the said place, a certain number of great dogs, which are tied up by day, and at night brought outside the enclosure to keep watch till morning." It was during the reign of this same Louis that the military order of chivalry of St Michael was instituted. The king made three pilgrimages to the mount and the first chapter of this great order, which was for a long time looked upon as the most distinguished in France, was held in the Salle des Chevaliers. For a long while Tombelaine, which lies so close to Mont St Michel, was in the occupation of the English, but in the account of the recovery of Normandy from the English, written by Jacques le Bouvier, King of Arms to Charles VII., we find that the place surrendered very easily to the French. We are told that the fortress of Tombelaine was "An exceedingly strong place and impregnable so long as the persons within it have provisions." The garrison numbered about a hundred men. They were allowed to go to Cherbourg where they took ship to England about the same time as the garrisons from Vire, Avranches, Coutances, and many other strongholds which were at this time falling like dead leaves. Le Bouvier at the end of his account of this wonderful break-up of the English fighting force in Normandy, tells us that the whole of the Duchy of Normandy with all the cities, towns, and castles was brought into subjection to the King of France within one year and six days. "A very wonderful thing," he remarks, "and it plainly appears that our Lord God therein manifested His grace, for never was so large a country conquered in so short a time, nor with the loss of so few people, nor with less injury, which is a great merit, honour and praise to the King of France." In the early part of the sixteenth century, Mont St Michel seems to have reached the high-water mark of its glories. After this time a decline commenced and Cardinal le Veneur reduced the number of monks to enlarge his own income. This new cardinal was the first of a series not chosen from the residents on the mount, for after 1523 the system of election among themselves which had answered so well, was abandoned, and this wealthy establishment became merely one of the coveted preferments of the Church. There was no longer that enthusiasm for maintaining and continuing the architectural achievements of the past, for this new series of ecclesiastics seemed to look upon their appointment largely as a sponge which they might squeeze. In Elizabethan times Mont St Michel once more assumed the character of a fortress and had to defend itself against the Huguenots when its resources had been drained by these worldly-minded shepherds, and it is not surprising to find that the abbey which had withstood all the attacks of the English during the Hundred Years' War should often fall into the hands of the protestant armies, although in every case it was re-taken. A revival of the religious tone of the abbey took place early in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, when twelve Benedictine monks from St Maur were installed in the buildings. Pilgrimages once more became the order of the day, but since the days of Louis XI. part of the sub-structure of the abbey buildings had been converted into fearful dungeons, and the day came when the abbey became simply a most remarkable prison. In the time of Louis XV., a Frenchman named Dubourg--a person who has often been spoken of as though he had been a victim of his religious convictions, but who seems to have been really a most reprehensible character--was placed in a wooden cage in one of the damp and gruesome vaults beneath the abbey. Dubourg had been arrested for his libellous writings concerning the king and many important persons in the French court. He existed for a little over a year in the fearful wooden cage, and just before he died he went quite mad, being discovered during the next morning half-eaten by rats. A realistic representation of his ghastly end is given in the museum, but one must not imagine that the grating filling the semi-circular arch is at all like the actual spot where the wretched man lay. The cage itself was composed of bars of wood placed so closely together that Dubourg was not able to put more than his fingers between them. The space inside was only about eight feet high and the width was scarcely greater. The cage itself was placed in a position where moisture dripped on to the miserable prisoner's body, and we can only marvel that he survived this fearful torture for so many months. During the French Revolution the abbey was nothing more than a jail, and it continued to be devoted to this base use until about forty years ago. Since that time, restoration has continued almost unceasingly, for in the prison period nothing was done to maintain the buildings, and there is still much work in hand which the French government who are now in control are most successfully carrying out. These are a few of the thrilling phases of the history of the rock. But what has been written scarcely does the smallest justice to its crowded pages. The only way of being fair to a spot so richly endowed with enthralling events seems to be in stirring the imagination by a preliminary visit, in order that one may come again armed with a close knowledge of all that has taken place since Aubert raised his humble chapel upon the lonely rock. Who does not know that sense of annoyance at being conducted over some historic building by a professional guide who mentions names and events that just whet the appetite and then leave a hungry feeling for want of any surrounding details or contemporary events which one knows would convert the mere "sight" into holy ground. I submit that a French guide, a French hand-book or a poor translation, can do little to relieve this hunger, that Mont St Michel is fully worthy of some preliminary consideration, and that it should not be treated to the contemptuous scurry of a day's trip. The tides that bring the sea across the great sweep of sand surrounding Mont St Michel, are intermittent, and it is possible to remain for a day or two on the island and be able to walk around it dry-shod at any hour. It is only at the really high tides that the waters of the Bay of Cancale give visitors the opportunity of seeing the fantastic buildings reflected in the sea. But although it is safer and much more pleasant to be able to examine every aspect of the rock from a boat, it is possible to walk over the sands and get the same views provided one is aware of the dangers of the quicksands which have claimed too many victims. It is somewhat terrifying that on what appears to be absolutely firm sand, a few taps of the foot will convert two or three yards beneath one's feet into a quaking mass. There is, however, no great danger at the foot of the rocks or fortifications, but to wander any distance away entails the gravest risks unless in company with a native who is fully aware of any dangerous localities. The sands are sufficiently firm to allow those who know the route to drive horses and carts to Tombelaine, but this should not encourage strangers to take any chances, for the fate of the English lady who was swallowed up by the sands in sight of the ramparts and whose body now lies in the little churchyard of the town, is so distressing that any repetition of such tragedies would tend to cast a shade over the glories of the mount. You may buy among the numerous photographs and pictures for sale in the trinket shops, coloured post-cards which show flaming sunsets behind the abbey, but nothing that I have yet seen does the smallest justice to the reality. Standing on the causeway and looking up to the great height of the tower that crowns the highest point, the gilded St Michael with his outspread wings seems almost ready to soar away into the immensity of the canopy of heaven. Through the traceried windows of the chancel of the church, the evening light on the opposite side of the rock glows through the green glass, for from this position the upper windows are opposite to one another and the light passes right through the building. The great mass of curiously simple yet most striking structures that girdle the summit of the rock and form the platform beneath the church, though built at different times, have joined in one consenescence and now present the appearance of one of those cities that dwell in the imagination when reading of "many tower'd Camelot" or the turreted walls of fairyland. Down below these great and inaccessible buildings comes an almost perpendicular drop of rocks, bare except for stray patches of grass or isolated bushes that have taken root in crevices. Then between this and the fortified wall, with its circular bastions, encircling the base of the rock, the roofs of the little town are huddled in picturesque confusion. The necessity of accommodating the modern pilgrims has unfortunately led to the erection of one or two houses that in some measure jar with their mediaeval surroundings. Another unwelcome note is struck by the needlessly aggressive board on the museum which has already been mentioned. However, when a sunset is glowing behind the mount, these modern intrusions are subdued into insignificance, and there is nothing left to disturb the harmony of the scene. A walk round the ramparts reveals an endless series of picturesque groupings of the old houses with their time-worn stone walls, over which tower the chatelet and La Merveille. Long flights of stone steps from the highest part of the narrow street lead up to the main entrance of the abbey buildings. Here, beneath the great archway of the chatelet, sits an old blind woman who is almost as permanent a feature as the masonry on which she sits. Ascending the wide flight of steps, the Salle des Gardes is reached. It is in the lower portion of the building known as Belle-Chaise, mentioned earlier in this chapter. From this point a large portion of the seemingly endless series of buildings are traversed by the visitor, who is conducted by a regular guide. You ascend a great staircase, between massive stone walls spanned by two bridges, the first a strongly built structure of stone, the next a slighter one of wood, and then reach a breezy rampart where great views over the distant coasts spread themselves out. From here you enter the church, its floor now littered with the debris of restoration. Then follow the cloister and the refectory, and down below them on the second floor of the Merveille is the Salle des Chevaliers. Besides the wonderful Gothic halls with their vaulted roofs and perfect simplicity of design, there are the endless series of crypts and dungeons, which leave a very strong impression on the minds of all those whose knowledge of architecture is lean. There is the shadowy crypt of Les Gros Pilliers down below the chancel of the church; there is the Charnier where the holy men were buried in the early days of the abbey; and there is the great dark space filled by the enormous wheel which was worked by the prisoners when Mont St Michel was nothing more than a great jail. It was by this means that the food for the occupants of the buildings was raised from down below. Without knowing it, in passing from one dark chamber to another, the guide takes his little flock of peering and wondering visitors all round the summit of the rock, for it is hard, even for those who endeavour to do so, to keep the cardinal points in mind, when, except for a chance view from a narrow window, there is nothing to correct the impression that you are still on the same side of the mount as the Merveille. At last the perambulation is finished--the dazzling sunshine is once more all around you as you come out to the steep steps that lead towards the ramparts. CHAPTER VIII Concerning Coutances and Some Parts of the Cotentin When at last it is necessary to bid farewell to Mont St Michel, one is not compelled to lose sight of the distant grey silhouette for a long while. It remains in sight across the buttercup fields and sunny pastures on the road to Pontaubault. Then again, when climbing the zig-zag hill towards Avranches the Bay of Mont St Michel is spread out. You may see the mount again from Avranches itself, and then if you follow the coast-road towards Granville instead of the rather monotonous road that goes to its destination with the directness of a gun-shot, there are further views of the wonderful rock and its humble companion Tombelaine. Keeping along this pretty road through the little village of Genets, where you actually touch the ocean, there is much pretty scenery to be enjoyed all the way to the busy town of Granville. It is a watering-place and a port, the two aspects of the town being divided from each other by the great rocky promontory of Lihou. If one climbs up right above the place this conformation is plainly visible, for down below is the stretch of sandy beach, with its frailly constructed concert rooms and cafes sheltering under the gaunt red cliffs, while over the shoulder of the peninsula appears a glimpse of the piers and the masts of sailing ships. There is much that is picturesque in the seaport side of the town, particularly towards evening, when the red and green harbour-lights are reflected in the sea. There are usually five or six sailing ships loading or discharging their cargoes by the quays, and you will generally find a British tramp steamer lying against one of the wharves. The sturdy crocketed spire of the sombre old church of Notre Dame stands out above the long line of shuttered houses down by the harbour. It is a wonderful contrast, this old portion of Granville that surmounts the promontory, to the ephemeral and gay aspect of the watering-place on the northern side. But these sort of contrasts are to be found elsewhere than at Granville, for at Dieppe it is much the same, although the view of that popular resort that is most familiar in England, is the hideous casino and the wide sweep of gardens that occupy the sea-front. Those who have not been there would scarcely believe that the town possesses a castle perched upon towering cliffs, or that its splendid old church of Saint-Jacques is the real glory of the place. Granville cannot boast of quite so much in the way of antiquities, but there is something peculiarly fascinating about its dark church, in which the light seems unable to penetrate, and whose walls assume almost the same tones as the rocks from which the masonry was hewn. I should like to describe the scenery of the twenty miles of country that lie between Granville and Coutances, but I have only passed over it on one occasion. It was nine o'clock in the evening, and the long drawn-out twilight had nearly faded away as I climbed up the long ascent which commences the road to Coutances, and before I had reached the village of Brehal it was quite dark. The road became absolutely deserted, and although one or two people on bicycles passed me about this time, they were carrying no lamps as is the usual custom in France, where the rules governing the use of a _bicyclette_ are so numerous and intricate, but so absolutely ignored. My own lamp seemed to be a grave distraction among the invisible occupants of the roadside meadows, and often much lowing rose up on either side. The hedges would suddenly whirr with countless grasshoppers, although, no doubt, they had been amusing themselves with their monotonous noises for hours. The strange sound seemed to follow me in a most persistent fashion, and then would be merged into the croaking of a vast assemblage of frogs. These sounds, however, carry with them no real menace, however late the hour, but there is something which may almost strike terror into the heart, though it might almost be considered foolish by those who have not experienced a midnight ride in this country. The clipped and shaven trees that in daylight merely appear ridiculous, in the darkness assume an altogether different character. To the vivid imagination, it is easy to see a witch's broom swaying in the wind; a group of curious and distorted stems will suggest a row of large but painfully thin brownies, holding hands as they dance. Every moment, two or three figures of gaunt and lanky witches in spreading skirts will alarm you as they suddenly appear round a corner. When they are not so uncanny in their outlines, the trees will appear like clipped poodles standing upon their hind legs, or they will suddenly assume the character of a grove of palm trees. After a long stretch of this sort of country, it is pleasant to pass through some sleeping village where there are just two or three lighted windows to show that there are still a few people awake besides oneself in this lonely country. I can imagine that the village of Hyenville has some claims to beauty. I know at least that it lies in a valley, watered by the river Sienne, and that the darkness allowed me to see an old stone bridge, with a cross raised above the centre of the parapet. Soon after this I began to descend the hill that leads into Coutances. A bend in the road, as I was rapidly descending, brought into view a whole blaze of lights, and I felt that here at last there were people and hotels, and an end to the ghostly sights of the open country. Then I came to houses, but they were all quite dark, and there was not a single human being in sight. Following this came a choice of streets without a possibility of knowing which one would lead in the direction of the hotel I was hoping to reach; but my perplexity was at length relieved by the advent of a tall youth whose cadaverous features were shown up by the street lamp overhead. He gave his directions clearly enough, but although I followed them carefully right up the hill past the cathedral, I began to think that I had overshot the mark, when another passer-by appeared in the silent street. I found that I was within a few yards of the hotel; but on hurrying forward, I found to my astonishment, that the whole building was completely shut up and no light appeared even within the courtyard. As I had passed the cathedral eleven reverbrating notes had echoed over the town, and it seemed as though Coutances had retired earlier on this night of all nights in order that I might learn to travel at more rational hours. Going inside the courtyard, my anxiety was suddenly relieved by seeing the light of a candle in a stable on the further side; a man was putting up a horse, and he at once volunteered to arouse some one who would find a bedroom. After some shouting to the gallery above, a maid appeared, and a few minutes afterwards mine host himself, clad in a long flannel night robe and protecting a flickering candle-flame with his hand, appeared at a doorway. His long grey beard gave him a most venerable aspect. The note of welcome in his cheery voice was unmistakable and soon the maid who had spoken from the balcony had shown the way up a winding circular staircase to a welcome exchange to the shelter of a haystack which I had begun to fear would be my only resting-place for the night. In the morning, the Hotel d'Angleterre proved to be a most picturesque old hostelry. Galleries ran round three sides of the courtyard, and the circular staircase was enclosed in one of those round towers that are such a distinctive feature of the older type of French inn. The long main street does not always look deserted and in daylight it appeared as sunny and cheerful as one expects to find the chief thoroughfare of a thriving French town. Coutances stands on such a bold hill that the street, almost of necessity, drops precipitously, and the cathedral which ranks with the best in France, stands out boldly from all points of view. It was principally built in the thirteenth century, but a church which had stood in its place two centuries before, had been consecrated by Bishop Geoffrey de Montbray in 1056, in the presence of Duke William, afterwards William I. of England. The two western towers of the present cathedral are not exactly similar, and owing to their curious formation of clustered spires they are not symmetrical. It is for this reason that they are often described as being unpleasing. I am unable to echo such criticism, for in looking at the original ideas that are most plainly manifest in this most astonishing cathedral one seems to be in close touch with the long forgotten builders and architects whose notions of proportion and beauty they contrived to stamp so indelibly upon their masterpiece. From the central tower there is a view over an enormous sweep of country which includes a stretch of the coast, for Coutances is only half a dozen miles from the sea. This central tower rises from a square base at the intersection of the transepts with the nave. It runs up almost without a break in an octagonal form to a parapet ornamented with open quatrefoils. The interior has a clean and fresh appearance owing to the recent restorations and is chiefly remarkable for the balustraded triforium which is continued round the whole church. In many of the windows there is glass belonging to the sixteenth century and some dates as early as the fourteenth century. Besides the cathedral, the long main street of Coutances possesses the churches of St Nicholas and St Pierre. In St Nicholas one may see a somewhat unusual feature in the carved inscriptions dating from early in the seventeenth century which appear on the plain round columns. Here, as in the cathedral, the idea of the balustrade under the clerestory is carried out. The fourteen Stations of the Cross that as usual meet one in the aisles of the nave, are in this church painted with a most unusual vividness and reality, in powerful contrast to so many of these crucifixion scenes to be seen in Roman Catholic churches. The church of St Pierre is illustrated here, with the cathedral beyond, but the drawing does not include the great central tower which is crowned by a pyramidal spire. This church belongs to a later period than the cathedral as one may see by a glance at the classic work in the western tower, for most of the building is subsequent to the fifteenth century. St Pierre and the cathedral form a most interesting study in the development from Early French architecture to the Renaissance; but for picturesqueness in domestic architecture Coutances cannot hold up its head with Lisieux, Vire, or Rouen. There is still a remnant of one of the town gateways and to those who spend any considerable time in the city some other quaint corners may be found. From the western side there is a beautiful view of the town with the great western towers of the cathedral rising gracefully above the quarries in the Bois des Vignettes. Another feature of Coutances is the aqueduct. It unfortunately does not date from Roman times when the place was known as Constantia, for there is nothing Roman about the ivy-clad arches that cross the valley on the western side. From Coutances northwards to Cherbourg stretches that large tract of Normandy which used to be known as the Cotentin. At first the country is full of deep valleys and smiling hills covered with rich pastures and woodland, but as you approach Lessay at the head of an inlet of the sea the road passes over a flat heathy desert. The church at Lessay is a most perfect example of Norman work. The situation is quite pretty, for near by flows the little river Ay, and the roofs are brilliant with orange lichen. The great square tower with its round-headed Norman windows, is crowned with a cupola. With the exception of the windows in the north aisle the whole of the interior is of pure Norman work. There is a double triforium and the round, circular arches rest on ponderous pillars and there is also a typical Norman semi-circular apse. The village, which is a very ancient one, grew round the Benedictine convent established here by one Turstan Halduc in 1040, and there may still be seen the wonderfully picturesque castle with its round towers. Following the estuary of the river from Lessay on a minor road you come to the hamlet of St Germain-sur-Ay. The country all around is flat, but the wide stretches of sand in the inlet have some attractiveness to those who are fond of breezy and open scenery, and the little church in the village is as old as that of Lessay. One could follow this pretty coast-line northwards until the seaboard becomes bold, but we will turn aside to the little town of La Haye-du-Puits. There is a junction here on the railway for Carentan and St Lo, but the place seems to have gone on quite unaltered by this communication with the large centres of population. The remains of the castle, where lived during the eleventh century the Turstan Halduc just mentioned, are to be seen on the railway side of the town. The dungeon tower, picturesquely smothered in ivy, is all that remains of this Norman fortress. The other portion is on the opposite side of the road, but it only dates from the sixteenth century, when it was rebuilt. Turstan had a son named Odo, who was seneschal to William the Norman, and he is known to have received certain important lands in Sussex as a reward for his services. During the next century the owner of the castle was that Richard de la Haye whose story is a most interesting one. He was escaping from Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, when he had the ill luck to fall in with some Moorish pirates by whom he was captured and kept as a slave for some years. He however succeeded in regaining his liberty, and after his return to France, he and his wife, Mathilde de Vernon, founded the Abbey of Blanchelande. The ruins of this establishment are scarcely more than two miles from La Haye du Puits, but they unfortunately consist of little more than some arches of the abbey church and some of the walls of the lesser buildings. Immediately north of La Haye there is some more heathy ground, but it is higher than the country surrounding Lessay. A round windmill, much resembling the ruined structure that stands out conspicuously on the bare tableland of Alderney, is the first of these picturesque features that we have seen in this part of the country. It is worth mention also on account of the fact that it was at St Sauveur-le-Vicomte, only about seven miles distant, that the first recorded windmill was put up in France about the year 1180, almost the same time as the first reference to such structures occurs in England. St Sauveur has its castle now occupied by the hospital. It was given to Sir John Chandos by Edward III. after the Treaty of Bretigny in 1360, and that courageous soldier, who saw so much fighting in France during the Hundred Years War, added much to the fortress which had already been in existence since very early times in the history of the duchy. A road runs from St Sauveur straight towards the sea. It passes the corner of a forest and then goes right down to the low sandy harbour of Port Bail. It is a wonderful country for atmospheric effects across the embanked swamps and sandhills that lie between the hamlet and the sea. One of the two churches has a bold, square tower, dating from the fifteenth century--it now serves as a lighthouse. The harbour has two other lights and, although it can only be entered at certain tides, the little port contrives to carry on a considerable export trade of farm produce, most of it being consumed in the Channel Islands. The railway goes on to its terminus at Cartaret, a nicely situated little seaside village close to the cape of the same name. Here, if you tire of shrimping on the wide stretch of sands, it is possible to desert Normandy by the little steamer that during the summer plies between this point and Gorey in Jersey. Modern influences have given Cartaret a more civilised flavour than it had a few years ago, and it now has something of the aspect of a watering-place. Northwards from Cartaret, a road follows the coast-line two or three miles from the cliffs to Les Pieux. Then one can go on to Flamanville by the cape which takes its name from the village, and there see the seventeenth century moated manor house. Cherbourg, the greatest naval port of France, is not often visited by those who travel in Normandy, for with the exception of the enormous breakwater, there is nothing beyond the sights of a huge dockyard town that is of any note. The breakwater, however, is a most remarkable work. It stands about two miles from the shore, is more than 4000 yards long by 100 yards wide, and has a most formidable appearance with its circular forts and batteries of guns. The church of La Trinite was built during the English occupation and must have been barely finished before the evacuation of the place in 1450. Since that time the post has only been once attacked by the English, and that was as recently as 1758, when Lord Howe destroyed and burnt the forts, shipping and naval stores. Leaving Cherbourg we will take our way southwards again to Valognes, a town which suffered terribly during the ceaseless wars between England and France. In 1346, Edward III. completely destroyed the place. It was captured by the English seventy-one years afterwards and did not again become French until that remarkable year 1450, when the whole of Normandy and part of Guienne was cleared of Englishmen by the victorious French armies under the Count of Clermont and the Duke of Alencon. The Montgommery, whose defeat at Domfront castle has already been mentioned, held Valognes against the Catholic army, but it afterwards was captured by the victorious Henry of Navarre after the battle of Ivry near Evreux. Valognes possesses a good museum containing many Roman relics from the neighbourhood. A short distance from the town, on the east side, lies the village of Alleaume where there remain the ivy-grown ruins of the castle in which Duke William was residing when the news was brought to him of the insurrection of his barons under the Viscount of the Cotentin. It was at this place that William's fool revealed to him the danger in which he stood, and it was from here that he rode in hot haste to the castle of Falaise, a stronghold the Duke seemed to regard as safer than any other in his possession. Still farther southwards lies the town of Carentan, in the centre of a great butter-making district. It is, however, a dull place--it can scarcely be called a city even though it possesses a cathedral. The earliest part of this building is the west front which is of twelfth century work. The spire of the central tower has much the same appearance as those crowning the two western towers at St Lo, but there is nothing about the building that inspires any particular enthusiasm although the tracery of some of the windows, especially of the reticulated one in the south transept, is exceptionally fine. CHAPTER IX Concerning St Lo and Bayeux The richest pasture lands occupy the great butter-making district that lies north of St Lo. The grass in every meadow seems to grow with particular luxuriance, and the sleepy cows that are privileged to dwell in this choice country, show by their complaisant expressions the satisfaction they feel with their surroundings. It is wonderful to lie in one of these sunny pastures, when the buttercups have gilded the grass, and to watch the motionless red and white cattle as they solemnly let the hours drift past them. During a whole sunny afternoon, which I once spent in those pastoral surroundings, I can scarcely remember the slightest movement taking place among the somnolent herd. There was a gentle breeze that made waves in the silky sea of grass and sometimes stirred the fresh green leaves of the trees overhead. The birds were singing sweetly, and the distant tolling of the cathedral bells at Carentan added a richness to the sounds of nature. Imagine this scene repeated a thousand times in every direction and you have a good idea of this strip of pastoral Normandy. About four miles north of St Lo, the main road drops down into the pleasant little village of Pont Hebert and then passes over the Vire where it flows through a lovely vale. In either direction the brimming waters of the river glide between brilliant green meadows, and as it winds away into the distance, the trees become more and more blue and form a charming contrast to the brighter colours near at hand. To come across the peasants of this pretty country in the garb one so frequently sees depicted as the usual dress of Normandy, it is necessary to be there on a Sunday or some fete day. On such days the wonderful frilled caps, that stand out for quite a foot above the head, are seen on every peasant woman. They are always of the most elaborate designs, and it is scarcely necessary to say that they are of a dazzling whiteness. The men have their characteristic dark blue close-fitting coats and the high-crowned cap that being worn on week days is much more frequently in evidence than the remarkable creations worn by the womenfolk. There is a long climb from Pont Hebert to St Lo but there are plenty of pretty cottages scattered along the road, and these with crimson stonecrop on the roofs and may and lilac blossoming in the gardens, are pictures that prevent you from finding the way tedious. At last, from the considerable height you have reached, St Lo, dominated by its great church, appears on a hill scarcely a mile away. The old town, perched upon the flat surface of a mass of rock with precipitous sides, has much the same position as Domfront. But here we are shut in by other hills and there is no unlimited view of green forest-lands. The place, too, has a busy city-like aspect so that the comparison cannot be carried very far. When you have climbed the steep street that leads up through a quaint gateway to the extensive plateau above, you pass through the Rue Thiers and reach one of the finest views of the church. On one side of the street, there are picturesque houses with tiled roofs and curiously clustered chimneys, and beyond them, across a wide gravelly space, rises the majestic bulk of the west front of Notre Dame. From the wide flight of steps that leads to the main entrance, the eye travels upwards to the three deeply-recessed windows that occupy most of the surface of this end of the nave. Then the two great towers, seemingly similar, but really full of individual ornament, rise majestically to a height equal to that of the highest portion of the nave. Then higher still, soaring away into the blue sky above, come the enormous stone spires perforated with great multi-foiled openings all the way to the apex. Both towers belong to the fifteenth century, but they were not built at quite the same time. In the chancel there is a double arcade of graceful pillars without capitals. There is much fine old glass full of beautiful colours that make a curious effect when the sunlight falls through them upon the black and white marble slabs of the floor. Wedged up against the north-west corner of the exterior stands a comparatively modern house, but this incongruous companionship is no strange thing in Normandy, although, as we have seen at Falaise, there are instances in which efforts are being made to scrape off the humble domestic architecture that clings, barnacle-like, upon the walls of so many of the finest churches. On the north side of Notre Dame, there is an admirably designed outside pulpit with a great stone canopy overhead full of elaborate tracery. It overhangs the pavement, and is a noticeable object as you go towards the Place de la Prefecture. On this wide and open terrace, a band plays on Sunday evenings. There are seats under the trees by the stone balustrade from which one may look across the roofs of the lower town filling the space beneath. The great gravelly Place des Beaux-Regards that runs from the western side of the church, is terminated at the very edge of the rocky platform, and looking over the stone parapet you see the Vire flowing a hundred feet below. This view must have been very much finer before warehouses and factory-like buildings came to spoil the river-side scenery, but even now it has qualities which are unique. Facing the west end of the church, the most striking gabled front of the Maison Dieu forms part of one side of the open space. This building may at first appear almost too richly carved and ornate to be anything but a modern reproduction of a mediaeval house, but it has been so carefully preserved that the whole of the details of the front belong to the original time of the construction of the house. The lower portion is of heavy stone-work, above, the floors project one over the other, and the beauty of the timber-framing and the leaded windows is most striking. St Lo teems with soldiers, and it has a town-crier who wears a dark blue uniform and carries a drum to call attention to his announcements. In the lower part of the town, in the Rue des Halles, you may find the corn-market now held in the church that was dedicated to Thomas a Becket. The building was in course of construction when the primate happened to be at St Lo and he was asked to name the saint to whom the church should be dedicated. His advice was that they should wait until some saintly son of the church should die for its sake. Strangely enough he himself died for the privileges of the church, and thus his name was given to this now desecrated house of God. The remains of the fortifications that crown the rock are scarcely noticeable at the present time, and it is very much a matter of regret that the town has, with the exception of the Tour Beaux-Regards, lost the walls and towers that witnessed so many sieges and assaults from early Norman times right up to the days of Henry of Navarre. It was one of the towns that was held by Geoffrey Plantagenet in Stephen's reign, and it was burnt by Edward III. about the same time as Valognes. Then again in the religious wars of the sixteenth century, a most terrific attack was made on St Lo by Matignon who overcame the resistance of the garrison after Colombieres, the leader, had been shot dead upon the ramparts. It is fortunate for travellers in hot weather that exactly half-way between St Lo and Bayeux there lies the shade of the extensive forest of Cerisy through which the main road cuts in a perfectly straight line. At Semilly there is a picturesque calvary. The great wooden cross towers up to a remarkable height so that the figure of our Lord is almost lost among the overhanging trees, and down below a double flight of mossy stone steps leads up to the little walled-in space where the wayfarer may kneel in prayer at the foot of the cross. Onward from this point, the dust and heat of the roadway can become excessive, so that when at last the shade of the forest is reached, its cool glades of slender beech-trees entice you from the glaring sunshine--for towards the middle of the day the roadway receives no suggestion of shadows from the trees on either side. In this part of the country, it is a common sight to meet the peasant women riding their black donkeys with the milk cans resting in panniers on either side. The cans are of brass with spherical bodies and small necks, and are kept brilliantly burnished. The forest left behind, an extensive pottery district is passed through. The tuilleries may be seen by the roadside in nearly all the villages, Naron being entirely given up to this manufacture. Great embankments of dark brown jars show above the hedges, and the furnaces in which the earthenware is baked, are almost as frequent as the cottages. There are some particularly quaint, but absolutely simple patterns of narrow necked jugs that appear for sale in some of the shops at Bayeux and Caen. Soon the famous Norman cathedral with its three lofty spires appears straight ahead. In a few minutes the narrow streets of this historic city are entered. The place has altogether a different aspect to the busy and cheerful St Lo. The ground is almost level, it is difficult to find any really striking views, and we miss the atmosphere of the more favourably situated town. Perhaps it is because of the evil influence of Caen, but certainly Bayeux lacks the cleanliness and absence of smells that distinguishes Coutances and Avranches from some of the other Norman towns. It is, however, rich in carved fronts and timber-framed houses, and probably is the nearest rival to Lisieux in these features. The visitor is inclined to imagine that he will find the tapestry for which he makes a point of including Bayeux in his tour, at the cathedral or some building adjoining it, but this is not the case. It is necessary to traverse two or three small streets to a tree-grown public square where behind a great wooden gateway is situated the museum. As a home for such a priceless relic as this great piece of needlework, the museum seems scarcely adequate. It has a somewhat dusty and forlorn appearance, and although the tapestry is well set out in a long series of glazed wooden cases, one feels that the risks of fire and other mischances are greater here than they would be were the tapestry kept in a more modern and more fire-proof home. Queen Mathilda or whoever may have been either the actual producer or the inspirer of the tapestry must have used brilliant colours upon this great length of linen. During the nine centuries that have passed since the work was completed the linen has assumed the colour of light brown canvas, but despite this, the greens, blues, reds, and buffs of the stitches show out plainly against the unworked background. There is scarcely an English History without a reproduction of one of the scenes portrayed in the long series of pictures, and London has in the South Kensington Museum a most carefully produced copy of the original. Even the chapter-house of Westminster Abbey has its coloured reproductions of the tapestry, so that it is seldom that any one goes to Bayeux without some knowledge of the historic events portrayed in the needlework. There are fifty-eight separate scenes on the 230 feet of linen. They commence with Harold's instructions from Edward the Confessor to convey to William the Norman the fact that he (Harold) is to become king of England. Then follows the whole story leading up to the flight of the English at Senlac Hill. Even if this wonderful piece of work finds a more secure resting-place in Paris, Bayeux will still attract many pilgrims for its cathedral and its domestic architecture compare favourably with many other Norman towns. The misfortunes that attended the early years of the life of the cathedral were so numerous and consistent that the existence of the great structure to-day is almost a matter for surprise. It seems that the first church made its appearance during the eleventh century, and it was in it that Harold unwittingly took that sacred oath on the holy relics, but by some accident the church was destroyed by fire and there is probably nothing left of this earliest building except the crypt. Eleven years after the conquest of England, William was present at Bayeux when a new building built by his half-brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, was consecrated. Ten years after his death, however, this second church was burnt down. They rebuilt it once more a few years later, but a third time a fire wrought much destruction. The portions of the cathedral that survived this century of conflagrations can be seen in the two great western towers, in the arches of the Norman nave, and a few other portions. The rest of the buildings are in the Early French period of pointed architecture, with the exception of the central tower which is partly of the flamboyant period, but the upper portion is as modern as the middle of last century. The spandrels of the nave arcades are covered over with a diaper work of half a dozen or more different patterns, some of them scaly, some representing interwoven basket-work, while others are composed simply of a series of circles, joined together with lines. There are curious little panels in each of these spandrels that are carved with the most quaint and curious devices. Some are strange, Chinese-looking dragons, and some show odd-looking figures or mitred saints. The panel showing Harold taking the oath is modern. There is a most imposing pulpit surmounted by a canopy where a female figure seated on a globe is surrounded by cherubs, clouds (or are they rocks?) and fearful lightning. At a shrine dedicated to John the Baptist, the altar bears a painting in the centre showing the saint's dripping head resting in the charger. Quite close to the west front of the cathedral there stands a house that still bears its very tall chimney dating from mediaeval times. Not far from this there is one of the timber-framed fifteenth century houses ornamented with curious carvings of small figures, and down in the Rue St Malo there is an even richer example of the same type of building. On the other side of the road, nearer the cathedral, a corner house stands out conspicuously. [Illustration: AN ANCIENT HOUSE IN THE RUE ST MALO, BAYEUX] It is shown in the illustration given here and its curious detail makes it one of the most quaint of all the ancient houses in the city. Some of these old buildings date from the year 1450, when Normandy was swept clear of the English, and it is probably owing to the consideration of the leader of the French army that there are any survivals of this time. The Lord of Montenay was leading the Duke of Alencon's troops and with him were Pierre de Louvain, Robert Conigrain and a number of free archers. After they had battered the walls of Bayeux with their cannon for fifteen days, and after they had done much work with mines and trenches, the French were ready for an assault. The King of France, however, and the notables who have been mentioned "had pity for the destruction of the city and would not consent to the assault." Without their orders, however, the troops, whose ardour could not be restrained, attacked in one place, but not having had the advice of their leaders the onslaught was quite indecisive, both sides suffering equally from arrows and culverins. It was soon after this that Matthew Gough, the English leader, was obliged to surrender the city, and we are told that nine hundred of the bravest and the best soldiers of the Duchy of Normandy came out and were allowed to march to Cherbourg. The French lords "for the honour of courtesy" lent some of their horses to carry the ladies and the other gentlewomen, and they also supplied carts to convey the ordinary womenfolk who went with their husbands. "It was," says Jacques le Bouvier, who describes the scene, "a thing pitiful to behold. Some carried the smallest of the children in their arms, and some were led by hand, and in this way the English lost possession of Bayeux." [Illustration: THE GATEWAY OF THE CHATEAU] CHAPTER X Concerning Caen and the Coast Towards Trouville Caen, like mediaeval London, is famed for its bells and its smells. If you climb up to any height in the town you will see at once that the place is crowded with the spires and towers of churches; and, if you explore any of the streets, you are sure to discover how rudimentary are the notions of sanitation in the historic old city. If you come to Caen determined to thoroughly examine all the churches, you must allow at least two or three days for this purpose, for although you might endeavour to "do" the place in one single day, you would remember nothing but the fatigue, and the features of all the churches would become completely confused. My first visit to Caen, several years ago, is associated with a day of sight-seeing commenced at a very early hour. I had been deposited at one of the quays by the steamer that had started at sunrise and had slowly glided along the ten miles of canal from Ouistreham, reaching its destination at about five o'clock. The town seemed thoroughly awake at this time, the weather being brilliantly fine. White-capped women were everywhere to be seen sweeping the cobbled streets with their peculiarly fragile-looking brooms. It was so early by the actual time, however, that it seemed wise to go straight to the hotel and to postpone the commencement of sight-seeing until a more rational hour. My rooms at the hotel, however, were not yet vacated, so that it was impossible to go to my bedroom till eight o'clock. The hotel courtyard, though picturesque, with its three superimposed galleries and its cylindrical tower containing the staircase, was not, at this hour in the morning at least, a place to linger in. It seemed therefore the wisest plan to begin an exploration of some of the adjoining streets to fill the time. After having seen the exterior of three or four churches, the interiors of some others; after having explored a dozen curious courtyards and the upper part of the town, where the Chateau stands, the clocks began to strike seven, although to me it seemed like noon. By half-past eight the afternoon seemed well advanced, and when dejeuner made its appearance at the hotel it seemed as though the day would never cease. I had by this time seen several more churches and interesting old buildings, and my whole senses had become so jaded that I would scarcely have moved a yard to have seen the finest piece of architecture in the whole of Normandy. The circumstances of this day, were, no doubt, exceptional, but I mention them as a warning to those who with a pathetic conscientiousness endeavour to see far more than they can possibly comprehend in the space of a very few hours. It would be far better to spend one's whole time in the great church of the Abbaye aux Hommes, and photograph in one's mind the simplicity of the early Norman structure, than to have a confused recollection of this, St Pierre, the church of the Abbaye aux Darnes and half a dozen others. The galleried hotel I have mentioned was known as the Hotel St Barbe. It is now converted into a warehouse, but no one need regret this for it was more pleasant to look at than to actually stay in. I am glad, personally, to have had this experience; to have seen the country carts, with the blue sheep-skins over the horse collars, drive into the courtyard, and to have watched the servants of the hotel eating their meals at a long table in the open air. There was a Spanish flavour about the place that is not found in the modern hotels. There is no town I have ever known more confusing in its plan than Caen, and, although I have stayed there for nearly a week on one occasion, I am still a little uncertain in which direction to turn for the castle when I am at the church of St Jean. The streets, as a rule, are narrow and have a busy appearance that is noticeable after the quiet of Bayeux. The clatter and noise of the omnibuses has been subdued in recent years by the introduction of electric trams which sweep round the corners with a terrifying speed, for after a long sojourn in the country and quiet little towns one loses the agility and wariness of the town-bred folk. Caen, of course, does not compete with Lisieux for its leading position as the possessor of the largest number of old houses, but it nevertheless can show some quaint carved fronts in the Rue St Pierre and the narrow streets adjoining. At the present time the marks of antiquity are being removed from the beautiful renaissance courtyard of the Bourse near St Pierre. The restoration has been going on for some years, and the steps that lead up to the entrance in one corner of the quadrangle are no longer stained with the blackish-green of a prolonged period of damp. But it is better, however, that this sixteenth century house should assume a fictitious newness rather than fall entirely into disrepair. It was originally the house of one of the wealthy families of Caen named Le Valois, and was known as the Hotel d'Escoville. Another splendid house is the Hotel de la Monnaie built by the famous and princely merchant Etienne Duval, Sieur de Mondrainville, whose great wealth enabled him to get sufficient supplies into Metz to make it possible for the place to hold out during its siege in 1553. In his most admirably written book "Highways and Byways in Normandy," Mr Dearmer gives an interesting sketch of this remarkable man whose success brought him jealous enemies. They succeeded in bringing charges against him for which he was exiled, and at another time he was imprisoned in the castle at Caen until, with great difficulty, he had proved the baseness of the attacks upon his character. Duval was over seventy when he died, being, like Job, wealthy and respected, for he had survived the disasters that had fallen upon him. The gateway of the Chateau is the best and most imposing portion of the fortifications of Caen. The castle being now used as barracks, visitors as a rule are unable to enter, but as the gateway may be seen from outside the deep moat, the rest of the place need not tantalise one. In William the Conqueror's time the castle was being built, and the town walls included the two great abbeys for which Caen is chiefly famous. These two magnificent examples of Norman architecture have been restored with great thoroughness so that the marks of antiquity that one might expect are entirely wanting in both buildings. The exterior of the great church of St Etienne disappoints so many, largely from the fact that the gaunt west front is the only view one really has of the building except from a distance. Inside, services seem to go on at most times of the day, and when you are quietly looking at the mighty nave with its plain, semicircular arches and massive piers, you are suddenly startled by the entry from somewhere of a procession of priests loudly singing some awe-inspiring chant, the guttural tones of the singers echoing through the aisles. Following the clerical party will come a rabble of nuns, children and ordinary laity, and before you have scarcely had time to think a service has commenced, people are kneeling, and if you do not make haste towards the doors a priest will probably succeed in reaching you with a collecting dish in which one is not inclined to place even a sou if the service has hindered the exploration of the church. Owing to the perpetuation of an error in some of the English guides to Normandy, it is often thought that a thigh-bone of the founder of the abbey is still lying beneath the marble slab in the sanctuary, but this is a great mistake, for that last poor relic of William the Conqueror was lost during the Revolution. The whole story of the death, the burial, and the destruction of the tomb and remains of the founder of the abbey are most miserable and even gruesome. William was at Rouen when he died, and we need scarcely remind ourselves of that tragic scene discovered by the clergy when they came to the house not long after the great man had expired. Every one of William's suite had immediately recognised the changed state of affairs now that the inflexible will that had controlled the two kingdoms had been removed, and each, concerned for himself, had betaken himself with indecent haste to England or wherever his presence might be most opportune. In this way, there being no one left to watch the corpse, the Archbishop of Rouen discovered that the house and even the bed had been pillaged, so that the royal body was lying in great disorder until reverently tended by a Norman gentleman named Herluin. Having fulfilled William's wishes and brought the remains to Caen, a stately funeral was arranged. As the procession slowly passed through the narrow streets, however, it was interrupted by an alarm of fire-some of the wooden houses blazing fiercely just when the bier was passing. The flames grew so quickly that in some danger the mournful procession was dispersed and the coffin was only attended by a few monks when the gates of the Abbaye aux Hommes were reached. Eventually the burial ceremonies were in progress beside the open grave within the church, but another interruption ensued. Scarcely had the Bishop of Evreux concluded his address when everybody was startled at hearing the loud voice of Ascelin resounding through the church. He was a well-known man, a burgher, and a possessor of considerable wealth, and it was therefore with considerable anxiety that the clergy heard his claim upon the ground in which they were about to bury William. It was the actual site of a house that had belonged to Ascelin's father, for the dead king had shown no consideration to private claims when he was building the great abbey to appease the wrath of the church. The disturbance having been settled by the payment for the grave of a sum which Ascelin was induced to accept, the proceedings were resumed. But then came the worst scene of all, for it has been recorded that the coffin containing the ponderous body of the king had not been made with sufficient strength, and as it was being lowered into the grave, the boards gave way, and so gruesome was the result that the church was soon emptied. It thus came about that once more in the last phase of all William was deserted except by a few monks. The monument which was raised over the Conqueror's grave, was, however, of a most gorgeous character. It was literally encrusted with precious gems, and it is known that enormous quantities of gold from the accumulated stores of wealth which William had made were used by Otto the goldsmith (sometimes known as Aurifaber) who was entrusted with the production of this most princely tomb. Such a striking object as this could scarcely pass through many centuries in safety, and we find that in the Huguenot wars of the seventeenth century it was largely destroyed and the stone coffin was broken open, the bones being scattered. We only know what became of a thigh-bone which was somehow rescued by a monk belonging to the abbey. He kept it for some time, and in 1642 it was replaced in a new, but much less gorgeous tomb. About one hundred years later, it was moved to another part of the church, but in the Revolution this third tomb was broken into, and the last relic of the Conqueror was lost. Then after some years, the Prefet of Calvados placed upon the site of the desecrated tomb the slab of black marble that still marks the spot. The inscription reads "Hic sepultus est, Invictissimus Guielmus Conquestor, Normanniae Dux et Angliae Rex, Hujusce domus Conditor Qui obit anno MLXXXVII." When Lanfranc had been sent to the Pope by William with a view to making some arrangement by which the King could retain his wife Matilda and at the same time the good offices of the Church, his side of the bargain consisted in undertaking to build two great abbeys at Caen, one for men and one for women. The first we have already been examining, the other is at the eastern side of the town on the hill beyond the castle. It is a more completely Norman building than St Etienne, but its simple, semi-circular arches and round-headed windows contrast strangely with the huge pontifical canopy of draped velvet that is suspended above the altar, and very effectually blocks the view of the Norman apse beyond. The smallness of the windows throughout the building subdues the light within, and thus gives St Trinite a somewhat different character to St Etienne. The capitals of the piers of the arcade are carved with strange-looking monkeys and other designs, and there are chevron mouldings conspicuous in the nave. The tomb of Queen Mathilda is in the choir. Like that of her husband it has been disturbed more than once, so that the marble slab on top is all that remains of the original. Opposite the Place Reine Mathilde stands the desecrated church of St Gilles, one of the numerous beautiful buildings in Caen now in partial ruin and occupied as warehouses, wine-vaults or workshops. They are all worth looking for, and if possible examining inside as well as out, for they include some beautiful flamboyant structures and others of earlier date, such as St Nicholas, illustrated here, which in part dates from Norman times. St Etienne le Vieux, quite close to the Abbaye aux Hommes, is a beautiful building rich in elaborate carving and rows of gargoyles. It was built in the early years of the fifteenth century in place of one which had fallen into ruin when Henry V. besieged Caen. It is still unrestored, and if you peep inside the open doors you will see the interior filled with ladders, boxes, brooms, and a thousand odds and ends, this most beautiful structure being used as a municipal workshop. We have more than once referred to the church of St Pierre, but as yet we have made no reference to its architecture. The tower and graceful spire needs no detailed description, for it appears in the coloured illustration adjoining, and from it one may see what a strikingly perfect structure this is for such an early date as 1308. It is a marvel of construction, for the spire within is hollow, and without any interior framework or supports at all. Although it is so seemingly frail, it was used during the sixteenth century for military purposes, having been selected as a good position for firing upon the castle, and it naturally became a target for the guns inside the fortress. You cannot now see the holes made by the cannon balls, but although they were not repaired for many years the tower remained perfectly stable, as a proof of the excellent work of Nicholas, the Englishman who built it. Unlike the church of the Abbaye aux Dames, St Pierre is brilliantly lit inside by large, traceried windows that let in the light through their painted glass. In the nave the roof is covered with the most elaborate vaulting with great pendants dropping from the centre of each section; but for the most crowded ornament one must examine the chancel and the chapels. The church of St Jean is not conspicuous, but it is notable for two or three features. The western tower is six and a half feet out of perpendicular, the triforium has a noticeable balustrade running all round, and the chancel is longer than the nave. St Sauveur, in the Rue St Pierre is of the same period as St Jean, but its tower if it had been crocketed would have very closely resembled that of St Pierre, and it is chiefly notable for the fact that it is two churches thrown into one--that of St Eustace being joined on to it. Another feature of Caen that is often overlooked is the charm of its old courtyards. Behind some of the rather plain stone fronts, the archways lead into little paved quadrangles that have curious well-heads, rustic outside staircases, and odd-shaped dormer windows on the steep roofs. One of these courtyards behind a house in the Rue de Bayeux is illustrated here, but to do justice to the quaintnesses that are to be revealed, it would have been necessary to give several examples. In the Boulevard St Pierre, where the pavements are shaded by pink horse chestnuts there stands the Tour le Roy. It is the most noticeable remnant of the days when Caen was a walled and strongly fortified city, but as you look at it to-day it seems too much like a good piece of the sham antique to be found at large exhibitions. It is the restoration that is at fault, and not the tower itself, which is really old, and no doubt is in quiet rebellion at the false complexion it is obliged to wear. The view of Caen from across the race-course is a beautiful one, but under some aspects this is quite eclipsed by the wonderful groupings of the church towers seen from the canal as it goes out of the town towards the east. I can remember one particular afternoon when there was a curious mistiness through which the western sunlight passed, turning everything into a strange, dull gold. It was a light that suppressed all that was crude and commercial near at hand and emphasised the medievalism of the place by throwing out spires and towers in softly tinted silhouettes. I love to think of Caen robed in this cloth of gold, and the best I can wish for every one who goes there with the proper motives, is that they may see the place in that same light. On the left, a few miles out of Caen on the road to Creully, stands the Abbaye d'Ardennes where Charles VII. lodged when his army was besieging the city in 1450. The buildings are now used as a farm, and the church is generally stacked with hay and straw up to the triforium. Although they start towards the east, the canal and the river Orne taking parallel courses run generally towards the north, both entering the sea by the village of Ouistreham, the ancient port of Caen. Along the margin of the canal there is a good road, and almost hidden by the long grass outside the tall trees that line the canal on each bank, runs the steam tramway to Cabourg and the coast to the west of the Orne. Except when the fussy little piece of machinery drawing three or four curious, open-sided trams, is actually passing, the tramway escapes notice, for the ground is level and the miniature rails are laid on the ground without any excavating or embanking. The scenery as you go along the tramway, the road, or the canal, is charming, the pastures on either side being exceedingly rich, and the red and white cattle seem to revel in the long grass and buttercups. Heronville, Blainville and other sleepy villages are pleasantly perched on the slight rise on the western side of the canal. Their churches, with red roofs all subdued with lichen into the softest browns, rise above the cottages or farm buildings that surround them in the ideal fashion that is finally repeated at Ouistreham where locks impound the waters of the canal, and a great lighthouse stands out more conspicuously than the church tower. Seen through the framework of closely trimmed trees Ouistreham makes a notable picture. The great Norman church is so exceedingly imposing for such a mere village, that it is easy to understand how, as a port in the Middle Ages, Ouistreham flourished exceedingly. The tramway crosses the canal at Benouville on its way to Cabourg, and leaving the shade of birches and poplars takes its way over the open fields towards the sea. Benouville is best remembered on account of its big chateau with a great classic portico much resembling a section of Waterloo Place perched upon a fine terraced slope. Ranville has an old church tower standing in lonely fashion by itself, and you pass a conspicuous calvary as you go on to the curious little seaside resort known as Le Home-Sur-Mer. The houses are bare and (if one may coin a word) seasidey. Perched here and there on the sandy ridge between the road and the shore, they have scarcely anything more to suggest a garden than the thin wiry grass that contrives to exist in such soil. Down on the wide sandy beach there is an extensive sweep of the coast to be seen stretching from beyond Ouistreham to the bold cliffs of Le Havre. Keeping along the road by the tramway you have been out of sight of the sea, but in a few minutes the pleasant leafiness of Cabourg has been reached. Here everything has the full flavour of a seaside resort, for we find a casino, a long esplanade, hotels, shops and bathing apparatus. It is a somewhat strong dose of modern life after the slumbering old world towns and villages we have been exploring, and it is therefore with great satisfaction that we turn toward the village of Dives lying close at hand. The place possesses a splendid old market hall, more striking perhaps than that of Ecouche and a picturesque inn--the Hotel Guillaume le Conquerant. The building is of stone with tiled roofs, and in the two courtyards there are galleries and much ancient timber-framing, but unfortunately the proprietor has not been content to preserve the place in its natural picturesqueness. He has crowded the exterior, as well as the rooms, with a thousand additions of a meretricious character which detract very much from the charm of the fine old inn and defeat the owner's object, that of making it attractive on account of its age and associations. Madame de Sevigne wrote many of her letters in one of the rooms, but we know that she saw none of the sham antique lamps, the well-head, or the excess of flowers that blaze in the courtyards. On account of its name, the unwary are trapped into thinking that William the Norman--for he had still to defeat Harold--could have frequently been seen strolling about this hostelry, when his forces for invading England were gathering and his fleet of ships were building. This is, of course, a total misapprehension, for the only structure that contains anything that dates back to 1066 is the church. Even this building dates chiefly from the fourteenth century, but there is to be seen, besides the Norman walls, a carved wooden cross that is believed to have been found in the sea, and therefore to have some connection with William's great fleet and its momentous voyage to England. The names of the leading men who accompanied William are engraved upon two marble slabs inside the church, and on the hill above the village a short column put up by M. de Caumont, commemorates the site upon which William is believed to have inspected his forces previous to their embarkation. It is a difficult matter to form any clear idea of the size of this army for the estimates vary from 67,000 to 14,000, and there is also much uncertainty as to the number of ships employed in transporting the host across the channel. The lowest estimates suggest 696 vessels, and there is every reason to believe that they were quite small. The building of so large a fleet of even small boats between the winter and summer of 1066 must have employed an enormous crowd of men, and we may be justified in picturing a very busy scene on the shores of this portion of the coast of Normandy. Duke William's ship, which was named the _Mora_, had been presented to him by his wife Mathilda, and most of the vessels had been built and manned by the Norman barons and prelates, the Bishop of Bayeux preparing no less than a hundred ships. The Conquest of England must have almost been regarded as a holy crusade! When the fleet left the mouth of the river Dives it did not make at once for Pevensey Bay. The ships instead worked along the coast eastwards to the Somme, where they waited until a south wind blew, then the vessels all left the estuary each carrying a light, for it was almost dark. By the next morning the white chalk of Beachy Head was in sight, and at nine o'clock William had landed on English soil. Close to Dives and in sight of the hill on which the Normans were mustered, there is a small watering-place known as Houlgate-sur-mer. The houses are charmingly situated among trees, and the place has in recent years become known as one of those quiet resorts where princes and princesses with their families may be seen enjoying the simple pleasures of the seaside, _incognito_. This fact, of course, gets known to enterprising journalists who come down and photograph these members of the European royal families wherever they can get them in particularly unconventional surroundings. From Houlgate all the way to Trouville the country is wooded and hilly, and in the hollows, where the timber-framed farms with their thatched roofs are picturesquely arranged, there is much to attract the visitor who, wearying of the gaiety of Trouville and its imitators along the coast, wishes to find solitudes and natural surroundings. CHAPTER XI Some Notes on the History of Normandy The early inhabitants of Normandy submitted to the Roman legions under Titurus Sabinus in B.C. 58, only a few years before Caesar's first attempt upon Britain. By their repeated attacks upon Roman territory the Gaulish tribes had brought upon themselves the invasion which, after some stubborn fighting, made their country a province of the Roman Empire. Inter-tribal strife having now ceased, the civilisation of Rome made its way all over the country including that northern portion known as Neustria, much of which from the days of Rollo came to be called Normandy. Traces of the Roman occupation are scattered all over the province, the most remarkable being the finely preserved theatre at Lillebonne, a corruption of Juliabona, mentioned in another chapter. In the second century Rouen, under its Roman name Rotomagos, is mentioned by Ptolemy. It was then merely the capital of the tribe of Velocasses, but in Diocletian's reign it had become not only the port of Roman Paris, but also the most important town in the province. In time the position occupied by Rotomagos became recognised as one having greater strategical advantages than Juliabona, a little further down the river, and this Gallo-Roman precursor of the modern Rouen became the headquarters of the provincial governor. The site of Rotomagos would appear to include the Palais de Justice and the Cathedral of the present day. After the four centuries of Roman rule came the incursions of the savage hordes of northern Europe, and of the great army of Huns, under Attila, who marched through Gaul in A.D. 451. The Romans with their auxiliaries engaged Attila at Chalons--the battle in which fabulous numbers of men are said to have fallen on both sides. The Roman power was soon completely withdrawn from Gaul, and the Franks under Clovis, after the battle of Soissons, made themselves complete masters of the country. In 511 Clovis died. He had embraced Christianity fifteen years before, having been baptised at Rheims, probably through the influence of his wife Clothilda. Then for two hundred and fifty years France was under the Merovingian kings, and throughout much of this period there was very little settled government, Neustria, together with the rest of France, suffering from the lawlessness that prevailed under these "sluggard" kings. Rouen was still the centre of many of the events connected with the history of Neustria. We know something of the story of Hilparik, a king of Neustria, whose brutal behaviour to his various queens and the numerous murders and revenges that darkened his reign, form a most unsavoury chapter in the story of this portion of France. Following this period came the time when France was ruled by the mayors of the palace who, owing to the weakness of the sovereigns, gradually assumed the whole of the royal power. After Charles Martel, the most famous of these mayors, had defeated the Saracens at Tours, came his son Pepin-le-Bref, the father of Charlemagne. Childeric, the last of the Merovingian kings, had been put out of the way in a monastery and Pepin had become the King of France. Charlemagne, however, soon made himself greater still as Emperor of an enormous portion of Europe--France, Italy, and Germany all coming under his rule. At his death Charlemagne divided his empire. His successor Louis le Debonnaire, owing to his easy-going weakness, fell a prey to Charlemagne's other sons, and at his death, Charles the Bald became King of France and the country west of the Rhine. The other portions of the empire falling to Lothaire and the younger Louis. During all this period, France had suffered from endless fighting and the famines that came as an unevitable consequence, and just about this time Neustria suffered still further owing to the incursions of the Danes. Even in Charlemagne's time the black-sailed ships of the Northmen had been seen hovering along the coast near the mouth of the Seine, and it has been said that the great Emperor wept at the sight of some of these awe-inspiring pirates. In the year 841 the Northmen had sailed up the Seine as far as Rouen, but they found little to plunder, for during the reign of the Merovingian kings, the town had been reduced to a mere shadow of its former prosperity. There had been a great fire and a great plague, and its ruin had been rendered complete during the civil strife that succeeded the death of Charlemagne. Wave after wave came the northern invasions led by such men as Bjorn Ironside, and Ragnar Lodbrog. Charles the Bald, fearing to meet these dreaded warriors, bribed them away from the walls of Paris in the year 875. But they came again twelve years afterwards in search of more of the Frenchmen's gold. When Charles the Fat, the German Emperor, became also King of France, he had to suffer for his treacherous murder of a Danish chief, for soon afterwards came the great Rollo with a large fleet of galleys, and Paris was besieged once more. Odo, Count of Paris, held out successfully, but when the king came from Germany with his army, instead of attacking the Danes, he induced them to retire by offering them a bribe of 800 lbs. of silver. Before long Odo became King of France, but after ten years of constant fighting, he died and was succeeded by Charles the Simple. This title does an injustice to his character, for he certainly did more for France than most of his predecessors. Finding the Northmen too firmly established in Neustria to have any hope of successfully driving them out of the country, he made a statesmanlike arrangement with Rollo. The Dane was to do homage to the French king, to abandon his gods Thor, Odin and the rest for Christianity, and in return was to be made ruler of the country between the River Epte and the sea, and westwards as far as the borders of Brittany Rollo was also to be given the hand of the Princess Gisela in marriage. Rouen became the capital of the new Duchy of Normandy, and the old name of Neustria disappeared. The Northmen were not at this time numerous, but they continued to come over in considerable numbers establishing centres such as that of Bayeux, where only Danish was spoken. As in England, this warrior people showed the most astonishing adaptability to the higher civilisation with which they had come into contact, and the new generations that sprang up on French soil added to the vigour and daring of their ancestors the manners and advanced customs of France, although the Northmen continued to be called "The Pirates" for a considerable time. When Rollo died he was succeeded by his son William Longsword, and from an incident mentioned by Mr T.A. Cook in his "Story of Rouen," we can see the attitude of the Normans towards Charles the Simple. He had sent down to Rouen two court gallants to sympathise with the Princess Gisela, his daughter, for the rough treatment she had received at the hands of Rollo, but they were both promptly siezed and hanged in what is now the Place du Marche Vieux. Great stone castles were beginning to appear at all the chief places in Normandy, and when Duke Richard had succeeded Harold Blacktooth we find that the Duchy was assuming an ordered existence internally. The feudal system had then reached its fullest development, and the laws established by Rollo were properly administered. With the accession of Hugh Capet to the throne of France, Normandy had become a most loyal as well as powerful fief of the crown. The tenth century witnessed also an attempt on the part of the serfs of the Duchy to throw off something of the awful grip of the feudal power. These peasants were the descendants of Celts, of Romans, and of Franks, and their efforts to form a representative assembly bear a pathetic resemblance to the movement towards a similar end in Russia of to-day. The representatives of the serfs were treated with the most fearful cruelty and sent back to their villages; but the movement did not fail to have its effects, for the condition of the villains in Normandy was always better than in other parts of France. Broadly speaking, all the successors of Rollo, the first Duke of Normandy, governed the country with wisdom and ability, and although there was more or less constant war, either with the French, who were always hoping to regain the lost province, or with rebellious barons who disputed the authority of the dukes, yet the country progressed steadily and became prosperous. Abbeys and churches that the invaders had laid waste were rebuilt on a larger scale. At Jumieges there are still to be seen some remains of the church that William Longsword began to build for the unfortunate monks who had been left homeless after their abbey had been destroyed by the "Pirates." Richard I., who died in 996, had added to the Cathedral at Rouen, and the abbey of St Ouen prospered greatly in the religious revival that became so widespread during the eleventh century. Duke Richard II. had been assisted on one occasion by Olaf, King of Norway, and before his return to the north that monarch, impressed no doubt by the pomp of the ceremonial, was in 1004 baptised in the cathedral at Rouen. After Richard II. came Robert the Magnificent, who was called also Robert the Devil by the people. It was he, who from the walls of his castle at Falaise, if the legend be true, first saw Arlette the tanner's daughter who afterwards became the Mother of William the Bastard. As a boy William had a perilous life, and it is almost marvellous that he survived to change his appellation to that of "Conqueror." Robert the Magnificent had joined one of the crusades to the Holy Land when William was only seven years old, but before he left Normandy, he had made it known that he wished the boy to succeed him. For twenty years there was civil war between the greater barons and the supporters of the heir, but in the end William showed himself sufficiently strong to establish his power. He won a great battle at Val-es-Dunes where he had been met by the barons led by Guy of Burgundy, and, having taken some of the most formidable fortresses in the Duchy, he turned his attention to his foes outside with equal success. Soon after this William married Mathilda a daughter of Count Baldwin of Flanders, but although by this act he made peace with her country, William soon found himself in trouble with the church. Bishop Mauger, whom he had appointed to the See of Rouen, found fault with the marriage owing to its being within the forbidden degrees of relationship, and the papal sanction having been refused, William only obtained his wishes through the agency of Lanfranc. All his life William appears to have set a stern example of purity in family life, and his relations with the church, from this time to his death, seem to have been most friendly. It was largely due to his religious life as well as the support he gave to the monasteries that William was able to give the colour of a religious crusade to his project for invading England. Harold had slighted the sacredness of the holy relics of the saints of Normandy, and William was to show England that their king's action was not to pass unpunished. In this way the Norman host that assembled at Dives, while the great fleet was being prepared, included many who came from outside William's dominions. After the whole of England had been completely subjugated William had his time and attention largely taken up with affairs in Normandy. His son Robert was soon in open rebellion, and assisted by the French King, Philip I., Robert brought about the death of his father, for it was while devastating a portion of French territory that William received the injury which resulted in his death. Robert then became Duke of Normandy, and there followed those sanguinary quarrels between the three brothers William Rufus, King of England, Henry Beauclerc and Robert. Finally, after his return from Palestine, Robert came to England to endeavour to make peace with his younger brother Henry, who was now king, but the quarrel was not to be settled in this way. Henry, determined to add Normandy to the English crown, crossed the channel with a large army and defeated his brother at Tinchebrai in 1106. With the accession of Stephen to the English throne in 1135, came the long struggle between that king and Maud. When Henry II. married Eleanor of Aquitaine, not only that great province but also Maine and Anjou came under his sway, so that for a time Normandy was only a portion of the huge section of France belonging to the English Crown. During his long reign Henry spent much time in Normandy, and Argentan and Avranches are memorable in connection with the tragedy of Thomas a Becket. During the absence of Richard Coeur-de-Lion in Palestine John became exceedingly friendly with Philip Augustus, the French King, but when Richard was dead he found cause to quarrel with the new English king and, after the fall of the Chateau Gaillard, John soon discovered that he had lost the Duchy of Normandy and had earned for himself the name of "Lackland." From this time, namely, the commencement of the thirteenth century, Normandy belonged to the crown of France although English armies were, until 1450, in frequent occupation of the larger towns and fortresses. 
7880	----	PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS IN FRANCE AND ITALY. FLORENCE (Continued). June 8th.--I went this morning to the Uffizi gallery. The entrance is from the great court of the palace, which communicates with Lung' Arno at one end, and with the Grand Ducal Piazza at the other. The gallery is in the upper story of the palace, and in the vestibule are some busts of the princes and cardinals of the Medici family,--none of them beautiful, one or two so ugly as to be ludicrous, especially one who is all but buried in his own wig. I at first travelled slowly through the whole extent of this long, long gallery, which occupies the entire length of the palace on both sides of the court, and is full of sculpture and pictures. The latter, being opposite to the light, are not seen to the best advantage; but it is the most perfect collection, in a chronological series, that I have seen, comprehending specimens of all the masters since painting began to be an art. Here are Giotto, and Cimabue, and Botticelli, and Fra Angelico, and Filippo Lippi, and a hundred others, who have haunted me in churches and galleries ever since I have been in Italy, and who ought to interest me a great deal more than they do. Occasionally to-day I was sensible of a certain degree of emotion in looking at an old picture; as, for example, by a large, dark, ugly picture of Christ hearing the cross and sinking beneath it, when, somehow or other, a sense of his agony, and the fearful wrong that mankind did (and does) its Redeemer, and the scorn of his enemies, and the sorrow of those who loved him, came knocking at any heart and got entrance there. Once more I deem it a pity that Protestantism should have entirely laid aside this mode of appealing to the religious sentiment. I chiefly paid attention to the sculpture, and was interested in a long series of busts of the emperors and the members of their families, and some of the great men of Rome. There is a bust of Pompey the Great, bearing not the slightest resemblance to that vulgar and unintellectual one in the gallery of the Capitol, altogether a different cast of countenance. I could not judge whether it resembled the face of the statue, having seen the latter so imperfectly in the duskiness of the hall of the Spada Palace. These, I presume, are the busts which Mr. Powers condemns, from internal evidence, as unreliable and conventional. He may be right,--and is far more likely, of course, to be right than I am,--yet there certainly seems to be character in these marble faces, and they differ as much among themselves as the same number of living faces might. The bust of Caracalla, however, which Powers excepted from his censure, certainly does give stronger assurance of its being an individual and faithful portrait than any other in the series. All the busts of Caracalla--of which I have seen many--give the same evidence of their truth; and I should like to know what it was in this abominable emperor that made him insist upon having his actual likeness perpetuated, with all the ugliness of its animal and moral character. I rather respect him for it, and still more the sculptor, whose hand, methinks, must have trembled as he wrought the bust. Generally these wicked old fellows, and their wicked wives and daughters, are not so hideous as we might expect. Messalina, for instance, has small and pretty features, though with rather a sensual development of the lower part of the face. The busts, it seemed to me, are usually superior as works of art to those in the Capitol, and either better preserved or more thoroughly restored. The bust of Nero might almost be called handsome here, though bearing his likeness unmistakably. I wish some competent person would undertake to analyze and develop his character, and how and by what necessity--with all his elegant tastes, his love of the beautiful, his artist nature--he grew to be such a monster. Nero has never yet had justice done him, nor have any of the wicked emperors; not that I suppose them to have been any less monstrous than history represents them; but there must surely have been something in their position and circumstances to render the terrible moral disease which seized upon them so generally almost inevitable. A wise and profound man, tender and reverent of the human soul, and capable of appreciating it in its height and depth, has a great field here for the exercise of his powers. It has struck me, in reading the history of the Italian republics, that many of the tyrants, who sprung up after the destruction of their liberties, resembled the worst of the Roman emperors. The subject of Nero and his brethren has often perplexed me with vain desires to come at the truth. There were many beautiful specimens of antique, ideal sculpture all along the gallery,--Apollos, Bacchuses, Venuses, Mercurys, Fauns,--with the general character of all of which I was familiar enough to recognize them at a glance. The mystery and wonder of the gallery, however, the Venus de' Medici, I could nowhere see, and indeed was almost afraid to see it; for I somewhat apprehended the extinction of another of those lights that shine along a man's pathway, and go out in a snuff the instant he comes within eyeshot of the fulfilment of his hopes. My European experience has extinguished many such. I was pretty well contented, therefore, not to find the famous statue in the whole of my long journey from end to end of the gallery, which terminates on the opposite side of the court from that where it commences. The ceiling, by the by, through the entire length, is covered with frescos, and the floor paved with a composition of stone smooth and polished like marble. The final piece of sculpture, at the end of the gallery, is a copy of the Laocoon, considered very fine. I know not why, but it did not impress me with the sense of mighty and terrible repose--a repose growing out of the infinitude of trouble-- that I had felt in the original. Parallel with the gallery, on both sides of the palace-court, there runs a series of rooms devoted chiefly to pictures, although statues and bas-reliefs are likewise contained in some of them. I remember an unfinished bas-relief by Michael Angelo of a Holy Family, which I touched with my finger, because it seemed as if he might have been at work upon it only an hour ago. The pictures I did little more than glance at, till I had almost completed again the circuit of the gallery, through this series of parallel rooms, and then I came upon a collection of French and Dutch and Flemish masters, all of which interested me more than the Italian generally. There was a beautiful picture by Claude, almost as good as those in the British National Gallery, and very like in subject; the sun near the horizon, of course, and throwing its line of light over the ripple of water, with ships at the strand, and one or two palaces of stately architecture on the shore. Landscapes by Rembrandt; fat Graces and other plump nudities by Rubens; brass pans and earthen pots and herrings by Terriers and other Dutchmen; none by Gerard Douw, I think, but several by Mieris; all of which were like bread and beef and ale, after having been fed too long on made dishes. This is really a wonderful collection of pictures; and from first, to last--from Giotto to the men of yesterday--they are in admirable condition, and may be appreciated for all the merit that they ever possessed. I could not quite believe that I was not to find the Venus de' Medici; and still, as I passed from one room to another, my breath rose and fell a little, with the half-hope, half-fear, that she might stand before me. Really, I did not know that I cared so much about Venus, or any possible woman of marble. At last, when I had come from among the Dutchmen, I believe, and was looking at some works of Italian artists, chiefly Florentines, I caught a glimpse of her through the door of the next room. It is the best room of the series, octagonal in shape, and hung with red damask, and the light comes down from a row of windows, passing quite round, beneath an octagonal dome. The Venus stands somewhat aside from the centre of the room, and is surrounded by an iron railing, a pace or two from her pedestal in front, and less behind. I think she might safely be left to the reverence her womanhood would win, without any other protection. She is very beautiful, very satisfactory; and has a fresh and new charm about her unreached by any cast or copy. The line of the marble is just so much mellowed by time, as to do for her all that Gibson tries, or ought to try to do for his statues by color, softening her, warming her almost imperceptibly, making her an inmate of the heart, as well as a spiritual existence. I felt a kind of tenderness for her; an affection, not as if she were one woman, but all womanhood in one. Her modest attitude, which, before I saw her I had not liked, deeming that it might be an artificial shame, is partly what unmakes her as the heathen goddess, and softens her into woman. There is a slight degree of alarm, too, in her face; not that she really thinks anybody is looking at her, yet the idea has flitted through her mind, and startled her a little. Her face is so beautiful and intellectual, that it is not dazzled out of sight by her form. Methinks this was a triumph for the sculptor to achieve. I may as well stop here. It is of no use to throw heaps of words upon her; for they all fall away, and leave her standing in chaste and naked grace, as untouched as when I began. She has suffered terribly by the mishaps of her long existence in the marble. Each of her legs has been broken into two or three fragments, her arms have been severed, her body has been broken quite across at the waist, her head has been snapped off at the neck. Furthermore, there have been grievous wounds and losses of substance in various tender parts of her person. But on account of the skill with which the statue has been restored, and also because the idea is perfect and indestructible, all these injuries do not in the least impair the effect, even when you see where the dissevered fragments have been reunited. She is just as whole as when she left the hands of the sculptor. I am glad to have seen this Venus, and to have found her so tender and so chaste. On the wall of the room, and to be taken in at the same glance, is a painted Venus by Titian, reclining on a couch, naked and lustful. The room of the Venus seems to be the treasure-place of the whole Uffizi Palace, containing more pictures by famous masters than are to be found in all the rest of the gallery. There were several by Raphael, and the room was crowded with the easels of artists. I did not look half enough at anything, but merely took a preliminary taste, as a prophecy of enjoyment to come. As we were at dinner to-day, at half past three, there was a ring at the door, and a minute after our servant brought a card. It was Mr. Robert Browning's, and on it was written in pencil an invitation for us to go to see them this evening. He had left the card and gone away; but very soon the bell rang again, and he had come back, having forgotten to give his address. This time he came in; and he shook hands with all of us, children and grown people, and was very vivacious and agreeable. He looked younger and even handsomer than when I saw him in London, two years ago, and his gray hairs seemed fewer than those that had then strayed into his youthful head. He talked a wonderful quantity in a little time, and told us--among other things that we should never have dreamed of--that Italian people will not cheat you, if you construe them generously, and put them upon their honor. Mr. Browning was very kind and warm in his expressions of pleasure at seeing us; and, on our part, we were all very glad to meet him. He must be an exceedingly likable man. . . . They are to leave Florence very soon, and are going to Normandy, I think he said, for the rest of the summer. The Venus de' Medici has a dimple in her chin. June 9th.--We went last evening, at eight o'clock, to see the Brownings; and, after some search and inquiry, we found the Casa Guidi, which is a palace in a street not very far from our own. It being dusk, I could not see the exterior, which, if I remember, Browning has celebrated in song; at all events, Mrs. Browning has called one of her poems "Casa Guidi Windows." The street is a narrow one; but on entering the palace, we found a spacious staircase and ample accommodations of vestibule and hall, the latter opening on a balcony, where we could hear the chanting of priests in a church close by. Browning told us that this was the first church where an oratorio had ever been performed. He came into the anteroom to greet us, as did his little boy, Robert, whom they call Pennini for fondness. The latter cognomen is a diminutive of Apennino, which was bestowed upon him at his first advent into the world because he was so very small, there being a statue in Florence of colossal size called Apennino. I never saw such a boy as this before; so slender, fragile, and spirit-like,--not as if he were actually in ill health, but as if he had little or nothing to do with human flesh and blood. His face is very pretty and most intelligent, and exceedingly like his mother's. He is nine years old, and seems at once less childlike and less manly than would befit that age. I should not quite like to be the father of such a boy, and should fear to stake so much interest and affection on him as he cannot fail to inspire. I wonder what is to become of him,--whether he will ever grow to be a man,--whether it is desirable that he should. His parents ought to turn their whole attention to making him robust and earthly, and to giving him a thicker scabbard to sheathe his spirit in. He was born in Florence, and prides himself on being a Florentine, and is indeed as un-English a production as if he were native of another planet. Mrs. Browning met us at the door of the drawing-room, and greeted us most kindly,--a pale, small person, scarcely embodied at all; at any rate, only substantial enough to put forth her slender fingers to be grasped, and to speak with a shrill, yet sweet, tenuity of voice. Really, I do not see how Mr. Browning can suppose that he has an earthly wife any more than an earthly child; both are of the elfin race, and will flit away from him some day when he least thinks of it. She is a good and kind fairy, however, and sweetly disposed towards the human race, although only remotely akin to it. It is wonderful to see how small she is, how pale her cheek, how bright and dark her eyes. There is not such another figure in the world; and her black ringlets cluster down into her neck, and make her face look the whiter by their sable profusion. I could not form any judgment about her age; it may range anywhere within the limits of human life or elfin life. When I met her in London at Lord Houghton's breakfast-table, she did not impress me so singularly; for the morning light is more prosaic than the dim illumination of their great tapestried drawing-room; and besides, sitting next to her, she did not have occasion to raise her voice in speaking, and I was not sensible what a slender voice she has. It is marvellous to me how so extraordinary, so acute, so sensitive a creature can impress us, as she does, with the certainty of her benevolence. It seems to me there were a million chances to one that she would have been a miracle of acidity and bitterness. We were not the only guests. Mr. and Mrs. E------, Americans, recently from the East, and on intimate terms with the Brownings, arrived after us; also Miss F. H------, an English literary lady, whom I have met several times in Liverpool; and lastly came the white head and palmer-like beard of Mr. ------ with his daughter. Mr. Browning was very efficient in keeping up conversation with everybody, and seemed to be in all parts of the room and in every group at the same moment; a most vivid and quick-thoughted person, logical and common-sensible, as, I presume, poets generally are in their daily talk. Mr. ------, as usual, was homely and plain of manner, with an old-fashioned dignity, nevertheless, and a remarkable deference and gentleness of tone in addressing Mrs. Browning. I doubt, however, whether he has any high appreciation either of her poetry or her husband's, and it is my impression that they care as little about his. We had some tea and some strawberries, and passed a pleasant evening. There was no very noteworthy conversation; the most interesting topic being that disagreeable and now wearisome one of spiritual communications, as regards which Mrs. Browning is a believer, and her husband an infidel. Mr. ------ appeared not to have made up his mind on the matter, but told a story of a successful communication between Cooper the novelist and his sister, who had been dead fifty years. Browning and his wife had both been present at a spiritual session held by Mr. Hume, and had seen and felt the unearthly hands, one of which had placed a laurel wreath on Mrs. Browning's head. Browning, however, avowed his belief that these hands were affixed to the feet of Mr. Hume, who lay extended in his chair, with his legs stretched far under the table. The marvellousness of the fact, as I have read of it, and heard it from other eye-witnesses, melted strangely away in his hearty gripe, and at the sharp touch of his logic; while his wife, ever and anon, put in a little gentle word of expostulation. I am rather surprised that Browning's conversation should be so clear, and so much to the purpose at the moment, since his poetry can seldom proceed far without running into the high grass of latent meanings and obscure allusions. Mrs. Browning's health does not permit late hours, so we began to take heave at about ten o'clock. I heard her ask Mr. ------ if he did not mean to revisit Europe, and heard him answer, not uncheerfully, taking hold of his white hair, "It is getting rather too late in the evening now." If any old age can be cheerful, I should think his might be; so good a man, so cool, so calm, so bright, too, we may say. His life has been like the days that end in pleasant sunsets. He has a great loss, however, or what ought to be a great loss,--soon to be encountered in the death of his wife, who, I think, can hardly live to reach America. He is not eminently an affectionate man. I take him to be one who cannot get closely home to his sorrow, nor feel it so sensibly as he gladly would; and, in consequence of that deficiency, the world lacks substance to him. It is partly the result, perhaps, of his not having sufficiently cultivated his emotional nature. His poetry shows it, and his personal intercourse, though kindly, does not stir one's blood in the least. Little Pennini, during the evening, sometimes helped the guests to cake and strawberries; joined in the conversation, when he had anything to say, or sat down upon a couch to enjoy his own meditations. He has long curling hair, and has not yet emerged from his frock and short hose. It is funny to think of putting him into trousers. His likeness to his mother is strange to behold. June 10th.--My wife and I went to the Pitti Palace to-day; and first entered a court where, yesterday, she had seen a carpet of flowers, arranged for some great ceremony. It must have been a most beautiful sight, the pavement of the court being entirely covered by them, in a regular pattern of brilliant lines, so as really to be a living mosaic. This morning, however, the court had nothing but its usual stones, and the show of yesterday seemed so much the more inestimable as having been so evanescent. Around the walls of the court there were still some pieces of splendid tapestry which had made part of yesterday's magnificence. We went up the staircase, of regally broad and easy ascent, and made application to be admitted to see the grand-ducal apartments. An attendant accordingly took the keys, and ushered us first into a great hall with a vaulted ceiling, and then through a series of noble rooms, with rich frescos above and mosaic floors, hung with damask, adorned with gilded chandeliers, and glowing, in short, with more gorgeousness than I could have imagined beforehand, or can now remember. In many of the rooms were those superb antique cabinets which I admire more than any other furniture ever invented; only these were of unexampled art and glory, inlaid with precious stones, and with beautiful Florentine mosaics, both of flowers and landscapes,--each cabinet worth a lifetime's toil to make it, and the cost a whole palace to pay for it. Many of the rooms were covered with arras, of landscapes, hunting-scenes, mythological subjects, or historical scenes, equal to pictures in truth of representation, and possessing an indescribable richness that makes them preferable as a mere adornment of princely halls and chambers. Some of the rooms, as I have said, were laid in mosaic of stone and marble, otherwise in lovely patterns of various woods; others were covered with carpets, delightful to tread upon, and glowing like the living floor of flowers which my wife saw yesterday. There were tables, too, of Florentine mosaic, the mere materials of which--lapis lazuli, malachite, pearl, and a hundred other precious things--were worth a fortune, and made a thousand times more valuable by the artistic skill of the manufacturer. I toss together brilliant words by the handful, and make a rude sort of patchwork, but can record no adequate idea of what I saw in this suite of rooms; and the taste, the subdued splendor, so that it did not shine too high, but was all tempered into an effect at once grand and soft,--this was quite as remarkable as the gorgeous material. I have seen a very dazzling effect produced in the principal cabin of an American clipper-ship quite opposed to this in taste. After making the circuit of the grand-ducal apartments, we went into a door in the left wing of the palace, and ascended a narrow flight of stairs,--several tortuous flights indeed,--to the picture-gallery. It fills a great many stately halls, which themselves are well worth a visit for the architecture and frescos; only these matters become commonplace after travelling through a mile or two of them. The collection of pictures--as well for their number as for the celebrity and excellence of many of them--is the most interesting that I have seen, and I do not yet feel in a condition, nor perhaps ever shall, to speak of a single one. It gladdened my very heart to find that they were not darkened out of sight, nor apparently at all injured by time, but were well kept and varnished, brilliantly framed, and, no doubt, restored by skilful touches if any of them needed it. The artists and amateurs may say what they like; for my part, I know no drearier feeling than that inspired by a ruined picture,--ruined, that is, by time, damp, or rough treatment,--and I would a thousand times rather an artist should do his best towards reviving it, than have it left in such a condition. I do not believe, however, that these pictures have been sacrilegiously interfered with; at all events, I saw in the masterpieces no touch but what seemed worthy of the master-hand. The most beautiful picture in the world, I am convinced, is Raphael's "Madonna della Seggiola." I was familiar with it in a hundred engravings and copies, and therefore it shone upon one as with a familiar beauty, though infinitely more divine than I had ever seen it before. An artist was copying it, and producing certainly something very like a fac-simile, yet leaving out, as a matter of course, that mysterious something that renders the picture a miracle. It is my present opinion that the pictorial art is capable of something more like magic, more wonderful and inscrutable in its methods, than poetry or any other mode of developing the beautiful. But how does this accord with what I have been saying only a minute ago? How then can the decayed picture of a great master ever be restored by the touches of an inferior hand? Doubtless it never can be restored; but let some devoted worshipper do his utmost, and the whole inherent spirit of the divine picture may pervade his restorations likewise. I saw the "Three Fates" of Michael Angelo, which were also being copied, as were many other of the best pictures. Miss Fanny Howorth, whom I met in the gallery, told me that to copy the "Madonna della Seggiola," application must be made five years beforehand, so many are the artists who aspire to copy it. Michael Angelo's Fates are three very grim and pitiless old women, who respectively spin, hold, and cut the thread of human destiny, all in a mood of sombre gloom, but with no more sympathy than if they had nothing to do with us. I remember seeing an etching of this when I was a child, and being struck, even then, with the terrible, stern, passionless severity, neither loving us nor hating us, that characterizes these ugly old women. If they were angry, or had the least spite against human kind, it would render them the more tolerable. They are a great work, containing and representing the very idea that makes a belief in fate such a cold torture to the human soul. God give me the sure belief in his Providence! In a year's time, with the advantage of access to this magnificent gallery, I think I might come to have some little knowledge of pictures. At present I still know nothing; but am glad to find myself capable, at least, of loving one picture better than another. I cannot always "keep the heights I gain," however, and after admiring and being moved by a picture one day, it is within my experience to look at it the next as little moved as if it were a tavern-sign. It is pretty much the same with statuary; the same, too, with those pictured windows of the Duomo, which I described so rapturously a few days ago. I looked at them again the next morning, and thought they would have been hardly worthy of my eulogium, even had all the separate windows of the cathedral combined their narrow lights into one grand, resplendent, many-colored arch at the eastern end. It is a pity they are so narrow. England has many a great chancel-window that, though dimmer in its hues, dusty, and perhaps made up of heterogeneous fragments, eclipses these by its spacious breadth. From the gallery, I went into the Boboli Gardens, which are contiguous to the palace; but found them too sunny for enjoyment. They seem to consist partly of a wilderness; but the portion into which I strayed was laid out with straight walks, lined with high box-hedges, along which there was only a narrow margin of shade. I saw an amphitheatre, with a wide sweep of marble seat around it, enclosing a grassy space, where, doubtless, the Medici may have witnessed splendid spectacles. June 11th.--I paid another visit to the Uffizi gallery this morning, and found that the Venus is one of the things the charm of which does not diminish on better acquaintance. The world has not grown weary of her in all these ages; and mortal man may look on her with new delight from infancy to old age, and keep the memory of her, I should imagine, as one of the treasures of spiritual existence hereafter. Surely, it makes me more ready to believe in the high destinies of the human race, to think that this beautiful form is but nature's plan for all womankind, and that the nearer the actual woman approaches it, the more natural she is. I do not, and cannot think of her as a senseless image, but as a being that lives to gladden the world, incapable of decay and death; as young and fair to-day as she was three thousand years ago, and still to be young and fair as long as a beautiful thought shall require physical embodiment. I wonder how any sculptor has had the impertinence to aim at any other presentation of female beauty. I mean no disrespect to Gibson or Powers, or a hundred other men who people the world with nudities, all of which are abortions as compared with her; but I think the world would be all the richer if their Venuses, their Greek Slaves, their Eves, were burnt into quicklime, leaving us only this statue as our image of the beautiful. I observed to-day that the eyes of the statue are slightly hollowed out, in a peculiar way, so as to give them a look of depth and intelligence. She is a miracle. The sculptor must have wrought religiously, and have felt that something far beyond his own skill was working through his hands. I mean to leave off speaking of the Venus hereafter, in utter despair of saying what I wish; especially as the contemplation of the statue will refine and elevate my taste, and make it continually more difficult to express my sense of its excellence, as the perception of it grows upon one. If at any time I become less sensible of it, it will be my deterioration, not any defect in the statue. I looked at many of the pictures, and found myself in a favorable mood for enjoying them. It seems to me that a work of art is entitled to credit for all that it makes us feel in our best moments; and we must judge of its merits by the impression it then makes, and not by the coldness and insensibility of our less genial moods. After leaving the Uffizi Palace, . . . . I went into the Museum of Natural History, near the Pitti Palace. It is a very good collection of almost everything that Nature has made,--or exquisite copies of what she has made,--stones, shells, vegetables, insects, fishes, animals, man; the greatest wonders of the museum being some models in wax of all parts of the human frame. It is good to have the wholeness and summed-up beauty of woman in the memory, when looking at the details of her system as here displayed; for these last, to the natural eye, are by no means beautiful. But they are what belong only to our mortality. The beauty that makes them invisible is our immortal type, which we shall take away with us. Under glass cases, there were some singular and horribly truthful representations, in small wax figures, of a time of pestilence; the hasty burial, or tossing into one common sepulchre, of discolored corpses,--a very ugly piece of work, indeed. I think Murray says that these things were made for the Grand Duke Cosmo; and if so, they do him no credit, indicating something dark and morbid in his character. June 13th.--We called at the Powers's yesterday morning to leave R----- there for an hour or two to play with the children; and it being not yet quite time for the Pitti Palace, we stopped into the studio. Soon Mr. Powers made his appearance, in his dressing-gown and slippers and sculptor's cap, smoking a cigar. . . . He was very cordial and pleasant, as I have always found him, and began immediately to be communicative about his own works, or any other subject that came up. There were two casts of the Venus de' Medici in the rooms, which he said were valuable in a commercial point of view, being genuine casts from the mould taken from the statue. He then gave us a quite unexpected but most interesting lecture on the Venus, demonstrating it, as he proceeded, by reference to the points which he criticised. The figure, he seemed to allow, was admirable, though I think he hardly classes it so high as his own Greek Slave or Eva; but the face, he began with saying, was that of an idiot. Then, leaning on the pedestal of the cast, he continued, "It is rather a bold thing to say, isn't it, that the sculptor of the Venus de' Medici did not know what he was about?" Truly, it appeared to me so; but Powers went on remorselessly, and showed, in the first place, that the eye was not like any eye that Nature ever made; and, indeed, being examined closely, and abstracted from the rest of the face, it has a very queer look,--less like a human eye than a half-worn buttonhole! Then he attacked the ear, which, he affirmed and demonstrated, was placed a good deal too low on the head, thereby giving an artificial and monstrous height to the portion of the head above it. The forehead met with no better treatment in his hands, and as to the mouth, it was altogether wrong, as well in its general make as in such niceties as the junction of the skin of the lips to the common skin around them. In a word, the poor face was battered all to pieces and utterly demolished; nor was it possible to doubt or question that it fell by its own demerits. All that could be urged in its defence--and even that I did not urge--being that this very face had affected me, only the day before, with a sense of higher beauty and intelligence than I had ever then received from sculpture, and that its expression seemed to accord with that of the whole figure, as if it were the sweetest note of the same music. There must be something in this; the sculptor disregarded technicalities, and the imitation of actual nature, the better to produce the effect which he really does produce, in somewhat the same way as a painter works his magical illusions by touches that have no relation to the truth if looked at from the wrong point of view. But Powers considers it certain that the antique sculptor had bestowed all his care on the study of the human figure, and really did not know how to make a face. I myself used to think that the face was a much less important thing with the Greeks, among whom the entire beauty of the form was familiarly seen, than with ourselves, who allow no other nudity. After annihilating the poor visage, Powers showed us his two busts of Proserpine and Psyche, and continued his lecture by showing the truth to nature with which these are modelled. I freely acknowledge the fact; there is no sort of comparison to be made between the beauty, intelligence, feeling, and accuracy of representation in these two faces and in that of the Venus de' Medici. A light--the light of a soul proper to each individual character--seems to shine from the interior of the marble, and beam forth from the features, chiefly from the eyes. Still insisting upon the eye, and hitting the poor Venus another and another and still another blow on that unhappy feature, Mr. Powers turned up and turned inward and turned outward his own Titanic orb,--the biggest, by far, that ever I saw in mortal head,--and made us see and confess that there was nothing right in the Venus and everything right in Psyche and Proserpine. To say the truth, their marble eyes have life, and, placing yourself in the proper position towards them, you can meet their glances, and feel them mingle with your own. Powers is a great man, and also a tender and delicate one, massive and rude of surface as he looks; and it is rather absurd to feel how he impressed his auditor, for the time being, with his own evident idea that nobody else is worthy to touch marble. Mr. B------ told me that Powers has had many difficulties on professional grounds, as I understood him, and with his brother artists. No wonder! He has said enough in my hearing to put him at swords' points with sculptors of every epoch and every degree between the two inclusive extremes of Phidias and Clark Mills. He has a bust of the reigning Grand Duchess of Tuscany, who sat to him for it. The bust is that of a noble-looking lady; and Powers remarked that royal personages have a certain look that distinguishes them from other people, and is seen in individuals of no lower rank. They all have it; the Queen of England and Prince Albert have it; and so likewise has every other Royalty, although the possession of this kingly look implies nothing whatever as respects kingly and commanding qualities. He said that none of our public men, whatever authority they may have held, or for whatever length of time, possess this look, but he added afterwards that Washington had it. Commanders of armies sometimes have it, but not in the degree that royal personages do. It is, as well as I could make out Powers's idea, a certain coldness of demeanor, and especially of eye, that surrounds them with an atmosphere through which the electricity of human brotherhood cannot pass. From their youth upward they are taught to feel themselves apart from the rest of mankind, and this manner becomes a second nature to them in consequence, and as a safeguard to their conventional dignity. They put themselves under glass, as it were (the illustration is my own), so that, though you see them, and see them looking no more noble and dignified than other mortals, nor so much so as many, still they keep themselves within a sort of sanctity, and repel you by an invisible barrier. Even if they invite you with a show of warmth and hospitality, you cannot get through. I, too, recognize this look in the portraits of Washington; in him, a mild, benevolent coldness and apartness, but indicating that formality which seems to have been deeper in him than in any other mortal, and which built up an actual fortification between himself and human sympathy. I wish, for once, Washington could come out of his envelopment and show us what his real dimensions were. Among other models of statues heretofore made, Powers showed us one of Melancholy, or rather of Contemplation, from Milton's "Penseroso"; a female figure with uplifted face and rapt look, "communing with the skies." It is very fine, and goes deeply into Milton's thought; but, as far as the outward form and action are concerned, I remember seeing a rude engraving in my childhood that probably suggested the idea. It was prefixed to a cheap American edition of Milton's poems, and was probably as familiar to Powers as to myself. It is very remarkable how difficult it seems to be to strike out a new attitude in sculpture; a new group, or a new single figure. One piece of sculpture Powers exhibited, however, which was very exquisite, and such as I never saw before. Opening a desk, he took out something carefully enclosed between two layers of cotton-wool, on removing which there appeared a little baby's hand most delicately represented in the whitest marble; all the dimples where the knuckles were to be, all the creases in the plump flesh, every infantine wrinkle of the soft skin being lovingly recorded. "The critics condemn minute representation," said Powers; "but you may look at this through a microscope and see if it injures the general effect." Nature herself never made a prettier or truer little hand. It was the hand of his daughter,--"Luly's hand," Powers called it,--the same that gave my own such a frank and friendly grasp when I first met "Luly." The sculptor made it only for himself and his wife, but so many people, he said, had insisted on having a copy, that there are now forty scattered about the world. At sixty years, Luly ought to have her hand sculptured again, and give it to her grandchildren with the baby's hand of five months old. The baby-hand that had done nothing, and felt only its mother's kiss; the old lady's hand that had exchanged the love-pressure, worn the marriage-ring, closed dead eyes,--done a lifetime's work, in short. The sentiment is rather obvious, but true nevertheless. Before we went away, Powers took us into a room apart--apparently the secretest room he had--and showed us some tools and machinery, all of his own contrivance and invention. "You see I am a bit of a Yankee," he observed. This machinery is chiefly to facilitate the process of modelling his works, for--except in portrait-busts--he makes no clay model as other sculptors do, but models directly in the plaster; so that instead of being crumbled, like clay, the original model remains a permanent possession. He has also invented a certain open file, which is of great use in finishing the surface of the marble; and likewise a machine for making these files and for punching holes through iron, and he demonstrated its efficiency by punching a hole through an iron bar, with a force equivalent to ten thousand pounds, by the mere application of a part of his own weight. These inventions, he says, are his amusement, and the bent of his nature towards sculpture must indeed have been strong, to counteract, in an American, such a capacity for the contrivance of steam-engines. . . . I had no idea of filling so many pages of this journal with the sayings and characteristics of Mr. Powers, but the man and his talk are fresh, original, and full of bone and muscle, and I enjoy him much. We now proceeded to the Pitti Palace, and spent several hours pleasantly in its saloons of pictures. I never enjoyed pictures anywhere else as I do in Florence. There is an admirable Judith in this gallery by Allori; a face of great beauty and depth, and her hand clutches the head of Holofernes by the hair in a way that startles the spectator. There are two peasant Madonnas by Murillo; simple women, yet with a thoughtful sense of some high mystery connected with the baby in their arms. Raphael grows upon me; several other famous painters--Guido, for instance--are fading out of my mind. Salvator Rosa has two really wonderful landscapes, looking from the shore seaward; and Rubens too, likewise on a large scale, of mountain and plain. It is very idle and foolish to talk of pictures; yet, after poring over them and into them, it seems a pity to let all the thought excited by them pass into nothingness. The copyists of pictures are very numerous, both in the Pitti and Uffizi galleries; and, unlike sculptors, they appear to be on the best of terms with one another, chatting sociably, exchanging friendly criticism, and giving their opinions as to the best mode of attaining the desired effects. Perhaps, as mere copyists, they escape the jealousy that might spring up between rival painters attempting to develop original ideas. Miss Howorth says that the business of copying pictures, especially those of Raphael, is a regular profession, and she thinks it exceedingly obstructive to the progress or existence of a modern school of painting, there being a regular demand and sure sale for all copies of the old masters, at prices proportioned to their merit; whereas the effort to be original insures nothing, except long neglect, at the beginning of a career, and probably ultimate failure, and the necessity of becoming a copyist at last. Some artists employ themselves from youth to age in nothing else but the copying of one single and selfsame picture by Raphael, and grow at last to be perfectly mechanical, making, I suppose, the same identical stroke of the brush in fifty successive pictures. The weather is very hot now,--hotter in the sunshine, I think, than a midsummer day usually is in America, but with rather a greater possibility of being comfortable in the shade. The nights, too, are warm, and the bats fly forth at dusk, and the fireflies quite light up the green depths of our little garden. The atmosphere, or something else, causes a sort of alacrity in my mind and an affluence of ideas, such as they are; but it does not thereby make me the happier. I feel an impulse to be at work, but am kept idle by the sense of being unsettled with removals to be gone through, over and over again, before I can shut myself into a quiet room of my own, and turn the key. I need monotony too, an eventless exterior life, before I can live in the world within. June 15th.--Yesterday we went to the Uffizi gallery, and, of course, I took the opportunity to look again at the Venus de' Medici after Powers's attack upon her face. Some of the defects he attributed to her I could not see in the statue; for instance, the ear appeared to be in accordance with his own rule, the lowest part of it being about in a straight line with the upper lip. The eyes must be given up, as not, when closely viewed, having the shape, the curve outwards, the formation of the lids, that eyes ought to have; but still, at a proper distance, they seemed to have intelligence in them beneath the shadow cast by the brow. I cannot help thinking that the sculptor intentionally made every feature what it is, and calculated them all with a view to the desired effect. Whatever rules may be transgressed, it is a noble and beautiful face,--more so, perhaps, than if all rules had been obeyed. I wish Powers would do his best to fit the Venus's figure (which he does not deny to be admirable) with a face which he would deem equally admirable and in accordance with the sentiment of the form. We looked pretty thoroughly through the gallery, and I saw many pictures that impressed me; but among such a multitude, with only one poor mind to take note of them, the stamp of each new impression helps to obliterate a former one. I am sensible, however, that a process is going on, and has been ever since I came to Italy, that puts me in a state to see pictures with less toil, and more pleasure, and makes me more fastidious, yet more sensible of beauty where I saw none before. It is the sign, I presume, of a taste still very defective, that I take singular pleasure in the elaborate imitations of Van Mieris, Gerard Douw, and other old Dutch wizards, who painted such brass pots that you can see your face in them, and such earthen pots that they will surely hold water; and who spent weeks and months in turning a foot or two of canvas into a perfect microscopic illusion of some homely scene. For my part, I wish Raphael had painted the "Transfiguration" in this style, at the same time preserving his breadth and grandeur of design; nor do I believe that there is any real impediment to the combination of the two styles, except that no possible space of human life could suffice to cover a quarter part of the canvas of the "Transfiguration" with such touches as Gerard Douw's. But one feels the vast scope of this wonderful art, when we think of two excellences so far apart as that of this last painter and Raphael. I pause a good while, too, before the Dutch paintings of fruit and flowers, where tulips and roses acquire an immortal bloom, and grapes have kept the freshest juice in them for two or three hundred years. Often, in these pictures, there is a bird's-nest, every straw perfectly represented, and the stray feather, or the down that the mother-bird plucked from her bosom, with the three or four small speckled eggs, that seem as if they might be yet warm. These pretty miracles have their use in assuring us that painters really can do something that takes hold of us in our most matter-of-fact moods; whereas, the merits of the grander style of art may be beyond our ordinary appreciation, and leave us in doubt whether we have not befooled ourselves with a false admiration. Until we learn to appreciate the cherubs and angels that Raphael scatters through the blessed air, in a picture of the "Nativity," it is not amiss to look at, a Dutch fly settling on a peach, or a bumblebee burying himself in a flower. It is another token of imperfect taste, no doubt, that queer pictures and absurd pictures remain in my memory, when better ones pass away by the score. There is a picture of Venus, combing her son Cupid's head with a small-tooth comb, and looking with maternal care among his curls; this I shall not forget. Likewise, a picture of a broad, rubicund Judith by Bardone,--a widow of fifty, of an easy, lymphatic, cheerful temperament, who has just killed Holofernes, and is as self-complacent as if she had been carving a goose. What could possibly have stirred up this pudding of a woman (unless it were a pudding-stick) to do such a deed! I looked with much pleasure at an ugly, old, fat, jolly Bacchus, astride on a barrel, by Rubens; the most natural and lifelike representation of a tipsy rotundity of flesh that it is possible to imagine. And sometimes, amid these sensual images, I caught the divine pensiveness of a Madonna's face, by Raphael, or the glory and majesty of the babe Jesus in her arm, with his Father shining through him. This is a sort of revelation, whenever it comes. This morning, immediately after breakfast, I walked into the city, meaning to make myself better acquainted with its appearance, and to go into its various churches; but it soon grew so hot, that I turned homeward again. The interior of the Duomo was deliciously cool, to be sure,--cool and dim, after the white-hot sunshine; but an old woman began to persecute me, so that I came away. A male beggar drove me out of another church; and I took refuge in the street, where the beggar and I would have been two cinders together, if we had stood long enough on the sunny sidewalk. After my five summers' experience of England, I may have forgotten what hot weather is; but it does appear to me that an American summer is not so fervent as this. Besides the direct rays, the white pavement throws a furnace-heat up into one's face; the shady margin of the street is barely tolerable; but it is like going through the ordeal of fire to cross the broad bright glare of an open piazza. The narrow streets prove themselves a blessing at this season, except when the sun looks directly into them; the broad eaves of the houses, too, make a selvage of shade, almost always. I do not know what becomes of the street-merchants at the noontide of these hot days. They form a numerous class in Florence, displaying their wares--linen or cotton cloth, threads, combs, and all manner of haberdashery--on movable counters that are borne about on wheels. In the shady morning, you see a whole side of a street in a piazza occupied by them, all offering their merchandise at full cry. They dodge as they can from shade to shade; but at last the sunshine floods the whole space, and they seem to have melted away, leaving not a rag of themselves or what they dealt in. Cherries are very abundant now, and have been so ever since we came here, in the markets and all about the streets. They are of various kinds, some exceedingly large, insomuch that it is almost necessary to disregard the old proverb about making two bites of a cherry. Fresh figs are already spoken of, though I have seen none; but I saw some peaches this morning, looking as if they might be ripe. June 16th.--Mr. and Mrs. Powers called to see us last evening. Mr. Powers, as usual, was full of talk, and gave utterance to a good many instructive and entertaining ideas. As one instance of the little influence the religion of the Italians has upon their morals, he told a story of one of his servants, who desired leave to set up a small shrine of the Virgin in their room--a cheap print, or bas-relief, or image, such as are sold everywhere at the shops --and to burn a lamp before it; she engaging, of course, to supply the oil at her own expense. By and by, her oil-flask appeared to possess a miraculous property of replenishing itself, and Mr. Powers took measures to ascertain where the oil came from. It turned out that the servant had all the time been stealing the oil from them, and keeping up her daily sacrifice and worship to the Virgin by this constant theft. His talk soon turned upon sculpture, and he spoke once more of the difficulty imposed upon an artist by the necessity of clothing portrait statues in the modern costume. I find that he does not approve either of nudity or of the Roman toga for a modern statue; neither does he think it right to shirk the difficulty--as Chantrey did in the case of Washington --by enveloping him in a cloak; but acknowledges the propriety of taking the actual costume of the age and doing his best with it. He himself did so with his own Washington, and also with a statue that he made of Daniel Webster. I suggested that though this costume might not appear ridiculous to us now, yet, two or three centuries hence, it would create, to the people of that day, an impossibility of seeing the real man through the absurdity of his envelopment, after it shall have entirely grown out of fashion and remembrance; and Webster would seem as absurd to them then as he would to us now in the masquerade of some bygone day. It might be well, therefore, to adopt some conventional costume, never actual, but always graceful and noble. Besides, Webster, for example, had other costumes than that which he wore in public, and perhaps it was in those that he lived his most real life; his dressing-gown, his drapery of the night, the dress that he wore on his fishing-excursions; in these other costumes he spent three fourths of his time, and most probably was thus arrayed when he conceived the great thoughts that afterwards, in some formal and outside mood, he gave forth to the public. I scarcely think I was right, but am not sure of the contrary. At any rate, I know that I should have felt much more sure that I knew the real Webster, if I had seen him in any of the above-mentioned dresses, than either in his swallow-tailed coat or frock. Talking of a taste for painting and sculpture, Powers observed that it was something very different and quite apart from the moral sense, and that it was often, perhaps generally, possessed by unprincipled men of ability and cultivation. I have had this perception myself. A genuine love of painting and sculpture, and perhaps of music, seems often to have distinguished men capable of every social crime, and to have formed a fine and hard enamel over their characters. Perhaps it is because such tastes are artificial, the product of cultivation, and, when highly developed, imply a great remove from natural simplicity. This morning I went with U---- to the Uffizi gallery, and again looked with more or less attention at almost every picture and statue. I saw a little picture of the golden age, by Zucchero, in which the charms of youths and virgins are depicted with a freedom that this iron age can hardly bear to look at. The cabinet of gems happened to be open for the admission of a privileged party, and we likewise went in and saw a brilliant collection of goldsmiths' work, among which, no doubt, were specimens from such hands as Benvenuto Cellini. Little busts with diamond eyes; boxes of gems; cups carved out of precious material; crystal vases, beautifully chased and engraved, and sparkling with jewels; great pearls, in the midst of rubies; opals, rich with all manner of lovely lights. I remember Benvenuto Cellini, in his memoirs, speaks of manufacturing such playthings as these. I observed another characteristic of the summer streets of Florence to-day; tables, movable to and fro, on wheels, and set out with cool iced drinks and cordials. June 17th.--My wife and I went, this morning, to the Academy of Fine Arts, and, on our way thither, went into the Duomo, where we found a deliciously cool twilight, through which shone the mild gleam of the painted windows. I cannot but think it a pity that St. Peter's is not lighted by such windows as these, although I by no means saw the glory in them now that I have spoken of in a record of my former visit. We found out the monument of Giotto, a tablet, and portrait in bas-relief, on the wall, near the entrance of the cathedral, on the right hand; also a representation, in fresco, of a knight on horseback, the memorial of one John Rawkwood, close by the door, to the left. The priests were chanting a service of some kind or other in the choir, terribly inharmonious, and out of tune. . . . On reaching the Academy, the soldier or policeman at the entrance directed us into the large hall, the walls of which were covered on both sides with pictures, arranged as nearly as possible in a progressive series, with reference to the date of the painters; so that here the origin and procession of the art may be traced through the course of, at least, two hundred years. Giotto, Cimabue, and others of unfamiliar names to me, are among the earliest; and, except as curiosities, I should never desire to look once at them, nor think of looking twice. They seem to have been executed with great care and conscientiousness, and the heads are often wrought out with minuteness and fidelity, and have so much expression that they tell their own story clearly enough; but it seems not to have been the painter's aim to effect a lifelike illusion, the background and accessories being conventional. The trees are no more like real trees than the feather of a pen, and there is no perspective, the figure of the picture being shadowed forth on a surface of burnished gold. The effect, when these pictures, some of them very large, were new and freshly gilded, must have been exceedingly brilliant, and much resembling, on an immensely larger scale, the rich illuminations in an old monkish missal. In fact, we have not now, in pictorial ornament, anything at all comparable to what their splendor must have been. I was most struck with a picture, by Fabriana Gentile, of the Adoration of the Magi, where the faces and figures have a great deal of life and action, and even grace, and where the jewelled crowns, the rich embroidered robes, and cloth of gold, and all the magnificence of the three kings, are represented with the vividness of the real thing: a gold sword-hilt, for instance, or a pair of gold spurs, being actually embossed on the picture. The effect is very powerful, and though produced in what modern painters would pronounce an unjustifiable way, there is yet pictorial art enough to reconcile it to the spectator's mind. Certainly, the people of the Middle Ages knew better than ourselves what is magnificence, and how to produce it; and what a glorious work must that have been, both in its mere sheen of burnished gold, and in its illuminating art, which shines thus through the gloom of perhaps four centuries. Fra Angelico is a man much admired by those who have a taste for Pre-Raphaelite painters; and, though I take little or no pleasure in his works, I can see that there is great delicacy of execution in his heads, and that generally he produces such a Christ, and such a Virgin, and such saints, as he could not have foreseen, except in a pure and holy imagination, nor have wrought out without saying a prayer between every two touches of his brush. I might come to like him, in time, if I thought it worth while; but it is enough to have an outside perception of his kind and degree of merit, and so to let him pass into the garret of oblivion, where many things as good, or better, are piled away, that our own age may not stumble over them. Perugino is the first painter whose works seem really worth preserving for the genuine merit that is in them, apart from any quaintness and curiosity of an ancient and new-born art. Probably his religion was more genuine than Raphael's, and therefore the Virgin often revealed herself to him in a loftier and sweeter face of divine womanhood than all the genius of Raphael could produce. There is a Crucifixion by him in this gallery, which made me partly feel as if I were a far-off spectator,--no, I did not mean a Crucifixion, but a picture of Christ dead, lying, with a calm, sweet face, on his mother's knees ["a Pieta"]. The most inadequate and utterly absurd picture here, or in any other gallery, is a head of the Eternal Father, by Carlo Dolce; it looks like a feeble saint, on the eve of martyrdom, and very doubtful how he shall be able to bear it; very finely and prettily painted, nevertheless. After getting through the principal gallery we went into a smaller room, in which are contained a great many small specimens of the old Tuscan artists, among whom Fra Angelico makes the principal figure. These pictures are all on wood, and seem to have been taken from the shrines and altars of ancient churches; they are predellas and triptychs, or pictures on three folding tablets, shaped quaintly, in Gothic peaks or arches, and still gleaming with backgrounds of antique gold. The wood is much worm-eaten, and the colors have often faded or changed from what the old artists meant then to be; a bright angel darkening into what looks quite as much like the Devil. In one of Fra Angelico's pictures,--a representation of the Last Judgment,--he has tried his saintly hand at making devils indeed, and showing them busily at work, tormenting the poor, damned souls in fifty ghastly ways. Above sits Jesus, with the throng of blessed saints around him, and a flow of tender and powerful love in his own face, that ought to suffice to redeem all the damned, and convert the very fiends, and quench the fires of hell. At any rate, Fra Angelico had a higher conception of his Saviour than Michael Angelo. June 19th.--This forenoon we have been to the Church of St. Lorenzo, which stands on the site of an ancient basilica, and was itself built more than four centuries ago. The facade is still an ugly height of rough brickwork, as is the case with the Duomo, and, I think, some other churches in Florence; the design of giving them an elaborate and beautiful finish having been delayed from cycle to cycle, till at length the day for spending mines of wealth on churches is gone by. The interior had a nave with a flat roof, divided from the side aisles by Corinthian pillars, and, at the farther end, a raised space around the high altar. The pavement is a mosaic of squares of black and white marble, the squares meeting one another cornerwise; the pillars, pilasters, and other architectural material is dark brown or grayish stone; and the general effect is very sombre, especially as the church is somewhat dimly lighted, and as the shrines along the aisles, and the statues, and the monuments of whatever kind, look dingy with time and neglect. The nave is thickly set with wooden seats, brown and worn. What pictures there are, in the shrines and chapels, are dark and faded. On the whole, the edifice has a shabby aspect. On each side of the high altar, elevated on four pillars of beautiful marble, is what looks like a great sarcophagus of bronze. They are, in fact, pulpits, and are ornamented with mediaeval bas-reliefs, representing scenes in the life of our Saviour. Murray says that the resting-place of the first Cosmo de' Medici, the old banker, who so managed his wealth as to get the posthumous title of "father of his country," and to make his posterity its reigning princes,--is in front of the high altar, marked by red and green porphyry and marble, inlaid into the pavement. We looked, but could not see it there. There were worshippers at some of the shrines, and persons sitting here and there along the nave, and in the aisles, rapt in devotional thought, doubtless, and sheltering themselves here from the white sunshine of the piazzas. In the vicinity of the choir and the high altar, workmen were busy repairing the church, or perhaps only making arrangements for celebrating the great festival of St. John. On the left hand of the choir is what is called the old sacristy, with the peculiarities or notabilities of which I am not acquainted. On the right hand is the new sacristy, otherwise called the Capella dei Depositi, or Chapel of the Buried, built by Michael Angelo, to contain two monuments of the Medici family. The interior is of somewhat severe and classic architecture, the walls and pilasters being of dark stone, and surmounted by a dome, beneath which is a row of windows, quite round the building, throwing their light down far beneath, upon niches of white marble. These niches are ranged entirely around the chapel, and might have sufficed to contain more than all the Medici monuments that the world would ever care to have. Only two of these niches are filled, however. In one of them sits Giuliano de' Medici, sculptured by Michael Angelo,--a figure of dignity, which would perhaps be very striking in any other presence than that of the statue which occupies the corresponding niche. At the feet of Giuliano recline two allegorical statues, Day and Night, whose meaning there I do not know, and perhaps Michael Angelo knew as little. As the great sculptor's statues are apt to do, they fling their limbs abroad with adventurous freedom. Below the corresponding niche, on the opposite side of the chapel, recline two similar statues, representing Morning and Evening, sufficiently like Day and Night to be their brother and sister; all, in truth, having sprung from the same father. . . . But the statue that sits above these two latter allegories, Morning and Evening, is like no other that ever came from a sculptor's hand. It is the one work worthy of Michael Angelo's reputation, and grand enough to vindicate for him all the genius that the world gave him credit for. And yet it seems a simple thing enough to think of or to execute; merely a sitting figure, the face partly overshadowed by a helmet, one hand supporting the chin, the other resting on the thigh. But after looking at it a little while the spectator ceases to think of it as a marble statue; it comes to life, and you see that the princely figure is brooding over some great design, which, when he has arranged in his own mind, the world will be fain to execute for him. No such grandeur and majesty has elsewhere been put into human shape. It is all a miracle; the deep repose, and the deep life within it. It is as much a miracle to have achieved this as to make a statue that would rise up and walk. The face, when one gazes earnestly into it, beneath the shadow of its helmet, is seen to be calmly sombre; a mood which, I think, is generally that of the rulers of mankind, except in moments of vivid action. This statue is one of the things which I look at with highest enjoyment, but also with grief and impatience, because I feel that I do not come at all which it involves, and that by and by I must go away and leave it forever. How wonderful! To take a block of marble, and convert it wholly into thought, and to do it through all the obstructions and impediments of drapery; for there is nothing nude in this statue but the face and hands. The vest is the costume of Michael Angelo's century. This is what I always thought a sculptor of true genius should be able to do,--to show the man of whatever epoch, nobly and heroically, through the costume which he might actually have worn. The statue sits within a square niche of white marble, and completely fills it. It seems to me a pity that it should be thus confined. At the Crystal Palace, if I remember, the effect is improved by a free surrounding space. Its naturalness is as if it came out of the marble of its own accord, with all its grandeur hanging heavily about it, and sat down there beneath its weight. I cannot describe it. It is like trying to stop the ghost of Hamlet's father, by crossing spears before it. Communicating with the sacristy is the Medicean Chapel, which was built more than two centuries ago, for the reception of the Holy Sepulchre; arrangements having been made about that time to steal this most sacred relic from the Turks. The design failing, the chapel was converted by Cosmo II. into a place of sepulture for the princes of his family. It is a very grand and solemn edifice, octagonal in shape, with a lofty dome, within which is a series of brilliant frescos, painted not more than thirty years ago. These pictures are the only portion of the adornment of the chapel which interferes with the sombre beauty of the general effect; for though the walls are incrusted, from pavement to dome, with marbles of inestimable cost, and it is a Florentine mosaic on a grander scale than was ever executed elsewhere, the result is not gaudy, as in many of the Roman chapels, but a dark and melancholy richness. The architecture strikes me as extremely fine; each alternate side of the octagon being an arch, rising as high as the cornice of the lofty dome, and forming the frame of a vast niche. All the dead princes, no doubt, according to the general design, were to have been honored with statues within this stately mausoleum; but only two--those of Ferdinand I. and Cosmo II.--seem to have been placed here. They were a bad breed, and few of them deserved any better monument than a dunghill; and yet they have this grand chapel for the family at large, and yonder grand statue for one of its most worthless members. I am glad of it; and as for the statue, Michael Angelo wrought it through the efficacy of a kingly idea, which had no reference to the individual whose name it bears. In the piazza adjoining the church is a statue of the first Cosmo, the old banker, in Roman costume, seated, and looking like a man fit to hold authority. No, I mistake; the statue is of John de' Medici, the father of Cosmo, and himself no banker, but a soldier. June 21st.--Yesterday, after dinner, we went, with the two eldest children, to the Boboli Gardens. . . . We entered by a gate, nearer to our house than that by the Pitti Palace, and found ourselves almost immediately among embowered walks of box and shrubbery, and little wildernesses of trees, with here and there a seat under an arbor, and a marble statue, gray with ancient weather-stains. The site of the garden is a very uneven surface, and the paths go upward and downward, and ascend, at their ultimate point, to a base of what appears to be a fortress, commanding the city. A good many of the Florentines were rambling about the gardens, like ourselves: little parties of school-boys; fathers and mothers, with their youthful progeny; young men in couples, looking closely into every female face; lovers, with a maid or two attendant on the young lady. All appeared to enjoy themselves, especially the children, dancing on the esplanades, or rolling down the slopes of the hills; and the loving pairs, whom it was rather embarrassing to come upon unexpectedly, sitting together on the stone seat of an arbor, with clasped hands, a passionate solemnity in the young man's face, and a downcast pleasure in the lady's. Policemen, in cocked hats and epaulets, cross-belts, and swords, were scattered about the grounds, but interfered with nobody, though they seemed to keep an eye on all. A sentinel stood in the hot sunshine, looking down over the garden from the ramparts of the fortress. For my part, in this foreign country, I have no objection to policemen or any other minister of authority; though I remember, in America, I had an innate antipathy to constables, and always sided with the mob against law. This was very wrong and foolish, considering that I was one of the sovereigns; but a sovereign, or any number of sovereigns, or the twenty-millionth part of a sovereign, does not love to find himself, as an American must, included within the delegated authority of his own servants. There is a sheet of water somewhere in the Boboli Gardens, inhabited by swans; but this we did not see. We found a smaller pond, however, set in marble, and surrounded by a parapet, and alive with a multitude of fish. There were minnows by the thousand, and a good many gold-fish; and J-----, who had brought some bread to feed the swans, threw in handfuls of crumbs for the benefit of these finny people. They seemed to be accustomed to such courtesies on the part of visitors; and immediately the surface of the water was blackened, at the spot where each crumb fell, with shoals of minnows, thrusting one another even above the surface in their eagerness to snatch it. Within the depths of the pond, the yellowish-green water--its hue being precisely that of the Arno-- would be reddened duskily with the larger bulk of two or three gold-fishes, who finally poked their great snouts up among the minnows, but generally missed the crumb. Beneath the circular margin of the pond, there are little arches, into the shelter of which the fish retire, when the noonday sun burns straight down into their dark waters. We went on through the garden-paths, shadowed quite across by the high walls of box, and reached an esplanade, whence we had a good view of Florence, with the bare brown ridges on the northern side of the Arno, and glimpses of the river itself, flowing like a street, between two rows of palaces. A great way off, too, we saw some of the cloud-like peaks of the Apennines, and, above them, the clouds into which the sun was descending, looking quite as substantial as the distant mountains. The city did not present a particularly splendid aspect, though its great Duomo was seen in the middle distance, sitting in its circle of little domes, with the tall campanile close by, and within one or two hundred yards of it, the high, cumbrous bulk of the Palazzo Vecchio, with its lofty, machicolated, and battlemented tower, very picturesque, yet looking exceedingly like a martin-box, on a pole. There were other domes and towers and spires, and here and there the distinct shape of an edifice; but the general picture was of a contiguity of red earthen roofs, filling a not very broad or extensive valley, among dry and ridgy hills, with a river-gleam lightening up the landscape a little. U---- took out her pencil and tablets, and began to sketch the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio; in doing which, she immediately became an object of curiosity to some little boys and larger people, who failed not, under such pretences as taking a grasshopper off her dress, or no pretence at all, to come and look over her shoulder. There is a kind of familiarity among these Florentines, which is not meant to be discourteous, and ought to be taken in good part. We continued to ramble through the gardens, in quest of a good spot from which to see the sunset, and at length found a stone bench, on the slope of a hill, whence the entire cloud and sun scenery was fully presented to us. At the foot of the hill were statues, and among them a Pegasus, with wings outspread; and, a little beyond, the garden-front of the Pitti Palace, which looks a little less like a state-prison here, than as it fronts the street. Girls and children, and young men and old, were taking their pleasure in our neighborhood; and, just before us, a lady stood talking with her maid. By and by, we discovered her to be Miss Howorth. There was a misty light, streaming down on the hither side of the ridge of hills, that was rather peculiar; but the most remarkable thing was the shape into which the clouds gathered themselves, after the disappearance of the sun. It was like a tree, with a broad and heavy mass of foliage, spreading high upward on the sky, and a dark and well-defined trunk, which rooted itself on the verge of the horizon. This morning we went to the Pitti Palace. The air was very sultry, and the pavements, already heated with the sun, made the space between the buildings seem like a close room. The earth, I think, is too much stoned out of the streets of an Italian city,--paved, like those of Florence, quite across, with broad flagstones, to the line where the stones of the houses on each side are piled up. Thunder rumbled over our heads, however, and the clouds were so dark that we scarcely hoped to reach the palace without feeling the first drops of the shower. The air still darkened and darkened, so that by the time we arrived at the suite of picture-rooms the pictures seemed all to be changed to Rembrandts; the shadows as black as midnight, with only some highly illuminated portions gleaming out. The obscurity of the atmosphere made us sensible how splendid is the adornment of these saloons. For the gilded cornices shone out, as did the gilding of the arches and wreathed circles that divide the ceiling into compartments, within which the frescos are painted, and whence the figures looked dimly down, like gods out of a mysterious sky. The white marble sculptures also gleamed from their height, where winged cupids or cherubs gambolled aloft in bas-reliefs; or allegoric shapes reclined along the cornices, hardly noticed, when the daylight comes brightly into the window. On the walls, all the rich picture-frames glimmered in gold, as did the framework of the chairs, and the heavy gilded pedestals of the marble, alabaster, and mosaic tables. These are very magnificent saloons; and since I have begun to speak of their splendor, I may as well add that the doors are framed in polished, richly veined marble, and the walls hung with scarlet damask. It was useless to try to see the pictures. All the artists engaged in copying laid aside their brushes; and we looked out into the square before the palace, where a mighty wind sprang up, and quickly raised a prodigious cloud of dust. It hid the opposite side of the street, and was carried, in a great dusky whirl, higher than the roofs of the houses, higher than the top of the Pitti Palace itself. The thunder muttered and grumbled, the lightning now and then flashed, and a few rain-drops pattered against the windows; but, for a long time, the shower held off. At last it came down in a stream, and lightened the air to such a degree that we could see some of the pictures, especially those of Rubens, and the illuminated parts of Salvator Rosa's, and, best of all, Titian's "Magdalen," the one with golden hair clustering round her naked body. The golden hair, indeed, seemed to throw out a glory of its own. This Magdalen is very coarse and sensual, with only an impudent assumption of penitence and religious sentiment, scarcely so deep as the eyelids; but it is a splendid picture, nevertheless, with those naked, lifelike arms, and the hands that press the rich locks about her, and so carefully permit those voluptuous breasts to be seen. She a penitent! She would shake off all pretence to it as easily as she would shake aside that clustering hair. . . . Titian must have been a very good-for-nothing old man. I looked again at Michael Angelo's Fates to-day; but cannot satisfactorily make out what he meant by them. One of them--she who holds the distaff--has her mouth open, as if uttering a cry, and might be fancied to look somewhat irate. The second, who holds the thread, has a pensive air, but is still, I think, pitiless at heart. The third sister looks closely and coldly into the eyes of the second, meanwhile cutting the thread with a pair of shears. Michael Angelo, if I may presume to say so, wished to vary the expression of these three sisters, and give each a different one, but did not see precisely how, inasmuch as all the fatal Three are united, heart and soul, in one purpose. It is a very impressive group. But, as regards the interpretation of this, or of any other profound picture, there are likely to be as many interpretations as there are spectators. It is very curious to read criticisms upon pictures, and upon the same face in a picture, and by men of taste and feeling, and to find what different conclusions they arrive at. Each man interprets the hieroglyphic in his own way; and the painter, perhaps, had a meaning which none of them have reached; or possibly he put forth a riddle, without himself knowing the solution. There is such a necessity, at all events, of helping the painter out with the spectator's own resources of feeling and imagination, that you can never be sure how much of the picture you have yourself made. There is no doubt that the public is, to a certain extent, right and sure of its ground, when it declares, through a series of ages, that a certain picture is a great work. It is so; a great symbol, proceeding out of a great mind; but if it means one thing, it seems to mean a thousand, and, often, opposite things. June 27th.--I have had a heavy cold and fever almost throughout the past week, and have thereby lost the great Florentine festivity, the Feast of St. John, which took place on Thursday last, with the fireworks and illuminations the evening before, and the races and court ceremonies on the day itself. However, unless it were more characteristic and peculiar than the Carnival, I have not missed anything very valuable. Mr. Powers called to see me one evening, and poured out, as usual, a stream of talk, both racy and oracular in its character. Speaking of human eyes, he observed that they did not depend for their expression upon color, nor upon any light of the soul beaming through them, nor any glow of the eyeball, nor upon anything but the form and action of the surrounding muscles. He illustrates it by saying, that if the eye of a wolf, or of whatever fiercest animal, could be placed in another setting, it would be found capable of the utmost gentleness of expression. "You yourself," said he, "have a very bright and sharp look sometimes; but it is not in the eye itself." His own eyes, as I could have sworn, were glowing all the time he spoke; and, remembering how many times I have seemed to see eyes glow, and blaze, and flash, and sparkle, and melt, and soften; and how all poetry is illuminated with the light of ladies' eyes; and how many people have been smitten by the lightning of an eye, whether in love or anger, it was difficult to allow that all this subtlest and keenest fire is illusive, not even phosphorescent, and that any other jelly in the same socket would serve as well as the brightest eye. Nevertheless, he must be right; of course he must, and I am rather ashamed ever to have thought otherwise. Where should the light come from? Has a man a flame inside of his head? Does his spirit manifest itself in the semblance of flame? The moment we think of it, the absurdity becomes evident. I am not quite sure, however, that the outer surface of the eye may not reflect more light in some states of feeling than in others; the state of the health, certainly, has an influence of this kind. I asked Powers what he thought of Michael Angelo's statue of Lorenzo de' Medici. He allowed that its effect was very grand and mysterious; but added that it owed this to a trick,--the effect being produced by the arrangement of the hood, as he called it, or helmet, which throws the upper part of the face into shadow. The niche in which it sits has, I suppose, its part to perform in throwing a still deeper shadow. It is very possible that Michael Angelo may have calculated upon this effect of sombre shadow, and legitimately, I think; but it really is not worthy of Mr. Powers to say that the whole effect of this mighty statue depends, not on the positive efforts of Michael Angelo's chisel, but on the absence of light in a space of a few inches. He wrought the whole statue in harmony with that small part of it which he leaves to the spectator's imagination, and if he had erred at any point, the miracle would have been a failure; so that, working in marble, he has positively reached a degree of excellence above the capability of marble, sculpturing his highest touches upon air and duskiness. Mr. Powers gave some amusing anecdotes of his early life, when he was a clerk in a store in Cincinnati. There was a museum opposite, the proprietor of which had a peculiar physiognomy that struck Powers, insomuch that he felt impelled to make continual caricatures of it. He used to draw them upon the door of the museum, and became so familiar with the face, that he could draw them in the dark; so that, every morning, here was this absurd profile of himself, greeting the museum-man when he came to open his establishment. Often, too, it would reappear within an hour after it was rubbed out. The man was infinitely annoyed, and made all possible efforts to discover the unknown artist, but in vain; and finally concluded, I suppose, that the likeness broke out upon the door of its own accord, like the nettle-rash. Some years afterwards, the proprietor of the museum engaged Powers himself as an assistant; and one day Powers asked him if he remembered this mysterious profile. "Yes," said he, "did you know who drew them?" Powers took a piece of chalk, and touched off the very profile again, before the man's eyes. "Ah," said he, "if I had known it at the time, I would have broken every bone in your body!" Before he began to work in marble, Powers had greater practice and success in making wax figures, and he produced a work of this kind called "The Infernal Regions," which he seemed to imply had been very famous. He said he once wrought a face in wax which was life itself, having made the eyes on purpose for it, and put in every hair in the eyebrows individually, and finished the whole with similar minuteness; so that, within the distance of a foot or two, it was impossible to tell that the face did not live. I have hardly ever before felt an impulse to write down a man's conversation as I do that of Mr. Powers. The chief reason is, probably, that it is so possible to do it, his ideas being square, solid, and tangible, and therefore readily grasped and retained. He is a very instructive man, and sweeps one's empty and dead notions out of the way with exceeding vigor; but when you have his ultimate thought and perception, you feel inclined to think and see a little further for yourself. He sees too clearly what is within his range to be aware of any region of mystery beyond. Probably, however, this latter remark does him injustice. I like the man, and am always glad to encounter the mill-stream of his talk. . . . Yesterday he met me in the street (dressed in his linen blouse and slippers, with a little bit of a sculptor's cap on the side of his head), and gave utterance to a theory of colds, and a dissertation on the bad effects of draughts, whether of cold air or hot, and the dangers of transfusing blood from the veins of one living subject to those of another. On the last topic, he remarked that, if a single particle of air found its way into the veins, along with the transfused blood, it caused convulsions and inevitable death; otherwise the process might be of excellent effect. Last evening, we went to pass the evening with Miss Blagden, who inhabits a villa at Bellosguardo, about a mile outside of the walls. The situation is very lofty, and there are good views from every window of the house, and an especially fine one of Florence and the hills beyond, from the balcony of the drawing-room. By and by came Mr. Browning, Mr. Trollope, Mr. Boott and his young daughter, and two or three other gentlemen. . . . Browning was very genial and full of life, as usual, but his conversation has the effervescent aroma which you cannot catch, even if you get the very words that seem to be imbued with it. He spoke most rapturously of a portrait of Mrs. Browning, which an Italian artist is painting for the wife of an American gentleman, as a present from her husband. The success was already perfect, although there had been only two sittings as yet, and both on the same day; and in this relation, Mr. Browning remarked that P------, the American artist, had had no less than seventy-three sittings of him for a portrait. In the result, every hair and speck of him was represented; yet, as I inferred from what he did not say, this accumulation of minute truths did not, after all, amount to the true whole. I do not remember much else that Browning said, except a playful abuse of a little King Charles spaniel, named Frolic, Miss Blagden's lap-dog, whose venerable age (he is eleven years old) ought to have pleaded in his behalf. Browning's nonsense is of very genuine and excellent quality, the true babble and effervescence of a bright and powerful mind; and he lets it play among his friends with the faith and simplicity of a child. He must be an amiable man. I should like him much, and should make him like me, if opportunities were favorable. I conversed principally with Mr. Trollope, the son, I believe, of the Mrs. Trollope to whom America owes more for her shrewd criticisms than we are ever likely to repay. Mr. Trollope is a very sensible and cultivated man, and, I suspect, an author: at least, there is a literary man of repute of this name, though I have never read his works. He has resided in Italy eighteen years. It seems a pity to do this. It needs the native air to give life a reality; a truth which I do not fail to take home regretfully to myself, though without feeling much inclination to go back to the realities of my own. We had a pleasant cup of tea, and took a moonlight view of Florence from the balcony. . . . June 28th.--Yesterday afternoon, J----- and I went to a horse-race, which took place in the Corso and contiguous line of streets, in further celebration of the Feast of St. John. A crowd of people was already collected, all along the line of the proposed race, as early as six o'clock; and there were a great many carriages driving amid the throng, open barouches mostly, in which the beauty and gentility of Florence were freely displayed. It was a repetition of the scene in the Corso at Rome, at Carnival time, without the masks, the fun, and the confetti. The Grand Duke and Duchess and the Court likewise made their appearance in as many as seven or eight coaches-and-six, each with a coachman, three footmen, and a postilion in the royal livery, and attended by a troop of horsemen in scarlet coats and cocked hats. I did not particularly notice the Grand Duke himself; but, in the carriage behind him, there sat only a lady, who favored the people along the street with a constant succession of bows, repeated at such short intervals, and so quickly, as to be little more than nods; therefore not particularly graceful or majestic. Having the good fortune, to be favored with one of these nods, I lifted my hat in response, and may therefore claim a bowing acquaintance with the Grand Duchess. She is a Bourbon of the Naples family, and was a pale, handsome woman, of princely aspect enough. The crowd evinced no enthusiasm, nor the slightest feeling of any kind, in acknowledgment of the presence of their rulers; and, indeed, I think I never saw a crowd so well behaved; that is, with so few salient points, so little ebullition, so absolutely tame, as the Florentine one. After all, and much contrary to my expectations, an American crowd has incomparably more life than any other; and, meeting on any casual occasion, it will talk, laugh, roar, and be diversified with a thousand characteristic incidents and gleams and shadows, that you see nothing of here. The people seems to have no part even in its own gatherings. It comes together merely as a mass of spectators, and must not so much as amuse itself by any activity of mind. The race, which was the attraction that drew us all together, turned out a very pitiful affair. When we had waited till nearly dusk, the street being thronged quite across, insomuch that it seemed impossible that it should be cleared as a race-course, there came suddenly from every throat a quick, sharp exclamation, combining into a general shout. Immediately the crowd pressed back on each side of the street; a moment afterwards, there was a rapid pattering of hoofs over the earth with which the pavement was strewn, and I saw the head and back of a horse rushing past. A few seconds more, and another horse followed; and at another little interval, a third. This was all that we had waited for; all that I saw, or anybody else, except those who stood on the utmost verge of the course, at the risk of being trampled down and killed. Two men were killed in this way on Thursday, and certainly human life was never spent for a poorer object. The spectators at the windows, to be sure, having the horses in sight for a longer time, might get a little more enjoyment out of the affair. By the by, the most picturesque aspect of the scene was the life given to it by the many faces, some of them fair ones, that looked out from window and balcony, all along the curving line of lofty palaces and edifices, between which the race-course lay; and from nearly every window, and over every balcony, was flung a silken texture, or cloth of brilliant line, or piece of tapestry or carpet, or whatever adornment of the kind could be had, so as to dress up the street in gala attire. But, the Feast of St. John, like the Carnival, is but a meagre semblance of festivity, kept alive factitiously, and dying a lingering death of centuries. It takes the exuberant mind and heart of a people to keep its holidays alive. I do not know whether there be any populace in Florence, but I saw none that I recognized as such, on this occasion. All the people were respectably dressed and perfectly well behaved; and soldiers and priests were scattered abundantly among the throng. On my way home, I saw the Teatro Goldoni, which is in our own street, lighted up for a representation this Sunday evening. It shocked my New England prejudices a little. Thus forenoon, my wife and I went to the Church of Santa Croce, the great monumental deposit of Florentine worthies. The piazza before it is a wide, gravelled square, where the liberty of Florence, if it really ever had any genuine liberty, came into existence some hundreds of years ago, by the people's taking its own rights into its hands, and putting its own immediate will in execution. The piazza has not much appearance of antiquity, except that the facade of one of the houses is quite covered with ancient frescos, a good deal faded and obliterated, yet with traces enough of old glory to show that the colors must have been well laid on. The front of the church, the foundation of which was laid six centuries ago, is still waiting for its casing of marbles, and I suppose will wait forever, though a carpenter's staging is now erected before it, as if with the purpose of doing something. The interior is spacious, the length of the church being between four and five hundred feet. There is a nave, roofed with wooden cross-beams, lighted by a clere-story and supported on each side by seven great pointed arches, which rest upon octagonal pillars. The octagon seems to be a favorite shape in Florence. These pillars were clad in yellow and scarlet damask, in honor of the Feast of St. John. The aisles, on each side of the nave, are lighted with high and somewhat narrow windows of painted glass, the effect of which, however, is much diminished by the flood of common daylight that comes in through the windows of the clere-story. It is like admitting too much of the light of reason and worldly intelligence into the mind, instead of illuminating it wholly through a religious medium. The many-hued saints and angels lose their mysterious effulgence, when we get white light enough, and find we see all the better without their help. The main pavement of the church is brickwork; but it is inlaid with many sepulchral slabs of marble, on some of which knightly or priestly figures are sculptured in bas-relief. In both of the side aisles there are saintly shrines, alternating with mural monuments, some of which record names as illustrious as any in the world. As you enter, the first monument, on your right is that of Michael Angelo, occupying the ancient burial-site of his family. The general design is a heavy sarcophagus of colored marble, with the figures of Sculpture, Painting, and Architecture as mourners, and Michael Angelo's bust above, the whole assuming a pyramidal form. You pass a shrine, within its framework of marble pillars and a pediment, and come next to Dante's monument, a modern work, with likewise its sarcophagus, and some huge, cold images weeping and sprawling over it, and an unimpressive statue of Dante sitting above. Another shrine intervenes, and next you see the tomb of Alfieri, erected to his memory by the Countess of Albany, who pays, out of a woman's love, the honor which his country owed him. Her own monument is in one of the chapels of the transept. Passing the next shrine you see the tomb of Macchiavelli, which, I think, was constructed not many years after his death. The rest of the monuments, on this side of the church, commemorate people of less than world-wide fame; and though the opposite side has likewise a monument alternating with each shrine, I remember only the names of Raphael Morghen and of Galileo. The tomb of the latter is over against that of Michael Angelo, being the first large tomb on the left-hand wall as you enter the church. It has the usual heavy sarcophagus, surmounted by a bust of Galileo, in the habit of his time, and is, of course, duly provided with mourners in the shape of Science or Astronomy, or some such cold-hearted people. I wish every sculptor might be at once imprisoned for life who shall hereafter chisel an allegoric figure; and as for those who have sculptured them heretofore, let them be kept in purgatory till the marble shall have crumbled away. It is especially absurd to assign to this frozen sisterhood of the allegoric family the office of weeping for the dead, inasmuch as they have incomparably less feeling than a lump of ice, which might contrive to shed a tear if the sun shone on it. But they seem to let themselves out, like the hired mourners of an English funeral, for the very reason that, having no interest in the dead person, nor any affections or emotions whatever, it costs them no wear and tear of heart. All round both transepts of the church there is a series of chapels, into most of which we went, and generally found an inscrutably dark picture over the altar, and often a marble bust or two, or perhaps a mediaeval statue of a saint or a modern monumental bas-relief in marble, as white as new-fallen snow. A chapel of the Bonapartes is here, containing memorials of two female members of the family. In several chapels, moreover, there were some of those distressing frescos, by Giotto, Cimabue, or their compeers, which, whenever I see them,--poor, faded relics, looking as if the Devil had been rubbing and scrubbing them for centuries, in spite against the saints,--my heart sinks and my stomach sickens. There is no other despondency like this; it is a new shade of human misery, akin to the physical disease that comes from dryrot in a wall. These frescos are to a church what dreary, old remembrances are to a mind; the drearier because they were once bright: Hope fading into Disappointment, Joy into Grief, and festal splendor passing into funereal duskiness, and saddening you all the more by the grim identity that you find to exist between gay things and sorrowful ones. Only wait long enough, and they turn out to be the very same. All the time we were in the church some great religious ceremony had been going forward; the organ playing and the white-robed priests bowing, gesticulating, and making Latin prayers at the high altar, where at least a hundred wax tapers were burning in constellations. Everybody knelt, except ourselves, yet seemed not to be troubled by the echoes of our passing footsteps, nor to require that we should pray along with them. They consider us already lost irrevocably, no doubt, and therefore right enough in taking no heed of their devotions; not but what we took so much heed, however, as to give the smallest possible disturbance. By and by we sat down in the nave of the church till the ceremony should be concluded; and then my wife left me to go in quest of yet another chapel, where either Cimabue or Giotto, or both, have left some of their now ghastly decorations. While she was gone I threw my eyes about the church, and came to the conclusion that, in spite of its antiquity, its size, its architecture, its painted windows, its tombs of great men, and all the reverence and interest that broods over them, it is not an impressive edifice. Any little Norman church in England would impress me as much, and more. There is something, I do not know what, but it is in the region of the heart, rather than in the intellect, that Italian architecture, of whatever age or style, never seems to reach. Leaving the Santa Croce, we went next in quest of the Riccardi Palace. On our way, in the rear of the Grand Ducal Piazza, we passed by the Bargello, formerly the palace of the Podesta of Florence, and now converted into a prison. It is an immense square edifice of dark stone, with a tall, lank tower rising high above it at one corner. Two stone lions, symbols of the city, lash their tails and glare at the passers-by; and all over the front of the building windows are scattered irregularly, and grated with rusty iron bars; also there are many square holes, which probably admit a little light and a breath or two of air into prisoners' cells. It is a very ugly edifice, but looks antique, and as if a vast deal of history might have been transacted within it, or have beaten, like fierce blasts, against its dark, massive walls, since the thirteenth century. When I first saw the city it struck me that there were few marks of antiquity in Florence; but I am now inclined to think otherwise, although the bright Italian atmosphere, and the general squareness and monotony of the Italian architecture, have their effect in apparently modernizing everything. But everywhere we see the ponderous Tuscan basements that never can decay, and which will look, five hundred years hence, as they look now; and one often passes beneath an abbreviated remnant of what was once a lofty tower, perhaps three hundred feet high, such as used to be numerous in Florence when each noble of the city had his own warfare to wage; and there are patches of sculpture that look old on houses, the modern stucco of which causes them to look almost new. Here and there an unmistakable antiquity stands in its own impressive shadow; the Church of Or San Michele, for instance, once a market, but which grew to be a church by some inherent fitness and inevitable consecration. It has not the least the aspect of a church, being high and square, like a mediaeval palace; but deep and high niches are let into its walls, within which stand great statues of saints, masterpieces of Donatello, and other sculptors of that age, before sculpture began to be congealed by the influence of Greek art. The Riccardi Palace is at the corner of the Via Larga. It was built by the first Cosmo de' Medici, the old banker, more than four centuries ago, and was long the home of the ignoble race of princes which he left behind him. It looks fit to be still the home of a princely race, being nowise dilapidated nor decayed externally, nor likely to be so, its high Tuscan basement being as solid as a ledge of rock, and its upper portion not much less so, though smoothed into another order of stately architecture. Entering its court from the Via Larga, we found ourselves beneath a pillared arcade, passing round the court like a cloister; and on the walls of the palace, under this succession of arches, were statues, bas-reliefs, and sarcophagi, in which, first, dead Pagans had slept, and then dead Christians, before the sculptured coffins were brought hither to adorn the palace of the Medici. In the most prominent place was a Latin inscription of great length and breadth, chiefly in praise of old Cosino and his deeds and wisdom. This mansion gives the visitor a stately notion of the life of a commercial man in the days when merchants were princes; not that it seems to be so wonderfully extensive, nor so very grand, for I suppose there are a dozen Roman palaces that excel it in both these particulars. Still, we cannot but be conscious that it must have been, in some sense, a great man who thought of founding a homestead like this, and was capable of filling it with his personality, as the hand fills a glove. It has been found spacious enough, since Cosmo's time, for an emperor and a pope and a king, all of whom have been guests in this house. After being the family mansion of the Medici for nearly two centuries, it was sold to the Riccardis, but was subsequently bought of then by the government, and it is now occupied by public offices and societies. After sufficiently examining the court and its antiquities, we ascended a noble staircase that passes, by broad flights and square turns, to the region above the basement. Here the palace is cut up and portioned off into little rooms and passages, and everywhere there were desks, inkstands, and men, with pens in their fingers or behind their ears. We were shown into a little antique chapel, quite covered with frescos in the Giotto style, but painted by a certain Gozzoli. They were in pretty good preservation, and, in fact, I am wrong in comparing them to Giotto's works, inasmuch as there must have been nearly two hundred years between the two artists. The chapel was furnished with curiously carved old chairs, and looked surprisingly venerable within its little precinct. We were next guided into the grand gallery, a hall of respectable size, with a frescoed ceiling, on which is represented the blue sky, and various members of the Medici family ascending through it by the help of angelic personages, who seem only to have waited for their society to be perfectly happy. At least, this was the meaning, so far as I could make it out. Along one side of the gallery were oil-pictures on looking-glasses, rather good than otherwise; but Rome, with her palaces and villas, takes the splendor out of all this sort of thing elsewhere. On our way home, and on our own side of the Ponte Vecchio, we passed the Palazzo Guicciardini, the ancient residence of the historian of Italy, who was a politic statesman of his day, and probably as cruel and unprincipled as any of those whose deeds he has recorded. Opposite, across the narrow way, stands the house of Macchiavelli, who was his friend, and, I should judge, an honester man than he. The house is distinguished by a marble tablet, let into the wall, commemorative of Macchiavelli, but has nothing antique or picturesque about it, being in a continuous line with other smooth-faced and stuccoed edifices. June 30th.--Yesterday, at three o'clock P. M., I went to see the final horse-race of the Feast of St. John, or rather to see the concourse of people and grandees whom it brought together. I took my stand in the vicinity of the spot whence the Grand Duke and his courtiers view the race, and from this point the scene was rather better worth looking at than from the street-corners whence I saw it before. The vista of the street, stretching far adown between two rows of lofty edifices, was really gay and gorgeous with the silks, damasks, and tapestries of all bright hues, that flaunted from windows and balconies, whence ladies looked forth and looked down, themselves making the liveliest part of the show. The whole capacity of the street swarmed with moving heads, leaving scarce room enough for the carriages, which, as on Sunday, passed up and down, until the signal for the race was given. Equipages, too, were constantly arriving at the door of the building which communicates with the open loggia, where the Grand Ducal party sit to see and to be seen. Two sentinels were standing at the door, and presented arms as each courtier or ambassador, or whatever dignity it might be, alighted. Most of them had on gold-embroidered court-dresses; some of them had military uniforms, and medals in abundance at the breast; and ladies also came, looking like heaps of lace and gauze in the carriages, but lightly shaking themselves into shape as they went up the steps. By and by a trumpet sounded, a drum beat, and again appeared a succession of half a dozen royal equipages, each with its six horses, its postilion, coachman, and three footmen, grand with cocked hats and embroidery; and the gray-headed, bowing Grand Duke and his nodding Grand Duchess as before. The Noble Guard ranged themselves on horseback opposite the loggia; but there was no irksome and impertinent show of ceremony and restraint upon the people. The play-guard of volunteer soldiers, who escort the President of the United States in his Northern progresses, keep back their fellow-citizens much more sternly and immitigably than the Florentine guard kept back the populace from its despotic sovereign. This morning J----- and I have been to the Uffizi gallery. It was his first visit there, and he passed a sweeping condemnation upon everything he saw, except a fly, a snail-shell, a caterpillar, a lemon, a piece of bread, and a wineglass, in some of the Dutch pictures. The Venus de' Medici met with no sort of favor. His feeling of utter distaste reacted upon me, and I was sensible of the same weary lack of appreciation that used to chill me through, in my earlier visits to picture-galleries; the same doubt, moreover, whether we do not bamboozle ourselves in the greater part of the admiration which we learn to bestow. I looked with some pleasure at one of Correggio's Madonnas in the Tribune,--no divine and deep-thoughted mother of the Saviour, but a young woman playing with her first child, as gay and thoughtless as itself. I looked at Michael Angelo's Madonna, in which William Ware saw such prophetic depth of feeling; but I suspect it was one of the many instances in which the spectator sees more than the painter ever dreamed of. Straying through the city, after leaving the gallery, we went into the Church of Or San Michele, and saw in its architecture the traces of its transformation from a market into a church. In its pristine state it consisted of a double row of three great open arches, with the wind blowing through them, and the sunshine falling aslantwise into them, while the bustle of the market, the sale of fish, flesh, or fruit went on within, or brimmed over into the streets that enclosed them on every side. But, four or five hundred years ago, the broad arches were built up with stone-work; windows were pierced through and filled with painted glass; a high altar, in a rich style of pointed Gothic, was raised; shrines and confessionals were set up; and here it is, a solemn and antique church, where a man may buy his salvation instead of his dinner. At any rate, the Catholic priests will insure it to him, and take the price. The sculpture within the beautifully decorated niches, on the outside of the church, is very curious and interesting. The statues of those old saints seem to have that charm of earnestness which so attracts the admirers of the Pre-Raphaelite painters. It appears that a picture of the Virgin used to hang against one of the pillars of the market-place while it was still a market, and in the year 1291 several miracles were wrought by it, insomuch that a chapel was consecrated for it. So many worshippers came to the shrine that the business of the market was impeded, and ultimately the Virgin and St. Michael won the whole space for themselves. The upper part of the edifice was at that time a granary, and is still used for other than religious purposes. This church was one spot to which the inhabitants betook themselves much for refuge and divine assistance during the great plague described by Boccaccio. July 2d.--We set out yesterday morning to visit the Palazzo Buonarotti, Michael Angelo's ancestral home. . . . It is in the Via Ghibellina, an ordinary-looking, three-story house, with broad-brimmed eaves, a stuccoed front, and two or three windows painted in fresco, besides the real ones. Adown the street, there is a glimpse of the hills outside of Florence. The sun shining heavily directly upon the front, we rang the door-bell, and then drew back into the shadow that fell from the opposite side of the street. After we had waited some time a man looked out from an upper window, and a woman from a lower one, and informed us that we could not be admitted now, nor for two or three months to come, the house being under repairs. It is a pity, for I wished to see Michael Angelo's sword and walking-stick and old slippers, and whatever other of his closest personalities are to be shown. . . . We passed into the Piazza of the Grand Duke, and looked into the court of the Palazzo Vecchio, with its beautifully embossed pillars; and, seeing just beyond the court a staircase of broad and easy steps, we ascended it at a venture. Upward and upward we went, flight after flight of stairs, and through passages, till at last we found an official who ushered us into a large saloon. It was the Hall of Audience. Its heavily embossed ceiling, rich with tarnished gold, was a feature of antique magnificence, and the only one that it retained, the floor being paved with tiles and the furniture scanty or none. There were, however, three cabinets standing against the walls, two of which contained very curious and exquisite carvings and cuttings in ivory; some of them in the Chinese style of hollow, concentric balls; others, really beautiful works of art: little crucifixes, statues, saintly and knightly, and cups enriched with delicate bas-reliefs. The custode pointed to a small figure of St. Sebastian, and also to a vase around which the reliefs seemed to assume life. Both these specimens, he said, were by Benvenuto Cellini, and there were many others that might well have been wrought by his famous hand. The third cabinet contained a great number and variety of crucifixes, chalices, and whatever other vessels are needed in altar service, exquisitely carved out of amber. They belong to the chapel of the palace, and into this holy closet we were now conducted. It is large enough to accommodate comfortably perhaps thirty worshippers, and is quite covered with frescos by Ghirlandaio in good preservation, and with remnants enough of gilding and bright color to show how splendid the chapel must have been when the Medicean Grand Dukes used to pray here. The altar is still ready for service, and I am not sure that some of the wax tapers were not burning; but Lorenzo the Magnificent was nowhere to be seen. The custode now led us back through the Hall of Audience into a smaller room, hung with pictures chiefly of the Medici and their connections, among whom was one Carolina, an intelligent and pretty child, and Bianca Capella. There was nothing else to show us, except a very noble and most spacious saloon, lighted by two large windows at each end, coming down level with the floor, and by a row of windows on one side just beneath the cornice. A gilded framework divides the ceiling into squares, circles, and octagons, the compartments of which are filled with pictures in oil; and the walls are covered with immense frescos, representing various battles and triumphs of the Florentines. Statues by Michael Angelo, John of Bologna, and Bandinello, as well historic as ideal, stand round the hall, and it is really a fit theatre for the historic scenes of a country to be acted in. It was built, moreover, with the idea of its being the council-hall of a free people; but our own little Faneuil, which was meant, in all simplicity, to be merely a spot where the townspeople should meet to choose their selectmen, has served the world better in that respect. I wish I had more room to speak of this vast, dusky, historic hall. [This volume of journal closes here.] July 4th 1858.--Yesterday forenoon we went to see the Church of Santa Maria Novella. We found the piazza, on one side of which the church stands, encumbered with the amphitheatrical ranges of wooden seats that had been erected to accommodate the spectators of the chariot-races, at the recent Feast of St. John. The front of the church is composed of black and white marble, which, in the course of the five centuries that it has been built, has turned brown and yellow. On the right hand, as you approach, is a long colonnade of arches, extending on a line with the facade, and having a tomb beneath every arch. This colonnade forms one of the enclosing walls of a cloister. We found none of the front entrances open, but on our left, in a wall at right angles with the church, there was an open gateway, approaching which, we saw, within the four-sided colonnade, an enclosed green space of a cloister. This is what is called the Chiostro Verde, so named from the prevailing color of the frescos with which the walls beneath the arches are adorned. This cloister is the reality of what I used to imagine when I saw the half-ruinous colonnades connected with English cathedrals, or endeavored to trace out the lines along the broken wall of some old abbey. Not that this extant cloister, still perfect and in daily use for its original purposes, is nearly so beautiful as the crumbling ruin which has ceased to be trodden by monkish feet for more than three centuries. The cloister of Santa Maria has not the seclusion that is desirable, being open, by its gateway, to the public square; and several of the neighbors, women as well as men, were loitering within its precincts. The convent, however, has another and larger cloister, which I suppose is kept free from interlopers. The Chiostro Verde is a walk round the four sides of a square, beneath an arched and groined roof. One side of the walk looks upon an enclosed green space with a fountain or a tomb (I forget which) in the centre; the other side is ornamented all along with a succession of ancient frescos, representing subjects of Scripture history. In the days when the designs were more distinct than now, it must have been a very effective way for a monk to read Bible history, to see its personages and events thus passing visibly beside him in his morning and evening walks. Beneath the frescos on one side of the cloistered walk, and along the low stone parapet that separates it from the grass-plat on the other, are inscriptions to the memory of the dead who are buried underneath the pavement. The most of these were modern, and recorded the names of persons of no particular note. Other monumental slabs were inlaid with the pavement itself. Two or three Dominican monks, belonging to the convent, passed in and out, while we were there, in their white habits. After going round three sides, we came to the fourth, formed by the wall of the church, and heard the voice of a priest behind a curtain that fell down before a door. Lifting it aside, we went in, and found ourselves in the ancient chapter-house, a large interior formed by two great pointed arches crossing one another in a groined roof. The broad spaces of the walls were entirely covered with frescos that are rich even now, and must have glowed with an inexpressible splendor, when fresh from the artists' hands, five hundred years ago. There is a long period, during which frescos illuminate a church or a hall in a way that no other adornment can; when this epoch of brightness is past, they become the dreariest ghosts of perished magnificence. . . . This chapter-house is the only part of the church that is now used for the purposes of public worship. There are several confessionals, and two chapels or shrines, each with its lighted tapers. A priest performed mass while we were there, and several persons, as usual, stepped in to do a little devotion, either praying on their own account, or uniting with the ceremony that was going forward. One man was followed by two little dogs, and in the midst of his prayers, as one of the dogs was inclined to stray about the church, he kept snapping his fingers to call him back. The cool, dusky refreshment of these holy places, affording such a refuge from the hot noon of the streets and piazzas, probably suggests devotional ideas to the people, and it may be, when they are praying, they feel a breath of Paradise fanning them. If we could only see any good effects in their daily life, we might deem it an excellent thing to be able to find incense and a prayer always ascending, to which every individual may join his own. I really wonder that the Catholics are not better men and women. When we had looked at the old frescos, . . . . we emerged into the cloister again, and thence ventured into a passage which would have led us to the Chiostro Grande, where strangers, and especially ladies, have no right to go. It was a secluded corridor, very neatly kept, bordered with sepulchral monuments, and at the end appeared a vista of cypress-trees, which indeed were but an illusory perspective, being painted in fresco. While we loitered along the sacristan appeared and offered to show us the church, and led us into the transept on the right of the high altar, and ushered us into the sacristy, where we found two artists copying some of Fra Angelico's pictures. These were painted on the three wooden leaves of a triptych, and, as usual, were glorified with a great deal of gilding, so that they seemed to float in the brightness of a heavenly element. Solomon speaks of "apples of gold in pictures of silver." The pictures of Fra Angelico, and other artists of that age, are really pictures of gold; and it is wonderful to see how rich the effect, and how much delicate beauty is attained (by Fra Angelico at least) along with it. His miniature-heads appear to me much more successful than his larger ones. In a monkish point of view, however, the chief value of the triptych of which I am speaking does not lie in the pictures, for they merely serve as the framework of some relics, which are set all round the edges of the three leaves. They consist of little bits and fragments of bones, and of packages carefully tied up in silk, the contents of which are signified in Gothic letters appended to each parcel. The sacred vessels of the church are likewise kept in the sacristy. . . . Re-entering the transept, our guide showed us the chapel of the Strozzi family, which is accessible by a flight of steps from the floor of the church. The walls of this chapel are covered with frescos by Orcagna, representing around the altar the Last Judgment, and on one of the walls heaven and the assembly of the blessed, and on the other, of course, hell. I cannot speak as to the truth of the representation; but, at all events, it was purgatory to look at it. . . . We next passed into the choir, which occupies the extreme end of the church behind the great square mass of the high altar, and is surrounded with a double row of ancient oaken seats of venerable shape and carving. The choir is illuminated by a threefold Gothic window, full of richly painted glass, worth all the frescos that ever stained a wall or ceiling; but these walls, nevertheless, are adorned with frescos by Ghirlandaio, and it is easy to see must once have made a magnificent appearance. I really was sensible of a sad and ghostly beauty in many of the figures; but all the bloom, the magic of the painter's touch, his topmost art, have long ago been rubbed off, the white plaster showing through the colors in spots, and even in large spaces. Any other sort of ruin acquires a beauty proper to its decay, and often superior to that of its pristine state; but the ruin of a picture, especially of a fresco, is wholly unredeemed; and, moreover, it dies so slowly that many generations are likely to be saddened by it. We next saw the famous picture of the Virgin by Cimabue, which was deemed a miracle in its day, . . . . and still brightens the sombre walls with the lustre of its gold ground. As to its artistic merits, it seems to me that the babe Jesus has a certain air of state and dignity; but I could see no charm whatever in the broad-faced Virgin, and it would relieve my mind and rejoice my spirit if the picture were borne out of the church in another triumphal procession (like the one which brought it there), and reverently burnt. This should be the final honor paid to all human works that have served a good office in their day, for when their day is over, if still galvanized into false life, they do harm instead of good. . . . . The interior of Santa Maria Novella is spacious and in the Gothic style, though differing from English churches of that order of architecture. It is not now kept open to the public, nor were any of the shrines and chapels, nor even the high altar itself, adorned and lighted for worship. The pictures that decorated the shrines along the side aisles have been removed, leaving bare, blank spaces of brickwork, very dreary and desolate to behold. This is almost worse than a black oil-painting or a faded fresco. The church was much injured by the French, and afterwards by the Austrians, both powers having quartered their troops within the holy precincts. Its old walls, however, are yet stalwart enough to outlast another set of frescos, and to see the beginning and the end of a new school of painting as long-lived as Cimabue's. I should be sorry to have the church go to decay, because it was here that Boccaccio's dames and cavaliers encountered one another, and formed their plan of retreating into the country during the plague. . . . At the door we bought a string of beads, with a small crucifix appended, in memory of the place. The beads seem to be of a grayish, pear-shaped seed, and the seller assured us that they were the tears of St. Job. They were cheap, probably because Job shed so many tears in his lifetime. It being still early in the day, we went to the Uffizi gallery, and after loitering a good while among the pictures, were so fortunate as to find the room of the bronzes open. The first object that attracted us was John of Bologna's Mercury, poising himself on tiptoe, and looking not merely buoyant enough to float, but as if he possessed more than the eagle's power of lofty flight. It seems a wonder that he did not absolutely fling himself into the air when the artist gave him the last touch. No bolder work was ever achieved; nothing so full of life has been done since. I was much interested, too, in the original little wax model, two feet high, of Benvenuto Cellini's Perseus. The wax seems to be laid over a wooden framework, and is but roughly finished off. . . . In an adjoining room are innumerable specimens of Roman and Etruscan bronzes, great and small. A bronze Chimera did not strike me as very ingeniously conceived, the goat's head being merely an adjunct, growing out of the back of the monster, without possessing any original and substantive share in its nature. The snake's head is at the end of the tail. The object most really interesting was a Roman eagle, the standard of the Twenty-fourth Legion, about the size of a blackbird. July 8th.--On the 6th we went to the Church of the Annunziata, which stands in the piazza of the same name. On the corner of the Via dei Servi is the palace which I suppose to be the one that Browning makes the scene of his poem, "The Statue and the Bust," and the statue of Duke Ferdinand sits stately on horseback, with his face turned towards the window, where the lady ought to appear. Neither she nor the bust, however, was visible, at least not to my eyes. The church occupies one side of the piazza, and in front of it, as likewise on the two adjoining sides of the square, there are pillared arcades, constructed by Brunelleschi or his scholars. After passing through these arches, and still before entering the church itself, you come to an ancient cloister, which is now quite enclosed in glass as a means of preserving some frescos of Andrea del Sarto and others, which are considered valuable. Passing the threshold of the church, we were quite dazzled by the splendor that shone upon us from the ceiling of the nave, the great parallelograms of which, viewed from one end, look as if richly embossed all over with gold. The whole interior, indeed, has an effect of brightness and magnificence, the walls being covered mostly with light-colored marble, into which are inlaid compartments of rarer and richer marbles. The pillars and pilasters, too, are of variegated marbles, with Corinthian capitals, that shine just as brightly as if they were of solid gold, so faithfully have they been gilded and burnished. The pavement is formed of squares of black and white marble. There are no side aisles, but ranges of chapels, with communication from one to another, stand round the whole extent of the nave and choir; all of marble, all decorated with pictures, statues, busts, and mural monuments; all worth, separately, a day's inspection. The high altar is of great beauty and richness, . . . . and also the tomb of John of Bologna in a chapel at the remotest extremity of the church. In this chapel there are some bas-reliefs by him, and also a large crucifix, with a marble Christ upon it. I think there has been no better sculptor since the days of Phidias. . . . The church was founded by seven gentlemen of Florence, who formed themselves into a religious order called "Servants of Mary." Many miraculous cures were wrought here; and the church, in consequence, was so thickly hung with votive offerings of legs, arms, and other things in wax, that they used to tumble upon people's heads, so that finally they were all cleared out as rubbish. The church is still, I should imagine, looked upon as a place of peculiar sanctity; for while we were there it had an unusual number of kneeling worshippers, and persons were passing from shrine to shrine all round the nave and choir, praying awhile at each, and thus performing a pilgrimage at little cost of time and labor. One old gentleman, I observed, carried a cushion or pad, just big enough for one knee, on which he carefully adjusted his genuflexions before each altar. An old woman in the choir prayed alternately to us and to the saints, with most success, I hope, in her petitions to the latter, though certainly her prayers to ourselves seemed the more fervent of the two. When we had gone entirely round the church, we came at last to the chapel of the Annunziata, which stands on the floor of the nave, on the left hand as we enter. It is a very beautiful piece of architecture,--a sort of canopy of marble, supported upon pillars; and its magnificence within, in marble and silver, and all manner of holy decoration, is quite indescribable. It was built four hundred years ago, by Pietro de' Medici, and has probably been growing richer ever since. The altar is entirely of silver, richly embossed. As many people were kneeling on the steps before it as could find room, and most of them, when they finished their prayers, ascended the steps, kissed over and over again the margin of the silver altar, laid their foreheads upon it, and then deposited an offering in a box placed upon the altar's top. From the dulness of the chink in the only case when I heard it, I judged it to be a small copper coin. In the inner part of this chapel is preserved a miraculous picture of the "Santissima Annunziata," painted by angels, and held in such holy repute that forty thousand dollars have lately been expended in providing a new crown for the sacred personage represented. The picture is now veiled behind a curtain; and as it is a fresco, and is not considered to do much credit to the angelic artists, I was well contented not to see it. We found a side door of the church admitting us into the great cloister, which has a walk of intersecting arches round its four sides, paved with flat tombstones, and broad enough for six people to walk abreast. On the walls, in the semicircles of each successive arch, are frescos representing incidents in the lives of the seven founders of the church, and all the lower part of the wall is incrusted with marble inscriptions to the memory of the dead, and mostly of persons who have died not very long ago. The space enclosed by the cloistered walk, usually made cheerful by green grass, has a pavement of tombstones laid in regular ranges. In the centre is a stone octagonal structure, which at first I supposed to be the tomb of some deceased mediaeval personage; but, on approaching, I found it a well, with its bucket hanging within the curb, and looking as if it were in constant use. The surface of the water lay deep beneath the deepest dust of the dead people, and thence threw up its picture of the sky; but I think it would not be a moderate thirst that would induce me to drink of that well. On leaving the church we bought a little gilt crucifix. . . . On Sunday evening I paid a short visit to Mr. Powers, and, as usual, was entertained and instructed with his conversation. It did not, indeed, turn upon artistical subjects; but the artistic is only one side of his character, and, I think, not the principal side. He might have achieved valuable success as an engineer and mechanician. He gave a dissertation on flying-machines, evidently from his own experience, and came to the conclusion that it is impossible to fly by means of steam or any other motive-power now known to man. No force hitherto attained would suffice to lift the engine which generated it. He appeared to anticipate that flying will be a future mode of locomotion, but not till the moral condition of mankind is so improved as to obviate the bad uses to which the power might be applied. Another topic discussed was a cure for complaints of the chest by the inhalation of nitric acid; and he produced his own apparatus for that purpose, being merely a tube inserted into a bottle containing a small quantity of the acid, just enough to produce the gas for inhalation. He told me, too, a remedy for burns accidentally discovered by himself; viz., to wear wash-leather, or something equivalent, over the burn, and keep it constantly wet. It prevents all pain, and cures by the exclusion of the air. He evidently has a great tendency to empirical remedies, and would have made a natural doctor of mighty potency, possessing the shrewd sense, inventive faculty, and self-reliance that such persons require. It is very singular that there should be an ideal vein in a man of this character. This morning he called to see me, with intelligence of the failure of the new attempt to lay the electric cable between England and America; and here, too, it appears the misfortune might have been avoided if a plan of his own for laying the cable had been adopted. He explained his process, and made it seem as practicable as to put up a bell-wire. I do not remember how or why (but appositely) he repeated some verses, from a pretty little ballad about fairies, that had struck his fancy, and he wound up his talk with some acute observations on the characters of General Jackson and other public men. He told an anecdote, illustrating the old general's small acquaintance with astronomical science, and his force of will in compelling a whole dinner-party of better instructed people than himself to succumb to him in an argument about eclipses and the planetary system generally. Powers witnessed the scene himself. He thinks that General Jackson was a man of the keenest and surest intuitions, in respect to men and measures, but with no power of reasoning out his own conclusions, or of imparting them intellectually to other persons. Men who have known Jackson intimately, and in great affairs, would not agree as to this intellectual and argumentative deficiency, though they would fully allow the intuitive faculty. I have heard General Pierce tell a striking instance of Jackson's power of presenting his own view of a subject with irresistible force to the mind of the auditor. President Buchanan has likewise expressed to me as high admiration of Jackson as I ever heard one man award to another. Surely he was a great man, and his native strength, as well of intellect as character, compelled every man to be his tool that came within his reach; and the more cunning the individual might be, it served only to make him the sharper tool. Speaking of Jackson, and remembering Raphael's picture of Pope Julius II., the best portrait in the whole world, and excellent in all its repetitions, I wish it had been possible for Raphael to paint General Jackson! Referring again to General Jackson's intuitions, and to Powers's idea that he was unable to render a reason to himself or others for what he chose to do, I should have thought that this very probably might have been the case, were there not such strong evidence to the contrary. The highest, or perhaps any high administrative ability is intuitive, and precedes argument, and rises above it. It is a revelation of the very thing to be done, and its propriety and necessity are felt so strongly that very likely it cannot be talked about; if the doer can likewise talk, it is an additional and gratuitous faculty, as little to be expected as that a poet should be able to write an explanatory criticism on his own poem. The English overlook this in their scheme of government, which requires that the members of the national executive should be orators, and the readiest and most fluent orators that can be found. The very fact (on which they are selected) that they are men of words makes it improbable that they are likewise men of deeds. And it is only tradition and old custom, founded on an obsolete state of things, that assigns any value to parliamentary oratory. The world has done with it, except as an intellectual pastime. The speeches have no effect till they are converted into newspaper paragraphs; and they had better be composed as such, in the first place, and oratory reserved for churches, courts of law, and public dinner-tables. July 10th.--My wife and I went yesterday forenoon to see the Church of San Marco, with which is connected a convent of Dominicans. . . . The interior is not less than three or four hundred years old, and is in the classic style, with a flat ceiling, gilded, and a lofty arch, supported by pillars, between the nave and choir. There are no side aisles, but ranges of shrines on both sides of the nave, each beneath its own pair of pillars and pediments. The pavement is of brick, with here and there a marble tombstone inlaid. It is not a magnificent church; but looks dingy with time and apparent neglect, though rendered sufficiently interesting by statues of mediaeval date by John of Bologna and other old sculptors, and by monumental busts and bas-reliefs: also, there is a wooden crucifix by Giotto, with ancient gilding on it; and a painting of Christ, which was considered a wonderful work in its day. Each shrine, or most of them, at any rate, had its dark old picture, and there is a very old and hideous mosaic of the Virgin and two saints, which I looked at very slightly, with the purpose of immediately forgetting it. Savonarola, the reforming monk, was a brother of this convent, and was torn from its shelter, to be subsequently hanged and burnt in the Grand Ducal Piazza. A large chapel in the left transept is of the Salviati family, dedicated to St. Anthony, and decorated with several statues of saints, and with some old frescos. When we had more than sufficiently examined these, the custode proposed to show us some frescos of Fra Angelico, and conducted us into a large cloister, under the arches of which, and beneath a covering of glass, he pointed to a picture of St. Dominic kneeling at the Cross. There are two or three others by the angelic friar in different parts of the cloister, and a regular series, filling up all the arches, by various artists. Its four-sided, cloistered walk surrounds a square, open to the sky as usual, and paved with gray stones that have no inscriptions, but probably are laid over graves. Its walls, however, are incrusted, and the walk itself is paved with monumental inscriptions on marble, none of which, so far as I observed, were of ancient date. Either the fashion of thus commemorating the dead is not ancient in Florence, or the old tombstones have been removed to make room for new ones. I do not know where the monks themselves have their burial-place; perhaps in an inner cloister, which we did not see. All the inscriptions here, I believe, were in memory of persons not connected with the convent. A door in the wall of the cloister admitted us into the chapter-house, its interior moderately spacious, with a roof formed by intersecting arches. Three sides of the walls were covered with blessed whitewash; but on the fourth side, opposite to the entrance, was a great fresco of the Crucifixion, by Fra Angelico, surrounded with a border or pictured framework, in which are represented the heads of saints, prophets, and sibyls, as large as life. The cross of the Saviour and those of the thieves were painted against a dark red sky; the figures upon them were lean and attenuated, evidently the vague conceptions of a man who had never seen a naked figure. Beneath, was a multitude of people, most of whom were saints who had lived and been martyred long after the Crucifixion; and some of these had wounds from which gilded rays shone forth, as if the inner glory and blessedness of the holy men blazed through them. It is a very ugly picture, and its ugliness is not that of strength and vigor, but of weakness and incompetency. Fra Angelico should have confined himself to miniature heads, in which his delicacy of touch and minute labor often produce an excellent effect. The custode informed us that there were more frescos of this pious artist in the interior of the convent, into which I might be allowed admittance, but not my wife. I declined seeing them, and heartily thanked heaven for my escape. Returning through the church, we stopped to look at a shrine on the right of the entrance, where several wax candles were lighted, and the steps of which were crowded with worshippers. It was evidently a spot of special sanctity, and, approaching the steps, we saw, behind a gilded framework of stars and protected by glass, a wooden image of the Saviour, naked, covered with spots of blood, crowned with thorns, and expressing all the human wretchedness that the carver's skill could represent. The whole shrine, within the glass, was hung with offerings, as well of silver and gold as of tinsel and trumpery, and the body of Christ glistened with gold chains and ornaments, and with watches of silver and gold, some of which appeared to be of very old manufacture, and others might be new. Amid all this glitter the face of pain and grief looked forth, not a whit comforted. While we stood there, a woman, who had been praying, arose from her knees and laid an offering of a single flower upon the shrine. The corresponding arch, on the opposite side of the entrance, contained a wax-work within a large glass case, representing the Nativity. I do not remember how the Blessed Infant looked, but the Virgin was gorgeously dressed in silks, satins, and gauzes, with spangles and ornaments of all kinds, and, I believe, brooches of real diamonds on her bosom. Her attire, judging from its freshness and newness of glitter, might have been put on that very morning. July 13th.--We went for the second time, this morning, to the Academy of Fine Arts, and I looked pretty thoroughly at the Pre-Raphaelite pictures, few of which are really worth looking at nowadays. Cimabue and Giotto might certainly be dismissed, henceforth and forever, without any detriment to the cause of good art. There is what seems to me a better picture than either of these has produced, by Bonamico Buffalmacco, an artist of about their date or not long after. The first real picture in the series is the "Adoration of the Magi," by Gentile da Fabriano, a really splendid work in all senses, with noble and beautiful figures in it, and a crowd of personages, managed with great skill. Three pictures by Perugino are the only other ones I cared to look at. In one of these, the face of the Virgin who holds the dead Christ on her knees has a deeper expression of woe than can ever have been painted since. After Perugino the pictures cease to be interesting; the art came forward with rapid strides, but the painters and their productions do not take nearly so much hold of the spectator as before. They all paint better than Giotto and Cimabue,--in some respects better than Perugino; but they paint in vain, probably because they were not nearly so much in earnest, and meant far less, though possessing the dexterity to express far more. Andrea del Sarto appears to have been a good painter, yet I always turn away readily from his pictures. I looked again, and for a good while, at Carlo Dolce's portrait of the Eternal Father, for it is a miracle and masterpiece of absurdity, and almost equally a miracle of pictorial art. It is the All-powerless, a fair-haired, soft, consumptive deity, with a mouth that has fallen open through very weakness. He holds one hand on his stomach, as if the wickedness and wretchedness of mankind made him qualmish; and he is looking down out of Heaven with an expression of pitiable appeal, or as if seeking somewhere for assistance in his heavy task of ruling the universe. You might fancy such a being falling on his knees before a strong-willed man, and beseeching him to take the reins of omnipotence out of his hands. No wonder that wrong gets the better of right, and that good and ill are confounded, if the Supreme Head were as here depicted; for I never saw, and nobody else ever saw, so perfect a representation of a person burdened with a task infinitely above his strength. If Carlo Dolce had been wicked enough to know what he was doing, the picture would have been most blasphemous,--a satire, in the very person of the Almighty, against all incompetent rulers, and against the rickety machine and crazy action of the universe. Heaven forgive me for such thoughts as this picture has suggested! It must be added that the great original defect in the character as here represented is an easy good-nature. I wonder what Michael Angelo would have said to this painting. In the large, enclosed court connected with the Academy there are a number of statues, bas-reliefs, and casts, and what was especially interesting, the vague and rude commencement of a statue of St. Matthew by Michael Angelo. The conceptions of this great sculptor were so godlike that he seems to have been discontented at not likewise possessing the godlike attribute of creating and embodying them with an instantaneous thought, and therefore we often find sculptures from his hand left at the critical point of their struggle to get out of the marble. The statue of St. Matthew looks like the antediluvian fossil of a human being of an epoch when humanity was mightier and more majestic than now, long ago imprisoned in stone, and half uncovered again. July 16th.--We went yesterday forenoon to see the Bargello. I do not know anything more picturesque in Florence than the great interior court of this ancient Palace of the Podesta, with the lofty height of the edifice looking down into the enclosed space, dark and stern, and the armorial bearings of a long succession of magistrates carved in stone upon the walls, a garland, as it were, of these Gothic devices extending quite round the court. The best feature of the whole is the broad stone staircase, with its heavy balustrade, ascending externally from the court to the iron-grated door in the second story. We passed the sentinels under the lofty archway that communicates with the street, and went up the stairs without being questioned or impeded. At the iron-grated door, however, we were met by two officials in uniform, who courteously informed us that there was nothing to be exhibited in the Bargello except an old chapel containing some frescos by Giotto, and that these could only be seen by making a previous appointment with the custode, he not being constantly on hand. I was not sorry to escape the frescos, though one of them is a portrait of Dante. We next went to the Church of the Badia, which is built in the form of a Greek cross, with a flat roof embossed and once splendid with now tarnished gold. The pavement is of brick, and the walls of dark stone, similar to that of the interior of the cathedral (pietra serena), and there being, according to Florentine custom, but little light, the effect was sombre, though the cool gloomy dusk was refreshing after the hot turmoil and dazzle of the adjacent street. Here we found three or four Gothic tombs, with figures of the deceased persons stretched in marble slumber upon them. There were likewise a picture or two, which it was impossible to see; indeed, I have hardly ever met with a picture in a church that was not utterly wasted and thrown away in the deep shadows of the chapel it was meant to adorn. If there is the remotest chance of its being seen, the sacristan hangs a curtain before it for the sake of his fee for withdrawing it. In the chapel of the Bianco family we saw (if it could be called seeing) what is considered the finest oil-painting of Fra Filippo Lippi. It was evidently hung with reference to a lofty window on the other side of the church, whence sufficient light might fall upon it to show a picture so vividly painted as this is, and as most of Fra Filippo Lippi's are. The window was curtained, however, and the chapel so dusky that I could make out nothing. Several persons came in to say their prayers during the little time that we remained in the church, and as we came out we passed a good woman who sat knitting in the coolness of the vestibule, which was lined with mural tombstones. Probably she spends the day thus, keeping up the little industry of her fingers, slipping into the church to pray whenever a devotional impulse swells into her heart, and asking an alms as often as she sees a person of charitable aspect. From the church we went to the Uffizi gallery, and reinspected the greater part of it pretty faithfully. We had the good fortune, too, again to get admittance into the cabinet of bronzes, where we admired anew the wonderful airiness of John of Bologna's Mercury, which, as I now observed, rests on nothing substantial, but on the breath of a zephyr beneath him. We also saw a bronze bust of one of the Medici by Benvenuto Cellini, and a thousand other things the curiosity of which is overlaid by their multitude. The Roman eagle, which I have recorded to be about the size of a blackbird, I now saw to be as large as a pigeon. On our way towards the door of the gallery, at our departure, we saw the cabinet of gems open, and again feasted our eyes with its concentrated brilliancies and magnificences. Among them were two crystal cups, with engraved devices, and covers of enamelled gold, wrought by Benvenuto Cellini, and wonderfully beautiful. But it is idle to mention one or two things, when all are so beautiful and curious; idle, too, because language is not burnished gold, with here and there a brighter word flashing like a diamond; and therefore no amount of talk will give the slightest idea of one of these elaborate handiworks. July 27th.--I seldom go out nowadays, having already seen Florence tolerably well, and the streets being very hot, and myself having been engaged in sketching out a romance [The Marble Faun.--ED.], which whether it will ever come to anything is a point yet to be decided. At any rate, it leaves me little heart for journalizing and describing new things; and six months of uninterrupted monotony would be more valuable to me just now, than the most brilliant succession of novelties. Yesterday I spent a good deal of time in watching the setting out of a wedding party from our door; the bride being the daughter of an English lady, the Countess of ------. After all, there was nothing very characteristic. The bridegroom is a young man of English birth, son of the Countess of St. G------, who inhabits the third piano of this Casa del Bello. The very curious part of the spectacle was the swarm of beggars who haunted the street all day; the most wretched mob conceivable, chiefly women, with a few blind people, and some old men and boys. Among these the bridal party distributed their beneficence in the shape of some handfuls of copper, with here and there a half-paul intermixed; whereupon the whole wretched mob flung themselves in a heap upon the pavement, struggling, lighting, tumbling one over another, and then looking up to the windows with petitionary gestures for more and more, and still for more. Doubtless, they had need enough, for they looked thin, sickly, ill-fed, and the women ugly to the last degree. The wedding party had a breakfast above stairs, which lasted till four o'clock, and then the bridegroom took his bride in a barouche and pair, which was already crammed with his own luggage and hers. . . . He was a well-looking young man enough, in a uniform of French gray with silver epaulets; more agreeable in aspect than his bride, who, I think, will have the upper hand in their domestic life. I observed that, on getting into the barouche, he sat down on her dress, as he could not well help doing, and received a slight reprimand in consequence. After their departure, the wedding guests took their leave; the most noteworthy person being the Pope's Nuncio (the young man being son of the Pope's Chamberlain, and one of the Grand Duke's Noble Guard), an ecclesiastical personage in purple stockings, attended by two priests, all of whom got into a coach, the driver and footmen of which wore gold-laced cocked hats and other splendors. To-day I paid a short visit to the gallery of the Pitti Palace. I looked long at a Madonna of Raphael's, the one which is usually kept in the Grand Duke's private apartments, only brought into the public gallery for the purpose of being copied. It is the holiest of all Raphael's Madonnas, with a great reserve in the expression, a sense of being apart, and yet with the utmost tenderness and sweetness; although she drops her eyelids before her like a veil, as it were, and has a primness of eternal virginity about the mouth. It is one of Raphael's earlier works, when he mixed more religious sentiment with his paint than afterwards. Perugino's pictures give the impression of greater sincerity and earnestness than Raphael's, though the genius of Raphael often gave him miraculous vision. July 28th.--Last evening we went to the Powers's, and sat with them on the terrace, at the top of the house, till nearly ten o'clock. It was a delightful, calm, summer evening, and we were elevated far above all the adjacent roofs, and had a prospect of the greater part of Florence and its towers, and the surrounding hills, while directly beneath us rose the trees of a garden, and they hardly sent their summits higher than we sat. At a little distance, with only a house or two between, was a theatre in full action, the Teatro Goldoni, which is an open amphitheatre, in the ancient fashion, without any roof. We could see the upper part of the proscenium, and, had we been a little nearer, might have seen the whole performance, as did several boys who crept along the tops of the surrounding houses. As it was, we heard the music and the applause, and now and then an actor's stentorian tones, when we chose to listen. Mrs. P------ and my wife, U---- and Master Bob, sat in a group together, and chatted in one corner of our aerial drawing-room, while Mr. Powers and myself leaned against the parapet, and talked of innumerable things. When the clocks struck the hour, or the bells rang from the steeples, as they are continually doing, I spoke of the sweetness of the Florence bells, the tones of some of them being as if the bell were full of liquid melody, and shed it through the air on being upturned. I had supposed, in my lack of musical ear, that the bells of the Campanile were the sweetest; but Mr. Powers says that there is a defect in their tone, and that the bell of the Palazzo Vecchio is the most melodious he ever heard. Then he spoke of his having been a manufacturer of organs, or, at least, of reeds for organs, at one period of his life. I wonder what he has not been! He told me of an invention of his in the musical line, a jewsharp with two tongues; and by and by he produced it for my inspection. It was carefully kept in a little wooden case, and was very neatly and elaborately constructed, with screws to tighten it, and a silver centre-piece between the two tongues. Evidently a great deal of thought had been bestowed on this little harp; but Mr. Powers told me that it was an utter failure, because the tongues were apt to interfere and jar with one another, although the strain of music was very sweet and melodious-- as he proved, by playing on it a little--when everything went right. It was a youthful production, and he said that its failure had been a great disappointment to him at the time; whereupon I congratulated him that his failures had been in small matters, and his successes in great ones. We talked, furthermore, about instinct and reason, and whether the brute creation have souls, and, if they have none, how justice is to be done them for their sufferings here; and Mr. Powers came finally to the conclusion that brutes suffer only in appearance, and that God enjoys for them all that they seem to enjoy, and that man is the only intelligent and sentient being. We reasoned high about other states of being; and I suggested the possibility that there might be beings inhabiting this earth, contemporaneously with us, and close beside us, but of whose existence and whereabout we could have no perception, nor they of ours, because we are endowed with different sets of senses; for certainly it was in God's power to create beings who should communicate with nature by innumerable other senses than those few which we possess. Mr. Powers gave hospitable reception to this idea, and said that it had occurred to himself; and he has evidently thought much and earnestly about such matters; but is apt to let his idea crystallize into a theory, before he can have sufficient data for it. He is a Swedenborgian in faith. The moon had risen behind the trees, while we were talking, and Powers intimated his idea that beings analogous to men--men in everything except the modifications necessary to adapt them to their physical circumstances--inhabited the planets, and peopled them with beautiful shapes. Each planet, however, must have its own standard of the beautiful, I suppose; and probably his sculptor's eye would not see much to admire in the proportions of an inhabitant of Saturn. The atmosphere of Florence, at least when we ascend a little way into it, suggests planetary speculations. Galileo found it so, and Mr. Powers and I pervaded the whole universe; but finally crept down his garret-stairs, and parted, with a friendly pressure of the hand. VILLA MONTANTO. MONTE BENI. August 2d.--We had grown weary of the heat of Florence within the walls, . . . . there being little opportunity for air and exercise except within the precincts of our little garden, which, also, we feared might breed malaria, or something akin to it. We have therefore taken this suburban villa for the two next months, and, yesterday morning, we all came out hither. J----- had preceded us with B. P------. The villa is on a hill called Bellosguardo, about a mile beyond the Porta Romana. Less than half an hour's walk brought us, who were on foot, to the iron gate of our villa, which we found shut and locked. We shouted to be let in, and while waiting for somebody to appear, there was a good opportunity to contemplate the external aspect of the villa. After we had waited a few minutes, J----- came racing down to the gate, laughing heartily, and said that Bob and he had been in the house, but had come out, shutting the door behind them; and as the door closed with a springlock, they could not get in again. Now as the key of the outer gate as well as that of the house itself was in the pocket of J-----'s coat, left inside, we were shut out of our own castle, and compelled to carry on a siege against it, without much likelihood of taking it, although the garrison was willing to surrender. But B. P------ called in the assistance of the contadini who cultivate the ground, and live in the farm-house close by; and one of them got into a window by means of a ladder, so that the keys were got, the gates opened, and we finally admitted. Before examining any other part of the house, we climbed to the top of the tower, which, indeed, is not very high, in proportion to its massive square. Very probably, its original height was abbreviated, in compliance with the law that lowered so many of the fortified towers of noblemen within the walls of Florence. . . . The stairs were not of stone, built in with the original mass of the tower, as in English castles, but of now decayed wood, which shook beneath us, and grew more and more crazy as we ascended. It will not be many years before the height of the tower becomes unattainable. . . . Near at hand, in the vicinity of the city, we saw the convent of Monte Olivetto, and other structures that looked like convents, being built round an enclosed square; also numerous white villas, many of which had towers, like that we were standing upon, square and massive, some of them battlemented on the summit, and others apparently modernized for domestic purposes. Among them U---- pointed out Galileo's tower, whither she made an excursion the other day. It looked lower than our own, but seemed to stand on a higher elevation. We also saw the duke's villa, the Poggio, with a long avenue of cypresses leading from it, as if a funeral were going forth. And having wasted thus much of description on the landscape, I will finish with saying that it lacked only water to be a very fine one. It is strange what a difference the gleam of water makes, and how a scene awakens and comes to life wherever it is visible. The landscape, moreover, gives the beholder (at least, this beholder) a sense of oppressive sunshine and scanty shade, and does not incite a longing to wander through it on foot, as a really delightful landscape should. The vine, too, being cultivated in so trim a manner, does not suggest that idea of luxuriant fertility, which is the poetical notion of a vineyard. The olive-orchards have a pale and unlovely hue. An English view would have been incomparably richer in its never-fading green; and in my own country, the wooded hills would have been more delightful than these peaks and ridges of dreary and barren sunshine; and there would have been the bright eyes of half a dozen little lakes, looking heavenward, within an extent like that of the Val d' Arno. By and by mamma's carriage came along the dusty road, and passed through the iron gateway, which we had left open for her reception. We shouted down to her and R-----, and they waved their handkerchiefs upward to us; and, on my way down, I met R----- and the servant coming up through the ghostly rooms. The rest of the day we spent mostly in exploring the premises. The house itself is of almost bewildering extent, insomuch that we might each of us have a suite of rooms individually. I have established myself on the ground-floor, where I have a dressing-room, a large vaulted saloon, hung with yellow damask, and a square writing-study, the walls and ceilings of the two latter apartments being ornamented with angels and cherubs aloft in fresco, and with temples, statues, vases, broken columns, peacocks, parrots, vines, and sunflowers below. I know not how many more saloons, anterooms, and sleeping-chambers there are on this same basement story, besides an equal number over them, and a great subterranean establishment. I saw some immense jars there, which I suppose were intended to hold oil; and iron kettles, for what purpose I cannot tell. There is also a chapel in the house, but it is locked up, and we cannot yet with certainty find the door of it, nor even, in this great wilderness of a house, decide absolutely what space the holy precincts occupy. Adjoining U----'s chamber, which is in the tower, there is a little oratory, hung round with sacred prints of very ancient date, and with crucifixes, holy-water vases, and other consecrated things; and here, within a glass case, there is the representation of an undraped little boy in wax, very prettily modelled, and holding up a heart that looks like a bit of red sealing-wax. If I had found him anywhere else I should have taken him for Cupid; but, being in an oratory, I presume him to have some religious signification. In the servants' room a crucifix hung on one side of the bed, and a little vase for holy water, now overgrown with a cobweb, on the other; and, no doubt, all the other sleeping-apartments would have been equally well provided, only that their occupants were to be heretics. The lower floor of the house is tolerably furnished, and looks cheerful with its frescos, although the bare pavements in every room give an impression of discomfort. But carpets are universally taken up in Italy during summer-time. It must have been an immense family that could have ever filled such a house with life. We go on voyages of discovery, and when in quest of any particular point, are likely enough to fetch up at some other. This morning I had difficulty in finding my way again to the top of the tower. One of the most peculiar rooms is constructed close to the tower, under the roof of the main building, but with no external walls on two sides! It is thus left open to the air, I presume for the sake of coolness. A parapet runs round the exposed sides for the sake of security. Some of the palaces in Florence have such open loggias in their upper stories, and I saw others on our journey hither, after arriving in Tuscany. The grounds immediately around the house are laid out in gravel-walks, and ornamented with shrubbery, and with what ought to be a grassy lawn; but the Italian sun is quite as little favorable to beauty of that kind as our own. I have enjoyed the luxury, however, almost for the first time since I left my hill-top at the Wayside, of flinging myself at full length on the ground without any fear of catching cold. Moist England would punish a man soundly for taking such liberties with her greensward. A podere, or cultivated tract, comprising several acres, belongs to the villa, and seems to be fertile, like all the surrounding country. The possessions of different proprietors are not separated by fences, but only marked out by ditches; and it seems possible to walk miles and miles, along the intersecting paths, without obstruction. The rural laborers, so far as I have observed, go about in their shirt-sleeves, and look very much like tanned and sunburnt Yankees. Last night it was really a work of time and toil to go about making our defensive preparations for the night; first closing the iron gate, then the ponderous and complicated fastenings of the house door, then the separate barricadoes of each iron-barred window on the lower floor, with a somewhat slighter arrangement above. There are bolts and shutters, however, for every window in the house, and I suppose it would not be amiss to put them all in use. Our garrison is so small that we must depend more upon the strength of our fortifications than upon our own active efforts in case of an attack. In England, in an insulated country house, we should need all these bolts and bars, and Italy is not thought to be the safer country of the two. It deserves to be recorded that the Count Montanto, a nobleman, and seemingly a man of property, should deem it worth while to let his country seat, and reside during the hot months in his palace in the city, for the consideration of a comparatively small sum a month. He seems to contemplate returning hither for the autumn and winter, when the situation must be very windy and bleak, and the cold death-like in these great halls; and then, it is to be supposed, he will let his palace in town. The Count, through the agency of his son, bargained very stiffly for, and finally obtained, three dollars in addition to the sum which we at first offered him. This indicates that even a little money is still a matter of great moment in Italy. Signor del Bello, who, I believe, is also a nobleman, haggled with us about some cracked crockery at our late residence, and finally demanded and received fifty cents in compensation. But this poor gentleman has been a spendthrift, and now acts as the agent of another. August 3d.--Yesterday afternoon William Story called on me, he being on a day or two's excursion from Siena, where he is spending the summer with his family. He was very entertaining and conversative, as usual, and said, in reply to my question whether he were not anxious to return to Cleopatra, that he had already sketched out another subject for sculpture, which would employ him during next winter. He told me, what I was glad to hear, that his sketches of Italian life, intended for the "Atlantic Monthly," and supposed to be lost, have been recovered. Speaking of the superstitiousness of the Italians, he said that they universally believe in the influence of the evil eye. The evil influence is supposed not to be dependent on the will of the possessor of the evil eye; on the contrary, the persons to whom he wishes well are the very ones to suffer by it. It is oftener found in monks than in any other class of people; and on meeting a monk, and encountering his eye, an Italian usually makes a defensive sign by putting both hands behind him, with the forefingers and little fingers extended, although it is a controverted point whether it be not more efficacious to extend the hand with its outspread fingers towards the suspected person. It is considered an evil omen to meet a monk on first going out for the day. The evil eye may be classified with the phenomena of mesmerism. The Italians, especially the Neapolitans, very generally wear amulets. Pio Nono, perhaps as being the chief of all monks and other religious people, is supposed to have an evil eye of tenfold malignancy; and its effect has been seen in the ruin of all schemes for the public good so soon as they are favored by him. When the pillar in the Piazza de' Spagna, commemorative of his dogma of the Immaculate Conception, was to be erected, the people of Rome refused to be present, or to have anything to do with it, unless the pope promised to abstain from interference. His Holiness did promise, but so far broke his word as to be present one day while it was being erected, and on that day a man was killed. A little while ago there was a Lord Clifford, an English Catholic nobleman, residing in Italy, and, happening to come to Rome, he sent his compliments to Pio Nono, and requested the favor of an interview. The pope, as it happened, was indisposed, or for some reason could not see his lordship, but very kindly sent him his blessing. Those who knew of it shook their heads, and intimated that it would go ill with his lordship now that he had been blessed by Pio Nono, and the very next day poor Lord Clifford was dead! His Holiness had better construe the scriptural injunction literally, and take to blessing his enemies. I walked into town with J------ this morning, and, meeting a monk in the Via Furnace, I thought it no more than reasonable, as the good father fixed his eyes on me, to provide against the worst by putting both hands behind me, with the forefingers and little fingers stuck out. In speaking of the little oratory connected with U----'s chamber, I forgot to mention the most remarkable object in it. It is a skull, the size of life (or death). . . . This part of the house must be very old, probably coeval with the tower. The ceiling of U----'s apartment is vaulted with intersecting arches; and adjoining it is a very large saloon, likewise with a vaulted and groined ceiling, and having a cushioned divan running all round the walls. The windows of these rooms look out on the Val d' Arno. The apartment above this saloon is of the same size, and hung with engraved portraits, printed on large sheets by the score and hundred together, and enclosed in wooden frames. They comprise the whole series of Roman emperors, the succession of popes, the kings of Europe, the doges of Venice, and the sultans of Turkey. The engravings bear different dates between 1685 and thirty years later, and were executed at Rome. August 4th.--We ascended our tower yesterday afternoon to see the sunset. In my first sketch of the Val d' Arno I said that the Arno seemed to hold its course near the bases of the hills. I now observe that the line of trees which marks its current divides the valley into two pretty equal parts, and the river runs nearly east and west. . . . At last, when it was growing dark, we went down, groping our way over the shaky staircases, and peeping into each dark chamber as we passed. I gratified J----- exceedingly by hitting my nose against the wall. Reaching the bottom, I went into the great saloon, and stood at a window watching the lights twinkle forth, near and far, in the valley, and listening to the convent bells that sounded from Monte Olivetto, and more remotely still. The stars came out, and the constellation of the Dipper hung exactly over the Val d' Arno, pointing to the North Star above the hills on my right. August 12th.--We drove into town yesterday afternoon, with Miss Blagden, to call on Mr. Kirkup, an old Englishman who has resided a great many years in Florence. He is noted as an antiquarian, and has the reputation of being a necromancer, not undeservedly, as he is deeply interested in spirit-rappings, and holds converse, through a medium, with dead poets and emperors. He lives in an old house, formerly a residence of the Knights Templars, hanging over the Arno, just as you come upon the Ponte Vecchio; and, going up a dark staircase and knocking at a door on one side of the landing-place, we were received by Mr. Kirkup. He had had notice of our visit, and was prepared for it, being dressed in a blue frock-coat of rather an old fashion, with a velvet collar, and in a thin waistcoat and pantaloons fresh from the drawer; looking very sprucely, in short, and unlike his customary guise, for Miss Blagden hinted to us that the poor gentleman is generally so untidy that it is not quite pleasant to take him by the hand. He is rather low of stature, with a pale, shrivelled face, and hair and beard perfectly white, and the hair of a particularly soft and silken texture. He has a high, thin nose, of the English aristocratic type; his eyes have a queer, rather wild look, and the eyebrows are arched above them, so that he seems all the time to be seeing something that strikes him with surprise. I judged him to be a little crack-brained, chiefly on the strength of this expression. His whole make is delicate, his hands white and small, and his appearance and manners those of a gentleman, with rather more embroidery of courtesy than belongs to an Englishman. He appeared to be very nervous, tremulous, indeed, to his fingers' ends, without being in any degree disturbed or embarrassed by our presence. Finally, he is very deaf; an infirmity that quite took away my pleasure in the interview, because it is impossible to say anything worth while when one is compelled to raise one's voice above its ordinary level. He ushered us through two or three large rooms, dark, dusty, hung with antique-looking pictures, and lined with bookcases containing, I doubt not, a very curious library. Indeed, he directed my attention to one case, and said that he had collected those works, in former days, merely for the sake of laughing at them. They were books of magic and occult sciences. What he seemed really to value, however, were some manuscript copies of Dante, of which he showed us two: one, a folio on parchment, beautifully written in German text, the letters as clear and accurately cut as printed type; the other a small volume, fit, as Mr. Kirkup said, to be carried in a capacious mediaeval sleeve. This also was on vellum, and as elegantly executed as the larger one; but the larger had beautiful illuminations, the vermilion and gold of which looked as brilliant now as they did five centuries ago. Both of these books were written early in the fourteenth century. Mr. Kirkup has also a plaster cast of Dante's face, which he believes to be the original one taken from his face after death; and he has likewise his own accurate tracing from Giotto's fresco of Dante in the chapel of the Bargello. This fresco was discovered through Mr. Kirkup's means, and the tracing is particularly valuable, because the original has been almost destroyed by rough usage in drawing out a nail that had been driven into the eye. It represents the profile of a youthful but melancholy face, and has the general outline of Dante's features in other portraits. Dante has held frequent communications with Mr. Kirkup through a medium, the poet being described by the medium as wearing the same dress seen in the youthful portrait, but as hearing more resemblance to the cast taken from his dead face than to the picture from his youthful one. There was a very good picture of Savonarola in one of the rooms, and many other portraits, paintings, and drawings, some of them ancient, and others the work of Mr. Kirkup himself. He has the torn fragment of an exquisite drawing of a nude figure by Rubens, and a portfolio of other curious drawings. And besides books and works of art, he has no end of antique knick-knackeries, none of which we had any time to look at; among others some instruments with which nuns used to torture themselves in their convents by way of penance. But the greatest curiosity of all, and no antiquity, was a pale, large-eyed little girl, about four years old, who followed the conjurer's footsteps wherever he went. She was the brightest and merriest little thing in the world, and frisked through those shadowy old chambers, among the dead people's trumpery, as gayly as a butterfly flits among flowers and sunshine. The child's mother was a beautiful girl named Regina, whose portrait Mr. Kirkup showed us on the wall. I never saw a more beautiful and striking face claiming to be a real one. She was a Florentine, of low birth, and she lived with the old necromancer as his spiritual medium. He showed us a journal, kept during her lifetime, and read from it his notes of an interview with the Czar Alexander, when that potentate communicated to Mr. Kirkup that he had been poisoned. The necromancer set a great value upon Regina, . . . . and when she died he received her poor baby into his heart, and now considers it absolutely his own. At any rate, it is a happy belief for him, since he has nothing else in the world to love, and loves the child entirely, and enjoys all the bliss of fatherhood, though he must have lived as much as seventy years before he began to taste it. The child inherits her mother's gift of communication with the spiritual world, so that the conjurer can still talk with Regina through the baby which she left, and not only with her, but with Dante, and any other great spirit that may choose to visit him. It is a very strange story, and this child might be put at once into a romance, with all her history and environment; the ancient Knight Templar palace, with the Arno flowing under the iron-barred windows, and the Ponte Vecchio, covered with its jewellers' shops, close at hand; the dark, lofty chambers with faded frescos on the ceilings, black pictures hanging on the walls, old books on the shelves, and hundreds of musty antiquities, emitting an odor of past centuries; the shrivelled, white-bearded old man, thinking all the time of ghosts, and looking into the child's eyes to seek them; and the child herself, springing so freshly out of the soil, so pretty, so intelligent, so playful, with never a playmate save the conjurer and a kitten. It is a Persian kitten, and lay asleep in a window; but when I touched it, it started up at once in as gamesome a mood as the child herself. The child looks pale, and no wonder, seldom or never stirring out of that old palace, or away from the river atmosphere. Miss Blagden advised Mr. Kirkup to go with her to the seaside or into the country, and he did not deny that it might do her good, but seemed to be hampered by an old man's sluggishness and dislike of change. I think he will not live a great while, for he seems very frail. When he dies the little girl will inherit what property he may leave. A lady, Catharine Fleeting, an Englishwoman, and a friend of Mr. Kirkup, has engaged to take her in charge. She followed us merrily to the door, and so did the Persian kitten, and Mr. Kirkup shook hands with us, over and over again, with vivacious courtesy, his manner having been characterized by a great deal of briskness throughout the interview. He expressed himself delighted to have met one (whose books he had read), and said that the day would be a memorable one to him,--which I did not in the least believe. Mr. Kirkup is an intimate friend of Trelawny, author of "Adventures of a Younger Son," and, long ago, the latter promised him that, if he ever came into possession of the family estate, he would divide it with him. Trelawny did really succeed to the estate, and lost no time in forwarding to his friend the legal documents, entitling him to half of the property. But Mr. Kirkup declined the gift, as he himself was not destitute, and Trelawny had a brother. There were two pictures of Trelawny in the saloons, one a slight sketch on the wall, the other a half-length portrait in a Turkish dress; both handsome, but indicating no very amiable character. It is not easy to forgive Trelawny for uncovering dead Byron's limbs, and telling that terrible story about them,--equally disgraceful to himself, be it truth or a lie. It seems that Regina had a lover, and a sister who was very disreputable It rather adds than otherwise to the romance of the affair,--the idea that this pretty little elf has no right whatever to the asylum which she has found. Her name is Imogen. The small manuscript copy of Dante which he showed me was written by a Florentine gentleman of the fourteenth century, one of whose ancestors the poet had met and talked with in Paradise. August 19th.--Here is a good Italian incident, which I find in Valery. Andrea del Castagno was a painter in Florence in the fifteenth century; and he had a friend, likewise a painter, Domenico of Venice. The latter had the secret of painting in oils, and yielded to Castagno's entreaties to impart it to him. Desirous of being the sole possessor of this great secret, Castagno waited only the night to assassinate Domenico, who so little suspected his treachery, that he besought those who found him bleeding and dying to take him to his friend Castagno, that he might die in his arms. The murderer lived to be seventy-four years old, and his crime was never suspected till he himself revealed it on his death-bed. Domenico did actually die in Castagno's arms. The death scene would have been a good one for the latter to paint in oils. September 1st.--Few things journalizable have happened during the last month, because Florence and the neighborhood have lost their novelty; and furthermore, I usually spend the whole day at home, having been engaged in planning and sketching out a romance. I have now done with this for the present, and mean to employ the rest of the time we stay here chiefly in revisiting the galleries, and seeing what remains to be seen in Florence. Last Saturday, August 28th, we went to take tea at Miss Blagden's, who has a weekly reception on that evening. We found Mr. Powers there, and by and by Mr. Boott and Mr. Trollope came in. Miss ------ has lately been exercising her faculties as a spiritual writing-medium; and, the conversation turning on that subject, Mr. Powers related some things that he had witnessed through the agency of Mr. Home, who had held a session or two at his house. He described the apparition of two mysterious hands from beneath a table round which the party were seated. These hands purported to belong to the aunt of the Countess Cotterel, who was present, and were a pair of thin, delicate, aged, lady-like hands and arms, appearing at the edge of the table, and terminating at the elbow in a sort of white mist. One of the hands took up a fan and began to use it. The countess then said, "Fan yourself as you used to do, dear aunt"; and forthwith the hands waved the fan back and forth in a peculiar manner, which the countess recognized as the manner of her dead aunt. The spirit was then requested to fan each member of the party; and accordingly, each separate individual round the table was fanned in turn, and felt the breeze sensibly upon his face. Finally, the hands sank beneath the table, I believe Mr. Powers said; but I am not quite sure that they did not melt into the air. During this apparition, Mr. Home sat at the table, but not in such a position or within such distance that he could have put out or managed the spectral hands; and of this Mr. Powers satisfied himself by taking precisely the same position after the party had retired. Mr. Powers did not feel the hands at this time, but he afterwards felt the touch of infant hands, which were at the time invisible. He told of many of the wonders, which seem to have as much right to be set down as facts as anything else that depends on human testimony. For example, Mr. K------, one of the party, gave a sudden start and exclamation. He had felt on his knee a certain token, which could have been given him only by a friend, long ago in his grave. Mr. Powers inquired what was the last thing that had been given as a present to a deceased child; and suddenly both he and his wife felt a prick as of some sharp instrument, on their knees. The present had been a penknife. I have forgotten other incidents quite as striking as these; but, with the exception of the spirit-hands, they seemed to be akin to those that have been produced by mesmerism, returning the inquirer's thoughts and veiled recollections to himself, as answers to his queries. The hands are certainly an inexplicable phenomenon. Of course, they are not portions of a dead body, nor any other kind of substance; they are impressions on the two senses, sight and touch, but how produced I cannot tell. Even admitting their appearance,--and certainly I do admit it as freely and fully as if I had seen them myself,--there is no need of supposing them to come from the world of departed spirits. Powers seems to put entire faith in the verity of spiritual communications, while acknowledging the difficulty of identifying spirits as being what they pretend to be. He is a Swedenborgian, and so far prepared to put faith in many of these phenomena. As for Home, Powers gives a decided opinion that he is a knave, but thinks him so organized, nevertheless, as to be a particularly good medium for spiritual communications. Spirits, I suppose, like earthly people, are obliged to use such instruments as will answer their purposes; but rather than receive a message from a dead friend through the organism of a rogue or charlatan, methinks I would choose to wait till we meet. But what most astonishes me is the indifference with which I listen to these marvels. They throw old ghost stories quite into the shade; they bring the whole world of spirits down amongst us, visibly and audibly; they are absolutely proved to be sober facts by evidence that would satisfy us of any other alleged realities; and yet I cannot force my mind to interest myself in them. They are facts to my understanding, which, it might have been anticipated, would have been the last to acknowledge them; but they seem not to be facts to my intuitions and deeper perceptions. My inner soul does not in the least admit them; there is a mistake somewhere. So idle and empty do I feel these stories to be, that I hesitated long whether or no to give up a few pages of this not very important journal to the record of them. We have had written communications through Miss ------ with several spirits; my wife's father, mother, two brothers, and a sister, who died long ago, in infancy; a certain Mary Hall, who announces herself as the guardian spirit of Miss ------; and, queerest of all, a Mary Runnel, who seems to be a wandering spirit, having relations with nobody, but thrusts her finger into everybody's affairs. My wife's mother is the principal communicant; she expresses strong affection, and rejoices at the opportunity of conversing with her daughter. She often says very pretty things; for instance, in a dissertation upon heavenly music; but there is a lack of substance in her talk, a want of gripe, a delusive show, a sentimental surface, with no bottom beneath it. The same sort of thing has struck me in all the poetry and prose that I have read from spiritual sources. I should judge that these effusions emanated from earthly minds, but had undergone some process that had deprived them of solidity and warmth. In the communications between my wife and her mother, I cannot help thinking that (Miss ------ being unconsciously in a mesmeric state) all the responses are conveyed to her fingers from my wife's mind. . . . We have tried the spirits by various test questions, on every one of which they have failed egregiously. Here, however, the aforesaid Mary Runnel comes into play. The other spirits have told us that the veracity of this spirit is not to be depended upon; and so, whenever it is possible, poor Mary Runnel is thrust forward to bear the odium of every mistake or falsehood. They have avowed themselves responsible for all statements signed by themselves, and have thereby brought themselves into more than one inextricable dilemma; but it is very funny, where a response or a matter of fact has not been thus certified, how invariably Mary Runnel is made to assume the discredit of it, on its turning out to be false. It is the most ingenious arrangement that could possibly have been contrived; and somehow or other, the pranks of this lying spirit give a reality to the conversations which the more respectable ghosts quite fail in imparting. The whole matter seems to me a sort of dreaming awake. It resembles a dream, in that the whole material is, from the first, in the dreamer's mind, though concealed at various depths below the surface; the dead appear alive, as they always do in dreams; unexpected combinations occur, as continually in dreams; the mind speaks through the various persons of the drama, and sometimes astonishes itself with its own wit, wisdom, and eloquence, as often in dreams; but, in both cases, the intellectual manifestations are really of a very flimsy texture. Mary Runnel is the only personage who does not come evidently from dream-land; and she, I think, represents that lurking scepticism, that sense of unreality, of which we are often conscious, amid the most vivid phantasmagoria of a dream. I should be glad to believe in the genuineness of these spirits, if I could; but the above is the conclusion to which my soberest thoughts tend. There remains, of course, a great deal for which I cannot account, and I cannot sufficiently wonder at the pigheadedness both of metaphysicians and physiologists, in not accepting the phenomena, so far as to make them the subject of investigation. In writing the communications, Miss ------ holds the pencil rather loosely between her fingers; it moves rapidly, and with equal facility whether she fixes her eyes on the paper or not. The handwriting has far more freedom than her own. At the conclusion of a sentence, the pencil lays itself down. She sometimes has a perception of each word before it is written; at other times, she is quite unconscious what is to come next. Her integrity is absolutely indubitable, and she herself totally disbelieves in the spiritual authenticity of what is communicated through her medium. September 3d.--We walked into Florence yesterday, betimes after breakfast, it being comfortably cool, and a gray, English sky; though, indeed, the clouds had a tendency to mass themselves more than they do on an overcast English day. We found it warmer in Florence, but, not inconveniently so, even in the sunniest streets and squares. We went to the Uffizi gallery, the whole of which with its contents is now familiar to us, except the room containing drawings; and our to-day's visit was especially to them. The door giving admittance to them is the very last in the gallery; and the rooms, three in number, are, I should judge, over the Loggia de' Lanzi, looking on the Grand Ducal Piazza. The drawings hang on the walls, framed and glazed; and number, perhaps, from one to two hundred in each room; but this is only a small portion of the collection, which amounts, it is said, to twenty thousand, and is reposited in portfolios. The sketches on the walls are changed, from time to time, so as to exhibit all the most interesting ones in turn. Their whole charm is artistic, imaginative, and intellectual, and in no degree of the upholstery kind; their outward presentment being, in general, a design hastily shadowed out, by means of colored crayons, on tinted paper, or perhaps scratched rudely in pen and ink; or drawn in pencil or charcoal, and half rubbed out; very rough things, indeed, in many instances, and the more interesting on that account, because it seems as if the artist had bestirred himself to catch the first glimpse of an image that did but reveal itself and vanish. The sheets, or sometimes scraps of paper, on which they are drawn, are discolored with age, creased, soiled; but yet you are magnetized by the hand of Raphael, Michael Angelo, Leonardo, or whoever may have jotted down those rough-looking master-touches. They certainly possess a charm that is lost in the finished picture; and I was more sensible of forecasting thought, skill, and prophetic design, in these sketches than in the most consummate works that have been elaborated from them. There is something more divine in these; for I suppose the first idea of a picture is real inspiration, and all the subsequent elaboration of the master serves but to cover up the celestial germ with something that belongs to himself. At any rate, the first sketch is the more suggestive, and sets the spectator's imagination at work; whereas the picture, if a good one, leaves him nothing to do; if bad, it confuses, stupefies, disenchants, and disheartens him. First thoughts have an aroma and fragrance in them, that they do not lose in three hundred years; for so old, and a good deal more, are some of these sketches. None interested me more than some drawings, on separate pieces of paper, by Perugino, for his picture of the mother and friends of Jesus round his dead body, now at the Pitti Palace. The attendant figures are distinctly made out, as if the Virgin, and John, and Mary Magdalen had each favored the painter with a sitting; but the body of Jesus lies in the midst, dimly hinted with a few pencil-marks. There were several designs by Michael Angelo, none of which made much impression on me; the most striking was a very ugly demon, afterwards painted in the Sistine Chapel. Raphael shows several sketches of Madonnas,--one of which has flowered into the Grand Duke's especial Madonna at the Pitti Palace, but with a different face. His sketches were mostly very rough in execution; but there were two or three designs for frescos, I think, in the Vatican, very carefully executed; perhaps because these works were mainly to be done by other hands than his own. It seems to one that the Pre-Raphaelite artists made more careful drawings than the later ones; and it rather surprised me to see how much science they possessed. We looked at few other things in the gallery; and, indeed, it was not one of the days when works of art find me impressible. We stopped a little while in the Tribune, but the Venus de' Medici seemed to me to-day little more than any other piece of yellowish white marble. How strange that a goddess should stand before us absolutely unrecognized, even when we know by previous revelations that she is nothing short of divine! It is also strange that, unless when one feels the ideal charm of a statue, it becomes one of the most tedious and irksome things in the world. Either it must be a celestial thing or an old lump of stone, dusty and time-soiled, and tiring out your patience with eternally looking just the same. Once in a while you penetrate through the crust of the old sameness, and see the statue forever new and immortally young. Leaving the gallery we walked towards the Duomo, and on our way stopped to look at the beautiful Gothic niches hollowed into the exterior walls of the Church of San Michele. They are now in the process of being cleaned, and each niche is elaborately inlaid with precious marbles, and some of them magnificently gilded; and they are all surmounted with marble canopies as light and graceful as frost-work. Within stand statues, St. George, and many other saints, by Donatello and others, and all taking a hold upon one's sympathies, even if they be not beautiful. Classic statues escape you with their slippery beauty, as if they were made of ice. Rough and ugly things can be clutched. This is nonsense, and yet it means something. . . . The streets were thronged and vociferative with more life and outcry than usual. It must have been market-day in Florence, for the commerce of the streets was in great vigor, narrow tables being set out in them, and in the squares, burdened with all kinds of small merchandise, such as cheap jewelry, glistening as brightly as what we had just seen in the gem-room of the Uffizi; crockery ware; toys, books, Italian and French; silks; slippers; old iron; all advertised by the dealers with terribly loud and high voices, that reverberated harshly from side to side of the narrow streets. Italian street-cries go through the head; not that they are so very sharp, but exceedingly hard, like a blunt iron bar. We stood at the base of the Campanile, and looked at the bas-reliefs which wreathe it round; and, above them, a row of statues; and from bottom to top a marvellous minuteness of inlaid marbles, filling up the vast and beautiful design of this heaven-aspiring tower. Looking upward to its lofty summit,--where angels might alight, lapsing downward from heaven, and gaze curiously at the bustle of men below,--I could not but feel that there is a moral charm in this faithful minuteness of Gothic architecture, filling up its outline with a million of beauties that perhaps may never be studied out by a single spectator. It is the very process of nature, and no doubt produces an effect that we know not of. Classic architecture is nothing but an outline, and affords no little points, no interstices where human feelings may cling and overgrow it like ivy. The charm, as I said, seems to be moral rather than intellectual; for in the gem-room of the Uffizi you may see fifty designs, elaborated on a small scale, that have just as much merit as the design of the Campanile. If it were only five inches long, it might be a case for some article of toilet; being two hundred feet high, its prettiness develops into grandeur as well as beauty, and it becomes really one of the wonders of the world. The design of the Pantheon, on the contrary, would retain its sublimity on whatever scale it might be represented. Returning homewards, we crossed the Ponte Vecchio, and went to the Museum of Natural History, where we gained admittance into the rooms dedicated to Galileo. They consist of a vestibule, a saloon, and a semicircular tribune, covered with a frescoed dome, beneath which stands a colossal statue of Galileo, long-bearded, and clad in a student's gown, or some voluminous garb of that kind. Around the tribune, beside and behind the statue, are six niches,--in one of which is preserved a forefinger of Galileo, fixed on a little gilt pedestal, and pointing upward, under a glass cover. It is very much shrivelled and mummy-like, of the color of parchment, and is little more than a finger-bone, with the dry skin or flesh flaking away from it; on the whole, not a very delightful relic; but Galileo used to point heavenward with this finger, and I hope has gone whither he pointed. Another niche contains two telescopes, wherewith he made some of his discoveries; they are perhaps a yard long, and of very small calibre. Other astronomical instruments are displayed in the glass cases that line the rooms; but I did not understand their use any better than the monks, who wished to burn Galileo for his heterodoxy about the planetary system. . . . After dinner I climbed the tower. . . . Florence lay in the sunshine, level, compact, and small of compass. Above the tiled roofs rose the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, the loftiest and the most picturesque, though built, I suppose, with no idea of making it so. But it attains, in a singular degree, the end of causing the imagination to fly upward and alight on its airy battlements. Near it I beheld the square mass of Or San Michele, and farther to the left the bulky Duomo and the Campanile close beside it, like a slender bride or daughter; the dome of San Lorenzo too. The Arno is nowhere visible. Beyond, and on all sides of the city, the hills pile themselves lazily upward in ridges, here and there developing into a peak; towards their bases white villas were strewn numerously, but the upper region was lonely and bare. As we passed under the arch of the Porta Romana this morning, on our way into the city, we saw a queer object. It was what we at first took for a living man, in a garb of light reddish or yellowish red color, of antique or priestly fashion, and with a cowl falling behind. His face was of the same hue, and seemed to have been powdered, as the faces of maskers sometimes are. He sat in a cart, which he seemed to be driving into the Deity with a load of earthen jars and pipkins, the color of which was precisely like his own. On closer inspection, this priestly figure proved to be likewise an image of earthenware, but his lifelikeness had a very strange and rather ghastly effect. Adam, perhaps, was made of just such red earth, and had the complexion of this figure. September 7th.--I walked into town yesterday morning, by way of the Porta San Frediano. The gate of a city might be a good locality for a chapter in a novel, or for a little sketch by itself, whether by painter or writer. The great arch of the gateway, piercing through the depth and height of the massive masonry beneath the battlemented summit; the shadow brooding below, in the immense thickness of the wall and beyond it, the vista of the street, sunny and swarming with life; outside of the gate, a throng of carts, laden with fruits, vegetables, small flat barrels of wine, waiting to be examined by the custom-house officers; carriages too, and foot-passengers entering, and others swarming outward. Under the shadowy arch are the offices of the police and customs, and probably the guard-room of the soldiers, all hollowed out in the mass of the gateway. Civil officers loll on chairs in the shade, perhaps with an awning over their heads. Where the sun falls aslantwise under the arch a sentinel, with musket and bayonet, paces to and fro in the entrance, and other soldiers lounge close by. The life of the city seems to be compressed and made more intense by this barrier; and on passing within it you do not breathe quite so freely, yet are sensible of an enjoyment in the close elbowing throng, the clamor of high voices from side to side of the street, and the million of petty sights, actions, traffics, and personalities, all so squeezed together as to become a great whole. The street by which I entered led me to the Carraja Bridge; crossing which, I kept straight onward till I came to the Church of Santa Maria Novella. Doubtless, it looks just the same as when Boccaccio's party stood in a cluster on its broad steps arranging their excursion to the villa. Thence I went to the Church of St. Lorenzo, which I entered by the side door, and found the organ sounding and a religious ceremony going forward. It is a church of sombre aspect, with its gray walls and pillars, but was decked out for some festivity with hangings of scarlet damask and gold. I sat awhile to rest myself, and then pursued my way to the Duomo. I entered, and looked at Sir John Hawkwood's painted effigy, and at several busts and statues, and at the windows of the chapel surrounding the dome, through which the sunshine glowed, white in the outer air, but a hundred-hued splendor within. I tried to bring up the scene of Lorenzo de' Medici's attempted assassination, but with no great success; and after listening a little while to the chanting of the priests and acolytes, I went to the Bank. It is in a palace of which Raphael was the architect, in the Piazza Gran Duca. I next went, as a matter of course, to the Uffizi gallery, and, in the first place, to the Tribune, where the Venus de' Medici deigned to reveal herself rather more satisfactorily than at my last visit. . . . I looked into all the rooms, bronzes, drawings, and gem-room; a volume might easily be written upon either subject. The contents of the gem-room especially require to be looked at separately in order to convince one's self of their minute magnificences; for, among so many, the eye slips from one to another with only a vague outward sense that here are whole shelves full of little miracles, both of nature's material and man's workmanship. Greater [larger] things can be reasonably well appreciated with a less scrupulous though broader attention; but in order to estimate the brilliancy of the diamond eyes of a little agate bust, for instance, you have to screw your mind down to them and nothing else. You must sharpen your faculties of observation to a point, and touch the object exactly on the right spot, or you do not appreciate it at all. It is a troublesome process when there are a thousand such objects to be seen. I stood at an open window in the transverse corridor, and looked down upon the Arno, and across at the range of edifices that impend over it on the opposite side. The river, I should judge, may be a hundred or a hundred and fifty yards wide in its course between the Ponte alle Grazie and the Ponte Vecchio; that is, the width between strand and strand is at least so much. The river, however, leaves a broad margin of mud and gravel on its right bank, on which water-weeds grow pretty abundantly, and creep even into the stream. On my first arrival in Florence I thought the goose-pond green of the water rather agreeable than otherwise; but its hue is now that of unadulterated mud, as yellow as the Tiber itself, yet not impressing me as being enriched with city sewerage like that other famous river. From the Ponte alle Grazie downward, half-way towards the Ponte Vecchio, there is an island of gravel, and the channel on each side is so shallow as to allow the passage of men and horses wading not overleg. I have seen fishermen wading the main channel from side to side, their feet sinking into the dark mud, and thus discoloring the yellow water with a black track visible, step by step, through its shallowness. But still the Arno is a mountain stream, and liable to be tetchy and turbulent like all its kindred, and no doubt it often finds its borders of hewn stone not too far apart for its convenience. Along the right shore, beneath the Uffizi and the adjacent buildings, there is a broad paved way, with a parapet; on the opposite shore the edifices are built directly upon the river's edge, and impend over the water, supported upon arches and machicolations, as I think that peculiar arrangement of buttressing arcades is called. The houses are picturesquely various in height, from two or three stories to seven; picturesque in hue likewise,--pea-green, yellow, white, and of aged discoloration,--but all with green blinds; picturesque also in the courts and galleries that look upon the river, and in the wide arches that open beneath, intended perhaps to afford a haven for the household boat. Nets were suspended before one or two of the houses, as if the inhabitants were in the habit of fishing out of window. As a general effect, the houses, though often palatial in size and height, have a shabby, neglected aspect, and are jumbled too closely together. Behind their range the city swells upward in a hillside, which rises to a great height above, forming, I believe, a part of the Boboli Gardens. I returned homewards over the Ponte Vecchio, which is a continuous street of ancient houses, except over the central arch, so that a stranger might easily cross the river without knowing it. In these small, old houses there is a community of goldsmiths, who set out their glass cases, and hang their windows with rings, bracelets, necklaces, strings of pearl, ornaments of malachite and coral, and especially with Florentine mosaics; watches, too, and snuff-boxes of old fashion or new; offerings for shrines also, such as silver hearts pierced with swords; an infinity of pretty things, the manufacture of which is continually going on in the little back-room of each little shop. This gewgaw business has been established on the Ponte Vecchio for centuries, although, long since, it was an art of far higher pretensions than now. Benvenuto Cellini had his workshop here, probably in one of these selfsame little nooks. It would have been a ticklish affair to be Benvenuto's fellow-workman within such narrow limits. Going out of the Porta Romana, I walked for some distance along the city wall, and then, turning to the left, toiled up the hill of Bellosguardo, through narrow zigzag lanes between high walls of stone or plastered brick, where the sun had the fairest chance to frizzle me. There were scattered villas and houses, here and there concentrating into a little bit of a street, paved with flag-stones from side to side, as in the city, and shadowed quite across its narrowness by the height of the houses. Mostly, however, the way was inhospitably sunny, and shut out by the high wall from every glimpse of a view, except in one spot, where Florence spread itself before my eyes, with every tower, dome, and spire which it contains. A little way farther on my own gray tower rose before me, the most welcome object that I had seen in the course of the day. September 10th.--I went into town again yesterday, by way of the Porta San Frediano, and observed that this gate (like the other gates of Florence, as far as I have observed) is a tall, square structure of stone or brick, or both, rising high above the adjacent wall, and having a range of open loggie in the upper story. The arch externally is about half the height of the structure. Inside, towards the town, it rises nearly to the roof. On each side of the arch there is much room for offices, apartments, storehouses, or whatever else. On the outside of the gate, along the base, are those iron rings and sockets for torches, which are said to be the distinguishing symbol of illustrious houses. As contrasted with the vista of the narrow, swarming street through the arch from without, the view from the inside might be presented with a glimpse of the free blue sky. I strolled a little about Florence, and went into two or three churches; into that of the Annunziata for one. I have already described this church, with its general magnificence, and it was more magnificent than ever to-day, being hung with scarlet silk and gold-embroidery. A great many people were at their devotions, thronging principally around the Virgin's shrine. I was struck now with the many bas-reliefs and busts in the costume of their respective ages, and seemingly with great accuracy of portraiture, in the passage leading from the front of the church into the cloisters. The marble was not at all abashed nor degraded by being made to assume the guise of the mediaeval furred robe, or the close-fitting tunic with elaborate ruff, or the breastplate and gorget, or the flowing wig, or whatever the actual costume might be; and one is sensible of a rectitude and reality in the affair, and respects the dead people for not putting themselves into an eternal masquerade. The dress of the present day will look equally respectable in one or two hundred years. The Fair is still going on, and one of its principal centres is before this church, in the Piazza of the Annunziata. Cloth is the chief commodity offered for sale, and none of the finest; coarse, unbleached linen and cotton prints for country-people's wear, together with yarn, stockings, and here and there an assortment of bright-colored ribbons. Playthings, of a very rude fashion, were also displayed; likewise books in Italian and French; and a great deal of iron-work. Both here and in Rome they have this odd custom of offering rusty iron implements for sale, spread out on the pavements. There was a good deal of tinware, too, glittering in the sunshine, especially around the pedestal of the bronze statue of Duke Ferdinand, who curbs his horse and looks down upon the bustling piazza in a very stately way. . . . The people attending the fair had mostly a rustic appearance; sunburnt faces, thin frames; no beauty, no bloom, no joyousness of young or old; an anxious aspect, as if life were no easy or holiday matter with them; but I should take them to be of a kindly nature, and reasonably honest. Except the broad-brimmed Tuscan hats of the women, there was no peculiarity of costume. At a careless glance I could very well have mistaken most of the men for Yankees; as for the women, there is very little resemblance between them and ours,--the old being absolutely hideous, and the young ones very seldom pretty. It was a very dull crowd. They do not generate any warmth among themselves by contiguity; they have no pervading sentiment, such as is continually breaking out in rough merriment from an American crowd; they have nothing to do with one another; they are not a crowd, considered as one mass, but a collection of individuals. A despotic government has perhaps destroyed their principle of cohesion, and crumbled them to atoms. Italian crowds are noted for their civility; possibly they deserve credit for native courtesy and gentleness; possibly, on the other hand, the crowd has not spirit and self-consciousness enough to be rampant. I wonder whether they will ever hold another parliament in the Piazza of Santa Croce! I paid a visit to the gallery of the Pitti Palace. There is too large an intermixture of Andrea del Sarto's pictures in this gallery; everywhere you see them, cold, proper, and uncriticisable, looking so much like first-rate excellence, that you inevitably quarrel with your own taste for not admiring them. . . . It was one of the days when my mind misgives me whether the pictorial art be not a humbug, and when the minute accuracy of a fly in a Dutch picture of fruit and flowers seems to me something more reliable than the master-touches of Raphael. The gallery was considerably thronged, and many of the visitors appeared to be from the country, and of a class intermediate between gentility and labor. Is there such a rural class in Italy? I saw a respectable-looking man feeling awkward and uncomfortable in a new and glossy pair of pantaloons not yet bent and creased to his natural movement. Nothing pleased me better to-day than some amber cups, in one of the cabinets of curiosities. They are richly wrought, and the material is as if the artist had compressed a great deal of sunshine together, and when sufficiently solidified had moulded these cups out of it and let them harden. This simile was suggested by ------. Leaving the palace, I entered the Boboli Gardens, and wandered up and down a good deal of its uneven surface, through broad, well-kept edges of box, sprouting loftily, trimmed smoothly, and strewn between with cleanly gravel; skirting along plantations of aged trees, throwing a deep shadow within their precincts; passing many statues, not of the finest art, yet approaching so near it, as to serve just as good a purpose for garden ornament; coming now and then to the borders of a fishpool, or a pond, where stately swans circumnavigated an island of flowers;--all very fine and very wearisome. I have never enjoyed this garden; perhaps because it suggests dress-coats, and such elegant formalities. September 11th.--We have heard a good deal of spirit matters of late, especially of wonderful incidents that attended Mr. Home's visit to Florence, two or three years ago. Mrs. Powers told a very marvellous thing; how that when Mr. Home was holding a seance in her house, and several persons present, a great scratching was heard in a neighboring closet. She addressed the spirit, and requested it not to disturb the company then, as they were busy with other affairs, promising to converse with it on a future occasion. On a subsequent night, accordingly, the scratching was renewed, with the utmost violence; and in reply to Mrs. Powers's questions, the spirit assured her that it was not one, but legion, being the ghosts of twenty-seven monks, who were miserable and without hope! The house now occupied by Powers was formerly a convent, and I suppose these were the spirits of all the wicked monks that had ever inhabited it; at least, I hope that there were not such a number of damnable sinners extant at any one time. These ghostly fathers must have been very improper persons in their lifetime, judging by the indecorousness of their behavior even after death, and in such dreadful circumstances; for they pulled Mrs. Powers's skirts so hard as to break the gathers. . . . It was not ascertained that they desired to have anything done for their eternal welfare, or that their situation was capable of amendment anyhow; but, being exhorted to refrain from further disturbance, they took their departure, after making the sign of the cross on the breast of each person present. This was very singular in such reprobates, who, by their own confession, had forfeited all claim to be benefited by that holy symbol: it curiously suggests that the forms of religion may still be kept up in purgatory and hell itself. The sign was made in a way that conveyed the sense of something devilish and spiteful; the perpendicular line of the cross being drawn gently enough, but the transverse one sharply and violently, so as to leave a painful impression. Perhaps the monks meant this to express their contempt and hatred for heretics; and how queer, that this antipathy should survive their own damnation! But I cannot help hoping that the case of these poor devils may not be so desperate as they think. They cannot be wholly lost, because their desire for communication with mortals shows that they need sympathy, therefore are not altogether hardened, therefore, with loving treatment, may be restored. A great many other wonders took place within the knowledge and experience of Mrs. P------. She saw, not one pair of hands only, but many. The head of one of her dead children, a little boy, was laid in her lap, not in ghastly fashion, as a head out of the coffin and the grave, but just as the living child might have laid it on his mother's knees. It was invisible, by the by, and she recognized it by the features and the character of the hair, through the sense of touch. Little hands grasped hers. In short, these soberly attested incredibilities are so numerous that I forget nine tenths of them, and judge the others too cheap to be written down. Christ spoke the truth surely, in saying that men would not believe, "though one rose from the dead." In my own case, the fact makes absolutely no impression. I regret such confirmation of truth as this. Within a mile of our villa stands the Villa Columbaria, a large house, built round a square court. Like Mr. Powers's residence, it was formerly a convent. It is inhabited by Major Gregorie, an old soldier of Waterloo and various other fights, and his family consists of Mrs. ------, the widow of one of the Major's friends, and her two daughters. We have become acquainted with the family, and Mrs. ------, the married daughter, has lent us a written statement of her experiences with a ghost, who has haunted the Villa Columbaria for many years back. He had made Mrs. ------ aware of his presence in her room by a sensation of extreme cold, as if a wintry breeze were blowing over her; also by a rustling of the bed-curtains; and, at such times, she had a certain consciousness, as she says, that she was not ALONE. Through Mr. Home's agency, the ghost was enabled to explain himself, and declared that he was a monk, named Giannane, who died a very long time ago in Mrs. ------'s present bedchamber. He was a murderer, and had been in a restless and miserable state ever since his death, wandering up and down the house, but especially haunting his own death-chamber and a staircase that communicated with the chapel of the villa. All the interviews with this lost spirit were attended with a sensation of severe cold, which was felt by every one present. He made his communications by means of table-rapping, and by the movements of chairs and other articles, which often assumed an angry character. The poor old fellow does not seem to have known exactly what he wanted with Mrs. ------, but promised to refrain from disturbing her any more, on condition that she would pray that he might find some repose. He had previously declined having any masses said for his soul. Rest, rest, rest, appears to be the continual craving of unhappy spirits; they do not venture to ask for positive bliss: perhaps, in their utter weariness, would rather forego the trouble of active enjoyment, but pray only for rest. The cold atmosphere around this monk suggests new ideas as to the climate of Hades. If all the afore-mentioned twenty-seven monks had a similar one, the combined temperature must have been that of a polar winter. Mrs. ------ saw, at one time, the fingers of her monk, long, yellow, and skinny; these fingers grasped the hands of individuals of the party, with a cold, clammy, and horrible touch. After the departure of this ghost other seances were held in her bedchamber, at which good and holy spirits manifested themselves, and behaved in a very comfortable and encouraging way. It was their benevolent purpose, apparently, to purify her apartments from all traces of the evil spirit, and to reconcile her to what had been so long the haunt of this miserable monk, by filling it with happy and sacred associations, in which, as Mrs. ------ intimates, they entirely succeeded. These stories remind me of an incident that took place at the old manse, in the first summer of our marriage. . . . September 17th.--We walked yesterday to Florence, and visited the church of St. Lorenzo, where we saw, for the second time, the famous Medici statues of Michael Angelo. I found myself not in a very appreciative state, and, being a stone myself, the statue of Lorenzo was at first little more to me than another stone; but it was beginning to assume life, and would have impressed me as it did before if I had gazed long enough. There was a better light upon the face, under the helmet, than at my former visit, although still the features were enough overshadowed to produce that mystery on which, according to Mr. Powers, the effect of the statue depends. I observe that the costume of the figure, instead of being mediaeval, as I believe I have stated, is Roman; but, be it what it may, the grand and simple character of the figure imbues the robes with its individual propriety. I still think it the greatest miracle ever wrought in marble. We crossed the church and entered a cloister on the opposite side, in quest of the Laurentian Library. Ascending a staircase we found an old man blowing the bellows of the organ, which was in full blast in the church; nevertheless he found time to direct us to the library door. We entered a lofty vestibule, of ancient aspect and stately architecture, and thence were admitted into the library itself; a long and wide gallery or hall, lighted by a row of windows on which were painted the arms of the Medici. The ceiling was inlaid with dark wood, in an elaborate pattern, which was exactly repeated in terra-cotta on the pavement beneath our feet. Long desks, much like the old-fashioned ones in schools, were ranged on each side of the mid aisle, in a series from end to end, with seats for the convenience of students; and on these desks were rare manuscripts, carefully preserved under glass; and books, fastened to the desks by iron chains, as the custom of studious antiquity used to be. Along the centre of the hall, between the two ranges of desks, were tables and chairs, at which two or three scholarly persons were seated, diligently consulting volumes in manuscript or old type. It was a very quiet place, imbued with a cloistered sanctity, and remote from all street-cries and rumble of the city,--odorous of old literature,--a spot where the commonest ideas ought not to be expressed in less than Latin. The librarian--or custode he ought rather to be termed, for he was a man not above the fee of a paul--now presented himself, and showed us some of the literary curiosities; a vellum manuscript of the Bible, with a splendid illumination by Ghirlandaio, covering two folio pages, and just as brilliant in its color as if finished yesterday. Other illuminated manuscripts--or at least separate pages of them, for the volumes were kept under glass, and not to be turned over--were shown us, very magnificent, but not to be compared with this of Ghirlandaio. Looking at such treasures I could almost say that we have left behind us more splendor than we have kept alive to our own age. We publish beautiful editions of books, to be sure, and thousands of people enjoy them; but in ancient times the expense that we spread thinly over a thousand volumes was all compressed into one, and it became a great jewel of a book, a heavy folio, worth its weight in gold. Then, what a spiritual charm it gives to a book to feel that every letter has been individually wrought, and the pictures glow for that individual page alone! Certainly the ancient reader had a luxury which the modern one lacks. I was surprised, moreover, to see the clearness and accuracy of the chirography. Print does not surpass it in these respects. The custode showed us an ancient manuscript of the Decameron; likewise, a volume containing the portraits of Petrarch and of Laura, each covering the whole of a vellum page, and very finely done. They are authentic portraits, no doubt, and Laura is depicted as a fair-haired beauty, with a very satisfactory amount of loveliness. We saw some choice old editions of books in a small separate room; but as these were all ranged in shut bookcases, and as each volume, moreover, was in a separate cover or modern binding, this exhibition did us very little good. By the by, there is a conceit struggling blindly in my mind about Petrarch and Laura, suggested by those two lifelike portraits, which have been sleeping cheek to cheek through all these centuries. But I cannot lay hold of it. September 21st.--Yesterday morning the Val d' Arno was entirely filled with a thick fog, which extended even up to our windows, and concealed objects within a very short distance. It began to dissipate itself betimes, however, and was the forerunner of an unusually bright and warm day. We set out after breakfast and walked into town, where we looked at mosaic brooches. These are very pretty little bits of manufacture; but there seems to have been no infusion of fresh fancy into the work, and the specimens present little variety. It is the characteristic commodity of the place; the central mart and manufacturing locality being on the Ponte Vecchio, from end to end of which they are displayed in cases; but there are other mosaic shops scattered about the town. The principal devices are roses,--pink, yellow, or white,--jasmines, lilies of the valley, forget-me-nots, orange blossoms, and others, single or in sprigs, or twined into wreaths; parrots, too, and other birds of gay plumage,-- often exquisitely done, and sometimes with precious materials, such as lapis lazuli, malachite, and still rarer gems. Bracelets, with several different, yet relative designs, are often very beautiful. We find, at different shops, a great inequality of prices for mosaics that seemed to be of much the same quality. We went to the Uffizi gallery, and found it much thronged with the middle and lower classes of Italians; and the English, too, seemed more numerous than I have lately seen them. Perhaps the tourists have just arrived here, starting at the close of the London season. We were amused with a pair of Englishmen who went through the gallery; one of them criticising the pictures and statues audibly, for the benefit of his companion. The critic I should take to be a country squire, and wholly untravelled; a tall, well-built, rather rough, but gentlemanly man enough; his friend, a small personage, exquisitely neat in dress, and of artificial deportment, every attitude and gesture appearing to have been practised before a glass. Being but a small pattern of a man, physically and intellectually, he had thought it worth while to finish himself off with the elaborateness of a Florentine mosaic; and the result was something like a dancing-master, though without the exuberant embroidery of such persons. Indeed, he was a very quiet little man, and, though so thoroughly made up, there was something particularly green, fresh, and simple in him. Both these Englishmen were elderly, and the smaller one had perfectly white hair, glossy and silken. It did not make him in the least venerable, however, but took his own character of neatness and prettiness. He carried his well-brushed and glossy hat in his hand in such a way as not to ruffle its surface; and I wish I could put into one word or one sentence the pettiness, the minikinfinical effect of this little man; his self-consciousness so lifelong, that, in some sort, he forgot himself even in the midst of it; his propriety, his cleanliness and unruffledness; his prettiness and nicety of manifestation, like a bird hopping daintily about. His companion, as I said, was of a completely different type; a tall, gray-haired man, with the rough English face, a little tinted with port wine; careless, natural manner, betokening a man of position in his own neighborhood; a loud voice, not vulgar, nor outraging the rules of society, but betraying a character incapable of much refinement. He talked continually in his progress through the gallery, and audibly enough for us to catch almost everything he said, at many yards' distance. His remarks and criticisms, addressed to his small friend, were so entertaining, that we strolled behind him for the sake of being benefited by them; and I think he soon became aware of this, and addressed himself to us as well as to his more immediate friend. Nobody but an Englishman, it seems to me, has just this kind of vanity,--a feeling mixed up with scorn and good-nature; self-complacency on his own merits, and as an Englishman; pride at being in foreign parts; contempt for everybody around him; a rough kindliness towards people in general. I liked the man, and should be glad to know him better. As for his criticism, I am sorry to remember only one. It was upon the picture of the Nativity, by Correggio, in the Tribune, where the mother is kneeling before the Child, and adoring it in an awful rapture, because she sees the eternal God in its baby face and figure. The Englishman was highly delighted with this picture, and began to gesticulate, as if dandling a baby, and to make a chirruping sound. It was to him merely a representation of a mother fondling her infant. He then said, "If I could have my choice of the pictures and statues in the Tribune, I would take this picture, and that one yonder" (it was a good enough Enthronement of the Virgin by Andrea del Sarto) "and the Dancing Faun, and let the rest go." A delightful man; I love that wholesome coarseness of mind and heart, which no education nor opportunity can polish out of the genuine Englishman; a coarseness without vulgarity. When a Yankee is coarse, he is pretty sure to be vulgar too. The two critics seemed to be considering whether it were practicable to go from the Uffizi to the Pitti gallery; but "it confuses one," remarked the little man, "to see more than one gallery in a day." (I should think so,--the Pitti Palace tumbling into his small receptacle on the top of the Uffizi.) "It does so," responded the big man, with heavy emphasis. September 23d.--The vintage has been going on in our podere for about a week, and I saw a part of the process of making wine, under one of our back windows. It was on a very small scale, the grapes being thrown into a barrel, and crushed with a sort of pestle; and as each estate seems to make its own wine, there are probably no very extensive and elaborate appliances in general use for the manufacture. The cider-making of New England is far more picturesque; the great heap of golden or rosy apples under the trees, and the cider-mill worked by a circumgyratory horse, and all agush with sweet juice. Indeed, nothing connected with the grape-culture and the vintage here has been picturesque, except the large inverted pyramids in which the clusters hang; those great bunches, white or purple, really satisfy my idea both as to aspect and taste. We can buy a large basketful for less than a paul; and they are the only things that one can never devour too much of--and there is no enough short of a little too much without subsequent repentance. It is a shame to turn such delicious juice into such sour wine as they make in Tuscany. I tasted a sip or two of a flask which the contadini sent us for trial,-- the rich result of the process I had witnessed in the barrel. It took me altogether by surprise; for I remembered the nectareousness of the new cider which I used to sip through a straw in my boyhood, and I never doubted that this would be as dulcet, but finer and more ethereal; as much more delectable, in short, as these grapes are better than puckery cider apples. Positively, I never tasted anything so detestable, such a sour and bitter juice, still lukewarm with fermentation; it was a wail of woe, squeezed out of the wine-press of tribulation, and the more a man drinks of such, the sorrier he will be. Besides grapes, we have had figs, and I have now learned to be very fond of them. When they first began to appear, two months ago, they had scarcely any sweetness, and tasted very like a decaying squash: this was an early variety, with purple skins. There are many kinds of figs, the best being green-skinned, growing yellower as they ripen; and the riper they are, the more the sweetness within them intensifies, till they resemble dried figs in everything, except that they retain the fresh fruit-flavor; rich, luscious, yet not palling. We have had pears, too, some of them very tolerable; and peaches, which look magnificently, as regards size and downy blush, but, have seldom much more taste than a cucumber. A succession of fruits has followed us, ever since our arrival in Florence:--first, and for a long time, abundance of cherries; then apricots, which lasted many weeks, till we were weary of them; then plums, pears, and finally figs, peaches, and grapes. Except the figs and grapes, a New England summer and autumn would give us better fruit than any we have found in Italy. Italy beats us I think in mosquitoes; they are horribly pungent little satanic particles. They possess strange intelligence, and exquisite acuteness of sight and smell,--prodigious audacity and courage to match it, insomuch that they venture on the most hazardous attacks, and get safe off. One of them flew into my mouth, the other night, and sting me far down in my throat; but luckily I coughed him up in halves. They are bigger than American mosquitoes; and if you crush them, after one of their feasts, it makes a terrific bloodspot. It is a sort of suicide--at least, a shedding of one's own blood--to kill them; but it gratifies the old Adam to do it. It shocks me to feel how revengeful I am; but it is impossible not to impute a certain malice and intellectual venom to these diabolical insects. I wonder whether our health, at this season of the year, requires that we should be kept in a state of irritation, and so the mosquitoes are Nature's prophetic remedy for some disease; or whether we are made for the mosquitoes, not they for us. It is possible, just possible, that the infinitesimal doses of poison which they infuse into us are a homoeopathic safeguard against pestilence; but medicine never was administered in a more disagreeable way. The moist atmosphere about the Arno, I suppose, produces these insects, and fills the broad, ten-mile valley with them; and as we are just on the brim of the basin, they overflow into our windows. September 25th.--U---- and I walked to town yesterday morning, and went to the Uffizi gallery. It is not a pleasant thought that we are so soon to give up this gallery, with little prospect (none, or hardly any, on my part) of ever seeing it again. It interests me and all of us far more than the gallery of the Pitti Palace, wherefore I know not, for the latter is the richer of the two in admirable pictures. Perhaps it is the picturesque variety of the Uffizi--the combination of painting, sculpture, gems, and bronzes--that makes the charm. The Tribune, too, is the richest room in all the world; a heart that draws all hearts to it. The Dutch pictures, moreover, give a homely, human interest to the Uffizi; and I really think that the frequency of Andrea del Santo's productions at the Pitti Palace--looking so very like masterpieces, yet lacking the soul of art and nature--have much to do with the weariness that comes from better acquaintance with the latter gallery. The splendor of the gilded and frescoed saloons is perhaps another bore; but, after all, my memory will often tread there as long as I live. What shall we do in America? Speaking of Dutch pictures, I was much struck yesterday, as frequently before, with a small picture by Teniers the elder. It seems to be a pawnbroker in the midst of his pledges; old earthen jugs, flasks, a brass kettle, old books, and a huge pile of worn-out and broken rubbish, which he is examining. These things are represented with vast fidelity, yet with bold and free touches, unlike the minute, microscopic work of other Dutch masters; and a wonderful picturesqueness is wrought out of these humble materials, and even the figure and head of the pawnbroker have a strange grandeur. We spent no very long time at the Uffizi, and afterwards crossed the Ponte alle Grazie, and went to the convent of San Miniato, which stands on a hill outside of the Porta San Gallo. A paved pathway, along which stand crosses marking stations at which pilgrims are to kneel and pray, goes steeply to the hill-top, where, in the first place, is a smaller church and convent than those of San Miniato. The latter are seen at a short distance to the right, the convent being a large, square battlemented mass, adjoining which is the church, showing a front of aged white marble, streaked with black, and having an old stone tower behind. I have seen no other convent or monastery that so well corresponds with my idea of what such structures were. The sacred precincts are enclosed by a high wall, gray, ancient, and luxuriously ivy-grown, and lofty and strong enough for the rampart of a fortress. We went through the gateway and entered the church, which we found in much disarray, and masons at work upon the pavement. The tribune is elevated considerably above the nave, and accessible by marble staircases; there are great arches and a chapel, with curious monuments in the Gothic style, and ancient carvings and mosaic works, and, in short, a dim, dusty, and venerable interior, well worth studying in detail. . . . The view of Florence from the church door is very fine, and seems to include every tower, dome, or whatever object emerges out of the general mass. September 28th.--I went to the Pitti Palace yesterday, and to the Uffizi to-day, paying them probably my last visit, yet cherishing an unreasonable doubt whether I may not see them again. At all events, I have seen them enough for the present, even what is best of them; and, at the same time, with a sad reluctance to bid them farewell forever, I experience an utter weariness of Raphael's old canvas, and of the time-yellowed marble of the Venus de' Medici. When the material embodiment presents itself outermost, and we perceive them only by the grosser sense, missing their ethereal spirit, there is nothing so heavily burdensome as masterpieces of painting and sculpture. I threw my farewell glance at the Venus de' Medici to-day with strange insensibility. The nights are wonderfully beautiful now. When the moon was at the full, a few nights ago, its light was an absolute glory, such as I seem only to have dreamed of heretofore, and that only in my younger days. At its rising I have fancied that the orb of the moon has a kind of purple brightness, and that this tinge is communicated to its radiance until it has climbed high aloft and sheds a flood of white over hill and valley. Now that the moon is on the wane, there is a gentler lustre, but still bright; and it makes the Val d' Arno with its surrounding hills, and its soft mist in the distance, as beautiful a scene as exists anywhere out of heaven. And the morning is quite as beautiful in its own way. This mist, of which I have so often spoken, sets it beyond the limits of actual sense and makes it ideal; it is as if you were dreaming about the valley,--as if the valley itself were dreaming, and met you half-way in your own dream. If the mist were to be withdrawn, I believe the whole beauty of the valley would go with it. Until pretty late in the morning, we have the comet streaming through the sky, and dragging its interminable tail among the stars. It keeps brightening from night to night, and I should think must blaze fiercely enough to cast a shadow by and by. I know not whether it be in the vicinity of Galileo's tower, and in the influence of his spirit, but I have hardly ever watched the stars with such interest as now. September 29th.--Last evening I met Mr. Powers at Miss Blagden's, and he talked about his treatment, by our government in reference, to an appropriation of twenty-five thousand dollars made by Congress for a statue by him. Its payment and the purchase of the statue were left at the option of the President, and he conceived himself wronged because the affair was never concluded. . . . As for the President, he knows nothing of art, and probably acted in the matter by the advice of the director of public works. No doubt a sculptor gets commissions as everybody gets public employment and emolument of whatever kind from our government, not by merit or fitness, but by political influence skilfully applied. As Powers himself observed, the ruins of our Capitol are not likely to afford sculptures equal to those which Lord Elgin took from the Parthenon, if this be the system under which they are produced. . . . I wish our great Republic had the spirit to do as much, according to its vast means, as Florence did for sculpture and architecture when it was a republic; but we have the meanest government and the shabbiest, and--if truly represented by it--we are the meanest and shabbiest people known in history. And yet the less we attempt to do for art the better, if our future attempts are to have no better result than such brazen troopers as the equestrian statue of General Jackson, or even such naked respectabilities as Greenough's Washington. There is something false and affected in our highest taste for art; and I suppose, furthermore, we are the only people who seek to decorate their public institutions, not by the highest taste among them, but by the average at best. There was also at Miss Blagden's, among other company, Mr. ------, an artist in Florence, and a sensible man. I talked with him about Home, the medium, whom he had many opportunities of observing when the latter was in these parts. Mr. ------ says that Home is unquestionably a knave, but that he himself is as much perplexed at his own preternatural performances as any other person; he is startled and affrighted at the phenomena which he produces. Nevertheless, when his spiritual powers fall short, he does his best to eke them out with imposture. This moral infirmity is a part of his nature, and I suggested that perhaps if he were of a firmer and healthier moral make, if his character were sufficiently sound and dense to be capable of steadfast principle, he would not have possessed the impressibility that fits him for the so-called spiritual influences. Mr. ------ says that Louis Napoleon is literally one of the most skilful jugglers in the world, and that probably the interest he has taken in Mr. Home was caused partly by a wish to acquire his art. This morning Mr. Powers invited me to go with him to the Grand Duke's new foundry, to see the bronze statue of Webster which has just been cast from his model. It is the second cast of the statue, the first having been shipped some months ago on board of a vessel which was lost; and, as Powers observed, the statue now lies at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean somewhere in the vicinity of the telegraphic cable. We were received with much courtesy and emphasis by the director of the foundry, and conducted into a large room walled with bare, new brick, where the statue was standing in front of the extinct furnace: a majestic Webster indeed, eight feet high, and looking even more colossal than that. The likeness seemed to me perfect, and, like a sensible man, Powers' has dressed him in his natural costume, such as I have seen Webster have on while making a speech in the open air at a mass meeting in Concord,--dress-coat buttoned pretty closely across the breast, pantaloons and boots,--everything finished even to a seam and a stitch. Not an inch of the statue but is Webster; even his coat-tails are imbued with the man, and this true artist has succeeded in showing him through the broadcloth as nature showed him. He has felt that a man's actual clothes are as much a part of him as his flesh, and I respect him for disdaining to shirk the difficulty by throwing the meanness of a cloak over it, and for recognizing the folly of masquerading our Yankee statesman in a Roman toga, and the indecorousness of presenting him as a brassy nudity. It would have been quite as unjustifiable to strip him to his skeleton as to his flesh. Webster is represented as holding in his right hand the written roll of the Constitution, with which he points to a bundle of fasces, which he keeps from falling by the grasp of his left, thus symbolizing him as the preserver of the Union. There is an expression of quiet, solid, massive strength in the whole figure; a deep, pervading energy, in which any exaggeration of gesture would lessen and lower the effect. He looks really like a pillar of the state. The face is very grand, very Webster stern and awful, because he is in the act of meeting a great crisis, and yet with the warmth of a great heart glowing through it. Happy is Webster to have been so truly and adequately sculptured; happy the sculptor in such a subject, which no idealization of a demigod could have supplied him with. Perhaps the statue at the bottom of the sea will be cast up in some future age, when the present race of man is forgotten, and if so, that far posterity will look up to us as a grander race than we find ourselves to be. Neither was Webster altogether the man he looked. His physique helped him out, even when he fell somewhat short of its promise; and if his eyes had not been in such deep caverns their fire would not have looked so bright. Powers made me observe how the surface of the statue was wrought to a sort of roughness instead of being smoothed, as is the practice of other artists. He said that this had cost him great pains, and certainly it has an excellent effect. The statue is to go to Boston, and I hope will be placed in the open air, for it is too mighty to be kept under any roof that now exists in America. . . . After seeing this, the director showed us some very curious and exquisite specimens of castings, such as baskets of flowers, in which the most delicate and fragile blossoms, the curl of a petal, the finest veins in a leaf, the lightest flower-spray that ever quivered in a breeze, were perfectly preserved; and the basket contained an abundant heap of such sprays. There were likewise a pair of hands, taken actually from life, clasped together as they were, and they looked like parts of a man who had been changed suddenly from flesh to brass. They were worn and rough and unhandsome hands, and so very real, with all their veins and the pores of the skin, that it was shocking to look at them. A bronze leaf, cast also from the life, was as curious and more beautiful. Taking leave of Powers, I went hither and thither about Florence, seeing for the last time things that I have seen many times before: the market, for instance, blocking up a line of narrow streets with fruit-stalls, and obstreperous dealers crying their peaches, their green lemons, their figs, their delicious grapes, their mushrooms, their pomegranates, their radishes, their lettuces. They use one vegetable here which I have not known so used elsewhere; that is, very young pumpkins or squashes, of the size of apples, and to be cooked by boiling. They are not to my taste, but the people here like unripe things,--unripe fruit, unripe chickens, unripe lamb. This market is the noisiest and swarmiest centre of noisy and swarming Florence, and I always like to pass through it on that account. I went also to Santa Croce, and it seemed to me to present a longer vista and broader space than almost any other church, perhaps because the pillars between the nave and aisles are not so massive as to obstruct the view. I looked into the Duomo, too, and was pretty well content to leave it. Then I came homeward, and lost my way, and wandered far off through the white sunshine, and the scanty shade of the vineyard walls, and the olive-trees that here and there branched over them. At last I saw our own gray battlements at a distance, on one side, quite out of the direction in which I was travelling, so was compelled to the grievous mortification of retracing a great many of my weary footsteps. It was a very hot day. This evening I have been on the towertop star-gazing, and looking at the comet, which waves along the sky like an immense feather of flame. Over Florence there was an illuminated atmosphere, caused by the lights of the city gleaming upward into the mists which sleep and dream above that portion of the valley, as well as the rest of it. I saw dimly, or fancied I saw, the hill of Fiesole on the other side of Florence, and remembered how ghostly lights were seen passing thence to the Duomo on the night when Lorenzo the Magnificent died. From time to time the sweet bells of Florence rang out, and I was loath to come down into the lower world, knowing that I shall never again look heavenward from an old tower-top in such a soft calm evening as this. Yet I am not loath to go away; impatient rather; for, taking no root, I soon weary of any soil in which I may be temporarily deposited. The same impatience I sometimes feel or conceive of as regards this earthly life. . . . I forgot to mention that Powers showed me, in his studio, the model of the statue of America, which he wished the government to buy. It has great merit, and embodies the ideal of youth, freedom, progress, and whatever we consider as distinctive of our country's character and destiny. It is a female figure, vigorous, beautiful, planting its foot lightly on a broken chain, and pointing upward. The face has a high look of intelligence and lofty feeling; the form, nude to the middle, has all the charms of womanhood, and is thus warmed and redeemed out of the cold allegoric sisterhood who have generally no merit in chastity, being really without sex. I somewhat question whether it is quite the thing, however, to make a genuine woman out of an allegory we ask, Who is to wed this lovely virgin? and we are not satisfied to banish her into the realm of chilly thought. But I liked the statue, and all the better for what I criticise, and was sorry to see the huge package in which the finished marble lies bundled up, ready to be sent to our country,--which does not call for it. Mr. Powers and his two daughters called to take leave of us, and at parting I expressed a hope of seeing him in America. He said that it would make him very unhappy to believe that he should never return thither; but it seems to me that he has no such definite purpose of return as would be certain to bring itself to pass. It makes a very unsatisfactory life, thus to spend the greater part of it in exile. In such a case we are always deferring the reality of life till a future moment, and, by and by, we have deferred it till there are no future moments; or, if we do go back, we find that life has shifted whatever of reality it had to the country where we deemed ourselves only living temporarily; and so between two stools we come to the ground, and make ourselves a part of one or the other country only by laying our bones in its soil. It is particularly a pity in Powers's case, because he is so very American in character, and the only convenience for him of his Italian residence is, that here he can supply himself with marble, and with workmen to chisel it according to his designs. SIENA. October 2d.--Yesterday morning, at six o'clock, we left our ancient tower, and threw a parting glance--and a rather sad one--over the misty Val d' Arno. This summer will look like a happy one in our children's retrospect, and also, no doubt, in the years that remain to ourselves; and, in truth, I have found it a peaceful and not uncheerful one. It was not a pleasant morning, and Monte Morello, looking down on Florence, had on its cap, betokening foul weather, according to the proverb. Crossing the suspension-bridge, we reached the Leopoldo railway without entering the city. By some mistake,--or perhaps because nobody ever travels by first-class carriages in Tuscany,--we found we had received second-class tickets, and were put into a long, crowded carriage, full of priests, military men, commercial travellers, and other respectable people, facing one another lengthwise along the carriage, and many of them smoking cigars. They were all perfectly civil, and I think I must own that the manners of this second-class would compare favorably with those of an American first-class one. At Empoli, about an hour after we started, we had to change carriages, the main train proceeding to Leghorn. . . . My observations along the road were very scanty: a hilly country, with several old towns seated on the most elevated hill-tops, as is common throughout Tuscany, or sometimes a fortress with a town on the plain at its base; or, once or twice, the towers and battlements of a mediaeval castle, commanding the pass below it. Near Florence the country was fertile in the vine and olive, and looked as unpicturesque as that sort of fertility usually makes it; not but what I have come to think better of the tint of the olive-leaf than when I first saw it. In the latter part of our journey I remember a wild stream, of a greenish hue, but transparent, rushing along over a rough bed, and before reaching Siena we rumbled into a long tunnel, and emerged from it near the city. . . . We drove up hill and down (for the surface of Siena seems to be nothing but an irregularity) through narrow old streets, and were set down at the Aquila Nera, a grim-looking albergo near the centre of the town. Mrs. S------ had already taken rooms for us there, and to these we were now ushered up the highway of a dingy stone staircase, and into a small, brick-paved parlor. The house seemed endlessly old, and all the glimpses that we caught of Siena out of window seemed more ancient still. Almost within arm's reach, across a narrow street, a tall palace of gray, time-worn stone clambered skyward, with arched windows, and square windows, and large windows and small, scattered up and down its side. It is the Palazzo Tolomei, and looks immensely venerable. From the windows of our bedrooms we looked into a broader street, though still not very wide, and into a small piazza, the most conspicuous object in which was a column, hearing on its top a bronze wolf suckling Romulus and Remus. This symbol is repeated in other parts of the city, and scours to indicate that the Sienese people pride themselves in a Roman origin. In another direction, over the tops of the houses, we saw a very high tower, with battlements projecting around its summit, so that it was a fortress in the air; and this I have since found to be the Palazzo Publico. It was pleasant, looking downward into the little old piazza and narrow streets, to see the swarm of life on the pavement, the life of to-day just as new as if it had never been lived before; the citizens, the priests, the soldiers, the mules and asses with their panniers, the diligence lumbering along, with a postilion in a faded crimson coat bobbing up and down on the off-horse. Such a bustling scene, vociferous, too, with various street-cries, is wonderfully set off by the gray antiquity of the town, and makes the town look older than if it were a solitude. Soon Mr. and Mrs. Story came, and accompanied us to look for lodgings. They also drove us about the city in their carriage, and showed us the outside of the Palazzo Publico, and of the cathedral and other remarkable edifices. The aspect of Siena is far more picturesque than that of any other town in Italy, so far as I know Italian towns; and yet, now that I have written it, I remember Perugia, and feel that the observation is a mistake. But at any rate Siena is remarkably picturesque, standing on such a site, on the verge and within the crater of an extinct volcano, and therefore being as uneven as the sea in a tempest; the streets so narrow, ascending between tall, ancient palaces, while the side streets rush headlong down, only to be threaded by sure-footed mules, such as climb Alpine heights; old stone balconies on the palace fronts; old arched doorways, and windows set in frames of Gothic architecture; arcades, resembling canopies of stone, with quaintly sculptured statues in the richly wrought Gothic niches of each pillar;--everything massive and lofty, yet minutely interesting when you look at it stone by stone. The Florentines, and the Romans too, have obliterated, as far as they could, all the interest of their mediaeval structures by covering them with stucco, so that they have quite lost their character, and affect the spectator with no reverential idea of age. Here the city is all overwritten with black-letter, and the glad Italian sun makes the effect so much the stronger. We took a lodging, and afterwards J----- and I rambled about, and went into the cathedral for a moment, and strayed also into the Piazza del Campo, the great public square of Siena. I am not in the mood for further description of public places now, so shall say a word or two about the old palace in which we have established ourselves. We have the second piano, and dwell amid faded grandeur, having for our saloon what seems to have been a ball-room. It is ornamented with a great fresco in the centre of the vaulted ceiling, and others covering the sides of the apartment, and surrounded with arabesque frameworks, where Cupids gambol and chase one another. The subjects of the frescos I cannot make out, not that they are faded like Giotto's, for they are as fresh as roses, and are done in an exceedingly workmanlike style; but they are allegories of Fame and Plenty and other matters, such as I could never understand. Our whole accommodation is in similar style,--spacious, magnificent, and mouldy. In the evening Miss S------ and I drove to the railway, and on the arrival of the train from Florence we watched with much eagerness the unlading of the luggage-van. At last the whole of our ten trunks and tin bandbox were produced, and finally my leather bag, in which was my journal and a manuscript book containing my sketch of a romance. It gladdened my very heart to see it, and I shall think the better of Tuscan promptitude and accuracy for so quickly bringing it back to me. (It was left behind, under one of the rail-carriage seats.) We find all the public officials, whether of railway, police, or custom-house, extremely courteous and pleasant to encounter; they seem willing to take trouble and reluctant to give it, and it is really a gratification to find that such civil people will sometimes oblige you by taking a paul or two aside. October 3d.--I took several strolls about the city yesterday, and find it scarcely extensive enough to get lost in; and if we go far from the centre we soon come to silent streets, with only here and there an individual; and the inhabitants stare from their doors and windows at the stranger, and turn round to look at him after he has passed. The interest of the old town would soon be exhausted for the traveller, but I can conceive that a thoughtful and shy man might settle down here with the view of making the place a home, and spend many years in a sombre kind of happiness. I should prefer it to Florence as a residence, but it would be terrible without an independent life in one's own mind. U---- and I walked out in the afternoon, and went into the Piazza del Campo, the principal place of the city, and a very noble and peculiar one. It is much in the form of an amphitheatre, and the surface of the ground seems to be slightly scooped out, so that it resembles the shallow basin of a shell. It is thus a much better site for an assemblage of the populace than if it were a perfect level. A semicircle or truncated ellipse of stately and ancient edifices surround the piazza, with arches opening beneath them, through which streets converge hitherward. One side of the piazza is a straight line, and is occupied by the Palazzo Publico, which is a most noble and impressive Gothic structure. It has not the mass of the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence, but is more striking. It has a long battlemented front, the central part of which rises eminent above the rest, in a great square bulk, which is likewise crowned with battlements. This is much more picturesque than the one great block of stone into which the Palazzo Vecchio is consolidated. At one extremity of this long front of the Palazzo Publico rises a tower, shooting up its shaft high, high into the air, and bulging out there into a battlemented fortress, within which the tower, slenderer than before, climbs to a still higher region. I do not know whether the summit of the tower is higher or so high as that of the Palazzo Vecchio; but the length of the shaft, free of the edifice, is much greater, and so produces the more elevating effect. The whole front of the Palazzo Publico is exceedingly venerable, with arched windows, Gothic carvings, and all the old-time ornaments that betoken it to have stood a great while, and the gray strength that will hold it up at least as much longer. At one end of the facade, beneath the shadow of the tower, is a grand and beautiful porch, supported on square pillars, within each of which is a niche containing a statue of mediaeval sculpture. The great Piazza del Campo is the market-place of Siena. In the morning it was thronged with booths and stalls, especially of fruit and vegetable dealers; but as in Florence, they melted away in the sunshine, gradually withdrawing themselves into the shadow thrown from the Palazzo Publico. On the side opposite the palace is an antique fountain of marble, ornamented with two statues and a series of bas-reliefs; and it was so much admired in its day that its sculptor received the name "Del Fonte." I am loath to leave the piazza and palace without finding some word or two to suggest their antique majesty, in the sunshine and the shadow; and how fit it seemed, notwithstanding their venerableness, that there should be a busy crowd filling up the great, hollow amphitheatre, and crying their fruit and little merchandises, so that all the curved line of stately old edifices helped to reverberate the noise. The life of to-day, within the shell of a time past, is wonderfully fascinating. Another point to which a stranger's footsteps are drawn by a kind of magnetism, so that he will be apt to find himself there as often as he strolls out of his hotel, is the cathedral. It stands in the highest part of the city, and almost every street runs into some other street which meanders hitherward. On our way thither, U---- and I came to a beautiful front of black and white marble, in somewhat the same style as the cathedral; in fact, it was the baptistery, and should have made a part of it, according to the original design, which contemplated a structure of vastly greater extent than this actual one. We entered the baptistery, and found the interior small, but very rich in its clustered columns and intersecting arches, and its frescos, pictures, statues, and ornaments. Moreover, a father and mother had brought their baby to be baptized, and the poor little thing, in its gay swaddling-clothes, looked just like what I have seen in old pictures, and a good deal like an Indian pappoose. It gave one little slender squeak when the priest put the water on its forehead, and then was quiet again. We now went round to the facade of the cathedral. . . . It is of black and white marble, with, I believe, an intermixture of red and other colors; but time has toned them down, so that white, black, and red do not contrast so strongly with one another as they may have done five hundred years ago. The architecture is generally of the pointed Gothic style, but there are likewise carved arches over the doors and windows, and a variety which does not produce the effect of confusion,--a magnificent eccentricity, an exuberant imagination flowering out in stone. On high, in the great peak of the front, and throwing its colored radiance into the nave within, there is a round window of immense circumference, the painted figures in which we can see dimly from the outside. But what I wish to express, and never can, is the multitudinous richness of the ornamentation of the front: the arches within arches, sculptured inch by inch, of the deep doorways; the statues of saints, some making a hermitage of a niche, others standing forth; the scores of busts, that look like faces of ancient people gazing down out of the cathedral; the projecting shapes of stone lions,--the thousand forms of Gothic fancy, which seemed to soften the marble and express whatever it liked, and allow it to harden again to last forever. But my description seems like knocking off the noses of some of the busts, the fingers and toes of the statues, the projecting points of the architecture, jumbling them all up together, and flinging them down upon the page. This gives no idea of the truth, nor, least of all, can it shadow forth that solemn whole, mightily combined out of all these minute particulars, and sanctifying the entire space of ground over which this cathedral-front flings its shadow, or on which it reflects the sun. A majesty and a minuteness, neither interfering with the other, each assisting the other; this is what I love in Gothic architecture. We went in and walked about; but I mean to go again before sketching the interior in my poor water-colors. October 4th.--On looking again at the Palazzo Publico, I see that the pillared portal which I have spoken of does not cover an entrance to the palace, but is a chapel, with an altar, and frescos above it. Bouquets of fresh flowers are on the altar, and a lamp burns, in all the daylight, before the crucifix. The chapel is quite unenclosed, except by an openwork balustrade of marble, on which the carving looks very ancient. Nothing could be more convenient for the devotions of the crowd in the piazza, and no doubt the daily prayers offered at the shrine might be numbered by the thousand,--brief, but I hope earnest,--like those glimpses I used to catch at the blue sky, revealing so much in an instant, while I was toiling at Brook Farm. Another picturesque thing about the Palazzo Publico is a great stone balcony quaintly wrought, about midway in the front and high aloft, with two arched windows opening into it. After another glimpse at the cathedral, too, I realize how utterly I have failed in conveying the idea of its elaborate ornament, its twisted and clustered pillars, and numberless devices of sculpture; nor did I mention the venerable statues that stand all round the summit of the edifice, relieved against the sky,--the highest of all being one of the Saviour, on the topmost peak of the front; nor the tall tower that ascends from one side of the building, and is built of layers of black and white marble piled one upon another in regular succession; nor the dome that swells upward close beside this tower. Had the cathedral been constructed on the plan and dimensions at first contemplated, it would have been incomparably majestic; the finished portion, grand as it is, being only what was intended for a transept. One of the walls of what was to have been the nave is still standing, and looks like a ruin, though, I believe, it has been turned to account as the wall of a palace, the space of the never-completed nave being now a court or street. The whole family of us were kindly taken out yesterday, to dine and spend the day at the Villa Belvedere with our friends Mr. and Mrs. Story. The vicinity of Siena is much more agreeable than that of Florence, being cooler, breezier, with more foliage and shrubbery both near at hand and in the distance; and the prospect, Mr. Story told us, embraces a diameter of about a hundred miles between hills north and south. The Villa Belvedere was built and owned by an Englishman now deceased, who has left it to his butler, and its lawns and shrubbery have something English in their character, and there was almost a dampness in the grass, which really pleased me in this parched Italy. Within the house the walls are hung with fine old-fashioned engravings from the pictures of Gainsborough, West, and other English painters. The Englishman, though he had chosen to live and die in Italy, had evidently brought his native tastes and peculiarities along with him. Mr. Story thinks of buying this villa: I do not know but I might be tempted to buy it myself if Siena were a practicable residence for the entire year; but the winter here, with the bleak mountain-winds of a hundred miles round about blustering against it, must be terribly disagreeable. We spent a very pleasant day, turning over books or talking on the lawn, whence we could behold scenes picturesque afar, and rich vineyard glimpses near at hand. Mr. Story is the most variously accomplished and brilliant person, the fullest of social life and fire, whom I ever met; and without seeming to make an effort, he kept us amused and entertained the whole day long; not wearisomely entertained neither, as we should have been if he had not let his fountain play naturally. Still, though he bubbled and brimmed over with fun, he left the impression on me that . . . . there is a pain and care, bred, it may be, out of the very richness of his gifts and abundance of his outward prosperity. Rich, in the prime of life, . . . . and children budding and blossoming around him as fairly as his heart could wish, with sparkling talents,--so many, that if he choose to neglect or fling away one, or two, or three, he would still have enough left to shine with,--who should be happy if not he? . . . . Towards sunset we all walked out into the podere, pausing a little while to look down into a well that stands on the verge of the lawn. Within the spacious circle of its stone curb was an abundant growth of maidenhair, forming a perfect wreath of thickly clustering leaves quite round, and trailing its tendrils downward to the water which gleamed beneath. It was a very pretty sight. Mr. Story bent over the well and uttered deep, musical tones, which were reverberated from the hollow depths with wonderful effect, as if a spirit dwelt within there, and (unlike the spirits that speak through mediums) sent him back responses even profounder and more melodious than the tones that awakened them. Such a responsive well as this might have been taken for an oracle in old days. We went along paths that led from one vineyard to another, and which might have led us for miles across the country. The grapes had been partly gathered, but still there were many purple or white clusters hanging heavily on the vines. We passed cottage doors, and saw groups of contadini and contadine in their festal attire, and they saluted us graciously; but it was observable that one of the men generally lingered on our track to see that no grapes were stolen, for there were a good many young people and children in our train, not only our own, but some from a neighboring villa. These Italian peasants are a kindly race, but, I doubt, not very hospitable of grape or fig. There was a beautiful sunset, and by the time we reached the house again the comet was already visible amid the unextinguished glow of daylight. A Mr. and Mrs. B------, Scotch people from the next villa, had come to see the Storys, and we sat till tea-time reading, talking, William Story drawing caricatures for his children's amusement and ours, and all of us sometimes getting up to look at the comet, which blazed brighter and brighter till it went down into the mists of the horizon. Among the caricatures was one of a Presidential candidate, evidently a man of very malleable principles, and likely to succeed. Late in the evening (too late for little Rosebud) we drove homeward. The streets of old Siena looked very grim at night, and it seemed like gazing into caverns to glimpse down some of the side streets as we passed, with a light burning dimly at the end of them. It was after ten when we reached home, and climbed up our gloomy staircase, lighted by the glimmer of some wax moccoli which I had in my pocket. October 5th.--I have been two or three times into the cathedral; . . . . the whole interior is of marble, in alternate lines of black and white, each layer being about eight inches in width and extending horizontally. It looks very curiously, and might remind the spectator of a stuff with horizontal stripes. Nevertheless, the effect is exceedingly rich, these alternate lines stretching away along the walls and round the clustered pillars, seen aloft, and through the arches; everywhere, this inlay of black and white. Every sort of ornament that could be thought of seems to have been crammed into the cathedral in one place or another: gilding, frescos, pictures; a roof of blue, spangled with golden stars; a magnificent wheel-window of old painted glass over the entrance, and another at the opposite end of the cathedral; statues, some of marble, others of gilded bronze; pulpits of carved marble; a gilded organ; a cornice of marble busts of the popes, extending round the entire church; a pavement, covered all over with a strange kind of mosaic work in various marbles, wrought into marble pictures of sacred subjects; immense clustered pillars supporting the round arches that divide the nave from the side aisles; a clere-story of windows within pointed arches;--it seemed as if the spectator were reading an antique volume written in black-letter of a small character, but conveying a high and solemn meaning. I can find no way of expressing its effect on me, so quaint and venerable as I feel this cathedral to be in its immensity of striped waistcoat, now dingy with five centuries of wear. I ought not to say anything that might detract from the grandeur and sanctity of the blessed edifice, for these attributes are really uninjured by any of the Gothic oddities which I have hinted at. We went this morning to the Institute of the Fine Arts, which is interesting as containing a series of the works of the Sienese painters from a date earlier than that of Cimabue. There is a dispute, I believe, between Florence and Siena as to which city may claim the credit of having originated the modern art of painting. The Florentines put forward Cimabue as the first artist, but as the Sienese produce a picture, by Guido da Siena, dated before the birth of Cimabue, the victory is decidedly with them. As to pictorial merit, to my taste there is none in either of these old painters, nor in any of their successors for a long time afterwards. At the Institute there are several rooms hung with early productions of the Sienese school, painted before the invention of oil-colors, on wood shaped into Gothic altar-pieces. The backgrounds still retain a bedimmed splendor of gilding. There is a plentiful use of red, and I can conceive that the pictures must have shed an illumination through the churches where they were displayed. There is often, too, a minute care bestowed on the faces in the pictures, and sometimes a very strong expression, stronger than modern artists get, and it is very strange how they attained this merit while they were so inconceivably rude in other respects. It is remarkable that all the early faces of the Madonna are especially stupid, and all of the same type, a sort of face such as one might carve on a pumpkin, representing a heavy, sulky, phlegmatic woman, with a long and low arch of the nose. This same dull face continues to be assigned to the Madonna, even when the countenances of the surrounding saints and angels are characterized with power and beauty, so that I think there must have been some portrait of this sacred personage reckoned authentic, which the early painters followed and religiously repeated. At last we came to a picture by Sodoma, the most illustrious representative of the Sienese school. It was a fresco; Christ bound to the pillar, after having been scourged. I do believe that painting has never done anything better, so far as expression is concerned, than this figure. In all these generations since it was painted it must have softened thousands of hearts, drawn down rivers of tears, been more effectual than a million of sermons. Really, it is a thing to stand and weep at. No other painter has done anything that can deserve to be compared to this. There are some other pictures by Sodoma, among them a Judith, very noble and admirable, and full of a profound sorrow for the deed which she has felt it her mission to do. Aquila Nera, October 7th.--Our lodgings in Siena had been taken only for five days, as they were already engaged after that period; so yesterday we returned to our old quarters at the Black Eagle. In the forenoon J----- and I went out of one of the gates (the road from it leads to Florence) and had a pleasant country walk. Our way wound downward, round the hill on which Siena stands, and gave us views of the Duomo and its campanile, seemingly pretty near, after we had walked long enough to be quite remote from them. Sitting awhile on the parapet of a bridge, I saw a laborer chopping the branches off a poplar-tree which he had felled; and, when it was trimmed, he took up the large trunk on one of his shoulders and carried it off, seemingly with ease. He did not look like a particularly robust man; but I have never seen such an herculean feat attempted by an Englishman or American. It has frequently struck me that the Italians are able to put forth a great deal of strength in such insulated efforts as this; but I have been told that they are less capable of continued endurance and hardship than our own race. I do not know why it should be so, except that I presume their food is less strong than ours. There was no other remarkable incident in our walk, which lay chiefly through gorges of the hills, winding beneath high cliffs of the brown Siena earth, with many pretty scenes of rural landscape; vineyards everywhere, and olive-trees; a mill on its little stream, over which there was an old stone bridge, with a graceful arch; farm-houses; a villa or two; subterranean passages, passing from the roadside through the high banks into the vineyards. At last we turned aside into a road which led us pretty directly to another gate of the city, and climbed steeply upward among tanneries, where the young men went about with their well-shaped legs bare, their trousers being tucked up till they were strictly breeches and nothing else. The campanile stood high above us; and by and by, and very soon, indeed, the steep ascent of the street brought us into the neighborhood of the Piazza del Campo, and of our own hotel. . . . From about twelve o'clock till one, I sat at my chamber window watching the specimens of human life as displayed in the Piazza Tolomei. [Here follow several pages of moving objects.] . . . . Of course, a multitude of other people passed by, but the curiousness of the catalogue is the prevalence of the martial and religious elements. The general costume of the inhabitants is frocks or sacks, loosely made, and rather shabby; often, shirt-sleeves; or the coat hung over one shoulder. They wear felt hats and straw. People of respectability seem to prefer cylinder hats, either black or drab, and broadcloth frock-coats in the French fashion; but, like the rest, they look a little shabby. Almost all the women wear shawls. Ladies in swelling petticoats, and with fans, some of which are highly gilded, appear. The people generally are not tall, but have a sufficient breadth of shoulder; in complexion, similar to Americans; bearded, universally. The vehicle used for driving is a little gig without a top; but these are seldom seen, and still less frequently a cab or other carriages. The gait of the people has not the energy of business or decided purpose. Everybody appears to lounge, and to have time for a moment's chat, and a disposition to rest, reason or none. After dinner I walked out of another gate of the city, and wandered among some pleasant country lanes, bordered with hedges, and wearing an English aspect; at least, I could fancy so. The vicinity of Siena is delightful to walk about in; there being a verdant outlook, a wide prospect of purple mountains, though no such level valley as the Val d' Arno; and the city stands so high that its towers and domes are seen more picturesquely from many points than those of Florence can be. Neither is the pedestrian so cruelly shut into narrow lanes, between high stone-walls, over which he cannot get a glimpse of landscape. As I walked by the hedges yesterday I could have fancied that the olive-trunks were those of apple-trees, and that I was in one or other of the two lands that I love better than Italy. But the great white villas and the farm-houses were unlike anything I have seen elsewhere, or that I should wish to see again, though proper enough to Italy. October 9th.--Thursday forenoon, 8th, we went to see the Palazzo Publico. There are some fine old halls and chapels, adorned with ancient frescos and pictures, of which I remember a picture of the Virgin by Sodoma, very beautiful, and other fine pictures by the same master. The architecture of these old rooms is grand, the roofs being supported by ponderous arches, which are covered with frescos, still magnificent, though faded, darkened, and defaced. We likewise saw an antique casket of wood, enriched with gilding, which had once contained an arm of John the Baptist,--so the custode told us. One of the halls was hung with the portraits of eight popes and nearly forty cardinals, who were natives of Siena. I have done hardly any other sight-seeing except a daily visit to the cathedral, which I admire and love the more the oftener I go thither. Its striped peculiarity ceases entirely to interfere with the grandeur and venerable beauty of its impression; and I am never weary of gazing through the vista of its arches, and noting continually something that I had not seen before in its exuberant adornment. The pavement alone is inexhaustible, being covered all over with figures of life-size or larger, which look like immense engravings of Gothic or Scriptural scenes. There is Absalom hanging by his hair, and Joab slaying him with a spear. There is Samson belaboring the Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. There are armed knights in the tumult of battle, all wrought with wonderful expression. The figures are in white marble, inlaid with darker stone, and the shading is effected by means of engraved lines in the marble, filled in with black. It would be possible, perhaps, to print impressions from some of these vast plates, for the process of cutting the lines was an exact anticipation of the modern art of engraving. However, the same thing was done--and I suppose at about the same period--on monumental brasses, and I have seen impressions or rubbings from those for sale in the old English churches. Yesterday morning, in the cathedral, I watched a woman at confession, being curious to see how long it would take her to tell her sins, the growth of a week perhaps. I know not how long she had been confessing when I first observed her, but nearly an hour passed before the priest came suddenly from the confessional, looking weary and moist with perspiration, and took his way out of the cathedral. The woman was left on her knees. This morning I watched another woman, and she too was very long about it, and I could see the face of the priest behind the curtain of the confessional, scarcely inclining his ear to the perforated tin through which the penitent communicated her outpourings. It must be very tedious to listen, day after day, to the minute and commonplace iniquities of the multitude of penitents, and it cannot be often that these are redeemed by the treasure-trove of a great sin. When her confession was over the woman came and sat down on the same bench with me, where her broad-brimmed straw hat was lying. She seemed to be a country woman, with a simple, matronly face, which was solemnized and softened with the comfort that she had obtained by disburdening herself of the soil of worldly frailties and receiving absolution. An old woman, who haunts the cathedral, whispered to her, and she went and knelt down where a procession of priests were to pass, and then the old lady begged a cruzia of me, and got a half-paul. It almost invariably happens, in church or cathedral, that beggars address their prayers to the heretic visitor, and probably with more unction than to the Virgin or saints. However, I have nothing to say against the sincerity of this people's devotion. They give all the proof of it that a mere spectator can estimate. Last evening we all went out to see the comet, which then reached its climax of lustre. It was like a lofty plume of fire, and grew very brilliant as the night darkened. October 10th.--This morning, too, we went to the cathedral, and sat long listening to the music of the organ and voices, and witnessing rites and ceremonies which are far older than even the ancient edifice where they were exhibited. A good many people were present, sitting, kneeling, or walking about,--a freedom that contrasts very agreeably with the grim formalities of English churches and our own meeting-houses. Many persons were in their best attire; but others came in, with unabashed simplicity, in their old garments of labor, sunburnt women from their toil among the vines and olives. One old peasant I noticed with his withered shanks in breeches and blue yarn stockings. The people of whatever class are wonderfully tolerant of heretics, never manifesting any displeasure or annoyance, though they must see that we are drawn thither by curiosity alone, and merely pry while they pray. I heartily wish the priests were better men, and that human nature, divinely influenced, could be depended upon for a constant supply and succession of good and pure ministers, their religion has so many admirable points. And then it is a sad pity that this noble and beautiful cathedral should be a mere fossil shell, out of which the life has died long ago. But for many a year yet to come the tapers will burn before the high altar, the Host will be elevated, the incense diffuse its fragrance, the confessionals be open to receive the penitents. I saw a father entering with two little bits of boys, just big enough to toddle along, holding his hand on either side. The father dipped his fingers into the marble font of holy water,--which, on its pedestals, was two or three times as high as those small Christians, --and wetted a hand of each, and taught them how to cross themselves. When they come to be men it will be impossible to convince those children that there is no efficacy in holy water, without plucking up all religious faith and sentiment by the roots. Generally, I suspect, when people throw off the faith they were born in, the best soil of their hearts is apt to cling to its roots. Raised several feet above the pavement, against every clustered pillar along the nave of the cathedral, is placed a statue of Gothic sculpture. In various places are sitting statues of popes of Sienese nativity, all of whom, I believe, have a hand raised in the act of blessing. Shrines and chapels, set in grand, heavy frames of pillared architecture, stand all along the aisles and transepts, and these seem in many instances to have been built and enriched by noble families, whose arms are sculptured on the pedestals of the pillars, sometimes with a cardinal's hat above to denote the rank of one of its members. How much pride, love, and reverence in the lapse of ages must have clung to the sharp points of all this sculpture and architecture! The cathedral is a religion in itself, --something worth dying for to those who have an hereditary interest in it. In the pavement, yesterday, I noticed the gravestone of a person who fell six centuries ago in the battle of Monte Aperto, and was buried here by public decree as a meed of valor. This afternoon I took a walk out of one of the city gates, and found the country about Siena as beautiful in this direction as in all others. I came to a little stream flowing over into a pebbly bed, and collecting itself into pools, with a scanty rivulet between. Its glen was deep, and was crossed by a bridge of several lofty and narrow arches like those of a Roman aqueduct. It is a modern structure, however. Farther on, as I wound round along the base of a hill which fell down upon the road by precipitous cliffs of brown earth, I saw a gray, ruined wall on the summit, surrounded with cypress-trees. This tree is very frequent about Siena, and the scenery is made soft and beautiful by a variety of other trees and shrubbery, without which these hills and gorges would have scarcely a charm. The road was thronged with country people, mostly women and children, who had been spending the feast-day in Siena; and parties of boys were chasing one another through the fields, pretty much as boys do in New England of a Sunday, but the Sienese lads had not the sense of Sabbath-breaking like our boys. Sunday with these people is like any other feast-day, and consecrated cheerful enjoyment. So much religious observance, as regards outward forms, is diffused through the whole week that they have no need to intensify the Sabbath except by making it gladden the other days. Returning through the same gate by which I had come out, I ascended into the city by a long and steep street, which was paved with bricks set edgewise. This pavement is common in many of the streets, which, being too steep for horses and carriages, are meant only to sustain the lighter tread of mules and asses. The more level streets are paved with broad, smooth flag-stones, like those of Florence,--a fashion which I heartily regret to change for the little penitential blocks of Rome. The walls of Siena in their present state, and so far as I have seen them, are chiefly brick; but there are intermingled fragments of ancient stone-work, and I wonder why the latter does not prevail more largely. The Romans, however,--and Siena had Roman characteristics,--always liked to build of brick, a taste that has made their ruins (now that the marble slabs are torn off) much less grand than they ought to have been. I am grateful to the old Sienese for having used stone so largely in their domestic architecture, and thereby rendered their city so grimly picturesque, with its black palaces frowning upon one another from arched windows, across narrow streets, to the height of six stories, like opposite ranks of tall men looking sternly into one another's eyes. October 11th.--Again I went to the cathedral this morning, and spent an hour listening to the music and looking through the orderly intricacies of the arches, where many vistas open away among the columns of the choir. There are five clustered columns on each side of the nave; then under the dome there are two more arches, not in a straight line, but forming the segment of a circle; and beyond the circle of the dome there are four more arches, extending to the extremity of the chancel. I should have said, instead of "clustered columns" as above, that there are five arches along the nave supported by columns. This cathedral has certainly bewitched me, to write about it so much, effecting nothing with my pains. I should judge the width of each arch to be about twenty feet, and the thickness of each clustered pillar is eight; or ten more, and the length of the entire building may be between two and three hundred feet; not very large, certainly, but it makes an impression of grandeur independent of size. . . . I never shall succeed even in reminding myself of the venerable magnificence of this minster, with its arches, its columns, its cornice of popes' heads, its great wheel windows, its manifold ornament, all combining in one vast effect, though many men have labored individually, and through a long course of time, to produce this multifarious handiwork and headwork. I now took a walk out of the city. A road turned immediately to the left as I emerged from the city, and soon proved to be a rustic lane leading past several villas and farm-houses. It was a very pleasant walk, with vineyards and olive-orchards on each side, and now and then glimpses of the towers and sombre heaped-up palaces of Siena, and now a rural seclusion again; for the hills rise and the valleys fall like the swell and subsidence of the sea after a gale, so that Siena may be quite hidden within a quarter of a mile of its wall, or may be visible, I doubt not, twenty miles away. It is a fine old town, with every promise of health and vigor in its atmosphere, and really, if I could take root anywhere, I know not but it could as well be here as in another place. It would only be a kind of despair, however, that would ever make me dream of finding a home in Italy; a sense that I had lost my country through absence or incongruity, and that earth is not an abiding-place. I wonder that we Americans love our country at all, it having no limits and no oneness; and when you try to make it a matter of the heart, everything falls away except one's native State; neither can you seize hold of that unless you tear it out of the Union, bleeding and quivering. Yet unquestionably, we do stand by our national flag as stoutly as any people in the world, and I myself have felt the heart throb at sight of it as sensibly as other men. I think the singularity of our form of government contributes to give us a kind of patriotism, by separating us from other nations more entirely. If other nations had similar institutions,--if England, especially, were a democracy,--we should as readily make ourselves at home in another country as now in a new State. October 12th.--And again we went to the cathedral this forenoon, and the whole family, except myself, sketched portions of it. Even Rosebud stood gravely sketching some of the inlaid figures of the pavement. As for me, I can but try to preserve some memorial of this beautiful edifice in ill-fitting words that never hit the mark. This morning visit was not my final one, for I went again after dinner and walked quite round the whole interior. I think I have not yet mentioned the rich carvings of the old oaken seats round the choir, and the curious mosaic of lighter and darker woods, by which figures and landscapes are skilfully represented on the backs of some of the stalls. The process seems to be the same as the inlaying and engraving of the pavement, the material in one case being marble, in the other wood. The only other thing that I particularly noticed was, that in the fonts of holy water at the front entrance, marble fish are sculptured in the depths of the basin, and eels and shellfish crawling round the brim. Have I spoken of the sumptuous carving of the capitals of the columns? At any rate I have left a thousand beauties without a word. Here I drop the subject. As I took my parting glance the cathedral had a gleam of golden sunshine in its far depths, and it seemed to widen and deepen itself, as if to convince me of my error in saying, yesterday, that it is not very large. I wonder how I could say it. After taking leave of the cathedral, I found my way out of another of the city gates, and soon turned aside into a green lane. . . . Soon the lane passed through a hamlet consisting of a few farm-houses, the shabbiest and dreariest that can be conceived, ancient, and ugly, and dilapidated, with iron-grated windows below, and heavy wooden shutters on the windows above,--high, ruinous walls shutting in the courts, and ponderous gates, one of which was off its hinges. The farm-yards were perfect pictures of disarray and slovenly administration of home affairs. Only one of these houses had a door opening on the road, and that was the meanest in the hamlet. A flight of narrow stone stairs ascended from the threshold to the second story. All these houses were specimens of a rude antiquity, built of brick and stone, with the marks of arched doors and windows where a subsequent generation had shut up the lights, or the accesses which the original builders had opened. Humble as these dwellings are,--though large and high compared with rural residences in other countries,--they may very probably date back to the times when Siena was a warlike republic, and when every house in its neighborhood had need to be a fortress. I suppose, however, prowling banditti were the only enemies against whom a defence would be attempted. What lives must now be lived there,--in beastly ignorance, mental sluggishness, hard toil for little profit, filth, and a horrible discomfort of fleas; for if the palaces of Italy are overrun with these pests, what must the country hovels be! . . . . We are now all ready for a start to-morrow. RADICOFANI. October 13th.--We arranged to begin our journey at six. . . . It was a chill, lowering morning, and the rain blew a little in our faces before we had gone far, but did not continue long. The country soon lost the pleasant aspect which it wears immediately about Siena, and grew very barren and dreary. Then it changed again for the better, the road leading us through a fertility of vines and olives, after which the dreary and barren hills came back again, and formed our prospect throughout most of the day. We stopped for our dejeuner a la fourchette at a little old town called San Quirico, which we entered through a ruined gateway, the town being entirely surrounded by its ancient wall. This wall is far more picturesque than that of Siena, being lofty and built of stone, with a machicolation of arches running quite round its top, like a cornice. It has little more than a single street, perhaps a quarter of a mile long, narrow, paved with flag-stones in the Florentine fashion, and lined with two rows of tall, rusty stone houses, without a gap between them from end to end. The cafes were numerous in relation to the size of the town, and there were two taverns,--our own, the Eagle, being doubtless the best, and having three arched entrances in its front. Of these, the middle one led to the guests' apartments, the one on the right to the barn, and that on the left to the stable, so that, as is usual in Italian inns, the whole establishment was under one roof. We were shown into a brick-paved room on the first floor, adorned with a funny fresco of Aurora on the ceiling, and with some colored prints, both religious and profane. . . . As we drove into the town we noticed a Gothic church with two doors of peculiar architecture, and while our dejeuner was being prepared we went to see it. The interior had little that was remarkable, for it had been repaired early in the last century, and spoilt of course; but an old triptych is still hanging in a chapel beside the high altar. It is painted on wood, and dates back beyond the invention of oil-painting, and represents the Virgin and some saints and angels. Neither is the exterior of the church particularly interesting, with the exception of the carving and ornaments of two of the doors. Both of them have round arches, deep and curiously wrought, and the pillars of one of the two are formed of a peculiar knot or twine in stone-work, such as I cannot well describe, but it is both ingenious and simple. These pillars rest on two nondescript animals, which look as much like walruses as anything else. The pillars of the other door consist of two figures supporting the capitals, and themselves standing on two handsomely carved lions. The work is curious, and evidently very ancient, and the material a red freestone. After lunch, J----- and I took a walk out of the gate of the town opposite to that of our entrance. There were no soldiers on guard, as at city gates of more importance; nor do I think that there is really any gate to shut, but the massive stone gateway still stands entire over the empty arch. Looking back after we had passed through, I observed that the lofty upper story is converted into a dove-cot, and that pumpkins were put to ripen in some open chambers at one side. We passed near the base of a tall, square tower, which is said to be of Roman origin. The little town is in the midst of a barren region, but its immediate neighborhood is fertile, and an olive-orchard, venerable of aspect, lay on the other side of the pleasant lane with its English hedges, and olive-trees grew likewise along the base of the city wall. The arched machicolations, which I have before mentioned, were here and there interrupted by a house which was built upon the old wall or incorporated into it; and from the windows of one of then I saw ears of Indian corn hung out to ripen in the sun, and somebody was winnowing grain at a little door that opened through the wall. It was very pleasant to see the ancient warlike rampart thus overcome with rustic peace. The ruined gateway is partly overgrown with ivy. Returning to our inn, along the street, we saw ------ sketching one of the doors of the Gothic church, in the midst of a crowd of the good people of San Quirico, who made no scruple to look over her shoulder, pressing so closely as hardly to allow her elbow-room. I must own that I was too cowardly to come forward and take my share of this public notice, so I turned away to the inn and there awaited her coming. Indeed, she has seldom attempted to sketch without finding herself the nucleus of a throng. VITERBO. The Black Eagle, October 14th.--Perhaps I had something more to say of San Quirico, but I shall merely add that there is a stately old palace of the Piccolomini close to the church above described. It is built in the style of the Roman palaces, and looked almost large enough to be one of them. Nevertheless, the basement story, or part of it, seems to be used as a barn and stable, for I saw a yoke of oxen in the entrance. I cannot but mention a most wretched team of vettura-horses which stopped at the door of our albergo: poor, lean, downcast creatures, with deep furrows between their ribs; nothing but skin and bone, in short, and not even so much skin as they should have had, for it was partially worn off from their backs. The harness was fastened with ropes, the traces and reins were ropes; the carriage was old and shabby, and out of this miserable equipage there alighted an ancient gentleman and lady, whom our waiter affirmed to be the Prefect of Florence and his wife. We left San Quirico at two o'clock, and followed an ascending road till we got into the region above the clouds; the landscape was very wide, but very dreary and barren, and grew more and more so till we began to climb the mountain of Radicofani, the peak of which had been blackening itself on the horizon almost the whole day. When we had come into a pretty high region we were assailed by a real mountain tempest of wind, rain, and hail, which pelted down upon us in good earnest, and cooled the air a little below comfort. As we toiled up the mountain its upper region presented a very striking aspect, looking as if a precipice had been smoothed and squared for the purpose of rendering the old castle on its summit more inaccessible than it was by nature. This is the castle of the robber-knight, Ghino di Tacco, whom Boccaccio introduces into the Decameron. A freebooter of those days must have set a higher value on such a rock as this than if it had been one mass of diamond, for no art of mediaeval warfare could endanger him in such a fortress. Drawing yet nearer, we found the hillside immediately above us strewn with thousands upon thousands of great fragments of stone. It looked as if some great ruin had taken place there, only it was too vast a ruin to have been the dismemberment and dissolution of anything made by man. We could now see the castle on the height pretty distinctly. It seemed to impend over the precipice; and close to the base of the latter we saw the street of a town on as strange and inconvenient a foundation as ever one was built upon. I suppose the inhabitants of the village were dependants of the old knight of the castle; his brotherhood of robbers, as they married and had families, settled there under the shelter of the eagle's nest. But the singularity is, how a community of people have contrived to live and perpetuate themselves so far out of the reach of the world's help, and seemingly with no means of assisting in the world's labor. I cannot imagine how they employ themselves except in begging, and even that branch of industry appears to be left to the old women and the children. No house was ever built in this immediate neighborhood for any such natural purpose as induces people to build them on other sites. Even our hotel, at which we now arrived, could not be said to be a natural growth of the soil; it had originally been a whim of one of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany,--a hunting-palace,--intended for habitation only during a few weeks of the year. Of all dreary hotels I ever alighted at, methinks this is the most so; but on first arriving I merely followed the waiter to look at our rooms, across stone-paved basement-halls dismal as Etruscan tombs; up dim staircases, and along shivering corridors, all of stone, stone, stone, nothing but cold stone. After glancing at these pleasant accommodations, my wife and I, with J-----, set out to ascend the hill and visit the town of Radicofani. It is not more than a quarter of a mile above our hotel, and is accessible by a good piece of road, though very steep. As we approached the town, we were assailed by some little beggars; but this is the case all through Italy, in city or solitude, and I think the mendicants of Radicofani are fewer than its proportion. We had not got far towards the village, when, looking back over the scene of many miles that lay stretched beneath us, we saw a heavy shower apparently travelling straight towards us over hill and dale. It seemed inevitable that it should soon be upon us, so I persuaded my wife to return to the hotel; but J----- and I kept onward, being determined to see Radicofani with or without a drenching. We soon entered the street; the blackest, ugliest, rudest old street, I do believe, that ever human life incrusted itself with. The first portion of it is the overbrimming of the town in generations subsequent to that in which it was surrounded by a wall; but after going a little way we came to a high, square tower planted right across the way, with an arched gateway in its basement story, so that it looked like a great short-legged giant striding over the street of Radicofani. Within the gateway is the proper and original town, though indeed the portion outside of the gate is as densely populated, as ugly, and as ancient, as that within. The street was very narrow, and paved with flag-stones not quite so smooth as those of Florence; the houses are tall enough to be stately, if they were not so inconceivably dingy and shabby; but, with their half-dozen stories, they make only the impression of hovel piled upon hovel,--squalor immortalized in undecaying stone. It was now getting far into the twilight, and I could not distinguish the particularities of the little town, except that there were shops, a cafe or two, and as many churches, all dusky with age, crowded closely together, inconvenient stifled too in spite of the breadth and freedom of the mountain atmosphere outside the scanty precincts of the street. It was a death-in-life little place, a fossilized place, and yet the street was thronged, and had all the bustle of a city; even more noise than a city's street, because everybody in Radicofani knows everybody, and probably gossips with everybody, being everybody's blood relation, as they cannot fail to have become after they and their forefathers have been shut up together within the narrow walls for many hundred years. They looked round briskly at J----- and me, but were courteous, as Italians always are, and made way for us to pass through the throng, as we kept on still ascending the steep street. It took us but a few minutes to reach the still steeper and winding pathway which climbs towards the old castle. After ascending above the village, the path, though still paved, becomes very rough, as if the hoofs of Ghino di Tacco's robber cavalry had displaced the stones and they had never been readjusted. On every side, too, except where the path just finds space enough, there is an enormous rubbish of huge stones, which seems to have fallen from the precipice above, or else to have rained down out of the sky. We kept on, and by and by reached what seemed to have been a lower outwork of the castle on the top; there was the massive old arch of a gateway, and a great deal of ruin of man's work, beside the large stones that here, as elsewhere, were scattered so abundantly. Within the wall and gateway just mentioned, however, there was a kind of farm-house, adapted, I suppose, out of the old ruin, and I noticed some ears of Indian corn hanging out of a window. There were also a few stacks of hay, but no signs of human or animal life; and it is utterly inexplicable to me, where these products of the soil could have come from, for certainly they never grew amid that barrenness. We had not yet reached Ghino's castle, and, being now beneath it, we had to bend our heads far backward to see it rising up against the clear sky while we were now in twilight. The path upward looked terribly steep and rough, and if we had climbed it we should probably have broken our necks in descending again into the lower obscurity. We therefore stopped here, much against J-----'s will, and went back as we came, still wondering at the strange situation of Radicofani; for its aspect is as if it had stepped off the top of the cliff and lodged at its base, though still in danger of sliding farther down the hillside. Emerging from the compact, grimy life of its street, we saw that the shower had swept by, or probably had expended itself in a region beneath us, for we were above the scope of many of the showery clouds that haunt a hill-country. There was a very bright star visible, I remember, and we saw the new moon, now a third towards the full, for the first time this evening. The air was cold and bracing. But I am excessively sleepy, so will not describe our great dreary hotel, where a blast howled in an interminable corridor all night. It did not seem to have anything to do with the wind out of doors, but to be a blast that had been casually shut in when the doors were closed behind the last Grand Duke who came hither and departed, and ever since it has been kept prisoner, and makes a melancholy wail along the corridor. The dreamy stupidity of this conceit proves how sleepy I am. SETTE VENE. October 15th.--We left Radicofani long before sunrise, and I saw that ceremony take place from the coupe of the vettura for the first time in a long while. A sunset is the better sight of the two. I have always suspected it, and have been strengthened in the idea whenever I have had an opportunity of comparison. Our departure from Radicofani was most dreary, except that we were very glad to get away; but, the cold discomfort of dressing in a chill bedroom by candlelight, and our uncertain wandering through the immense hotel with a dim taper in search of the breakfast-room, and our poor breakfast of eggs, Italian bread, and coffee,--all these things made me wish that people were created with roots like trees, so they could not befool themselves with wandering about. However, we had not long been on our way before the morning air blew away all our troubles, and we rumbled cheerfully onward, ready to encounter even the papal custom-house officers at Ponte Centino. Our road thither was a pretty steep descent. I remember the barren landscape of hills, with here and there a lonely farm-house, which there seemed to be no occasion for, where nothing grew. At Ponte Centino my passport was examined, and I was invited into an office where sat the papal custom-house officer, a thin, subtle-looking, keen-eyed, sallow personage, of aspect very suitable to be the agent of a government of priests. I communicated to him my wish to pass the custom-house without giving the officers the trouble of examining my luggage. He inquired whether I had any dutiable articles, and wrote for my signature a declaration in the negative; and then he lifted a sand-box, beneath which was a little heap of silver coins. On this delicate hint I asked what was the usual fee, and was told that fifteen pauls was the proper sum. I presume it was entirely an illegal charge, and that he had no right to pass any luggage without examination; but the thing is winked at by the authorities, and no money is better spent for the traveller's convenience than these fifteen pauls. There was a papal military officer in the room, and he, I believe, cheated me in the change of a Napoleon, as his share of the spoil. At the door a soldier met me with my passport, and looked as if he expected a fee for handing it to me; but in this he was disappointed. After I had resumed my seat in the coupe, the porter of the custom-house--a poor, sickly-looking creature, half dead with the malaria of the place--appeared, and demanded a fee for doing nothing to my luggage. He got three pauls, and looked but half contented. This whole set of men seem to be as corrupt as official people can possibly be; and yet I hardly know whether to stigmatize them as corrupt, because it is not their individual delinquency, but the operation of a regular system. Their superiors know what men they are, and calculate upon their getting a living by just these means. And, indeed, the custom-house and passport regulations, as they exist in Italy, would be intolerable if there were not this facility of evading them at little cost. Such laws are good for nothing but to be broken. We now began to ascend again, and the country grew fertile and picturesque. We passed many mules and donkeys, laden with a sort of deep firkin on each side of the saddle, and these were heaped up with grapes, both purple and white. We bought some, and got what we should have thought an abundance at small price, only we used to get twice as many at Montanto for the same money. However, a Roman paul bought us three or four pounds even here. We still ascended, and came soon to the gateway of the town of Acquapendente, which stands on a height that seems to descend by natural terraces to the valley below. . . . French soldiers, in their bluish-gray coats and scarlet trousers, were on duty at the gate, and one of them took my passport and the vetturino's, and we then drove into the town to wait till they should be vised. We saw but one street, narrow, with tall, rusty, aged houses, built of stone, evil smelling; in short, a kind of place that would be intolerably dismal in cloudy England, and cannot be called cheerful even under the sun of Italy. . . . Priests passed, and burly friars, one of whom was carrying a wine-barrel on his head. Little carts, laden with firkins of grapes, and donkeys with the same genial burden, brushed passed our vettura, finding scarce room enough in the narrow street. All the idlers of Acquapendente--and they were many--assembled to gaze at us, but not discourteously. Indeed, I never saw an idle curiosity exercised in such a pleasant way as by the country-people of Italy. It almost deserves to be called a kindly interest and sympathy, instead of a hard and cold curiosity, like that of our own people, and it is displayed with such simplicity that it is evident no offence is intended. By and by the vetturino brought his passport and my own, with the official vise, and we kept on our way, still ascending, passing through vineyards and olives, and meeting grape-laden donkeys, till we came to the town of San Lorenzo Nuovo, a place built by Pius VI. as the refuge for the people of a lower town which had been made uninhabitable by malaria. The new town, which I suppose is hundreds of years old, with all its novelty shows strikingly the difference between places that grow up and shape out their streets of their own accord, as it were, and one that is built on a settled plan of malice aforethought. This little rural village has gates of classic architecture, a spacious piazza, and a great breadth of straight and rectangular streets, with houses of uniform style, airy and wholesome looking to a degree seldom seen on the Continent. Nevertheless, I must say that the town looked hatefully dull and ridiculously prim, and, of the two, I had rather spend my life in Radicofani. We drove through it, from gate to gate, without stopping, and soon came to the brow of a hill, whence we beheld, right beneath us, the beautiful lake of Bolsena; not exactly at our feet, however, for a portion of level ground lay between, haunted by the pestilence which has depopulated all these shores, and made the lake and its neighborhood a solitude. It looked very beautiful, nevertheless, with a sheen of a silver mid a gray like that of steel as the wind blew and the sun shone over it; and, judging by my own feelings, I should really have thought that the breeze from its surface was bracing and healthy. Descending the hill, we passed the ruins of the old town of San Lorenzo, of which the prim village on the hill-top may be considered the daughter. There is certainly no resemblance between parent and child, the former being situated on a sort of precipitous bluff, where there could have been no room for piazzas and spacious streets, nor accessibility except by mules, donkeys, goats, and people of Alpine habits. There was an ivy-covered tower on the top of the bluff, and some arched cavern mouths that looked as if they opened into the great darkness. These were the entrances to Etruscan tombs, for the town on top had been originally Etruscan, and the inhabitants had buried themselves in the heart of the precipitous bluffs after spending their lives on its summit. Reaching the plain, we drove several miles along the shore of the lake, and found the soil fertile and generally well cultivated, especially with the vine, though there were tracks apparently too marshy to be put to any agricultural purpose. We met now and then a flock of sheep, watched by sallow-looking and spiritless men and boys, who, we took it for granted, would soon perish of malaria, though, I presume, they never spend their nights in the immediate vicinity of the lake. I should like to inquire whether animals suffer from the bad qualities of the air. The lake is not nearly so beautiful on a nearer view as it is from the hill above, there being no rocky margin, nor bright, sandy beach, but everywhere this interval of level ground, and often swampy marsh, betwixt the water and the hill. At a considerable distance from the shore we saw two islands, one of which is memorable as having been the scene of an empress's murder, but I cannot stop to fill my journal with historical reminiscences. We kept onward to the town of Bolsena, which stands nearly a mile from the lake, and on a site higher than the level margin, yet not so much so, I should apprehend, as to free it from danger of malaria. We stopped at an albergo outside of the wall of the town, and before dinner had time to see a good deal of the neighborhood. The first aspect of the town was very striking, with a vista into its street through the open gateway, and high above it an old, gray, square-built castle, with three towers visible at the angles, one of them battlemented, one taller than the rest, and one partially ruined. Outside of the town-gate there were some fragments of Etruscan ruin, capitals of pillars and altars with inscriptions; these we glanced at, and then made our entrance through the gate. There it was again,--the same narrow, dirty, time-darkened street of piled-up houses which we have so often seen; the same swarm of ill-to-do people, grape-laden donkeys, little stands or shops of roasted chestnuts, peaches, tomatoes, white and purple figs; the same evidence of a fertile land, and grimy poverty in the midst of abundance which nature tries to heap into their hands. It seems strange that they can never grasp it. We had gone but a little way along this street, when we saw a narrow lane that turned aside from it and went steeply upward. Its name was on the corner,--the Via di Castello,--and as the castle promised to be more interesting than anything else, we immediately began to ascend. The street--a strange name for such an avenue--clambered upward in the oddest fashion, passing under arches, scrambling up steps, so that it was more like a long irregular pair of stairs than anything that Christians call a street; and so large a part of it was under arches that we scarcely seemed to be out of doors. At last U----, who was in advance, emerged into the upper air, and cried out that we had ascended to an upper town, and a larger one than that beneath. It really seemed like coming up out of the earth into the midst of the town, when we found ourselves so unexpectedly in upper Bolsena. We were in a little nook, surrounded by old edifices, and called the Piazza del Orologio, on account of a clock that was apparent somewhere. The castle was close by, and from its platform there was a splendid view of the lake and all the near hill-country. The castle itself is still in good condition, and apparently as strong as ever it was as respects the exterior walls; but within there seemed to be neither floor nor chamber, nothing but the empty shell of the dateless old fortress. The stones at the base and lower part of the building were so massive that I should think the Etrurians must have laid them; and then perhaps the Romans built a little higher, and the mediaeval people raised the battlements and towers. But we did not look long at the castle, our attention being drawn to the singular aspect of the town itself, which--to speak first of its most prominent characteristic--is the very filthiest place, I do believe, that was ever inhabited by man. Defilement was everywhere; in the piazza, in nooks and corners, strewing the miserable lanes from side to side, the refuse of every day, and of accumulated ages. I wonder whether the ancient Romans were as dirty a people as we everywhere find those who have succeeded them; for there seems to have been something in the places that have been inhabited by Romans, or made famous in their history, and in the monuments of every kind that they have raised, that puts people in mind of their very earthliness, and incites them to defile therewith whatever temple, column, ruined palace, or triumphal arch may fall in their way. I think it must be an hereditary trait, probably weakened and robbed of a little of its horror by the influence of milder ages; and I am much afraid that Caesar trod narrower and fouler ways in his path to power than those of modern Rome, or even of this disgusting town of Bolsena. I cannot imagine anything worse than these, however. Rotten vegetables thrown everywhere about, musty straw, standing puddles, running rivulets of dissolved nastiness,--these matters were a relief amid viler objects. The town was full of great black hogs wallowing before every door, and they grunted at us with a kind of courtesy and affability as if the town were theirs, and it was their part to be hospitable to strangers. Many donkeys likewise accosted us with braying; children, growing more uncleanly every day they lived, pestered us with begging; men stared askance at us as they lounged in corners, and women endangered us with slops which they were flinging from doorways into the street. No decent words can describe, no admissible image can give an idea of this noisome place. And yet, I remember, the donkeys came up the height loaded with fruit, and with little flat-sided barrels of wine; the people had a good atmosphere--except as they polluted it themselves--on their high site, and there seemed to be no reason why they should not live a beautiful and jolly life. I did not mean to write such an ugly description as the above, but it is well, once for all, to have attempted conveying an idea of what disgusts the traveller, more or less, in all these Italian towns. Setting aside this grand characteristic, the upper town of Bolsena is a most curious and interesting place. It was originally an Etruscan city, the ancient Volsinii, and when taken and destroyed by the Romans was said to contain two thousand statues. Afterwards the Romans built a town upon the site, including, I suppose, the space occupied by the lower city, which looks as if it had brimmed over like Radicofani, and fallen from the precipitous height occupied by the upper. The latter is a strange confusion of black and ugly houses, piled massively out of the ruins of former ages, built rudely and without plan, as a pauper would build his hovel, and yet with here and there an arched gateway, a cornice, a pillar, that might have adorned a palace. . . . The streets are the narrowest I have seen anywhere,--of no more width, indeed, than may suffice for the passage of a donkey with his panniers. They wind in and out in strange confusion, and hardly look like streets at all, but, nevertheless, have names printed on the corners, just as if they were stately avenues. After looking about us awhile and drawing half-breaths so as to take in the less quantity of gaseous pollution, we went back to the castle, and descended by a path winding downward from it into the plain outside of the town-gate. It was now dinner-time, . . . . and we had, in the first place, some fish from the pestiferous lake; not, I am sorry to say, the famous stewed eels which, Dante says, killed Pope Martin, but some trout. . . . By the by, the meal was not dinner, but our midday colazione. After despatching it, we again wandered forth and strolled round the outside of the lower town, which, with the upper one, made as picturesque a combination as could be desired. The old wall that surrounds the lower town has been appropriated, long since, as the back wall of a range of houses; windows have been pierced through it; upper chambers and loggie have been built upon it; so that it looks something like a long row of rural dwellings with one continuous front or back, constructed in a strange style of massive strength, contrasting with the vines that here and there are trained over it, and with the wreaths of yellow corn that hang from the windows. But portions of the old battlements are interspersed with the line of homely chambers and tiled house-tops. Within the wall the town is very compact, and above its roofs rises a rock, the sheer, precipitous bluff on which stands the upper town, whose foundations impend over the highest roof in the lower. At one end is the old castle, with its towers rising above the square battlemented mass of the main fortress; and if we had not seen the dirt and squalor that dwells within this venerable outside, we should have carried away a picture of gray, grim dignity, presented by a long past age to the present one, to put its mean ways and modes to shame. ------ sat diligently sketching, and children came about her, exceedingly unfragrant, but very courteous and gentle, looking over her shoulders, and expressing delight as they saw each familiar edifice take its place in the sketch. They are a lovable people, these Italians, as I find from almost all with whom we come in contact; they have great and little faults, and no great virtues that I know of; but still are sweet, amiable, pleasant to encounter, save when they beg, or when you have to bargain with them. We left Bolsena and drove to Viterbo, passing the gate of the picturesque town of Montefiascone, over the wall of which I saw spires and towers, and the dome of a cathedral. I was sorry not to taste, in its own town, the celebrated est, which was the death-draught of the jolly prelate. At Viterbo, however, I called for some wine of Montefiascone, and had a little straw-covered flask, which the waiter assured us was the genuine est-wine. It was of golden color, and very delicate, somewhat resembling still champagne, but finer, and requiring a calmer pause to appreciate its subtle delight. Its good qualities, however, are so evanescent, that the finer flavor became almost imperceptible before we finished the flask. Viterbo is a large, disagreeable town, built at the foot of a mountain, the peak of which is seen through the vista of some of the narrow streets. There are more fountains in Viterbo than I have seen in any other city of its size, and many of them of very good design. Around most of them there were wine-hogsheads, waiting their turn to be cleansed and rinsed, before receiving the wine of the present vintage. Passing a doorway, J----- saw some men treading out the grapes in a great vat with their naked feet. Among the beggars here, the loudest and most vociferous was a crippled postilion, wearing his uniform jacket, green, faced with red; and he seemed to consider himself entitled still to get his living from travellers, as having been disabled in the way of his profession. I recognized his claim, and was rewarded with a courteous and grateful bow at our departure. . . . To beggars--after my much experience both in England and Italy--I give very little, though I am not certain that it would not often be real beneficence in the latter country. There being little or no provision for poverty and age, the poor must often suffer. Nothing can be more earnest than their entreaties for aid; nothing seemingly more genuine than their gratitude when they receive it. They return you the value of their alms in prayers, and say, "God will accompany you." Many of them have a professional whine, and a certain doleful twist of the neck and turn of the head, which hardens my heart against them at once. A painter might find numerous models among them, if canvas had not already been more than sufficiently covered with their style of the picturesque. There is a certain brick-dust colored cloak worn in Viterbo, not exclusively by beggars, which, when ragged enough, is exceedingly artistic. ROME. 68 Piazza Poli, October 17th.--We left Viterbo on the 15th, and proceeded, through Monterosi, to Sette Verse. There was nothing interesting at Sette Verse, except an old Roman bridge, of a single arch, which had kept its sweep, composed of one row of stones, unbroken for two or more thousand years, and looked just as strong as ever, though gray with age, and fringed with plants that found it hard to fix themselves in its close crevices. The next day we drove along the Cassian Way towards Rome. It was a most delightful morning, a genial atmosphere; the more so, I suppose, because this was the Campagna, the region of pestilence and death. I had a quiet, gentle, comfortable pleasure, as if, after many wanderings, I was drawing near Rome, for, now that I have known it once, Rome certainly does draw into itself my heart, as I think even London, or even little Concord itself, or old sleepy Salem, never did and never will. Besides, we are to stay here six months, and we had now a house all prepared to receive us; so that this present approach, in the noontide of a genial day, was most unlike our first one, when we crept towards Rome through the wintry midnight, benumbed with cold, ill, weary, and not knowing whither to betake ourselves. Ah! that was a dismal tine! One thing, however, that disturbed even my present equanimity a little was the necessity of meeting the custom-house at the Porta del Popolo; but my past experience warranted me in believing that even these ogres might be mollified by the magic touch of a scudo; and so it proved. We should have escaped any examination at all, the officer whispered me, if his superior had not happened to be present; but, as the case stood, they took down only one trunk from the top of the vettura, just lifted the lid, closed it again, and gave us permission to proceed. So we came to 68 Piazza Poli, and found ourselves at once at home, in such a comfortable, cosey little house, as I did not think existed in Rome. I ought to say a word about our vetturino, Constantino Bacci, an excellent and most favorable specimen of his class; for his magnificent conduct, his liberality, and all the good qualities that ought to be imperial, S----- called him the Emperor. He took us to good hotels, and feasted us with the best; he was kind to us all, and especially to little Rosebud, who used to run by his side, with her small white hand in his great brown one; he was cheerful in his deportment, and expressed his good spirits by the smack of his whip, which is the barometer of a vetturino's inward weather; he drove admirably, and would rumble up to the door of an albergo, and stop to a hair's-breadth just where it was most convenient for us to alight; he would hire postilions and horses, where other vetturini would take nothing better than sluggish oxen, to help us up the hilly roads, so that sometimes we had a team of seven; he did all that we could possibly require of him, and was content and more, with a buon mono of five scudi, in addition to the stipulated price. Finally, I think the tears had risen almost to his eyelids when we parted with him. Our friends, the Thompsons, through whose kindness we procured this house, called to see us soon after our arrival. In the afternoon, I walked with Rosebud to the Medici Gardens, and on our way thither, we espied our former servant, Lalla, who flung so many and such bitter curses after us, on our departure from Rome, sitting at her father's fruit-stall. Thank God, they have not taken effect. After going to the Medici, we went to the Pincian Gardens, and looked over into the Borghese grounds, which, methought, were more beautiful than ever. The same was true of the sky, and of every object beneath it; and as we came homeward along the Corso, I wondered at the stateliness and palatial magnificence of that noble street. Once, I remember, I thought it narrow, and far unworthy of its fame. In the way of costume, the men in goat-skin breeches, whom we met on the Campagna, were very striking, and looked like Satyrs. October 21st.--. . . . I have been twice to St. Peter's, and was impressed more than at any former visit by a sense of breadth and loftiness, and, as it were, a visionary splendor and magnificence. I also went to the Museum of the Capitol; and the statues seemed to me more beautiful than formerly, and I was not sensible of the cold despondency with which I have so often viewed them. Yesterday we went to the Corsini Palace, which we had not visited before. It stands in the Trastevere, in the Longara, and is a stately palace, with a grand staircase, leading to the first floor, where is situated the range of picture-rooms. There were a good many fine pictures, but none of them have made a memorable impression on my mind, except a portrait by Vandyke, of a man in point-lace, very grand and very real. The room in which this picture hung had many other portraits by Holbein, Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens, and other famous painters, and was wonderfully rich in this department. In another, there was a portrait of Pope Julius II., by Raphael, somewhat differing from those at the Pitti and the Uffizi galleries in Florence, and those I have seen in England and Paris; thinner, paler, perhaps older, more severely intellectual, but at least, as high a work of art as those. The palace has some handsome old furniture, and gilded chairs, covered with leather cases, possibly relics of Queen Christina's time, who died here. I know not but the most curious object was a curule chair of marble, sculptured all out of one piece, and adorned with bas-reliefs. It is supposed to be Etruscan. It has a circular back, sweeping round, so as to afford sufficient rests for the elbows; and, sitting down in it, I discovered that modern ingenuity has not made much real improvement on this chair of three or four thousand years ago. But some chairs are easier for the moment, yet soon betray you, and grow the more irksome. We strolled along Longara, and found the piazza of St. Peter's full of French soldiers at their drill. . . . We went quite round the interior of the church, and perceiving the pavement loose and broken near the altar where Guido's Archangel is placed, we picked up some bits of rosso antico and gray marble, to be set in brooches, as relics. We have the snuggest little set of apartments in Rome, seven rooms, including an antechamber; and though the stairs are exceedingly narrow, there is really a carpet on them,--a civilized comfort, of which the proudest palaces in the Eternal City cannot boast. The stairs are very steep, however, and I should not wonder if some of us broke our noses down them. Narrowness of space within doors strikes us all rather ludicrously, yet not unpleasantly, after being accustomed to the wastes and deserts of the Montanto Villa. It is well thus to be put in training for the over-snugness of our cottage in Concord. Our windows here look out on a small and rather quiet piazza, with an immense palace on the left hand, and a smaller yet statelier one on the right, and just round the corner of the street, leading out of our piazza, is the Fountain of Trevi, of which I can hear the plash in the evening, when other sounds are hushed. Looking over what I have said of Sodoma's "Christ Bound," at Sierra, I see that I have omitted to notice what seems to me one of its most striking characteristics,--its loneliness. You feel as if the Saviour were deserted, both in heaven and earth; the despair is in him which made him say, "My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Even in this extremity, however, he is still Divine, and Sodoma almost seems to have reconciled the impossibilities of combining an omnipresent divinity with a suffering and outraged humanity. But this is one of the cases in which the spectator's imagination completes what the artist merely hints at. Mr. ------, the sculptor, called to see us, the other evening, and quite paid Powers off for all his trenchant criticisms on his brother artists. He will not allow Powers to be an artist at all, or to know anything of the laws of art, although acknowledging him to be a great bust-maker, and to have put together the Greek Slave and the Fisher-Boy very ingeniously. The latter, however (he says), is copied from the Apollino in the Tribune of the Uzi; and the former is made up of beauties that had no reference to one another; and he affirms that Powers is ready to sell, and has actually sold, the Greek Slave, limb by limb, dismembering it by reversing the process of putting it together,--a head to one purchaser, an arm or a foot to another, a hand to a third. Powers knows nothing scientifically of the human frame, and only succeeds in representing it as a natural bone-doctor succeeds in setting a dislocated limb by a happy accident or special providence. (The illustration was my own, and adopted by Mr. ------.) Yet Mr. ------ seems to acknowledge that he did succeed. I repeat these things only as another instance how invariably every sculptor uses his chisel and mallet to smash and deface the marble-work of every other. I never heard Powers speak of Mr. ------, but can partly imagine what he would have said. Mr. ------ spoke of Powers's disappointment about the twenty-five-thousand-dollar appropriation from Congress, and said that he was altogether to blame, inasmuch as he attempted to sell to the nation for that sum a statue which, to Mr. ------'s certain knowledge, he had already offered to private persons for a fifth part of it. I have not implicit faith in Mr. ------'s veracity, and doubt not Powers acted fairly in his own eyes. October 23d.--I am afraid I have caught one of the colds which the Roman air continually affected me with last winter; at any rate, a sirocco has taken the life out of me, and I have no spirit to do anything. This morning I took a walk, however, out of the Porta Maggiore, and looked at the tomb of the baker Eurysaces, just outside of the gate,--a very singular ruin covered with symbols of the man's trade in stone-work, and with bas-reliefs along the cornice, representing people at work, making bread. An inscription states that the ashes of his wife are likewise reposited there, in a bread-basket. The mausoleum is perhaps twenty feet long, in its largest extent, and of equal height; and if good bakers were as scarce in ancient Rome as in the modern city, I do not wonder that they were thought worthy of stately monuments. None of the modern ones deserve any better tomb than a pile of their own sour loaves. I walked onward a good distance beyond the gate alongside of the arches of the Claudian aqueduct, which, in this portion of it, seems to have had little repair, and to have needed little, since it was built. It looks like a long procession, striding across the Campagna towards the city, and entering the gate, over one of its arches, within the gate, I saw two or three slender jets of water spurting from the crevices; this aqueduct being still in use to bring the Acqua Felice into Rome. Returning within the walls, I walked along their inner base, to the Church of St. John Lateran, into which I went, and sat down to rest myself, being languid and weary, and hot with the sun, though afraid to trust the coolness of the shade. I hate the Roman atmosphere; indeed, all my pleasure in getting back--all my home-feeling--has already evaporated, and what now impresses me, as before, is the languor of Rome,--its weary pavements, its little life, pressed down by a weight of death. Quitting St. John Lateran, I went astray, as I do nine times out of ten in these Roman intricacies, and at last, seeing the Coliseum in the vista of a street, I betook myself thither to get a fresh start. Its round of stones looked vast and dreary, but not particularly impressive. The interior was quite deserted; except that a Roman, of respectable appearance, was making a pilgrimage at the altars, kneeling and saying a prayer at each one. Outside of the Coliseum, a neat-looking little boy came and begged of me; and I gave him a baiocco, rather because he seemed to need it so little than for any other reason. I observed that he immediately afterwards went and spoke to a well-dressed man, and supposed that the child was likewise begging of him. I watched the little boy, however, and saw that, in two or three other instances, after begging of other individuals, he still returned to this well-dressed man; the fact being, no doubt, that the latter was fishing for baiocci through the medium of his child,--throwing the poor little fellow out as a bait, while he himself retained his independent respectability. He had probably come out for a whole day's sport; for, by and by, he went between the arches of the Coliseum, followed by the child, and taking with him what looked like a bottle of wine, wrapped in a handkerchief. November 2d.--The weather lately would have suited one's ideal of an English November, except that there have been no fogs; but of ugly, hopeless clouds, chill, shivering winds, drizzle, and now and then pouring rain, much more than enough. An English coal-fire, if we could see its honest face within doors, would compensate for all the unamiableness of the outside atmosphere; but we might ask for the sunshine of the New Jerusalem, with as much hope of getting it. It is extremely spirit-crushing, this remorseless gray, with its icy heart; and the more to depress the whole family, U---- has taken what seems to be the Roman fever, by sitting down in the Palace of the Caesars, while Mrs. S----- sketched the ruins. . . . [During four months of the illness of his daughter, Mr. Hawthorne wrote no word of Journal.--ED.] February 27th, 1859.--For many days past, there have been tokens of the coming Carnival in the Corso and the adjacent streets; for example, in the shops, by the display of masks of wire, pasteboard, silk, or cloth, some of beautiful features, others hideous, fantastic, currish, asinine, huge-nosed, or otherwise monstrous; some intended to cover the whole face, others concealing only the upper part, also white dominos, or robes bedizened with gold-lace and theatric splendors, displayed at the windows of mercers or flaunting before the doors. Yesterday, U---- and I came along the Corso, between one and two o'clock, after a walk, and found all these symptoms of impending merriment multiplied and intensified; . . . . rows of chairs, set out along the sidewalks, elevated a foot or two by means of planks; great baskets, full of confetti, for sale in the nooks and recesses of the streets; bouquets of all qualities and prices. The Corso was becoming pretty well thronged with people; but, until two o'clock, nobody dared to fling as much as a rosebud or a handful of sugar-plums. There was a sort of holiday expression, however, on almost everybody's face, such as I have not hitherto seen in Rome, or in any part of Italy; a smile gleaming out, an aurora of mirth, which probably will not be very exuberant in its noontide. The day was so sunny and bright that it made this opening scene far more cheerful than any day of the last year's carnival. As we threaded our way through the Corso, U---- kept wishing she could plunge into the fun and uproar as J----- would, and for my own part, though I pretended to take no interest in the matter, I could have bandied confetti and nosegays as readily and as riotously as any urchin there. But my black hat and grave talma would have been too good a mark for the combatants, . . . . so we went home before a shot was fired. . . . March 7th.--I, as well as the rest of the family, have followed up the Carnival pretty faithfully, and enjoyed it as well, or rather better than could have been expected; principally in the street, as a more looker-on,--which does not let one into the mystery of the fun,--and twice from a balcony, where I threw confetti, and partly understood why the young people like it so much. Certainly, there cannot well be a more picturesque spectacle in human life, than that stately, palatial avenue of the Corso, the more picturesque because so narrow, all hung with carpets and Gobelin tapestry, and the whole palace-heights alive with faces; and all the capacity of the street thronged with the most fantastic figures that either the fancies of folks alive at this day are able to contrive, or that live traditionally from year to year. . . . The Prince of Wales has fought manfully through the Carnival with confetti and bouquets, and U---- received several bouquets from him, on Saturday, as her carriage moved along. March 8th.--I went with U---- to Mr. Motley's balcony, in the Corso, and saw the Carnival from it yesterday afternoon; but the spectacle is strangely like a dream, in respect to the difficulty of retaining it in the mind and solidifying it into a description. I enjoyed it a good deal, and assisted in so far as to pelt all the people in cylinder hats with handfuls of confetti. The scene opens with a long array of cavalry, who ride through the Corso, preceded by a large band, playing loudly on their brazen instruments. . . . There were some splendid dresses, particularly contadina costumes of scarlet and gold, which seem to be actually the festal attire of that class of people, and must needs be so expensive that one must serve for a lifetime, if indeed it be not an inheritance. . . . March 9th.--I was, yesterday, an hour or so among the people on the sidewalks of the Corso, just on the edges of the fun. They appeared to be in a decorous, good-natured mood, neither entering into the merriment, nor harshly repelling; and when groups of maskers overflowed among them, they received their jokes in good part. Many women of the lower class were in the crowd of bystanders; generally broad and sturdy figures, clad evidently in their best attire, and wearing a good many ornaments; such as gold or coral beads and necklaces, combs of silver or gold, heavy ear-rings, curiously wrought brooches, perhaps cameos or mosaics, though I think they prefer purely metallic work to these. One ornament very common among them is a large bodkin, which they stick through their hair. It is usually of silver, but sometimes it looks like steel, and is made in the shape of a sword,--a long Spanish thrusting sword, for example. Dr. Franco told us a story of a woman of Trastevere, who was addressed rudely at the Carnival by a gentleman; she warned him to desist, but as he still persisted, she drew the bodkin from her hair, and stabbed him to the heart. By and by I went to Mr. Motley's balcony, and looked down on the closing scenes of the Carnival. Methought the merry-makers labored harder to be mirthful, and yet were somewhat tired of their eight play-days; and their dresses looked a little shabby, rumpled, and draggled; but the lack of sunshine--which we have had on all the preceding days--may have produced this effect. The wheels of some of the carriages were wreathed round and spoked with green foliage, making a very pretty and fanciful appearance, as did likewise the harnesses of the horses, which were trimmed with roses. The pervading noise and uproar of human voices is one of the most effective points of the matter; but the scene is quite indescribable, and its effect not to be conceived without both witnessing and taking part in it. If you merely look at it, it depresses you; if you take even the slightest share in it, you become aware that it has a fascination, and you no longer wonder that the young people, at least, take such delight in plunging into this mad river of fun that goes roaring between the narrow limits of the Corso. As twilight came on, the moccoli commenced, and as it grew darker the whole street twinkled with lights, which would have been innumerable if every torch-bearer had not been surrounded by a host of enemies, who tried to extinguish his poor little twinkle. It was a pity to lose so much splendor as there might have been; but yet there was a kind of symbolism in the thought that every one of those thousands of twinkling lights was in charge of somebody, who was striving with all his might to keep it alive. Not merely the street-way, but all the balconies and hundreds of windows were lit up with these little torches; so that it seemed as if the stars had crumbled into glittering fragments, and rained down upon the Corso, some of them lodging upon the palace-fronts, some falling on the ground. Besides this, there were gas-lights burning with a white flame; but this illumination was not half so interesting as that of the torches, which indicated human struggle. All this time there were myriad voices shouting, "SENZA MOCCOLO!" and mingling into one long roar. We, in our balcony, carried on a civil war against one another's torches, as is the custom of human beings, within even the narrowest precincts; but after a while we grew tired, and so did the crowd, apparently; for the lights vanished, one after another, till the gas-lights--which at first were an unimportant part of the illumination--shone quietly out, overpowering the scattered twinkles of the moccoli. They were what the fixed stars are to the transitory splendors of human life. Mr. Motley tells me, that it was formerly the custom to have a mock funeral of harlequin, who was supposed to die at the close of the Carnival, during which he had reigned supreme, and all the people, or as many as chose, bore torches at his burial. But this being considered an indecorous mockery of Popish funereal customs, the present frolic of the moccoli was instituted,--in some sort, growing out of it. All last night, or as much of it as I was awake, there was a noise of song and of late revellers in the streets; but to-day we have waked up in the sad and sober season of Lent. It is worthy of remark, that all the jollity of the Carnival is a genuine ebullition of spirit, without the aid of wine or strong drink. March 11th.--Yesterday we went to the Catacomb of St. Calixtus, the entrance to which is alongside of the Appian Way, within sight of the tomb of Cecilia Metella. We descended not a very great way under ground, by a broad flight of stone steps, and, lighting some wax tapers, with which we had provided ourselves, we followed the guide through a great many intricate passages, which mostly were just wide enough for me to touch the wall on each side, while keeping my elbows close to my body; and as to height, they were from seven to ten feet, and sometimes a good deal higher It was rather picturesque, when we saw the long line of our tapers, for another large party had joined us, twinkling along the dark passage, and it was interesting to think of the former inhabitants of these caverns. . . . In one or two places there was the round mark in the stone or plaster, where a bottle had been deposited. This was said to have been the token of a martyr's burial-place, and to have contained his blood. After leaving the Catacomb, we drove onward to Cecilia Metella's tomb, which we entered and inspected. Within the immensely massive circular substance of the tomb was a round, vacant space, and this interior vacancy was open at the top, and had nothing but some fallen stones and a heap of earth at the bottom. On our way home we entered the Church of "Domine, quo vadis," and looked at the old fragment of the Appian Way, where our Saviour met St. Peter, and left the impression of his feet in one of the Roman paving-stones. The stone has been removed, and there is now only a fac-simile engraved in a block of marble, occupying the place where Jesus stood. It is a great pity they had not left the original stone; for then all its brother-stones in the pavement would have seemed to confirm the truth of the legend. While we were at dinner, a gentleman called and was shown into the parlor. We supposed it to be Mr. May; but soon his voice grew familiar, and my wife was sure it was General Pierce, so I left the table, and found it to be really he. I was rejoiced to see him, though a little saddened to see the marks of care and coming age, in many a whitening hair, and many a furrow, and, still more, in something that seemed to have passed away out of him, without leaving any trace. His voice, sometimes, sounded strange and old, though generally it was what it used to be. He was evidently glad to see me, glad to see my wife, glad to see the children, though there was something melancholy in his tone, when he remarked what a stout boy J----- had grown. Poor fellow! he has neither son nor daughter to keep his heart warm. This morning I have been with him to St. Peter's, and elsewhere about the city, and find him less changed than he seemed to be last night; not at all changed in heart and affections. We talked freely about all matters that came up; among the rest, about the project--recognizable by many tokens--for bringing him again forward as a candidate for the Presidency next year. He appears to be firmly resolved not again to present himself to the country, and is content to let his one administration stand, and to be judged by the public and posterity on the merits of that. No doubt he is perfectly sincere; no doubt, too, he would again be a candidate, if a pretty unanimous voice of the party should demand it. I retain all my faith in his administrative faculty, and should be glad, for his sake, to have it fully rccognized; but the probabilities, as far as I can see, do not indicate for him another Presidential term. March 15th.--This morning I went with my wife and Miss Hoar to Miss Hosmer's studio, to see her statue of Zenobia. We found her in her premises, springing about with a bird-like action. She has a lofty room, with a skylight window; it was pretty well warmed with a stove, and there was a small orange-tree in a pot, with the oranges growing on it, and two or three flower-shrubs in bloom. She herself looked prettily, with her jaunty little velvet cap on the side of her head, whence came clustering out, her short brown curls; her face full of pleasant life and quick expression; and though somewhat worn with thought and struggle, handsome and spirited. She told us that "her wig was growing as gray as a rat." There were but very few things in the room; two or three plaster busts, a headless cast of a plaster statue, and a cast of the Minerva Medica, which perhaps she had been studying as a help towards the design of her Zenobia; for, at any rate, I seemed to discern a resemblance or analogy between the two. Zenobia stood in the centre of the room, as yet unfinished in the clay, but a very noble and remarkable statue indeed, full of dignity and beauty. It is wonderful that so brisk a woman could have achieved a work so quietly impressive; and there is something in Zenobia's air that conveys the idea of music, uproar, and a great throng all about her; whilst she walks in the midst of it, self-sustained, and kept in a sort of sanctity by her native pride. The idea of motion is attained with great success; you not only perceive that she is walking, but know at just what tranquil pace she steps, amid the music of the triumph. The drapery is very fine and full; she is decked with ornaments; but the chains of her captivity hang from wrist to wrist; and her deportment--indicating a soul so much above her misfortune, yet not insensible to the weight of it--makes these chains a richer decoration than all her other jewels. I know not whether there be some magic in the present imperfect finish of the statue, or in the material of clay, as being a better medium of expression than even marble; but certainly I have seldom been more impressed by a piece of modern sculpture. Miss Hosmer showed us photographs of her Puck--which I have seen in the marble--and likewise of the Will-o'-the-Wisp, both very pretty and fanciful. It indicates much variety of power, that Zenobia should be the sister of these, which would seem the more natural offspring of her quick and vivid character. But Zenobia is a high, heroic ode. . . . . On my way up the Via Babuino, I met General Pierce. We have taken two or three walks together, and stray among the Roman ruins, and old scenes of history, talking of matters in which he is personally concerned, yet which are as historic as anything around us. He is singularly little changed; the more I see him, the more I get him back, just such as he was in our youth. This morning, his face, air, and smile were so wonderfully like himself of old, that at least thirty years are annihilated. Zenobia's manacles serve as bracelets; a very ingenious and suggestive idea. March 18th.--I went to the sculpture-gallery of the Capitol yesterday, and saw, among other things, the Venus in her secret cabinet. This was my second view of her: the first time, I greatly admired her; now, she made no very favorable impression. There are twenty Venuses whom I like as well, or better. On the whole, she is a heavy, clumsy, unintellectual, and commonplace figure; at all events, not in good looks to-day. Marble beauties seem to suffer the same occasional eclipses as those of flesh and blood. We looked at the Faun, the Dying Gladiator, and other famous sculptures; but nothing had a glory round it, perhaps because the sirocco was blowing. These halls of the Capitol have always had a dreary and depressing effect upon me, very different from those of the Vatican. I know not why, except that the rooms of the Capitol have a dingy, shabby, and neglected look, and that the statues are dusty, and all the arrangements less magnificent than at the Vatican. The corroded and discolored surfaces of the statues take away from the impression of immortal youth, and turn Apollo [The Lycian Apollo] himself into an old stone; unless at rare intervals, when he appears transfigured by a light gleaming from within. March 23d.--I am wearing away listlessly these last precious days of my abode in Rome. U----'s illness is disheartening, and by confining ------, it takes away the energy and enterprise that were the spring of all our movements. I am weary of Rome, without having seen and known it as I ought, and I shall be glad to get away from it, though no doubt there will be many yearnings to return hereafter, and many regrets that I did not make better use of the opportunities within my grasp. Still, I have been in Rome long enough to be imbued with its atmosphere, and this is the essential condition of knowing a place; for such knowledge does not consist in having seen every particular object it contains. In the state of mind in which I now stand towards Rome, there is very little advantage to be gained by staying here longer. And yet I had a pleasant stroll enough yesterday afternoon, all by myself, from the Corso down past the Church of St. Andrea della Valle,-- the site where Caesar was murdered,--and thence to the Farnese Palace, the noble court of which I entered; thence to the Piazza Cenci, where I looked at one or two ugly old palaces, and fixed on one of them as the residence of Beatrice's father; then past the Temple of Vesta, and skirting along the Tiler, and beneath the Aventine, till I somewhat unexpectedly came in sight of the gray pyramid of Caius Cestius. I went out of the city gate, and leaned on the parapet that encloses the pyramid, advancing its high, unbroken slope and peak, where the great blocks of marble still fit almost as closely to one another as when they were first laid; though, indeed, there are crevices just large enough for plants to root themselves, and flaunt and trail over the face of this great tomb; only a little verdure, however, over a vast space of marble, still white in spots, but pervadingly turned gray by two thousand years' action of the atmosphere. Thence I came home by the Caelian, and sat down on an ancient flight of steps under one of the arches of the Coliseum, into which the sunshine fell sidelong. It was a delightful afternoon, not precisely like any weather that I have known elsewhere; certainly never in America, where it is always too cold or too hot. It, resembles summer more than anything which we New-Englanders recognize in our idea of spring, but there was an indescribable something, sweet, fresh, gentle, that does not belong to summer, and that thrilled and tickled my heart with a feeling partly sensuous, partly spiritual. I go to the Bank and read Galignani and the American newspapers; thence I stroll to the Pincian or to the Medici Gardens; I see a good deal of General Pierce, and we talk over his Presidential life, which, I now really think, he has no latent desire nor purpose to renew. Yet he seems to have enjoyed it while it lasted, and certainly he was in his element as an administrative man; not far-seeing, not possessed of vast stores of political wisdom in advance of his occasions, but endowed with a miraculous intuition of what ought to be done just at the time for action. His judgment of things about him is wonderful, and his Cabinet recognized it as such; for though they were men of great ability, he was evidently the master-mind among them. None of them were particularly his personal friends when he selected them; they all loved him when they parted; and he showed me a letter, signed by all, in which they expressed their feelings of respect and attachment at the close of his administration. There was a noble frankness on his part, that kept the atmosphere always clear among them, and in reference to this characteristic Governor Marcy told him that the years during which he had been connected with his Cabinet had been the happiest of his life. Speaking of Caleb Cushing, he told me that the unreliability, the fickleness, which is usually attributed to him, is an actual characteristic, but that it is intellectual, not moral. He has such comprehensiveness, such mental variety and activity, that, if left to himself, he cannot keep fast hold of one view of things, and so cannot, without external help, be a consistent man. He needs the influence of a more single and stable judgment to keep him from divergency, and, on this condition, he is a most inestimable coadjutor. As regards learning and ability, he has no superior. Pierce spoke the other day of the idea among some of his friends that his life had been planned, from a very early period, with a view to the station which he ultimately reached. He smiled at the notion, said that it was inconsistent with his natural character, and that it implied foresight and dexterity beyond what any mortal is endowed with. I think so too; but nevertheless, I was long and long ago aware that he cherished a very high ambition, and that, though he might not anticipate the highest things, he cared very little about inferior objects. Then as to plans, I do not think that he had any definite ones; but there was in him a subtle faculty, a real instinct, that taught him what was good for him,--that is to say, promotive of his political success,--and made him inevitably do it. He had a magic touch, that arranged matters with a delicate potency, which he himself hardly recognized; and he wrought through other minds so that neither he nor they always knew when and how far they were under his influence. Before his nomination for the Presidency I had a sense that it was coming, and it never seemed to me an accident. He is a most singular character; so frank, so true, so immediate, so subtle, so simple, so complicated. I passed by the tower in the Via Portoghese to-day, and observed that the nearest shop appears to be for the sale of cotton or linen cloth. . . . The upper window of the tower was half open; of course, like all or almost all other Roman windows, it is divided vertically, and each half swings back on hinges. . . . Last week a fritter-establishment was opened in our piazza. It was a wooden booth erected in the open square, and covered with canvas painted red, which looked as if it had withstood much rain and sunshine. In front were three great boughs of laurel, not so much for shade, I think, as ornament. There were two men, and their apparatus for business was a sort of stove, or charcoal furnace, and a frying-pan to place over it; they had an armful or two of dry sticks, some flour, and I suppose oil, and this seemed to be all. It was Friday, and Lent besides, and possibly there was some other peculiar propriety in the consumption of fritters just then. At all events, their fire burned merrily from morning till night, and pretty late into the evening, and they had a fine run of custom; the commodity being simply dough, cut into squares or rhomboids, and thrown into the boiling oil, which quickly turned them to a light brown color. I sent J----- to buy some, and, tasting one, it resembled an unspeakably bad doughnut, without any sweetening. In fact, it was sour, for the Romans like their bread, and all their preparations of flour, in a state of acetous fermentation, which serves them instead of salt or other condiment. This fritter-shop had grown up in a night, like Aladdin's palace, and vanished as suddenly; for after standing through Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, it was gone on Monday morning, and a charcoal-strewn place on the pavement where the furnace had been was the only memorial of it. It was curious to observe how immediately it became a lounging-place for idle people, who stood and talked all day with the fritter-friers, just as they might at any old shop in the basement, of a palace, or between the half-buried pillars of the Temple of Minerva, which had been familiar to them and their remote grandfathers. April 14th.--Yesterday afternoon I drove with Mr. and Mrs. Story and Mr. Wilde to see a statue of Venus, which has just been discovered, outside of the Porta Portese, on the other side of the Tiber. A little distance beyond the gate we came to the entrance of a vineyard, with a wheel-track through the midst of it; and, following this, we soon came to a hillside, in which an excavation had been made with the purpose of building a grotto for keeping and storing wine. They had dug down into what seemed to be an ancient bathroom, or some structure of that kind, the excavation being square and cellar-like, and built round with old subterranean walls of brick and stone. Within this hollow space the statue had been found, and it was now standing against one of the walls, covered with a coarse cloth, or a canvas bag. This being removed, there appeared a headless marble figure, earth-stained, of course, and with a slightly corroded surface, but wonderfully delicate and beautiful, the shape, size, and attitude, apparently, of the Venus de' Medici, but, as we all thought, more beautiful than that. It is supposed to be the original, from which the Venus de' Medici was copied. Both arms were broken off, but the greater part of both, and nearly the whole of one hand, had been found, and these being adjusted to the figure, they took the well-known position before the bosom and the middle, as if the fragmentary woman retained her instinct of modesty to the last. There were the marks on the bosom and thigh where the fingers had touched; whereas in the Venus de' Medici, if I remember rightly, the fingers are sculptured quite free of the person. The man who showed the statue now lifted from a corner a round block of marble, which had been lying there among other fragments, and this he placed upon the shattered neck of the Venus; and behold, it was her head and face, perfect, all but the nose! Even in spite of this mutilation, it seemed immediately to light up and vivify the entire figure; and, whatever I may heretofore have written about the countenance of the Venus de' Medici, I here record my belief that that head has been wrongfully foisted upon the statue; at all events, it is unspeakably inferior to this newly discovered one. This face has a breadth and front which are strangely deficient in the other. The eyes are well opened, most unlike the buttonhole lids of the Venus de' Medici; the whole head is so much larger as to entirely obviate the criticism that has always been made on the diminutive head of the De' Medici statue. If it had but a nose! They ought to sift every handful of earth that has been thrown out of the excavation, for the nose and the missing hand and fingers must needs be there; and, if they were found, the effect would be like the reappearance of a divinity upon earth. Mutilated as we saw her, it was strangely interesting to be present at the moment, as it were, when she had just risen from her long burial, and was shedding the unquenchable lustre around her which no eye had seen for twenty or more centuries. The earth still clung about her; her beautiful lips were full of it, till Mr. Story took a thin chip of wood and cleared it away from between them. The proprietor of the vineyard stood by; a man with the most purple face and hugest and reddest nose that I ever beheld in my life. It must have taken innumerable hogsheads of his thin vintage to empurple his face in this manner. He chuckled much over the statue, and, I suppose, counts upon making his fortune by it. He is now awaiting a bid from the Papal government, which, I believe, has the right of pre-emption whenever any relics of ancient art are discovered. If the statue could but be smuggled out of Italy, it might command almost any price. There is not, I think, any name of a sculptor on the pedestal, as on that of the Venus de' Medici. A dolphin is sculptured on the pillar against which she leans. The statue is of Greek marble. It was first found about eight days ago, but has been offered for inspection only a day or two, and already the visitors come in throngs, and the beggars gather about the entrance of the vineyard. A wine shop, too, seems to have been opened on the premises for the accommodation of this great concourse, and we saw a row of German artists sitting at a long table in the open air, each with a glass of thin wine and something to eat before him; for the Germans refresh nature ten times to other persons once. How the whole world might be peopled with antique beauty if the Romans would only dig! April 19th.--General Pierce leaves Rome this morning for Venice, by way of Ancona, and taking the steamer thence to Trieste. I had hoped to make the journey along with him; but U----'s terrible illness has made it necessary for us to continue here another mouth, and we are thankful that this seems now to be the extent of our misfortune. Never having had any trouble before that pierced into my very vitals, I did not know what comfort there might be in the manly sympathy of a friend; but Pierce has undergone so great a sorrow of his own, and has so large and kindly a heart, and is so tender and so strong, that he really did the good, and I shall always love him the better for the recollection of his ministrations in these dark days. Thank God, the thing we dreaded did not come to pass. Pierce is wonderfully little changed. Indeed, now that he has won and enjoyed--if there were any enjoyment in it--the highest success that public life could give him, he seems more like what he was in his early youth than at any subsequent period. He is evidently happier than I have ever known him since our college days; satisfied with what he has been, and with the position in the country that remains to him, after filling such an office. Amid all his former successes,--early as they came, and great as they were,--I always perceived that something gnawed within him, and kept him forever restless and miserable. Nothing he won was worth the winning, except as a step gained toward the summit. I cannot tell how early he began to look towards the Presidency; but I believe he would have died an unhappy man without it. And yet what infinite chances there seemed to be against his attaining it! When I look at it in one way, it strikes me as absolutely miraculous; in another, it came like an event that I had all along expected. It was due to his wonderful tact, which is of so subtle a character that he himself is but partially sensible of it. I have found in him, here in Rome, the whole of my early friend, and even better than I used to know him; a heart as true and affectionate, a mind much widened and deepened by his experience of life. We hold just the same relation to each other as of yore, and we have passed all the turning-off places, and may hope to go on together still the same dear friends as long as we live. I do not love him one whit the less for having been President, nor for having done me the greatest good in his power; a fact that speaks eloquently in his favor, and perhaps says a little for myself. If he had been merely a benefactor, perhaps I might not have borne it so well; but each did his best for the other as friend for friend. May 15th.--Yesterday afternoon we went to the Barberini picture-gallery to take a farewell look at the Beatrice Cenci, which I have twice visited before since our return from Florence. I attempted a description of it at my first visit, more than a year ago, but the picture is quite indescribable and unaccountable in its effect, for if you attempt to analyze it you can never succeed in getting at the secret of its fascination. Its peculiar expression eludes a straightforward glance, and can only be caught by side glimpses, or when the eye falls upon it casually, as it were, and without thinking to discover anything, as if the picture had a life and consciousness of its own, and were resolved not to betray its secret of grief or guilt, though it wears the full expression of it when it imagines itself unseen. I think no other such magical effect can ever have been wrought by pencil. I looked close into its eyes, with a determination to see all that there was in them, and could see nothing that might not have been in any young girl's eyes; and yet, a moment afterwards, there was the expression--seen aside, and vanishing in a moment--of a being unhumanized by some terrible fate, and gazing at me out of a remote and inaccessible region, where she was frightened to be alone, but where no sympathy could reach her. The mouth is beyond measure touching; the lips apart, looking as innocent as a baby's after it has been crying. The picture never can be copied. Guido himself could not have done it over again. The copyists get all sorts of expression, gay, as well as grievous; some copies have a coquettish air, a half-backward glance, thrown alluring at the spectator, but nobody ever did catch, or ever will, the vanishing charm of that sorrow. I hated to leave the picture, and yet was glad when I had taken my last glimpse, because it so perplexed and troubled me not to be able to get hold of its secret. Thence we went to the Church of the Capuchins, and saw Guido's Archangel. I have been several times to this church, but never saw the picture before, though I am familiar with the mosaic copy at St. Peter's, and had supposed the latter to be an equivalent representation of the original. It is nearly or quite so as respects the general effect; but there is a beauty in the archangel's face that immeasurably surpasses the copy,--the expression of heavenly severity, and a degree of pain, trouble, or disgust, at being brought in contact with sin, even for the purpose of quelling and punishing it. There is something finical in the copy, which I do not find in the original. The sandalled feet are here those of an angel; in the mosaic they are those of a celestial coxcomb, treading daintily, as if he were afraid they would be soiled by the touch of Lucifer. After looking at the Archangel we went down under the church, guided by a fleshy monk, and saw the famous cemetery, where the dead monks of many centuries back have been laid to sleep in sacred earth from Jerusalem. . . . FRANCE. Hotel des Colonies, Marseilles, May 29th, Saturday.--Wednesday was the day fixed for our departure from Rome, and after breakfast I walked to the Pincian, and saw the garden and the city, and the Borghese grounds, and St. Peter's in an earlier sunlight than ever before. Methought they never looked so beautiful, nor the sky so bright and blue. I saw Soracte on the horizon, and I looked at everything as if for the last time; nor do I wish ever to see any of these objects again, though no place ever took so strong a hold of my being as Rome, nor ever seemed so close to me and so strangely familiar. I seem to know it better than my birthplace, and to have known it longer; and though I have been very miserable there, and languid with the effects of the atmosphere, and disgusted with a thousand things in its daily life, still I cannot say I hate it, perhaps might fairly own a love for it. But life being too short for such questionable and troublesome enjoyments, I desire never to set eyes on it again. . . . . . . . We traversed again that same weary and dreary tract of country which we passed over in a winter afternoon and night on our first arrival in Rome. It is as desolate a country as can well be imagined, but about midway of our journey we came to the sea-shore, and kept very near it during the rest of the way. The sight and fragrance of it were exceedingly refreshing after so long an interval, and U---- revived visibly as we rushed along, while J----- chuckled and contorted himself with ineffable delight. We reached Civita Vecchia in three or four hours, and were there subjected to various troubles. . . . All the while Miss S------ and I were bothering about the passport, the rest of the family sat in the sun on the quay, with all kinds of bustle and confusion around them; a very trying experience to U---- after the long seclusion and quiet of her sick-chamber. But she did not seem to suffer from it, and we finally reached the steamer in good condition and spirits. . . . I slept wretchedly in my short and narrow berth, more especially as there was an old gentleman who snored as if he were sounding a charge; it was terribly hot too, and I rose before four o'clock, and was on deck amply in time to watch the distant approach of sunrise. We arrived at Leghorn pretty early, and might have gone ashore and spent the day. Indeed, we had been recommended by Dr. Franco, and had fully purposed to spend a week or ten days there, in expectation of benefit to U----'s health from the sea air and sea bathing, because he thought her still too feeble to make the whole voyage to Marseilles at a stretch. But she showed herself so strong that we thought she would get as much good from our three days' voyage as from the days by the sea-shore. Moreover, . . . . we all of us still felt the languor of the Roman atmosphere, and dreaded the hubbub and crazy confusion of landing at an Italian port. . . . So we lay in the harbor all day without stirring from the steamer. . . . It would have been pleasant, however, to have gone to Pisa, fifteen miles off, and seen the leaning tower; but, for my part, I have arrived at that point where it is somewhat pleasanter to sit quietly in any spot whatever than to see whatever grandest or most beautiful thing. At least this was my mood in the harbor of Leghorn. From the deck of the steamer there were many things visible that might have been interesting to describe: the boats of peculiar rig, and covered with awning; the crowded shipping; the disembarkation of horses from the French cavalry, which were lowered from steamers into gondolas or lighters, and hung motionless, like the sign of the Golden Fleece, during the transit, only kicking a little when their feet happened to graze the vessel's side. One horse plunged overboard, and narrowly escaped drowning. There was likewise a disembarkation of French soldiers in a train of boats, which rowed shoreward with sound of trumpet. The French are concentrating a considerable number of troops at this point. Our steamer was detained by order of the French government to take on board despatches; so that, instead of sailing at dusk, as is customary, we lay in the harbor till seven of the next morning. A number of young Sardinian officers, in green uniform, came on board, and a pale and picturesque-looking Italian, and other worthies of less note,--English, American, and of all races,--among them a Turk with a little boy in Christian dress; also a Greek gentleman with his young bride. At the appointed time we weighed anchor for Genoa, and had a beautiful day on the Mediterranean, and for the first time in my life I saw the real dark blue of the sea. I do not remember noticing it on my outward voyage to Italy. It is the most beautiful hue that can be imagined, like a liquid sky; and it retains its lustrous blue directly under the side of the ship, where the water of the mid-Atlantic looks greenish. . . . We reached Genoa at seven in the afternoon. . . . Genoa looks most picturesquely from the sea, at the foot of a sheltering semicircle of lofty hills; and as we lay in the harbor we saw, among other interesting objects, the great Doria Palace, with its gardens, and the cathedral, and a heap and sweep of stately edifices, with the mountains looking down upon he city, and crowned with fortresses. The variety of hue in the houses, white, green, pink, and orange, was very remarkable. It would have been well to go ashore here for an hour or two and see the streets, --having already seen the palaces, churches, and public buildings at our former visit,--and buy a few specimens of Genoa goldsmiths' work; but I preferred the steamer's deck, so the evening passed pleasantly away; the two lighthouses at the entrance of the port kindled up their fires, and at nine o'clock the evening gun thundered from the fortress, and was reverberated from the heights. We sailed away at eleven, and I was roused from my first sleep by the snortings and hissings of the vessel as she got under way. At Genoa we took on board some more passengers, an English nobleman with his lady being of the number. These were Lord and Lady J------, and before the end of our voyage his lordship talked to me of a translation of Tasso in which he is engaged, and a stanza or two of which he repeated to me. I really liked the lines, and liked too the simplicity and frankness with which he spoke of it to me a stranger, and the way be seemed to separate his egotism from the idea which he evidently had that he is going to make an excellent translation. I sincerely hope it may be so. He began it without any idea of publishing it, or of ever bringing it to a conclusion, but merely as a solace and occupation while in great trouble during an illness of his wife, but he has gradually come to find it the most absorbing occupation he ever undertook; and as Mr. Gladstone and other high authorities give him warm encouragement, he now means to translate the entire poem, and to publish it with beautiful illustrations, and two years hence the world may expect to see it. I do not quite perceive how such a man as this--a man of frank, warm, simple, kindly nature, but surely not of a poetical temperament, or very refined, or highly cultivated--should make a good version of Tasso's poems; but perhaps the dead poet's soul may take possession of this healthy organization, and wholly turn him to its own purposes. The latter part of our voyage to-day lay close along the coast of France, which was hilly and picturesque, and as we approached Marseilles was very bold and striking. We steered among rocky islands, rising abruptly out of the sea, mere naked crags, without a trace of verdure upon them, and with the surf breaking at their feet. They were unusual specimens of what hills would look like without the soil, that is to them what flesh is to a skeleton. Their shapes were often wonderfully fine, and the great headlands thrust themselves out, and took such lines of light and shade that it seemed like sailing through a picture. In the course of the afternoon a squall came up and blackened the sky all over in a twinkling; our vessel pitched and tossed, and a brig a little way from us had her sails blown about in wild fashion. The blue of the sea turned as black as night, and soon the rain began to spatter down upon us, and continued to sprinkle and drizzle a considerable time after the wind had subsided. It was quite calm and pleasant when we entered the harbor of Marseilles, which lies at the foot of very fair hills, and is set among great cliffs of stone. I did not attend much to this, however, being in dread of the difficulty of landing and passing through the custom-house with our twelve or fourteen trunks and numberless carpet-bags. The trouble vanished into thin air, nevertheless, as we approached it, for not a single trunk or bag was opened, and, moreover, our luggage and ourselves were not only landed, but the greater part of it conveyed to the railway without any expense. Long live Louis Napoleon, say I. We established ourselves at the Hotel des Colonies, and then Mss S------, J-----, and I drove hither and thither about Marseilles, making arrangements for our journey to Avignon, where we mean to go to-day. We might have avoided a good deal of this annoyance; but travellers, like other people, are continually getting their experience just a little too late. It was after nine before we got back to the hotel and took our tea in peace. AVIGNON. Hotel de l'Europe, June 1st.--I remember nothing very special to record about Marseilles; though it was really like passing from death into life, to find ourselves in busy, cheerful, effervescing France, after living so long between asleep and awake in sluggish Italy. Marseilles is a very interesting and entertaining town, with its bold surrounding heights, its wide streets,--so they seemed to us after the Roman alleys,--its squares, shady with trees, its diversified population of sailors, citizens, Orientals, and what not; but I have no spirit for description any longer; being tired of seeing things, and still more of telling myself about them. Only a young traveller can have patience to write his travels. The newest things, nowadays, have a familiarity to my eyes; whereas in their lost sense of novelty lies the charm and power of description. On Monday (30th May), though it began with heavy rain, we set early about our preparations for departure, . . . . and, at about three, we left the Hotel des Colonies. It is a very comfortable hotel, though expensive. The Restaurant connected with it occupies the enclosed court-yard and the arcades around it; and it was a good amusement to look down from the surrounding gallery, communicating with our apartments, and see the fashion and manner of French eating, all the time going forward. In sunny weather a great awning is spread over the whole court, across from the upper stories of the house. There is a grass-plat in the middle, and a very spacious and airy dining-saloon is thus formed. Our railroad carriage was comfortable, and we found in it, besides two other Frenchwomen, two nuns. They were very devout, and sedulously read their little books of devotion, repeated prayers under their breath, kissed the crucifixes which hung at their girdles, and told a string of beads, which they passed from one to the other. So much were they occupied with these duties, that they scarcely looked at the scenery along the road, though, probably, it is very rare for them to see anything outside of their convent walls. They never failed to mutter a prayer and kiss the crucifix whenever we plunged into a tunnel. If they glanced at their fellow-passengers, it was shyly and askance, with their lips in motion all the time, like children afraid to let their eyes wander from their lesson-book. One of them, however, took occasion to pull down R-----'s dress, which, in her frisky movements about the carriage, had got out of place, too high for the nun's sense of decorum. Neither of them was at all pretty, nor was the black stuff dress and white muslin cap in the least becoming, neither were their features of an intelligent or high-bred stamp. Their manners, however, or such little glimpses as I could get of them, were unexceptionable; and when I drew a curtain to protect one of them from the sun, she made me a very courteous gesture of thanks. We had some very good views both of sea and hills; and a part of our way lay along the banks of the Rhone. . . . By the by, at the station at Marseilles I bought the two volumes of the "Livre des Merveilles," by a certain author of my acquaintance, translated into French, and printed and illustrated in very pretty style. Miss S------ also bought them, and, in answer to her inquiry for other works by the same author, the bookseller observed that "she did not think Monsieur Nathaniel had published anything else." The Christian name deems to be the most important one in France, and still more especially in Italy. We arrived at Avignon, Hotel de l'Europe, in the dusk of the evening. . . . The lassitude of Rome still clings to us, and I, at least, feel no spring of life or activity, whether at morn or eve. In the morning we found ourselves very pleasantly situated as regards lodgings. The gallery of our suite of rooms looks down as usual into an enclosed court, three sides of which are formed by the stone house and its two wings, and the third by a high wall, with a gateway of iron between two lofty stone pillars, which, for their capitals, have great stone vases, with grass growing in them, and hanging over the brim. There is a large plane-tree in one corner of the court, and creeping plants clamber up trellises; and there are pots of flowers and bird-cages, all of which give a very fresh and cheerful aspect to the enclosure. The court is paved with small round stones; the omnibus belonging to the hotel, and all the carriages of guests drive into it; and the wide arch of the stable-door opens under the central part of the house. Nevertheless, the scene is not in all respects that of a stable-yard; for gentlemen and ladies come from the salle a manger and other rooms, and stand talking in the court, or occupy chairs and seats there; children play about; the hostess or her daughter often appears and talks with her guests or servants; dogs lounge, and, in short, the court might well enough be taken for the one scene of a classic play. The hotel seems to be of the first class, though such would not be indicated, either in England or America, by thus mixing up the stable with the lodgings. I have taken two or three rambles about the town, and have climbed a high rock which dominates over it, and gives a most extensive view from the broad table-land of its summit. The old church of Avignon --as old as the times of its popes, and older--stands close beside this mighty and massive crag. We went into it, and found it a dark old place, with broad, interior arches, and a singularly shaped dome; a venerable Gothic and Grecian porch, with ancient frescos in its arched spaces; some dusky pictures within; an ancient chair of stone, formerly occupied by the popes, and much else that would have been exceedingly interesting before I went to Rome. But Rome takes the charm out of an inferior antiquity, as well as the life out of human beings. This forenoon J----- and I have crossed the Rhone by a bridge, just the other side of one of the city gates, which is near our hotel. We walked along the riverside, and saw the ruins of an ancient bridge, which ends abruptly in the midst of the stream; two or three arches still making tremendous strides across, while the others have long ago been crumbled away by the rush of the rapid river. The bridge was originally founded by St. Benezet, who received a Divine order to undertake the work, while yet a shepherd-boy, with only three sous in his pocket; and he proved the authenticity of the mission by taking an immense stone on his shoulder, and laying it for the foundation. There is still an ancient chapel midway on the bridge, and I believe St. Benezet lies buried there, in the midst of his dilapidated work. The bridge now used is considerably lower down the stream. It is a wooden suspension-bridge, broader than the ancient one, and doubtless more than supplies its place; else, unquestionably, St. Benezet would think it necessary to repair his own. The view from the inner side of this ruined structure, grass-grown and weedy, and leading to such a precipitous plunge into the swift river, is very picturesque, in connection with the gray town and above it, the great, massive bulk of the cliff, the towers of the church, and of a vast old edifice, shapeless, ugly, and venerable, which the popes built and occupied as their palace, many centuries ago. . . . After dinner we all set out on a walk, in the course of which we called at a bookseller's shop to show U---- an enormous cat, which I had already seen. It is of the Angora breed, of a mottled yellow color, and is really a wonder; as big and broad as a tolerably sized dog, very soft and silken, and apparently of the gentlest disposition. I never imagined the like, nor felt anything so deeply soft as this great beast. Its master seems very fond and proud of it; and, great favorite as the cat is, she does not take airs upon herself, but is gently shy and timid in her demonstrations. We ascended the great Rocher above the palace of the popes, and on our way looked into the old church, which was so dim in the decline of day that we could not see within the dusky arches, through which the chapels communicated with the nave. Thence we pursued our way up the farther ascent, and, standing on the edge of the precipice,--protected by a parapet of stone, and in other places by an iron railing,--we could look down upon the road that winds its dusky track far below, and at the river Rhone, which eddies close beside it. This is indeed a massive and lofty cliff, and it tumbles down so precipitously that I could readily have flung myself from the bank, and alighted on my head in the middle of the river. The Rhone passes so near its base that I threw stones a good way into its current. We talked with a man of Avignon, who leaned over the parapet near by, and he was very kind in explaining the points of view, and told us that the river, which winds and doubles upon itself so as to look like at least two rivers, is really the Rhone alone. The Durance joins with it within a few miles below Avignon, but is here invisible. Hotel de l'Europe, June 2d.--This morning we went again to the Duomo of the popes; and this time we allowed the custode, or sacristan, to show us the curiosities of it. He led us into a chapel apart, and showed us the old Gothic tomb of Pope John XXII., where the recumbent statue of the pope lies beneath one of those beautiful and venerable canopies of stone which look at once so light and so solemn. I know not how many hundred years old it is, but everything of Gothic origin has a faculty of conveying the idea of age; whereas classic forms seem to have nothing to do with time, and so lose the kind of impressiveness that arises from suggestions of decay and the past. In the sacristy the guide opened a cupboard that contained the jewels and sacred treasures of the church, and showed a most exquisite figure of Christ in ivory, represented as on a cross of ebony; and it was executed with wonderful truth and force of expression, and with great beauty likewise. I do not see what a full-length marble statue could have had that was lacking in this little ivory figure of hardly more than a foot high. It is about two centuries old, by an unknown artist. There is another famous ivory statuette in Avignon which seems to be more celebrated than this, but can hardly be superior. I shall gladly look at it if it comes in my way. Next to this, the prettiest thing the man showed us was a circle of emeralds, in one of the holy implements; and then he exhibited a little bit or a pope's skull; also a great old crozier, that looked as if made chiefly of silver, and partly gilt; but I saw where the plating of silver was worn away, and betrayed the copper of its actual substance. There were two or three pictures in the sacristy, by ancient and modern French artists, very unlike the productions of the Italian masters, but not without a beauty of their own. Leaving the sacristy, we returned into the church, where U---- and J----- began to draw the pope's old stone chair. There is a beast, or perhaps more than one, grotesquely sculptured upon it; the seat is high and square, the back low and pointed, and it offers no enticing promise to a weary man. The interior of the church is massively picturesque, with its vaulted roof, and a stone gallery, heavily ornamented, running along each side of the nave. Each arch of the nave gives admittance to a chapel, in all of which there are pictures, and sculptures in most of them. One of these chapels is of the time of Charlemagne, and has a vaulted roof of admirable architecture, covered with frescos of modern date and little merit. In an adjacent chapel is the stone monument of Pope Benedict, whose statue reposes on it, like many which I have seen in the cathedral of York and other old English churches. In another part we saw a monument, consisting of a plain slab supported on pillars; it is said to be of a Roman or very early Christian epoch. In another chapel was a figure of Christ in wax, I believe, and clothed in real drapery; a very ugly object. Also, a figure reposing under a slab, which strikes the spectator with the idea that it is really a dead person enveloped in a shroud. There are windows of painted glass in some of the chapels; and the gloom of the dimly lighted interior, especially beneath the broad, low arches, is very impressive. While we were there some women assembled at one of the altars, and went through their acts of devotion without the help of a priest; one and another of them alternately repeating prayers, to which the rest responded. The murmur of their voices took a musical tone, which was reverberated by the vaulted arches. U---- and I now came out; and, under the porch, we found an old woman selling rosaries, little religious books, and other holy things. We bought two little medals of the Immaculate Virgin, one purporting to be of silver, the other of gold; but as both together cost only two or three sous, the genuineness of the material may well be doubted. We sat down on the steps, of a crucifix which is placed in front of the church, and the children began to draw the porch, of which I hardly know whether to call the architecture classic or Gothic (as I said before); at all events it has a venerable aspect, and there are frescos within its arches by Simone Memmi. . . . The popes' palace is contiguous to the church, and just below it, on the hillside. It is now occupied as barracks by some regiments of soldiers, a number of whom were lounging before the entrance; but we passed the sentinel without being challenged, and addressed ourselves to the concierge, who readily assented to our request to be shown through the edifice. A French gentleman and lady, likewise, came with similar purpose, and went the rounds along with us. The palace is such a confused heap and conglomeration of buildings, that it is impossible to get within any sort of a regular description. It is a huge, shapeless mass of architecture; and if it ever had any pretence to a plan, it has lost it in the modern alterations. For instance, an immense and lofty chapel, or rather church, has had two floors, one above the other, laid at different stages of its height; and the upper one of these floors, which extends just where the arches of the vaulted root begin to spring from the pillars, is ranged round with the beds of one of the regiments of soldiers. They are small iron bedsteads, each with its narrow mattress, and covered with a dark blanket. On some of them lay or lounged a soldier; other soldiers were cleaning their accoutrements; elsewhere we saw parties of them playing cards. So it was wherever we went among those large, dingy, gloomy halls and chambers, which, no doubt, were once stately and sumptuous, with pictures, with tapestry, and all sorts of adornment that the Middle Ages knew how to use. The windows threw a sombre light through embrasures at least two feet thick. There were staircases of magnificent breadth. We were shown into two small chapels, in different parts of the building, both containing the remains of old frescos wofully defaced. In one of them was a light, spiral staircase of iron, built in the centre of the room as a means of contemplating the frescos, which were said to be the work of our old friend Giotto. . . . Finally, we climbed a long, long, narrow stair, built in the thickness of the wall, and thus gained access to the top of one of the towers, whence we saw the noblest landscapes, mountains, plains, and the Rhone, broad and bright, winding hither and thither, as if it had lost its way. Beneath our feet was the gray, ugly old palace, and its many courts, just as void of system and as inconceivable as when we were burrowing through its bewildering passages. No end of historical romances might be made out of this castle of the popes; and there ought to be a ghost in every room, and droves of them in some of the rooms; for there have been murders here in the gross and in detail, as well hundreds of years ago, as no longer back than the French Revolution, when there was a great massacre in one of the courts. Traces of this bloody business were visible in actual stains on the wall only a few years ago. Returning to the room of the concierge, who, being a little stiff with age, had sent an attendant round with us, instead of accompanying us in person, he showed us a picture of Rienzi, the last of the Roman tribunes, who was once a prisoner here. On a table, beneath the picture, stood a little vase of earthenware containing some silver coin. We took it as a hint, in the customary style of French elegance, that a fee should be deposited here, instead of being put into the hand of the concierge; so the French gentleman deposited half a franc, and I, in my magnificence, twice as much. Hotel de l'Europe, June 6th.--We are still here. . . . I have been daily to the Rocher des Dons, and have grown familiar with the old church on its declivity. I think I might become attached to it by seeing it often. A sombre old interior, with its heavy arches, and its roof vaulted like the top of a trunk; its stone gallery, with ponderous adornments, running round three sides. I observe that it is a daily custom of the old women to say their prayers in concert, sometimes making a pilgrimage, as it were, from chapel to chapel. The voice of one of them is heard running through the series of petitions, and at intervals the voices of the others join and swell into a chorus, so that it is like a river connecting a series of lakes; or, not to use so gigantic a simile, the one voice is like a thread, on which the beads of a rosary are strung. One day two priests came and sat down beside these prayerful women, and joined in their petitions. I am inclined to hope that there is something genuine in the devotion of these old women. The view from the top of the Rocker des Dons (a contraction of Dominis) grows upon me, and is truly magnificent; a vast mountain-girdled plain, illuminated by the far windings and reaches of the Rhone. The river is here almost as turbid as the Tiber itself; but, I remember, in the upper part of its course the waters are beautifully transparent. A powerful rush is indicated by the swirls and eddies of its broad surface. Yesterday was a race day at Avignon, and apparently almost the whole population and a great many strangers streamed out of the city gate nearest our hotel, on their way to the race-course. There were many noticeable figures that might come well into a French picture or description; but only one remains in my memory,--a young man with a wooden leg, setting off for the course--a walk of several miles, I believe--with prodigious courage and alacrity, flourishing his wooden leg with an air and grace that seemed to render it positively flexible. The crowd returned towards sunset, and almost all night long, the streets and the whole air of the old town were full of song and merriment. There was a ball in a temporary structure, covered with an awning, in the Place d'Horloge, and a showman has erected his tent and spread forth his great painted canvases, announcing an anaconda and a sea-tiger to be seen. J----- paid four sous for admittance, and found that the sea-tiger was nothing but a large seal, and the anaconda altogether a myth. I have rambled a good deal about the town. Its streets are crooked and perplexing, and paved with round pebbles for the most part, which afford more uncomfortable pedestrianism than the pavement of Rome itself. It is an ancient-looking place, with some large old mansions, but few that are individually impressive; though here and there one sees an antique entrance, a corner tower, or other bit of antiquity, that throws a venerable effect over the gray commonplace of past centuries. The town is not overclean, and often there is a kennel of unhappy odor. There appear to have been many more churches and devotional establishments under the ancient dominion of the popes than have been kept intact in subsequent ages; the tower and facade of a church, for instance, form the front of a carpenter's shop, or some such plebeian place. The church where Laura lay has quite disappeared, and her tomb along with it. The town reminds me of Chester, though it does not in the least resemble it, and is not nearly so picturesque. Like Chester, it is entirely surrounded by a wall; and that of Avignon--though it has no delightful promenade on its top, as the wall of Chester has--is the more perfectly preserved in its mediaeval form, and the more picturesque of the two. J----- and I have once or twice walked nearly round it, commencing from the gate of Ouelle, which is very near our hotel. From this point it stretches for a considerable distance along by the river, and here there is a broad promenade, with trees, and blocks of stone for seats; on one side "the arrowy Rhone," generally carrying a cooling breeze along with it; on the other, the gray wall, with its battlements and machicolations, impending over what was once the moat, but which is now full of careless and untrained shrubbery. At intervals there are round towers swelling out from the wall, and rising a little above it. After about half a mile along the river-side the wall turns at nearly right angles, and still there is a wide road, a shaded walk, a boulevard; and at short distances are cafes, with their little round tables before the door, or small shady nooks of shrubbery. So numerous are these retreats and pleasaunces that I do not see how the little old town can support them all, especially as there are a great many cafes within the walls. I do not remember seeing any soldiers on guard at the numerous city gates, but there is an office in the side of each gate for levying the octroi, and old women are sometimes on guard there. This morning, after breakfast, J----- and I crossed the suspension-bridge close by the gate nearest our hotel, and walked to the ancient town of Villeneuve, on the other side of the Rhone. The first bridge leads to an island, from the farther side of which another very long one, with a timber foundation, accomplishes the passage of the other branch of the Rhone. There was a good breeze on the river, but after crossing it we found the rest of the walk excessively hot. This town of Villeneuve is of very ancient origin, and owes its existence, it is said, to the famous holiness of a female saint, which gathered round her abode and burial-place a great many habitations of people who reverenced her. She was the daughter of the King of Saragossa, and I presume she chose this site because it was so rocky and desolate. Afterwards it had a long mediaeval history; and in the time of the Avignon popes, the cardinals, regretful of their abandoned Roman villas, built pleasure-houses here, so that the town was called Villa Nueva. After they had done their best, it must have seemed to these poor cardinals but a rude and sad exchange for the Borghese, the Albani, the Pamfili Doria, and those other perfectest results of man's luxurious art. And probably the tradition of the Roman villas had really been kept alive, and extant examples of them all the way downward from the times of the empire. But this Villeneuve is the stoniest, roughest town that can be imagined. There are a few large old houses, to be sure, but built on a line with shabby village dwellings and barns, and so presenting little but samples of magnificent shabbiness. Perhaps I might have found traces of old splendor if I had sought for them; but, not having the history of the place in my mind, I passed through its scrambling streets without imagining that Princes of the Church had once made their abode here. The inhabitants now are peasants, or chiefly such; though, for aught I know, some of the French noblesse may burrow in these palaces that look so like hovels. A large church, with a massive tower, stands near the centre of the town; and, of course, I did not fail to enter its arched door,--a pointed arch, with many frames and mouldings, one within another. An old woman was at her devotions, and several others came in and knelt during my stay there. It was quite an interesting interior; a long nave, with six pointed arches on each side, beneath which were as many chapels. The walls were rich with pictures, not only in the chapels, but up and down the nave, above the arches. There were gilded virgins, too, and much other quaint device that produced an effect that I rather liked than otherwise. At the end of the church, farthest from the high altar, there were four columns of exceedingly rich marble, and a good deal more of such precious material was wrought into the chapels and altars. There was an old stone seat, also, of some former pope or prelate. The church was dim enough to cause the lamps in the shrines to become points of vivid light, and, looking from end to end, it was a long, venerable, tarnished, Old World vista, not at all tampered with by modern taste. We now went on our way through the village, and, emerging from a gate, went clambering towards the castle of St. Andre, which stands, perhaps, a quarter of a mile beyond it. This castle was built by Philip le Bel, as a restraint to the people of Avignon in extending their power on this side of the Rhone. We happened not to take the most direct way, and so approached the castle on the farther side and were obliged to go nearly round the hill on which it stands, before striking into the path which leads to its gate. It crowns a very bold and difficult hill, directly above the Rhone, opposite to Avignon,--which is so far off that objects are not minutely distinguishable,--and looking down upon the long, straggling town of Villeneuve. It must have been a place of mighty strength, in its day. Its ramparts seem still almost entire, as looked upon from without, and when, at length, we climbed the rough, rocky pathway to the entrance, we found the two vast round towers, with their battlemented summits and arched gateway between them, just as perfect as they could have been five hundred or more years ago. Some external defences are now, however, in a state of ruin; and there are only the remains of a tower, that once arose between the two round towers, and was apparently much more elevated than they. A little in front of the gate was a monumental cross of stone; and in the arch, between the two round towers, were two little boys at play; and an old woman soon showed herself, but took no notice of us. Casting our eyes within the gateway, we saw what looked a rough village street, betwixt old houses built ponderously of stone, but having far more the aspect of huts than of castle-hails. They were evidently the dwellings of peasantry, and people engaged in rustic labor; and no doubt they have burrowed into the primitive structures of the castle, and, as they found convenient, have taken their crumbling materials to build barns and farm-houses. There was space and accommodation for a very considerable population; but the men were probably at work in the fields, and the only persons visible were the children aforesaid, and one or two old women bearing bundles of twigs on their backs. They showed no curiosity respecting us, and though the wide space included within the castle-rampart seemed almost full of habitations ruinous or otherwise, I never found such a solitude in any ruin before. It contrasts very favorably in this particular with English castles, where, though you do not find rustic villages within the warlike enclosure, there is always a padlocked gate, always a guide, and generally half a dozen idle tourists. But here was only antiquity, with merely the natural growth of fungous human life upon it. We went to the end of the castle court and sat down, for lack of other shade, among some inhospitable nettles that grew close to the wall. Close by us was a great gap in the ramparts,--it may have been a breach which was once stormed through; and it now afforded us an airy and sunny glimpse of distant hills. . . . J----- sketched part of the broken wall, which, by the by, did not seem to me nearly so thick as the walls of English castles. Then we returned through the gate, and I stopped, rather impatiently, under the hot sun, while J----- drew the outline of the two round towers. This done, we resumed our way homeward, after drinking from a very deep well close by the square tower of Philip le Bel. Thence we went melting through the sunshine, which beat upward as pitilessly from the white road as it blazed downwards from the sky. . . . GENEVA. Hotel d'Angleterre, June 11th.--We left Avignon on Tuesday, 7th, and took the rail to Valence, where we arrived between four and five, and put up at the Hotel de la Poste, an ancient house, with dirty floors and dirt generally, but otherwise comfortable enough. . . . Valence is a stately old town, full of tall houses and irregular streets. We found a cathedral there, not very large, but with a high and venerable interior, a nave supported by tall pillars, from the height of which spring arches. This loftiness is characteristic of French churches, as distinguished from those of Italy. . . . We likewise saw, close by the cathedral, a large monument with four arched entrances meeting beneath a vaulted roof; but, on inquiry of an old priest and other persons, we could get no account of it, except that it was a tomb, and of unknown antiquity. The architecture seemed classic, and yet it had some Gothic peculiarities, and it was a reverend and beautiful object. Had I written up my journal while the town was fresh in my remembrance, I might have found much to describe; but a succession of other objects have obliterated most of the impressions I have received here. Our railway ride to Valence was intolerably hot. I have felt nothing like it since leaving America, and that is so long ago that the terrible discomfort was just as good as new. . . . We left Valence at four, and came that afternoon to Lyons, still along the Rhone. Either the waters of this river assume a transparency in winter which they lose in summer, or I was mistaken in thinking them transparent on our former journey. They are now turbid; but the hue does not suggest the idea of a running mud-puddle, as the water of the Tiber does. No streams, however, are so beautiful in the quality of their waters as the clear, brown rivers of New England. The scenery along this part of the Rhone, as we have found all the way from Marseilles, is very fine and impressive; old villages, rocky cliffs, castellated steeps, quaint chateaux, and a thousand other interesting objects. We arrived at Lyons at five o'clock, and went to the Hotel de l'Univers, to which we had been recommended by our good hostess at Avignon. The day had become showery, but J----- and I strolled about a little before nightfall, and saw the general characteristics of the place. Lyons is a city of very stately aspect, hardly inferior to Paris; for it has regular streets of lofty houses, and immense squares planted with trees, and adorned with statues and fountains. New edifices of great splendor are in process of erection; and on the opposite side of the Rhone, where the site rises steep and high, there are structures of older date, that have an exceedingly picturesque effect, looking down upon the narrow town. The next morning I went out with J----- in quest of my bankers, and of the American Consul; and as I had forgotten the directions of the waiter of the hotel, I of course went astray, and saw a good deal more of Lyons than I intended. In my wanderings I crossed the Rhone, and found myself in a portion of the city evidently much older than that with which I had previously made acquaintance; narrow, crooked, irregular, and rudely paved streets, full of dingy business and bustle,--the city, in short, as it existed a century ago, and how much earlier I know not. Above rises that lofty elevation of ground which I before noticed; and the glimpses of its stately old buildings through the openings of the street were very picturesque. Unless it be Edinburgh, I have not seen any other city that has such striking features. Altogether unawares, immediately after crossing the bridge, we came upon the cathedral; and the grand, time-blackened Gothic front, with its deeply arched entrances, seemed to me as good as anything I ever saw,--unexpectedly more impressive than all the ruins of Rome. I could but merely glance at its interior; so that its noble height and venerable space, filled with the dim, consecrated light of pictured windows, recur to me as a vision. And it did me good to enjoy the awfulness and sanctity of Gothic architecture again, after so long shivering in classic porticos. . . . We now recrossed the river. . . . The Frank methods and arrangements in matters of business seem to be excellent, so far as effecting the proposed object is concerned; but there is such an inexorable succession of steel-wrought forms, that life is not long enough for so much accuracy. The stranger, too, goes blindfold through all these processes, not knowing what is to turn up next, till, when quite in despair, he suddenly finds his business mysteriously accomplished. . . . We left Lyons at four o'clock, taking the railway for Geneva. The scenery was very striking throughout the journey; but I allowed the hills, deep valleys, high impending cliffs, and whatever else I saw along the road, to pass from me without an ink-blot. We reached Geneva at nearly ten o'clock. . . . It is situated partly on low, flat ground, bordering the lake, and behind this level space it rises by steep, painfully paved streets, some of which can hardly be accessible by wheeled carriages. The prosperity of the town is indicated by a good many new and splendid edifices, for commercial and other purposes, in the vicinity of the lake; but intermixed with these there are many quaint buildings of a stern gray color, and in a style of architecture that I prefer a thousand times to the monotony of Italian streets. Immensely high, red roofs, with windows in them, produce an effect that delights me. They are as ugly, perhaps, as can well be conceived, but very striking and individual. At each corner of these ancient houses frequently is a tower, the roof of which rises in a square pyramidal form, or, if the tower be round, in a round pyramidal form. Arched passages, gloomy and grimy, pass from one street to another. The lower town creeps with busy life, and swarms like an ant-hill; but if you climb the half-precipitous streets, you find yourself among ancient and stately mansions, high roofed, with a strange aspect of grandeur about them, looking as if they might still be tenanted by such old magnates as dwelt in them centuries ago. There is also a cathedral, the older portion exceedingly fine; but it has been adorned at some modern epoch with a Grecian portico,--good in itself, but absurdly out of keeping with the edifice which it prefaces. This being a Protestant country, the doors were all shut,--an inhospitality that made me half a Catholic. It is funny enough that a stranger generally profits by all that is worst for the inhabitants of the country where he himself is merely a visitor. Despotism makes things all the pleasanter for the stranger. Catholicism lends itself admirably to his purposes. There are public gardens (one, at least) in Geneva. . . . Nothing struck me so much, I think, as the color of the Rhone, as it flows under the bridges in the lower town. It is absolutely miraculous, and, beautiful as it is, suggests the idea that the tubs of a thousand dyers have emptied their liquid indigo into the stream. When once you have conquered and thrust out this idea, it is an inexpressible delight to look down into this intense, brightly transparent blue, that hurries beneath you with the speed of a race-horse. The shops of Geneva are very tempting to a traveller, being full of such little knick-knacks as he would be glad to carry away in memory of the place: wonderful carvings in wood and ivory, done with exquisite taste and skill; jewelry that seems very cheap, but is doubtless dear enough, if you estimate it by the solid gold that goes into its manufacture; watches, above all things else, for a third or a quarter of the price that one pays in England, looking just as well, too, and probably performing the whole of a watch's duty as uncriticisably. The Swiss people are frugal and inexpensive in their own habits, I believe, plain and simple, and careless of ornament; but they seem to reckon on other people's spending a great deal of money for gewgaws. We bought some of their wooden trumpery, and likewise a watch for U----. . . . Next to watches, jewelry, and wood-carving, I should say that cigars were one of the principal articles of commerce in Geneva. Cigar-shops present themselves at every step or two, and at a reasonable rate, there being no duties, I believe, on imported goods. There was no examination of our trunks on arrival, nor any questions asked on that score. VILLENEUVE. Hotel de Byron, June 12th.--Yesterday afternoon we left Geneva by a steamer, starting from the quay at only a short distance from our hotel. The forenoon had been showery; but the suit now came out very pleasantly, although there were still clouds and mist enough to give infinite variety to the mountain scenery. At the commencement of our voyage the scenery of the lake was not incomparably superior to that of other lakes on which I have sailed, as Lake Windermere, for instance, or Loch Lomond, or our own Lake Champlain. It certainly grew more grand and beautiful, however, till at length I felt that I had never seen anything worthy to be put beside it. The southern shore has the grandest scenery; the great hills on that side appearing close to the water's edge, and after descending, with headlong slope, directly from their rocky and snow-streaked summits down into the blue water. Our course lay nearer to the northern shore, and all our stopping-places were on that side. The first was Coppet, where Madame de Stael or her father, or both, were either born or resided or died, I know not which, and care very little. It is a picturesque village, with an old church, and old, high-roofed, red-tiled houses, the whole looking as if nothing in it had been changed for many, many years. All these villages, at several of which we stopped momentarily, look delightfully unmodified by recent fashions. There is the church, with its tower crowned by a pyramidal roof, like an extinguisher; then the chateau of the former lord, half castle and half dwelling-house, with a round tower at each corner, pyramid topped; then, perhaps, the ancient town-house or Hotel de Ville, in an open paved square; and perhaps the largest mansion in the whole village will have been turned into a modern inn, but retaining all its venerable characteristics of high, steep sloping roof, and antiquated windows. Scatter a delightful shade of trees among the houses, throw in a time-worn monument of one kind or another, swell out the delicious blue of the lake in front, and the delicious green of the sunny hillside sloping up and around this closely congregated neighborhood of old, comfortable houses, and I do not know what more I can add to this sketch. Often there was an insulated house or cottage, embowered in shade, and each seeming like the one only spot in the wide world where two people that had good consciences and loved each other could spend a happy life. Half-ruined towers, old historic castles, these, too, we saw. And all the while, on the other side of the lake, were the high hills, sometimes dim, sometimes black, sometimes green, with gray precipices of stone, and often snow-patches, right above the warm sunny lake whereon we were sailing. We passed Lausanne, which stands upward, on the slope of the hill, the tower of its cathedral forming a conspicuous object. We mean to visit this to-morrow; so I may pretermit further mention of it here. We passed Vevay and Clarens, which, methought, was particularly picturesque; for now the hills had approached close to the water on the northern side also, and steep heights rose directly above the little gray church and village; and especially I remember a rocky cliff which ascends into a rounded pyramid, insulated from all other peaks and ridges. But if I could perform the absolute impossibility of getting one single outline of the scene into words, there would be all the color wanting, the light, the haze, which spiritualizes it, and moreover makes a thousand and a thousand scenes out of that single one. Clarens, however, has still another interest for me; for I found myself more affected by it, as the scene of the love of St. Preux and Julie, than I have often been by scenes of poetry and romance. I read Rousseau's romance with great sympathy, when I was hardly more than a boy; ten years ago, or thereabouts, I tried to read it again without success; but I think, from my feeling of yesterday, that it still retains its hold upon my imagination. Farther onward, we saw a white, ancient-looking group of towers, beneath a mountain, which was so high, and rushed so precipitately down upon this pile of building as quite to dwarf it; besides which, its dingy whiteness had not a very picturesque effect. Nevertheless, this was the Castle of Chillon. It appears to sit right upon the water, and does not rise very loftily above it. I was disappointed in its aspect, having imagined this famous castle as situated upon a rock, a hundred, or, for aught I know, a thousand feet above the surface of the lake; but it is quite as impressive a fact--supposing it to be true--that the water is eight hundred feet deep at its base. By this time, the mountains had taken the beautiful lake into their deepest heart; they girdled it quite round with their grandeur and beauty, and, being able to do no more for it, they here withheld it from extending any farther; and here our voyage came to an end. I have never beheld any scene so exquisite; nor do I ask of heaven to show me any lovelier or nobler one, but only to give me such depth and breadth of sympathy with nature, that I may worthily enjoy this. It is beauty more than enough for poor, perishable mortals. If this be earth, what must heaven be! It was nearly eight o'clock when we arrived; and then we had a walk of at least a mile to the Hotel Byron. . . . I forgot to mention that in the latter part of our voyage there was a shower in some part of the sky, and though none of it fell upon us, we had the benefit of those gentle tears in a rainbow, which arched itself across the lake from mountain to mountain, so that our track lay directly under this triumphal arch. We took it as a good omen, nor were we discouraged, though, after the rainbow had vanished, a few sprinkles of the shower came down. We found the Hotel Byron very grand indeed, and a good one too. There was a beautiful moonlight on the lake and hills, but we contented ourselves with looking out of our lofty window, whence, likewise, we had a sidelong glance at the white battlements of Chillon, not more than a mile off, on the water's edge. The castle is wofully in need of a pedestal. If its site were elevated to a height equal to its own, it would make a far better appearance. As it now is, it looks, to speak profanely of what poetry has consecrated, when seen from the water, or along the shore of the lake, very like an old whitewashed factory or mill. This morning I walked to the Castle of Chillon with J-----, who sketches everything he sees, from a wildflower or a carved chair to a castle or a range of mountains. The morning had sunshine thinly scattered through it; but, nevertheless, there was a continual sprinkle, sometimes scarcely perceptible, and then again amounting to a decided drizzle. The road, which is built along on a little elevation above the lake shore, led us past the Castle of Chillon; and we took a side-path, which passes still nearer the castle gate. The castle stands on an isthmus of gravel, permanently connecting it with the mainland. A wooden bridge, covered with a roof, passes from the shore to the arched entrance; and beneath this shelter, which has wooden walls as well as roof and floor, we saw a soldier or gendarme who seemed to act as warder. As it sprinkled rather more freely than at first, I thought of appealing to his hospitality for shelter from the rain, but concluded to pass on. The castle makes a far better appearance on a nearer view, and from the land, than when seen at a distance, and from the water. It is built of stone, and seems to have been anciently covered with plaster, which imparts the whiteness to which Byron does much more than justice, when he speaks of "Chillon's snow-white battlements." There is a lofty external wall, with a cluster of round towers about it, each crowned with its pyramidal roof of tiles, and from the central portion of the castle rises a square tower, also crowned with its own pyramid to a considerably greater height than the circumjacent ones. The whole are in a close cluster, and make a fine picture of ancient strength when seen at a proper proximity; for I do not think that distance adds anything to the effect. There are hardly any windows, or few, and very small ones, except the loopholes for arrows and for the garrison of the castle to peep from on the sides towards the water; indeed, there are larger windows at least in the upper apartments; but in that direction, no doubt, the castle was considered impregnable. Trees here and there on the land side grow up against the castle wall, on one part of which, moreover, there was a green curtain of ivy spreading from base to battlement. The walls retain their machicolations, and I should judge that nothing had been [altered], nor any more work been done upon the old fortress than to keep it in singularly good repair. It was formerly a castle of the Duke of Savoy, and since his sway over the country ceased (three hundred years at least), it has been in the hands of the Swiss government, who still keep some arms and ammunition there. We passed on, and found the view of it better, as we thought, from a farther point along the road. The raindrops began to spatter down faster, and we took shelter under an impending precipice, where the ledge of rock had been blasted and hewn away to form the road. Our refuge was not a very convenient and comfortable one, so we took advantage of the partial cessation of the shower to turn homeward, but had not gone far when we met mamma and all her train. As we were close by the castle entrance, we thought it advisable to seek admission, though rather doubtful whether the Swiss gendarme might not deem it a sin to let us into the castle on Sunday. But he very readily admitted us under his covered drawbridge, and called an old man from within the fortress to show us whatever was to be seen. This latter personage was a staid, rather grim, and Calvinistic-looking old worthy; but he received us without scruple, and forthwith proceeded to usher us into a range of most dismal dungeons, extending along the basement of the castle, on a level with the surface of the lake. First, if I remember aright, we came to what he said had been a chapel, and which, at all events, looked like an aisle of one, or rather such a crypt as I have seen beneath a cathedral, being a succession of massive pillars supporting groined arches,--a very admirable piece of gloomy Gothic architecture. Next, we came to a very dark compartment of the same dungeon range, where he pointed to a sort of bed, or what might serve for a bed, hewn in the solid rock, and this, our guide said, had been the last sleeping-place of condemned prisoners on the night before their execution. The next compartment was still duskier and dismaller than the last, and he bade us cast our eyes up into the obscurity and see a beam, where the condemned ones used to be hanged. I looked and looked, and closed my eyes so as to see the clearer in this horrible duskiness on opening them again. Finally, I thought I discerned the accursed beam, and the rest of the party were certain that they saw it. Next beyond this, I think, was a stone staircase, steep, rudely cut, and narrow, down which the condemned were brought to death; and beyond this, still on the same basement range of the castle, a low and narrow [corridor] through which we passed and saw a row of seven massive pillars, supporting two parallel series of groined arches, like those in the chapel which we first entered. This was Bonnivard's prison, and the scene of Byron's poem. The arches are dimly lighted by narrow loopholes, pierced through the immensely thick wall, but at such a height above the floor that we could catch no glimpse of land or water, or scarcely of the sky. The prisoner of Chillon could not possibly have seen the island to which Byron alludes, and which is a little way from the shore, exactly opposite the town of Villeneuve. There was light enough in this long, gray, vaulted room, to show us that all the pillars were inscribed with the names of visitors, among which I saw no interesting one, except that of Byron himself, which is cut, in letters an inch long or more, into one of the pillars next to that to which Bonnivard was chained. The letters are deep enough to remain in the pillar as long as the castle stands. Byron seems to have had a fancy for recording his name in this and similar ways; as witness the record which I saw on a tree of Newstead Abbey. In Bonnivard's pillar there still remains an iron ring, at the height of perhaps three feet from the ground. His chain was fastened to this ring, and his only freedom was to walk round this pillar, about which he is said to have worn a path in the stone pavement of the dungeon; but as the floor is now covered with earth or gravel, I could not satisfy myself whether this be true. Certainly six years, with nothing else to do in them save to walk round the pillar, might well suffice to wear away the rock, even with naked feet. This column, and all the columns, were cut and hewn in a good style of architecture, and the dungeon arches are not without a certain gloomy beauty. On Bonnivard's pillar, as well as on all the rest, were many names inscribed; but I thought better of Byron's delicacy and sensitiveness for not cutting his name into that very pillar. Perhaps, knowing nothing of Bonnivard's story, he did not know to which column he was chained. Emerging from the dungeon-vaults, our guide led us through other parts of the castle, showing us the Duke of Savoy's kitchen, with a fireplace at least twelve feet long; also the judgment-hall, or some such place, hung round with the coats of arms of some officers or other, and having at one end a wooden post, reaching from floor to ceiling, and having upon it the marks of fire. By means of this post, contumacious prisoners were put to a dreadful torture, being drawn up by cords and pulleys, while their limbs were scorched by a fire underneath. We also saw a chapel or two, one of which is still in good and sanctified condition, and was to be used this very day, our guide told us, for religious purposes. We saw, moreover, the Duke's private chamber, with a part of the bedstead on which he used to sleep, and be haunted with horrible dreams, no doubt, and the ghosts of wretches whom he had tortured and hanged; likewise the bedchamber of his duchess, that had in its window two stone seats, where, directly over the head of Bonnivard, the ducal pair might look out on the beautiful scene of lake and mountains, and feel the warmth of the blessed sun. Under this window, the guide said, the water of the lake is eight hundred feet in depth; an immense profundity, indeed, for an inland lake, but it is not very difficult to believe that the mountain at the foot of which Chillon stands may descend so far beneath the water. In other parts of the lake and not distant, more than nine hundred feet have been sounded. I looked out of the duchess's window, and could certainly see no appearance of a bottom in the light blue water. The last thing that the guide showed us was a trapdoor, or opening, beneath a crazy old floor. Looking down into this aperture we saw three stone steps, which we should have taken to be the beginning of a flight of stairs that descended into a dungeon, or series of dungeons, such as we had already seen. But inspecting them more closely, we saw that the third step terminated the flight, and beyond was a dark vacancy. Three steps a person would grope down, planting his uncertain foot on a dimly seen stone; the fourth step would be in the empty air. The guide told us that it used to be the practice to bring prisoners hither, under pretence of committing them to a dungeon, and make them go down the three steps and that fourth fatal one, and they would never more be heard of; but at the bottom of the pit there would be a dead body, and in due time a mouldy skeleton, which would rattle beneath the body of the next prisoner that fell. I do not believe that it was anything more than a secret dungeon for state prisoners whom it was out of the question either to set at liberty or bring to public trial. The depth of the pit was about forty-five feet. Gazing intently down, I saw a faint gleam of light at the bottom, apparently coming from some other aperture than the trap-door over which we were bending, so that it must have been contemplated to supply it with light and air in such degree as to support human life. U---- declared she saw a skeleton at the bottom; Miss S------ thought she saw a hand, but I saw only the dim gleam of light. There are two or three courts in the castle, but of no great size. We were now led across one of them, and dismissed out of the arched entrance by which we had come in. We found the gendarme still keeping watch on his roofed drawbridge, and as there was the same gentle shower that had been effusing itself all the morning, we availed ourselves of the shelter, more especially as there were some curiosities to examine. These consisted chiefly of wood-carvings,--such as little figures in the national costume, boxes with wreaths of foliage upon them, paper knives, the chamois goat, admirably well represented. We at first hesitated to make any advances towards trade with the gendarme because it was Sunday, and we fancied there might be a Calvinistic scruple on his part about turning a penny on the Sabbath; but from the little I know of the Swiss character, I suppose they would be as ready as any other men to sell, not only such matters, but even their own souls, or any smaller--or shall we say greater--thing on Sunday or at any other time. So we began to ask the prices of the articles, and met with no difficulty in purchasing a salad spoon and fork, with pretty bas-reliefs carved on the handles, and a napkin-ring. For Rosebud's and our amusement, the gendarme now set a musical-box a-going; and as it played a pasteboard figure of a dentist began to pull the tooth of a pasteboard patient, lifting the wretched simulacrum entirely from the ground, and keeping him in this horrible torture for half an hour. Meanwhile, mamma, Miss Shepard, U----, and J----- sat down all in a row on a bench and sketched the mountains; and as the shower did not cease, though the sun most of the time shone brightly, they were kept actual prisoners of Chillon much longer than we wished to stay. We took advantage of the first cessation,--though still the drops came dimpling into the water that rippled against the pebbles beneath the bridge,--of the first partial cessation of the shower, to escape, and returned towards the hotel, with this kindliest of summer rains falling upon us most of the way In the afternoon the rain entirely ceased, and the weather grew delightfully radiant, and warmer than could well be borne in the sunshine. U---- and I walked to the village of Villeneuve, --a mile from the hotel,--and found a very commonplace little old town of one or two streets, standing on a level, and as uninteresting as if there were not a hill within a hundred miles. It is strange what prosaic lines men thrust in amid the poetry of nature. . . . Hotel de l'Angleterre, Geneva, June 14th.--Yesterday morning was very fine, and we had a pretty early breakfast at Hotel Byron, preparatory to leaving it. This hotel is on a magnificent scale of height and breadth, its staircases and corridors being the most spacious I have seen; but there is a kind of meagreness in the life there, and a certain lack of heartiness, that prevented us from feeling at home. We were glad to get away, and took the steamer on our return voyage, in excellent spirits. Apparently it had been a cold night in the upper regions, for a great deal more snow was visible on some of the mountains than we had before observed; especially a mountain called "Diableries" presented a silver summit, and broad sheets and fields of snow. Nothing ever can have been more beautiful than those groups of mighty hills as we saw them then, with the gray rocks, the green slopes, the white snow-patches and crests, all to be seen at one glance, and the mists and fleecy clouds tumbling, rolling, hovering about their summits, filling their lofty valleys, and coming down far towards the lower world, making the skyey aspects so intimate with the earthly ones, that we hardly knew whether we were sojourning in the material or spiritual world. It was like sailing through the sky, moreover, to be borne along on such water as that of Lake Leman,--the bluest, brightest, and profoundest element, the most radiant eye that the dull earth ever opened to see heaven withal. I am writing nonsense, but it is because no sense within my mind will answer the purpose. Some of these mountains, that looked at no such mighty distance, were at least forty or fifty miles off, and appeared as if they were near neighbors and friends of other mountains, from which they were really still farther removed. The relations into which distant points are brought, in a view of mountain scenery, symbolize the truth which we can never judge within our partial scope of vision, of the relations which we bear to our fellow-creatures and human circumstances. These mighty mountains think that they have nothing to do with one another, each seems itself its own centre, and existing for itself alone; and yet to an eye that can take them all in, they are evidently portions of one grand and beautiful idea, which could not be consummated without the lowest and the loftiest of them. I do not express this satisfactorily, but have a genuine meaning in it nevertheless. We passed again by Chillon, and gazed at it as long as it was distinctly visible, though the water view does no justice to its real picturesqueness, there being no towers nor projections on the side towards the lake, nothing but a wall of dingy white, with an indentation that looks something like a gateway. About an hour and a half brought us to Ouchy, the point where passengers land to take the omnibus to Lausanne. The ascent from Ouchy to Lausanne is a mile and a half, which it took the omnibus nearly half an hour to accomplish. We left our shawls and carpet-bags in the salle a manger of the Hotel Faucon, and set forth to find the cathedral, the pinnacled tower of which is visible for a long distance up and down the lake. Prominent as it is, however, it is by no means very easy to find it while rambling through the intricate streets and declivities of the town itself, for Lausanne is the town, I should fancy, in all the world the most difficult to go directly from one point to another. It is built on the declivity of a hill, adown which run several valleys or ravines, and over these the contiguity of houses extends, so that the communication is kept up by means of steep streets and sometimes long weary stairs, which must be surmounted and descended again in accomplishing a very moderate distance. In some inscrutable way we at last arrived at the cathedral, which stands on a higher site than any other in Lausanne. It has a very venerable exterior, with all the Gothic grandeur which arched mullioned windows, deep portals, buttresses, towers, and pinnacles, gray with a thousand years, can give to architecture. After waiting awhile we obtained entrance by means of an old woman, who acted the part of sacristan, and was then showing the church to some other visitors. The interior disappointed us; not but what it was very beautiful, but I think the excellent repair that it was in, and the Puritanic neatness with which it is kept, does much towards effacing the majesty and mystery that belong to an old church. Every inch of every wall and column, and all the mouldings and tracery, and every scrap of grotesque carving, had been washed with a drab mixture. There were likewise seats all up and down the nave, made of pine wood, and looking very new and neat, just such seats as I shall see in a hundred meeting-houses (if ever I go into so many) in America. Whatever might be the reason, the stately nave, with its high-groined roof, the clustered columns and lofty pillars, the intersecting arches of the side-aisles, the choir, the armorial and knightly tombs that surround what was once the high altar, all produced far less effect than I could have thought beforehand. As it happened, we had more ample time and freedom to inspect this cathedral than any other that we have visited, for the old woman consented to go away and leave us there, locking the door behind her. The others, except Rosebud, sat down to sketch such portions as struck their fancy; and for myself, I looked at the monuments, of which some, being those of old knights, ladies, bishops, and a king, were curious from their antiquity; and others are interesting as bearing memorials of English people, who have died at Lausanne in comparatively recent years. Then I went up into the pulpit, and tried, without success, to get into the stone gallery that runs all round the nave; and I explored my way into various side apartments of the cathedral, which I found fitted up with seats for Sabbath schools, perhaps, or possibly for meetings of elders of the Church. I opened the great Bible of the church, and found it to be a French version, printed at Lille some fifty years ago. There was also a liturgy, adapted, probably, to the Lutheran form of worship. In one of the side apartments I found a strong box, heavily clamped with iron, and having a contrivance, like the hopper of a mill, by which money could be turned into the top, while a double lock prevented its being abstracted again. This was to receive the avails of contributions made in the church; and there were likewise boxes, stuck on the ends of long poles, wherewith the deacons could go round among the worshippers, conveniently extending the begging-box to the remotest curmudgeon among them all. From the arrangement of the seats in the nave, and the labels pasted or painted on them, I judged that the women sat on one side and the men on the other, and the seats for various orders of magistrates, and for ecclesiastical and collegiate people, were likewise marked out. I soon grew weary of these investigations, and so did Rosebud and J-----, who essayed to amuse themselves with running races together over the horizontal tombstones in the pavement of the choir, treading remorselessly over the noseless effigies of old dignitaries, who never expected to be so irreverently treated. I put a stop to their sport, and banished them to different parts of the cathedral; and by and by, the old woman appeared again, and released us from durance. . . . While waiting for our dejeuner, we saw the people dining at the regular table d'hote of the hotel, and the idea was strongly borne in upon me, that the professional mystery of a male waiter is a very unmanly one. It is so absurd to see the solemn attentiveness with which they stand behind the chairs, the earnestness of their watch for any crisis that may demand their interposition, the gravity of their manner in performing some little office that the guest might better do for himself, their decorous and soft steps; in short, as I sat and gazed at them, they seemed to me not real men, but creatures with a clerical aspect, engendered out of a very artificial state of society. When they are waiting on myself, they do not appear so absurd; it is necessary to stand apart in order to see them properly. We left Lausanne--which was to us a tedious and weary place--before four o'clock. I should have liked well enough to see the house of Gibbon, and the garden in which he walked, after finishing "The Decline and Fall"; but it could not be done without some trouble and inquiry, and as the house did not come to see me, I determined not to go and see the house. There was, indeed, a mansion of somewhat antique respectability, near our hotel, having a garden and a shaded terrace behind it, which would have answered accurately enough to the idea of Gibbon's residence. Perhaps it was so; far more probably not. Our former voyages had been taken in the Hirondelle; we now, after broiling for some time in the sunshine by the lakeside, got on board of the Aigle, No. 2. There were a good many passengers, the larger proportion of whom seemed to be English and American, and among the latter a large party of talkative ladies, old and young. The voyage was pleasant while we were protected from the sun by the awning overhead, but became scarcely agreeable when the sun had descended so low as to shine in our faces or on our backs. We looked earnestly for Mont Blanc, which ought to have been visible during a large part of our course; but the clouds gathered themselves hopelessly over the portion of the sky where the great mountain lifted his white peak; and we did not see it, and probably never shall. As to the meaner mountains, there were enough of them, and beautiful enough; but we were a little weary, and feverish with the heat. . . . I think I had a head-ache, though it is so unusual a complaint with me, that I hardly know it when it comes. We were none of us sorry, therefore, when the Eagle brought us to the quay of Geneva, only a short distance from our hotel. . . . To-day I wrote to Mr. Wilding, requesting him to secure passages for us from Liverpool on the 15th of next month, or 1st of August. It makes my heart thrill, half pleasantly, half otherwise; so much nearer does this step seem to bring that home whence I have now been absent six years, and which, when I see it again, may turn out to be not my home any longer. I likewise wrote to Bennoch, though I know not his present address; but I should deeply grieve to leave England without seeing him. He and Henry Bright are the only two men in England to whom I shall be much grieved to bid farewell; but to the island itself I cannot bear to say that word as a finality. I shall dreamily hope to come back again at some indefinite time; rather foolishly perhaps, for it will tend to take the substance out of my life in my own land. But this, I suspect, is apt to be the penalty of those who stay abroad and stay too long. HAVRE. Hotel Wheeler, June 22d.--We arrived at this hotel last evening from Paris, and find ourselves on the borders of the Petit Quay Notre Dame, with steamers and boats right under our windows, and all sorts of dock-business going on briskly. There are barrels, bales, and crates of goods; there are old iron cannon for posts; in short, all that belongs to the Wapping of a great seaport. . . . The American partialities of the guests [of this hotel] are consulted by the decorations of the parlor, in which hang two lithographs and colored views of New York, from Brooklyn and from Weehawken. The fashion of the house is a sort of nondescript mixture of Frank, English, and American, and is not disagreeable to us after our weary experience of Continental life. The abundance of the food is very acceptable in comparison with the meagreness of French and Italian meals; and last evening we supped nobly on cold roast beef and ham, set generously before us, in the mass, instead of being doled out in slices few and thin. The waiter has a kindly sort of manner, and resembles the steward of a vessel rather than a landsman; and, in short, everything here has undergone a change, which might admit of very effective description. I may now as well give up all attempts at journalizing. So I shall say nothing of our journey across France from Geneva. . . . To-night, we shall take our departure in a steamer for Southampton, whence we shall go to London; thence, in a week or two, to Liverpool; thence to Boston and Concord, there to enjoy--if enjoyment it prove--a little rest and a sense that we are at home. [More than four months were now taken up in writing "The Marble Faun," in great part at the seaside town of Redcar, Yorkshire, Mr. Hawthorne having concluded to remain another year in England, chiefly to accomplish that romance. In Redcar, where he remained till September or October, he wrote no journal, but only the book. He then went to Leamington, where he finished "The Marble Faun" in March, and there is a little journalizing soon after leaving Redcar.--ED.] ENGLAND. Leamington, November 14th, 1859.--J---- and I walked to Lillington the other day. Its little church was undergoing renovation when we were here two years ago, and now seems to be quite renewed, with the exception of its square, gray, battlemented tower, which has still the aspect of unadulterated antiquity. On Saturday J----- and I walked to Warwick by the old road, passing over the bridge of the Avon, within view of the castle. It is as fine a piece of English scenery as exists anywhere,-- the quiet little river, shadowed with drooping trees, and, in its vista, the gray towers and long line of windows of the lordly castle, with a picturesquely varied outline; ancient strength, a little softened by decay. . . . The town of Warwick, I think, has been considerably modernized since I first saw it. The whole of the central portion of the principal street now looks modern, with its stuccoed or brick fronts of houses, and, in many cases, handsome shop windows. Leicester Hospital and its adjoining chapel still look venerably antique; and so does a gateway that half bestrides the street. Beyond these two points on either side it has a much older aspect. The modern signs heighten the antique impression. February 5th, 1860.--Mr. and Mrs. Bennoch are staying for a little while at Mr. B------'s at Coventry, and Mr. B------ called upon us the other day, with Mr. Bennoch, and invited us to go and see the lions of Coventry; so yesterday U---- and I went. It was not my first visit, therefore I have little or nothing to record, unless it were to describe a ribbon-factory into which Mr. B------ took us. But I have no comprehension of machinery, and have only a confused recollection of an edifice of four or five stories, on each floor of which were rows of huge machines, all busy with their iron hands and joints in turning out delicate ribbons. It was very curious and unintelligible to me to observe how they caused different colored patterns to appear, and even flowers to blossom, on the plain surface of a ribbon. Some of the designs were pretty, and I was told that one manufacturer pays 500 pounds annually to French artists (or artisans, for I do not know whether they have a connection with higher art) merely for new patterns of ribbons. The English find it impossible to supply themselves with tasteful productions of this sort merely from the resources of English fancy. If an Englishman possessed the artistic faculty to the degree requisite to produce such things, he would doubtless think himself a great artist, and scorn to devote himself to these humble purposes. Every Frenchman is probably more of an artist than one Englishman in a thousand. We ascended to the very roof of the factory, and gazed thence over smoky Coventry, which is now a town of very considerable size, and rapidly on the increase. The three famous spires rise out of the midst, that of St. Michael being the tallest and very beautiful. Had the day been clear, we should have had a wide view on all sides; for Warwickshire is well laid out for distant prospects, if you can only gain a little elevation from which to see them. Descending from the roof, we next went to see Trinity Church, which has just come through an entire process of renovation, whereby much of its pristine beauty has doubtless been restored; but its venerable awfulness is greatly impaired. We went into three churches, and found that they had all been subjected to the same process. It would be nonsense to regret it, because the very existence of these old edifices is involved in their being renewed; but it certainly does deprive them of a great part of their charm, and puts one in mind of wigs, padding, and all such devices for giving decrepitude the aspect of youth. In the pavement of the nave and aisles there are worn tombstones, with defaced inscriptions, and discolored marbles affixed against the wall; monuments, too, where a mediaeval man and wife sleep side by side on a marble slab; and other tombs so old that the inscriptions are quite gone. Over an arch, in one of the churches, there was a fresco, so old, dark, faded, and blackened, that I found it impossible to make out a single figure or the slightest hint of the design. On the whole, after seeing the churches of Italy, I was not greatly impressed with these attempts to renew the ancient beauty of old English minsters; it would be better to preserve as sedulously as possible their aspect of decay, in which consists the principal charm. . . . On our way to Mr. B------'s house, we looked into the quadrangle of a charity-school and old men's hospital, and afterwards stepped into a large Roman Catholic church, erected within these few years past, and closely imitating the mediaeval architecture and arrangements. It is strange what a plaything, a trifle, an unserious affair, this imitative spirit makes of a huge, ponderous edifice, which if it had really been built five hundred years ago would have been worthy of all respect. I think the time must soon come when this sort of thing will be held in utmost scorn, until the lapse of time shall give it a claim to respect. But, methinks, we had better strike out any kind of architecture, so it be our own, however wretched, than thus tread back upon the past. Mr. B------ now conducted us to his residence, which stands a little beyond the outskirts of the city, on the declivity of a hill, and in so windy a spot that, as he assured me, the very plants are blown out of the ground. He pointed to two maimed trees whose tops were blown off by a gale two or three years since; but the foliage still covers their shortened summits in summer, so that he does not think it desirable to cut them down. In America, a man of Mr. B------'s property would take upon himself the state and dignity of a millionaire. It is a blessed thing in England, that money gives a man no pretensions to rank, and does not bring the responsibilities of a great position. We found three or four gentlemen to meet us at dinner,--a Mr. D------ and a Mr. B------, an author, having written a book called "The Philosophy of Necessity," and is acquainted with Emerson, who spent two or three days at his house when last in England. He was very kindly appreciative of my own productions, as was also his wife, next to whom I sat at dinner. She talked to me about the author of "Adam Bede," whom she has known intimately all her life. . . . Miss Evans (who wrote "Adam Bede") was the daughter of a steward, and gained her exact knowledge of English rural life by the connection with which this origin brought her with the farmers. She was entirely self-educated, and has made herself an admirable scholar in classical as well as in modern languages. Those who knew her had always recognized her wonderful endowments, and only watched to see in what way they would develop themselves. She is a person of the simplest manners and character, amiable and unpretending, and Mrs. B------ spoke of her with great affection and respect. . . . Mr. B------, our host, is an extremely sensible man; and it is remarkable how many sensible men there are in England,--men who have read and thought, and can develop very good ideas, not exactly original, yet so much the product of their own minds that they can fairly call them their own. February 18th.--. . . . This present month has been somewhat less dismal than the preceding ones; there have been some sunny and breezy days when there was life in the air, affording something like enjoyment in a walk, especially when the ground was frozen. It is agreeable to see the fields still green through a partial covering of snow; the trunks and branches of the leafless trees, moreover, have a verdant aspect, very unlike that of American trees in winter, for they are covered with a delicate green moss, which is not so observable in summer. Often, too, there is a twine of green ivy up and down the trunk. The other day, as J----- and I were walking to Whitnash, an elm was felled right across our path, and I was much struck by this verdant coating of moss over all its surface,--the moss plants too minute to be seen individually, but making the whole tree green. It has a pleasant effect here, where it is the natural aspect of trees in general; but in America a mossy tree-trunk is not a pleasant object, because it is associated with damp, low, unwholesome situations. The lack of foliage gives many new peeps and vistas, hereabouts, which I never saw in summer. March 17th.--J----- and I walked to Warwick yesterday forenoon, and went into St. Mary's Church, to see the Beauchamp chapel. . . . On one side of it were some worn steps ascending to a confessional, where the priest used to sit, while the penitent, in the body of the church, poured his sins through a perforated auricle into this unseen receptacle. The sexton showed us, too, a very old chest which had been found in the burial vault, with some ancient armor stored away in it. Three or four helmets of rusty iron, one of them barred, the last with visors, and all intolerably weighty, were ranged in a row. What heads those must have been that could bear such massiveness! On one of the helmets was a wooden crest--some bird or other--that of itself weighed several pounds. . . . April 23d.--We have been here several weeks. . . . Had I seen Bath earlier in my English life, I might have written many pages about it, for it is really a picturesque and interesting city. It is completely sheltered in the lap of hills, the sides of the valley rising steep and high from the level spot on which it stands, and through which runs the muddy little stream of the Avon. The older part of the town is on the level, and the more modern growth--the growth of more than a hundred years--climbs higher and higher up the hillside, till the upper streets are very airy and lofty. The houses are built almost entirely of Bath stone, which in time loses its original buff color, and is darkened by age and coal-smoke into a dusky gray; but still the city looks clean and pure as compared with most other English towns. In its architecture, it has somewhat of a Parisian aspect, the houses having roofs rising steep from their high fronts, which are often adorned with pillars, pilasters, and other good devices, so that you see it to be a town built with some general idea of beauty, and not for business. There are Circuses, Crescents, Terraces, Parades, and all such fine names as we have become familiar with at Leamington, and other watering-places. The declivity of most of the streets keeps them remarkably clean, and they are paved in a very comfortable way, with large blocks of stone, so that the middle of the street is generally practicable to walk upon, although the sidewalks leave no temptation so to do, being of generous width. In many alleys, and round about the abbey and other edifices, the pavement is of square flags, like those of Florence, and as smooth as a palace floor. On the whole, I suppose there is no place in England where a retired man, with a moderate income, could live so tolerably as at Bath; it being almost a city in size and social advantages; quite so, indeed, if eighty thousand people make a city,--and yet having no annoyance of business nor spirit of worldly struggle. All modes of enjoyment that English people like may be had here; and even the climate is said to be milder than elsewhere in England. How this may be, I know not; but we have rain or passing showers almost every day since we arrived, and I suspect the surrounding hills are just about of that inconvenient height, that keeps catching clouds, and compelling them to squeeze out their moisture upon the included valley. The air, however, certainly is preferable to that of Leamington. . . . There are no antiquities except the abbey, which has not the interest of many other English churches and cathedrals. In the midst of the old part of the town stands the house which was formerly Beau Nash's residence, but which is now part of the establishment of an ale-merchant. The edifice is a tall, but rather mean-looking, stone building, with the entrance from a little side court, which is so cumbered with empty beer-barrels as hardly to afford a passage. The doorway has some architectural pretensions, being pillared and with some sculptured devices--whether lions or winged heraldic monstrosities I forget--on the pediment. Within, there is a small entry, not large enough to be termed a hall, and a staircase, with carved balustrade, ascending by angular turns and square landing-places. For a long course of years, ending a little more than a century ago, princes, nobles, and all the great and beautiful people of old times, used to go up that staircase, to pay their respects to the King of Bath. On the side of the house there is a marble slab inserted, recording that here he resided, and that here he died in 1767, between eighty and ninety years of age. My first acquaintance with him was in Smollett's "Roderick Random," and I have met him in a hundred other novels. His marble statue is in a niche at one end of the great pump-room, in wig, square-skirted coat, flapped waistcoat, and all the queer costume of the period, still looking ghost-like upon the scene where he used to be an autocrat. Marble is not a good material for Beau Nash, however; or, if so, it requires color to set him off adequately. . . . It is usual in Bath to see the old sign of the checker-board on the doorposts of taverns. It was originally a token that the game might be played there, and is now merely a tavern-sign. LONDON. 31 Hertford Street, Mayfair, May 16th, 1860.--I came hither from Bath on the 14th, and am staying with my friends, Mr. and Mrs. Motley. I would gladly journalize some of my proceedings, and describe things and people; but I find the same coldness and stiffness in my pen as always since our return to England. I dined with the Motleys at Lord Dufferin's, on Monday evening, and there met, among a few other notable people, the Honorable Mrs. Norton, a dark, comely woman, who doubtless was once most charming, and still has charms, at above fifty years of age. In fact, I should not have taken her to be greatly above thirty, though she seems to use no art to make herself look younger, and talks about her time of life, without any squeamishness. Her voice is very agreeable, having a sort of muffled quality, which is excellent in woman. She is of a very cheerful temperament, and so has borne a great many troubles without being destroyed by them. But I can get no color into my sketch, so shall leave it here. London, May 17th. [From a letter.]--Affairs succeed each other so fast, that I have really forgotten what I did yesterday. I remember seeing my dear friend, Henry Bright, and listening to him, as we strolled in the Park, and along the Strand. To-day I met at breakfast Mr. Field Talfourd, who promises to send you the photograph of his portrait of Mr. Browning. He was very agreeable, and seemed delighted to see me again. At lunch, we had Lord Dufferin, the Honorable Mrs. Norton, and Mr. Sterling (author of the "Cloister Life of Charles V."), with whom we are to dine on Sunday. You would be stricken dumb, to see how quietly I accept a whole string of invitations, and what is more, perform my engagements without a murmur. A German artist has come to me with a letter of introduction, and a request that I will sit to him for a portrait in bas-relief. To this, likewise, I have assented! subject to the condition that I shall have my leisure. The stir of this London life, somehow or other, has done me a wonderful deal of good, and I feel better than for months past. This is strange, for if I had my choice, I should leave undone almost all the things I do. I have had time to see Bennoch only once. [This closes the European Journal. After Mr. Hawthorne's return to America, he published "Our Old Home," and began a new romance, of which two chapters appeared in the Atlantic Monthly. But the breaking out of the war stopped all imaginative work with him, and all journalizing, until 1862, when he went to Maine for a little excursion, and began another journal, from which I take one paragraph, giving a slight note of his state of mind at an interesting period of his country's history. --ED.] West Gouldsborough, August 15th, 1862.--It is a week ago, Saturday, since J----- and I reached this place, . . . . Mr. Barney S. Hill's. At Hallowell, and subsequently all along the route, the country was astir with volunteers, and the war is all that seems to be alive, and even that doubtfully so. Nevertheless, the country certainly shows a good spirit, the towns offering everywhere most liberal bounties, and every able-bodied man feels an immense pull and pressure upon him to go to the war. I doubt whether any people was ever actuated by a more genuine and disinterested public spirit; though, of course, it is not unalloyed with baser motives and tendencies. We met a train of cars with a regiment or two just starting for the South, and apparently in high spirits. Everywhere some insignia of soldiership were to be seen,-- bright buttons, a red stripe down the trousers, a military cap, and sometimes a round-shouldered bumpkin in the entire uniform. They require a great deal to give them the aspect of soldiers; indeed, it seems as if they needed to have a good deal taken away and added, like the rough clay of a sculptor as it grows to be a model. The whole talk of the bar-rooms and every other place of intercourse was about enlisting and the war, this being the very crisis of trial, when the voluntary system is drawing to an end, and the draft almost immediately to commence. END OF VOL. II. 
8819	----	[Frontispiece: Tower of St. Trophimus, Arles.] IN TROUBADOUR-LAND. A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc. by S. Baring-Gould, M.A., AUTHOR OF "MEHALAU," "JOHN HERRING," "OLD COUNTRY LIFE," ETC. ILLUSTRATED BY J. E. ROGERS. "What is this life, if it be not mixed with some delight? And what delight is more pleasing than to see the fashions and manners of unknown places? You know I am no common gadder, nor have oft troubled you with travell."--_Tom of Reading_, 1600. 1891. PREFACE. With Murray, Bædeker, Guide Joanne, and half-a-dozen others--all describing, and describing with exactness, the antiquities and scenery--the writer of a little account of Provence and Languedoc is driven to give much of personal incident. When he attempts to describe what objects he has seen, he is pulled up by finding all the information he intended to give in Murray or in Bædeker or Joanne. If he was in exuberant spirits at the time, and enjoyed himself vastly, he is unable, or unwilling, to withhold from his readers some of the overflow of his good spirits. That is my apology to the reader. If he reads my little book when his liver is out of order, or in winter fogs and colds--he will call me an ass, and I must bear it. If he is in a cheerful mood himself, then we shall agree very well together. S. BARING-GOULD. LEW TRENCHARD, DEVON, _October 28, 1890._ CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. The Tiber in Flood--Typhoid fever in Rome--Florence--A Jew acquaintance--Drinking in Provence--Buying _bric-à-brac_ with the Jew--the _carro_ on Easter Eve--Its real Origin--My Jew friend's letters--Italian _dolce far niente_ CHAPTER II. THE RIVIERA. No ill without a counterbalancing advantage--An industry peculiar to Italy--Italian honesty--Buffalo Bill at Naples--The Prince and the straw-coloured gloves--The Riviera--A tapestry--Nice--Its flowers--Notre Dame--The château--My gardener--A pension of ugly women--Horses and their hats--Antibes--Meeting of Honoré IV. and Napoleon--The Grimaldis--Lérins, an Isle of Saints--A family jar--Healed CHAPTER III. FRÉJUS. The freedman of Pliny--Forum Julii--The Port of Agay--The Port of Fréjus--Roman castle--Aqueduct--The lantern of Augustus--The cathedral--Cloisters--Boy and dolphin--Story told by Pliny--The _Chains des Maures_--Désaugiers--Dines with the porkbutchers of Paris--Siéyès--_Sans phrase_--Agricola--His discoveries CHAPTER IV. MARSEILLES. The three islands Phoenice, Phila, Iturium--Marseilles first a Phoenician colony--The tariff of fees exacted by the priests of Baal--The arrival of the Ionians--The legend of Protis and Gyptis--Second colony of Ionians--The voyages of Pytheas and Euthymenes--Capture of Marseilles by Trebonius--Position of the Greek city--The Acropolis--Greek inscriptions--The lady who never "jawed" her husband--The tomb of the sailor-boy--Hôtel des Négociants--Ménu--Entry of the President of the Republic--Entry of Francis I.--The church of S. Vincent--The cathedral--Notre Dame de la Garde--The abbey of S. Victor--Catacombs--The fable of S. Lazarus CHAPTER V. THE CRAU. The Basin of Berre--A neglected harbour--The diluvium--Formation of the Crau--The two Craus--Canal of Craponne--Climate of the Crau--The _bise_ and _mistral_--Force of the wind--Cypresses--A vision of kobolds CHAPTER VI. LES ALYSCAMPS. Difficulty of finding one's way about in Arles--The two inns--The _mistral_--The charm of Arles is in the past--A dead city--Situation of Arles on a nodule of limestone--The Elysian Fields--A burial-place for the submerged neighbourhood--The Alyscamp now in process of destruction--Expropriation of ancient tombs--Avenue of tombs--Old church of S. Honoré--S. Trophimus--S. Virgilius--Augustine, apostle of the English, consecrated by him--The flying Dutchman--Tomb of Ælia--Of Julia Tyranna--Her musical instruments--Monument of Calpurnia--Her probable story--Mathematical _versus_ classic studies--Tombs of _utriculares_--Christian sarcophagi--Probably older than the date usually attributed to them--A French author on the wreckage of the Elysian Fields CHAPTER VII. PAGAN ARLES. The Arles race a mixture of Greek and Gaulish--The colonisation by the Romans--The type of beauty in Arles--The amphitheatre--A bull-baiting--Provençal bull-baits different from Spanish bull-fights--The theatre--The ancient Greek stage--The destruction of the Arles theatre--Excavation of the orchestra--Discovery of the Venus of Arles--A sick girl--Palace of Constantine CHAPTER VIII. CHRISTIAN ARLES. Sunday in France--Improved observance--The cathedral of Arles--West front--Interior-Tool-marks--A sermon on peace--The cloisters--Old Sacristan and his garden--Number of desecrated churches in Arles--Notre Dame de la Majeur--S. Cæsaire--The isles near Arles--Cordes--Montmajeur--A gipsy camp--The ruins--Tower--The chapel of S. Croix CHAPTER IX. LES BAUX. The chain of the Alpines--The promontory of Les Baux--The railway from Arles to Salon--First sight of Les Baux--The churches of S. Victor, S. Claude, and S. Andrew--The lords of Les Baux claimed descent from one of the Magi--The fair maid with golden locks--The chapel of the White Penitents--The _deïmo_--History of the House of Les Baux--The barony passes to the Grimaldi--The ladies of Les Baux and the troubadours--Fouquet--William de Cabestaing--The morality of the loves of the troubadours--The Porcelets--Story of a siege--Les Baux a place of refuge for the citizens of Arles--_Glanum Liviæ_--Its Roman remains--In the train--Jäger garments CHAPTER X. THE CAMPAIGN OF MARIUS. The Trémaïé--Representation of C. Marius, Martha, and Julia--The Gaïé--The Teutons and Ambrons and Cimbri threaten Italy--C. Marius sent against them--His camp at S. Gabriel--The canal he cut--The barbarians cross the Rhone--First brush with them--They defile before him at Orgon--The rout of the Ambrons at Les Milles--He follows the Teutons--The plain of Pourrières--Position of Marius--The battle--Slaughter of the Teutons--Position of their camp--Monument of Marius--Venus Victrix--Annual commemoration CHAPTER XI. TRETS AND GARDANNE. The fortifications of Trets--The streets--The church--Roman sarcophagus--Château of Trets--Visit to a self-educated archæologist--His collection made on the battle-field--Dispute over a pot of burnt bones--One magpie--Gardanne--The church--A vielle--Trouble with it--Story of an executioner's sword CHAPTER XII. AIX. Dooll, but the mutton good--Les Bains de Sextius--Ironwork caps to towers--S. Jean de Malthe--Museum--Cathedral--Tapestries and tombs--The cloisters--View from S. Eutrope--King René of Anjou--His misfortunes--His cheeriness--His statue at Aix--Introduces the Muscat grape CHAPTER XIII. THE CAMARGUE. Formation of the delta of the Rhone--The diluvial wash--The alluvium spread over this--The three stages the river pursues--The zone of erosion--The zone of compensation--The zone of deposit--River mouths--Estuaries and deltas--The formation of bars--Of lagoons--The lagoons of the Gulf of Lyons--The ancient position of Arles between the river and the lagoons--Neglect of the lagoons in the Middle Ages--They become morasses--Attempt at remedy--Embankments and drains--A mistake made--The Camargue now a desert--Les Saintes Maries--No evidence to support the legend--Based on a misapprehension CHAPTER XIV. TARASCON. Position of Tarascon and Beaucaire opposite each other--Church of S. Martha--Crypt--Ancient paintings--Catechising--Ancient altar--The festival of the Tarasque--The Phoenician goddess Martha--Story of S. Fronto--Discussion at _déjeûner_ over the entry of M. Carnot into Marseilles--The change in the French character--Pessimism--Beaucaire--Font--Castle--Siege by Raymond VII.--Story of Aucassin and Nicolette CHAPTER XV. NIMES. The right spelling of Nimes--Derivation of name--The fountain--Throwing coins into springs--Collecting coins--Symbol of Agrippa--Character of Agrippa--What he did for Nimes--The Maison Carrée--Different idea of worship in the Heathen world from what prevails in Christendom--S. Baudille--Vespers--Activity of the Church in France--Behaviour of the clergy in Italy to the King and Queen--The Revolution a blessing to the Church in France--Church services in Italy and in France--The Tourmagne--Uncertainty as to its use--Cathedral of Nimes--Other churches--A canary lottery--Altars to the Sun--The sun-wheel--The cross of Constantine--Anecdote of Fléchier CHAPTER XVI. AIGUES MORTES AND MAGUELONNE. A dead town--The Rhônes-morts--Bars--S. Louis and the Crusades--How S. Louis acquired Aigues Mortes--His canal--The four littoral chains and lagoons--The fortifications--Unique for their date--Original use of battlements--Deserted state of the town--Maguelonne--How reached--History of Maguelonne--Cathedral--The Bishops forge Saracen coins--Second destruction of the place--Inscription on door--Bernard de Treviis--His romance of Pierre de Provence--Provençal poetry not always immoral--Present state of Maguelonne CHAPTER XVII. BÉZIERS AND NARBONNE. Position of Béziers--S. Nazaire--The Albigenses--Their tenets--Albigensian "consolation"--Crusade against them--The storming of Béziers--Massacre--Cathedral of Béziers--Girls' faces in the train--Similar faces at Narbonne, in cathedral and museum--Narbonne a Roman colony--All the Roman buildings destroyed--Caps of liberty--Christian sarcophagi--Children's toys of baked clay--Cathedral unfinished--Archiepiscopal palace--Unsatisfactory work of M. Viollet-le-Duc--In trouble with the police--Taken for a German spy--My sketch-book gets me off CHAPTER XVIII. CARCASSONNE. Siege of Carcassonne by the Crusaders--Capture--Perfidy of legate--Death of the Viscount--Continuation of the war--Churches of New Carcassonne--_La Cité_--A perfect Mediæval fortified town--Disappointing--Visigoth fortifications--Later additions--The cathedral--Tomb of Simon de Montfort CHAPTER XIX. AVIGNON. How Avignon passed to the Popes--The court of Clement VI.--John XXII.--Benedict XII.--Their tombs--Petrarch and Laura--The Palace of the Popes--The Salle Brûlée--Cathedral--Porch--S. Agricole--Church of S. Pierre--The museum--View from the Rocher des doms--The Rhone--The bridge--Story of S. Benezet--Dancing on bridges--Villeneuve--Tomb of Innocent VI.--The castle at Villeneuve--Defences--Tête-du-pont of the bridge CHAPTER XX. VALENCE. A dull town--Cathedral--Jacques Cujas--His daughter--Pius VI.--His death--Maison des Têtes--Le Pendentif--The castle of Crussol--The dukes of Uzes--A dramatic company of the thirteenth century CHAPTER XXI. VIENNE. Historic associations--Salvation Army bonnets--The fair--A quack--A vampire--The amphitrite--A _carousel_--Temple of Augustus and Livia--The Aiguille--Cathedral--Angels and musical instruments--S. André-le-Bas--Situation of Vienne--Foundation of the Church there--Letter of the Church on the martyrdoms at Lyons CHAPTER XXII. BOURGES. The siege of Avaricum by Cæsar--The complete subjugation of Gaul--The statue of the Dying Gaul at Rome--Beauty of Bourges--The cathedral--Not completed according to design--Defect in height--Strict geometrical proportion in design not always satisfactory--Necessity of proportion for acoustics--Domestic architecture in Bourges--The house of Jacques Coeur--Story of his life--A rainy day--Why Bourges included in this book--A silver thimble--_Que de singeries faites-vous là, Madeleine?_--Adieu APPENDIX LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. FULL PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS. Tower of S. Trophimus, Arles Abbey of S. Victor, Marseilles Part of the North Cloister of Arles Cathedral Les Baux The Pont du Gard Béziers from the River An Entrance to Carcassonne The Cathedral and the Palace of the Popes, Avignon GENERAL ILLUSTRATIONS. The Carro A Florentine Torch Holder A Horse in a Hat Lérins Aqueduct of Fréjus Lantern of Augustus Map of Massalia Musical Instruments from the Tomb of Julia Calpurnia's Monument An Arelaise. (_From a Photograph._) Part of the Amphitheatre of Arles Back of a House at Arles A Boat with two rudders at Arles On a House at Arles Samson and the Lion, from the West door of the Cathedral of Arles On a House at Arles South Entrance to the Cloister, Arles Cathedral Church of Notre Dame de la Majeur, Arles Tower of the desecrated Church of S. Croix, Arles Part of the Courtyard of the Convent of S. Cæsarius, Arles Church of the Penitents Gris, Arles In the Cloisters, Montmajeur In the Cloister at Arles Les Baux Range of the Alpines from Glanum Liviæ Ruins S. Gabriel La Trémaïé Les Gaïé Caius Marius (_From a bust in the Vatican._) Orgon and the Durance Mont Victoire and the Plain of Pourrières Sketch Plan of the Battle-fields Monument of Marius Venus Victrix Gardanne The Vielle Les Saintes Maries Early Altar, Tarascon Spire of S. Martha's Church, Tarascon Iron Door to Safe in S. Martha's Church King René's Castle, Tarascon A bit in Tarascon The Chapel of Beaucaire Castle Beaucaire Castle from Tarascon.--Sunset In the Public Garden, Nimes The Maison Carrée, Nimes Cathedral of Nimes.--Part of West Front Aigues Mortes.--One of the Gates Aigues Mortes.--Tower of the Bourgignons Sketch Map of Aigues Mortes and its Littoral Chains Original use of Battlements. (_From Viollet-le-Duc._) Second stage of Battlements East End of the Church of Maguelonne Béziers.--Church of S. Nazaire Fountain in the Cloister of S. Nazaire, Béziers Types of faces, Narbonne: Modern--Sixteenth-Century Tomb in Cathedral--Classic Bust in Museum Freedmen's Caps, Narbonne Children's Toys in the Museum, Narbonne Towers on the Wall, Carcassonne A Bit of Carcassonne Inside the Wall, Carcassonne Papal Throne in the Cathedral of Avignon John XXII. Benedict XII. An Angle of the Papal Palace, Avignon Lantern at the Cathedral, Avignon Angel at West Door, Church of S. Agricole A Bit of the Old Wall, Avignon Part of Church of S. Didier, Avignon Bridge and Chapel of S. Benezet At Villeneuve Castle of S. André, at Villeneuve At Villeneuve A Well at Villeneuve Cathedral of Valence Doorway in the House Dupré Latour, Valence Doorway and Niche in the Maison des Têtes, Valence House in Vienne At Vienne Hurdy-Gurdy Played by an Angel Church of S. André-le-Bas.--The Tower Porte de l'Ambulance, Vienne A Street Corner, Bourges Part of Jacques Coeur's House Turret in the Hôtel Lallemand Staircase in the Hôtel Lallemand Sculpture over the Kitchen Entrance at Jacques Coeur's House Jacques Coeur's Knocker CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. The Tiber in Flood--Typhoid fever in Rome--Florence--A Jew acquaintance--Drinking in Provence--Buying _bric-à-brac_ with the Jew--The _carro_ on Easter Eve--Its real Origin--My Jew friend's letters--Italian _dolce far niente_. Conceive yourself confronted by a pop-gun, some ten feet in diameter, charged with mephitic vapours and plugged with microbes of typhoid fever. Conceive your sensations when you were aware that the piston was being driven home. That was my situation in March, 1890, when I got a letter from Messrs. Allen asking me to go into Provence and Languedoc, and write them a book thereon. I dodged the microbe, and went. To make myself understood I must explain. I was in Rome. For ten days with a sirocco wind the rains had descended, as surely they had never come down since the windows of heaven were opened at the Flood. The Tiber rose thirty-two feet. Now Rome is tunnelled under the streets with drains or sewers that carry all the refuse of a great city into the Tiber. But, naturally, when the Tiber swells high above the crowns of the sewers, they are choked. All the foulness of the great town is held back under the houses and streets, and breeds gases loathsome to the nose and noxious to life. Not only so, but a column of water, some twenty to twenty-five feet in height, is acting like the piston of a pop-gun, and is driving all the accumulated gases charged with the germs of typhoid fever into every house which has communication with the sewers. There is no help for it, the poisonous vapours _must_ be forced out of the drains and _must_ be forced into the houses. That is why, with a rise of the Tiber, typhoid fever is certain to break out in Rome. As I went over Ponte S. Angelo I was wont to look over the parapet at the opening of the sewer that carried off the dregs of that portion of the city where I was residing. One day I looked for it, and looked in vain. The Tiber had swelled and was overflowing its banks, and for a week or fortnight there could be no question, not a sewer in the vast city would be free to do anything else but mischief. I did not go on to the Vatican galleries that day. I could not have enjoyed the statues in the Braccio Nuovo, nor the frescoes in the Loggia. I went home, found Messrs. Allen's letter, packed my Gladstone bag, and bolted. I shall never learn who got the microbe destined for me, which I dodged. I went to Florence; at the inn where I put up--one genuinely Italian, Bonciani's,--I made an acquaintance, a German Jew, a picture-dealer with a shop in a certain capital, no matter which, editor of a _bric-à-brac_ paper, and a right merry fellow. I introduce him to the reader because he afforded me some information concerning Provence. He had a branch establishment--never mind where, but in Provence--and he had come to Florence to pick up pictures and _bric-à-brac_. Our acquaintance began as follows. We sat opposite each other at table in the evening. A large rush-encased flask is set before each guest in a swing carriage, that enables him to pour out his glassful from the big-bellied flask without effort. Each flask is labelled variously Chianti, Asti, Pomino, but all the wines have a like substance and flavour, and each is an equally good light dinner-wine. A flask when full costs three francs twenty centimes; and when the guest falls back in his seat, with a smile of satisfaction on his face, and his heart full of good will towards all men, for that he has done his dinner, then the bottle is taken out, weighed, and the guest charged the amount of wine he has consumed. He gets a fresh flask at every meal. "Du lieber Himmel!" exclaimed my _vis-à-vis_. "I do b'lieve I hev drunk dree francs. Take up de flasche and weigh her. Tink so?" "I can believe it without weighing the bottle," I replied. "And only four sous--twenty centimes left!" exclaimed the old gentleman, meditatively. "But four sous is four sous. It is de price of mine paper"--brightening in his reflections--"I can but shell one copy more, and I am all right." Brightening to greater brilliancy as he turns to me: "Will you buy de last number of my paper? She is in my pocket. She is ver' interesting. Oh! ver' so. Moche information for two pence." "I shall be charmed," I said, and extended twenty centimes across the table. "Ach Tausend! Dass ist herrlich!" and he drew off the last drops of Pomino. "Now I will tell you vun ding. Hev you been in Provence?" "Provence! Why--I am on my way there, now." "Den listen to me. Ebery peoples hev different ways of doing de same ding. You go into a cabaret dere, and you ask for wine. De patron brings you a bottle, and at de same time looks at de clock and wid a bit of chalk he mark you down your time. You say you will drink at two pence, or dree pence, or four pence. You drink at dat price you have covenanted for one hour, you drink at same price anodder hour, and you sleep--but you pay all de same, wedder you drink or wedder you sleep, two pence, or dree pence, or four pence de hour. It is an old custom. You understand? It is de custom of de country--of La belle Provence." "I quite understand that it is to the interest of the taverner to make his customers drunk." "Drunk!" repeated my Mosaic acquaintance. "I will tell you one ding more, ver' characteristic of de nationalities. A Frenchman--_il boit_; a German--_er sauft_; and an Englishman--he gets fresh. Der you hev de natures of de dree peoples as in a picture. De Frenchman, he looks to de moment, and not beyond. _Il boit_. De German, he looks to de end. _Er sauft_. De Englishman, he sits down fresh and intends to get fuddled; but he is a hypocrite. He does not say de truth to hisself nor to nobody, he says, _I will get fresh_, when he means de odder ding. Big humbug. You understand?" One morning my Jew friend said to me: "Do you want to see de, what you call behind-de-scenes of Florence? Ver' well, you come wid me. I am going after pictures." He had a carriage at the door. I jumped in with him, and we spent the day in driving about the town, visiting palaces and the houses of professional men and tradesmen--of all who were "down on their luck," and wanted to part with art-treasures. Here we entered a palace, of roughed stone blocks after the ancient Florentine style, where a splendid porter with cocked hat, a silver-headed _bâton_, and gorgeous livery kept guard. Up the white marble stairs, into stately halls overladen with gilding, the walls crowded with paintings in cumbrous but resplendent frames. Prince So-and-So had got into financial difficulties, and wanted to part with some of his heirlooms. There we entered a mean door in a back street, ascended a dirty stair, and came into a suite of apartments, where a dishevelled woman in a dirty split dressing-gown received us and showed us into her husband's sanctum, crowded with rare old paintings on gold grounds. Her good man had been a collector of the early school of art; now he was ill, he could not attend to his business, he might not recover, and whilst he was ill his wife was getting rid of some of his treasures. There we entered the mansion of a widow, who had lost her husband recently, a rich merchant. The heirs were quarrelling over the spoil, and she was in a hurry to make what she could for herself before a valuer came to reckon the worth of the paintings and silver and cabinets. In that day I saw many sides of life. "But how in the world," I asked of my guide, "did you know that all these people were wanting to sell?" "I have my agents ebberywhere," was his reply. I thought of the _Diable boiteux_ carrying the student of Alcala over the city, Madrid, removing the roofs of the houses, and exposing to his view the stories of the lives and miseries of those within. I was at Florence on Easter Eve. A ceremony of a very peculiar character takes place there on that day at noon. In the morning a monstrous black structure on wheels, some twenty-five feet high, is brought into the square before the cathedral by oxen, garlanded with flowers. This erection, the _carro_, is also decorated with flowers, but is likewise covered with fireworks. A rope is then extended from the _carro_ to a pole which is set up in the choir of the Duomo, before the high altar. For this purpose the great west doors are thrown open, and the rope extends the whole length of the nave. Upon it, close to the pole, is perched a white dove of plaster. Crowds assemble both in the square and in the nave of the cathedral. Peasants from the countryside come in in bands, and before the hour of noon every vantage place is occupied, and the square and the streets commanding it are filled with a sea of heads. [Illustration: The Carro.] At half-past eleven, the archbishop, the canons, the choir, go down the nave in procession, and make the circuit of the Duomo, then re-enter the cathedral, take their places in the choir, and the mass for Easter Eve is begun. At the Gospel--at the stroke of twelve, a match is applied to a fusee, and instantly the white dove flies along the rope, pouring forth a tail of fire, down the nave, out at the west gates, over the heads of the crowd, reaches the _carro_, ignites a fusee there, turns, and, still propelled by its fiery tail, whizzes along the cord again, till it has reached its perch on the pole in the choir, when the fire goes out and it remains stationary. But in the meantime the match ignited by the dove has communicated with the squibs and crackers attached to the _carro_, and the whole mass of painted wood and flowers is enveloped in fire and smoke, from which issue sheets of flame and loud detonations. Meanwhile, mass is being sung composedly within the choir, as though nothing was happening without. The fireworks continue to explode for about a quarter of an hour, and then the great garlanded oxen, white, with huge horns, are reyoked to the _carro_, and it is drawn away. The flight of the dove for its course of about 540 feet is watched by the peasants with breathless attention, for they take its easy or jerky flight as ominous of the weather for the rest of the year and of the prospects of harvest. If the bird sails along without a hitch, then the summer will be fine, but if there be sluggishness of movement, and one halt, then another, the year is sure to be one of storms and late frosts and hail. Now what is the origin of this extraordinary custom--a custom that is childish, and yet is so curious that one would hardly wish to see it abolished? Several stories are told to explain it, none very satisfactory. According to one, a Florentine knight was in the crusading host of Godfrey de Bouillon, and was the first to climb the walls of Jerusalem, and plant thereon the banner of the Cross. He at once sent tidings of the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre back to his native town by a carrier pigeon, and thus the Florentines received the glad tidings long before it reached any other city in Europe. In token of their gladness at the news, they instituted the ceremony of the white pigeon and the _carro_ on Easter Eve. [Illustration: A Florentine torch holder.] Another story is to the effect that this Florentine entered the city of Jerusalem before the first crusade, broke off a large fragment of the Holy Sepulchre, and carried it to Florence. He was pursued by the Saracens, but escaped by shoeing his horse with reversed irons. Another version is that he resolved to bring back to Florence the sacred flame that burnt in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Accordingly he lighted thereat a torch, and rode back to Italy with the torch flaming. But to protect it from the wind, he rode with his face to the tail of his steed, screening the torch with his body. As he thus rode, folk who saw him shouted "Pazzi! Pazzi!"--Fool! Fool! and this name was assumed by his family ever after. The Pazzis of Florence every year paid all the expenses of the _carro_ till quite recently, when the Municipality assumed the charge and now defray it from the city chest. Clearly the origin of the custom is forgotten; nevertheless it is not difficult to explain the meaning of the ceremony. In the Eastern Church, and still, in many churches in the West, the lights are extinguished on Good Friday, and formerly this was the case with all fires, those of the domestic hearth as well as the lamps in church. On Easter Day, fresh fire was struck with flint and steel by the bishop, and all candles, lamps and hearths were rekindled from this new light. At the present day one of the most solemn scenes in the Eastern Church is this kindling of the Easter fire, and its communication from one to another in a vast congregation assembled to receive it and carry it off to their homes. In the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, the new fire kindled and blessed by the patriarch, is cast down from the height of the dome. In Florence, anciently, it was much the same. The archbishop struck the Easter fire, and it was then distributed among the people; but there were inconveniences, unseemly scuffles, accidents even, and the dove was devised as a means of conveying the Easter fire outside the Duomo, and kindling a great bonfire, whereat the people might light their torches without desecrating the sacred building by scrambling and fighting therein for the hallowed flame. At this bonfire all could obtain the fire without inconvenience. By degrees the bonfire lost its significance, so did the dove, and fables were invented to explain the custom. The bonfire, moreover, degenerated into an exhibition of fireworks at mid-day. One morning my Jew friend insisted on my reading a letter he had just received from his daughter, aged fourteen. He was proud of the daughter, and highly pleased with the letter. It began thus: "Cher papa--nous sommes sauvés. That picture of a Genoese lady you bought for 200 francs, and doubted if you would be able to get rid of, I sold before we left home for Provence to an American, as a genuine Queen Elizabeth for 1,000 francs." Then followed three closely-written pages of record of business transactions, all showing a balance to the good, all showing a profit nowhere under thirty per cent. Finally, the letter concluded: "Mamma's back is better. Louis and I went on Sunday to see a farm. A cow, a stable, an old peasantess saying her rosary, a daughter knitting--all real, not waxwork. Votre fille très devouée, LEAH." "That is a girl to be proud of," said my acquaintance. "And only fourteen! But hein! here is another letter I have received, and it is awkward." He told me that when he had been in London on business he had lodged in the house of a couple who were not on the best of terms. The husband had been a widower with one child, a daughter, and the stepmother could not abide the child. Whilst M. Cohen, my friend, was there, the quarrels had been many, and he had done his best to smooth matters between the parties. Then he had invited them over to visit the Continent and stay at his house. They had come, and he had again to exercise the office of mediator. "And now," lamented my good-hearted friend, "nebber one week but I get a letter from de leddy. Here is dis, sent on to me. Read it." The letter ran as follows:-- "Do write to me. I fear my last letter cannot have reached you, or you would have answered it. I am miserable. My husband is so cross about that little girl, because I cannot love the nasty little beast. Oh, Mr. Cohen, do come to London, or let me come abroad and live in your house away from my husband and that child. You were so sensible and so kind. I can't bear to be longer here in the house with my husband and the spoiled child." My friend looked disconsolately at me. "What am I to do?" he asked. "She writes ebery week, and I don't answer. And my wife sends on dese letters." "Do?" said I. "Send this one at once to Madame Cohen, and ask her to answer it for you. That London lady will never trouble you again." The following circumstance I relate, not that it has the smallest importance except as a characteristic sketch of Italian _dolce far niente_, and as a lesson to travellers. The proper study of mankind is man, and a little incident such as occurred to me, and which I will now relate, raises the curtain and shows us a feature of humanity in Italy. When I hurried from Rome, I sent off all my luggage by goods train to England, except such articles as I could compress into a Gladstone bag; a change of raiment of course was there. But mark the cruelty of fate. My foot slipped on a white marble stair, and I rent a certain garment at the knee. I at once dived into my Gladstone bag and produced another pair, but found with a shock that they also had suffered--become threadbare, and needed attention from a tailor. What was to be done? I had to leave Florence at noon. The discovery was made the night before. I rose early, breakfasted early, and hung about the shop door of a tailor at 8 A.M. till the door was opened, when I entered, stated my case, and the obliging _sartore_ promised that the trifling remedy should be applied and I should have my garment again in one hour. "In one hour!" he said, holding up his hand in solemn asseveration. Nine o'clock came; then ten, and my raiment had not returned. I flew to the tailor's shop and asked for my garment. "It was all right," said he, "only the thread being knotted. It should be sent to my inn." So I returned and waited. I had my lunch, paid my bill, packed my bag, looked at my watch. The omnibus was at the door. No garment. I ran to the tailor's. He listened to my tale of distress with an amiable smile on his face, then volunteered to come with me to my inn, and talk the matter over with the host. Accordingly he locked up his shop and sauntered with me to Bonciani's. Bonciani and he considered the circumstances at length, thrashed the subject thoroughly. Then, as the horses were being put into the omnibus--"Come," said the tailor, "I have a brother, a grocer, we will go to him." "But why?" asked I. "Do you see, the boxes are being put on the omnibus. I want my--garment." "You must come with me to my brother's," said the tailor. So to the grocer's went we. Vainly did I trust that the journeyman who was engaged on my article of apparel lodged there, and that, done or undone, I could recover it thence. But no--not so. The whole story was related with embellishments to the brother, the grocer, who listened, discussed, commented on, the matter. "There goes the 'bus!" I shouted, looking down the street. "Even now, if you will let me have the article, I can run to the station and get off; I have my ticket." "Subito! subito!" said the tailor. Then the grocer said that the thing in request might be sent by post. "But," I replied, "I am going into France, to Nice, and clothes are subjected to burdensome charges if carried across the frontier." "Ten minutes!" I gasped. "Almost too late." A moment later-- "Appunto!" "The clock is striking. I am done for." "Appunto!" and he lighted a cigarette. So I had to travel by night, instead of by day. CHAPTER II. THE RIVIERA. No ill without a counterbalancing advantage--An industry peculiar to Italy--Italian honesty--Buffalo Bill at Naples--The Prince and the straw-coloured gloves--The Riviera--A tapestry--Nice--Its flowers--Notre Dame--The château--My gardener--A pension of ugly women--Horses and their hats--Antibes--Meeting of Honoré IV. and Napoleon--The Grimaldis--Lérins, an Isle of Saints--A family jar--Healed. That was not all. The dawdling of the tailor not only made me lose the mid-day train, but delayed my arrival in Nice for twenty-four hours. I took the night train to Pisa, where I purposed catching the express from Rome. But the express came slouching along in a hands-in-the-pocket sort of way, and was over half-an-hour late, and would not bestir itself to pick up the misspent, lost moments between Pisa and Genoa, the consequence of which was that the train for Nice had gone on without waiting, and accordingly those who desired to prosecute their journey in that direction were obliged to loiter about in the small hours of the morning between a restaurant, half asleep, and a waiting-room where the electric light had gone out, till the hour of seven. Before leaving Italy, I may mention an industry which I found cultivated there, original, and I believe unique. When I procured postage stamps at the post-offices, I was surprised, if I took them home with me, to find that their adhesive power had failed. I also received indignant letters from correspondents in England remonstrating with me for posting my communications to them unstamped. This surprised me, and at Rome, where I had been accustomed to purchase _franco-bolli_ at the head office, I took them home and regummed them. But the remarkable phenomenon was, that such stamps as were purchased at tobacconists' shops had gum on them--only those acquired at the post-offices were without. I learned that the same peculiarity existed at Florence, and indeed elsewhere in Italy, and finally the explanation was vouchsafed to me. The functionary at the post-office passes a wet sponge over the back of the sheets of _franco-bolli_ supplied to him, thus removing the adhesive matter. When he sells stamps at the window, he hopes that those who purchase will proceed at once to apply them to their letters, without perceiving their deficiencies. As soon as the stamp becomes dry it falls off, and quite a collection of stamps of sundry values can thus be gathered at every clearing of the box, and the postal clerk reaps thence a daily harvest that goes a long way towards the eking out the small pittance paid him by Government. It is interesting to see the directions taken by human enterprise. Whilst I was in Rome, Buffalo Bill was in Naples exhibiting his troupe of horses and gang of Indians. The Italian papers informed the public of a remarkable exploit achieved by the Neapolitans. They had done Buffalo Bill out of two thousand francs. It had been effected in this wise. His reserved seats were charged five francs. Four hundred forged five-franc notes were passed at the door of his show by well-dressed Neapolitans, indeed, the _élite_ of Neapolitan society; and the trick played on him was not discovered till too late. Now consider what this implies. It implies that some hundreds of the best people, princes, counts, marquesses at Naples lent themselves to see Buffalo Bill's exhibition by a fraud. They wanted to see and be seen there, but not to pay five francs for a seat. There must have been combination, and that among the members of the aristocracy of Naples. The Italian papers did not mention this in a tone of disgust, but rather in one of surprise that Italians should have been able to overreach a Yankee. But I do not believe such a fraud would have been perpetrated at Rome, Florence, or Milan. It was considered quite in its place at Naples. A lady of my acquaintance was staying in a pension at Naples. There resided at the time, in the same pension, a prince--Neapolitan, be it understood. One day, just before she left, she brought in a packet of kid gloves she had purchased, among them one pair, straw-coloured. She laid them on the table, went out for two minutes, leaving the prince in the room with the gloves. On her return, the prince and the straw-coloured gloves were gone. She made inquiries of the landlady, who, when told that the prince had been in the room, laughed and said: "But of course he has them. You should never leave anything in the room unguarded where there is a prince." Two days after the departure of this lady, the straw-coloured gloves were produced by his highness and presented by him to a young lady whom he admired, then in the same pension. No evil comes without a counterbalancing good. The day I was detained in Florence by that tailor, and the loss of the night train at Genoa were not immense evils. A furious gale broke over the coast, and when at seven in the morning we steamed out of Genoa, the Mediterranean was sullen, the rain poured down, and the mountains were enveloped in vapour. But as we proceeded along the coast the weather improved, and before long every cloud was gone, the sky became blue as a gentian, and the oranges flamed in the sunshine as we swept between the orchards. Had I gone by the noon train from Florence I should have travelled this road by night, had I caught the 3.27 A.M. train I should have seen nothing for storm and cloud. And--what a glorious, what an unrivalled road that is! It was like passing through a gallery hung with Rénaissance tapestry, all in freshness of colour. The sea deep blue and green like a peacock's neck, the mountains pale yellow, as shown in tapestry, with blue shadows; the silvery-grey olives, the glossy orange trees with their fruit--exactly as in tapestry. Surely the old weavers of those wondrous webs studied this coast and copied it in their looms. I have said that the sea was like a peacock's neck; but it had a brilliancy above even that. As I have mentioned tapestry I may say that it resembled a sort of tapestry that is very rare and costly, of which I have seen a sample in a private collection at Frankfort, and another in the Palazzo Bardini at Florence. It consists of the threads being drawn over plates of gold and silver. In the piece at Florence the effect of the sun shining through a tree is thus produced by gold leaf under the broidery of tree-leaves. Silver leaf is employed for water, with blue silk drawn in lines over it. So with the sea. There seemed to be silver burnished to its greatest polish below, over which the water was drawn as a blue lacquer. And Nice. What shall I say of that bright and laughing city--with its shops of flowers, its avenues of trees through which run the streets, its gardens, its pines and cactus and aloe walks? Only one blemish can I pick out in Nice, and that is a hideous modern Gothic church, Notre Dame, filled with detestable garish glass, so utterly faulty in design, so full of blemish of every sort, that the best wish one could make for the good people of Nice is that the next earthquake that visits the Riviera may shake this wretched structure to pieces, so as to give them an opportunity of erecting another in its place which is not a monstrosity. The Avenue de la Gare is planted with the eucalyptus, that has attained a considerable size. It is not a beautiful tree, its leaves are ever on the droop, as though the tree were unhealthy or unhappy, sulky at being transplanted to Europe, dissatisfied with the climate, displeased with the soil, discontented with its associates. It struck me as very much like a good number of excellent and very useful souls with whom I am acquainted, who never take a cheerful view of life, are always fault-finding, hole-picking, worry-discovering, eminently good in their place as febrifuges, but not calculated to brighten their neighbourhood. What a delightful walk is that on the cliff of the château! The day I was at Nice was the 9th of April. The crags were rich with colour, the cytisus waving its golden hair, the pelargonium blazing scarlet, beds of white stock wafting fragrance, violets scrambling over every soft bank of deep earth exhaling fragrance; roses, not many in flower, but their young leaves in masses of claret-red; wherever a ledge allowed it, there pansies of velvety blue and black and brown had been planted. In a hot sun I climbed the château cliff to where the water, conveyed to the summit, dribbled and dropped, or squirted and splashed, nourishing countless fronds of fern and beds of moss, and many a bog plant. The cedars and umbrella pines in the spring sun exhaled their aromatic breath, and the flowering birch rained down its yellow dust over one from its swaying catkins. I see I have spoken of the cytisus. I may be excused mentioning an anecdote that the sight of this plant provokes in my mind every spring. I had a gardener--a queer, cantankerous creature, who never saw a joke, even when he made one. "Please, sir," he said to me with a solemn face, "I've been rearing a lot o' young citizens for you." "Have you?" said I, with a sigh. "I fancy I'm rearing a middling lot of them myself." "Please, sir," said he to me on another occasion, "that there lumbago be terrible trying to know what to do with it." "Oh!" said I with alacrity, "nothing equals hartshorn and oil applied to the small of the back with a flannel. You have a wife--" "Yes, sir." He looked at me vacantly. "And yet, it's a beautiful thing." "Well--yes, when it attacks one's deadly enemy." "I've cut it down, and trimmed it out, and tied it up," said the gardener. He meant the _Plumbago capense!_ That man never would allow that he was beaten. My eldest boy one day held some pansies over the fumes of ammonia, turned them green, and showed them as a _lusus naturæ_ to the gardener. He smiled contemptuously. "Them's the colour of biled cabbage," said he; "I grew them verdigris green--beds of 'em, when I was with Squire Cross." One day he said to me: "The nurserymen call them plants big onias just to sell them, I call them little onias; you shall just see them I grow, them be the true big onias, as large as the palm of your hand." I tumbled, by hazard, at Nice into a pension, where I believe I saw at _table d'hôte_ a score of the ugliest women I have ever had the trial of sitting over against in my long career. I found out, in conversation with a porter at the station afterwards, that this pension was notorious for the ugly women who put up there, and it is a joke among the porters when they see one very ill-favoured arrive by the train, that she is going to be an inmate of the Hotel ----. The name I will not give, lest any of my fair readers, in that spirit of delightful perversity that characterises the sex, should go there and spoil the credit of the pension. I could not endure the _table d'hôte_ there for many days. An ugly woman is, or may be, restful for the eye when her face is in repose--not when she is chewing tough beef or munching an apple. Besides, Lent was passed. When I was in Rome there appeared in a comic paper at the beginning of Lent the picture of a very stout lady, who thus addressed her spouse. "Hubby, dear! you haven't kissed me." "Can't, love," he replies, "_fat_ is forbidden in Lent." Ugliness was uncongenial to me in radiantly beautiful Nice, and in sparkling Easter--so I packed my Gladstone bag and went further. The snow still lying on the crests of the Maritime Alps and the intermediate ranges broken into fantastic forms, the lovely range of red porphyry Esterel to the south, with the intensely blue sea drawing a thread of silver about its base, together made a picture of incomparable loveliness. The sun was so hot that the horses had already assumed their summer hats. "A good man is merciful to his beast," and the good-hearted peasants of the Riviera and Provence, thinking that their horses must suffer from the burning heat of the sun, provide, them with straw hats, very much the same sort of hats as girls wear, adorned also with ribbons and rosettes, but to suit the peculiarity of formation of the horse's head, two holes are cut in the hat through which the ears are drawn. The effect is comical when you are being driven in a carriage with a pair of horses before you wearing straw hats, and their ears protruding, one on each side, like the horns in the helmets of mediæval German knights. One lovely glimpse of the sea I got that I shall never forget. The blue sea was in the background gleaming; against it stood a belt of sombre cypresses; before the cypresses the silvery, smoke-grey tufts of olive, in a grove; and before the olive, in mid-distance, a field of roses in young claret-red foliage--a landscape of belts of colour right marvellous. [Illustration: A Horse in a Hat.] Then Antibes--a blue bay with castle on one horn, on the other the little town, its lighthouse, and a couple of bold towers. It was at Cannes that Prince Honoré IV. of Monaco encountered Napoleon in 1815, as he was returning from Paris in his carriage to take possession of his principality, that had been restored to him by the Treaty of Paris in 1814. The Grenadiers of the Imperial Guard stopped his carriage, made the prince descend, and conducted him before a little man with clean-cut features, whom he at once knew as the Emperor--returned from Elba. "Où allez-vous, Monaco?" asked Napoleon bluntly. "Sire," replied Honoré IV., "je vais à la découverte de mon royaume." The Emperor smiled. "Voilà une singulière rencontre, monsieur," said Napoleon. "Deux majestés sans place; mais ce n'est peut-être pas la peine de vous déranger. Avant huit jours je serai à Paris, et je me verrai forcé de vous renverser du trône, mon cousin. Revenez plutôt avec moi, je vous nommerai sous-préfet de Monaco, si vous y tenez beaucoup." "Merci de vos bontés, sire," replied the prince in some confusion; "mais je tiendrais encore plus à faire une restauration, ne dut-elle durer que trois jours." "Allons! faites la durer trois mois, mon cousin, je vous garderai votre place de chancellier, et vous viendriez me réjoindre aux Tuileries." The two monarchs separated after having shaken hands amicably. The story would be spoiled by translation. The Grimaldis anciently possessed much more extensive territories than at present. At Cagnes, near Vence, is their ancient château, now converted into a hospital and barrack, and they owned considerable property, manors and lordships near Cannes and Vence. We shall meet them again as Princes of Les Baux. The present reigning family are not properly Grimaldis. The last representative was a daughter, married to the Count of Thorigny in 1715, who, on the extinction of the male line in 1731, assumed the name of Grimaldi, and succeeded to the principality. [Illustration: Lérins.] Everywhere, for the mere delight of the eye, not from thought of any gain gotten out of it, is the Judas tree covered with pink flowers, standing among the cool grey olives. Here and there is a mulberry bursting into fresh, green, vivid leaf; in every garden the palms are rustling their leaves in the pleasant air, and are glistening in the sun. Out at sea lies the low, dull island of Lérins; but, though low and dull, full of interest, as taking the place to Provence occupied by Iona to Scotland and Lindisfarne to Northumberland, a cradle of Christianity, a cradle rocked by the waves. I cannot do better than quote Montalembert's words on this topic. "The sailor, the soldier, or the traveller who proceeds from the roadstead of Toulon to sail towards Italy and the East, passes among two or three islands, rocky and arid, surmounted here and there by a slender cluster of pines. He looks at them with indifference, and avoids them. However, one of these islands has been for the soul, for the mind, for the moral progress of humanity, a centre purer and more fertile than any famous isle of the Hellenic Archipelago. It is Lerins, formerly occupied by a city, which was already ruined in the time of Pliny, and where, at the commencement of the fifth century, nothing more was to be seen than a desert coast. In 410, a man landed and remained there; he was called Honoratus. Descended from a consular race, educated and eloquent, but devoted from his youth to great piety, he desired to be made a monk. His father charged his eldest brother, a gay and impetuous young man, to turn him from his purpose; but, on the contrary, it was he who won over his brother. Disciples gathered round them. The face of the isle was changed, the desert became a garden. Honoratus, whose fine face is described to us as radiant with a sweet and attractive majesty, opened here an asylum and a school for all such as loved Christ." From this school went forth disciples, inspired with the spirit of Honoratus, to rule the churches of Arles, Avignon, Lyons, Vienne, Fréjus, Valence, Nice, Metz, and many others. Honoratus himself, taken from his peaceful isle to be elevated to the metropolitan see of Arles, had for his successor, as Abbot of Lerins, and afterwards as Bishop of Arles, his pupil and kinsman S. Hilary, to whom we owe the admirable biography of his master. Hilary was celebrated for his graceful eloquence, his unwearied zeal, his tender sympathy with all forms of suffering, his ascendency over a crowd, and by the numerous conversions which he worked. But, indeed Lerins was a hive whence swarmed forth the teachers and apostles of Southern Gaul. Hence came the modest Vincent of Lerins, the first controversialist of his time, who at the head of his greatest work inscribed a touching testimony of his love for that poor little isle where he had spent so many years, and learned so much. Salvian, also, the "Master of Bishops," as he was called, though himself only a priest, was held to be the most eloquent man of his day, only second to S. Augustine. S. Eucherius of Lyons, S. Lupus of Troyes, who had married the sister of S. Hilary, were other prelates trained in this holy isle. When Troyes was threatened by Attila and his Huns, Lupus boldly went forth to meet him. "Who art thou?" asked the bishop. "I am Attila, the Scourge of God," was the reply. The intrepid gentleness of the bishop disarmed the ferocious invader. He left Troyes without injuring it, and drew back to the Rhine. And this isle through Lupus claims some regard from a native of Britain, for Lupus, trained in it, was chosen by the Council of Arles in 429 to combat the Pelagian heresy in Great Britain, along with S. Germanus of Auxerre. Into the same carriage with me, at Nice, got a pair--a young couple; he, with an amiable but weak face; she heavy featured, her only charm her eyes. There had been a breeze between the pair, evidently, before they took their places, and she was sulky. He, poor fool, endeavoured by every means to allay her ruffled temper, always ineffectually. He pulled out his Guide Joannot, and endeavoured to interest her in the places we passed, their history, their antiquities; in vain, she sat scowling, with pursed lips. He called her attention to the red porphyry cliffs of Esterel with purple shadows in their hollows, to the blue bays opening between their red horns--all to no purpose, she would not look out at the window. He produced a box of jujubes, and offered her one between his thumb and forefinger. She refused it, but thrust her fingers into the box and extracted one for herself. Then she leaned back in the carriage, drew her hat over her face, and exposed to view only a chin and a mole under it, that moved up and down as she sucked her jujube. Next, the feeble, amorous husband, endeavoured to get hold of her hand. She snatched it away vixenishly. Hectic spots formed on his cheeks, and perspiration stood in great drops on his brow. This was clearly the first ruffle he had experienced on the hymeneal sea. He got out of the carriage at Cannes, and hung about the buffet till the extreme moment, hoping to betray her into tokens of uneasiness lest he should miss the train. As it was, at the final moment he swung himself into another carriage. She thrust her hat a little on one side, protruded an eye to see what became of him, then covered it once more. He got in at the next station, breathless, in pretended agitation. He had nearly lost his place--he was all but left behind. Had he been so left, what would she have done? She vouchsafed no reply. Tired, however, of looking into the crown of her hat, she now removed it and placed it on her lap. The face was still sullen, with the jowl hanging down, the coarse lips set in defiance, and an ugly flicker in the eyes. Now the hectic-cheeked husband became boisterous in merry conversation with other travellers near him, but always with an eye reverting at periods to his wife, whose lips retained a contemptuous curl. Then he sulked in his turn, folded his arms, thrust forth his feet under the seat opposite, and looked gloomily into the space between them. Thereat she began to hum an air from "La Traviata," when suddenly the situation was altered. By some marvellous instinct she discovered that I had been observing the little play; the comedy _à deux_, and had made my comments thereon--not in her favour. Instantly the expression of her countenance changed. She turned to her husband. "Gustave!" said she, "Je souffre," and she laid her head on his shoulder. A flash in his face, full of surprise sliding into ecstasy. He could not understand this sudden change in her disposition, and I am quite sure she never gave him the key. I left the carriage at Fréjus, and at parting caught her eye. She laughed, so did I. We understood each other. Now, as it happened, at Nice, when I was seeking a carriage, I entered one where were a lady and an elderly gentleman. At the first glance I recognised a "Milord Anglais," the lady was his daughter. At the same moment that I said to myself, "This carriage will never do for me," the lady addressed me, "Monsieur! ce voitoore est réservée à noos doox." If I had gone to Fréjus with them, I should have missed that little episode of the young married couple and that would have grieved me, and the reconciliation would not have been brought about before Marseilles. Oh, how grateful I was to fate, that the lady had said, "Monsieur! ce voitoore est réservée à noos doox." CHAPTER III. FRÉJUS. The freedman of Pliny--Forum Julii--The Port of Agay--The Port of Fréjus--Roman castle--Aqueduct--The lantern of Augustus--The cathedral--Cloisters--Boy and dolphin--Story told by Pliny--The _Chaine des Maures_--Désaugiers--Dines with the porkbutchers of Paris--Siéyès--_Sans phrase_--Agricola--His discoveries. It was strange. The first person I thought of, on arriving at Fréjus, was not Julius Cæsar the founder of this old port--no, nor Agricola, a native of Fréjus, who is so associated with British history, especially with Scottish--no! it was Pliny's sick freedman, about whom that polished orator wrote in his nineteenth letter, in Book V. of his collected epistles. Pliny was a native of Como, he had two villas on the lake. He was a kindly, honourable, somewhat bumptious man--but what great talkers think small matter of themselves? He had a slave, a Greek, named Zosimus, of whom he writes to his friend Paulinus, who had an estate at Fréjus: "He is a person of great worth, diligent in his services, and well skilled in literature; but his chief talent is that of a comedian. He pronounces with great judgment, propriety, and gracefulness; he has a very good hand too upon the lyre, and performs with more skill than is necessary for one of his profession. To this I must add, he reads history, oratory, and poetry. He is endeared to me by ties of long affection, now heightened by the danger in which he is." Pliny had given Zosimus his liberty, but Zosimus remained attached to his service as freedman. Some years before, this accomplished slave had overstrained his voice, and begun to spit blood. Thereupon Pliny sent him to Egypt, where in the dry air he seemed better, and after a while Zosimus returned to his master, apparently completely restored. Pliny goes on, in his letter: "Having exerted himself again beyond his strength, there was a return of his former malady and a spitting of blood. For this reason, I intend to send him to your farm at Forum Julii (Fréjus), having often heard you mention the exceeding fine air there, and recommend the milk of that place as very salutary in disorders of this nature. I beg you will give directions to your people to receive him into your house, and to supply him with what he shall have occasion for: which will not be much; for he is so temperate as not only to abstain from delicacies, but even to deny himself the necessaries his ill health requires. I shall supply him with all that is needful for his journey. Farewell." Now, on reaching Fréjus on a balmy day in April, when the air was soft as butter-milk, and the sun was hot, not scorching, my thoughts went at once to poor Zosimus, with his hacking cough, his delicate complexion, come here to inhale the soft air and drink the warm milk. And I thought of him the more from certain experiences of my own relative to Como. I went to that city in January from England, thinking that it lay in a warm nook, and that there I might bask for a few weeks, when recovering from an attack of bronchitis, till I was able to go further south. I went into an hotel where I had stayed in summer and been comfortable; but--oh!--never shall I forget the horrors of that hotel in January! I was the sole person staying in it. There was no bedroom that had in it a stove. In the _salle-à-manger_ the fire was lighted for half-an-hour at nine in the morning, then let out and not rekindled through the day. The fountain in the square was frozen. An icy wind descended from the Alps. My bedroom was a tomb; brick-floored, stone vaulted. My bed measured two feet across, and the sheet and crimson _duvet_ were so nicely adjusted as exactly to fit the bed, when unoccupied. When I lay in the bed, that _duvet_ was balanced like a logan stone on the ridge of my body shivering under it, and it oscillated as I shivered. Then it slid gently to the floor, and left me with a chill and damp linen sheet over me, the thermometer being below zero, and I--afflicted with a cough. Next morning I fled--fled to Milan--was stabbed there by the Tramontana, fell ill, escaped to Genoa, and there recovered. Now, perhaps, the reader will understand how it was that naturally, and at once, my mind turned to poor Zosimus, as I entered Fréjus. His dust is laid there--I doubt not. He had wandered there--some eighteen hundred years ago, and, like me, had inhaled the sweet scent of the flowering beans, looked on the Esterel chain glowing as if red-hot in the sunshine, and had entertained, like me, kindly, affectionate thoughts of that somewhat pedantic, conceited, but eminently worthy Caius Plinius Cæcilius Secundus. Although Julius Cæsar is said to have formed the port at Forum Julii, and to have given the place his name, it is probable that there was a settlement there earlier. He, however raised it into consideration by the construction of the harbour. The port is there still, within its moles, and guarded by two castles on heights above it, but--alas for the well being of Fréjus, the harbour is filled with sand and soil brought down by the river Argens and washed in by the waves, and is now a level meadow, every portion belonging to a farmer cut off from another portion by a ditch, in which spring the rushes and croak the frogs. Augustus enlarged the port, and after the decisive battle of Actium (B.C. 31) sent thither the galleys captured from Anthony. The sea is now two miles distant. The mistake of making ports at the mouths of rivers was one constantly made by the Romans. The Greeks knew better--Marseilles has not been choked. Hard by, at Agay, is a perfect natural harbour. The red porphyry mountains rise in fantastic shapes above it, and plunge in abrupt crags into the deep blue water. It is a little harbour that calls out "Come and rest in me from every wind." Now a lighthouse has been erected at the extremity of one of the natural moles of rock, a coastguard establishment crowns the heights, two or three fishermen's cottages nestle in the lap of the bay--that is all. On the south of the port of Fréjus is an old castle. There must have existed there originally a nodule of rock, but out of this a platform has been formed artificially of earth gathered from the port, and this platform was converted in Roman times into a fort. On one side may be seen a curious contrivance for resisting the outward pressure of the earth heaped up within. The basement wall has not buttresses thrust forth, but consists of a series of semicircular concave depressions in its face. In Mediæval times a strong castle with circular towers was erected on the ancient basement, that also is now in ruins, the ledges where the old Roman wall ended and the Mediæval wall sprang at half the thickness of the former were, when I saw them, dense with white irises. [Illustration: Aqueduct of Fréjus.] Fréjus was supplied in Roman times with an aqueduct, the arches of which, broken and ruinous, still stretch across the plain, and were destined to convey into the town the waters of the Siagnole, from a distance of about fifty miles. The arcade is about forty-five feet high. Following a path that leads along the ancient mole one reaches a quadrangular tower of Roman masonry with a stone conical roof, which goes by the name of the Lantern of Augustus, and is supposed to have served as lighthouse at the entrance of the harbour, but the height is too insignificant for this purpose, it is not over thirty-five feet, and there is no indication of any contrivance whereby it could have been utilised for the purpose of a pharos. In the Torlonia Museum at Rome is a bas-relief representing the port of Ostia, with its pharos; that is a structure of several stages, each receding as it is superposed on the other, and the topmost sustains the ever-burning fire--quite a different sort of building from this tower at Fréjus. [Illustration: Lantern of Augustus.] Fréjus is a cathedral city, though numbering only 3,500 inhabitants, but it is an ancient see, dating from about 374, when it was an important maritime place. Its fortunes had gone down in the Middle Ages, and the citizens and prelates were never in a position to build much of a cathedral. The present church is of the eleventh century, both small and plain. It contains little of interest save a fine painting on gold ground of S. Margaret and other saints, brought from the ancient Monastery of Lerins. The organ gallery is supported on granite pillars, Classic, found among the ruins of the amphitheatre. The baptistery is surrounded by eight porphyry columns with Corinthian capitals taken from a pagan temple. The carved doors of the cathedral deserve to be seen, they are of rich Rénaissance work. In the north aisle of the cathedral to the west is the tomb of two bishops of the seventeenth century, Bartholomew and Peter de Camelin, kneeling; and at the east end are two alabaster monuments of bishops three centuries earlier. The cloisters are of the usual Provençal type, the arcade resting on double columns, but walls have been erected blocking up the spaces, and the interior yard is turned into the bishop's fowl-house. But--is not that sufficient? I am not writing a guide book; and I enter into these details here solely because the guide books pass over the cathedral very slightingly, and concern themselves chiefly with the Roman antiquities. Of these latter, besides what I have mentioned, there is the Porte Dorée, one arcade only of what was formerly a noble portico facing the harbour; also a fine amphitheatre, now traversed by a highway, not however as perfect as those of Nimes and Arles. Fragments also remain of the ancient theatre, but they are unimportant. Hard by the Hôtel de Ville is a beautiful red porphyry figure of a boy and a dolphin which one would have taken to have been Rénaissance work, but that the Rénaissance artists would hardly have taken the pains to sculpture such intractable material as porphyry for a petty town of the size of Fréjus. The group recalls that very odd story told by Pliny in one of his letters, which, as it may not be familiar to many of my readers, I will venture here to repeat. He says that the story "was related to him at table by a person of unsuspected veracity." At Hippo, in Africa, when the boys were playing in the lake that communicates with the sea, and the lads were contending together which could swim furthest, one boy found a dolphin play about him as he swam, and he ventured to climb on the back of the fish. The dolphin was not alarmed, but conveyed the little fellow on his back to the shore. The fame of this remarkable event spread through the town, and crowds came down to the water's edge to see the boy and ask him questions. Next day he went into the water again, and once more the dolphin appeared, played round him, and again took him on his back. This happened several times, and the circumstance was bruited throughout the neighbourhood, so that great numbers of people came in from the countryside to see the fish play in the water with the children, and carry them on its back. At last the authorities of the town, annoyed at the concourse of the curious, destroyed the playful dolphin, a bit of barbarity that excites Pliny's wrath. To the south-west of Fréjus lies the Chaine des Maures, the outline of which is by no means so bold as that of the porphyry Esterel, but the mountains rise in sweeping lines from a broad and fertile plain covered and silvered with olives, growing out of rich red soil, like the old red sandstone of Devonshire. The red sandstone rocks through which the line passes are ploughed with rains. On the right appears the wonderfully picturesque little town of La Pauline, with an extensive ruined castle, and the walls and towers of the town in tolerable condition. Above it rises a stately peak capped with the white limestone that forms the mountains about Toulon and Marseilles, and having all the appearance of a flake of snow. When we reach the basin between Aubaine and Camp-Major we are surrounded by these barren white ranges, so white that they look as if a miller had shaken his flour-bag over them. But I have not quite done with Fréjus yet. I fear the reader will think I have given him a dull chapter of antiquarian and historical detail, so I will here add an anecdote, to spice it, concerning a worthy of Fréjus, Désaugiers, one of the liveliest of French poets. He was born at Fréjus in 1772. One day he was invited to preside at the annual banquet of the pork-butchers. At dessert everyone present was expected to pronounce an epigram or sing a song; and when the turn came to Désaugiers, he rose, cleared his throat, looked around with a twinkle in his eye, and thundered forth "Des Cochons, des Cochons." The pork-butchers bridled up, grew red about the cheeks and temples, believing that an insult was intended, when Désaugiers proceeded with his song:-- "Décochons les traits de la satire." Siéyès was another native of Fréjus, that renegade priest, to whom is attributed the ferocious saying, when called on to give his vote on the condemnation of Louis XVI., "La mort--sans phrases." Some few years after the Directory sent Siéyès as ambassador to Berlin. He invited a prince of the blood royal of Prussia to dine at the embassy with him; but the prince took the invitation and scored across it his answer:-- "Non--sans phrases." Napoleon as national recompense to Siéyès for the services he had rendered to France, and to himself personally, gave him the estate of Crosne. This gave rise to the epigram-- "Bonaparte à Siéyès a fait présent de Crosne, Siéyès à Bonaparte a fait présent du trône." But after all, it is chiefly as the birthplace of Agricola, that true model of a Roman soldier of the best description, that Fréjus interests us most. His father, Julius Græcinus, had fallen a victim to Caligula, because he refused to undertake the prosecution of a man the Emperor was determined to destroy, and there is some reason to suspect that Agricola himself was sacrificed to the suspicions and envy of Domitian. Like most good and honourable men, he had a good mother, whose virtues Tacitus records. When Agricola was proconsul of Britain, his rule was mild, and he took pains to win the confidence of the provincials. He it was who drew a chain of forts from sea to sea between the Tyne and Solway, to protect the reclaimed subjects of the southern valleys from the untamed barbarians who roved the Cheviots and the Pentlands. He was not merely a conqueror, but an explorer and discoverer, in Scotland. In A.D. 83 he passed beyond the Frith and fought a great battle with the Caledonians near Stirling. The Roman entrenchments still remaining in Fife and Angus were thrown up by him. In 84 he fought another battle on the Grampians, and sent his fleet to circumnavigate Britain. The Roman vessels at all events for the first time entered the Pentland Frith; examined the Orkney islands, and perhaps gained a glimpse of the Shetlands. It was interesting to tread the soil where the childhood was passed of a man who left such permanent marks in Britain, and to whom we are indebted for our first knowledge of Scotland. CHAPTER IV. MARSEILLES. The three islands Phoenice, Phila, Iturium--Marseilles first a Phoenician colony--The tariff of fees exacted by the priests of Baal--The arrival of the Ionians--The legend of Protis and Gyptis--Second colony of Ionians--The voyages of Pytheas and Euthymenes--Capture of Marseilles by Trebonius--Position of the Greek city--The Acropolis--Greek inscriptions--The lady who never "jawed" her husband--The tomb of the sailor-boy--Hôtel des Négociants--Ménu--Entry of the President of the Republic--Entry of Francis I.--The church of S. Vincent--The Cathedral--Notre Dame de la Garde--The abbey of S. Victor--Catacombs--The fable of S. Lazarus. The traveller approaching Marseilles from the sea observes three islets of bare limestone rock that are apparently a prolongation of that rocky promontory now crowned by the fortress of S. Nicolas, and that act as a natural breakwater against wave and storm from the S.E. They go by the names of Pomègue, Ratonneau, and Château d'If. But the classic geographers called the group the Little Stoechades, and named these islets Phoenice, Phila, and Iturium; and these three appellations give us in a compact form the story of ancient Marseilles, founded by the Phoenicians, refounded by the Greeks, and then made a dependency under the Roman empire. That Marseilles was a Phoenician colony before the Phoceans settled there is shown by the monuments that have been exhumed from the foundations of the modern houses, and are now collected in the museum. There are some curious images of Melkarth and Melita, the Hercules and Venus of these Asiatic traders, known also to us through the Bible as Baal and Ashtaroth. But most curious of all is a long Phoenician table of charges made by the priests of Baal for the various sacrifices and oblations offered by the people. This tariff of charges was found in 1845. It consists of twenty-one lines, and begins:-- "The Temple of Baal.--This is the regulation relative to the dues legally established by Italis-Baal, the suffete, son of Bod-tanith, son of Bod-Milcarth, and by Italis-Baal. "For an entire ox, the ordinary sacrifice, the priests are to receive ten shekels. At the sacrifice, in addition, three hundred mishekels of flesh. "Item. For the ordinary sacrifice, of cereals and flour of wheat, also the hide, the entrails, and the feet of the victim. All the rest of the flesh goes to the master of the sacrifice." So it continues to regulate the fees for a calf, a ram, a bird; also for cakes, and for offerings made by lepers and by common people. The table of fees is extremely curious and is, I believe, unique. The Phoenician colony at Marseilles was probably in decline when, in B.C. 599, a Greek fleet left the port of Phocæa, one of the twelve Ionian cities of Asia Minor, seeking new homes in the West. The colony was under the command of an adventurer named Protis. Attracted by the Bay of Marseilles, and the basin surrounded by hills that lay in its lap, the Greek colony disembarked. And now for a legend. The first measure taken by the new arrivals was to send a deputation to the King of the Segobrigæ, a Keltic race occupying what is now called Provence. The king was at Arles, which was his capital; his name was Nannos. By a happy coincidence the embassy arrived on the day upon which Nannos had assembled the warriors of his tribe, for his daughter, Gyptis, to choose a husband among them. The arrival of the young Greek, Protis, in the midst of this banquet was a veritable _coup-de-théâtre_; he took his place at the board. His natural grace, his easy and polished manners, the nobleness and elegance of his person and features, contrasted strangely with the savagery and coarseness of the Gaulish warriors. Free to choose whom she would, Gyptis rose from the table, filled a cup, and made the circuit of the board. Every eye was fixed on her; he was to be her choice to whom she offered the bowl. She did not hesitate for a moment, she went to the Greek stranger and extended it to him. Protis put the goblet to his lips, and the alliance was concluded. The example of Gyptis was followed by some of her maidens. The Gauls agreed to receive the Greeks, and suffer them to colonise the basin of Marseilles. But the chiefs who had been set aside by the fair Gyptis bore a grudge against the new-comers. The growing prosperity and rapid development of the new settlement aroused their jealousy, which was probably augmented by the defection of some of their wives and daughters. Profiting by the Feast of Flora in May, they presented themselves at the gates of Marseilles in attendance on some waggons laden with green boughs, under which were their arms concealed. But love, that had founded the Ionian colony, was destined to save it. A young Gaulish woman revealed the plot to her Hellenic lover, and the Greeks laid their hands on the arms that were to have been employed against them, turned them against the intrusive Gauls, and massacred them to a man. But having thus saved themselves from one danger they felt that they had incurred another. They had provoked the deadly animosity of the whole tribe of the Segobrigæ. They therefore appealed to their countrymen in Ionia to come to their aid. The appeal met with a ready response, a second fleet of colonists arrived. Marseilles was encompassed with walls on the land side, and thus made secure against the assaults of undisciplined barbarians. Such is the graceful legend of the origin of Marseilles. It is only so far historical that it gives us in poetic and romantic form the main facts, that the first colony settled at Marseilles without opposition, that after a while it got embroiled with the Gaulish tribes of the neighbourhood, and that a second Ionian colony came to strengthen the first. But this second colony arrived B.C. 542, fifty-seven years after the first, and was due to the taking of Phocæa by the Medes and Persians. As a Greek mercantile colony Marseilles flourished, and sent forth other colonies, that formed settlements along the Ligurian coast, as a Literal crown from Ampurias and Rhodé in Catalonia to the confines of Etruria. Free, rich, protected by the Roman legions, these Greek settlements cultivated the arts and sciences with ardour, as well as carrying on the trade of the Mediterranean. In the year B.C. 350 two of her most illustrious citizens, Pytheas and Euthymenes, explored the northern and southern Atlantic. Pytheas was charged to make a voyage of discovery towards the north. He coasted Spain, Portugal, Aquitania, Brittany, discovered Great Britain, coasted it, and reached Thule, which some have supposed to be Iceland, but others the Orkney Isles. In a second voyage he penetrated the Baltic by the Cattegat and Sound, and reached the mouths of the Dwina or the Vistula. On his return he composed two works, records of his discoveries, of which precious fragments have been preserved by Pliny and Strabo. Thanks to his labours, Marseilles was the first town whose latitude was determined with some precision. About the same time, Euthymenes was commissioned to make explorations in the opposite direction. He sailed south-west, traced the western coast of Africa, and penetrated the mouths of the Senegal, whence he brought back gold dust. Marseilles was taken, B.C. 49, by Trebonius, the lieutenant of Julius Cæsar. Two naval battles ruined her fleet; and, but for the clemency of Cæsar, the doom of the city would have been sealed. She had enthusiastically taken the part of Pompey, and had resisted Cæsar with unusual determination. But he appreciated the importance of the colony and the mercantile energy of her inhabitants, and he did not lay his hand in retribution too severely upon her. [Illustration: Ancient Massilia.] The old Greek city of Massilia occupied the promontory which is still old Marseilles, clustered on the Butte St. Laurent and Butte des Moulins, where was the Acropolis, with the temples of Apollo and Diana, and the Butte des Cannes. The harbour was the natural fiord, which is now the Vieux port; and the modern splendid street Canebière runs along the site of the old shipbuilding-docks of the Greeks. Here was found a few years ago an ancient galley with keel and ribs of cedar, and coins in her of the date of Julius Cæsar. She is now in the museum. To the south of the old port was a marsh; the rectangular canal and the Bassin du Carénage mark the position of this marsh, now built over--a marsh that reached to the base of the limestone hills that rise to the peak now occupied by Notre Dame de la Garde. The old Greek walls of Massilia ran in a sweep along where is now the Boulevard des Dames, Rue d'Aix, and reached the Vieux port at the Bourse. Considering the importance of the Greek city, its wealth and splendour, it is surprising to find nowhere in Marseilles any ruins of its ancient founders. But Marseilles has traversed every historic period, in the midst of storm; and after a voyage of three thousand years through history, she has been plundered of every fragment of her ancient treasures. In Rome the Colosseum and the tomb of Augustus were robbed of their materials for the construction of houses; and in Marseilles every stone of her ancient temples and acropolis have been appropriated for baser purposes. She has passed through twenty fires, and as many sieges. Taken, sacked, decimated, she has been rebuilt over and over again, always hurriedly, consequently always with material taken where nearest at hand, without respect for her monuments and historic recollections. The disturbed soil of Marseilles is not even a heap of ruins, for every stone found in the soil has been utilised as material for construction. Nevertheless some traces of the Greek founders remain in the beautiful coins of the colony, and in inscriptions that have been picked out of the walls or foundations of mediæval houses. The coins, stamped with classic beauty, are well-known to numismatists. We have space to notice only one or two inscriptions. One is the sign of Athenades, son of Dioscorides, professor of Latin grammar, probably set up two thousand years ago over his door; another is a notice of a young lad, Cleudemos, son of Dionysius, having gained a prize. A curious Greek inscription is found at Carpentras, a colony from Marseilles, that illustrates the manner in which foreign religions got mixed up with those that were proper to the Greeks. "Blessed be Thebe, daughter of Thelhui, laden with oblations for the God Osiris--she never jawed her husband--she was blameless in the eyes of Osiris, and receives his benediction." Truly such a wife deserved that her conduct towards her husband should be commemorated through ages upon ages, and we may thank good fortune that it has preserved to us the name of this incomparable lady. As I am on the subject of Greek inscriptions, I may quote the following touching one, that has been found built into the wall of a house at Aix. "On the banks, beaten by the waves, a youth appeals to thee, voyager! I, beloved by God, am no more subject to the domination of Death. I passed my life sailing on the sea, myself a sailor, like to the youthful gods, the Amyclæans, saviours of sailors, free from the yoke of matrimony. Here in my tomb, which I owe to the piety of my masters, I rest sheltered from all maladies, free from toil, from cares, from pains; whereas in life, all these woes fall on our gross envelopes of matter. The dead, on the other hand, are divided into two classes, of which one returns to the earth, whereas the other rises to join the dance with the celestial choirs; and it is to this latter class that I belong, having had the good fortune to range myself under the banners of the Divinity." Clearly this was the tomb of a young sailor-boy, a native of Aix, who had served in a merchant vessel of Marseilles. There is something graceful and pathetic in the monument. But enough of the past. Now for the present, and in considering the present let us attend to that which feeds and builds up that gross envelope of matter the young Greek sailor had laid aside. At Marseilles I put up at the Hôtel des Négociants, in the Cours Belzunce. Let me observe that I do not see the fun of going to hotels of the first class. Not only is one's expense doubled, but one is thrown among English and American travellers, and sees nothing whatever of the people in whose country one is travelling. Now, here in this commercial inn, I had for dinner the following dishes, which I am quite sure I should not have had in the Grand Hôtel de Noailles, where a dinner is six francs, whereas at my inn I paid just half. I must also observe that the dinners were abundant and excellent, but among the dishes were some that were peculiar to the Provençal cuisine, for instance:-- Bread slices sopped in saffron, with fish, garnished with small crabs, to be chewed up, shell and all. Artichokes, raw, with oil and vinegar. Oranges with pepper and salt. On the table were glass jugs with tar-water, and I observed that over half those present drank their wine diluted with this tar-water. One day in summer I was at table-d'hôte in France when I saw a very fine melon on the table. Said I, in my heart of hearts, "I'll have some of you by-and-by!" But, to my consternation, the melon was taken round with stewed conger eel, and eaten with salt and pepper. I could not summon up courage to try the mixture, and the whole melon was consumed before the next course came on. I was at Marseilles when M. Carnot, the President of the Republic visited it, April 16th. Great efforts were made to give him a splendid reception. Venetian masts were set up, strings of fairy lamps were suspended between them, and tricolours were hung as banners to the masts, or grouped together in trophies. But alas! No sooner were all preparations made, than a furious gale broke over the coast, the venetian masts swayed in the wind and were upset or thrown out of the perpendicular, the little lamps jingled against each other and were broken, such as were not shivered were filled with rain, the banners were lashed with the broken wires and torn to shreds, and when M. Carnot arrived, in a pouring rain, it was amidst a very wreckage of festival preparations, and he was received by a crowd of umbrellas. Under such circumstances enthusiasm was damped and ejaculations of welcome were muffled. The President occupied an open landau, and drove along the boulevards without umbrella or waterproof, bowing to right and left in a slashing rain. A deputation of flower women presented him with a sodden bouquet, by the hand of a dripping little girl in white that clung to her as a bathing gown. The President insisted on the maid being lifted to him into the carriage, where he hugged and kissed her, whilst the moisture ran out of her garments like a squeezed sponge, and this demonstration provoked some damp cheers. I bought Henri Rochefort's paper next day, to see what his correspondent had to say about the visit. Some passages from it are too racy not to be quoted. "Il faisait un temps à ne pas mettre un ministre dehors, lorsque le train présidentiel est arrivé en gare, et le défilé à la détrempe était pitieux à voir dans _le gargouillement et la transsudation de ce dégorgement cataractal_. Sadi Carnot avait donné l'ordre de laisser son landau découvert, afin de recevoir les ovations enthousiastes des parapluies. "Bref, la Présidence est arrivée à la préfecture _trempée comme une soupe à l'oignon et fortement dessalée_." Verily there is no tongue like the French for saying nasty things in a nasty way. I do not know whether it is fair for one to pass an opinion on a man from a sight of his face overrun with rain-water, and with his nose acting like a shoot from a roof; but certainly the impression produced on me by M. Sadi Carnot was that his features were wooden, and that he was but a very ordinary man--intellectually. I pass this opinion with hesitation. When dried possibly the sparks of genius may be discovered and may flare up; they were all but extinguished in the downpour when I saw him. That cheerful king, Réné of Anjou and Provence, paid a visit to Marseilles in 1437, and made his royal entry on Sunday, December 15th. He was delighted with the reception accorded him, and in a gush of kindly feeling promised to make Marseilles his headquarters. But he forgot his promise, or circumstances were against his keeping it. He never revisited Marseilles. On January 22, 1516, Francis I. entered the town and was received by children carrying banners and garlands, and troupes of young girls in white, then followed archers, arquebusiers, the consuls, and the clergy bearing the relics of S. Lazarus and S. Victor. A theatre was erected at every street corner, on which were presented to his sight incidents from the life of S. Louis. The procession ended with a battle of oranges and lemons, in which the king gave and received a good many blows on the head with the golden fruit. At the head of the Allées des Capucins, a fine street planted with trees and with a handsome fountain in the place where the Allées de Meilhan unites with it, is a really fine modern Gothic church with twin west spires of open tracery. They are perhaps too thin, a usual fault with modern work, but otherwise the church is very good and stately. It is as fine within as without, but sorely disfigured by the coloured glass, which is garish. French painted glass is very bad. It is precisely the sort of stuff that was turned out by English glass-painters about thirty years ago, the colours crude and distressing to the eye--windows that our more cultured taste cannot now endure. But the French artists have not advanced, the windows put in to-day are as detestable as those they put in at the beginning of the revival. Unfortunately, every cathedral is crowded through the length and breadth of France with this abominable stuff, that is only tolerable in a modern tasteless church, vulgar in its architecture and insipid in its sculpture, but is painfully out of place in a venerable minster. The city of Marseilles has been lucky in securing a good architect for the Church of S. Vincent de Paul, but in another architectural venture Marseilles has been unfortunate. She was resolved to have a cathedral, and she gave the designing of it to a man void of taste, who has built a hideous erection on the quay in what he is pleased to call Byzantine style. I am quite sure any Byzantine architect would cheerfully have jumped into the Bosphorus rather than disfigure a city with such a structure as Notre Dame. The Germans have a saying that the higher a monkey climbs the more he exposes his monkeyishness; and unfortunately this architect has been allowed to climb very high. He was given the peak of Notre Dame de la Garde, that towers over Marseilles, on which to erect a church. The site is exceptionally good, one on which a man of ordinary genius would have done something, could hardly have failed to have done something, that would have been picturesque. But such is the perversity of this unfortunate man's talent that he has erected a structure on the limestone crag, of almost miraculous hideousness. It is also in so-called Byzantine architecture. There is a dish-cover which serves as a dome, and a tower which would be comical if it were not irritating. It resembles the handle of a renaissance knife or fork stuck into a sheath and standing upright with a figure at top. We have made a blunder at South Kensington in setting side by side a depressed dome--the Albert Hall, and the acute pinnacle of the Albert Memorial; but a road runs between them, and it is possible to shut one eye and see one of these two structures apart from the other. But in Notre Dame de la Garde the two are combined in one building, and tease the eye from every point in Marseilles. [Illustration: Abbey of S. Victor, Marseilles] I ascended the steep crag to the church and found it full of a devout congregation. The service was the "Salut," and the Host was being elevated to the strains of "The Last Rose of Summer," on the hautbois stop of the organ. The view from the platform of the church, of Marseilles, the coast, the blue Mediterranean and the islands is beautiful. Below Notre Dame de la Garde, and above the old port, stands the ancient Abbey of S. Victor; this abbey, of which the church alone remains, occupies a site where the successive generations of Massaliots buried their dead from the earliest pagan times, and here the first Christians formed catacombs of which some traces remain under the church, subterranean passages bearing some resemblance to those in the outskirts of Rome. The abbey itself was founded by Cassian, in the fourth century, over these galleries containing the bones of the first Christians, but his monastery was wrecked by the Saracens four hundred years later, and it was rebuilt in the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. What remains of this famous Abbey of S. Victor has rather the appearance of a fortress than a church; the walls and ramparts date from 1350, and were the work of William de Grimoard, who was prior of the monastery before he was elevated to be pope under the title of Urban V. The heavy, clumsy pile is a type of the architecture, at once military and ecclesiastical, that characterises most of the churches along the coast. Externally the venerable church is devoid of beauty. No attempt at decoration has been made. It seems a shapeless pile of towers and machicolated and battlemented curtains, falling into almost complete ruin. But on passing through the single entrance, one finds oneself in a well-proportioned church of nave and side aisles, a south chapel, and an apse. Each buttress of the apse is battlemented outside and forms a turret, and two strong towers are adapted internally to serve as a transept and a porch. Marseilles claims to have had as its first apostle Lazarus, whom Christ raised from the dead. The foundation of this myth is that in the fourth century it perhaps had a prelate of the name of Lazarus, though the earliest known bishop was Orestius, A.D. 314. The fact is that the existence of S. Lazarus at Marseilles was unsuspected till the eleventh century. When Cassian founded his abbey he dedicated it to S. Victor. If he had known anything about Lazarus, almost certainly he would have dedicated the church to him; he erected moreover, two other chapels, one to SS. Peter and Paul, the other to the Blessed Virgin and S. John the Baptist. When, in 1010, Benedict IX. enumerates the glories of the abbey restored after the destruction by the Saracens, he does not make the most transient allusion to S. Lazarus. However, Benedict IX., in 1040, does mention the passion of this Lazarus raised from the dead by Christ, as one of the causes why the abbey was venerable. His relics were said to have been transported thence to Athens, to preserve them from the Saracens. We shall learn more about this fable when we come to the Camargue. CHAPTER V. THE CRAU. The Basin of Berre--A neglected harbour--The diluvium--Formation of the Crau--The two Craus--Canal of Craponne--Climate of the Crau--The Bise and Mistral--Force of the wind--Cypresses--A vision of kobolds. On leaving Marseilles by train for Arles, the line cuts through the limestone ridge of the Estaque, and the traveller passes from the basin of Marseilles into the much more extensive basin of Berre, surrounded by hills on all sides, a wide bowl like a volcanic crater, with the great inland salt lake of the Etang de Berre occupying its depths. This is a great natural harbour, seven times the size of the port of Toulon, and varying in depth from 28 to 32 feet; it is perfectly sheltered from every wind, and entire fleets might anchor there in security, not only out of reach, but out of sight of an enemy, for the chain of l'Estaque intervenes between it and the sea. It would seem as though Nature herself had designed Berre as a safe harbour for the merchant vessels that visit the south coast of France. It is almost inconceivable how this sheet of water, communicating with the sea by the channel of Martignes, can have been neglected; how it is that its still blue waters are not crowded with ships, and its smiling shores not studded with a chain of industrial and populous towns. "The neglect of this little inland sea as a port of refuge," says M. Elisée Reclus, "is an economic scandal. Whilst on dangerous coasts harbours are constructed at vast expense, here we have one that is perfect, and which has been neglected for fifteen centuries." But though the Romans or Greeks had a station here, they did not utilise the lagoon. At S. Chamas are remains of the masters of the ancient world, but no evidence that they had there a naval station. The line cuts again through the lip of the basin, and we are in the Crau. At a remote period, but, nevertheless, in one geologically modern, the vast floods of the diluvial age that flowed from the Alps brought down incredible quantities of rolled stones, the detritus of the Alps. This filled up a great bay now occupied by the mouths of the Rhone, and spread in a triangle from Avignon as the apex, to Cette in the west, and Fos in the east. This rubble, washed down from the Alps, forms the substratum of the immense plain that inclines at a very slight angle into the Mediterranean, and extends for a considerable distance below the sea. Not only did the Rhone bring down these boulders, but also the Durance, which enters the Rhone above Arles, and formed between the chain of Les Alpines and the Luberon another triangular plain of rolled stones, with the apex at Cavaillon and the base between Tarascon and Avignon. But the Durance did more. There is a break in the chain on the south, between the limestone Alpines and the sandstone Trévaresse; and the brimming Durance, unable to discharge all her water, choked with rubble, into the Rhone, burst through the open door or natural waste-pipe, by Salon, and carried a portion of her pebbles into the sea directly, without asking her sister the Rhone to help her. Now the two great plains formed by the delta of the Rhone, and that of the Durance into the Rhone, are called the great and little Craus. They were known to the ancients, and puzzled them not a little. Strabo says of the Great Crau: "Between Marseilles and the mouth of the Rhone, at about a hundred stadia from the sea, is a plain, circular in form, and a hundred stadia in diameter, to which a singular event obtained for it the name of the Field of Pebbles. It is, in fact, covered with pebbles, as big as the fist, among which grows some grass in sufficient abundance to pasture herds of oxen." Then we are given the legend that accounts for it. Here Hercules fought against the Ligurians, when the son of Jove, having exhausted his arrows, was supplied with artillery by a discharge of stones from the sky, showered on his enemies by Jupiter. This desert, a little Sahara in Europe, occupies 30,000 acres. "It is composed entirely of shingle," says Arthur Young, "being so uniform a mass of round stones, some to the size of a man's head, but of all sizes less, that the newly thrown up shingle of a seashore is hardly less free from soil; beneath these surface-stones is not so much a sand as a cemented rubble, with a small admixture of loam. Vegetation is rare and miserable, some of the absinthium and lavender so low and poor as scarcely to be recognised, and two or three miserable grasses, with _Centaurea calycitropes_ and _solstitialis_, were the principal plants I could find." A mineralogical examination of the rolled stones presents peculiar interest. In the Little Crau, the mouth of the Durance, are found prodigious numbers of green and crystalline rocks, granite and variolite brought down from the Alps of Briançon, but nine-tenths of the pebbles of the Great Crau are white quartz brought from the great chain of the Alps, together with mica-slate and calcareous stones, and only a few of the variolites of Mont Genèvre. One may say that the Great Crau is a complete mineralogical collection of all the rocks that form the chain of the Alps, whence flow the Rhone and its tributaries. The aspect of the Crau is infinitely desolate, but it is no longer as barren as it was formerly. It is in fact, undergoing gradual but sure transformation. This is due to a gentleman of Provence, named Adam de Craponne, born in 1525 at Salon, who conceived the idea of bringing some of the waters of the Durance through the gap where some of its overspill had flowed in the diluvial epoch, by a canal, into the Great Crau, so that it might deposit its rich alluvium over this desert of stones. He spent his life and his entire fortune in carrying out his scheme, and it is due to this that year by year the barren desert shrinks, and cultivation advances. There are to-day other canals, those of Les Alpines, of Langlade, and d'Istres, besides that of Craponne that assist in fertilising the waste. Wherever the water reaches, the soil is covered with trees, with pasture-land, with fields of corn; and in another century probably the sterility of the Crau will have been completely conquered. In its present condition, the Crau may be divided into two parts, that which is watered, and which has been converted into a garden, and that which is not as yet reached by the rich loamy waters of the Durance, and is therefore parched and desolate, overrun by herds of sheep and cattle, driven down in winter from the Alps, when a certain amount of herbage is found on the desert, which in summer is utterly dry and barren. These migrations date back to a remote epoch, for they are mentioned by Pliny. Previous to the construction of the canal by Craponne, who began it in 1554, the desert reached to Arles; the whole of the plain south of the chain of the Alpines was either marsh lagoon, or a waste of stones, where now grow and luxuriate mulberries, olives, almond trees and vines. The canal of Craponne was carried by the originator for thirty-three miles, sending out branches at Salon, Eyguières, and elsewhere. In winter the meadows are green as those of Devon in spring, and the fields yield heavy crops. Indeed, the Durance acts to this region in the same way as does the Nile to Egypt. "The meadows I viewed," says Young, "are among the most extraordinary spectacles the world can afford in respect to the amazing contrast between the soil in its natural and in its watered state, covered richly and luxuriantly with clover, chicory, rib-grass, and _Avena elatior_." The climate of the Crau presents contrasts most extreme. In winter the thermometer falls and remains below zero for many nights in succession, and the glacial _bise_ sweeps over the face of the desert, curdling the blood; the flocks and herds seek shelter from this blast behind the long walls of dry stones, which sometimes the violence of the wind throws down upon them. During the summer the phenomenon of the mirage is almost continuous. The bed of air in contact with the surface of stones scorched by the blazing sun becomes rarified and dilated, so that the horizon appears to be fringed on all sides with lakes of rippling water, most deceptive and tantalising to the eye of the traveller. The troops of wandering bulls and wild horses, flights of rose-coloured flamingoes, of partridges and wild ducks give this region a pronounced oriental physiognomy, and however painful it may be at such a time to traverse this burning plain, it affords a curious picture of the Sahara in miniature nowhere else to be seen in Europe. The great scourge of the Crau is the north-west wind, the _bise_, the black boreas of the ancients, so violent as to roll over the pebbles, and to blow away the roofs of houses, and tear up trees by the roots. In fact, the Crau may be regarded as the Home of the Winds. It is easy to explain the origin of these furious gales, _bise_ and _mistral_. The low sandy regions at the mouth of the Rhone, denuded of all vegetation, and the great stony plain of the Crau, heated by the direct rays of the sun, rarify the air over the surface of the soil, and this rises, to be at once replaced by the cold air from the Alps and Cevennes; the air off the snow pours down with headlong violence to occupy the vacuum formed by the heated ascending column of air off the plain, sweeping the valley of the Rhone, and reaching its maximum of intensity between Avignon and the sea, where it meets, and is blunted in its force by the equable atmosphere that covers the surface of the Mediterranean. The violence of the wind is consequently due to the difference of temperature between the hot air of the plain and the cold air of the mountain. An old saying was to this effect:-- "Parlement, Mistral et Durance Sont les trois fléaux de Provence." Parlement exists no longer, or rather is expanded into a National Assembly that is a discredit to all France, and not Provence alone; the Durance has become, thanks to Adam de Craponne, an agent of fertilisation and wealth. But the _mistral_ (_magistral_, the master-wind) remains, and still scourges the delta of the Rhone. In 1845 it carried away the suspension bridge between Beaucaire and Tarascon; the passage of the Rhone is often rendered impossible for days, through its violence. It has been found necessary to plant rows of cypress on each side of the line that crosses the Crau, to break the force of the wind upon the trains. Indeed, throughout the district, the fields will, in many places, be found walled up on all sides by plantations of cypresses from thirty to fifty feet high, as screens against this terrible blast, to protect the crops from being literally blown out of the ground. When I was a child of five years my father's carriage with post horses was crossing the Crau. It was in summer. I sat on the box with my father and looked at the postilions. Presently I saw a number of little figures of men with peaked caps running about the horses and making attempts to scramble up them. I said something about what I saw, whereupon my father stopped the carriage and put me inside with my mother. The heat of the sun on my head, he concluded, had produced these illusions. For some time I continued to see these dwarfs running among the pebbles of the Crau, jumping over tufts of grass, or careering along the road by the carriage side, making faces at me. But gradually their number decreased, and I failed finally to see any more. One June day in the year 1884, one of my boys, then aged eight, was picking gooseberries in the fruit garden at home, when, standing between the bushes, he saw a little man of his own height, with a brown peaked cap, a red jacket, and green breeches. He had black hair and whiskers and beard. He looked angrily at the boy and said something. The child was frightened, ran indoors and told his elder brother and sister. They brought him to me, and his elder brother repeated the story, but purposely varied the description of the apparition, so as to see whether the lad held to the same account, but the child at once corrected him, and told me his story, which his brother informed me agreed exactly with what in his alarm, he had first told. The little boy was looking white, and frightened. Again a case of sun on the head. Now for another. A lady whom I know very well indeed, and who never deviated from the truth in her life--save when she swore at the altar to honour and obey me--was walking one day, when a girl of thirteen, beside a quickset hedge; her brother was on the other side. I believe they were looking for birds' nests. All at once she saw a little man dressed entirely in green, with jacket, breeches, and high peaked hat, seated in the hedge, staring at her. She was paralysed with terror for a moment, then recovering herself, she called to her brother to come round and see the little green man. When he arrived the dwarf had disappeared. Now these are funny stories, and are to be explained by the fact that the sun was hot on the head. But it does not strike me that the explanation is wholly satisfactory. _Why_ should the sun on the head superinduce visions of kobolds? Is it because other people have suffered from a hot sun, and that the hot sun reproduces year after year the same phenomenon, that the fable of little men, pixies, gnomes, brownies, fairies, leprechauns is to be found everywhere? Or--is it possible that there is such a little creation only visible to man when he is subject to certain influences? Sir Charles Isham, of Lamport, has collected a good deal of evidence of a similar nature. I do not venture to express an opinion one way or another. I can remember still, with vividness, the impression produced on me by what I saw that hot day on the Crau, when but a child of five years; but I cannot for the life of me explain it satisfactorily to myself. CHAPTER VI. LES ALYSCAMPS. Difficulty of finding one's way about in Arles--The two inns--The _mistral_--The charm of Arles is in the past--A dead city--Situation of Arles on a nodule of limestone--The Elysian Fields--A burial-place for the submerged neighbourhood--The Alyscamp now in process of destruction--Expropriation of ancient tombs--Avenue of tombs--Old church of S. Honoré--S. Trophimus--S. Virgilius--Augustine, apostle of the English, consecrated by him--The Flying Dutchman--Tomb of Ælia--Of Julia Tyranna--Her musical instruments--Monument of Calpurnia--Her probable story--Mathematical _versus_ classic studies--Tombs of _utriculares_--Christian sarcophagi--Probably older than the date usually attributed to them--A French author on the wreckage of the Elysian Fields. I do not know a more perplexing place anywhere to find one's way in and out of than Arles. During a fortnight spent there I never could hit my inn aright once on coming from the railway station. The place is like a labyrinth; but one of those labyrinths that our forefathers delighted to construct of pleached alleys of box or lime were always to be traversed when you possessed the key. There is no key, no principle whatever upon which Arles has been built. Every public edifice seems to be dodging round the corner, like Chevy Slyme, hiding from some other public edifice with which it is on dubious terms, or not quite on social equality, and wishes to avoid the difficulties of an encounter. Arles streets are about the worst paved in Europe. They are floored with the cobble-stones rolled down by the diluvium, and torture the feet that walk over them and rick the ankles. There are two melancholy inns in the Place du Forum, and it is hard to choose between them, probably it does not much matter. I was given a bed-chamber in one where neither the door nor the window would shut, and where there were besides two locked doors that did not fit, and as the _mistral_ was blowing, my hours in that room were spent in a swirl of draughts. Moreover, an old party with bronchitis was in the adjoining room, also suffering from the draughts, and in despair of recovering his health in such a situation. I complained, and was given another room where the draughts were the same, but I was without my coughing and hawking neighbour. No wonder that I was charged half a franc per night for my candle. It guttered itself in no time into the tray of the candlestick, as it was blown upon from four distinct directions simultaneously. Arles--when not in a _mistral_--is charming, but the charm is in the past. There one must be a _laudator temporis acti_, for the present is wholly wretched and bad. The fact is, Arles had a glorious past, from which it has been falling throughout the Middle Ages till it reached a point approaching extinction, and it has not as yet realised that better days are shining before it, and that there is a future to which it may look up. So depressed did Arles become some time ago, that its only lively trade was in old coffins. It had a vast cemetery outside its walls, crammed with memorials of the dead of all ages; and as the curators of the museums of Paris, Marseilles, Avignon, Aix, &c., thirsted after sarcophagi, the mournful Arelois went to their necropolis, dug up as many as were wanted, and forwarded coffins to those who had made requisition for them. Arles is planted upon a nodule of limestone rock that rises out of the diluvium of rolled stones. In former times it was almost the sole dry spot to be found for miles round, and as the dead of Pagan and Christian times alike seem to have objected to wet beds, their bodies were transported from all the country round to the plateau east of Arles and there entombed. This plateau was called the Elysian Fields, now Alyscamp, and is so thick with tombs that you walk over them as you follow the road that runs along the plateau. You see the grass at the side dead in one place, there is a tomb there; you see a bit of white marble cropping up in another, that is a tomb. You see a great stack of stones heaped up by the side of a railway cutting, they are all tombs. You look at the cutting itself, and see that to a certain depth it is honeycombed with tombs, some cut through, some sticking out. In every farmyard the pigs eat out of old sarcophagi. The fountains squirt into them, the bacon is cured in them. The farrier dips his hot iron into a sarcophagus. In the churches the altars are made of them. The foundations of the houses are laid in them. The very air seems to be pervaded with the dust of the dead, and this dust lies heavy on the spirits and energies of the inhabitants. But what an age we live in! Utilitarian and disrespectful of the past! The other day a cargo of mummied cat-deities arrived at Liverpool and was sold for manure. At Arles, the Paris, Lyons and Mediterranean Railway Company has bought up the Elysian Fields to convert them into a factory for their engines. The company are excavating Les Alyscamp for this purpose, throwing about the sarcophagi, Pagan or Christian, or using them for building materials--and sawn in half they make decent quoins for a brickshed--and strewing the dust of the dead of ages under the wheels of the locomotives. One undesecrated, unrifled headland remains above the factories, on which is a venerable but abandoned church. The company would grub that up too, but the proprietor will not sell, as he believes the tradition that an incalculable treasure is hidden somewhere among these tombs. But the Arelois not only expropriate the tombs of their forefathers, they have given away or sold other things as well. On the Alyscamp is the venerable church of S. Honoré, half ruinous, in which, underground in the crypt is the ancient baptistery that had served the first Christians when the church was young. It was furnished with a large porphyry circular vessel for immersing adults. Louis XIV. saw it, coveted it for some water-works, and got the Arelois to give it him. Among the ruins of the theatre was found a Venus of Greek workmanship and of Parian marble. They sent it away also; it is in Paris. The old church of S. Honoré is now reached by a long avenue of poplars lined with Pagan Roman tombs. The nave of the church is in ruins, but the choir is in tolerable condition, and is the most interesting portion. It consists in fact of an early Romanesque basilica with three aisles ending in three apses. The pillars separating nave from aisles, three on each side, are great drums ten feet in diameter. The later, ruinous nave contains the reputed chapel of S. Trophimus, apostle of Arles. When the fourteenth century church was added, this little chapel was left standing within, and though now crumbling, it is comparatively watertight. It has, however, undergone recasing in Renaissance times, and to understand its structure the chapel must be entered. It is then seen to have been an open porch of four semicircular arches, and may possibly have been erected over the tomb of S. Trophimus. The only ornament about it is a moulding, which may give its date. S. Trophimus, reputed apostle of Aix, is now said to have been that Asiatic who was a companion of S. Paul mentioned in Acts xx. 4, xxi. 27-29, and 2 Tim. iv. 12, 20. But the very early diptychs of the church of Arles mention S. Dionysius as the first prelate, and the cathedral was built in 625 by S. Virgilius, and dedicated to S. Stephen. It did not take the title of S. Trophimus till the twelfth century, when the relics of this saint were brought to it from the little chapel just described. The exact date was 1152; the tradition of S. Trophimus having been one of the disciples of Christ and companion of S. Paul arose about this time. Not a trace of such a tradition appears in the Provençal poem composed by an eye-witness of the translation of the relics. There was, no doubt, a bishop of this name at Arles, and probably early, but the first whose name is authenticated is Martianus, who followed the Novatian heresy in 254. Gregory of Tours--and his testimony is confirmed by a MS. of the fifth century--says that S. Trophimus was sent into Gaul in the consulship of Decius and Gratus, i.e., 250, and that he was the first bishop of Arles, and Gregory of Tours is the earliest and most reliable authority that we have on the beginnings of the Christian church in Gaul. The church of S. Honoré was built by S. Virgilius, Archbishop of Arles A.D. 588-618, and the baptistery dates from his time. According to the legend, whilst he was erecting the basilica, the people toiled ineffectually to move the pillars to their destined place. At last they sent word to S. Virgil that the truck was fast, and the pillars could neither be taken on nor carried back. Then Virgil hurried to the spot, and saw a little devil, like a negro boy, sitting under the truck, obstructing its progress. Virgil drove him away, whereupon the columns were easily moved. He was buried in this church, but I do not fancy his tomb is known. A strange story is told of him, how one night, as he was pacing the walls of Arles, or possibly walking in the Alyscamp, he saw a mysterious ship come sailing over the meres. In the starlight he discerned forms of sailors. The ship drew up near where he stood, and a voice called to him: "Reverend father, we know who thou art. Now we are bound for Jerusalem, and are here to ask thee to come on board with us." "No, thank you," answered Virgilius, "not till you have shown me who you are." Then he made the sign of the cross, and suddenly the ship resolved itself into a drift of fog that rolled away before the wind along the surface of the mere. This is the _second_ version of the world-wide-known myth of the Flying Dutchman. The earliest form comes to us in the legend of S. Adrian, a martyr in Asia Minor. As his widow Basilissa was sailing over the Black Sea with his body, to bury it at Byzantium, a phantom ship passed by, which also vanished when adjured in the sacred name. What is, to us English, of interest in connection with S. Virgil of Arles is, that it was he who consecrated Augustine for his mission to Kent, at the command of Gregory the Great. So here, probably, in this ruinous, silent old church, our apostle of the English knelt and received his commission to go and preach the Gospel to us Angles. This same Virgil also built the cathedral, and dedicated it to S. Stephen. But of his work there not a trace remains. Another bishop of Arles of some note was Regulus, who when preaching one day was so troubled by the noise made by the frogs, that he interrupted his sermon to order them to be silent, and--they obeyed. In a side chapel of the old church of S. Honoratus is a sarcophagus that contains the skull and bones and dust of a young girl. The coffin is of lead, and this perhaps accounts for the preservation. Along with it were found the gold ear-rings and other trinkets. On the ear-rings a cross, but the inscription on the tomb hardly leads one to believe the girl was a Christian. She was aged seventeen years, eight months, and eighteen days, when she died. Her name was Ælia. Here is the inscription in the lead, translated:-- ÆLIA, DAUGHTER OF ÆLIA. Thou who can'st read these lines, read a sad mishap, and learn our plaintive lay. Many call that a sarcophagus which contains bones, But this has become the home of unhallowed bees. [1] Shame it should be so! Here lies a damsel of exceeding beauty. There's more than grief in this: a dearly loved wife has been snatched away. She lived a virgin so long as Nature willed. When she became a bride, the marriage vows were a joy to her parents. She lived seventeen years, eight months, and eighteen days. Happy the father who lived not to see such sorrow. The wound rankles in the bosom of her mother, her precious jewel, And her father, taken away in old age, still holds her clasped to his heart. [Footnote 1: The ancients thought that bees were bred of dead bodies. See Virgil, Georgics. iv. 281-5.] Here is the original with conjectural restorations. Would not old Dr. Keates have whipped the Eton boy who wrote such barbarous Latin verses! But it must be remembered the Arles folk were Græeco-Gallic, and not masters of Latin. Some of the words are run together. It runs thus-- ÆLIA ÆLIÆ Littera.quinosti.lege.casum.et.d(_ice querelam_.) Multi.sarcophagum.dicunt.quod.con(_tinet ossa_:) Set.conclusa.decens.apibus.domus.ist(_a profanis_:) Onefas.indignum.jacet.hic.præclara(_puella_.) Hoc.plusquam.dolor.est.rapta.est.s(_uavissima conjux_.) Pervixit.virgo.vbi.jam.natura.placebat. Vixit.enim.ann.xvii.et.menses viii.diesque xviii. O.felice.patrem.qui.non.vidit.tale.dolorem. Hoeret.et.in fixo.pectore.volnus.dionysyadi matri. Et junctam.secum.geron.pater.tenet.ipse.puellam. This is an exact copy. I am not responsible for the grammatical blunders, they were made clearly by the sculptor of the inscription, who did not understand what he cut. Among the tombs extracted from the Alyscamp and now in the Museum of Arles, is another of a girl, and a very accomplished young lady she must have been; her name was Julia, and she was the daughter of Lucius Tyrannus. She died at the age of twenty; the inscription on her tomb records that in her morals and in her schooling she was a pattern to all other girls. [Illustration: Musical instruments from the tomb of Julia.] What is particularly interesting about this monument is that it gives illustrations of all the musical instruments she was able to play, and it affords us I believe, the earliest known example of the organ. [1] But what is even more curious is that on it is represented a guitar, very much the same as is now manufactured. [Footnote 1: Nero on the night when he died was going to try a water-organ, when the news of the revolt of Galba and the defection of the troops reached him. I am puzzled about this organ on the tomb of Julia Tyranna. Sir George Grove, in his 'Dictionary of Music,' gives an illustration of this same organ copied from Dom. Bedos' 'L'Art du Facteur d'Orgues,' Paris, 1766. This represents two slaves crouched and blowing into the organ bellows. I could not see these figures. I made my sketch carefully, and can hardly suppose the figures have been chipped away since the monument was placed in the museum.] The instruments she could play were the organ, the guitar, the syrinx or panpipe, and the lyre, which she struck not with her fingers, but a plectrum represented beside it. Observe, between the lyre and the banjo her little satchel of music-books, and below the syrinx a lamb and palm. This is the only sign on the monument that could in the least lead to a supposition that Julia Tyranna was Christian. The inscription bears no trace of Christianity. [Illustration: Calpurnia's monument.] Another interesting monument found there is that to Calpurnia, daughter of Caius Marius. Probably she died from the exposure and roughness of life camping out, when the barbarian hordes rolled west, and all the inhabitants of the towns were obliged to fly before them to the hills. I shall in a future chapter tell the story of Caius Marius and his great victory at Pourrières over the Teutons, having first thrashed the Ambrons near Aix. Suffice it now to note that here is the tombstone of his poor little daughter. I must, however, state that the genuineness of this inscription has been called in question. It is also worthy of notice how that the victory of Marius and delivery from the barbarians impressed the people of the neighbourhood. In the museum the name of Marius occurs on other monuments. The name of Marius is even now a popular Christian name in Provence. But to return to Calpurnia. The place where the Arles inhabitants fled from the Teutons was the limestone range of Les Alpines, almost an island, so surrounded was it by lagoons and marshes. Looking at Calpurnia's monument I fell into a dream, and saw her whole story unfolded before me. Caius Marius was a rough-mannered man, of peasant origin, but he had a wife Julia, of patrician rank, and who, I have not a shadow of doubt, flourished her noble origin before him, and talked very big of her grand relations. When little missie was born: "I'll have none of your plebeian names, if you please, for my baby," said Julia; "you will please note that my family derives from the immortal gods. I shall call the child Calpurnia." [1] Madame Julia was a good wife, and she followed her rough husband everywhere. At the beginning of windy March, tidings came that the Teutons and Ambrons were on the move. In April all the women and children of Arles, Glanum, Ernaginum, and Cabelio were clustered on the heights of Les Alpines, in extemporised cabins or in some of the prehistoric habitations they found scooped out of the limestone. Down came the rains. A gale and driving out-pour then as to-day, when M. Carnot comes into Provence. The roofs of the cabins let in water, the sides of the caves ran down with moisture. Then the wind changed, the sun shone out hot, but the _mistral_ tore over the country cold and sharp as a double-edged sword. Poor Calpurnia could not stand it. She shivered and coughed, lost appetite and spirits. Next came the tidings of the battle at Les Milles, and a couple of days later of the extermination of the enemy at Pourrières. Now the refugees might in safety descend from their rocky refuges, and return to their homes. [Footnote 1: See Appendix A, on this monument and the question of its genuineness; as well as for some other inscriptions in the Arles Museum.] Then Julia went with the sick girl to Arles. Meantime Marius on the battlefield had received the ovation of his officers and soldiers, and the salutations of the delegates from the senate proclaiming him consul. But at the same time there appeared--I doubt not, though Plutarch does not say so--a slave with a note from Julia:-- "I am sorry to tell you that Calpurnia is very unwell. That horrible _mistral_ froze her, and she has done little else than cough night and day since. I have given her snail broth, but it has not relieved her much, and she is now spitting blood. Bother these Teutons, it is all their work. I always told you that you made a mistake in letting them come into Provence, and cross the Rhone. However, you were ever pigheaded, and now it serves you right. You will lose Calpurnia, who is the apple of your eye. Now if you had listened to me, etc., etc. "Salve." But there was something further to complicate matters, and superinduce sickness in a delicate girl. To escape to the hills the good people of Arles could not follow a road, for the whole district between them and the range of Les Alpines was covered with one vast lagoon. They could not travel in boats, for the lagoon was shallow, so they went on rafts supported on inflated skins, about which I shall have something to say presently. So Calpurnia, creeping close to her mother, wrapped in her _pallium_, was exposed for hours on a raft at the beginning of April to the cold winds, and to the water oozing up between the joints of the raft. The whole story works out like an equation. I fancy--but am not sure--a quadratic equation, somehow thus:-- As I, in a 19th cent. hotel, and in Jäger underclothing: Calpurnia, on a raft and in a pre-historic cave:: a cold in the head I got: x x X self in hotel and Jäger costume = Calpurnia on a raft and in a cave X cold in the head. x = pthysis. I think this is right. I cannot be sure; and I cannot be sure, though I was educated to be a mathematician by a senior wrangler. The facts were these. My dear father thought, and thought perhaps justly, that a classical education was but a throwing back of the current of the mind into the past, whereas a mathematical education directed it to the future, and was the sole course which would prove Pactolean. So I was cut down in my classical studies, and drawn out in those which were mathematical. Likewise I was sent the year before entering the university to a senior wrangler to ripen me. I then learned that what as a boy I was wont to call the Rule of Three was more properly termed equations, and that equations might be complicated to the highest limits of muddledom, and when so complicated were termed quadratics. After a course of equations that flattened out my head like the Camargue, I was thrust into what are called surds, a sort of wood of errors, in which one spends hours in hewing one's way to get at nothing of the slightest profit to man or beast; finally, I believe my good tutor, now a bishop, got tired of me. I was stupefied by surds; and I entered the university. Now, after thirty-seven years, I find that every ode of Horace, every chapter of Cæsar, every line of Virgil I learned at school lies as a sprig of lavender in the folds of my memory--but I cannot even set and work out a common equation, or add up a sum in compound addition correctly. I beg the pardon of the reader for this digression. I have made it because I think, should my reader be a father, this experience of mine may be of profit to him. To return to the monuments of the Elysian Fields. A considerable number have been found here, also at Nimes, S. Gabriel, and Cavaillon, which are the memorials of _utriculares_. [1] There were guilds of these men. They appointed noble Romans as their patrons, and these patrons on their tombstones made mention of the fact. But what were these _utriculares_? They were raftsmen who carried on trade over the lagoons, sustaining their flat vessels upon distended skins. The lagoons were so shallow that no vessel of deep draught could travel over them, and all the merchandise of central Gaul for the Mediterranean--the tin from Britain for instance--and all the goods of the Mediterranean for Gaul, had to be transhipped at Arles from the river boats, unable to cross the bar, on to these barges sustained on inflated skins that conveyed them to Fos, at the mouth of the lagoons, where they were again shipped for the sea voyage. After Marius had cut a canal, matters were better. Ships could come up through the lagoons to Arles, but none at any time of deep draught, and the raftsmen, the _utriculares_, carried on their trade till the Middle Ages, when the mouths of the lagoons became choked, and the lagoons themselves turned into noxious morasses. Here is one of their monuments, in the museum of Arles:-- "To the manes. To Marcus Junius Messianus, of the guild of the utriculares of Arles, four times president of this corpora Junia Valeria raised this monument to him, her son, who died aged twenty-eight years, five months, and ten days." Here is another, found near Lyons:-- "To the manes and eternal repose of Caius Victorinus ... urix, also called Quiguro, citizen of Lyons, one of the corporation of utriculares there, who lived twenty-eight years,... months and five days, without giving offence to anyone. His mother, Castorina, raised this to the memory of her sole and very dear boy." The navigation on distended skins is now everywhere extinct except on the Euphrates. On some of the Nineveh sculptures may be seen men swimming across rivers sustained on these primitive air-vessels. [Footnote 1: See Appendix C.] In the museum at Arles are numerous sculptured Christian sarcophagi, with groups of the Raising of Lazarus, the Multiplication of Loaves, the Striking of the Rock by Moses, the Opening of the Eyes of the Blind, &c. These are attributed to the fourth and fifth centuries. For myself I am by no means satisfied that the Christian sarcophagi of rich and beautiful sculpture are as late as the dates generally given to them. I judge by the fashion of the hair worn by the ladies. Now there is a sarcophagus at Arles with the twelve apostles on it, six on each side of Christ, and a portrait of the deceased. This is set down to be a tomb of the fifth century, and yet the lady wears her hair in precisely the fashion, and it was a peculiar one, of the Faustinas, the wives of Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, A.D. 138-177. It must not be forgotten that the protection of the laws was extended to Christian sepulchres as well as Pagan till the edict of Valerian in A.D. 257, and although this was withdrawn by Gallienus in A.D. 260, yet after that edict, the cemeteries, the catacombs, were never quite secure; before that, the Christians made no concealment of their places of burial, they used the richest available decorations for them, in sculpture and in painting. Only after A.D. 257 do the ornamentations cease, or become hastily sketched and rude, and the inscriptions degenerate into scrawls. All the finest, costliest work in the Roman catacombs belongs to the first two centuries and the beginning of the third. When peace returned to the Church, art had fallen into decay, and there were not sculptors capable of performing such work as had been done before. No more convincing proof of this can be found than the two porphyry tombs of Constantia and Helena, daughter and mother of Constantine, now in the Vatican. To what a depth of degeneracy sculpture fell may be judged by the lid of the sarcophagus of S. Hilary, Bishop of Arles, d. 449, now in the Arles museum. Beside the rude lettering, there are but a leaf and two birds on it, but they might have been scribbled by a child. It is to me inconceivable that some of the beautiful white marble sarcophagi both at Arles and at Rome, sculptured with Scriptural scenes, can belong to the period when art was as degraded as it certainly was in the time of Constantine, and I think that antiquarians have been misled in dating them. Before taking leave of the Elysian Fields, I must quote the words of a French author upon them:--"It has been a rich quarry only too easily worked, and we will not here enter on the painful story of its spoliation. All the museums of the south of France possess tombs stolen from the Alyscamp. As to the monolithic tombs, they were abandoned to any one who cared to have them, and for many centuries have been regarded as stones quarried ready for use. The city of Arles has on several occasions had the culpable condescension of giving up the tombs of its ancestors to the princes and great men of the world. Charles IX. laded several ships with them, which sank in the Rhone at Pont S. Esprit. The Duke of Savoy, the Prince of Lorraine, the Cardinal Richelieu, and a hundred others have taken away just what they liked, and Arles to-day has hardly more to show of this vast cemetery than an avenue--but a noble one--of sarcophagi and some fragments of fine Gothic or Romanesque chapels lost in the midst of a desert." [1] [Footnote 1: Lenthéric, 'La Grèce et l'Orient en Provence,' 1878.] CHAPTER VII. PAGAN ARLES. The Arles race a mixture of Greek and Gaulish--The colonisation by the Romans--The type of beauty in Arles--The amphitheatre--A bull-baiting--Provençal bull-baits different from Spanish bull-fights--The theatre--The ancient Greek stage--The destruction of the Arles theatre--Excavation of the orchestra--Discovery of the Venus of Arles--A sick girl--Palace of Constantine. Before describing Arles I began with the Elysian Fields, the great cemetery of Pagan and Christian Arles, for this seems to have affected the whole town, and with the dust of ages to have smothered the life out of it. Now let us look at the remains of ancient Arles. But first of all let me observe that the Arles race prides itself on its singular purity of descent. There was, unquestionably, a Gaulish settlement there. The Keltic name Ar-lath, the "moist habitation," tells us as much. So does the legend of Protis and Gyptis, already related. But it was speedily occupied by a large Greek contingent, and the race was formed of Greek and Gaulish blood united. In the year B.C. 46 a Roman colony was planted at Arles. Cæsar, desirous of paying off his debt of gratitude to the officers and soldiers who had served him in his wars, commissioned Claudius Tiberius Nero, one of his quæstors, father and grandfather of the emperors Tiberius, Claudius, and Caligula, to conduct two colonies into Southern Gaul, one was settled at Narbonne and the other at Arles, and this was one of the first military colonies planted beyond Italy. The office of this Tiberius was to portion out the land among the veteran soldiers, six thousand men of the Sixth Legion occupied the town and country round--such of it, at all events, as was not under water--and thenceforth the city took the name of Arelate Sextanorum. Tacitus gives us a picture of the proceedings on such occasions. After the tribunes and the centurions came a cloud of officials called _agrimensores_, surveyors, charged with the duty of parcelling out the soil among the new comers. Then followed a hierarchy of civil officers, religious, judicial, administrative, all under the direction of an administrator-general, who was entitled _curator coloniæ_. From that moment the transformation of the colonial town into a little Rome was a matter of time only. The new comers constructed a capitol, a forum, temples, triumphal arches, aqueducts, markets; besides these, theatres, a circus, baths. In a very few years the aspect of Arles was completely changed. A mercantile city of Græco-Gauls had become Latinised, bureaucratic, and nattered itself that it was like its new parent on the Tiber. It called itself _Gallula Roma, Arelas_. [Illustration: An Arelaise. (_From a Photograph_)] Consequently, we find in Arles a strong current of Roman blood mingled with the Greek and Gallic, and there has been practically no other admixture. Cut off from the country round by its marshes and lagoons, it has maintained its purity of blood and its characteristic stamp of face. The Arles women are said to be, believe themselves to be, and show to everyone that they believe themselves to be, the handsomest women in France. Their type is quite distinct from that of the inhabitants of Nimes, Marseilles, Aix, and even of the peasantry outside the gates of Arles. What is the more singular is that this peculiarity of type is not noticeable among the men. Among the women it is quite unmistakable. Their straight brows and noses are sometimes Greek, but the Roman arch appears as frequently as the straight nose; they have magnificent dark eyes; black hair which is curled up over their broad straight brows, brought forward about their faces so as to form a dark misty halo round the olive-complexioned features, then tied into a horn at the top of the head, which is bound round with black satin ribbon, that flows down at the back. The face is haughty, noble, somewhat imperious. Queens these Arelaises feel themselves to be, down to the fishwives in the market-place; they walk as queens, as well as the cobble stones will permit, and bear themselves, their black mantillas cast over their arms, in a queen-like manner. I had a fine opportunity of studying them, for I went to the first bull-fight of the season in the old Roman arena, and all Arles was there, male and female, down to the babies in arms. Between each _course_ all the spectators promenaded under the galleries and on the terrace at the top of the amphitheatre, the women in gala dress of white lace bodices, black mantle, and dark silk skirts; and a very fine sight they were; it was worth the forty centimes I paid for admission to see these majestic women pace along and sweep the little men from their path as they careered round and round the amphitheatre, with cold, stern faces, full of pride of ancestry and conscious beauty. I will quote the opinion on the Arles type of a very competent judge perfectly acquainted with the whole of Provence:--"It can be affirmed without contradiction that Greek beauty exists at Arles, and exists only among the women. The men are clumsy, small and vulgar, rude in form and rough in vocal intonation. The women, on the contrary, have preserved the ancestral delicacy. The face is that of a cameo, the nose is straight, the chin very Greek, the ear delicately modelled; the eyes, admirably shaped, have in them a sort of Attic grace, transmitted from their mothers, and to be handed on to the children. "To get an idea of this characteristic type, one must not study two or three subjects, but must observe the whole population _en bloc_, and especially compare it with the neighbouring populations. The result of such a comparison brings out with force the grand lines constituting in the Arelaise the character of a perfectly definite and distinct race." [1] [Footnote 1: Lenthéric, _op. cit._] [Illustration: Part of the Amphitheatre of Arles.] As I have already mentioned the amphitheatre, I will begin my account of the antiquities of Arles with that. In the Middle Ages it was turned into a fortified _bourg_ in the heart of fortified Arles; it contained streets about as broad as a man could walk up and touch walls on both sides with arms akimbo, a crowd of houses, and two chapels or churches. Four great towers were erected at the cardinal points, and the vast galleries and arcades were a very warren of human habitations. Constructed of huge blocks of limestone, laid without cement, the amphitheatre forms an ellipse, whose axis measures four hundred and twenty feet by three hundred and ten feet. It is said to be able to contain twenty-six thousand spectators, which is just two thousand five hundred more persons than the entire population of modern Arles. Externally it presents two stages of sixty arcades, between the arches are engaged Doric pillars in the lower storey, those above are Corinthian, but only about six of the capitals of these latter remain. There are, within, three stages of seats, those for the senators, those for the knights, and the upper range for the common people, now much mutilated, and turned into a promenade. Fortunately the accumulation of earth over which the houses were built within the arena was so great, that when that was cleared away, the marble casing of the _podium_ was disclosed in very tolerable perfection. When I visited the amphitheatre, Les Arènes they are called, it was to see a _Course aux Taureaux_. The Provençals are passionately fond of these bull-baits, which take place weekly through the summer, beginning at Easter, but it is only at Arles and Nimes that they are carried out in the ancient Roman amphitheatres. These _courses_ are quite distinct from the Spanish bull-fights. There is no brutality, no torturing of the beast with arrows and crackers, no goring of horses. The bull is uninjured, and, though he gets furious, clearly relishes the fight, and in some cases cannot be induced to abandon it. The old proconsular seat was draped, and occupied by the _prefet_ and madame, and the _sous-prefet_. The spectators went where they liked, men paid fourpence, women threepence for admission. The arena was enclosed within a screen of strong timber boards. Five wild bulls from the Camargue were advertised to be baited. One, a strong black fellow, Nero, was clearly a favourite--his name was announced in very large letters. Every bull is given a rosette of coloured ribbons, fastened between his horns, and the sport consists in plucking away this rosette, and bearing it in safety beyond the barricades. Should a rosette fall to the ground, it does not count. A prize is given to whoever recovers a rosette. The blood-red rosette of Nero entitled the snatcher of it to one hundred francs. Another characteristic feature of the Provençal _courses_ is that there are no professional toreadors. Any man or boy who likes enters the lists against the bull. Usually there are from a dozen to a score and a half in the arena, all endeavouring to pluck the bunch of ribbons from the brow of the enraged bull. From practice, and acquaintance with the habits of bulls, the young men become very skilful, and fatal accidents are rare. The amateur runs up alongside of the bull, swings himself round in front of it, and makes his snatch. The bull at once goes at him, and he takes to his heels. When he is flying a second invariably runs across his path at right angles, and the bull can never resist the temptation of turning upon this second. If he also is hard pressed, a third crosses between him and the bull, and again diverts the angry beast. In one case a man's foot slipped as he was flying, and he fell. Then the bull was on him before another could intervene, but the brute rolled over the prostrate man, who got up, shook himself, and cleared the barricade. [Illustration: Back of a house at Arles.] One very nimble young fellow in a grey shirt had attracted general attention by his dexterity. He was resolved to have Nero's rosette. He managed to wrench it from between the bull's horns, but not completely to disengage it. The bull drove after him so close that it was impossible for another man to run between, the grey shirt reached the barrier and swung over, but the horns caught his nether garment and rent it, fortunately without really injuring the man, who, however, was not able to enter the arena again that day. When a _course_ has been run the doors are opened, and one or two young bulls are sent into the arena; they run round, and the bull who has been baited adjoins them, and they all run out together. Nero, however, would not go. He was fagged, but his blood was up. Five bulls were sent in to lure him away, but he was resolved to gore his man before he left. His rosette he had dangling on his brow, uncaptured. Then the keepers entered with a species of halbert, with half-moon shaped steels at the head, and one small spike in the midst. With this they caught the horns of Nero, and he was forced to retreat before the men, for if he resisted the spike entered his head and hurt him. Thus finally, by sheer force, he was driven, snorting, pawing the ground, and with arched tail from off the place of contest. The sport is good. It is not cruel. It draws out the courage, provokes dexterity and nimbleness, and takes the place in Provence that cricket does in England and golf in Scotland. The Romans loved the brutal and demoralising games of the amphitheatre. Wherever they went they erected these huge places for entertaining themselves with the spectacle of suffering. There never was an amphitheatre at Marseilles, for Marseilles was Greek and not Roman, and to the Greek such spectacles were abhorrent. At Arles there are the equally interesting remains of a theatre. The stage is fairly perfect, with its customary scenery of Corinthian pillars grouped so as to form two doors for entrance and exit between them. The pillars of this permanent scene are not all in place. Two are standing, and the bases of others remain. At the proscenium may be noticed the grooves into which the beams fitted for the wooden small stage that stood forward in front of the curtain. The ancient Greek theatre was composed, like that of our days, of a hemicycle for the spectators, and a rectangular portion that formed the place for dramatic performance. The pit was a semicircle, and was not fitted with seats, but constituted the orchestra. This orchestra among the Greeks formed an inferior stage, and, as its name implies, was reserved for the ballet. It was not till Roman times that specially privileged spectators were admitted into it, but it never had the musicians installed in it. These latter were placed in front of the stage, much where is our modern proscenium. The actors performed, as nowadays, on the boarded anterior portion, which was called the _pulpitum_. Finally, to facilitate communication between the stage and the orchestra, a pair of flights of steps descended laterally from the proscenium. In the centre of the pit or orchestra was usually placed an altar to Bacchus, around which the choirs executed their evolutions; and against this little altar sat the prompter, hidden by it, whilst some flute-players stood beside the altar, in flowing robes, acting as ballet masters, and giving the measure with the shrill notes of their pipes. The Greek tragedy, therefore, had a double action, one on the stage proper and the other below, and all was graceful and refined. The purest taste, the most elevated sentiments, were the characteristics of the Greek drama, and the most beautiful and stirring effects were produced by means of the utmost simplicity. Thus, when the Tragedy of the Persæ of Æschylus was being performed, the depth of the stage opened, to show in the distance the blue sea on which a recent victory had taken place, with the rocky isle of Salamis bathed in the tints of the Eastern setting sun. A thrill of the most lively emotion ran instantly through the whole crowd of spectators. But with the Romans the theatre lost its dignity, and was degraded to low buffoonery, indecencies the most repulsive, and to gaudy spectacles. So bad was the moral result produced by the theatre, that the first Christian bishops who were able to do so, stirred their adherents to the destruction of this breeding-place of moral pestilence. The MS. chronicles of the church of Arles have preserved the name of the man who destroyed the theatre. He was a deacon, Cyril; acting under a strong moral impulse, filled with righteous indignation at the obscenities perpetrated on the boards, he roused the Christian populace of Arles to attack and wreck the theatre and expel the actors. The mob burst in--tore the marble from the proscenium, smashed the statues of admirable Greek sculpture, overthrew the altar and ground it to powder, upset the columns, and reduced it to a state of ruin very little better than that in which it is at present. Heads of statues were knocked off, bas-reliefs broken in half, cornices, capitals, were thrown into the pit and choked it to the level of the stage. In 1651 the pick was set to work to clear out this orchestra, and almost the first stroke revealed one of the most admirable works of Greek sculpture that has descended to us, the Venus of Arles, an imitation or reproduction of the celebrated Venus of Praxiteles, now, unhappily, lost. This statue lay before the columns of the proscenium and had been saved from destruction by the ruins that had buried it. Head and body are almost intact, only the arms were gone. The goddess is half naked, like the Venus of Milo. The bust is slightly turned. Head and coiffure are of the noblest and purest execution. It was evening when I visited the theatre, a balmy spring evening, where shelter could be obtained from a cold wind. The pink Judas trees were in full flower. The syringas scented the air. The golden sunlight filled the theatre with light and warmth. But two persons were present, except myself. Seated on one of the white marble steps for the audience, was an Arles mother with a royal face, in the quaintly beautiful costume the women of all classes still affect, and she had spread her mantle over the shoulders of a girl of fourteen, sick, with face of the purest alabaster, and of features as fine as were ever traced for Venus Anadyomene, with large, solemn, dreamy eyes, watching a robin that was perched on the proscenium and was twittering. The pity, love, and sorrow of that mother's heart were not to be read in her calm disciplined countenance, but I could see the emotions flow in short wavelets from her heart, through the arm that encircled the sick girl, into the hand that rhythmically contracted and expanded on the sharp little shoulder, rocking the child in the warm sun, against her own heart, and with her dark eyes looking into the future, in which she would have no more the child at her side to sway. In that theatre!--the ebbing tide of a white and limpid life taking its last sunning, where the crowds had laughed and roared their applause at sights and songs of unspeakable foulness. [Illustration: A boat with two rudders at Arles.] In the museum may be seen some of the treasures from the theatre, a head of Augustus, a so-called Livia, a bust of the young Marcellus, bas-reliefs, dancing women, a few inscriptions, and the seal of a Roman dentist, which I suppose he lost there one day when watching a play, and which has recently been found there. It is worth the visitor's while to walk by the broad muddy Rhone, and observe the clumsy picturesque vessels moored there, or gliding down the turgid stream. So clumsy is the construction that some are provided with two rudders, one being found insufficient to direct the course of these tubs. At Arles, near the river, is a palace of Constantine the Great, now turned into cottages and sheds, and in a very ruinous condition, but sufficient of it is preserved to show what a falling off in architecture had ensued through the anarchy of rising and sinking emperors, and the destruction of the great families of the Patriciate. Employment for architects and sculptors was gone in times of proscription and military revolts, and apparently all at once the arts that had reached the utmost perfection fell into a condition of the most abject degradation. CHAPTER VIII. CHRISTIAN ARLES. Sunday in France--Improved observance--The cathedral of Arles--West front--Interior--Tool-marks--A sermon on peace--The cloisters--Old Sacristan and his garden--Number of desecrated churches in Arles--Notre Dame de la Majeur--S. Cæsaire--The isles near Arles--Cordes--Montmajeur--A gipsy camp--The ruins--Tower--The chapel of S. Croix. I spent the first Sunday after Easter at Arles. It was a bright and joyous spring day. I went to the cathedral at nine o'clock and found a good congregation there, listening to a sermon on the obligation of observing the Sunday. It was dull, and I left. But I may here observe what a great change has taken place in France of late years relative to this observance. I can remember when I was a boy how that every shop was open, and business went on much as on other days. But the Church has made great efforts to obtain a due recognition of the Lord's Day, and all who consider themselves to be good Catholics now shut their shops, and others, who find that there is now very little trade going on upon Sunday, shut their shops also because it is of no use having them open. It is only the polemical infidels who continue to keep their factories in full work and their places of merchandise open to invite purchasers. Some few years ago I was talking with a Frenchman in Rome, a commercial man, about the phylloxera that was devastating the vines, and ruining the peasantry, and I asked him what was being done to correct the evil. "Bah!" said he. "Everything has been tried. Mon ami. We don't observe the Sunday. Voilà le vrai phylloxera." [Illustration: On a house at Arles.] Now this observation of his was only worth so much, that it showed how that the clergy had been going hammer and tongs at the consciences of their sheep, till they had impressed a conviction on them that if they neglected the commandment of God relative to the observance of one day in seven, He would chastise them till they realised that they had erred, acknowledged their error, and endeavoured to rectify it. The cathedral of Arles is a very interesting church indeed. Externally the west front is rich in the bold rude style of the twelfth century, and consists of a deeply-recessed semicircular arch resting on a horizontal sculptured frieze which forms the lintel of the door, and is continued on each side upon pillars that rest on the backs of lions and have apostles and saints standing between them. The interior of the church is very solemn and striking. It has been cleaned, but judiciously, without sand-papering away the tool-marks on the ancient stone. Has the reader never been puzzled to note the difference between old work and new, even when the new is a reproduction of the old? In the new there is an absence of something, but what we cannot tell. This something is very probably nothing more than the old tool-marks. The ancient workers left on the stone the tale of every stroke they dealt, and to ages on ages these marks tell us: here was a strong arm employed, here was dealt a vigorous blow; here Symon the hewer was tickled with a comical story that mason Peter told and he laughed, and the blow he dealt ran jagged with his laughter. These strokes were done in the morning, when the workers were fresh; those at even, when their arms were weary. But nowadays the stone is all gone over with a metal toothcomb, and scraped till not a tool-mark remains, and wood is glass-papered till every particle of sharpness and character is taken out of the work. [Illustration: Samson and the lion, from the west door of the Cathedral of Arles.] The aisles of the cathedral of Arles are but five feet wide, the arches are round, the windows Romanesque; the church is barrel-vaulted, nothing could be plainer, and yet somehow that old church is full of poetry and charm. I went to High Mass at eleven. It was all very homely, quiet and reverent. Another congregation was gathered; a Gregorian simple service sung, which the congregation knew and joined in heartily. Then up into the pulpit got a canon, and gave out his text, from the Gospel, S. John xx., end of verse nineteen. My heart stood still. Why--you shall hear. [Illustration: On a house at Arles.] Just twenty-two years ago, I was in Switzerland on Whit Sunday, and went to the little village church. The _curé_ gave out these same words as his text, and preached a very good sermon on Peace, though perhaps not very appropriate to the day. Peace, he said, was an excellent thing, whether (1) in a country; (2) in a household; (3) in the conscience. There we had the three heads; on these he dilated. First we had a picture of the miseries of war in a country, and the converse picture of prosperity in peace. Then, secondly, we had a description of domestic discomfort, where husband and wife were at loggerheads, and--naturally, a charming family piece where both were in unity. Then came, thirdly, the special topic of his discourse, peace in the conscience, and how it was to be obtained and secured. I bottled up that sermon in my memory and have preached it since, myself, once or twice. One day, some fifteen years ago, I was at Eichstädt in Bavaria, on a Saturday. The church of S. Michael there is reserved for the episcopal seminary; I wanted to see the interior and found it locked, but discovering a side door into the cloisters open, I, and my wife who was with me, entered. The church was empty, save that a sacristan with a feather brush was dusting the side altars, but to my surprise I heard a sermon being preached, and caught a glimpse of a priest in the pulpit haranguing and gesticulating to an empty church. The sacristan, who saw us enter, went into convulsions of laughter. I did not understand the situation, and walked slowly down the aisle looking at the pictures, and listening to the discourse. I was very much surprised to hear the subject of Peace being chopped into three portions: peace in the country, peace in the family, peace in the conscience. It was my old friend the sermon on Peace again. Presently, my wife and I, having finished with the pictures in the north aisle, crossed the nave of the church to look at those in the south aisle, when, suddenly the preacher was aware of a strange gentleman and lady acting as his audience. His voice faltered, he broke down, searched for his MS., could not find his place, fell into complete confusion, turned tail, and bolted down the stairs and out of the church. He was a recently ordained seminarist rehearsing his first sermon. Two years later I was in Brussels. A new dean had been appointed to S. Gudule, and was to preach his first sermon. I went there with a friend. He gave out his text. I pricked up my ears. Then he addressed himself to his subject, Peace; and showed how it naturally divided itself into three heads, peace in a country, peace in a household, peace in the conscience. It was my old friend again. [Illustration: South entrance to the Cloister, Arles Cathedral.] Now when I heard this text given out by a canon at Arles, I thought with a shock: Bless me! we shall have those three heads once more! But I was mistaken. The old man gave us a simple, crystal-pure discourse of ten minutes on the peace that passeth man's understanding. Now I do not mean to hint that the Swiss, the German, and the Belgian preachers all used literally the same discourse; but I suppose that in the seminaries there are supplied certain skeleton discourses for the whole year, and these skeletons are dressed up sometimes in homely fustian, sometimes in rhetorical tinsel: yet they never remain other than dressed-up skeletons. There is very little of colour in the cathedral of Arles--only nine great pieces of Flemish tapestry, green and soft pale yellow, that are suspended in the aisles. All the rest is of unadorned limestone blocks, unadorned save for the chipping marks of the old masons seven hundred years ago. On the south side of the church is a delightfully rich cloister, the arcade resting on double columns whose capitals are richly sculptured with sacred subjects, incidents from the Old and New Testament. In the cloister is a well, fed, I believe, originally by the old Roman aqueduct that supplied the town with pure water from the hills, but which was suffered in the Middle Ages to fall into complete ruin. This aqueduct was older than the amphitheatre, for it ran in a cut channel through the rock beneath it. One evening that I was in the cloister the aged sacristan was engaged drawing from this well and watering a little garden of flowers he had made in the sunny sheltered nook within the cloister, against the south wall. [Illustration: Part of the north cloister of Arles Cathedral.] It was a pretty little subject; the old man in his long black coat, with silvery hair, stooping over his anemones and tulips, tying up the white narcissus that a swirl of the _mistral_ had broken; with the quaint sculptured capitals of the pillars above, and the deep shadows between the pillars before him; in the junctions of the old blocks above the arcade were wild gillyflowers blooming, and under the tiles were swallows busy over their mud nests. And as the old man tied up the bruised narcissus, in a cracked voice he sang to himself one of the vesper psalms, and I caught the verse: "Hæc requies mea in sæculum sæculi: hic habitabo quoniam elegi eam." ("This shall be my rest for ever, here will I dwell, for I have a delight therein.") [Illustration: Church of Notre Dame de la Majeus, Arles.] Arles was at one time a city of churches, but the hurricane of the Revolution swept over her, and now she has left but four. On the walls, is a very early Romanesque church, tottering to ruins, because the Society for the Promotion of Athletic Sports, to whom it has been surrendered up for tumbling, climbing, wrestling, are impecunious and cannot keep it watertight. Hard by is another church, still earlier, a temple adapted to Christian worship, now half swept away, half devoted to a cabaret. The church of the Cordeliers is turned into a school, and the octagonal tower rises out of the roof of the dormitory. The beautiful fourteenth-century church of the Dominicans is a stable for the horses of the omnibuses that ply between the train and the town. S. Martin is desecrated, so is S. Isidore. The earliest church in Arles is Notre Dame de la Majeur, near the Arènes, but it does not look its age. It was in that church that the Council assembled in 475 on the doctrine of Grace, when the Gallican prelates were by no means disposed to admit S. Augustine's predestinarian teaching. Outside the church in the open space are traces of walls that are level with the earth; and if I am not mistaken, they are the foundations of an early basilica, with apse to the west. The church was rebuilt in the Middle Ages, and made to orientate, and was thrown further east than the earlier church. That is my impression, but nothing can be determined without pick and spade. [Illustration: Tower of the desecrated church of S. Croix, Arles.] In the church of S. Antonine is a metal font, made to resemble the laver of Solomon, resting on the backs of oxen. [Illustration: Part of the courtyard of the convent of S. Cæsarius, Arles.] The old Grand Priory has a charming Renaissance front to the river, and some late rich flamboyant work in a street at the back. It is now turned into a gallery of indifferent pictures. The Church of S. Cæsaire is modernised, and has, alas! nothing of interest remaining in it, only its historic memories to hallow it. [Illustration: Church of the Penitents Gris, Arles.] S. Cæsarius, son of a count of Chalons, born in 470, had been educated at Lerins, but thence he was drawn in 501, to succeed the first fathers of that holy isle, Honoratus and Hilary, upon the archiepiscopal throne of Arles. He was engaged in erecting a great monastery for women outside the walls, when the Ostrogoths and the Franks met in a furious conflict beneath them. His monastery was reduced to a ruin. A priest, a relative of Cæsarius, had the meanness to let himself down the walls at night, escape to Theodoric the Ostrogoth king, and denounce him as engaged in secret communication with Clovis, king of the Franks. As soon as Arles was taken, Cæsarius was led under custody to Theodoric, but was speedily set at liberty by that great-minded prince. Another and similar charge was made against him later, and Cæsarius was forced to travel to Ravenna to exculpate himself. On his return to Arles he set to work to rebuild his monastery, not this time without the walls. He made his own sister, Cæsaria, the abbess, and she governed it for thirty years, and gathered about her a community of two hundred nuns. This brave Christian woman caused to be prepared, and ranged symmetrically round the church, stone coffins for herself and for each of the sisters. They sang day and night the praises of God in the presence of the new tombs that awaited them. When each sister was dead, she was placed in one of these stone coffins and carried off to the Elysian Fields, and most likely some of them are among those there strewn about or being now broken up. It was into this church that Cæsarius himself, feeling his end approach, had himself conveyed, that with feeble uplifted hands he might bestow his final blessing on that band of faithful women who were labouring to bring a higher ideal of womanhood before the Arles folk, corrupted by the vices of the decayed civilisation of Rome. As already said, Arles was formerly surrounded by water, river on one side, meres on the other. Out of the lagoons, however, rose islets of limestone rock; of these there are two, Cordes and Montmajeur, but there were also formerly a number of smaller tofts standing above the water, but not always rocky, forming an archipelago, and were covered with the cottages of fishermen and _utriculares_, and farmers who cultivated vines and olives on the slopes above the reach of the water. Such were Castelet, Mont d'Argent, Pierre-Feu, and Trébonsitte. Nowadays we can go by road to all these spots, formerly they could be reached only by boat or raft. The isle of Cordes is about five miles from Arles, it was evidently at one period fortified, and is believed to have formed for some time the camp of the Saracen invaders who scourged and swept Provence with sword and flame. In the rocks of Cordes is a very curious cave, called the Trou des Fées, formed exactly in the shape of a sword, with lateral galleries to answer to the cross-piece at the hilt. It was undoubtedly a prehistoric habitation, probably enlarged by the Saracens and used by them as a storehouse for their spoils. It is entered through an oval antechamber which resembles the hilt of the sword; and which most likely was the original prehistoric dwelling. But the largest of the islands was Montmajeur, that now rises abruptly from the plain, crowned with ruins. I walked to it in driving rain and _mistral_. As I approached, I saw a gipsy woman bringing water in a pail to the camp, but the wind literally scooped the water out of the pail as with a spoon, and when she reached her destination very little remained. I stopped and had a little chat with the gipsies. They had tried to set up their tent, but it had been blown down over their heads, and had been rolled along with them in it, as they said, like a bag of potatoes. They were now squatted in the lee of a wall, an old ruined wall, and were endeavouring to boil a kettle, but the flames were carried by the wind in horizontal flashes, and would not touch the bottom of the vessel. They wanted me to have a cup of coffee with them when I returned from seeing the ruins, and I promised to do so, but, on my return, I found that rain and wind had blown and soused out their little fire, and they had not been able to get the water to boil, so were drinking it lukewarm. Good-natured, merry folk, they laughed over their troubles as though it were a sovereign joke, and yet they were drenched to the skin. [Illustration: In the cloisters, Montmajeur.] Montmajeur was a great Benedictine abbey, with a glorious church founded in the sixth century, that was rebuilt in the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, over a large and interesting crypt, and with cloisters at the side like those of Arles, but by no means as rich. Beneath the abbey are the chapel and the reputed cell of S. Trophimus, who probably never lived there--a charming specimen of early Romanesque. Part of this chapel is scooped and sculptured out of the living rock. But what is one of the grandest portions of the abbey is the machicolated tower that commands the plain for miles to the sea, a noble specimen of a donjon, and in excellent preservation. The abbey buildings adjoining the church were erected about fifty years before the Revolution, when the monastery was in the plenitude of its wealth. They form the wreckage of a palace for princes rather than of an abbey for the sons of S. Benedict, who I am quite sure would have been one of the first, had it been possible for him to be there, to lay his hand to destroy it, along with the mob of Arles' republicans, as utterly out of accord with the spirit of his rule. Indeed, on looking up at these sumptuous halls and stately galleries, one cannot but feel that the time was past in which the monastic orders, wealthy and luxurious and idle, could be endured. The church is no longer in use, and is ruinous. Below the rock is a spit of land that stood anciently dry above the meres, and on that is a very singular old church dedicated to the Holy Cross, round which has been discovered a minor Alyscamp, a place of sepulture utilised from the earliest times. Sainte Croix is now regarded as a national monument, and is preserved carefully. It consists of a central square tower, from which project four equal semicircular apses, that to the west having a porch attached. It was consecrated in 1019. It is lighted by three little windows, only one to the east and two to the S. and S.E. Internally it is entirely deficient in sculpture, and was probably decorated with paintings. This was a funeral chapel in the midst of the cemetery, and was never used as a church. "The monks brought their dead hither," says Viollet le Duc, "processionally; the body was placed in the porch; the brethren remained outside. When Mass was said, the body was blessed, and it was conveyed through the chapel and out at the little S. door, to lay it in the grave. The only windows which lighted this chapel looked into the walled cemetery. At night, a lamp burned in the centre of this monument, and, in conformity with the use of the first centuries of the Middle Ages, these three little windows let the gleam of the lamp fall upon the graves. During the office for the dead a brother tolled the bell hung in the turret, by means of a hole reserved for the purpose in the centre of the dome." A similar but earlier mortuary chapel is at Planès, in Roussillon. [Illustration: In the cloister at Arles.] CHAPTER IX. LES BAUX. The chain of the Alpines--The promontory of Les Baux--The railway from Arles to Salon--First sight of Les Baux--The churches of S. Victor, S. Claude, and S. Andrew--The lords of Les Baux claimed descent from one of the Magi--The fair maid with golden locks--The chapel of the White Penitents--The _deïmo_--History of the House of Les Baux--The barony passes to the Grimaldi.--The ladies of Les Baux and the troubadours--Fouquet--William de Cabestaing--The morality of the loves of the troubadours--The Porcelets--Story of a siege--Les Baux a place of refuge for the citizens of Arles--_Glanum Liviæ_--Its Roman remains--In the train--Jäger garments. From east to west runs the chain of Les Alpines, for just twenty miles, separating the Durance from the plain of the Great Crau. It is of limestone, and rises to the height of about eight hundred or a thousand feet, but is remarkable from the abruptness with which it springs out of the plain, and the fantastic shapes assumed by its crest. This chain dies into the plain to the west at S. Gabriel, and its extreme limits to the east are the crags of Orgon, which rise sheer above the Durance, and the Mont du Defends farther to the south. To the north is the broad flat valley of the Durance stretching away to Tarascon, to the south the vast desert of the Crau reaching to the sea. About twelve miles from S. Gabriel, the chain of the Alpines thrusts forth an arm to the south that rises sheer from the plain some five hundred feet, and forms a plateau at the top encrusted with white crags, two thousand seven hundred feet long, by six hundred feet wide. It is detached from the main chain by a dip, and on every other side stands up in precipices. This is Les Baux, the name in Provençal signifies _cliffs_. There is a little railway from Arles to Salon, by which one travels at a snail's pace to the station of Paradou, whence a walk of five miles takes one into a crater-like valley surrounded by bald white limestone crags, and there, towering overhead, are the walls and towers of Les Baux, in a position apparently inaccessible. This valley struck me as very much like one of the Lunar craters, as I had seen it through the Northumberland telescope, just as white, ghastly and barren. In the bottom were, indeed, a few patches of green field and a cluster of poplars, but the sides of the crater were almost wholly devoid of vegetation; and the white stone where quarried, and it was quarried extensively, glistened like sugar, with a greenish white lustre. In coming from Arles I had travelled third class, in a compartment on top of the second and first class carriages; for on these little lines the carriages are of two storeys; the upper storey commands the best view; and in the compartment with me was an intelligent postman. We got into conversation about Les Baux. He told me that he had lived there, and had found there a considerable number of flint and bronze weapons. He was now stationed at Tarascon, and he invited me to pay him a visit, when he would show me the weapons he had found on these hills. He also strongly urged me not to return by the same route, but to strike across the chain, reach S. Remy, see the Roman remains there, catch the evening train, and so return to Arles by Tarascon. [Illustration: Les Baux.] And now for Les Baux, which is certainly one of the most astounding places I have ever seen. Let the reader conceive of a rocky plateau standing up on abrupt precipices above the plain, with its top not altogether level, but inclined to the west, and the eastern side fringed with white crags. Let him imagine a little town clustered on the slope to the west, clinging to the inclined surface to prevent itself from slipping over the edge and shooting down the precipice. Then let him imagine the white limestone fringe that rises to the east some ninety feet above the town, adapted to serve the purpose of a castle, natural cliffs sculptured and perforated to form window and door, and vault and hall, and where living rock did not avail, masonry added, and the whole thrown into ruin. This is what he sees looking up from the valley. Then let him climb the steep ascent, anciently the only way by which the town and castle could be approached, and his amazement will grow with every step he takes. After having passed under a gateway well defended, he will find himself in the street of a Mediæval Pompeii: houses--not cottages, but the mansions of nobles--all, or nearly all, in ruins and uninhabited, some with architectural pretensions; a church, still in use, dedicated to S. Vincent; another still larger, S. Claude, half sculptured out of the living rock, half of masonry, beautifully vaulted, with no glass in the windows, and the doors fallen in; a chapel of S. Anne, without a roof, and some trees growing out of the floor. Another church, the second parish church of Les Baux, S. Andrew, crumbled to its foundations. Further up the ascent, bedded in the ruins of the castle, a beautiful Gothic chapel with delicate ribbed vaulting of the thirteenth century, also in ruins. On one portion of the platform to the south the remains of a great hospital, with the recesses for the beds of the patients round it. A cemetery enclosed within walls; guard rooms, halls, a mighty dove-cot hewn out of the rock; galleries and the windows of banqueting halls cut in the rock; high up, unapproachable, as the masonry has been blown up and thrown down that formed the western side of the castle. And to the north, where was the only approach to the castle by the neck of land, a curved ridge of limestone rock was hewn into a wall of defence. Now a road has been engineered along this _col_, and the rock wall has been cut through; not only so, but it has been carried through a nobleman's mansion, and the sculptured fireplaces overhang the carriage road. Such, briefly, is the general aspect of Les Baux. Now we will enter into details. We will begin with the only parish church still in use. This church consists of nave and side aisles, with lateral chapels. The floor of the church is honeycombed with graves scooped out of the rock. In one of these before the high altar, a few years ago, when the slab that covered it was raised, the body of a man in rich garments was disclosed holding a book in his hand, that seemed to have escaped the ravages of time. However, on the first touch, it fell to dust. In another sepulchre was found the body of a young lady. Singularly enough, her hair, which was of a golden straw colour, was uninjured, though the rest of her body crumbled to dust in the air. The innkeeper of the little place managed to possess himself of it, and at once dubbed his tavern "A la Chevelure d'Or." He was wont to exhibit the mass of golden locks to the visitor for a consideration. Recently the tavern has changed hands, and the old innkeeper has carried off with him the golden locks. Consequently, the inn has changed its name, and is now the Hotel Monaco. [Illustration: Les Baux.] In front of the church is a small platform that overhangs the precipice. On it is the ruined chapel of the White Penitents, erected in 1659. Over the door may be read with difficulty the inscription in Latin, "At the name of Jesus every knee shall bow." Hard by is a cistern, semicircular, dug out of the living rock; this goes by the name of the _deïmo_--that is to say, the place of tithe. Into this cistern the farmers of the manor were bound to pour the tenth of all the wine they made, as the due of the Lord of Les Baux. The ruined church of S. Claude has in the bosses of the vaulting the arms of the Princes of Les Baux, and of other noble families who lived in the little town and were feudatories of the princes, as well as of some of the guilds which had chapels in this church. The arms of the princes represented a star, for these princes claimed descent from Balthazar, one of the Magi who came from the East to bring gifts to the infant Saviour. The tomb of Raymond des Baux, grand chamberlain of Queen Jeanne of Naples, at Casaluccio, bears the inscription, "To the illustrious family of the Baux, which is held to derive its origin from the ancient kings of Armenia, to whom, under the guidance of a star, the Saviour of the world manifested Himself." The Barony of Les Baux consisted of seventy-nine towns or bourgs, which formed the territory called La Baussenique. It was confiscated by Louis III., Duke of Anjou, and Count of Provence in 1414, after having been governed by one family from Pons des Baux, the first who appears in history, and who died in 970. The last male representative died in 1374, and his sister and heiress, Alice, married Conrad, Count of Freiburg, who died in 1414. She bequeathed the principality to her kinsman, William, Duke of Andria, but on account of his attachment to the opposed party, Louis III. seized on Les Baux. In 1642, Louis XIII. erected it into a marquisate, and gave it to Honoré Grimaldi, Prince of Monaco, and it remained in the possession of the House of Monaco till the revolution of 1789. The princes of Baux were podestas of Milan, consul-podestas of Arles, where they had a castle, were seneschals of Piedmont, grand justiciaries of the kingdom of Naples, princes of Orange, and viscounts of Marseilles. They bore also the titles of counts of Provence, kings of Arles and Vienne, princes of Achaia, counts of Cephalonia, and finally assumed that of emperors of Constantinople. The castle was thrice besieged, twice destroyed, and again rebuilt; it lasted over eleven centuries. The most complete restoration of the castle and of the town-walls took place in 1444 by Louis III. of Provence; but when it passed to the Crown of France in 1630, by order of Cardinal Richelieu, it was destroyed. The strength of the position was such that he feared it. In the old days, when the Princes and Princesses des Baux held court in this eagle's nest, it was a great resort of the troubadours, who came to it from all quarters. Fouquet, the Provençal poet, celebrated in his verses Adelasia, wife of Berald, Prince of Baux. He was filled with a romantic love for this exalted lady, and on her death, in a fit of sorrow, became monk of Citeaux. Afterwards he became abbot of Thoronêt, bishop of Marseilles, and finally archbishop of Toulouse. He was born between 1160 and 1170, and was the son of a merchant of Venice who had retired from business and settled at Marseilles. When Richard Coeur de Lion was on his way to Syria, he made some stay at Marseilles before going on to Genoa, where he was to embark, and there Fouquet insinuated himself into his good graces. He was married, but his wife was sorely neglected, and all his devotion was paid to the lady Adelasia des Baux. Provençal traditions diverge as to the result of his suit. According to one account, he could "jamais trouver merci, ni obtenir aucun bien en droit d'amour," from the object of his passion, and, in disgust, he turned to make love to Laura de S. Jorlan, sister of Berald des Baux. But the other account is that he made love to both ladies at once, and that Adelasia cast him off because she found that his fickle heart was turning to the fresher charms of Laura. Anyhow, he made his rejection by Adelasia the subject of poetical laments, and prosecuted with vigour his siege of the heart and virtue of his patron's sister. And then he pursued with the same ardour the conquest of Eudoxia, wife of William, Count of Montpellier. As already said, after the death of Adelasia, he assumed the cowl. As Bishop of Toulouse, he exercised the ferocity of a wolf in his dealings with the Albigenses. "There is no act of treachery or cruelty throughout the war," says Dean Milman, "in which the Bishop of Toulouse was not the most forward, sanguinary, and unscrupulous." The historian of his life, in the 'Histoire Littéraire de la France,' says of him: "After having given half his life to gallantry, he gave up, without restraint, the remainder of his life to the cause of tyranny, murder, and spoliation, and unhappily he profited by it.... Loving women passionately, a ferocious apostle of the Inquisition, he did not give up the composition of verses which bore the impress of his successive passions." Another troubadour, William de Cabestaing, sang the praises of Berengaria des Baux. Afterwards he lost his heart to Sermonda, wife of Raymond de Roussillon, who, not seeing the fun of this romantic spooning of his wife, waylaid and slew him, then plucked out his heart and had it served up at table in the evening. After his wife had partaken of the dish he informed her that what she had tasted was the heart of her admirer. She, full of horror, threw herself from a window of the castle and was dashed to pieces. This outrage was the occasion of civil war. The relatives of the lady and of William de Cabestaing persuaded Alphonso I., King of Aragon, to ravage the territories of the Count of Roussillon and to destroy his castle. Again, another troubadour, Sordel, sang the praises of Rambaude des Baux, but in such enigmatical fashion that his verses may be read as a satire upon her charms. The princely family, moreover, had among its members two troubadours, Berard des Baux in the twelfth century, and in the next Rambaud des Baux, who in 1236 distinguished himself by his songs in honour of Marie de Chateauvert and of the Countess of Argeuil. In 1244 the troubadours vied with each other in lauding Cecilia des Baux, who was called Passe-Rose, on account of her beauty. Other ladies of the same family sung by the poets were Clairette in 1270 and 1275 by Pierre d'Auvergne, and Etiennette de Ganteaume--who shone in the Court of Love in 1332 at Romanil, and Baussette, daughter of Hugh des Baux in 1323, sung by Roger of Arles. So the family must have been one that in its alliances and daughters was distinguished by its beauty, or else paid liberally for flattery. Vernon Lee, in her Euphorion, passes a severe sentence on the romantic affection professed by the minstrels of the Middle Ages for noble ladies. She says it was rank adultery and nothing short. I do not think so. There may have been cases, there no doubt were instances of criminal passion, but in nine cases out of ten these troubadours sang for their bread and butter. They lauded the seigneurs to the skies for their _gestes_ of valour, and their ladies for their transcendent beauty; they laid on their colours with a trowel, and were paid for so doing. That some of them burnt their fingers in playing with fire one cannot doubt, but I hardly think that they set to work in their trifling with the intent of provoking blisters. The husbands of the much-lauded ladies were hardly likely to suffer this sort of fun to proceed beyond romancing. There was always a chance of a minstrel who went too far with his heart into the flames, getting it roasted on a spit and served up à la William de Cabestaing. Besides, a good many of these much-besung ladies were no young brides, but mature and withering matrons. A troubadour attached himself to a lady as he attached himself to a seigneur, and, as a client of both, fawned on and flattered both. I cannot refer to Petrarch, for I believe his Laura was not a married woman, and the Platonism of his affection is more than questionable. He was not an acknowledged troubadour, but an exile, whom the haughty family of Sade would not suffer Laura to marry. But there is the case of Dante and Beatrice, and of Wolfram of Eschenbach, one of the noblest and purest of singers, who idealised his lady Elizabeth, wife of the Baron of Hartenstein, and with him most undoubtedly the devotion was without tincture of grossness. It is precisely this unreal love, or playing at love-making, that is scoffed at by Cervantes in Don Quixote and the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso. Why, that unfortunate William de Cabestaing, whose heart was offered to his mistress, sang of her as cold to his suit:-- "Since Adam gathered from the tree The apple, cause of all our woe, Christ ne'er inspired so fair a she. A graceful form, not high nor low, A model of just symmetry, A skin whose purity and glow The rarest amethyst surpass; So fair is she for whom I sigh. But vain are all my sighs, alas! She heeds me not, nor deigns reply." The Courts of Love held by ladies of high rank were originally courts in which the rules of minstrelsy were laid down, they pronounced on the qualifications of a candidate, they polished and cherished the Langue d'oc in its purity, dictated the subjects upon which the troubadours were to compose their lays, judged their pretensions, settled their controversies, recompensed their merits, and punished by disgrace or exclusion those who violated the laws. In the twelfth century these Courts of Ladies drew up Provençal grammars, in which the rules of the dialect were laid down. One of these is the "Donatus provincialis," another was composed by Raimond Vidal. But these Courts of Love went further. They laid down rules for love; they allowed married women to receive the homage of lovers, and even nicely directed all the symptoms they were to exhibit of reciprocation. But it is quite possible that this was all solemn fooling, and meant no harm. I wonder whether those golden locks carried off by the taverner had belonged to one of those queens of beauty sung by the troubadours! Probably so, for the church of S. Vincent was their mausoleum. One of the noble families that owed feudal duty to the Lords of Les Baux was that of Porcelet, and their mansion is one of the very few that is not deserted and ruinous in the little town. It is now occupied by some Sisters of Mercy who keep in it an orphanage. The Porcelets were the first nobles of Arles. King René of Anjou, who was fond of giving nicknames, sometimes flattering, sometimes the reverse to this, entitled the family Grandeur des Porcelets. Other of his designations were Inconstance des Baux, Déloyauté de Beaufort, Envie de Candole, Dissolution de Castelane, Sottise de Grasse, and Opiniâtreté de Sade. A story is told of one of the sieges of Les Baux which is found elsewhere. The garrison of the castle and the inhabitants of the town were reduced to great straits for food, when orders were issued that everyone should surrender what he had into a common fund, to be doled out in equal portions to all. As none complied with this order, a domiciliary visit was made to every house, when an old woman was found to have a pig, likewise a sack of barley meal. The Sieur des Baux ordered the pig to be given a feed and then to be thrown over the precipice. When the besiegers found that the besieged had a pig so well nourished they thought it was hopeless to reduce the place, and raised the siege. In the thirteenth century the little eagle's nest of a town numbered three thousand six hundred inhabitants. At the present time it cannot count four hundred. Every two or three years sees another house deserted, and the tenants migrate to the valley or plain. The houses are, like the castle, partly scooped out of the rock, and partly constructed. Whole chambers, kitchens, cellars are veritable caverns. There can be no doubt that the place has been colonised from prehistoric times, and that many of these caves are the dwellings of a primitive population in the Stone period. Vast quantities of Greek Marseilles medals and of coins of the Empire have been found here, as well as fragments of pottery of every age. A few years ago a beautiful bronze helmet of Greek shape was here discovered. The place has served as a refuge for the inhabitants of Arles at various periods. Hither they fled before the Teutons and Ambrons in B.C. 102, when these invaders swept across the south of Gaul on their return from Spain; and opposite Les Baux, on the heights of Costa Pera, may be traced the walled camp and cisterns, where they took refuge and remained till the danger was overpast. Again, in A.D. 480, when Earic, king of the Visigoths, took possession of Arles, the inhabitants fled to the heights of Les Baux and constructed dwellings for themselves there in the rock. These chambers, scooped out of the limestone crag, are locally called Baumes. Anciently the roofs of the castle caught the rains, and shoots conveyed the water into great reservoirs that remain, but since the destruction of the castle the inhabitants have had to pave one whole sweep of the plateau so as to catch the showers, and convey them away into a subterranean cistern where the water purifies itself for use. After the Hôtel Dieu ceased to be used as an hospital, it was converted into an arena for bull-fights, but as on several occasions the bulls escaped and fell over the precipices, the utilisation of the great hall for this purpose was abandoned. I had a charming walk across the hills to S. Remy, near which are the remains of the Roman city of Glanum Liviæ. These remains consist of a triumphal arch, and a lovely monument about fifty feet high, quadrangular at the base, adorned with well-preserved bas-reliefs representing a skirmish of cavalry, a combat of infantry, and a sacrifice after a battle. Above this basement rises a circular temple with Corinthian pillars, containing in the midst two statues. The triumphal arch is not in equally good condition. The bas-reliefs on it represent captive barbarians and their wives. I caught the evening train at S. Remy, and again ascended to the third-class compartment in the upper storey. Presently after me came the guard: "Would not Monsieur like to descend? There is female society downstairs." "But, assuredly--only I have a third-class ticket." "Ça ne fait rien," replied the guard, "so have the ladies below, but we never send them up into the attics. Come, monsieur!" Accordingly I descended to a carriage-load of cheery Arles damsels and matrons in the quaint and picturesque costume of that town, and to a little French doctor and a couple of good-natured Zouaves. "But--this is very remarkable," said the doctor. "Only an hour ago I saw a monsieur in the same hat and boots as yourself--only the face was not the same." "Very possibly. Are you a doctor, and do not recognise Jäger garments? I am not, it is true, in coat and continuations of that sanitary reformer, because I had to discard them. The fact is, I had a complete suit, but having been out in the rain in them, they shrank on me to such an extent that I entered the house contracted like a trussed fowl, and had to be cut out of the suit with a penknife." "What countryman are you?" asked the doctor. When I told him he shook his head. "You have not an English pronunciation. Are you German?" I also shook my head. Then he attempted some words in English. I was obliged to laugh: he was unintelligible. As I could not understand his English--"Mais, Monsieur!" said the Arles women, "you must be a Swiss." It was not complimentary, I must admit, to be thought to speak French with a German accent. It has come about thus, I suppose, that, though as a boy I lived in France for many years, yet of late I have been, almost annually, a visitor to Germany. I only mention this incident, because I got into trouble later through a similar misapprehension as to my nationality. [Illustration: Range of the Alpines from Glanum Liviæ.] CHAPTER X. THE CAMPAIGN OF MARIUS. The Trémaïé--Representation of C. Marius, Martha, and Julia--The Gaïé--The Teutons and Ambrons and Cimbri threaten Italy--C. Marius sent against them--His camp at S. Gabriel--The canal he cut--The barbarians cross the Rhone--First brush with them--They defile before him at Orgon--The rout of the Ambrons at Les Milles--He follows the Teutons--The plain of Pourrières--Position of Marius--The battle--Slaughter of the Teutons--Position of their camp--Monument of Marius--Venus Victrix--Annual commemoration. [Illustration: Ruins S. Gabriel.] The two oldest and most interesting monuments of Les Baux have been unnoticed in the last chapter. These are the sculptured stones of Trémaïé and Gaïé. They are two limestone blocks fallen from the precipices above, lying on the flounce of rubble near the bottom of the promontory of Les Baux, the one on the east the other on the south. That on the east, La Trémaïé, consists of a block of shell-limestone about twenty-five feet high, in which, twelve feet from the soil, is sculptured a semicircular headed niche, five and a half feet high by four and a half feet wide, that contains a group of three personages, a bearded man on the left of the observer, a tall woman in the centre wearing a mitre, and on the right another woman. At first glance, I confess I supposed this was a bit of sculpture of the eleventh century, but on climbing to the roof of the chapel erected beneath the niche, some forty-five years ago, I was able to examine the group minutely, and satisfied myself that the work is of the Classic period. [Illustration: La Trémaïé.] What gave me the first impression that it was of later date was the use of the honeysuckle ornament at the crown of the arch, and at the capitals of the pillars supporting it, which was adopted by architects of the eleventh century from Classic work. But on close examination I found that, not only were the figures dressed in pure Classic tunics and togas, but that the drapery is modelled in conformity with that of the same epoch, and is quite distinct from the modelling by the Mediæval artists. This is specially noticeable where the statues have been protected by the sides from weathering. Moreover, below the figures is an inscription in letters, the date of which is unmistakable, though unfortunately it can be only partially deciphered. It runs:-- ........F. CALDVS .....AE POSVIT. P... The three figures are life-size. The central one is very peculiar, owing to the mitre or diadem it wears, which, however, is utterly unlike the episcopal mitre of the eleventh century. Moreover, there is no doubt about the person wearing it being a female. Popular belief, also, does not err as to her sex; it has made a mistake relative to that of the man on her right, and when some forty-five years ago the curé of Les Baux erected the chapel under the rock, he believed that these figures represented the Three Marys. The man is in consular habit, the toga, _neque fusa neque restricta_, worn till the time of Augustus. His feet appear beneath the tunic. Unfortunately the face is too much weathered to present any features. Not so the tall, mitred central figure, whose right hand is raised, as is thought, to hold a staff wreathed with chaplets. Her mantle, the [Greek: himation], is clasped on the shoulder of her right arm. The third figure is that of a Roman matron. Now it has been supposed, with a great degree of probability, that these three figures represent C. Marius, his wife Julia, and the prophetess Martha, who attended him in his campaign against the Teutons and Ambrons. Plutarch says: "He had with him a Syrian woman named Martha, who was said to have the gift of prophecy. She was carried about in a litter with great solemnity, and the sacrifices which he offered were all by her direction. When she went to sacrifice she wore a purple robe, lined with the same, and buttoned up, and held in her hand a spear adorned with ribands and garlands." I confess that the staff with ribands and chaplets seen by some in this sculpture, were not distinguishable by myself. At the same time I was puzzled with certain ornaments below the raised hand of the diademed lady, which I could not explain. It is said that the staff is only visible when the morning sun strikes the weathered surface. It may be there--but I think that a fold of drapery has been mistaken for a staff. Yet--the wreath or buckle below her hand in such a case remains unaccounted for. If these three figures represent Caius Marius, Martha, and Julia, then we can understand the name given the group--Les Trémaïés--the three Marii; Caius Marius, Martha Marii, and Julia Marii, which has since been altered into Les Trois 'Maries, and the figures assumed to be those of Mary the wife of Salome, Mary Magdalen, and Martha the sister of Mary. In the belief that such is the case, Mass is said in the chapel on the 25th of May, and there is a concourse of devotees assembled from the neighbourhood around the little chapel and memorial stone. The second sculptured block lies about three hundred paces to the south, and is called Les Gaïé, i.e., _Caii imagines_. It resembles hundreds of similar Roman monuments to a husband and wife, found in the museums of Rome, Arles, Nimes, and Avignon. Here also there is a niche, four feet wide by two feet four inches high. On the right of the observer is a bearded man holding a roll in his left hand, and with his right he clasps the right hand of his wife. He is in consular habit; unfortunately both heads have been damaged. At some time or other a Vandal thought that the upper portion of the block would serve his purpose as a step or threshold, and drove a crowbar into the face of the stone between the two heads, and split off the cap, thus exposing the sculpture to the ash of the rain. [Illustration: Les Gaïé.] Beneath the figures is an inscription no longer legible. It is _possible_ that this monument may represent Caius Marius and his wife Julia. A somewhat lively French imagination has taken the figure of the man to be Martha with her staff and mitre, but I examined the sculpture under a favourable light, and satisfied myself that this figure is that of a man. The face was apparently struck by the crowbar, which has broken off a film of the limestone, and destroyed the nose. The Caldus whose name appears on the Trémaïé is probably Caius Cælius Caldus, who belonged to the party of Marius, was created tribune B.C. 107, and who was one of the lieutenants of Marius in the war against the Cimbri, and signed a disgraceful treaty with the Ligurians to save the remnant of the army, after the death of the consul Cassius. He was named consul B.C. 97, and some medals struck by him exist. Possibly Caldus erected this monument in honour of Marius, who had made the platform of Les Baux and the range of the Alpines the vantage ground whence he watched the march of the Teutons and whence he swooped down to destroy them. The great figure of Caius Marius overshadows the whole of Provence, and it is not possible for one who has any interest in the past not to feel its influence and be inspired by it. Stirred by the sight of these sculptures at Les Baux, I resolved to go over all the ground of his campaign, Plutarch in hand, and I venture to think that what I saw and discovered will not only interest the reader, but help to elucidate the history of that memorable struggle. In the year B.C. 113, there appeared to the north of the Adriatic, on the right bank of the Danube, a vast horde of barbarians ravaging Noricum--the present Austria, and threatening Italy. Two nations prevailed, the Cimbri, Kaempir, _i.e._, warriors, perhaps Scandinavian, and the Teutons, pure Germans. They had come from afar, from the Cimbric peninsula, now Jutland and Holstein, driven from their homes by an irruption of the sea. For a while they roamed over Germany. The consul Papirius Carbo was despatched in all haste to defend the menaced frontier of Italy. The barbarians pleaded to be given lands on which to settle. Carbo treacherously attacked them, but was defeated. However, the hordes did not yet venture to cross the Alps. They inundated the Swiss valleys, and as they flowed west swept along with them other races, amongst which was that of the Ambrons, a German race, whose name meets us again as Sicambrians, of which stock later was Chlodovig (Clovis). When Clovis was about to enter the font, S. Remigius thus addressed him: "Bow thy head, haughty Sicambrian; adore what thou hast burned; burn what thou didst adore." In the year B.C. 110 all together entered Gaul, and then, continuing their wanderings and ravages in central Gaul, at last reached the Rhone and menaced the Roman province. There, however, the fear of Rome arrested their progress; they applied anew for lands, but Silanus, the Governor, answered them haughtily, that the commonwealth had neither lands to give nor services to accept from barbarians. He attacked them and was defeated. Three consuls, L. Cassius, C. Servilius Cæpio, and Cn. Manlius, sent in all haste against them, successively experienced the same fate. With the barbarians victory bred presumption. Their chieftains met, and deliberated whether they should not forthwith cross into Italy and exterminate or enslave the Romans. Scaurus, a prisoner, was present at this deliberation. He laughed at the threat, and cried to his captors, "Go, but the Romans you will find are invincible." In a transport of fury one of the chiefs present ran him through with his sword. Howbeit the warning of Scaurus had its effect. The barbarians scoured the Roman province, but did not as yet dare to invade the sacred soil of the peninsula. Then the Cimbri broke off from their comrades and passed into Spain, as an overswollen torrent divides, and disperses its waters in all directions. After ravaging Spain, the Cimbri returned, and the re-united hordes resolved no longer to spare Italy. The Cimbri were to invade it by way of the Brenner pass and the Adige, the Teutons and Ambrons by the Maritime Alps. [Illustration: Caius Marius. (_From a bust in the Vatican._)] The utmost terror prevailed in Rome, and throughout Italy. There was but one man, it was said, who could avert the danger. It was Marius, low-born, but already illustrious, esteemed by the senate for his military genius and successes; swaying at his will the people, who saw in him one of themselves; beloved and feared by the army for his bravery, his rigorous discipline, and for his readiness to share with his soldiers all toils, and dangers; stern and rugged, lacking education, eloquence, and riches, but resolute and dexterous in the field. His father had been a farmer, and his hands had been hardened in youth at the plough. But as a free-born Latin he had been called to serve in war, and his skill and genius had advanced him, from step to step. He was consul in Africa at the time when summoned to save his country from the danger threatening it from the barbarian hordes. On reaching Provence, he found the soldiers demoralised by disaster, and with discipline relaxed. The barbarians had not as yet reached the Rhone, they were moving east slowly, and during the winter remained stationary. He had therefore time to organise his troops and choose his positions. [Illustration: Orgon and the Durance.] Now the old Græco-Phoenician road along the coast, that had been restored by the consul Cn. Domitius, and thenceforth bore his name, deserted the coast as it approached the mouths of the Rhone, the region of morasses, stony deserts, lagoons, and broad streams; kept to the heights, and reached Nimes, whence, still skirting lagoons, it ran along the high ground of limestone to Beaucaire. The Rhone was crossed to Tarascon, and thence the road followed the Durance up to Orgon, where it branched; one road to the left went to Apt, and crossed the Alps into Italy by Pont Genèvre, the other turned south to Aix and Marseilles. The road, afterwards called the Aurelian way, led from Aix up the river Are, over a low _col_ to S. Maximin, and reached the coast by the valley of the Argens, that flows into the sea at Fréjus. It was a little doubtful to Marius which course the barbarians would pursue. Accordingly he formed a strong camp at Ernaginum, now S. Gabriel, at the extreme limit of the chain of the Alpines, to the west. Almost certainly all the inhabitants of Arles, Tarascon, Glanum, and Cavaillon, all Græco-Gaulish towns, took refuge on the plateau of the limestone hills. The barbarians could not go south of the Alpines, because the whole region was desert, or was covered with lagoons. In order to victual his camp, Marius set his soldiers to work to convey a branch of the Durance [1] past Ernaginum into the lagoons below, and he cut a channel of communication between these lagoons, and opened a mouth into the sea through the Etang de Galéjon. By this means vessels from Rome or Marseilles could reach the walls of his camp with supplies. [Footnote 1: Plutarch says the Rhone, but he is almost certainly mistaken. The canal was afterwards probably that called Les Lonnes (lagunes), the dried-up bed of which can be distinguished in places still. The line from Tarascon to Arles runs beside it for a little way. See Appendix B.] In the spring of 102 B.C. the Teutons and Ambrons packed their tents and began to move east. The grass had grown sufficiently to feed their horses and oxen. Marius allowed them to traverse the Rhone without offering resistance; and they began their march along the road that ran at the foot of the precipitous Alpines. They soon appeared, "in immense numbers," says Plutarch, "with their hideous looks and their wild cries," drawing up their chariots, and planting their tents in front of the Roman camp. They showered upon Marius and his soldiers continual insult and defiance. The Romans, in their irritation, would fain have rushed out of their camp, but Marius restrained them. "It is no question," said he, with his simple and convincing common sense, "of gaining triumphs and trophies, but of averting this storm of war and of saving Italy." A Teuton chief came one day up to the very gates of the camp, and challenged him to fight. Marius had him informed that if he were weary of life, he could go and hang himself. As the barbarian still persisted, Marius sent him a gladiator. However, he made his soldiers, in regular succession, mount guard on the ramparts, to get them familiarised with the cries, appearance, and weapons of the barbarians. The most distinguished of his officers, young Sertorius, a man whose tragic story is, itself, a romance, and who understood and spoke Gallic well, penetrated in the disguise of a Gaul into the camp of the Ambrons, and informed Marius of what was going on there. At last, the barbarians, in their impatience, having vainly attempted to storm the Roman camp at Ernaginum, struck their own, and put themselves in motion towards the Alps. Marius followed them along the heights, out of reach, ready to rush down on their rear, observant of their every movement. They reached Orgon. There the limestone precipices rise as walls sheer above the plain, now crowned by a church and a couple of ruined castles. It was probably from this point that Marius watched the hordes defile past. For six whole days, it is said, their bands flowed before the Roman position. The Teutons looked up at the military on the cliffs and flung at them the insolent question: "Have you any messages for your wives in Italy? We shall soon be with them." The soldiers, still restrained by Marius, waited till all had passed, and then the general struck his camp, and crossing the dip at Lamanon, where the overspill of the Durance had once carried its rolled stones into the Crau, he regained the heights on the farther side of the Touloubre, at Pelissanne, the ancient Pisavis. Still keeping to the heights, now of red sandstone, Marius again came on the barbarians at Les Milles, four miles to the south of Aix. He had observed all their movements, and had seen that the Ambrons had detached themselves from the Teutons at Aix, so as to make a descent on Marseilles. Possibly Aix had been given up to ravage by the Teutons, and the Ambrons were bidden find their spoil in Marseilles. At Les Milles the red sandstone cliff stands above the Are, which makes here a sweep, leaving a green meadow in the loop. Here, from under the rocks ooze forth countless streams; some were, like those at Aix, hot; [1] now I will again quote Plutarch. "Here Marius pitched on a place for his camp, unexceptionable in point of strength, but affording little water; and when his soldiers complained of thirst, he pointed to the river that flowed by the enemy's camp, and told them, 'that they must thence purchase water with their blood.' 'Why then,' said they, 'do you not immediately lead us thither, before our blood is quite parched?' To which he replied, in a milder tone, 'So I will; but first of all let us fortify our camp.' [Footnote 1: Whether so at present I am unable to state, not having been able to test them. All the hot springs have been reduced in temperature considerably since Roman times.] "The soldiers, though with some reluctance, obeyed. But the camp-followers, being in great want of water for themselves and their cattle, ran in crowds to the stream, some with pick-axes, some with hatchets, and some with swords and javelins, along with their pitchers; for they were resolved to have water, even if forced to fight for it. These were, at first, encountered by only a small party of the enemy; for of the main body, some, having bathed, were engaged at dinner, and others were still bathing, the country there abounding in hot wells. This gave the Romans a chance of cutting off a number of them, while they were indulging themselves in these delightful baths. Their cry brought others to their assistance, so that now it was no longer possible for Marius to restrain the impetuosity of his soldiers, who were uneasy for the fate of their servants. Besides, these were the Ambrons, who had defeated Manlius and Cæpio, that they saw before them." The contest became general. The Ambrons rushed across the river, yelling "Ambra! Ambra!" their war-cry, which was at once retorted on them by a body of auxiliaries in the Roman camp, who heard their own cry and name. After a furious engagement, the Romans remained victors, the little river Are being choked with the bodies of the barbarians. Those who retreated to their camp were pursued by the Romans. There the women, with loud cries, armed themselves, and made a desperate resistance, catching at the swords with their naked hands, and suffering themselves to be hacked to pieces. The night was spent by the Romans in some alarm, for though they had defeated their foes and penetrated to their camp, yet they had not time to fortify their own position; and they dreaded lest the Ambrons should make head during the night, call the Teutons to their assistance, and charge up the hill. "A cry was heard from the defeated Ambrons all through the night, not like the sighs and groans of men, but like the howling and bellowing of wild beasts." Two days after this a second and decisive battle ensued. The narrative in Plutarch is a little confused, and it is only by familiarity with the sites that the whole story becomes unfolded clearly before us. Thus, it is only on the spot that one sees how it was that Marius, striking from the chain of the Alpines, came up over against the Ambrons on the hill above Les Milles, and how he pursued his course thence. Plutarch, though he speaks of the two battles, does not distinguish the sites effectually. The Teutons, as already said, were making their way east from Aix. The road ran through the broad basin of the Are; to the north rise, precipitously, the bald white precipices of the limestone Mont Victoire, to the height of 3,000 feet, with not a ledge on the sides where a shrub can find root. Between these cliffs and the plain are, however, two low sandstone ridges, the higher of which forms an arc, and dives into the wall of Mont Victoire, about half way through the plain. On the southern side of the river are low hills; at the extreme north-east is a conical green hill named Pain de Munition, which is fortified much like the Hereford Beacon, with walls in concentric rings. To the south-east is the chain of Mont Aurelien, and there, on the Mont Olympe, is another fortified position, beneath which is the town of Trets, an ancient Roman settlement. [Illustration: Mont Victoire and the Plain of Pourrières.] Now the barbarians followed the road on the north side of the river Are, to the Roman station on it named Tegulata, the first station out of Aix, their numbers swelled by the discomfited Ambrons. Marius, however, being at Les Milles, crossed the river, and kept to the south side of it till he reached Trets. Then he had a fortified position in his rear, the camp of Mont Olympe; moreover, the barbarians were encamped on three tofts of red sandstone on the north side of the river, at the station Tegulata, with, at their back, the Roman fortified position of _Panis Annonæ_, now called Pain de Munition, where one may conjecture Marius had his stores and reserves. They were probably unaware of the trap into which they had walked. Marius, however, had despatched on the day before Claudius Marcellus, with three thousand men, up the long valley of the Infernet, to the north side of Mont Victoire, so as to reach and strengthen the fortress of Panis Annonæ, and secure his stores, and next day to descend the height and fall on the rear of the enemy. The slopes along which Marius marched were probably well-wooded, and he was unobserved by the Teutons. They had spent one whole day in pacing along the straight flat Roman road under Mont Victoire. As they approached the station Tegulata, a singular blood-red splash on the white sides of Mont Victoire emerged from behind the lower wooded sandstone road, a signal of warning to them that they were approaching a place of peril. Moreover, the sandstone deepened in colour, till at Tegulata the little streams that oozed from under the sandstone ran like blood about their feet. Of these they could not drink, therefore they halted at Tegulata, where they again reached the river, and where there was a bridge; they there encamped on the three tofts already mentioned, the surfaces of which are of hard, dry, yellow sandstone, superposed on beds of friable red sand. Here the river flowed sparkling and clear, and supplied them with what water they required. Everything points to this spot as their camp. It is one day's march from Aix. It is the first point at which drinkable water is reached. The sandstone tofts stand up above the plain, then undrained and marshy, as a dry base for their tents. Finally, the monument of Marius is opposite them, on the farther side of the river. [Illustration: Sketch plan of the battle fields.] In the meantime the Romans had approached from the south, from Trets, making a slight détour, following the tactics of Marius as before, to keep to the south of the horde, and with now a river between him and them. At Trets the ground inclines from south to north, with a broken edge of sandstone--invisible from the river, serving as a screen behind which troops could be massed unperceived. Here it was, I suspect, that Marius passed that spring night, the second after the defeat of the Ambrons. The broken edge of sandstone is not eighteen feet high. From the top the ground slopes down for a mile, and then ensues a gully cut in the sandstone by a small blood-red confluent of the Are. Another mile, or mile and a half beyond, is the river, and close to the river, on the farther bank, was the camp of the Teutons. On the morning of the 23rd March [1] the Roman cavalry were discovered by the Teutons drawn up on the slope. [Footnote 1: My reason for fixing the day I shall give in the sequel.] "On seeing this, unable to contain themselves," says Plutarch, "nor stay till the Romans were come down into the plain, they armed themselves hastily and advanced up the hill. Marius sent officers throughout the army, with orders that they should await the onslaught of the enemy. When the barbarians were within reach, the Romans were to hurl their javelins, then draw their swords, and advance, pressing the enemy back by their shields. For the place was so slippery that the enemy's blows could have little weight, nor could they preserve close order, where the declivity of the ground made them lose their balance." One can see exactly where this took place, it was where the confluent of the Are formed a natural protection to the position of the Romans; the hollow cut in the greasy red marl was too insignificant to prevent the Teutons from attempting to pass it, but was sufficient to break their order, and to give the Romans the first advantage over them. Having driven back the assailants, the Romans now crossed the natural moat and bore down on the Teutons. At the same moment the well-designed manoeuvre of Marius, in despatching Marcellus to the fort on Panis Annonæ, produced its result. Marcellus had descended the hill, screened by the trees, and had suddenly fallen on the rear of the camp of the Teutons. Thus attacked, both in front and in the rear, the barbarians were seized with panic. A frightful carnage ensued. No quarter was given. Women and children were mown down; the dogs furiously defending their masters' bodies were also slaughtered. [Illustration: Monument of Marius, Position of Marius, Treta.] "After the battle, Marius selected from among the arms and other spoils such as were elegant and entire, and likely to make the most brilliant show in his triumph. The rest he piled together, and offered them as a splendid sacrifice to the gods. The army stood around the hill crowned with laurel; and he himself, arrayed in a purple robe, girt after the manner of the Romans, held a lighted torch. He had just raised it with both hands towards heaven, and was about to set fire to the pyre, when some men were seen approaching at a gallop. Great silence and expectation followed. On their coming up, they leaped from their horses and saluted him with the title of Consul for the fifth time, and presented letters to the same purport. This added joy to the solemnity, which the soldiers expressed by acclamations and by clanking of arms; and, while the officers were presenting Marius with new crowns of laurel, he set fire to the pile, and finished the sacrifice." According to some accounts the number of Teutons slain numbered two hundred thousand, and that of the prisoners is stated to have been eighty thousand. The most moderate computation of the slain is fixed at one hundred thousand. In any case the carnage was great, for the battle-field, where all the corpses rested without burial, rotting in the sun and rain, got the name of _Campi Putridi_, the Fields of Putrefaction, a name still traceable in that of Pourrières, the neighbouring village. [Illustration: Venus Victrix.] On the site of the battle, on the south bank of the river, over against the camp of the enemy, where also was the pyre in which the waggons, chariots, arms and vesture of the invaders was consumed, a monument to Marius was erected, which was tolerably perfect before the French Revolution, but which now presents a mass of ruins. It consists of a quadrangular block of masonry, measuring fifteen feet on each side, within an enclosing wall fourteen feet distant. This quadrangular block sustained a pyramid, with statues at the angles, as it still figures upon the arms of the Commune and on some Renaissance tapestry in a neighbouring château. Here, three or four years ago, was found a beautiful statue in Parian marble of Venus Victrix, unfortunately without head and arms, but quite of the best Greek workmanship. The city of Avignon bought it of the proprietor of the field for one thousand eight hundred francs, and it is now one of the principal ornaments of the Avignon Museum. The statue, to my mind, proves that this monument was raised by Julius Cæsar; there is an indirect compliment to his own family in it. Venus was the ancestress of the Julian race, and Cæsar perhaps insinuated, if he erected the statue, that the success of Marius was due to the patronage of the divine ancestress and protectress of the Julian race, and of Julius Cæsar's aunt, the wife of Marius, quite as much as to the genius in war of Marius himself. We know, moreover, that the trophies erected to Marius for his Cimbric and Teutonic victories were overthrown by Sulla, and that they were re-erected by Julius Cæsar in A.D. 65. The anniversary of the battle was annually celebrated in a little temple dedicated to Venus Victrix on the apex of Mont Victoire, that overhangs the plain. When Provence became Christian the temple was converted into a chapel, Venus Victrix became transformed into S. Victoria; and the procession remained unaltered, the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages ascended the mountain bearing boughs of box, which they waved and shouted "Victoire! Victoire!" On reaching the chapel, Mass was celebrated. This took place annually on March 23rd till the Revolution, when the chapel was suffered to fall into ruin. I was on the battlefield on the day which is traditionally held to have been that when this decisive battle took place. A brilliant day. The frogs were croaking in the marshes and dykes, the tones of some like the cawing of young rooks. The ground was strewn with grape-hyacinth, and white star of Bethlehem, the rocks were covered with rosemary in pale grey bloom, the golden chains of the broom waving over the blood-red sandstone rocks. That the tradition is correct, or approximately so, I think probable, for towards the end of March would be the suitable time for the barbarians to set themselves in motion for the invasion of Italy. Sufficient grass could be had for their horses and cattle, and they would desire to reach the plains of Italy before the great summer heats. [Illustration: March of S. Victoire (23rd March). Harmonised by F. W. BUSSELL, Esq., M.A.] I talked a good deal to peasants working in the fields. They were all of one mind as to where the battle had raged--from north to south, they said, between Trets and Pourrières. The tradition is only worth anything in that it is based on the fact that along this line the greatest amount of weapons has been turned up by the spade, and pick, and plough. [1] A French writer, referred to in the footnote, says that if a little rill trickling into the Are be examined where it flows in, opposite the monument of Marius, the banks will be found at first to be full of broken Roman pottery, but if the course of the stream be pursued a little farther up it will be found to flow through beds of charcoal and molten masses of metal--clearly the site of the pyre raised by Marius. I accordingly searched the locality. I found the pottery, and picked out fragments of Samian ware; the bank is from three to nine feet deep in them. Farther on, I came, as M. Gilles said, to remains of charcoal and cinder. I was perplexed. I followed the stream farther up, and found that it crossed a road that was metalled for half a mile with cinder, and that the cinder lay on the road and on the road only. I instituted inquiries and ascertained that this was all brought from a steam mill a mile and a half off along this road. But though these remains of charcoal and scoria are not ancient, yet the little rill does ooze from the plateau on which I believe Marius raised the pyre. It is exactly opposite his monument, between his position and the Panis Annonæ, whence swept down Marcellus with his cavalry. It was the site at once of the camp and of the pyre. No remains could possibly be found on it of camp or pyre, as the sandstone is in constant disintegration, and the whole surface has been many times washed bare and renewed during the nineteen hundred and ninety-two years that have elapsed since the battle. [Footnote 1: M. Gilles, "Campagne de Marius dans la Gaule," Paris, 1870, thinks that Marius pursued the Teutons along the Aurelian road, and that the battle was fought on the north side of the river. I do not hold this. The monument of Marius is on the south side, and I think he would naturally secure a fortified camp in his rear.] The story how Marius, having destroyed the hordes of Ambrons and Teutons, and secured Italy on the west, returned to the Peninsula, and finding that the Cimbri were streaming down from the north-east, met them near Vercellæ, and there defeated and slaughtered them also, I leave for other pens to describe. That battle took place on July 30th. * * * * * I have given (_ante_, pp. 152, 153) what may interest the musical reader, the traditional march performed on the day of the battle of Pourrières, when the pilgrims ascended the mountain to return thanks for the victory of Marius. CHAPTER XI. TRETS AND GARDANNE. The fortifications of Trets--The streets--The church--Roman sarcophagus--Château of Trets--Visit to a self-educated archæologist--His collection made on the battle-field--Dispute over a pot of burnt bones--One magpie--Gardanne--The church--A vielle--Trouble with it--Story of an executioner's sword. [Illustration: Trets.] Trets is an odd little place, surrounded by its ancient walls and towers, and with its gates--but, oh! if anyone would know what a cramped, unwholesome place one of these old mediæval burghs was, let him visit Trets. The streets are some four and some five feet across; in threading them you pass under a succession of archways, for every house desiring more space has thrust forth a couple of storeys over the street, sustained by an arch. The exhalations from the dirt-heaps, the foulness of every house, the general condition of tumble-down, compose a something to make a sanitary officer's hair stand on end. But it is very wonderful. Carcassonne is marvellous, but this is Carcassonne seen through a diminishing glass. Trets has an ancient church, but that has a tower in ruins, and it is a marvel to the visitor how that the rain does not enter and souse the interior and congregation, so dilapidated is the whole structure. In the basement of the tower is a white marble sculptured Roman sarcophagus; on it are the heads of husband and wife, supported by genii. Within the church is a slab bearing record of the consecration, A.D. 1051. The town has a stately château, now abandoned to the poor and cut up into small habitations. There is in it a grand stone staircase with ornamental plaster ceilings on the several landings; one represents a boar hunt, the other an ostrich chase. In the château lives a miner, a M. Maneil, who is an enthusiastic archæologist. The publican of the little inn at Trets told me of him: of how, when his work is over, and other labouring men come to the cabaret or the café, he spends his time in prowling over the battle-field of Pourrières, searching for antiquities, and how he hoards up his little savings to buy books that deal with archæological subjects. It was to see M. Maneil that I visited the château. He has a rich collection of objects. I counted twenty-four stone hatchets, and something like three hundred beads strung for necklaces, flint arrow-heads in large numbers, also many bronze implements, a quern, pierced shells, several sculptured stones found in Dolmens, and a great many Roman coins. It is the collection of a life, made by an enthusiast, and ought to be acquired by the museum of Aix. In the mairie at Trets is an urn full of calcined bones, in very good condition. It was found by two boys some little while ago in a tumulus on the side of the road to Puyloubier. The farmer whose land it was on, hearing of the discovery, and concluding that something precious had been found, brought an action against the youthful archæologists, and strove to recover the treasure. After a hard-fought battle he obtained his rights. They were forced to surrender their acquisition--a crock--and, to the disgust of the farmer, it contained not a coin of any sort, only bones. So he has left it in the mairie, in the hopes that some one will be induced to buy it, and so contribute a trifle towards the heavy expenses of the trial. [Illustration: Gardanne.] Now, as I was walking from the field of Pourrières to Trets, one solitary magpie appeared on my left, flew a little way, lighted, and flew on farther, and accompanied me thus for half the journey. "One is for sorrow." My mind immediately recurred to home--to wife and children. What had or would happen? Influenza--would that decimate the flock? or a fire--would that consume my books and pictures? Nothing happens but the unexpected. Never for one moment did I obtain a glimpse, no, not half a glimpse, into the trouble in store for me, which was to arise, not from the loss of anything, but out of an acquisition. From Trets I went on by train to Gardanne, watching the evening lights die upon the silver-grey precipices of Mont Victoire. At Gardanne I had to change, and kick my heels for two hours. Gardanne is a picturesque little town, built on a hill round a castle in ruins and a church very much restored. So restored did the church seem to be from the bottom of the hill that I doubted whether it would be worth a visit. Gardanne is surrounded by broad boulevards planted with trees. Now, no sooner has one passed inward, from this boulevard, than one finds a condition of affairs only a little less dreadful than that at Trets. Gardanne was a walled town, but all the walls have been transformed into the faces of houses, inns and cafés, plastered and painted and so disguised as not to reveal their origin till one passes behind them. Then one is involved in a labyrinth of narrow, dark lanes scrambling up the hill, running in and out among the houses, paved with cobble stones in some places, in others resolving themselves into flights of broken steps. On scrambling to the terrace on which the church stands on the apex of the hill, I saw that it was of very remarkable width, all under one low gable--certainly extraordinarily ugly, and newly plastered, marked out in sham blocks of stone, and made as hideous as the ingenuity of man could well achieve. However, I entered the west door, and passed into almost complete darkness, only relieved by the paschal candle that was burning at a side altar and the red lamp in the choir. As my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, I discovered to my surprise that I had entered a very interesting eleventh-century church, of five aisles, all under one roof, without clerestory. But the evening light through the small stained windows did not suffer me to make out any details. The east end of the church rises from the crag on which it is built, without any window in it. On leaving the top of the hill and descending into the town I met my fate in the form of a woman who was playing a hurdy-gurdy, and singing to its strains a Provençal ballad. I stopped at once, and asked her to let me investigate the instrument. I have a fancy for ancient musical instruments. A handle is turned that grates on one catgut string, and the fingers of the left hand, passed under the hurdy-gurdy, touch notes that stop the string at various lengths, and so vary the tone. [Illustration: The Vielle.] She told me the instrument was called the vielle, in fact--our old English viol; a very ancient instrument, which is represented as being played by one of the minstrels sculptured on the east front of Launceston Parish Church, circ. 1525. On a capital at S. Georges de Boscherville, in Normandy, is an eleventh-century representation of a huge hurdy-gurdy resting on the knees of two performers. One turns the handle, the other plays on the keys. Mr. Chappell at one time believed it was the old English _Rote_, from _rota_, a wheel, but changed his mind later, and showed that the rote had a hole through it, which enabled it to be played with both hands like a lyre or harp, and derived its name from the Anglo-Saxon "rott"--cheerful. This branch of archæology being one in which I was particularly interested, nothing would suffice me but buying the viol of the woman; and having acquired it, I slung it round my neck by a very dirty blue ribbon, and hastened to the station to catch my train to Aix. Now only did I discover what the magpie portended, for with the acquisition of that hurdy-gurdy my life became a burden to me. I could not pack it into my Gladstone bag. I could not fold it up with my rugs. I was forced to travel with it slung round my neck. Naturally, in a railway carriage I was asked to perform on the singular instrument--but I was incapable of doing this. Fellow travellers disbelieved in my statement. Why did I wander through Provence, the land of troubadours, if I were no troubadour? Surely I was sulky--not incapable; unwilling to oblige--not unable to do so. When I arrived at an hotel--especially late in the evening--I found the host doubtful about receiving me. He looked at my bag, then at my hurdy-gurdy, then scrutinised my boots; wanted to know what priced rooms I required; must consult madam. On the railway platform again, I found myself an object of attention to certain men in plain clothes, with keen searching eyes--and, as I shall relate in the sequel, brought one of them down on me. Vexed that I was unable to pass the tedious time in the train with a tune on my vielle, and entertain my fellow travellers, I began to practise on it in my room at night. Then the fellow inmates complained: they sent their compliments and desired to know whether there were wild beasts next door--they objected to be lodged near a menagerie. My experiences with the hurdy-gurdy recall to my memory some others I went through a few years ago. On one occasion I spent a winter in a city in the south of Germany, where I made the acquaintance of an antiquary who was very old and bedridden, and had no relations, no one to care for him but an old housekeeper. The man had belonged to the town-council, and had spent his life in collecting curiosities connected with the history of his town. Among his treasures above his bed, was the city executioner's sword, much notched. This sword was six feet long, with a huge handle, to be grasped with two hands, and with an iron ornamented knob as counterpoise at the end of the handle. How life is made up of lost opportunities! How much of the criminal history of the city might I not have learned, if I had paid longer visits to Herr Schreiber, and listened to his account of the notches in the blade, to each of which a ghastly history attached. But the antiquary's bedroom measured fifteen feet by seven, and the window was hermetically sealed; moreover, there was a stove in the room, and--Herr Schreiber himself, always. "Ach, mein Herr! do you see dis great piece broken out of de blade? Dat vas caused by a voman's neck. De executioner could not cut it drough; her neck vas harder dan his sword. She vas a very vicked voman; she poisoned her fader.--Do you see dis littel nick? Dis vas made by a great trater to the Kaiser and Vaterland. I vill tell you all about it." I never heard all the stories: I should have been suffocated had I stayed to listen; but I found, whenever I called on my friend, that my eyes invariably turned to the sword--it was so huge, it was so notched, and had such a gruesome history. Poor old Schreiber, I knew, would have to bow his neck before long under the scythe of Time. How he hung on in that stuffy room under the great sword so long was a marvel to me, and would be pronounced impossible by sanitary authorities in England. Nevertheless, he did live on for a twelvemonth after I left the town. When about to depart, I said to the English chaplain: "Old Schreiber can't last long; he must smother shortly. Keep an eye on the sword for me, there's a good fellow. He has left everything to the housekeeper." A twelvemonth after, as I was about to leave England for a run into Bohemia, I got a letter from the chaplain: "Schreiber is dead. I have the sword." I wired at once to him: "Send it me to my inn at Aix-la-Chapelle. Will pick it up on my way home." So I went on my way rejoicing, ascended the Rhine to Mainz, trained to Nuremberg, and passed through the gap of the Bohemian mountain-chain to Pilsen, and on to Prague. After six weeks in Bohemia and Silesia, I descended the Rhine to Aix-la-Chapelle, and arrived at my inn. "Dere is vun vunderful chest come for you," said the landlord. "Ve vas not very comfortable to take him in. Ve keep him, dough." And no wonder. The chest was shaped somewhat like the coffin of a very tall man. "Vat ish he? He have been here four veek and doe days.--Dere is no schmell." "I cannot take that thing--I really cannot. It is preposterous. How could the chaplain have put my sword into the hands of an undertaker?--Get me a hammer; I will knock the case to pieces." Now, there was a reason why the chest should assume the shape of a coffin--that was, because of the crosspiece between the handle and the blade. My name and address were on the lid, at the place where usually goes the so-called "breast-plate." The host of my inn, the waiters, the porter, the boots, all stood in breathless curiosity to see the box opened, and when the sword was exposed--"Ach!" exclaimed the host gravely, "I vas right--dere vas no schmell, because dere could be no schmell." I could not see the force of this reasoning, remembering Herr Schreiber's room, and how long the sword had been in it; and allowing that there is no porosity in tempered steel, still, the black velvet casing of the handle might have absorbed a considerable amount of Schreiberian bacteria, bacilli, or whatever it is that physiologists assert to be so nasty and so ubiquitous, and so set on finding out our weak places and hitting us there, as swordfish "go" at whales. I had got my sword out of its coffin, but had not considered what to do with it next, and I found myself in as great a difficulty as before. I got a porter to convey it for me to the station, and he placed it in the first-class waiting-room with the iron counterpoise on the floor, beside a divan, and leaned the tip of the blade against the wall. There it was allowed to remain; and I walked about, pretending that it did not belong to me. Presently, a well-dressed, very stately lady--she was a _Gräfin_ (countess)--came in, stalked to the divan, and seated herself on it, very upright, without observing the sword. She opened a reticule and produced a lace-edged handkerchief, with which she proceeded to dust the velvet of her dress, and in so doing, with the end of her delicately-shod foot, touched the counterpoise. At once the sword-blade began to grate against the wall. She looked up suddenly, saw the huge notched executioner's sword descending upon her bowed neck, uttered a little scream, sprang to her feet and ran, fleet as a rabbit, across the waiting-room; whilst down its full length after her with a clang fell the weapon--followed by a burst of laughter from everyone in the room but the countess. After this, I took the sword up and marched on the platform with it at my side. This I will say for it--that, considering its size and weight, it is easily carried; for not only is there the crosspiece as hand-guard, but above this is a crescent worked in the iron, the horns extending with the convexity towards the point of the blade. By putting a couple of fingers under these horns, the sword is carried at the side, pommel downwards, blade up, with perfect ease, the balance is so true. Some difficulty attended the getting into the carriage with the sword; I had to enter backwards and bring my sword in after me, passengers keeping judiciously out of its reach till it was safely brought within. Not the Douvres-Calais that day! only that horrible little narrow boat that always upsets me--and I--such an heroic being, bearing the mighty mediæval sword, an object of wonder and questioning to sailors, _douaniers_, passengers alike. As it happened, I was the sole individual on board whose inner organs had not their sea-legs on this occasion. I lay on a bench upon deck, hugging my executioner's sword, and faintly calling: "A basin please!" Two ruffians--I can call them, nothing else--paced the deck, smoking, and passed me every forty seconds. If there is a thing which tumbles a human being of a highly-strung nervous temperament over when he feels squeamish, it is the occasional whiff of a cigar. Then, added to the occasional whiff, were occasional catches of derogatory remarks, which came home to me as unpleasantly as did the tobacco: "A chap with a sword like that should live up to it, and not grovel over a basin."--And a quotation from the Burial of Sir John Moore: "He lay like a warrior taking his rest." My spine, with the pitching and vibration of the vessel, felt not like a spinal column, but like a loose string of beads. If by swallowing the sword I could have acquired stamina, I should have tried it; but I did not think I could keep it down. At length, with a pasty face, blear-eyes, liver-coloured lips, a battered hat, a dripping and torn waterproof, reeling, holding my ticket in my teeth, the sword in one hand and my portmanteau in the other, looking like a dynamitard every inch, and at once pounced on and overhauled by the police and customs-officers, I staggered ashore. Having that sword was as much as proclaiming that I had infernal machines about me somewhere, and even my pockets were not sacred. Having turned out all my insides at sea, I had to turn out my exterior pockets and portmanteau now. It was monstrous. That was not all. I am sure a detective followed me to town. When I got into a hansom at Charing Cross, the sword would go nowhere except between my knees, with the blade shooting up between the reins of the driver, high above the top of the conveyance. I caused great amusement as I drove through the streets of London thus. The sword is at rest now, lodged on my staircase, and of one thing I am sure: no one is likely to run away with it. I have lost curiosities too tempting for specialists to keep their fingers from; but no one will carry away my sword. I shall go, but the sword will remain. CHAPTER XII. AIX. Dooll, but the mutton good--Les Bains de Sextius--Ironwork caps to towers--S. Jean de Malthe--Museum--Cathedral--Tapestries and tombs--The cloisters--View from S. Eutrope--King René of Anjou--His misfortunes--His cheeriness--His statue at Aix--Introduces the Muscat grape. I had a friend, a parson, a good fellow, who was some years ago in Cumberland, where he was concerned about the spiritual condition of the neighbouring parsons. Among these latter was one, very bucolic, with a heavy red face. My friend urged him to take advantage of a "retreat," that is a gathering of clergy for devotion and meditation, that was to take place in Carlisle. After some persuasion the heavy-souled parson agreed to go, and my dear good friend hoped that some spark of spiritual zeal might be thus kindled in him. When the retreat was at an end he button-holed him, and asked, "Well, how did you get on?" "Dooll, varry dooll!" replied the heavy soul, "I shud ha' left long ago, but--the mutton was good." I had gone for a couple of weeks to commercial inns, and now that I visited Aix I thought I would like to see another aspect of Gallic life, so I went to the Hôtel des Bain de Sextius, and took a plunge into the society of patients drinking waters and taking baths. I may say of that social phase in the Bain, that it was "dooll, varry dooll, but the mutton was good." I was a fool to go there; of course one cannot expect people with their livers and their spleens, and their entire internal tubular mechanism out of order, to be chirpy and frolicsome. There were a good many ladies there, pale, I could not quite make out whether from ill-health or from violet-powder; but I think the latter had something to do with their pallor, for, after drinking, when they wiped their lips, roses began to bloom, wherever the napkin touched. They lived up to their appearance, natural or applied, they were "mild-eyed, melancholy, lotus-eaters," to whom it was "always afternoon." The gentlemen were equally sad, still and forlorn. But the mutton was good. The feeding left little to be wished for. Aix lies in a green basin of hills, at a little distance from the river Are, clustered about the hot springs that rise at the junction of the porphyry and the limestone. They were certainly hotter when Aix was founded by Caius Sextius Calvinus, B.C. 123, to serve as a protection to the Greeks of Marseilles against the attacks of the Salyes. Roman colonists were planted there, consequently in race distinct from the Massalliotes. I cannot say that the Greek type lingers in Marseilles, certainly the women who hover about the Vieux port are as ugly as women can well be, nor have the natives of Aix a peculiarly Roman character of face and head. The only people who retain any distinguishing features of their ancestry are those of Arles, of whom I have already told. Aix has lost its old walls and towers within the last twenty years. It has good boulevards and shaded walks, and in the old parts of the town many charming bits. Most charming perhaps are the iron crowns to two of the towers, one by the Hôtel de Ville, which is conical, the other opposite the church of La Sainte Esprit, which is like a papal tiara. When I saw in Baedeker that "en face de cette église--une tour de 1494, qui a un beau campanile en fer," my mind turned at once to that horrible iron spire at Rouen, and I felt disposed to look at the pavement when approaching the church. However, it is not modern, and not hideous; it is quite the reverse, a study in fine ironwork. That the ancients could, however, do very villainous things, may be seen on a visit paid to the church of S. Jean de Malthe. It has a square east end, is an edifice of the thirteenth century, with a tower of the fourteenth and fifteenth. The original architect in the thirteenth century was a fool, and those who desired to complete the church a century later probably advertised for the greatest fool then in the profession, and secured him. Within the church is a monument that pretends to be the tomb of Alphonso II., Count of Provence, in 1209, and to be adorned not only with his statue, but also with those of his son Raymond Berengarius IV., and of Beatrix, Queen of Naples, the wife of the latter. The monument is, however, a hoax. The statues are there, but are modern, of the namby-pamby school, and of the original tomb possibly a crocket and a cusp may remain. Hard by this odious church, with its horrible modern garish windows, is the museum, containing some Greek inscriptions, a Christian sarcophagus or two, not grown on the spot, but imported from Arles, and some fragments of statues. The Cathedral of S. Sauveur is the great attraction in Aix, and it is, indeed, a very fascinating church. The west front contains a recessed gateway with ranges of saints in the outer member, and a legion of cherubim with their wings, some spread, some folded, in the inner member. The lower portion of the doorway was encased by a hoarding, and I could not see it. It is undergoing restoration. The saints' figures thereon had their heads knocked off at the Revolution, and these were restored in bad taste later, and now fresh heads--we will hope more successful--are being adjusted. Oh that we also could change our heads! The octagonal tower, which formerly had a somewhat bold appearance, has been successfully completed with an open traceried parapet and pinnacles. On the right hand of the church is a very interesting doorway, clearly Classic. Two fluted Corinthian pillars are let into the wall, and support an entablature. Between these a Romanesque doorway has been inserted, with a twisted pillar on one side, and another fluted, opposite it. The interior of the cathedral is full of surprises, The baptistery on the right is supported on Classic columns of grey polished granite. The S. aisle of the church is Romanesque of the twelfth century, and was the original nave of the minster. In the fourteenth or fifteenth century the present nave and N. aisle were added, and then the S. aisle of the Romanesque church was destroyed. Consequently the cloister of the twelfth century, which originally abutted on the S. wall of the church, now stands detached from it by the width of the destroyed aisle. In some chapels is soft old glowing marigold-yellow cinque-cento glass. The choir of the cathedral is hung with tapestries, said to be by Quentin Matsys, gorgeous in colour, of, however, beauteous harmony of tone. There are quaint old paintings on gold grounds in the nave. In the N. aisle lovely tombs that served as memorials of the dead, and likewise as altar-pieces. [1] [Footnote 1: Christ on the cross is between kneeling figures of a knight and a lady; S. Anne and the B. V. Mary are also represented. This reredos is so excellent, so beautiful, that of course it did not suit the taste for tawdriness that sprang up in the eighteenth century, and a vulgar reredos has been erected, and the altar moved before that.] The church is rich in picturesque features, not to be sketched with pencil, but laid in with the brush and colour. Moreover, the cloister is charming in its rich quaintness. The sculptors have revelled in the foliage with which they have adorned the capitals. Here we have twisted pillars, there they are sculptured over with scales, lozenges, and other ornamental fancies. In the capitals, groups of figures alternate with bursting fronds of ferns, unfolding vine leaves, and fantastic playing monsters. In the centre of the quadrangle stands an old column, on which is S. Mary Magdalen with her ointment-pot, and doves were fluttering and cooing as an old canon scattered crumbs to them about his feet. Aix lacks one thing greatly, a terrace above the town whence the valley may be seen, the towers of Aix, and the crags of Mont Victoire. But a walk should on no account be omitted up the heights of S. Eutrope to an old windmill that stands on a crest of limestone. The view thence is charming. To the right the green valley of L'Infernet, up which marched Marcellus on the eve of the great battle of Pourrières. Towering overhead, catching the evening sun on its glistening bald peaks is to be seen Mont Victoire. A little to the S.E. the cleft in the wooded hills through which the Are breaks its way, a cleft up which the Teutons trudged with their wives and children and the spoil of Gaul, to their destruction. To the south-east also a quaint chain of hills that rise above Gardanne, with a boss like a great snuff-box on the top, the Pillon du Roi. At one's feet is Aix, with its many towers, surrounded by silvery olive orchards, and away to the south is the red hill above Les Milles where Marius was encamped the night after the fight with the Ambrons. Aix is closely associated with that delightful old Mark Tapley of kings, René of Anjou, whose character has been hit off with such masterly fidelity by Sir Walter Scott in "Anne of Geierstein." René was born at Angers in 1409, and was the second son of Duke Louis II., of the junior house of Anjou, and of Iolanthe, daughter of king John of Aragon. He bore the title of Duke of Guise till his father's death. Louis II. had been adopted by Joanna of Naples, as her heir, and had been crowned king of Naples at Avignon by Clement VII., but was never able to obtain possession of his inheritance. After his death, in 1417, René's eldest brother, Louis III., succeeded to his titles and rights, and when he died without issue, in 1434, Anjou, Provence, and claims to Naples, Sicily and Jerusalem devolved on René, who had in the meantime acquired, by the death of an uncle, the Duchy of Bar, and, by right of his wife, laid claim to the Duchy of Lorraine. When he desired to make these latter claims good, he was involved in war with his wife's kinsmen, and was taken prisoner and locked up at Dijon. Finally, the question of the right to the Duchy of Lorraine was referred to the decision of the Emperor Sigismund, who gave it in favour of René. His opponent, however, appealed to Philip of Burgundy, who summoned René to appear before him, and when he did not appear, ordered him to return to his prison, from which he had been released on parole. René at once submitted. Whilst he was in prison at Dijon, delegates from Naples arrived offering him the crown; but Duke Philip would not release him. Thereupon René transferred his rights provisionally to his wife, the Duchess Isabella, and she became regent of Naples, Sicily, Anjou, and Provence. She, however, soon found herself involved in war with the king of Aragon. In the meantime René managed to ransom himself for the sum of 400,000 gold florins (1437) and at once hasted to Naples. There, however, he found himself unable to make head against Alphonso of Aragon, and he was finally driven out, and obliged to return to Provence. He died at Aix on July 10, 1480. Sir Walter well says of him: "Born of royal parentage, and with high pretensions, René had at no period of his life been able to match his fortunes to his claims. Of the kingdoms to which he asserted right, nothing remained in his possession but the county of Provence, itself a fair and friendly principality, but diminished by the many claims which France had acquired upon portions of it by advances of money to supply the personal expenses of its master, and by other portions, which Burgundy, to whom René had been a prisoner, held in pledge for his ransom.... René was a prince of very moderate parts, endowed with a love of the fine arts, which he carried to extremity, and with a degree of good humour, which never permitted him to repine at fortune, but rendered its possessor happy, when a prince of keener feelings would have died of despair. This _insouciant_, light-tempered, gay and thoughtless disposition conducted René, free from all the passions which embitter life, to a hale and mirthful old age. Even domestic losses made no deep impression on the feelings of this cheerful old monarch. Most of his children had died young; René took it not to heart. His daughter Margaret's marriage with the powerful Henry of England was considered a connection above the fortunes of the king of Troubadours. But in the issue, instead of René deriving any splendour from the match, he was involved in the misfortunes of his daughter, and repeatedly obliged to impoverish himself to supply her ransom.... Among all his distresses, René feasted and received guests, danced, sang, composed poetry, used the pencil or brush with no small skill, devised and conducted festivals and processions, and studied to promote the mirth and good humour of his subjects." In the cathedral is his portrait along with that of his second wife, Jeanne de Laval. In the _place_ is his statue, a mediocre work, holding a bunch of Muscat grapes, a species he first introduced to Europe. I sought in vain at Aix for a photograph of the Merry Monarch taken from the authentic picture, and was offered one from the characterless statue, which I declined. Poor king René's poems have found an editor and a publisher--in four volumes (Paris, 1845-6, edited by Quatrebarbes), but, I fear, not many readers. No; it will not be through his laboured poetic compositions, nor through the daubs which he painted, that René will be known and will have earned the gratitude of posterity, but through the introduction of the Muscat grape. Henceforth, let my readers, whenever they enjoy their muscatels out of the grape-house at home, or sip Moscada Toscana in Italy, or Muscat in La Vallais, give a kindly thought to that much-tried but never downcast monarch. CHAPTER XIII. THE CAMARGUE. Formation of the delta of the Rhone--The diluvial wash--The alluvium spread over this--The three stages the river pursues--The zone of erosion--The zone of compensation--The zone of deposit--River mouths--Estuaries and deltas--The formation of bars--Of lagoons--The lagoons of the Gulf of Lyons--The ancient position of Arles between the river and the lagoons--Neglect of the lagoons in the Middle Ages--They become morasses--Attempt at remedy--Embankments and drains--A mistake made--The Camargue now a desert--Les Saintes Maries--No evidence to support the legend--Based on a misapprehension. As I said when speaking of the Crau, the whole delta of the Rhone, which extended in the diluvial epoch from Cette to Fos, consists of a vast sloping plain of rolled stones from the Alps. What is now a great convexity thrust into the Mediterranean, perpetually gaining ground on the sea, was at the commencement of the present geologic epoch a great bay, and the waves of the Mediterranean broke against the cliffs of les Monts Garrigues, at Lodève, the heights of Nimes and Beaucaire, against the limestone crags of the Alpines, and swirled against that calcareous spur that now separates the lagoon of Berre from the desert of la Crau. But, at an epoch which it is impossible to fix, which, however, is posterior to the last geologic dislocations of the soil, two formidable deluges swept from the Alps down the troughs of the Rhone and the Durance, carrying with them vast masses of stone torn from the flanks of the mountains. They were veritable avalanches of water, mud and rubble, that filled the entire bay and covered the land, wherever they poured, with the wreckage of the Alps. The stones were broken into a thousand pieces in their course, their angles rubbed down, and their surfaces polished by friction, and this vast bed of rubble measures near the mouth of the Rhone some sixty feet in depth, and extends under the blue surface of the sea to the distance of many miles. But, when the diluvium ceased, and the rivers Rhone and Durance assumed approximately their present character, a change of procedure took place. The volume of water rolled down was by no means so great, the inclination of the fall was vastly lessened, consequently the rivers were enabled to do what they had not been able to do in the diluvial period, chew up their food of stone, and reduce it to the condition of mud. This is what the two rivers are engaged upon now, and instead of strewing their _embouchures_ with pebbles, they distribute over them, or would do so, if permitted, a film of fertilising mud. Through many ages the Rhone has rambled at its sweet will over the vast tract of rubble that formed its delta in the diluvial age, changing its course capriciously, and always, wherever it went, covering up the pebble bed with a deposit of fertile soil. Other streams helped in the good work--the Hérault, rich with red mud, the Ley, that flows past Montpellier, and the Vidourle from Lunel: consequently a very large portion of the rubble bed is covered with rich soil, that grows vines, mulberries, and olives. The plough and spade, however, speedily reach the boulders that lie but slightly buried beneath the surface. The canal of Craponne, that conveys the charged waters of the Durance over the Crau of Arles, is effecting artificially over that portion of the rubbly desert, the work that was done by Nature herself in past ages over the whole region from Cette to Aiguesmortes. Now let us examine very shortly the stages through which every mountain-born river runs. When young, sprung from eternal snows, gushing from under glaciers, it cuts its way through mountain gorges, receiving the rocks that fall from above, and carrying them along in its course, tearing its way round rocky spurs, and breaking them in its fury, and, as it travels down into the lower ground, it carries with it a vast mass of stone. Every tributary does the same. This first stage is called the _zone of erosion_. But, as the river leaves the Alps, its course becomes less rapid, and the fall is not so abrupt. The bed widens, and what was a boiling torrent becomes a rapid river. As it rolls along, it carries down with it the stones that it has brought from the mountains, turning them over and over in its course, rubbing down all rough points, and becoming itself discoloured with the particles it has rubbed off the pebbles. All this matter thus produced has a tendency to fall to the bottom and form banks of gravel; but the violence of the stream is constantly altering the shape and position of these beds, carrying the gravel farther, and throwing down in their place half-triturated deposits of the same character. This is called the _zone of compensation_. Any traveller who has visited the Vallais may see the Rhone at work in its first stage. In the second he can trace the river from below Lyons, and see the thousand gravel-banks formed, swept away, and reformed, at every flood, that mark the course of the river in its second stage. By the time the Rhone has reached Arles all its gravel has been champed up and reduced to impalpable mud. That blue crystalline flood that gushed from the Lake of Leman, unsullied by a particle of earth, is now a river of brown mud--thick as pea-soup, and as nutritious. The stones that would have killed all vegetation have been pounded into a condition so attenuated, that they form rich alluvial matter. The river now seeks to deposit all this mud. On reaching the sea, the difference in gravity between the meeting waters, and their variation in temperature, produces rapid precipitation of all the earthy matter held in suspense by the stream. This last stage in the river's course is called the _zone of deposit_. The inclination of the bed of the Rhone between Tarascon and Arles is four feet three inches in the mile; but at Arles the elevation of the bank is but three feet six inches above the level of the sea; and the river has to run sixty-two miles before it reaches salt waves. Consequently the bed widens, the river branches, and the rapidity of its movement diminishes progressively. The alluvium is deposited, banks multiply, the mouths are encumbered with submarine islets, locally called _theys_, which the waves and currents of the sea displace and remodel continuously, and render the entrance to the river impracticable. [1] [Footnote 1: Lenthéric: 'Les Villes Mortes du Golfe de Lyon,' Paris, 1883.] River mouths vary greatly; they are either estuaries, like those of the Thames, the Seine, and the S. Lawrence, or they are deltas, like those of the Nile, the Po, and the Rhone. Very generally in tidal seas we have estuaries; but in those that are tideless, as the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, they are deltas. Where there is a tide, the mouth of the river is washed out and kept open by the flux and reflux of the sea; but where there is no tide there is nothing to interfere with the river choking its mouth with its deposits. In such a case, after a while, the mass of deposit becomes so great as to interfere with the course of the river. The sea beating against this bar throws up sand and gravel upon it, and at every storm raises it higher. Then the river divides into two or more branches, and forms for itself new beds, which are destined in turn to undergo the same process. Now, when a river has formed its bar choking its mouth, and is then forced to make a fresh mouth, it leaves a lagoon behind this bar. At every flood its waters overflow, and are unable to escape to the sea when left behind the bar. Sometimes, in like manner, in a gale of wind on shore, the waves are carried over the bar, and there are left as a brackish pool, unable to return to the sea. Thus the whole of the Bay of the Gulf of Lyons is masked by a false coastline of old bars, behind which lie lagoons all formed in the way indicated. Between Rousillon and Leucate is the Etang de Salses; Narbonne anciently was seated in the lap of another great inland lake or lagoon. The vast Etang de Tau has a barrier between it and the sea on which is planted Cette. Lagoons behind bars extend thence the whole way to Aiguesmortes; and between the mouths of the Rhone, as they flow at present, is the Etang de Valcarès. After the river has deserted its old bed, and the lagoon has been formed behind the bar, or littoral cord, wave and storm working upon this long line of mud and sand succeed in breaking through; then, as the inclination of the land is but 0'm, 01 in the metre--almost nothing, the sweet and salt water mingle in these lakes, they never run dry, though in many cases not three feet deep. A look at the map of the Gulf of Lyons will show the reader that its special characteristic is the chain of lagoons separated from the sea by a narrow ribbon of sand. It may have caused perplexity in the mind of many that the Gulf should bear the name it does. It cannot take its name from the city of Lyons--the ancient Lugdunum--which is two hundred and twenty miles inland. It certainly cannot derive it from the wild beasts--lions--for there are none nearer than Africa. The fact is, that the Gulf takes its title from the Keltic word for a lagoon, lôn or lyn, a name that recurs in Maguelonne--the Dwelling on the Pool--in the Canal des Lonnes, a channel connecting the ponds and lagoons of the Durance and Rhone, and, indeed, in our own London (Londinium) the Dinas, Castle on the Lon, or pool of the Thames and the Essex marshes. Anciently, in historic times, Arles, that lies near the apex of the triangle formed by the branches of the Rhone, was bathed on one side by the river, by which she received merchandise from the north; and, on the other side by the _lones_, or submerged land, that extended to the sea; and after Marius had connected these lones with his canal, she exported and imported merchandise over the Mediterranean through the lagoons, as the sea could not be reached by the river on account of its bars. Moreover, the Greek and Roman cities along the coast are not found on the actual coast, on the bars, but were planted on the lagoons, which afforded them perfect harbourage for their merchant vessels. These lagoons, through which flowed salt and fresh water, were always healthy, and remained healthy as long as communication was maintained with the sea and the river. But wind and wave and alluvium working together choke these communications, and directly the mouth seawards of a lagoon is closed it is converted into a stagnating marsh that exhales malaria. During the Middle Ages no attention was paid to this fact, and those stations which had been perfectly wholesome in the Classic Epoch were rendered pestilential, and dwindled from populous cities to a cluster of fever-smitten peasants' hovels. In later times this desperate condition of affairs called for remedy. Louis XIV. sent engineers to examine and report on the state of this region, and works were begun which have been maintained and extended annually, the raising of dykes against overflow by the Rhone and by the sea. Drains have been cut in all directions to carry off the stagnant water, opening by traps into the sea. The extent of dyke now reaches two hundred and thirty miles. The banks of the two main branches of the Rhone are protected, as well as the sea-face of the Camargue, the triangle between them, and the annual cost to the country to keep them in repair is one hundred and twenty thousand francs. A flood, however, often breaks through the banks, and submerges a large district. On such occasions the additional expense is heavy. Now, what is the result of all this outlay? The engineers and scientific authorities of the coast-works and dykes are pretty unanimous in saying that a great mistake was made in the beginning by Louis XIV. The Rhone ought never to have been embanked. What should have been done was to keep open the mouths of the lagoons, to preserve them from festering. Formerly, the large island of the Camargue, occupying nearly twenty thousand acres, was periodically inundated by the Rhone, and when the waters fell, a film of the richest deposit was left behind, just as in Egypt the Nile overflows and fertilises its delta. At every overflow eighteen thousand cubic yards of alluvium was deposited over this district, all of which is now carried into the Mediterranean and thrown down in the construction of new bars; utterly wasted. In the time of the Roman domination the Camargue was a second Egypt, and was called "The granary of the Roman army;" and Arles was given the designation of "The Breasts," so flowing with plenty was it held to be. At the initial cost of millions of pounds, and an annual outlay of five thousand pounds, the Camargue has been reduced to absolute sterility. The protected lands, deprived of the sweet water which would have washed from them the salt that now spoils their fertility, and of the natural dressing that Providence sends down to them every spring and autumn, are now productive of only a little coarse wiry grass and thistles, and the dried soil is white with saline efflorescence. At the present day the value of land in the neighbourhood of Arles that is subject to periodic inundation is three times that of the land guarded by costly embankments against the bounties of the river. On descending the sinuous course of the lesser Rhone the hills disappear, the horizon is level as the sea, and all around is desert. Then the current of the Rhone seems to fail wholly, the waters of the river and of the lagoons on both sides of its bed mingle, and become confounded in one sheet. All nature is dead. The dull and sluggish water, streaked with lines of ooze, extend on all sides as far as the eye can reach. The effects of the mirage add bewilderment. One can hardly distinguish water from sky. Nothing can be more dreary than this naked surface, hushed into silence, where vegetation is reduced to a few tufts of rushes and tamarisks. But, suddenly, out of the marshy, submerged plain, a strange pile of buildings is seen cutting the horizon, half a castle, half a cathedral, imposing in a mass as it towers above the fragile and squalid hovels crouched at the feet. This building is _Les Saintes Maries_. [Illustration: Les Saintes Maries.] Probably nowhere in the world is to be seen a spot so desolate and so wretched. The village is planted at the extreme west angle of the Camargue. It can be reached by one road only, rough to travel over, and impracticable in winter. This road leaves Arles, or rather Trinquetailles, opposite Arles, traverses the marsh of the Grand Mar, follows the dyke of the river, and then threads its way among morasses, and over soil white with salt, and burning under the rays of the sun. Once in the year this route is crowded with pilgrims, who come to pay their devotions at the spot where it is supposed that the Three Marys, Mary, the mother of James, Mary Salome, and their servant Sara, landed. The legend is somewhat mixed. According to one version, those who came to Provence, flying from the persecution raised by the Jews, were Lazarus, Mary Magdalene, and Martha. Lazarus, as we have seen, has been appropriated by Marseilles as its apostle; Martha has been settled at Tarascon, and Mary Magdalene has been given a cell in La Sainte Baume. Here, at Les Saintes Maries, however, the apostolic three are said to be Mary, mother of James, Mary, wife of Cleopas, and Sara, their servant; but a concession to the other tradition is made, in that it is allowed that these three brought with them Lazarus and Martha. Nothing was known of all this till the time of good King René. The church at this point was called in the sixth century S. Maria de Ratis, S. Mary of the Boats, by S. Cæsarius, Bishop of Arles. William, Count of Provence, in his will, A.D. 992, gives it the same designation; so Raimbald, Archbishop of Arles in A.D. 1061, "The Church of the Ever Virgin Mother of God, Mary of the Boats." So also Bertrand II., Count of Provence, at the same date. Two bulls of popes in 1123 and 1200 speak of the church as that of S. Mary on the Sea. So does Gervais of Tilbury. In 1241 Raymond Berengarius, Count of Provence, entitles it Notre Dame de la Mer. And so it continued to be called in documents down to 1395. If not Our Lady of the Sea, it was S. Maria de la Mar, of the Mere, the Lagoon. However, in 1448, King René took it into his head that Mary and the Mere were distinct persons, that Mary was not, could not be, the Virgin, she must be one of the other Marys; so with a little putting together of heads and puzzlement, he and his advisers decided that the two Marys were Mary, the mother of James, and Mary Salome. The next thing to be done was to find their bodies there, but that naturally presented no difficulty. There were bones there--from Pagan times. Since that date a great pilgrimage has taken place annually to Les Saintes Maries; and the curé of Les Baux, being very satisfied that the Trémaïé in his parish must be the Three Marys, erected a chapel under the rock sculptured with the figures of Marius, Martha, and Julia. The Magdalen is probably a personation of the perished city of Maguelonne, as one of the Marys is the Mar or Mere; and Martha, there can hardly be a question, is the Syrian prophetess who accompanied Marius, but who in her place inherited the attributes and cult of Martis, the Phoenician goddess, venerated, doubtless, at all the settlements of these mercantile adventurers along the coast. CHAPTER XIV. TARASCON. Position of Tarascon and Beaucaire opposite each other--Church of S. Martha--Crypt--Ancient paintings--Catechising--Ancient altar--The festival of the Tarasque--The Phoenician goddess Martha--Story of S. Fronto--Discussion at _déjeuner_ over the entry of M. Carnot into Marseilles--The change in the French character--Pessimism--Beaucaire--Font--Castle--Siege by Raymond VII.--Story of Aucassin and Nicolette. Tarascon and Beaucaire stand frowning at each other across the Rhone, each with its castle; Beaucaire a grand pile on a crag, Tarascon dipping its feet in the water, and sulkily showing to its enemy a plain face, reserving all its picturesqueness for its side towards the town. This castle of Tarascon was one in which King René resided, as well as in that at Aix, but the Aix castle is gone, and that at Tarascon remains. Beaucaire belonged to the counts of Toulouse, whereas Tarascon, as already said, belonged to Provence. I do not like to venture on an explanation of the name, but the _Tar_ with which it begins is most probably the Keltic _Daur_, water. [1] But the Tarasconese will not hear of this. To them the name is taken from the Tarasc, a monster that devastated the whole country round, but whom S. Martha bridled and slew. S. Martha, as we have already seen, is the very prophetess who directed Caius Marius in his campaign against the Teutons and Ambrons, the devastating horde that has in the popular imagination been represented as a dragon. The body of S. Martha is supposed to lie in the crypt, in an early Christian marble sarcophagus, probably brought from the Alyscamp at Arles, representing Moses striking the rock, and the miraculous feeding of the multitude, the miracle of Cana, and the resurrection of Lazarus. [Footnote 1: _Gwask_, in Breton, is _contraction_, and at Tarascon the river is drawn together by the opposed points of Beaucaire and Tarascon. This may perhaps form the second syllable.] [Illustration: Early altar, Tarascon.] [Illustration: Spire of S. Martha's Church, Tarascon.] In this crypt is a Corinthian capital turned upside down and converted into a holy water stoup; also a very early and curious altar, the slab of which is just two feet square, and has in the midst a square hole cut, probably of later date, for the reception of relics; the height of the altar is three feet three and a-half inches, it is of a porous stone that has become greatly corroded with weather. It is probably the earliest Christian altar in France. In the crypt is a life-size representation of the entombment of S. Martha, with figures standing round, Christ at the head, and S. Pronto at the feet. [Illustration: Iron door to safe in S. Martha's Church.] The church of S. Martha is of the fourteenth century, with the exception of the south portal, which dates from 1187, and is rich in its deeply-recessed mouldings filled with sculpture, but has been sadly mutilated. Within the church is some very fine ironwork, a grille dividing the choir from the side aisles, and a charming iron safe let into the wall on the north side, of ironwork painted and gilt. There are moreover some quaint paintings; an ancient altarpiece representing S. Rocque, between S. John and S. Laurence, on a gold ground; a S. Mary Magdalen with the portrait of a canon kneeling at her feet; the finest painting is S. Michael, also with a canon kneeling below. The armour of the archangel is very rich, and heightened with gold. The date of these pictures is 1513. There is another of the Nativity that is inferior. Whilst looking round the church, I heard singing muffled and distant, and presently, on reaching the steps that descended to the crypt, found that a young priest was there catechising a class of little girls. After some instructions they sang a hymn, which a Sister of Mercy was accompanying on the harmonium. The air was taking. It puzzled me at first. It was familiar and yet strange, and not till the children had reached the last verse did I recognise a wonderfully distorted form of the mermaid's song in _Oberon_, all the accents being altered. In this crypt is the tomb of a Neapolitan knight attached to the court of king René; and in the floor a well the water of which rises and falls with the river. In all probability this crypt was originally the baptistery of the first basilica erected in Tarascon. [Illustration: King René's castle, Tarascon.] The castle of King René is wonderfully picturesque on the landside. It was begun in 1400; he is said to have instituted the festival of the Tarasque, that used to be conducted with great merriment annually on July 29th. A procession of mummers attended by the clergy paraded the town, escorting the figure of a dragon, made of canvas, and wielding a heavy beam of wood for a tail, to the imminent danger of the legs of all who approached. The dragon was conducted by a girl in white and blue, who led it by her girdle of blue silk, and when the dragon was especially frolicsome and unruly dashed holy water over it. The ceremony was attended by numerous practical jokes, and led to acts of violence, in consequence of which it has been suppressed. S. Martha has inherited the symbols of the Phoenician goddess of her own name, the ship and the dragon; there can be little doubt that the first Phoenician settlers in Provence introduced her worship as the patroness of sailors, and that this worship acquired a fresh impulse after the destruction of the Teutons who had overrun the land, when the prophetess Martha was regarded as one with the earlier goddess. When Christianity came in, the name of the hostess of Bethany was given to the churches erected where Martha the moon goddess had been venerated before, so as gradually to wean the heathen from their old faith. They came over into the Church, but brought with them their myth of the pagan goddess. [Illustration: A bit in Tarascon.] An odd legend is told of her death. On a Sunday morning, S. Fronto, bishop of Perigeux was about to say Mass, and whilst waiting for the congregation to assemble, fell asleep in his chair, when he saw Christ appear, who bade him come and assist at the obsequies of Martha. Instantly he found himself translated to Tarascon, in the church with our Lord, he at the feet and Christ at the head of the body, and the Saviour sang the burial office. In the meantime at Perigeux, the deacon wondered at the heavy sleep of the bishop, and had much ado to rouse him. At length Fronto opened his eyes, when the deacon whispered that the people were impatient with long waiting. "Do not be troubled," said Fronto, "you do not understand what I have been about." Now it fell out that whilst at Tarascon Fronto was engaged in burying Martha, he had taken off his glove and ring, and had put them into the hands of the sacristan. When Fronto informed the congregation at Perigeux what he had been about, they disbelieved. However, messengers were sent to Tarascon, and his glove and ring were identified. These were preserved as relics in the church till the Revolution. Unfortunately for the story, Fronto of Perigeux belongs to the fourth century, so that the lapse in dream was not merely a skip over half France, but also through four centuries. Tarascon has some picturesque bits in the town, arcades with shops underneath, and quaint doorways of Renaissance work; but its chief charm after the castle is certainly the view across the river to the heights of Beaucaire with its grand ruins. I lunched at an hotel where, nearly opposite me, was a gentleman who had been at Marseilles on the arrival of the President, and was very full of what he had seen. At the table were half-a-dozen beside myself, and he held forth to them on the spectacle. Opposite him sat a bullet-headed commercial traveller. "But," said the latter, "I would not have crossed the Rhone by the bridge of Tarascon to have seen him. What is M. Sadi-Carnot? He is naught." "No, but he represents the nation. Give us a pump as president, and we must garland that pump with flowers. And believe me, c'est un vilain métier cet de président. If he leans a little too much on this side he goes down into the mud, a little too much on the other he rolls in the dust. One must feel some respect for the man who undertakes such a thankless office. And, again, when a man rides in an open landau in pelting rain, when il lui pleut dans le nez, without an umbrella, with his hat off, saluting right and left, he deserves recognition." "It was not worth the cost of his entertainment. I am surprised that Marseilles did it." "I beg pardon. It was worth while doing it. Had the weather been fine, it would have brought money into the town." "What! Would any English and American travellers desert Montecarlo for a day to see a Sadi-Carnot?" "No, but every woman in Marseilles would have bought a new kerchief or a trinket to make herself smart, just because it was a fête. As it was, money circulated." "How so?" "One thousand and ninety-seven umbrellas were sold that day at prices ranging from five to fifteen francs, which on other occasions sell for two francs twenty-five centimes, and ten francs." I do not know whether I have been peculiarly unfortunate in lighting on only one class of men under the present _régime_, but whether it be in France, Switzerland, Belgium, or Italy, that I have come across Frenchmen and had a talk with them of late years, I have noticed a prevailing discouragement, a pessimism, that certainly was absent in former days. The very character of a French _table d'hôte_ is changed. Instead of Gallic vivacity, merriment, and general conversation, such as one was wont to find there, one encounters silence, reserve, and a marked absence of self-assertion. It is the Germans who are now boisterous and self-assertive at table. The French are quiet and subdued. As I have already said, I may be mistaken; I may have hit on exceptional cases, but it is a fact that those Frenchmen I have conversed with during the last two or three years have been oppressed with a conviction that France has lost caste among the nations, that her future is menaced, and they say that they see no way out of their present condition. As one said to me last winter in Rome: "The idea of France is an abstraction. We range ourselves now under parties, our devotion is no longer to our country but to our party. Have you ever been at a stag hunt? When the noble beast is down the huntsman slices it open and throws the heart and liver and entrails to the hounds. Then ensues a battle. Every dog snatches at what he desires, and envies the other the piece of offal he has secured. All are filled with hatred of each other, and selfish greed as to who can eat most and the best morsels of the fallen beast. And that is a picture of France. If war came upon us, we must infallibly be overthrown, for each general would be seeking out of the accidents of warfare to steal an advantage for himself or the party he favours." The town of Beaucaire, on the farther side of the Rhone, is fuller of picturesque points than is Tarascon. Seated at the head of the Beaucaire Canal, that communicates with the sea, it has that commercial prosperity which is lacking at Tarascon. The old church is an exact reproduction of that of S. Martha, but has in addition a most remarkable font, a structure rising in stages like a tower, and with a spire to cap it, resembling somewhat the sacramental tabernacles in the German churches. The Hôtel de Ville is a picturesque Renaissance building with bold open staircase on pillars. The castle of Beaucaire crowns the ridge of limestone that extends across the country from Nimes and is cut through by the Rhone, again emerging, in a low eminence, at Tarascon. This noble castle was taken by Simon de Montfort in the Albigensian War from the Count of Toulouse, but the youthful Raymond VII., though only nineteen years old, laid siege to it in 1216, and succeeded in recovering it. In this siege, the inhabitants of the town, under the young count, assailed the castle. Simon de Montfort collected an army and attacked Raymond in the rear. There is a very curious account of this siege in a Provençal poem on the Albigensian War, from which I will quote a few lines, only premising that in the original the castle is called the Capitol:-- "The townsmen set up their engines against the Crusaders in the castle, and so battered it that castle and watch-tower were broken, beams and lead and stone. At Holy Easter the battering-ram was made ready, long, iron-headed, sharp, which so struck and cut that the wall was injured, and the stones began to fall out. But the besieged were not discouraged; they made a loop of cords attached to a wooden beam, and with that they caught the head of the ram and held it fast. This troubled those of Beaucaire sore; till the master engineer came, and he set the ram in motion once more. Then several of the assailants got up the rock, and began to detach portions of the wall with their picks. This the besieged were ware of, and they let down upon them sulphur and pitch and fire in sackcloth by a chain along the wall, and when it blazed it broke forth and was spilt over the workmen, and suffocated them so that not one could there continue. Then they went to their machines for casting stones, and they threw them with such effect into the castle as to break all the beams thereof." Beaucaire castle is now in ruins, but the Romanesque chapel remains in tolerable condition. In it Louis IX. is said to have heard Mass before he embarked for the crusade to Egypt. The pretty old Provençal poem of Aucassin and Nicolette, which has been recently translated into English by Mr. Andrew Lang and daintily published, has its scene laid at Beaucaire. Tieck gave a version of it in his "Phantasus." [Illustration: The chapel of Beaucaire Castle.] As we are on the very scene of this graceful little tale, I must give the essence of it. The romance, which dates from the second half of the thirteenth century, is in prose, mingled with scraps of rhyme, destined to be sung, and with their musical notation given. At the head of each scrap of verse comes the rubric "Now is to be sung," and the prose passages are headed, "Now is to be said." Aucassin was the son of the Count of Beaucaire. He was fair of face, with light curled hair and grey eyes. Now there was a viscount in the town who had bought of the Saracens a little maid, and he taught her the Christian faith, and had her baptised and called Nicolette. Then said the Count of Beaucaire to his son Aucassin that he should go to battle and win his spurs and be dubbed a knight. Aucassin replied that he had no wish to be a knight, unless his father would give him Nicolette "ma douce mie" to wife. The count is indignant. He says that his son must marry the daughter of a king or of a count; but Aucassin replies that were an empress offered him he would refuse her for Nicolette. Thereat the count goes to the viscount and bids him give up the little maid that he may burn her as a witch. The viscount hesitates, and promises he will put her out of reach of Aucassin. Thereupon he shuts her up in a tower, along with her nurse, where there is but a single window. And the count promises his son that he shall have his "douce mie" if he will go to fight against the mortal enemy of their house, the Count of Vallence. Aucassin believes his father; goes and captures the count. Then the father refuses to fulfil his promise. Aucassin in a rage releases the Count of Vallence, and the Count of Beaucaire imprisons his son in a tower of the castle. One moonlight night, when her nurse is asleep, Nicolette ties the bedclothes together and lets herself down out of the window, escapes from the town, and goes under the castle, where she hears Aucassin lamenting in his prison. She speaks to him and he replies. But (as it is ascertained that she has escaped) the guard are sent forth in search of her, with orders to run her through the body if found. However, the chief officer of the guard is a merciful man, and so, as he goes about, he sings a song to warn her, and she hides in the shadow of the tower till the watch is gone by and then flies away into the forest land. There she builds herself a hut. When no tidings of Nicolette are heard, the Count of Beaucaire lets his son forth from prison. One day, as Aucassin rides in the forest, he lights on the cabin of his dear Nicolette, and they resolve to fly together. So they take a boat on the Rhone and they are washed down towards the sea, captured by Saracen pirates and separated. Aucassin is ransomed and returns home. Nicolette stains her face, makes her escape, obtains a _vielle_, and travels about Provence, singing ballads. She comes to Beaucaire, where Aucassin is now count, his father having died, and sings to her hurdy-gurdy the song of her adventures. The tears run down his cheeks, and he promises her rich gifts if she will tell him more. Then she goes to the viscountess--the viscount is dead--washes off the walnut juice, dresses in best array, is seen and recognised by Aucassin, they are married with great pomp, and are happy ever after. A dear little innocent story, fresh and sweet with the springtime bloom of early literature, withal full of curious pictures of the feelings of the time relative to chivalry, monachism, and religion. [Illustration: Beaucaire Castle from Tarascon.--Sunset.] CHAPTER XV. NIMES. The right spelling of Nimes--Derivation of name--The fountain--Throwing coins into springs--Collecting coins--Symbol of Agrippa--Character of Agrippa--What he did for Nimes--The Maison Carrée--Different idea of worship in the Heathen world from what prevails in Christendom--S. Baudille--Vespers--Activity of the Church in France--Behaviour of the Clergy in Italy to the King and Queen--The Revolution a blessing to the Church in France--Church services in Italy and in France--The Tourmagne--Uncertainty as to its use--Cathedral of Nimes--Other churches--A canary lottery--Altars to the Sun--The sun-wheel--The Cross of Constantine--Anecdote of Fléchier. I pray the reader to observe how I spell the name of Nimes, with neither an s nor a circumflex, neither as Nismes, nor as Nîmes, for both are wrong. Nimes is Nemausus, and there is no s to be sounded or suppressed in the ancient name of the place, which comes from the Keltic _naimh_, a fountain or spring. And in very truth no other name could better suit it, for here under a limestone hill wells up the river in one large flood sufficient for boats to go on it at once. This great green spring, ever flowing, mysterious even nowadays, is the great feature of Nimes, and this fountain certainly awoke the veneration of the old Gauls, who believed it to be a direct gift of the gods. One follows up a canal between streets planted with trees, and looks down into the pure water like liquid green glass, then suddenly reaches a garden. Above rises a wooded hill, thick with pines, syringa, Judas tree of brilliant pink lake, laburnum with its chains of gold, forming an arc of flowers, and sees before one a wide enclosed pool, walled round, of the shape of the figure 8, heaving with cold pure water that flows away under the terrace and falls with a roar to the lower level of the canal. On one side are ruins--of a temple to the Nymphs; but one cannot at first look at that, the volume of water engages one--a lake lifting itself up by its own strength out of the earth, always, night and day, inexhaustible, hardly varying in volume, coming no one knows whence, deep and green, with no visible bottom, without a bubble, without a ruffle--it is indeed wonderful. I have seen the spring of the Danube at Donaueschingen: it is nothing to this; the fountain of Vaucluse one can understand--it breaks out from a cave in the mountainside, like scores of others; this is otherwise--a river rising with no fuss, no display, no noise, without even a ripple. It does not gush, it does not boil up. It is simply one glassy surface, and looking at it you cannot conceive that it is a river rising vertically and sliding away under your feet. Pliny says of the source of the Clitumnus: "At the foot of a little hill covered with venerable and shady trees, a spring issues which, gushing out in different and unequal streams, forms itself, after several windings, into a spacious basin, so extremely clear that you may see the pebbles, and the little pieces of money that are thrown into it, as they lie at the bottom." I have quoted this passage, not because the source of the Clitumnus at all resembles that of the river at Nimes, but because of the mention of the coins thrown in. Suetonius speaks of this same practice in his life of Augustus. Now this fountain at Nimes has yielded, and yields still, an almost inexhaustible supply of Roman and Gaulish and Gallo-Greek coins that have been thus thrown in as oblations to the nymphs in remote times; and these coins are now in the museums of Nimes and Paris, and in those of private collectors. The same custom still remains, but instead of coins, pins are now cast into springs. [Illustration: In the public gardens, Nimes.] At the entrance to the public gardens, over the iron gate is a medallion representing a crocodile and a palm-tree. The moment I saw it I stood still and stared. I knew that symbol, had known it from a boy. And this is how I came to know it. Living much in the south of France, and having always a hankering after old things, I collected coins, and I got them from the priests. The peasants were wont to drop old Roman coins which they found in their fields into the offertory bags and plates, and as these were of no use to the _curés_, they were very glad to give or sell them to me for small current sous. By this means I succeeded in making a very tolerable collection of Roman coins at an incredibly small cost. Now among these, one of the very first I got, and most curious, represented Octavius and Agrippa on one side, and on the reverse this identical symbol of a crocodile under a palm tree. Often enough did I turn that coin over and wonder what it meant, and highly delighted was I to discover its signification at length. It was symbolical of the subjugation of Egypt, and was struck in compliment to Agrippa. Then most assuredly Agrippa had something to do with Nimes. I turned to a little history of the place that I had, and to my delight found that he it was who is held to have been the great benefactor, indeed maker, of this little town. I have the greatest possible respect for Agrippa. His stern, yet noble face, once seen in this bust is never to be forgotten, and infinitely sad--sad beyond comparison in history is the story of his family. He was a man of obscure, plebeian birth, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, belonging to a family, the Vipsanian, of which the gentlemen of Rome professed never to have heard, or not to have found it necessary to trouble their heads to learn anything. He was a fine soldier, a man of plain manners, good morals, upright, faithful, unambitious. Octavius Augustus was warmly attached to him, and valued his good qualities and his admirable military genius; and Agrippa on his side was tenderly devoted to his noble friend. Their characters were as unlike as their faces and as their manners. When Octavius became the supreme ruler of the destinies of Rome, he heaped honours on his friend. He made him put away his wife and marry his own daughter Julia. He had children by her, Caius and Lucius, who grew to man's estate and then died, one from a wound, the other of decline, and another son, an ill-conditioned boy, Agrippa Posthumus, put to death, probably by order of Octavius, a commission given on his own deathbed, to save Rome from internecine war. His daughter, Agrippina, starved herself to death, heartbroken at the murder of her two sons by Tiberius, and despairing at the thought that her other son, the crazy, debauched, cruel Caligula was alone left to represent her family. The other daughter of Agrippa, Julia, was infamous for her debaucheries, and died in banishment. The family was then represented by the second Agrippina, daughter of the first Agrippina, who became the mother of Nero--that son who was his mother's and his brother's murderer, and died finally by his own hand, amidst the execrations of the Roman world. The sad shadow that lies on the brow of Agrippa almost seems to be cast there by the destiny awaiting his family. Not one drop of his blood mingled with the sacred _ichor_ of the Julian race remains on earth. But other remnants of Agrippa abide. The Pantheon of Rome, and the Pont du Gard near Nimes, aye--and the baths he made for the washerwomen in the water he led into this town, that they might not sully the sacred spring that welled up before the temple of the Nymphs. Agrippa in his various offices and governorships accumulated great wealth, but he was not a grasping man, nor one who spent his wealth upon himself. Wherever he was, he expended his fortune on improving and embellishing the cities under his sway. Thus it was that for quite an inconsiderable little town, which the classic authors pass over without notice, he lavished very large sums to provide it with excellent water from two springs twenty-five miles distant, not that the river that rises at Nimes is impure, but that a certain awe felt for it withheld the natives from desecrating the sacred waters to common use. The Pont du Gard which carried the waters by three tiers of arches across the valley of the Gurdon, at a height of one hundred and eighty feet, is one of the most striking and perfect of the monuments left by the Romans in Gaul, or anywhere; and it is certainly remarkable that the two most complete relics of this great people that remain, should have been the work of Agrippa, the Pantheon and the Pont du Gard. This latter is a colossal work. Its length is 873 feet at top, and may well be compared to its advantage with the modern aqueduct that conveys water to the Prado of Montpellier, a more lengthy, but a feeble structure. [Illustration: The Pont du Gard.] The Roman remains in Nimes are held famous everywhere. Nowhere, least of all in Rome, are the relics of that great people of builders to be seen in such perfection. There is the amphitheatre, smaller, but more perfect even, than that at Arles. There is the _Maison Carrée_, a temple almost quite perfect, and of surpassing proportional perfection. Small this temple is: it consists of thirty elegant Corinthian columns, ten of which are disengaged, and form the portico, whereas the remainder are engaged in the _naos_ or sanctuary. No engraving can give an idea of its loveliness. It is the best example we have in Europe, of a temple that is perfectly intact. It is mignon, it is cheerful, it is charming. I found myself unable at any time to pass it without looking round over my shoulder, again and again, and uttering some exclamation of pleasure at the sight of it. [Illustration: The Maison Carrée, Nimes.] That temple is instructive in a way the ordinary traveller would hardly suspect. It is a valuable example to us of the complete and radical difference that existed between the Pagan and the Christian ideas of worship. The Pagan world had no idea of gathering a congregation together, any more than I may say have the old canons of Florence, or of S. Peter's, Rome, who shut themselves into glass boxes, of bringing all men into one building to unite in prayer and praise. The sanctuaries of the Pagan gods were quite small and dark. Worship was simply an individual matter, a bringing of a sacrifice to an altar. There was nothing like congregational worship in the Jewish temple either. The priest alone went within to offer the incense, whilst the people stood without. But in the Christian church the condition of affairs was completely reversed. The worship of God was to be for all the people, all together, with one heart and one voice. That is why the early Christians in the fourth century never adapted a temple to a church. A temple could not be adapted. The pillars were all outside, and within was a little dark box--the sanctuary--that would not hold more than a couple of score of persons. They could not use the temples; what they wanted were temples turned outside-in, the pillars within forming great halls in which a crowd might be gathered. I had been looking at this delightful little temple and considering this, and it was a Sunday. I sauntered on, this still on my mind, when I fell in with trains of school children, all drifting in one direction. I followed them, and found myself in the great new church of S. Baudille. The time was afternoon. The church, quite a cathedral in size, was crowded, boys' schools, girls' schools, men, women, of all sorts and ranks were there. Then I heard such a service as did the heart good to hear. It was only vespers--just five psalms, a hymn, and the Magnificat; nothing more. But the psalms were sung in alternate verses between the choir and the congregation, who knew every word and every note, and sang lustily from their hearts' depths, the plain old Gregorian tones with which many of us are so familiar at home. I found the words welling up in my mind: "The voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth." I was glad there was no one with me as we dispersed, to speak to me. I could not have answered, my heart was too full. But I went back to the Maison Carrée, and looked again at it for long, and then realised, in a way I had never realised before, how that the Carpenter of Nazareth had transformed the whole idea of worship into something of which the world previously had no conception. To the ordinary English traveller the services in a foreign Roman Catholic church are so unintelligible that I may be excused if I say a word on vespers that may enable him to understand it. Usually--always on week days--two evening services, vespers and compline are said together, or rather one immediately after the other. Each consists of confession and absolution, a short Scriptural lesson, psalms, a canticle, a hymn and collects. The canticle for vespers is the Magnificat; for compline is the Nunc Dimittis. Now as the two services were practically united, what our Reformers did was to weld them together. They cut out the second confession and absolution and the second batch of psalms, but retained the second lesson and the second canticle. The English even-song is therefore simply the Latin vespers and compline pressed into a single service. The Reformers, by putting a psalm as alternative for each canticle, perhaps intended the English even-song to serve as either vespers (when Magnificat was sung) or as compline (when Nunc Dimittis was sung). When I was in Rome during the winter, I was very much astonished, one day, as the King of Italy passed, to see a whole school of little boys under the direction of three Christian Brothers, strut by with their little noses in the air, and without raising their hats. At the same pension with myself was a young Swiss Benedictine monk, who sat by me at _table d'hôte_, and with whom I struck up a warm friendship. I commented to him on what I had seen. "Oh!" he replied, "we make a point of never saluting the king. Why," he continued, "only yesterday I was walking down the Corso with Cardinal U----, when we saw the queen's carriage approaching. I asked what was to be done. His eminence replied, 'Keep your hat on, don't notice her.'" I confess that my English blood boiled up, and for the first and last time I spoke sharply to my friend. I believe I made a certain allusion to an injunction of S. Paul, and told him plainly that I thought such conduct unbecoming in a gentleman and a Christian, and a priest. On entering France ones sees what devastation the Revolution wrought on the Church, and one compares the condition there with the very light and easy way in which she has been taken out of her temporal throne and seated on the ground in Italy. She has been treated there too easily, so easily that she pouts, and frets, and sulks; whereas in France she has been an Antæus who rose from the ground stronger than when cast down. In Rome, the Church shuffles along in her old slouching, hands-in-the-pockets, half-asleep, don't-care style, letting every opportunity slip away, neglected by the people, because she neglects them. In France, the Church is tingling with fresh life-blood to her fingers' ends, full of energy, activity, zeal. Why, there is not to be found in Rome, or Florence, or Naples, a church where a tolerable service is to be heard sung. In Rome one gets sick of and angry with the squalling of eunuchs, and longs for a scourge of small cords to drive them out of the temple. No one cares for the Church services in Rome. No attempt is made to attract the people to them. At Florence the service is like the bleating of a flock of sheep driven into a pen to be shorn, and the old canons who baa are enclosed within glass against draughts, and to the exclusion of all congregational worship. But in France, the people who have any religion in them love their services--love them and have made them their own, sing in them and follow them with eager interest. I remember, when I was a youth in France, that few men were seen in church, and the ladies lounged through the service. It is not so now, you see as many men in church as you will in England, and the women are attentive and devout. The Italian Church must suffer deeper humiliation, and learn to touch her cap to "the powers that be, ordained of God," before the people will rally to her and show her reverence. On the summit of the hill above the fountain and temple of the Nymphs is a most puzzling building, the _Tourmagne_. It is of Roman construction, a great tower like that of Babel, in stages, the upper stage with semicircular recesses that sustained the external wall, now in part fallen. No one can tell its purpose. It has clearly been utilised since its first construction by the Romans, by making it an angle tower of some other building, the foundations of which have been quite recently exposed. The tower is octagonal. It resembles the structure of the lighthouse at Ostia, already mentioned as in the Torlonia gallery. But why a lighthouse here? It is true that to the south of Nimes was lagoon and marsh, with islets and strips of dry land scattered about among the tracts of water, all the way to the sea, but one hardly supposes such a lighthouse would have been raised to guide the _utriculares_ on their skin-sustained rafts. Yet for what other purpose it can have been raised it is hard to imagine. It stands on very high ground, and commands a most extensive prospect. It has long been, and is likely to remain, a hard nut for antiquaries to break their teeth upon. The cathedral of Nimes has been, not so much restored as transformed internally, so as to void it of much interest, but it must have been a curious church at one time. Externally, at the west end, is a most wonderful frieze, a band of rich sculpture representing the story of man from the Creation to the drunkenness of Noah. In one chapel within is an old Christian sarcophagus utilised as an altar, on it our Lord is represented as teacher surrounded by the apostles. S. Paul is a modern church good in proportion, with an admirable central octagonal tower and spire. The only fault to be found with the church is in the details. S. Baudille is a pretentious Gothic church, with two asparagus shoots as western towers, it has a square east end, with a really marvellously ugly east window. The new church of S. Perpetue is beneath criticism. [Illustration: Cathedral of Nimes.--Part of west front.] There are two Roman triumphal arches at Nimes, but neither is remarkable. In front of one I found a man exhibiting a cage of canaries. He had a little table before the cage on which small cards, each numbered, were set out. Then he sold among the bystanders tickets with corresponding numbers. There were eighteen numbers, and each card sold for a sou, and the whole constituted a lottery for a chain and some seals that the fellow dangled before the eyes of the little circle of lookers-on. The lots were taken up after a little persuasion and chaffering. Then he opened the cage door; out hopped a canary that trotted up and down the little table, and finally picked up one of the cards. "Number nine," called the proprietor of the canaries. "Which monsieur is the happy possessor of card number nine?" A soldier stepped forward, presented his tally, and received the silver watch-chain. Then all those who had been unsuccessful restored their cards, and the same process was repeated, this time among women, for a silver thimble. Nimes struck me as one of the very brightest, pleasantest towns I have ever visited, and the one in which, if forced to live out of England, I think I could live most happily in. I have said not one word about the museum at Nimes, which is within the Maison Carrée, and yet the museum contains some objects deserving of attention. There are two altars with wheels carved on them, both small, the largest only two feet three inches high, and that has on it not the wheel only, but the thunderbolt. These are altars to the Gaulish god of the sun. The second bears an inscription "et terræ matri." It was dedicated doubtless to the "sun and to the earth mother," but the first portion of the legend is lost. In the Avignon Museum is a statue of a Gaulish Jupiter in military costume, with his right hand on the wheel, and with the eagle on his left. [1] [Footnote 1: Others at Trèves, Moulin, and Paris.] Moreover, in the Nimes museum are some bronze circular ornaments, found in 1883 in the caves of S. Vallon in Ardèche, representing the wheel. On the triumphal arch of Orange are Gaulish warriors with horned helmets, and wheels as crests between the horns. The wheel, as symbol of the sun, was very general everywhere, in the east as well as the west, among the Germans as well as among the Gauls, but among the latter it assumed a very special importance, and it is due to this fact that in the French cathedrals the west window is a wheel window. At Basle there is a round window in the minster with figures climbing and falling on the spokes, and Fortune sits in the midst. It is a wheel of Fortune. It is the same at Beauvais, at Amiens, and elsewhere. At Chartres is a representation in stained glass of the Transfiguration; and Christ is exhibited in glory in the midst of an eight-spoked wheel. A curious statue at Luxeuil, now lost, represented a rider protecting a lady whilst his horse tramples on a prostrate foe; his raised hand over the woman is thrust through a six-rayed wheel. On the Meuse a similar peculiarity has been noticed in a fragment of a sculptured figure, it is a hand holding a four-spoked wheel. In the Museum Kircherianum at Rome are bronze six-rayed wheels, the spokes zigzagged like lightnings, found at Forli, others at Modena. All these were symbols of the sun. Now when Constantine professed to have seen his vision, which was in all probability a mock-sun, he thought that the rays he saw formed the Greek initials of Christ, and he therefore ordered these initials, _forming a six-rayed wheel_, to be set up on the standards of his soldiers. The only difference between his "Labarum" and the symbol of the Gaulish sun-god was that his upper spoke was looped to form the letter P. No doubt whatever, that his Keltic soldiers hailed the new standard as that of their national god, and that when they marched against Maxentius and met him at Saxa Rubra, eight miles from Rome, they thought that they, as Gauls, were marching to a second capture of the capital of the world, under the protection of their national god. Among men of note that have been associated with Nimes is Fléchier, born at Pernes in Vaucluse in 1632, who became Bishop of Nimes in 1687. He was the son of a tallow-chandler. From his eloquence he was much regarded as a preacher, but unfortunately his discourses contain very little except well-rounded sentences of well-chosen words. He was a favourite of Louis XIV., who respected his integrity and piety. One day a haughty aristocratic prelate about the Court had the bad taste to sneer at him for his origin. "Avec votre manière de penser," replied Fléchier calmly, "je crois que si vous étiez né ce que je suis, vous n'eussiez fait, toute votre vie--que de chandelles." CHAPTER XVI. AIGUES MORTES AND MAGUELONNE. A dead town--The Rhônes-morts--Bars--S. Louis and the Crusades--How S. Louis acquired Aigues Mortes--His canal--The four littoral chains and lagoons--The fortifications--Unique for their date--Original use of battlements--Deserted state of the town--Maguelonne--How reached--History of Maguelonne--Cathedral--The Bishops forge Saracen coins--Second destruction of the place--Inscription on door--Bernard de Treviis--His Romance of Pierre de Provence--Provençal poetry not always immoral--Present state of Maguelonne. Aigues Mortes is a dead town, and differs from Maguelonne, to be presently described, in this, that it is a dead _town_, whereas Maguelonne is only the ghost of a dead town. It is a great curiosity, for it is a dead mediæval town surrounded by its walls, and dominated by its keep. But first about its name, which signifies Dead Waters. If the reader will remember what has been already said about the structure of the delta of the Rhone, he will recall the fact that the river is constantly engaged in changing its mouths. When it has formed for itself a new mouth, it deserts its former course, which it leaves as a stagnating canal. This occasions the delta to be striped with what are locally termed Rhônes-morts, whereas a flowing branch is called a Rhône-vif. [Illustration: Aigues Mortes.--One of the gates.] Moreover the stagnant masses of water left by floods are called Aigues Mortes--Dead Waters; and it is precisely on such that the little fortified town I am now writing about, stands. I know of no point on the littoral of the Rhone that offers so excellent an opportunity of observing the processes of that river than at Aigues Mortes. The river has, indeed, long ago deserted the branch that once discharged itself here, and it has left four lines behind it, making successive stages of advance, four bars, with their several backwaters, now converted into ponds or meres. The Canal of Beaucaire now passes by Aigues Mortes, and reaches the Mediterranean nearly three miles below the town. It was from Aigues Mortes that S. Louis sailed on his Crusades in 1248 and 1270; and it has a little puzzled many people to account for his having chosen such a wretched place as this for the assembly of his Crusaders and for embarkation. But he could not help himself. [Illustration: Aigues Mortes.--Tower of the Bourgignons.] As soon as Louis had, in 1244, made his vow to assume the cross, his first care was to obtain on the shores of the Mediterranean a territory and a port sufficient for the concentration of the troops that were to from his expedition. But he encountered great difficulty. The king was not _suzerain_ over the southern provinces of France, and possessed as his own not a single town on the coast. The port of Narbonne was choked with sand, and belonged to the viscounts of that town. The port of Maguelonne was under the sovereignty of the bishop. The lagoons and their openings into the sea of Montpellier were under the King of Aragon. The ports of Agde and S. Gilles were subject to the counts of Toulouse, and independent Provence was not to be attached to the crown till three centuries later. The marshy district of Aigues Mortes was alone available; it was under the abbey of Psalmodi, planted amidst the swamps on a little sandy elevation. Louis IX. entered into negotiations with the abbot, and in exchange for certain royal domains near Sommière, he was enabled to acquire the town of Aigues Mortes and all the zone of lagoons between it and the sea. At that time there existed but a single fortification--the tower of Matafera--erected about five centuries before as a place of refuge from the Saracens. S. Louis restored this tower, or rather rebuilt it, in the form in which it remains to this day. Then he constructed a quay, and scooped out a canal through the lagoons to the sea. This is the old canal, now full of sand, and up this vessels were able to proceed through two lagoons to the tower of Matafera, which acquired later the name of Tour de Constance. But the old canal had an ephemeral existence; every inundation of the lagoons of the Rhone altered their depths, and disturbed the canal. A century or two later another canal was cut between the old one and that now in use, that also was destined in time to be choked up; but the old discharging and lading place of the vessels can still be distinguished by the heaps of ballast thrown out, consisting of stones from Genoa and Corsica. It is quite a mistake to suppose that Aigues Mortes was on the sea in the thirteenth century. The Crusaders embarked in the canal cut by S. Louis, and sailed through the lagoons before they reached the open Mediterranean. The most ancient maps show us Aigues Mortes bathed by one of those branches of the Rhone, now deserted, which go by the name of Rhônes-morts. At a time before history--at all events the history of Gaul begins, the Rhone had its principal mouth in the great Etang de Maugio; but it choked up its mouth there, and advanced eastward in several stages, leaving in its rear, as the river thus shifted its quarters, a series of dwindling and then dead channels. [Illustration: Sketch map of Mortes and its littoral chains.] What is now the Petit Rhône, reaching the sea at Les Saintes Maries, was then the main stream, which has long ago turned away, and now discharges its greatest body of water into the Mediterranean at Saint Louis. It has left behind it, not only the dead or stagnant Rhones, its neglected beds, but also, as already noticed, its old bars, and these are very distinctly marked at Aigues Mortes. The first chain gives us the primitive beach, which began at the lagoon of Maugio, traversed the entire Camargue, and can be traced to Fos. It is formed of an almost uninterrupted succession of sandhills crowned with a tolerably rich vegetation; on it grow the white poplar, the aleppo and the umbrella pines. To the south of this lay the prehistoric sea; the ground is horizontal, and although subjected to culture shows sufficient evidence that it was at one time sea-bed, covered with more recent alluvium. Here is the great lagoon of Loyran, which, before many years are passed, will be completely drained, and its bed turned up by the plough. Still advancing seaward, we reach a second littoral chain, not so distinctly marked as the first, but nevertheless distinguishable by its low line of sandy dunes, on which a scanty growth of tamarisks and coarse grass is sustained. Then we come to a succession of lagoons, once united into one, and after them the third bar, presenting exactly the same features--a low range of sand and pebbles, and beyond it once more lagoons, cut off from the waves of the Mediterranean by a fourth and last chain, the most recent, that belongs to the historic epoch. But that is not all: the wash of the sea, its current settling west, and carrying with it the mud of the Rhone is gradually, but surely building up a fifth bar or bank, which will in time close the gulf from the point of Espignette to the bathing-place of Palavas, when the Gulf of Aigues Mortes will be converted into a second Etang de Berre. [Illustration: Map of THE COAST OF PROVENCE & LANGUENDOC showing Old Lagoons & Deserted River Mouths] Aigues Mortes is surrounded by its mediæval fortifications just as they were left by Philip the Bold, son of S. Louis. The plan of the town is almost quadrilateral, it has six gates and fifteen towers. Only one angle of the parallelogram is cut off, where stands the stately circular tower of Constance. The streets are laid out in the most precise manner, cutting each other at right angles; there are four churches, of which the principal is Notre Dame des Sablons. The others were all formerly attached to monasteries or convents. [Illustration: Original use of battlements.--(_From Viollet-le-Duc._)] The plan of the fortification is precisely that adopted by the Crusaders wherever they built defences, in Syria, in Cyprus, in Palestine. The walls are crenellated, usually without machicolations, pierced with long slots, and with square holes through which beams were thrust, supporting wooden balconies which commanded the bases of the walls, and enabled the besieged to protect themselves against the efforts made by the assailants to sap the bases of the ramparts, or to escalade the walls. Towers, round and square at intervals, strengthened the walls, and formed points of vantage and of assembly for the besieged. Precisely similar fortifications were raised about the same period at Tortosa, Antioch, Ascalon, Cæsarea, &c.; but all these have been destroyed, only Aigues Mortes remains, an unique and perfect example of the systematic fortification adopted by the Crusaders everywhere. The reader, probably, has not given a thought to the original purpose of a battlement, so common on towers and churches and castles. I therefore venture to show what it was originally. It was a wall broken through with doorways into the wooden gallery that overhung, and through which the assailants could be kept from approaching too near to the base of the walls. But, after a time, these wooden galleries were found to be inconvenient. Means were taken by the besiegers to set them on fire. Consequently they were abandoned, and their places were taken by projecting galleries of stone, supported, not on wooden beams, but on stone corbels, and it is this second stage in fortification which is called machicolation. The battlements were retained, but were no longer roofed over. Consequently it is possible to tell approximately the epoch of a Mediæval fortification, by a look at the battlements, whether they stand back flush with the walls, and have the beam-holes, or whether they stand forward, bracketed out from the walls. [Illustration: Second stage of battlements.] Aigues Mortes is a dead town. About a third of the area within the walls is devoted to gardens, or is waste. The population, which in the thirteenth century numbered 15,000 souls, has shrunk to a little over 3,000, a number at which it remains stationary. It does a little sleepy trade in salt, and sees the barges for Beaucaire pass its walls, and perhaps supplies the boatmen with wine and bread. The neighbourhood is desolate. The soil is so full of salt that it is impatient of tillage, and produces only such herbs as love the sea border. But its lagoons are alive with wild fowl, rose-coloured flamingoes, white gulls, and green metallic-throated ducks. And now for Maguelonne. I said that Aigues Mortes was a dead town, but Maguelonne was the ghost of one. The best way to reach this latter very singular spot is to take the train from Montpellier to Villeneuve de Maguelonne, and walk thence to the border of the Etang. There one is pretty sure to find fishermen--they catch little else than eels--who will row one across to the narrow strip of land that intervenes between the lagoon and the sea. The littoral chain here is not of sand and gravel only, for a mass of volcanic tufa rises to the surface, and originally formed an islet in the sea, then, when the process began of forming a littoral belt with a lagoon behind it, the sands clung to this islet and spread out from it to left and right. On this volcanic islet stood first a Greek and then a Roman city, but of its history nothing is known till the sixth century, when it was attacked from the sea by Wamba, King of the Visigoths. It had been an episcopal city for a century before. After the Visigoths came the Saracens, who gave the place their name, and the harbour of Maguelonne was called Port Sarasin. In 737, Charles Martel, in order to clear the pirates completely out of their stronghold, destroyed the city to its last foundation, with the sole exception of the old church of S. Peter. The bishop took up his abode on the mainland at Villeneuve, and the seat of the bishopric was moved to Castelnau near Montpellier. For three centuries the islet was abandoned and left a heap of ruins. But it was restored in the eleventh century. The walls were again set up, and flanked with towers, and a causeway consisting of a chain of wooden bridges was carried across the lagoon to Villeneuve. The entrance to the port was closed lest it should invite Saracen pirates, and another opened under the walls of the town which could be rendered impassable by a chain at the first sign of danger. The newly-built town speedily showed vigour, became populous, and the harbour was filled with the merchandise of the Mediterranean. Two popes visited the city, Gelasius II. in 1118, and Alexander III. in 1162. In addition to the Cathedral of S. Peter, other churches were raised, dedicated to S. Augustine and S. Pancras. A castle with keep was erected. For several centuries Maguelonne was a sort of ecclesiastical republic, in which the bishop exercised the office of president. It became very rich and luxurious. The bishop, not too scrupulous, forged imitation Saracen coins, and was called to order for doing this by Clement IV. in 1266. It seemed to the sovereign pontiff a scandal, not that the bishop should forge the coins, but that he should forge them with the name of Mahomet on them as "Prophet of God." In 1331 statutes for the monastery on Maguelonne were drawn up, which proved that the discipline kept therein left much to be desired; and a monastic treatise on cooking that came thence shows that the monks and canons were consummate epicures. Maguelonne was ruined first by Charles Martel. It was again, and finally ruined, by Louis XIII. The castle, the walls, the towers, the monastic buildings--everything was levelled to the dust, with the sole exception of the cathedral church. The stones of the dismantled buildings encumbered the ground till 1708, when they were all carried off for the construction of the new canal which runs along the coast through the chain of lagoons from Cette to Aigues Mortes. "A church and its archives," says the historian of Maguelonne, "that is all that the revolution of fate has respected of one of the principal monastic centres in the south. A church in which service is no longer said, and archives that are incomplete. Even the very cemetery of Maguelonne has vanished, as though Death had feared to encounter himself in this desert, where naught remained save the skeleton of a cathedral. Yet what dust is here! Phoenician, Greek, Celtic, Roman, Christian, Mahomedan, French: A few tombs escaped the observation of the stone collectors of 1708, and even fewer inscriptions, excepting such as are found within the church, that is all! What a realization is this of the sentence on all things human, _Pulvis es_." [1] [Footnote 1: Germain: "Maguelonne et ses Évêques," 1859.] [Illustration: East end of the Church of Maguelonne.] The islet of Maguelonne is but one knot in the long thread of _cordon littoral_ that reaches from Cette to Aigues Mortes, and it can be reached on foot by land from Palavas, but the simplest and shortest route is by boat in half an hour over the shallow mere, nowhere over three feet six inches deep. The boats of the fishermen are all flat-bottomed, and the men have to row gingerly, lest their oars strike the bottom, or else they punt along. One can see as one crosses, the points of rest of the old causeway. The church, like that of Les Trois Maries, is feudal castle as much as cathedral, calculated, on occasion, to give refuge within to the inhabitants of the town, whilst the garrison stood on the flat roof and showered arrows, stones, molten sulphur and pitch upon the besiegers. The whole of this coast was liable to the descent of Moorish and Saracen pirates, consequently the same type of church prevails all along it. The western tower is ruinous, but the remainder of the church is in tolerable condition. It is cruciform, with an apse, as but very narrow windows, high up and few. The roof is slabbed with stone, so as to form a terrace on which the besieged could walk, and whence they could launch their weapons through the slots and between the battlements. At the south-west end of the church is a curious entrance door of the twelfth century, with a relieving arch of coloured marbles over it, and the apostles Peter and Paul rudely sculptured as supporters of the arch. They occupy a crouching position, and are sculptured on triangular blocks. In the tympanum is the Saviour seated in glory. But what in addition to its quaintness of design gives peculiar interest to this doorway is the inscription it bears:-- AD PORTVM VITE SITIENTES QVIQVE VENITE. HAS INTRANDO FORES, VESTROS COMPONITE MORES. HINC INTRANS ORA, TVA SEMPER CRIMINA PLORA. QVICQVID PECCATVR LACRIMARVM FONTE LAVATVR. B. D. IIIVIS FECIT HOC ANNO INC. DO. CLXXVIII. Let those who will come thirsting to the gate of Life. On entering these doors compose your manners. Entering here pray, and ever bewail your crimes. All sin is washed away in the spring of tears. Bernard de Trevies made this, A.D. 1178. Now Bernard of the Three-Ways is a man who did something else--he was a novelist and a poet. A Canon of Maguelonne, gentle and pure of heart, he wrote the story of 'Pierre de Provence et la belle Maguelone,' a charming monument of the old Languedoc tongue worthy to range alongside with 'Aucassin et Nicolette.' It has been translated into most European languages, Greek not excepted, and has become a favourite chapbook tale. It is still read in all cottages of France, sold at all fairs, but sadly mutilated at each re-edition, and in its chapbook form reduced to a few pages, which is but a wretched fragment of a very delightful whole. No idea of its beauty can be obtained without reference to the old editions, where it occupies a goodly volume. The story of Pierre de Provence is not one of extraordinary originality, but its charm lies in its general tone, healthy, pure, gentle, full of the freshness of chivalry in its first institution, and of religion in its simplicity. We probably have not got the poetic romance quite in its original form as it left the hands of Bernard, for Petrarch, whilst a student at Montpellier, was struck with it, and added some polishing touches, and it is the version thus improved by his master-hand that is believed to have come down to us. I shrink from still further condensing a story spoiled already by condensation, and yet do not like altogether to pass it over without giving the reader some idea of it. The story tells of a Peter, son of the Count of Melgueil, who, hearing that the King of Naples had a daughter of surpassing loveliness, determined to ride and see her. He had himself accoutred in armour, with silver keys on his helm, and on his shield; and when he reached Naples jousted in tournament before the fair princess, whose name was Maguelone, and loved her well, and she him. But, alas! the king had promised to give her to the Prince of Carpona in marriage, and as she felt she could not live without her Pierre, and Peter was quite sure he could not live without her, they eloped together. When the sun waxed burning hot she became very weary, and he led her beneath a tree, and she laid her head on his knee and fell asleep. Then he saw how she had in her bosom a little silken bag, and he lightly drew it forth and peered within to see what it contained. Then, lo! he found three rings that he had sent her by her nurse. Afraid of waking her, by replacing the bag, he laid it beside him on a stone, when down swooped a raven and carried it off. Peter at once folded his mantle, put it under the head of the sleeping girl, and ran after the bird, which flew to the sea and perched on a rock above it. Peter threw a stone at the raven and made it drop the bag into the water. Then he got a boat, moored hard by, jumped into the boat and went after the floating bag with the rings. But wind and waves rose and brushed him out to sea, and carried him across the Mediterranean to Alexandria, where the Sultan made him his page. In the meantime the fair Maguelone awoke in the green wood, and finding herself alone, ran about calling "Pierre! Pierre!" but received no answer. She spent the night in the forest, and then took the road to Rome, and encountering a female pilgrim, exchanged clothes with her. Maguelone pursued her journey, prayed in S. Peter's Church at Rome, unnoticed by her uncle, who, with great state, passed by her kneeling there, and threw her alms. Then she went on to Genoa, where she took boat to Aigues Mortes. Hearing at this place that there was a little island off the coast suitable for a hermitage, thither she went, and with her jewels she had brought from Naples built a little church and a hospital, in which she ministered to sick people. The Countess of Melgueil, hearing of the holy woman, came to visit her, and won by her sympathy, with many tears told her how she had lost her dear son Peter, who had gone to Naples, and had not been heard of since. One day, a fisherman caught a tunny, and brought it as a present to the count. When the tunny was opened, in its stomach was found a little bag that contained three rings. Now, no sooner did the countess see these than she knew they were her own, which she had given to Pierre, and she hasted to tell the anchorite on the isle of the wondrous discovery, and to show her the rings. It need hardly be told that Maguelone also recognised them. Now the Sultan of Alexandria had become so attached to Peter, that he treated him as his own son, and finally, at Peter's entreaty, allowed him to return to Provence, having first extracted from him a promise to come back to him. Peter carried with him a great treasure in fourteen barrels, but to hide their contents he filled up the tops with salt. Then he engaged with a captain of a trader to convey him across to Provence. Now one day the vessel stayed for water at a little isle, called Sagona, and Peter went on shore, and the sun being hot, lay down on the grass and fell asleep. A wind sprang up. The sails were spread. The captain called Peter. The men ran everywhere searching for him, could not find him, and at length were reluctantly obliged to sail without him. On reaching Provence the captain was unwilling to retain the goods of the lost man, and so gave them to the holy woman who ministered to the sick in the hospital she had built on a tiny islet off the coast. One day when Maguelone was short of salt she went to fetch some from the barrels given her by the ship's captain, and to her amazement found under the salt an incalculable treasure. With this she set to work to rebuild the church and her hospital. In the meantime, Peter awoke, and found himself deserted. For some time he remained in the island, but from want of food and discouragement fell ill, and would have died had not some fishermen, chancing to come there, taken him into their boat. They consulted what to do with the sick man, and one said that they had best take him to Maguelone. On hearing the name Peter asked what they meant. They told him that this was the name given to a church and hospital richly built and tended to by a holy woman, on the coast of Provence. Peter then entreated them to carry him to the place that bore so fair a name. So he was conveyed, sick and feeble, into the hostel; but he was so changed with sickness that Maguelone did not recognise him, and as she wore a veil he could not see her face. Now Maguelone, whenever she went by his bed heard him sigh, so she stood still one day, spoke gently to him, and asked what was his trouble. Then he told her all his story, and how sad his heart was for his dear Maguelone, whom he had lost, and might never see again. She now knew him, and with effort constrained her voice to bid him pray to God, with whom all things are possible. And when she heard him raise his voice in prayer with many sobs, she could not contain herself, but ran off to the church, and kneeling before the altar gave way also to tears, but tears of joy mingled with psalms of thanksgiving. Then she arose, and brought forth her royal robes, and cast aside those of an anchorite, and bade that Pierre should be given a bath and be clothed in princely garb. After which he was introduced into her presence. Of the joy of the recognition, of the restoration of the lost son to his parents, of the happy wedding, no need that I should tell. The church and hostel of Maguelone remained ever after as testimony to the virtues and piety of La Belle Maguelone, its foundress. Such is the merest and baldest sketch of this graceful tale, told by the very man who cut the inscription I copied from the door of the church, in which he served as canon. When Vernon Lee says of Provençal poetry that adultery--rank adultery was what it lauded, we must not forget that there is another side to be considered--and that the Provençal poets turned their pens as well to drawing pure and artless love. The land and the old church are now the property of a private gentleman, a M. Fabre, who has a great love for the place. I remember the church, when I was a child, full of hay and faggots. It is now restored to sacred uses, but Mass is only said therein once in the year. The proprietor has built a farmhouse near it, and has moved his children's bodies to the old cathedral, and purposes to be laid there himself, when his hour strikes--surrounded by waters: the sea on one side, the great mere of Maguelonne on the other. CHAPTER XVII. BÉZIERS AND NARBONNE. Position of Béziers--S. Nazaire--The Albigenses--Their tenets--Albigensian "consolation"--Crusade against them--The storming of Béziers--Massacre--Cathedral of Béziers--Girls' faces in the train--Similar faces at Narbonne, in Cathedral and Museum--Narbonne a Roman colony--All the Roman buildings destroyed--Caps of liberty--Christian sarcophagi--Children's toys of baked clay--Cathedral unfinished--Archiepiscopal Palace--Unsatisfactory work of M. Viollet-le-Duc--In trouble with the police--Taken for a German spy--My sketch-book gets me off. The position of Béziers is striking. It crowns a height above the Orb, its grand fortified church of S. Nazaire occupying the highest point, where it stands on a platform. This fine church is not the cathedral. In La Madeleine is the bishop's throne, a church that, with the exception of the tower and exterior of the apse, has been modernised out of all interest. But S. Nazaire is a stately and beautiful church of the twelfth to the fourteenth century, in the style of the country, very little ornamented externally, and very strongly fortified; even the windows being made impenetrable by their strong _grilles_ of iron. There are two western towers, small, with an arch thrown between their battlements, over the rose window, and this battlemented archway is in fact a screen behind which the besieged sheltered whilst they poured down molten pitch on those who assailed the gateway of the cathedral. For this purpose there is an open space between the screen and the façade. The apse of eight sides, internally is fine; and there is a beautiful octagonal apsidal chapel on the north side, entered from the transept. Beziers is the scene of a horrible slaughter in 1209, after the siege by the Crusaders under Simon de Montfort. It had been a headquarter of the Albigenses. As we are now entering the region reddened with the blood of these heretics, it will not be improper here to give a little account of them. The Albigenses are often erroneously confused with the Waldenses, with whom really they had little in common. Actually, the Albigenses were not Christians at all, but Manicheans. The heresy was nothing other than the reawakening of the dormant and suppressed Paganism of the south of France. There are plenty of documents which enable us to understand their peculiar tenets and practices. [Illustration: Béziers from the river.] They held a dualism of good and evil principles in the world, equally matched; and they taught that the evil principle was the origin of all created matter. Accordingly they rejected the Old Testament, and declared that all the world and man's body were of diabolic origin, and that the spirit only was divine. With regard to the person of Christ they were divided in opinion. Some said He had a phantom body, and that He seemed only to die on the cross. The real Christ was incapable of suffering. But another school among them declared that He had a true body born of Mary and Joseph, and that this was due to the evil principle, and that this body did hang on the cross. It was the Evil God of the Jews who slew Pharaoh in the Red Sea. They held that the Good God had two wives, Colla and Coliba, from whom he had many generations of spiritual beings. Of the Good Christ, the spiritual, they asserted, that He neither ate nor drank, that He was the source of all mercy and salvation, but that the Bad Christ was the carnal one following the Good Christ as the shadow follows the body; that this Bad Christ had Magdalen as his concubine. They were not agreed as to the future of man. Some denied the existence of souls, some said that the souls were fallen angels inhabiting men's bodies, others that the soul was pure and could only attain to blessedness by emancipation from the body, all the works of which were evil. The faithful of the Albigenses were divided into two orders, the "perfect," who wore a black dress, abstained from flesh, eggs, cheese, and from marriage; and the "believers" whose salvation was to be attained by a certain ceremony called the "consolation." This sacrament of consolation was performed by one of the perfect laying his hands on the believer; and after consolation, the newly-consoled must starve himself to death. A great number of trials of Albigenses have been collected by Limborch in his history of the Inquisition. One only can we now give. It is that of a woman who had herself consoled, and sending for a surgeon, ordered him to open her veins in a bath, that so, the blood running out more freely, she might sooner die. Also she bought poison, as the bleeding did not succeed, and procured a cobbler's awl wherewith to pierce her heart, but as the women with her were undecided whether the heart were on the right side or the left, she took the poison, and so died. [1] [Footnote 1: We have got the Acts of the Inquisition at Toulouse during sixteen years, between 1307-1323. The whole number of cases reported is 932. The usual sentence on one found guilty--unless guilty of causing death by "consolation"--was to wear a tongue of red cloth on the garments. Of such there are 174 sentences. If a case of relapse, there was sentence of brief imprisonment, 218 cases; 38 were reported as having run away; 40 were condemned to death for having caused the death of dupes by "consolation;" 113 were let off penances previously imposed; 139 were discharged from prison, and 90 sentences were pronounced against persons already dead. _See_ Maitland's Tracts and Documents on the Albigenses, 1831.] We can understand what alarm this great heathen reaction in Provence and Aquitaine awoke in France, and in the minds of the popes. Innocent III. at first employed against the Albigenses only spiritual and legitimate weapons; before proscribing he tried to convert them, but when they murdered his emissary, Peter de Castelnau, in 1208, he proclaimed a Holy War against them. It was a war undertaken on the plea of a personal crime, but in reality for the dispossession of the native princes who were believed to be in favour of the heresy. "The crusade against the Albigensians," says M. Guizot, "was the most striking application of two principles equally false and fatal, which did as much evil to the Catholics as to the heretics; and these are the right of the spiritual power to coerce souls by the material force of the temporal power, and the right to strip princes of their title to the obedience of their subjects--in other words, denial of religious liberty to consciences, and of political independence to states." [Illustration: Béziers.--Church of S. Nazaire.] In 1208 Innocent summoned the King of France to sweep from southern France these heretics, "worse than the Saracens," and he promised to the leaders of the crusade the domains they won of the princes who favoured the heresy. The war lasted fifteen years (from 1208 to 1223) and of the two leading spirits, one ordering and the other executing, Pope Innocent III. and Simon de Montfort, neither saw the end of it. During the fifteen years of this religious war, nearly all the towns and strong castles in the regions between the Rhone, the Pyrenees, the Garonne were taken, lost, retaken, given over to pillage, sack, and massacre, and burnt by the Crusaders with all the cruelty of fanatics and all the greed of conquerors. In the account of the war by a Provençal poet, we are told that God never made the clerk who could have written the muster-roll of the crusading army in two or even three months. One of the first victims was the young and gallant Viscount of Béziers, who, the same author assures us, was a good Catholic, but whose lands and towns the rapacious horde lusted to acquire. When they sat down before Béziers, then the Catholics within the walls made common cause with the heretics, and refused to surrender. [Illustration: Fountain in the cloister of S. Nazaire, Béziers.] Then the city was stormed, the walls scrambled up by a rabble rout of camp-followers, in shirts and breeches, but without shoes, who burst over the parapets whilst the envoys of the town were being amused by mock conferences with Montfort and the other leaders of the crusading host. A general massacre ensued; neither age nor sex were spared, even priests fell. It is said that news of what was being done was brought to Arnauld, Abbot of Citeaux, one of the commanders of the crusade, and he was told that faithful and heretics were being slaughtered alike. "Slay them all," said he, "God will know His own." The story is told by a contemporary, but only as an _on-dit_, and may therefore be quite untrue. But Simon de Montfort, the hero of the crusade, employed like language. One day two heretics, taken at Castres, were brought before him, one of whom was unshakable in his belief, the other expressed himself open to conviction. "Burn them both," said the count; "if this fellow mean what he says, the fire will expiate his sins; and, if he lie, he will suffer for his imposture." An attempt has been made to exculpate the leaders of the crusade from the atrocities committed at the capture of Béziers, and to clear them of the charge of treachery. It is so far certain that the town was captured and the massacre begun by the camp-followers, but the Crusaders soon joined in and accomplished the work begun by the "ribauds;" and no attempt was made by the leaders to stay the carnage. In the cathedral church of S. Madeleine some seven thousand who had taken refuge there were butchered without regard to the sanctity of the spot. The city was then set on fire and the cathedral perished in the flames. After all, it was well that the cathedral should be purged with fire, and rebuilt. One could not pray, one would not like to see the service of God rendered in a building that had been thus bespattered with blood. S. Nazaire is later. It was almost wholly rebuilt in the fourteenth century, and within it one can forget the horrors of that hateful siege and butchery. As I travelled on to Narbonne, there entered the carriage in which I was two girls with remarkable profiles, and I wondered whether they bore the features of the Ligurian race that first peopled all this coast, now probably represented by the Basques--a race akin to the Lap. These girls had fine dark eyes and hair, sallow complexions, and their full faces were not unpleasant, but their profiles were certainly most remarkable. Now curiously enough, on entering the cathedral at Narbonne, I saw a tomb of the eighteenth century with mourners represented on it--some six to eight, and they had all the same type of face. Not only so, but in the museum of the town is a Classic bust, found among the remains of Roman Narbona, and the same type is there. [Illustration: Types of faces, Narbonne. Modern. Sixteenth-century tomb in Cathedral. Classic bust in museum.] Narbonne was once a great capital. It stood on a lagoon, and did a large trade in the Mediterranean. It was a Roman colony, founded at the same time as Arles, and had its forum, capitol, baths, amphitheatre, theatre, and temples. But, alas! the necessity for fortifying the city in the Middle Ages induced the inhabitants to go to these Roman buildings and pull them to pieces in order with them to construct the walls and towers surrounding the town, and now not one of all these monuments remains. The walls have served, however, as a rich quarry of antiquities that have supplied the two great collections in the town, one in the Hôtel de Ville, the other in a ruined church. These collections are only second to the Avignon museum, and abound with objects of interest. Among the monumental stones for the dead are several with caps figured on them. The like are to be seen at Nimes, Avignon, and elsewhere. These are freedmen's caps. When a noble Roman died he left in his will that so many of his slaves were to be given their liberty, and then this was represented by caps sculptured on his tombstone. [Illustration: Freedmen's caps, Narbonne.] Thus it happened that the cap came to be regarded as the symbol of liberty. The museum contains a Christian sarcophagus on the staircase, with an orante, a woman praying with uplifted hands in the midst, on the sides the striking of the rock and the multiplication of the loaves. On the lid is the portrait of the lady who was buried in it, with hair dressed in the fashion worn by the Julias of the Heliogabalus and Alexander Severus epoch, with whose busts one becomes so familiar at Rome, 218-223--a fashion that never came in again, that I am aware of. Another Christian sarcophagus has on it the multiplication of loaves, the denial of Peter, and a representation of Christ unbearded, which is the earliest form. Another, again, represents him unbearded holding a scroll, on the right St. Peter and two other apostles holding rolls, and three apostles on the left; on the lid is an orante. In this museum may be seen one or two examples of bronze Gaulish sun-wheels with four and eight spokes; and, what is to me very touching, a number of children's toys made in clay, found in children's tombs--cocks and hens, pigs and horses, very rude. Similar toys are to be found in the Arles and the Avignon museums. I remember in the catacomb of S. Agnes at Rome is a whole collection of toys found in a Christian grave there, ivory dolls, a rattle, bells, and an earthenware money-box, just such as may be bought for a sou now in a foreign fair. De Rossi, the curator of the catacombs, has had them all put together under glass in proximity to the little grave where they were found. In a child's grave at S. Sebastian was found a little terra-cotta horse dappled with yellow spots. I suppose parents could not bear to see the toys of their darlings about the house, and so enclosed them with their dear ones in the last home. I remember a modern French grave, near La Rochelle; in the centre of the head-cross was a glass case, with a doll dinner-service enclosed, that had been a favourite toy with the poor little mite lying under the cross. So human hearts are the same as centuries roll by and religions alter. [Illustration: Children's toys in the museum, Narbonne.] The cathedral of Narbonne is very delightful, after a course of castellated fortress-churches of early date. It is of the fourteenth century, light, lantern-like, with glorious flying buttresses. The church is unfinished, it has no nave, only the lovely soaring choir, standing alone, like that of Beauvais; and as was that of Cologne till the last thirty years. Unfortunately this choir is so built round with houses that it is only in one place at the east end that it can be seen, and just there, out of delightful play of fancy, the architect has thrown a bow across from one flying buttress to another high up, and through this stone rainbow one sees the pinnacles and the sweeping arches of the buttresses crossing each other at every angle. The archiepiscopal palace was a fortress, with two strong towers. M. Viollet-le-Duc was invited by the town to take them in hand and construct between them a façade in keeping with their architecture, which was to be thenceforth the façade of the Hôtel de Ville. There was not a man in France who had a more intimate knowledge of Gothic architecture than he; but, unfortunately, like Rickman in England and Heideloff in Germany, he was incapable of applying his knowledge. The consequence is that he has produced a façade which is disfiguring to the two grand towers between which it is planted. Viollet-le-Duc was delighted with the grand effect of the face of the papal palace at Avignon, where the buttresses run up unstaged and then are united by bold arches that sustain the parapet and battlements, so he attempted the same thing at Narbonne on a smaller scale. Now these buttresses or piers at Avignon are 5 ft. 1 in. by 2 ft. 9 in., whereas the measurements of M. le-Duc's little props are reduced to 1 ft. 2 in. by 1 ft. 6 in. Relative proportions are changed as well as sadly reduced. The result is that they are ludicrous. Moreover, instead of sinking his façade modestly--a little, eighteen inches would have been enough--he has carried the face of his niggling little buttresses flush with the massive walls of the great towers. I wished I could have had M. Viollet-le-Duc there by both his ears and knocked his head against the abomination he has created. He had a splendid opportunity, and through incapacity he lost it. I got into trouble at Narbonne. As I was walking on the platform of the station, a man in plain clothes with very blue eyes came to me, touched his hat, and asked if he might be honoured with a few words privately. I at once suspected he was going to beg or borrow money, and said I was willing to hear what he wanted to say on the spot. He smiled, and said that he thought perhaps it would be better that we had our conversation elsewhere, outside the station. After a little hesitation, I complied, and when we were by ourselves, "Monsieur," said he, "I must request you to show me your papers and allow me to identify you. I am in search of some one uncommonly like yourself. I am--the _chef_ of the secret police down here. Will you come to my office, and bring your luggage?" "Certainly, delighted to make your acquaintance. I will get my Gladstone bag, and my roll of rugs in a moment. There is a--a hurdy-gurdy--" "I know there is," said the _chef_ sternly. "It is that _vielle_ that is suspicious." So all my luggage was conveyed to the office of the police. I showed no concern, but laughed and joked. "What countryman do you say you are?" "English." "Impossible. You have not the English accent when you speak. It is rather German than anything else." "You think I am a German?" "But certainly. Your bag has a German address on it, written in German characters." So it had. I had been in Germany before going to Rome, and had never removed the address, which, as he said, was in German characters. I explained, but the _chef_ was unsatisfied. I became now convinced that he thought I was a spy. "Here are German newspapers and a German book in your bag!" said the _chef_. "Certainly. Why not? I have been in Germany." "Yet you say you are English?" "Here is my passport." I extended one to him. He looked at it, shook his head, and said: "It is a very old one of 1867." That was true, and I had not had it _viséd_ since. "Then," said the _chef_, "this passport is for you and your wife. Where is the wife?" "Minding the babies. Thirteen of them--a handful," said I. I had to produce card-case, letters, all of which the _chef_ examined carefully, and yet he was not satisfied. Then, suddenly, a bright idea struck me. "Monsieur!" said I, "I see what you take me to be. It is true I have been sketching in Narbonne, and along the whole coast. Would you like to see my drawings? Here is the result of my studies in Narbonne: the very remarkable profile of a Narbonnaise girl, the face of a lady carved in the cathedral, of another in the museum, some sketches of children's clay toys found in Roman tombs, and sundry Gaulish and Merovingian bronzes; also! yes, see, a bone toothcomb discovered among the remains of the fortifications." The _chef_ laughed, especially over the beauties of Narbonne, ran his eye through the book, took it over to his assistant to look at and laugh over the wonderful girls' faces, returned it to me, and let me off. "And the _vielle_," said I, "what do you think of that--" "Mais! with the _vielle_ over your shoulder, and that book of sketches and thirteen babies--_assurément_--you could only be an Englishman." CHAPTER XVIII. CARCASSONNE. Siege of Carcassonne by the Crusaders--Capture--Perfidy of legate--Death of the Viscount--Continuation of the war--Churches of New Carcassonne--_La Cité_--A perfect Mediæval fortified town--Disappointing--Visigoth fortifications--Later additions--The Cathedral--Tomb of Simon de Montfort. The Viscount of Béziers was not in the city from which he took his title when it fell. He had hurried on to Carcassonne to prepare that for defence. There he exerted himself with the utmost energy, with rage and despair, to be ready against the bloodthirsty, and yet blood-drunken ruffians who were pouring along the road from smoking Béziers, to do to Carcassonne as they had done there. Pedro, king of Aragon, interfered; he appeared as mediator in the camp of the Crusaders. Carcassonne was held as a fief under him as lord paramount. He pleaded the youth of the viscount, asserted his fidelity to the Church, his abhorrence of the Albigensian heresy; it was no fault of his, he argued, that his subjects had lapsed into error, and he declared that the Viscount had authorised him to place his submission in the hands of the legate of Pope Innocent. But the Crusaders were snorting for plunder and murder. The only terms they would admit were that the young viscount might retire with twelve knights; the city must surrender at discretion. The proud and gallant youth declared that he had rather be flayed alive than desert the least of his subjects. The first assaults, though on one occasion led by the prelates chanting the 'Veni Creator' ended in failure. [Illustration: Towers on the wall, Carcassonne.] Carcassonne might have resisted successfully had it been properly provisioned, or had the viscount limited the number admitted within its walls. But multitudes of refugees had come there from all the country round. The wells failed. Disease broke out. The viscount was obliged to come to terms, to accept a free conduct from the officer of the legate, and he endeavoured to make terms for his subjects. Most of the troops made their escape by subterranean passages, and the defenceless city came into the power of the Crusaders. The citizens were stripped almost naked, and their houses given up to pillage, but their lives were spared, with the exception of some fifty who were hanged and four hundred who were burned alive. The viscount had given himself up on promise of safe conduct; but no promises, no oaths were held sacred in these wars of religion, and the perfidious legate seized him, cast him into a dungeon, and there he died a few months later of a broken spirit and the pestilential prison air. The law of conquest was now to be put in force. The lands of the heretic the Pope was ready to bestow on such as had dutifully done his behest. The legate assembled the principal crusading nobles, that they might choose among them one to act as lord over their conquests. The offer was made, successively, to the Duke of Burgundy, the Count of Nevers, and the Count of S. Pol; but they all three declined, saying scornfully that they had lands enough of their own without taking those of another. They were, perhaps, fearful of the perilous example of setting up the fiefs of France to the hazard of the sword. Simon de Montfort was less scrupulous, or more ambitious, and he took immediate possession of the lands that had been acquired. The Pope wrote to him and confirmed him in the hereditary possession of his new dominions, at the same time expressing to him a hope that, in concert with the legates, he would continue very zealous in the extirpation of the heretics. From this time forth the war in southern France changed character, or, rather, it assumed a double character; with the war of religion was openly joined a war of conquest; it was no longer merely against the Albigenses and their heresies, it was against the native princes of the south of France, for the sake of their dominions, that the crusade was prosecuted. If it came within my scope to speak about Toulouse, I should be constrained to tell more of this sanguinary story. I am thankful that I need not prosecute the hateful tale; but so much it was not possible for me to withhold from the reader, as it is with these memories that Carcassonne and Beziers must be visited and looked at. Carcassonne is a double city, a city on a hill and another on the plain, each ancient, but that below with the modern element leavening it, that above wholly steeped in mediævalism. [Illustration: An entrance to Carcassonne.] In the lower town are two fine churches, very peculiar in design, forming vast halls without pillars, and with small chancels and apses. There can be no question that they look uncomfortable without pillars, that the choir does not grow out of the church naturally, and is devoid of dignity. These two churches are S. Vincent and S. Michael. The latter is of the thirteenth century, and seems to have formed the pattern upon which the other was built in the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. There is no west portal, but it has a fine rose window. The church is entered by a small door on the north. The other and later church, S. Vincent, has a very fine tower, which has, unfortunately, not been completed. It also has no west door, and is entered by a small portal at the side. These churches have their lateral chapels arranged like those in the cathedral at Munich between the buttresses, and the church is lighted by windows above them. Such buildings make admirable preaching-halls, but as churches are not pleasing internally. To the east of New Carcassonne flows the river Aude crossed by a bridge, with a quaint little chapel recently restored beside it. From this bridge a view of Old Carcassonne, _La Cité_, as it is called, bursts on the sight. It stands on a height about 125 ft. above the river, and this height has two peaks, one is occupied by the citadel, the other by the old cathedral of S. Nazaire. The whole of this _Cité_ is surrounded by its walls and towers, quite as perfect as when originally built, for they have been very carefully restored by M. Viollet-le-Duc. Consequently we have before us a French fortified town of the Middle Ages come down to us unaltered. That it is picturesque is unquestionable, that it is _eminently_ picturesque cannot be allowed. The builders had no concern for making a beautiful picture, they thought only of making an impregnable place. It is precisely this that differentiates it from a score of German fortified towns. The burghers of these latter were resolved to make their towns miracles of beauty as well as strong places. Consequently they varied the shapes of their towers, they capped them quaintly, hardly making two alike. Here, at Carcassonne, every tower, or nearly every tower, resembles its fellow, and all have sugar-loaf caps that irritate the eye with iteration of the same form. The citadel has no character of massiveness, no grand donjon to distinguish it from the rest of the fortifications, and the cathedral has only two mean little donkey's ears of towers that are most ineffective, peeping over the walls of the south-western angle of the town. In looking out for a study for a picture one has to get where some of the sugar-loaf towers are eclipsed, and there is only one point in the whole circumference where a really satisfactory grouping is obtainable, and that is at the angle outside immediately below the cathedral platform to the west, where the one respectable turret of the castle stands up boldly from the rock, and the flanking turrets overlap and hide each other. [Illustration: A bit of Carcassonne.] Interesting, most interesting is Old Carcassonne, and picturesque in its fashion; the regret one feels is that, with its opportunities, it is not more so. I do not think that M. Viollet-le-Duc's restoration is in fault, but that the original architects had no idea of anything better, were men of mediocre abilities, or cared only to make the defences strong at all costs, and to sacrifice everything else to this one consideration. But the same fault is inherent in all French castle-building and city-fortification of the Middle Ages. It is picturesque when in ruins. On the other hand, the German castles and fortified towns look their very best when in perfect repair. Let the reader take up Albert Dürer's delightful little engraving of the Hermit, and compare the background of a German walled town and castle on a height with _La Cité_, Carcassonne, and he will see how vast is the difference in quality of picturesqueness between the two. The _Cité_ is actually enclosed within double ramparts, and a portion of these dates from the time of the Visigoths. Their walls were composed of cubic blocks of stone, with alternate layers of brick, were double-faced, and filled in with rubble bedded in lime, forming a sort of concrete core. The towers were round outside with flat face to the town, and large round-headed windows which were closed with boards. These in later times were built up. The interior walls and towers are the earliest, and were those besieged by the Crusaders. It was in one of the towers of the castle that the unhappy young viscount died. The outer fortifications were erected by Louis IX. and his son, Philip the Bold. The Visigoth walls were defended by thirty-two towers, of which only one was square. Louis IX. constructed a great barbican below the castle, commanding the bridge over the Aude, but that was destroyed some years ago. [Illustration: Inside the wall, Carcassonne.] The _Cité_ underwent a second siege in 1240, whilst Louis IX. was on his crusade, and Queen Blanche was regent. Very curious letters exist from Guillaume des Ormes, the seneschal to the regent, describing the siege of Carcassonne by the troops of the viscount; but for these, and for a detailed account of the fortifications, I must refer the reader to M. Viollet-le-Duc's account, in his treatise on the Military Architecture of the Middle Ages. [Illustration: Entrance to the Castle, Carcassonne.] The old town of Carcassonne, crowded within the walls, has very narrow streets and tiny squares; the only open space being before the citadel and the cathedral. This latter has a fine Romanesque nave that was consecrated by Pope Urban II. in 1096, with its west end designed for defence, after the customary manner in the south. It is supported by massive piers, alternately round and square. To this plain nave is added a light and lovely choir with transepts, of the beginning of the fourteenth century. Here the glorious windows are filled with rich old stained glass--barbarously restored. And here, on one side of the high altar may be seen a slab of red marble--rightly blood-red--marking the tomb of the infamous Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, the cruel and remorseless right hand of the Pope, with which this fair region was deluged with blood. He was killed on June 20th, 1218, by a stone flung from the walls of Toulouse, which he had been unsuccessfully besieging for nine months. From the south side of the old _Cité_ a delightful view is obtained of the Pyrenees, snow-clad when I was there in April; but the mountain forms of the chain as it approaches the Mediterranean lose boldness and picturesqueness of outline, as they also dwindle in altitude. CHAPTER XIX. AVIGNON. How Avignon passed to the Popes--The court of Clement VI.--John XXII.--Benedict XII.--Their tombs--Petrarch and Laura--The Palace of the Popes--The Salle Brûlée--Cathedral--Porch--S. Agricole--Church of S. Pierre--The museum--View from the Rocher des doms--The Rhone--The bridge--Story of S. Benezet--Dancing on bridges--Villeneuve--Tomb of Innocent VI.--The Castle at Villeneuve--Defences--Tête-du-pont of the bridge. We leave Languedoc and are again in Provence, or what was Provence, till the Popes by a fraud obtained it. Avignon belonged to Provence, which was claimed by Charles of Anjou in right of his wife, and it had descended to his son, Charles II. of Naples. On the death of the latter it fell to Robert of Naples, and from him to his grand-daughter, Joanna, the heiress of the Duke of Calabria. The Papal residence was now at Avignon, and there it remained for a century and a quarter. Joanna fell into trouble, her kingdom of Naples was invaded by Louis, King of Hungary, who asserted his right to her throne. She fled to Provence--to Avignon--where at once Pope Clement VI. seized the occasion to purchase this portion of her Provençal inheritance of her at the price of eighty thousand gold crowns. He kept the principality, but never paid the money. The Popes have left their indelible mark on the place in the glorious palace, a vast castle, of the boldest structure, wonderful in its size and massiveness. The Papal court at Avignon, under Clement VI., "became", says Dr. Milman, "the most splendid, perhaps the gayest, in Christendom. The Provençals might almost think their brilliant and chivalrous counts restored to power and enjoyment. The Papal palace spread out in extent and magnificence; the Pope was more than royal in the number and attire of his retainers; the papal stud of horses commanded general admiration. The life of Clement was a constant succession of ecclesiastical pomps and gorgeous receptions and luxurious banquets. Ladies were freely admitted to the Court, and the Pope mingled with ease in the gallant intercourse. The Countess of Turenne, if not, as general report averred, actually so, had at least many of the advantages of the Pope's mistresses--the distribution of preferments and benefices to any extent, which this woman, as rapacious as she was handsome and imperious, sold with shameless publicity." Under the Papal rule, with such an example before it, Avignon became the moral sink of Christendom. To see what its condition was, and how flagrant was the vice in all quarters, the letters of Petrarch must be read. He speaks of the corruption of Avignon with loathing abhorrence; Rome itself, in comparison, was the seat of matronly virtue. But I must step back for a moment to John XXII. because of the lovely monument to him in the cathedral, and because thereon we have his authentic portrait. This Pope was a cobbler's son of Cahors; he was a small, deformed, but clever man: the second cobbler's son who sat on the seat of S. Peter. He had gone, when a youth, to Naples, where his uncle was settled in a little shop. There he studied, his talents and luck pushed him into notice, and he became bishop of Fréjus. But he preferred to live on the sunny shores of Naples, and to keep within the circle of the king, where lay chances of higher preferment, and he troubled his diocese little with his presence. He became a cardinal, and in 1316 was elected Pope at the conclave of Lyons. He at once dropped down the Rhone, and fixed the seat of his pontificate at Avignon. Able, learned though he was, he was not above the superstitions of his age. He had been given a serpentine ring by the Countess of Foix, and had lost it. He believed that it had been stolen from him wherewith to work some magic spell against his health. The Pope pledged all his goods, movable and immovable, for the safe restoration of his ring: he pronounced anathema against all such as were involved in the retention of it. It was rumoured that one of those involved in the plot by witchcraft to cause his death through this serpentine ring was Gerold, bishop of his own native city, Cahors. The alarmed and angry sovereign Pontiff had the unhappy bishop degraded, _flayed alive_, and torn to pieces by wild horses. [Illustration: Papal Throne in the Cathedral of Avignon.] John XXII. issued an edict of terrible condemnation against all such as dealt in magical arts, who bottled up spirits, made waxen images and stuck pins into them, and the like. He died at the age of ninety, having amassed enormous wealth by drawing into his own power all the collegiate benefices throughout Christendom, and by means of reservations, an ingenious mode of getting large pickings out of every bishopric before the institution of a new bishop. The brother of Villani the historian, a banker, took the inventory of his goods when he was dead. It amounted to eighteen millions of gold florins in specie, and seven millions in plate and jewels. His face, on his monument, is indicative of his harsh, grasping, and cold character. Now look at this other face, it is that of the successor of John, of James Fournier, who took the name of Benedict XII. He lies in the north aisle of the cathedral. [Illustration: John XXII.] On the death of John XII. twenty-four cardinals met, mostly Frenchmen, and their votes inclined to a brother of the count of Comminges, but they endeavoured to wring from him an oath to continue to make Avignon the seat of the Papacy. He refused; and then, to his own surprise, the suffrages fell on the Cistercian abbot, James Fournier. "You have chosen an ass!" he said, in humility or in irony. [Illustration: Benedict XII.] But he did himself an injustice: he was a man of shrewdness and sagacity, he lacked only courage and strength to have made a great Pope. His whole reign was a tacit reproach against the turbulence, implacability and avarice of his predecessor. The court of Avignon was crowded with fawning courtier bishops seeking promotion: he sent them flying back to their sees. He discouraged the Papal reserves, the iniquitous system whereby Pope John had amassed his wealth; he threw open the treasury of his predecessor, and distributed some of the coin among the cardinals, the rest he spent in the erection of the huge castle-palace that is now the wonder of all who visit Avignon, and the construction of which made the money circulate among the poor and industrious artificers. When Benedict died, after a brief reign of eight years, his reputation was disputed over with singular pertinacity by friends and foes. [Illustration: An angle of the Papal Palace, Avignon.] "He was a man wiser in speech than in action, betraying by his keen words that he saw what was just and right, but dared not follow it. Yet political courage alone was wanting. He was resolutely superior to the Papal vice of nepotism. On one only of his family, and that a deserving man, he bestowed a rich benefice. To the rest he said, 'As James Fournier I knew you well, as Pope I know you not. I will not put myself in the power of the King of France by encumbering myself with a host of needy relatives.' He had the moral fortitude to incur unpopularity with the clergy by persisting in his slow, cautious, and regular distribution of benefices; with the monks by his rigid reforms. He hated the monks, and even the Mendicant Orders. He showed his hatred, as they said, by the few promotions which he bestowed upon them." [1] [Footnote 1: Milman: 'Latin Christianity.'] The bitter hatred begotten in return was displayed in the epitaph set up over him, describing him as a Nero, as death to the laity, a viper to the clergy, a liar and a drunkard. [1] But malignity of disappointed ambition and repressed vice did not go so far as to caricature his face. The graver had to copy the epitaph given him, but the sculptor reproduced the face of the man himself, and that face, sweet, gentle, and pure, tells its own tale. It is quite another face from that of John XXII. John has a magnificent shrine of incomparable Gothic pinnacle-work; but Benedict is laid in a very humble tomb, yet over it is the best of monuments, his own good face. Of this "Nero" there is not recorded one single act of cruelty; and he was guiltless of human blood shed in war. [Footnote 1: "Ille fuit Nero, laicis mors, vipera clero, Devius a vero, cuppa repleta mero."] Here, at Avignon, and writing of the very epoch in which he lived, it is not possible to withhold the pen from some lines relative to Petrarch, and I feel the more disposed to write about him, for I think that the words used relative to him and Laura in Murray's Handbook are not quite just. Speaking of Vaucluse, the author says: "It is more agreeable to contemplate Petrarch in these haunts, as the laborious student retired from the world, than as the mawkish lover sighing for a married mistress." Petrarch was an exile, living at Avignon in exile, when he saw his Laura in a church there, and lost his heart. He was then aged twenty-one, and she was twelve or thirteen; she belonged to the illustrious family of Sade. Now it so happens that the chief authority for the history of Petrarch is the Abbé de Sade, who set to work with a determination to show that his family were lineal descendants of Petrarch's Laura, and he ingenuously left out such particulars as militated against his doctrine. The great family of Sade, who had their castle between Avignon and Vaucluse, had not the smallest intention of suffering a daughter of the house to become allied to an exile of no great birth and prospects; accordingly every impediment was put in the way of a meeting. Petrarch's love for her was well known, indeed his imprudence was great, he allowed his poems in her honour to pass from hand to hand. It was impossible for her relatives to suffer this to continue. She was placed with her aunt Stephanette de Romanie; and died unmarried. Her father was Hugo de Sade, and her mother Laura de Neves; and the Abbé de Sade, and all who follow him, suppose that Petrarch was in love with the mother, whereas there is abundant evidence that the object of his passion was the daughter. [1] [Footnote 1: The whole matter has been thoroughly discussed, and I think the story of his love for the wife of Hugo de Sade refuted by Bruce-Whyte ('Hist. des Langues Romanes,' t. iii. c. 38)]. Whether Petrarch's love for Laura was as pure as he represents it in some of his sonnets--whether the unhappy Laura did not suffer from his pursuit in honour as she certainly lost in repute, is uncertain. Petrarch in some of his poems exalts his passion for her into the most pure platonic affection, but other verses addressed to her have a very different complexion. [Illustration: The Cathedral and the Palace of the Popes, Avignon.] The vast fortress-palace of the Popes at Avignon has stood a siege. It was at the time of the Great Schism, when three grey-headed claimants to be representatives of S. Peter and Vicegerents of Christ were thundering anathemas against each other and the supporters of their rivals. Benedict XIII. was then Pope in Avignon, but there was a general desire in Christendom that the scandal should be terminated. All his cardinals except two deserted Benedict, and the King of France required his renunciation of the tiara. "Pope I have written myself; Pope I have been acknowledged to be; Pope I will remain to the end of my days," was his answer. Then he was besieged in his palace and forced to capitulate, and thrown into prison, where he lingered under the jealous ward of the cardinals for five years. [Illustration: Lantern at the Cathedral, Avignon.] The palace has been restored, and is now a barrack. In it is shown a hall, the principal dining hall, called now la Salle Brûlée, as in 1441 the Papal Legate brought together into it the burghers and nobles of Avignon, and in the height of revelry withdrew himself, and had fire applied to barrels of gunpowder under it, and blew the guests into the air. This was done in revenge for the murder of his nephew, a young libertine who had dishonoured a maiden of good family in the town. [Illustration: Angel at W. Door, Church of S. Agricole] Adjoining the palace, on higher ground, the Rocher des doms, is the cathedral of Nôtre Dame, small and early. With barbarous taste, the fine Romanesque west tower has been finished off with an octagonal structure supporting as apex a gigantic figure of the Virgin, leaning against a lightning conductor that is screwed into her head and back, and looks much like the apparatus of a photographer to steady her for a successful _carte_. To the cathedral ascent is made by flights of stone steps, and it is entered by a porch that is made up of Corinthian pillars taken from a Classic temple. Some have thought the whole porch to be of Roman architecture, but it is not so. For some time Provençal architecture was much influenced by the remains that covered the soil, and from which the builders of churches not merely drew their ideas but also appropriated materials. The dome of the cathedral is noticeable within from the bold and effective manner in which it is sustained on four successive receding arches. There is a fine north aisle, the vaulting of which starts as though it were about to spread into the fan-tracery of English Perpendicular. It is curious as showing French architects on the eve of reaching the same marvellous development attained in England. There is a fine church at Avignon, S. Agricole, of noble proportions, the vaulting and arcades springing from the pillars without capitals. In the south aisle is a curious fourteenth-century shrine. The west front of the church is of very poor design. [Illustration: A Bit of the Old Wall, Avignon.] S. Pierre is a flamboyant church, the details passing into Renaissance. In the north aisle is a superb Renaissance altar-piece, representing Christ between S. Peter and S. Paul. Underneath is the Last Supper. It was too fine and good to be appreciated, and a modern vulgar altar and altar-piece have been erected at the side for use. The choir-stalls are really wonderful. They are also of Renaissance woodwork, with painted panels in the back representing architectural scenes alternating with vases of flowers. They are separated by Corinthian columns gilt, and very sumptuous, yet the whole effect is subdued and pleasing, not gaudy. In this church also the arches spring from the pillars without capitals. Altogether this church deserves careful study. The museum of Avignon is the richest in antiquities in the south of France. Unfortunately the substance of the collection was gathered by a M. Calvert who made no note as to _where_ he got the various articles he collected, and this naturally deprives much that is there of its value. However, there is a great deal there to be seen; notably a bronze cavalry standard, Roman, in admirable preservation; a stamp in bronze with the letters A I V N and the seven-branched-candlestick between, clearly a Jewish stamp. A magnificent gold necklace and gold bracelets with a large medallion of a Roman Empress in gold in the midst. The head is said to be that of Orbiana, third wife of Severus Alexander, unknown to history, and known only by her coins. Among the statues preserved there is the Venus Victrix found at Pourrières, and a very rude but interesting Gaulish warrior, discovered at Montdragon in 1834, cut in sandstone. He is leaning on a huge shield. There are several busts of Roman emperors, a good one, but with nose broken, of the Elder Drusus, Lucius Verus, Tiberius, Trajan, a Plautilla--and some that are doubtful. Of the paintings in the _Musé_ I cannot say much, as I looked at two only--two perfectly delicious Brueghels, a Flemish Fair, and, I think, a wedding. I won the heart of the _concierge_ by studying them. He found me careering about the gallery, like an owl in sunlight, looking for Brueghel, and when he found what I was after, led me back to them, one on each side of the entrance door. "Why do you want to see Brueghel?" he asked. "Why? because I love his oddities." "Are you a Belge?" "No." "But you seem to know the Flemish artists. I am by ancestry a Belge. My grandfather came from Brussels." So we talked over dear, delightful Belgium for half-an-hour, and I had the most eager, amiable guide to all that was of interest in the museum, after that. And it is a collection! The mediæval and Renaissance sculptures alone deserve a visit. One can hardly bear to think of the amount of good work that has perished in Avignon. The city possessed before the Revolution sixty churches, and of these only eighteen remain; of between two and three hundred towers and spires, not one-tenth are left standing. There is, however, a very fine tower and east end in S. Didier, a church of the fourteenth century, another in the Hôtel de Ville built round with a tasteless Classic structure that obscures it from view. The Musée Requien is in an old convent, the chapel of which is given up to the Protestants; it has a rich flamboyant window to the north, unfortunately blocked. [Illustration: Part of Church of S. Didier, Avignon.] A quaint and picturesque tower stands by itself in the Rue Carréterie; it is machicolated and has a delicate little spire. It is all that remains of the church of the Augustinians. Nearly opposite is a rich flamboyant portal. [Illustration: Bridge and Chapel of S. Benezet.] Avignon is completely surrounded by its old walls and towers. Much of the space inside is now occupied by gardens and vineyards; apparently in the time when Avignon was the seat of the Papacy, it was far more populous than at present. I should like the clergy of Rome to see Avignon with its fifty-two desecrated churches and its thirty-five abandoned convents, and compare it with Rome where nearly everything is left them; then perhaps they would be inclined to salute their king and queen. What a lovely view that is from the gardens on the Rocher des Domes! To the east rises Mont Ventoux, a spur of the Alps thrown out into the plain, and in April veiled in snow. To the west the chain of the Cevennes, and the plain gleaming with water from the many windings of the Rhone, and from its branches, as it splits and circumvents islands clothed with willow and poplar. Above Avignon is a very large island, and below it the Durance enters the Rhone through a lacework of rubble-beds with scanty growths upon them, the water flickering in a thousand silver threads between. Then, immediately under the Rocher des Domes is the mighty river sweeping on with strong purpose, and half-bridged by a quaint old structure, built between 1177 and 1185 under the direction of S. Benezet. On the second pile is a little chapel, erected in honour of the founder, in which Mass is still said on his day, April 14th. S. Benezet was a shepherd, he was baptised by the name of Benedict, but, being a very little man, he received the diminutive that has adhered to him. He heard of the accidents that happened to those who crossed the rapid Rhone in boats, and he considered in his mind that it were well if the prelates and burghers of Avignon would devote their wealth to making a good bridge, instead of squandering it in show and riotous living. So he came into the city, and adjured the Pope and the bishop of the see to construct a bridge. The haughty ecclesiastics scoffed at him, and, as he would not desist from his urgency, sent him to the city governor to be chastised. Unshaken by this treatment, the shepherd persisted. He went among the citizens, he sought out the clergy, he collected knots of men to listen to him in the market-place, preaching the advantage of a bridge. It was his one idea. He was ignorant, perhaps foolish, in other matters, but he was possessed with the belief that God had sent him to induce the Avignonese to build a bridge. After a while, nothing was talked of in the place but the great question of this same bridge. Its advantage was apparent to all. Finally it was decided by acclamation that they must have a bridge, and when it was built, and the shepherd died, "Really," said the good people of Avignon, "he must have been a saint to have roused us out of our apathy." [Illustration: At Villeneuve.] The poor shepherd's body was not respected by the revolutionists, though he was a sans-culotte, but he was a sans-culotte who was a constructor and not a destroyer, therefore--to the dogs with him. There was a saying-- "Avenio ventosa Cum vento fastidiosa, Sine vento venenosa." That may be rendered in French-- "Avignon venteuse Avec vent ennuyeuse, Sans vent pernicieuse." Windy it was when I was there, and when I went out on the broken-down bridge of S. Benezet I was nearly blown off it. This bridge in French nursery rhyme takes much the same place as does London Bridge in English children's jingles. We have:-- "London Bridge is broken down, Dance over my Lady Lee." And the French have:-- "Sur le Pont d'Avignon tout le monde danse, danse; Sur le Pont d'Avignon tout le monde danse en rond." Why dancing should be associated with bridges I cannot tell for certain, but there is probably some mythologic origin. It was customary in Pagan times to sacrifice a human being when the foundations of a bridge were laid, by burying the victim alive under it, and every year an offering of a life was made to the river to propitiate it, and ensure the stability of the bridge. Our nursery games of children dancing in a round, and one being taken by the casting of a kerchief, is a relic of an old heathen _sors_, by which a victim for immolation was selected; and it is very probable that the dancing on bridges had something to do with this. One out of the chain that danced over the bridge, or the ring that wheeled on it was chosen, and cast over the parapet as an offering to the river. [Illustration: Castle of S. André, at Villeneuve.] This superstition lingered on through the Middle Ages, in spite of Christianity. We say in Devon:-- "The River Dart Every year demands a heart." Anciently the Dart was _given_ his victim; now, however, he _takes_ it. The bridge of S. Benezet is broken down and abandoned, but a suspension bridge unites Avignon with the farther bank of the Rhone, and this must be crossed to reach Villeneuve, which stood to Avignon as Beaucaire to Tarascon. Villeneuve was French, and Avignon Papal down to the Revolution, when in 1791 it was annexed to France. At Villeneuve the army was assembled that besieged Pope Benedict XIII. in his palace. Villeneuve is full of picturesque points. It was originally well fortified, and was a frontier fortress of Languedoc. The old Hôpital contains the tomb of Pope Innocent VI., which may be compared with that of John XXII. in the cathedral. Innocent was a native of Limoges. There was a strange struggle at his election. On the death of Clement VI. a conclave of cardinals assembled to consider about choosing John Borelli, Carthusian superior, but, when Cardinal Talleyrand warned them that a man of such stern simplicity would in a very few days order their stately caparisoned horses to be turned to toil at the plough, they were alarmed, and looked elsewhere. But first of all they passed a law by unanimous vote that the College of Cardinals should become a dominant, self-elective assembly, superior to the Pope, and that one-half of the revenues of the Papacy should be diverted into the pockets of the cardinals. Then they proceeded to elect, and chose Stephen Aubert, a distinguished canon lawyer, who assumed the title of Innocent VI., and his first act was to emancipate himself from the oath he had taken, to rescind and declare null this statute of the Conclave. He was a severe disciplinarian. He drove away a great portion of the swarm of bishops and beneficed clergy, who passed their time in Avignon in luxury and indolence, on the look-out for rich emoluments. One story is told of his conduct with regard to preferments. A favourite chaplain presented his nephew, a boy, and asked for him a rich benefice. "You are already the holder of seven," said the Pope, "give him one of those." The chaplain looked discouraged. The Pope compelled him to choose three of the best. "These must suffice thee and the boy," said Innocent, "I will give the others to poor and deserving clerks." It was under Cardinal Albornoz, the martial legate of this Pope, that Rienzi was subdued, and Rome recovered to the Papal chair. [Illustration: At Villeneuve.] The castle of Villeneuve was built by Philip the Bold in the thirteenth century, and is interesting in many ways. It contains a little chapel of an earlier date with a small apse and little round-headed windows. The whole of the body is under a very low-pitched roof supported on an almost Classic cornice. The fortifications of the castle are an example of a stage of defence carried beyond what was attained at Aigues Mortes. There, as we saw, the upper portion of the walls was covered with a balcony of wood on to which the besieged stepped through the doorways left in the battlements. [Illustration: A well at Villeneuve.] When, in sieges, the catapults were made to fling barrels of flaming tar over these balconies, and set them on fire, recourse was had to structures of stone, and the wooden _hourdes_, or balconies, disappeared. Then came the machicolated galleries. But even these were deemed insufficient, and _échauguettes_ were erected, sentry-boxes between the towers standing forward beyond the curtains, and with double slits in the floor, through which two streams of flaming combustible or of stones could be sent down on the besiegers. The palace of the Popes at Avignon exhibits these on piers standing forth from the wall. They are also to be seen at Villeneuve. The fine Gothic church of the Chartreuse is ruinous; in that stood the tomb of Innocent VI. A grand tower, erected by Philip the Fair, formed the Tête du Pont of the bridge of S. Benezet. It was erected after the bridge had been constructed, as a protection against the troops of the Papacy. Thereupon the popes raised a tower of defence at their end of the bridge. There were originally seventeen arches in the bridge, resting on eighteen piers. CHAPTER XX. VALENCE. A dull town--Cathedral--Jacques Cujas--His daughter--Pius VI.--His death--Maison des Têtes--Le Pendentif--The castle of Crussol--The dukes of Uzès--A dramatic company of the thirteenth century. What a sleepy place Valence is! There was supposed to be a fair there when I was at Valence, but even that could not wake it up. But the fair was in a condition of the utmost somnolence itself. Why--I did not suspect till I reached Vienne, when I found that this latter place had drawn to it all that was enterprising, startling, attractive, and left only the very dregs of fairings to poor Valence. It has a great boulevard, very wide, very inviting, but the spotted boys, and fat girls, and bearded women, would have nothing to say to it--they herded to Vienne. It has a vast terrace, planted with trees, where any amount of stalls might stand, but there were erected there only some very inconsiderable ranges of boot and shoe tables, and of old cutlery, and slop clothes. The cathedral is interesting and fine. The apse at the east end is early and curious; in place of buttresses receding in stages are Corinthian pillars tied into the walls they are to support at their heads by caps laid on them. There is no clerestory to the church, only an arcade of rude character. The walls of the cathedral are of sandstone, and have been so gnawed by the wind and rain, that the whole pile looks like a piece of very decayed cheese. The interior, however, is quite sound, reposeful, and lovely. That weather-beaten exterior, with its calm sweet interior, struck me as a picture of many a good Christian, buffeted and worn by storm and trial without, whose inner self is ever still and untouched. [Illustration: Cathedral of Valence.] The church was consecrated in 1095 by Pope Urban II. in person. A new western tower has been erected and a very fine west entrance in the Romanesque style, all very good, except the topmost stage of the tower, which has probably been confided to an inferior architect, who has managed to mar a work of great promise. Jacques Cujas, born at Toulouse in 1520, one of the most famous lawyers of his time, taught at Valence. He was a candidate for the chair of laws in the university of his native city, but was refused it; a certain Forcadel was elected instead, whose chief merit seems to have been that he was a wag. Cujas, on leaving Toulouse, turned, and shaking the dust off his feet against it said, "Ungrateful fatherland, in you my bones shall not rest." He kept his word, he died and was buried at Bourges. After he was gone from the place and his fame was sounded abroad, the university of Toulouse wanted to recall him, and sent a letter to him nominating him to the chair of laws. His answer was, "Frustra absentem requiris, quem præsentem neglexistis." "In vain do you desire him absent whom present you flouted." At Valence he had eight hundred scholars, who attended his lectures. So great was the reverence shown for his opinion, that it is said that in the schools of Germany, when the professors quoted him they were wont to raise their hands to their caps. And he deserved it. His burning ambition was to break down the system of injustice to the accused which prevailed in French courts, where one charged with a crime, if the crime were unproved did not obtain complete acquittal. He wrote in the cause of humanity against the abuses of tyranny and ignorance. "Where there is not complete proof of guilt," said he, "there let there be no condemnation," a maxim observed in England, but not in France. "What is not full truth," is a saying of his, "is full falsehood." It was his hope, his prayer, that he might live to see the injustice of the French laws swept away. That he was not destined to see. He was a kind professor to all his scholars. When he found that some were needy, he assisted them with money and books. "I was once a poorer lad than you," said he to one whom he assisted, "and very grateful if any one would have pity on me." [Illustration: Doorway in the house Dupré Latour, Valence.] He had a daughter, unworthy of her virtuous father. When his scholars were caught flirting with the damsel, they were wont to excuse themselves by saying that they were only "commenting on the works of Cujas." On this the following epigram was composed:-- "Videras immensos Cujaci labores Æternum patri commeruisse decus: Ingenio haud poterat tam magnum æquare parentem Filia; quod potuit corpore fecit opus." In his will Cujas desired that none of his books should be sold to a Jesuit; and that his library should be sold in parcels, lest any one should use his ill-digested notes for publication. His behest was obeyed. The booksellers of Lyons purchased his MSS. and used them as binding for books. It was not till sixteen years after his death that Alexander Scott of Carpentras, one of his pupils, collected his works. At Valence died and was buried the unfortunate Pope Pius VI. who had been treated with great harshness, and had been loaded with insults by the French. His was, indeed, a strange story. He began his pontificate in splendour in 1775, and set to work at once to aggrandise his family, the Braschi. He was a man of rapacious avarice; of this one glaring instance is given. He persuaded, or compelled, a certain Amanzio Lepri to constitute him his heir, and hand over to him the title-deeds of an estate worth many millions of lire. The natural heirs of Lepri were greatly annoyed at this, and instituted proceedings before the tribunals, which gave judgment sometimes for them and sometimes for the Pope, and the matter might have dragged on indefinitely, had not public opinion begun to manifest itself with such force that Pius thought it best to agree to a compromise. In everything relating to himself and his family the Pope showed unbounded extravagance and ostentation. He had pedigrees manufactured to prove the descent of his family from ancient Scandinavian heroes, and that of his nephews, on whom he heaped honours, from the Dukes of Benevento. He collected all the proudest devices of heraldry to incorporate them as quarterings into his arms, and this gave rise to an epigram from the pen of an ex-Jesuit, to this effect: "The eagle belongs to the Empire, the lilies of the field to France, to heaven belongs the stars--to Braschi what? Puff." His extravagance had become so great that the States of the Church were practically bankrupt long before the French overran and pillaged them. In his money difficulties he laid his hands on the funds appropriated to pious works, and so barefaced were his robberies at last, that ten years before the French invasion he had appropriated 36,000 pounds weight of silver from the Holy House of Loretto. Then came the crash. This luxurious and splendid Pope, in his old age, was reduced to be a prisoner, and to be hustled about from place to place by the French. He had been sent first to the Certosa, near Florence, with only two companions; then, by order of the Directory, was conveyed to Parma. There he was allowed to remain only thirteen days, and, in spite of his age and growing infirmities, was conveyed to the citadel of Turin. One day was there allowed him for repose, and then he was carried over the Alpine pass of Mont Genèvre in April to Briançon. There he was left in peace, but sick and feeble, till the end of June, when he was hurried away by Gap towards Dijon, but at Valence he became so ill that he could be no further moved, and there he died on the 29th August 1799, three days after his arrival. [Illustration: Doorway and niche in the Maison des Têtes, Valence.] The story is told that the official at Briançon on receiving him, sent to headquarters a formal receipt couched in these terms: "Reçu--un pape, en fort mauvais état." There is not much of interest in domestic architecture at Valence, with the sole exception of the Maison des Têtes, which stands near the market-place, and which is sculptured over with great richness, with heads representing the seasons, and Roman emperors. The enrichment of this house is in the style of Flamboyant passing into Renaissance; the façade being in sandstone has been sadly gnawed by the tooth of Time, has indeed lost all edge to the sculpture, but within the entrance porch, where protected, the sandstone retains its sharpness. Curiously enough, no one knows for whom this gorgeous mansion was raised. It has a pretty interior court, but there is not much sculpture therein. One cannot quite forgive the original owner and edifier of the mansion for a bit of ostentation and vulgarity of which he has been guilty. The house has one portion looking on to the square, but at the side bends away at an obtuse angle down the street. As the whole façade was not visible at a single glance, only that portion which was most seen was sculptured, and that with overpowering richness, whereas the other portion in the street was left bare to baldness. Wind and rain and frost are engaged in rubbing down all the decoration, and flattening the surface of the decorated portion to the simplicity of the other part. The same destroying agencies are at work upon a very quaint mausoleum, on the north side of the cathedral, called _Le Pendentif_, which was erected in 1548 in Classic style as a monument to the Mistral family. It is quadrangular, and consists of four great piers at the angles, and is adorned with pillars and with arches in the sides sustaining a vault. In the rusticated space that fills the sides, quaint sculptures of monsters and birds of foreign plumage may, or rather might have been traced, the honeycombing by weather has made them almost undiscoverable. Probably the structure is more picturesque now in its decay than it ever was before. Immediately opposite Valence, on the farther side of the Rhone, rises a bold scarp of sandstone cliff, crowned with the ruined castle of Crussol above the village of S. Peray at its feet, where is made a very capital sparkling wine, not at all inferior to champagne. There is also there an odd château, designed, it is believed, by Marshal Vauban, on the plan of a mimic fortress, with bastions, curtains, glacis, portcullis, and loopholes. It is now the residence of the owner of the great vineyards where the S. Peray effervescing wine is made. The view of the cliff of Crussol and the village of S. Peray from the terrace of Valence is spoiled by the river being at some distance from the base of the terrace, and the flat land that intervenes being covered by poplars, manufactories and cottages, so that the Rhone is shut out from sight. Originally, certainly, the cliff on which stands the cathedral, as well as that now converted into a promenade, were swept by the Rhone, but it has thrown its gravels on to the left bank and cut its way farther to the west. The castle of Crussol belonged to the Dukes d'Uzès, and occupies a headland formed by the torrent at its side, that has sawn a chasm through the soft sandstone in its course to join the Rhone. Within the walls may be seen the remains of a small town that clustered there, much like Les Baux, but now completely deserted. The family of Crussol was not of much note till Louis de Crussol gained the favour of Louis XI., and was created his chamberlain, and governor of Dauphiné. The son married the heiress of Uzès, and with her the title of viscount passed to their son Charles, whose son Anthony obtained the title of Duke d'Uzès. There is nothing very remarkable in the story of the Crussols, but the origin of the Uzès is of romantic interest. There were three brothers, Ebles, Guy, and Pierre, who had a little estate and castle at Uzès near Nimes. There they lived together, unmarried, and in very pinched circumstances. So, one day Ebles said to his brothers that it was a shabby life for three gentlemen thus to live scraping a few coppers together whilst all was beautiful beyond Uzès. Let them all three leave the crumbling walls and leaky roof of Uzès to the bats and owls, and seek their fortunes in the courts of princes. His advice was relished, and they invited their cousin, named Elias, a comic poet, to travel with them. Now Guy, the youngest of the brothers, and Ebles the eldest, had a pretty gift at poetry, and the second brother, Pierre, had a pleasant pipe, so they agreed that Ebles should write _sirventes_, and Guy _chansons_, and that Pierre should sing them. Moreover, Elias should compose little comedies that could be performed by their small party, and the profits were to be equally shared between them. They also put their hands together and vowed to be true and friendly, and not to separate till they came back to ramshackle Uzès. So the company started, and went first to the court of Reynald, Viscount of Albuzoni and of Marguerite his wife, who received them with pleasure, both of them being fond of Provençal poetry. The brothers and cousin had great success with their songs and comedies, sent round the hat, and got a handsome sum. Then, when they had sucked their orange, they went farther, mounted like paladins, and passed into the territories of the Countess of Montferrat, who received them quite as cordially as had the Viscount of Albuzoni. There they sang and twanged the guitar, but having unhappily composed some satirical verses under the title of "The Life of the Tyrants" in which the morals and greed of the popes and some of the princes of Europe were chastised, the Papal Legate complained and threatened them with public punishment; he finally imposed silence on them, under threat of excommunication. Then the little company returned home laden with treasures, but sad at heart; and Guy died about 1230. The company must have done pretty well, if Guy founded with his share of the profits the family which later became one of viscounts. I fear dramatic and musical companies nowadays have not the same success. CHAPTER XXI. VIENNE. Historic associations--Salvation Army bonnets--The fair--A quack--A vampire--The amphitrite--A _carousel_--Temple of Augustus and Livia--The Aiguille--Cathedral--Angels and musical instruments--S. André-le-Bas--Situation of Vienne--Foundation of the Church there--Letter of the Church on the martyrdoms at Lyons. I went on to Vienne with mind full of thoughts of the Burgundian kingdom of which it was the capital in the fifth century, of S. Avitus, of King Clovis, of Calixtus II., of the condemnation of the Templars at the Council of Vienne in 1307--one of the most cruel and iniquitous deeds done by the Crown of France in compact with the Papacy--and I found myself plunged, unexpectedly, suddenly, into the vortex of a great popular fair. I had passed from a fair in a condition of languor into one in full flush of life. Which was to be done first, the temple of Augustus and Livia, the remains of the Roman theatre--microscopic I found afterwards--the cathedral of S. Maurice, or the shows? But surely, the proper study of mankind is man, so I resolved on seeing the fair first, and after that of studying the antiquities, and indulging in antiquarian and historic dreams. The weather was sorry: wind and threatenings of rain. Moreover it was cold and overcast. Yet nothing damped the ardour of the sellers, and the acquisitiveness of the buyers. But--had I come upon a nursery of hallelujah lasses? Were the nights to be made hideous with Salvation Army howls? On all sides of me were great girls and little girls, matrons and maids, in Salvation Army straws. I turned sick and faint with dismay. In the city of S. Mamertius, of S. Avitus and of Ado--"General" Booth's great Religious Speculation! It was not so, however, I was rejoiced to find, only all the women had been buying straws in the fair of the Salvation Army shape that were selling cheap, and having bought them ran home, trimmed them, and then out they popped again and marched about to show them. An avenue of booths and stalls. Boots, straw hats and Salvation bonnets, ribbons, kerchiefs, books and engravings. There was even a reduced household selling off all their worldly goods, lamps, chairs, prayer-books, kettles, crocks, linen--and a spinning-wheel. I looked lovingly, longingly at that spinning-wheel, and might have bought it for a franc and a half, and would have done so, had I not been encumbered with the hurdy-gurdy. _That_ had brought me into such difficulties that I felt convinced a hurdy-gurdy + a spinning-wheel would lodge me in a lunatic asylum. So reluctantly I left it. A gust of wind, and away went the straw hats from the stall, up into the air, over the heads of the crowd, spinning along in the gutters; one, a very kiss-me-quick, was blown slap in the face of an old priest trudging along reading his breviary. Then such outcries, entreaties, objurgations, as the straw hats and bonnets were run after and recovered, or sought to be recovered. Here--a quack with an assortment of bones that were so brown they looked as if they had been devilled, but they had acquired their tone from his hands. He held up a distorted piece of spine and pelvis, and declared he had a plaster so curative--fifty centimes, ten sous--that it would restraighten the most curved back. As for corns! He raised a horrible foot, applied to it some tow steeped in green fat, rapidly narrated the treatment he recommended--_et voilà!_--he drew away the tow, and the supposed corn was lodged in the midst of it. An inflammation of the lungs? a darling child sick? He opened a coffin and exposed a baby skeleton. "Look! your _cher enfant_ will be like this, but for fifty centimes I will save it, I guarantee. Pelt me with rotten apples, with addled eggs, if I fail. This plaster placed here (he applied it to the breast of the skeleton), and your child breathes thus (drew a long inhalation)--is well. Warts (a labourer held up a horny hand, the middle joint of the little finger disfigured with such excrescences)? Nothing easier! You take this bottle--warts are my speciality--you rub the wart with this. Thank you, fifty centimes. Come here next Sunday. If the wart be not gone--I do not say it will not leave a scar, but the scar will disappear in a month--here is a knife, stick it into my heart. I give you leave. I will not resist. I will not budge." [Illustration: House in Vienne.] Here--a man selling silvering-liquor, to be applied to vulgar yellow spoons, only a franc a bottle, and a whole set turned into purest silver-plating, plating that will not wear out through all your lives. Then, among the shows:--Cora, the Beautiful Serpent Charmer. Cora was outside beating a drum, and was quite the reverse of beautiful; she may have had the faculty of charming serpents, but not men. A cluster of young soldiers stood without, shook their heads, and would not be allured within. "Galerie des actualités artistiques"--a peep-show at photographs from the Paris Exhibition. "The real Vampire, alive, living on BLOOD. Called by the Chinese, from its powers of traversing twenty kilometres in an hour, 'The Flying Horse.'" The showman was outside, haranguing. His system was to thrill the audience with horror, till they precipitated themselves in a spasm of terror into his show. Just as when one is on a height, a nervous, uncontrollable impulse fills some men to throw themselves down out of very fear of falling, so did this great artist in horrors work up the feelings of his audience to such tension that it became insupportable, they must go headlong in, and see the vampire, if they died for it. "The vampire is to be seen--smacking his lips--thirsting, ravening, for BLOOD. A live rabbit will be offered him; he will roll his eyes, look at the human beings present, try the bars of his cage--he cannot reach them. En fin, a rabbit is better than nothing! Mesdames, je vous implore! Do not bring your babes within. A stern necessity--a care for the consequences would prevent me from admitting them. The sight of a human babe rouses in the vampire the sanguinary passion to a paroxysm of frenzy. In its natural state the vampire sucks the blood of men. This vampire has sucked that of KINGS, and to have to descend to--RABBIT!" [Illustration: At Vienne.] I did not expend my sous to see the wretched bat, but I did lavish thirty centimes on the amphitrite next door. The programme was so characteristically French that I give it:-- "Amphitrite vivante. Tous les soirs au couche du soleil elle laisse son palais royal de coraux et d'algues, et sort des vagues sombres pour jouir de son amour idéal. Légère et vaporeuse comme un ange, elle caresse les ondes, et observe d'un doux regard son idéal, et réplonge au fond de l'océan. Dépeindre avec quelle perfection on présente cette expérience au public est impossible!!!" Thirty centimes, reserved seats; twenty, unreserved. As it turned out, there were no seats at all, but a slushy soil on which one stood, where the water had run in under the sides of the booth, and which sightseers had, with their boots, churned into mud. I supposed I was to see a nautilus; it was légère et vaporeux, it could not then be a seal. No, a nautilus. Thirty centimes--here goes for a sight of the nautilus. But it was touching to observe the confidence of the showman. He refused the entrance fee. "No, gentlemen. You shall yourselves decide whether the amphitrite is worth six sous. If you say not--go forth; I am content, but I pity you." A piece of drugget served as a curtain, which cut off what may be termed the stage. At a signal the drugget was withdrawn, and the spectators looked into a cave, the sides made of painted calico. Beyond this was the rippling ocean, with the evening sun sparkling on it, much like the scene in "Oberon," only on a very small scale, and with no stage. At a word from the showman, Amphitrite arose. By Ginger! not a nautilus, not a seal, but a living girl of sixteen summers, in fleshings, who floated in the air, made revolutions, waved her hands, stood on her head, touching nothing, precisely as if she really were devoid of all specific gravity. Only when hand or foot touched the calico-rocks did these same rocks begin to wave about. I supposed at the time, I suppose still, that the trick is done by means of mirrors. But _how_--I cannot conceive. Presently the hat went round for Amphitrite's special benefit: her _amour idéal_ had something of the sordid mammon in it. As everyone put a copper into the hat, "Merci, monsieur; merci, madame!" was what she said. So that there is a difficulty in supposing that the phenomenon was achieved by reflectors. She watched and acknowledged every offering made, as she calmly folded her arms and floated in mid-air, with head on one side, observant. I can't explain it--I am puzzled still. I paid my thirty centimes with alacrity, so did every one else. The show was worth the money. There was a merry-go-round--a _carousel_; the only feature in it with which I was unfamiliar was a ship, sails spread, on a pivot athwart the ring, so that it swayed as on a rolling sea when the _carousel_ was in revolution. I would not have entered that ship for twenty francs. Before the orchestrion that accompanied the merry-go-round had accomplished the first strain of Strauss's waltz I should have been feebly calling for the steward. I observed that those silly youngsters with nautical proclivities who did scramble into the swaying ship, got out with livid lips, and did not ask to go in again. Some years ago I was at Innsprück with a friend. We were sauntering together in the afternoon, not exactly knowing what to do with ourselves, when we found one of these _carousels_. We went farther; then I said, "We will return and go and see the Xaverianum"--a collection of paintings, mostly daubs, at Innsprück. "No," said my companion, "I don't feel inclined for the Xaverianum, I'll go down by the river." So we parted. Now, I had not gone far along my way in the direction of the Xaverianum, before I said to myself, "I don't want to see the Xaverianum either; but, as my friend is away--upon my word--I am unknown here! I'll--yes, I will--by Jove, I will--I'll go and have a round on the whirligig." So I retraced my steps, and, on reaching the merry-go-round, what should I behold but my friend seated on a piebald horse, with a short sword in his hand, aiming at the targets he passed in his revolution. He was a bald-headed man, with a long grey beard. His face and head became like a beetroot when he saw me; but I comforted him. At Würzburg, in the Episcopal palace, is a _carousel_, in which the bishop--a prince elector--was wont on rainy days to go round and round, seated in a purple velvet chair with the Episcopal arms embroidered on the curtains, and the mitre over it. Enough of the fair. Now to graver matters; and first the temple of Augustus and Livia. I do not know whether it was that the weather was gloomy, or that the fair had set me out of tune for antiquities; but somehow this temple did not impress me as did the dear little Maison Carrée at Nimes. For one thing the stone is dingy, whereas that of Nimes is bright and white; and the proportions did not please me. I believe the knowing ones say that the Nimes temple is not proportioned according to the laws of Vitruvius, and this at Vienne is. If that be the case, then I am sorry for Vitruvius. The temple is structurally perfect--as perfect as that of Nimes. Another object of interest is the Aiguille, a Roman obelisk seventy-six feet high. There is a square base, pierced by arches in each face, and the obelisk, or pyramid rather, stands on this. It is not very beautiful, but it is worth examining. It is thought that the monument to Marius at Pourrières was somewhat similar. [Illustration: Hurdy-Gurdy Played by an Angel.] The cathedral of Vienne is of sandstone, and has decayed accordingly. The west end, which was very rich, and is rich still, has suffered from corrosion in the upper part; but a firmer, less friable sandstone was fortunately employed for the lower stage, in which is the richest sculpture, and that is fairly perfect. Murray pooh-poohs this west front: "It is rich in flamboyant ornaments, but they are clumsy and without delicacy." The sculpture was adapted to the material, and any other would not have looked well. After the severe and bald west fronts in Provence, I was disposed, I suppose, to be pleased with the rich façade at Vienne. I confess that "clumsy and without delicacy" though it might be, I thoroughly enjoyed it. But that façade caught me quite by my weak point. There is a central doorway, and one into each aisle, and round the archways into these lateral doors are sculptured angels playing upon musical instruments. As I have told the reader, ancient forms of musical instruments are my hobby, or rather one of my hobbies. I at once pulled out my sketch-book and drew them; there are angels with fiddles, angels with viols--no, not hurdy-gurdys!--but twanged with the fingers, angels with pipes and horns, one with a harp, two with portable organs of ten pipes in each, two angels with bagpipes with single drones. Conceive of a salutation on bagpipes from the celestial choir! An angel plays the cymbals, and another with a plectrum strikes a metal disc. [Illustration: Church of S. André-le-Bas. The Tower.] The interior of the cathedral is remarkable for the peculiarly fine sculpture of the capitals of the pillars. The foliage is of exquisite loveliness and variety; but over the transept door is a very Brueghel creation of horrors--in fact, the zodiacal signs worked up together into a nightmare. A church of remarkable interest in Vienne is S. André-le-Bas; it has in it two Roman marble Corinthian columns supporting the arch of the apse, and a Corinthian capital used as a font. The situation of Vienne is remarkable, it resembles one of the towns on the Rhine, where the river is contracted among hills. The mountains rise immediately behind the city, and are crowned with old castles. The space between the river and the bases of the heights is small, and the city is somewhat cramped accordingly. But the Gère issues from the hills on the north, and gives some scope for the suburbs of the old town to creep up its banks. Vienne is one of the most ancient towns of Gaul, it was the capital of the Allobroges; it claims as the founder of the Church there Crescens, disciple of S. Paul. Crescens, it will be remembered, was sent by Paul into Galatia. That was quite sufficient for these Gallic enthusiasts, who desired to give to the French bishoprics Apostolic founders. They supposed that Galatia was a slip of the pen for Gallia, and argued, if to Gallia, then to Vienne, the most ancient and important city therein, _q.e.d._ But no bishop of Vienne appears fixed with any certainty before Verus, who attended the Council of Arles in A.D. 314. It is, however, quite certain that the Church was founded there before A.D. 150; for one of the most precious and authentic records of the early Church we have is the letter written by the Vienne Christians to those of the East, recording the martyrdom of the bishop Pothinus of Lyons. [Illustration: Porte de l'Ambulance, Vienne.] It used to be said of the old Gallo-Roman city that its wealth was so great that the streets were paved with mosaic. Now one would be thankful for a bit that was smooth. The pavement is almost as bad as that of Arles. CHAPTER XXII. BOURGES. The siege of Avaricum by Cæsar--The complete subjugation of Gaul--The statue of the Dying Gaul at Rome--Beauty of Bourges--The cathedral--Not completed according to design--Defect in height--Strict geometrical proportion in design not always satisfactory--Necessity of proportion for acoustics--Domestic architecture in Bourges--The house of Jacques Coeur--Story of his life--A rainy day--Why Bourges included in this book--A silver thimble--_Que de singeries faites-vous là, Madeleine?_--Adieu. Bourges stands in the very forefront of Gaulish history marked by a great disaster. There, on a little height at the junction of the Yèvre and the Auron, the gallant Bituriges had their capital, Avaricum. In six campaigns Cæsar had, as he believed, broken the neck of all resistance, and Gaul was under the iron heel of Rome. "My aunt Julia," said Cæsar, "is, maternally, the daughter of kings; paternally--" he passed his fingers through his curled and scented locks--"paternally, she is descended from the immortal gods." After that, even barbarians must feel that it was in vain to strive against a man thus preordained to mastery. Yet they did not see it. When Julius Cæsar was in Rome, after six years of stubborn conflict, after incredible suffering and bloodshed, the heart of the people though bowed down was not broken. There lived among the Arvernians, in the high mountainland, among the volcanic peaks of Auvergne, as it is now called, a young chief, whose real name is not known, but whom history calls Vercingetorix, that is, Head over a Hundred Tribes. The time was come for an united, determined, and desperate resistance. He sent messengers throughout Gaul. The downtrodden inhabitants rose to a man and invested Vercingetorix with the chief command. In the year of Rome 702, B.C. 32, Cæsar was suddenly informed in Italy that his work of six years was threatened with ruin. Most of the Gallic nations, united under a chieftain hitherto unknown, were rising with one common impulse, and recommencing war. Cæsar at once returned to Gaul. He had one quality, rare even amongst the greatest men, he remained cool amidst the hottest alarms. He was always quick, never hasty. He placed himself at the head of his troops, and, in the early part of March, moved to what is now Sens, the very centre of revolt, and looked round to decide where first to strike. Vercingetorix from the outset knew that the ill-armed and worse disciplined Gauls could not cope in the open field with Cæsar and the Roman legions; he therefore formed a plan of campaign that required great sacrifices on the side of the Gauls, for the sake of the common safety. No walls, he assured the confederates, could withstand the skill of the Romans in engineering, no array maintain itself in the field against their phalanx. But he reminded them that through the winter and early spring the soil on which the enemy trod could not furnish him with provision. He must disperse his troops among the fortresses. Let then, said he, no further attempts be made to defy the Roman in the open field; let him rather be followed in detail, and cut off when separated into cantonments, and above all, let the towns that served him for magazines be destroyed by the hands of the inhabitants themselves. He recommended in fact the very course pursued more than eighteen hundred years later by the Russians against the French Cæsar, a course which proved fatal to him. The assembled council of Gaulish states assented gallantly to this proposal. In one day twenty cities of the Bituriges were flaming, and similar havoc was made throughout the territories of the allies. But when the fate of Avaricum (Bourges) came to be discussed, the hearts of the Bituriges failed them. Their deputies knelt to the assembled chiefs and interceded for the preservation of their beautiful, and as they deemed it, impregnable city. The council yielded. In vain did Vercingetorix urge them to carry out their determination without exception. They would surrender every other city to the flames, but not their loved capital, not Avaricum. The situation was admirably calculated for defence. It stood on rising ground, and the only approach to it then was a causeway between the river and a morass. The garrison laboured night and day to strengthen their defences with earthworks and with palisades of sharpened stakes. The Romans at once moved from Sens and surrounded the place. The story of its fall I will take from the graphic pen of Dean Merivale:--"Whilst the Bituriges within their city were hard pressed by the machinery which the Roman engineers directed against their walls, the forces of the proconsul on their side were harassed by the fatigues of the siege and the scarcity of provisions. Cæsar is lavish of praise in speaking of the fortitude with which his soldiers bore their privations; they refused to allow him to raise the siege, and when he at last led them against the enemy's army, and finding it too strongly posted for an attack, withdrew them again within their lines, they submitted to the disappointment, and betook themselves once more without a murmur to the tedious operations of the blockade. The skill of the assailants at length triumphed over the bravery of the defenders. The walls were approached by towers at various points, and mounds constructed against which the combustible missiles of the besieged were unavailing. Finally, a desperate sally was repulsed, and then, at last the constancy of the Bituriges began to fail. Taking advantage of a moment when the watch on the walls had relaxed its vigilance, Cæsar marshalled his legions behind his works, and poured them suddenly against the opposing ramparts. They gained the summit of the walls, which the defenders abandoned without a blow, rallying, however, in the middle of the town, in such hasty array as the emergency would allow. A bloody struggle ensued; both parties were numerous, and the assailants gave no quarter. The Gauls were routed and exterminated, their women and children mercilessly slaughtered, and the great central city of Gaul fell into the hands of the conquerors without affording a single captive for their triumph." After that the fate of the insurrection was sealed. The war was carried on with fluctuations of fortune even into an eighth campaign, and then the yoke of Rome, iron, and doubly weighted with the wrath of the conqueror, was riveted on to the neck of prostrate Gallia, never again to be shaken off. [Illustration: A street corner, Bourges.] Now, day after day at Rome during the winter had I stood before the Dying Gaul in the Capitoline Museum, that statue of incomparable pathos:-- "He leans upon his hand--his manly brow Consents to death, but conquers agony, And his drooped head sinks gradually low-- From the red gash fall heavy, one by one, Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now The arena swims around him--he is gone, Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won." _Childe Harold._ The statue is not of a Dying Gladiator, but of a Gaulish chief, who has dealt himself the death-wound rather than fall into servitude to the Roman, and then has broken his sword. And, after having looked and dreamed over that figure, could one come to Bourges and not think of that heroic and fatal struggle? Bourges was a beautiful city in those times, loved by the Bituriges so that they could not resolve to destroy it; but oh! how beautiful it is now, with its quaint Mediæval and Renaissance houses, and above all that most glorious cathedral, one of the very finest creations of art in the world. And yet, it is not perfect. The original design was not carried out. The nave has not the height proposed. Funds failed, and it was finished off as best might be. It wants about forty-six feet of the height it should have had, to be in correct proportion. The flying buttresses outside were designed and executed to carry a vaulting some forty-six feet higher than the present one, and they are now of no use; they sustain nothing, all the outward thrust of the central vault is thrown on the second stage of buttresses. Fine as is the interior, it ought to be finer. The clerestory windows are dwarfed, and the height of the side aisles is felt to be out of all proportion to that of the nave. Moreover, there is nothing of the wonderful skill of design in the apsidal chapels, that is seen at Amiens, Vezelai, Beauvais, &c. Instead of forming an integral portion of the plan, they are mere excrescences in the sides of the apse. However, in spite of defects, partly in design, but mainly through lack of means to carry it out, the cathedral of Bourges is of singular beauty. In one point the architect was a greater man than the designers of Amiens and Cologne. These two cathedrals are in strict proportion in all their parts. The designer of each, like the architect of York Minster, was a great man with the compasses. But an architect should be artist as well as geometrician. I have ever felt in York Minster, in Amiens and Cologne, that there is a lack of genius, of the human soul in the creation. There is strict formality, exact rule, that is all. No allowance has been made for effect of perspective, for the foreshortening to the eye at distances; there is no poetry in these three cathedrals. The designers drew them out on paper without having the faculty of seeing them in their minds' eye rise before them out of the soil. These churches made better sketches than they do structures. They are in admirable proportion on paper, but they are out of proportion when seen in stone. Now such architects as the men who designed Beauvais and Bourges were geniuses. They were not tied hard and fast by rule of compass. They worked from a definite geometric plan, but deviated from it where their taste and feeling for beauty taught them that such deviation was advisable. Now at Beauvais and at Bourges the exact, proportions have been abandoned. For instance, at Bourges, to be exact, each of the two side aisles should have been half the width of the nave. But the architect was perhaps afraid of the great span, perhaps he dreaded too great formality, and he made the aisle next to the nave about 2 ft. 3 in. less than the width it ought to have had, if in exact proportion. The outer aisle was given almost, but not quite, the exact proportional width. The great defect of our modern architects is that they do not work from a foundation of geometrical proportion, but design out of their own heads by eye; we are sometimes distressed at finding that our churches recently built are bad acoustically. This is very generally due to the fact that they have been built regardless of geometric proportion. If Bourges had been carried out as intended, the crown of the vault would have been exactly seven times half the width of the nave. S. Servin, Toulouse, has the keystone of the vault exactly five times the half width. If we desire to have good acoustic qualities in our churches and halls we must observe some such rule. So with the plan. The length of Autun is seven times the width of the nave; Beauvais the same, or would have been, had the nave been completed. Amiens has exactly the same proportion, measured to the end of the apse. So Noyon. In fact, the Mediæval architects were careful to build so as never to give even proportions. Twice, four times, six times, would have had bad acoustic effects. There would have been an echo. Of the sculpture on the west façade, the richly, deeply-recessed portals, I will not speak. That has been sufficiently observed and admired by other writers. I am not writing a guide-book, and I do not as a rule notice at any length what may be found in easily-accessible works. Here, as at Rouen, is a butter tower, so called because built with money paid for indulgence to be allowed to eat butter in Lent. Does the reader know how strictly the observance of Lent was enforced down to the Civil Wars in England? I have gone through some episcopal registers of our English bishops since the Reformation, and find that in James I.'s time a bishop's licence was sought to obtain permission to eat meat in Lent. Not only so, but all schoolmasters, surgeons, and midwives were required to obtain an episcopal licence before being permitted to practise in the diocese. In Bourges one feels that one is removed altogether from the influences that moulded architecture in Provence. There the abundance of Classic remains affected the minds and formed the taste of the Mediæval builders. In Central France there were few traces of the Roman conquerors, and Gothic architecture developed freely according to its own genius. The domestic architecture is different. We come now to the gables standing over the street. There are many and charming specimens in Bourges. Among the houses is that of Cujas, concerning whom some anecdotes have already been told. Bourges was famous for its University and School of Laws, and Cujas was invited to a professorship in it. The house is of brick, of the sixteenth century, and richly adorned. Another interesting house is that of Charles VII., with a graceful staircase, and an old hall with open fireplace. But the striking mansion of all is that of Jacques Coeur, the Bourges jeweller, father of an Archbishop of this his native city. Throughout the house is introduced his canting device, a human heart and the scallopshell of S. James. His motto is also graven, "A vaillants coeurs rien impossible." [Illustration: Part of Jacques Coeur's House.] I hate doing a thing again and in an inferior manner that has already been done inimitably; and Madame Parkes-Belloc, with her fresh pen dipped in sunlight has written about Bourges and Jacques Coeur's house in her charming book, 'La Belle France,' [1] and I dare not tread after her. So I simply quote her words--I fear her pleasant book is not much sought after and read now:--"His dwelling must have fitted Jacques Coeur as its skin fits an animal. All its quaint architectural corners seem, as it were, wrinkles and creases, whereby it adapted itself to the nature and genius of the man. We, in our day, know nothing of such a style of building. If we want a large house we send for an architect, who submits his plans to our enlightened judgment; allotting ample stairs, a sufficiency of best bedrooms, kitchen, butler's pantry, &c. If rather less, then rather cheaper; and as to making the slightest difference in style on account of our late pursuits, as whether, for instance, we were a retired candlestick-maker, or a Lord Chancellor, or a physician, the very idea would savour of lunacy. Not so Jacques Coeur. This man wished, in dying, to leave a beautiful shell behind him, so that the passers-by might say: 'Here lived a great merchant; he had a wife, sons, and a daughter, and numerous domestics. He liked his money, but loved art more. He kept a negro; he was pious, also loyal. He didn't mind fighting, if needs must be; but preferred commerce and politics. He loved Bourges, and Bourges loved him; for he paid his workmen well.' All this, and more, Jacques Coeur continued to write in legible characters on the walls of his house, some of it on the outside, some of it on the inside." [Footnote 1: Published in 1868.] He had humour, a quaint conceit, this man of gold and jewelry. He had the very knocker to his door made to strike upon a _heart_. Under the eaves of his observatory he had his negro sculptured hugging his money-box, and a little beyond an angel exhibiting his newly-acquired coat-of-arms. The one led to the other--the money-box brought on gentility. Hard by is the shield of an allied commercial family, their coat one of _fleurs-de-lis_ interspersed with woolsacks. The Fuggers of Augsburg, when desiring a coat, asked Maximilian for lilies--for, said these wealthy spinners--as for the lilies, "_They_ toil not, neither do they spin." With droll invention Jacques had one of his fireplaces made like a fortress, with little windows above, out of which folk are peeping. He had a gift for pungent mottoes. Here are some he had wrought into the decorations of his house:-- "A close bouche Il n'entre mouche." Another is:-- "Entendre, taire, Dire, et faire, Est ma joie." I remember a merchant's house, very sumptuous, at Schaffhausen, on which he had written this bitter device--"God preserve me from my friends; I will protect myself from my enemies." Another man altogether from Jacques Coeur. The ending of this bright, merry, pomp-loving merchant was sad. He fell into disgrace with his king--he had probably lent him too much money; he was accused falsely of several crimes--forging money and selling arms to infidels, and was thrown into prison. The king then seized his wealth, tore up the bills in his name, and left one of Jacques' sons only a remnant of his treasure and the house. Jacques Coeur managed to escape from prison, got to Rome, and was taken into favour by Nicolas V. and Calixtus III., and was appointed captain of an expedition against the Turks. He is thought to have been wounded in a skirmish with them, for he is known to have died in Chios. And so he passed his old age, and laid his bones far from the house he had built for himself in which to end his days, and was not buried in the chapel of the cathedral which he had constructed as his mausoleum. [Illustration: Turret in the Hôtel Lallemand.] Another very delightful old house in Bourges is the Hôtel Lallemand, constructed after the great fire of 1487; there is another in the Rue des Toiles, and another again in the Rue S. Suplice. [Illustration: Staircase in the Hôtel Lallemand.] The reader may ask--If you are writing a book on Provence and Languedoc, why give us Bourges? Bourges, which is in Berry, which is in the very centre of France? For the same reason that I began with Florence. One does not drop out of a balloon into Provence, nor ascend out of it by one. One must stay somewhere in going there, and stay somewhere and see something on leaving there. And as my stay at Florence led on as a sort of preface to my flight up and down in Provence, so will this chapter on Bourges serve as an epilogue. For, in verity, as my encounter with the Jew dealer served me as an introduction so shall a little incident I met with in Bourges serve me as an easy mode of making my exit with a bow. It was raining. It had rained all day. The interior of the cathedral, dark at all times with its deep-dyed (and dirty) glass, was in darkness, too deep to see and study much. The gurgoyles were spouting, the eaves dripping, the gutters running as mountain torrents. However, towards sunset, the windows of heaven were closed, the rain ceased, and folk who had been indoors all day came out with umbrellas and pattered and splashed about. Now, by some fatality a thimble had been brought down from the roof of one of the houses by a descending water-spout; perhaps a dragon-gurgoyle had spat it disdainfully down. How had the thimble got on the roof? That was the question, not how it got down into the gutter. Had a cunning jackdaw, as in the 'Gazza di Ladra' carried it off, or had a child tumbled it out of an attic window on to the leads? I was not the only person interested in this thimble. There was a young man, a student, a French exquisite, who also observed it; and I saw him poking at it in the water with the ferrule of his umbrella. Indeed it was his behaviour towards the thimble that attracted my attention to it. Presently he managed to extricate the thimble from the flood, to lodge it on a paving-stone, but it was slippery and round, and rolled off between two cobbles. Then he put up his eye-glass and studied it. Was it worth soiling his fingers over or not? Was it of silver or of brass? He walked round the thimble, with his eye-glass up, stood astride over the little torrent that had brought it down, stiffened his back, clapped the umbrella under his arm, and pursed up his lips to consider. Then he formed his resolution, stooped, and with the extreme point of his forefinger turned the thimble about. Then he stood erect again, pulled out a pocket handkerchief--saw it was of spotless cleanliness, considered that it would cost him two sous to have it washed if he dirtied it by drying thereon his forefinger, replaced it, and put his finger up his back under his coat tails and wiped it on the calico of his waistcoat. He had made up his mind to have nothing more to do with the thimble, when along the _trottoïr_ came tripping a pretty damsel, with the purest of white caps, a sallow face, with fine dark eyes and abundant black hair. She bore over her shoulder, expanded, a plum-coloured umbrella. It had ceased raining, but the plum-colour threw out her pleasant face into relief: she knew that, and tripped on without folding it. Instantly down bent the student, and, regardless of the dirty water, picked up the thimble. It slipped from his fingers into the gutter. Boldly he plunged his hand in, soiling thereby his _manchette_; but he recovered the trifle. The girl was abreast of him, and had passed before he was prepared. He now pulled out a dogskin glove and polished the article. It _was_ silver. He affixed it to the end of his little finger and waited his opportunity. Three ladies approached. The youth plucked up courage--holding out his little finger shod with the thimble. It was like Paris and the Three Goddesses. The ladies looked at him, at his thimble, then at each other, tossed their heads, and walked on. Then came a very ugly woman--the exquisite put the thimble resolutely behind his back. Next--back, under her plum-coloured umbrella, returned the grisette. At once the dandy stood forward. "Mademoiselle, as you passed just now, assuredly you dropped this." [Illustration: Sculpture over the kitchen entrance at Jacques Coeur's house.] "Mais, Monsieur! ce n'est pas possible. Ce n'est pas à moi." "Pardon, mademoiselle, you dropped it; I saw you. I heard it fall." "Cependant,--it is not mine." "Then it is nobody's. I will throw it away." "Mais, monsieur, it is of silver." "Take it, mademoiselle, I pray." She held the little silver thimble between thumb and forefinger, turned it about, studied it, hesitated, was inclined to take it, but did not wish to place herself under an obligation to a fop, and a stranger--knitted her brows--when up came a young workman, with a lead pencil in his hand--in his blouse. "Mais! que de singeries faites-vous là, Madeleine?" said he, and flip!--with his pencil he sent the thimble out from her hand, flying--neither he, nor the girl, nor I saw whither it went, or where it fell. And--just thus stands the author of this little work, offering his trifle to the gentle and well-disposed reader, who is inclined, may be, to be pleased with it, and to adopt it. But up comes the envious reviewer, and with his pen--flip--he sends the poor little article away--away--away, into the limbo of forgotten books, "que de singeries faites-vous là--avec cette bagatelle là?" [Illustration: Jacques Coeur's knocker.] APPENDIX. A.--MONUMENTS FROM THE ALYSCAMPS. 1. The inscription to Cornelia, daughter of Marius, is something of a puzzle. Against its genuineness may be urged that he is represented as conqueror of the Cimbri, whereas the Cimbri were not defeated till the following year, near Vercelli. Now it is strange that he should have left his daughter at Arles instead of moving her into Italy; and it is also odd that, if she were left there, he should be designated as conqueror of the Cimbri, whereas in the engagement with the Cimbri he shared the glory with Catulus; and he alone was victor over the Teutons and Ambrons near Aix. Moreover, one would have supposed that at Arles he would have been entitled the conqueror of these latter, the terror of whom had fallen on the province, and not of the Cimbri who did not menace it. On the other hand, the inscription is in shockingly bad Latin; Calpurnia is made conqueror of the Cimbri, not her father, by a grammatical blunder; and one would suspect a forger would have avoided such a grotesque error, which is quite in agreement with other blunders made by the sculptors of monuments in the Alyscamps, who were clearly Gallo-Greeks, and hardly understood Latin. Also--and this is remarkable--the name of the girl is Calpurnia; and Caius Marius was a native of Arpinum, and when this town was taken by the Romans from the Samnites, in B.C. 188, the franchise was given to the inhabitants, who were enrolled in the Calpurnian _gens_. Now this is a little fact that it is most improbable a forger would know--but it quite explains the girl receiving the name of Calpurnia, if genuine. 2. The Tomb of Julia Tyranna. The inscription runs:-- IVLIÆ . LVC . FILIÆ . TYRANNIÆ . VIXIT ANN . XX . M . VIII . QVÆ MORIBVS . PARITER . ET . DISCIPLINA . CETERIS . FEMINIS . EXEMPLO . FVIT . ANTARCIVS . NVRVI . LAVRENTIVS . VCXORI . It was raised to her memory by her father-in-law Antarcius, and by her husband, Laurentius. The organ is represented with seven pipes. 3. O DOLOR . QVANTÆ LACHRIMÆ . FECERE SEPVLCRVM . IVL . LV CINÆ . QVÆ . VIXIT . KA D . RISSIMA . MATRI . FLOS . Æ M. TATIS . HIQ . IACET . INTVS . CONDITA . SAXOO . VTINAM . POSSIT . REPARARI . SPIRITVS . ILLE . VT . SCIRET . QVANTVS . DOLOR . EST . QVÆ . VIXIT . ANN . XXVII . M . X . DIE XIII . IVL . PARTHENOPE . POSVIT . INFELIX MATER . "O Grief! what tears have watered this tomb of Julia Lucina who in life was very dear to her mother. Carried off in the flower of her age, here she lies, buried in this marble tomb. Would that her spirit might be restored, that she might learn how great is my grief. She lived twenty-seven years, ten months, and thirteen days. Julia Parthenope, her unhappy mother, raised this." 4. HYDRIÆ TERTVLLÆ C . F . CONIVGI . AMANTISSI MÆ ET AXIÆ OELIANÆ . FILIÆ DVLCISSIMÆ . TERENTIVS MVSEVS HOC SEPVLCRVM POSVIT . "Terentius Musæus placed this to his most loving wife, Hydria Tertulla, and to his most sweet daughter, Axia Oeliana." On this is a child with a cock in hand, an oblation to the infernal deities. 5. F . MARIO . MF . MARINO . EXS . TESTA MENTO . Observe in this, as in No. 3, the queer spelling, in both phonetic:--HIQ, SAXOO, EXS. 6. Here is a Christian inscription:-- INTEGER . ATQVE . PIVS . VITA . ET . CORPORE . PVRVS . ÆTERNO . HIC . POSITVS . VIVIT . CONCORDIVS . ÆVO . QVI . TENERIS . PRIMVM . MINISTER . FVLSIT . IN . ANNIS . POST . ETIAM . LECTVS . COELESTI . LEGE . SACERDOS TRIGINTA . ET GEMINOS . DECEM . VIX . REDDIDIT . ANNOS . HVNC . CITO . SIDEREAM . RAPTVM . OMNIPOTENTIS . IN AVLAM MATER . BLANDA . ET . FRATER . SINE FVNERE QVÆRVNT . "Intact and pious, pure in life and body, here lies buried, but eternally lives Concordius, who in his tender years shone first as a deacon, afterwards chosen by the celestial law a priest; he lived hardly fifty years. Transported too soon to the starry hall of the Almighty, his gentle mother and his brother seek him without bewailing him." This is on a sarcophagus of white marble with a colonnade carved on the face, the pillars channeled and spiral. In the centre is Jesus Christ, seated on a throne, instructing His apostles and a crowd, which is seen through the arcade, at the right a man, on the left a woman, on the cover are the twelve apostles with rolled volumes before them. This sarcophagus belongs to the fourth century. 7. PAX ÆTERNA DVLCISSIMÆ . ET . INNOCEN TISSIM . FILLIÆ . CHRYSOGONE . IV NIOR . SIRICIO . QVÆ . VIX . ANN . III . M . II . DIEB . XXVII . VALERIVS . ET . CHRY SOGONE . PARENTES . FILLIÆ . KARIS SIMÆ . ET . OMNI . TEMPORE . VI TÆ . SVE . DESIDERANTISS . M . A . E . "Peace eternal to the most sweet and innocent girl, Chrysogone (the younger) Siricio, who lived three years, three months, and twenty-seven days. Valerius and Chrysogone, her parents, raised this monument to their most dear daughter, whom they will regret all their lives." The bones were found in a leaden coffin enclosed in one of stone. The body of the little Chrysogone had been enveloped in a rich brocade of gold thread and silk. 8. A curious column dedicated by the good people of Arles to Flavius Valerius Constantinus (Constantine the Great), son of Constantius, long served the boatmen on the Rhone to fasten their vessels to, and it is sadly furrowed by the chains and cords so employed. It bears the inscription:-- IMP . CÆS . FL . VAL . CONSTANTINO P . F . AVG . DIVI CONSTANTI . AVG . RII . FILIO . Constantius Chorus also bore the names of Flavius Valerius. B.--THE CAMPAIGN OF MARIUS. For determining this the following points must be settled:-- I. _Where was his camp?_ To fix the position of his camp we must see where he could best watch the barbarians cross the Rhone, in such a place as he would have his rear covered, and where he could keep open his communications with Rome, and receive both reinforcements and victuals. Now there is absolutely no point that answers these requirements like S. Gabriel. It was certain that the barbarians would not cross at Arles, for they could not advance thence south of the chain of Les Alpines, owing to the lagoons and morasses, and the desert of the Great Crau. They must cross below Avignon and at or above Tarascon. Now, as they would almost certainly march along the high table-land that extends from Montpellier by Nimes to Beaucaire, and not wade through the marshes below these hills, they would arrive with dry feet at Beaucaire, and there, naturally would cross and follow up the valley of the Durance. S. Gabriel was a natural watch-tower, whence Marius could observe them. It is an ancient Roman settlement. Numerous Roman remains have been found there. Marius had but to mount the heights behind the little town, and he commanded all the country to the north-west and south for a vast distance. Then, again, by means of his canal, connecting the lagoons, he was able to bring ships with supplies under his walls. His canal opened out of the Etang de Galéjon, with a station at Fos, not at the exact entrance of the canal, which was low and marshy, but at the entrance of the channel of Martigues that opens into the Etang de Berre. Through Galéjon it ran north, cutting through a chain of lagoons, passed under Mont Majeur to S. Gabriel, and there probably received the waters, the overspill of the Durance, above Château Renard. Plutarch says that it was connected with the Rhone, but this was probably an error. Its course to S. Gabriel remained in use and falling into decay in the Middle Ages as the Canal des Lonnes. Between S. Gabriel and the Etang de Galéjon it could also be traced, and bore the name of Le Vigueirat. This canal of Marius was perfectly protected from the barbarians by the morasses that intervened between it and the Rhone. II. _To determine his march._ The old pre-Roman road from Nimes to Aix certainly followed the high and dry ground to Tarascon, thence traced up the valley of the Durance. It could no longer follow the high ground, as that is broken into limestone peaks, but it followed up the river below them, carried above the rubble of the Durance. The first station after Tarascon was Glanum, now S. Remi. Then it went to Orgon, where it touched the Durance for the first time, and whence branched the roads to Italy--one by Mont Genèvre, the other by Aix and the coast. I suppose that Marius, following the barbarians, he on the heights, they in the valley, observed the direction they took to right or to left, from the precipitous crags of Orgon. It must be remembered that Marius had an army made up of demoralised soldiers, who had escaped from defeat by the barbarians, and of raw levies, and all were in deadly fear of their savage foes, so that he dare not bring them to a pitched battle till they had become accustomed to the sight of the Teutons and Ambrons, and were themselves impatient to come to blows with them. The host of invaders turned south towards Aix. Marius pursued: there can, I think, be little question that he pursued the same tactics, exchanging a sandstone range for one of limestone, and following them steadily step by step, keeping the heights. Now, if the camp of Marius was at S. Gabriel, and if the Teutons marched up the Durance valley to Orgon, and then turned to Aix, then, it seemed to me, on the spot, that no one save an idiot in command of the Roman soldiers could have done anything else than strike for the sandstone ridge and march along that, still observing the enemy. Another theory relative to the Roman road is that it ran south of the chain of Les Alpines. This would not matter for the course of Marius, but would explain the fact of the monument of Marius being found at Les Baux; and Les Baux would then be the cliff whence he watched the march of the barbarians. III. _To determine the position of the battles._ Plutarch does not distinguish between sites. He says that there were two battles separated from one another by two days, and that in the first Marius defeated the Ambrons. In the second he defeated the Teutons. He leaves us to infer that both battles were fought on the same field. But there are difficulties in supposing this. 1. The field of Pourrières does not answer the description of the first battle site; it does that of the second. 2. The Ambrons alone were engaged in the first battle, and no Teutons came to their help. We may therefore fairly suppose that the two great bodies of barbarian invaders had separated. 3. There was a very tempting bait, Marseilles lying to the south, inviting attack and pillage. Following M. Gilles in his monograph on the campaign of Marius, I believe that the first battle was fought at Les Milles, the first station out of Aix on the Marseilles road, and that the Ambrons had parted company with the Teutons so as to try their luck with Marseilles, or perhaps only so as to ravage the coast, if they could make no impression on a walled city. Now, the sandstone ridge along which Marius and his army were marching, as I suppose, ends abruptly above Les Milles. Below flows the river Are, making a loop in which is a rich green meadow, and under the hill ooze out countless rills of water. Indeed, the bottom of the hill is dense with irises loving the slushy percolated soil. There is no water on the sandstone heights. Here, if I am right, Marius came out and saw the Ambrons below, and wanted to form his camp, but was deterred by an engagement being begun by the water-carriers of the camp going down to the river and springs with their pails, and being attacked by the Ambrons. Aix lies away to the north in a broad basin, and at some little distance, two kilos., from the river. The battle could not have happened there. There is no other place save Les Milles where we have hill, river, green plain and springs together, as in Plutarch's narrative. Let us then suppose that Marius fought the first battle at Les Milles and there defeated the Ambrons. Those not slain would fly along the Aurelian road that leads from Aix through the plain of Pourrières, crosses a low _col_, and enters the valley of the Argens, and leads to Fréjus, where I suppose Teutons and Ambrons designed to meet again, and pursue their course westward together. In the meantime the Teutons had been advancing up the Are valley along the Aurelian way. A mile and a half out of Aix they reached the Are, five miles above Les Milles, and thence followed up the river for three miles, when they left it. Their road now lay due east before them, across the almost level plain of Pourrières, below the limestone precipice to the north of Mont Victoire. But there is a curious formation here. South of Mont Victoire is a semicircular sandstone chain, inferior in height, precipitous towards the plain, called Le Cengle, "the Belt," dying into the limestone mountain at the point where the latter attains its greatest altitude, above the village of Puyloubier. This sandstone girdle slopes easily inward to the precipice of Mont Victoire, and its rills flow together into a little stream that reaches the Are at the point where the Aurelian road left it, _i.e._ seven and a half miles from Aix. M. Gilles supposes that Marius followed on the heels of the flying Ambrons along the Aurelian way, and that he detached Marcellus at this point to go up this little stream behind the Cengle and come out farther east so as to gain Pain de Munition. I do not think this is tenable, for there is a long tract of bare hill-slope between the extremity of the Cingle and the conical fortified hill of Pain de Munition, and even if Marcellus were concealed whilst ascending this little lateral valley, he would emerge in full view of the barbarians for the last five or six miles of his march. My belief is that Marcellus was despatched up the valley of the Infernet, behind Mont Victoire, by which means his march would be concealed throughout, nor would it be much longer. Also, I do not think that Marius pursued the Teutons the whole way along the road. According to Plutarch's account, the second time he came on them so as to cause them surprise. Again, if he had pursued a certain plan up to the first engagement, and it had succeeded, it is likely that he would follow the same plan up to the second and final engagement. Now hitherto he had kept to high ground always to the south of the advancing horde. From Les Milles he very probably, as I think, only followed the traces of the flying Ambrons along the road till he struck the Are in the open plain of Pourrières, and then at once crossed to the south bank of the river, and marched along on ground that slopes up to the south, so that he had the river between him and the enemy. If, as is probable, this hill-slope, along which the rail now runs, was then, more than now, dense with broom and pine, his march would not be seen by the enemy. And so I conclude Marius by a forced march reached Trets. Then, as I have said in my text, he had the enemy in a trap. Behind them was the fortified camp of Pain de Munition into which he had thrown Marcellus, and behind him he had the chain of Mont Aurélien and Mont Olympe, with another fortified camp. Between him and the enemy was a slope, and this was cut by streams that had torn their way through a friable marly soil. Moreover, he had a natural screen of rock between him and the enemy, with the low face towards him, and an easy slope towards the barbarians. The actual site of the camp of the Teutons is fixed without very much doubt. They would certainly camp in the first available situation near water. Now they had been marching for five miles without water, and on reaching the Are at the station Tegulata, they found an admirable site, three tofts of dry level sandstone apparently made for their purpose. Moreover, opposite them is the ruin of the monument of Marius. About the ruin there might have been doubts whether it was Roman, and whether it referred to the victory, but for the discovery there of the statue of Venus Victrix, which sets that question at rest for ever. M. Gilles supposes that the battle was fought along the road, when the Teutons saw Marius overtake them in pursuit, and that it began at a point about a mile due west, at Le Logis Neuf. If it had been so, then surely the monument would have been on the west side of Tegulata, and north of the Are. The tradition that it raged from north to south between the bridge and Trets is only of value from its being based on the masses of weapons, bronze and flint, found on the south side of the river, and not on the north. There is something too to be said for what common sense would point out. Standing on the red sandstone hill above Les Milles, and looking at Aix, and away east, one tries to imagine the barbarian hordes marching along the Aurelian way; and then one asks, "Now had I to fight them, what would I do?" The answer I gave to myself was, "Common sense bids me make with forced marches away to Trets, keeping my flank protected by the river, and surprise them again." I am not a general--but it appeared to me that it would be hard for any one on the spot in the position of Marius, if he had his wits about him, not to see that the barbarians had given him a splendid chance, and that he must catch it, and take them unawares when they had stepped into his net. C.--THE UTRICULARES. There are twenty-three inscriptions relative to the Colleges of Utriculares in Provence. M. Lenthéric gives five in the appendix to his volume, 'Les Villes Mortes du Golfe de Lyon,' and nineteen in that to his volume 'Le Grèce et l'Orient en Provence,' but of these one is from Temesvar in Hungary. Then M. Gilles, in his 'Campagne de Marius,' engraves a medal of the Guild of Utriculares of Cabelio (Cavaillon), which is now in the Cabinet of Medals at Paris. It was found on the hill-slopes of the Luberon. On the obverse it bears a representation of an inflated skin of a beast (a calf?); on the other side the inscription-- _Colle(gium)utri(culariorum) Cab(ellionensis) L(ucius) Valer(ius) succes(sor)._ I will give a few of the inscriptions on stones. 1. _D. M. G. Paqui, Optati lib(erti) Pardalæ, sextum (viri) Aug(ustalis) col(oniæ) Ju(liæ) Pat(ernæ) Ar(elatensis) patron(i) ejusdem corpor(is), item patron(i) fabror(um) naval(ium), utricular(iorum) et centena(riorum) C. Paquius Epigonus cum liberis suis patrono optime merito._ "To the manes of G. Paquius Pardalas, freedman of Optatus, sevir Augustal of the Colony of Julia Paterna of Arles, patron of the same body, and also patron of the shipbuilders, of the utriculares, and of the centenares. C. Paquius Epigonius and his children to a well-deserving patron." This was found under the porch of S. Cæsarius at Arles. The Centenarii were the men who made the patchwork beds that covered towers and walls in war as a protection against the ram and against fire. 2. _D. M. L(ucio) Secundia eleutheria navicular(io) Arel(atensi) item sevir(o) Aug(ustali) corpor(ato) c(oloniæ) J(uliæ) P(aternæ) A(relatensis) secundia Tatiana fil(ia) patri pientissim(o)._ "To the manes of Lucius Secundius Eleutherius, boatman of Arles, and Augustal sevir, incorporated in the colony of Julia Paterna of Arles. Secundia Tatiana, his daughter, to the most tender of fathers." Found on the banks of the Rhone, at Arles. 3. _D. M. M(arco) Junio Messanio, utricul(ario) corp(orato) Arelat(ensi), ejusd(em) corp(oris) mag(istro) quater, fi(lio), qui vixit ann(os) octo et viginti menses quinque, dies decem, Junia Valeria._ "To the manes. To Marcus Junius Messianus of the corporation of the utriculares of Arles, four times president of the same; Junia Valeria to her son, who died at the age of twenty-eight years, five months, and ten days." This is on a stone sarcophagus in the museum at Arles. 4. _M(arco) Frontoni Eupori, sevir(o) Aug(ustali) col(oniæ) Julia(e) Aug(ustæ) Aquis Sextis, navicular(io) Mar(ino) Are(late) Curat(ori) ejusd(em) corp(oris) patrono nautar(um) Druen(ticorum) et utricularior(um) corp(oratorum) Ernaginensium. Julia Nice uxor conjugi carissimo_. "To Marcus Fronto Eupor, Augustal sevir of the Colony of Julia Augusta at Aix, mariner of Arles, curator of the said corporation, patron of the corporations of the mariners of the Durance and of the utriculares of Ernaginum. Julia Nice to her dearest husband." Found in the church of S. Gabriel (Ernaginum). FINIS. 
9480	----	Proofreaders. HTML version by Al Haines. IN THE HEART OF THE VOSGES [Illustration] AND OTHER SKETCHES BY A "DEVIOUS TRAVELLER" BY MISS BETHAM-EDWARDS OFFICIER DE L'INSTRUCTION PUBLIQUE DE FRANCE _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY SPECIAL PERMISSION_ 1911 "I travel not to look for Gascons in Sicily. I have left them at home."--Montaigne. PREFATORY NOTE Some of these sketches now appear for the first time, others have been published serially, whilst certain portions, curtailed or enlarged respectively, are reprinted from a former work long since out of print. Yet again I might entitle this volume, "Scenes from Unfrequented France," many spots being here described by an English traveller for the first time. My warmest thanks are due to M. Maurice Barrès for permission to reproduce two illustrations by M. Georges Conrad from his famous romance, _Au Service de l'Allemagne_; also to M. André Hallays for the use of two views from his _À Travers l'Alsace_; and to the publishers of both authors, MM. Fayard and Perrin, for their serviceableness in the matter. Nor must I omit to acknowledge my indebtedness to Messrs. Sampson Low & Co., to whom I owe the reproduction of Gustave Doré's infantine _tours de force_; and to Messrs. Rivington, who have allowed large reprints from the work published by them over twenty years ago. And last but not least, I thank the Rev. Albert Cadier, the son of my old friend, the much respected pastor of Osse, for the loan of his charming photographs. CONTENTS CHAP. I GÉRARDMER AND ITS ENVIRONS II THE CHARM OF ALSACE III IN GUSTAVE DORÉ'S COUNTRY IV FROM BARR TO STRASBURG V THE "MARVELLOUS BOY" OF ALSACE VI QUISSAC AND SAUVE VII AN IMMORTALIZER VIII TOULOUSE IX MONTAUBAN, OR INGRES-VILLE X MY PYRENEAN VALLEY AT LAST XI AN OLIVE FARM IN THE VAR XII PESSICARZ AND THE SUICIDES' CEMETERY XIII GUEST OF FARMER AND MILLER XIV LADY MERCHANTS AND SOCIALIST MAYORS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ST. ODILE PROVINS, GENERAL VIEW PROVINS, THE CAPITOL PROVINS, THE CITY WALLS GÉRARDMER A VOSGIAN SCENE CIRQUE DE RETOURNEMER THE PINNACLE OF ODILE ETTENHEIM COLMAR GUSTAVE DORÉ, INFANTINE SKETCH GUSTAVE DORÉ, DO OSSE NEAR THE SPANISH FRONTIER ORCUM ARRAS, LA PETITE PLACE I GÉRARDMER AND ENVIRONS [Illustration: PROVINS, GENERAL VIEW] The traveller bound to eastern France has a choice of many routes, none perhaps offering more attractions than the great Strasburg line by way of Meaux, Châlons-sur-Marne, Nancy, and Épinal. But the journey must be made leisurely. The country between Paris and Meaux is deservedly dear to French artists, and although Champagne is a flat region, beautiful only by virtue of fertility and highly developed agriculture, it is rich in old churches and fine architectural remains. By the Troyes-Belfort route, Provins may be visited. This is, perhaps, the most perfect specimen of the mediaeval walled-in town in France. To my thinking, neither Carcassonne, Semur nor Guérande surpass Hégésippe Moreau's little birthplace in beauty and picturesqueness. The acropolis of Brie also possesses a long and poetic history, being the seat of an art-loving prince, and the haunt of troubadours. A word to the epicure as well as the archaeologist. The bit of railway from Châlons-sur-Marne to Nancy affords a series of gastronomic delectations. At Épernay travellers are just allowed time to drink a glass of champagne at the buffet, half a franc only being charged. At Bar-le-Duc little neatly-packed jars of the raspberry jam for which the town is famous are brought to the doors of the railway carriage. Further on at Commercy, you are enticed to regale upon unrivalled cakes called "Madeleines de Commercy," and not a town, I believe, of this favoured district is without its speciality in the shape of delicate cates or drinks. Châlons-sur-Marne, moreover, possesses one of the very best hotels in provincial France--the hotel with the queer name--another inducement for us to idle on the way. The town itself is in no way remarkable, but it abounds in magnificent old churches of various epochs--some falling into decay, others restored, one and all deserving attention. St. Jean is especially noteworthy, its beautiful interior showing much exquisite tracery and almost a fanciful arrangement of transepts. It is very rich in good modern glass. But the gem of gems is not to be found in Châlons itself; more interesting and beautiful than its massive cathedral and church of Notre Dame, than St. Jean even, is the exquisite church of Notre Dame de l'Épine, situated in a poor hamlet a few miles beyond the octroi gates. We have here, indeed, a veritable cathedral in a wilderness, nothing to be imagined more graceful than the airy open colonnades of its two spires, light as a handful of wheat ears loosely bound together. The colour of the grey stone gives solemnity to the rest of the exterior, which is massive and astonishingly rich in the grotesque element. We carefully studied the gargoyles round the roof, and, in spite of defacements, made out most of them--here a grinning demon with a struggling human being in its clutch--there an odd beast, part human, part pig, clothed in a kind of jacket, playing a harp--dozens of comic, hideous, heterogeneous figures in various attitudes and travesties. [Illustration: Provins, The Capitol] Notre Dame de l'Épine--originally commemorative of a famous shrine--has been restored, and purists in architecture will pass it by as an achievement of Gothic art in the period of its decline, but it is extremely beautiful nevertheless. On the way from Châlons-sur-Marne to Nancy we catch glimpses of other noble churches that stand out from the flat landscape as imposingly as Ely Cathedral. These are Notre Dame of Vitry le François and St. Étienne of Toul, formerly a cathedral, both places to be stopped at by leisurely tourists. The fair, the _triste_ city of Nancy! There is an indescribable charm in the sad yet stately capital of ancient Lorraine. No life in its quiet streets, no movement in its handsome squares, nevertheless Nancy is one of the wealthiest, most elegant cities in France! Hither flocked rich Alsatian families after the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, and perhaps its proximity to the lost provinces in part accounts for the subdued, dreamy aspect of the place as a whole. A strikingly beautiful city it is, with its splendid monuments of the house of Lorraine, and handsome modern streets bearing evidence of much prosperity in these days. In half-an-hour you may get an unforgettable glimpse of the Place Stanislas, with its bronze gates, fountains, and statue, worthy of a great capital; of the beautiful figure of Duke Antonio of Lorraine, on horseback, under an archway of flamboyant Gothic; of the Ducal Palace and its airy colonnade; lastly, of the picturesque old city gate, the Porte de la Craffe, one of the most striking monuments of the kind in France. All these things may be glanced at in an hour, but in order to enjoy Nancy thoroughly a day or two should be devoted to it, and here, as at Châlons-sur-Marne, creature comforts are to be had in the hotels. In the Ducal Palace are shown the rich tapestries found in the tent of Charles le Téméraire after his defeat before Nancy, and other relics of that Haroun-al-Raschid of his epoch, who bivouacked off gold and silver plate, and wore on the battlefield diamonds worth half a million. In a little church outside the town, commemorative of this victory, are collected the cenotaphs of the Dukes of Lorraine--the _chapelle ronde_, as the splendid little mausoleum is designated--with its imposing monuments in black marble, and richly-decorated octagonal dome, making up a solemn and beautiful whole. Graceful and beautiful also are the monuments in the church itself, and those of another church, Des Cordeliers, close to the Ducal Palace. [Illustration: PROVINS, THE CITY WALLS] Nancy is especially rich in monumental sculpture, but it is in the cathedral that we are to be fairly enchanted by the marble statues of the four doctors of the church--St. Augustine, St. Grégoire, St. Léon, and St. Jerome. These are the work of Nicolas Drouin, a native of Nancy, and formerly ornamented a tomb in the church of the Cordeliers just mentioned. The physiognomy, expression, and pose of St. Augustine are well worthy of a sculptor's closest study, but it is rather as a whole than in detail that this exquisite statue delights the ordinary observer. All four sculptures are noble works of art; the fine, dignified figure of St. Augustine somehow takes strongest hold of the imagination. We would fain return to it again and again, as indeed we would fain return to all else we have seen in the fascinating city of Nancy. From Nancy by way of Épinal we may easily reach the heart of the Vosges. [Illustration: GÉRARDMER] How sweet and pastoral are these cool resting-places in the heart of the Vosges! Gérardmer and many another as yet unfrequented by the tourist world, and unsophisticated in spite of railways and bathing seasons. The Vosges has long been a favourite playground of our French neighbours, although ignored by the devotees of Cook and Gaze, and within late years, not a rustic spot possessed of a mineral spring but has become metamorphosed into a second Plombières. Gérardmer--"_Sans Gérardmer et un peu Nancy, que serait la Lorraine?_" says the proverb--is resorted to, however, rather for its rusticity and beauty than for any curative properties of its sparkling waters. Also in some degree for the sake of urban distraction. The French mind when bent on holiday-making is social in the extreme, and the day spent amid the forest nooks and murmuring streams of Gérardmer winds up with music and dancing. One of the chief attractions of the big hotel in which we are so wholesomely housed is evidently the enormous salon given up after dinner to the waltz, country dance, and quadrille. Our hostess with much ease and tact looks in, paying her respects, to one visitor after another, and all is enjoyment and mirth till eleven o'clock, when the large family party, for so our French fellowship may be called, breaks up. These socialities, giving as they do the amiable aspect of French character, will not perhaps constitute an extra charm of Gérardmer in the eyes of the more morose English tourist. After many hours spent in the open air most of us prefer the quiet of our own rooms. The country, too, is so fresh and delicious that we want nothing in the shape of social distraction. Drawing-room amenities seem a waste of time under such circumstances. Nevertheless the glimpses of French life thus obtained are pleasant, and make us realize the fact that we are off the beaten track, living among French folks, for the time separated from insular ways and modes of thought. Our fellowship is a very varied and animated one. We number among the guests a member of the French ministry--a writer on the staff of Figaro--a grandson of one of the most devoted and unfortunate generals of the first Napoleon, known as "the bravest of the brave," with his elegant wife--the head of one of the largest commercial houses in eastern France--deputies, diplomats, artists, with many family parties belonging to the middle and upper ranks of society, a very strong Alsatian element predominating. Needless to add that people make themselves agreeable to each other without any introduction. For the time being at least distinctions are set aside, and fraternity is the order of the day. I do not aver that my country-people have never heard of Gérardmer, but certainly those who stray hither are few and far between. Fortunately for the lover of nature no English writer has as yet popularized the Vosges. An Eden-like freshness pervades its valleys and forests, made ever musical with cascades, a pastoral simplicity characterizes its inhabitants. Surely in no corner of beautiful France can any one worn out in body or in brain find more refreshment and tranquil pleasure! It is only of late years that the fair broad valley of Gérardmer and its lovely little lake have been made accessible by railway. Indeed, the popularity of the Vosges and its watering-places dates from the late Franco-German war. Rich French valetudinarians, and tourists generally, have given up Wiesbaden and Ems from patriotic motives, and now spend their holidays and their money on French soil. Thus enterprise has been stimulated in various quarters, and we find really good accommodation in out-of-the-way spots not mentioned in guide-books of a few years' date. Gérardmer is now reached by rail in two hours from Épinal, on the great Strasburg line, but those who prefer a drive across country may approach it from Plombières, Remiremont, Colmar and Münster, and other attractive routes. Once arrived at Gérardmer, the traveller will certainly not care to hurry away. No site in the Vosges is better suited for excursionizing in all directions, and the place itself is full of quiet charm. There is wonderful sweetness and solace in these undulating hill-sides, clothed with brightest green, their little tossing rivers and sunny glades all framed by solemn hills--I should rather say mountains--pitchy black with the solemn pine. You may search far and wide for a picture so engaging as Gérardmer when the sun shines, its gold-green slopes sprinkled with white châlets, its red-roofed village clustered about a rustic church tower, and at its feet the loveliest little lake in the world, from which rise gently the fir-clad heights. And no monotony! You climb the inviting hills and woods day by day, week after week, ever to find fresh enchantment. Not a bend of road or winding mountain-path but discloses a new scene--here a fairy glen, with graceful birch or alder breaking the expanse of dimpled green; there a spinny of larch or of Scotch fir cresting a verdant monticule; now we come upon a little Arcadian home nestled on the hill-side, the spinning-wheel hushed whilst the housewife turns her hay or cuts her patch of rye or wheat growing just outside her door. Now we follow the musical little river Vologne as it tosses over its stony bed amid banks golden with yellow loosestrife, or gently ripples amid fair stretches of pasture starred with the grass of Parnassus. The perpetual music of rushing, tumbling, trickling water is delightful, and even in hot weather, if it is ever indeed hot here, the mossy banks and babbling streams must give a sense of coolness. Deep down, entombed amid smiling green hills and frowning forest peaks, lies the pearl of Gérardmer, its sweet lake, a sheet of turquoise in early morn, silvery bright when the noon-day sun flashes upon it, and on grey, sunless days gloomy as Acheron itself. [Illustration: A VOSGIAN SCENE] Travellers stinted for time cannot properly enjoy the pastoral scenes, not the least charm of which is the frank, pleasant character of the people. Wherever we go we make friends and hear confidences. To these peasant folks, who live so secluded from the outer world, the annual influx of visitors from July to September is a positive boon, moral as well as material. The women are especially confidential, inviting us into their homely yet not poverty-stricken kitchens, keeping us as long as they can whilst they chat about their own lives or ask us questions. The beauty, politeness, and clear direct speech of the children, are remarkable. Life here is laborious, but downright want I should say rare. As in the Jura, the forest gorges and park-like solitudes are disturbed by the sound of hammer and wheel, and a tall factory chimney not infrequently spoils a wild landscape. The greater part of the people gain, their livelihood in the manufactories, very little land here being suitable for tillage. Gérardmer is famous for its cheeses; another local industry is turnery and the weaving of linen, the linen manufactories employing many hands, whilst not a mountain cottage is without its handloom for winter use. Weaving at home is chiefly resorted to as a means of livelihood in winter, when the country is covered with snow and no out-door occupations are possible. Embroidery is also a special fabric of the Vosges, but its real wealth lies in mines of salt and iron, and mineral waters. One chief feature in Gérardmer is the congeries of handsome buildings bearing the inscription _"École Communale"_ and how stringently the new educational law is enforced throughout France may be gathered from the spectacle of schoolboys at drill. We saw three squadrons, each under the charge of a separate master, evidently made up from all classes of the community. Some of the boys were poorly, nay, miserably, clad, others wore good homely clothes, a few were really well dressed. Our first week at Gérardmer was wet and chilly. Fires and winter clothes would have been acceptable, but at last came warmth and sunshine, and we set off for the Col de la Schlucht, the grandest feature of the Vosges, and the goal of every traveller in these regions. [Illustration: CIRQUE DE RETOURNEMER] There is a strange contrast between the calm valley of Gérardmer, a little haven of tranquil loveliness and repose, and the awful solitude and austerity of the Schlucht, from which it is separated by a few hours only. Not even a cold grey day can turn Gérardmer into a dreary place, but in the most brilliant sunshine this mountain pass is none the less majestic and solemn. One obtains the sense of contrast by slow degrees, so that the mind is prepared for it and in the mood for it. The acme, the culminating point of Vosges scenery is thus reached by a gradually ascending scale of beauty and grandeur from the moment we quit Gérardmer, till we stand on the loftiest summit of the Vosges chain, dominating the Schlucht. For the first half-hour we skirt the alder-fringed banks of the tossing, foaming little river Vologne, as it winds amid lawny spaces, on either side the fir-clad ridges rising like ramparts. Here all is gentleness and golden calm, but soon we quit this warm, sunny region, and enter the dark forest road curling upwards to the airy pinnacle to which we are bound. More than once we have to halt on our way. One must stop to look at the cascade made by the Vologne, never surely fuller than now, one of the prettiest cascades in the world, masses of snow-white foam tumbling over a long, uneven stair of granite through the midst of a fairy glen. The sound of these rushing waters is long in our ears as we continue to climb the splendid mountain road that leads to the Schlucht, and nowhere else. From a giddy terrace cut in the sides of the shelving forest ridge we now get a prospect of the little lakes of Longuemer and Retournemer, twin gems of superlative loveliness in the wildest environment. Deep down they lie, the two silvery sheets of water with their verdant holms, making a little world of peace and beauty, a toy dropped amid Titanic awfulness and splendour. The vantage ground is on the edge of a dizzy precipice, but the picture thus sternly framed is too exquisite to be easily abandoned. We gaze and gaze in spite of the vast height from which we contemplate it; and when at last we tear ourselves away from the engaging scene, we are in a region all ruggedness and sublimity, on either side rocky scarps and gloomy forests, with reminders by the wayside that we are approaching an Alpine flora. Nothing can be wilder or more solitary than the scene. For the greater part, the forests through which our road is cut are unfrequented, except by the wild boar, deer, and wild cat, and in winter time the fine mountain roads are rendered impenetrable by the accumulation of snow. This approach to the Col is by a tunnel cut in the granite, fit entrance to one of the wildest regions in France. The road now makes a sudden bend towards the châlet cresting the Col, and we are able in a moment to realize its tremendous position. From our little châlet we look upon what seems no mere cleft in a mountain chain, but in the vast globe itself. This huge hollow, brought about by some strange geological perturbation, is the valley of Münster, no longer a part of French territory, but of Prussian Elsass. The road we have come by lies behind us, but another as formidable winds under the upper mountain ridge towards Münster, whilst the pedestrian may follow a tiny green footpath that will lead him thither, right through the heart of the pass. Looking deep down we discern here and there scattered châlets amid green spaces far away. These are the homesteads or _chaumes_ of the herdsmen, all smiling cheerfulness now, but deserted in winter. Except for such little dwellings, barely discernible, so distant are they, there is no break in the solitary scene, no sign of life at all. The châlet is a fair hostelry for unfastidious travellers, its chief drawback being the propensity of tourists to get up at three o'clock in the morning in order to behold the sunrise from the Hoheneck. Good beds, good food, and from the windows, one of the finest prospects in the world, might well tempt many to linger here in spite of the disturbance above mentioned. For the lover of flowers this halting-place would be delightful. Next morning the day dawned fair, and by eight o'clock we set off with a guide for the ascent of the Hoheneck, rather, I should say, for a long ramble over gently undulating green and flowery ways. After climbing a little beechwood, all was smoothness under our feet, and the long _détour_ we had to make in order to reach the summit was a series of the gentlest ascents, a wandering over fair meadow-land several thousand feet above the sea-level. Here we found the large yellow gentian, used in the fabrication of absinthe, and the bright yellow arnica, whilst instead of the snow-white flower of the Alpine anemone, the ground was now silvery with its feathery seed; the dark purple pansy of the Vosges was also rare. We were a month too late for the season of flowers, but the foxglove and the bright pink Epilobium still bloomed in great luxuriance. It was a walk to remember. The air was brisk and genial, the blue sky lightly flecked with clouds, the turf fragrant with wild thyme, and before our eyes we had a panorama every moment gaining in extent and grandeur. As yet indeed the scene, the features of which we tried to make out, looked more like cloudland than solid reality. On clear days are discerned here, far beyond the rounded summits of the Vosges chain, the Rhine Valley, the Black Forest, the Jura range, and the snow-capped Alps. To-day we saw grand masses of mountains piled one above the other, and higher still a pageantry of azure and gold that seemed to belong to the clouds. No morning could promise fairer, but hardly had we reached the goal of our walk when from far below came an ominous sound of thunder, and we saw heavy rain-clouds dropping upon the heights we had left behind. All hope of a fine prospect was now at an end, but instead we had a compensating spectacle. For thick and fast the clouds came pouring into one chasm after another, drifting in all directions, here a mere transparent veil drawn across the violet hills, there a golden splendour as of some smaller sun shining on a green little world. At one moment the whole vast scene was blurred and blotted with chill winter mist; soon a break was visible, and far away we gazed on a span of serene amethystine sky, barred with lines of bright gold. Not one, but a dozen, horizons--a dozen heavens--seemed there, whilst the thunder that reached us from below seemed too remote to threaten. But at last the clouds gathered in form and volume, hiding the little firmaments of violet and amber; the bright blue sky, bending over the green oasis--all vanished as if by magic. We could see no more, and nothing remained but to go back, and the quicker the better. The storm, our guide said, was too far off to reach us yet, and we might reach the châlet without being drenched to the skin, as we fortunately did. No sooner, however, were we fairly under shelter than the rain poured down in torrents and the thunder pealed overhead. In no part of France are thunderstorms so frequent and so destructive as here, nowhere is the climate less to be depended on. A big umbrella, stout shoes, and a waterproof are as necessary in the Vosges as in our own Lake district. We had, however, a fine afternoon for our drive back, a quick downhill journey along the edge of a tremendous precipice, clothed with beech-trees and brushwood. A most beautiful road it is, and the two little lakes looked lovely in the sunshine, encircled by gold-green swards and a delicate screen of alder branches. Through pastures white with meadow-sweet the turbulent, crystal-clear little river Vologne flowed merrily, making dozens of tiny cascades, turning a dozen mill-wheels in its course. All the air was fragrant with newly-turned hay, and never, we thought, had Gérardmer and its lake made a more captivating picture. Excursions innumerable may be made from Gérardmer. We may drive across country to Remiremont, to Plombières, to Wesserling, to Colmar, to St. Dié, whilst these places in turn make very good centres for excursions. On no account must a visit to La Bresse be omitted. This is one of the most ancient towns in the Vosges. Like some of the villages in the Morvan and in the department of La Nièvre, La Bresse remained till the Revolution an independent commune, a republic in miniature. The heads of families of both sexes took part in the election of magistrates, and from this patriarchal legislation there was seldom any appeal to the higher court--namely, that of Nancy. La Bresse is still a rich commune by reason of its forests and industries. The sound of the mill-wheel and hammer now disturbs these mountain solitudes, and although so isolated by natural position, this little town is no longer cut off from cosmopolitan influence. The little tavern is developing into a very fair inn. In the summer tourists from all parts of France pass through it, in carriages, on foot, occasionally on horseback. Most likely it now possesses a railway station, a newspaper kiosk, and a big hotel, as at Gérardmer! As we drop down upon La Bresse after our climb of two hours and more, we seem to be at the world's end. Our road has led us higher and higher by dense forests and wild granite parapets, tasselled with fern and foxglove, till we suddenly wheel round upon a little straggling town marvellously placed. Deep down it lies, amid fairy-like greenery and silvery streams, whilst high above tower the rugged forest peaks and far-off blue mountains, in striking contrast. The sloping green banks, starred with the grass of Parnassus, and musical with a dozen streams, the pastoral dwellings, each with its patch of flower garden and croft; the glades, dells and natural terraces are all sunny and gracious as can be; but round about and high above frown inaccessible granite peaks, and pitchy-black forest summits, impenetrable even at this time of the year. As we look down we see that roads have been cut round the mountain sides, and that tiny homesteads are perched wherever vantage ground is to be had, yet the impression is one of isolation and wildness. The town lies in no narrow cleft, as is the case with many little manufacturing towns in the Jura, but in a vast opening and falling back of the meeting hills and mountain tops, so that it is seen from far and wide, and long before it is approached. We had made the first part of our journey at a snail's pace. No sooner were we on the verge of the hills looking down upon La Bresse, than we set off at a desperate rate, spinning breathlessly round one mountain spur after another, till we were suddenly landed in the village street, dropped, as it seemed, from a balloon. A curious feature to be noted in all the places I have mentioned is the outer wooden casing of the houses. This is done as a protection against the cold, the Vosges possessing, with the Auvergne and the Limousin, the severest climate in France. La Bresse, like Gérardmer and other sweet valleys of these regions, is disfigured by huge factories, yet none can regret the fact, seeing what well-being these industries bring to the people. Beggars are numerous, but we are told they are strangers, who merely invade these regions during the tourist season. Remiremont, our next halting-place, may be reached by a pleasant carriage drive, but the railway is more convenient to travellers encumbered with half-a-dozen trunks. The railway, moreover, cuts right through the beautiful valley of the Moselle--a prospect which is missed by road. Remiremont is charming. We do not get the creature comforts of Gérardmer, but by way of compensation we find a softer and more genial climate. The engaging little town is indeed one of nature's sanatoriums. The streets are kept clean by swift rivulets, and all the air is fragrant with encircling fir-woods. Like Gérardmer and La Bresse, however, Remiremont lies open to the sun. A belt of flowery dells, terraced orchards, and wide pastures, amid which meanders the clear blue Moselle, girds it round about, and no matter which path you take, it is sure to lead to inviting prospects. The arcades lend a Spanish look to the town, and recall the street architecture of Lons-le-Saunier and Arbois in the Jura. Flower gardens abound, and the general atmosphere is one of prosperity and cheerfulness. The historic interest of this now dead-alive little town centres around its lady abbesses, who for centuries held sovereign rule and state in their abbatial palace, at the present time the Hôtel de Ville. These high-born dames, like certain temporal rulers of the sex, loved battle, and more than one _chanoinesse_, when defied by feudal neighbours, mounted the breach and directed her people. One and all were of noble birth, and many doubtless possessed the intellectual distinction and personal charm of Renan's _Abbesse de Jouarre_. There are beautiful walks about Remiremont, and one especial path amid the fragrant fir-woods leads to a curious relic of ancient time--a little chapel formerly attached to a Lazar-house. It now belongs to the adjoining farm close by, a pleasant place, with flower-garden and orchard. High up in the woods dominating the broad valley in which Remiremont is placed are some curious prehistoric stones. But more inviting than the steep climb under a burning sun--for the weather has changed on a sudden--is the drive to the Vallée d'Hérival, a drive so cool, so soothing, so delicious, that we fancy we can never feel heated, languid, or irritated any more. The isolated dwellings of the dalesfolk in the midst of tremendous solitudes--little pastoral scenes such as Corot loved to paint--and hemmed round by the sternest, most rugged nature, are one of the characteristics of Vosges scenery. We also find beside tossing rivers and glittering cascades a solitary linen factory or saw-mill, with the modern-looking villa of the employer, and clustered round it the cottages of the work-people. No sooner does the road curl again than we are once more in a solitude as complete as if we were in some primeval forest of the new world. We come suddenly upon the Vallée d'Hérival, but the deep close gorge we gaze upon is only the beginning of the valley within valley we have come to see. Our road makes a loop round the valley so that we see it from two levels, and under two aspects. As we return, winding upwards on higher ground, we get glimpses of sunny dimpled sward through the dark stems of the majestic fir-trees towering over our head. There is every gradation of form and colour in the picture, from the ripe warm gold barring the branches of the firs, to the pale silveriness of their upper foliage; from the gigantic trees rising from the gorge below, each seeming to fill a chasm, to the airy, graceful birch, a mere toy beside it. Rare butterflies abound, but we see few birds. The hardy pedestrian is an enviable person here, for although excellent carriages are to be had, some of the most interesting excursions must be made on foot. I do not suppose that matters are very greatly changed in hotels here since my visit so many years ago. In certain respects travellers fare well. They may feast like Lucullus on fresh trout and on the dainty aniseed cakes which are a local speciality. But hygienic arrangements were almost prehistoric, and although politeness itself, mine host and hostess showed strange nonchalance towards their guests. Thus, when ringing and ringing again for our tea and bread and butter between seven and eight o'clock, the chamber--not maid, but man--informed us that Madame had gone to mass, and everything was locked up till her return. Even the fastidious tourist, however, will hardly care to exchange his somewhat rough and noisy quarters at Remiremont for the cosmopolitan comforts of Plombières within such easy reach. It is a pretty drive of an hour and a half to Plombières, and all is prettiness there--its little park, its tiny lake, its toy town. It is surely one of the hottest places in the world, and like Spa, of which it reminds me, must be one of the most wearisome. Just such a promenade, with a sleepy band, just such a casino, just such a routine. This favourite resort of the third Napoleon has of late years seen many rivals springing up. Vittel, Bains, Bussang--all in the Vosges--yet it continues to hold up its head. The site is really charming, but so close is the valley in which the town lies, that it is a veritable hothouse, and the reverse, we should think, of what an invalid wants. Plombières has always had illustrious visitors--Montaigne, who upon several occasions took the waters here--Maupertuis, Voltaire, Beaumarchais, the Empress Josephine, and a host of historic personages. But the emperor may be called the creator of Plombières. The park, the fine road to Remiremont, the handsome Bain Napoleon (now National), the church, all these owe their existence to him, and during the imperial visits the remote spot suffered a strange transformation. The pretty country road along which we met a couple of carriages yesterday became as brilliant and animated as the Bois de Boulogne. It was a perpetual coming and going of fashionable personages. The emperor used to drive over to Remiremont and dine at the little dingy commercial hotel, the best in the place, making himself agreeable to everybody. But all this is past, and nowhere throughout France is patriotism more ardent or the democratic spirit more alert than in the Vosges. The reasons are obvious. We are here on the borders of the lost provinces, the two fair and rich departments of Haut-Rhin and Bas-Rhin, now effaced from the map of France. Reminders of that painful severance of a vast population from its nationality are too vivid for a moment to be lost sight of. Many towns of the Vosges and of the ancient portion of Lorraine not annexed, such as Nancy, have been enriched by the immigration of large commercial firms from the other side of the new frontier. The great majority of Alsatians, by force of circumstances and family ties, were compelled to remain--French at heart, German according to law. The bitterness and intensity of this feeling, reined-in yet apparent, constitutes the one painful feature of Vosges travel. Of course there is a wide difference between the supporters of retaliation, such journals as _L'Alsacien-Lorrain_, and quiet folks who hate war, even more than a foreign domination. But the yearning towards the parent country is too strong to be overcome. No wonder that as soon as the holidays begin there is a rush of French tourists across the Vosges. From Strasburg, Metz, St. Marie aux Mines, they flock to Gérardmer and other family resorts. And if some Frenchwoman--maybe, sober matron--dons the pretty Alsatian dress, and dances the Alsatian dance with an exile like herself, the enthusiasm is too great to be described. Lookers-on weep, shake hands, embrace each other. For a brief moment the calmest are carried away by intensity of patriotic feeling. The social aspect of Vosges travel is one of its chief charms. You must here live with French people, whether you will or no. Insular reserve cannot resist the prevailing friendliness and good-fellowship. How long such a state of things will exist, who can say? Fortunately for the lover of nature, most of the places I have mentioned are too unobtrusive ever to become popular. "Nothing to see here, and nothing to do," would surely be the verdict of most globe-trotters even on sweet Gérardmer itself! II THE CHARM OF ALSACE The notion of here reprinting my notes of Alsatian travel was suggested by a recent French work--_À travers l'Alsace en flânant_, from the pen of M. André Hallays. This delightful writer had already published several volumes dealing with various French provinces, more especially from an archaeological point of view. In his latest and not least fascinating _flânerie_ he gives the experiences of several holiday tours in Germanized France. My own sojourns, made at intervals among French friends, _annexés_ both of Alsace and Lorraine, were chiefly undertaken in order to realize the condition of the German Emperor's French subjects. But I naturally visited many picturesque sites and historic monuments in both, the forfeited territories being especially rich. Whilst volume after volume of late years have appeared devoted to French travel, holiday tourists innumerable jotting their brief experiences of well-known regions, strangely enough no English writer has followed my own example. No work has here appeared upon Alsace and Lorraine. On the other side of the Channel a vast literature on the subject has sprung up. Novels, travels, reminiscences, pamphlets on political and economic questions, one and all breathing the same spirit, continue to appear in undiminished numbers. Ardent spirits still fan the flame of revolt. The burning thirst for re-integration remains unquenched. Garbed in crape, the marble figure of Strasburg still holds her place on the Place de la Concorde. The French language, although rigidly prohibited throughout Germanized France, is studied and upheld more sedulously than before Sedan. And after the lapse of forty years a German minister lately averred that French Alsatians were more French than ever. _Les Noëllets_ of René Bazin, M. Maurice Barrès' impassioned series, _Les Bastions de l'Est_, enjoy immense popularity, and within the last few months have appeared two volumes which fully confirm the views of their forerunners--M. Hallays' impressions of many wayfarings and _Après quarante ans_ by M. Jules Claretie, the versatile, brilliant and much respected administrator-general of the Comédie Française. Whilst in these days of peace and arbitration propaganda the crime of enforced denationalization seems more heinous than ever, there appears little likelihood of the country conquered by Louis XIV., and re-conquered by German arms a century and a half later, again waving the Tricolour. Let us hope, however, that some _via media_ may be found, and that if not recovering its lost privilege, the passionately coveted French name, as a federal state Alsace and Lorraine may become independent and prosperous. For a comprehensive study of Alsace and its characteristics, alike social, artistic and intellectual, readers must go to M. Hallays' volume. In every development this writer shows that a special stamp may be found. Neither Teutonic nor Gallic, art and handicrafts reveal indigenous growth, and the same feature may be studied in town and village, in palace, cathedral and cottage. We must remember that we are here dealing with a region of very ancient civilization. Taste has been slowly developed, artistic culture is of no mushroom growth. Alsace formed the highroad between Italy and Flanders. In M. Hallays' words, already during the Renaissance, aesthetic Alsace blended the lessons of north and south, her genius was a product of good sense, experience and a feeling of proportion. And he points out how in the eighteenth century French taste influenced Alsatian faïence, woven stuffs, ironwork, sculpture, wood-carving and furniture, even peasant interiors being thereby modified. "Alsace," he writes, "holds us spell-bound by the originality of culture and temperament found among her inhabitants. It has generally been taken for granted that native genius is here a mere blend of French and German character, that Alsatian sentiment appertains to the latter stock, intellectual development to the former, that the inhabitants think in French and imagine in German. There is a certain leaven of truth in these assumptions, but when we hold continued intercourse with all classes, listen to their speech, familiarize ourselves with their modes of life and mental outlook, we arrive again and again at one conclusion: we say to ourselves, here is an element which is neither Teutonic nor Gallic. I cannot undertake to particularize, I only note in my pages those instances that occur by the way. And the conviction that we are here penetrating a little world hitherto unknown to us, such novelty being revealed in every stroll and chat, lends extraordinary interest to our peregrination." It is especially an artistic Alsace that M. Hallays reveals to us. Instead of visiting battlefields, he shows us that English travellers may find ample interest of other kind. The artist, the ecclesiologist, the art-loving have here a storehouse of unrevealed treasure. A little-read but weighty writer, Mme. de Staël, has truly averred that the most beautiful lands in the world, if devoid of famous memories and if bearing no impress of great events, cannot be compared in interest to historic regions. Hardly a spot of the annexed provinces but is stamped with indelible and, alas! blood-stained, records. From the tenth century until the peace of Westphalia, these territories belonged to the German empire, being ruled by sovereign dukes and princes. In 1648 portions of both provinces were ceded to France, and a few years later, in times of peace, Strasburg was ruthlessly seized and appropriated by the arch-despot and militarist, Louis XIV. By the treaty of Ryswick, that of Westphalia was ratified, and thenceforward Alsace and Lorraine remained radically and passionately French. In 1871 was witnessed an awful historic retribution, a political crime paralleling its predecessor committed by the French king two centuries before. Alsace-Lorraine still awaits the fulfilment of her destiny. Meantime, as Rachel mourning for her children, she weeps sore and will not be comforted. Historically speaking, therefore, the annexed provinces present a strangely complex patchwork and oft-repeated palimpsest, civilization after civilization overlapping each other. If Alsace-Lorraine has produced no Titan either in literature or art, she yet shows a goodly roll-call. The name heading the list stands for France herself. It was a young soldier of Strasburg--not, however, Alsatian born--who, in April, 1792, composed a song that saved France from the fate of Poland and changed the current of civilization. By an irony of destiny the Tricolour no longer waves over the cradle of the Marseillaise! That witty writer, Edmond About, as well as the "Heavenly Twins" of Alsatian fiction, was born in Lorraine, but all three so thoroughly identified themselves with this province that they must be regarded as her sons. Those travellers who, like myself, have visited Edmond About's woodland retreat in Saverne can understand the bitterness with which he penned his volume--_Alsace 1870-1_--and the concluding lines of the preface-- "If I have here uttered an untrue syllable, I give M. de Bismarck permission to treat my modest dwelling as if it were a villa of Saint Cloud." The literary brethren whose pictures of Alsatian peasant life, both in war and peace, have become world-wide classics, suffered no less than their brilliant contemporary, and their works written after annexation breathe equal bitterness. The celebrated partnership which began in 1848 and lasted for a quarter of a century, has been thus described by Edmond About: "The two friends see each other very rarely, whether in Paris or in the Vosges. When they do meet, they together elaborate the scheme of a new work. Then Erckmann writes it. Chatrian corrects it--and sometimes puts it in the fire!" One at least of their plays enjoys equal popularity with the novel from which it is drawn. To have witnessed _L'Ami Fritz_ at Molière's house in the last decade of the nineteenth century was an experience to remember. That consummate artist, Got, was at his very best--if the superlative in such a case is applicable--as the good old Rabbi. No less enchanting was Mlle. Reichenbach, the _doyenne_ of the Comédie Française, as Suzel. Of this charming artist Sarcey wrote that, having attained her sixteenth year, there she made the long-stop, never oldening with others. _L'Ami Fritz_ is, in reality, a German bucolic, the scene being laid in Bavaria. But it has long been accepted as a classic, and on the stage it becomes thoroughly French. This delightful story was written in 1864, that is to say, before any war-cloud had arisen over the eastern frontier, and before the evocation of a fiend as terrible, the anti-Jewish crusade culminating in the Dreyfus crime. It is painful to reflect that whilst twenty years ago the engaging old Jew of this piece was vociferously acclaimed on the first French stage, the drama of a gifted Jewish writer has this year been banned in Paris! Edmond About and Erckmann and Chatrian belong to the same period as another native, and more famous, genius, the precocious, superabundantly endowed Gustave Doré. Of this "admirable Crichton" I give a sketch. For mere holiday-makers in search of exhilaration and beauty, Alsace offers attractions innumerable, sites grandiose and idyllic, picturesque ruins, superb forests, old churches of rare interest and many a splendid historic pile. There are naturally drawbacks to intense lovers of France. Throughout M. Hallays' volume he acknowledges the courtesy of German officials, a fact to which I had borne testimony when first journalizing my own experiences. Certain aspects of enforced Germanization can but afflict all outsiders. There is firstly that obtrusive militarism from which we cannot for a moment escape. Again, a no less false note strikes us in matters aesthetic. Modern German taste in art, architecture and decoration do not harmonize with the ancientness and historic severity of Alsace. The restoration of Hohkönigsburg and the new quarters of Strasburg are instances in point. All who visited the German art section of the Paris Exhibition in 1900 will understand this dis-harmony. The reminiscences of my second and third journeys in Alsace and Lorraine having already appeared in volume form, still in print (_East of Paris_), are therefore omitted here. For the benefit of English travellers in the annexed portion of the last-named province I cite a passage from M. Maurice Barrès' beautiful story, _Colette Baudoche_. His hero is German and his heroine French, a charming _Messine_ or native of Metz. In company of Colette's mother and a friend or two, the _fiancés_ take part in a little festival held at Gorze, a village near the blood-stained fields of Gravelotte and Mars-la-Tour-- "At Gorze, church, lime-trees, dwellings and folks belong to the olden time, that is to say, all are very French.... In crossing the square the five holiday-makers halted before the Hôtel de Ville and read with interest a commemorative inscription on the walls. A tablet records English generosity in 1870, when, after the carnage and devastation of successive battles, money, roots and seeds were distributed among the peasants by a relief committee. The inspection over, the little party gaily sat down to dinner in an inn close by, regaling themselves with fried English potatoes, descendants of those sent across the Manche forty years before." As I re-read this passage I think sadly how the tribute from such a pen would have rejoiced the two moving spirits of that famous relief committee--Sir John Robinson and Mr. Bullock Hall, both long since passed, away. To the whilom editor of the _Daily News_ both initiative and realization were mainly owing, the latter being the laborious and devoted agent of distribution. But an omission caused bitterness. Whilst Mr. Bullock Hall most deservedly received the Red Ribbon, his leader was overlooked. The tens of thousands of pounds collected by Sir John Robinson which may be said to have kept alive starving people and vivified deserts, were gratefully acknowledged by the French Government. By some unaccountable misconception, the decoration here only gratified one good friend of France. "I should much have liked the Legion of Honour," sighed the kindly old editor to me, a year or two before he died. I add that my second sojourn in Alsace-Lorraine was made at Sir John's suggestion, the series of papers dealing with Metz, Strasburg, and its neighbourhood appearing from day to day in the _Daily News_. English tourists must step aside and read the tablet on the Hôtel de Ville of Gorze, reminder, by the way, of the Entente Cordiale! III IN GUSTAVE DORÉ'S COUNTRY The Vosges and Alsace-Lorraine must be taken together, as the tourist is constantly compelled to zigzag across the new frontier. Many of the most interesting points of departure for excursionizing in the Vosges lie in Alsace-Lorraine, while few travellers who have got so far as Gérardmer or St. Dié will not be tempted to continue their journey, at least as far as the beautiful valleys of Munster and St. Marie-aux-Mines, both peopled by French people under German domination. Arrived at either of these places, the tourist will be at a loss which route to take of the many open to him. On the one hand are the austere sites of the Vosges, impenetrable forests darkening the rounded mountain tops, granite precipices silvered with perpetual cascades, awful ravines hardly less gloomy in the noonday sun than in wintry storms, and as a relief to these sombre features, the sunniest little homesteads perched on airy terraces of gold-green; crystal streams making vocal the flowery meadow and the mossy dell, and lovely little lakes shut in by rounded hills, made double in their mirror. In Alsace-Lorraine we find a wholly different landscape, and are at once reminded that we are in one of the fairest and most productive districts of Europe. All the vast Alsatian plain in September is a-bloom with fruit garden and orchard, vineyard and cornfield, whilst as a gracious framework, a romantic background to the picture, are the vineclad heights crested with ruined castles and fortresses worthy to be compared to Heidelberg and Ehrenbreitstein. We had made a leisurely journey from Gérardmer to St. Dié, bishopric and _chef-lieu_ of the department of the Vosges, without feeling sure of our next move. Fortunately a French acquaintance advised us to drive to St. Marie-aux-Mines, one of the most wonderful little spots in these regions, of which we had never before heard. A word or two, however, concerning St. Dié itself, one of the most ancient monastic foundations in France. The town is pleasant enough, and the big hotel not bad, as French hotels go. But in the Vosges, the tourist gets somewhat spoiled in the matter of hotels. Wherever we go our hosts are so much interested in us, and make so much of us, that we feel aggrieved at sinking into mere numbers three or four. Many of these little inns offer homely accommodation, but the landlord and landlady themselves wait upon the guests, unless, which often happens, the host is cook, no piece of ill-fortune for the traveller! These good people have none of the false shame often conspicuous among the same class in England. At Remiremont, our hostess came bustling down at the last moment saying how she had hurried to change her dress in order to bid us good-bye. Here the son-in-law, a fine handsome fellow, was the cook, and when dinner was served he used to emerge from his kitchen and chat with the guests or play with his children in the cool evening hour. There is none of that differentiation of labour witnessed in England, and on the whole the stranger fares none the worse. With regard to French hotels generally the absence of competition in large towns strikes an English mind. At St. Dié, as in many other places, there was at the time of my visit but one hotel, which had doubtless been handed down from generation to generation, simply because no rival aroused a spirit of emulation. St. Dié has a pleasant environment in the valley of the Meurthe, and may be made the centre of many excursions. Its picturesque old Romanesque cathedral of red sandstone, about which are grouped noble elms, grows upon the eye; more interesting and beautiful by far are the Gothic cloisters leading from within to the smaller church adjoining. These delicate arcades, in part restored, form a quadrangle. Greenery fills the open space, and wild antirrhinum and harebell brighten the grey walls. Springing from one side is an out-of-door pulpit carved in stone, a striking and suggestive object in the midst of the quiet scene. We should like to know what was preached from that stone pulpit, and what manner of man was the preacher. The bright green space, the delicate arcades of soft grey, the bits of foliage here and there, with the two silent churches blocking in all, make up an impressive scene. We wanted the country, however, rather than the towns, so after a few days at St. Dié, hired a carriage to take us to St. Marie-aux-Mines or Markirch, on the German side of the frontier, and not accessible from this side by rail. We enter Alsace, indeed, by a needle's eye, so narrow the pass in which St. Marie lies. Here a word of warning to the tourist. Be sure to examine your carriage and horses well before starting. We were provided for our difficult drive with what Spenser calls "two unequal beasts," namely, a trotting horse and a horse that could only canter, with a very uncomfortable carriage, the turnout costing over a pound--pretty well, that, for a three hours' drive. However, in spite of discomfort, we would not have missed the journey on any account. The site of this little cotton-spinning town is one of the most extraordinary in the world. We first traverse a fruitful, well cultivated plain, watered by the sluggish Meurthe, then begin to ascend a spur of the western chain of the Vosges, formerly dividing the two French departments of Vosges and Haut Rhin, now marking the boundaries of France and German Elsass. Down below, amid the hanging orchards, flower-gardens and hayfields, we were on French soil, but the flagstaff, just discernible on yonder green pinnacles, marks the line of demarcation between France and the conquered territory of the German empire. For the matter of that, the Prussian helmet makes the fact patent. As surely as we have set foot in the Reich, we see one of these gleaming casques, so hateful still in French eyes. They seem to spring from the ground like Jason's warriors from the dragon's teeth. This new frontier divided in olden times the dominions of Alsace and Lorraine, when it was the custom to say of many villages that the bread was kneaded in one country and baked in the other. Nothing could be more lovely than the dim violet hills far away, and the virginal freshness of the pastoral scenery around. But only a stout-hearted pedestrian can properly enjoy this beautiful region. We had followed the example of another party of tourists in front of us, and accomplished a fair climb on foot, and when we had wound and wound our way up the lofty green mountain to the flagstaff before mentioned, we wanted to do the rest of our journey on foot also. But alike compassion for the beasts and energy had gone far enough, we were only too glad to reseat ourselves, and drive, or rather be whirled, down to St. Marie-aux-Mines in the vehicle. Do what we would there was no persuading our driver to slacken pace enough so as to admit of a full enjoyment of the prospect that unfolded before us. The wonderful little town! Black pearl set in the richest casket! This commonplace, flourishing centre of cotton spinning, woollen, and cretonne manufacture, built in red brick, lies in the narrow, beautiful valley of the Lièpvrette, as it is called from the babbling river of that name. But there is really no valley at all. The congeries of red-roofed houses, factory chimneys and church towers, Catholic and Protestant, is hemmed round by a narrow gorge, wedged in between the hills which are just parted so as to admit of such an intrusion, no more. The green convolutions of the mountain sides are literally folded round the town, a pile of green velvet spread fan-like in a draper's window has not softer, neater folds! As we enter it from the St. Dié side we find just room for a carriage to wind along the little river and the narrow street. But at the other end the valley opens, and St. Marie-aux-mines spreads itself out. Here are factories, handsome country houses, and walks up-hill and down-hill in abundance. Just above the town, over the widening gorge, is a deliciously cool pine-wood which commands a vast prospect--the busy little town caught in the toils of the green hills; the fertile valley of the Meurthe as we gaze in the direction from which we have come; the no less fertile plains of Lorraine before us; close under and around us, many a dell and woodland covert with scattered homes of dalesfolk in sunny places and slanting hills covered with pines. It is curious to reflect that St. Marie-aux-Mines, mentioned as Markirch in ancient charts, did not become entirely French till the eighteenth century. Originally the inhabitants on the left bank of the Lièpvrette were subjects of the Dukes of Lorraine, spoke French, and belonged to the Catholic persuasion, whilst those dwelling on the right bank of the river, adhered to the seigneury of Ribeaupaire, and formed a Protestant German-speaking community. Alsace, as everybody knows, was annexed to France by right--rather wrong--of conquest under Louis XIV., but it was not till a century later that Lorraine became a part of French territory, and the fusion of races, a task so slowly accomplished, has now to be undone, if, indeed, such undoing is possible! The hotel here is a mere _auberge_ adapted to the needs of the _commis-voyageur_, but our host and hostess are charming. As is the fashion in these parts, they serve their guests and take the greatest possible interest in their movements and comfort. We would willingly have spent some days at Marie-aux-Mines--no better headquarters for excursionizing in these regions!--but too much remained for us to do and to see in Alsace. We dared not loiter on the way. Everywhere we find plenty of French tourists, many of them doing their holiday travel in the most economical fashion. We are in the habit of regarding the French as a stay-at-home nation, and it is easy to see how such a mistake arises. English people seldom travel in out-of-the-way France, and our neighbours seldom travel elsewhere. Thus holiday-makers of the two nations do not come in contact. Wherever we go we encounter bands of pedestrians or family parties thoroughly enjoying themselves. Nothing ruffles a French mind when bent on holiday-making. The good-nature, _bonhomie_, and accommodating spirit displayed under trying circumstances might be imitated by certain insular tourists with advantage. From St. Marie-aux-Mines we journeyed to Gustave Doré's favourite resort, Barr, a close, unsavoury little town enough, but in the midst of bewitching scenery. "An ounce of sweet is worth a pound of sour," sings Spenser, and at Barr we get the sweet and the sour strangely mixed. The narrow streets smell of tanneries and less wholesome nuisances, not a breath of fresh pure air is to be had from one end of the town to the other. But our pretty, gracious landlady, an Alsacienne, and her husband, the master of the house and _chef de cuisine_ as well, equally handsome and courteous, took so much pains to make us comfortable that we stayed on and on. Not a thousand bad smells could drive us away! Yet there is accommodation for the traveller among the vineyards outside the town, and also near the railway station, so Barr need not be avoided on account of its unsavouriness. No sooner are you beyond the dingy streets than all is beauty, pastoralness and romance. Every green peak is crested with ruined keep or tower, at the foot of the meeting hills lie peaceful little villages, each with its lofty church spire, whilst all the air is fragrant with pine-woods and newly turned hay. These pine-woods and frowning ruins set like sentinels on every green hill or rocky eminence, recall many of Doré's happiest efforts. "_Le pauvre garçon_," our hostess said. "_Comme il était content chez nous_!" I can fancy how Doré would enjoy the family life of our little old-fashioned hotel, how he would play with the children, chat with master and mistress, and make himself agreeable all round. One can also fancy how animated conversation would become if it chanced to take a patriotic turn. For people speak their thoughts in Alsace,--nowhere more freely. In season and out of season, the same sentiment comes to the surface. "_Nous sommes plus Français que les Français_." This is the universal expression of feeling that greeted our ears throughout our wanderings. Such, at least, was formerly the case. The men, women and children, rich and poor, learned and simple, gave utterance to the same expression of feeling. Barr is a town of between six and seven thousand souls, about twenty of whom are Prussians. A pleasant position, truly, for the twenty officials! And what we see at Barr is the case throughout the newly acquired German dominion. Alike the highest as well as the humblest functionary of the imperial government is completely shut off from intercourse with his French neighbours. Barr lies near so much romantic scenery that the tourist in these parts had better try the little hotel amid the mines. For, in spite of the picturesque stork's nest close by, an excellent ordinary and the most delightful host and hostess in the world, I cannot recommend a sojourn in the heart of the town. The best plan of all were to halt here simply for the sake of the excursion to St. Odile--St. Odile leads nowhither--then hire a carriage, and make leisurely way across country by the Hohwald, and the Champ de Feu to Rothau, Oberlin's country, thence to Strasburg. In our own case, the fascinations of our hosts overcame our repugnance to Barr itself, so we stayed on, every day making long drives into the fresh, quiet, beautiful country. One of the sweet spots we discovered for the benefit of any English folks who may chance to stray in that region is the Hohwald, a _ville giatura_ long in vogue with the inhabitants of Strasburg and neighbouring towns, but not mentioned in any English guide-book at the time of my visit. We are reminded all the way of Rhineland. The same terraced vineyards, the same limestone crags, each with its feudal tower, the same fertility and richness everywhere. Our road winds for miles amid avenues of fruit-trees, laden with pear and plum, whilst on every side are stretches of flax and corn, tobacco and hemp. What plenty and fruitfulness are suggested at every turn! Well might Goethe extol "this magnificent Alsace." We soon reach Andlau, a picturesque, but, it must be confessed, somewhat dirty village, lying amid vineyards and chestnut woods, with mediaeval gables, archways, wells, dormers. All these are to be found at Andlau, also one of the finest churches in these parts. I followed the _curé_ and sacristan as they took a path that wound high above the village and the little river amid the vineyards, and obtained a beautiful picture; hill and dale, clustered village and lofty spire, and imposingly, confronting us at every turn, the fine façade of the castle of Andlau, built of grey granite, and flanked at either end with massive towers. More picturesque, but less majestic are the neighbouring ruins of Spesburg, mere tumbling walls wreathed with greenery, and many another castled crag we see on our way. We are indeed in the land of old romance. Nothing imaginable more weird, fantastic and sombre, than these spectral castles and crumbling towers past counting! The wide landscape is peopled with these. They seem to rise as if by magic from the level landscape, and we fancy that they will disappear magically as they have come. And here again one wild visionary scene after another reminds us that we are in the land of Doré's most original inspiration. There are bits of broken pine-wood, jagged peaks and ghostly ruins that have been already made quite familiar to us in the pages of his _Dante_ and _Don Quixote._ The pretty rivulet Andlau accompanies us far on our way, and beautiful is the road; high above, beech- and pine-woods, and sloping down to the road green banks starred with large blue and white campanula, with, darkling amid the alders, the noisy little river. The Hohwald is the creation of a woman; that is to say, the Hohwald of holiday-makers, tourists and tired brain-workers. "Can you imagine," wrote M. Edmond About, forty years ago, "an inn at the world's end that cost a hundred thousand francs in the building? I assure you the owner will soon have recouped her outlay. She had not a centime to begin with, this courageous lady, left a widow without resources, and a son to bring up. The happy thought occurred to her of a summer resort in the heart of these glorious woods, within easy reach of Strasburg." There are gardens and reception-rooms in common, and here as at Gérardmer croquet, music and the dance offer an extra attraction. It must be admitted that these big family hotels, in attractive country places with prices adapted to all travellers, have many advantages over our own seaside lodgings. People get much more for their money, better food, better accommodation, with agreeable society into the bargain, and a relief from the harass of housekeeping. The children, too, find companionship, to the great relief of parents and nursemaids. The Hohwald proper is a tiny village numbering a few hundred souls, situated in the midst of magnificent forests at the foot of the famous Champ de Feu. This is a plateau on one of the loftiest summits of the Vosges, and very curious from a geological point of view. To explore it properly you must be a good pedestrian. Much, indeed, of the finest scenery of these regions is beyond reach of travellers who cannot walk five or six hours a day. Any one, however, may drive to St. Odile, and St. Odile is the great excursion of Alsace. Who cares a straw for the saint and her story now? But all tourists must be grateful to the Bishop of Strasburg, who keeps a comfortable little inn at the top of the mountain, and, beyond the prohibition of meat on fast-days, smoking, noise and levity of manner on all days, makes you very comfortable for next to nothing. The fact is, this noble plateau, commanding as splendid a natural panorama as any in Europe, at the time I write of the property of Monseigneur of Strasburg, was once a famous shrine and a convent of cloistered men and women vowed to sanctity and prayer. The convent was closed at the time of the French Revolution, and the entire property, convent, mountain and prospect, remained in the hands of private possessors till 1853, when the prelate of that day repurchased the whole, restored the conventual building, put in some lay brethren to cultivate the soil, and some lay sisters, who wear the garb of nuns, but have taken no vows upon them except of piety, to keep the little inn and make tourists comfortable. No arrangement could be better, and I advise any one in want of pure air, superb scenery, and complete quiet, to betake himself to St. Odile. Here again I must intercalate. Since these lines were jotted down, many changes, and apparently none for the better, have taken place here. Intending tourists must take both M. Hallays' volume and Maurice Barrès' _Au Service d'Allemagne_ for recent accounts of this holiday resort. The splendid natural features remain intact. The way from Barr lies through prosperous villages, enriched by manufactories, yet abounding in pastoral graces. There are English-like parks and fine châteaux of rich manufacturers; but contrasted with these nothing like abject poverty. The houses of working-folk are clean, each with its flower-garden, the children are neatly dressed, no squalor or look of discontent to be seen anywhere. Every hamlet has its beautiful spire, whilst the country is the fairest, richest conceivable; in the woods is seen every variety of fir and pine, mingled with the lighter foliage of chestnut and acacia, whilst every orchard has its walnut and mulberry trees, not to speak of pear and plum. One of the chief manufactures of these parts is that of paints and colours: there are also ribbon and cotton factories. Rich as is the country naturally, its chief wealth arises from these industries. In every village you hear the hum of machinery. You may lessen the distance from Barr to St. Odile by one-half if you make the journey on foot, winding upwards amid the vine-clad hills, at every turn coming upon one of those grand old ruins, as plentiful here as in Rhineland, and quite as romantic and beautiful. The drive is a slow and toilsome ascent of three hours and a half. As soon as we quit the villages and climb the mountain road cut amid the pines, we are in a superb and solitary scene. No sound of millwheels or steam-hammers is heard here, only the summer breeze stirring the lofty pine branches, the hum of insects, and the trickling of mountain streams. The dark-leaved henbane is in brilliant yellow flower, and the purple foxglove in striking contrast; but the wealth of summer flowers is over. Who would choose to live on Ararat? Yet it is something to reach a pinnacle from whence you may survey more than one kingdom. The prospect from St. Odile is one to gaze on for a day, and to make us dizzy in dreams ever after. From the umbrageous terrace in front of the convent--cool and breezy on this, one of the hottest days of a hot season--we see, as from a balloon, a wonderful bit of the world spread out like a map at our feet. The vast plain of Alsace, the valley of the Rhine, the Swiss mountains, the Black Forest, Bâle, and Strasburg--all these we dominate from our airy pinnacle close, at it seems, under the blue vault of heaven. But though they were there, we did not see them: for the day, as so often happens on such occasions, was misty. We had none the less a novel and wonderful prospect. As we sit on this cool terrace, under the shady mulberry trees, and look far beyond the richly-wooded mountain we have scaled on our way, we gradually make out some details of the fast panorama, one feature after another becoming visible as stars shining faintly in a misty heaven. Villages and little towns past counting, each with its conspicuous spire, break the monotony of the enormous plain. Here and there, miles away, a curl of white vapour indicates the passage of some railway train, whilst in this upper stillness sweet sounds of church bells reach us from hamlets close underneath the convent. Nothing can be more solid, fresher, or more brilliant than the rich beech- and pine-woods running sheer from our airy eminence to the level world below, nothing more visionary, slumberous, or dimmer than that wide expanse teeming, as we know, with busy human life, yet flat and motionless as a picture. [Illustration] On clear nights the electric lights of the railway station at Strasburg are seen from this point; but far more attractive than the prospects from St. Odile is its prehistoric wall. Before the wall, however, came the dinner, which deserves mention. It was Friday, so in company of priests, nuns, monks and divers pious pilgrims, with a sprinkling of fashionable ladies from Strasburg, and tourists generally, we sat down to a very fair _menu_ for a fast-day, to wit: rice-soup, turnips and potatoes, eggs, perch, macaroni-cheese, custard pudding, gruyère cheese, and fair vin ordinaire. Two shillings was charged per head, and I must say people got their money's worth, for appetites seem keen in these parts. The mother-superior, a kindly old woman, evidently belonging to the working class, bustled about and shook hands with each of her guests. After dinner we were shown the bedrooms, which are very clean; for board and lodging you pay six francs a day, out of which, judging from the hunger of the company, the profit arising would be small except to clerical hotel-keepers. We must bear in mind that nuns work without pay, and that all the fish, game, dairy and garden produce the bishop gets for nothing. However, all tourists must be glad of such a hostelry, and the nuns are very obliging. One sister made us some afternoon tea very nicely (we always carry tea and teapot on these excursions), and everybody made us welcome. We found a delightful old Frenchman of Strasburg to conduct us to the Pagan Wall, as, for want of a better name, people designate this famous relic of prehistoric times. Fragments of stone fortifications similarly constructed have been found on other points of the Vosges not far from the promontory on which the convent stands, but none to be compared to this one in colossal proportions and completeness. We dip deep down into the woods on quitting the convent gates, then climb for a little space and come suddenly upon the edge of the plateau, which the wall was evidently raised to defend. Never did a spot more easily lend itself to such rude defence by virtue of natural position, although where the construction begins the summit of the promontory is inaccessible from below. We are skirting dizzy precipices, feathered with light greenery and brightened with flowers, but awful notwithstanding, and in many places the stones have evidently been piled together rather for the sake of symmetry than from a sense of danger. The points thus protected were already impregnable. When we look more nearly we see that however much Nature may have aided these primitive constructors, the wall is mainly due to the agency of man. There is no doubt that in many places the stupendous masses of conglomerate have been hurled to their places by earthquake, but the entire girdle of stone, of pyramidal size and strength, shows much symmetrical arrangement and dexterity. The blocks have been selected according to size and shape, and in many places mortised together. We find no trace of cement, a fact disproving the hypothesis that the wall may have been of Roman origin. We must doubtless go much farther back, and associate these primitive builders with such relics of prehistoric times as the stones of Carnac and Lokmariaker. And not to seek so wide for analogies, do we not see here the handiwork of the same rude architects I have before alluded to in my Vosges travels, who flung a stone bridge across the forest gorge above Remiremont and raised in close proximity the stupendous monolith of Kirlinkin? The prehistoric stone monuments scattered about these regions are as yet new to the English archaeologist, and form one of the most interesting features of Vosges and Alsatian travel. We may follow these lightly superimposed blocks of stone for miles, and the _enceinte_ has been traced round the entire plateau, which was thus defended from enemies on all sides. As we continue our walk on the inner side of the wall we get lovely views of the dim violet hills, the vast golden plain, and, close underneath, luxuriant forests. Eagles are flying hither and thither, and except for an occasional tourist or two, the scene is perfectly solitary. An hour's walk brings us to the Menelstein, a vast and lofty platform of stone, ascended by a stair, both untouched by the hand of man. Never was a more formidable redoubt raised by engineering skill. Nature here helped her primitive builders well. From a terrace due to the natural formation of the rock, we obtain another of those grand and varied panoramas so numerous in this part of the world, but the beauty nearer at hand is more enticing. Nothing can exceed the freshness and charm of our homeward walk. We are now no longer following the wall, but free to enjoy the breezy, heather-scented plateau, and the broken, romantic outline of St. Odile, the Wartburg of Alsace, as the saint herself was its Holy Elizabeth, and with as romantic a story for those with a taste for such legends. Here and there on the remoter wooded peaks are stately ruins of feudal castles, whilst all the way our path lies amid bright foliage of young forest trees, chestnut and oak, pine and acacia, and the ground is purple with heather. Blocks of the conglomerate used in the construction of the so-called Pagan Wall meet us at every turn, and as we gaze down the steep sides of the promontory we can trace its massive outline. A scene not soon to be forgotten! The still, solitary field of Carnac, with its avenues of monoliths, is not more impressive than these Cyclopean walls, thrown as a girdle round the green slopes of St. Odile. We would fain have stayed here some time, but much more still remained to be seen and accomplished in Alsace. Rothau, the district known as the Ban de la Roche, where Oberlin laboured for sixty years, Thann, Wesserling, with a sojourn among French subjects of the German Empire at Mulhouse--all these things had to be done, and the bright summer days were drawing to an end. IV FROM BARR TO STRASBURG, MULHOUSE AND BELFORT The opening sentences of this chapter, written many years ago, are no longer applicable. Were I to revisit Alsace-Lorraine at the present time, I should only hear French speech among intimate friends and in private, so strictly of late years has the law of lèse-majesté been, and is still, enforced. Nothing strikes the sojourner in Alsace-Lorraine more forcibly than the outspokenness of its inhabitants regarding Prussian rule. Young and old, rich and poor, wise and simple alike unburden themselves to their chance-made English acquaintance with a candour that is at the same time amusing and pathetic. For the most part no heed whatever is paid to possible German listeners. At the ordinaries of country hotels, by the shop door, in the railway carriage, Alsatians will pour out their hearts, especially the women, who, as two pretty sisters assured us, are not interfered with, be their conversation of the most treasonable kind. We travelled with these two charming girls from Barr to Rothau, and they corroborated what we had already heard at Barr and other places. The Prussian inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine--for the most part Government officials--are completely shut off from all social intercourse with the French population, the latter, of course, still forming the vast majority. Thus at Barr, a town consisting of over six thousand inhabitants, only a score or two are Prussians, who are employed in the railway and postal service, the police, the survey of forests, etc. The position of these officials is far from agreeable, although, on the other hand, there is compensation in the shape of higher pay, and much more material comfort, even luxury, than are to be had in the Fatherland. Alsace-Lorraine, especially by comparison with Prussia, may be called a land of Goshen, overflowing with milk and honey. The vine ripens on these warm hill-sides and rocky terraces, the plain produces abundant variety of fruit and vegetables, the streams abound with trout and the forests with game. No wonder, therefore, that whilst thousands of patriotic Alsatians have already quitted the country, thousands of Prussians are ready to fill their places. But the Alsatian exodus is far from finished. At first, as was only natural, the inhabitants could not realize the annexation. They refused to believe that the Prussian occupation was final, so, for the most part, stayed on, hoping against hope. The time of illusion is past. French parents of children born since the war had to decide whether their sons are to become Prussian or French citizens. After the age of sixteen a lad's fate is no longer in their hands; he must don the uniform so odious in French eyes, and renounce the cherished _patrie_ and _tricolor_ for ever. The enforced military service, necessitated, perhaps, by the new order of things, is the bitterest drop in the cup of the Alsatians. Only the poorest, and those who are too much hampered by circumstances to evade it, resign themselves to the enrolment of their sons in the German army. For this reason well-to-do parents, and even many in the humbler ranks of life, are quitting the country in much larger numbers than is taken account of, whilst all who can possibly afford it send their young sons across the frontier for the purpose of giving them a French education. The prohibition of French in the public schools and colleges is another grievous condition of annexation. Alsatians of all ranks are therefore under the necessity of providing private masters for their children, unless they would let them grow up in ignorance of their mother tongue. And here a word of explanation may be necessary. Let no strangers in Alsace take it for granted that because a great part of the rural population speak a _patois_ made up of bad German and equally bad French, they are any more German at heart for all that. Some of the most patriotic French inhabitants of Alsace can only express themselves in this dialect, a fact that should not surprise us, seeing the amalgamation of races that has been going on for many generations. Physically speaking, so far the result has been satisfactory. In Alsace-Lorraine no one can help being struck with the fine appearance of the people. The men are tall, handsome, and well made, the women graceful and often exceedingly lovely, French piquancy and symmetrical proportions combined with Teutonic fairness of complexion, blonde hair, and blue eyes. I will now continue my journey from Barr to Strasburg by way of the Ban de la Roche, Oberlin's country. A railway connects Barr with Rothau, a very pleasant halting-place in the midst of sweet pastoral scenery. It is another of those resorts in Alsace whither holiday folks flock from Strasburg and other towns during the long vacation, in quest of health, recreation and society. Rothau is a very prosperous little town, with large factories, handsome châteaux of mill-owners, and trim little cottages, having flowers in all the windows and a trellised vine in every garden. Pomegranates and oleanders are in full bloom here and there, and the general aspect is bright and cheerful. At Rothau are several _blanchisseries_ or laundries, on a large scale, employing many hands, besides dye-works and saw-mills. Through the town runs the little river Bruche, and the whole district, known as the Ban de la Roche, a hundred years ago one of the dreariest regions in France, is now all smiling fertility. The principal building is its handsome Protestant church--for here we are among Protestants, although of a less zealous temper than their fore-fathers, the fervid Anabaptists. I attended morning service, and although an eloquent preacher from Paris officiated, the audience was small, and the general impression that of coldness and want of animation. From the sweet, fragrant valley of Rothau a road winds amid green hills and by the tumbling river to the little old-world village of Foudai, where Oberlin lies buried. The tiny church and shady churchyard lie above the village, and a more out-of-the-way spot than Foudai itself can hardly be imagined. Yet many a pious pilgrim finds it out and comes hither to pay a tribute to the memory of "Papa Oberlin," as he was artlessly called by the country folk. This is the inscription at the head of the plain stone slab marking his resting-place; and very suggestive it is of the relation between the pastor and his flock. Oberlin's career of sixty years among the primitive people of the Ban de la Roche was rather that of a missionary among an uncivilized race than of a country priest among his parishioners. How he toiled, and how he induced others to toil, in order to raise the material as well as moral and spiritual conditions of his charges, is pretty well known. His story reads like the German narrative, _Des Goldmachers Dorf_. Nor does it require any lively fancy to picture what this region must have been like before Oberlin and his fellow-workers made the wilderness to blossom as the rose. The soil is rocky and barren, the hill-sides whitened with mountain streams, the more fertile spots isolated and difficult of access. An elaborate system of irrigation has now clothed the valleys with rich pastures, the river turns a dozen wheels, and every available inch of soil has been turned to account. The cottages with orchards and flower-gardens are trim and comfortable. The place in verity is a veritable little Arcadia. No less so is Waldersbach, which was Oberlin's home. The little river winding amid hayfields and fruit-trees leads us thither from Foudai in half-an-hour. It is Sunday afternoon, and a fête day. Young and old in Sunday garb are keeping holiday, the lads and lasses waltzing, the children enjoying swings and peep-shows. No acerbity has lingered among these descendants of the austere parishioners of Oberlin. Here, as at Foudai, the entire population is Protestant. The church and parsonage lie at the back of the village, and we were warmly welcomed by the pastor and his wife, a great-great-granddaughter of Oberlin. Their six pretty children were playing in the garden with two young girls in the costume of Alsace, forming a pleasant domestic picture. Our hosts showed us many relics of Oberlin, the handsome cabinets and presses of carved oak, in which were stored the family wardrobe and other treasures, and in the study the table on which he habitually wrote. This is a charming upper room with wide views over the green hills and sunny, peaceful valley. We were offered hospitality for days, nay, weeks, if we chose to stay, and even the use of Oberlin's study to sit and write in! A summer might be pleasantly spent here, with quiet mornings in this cheerful chamber, full of pious memories, and in the afternoon long rambles with the children over the peaceful hills. From Foudai, too, you may climb the wild rocky plateau known as the Champ de Feu--no spot in the Vosges chain is more interesting from a geological point of view. After much pleasant talk we took leave of our kind hosts, not going away, however, without visiting the church. A tablet with medallion portrait of Oberlin bears the touching inscription that for fifty-nine years he was "the father of this parish." Then we drove back as we had come, stopping at Foudai to rest the horse and drink tea. We were served in a cool little parlour opening on to a garden, and, so tempting looked the tiny inn that we regretted we could not stay there a week. A pleasant pastoral country rather than romantic or picturesque is the Ban de la Roche, but close at hand is the lofty Donon, which may be climbed from Rothau or Foudai, and there are many other excursions within reach. Here, for the present, the romance of Alsace travel ends, and all is prose of a somewhat painful kind. The first object that attracted our attention on reaching Strasburg was the new railway station, of which we had already heard so much. This handsome structure, erected by the German Government at an enormous cost, had only been recently opened, and so great was the soreness of feeling excited by certain allegorical bas-reliefs decorating the façade that for many days after the opening of the station police-officers in plain clothes carefully watched the crowd of spectators, carrying off the more seditious to prison. To say the least of it, these mural decorations are not in the best of taste, and at any rate it would have been better to have withheld them for a time. The two small bas-reliefs in question bear respectively the inscription, "_Im alten, und im neuen Reich_" ("In the old and new Empire"), improved by a stander-by, to the great relish of others, thus, "_Im alten, reich, im neuen, arm_" ("In the old, rich, in the new, poor"). They give a somewhat ideal representation of the surrender of Strasburg to the German Emperor. But the bombardment of their city, the destruction of public monuments and the loss of life and property thereby occasioned, were as yet fresh in the memories of the inhabitants, and they needed no such reminder of the new state of things. Their better feelings towards Germany had been bombarded out of them, as an Alsacienne wittily observed to the Duchess of Baden after the surrender. The duchess, daughter to the Emperor William, made the round of the hospitals, and not a single Alsatian soldier but turned his face to the wall, whereupon she expressed her astonishment at not finding a better sentiment. Nor can the lover of art help drawing a painful contrast between the Strasburg of the old and the new _régime_. There was very little to see at Strasburg except the cathedral at this time. The Library, with its 300,000 volumes and 1,500 manuscripts--the priceless _Hortus Deliciarium_ of the twelfth century, richly illuminated and ornamented with miniatures invaluable to the student of men and manners of the Middle Ages, the missal of Louis XII., bearing his arms, the _Recueil de Prières_ of the eighth century--all these had been completely destroyed by the ruthless Prussian bombardment. The Museum, rich in _chefs d'oeuvre_ of the French school, both of sculpture and painting, the handsome Protestant church, the theatre, the Palais de Justice, all shared the same fate, not to speak of buildings of lesser importance, including four hundred private dwellings, and of the fifteen hundred civilians, men, women and children, killed and wounded by the shells. The fine church of St. Thomas suffered greatly. Nor was the cathedral spared, and it would doubtless have perished altogether, too, but for the enforced surrender of the heroic city. On my second visit ten years later I found immense changes, new German architecture to be seen everywhere. Strasburg is said to contain a much larger German element than any other city of Alsace-Lorraine, but the most casual observer soon finds out how it stands with the bulk of the people. The first thing that attracted our notice in a shop window was a coloured illustration representing the funeral procession of Gambetta, as it wound slowly past the veiled statue of Strasburg on the Place de la Concorde. These displays of patriotic feeling are forbidden, but they come to the fore all the same. Here, as elsewhere, the clinging to the old country is pathetically--sometimes comically--apparent. A rough peasant girl, employed as chambermaid in the hotel at which we stayed, amused me not a little by her tirades against the Prussians, spoken in a language that was neither German nor French, but a mixture of both--the delectable tongue of Alsace! Strasburg is now a vast camp, with that perpetual noisy military parade so wearisome in Berlin and other German cities, and, as I have said, there was very little to see. It was a relief to get to Mulhouse, the comparatively quiet and thoroughly French city of Mulhouse, in spite of all attempts to make it German. But for the imperial eagle placed over public offices and the sprinkling of Prussian helmets and Prussian physiognomies, we could hardly suppose ourselves outside the French border. The shops are French. French is the language of the better classes, and French and Jews make up the bulk of the population. The Jews from time immemorial have swarmed in Alsace, where, I am sorry to say, they seemed to be little liked. This thoroughly French appearance of Mulhouse, to be accounted for, moreover, by an intensely patriotic clinging to the mother country, naturally occasions great vexation to the German authorities. It is, perhaps, hardly to be wondered at that undignified provocations and reprisals should be the consequence. Thus the law forbids the putting up of French signboards or names over shop doors in any but the German language. This is evaded by withholding all else except the surname of the individual, which is of course the same in both languages. One instance more I give of the small annoyances to which the French residents of Mulhouse are subject, a trifling one, yet sufficient to irritate. Eight months after the annexation, orders were sent round to the pastors and clergy generally to offer up prayers for the Emperor William every Sunday. The order was obeyed, for refusal would have been assuredly followed by dismissal, but the prayer is ungraciously performed. The French pastors invoke the blessing of Heaven on "_l'Empereur qui nous gouverne_". The pastors who perform the service in German, pray not for "our Emperor," as is the apparently loyal fashion in the Fatherland, but for "the Emperor." These things are trifling grievances, but, on the other hand, the Prussians have theirs also. Not even the officials of highest rank are received into any kind of society whatever. Mulhouse possesses a charming zoological garden, free to subscribers only, who have to be balloted for. Twenty years after the annexation not a single Prussian has ever been able to obtain access to this garden. Even the very poorest contrive to show their intense patriotism. It is the rule of the German government to give twenty-five marks to any poor woman giving birth to twins. The wife of a French workman during my sojourn at Mulhouse had three sons at a birth, but though in very poor circumstances, refused to claim the donation. "My sons shall never be Prussian," she said, "and that gift would make them so." The real thorn in the flesh of the annexed Alsatians is, however, as I have before pointed out, military service, and the enforced German education. All who have read Alphonse Daudet's charming little story, _La dernière leçon de Français_, will be able to realize the painfulness of the truth, somewhat rudely brought home to French parents. Their children must henceforth receive a German education, or none at all, for this is what the law amounts to in the great majority of cases. Rich people, of course, and those who are only well-to-do, can send their sons to the Lycée, opened at Belfort since the annexation, but the rest have to submit, or, by dint of great sacrifice, obtain private French teaching. And, whilst even Alsatians are quite ready to render justice to the forbearance and tact often shown by officials, an inquisitorial and prying system is pursued, as vexatious to the patriotic as enforced vaccination to the Peculiar People or school attendance to the poor. One lady was visited at seven o'clock in the morning by the functionary charged with the unpleasant mission of finding out where her boy was educated. "Tell those who sent you," said the indignant mother, "that my son shall never belong to you. We will give up our home, our prospects, everything; but our children shall never be Prussians." True enough, the family have since emigrated. No one who has not stayed in Alsace among Alsatians can realize the intense clinging to France among the people, nor the sacrifices made to retain their nationality. And it is well the true state of feeling throughout the annexed territory should be known outside its limits. With a considerable knowledge of French life and character, I confess I went to Mulhouse little prepared to find there a ferment of feeling which years have not sufficed to calm down. [Illustration: ETTENHEIM] "Nous ne sommes pas heureux à Mulhouse" were almost the first words addressed to me by that veteran patriot and true philanthropist, Jean Dollfus. And how could it be otherwise? M. Dollfus, as well as other representatives of the French subjects of Prussia in the Reichstag, had protested against the annexation of Alsace in vain. They pointed out the heavy cost to the German empire of these provinces, in consequence of the vast military force required to maintain them, the undying bitterness aroused, the moral, intellectual, and material interests at stake. I use the word intellectual advisedly, for, amongst other instances in point, I was assured that the book trade in Mulhouse had greatly declined since the annexation. The student class has diminished, many reading people have gone, and those who remain feel too uncertain about the future to accumulate libraries. Moreover, the ordeal that all have gone through has depressed intellectual as well as social life. Mulhouse has been too much saddened to recover herself as yet, although eminently a literary place, and a sociable one in the old happy French days. The balls, soirées and reunions, that formerly made Mulhouse one of the friendliest as well as the busiest towns in the world, have almost ceased. People take their pleasures very soberly. It is hardly possible to write of Mulhouse without consecrating a page or two to M. Jean Dollfus, a name already familiar to some English readers. The career of such a man forms part of contemporary history, and for sixty years the great cotton-printer of Mulhouse, the indefatigable philanthropist--the fellow-worker with Cobden, Arles-Dufour, and others in the cause of Free Trade--and the ardent patriot, had been before the world. The year before my visit was celebrated, with a splendour that would be ridiculed in a novel, the diamond wedding of the head of the numerous house of Dollfus, the silver and the golden having been already kept in due form. Mulhouse might well be proud of such a fête, for it was unique, and the first gala-day since the annexation. When M. Dollfus looked out of his window in the morning, he found the familiar street transformed as if by magic into a bright green avenue abundantly adorned with flowers. The change had been effected in the night by means of young fir-trees transplanted from the forest. The day was kept as a general holiday. From an early hour the improvised avenue was thronged with visitors of all ranks bearing cards, letters of congratulation or flowers. The great Dollfus works were closed, and the five thousand workmen with their wives, children and superannuated parents, were not only feasted but enriched. After the banquet every man, woman and child received a present in money, the oldest and those who had remained longest in the employ of M. Dollfus being presented with forty francs. But the crowning sight of the day was the board spread for the Dollfus family and the gathering of the clan, as it may indeed be called. There was the head of the house, firm as a rock still, in spite of his eighty-two years; beside him the partner of sixty of those years, his devoted wife; next according to age, their numerous sons and daughters, sons-in-law and daughters-in-law; duly following came the grandsons and grand-daughters, then the great-grandsons and great-granddaughters, and lastly, the babies of their fifth generation, all accompanied by their nurses in the picturesque costume of Alsace and Lorraine. This patriarchal assemblage numbered between one and two hundred guests. On the table were represented, in the artistic confectionery for which Mulhouse is famous, some of the leading events of M. Dollfus's busy life. Here in sugar was a model of the achievement which will ever do honour to the name of Jean Dollfus, namely, the _cités ouvrières_, and what was no less a triumph of the confectioner's skill, a group representing the romantic ride of M. and Mme. Dollfus on camels towards the Algerian Sahara when visiting the African colony some twenty years before. This patriarchal festival is said to have cost M. Dollfus half a million of francs, a bagatelle in a career devoted to giving! The bare conception of what this good man has bestowed takes one's breath away! Not that he was alone; never was a city more prolific of generous men than Mulhouse, but Jean Dollfus, _"Le Père Jean,"_ as he is called, stood at the head. He received with one hand to bestow with the other, and not only on behalf of the national, intellectual and spiritual wants of his own workmen and his own community--the Dollfus family are Protestant--but indiscriminately benefiting Protestant, Catholic, Jew; founding schools, hospitals, libraries, refuges, churches, for all. We see at a glance after what fashion the great manufacturers set to work here to solve the problem before them. The life of ease and the life of toil are seen side by side, and all the brighter influences of the one brought to bear on the other. The tall factory chimneys are unsightly here as elsewhere, and nothing can be uglier than the steam tramways, noisily running through the streets. But close to the factories and workshops are the cheerful villas and gardens of their owners, whilst near at hand the workmen's dwellings offer an exterior equally attractive. These _cités ouvrières_ form indeed a suburb in themselves, and a very pleasant suburb too. Many middle-class families in England might be glad to own such a home, a semi-detached cottage or villa standing in a pretty garden with flowers and trees and plots of turf. Some of the cottages are models of trimness and taste, others of course are less well kept, a few have a neglected appearance. The general aspect, however, is one of thrift and prosperity, and it must be borne in mind that each dwelling and plot of ground are the property of the owner, gradually acquired by him out of his earnings, thanks to the initiative of M. Dollfus and his fellow-workers. "It is by such means as these that we have combated Socialism," said M. Dollfus to me; and the gradual transformation of the workman into an owner of property, is but one of the numerous efforts made at Mulhouse to lighten, in so far as is practicable, the burden of toil. These pleasant avenues are very animated on Sundays, especially when a universal christening of babies is going on. The workmen at Mulhouse are paid once a fortnight, in some cases monthly, and it is usually after pay-day that such celebrations occur. We saw one Sunday afternoon quite a procession of carriages returning from the church to the _cité ouvrière_, for upon these occasions nobody goes on foot. There were certainly a dozen christening parties, all well dressed, and the babies in the finest white muslin and embroidery. A very large proportion of the artisans here are Catholics, and as one instance among others of the liberality prevailing here, I mention that one of the latest donations of M. Dollfus is the piece of ground, close to the _cité ouvrière_, on which now stands the new, florid Catholic church. There are free libraries for all, and a very handsome museum has been opened within the last few years, containing some fine modern French pictures, all gifts of the Dollfrees, Engels, and Köchlins, to their native town. The museum, like everything else at Mulhouse, is as French as French can be, no German element visible anywhere. Conspicuous among the pictures are portraits of Thiers and Gambetta, and a fine subject of De Neuville, representing one of those desperate battle-scenes of 1870-71 that still have such a painful hold on the minds of French people. It was withheld for some time, and had only been recently exhibited. The bombardment of Strasburg is also a popular subject in Mulhouse. I have mentioned the flower-gardens of the city, but the real pleasure-ground of both rich and poor lies outside the suburbs, and a charming one it is, and full of animation on Sundays. This is the Tannenwald, a fine bit of forest on high ground above the vineyards and suburban gardens of the richer citizens. A garden is a necessity of existence here, and all who are without one in the town hire or purchase a plot of suburban ground. Here is also the beautiful subscription garden I have before alluded to, with fine views over the Rhine valley and the Black Forest. Nor is Mulhouse without its excursions. Colmar and the romantic site of Notre Dame des Trois Épis may be visited in a day. Then there is Thann, with its perfect Gothic church, a veritable cathedral in miniature, and the charming, prosperous valley of Wesserling. From Thann the ascent of the Ballon d'Alsace may be made, but the place itself must on no account be missed. No more exquisite church in the region, and most beautifully is it placed amid sloping green hills! It may be said to consist of nave and apse only. There are but two lateral, chapels, evidently of a later period than the rest of the building. The interior is of great beauty, and no less so the façade and side porch, both very richly decorated. One's first feeling is of amazement to find such a church in such a place; but this dingy, sleepy little town was once of some importance and still does a good deal of trade. There is a very large Jewish community here, as in many other towns of Alsace. Whether they deserve their unpopularity is a painful question not lightly to be taken up. [Illustration: COLMAR] Leisurely travellers bound homeward from Mulhouse will do well to diverge from the direct Paris line and join it at Dijon, by way of Belfort--the heroic city of Belfort, with its colossal lion, hewn out of the solid rock--the little Protestant town of Montbéliard, and Besançon. Belfort is well worth seeing, and the "Territoire de Belfort" is to all intents and purposes a new department, formed from that remnant of the Haut Rhin saved to France after the war of 1870-71. The "Territoire de Belfort" comprises upwards of sixty thousand hectares, and a population, chiefly industrial, of nearly seventy thousand inhabitants, spread over many communes and hamlets. There is a picturesque and romantic bit of country between Montbéliard and Besançon, well worth seeing, if only from the railway windows. But the tourist who wants to make no friendly calls on the way, whose chief aim is to get over the ground quickly, must avoid the _détour_ by all means, as the trains are slow and the stoppages many. [Illustration: SKETCH BY GUSTAVE DORÉ, AETAT EIGHT YEARS] V THE 'MARVELLOUS BOY' OF ALSACE I It is especially at Strasburg that travellers are reminded of another "marvellous boy," who, if he did not "perish in his pride," certainly shortened his days by overreaching ambition and the brooding bitterness waiting upon shattered hopes. Gustave Doré was born and reared under the shadow of Strasburg Cathedral. The majestic spire, a world in itself, became indeed a world to this imaginative prodigy. He may be said to have learned the minster of minsters by heart, as before him Victor Hugo had familiarized himself with Notre Dame. The unbreeched artist of four summers never tired of scrutinizing the statues, monsters, gargoyles and other outer ornamentations, while the story of the pious architect Erwin and of his inspirer, Sabine, was equally dear. Never did genius more clearly exhibit the influence of early environment. True child of Alsace, he revelled in local folklore and legend. The eerie and the fantastic had the same fascination for him as sacred story, and the lives of the saints, gnomes, elves, werewolves and sorcerers bewitched no less than martyrs, miracle-workers and angels. His play-hours would be spent within the precincts of the cathedral, whilst the long winter evenings were beguiled with fairy-tales and fables, his mother and nurse reading or reciting these, their little listener being always busy with pen or pencil. Something much more than mere precocity is shown in these almost infantine sketches. Exorbitant fancy is here much less striking than sureness of touch, outlined figures drawn between the age of five and ten displaying remarkable precision and point, each line of the silhouette telling. At six he celebrated his first school prize with an illustrated letter, two portraits and a mannikin surmounting the text. [Footnote: See his life by Blanch Roosevelt, Sampson Low & Co. 1885; also the French translation of the same, 1886.] His groups of peasants and portraits, made three or four years later, possess almost a Rembrandt strength, unfortunately passion for the grotesque and the fanciful often lending a touch of caricature. Downright ugliness must have had an especial charm for the future illustrator of the _Inferno_, his unconscious models sketched by the way being uncomely as the immortal Pickwick and his fellows of Phiz. A devotee of Gothic art, he reproduced the mediæval monstrosities adorning cornice and pinnacle in human types. Equally devoted to nature out of doors, the same taste predominated. What he loved and sought was ever the savage, the legend-haunted, the ghoulish, seats and ambuscades of kelpie, hobgoblin, brownie and their kind. [Illustration: SKETCH BY GUSTAVE DORÉ, ÆTAT EIGHT YEARS] From the nursery upwards, if the term can be applied to French children, his life was a succession of artistic abnormalities and _tours de force_. The bantling in petticoats who could astound his elders with wonderfully accurate silhouettes, continued to surprise them in other ways. His memory was no less amazing than his draughtsmanship. When seven years of age, he was taken to the opera and witnessed _Robert le Diable_. On returning home he accurately narrated every scene. At eight he broke his right arm, but became as if by magic ambidextrous, whilst confined to bed, cheerily drawing all day long with the left hand. At ten he witnessed a grand public ceremony. In 1840 Strasburg celebrated the inauguration of a monument to Gutenberg, the festival being one of extraordinary splendour. Fifteen cars represented the industrial corporations of the city, each symbolically adorned, and in each riding figures suitably travestied and occupied, men, women and children wearing the costumes of the period represented. Among the corporations figured the _Peintres-verriers_, or painters on stained glass, their car proving especially attractive to one small looker-on. Intoxicated by the colour and movement of the fête, garlanded and beflagged streets, the symbolic carriages, the bands, civic and military, and the prevailing enthusiasm, the child determined to get up an apotheosis of his own: in other words, to repeat the performance on a smaller scale. Which he did. Cars, costumes, banners and decorations were all designed by this imp of ten. With the approval of his professors and the collaboration of his school-fellows, the Doré procession, consisting of four highly decorated cars, drawn by boys, defiled before the college authorities and made the round of the cathedral, the youthful impresario at its head. The car of the painters on glass was conspicuously elaborate, a star copied from a Cathedral window showing the superscription, _G. Doré, fecit_. Small wonder is it that the adoring mother of an equally adoring son should have believed in him from the first, and seen in these beginnings the dawn of genius, the advent, indeed, of a second Michael Angelo or Titian. The more practical father might chide such overreaching vaticinations, might reiterate-- "Do not fill the boy's head with nonsense." The answer would be-- "I know it. Our son is a genius." And Doré _père_ gave way, under circumstances curious enough. II In 1847 the family visited Paris, there to Gustave's delight spending four months. Loitering one day in the neighbourhood of the Bourse, his eye lighted upon comic papers with cuts published by MM. Auber and Philipon. Their shop windows were full of caricatures, and after a long and intent gaze the boy returned home, in two or three days presenting himself before the proprietors with half-a-dozen drawings much in the style of those witnessed. The benevolent but businesslike M. Philipon examined the sketches attentively, put several questions to his young visitor, and, finding that the step had been taken surreptitiously, immediately sat down and wrote to M. and Mme. Doré. He urged them with all the inducements he could command to allow their son the free choice of a career, assuring them of his future. A few days later an agreement was signed by father and publisher to this effect: During three years the latter was to receive upon certain terms a weekly cartoon from the sixteen-year-old artist, who, on his side, bound himself to offer no sketches elsewhere. [Footnote: This document was reproduced in _Le Figaro_ of December 4, 1848.] Meanwhile, Gustave would pursue his studies at the Lycée Charlemagne, his patron promising to look after his health and well-being. The arrangement answered, and in _Le Journal pour rire_ the weekly caricature signed by Doré soon noised his fame abroad. Ugly, even hideous, as were many of these caricatures, they did double duty, paying the lad's school expenses, and paving the way to better things. Of caricature Doré soon tired, and after this early period never returned to it. Is it any wonder that facile success and excessive laudation should turn the stripling's head? Professionally, if not artistically speaking, Doré passed straight from child to man; in one sense of the word he had no boyhood, the term tyro remained inapplicable. This undersized, fragile lad, looking years younger than he really was, soon found himself on what must have appeared a pinnacle of fame and fortune. Shortly after his agreement with Philipon, his father died, and Mme. Doré with her family removed to Paris, settling in a picturesque and historic hôtel of the Rue St. Dominique. Here Doré lived for the rest of his too short life. The house had belonged to the family of Saint Simon, that terrible observer under whose gaze even Louis XIV. is said to have quailed. So aver historians of the period. The associations of his home immediately quickened Doré's inventive faculties. He at once set to work and organized a brilliant set of _tableaux vivants_, illustrating scenes from the immortal Mémoires. The undertaking proved a great social success, and henceforth we hear of galas, soirées, theatricals and other entertainments increasing in splendour with the young artist's vogue--and means. The history of the next twenty years reads like a page from the _Arabian Nights_. Although dazzling is the record from first to last, and despite the millions of francs earned during those two decades, the artist's ambition was never satisfied. We are always conscious of bitterness and disillusion. As an illustrator, no longer of cheap comic papers but of literary masterpieces brought out in costly fashion, Doré reached the first rank at twenty, his _Rabelais_ setting the seal on his renown. So immense was the success of this truly colossal undertaking and of its successors, the _Don Quixote_, the _Contes de fées_ of Perrault and the rest, that he meditated nothing less than the illustration of cosmopolitan _chefs 'd' oeuvre, en bloc_, a series which should include every great imaginative work of the Western world! Thus in 1855 we find him noting the following projects, to be carried out in ten years' time:--illustrations of Æschylus, Lucan, Ovid, Shakespeare, Goethe _(Faust)_, Lamartine _(Méditations)_, Racine, Corneille, Schiller, Boccaccio, Montaigne, Plutarch's Lives--these names among others. The jottings in question were written for a friend who had undertaken to write the artist's biography. The _Rabelais, Don Quixote, The Inferno_, and several more of these sumptuous volumes were brought out in England. Forty years ago Doré's bold and richly imaginative work was in great favour here; indeed, throughout his life he was much more appreciated by ourselves than by his countrymen. All the drawings were done straight upon wood. Lavish in daily life, generous of the generous, Doré showed the same lavishness in his procedure. Some curious particulars are given upon this head. Fabulous sums were spent upon his blocks, even small ones costing as much as four pounds apiece. He must always have the very best wood, no matter the cost, and it was only the whitest, smoothest and glossiest boxwood that satisfied him. Enormous sums were spent upon this material, and to his honour be it recorded, that no matter the destination of a block, the same cost, thought and minute manipulation were expended upon a trifling commission as upon one involving thousands of pounds. The penny paper was treated precisely the same as the volume to be brought out at two guineas. In the zenith of his fame as an illustrator, at a time when tip-top authors and editors were all clamouring for his drawings, he did not despise humbler admirers and clients. His delight in his work was only equalled by quite abnormal physical and mental powers. Sleep, food, fresh air, everything was forgotten in the engrossment of work. At this time he would often give himself three hours of sleep only. Doré's ambition--rather, one of his ambitions--was to perfect wood engraving as an art, hence his indifference to the cost of production. Hence, doubtless, his persistence in drawing on wood without preliminary sketch or copy. Perhaps such obsession was natural. How could he foresee the variety of new methods that were so soon to transform book illustration? Anyhow, herein partly lies the explanation of the following notice in a second-hand book catalogue, 1911-- "No. 355. Gustave Doré: _Dante's Inferno_, with 76 full-page illustrations by Doré. 4to, gilt top, binding soiled, but otherwise good copy. _42s._ for _3s. 6d._ London, n.d." A leading London publisher consulted by me on the subject, writes as follows-- "Doré's works are no longer in vogue. One of the reasons lies in the fact that his pictures were done by the old engraved process. He drew them straight on wood, and there are, accordingly, no original drawings to be reproduced by modern methods." The words "fatal facility" cannot be applied to so consummate a draughtsman as the illustrator of Dante, Cervantes and Victor Hugo. But Doré's almost superhuman memory was no less of a pitfall than manual dexterity. The following story will partly explain his dislike of facsimile and duplication. An intimate friend, named Bourdelin, relates how one day during the siege of Paris, the pair found themselves by the Courbevoie bridge. One side of this bridge was guarded by French gendarmes, the other by German officers, Prussians, Saxons, Bavarians, a dozen in all. For a quarter of an hour the two Frenchmen lingered, Doré intently gazing on the group opposite. On returning home some hours later he produced a sketch-book and in Bourdelin's presence swiftly outlined the twelve figures, exactly reproducing not only physiognomic divergences but every detail of costume! Poor Doré! In those ardently patriotic days he entirely relied upon victory and drew an anticipatory picture of France triumphant, entitled, "Le Passage du Rhin." But the French never crossed the Rhine, and the drawing was given to this friend with the words: "My sketch has no longer any _raison d'être_. Keep it in memory of our fallacious hopes." III In an evil hour for his peace of mind and his fame, Doré decided to leave illustration and become a historic painter. He evidently regarded genius as a Pandora's gift, an all-embracing finality, an endowment that could neither be worsened nor bettered, being complete in itself. A reader of Ariosto, he had not taken to heart one of his most memorable verses, those mellifluous lines in which the poet dwells upon the laboriousness of intellectual achievement. Nor when illustrating the _Arabian Nights_ had the wonderful story of Hasan of El-Basrah evidently brought home to him the same moral. Between a Doré and his object--so he deemed--existed neither "seven valleys nor seven seas, nor seven mountains of vast magnitude." A Doré needed no assistance of the flying Jinn and the wandering stars on his way, no flying horse, "which when he went along flew, and when he flew the dust overtook him not." Without the equipment of training, without recognition of such a handicap, he entered upon his new career. In 1854 for the first time two pictures signed by Doré appeared on the walls of the Salon. But the canvases passed unnoticed. The Parisians would not take the would-be painter seriously, and the following year's experience proved hardly less disheartening. Of four pictures sent in, three were accepted, one of these being a historic subject, the other two being landscapes. The first, "La Bataille de l'Alma," evoked considerable criticism. The rural scenes were hung, as Edmond About expressed it, so high as to need a telescope. Both About and Th. Gautier believed in their friend's newly-developed talent, but art-critics and the public held aloof. No medal was decreed by the jury, and, accustomed as he had been to triumph after triumph, his fondest hopes for the second time deceived, Doré grew bitter and acrimonious. That his failure had anything to do with the real question at issue, namely, his genius as a historic painter, he would never for a moment admit. Jealousy, cabals, prejudice only were accountable. The half dozen years following were divided between delightfully gay and varied sociabilities, feverishly prolonged working hours and foreign travel. The millions of francs earned by his illustrations gave him everything he wanted but one, that one, in his eyes, worth all the rest. Travel, a splendid studio, largesses--he was generosity itself--all these were within his reach. The craved-for renown remained ungraspable. Even visits to his favourite resort, Barr, brought disenchantment. He found old acquaintances and the country folks generally wanting in appreciation. With greater and lesser men, he subacidly said to himself that a man was no prophet in his own country. Ten years after the fiasco of his first canvases in the Salon came an invitation to England and the alluring project of a Doré gallery. The Doré Bible and Tennyson, with other works, had paved the way for a right royal reception. The streets of London, as he could well believe, were paved with gold. But many were the _contra_. "I feel the presentiment," he wrote to a friend, "that if I betake myself to England, I shall break with my own country and lose prestige and influence in France. I cannot exist without my friends, my habits and my _pot-au-feu_. Folks tell me that England is a land of fogs, that the sun never shines there, that the inhabitants are cold, and that I should most likely suffer from sea-sickness in crossing the Manche. To sum up, England is a long way off, and I have a great mind to give up the project." Friendly persuasion, self-interest, wounded self-love carried the day. Reluctantly he decided upon the redoubtable sea-voyage. Whether he suffered from sea-sickness or no we are not told. In any case the visit was repeated, John Bull according the great Alsatian, as he was called, what France had so persistently withheld. Doré was here accorded the first rank among historic painters. His gallery in Bond Street became one of the London sights; in fashionable society, if not in the close ring of the great Victorian artists, he made a leading figure. Royalty patronized and welcomed him. The Queen bought one of his pictures ("Le Psalterion," now at Windsor), and invited him to Balmoral. The heir-apparent, the late King, admired his talent and relished his society. By the clerical world he was especially esteemed, being looked upon as a second Leonardo da Vinci. And, in fine, Doré must be regarded as an anticipator of the Entente cordiale. "Gustave Doré," his compatriots would say, "he is half an Englishman!" Forty years ago our popular favourite might indeed have believed in the fulfilment of his dream. The Thorwaldsen Gallery of Copenhagen had ever dazzled his imagination. Bond Street was not Paris, certainly, but in the greatest metropolis of the world his memory would be for ever perpetuated. Turning to the dithyrambic utterances of the London Press at the time we can hardly wonder at the hallucination. Here are one or two passages culled from leading dailies and weeklies-- "In gravity and magnitude of purpose, no less than in the scope and power of his imagination, he towers like a Colossus among his contemporaries. Compared with such a work as 'Christ leaving the Prætorium,' the pictures in Burlington House look like the production of a race of dwarfs whose mental faculties are as diminutive as their stature. And it is not alone the efforts of the English School of Painting that appear puny in presence of so great and gigantic an undertaking; the work of all the existing schools of Europe sinks into equal insignificance, and we must go back to the Italian painters of the sixteenth century to find a picture worthy of being classed with this latest and most stupendous achievement of the great French master." Elsewhere we read-- "The most marvellous picture of the present age is to be seen at 35, New Bond Street. The subject is 'Christ leaving the Prætorium,' The painter is the world-renowned Gustave Doré." A journal devoted to art-criticism wrote-- "In 'The Christian Martyrs' we have a striking, thrilling and ennobling picture." And so on, and so on. Yet at this time among "the dwarfs" of Burlington House then exhibiting was Millais, and contemporaneously with Doré in our midst, 1870-1, was Daubigny, whose tiniest canvases now fetch their thousands! It was during Doré's apogee in England that a well-known French amateur, also visiting our shores, was thus addressed by an English friend: "Come with me to Bond Street, you will there see the work of your greatest living painter." "_Our_ greatest painter!" exclaimed the other. "You mean your own. Doré is our first draughtsman of France, yes, but painter, never, neither the greatest nor great; at least we were ignorant of the fact till informed of it by yourself and your country-people." Doré knew well how matters stood, and bitterly resented the attitude of his own nation. Accorded a princely welcome across the Manche, his work worth its weight in gold on the other side of the Atlantic, in France he was looked at askance, even as a painter ignored. He regarded himself as shut out from his rightful heritage, and the victim, if not of a conspiracy, of a cabal. His school playmates and close friends, Taine, Edmond About and Th. Gautier, might be on his side; perhaps, with reservations, Rossini and a few other eminent associates also. But the prescient, unerring verdict of the collective "man in the street"-- "The people's voice, the proof and echo of all human fame"-- he missed; resentment preyed upon his spirits, undermined his vitality, and doubtless had something to do with his premature breakdown. The Doré gallery indeed proved his Capua, the long-stop to his fame. IV As a personality the would-be Titian, Dürer, Thorwaldsen and Benvenuto Cellini in one presents an engaging figure. His domestic life makes very pleasant reading. We find no dark holes and corners in the career of one who may be said to have remained a boy to the end, at fifty as at five full of freak and initiative, clingingly attached to a devoted and richly-endowed mother, and the ebullient spirit of a happy home. With his rapidly increasing fortune, the historic house in the Rue Dominique became an artistic, musical and dramatic centre. His fêtes were worthy of a millionaire, and, alike in those private theatricals, _tableaux vivants_ or concerts, he ever took a leading part. An accomplished violinist, Doré found in music a never-failing stimulant and refreshment. Rossini was one of his circle, among others were the two Gautiers, the two Dumas, Carolus Duran, Liszt, Gounod, Patti, Alboni and Nilsson, Mme. Doré, still handsome and alert in her old age, proudly doing the honours of what was now called the Hôtel Doré. By his literary and artistic brethren the many-faceted genius and exhilarating host was fully appreciated. Generosities he ever freely indulged in, the wealth of such rapid attainment being dispensed with an ungrudgeful hand. To works of charity the great illustrator gave largely, but we hear of no untoward misreckonings, nor bills drawn upon time, health or talents. With him, as with the average Frenchman, solvency was an eleventh commandment. Meantime, as the years wore on, again and again he bid desperately for the suffrages withheld, his legitimately won renown held by him of small account. To his American biographer he said, on showing her some of his pictures: "I illustrate books in order to pay for my colours and paint-brushes. I was born a painter." On the lady's companion, an American officer, naively asking if certain canvases were designed for London or Paris, he answered with bitter irony-- "Paris, forsooth! I do not paint well enough for Paris." As he spoke his face became clouded. The gay, jovial host of a few minutes before sighed deeply, and during their visit could not shake off depression. Two crowning humiliations came before the one real sorrow of his life, the loss of that gifted mother who was alike his boon companion, closest confidante and enthusiastic Egeria. Perpetually seeking laurels in new fields, in 1877 he made his _début_ as a sculptor. The marble group, "La Parque et l'Amour," signed G. Doré, won a _succès d'estime_, no more. In the following year was opened the great international exhibition on the Champ de Mars, Doré's enormous monumental vase being conspicuously placed over one of the porticoes. This astounding achievement in bronze, appropriately named the "Poème de la Vigne," created quite a sensation at the time. Reproductions appeared in papers of all countries containing a printing press or photographic machine. But for the artist's name, doubtless his work would have attained the gold medal and other honours. The Brobdingnagian vase, so wonderfully decorated with flowers, animals and arabesques, was passed over by the jury. Equally mortifying was the fate of his marble group in the same year's Salon. This subject, "La Gloire," had a place of honour in the sculpture gallery and won universal suffrages. The critics echoed popular approval. The jury remained passive. It was in the midst of these unnecessarily crushing defeats--for why, indeed, should any mortal have craved more than mortal success?--that Mme. Doré's forces gave way. From that time till her death, which occurred two years later, her son's place was by her side, floutings, projects, health and pleasure, forgotten, his entire thoughts being given to the invalid. No more beautiful picture of filial devotion could suggest itself to the painter of domestic subjects than this, Doré with table and sketching materials seated in his mother's sick-room, or at night ministering to her in wakeful moments. At dawn he would snatch a few hours' sleep, but that was all. No wonder that his own health should give way so soon after the death-blow of her loss. "My friend," he wrote to an English boon companion, on March 16, 1881, "she is no more. I am alone. You are a clergyman, I entreat you to pray for the repose of her beloved soul and the preservation of my reason." A few days later he wrote to the same friend of his "frightful solitude," adding his regret at not having anticipated such a blank and made for himself a home--in other words, taken a wife. Some kind matchmaking friends set to work and found, so at least they fancied, a bride exactly calculated to render him happy. But on January 23, 1883, Doré died, prematurely aged and broken down by grief, corroding disappointment and quite frenzied overwork and ambition. He never attained recognition as a historic painter among his country-folks. One canvas, however, "Tobit and the Angel," is placed in the Luxembourg, and his monument to Dumas ornaments the capital. His renown as an illustrator remains high as ever in France. And one, that one, the passionately desired prize of every Frenchman, became his: in 1861 he was decorated with the Red Ribbon. Six of Doré's great religious subjects retain their place in the Bond Street Gallery, but for reasons given above his wonderfully imaginative illustrations are here forgotten. The superb edition of the _Enid_ (Moxon, 1868), a folio bound in royal purple and gold, and printed on paper thick as vellum, the volume weighing four pounds, awakens melancholy reflections. What would have been poor Doré's feelings had he lived to see such a guinea's worth, and cheap at the price, gladly sold, rather got rid of, for three shillings! Doré's last work, the unconventional monument to the elder Dumas, was left unfinished. Completed by another hand, the group now forms a conspicuous object in the Avenue Villiers, Paris. The striking figure of the great quadroon, with his short crisped locks, suggests a closer relationship to the race thus apostrophized by Walt Whitman-- "You, dim descended, black, divine souled African...." He surmounts a lofty pedestal, on the base being seated a homely group, three working folks, a mob-capped woman reading a Dumas novel to two companions, evidently her father and husband, sons of the soil, drinking in every word, their attitude of the most complete absorption. Classicists and purists in art doubtless look askance at a work which would certainly have enchanted the sovereign romancer. "Will folks read my stories when I am gone, doctor?" he asked as he lay a-dying. The good physician easily reassured his patient. "When we have patients awaiting some much-dreaded operation in hospital," he replied, "we have only to give them one of your novels. Straightway they forget everything else." And Dumas--"the great, the humane," as a charming poet has called him--died happy. As well he might, in so far as his fame was concerned. _La Tulipe Noire_ would alone have assured his future. VI QUISSAC AND SAUVE One should always go round the sun to meet the moon in France, that is to say, one should ever circumambulate, never make straight for the lodestar ahead. The way to almost any place of renown, natural, historic or artistic, is sure to teem with as much interest as that to which we are bound. So rich a palimpsest is French civilization, so varied is French scenery, so multifarious the points of view called up at every town, that hurry and scurry leave us hardly better informed than when we set out. Thus it has ever been my rule to indulge in the most preposterous peregrination, taking no account whatever of days, seasons or possible cons, hearkening only to the pros, and never so much as glancing at the calendar. Such protracted zigzaggeries have been made easy to the "devious traveller" by one unusual advantage. Just as pioneers in Australasia find Salvation Army shelters scattered throughout remotest regions, so, fortunately, have I ever been able to count upon "harbour and good company" during my thirty-five years of French sojourn and travel. To reach a certain Pyrenean valley in which I was to spend a holiday would only have meant a night's dash by express from Paris. Instead, I followed the south-eastern route, halting at--Heaven knows how many!--already familiar and delightful places between Paris and Dijon, Dijon and Lyons, Lyons and Nîmes; from the latter city being bound for almost as many more before reaching my destination. Quite naturally I would often find myself on the track of that "wise and honest traveller," so John Morley calls Arthur Young. Half-way between Nîmes and Le Vigan lies the little town of Sauve, at which the Suffolk farmer halted in July 1787. "Pass six leagues of a disagreeable country," he wrote. "Vines and olives." But why a disagreeable country? Beautiful I thought the landscape as I went over the same ground on a warm September afternoon a century and odd years later, on alighting to be greeted with a cheery-- "Here I am!" As a rule I am entirely of Montaigne's opinion. "When I travel in Sicily," said the philosopher of Gascony, "it is not to find Gascons." Dearly as we love home and home-folk, the gist of travel lies in oppositeness and surprises. We do not visit the uttermost ends of the globe in search of next-door neighbours. That cordial "Here I am!" however, had an unmistakable accent, just a delightful suspicion of French. My host was a gallant naval officer long since retired from service, with his English wife and two daughters, spending the long vacation in his country home. High above the little village of Quissac rises the residence of beneficent owners, master and mistress, alas! long since gone to their rest. From its terrace the eye commands a vast and beautiful panorama, a richly cultivated plain dotted with villages and framed by the blue Cévennes. Tea served after English fashion and by a dear countrywoman, everywhere _"le confortable Anglais"_ admittedly unattainable by French housewives, could not for a single moment make me forget that I was in France. And when the dinner gong sounded came the final, the unequivocal, proof of distance. Imagine dining out of doors and in evening dress at eight o'clock in the last week of August! The table was set on the wide balcony of the upper floor, high above lawn and bosquets, the most chilly person having here nothing to fear. It is above all things the French climate that transports us so far from home and makes us feel ourselves hundreds, nay, thousands of miles away. I have elsewhere, perhaps ofttimes, dwelt on the luminosity of the atmosphere in southern and south-western France. To-night not a breath was stirring, the outer radiance was the radiance of stars only, yet so limpid, so lustrous the air that cloudless moonlight could hardly have made every object seem clearer, more distinct. The feeling inspired by such conditions is that of enchantment. For the nonce we may yield to a spell, fancy ourselves in Armida's enchanted garden or other "delightful land of Faëry." Not for long, however! Pleasant practical matters soon recall us to the life of every day. That laborious, out-of-door existence, which seems sordid in superfine English eyes, but which is never without the gaiety that enchanted Goldsmith and Sterne a hundred and fifty years ago. Whilst host and guest dined on the balcony, the farming folk and such of the household as could be spared were enjoying a starlit supper elsewhere. Later, my hostess took me downstairs and introduced her English visitor to a merry but strictly decorous party having a special bit of sward to themselves, bailiff, vintagers, stockmen, dairywoman, washerwoman and odd hands making up a round dozen of men, women and boys. All seemed quite at home, and chatted easily with their employer and the visitor, by no means perturbed, rather pleased by the intrusion. And here I will mention one of those incidents that lead English observers into so many misconceptions concerning French rural life. Little things that seem sordid, even brutifying to insular eyes, really arise from incompatible standards. The Frenchman's ideal of material comfort begins and ends with solvency, the sense of absolute security from want in old age. Small comforts he sets little store by; provided that he gets a good dinner, lesser considerations go. I do not hesitate to say that the comforts enjoyed by our own farm-servants half a century ago were far in excess of those thought more than sufficient by French labourers and their employers. On the following day my hosts took me round the farmery, fowl-run, piggeries, neat-houses and stalls being inspected one by one. When we came to the last named, I noticed at the door of the long building and on a level with the feeding troughs for oxen, a bed-shaped wooden box piled up with fresh clean straw. "That is where our stockman sleeps," explained the lady. Here, then, quite contentedly slept the herdsman of a large estate in nineteenth-century France, whilst his English compeers two generations before, and in much humbler employ, had their tidy bedroom and comfortable bed under the farmer's roof. What would my own Suffolk ploughmen have said to the notion of spending the night in an ox-stall? But _autres pays, autres moeurs_. In Déroulède's fine little poem, "Bon gîte", a famished, foot-sore soldier returning home is generously entreated by a poor housewife. When she sets about preparing a bed for him, he remonstrates-- "Good dame, what means that new-made bed, Those sheets so finely spun? On heaped-up straw in cattle-shed, I'd snore till rise of sun." The compensations for apparent hardship in the case of French peasants are many and great. In Henry James's great series of dissolving views called _The American Scene_, he describes the heterogeneous masses as having "a promoted look". The French proletariat have not a promoted look, rather one of inherited, traditional stability and self-respect. One and all, moreover, are promoting themselves, rising by a slow evolutionary process from the condition of wage-earner to that of metayer, tenant, lastly freeholder. Although the immediate environs of Quissac and Sauve are not remarkable, magnificent prospects are obtained a little farther afield--our drives and walks abounded in interest--and associations! Strange but true it is that we can hardly halt anywhere in France without coming upon historic, literary or artistic memorials. Every town and village is redolent of tradition, hardly a spot but is glorified by genius! Thus, half-an-hour's drive from our village still stands the château and birthplace of Florian, the Pollux of fabulists, La Fontaine being the Castor, no other stars of similar magnitude shining in their especial arc. Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian was born here in 1755, just sixty years after the great fabulist's death. Nephew of a marquis, himself nephew-in-law of Voltaire, endowed with native wit and gaiety, the young man was a welcome guest at Fernay, and no wonder! His enchanting fables did not see the light till after Voltaire's death, but we will hope that some of them had delighted his host in recitation. Many of us who loved French in early years have a warm corner in our hearts for "Numa Pompilius", but Florian will live as the second fabulist of France, to my own thinking twin of his forerunner. How full of wisdom, wit and sparkle are these apologues! Take, for instance, the following, which to the best of my ability I have rendered into our mother tongue-- VANITY (LE PETIT CHIEN). I Once on a time and far away, The elephant stood first in might, He had by many a forest fray At last usurped the lion's right. On peace and reign unquestioned bent, The ruler in his pride of place, Forthwith to life-long banishment Doomed members of the lion race. II Dispirited, their best laid low, The vanquished could but yield to fate, And turn their backs upon the foe In silence nursing grief and hate. A poodle neatly cropped and clipped, With tasselled tail made leonine, On hearing of the stern rescript, Straightway set up a piteous whine. III "Alas!" he moaned. "Ah, woe is me! Where, tyrant, shall I shelter find; Advancing years what will they be, My home and comforts left behind?" A spaniel hastened at the cry, "Come, mate, what's this to-do about?" "Oh, oh," the other gulped reply, "For exile we must all set out!" IV "Must all?" "No, you are safe, good friend; The cruel law smites us alone; Here undisturbed your days may end, The lions must perforce begone." "The lions? Brother, pray with these, What part or lot have such as you?" "What part, forsooth? You love to tease; You know I am a lion too." [Footnote: The first translation appeared with others in _French Men, Women and Books_, 1910. The second was lately issued in the _Westminster Gazette_.] Here is another, a poem of essential worldly wisdom, to be bracketed with Browning's equally oracular "The Statue and the Bust," fable and poem forming a compendium. THE FLIGHTY PURPOSE (LE PAYSAN AND LA RIVIERE). "I now intend to change my ways"-- Thus Juan said--"No more for me A round on round of idle days 'Mid soul-debasing company. I've pleasure woo'd from year to year As by a siren onward lured, At last of roystering, once held dear, I'm as a man of sickness cured." "Unto the world I bid farewell, My mind to retrospection give, Remote as hermit in his cell, For wisdom and wise friends I'll live." "Is Thursday's worldling, Friday's sage? Too good such news," I bantering spoke. "How oft you've vowed to turn the page, Each promise vanishing like smoke!" "And when the start?" "Next week--not this." "Ah, you but play with words again." "Nay, do not doubt me; hard it is To break at once a life-long chain." Came we unto the riverside, Where motionless a rustic sate, His gaze fixed on the flowing tide. "Ho, mate, why thus so still and squat?" "Good sirs, bound to yon town am I; No bridge anear, I sit and sit Until these waters have run dry, So that afoot I get to it." "A living parable behold, My friend!" quoth I. "Upon the brim You, too, will gaze until you're old, But never boldly take a swim!" As far as I know, no memorial has as yet been raised to the fabulist either at Quissac or at Sauve, but as long as the French language lasts successive generations will keep his memory green. Certain of his fables every little scholar knows by heart. Associations of other kinds are come upon by travellers bound from Quissac to Le Vigan, that charming little centre of silkworm rearing described by me elsewhere. A few miles from our village lies Ganges, a name for ever famous in the annals of political economy and progress. "From Ganges", wrote the great Suffolk farmer in July 1787, "to the mountain of rough ground which I crossed" (in the direction of Montdardier), "the ride has been the most interesting which I have taken in France; the efforts of industry the most vigorous, the animation the most lively. An activity has been here that has swept away all difficulties before it and clothed the very rocks with verdure. It would be a disgrace to common sense to ask the cause; the enjoyment of property must have done it. _Give a man the sure possession of a bleak rock, and he will turn it into a garden_." The italics are my own. When will Arthur Young have his tablet in Westminster Abbey, I wonder? The department of the Gard offers an anomaly of the greatest historic interest. Here and here only throughout the length and breadth of France villages are found without a Catholic church, communities that have held fast to Protestantism and the right of private judgment from generation to generation during hundreds of years. Elsewhere, in the Côte d'Or, for instance, as I have described in a former work, Protestantism was completely stamped out by the Revocation, whole villages are now ultramontane, having abjured, the alternatives placed before them being confiscation of property, separation of children and parents, banishment, prison and death. [Footnote: See _Friendly Faces_, chap. xvi.] The supremacy of the reformed faith may be gathered from the following facts: A few years back, of the six deputies representing this department five were Protestant and the sixth was a Jew. The _Conseil Général_ or provincial council numbered twenty-three Protestants as against seventeen Catholics. The seven members of the Board of Hospitals at Nîmes, three of the four inspectors of public health, nine of the twelve head-mistresses of girls' schools, twenty-nine of forty rural magistrates, were Protestants. My host belonged to the same faith, as indeed do most of his class and the great captains of local industry. It is not as in Michelet's fondly-loved St. Georges de Didonne, where only the lowly and the toiler have kept the faith aflame. But whilst neighbours now live peacefully side by side, a gulf still divides Catholic and Protestant. Although half a millennium has elapsed since the greatest crime of modern history, the two bodies remain apart: French _annexés_ of Alsace-Lorraine and Germans are not more completely divided. Mixed marriages are of rarest occurrence, intercourse limited to the conventional and the obligatory. There are historic curses that defy lustration. St. Bartholomew is one of these. I must now say something about the country-folks. Calls upon our rustic neighbours, long chats with affable housewives, and rounds of farmery, vineyard and field attracted me more than the magnificent panoramas to be obtained from Corconne and other villages within an easy drive. George Sand has ever been regarded as a poetizer of rural life, an arch-idealist of her humbler country-folks. At Quissac I made more than one acquaintance that might have stepped out of _La petite Fadette_ or _La mare au Diable_. One old woman might have been "la paisible amie," the tranquil friend, to whom the novelist dedicated a novel. Neat, contented, active and self-respecting, she enjoyed a life-interest in two acres and a cottage, her live stock consisting of a goat, a pig and poultry, her invested capital government stock representing a hundred pounds. Meagre as may seem these resources, she was by no means to be pitied or inclined to pity herself, earning a few francs here and there by charing, selling her little crops, what eggs and chickens she could spare, above all things being perfectly independent. A charming idyll the great Sand could have found here. The owner of a thirty-acre farm had lately died, leaving it with all he possessed to two adopted children, a young married couple who for years had acted respectively as steward and housekeeper. We are bound to infer that on the one hand there had been affection and gratitude, on the other the same qualities with conscientiousness in business matters. The foster-father was childless and a widower, but, among the humble as well as the rich French, ambition of posthumous remembrance often actuates impersonal bequests. This worthy Jacques Bonhomme might have made an heir of his native village, leaving money for a new school-house or some other public edifice. Very frequently towns and even villages become legatees of the childless, and the worthy man would have been quite sure of a statue, a memorial tablet, or at least of having his name added to a street or square. Before taking leave of Quissac I must mention one curious fact. The Proteus of Odyssean story or the King's daughter and the Efreet in the "Second Royal Mendicant's Adventure," could not more easily transform themselves than the French peasant. Husbandman to-day, mechanic on the morrow, at one season he plies the pruning-hook, at another he turns the lathe. This adaptability of the French mind, strange to say, is nowhere seen to greater advantage than in out-of-the-way regions, just where are mental torpidity and unbendable routine. Not one of Millet's blue-bloused countrymen but masters a dozen handicrafts. Thus, whilst the heraldic insignia of Sauve should be a trident, those of Quissac should be surmounted by an old shoe! In the former place the forked branches of the _Celtis australis_ or nettle tree, _Ulmaceæ_, afford a most profitable occupation. From its tripartite boughs are made yearly thousands upon thousands of the three-pronged forks used in agriculture. The wood, whilst very durable, is yielding, and lends itself to manipulation. In Florian's birthplace folks make a good living out of old boots and shoes! Some native genius discovered that, however well worn footgear may be, valuable bits of leather may remain in the sole. These fragments are preserved, and from them boot heels are made; the _débris_, boots, shoes and slippers, no matter the material, find their way to the soil as manure. But this subject if pursued further would lead to a lane, metaphorically speaking, without a turning, that is to say to a treatise on French rural economy. VII AN IMMORTALIZER In Renan's exquisitely phrased preface to his _Drames Philosophiques_ occurs the following sentence which I render into English _tant bien que mal_: "Side by side are the history of fact and the history of the ideal, the latter materially speaking of what has never taken place, but which, in the ideal sense, has happened a thousand times." Who when visiting the beautiful little town of Saumur thinks of the historic figures connected with its name? Even the grand personality of Duplessis Morny sinks into insignificance by comparison with that of the miser's daughter, the gentle, ill-starred Eugénie Grandet! And who when Carcassonne first breaks upon his view thinks of aught but Nadaud's immortal peasant and his plaint-- "I'm growing old, just three score year, In wet and dry, in dust and mire, I've sweated, never getting near Fulfilment of my heart's desire. Ah, well I see that bliss below 'Tis Heaven's will to vouchsafe none, Harvest and vintage come and go, I've never got to Carcassonne!" The tragi-comic poem of six eight-lined verses ending thus-- "So sighed a peasant of Limoux, A worthy neighbour bent and worn. 'Ho, friend,' quoth I, 'I'll go with you. We'll sally forth to-morrow morn.' And true enough away we hied, But when our goal was almost won, God rest his soul!--the good man died, He never got to Carcassonne!" No lover of France certainly should die without having seen Carcassonne, foremost of what I will call the pictorial Quadrilateral, no formidable array after the manner of their Austrian cognominal, but lovely, dreamlike things. These four walled-in towns or citadels, perfect as when they represented mediaeval defence, are Carcassonne, Provins in the Brie, Semur in upper Burgundy, and the Breton Guérande, scene of Balzac's _Béatrix_. To my thinking, and I have visited each, there is little to choose between the first two, but exquisite as is the little Briard acropolis, those imaginary "topless towers of Ilium" of Nadaud's peasant bear the palm. That first view of Carcassonne as we approach it in the railway of itself repays a long and tedious journey. A vision rather than reality, structure of pearly clouds in mid-heaven, seems that opaline pile lightly touched with gold. We expect it to evaporate at evenfall! Vanish it does not, nor wholly bring disillusion, so fair and harmonious are the vistas caught in one circuit of the citadel, mere matter of twenty minutes. But the place by this time has become so familiar to travellers in France and readers of French travel, that I will here confine myself to its glorifier, author of a song that has toured the world. The first biography of the French Tom Moore, published last year, gives no history of this much translated poem. Had, indeed, some worthy vine-grower poured out such a plaint in the poet's ears? Very probably, for one and all of Nadaud's rural poems breathe the very essence of the fields, the inmost nature of the peasant, from first to last they reveal Jacques Bonhomme to us, his conceptions of life, his mentality and limitations. [Footnote: My own rendering of this piece and many other of Nadaud's songs and ballads are given in _French Men, Women and Books_, 1910. American translators have admirably translated _Carcassonne_.] Nadaud's career is uneventful, but from one point of view, far from being noteless, he was pre-eminently the happy man. His biographer (A. Varloy) tells us of a smooth, much relished, even an exuberant existence. The son of an excellent bourgeois, whose ancestry, nevertheless, like that of many another, could be traced for six hundred years, his early surroundings were the least lyric imaginable. He was born at Roubaix, the flourishing seat of manufacture near Lille, which, although a mere _chef-lieu du canton_, does more business with the Bank of France than the big cities of Toulouse, Nîmes, Montpellier and others thrice its size. Dress fabrics, cloths and exquisite napery are the products of Roubaix and its suburb; vainly, however, does any uncommercial traveller endeavour to see the weavers at work. Grimy walls and crowded factory chimneys are relieved at Roubaix by gardens public and private, and the town is endowed with museums, libraries, art and technical schools. But Nadaud, like Cyrano de Bergerac, if asked what gave him most delectation, would certainly have replied-- "Lorsque j'ai fait un vers et que je l'aime, Je me paye en me le chantant à moi-même." Here is the boy's daily programme when a twelve-year-old student at the Collège Rollin, Paris. The marvel is that the poetic instinct survived such routine, marvellous also the fact that the dry-as-dust in authority was a well-known translator of Walter Scott. If anything could have conjured the Wizard of the North from his grave it was surely these particulars written by Gustave Nadaud to his father on the 19th of October, 1833-- "Five-thirty, rise; five-forty-five, studies till seven-thirty; breakfast and recreation from seven-thirty till eight; from eight till ten, school; from ten to a quarter past, recreation; from a quarter past ten till half past twelve, school; then dinner and recreation from one till two. School from two till half past four; collation from half past four till a quarter past five; school from a quarter past five till eight. Supper and to bed." Poetry here was, however, a healthy plant, and in his school-days this born song-writer would scribble verses on his copy-books and read Racine for his own amusement. Turning his back upon the mill-wheels of his native town and an assured future in a Parisian business house, like Gil Bias's friend, _il s'est jeté dans le bel esprit_--in other words, he betook himself to the career of a troubadour. Never, surely, did master of song-craft write and sing so many ditties! Quitting school with a tip-top certificate both as to conduct and application, Gustave Nadaud quickly won fame if not fortune. Hardly of age, he wrote somewhat Bohemian effusions that at once made the round of Parisian music-halls. The revolution, if it brought topsy-turvydom in politics, like its great forerunner '89 brought the apogee of song. The popular young lyrist, ballader and minstrel, for Nadaud accompanied himself on the piano, now made a curious compact, agreeing to write songs for twenty years, a firm named Heugel paying him six thousand francs yearly by way of remuneration. Two hundred and forty pounds a year should seem enough for a young man, a bachelor brought up in bourgeois simplicity. But the cost of living in Paris was apparently as high sixty years ago as now. In 1856-7 he wrote to a friend: "How upon such an income I contrived to live and frequent Parisian salons without ever asking a farthing of any one, only those who have been poor can tell." The salons spoken of were not only aristocratic but Imperial, the late Princess Mathilde being an enthusiastic hostess and patroness. Several operettas were composed by Nadaud for her receptions and philanthropic entertainments. Here is a sketch of the French Tom Moore in 1868 by a witty contributor of the _Figaro_-- "Nadaud then seated himself at the piano, and of the words he sang I give you full measure, the impression produced by his performance I cannot hope to convey. Quite indescribable was the concord of voice and hands, on the music as on wings each syllable being lightly borne, yet its meaning thereby intensified. In one's memory only can such delight be revived and reproduced." With other poets, artists and musicians Nadaud cast vocation to the winds in 1870-1, working in field and other hospitals. "I did my best to act the part of a poor little sister of charity," he wrote to a friend. His patriotic poem, "La grande blessée," was written during that terrible apprenticeship. With Nadaud henceforward it was a case of roses, roses all the way. Existence he had ever taken easily, warm friendships doing duty for a domestic circle. And did he not write-- "I dreamed of an ideal love And Benedick remain?" His songs proved a mine of wealth, and the sumptuously illustrated edition got up by friends and admirers brought him 80,000 francs, with which he purchased a villa, christened Carcassonne, at Nice, therein spending sunny and sunny-tempered days and dispensing large-hearted hospitality. To luckless brethren of the lyre he held out an ungrudgeful hand, alas! meeting with scant return. The one bitterness of his life, indeed, was due to ingratitude. Among his papers after death was found the following note-- "Throughout the last thirty years I have lent sums, large considering my means, to friends, comrades and entire strangers. Never, never, never has a single centime been repaid by a single one of these borrowers. I now vow to myself, never under any circumstances whatever to lend money again!" Poor song-writers, nevertheless, he posthumously befriended. By his will with the bulk of his property was founded "La petite Caisse des chansonniers," a benefit society for less happy Nadauds to come. By aid of these funds, lyrists and ballad-writers unable to find publishers would be held on their onward path. Full of honours, Nadaud died in 1893, monuments being erected to his memory, streets named after him, and undiminished popularity keeping his name alive. And the honour denied to Béranger, to Victor Hugo, to Balzac, the coveted sword and braided coat of the Forty were Nadaud's also. With the witty Piron he could not ironically anticipate his own epitaph thus-- "Here lies Nadaud who was nothing, not even an Academician!" Before taking leave of Carcassonne, poetic and picturesque, the most inveterate anti-sightseer should peep into its museum. For this little _chef-lieu_ of the Aude, with a population under thirty thousand, possesses what, indeed, hardly a French townling lacks, namely, a picture-gallery. If not remarkable from an artistic point of view, the collection serves to demonstrate the persistent, self-denying and constant devotion to culture in France. Times may be peaceful or stormy, seasons may prove disastrous, the withered, thin and blasted ears of corn may devour the seven ears full and golden, the ship of State may be caught in a tornado and lurch alarmingly--all the same "the man in the street," "the rascal many," to quote Spenser, will have a museum in which, with wife and hopefuls, to spend their Sunday afternoons. The local museum is no less of a necessity to Jacques Bonhomme than his daily _pot-au-feu_, that dish of soup which, according to Michelet, engenders the national amiability. The splendid public library--the determinative is used in the sense of comparison--numbers just upon a volume per head, and the art school, school of music, and other institutions tell the same story. Culture throughout the country seems indigenous, to spread of itself, and, above all things, to reach all classes. Culture on French soil is gratuitous, ever free as air! We must never overlook that primary fact. One or two more noticeable facts about Carcassonne. Here was born that eccentric revolutionary and poetic genius, Fabre d'Eglantine, of whom I have written elsewhere. [Footnote: See Literary Rambles in France, 1906] Yet another historic note. From St. Vincent's tower during the Convention, 1792-5, were taken those measurements, the outcome of which was the metric system. Two mathematicians, by name Delambre and Méchain, were charged with the necessary calculations, the _mètre_, or a ten-millionth part of the distance between the poles and the equator (32,808 English feet), being made the unit of length. Uniformity of weight followed, and became law in 1799. But to touch upon historic Carcassonne is to glance upon an almost interminable perspective. The chronicle of this charming little city on the bright blue Aude has been penned and re-penned in blood and tears. In 1560 Carcassonne suffered a preliminary Saint Bartholomew, a general massacre of Protestants announcing the evil days to follow; days that after five hundred years have left their trace, moral as well as material. VIII TOULOUSE A zigzaggery, indeed, was this journey from Nîmes to my Pyrenean valley. That metropolis of art and most heroic town, Montauban, I could not on any account miss. Toulouse necessarily had to be taken on the way to Ingres-ville, as I feel inclined to call the great painter's birthplace and apotheosis. But why write of Toulouse? The magnificent city, its public gardens, churches, superbly housed museums and art galleries, its promenades, drives and panoramas are all particularized by Murray, Joanne and Baedeker. Here, however, as elsewhere, are one or two features which do not come within the province of a guide-book. The only city throughout France that welcomed the Inquisition was among the first to open a _Lycée pour jeunes filles._ In accordance with the acts of 1880-82 public day schools for girls were opened throughout France; that of Toulouse being fairly representative, I will describe my visit. The school was now closed for the long vacation, but a junior mistress in temporary charge gave us friendliest welcome, and showed us over the building and annexes. She evidently took immense and quite natural pride in the little world within world of which she formed a part. Her only regret was that we could not see the scholars at work. Here may be noted the wide field thrown open to educated women by the above-named acts, from under-mistresses to _Madame la directrice_, the position being one of dignity and provision for life, pensions being the reward of long service. The course of study is prepared by the rector of the Toulousain Academy, and the rules of management by the municipal council, thus the programme of instruction bears the signature of the former, whilst the prospectus, dealing with fees, practical details, is signed by the mayor in the name of the latter. We find a decree passed by the town council in 1887 to the effect that in the case of two sisters a fourth of the sum-total of fees should be remitted, of three, a half, of four, three-quarters, and of five, the entire amount. Even the outfit of the boarders must be approved by the same authority. A neat costume is obligatory, and the number and material of undergarments is specified with the utmost minuteness. Besides a sufficient quantity of suitable clothes, each student must bring three pairs of boots, thirty pocket-handkerchiefs, a bonnet-box, umbrella, parasol, and so forth. Such regulations may at first sight look trivial and unnecessary, but there is much to be said on the other side. From the beginning of the term to the end, the matron, whose province is quite apart from that of the head-mistress, is never worried about the pupils' dress, no shoes in need of repair, no garments to be mended, no letters to be written begging Mme. A. to send her daughter a warm petticoat, Mme. B. to forward a hair-brush, and so on. Again, the uniform obligatory on boarders prevents those petty jealousies and rivalries provoked by fine clothes in girls' schools. Alike the child of the millionaire and of the small official wear the same simple dress. Children are admitted to the lower school between the ages of five and twelve, the classes being in the hands of certificated mistresses. The upper school, at which pupils are received from twelve years and upwards, and are expected to remain five years, offers a complete course of study, lady teachers being aided by professors of the Faculté des Lettres and of the Lycée for youths. Students who have remained throughout the entire period, and have satisfactorily passed final examinations, receive a certificate entitling them to admission into the great training college of Sèvres or to offer themselves as teachers in schools and families. The curriculum is certainly modest compared with that obligatory on candidates for London University, Girton College, or our senior local examination; but it is an enormous improvement on the old conventual system, and several points are worthy of imitation. Thus a girl quitting the Lycée would have attained, first and foremost, a thorough knowledge of her own language and its literature; she would also possess a fair notion of French common law, of domestic economy, including needlework of the more useful kind, the cutting out and making up of clothes, and the like. Gymnastics are practised daily. In the matter of religion the municipality of Toulouse shows absolute impartiality. No sectarian teaching enters into the programme, but Catholics and Protestants and Jews in residence can receive instruction from their respective ministers. The Lycée competes formidably with the convents as regards fees. Twenty-eight pounds yearly cover the expense of board, education, and medical attendance at the upper school; twenty-four at the lower; day boarders pay from twelve to fifteen pounds a year; books, the use of the school omnibus, and laundress being extras. Three hundred scholars in all attended during the scholastic year ending July 1891. Day-pupils not using the school omnibus must be accompanied to and from the school, and here an interesting point is to be touched upon. In so far as was practicable, the Lycée for girls has been modelled on the plan of the time-honoured establishments for boys. As yet a uniform curriculum to begin with was out of the question; the programme is already too ambitious in the eyes of many, whilst ardent advocates of the higher education of women in France regret that the vices as well as the virtues of the existing system have been retained. Educationists and advanced thinkers generally would fain see a less strait-laced routine, a less stringent supervision, more freedom for play of character. The Lycée student, boy or girl, youth or maiden, is as strictly guarded as a criminal; not for a moment are these citizens of the future trusted to themselves. In the vast dormitory of the high school here we see thirty neat compartments with partitions between, containing bed and toilet requisites, and at the extreme end of the room, commanding a view of the rest, is the bed of the under-mistress in charge, _surveillante_ as she is called. Sleeping or waking, the students are watched. This massing together of numbers and perpetual supervision no longer find universal favour. But I am here writing of fifteen years ago. Doubtless were I to repeat my visit I should find progressive changes too numerous for detail. Happy little middle-class Parisians now run to and from their Lycées unattended. Young ladies in society imitate their Anglo-Saxon sisters and have shaken off that incubus, _la promeneuse_ or walking chaperon. Works on social France, as is the case with almanacs, encyclopædias and the rest, require yearly revision. Manners and customs change no less quickly than headgear and skirts. Charles Lamb would have lived ecstatically at the Languedocian capital. It is a metropolis of beggardom, a mendicant's Mecca, a citadel of Jules Richepin's cherished _Gueux_. Here, indeed, Elia need not have lamented over the decay of beggars, "the all sweeping besom of societarian reformation--your only modern Alcides' club to rid time of its abuses--is uplift with many-handed sway to extirpate the last fluttering tatters of the bugbear _Mendicity_. Scrips, wallets, bags, staves, dogs and crutches, the whole mendicant fraternity with all their baggage are fast hasting out of the purlieus of this eleventh persecution." No, here is what the best beloved of English humorists calls "the oldest and the honourablest form of pauperism," here his vision would have feasted on "Rags, the Beggars' robes and graceful insignia of his profession, his tenure, his full dress, the suit in which he is expected to show himself in public." "He is never out of fashion," adds Lamb, "or limpeth outwardly behind it. He is not required to wear court mourning. He weareth all colours, fearing none. His costume hath undergone less change than the Quaker's. He is the only man in the universe who is not obliged to study appearances." Here, too, would the unmatchable writer have gazed upon more than one "grand fragment, as good as an Elgin marble." And alas! many deformities more terrible still, and which, perhaps, would have damped even Lamb's ardour. For in the Toulouse of 1894, as in the London of sixty years before, its mendicants "were so many of its sights, its Lions." The city literally swarmed with beggars. At every turn we came upon some living torso, distorted limb and hideous sore. Begging seemed to be the accepted livelihood of cripples, blind folk and the infirm. Let us hope that by this time something better has been devised for them all. Was it here that Richepin partly studied the mendicant fraternity, giving us in poetry his astounding appreciation, psychological and linguistic? And perhaps the bard of the beggars, like the English humorist, would wish his _pauvres Gueux_ to be left unmolested. The sights of Toulouse would occupy a conscientious traveller many days. The least leisurely should find time to visit the tiny square called _place du Salin_. Here took place the innumerable _autos-da-fé_ of the Toulousain Inquisition, and here, so late as 1618, the celebrated physician and scientist Vanini was atrociously done to death by that truly infernal tribunal, and for what? For simply differing from the obscurantism of his age, and having opinions of his own. The atrocious sentence passed on Vanini was in part remitted, evidently public opinion already making itself felt. His tongue was cut out, but strangulation preceded the burning alive. Here one cannot help noting the illogical, the puerile--if such words are applicable to devilish wickedness--aspect of such Inquisitorial sentences. If these hounders-down of common-sense and the reasoning faculty really believed, as they affected to believe, that men who possessed and exercised both qualities were thereby doomed to eternal torments, why set up the horrible and costly paraphernalia of the Inquisition? After all, no matter how ingeniously inventive might be their persecutors, they could only be made to endure terminable and comparatively insignificant torments, not a millionth millionth fraction of eternity! Refreshing it is to turn to the Toulouse of minstrelsy. The proud seat of the troubadours, the Academy of the Gay Science and of the poetic tourneys revived in our own day! Mistral's name has long been European, and other English writers have charmingly described the _Feux Floraux_ of the olden time and the society of _Lou Felibrige_ with its revival of Provençal literature. But forty years ago, and twenty years before his masterpiece had found a translator here, he was known and highly esteemed by a great Englishman. In Mill's _Correspondence_ (1910) we find a beautiful letter, and written in fine stately French, from the philosopher to the poet, dated Avignon, October 1869. Mill had sent Mistral the French translation of his essay, "The Subjection of Women," and in answer to the other's thanks and flattering assurance of his own conversion, he wrote: "Parmi toutes les adhésions qui ont été données à la thèse de mon petit livre, je ne sais s'il y en a aucune qui m'ont fait plus de plaisir que la vôtre." The letter as a whole is most interesting, and ends with a characterization, a strikingly beautiful passage in the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. Hard were it to match this appreciation among orthodox writers. So transparent is the atmosphere here that the Pyrenees appear within an hour's ride: they are in reality sixty miles off! Lovely are the clearly outlined forms, flecked with light and shadow, the snowy patches being perfectly distinct. IX MONTAUBAN, OR INGRES-VILLE An hour by rail from Toulouse lies the ancient city of Montauban, as far as I know unnoticed by English tourists since Arthur Young's time. This superbly placed _chef-lieu_ of the Tarn and Garonne is alike an artistic shrine and a palladium of religious liberty. Here was born that strongly individualized and much contested genius, Dominique Ingres, and here Protestantism withstood the League, De Luyne's besieging army and the dragonnades of Louis XIV. The city of Ingres may be thought of by itself; there is plenty of food for reflection here without recalling the prude whose virtue caused more mischief than the vices of all the Montespans and Dubarrys put together. Let us forget the Maintenon terror at Montauban, the breaking up of families, the sending to the galleys of good men and women, the torturings, the roastings alive, and turn to the delightful and soothing souvenirs of genius! Every French town that has given birth to shining talent is straightway turned into a Walhalla. This ancient town, so strikingly placed, breathes of Ingres, attracts the traveller by the magic of the painter's name, has become an art pilgrimage. The noble monument erected by the townsfolk to their great citizen and the picture-gallery he bequeathed his native city well repay a much longer journey than that from Toulouse. We see here to what high levels public spirit and local munificence can rise in France. We see also how close, after all, are the ties that knit Frenchman and Frenchman, how the glory of one is made the pride of all. The bronze statue of the painter, with the vast and costly bas-relief imitating his "Apotheosis of Homer" in the Louvre, stand in the public walk, the beauty of which aroused even Arthur Young's enthusiasm. "The promenade," he wrote in June 1787, "is finely situated. Built on the highest part of the rampart, and commanding that noble vale, or rather plain, one of the richest in Europe, which extends on one side to the sea and in front to the Pyrenees, whose towering masses heaped one upon another in a stupendous manner, and covered with snow, offer a variety of lights and shades from indented forms and the immensity of their projections. This prospect, which contains a semicircle of a hundred miles in diameter, has an oceanic vastness in which the eye loses itself; an almost boundless scene of cultivation; an animated but confused mass of infinitely varied parts, melting gradually into the distant obscure, from which emerges the amazing frame of the Pyrenees, rearing their silvered heads above the clouds." The Ingres Museum contains, I should say, more works from the hand of a single master than were ever before collected under the same roof. Upwards of a thousand sketches, many of great power and beauty, are here, besides several portraits and one masterpiece, the Christ in the Temple, brilliant as a canvas of Holman Hunt, although the work of an octogenarian. The painter's easel, palette, and brushes, his violin, the golden laurel-wreath presented to him by his native town, and other relics are reverently gazed at on Sundays by artisans, soldiers and peasant-folk. The local museum in France is something more than a little centre of culture, a place in which to breathe beauty and delight. It is a school of the moral sense, of the nobler passions, and also a temple of fame. Therein the young are taught to revere excellence, and here the ambitious are stimulated by worthy achievement. Ingres-ville recalls an existence stormy as the history of Montauban itself. This stronghold of reform throughout her vicissitudes did not show a bolder, more determined front to the foe than did her great citizen his own enemies and detractors. Dominique Ingres and his life-story favour those physicists who discern in native soil and surroundings the formative influences of aptitudes and character. The man and his birthplace matched each other. Indomitableness characterized both, and to understand both we must know something of their respective histories. To Montauban Henri Martin's great history does ample justice, to her illustrious son contemporary writers have recently paid worthy tributes. [Footnote: See _Les Grands Artistes--Ingres_, par J. Mommeja, Paris, Laurens; _Le Roman d'amour de M. Ingres_, par H. Lapauze, Paris, Lafitte, 1911.] "When a writer is praised above his merits in his own times," wrote Savage Landor, "he is certain of being estimated below them in the times succeeding." In the case of Ingres, opposition and contumely were followed by perhaps excessive laudation whilst he lived, after his death ensuing a long period of reaction. Time has now set the seal upon his fame. The great Montalbanais has been finally received into the national Walhalla. The father of the so-called French Raphaël, writes his biographer, was not even a Giovanni Santi. Joseph Ingres, in the words of M. Momméja, was _un petit ornemaniste_, a fabricator of knick-knacks, turning out models in clay, busts in plaster, miniatures and other trifles for sale at country fairs. Who can say, this humble craftsman may yet have had much to do with his son's aspirations? An inferior artist can appraise his masters. From the humble artificer and purveyor of bagatelles the youth not only imbibed a passion for art and technical knowledge: he inherited the next best thing to a calling, in other words, a love of music. From the palette throughout his long life Ingres would turn with never-abated enthusiasm to his adored violin. The learned monograph above-named gives a succinct and judicial account of the painter's career. The second writer mentioned tells the story of his inner life; one, indeed, of perpetual and universal interest. For to this sturdy young bourgeois early came a crisis. He found himself suddenly at the parting of the ways, on the one hand beckoning Conscience, on the other ambition in the flattering shape of Destiny. To which voice would he hearken? Would love and plighted troth overrule that insistent siren song, Vocation? Would he yield, as have done thousands of well-intentioned men and women before him, to self-interest and worldly wisdom? The problem to be solved by this brilliantly endowed artist just twenty-six--how many a historic parallel does it recall! What three words can convey so much pathos, heroism and generosity as "il gran riffiuto?"--the great renunciation. Does the French language contain a more touching record than that of the great Navarre's farewell to his Huguenot brethren? What bitter tears shed Jeanne d'Albret's son ere he could bring himself to sacrifice conscience on the altar of expediency and a great career! At the age of twenty we find Dominique Ingres studying in Paris under David, then in his apogee. The son of an obscure provincial, however promising, would hardly be overwhelmed with hospitalities; all the more welcome came the friendliness of an honourable magistrate and his wife, by name Forestier. During five years the young man had lived on terms of closest intimacy with these good folks, under his eyes growing up their only daughter. Alas! poor Julie. Mighty, says Goethe, is the god of propinquity. On Dominique's part attachment seems to have come insensibly, as a matter of course and despite the precariousness of his position. M. Forestier encouraged the young man's advances. To Julie love for the brilliant winner of the Prix de Rome became an absorption, her very life. Not particularly endowed by Nature--we have her portrait in M. Momméja's volume--she described her own physiognomy as "not at all remarkable, but expressive of candour and goodness of heart." For Julie, as we shall see, turned her love-story into a little novel, only unearthed the other day by M. Lapauze. The Prix de Rome meant, of course, a call to Rome, the worthy magistrate exacting from his prospective son-in-law a promise that in twelve months' time he would return. During that interval correspondence went on apace not only between the affianced lovers, but between M. Forestier and Ingres, the former taking affectionate and not uncritical interest in the other's projects. For Ingres was before all things a projector, anticipating by decades the achievements of his later years. The glow of enthusiasm, the fever of creativeness were at its height. Italy possessed Ingres' entire being when the crisis came. After delays, excuses, pleadings, Julie's father lost patience. He would brook no further tergiversations. Ingres must choose between Italy and Paris; in other words, so the artist interpreted it, between art and marriage, a proud destiny or self-extinction. Never had a young artist more completely fallen under the spell of Italy. The recall seemed a death-blow. "On my knees," he wrote to Julie, whom he really loved, "I implore you not to ask this. It is impossible for me to quit immediately a land so full of marvel." But the practical M. Forestier would not give way. Ingres' persistence looked like folly, even madness in his eyes. The young man was with difficulty living from hand to mouth, portraits and small orders barely keeping the wolf from the door. The return home and marriage would ensure his future materially and socially, and up to a certain point render him independent of malevolent criticism. For already Ingres was fiercely attacked by Parisian authorities on art: he had become important enough to be a target. After cruellest heart-searching and prolonged self-reproach, _il gran riffiuto_ was made, youthful passion, worldly advantages--and plighted faith--were cast to the winds. Henceforth he would live for his palette only, defying poverty, detraction and fiercely antagonistic opinion; if failing in allegiance to others, at least remaining staunch to his first, best, highest self, his genius. Julie, the third imperishable Julie of French romance, never married. Let us hope that the writing of her artless little autobiography called a novel brought consolation. Did she ever forgive the recalcitrant? Her story, _Emma, ou la fiancée,_ ends with the aphorism: "Without the scrupulous fulfilment of the given word, there can be neither happiness nor inner peace." Did that backsliding in early life disturb the great painter's stormy but dazzling career? Who can say? We learn that Ingres was twice, and, according to accredited reports, happily, married. His first wife, a humbly-born maiden from his native province, died in 1849, leaving the septuagenarian so desolate, helpless and stricken that kindly interveners set to work and re-married him. The second Mme. Ingres, although thirty years his junior, gave him, his biographer tells us, "that domestic peace and happiness of which for a brief space he had been deprived." Heaped with honours, named by Napoleon III. Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour, Senator, Member of the Institut, Ingres died in 1869. Within a year of ninety, he was Dominique Ingres to the last, undertaking new works with the enthusiasm and vitality of Titian. A few days before his death he gave a musical party, favourite works of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven being performed by skilled amateurs. His funeral was a veritable apotheosis, disciples, admirers and detractors swelling the enormous cortège. Those who, like myself, have times without number contemplated the master's _opus magnum_ in the Louvre, and have studied his art as represented in the provincial museums, will quit the Musée Ingres with mixed feelings. It must occur to many that, perhaps, after all, _il gran riffiuto_ of opposite kind might have better served art and the artist's fame. Had he returned to France--and to Julie--at the stipulated period, the following eighteen years being spent not on Italian but on native soil, how different the result! Then of his work he could have said, as did Chantecler of his song-- "Mon chant Qui n'est pas de ces chants qu'on chante en cherchant Mais qu'on reçoit du sol natal comme une sève." Would not most of us willingly give Ingres' greatest classical and historic canvases for one or two portraits, say that of Bertin, or, better still, for a group like that of the Stamiti family? What a portrait gallery he would have bequeathed, how would he have made the men and women of his time live again before us! [Footnote: Both are reproduced, with many other works, in M. Momméja's volume.] Ingres, the artist, ever felt sure of himself. Did the lover look back, regretting the broken word, the wrong done to another? We do not know. His life was throughout upright, austere, free from blot; born and bred a Catholic, he had doubtless Huguenot blood in his veins, many of his most striking characteristics pointed to this inference. A word more concerning Montauban itself. The stronghold of reform, that defied all Richelieu's attempts to take it, is to this day essentially a Protestant town. Half of its inhabitants have remained faithful to the faith of their ancestors. Tourists will note the abundance of cypress trees marking Huguenot graves, the capital of Tarn and Garonne is a veritable Calvinistic _Campo Santo_. After the Revocation, many families fled hence to England, their descendants to this day loving and reverencing the country which gave them a home. Montauban, as we should expect, has raised a splendid monument to its one great citizen. Since writing these lines, an Ingres exhibition has been opened in the Georges Petit Gallery, Paris. Apropos of this event, the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ (May 15, 1911) contains a striking paper by the art-critic, M. de Sizeraine. Some of the conclusions here arrived at are startling. Certain authorities on art are said to regard the great Montalbanais as a victim of daltonism--in other words, colour-blind! In company of the mere amateur, this authority turns with relief from the master's historical and allegorical pieces to his wonderfully speaking portraits. Here, he says, all is simple, nothing is commonplace, nothing is unexpected, and yet nothing resembles what we have seen elsewhere; we find no embellishment, no stultification. He adds: "In art, as in literature, works which survive are perhaps those in which the artist or writer has put the most of himself, not those in which he has had most faith. The "Voeu de Louis XIII," the "Thétis" of Ingres, we may compare to Voltaire's _Henriade_ and to the _Franciade_ of Ronsard, all belong to the category of the _opus magnum_ that has failed, and of which its creator is proud." With the following charming simile the essay closes-- "Posterity is a great lady, she passes, reviews the _opus magnum, la grande machine_ disdainfully, satirically; all seems lost, the artist condemned. But by chance she catches sight of a neglected picture turned to the wall in a corner or passage, some happy inspiration that has cost its author little pains, but in which he has not striven beyond his powers, and in which he has put the best of himself. The _grande dame_ catches it up, holds it to the light. 'Ha! here is something pretty!' she cries. And the artist's fame is assured." Has not Victor Hugo focused the same truth in a line-- "Ici-bas, le joli c'est le nécessaire!" And our own Keats also-- "For 'tis the eternal law, That first in beauty should be first in might." X MY PYRENEAN VALLEY AT LAST Osse, la bien aimée Toi, du vallon Le choix, la fille aînée Le vrai fleuron! C'est sur toi qu'est fixée Dans son amour, La première pensée Du roi du jour Comme à sa fiancée L'amant accourt. Xavier Navarrot. Between Toulouse and Tarbes the scenery is quite unlike that of the Gard and the Aude. Instead of the interminable vineyards round about Aigues-Mortes and Carcassonne, we gaze here upon a varied landscape. Following the Garonne with the refrain of Nadaud's famous song in our minds-- "Si la Garonne avait voulu,"-- we traverse a vast plain or low vale rich in many-coloured crops: buckwheat, sweeps of creamy blossom, dark-green rye, bluish-green Indian corn with silvery flower-head, and purple clover, and here and there a patch of vine are mingled together before us; in the far distance the Pyrenees, as yet mere purple clouds against the horizon. We soon note a peculiarity of this region--vines trained to trees, a method in vogue a hundred years ago. "Here," wrote Arthur Young, when riding from Toulouse to St. Martory on his way to Luchon, "for the first time I see rows of maples with vines trained in festoons from tree to tree"; and farther on he adds, "medlars, plums, cherries, maples in every hedge with vines trained." The straggling vine-branches have a curious effect, but the brightness of the leafage is pleasant to the eye. No matter how it grows, to my thinking the vine is a lovely thing. The rich plain passed, we reach the slopes of the Pyrenees, their wooded sides presenting a strange, even grotesque, appearance, owing to the mathematical regularity with which the woods are cut, portions being close shaven, others left intact in close juxtaposition, solid phalanxes of trees and clearings at right angles. The fancy conjures up a Brobdingnagian wheat-field partially cut in the green stage. Sad havoc is thus made of once beautiful scenes, richly-wooded slopes having lost half their foliage. A hundred years ago Lourdes was a mere mountain fortress, a State prison to which unhappy persons were consigned by _lettres de cachet_. Apologists of the Ancien Régime assert, in the first place, that these Bastilles were comfortable, even luxurious retreats; in the second, that _lettres de cachet_ were useful and necessary; in the third, that neither Bastilles nor _lettres de cachet_ were resorted to on the eve of the Revolution. Let us hear what Arthur Young has to say on the subject. "I take the road to Lourdes," he writes in August 1787, "where is a castle on a rock, garrisoned for the mere purpose of keeping State prisoners, sent hither by _lettres de cachet_. Seven or eight are known to be here at present; thirty have been here at a time; and many for life--torn by the relentless hand of jealous tyranny from the bosom of domestic comfort, from wives, children, friends, and hurried, for crimes unknown to themselves, most probably for virtues, to languish in this detested abode, and die of despair. Oh liberty, liberty!" Great is the contrast between the lovely entourage of this notorious place and the triviality and vulgar nature of its commerce. The one long, winding street may be described as a vast bazaar, more suited to Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims than to holders of railway tickets and contemporaries of the Eiffel Tower. A brisk trade is done here, the place wearing the aspect of a huge fair. Rosaries, crosses, votive tablets, ornamental cans for holding the miraculous waters, drinking-cups, candles, photographs, images, medals are sold by millions. The traffic in these wares goes on all day long, the poorest "pilgrim" taking away souvenirs. The Lourdes of theology begins where the Lourdes of bartering ends. As we quit the long street of bazaars and brand-new hotels, the first glimpse gives us an insight into its life and meaning, makes us feel that we ought to have been living two or three hundred years ago. We glance back at the railway station, wondering whether a halt were wise, whether indeed the gibbet, wheel, and stake were not really prepared for heretics like ourselves! The votive church built on the outer side of the rock from which flows the miraculous fountain is a basilica of sumptuous proportions, representing an outlay of many millions of francs. Its portico, with horse-shoe staircase in marble, spans the opening of the green hills, behind which lie grotto and spring. We are reminded of the enormous church now crowning the height of Montmartre at Paris; here, as there and at Chartres, is a complete underground church of vast proportions. The whole structure is very handsome, the grey and white building-stone standing out against verdant hills and dark rocks. A beautifully laid-out little garden with a statue of the miracle-working Virgin lies between church and town. Looking from the lofty platform on the other side of the upper church, we behold a strange scene. The space below is black with people, hundreds and thousands of pilgrims, so called, priests and nuns being in full force, one and all shouting and gesticulating with fierce zealotry, a priest or two holding forth from a temporary pulpit. Between these closely-serried masses is a ghastly array. On litters, stretchers, beds, chairs, lie the deformed, the sick, the moribund, awaiting their turn to be sprinkled with the miraculous waters or blessed by the bishop. These poor people, many of whom are in the last stage of illness, have for bearers, volunteers; these are priests, young gentlemen of good family, and others, who wear badges and leather traces, by which they attach themselves to their burden. All day long masses are held inside the church and in the open air; at a given signal the congregation stretching out their arms in the form of a cross, prostrating themselves on the ground, kissing the dust. We must descend the broad flight of steps in order to obtain a good view of the grotto, an oval opening in the rocks made to look like a stalactite cave, with scores and hundreds of _ex-votos_ in the shape of crutches. Judging from this display, there should be no more lame folks left in France. The Virgin of Lourdes must have healed them all. In a niche of the grotto stands an image of the Virgin, and behind, perpetually lighted with candles, an altar, at which mass is celebrated several times daily. On one side, the rock has been pierced in several places, deliciously pure, cool water issuing from the taps. Crowds are always collected here, impatient to drink of the miraculous fountain, and to fill vessels for use at home. We see tired, heated invalids, and apparently dying persons, drinking cups of this ice-cold water; enough, one would think, to kill them outright. Close by is a little shop full of trifles for sale, but so thronged at all hours of the day that you cannot get attended to; purchasers lay down their money, take up the object desired, and walk away. Here may be bought a medal for two sous, or a crucifix priced at several hundred francs. The praying, chanting, and prostrating are at their height when the violet-robed figure of a bishop is caught sight of, tripping down a side-path leading from the town. Blessing any who chance to meet him on the way, chatting pleasantly with his companion, a portly gentleman wearing the red ribbon of the Legion of Honour, the bishop hastens towards the grotto, dons his sacerdotal robes of ivory-white and gold, and celebrates mass. The ceremony over, there is a general stir. Adjusting their harness, the bearers form a procession, the bishop emerges from the grotto, and one by one the thirty and odd litters are drawn before him to be sprinkled, blessed--and healed! alas, such, doubtless, is the fond delusion of many. The sight of so many human wrecks, torsos and living skeletons all agog for life, health, and restoration, is even less heart-breaking than that of their companions. Here we see a mother bending with agonized looks over some white-faced, wasted boy, whose days, even hours, are clearly numbered; there a father of a wizen-faced, terribly deformed girl, a mite to look at, but fast approaching womanhood, brought hither to be put straight and beautiful. Next our eye lights on the emaciated form of a young man evidently in the last stage of consumption, his own face hopeful still, but what forlornness in that of the adoring sister by his side! These are spectacles to make the least susceptible weep. Grotesque is the sight of a priest who must be ninety at least; what further miracle can he expect, having already lived the life of three generations? The last litter drawn by, the enormous crowd breaks up; tall candles are offered to those standing near, and a procession is formed, headed by the bishop under his gold and white baldachin, a large number of priests following behind, then several hundred men, women, and children, the black and white robes of the priests and nuns being conspicuous. Chanting as they go, outsiders falling on their knees at the approach of the baldachin, the pilgrims now wind in solemn procession round the statue in front of the church, and finally enter, when another religious celebration takes place. Services are going on all day long and late into the night. Hardly do these devotees give themselves time for meals, which are a scramble at best, every hotel and boarding-house much overcrowded. The _table d'hôte_ dinner, or one or two dishes, are hastily swallowed, and the praying, chanting, marching and prostrating begin afresh. At eight o'clock from afar comes the sound of pilgrims' voices as the procession winds towards the grotto. There is picturesqueness in these nocturnal celebrations, the tapers twinkling against the dark heavens, the voices dying away in the distance. Superstition has its season as well as sulphur-baths and chalybeate springs. The railway station is a scene of indescribable confusion; enormous contingents come for a few hours only, the numbered trains that brought them are drawn up outside the main lines awaiting their departure. Here we are hustled by a motley throng; fashionable ladies bedizened with rosaries, badges, and medallions; elegant young gentlemen, the _jeunesse dorée_ of a vanished _régime_, proudly wearing the pilgrim's badge, all travelling third-class and in humble company for their soul's good; peasant women from Brittany in charming costumes; a very, very few blue blouses of elderly civilians'; enormous numbers wearing religious garb. It seems a pity that a bargain could not be struck by France and Germany, the Emperor William receiving Lourdes in exchange for Metz or Strasburg! Lourdes must represent a princely revenue, far in excess, I should say, of any profit the Prussian Government will ever make out of the annexed provinces; and as nobody lives there, and visitors only remain a day or two, it would not matter to the most patriotic French pilgrim going to whom the place belonged. The tourist brings evil as well as good in his track, and the tax upon glorious scenery here is not the globe-trotter but the mendicant. Gavarnie is, without doubt, as grandiose a scene as Western Europe can show. In certain elements of grandeur none other can compete with it. But until a balloon service is organized between Luz and the famous Cirque it is impossible to make the journey with an unruffled temper. The traveller's way is beset by juvenile vagrants, bare-faced and importunate as Neapolitans or Arabs. Lovers of aerial navigation have otherwise not much left to wish for. Nothing can be more like a ride in cloudland than the drive from Pierrefitte to Luz and from Luz to Gavarnie. The splendid rock-hewn road is just broad enough to admit of two carriages abreast. On one side are lofty, shelving rocks, on the other a stone coping two feet high, nothing else to separate us from the awful abyss below, a ravine deep as the measure of St. Paul's Cathedral from base to apex of golden cross. We hear the thunder of the river as it dashes below by mountains two-thirds the height of Mont Blanc, their dark, almost perpendicular sides wreathed with cloud, on their summits gleaming never-melted snow, here and there the sombre parapets streaked with silvery cascades. At intervals the Titanic scene is relieved by glimpses of pastoral grace and loveliness, and such relief is necessary even to those who can gaze without giddiness on such awfulness. Between gorge and gorge lie level spaces, amid dazzlingly-green meadows the river flows calm and crystal clear, the form and hue of every pebble distinct as the pieces of a mosaic. Looking upwards we see hanging gardens and what may be called farmlets, tiny homesteads with minute patches of wheat, Indian corn, and clover on an incline so steep as to look vertical. Most beautiful and refreshing to the eye are the little hayfields sloping from the river, the freshly-mown hay in cocks or being turned, the shorn pasture around bright as emerald. Harvest during the year 1891 was late, and in the first week of September corn was still standing; nowhere, surely, corn so amber-tinted, so golden, nowhere, surely, ripened so near the clouds. In the tiny chalets perched on the mountain ridges, folks literally dwell in cloudland, and enjoy a kind of supernal existence, having for near neighbours the eagles in their eyries and the fleet-footed chamois or izard. These vast panoramas--towering rocks of manifold shape, Alp rising above Alp snow-capped or green-tinted, terrace upon terrace of fields and homesteads--show every variety of savage grandeur and soft beauty till we gradually reach the threshold of Gavarnie. This is aptly called "chaos" which we might fancifully suppose the leavings, "the fragments that were left," of the semicircular wall now visible, thrown up by transhuman builders, insurmountable barrier between heaven and earth. No sooner does the awful amphitheatre break upon the view, than we discern the white line of the principal fall, a slender silvery column reaching, so it seems, from star-land and moon-land to earth; river of some upper world that has overleaped the boundaries of our own. No words can convey the remotest idea of such a scene. We may say with regard to scenery what Lessing says of pictures, we only see in both what we bring with us to the view. More disconcerting than the importunities of beggars and donkey-drivers are the supercilious remarks of tourists. To most, of course, the whole thing is "a sad disappointment." Everything must necessarily be a disappointment to some beholders; and with critics of a certain order, the mere fact of not being pleased implies superiority. The hour's walk from the village to the Cirque is an event also in the life of the flower-lover. We have hardly eyes for Gavarnie, so completely is our gaze fascinated by the large luminous gold and silver stars gleaming conspicuously from the brilliant turf. These are the glorious flower-heads of the white and yellow Pyrenean thistle that open in sunshine as do sea-anemones, sending out lovely fringes, sunrays and moonbeams not more strikingly contrasted. As we rush hither and thither to gather them--if we can--their roots are veritable tentaculae, other lovely flowers are to be had in plenty, the beautiful deep-blue Pyrenean gentian, monk's-hood in rich purple blossom, rose-coloured antirrhinum, an exquisite little yellow sedum, with rare ferns. On one side, a narrow bridle-path winds round the mountain towards Spain; on the other, cottage-farms dot the green slopes; between both, parting the valley, flows the Gave, here a quietly meandering streamlet, whilst before us rises Gavarnie; a scene to which one poet only--perhaps the only one capable of grappling with such a subject--has done justice-- "Cirque, hippodrome, Stage whereon Stamboul, Tyre, Memphis, London, Rome, With their myriads could find place, whereon Paris at ease Might float, as at sundown a swarm of bees, Gavarnie, dream, miracle!" [Footnote: "Un cirque, un hippodrome, Un théâtre où Stamboul, Tyre, Memphis, Londres, Rome, Avec leurs millions d'hommes pourraient s'asseoir. Ou Paris flotterait comme un essaim du soir. Gavarnie!--un miracle! un rêve!"--Victor Hugo, "Dieu."] How to give some faint conception of the indescribable? Perhaps the great French poet has best succeeded in a single line-- "L'impossible est ici debout." We feel, indeed, that we are here brought face to face with the impossible. Let the reader then conjure up a solid mass of rock threefold the circumference of St. Paul's Cathedral; let him imagine the façade of this natural masonry of itself exceeding the compass of our great Protestant minster; then in imagination let him lift his eyes from stage to stage, platform to platform, the lower nearly three times the height of St. Paul's from base to apex of golden cross, the higher that of four such altitudes; their gloomy parapets streaked with glistening white lines, one a vast column of water, although their shelving sides show patches of never-melted snows; around, framing in the stupendous scene, mountain peaks, each unlike its majestic brother, each in height reaching to the shoulder of Mont Blanc. Such is Gavarnie. My next halting-place was a remote Pyrenean village admirably adapted for the study of rural life. Within a few hours' journey of the Spanish frontier, Osse lies in the beautiful valley of Aspe, and is reached by way of Pau and Oloron. At the latter town the railway ends, and we have to drive sixteen miles across country, a delightful expedition in favourable weather. The twin towns, old and new Oloron, present the contrast so often seen throughout France, picturesque, imposing antiquity beside utilitarian ugliness and uniformity. The open suburban spaces present the appearance of an enormous drying-ground, in which are hung the blankets of the entire department. Blankets, woollen girdles or sashes, men's bonnets are manufactured here. "Pipers, blue bonnets, and oatmeal," wrote an English traveller a hundred years ago, "are found in Catalonia, Auvergne, and Suabia as well as in Lochaber." We are now in the ancient kingdom of Beam, with a portion of Navarre added to the French crown by Henry IV, and, two hundred years later, named the department of the Basses Pyrenées. [Illustration: OSSE] Every turn of the road reveals new features as we journey towards Osse, having always in view the little Gave d'Aspe, after the manner of Pyrenean rivers, making cascades, waterfalls, whirlpools on its way. Most beautiful are these mountain streams, their waters of pure, deep green, their surface broken by coruscations of dazzlingly white foam and spray, their murmur ever in our ears. When far away we hardly miss the grand contours of the Pyrenees more than the music of their rushing waters. No tourists meet us here, yet whither shall we go for scenes sublimer or more engaging? On either side of the broadening velvety green valley, with its tumbling stream, rises a rampart of stately peaks, each unlike its neighbour, each having a graciousness and grandeur of its own. Here and there amid these vast solitudes is seen a white glittering thread breaking the dark masses of shelving rock, mountain torrent falling into the river from a height of several hundred feet. Few and far between are the herdsmen's châlets and scattered cornfields and meadows, and we have the excellent carriage road to ourselves. Yet two or three villages of considerable size are passed on the way; of one, an inland spa much frequented by the peasants, I shall make mention presently. For three hours we have wound slowly upward, and, as our destination is approached, the valley opens wide, showing white-walled, grey-roofed hamlets and small towns all singularly alike. The mountains soon close round abruptly on all sides, making us feel as if we had reached the world's end. On the other side of those snow-capped peaks, here so majestically massed before our gaze, lies Spain. We are in a part of France thoroughly French, yet within a few hours of a country strikingly contrasted with it; manners, customs, modes of thought, institutions radically different. [Illustration: NEAR THE SPANISH FRONTIER] The remoteness and isolation of Osse explain the existence of a little Protestant community in these mountain fastnesses. For centuries the Reformed faith has been upheld here. Not, however, unmolested. A tablet in the neat little church tells how the original place of Protestant worship was pulled down by order of the king in 1685, and only reconstructed towards the close of the following century. Without church, without pastor, forbidden to assemble, obliged to bury their dead in field or garden, these dales-folk and mountaineers yet clung tenaciously to their religion. One compromise, and one only, they made. Peasant property has existed in the Pyrenees from time immemorial, and in order to legitimize their children and enjoy the privilege of bequeathing property, the Protestants of the Vallée d'Aspe were married according to the rites of the Romish Church. In our own days, here as elsewhere throughout France, the religious tenets handed down from father to son are adhered to without wavering, and at the same time without apparent enthusiasm. Catholics and Protestants live amicably side by side; but intermarriages are rare, and conversions from Rome to rationalism infrequent. The Sunday services of the little Protestant church are often attended by Catholics. Strangers passing through Osse, market-folk, peasants and others, never fail to inspect it curiously. The Protestant pastor is looked up to with respect and affection alike by Catholic and Protestant neighbours. The rival churches neither lose nor gain adherents to any extent. This fact is curious, especially in a spot where Protestantism is seen at its best. It shows the extreme conservatism and stability of the French character, often set down as revolutionary and fickle. In England folks often and avowedly change their religion several times during their lives. Is not the solemn reception into Rome of instructed men and women among ourselves a matter of every day? In France it is otherwise, and when a change is made we shall generally find that the step is no retrograde one. If the social aspect is encouraging at Osse, the same may be said of peasant property. Even a Zola must admit some good in a community unstained by crime during a period of twenty years, and bound by ties of brotherhood which render want impossible. A beautiful spirit of humanity, a delicacy rare among the most polished societies, characterize these frugal sons and daughters of the soil. Nor is consideration for others confined to fellow-beings only. The animal is treated as the friend, not the slave of man. "We have no need of the Loi Grammont here," said a resident to me; and personal observation confirmed the statement. As sordidness carried to the pitch of brutality is often imputed to the French peasant, let me relate an incident that occurred hereabouts, not long before my visit. The land is minutely divided, many possessing a cottage and field only. One of these very small owners was suddenly ruined by the falling of a rock, his cottage, cow and pig being destroyed. Without saying a word, his neighbours, like himself in very humble circumstances, made up a purse of five hundred francs, a large sum with such donors, and, too delicate-minded to offer the gift themselves, deputed an outsider to do it anonymously. Another instance in point came to my knowledge. This was of a young woman servant, who, during the illness of her employer, refused to accept wages. "You shall pay me some other time," said the girl to her mistress; "I am sure you can ill afford to give me the money now." Peasant property and rural life generally here presented to me some wholly new features; one of these is the almost entire self-sufficingness of very small holdings, their owners neither buying nor selling, making their little crops and stock almost completely supply their needs. Thus on a field or two, enough flax is grown with which to spin linen for home use, enough wheat and Indian corn for the year's bread-making, maize being mixed with wheaten flour; again, pigs and poultry are reared for domestic consumption--expenditure being reduced to the minimum. Coffee is a luxury seldom indulged in, a few drink home-grown wine, but all are large milk-drinkers. The poorest is a good customer of the dairy farmer. I was at first greatly puzzled by the information of a neighbour that he kept cows for the purpose of selling milk. Osse being sixteen miles from a railway station, possessing neither semi-detached villas, hotels, boarding-houses, convents, barracks, nor schools, and a population of from three to four hundred only, most of these small farmers--who were his patrons? I afterwards learned that the "ha'porth of milk," which means much more in all senses than with us, takes the place of tea, coffee, beer, to say nothing of more pernicious drinks, with the majority. New milk from the cow costs about a penny a quart, and perhaps if we could obtain a similar commodity at the same price in England, even gin might be supplanted. Eggs and butter are also very cheap; but as the peasants rear poultry exclusively for their own use, it is by no means easy at Osse to procure a chicken. A little, a very little money goes to the shoemaker and general dealer, and fuel has to be bought; this item is inconsiderable, the peasants being allowed to cart wood from the communal forests for the sum of five or six francs yearly. The village is chiefly made up of farmhouses; on the mountain-sides and in the valley are the châlets and shepherds' huts, abandoned in winter. The homesteads are massed round the two churches, Catholic and Protestant, most having a narrow strip of garden and balcony carried along the upper storey, which does duty as a drying-ground. One of these secluded hamlets, with its slated roofs, white walls, and brown shutters, closely resembles another; but Osse stands alone in possessing a Protestant church and community. Although the little centre of a purely agricultural region, we find here one of those small, specific industries, as characteristic of French districts as soil and produce. Folks being great water-drinkers, they will have their drinking-water in a state of perfection. Some native genius long ago invented a vessel which answers the requirement of the most fastidious. This is a pail-shaped receptacle of yewen wood, bound with brass bands, both inner and outer parts being kept exquisitely clean. Water in such vessels remains cool throughout the hottest hours of the hottest summer, and the wood is exceedingly durable, standing wear and tear, it is said, hundreds of years. The turning and encasing of yewen wood, brass-bound water-jars is a flourishing manufacture at Osse. Here may be seen and studied peasant property in many stages. I would again remark that any comparison between the condition of the English agricultural labourer and the French peasant proprietor is irrelevant and inconclusive. In the cottage of a small owner at Osse, for instance, we may discover features to shock us, often a total absence of the neatness and veneer of the Sussex ploughman's home. Our disgust is trifling compared with that of the humblest, most hard-working owner of the soil, when he learns under what conditions lives his English compeer. To till another's ground for ten or eleven shillings a week, inhabit a house from which at a week's notice that other can eject him, possess neither home, field nor garden, and have no kind of provision against old age, such a state of things appears to our artless listener wholly inconceivable, incommensurate with modern civilization and bare justice. As an instance of the futility of comparisons, I will mention one experience. I was returning home late one afternoon when a poorly-dressed, sunburnt woman overtook me. She bore on her head a basket of bracken, and her appearance was such that in any other country I should have expected a demand for alms. Greeting me, however, cheerfully and politely, she at once entered into conversation. She had seen me at church on Sunday, and went on to speak of the pastor, with what esteem both Catholics and Protestants regarded him, then of the people, their mode of life and condition generally. "No," she said, in answer to my inquiry, "there is no real want here, and no vagrancy. Everybody has his bit of land, or can find work. I come from our vineyard on the hillside yonder, and am now returning home to supper in the village--our farmhouse is there". She was a widow, she added, and with her son did the work of their little farm, the daughter-in-law minding the house and baby. They reared horses for sale, possessed a couple of cows, besides pigs and poultry. The good manners, intelligence, urbanity, and quiet contentment of this good woman were very striking. She had beautiful white teeth, and was not prematurely aged, only very sun-burnt and shabby, her black stuff dress blue with age and mended in many places, her partially bare feet thrust in sabots. The women here wear toeless or footless stockings, the upper part of the foot being bare. I presume this is an economy, as wooden shoes wear out stockings. We chatted of England, of Protestantism, and many topics before bidding each other good-night. There was no constraint on her part, and no familiarity. She talked fluently and naturally, just as one first-class lady traveller might do to a fellow-passenger. Yet, if not here in contact with the zero of peasant property, we are considering its most modest phase. A step higher and we found an instance of the levelling process characteristic of every stage of French society, yet hardly to be looked for in a remote Pyrenean village. In one of our afternoon rambles we overtook a farmeress, and accepted an invitation to accompany her home. She tripped cheerfully beside us; although a Catholic, on friendliest terms with her Protestant neighbours. Her thin white feet in toeless stockings and sabots, well-worn woollen petticoat, black stuff jacket, headgear of an old black silk handkerchief, would have suggested anything but the truth to the uninitiated. Here also the unwary stranger might have fumbled for a spare coin. She had a kindly, intelligent face, and spoke volubly in patois, having very little command of French. It was, indeed, necessary for me to converse by the medium of an interpreter. On approaching the village we were overtaken by a slight, handsome youth conducting a muck-wagon. This was her younger son, and his easy, well-bred greeting, and correct French, prepared me for the piece of intelligence to follow. The wearer of peasant's garb, carting manure, had passed his examination of Bachelor of Arts and Science, had, in fact, received the education of a gentleman. In his case, the patrimony being small, a professional career meant an uphill fight, but doubtless, with many another, he would attain his end. The farmhouse was large, and, as is unusual here, apart from stables and cow-shed, the kitchen and outhouse being on the ground floor, the young men's bedrooms above. Our hostess slept in a large, curtained four-poster, occupying a corner of the kitchen. A handsome wardrobe of solid oak stood in a conspicuous place, but held only a portion of the family linen. These humble housewives count their sheets by the dozen of dozens, and linen is still spun at home, although not on the scale of former days. The better-off purchase strong, unbleached goods of local manufacture. Here and there I saw old women plying spindle and distaff, but the spinning-wheel no longer hums in every cottage doorway. Meantime our hospitable entertainer--it is ever the women who wait on their guests--brought out home-grown wine, somewhat sour to the unaccustomed palate, and, as a corrective, home-made brandy, which, with sugar, formed an agreeable liqueur, walnuts--everything, indeed, that she had. We were also invited to taste the bread made of wheaten and maize flour mixed, a heavy, clammy compound answering Mrs. Squeers's requirement of "filling for the price." It is said to be very wholesome and nutritious. The kitchen floor, as usual, had an unsecured look, but was clean swept, and on shelves stood rows of earthen and copper cooking-vessels and the yewen wood, brass-bound water-jars before mentioned. The façade of the house, with its shutters and balcony, was cheerful enough, but just opposite the front door lay a large heap of farmhouse manure awaiting transfer to the pastures. A little, a very little, is needed to make these premises healthful and comfortable. The removal of the manure-heap, stables, and cow-shed; a neat garden plot, a flowering creeper on the wall, and the aspect would be in accordance with the material condition of the owner. The property shared by this widow and her two sons consisted of between five and six acres, made up of arable land and meadow. They kept four cows, four mares for purposes of horse-breeding, and a little poultry. Milch cows here are occasionally used on the farm, an anomaly among a population extremely gentle to animals. My next visits were paid on a Sunday afternoon, when everybody is at home to friends and neighbours. Protestant initiative in the matter of the seventh day test has been uniformly followed, alike man and beast enjoy complete repose. As there are no cabarets and no trippers to disturb the public peace, the tranquillity is unbroken. Our first call was upon an elder of the Protestant Church, and one of the wealthier peasants of the community. The farmhouse was on the usual Pyrenean plan, stables and neat-houses occupying the ground floor, an outer wooden staircase leading to kitchen, parlour, and bedrooms; on the other side a balcony overlooking a narrow strip of garden. Our host, dressed in black cloth trousers, black alpaca blouse, and spotless, faultlessly-ironed linen, received us with great cordiality and the ease of a well-bred man. His mother lived with him, a charming old lady, like himself peasant-born, but having excellent manners. She wore the traditional black hood of aged and widowed Huguenot women, and her daughter-in-law and little granddaughter, neat stuff gowns and coloured cashmere kerchiefs tied under the chin. We were first ushered into the vast kitchen or "living room," as it would be called in some parts of England, to-day with every other part of the house in apple-pie order. Large oak presses, rows of earthen and copper cooking-vessels, an enormous flour-bin, with plain deal table and chairs, made up the furniture, from one part of the ceiling hanging large quantities of ears of Indian corn to dry. Here bread is baked once a week, and all the cooking and meals take place. Leading out of the kitchen was the salon or drawing-room, the first I had ever seen in a peasant farmer's house. A handsome tapestry table-cover, chimney ornaments, mirror, sofa, armchairs, rugs, betokened not only solid means but taste. We were next shown the grandmother's bedchamber, which was handsomely furnished with every modern requirement, white toilet-covers and bed-quilt, window-curtains, rug, wash-stand; any lady unsatisfied here would be hard indeed to please. The room of master and mistress was on the same plan, only much larger, and one most-unlooked-for item caught my eye. This was a towel-horse (perhaps the comfortably-appointed parsonage had set the fashion?), a luxury never seen in France except in brand-new hotels. As a rule the towel is hung in a cupboard. We were then shown several other bedrooms, all equally suggestive of comfort and good taste; yet the owner was a peasant, prided himself on being so, and had no intention of bringing up his children to any other condition. His farm consisted of a few hectares only, but was very productive. We saw his cows, of which he is very fond, the gentle creatures making signs of joy at their master's approach. Four or five cows, as many horses for breeding purposes, a few sheep, pigs, and poultry made up his stock. All that I saw of this family gave me a very high notion of intelligence, morality, thrift and benevolence. Very feelingly all spoke of their animals and of the duty of human beings towards the animal world generally. It was the first time I had heard such a tone taken by French peasants, but I was here, be it remembered, among Protestants. The horrible excuse made in Italy and Brittany for cruelty to beasts, "Ce ne sont pas des chrétiens," finds no acceptance among these mountaineers. Our second visit brought us into contact with the bourgeois element. The farmhouse, of much better appearance than the rest, also stood in the village. The holding was about the size of that just described. The young mistress was dressed in conventional style, had passed an examination at a girls' Lycée, entitling her to the _brevet supérieur_ or higher certificate, her husband wore the dress of a country gentleman, and we were ushered into a drawing-room furnished with piano, pictures, a Japanese cabinet, carpets, and curtains. The bedrooms might have been fitted up by an upholsterer of Tottenham Court Road. It must be borne in mind that I am not describing the wealthy farmers of the Seine and Marne or La Venidée. The fact that these young people let a part of their large, well-furnished house need not surprise us. There is no poverty here, but no riches. I do not suppose that any one of the small landowners to whom I was introduced could retire to-morrow and live on his savings. I dare aver that one and all are in receipt of a small income from invested capital, and have a provision against sickness and old age. The master of the house showed me his stock, five or six handsome cows of cross breed, in value from £10 to £16, the latter the maximum price here. We next saw several beautiful mares and young colts, and four horned sheep. Sheepkeeping and farming are seldom carried on together, and this young farmer was striking out a new path for himself. He told me that he intended to rear and fatten sheep, also to use artificial manure. Up to the present time, guanos and phosphates are all but unknown in these regions, only farmhouse dung is used, cows being partly kept for that purpose. Although the land is very productive, my informant assured me that much remained to be done by departure from routine and the adoption of advanced methods. The cross-breeding of stock was another subject he had taken up. Such initiators are needed in districts remote from agricultural schools, model farms, and State-paid chairs of agriculture. Each of the four instances just given differed from the other. The first showed us peasant property in its simplest development, a little family contentedly living on their bit of land, making its produce suffice for daily needs, independent of marts and markets as the members of a primitive community. The second stage showed us a wholly dissimilar condition, yet not without its ideal side. We were brought face to face with that transitional phase of society and pacific revolution, of happiest augury for the future. From the peasant ranks are now recruited contingents that will make civil wars impossible, men who carry into politics learning and the arts, those solid qualities that have made rural France the admiration of the world, and more than once saved her Republic. The first instance exemplified the intense conservatism of the French peasant. Liberal in politics, enlightened in religion, open to the reception of new ideas, here was nevertheless a man absolutely satisfied with social conditions as they affected himself and his children, utterly devoid of envy or worldly ambition. To reap the benefits of his toil, deserve the esteem of his neighbours, bequeath his little estate, improved and enriched, to his heirs, surely this was no contemptible ideal either. The last case differed from the other three. We were now reminded of the English tenant, or even gentleman-farmer--with a difference. Alike master and mistress had received a good education and seen something of the world; they could enjoy music and books. But in spite of her _brevet supérieur_, the wife attended to her dairy; and although the husband was a gentleman in manners and appearance, he looked after the stock. They lived, too, on friendliest terms with their less-instructed and homelier neighbours, the black alpaca blouse and coloured kerchief, doing duty for bonnet, being conspicuous at their Sunday receptions. Not even a Zola can charge French village-life with the snobbishness so conspicuous in England. It will be amply shown from the foregoing examples that peasant property is no fixed condition to be arbitrarily dealt with after the manner of certain economists. On the contrary, it is many-phased; the fullest and widest development of modern France is indeed modern France itself. The peasant owner of the soil has attained the highest position in his own country. No other class can boast of such social, moral and material ascendency. He is the acknowledged arbitrator of the fortunes of France. I will now cite two facts illustrating the bright side of peasant property in its humblest phase, where we have been told to expect sordidness, even brutality. The land hereabouts, as I have before stated, is excessively divided, the holdings being from two and a half acres in extent and upwards. It often happens that the younger children of these small owners give up their share of the little family estate without claiming a centime of compensation, and seek their fortunes in the towns. They betake themselves to handicrafts and trade, in their turn purchasing land with the savings from daily wages. Again, it is supposed that the life of the peasant owner is one of uniform, unbroken drudgery, his daily existence hardly more elevated than that of the ox harnessed to his plough. Who ever heard of an English labourer taking a fourteen days' rest at the seaside? When did a rheumatic ploughman have recourse to Bath or Buxton? They order these things better in France. Between Osse and Oloron stands Escot, long famous for its warm springs. The principal patrons of this modest watering-place are the peasants. It is their Carlsbad, their Homburg, many taking a season as regularly as the late King Edward. The thing is done with thoroughness, but at a minimum of cost. They pay half a franc daily for a room, and another half-franc for the waters, cooking their meals in the general kitchen of the establishment. Where the French peasant believes, his faith is phenomenal. Some of these valetudinarians drink as many as forty-six glasses of mineral water a day! What must be their capacities in robust health? The bourgeois or civilian element is not absent. Hither from Pau and Oloron come clerks and small functionaries with their families. Newspapers are read and discussed in company. We may be sure that the rustic spa is a little centre of sociability and enlightenment. Let me now say something about the crops of this sweet Pyrenean valley. The chief of these are corn, maize, rye, potatoes, and clover; the soil being too dry and poor for turnips and beetroot. Flax is grown in small quantities, and here and there we seen vines, but the wine is thin and sour. From time immemorial, artificial irrigation has been carried on in the Vallée d'Aspe, and most beautiful is the appearance of the brilliantly green pastures, intersected by miniature canals in every direction; the sweet pastoral landscape framed by mountain peaks of loveliest colour and majestic shape. These well-watered grasslands produce two or even three crops a year; the second, or _regain_ as it is called, was being got in early in September, and harvest having taken place early, clover was already springing up on the cleared cornfields. Everywhere men and women were afield making hay or scattering manure on the meadows, the latter sometimes being done with the hands. All these small farmers keep donkeys and mules, and on market-days the roads are alive with cavalcades; the men wearing gay waist-sashes, flat cloth caps, or berets, the women coloured kerchiefs. The type is uniform--medium stature, spareness, dark eyes and hair, and olive complexion predominating. Within the last thirty years the general health and physique have immensely improved, owing to better food and wholesomer dwellings. Goître and other maladies arising from insufficient diet have disappeared. Epidemics, I was assured, seldom work havoc in this valley; and though much remains to be done in the way of drainage and sanitation, the villages have a clean, cheerful look. The last ailment that would occur to us proves most fatal to those hardy country folks. They are very neglectful of their health, and as the changes of temperature are rapid and sudden, the chief mortality arises from inflammation of the lungs. It is difficult indeed to defend oneself against so variable a climate. On my arrival the heat was tropical. Twelve hours later I should have rejoiced in a fire. Dangerous, too, is the delicious hour after sunset, when mist rises from the valley, whilst yet the purple and golden glow on the peaks above tempts us to linger abroad. The scenery is grandiose and most beautiful. Above the white-walled, grey-roofed villages and townlings scattered about the open, rise sharp-pointed green hills or monticules, one gently overtopping the other; surmounting these, lofty barren peaks, recalling the volcanic chains of Auvergne, the highest snow-capped point twice the altitude of the Puy de Dôme, two-thirds that of Mont Blanc. Whichever way we go we find delightful scenery. Hidden behind the folded hills, approached by lovely little glades and winding bridle-path, tosses and foams the Gave d'Aspe, its banks thickly set with willow and salicornia, its solitary coves inviting the bather. The witchery of these mountain streams grows upon us in the Pyrenees. We hunger for the music of their cascades when far away. The sun-lit, snow-lit peaks, towering into the brilliant blue heavens, are not deserted as they appear. Shepherd farmers throughout the summer dwell in huts here, and welcome visitors with great affability. Let me narrate a fact interesting alike to the naturalist and meteorologist. On the 7th September, 1891, the heat on one of these summits, nine thousand feet above the sea-level, was so intense that a little flock of sheep were seen literally hugging the snow, laying their faces against the cool masses, huddled about them, as shivering mortals round a fire in winter. And, a little way off, the eye-witnesses of this strange scene gathered deep blue irises in full bloom. [Illustration: ORCUM] On the lower slopes the farmers leave their horses to graze, giving them a look from time to time. One beautiful young horse lost its life just before my arrival, unwarily approaching a precipitous incline. As a rule accidents are very rare. The izard or Pyrenean chamois, although hunted as game, is not yet a survival here, nor the eagle and bear, the latter only making its appearance in winter-time. Tent-life in these mountain-sides is quite safe and practicable. Who can say? A generation hence and these magnificent Alps may be tunnelled by railways, crowned by monster hotels, peopled from July to October with tourists in search of disappointments. At present the Vallée d'Aspe is the peacefullest in the world. Alike on week-days and Sundays the current of life flows smoothly. Every morning from the open windows of the parsonage may be heard the sweet, simple hymns of the Lutheran Church, master and mistress, servants and children, uniting in daily thanksgiving and prayer. And a wholesome corrective is the Sunday service after the sights of Lourdes. The little congregation was striking. Within the altar railings stood two _anciens_, or elders, of the church, middle-aged men, tall, stalwart, the one fair as a Saxon, the other dark as a Spaniard. Both wore the dress of the well-to-do peasant, short black alpaca blouses, black cloth trousers, and spotless collars and cuffs, and both worthily represented those indomitable ancestors who neither wavered nor lost heart under direst persecution. By the time the pastor ascended the reading-desk, the cheerful, well-kept little church was full, the men in black blouses, the women wearing neat stuff or print gowns, with silk handkerchiefs tied under the chin, widows and the aged, the sombre black-hooded garment, enveloping head and figure, of Huguenot matrons of old--supposed to have suggested the conventual garb. Among the rest were two or three Catholics, peasants of the neighbourhood, come to look on and listen. The simple, intelligible service, the quiet fervour of the assembly, might well impress a sceptical beholder. Even more impressive is the inscription over the door. A tablet records how the first Protestant church was pulled down by order of the king after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and rebuilt on the declaration of religious liberty by the National Assembly. Gazing on that inscription and the little crowd of worshippers, a sentence of Tacitus came into my mind. Recording how not only the biographers of good men were banished or put to death, but their works publicly burnt by order of Domitian, the historian, whose sentences are volumes condensed, adds: "They fancied, forsooth"--he is speaking of the tyrant and his satellites--"that all records of these actions being destroyed, mankind could never approve of them." An illusion shared by enemies of intellectual liberty, from the Caesars to their latest imitator, unhappily not wholly dispelled in our own day. Whether the homeward journey is made through the Landes by way of Bayonne and Bordeaux, or through the Eastern Pyrenees by way of Perpignan, we are brought face to face with scenes of strangest transformation. In the former region the agency has been artificial, the shifting sands being fixed and solidified by plantations on a gigantic scale, and large tracts rendered fertile by artificial irrigation; in the latter, Nature has prepared the field, the more laborious portion of the husbandman's task is already done. "The districts of sand, as white as snow and so loose as to blow," seen by Arthur Young towards the close of the last century, can hardly be said to exist in our own day. Even within twenty-five years the changes are so great as to render entire regions hardly recognizable. The stilts, or _chanques_, of which our word "shanks" is supposed to be the origin, become rarer and rarer. The creation of forests and sinking of wells, drainage, artificial manures and canals are rapidly fertilizing a once arid region; with the aspect of the country a proportionate change taking place in the material condition of the people. No less startling is the transformation of lagoon into salt marsh, and marsh into cultivable soil, witnessed between the Spanish frontier, Perpignan and Nîmes. Quitting Cerbère, the little town at which travellers from Barcelona re-enter French territory, we follow the coast, traversing a region long lost to fame and the world, but boasting of a brilliant history before the real history of France began. We are here in presence of geological changes affected neither by shock nor convulsion, nor yet by infinitesimally slow degrees. A few centuries have sufficed to alter the entire contour of the coast and reverse the once brilliant destinies of maritime cities. With the recorded experience of mediaeval writers at hand, we can localize lagoons and inland seas where to-day we find belts of luxuriant cultivation. In a lifetime falling short of the Psalmist's threescore years and ten observations may be made that necessitate the reconstruction of local maps. The charming little watering-place of Banyulssur-Mer, reached soon after passing the Spanish frontier, is the only place on this coast, except Cette, without a history. The town is built in the form of an amphitheatre, its lovely little bay surrounded by rich southern vegetation. The oleanders and magnolias in full bloom, gardens and vineyards, are no less strikingly contrasted with the barrenness and monotony that follows, than Banyuls itself, spick and span, brand-new, with the buried cities scattered on the way, ancient as Tyre and Sidon, and once as flourishing. There is much sadness yet poetic charm in the landscape sweeps of silvery-green olive or bluish salicornia against a pale-blue sky, dull-brown fishing villages bordering sleepy lagoons, stretches of white sand, with here and there a glimpse of the purple, rock-hemmed sea. Little of life animates this coast, in many spots the custom-house officer and a fisherman or two being the sole inhabitants, their nearest neighbours removed from them by many miles. Only the flamingo, the heron, and the sea-gull people these solitudes, within the last few years broken by the whistle of the locomotive. We are following the direct line of railway between Barcelona and Paris. The first of the buried cities is the musically-named Elne, anciently Illiberis, now a poor little town of the department of the Eastern Pyrenees, hardly, indeed, more than a village, but boasting a wondrous pedigree. We see dull-brown walls, ilex groves, and above low-lying walls the gleaming sea. This apparently deserted place occupies the site of city upon city. Seaport, metropolis, emporium had here reached their meridian of splendour before the Greek and the Roman set foot in Gaul. Already in Pliny's time the glories of the Elne had become tradition. We must go farther back than Phoenician civilization for the beginnings of this town, halting-place of Hannibal and his army on their march towards Rome. The great Constantine endeavoured to resuscitate the fallen city, and for a brief space Elne became populous and animated. With other once flourishing seaports it has been gradually isolated from the sea, and the same process is still going on. Just beyond Perpignan a lofty tower, rising amid vineyards and pastures, marks the site of Ruscino, another ancient city and former seaport. The Tour de Roussillon is all that now remains of a place once important enough to give its name to a province. Le Roussillon, from which was formed the department of the Pyrénées Orientales, became French by the treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659. Here also the great Carthaginian halted, and here, we learn, he met with a friendly reception. Monotonous as are these wide horizons and vast stretches of marsh and lagoon, they appeal to the lover of solitude and of the more pensive aspects of nature. The waving reeds against the pale sky, the sweeps of glasswort and terebinth, show delicate gradations of colour; harmonious, too, the tints of far-off sea and environing hills. Not cities only seem interred here: the railway hurries us through a world in which all is hushed and inanimate, as if, indeed, mankind no less than good fortune had deserted it. The prevailing uniformity is broken by the picturesquely placed little town of Salses and the white cliffs of Leucate. Strabo and Pomponius Mela describe minutely the floating islands or masses of marine plants moving freely on the lake of Salses. Here, as elsewhere, the coastline is undergoing slow but steady modification, yet we are in presence of phenomena that engaged the attention of writers two thousand years ago. From this point till we approach Cette the region defies definition. It is impossible to determine nicely where the land ends and the sea begins. The railway follows a succession of inland salt lakes and lagoons, with isolated fishermen's cabins, reminding us of lake-dwellings. In some places the hut is approached by a narrow strip of solid ground, on either side surrounded by water, just admitting the passage of a single pedestrian. The scene is unspeakably desolate. Only sea-birds keep the fisher-folk company; only the railway recalls the busy world far away. Of magnificent aspect is Narbonne, the Celtic Venice, as it rises above the level landscape. The great seaport described by Greek historians six centuries before our own era, the splendid capital of Narbonese Gaul, rival of the Roman Nîmes and of the Greek Arles, is now as dull a provincial town as any throughout France. Invasions, sieges, plagues, incendiaries, most of all religious persecutions, ruined the mediæval Narbonne. The Jewish element prevailed in its most prosperous phase, and M. Renan in his history of Averroës shows how much of this prosperity and intellectual pre-eminence was due to the Jews. The cruel edicts of Philip Augustus against the race proved no less disastrous here than the expulsion of Huguenots elsewhere later. The decadence of Narbonne as a port is due to natural causes. Formerly surrounded by lagoons affording free communication with the sea, the Languedocian Venice has gradually lost her advantageous position. The transitional stage induced such unhealthy climatic conditions that at one period there seemed a likelihood of the city being abandoned altogether. In proportion as the marsh solidified the general health improved. Day by day the slow but sure process continues, and when the remaining salt lakes shall have become dry land, this region, now barren and desolate, will blossom like the rose. The hygienic and atmospheric effects of the _Eucalyptus globulus_ in Algeria are hardly more striking than the amelioration wrought here in a natural way. The Algerian traveller of twenty-five years ago now finds noble forests of blue gum tree, where, on his first visit, his heart was wrung by the spectacle of a fever-stricken population. On the coast of Languedoc the change has been slower. It has taken not only a generation but a century to transform pestilential tracts into zones of healthfulness and fertility. An interesting fact, illustrating the effect of physical agencies upon human affairs, must be here mentioned. Till within the last few years this town counted a considerable Protestant community. The ravages of the phylloxera in the neighbouring vineyards caused a wholesale exodus of vine-growers belonging to the Reformed Church, and in 1886 the number had dwindled to such an extent that the services of a pastor were no longer required. The minister in charge was transferred elsewhere. The dull little town of Agde is another ancient site. Its name is alike a poem and a history. The secure harbourage afforded by this sheltered bay won for the place the name of Good Fortune, [Greek: agathae tuchae], whence Agathe, Agde. A Greek settlement, its fine old church was in part constructed of the materials of a temple to Diana of Ephesus. Agde possesses interest of another kind. It is built of lava, the solitary peak rising behind it, called Le Pic de St. Loup, being the southern extremity of that chain of extinct volcanoes beginning with Mont Mezenc in the Cantal. A pathetic souvenir is attached to this lonely crater. At a time when geological ardour was rare, a Bishop of Agde, St. Simon by name, devoted years of patient investigation to the volcanic rocks in his diocese. The result of his studies were recorded in letters to a learned friend, but the Revolution stopped the poor bishop's discoveries. He perished by the guillotine during the Terror. The celebrated founder of socialism in France was his nephew. XI AN OLIVE FARM IN THE VAR The friendly visit of a few Russian naval officers lately put the country into as great a commotion as a hostile invasion. I started southward from Lyons on the 12th October, 1893, amid scenes of wholly indescribable confusion; railway stations a mere compact phalanx of excited tourists bound for Toulon, with no immediate prospect of getting an inch farther, railway officials at their wits' end, carriage after carriage hooked on to the already enormously long train, and yet crowds upon crowds left behind. Every train was, of course, late; and on the heels of each followed supplementary ones, all packed to their utmost capacity. As we steamed into the different stations "Vive la Russie!" greeted our ears. The air seemed filled with the sound; never surely was such a delirium witnessed in France since the fever heat of 1789! At Valence, Montélimar, Avignon, Arles, the same tumult reigned; but before reaching the second place, the regulation number of carriages, twenty-five, had been exceeded, and as hardly one per cent of the travellers alighted, we could only pass by the disconcerted multitudes awaiting places. And a mixed company was ours--the fashionable world, select and otherwise, the demi-monde in silks and in tatters, musicians, travelling companies of actors and showmen, decorated functionaries, children, poodles, all bound for the Russian fleet! At Marseilles, a bitter disappointment awaited some, I fear, many. No sooner were we fairly within the brilliantly-lighted, crowded station, and before the train had come to a standstill, than a stentorian voice was heard from one end of the platform to the other, crying-- "LOOK TO YOUR PURSES!" And as the gorged carriages slowly discharged their burden, the stream of passengers wending towards the door marked "Way out," a yet louder and more awe-inspiring voice came from above, the official being perched high as an orator in the pulpit, repeating the same words-- "ATTENTION À VOTRE PORTE-MONNAIE!" The dismay of the thwarted pickpockets may be better imagined than described. Many, doubtless, had come from great distances, confident of a golden harvest. Let us hope that the authorities of Toulon were equally on the alert. Marseilles no more resembles Lyons, Bordeaux, Nantes, than those cities resemble each other. Less elegant than Lyons, less majestic than Bordeaux, gayer by far than Nantes, the capital of Southern France has a stamp of its own. Today, as three thousand years ago, Marseilles may be called the threshold of the East. In these hot, bustling, noisy streets, Paris is quiet by comparison; London a Trappist monastery! Orientals, or what our French neighbours call exotics, are so common that no one looks at them. Japanese and Chinese, Hindus, Tonquinois, Annamites, Moors, Arabs, all are here, and in native dress; and writing letters in the salon of your hotel, your _vis-à-vis_ at the _table d'hôte_, your fellow sightseers, east and west, to-day as of old, here come into friendly contact; and side by side with the East is the glowing life of the South. We seem no longer in France, but in a great cosmopolitan mart that belongs to the whole world. The Marseillais, nevertheless, are French; and Marseilles, to their thinking, is the veritable metropolis. "If Paris had but her Cannebière," they say, "she would be a little Marseilles!" Superbly situated, magnificently endowed as to climate, the _chef-lieu_ of the Bouches du Rhône must be called a slatternly beauty; whilst embellishing herself, putting on her jewels and splendid attire, she has forgotten to wash her face and trim her hair! Not in Horatian phrase, dainty in her neatness, Marseilles does herself injustice. Lyons is clean swept, spick and span as a toy town; Bordeaux is coquettish as her charming Bordelaise; Nantes, certainly, is not particularly careful of appearances. But Marseilles is dirty, unswept, littered from end to end; you might suppose that every householder had just moved, leaving their odds and ends in the streets, if, indeed, these beautifully-shaded walks can be so called. The city in its development has laid out alleys and boulevards instead of merely making ways, with the result that in spite of brilliant sky and burning sun, coolness and shadow are ever to be had. The Cannebière, with its blue sky, glowing foliage and gay, nonchalant, heterogeneous crowds, reminds me of the Rambla of Barcelona. Indeed, the two cities have many points of resemblance. Marseilles is greatly changed from the Marseilles I visited twenty-five years ago, to say nothing of Arthur Young's description of 1789. The only advantage with which he accredited the city was that of possessing newspapers. Its port, he wrote, was a horsepond compared to that of Bordeaux; the number of country houses dotting the hills disappointingly small. At the present time, suburban Marseilles, like suburban London, encroaches year by year upon the country; another generation, and the sea-coast from Toulon to the Italian frontier will show one unbroken line of country houses. Of this no one can doubt who sees what is going on in the way of building. But it is not only by beautiful villas and gardens that the city has embellished itself. What with the lavishness of the municipality, public companies, and the orthodox, noble public buildings, docks, warehouses, schools, churches, gardens, promenades, have rendered Marseilles the most sumptuous French capital after Paris. Neither Lyons, Bordeaux, Nantes, can compare with it for sumptuosity. In the Palais de Longchamps, the splendour of municipal decoration reaches its acme; the horsepond Arthur Young sneered at now affords accommodation of 340 acres, with warehouses, said to be the finest in the world; last, but not least, comes the enormous Byzantine Cathedral not yet finished, built at the cost of a quarter of a million sterling. Other new churches and public buildings without number have sprung up of late years, the crowning glory of Marseilles being its Palais de Longchamps. This magnificent group of buildings may be called a much enlarged and much more grandiose Trocadéro. Worthily do these colossal Tritons and sea-horses commemorate the great achievement of modern Marseilles; namely, the conveying of a river to its very doors. Hither, over a distance of fifty-four miles, are brought the abundant waters of the Durance; as we stand near, their cascades falling with the thunder of our own Lodore. But having got the river and given the citizens more than enough water with which to turn their mills, supply their domestic wants, fertilize suburban fields and gardens, the Town Council seem satisfied. The streets are certainly, one and all, watered with rushing streams, greatly to the public health and comfort. A complete system of drainage is needed to render the work complete. When we learn that even Nice is not yet drained from end to end, we need not be astonished at tardy progress elsewhere. Sanitation is ever the last thing thought of by French authorities. Late in the afternoon we saw two or three men slowly sweeping one street. No regular cleaning seems to take place. Get well out of the city, by the sea-shore, or into the Prado--an avenue of splendid villas--and all is swept and garnished. The central thoroughfares, so glowing with life and colour, and so animated by day and night, are malodorous, littered, dirty. It is a delightful drive by the sea, over against the Château d'If, forts frowning above the rock, the deep blue waves, yellowish-brown shore, and green foliage, all in striking contrast. We with difficulty realize that Marseilles is not the second city in France. The reason is obvious. Lyons lies less compactly together, its thickly-peopled Guillotière seems a town apart; the population of Lyons, moreover, is a sedentary one, whilst the Marseillais, being seafarers, are perpetually abroad. The character, too, is quite different, less expansive, less excitable, less emotional in the great silk-weaving capital, here gay, noisy, nonchalant. Nobody seems to find the cares of the day a burden, all to have some of the sunshine of the place in their composition. "Mon bon," a Marsellais calls his neighbour; there is no stillness anywhere. Everybody is "Mon bon" to everybody. The out-of-door, rollicking, careless life, more especially strikes a northerner. We seem here as remote from ordinary surroundings as if suddenly transported to Benares. The commercial prosperity of the first French sea-port is attested by its lavish public works, and number of country houses, a disappointing handful in Arthur Young's time. Hardly a householder, however modest his means, who does not possess a cottage or châlet; the richer having palatial villas and gardens. Nothing can convey a greater notion of ease and wealth than the prospect of suburban Marseilles, its green hills, rising above the sea, thickly dotted with summer houses in every part. All who wish to realize the advance of French cities since 1870-71 should visit Marseilles. Only those who knew it long ago can measure the change, and greater changes still are necessary ere its sanitary conditions match climate and situation. From Marseilles to Nice, from the land of the olive to that of the palm, is a long and wearisome journey. That tyrannical monopoly, the Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée Railway Company, gives only slow trains, except to travellers provided with through tickets; and these so inconveniently arranged, that travellers unprovided with refreshments, have no opportunity of procuring any on the way. Whenever we travel by railway in France we are reminded of the crying need for competition. The all-omnipotent P.-L.-M. does as it pleases, and it is quite useless for travellers to complain. Every inch of the way points to the future of the Riviera--a future not far off. A few years hence and the sea-coast from Marseilles to Mentone will be one unbroken line of hotels and villas. The process is proceeding at a rapid rate. When Arthur Young made this journey a century ago, he described the country around Toulon thus: "Nine-tenths are waste mountain, and a wretched country of pines, box, and miserable aromatics." At the present time, the brilliant red soil, emerald crops, and gold and purple leafage of stripped vine, make up a picture of wondrous fertility. At every point we see vineyards of recent creation; whilst not an inch of soil between the olive trees is wasted. On the 28th of October the landscape was bright with autumn crops, some to be _répiqué_, or planted out according to the Chinese system before mentioned. The first thing that strikes the stranger at Nice is its Italian population. These black-eyed, dark-complexioned, raven-haired, easy-going folks form as distinct a type as the fresh-complexioned, blue-eyed Alsatian. That the Niçois are French at heart is self-evident, and no wonder, when we compare their present condition with that of the past. We see no beggars or ragged, wretched-looking people. If the municipal authorities have set themselves the task of putting down mendicity, they have succeeded. French enterprise, French capital is enriching the population from one end of the Alpes Maritimes to the other. At the present time there must be tens of thousands of workmen employed in the building of hotels and villas between Marseilles and Ventimille. That the Riviera will finally be overbuilt no one can doubt; much of the original beauty of the country is already destroyed by this piling up of bricks and mortar, more beauty is doomed. But meantime work is brisk, wages are high, and the Post Office savings bank and private banks tell their own tale. Of course the valetudinarians contribute to the general prosperity, a prosperity which it is difficult for residents in an English watering-place to realize. Thus I take up a Hastings newspaper to find a long list of lodging-house keepers summoned for non-payment of taxes. Arrived at Nice, a laundress employed by my hostess immediately came to see if I had any clothes for her. On bringing back the linen she deposited it in my room, saying I could pay her when fetching the next bundle. I let her go, but called her back, thinking that perhaps the poor woman had earned nothing for months and was in distress. My hostess afterwards informed me with a smile that this good woman had £2,500 in the bank. I could multiply instances in point. If the condition of the working classes has immensely improved, the cost of living has not stood still. A householder informed me that prices of provisions, servants' wages, house rent and other items of domestic economy have tripled within the last twenty years. There is every prospect that this increase will continue. Last winter hotels and boarding-houses at Nice were all full; fast as new ones are built, they fill to overflowing. And, of course, the majority of visitors are rich. No others should come; they are not wanted. In studying the rural population we must bear in mind one fact--namely, the line of demarcation separating the well-to-do peasants of the plain from the poor and frugal mountaineer. Follow the mule track from Mentone to Castillon, and we find a condition of things for squalor and poverty unmatched throughout France. Visit an olive-grower in the valley of the Var, and we are once more amid normal conditions of peasant property. My first visit was to the land of Goshen. Provided with a letter of introduction to a farmer, I set off for the village of St. Martin du Var, a village of five hundred and odd souls, only within the last year or two accessible by railway. The new line, which was to have connected Nice with Digne and Cap, had been stopped short half-way, the enterprising little company who projected it being thereby brought to the verge of ruin. This fiasco, due, I am told, to the jealous interference of the P.-L.-M., is a great misfortune to travellers, the line partially opened up leading through a most wildly picturesque and lovely region, and being also of great commercial and strategic importance. But that terrible monopoly, the Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée, will tolerate no rivals. Folks bound from Gap to Nice must still make the long round by way of Marseilles in order to please the Company; merchandise--and, in case of a war with Italy, which may Heaven avert!--soldiers and ammunition must do the same. The pretty new "Gare du Sud" invites patronage, and three services are performed daily. On this little line exists no third class. I imagine, then, that either the very poor are too poor to take train at all, or that there are none unable to pay second-class fare. In company of priests, peasants, and soldiers, I took a second-class place, the guard joining us and comfortably reading a newspaper as soon as we were fairly off. It is a superb little journey to St. Martin du Var. The line may be described as a succession of tunnels, our way lying between lofty limestone cliffs and the Var, at the present time almost dry. As we slowly advance, the valley widens, and on either side are broad belts of verdure and fertility; fields, orchards, gardens, olive trees feathering the lower slopes, here and there, little villages perched high above the valley. One charming feature of the landscape is the aspen; so silvery were its upper leaves in the sun that at first I took them for snow-white blossoms. These verdant stretches on either side of the river were formerly mere waste, redeemed and rendered cultivable by means of dykes. My destination is reached in an hour, a charmingly placed village amid beautiful mountain scenery, over against it towering the hamlet of La Roquette, apparently inaccessible as cloudland. Here a tributary stream joins the Var, the long winding valley, surrounded by lofty crags and olive-clad slopes, affording a delightful and most exhilarating prospect. The weather on this 20th of October was that of a perfect day in July. St. Martin du Var has its Mairie, handsome communal schools, and large public walks or recreation ground, a parallelogram planted with trees. The place has a neglected, Italian aspect; at the same time an aspect of ease and contentment. The black-eyed, olive-complexioned, Italian-looking children are uniformly well dressed, with good shoes and stockings. French children, even of the poorest class, are always decently shod. I found my host at dinner with his wife, little daughter, and sister-in-law. The first impression of an uninitiated traveller would be of poverty. The large bare kitchen was unswept and untidy; the family dishes--soup, vegetables, olives, good white bread, wine--were placed on the table without cloth or table-cover. As will be seen, these hard-working, frugal people were rich; in England they would have servants to wait upon them, fine furniture, and wear fashionable clothes. My letter of introduction slowly read and digested, the head of the family placed himself at my disposal. We set off on a round of inspection, the burning mid-day sun here tempered by a delicious breeze. We first visited the olive-presses and corn-mill--this farmer was village miller as well as olive grower--all worked by water-power and erected by himself at a heavy outlay. Formerly these presses and mills were worked by horses and mules after the manner of old-fashioned threshing-machines, but in Provence as in Brittany, progress is now the order of the day. In order to supply these mills, a little canal was dug at my host's own expense, and made to communicate with the waters of the Var; thus a good supply is always at hand. The enormous olive-presses and vats are now being got in for the first or October harvest. This is the harvest of windfalls or fallen fruit, green or black as the case may be, and used for making an inferior kind of oil. The second harvest or gathering of the olives remaining on the trees takes place in April. Linen is spread below, and the berries gently shaken off. I may add that the periods of olive harvests vary in different regions, often being earlier or later. An olive tree produces on an average a net return of twelve francs, the best returns being alternate or biennial; the roots are manured from time to time, otherwise the culture is inexpensive. The trees are of great age and, indeed, are seldom known to die. The "immortal olive" is, indeed, no fiction. In this especial district no olive trees have, within living memory, been killed by frost, as was the case in Spain some years ago. Nevertheless, the peaks around St. Martin du Var are tipped with snow in winter. The olive harvests and necessary preparations require a large number of hands, the wages of men averaging three francs, of women, the half. Thus at the time I write of, day labourers in remote regions of Provence receive just upon fourteen shillings and sixpence per week; whereas I read in the English papers that Essex farmers are reducing the pittance of twelve and even ten shillings per week for able-bodied men. Ten days later, my cicerone said that the first harvest would be in active progress, and he most cordially invited me to revisit him for the purpose of looking on. From the lees of the crushed berries a third and much inferior oil is made and used in the manufacture of soap, just as what is called _piquette_ or sour wine is made in Brittany from the lees of crushed grapes. I was assured by this farmer that the impurity of olive oil we so often complain of in England, arises from adulteration at the hands of retailers. Table oil as it issues from the presses of the grower is absolutely pure; merchants add inferior qualities or poppy oil, described by me in an earlier page, and which my present host looked upon with supreme contempt. The olive, with the vine and tobacco, attains the maximum of agricultural profits. This farmer alone sells oil to the annual value of several thousand pounds, and to the smaller owner also it is the principal source of income. Peasant owners or tenants of an acre or two grow a little corn as well, this chiefly for their own use. The interior of the corn-mill presented an amusing scene. Two or three peasants were squabbling with my host's subordinate over their sacks of flour; one might have supposed from the commotion going on and the general air of vindictive remonstrance that we were suddenly transported to a seigneurial mill. A few conciliatory words from the master put all straight, and soon after we saw the good folks, one of them an old woman, trotting off on donkeys with their sack of corn slung before them. I need hardly say that the talk of these country-people among themselves is always in patois, not a word of which is intelligible to the uninitiated. Just above the mills are groves of magnificent old olive trees, and alongside the little railway were bright strips of lucerne and pasture, folks here and there getting in their tiny crops of hay. The iron road is not yet regarded as an unmixed good. My host told me that local carters and carriers had been obliged in consequence to sell their horses and carts and betake themselves to day labour. Such drawbacks are, of course, inevitable, but the ulterior advantage effected by the railway is unquestionable. I should say that nowhere are life and property safer than in these mountain-hemmed valleys. The landlady of the little hotel at St. Martin du Var assured me that she always left her front door open all night. Nothing had ever happened to alarm her but the invasion of three English ladies at midnight, one of these of gigantic stature and armed with a huge stick. The trio were making a pedestrian journey across country, apparently taking this security for granted. Neither brigands nor burglars could have given the poor woman a greater fright than the untimely appearance of my countrywomen. It was now too hot to visit the open tracts of pasture and cultivation alongside the Var. The farmer's wife proposed a shady walk to a neighbouring farm instead, our errand being to procure milk for my five o'clock tea. Without hat or umbrella, my companion set off, chatting as we went. She explained to me that on Sundays she wore bonnet and mantle after the fashion of a _bourgeoise_; in other words, she dressed like a lady, but that neither in summer nor winter at any other time did she cover her head. She was a pleasant-mannered, intelligent, affable woman, almost toothless, as are so many well-to-do middle-aged folks in France. Dentists must fare badly throughout the country. No one ever seems to have a guinea to spend upon false teeth. We were soon out of the village, and passing the pretty garden of the Gendarmerie, reached a scene of unimaginable, unforgettable beauty. Never shall I forget the splendour of the olive trees set around a wide, brilliantly green meadow; near the farmhouse groves of pomegranate, orange and lemon with ripening fruit; beside these, medlar and hawthorn trees (_cratoegus azarolus_), the golden leafage and coral-red fruit of the latter having a striking effect; beyond, silvery peaks, and, above all, a heaven of warm, yet not too dazzling blue. At the farther end of the meadow, in which a solitary cow grazed at will, a labourer was preparing a ribbon-like strip of land for corn, beside him, pretending to work too, his little son of five years. My hostess held up her jug and stated her errand, proposing that the cow should be milked a trifle earlier in order to suit my convenience. The man good-naturedly replied that, as far as the matter concerned himself, he was agreeable enough, but that the cow was not so easily to be put out of her way. She was milked regularly as clockwork at a quarter to five, the clock had only just struck four; he might leave his work and take her home, but not a drop of milk would she give before the proper time! Leaving our jug, we roamed about this little paradise, unwilling to quit a scene of unblemished beauty. A more bewitching spot I do not recall; and it seemed entirely shut off from the world, on all sides, unbroken quiet, nothing to mar the exquisiteness of emerald turf, glossy foliage of orange and lemon trees, silvery olive in striking contrast, and above, a cloudless sky. In the heart of a primeval forest we could not feel more alone. The thought occurred to me how perfect were such a holiday resort could a clean little lodging be found near! With some attention to cleanliness and sanitation, the little hotel at St. Martin du Var might satisfy the unfastidious. I am bound to admit that in French phrase it leaves much to desire. My host gave me a good deal of interesting information about the place and the people. Excellent communal schools with lay teachers of both sexes have been opened under French régime; and the village of five hundred and odd souls has, of course, its Mairie, Hôtel de Ville, and Gendarmerie, governing itself after the manner of French villages. Whilst the ladies of the house chatted with me they knitted away at socks and stockings, in coarse, bright-coloured wool. Such articles are never bought, the home-made substitute being much more economical in the end. As an instance of the solid comfort of these apparently frugal folks, let me mention their homespun linen sheets. My hostess showed me some coarse bed-linen lately woven for her in the village. Calico sheets, she said, were much cheaper, but she preferred this durable home-spun even at three times the price. An old woman in the village still plied the loom, working up neighbours' materials at three francs a day. The flax has to be purchased also, so that the homespun sheet is a luxury; "and at the same time," the housewife added, "a work of charity. This poor old woman lives by her loom. It is a satisfaction to help her to a mouthful of bread." The moon had risen when I took leave, hostess, little daughter, and sister all accompanying me to the station, reiterating their wish to see me again. Nothing, indeed, would have been pleasanter than to idle away weeks amid this adorable scenery and these charming people. But life is short and France is immense. The genially uttered _au revoir_ becomes too often a mere figure of speech. I add, by the way, that the little daughter, now trotting daily to the village school, is sure to have a handsome dowry by and by. Four thousand pounds is no unusual portion of a rich peasant's daughter in these regions. As an old resident at Nice informed me, "The peasants are richer than the _bourgeoisie_"--as they deserve to be, seeing their self-denial and thrift. XII PESSICARZ AND THE SUICIDES' CEMETERY Pessicarz is a hamlet not mentioned in either French or English guide-books; yet the drive thither is far more beautiful than the regulation excursions given in tourists' itineraries. The road winds in corkscrew fashion above the exquisite bay and city, gleaming as if built of marble, amid scenes of unbroken solitude. Between groves of veteran olives and rocks rising higher and higher, we climb for an hour and a half, then leaving behind us the wide panorama of Nice, Cimiez, the sea, and villa-dotted hills, take a winding inland road, as beautiful as can be imagined. Here, nestled amid chestnut woods, lay the little farm I had come to see, consisting of three hectares let at a rent of five hundred francs (between seven and eight acres, rented at twenty pounds a year), the products being shared between owner and tenant. This modified system of _métayage_ or half profits is common here, and certainly affords a stepping-stone to better things. By dint of uncompromising economy, the metayer may ultimately become a small owner. The farmhouse was substantially built and occupied by both landlord and tenant, the latter with his family living on the ground floor. This arrangement probably answers two purposes, economy is effected, and fraud prevented on the part of the metayer. Pigs and poultry are noisy animals, and if a dishonest tenant wanted to smuggle any of these away by night, they would certainly betray him. The housewife, in the absence of her husband, received me very kindly. I was of course introduced by a neighbour, who explained my errand, and she at once offered to show me round. She was a sturdy, good-natured-looking woman, very well-dressed and speaking French fairly. The first thing she did was to show me her poultry, of which she was evidently very proud. This she accomplished by calling out in a loud voice, "Poules, poules, poules" ("chickens, chickens, chickens"), as if addressing children, whereupon they came fluttering out of the chestnut woods, fifty or more, some of fine breed. These fowls are kept for laying, and not for market, the eggs being sent daily into Nice. She then asked me indoors, the large kitchen being on one side of the door, the outhouses on the other. Beyond the kitchen was a large bedroom, her children, she explained, sleeping upstairs. Both rooms were smoke-dried to the colour of mahogany, unswept and very untidy, but the good woman seemed quite sensible of these disadvantages and apologized on account of narrow space. A large supply of clothes hung upon pegs in the bed-chamber, and it possessed also a very handsome old upright clock. The kitchen, besides stores of cooking utensils, had a stand for best china, and on the walls were numerous unframed pictures. I mention these trifling details to show that even among the poorer peasant farmers something is found for ornament; they do not live as Zola would have us believe, for sordid gains alone. We next visited the pigs, of which she possessed about a dozen in three separate styes. These are fed only upon grain and the kitchen wash supplied from hotels; but she assured me that the disgusting story I had heard at Nice was true. There are certain pork-rearing establishments in the department at which carrion is purchased and boiled down for fattening pigs. My hostess seemed quite alive to the unwholesomeness of such a practice, and we had a long talk about pigs, of which I happen to know something; that they are dirt-loving animals is quite a mistake; none more thoroughly enjoy a good litter of clean straw. I was glad to find this good woman entirely of the same opinion. She informed me with evident satisfaction that fresh straw was always thrown down on one side of the piggery at night, and that the animals always selected it for repose. The first lot were commodiously housed, but I reasoned with her with regard to the other two, the pig-styes being mere caverns without light or air, and the poor creatures grunting piteously to be let out. She told me that they were always let out at sundown, and heard what I had to say about pigs requiring air, let us hope to some purpose. Certainly, departmental professors have an uphill task before them in out-of-the-way regions. These poor people are said to be extremely frugal as a rule, but too apt to squander their years' savings at a paternal fête, wedding or any other festivity. Generations must elapse ere they are raised to the level of the typical French peasant. On the score of health they may compare favourably with any race. A fruit and vegetable diet seems sufficient in this climate. Besides her poultry and pigs my farmeress had not much to show me; but a plot of flowers for market, a little corn, and a few olive trees added grist to the mill. On the whole, want of comfort, cleanliness, and order apart, I should say that even such a condition contrasts favourably with that of an English agricultural labourer. Without doubt, were we to inquire closely into matters, we should discover a sum of money invested or laid by for future purchases utterly beyond the reach of a Suffolk ploughman. Just below the little farm I visited a philanthropic experiment interesting to English visitors. This was an agricultural orphanage founded by an Englishman two years before, seventeen waifs and strays having been handed over to him by the Municipal Council of Nice. The education of the poor little lads is examined once a year by a school inspector, in other respects the protégés are left to their new patron. Here they are taught household and farm work, fruit and flower culture, the business of the dairy, carpentering, and other trades; being afterwards placed out. I question whether an English Board of Guardians would so readily hand over seventeen workhouse lads to a foreigner, but it is to be hoped that the Niçois authorities will have no reason to regret their confidence. The boys do no work on Sundays, and once a year have a ten days' tramp in the country; the buildings are spacious and airy, but I was sorry to see a plank-bed used as a punishment. Indeed, I should say that the system pursued savours too much of the military. Here, be it remembered, no juvenile criminals are under restraint, only foundlings guilty of burdening society. Whether this school exists still I know not. Very different was the impression produced by the State Horticultural College recently opened at Antibes. Around the lovely little bay the country still remains pastoral and unspoiled; a mile or two from the railway station and we are in the midst of rural scenes, tiny farms border the road, patches of corn, clover, vineyard, and flower-garden--flowers form the chief harvest of these sea-board peasants--orange, lemon and olive groves with here and there a group of palms, beyond these the violet hills and dazzling blue sea, such is the scenery, and could a decent little lodging be found in its midst, the holiday resort were perfect. One drawback to existence is the treatment of animals. As I drove towards the college a countryman passed with a cart and pair of horses, the hindmost had two raw places on his haunches as large as a penny piece. I hope and believe that in England such an offender would have got seven days' imprisonment. The Italians, as we all know, have no feeling for animals, and the race here is semi-Italian--wholly so, if we may judge by physiognomy and complexion. Until the foundation of the Horticultural College here, the only one in existence on French soil was that of Versailles. Whilst farm-schools have been opened in various parts of the country, and special branches have their separate institutions, the teaching of horticulture remained somewhat in abeyance. Forestry is studied at Nancy, husbandry in general at Rennes, Grignan, and Amiens, the culture of the vine at Montpellier, drainage and irrigation at Quimperlé, all these great schools being made accessible to poorer students by means of scholarships. In no other region of France could a Horticultural College be so appropriately placed as in the department of the Alpes Maritimes. It is not only one vast flower-garden, but at the same time a vast conservatory, the choice flowers exported for princely tables in winter being all reared under glass. How necessary, then, that every detail of this delightful and elaborate culture should be taught the people, whose mainstay it is, a large proportion being as entirely dependent upon flowers as the honey bee! Here, and in the neighbourhood of Nice, they are cultivated for market and exportation, not for perfume distilleries as at Grasse. The State School of Antibes was created by the Minister of Agriculture in 1891, and is so unlike anything of the kind in England that a brief description will be welcome. The first point to be noted is its essentially democratic spirit. When did a farm-labourer's son among ourselves learn any more of agriculture than his father or fellow-workmen could teach him? At Antibes, as in the numerous farm-schools (fermes-écoles) now established throughout France, the pupils are chiefly recruited from the peasant class. How, will it be asked, can a small tenant farmer or owner of three or four acres afford to lose his son's earnings as soon as he quits school, much less to pay even a small sum for his education? The difficulty is met thus: in the first place, the yearly sum for board, lodging and teaching is reduced to the minimum, viz. five hundred francs a year; in the second, large numbers of scholarships are open to pupils who have successfully passed the examination of primary schools, and whose parents can prove their inability to pay the fees. No matter how poor he may be, the French peasant takes a long look ahead. He makes up his mind to forfeit his son's help or earnings for a year or two in view of the ulterior advantage. A youth having studied at Antibes, would come out with instruction worth much more than the temporary loss of time and money. That parents do reason in this way is self-evident. On the occasion of my visit, of the twenty-seven students by far the larger proportion were exhibitioners, sons of small owners or tenants. Lads are admitted from fourteen years and upwards, and must produce the certificate of primary studies, answering to that of our Sixth Standard, or pass an entrance examination. The school is under State supervision, the teaching staff consisting of certificated professors. The discipline is of the simplest, yet, I was assured, quite efficacious. If a lad, free scholar or otherwise, misbehaves himself, he is called before the director and warned that a second reprimand only will be given, the necessity of a third entailing expulsion. No more rational treatment could be devised. Besides practical teaching in the fields and gardens, consisting as yet of only twenty-five hectares, or nearly sixty acres, a somewhat bewildering course of study is given. The list of subjects begins well. First, a lad is here taught his duties as the head of a family, a citizen, and a man of business. Then come geography, history, arithmetic, book-keeping, trigonometry, linear drawing, mechanics, chemistry, physics, natural history, botany, geology, _agrologie_, or the study of soils, irrigation, political economy. Whilst farming generally is taught, the speciality of the school is fruit and flower culture. A beautiful avenue of palm and orange trees leads from the road to the block of buildings, the director's house standing just outside. I was fortunate in finding this gentleman at home, and he welcomed me with the courtesy, I may say cordiality, I have ever received from professors of agriculture and practical farmers in France. We immediately set out for our survey, my companion informing me, to my surprise, that the gardens I now gazed on so admiringly formed a mere wilderness a few years ago, that is to say, until their purchase by the State. The palm and orange trees had been brought hither and transplanted, everything else had sprung up on the roughly-cleared ground. Palm trees are reared on the school lands for exportation to Holland, there, of course, to be kept under glass; ere long the exportation of palms and orange trees will doubtless become as considerable as that of hothouse flowers. I was shown magnificent palms fifteen years old, and nurseries of tiny trees, at this stage of their existence unlovely as birch brooms. Hitherto, majestic although its appearance, the palm of the Riviera has not produced dates. The director is devoting much time to this subject, and hopes ere long to gather his crop. As we passed between the orange trees, here and there the deep green glossy fruit turning to gold, I heard the same report as at Pessicarz. At neither place can the lads resist helping themselves to the unripe oranges. Sour apples and green oranges seem quite irresistible to hobbledehoys. The trees were laden with fruit, and, unless blown off by a storm, the crop would be heavy. An orange tree on an average produces to the value of two hundred francs. I was next taken to the newly-created vineyards, some consisting of French grafts on American stock, others American plants; but vines are capricious, and one vineyard looked sickly enough, although free from parasites. The climate did not suit it, that was all. But by far the most important and interesting crops here are the hothouse flowers. I fancy few English folks think of glass-houses in connection with the Riviera. Yet the chief business of horticulturists during a large portion of the year is in the conservatory. Brilliant as is the winter sun, the nights are cold and the fall of temperature after sundown extremely rapid. Only the hardier flowers, therefore, remain out of doors. I was now shown the glass-houses being made ready for the winter. All the choice flowers, roses, carnations and others, sent to Paris, London, Berlin, St. Petersburg, are grown under glass. Roses thus cultivated will bring four francs per dozen to the grower; I was even told of choicest kinds sold from the conservatories at a franc each. It may easily be conceived how profitable is this commerce, destined without doubt to become more so as the culture of flowers improves. New varieties are ever in demand for royal or millionaires' tables, bridal bouquets, funeral wreaths. I was told the discoverer or creator of a blue carnation would make his fortune. I confess this commercial aspect of flowers takes something from their poetry. Give me a cottager's plot of sweet-williams and columbine instead of the floral paragon evolved for the gratification of the curious! As we strolled about we came upon groups of students at work. All politely raised their hats when we passed, and by their look and manner might have been taken for young gentlemen. A great future doubtless awaits this delightfully placed Horticultural School. Whilst the object primarily aimed at by the State is the education of native gardeners and floriculturists, other results may be confidently expected. No rule keeps out foreigners, and just as our Indian candidates for the Forestry service prepare themselves at Nancy, so intending fruit-growers in Tasmania will in time betake themselves to Antibes. A colonial, as well as an international element is pretty sure to be added. French subjects beyond seas will certainly avail themselves of privileges not to be had at home, carrying away with them knowledge of the greatest service in tropical France. Horticulture as a science must gain greatly by such a centre, new methods being tried, improved systems put into practice. In any case, the department may fairly be congratulated on its recent acquisition, one, alas, we have to set against very serious drawbacks! In these intensely hot and glaring days of mid-October, the only way of enjoying life is to betake oneself to a sailing-boat. Few English folks realize the torture of mosquito-invaded nights on the Riviera. As to mosquito curtains, they afford a remedy ofttimes worse than the disease, keeping out what little air is to be had and admitting, here and there, one mosquito of slenderer bulk and more indomitable temper than the rest. After two or three utterly sleepless nights the most enthusiastic traveller will sigh for grey English skies, pattering drops and undisturbed sleep. At sea, you may escape both blinding glare and mosquito bites. A boat is also the only means of realizing the beauty of the coast. Most beautiful is the roundabout sail from Cannes to the Île St. Marguerite: I say roundabout, because, if the wind is adverse, the boatmen have to make a circuit, going out of their course to the length of four or five miles. Every tourist knows the story of the Iron Mask; few are perhaps aware that in the horrible prison in which Louis XIV kept him for seventeen years, Protestants were also incarcerated, their only crime being that they would not perjure themselves, in other words, feign certain beliefs to please the tyrant. At the present time the cells adjoining the historic dungeon of the Masque de Fer are more cheerfully occupied. Soldiers are placed there for slight breaches of discipline, their confinement varying from twelve hours to a few days. We heard two or three occupants gaily whiling away the time by singing patriotic songs, under the circumstances the best thing they could do. Lovely indeed was the twenty minutes' sail back to Cannes, the sea, deep indigo, the sky, intensest blue, white villas dotting the green hills, far away the violet mountains. When we betake ourselves to the railway or carriage road, we must make one comparison very unfavourable to English landscape. Here building stone, as bricks and mortar with us, is daily and hourly invading pastoral scenes, but the hideous advertizing board is absent in France. We do not come upon monster advertisements of antibilious pills, hair dye, or soap amid olive groves and vineyards. Let us hope that the vulgarization permitted among ourselves will not be imitated by our neighbours. In 1789 Arthur Young described the stretch of country between Fréjus and Cannes as a desert, "not one mile in twenty cultivated." Will Europe and America, with the entire civilized world, furnish valetudinarians in sufficient numbers to fill the hotels, villas, and boarding houses now rising at every stage of the same way? The matter seems problematic, yet last winter accommodation at Nice barely sufficed for the influx of visitors. Nice is the most beautiful city in France, I am tempted to say the most beautiful city I ever beheld. It is the last in which I should choose to live or even winter. Site, sumptuosity, climate, vegetation here attain their acme; so far, indeed, Nice may be pronounced flawless. During a certain portion of the year, existence, considered from the physical and material point of view, were surely here perfect. When we come to the social and moral aspect of the most popular health resort in Europe, a very different conclusion is forced upon us. Blest in itself, Nice is cursed in its surroundings. So near is that plague spot of Europe, Monte Carlo, that it may almost be regarded as a suburb. For a few pence, in half-an-hour, you may transport yourself from a veritable earthly Paradise to what can only be described as a gilded Inferno. Unfortunately evil is more contagious than good. Certain medical authorities aver that the atmosphere of Mentone used to be impregnated with microbes of phthisis; the germs of moral disease infecting the immediate neighbourhood of Nice are far more appalling. Nor are symptoms wanting of the spread of that moral disease. The municipal council of this beautiful city, like Esau, had just sold their birthright for a mess of pottage. They had conceded the right of gambling to the Casino, the proprietors purchasing the right by certain outlays in the way of improvements, a new public garden, and so on. As yet roulette and rouge-et-noir are not permitted at Nice, the gambling at present carried on being apparently harmless. It is in reality even more insidious, being a stepping-stone to vice, a gradual initiation into desperate play. Just as addiction to absinthe is imbibed by potions quite innocuous in the beginning, so the new Casino at Nice schools the gamester from the outset, slowly and by infinitesimal degrees preparing him for ruin, dishonour and suicide. The game played is called _Petits Chevaux_, and somewhat resembles our nursery game of steeplechase. The stakes are only two francs, but as there are eight to each horse, and you may take as many as you please, it is quite easy to lose several hundred francs in one evening--or, for the matter of that, one afternoon. Here, as at Monte Carlo, the gambling rooms remain open from noon till midnight. The buildings are on an imposing scale: reading rooms, a winter garden, concerts, entertainments of various kinds blinding the uninitiated to the real attraction of the place, namely, the miniature horses spinning around the tables. Already--I write of October--eager crowds stood around, and we heard the incessant chink of falling coin. This modified form of gambling is especially dangerous to the young. Parents, who on no account would let their children toss a five-franc piece on to the tables of Monte Carlo, see no harm in watching them play at _petits chevaux_. They should, first of all, make a certain ghastly pilgrimage I will now relate. Monaco does not as yet, politically speaking, form a part of French territory; from a geographical point of view we are obliged so to regard it. Thus French geographers and writers of handbooks include the tiny principality, which for the good of humanity, let us hope, may ere long be swallowed up by an earthquake--or moralized! The traveller then is advised to take train to Monaco, and, arrived at the little station, whisper his errand in the cab-driver's ear, "To the suicides' cemetery." For the matter of that, it is an easy walk enough for all who can stand the burning sun and glare of white walls and buildings. Very lovely, too, is the scene as we slowly wind upwards, the road bordered with aloes and cypresses; above, handsome villas standing amid orange groves and flowers; below, the sparkling sea. A French cemetery, with its wreaths of beadwork and artificial violets, has ever a most depressing appearance. That of Monaco is like any other, we find the usual magnificence, and usual tinsel. Many beautiful trees, shrubs, and flowers, however, relieve the gloom, and every inch is exquisitely kept. Quite apart from this vast burial-ground, on the other side of the main entrance, is a small enclosure, walled in and having a gate of open ironwork always locked. Here, in close proximity to heaps of garden rubbish, broken bottles and other refuse, rest the suicides of Monte Carlo, buried by the parish gravedigger, without funeral and without any kind of religious ceremony. Each grave is marked by an upright bit of wood, somewhat larger than that by which gardeners mark their seeds, and on which is painted a number, nothing more. Apart from these, are stakes driven into the ground which mark as yet unappropriated spots. The indescribable dreariness of the scene is heightened by two monumental stones garlanded with wreaths and surrounded by flowers. The first records the memory of a young artisan, and was raised by his fellow-workmen; the second commemorates brotherly and sisterly affection. Both suicides were driven to self-murder by play. The remainder are mere numbers. There are poor gamesters as well as rich, and it is only or chiefly these who are put into the ground here. The bodies of rich folks' relatives, if identified, are immediately removed, and, by means of family influence, interred with religious rites. Many suicides are buried at Nice and Mentone, but the larger proportion, farther off still. Not to descant further on this grim topic, let me now say something about Monte Carlo itself. Never anywhere was snare more plainly set in the sight of any bird. There is little in the way of amusement that you do not get for nothing here, a beautiful pleasure-ground, reading-rooms as luxurious and well-supplied as those of a West End club, one of the best orchestras in Europe, and all without cost of a farthing. The very lavishness arouses suspicion in the minds of the wary. Why should we be supplied, not only with every English newspaper we ever heard of, but with _Punch_, _Truth_, and similar publications to boot? Why should Germans, Russians, Dutch, every other European nation, receive treatment equally generous? Again, to be able to sit down at elegant writing-tables and use up a quire of fine notepaper and a packet of envelopes to match, if we chose, how is all this managed? The concerts awaken a feeling of even intenser bewilderment. Not so much as a penny are we allowed to pay for a programme, to say nothing of the trained musicians. Where is the compensation of such liberality? The gambling tables, crowded even at three o'clock on an October afternoon, answer our question. The season begins later, but gamblers cannot wait. "Faites le jeu, messieurs; messieurs, faites le jeu," is already heard from noon to midnight, and the faster people ruin themselves and send a pistol shot through their heads, the faster others take their place. It is indeed melancholy to reflect how many once respectable lives, heads of families, even wives and mothers, are being gradually lured on to bankruptcy and suicide. In cruellest contrast to the moral degradation fostered below, is the enormous cathedral, at the time of my visit in course of erection directly above the gambling rooms. The millions of francs expended on this sumptuous basilica were supplied by the proprietors of the Casino and the Prince of Monaco. Nothing can strike the stranger with a stronger sense of incongruity--a church rising from the very heart of a Pandemonium! Monaco is a pretty, toy-like, Lilliputian kingdom compared with which the smallest German principality of former days was enormous. Curiously enough, whilst Monte Carlo is peopled with gamesters, the only tenants of Monaco seem to be priests, nuns and their pupils. The miniature capital, state and kingdom in one, consists chiefly of convents and seminaries, and wherever you go you come upon these Jesuit fathers with their carefully-guarded troops of lads in uniform. A survey of the entire principality of Monaco, Monte Carlo included, requires about a quarter of an hour. Nowhere, surely, on the face of the civilized globe is so much mischief contained in so small a space. Fortunately, the poisonous atmosphere of the Casino does not seem to affect the native poor. Everywhere we are struck by the thrifty, sober, hard-working population; beggars or ragged, wretched-looking creatures are very rare. If the authorities of the Alpes Maritimes have set themselves to put down vagrancy, they have certainly succeeded. Nice is a home for the millionaire and the working man. The intermediate class is not wanted. Visitors are expected to have money, are welcomed on that account, and if they have to look to pounds, shillings, and pence, had much better remain at home. Woe betide the needy invalid sent thither in search of sunshine! Sunshine is indeed a far more expensive luxury on the Riviera than we imagine, seeing that only rooms with a north aspect are cheap, and a sunless room is much more comfortless and unwholesome than a well-warmed one, no matter its aspect, in England. The only cheap commodity, one unfortunately we cannot live upon, is the bouquet. In October, that is to say, before the arrival of winter visitors, flowers are to be had for the asking; on the market-place an enormous bouquet of tuberoses, violets, carnations, myrtle, priced at two or three francs, the price in Paris being twenty. Fruit also I found cheap, figs fourpence a dozen, and other kinds in proportion. This market is the great sight of Nice, and seen on a cloudless day--indeed it would be difficult to see it on any other--is a glory of colour of which it is impossible to give the remotest notion. I was somewhat taken aback to find Sunday less observed here as a day of rest than in any other French town I know, and not many French towns are unknown to me. The flower and fruit markets were crowded, drapers', grocers', booksellers' shops open all day long, traffic unbroken as usual. I should have imagined that a city, for generations taken possession of by English visitors, would by this time have fallen into our habit of respecting Sunday alike in the interests of man and beast. Of churches, both English and American, there is no lack. Let us hope that the Protestant clergy will turn their attention to this subject. Let us hope also that the entire English-speaking community will second their efforts in this direction. Further, I will put in a good word for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals founded at Nice some years since, and sadly in need of funds. The Society is backed up by the Government in accordance with the admirable Loi Grammont, but, as is the case with local societies in England, requires extraneous help. Surely rich English valetudinarians will not let this humane work stand still, seeing, as they must do daily, the urgent necessity of such interference! From the windows of a beautiful villa on the road to Villefranche, I saw baskets of chickens brought in from Italy, the half of which were dead or dying from suffocation. As the owner of the villa said, "Not even self-interest teaches this Italian humanity." By packing his fowls so as to afford them breathing space, he would double his gains. The habit of cruelty is too inveterate. My host assured me that large numbers of poultry sent across the frontier are suffocated on the way. Horrible also is the pigeon-shooting at Monte Carlo. Hundreds of these wretched birds are killed for sport every day during the winter. The wounded or escaped fly back after a while to be shot at next day. The word "villa" calls for comment. Such a designation is appropriate here. The palatial villas of Nice, standing amid orangeries and palm groves, are worthy of their Roman forerunners. For the future I shall resent the term as applied in England to eight-roomed, semi-detached constructions, poorly built, and with a square yard of flower-bed in front. Many of the Niçois villas are veritable palaces, and what adds to their sumptuousness is the indoor greenery, dwarf palms, india-rubber trees, and other handsome evergreens decorating corridor and landing-places. The English misnomer has, nevertheless, compensations in snug little kitchen and decent servant's bedroom. I looked over a handsome villa here, type, I imagine, of the rest. The servants' bedrooms were mere closets with openings on to a dark corridor, no windows, fireplace, cupboard, or any convenience. The kitchen was a long, narrow room, after the manner of French kitchens, with space by the window for two or three chairs. I ventured to ask the mistress of the house where the servants sat when work was done. Her answer was suggestive-- "They have no time to sit anywhere." It will be seen that our grey skies and mean-looking dwellings have compensations. XIII GUEST OF FARMER AND MILLER "Nine hours' rolling at anchor" was Arthur Young's experience of a Channel passage in 1787, and on the return journey he was compelled to wait three days for a wind. Two years later, what is in our own time a delightful little pleasure cruise of one hour and a quarter, the journey from Dover to Calais occupied fourteen hours. We might suppose from the hundreds of thousands of English travellers who yearly cross the Manche, that Picardy, Artois, and French Flanders would overflow with them, that we should hear English speech wherever we go, and find ourselves amid more distinctly English surroundings than even in Switzerland or Norway; but no such thing. From the moment I quitted Boulogne to that of my departure from Calais, having made the round by way of Hesdin, Arras, Vitry-en-Artois, Douai, Lille, St. Omer, I no more encountered an English tourist than on the Causses of the Lozère a few years before. Many years later, on going over much of the same ground, with a halt at Étaples and Le Touquet, it was much the same. Yet such a tour, costing so little as regards money, time and fatigue, teems with interest of very varied and unlooked-for kind. Every inch of ground is historic to begin with, and has contributed its page to Anglo-French annals or English romance. We may take the little railway from Hesdin to Abbeville, traversing the forest of Crécy, and drive across the cornfields to Agincourt. We may stop at Montreuil, which now looks well, not only "on the map," but from the railway carriage, reviving our recollections of Tristram Shandy. At Douai we find eighty English boys playing cricket and football under the eye of English Benedictine monks--their college being a survival of the persecutions of Good Queen Bess. And to come down from history and romance to astounding prose, we find, a few years ago, Roubaix, a town of 114,000 souls, that is to say, a fourth of the population of Lyons--a town whose financial transactions with the Bank of France exceed those of Rheims, Nîmes, Toulouse, or Montpellier, represented by a man of the people, the important functions of mayor being filled by the proprietor of a humble _estaminet_ and vendor of newspapers, character and convictions only having raised the Socialist leader to such a post! In rural districts there is also much to learn. Peasant property exists more or less in every part of France, but we are here more especially in presence of agriculture on a large scale. In the Pas-de-Calais and the Nord we find high farming in right good earnest, holdings of from ten to fifteen hundred acres conducted on the footing of large industrial concerns, capital, science and enterprise being alike brought to bear upon the cultivation of the soil and by private individuals. I travelled from Boulogne to Hesdin, in time for the first beautiful effect of spring-tide flower and foliage. The blackthorn and pear trees were already in full blossom, and the elm, poplar and chestnut just bursting into leaf. Everything was very advanced, and around the one-storeyed, white-washed cottages the lilacs showed masses of bloom, field and garden being a month ahead of less favoured years. * * * * * Near Étaples the wide estuary of the Canche showed clear, lake-like sheets of water amid the brilliant greenery; later are passed sandy downs with few trees or breaks in the landscape. This part of France should be seen during the budding season; of itself unpicturesque, it is yet beautified by the early foliage. Hesdin is an ancient, quiet little town on the Canche, with tanneries making pictures--and smells--by the river, unpaved streets, and a very curious bit of civic architecture, the triple-storeyed portico of the Hôtel de Ville. Its 7000 and odd souls were soon to have their museum, the nucleus being a splendid set of tapestries representing the battle of Agincourt, in loveliest shades of subdued blue and grey. The little inn is very clean and comfortable; for five francs a day you obtain the services of the master, who is cook; the mistress, who is chambermaid; and the daughters of the house, who wait at table. Such, at least, was my experience. * * * * * My errand was to the neighbouring village of Hauteville-Caumont, whither I drove one afternoon. Quitting the town in a north-easterly direction, we enter one of those long, straight French roads that really seem as if they would never come to an end. The solitude of the scene around is astonishing to English eyes. For miles we only meet two road-menders and an itinerant glazier. On either side, far as the glance could reach, stretches the chessboard landscape--an expanse oceanic in its vastness of green and brown, fields of corn and clover alternating with land prepared for beetroot and potatoes. The extent and elevation of this plateau, formerly covered with forests, explain the excessive dryness of the climate. Bitter indeed must be the wintry blast, torrid the rays of summer here. As we proceed we see little breaks in the level uniformity, plains of apple-green and chocolate-brown; the land dips here and there, showing tiny combes and bits of refreshing wood. The houses, whether of large landowner, functionary or peasant, are invariably one-storeyed, the white walls, brown tiles, or thatched roof having an old-fashioned, rustic effect. One might suppose earthquakes were common from this habit of living on the ground floor. The dryness of the climate doubtless obviates risk of damp. Much more graceful are the little orchards of these homesteads than the mathematically planted cider apples seen here in all stages of growth. Even the blossoms of such trees later on cannot compare with the glory of an orchard, in the old acceptance of the word, having reached maturity in the natural way. Certain portions of rural France are too geometrical. That I must admit. Exquisitely clean, to use a farmer's expression, are these sweeps of corn and ploughed land, belonging to different owners, yet apparently without division. Only boundary stones at intervals mark the limits. Here we find no infinitesimal subdivision and no multiplicity of crops. Wheat, clover, oats form the triennial course, other crops being rye, potatoes, Swede turnips, sainfoin and the _oeillette_ or oil poppy. The cider apple is also an important product. I found my friend's friend at home, and after a chat with madame and her daughter, we set out for our round of inspection. This gentleman farmed his own land, a beautifully cultivated estate of several hundred acres; here and there a neighbour's field dovetailed into his own, but for the greater part lying compactly together. The first object that attracted my notice was a weather-beaten old windmill--sole survivor of myriads formerly studding the country. This antiquated structure might have been the identical one slashed at by Don Quixote. Iron grey, dilapidated, solitary, it rose between green fields and blue sky, like a lighthouse in mid-ocean. These mills are still used for crushing rye, the mash being mixed with roots for cattle, and the straw used here, as elsewhere, for _liage_ or tying up wheatsheaves. The tenacity of this straw makes it very valuable for such purposes. Corn, rye and sainfoin were already very advanced, all here testifying to highly scientific farming; and elsewhere roots were being sown. The soil is prepared by a process called _marnage_, _i.e_. dug up to the extent of three feet, the _marne_ or clayey soil being brought to the surface. A very valuable manure is that of the scoria or residue of dephosphated steel, formerly thrown away as worthless, but now largely imported from Hungary for agricultural purposes. Nitrate is also largely used to enrich the soil. Sixty years ago the Pas-de-Calais possessed large forests. Here at Caumont vast tracts have been cleared and brought under culture since that time. These denuded plateaux, at a considerable elevation above the sea-level, are naturally very dry and very cold in winter, the climate being gradually modified by the almost total absence of trees. Wisely has the present Government interdicted further destruction; forests are now created instead, and we find private individuals planting instead of hacking down. Lucerne is not much cultivated, and my host told me an interesting fact concerning it; in order to grow lucerne, farmers must procure seeds of local growers. Seeds from the south of France do not produce robust plants. The purple-flowered poppy, cultivated for the production of oil, must form a charming crop in summer, and is a most important product. I was assured that oil procured from crushed seeds is the only kind absolutely free from flavour, and as such superior even to that of olives. Of equal importance is the cider apple. The economic results of war are curiously exemplified here. During the war of 1871 German troops were stationed in the neighbouring department of the Somme, and there acquired the habit of drinking cider. So agreeable was found this drink that cider apples are now largely exported to Germany, and just as a Frenchman now demands his Bock at a café, so in his Biergarten the German calls for cider. My host informed me that all his own apples, grown for commerce, went over the northern frontier. Cider is said to render the imbiber gout-proof and rheumatism-proof, but requires a long apprenticeship to render it palatable. The profits of an apple orchard are threefold. There is the crop gathered in October, which will produce in fair seasons 150 francs per hectare, and the two grass crops, apple trees not hurting the pasture. The labourer's harvest here are his potato-fed pigs. In our walks we came upon men and women sowing potatoes on their bit of hired land; for the most part their bit of land is tilled on Sundays, a neighbour's horse being hired or borrowed for the purpose. Thus neither man nor beast rest on the seventh day, and as a natural consequence church-going gradually falls into abeyance. My host deplored this habit of turning Sunday into a veritable _corvée_ for both human beings and cattle, but said that change of system must be very slow. On the whole, the condition of the agricultural labourer here contrasts very unfavourably with that of the peasant owner described elsewhere. The same drawbacks exist as in England. Land for the most part being held by large owners, accommodation for poorer neighbours is insufficient. Many able-bodied workmen migrate to the towns, simply because they cannot get houses to live in; such one-storeyed dwellings as exist have an uncared-for look, neither are the village folks so well dressed as in regions of peasant property. In fact, I should say, after a very wide experience, that peasant property invariably uplifts and non-propertied labour drags down. This seems to me a conclusion mathematically demonstrable. Mayor of his commune, my host was a man of progress and philanthropy in the widest sense of the word. He had lately brought about the opening of an infant school here, and dwelt on the beneficial results; children not being admitted to the communal schools under the age of seven, were otherwise thrown on the streets all day. Infant schools are generally found in the larger communes. Intersecting my host's vast stretches of field and ploughed land lay the old strategic road from Rouen to St. Omer, a broad band of dazzling white thrown across the tremendous panorama. An immense plain is spread before us as a map, now crudely brilliant in hue, two months later to show blending gold and purple. Vast, too, the views obtained on the homeward drive. Over against Hesdin rises its forest--holiday ground of rich and poor, as yet undiscovered by the tourist. From this friendly little town a charming woodland journey may be made by the railway now leading through the forest of Crécy to Abbeville. Between Hesdin and Arras the geometrically planted cider apple trees and poplars growing in parallel lines are without beauty, but by the railway are bits of waste ground covered with cowslip, wind flowers, cuckoo-pint, and dandelion. On the top of lofty elms here and there are dark masses; these are the nests of the magpie, and apparently quite safe from molestation. By the wayside we see evidences of peasant ownership on the most modest scale, women cutting their tiny patch of rye, as green food for cattle, sowing their potato field, or keeping a few sheep. Everywhere lilacs are in full bloom, and the pear and cherry trees burdened with blossom as snow. Everything is a month ahead of ordinary years. I write of April 1893. The Hôtel St. Pol at Arras looks, I should say, precisely as it did in Robespierre's time. The furniture certainly belongs to that epoch, sanitary arrangements have made little advance, and the bare staircases and floors do not appear as if they had been well swept, much less scoured, since the fall of the Bastille. It is a rambling, I should say rat-haunted, old place, but fairly quiet and comfortable, with civil men-servants and no kind of pretence. Arras itself, that is to say its Petite Place, is a specimen of Renaissance architecture hardly to be matched even in France. The Flemish gables and Spanish arcades, not a vestige of modernization marring the effect, make a unique picture. Above all rises the first of those noble belfry towers met by the traveller on this round, souvenirs of civic rights hardly won and stoutly maintained. The first object looked for will be Robespierre's birthplace, an eminently respectable middle-class abode, now occupied by a personage almost as generally distasteful as that of the Conventionnel himself, namely, a process-server or bailiff. A bright little lad whom I interrogated on the way testified the liveliest interest in my quest, and would not lose sight of me till I had discovered the right house. It is a yellow-walled, yellow-shuttered, symbolically atrabilious-looking place, with twenty-three front windows. Robespierre's parents must have been in decent circumstances when their son Maximilian was born, and perhaps the reverses of early life had no small share in determining his after career. Left an orphan in early life, he owed his education and start in life to charity. The fastidious, poetic, austere country lawyer, unlike his fellow-conventionnels, was no born orator. Thoughts that breathe and words that burn did not drop from his lips as from Danton's. His carefully prepared speeches, even in the apogee of his popularity, were often interrupted by the cry "Cut it short" or "Keep to the point." The exponent of Rousseau was ofttimes "long preaching," like St. Paul. But there are early utterances of Robespierre's that constitute in themselves a revolution, when, for instance, in 1789 he pleaded for the admission of Jews, non-Catholics, and actors to political rights. "The Jews," he protested, "have been maligned in history. Their reputed vices arise from the ignominy into which they have been plunged." And although his later discourses breathe a spirit of frenzied vindictiveness, certain passages recall that "humane and spiritual element" commented upon by Charles Nodier. This is especially noticeable in what is called his _discours-testament_, the speech delivered on the eve of Thermidor. At one moment, with positive ferocity, he lashes the memory of former friends and colleagues sent by himself to the guillotine; at another he dilates upon the virtue of magnanimity in lofty, Platonic strains. [ILLUSTRATION: ARRAS, LA PETITE PALACE] With Danton's implacable foe it was indeed a case of "Roses, roses, all the way. Thus I enter, and thus I go." Twenty-four hours after that peroration he awaited his doom, an object of ruthless execration. And visitors are still occasionally shown in the Hôtel des Archives the table on which was endured his short but terrible retribution. A public day school for girls exists at Arras, but the higher education of women--we must never lose sight of the fact--is sternly denounced by Catholic authorities. Lay schools and lay teachers for girls are not only unfashionable, they are immoral in the eyes of the orthodox. The museum and public library, 40,000 and odd volumes, of this town of 26,000 souls are both magnificent and magnificently housed in the ancient Abbaye de St. Vaast, adjoining cathedral, bishopric and public garden. Besides pictures, statuary, natural history and archaeological collections, occupying three storeys, is a room devoted exclusively to local talent and souvenirs. Among the numerous bequests of generous citizens is a collection of _faïence_ lately left by a tradeswoman, whose portrait commemorates the deed. Some fine specimens of ancient tapestry of Arras, hence the name arras, chiefly in shades of grey and blue, and also specimens of the delicate hand-made Arras lace, are here. There is also a room of technical exhibits, chemicals and minerals used in the industrial arts, dyes, textiles. Quite a third of the visitors thronging these sumptuous rooms were young recruits. A modern picture of Eustache St. Pierre and his companions, at the feet of Edward III and his kneeling Queen, evoked much admiration. I heard one young soldier explaining the subject to a little group. There were also many family parties, and some blue blouses. How delightful such a place of resort-not so much in July weather, on this 9th of April one might fancy it harvest time!--but on bleak, rainy, uninviting days! One of the officials advised me to visit the recently erected Ecole des Beaux Arts at the other end of the town, which I did. I would here note the pride taken in their public collections by all concerned. This elderly man, most likely an old soldier, seemed as proud of the museum as if it were his own especial property. I was at once shown over the spacious, airy, well-kept building--school of art and conservatorium of music in one, both built, set on foot, and maintained by the municipality. Here youths and girls of all ranks can obtain a thorough artistic and musical training without a fraction of cost. The classes are held in separate rooms, and boys in addition learn modelling and mechanical drawing. The school was opened four years ago, and already numbers eighty students of both sexes, girls meeting two afternoons a week, boys every evening. Arras also possesses an École Normale or large training school for female teachers. On this brilliant Sunday afternoon, although many small shops were open, I noted the cessation of street traffic. Every one seemed abroad, and business at a standstill. All the newspaper kiosks were closed. Next morning soon after eight o'clock I was off to Vitry-en-Artois for a day's farming. At the little station I was met by a friend's friend--a typical young Frenchman, gaiety itself, amiable, easy, all his faculties alert--and driven by him in a little English dogcart to the neighbouring village. Twenty-five minutes brought us to our destination--house and model farm of a neighbour, upwards of twelve hundred acres, all cultivated on the most approved methods. Our host now took my young friend's reins, he seating himself behind, and we drove slowly over a large portion of the estate, taking a zigzag course across the fields. There are here three kinds of soil--dry, chalky and unproductive, rich loam, and light intermediate. In spite of the drought of the last few weeks, the crops are very luxuriant, and quite a month ahead of former seasons. This estate of six hundred and odd hectares is a specimen of high farming on a large scale, such as I had never before witnessed in France. I do not exaggerate when I say that from end to end could not be discerned a single weed. Of course, the expense of cultivation on such a scale is very great, and hardly remunerative at the present price of wheat. Sixty hectares, _i.e._ nearly 150 acres, are planted with wheat, and two-thirds of that superficies with beetroot. The young corn was as advanced as in June with us, some kinds of richer growth than others, and showing different shades of green, each tract absolutely weedless, and giving evidence of highest cultivation. Fourteen hectolitres per hectare of corn is the average, forty the maximum. Besides beetroot for sugar, clover and sainfoin are grown, little or no barley, and neither turnips nor mangel-wurzel. [Footnote: Hectolitre = 2 bushels 3 pecks.] The land is just now prepared for planting beetroot, by far the most important crop here, and on which I shall have much to say. Henceforth, indeed, the farming I describe may be called industrial, purely agricultural products being secondary. On the importance of beetroot sugar it is hardly necessary to dwell at length. A few preliminary facts, however, may be acceptable. Up till the year 1812, cane sugar only was known in France; the discovery of beetroot sugar dates from the Continental blockade of that period. In 1885 the amount of raw sugar produced from beetroot throughout France was 90 millions of kilos. In 1873 the sum-total had reached 400 millions. The consumption of sugar per head here is nevertheless one-third less than among ourselves. [Footnote: Kilogramme = 2 lb. 3 oz.] We come now to see the results of fiscal regulation upon agriculture. Formerly duty was paid not upon the root itself but its product. This is now changed, and, the beetroot being taxed, the grower strives after that kind producing the largest percentage of saccharine matter. Hardly less important is the residue. The pulp of the crushed beetroot in these regions forms the staple food of cows, pigs and sheep. Mixed with chopped straw, it is stored for winter use in mounds by small cultivators, in enormous cellars constructed on purpose by large owners. Horses refuse to eat this mixture, which has a peculiar odour, scenting farm premises from end to end. The chief manure used is that produced on the farm and nitrates. On this especial estate dried fish from Sweden had been tried, and, as on the farm before mentioned, chalky land is dug to the depth of three feet, the better soil being put on the top. This is the process called _marnage_. We now drove for miles right across the wide stretches of young wheat and land prepared for beetroot. The wheels of our light cart, the host said, would do good rather than harm. Horse beans, planted a few weeks before, were well up; colza also was pretty forward. Pastures there were none. Although the cornfields were as clean as royal gardens we came upon parties of women, girls and boys hoeing here and there. The rows of young wheat showed as much uniformity as a newly-planted vineyard. Ploughing and harrowing were being done chiefly by horses, only a few oxen being used. My host told me that his animals were never worked on Sundays. On week-days they remain longer afield than with us, but a halt of an hour or two is made for food and rest at mid-day. Another crop to be mentioned is what is called _hivernage_ or winter fodder, _i.e._ lentils planted between rows of rye, the latter being grown merely to protect the other. On my query as to the school attendance of boys and girls employed in agriculture, my host said that authorities are by no means rigid; at certain seasons of the year, indeed, they are not expected to attend. Among some large landowners we find tolerably conservative notions even in France. Over-education, they say, is unfitting the people for manual labour, putting them out of their place, and so forth. Moles are not exterminated. "They do more good than harm," said my host, "and I like them." I had heard the same thing at Caumont, where were many mole-hills. Here and there, dove-tailed into these enormous fields, were small patches farmed by the peasants, rarely their own property. Their condition was described as neither that of prosperity nor want. "They get along." That was the verdict. In our long drive across weedless corn and clover fields we came upon a small wood, a recent plantation of our host. Even this bit of greenery made a pleasant break in the uniform landscape. We then drove home, and inspected the premises on foot. Everything was on a colossal scale, and trim as a Dutch interior. The vast collection of machinery included the latest French, English, Belgian and American inventions. Steam engines are fixtures, the consumption of coal being 160 tons yearly per 300 hectares. We are thus brought face to face with the agriculture of the future, ancient methods and appliances being supplanted one by one, manual labour reduced to the minimum, the cultivation of the soil become purely mechanical. The idyllic element vanishes from rural life and all savours of Chicago! Stables and neat-houses were the perfection of cleanliness and airiness. Here for the first time I saw sheep stabled like cows and horses. Their quarters were very clean, and littered with fresh straw. They go afield for a portion of the day, but, as I have before mentioned, pastures are few and far between. The enormous underground store-houses for beetroot, pulp and chopped straw were now almost empty. At midday, the oxen were led home and fell to their strange food with appetite, its moistness being undoubtedly an advantage in dry weather. The cart horses were being fed with boiled barley, and looked in first-rate condition. Indeed, all the animals seemed as happy and well-cared for as my host's scores upon scores of pet birds. Birds, however, are capricious, and nothing would induce a beautiful green parrot to cry, "Vive la France" in my presence. After an animated breakfast--thoroughly French breakfast, the best of everything cooked and served in the best possible manner--we took leave, and my young friend drove me back to Vitry to call upon his own family. M.D., senior, is a miller, and the family dwelling, which adjoins his huge water-mill, is very prettily situated on the Scarpe. We entered by a little wooden bridge running outside, a conservatory filled with exotics and ferns lending the place a fairy look. I never saw anything in rural France that more fascinated me than this water-mill with its crystal clear waters and surrounding foliage. M.D. with his three sons quitted their occupation as we drove up. Madame and her young daughter joined us in the cool salon, and we chatted pleasantly for a quarter of an hour. I was much struck with the head of the family, an elderly man with blue eyes, fine features, and a thoughtful expression. He spoke sadly of the effect of American competition, and admitted that protection could offer but a mere palliative. Hitherto I had found a keenly protectionist bias among French agriculturists. Of England and the English he spoke with much sympathy, although at this time we were as yet far from the Entente Cordiale. "C'est le plus grand peuple au monde" ("It is the greatest nation in the world"), he said. Nothing could equal the ease and cordiality with which this charming family received me. The miller with his three elder sons had come straight from the mill. Well-educated gentlemen are not ashamed of manual labour in France. How I wished I could have spent days, nay weeks, in the neighbourhood of the water-mill! XIV LADY MERCHANTS AND SOCIALIST MAYORS Only three museums in France date prior to the Revolution, those of Rheims, founded in 1748, and of Dijon and Nancy, founded in 1787. The opening in Paris of the Muséum Français in 1792, consisting of the royal collections and art treasures of suppressed convents, was the beginning of a great movement in this direction. At Lille the municipal authorities first got together a few pictures in the convent of the Récollets, and Watteau the painter was deputed to draw up a catalogue. On the 12th May, 1795, the collection consisted of 583 pictures and 58 engravings. On the 1st September, 1801, the consuls decreed the formation of departmental museums and distribution of public art treasures. It was not, however, till 1848 that the municipal council of Lille set to work in earnest upon the enrichment of the museum, now one of the finest in provincial cities. The present superb building was erected entirely at the expense of the municipality, and was only opened two years ago. It has recently been enriched by art treasures worth a million of francs, the gift of a rich citizen and his wife, tapestries, _faïence_, furniture, enamels, ivories, illuminated MSS., rare bindings, engraved gems. Before that time the unrivalled collection of drawings by old masters had lent the Lille museum a value especially its own. The collections are open every day, Sundays included. Being entirely built of stone, there is little risk of fire. Thieves are guarded against by two caretakers inside the building at night and two patrols outside. It is an enormous structure, and arranged with much taste. The old wall still encircles the inner town, and very pretty is the contrast of grey stone and fresh spring foliage; lilacs in full bloom, also the almond, cherry, pear tree, and many others. Lille nowadays recalls quite other thoughts than those suggested by Tristram Shandy. It may be described as a town within towns, the manufacturing centres around having gradually developed into large rival municipalities. Among these are Tourcoing, Croix, and Roubaix, now more than half as large as Lille itself. I stayed a week at Lille, and had I remained there a year, in one respect should have come away no whit the wiser. The manufactories, one and all, are inaccessible as the interior of a Carmelite convent. Queen Victoria could get inside the monastery of the Grande Chartreuse, but I question whether Her Majesty would have been permitted to see over a manufactory of thread gloves at Lille! Such jealousy has doubtless its reason. Most likely trade secrets have been filched by foreign rivals under the guise of the ordinary tourist. Be this as it may, the confection of a tablecloth or piece of beige is kept as profoundly secret as that of the famous pepper tarts of Prince Bedreddin or the life-sustaining cordial of celebrated fasters. In the hope of winning over a feminine mind, I drove with a friend to one of the largest factories at Croix, the property of a lady. Here, as at Mulhouse, mill-owners live in the midst of their works. They do not leave business cares behind them, after English fashion, dwelling as far away as possible from factory chimneys. The premises of Mme. C. are on a magnificent scale; all in red brick, fresh as if erected yesterday, the mistress's house--a vast mansion--being a little removed from these and surrounded by elegantly-arranged grounds. A good deal of bowing and scraping had to be got through before we were even admitted to the portress's lodge, as much more ceremonial before the portress could be induced to convey our errand to one of the numerous clerks in a counting-house close by. At length, and after many dubious shakes of the head and murmurs of surprise at our audacity, the card was transmitted to the mansion. A polite summons to the great lady's presence raised our hopes. There seemed at least some faint hope of success. Traversing the gravelled path, as we did so catching sight of madame's coach-house and half-dozen carriages, landau, brougham, brake, and how many more! we reached the front door. Here the clerk left us, and a footman in livery, with no little ceremony, ushered us into the first of a suite of reception rooms, all fitted up in the modern style, and having abundance of ferns and exotics. At the end of the last salon a fashionably dressed lady, typically French in feature, manners and deportment, sat talking to two gentlemen. She very graciously advanced to meet us, held out a small white hand covered with rings, and with the sweetest smile heard my modestly reiterated request to be allowed a glimpse of the factory. Would that I could convey the gesture, expression of face and tone of voice with which she replied, in the fewest possible words! After that inimitable, unforgettable "Jamais, jamais, jamais!" there was nothing to do but make our bow and retire, discomfiture being amply atoned by the little scene just described. We next drove straight through Lille to the vast park or Bois, as it is called, not many years since acquired by the town as a pleasure-ground. Very wisely, the pretty, irregular stretch of glade, dell and wood has been left as it was, only a few paths, seats and plantations being added. No manufacturing town in France is better off in this respect. Wide, handsome boulevards lead to the Bois and pretty botanical garden, many private mansions having beautiful grounds, but walled in completely as those of cloistered convents. The fresh spring greenery and multitude of flowering trees and shrubs make suburban Lille look its best; outside the town every cottage has a bit of ground and a tree or two. During this second week of April the weather suddenly changed. Rain fell, and a keen east wind rendered fires and winter garments once more indispensable. On one of these cold, windy days I went with Lille friends to Roubaix, as cold and windy a town, I should say, as any in France. A preliminary word or two must be said about Roubaix, the city of strikes, pre-eminently the Socialist city. City we may indeed call it, and it is one of rapidly increasing dimensions. In the beginning of the century Roubaix numbered 8000 souls only. Its population is now 114,000. Since 1862 the number of its machines has quintupled. Every week 600 tons of wool are brought to the mills. As I have before mentioned, more business is transacted with the Bank of France by this _cheflieu_ of a canton than by Toulouse, Rheims, Nîmes, or Montpellier. The speciality of Roubaix is its dress stuffs and woollen materials, large quantities of which are exported to America. To see these soft, delicate fabrics we must visit Regent Street and other fashionable quarters, not an inch is to be caught sight of here. Roubaix is a handsome town, with every possible softening down of grimy factory walls and tall chimneys. A broad, well-built street leads to the Hôtel de Ville; another equally wide street, with mansions of wealthy mill-owners and adjacent factories, leads to the new Boulevard de Paris and pretty public park, where a band plays on Sunday afternoons. But my first object was to obtain an interview with the Socialist mayor, a man of whom I had heard much. A friend residing at Lille kindly paved the way by sending his own card with mine, the messenger bringing back a courteous reply. Unfortunately, the Conseil-Général then sitting at Lille curtailed the time at the mayor's disposal, but before one o'clock he would be pleased to receive me, he sent word. Accordingly, conducted by my friend's clerk, I set out for the Town Hall. We waited some little time in the vestibule, the chief magistrate of Roubaix being very busy. Deputy-mayors, adjoints, were coming and going, and liveried officials bustled about, glancing at me from time to time, but without any impertinent curiosity. Impertinent curiosity, by the way, we rarely meet with in France. People seem of opinion that everybody must be the best judge of his or her own business. I was finally ushered into the council chamber, where the mayor and three deputy-mayors sat at a long table covered with green baize, transacting business. He very courteously bade me take a seat beside him, and we at once entered into conversation. The working man's representative of what was then the city _par excellence_ of strikes and socialism is a remarkable-looking man in middle life. Tall, angular, beardless, with the head of a leader, he would be noticed anywhere. There was a look of indomitable conviction in his face, and a quiet dignity from which neither his shabby clothes nor his humble calling detract. Can any indeed well be humbler? The first magistrate of a city of a hundred and fourteen thousand souls, a large percentage of whom are educated, wealthy men of the world, keeps, as I have said, a small _estaminet_ or café in which smoking is permitted, and sells newspapers, himself early in the morning making up and delivering his bundles to the various retailers. Here, indeed, we have the principles of the Republic--Liberty, Equality, Fraternity--carried out to their logical conclusion. Without money, without social position, this man owes his present dignity to sheer force of character and conviction. We chatted of socialism and the phases of it more immediately connected with Roubaix, on which latter subject I ventured to beg a little information. [Footnote: I give Littré's meaning of _estaminet_.] "We must go to the fountain-head," he replied very affably. "I regret that time does not permit me to enter into particulars now; but leave me your English address. The information required shall be forwarded." We then talked of socialism in England, of his English friends, and he was much interested to learn that I had once seen the great Marx and heard him speak at a meeting of the International in Holborn twenty-five years before. Then I told him, what perhaps he knew, of the liberty accorded by our Government to hold meetings in Trafalgar Square, and we spoke of Gladstone. "A good democrat, but born too early for socialism--the future of the world. One cannot take to socialism at eighty-three years of age," I said. "No, that is somewhat late in the day," was the smiling reply. I took leave, much pleased with my reception. From a certain point of view, the socialist mayor of Roubaix was one of the most interesting personalities I had met in France. Roubaix has been endowed by the State with a handsome museum, library, technical and art school, the latter for young men only. These may belong to any nationality, and obtain their professional or artistic training free of charge. The exhibition of students' work sufficiently proclaims the excellence of the teaching. Here we saw very clever studies from the living model, a variety of designs, and, most interesting of all, fabrics prepared, dyed and woven entirely by the students. The admirably arranged library is open to all, and we were courteously shown some of its choicest treasures. These are not bibliographical curiosities, but albums containing specimens of Lyons silk, a marvellous display of taste and skill. Gems, butterflies' wings, feathers of tropical birds are not more brilliant than these hues, while each design is thoroughly artistic, and in its way an achievement. The picture gallery contains a good portrait of the veteran song-writer Nadaud, author of the immortal "Carcassonne." Many Germans and Belgians, engaged in commerce, spend years here, going away when their fortunes are made. More advantageous to the place are those capitalists who take root, identifying themselves with local interests. Such is the case with a large English firm at Croix, who have founded a Protestant church and schools for their workpeople. Let me record the spectacle presented by the museum on Sunday afternoon during the brilliant weather of April 1893. What most struck me was the presence of poorly-dressed boys; they evidently belonged to the least prosperous working class, and came in by twos and threes. Nothing could equal the good behaviour of these lads, or their interest in everything. Many young shop-women were also there, and, as usual, a large contingent of soldiers and recruits. Few shops remained open after mid-day, except one or two very large groceries, at which fresh vegetables were sold. It is pleasant to note a gradual diminution of Sunday labour throughout France. The celebration of May-Day, which date occurred soon after my visit, was not calculated either to alarm the Republic or the world in general. It was a monster manifestation in favour of the Three Eights, and I think few of us, were we suddenly transformed into Roubaix machinists, would not speedily become Three Eighters as well. At five o'clock in the morning the firing of cannon announced the annual "Fête du Travail," or workmen's holiday, not accorded by Act of Parliament, but claimed by the people as a legitimate privilege. Unwonted calm prevailed in certain quarters. Instead of men, women, boys and girls pouring by tens of thousands into the factories, the streets leading to them were empty. In one or two cases, where machinery had been set in motion and doors opened, public opinion immediately effected a stoppage of work. Instead, therefore, of being imprisoned from half-past five in the morning till seven or eight at night, the entire Roubaisien population had freed itself to enjoy "a sunshine holiday." Such a day cannot be too long, and at a quarter past seven vast crowds had collected before the Hôtel de Ville. Here a surprise was in store for the boldest Three Eighter going. The tricolour had been hoisted down, and replaced, not by a red flag, but by a large transparency, showing the following device in red letters upon a white ground:-- FÊTE INTERNATIONALE DU TRAVAIL, 1er Mai 1893. Huit Heures du Travail, Huit Heures du Loisir, Huit Heures du Repos. [Footnote: Translation-International festival of labour; eight hours' work, eight hours' leisure, eight hours' repose.] The mayor, in undress, that is to say in garments of every day, having surveyed these preparations, returned to his _estaminet_, the Plat d'Or, and there folded his newspapers as usual for the day's distribution. In the meantime the finishing touch was put to other decorations, consisting of flags, devices and red drapery, everywhere the Three Eights being conspicuous. A monster procession was then formed, headed by the Town Council and a vast number of bands. There was the music of the Fire Brigade, the socialist brass band, the children's choir, the Choral Society of Roubaix, the Franco-Belgian Choral Society, and many others. Twenty thousand persons took part in this procession, the men wearing red neckties and a red flower in their button-holes, the forty-seven groups of the workmen's federation bearing banners, all singing, bands playing, drums beating, cannons firing as they went. At mid-day the defile was made before the Hôtel de Ville, and delegates of the different socialist groups were formally received by the mayor and deputy-mayors, wearing their tricolour scarves of office. I must say the mayor's speech was a model of conciseness, good sense and, it must be added, courtesy; addressing himself first to his fellow-townswomen, then to his fellow-townsmen, he thanked the labour party for the grandiose celebration of the day, dwelt on the determination of the municipal council to watch over the workmen's interests, then begged all to enjoy themselves thoroughly, taking care to maintain the public peace. Toasts were drunk, the mayor's health with especial enthusiasm, but when at the stroke of noon he waved the tricolour and an enormous number of pigeons were let loose, not to be fired at but admired as they flew away in all directions, their tricolour ribbons fluttering, the general delight knew no bounds. "Long live our mayor," resounded from every mouth, "Vive le citoyen Carrette!" The rest of the day was devoted to harmless, out-of-door amusements: a balloon ascent, on the car being conspicuous in red, "Les trois huits," concerts, gymnastic contests, finally dancing and illuminations. Thus ended the first of May, 1893, in Lille. * * * * * St. Omer is a clean, well-built and sleepy little town, with some fine old churches. The mellow tone of the street architecture, especially under a burning blue sky, is very soothing; all the houses have a yellowish or pinkish hue. The town abounds in convents and seminaries, and the chief business of well-to-do ladies seems that of going to church. In the cathedral are many votive tablets to "Our Lady of Miracles"--one of the numerous miracle-working Virgins in France. Here we read the thanksgiving of a young man miraculously preserved throughout his four years' military service; there, one records how, after praying fervently for a certain boon, after many years the Virgin had granted his prayer. Parents commemorate miraculous favours bestowed on their children, and so on. The ancient ramparts at this time were in course of demolition, and the belt of boulevards which are to replace them will be a great improvement. The town is protected by newly-constructed works. Needless to say, it possesses a public library, on the usual principle--one citizen one book,--a museum, and small picture gallery. The population is 21,000. I was cordially received by a friend's friend, foremost resident in the place, and owner of a large distillery. As usual, the private dwelling, with coach-house, stables and garden adjoined the business premises. The _genièvre_ or gin, so called from the juniper used in flavouring it, here manufactured, is a choice liqueur, not the cheap intoxicant of our own public-houses. Liqueurs are always placed with coffee on French breakfast-tables. Every one takes a teaspoonful as a help to digestion. French people are greatly astonished at the absence of liqueurs in England. The excellence of French digestions generally would not seem to discredit the habit. In the fabrication of gin here only the corn of rye is used, and in small quantities, the juniper berry; it is ready for drinking in six months, although improved by keeping. I saw also curaçoa in its various stages. The orange peel used in the manufacture of this liqueur is soaked in alcohol for four months. My object, however, was to see the high farming on an extensive scale for which this region is famous. Accordingly my host, accompanied by his amiable wife, placed themselves, their carriage, and time at my disposal, and we set out for a long round. In harvest time the aspect of the country must be one of extreme richness. The enormous sweeps of corn, clover, and beetroot have no division from each other or the road; no hedges are to be seen, and not a tree in the middle of the crops, few trees, indeed, anywhere. Everywhere, on this 17th of April, the corn was a month ahead of former seasons, and, in spite of the long drought, very flourishing. The first farm visited consists of 360 hectares (just upon 900 acres), all in the highest cultivation, and conducted strictly on the footing of a large industrial concern, with offices, counting-house, carpenters', saddlers' and wheelwrights' shops, smithies, mills and machinery, every agricultural process down to grinding the corn being performed on the premises, and by workmen in the employ of the owner. As we enter these vast premises, and hear the buzz of machinery, we feel the complete prosaicization of rustic life. The farmhouse scenes of my own childhood in Suffolk, the idyllic descriptions of George Eliot, no more resemble actualities than the poetic spinning-wheel of olden times the loom of latest invention. Utility is the object aimed at, incontestably with great results, but in effect unromantic as Chicago. It is high farming made to pay. All was bustle and activity as we made the round of the premises, beginning with the vast machinery and workshops. These walled-in buildings, divided into two portions, each covering three-quarters of an acre, reminded me of nothing so much as of the caravanserais of Algerian travel twenty-five years ago. Once the doors are bolted none can enter, yet to render security doubly sure dogs are chained up in every corner--we will hope, let loose at night. I will not here go into agricultural details, only adding a few particulars. The splendid wheat, clover, bean and rye crops attested the excellence of the farming. Dovetailing into these enormous fields were small patches of peasant owners or tenants, all without division or apparent boundary. In the villages I was struck by the tidy appearance of the children coming out of school. The usual verdict on peasant proprietors hereabouts was that they do not accumulate, neither are they in want. Very little, if any, beggary meets the eye, either in town or country. We then drove to the château, with its English grounds, of the Vicomte de----, friend of my host, and an ardent admirer of England and English ways. This gentleman looked, indeed, like an English squire, and spoke our tongue. He had visited King Edward, then Prince of Wales, at Sandringham. As an illustration of his lavish method of doing things, I mention a quantity of building stone lately ordered from Valenciennes. This stone, for the purpose of building offices, had cost £800. In this part of France clerks and counting-houses seem an indispensable feature of farm premises. An enormous bell for summoning work-people to work or meals is always conspicuous. The whole thing has a commercial aspect. Here we saw some magnificent animals, among these a prize bull of Flemish breed. It was said to be very fierce, and on this account had a ring in its nose. This cruel custom is now, I believe, prohibited here by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. On the other hand, I was glad to find the Vicomte a member of the kindred society in Paris, and he assured me that he was constantly holding his green card of membership over offenders _in terrorem_. We hardly expect a rich aristocrat to make utility the first object in his agricultural pursuits. High farming was nevertheless here the order of the day. We next drove to Clairmarais, a village some miles off in quite another direction, coming in sight of magnificent forests. Our errand was to the ancient Cistercian abbey, now the property of a capitalist, and turned into the business premises of his large farm. Of the original monastery, founded in 1140, hardly a trace remains. Abutting on the outer wall is the chapel, and before it a small enclosed flower-garden full of wallflowers and flowering shrubs, a bit of prettiness welcome to the eye. Just beyond, too, was an old-fashioned, irregularly planted orchard, with young cattle grazing under the bloom-laden trees, the turf dazzlingly bright, but less so than the young corn and rye, now ready for first harvesting. The vaulted kitchens with vast fireplaces are relics of the ancient abbey, and even now form most picturesque interiors. At a long wooden table in one sat a blue-bloused group drinking cider out of huge yellow mugs--scene for a painter. Another, fitted up as a dairy, was hardly less of a picture. On shelves in the dark, antiquated chamber lay large, red-earthen pans full of cream for cheese-making. The brown-robed figure of a lay brother would have seemed appropriate in either place. Outside these all was modernization and hard prose. We saw the shepherd returning with his sheep from the herbage, the young lambs bleating pitifully in an inner shed. It is the custom here to send the sheep afield during the day, the lambs meantime being fed on hay. Here again, I should say, is a commercial mistake. The lamb of pasture-fed animals must be incontestably superior. Humanity here seems on the side of utilitarianism. Who can say? Perhaps the inferiority of French meat in certain regions arises from this habit of stabling cattle and sheep. The drive from Clairmarais to St. Omer took us through a quite different and much more attractive country. We were now in the marais, an amphibious stretch of country, cut up into gardens and only accessible by tiny canals. It is a small Holland. This vast stretch of market garden, intersected by waterways just admitting the passage of a boat, is very productive. Three pounds per hectare is often paid in rent. The early vegetables, conveyed by boat to St. Omer, are largely exported to England. Every inch of ground is turned to account, the turf-bordered, canal-bound gardens making a pretty scene, above the green levels intersected by gleaming water the fine towers of St. Omer clearly outlined against the brilliant sky. The English colony of former days vanished on the outbreak of the last war, not to return. A few young English Catholics still prepare for the priesthood here, and eighty more were at this time pursuing their studies at Douai, under the charge of English Benedictines. "Why," impatiently asked Arthur Young in 1788, "are Catholics to emigrate in order to be ill-educated abroad, instead of being allowed institutions that would educate them well at home?" The disabilities he reprobates have long since been removed, but English-speaking seminarists still flock to Douai. Here I close this agricultural and industrial round in Picardy and French Flanders, regions so near home, yet so unfamiliar to most of us! And here I close what, in many respects, may be called another round in unfrequented France. THE END 
7961	----	IN AND OUT OF THREE NORMANDY INNS BY ANNA BOWMAN DODD [Illustration: GUILLAUME-LE-CONQUERANT-DIVES] TO EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. _My Dear Mr. Stedman: To this little company of Norman men and women, you will, I know, extend a kindly greeting, if only because of their nationality. To your courtesy, possibly, you will add the leaven of interest, when you perceive--as you must--that their qualities are all their own, their defects being due solely to my own imperfect presentment. With sincere esteem_, ANNA BOWMAN DODD. _New York_. CONTENTS. VILLERVILLE. I. A LANDING ON THE COAST OF FRANCE II. A SPRING DRIVE III. FROM AN INN WINDOW IV. OUT ON A MUSSEL-BED V. THE VILLAGE VI. A PAGAN COBBLER VII. SOME NORMAN LANDLADIES VIII. THE QUARTIER LATIN ON THE BEACH IX. A NORMAN HOUSEHOLD X. ERNESTINE ALONG AN OLD POST-ROAD. XI. TO AN OLD MANOIR XII. A NORMAN CURE XIII. HONFLEUR--NEW AND OLD DIVES. XIV. A COAST DRIVE XV. GUILLAUME-LE-CONQUERANT XVI. THE GREEN BENCH XVII. THE WORLD THAT CAME TO DIVES XVIII. THE CONVERSATION OF PATRIOTS XIX. IN LA CHAMBRE DES MARMOUSETS TWO BANQUETS AT DIVES. XX. A SEVENTEENTH CENTURY REVIVAL XXI. THE AFTER-DINNER TALK OF THREE GREAT LADIES XXII. A NINETEENTH CENTURY BREAKFAST A LITTLE JOURNEY ALONG THE COAST. XXIII. A NIGHT IN A CAEN ATTIC XXIV. A DAY AT BAYEUX AND ST. LO XXV. A DINNER AT COUTANCES XXVI. A SCENE IN A NORMAN COURT XXVII. THE FETE-DIEU--A JUNE CHRISTMAS XXVIII. BY LAND TO MONT ST. MICHEL MONT ST. MICHEL. XXIX. BY SEA TO THE POULARD INN XXX. THE PILGRIMS AND THE SHRINE--AN HISTORICAL OMELETTE LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. GUILLAUME-LE-CONQUERANT--DIVES A VILLAGE STREET--VILLERVILLE ON THE BEACH--VILLERVILLE A SALE OF MUSSELS--VILLERVILLE A VILLERVILLE FISH-WIFE A DEPARTURE--VILLERVILLE THE INN AT DIVES--GUILLAUME-LE-CONQUERANT CHAMBRE DE LA PUCELLE--DIVES CHAMBRE DES MARMOUSETS--DIVES MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ CHAMBRE DE LA PUCELLE--DIVES CHATEAU FONTAINE LE HENRI, NEAR CAEN AN EXCITING MOMENT--A COUTANCES INTERIOR A STREET IN COUTANCES--EGLISE SAINT-PIERRE MONT SAINT MICHEL MONT SAINT MICHEL SNAIL-GATHERERS VILLERVILLE. AN INN BY THE SEA. CHAPTER I. A LANDING ON THE COAST OF FRANCE. Narrow streets with sinuous curves; dwarfed houses with minute shops protruding on inch-wide sidewalks; a tiny casino perched like a bird-cage on a tiny scaffolding; bath-houses dumped on the beach; fishing-smacks drawn up along the shore like so many Greek galleys; and, fringing the cliffs--the encroachment of the nineteenth century--a row of fantastic sea-side villas. This was Villerville. Over an arch of roses; across a broad line of olives, hawthorns, laburnums, and syringas, straight out to sea-- This was the view from our windows. Our inn was bounded by the sea on one side, and on the other by a narrow village street. The distance between good and evil has been known to be quite as short as that which lay between these two thoroughfares. It was only a matter of a strip of land, an edge of cliff, and a shed of a house bearing the proud title of Hôtel-sur-Mer. Two nights before, our arrival had made quite a stir in the village streets. The inn had given us a characteristic French welcome; its eye had measured us before it had extended its hand. Before reaching the inn and the village, however, we had already tasted of the flavor of a genuine Norman welcome. Our experience in adventure had begun on the Havre quays. Our expedition could hardly be looked upon as perilous; yet it was one that, from the first, evidently appealed to the French imagination; half Havre was hanging over the stone wharves to see us start. "_Dame_, only English women are up to that!"--for all the world is English, in French eyes, when an adventurous folly is to be committed. This was one view of our temerity; it was the comment of age and experience of the world, of the cap with the short pipe in her mouth, over which curved, downward, a bulbous, fiery-hued nose that met the pipe. "_C'est beau, tout de même_, when one is young--and rich." This was a generous partisan, a girl with a miniature copy of her own round face--a copy that was tied up in a shawl, very snug; it was a bundle that could not possibly be in any one's way, even on a somewhat prolonged tour of observation of Havre's shipping interests. "And the blonde one--what do you think of her, _hein_?" This was the blouse's query. The tassel of the cotton night-cap nodded, interrogatively, toward the object on which the twinkling ex-mariner's eye had fixed itself--on Charm's slender figure, and on the yellow half-moon of hair framing her face. There was but one verdict concerning the blonde beauty; she was a creature made to be stared at. The staring was suspended only when the bargaining went on; for Havre, clearly, was a sailor and merchant first; its knowledge of a woman's good points was rated merely as its second-best talent. Meanwhile, our bargaining for the sailboat was being conducted on the principles peculiar to French traffic; it had all at once assumed the aspect of dramatic complication. It had only been necessary for us to stop on our lounging stroll along the stone wharves, diverting our gaze for a moment from the grotesque assortment of old houses that, before now, had looked down on so many naval engagements, and innocently to ask a brief question of a nautical gentleman, picturesquely attired in a blue shirt and a scarlet beret, for the quays immediately to swarm with jerseys and red caps. Each beret was the owner of a boat; and each jersey had a voice louder than his brother's. Presently the battle of tongues was drowning all other sounds. In point of fact, there were no other sounds to drown. All other business along the quays was being temporarily suspended; the most thrilling event of the day was centring in us and our treaty. Until this bargain was closed, other matters could wait. For a Frenchman has the true instinct of the dramatist; business he rightly considers as only an _entr'acte_ in life; the serious thing is the _scene de theatre_, wherever it takes place. Therefore it was that the black, shaky-looking houses, leaning over the quays, were now populous with frowsy heads and cotton nightcaps. The captains from the adjacent sloops and tug-boats formed an outer circle about the closer ring made by the competitors for our favors, while the loungers along the parapets, and the owners of top seats on the shining quay steps, may be said to have been in possession of orchestra stalls from the first rising of the curtain. A baker's boy and two fish-wives, trundling their carts, stopped to witness the last act of the play. Even the dogs beneath the carts, as they sank, panting, to the ground, followed, with red-rimmed eyes, the closing scenes of the little drama. "_Allons_, let us end this," cried a piratical-looking captain, in a loud, masterful voice. And he named a price lower than the others had bid. He would take us across--yes, us and our luggage, and land us--yes, at Villerville, for that. The baker's boy gave a long, slow whistle, with relish. "_Dame!_" he ejaculated, between his teeth, as he turned away. The rival captains at first had drawn back; they had looked at their comrade darkly, beneath their berets, as they might at a deserter with whom they meant to deal--later on. But at his last words they smiled a smile of grim humor. Beneath the beards a whisper grew; whatever its import, it had the power to move all the hard mouths to laughter. As they also turned away, their shrugging shoulders and the scorn in their light laughter seemed to hand us over to our fate. In the teeth of this smile, our captain had swung his boat round and we were stepping into her. "_Au revoir--au revoir et à bientôt!_" The group that was left to hang over the parapets and to wave us its farewell, was a thin one. Only the professional loungers took part in this last act of courtesy. There was a cluster of caps, dazzlingly white against the blue of the sky; a collection of highly decorated noses and of old hands ribboned with wrinkles, to nod and bob and wave down the cracked-voiced "_bonjours_." But the audience that had gathered to witness the closing of the bargain had melted away with the moment of its conclusion. Long ere this moment of our embarkation the wide stone street facing the water had become suddenly deserted. The curious-eyed heads and the cotton nightcaps had been swallowed up in the hollows of the dark, little windows. The baker's boy had long since mounted his broad basket, as if it were an ornamental head-dress, and whistling, had turned a sharp corner, swallowed up, he also, by the sudden gloom that lay between the narrow streets. The sloop-owners had linked arms with the defeated captains, and were walking off toward their respective boats, whistling a gay little air. "_Colinette au bois s'en alla En sautillant par-ci, par-là; Trala deridera, trala, derid-er-a-a._" One jersey-clad figure was singing lustily as he dropped with a spring into his boat. He began to coil the loose ropes at once, as if the disappointments in life were only a necessary interruption, to be accepted philosophically, to this, the serious business of his days. We were soon afloat, far out from the land of either shores. Between the two, sea and river meet; is the river really trying to lose itself in the sea, or is it hopelessly attempting to swallow the sea? The green line that divides them will never give you the answer: it changes hour by hour, day by day; now it is like a knife-cut, deep and straight; and now like a ribbon that wavers and flutters, tying together the blue of the great ocean and the silver of the Seine. Close to the lips of the mighty mouth lie the two shores. In that fresh May sunshine Havre glittered and bristled, was aglow with a thousand tints and tones; but we sailed and sailed away from her, and behold, already she had melted into her cliffs. Opposite, nearing with every dip of the dun-colored sail into the blue seas, was the Calvados coast; in its turn it glistened, and in its young spring verdure it had the lustre of a rough-hewn emerald. "_Que voulez-vous, mesdames?_ Who could have told that the wind would play us such a trick?" The voice was the voice of our captain. With much affluence of gesture he was explaining--his treachery! Our nearness to the coast had made the confession necessary. To the blandness of his smile, as he proceeded in his unabashed recital, succeeded a pained expression. We were not accepting the situation with the true phlegm of philosophers; he felt that he had just cause for protest. What possible difference could it make to us whether we were landed at Trouville or at Villerville? But to him--to be accused of betraying two ladies--to allow the whole of the Havre quays to behold in him a man disgraced, dishonored! His was a tragic figure as he stood up, erect on the poop, to clap hands to a blue-clad breast, and to toss a black mane of hair in the golden air. "_Dame! Toujours été galant homme, moi!_ I am known on both shores as the most gallant of men. But the most gallant of men cannot control the caprice of the wind!" To which was added much abuse of the muddy bottoms, the strength of the undertow, and other marine disadvantages peculiar to Villerville. It was a tragic figure, with gestures and voice to match. But it was evident that the Captain had taken his own measure mistakenly. In him the French stage had lost a comedian of the first magnitude. Much, therefore, we felt, was to be condoned in one who doubtless felt so great a talent itching for expression. When next he smiled, we had revived to a keener appreciation of baffled genius ever on the scent for the capture of that fickle goddess, opportunity. The captain's smile was oiling a further word of explanation. "See, mesdames, they come! they will soon land you on the beach!" He was pointing to a boat smaller than our own, that now ran alongside. There had been frequent signallings between the two boats, a running up and down of a small yellow flag which we had thought amazingly becoming to the marine landscape, until we learned the true relation of the flag to the treachery aboard our own craft. "You see, mesdames," smoothly continued our talented traitor, "you see how the waves run up on the beach. We could never, with this great sail, run in there. We should capsize. But behold, these are bathers, accustomed to the water--they will carry you--but as if you were feathers!" And he pointed to the four outstretched, firmly-muscled arms, as if to warrant their powers of endurance. The two men had left their boat; it was dancing on the water, at anchor. They were standing immovable as pillars of stone, close to the gunwales of our craft. They were holding out their arms to us. Charm suddenly stood upright. She held out her hands like a child, to the least impressionable boatman. In an instant she was clasping his bronze throat. "All my life I've prayed for adventure. And at last it has come!" This she cried, as she was carried high above the waves. "That's right, have no fear," answered her carrier as he plunged onward, ploughing his way through the waters to the beach. Beneath my own feet there was a sudden swish and a swirl of restless, tumbling waters. The motion, as my carrier buried his bared legs in the waves, was such as accompanies impossible flights described in dreams, through some unknown medium. The surging waters seemed struggling to submerge us both; the two thin, tanned legs of the fisherman about whose neck I was clinging, appeared ridiculously inadequate to cleave a successful path through a sea of such strength as was running shoreward. "Madame does not appear to be used to this kind of travelling," puffed out my carrier, his conversational instinct, apparently, not in the least dampened by his strenuous plunging through the spirited sea. "It happens every day--all the aristocrats land this way, when they come over by the little boats. It distracts and amuses them, they say. It helps to kill the ennui." "I should think it might, my feet are soaking; sometimes wet feet--" "Ah, that's a pity, you must get a better hold," sympathetically interrupted my fisherman, as he proceeded to hoist me higher up on his shoulder. I, or a sack of corn, or a basket of fish, they were all one to this strong back and to these toughened sinews. When he had adjusted his present load at a secure height, above the dashing of the spray, he went on talking. "Yes, when the rich suffer a little it is not such a bad thing, it makes a pleasant change--_cela leur distrait_. For instance, there is the Princess de L----, there's her villa, close by, with green blinds. She makes little excuses to go over to Havre, just for this--to be carried in the arms like an infant. You should hear her, she shouts and claps her hands! All the beach assembles to see her land. When she is wet she cries for joy. It is so difficult to amuse one's self, it appears, in the great world." "But, _tiens_, here we are, I feel the dry sands." I was dropped as lightly on them as if it had been indeed a bunch of feathers my fisherman had been carrying. And meanwhile, out yonder, across the billows, with airy gesture dramatically executed, our treacherous captain was waving us a theatrical salute. The infant mate was grinning like a gargoyle. They were both delightfully unconscious, apparently, of any event having transpired, during the afternoon's pleasuring, which could possibly tinge the moment of parting with the hues of regret. "_Pour les bagages, mesdames_--" Two dripping, outstretched hands, two berets doffed, two picturesque giants bowing low, with a Frenchman's grace--this, on the Trouville sands, was the last act of this little comedy of our landing on the coast of France. CHAPTER II. A SPRING DRIVE. The Trouville beach was as empty as a desert. No other footfall, save our own, echoed along the broad board walks; this Boulevard des Italiens of the Normandy coast, under the sun of May was a shining pavement that boasted only a company of jelly-fishes as loungers. Down below was a village, a white cluster of little wooden houses; this was the village of the bath houses. The hotels might have been monasteries deserted and abandoned, in obedience to a nod from Rome or from the home government. Not even a fisherman's net was spread a-drying, to stay the appetite with a sense of past favors done by the sea to mortals more fortunate than we. The whole face of nature was as indifferent as a rich relation grown callous to the voice of entreaty. There was no more hope of man apparently, than of nature, being moved by our necessity; for man, to be moved, must primarily exist, and he was as conspicuously absent on this occasion as Genesis proves him to have been on the fourth day of creation. Meanwhile we sat still, and took counsel together. The chief of the council suddenly presented himself. It was a man in miniature. The masculine shape, as it loomed up in the distance, gradually separating itself from the background of villa roofs and casino terraces, resolved itself into a figure stolid and sturdy, very brown of leg, and insolent of demeanor--swaggering along as if conscious of there being a full-grown man buttoned up within a boy's ragged coat. The swagger was accompanied by a whistle, whose neat crispness announced habits of leisure and a sense of the refined pleasures of life; for an artistic rendering of an aria from "La Fille de Madame Angot" was cutting the air with clear, high notes. The whistle and the brown legs suddenly came to a dead stop. The round blue eyes had caught sight of us: "_Ouid-a-a!_" was this young Norman's salutation. There was very little trouser left, and what there was of it was all pocket, apparently. Into the pockets the boy's hands were stuffed, along with his amazement; for his face, round and full though it was, could not hold the full measure of his surprise. "We came over by boat--from Havre," we murmured meekly; then, "Is there a cake-shop near?" irrelevantly concluded Charm with an unmistakable ring of distress in her tone. There was no need of any further explanation. These two hearty young appetites understood each other; for hunger is a universal language, and cake a countersign common among the youth of all nations. "Until you came, you see, we couldn't leave the luggage," she went on. The blue eyes swept the line of our boxes as if the lad had taken his afternoon stroll with no other purpose than to guard them. "There are eight, and two umbrellas. _Soyez tranquille, je vous attendrai._" It was the voice and accent of a man of the world, four feet high--a pocket edition, so to speak, in shabby binding. The brown legs hung, the next instant, over the tallest of the trunks. The skilful whistling was resumed at once; our appearance and the boy's present occupation were mere interludes, we were made to understand; his real business, that afternoon, was to do justice to the Lecoq's entire opera, and to keep his eye on the sea. Only once did he break down; he left a high _C_ hanging perilously in mid-air, to shout out "I like madeleines, I do!" We assured him he should have a dozen. "_Bien!_" and we saw him settling himself to await our return in patience. Up in the town the streets, as we entered them, were as empty as was the beach. Trouville might have been a buried city of antiquity. Yet, in spite of the desolation, it was French and foreign; it welcomed us with an unmistakably friendly, companionable air. Why is it that one is made to feel the companionable element, by instantaneous process, as it were, in a Frenchman and in his towns? And by what magic also does a French village or city, even at its least animated period, convey to one the fact of its nationality? We made but ten steps progress through these silent streets, fronting the beach, and yet, such was the subtle enigma of charm with which these dumb villas and mute shops were invested, that we walked along as if under the spell of fascination. Perhaps the charm is a matter of sex, after all: towns are feminine, in the wise French idiom, that idiom so delicate in discerning qualities of sex in inanimate objects, as the Greeks before them were clever in discovering sex distinctions in the moral qualities. Trouville was so true a woman, that the coquette in her was alive and breathing even in this her moment of suspended animation. The closed blinds and iron shutters appeared to be winking at us, slyly, as if warning us not to believe in this nightmare of desolation; she was only sleeping, she wished us to understand; the touch of the first Parisian would wake her into life. The features of her fashionable face, meanwhile, were arranged with perfect composure; even in slumber she had preserved her woman's instinct of orderly grace; not a sign was awry, not a window-blind gave hint of rheumatic hinges, or of shattered vertebrae; all the machinery was in order; the faintest pressure on the electrical button, the button that connects this lady of the sea with the Paris Bourse and the Boulevards, and how gayly, how agilely would this Trouville of the villas and the beaches spring into life! The listless glances of the few tailors and cobblers who, with suspended thread, now looked after us, seemed dazed--as if they could not believe in the reality of two early tourists. A woman's head, here and there, leaned over to us from a high window; even these feminine eyes, however, appeared to be glued with the long winter's lethargy of dull sleep; they betrayed no edge of surprise or curiosity. The sun alone, shining with spendthrift glory, flooding the narrow streets and low houses with a late afternoon stream of color, was the sole inhabitant who did not blink at us, bovinely, with dulled vision. Half an hour later we were speeding along the roadway. Half an hour--and Trouville might have been a thousand miles away. Inland, the eye plunged over nests of clover, across the tops of the apple and peach trees, frosted now with blossoms, to some farm interiors. The familiar Normandy features could be quickly spelled out, one by one. It was the milking-hour. The fields were crowded with cattle and women; some of the cows were standing immovable, and still others were slowly defiling, in processional dignity, toward their homes. Broad-hipped, lean-busted figures, in coarse gowns and worsted kerchiefs, toiled through the fields, carrying full milk-jugs; brass _amphorae_ these latter might have been, from their classical elegance of shape. Ploughmen appeared and disappeared, they and their teams rising and sinking with the varying heights and depressions of the more distant undulations. In the nearer cottages the voices of children would occasionally fill the air with a loud clamor of speech; then our steed's bell-collar would jingle, and for the children's cries, a bird-throat, high above, from the heights of a tall pine would pour forth, as if in uncontrollable ecstasy, its rapture into the stillness of this radiant Normandy garden. The song appeared to be heard by other ears than ours. We were certain the dull-brained sheep were greatly affected by the strains of that generous-organed songster--they were so very still under the pink apple boughs. The cows are always good listeners; and now, relieved of their milk, they lifted eyes swimming with appreciative content above the grasses of their pasture. Two old peasants heard the very last of the crisp trills, before the concert ended; they were leaning forth from the narrow window-ledges of a straw-roofed cottage; the music gave to their blinking old eyes the same dreamy look we had read in the ruminating cattle orbs. For an aeronaut on his way to bed, I should have felt, had I been in that blackbird's plumed corselet, that I had had a gratifyingly full house. Meanwhile, toward the west, a vast marine picture, like a panorama on wheels, was accompanying us all the way. Sometimes at our feet, beneath the seamy fissures of a hillside, or far removed by sweep of meadow, lay the fluctuant mass we call the sea. It was all a glassy yellow surface now; into the liquid mirror the polychrome sails sent down long lines of color. The sun had sunk beyond the Havre hills, but the flame of his mantle still swept the sky. And into this twilight there crept up from the earth a subtle, delicious scent and smell--the smell and perfume of spring--of the ardent, vigorous, unspent Normandy spring. [Illustration: A VILLAGE STREET--VILLERVILLE] Suddenly a belfry grew out of the grain-fields. "_Nous voici_--here's Villerville!" cried lustily into the twilight our coachman's thick peasant voice. With the butt-end of his whip he pointed toward the hill that the belfry crowned. Below the little hamlet church lay the village. A high, steep street plunged recklessly downward toward the cliff; we as recklessly were following it. The snapping of our driver's whip had brought every inhabitant of the street upon the narrow sidewalks. A few old women and babies hung forth from the windows, but the houses were so low, that even this portion of the population, hampered somewhat by distance and comparative isolation, had been enabled to join in the chorus of voices that filled the street. Our progress down the steep, crowded street was marked by a pomp and circumstance which commonly attend only a royal entrance into a town; all of the inhabitants, to the last man and infant, apparently, were assembled to assist at the ceremonial of our entry. A chorus of comments arose from the shadowy groups filling the low doorways and the window casements. "_Tiens_--it begins to arrive--the season!" "Two ladies--alone--like that!" "_Dame! Anglaises, Américaines_--they go round the world thus, _à deux_!" "And why not, if they are young and can pay?" "Bah! old or poor, it's all one--they're never still, those English!" A chorus of croaking laughter rattled down the street along with the rolling of our carriage-wheels. Above, the great arch of sky had shrunk, all at once, into a narrow scallop; with the fields and meadows the glow of twilight had been left behind. We seemed to be pressing our way against a great curtain, the curtain made by the rich dusk that filled the narrow thoroughfare. Through the darkness the sinuous street and rickety houses wavered in outline, as the bent shapes of the aged totter across dimly-lit interiors. A fisherman's bare legs, lit by some dimly illumined interior; a line of nets in the little yards; here and there a white kerchief or cotton cap, dazzling in whiteness, thrown out against the black facades, were spots of light here and there. There was a glimpse of the village at its supper--in low-raftered interiors a group of blouses and women in fishermen's rig were gathered about narrow tables, the coarse-featured faces and the seamed foreheads lit up by the feeble flame of candles that ended in long, thin lines of smoke. "_Ohé--Mère Mouchard!--des voyageurs!_" cried forth our coachman into the darkness. He had drawn up before a low, brightly-lit interior. In response to the call a figure appeared on the threshold of the open door. The figure stood there for a long instant, rubbing its hands, as it peered out into the dusk of the night to take a good look at us. The brown head was cocked on one side thoughtfully; it was an attitude that expressed, with astonishingly clear emphasis, an unmistakable professional conception of hospitality. It was the air and manner, in a word, of one who had long since trimmed the measurement of its graciousness to the price paid for the article. "_Ces dames_ wished rooms, they desired lodgings and board--_ces dames_ were alone?" The voice finally asked, with reticent dignity. "From Havre--from Trouville, _par p'tit bateau!_" called out lustily our driver, as if to furnish us, _gratis_, with a passport to the landlady's not too effusive cordiality. What secret spell of magic may have lain hidden in our friendly coachman's announcement we never knew. But the "p'tit bateau" worked magically. The figure of Mère Mouchard materialized at once into such zeal, such effusion, such a zest of welcome, that we, our bags, and our coachman were on the instant toiling up a pair of spiral wooden stairs. There was quite a little crowd to fill the all-too-narrow landing at the top of the steep steps, a crowd that ended in a long line of waiters and serving-maids, each grasping a remnant of luggage. Our hostess, meanwhile, was fumbling at a door-lock--an obstinate door that refused to be wrenched open. "Augustine--run--I've taken the wrong key. _Cours, mon enfant_, it is no farther away than the kitchen." The long line pressed itself against the low walls. Augustine, a blond-haired, neatly-garmented shape, sped down the rickety stairs with the step of youth and a dancer; for only the nimble ankles of one accomplished in waltzing could have tripped as dexterously downward as did Augustine. "How she lags! what an idiot of a child!" fumed Mère Mouchard as she peered down into the round blackness about which the curving staircase closed like an embrace. "One must have patience, it appears, with people made like that. _Ah, tiens,_ here she comes. How could you keep _ces dames_ waiting like this? It is shameful, shameful!" cried the woman, as she half shook the panting girl, in anger. "If _ces dames_ will enter,"--her voice changing at once to a caressing falsetto, as the door flew open, opened by Augustine's trembling fingers--"they will find their rooms in readiness." The rooms were as bare as a soldier's barrack, but they were spotlessly clean. There was the pale flicker of a sickly candle to illumine the shadowy recesses of the curtained beds and the dark little dressing-rooms. A few moments later we wound our way downward, spirally, to find ourselves seated at a round table in a cosy, compact dining-room. Directly opposite, across the corridor, was the kitchen, from which issued a delightful combination of vinous, aromatic odors. The light of a strong, bright lamp made it as brilliant as a ball-room; it was a ball-room which for decoration had rows of shining brass and copper kettles--each as burnished as a jewel--a mass of sunny porcelain, and for carpet the satin of a wooden floor. There was much bustling to and fro. Shapes were constantly passing and repassing across the lighted interior. The Mère's broad-hipped figure was an omniscient presence: it hovered at one instant over a steaming saucepan, and the next was lifting a full milk-jug or opening a wine-bottle. Above the clatter of the dishes and the stirring of spoons arose the thick Normandy voices, deep alto tones, speaking in strange jargon of speech--a world of patois removed from our duller comprehension. It was made somewhat too plain in this country, we reflected, that a man's stomach is of far more importance than the rest of his body. The kitchen yonder was by far the most comfortable, the warmest, and altogether the prettiest room in the whole house. Augustine crossed the narrow entry just then with a smoking pot of soup. She was followed, later, by Mère Mouchard, who bore a sole au vin blanc, a bottle of white Burgundy, and a super-naturally ethereal soufflé. And an hour after, even the curtainless, carpetless bed chambers above were powerless to affect the luxurious character of our dreams. CHAPTER III. FROM AN INN WINDOW. One travels a long distance, sometimes, to make the astonishing discovery that pleasure comes with the doing of very simple things. We had come from over the seas to find the act of leaning on a window casement as exciting as it was satisfying. It is true that from our two inn windows there was a delightful variety of nature and of human nature to look out upon. From the windows overlooking the garden there was only the horizon to bound infinity. The Atlantic, beginning with the beach at our feet, stopped at nothing till it met the sky. The sea, literally, was at our door; it and the Seine were next-door neighbors. Each hour of the day these neighbors presented a different face, were arrayed in totally different raiment, were grave or gay, glowing with color or shrouded in mists, according to the mood and temper of the sun, the winds, and the tides. [Illustration: ON THE BEACH--VILLERVILLE] The width of the sky overhanging this space was immense; not a scrap, apparently, was left over to cover, decently, the rest of the earth's surface--of that one was quite certain in looking at this vast inverted cup overflowing with ether. What there was of land was a very sketchy performance. Opposite ran the red line of the Havre headlands. Following the river, inland, there was a pretence of shore, just sufficiently outlined, like a youth's beard, to give substance to one's belief in its future growth and development. Beneath these windows the water, hemmed in by this edge of shore, panted, like a child at play; its sighs, liquid, lisping, were irresistible; one found oneself listening for the sound of them as if they had issued from a human throat. The humming of the bees in the garden, the cry of a fisherman calling across the water, the shout of the children below on the beach, or, at twilight, the chorusing birds, carolling at full concert pitch; this, at most, was all the sound and fury the sea beach yielded. The windows opening on the village street let in a noise as tumultuous as the sea was silent. The hubbub of a perpetual babble, all the louder for being compressed within narrow space, was always to be heard; it ceased only when the village slept. There was an incessant clicking accompaniment to this noisy street life; a music played from early dawn to dusk over the pavement's rough cobbles--the click clack, click clack of the countless wooden sabots. Part of this clamor in the streets was due to the fact that the village, as a village, appeared to be doing a tremendous business with the sea. Men and women were perpetually going to and coming from the beach. Fishermen, sailors, women bearing nets, oars, masts, and sails, children bending beneath the weight of baskets filled with kicking fish; wheelbarrows stocked high with sea-food and warm clothing; all this commerce with the sea made the life in these streets a more animated performance than is commonly seen in French villages. In time, the provincial mania began to work in our veins. To watch our neighbors, to keep an eye on this life--this became, after a few days, the chief occupation of our waking hours. The windows of our rooms fronting on the street were peculiarly well adapted for this unmannerly occupation. By merely opening the blinds, we could keep an eye on the entire village. Not a cat could cross the street without undergoing inspection. Augustine, for example, who, once having turned her back on the inn windows, believed herself entirely cut off from observation, was perilously exposed to our mercy. We knew all the secrets of her thieving habits; we could count, to a second, the time she stole from the Mere, her employer, to squander in smiles and dimples at the corner creamery. There a tall Norman rained admiration upon her through wide blue eyes, as he patted, caressingly, the pots of blond butter, just the color of her hair, before laying them, later, tenderly in her open palm. Soon, as our acquaintance with our neighbors deepened into something like intimacy, we came to know their habits of mind as we did their facial peculiarities; certain of their actions made an event in our day. It became a serious matter of conjecture as to whether Madame de Tours, the social swell of the town, would or would not offer up her prayer to Deity, accompanied by Friponne, her black poodle. If Friponne issued forth from the narrow door, in company with her austere mistress, the shining black silk gown, we knew, would not decorate the angular frame of this aristocratic provincial; a sober beige was best fitted to resist the dashes made by Friponne's sharply-trimmed nails. It was for this, to don a silk gown in full sight of her neighbors; to set up as companion a dog of the highest fashion, the very purest of _caniches_, that twenty years of patient nursing a paralytic husband--who died all too slowly--had been counted as nothing! Once we were summoned to our outlook by the vigorous beating of a drum. Madame Mouchard and Augustine were already at their own post of observation--the open inn door. The rest of the village was in full attendance, for it was not every day in the week that the "tambour," the town-crier, had business enough to render his appearance, in his official capacity, necessary; as a mere townsman he was to be seen any hour of the day, as drunk as a lord, at the sign of "L'Ami Fidèle." His voice, as it rolled out the words of his cry, was as _staccato_ in pitch as any organ can be whose practice is largely confined to unceasing calls for potations. To the listening crowd, the thick voice was shouting: "_Madame Tricot--à la messe--dimanche--a--perdu une broche--or et perles--avec cheveux--Madame Merle a perdu--sur la plage--un panier avec--un chat noir--_" We ourselves, to our astonishment, were drummed the very next morning. Augustine had made the discovery of a missing shoulder-cape; she had taken it upon herself to call in the drummer. So great was the attendance of villagers, even the abstractors of the lost garment must, we were certain, be among the crowd assembled to hear our names shouted out on the still air. We were greatly affected by the publicity of the occasion; but the village heard the announcement, both of our names and of our loss, with the phlegm of indifference. "Vingt francs pour avoir tambouriné mademoiselle!" This was an item which a week later, in madame's little bill, was not confronted with indifference. "It gives one the feeling of having had relations with a wandering circus," remarked the young philosopher at my side. "But it is really a great convenience, that system," she continued; "I'm always mislaying things--and through the drummer there's a whole village as aid to find a lost article. I shall, doubtless, always have that, now, in my bills!" And Charm, with an air of serene confidence in the village, adjusted her restored shoulder-cape. Down below, in our neighbor's garden--the one adjoining our own and facing the sea--a new and old world of fashion in capes and other garments were a-flutter in the breeze, morning after morning. Who and what was this neighbor, that he should have so curious and eccentric a taste in clothes? No woman was to be seen in the garden-paths; a man, in a butler's apron and a silk skullcap, came and went, his arms piled high with gowns and scarves, and all manner of strange odds and ends. Each morning some new assortment of garments met our wondering eyes. Sometimes it was a collection of Empire embroidered costumes that were hung out on the line; faded fleur-de-lis, sprigs of dainty lilies and roses, gold-embossed Empire coats, strewn thick with seed-pearls on satins softened by time into melting shades. When next we looked the court of Napoleon had vanished, and the Bourbon period was, literally, in full swing. A frou-frou of laces, coats with deep skirts, and beribboned trousers would be fluttering airily in the soft May air. Once, in fine contrast to these courtly splendors, was a wondrous assortment of flannel petticoats. They were of every hue--red, yellow, brown, pink, patched, darned, wide-skirted, plaited, ruffled--they appeared to represent the taste and requirement of every climate and country, if one could judge by the thickness of some and the gossamer tissues of others; but even the smartest were obviously, unmistakably, effrontedly, flannel petticoats. It was a mystery that greatly intrigued us. One morning the mystery was solved. A whiff of tobacco from an upper window came along with a puff of wind. It was a heated whiff, in spite of the cooling breeze. It was from a pipe, a short, black pipe, owned by some one in the Mansard window next door. There was the round disk of a dark-blue beret drooping over the pipe. "Good--" I said to myself--"I shall see now--at last--this maniac with a taste for darned petticoats!" The pipe smoked peacefully, steadily on. The beret was motionless. Between the pipe and the cap was a man's profile; it was too much in shadow to be clearly defined. The next instant the man's face was in full sunlight. The face turned toward me--with the quick instinct of knowing itself watched--and then-- "Pas--possible!" "You--here!" "Been here a year--but you, when did you arrive? What luck! What luck!" It was John Renard, the artist; after the first salutations question followed question. "Are you alone?--" "No." "Is she--young?" "Yes." "Pretty?" "Judge for yourself--that is she--in the garden yonder." The beret dipped itself perilously out into the sky--to take a full view. "Hem--I'll come in at once." It was as a trio that the conversation was continued later, in the garden. But Renard was still chief questioner. "Have you been out on the mussel-beds?" "Not yet." "We'll go this afternoon--Have you been to Honfleur? Not yet?--We'll go to-morrow. The tide will be in to-day about four--I'll call for you--wear heavy boots and old clothes. It's jolly dirty. Where do you breakfast?" The breakfast was eaten, as a trio, at our inn, an hour later. It was so warm a day, it was served under one of the arbors. Augustine was feeding and caressing the doves as we entered the inn garden. At sight of Renard she dropped a quiet courtesy, smiles and roses struggling for a supremacy on her round peasant face. She let the doves loose at once, saying: "Allez, allez," as if they quite understood that with Monsieur Renard's advent their hour of success was at an end. Why does a man's presence always seem to communicate such surprising animation to a woman--to any woman? Why does his appearance, for instance, suddenly, miraculously stiffen the sauces, lure from the cellar bottles incrusted with the gray of thick cobwebs, give an added drop of the lemon to the mayonnaise, and make an omelette to swim in a sea of butter? All these added touches to our commonly admirable breakfast were conspicuous that day--it was a breakfast for a prince and a gourmet. "The Mère can cook--when she gives her mind to it," was Renard's meagre masculine comment, as the last morsel of the golden omelette disappeared behind his mustache. It was a gay little breakfast, with the circling above of the birds and the doves. There are duller forms of pleasure than to eat a repast in the company of an artist. I know not why it is, but it has always seemed to me that the man who lives only to copy life appears to get far more out of it than those who make a point of seeing nothing in it save themselves. Renard, meanwhile, was taking pains to assure us that in less than a month the Villerville beaches would be crowded; only the artists of the brushes were here now; the artists of high life would scarcely be found deserting the Avenue des Acacias before June. "French people are always coming to the seashore, you know--or trying to come. It's a part of their emotional religion to worship the sea. 'La mer! la mer!' they cry, with eyes all whites; then they go into little swoons of rapture--I can see them now, attitudinizing in salons and at tables-d'hôte!" To which comment we could find no more original rejoinder than our laughter. It was a day when laughter was good; it put one in closer relations with the universal smiling. There are certain days when nature seems to laugh aloud; in this hour of noon the entire universe, all we could see of it, was on a broad grin. Everything moved, or danced, or sang; the leaves were each alive, trembling, quivering, shaking; the insect hum was like a Wagnerian chorus, deafening to the ear; there was a brisk, light breeze stirring--a breeze that moved the higher branches of the trees as if it had been an arm; that rippled the grass; that tossed the wavelets of the sea into such foam that they seemed over-running with laughter; and such was still its unspent energy that it sent the Seine with a bound up through its shores, its waters clanging like a sheet of mail armor worn by some lusty warrior. We were walking in the narrow lane that edged the cliff; it was a lane that was guarded with a sentinel row of osiers, syringas, and laburnums. This was the guard of the cliffs. On the other side was the high garden wall, over which we caught dissolving views of dormer-windows, of gabled roofs, vine-clad walls, and a maze of peach and pear blossoms. This was not precisely the kind of lane through which one hurried. One needed neither to be sixteen nor even in love to find it a delectable path, very agreeable to the eye, very suggestive to the imaginative faculty, exceedingly satisfactory to the most fastidious of all the senses, to that aristocrat of all the five, the sense of smell. Like all entirely perfect experiences in life, the lane ended almost as soon as it began; it ended in a steep pair of steps that dropped, precipitously, on the pebbles of the beach. For some reason best known to the day and the view, we all, with one accord, proceeded to seat ourselves on the topmost step of this stairway. We were waiting for the tide to fall, to go out to the mussel-bed. Meanwhile the prospect to be seen from this improvised seat was one made to be looked at. There is a certain innate compelling quality in all great beauty. When nature or woman presents a really grandiose appearance, they are singularly reposeful, if you notice; they have the calm which comes with a consciousness of splendor. It is only prettiness which is tormented with the itching for display; and therefore this prospect, which rolled itself out beneath our feet, curling in a half-moon of beach, broadening into meadows that dropped to the river edge, lifting its beauty upward till the hills met the sky. and the river was lost in the clasp of the shore--this aspect of nature, in this moment of beauty, was as untroubled as if Chateaubriand had not found her a lover, and had flattered man by persuading him that, "La voix de l'univers, c'est mon intelligence." CHAPTER IV. OUT ON A MUSSEL-BED. That same afternoon we were out on the mussel bed. The tide was at its lowest. Before us, for an acre or more, there lay a wide, wet, stretch of brown mud. Near the beach was a strip of yellow sand; here and there it had contracted into narrow ridges, elsewhere it had expanded into scroll-like patterns. The bed of mud and slime ran out from this yellow sand strip--a surface diversified by puddles of muddy water, by pools, clear, ribbed with wavelets, and by little heaps of stones covered with lichens. The surface of the bed, whether pools or puddles, or rock-heaps, or sea-weeds massed, was covered by thousands and thousands of black, lozenge-shaped bivalves. These bivalves were the mussels. Over this bed of shells and slime there moved and toiled a whole villageful of old women. Where the sea met the edges of the mud-flat the throng of women was thickest. The line of the ever-receding shore was marked by the shapes of countless bent figures. The heads of these stooping women were on a level with their feet, not one stood upright. All that the eye could seize for outline was the dome made by the bent hips, and the backs that closed against the knees as a blade is clasped into a knife handle. The oblong masses that were lifted now and then, from the level of the sabots, resolved themselves into the outlines of women's heads and women's faces. These heads were tied up in cotton kerchiefs or in cotton nightcaps; these being white, together with the long, thick, aprons also white, were in startling contrast to the blue of the sky and to the changing sea-tones. Between these women and the incoming tide, twice daily, was fought a persistent, unrelenting duel. It was a duel, on the part of the fish-wives, against time, against the fate of the tides, against the blind forces of nature. For this combat the women were armed to the teeth, clad as they were in their skeleton muscular leanness; helmeted with their heads of iron; visored in the bronze of their skin and in wrinkles that laughed at the wind. In these sinewy, toughened bodies there was a grim strength that appeared to know neither ache nor fatigue nor satiety. High, clear, strong, came their voices. The tones were the tones that come from deep chests, and with a prolonged, sustained capacity for enduring the toil of men. But the high-pitched laughter proved them women, as did their loud and unceasing gossip. The battle of the voices rose above the swash of the waves, above, also, another sound, as incessant as the women's chatter and the swish of the water as it hissed along the mud-flat's edges. [Illustration: A SALE OF MUSSELS--VILLERVILLE] This was the swift, sharp, saw-like cutting among the stones and the slime, the scrape, scrape of the hundred of knives into the moist earth. This ceaseless scraping, lunging, digging, made a new world of sound--strange, sinister, uncanny. It was neither of the sea nor yet of the land--it was a noise that seemed inseparable from this tongue of mud, that also appeared to be neither of the heavens above nor of the earth, from the bowels out of which it had sprung. The mussels cling to their slime with extraordinary tenacity; only an expert, who knows the exact point of attachment between the hard shell and its soil, can remove a mussel with dexterity. These women, as they dipped their knives into the thick mud, swept the diminutive black bivalve with a trenchant movement, as a Moor might cleave a human head with one turn of his moon-shaped sword. Into the bronzed, wrinkled old hands the mussels then were slipped as if they had been so many dainty sweets. New and pungent smells were abroad on this strip of slime. Sea smells, strong and salty; smells of the moist and damp soil, the bitter-sweet of wetted weeds, the aromatic flavor that shell-life yields, and the smells also of rotten and decaying fish--all these were inextricably blended in the air, that was of the keenness of a frost-blight for freshness, and yet was warm with the softness of a June sun. Meanwhile the voices of the women were nearing. Some of the bent heads were lifted as we approached. Here and there a coif, or cotton cap, nodded, and the slit of a smile would gape between the nose and the meeting chin. A high good humor appeared to reign among the groups; a carnival of merriment laughed itself out in coarse, cracked laughter; loud was the play of the jests, hoarse and guttural the gibes that were abroad on the still air, from old mouths that uttered strong, deep notes. "Why should they all be old?" we queried. We were near enough to see the women face to face now, since we were far out along the outer edges of the bed; we were so near the sea that the tide was beginning to wash us back, along with the fringe of the diggers. "They're not--they only look old," replied Renard, stopping a moment to sketch in a group directly in front. "This life makes old women of them in no time. How old, for instance, should you think that girl was, over there?" The girl whom he designated was the only figure of youth we had seen on the bed. She was working alone and remote from the others. She wore no coif. Her masses of red, wavy hair shaded a face already deeply seamed with lines of premature age. A moment later she passed close to us. She was bent almost double beneath a huge, reeking basket, heaped with its pile of wet mussels. She was carrying it to a distant pool. Once beside the pool, with swift, dexterous movement the heavy basket was slipped from the bent back, the load of mussels falling in a shower into the miniature lake. The next instant she was stamping on the heap, to plunge them with her sabot still further into the pool. She was washing her load. Soon she shouldered the basket again, filling it with the cleansed mussels. A moment later she joined the long, toiling line of women that were perpetually forming and reforming on their way to the carts. These latter were drawn up near the beach, their contents guarded by boys and old men, who received the loads the women had dug, dragging the whole, later, up the hill. "She has the Venus de Milo lines, that girl," Renard continued, critically, with his eyes on her, as she now repassed us. The figure was drawn up at its full height. It had in truth a noble dignity of outline. There was a Spartan vigor and severity in the lean, uncorseted shape, with the bust thrown out against the sky--the bust of a young warrior rather than a woman. There was a hardy, masculine freedom in the pliable motion of her straight back, a ripple with muscles that played easily beneath the close bodice, in her arms, and her finely turned ankles and legs, that were bared below the knee. The very simplicity of her costume helped to mark the Greek severity of her figure. She wore a short skirt of some coarse hempen stuff, covered with a thick apron made of sail-cloth, her feet thrust into black sabots, while the upper part of her body was covered with an unbleached chemise, widely open at the throat. She had the Phidian breadth and the modern charm--that charm which troubles and disturbs, haunting the mind with vague, unsatisfied suggestions of something finer than is seen, something nobler than the gross physical envelope reveals. "I must have her--for my Salon picture," calmly remarked Renard, after a long moment of scrutiny, his eyes following the lean, stately figure in its grave walk across the weeds and slime. "Yes, I must have her." "Won't she be hard to get? How can she be made to sit, a stiffened image of clay, after this life of freedom, this athletic struggle out here--with these winds and tides?" One of us, at least, was stirred at Renard's calm assumption--the assumption so common to artists, who, when they see a good thing at once count on its possessorship, as if the whole world, indeed, were eternally sitting, agape with impatience, awaiting the advent of some painter to sketch in its portrait. "Oh, it'll be easy enough. She makes two francs a day with her six basketfuls. I'll offer her three, and she'll drop like a shot." "I'll make it a red picture," he continued, dipping his brushes into a little case of paints he held on his thumb; "the mussel-bed a reddish violet, the sky red in the horizon, and the girl in the foreground, with that torrent of hair as the high light. I've been hunting for that hair all over Europe." And he began sketching her in at once. "_Bonjour, mère_, how goes it?" He nodded as he sketched at a wrinkled, bent figure, who was smiling out at him from beneath her load of mussels. "_Pas mal--e' vous, M'sieur Renard?_" "All right--and the mortgage, how goes that?" "Pas si mal--it'll be paid off next year." "Who is she? One of your models?" "Yes, last year's: she was my belle--the belle of the mussel-bed for me, a year ago. Now there's a lesson in patience for you. She's sixty-five, if she's a minute; she's been working here, on this mussel-bed, for five years, to pay the mortgage off her farm; when that is done, her daughter Augustine can marry; Augustine's _dot_ is the farm." "Augustine--at our inn?" "The very same." "And the blonde--the handsome man at the creamery, he is the future--?" "I'm sorry to hear such things of Augustine," smiled Renard, as he worked; "she must be indulging in an entr'acte. No, the gentleman of Augustine's--well, perhaps not of her affections, but of her mother's choice, is a peasant who works the farm; the creamery is only an incidental diversion. Again, I'm sorry to hear such sad things of Augustine--" "Horrors!" "Exactly. That's the way it's done--over here. Will you join me--over there?" Renard blushed a little. "I mean I wish to follow that girl--she's going to dig out yonder. Will you come?" Meanwhile the light was changing, and so was the tide. The women were coming inward, washed up to the shore along with the grasses and seaweeds. A band of diggers suddenly started, with full basket loads, toward a fishing boat that had dropped anchor close in to the shore; it was a Honfleur craft, come to buy mussels for the Paris market. The women trudged through the water, up to their waists; they clustered about the boats like so many laden beasts. But their shrill bargaining proved them women. Meanwhile that gentle hissing along the level stretch of brown mud was the tide. It was pushing the women upward, as if it had been a hand--the hand of a relentless fate--instead of a little, liquid kiss. The sun, as it dipped, made a glory of splendor out of this commonplace bank. It soaked the mud in gold; it was in a royal mood, throwing its largess with reckless abundance to this poor of earth--to the slime and the mud. The long, yellow, lichen leaves massed on the rocks were dyed as if lying in a yellow bath. The sands were richly colored; the ridges were brown in the shadows and burnished at the tops. In the distance the sea weeds were black, sable furs, covering the velvet robes of earth. The sea out beyond was as rosy as a babe, and the sails were dazzlingly white as they floated past, between the sky and the distant purple line of the horizon. Meanwhile the tide is coming in. The procession of the women toward the carts grows in numbers. The thick sabots plunge into the mud, the water squirts out of the wooden shoes as the strong heels press into them. The straw, the universal stocking of these women-diggers, is reeking with dirt. Volumes of slush are splashed on the bared skinny ankles, on the wet skirts, wet to the waists, and on the coarse sail-cloth aprons tied beneath the hanging bosoms. The women are all drenched now in a bath of filth. The baskets are reeking with filth also, they rain showers of dirt along the bent backs. A long line of the bent figures has formed on their way to the carts. There is, however, a thick fringe of diggers left who still dispute their rights with the sea. But the tide is pushing them inward, upward. And all the while the light is getting more and more golden, shimmery, radiant. Under this light, beneath this golden mantel of color, these creatures appear still more terrible. As they bend over, their faces tirelessly held downward on a level with their hands, they seem but gnomes; surely they are huge, undeveloped embryos of women, with neither head nor trunk. For this light is pitiless. It makes them even more a part of this earth, out of which they seem to have sprung, a strange amorphous growth. The bronzed skins are dyed in the gold as if to match with the hue of the mud; the wet skirts are shreds, gray and brown tatters, not so good in texture as the lichens, and the ragged jerseys seem only bits of the more distant weeds woven into tissues to hide mercifully the lean, sinewy backs. The tide is almost in. In the shallows the sunset is fading. Here and there are brilliant little pools, each pool a mirror, and each mirror reflects a different picture. Here is a second sky--faintly blue, with a trailing saffron scarf of cloud; there, the inverted silhouettes of two fish-wives are conical shapes, their coifs and wet skirts startlingly distinct in tones; beyond, sails a fantastic fleet, with polychrome sails, each spar, masthead, and wrinkled sail as sharply outlined as if chiselled in relief. Presently these miniature pictures fade as the light fades. Blacker grows the mud, and there is less and less of it; the silhouetted shapes of the diggers are seen no more; they are following the carts up the steep cliffs; even the sky loses its color and fades also. And the little pools that have been a burning orange, then a darkening violet, gay with pictured worlds, in turn pale to gray, and die into the universal blackness. The tide is in. It is flowing, rich and full, crested with foam beneath the osier hedges. We hear it break with a sudden dash and splutter against the cliff parapets. And the mud-bank is no more. Half an hour later, from our chamber windows we looked forth through the dusk across at the mussel bed. The great mud-bank, all that black acreage of slime and sea-weed, the eager, struggling band of toiling fish wives, all was gone; it was all as if it had not been--would never be again. The water hissed along the beach; it broke in rhythmic, sonorous measure against the parapet. Surely there had never been any beds, or any mussels, or any toiling fish-wives; or if there had, it was all a world that the sea had washed up, and then as quietly, as heedlessly, as pitilessly had obliterated. It was the very epitome of life itself. CHAPTER V. THE VILLAGE. Our visit to the mussel-bed, as we soon found, had been our formal introduction to the village. Henceforth every door step held a friend; not a coif or a blouse passed without a greeting. The village, as a village, lived in the open street. Villerville had the true French genius for society; the very houses were neighborly, crowding close upon the narrow sidewalk. Conversation, to be carried on from a dormer-window or from opposite sides of the street, had evidently been the first architectural consideration in the mind of the builders; doors and windows must be as open and accessible as the lives of the inhabitants. The houses themselves appeared to be regarded in the light of pockets, into which the old women and fishermen plunged to drag forth a net or a knife; also as convenient, if rude, little caverns into which the village crawled at night, to take its heavy slumber. The door-step was the drawing-room, and the open street was the club of this Villerville world. The door-way, the yard, or the bit of garden tucked in between two high walls--it was here, under the tent of sky rather than beneath the stuffy roofs, that the village lived, talked, quarrelled, bargained, worked, and more or less openly made love. To the door-step everything was brought that was portable. There was nothing, from the small boy to the brass kettle, that could not be more satisfactorily polished off, in full view of one's world, than by one's self, in seclusion and solitude. Justice, at least, appeared to gain by this passion for open-air ministration, if one were to judge by the frequency with which the Villerville boy was laid across the parental knee. We were repeatedly called upon to coincide, at the very instant of flagellation, with the verdict pronounced against the youthful offender. "_S'il est assez méchant, lui?_ Ah, mesdames, what do you think of one who goes forth dry, with clean sabots, that I, myself, have washed, and behold him returned, _après un tout p'tit quart d'heure_, stinking with filth? Bah! it's he that will catch it when his father comes home!" And meanwhile the mother's hand descends, lest justice should cool ere night. [Illustration: A VILLERVILLE FISH-WIFE] There were other groups that crowded the doorsteps; there were young mothers that sat there, with their babes clasped to the full breasts, in whose eyes was to be read the satisfied passion of recent motherhood; there were gay clusters of young Norman maidens, whose glances, brilliant and restless, were pregnant with all the meaning of unspent youth. The figures of the fishermen, toiling up the street with bared legs and hairy breast, bending beneath their baskets alive with fish, stopped to have a word or two, seasoned with a laugh, with these latter groups. There were also knots of patient old men, wrecks that the sea had tossed back to earth, to rot and die there, that came out of the black little houses to rest their bones in the sun. And everywhere there were groups of old women, or of women still young, to whom the look of age had come long before its due time. The village seemed peopled with women, sexless creatures for the most part, whom toil and the life on the mussel-bed or in the field had dried and hardened into mummy shapes. Only these, the old and the useless, were left at home to rear the younger generation and to train them to take up the same heavy burden of life. The coifs of these old hags made dazzling spots of brightness against the gray of the walls and the stuccoed houses; clustered together, the high caps that nodded in unison to the chatter were in startling contrast to the bronzed faces bending over the fish-nets, and to the blue-veined, leathery hands that flew in and out of the coarse meshes with the fluent ease of long practice. With one of these old women we became friends. We had made her acquaintance at a poetic moment, under romantic circumstances. We were all three watching a sunset, under a pink sky; we were sitting far out on the grasses of the cliff. Her house was in the midst of the grasses, some little distance from the village, attached to it only as a ragged fringe might edge a garment. It was a thatched hut; yet there were circumstances in the life of the owner which had transformed the interior into a luxurious apartment. The owner of the hut was herself hanging on the edge of life; she was a toothless, bent, and withered old remnant; but her vigor and vivacity were those of a witch. Her hands and eyes were ceaselessly active; she was forever busy, fingering a fish-net, or polishing her Normandy brasses, or stirring some dark liquid in an iron pot over the dim fire. At our first meeting, conversation had immediately engaged itself; it had ended, as all right talk should, in friendship. On this morning of our visit, many a gay one having preceded it, we found our friend arrayed as if for an outing. She had mounted her best coif, and tied across her shrivelled old breast was a vivid purple silk kerchief. "_Tiens, mes enfants, soyez les bienvenues_," was her gay greeting, seasoned with a high cackling laugh, as she waved us to two rickety chairs. "No, I'm not going out, not yet; there is plenty of time, plenty of time. It is you who are good, _si aimables_, to come out here to see me. And tired, too, _hein_, with the long walk? _Tiens_, I had nearly forgotten; there's a bottle of wine open below--you must take a glass." She never forgot. The bottle of wine had always just been opened; the cork was always also miraculously rebellious for a cork that had been previously pulled. Although our ancient friend was a peasant, her cellar was the cellar of a gourmet. Wonderful old wines were hers! Port, Bordeaux, white wines, of vintages to make the heart warm; each was produced in turn, a different vintage and wine on each one of our visits, but no champagne. This was no wine for women--for the right women. Champagne was a bad, fast wine, for fast, disreputable people. "_C'est un vrai poison, qui vous infecte_," she had declared again and again, and when she saw her daughter drinking it, it made her shudder; she confessed to having a moment of doubt; had Paris, indeed, really brought her child no harm? Then the old mere would shrug her bent shoulders and rub her hands, and for a moment she would be lost in thought. Presently the cracked old laugh would peal forth again, and, as she threw back her head, she would shake it as if to dispel some dark vision. To-day she had dropped, almost as soon as we entered, into a narrow trap-door, descending a flight of stone steps. We could hear a clicking of bottles and a rustling of straw; and then, behold, a veritable fairy issuing from the bowels of the earth, with flushes of red suffusing the ribbed, bewrinkled face, as the old figure straightens its crookedness to carry the dusty bottle securely, steadily, lest the cloudy settling at the bottom should be disturbed. What a merry little feast then began! We had learned where the glasses were kept; we had been busily scouring them while our hostess was below. Then wine and glasses, along with three chairs, were quickly placed on the pine table at the door of the old house. Here, on the grass of the cliffs, we sat, sipping our wine, enjoying the sea that lay at our feet, and above, the sunlit sky. To our friend both sky and sea were familiar companions; but the fichu was a new friend. "Yes, it is very beautiful, as you say," she said, in answer to our admiring comments. "It came from Paris, from my daughter. She sent it to me; she is always making me gifts; she is one who remembers her old mother! Figure to yourselves that last year, in midwinter, she sent me no less than three gowns, all wool! What can I do with them? _C'est pour me flatter, c'est sa manière de me dire qu'il faut vivre pour longtemps! Ah, la chère folle!_ But she spoils me, the darling!" This daughter had become the most mysterious of all our Villerville discoveries. Our old friend was a peasant, the child of peasant farmers. She would always remain a peasant; and yet her daughter was a Parisian, and lived in a _bonbonnière_. She was also married; but that only served to thicken the web of mystery enshrouding her. How could a daughter of a peasant, brought up as a peasant, who had lived here, a tiller of the fields till her nineteenth year, suddenly be transformed into a woman of the Parisian world, gain the position of a banker's wife, and be dancing, as the old mere kept telling us, at balls at the Elysée? Her mother never answered this riddle for us; and, more amazing still, neither could the village. The village would shrug its shoulders, when we questioned it, with discretion, concerning this enigma. "Ah, dame! It was she--the old mere--who had had chances in life, to marry her daughter like that! Victorine was pretty--yes, there was no gainsaying she was pretty--but not so beautiful as all that, to entrap a banker, _un homme sérieux, qui vit de ses rentes!_ and who was generous, too, for the old mere needn't work now, since she was always receiving money." Gifts were perpetually pouring into the low rooms--wines, and Parisian delicacies, and thick garments. The tie between the two, between the mother and daughter, appeared to be as strong and their relations as complete, as if one were not clad in homespun and the other in Worth gowns. There was no shame, that was easily seen, on either side; each apparently was full of pride in the other; their living apart was entirely due to the old mère's preference for a life on the cliffs, alone in the midst of all her old peasant belongings. "_C'est plus chez-soi, ici!_ Victorine feels that, too. She loves the smell of the old wood, and of the peat burning there in the fireplace. When she comes down to see me, I must shut fast all the doors and windows; she wants the whole of the smell, _pour faire le vrai bouquet_, as she says. If she had had children--ah!--I don't say but what I might have consented; but as it is, I love my old fire, and my view out there, and the village, best!" At this point in the conversation, the old eyes, bright as they were, turned dim and cloudy; the inward eye was doubtless seeing something other than the view; it was resting on a youthful figure, clad in Parisian draperies, and on a face rising above the draperies, that bent lovingly over the deep-throated fireplace, basking in its warmth, and revelling in its homely perfume. We were silent also, as the picture of that transfigured daughter of the house flitted across our own mental vision. "The village?" suddenly broke in the old mère. "_Dieu de Dieu!_ that reminds me. I must go, my children, I must go. Loisette is waiting; _la pauvre enfant_--perhaps suffering too--how do I know? And here am I, playing, like a lazy clout! Did you know she had had un _nini_ this morning? The little angel came at dawn. That's a good sign! And what news for Auguste! He was out last night--fishing; she was at her washing when he left her. _Tiens_, there they are, looking for him! They've brought the spy-glass." The old mère shaded her eyes, as she looked out into the dazzling sunlight. We followed her finger, that pointed to a projection on the cliffs. Among the grasses, grouped on top of the highest rock, was a family party. An old fish-wife was standing far out against the sky; she also was shading her eyes. A child's round head, crowded into a white knit cap, was etched against the wide blue; and, kneeling, holding in both hands a seaman's long glass, was a girl, sweeping the horizon with swift, skilful stretches of arm and hand. The sun descended in a shower of light on the old grandam's seamy face, on the red, bulging cheeks of the chubby child, and on the bent figure of the girl, whose knees were firmly implanted in the deep, tall grasses. Beyond the group there was nothing but sea and sky. "Yes," the mere went on, garrulously, as she recorked the bottle of old port, carrying table and glasses within doors. "Yes, they're looking for him. It ought to be time, now; he's due about now. There's a man for you--good--_bon comme le bon Dieu_. Sober, saving too--good father--in love with Loisette as on the wedding night--_ah, mes enfants!_--there are few like him, or this village would be a paradise!" She shut the door of the little cabin. And then she gave us a broad wink. The wink was entirely by way of explanation; it was to enlighten us as to why a certain rare bottle of port--a fresh one--was being secreted beneath her fichu. It was a wink that conveyed to us a really valuable number of facts; chief among them being the very obvious fact that the French Government was an idiot, and a tyrant into the bargain, since it imposed stupid laws no one meant to carry out; least of all a good Norman. What? pay two _sous octroi_ on a bottle of one's own wine, that one had had in one's cellar for half a lifetime? To cheat the town out of those twopence becomes, of course, the true Norman's chief pleasure in life. What is his reputation worth, as a shrewd, sharp man of business, if a little thing like cheating stops him? It is even better fun than bargaining, to cheat thus one's own town, since nothing is to be risked, and one is so certain of success. The mere nodded to us gayly, in farewell, as we all three re-entered the town. She disappeared all at once into a narrow door way, her arms still clasping her old port, that lay in the folds of her shawl. On her shrewd kindly old face came a light that touched it all at once with a glow of divinity; the mother in her had sprung into life with sharp, sweet suddenness; she had caught the wail of the new-born babe through the open door. The village itself seemed to have caught something of the same glow. It was not only the splendor of the noon sun that made the faces of the worn fish-wives and the younger women softer and kindlier than common; the groups, as we passed them, were all talking of but one thing--of this babe that had come in the night, of Auguste's absence, and of Loisette's sharp pains and her cries, that had filled the street, so that none could sleep. CHAPTER VI. A PAGAN COBBLER. At dusk that evening the same subject, with variations, was the universal topic of the conversational groups. Still Auguste had not come; half the village was out watching for him on the cliffs. The other half was crowding the streets and the doorsteps. Twilight is the classic time, in all French towns and villages, for the _al fresco_ lounge. The cool breath of the dusk is fresh, then, and restful; after the heat and sweat of the long noon the air, as it touches brow and lip, has the charm of a caress. So the door ways and streets were always crowded at this hour, groups moved, separated, formed and re formed, and lingered to exchange their budget of gossip, to call out their "_Bonne nuit_," the girls to clasp hands, looking longingly over their shoulders at the younger fishermen and farmers; the latter to nod, carelessly, gayly back at them; and then--as men will--to fling an arm about a comrade's shoulder as they, in their turn, called out into the dusk, "_Allons, mon brave; de l'absinthe, toi?_" as the cabaret swallowed them up. Great and mighty were the cries and the oaths that issued from the cabaret's open doors and windows. The Villerville fisherman loved Bacchus only, second to Neptune; when he was not out casting his net into the Channel he was drinking up his spoils. It was during the sobering process only that affairs of a purely domestic nature engaged his attention. Some of the streets were permeated with noxious odors, with the poison of absinthe and the fumes of cheap brandy. Noisy, reeling groups came out of the tavern doors, to shout and sing, or to fight their way homeward. One such figure was filling a narrow alley, swaying from right to left, with a jeering crowd at his heels. "_Est-il assez ridicule, lui?_ with his cap over his nose, and his knees knocking at everyone's door? _Bah! ça pue! _" the group of lads following him went on, shouting about the poor sot, as they pelted him with their rain of pebbles and paper bullets. "Ah--h, he will beat her, in his turn, poor soul; she always gets it when he's full, as full as that--" The voice was so close to our ears that we started. The words appeared addressed to us; they were, in a way, since they were intended for the street, as a street, and for the benefit of the groups that filled it. The voice was gruff yet mellow; despite its gruffness it had the ring of a latent kindliness in its deep tones. The man who owned it was seated on a level with our elbows, at a cobbler's bench. We stopped to let the crowd push on beyond us. The man had only lifted his head from his work, but involuntarily one stopped to salute the power in it. "_Bonsoir, mesdames_"--the head gravely bowed as the great frame of the body below the head rose from the low seat. The room within seemed to contain nothing else save this giant figure, now that it had risen and was moving toward us. The half-door was courteously opened. "Will not _ces dames_ give themselves the trouble of entering? The streets are not gay at this hour." We went in. A dog and a woman came forth from a smaller inner room to greet us; of the two the dog was obviously the personage next in point of intelligence and importance to the master. The woman had a snuffed-out air, as of one whose life had died out of her years ago. She blinked at us meekly as she dropped a timid courtesy; at a low word of command she turned a pitifully patient back on us all. There were years of obedience to orders written on its submissive curves; and she bent it once more over her kettles; both she and the kettles were on the bare floor. It was the poorest of all the Villerville interiors we had as yet seen; the house was also, perhaps, the oldest in the village. It and the old church had been opposite neighbors for several centuries. The shop and the living-room were all in one; the low window was a counter by day and a shutter by night. Within, the walls were bare as were the floors. Three chairs with sunken leather covers, and a bed with a mattress also sunken--a hollow in a pine frame, was the equipment in furniture. The poverty was brutal; it was the naked, unabashed poverty of the middle ages, with no hint of shame or effort of concealment. The colossus whom the low roof covered was as unconscious of the barrenness of his surroundings as were his own walls. This hovel was his home; he had made us welcome with the manners of a king. Meanwhile the dog was sniffing at our skirts. After a tour of observation and inspection he wagged his tail, gave a short bark, and seated himself by Charm. The giant's eyes twinkled. "You see, mesdames, it is a dog with a mind--he knows in an instant who are the right sort. And eloquence, also--he is one who can make speeches with his tail. A dog's tongue is in his tail, and this one wags his like an orator!" Some one else, as well as the dog, possessed the oratorical gift. The cobbler's voice was the true speaker's voice--rich, vibrating, sonorous, with a deep note of melody in it. Pose and gestures matched with the voice; they were flexible and picturesquely suggestive. "If you care for oratory--" Charm smiled out upon the huge but mobile face--"you are well placed. The village lies before you. You can always see the play going on, and hear the speeches--of the passers-by." The large mouth smiled back. But at Charm's first sentence the keen Norman eyes had fixed their twinkling glitter on the girl's face. They seemed to be reading to the very bottom of her thought and being. The scrutiny was not relaxed as he answered. "Yes, yes, it is very amusing. One sees a little of everything here. _Le monde qui passe_--it makes life more diverting; it helps to kill the time. I look out from my perch, like a bird--a very old one, and caged"--and he shook forth a great laugh from beneath the wide leather apron. The woman, hearing the laugh, came out into the room. "_E'ben--et toi_--what do you want?" The giant stopped laughing long enough to turn tyrant. The woman, at the first of his growl, smiled feebly, going back with unresisting meekness to her knees, to her pots, and her kettles. The dog growled in imitation of his master; obviously the soul of the dog was in the wrong body. Meanwhile the master of the dog and the woman had forgotten both now; he was continuing, in a masterful way, to enlighten us about the peculiarities of his native village. The talk had now reached the subject of the church. "Oh, yes, it is fine, very, and old; it and this old house are the oldest of all the inhabitants of this village. The church came first, though, it was built by the English, when they came over, thinking to conquer us with their Hundred Years' War. Little they knew France and Frenchmen. The church was thoroughly French, although the English did build it; on the ground many times, but up again, only waiting the hand of the builder and the restorer." Again the slim-waisted shape of the old wife ventured forth into the room. "Yes, as he says"--in a voice that was but an echo--"the church has been down many times." "_Tais-toi--c'est moi qui parle_," grumbled anew her husband, giving the withered face a terrific scowl. "_Ohé, oui, c'est toi_," the echo bleated. The thin hands meekly folded themselves across her apron. She stood quite still, as if awaiting more punishment. "It is our good curé who wishes to pull it down once more," her terrible husband went on, not heeding her quiet presence. "Do you know our curé? Ah, ha, he's a fine one. It's he that rules us now--he's our king--our emperor. Ugh, he's a bad one, he is." "Ah, yes, he's a bad one, he is," his wife echoed, from the side wall. "Well, and who asked you to talk?" cried her husband, with a face as black as when the curé's name had first been mentioned. The echo shrank into the wall. "As I was telling these ladies"--he resumed here his boot work, clamping the last between his great knees--"as I was saying, we have not been fortunate in cures, we of our parish. There are curés and curés, as there are fagots and fagots--and ours is a bad lot. We've had nothing but trouble since he came to rule over us. We get poorer day by day, and he richer. There he is now, feeding his hens and his doves--look, over there--with the ladies of his household gathered about him--his mother, his aunt, and his niece--a perfect harem. Oh, he keeps them all fat and sleek, like himself! Bah!" The grunt of disgust the cobbler gave filled the room like a thunder-clap. He was peering over his last, across the open counter, at a little house adjoining the church green, with a great hatred in his face. From one of the windows of the house there was leaning forth a group of three heads; there was the tonsured head of a priest, round, pink-tinted, and the figures of two women, one youthful, with a long, sad-featured face, and the other ruddy and vigorous in outline. They were watching the priest as he scattered corn to the hens and geese in the garden below the window. The cobbler was still eying them fiercely, as he continued to give vent to his disgust. "_Méchant homme--lui_," he here whipped his thread, venomously, through the leather he was sewing. "Figure to yourselves, mesdames, that besides being wicked, our curé is a very shrewd man; it is not for the pure good of the parish he works, not he." "Not he," the echo repeated, coming forth again from the wall. This time the whisper passed unnoticed; her master's hatred of the curé was greater than his passion for showing his own power. "Religion--religion is a very good way of making money, better than most, if one knows how to work the machine. The soul, it is a fine instrument on which to play, if one is skilful. Our curé has a grand touch on this instrument. You should see the good man take up a collection, it is better than a comedy." Here the cobbler turned actor; he rose, scattering his utensils right and left; he assumed a grand air and a mincing, softly tread, the tread of a priest. His flexible voice imitated admirably the rounded, unctuous, autocratic tone peculiar to the graduates of St. Sulpice. "You should hear him, when the collection does not suit him: '_Mes frères et mes soeurs_, I see that _le bon Dieu_ isn't in your minds and your hearts to-day; you are not listening to his voice; the Saviour is then speaking in vain?' Then he prays--" the cobbler folded his hands with a great parade of reference, lifting his eyes as he rolled his lids heavenward hypocritically--"yes, he prays--and then he passes the plate himself! He holds it before your very nose, there is no pushing it aside; he would hold it there till you dropped--till Doomsday. Ah, he's a hard crust, he is! There's a tyrant for you--_la monarchie absolue_--that's what he believes in. He must have this, he must have that. Now it is a new altar-cloth, or a fresh Virgin of the modern make, from Paris, with a robe of real lace; the old one was black and faded, too black to pray to. Now it is a _huissier_, forsooth, that we must have, we, a parish of a few hundred souls, who know our seats in the church as well as we know our own noses. One would think a 'suisse' would have done; but we are swells now--_avec ce gaillard-là_, only the tiptop is good enough. So, if you grace our poor old church with your presence you will be shown to your bench by a very splendid gentleman in black, in knee-breeches, with silver chains, with a three-cornered hat, who strikes with his stick three times as he seats you. Bah! ridiculous!" "Ridiculous!" the woman repeated, softly. "They had the curé once, though. One day in church he announced a subscription to be taken up for restorations, from fifty centimes to--to anything; he will take all you give him, avaricious that he is! He believes in the greasing of the palm, he does. Well, think you the subscription was for restorations, _mesdames_? It was for demolition--that's what it was for--to make the church level with the ground. To do this would cost a little matter of twenty thousand francs, which would pass through his hands, you understand. Well, that staggered the parish. Our mayor--a man _pas trop fin_, was terribly upset. He went about saying the curé claimed the church as his; he could do as he liked with it, he said, and he proposed to make it a fine modern one. All the village was weeping. The church was the oldest friend of the village, except for such as I, whom these things have turned pagan. Well, one of our good citizens reminds the mayor that the church, under the new laws, belongs to the commune. The mayor tells this timidly to the curé. And the curé retorts, 'Ah, _bien_, at least one-half belongs to me.' And the good citizen answers--he has gone with the mayor to prop him up--'Which half will you take? The cemetery, doubtless, since your charge is over the souls of the parish.' Ah! ah! he pricked him well then! he pricked him well!" The low room rang with the great shout of the cobbler's laughter. The dog barked furiously in concert. Our own laughter was drowned in the thunder of our host's loud guffaws. The poor old wife shook herself with a laugh so much too vigorous for her frail frame, one feared its after-effects. The after-effects were a surprise. After the first of her husband's spasms of glee the old woman spoke out, but in trembling tones no longer. "Ah, the cemetery, it is I who forgot to go there this week." Her husband stopped, the laugh dying on his lip as he turned to her. "_Ah, ma bonne_, how came that? You forgot?" His own tones trembled at the last word. "Yes, you had the cramps again, you remember, and there was no money left for the bouquet." "Yes, I remember," and the great chest heaved a deep sigh. "You have children--you have lost someone?" "_Hélas!_ no living children, mademoiselle. No, no--one daughter we had, but she died twenty years ago. She lies over there--where we can see her. She would have been thirty-eight years now--the fourteenth of this very month!" "Yes, this very month." Then the old woman, for the first time, left her refuge along the wall; she crept softly, quietly near to her husband to put her withered hand in his. His large palm closed over it. Both of the old faces turned toward the cemetery; and in the old eyes a film gathered, as they looked toward all that was left of the hope that was buried away from them. We left them thus, hand in hand, with many promises to renew the acquaintance. The village was no longer abroad in the streets. During our talk in the shop the night had fallen; it had cast its shadow, as trees cast theirs, in a long, slow slant. Lights were trembling in the dim interiors; the shrill cries of the children were stilled; only a muffled murmur came through the open doors and windows. The villagers were pattering across the rough floors, talking, as their sabots clattered heavily over the wooden surface, as they washed the dishes, as they covered their fires, shoving back the tables and chairs. As we walked along, through the nearer windows came the sound of steps on the creaking old stairs, then a rustling of straw and the heavy fall of weary bodies, as the villagers flung themselves on the old oaken beds, that groaned as they received their burden. Presently all was still. Only our steps resounded through the streets. The stars filled the sky; and beneath them the waves broke along the beach. In the closely packed little streets the heavy breathing of the sleeping village broke also in short, quick gasps. Only we and the night were awake. CHAPTER VII. SOME NORMAN LANDLADIES. Quite a number of changes came about with our annexation of an artist and his garden. Chief among these changes was the surprising discovery of finding ourselves, at the end of a week, in possession of a villa. "It's next door," Renard remarked, in the casual way peculiar to artists. "You are to have the whole house to yourselves, all but the top floor; the people who own it keep that to live in. There's a garden of the right sort, with espaliers, also rose trees, and a tea house; quite the right sort of thing altogether." The unforeseen, in its way, is excellent and admirable. _De l'imprévu,_ surely this is the dash of seasoning--the caviare we all crave in life's somewhat too monotonous repasts. But as men have been known to admire the still life in wifely character, and then repented their choice, marrying peace only to court dissension, so we, incontinently deserting our humble inn chambers to take possession of a grander state, in the end found the capital of experience drained to pay for our little infidelity. [Illustration: A DEPARTURE--VILLERVILLE] The owners of the villa Belle Etoile, our friend announced, he had found greatly depressed; of this, their passing mood, he had taken such advantage as only comes to the knowing. "They speak of themselves drearily as 'deux pauvres malheureux' with this villa still on their hands, and here they are almost 'touching June,' as they put it. They also gave me to understand that only the finest flowers of the aristocracy had had the honor of dwelling in this villa. They have been able, I should say, more or less successfully to deflower this 'fine fleur' of some of their gold. But they are very meek just now--they were willing to listen to reason." The "two poor unhappies" were looking surprisingly contented an hour later, when we went in to inspect our possessions. They received us with such suave courtesy, that I was quite certain Renard's skill in transactions had not played its full gamut of capacity. Civility is the Frenchman's mask; he wears it as he does his skin--as a matter of habit. But courtesy is his costume de bal; he can only afford to don his bravest attire of smiles and graciousness when his pocket is in holiday mood. Madame Fouchet we found in full ball-room toilet; she was wreathed in smiles. Would _ces dames_ give themselves the trouble of entering? would they see the house or the garden first? would they permit their trunks to be sent for? Monsieur Fouchet, meanwhile, was making a brave second to his wife's bustling welcome; he was rubbing his hands vigorously, a somewhat suspicious action in a Frenchman, I have had occasion to notice, after the completion of a bargain. Nature had cast this mild-eyed individual for the part of accompanyist in the comedy we call life; a _rôle_ he sometimes varied as now, with the office of _claqueur_, when an uncommonly clever proof of madame's talent for business drew from him this noiseless tribute of applause. His weak, fat contralto called after us, as we followed madame's quick steps up the waxed stairway; he would be in readiness, he said, to show us the garden, "once the chambers were visited." "It wasn't a real stroke, mesdames, it was only a warning!" was the explanation conveyed to us in loud tones, with no reserve of whispered delicacy, when we expressed regret at monsieur's detention below stairs; a partially paralyzed leg, dragged painfully after the latter's flabby figure, being the obvious cause of this detention. The stairway had the line of beauty, describing a pretty curve before its glassy steps led us to a narrow entry; it had also the brevity which is said to be the very soul, _l'anima viva_, of all true wit; but it was quite long and straight enough to serve Madame Fouchet as a stage for a prolonged monologue, enlivened with much affluence of gesture. Fouchet's seizure, his illness, his convalescence, and present physical condition--a condition which appeared to be bristling with the tragedy of danger, "un vrai drame d'anxiété"--was graphically conveyed to us. The horrors of the long winter also, so sad for a Parisian--"si triste pour la Parisienne, ces hivers de province"--together with the miseries of her own home life, between this paralytic of a husband below stairs, and above, her mother, an old lady of eighty, nailed to her sofa with gout. "You may thus figure to yourselves, mesdames, what a melancholy season is the winter! And now, with this villa still on our hands, and the season already announcing itself, ruin stares us in the face, mesdames--ruin!" It was a moving picture. Yet we remained strangely unaffected by this tale of woe. Madame Fouchet herself, the woman, not the actress, was to blame, I think, for our unfeelingness. Somehow, to connect woe, ruin, sadness, melancholy, or distress, in a word, of any kind with our landlady's opulent figure, we found a difficult acrobatic mental feat. She presented to the eye outlines and features that could only be likened, in point of prosperity, to a Dutch landscape. Like certain of the mediaeval saints presented by the earlier delineators of the martyrs as burning above a slow fire, while wearing smiles of purely animal content, as if in full enjoyment of the temperature, this lady's sufferings were doubtless an invisible discipline, the hair shirt which her hardened cuticle felt only to be a pleasurable itching. "_Voilà, mesdames!_" It was with a magnificent gesture that madame opened doors and windows. The drama of her life was forgotten for the moment in the conscious pride of presenting us with such a picture as her gay little house offered. Inside and out, summer and the sun were blooming and shining with spendthrift luxuriance. The salon opened directly on the garden; it would have been difficult to determine just where one began and the domain of the other ended, with the pinks and geraniums that nodded in response to the peach and pear blossoms in the garden. A bit of faded Aubusson and a print representing Madame Geoffrin's salon in full session, with a poet of the period transporting the half-moon grouped listeners about him to the point of tears, were evidences of the refined tastes of our landlady in the arts; only a sentimentalist would have hung that picture in her salon. Other decorations further proved her as belonging to both worlds. The chintzes gay with garlands of roses, with which walls, beds, and chairs were covered, revealed the mundane element, the woman of decorative tastes, possessed of a hidden passion for effective backgrounds. Two or three wooden crucifixes, a _prie-dieu_, and a couple of saints in plaster, went far to prove that this excellent _bourgeoise_ had thriftily made her peace with Heaven. It was a curious mixture of the sacred and the profane. Down below, beneath the windows overlooking the sea, lay the garden. All the houses fronting the cliff had similar little gardens, giving, as the French idiom so prettily puts it, upon the sea. But compared to these others, ours was as a rose of Sharon blooming in the midst of little deserts. Renard had been entirely right about this particular bit of earth attached to our villa. It was a gem of a garden. It was a French garden, and therefore, entirely as a matter of course, it had walls. It was as cut off from the rest of the world as if it had been a prison or a fortification. The Frenchman, above all others, appears to have the true sentiment of seclusion, when the society of trees and flowers is to be enjoyed. Next to woman, nature is his fetish. True to his national taste in dress, he prefers that both should be costumed _à la Parisienne_; but as poet and lover, it is his instinct to build a wall about his idol, that he may enjoy his moments of expansion unseen and unmolested. This square of earth, for instance, was not much larger than the space covered by the chamber roof above us; and yet, with the high walls towering over the rose-stalks, it was as secluded as a monk's cloister. We found it, indeed, on later acquaintance, as poetic and delicately sensuous a retreat as the romance-writers would wish us to believe did those mediaeval connoisseurs of comfort, when, with sandalled feet, they paced their own convent garden-walks. Fouchet was a broken-down shopkeeper; but somewhere hidden within, there lurked the soul of a Maecenas; he knew how to arrange a feast--of roses. The garden was a bit of greensward, not much larger than a pocket handkerchief; but the grass had the right emerald hue, and one's feet sank into the rich turf as into the velvet of an oriental rug. Small as was the enclosure, between the espaliers and the flower-beds serpentined minute paths of glistening pebbles. Nothing which belonged to a garden had been forgotten, not even a pine from the tropics, and a bench under the pine that was just large enough for two. This latter was an ideal little spot in which to bring a friend or a book. One could sit there and gorge one's self with sweets; a dance was perpetually going on--the gold-and-purple butterflies fluttering gayly from morning till night; and the bees freighted the air with their buzzing. If one tired of perfumes and dancing, there was always music to be enjoyed, from a full orchestra. The sea, just the other side of the wall of osiers, was always in voice, whether sighing or shouting. The larks and blackbirds had a predilection for this nest of color, announcing their preference loudly in a combat of trills. And once or twice, we were quite certain, a nightingale with Patti notes had been trying its liquid scales in the dark. It was in this garden that our acquaintance with our landlord deepened into something like friendship. Monsieur Fouchet was always to be found there, tying up the rose-trees, or mending the paths, or shearing the bit of turf. _"Mon jardin, c'est un peu moi, vous savez_--it is my pride and my consolation." At the latter word, Fouchet was certain to sigh. Then we fell to wondering just what grief had befallen this amiable person which required Horatian consolation. Horace had need of rose-leaves to embalm his disappointments, for had he not cooled his passions by plunging into the bath of literature? Besides, Horace was bitten by the modern rabies: he was as restless as an American. When at Rome was he not always sighing for his Sabine farm, and when at the farm always regretting Rome? But this harmless, innocent-eyed, benevolent-browed old man, with his passive brains tied up in a foulard, o' morning's, and his _bourgeois_ feet adorned with carpet slippers, what grief in the past had bitten his poor soul and left its mark still sore? "It isn't monsieur--it is madame who has made the past dark," was Renard's comment, when we discussed our landlord's probable acquaintance with regret--or remorse. Whatever secret of the past may have hovered over the Fouchet household, the evil bird had not made its nest in madame's breast, that was clear; her smooth, white brow was the sign of a rose-leaf conscience; that dark curtain of hair, looped madonna-wise over each ear, framed a face as unruffled as her conscience. She was entirely at peace with her world, and with heaven as well, that was certain. Whatever her sins, the confessional had purged her. Like others, doubtless, she had found a husband and the provinces excellent remedies for a damaged reputation. She lived now in the very odor of sanctity; the cure had a pipe in her kitchen, with something more sustaining, on certain bright afternoons. Although she was daily announcing to us her approaching dissolution--"I die, mesdames--I die of ennui"--it seemed to me there were still signs, at times, of a vigorous resuscitation. The cure's visits were wont to produce a deeper red in the deep bloom of her cheek; the mayor and his wife, who drank their Sunday coffee in the arbor, brought, as did Beatrix's advent to Dante, _vita nuova_ to this homesick Parisian. There were other pleasures in her small world, also, which made life endurable. Bargaining, when one teems with talent, may be as exciting as any other form of conquest. Madame's days were chiefly passed in imitation of the occupation so dear to an earlier, hardier race, that race kings have knighted for their powers in dealing mightily with their weaker neighbors. Madame, it is true, was only a woman, and Villerville was somewhat slimly populated. But in imitation of her remote feudal lords, she also fell upon the passing stranger, demanding tribute. When the stranger did not pass, she kept her arm in practice, so to speak, by extracting the last _sou_ in a transaction from a neighbor, or by indulging in a drama in which the comedy of insult was matched by the tragedy of contempt. One of these mortal combats it was my privilege to witness. The war arose on our announcement to Mère Mouchard, the lady of the inn by the sea, of our decision to move next door. To us Mère Mouchard presented the unruffled plumage of a dove; her voice also was as the voice of the same, mellowed by sucking. Ten minutes later the town was assembled to lend its assistance at the encounter between our two landladies. Each stood on their respective doorsteps with arms akimbo and head thrust forward, as geese protrude head and tongue in moments of combat. And it was thus, the mere hissed, that her boarders were stolen from her--under her very nose--while her back was turned, with no more thought of honesty or shame than a----. The word was never uttered. The mère's insult was drowned in a storm of voices? for there came a loud protest from the group of neighbors. Madame Fouchet, meanwhile, was sustaining her own role with great dignity. Her attitude of self-control could only have been learned in a school where insult was an habitual weapon. She smiled, an infuriating, exasperating, successful smile. She showed a set of defiant white teeth, and to her proud white throat she gave a boastful curve. Was it her fault if _ces dames_ knew what comfort and cleanliness were? if they preferred "_des chambres garnies avec goût, vraiment artistiques_"--to rooms fit only for peasants? _Ces dames_ had just come from Paris; doubtless, they were not yet accustomed to provincial customs--_aux moeurs provinciales_. Then there were exchanged certain melodious acerbities, which proved that these ladies had entered the lists on previous occasions, and that each was well practised in the other's methods of warfare. Opportunely, Renard appeared on the scene; his announcement that we proposed still to continue taking our repasts with the mere, was as oil on the sea of trouble. A reconciliation was immediately effected, and the street as immediately lost all interest in the play, the audience melting away as speedily as did the wrath of the disputants. "_Le bon Dieu soit loué_," cried Madame Fouchet, puffing, as she mounted the stairs a few moments later--"God be praised"--she hadn't come here to the provinces to learn her rights--to be taught her alphabet. Mère Mouchard, forsooth, who wanted a week's board as indemnity for her loss of us! A week's board--for lodgings scorned by peasants! "Ah, these Normans! what a people, what a people! They would peel the skin off your back! They would sell their children! They would cheat the devil himself!" "You, madame, I presume, are from Paris." Madame smiled as she answered, a thin fine smile, richly seasoned with scorn. "Ah, mesdames! All the world can't boast of Paris as a birthplace, unfortunately. I also, I am a Norman, _mais je ne m'en fiche pas!_ Most of my life, however, I've lived in Paris, thank God!" She lifted her head as she spoke, and swept her hands about her waist to adjust the broad belt, an action pregnant with suggestions. For it was thus conveyed to us, delicately, that such a figure as hers was not bred on rustic diet; also, that the Parisian glaze had not failed of its effect on the coarser provincial clay. Meanwhile, below in the garden, her husband was meekly tying up his rose-trees. Neither of the landladies' husbands had figured in the street-battle. It had been a purely Amazonian encounter, bloodless but bitter. Both the husbands of these two belligerent landladies appeared singularly well trained. Mouchard, indeed, occupied a comparatively humble sphere in his wife's _ménage_. He was perpetually to be seen in the court-yard, at the back of the house, washing dogs, or dishes, in a costume in which the greatest economy of cloth compatible with decency had been triumphantly solved. His wife ran the house, and he ran the errands, an arrangement which, apparently, worked greatly to the satisfaction of both. But Mouchard was not the first or the second French husband who, on the threshold of his connubial experience, had doubtless had his role in life appointed to him, filling the same with patient acquiescence to the very last of the lines. There is something very touching in the subjection of French husbands. In point of meekness they may well serve, I think, as models to their kind. It is a meekness, however, which does not hint of humiliation; for, after all, what humiliation can there be in being thoroughly understood? The Frenchwoman, by virtue of centuries of activity, in the world and in the field, has become an expert in the art of knowing her man; she has not worked by his side, under the burn of the noon sun, or in the cimmerian darkness of the shop-rear, counting the pennies, for nothing. In exchanging her illusions for the bald front of fact, man himself has had to pay the penalty of this mixed gain. She tests him by purely professional standards, as man tests man, or as he has tested her, when in the ante-matrimonial days he weighed her _dot_ in the scale of his need. The Frenchwoman and Shakespeare are entirely of one mind; they perceive the great truth of unity in the scheme of things: "Woman's test is man's taste." This is the first among the great truths in the feminine grammar of assent. French masculine taste, as its criterion, has established the excellent doctrine of utilitarianism. With quick apprehension the Frenchwoman has mastered this fact; she has cleverly taken a lesson from ophidian habits--she can change her skin, quickly shedding the sentimentalist, when it comes to serious action, to don the duller raiment of utility. She has accepted her world, in other words, as she finds it, with a philosopher's shrug. But the philosopher is lined with the logician; for this system of life has accomplished the miracle of making its women logical; they have grasped the subtleties of inductive reasoning. Marriage, for example, they know is entered into solely on the principle of mutual benefit; it is therefore a partnership, _bon_; now, in partnerships sentiments and the emotions are out of place, they only serve to dim the eye; those commodities, therefore, are best conveyed to other markets than the matrimonial one; for in purely commercial transactions one has need of perfect clearness of vision, if only to keep one well practised in that simple game called looking out for one's own interest. In Frenchwomen, the ratiocinationist is extraordinarily developed; her logic penetrates to the core of things. Hence it is that Mouchard washes dishes. Monsieur Jourdain, in Molière's comedy, who expressed such surprise at finding that he had been talking prose for forty years without knowing it, was no more amazed than would Mère Mouchard have been had you announced to her that she was a logician; or that her husband's daily occupations in the bright little court-yard were the result of a system. Yet both facts were true. In that process we now know as the survival of the fittest, the mère's capacity had snuffed out her weaker spouse's incompetency; she had taken her place at the helm, because she belonged there by virtue of natural fitness. There were no tender illusions which would suffer, in seeing the husband allotted to her, probably by her parents and the _dot_ system, relegated to the ignominy of passing his days washing dishes--dishes which she cooked and served--dishes, it should be added, which she was entirely conscious were cooked by the hand of genius, and which she garnished with a sauce and served with a smile, such as only issue from French kitchens. CHAPTER VIII. THE QUARTIER LATIN ON THE BEACH. The beach, one morning, we found suddenly peopled with artists. It was a little city of tents. Beneath striped awnings and white umbrellas a multitude of flat-capped heads sat immovably still on their three-legged stools, or darted hither and thither. Paris was evidently beginning to empty its studios; the Normandy beaches now furnished the better model. One morning we were in luck. A certain blonde beard had counted early in the day on having the beach to himself. He had posed his model in the open daylight, that he might paint her in the sun. He had placed her, seated on an edge of seawall; for a background there was the curve of the yellow sands and the flat breadth of the sea, with the droop of the sky meeting the sea miles away. The girl was a slim, fair shape, with long, thin legs and delicately moulded arms; she was dressed in the fillet and chiton of Greece. During her long poses she was as immovable as an antique marble; her natural grace and prettiness were transfigured into positive beauty by the flowing lines and the pink draperies of her Attic costume. Seated thus, she was a breathing embodiment of the best Greek period. When the rests came, her jump from the wall landed her square on her feet and at the latter end of the nineteenth century. Once free, she bounded from her perch on the high sea-wall. In an instant she had tucked her tinted draperies within the slender girdle; her sandalled feet must be untrammelled, she was about to take her run on the beach. Soon she was pelting, irreverently, her painter with a shower of loose pebbles. Next she had challenged him to a race; when she reached the goal, her thin, bare arms were uplifted as she clapped and shouted for glee; the Quartier Latin in her blood was having its moment of high revelry in the morning sun. This little grisette, running about free and unshackled in her loose draperies, quite unabashed in her state of semi-nudity--gay, reckless, wooing pleasure on the wing, surely she might have posed as the embodied archetype of France itself. So has this pagan among modern nations borrowed something of the antique spirit of wantonness. Along with its theft of the Attic charm and grace, it has captured, also, something of its sublime indifference; in the very teeth of the dull modern world, France has laughed opinion to scorn. At noon the tents were all deserted. It was at this hour that the inn garden was full. The gayety and laughter overflowed the walls. Everyone talked at once; the orders were like a rattle of artillery--painting for hours in the open air gives a fine edge to appetite, and patience is never the true twin of hunger. Everything but the _potage_ was certain to be on time. Colinette, released from her Greek draperies, with her Parisian bodice had recovered the _blague_ of the studios. "_Sacré nom de--on reste donc claquemuré ainsi toute la matinée!_ And all for an _omelette_--a puny, good-for-nothing _omelette_. And you--you've lost your tongue, it seems?" And a shrill voice pierced the air as Colinette gave her painter the hint of her prodding elbow. With the appearance of the _omelette_ the reign of good humor would return. Everything then went as merrily as that marriage-bell which, apparently, is the only one absent in Bohemia's gay chimes. These arbors had obviously been built out of pure charity: they appeared to have been constructed on the principle that since man, painting man, is often forced to live alone, from economic necessity, it is therefore only the commonest charity to provide him with the proper surroundings for eating _à deux._ The little tables beneath the kiosks were strictly _tête-à-tête_ tables; even the chairs, like the visitors, appeared to come only in couples. The Frenchman has been reproached with the sin of ingratitude; has been convicted, indeed, as possessed of more of that pride that comes late--the day after the gift of bounty has been given--than some other of his fellow-mortals. Yet here were a company of Frenchmen--and Frenchwomen--proving in no ordinary fashion their equipment in this rare virtue. It was early in May; up yonder, where the Seine flows beneath the Parisian bridges, the pulse of the gay Paris world was beating in time to the spring in the air. Yet these artists had deserted the asphalt of the boulevards for the cobbles of a village street, the delights of the _café chantant_ had been exchanged for the miracle of the moon rising over the sea, and for the song of the thrush in the bush. The Frenchman, more easily and with simpler art than any of his modern brethren, can change the prose of our dull, practical life into poetry; he can turn lyrical at a moment's notice. He possesses the power of transmuting the commonplace into the idyllic, by merely clapping on his cap and turning his back on the haunts of men. He has retained a singular--an almost ideal sensitiveness, of mental cuticle--such acuteness of sensation, that a journey to a field will oftentimes yield him all the flavor of a long voyage, and a sudden introduction to a forest, the rapture that commonly comes only with some unwonted aspect of nature. Perhaps it is because of this natural poet indwelling in a Frenchman, that makes him content to remain so much at home. Surely the extraordinary is the costly necessity for barren minds; the richly-endowed can see the beauty that lies the other side of their own door-step. CHAPTER IX. A NORMAN HOUSEHOLD. There were two paths in the village that were well worn. One was that which led the village up into the fields. The other was the one that led the tillers of the soil down into the village, to the door step of the justice of the peace. A good Norman is no Norman who has not a lawsuit on hand. Anything will serve as a pretext for a quarrel No sum of money is so small as not to warrant a breaking of the closest blood ties, if thereby one's rights may be secured. Those beautiful stripes of rye, barley, corn, and wheat up yonder in the fields, that melt into one another like sea-tones--down here on the benches before the _juge de paix_--what quarrels, what hatreds, what evil passions these few acres of land have brought their owners, facing each other here like so many demons, ready to spring at the others' throats! Brothers on these benches forget they are brothers, and sisters that they have suckled the same mother. Two more yards of the soil that should have been Fillette's instead of Jeanne's, and the grave will enclose both before the clenched fist of either is relaxed, and the last _sous_ in the stocking will be spent before the war between their respective lawyers will end. Many and many were the tales told us of the domestic tragedies, born of wills mal-administered, of the passions of hate, ambition, and despair kept at a white heat because half the village owned, up in the fields, what the other half coveted. Many, also, and fierce were the heated faces we looked in upon at the justice's door, in the very throes of the great moment of facing justice, and their adversary. Our own way, by preference, took us up into the fields. Here, in the broad open, the farms lay scattered like fortifications over a plain. Doubtless, in the earlier warlike days they had served as such. Once out of the narrow Villerville streets, and the pastoral was in full swing. The sea along this coast was not in the least insistant; it allowed the shore to play its full gamut of power. There were no tortured shapes of trees or plants, or barren wastes, to attest the fierce ways of the sea with the land. Reminders of the sea and of the life that is lived in ships were conspicuous features everywhere, in the pastoral scenes that began as soon as the town ended. Women carrying sails and nets toiled through the green aisles of the roads and lanes. Fishing-tackle hung in company with tattered jerseys outside of huts hidden in grasses and honeysuckle. The shepherdesses, as they followed the sheep inland into the heart of the pasture land, were busy netting the coarse cages that trap the finny tribe. Long-limbed, vigorous-faced, these shepherdesses were Biblical figures. In their coarse homespun, with only a skirt and a shirt, with their bare legs, half-open bosoms, and the fine poise of their blond heads, theirs was a beauty that commanded the homage accorded to a rude virginity. In some of the fields, in one of our many walks, the grass was being cut. In these fields the groups of men and women were thickest. The long scythes were swung mightily by both; the voices, a gay treble of human speech, rose above the metallic swish of the sharp blades cutting into the succulent grasses. The fat pasture lands rose and sank in undulations as rounded as the nascent breasts of a young Greek maiden. A medley of color played its charming variations over fields, over acres of poppies, over plains of red clover, over the backs of spotted cattle, mixing, mingling, blending a thousand twists and turns into one exquisite, harmonious whole. There was no discordant note, not one harsh contrast; even the hay-ricks seemed to have been modelled rather than pitched into shape; their sloping sides and finely pointed apexes giving them the dignity of structural intent. Why should not a peasant, in blouse and sabots, with a grinning idiot face, have put the picture out? But he did not. He was walking, or rather waddling, toward us, between two green walls that rose to be arched by elms that hid the blue of the sky. This lane was the kind of lane one sees only in Devonshire and in Normandy. There are lanes and lanes, as, to quote our friend the cobbler, there are cures and cures. But only in these above-named countries can one count on walking straight into the heart of an emerald, if one turns from the high-road into a lane. The trees, in these Devonshire and Normandy by-paths, have ways of their own of vaulting into space; the hedges are thicker, sweeter, more vocal with insect and song notes than elsewhere; the roadway itself is softer to the foot, and narrower--only two are expected to walk therein. It was through such a lane as this that the coarse, animal shape of a peasant was walking toward us. His legs and body were horribly twisted; the dangling arms and crooked limbs appeared as if caricaturing the gnarled and tortured boughs and trunks of the apple-trees. The peasant's blouse was filthy; his sabots were reeking with dirty straw; his feet and ankles, bare, were blacker than the earth over which he was painfully crawling; and on his face there was the vacuous, sensuous deformity of the smile idiocy wears. Again I ask, why did he not disfigure this fair scene, and put out something of the beauty of the day? Is it because the French peasant seems now to be an inseparable adjunct of the Frenchman's landscape? That even deformity has been so handled by the realists as to make us see beauty in ugliness? Or is it that, as moderns, we are all bitten by the rabies of the picturesque; that all things serve and are acceptable so long as we have our necessary note of contrast? Certain it is that it appears to be the peasant's blouse that perpetuates the Salon, and perhaps--who knows?--when over-emigration makes our own American farmer too poor to wear a boiled shirt when he ploughs, we also may develop a school of landscape, with figures. Meanwhile the walk and the talk had made Charm thirsty. "Why should we not go," she asked, "across the next field, into that farm house yonder, and beg for a glass of milk?" The farm-house might have been waiting for us, it was so still. Even the grasses along its sloping roof nodded, as if in welcome. The house, as we approached it, together with its out-buildings, assumed a more imposing aspect than it had from the road. Its long, low facade, broken here and there by a miniature window or a narrow doorway, appeared to stretch out into interminable length beneath the towering beeches and the snarl of the peach-tree boughs. The stillness was ominous--it was so profound. The only human in sight was a man in a distant field; he was raking the ploughed ground. He was too far away to hear the sound of our voices. "Perhaps the entire establishment is in the fields," said Charm, as we neared the house. Just then a succession of blows fell on our ear. "Someone is beating a mattress within, we shall have our glass after all." We knocked. But no one answered our knock. The beating continued; the sound of the blows fell as regularly as if machine-impelled. Then a cry rose up; it was the cry of a young, strong voice, and it was followed by a low wail of anguish. The door stood half-open, and this is what we saw: A man--tall, strong, powerful, with a face purple with passion--bending over the crouching form of a girl, whose slender body was quivering, shrinking, and writhing as the man's hand, armed with a short stick, fell, smiting her defenceless back and limbs. Her wail went on as each blow fell. In a corner, crouched in a heap, sitting on her heels, was a woman. She was clapping her hands. Her eyes were starting from her head; she clapped as the blows came, and above the girl's wail her strong, exultant voice arose--calling out: "_Tue-la! Tue-la!_" It was the voice of a triumphant fury. The backs of all these people were turned upon us; they had not seen, much less heard, our entrance. Someone else had seen us, however. A man with a rake over his shoulder rushed in through the open door; it was the peasant we had seen in the field. He seized Charm by the arm, and then my own hand was grasped as in a grip of iron. Before we had time for resistance he had pushed us out before him into the entry, behind the outer door. This latter he slammed. He put his broad back against it; then he dropped his rake and began to mop his face, violently, with a filthy handkerchief he plucked from beneath his blouse. "_Que chance! Nom de Dieu, que chance! Je v'avions vue_, I saw you just in time--just in time--" "But, I must go in--I wish to go back!" But Charm might as well have attempted to move a pillar of stone. The peasant's coarse, good-humored face broke into a broad laugh. "Pardon, mam'selle--_j'n bougeons pas. Not' maitre e encoléré; e' son jour--faut pas l'irriter--aujou'hui."_ Meantime, during the noise of our forced exit and the ensuing dialogue, the scene within had evidently changed in character, for the blows had ceased. Steps could be heard crossing and recrossing the wooden floor. A creaking sound succeeded to the beating--it was the creaking and groaning of a wooden staircase bending beneath the weight of a human figure. In an upper chamber there came the sound of a quiet, subdued sobbing now. They were the sobs of the girl. She at least had been released. A face, cruel, pinched, hardened, with flaming agate eyes and an insolent smile, stood looking out at us through the dulled, dusty window-pane. It was the fury. Meanwhile the peasant was still defending his post. A moment later the tall frame of the farmer suddenly filled the open doorway. The peasant well-nigh fell into his master's arms. The farmer's face was still terrible to look upon, but the purple stain of passion was now turned to red. There was a mocking insolence in his tone as he addressed us, that matched with the woman's unconcealed glee. "Will you not come in, mesdames? Will you not rest a while after your long walk?" On the man's hard face there was still the shadow of a sinister cruelty as he waved his hand toward the room within. The peasant's good-humored, loutish smile, and his stupid, cow-like eyes, by contrast, were the eyes and smile of a benevolent deity. The smile told us we were right, as we slunk away toward the open road. The head kept nodding approval as we vanished presently beneath the shade of the protecting trees. The fields, as we swept rapidly past them, were as bathed in peace as when we had left them; there was even a more voluptuous content abroad: for the twilight was wrapping about the landscape its poppied dusk of gloom and shadow. Above, the birds were swirling in sweeping circles, raining down the ecstasy of their night-song; still above, far beyond them, across a zenith pure, transparent, ineffably pink, illumined wisps of clouds were trailing their scarf-like shapes. It was a scene of beatific peace. Across the fields came the sound of a distant bell. It was the _Angelus_. The ploughmen stopped to doff their hats, the women to bend their heads in prayer. And in our ears, louder than the vibrations of the hamlet bell, louder than the bird-notes and the tumult of the voluptuous insect whirr, there rang the thud, thud of cruel blows falling on quivering human flesh. The curtain that hid the life of the peasant-farmer had indeed been lifted. CHAPTER X. ERNESTINE. "Ah, mesdames, what will you have? The French peasant is like that. When he is in a rage nothing stops him--he beats anything, everything; whatever his hand encounters must suffer when he is angry; his wife, his child, his servant, his horse, they are all alike to him when he sees red." Monsieur Fouchet was tying up his rose-trees; we were watching him from our seat on the green bench. Here in the garden, beneath the blue vault, the roses were drooping from very heaviness of glory; they gave forth a scent that made the head swim. It was a healthy, virile intoxication, however, the salt in the air steadying one's nerves. Nature, not being mortal and cursed with a conscience, had risen that morning in a mood for carousal; at this hour of noon she had reached the point of ecstatic stupor. No state of trance was ever so exquisite. The air was swooning, but how delicate its gasps, as if it fell away into calm! How adorably blue the sky in its debauch of sun-lit ether! The sea, too, although it reeled slightly, unsteadily rising only to fall away, what a radiance of color it maintained! Here in the garden the drowsy air would lift a flower petal, as some dreamer sunk in hasheesh slumber might touch a loved hand, only to let it slip away in nerveless impotence. Never had the charm of this Normandy sea-coast been as compelling; never had the divine softness of this air, this harmonious marriage of earth-scents and sea-smells seemed as perfect; never before had the delicacy of the foliage and color-gradations of the sky as triumphantly proved that nowhere else, save in France, can nature be at once sensuous and poetic. We looked for something other than pure enjoyment from this golden moment; we hoped its beauty would help us to soften our landlord. This was the moment we had chosen to excite his sympathies, also to gain counsel from him concerning the tragedy we had witnessed the day before. He listened to our tale with evident interest, but there was a disappointing coolness in his eye. As the narrative proceeded, the brutality of the situation failed to sting him to even a mild form of indignation. He went on tying his rose-trees, his ardor expending itself in choice snippings of the stray stalks and rebellious tendrils. "This Guichon," he said, after a brief moment, in the tone that goes with the pursuance of an occupation that has become a passion. "This Guichon--I know him. He is a hard man, but no harder than many others, and he has had his losses, which don't always soften a man. '_Qui terre a guerre a_,' Molière says, and Guichon has had many lawsuits, losing them all. He has been twice married; that was his daughter by his first wife he was touching up like that. He married only the other day Madame Tier, a rich woman, a neighbor, their lands join. It was a great match for him, and she, the wife, and his daughter don't hit it off, it appears. There was some talk of a marriage for the girl lately; a good match presented itself, but the girl will have none of it; perhaps that accounts for the beating." A rose, overblown with its fulness of splendor, dropped in a shower at Fouchet's feet just then. "_Tiens, elle est finie, celle-là_" he cried, with an accent of regret, and he stooped over the fallen petals as if they had been the remains of a friend. Then he sighed as he swept the mass into his broad palm. "Come, let us leave him to the funeral of his roses; he hasn't the sensibilities of an insect;" and Charm grasped my arm to lead me over the turf, across the gravel paths, toward the tea-house. This tottering structure had become one of our favorite retreats; in the poetic _mise-en-scène_ of the garden it played the part of Ruin. It was absurdly, ridiculously out of repair; its gaping beams and the sunken, dejected floor could only be due to intentional neglect. Fouchet evidently had grasped the secrets of the laws of contrast; the deflected angle of the tumbling roof made the clean-cut garden beds doubly true. Nature had had compassion on the aged little building, however; the clustering, fragrant vines, in their hatred of nudity, had invested the prose of a wreck with the poetry of drapery. The tip-tilted settee beneath the odorous roof became, in time, our chosen seat; from that perch we could overlook the garden-walls, the beach, the curve of the shore, the grasses and hollyhocks in our neighbor's garden, the latter startlingly distinct against the great arch of the sky. It was here Renard found us an hour later. To him, likewise, did Charm narrate our extraordinary experience of yesterday, with much adjunct of fiery comment, embellishment of gesture, and imitative pose. "Ye gods, what a scene to paint! You were in luck--in luck; why wasn't I there?" was Renard's tribute to human pity. "Oh, you are all alike, all--nothing moves you--you haven't common human sympathies--you haven't the rudiments of a heart! You are terrible--all of you--terrible!" A moment after she had left us, as if the narrowness of the little house stifled her. With long, swinging steps she passed out, to air her indignation, apparently, beneath the wall of the espaliers. "Splendid creature, isn't she?" commented Renard, following the long lines of the girl's fluttering muslin gown, as he plucked at his mustache. "She should always wear white and gold--what is that stuff?--and be lit up like that with a kind of goddess-like anger. She is wrong, however," he went on, a moment later; "those of us who live here aren't really barbarians, only we get used to things. It's the peasants themselves that force us; they wouldn't stand interference. A peasant is a kind of king on his own domain; he does anything he likes, short of murder, and he doesn't always stop at that." "But surely the Government--at least their Church, ought to teach them--" "Oh, their Church! they laugh at their curés--till they come to die. He's a heathen, that's what the French peasant is--there's lots of the middle ages abroad up there in the country. Along here, in the coast villages, the nineteenth century has crept in a bit, humanizing them, but the _fonds_ is always the same; they're by nature avaricious, sordid, cruel; they'll do anything for money; there isn't anything sacred for them except their pocket." A few days later, in our friend the cobbler we found a more sympathetic listener. "Dame! I also used to beat my wife," he said, contemplatively, as he scratched his herculean head, "but that was when I was a Christian, when I went to confession; for the confessional was made for that, _c'est pour laver le linge sale des consciences, çà_" (interjecting his epigram). "But now--now that I am a free-thinker, I have ceased all that; I don't beat her," pointing to his old wife, "and neither do I drink or swear." "It's true, he's good--he is, now," the old wife nodded, with her slit of a smile; "but," she added, quickly, as if even in her husband's religious past there had been some days of glory, "he was always just--even then--when he beat me." "_C'est très femme, çà--hein, mademoiselle?_" And the cobbler cocked his head in critical pose, with a philosopher's smile. The result of the interview, however, although not entirely satisfactory, was illuminating, besides this light which had been thrown on the cobbler's reformation. For the cobbler was a cousin, distant in point of kinship, but still a cousin, of the brutal farmer and father. He knew all the points of the situation, the chief of which was, as Fouchet had hinted, that the girl had refused to wed the _bon parti_, who was a connection of the step-mother. As for the step-mother's murderous outcry, "Kill her! kill her!" the cobbler refused to take a dramatic view of this outburst. "In such moments, you understand, one loses one's head; brutality always intoxicates; she was a little drunk, you see." When we proposed our modest little scheme, that of sending for the girl and taking her, for a time at least, into our service, merely as a change of scene, the cobbler had found nothing but admiration for the project. "It will be perfect, mesdames. They, the parents, will ask nothing better. To have the girl out at service, away, and yet not disgracing them by taking a place with any other farmer; yes, they will like that, for they are rich, you see, and wealth always respects itself. Ah, yes, it's perfect; I'll arrange all that--all the details." Two days later the result of the arrangement stood before us. She was standing with her arms crossed, her fingers clasping her elbows--with her very best peasant manner. She was neatly, and, for a peasant, almost fashionably attired in her holiday dress--a short, black skirt, white stockings, a flowery kerchief crossed over her broad bosom, and on her pretty hair a richly tinted blue _foulard_. She was very well dressed for a peasant, and, from the point of view of two travellers, of about as much use as a plough. "It's a beautiful scheme, and it's as dramatic as the fifth act of a play; but what shall we do with her?" "Oh." replied Charm, carelessly, "there isn't anything in particular for her to do. I mean to buy her a lot of clothes, like those she has on, and she can walk about in the garden or in the fields." "Ah, I see; she's to be a kind of a perambulating figure-piece." "Yes, that's about it. I dare say she will be very useful at sunset, in a dim street; so few peasants wear anything approaching to costume nowadays." Ernestine herself, however, as we soon discovered, had an entirely different conception of her vocation. She was a vigorous, active young woman, with the sap of twenty summers in her lusty young veins. Her energies soon found vent in a continuous round of domestic excitements. There were windows and floors that cried aloud to Heaven to be scrubbed; there were holes in the sheets to make mam'zelle's lying between them _une honte, une vraie honte_. As for Madame Fouchet's little weekly bill, _Dieu de Dieu_, it was filled with such extortions as to make the very angels weep. Madame and Ernestine did valiant battle over those bills thereafter. Ernestine was possessed of the courage of a true martyr; she could suffer and submit to the scourge, in the matter of personal persecution, for the religion of her own convictions; but in the service of her rescuer, she could fight with the fierceness of a common soldier. "When Norman meets Norman--" Charm began one day, the sound of voices, in a high treble of anger, coming in to us through the windows. But Ernestine was knocking at the door, with a note in her hand. "An answer is asked, mesdames," she said, in a voice of honey, as she dropped her low courtesy. This was the missive: ALONG AN OLD POST-ROAD. TO HONFLEUR AND TROUVILLE. CHAPTER XI. TO AN OLD MANOR. "Will _ces dames_ join me in a marauding expedition? Like the poet Villon, I am about to turn marauder, house breaker, thief. I shall hope to end the excursion by one act, at least, of highway robbery. I shall lose courage without the enlivening presence of _ces dames._ We will start when the day is at its best, we will return when the moon smiles. In case of finding none to rob, the coach of the desperadoes will be garrisoned with provisions; Henri will accompany us as counsellor, purveyor, and bearer of arms and costumes. The carriage for _ces dames_ will stop the way at the hour of eleven. "I have the honor to sign myself their humble servant and co-conspirator. "John Renard." "This, in plain English," was Charm's laconic translation of this note, "means that he wishes us to be ready at eleven for the excursion to P----, to spend the day, you may remember, at that old manor. He wants to paint in a background, he said yesterday, while we stroll about and look at the old place. What shall I wear?" In an hour we were on the road. A jaunty yellow cart, laden with a girl on the front seat; with a man, tawny of mustache, broad of shoulder, and dark of eye, with face shining to match the spring in the air and that fair face beside him; laden also with another lady on the back seat, beside whom, upright and stiff, with folded arms, sat Henri, costumer, valet, cook, and groom. It was in the latter capacity that Henri was now posing. The role of groom was uppermost in his orderly mind, although at intervals, when his foot chanced to touch a huge luncheon-basket with which the cart was also laden, there were betraying signs of anxiety; it was then that the chef crept back to life. This spring in the air was all very well, but how would it affect the sauces? This great question was written on Henri's brow in a network of anxious wrinkles. "Henri," I remarked, as we were wheeling down the roadway, "I am quite certain you have put up enough luncheon for a regiment." "Madame has said it, for a regiment; Monsieur Renard, when he works, eats with the hunger of a wolf." "Henri, did you get in all the rags?" This came from Renard on the front seat, as he plied his steed with the whip. "The costume of Monsieur le Marquis, and also of Madame la Marquise de Pompadour, are beneath my feet in the valise, Monsieur Renard. I have the sword between my legs," replied Henri, the costumer coming to the surface long enough to readjust the sword. "Capital fellow, Henri, never forgets anything," said Renard, in English. "Couldn't we offer a libation or something, on such a morning--" "On such a morning," interrupted the painter, "one should be seated next to a charming young lady who has the genius to wear Nile green and white; even a painter with an Honorable Mention behind him and fame still ahead, in spite of the Mention, is satisfied. You know a Greek deity was nothing to a painter, modern, and of the French school, in point of fastidiousness." "Nonsense! it's the American woman who is fastidious, when it comes to clothes." Meanwhile, there was one of the party who was looking at the road; that also was arrayed in Nile green and white; the tall trees also held umbrellas above us, but these coverings were woven of leaves and sky. This bit of roadway appeared to have slipped down from the upper country, and to have carried much of the upper country with it. It was highway posing as pure rustic. It had brought all its pastoral paraphernalia along. Nothing had been forgotten: neither the hawthorn and the osier hedges, nor the tree-trunks, suddenly grown modest at sight of the sea, burying their nudity in nests of vines, nor the trick which elms and beeches have, of growing arches in the sky. Timbered farm-houses were here, also thatched huts, to make the next villa-gate gain in stateliness; apple orchards were dotted about with such a knowing air of wearing the long line of the Atlantic girdled about their gnarled trunks, that one could not believe pure accident had carried them to the edge of the sea. There were several miles of this driving along beneath these green aisles. Through the screen of the hedges and the crowded tree-trunks, picture succeeded picture; bits of the sea were caught between slits of cliff; farmhouses, huts, and villas lay smothered in blossoms; above were heights whereon poplars seemed to shiver in the sun, as they wrapped about them their shroud-like foliage; meadows slipped away from the heights, plunging seaward, as if wearying for the ocean; and through the whole this line of green roadway threaded its path with sinuous grace, serpentining, coiling, braiding in land and sea in one harmonious, inextricable blending of incomparable beauty. One could quite comprehend, after even a short acquaintance with this road, that two gentlemen of Paris, as difficult to please as Daubigny and Isabey, should have seen points of excellence in it. There are all sorts of ways of being a painter. Perhaps as good as any, if one cares at all about a trifling matter like beauty, is to know a good thing when one sees it. That poet of the brush, Daubigny, not only was gifted with this very unusual talent in a painter, but a good thing could actually be entrusted in his hands after its discovery. And herein, it appears to me, lies all the difference between good and bad painting; not only is an artist--any artist--to be judged by what he sees, but also by what he does with a fact after he's acquired it--whether he turns it into poetry or prose. I might incautiously have sprung these views on the artist on the front seat, had he not wisely forestalled my outburst by one of his own. "By the way," he broke in; "by the way, I'm not doing my duty as cicerone. There's a church near here--we're coming to it in a moment--famous--eleventh or twelfth century, Romanesque style--yes--that's right, although I'm somewhat shaky when it comes to architecture--and an old manoir, museum now, with lots of old furniture in it--in the manoir, I mean." "There's the church now. Oh, let us stop!" In point of fact there were two churches before us. There was one of ivy: nave, roof, aisles, walls, and conic-shaped top, as perfectly defined in green as if the beautiful mantle had been cut and fitted to the hidden stone structure. Every few moments the mantle would be lifted by the light breeze, as might a priest's vestment; it would move and waver, as if the building were a human frame, changing its posture to ease its long standing. Between this church of stone and this church of vines there were signs of the fight that had gone on for ages between them. The stones were obviously fighting decay, fighting ruin, fighting annihilation; the vines were also struggling, but both time and the sun were on their side. The stone edifice was now, it is true, as Renard told us, protected by the Government--it was classed as a "monument historique"--but the church of greens was protected by the god of nature, and seemed to laugh aloud, as if with conscious gleeful strength. This gay, triumphant laugh was reflected, as if to emphasize its mockery of man's work, in the tranquil waters of a little pond, lily-leaved, garlanded in bushes, that lay hidden beyond the roadway. Through the interstices of the vines one solitary window from the tower, like a sombre eye, looked down into the pond; it saw there, reflected as in a mirror, the old, the eternal picture of a dead ruin clasped by the arms of living beauty. This Criqueboeuf church presents the ideal picturesque accessories. It stands at the corner of two meeting roadways. It is set in an ideal pastoral frame--a frame of sleeping fields, of waving tree-tops, of an enchanting, indescribable snarl of bushes, vines, and wild flowers. In the adjoining fields, beneath the tree-boughs, ran the long, low line of the ancient manoir--now turned into a museum. We glanced for a few brief moments at the collection of antiquities assembled beneath the old roof--at the Henry II. chairs, at the Pompadour-wreathed cabinets, at the long rows of panels on which are presented the whole history of France--the latter an amazing record of the industry of a certain Dr. Le Goupils. "Criqueboeuf doesn't exactly hide its light under a bushel, you know, although it doesn't crown a hill. No end of people know it; it sits for its portrait, I should say at least twice a week regularly, on an average, during the season. English water-colorists go mad over it--they cross over on purpose to `do' it, and they do it extremely badly, as a rule." This was Renard's last comment of a biographical and critical nature, concerning the "historical monument," as we reseated ourselves to pursue our way to P----. "Why don't you show them how it can be done?" "Would," coolly returned Renard, "if it were worth while, but it isn't in my line. Henri, did you bring any ice?" Henri, I had noticed, when we had reseated ourselves in the cart, had greeted us with an air of silent sadness; he clearly had not approved of ruins that interfered with the business of the day. "_Oui, monsieur_, I did bring some ice, but as monsieur can imagine to himself--a two hours' sun--" "Nonsense, this sun wouldn't melt a pat of butter; the ice is all right, and so is the wine." Then he continued in English: "Now, ladies, as I should begin if I were a politician, or an auctioneer; now, ladies, the time for confession has arrived; I can no longer conceal from you my burglarious scheme. In the next turn that we shall make to the right, the park of the P---- manoir will disclose itself. But, between us and that Park, there is a gate. That gate is locked. Now, gates, from the time of the Garden of Eden, I take it, have been an invention of--of--the other fellow, to keep people out. I know a way--but it's not the way you can follow. Henri and I will break down a few bars, we'll cross a few fields over yonder, and will present ourselves, with all the virtues written on our faces, to you in the Park. Meanwhile you must enter, as queens should--through the great gates. Behold, there is a curé yonder, a great friend of mine. You will step along the roadway; you will ring a door-bell; the curé will appear; you will ask him if it be true that the manoir of P---- is to rent, you have heard that he has the keys; he will present you the keys; you will open the big gate and find me." "But--but, Mr. Renard, I really don't see how that scheme will work." "Work! It will work to a charm. You will see. Henri, just help the ladies, will you?" Henri, with decisive gravity, was helping the ladies to alight; in another instant he had regained his seat, and he and Renard were flying down the roadway, out of sight. "Really--it's the coolest proceeding," Charm began. Then we looked through the bars of the park gate. The park was as green and as still as a convent garden; a pink brick mansion, with closed window-blinds, was standing, surrounded by a terrace on one side, and by glittering parterres on the other. "Where did he say the old curé was?" asked Charm, quite briskly, all at once. Everything had turned out precisely as Renard had predicted. Doubtless he had also counted on the efficacy of the old fable of the Peri at the Gate--one look had been sufficient to turn us into arrant conspirators; to gain an entrance into that tranquil paradise any ruse would serve. "Here's a church--he said nothing about a church, did he?" Across the avenue, above the branches of a row of tall trees, rose the ivied facade of a rude hamlet church; a flight of steep weedy steps led up to its Norman doorway. The door was wide open; through the arched aperture came the sounds of footfalls, of a heavy, vigorous tread; Charm ran lightly up a few of the lower steps, to peer into the open door. "It's the curé dusting the altar--shall I go in?" "No, we had best ring--this must be his house." The clatter of the curé's sabots was the response that answered to the bell we pulled, a bell attached to a diminutive brick house lying at the foot of the churchyard. The tinkling of the cracked-voiced bell had hardly ceased when the door opened. But the curé had already taken his first glance at us over the garden hedges. CHAPTER XII. A NORMAN CURE. "Mesdames!" The priest's massive frame filled the narrow door; the tones of his mellow voice seemed also suddenly to fill the air, drowning all other sounds. The grace of his manner, a grace that invested the simple act of his uncovering and the holding of his _calotte_ in hand, with an air of homage, made also our own errand the more difficult. I had already begun to murmur the nature of our errand: we were passing, we had seen the manoir opposite, we had heard it was to rent, also that he, Monsieur le Curé, had the keys. Yes, the keys were here. Then the velvet in Monsieur le Curé's eyes turned to bronze, as they looked out at us from beneath the fine dome of brow. "I have the keys of the garden only, mesdames," he replied, with perfect but somewhat distant courtesy; "the gardener, down the road yonder, has the keys of the house. Do you really wish to rent the house?" He had seen through our ruse with quick Norman penetration. He had not, from the first, been in the least deceived. It became the more difficult to smooth the situation into shape. "We had thought perhaps to rent a villa, we were in one now at Villerville. If Monsieur le curé would let us look at the garden. Monsieur Renard, whom perhaps he remembered-- "M. Renard! Oh ho! Oh ho! I see it all now," and a deep, mellow laugh smote the air. The keenness in the fine eyes melted into mirth, a mirth that laid the fine head back on the broad shoulders, that the laugh that shook the powerful frame might have the fuller play. "Ah, _mes enfants_, I see it all now--it is that scoundrel of a boy. I'll warrant he's there, over yonder, already. He was here yesterday, he was here the day before, and he is afraid, he is ashamed to ask again for the keys. But come, _mes enfants_, come, let us go in search of him." And the little door was closed with a slam. Down the broad roadway the next instant fluttered the old curé's soutane. We followed, but could scarcely keep pace with the brisk, vigorous strides. The sabots ploughed into the dust. The cane stamped along in company with the sabots, all three in a fury of impatience. The curé's step and his manner might have been those of a boy, burning with haste to discover a playmate in hiding. All the keenness and shrewdness on the fine, ruddy face had melted into sweetness; an exuberance of mirth seemed to be the sap that fed his rich nature. It was easy to see he had passed the meridian of his existence in a realm of high spirits; an irrepressible fountain within, the fountain of an unquenchable good-humor, bathed the whole man with the hues of health. Ripe red lips curved generously over superb teeth; the cheeks were glowing, as were the eyes, the crimson below them deepening to splendor the velvet in the iris. The one severe line in the face, the thin, straight nose, ended in wide nostrils in the quivering, mobile nostrils of the humorist. The swell of the gourmand's paunch beneath the soutane was proof that the curé was a true Norman he had not passed a lifetime in these fertile gardens forgetful of the fact that the fine art of good living is the one indulgence the Church has left to its celibate sons. Meanwhile, our guide was peering with quick, excited gaze, through the thick foliage of the park; his fine black eyes were sweeping the parterre and terrace. "Ah-h!" his rich voice cried out, mockingly; and he stopped, suddenly, to plant his cane in the ground with mock fierceness. "_Tiens_, Monsieur le Curé!" cried Renard, from behind a tree, in a beautiful voice. It was a voice that matched with his well-acted surprise, when he appeared, confronting us, on the other side of the tree-trunk. The curé opened his arms. "_Ah, mon enfant, viens, viens!_ how good it is to see thee once again!" They were in each other's arms. The curé was pressing his lips to Renard's cheek, in hearty French fashion. The priest, however, administered his reproof before he released him. Renard's broad shoulders received a series of pats, which turned to blows, dealt by the curé's herculean hand. "Why didn't you let me know you were here, yesterday, _Hein_? Answer me that. How goes the picture? Is it set up yet? You see, mesdames," turning with a reddened cheek and gleaming eyes, "it is thus I punish him--for he has no heart, no sensibilities--he only understands severities! And he defrauded me yesterday, he cheated me. I didn't even know of his being here till he had gone. And the picture, where is it?" It was on an easel, sunning itself beneath the park trees. The old priest clattered along the gravelly walk, to take a look at it. "_Tiens_--it grows--the figures begin to move--they are almost alive. There should be a trifle more shadow under the chin, what do you think?" Henri raised his chin. Henri had undergone the process of transformation in our absence. He was now M. le Marquis de Pompadour--under the heart-shaped arch of the great trees, he was standing, resplendent in laces, in glistening satins, leaning on a rusty, dull-jewelled sword. Renard had mounted his palette; he was dipping already into the mounds of color that dotted the palette-board, with his long brushes. On the canvas, in colors laid on by the touch of genius, this archway beneath which we were standing reared itself aloft; the park trees were as tall and noble, transfixed in their image of immutable calm, on that strip of linen, as they towered now above us; even the yellow cloud of the laburnum blossoms made the sunshine of the shaded grass, as it did here, where else no spot of sun might enter, so dense was the night of shade. The life of another day and time lived, however, beneath that shade; Charm and the curé, as they drooped over the canvas, confronted a graceful, attenuated courtier, sickening in a languor of adoration, and a sprightly coquette, whose porcelain beauty was as finished as the feathery edges of her lacy sleeves. "_Très bien très bien_" said the curé, nodding his head in critical commendation. "It will be a little masterpiece. And now," waving his hand toward us, "what do you propose to do with these ladies while you are painting?" "Oh, they can wander about," Renard replied, abstractedly. He had already reseated himself and had begun to ply his brushes; he now saw only Henri and the hilt of the sword he was painting in. "I knew it, I could have told you--a painter hasn't the manners of a peasant when he's painting," cried the priest, lifting cane and hands high in air, in mock horror. "But all the better, all the better, I shall have you all to myself. Come, come with me. You can see the house later. I'll send for the gardener. It's too fine a day to be indoors. What a day, _hein_? _Le bon Dieu_ sends us such days now and then, to make us ache for paradise. This way, this way--we'll go through the little door--my little door; it was made for me, you know, when the manoir was last inhabited. I and the children were too impatient--we suffered from that malady--all of us--we never could wait for the great gates yonder to be opened. So Monsieur de H---- built us this one." The little door opened directly on the road, and on the curé's house. There was a tangle of underbrush barring the way; but the curé pushed the briars apart with his strong hands, beating them down with his cane. When the door opened, we passed directly beyond the roadway, to the steep steps leading to the church. The curé, before mounting the steps, swept the road, upward and downward, with his keen glance. It was the instinctive action of the provincial, scenting the chance of novelty. Some distant object, in the meeting of two distant roadways, arrested the darting eyes; this time, at least, he was to be rewarded for his prudence in looking about him. The object slowly resolved itself into two crutches between which hung the limp figure of a one-legged man. "_Bonjour, Monsieur le curé_." The crutches came to a standstill; the cripple's hand went up to doff a ragged worsted cap. "Good-day, good-day, my friend; how goes it? Not quite so stiff, _hein_--in such a bath of sunlight as this? Good-day, good-day." The crutches and their burden passed on, kicking a little cloud of dust about the lean figure. "_Un peu cassé, le bonhomme_" he said, as he nodded to the cripple in a tone of reflection, as if the breakage that bad befallen his humble friend were a fresh incident in his experience. "Yes, he's a little broken, the poor old man; but then," he added, quickly renewing his tone of unquenchable high spirits--"one doesn't die of it. No, one doesn't die, fortunately. Why, we're all more or less cracked, or broken up here." He shook another laugh out, as he preceded us up the stone steps. Then he turned to stop for a moment to point his cane toward the small house with whose chimneys we were now on a level. "There, mesdames, there is the proof that more breaking doesn't signify in this matter of life and death, _Tenez_, madame--" and with a charming gesture he laid his richly-veined, strong old hand on my arm--a hand that ended in beautiful fingers, each with its rim of moon-shaped dirt; "_tenez_--figure to yourself, madame, that I myself have been here twenty years, and I came for two! I bought out the _bonhomme_ who lived over yonder. "I bought him and his furniture out. I said to myself, 'I'll buy it for eight hundred, and I'll sell it for four hundred, in a year.'" Here he laid his finger on his nose--lengthwise, the Norman in him supplanting the priest in his remembrance of a good bargain. "And now it is twenty years since then. Everything creaks and cracks over there: all of us creak and crack. You should hear my chairs, _elles se cassent les reins_--they break their thighs continually. Ah! there goes another, I cry out, as I sit down in one in winter and hear them groan. Poor old things, they are of the Empire, no wonder they groan. You should see us, when our brethren come to take a cup of soup with me. Such a collection of antiquities as we are! I catch them, my brothers, looking about, slyly peering into the secrets of my little ménage. 'From his ancestors, doubtless, these old chairs and tables, say these good frères, under their breath. And then I wink slyly at the chairs, and they never let on." Again the mellow laugh broke forth. He stopped again to puff and blow a little, from his toil up the steep steps. Then all at once, as the rough music of his clicking sabots and the playful taps of his cane ceased, the laugh on his mobile lips melted into seriousness. He lifted his cane, pointing to the cemetery just above us, and to the gravestones looking down over the hillsides between a network of roses. "We are old, madame--we are old, but, alas! we never die! It is difficult to people, that cemetery. There are only sixty of us in the parish, and we die--we die hard. For example, here is my old servant"--and he covered a grave with a sweep of his cane--for we were leisurely sauntering through the little cemetery now. The grave to which he pointed was a garden; heliotrope, myosotis, hare-bells and mignonette had made of the mound a bed of perfume--"see how quietly she lies--and yet what a restless soul the flowers cover! She, too, died hard. It took her years to make up her mind; finally _le bon Dieu_ had to decide it for her, when she was eighty-four. She complained to the last--she was poor, she was in my way, she was blind. '_Eh bien, tu n'as pas besoin de me faire les beaux yeux, toi_'--I used to say to her. Ah, the good soul that she was!" and the dark eye glistened with moisture. A moment later the curé was blowing vigorously the note of his grief, in trumpet-tones, through the organ that only a Frenchman can render an effective adjunct to moments of emotion. "You see, _mes enfants_, I am like that--I weep over my friends--when they are gone! But see," he added quickly, recovering himself--"see, over yonder there is my predecessor's grave. He lies well, _hein?_--comfortable, too--looking his old church in the face and the sun on his old bones all the blessed day. Soon, in a few years, he will have company. I, too, am to lie there, I and a friend." The humorous smile was again curving his lips, and the laughter-loving nostrils were beginning to quiver. "When my friend and I lie there, we shall be a little crowded, perhaps. I said to him, when he proposed it, proposed to lie there with us, 'but we shall be crunching each other's bones!' 'No,' he replied, 'only falling into each other's arms!' So it was settled. He comes over from Havre, every now and then, to talk our tombstones over; we drink a glass of wine together, and take a pipe and talk about our future--in eternity! Ah, how gay we are! It is so good to be friends with God!" The voice deepened into seriousness. He went on in a quieter key: "But why am I always preaching and talking about death and eternity to two such ladies--two such children? Ah--I know, I am really old--I only deceive myself into pretending I'm young. You will do the same, both of you, some day. But come and see my good works. You know everyone has his little corner of conceit--I have mine. I like to do good, and then to boast of it. You shall see--you shall see." He was hurrying us along the narrow paths now, past the little company of grave-stones, graves that were bearing their barbaric burdens of mortuary wreaths, of beaded crosses, and the motley assemblage, common to all French graveyards, of hideous shrines encasing tin saints and madonnas in plaster. Above the sunken graves and the tin effigies of the martyrs behind the church, arose a fair and glittering marble tomb. It was strangely out of keeping with the meagre and paltry surroundings of the peasant grave-stones. As we approached the tomb it grew in imposingness. It was a circular mortuary chapel, with carved pediment and iron-wrought gateway. "It's fine, _hein_, and beautiful, _hein?_ It is the Duke's!" The curé, it was easy to see, considered the chapel in the light of a personal possession. He stood before it, bare-headed, with a new earnestness on his mobile face. "It is the Duke's. Yes, the Duke's. I saved his soul, blessed be God! and he--he rebuilds my cellars for me: See"--and he pointed to the fine new base of stone, freshly cemented, on which the church rested--"see, I save his soul, and he preserves my buildings for me. It's a fair deal, isn't it? How does it come about, that he is converted? Ah, you see, although I am a man without science, without knowledge, devoid of pretensions and learning, the good God sometimes makes use of such humble instruments to work His will. It came about in the usual way. The Duke came here carrying his religion lightly, as one may say, not thinking of his soul. I--I dine with him. We talk, we argue; he does, that is--I only preach from my Bible. And behold! one day he is converted. He is devout. And from gratitude, he repairs my crumbling old stones. And now see how solid, how strong is my church cellar!" Again the fountain of his irrepressible merriment bubbled forth. For all the gayety, however, the severe line deepened as one grew to know the face better; the line in profile running from the nose into the firm upper lip and into the still more resolute chin, matched the impress of authority marked on the noble brow. It was the face of one who might have infinite charity and indulgence for a sin, and yet would make no compromise with it. We had resumed our walk. It led us at last into the interior of the little church. The gloom and silence within, after the dazzling brilliancy of the noon-day sun and the noisy insect hum, invested the narrow nave and dim altar with an added charm. The old priest knelt for the briefest instant in reverence to the altar. When he turned there was surprise as well as a gentle reproach in the changeable eyes. "And you, mesdames! How is this? You are not Catholics? And I was so sure of it! Quite sure of it, you were so sympathetic, so full of reverence. And you, my child"--turning to Charm--"you speak our tongue so well, with the very accent of a good Catholic. What! you are Protestant? La! La! What do I hear?" He shook his cane over the backs of the straw-bottomed chairs; the sweet, mellow accents of his voice melted into loving protest--a protest in which the fervor was not quenched in spite of the merry key in which it was pitched. "Protestants? Pouffe! pouffe! What is that? What is it to be a Protestant? Heretics, heretics, that is what you are. So you are _deux affreuses hérétiques_? Ah, la! la! Horrible! horrible! I must cure you of all that. I must cure you!" He dropped his cane in the enthusiasm of his attack; it fell with a clanging sound on the stone pavement. He let it lie. He had assumed, unconsciously, the orator's, the preacher's attitude. He crowded past the chairs, throwing back his head as he advanced, striking into argumentative gesture: "_Tenez_, listen, there is so little difference, after all. As I was saying to M. le comte de Chermont the other day, no later than Thursday--he has married an English wife, you know--can't understand that either, how they can marry English wives. However, that's none of my business--we have nothing to do with marrying, we priests, except as a sacrament for others. I said to M. le comte, who, you know, shows tendencies toward anglicism--astonishing the influence of women--I said: 'But, my dear M. le comte, why change? You will only exchange certainty for uncertainty, facts for doubts, truth for lies.' 'Yes, yes,' the comte replied, 'but there are so many new truths introduced now into our blessed religion--the infallibility of the pope--the--' '_Ah, mon cher comte--ne m'en parlez pas_. If that is all that stands in your way--_faites comme le bon Dieu! Lui--il ferme les yeux et tend les bras._ That is all we ask--we his servants--to have you close your eyes and open your arms.'" The good curé was out of breath; he was panting. After a moment, in a deeper tone, he went on: "You, too, my children, that is what I say to you--you need only to open your arms and to close your eyes. God is waiting for you." For a long instant there was a great stillness--a silence during which the narrow spaces of the dim aisles were vibrating with the echoes of the rich voice. The rustle of a light skirt sweeping the stone flooring broke the moment's silence. Charm was crossing the aisles. She paused before a little wooden box, nailed to the wall. There came suddenly on the ear the sound of coin rattling down into the empty box; she had emptied into it the contents of her purse. "For your poor, monsieur le curé," she smiled up, a little tremulously, into the burning, glowing eyes. The priest bent over the fair head, laying his hand, as if in benediction, upon it. "My poor need it sadly, my child, and I thank you for them. God will bless you." It was a touching little scene, and I preferred, for one, to look out just then at Henri's figure advancing toward us, up the stone steps. When the priest spoke again, it was in a husky tone, the gold in his voice dusted with moisture; but the bantering spirits in him had reappeared. "What a pity, that you must burn! For you must, dreadful heretics that you are! And this dear child, she seems to belong to us--I can never sit by, now, in Paradise, happy and secure, and see her burn!" The laugh that followed was a mingled caress and a blessing. Henri came in for a part of the indulgence of the good curé's smile as he came up the steps. "Ah, Henri, you have come for these ladies?" "_Oui_, monsieur le curé, luncheon is served." Our friend followed us to the topmost step, and to the very edge of the step. He stood there, talking down to us, as we continued to press him to return with us. "No, my children--no--no, I can't join you; don't urge me; I can't, I must not. I must say my prayers instead; besides the children come soon, for their catechism. No, don't beg me, I don't need to be importuned; I know what that dear Renard's wine is. _Au revoir et a bientôt_--and remember," and here he lifted his arms--cane and all, high in the air--"all you need do is to close your eyes and to open your arms. God himself is doing the same." High up he stood, with uplifted hands, the smile irradiating a face that glowed with a saint's simplicity. Behind the black lines of his robe, the sunlight lay streaming in noon glory; it aureoled him as never saint was aureoled by mortal brush. A moment only he lingered there, to raise his cap in parting salute. Then he turned, the trail of his gown sweeping the gravel paths, and presently the low church door swallowed him up. Through the door, as we crossed the road, there came out to us the click of sabots striking the rude flagging; and a moment after, the murmuring echo of a deep, rich voice, saying the office of the hour. CHAPTER XIII. HONFLEUR--NEW AND OLD. The stillness of the park trees, as we passed beneath them, was like the silence that comes after a blessing. The sun, flooding the landscape with a deluge of light, lost something of its effulgence, by contrast with the fulness of the priest's rich nature. This fair world of beauty that lay the other side of the terrace wall, beneath which our luncheon was spread, was fair and lovely still--but how unimportant the landscape seemed compared to the varied scenery of the curé's soul-lit character! Of all kinds of nature, human nature is assuredly the best; it is at least the most perdurably interesting. When we tire of it, when we weary of our fellow-man and turn the blasé cheek on the fresh pillow of mother-earth, how quickly is the pillow deserted once the mental frame is rested or renewed! The history of all human relations has the same ending--we all of us only fall out of love with man to fall as swiftly in again. The remainder of the afternoon passed with the rapidity common to all phases of enchantment. How could one eat seriously, with vulgar, gluttonous hunger, of a feast spread on the parapet of a terrace-wall? The white foam of napkins, the mosaic of the _patties_, the white breasts of chicken, the salads in their bath of dew--these spoke the language of a lost cause. For there was an open-air concert going on in full swing, and the performance was one that made the act of eating seem as gross as the munching of apples at an oratorio--the music being, indeed, of a highly refined order of perfection. One's ears needed to be highly attuned to hear the pricking of the locusts in the leaves; even the breeze kept uncommonly still, that the brushing of the humming-birds' and bees' wings against the flower-petals might be the more distinctly heard. I never knew which one of the party it was that decided we were to see the day out and the night in; that we were to dine at the Cheval Blanc, on the Honfleur quays, instead of sedately breaking bread at the Mère Mouchard's. Even our steed needed very little urging to see the advantages of such a scheme. Henri alone wore a grim air of disapproval. His aspect was an epitome of rigid protest. As he took his seat in the cart, he held the sword between his legs with the air of one burning with a pent-up anguish of protest. His eye gloomed on the day; his head was held aloft, reared on a column of bristling vertebra, and on his brow was written the sign of mutiny. "Henri--you think we should go back; you think going on to Honfleur a mistake?" "Madame has said it"--Henri was a fatalist--in his speech, at least, he lived up to his creed. "Honfleur is far--Monsieur Renard has not the good digestion when he is tired--he suffers. _Il passe des nuits d'angoisse. Il souffre des fatigues de l'estomac. Il se fatigue aujourd'hui!_" This, with an air of stern conviction, was accompanied by a glance at his master in which compassion was not the most obvious note to be read. He went on, remorselessly: "And, as madame knows, the work but begins for me when we are at home. There are the costumes to be dusted and put away, the paintbrushes to clean, the dishes and lunch-basket to be attended to. As madame says, monsieur is sometimes lacking in consideration. _Mais, que voulez-vous? le génie, c'est fait comme ça._" Madame had not expressed the feeblest echo of a criticism on the composition of the genius in front; but the short dialogue had helped, perceptibly, to lift the weight of Henri's gloom; he was beginning to accept the fate of the day with a philosopher's phlegm. Already he had readjusted a little difficulty between his feet and the lunch basket, making his religious care of the latter compatible with the open sin of improved personal comfort. Meanwhile the two on the front seat were a thousand miles away. Neither we, nor the day, nor the beauty of the drive had power to woo their glances from coming back to the focal point of interest they had found in each other. They were beginning to talk, not about each other but of themselves--the danger-signal of all tête-à-tête adventures. When two young people have got into the personal-pronoun stage of human intercourse, there is but one thing left for the unfortunate third in the party to do. Yes, now that I think of it, there are two roles to be played. The usual conception of the part is to turn marplot--to spoil and ruin the others' dialogue--to put an end to it, if possible, by legitimate or illegitimate means; a very successful way, I have observed, of prolonging, as a rule, such a duet indefinitely. The more enlightened actor in any such little human comedy, if he be gifted with insight, will collapse into the wings, and let the two young idiots have the whole stage to themselves. As like as not they'll weary of the play, and of themselves, if left alone. No harm will come of all the sentimental strutting and the romantic attitudinizing, other than viewing the scene, later, in perspective, as a rather amusing bit of emotional farce. Besides being in the very height of the spring fashion, in the matter of the sentiments, these two were also busily treading, at just this particular moment, the most alluring of all the paths leading to what may be termed the outlying territorial domain of the emotions; they were wandering through the land called Mutual Discovery. Now, this, I have always held, is among the most delectable of all the roads of life; for it may lead one--anywhere or nowhere. Therefore it was from a purely generous impulse that I continued to look at the view. The surroundings were, in truth, in conspiracy with the sentimentalists on the front seat; the extreme beauty of the road would have made any but sentimental egotists oblivious to all else. The road was a continuation of the one we had followed in the morning's drive. Again, all the greenness of field and grass was braided, inextricably, into the blue of river and ocean. Above, as before, in that earlier morning drive, towered the giant aisles of the beaches and elms. Through those aisles the radiant Normandy landscape flowed again, as music from rich organ-piped throats flows through cathedral arches. Out yonder, on the Seine's wide mouth, the boats were balancing themselves, as if they also were half divided between a doubt and a longing; a freshening spurt of breeze filled their flapping sails, and away they sped, skipping through the waters with all the gayety which comes with the vigor of fresh resolutions. The light that fell over the land and waters was dazzling, and yet of an astonishing limpidity; only a sun about to drop and end his reign could be at once so brilliant and so tender--the diffused light had the sparkle of gold made soft by usage. Wherever the eye roved, it was fed as on a banquet of light and color. Nothing could be more exquisite, for depth of green swimming in a bath of shadow, than the meadows curled beneath the cliffs; nothing more tempting, to the painter's brush, than the arabesque of blossoms netted across the sky; and would you have the living eye of nature, bristling with animation, alive with winged sails, and steeped in the very soul of yellow sunshine, look out over the great sheet of the waters, and steep the senses in such a breadth of aqueous splendor as one sees only in one or two of the rare shows of earth. Then, all at once, all too soon, the great picture seemed to shrink; the quivering pulsation of light and color gave way to staid, commonplace gardens. Instead of hawthorn hedges there was the stench of river smells--we were driving over cobble-paved streets and beneath rows of crooked, crumbling houses. A group of noisy street urchins greeted us in derision. And then we had no doubt whatsoever that we were already in Honfleur town. "Honfleur is an evil-smelling place," I remarked. "Oh, well, after all, the smells of antiquity are a part of the show; we should refuse to believe in ancientness, all of us, I fancy, if mustiness wasn't served along with it." "How can any town have such a stench with all this river and water and verdure to sweeten it?" I asked, with a woman's belief in the morality of environment--a belief much cherished by wives and mothers, I have noticed. "Wait till you see the inhabitants--they'll enlighten you--the hags and the nautical gentlemen along the basins and quays. They've discovered the secret that if cleanliness is next to godliness, dirt and the devil are likewise near neighbors. Awful set--those Honfleur sailors The Havre and Seine people call them Chinamen, they are so unlike the rest of France and Frenchmen." "Why are they so unlike?" asked Charm. "They're so low down, so hideously wicked; they're like the old houses, a rotten, worm-eaten set--you'll see." Charm stopped him then, with a gesture. She stopped the horse also; she brought the whole establishment to a standstill; and then she nodded her head briskly forward. We were in the midst of the Honfleur streets--streets that were running away from a wide open space, in all possible directions. In the centre of the square rose a curious, an altogether astonishing structure. It was a tower, a belfry doubtless, a house, a shop, and a warehouse, all in one; such a picturesque medley, in fact, as only modern irreverence, in its lawless disregard of original purpose and design, can produce. The low-timbered sub-base of the structure was pierced by a lovely doorway with sculptured lintel, and also with two impertinent modern windows, flaunting muslin curtains, and coquettishly attired with rows of flowering carnations. Beneath these windows was a shop. Above the whole rose, in beautiful symmetrical lines, a wooden belfry, tapering from a square tower into a delicately modelled spire. To complete and accentuate the note of the picturesque, the superstructure was held in its place by rude modern beams, propping the tower with a naive disregard of decorative embellishment. We knew it at once as the quaint and famous Belfry of St. Catherine. As we were about to turn away to descend the high street, a Norman maiden, with close-capped face, leaned over the carnations to look down upon us. "That's the daughter of the bell-ringer, doubtless. Economical idea that," Renard remarked, taking his cap off to the smiling eyes. "Economical?" "Yes, can't you see? Bell-ringer sends pretty daughter to window, just before vespers or service, and she rings in the worshippers; no need to make the bells ring." "What nonsense!"--but we laughed as flatteringly as if his speech had been a genuine coin of wit. A turn down the street, and the famous Honfleur of the wharves and floating docks lay before us. About us, all at once, was the roar and hubbub of an extraordinary bustle and excitement; all the life of the town, apparently, was centred upon the quays. The latter were swarming with a tattered, ragged, bare-footed, bare-legged assemblage of old women, of gamins, and sailors. The collection, as a collection, was one gifted with the talent of making itself heard. Everyone appeared to be shrieking, or yelling, or crying aloud, if only to keep the others in voice. Sailors lying on the flat parapets shouted hoarsely to their fellows in the rigging of the ships that lay tossing in the docks; fishermen's families tossed their farewells above the hubbub to the captain-fathers launching their fishing-smacks; one shrieking infant was being passed, gayly, from the poop of a distant deck, across the closely lying shipping, to the quay's steps, to be hushed by the generous opening of a peasant mother's bodice. One could hear the straining of cordage, the creak of masts, the flap of the sails, all the noises peculiar to shipping riding at anchor. The shriek of steam-whistles broke out, ever and anon, above all the din and uproar. Along the quay steps and the wharves there were constantly forming and re-forming groups of wretched, tattered human beings; of men with bloated faces and a dull, sodden look, strikingly in contrast with the vivacity common among French people. Even the children and women had a depraved, shameless appearance, as if vice had robbed them of the last vestige of hope and ambition. Along the parapet a half-dozen drunkards sprawled, asleep or dozing. At the legs of one a child was pulling, crying: "_Viens--mère t'battra, elle est soûle aussi._" The sailors out yonder, busy in the rigging, and the men on the decks of the smart brigs and steamships, whistled and shouted and sang, as indifferent to this picture of human misery and degradation as if they had no kinship with it. As a frame to the picture, Honfleur town lay beneath the crown of its hills; on the tops and sides of the latter, villa after villa shot through the trees, a curve of roof-line, with rows of daintily draped windows. At the right, close to the wharves, below the wooded heights, there loomed out a quaint and curious gateway flanked by two watchtowers, grim reminders of the Honfleur of the great days. And above and about the whole, encompassing villa-crowded hills and closely packed streets, and the forest of masts trembling against the sky, there lay a heaven of spring and summer. Renard had driven briskly up to a low, rambling facade parallel with the quays. It was the "Cheval Blanc." A crowd assembled on the instant, as if appearing according to command. "_Allons--n'encombrez pas ces dames!_" cried a very smart individual, in striking contrast to the down at-heel air of the hotel--a personage who took high-handed possession of us and our traps. "Will _ces dames_ desire a salon--there is _un vrai petit bijou_ empty just now," murmured a voice in a purring soprano, through the iron opening of the cashier's desk. Another voice was crying out to us, as we wound our way upward in pursuit of the jewel of a salon. "And the widow, _La Veuve_, shall she be dry or sweet?" When we entered the low dining-room, a little later, we found that the artist as well as the epicure has been in active conspiracy to make the dinner complete; the choice of the table proclaimed one accomplished in massing effects. The table was parallel with the low window, and through the latter was such a picture as one travels hundreds of miles to look upon, only to miss seeing it, as a rule. There was a great breadth of sky through the windows; against the sky rose the mastheads; and some red and brown sails curtained the space, bringing into relief the gray line of the sad-faced old houses fringing the shoreline. "Couldn't have chosen better if we'd tried, could we? It's just the right hour, and just the right kind of light. Those basins are unendurable--sinks of iniquitous ugliness, unless the tide's in and there's a sunset going on. Just look now! Who cares whether Honfleur has been done to death by the tourist horde or not? and been painted until one's art-stomach turns? I presume I ought to beg your pardon, but I can't stand the abomination of modern repetitions; the hand-organ business in art, I call it. But at this hour, at this time of the year, before this rattle-trap of an inn is as packed with Baedeker attachments as a Siberian prison is with Nihilists--to run out here and look at these quays and basins, and old Honfleur lying here, beneath her green cliffs--well, short of Cairo, I don't know any better bit of color. Look out there, now! See those sails, dripping with color, and that fellow up there, letting the sail down--there, splash it goes into the water, I knew it would; now tell me where will you get better blues or yellows or browns, with just the right purples in the shore line, than you'll get here?" Renard was fairly started; he had the bit of the born monologist between his teeth; he stopped barely long enough to hear even an echoing assent. We were quite content; we continued to sip our champagne and to feast our eyes. Meanwhile Renard talked on. "Guide-books--what's the use of guide-books? What do they teach you, anyway? Open any one of the cursed clap-trap things. Yes, yes, I know I oughtn't to use vigorous language." "Do," bleated Charm, smiling sweetly up at him. "Do, it makes you seem manly." Even Renard had to take time to laugh. "Thank you! I'm not above making use of any aids to create that illusion. Well, as I was saying, what guide-book ever really helped anyone to _see?_--that's what one travels for, I take it. Here, for instance, Murray or Baedeker would give you this sort of thing: 'Honfleur, an ancient town, with pier, beaches, three floating docks, and a good deal of trade in timber, cod, etc.; exports large quantities of eggs to England.' Good heavens! it makes one boil! Do sane, reasonable mortals travel three thousand miles to read ancient history done up in modern binding, served up a la Murray, a la Baedeker?" "Oh, you do them injustice, I think--the guides do go in for a little more of the picturesque than that--" "And how--how do they do it? This is the sort of thing they'll give you: 'Church of St. Catherine is large and remarkable, entirely of timber and plaster, the largest of its kind in France.' Ah! ha! that's the picturesque with a vengeance. No, no, my friends, throw the guide-books into the river, pitch them overboard through the port holes, along with the flowers, and letters _to be read three days out_, and the nasty novels people send you to make the crossing pleasant. And when you travel, really travel, mind, never make a plan--just go--go anywhere, whenever the impulse seizes you--and you may hope to get there, in the right way, possibly." Here Renard stopped to finish his glass, draining-the last drop of the yellow liquid. Then he went on: "To travel! To start when an impulse seizes one! To go--anywhere! Why not! It was for this, after all, that all of us have come our three thousand miles." Perhaps it was the restless tossing of the shipping out yonder in the basins that awoke an answering impatience within, in response to Renard's outburst. Where did they go, those ships, and, up beyond this mouth of the Seine, how looked the shores, and what life lived itself out beneath the rustling poplars? Is it the mission of all flowing water to create an unrest in men's minds? Meanwhile, though the talk was not done, the dinner was long since eaten. We rose to take a glimpse of Honfleur and its famous old basin. The quays and the floating docks, in front of which we had been dining, are a part of the nineteenth century; the great ships ride in to them from the sea. But here, in this inner quadrangular dock, beside which we were soon standing, traced by Duquesne when Louis the Great discovered the maritime importance of Honfleur, we found still reminders of the old life. Here were the same old houses that, in the seventeenth century, upright and brave in their brand new carvings, saw the high-decked, picturesquely painted Spanish and Portuguese ships ride in to dip their flag to the French fleur-de-lis. There are but few of the old streets left to crowd about the shipping life that still floats here, as in those bygone days of Honfleur pride;--when Havre was but a yellow strip of sand; when the Honfleur merchants would have laughed to scorn any prophet's cry of warning that one day that sand-bar opposite, despised, disregarded, boasting only a chapel and a tavern, would grow and grow, and would steal year by year and inch by inch bustling Honfleur's traffic, till none was left. In the old adventurous days, along with the Spanish ships came others, French trading and fishing vessels, with the salty crustations of long voyages on their hulls and masts. The wharves were alive then with fish-wives, whom Evelyn will tell you wore "useful habits made of goats' skin." The captains' daughters were in quaint Normandy costumes; and the high-peaked coifs and the stiff woollen skirts, as well as the goat-skin coats, trembled as the women darted hither and thither among the sailors--whose high cries filled the air as they picked out mother and wife. Then were bronzed beards buried in the deeply-wrinkled old mères' faces, and young, strong arms clasped about maidens' waists. The whole town rang with gayety and with the mad joy of reunion. On the morrow, coiling its way up the steep hillsides, wound the long lines of the grateful company, one composed chiefly of the crews of these vessels happily come to port. The procession would mount up to the little church of Notre Dame de Grâce perched on the hill overlooking the harbor. Some even--so deep was their joy at deliverance from shipwreck and so fervent their piety--crawled up, bare-footed, with bared head, wives and children following, weeping for joy, as the rude _ex-votos_ were laid by the sailors' trembling hands at the feet of the Virgin Lady. As reminders of this old life, what is left? Within the stone quadrangle we found clustered a motley fleet of wrecks and fishing-vessels; the nets, flung out to dry in the night air, hung like shrouds from the mastheads; here and there a figure bestrode a deck, a rough shape, that seemed endowed with a double gift of life, so still and noiseless was the town. Around the silent dock, grouped in mysterious medley and confusion, were tottering roof lines, projecting eaves, narrow windows, all crazily tortured and out of shape. Here and there, beneath the broad beams of support, a little interior, dimly lighted, showed a knot of sailors gathered, drinking or lounging. Up high beneath a chimney perilously overlooking a rude facade, a quaint shape emerged, one as decrepit and forlorn of life and hope as the decaying houses it overlooked. Silence, poverty, wretchedness, the dregs of life, to this has Honfleur fallen. These old houses, in their slow decay, hiding in their dark bosom the gaunt secrets of this poverty and human misery, seemed to be dancing a dance of drunken indifference. Some day the dance will end in a fall, and then the Honfleur of the past will not even boast of a ghost, as reminder of its days of splendor. An artist quicker than anyone else, I think, can be trusted to take one out of history and into the picturesque. Renard refused to see anything but beauty in the decay about us; for him the houses were at just the right drooping angle; the roof lines were delightful in their irregularity; and the fluttering tremor of the nets, along the rigging, was the very poetry of motion. "We'll finish the evening on the pier," he exclaimed, suddenly; "the moon will soon be up--we can sit it out there and see it begin to color things." The pier was more popular than the quaint old dock. It was crowded with promenaders, who, doubtless, were taking a bite of the sea-air. Through the dusk the tripping figures of gentlemen in white flannels and jaunty caps brushed the provincial Honfleur swells. Some gentle English voices told us some of the villa residents had come down to the pier, moved by the beauty of the night. Groups of sailors, with tanned faces and punctured ears hooped with gold rings, sat on the broad stone parapets, talking unintelligible Breton _patois_. The pier ran far out, almost to the Havre cliffs, it seemed to us, as we walked along in the dusk of the young night. The sky was slowly losing its soft flame. A tender, mellow half light was stealing over the waters, making the town a rich mass of shade. Over the top of the low hills the moon shot out, a large, globular mass of beaten gold. At first it was only a part and portion of the universal lighting, of the still flushed sky, of the red and crimson harbor lights, of the dim twinkling of lamps and candles in the rude interiors along the shore. But slowly, triumphantly, the great lamp swung up; it rose higher and higher into the soft summer sky, and as it mounted, sky and earth began to pale and fade. Soon there was only a silver world to look out upon--a wealth of quivering silver over the breast of the waters, and a deeper, richer gray on cliffs and roof tops. Out of this silver world came the sound of waters, lapping in soft cadence against the pier; the rise and fall of sails, stirring in the night wind; the tread of human footsteps moving in slow, measured beat, in unison with the rhythm of the waters. Just when the stars were scattering their gold on the bosom of the sea-river, a voice rang out, a rich, full baritone. Quite near, two sailors were seated, with their arms about each other's shoulders. They also were looking at the moonlight, and one of them was singing to it: "_Te souviens-tu, Marie, De notre enfance aux champs?_ "_Te souviens-tu? Le temps que je regrette C'est le temps qui n'est plus._" [Illustration: THE INN AT DIVES--GUILLAUME-LE-CONQUERANT] DIVES: AN INN ON A HIGH-ROAD. CHAPTER XIV. A COAST DRIVE. On our return to Villerville we found that the charm of the place, for us, was a broken one. We had seen the world; the effect of that experience was to produce the common result--there was a fine deposit of discontent in the cup of our pleasure. Madame Fouchet had made use of our absence to settle our destiny; she had rented her villa. This was one of the bitter dregs. Another was to find that the life of the village seemed to pass us by; it gave us to understand, with unflattering frankness, that for strangers who made no bargains for the season, it had little or no civility to squander. For the Villerville beach, the inn, and the villas were crowded. Mere Mouchard was tossing omelettes from morning till night; even Augustine was far too hurried to pay her usual visit to the creamery. A detachment of Parisian costumes and beribboned nursery maids was crowding out the fish-wives and old hags from their stations on the low door-steps and the grasses on the cliffs. Even Fouchet was no longer a familiar figure in the foreground of his garden; his roses were blooming now for the present owners of his villa. He and madame had betaken themselves to a box of a hut on the very outskirts of the village--a miserable little hovel with two rooms and a bit of pasture land being the substitute, as a dwelling, for the gay villa and its garden along the sea-cliffs. Pity, however, would have been entirely wasted on the Fouchet household and their change of habitation. Tucked in, cramped, and uncomfortable beneath the low eaves of their cabin ceilings, they could now wear away the summer in blissful contentment: Were they not living on nothing--on less than nothing, in this dark pocket of a _chaumière_, while their fine house yonder was paying for itself handsomely, week after week? The heart beats high, in a Norman breast, when the pocket bulges; gold--that is better than bread to feel in one's hand. The whole village wore this triumphant expression--now that the season was beginning. Paris had come down to them, at last, to be shorn of its strength; angling for pennies in a Parisian pocket was better, far, than casting nets into the sea. There was also more contentment in such fishing--for true Norman wit. Only once did the village change its look of triumph to one of polite regret; for though it was Norman, it was also French. It remembered, on the morning of our departure, that the civility of the farewell costs nothing, and like bread prodigally scattered on the waters, may perchance bring back a tenfold recompense. Even the morning arose with a flattering pallor. It was a gray day. The low houses were like so many rows of pale faces; the caps of the fishwives, as they nodded a farewell, seemed to put the village in half mourning. "You will have a perfect day for your drive--there's nothing better than these grays in the French landscape," Renard was saying, at our carriage wheels; "they bring out every tone. And the sea is wonderful. Pity you're going. Grand day for the mussel-bed. However, I shall see you, I shall see you. Remember me to Monsieur Paul; tell him to save me a bottle of his famous old wine. Good-by, good-by." There was a shower of rose-leaves flung out upon us; a great sweep of the now familiar beret; a sonorous "Hui!" from our driver, with an accompaniment of vigorous whip-snapping, and we were off. The grayness of the closely-packed houses was soon exchanged for the farms lying beneath the elms. With the widening of the distance between our carriage-wheels and Villerville, there was soon a great expanse of mouse-colored sky and the breath of a silver sea. The fields and foliage were softly brilliant; when the light wind stirred the grain, the poppies and bluets were as vivid as flowers seen in dreams. It is easy to understand, I think, why French painters are so enamoured of their gray skies--such a background makes even the commonplace wear an air of importance. All the tones of the landscape were astonishingly serious; the features of the coast and the inland country were as significant as if they were meditating an outbreak into speech. It was the kind of day that bred reflection; one could put anything one liked into the picture with a certainty of its fitting the frame. We were putting a certain amount of regret into it; for though Villerville has seen us depart with civilized indifference or the stolidity of the barbarian--for they are one, we found our own attainments in the science of unfeelingness deficient: to look down upon the village from the next hill top was like facing a lost joy. Once on the highroad, however, the life along the shore gave us little time for the futility of regret. Regret, at best, is a barren thing: like the mule, it is incapable of perpetuating its own mistakes; it appears to apologize, indeed, for its stupidity by making its exit as speedily as possible. With the next turn of the road we were in fitting condition to greet the wildest form of adventure. Pedlars' carts and the lumbering Normandy farm wagons were, at first, our chief companions along the roadway. Here and there a head would peep forth from a villa window, or a hand be stretched out into the air to see if any rain was falling from the moist sky. The farms were quieter than usual; there was an air of patient waiting in the courtyards, among the blouses and standing cattle, as though both man and beast were there in attendance on the day and the weather, till the latter could come to the point of a final decision in regard to the rain. Finally, as we were nearing Trouville, the big drops fell. The grain-fields were soon bent double beneath the spasmodic shower. The poppies were drenched, so were the cobble paved courtyards; only the geese and the regiment of the ducks came abroad to revel in the downpour. The villas were hermetically sealed now--their summer finery was not made for a wetting. The landscape had no such reserves; it gave itself up to the light summer shower as if it knew that its raiment, like Rachel's, when dampened the better to take her plastic outlines, only gained in tone and loveliness the closer it fitted the recumbent figure of mother earth. Our coachman could never have been mistaken for any other than a good Norman. He was endowed with the gift of oratory peculiar to the country; and his profanity was enriched with all the flavor of the provincial's elation in the committing of sin. From the earliest moment of our starting, the stream of his talk had been unending. His vocabulary was such as to have excited the envy and despair of a French realist, impassioned in the pursuit of "the word." "_Hui!--b-r-r-r!_"--This was the most common of his salutations to his horse. It was the Norman coachman's familiar apostrophe, impossible of imitation; it was also one no Norman horse who respects himself moves an inch without first hearing. Chat Noir was a horse of purest Norman ancestry; his Percheron blood was as untainted as his intelligence was unclouded by having no mixtures of tongues with which to deal. His owner's "_Hui!_" lifted him with arrowy lightness to the top of a hill. The deeper "_Bougre_" steadied his nerve for a good mile of unbroken trotting. Any toil is pleasant in the gray of a cool morning, with a friend holding the reins who is a gifted monologist; even imprecations, rightly administered, are only lively punctuations to really talented speech. "Come, my beauty, take in thy breath--courage! The hill is before thee! Curse thy withered legs, and is it thus thou stumbleth? On--up with thee and that mountain of flesh thou carriest about with thee." And the mountain of flesh would be lifted--it was carried as lightly by the finely-feathered legs and the broad haunches as if the firm avoirdupois were so much gossamer tissue. On and on the neat, strong hoofs rang their metallic click, clack along the smooth macadam. They had carried us past the farm-houses, the cliffs, the meadows, and the Norman roofed manoirs buried in their apple-orchards. These same hoofs were now carefully, dexterously picking their way down the steep hill that leads directly into the city of the Trouville villas. Presently, the hoofs came to a sudden halt, from sheer amazement. What was this order, this command the quick Percheron hearing had overheard? Not to go any farther into this summer city--not to go down to its sand-beach--not to wander through the labyrinth of its gay little streets?--Verily, it is the fate of a good horse, how often! to carry fools, and the destiny of intelligence to serve those deficient in mind and sense. The criticism on our choice of direction was announced by the hoofs turning resignedly, with the patient assent of the fatigue that is bred of disgust, into one of the upper Trouville by-streets. Our coachman contented himself with a commiserating shrug and a prolonged flow of explanation. Perhaps _ces dames_, being strangers, did not know that Trouville was now beginning its real season--its season of baths? The Casino, in truth, was only opened a week since; but we could hear the band even now playing above the noise of the waves. And behold, the villas were filling; each day some _grande dame_ came down to take possession of her house by the sea. How could we hope to make a Frenchman comprehend an instinctive impulse to turn our backs on the Trouville world? What, pray, had we just now to do with fashion--with the purring accents of boudoirs, with all the life we had run away from? Surely the romance--the charm of our present experiences would be put to flight once we exchanged salutations with the _beau monde_--with that world that is so sceptical of any pleasure save that which blooms in its own hot-houses, and so disdainful of all forms of life save those that are modelled on fashion's types. We had fled from cities to escape all this; were we, forsooth, to be pushed into the motley crowd of commonplace pleasure-seekers because of the scorn of a human creature, and the mute criticism of a beast that was hired to do the bidding of his betters? The world of fashion was one to be looked out upon as a part of the general _mise-en-scène_--as a bit of the universal decoration of this vast amphitheatre of the Normandy beaches. Chat noir had little reverence for philosophic reflections; he turned a sharp corner just then; he stopped short, directly in front of the broad windows of a confectioner's shop. This time he did not appeal in vain to the strangers with a barbarian's contempt for the great world. The brisk drive and the salt in the air were stimulants to appetite to be respected; it is not every day the palate has so fine an edge. "_Du thé, mesdames--à l'Anglaise?_" a neatly-corsetted shape, in black, to set off a pair of dazzling pink cheeks, shone out behind rows of apricot tarts. There was also a cap that conveyed to one, through the medium of pink bows, the capacities of coquetry that lay in the depths of the rich brown eyes beneath them. The attractive shape emerged at once from behind the counter, to set chairs about the little table. We were bidden to be seated with an air of smiling grace, one that invested the act with the emphasis of genuine hospitality. Soon a great clatter arose in the rear of the shop; opinions and counter-opinions were being volubly exchanged in shrill French, as to whether the water should or should not come to a boil; also as to whether the leaves of oolong or of green should be chosen for our beverage. The cap fluttered in several times to ask, with exquisite politeness--a politeness which could not wholly veil the hidden anxiety--our own tastes and preferences. When the cap returned to the battling forces behind the screen, armed with the authority of our confessed prejudices, a new war of tongues arose. The fate of nations, trembling on the turn of a battle, might have been settled before that pot of water, so watched and guarded over, was brought to a boil. When, finally, the little tea service was brought in, every detail was perfect in taste and appointment, except the tea; the action that had held out valiantly, that the water should not boil, had prevailed, as the half-soaked tea-leaves floating on top of our full cups triumphantly proclaimed. We sipped the beverage, agreeing Balzac had well named it _ce boisson fade et mélancolique_; the novelist's disdain being the better understood as we reflected he had doubtless only tasted it as concocted by French ineptitude. We were very merry over the liver-colored liquid, as we sipped it and quoted Balzac. But not for a moment had our merriment deceived the brown eyes and the fluttering cap-ribbons. A little drama of remorse was soon played for our benefit. It was she, her very self, the cap protested--as she pointed a tragic finger at the swelling, rounded line of her firm bodice--it was she who had insisted that the water should _not_ boil; there had been ladies--_des vraies anglaises_--here, only last summer, who would not that the water should boil, when their tea was made. And now, it appears that they were wrong, "_c'etait probablement une fantaisie de la part de ces dames_." Would we wait for another cup? It would take but an instant, it was a little mistake, so easy to remedy. But this mistake, like many another, like crime, for instance, could never be remedied, we smilingly told her; a smile that changed her solicitous remorse to a humorist's view of the situation. Another humorist, one accustomed to view the world from heights known as trapeze elevations, we met a little later on our way out of the narrow upper streets; he was also looking down over Trouville. It was a motley figure in a Pierrot garb, with a smaller striped body, both in the stage pallor of their trade. These were somewhat startling objects to confront on a Normandy high-road. For clowns, however, taken by surprise, they were astonishingly civil. They passed their "_bonjour_" to us and to the coachman as glibly as though accosting us from the commoner circus distance. "They have come to taste of the fresh air, they have," laconically remarked our driver, as his round Norman eyes ran over the muscled bodies of the two athletes. "I had a brother who was one--I had; he was a famous one--he was; he broke his neck once, when the net had been forgotten. They all do it--_ils se cassent le cou tous, tôt ou tard! Allons toi t'as peur, toi?_" Chat noir's great back was quivering with fear; he had no taste, himself, for shapes like these, spectral and wan as ghosts, walking about in the sun. He took us as far away as possible, and as quickly, from these reminders of the thing men call pleasure. We, meanwhile, were asking Pierre for a certain promised chateau, one famous for its beauty, between Trouville and Cabourg. "It is here, madame--the château," he said, at last. Two lions couchant, seated on wide pedestals beneath a company of noble trees, were the only visible inhabitants of the dwelling. There was a sweep of gardens: terraces that picked their way daintily down the cliffs toward the sea, a mansard roof that covered a large mansion--these were the sole aspects of chateau life to keep the trees company. In spite of Pierre's urgent insistence that the view was even more beautiful than the one from the hill, we refused to exchange our first experiences of the beauty of the prospect for a second which would be certain to invite criticism; for it is ever the critic in us that plays the part of Bluebeard to our many-wived illusions. We passed between the hedgerows with not even a sigh of regret. We were presently rewarded by something better than an illusion--by reality, which, at its best, can afford to laugh at the spectral shadow of itself. Near the château there lived on, the remnant of a hamlet. It was a hamlet, apparently, that boasted only one farm-house; and the farm-house could show but a single hayrick. Beneath the sloping roof, modelled into shape by a pitchfork and whose symmetrical lines put Mansard's clumsy creation yonder to the blush, sat an old couple--a man and a woman. Both were old, with the rounded backs of the laborer; the woman's hand was lying in the man's open palm, while his free arm was clasped about her neck with all the tenderness of young love. Both of the old heads were laid back on the pillow made by the freshly-piled grasses. They had done a long day's work already, before the sun had reached its meridian; they were weary and resting here before they went back to their toil. This was better than the view; it made life seem finer than nature; how rich these two poor old things looked, with only their poverty about them! Meanwhile Pierre had quickly changed the rural _mise-en-scène_; instead of pink hawthorn hedges we were in the midst of young forest trees. Why is it that a forest is always a surprise in France? Is it that we have such a respect for French thrift, that a real forest seems a waste of timber? There are forests and forests; this one seemed almost a stripling in its tentative delicacy, compared to the mature splendor of Fontainebleau, for example. This forest had the virility of a young savage; it was neither dense nor vast; yet, in contrast to the ribbony grain fields, and to the finish of the villa parks, was as refreshing to the eye as the right chord that strikes upon the ear after a succession of trills. In all this fair Normandy sea-coast, with its wonderful inland contrasts, there was but one disappointing note. One looked in vain for the old Normandy costumes. The blouse and the close white cap--this is all that is left of the wondrous headgear, the short brilliant petticoats, the embroidered stomacher, and the Caen and Rouen jewels, abroad in the fields only a decade ago. Pierre shrugged his shoulders when asked a question concerning these now pre-historic costumes. "Ah! mademoiselle, you must see for yourself, that the peasant who doesn't despise himself dresses now in the fields as he would in Paris." As if in confirmation of Pierre's news of the fashions, there stepped forth from an avenue of trees, fringing a near farm-house, a wedding-party. The bride was in the traditional white of brides; the little cortege following the trail of her white gown, was dressed in costumes modelled on Bon Marché styles. The coarse peasant faces flamed from bonnets more flowery than the fields into which they were passing. The men seemed choked in their high collars; the agony of new boots was written on faces not used to concealing such form of torture. Even the groom was suffering; his bliss was something the gay little bride hanging on his arm must take entirely for granted. It was enough greatness for the moment to wear broadcloth and a white vest in the face of men. "_Laissez, laissez, Marguerite_, it is clean here; it will look fine on the green!" cried the bride to an improvised train-bearer, who had been holding up the white alpaca. Then the full splendor of the bridal skirt trailed across the freshly mown grasses. An irrepressible murmur of admiration welled up from the wedding guests; even Pierre made part of the chorus. The bridegroom stopped to mop his face, and to look forth proudly, through starting eyeballs, on the splendor of his possessions. "Ah! Lizette, thou art pretty like that, thou knowest. _Faut l'embrasser, tu sais_." He gave her a kiss full on the lips. The little bride returned the kiss with unabashed fervor. Then she burst into a loud fit of laughter. "How silly you look, Jean, with your collar burst open." The groom's enthusiasm had been too much for his toilet; the noon sun and the excitements of the marriage service had dealt hardly with his celluloid fastenings. All the wedding cortege rushed to the rescue. Pins, shouts of advice, pieces of twine, rubber fastenings, even knives, were offered to the now exploding bridegroom; everyone was helping him repair the ravages of his moment of bliss; everyone excepting the bride. She sat down upon her train and wept from pure rapture of laughter. Pierre shook his head gravely, as he whipped up his steed. "Jean will repent it; he'll lose worse things than a button, with Lizette. A woman who laughs like that on the threshold of marriage will cry before the cradle is rocked, and will make others weep. However, Jean won't be thinking of that--to-night." "Where are they going--along the highroad?" "Only a short distance. They turn in there," and he pointed with his whip to a near lane; "they go to the farm-house now--for the wedding dinner. Ah! there'll be some heavy heads to-morrow. For you know, a Norman peasant only really eats and drinks well twice in his life--when he marries himself and when his daughter marries. Lizette's father is rich--the meat and the wines will be good to-night." Our coachman sighed, as if the thought of the excellence of the coming banquet had disturbed his own digestion. CHAPTER XV. GUILLAUME-LE-CONQUERANT. The wedding party was lost in a thicket. Pierre gave his whip so resounding a snap, it was no surprise to find ourselves rolling over the cobbles of a village street. "This is Dives, mesdames, this is the inn!" Pierre drew up, as he spoke, before a long, low facade. Now, no one, I take it, in this world enjoys being duped. Surely disappointment is only a civil term for the varying degrees of fraud practised on the imagination. This inn, apparently, was to be classed among such frauds. It did not in the least, externally at least, fulfil Renard's promises. He had told us to expect the marvellous and the mediaeval in their most approved period. Yet here we were, facing a featureless exterior! The facade was built yesterday--that was writ large, all over the low, rambling structure. One end, it is true, had a gabled end; there was also an old shrine niched in glass beneath the gable, and a low Norman gateway with rude letters carved over the arch. June was in its glory, and the barrenness of the commonplace structure was mercifully hidden by a wreath of pink and amber roses. But one scarcely drives twenty miles in the sun to look upon a facade of roses! Chat noir, meanwhile, was becoming restless. Pierre had managed to keep his own patience well in hand. Now, however, he broke forth: "Shall we enter, my ladies?" Pierre drove us straight into paradise; for here, at last, within the courtyard, was the inn we had come to seek. A group of low-gabled buildings surrounded an open court. All of the buildings were timbered, the diagonal beams of oak so old they were black in the sun, and the snowy whiteness of fresh plaster made them seem blacker still. The gabled roofs were of varying tones and tints; some were red, some mossy green, some as gray as the skin of a mouse; all were deeply, plentifully furrowed with the washings of countless rains, and they were bearded with moss. There were outside galleries, beginning somewhere and ending anywhere. There were open and covered outer stairways so laden with vines they could scarce totter to the low heights of the chamber doors on which they opened; and there were open sheds where huge farm-wagons were rolled close to the most modern of Parisian dog-carts. That not a note of contrast might be lacking, across the courtyard, in one of the windows beneath a stairway, there flashed the gleam of some rich stained glass, spots of color that were repeated, with quite a different lustre, in the dappled haunches of rows of sturdy Percherons munching their meal in the adjacent stalls. Add to such an ensemble a vagrant multitude of rose, honeysuckle, clematis, and wistaria vines, all blooming in full rivalry of perfume and color; insert in some of the corners and beneath some of the older casements archaic bits of sculpture--strange barbaric features with beards of Assyrian correctness and forms clad in the rigid draperies of the early Jumièges period of the sculptor's art; lance above the roof ridges the quaint polychrome finials of the earlier Palissy models; and crowd the rough cobble-paved courtyard with a rare and distinguished assemblage of flamingoes, peacocks, herons, cockatoos swinging from gabled windows, and game-cocks that strut about in company with pink doves--and you have the famous inn of Guillaume le Conquérant! Meanwhile an individual, with fine deep-gray eyes, and a face grave, yet kindly, over which a smile was humorously breaking, was patiently waiting at our carriage door. He could be no other than Monsieur Paul, owner and inn-keeper, also artist, sculptor, carver, restorer, to whom, in truth, this miracle of an inn owed its present perfection and picturesqueness. "We have been long expecting you, mesdames," Monsieur Paul's grave voice was saying. "Monsieur Renard had written to announce your coming. You took the trouble to drive along the coast this fine day? It is idyllically lovely, is it not--under such a sun?" Evidently the moment of enchantment was not to be broken by the worker of the spell. Monsieur Paul and his inn were one; if one was a poem the other was a poet. The poet was also lined with the man of the practical moment. He had quickly summoned a host of serving-people to take charge of us and our luggage. "Lizette, show these ladies to the room of Madame de Sévigné. If they desire a sitting-room--to the Marmousets." The inn-keeper gave his commands in the quiet, well-bred tone of a man of the world, to a woman in peasant's dress. She led us past the open court to an inner one, where we were confronted with a building still older, apparently, than those grouped about the outer quadrangle. The peasant passed quickly beneath an overhanging gallery, draped in vines. She was next preceding us up a spiral turret stairway; the adjacent walls were hung here and there with faded bits of tapestry. Once more she turned to lead us along an open gallery; on this several rooms appeared to open. On each door a different sign was painted in rude Gothic letters. The first was "Chambre de l'Officier;" the second, "Chambre du Curé," and the next was flung widely open. It was the room of the famous lady of the incomparable Letters. The room might have been left--in the yesterday of two centuries--by the lady whose name it bore. There was a beautiful Seventeenth century bedstead, a couple of wide arm-chairs, with down pillows for seats, and a clothes press with the carvings and brass work peculiar to the epoch of Louis XIV. The chintz hangings and draperies were in keeping, being copies of the brocades of that day. There were portraits in miniature of the courtiers and the ladies of the Great Reign on the very ewers and basins. On the flounced dressing-table, with its antique glass and a diminutive patch-box, now the receptacle of Lubin's powder, a sprig of the lovely Rose The was exhaling a faint, far-away century perfume. It was surely a stage set for a real comedy; some of these high-coiffed ladies, who knows? perhaps Madame de Sévigné herself would come to life, and give to the room the only thing it lacked--the living presence of that old world grace and speech. Presently, we sallied forth on a further voyage of discovery. We had reached the courtyard when Monsieur Paul crossed it; it was to ask if, while waiting for the noon breakfast, we would care to see the kitchen; it was, perhaps, different to those now commonly seen in modern taverns. The kitchen which was thus modestly described as unlike those of our own century might easily, except for the appetizing smell of the cooking fowls and the meats, have been put under lock and key and turned over to a care-taker as a full-fledged culinary museum of antiquities. One entire side of the crowded but orderly little room was taken up by a huge open fireplace. The logs resting on the great andirons were the trunks of full-grown trees. On two of the spits were long rows of fowl and legs of mutton roasting; the great chains were being slowly turned by a _chef_ in the paper cap of his profession. In deep burnished brass bowls lay water-cresses; in Caen dishes of an age to make a bric-a-brac collector turn green with envy, a _Béarnaise_ sauce was being beaten by another gallic master-hand. Along the beams hung old Rouen plates and platters; in the numberless carved Normandy cupboards gleamed rare bits of Delft and Limoges; the walls may be said to have been hung with Normandy brasses, each as burnished as a jewel. The floor was sanded and the tables had attained that satiny finish which comes only with long usage and tireless use of the brush. There was also a shrine and a clock, the latter of antique Norman make and design. The smell of the roasting fowls and the herbs used by the maker of the sauces, a hungry palate found even more exciting than this most original of kitchens. There was a wine that went with the sauce; this fact Monsieur Paul explained, on our sitting down to the noonday meal; one which, in remembrance of Monsieur Renard's injunctions, he would suggest our trying. He crossed the courtyard and disappeared into the bowels of the earth, beneath one of the inn buildings, to bring forth a bottle incrusted with layers of moist dirt. This Sauterne was by some, Monsieur Paul smilingly explained, considered as among the real treasures of the inn. Both it and the sauce, we were enabled to assure him a moment later, had that golden softness which make French wines and French sauces at their best the rapture of the palate. In the courtyard, as our breakfast proceeded, a variety of incidents was happening. We were facing the open archway; through it one looked out upon the high-road. A wheelbarrow passed, trundled by a peasant-girl; the barrow stopped, the girl leaving it for an instant to cross the court. "_Bonjour, mère--_" "_Bonjour, ma fille_--it goes well?" a deep guttural voice responded, just outside of the window. "_Justement_--I came to tell you the mare has foaled and Jean will be late to-night." "_Bien._" "And Barbarine is still angry--" "Make up with her, my child--anger is an evil bird to take to one's heart," the deep voice went on. "It is my mother," explained Monsieur Paul. "It is her favorite seat, out yonder, on the green bench in the courtyard. I call it her judge's bench," he smiled, indulgently, as he went on. "She dispenses justice with more authority than any other magistrate in town. I am Mayor, as it happens, just now; but madame my mother is far above me, in real power. She rules the town and the country about, for miles. Everyone comes to her sooner or later for counsel and command. You will soon see for yourselves." A murmur of assent from all the table accompanied Monsieur Paul's prophecy. "_Femme vraiment remarquable_," hoarsely whispered a stout breakfaster, behind his napkin, between two spoonsful of his soup. "Not two in a century like her," said my neighbor. "No--nor two in all France--_non plus_," retorted the stout man. "She could rule a kingdom--hey, Paul?" "She rules me--as you see--and a man is harder to govern than a province, they say," smiled Monsieur Paul with a humorous relish, obviously the offspring of experience. "In France, mesdames," he added, a sweeter look of feeling coming into the deep eyes, "you see we are always children--_toujours enfants_--as long as the mother lives. We are never really old till she dies. May the good God preserve her!" and he lifted his glass toward the green bench. The table drank the toast, in silence. [Illustration: CHAMBRE DE LA PUCELLES--DIVES] CHAPTER XVI. THE GREEN BENCH. In the course of the first few days we learned what all Dives had known for the past fifty years or so--that the focal point of interest in the inn was centred in Madame Le Mois. She drew us, as she had the country around for miles, to circle close about her green bench. The bench was placed at the best possible point for one who, between dawn and darkness, made it the business of her life to keep her eye on her world. Not the tiniest mouse nor the most spectral shade could enter or slip away beneath the open archway without undergoing inspection from that omniscient eye, that seemed never to blink nor to grow weary. This same eye could keep its watch, also, over the entire establishment, with no need of the huge body to which it was attached moving a hair's-breadth. Was it Nitouche, the head-cook, who was grumbling because the kitchen-wench had not scoured the brass saucepans to the last point of mirrory brightness? Behold both Nitouche and the trembling peasant-girl, together with the brasses as evidence, all could be brought at an instant's call, into the open court. Were the maids--were Marianne or Lizette neglecting their work to flirt with the coachmen in the sheds yonder? "_Allons, mes filles--doucement, là-bas--et vos lits? qui les fait--les bons saints du paradis, peut-être?_" And Marianne and Lizette would slink away to the waiting beds. Nothing escaped this eye. If the _poule sultane_ was gone lame, limping in the inner quadrangle, madame's eye saw the trouble--a thorn in the left claw, before the feathered cripple had had time to reach her objective point, her mistress's capacious lap, and the healing touch of her skilful surgeon's fingers. Neither were the cockatoes nor the white parrots given license to make all the noise in the court-yard. When madame had an unusually loquacious moment, these more strictly professional conversationists were taught their place. "_E'ben, toi_--and thou wishest to proclaim to the world what a gymnast thou art--swinging on thy perch? Quietly, quietly, there are also others who wish to praise themselves! And now, my child, you were telling me how good you had been to your old grandmother, and how she scolded you. Well, and how about obedience to our parents, _hein_--how about that?" This, as the old face bent to the maiden beside her. There was one, assuredly, who had not failed in his duty to his parents. Monsieur Paul's whole life, as we learned later, had been a willing sacrifice to the unconscious tyranny of his mother's affection. The son was gifted with those gifts which, in a Parisian atelier, would easily have made him successful, if not famous. He had the artistic endowment in an unusual degree; it was all one to him, whether he modelled in clay, or carved in wood, or stone, or built a house, or restored old bric-a-brac. He had inherited the old world roundness of artistic ability--his was the plastic renascent touch that might have developed into that of a Giotto or a Benvenuto. It was such a sacrifice as this that he had lain at his mother's feet. Think you for an instant the clever, witty, canny woman in Madame Le Mois looked upon her son's renouncing the world of Paris, and holding to the glories of Dives and their famous inn in the light of a sacrifice? "_Parbleu!_" she would explode, when the subject was touched on, "it was a lucky thing for him that Paul had had an old mother to keep him from burning his fingers. Paris! What did the provinces want with Paris? Paris had need enough of them, the great, idle, shiftless, dissipated, cruel old city, that ground all their sons to powder, and then scattered their ashes abroad like so many cinders. Oh, yes, Paris couldn't get along without the provinces, to plunder and rob, to seduce their sons away from living good, pure lives, and to suck these lives as a pig would a trough of fresh water! But the provinces, if they valued their souls, shunned Paris as they would the devil. And as for artists--when it came to the young of the provinces, who thought they could paint or model-- "_Tenez, madame_--this is what Paris does for our young. My neighbor yonder," and she pointed, as only Frenchwomen point, sticking her thumb into the air to designate a point back of her bench, "my neighbor had a son like Paul. He too was always niggling at something. He niggled so well a rich cousin sent him up to Paris. Well, in ten years he comes back, famous, rich, too, with a wife and even a child. The establishment is complete. Well, they come here to breakfast one fine morning, with his mother, whom he put at a side table, with his nurse--he is ashamed of his mother, you see. Well, then his wife talks and I hear her. '_Mais, mon Charles, c'est toi qui est le plus fameux--il n'y a que toi! Tu es un dieu, tu sais--il n'y a pas deux comme toi!_' The famous one deigns to smile then, and to eat of his breakfast. His digestion had gone wrong, it appears. The _Figaro_ had placed his name second on a certain list, _after_ a rival's! He alone must be great--there must not be another god of painting save him! He! He! that's fine, that's greatness--to lose one's appetite because another is praised, and to be ashamed of one's old mother!" Madame Le Mois's face, for a moment, was terrible to look upon. Even in her kindliest moments hers was a severe countenance, in spite of the true Norman curves in mouth and nostril--the laughter-loving curves. Presently, however, the fierceness of her severity melted; she had caught sight of her son. He was passing her, now, with the wine bottles for dinner piled up in his arms. "You see," croaked the mother, in an exultant whisper, "I've saved him from all that--he's happy, for he still works. In the winter he can amuse himself, when he likes, with his carving and paintbrushes. Ah, _tiens, du monde qui arrive!_" And the old woman seated herself, with an air of great dignity, to receive the new-comers. The world that came in under the low archway was of an altogether different character from any we had as yet seen. In a satin-lined victoria, amid the cushions, lay a young and lovely-eyed Anonyma. Seated beside her was a weak-featured man, with a huge flower decorating his coat lappel. This latter individual divided the seat with an army of small dogs who leaped forth as the carriage stopped. Madame Le Mois remained immovable on her bench. Her face was as enigmatic as her voice, as it gave Suzette the order to show the lady to the salon bleu. The high Louis XV. slipper, as it picked its way carefully after Suzette, never seemed more distinctly astray than when its fair wearer confided her safety to the insecure footing of the rough, uneven cobbles. In a brief half-hour the frou-frou of her silken skirts was once more sweeping the court-yard. She and her companion and the dogs chose the open air and a tent of sky for their banqueting-hall. Soon all were seated at one of the many tables placed near the kitchen, beneath the rose-vines. Madame gave the pair a keen, dissecting glance. Her verdict was delivered more in the emphasis of her shrug and the humor of her broad wink than in the loud-whispered "_Comme vous voyez, chère dame, de toutes sortes ici, chez nous--mais--toujours bon genre!_" The laughter of one who could not choose her world was stopped, suddenly, by the dipping of the thick fingers into an old snuff-box. That very afternoon the court-yard saw another arrival; this one was treated in quite a different spirit. A dog-cart was briskly driven into the yard by a gentleman who did not appear to be in the best of humor. He drew his horse up with a sudden fierceness; he as fiercely called out for the hostler. Monsieur Paul bit his lip; but he composedly confronted the disturbed countenance perched on the driver's seat. The gentleman wished. "I want indemnity--that is what I want. Indemnity for my horse," cried out a thick, coarse voice, with insolent authority. "For your horse? I do not think I understand--" "O--h, I presume not," retorted the man, still more insolently; "people don't usually understand when they have to pay. I came here a week ago, and stayed two days; and you starved my horse--and he died--that is what happened--he died!" The whole court-yard now rang with the cries of the assembled household. The high, angry tones had called together the last serving-man and scullery-maid; the cooks had come out from their kitchens; they were brandishing their long-handled saucepans. The peasant-women were shrieking in concert with the hostlers, who were raising their arms to heaven in proof of their innocence. Dogs, cats, cockatoes swinging on their perches, peacocks, parrots, pelicans, and every one of the cocks swarmed from the barnyards and garden and cellars, to add their shrill cries and shrieks to the universal babel. Meanwhile, calm and unruffled as a Hindoo goddess, and strikingly similar in general massiveness of structure and proportion to the common reproduction of such deities, sat Madame Le Mois. She went on with her usual occupation; she was dipping fresh-cut salad leaves into great bowls of water as quietly as if only her own little family were assembled before her. Once only she lifted her heavily-moulded, sagacious eyebrow at the irate dog-cart driver, as if to measure his pitiful strength. She allowed the fellow, however, to touch the point of abuse before she crushed him. Her first sentence reduced him to the ignominy of silence. All her people were also silent. What, the deep sarcastic voice chanted on the still air--what, this gentleman's horse had died--and yet he had waited a whole week to tell them of the great news? He was, of a truth, altogether too considerate. His own memory, perhaps, was also a short one, since it told him nothing of the condition in which the poor beast had arrived, dropping with fatigue, wet with sweat, his mouth all blood, and an eye as of one who already was past the consciousness of his suffering? Ah no, monsieur should go to those who also had short memories. "For we use our eyes--we do. We are used to deal with gentlemen--with Christians" (the Hebrew nose of the owner of the dead horse, even more plainly abused the privilege of its pedigree in proving its race, by turning downward, at this onslaught of the mère's satire), "as I said, with Christians," continued the mere, pitilessly. "And do those gentlemen complain and put upon us the death of their horses? No, my fine sir, they return--_ils reviennent, et sont revenus depuis la Conquête!_" With this fine climax madame announced the court as closed. She bowed disdainfully, with a grand and magisterial air, to the defeated claimant, who crept away, sulkily, through the low archway. "That is the way to deal with such vermin, Paul; whip them, and they turn tail." And the mere shook out a great laugh from her broad bosom, as she regaled her wide nostrils with a fresh pinch of snuff. The assembled household echoed the laugh, seasoning it with the glee of scorn, as each went to his allotted place. CHAPTER XVII. THE WORLD THAT CAME TO DIVES. It was a world of many mixtures, of various ranks and habits of life that found its way under the old archway, and sat down at the table d'hôte breakfasts and dinners. Madame and her gifted son were far too clever to attempt to play the mistaken part of Providence; there was no pointed assortment made of the sheep and the goats; at least, not in a way to suggest the most remote intention of any such separation being premeditated. Such separation as there was came about in the most natural and in the pleasantest possible fashion. When Petitjean, the pedler, and his wife drove in under the Gothic sign, the huge lumbering vehicle was as quickly surrounded as when any of the neighboring notabilities arrived in emblazoned chariots. Madame was the first to waddle forward, nodding up toward the open hood as, with a short, brisk, business "_Bonjour_," she welcomed the head of Petitjean and his sharp-eyed spouse looking over the aprons. The pedler is always popular with his world and Dives knew Petitjean to be as honest as a pedler can ever hope to be in a world where small pence are only made large by some one being sacrificed on the altar of duplicity. Therefore it was that Petitjean's hearse-like cart was always a welcome visitor;--one could at least be as sure of a just return for one's money in trading with a pedler as from any other source in this thieving world. In the end, one always got something else besides the bargain to carry away with one. For Petitjean knew all the gossip of the province; after dinner, when the stiff cider was working in his veins, he would be certain to tell all one wanted to know. Even Madame Le Mois, whose days were too busy in summer to include the daily reading of her newspaper, had grown dependent, in these her later years, on such sources of information as the peddler's garrulous tongue supplied. In the end she had found his talent for fiction quite as reliable as that of the journalists, besides being infinitely more entertaining, abounding in personalities which were the more racy, as the pedler felt himself to be exempt from that curse of responsibility, which, in French journalism, is so often a barrier to the full play of one's talent. Therefore it was that Petitjean and his bright-eyed spouse were always made welcome at Dives. "It goes well, Madame Jean? Ah, there you are. Well, _hein_, also? It is long since we saw you." "Ah, madame, centuries, it is centuries since we were here. But what will you have? with the bad season, the rains, the banks failing, the--but you, madame, are well? And Monsieur Paul?" "_Ah, ça va tout doucement_ Paul is well, the good God be praised, but I--I perish day by day" At which the entire court-yard was certain to burst into laughing protest. For the whole household of Guillaume le Conquérant was quite sure to be assembled about the great wheels of the pedler's wagon--only to look, not to buy, not yet. Petitjean, and his wife had not dined yet, and a pedler's hunger is something to be respected--one made money by waiting for the hour of digestion. The little crowd of maids, hostlers, cooks, and scullery wenches, were only here to whet their appetite, and to greet Petitjean. Nitouche, the head _chef_, put a little extra garlic in his sauces that day. But in spite of this compliment to their palate, the pedler and his wife dined in the smaller room off the kitchen;--Madame was desolated, but the _salle-à-manger_ was crowded just now. One was really suffocated in there these days! Therefore it was that the two ate the herbaceous sauces with an extra relish, as those conscious of having a larger space for the play of vagrant elbows than their less fortunate brethren. The gossip and trading came later. On the edge of the fading daylight there was still time to see; the chosen articles could easily be taken into the brightly lit kitchen to be passed before the lamps. After the buying and bargaining came the talking. All the household could find time to spend the evening on the old benches; these latter lined the sidewalk just beneath the low kitchen casements. They had been here for many a long year. What a history of Dives these old benches could have told! What troopers, and beggars, and cowled monks, and wayfarers had sat there!--each sitter helping to wear away the wood till it had come to have the depressions of a drinking-trough. Night after night in the long centuries, as the darkness fell upon the hamlet--what tales and confidences, and what murmured anguish of remorse, what cries for help, what gay talk and light song must have welled up into the dome of sky! Once, as we sat within the court-yard, under the stars, a young voice sang out. It was so still and quiet every word the youth phrased was as clear as his fresh young voice. "_Tiens_--it is Mathieu--he is singing _Les Oreillers!_" cried Monsieur Paul, with an accent of pride in his own tone. The young voice sang on: "_J'arrive en ce pays De Basse Normandie, Vous dire une chanson, S'il plaît la compagnie!_" "It is an old Norman bridal song," Monsieur Paul went on, lowering his voice. "One I taught a lot of young boys and lads last winter--for a wedding held here--in the inn." Still the fresh notes filled the air: "_Les amours sont partis Dans un bateau de verre; Le bateau a cassé a cassé-- Les amours sont parterre._" "How the old women laughed--and cried--at once! It was years since they had heard it--the old song. And when these boys--their sons and grandsons--sang it, and I had trained them well--they wept for pure delight." Again the song went on: "_Ouvrez la porte, ouvrez! Nouvelle mariée, Car si vous ne l'ouvrez Vous serez accusée_" "I dressed all the young girls in old costumes," our friend continued, still in a whisper. "I ransacked all the old chests and closets about here. I got the ladies of the chateaux near by to aid me; they were so interested that many came down from Paris to see the wedding. It was a pretty sight, each in a different dress! Every century since the thirteenth was represented." "_Attendez à demain, La fraîche matinée, Quand mon oiseau privé Aura pris sa volée!_" Clear, strong, free rang the young tenor's voice--and then it broke into "_Comment--tu dis que Claire est là?_" whereat Monsieur Paul smiled. "That will be the next wedding--what shall I devise for that? That will also be the ending of a long lawsuit. But he should have sung the last verse--the prettiest of all. Mathieu!" Paul lifted his voice, calling into the dark. _"Oui, Monsieur Paul!"_ "Sing us the last verse--" "_Dans ce jardin du Roi A pris sa reposée, Cueillant le romarin La--vande--bouton--née--_" The last notes were but faint vibrations, coming from a lengthening distance. "Ah!" and Monsieur Paul breathed a sigh. "They don't care about singing. They are doing it all the time they are so much in love. The fathers' lawsuit ended only last month. They've waited three years--happy Claire--happy Mathieu!" CHAPTER XVIII. THE CONVERSATION OF PATRIOTS. The world that found its way to the mayor's table at this early period of the summer season was largely composed of the class that travels chiefly to amuse others. The commercial gentlemen in France, however, have the outward bearing of those who travel to amuse themselves. The selling of other people's goods--it is surely as good an excuse as any other for seeing the world! Such an occupation offers an orator, one gifted in conversational talents--talents it would be a pity to see buried in the domestic napkin--a fine arena for display. The French commercial traveller is indeed a genus apart; he makes a fetish of his trade; he preaches his propaganda. The fat and the lean, the tall and the little, the well or meanly dressed representatives of the great French houses who sat down to dine, as our neighbors or _vis-à-vis_, night after night, were, on the whole, a great credit to their country. Their manners might have been mistaken for those of a higher rank; their gifts as talkers were of such an order as to make listening the better part of discretion. Dining is always a serious act in France. At this inn the sauces of the _chef_, with their reputation behind them, and the proof of their real excellence before one, the dinner-hour was elevated to the importance of a ceremony. How the petty merchants and the commercial gentlemen ate, at first in silence, as if respecting the appeal imposed by a great hunger, and then warming into talk as the acid cider was passed again and again! What crunching of the sturdy, dark-colored bread between the great knuckles! What huge helps of the famous sauces! What insatiable appetites! What nice appreciation of the right touch of the tricksy garlic! What nodding of heads, clinking of glasses, and warmth of friendship established over the wine-cups! At dessert everyone talked at once. On one occasion the subject of Gambetta's death was touched on; all the table, as one man, broke out into an effervescence of political babble. "What a loss! What a death-blow to France was his death!" exclaimed a heavy young man in a pink cravat. "If Gambetta had lived, Alsace and Lorraine would be ours now, without the firing of a gun!" added an elderly merchant at the foot of the table. "Ah--h! without the firing of a gun they will come to us yet. I tell you, without the firing of a gun--unless we insist on a battle," explosively rejoined a fiery-hued little man sitting next to Monsieur Paul; "but you will see--we shall insist. There is between us and Germany an inextinguishable hate--and we must kill, kill, right and left!" "_Allons--allons!_" protested the table, in chorus. "Yes, yes, a general massacre, that is what we want; that is what we must have. Men, women, and children--all must fall. I am a married man--but not a woman or a child shall escape--when the time comes," continued the fiery-eyed man, getting more and more ferocious as he warmed with the thought of his revenge. "What a monster!" broke in Madame Le Mois, her deep base notes unruffled by the spectacle of her bloodthirsty neighbor's violence; "you--to bayonet a woman with a child in her arms!" "I would--I would--" "Then you would be more cruel than they were. They treated our women with respect." There was a murmur of assenting applause, at this sentiment of justice, from the table. But the fiery-eyed man was not to be put down. "Oh, yes, they were generous enough in '71, but I should remember their insults of 1815!" "_Ancienne histoire--çà_" said the mère, dismissing the subject, with a humorous wink at the table. "As you see," was Monsieur Paul's comment on the conversation, as we were taking our after-dinner stroll in the garden--"as you see, that sort of person is the bad element in our country--the dangerous element--unreasoning, revengeful, and ignorant. It is such men as he who still uphold hatreds and keep the flame alive. It is better to have no talent at all for politics--to be harmless like me, for instance, whose worst vice is to buy up old laces and carvings." "And roses--" "Yes--that is another of my vices--to perpetuate the old varieties. They call me along our coast the millionnaire--of roses! Will you have a 'Marie Louise,' mademoiselle?" The garden was as complete in its old time aspect as the rest of the inn belongings. Only the older, rarer varieties of flowers and rose stalks had been chosen to bloom within the beautifully arranged inclosure. _Citronnelle_, purple irises, fringed asters, sage, lavender, _rose-pêche_, bachelor's-button, _the d'Horace_, and the wonderful electric fraxinelle, these and many other shrubs and plants of the older centuries were massed here with the taste of one difficult to please in horticultural arrangements. Our after-dinner walks became an event in our day. At that hour the press of the day's work was over, and Madame Mère or Monsieur Paul were always ready to join us for a stroll. "For myself, I do not like large gardens," Monsieur Paul remarked, during one of these after-dinner saunters. "The monks, in the old days, knew just the right size a garden should be--small and sheltered, with walls--like a strong arm about a pretty woman--to protect the shrubs and flowers. One should enter the garden, also, by a gate which must click as it closes--the click tickles the imagination--it is the sound henceforth connected with silence, with perfumes and seclusion. How far away we seem now, do we not?--from the bustle of the inn court-yard--and yet I could throw a stone into it." The only saunterers besides ourselves were the flamingo, who, cautiously, timorously picked his way--as if he were conscious he was only a bunch of feathers hoisted on stilts; the white parrot, who was wabbling across the lawn to a favorite perch in the leaves of a tropical palm; and the peacock, whose train had been spread with a due regard to effect across a bed of purple irises, with a view to annihilating the brilliancy of their rival hues. The bit of sky framed by these four garden walls always seemed more delicate in tone than that which covered the open court-yard. The birds in the bushes had moments of melodious outbursts they did not, apparently, indulge in along the high-road. And what with the fading lights, the stars pricking their way among the palms, the scents of flowers, and the talk of a poet, it is little wonder that this twilight hour in the old garden was certain to be the most lyrical of the twenty-four. CHAPTER XIX. IN LA CHAMBRE DES MARMOUSETS. "It is the winters, mesdames, that are hard to bear. They are long--they are dull. No one passes along the high-road. It is then, when sometimes the snow is piled knee-deep in the court-yard, it is then I try to amuse myself a little. Last year I did the Jumièges sculptures; they fit in well, do they not?" It was raining; and Monsieur Paul was paying us an evening call. A great fire was burning in the beautiful Francois I. fireplace of our sitting-room, the famous Chambre des Marmousets. We had not consented that any of the lights should be lit, although the lovely little Louis XIV. chandelier and the antique brass sconces were temptingly filled with fresh candles. The flames of the great logs would suffer no rival illuminations; if the trunks of full-grown trees could not suffice to light up an old room, with low-raftered ceilings, and a mass of bric-à-brac, what could a few thin waxen candles hope to do? On many other occasions we had thought our marvellous sitting-room had had exceptional moments of beauty. To turn in from the sunlit, open court-yard; to pass beneath, the vine-hung gallery; to lift the great latch of the low Gothic door and to enter the rich and sumptuous interior, where the light came, as in cathedral aisles, only through the jewels of fourteenth-century glass; to close the door; to sit beneath the prismatic shower, ensconced in a nest of old tapestried cushions, and to let the eye wander over the wealth of carvings, of ceramics, of Spanish and Normandy trousseaux chests, on the collection of antique chairs, Dutch porcelains, and priceless embroideries--all the riches of a museum in a living-room--such a moment in the Marmousets we had tested again and again with delectable results. At twilight, also, when the garden was submerged in dew, this old seigneurial chamber was a retreat fit for a sybarite or a modern aesthete. The stillness, the soft luxurious cushions, the rich dusk thickening in the corners, the complete isolation of the old room from the noise and tumult of the inn life, its curious, its delightful unmodernness, made this Marmouset room an ideal setting for any mediaeval picture. Even a sentiment tinctured with modern cynicism would, I think, have borrowed a little antique fervor, if, like the photographic negative our nineteenth-century emotionalism somewhat too closely resembles, in its colorless indefiniteness, the sentiment were sufficiently exposed, in point of time and degree of sensitiveness, to the charm of these old surroundings. On this particular evening, however, the pattering of the rain without on the cobbles and the great blaze of the fire within, made the old room seem more beautiful than we had yet seen it. Perhaps the capture of our host as a guest was the added treasure needed to complete our collection. Monsieur Paul himself was in a mood of prodigal liberality; he was, as he himself neatly termed the phrase, ripe for confession; not a secret should escape revelation; all the inn mysteries should yield up the fiction of their frauds; the full nakedness of fact should be given to us. "You see, _chères dames_, it is not so difficult to create the beautiful, if one has a little taste and great patience. My inn--it has become my hobby, my pride, my wife, my children. Some men marry their art, I espoused my inn. I found her poor, tattered, broken-down, in health, if you will; verily, as your Shakespeare says of some country wench: 'a poor thing but mine own.'" Monsieur Paul's possession of the English language was scarcely as complete as the storehouse of his memory. He would have been surprised, doubtless, to learn he had called poor Audrey, "a pure ting, buttaire my noon!" "She was, however," he continued, securely, in his own richer Norman, "though a wench, a beautiful one. And I vowed to make her glorious. 'She shall be famous,' I vowed, and--and--better than most men I have kept my vow. All France now has heard of Guillaume le Conquérant!" The pride Monsieur Paul took in his inn was indeed a fine thing to see. The years of toil he had spent on its walls and in its embellishment had brought him the recompense much giving always brings; it had enriched him quite as much as the wealth of his taste and talent had bequeathed to the inn. Latterly, he said, he had travelled much, his collection of curios and antiquities having called him farther afield than many Frenchmen care to wander. His love of Delft had taken him to Holland; his passion for Spanish leather to the country of Velasquez; he must have a Virgin, a genuine fifteenth-century Virgin, all his own; behold her there, in her stiff wooden skirts, a Neapolitan captive. The brass braziers yonder, at which the courtiers of the Henris had warmed their feet, stamping the night out in cold ante chambers, had been secured at Blois; and his collection of tapestries, of stained glass, of Normandy brasses, and Breton carvings had made his own coast as familiar as the Dives streets. "The priests who sold me these, madame," he went on, as he picked up a priest's chasuble, now doing duty as a table covering "would sell their fathers and their mothers. It is all a question of price." After a review of the curios came the history of the human collection of antiquities who had peopled the inn and this old room. Many and various had been the visitors who had slept and dined here and gone forth on their travels along the high-road. The inn had had a noble origin; it had been built by no less a personage than the great William himself. He had deemed the spot a fitting one in which to build his boats to start forth for his modest project of conquering England. He could watch their construction in the waters of Dives River--that flows still, out yonder, among the grasses of the sea-meadows. For some years the Norman dukes held to the inn, in memory of the success of that clever boat-building. Then for five centuries the inn became a manoir--the seigneurial residence of a certain Sieur de Sémilly. It was his arms we saw yonder, joined to those of Savoy, in the door panel, one of the family having married into a branch of that great house. Of the famous ones of the world who had travelled along this Caen post-road and stopped the night here, humanly tired, like any other humble wayfarer, was a hurried visit from that king who loved his trade--Louis XI. He and his suite crowded into the low rooms, grateful for a bed and a fire, after the weary pilgrimage to the heights of Mont St. Michel. Louis's piety, however, was not as lasting in its physically exhaustive effects, as were the fleshly excesses of a certain other king--one Henri IV., whose over-appreciation of the oysters served him here, caused a royal attack of colic, as you may read at your pleasure in the State Archives in Paris--since, quite rightly, the royal secretary must write the court physician every detail of so important an event. What with these kingly travellers and such modern uncrowned kings as Puvis de Chavannes, Dumas, George Sand, Daubigny, and Troyon, together with a goodly number of lesser great ones, the famous little inn has had no reason to feel itself slighted by the great of any century. Of all this motley company of notabilities there were two whose visits seemed to have been indefinitely prolonged. There was nothing, in this present flowery, picturesque assemblage of buildings, to suggest a certain wild drama enacted here centuries ago. Nothing either in yonder tender sky, nor in the silvery foliage on a fair day, which should conjure up the image of William as he must have stood again and again beside the little river; nor of the fury of his impatience as the boats were building all too slowly for his hot hopes; nor of the strange and motley crew he had summoned there from all corners of Europe to cut the trees; to build and launch boats; to sail them, finally, across the strip of water to that England he was to meet at last, to grapple with, and overthrow, even as the English huscarles in their turn bore down on that gay Minstrel Taillefer, who rode so insolently forth to meet them, with a song in his throat, tossing his sword in English eyes, still chanting the song of Roland as he fell. None of the inn features were in the least informed with this great, impressive picture of its past. Yet does William seem by far the most realizable of all the personages who have inhabited the old house. There was another visitor whose presence Monsieur Paul declared was as entirely real as if she, also, had only just passed within the court-yard. "I know not why it is, but of all these great, _ces fameux_, Madame de Sévigné seems to me the nearest, in point of time. Her visit appears to have happened only yesterday. I never enter her room but I seem to see her moving about, talking, laughing, speaking in epigrams. She mentions the inn, you know, in her letters. She gives the details of her journey in full." I, also, knew not why; but, later, after Monsieur Paul had left us, when he had shut himself out, along with the pattering raindrops, and had closed us in with the warmth and the flickering fire-light, there came, with astonishing clearness, a vision of that lady's visit here. She and her company of friends might have been stopping, that very instant, without, in the open court. I, also, seemed to hear the very tones of their voices; their talk was as audible as the wind rustling in the vines. In the growing stillness the vision grew and grew, till this was what I saw and heard: [Illustration: CHAMBRE DES MARMOUSETS--DIVES] TWO BANQUETS AT DIVES. CHAPTER XX. A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY REVIVAL. Outside the inn, some two hundred years ago, there was a great noise and confusion; the cries of outriders, of mounted guardsmen and halberdiers, made the quiet village as noisy as a camp. An imposing cavalcade was being brought to a sharp stop; for the outriders had suddenly perceived the open inn entrance, with its raised portcullis, and they were shouting to the coachmen to turn in, beneath the archway, to the paved court-yard within. In an incredibly short space of time the open quadrangle presented a brilliant picture; the dashing guardsmen were dismounting; the maids and lackeys had quickly descended from their perches in the caleches and coaches; and the gentlemen of the household were dusting their wide hats and lace-trimmed coats. The halberdiers, ranging themselves in line, made a prismatic grouping beneath the low eaves of the picturesque old inn. In the very middle of the court-yard stood a coach, resplendent in painted panels and emblazoned with ducal arms. About this coach, as soon as the four horses which drew the vehicle were brought to a standstill, cavaliers, footmen, and maids swarmed with effusive zeal. One of the footmen made a rush for the door: another let down the steps; one cavalier was already presenting an outstretched, deferential hand, while still another held forth an arm, as rigid as a post, for the use of the occupants of the ducal carriage. Three ladies were seated within. Large and roomy as was the vehicle, their voluminous draperies and the paraphernalia of their belongings seemed completely to fill the wide, deep seats. The ladies were the Duchesse de Chaulnes, Madame de Kerman, and Madame de Sévigné. The faces of the Duchesse and of Madame de Kerman were invisible, being still covered with their masks, which, both as a matter of habit and of precaution against the sun's rays, they had religiously worn during the long day's journey. But Madame de Sévigné had torn hers off; she was holding it in her hand, as if glad to be relieved from its confinement. All three ladies were in the highest possible spirits, Madame de Sévigné obviously being the leader of the jests and the laughter. They were in a mood to find everything amusing and delightful. Even after they had left the coach and were carefully picking their way over the rough stones--walking on their high-heeled "mules" at best, was always a dangerous performance--their laughter and gayety continued in undiminished exuberance. Madame de Sévigné's keen sense of humor found so many things to ridicule. Could anything, for example, be more comical than the spectacle they presented as they walked, in state, with their long trains and high-heeled slippers, up these absurd little turret steps, feeling their way as carefully as if they were each a pickpocket or an assassin? The long line behind of maids carrying their muffs, and of lackeys with the muff-dogs, and of pages holding their trains, and the grinning innkeeper, bursting with pride and courtesying as if he had St. Vitus's dance, all this crowd coiling round the rude spiral stairway--it was enough to make one die of laughter. Such state in such savage surroundings!--they and their patch-boxes, and towering head-gears and trains, and dogs and fans, all crowded into a place fit only for peasants! When they reached their bedchambers the ridicule was turned into a condescending admiration; they found their rooms unexpectedly clean and airy. The furniture was all antique, of interesting design, and though rude, really astonishingly comfortable. Beds and dressing-tables, mostly of Henry III's time, were elaborately canopied in the hideous crude draperies of that primitive epoch. How different were the elegant shapes and brocades of their own time! Fortunately their women had suitable hangings and draperies with them, as well, of course, as any amount of linen and any number of mattresses. The settees and benches would do very well, with the aid of their own hassocks and cushions, and, after all, it was only for a night, they reminded the other. The toilet, after the heat and exposure of the day, was necessarily a long one. The Duchesse and Madame de Kerman had their faces to make up--all the paint had run, and not a patch was in its place. Hair, also, of this later de Maintenon period, with its elaborate artistic ranges of curls, to say nothing of the care that must be given to the coif and the "follette," these were matters that demanded the utmost nicety of arrangement. In an hour, however, the three ladies reassembled, in the panelled lower room--in "la Chambre de la Pucelle." In spite of the care her two companions had given to repairing the damages caused by their journey, of the three, Madame de Sévigné looked by far the freshest and youngest. She still wore her hair in the loosely flowing de Montespan fashion; a style which, though now out of date, was one that exactly suited her fair skin, her candid brow, and her brilliant eyes. These latter, when one examined them closely, were found to be of different colors; but this peculiarity, which might have been a serious defect in any other countenance, in Madame de Sévigné's brilliant face was perhaps one cause of its extraordinarily luminous quality. Not one feature was perfect in that fascinatingly mobile face: the chin was a trifle too long for a woman's chin; the lips, that broke into such delicious curves when she laughed, when at rest betrayed the firmness of her wit and the almost masculine quality of her reasoning judgment. Even her arms and hands and her shoulders were "_mal taillés_" as her contemporaries would have told you. But what a charm in those irregular features! What a seductiveness in the ensemble of that not too-well-proportioned figure! What an indescribable radiance seemed to emanate from the entire personality of this most captivating of women! As she moved about the low room, dark with the trembling shadows of light that flowed from the bunches of candles in the sconces, Madame de Sévigné's clear complexion, and her unpowdered chestnut curls, seemed to spot the room with light. Her companions, though dressed in the very height of the fashion, were yet not half as catching to the eye. Neither their minute waists, nor their elaborate underskirts and trains, nor their tall coffered coifs (the duchesse's was not unlike a bishop's mitre, studded as it was with ruby-headed pins), nor the correctness of these ladies' carefully placed patches, nor yet their painted necks and tinted eyebrows, could charm as did the unmodish figure of Madame de Sévigné--a figure so indifferently clad, and yet one so replete with its distinction of innate elegance and the subtle charm of her individuality. With the entrance of these ladies dinner was served at once. The talk flowed on; it was, however, more or less restrained by the presence of the always too curious lackeys, of the bustling innkeeper, and the gentlemen of the household in attendance on the party. As a spectacle, the little room had never boasted before of such an assemblage of fashion and greatness. Never before had the air under the rafters been so loaded with scents and perfumes--these ladies seeming, indeed, to breathe out odors. Never before had there been grouped there such splendor of toilet, nor had such courtly accents been heard, nor such finished laughter. The fire and the candlelight were in competition which should best light up the tall transparent caps, the lace fichus, the brocade bodices, and the long trains. The little muff-dogs, released from their prisons, since the muffs were laid aside at dinner time, blinked at the fire, curling their minute bodies--clipped lion-fashion--about the huge andirons, as they snored to kill time, knowing their own dinner would come only when their mistresses had done. After the dessert had been served the ladies withdrew; they were preceded by the ever-bowing innkeeper, who assured them, in his most reverential tones, that they would find the room opening on the other court-yard even warmer and more comfortable than the one they were in. In spite of the walk across the paved court-yard and the enormous height of their heels, always a fact to be remembered, the ladies voted to make the change, since by that means they could be assured the more entire seclusion. Mild as was the May air, Madame de Kerman's hand-glass hanging at her side was quickly lifted in the very middle of the open court-yard; she had scarcely passed the door when she had felt one of her patches blowing off. "I caught it just in time, dear duchesse," she cried, as she stood quite still, replacing it with a fresh one picked from her patch-box, as the others passed her. "The very best patch-maker I have found lives in the rue St. Denis, at the sign of La Perle des Mouches; have you discovered him, dear friend?" said the duchesse, as they walked on toward the low door beneath the galleries. "No, dear duchesse, I fear I have not even looked for him--the science of patches I have always found so much harder than the science of living!" gayly answered Madame de Sévigné. Madame de Kerman had now re joined them, and all three passed into la Chambre des Marmousets. CHAPTER XXI. THE AFTER-DINNER TALK OF THREE GREAT LADIES. The three ladies grouped themselves about the fire, which they found already lighted. The duchesse chose a Henry II. carved aim chair, one, she laughingly remarked, quite large enough to have held both the King and Diana. A lackey carrying the inevitable muff-dogs, their fans, and scent-bottles, had followed the ladies; he placed a hassock at the duchesse's feet, two beneath the slender feet of Madame de Kerman, and, after having been bidden to open one of the casements, since it was still so light without, withdrew, leaving the ladies alone. Although Madame de Sévigné had comfortably ensconced herself in one of the deep window seats, piling the cushions behind her, no sooner was the window opened than with characteristic impetuosity she jumped up to look out into the country that lay beyond the leaded glass. In spite of the long day's drive in the open air, her appetite for blowing roses and sweet earth smells had not been sated. Madame de Sévigné all her life had been the victim of two loves and a passion; she adored society and she loved nature; these were her lesser delights, that gave way before the chief idolatry of her soul, her adoration for her daughter. [Illustration: MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ] As she stood by the open window, her charming face, always a mirror of her emotions, was suffused with a glow and a bloom that made it seem young again. Her eyes grew to twice their common size under the "wandering" eyelids, as her gaze roved over the meadows and across the tall grasses to the sea. A part of her youth was being, indeed, vividly brought back to her; the sight of this marine landscape recalled many memories; and with the recollection her whole face and figure seemed to irradiate something of the inward ardor that consumed her. She had passed this very road, through this same country before, long ago, in her youth, with her children. She half smiled at the remembrance of a description given of the impression produced by her appearance on the journey by her friend the Abbé Arnauld; he had ecstatically compared her to Latona seated in an open coach, between a youthful Apollo and a young Diana. In spite of the abbe's poetical extravagance, Madame de Sévigné recognized, in this moment of retrospect, the truth of the picture. That, indeed, had been a radiant moment! Her life at that time had been so full, and the rapture so complete--the rapture of possessing her children--that she could remember to have had the sense of fairly evaporating happiness. And now, the sigh came, how scattered was this gay group! her son in Brittany, her daughter in Provence, two hundred leagues away! And she, an elderly Latona, mourning her Apollo and her divine huntress, her incomparable Diana. The inextinguishable name of youth was burning still, however, in Madame de Sévigné's rich nature. This adventure, this amazing adventure of three ladies of the court having to pass the night in a rude little Normandy inn, she, for one, was finding richly seasoned with the spice of the unforeseen; it would be something to talk of and write about for a month hence at Chaulnes and at Paris. Their entire journey, in point of fact, had been a series of the most delightful episodes. It was now nearly a month since they had started from Picardy, from the castle of Chaulnes, going into Normandy _via_ Rouen. They had been on a driving tour, their destination being Rennes, which they would reach in a week or so. They had been travelling in great state, with the very best coach, the very best horses; and they had been guarded by a whole regiment of cavaliers and halberdiers. Every possible precaution had been taken \against their being disagreeably surprised on their route. Their chief fear on the journey had been, of course, the cry common in their day of "_Au voleur!_" and the meeting of brigands and assassins; for, once outside of Paris and the police reforms of that dear Colbert, and one must be prepared to take one's life in one's hand. Happily, no such misadventures had befallen them. The roads, it is true, they had found for the most part in a horrible condition; they had been pitched about from one end of their coach to the other they might easily have imagined themselves at sea. The dust also had nearly blinded them, in spite of their masks. The other nuisances most difficult to put up with had been the swarm of beggars that infested the roadsides; and worst of all had been the army of crippled, deformed, and mangy soldiers. These latter they had encountered everywhere; their whines and cries, their armless, legless bodies, their hideous filth, and their insolent importunities, they had found a veritable pest. Another annoyance had been the over-zealous courtesy of some of the upper middle-class. Only yesterday, in the very midst of the dust and under the burning noon sun, they had all been forced to alight, to receive the homage tendered the duchesse, of some thirty women and as many men. Each one of the sixty must, of course, kiss the duchesse's hand. It was really an outrage to have exposed them to such a form of torture! Poor Madame de Kerman, the delicate one of the party, had entirely collapsed after the ceremony. The duchesse also had been prostrated; it had wearied her more than all the rest of the journey. Madame de Sévigné alone had not suffered. She was possessed of a degree of physical fortitude which made her equal to any demand. The other two ladies, as well as she herself, were now experiencing the pleasant exhilaration which comes with the hour of rest after an excellent dinner. They were in a condition to remember nothing except the agreeable. Madame de Sévigné was the first to break the silence. She turned, with a brisk yet graceful abruptness, to the two ladies still seated before the low fire. With a charming outburst of enthusiasm she exclaimed aloud: "What a beauty, and youth, and tenderness this spring has, has it not?" "Yes," answered the duchesse, smiling graciously into Madame de Sévigné's brilliantly lit face; "yes, the weather in truth has been perfect." "What an adorable journey we have had!" continued Madame de Sévigné, in the same tone, her ardor undampened by the cooler accent of her friend--she was used to having her enthusiasm greeted with consideration rather than response. "What a journey!--only meeting with the most agreeable of adventures; not the slightest inconvenience anywhere; eating the very best of everything; and driving through the heart of this enchanting springtime!" Her listeners laughed quietly, with an accent of indulgence. It was the habit of her world to find everything Madame de Sévigné did or said charming. Even her frankness was forgiven her, her tact was so perfect; and her spontaneity had always been accounted as her chief excellence; in the stifled air of the court and the _ruelles_ it had been frequently likened to the blowing in of a fresh May breeze. Her present mood was one well known to both ladies. "Always 'pretty pagan,' dear madame," smiled Madame de Kerman, indulgently. "How well named--and what a happy hit of our friend Arnauld d'Audilly! You are in truth a delicious--an adorable pagan! You have such a sense of the joy of living! Why, even living in the country has, it appears, no terrors for you. We hear of your walking about in the moonlight-you make your very trees talk, they tell us, in Italian--in Latin; you actually pass whole hours alone with the hamadryads!" There was just a suspicion of irony in Madame de Kerman's tone, in spite of its caressing softness; it was so impossible to conceive of anyone really finding nature endurable, much less pretending to discover in trees and flowers anything amusing or suggestive of sentiment! But Madame de Sévigné was quite impervious to her friend's raillery. She responded, with perfect good humor: "Why not?--why not try to discover beauties in nature? One can be so happy in a wood! What a charming thing to hear a leaf sing! I know few things more delightful than to watch the triumph of the month of May when the nightingale, the cuckoo, and the lark open the spring in our forests! And then, later, come those beautiful crystal days of autumn--days that are neither warm, nor yet are they really cold! And then the trees--how eloquent they can be made; with a little teaching they may be made to converse so charmingly. _Bella cosa far aniente_, says one of my trees; and another answers, _Amor odit inertes_. Ah, when I had to bid farewell to all my leaves and trees; when my son had to dispose of the forest of Buron, to pay for some of his follies, you remember how I wept! It seemed to me I could actually feel the grief of those dispossessed sylvans and of all those homeless dryads!" "It is this, dear friend--this life you lead at Les Rochers--and your enthusiasm, which keep you so young. Yes, I am sure of it. How inconceivably young, for instance, you are looking this very evening! You and the glow out yonder make youth seem no longer a legend." The duchesse delivered her flattering little speech with a caressing tone. She moved gently forward in her chair, as if to gain a better view of the twilight and her friend. At the sound of the duchesse's voice Madame de Sévigné again turned, with the same charming smile and the quick impulsiveness of movement common to her. During her long monologue she had remained standing; but she left the window now to regain her seat amid the cushions of the window. There was something better than the twilight and the spring in the air; here, within, were two delightful friends-and listeners; there was before her, also, the prospect of one of those endless conversations that were the chief delight of her life. She laughed as she seated herself--a gay, frank, hearty little laugh--and she spread out her hands with the opening of her fan, as, with her usual vivacious spontaneity, her mood changed. "Fancy, dear duchesse, the punishment that comes to one who commits the crime of looking young--younger than one ought! My son-in-law, M. de Grignan, actually avows he is in daily terror lest I should give him a father-in-law!" All three ladies laughed gayly at this absurdity; the subject of Madame de Sévigné's remarrying had come to be a venerable joke now. It had been talked of at court and in society for nearly forty years; but such was the conquering power of her charms that these two friends, her listeners, saw nothing really extravagant in her son-in-law's fear; she was one of those rare women who, even at sixty, continue to suggest the altar rather than the grave. Madame de Kerman was the first to recover her breath after the laughter. "Dear friend, you might assure him that after a youth and the golden meridian of your years passed in smiling indifference to the sighs of a Prince de Conti, of a Turenne, of a Fouquet, of a Bussy de Rabutin, at sixty it is scarcely likely that--" "Ah, dear lady at sixty, when one has the complexion and the curls, to say nothing of the eyes of our dear enchantress, a woman is as dangerous as at thirty!" The duchesse's flattery was charmingly put, with just enough vivacity of tone to save it from the charge of insipidity. Madame de Sévigné bowed her curls to her waist. "Ah, dear duchesse, it isn't age," she retorted, quickly, "that could make me commit follies. It is the fact that that son-in-law of mine actually surrounds me with spies--he keeps me in perpetual surveillance. Such a state of captivity is capable of making me forget everything; I am beginning to develop a positive rage for follies. You know that has been my chief fault--always; discretion has been left out of my composition. But I say now, as I have always said, that if I could manage to live two hundred years, I should become the most delightful person in the world!" She herself was the first to lead in the laughter that followed her outburst; and then the duchesse broke in: "You talk of defects, dear friend; but reflect what a life yours has been. So surrounded and courted, and yet you were always so guarded; so free, and yet so wise! So gay, and yet so chaste!" "If you rubbed out all those flattering colors, dear duchesse, and wrote only, 'She worshipped her children, and preferred friends to lovers,' the portrait would be far nearer to the truth. It is easy to be chaste if one has only known one passion in one's life, and that the maternal one!" Again a change passed over Madame de Sévigné's mobile face; the bantering tone was lost in a note of deep feeling. This gift of sensibility had always been accounted as one of Madame de Sévigné's chief charms; and now, at sixty, she was as completely the victim of her moods as in her earlier youth. "Where is your daughter, and how is she?" sympathetically queried the duchesse. "Oh, she is still at Grignan, as usual; she is well, thank God. But, dear duchesse, after all these years of separation I suffer still, cruelly." The tears sprang to Madame de Sévigné's eyes, as she added, with passion and a force one would scarcely have expected in one whose manners were so finished, "the truth is, dear friends, I cannot live without her. I do not find I have made the least progress in that career. But, even now, believe me, these tears are sweeter than all else in life--more enrapturing than the most transporting joy!" Madame de Kerman smiled tenderly into the rapturous mother's face; but the duchesse moved, as if a little restless and uneasy under this shower of maternal feeling. For thirty years her friends had had to listen to Madame de Sévigné's rhapsodies over the perfections of her incomparable daughter. Although sensibility was not the emotional fashion of the day, maternity, in the person of Madame de Sévigné, had been apotheosized into the queen of the passions, if only because of its rarity; still, even this lady's most intimate friends sometimes wearied of banqueting off the feast of Madame de Grignan's virtues. "Have you heard from Madame de La Fayette recently?" asked the duchesse, allowing just time enough to elapse, before putting the question, for Madame de Sévigné's emotion to subside into composure. The duchesse was too exquisitely bred to allow her impatience to take the form of even the appearance of haste. "Oh, yes," was Madame de Sévigné's quiet reply; the turn in the conversation had been instantly understood, in spite of the delicacy of the duchesse's methods. "Oh, yes--I have had a line--only a line. You know how she detests writing, above all things. Her letters are all the same--two lines to say that she has no time in which to say it!" "Did she not once write you a pretty little series of epigrams about not writing?" "Oh, yes--some time ago, when I was with my daughter. I've quoted them so often, they have become famous. 'You are in Provence, my beauty; your hours are free, and your mind still more so. Your love for corresponding with everyone still endures within you, it appears; as for me, the desire to write to any human being has long since passed away-forever; and if I had a lover who insisted on a letter every morning, I should certainly break with him!'" "What a curious compound she is! And how well her soubriquet becomes her!" "Yes, it is perfect--'_Le Brouillard_'--the fog. It is indeed a fog that has always enveloped her, and what charming horizons are disclosed once it is lifted!" "And her sensibilities--of what an exquisite quality; and what a rare, precious type, indeed, is the whole of her nature! Do you remember how alarmed she would become when listening to music?" "And yet, with all this sensibility and delicacy of organization there was another side to her nature." Madame de Kerman paused a moment before she went on; she was not quite sure how far she dared go in her criticism; Madame de La Fayette was such an intimate friend of Madame de Sévigné's. "You mean," that lady broke out, with unhesitating candor, "that she is also a very selfish person. You know that is my daughter's theory of her--she is always telling me how Madame de La Fayette is making use of me; that while her sensitiveness is such that she cannot sustain the tragedy of a farewell visit--if I am going to Les Rochers or to Provence, when I go to pay my last visit I must pretend it is only an ordinary running-in; yet her delicacy does not prevent her from making very indelicate proposals, to suit her own convenience. You remember what one of her commands was, don't you?" "No," answered the duchesse, for both herself and her companion. "Pray tell us." Madame de Sévigné went on to narrate that once, when at Les Rochers, Madame de La Fayette was quite certain that she, Madame de Sévigné, was losing her mind, for no one could live in the provinces and remain sane, poring over stupid books and sitting over fires. "She was certain I should sicken and die, besides losing the tone of my mind," laughed Madame de Sévigné, as she called up the picture of her dissolution and rapid disintegration; "and therefore it was necessary at once that I should come up to Paris. This latter command was delivered in the tone of a judge of the Supreme Court. The penalty of my disobedience was to be her ceasing to love me. I was to come up to Paris directly--on the minute; I was to live with you, dear duchesse; I was not to buy any horses until spring; and, best of all, I was to find on my arrival a purse of a thousand crowns which would be lent me without interest! What a proposition, _mon Dieu_, what a proposition! To have no house of my own, to be dependent, to have no carriage, and to be in debt a thousand crowns!" As Madame de Sévigné lifted her hands the laces of her sleeves were fairly trembling with the force of her indignation. There were certain things that always put her in a passion, and Madame de La Fayette's peculiarities she had found at times unendurable. Her listeners had followed her narration with the utmost intensity and absorption. When she stopped, their eyes met in a look of assenting comment. "It was perfectly characteristic, all of it! She judged you, doubtless, by herself. She always seems to me, even now, to keep one eye on her comfort and the other on her purse!" "Ah, dear duchesse, how keen you are!" laughingly acquiesced Madame de Sévigné, as with a shrug she accepted the verdict--her indignation melting with the shrug. "And how right! No woman ever drives better bargains, without moving a finger. From her invalid's chair she can conduct a dozen lawsuits. She spends half her existence in courting death; she caresses her maladies; she positively hugs them; but she can always be miraculously resuscitated at the word money!" "Yes," added with a certain relish Madame de Kerman. "And this is the same woman who must be forever running away from Paris because she can no longer endure the exertion of talking, or of replying, or of listening; because she is wearied to extinction, as she herself admits, of saying good-morning and good-evening. She must hide herself in some pastoral retreat, where simply, as she says, 'to exist is enough;' where she can remain, as it were, miraculously suspended between heaven and earth!" A ripple of amused laughter went round the little group; there was nothing these ladies enjoyed so keenly as a delicate dish of gossip, seasoned with wit, and stuffed with epigrams. This talk was exactly to their taste. The silence and seclusion of their surroundings were an added stimulus to confidence and to a freer interchange of opinions about their world. Paris and Versailles seemed so very far away; it would appear safe to say almost anything about one's dearest friends. There was nothing to remind them of the restraints of levees, or the penalty indiscretion must pay for folly breathed in that whispering gallery--the _ruelle_. It was indeed a delightful hour; altogether an ideal situation. The fire had burned so low only a few embers were alive now, and the candles were beginning to flicker and droop in the sconces. But the three ladies refused to find the little room either cold or dark; their talk was not half done yet, and their muffs would keep them warm. The shadow of the deepening gloom they found delightfully provocative of confidences. After a short pause, while Madame de Kerman busied herself with the tongs and the fagots, trying to reinvigorate the dying flames, the duchesse asked, in a somewhat more intimate tone than she had used yet: "And the duke--do you really think she loved the Duke de La Rochefoucauld?" "She reformed him, dear duchesse; at least she always proclaims his reform as the justification of her love." "You--you esteemed him yourself very highly, did you not?" "Oh, I loved him tenderly; how could one help it? He was the best as well as the most brilliant of men! I never knew a tenderer heart; domestic joys and sorrows affected him in a way to render him incomparable. I have seen him weep over the death of his mother, who only died eight years before him, you know, with a depth of sincerity that made me adore him." "He must in truth have been a very sincere person." "Sincere!" cried Madame de Sévigné, her eyes flaming. "Had you but seen his deathbed! His bearing was sublime! Believe me, dear friend, it was not in vain that M. de La Rochefoucauld had written philosophic reflections all his life; he had already anticipated his last moments in such a way that there was nothing either new or strange in death when it came to him." "Madame de La Fayette truly mourned him--don't you think so? You were with her a great deal, were you not, after his death?" "I never left her. It was the most pitiable sight to see her in her loneliness and her misery. You see, their common ill-health and their sedentary habits, had made them so necessary to each other! It was, as it were, two souls in a single body. Nothing could exceed the confidence and charm of their friendship; it was incomparable. To Madame de La Fayette his loss came as her death-blow; life seems at an end for her; for where, indeed, can she find another such friend, or such intercourse, such sweetness and charm--such confidence and consideration?" There was a moment's silence after Madame de Sévigné's eloquent outburst. The eyes of the three friends were lost for a moment in the twinkling flames. The duchesse and Madame de Kerman exchanged meaning glances. "Since the duke's death her thoughts are more and more turned toward religion. I hear she has been fortunate in her choice of directors, has she not? Du Guet is said to be an ideal confessor for the authoress of 'La Princesse de Clèves.'" There was just a suspicion of malice in the duchesse's tones. "Oh, he was born to take her in hand. He knew just when to speak with authority, and when to make use of the arts of persuasion. He wrote to her once, you remember: 'You, who have passed your life in dreaming--cease to dream! You, who have taken such pride unto yourself for being so true in all things, were very far, indeed, from the truth--you were only half true--falsely true. Your godless wisdom was in reality purely a matter of good taste!'" "What audacity! Bossuet himself could not have put the truth more nakedly." The duchesse was one of those to whom truths were novelties, and unpleasant ones. "Bossuet, if I remember rightly, was with the Duke de La Rochefoucauld at the last, was he not?" "Yes," responded Madame de Sévigné; "he was with him; he administered the supreme unction. The duke was in a beautiful state of grace. M, Vinet, you remember, said of him that he died with 'perfect decorum.'" "Speaking of dying reminds me"--cried suddenly Madame de Sévigné--"how are the duke's hangings getting on?" "They begin, the duke writes me, to hang again to-morrow," answered the duchesse, with a certain air of disdain, the first appearance of this weapon of the great now coming to the _grande dame's_ aid. Her husband, the Duke de Chaulnes' trouble with his revolutionary citizens at Rennes was a subject that never failed to arouse a feeling of angry contempt in her. It was too preposterous, the idea of those insolent creatures rising against him, their rightful duke and master! The duchesse's feeling in the matter was fully shared by her friends. In all the court there was but one opinion in the matter--hanging was really far too good for the wretched creatures. "Monsieur de Chaulnes," the duchesse went on, with ironical contempt in her voice, "still goes on punishing Rennes!" "This province and the duke's treatment of it will serve as a capital example to all others. It will teach those rascals," Madame de Kerman continued, in lower tones, "to respect their governors, and not to throw stones into their gardens!" "Fancy that--the audacity of throwing stones into their duke's garden! Why, did you know, they actually--those insolent creatures actually called him--called the duke--'_gros cochon?_'" All three ladies gasped in horror at this unparalleled instance of audacity; they threw up their hands, as they groaned over the picture, in low tones of finished elegance. "It is little wonder the duke hangs right and left! The dear duke--what a model governor! How I should like to have seen him sack that street at Rennes, with all the ridiculous old men, and the women in childbirth, and the children, turned out pêle-mêle! And the hanging, too--why, hanging now seems to me a positively refreshing performance!" And Madame de Sévigné laughed with unstinted gayety as at an excellent joke. The picture of Rennes and the cruelty dealt its inhabitants was a pleasant picture, in the contemplation of which these ladies evidently found much delectation. They were quiet for a longer period of time than usual; they continued silent, as they looked into the fire, smiling; the flames there made them think of other flames as forms of merited punishment. "A curious people those Bas Bretons," finally ejaculated Madame de Sévigné. "I never could understand how Bertrand Duguesclin made them the best soldiers of his day in France!" "You know Lower Brittany very well, do you not, dear friend?" "Not so well as the coast. Les Rochers is in Upper Brittany, you know. I know the south better still. Ah, what a charming journey I once took along the Loire with my friend _Bien-Bon_, the Abbé de Coulanges. We found it the most enchanting country in the world--the country of feasts and of famine; feasts for us and famine for the people. I remember we had to cross the river; our coach was placed on the barge, and we were rowed along by stout peasants. Through the glass windows of the coach we looked out at a series of changing pictures--the views were charming. We sat, of course, entirely at our ease, on our soft cushions. The country people, crowded together below, were--ugh!--like pigs in straw." "Was Bien-Bon with you when you made that little excursion to St. Germain?" queried the duchesse. "Ah, that was a gay night," joyously responded Madame de Sévigné. "How well we amused ourselves on that little visit that we paid Madame de Maintenon--when she was only Madame Scarron." "Was she so handsome then as they say she was--at that time?" "Very handsome; she was good, too, and amiable, and easy to talk to; one talked well and readily with her. She was then only the governess of the king's bastards, you know--of the children he had had by Madame de Montespan. That was the first step toward governing the king. Well, one night--the night to which you refer--I remember we were all supping with Madame de La Fayette. We had been talking endlessly! Suddenly it occurred to us it would be a most amusing adventure to take Madame Scarron home, to the very last end of the Faubourg Saint Germain, far beyond where Madame de La Fayette lived--near Vaugirard, out into the Bois, in the country. The Abbé came too. It was midnight when we started. The house, when at last we reached it, we found large and beautiful, with large and fine rooms and a beautiful garden; for Madame Scarron, as governess of the king's children, had a coach and a lot of servants and horses. She herself dressed then modestly and yet magnificently, as a woman should, who spent her life among people of the highest rank. We had a merry outing, returning in high spirits, blessed in having no end of lanterns, and thus assured against robbers." "She and Madame de La Fayette were very close friends, I remember, during that time," mused the duchesse, "when they were such near neighbors." "Yes," Madame de Sévigné went on, as unwearied now, although it was nearly midnight, as in the beginning of the long evening. "Yes; I always thought Madame de Maintenon's satirical little joke about Madame de La Fayette's bed festooned with gold--'I might have fifty thousand pounds income, and never should I live in the style of a great lady; never should I have a bed festooned with gold like Madame de La Fayette'--was the beginning of their rupture." "All the same, Madame de La Fayette, lying on that bed, beneath the gold hangings, was a much more simple person than ever was Madame de Maintenon!" "Your speaking of bed reminds me, dear ladies ours must be quite cold by this time. How we have chatted! What a delightful gossip! But we must not forget that our journey to-morrow is to be a long one!" The duchesse rose, the other two ladies rising instantly, observing, in spite of the intimate relations in which they stood toward the duchesse, the deference due to her more exalted rank. The latter clapped her hands; outside the door a shuffling and a low groan were heard--the groan came from the sleepy lackey, roused from his deep slumber, as he uncoiled himself from the close knot into which his legs and body were knit in the curve of the narrow stairs. The ladies, a few seconds later, were wending their way up the steep turret steps. They were preceded by torches and followed by quite a long train of maids and lackeys. For a long hour, at least, the little inn resounded with the sound of hurrying feet, of doors closing and shutting; with the echo of voices giving commands and of others purring in sleepy accents of obedience. Then one by one the sounds died away; the lights went out in the bedchambers; faint flickerings stole through the chinks of doors and windows. The watchman cried out the hour, and the gleam of a lantern flashed here and there, illuminating the open court-yard. The cocks crowed shrilly into the night air. A halberdier turned in his sleep where he lay, on some straw beneath the coach-shed, his halberd rattling as it struck the cobbles. And over the whole--over the gentle slumber of the great ladies and the sleep of beast and man--there fell the peace and the stillness of the midnight--of that midnight of long ago. [Illustration: CHAMBRE DE LA PUCELLE--DIVES] CHAPTER XXII. A NINETEENTH-CENTURY BREAKFAST. The very next morning, after the rain, and the vision I had had of Madame de Sévigné, conjured up by my surroundings and the reading of her letters, Monsieur Paul paid us an early call. He came to beg the loan of our sitting-room, he said. He had had a despatch from a coaching-party from Trouville; they were to arrive for breakfast. The whip and owner of the coach was a great friend of his, he proffered by way of explanation--a certain count who had a genius for friendship--one who also had an artist's talent for admiring the beautiful. He was among those who were in a state of perpetual adoration before the inn's perfections. He made yearly pilgrimages from his chateau above Rouen to eat a noon breakfast in the Chambre des Marmousets. Now, a breakfast served elsewhere than in this chamber would be, from his point of view, to have journeyed to a shrine to find the niche empty. The gift that was begged of us, therefore, was the loan for a few hours of the famous little room. In less than a half hour we were watching the entrance of the coach by the side of Madame Le Mois. We were all three seated on the green bench. Faintly at first, and presently gaining in distinctness, came the fall of horses' hoofs and the rumble of wheels along the highway. A little cavalcade was soon passing beneath the archway. First there dashed in two horsemen, who had sprung to the ground almost as soon as their steeds' hoofs struck the paved court-yard. Then there swept by a jaunty dog cart, driven by a mannish figure radiantly robed in white. Swiftly following came the dash and jingle of four coach-horses, bathed in sweat, rolling the vehicle into the court as if its weight were a thing of air. All save one among the gay party seated on the high seats, were too busy with themselves and their chatter, to take heed of their surroundings. A lady beneath her deep parasol was busily engaged in a gay traffic of talk with the groups of men peopling the back seats of the coach. One of the men, however, was craning his neck beyond the heads of his companions; he was running his eye rapidly up and down the long inn facade. Finally his glance rested on us; and then, with a rush, a deep red mounted the man's cheek, as he tore off his derby to wave it, as if in a triumph of discovery. Renard had been true to his promise. He had come to see his friends and to test the famous Sauterne. He flung himself down from his lofty perch to take his seat, entirely as a matter of course, beside us on the green bench. "What luck, hey?--greatest luck in the world, finding you in, like this. I've been in no end of a tremble, fearing you'd gone to Caen, or Falaise, or somewhere, and that I shouldn't see you after all. Well, how are you? How goes it? What do you think of old Dives and Monsieur Paul, and the rest of it? I see you're settled; you took the palace chamber. Trust American women--they know the best, and get it." "But these people, who are they, and how did you--?" We were unfeignedly glad to see him, but curiosity is a passion not to be trifled with--after a month in the provinces. "Oh--the De Troisacs? Old friends of mine--known them years. Jolly lot. Charming fellow, De Troisac--only good Frenchman I've ever known. They're just off their yacht; saw them all yesterday at the Trouville Casino. Said they were running down here for breakfast to-day, asked me, and I came, of course." He laughed as he added: "I said I should come, you remember, to get some of that Sauterne. A man will go any distance for a good bottle of wine, you know." Meanwhile, in the court-yard, the party on the coach, by means of ladders and the helping of the grooms, were scrambling down from their seats. Renard's friend, the Comte de Troisac, was easily picked out from the group of men. He was the elder of the party--stoutish, with frank eyes and a smiling mouth; he was bustling about from the gaunt grooms to the ladder, and from ladder to the coach-seat, giving his commands right and left, and executing most of them himself. A tall, slim woman, with drooping eyelids, and an air of extreme elegance and of cultivated fatigue, was also easily recognizable as the countess. It took two grooms, two of the gentlemen guests, and her husband to assist her to the ground. Her passage down the steps of the ladder had been long enough, however, to enable her to display a series of pretty poses, each one more effective than the others. When one has an instep of ideal elevation, what is the use of being born a Frenchwoman, unless one knows how to make use of opportunity? From the dog-cart, that had rattled in across the cobbles with a dash and a spurt, there came quite a different accent and pose. The whitish personage, whom we had mistakenly supposed to be a man, wore petticoats; the male attire only held as far as the waist of the lady. The stiff white shirt-front, the knotted tie--a faultless male knot--the loose driving-jacket, with its sprig of white geranium, and the round straw-hat worn in mannish fashion, close to the level brows, was a costume that would have deceived either sex. Below the jacket flowed the straight lines of a straight skirt, that no further conjectures should be rendered necessary. This lady had a highbred air of singular distinction, accentuated by a tremendously knowing look. She was at once elegant and rakish; the _gamin_ in her was obviously the touch of _caviare_ to season the woman of fashion. The mixture made an extraordinarily attractive ensemble. As she jumped to the ground, throwing her reins to a groom, her jump was a master-stroke; it landed her squarely on her feet; even as she struck the ground her hands were thrust deeply into her pockets. The man seated beside her, who now leaped out after her, seemed timid and awkward by contrast with her alert precision. This couple moved at once toward the bench on which madame was seated. With the coming in of the coach and the cart she had risen, waddling forward to meet the party. Monsieur Paul was at the coach-wheels before the grooms had shot themselves down; De Troisac, with eager friendliness, stretched forth a hand from the top of his seat, exclaiming, with gay heartiness, "Ah, mon bon--comment ça va?" The mere was as eagerly greeted. Even the countess dismissed her indifference for the moment, as she held out her hand to Madame Le Mois. "Dear Madame Le Mois--and it goes well with you? And the gout and the rheumatism, they have ceased to torment you? Quelle bonne nouvelle! And here are the dear old cocks and the wounded bantam. The cockatoos--ah, there they are, still swinging in the air! Comme c'est joli--et frais--et que ça sent bon!" Madame and Monsieur Paul were equally effusive in their inquiries and exclamations--it was clearly a meeting of old friends. Madame Le Mois' face was meanwhile a study. The huge surface was glistening with pleasure; she was unfeignedly glad to see these Parisians:--but there was no elation at this meeting on such easy terms with greatness. Her shrewdness was as alive as ever; she was about to make money out of the visit--they were to have of her best, but they must pay for it. Between her rapid fire of questionings as to the countess's health and the history of her travels, there was as rapid a shower of commands, sometimes shouted out, above all the hubbub, to the cooks standing gaping in the kitchen doorway, or whispered hoarsely to Ernestine and Marianne, who were flying about like wild pigeons, a little drunk with the novelty of this first breakfast of the season. "_Allons, mon enfant--cours--cours_--get thy linen, my child, and the silver candélabres. It is to be laid in the Marmousets, thou knowest. Paul will come presently. And the salads, pluck them and bring them in to me--_cours--cours_." The great world was all very well, and it was well to be on friendly, even intimate terms, with it; but, _Dieu!_ one's own bread is of importance too! And the countess, for all her delicacy, was a _bonne fourchette_. The countess and her friend, after a moment of standing in the court-yard, of patting the pelican, of trying their blandishments on the flamingo, of catching up the bantam, and filling the air with their purring, and caressing, and incessant chatter, passed beneath the low door to the inner sanctum of madame. The two ladies were clearly bent on a few moments of unreserved gossip and that repairing of the toilet which is a religious act to women of fashion the world over. In the court-yard the scene was still a brilliant one. The gayly painted coach was now deserted. It stood, a chariot of state, as it were, awaiting royalty; its yellow sides gleamed like topaz in the sun. The grooms were unharnessing the leaders, that were still bathed in the white of their sweat. The count's dove-colored flannels were a soft mass against the snow of the _chef's_ apron and cap; the two were in deep consultation at the kitchen door. Monsieur Paul was showing, with all the absorption of the artist, his latest Jumièges carvings to the taller, more awkward of the gentlemen, to the one driven in by the mannish beauty. The cockatoos had not ceased shrieking from the very beginning of the hubbub; nor had the squirrels stopped running along the bars of their cage, a-flutter with excitement. The peacocks trailed their trains between the coach-wheels, announcing, squawkingly, their delight at the advent of a larger audience. Above the cries of the fowls and the shrieks of the cocks, the chatter of human tongues, the subdued murmur of the ladies' voices coming through the open lattice, and the stamp of horses' hoofs, there swept above it all the light June breeze, rustling in the vines, shaking the thick branches against the wooden facades. The two ladies soon made their appearance in the sunlit court-yard. The murmur of their talk and their laughter reached us, along with the froufrou of their silken petticoats. "You were not bored, _chère enfant_, driving Monsieur d'Agreste all that long distance?" The countess was smiling tenderly into her companion's face. She had stopped her to readjust the geranium sprig that was drooping in her friend's cover-coat. The smile was the smile of a sympathizing angel, but what a touch of hidden malice there was in the notes of her caressing voice! As she repinned the _boutonnière_, she gave the dancing eyes, that were brimming with the mirth of the coming retort, the searching inquest of her glance. "Bored! _Dieu, que non!_" The black little beauty threw back her throat, laughing, as she rolled her great eyes. "Bored--with all the tricks I was playing? Fernande! pity me, there was such a little time, and so much to do!" "So little time--only fourteen kilos!" The countess compressed her lips; they were smiling no longer. "Ah, but you see, I had so much to combat. You had a whole season, last summer, in which to play your game, your solemn game." Here the gay young widow rippled forth a pearly scale of treble laughter. "And I have had only a week, thus far!" "Yes, but what time you make!" And this time both ladies laughed, although, still, only one laughed well. "Ah! those women--how they love each other," commented Renard, as he sat on the bench, swinging his legs, with his eyes following the two vanishing figures. "Only women who are intimate--Parisian intimates--can cut to the bone like that, with a surgeon's dexterity." He explained then that the handsome brunette was a widow, a certain Baronne d'Autun, noted for her hunting and her conquests; the last on the latter list was Monsieur d'Agreste, a former admirer of the countess; he was somewhat famous as a scientist and socialist, so good a socialist as to refuse to wear his title of duke. The other two gentlemen of the party, who had joined them now, the two horsemen, were the Comtes de Mirant and de Fonbriant. These latter were two typical young swells of the Jockey Club model; their vacant, well-bred faces wore the correct degree of fashionable pallor, and their manners appeared to be also as perfect as their glances were insolent. Into these vacant faces the languid countess was breathing the inspiration of her smile. Enigmatic as was the latter, it was as simple as an infant's compared to the occult character of her glance. A wealth of complexities lay enfolded in the deep eyes, rimmed with their mystic darkened circlet--that circle in which the Parisienne frames her experience, and through which she pleads to have it enlarged! A Frenchwoman and cosmetics! Is there any other combination on this round earth more suggestive of the comedy of high life, of its elegance and of its perfidy, of its finish and of its emptiness? The men of the party wore costumes perilously suggestive of Opera Bouffe models. Their fingers were richly begemmed; their watch-chains were laden with seals and charms. Any one of the costumes was such as might have been chosen by a tenor in which to warble effectively to a _soubrette_ on the boards of a provincial theatre; and it was worn by these fops of the Jockey Club with the air of its being the last word in nautical fashions. Better than their costumes were their voices; for what speech from human lips pearls itself off with such crispness and finish as the delicate French idiom from a Parisian tongue? I never quite knew how it came about that we were added to this gay party of breakfasters. We found ourselves, however, after a high skirmish of preliminary presentations, among the number to take our places at the table. In the Chambre des Marmousets, Monsieur Paul, we found, had set the feast with the taste of an artist and the science of an archaeologist. The table itself was long and narrow, a genuine fifteenth century table. Down the centre ran a strip of antique altar-lace; the sides were left bare, that the lustre of the dark wood might be seen. In the centre was a deep old Caen bowl, with grapes and fuchsias to make a mound of soft color. A pair of seventeenth-century candélabres twisted and coiled their silver branches about their rich _repoussé_ columns; here and there on the yellow strip of lace were laid bunches of June roses, those only of the rarer and older varieties having been chosen, and each was tied with a Louis XV love-knot. Monsieur Paul was himself an omniscient figure at the feast; he was by turns officiating as butler, carving, or serving from the side-tables; or he was crossing the court-yard with his careful, catlike tread, a bottle under each arm. He was also constantly appealed to by Monsieur d'Agreste or the count, to settle a dispute about the age of the china, or the original home of the various old chests scattered about the room. "Paul, your stained glass shows up well in this light," the count called out, wiping his mustache over his soup-plate. "Yes," answered Monsieur Paul, as he went on serving the sherry, pausing for a moment at the count's glass. "They always look well in full sunlight. It was a piece of pure luck, getting them. One can always count on getting hold of tapestries and carvings, but old glass is as rare as--" "A pretty woman," interpolated the gay young widow, with the air of a connoisseur. "Outside of Paris--you should have added," gallantly contributed the count. Everyone went on eating after the light laughter had died away. The countess had not assisted at this brief conversation; she was devoting her attention to receiving the devotion of the two young counts; one was on either side of her, and both gave every outward and visible sign of wearing her chains, and of wearing them with insistance. The real contest between them appeared to be, not so much which should make the conquest of the languid countess, as which should outflank the other in his compromising demeanor. The countess, beneath her drooping lids, watched them with the indulgent indolence of a lioness, too luxuriously lazy to spring. The countess, clearly, was not made for sunlight. In the courtyard her face had seemed chiefly remarkable as a triumph of cosmetic treatment; here, under this rich glow, the purity and delicacy of the features easily placed her among the beauties of the Parisian world. Her eyes, now that the languor of the lids was disappearing with the advent of the wines, were magnificent; her use of them was an open avowal of her own knowledge of their splendor. The young widow across the table was also using her eyes, but in a very different fashion. She had now taken off her straw hat; the curly crop of a brown mane gave the brilliant face an added accent of vigor. The _chien de race_ was the dominant note now in the muscular, supple body, the keen-edged nostrils, and the intent gaze of the liquid eyes. These latter were fixed with the fixity of a savage on Charm. She was giving, in a sweet sibilant murmur, the man seated next her--Monsieur d'Agreste, the man who refused to bear his title--her views of the girl. "Those Americans, the Americans of the best type, are a race apart, I tell you; we have nothing like them; we condemn them because we don't understand them. They understand us--they read us--" "Oh, they read our books--the worst of them." "Yes, but they read the best too; and the worst don't seem to hurt them. I'll warrant that Mees Gay--that is her name, is it not?--has read Zola, for instance; and yet, see how simple and innocent--yes--innocent, she looks." "Yes, the innocence of experience--which knows how to hide," said Monsieur d'Agreste, with a slight shrug. "Mees Gay!" the countess cried out across the table, suddenly waking from her somnolence; she had overheard the baroness in spite of the low tone in which the dialogue had been carried on; her voice was so mellifluously sweet, one instinctively scented a touch of hidden poison in it--"Mees Gay, there is a question being put at this side of the table you alone can answer. Pray pardon the impertinence of a personal question--but we hear that American young ladies read Zola; is it true?" "I am afraid that we do read him," was Charm's frank answer. "I have read him--but my reading is all in the past tense now." "Ah--you found him too highly seasoned?" one of the young counts asked, eagerly, with his nose in the air, as if scenting an indiscretion. "No, I did not go far enough to get a taste of his horrors; I stopped at his first period." "And what do you call his first period, dear mademoiselle?" The countess's voice was still freighted with honey. Her husband coughed and gave her a warning glance, and Renard was moving uneasily in his chair. "Oh," Charm answered lightly, "his best period--when he didn't sell." Everyone laughed. The little widow cried beneath her breath: "_Elle a de l'esprit, celle-là_---" "_Elle en a de trop_," retorted the countess. "Did you ever read Zola's 'Quatre Saisons?'" Renard asked, turning to the count, at the other end of the table. No, the count had not read it--but he could read the story of a beautiful nature when he encountered one, and presently he allowed Charm to see how absorbing he found its perusal. "_Ah, bien--et tout de même_--Zola, yes, he writes terrible books; but he is a good man--a model husband and father," continued Monsieur d'Agreste, addressing the table. "And Daudet--he adores his wife and children," added the count, as if with a determination to find only goodness in the world. "I wonder how posterity will treat them? They'll judge their lives by their books, I presume." "Yes, as we judge Rabelais or Voltaire--" "Or the English Shakespeare by his 'Hamlet.'" "Ah! what would not Voltaire have done with Hamlet!" The countess was beginning to wake again. "And Molière? What of _his_ 'Misanthrope?' There is a finished, a human, a possible Hamlet! a Hamlet with flesh and blood," cried out the younger count on her right. "Even Mounet-Sully could do nothing with the English Hamlet." "Ah, well, Mounet-Sully did all that was possible with the part. He made Hamlet at least a lover!" "Ah, love! as if, even on the stage, one believed in that absurdity any longer!" was the countess's malicious comment. "Then, if you have ceased to believe in love, why did you go so religiously to Monsieur Caro's lectures?" cried the baroness. "Oh, that dear Caro! He treated the passions so delicately, he handled them as if they were curiosities. One went to hear his lecture on Love as one might go to hear a treatise on the peculiarities of an extinct species," was the countess's quiet rejoinder. "One should believe in love, if only to prove one's unbelief in it," murmured the young count on her left. "Ah, my dear comte, love, nowadays, like nature, should only be used for decoration, as a bit of stage setting, or as stage scenery." "A moonlight night can be made endurable, sometimes," whispered the count. "A _clair de lune_ that ends in _lune de miel_, that is the true use to which to put the charms of Diana." It was Monsieur d'Agreste's turn now to murmur in the baroness's ear. "Oh, honey, it becomes so cloying in time," interpolated the countess, who had overheard; she overheard everything. She gave a wearied glance at her husband, who was still talking vigorously to Charm and Renard. She went on softly: "It's like trying to do good. All goodness, even one's own, bores one in the end. At Basniège, for example, lovely as it is, ideally feudal, and with all its towers as erect as you please, I find this modern virtue, this craze for charity, as tiresome as all the rest of it. Once you've seen that all the old women have woollen stockings, and that each cottage has fagots enough for the winter, and your _role_ of benefactress is at an end. In Paris, at least, charity is sometimes picturesque; poverty there is tainted with vice. If one believed in anything, it might be worth while to begin a mission; but as it is--" "The gospel of life, according to you, dear comtesse, is that in modern life there is no real excitement except in studying the very best way to be rid of it," cried out Renard, from the bottom of the table. "True; but suicide is such a coarse weapon," the lady answered, quite seriously; "so vulgar now, since the common people have begun to use it. Besides, it puts your adversary, the world, in possession of your secret of discontent. No, no. Suicide, the invention of the nineteenth century, goes out with it. The only refined form of suicide is to bore one's self to death," and she smiled sweetly into the young man's eyes nearest her. "Ah, comtesse, you should not have parted so early in life with all your illusions," was Monsieur d'Agreste's protest across the table. "And, Monsieur d'Agreste, it isn't given to us all to go to the ends of the earth, as you do, in search of new ones! This friction of living doesn't wear on you as it does on the rest of us." "Ah, the ends of the earth, they are very much like the middle and the beginning of things. Man is not so very different, wherever you find him. The only real difference lies in the manner of approaching him. The scientist, for example, finds him eternally fresh, novel, inspiring; he is a mine only as yet half-worked." Monsieur d'Agreste was beginning to wake up; his eyes, hitherto, alone had been alive; his hands had been busy, crunching his bread; but his tongue had been silent. "Ah--h science! Science is only another anaesthetic--it merely helps to kill time. It is a hobby, like any other," was the countess's rejoinder. "Perhaps," courteously returned Monsieur d'Agreste, with perfect sweetness of temper. "But at least, it is a hobby that kills no one else. And if of a hobby you can make a principle--" "A principle?" The countess contracted her brows, as if she had heard a word that did not please her. "Yes, dear lady; the wise man lays out his life as a gardener does a garden, on the principle of selection, of order, and with a view to the succession of the seasons. You all bemoan the dulness of life; you, in Paris, the torpor of ennui stifles you, you cry. On the contrary, I would wish the days were weeks, and the weeks months. And why? Simply because I have discovered the philosopher's stone. I have grasped the secret of my era. The comedy of rank is played out; the life of the trifler is at an end; all that went out with the Bourbons. Individualism is the new order. To-day a man exists simply by virtue of his own effort--he stands on his own feet. It is the era of the republican, of the individual--science is the true republic. For us who are displaced from the elevation our rank gave us, work is the watchword, and it is the only battle-cry left us now. He only is strong, and therefore happy, who perceives this truth, and who marches in step with the modern movement." The serious turn given to the conversation had silenced all save the baroness. She had listened even more intently than the others to her friend's eloquence, nodding her head assentingly to all that he said. His philosophic reflections produced as much effect on her vivacious excitability as they might on a restless Skye-terrier. "Yes, yes--he's entirely right, is Monsieur d'Agreste; he has got to the bottom of things. One must keep in step with modernity--one must be _fin de siècle_. Comtesse, you should hunt; there is nothing like a fox or a boar to make life worth living. It's better, infinitely better, than a pursuit of hearts; a boar's more troublesome than a man." "Unless you marry him," the countess interrupted, ending with a thrush-like laugh. When she laughed she seemed to have a bird in her throat. "Oh, a man's heart, it's like the flag of a defenceless country--anyone may capture it." The countess smiled with ineffable grace into the vacant, amorous-eyed faces on either side of her, rising as she smiled. We had reached dessert now; the coffee was being handed round. Everyone rose; but the countess made no move to pass out from the room. Both she and the baroness took from their pockets dainty cigarette-cases. "_Vous permettez?_" asked the baroness, leaning over coquettishly to Monsieur d'Agreste's cigar. She accompanied her action with a charming glance, one in which all the woman in her was uppermost, and one which made Monsieur d'Agreste's pale cheeks flush like a boy's. He was a philosopher and a scientist; but all his science and philosophy had not saved him from the barbed shafts of a certain mischievous little god. He, also, was visibly hugging his chains. The party had settled themselves in the low divans and in the Henri IV arm-chairs; a few here and there remained, still grouped about the table, with the freedom of pose and in the comfort of attitude smoking and coffee bring with them. It was destined, however, that the hour was to be a short one. One of the grooms obsequiously knocked at the door; he whispered in the count's ear, who advanced quickly toward him, the news that the coach was waiting; one of the leaders. "Desolated, my dear ladies--but my man tells me the coach is in readiness, and I have an impertinent leader who refuses to stand, when he is waiting, on anything more solid than his hind legs. Fernande, my dear, we must be on the move. Desolated, dear ladies--desolated--but it's only _au revoir_. We must arrange a meeting later, in Paris--" The scene in the court-yard was once again gay with life and bristling with color. The coach and the dog-cart shone resplendent in the slanting sun's rays. In the brighter sunlight, the added glow in the eyes and the cheeks of the brilliantly costumed group, made both men and women seem younger and fresher than when they had appeared, two hours since. All were in high good humor--the wines and the talk had warmed the quick French blood. There was a merry scramble for the top coach-seats; the two young counts exchanged their seat in their saddles for the privilege of holding, one the countess's vinaigrette, and the other, her long-handled parasol. Renard was beside his friend De Troisac; the horn rang out, the horses started as if stung, dashing at their bits, and in another moment the great coach was being whirled beneath the archway. "_Au revoir--au revoir!_" was cried down to us from the throne-like elevation. There was a pretty waving of hands--for even the countess's dislike melted into sweetness as she bade us farewell. There were answering cries from the shrieking cockatoos, from the peacocks who trailed their tails sadly in the dust, from the cooks and the peasant serving-women who had assembled to bid the distinguished guests adieu. There was also a sweeping bow from Monsieur Paul, and a grunt of contented dismissal from Madame Le Mois. A moment after the departure of the coach the court yard was as still as a convent cloister. It was still enough to hear the click of madame's fingers, as she tapped her snuff-box. "The count doesn't see any better than he did--_toujours myope, lui_" the old woman murmured to her son, with a pregnant wink, as she took her snuff. "_C'est sa façon de tout voir, au contraire, ma mère_," significantly returned Monsieur Paul, with his knowing smile. The mother's shrug answered the smile, as both mother and son walked in different directions--across the sunlit court. A LITTLE JOURNEY ALONG THE COAST. CAEN, BAYEUX, ST. LO, COUTANCES. CHAPTER XXIII. A NIGHT IN A CAEN ATTIC. I have always found the act of going away contagious. Who really enjoys being left behind, to mope in a corner of the world others have abandoned? The gay company atop of the coach, as they were whirled beneath the old archway, had left discontent behind; the music of the horn, like that played by the Pied Piper, had the magic of making the feet ache to follow after. Monsieur Paul was so used to see his world go and come--to greeting it with civility, and to assist at its departure with smiling indifference that the announcement of our own intention to desert the inn within a day or so, was received with unflattering impassivity. We had decided to take a flight along the coast--the month and the weather were at their best as aids to such adventure. We hoped to see the Fête Dieu at Caen. Why not push on to Coutances, where the Fête was still celebrated with a mediaeval splendor? From thence to the great Mont, the Mont St. Michel, it was but the distance of a good steed's galloping--we could cover the stretch of country between in a day's driving, and catch, who knows?--perhaps the June pilgrims climbing the Mont. "Ah, mesdames! there are duller things in the world to endure than a glimpse of the Normandy coast and the scent of June roses! _Idylliquement belle, la côte à ce moment-ci!_" This was all the regret that seasoned Monsieur Paul's otherwise gracious and most graceful of farewells. Why cannot we all attain to an innkeeper's altitude, as a point of view from which to look out upon the world? Why not emulate his calm, when people who have done with us turn their backs and stalk away? Why not, like him, count the pennies as not all the payment received when a pleasure has come which cannot be footed up in the bill? The entire company of the inn household was assembled to see us start. Not a white mouse but was on duty. The cockatoos performed the most perilous of their trapeze accomplishments as a last tribute; the doves cooed mournfully; the monkeys ran like frenzied spirits along their gratings to see the very last of us. Madame Le Mois considerately carried the bantam to the archway, that the lost joy of strutting might be replaced by the pride of preferment above its fellows. "_Adieu_, mesdames." "_Au revoir_--you will return--_tout le monde revient_--Guillaume le Conquérant, like Caesar, conquers once to hold forever--remember--" [Illustration: CHATEAU FONTAINE LE HENRI, NEAR CAEN] From Monsieur Paul, in quieter, richer tones, came his true farewell, the one we had looked for: "The evenings in the Marmousets will seem lonely when it rains--you must give us the hope of a quick return. Hope is the food of those who remain behind, as we Normans say!" The archway darkened the sod for an instant; the next we had passed out into the broad highway. Jean, in his blouse, with Suzette beside him, both jolting along in the lumbering _char-à-banc_, stared out at us with a vacant-eyed curiosity. We were only two travellers like themselves, along a dusty roadway, on our way to Caen; we were of no particular importance in the landscape, we and our rickety little phaeton. Yet only a moment before, in the inn court-yard, we had felt ourselves to be the pivotal centre of a world wholly peopled with friends! This is what comes to all men who live under the modern curse--the double curse of restlessness and that itching for novelty, which made the old Greek longing for the unknown deity--which is also the only honest prayer of so many _fin de siècle_ souls! Besides the dust, there were other things abroad on the high-road. What a lot of June had got into the air! The meadows and the orchards were exuding perfumes; the hedge-rows were so many yards of roses and wild grape-vines in blossom. The sea-smells, aromatic, pungent, floated inland to be married, in hot haste, to a perfect harem of clover and locust scents. The charm of the coast was enriched by the homely, familiar scenes of farm-house life. All the country between Dives and Caen seemed one vast farm, beautifully tilled, with its meadow-lands dipping seaward. For several miles, perhaps, the agricultural note alone would be the dominant one, with the fields full of the old, the eternal surprise--the dawn of young summer rising over them. Down the sides of the low hills, the polychrome grain waved beneath the touch of the breeze like a moving sea. Many and vast were the flat-lands; they were wide vistas of color: there were fields that were scarlet with the pomp of poppies, others tinged to the yellow of a Celestial by the feathery mustard; and still others blue as a sapphire's heart from the dye of millions of bluets. A dozen small rivers--or perhaps it was only one--coiled and twisted like a cobra in sinuous action, in and out among the pasture and sea meadows. As we passed the low, bushy banks, we heard the babel of the washerwomen's voices as they gossiped and beat their clothes on the stones. A fisherman or two gave one a hint that idling was understood here, as elsewhere, as being a fine art for those who possess the talent of never being pressed for time. A peasant had brought his horse to the bank; the river, to both peasant and Percheron, was evidently considered as a personal possession--as are all rivers to those who live near them. There was a naturalness in all the life abroad in the fields that gave this Normandy highroad an incomparable charm. An Arcadian calm, a certain patriarchal simplicity reigned beneath the trees. Children trudged to the river bank with pails and pitchers to be filled; women, with rakes and scythes in hand, crept down from the upper fields to season their mid-day meal with the cooling whiff of the river and sea air. Children tugged at their skirts. In two feet of human life, with kerchief tied under chin, the small hands carrying a huge bunch of cornflowers, how much of great gravity there may be! One such rustic sketch of the future peasant was seriously carrying its bouquet to another small edition seated in a grove of poppies; it might have been a votive offering. Both the children seated themselves, a very earnest conversation ensuing. On the hill-top, near by, the father and mother were also conversing, as they bent over their scythes. Another picture was wheeling itself along the river bank; it was a farmer behind a huge load of green grass; atop of the grasses two moon-faced children had laps and hands crowded with field flowers. Behind them the mother walked, with a rake slung over her shoulder, her short skirts and scant draperies giving to her step a noble freedom. The brush of Vollon or of Breton would have seized upon her to embody the type of one of their rustic beauties, that type whose mingled fierceness and grace make their peasants the rude goddesses of the plough. Even a rustic river wearies at last of wandering, as an occupation. Miles back we had left the sea; even the hills had stopped a full hour ago, as if they had no taste for the rivalry of cathedral spires. Behold the river now, coursing as sedately as the high-road, between two interminable lines of poplars. Far as the eye could reach stretched a wide, great plain. It was flat as an old woman's palm; it was also as fertile as the city sitting in the midst of its luxuriance has been rich in history. "_Ce pays est très beau, et Caen la plus jolie ville, la plus avenante, la plus gaie, la mieux située, les plus belles rues, les plus beaux bâtiments, les plus belles églises_--" There was no doubt, Charm added, as she repeated the lady's verdict, of the opinion Madame de Sévigné had formed of the town. As we drove, some two hundred years later, through the Caen streets, the charm we found had been perpetuated, but alas! not all of the beauty. At first we were entirely certain that Caen had retained its old loveliness; the outskirts were tricked out with the bloom of gardens and with old houses brave in their armor of vines. The meadows and the great trees of the plain were partly to blame for this illusion; they yielded their place grudgingly to the cobble-stoned streets and the height of dormer windows. To come back to the world, even to a provincial world, after having lived for a time in a corner, is certain to evoke a pleasurable feeling of elation. The streets of Caen were by no means the liveliest we had driven into; nor did the inhabitants, as at Villerville, turn out _en masse_ to welcome us. The streets, to be quite truthful, were as sedately quiet as any thoroughfares could well be, and proudly call themselves boulevards. The stony-faced gray houses presented a singularly chill front, considering their nationality. But neither the pallor of the streets nor their aspect of provincial calm had power to dampen the sense of our having returned to the world of cities. A girl issuing from a doorway with a netted veil drawn tightly over her rosy cheeks, and the curve of a Parisian bodice, immediately invested Caen with a metropolitan importance. The most courteous of innkeepers was bending over our carriage-door. He was desolated, but his inn was already full; it was crowded to repletion with people; surely these ladies knew it was the week of the races? Caen was as crowded as the inn; at night many made of the open street their bed; his own court-yard was as filled with men as with farm-wagons. It was altogether hopeless as a situation; as a welcome into a strange city, I have experienced none more arctic. I had, however, forgotten that I was travelling with a conqueror; that when Charm smiled she did as she pleased with her world. The innkeeper was only a man; and since Adam, when has any member of that sex been known to say "No" to a pretty woman? This French Adam, when Charm parted her lips, showing the snow of her teeth, found himself suddenly, miraculously, endowed with a fragment of memory. _Tiens_, he had forgotten! that very morning a corner of the attic--_un bout du toit_--had been vacated. If these ladies did not mind mounting to a _grenier_--an attic, comfortable, although still only an attic! The one dormer window was on a level with the roof-tops. We had a whole company of "belles voisines," a trick of neighborliness in windows the quick French wit, years ago, was swift to name. These "neighbors" were of every order and pattern. All the world and his mother-in-law were gone to the races;--and yet every window was playing a different scene in the comedy of this life in the sky. Who does not know and love a French window, the higher up in the world of air the better? There are certain to be plants, rows of them in pots, along the wide sill; one can count on a bullfinch or a parrot, as one can on the bébés that appear to be born on purpose to poke their fingers in the cages; there is certain also to be another cage hanging above the flowers--one filled with a fresh lettuce or a cabbage leaf. There is usually a snowy curtain, fringed; just at the parting of the draperies an old woman is always seated, with chin and nose-tip meeting, her bent figure rounding over the square of her knitting-needles. It was such a window as this that made us feel, before our bonnets were laid aside, that Caen was glad to see us. The window directly opposite was wide open. Instead of one there were half a dozen songsters aloft; we were so near their cages that the cat-bird whistled, to call his master and mistress to witness the intrusion of these strangers. The master brought a hot iron along--he was a tailor and was just in the act of pressing a seam. His wife was scraping carrots, and she tucked her bowl between her knees as she came to stand and gaze across. A cry rose up within the low room. Some one else wished to see the newcomers. The tailor laid aside his iron to lift proudly, far out beyond the cages, the fattest, rosiest offspring that ever was born in an attic. The babe smote its hands for pure joy. We were better than a broken doll--we were alive. The family as a family accepted us as one among them. The man smiled, and so did his wife. Presently both nodded graciously, as if, understanding the cause of our intrusion on their aerial privacy, they wished to present us with the compliment of their welcome. The manners among these garret-windows, we murmured, were really uncommonly good. "Bonjour, mesdames!" It was the third time the woman had passed, and we were still at the window. Her husband left his seam to join her. "Ces dames are not accustomed to such heights--_à ces hauteurs peut-être?_" The ladies in truth were not, unhappily, always so well lodged; from this height at least one could hope to see a city. "_Ah! ha! c'est gai par ici, n'est-ce pas?_ One has the sun all to one's self, and air! Ah! for freshness one must climb to an attic in these days, it appears." It was impossible to be more contented on a height than was this family of tailors; for when not cooking, or washing, or tossing the "bébé" to the birds, the wife stitched and stitched all her husband cut, besides taking a turn at the family socks. Part of this contentment came, no doubt, from the variety of shows and amusements with which the family, as a family, were perpetually supplied. For workers, there were really too many social distractions abroad in the streets; it was almost impossible for the two to meet all the demands on their time. Now it was the jingle of a horse's bell-collar; the tailor, between two snips at a collar, must see who was stopping at the hotel door. Later a horn sounded; this was only the fish vender, the wife merely bent her head over the flowers to be quite sure. Next a trumpet, clear and strong, rang its notes up into the roof eaves; this was something _bébé_ must see and hear--all three were bending at the first throbbing touch of that music on the still air, to see whence it came. Thus you see, even in the provinces, in a French street, something is quite certain to happen; it all depends on the choice one makes in life of a window--of being rightly placed--whether or not one finds life dull or amusing. This tailor had the talent of knowing where to stand, at life's corner--for him there was a ceaseless procession of excitements. It may be that our neighbor's talent for seeing was catching. It is certain that no city we had ever before looked out upon had seemed as crowded with sights. The whole history of Caen was writ in stone against the blue of the sky. Here, below us, sat the lovely old town, seated in the grasses of her plain. Yonder was her canal, as an artery to keep her pulse bounding in response to the sea; the ship-masts and the drooping sails seemed strange companions for the great trees and the old garden walls. Those other walls William built to cincture the city, Froissart found three centuries later so amazingly "strong, full of drapery and merchandise, rich citizens, noble dames, damsels, and fine churches," for this girdle of the Conqueror's great bastions the eye looks in vain. But William's vow still proclaims its fulfilment; the spire of l'Abbaye aux Hommes, and the Romanesque towers of its twin, l'Abbaye aux Dames, face each other, as did William and Mathilde at the altar--that union that had to be expiated by the penance of building these stones in the air. Commend me to an attic window to put one in sympathetic relations with cathedral spires! At this height we and they, for a part of their flight upward, at least, were on a common level--and we all know what confidences come about from the accident of propinquity. They seemed to assure us as never before when sitting at their feet, the difficulties they had overcome in climbing heavenward. Every stone that looked down upon the city wore this look of triumph. In the end it was this Caen in the air--it was this aerial city of finials, of towers, of peaked spires, of carved chimneys, of tree-tops over which the clouds rode; of a plain, melting--like a sea--into the mists of the horizon; this high, bright region peopled with birds and pigeons; of a sky tender, translucent, and as variable as human emotions; of an air that was rapture to breathe, and of nights in which the stars were so close they might almost be handled; it was this free, hilly city of the roofs that is still the Caen I remember best. There were other features of Caen that were good to see, I also remember. Her street expression, on the whole, was very pleasing. It was singularly calm and composed, even for a city in a plain. But the quiet came, doubtless, from its population being away at the races. The few townspeople who, for obvious reasons, were stay-at-homes, were uncommonly civil; Caen had evidently preserved the tradition of good manners. An army of cripples was in waiting to point the way to the church doors; a regiment of beggars was within them, with nets cast already for the catching of the small fry of our pennies. In the gay, geranium-lit garden circling the side walls of St. Pierre there were many legless soldiers; the old houses we went to see later on in the high street seemed, by contrast, to have survived other wars, those of the Directory and the Mountain, with a really scandalous degree of good fortune. On our way to a still greater church than St. Pierre, to the Abbaye aux Dames, that, like the queen who built her, sits on the throne of a hill--on our way thither we passed innumerable other ancient mansions. None of these were down in the guide books; they were, therefore, invested with the deeper charm of personal discovery. Once away from the little city of the shops, the real Caen came out to greet us. It was now a gray, sad, walled town; behind the walls, level-browed Francis I. windows looked gravely over the tufts of verdure; here was an old gateway; there what might once have been a portcullis, now only an arched wreath of vines; still beyond, a group of severe-looking mansions with great iron bound windows presented the front of miniature fortresses. And everywhere gardens and gardens. Turn where you would, you would only turn to face verdure, foliage, and masses of flowers. The high walls could neither keep back the odors nor hide the luxuriance of these Caen gardens. These must have been the streets that bewitched Madame de Sévigné. Through just such a maze of foliage Charlotte Corday has also walked, again and again, with her wonderful face aflame with her great purpose, before the purpose ripened into the dagger thrust at Marat's bared breast--that avenging Angel of Beauty stabbing the Beast in his bath. Auber, with his Anacreontic ballads in his young head, would seem more fittingly framed in this old Caen that runs up a hill-side. But women as beautiful as Marie Stuart and the Corday can deal safely in the business of assassination, the world will always continue to aureole their pictures with a garland of roses. The Abbaye on its hill was reached at last. All Caen lay below us; from the hillside it flowed as a sea rolls away from a great ship's sides. Down below, far below, as if buttressing the town that seemed rushing away recklessly to the waste of the plains, stands the Abbaye's twin-brother, the Aux Hommes. Plains, houses, roof-tops, spires, all were swimming in a sea of golden light; nothing seemed quite real or solid, so vast was the prospect and so ethereal was the medium through which we saw it. Perhaps it was the great contrast between that shimmering, unstable city below, that reeked and balanced itself like some human creature whose dazzled vision had made its footing insecure--it may be that it was this note of contrast which invested this vast structure bestriding the hill, with such astonishing grandeur. I have known few, if any, other churches produce so instantaneous an effect of a beauty that was one with austerity. This great Norman is more Puritan than French: it is Norman Gothic with a Puritan severity. The sound of a deep sonorous music took us quickly within. It was as mysterious a music as ever haunted a church aisle. The vast and snowy interior was as deserted as a Presbyterian church on a week-day. Yet the sound of the rich, strong voices filled all the place. There was no sound of tingling accompaniment: there was no organ pipe, even, to add its sensuous note of color. There was only the sound of the voices, as they swelled, and broke, and began afresh. The singing went on. It was a slow "plain chant." Into the great arches the sonorous chanting beat upon the ear with a rhythmic perfection that, even without the lovely flavor of its sweetness, would have made a beauty of its own. In this still and holy place, with the company of the stately Norman arches soaring aloft--beneath the sombre glory of the giant aisle--the austere simplicity of this chant made the heart beat, one knew not why, and the eyes moisten, one also knew not why. We had followed the voices. They came, we found, from within the choir. A pattering of steps proclaimed we were to go no farther. "Not there, my ladies--step this way, one only enters the choir by going into the hospital." The voice was low and sweet; the smile, a spark of divinity set in a woman's face; and the whole was clothed in a nun's garb. We followed the fluttering robes; we passed out once more into the sunlit parvis. We spoke to the smile and it answered: yes, the choir was reserved for the Sisters--they must be able to approach it from the convent and the hospital; it had always, since the time of Mathilde, been reserved for the nuns; would we pass this way? The way took us into an open vaulted passage, past a grating where sat a white-capped Sister, past a group of girls and boys carrying wreaths and garlands--they were making ready for the _Fête-Dieu_, our nun explained--past, at the last, a series of corridors through which, faintly at first, and then sweeter and fuller, there struck once more upon our ears the sounds of the deep and resonant chanting. The black gown stopped all at once. The nun was standing in front of a green curtain. She lifted it. This was what we saw. The semicircle of a wide apse. Behind, rows upon rows of round arches. Below the arches, in the choir stalls, a long half-circle of stately figures. The figures were draped from head to foot. When they bent their heads not an inch of flesh was visible, except a few hands here and there that had escaped the long, wide sleeves. All these figures were motionless; they were as immobile as statues; occasionally, at the end of a "Gloria," all turned to face the high altar. At the end of the "Amen" a cloud of black veils swept the ground. Then for several measures of the chant the figures were again as marble. In each of the low, round arches, a stately woman, tall and nobly planned, draped like a goddess turned saint, stood and chanted to her Lord. Had the Norman builders carved these women, ages ago, standing about Mathilde's tomb, those ancient sculptures could not have embodied, in more ideal image, the type of womanly renunciation and of a saint's fervor of exaltation. We left them, with the rich chant still full upon their lips, with heads bent low, calm as graven images. It was only the bloom on a cheek, here and there, that made one certain of the youth entombed within these nuns' garb. "Happy, _mesdames? Oh, mais très heureuses, toutes_--there are no women so happy as we. See how they come to us, from all the country around. _En voilà une_--did you remark the pretty one, with the book, seated, all in white? She is to be a full Sister in a month. She comes from a noble family in the south. She was here one day, she saw the life of the Sisters, of us all working here, among the poor soldiers--_elle a vu ça, et pour tout de bon, s'est donnée à Dieu!_" The smile of our nun was rapturous. She was proving its source. Once more we saw the young countess who had given herself to her God. An hour later, when we had reached the hospital wards, her novice's robes were trailing the ground. She was on her knees in the very middle of the great bare room. She was repeating the office of the hour, aloud, with clasped hands and uplifted head. On her lovely young face there was the glow of a divine ecstasy. All the white faces from the long rows of the white beds were bending toward her; to one even in all fulness of strength and health that girlish figure, praying beside the great vase of the snowy daisies, with the glow that irradiated the sweet, pure face, might easily enough have seemed an angel's. As companions for our tour of the grounds we had two young Englishmen. Both eyed the nuns in the distance of the corridors and the gardens with the sharpened glances all men level at the women who have renounced them. It is a mystery no man ever satisfactorily fathoms. "Queer notion, this, a lot of women shutting themselves up," remarked the younger of the two. "In England, now, they'd all go in for being old maids, drinking tea and coddling cats, you know." "I wonder which are the happier, your countrywomen or these Sisters, who, in renouncing the world devote their lives to serving it. See, over yonder" and I nodded to a scene beneath the wide avenue of the limes. Two tall Augustines were supporting a crippled old man; they were showing him some fresh garden-beds. Beyond was a gayer group. Some of the lay sisters were tugging at a huge basket of clothes, fresh from the laundry. Running across the grass, with flying draperies, two nuns, laughing as they ran, each striving to outfoot the other, were hastening to their rescue. "They keep their bloom, running about like that; only healthy nuns I ever saw." "That's because they have something better than cats to coddle." "Ah, ha! that's not bad. It's a slow suicide, all the same. But here we are, at the top; it's a fine outlook, is it not?" The young man panted as he reached the top of the Maze, one of the chief glories of the old Abbaye grounds. He had a fair and sensitive face; a weak product on the whole, he seemed, compared with the nobly-built, vigorous-bodied nuns crowding the choir-stalls yonder. Instead of that long, slow suicide, surely these women should be doing their greater work of reproducing a race. Even an open-air cell seems to me out of place in our century. It will be entirely out of fashion in time, doubtless, as the mediaeval cell has gone along with the old castle life, whose princely mode of doing things made a nunnery the only respectable hiding-place for the undowered daughters. As we crept down into Caen, it was to find it thick with the dust of twilight. The streets were dense with other things besides the thickened light. The Caen world was crowding homeward; all the boulevards and side streets were alive with a moving throng of dusty, noisy, weary holidaymakers. The town was abroad in the streets to hear the news of the horses, and to learn the history of the betting. Although we had gone to church instead of doing the races, many of those who had peopled the gay race-track came back to us. The table d'hôte, at our inn that night, was as noisy as a Parisian cafe. It was scarcely as discreet, I should say. On our way to our attic that night, the little corridors made us a really amazing number of confidences. It was strange, but all the shoes appeared to have come in pairs of twos. Never was there such a collection of boots in couples. Strange it was, also, to see how many little secrets these rows of candid shoe-leather disclosed. Here a pert, coquettish pair of ties were having as little in common as possible with the stout, somewhat clumsy walking-boots next them. In the two just beyond, at the next door, how the delicate, slender buttoned kids leaned over, floppingly, to rest on the coarse, yet strong, hobnailed clumpers! Shabbier and shabbier grew the shoes, as we climbed upward. With each pair of stairs we seemed to have left a rung in the ladder of fortune behind. But even the very poorest in pocket had brought his little extravagance with him to the races. The only genuine family party had taken refuge, like ourselves, in the attic. At the very next door to our own, Monsieur, Madame, et Bébé proclaimed, by the casting of their dusty shoes, that they also, like the rest of the world, had come to Caen to see the horses run. CHAPTER XXIV. A DAY AT BAYEUX AND ST. LO. Caen seated in its plain, wearing its crown of steeples--this was our last glimpse of the beautiful city. Our way to Bayeux was strewn thick with these Normandy jewels; with towns smaller than Caen; with Gothic belfries; with ruined priories, and with castles, stately even when tottering in decay. When the last castle was lost in a thicket, we discovered that our iron horse was stopping in the very middle of a field. If the guard had shouted out the name of any American city, built overnight, on a Western prairie, we should have felt entirely at home in this meadow; we should have known any clearing, with grass and daisies, was a very finished evidence of civilization at high pressure. But a lane as the beginning of a cathedral town! Evidently Bayeux has had a Ruskinian dread of steam-whistles, for this ancient seat of bishops has succeeded in retaining the charms of its old rustic approaches, whatever else it may have sacrificed on the altar of modernness. An harangue, at the door of the quaint old Normandy omnibus, by the driver of the same, was proof that the lesson of good oratory, administered by generations of bishops, had not been lost on the Bayeux inhabitants. Two rebellious English tourists furnished the text for the driver's sermon; they were showing, with all the naive pride of pedestrians, their intention of footing the distance between the station and the cathedral. This was an independence of spirit no Norman could endure to see. What? these gentlemen proposed to walk, in the sun, through clouds of dust, when here was a carriage, with ladies for companions, at their command? The coach had come down the hill on purpose to conduct _Messieurs les voyageurs;_ how did these gentlemen suppose _a père de famille_ was to make his living if the fashion of walking came in? And the rusty red vest was thumbed by the gnarled hand of the father, who was also an orator; and a high-peaked hat swept the ground before the hard-hearted gentlemen. All the tragedy of the situation had come about from the fact that the tourists, also, had gotten themselves up in costume. When two fine youths have risen early in the day to put on checked stockings, leggings, russet walking-shoes, and a plaited coat with a belt, such attire is one to be lived up to. Once in knickerbockers and a man's getting into an omnibus is really too ignominious! With such a road before two sets of such well-shaped calves--a road all shaped and graded--this, indeed, would be flying in the face of a veritable providence of bishop-builders intent on maintaining pastoral effects. The knickerbockers relentlessly strode onward; the driver had addressed himself to hearts of stone. But he had not yet exhausted his quiver of appeal. Englishmen walk, well! there's no accounting for the taste of Britons who are also still half savages; but even a barbarian must eat. Half-way up the hill, the rattle of the loose-jointed vehicle came to a dead stop. With great gravity the guard descended from his seat; this latter he lifted to take from the entrails of the old vehicle a handful of hand-bills. He, the horse, the omnibus, and we, all waited for, what do you suppose? To besprinkle the walking Englishmen as they came within range with a shower of circulars announcing that at "_midi, chez Nigaud, il y aura un dejeuner chaud_." The driver turned to look in at the window--and to nod as he turned--he felt so certain of our sympathy; had he not made sure of them at last? A group of gossamer caps beneath a row of sad, gray-faced houses was our Bayeux welcome. The faces beneath the caps watched our approach with the same sobriety as did the old houses--they had the antique Norman seriousness of aspect. The noise we made with the clatter and rattle of our broken-down vehicle seemed an impertinence, in the face of such severe countenances. We might have been entering a deserted city, except for the presence of these motionless Normandy figures. The cathedral met us at the threshold of the city: magnificent, majestic, a huge gray mountain of stone, but severe in outline, as if the Norman builders had carved on the vast surface of its facade an imprint of their own grave earnestness. We were somewhat early for the hot breakfast at Nigaud's. There was, however, the appetizing smell of soup, with a flourishing pervasiveness of onion in the pot, to sustain the vigor of an appetite whetted by a start at dawn. The knickerbockers came in with the omelette. But one is not a Briton on his travels for nothing; one does not leave one's own island to be the dupe of French inn-keepers. The smell of the soup had not departed with our empty plates, and the voice of the walkers was not of the softest when they demanded their rights to be as odorous as we. There is always a curiously agreeable sensation, to an American, in seeing an Englishman angry; to get angry in public is one thing we do badly; and in his cup of wrath our British brother is sublime--he is so superbly unconscious--and so contemptuous--of the fact that the world sometimes finds anger ridiculous. At the other end of the long and narrow table two other travellers were seated, a man and a woman. But food, to them, it was made manifestly evident, was a matter of the most supreme indifference. They were at that radiant moment of life when eating is altogether too gross a form of indulgence. For these two were at the most interesting period of French courtship--just _after_ the wedding ceremony, when, with the priest's blessing, had come the consent of their world and of tradition to their making the other's acquaintance. This provincial bride and her husband of a day were beginning, as all rustic courting begins, by a furtive holding of hands; this particular couple, in view of our proximity and their own mutual embarrassment, had recourse to the subterfuge of desperate lunges at the other's fingers, beneath the table-cloth. The screen, as a screen, did not work. It deceived no one--as the bride's pale-gray dress and her flowery bonnet also deceived no one--save herself. This latter, in certain ranks of life, is the bride's travelling costume, the world over. And the world over, it is worn by the recently wedded with the profound conviction that in donning it they have discovered the most complete of all disguises. This bride and groom were obviously in the first rapture of mutual discovery. The honey in their moon was not fresher than their views of the other's tastes and predilections. "Ah--ah--you like to travel quickly--to see everything, to take it all in a gulp--so do I, and then to digest at one's leisure." The bride was entirely of this mind. Only, she murmured, there were other things one must not do too quickly--one must go slow in matters of the heart--to make quite sure of all the stages. But her husband was at her throat, that is, his eyes and lips were, as he answered, so that all the table might partake of his emotion--"No, no, the quicker the heart feels the quicker love comes. _Tiens, voyons, mon amie, toi-même, tu m'as confié_"--and the rest was lost in the bride's ear. Apparently we were to have them, these brides, for the rest of our journey, in all stages and of all ages! Thus far none others had appeared as determined as were these two honey-mooners, that all the world should share their bliss. They were cracking filberts with their disengaged fingers, the other two being closely interlocked, in quite scandalous openness, when we left them. That was the only form of excitement that greeted us in the quiet Bayeux streets. The very street urchins invited repose; the few we saw were seated sedately on the threshold of their own door-steps, frequent sallies abroad into this quiet city having doubtless convinced them of the futility of all sorties. The old houses were their carved facades as old ladies wear rich lace--they had reached the age when the vanity of personal adornment had ceased to inflate. The great cathedral, towering above the tranquil town, wore a more conscious air; its significance was too great a contrast to the quiet city asleep at its feet. In these long, slow centuries the towers had grown to have the air of protectors. The famous tapestries we went to see later, might easily enough have been worked yesterday, in any one of the old mediaeval houses; Mathilde and her hand-maidens would find no more--not so much--to distract and disturb them now in this still and tranquil town, with its sad gray streets and its moss-grown door-steps, as they must in those earlier bustling centuries of the Conqueror. Even then, when Normandy was only beginning its career of importance among the great French provinces, Bayeux was already old. She was far more Norse then than Norman; she was Scandinavian to the core; even her nobles spoke in harsh Norse syllables; they were as little French as it was possible to be, and yet govern a people. Mathilde, when she toiled over her frame, like all great writers, was doubtless quite unconscious she was producing a masterpiece. She was, however, in point of fact, the very first among the great French realists. No other French writer has written as graphically as she did with her needle, of the life and customs of their day. That long scroll of tapestry, for truth and a naive perfection of sincerity--where will you find it equalled or even approached? It is a rude Homeric epic; and I am not quite certain that it ought not to rank higher than even some of the more famous epics of the world--since Mathilde had to create the mould of art into which she poured her story. For who had thought before her of making women's stitches write or paint a great historical event, crowded with homely details which now are dubbed archaeological veracities? Bayeux and its tapestry; its grave company of antique houses; its glorious cathedral dominating the whole--what a lovely old background against which poses the eternal modernness of the young noon sun! The history of Bayeux is commonly given in a paragraph. Our morning's walk had proved to us it was the kind of town that does more to re-create the historic past than all the pages of a Guizot or a Challamel. The bells that were ringing out the hour of high-noon from the cathedral towers at Bayeux were making the heights of St. Lo, two hours later, as noisy as a village fair. The bells, for rivals, had the clatter of women's tongues. I think I never, before or since, have beheld so lively a company of washerwomen as were beating their clothes in Vire River. The river bends prettily just below the St. Lo heights, as if it had gone out of its way to courtesy to a hill. But even the waters, in their haste to be polite, could not course beneath the great bridge as swiftly as ran those women's tongues. There were a good hundred of them at work beneath the washing-sheds. Now, these sheds, anywhere in France, are really the open-air club room of the French peasant woman; the whole dish of the village gossip is hung out to dry, having previously been well soused and aired, along with the blouses and the coarse chemises. The town of St. Lo had evidently furnished these club members of the washing-stones with some fat dish of gossip--the heads were as close as currants on a stem, as they bent in groups over the bright waters. They had told it all to the stream; and the stream rolled the volume of the talk along as it carried along also the gay, sparkling reflections of the life and the toil that bent over it--of the myriad reflections of those moving, bare-armed figures, of the brilliant kerchiefs, of the wet blue and gray jerseys, and of the long prismatic line of the damp, motley-hued clothes that were fluttering in the wind. The bells' clangor was an assurance that something was happening on top of the hill. Just what happened was as altogether pleasing a spectacle, after a long and arduous climb up a hillside, as it has often been my good fortune to encounter. The portals of the church of Notre Dame were wide open. Within, as we looked over the shoulders of the townspeople who, like us, had come to see what the bells meant by their ringing, within the church there was a rich and sombre dusk; out of this dusk, indistinctly at first, lit by the tremulous flicker of a myriad of candles, came a line of white-veiled heads; then another of young boys, with faces as pale as the nosegays adorning their brand-new black coats; next the scarlet-robed choristers, singing, and behind them still others swinging incense that thickened the dusk. Suddenly, like a vision, the white veils passed out into the sunlight, and we saw that the faces beneath the veils were young and comely. The faces were still alternately lighted by the flare of the burning tapers and the glare of the noon sun. The long procession ended at last in a straggling group of old peasants with fine tremulous mouths, a-tremble with pride and with feeling; for here they were walking in full sight of their town, in their holiday coats, with their knees treacherously unsteady from the thrill of the organ's thunder and the sweetness of the choir-boys' singing. Whether it was a pardon, or a _fête_, or a first communion, we never knew. But the town of St. Lo is ever gloriously lighted, for us, with a nimbus of young heads, such as encircled the earlier madonnas. After such a goodly spectacle, the rest of the town was a tame morsel. We took a parting sniff of the incense still left in the eastern end of the church's nave; there was a bit of good glass in a window to reward us. Outside the church, on the west from the Petite Place, was a wide outlook over the lovely vale of the Vire, with St. Lo itself twisting and turning in graceful postures down the hillside. On the same prospect two kings have looked, and before the kings a saint. St. Lo or St. Laudus himself, who gave his name to the town, must, in the sixth century, have gazed on virgin forests stretching away from the hill far as the eye could reach. Charlemagne, three hundred years later, in his turn, found the site a goodly one, one to tempt men to worship the Creator of such beauty, for here he founded the great Abbey of St. Croix, long since gone with the monks who peopled it. Louis XI, that mystic wearing the warrior's helmet, set his seal of approval on the hill, by sending the famous glass yonder in the cathedral, when the hill and the St. Lo people beat the Bretons who had come to capture both. Like saint, and kings, and monks, and warriors, we in our turn crept down the hill. For we also were done with the town. CHAPTER XXV. A DINNER AT COUTANCES. The way from St. Lo to Coutances is a pleasant way. There is no map of the country that will give you even a hint of its true character, any more than from a photograph you can hope to gain an insight into the moral qualities of a pretty woman. Here, at last, was the ideal Normandy landscape. It was a country with a savage look--a savage that had been trained to follow the plough. Even in its color it had retained the true barbarians' instinct for a good primary. Here were no melting-yellow mustard-fields, nor flame-lit poppied meadows, nor blue-bells lifting their baby-blue eyes out of the grain. All the land was green. Fields, meadows, forests, plains--all were green, green, green. The features of the landscape had changed with this change in coloring. The slim, fragile grace of slim trees and fragile cliffs had been replaced by trees of heroic proportions, and by outlines nobly rounded and full--like the breasts of a mother. The whole country had an astonishing look of vigor--of the vigor which comes with rude strength; and it had that charm which goes with all untamed beauty--the power to sting one into a sense of agitated enjoyment. Even the farm-houses had been suddenly transformed into fortresses. Each one of the groups of the farm enclosures had its outer walls, its miniature turrets, and here and there its rounded bastions. Each farm, apparently, in the olden days had been a citadel unto itself. The Breton had been a very troublesome neighbor for many a long century; every ploughman, until a few hundred years ago, was quite likely to turn soldier at a second's notice--every true Norman must look to his own sword to defend his hearth-stone. Such is the story those stone turrets that cap the farm walls tell you--each one of these turrets was an open lid through which the farmer could keep his eye on Brittany. Meanwhile, along the roads as we rushed swiftly by, a quieter life was passing. The farm wagons were jogging peacefully along on a high-road as smooth as a fine lady's palm--and as white. The horses were harnessed one before the other, in interminable length of line. Sometimes six, sometimes eight, even so many as ten, marched with great gravity, and with that majestic dignity only possible to full-blooded Percherons, one after the other. They each wore a saddle-cloth of blue sheepskin. On their mottled haunches this bit of color made their polished coats to gleam like unto a lizards' skin. Meanwhile, also, we were nearing Coutances. The farm-houses were fortresses no longer; the thatched roofs were one once more with the green of the high roads; for even in the old days there was a great walled city set up on a hill, to which refuge all the people about for miles could turn for protection. A city that is set on a hill! That for me is commonly recommendation enough. Such a city, so set, promises at the very least the dual distinction of looking up as well as looking down; it is the nearer heaven, and just so much the farther removed from earth. Coutances, for a city with its head in the air, was surprisingly friendly. It went out of its way to make us at home. At the very station, down below in the plain, it had sent the most loquacious of coach-drivers to put us in immediate touch with its present interests. All the city, as the coarse blue blouse, flourishing its whip, took pains to explain, was abroad in the fields; the forests, _tiens_, down yonder through the trees, we could see for ourselves how the young people were making the woods as crowded as a ball-room. The city, as a city, was stripping the land and the trees bare--it would be as bald as a new-born babe by the morrow. But then, of a certainty, we also had come for the _fête_--or, and here a puzzled look of doubt beclouded the provincial's eyes--might we, perchance, instead, have come for the trial? _Mais non, pas çà_, these ladies had never come for that, since they did not even know the court was sitting, now, this very instant, at Coutances. And--_sapristi!_ but there was a trial going on--one to make the blood curdle; he himself had not slept, the rustic coachman added, as he shivered beneath his blouse, all the night before--the blood had run so cold in his veins. The horse and the road were all the while going up the hill. The road was easily one that might have been the path of warriors; the walls, still lofty on the side nearest the town, bristled with a turret or a bastion to remind us Coutances had not been set on a hill for mere purposes of beauty. The ramparts of the old fortifications had been turned into a broad promenade. Even as we jolted past, beneath the great breadth of the trees' verdure we could see how gloriously the prospect widened--the country below reaching out to the horizon like the waters of a sea that end only in indefiniteness. The city itself seemed to grow out of the walls and the trees. Here and there a few scattered houses grouped themselves as if meaning to start a street; but a maze of foliage made a straight line impossible. Finally a large group of buildings, with severe stone faces, took a more serious plunge away from the vines; they had shaken themselves free and were soon soberly ranging themselves into the parallel lines of narrow city streets. It was a pleasant surprise to find that, for once, a Norman blouse had told the truth; for here were the people of Coutances coming up from the fields to prove it. In all these narrow streets a great multitude of people were passing us; some were laden with vines, others with young forest trees, and still others with rude garlands of flowers. The peasant women's faces, as the bent figures staggered beneath a young fir-tree, were purple, but their smiles were as gay as the wild flowers with which the stones were thickly strewn. Their words also were as rough: "_Diantre--mais c'e lourd!_" "_E-ben, e toi, tu n' bougeons point, toi!_" And the nearest fir-tree carrier to our carriage wheels cracked a swift blow over the head of a vine-bearer, who being but an infant of two, could not make time with the swift foot of its mother. The smell of the flowers was everywhere. Fir-trees perfumed the air. Every doorstep was a garden. The courtyards were alive with the squat figures of capped maidens, wreathing and twisting greens and garlands. And in the streets there was such a noise as was never before heard in a city on a hill-top. For Coutances was to hold its great _fête_ on the morrow. It was a relief to turn in from the noise and hubbub to the bright courtyard of our inn. The brightness thereof, and of the entire establishment, indeed, appeared to find its central source in the brilliant eyes of our hostess. Never was an inn-keeper gifted with a vision at once so omniscient and so effulgent. Those eyes were everywhere; on us, on our bags, our bonnets, our boots; they divined our wants, and answered beforehand our unuttered longings. We had come far? the eyes asked, burning a hole through our gossamer evasions; from Paris, perhaps--a glance at our bonnets proclaimed the eyes knew all; we were here for the _fête_, to see the bishop on the morrow; that was well; we were going on to the Mont; and the eyes scented the shortness of our stay by a swift glance at our luggage. "_Numéro quatre, au troisième!_" There was no appeal possible. The eyes had penetrated the disguise of our courtesy; we were but travellers of a night; the top story was built for such as we. But such a top story, and such a chamber therein! A great, wide, low room; beams deep and black, with here and there a brass bit hanging; waxed floors, polished to mirrory perfection; a great bed clad in snowy draperies, with a snow-white _duvet_ of gigantic proportions. The walls were gray with lovely bunches of faded rosebuds flung abroad on the soft surface; and to give a quaint and antique note to the whole, over the chimney was a bit of worn tapestry with formidable dungeon, a Norman keep in the background, and well up in front, a stalwart young master of the hounds, with dogs in leash, of the heavy Norman type of bulging muscle and high cheekbones. Altogether, there were worse fates in the world than to be travellers of a night, with the destiny of such a room as part of the fate. When we descended the steep, narrow spiral of steps to the dining-room, it was to find the eyes of our hostess brighter than ever. The noise in the streets had subsided. It was long after dusk, and Coutances was evidently a good provincial. But in the gay little dining-room there was an astonishing bustle and excitement. The _fête_ and the court had brought a crowd of diners to the inn-table; when we were all seated we made quite a company at the long, narrow board. The candles and lamps lit up any number of Vandyke pointed beards, of bald heads, of loosely-tied cravats, and a few matronly bosoms straining at the buttons of silk holiday gowns. For the _Fête-Dieu_ had brought visitors besides ourselves from all the country round; and then "a first communion is like a marriage, all the relatives must come, as doubtless we knew," was a baldhead's friendly beginning of his soup and his talk, as we took our seats beside him. With the appearance of the _potage_ conversation, like a battle between foes eager for contest, had immediately engaged itself. The setting of the table and the air of companionship pervading the establishment were aiders and abettors to immediate intercourse. Nothing could be prettier than the Caen bowls with their bunches of purple phlox and spiked blossoms. Even a metropolitan table might have taken a lesson from the perfection of the lighting of the long board. In order that her guests should feel the more entirely at home, our brilliant-eyed hostess came in with the soup; she took her place behind it at the head of the table. It was evident the merchants from Cherbourg who had come as witnesses to the trial, had had many a conversational bout before now with madame's ready wit. So had two of the town lawyers. Even the commercial gentlemen, for once, were experiencing a brief moment of armed suspense, before they flung themselves into the arena of talk. At first, or it would never have been in the provinces, this talk at the long table, everyone broke into speech at once. There was a flood of words; one's sense of hearing was stunned by the noise. Gradually, as the cider and the thin red wine were passed, our neighbors gave digestion a chance; the din became less thick with words; each listened when the other talked. But, as the volume of speech lessened, the interest thickened. It finally became concentrated, this interest, into true French fervor when the question of the trial was touched on. "They say D'Alençon is very clever. He pleads for Filon, the culprit, to-night, does he not?" "Yes, poor Filon--it will go hard with him. His crime is a black one." "I should think it was--implicating _le petit_!" "Dame! the judge doesn't seem to be of your mind." "Ah--h!" cried a florid Vandyke-bearded man, the dynamite bomb of the table, exploding with a roar of rage. "_Ah--h, cré nom de Dieu!--Messieurs les presidents_ are all like that; they are always on the side of the innocent--" "Till they prove them guilty." "Guilty! guilty!" the bomb exploded in earnest now. "How many times in the annals of crime is a man guilty--really guilty? They should search for the cause--and punish that. That is true justice. The instigator, the instigator--he is the true culprit. Inheritances--_voilà les vrais coupables_. But when are such things investigated? It is ever the innocent who are punished. I know something of that--I do." "_Allons--allons!_" cried the table, laughing at the beard's vehemence. "When were you ever under sentence?" "When I was doing my duty," the beard hurled back with both arms in the air; "when I was doing my three years--I and my comrade; we were convicted--punished--for an act of insubordination we never committed. Without a trial, without a chance of defending ourselves, we were put on two crumbs of bread and a glass of water for two months. And we were innocent--as innocent as babes, I tell you." The table was as still as death. The beard had proved himself worthy of this compliment; his voice was the voice of drama, and his gestures such as every Frenchman delights in beholding and executing. Every ear was his, now. "I have no rancor. I am, by nature, what God made me, a peaceable man, but"--here the voice made a wild _crescendo_--"if I ever meet my colonel--_gare à lui_! I told him so. I waited two years, two long years, till I was released; then I walked up to him" (the beard rose here, putting his hand to his forehead), "I saluted" (the hand made the salute), "and I said to him, 'Mon colonel, you convicted me, on false evidence, of a crime I never committed. You punished me. It is two years since then. But I have never forgotten. Pray to God we may never meet in civil life, for then yours would end!" "_Allons, allons!_ A man after all must do his duty. A colonel--he can't go into details!" remonstrated the hostess, with her knife in the air. "I would stick him, I tell you, as I would a pig--or a Prussian! I live but for that!" "_Monstre!_" cried the table in chorus, with a laugh, as it took its wine. And each turned to his neighbor to prove the beard in the wrong. "Of what crime is the defendant guilty--he who is to be tried to-night?" Charm asked of a silent man, with sweet serious eyes and a rough gray beard, seated next her. Of all the beards at the table, this one alone had been content with listening. "Of fraud--mademoiselle--of fraud and forgery." The man had a voice as sweet as a church bell, and as deep. Every word he said rang out slowly, sonorously. The attention of the table was fixed in an instant. "It is the case of a Monsieur Filon, of Cherbourg. He is a cider merchant. He has cheated the state, making false entries, etc. But his worst crime is that he has used as his accomplice _un tout petit jeune homme_--a lad of barely fifteen--" "It is that that will make it go hard for him with the jury--" "Hard!" cried the ex-soldier, getting red at once with the passion of his protest--"hard--it ought to condemn him, to guillotine him. What are juries for if they don't kill such rascals as he?" "_Doucement, doucement, monsieur,_" interrupted the bell-note of the merchant. "One doesn't condemn people without hearing both sides. There may be extenuating circumstances!" "Yes--there are. He is a merchant. All merchants are thieves. He does as all others do--_only_ he was found out." A protesting murmur now rose from the table, above which rang once more, in clear vibrations, the deep notes of the merchant. "_Ah--h, mais--tous voleurs--non_, not all are thieves. Commerce conducted on such principles as that could not exist. Credit is not founded on fraud, but on trust." "_Très bien, très bien,_" assented the table. Some knives were thumped to emphasize the assent. "As for stealing"--the rich voice continued, with calm judicial slowness--"I can understand a man's cheating the state once, perhaps--yielding to an impulse of cupidity. But to do as _ce_ Monsieur Filon has done--he must be a consummate master of his art--for his processes are organized robbery." "Ah--h, but robbery against the state isn't the same thing as robbing an individual," cried the explosive, driven into a corner. "It is quite the same--morally, only worse. For a man who robs the state robs everyone--including himself." "That's true--perfectly true--and very well put." All the heads about the table nodded admiringly; their hostess had expressed the views of them all. The company was looking now at the gray beard with glistening eyes; he had proved himself master of the argument, and all were desirous of proving their homage. Not one of the nice ethical points touched on had been missed; even the women had been eagerly listening, following, criticising. Here was a little company of people gathered together from rustic France, meeting, perhaps, for the first time at this board. And the conversation had, from the very beginning, been such as one commonly expects to hear only among the upper ranks of metropolitan circles. Who would have looked to see a company of Norman provincials talking morality, and handling ethics with the skill of rhetoricians? Most of our fellow-diners, meanwhile, were taking their coffee in the street. Little tables were ranged close to the house-wall. There was just room for a bench beside the table, and then the sidewalk ended. "Shall you be going to the trial to-night?" courteously asked the merchant who had proven himself a master in debate, of Charm. He had lifted his hat before he sat down, bowing to her as if he had been in a ball-room. "It will be fine to-night--it is the opening of the defence," he added, as he placed carefully two lumps of sugar in his cup. "It's always finer at night--what with the lights and the people," interpolated the landlady, from her perch on the door-sill. "If _ces dames_ wish to go, I can show them the way to the galleries. Only," she added, with a warning tone, her growing excitement obvious at the sense of the coming pleasure, "it is like the theatre. The earlier we get there the better the seat. I go to get my hat." And the door swallowed her up. "She is right--it is like a theatre," soliloquized the merchant--"and so is life. Poor Filon!" We should have been very content to remain where we were. The night had fallen; the streets, as they lost themselves in dim turnings, in mysterious alleyways, and arches that seemed grotesquely high in the vague blur of things, were filled for us with the charm of a new and lovely beauty. At one end the street ended in a towering mass of stone; that doubtless was the cathedral. At the right, the narrow houses dipped suddenly; their roof-lines were lost in vagueness. Between the slit made by the street a deep, vast chasm opened; it was the night filling the great width of sky, and the mists that shrouded the hill, rising out of the sleeping earth. There was only one single line of light; a long deep glow was banding the horizon; it was a bit of flame the dusk held up, like a fading torch, to show where the sun had reigned. In and out of this dusk the townspeople came and went. Away from the mellow lights, streaming past the open inn doors, the shapes were only a part of the blur; they were vague, phantasmal masses, clad in coarse draperies. As they passed into the circle of light, the faces showed features we had grown to know--the high cheekbones, the ruddy tones, the deep-set, serious eyes, and firm mouths, with lips close together. The air on this hill-top must be of excellent quality; the life up here could scarcely be so hard as in the field villages. For the women looked less worn, and less hideously old, and in the men's eyes there was not so hard and miserly a glittering. Almost all, young or old, were bearing strange burdens. Some of the men were carrying huge floral crosses; the women were laden with every conceivable variety of object--with candlesticks, vases, urns, linen sheets, rugs, with chairs even. "They are helping to dress the reposoirs, they must all be in readiness for the morning," answered our friend, still beside us, when we asked the cause of this astonishing spectacle. Everywhere garlands and firs, leaves, flowers, and wreaths; people moving rapidly; the carriers of the crosses stopping to chat for an instant with groups working at some mysterious scaffolding--all shapes in darkness. Everywhere, also, there was the sweet, aromatic scent of the greens and the pines abroad in the still, clear air of the summer night. This was the perfume and these the dim pictures that were our company along the narrow Coutances streets. CHAPTER XXVI. A SCENE IN A NORMAN COURT. The court-room was brightly lighted; the yellow radiance on the white walls made the eyes blink. We had turned, following our guide, from the gloom of the dim streets into the roomy corridors of the Prefecture. Even the gardens about the building were swarming with townspeople and peasants waiting for the court to open. When we entered it was to find the hallways and stairs blocked with a struggling mass of people, all eager to get seats. A voice that was softened to a purring note, the voice that goes with the pursuit of the five franc piece, spoke to our landlady. "The seats to be reserved in the tribune were for these ladies?" No time had been lost, you perceive. We were strangers; the courtesies of the town were to be extended to us. We were to have of their best, here in Coutances; and their best, just now, was this _mise en scène_ in their court room. The stage was well set. The Frenchman's instinctive sense of fitness was obvious in the arrangements. Long lines of blue drapery from the tall windows brought the groups below into high relief; the scarlet of the judges' robes was doubly impressive against this background. The lawyers, in their flowing black gowns and white ties, gained added dignity from the marine note behind them. The bluish pallor of the walls made the accused and the group about him pathetically sombre. Each one of this little group was in black. The accused himself, a sharp, shrewd, too keen-eyed man of thirty or so, might have been following a corpse--so black was his raiment. Even the youth beside him, a dull, sodden-eyed lad, with an air of being here not on his own account, but because he had been forced to come, was clad in deepest mourning. By the side of the culprit sat the one really tragic figure in all the court--the culprit's wife. She also was in black. In happier times she must have been a fair, fresh-colored blonde. Now all the color was gone from her cheek. She was as pale as death, and in her sweet downcast eyes there were the tell-tale vigils of long nights of weeping. Beside her sat an elderly man who bent over her, talking, whispering, commenting as the trial went on. Every eye in the tribune was fixed on the slim young figure. A passing glance sufficed, as a rule, for the culprit and his accomplice; but it was on the wife that all the quick French sympathy, that volubly spoke itself out, was lavished. The blouses and peasants' caps, the tradesmen and their wives crowded close about the railing to pass their comment. "She looks far more guilty than he," muttered a wizened old man next to us, very crooked on his three-legged stool. "Yes," warmly added a stout capped peasant, with a basket once on her arm, now serving as a pedestal to raise the higher above the others her own curiosity. "Yes--she has her modesty--too--to speak for her--" "Bah--all put on--to soften the jury." It was our fiery one of the table d'hôte who had wedged his way toward us. "And why not? A woman must make use of what weapons she has at hand--" _"Silence! Silence! messieurs!"_ The _huissier_ brought down his staff of office with a ring. The clatter of sabots over the wooden floor of the tribune and the loud talking were disturbing the court. This French court, as a court, sat in strange fashion, it seemed to us. The bench was on wonderfully friendly terms with the table about which the clerks sat, with the lawyers, with the foreman of the jury, with even the _huissiers_. Monsieur le President was in his robes, but he wore them as negligently as he did the dignity of his office. He and the lawyer for the defence, a noted Coutances orator, openly wrangled; the latter, indeed, took little or no pains to show him respect; now they joked together, next a retort flashed forth which began a quarrel, and the court and the trial looked on as both struggled for a mastery in the art of personal abuse. The lawyer made nothing of raising his finger, to shake it in open menace in the very teeth of the scarlet robes. And the robes clad a purple-faced figure that retorted angrily, like a fighting school-boy. But to Coutances, this, it appears, was a proper way for a court to sit. "_Ah, D'Alençon--il est fort, lui. C'est lui qui agace toujours monsieur le président_--" "He'll win--he'll make a great speech--he is never really fine unless it's a question of life or death--" Such were the criticisms that were poured out from the quick-speaking lips about us. Presently a simultaneous movement on the part of the jury brought the proceedings to confusion. A witness in the act of giving evidence stopped short in his sentence; he twisted his head; looking upward, he asked a question of the foreman, and the latter nodded, as if assenting. The judge then looked up. All the court looked up. All the heads were twisted. Something obviously was wrong. Then, presently the _concierge_ appeared with a huge bunch of keys. And all the court waited in perfect stillness while the windows were being closed! "_Il y avait un courant d'air_--there was a draught,"--gravely announced the crooked man, as he rose to let the _concierge_ pass. This latter had her views of a court so susceptible to whiffs of night air. "_Ces messieurs_ are delicate--pity they have to be out at night!"--whereat the tribune snickered. All went on bravely for a good half-hour. More witnesses were called; each answered with wonderful aptness, ease, and clearness; none were confused or timid; these were not men to be the playthings of others who made tortuous cross-questionings their trade. They, also, were Frenchmen; they knew how to speak. The judge and the Coutances lawyer continued their jokes and their squabblings. And still only the poor wife hung her head. Then all at once the judge began to mop his brow. The jury, to a man, mopped theirs. The witnesses and lawyers each brought forth their big silk handkerchiefs. All the court was wiping its brow. "It's the heat," cried the judge. "_Huissier_, call the _concierge_; tell her to open the windows." The _concierge_ reappeared. Flushed this time, and with anger in her eye. She pushed her way through the crowd; she took not the least pains in the world to conceal her opinion of a court as variable as this one. "_Ah mais_, this is too much! if the jury doesn't know its mind better than this!"--and in the fury of her wrath she well-nigh upset the crooked little old gentleman and his three-legged stool. "That's right--that's right. I'm not a fine lady, tip me over. You open and shut me as if I were a bureau drawer; _continuez_--_continuez_--" The _concierge_ had reached the windows now. She was opening and slamming them in the face of the judge, the jury, and _messieurs les huissiers_, with unabashed violence. The court, except for that one figure in sombre draperies, being men, suffered this violence as only men bear with a woman in a temper. With the letting in of the fresh air, fresh energy in the prosecution manifested itself. The witnesses were being subjected to inquisitorial torture; their answers were still glib, but the faces were studies of the passions held in the leash of self-control. Not twenty minutes had ticked their beat of time when once more the jury, to a man, showed signs of shivering. Half a dozen gravely took out their pocket-handkerchiefs, and as gravely covered their heads. Others knotted the square of linen, thus making a closer head-gear. The judge turned uneasily in his own chair; he gave a furtive glance at the still open windows; as he did so he caught sight of his jury thus patiently suffering. The spectacle went to his heart; these gentlemen were again in a draught? Where was the _concierge_? Then the _huissier_ whispered in the judge's ear; no one heard, but everyone divined the whisper. It was to remind monsieur le president that the _concierge_ was in a temper; would it not be better for him, the _huissier_, to close the windows? Without a smile the judge bent his head, assenting. And once more all proceedings were at a standstill; the court was patiently waiting, once more, for the windows to be closed. Now, in all this, no one, not even the wizened old man who was obviously the humorist of the tribune, had seen anything farcical. To be too hot--to be too cold! this is a serious matter in France. A jury surely has a right to protect itself against cold, against _la migraine_, and the devils of rheumatism and pleurisy. There is nothing ridiculous in twelve men sitting in judgment on a fellow-man, with their handkerchiefs covering their bare heads. Nor of a judge who gallantly remembers the temper of a _concierge_. Nor of a whole court sitting in silence, while the windows are opened and closed. There was nothing in all this to tickle the play of French humor. But then, we remembered, France is not the land of humorists, but of wits. Monsieur d'Alençon down yonder, as he rises from his chair to address the judge and jury, will prove to you and me, in the next two hours, how great an orator a Frenchman can be, without trenching an inch on the humorist's ground. The court-room was so still now that you could have heard the fall of a pin. At last the great moment had come-the moment and the man. There is nothing in life Frenchmen love better than a good speech--_un discours_; and to have the same pitched in the dramatic key, with a tragic result hanging on the effects of the pleading, this is the very climax of enjoyment. To a Norman, oratory is not second, but first, nature; all the men of this province have inherited the gift of a facile eloquence. But this Monsieur d'Alençon, the crooked man whispered, in hurried explanation, he was _un fameux_--even the Paris courts had to send for him when they wanted a great orator. The famous lawyer understood the alphabet of his calling. He knew the value of effect. He threw himself at once into the orator's pose. His gown took sculptural lines; his arms were waved majestically, as arms that were conscious of having great sleeves to accentuate the lines of gesture. Then he began to speak. The voice was soft; at first one was chiefly conscious of the music in its cadences. But as it warmed and grew with the ardor of the words, the room was filled with such vibrations as usually come only with the sounding of rich wind-instruments. With such a voice a man could do anything. D'Alençon played with it as a man plays with a power he has both trained and conquered. It was firmly modulated, with no accent of sympathy when he opened his plea for his client. It warmed slightly when he indignantly repelled the charges brought against the latter. It took the cadence of a lover when he pointed to the young wife's figure and asked if it were likely a husband could be guilty of such crimes, year after year, with such a woman as that beside him? It was tenderly explanatory as he went on enlarging on the young wife's perfections, on her character, so well known to them all here in Coutances, on the influence she had given the home-life yonder in Cherbourg. Even the children were not forgotten, as an aid to incidental testimony. Was it even conceivable a father of a young family would lead an innocent lad into error, fraud, and theft? "It is he who knows how to touch the heart!" "_Quel beau moment!_" cried the wizened man, in a transport. "See--the jury weep!" All the court was in tears, even monsieur le president sniffled, and yet there was no draught. As for the peasant women and the shop keepers, they could not have been more moved if the culprit had been a blood relation. How they enjoyed their tears! What a delight it was to thus thrill and shiver! The wife was sobbing now, with her head on her uncle's shoulder. And the culprit was acting his part, also, to perfection. He had been firmly stoical until now. But at this parade of his wife's virtues he broke down, his head was bowed at last. It was all the tribune could do to keep its applause from breaking forth. It was such a perfect performance! it was as good as the theatre--far better--for this was real--this play-with a man's whole future at stake! Until midnight the lawyer held all in the town in a trance. He ended at last with a Ciceronian, declamatory outburst. A great buzz of applause welled up from the court. The tribune was in transports; such a magnificent harangue he had not given them in years. It was one of his greatest victories. "And his victories, madame, they are the victories of all Coutances." The crooked man almost stood upright in the excitement of his enthusiasm. Great drops of sweat were on his wrinkled old brow. The evening had been a great event in his life, as his twisted frame, all a-tremble with pleasurable elation, exultingly proved. The women's caps were closer together than ever; they were pressing in a solid mass close to the railing of the tribune to gain one last look at the figure of the wife. "It is she who will not sleep--" "Poor soul, are her children with her?" "No--and no women either. There is only the uncle." "He is a good man, he will comfort her!" "_Faut prier le bon Dieu!_" At the court-room door there was a last glimpse of the stricken figure. She disappeared into the blackness of the night, bent and feeble, leaning with pitiful attempt at dignity on the uncle's arm. With the dawn she would learn her husband's fate. The jury would be out all night. "You see, madame, it is she who must really suffer in the end." We were also walking into the night, through the bushes of the garden, to the dark of the streets. Our landlady was guiding us, and talking volubly. She was still under the influence of the past hour's excitement. Her voice trembled audibly, and she was walking with brisk strides through the dim streets. "If Filon is condemned, what would happen to them?" "Oh, he would pass a few years in prison--not many. The jury is always easy on the rich. But his future is ruined. They--the family--would have to go away. But even then, rumor would follow them. It travels far nowadays--it has a thousand legs, as they say here. Wherever they go they will be known. But Monsieur d'Alençon, what did you think of him, _hein_? There's a great man--what an orator! One must go as far as Paris--to the theatre; one must hear a great play--and even there, when does an actor make you weep as he did? Henri, he was superb. I tell you, superb! _d'une éloquence!_" And to her husband, when we reached the inn door, our vivacious landlady was still narrating the chief points of the speech as we crawled wearily up to our beds. It was early the next morning when we descended into the inn dining-room. The lawyer's eloquence had interfered with our rest. Coffee and a bite of fresh air were best taken together, we agreed. Before the coffee came the news of the culprit's fate. Most of the inn establishment had been sent to court to learn the jury's verdict. Madame confessed to a sleepless night. The thought of that poor wife had haunted her pillow. She had deemed it best--but just to us all, in a word, to despatch Auguste--the one inn waiter, to hear the verdict. _Tiens_, there he was now, turning the street corner. "_Il est acquitté!_" rang through the streets. "He is acquitted--he is acquitted! _Le bon Dieu soit loué!_ Henri--Ernest--Monsieur Terier, he is acquitted--he is acquitted! I tell you!" The cry rang through the house. Our landlady was shouting the news out of doors, through windows, to the passers-by, to the very dogs as they ran. But the townspeople needed no summoning. The windows were crowded full of eager heads, all asking the same question at once. A company of peasants coming up from the fields for breakfast stopped to hear the glad tidings. The shop-keepers all the length of the street gathered to join them. Everyone was talking at once. Every shade of opinion was aired in the morning sun. On one subject alone there was a universal agreement. "What good news for the poor wife!" "And what a night she must have passed!" All this sympathy and interest, be it remembered, was for one they barely knew. To be the niece of a Coutances uncle--this was enough, it appears, for the good people of this cathedral city, to insure the flow of their tears and the gift of their prayers. CHAPTER XXVII. THE FETE-DIEU--A JUNE CHRISTMAS. When we stepped forth into the streets, it was to find a flower strewn city. The paving stones were covered with the needles of pines, with fir boughs, with rose leaves, lily stocks, and with the petals of flock and clematis. One's feet sank into the odorous carpet as in the thick wool of an Oriental prayer rug. To tread upon this verdure was to crush out perfume. Yet the fragrance had a solemn flavor. There was a touch of consecration in the very aroma of the fir sap. Never was there a town so given over to its festival. Everything else--all trade, commerce, occupation, work, or pleasure even, was at a dead standstill. In all the city there was but one thought, one object, one end in view. This was the great day of the _Fête-Dieu_. To this blessed feast of the Sacrament the townspeople had been looking forward for weeks. It is their June Christmas. The great day brings families together. [Illustration: AN EXCITING MOMENT--A COUTANCES INTERIOR] From all the country round the farm wagons had been climbing the hill for hours. The peasants were in holiday dress. Gold crosses and amber beads encircled leathery old necks; the gossamer caps, real Normandy caps at last, crowned heads held erect today, with the pride of those who had come to town clad in their best. Even the younger women were in true peasant garb; there was a touch of a ribbon, brilliant red and blue stockings, and the sparkle of silver shoe-buckles and gold necklaces to prove they had donned their finery in honor of the _fête_. The men wore their blue and purple blouses over their holiday suits; but almost all had pinned a sprig of bright geranium or honeysuckle to brighten up the shiny cotton of the preservative blouse. Even the children carried bouquets; and thus many of the farm wagons were as gay as the streets. No, gay is not the word. Neither the city nor the streets were really gay. The city, as a city, was too dead in earnest, too absorbed, too intent, to indulge in gayety. It was the greatest of all the days of the year in Coutances. In the climaxic moments of life, one is solemn, not gay. It was not only the greatest, but the busiest, day of the year for this cathedral town. Here was a whole city to deck; every street, every alleyway must be as beautiful as a church on a feast-day. The city, in truth, must be changed from a bustling, trading, commercial entrepôt into an altar. And this altar must be beautiful--as beautiful, as ingeniously picturesque as only the French instinct for beauty could make it. Think you, with such a task on hand, this city-ful of artists had time for frivolous idling? Since dawn these artists had been scrubbing their doors, washing windows, and sluicing the gutters. One is not a provincial for nothing; one is honest in the provinces; one does not drape finery over a filthy frame. The city was washed first, before it was adorned. Opposite, across from our inn door-sill, where we lingered a moment before we began our journey through the streets, we could see for ourselves how thorough was this cleansing. A shopkeeper and his wife were each mounted on a step-ladder. One washed the inside and the other the outside of the low shop-windows. They were in the greatest possible haste, for they were late in their preparations. In two hours the procession was to pass. Their neighbors stopped to cry up to them: "_Tendez vous, aujourd'hui?_" It is the universal question, heard everywhere. "_Mais oui_," croaked out the man, his voice sounding like the croak of a rook, from the height from which he spoke. "Only we are late, you see." It was his wife who was taking the question to heart. She saw in it just cause for affront. "Ah, those Espergnons, they're always on time, they are; they had their hangings out a week ago, and now they are as filthy as wash-rags. No wonder they have time to walk the streets!" and the indignant dame gave her window-pane an extra polish. "Here, Leon, catch hold, I'm ready now!" The woman was holding out one end of a long, snowy sheet. Leon meekly took his end; both hooked the stuff to some rings ready to secure the hanging; the facade of the little house was soon hidden behind the white fall of the family linen; and presently Leon and his wife began very gravely to pin tiny sprigs of purple clematis across the white surface. This latter decoration was performed with the sure touch of artists. No mediaeval designer of tapestry could have chosen, with more secure selection, the precise points of distance at which to place the bouquets; nor could the tones and tints of the greens and purples, and the velvet of the occasional heartsease, sparsely used, have been more correctly combined. When the task was ended, the commonplace house was a palace wall, hung with the sheen of fine linen, on which bloomed geometric figures beautifully spaced. All the city was thus draped. One walked through long walls of snow, in which flowers grew. Sometimes the floral decorations expanded from the more common sprig into wreaths and garlands. Here and there the Coutances fancy worked itself out in _fleur-de-lis_ emblems or in armorial bearings. But everywhere an astonishing, instinctive sense of beauty, a knowledge of proportion, and a natural sense for color were obvious. There was not, in all the town, a single offence committed against taste. Is it any wonder, with such an heredity at their fingers' ends, that the provinces feed Paris, and that Paris sets the fashions in beauty for the rest of the world? Come with us, and look upon this open-air chapel. It stands in the open street, in front of an old house of imposing aspect. The two commonplace-looking women who are putting--the finishing--touches to this beautiful creation tell us it is the reposoir of Madame la Baronne. They have been working on it since the day before. In the night the miracle was finished--nearly--they were so weary they had gone to bed at dawn. They do not tell you it is a miracle. They think it fine, oh, yes--"c'est beau--Madame la Baronne always has the most beautiful of all the reposoirs," but then they have decked these altars since they were born; their grandmothers built them before ever they saw the light. For always in Coutances "on la fête beaucoup;" this feast of the Sacrament has been a great day in Coutances for centuries past. But although they are so used to it, these natural architects love the day. "It's so fine to see--_si beau à voir_ all the reposoirs, and the children and the fine ladies walking--through the streets, and then, all kneeling--when Monseigneur l'Archevêque prays. Ah yes, it is a fine sight." They nod, and smile, and then they turn to light a taper, and to consult about the placing of a certain vase from out of which an Easter lily towers. At the foot of these miniature altars trees had been planted. Gardens had also been laid out; the parterres were as gravely watered as if they were to remain in the middle of a bustling high street in perpetuity. Steps lead up to the altar. These were covered with rugs and carpets; for the feet of the bishop must tread only on velvet and flowers. Candelabra, vases, banners, crosses, crucifixes, flowers, and tall thin tapers--all the altars were crowded with such adornments. Human vanity and the love of surpassing one's neighbors, these also figured conspicuously among the things the fitfully shining sun looks down upon. But what a charm there is in such a contest! Surely the desire to beautify the spot on which the Blessed Sacrament rests this is only another way of professing one's adoration. As we passed through the streets a multitude of pictures crowded upon the eyes. In an archway groups of young first communicants were forming; they were on their way to the cathedral. Their white veils against the gloom of the recessed archways were like sunlit clouds caught in an abyss. Priests in gorgeous vestments were walking quickly through the streets. All the peasants were going also toward the cathedral. A group stopped, as did we, to turn into a side-street. For there was a picture we should not see later on. Between some lovely old turrets, down from convent walls a group of nuns fluttered tremulously; they were putting the last touches to the reposoir of their own Sacré Coeur. Some were carrying huge gilt crosses, staggering as they walked; others were on tiptoe filling the tall vases; others were on their knees, patting into perfect smoothness the turf laid about the altar steps. There was an old curé among them and a young carpenter whom the curé was directing. Everyone of the nuns had her black skirts tucked up; their stout shoes must be free to fly over the ground with the swiftness of hounds. How pretty the faces were, under the great caps, in that moment of unwonted excitement! The cheeks, even of the older nuns, were pink; it was a pink that made their habitual pallor have a dazzling beauty. The eyes were lighted into a fresh flame of life, and the lips were temptingly crimson; they were only women, after all, these nuns, and once a year at least this feast of the Sacrament brings all their feminine activities into play. Still we moved on, for within the cathedral the procession had not yet formed. There was still time to make a tour of the town. To plunge into the side-streets away from the wide cathedral parvis, was to be confronted with a strange calm. These narrow thoroughfares had the stillness which broods over all ancient cities' by-ways. Here was no festival bustle; all was grave and sad. The only dwellers left in the antique fifteenth century houses were those who must remain at home till a still smaller house holds them. We passed several aged Coutançais couples. By twos they were seated at the low windows; they had been dressed and then left; they were sitting here, in the pathetic patience of old age; they were hoping something of the _fête_ might come their way. Two women, in one of the low interiors, were more philosophic than their neighbors; if their stiffened knees would not carry them to the _fête_, at least their gnarled old hands could hold a pack of cards. They were seated close to the open casement, facing each other across a small round table; along the window-sill there were rows of flower-pots; a pewter tankard was set between them; and out of the shadowy interior came the topaz gleam of the Normandy brasses, the huge bed, with its snowy draperies, the great chests, and the flowery chintz-frill defining the width of the yawning fireplace. The two old faces, with the strong features, deep wrinkles, sunken mouths, and bald heads tied up in dazzling white coifs, were in full relief against the dim background. They were as motionless as statues; neither looked up as our footfall struck along the cobbles; it was an exciting moment in the game. [Illustration: A STREET IN COUTANCES--EGLISE SAINT-PIERRE] Below these old houses stretched the public gardens. Here also there was a great stillness. For us alone the rose gardens bloomed, the tropical trees were shivering, and the palms were making a night of shade for wide acres of turf. Rarely does a city boast of such a garden. It was no surprise to learn, later, that these lovely paths and noble terraces had been the slow achievement of a lover of landscape gardening, one who, dying, had given this, his master-piece, to his native town. There is no better place from which to view the beautiful city. From the horizontal lines of the broad terraces flows the great sweep of the hillside; it takes a swift precipitous plunge, and rests below in wide stretches of meadow. The garden itself seemed, by virtue of this encompassing circle of green, to be only a more exquisitely cultivated portion of the lovely outlying hills and wooded depths. The cows, grazing below in the valleys, were whisking their tails, and from the farm-yards came the crow of the chanticleer. One turned to look upward--to follow heavenward the soaring glory of the cathedral towers. From the plane of the streets their geometric perfection had made their lines seem cold. Through this aerial perspective the eye followed, enraptured, the perfect Gothic of the spires and the lower central tower. The great nave roof and the choir lifted themselves above the turrets and the tiled house-tops of the city, as gray mountains of stone rise above the huts of pygmies. Coutances does well to be proud of its cathedral. The sound of a footstep, crunching the gravel of the garden-walk, caused us to turn. It was to find, face to face, the hero of the night before; the celebrated Coutances lawyer was also taking his constitutional. But not alone, some friends were with him, come up to town doubtless for the _fête_ or the trial. He was showing them his city. He stretched a hand forth, with the same magisterial gesture of the night before, to point out the glory of the prospect lying below the terrace. He faced the cathedral towers, explaining the points of their perfection. And then, for he was a Frenchman, he perceived the presence of two ladies. In an instant his hat was raised, and as quickly his eyes told us he had seen us before, in the courtroom. The bow was the lower because of this recognition, and the salute was accompanied by a grave smile. Manners in the provinces are still good, you perceive--if only you are far enough away from Paris. Someone else also bestowed on us the courtesy of a passing greeting. It was a curé who was saying his Ave, as he paced slowly, in the sun, up and down the yew path. He was old; one leg was already tired of life--it must be dragged painfully along, when one walked in the sun. The curé himself was not in the least tired of life. His smile was as warm as the sun as he lifted his _calotte_. "Surely, mesdames, you will not miss the _fête_? It must be forming now." He had taken an old man's, and a priest's, privilege. We were all three looking down into the valley, which lay below, a pool of freshness. He had spoken, first of the beauty of the prospect, and then of the great day. To be young and still strong, to be able to follow the procession from street to street, and yet to be lingering here among the roses!--this passed the simple curé's comprehension. The reproach in his mild old eyes was quickly changed to approval, however; for upon the announcement that the procession was already in motion we started, bidding him a hurried adieu. The huge cathedral portals yawned at the top of the hill; they were like a gaping chasm. The great place of the cathedral square was half filled; a part of the procession had passed already beyond the gloom of the vast aisles into the frank openness of day. Winding in and out of the white-hung streets a long line of figures was marching; part of the line had reached the first reposoir and gradually the swaying of the heads was slackening, as, by twos and twos, the figures stopped. Still, from between the cathedral doors an unending multitude of people kept pouring forth upon the cathedral square. Now it was an interminable line of young girls, first communicants, in their white veils and gowns; against the grays and browns of the cathedral facade this mass of snow was of startling purity--a great white rose of light. Closely following the dazzling line marched a grave company of nuns; with their black robes sweeping the flower-strewn streets, the pallor of their faces, and the white wings of their huge coifs, they might have been so many marble statues moving with slow, automatic step, repeating in life the statues in stone above their heads, incarnations of meek renunciation. With the free and joyous step of a vigorous youth not yet tamed to complete self-obliteration, next there stepped forth into the sun a group of seminarists. In the lace and scarlet of their bright robes they were like unto so many young kings. High in the summer air they swung their golden censers; from huge baskets, heaped with flowers, they scattered flowers as they swayed, in the grace of their youth, from side to side, with priestly rhythmic motion. In the days of Greece, under the Attic tent of sky, it was Jove that was thus worshipped; here in Coutances, under the paler, less ardent blue of France, it was the Christian God these youths were honoring. So men have continued to scatter flowers; to swing incense; to bend the knee; surely in all ages the long homage of men, like the procession here before us, has been but this--the longing to worship the Invisible, and to make the act one with beauty. Is it Greek, is it Christian, this festival? If it be Catholic, it is also pagan. It is as composite a union of religious ceremonials as man is himself an aggregate of lost types, for there is a subtle law of repetition which governs both men and ceremonials. How pagan was the color! how Greek the sense of beauty that lies in contrasts! how Jewish the splendor of the priestly vestments as the gold and silver tissues gleamed in the sun! How mediaeval this survival of an old miracle play! See this group of children, half-frightened, half-proud, wandering from side to side as children unused to walking soberly ever march. They were following the leadership of a huge Suisse. This latter was magnificently apparelled. He carried a great mace, and this he swung high in the air. The children, little John the Baptist, Christ, Mary the Mother, and Magdalen, were magnetized by his mighty skill. They were looking at the golden stick; they were thinking only of how high he, this splendid giant who terrified them so, would throw it the next time, and if he would always surely catch it. The small Virgin, in her long brown robes, tripped as she walked. The cherubic John the Baptist, with only his sheepskin and his cross, shivered as he stumbled after her. "At least they might have covered his arms, _le pauvre petit_," one stout peasant among the bystanders was Christian enough to mutter, "Poor little John!" Even in summer the sun is none too hot on this hill-top; and a sheepskin is a garment one must be used to, it appears. Christ, himself, was no better off. He was wearing his crown of thorns, but he had only his night-dress, bound with a girdle, to keep his naked little body warm. An angel, in gossamer wings and a huge rose-wreath, being of the other sex, had her innate woman's love of finery to make her oblivious to the light sting of the wind, as it passed through her draperies. As this group in the procession moved slowly along, the city took on a curiously antique aspect. In every lattice window a head was framed. The lines of the townspeople pressed closer and closer; they made a serried mass of blouses and caps, of shiny coats and bared heads. The very houses seemed to recognize that a part of their own youth was passing them by; these were the figures they had looked out upon, time after time, in the old fourteenth and fifteenth century days, when the great miracle plays drew the country around, for miles and miles, to this Coutances square. Across the square, in the long gray distance of the streets, the archbishop's canopy was motionless. A sweet groaning murmur rippled from lip to lip. Then a swift and mighty rustling filled the air, for the bones of thousands of knees were striking the stones of the street;--even heretic knees were bent when the Host was lifted. It was the moment of silent prayer. It was also, perhaps, the most beautiful, it was assuredly the most consummately picturesque moment of the day. The bent heads; the long vistas of kneeling figures; the lovely contrasts of the flowing draperies; the trailing splendor of the priests' robes dying into the black note made by the nuns' sombre skirts; the gossamer brilliance of the hundreds of white veils, through which the young rapture of religious awe on lips and brow made even commonplace features beautiful; the choristers' scarlet petticoats; the culminating note of splendor, the Archbishop, throned like some antique scriptural king under the feathers and velvets of his crimson canopy; then the long lines of the townspeople with the groups of peasants beside them, whose well-sunned skins made even their complexion seem pale by the side of cheeks that brought the burn of noon-suns in the valleys to mind; and behind this wall of kneeling figures, those other walls, the long white-hung house facades, with their pendent sprigs and wreaths and garlands above which hung the frieze of human heads beneath the carved cornices; surely this was indeed the culminating moment, both in point of beauty and in impressiveness, of the great day's festival. Thus was reposoir after reposoir visited. Again and again the multitude was on its knees. Again and again the Host was lifted. And still we followed. Sometimes all the line was in full light, a long perspective of color and of prismatic radiance. And then the line would be lost; some part of it was still in a side-street; and the rest were singing along the edges of the city's ramparts, under the great branches of the trees. Here, in the gray of the narrow streets, the choristers' gowns were startling in their richness. Yonder, in full sunlight, the brightness on the maidens' robes made the shadows in their white skirts as blue as light caught in a grotto's depth. Still they sang. In the dim streets or under the trees, where the gay banners were still fluttering, and the white veils, like airy sails, were bulging in the wind, the hymn went on. It was thin and pathetically weak in the mouths of the babes that walked. It was clear, as fresh and pure as a brooklet's ripple, from the mouths of the young communicants. It was of firm contralto strength from the throats of the grave nuns. The notes gained and gained in richness; the hymn was almost a chant with the priests; and in the mouths of the people it was as a ringing chorus. Together with the swelling music swung the incense into high air; and to the Host the rose-leaves were flung. Still we followed. Still the long line moved on from altar to altar. Then, when the noon was long past, wearily we climbed upward to our inn. In the high streets there was much going to and fro. The shop-keepers already were taking down their linen. Pouffe! Pouffe! there was much blowing through mouths and a great standing on tiptoes to reach the tall tapers on the reposoirs. Coutances was pious. Coutances was proud of its fête. But Coutances was also a thrifty city. Once the cortege had passed, it was high time to snuff out the tapers. Who could stand by and see good candles blowing uselessly in the wind, and one's money going along with the dripping? CHAPTER XXVIII. BY LAND TO MONT ST. MICHEL. Two hours later the usual collection of forces was assembled in our inn courtyard; for a question of importance was to be decided. Madame was there--chief of the council; her husband was also present, because he might be useful in case any dispute as to madame's word came up; Auguste, the one inn waiter, was an important figure of the group; for he, of them all, was the really travelled one; he had seen the world--he was to be counted on as to distances and routes; and above, from the upper windows, the two ladies of the bed-chamber looked down, to act as chorus to the brisk dialogue going on between madame and the owner of a certain victoria for which we were in treaty. "_Ces dames,_" madame said, with a shrug which was meant for the coachman, and a smile which was her gift to us--"these ladies wish to go to Mont St. Michel, to drive there. Have you your little victoria and Poulette?" Now, by the shrug madame had conveyed to the man and the assembled household generally, her own great scorn of us, and of our plans. What a whim this, of driving, forsooth, to the Mont! _Dieu sait_--French people were not given to any such follies; they were serious-minded, _always_, in matters of travel. To travel at all, was no light thing; one made one's will and took an honest and tearful farewell of one's family, when one went on a journey. But these English, these Americans, there's no foretelling to what point their folly will make them tempt fate! However, madame was one who knew on which side her bread was buttered, if ever a woman did, and the continuance of these mad follies helped to butter her own French roll. And so her shrug and wink conveyed to the tall Norman just how much these particular lunatics before them would be willing to pay for this their whim. "Have you Poulette?" "Yes--yes--Poulette is at home. I have made her repose herself all day--hearing these ladies had spoken of driving to the Mont--" Chorus from the upper window-sills. "The poor beast! it is _joliment longue--la distance_." "As these ladies observe," continued the owner of the doomed animal, not raising his head, but quickly acting on the hint, "it is long, the distance--one does not go for nothing." And though the man kept his mouth from betraying him, his keen eyes glittered with avarice. "And then--_ces dames_ must descend at Genets, to cross the _grève, tu sais_" interpolated the waiter, excitedly changing his napkin, his wand of office, from one armpit to the other. The thought of travel stirred his blood. It was fine--to start off thus, without having to make the necessary arrangements for a winter's service or a summer's season. And to drive, that would be new--yes that would be a change indeed from the stuffy third-class compartments. For Auguste, you see, approved of us and of the foolishness of our plans. His sympathy being gratis, was allied to the protective instinct--he would see the cheating was at least as honestly done as was compatible with French methods. "Another carriage--and why?" we meekly queried, warned by this friendly hint. A chorus now arose from the entire audience. "_Mais, madame!_--it is as much as five or six kilos over the sands to the Mont from Genets!" was cried out in a tone of universal reproach. "Through rivers, madame, through rivers as high as that!" and Auguste, striking in after the chorus, measured himself off at the breast. "Yes--the water comes to there, on the horse," added the driver, sweeping an imaginary horse's head, with a fine gesture, in the air. "Dame, that must be fine to see," cried down Léontine and Marie, gasping with little sighs of envy. "And so it is!" cried back Auguste, nodding upward with dramatic gesture. "One can get as wet as a duck splashing through those rivers. _Dieu! que c'est beau!_" And he clasped his hands as his eye, rolling heavenward, caught the blue and the velvet of the four feminine orbs on its upward way. Seeing which ecstasy, the courtyard visibly relented; Auguste's rapture and his envy had worked the common human miracle of turning contempt for a folly into belief in it. This quick firing of French people to a pleasurable elation in others' adventure is, I think we must all agree, one of the great charms of this excitable race: anything will serve as a pretext for setting this sympathetic vibration in motion. What they all crave as a nation is a daily, hourly diet of the unusual, the unforeseen. It is this passion for incident which makes a Frenchman's life not unlike his soups, since in the case of both, how often does he make something out of nothing! An hour later we were picking our way through the city's streets. Sweeter than the crushed flowers was the free air of the valley. There is no way of looking back so agreeable, on the whole, I think, as to look back upon a city. From the near distance of the first turn in the road, Coutances and its cathedral were at their very best. The hill on which both stood was only one of the many hills we now saw growing out of the green valley; among the dozen hill tops, this one we were leaving was only more crowded than the others, and more gloriously crowned. In giant height uprose, above the city's roofs and the lesser towers, the spires and the lovely lantern tower. This vast mass of stone, pricked into lacy apertures and with its mighty lines of grace-for how many a long century has it been in the eye of the valley? Tancrède de Hauteville saw it before William was born--before he, the Conqueror, rode in his turn through the green lanes to consecrate the church to One greater than he. From Tancrède to Boileau, what a succession of bishops, each in their turn, have had their eye on the great cathedral. There was a sort of viking bishop, one Geoffrey de Montbray, of the Conqueror's day, who, having a greater taste for men's blood than their purification, found Coutances a dull city; there was more war of the kind his stout arm rejoiced in across the Channel; and so he travelled a bit to do a little pleasant killing. From Geoffrey to Boileau and the latter's lacy ruffles--how many a rude Norman epic was acted out, here in the valley, beneath the soaring spires, before the Homeric combat was turned into the verse of a _chanso de geste_, a _Roman de Rou_, or a _Latrin!_ As Poulette rolled the wheels along, instead of visored bishop, or mail rustling on strong breasts, there was the open face of the landscape, and the tremble of the grasses beneath the touch of the wind. Coming down the hill was a very peaceable company; doubtless, between wars in those hot fighting centuries, just such travellers went up and down the hill-road as unconcernedly as did these peasants. There was quite a variety among the present groups: some were strictly family parties; these talked little, giving their mind to stiff walking--the smell of the soup in the farmyard kitchen was in their nostrils. The women's ages were more legibly read in their caps than in their faces--the older the women the prettier the caps. Among these groups, queens of the party, were some first communicants. Their white kid slippers were brown now, from the long walk in the city streets and the dust of the highway. They held their veils with a maiden's awkwardness; with bent heads they leaned gravely on their fathers' arms. In this, their first supreme experience of self-consciousness, they had the self-absorption of young brides. The trail of their muslin gowns and the light cloud of their veils made dazzling spots of brightness in the delicate frame of the June landscape. Each of these white-clad figures was followed by a long train of friends and relatives. "_C'est joli à voir_--it's a pretty sight, _hein_, my ladies? these young girls are beautiful like that!" Our coachman took his eye off Poulette to turn in his seat, looking backward at the groups as they followed in our wake. "Ah--it was hard to leave my own--I had two like that, myself, in the procession to-day." And the full Norman eye filled with a sudden moisture. This was a more attractive glitter than the avarice of a moment before. "You see, mesdames," he went on, as if wishing to excuse the moistened eyelids, "you see--it's a great day in the family when our children take their first communion. It is the day the child dies and the man, the woman is born. When our children kneel at our feet, before the priest, before their comrades, and beg us to forgive them all the sin they have done since they were born--it is too much--the heart grows so big it is near to bursting. Ah--it is then we all weep!" Charm settled herself in her seat with a satisfied smile. "We are in luck--an emotional coachman who weeps and talks! The five hours will fly," she murmured. Then aloud, to Jacques--as we learned the now sniffling father was called--she presently asked, with the oil of encouragement in her tone: "You say your two were in the procession?" "Two! there were five in all. Even the babies walked. Did you see Jésu and the Magdalen? They were mine--_C'était à moi, çà!_ For the priests will have them--as many as they can get." "They are right. If the children didn't walk, how could the procession be so fine?" "Fine--_beau--ca?_" And there was a deep scorn in Jacques's voice. "You should have seen the _fête_ twenty years ago! Now, its glory is as nothing. It's the priests themselves who are to blame. They've spoiled it all. Years ago, the whole town walked. _Dieu_--what a spectacle! The mayor, the mairie, all the firemen, municipal officers--yes, even the soldiers walked. And as for the singing--_dame_, all the young men were choristers then--we were trained for months. When we walked and sang in the open streets the singing filled all the town. It was like a great thunder." "And the change--why has it come?" persisted Charm. "Oh," Jacques replied, caressing Poulette's haunches with his whip-lash. "It's the priests; they were too grasping. They are avaricious, that's what they are. They want everything for themselves. And a _fête--ça coule, vous savez_. Besides, the spirit of the times has changed. People aren't so devout now. _Libres penseurs_--that's the fashion now. _Holà_, Poulette!" Poulette responded. She dashed into the valley, below us now, as if this rolling along of a heavy victoria, a lot of luggage, and three travellers, was an agreeable episode in her career of toil. But on the mind of her owner, the spectre of the free-thinkers was still hovering like an evil spirit. During the next hour he gave us a long and exhaustive exposition of the changes wrought by _ces messieurs qui nient le bon Dieu._ Among their crimes was to be numbered that of having disintegrated the morale of the peasantry. They--the peasants--no longer believed in miracles, and as for sorcery, for the good old superstitions, bah: they were looked upon as old wives' tales. Even here, in the heart of this rural country, you would have to walk far before you could find _vne vraie sorcière_, one who, by looking into a glass of water, for instance, could read the future as in a book, or one who, if your cow dried up, could name the evil spirit, the demon, who, among the peasants was exercising the curse. All this science was lost. A peasant would now be ashamed to bring his cow to a fortune-teller; all the village would laugh. Even the shepherds had lost the power of communing with the planets at night; and all the valley read the _Petit Journal_ instead of consulting the _vieilles mères_. One must go as far as Brittany to see a real peasant with the superstitions of a peasant. As for Normandy, it went in step with the rest of the world, _que diable!_ And again the whip lash descended. Poulette must suffer for Jacques's disgust. If the Norman peasant was a modern, his country, at least, had retained the charm of its ancient beauty. The road was as Norman a highway as one could wish to see. It had the most capricious of natures, turning and perversely twisting among the farms and uplands. The land was ribboned with growing grain, and the June grass was being cut. The farms stood close upon the roadway, as if longing for its companionship; and then, having done so much toward the establishment of neighborly gossip, promptly turned their backs upon it--true Normans, all of them, with this their appearance of frankness and their real reserves of secrecy. For a last time we caught a distant glimpse of the great cathedral. As we looked back across the bright-roofed villages, we saw the stately pile, gray, glorious, superb, dominating the scene, the hills, river, and fields, as in the old days the great city walls and the cathedral towers had dominated all the human life that played helplessly about them. We were out once more among the green and yellow broadlands; between our carriage-wheels and the horizon there was now spread a wide amphitheatre of wooded hills. The windings of the poplar-lined road serpentined in sinuous grace in and out of forests, meadows, hills, and islands. The afternoon lights were deepening; the shadows on the grain-fields cast by the oaks and beeches were a part of our company. The blue bloom of the distant hills was strengthening into purple. As the light was intensifying in color, the human life in the fields was relaxing its tension; the bent backs were straightening, the ploughmen were whipping their steeds toward the open road; for although it was Sunday, and a _fête_ day, the farmer must work. The women were gathering up some of the grasses, tying them into bundles, and tossing them on their heads as they moved slowly across the blackening earth. One field near us was peopled with a group of girls resting on their scythes. One or two among them were mopping their faces with their coarse blue aprons; the faces of all were aflame with the red of rude health. As we came upon them, some had flung away their scythes, the tallest among the group grasping a near companion, playfully, in the pose of a wrestler. In an instant the company was turned into a group of wrestlers. There was a great shout of laughter, as maiden after maiden was tumbled over on her back or face amid the grasses. Sabots, short skirts, kerchiefs, scarlet arms rose and fell to earth in the mad whirl of their gayety. "Stop, Jacques, I must see the end," cried Charm. "Will they fight or dance, I wonder!" "Oh, it is a pure Georgic--they'll dance." They were dancing already. The line, with dishevelled hair, aprons and kerchiefs askew, had formed into the square of a quadrille. A rude measure was tripped; a snatch of song, shouted amid the laughter, gave rhythm to the measure, and then the whole band, singing in chorus, linked arms and swept with a furious dash beneath the thatched roof of a low farm-house. "As you see, my ladies, sometimes the fields are gay--even now," was Jacques's comment. "But they should be getting their grasses in--for it'll rain before night. It's time to sing when the scythe sleeps--as we say here." To our eyes there were no signs of rain. The clouds rolling in the blue sea above us were only gloriously lighted. But the birds and the peasants knew their sky; there was a great fluttering of wings among the branches; and the peasants, as we rattled in and out of the hamlets, were pulling the _reposoirs_ to pieces in the haste that predicts bad weather. They had been "celebrating" all along the road; and besides the piety, the Norman thrift was abroad upon the highway. Women were tearing sheets off the house facades; the lads and girls were bearing crosses, china vases, and highly-colored Virgins from the wooden altars into the low houses. Presently the great drops fell; they beat upon the smooth roadway like so many hard bits of coin. In less than two ticks of the clock, the world was a wet world; there were masses of soft gray clouds that were like so much cotton, dripping with moisture. The earth was as drenched as if, half an hour ago, it had not been a jewel gleaming in the sun; and the very farm-houses had quickly assumed an air of having been caught out in the rain without an umbrella. The farm gardens alone seemed to rejoice in the suddenness of the shower. Flowers have a way of shining, when it rains, that proves flower-petals have a woman's love of solitaires. There were other dashes of color that made the gray landscape astonishingly brilliant. Some of the peasants on their way to the village _fêtes_ were also caught in the passing shower. They had opened their wide blue and purple umbrellas; these latter made huge disks of color reflected in the glass of the wet macadam. The women had turned their black alpaca and cashmere skirts inside out, tucking the edges about their stout hips; beneath the wide vivid circles of the dripping umbrellas these brilliantly colored under-petticoats showed a liberal revelation of scarlet hose and thick ankles sunk in the freshly polished black sabots. The men's cobalt-blue blouses and their peaked felt hats spotted the landscape with contrasting notes and outlines. After the last peaked hat had disappeared into the farm enclosures, we and the wet landscape had the rain to ourselves. The trees now were spectral shapes; they could not be relied on as companions. Even the gardens and grain lands were mysteriously veiled, so close rolled the mists to our carriage-wheels. Beyond, at the farthest end of the road, these mists had formed themselves into a solid, compact mass. The clouds out yonder, far ahead, seemed to be enwrapping some part of earth that had lanced itself into the sky. After a little the eyes unconsciously watched those distant woolly masses. There was a something beyond, faint, vague, impalpable as yet, which the rolling mists begirt as sometimes they cincture an Alpine needle. Even as the thought came, a sudden lifting--of the gray mass showed the point of a high uplifted pinnacle. The point thereof pricked the sky. Then the wind, like a strong hand, swept the clouds into a mantle, and we saw the strange spectacle no more. For several miles our way led us through a dim, phantasmal landscape. All the outlines were blurred. Even the rain was a veil; it fell between us and the nearest hedgerows as if it had been a curtain. The jingling of Poulette's bell-collar and the gurgle of the water rushing in the gulleys--these were the only sounds that fell upon the ear. Still the clouds about that distant mass curled and rolled; they were now breaking, now re-forming--as if some strange and wondrous thing were hanging there--between heaven and earth. It was still far out, the mass; even the lower mists were not resting on any plain of earth. They also were moved by something that moved beneath them, as a thick cloak takes the shape and motion of the body it covers. Still we advanced, and still the great mountain of cloud grew and grew. And then there came a little lisping, hissing sound. It was the kiss of the sea as it met some unseen shore. And on our cheeks the sea-wind blew, soft and salty to the lips. The mass was taking shape and outline. The mists rolled along some wide, broad base that rested beneath the sea, and skyward they clasped the apexal point of a pyramid. This pyramid in the sky was Mont St. Michel. With its feet in the sea, and its head vanishing into infinity--here, at last, was this rock of rocks, caught, phantom-like, up into the very heavens above. It loomed out of the spectral landscape--itself the superlative spectre; it took its flight upward as might some genius of beauty enrobed in a shroud of mystery. Such has it been to generations of men. Beautiful, remote, mysterious! With its altars and its shrines, its miracle of stone carved by man on those other stones hewn by the wind and the tempest, Mont St. Michel has ever been far more a part of heaven than a thing of earth. Then, for us, the clouds suddenly lifted, as, for modern generations of men, the mists of superstition have also rolled themselves away. MONT ST. MICHEL: AN INN ON A ROCK. [Illustration: MONT SAINT MICHEL] CHAPTER XXIX. BY SEA TO THE POULARD INN. We were being tossed in the air like so many balls. A Normandy _char a banc_ was proving itself no respecter of nice distinctions in conditions in life. It phlipped, dashed, and rolled us about with no more concern than if it were taking us to market to be sold by the pound. For we were on the _grève_. The promised rivers were before us. So was the Mont, spectral no longer, but nearing with every plunge forward of our sturdy young Percheron. Locomotion through any new or untried medium is certain to bring with the experiment a dash of elation. Now, driving through water appears to be no longer the fashion in our fastidious century; someone might get a wetting, possibly, has been the conclusion of the prudent. And thus a very innocent and exciting bit of fun has been gradually relegated among the lost arts of pleasure. We were taking water as we had never taken it before, and liking the method. We were as wet as ducks, but what cared we? We were being deluged with spray; the spume of the sea was spurting in our faces with the force of a strong wet breeze, and still we liked it. Besides, driving thus into the white foam of the waters, over the sand ridges, across the downs, into the wide plains of wet mud, this was the old classical way of going up to the Mont. Surely, what had been found good enough as a pathway for kings and saints and pilgrims should be good enough for two lovers of old-time methods. The dike yonder was built for those who believe in the devil of haste, and for those who also serve him faithfully. Someone else besides ourselves was enjoying our drive through the waves. Our gay young Normandy driver seemed to find an exquisite relish in the spectacle of our wet faces and unstable figures. He could not keep his eyes off us; they fairly glistened with the dew of his enjoyment. Two ladies pitched and rolled about, exactly as if they were peasants, and laughing as if they were children--this was a spectacle and a keen appreciation of a joke that brought joy to a rustic blouse. "Ah--ah! mesdames!" he cried, exultingly, between the gasps of his own laughter, as he tossed his own fine head in the air, sitting on his rude bench, covered with sheepskin, as if it had been an armchair. "Ah, ah! mesdames, you didn't expect this, _hein_? You hoped for a landau, and feathers and cushions, perhaps? But soft feathers and springs are not for the _grève_." "Is it dangerous? are there deep holes?" "Oh, the holes, they are as nothing. It is the quicksands we fear. But it is only a little danger, and danger makes the charm of travel, is it not so, my ladies? Adventure, that is what one travels for! _Hui!_ Fend l'Air!" It had occurred to us before that we had been uncommonly lucky in our coachmen, as well as in the names of the horses, that had brightened our journey. In spite of Juliet, whose disdain of the virtue or the charm that lies in a name is no more worthy of respect than is any lover's opinion when in the full-orbed foolishness of his lunacy, I believe names to be a very effective adjunct to life's scenic setting. Most of the horses we had had along these Normandy high-roads, had answered to names that had helped to italicize the features of the country. Could Poulette, the sturdy little mare, with whom only an hour ago we had parted forever, have been given a better sobriquet by which to have identified for us the fat landscape? And now here was Fend l'Air proving good his talent for cleaving through space, whatever of land or sea lay in his path. "And he merits his name, my lady," his driver announced with grave pride, as he looked at the huge haunches with a loving eye. "He can go, oh, but as the wind! It is he who makes of the crossing but as if it were nothing!" The crossing! That was the key-note of the way the coast spoke of the Mont. The rock out yonder was a country apart, a bit of land or stone the shore claimed not, had no part in, felt to be as remote as if it were a foreign province. At Genets the village spoke of the Mont as one talks of a distant land. Even the journey over the sands was looked upon with a certain seriousness. A starting forth was the signal for the village to assemble about the _char-à-banc's_ wheels. Quite a large company for a small village to muster was grouped about our own vehicle, to look on gravely as we mounted to the rude seat within. The villagers gave us their "_bonjours_" with as much fervor as if we were starting forth on a sea voyage. "You will have a good crossing!" cackled one of the old men, nodding toward the peak in the sky. "The sands may be wet, but they are firm already!" added a huge peasant--the fattest man in all the canton, whisperingly confided the landlady, as one proud of possessing a village curiosity. "_Hui_, Fend l'Air! _attention, toi!_" Fend l'Air tossed his fine mane, and struck out with a will over the cobbles. But his driver was only posing for the assembled village. He was in no real haste; there was a fresh voice singing yonder in his mother's tavern; the sentimentalist in him was on edge to hear the end of the song. "Do you hear that, mesdames? There's no such singing as that out of Paris. One must go to a café--" "_Allons, toi!_" shrieked his mother's voice, as her face darkened. "Do you think these ladies want to spend the night on the _grève_? _Depêches-toi, vaurien!_" And she gave the wheels a shove with her strong hand, whereat all the village laughed. But the good-for-nothing son made no haste as the song went on-- "_Le bon vin me fait dormir, L'amour me réveil--_" He continued to cock his head on one side and to let his eyes dream a bit. Within, a group of peasants was gathered about the inn table. There were some young girls seated among the blouses; one of them, for the hour that we had sat waiting for Fend l'Air to be captured and harnessed, had been singing songs of questionable taste in a voice of such contralto sweetness as to have touched the heart of a bishop. "Some young girls from the factories at Avranches, mesdames, who come here Sundays to get a bit of fresh air; _Dieu soit si elles en ont besoin, pauvres enfants!_" was the landlady's charitable explanation. It appeared to us that the young ladies from Avranches were more in need of a moral than a climatic change. But then, we also charitably reflected, it makes all the difference in the world, in these nice questions of taste and morality, whether one has had as an inheritance a past of Francis I. and a Rabelais, or of Calvin and a Puritan conscience. The geese on the green downs, just below the village, had clearly never even heard of Calvin; they were luxuriating in a series of plunges into the deep pools in a way to prove complete ignorance of nice sabbatarian laws. With our first toss upon the downs, a world of new and fresh experiences began. Genets was quite right; the Mont over yonder was another country; even at the very beginning of the journey we learned so much. This breeze blowing in from the sea, that had swept the ramparts of the famous rock, was a double extract of the sea essence; it had all the salt of the sea and the aroma of firs and wild flowers; its lips had not kissed a garden in high air without the perfume lingering, if only to betray them. Even this strip of meadow marsh had a character peculiar to itself; half of it belonged to earth and half to the sea. You might have thought it an inland pasture, with its herds of cattle, its flocks of sheep, and its colonies of geese--patrolled by ragged urchins. But behold, somewhere out yonder the pasture was lost in high sea-waves; ships with bulging sails replaced the curve of the cattle's sides, and instead of bending necks of sheep, there were seagulls swooping down upon the foamy waves. As the incarnation of this dual life of sea and land, the rock stands. It also is both of the sea and the land. Its feet are of the waters--rocks and stones the sea-waves have used as playthings these millions of years. But earth regains possession as the rocks pile themselves into a mountain. Even from this distance, one can see the moving arms of great trees, the masses of yellow flower-tips that dye the sides of the stony hill, and the strips of green grass here and there. So much has nature done for this wonderful pyramid in the sea. Then man came and fashioned it to his liking. He piled the stones at its base into titanic walls; he carved about its sides the rounded breasts of bastions; he piled higher and higher up the dizzy heights a medley of palaces, convents, abbeys, cloisters, to lay at the very top the fitting crown of all, a jewelled Norman-Gothic cathedral. Earth and man have thrown their gauntlet down to the sea--this rock is theirs, they cry to the waves and the might of oceans. And the sea laughs--as strong men laugh when boys are angry or insistent. She has let them build and toil, and pray and fight; it is all one to her what is done on the rock--whether men carve its stones into lace, or rot and die in its dungeons; it is all the same to her whether each spring the daffodils creep up within the crevices and the irises nod to them from the gardens. It is all one to her. For twice a day she recaptures the Mont. She encircles it with the strong arm of her tides; with the might of her waters she makes it once more a thing of the sea. The tide was rising now. The fringe of the downs had dabbled in the shoals till they had become one. We had left behind the last of the shepherd lads, come out to the edge of the land to search for a wandering kid. We were all at once plunging into high water. Our road was sunk out of sight; we were driving through waves as high as our cart-wheels. Fend l'Air was shivering; he was as a-tremble as a woman. The height of the rivers was not to his liking. "_Sacré fainéant!_" yelled his owner, treating the tremor to a mighty crack of the whip. "Is he afraid?" "Yes--when the water is as high as that, he is always afraid. Ah, there he is--_diantre_, but he took his time!" he growled, but the growl was set in the key of relief. He was pointing toward a figure that was leaping toward us through the water. "It is the guide!" he added, in explanation. The guide was at Fend l'Air's shoulder. Very little of him was above water, but that little was as brown as an Egyptian. He was puffing and blowing like unto a porpoise. In one hand he held a huge pitchfork--the trident of this watery Mercury. "Shall I conduct you?" he asked, dipping the trident as if in salute, into the water, as he still puffed and gasped. "If you please," as gravely responded our driver. For though up to our cart-wheels and breasts in deep water, the formalities were not to be dispensed with, you understand. The guide placed himself at once in front of Fend l'Air, whose shivers as quickly disappeared. "You see, mesdames--the guide gives him courage--and he now knows no fear," cried out with pride our whip on the outer bench. "And what news, Victor--is there any?" It was of the Mont he was asking. And the guide replied, taking an extra plunge into deep water: "Oh, not much. There's to be a wedding tomorrow and a pilgrimage the next day. Madame Poulard has only a handful as yet. _Ces dames_ descend doubtless at Madame Poulard's--_celle qui fait les omelettes?_" The ladies were ignorant as yet of the accomplishments of the said landlady; they had only heard of her beauty. "_C'est elle_," gravely chorussed the guide and the driver, both nodding their heads as their eyes met. "_Fameuse, sa beauté, comme son omelette_," as gravely added our driver. The beauty of this lady and the fame of her omelette were very sobering, apparently, in their effects on the mind; for neither guide nor driver had another word to say. Still the guide plunged into the rivers, and Fend l'Air followed him. Our cart still pitched and tossed--we were still rocked about in our rough cradle. But the sun, now freed from the banks of clouds, was lighting our way with a great and sudden glory. And for the rest of our watery journey we were conscious only of that lighting. Behind the Mont, lay a vast sea of saffron. But it was in the sky; against it the great rock was as black as if the night were upon it. Here and there, through the curve of a flying buttress, or the apertures of a pierced parapet, gay bits of this yellow world were caught and framed. The sea lay beneath like a quiet carpet; and over this carpet ships and sloops swam with easy gliding motion, with sails and cordage dipped in gold. The smaller craft, moored close to shore, seemed transfigured as in a fog of gold. And nearer still were the brown walls of the Mont making a great shadow, and in the shadow the waters were as black as the skin of an African. In the shoals there were lovely masses of turquoise and palest green; for here and there a cloudlet passed, to mirror their complexions in the translucent pools. But Fend l'Air's hoofs had struck a familiar note. His iron shoes were clicking along the macadam of the dike. There was a rapid dashing beneath the great walls; a sudden night of darkness as we plunged through an open archway into a narrow village street; a confused impression of houses built into side-walls; of machicolated gateways; of rocks and roof-tops tumbling about our ears; and within the street was sounding the babel of a shrieking troop of men and women. Porters, peasants, lads, and children were clamoring about our cart-wheels like unto so many jackals. The bedlam did not cease as we stopped before a wide, brightly-lit open doorway. Then through the doorway there came a tall, finely-featured brunette. She made her way through the yelling crowd as a duchess might cleave a path through a rabble. She was at the side of the cart in an instant. She gave us a bow and smile that were both a welcome and an act of appropriation. She held out a firm, soft, brown hand. When it closed on our own, we knew it to be the grasp of a friend, and the clasp of one who knew how to hold her world. But when she spoke the words were all of velvet, and her voice had the cadence of a caress. "I have been watching you, _chères dames_--crossing the _grève_--but how wet and weary you must be! Come in by the fire, it is ablaze now--I have been feeding it for you!" And once more the beautifully curved lips parted over the fine teeth, and the exceeding brightness of the dark eyes smiled and glittered in our own. The caressing voice still led us forward, into the great gay kitchen; the touch of skilful, discreet fingers undid wet cloaks and wraps; the soft charm of a lovely and gracious woman made even the penetrating warmth of the huge fire-logs a secondary feature of our welcome. To those who have never crossed a _grève_; who have had no jolting in a Normandy _char-à-banc_; who, for hours, have not known the mixed pleasures and discomfort of being a part of sea-rivers; and who have not been met at the threshold of an Inn on a Rock by the smiling welcome of Madame Poulard--all such have yet a pleasant page to read in the book of travelled experience. Meanwhile somewhere, in an inner room, things sweet to the nostrils were cooking. Maids were tripping up and down stairs with covered dishes; there was the pleasant clicking in the ear of the lids of things; dishes or pans or jars were being lifted. And more delicious to the ear than even the promise to starving mouths of food, and of red wine to the lip, was the continuing music of madame's voice, as she stood over us purring with content at seeing her travellers drying and being thoroughly warmed. "The dinner-bell must soon be rung, dear ladies; I delayed it as long as I dared--I gauged your progress across from the terrace--I have kept all my people waiting; for your first dinner here must be hot! But now it rings! Shall I conduct you to your rooms?" I have no doubt that, even without this brunette beauty, with her olive cheek and her comely figure as guides, we should have gone the way she took us in a sort of daze. One cannot pass under machicolated gateways; rustle between the walls of fourteenth century fortifications; climb a stone stairway that begins in a watch-tower and ends in a rampart, with a great sea view, and with the breadth of all the land shoreward; walk calmly over the top of a king's gate, with the arms of a bishop and the shrine of the Virgin beneath one's feet; and then, presently, begin to climb the side of a rock in which rude stone steps have been cut, till one lands on a miniature terrace, to find a preposterously sturdy-looking house affixed to a ridiculous ledge of rock that has the presumption to give shelter to a hundred or more travellers--ground enough, also, for rows of plane-trees, for honeysuckles, and rose-vine, with a full coquettish equipment of little tables and iron chairs--no such journey as that up a rock was ever taken with entirely sober eyes. Although her people were waiting below, and the dinner was on its way to the cloth, Madame Poulard had plenty of time to give to the beauty about her. How fine was the outlook from the top of the ramparts! What a fresh sensation, this, of standing on a terrace in mid-air and looking down on the sea, and across to the level shores! The rose-vines--we found them sweet--_tiens_--one of the branches had fallen--she had full time to re-adjust the loosened support. And "Marianne, give these ladies their hot water, and see to their bags--" even this order was given with courtesy. It was only when the supple, agile figure had left us to fly down the steep rock-cut steps; when it shot over the top of the gateway and slid with the grace of a lizard into the street far below us, that we were made sensible of there having been any especial need of madame's being in haste. That night, some three hours later, a picturesque group was assembled about this same supple figure. A pretty, and unlooked-for ceremony was about to take place. It was the ceremony of the lighting of the lanterns. In the great kitchen, in the dance of the firelight and the glow of the lamps, some seven or eight of us were being equipped with Chinese lanterns. This of itself was an engaging sight. Madame Poulard was always gay at this performance--for it meant much innocent merriment among her guests, and with the lighting of the last lantern, her own day was done. So the brilliant eyes flashed with a fresh fire, and the olive cheek glowed anew. All the men and women laughed as children sputter laughter, when they are both pleased and yet a little ashamed to show their pleasure. It was so very ridiculous, this journey up a rock with a Chinese lantern! But just because it was ridiculous, it was also delightful. One--two--three--seven--eight--they were all lit. The last male guest had touched his cap to madame, exchanging the "_bonne nuit_" a man only gives to a pretty woman, and that which a woman returns who feels that her beauty has received its just meed of homage; madame's figure stood, still smiling, a radiant benedictory presence, in the doorway, with the great glow of the firelight behind her; the last laugh echoed down the street--and behold, darkness was upon us! The street was as black as a cavern. The strip of sky and the stars above seemed almost day, by contrast. The great arch of the Porte du Roi engulphed us, and then, slowly groping our way, we toiled up the steps to the open ramparts. Here the keen night air swept rudely through our cloaks and garments; the sea tossed beneath the bastions like some restless tethered creature, that showed now a gray and now a purple coat, and the stars were gold balls that might drop at any instant, so near they were. The men shivered and buttoned their coats, and the women laughed, a trifle shrilly, as they grasped the floating burnous closer about their faces and shoulders. And the lanterns' beams danced a strange dance on the stone flagging. Once more we were lost in darkness. We were passing through the old guard-house. And then slowly, more slowly than ever, the lanterns were climbing the steps cut in the rock. Hands groped in the blackness to catch hold of the iron railing; the laughter had turned into little shouts and gasps for help. And then one of the lanterns played a treacherous trick; it showed the backs of two figures groping upward together--about one of the girlish figures a man's arm was flung. As suddenly the noise of the cries was stilled. The lanterns played their fitful light on still other objects. They illumined now a vivid yellow shrub; they danced upon a roof-top; they flooded, with a sudden circlet of brilliance, the awful depths below of the swirling waters and of rocks that were black as a bottomless pit. Then the terrace was reached. And the lanterns danced a last gay little dance among the roses and the vines before, Pouffe! Pouffe! and behold! they were all blown out. Thus it was we went to bed on the Mont. CHAPTER XXX. AN HISTORICAL OMELETTE--THE PILGRIMS AND THE SHRINE. To awake on a hill-top at sea. This was what morning brought. Crowd this hill with houses plastered to the sides of rocks, with great walls girdling it, with tiny gardens lodged in crevices, and with a forest tumbling seaward. Let this hill yield you a town in which to walk, with a street of many-storied houses; with other promenades along ramparts as broad as church aisles; with dungeons, cloisters, halls, guard-rooms, abbatial gateways, and a cathedral whose flying buttresses seemed to spring from mid-air and to end in a cloud--such was the world into which we awoke on the heights of Mont St. Michel. The verdict of the shore on the hill had been a just one; this world on a rock was a world apart. This hill in the sea had a detached air--as if, though French, at heart a true Gaul, it had had from the beginning of things a life of adventure peculiar to itself. The shore, at best, had been only a foster-mother; the hill was the true child of the sea. Since its birth it has had a more or less enforced separateness, in experience, from the country to which it belonged. Whether temple or fortress, whether forest-clad in virginal fierceness of aspect, or subdued into beauty by the touch of man's chisel, its destiny has ever been the same--to suffice unto itself--to be, in a word, a world in miniature. The Mont proved by its appearance its history in adventure; it had the grim, grave, battered look that comes only to features, whether of rock or of more plastic human mould--that have been carved by the rough handling of experience. It is the common habit of hills and mountains, as we all know, to turn disdainful as they grow skyward; they only too eagerly drop, one by one, the things by which man has marked the earth for his own. To stand on a mountain top and to go down to your grave are alike, at least in this--that you have left everything, except yourself, behind you. But it is both the charm and the triumph of Mont St. Michel, that it carries so much of man's handiwork up into the blue fields of air; this achievement alone would mark it as unique among hills. It appears as if for once man and nature had agreed to work in concert to produce a masterpiece in stone. The hill and the architectural beauties it carries aloft, are like a taunt flung out to sea and to the upper heights of air; for centuries they appear to have been crying aloud, "See what we can do, against your tempests and your futile tides--when we try." On that particular morning, the taunt seemed more like an epithalamium--such marriage-lines did sea and sky appear to be reading over the glistening face of the rock. June had pitched its tent of blue across the seas; all the world was blue, except where the sun smote it into gold. To eyes in love with beauty, what a world at one's feet! Beneath that azure roof, toward the west, was the world of water, curling, dimpling, like some human thing charged with the conscious joy of dancing in the sun. Shoreward, the more stable earth was in the Moslem's ideal posture--that of perpetual prostration. The Brittany coast was a long, flat, green band; the rocks of Cancale were brown, but scarcely higher in point of elevation than the sand-hills; the Normandy forests and orchards were rippling lines that focussed into the spiral of the Avranches cathedral spires: floating between the two blues, hung the aerial shapes of the Chaunsey and the Channel Islands; and nearer, along the coast-line, were the fringing edges of the shore, broken with shoals and shallows--earth's fingers, as it were, touching the sea--playing, as Coleridge's Abyssinian maid fingered the dulcimer, that music that haunts the poet's ear. We were seated at the little iron tables, on the terrace. We were sipping our morning coffee, beneath the plane-trees. The terrace, a foot beyond our coffee-cups, instantly began its true career as a precipice. We, ourselves, seemed to have begun as suddenly our own flight heavenward--on such astonishing terms of intimacy were we with the sky. The clapping close to our ears of large-winged birds; the swirling of the circling sea-gulls; the amazing nearness of the cloud drapery--all this gave us the sense of being in a new world, and of its being a strangely pleasant one. Suddenly a cock's crow, shrill and clear, made us start from the luxurious languor of our contentment; for we had scarcely looked to find poultry on this Hill of Surprises. Turning in the direction of the homely, familiar note, we beheld a garden. In this garden walked the cock--a two-legged gentleman of gorgeous plumage. If abroad for purely constitutional purposes, the crowing chanticleer must be forced to pass the same objects many times in review. Of all infinitesimal, microscopic gardens, this one, surely, was a model in minuteness. Yet it was an entirely self-respecting little garden. It was not much larger than a generous-sized pocket handkerchief; yet how much talent--for growing--may be hidden in a yard of soil--if the soil have the right virtue in it. Here were two rocks forming, with a fringe of cliff, a triangle; in that tri-cornered bit of earth a lively crop of growing vegetables was offering flattering signs of promise to the owner's eye. Where all land runs aslant, as all land does on this Mont, not an inch was to be wasted; up the rocks peach and pear-split trees were made to climb--and why should they not, since everything else--since man himself must climb from the moment he touches the base of the hill? Following the cock's call, came the droning sweetness of bees; the rose and the honeysuckle vines were loading the morning air with the perfume of their invitations. Then a human voice drowned the bees' whirring, and a face as fresh and as smiling as the day stood beside us. It was the voice and the face of Madame Poulard, on the round of her morning inspections. Our table and the radiant world at her feet were included in this, her line of observations. "_Ah, mesdames, comme vous savez bien vous placer!_--how admirably you understand how to place yourselves! Under such a sky as this--before such a spectacle--one should be in the front row, as at a theatre!" And that was the beginning of our deeds finding favor in the eyes of Madame Poulard. It was our happy fate to drink many a morning cup of coffee at those little iron tables; to have many a prolonged chat with the charming landlady of the famous inn; to become as familiar with the glories and splendors of the historical hill as with the habits and customs of the world that came up to view them. For here our journey was to end. The comedy of life, as it had played itself out in Normandy inns, was here, in this Inn on a Rock, to give us a series of farewell performances. On no other stage, we were agreed, could the versatile French character have had as admirable and picturesque a setting; and surely, on no other bit of French soil could such an astonishing and amazing variety of types be assembled for a final appearance, as came up, day after day, to make the tour of the Mont. To the shore, and for the whole of the near-lying Breton and Norman rustic world, the Mont is still the Hill of Delight. It is their Alp, their shrine, the tenth wonder of the world, a prison, a palace, and a temple still. In spite of Parisian changes in religious fashions, the blouse is still devout; for curiosity is the true religion of the provincial, and all love of adventure did not die out with the Crusades. Therefore it is that rustic France along this coast still makes pilgrimages to the shrine of the Archangel St. Michael. No marriage is rightly arranged which does not include a wedding-journey across the _grève_; no nuptial breakfast is aureoled with the true halo of romance which is eaten elsewhere than on these heights in mid-air. The young come to drink deep of wonders; the old, to refresh the depleted fountains of memory; and the tourist, behold, he is as a plague of locusts let loose upon the defenceless hill! After a fortnight's sojourn, Charm and I held many a grave consultation; close observation of this world that climbed the heights had bred certain strange misgivings. What was it this world of sight-seers came up to the Mont for to see? Was it to behold the great glories thereof, or was it, oh, human eye of man! to look on the face of a charming woman I It was impossible, after sojourning a certain time upon the hill, not to concede that there were two equally strong centres of attractions, that drew the world hither-ward. One remained, indeed, gravely suspended between the doubt and the fear, as to which of these potential units had the greater pull, in point of actual attraction. The impartial historian, given to a just weighing of evidence, would have been startled to find how invariably the scales tipped; how lightly an historical Mont, born of a miracle, crowned by the noblest buildings, a pious Mecca for saints and kings innumerable, shot up like feathers in lightness when over-weighted by the modern realities of a perfectly appointed inn, the cooking and eating of an omelette of omelettes, and the all-conquering charms of Madame Poulard. The fog of doubt thickened as, day after day, the same scenes were enacted; when one beheld all sorts and conditions of men similarly affected; when, again and again, the potentiality in the human magnet was proved true. Doubt turned to conviction, at the last, that the holy shrine of St. Michael had, in truth, been, violated; that the Mont had been desecrated; that the latter exists now solely as a setting for a pearl of an inn; and that within the shrine--it is Madame Poulard herself who fills the niche! The pilgrims come from darkest Africa and the sunlit Yosemite, but they remain to pray at the Inn of the Omelette. Yonder, on the _grèves,_ as we ourselves had proved, one crosses the far seas and one is wet to the skin, only to hear the praises sung of madame's skill in the handling of eggs in a pan; it is for this the lean guide strides before the pilgrim tourist, and that he dippeth his trident in the waters. At the great gates of the fortifications the pilgrim descends, and behold, a howling chorus of serving-people take up the chant of: "_Chez Madame Poulard, à gauche, à la renommée de l'omelette!_" The inner walls of the town lend themselves to their last and best estate, that of proclaiming the glory of "_L'Omelette_." Placards, rich in indicative illustrations of hands all forefingers, point, with a directness never vouchsafed the sinner eager to find the way to right and duty, to the inn of "_L'Incomparable, la Fameuse Omelette!_" The pilgrims meekly descend at that shrine. They bow low to the worker of the modern miracle; they pass with eager, trembling foot, into the inner sanctorum, to the kitchen, where the presiding deity receives them with the grace of a queen and the simplicity of a saint. Life on the Mont, as we soon found, resolved itself into this--into so arranging one's day as to be on hand for the great, the eventful hour. In point of fact there were two such hours in the Mont St. Michel day. There was the hour of the cooking of the omelette. There was always the other really more tragic hour, of the coming across the dike, of the huge lumbering omnibuses. For you see, that although one may be beautiful enough to compete successfully against dead-and-gone saints, against worn out miracles, and wonders in stone, human nature, when it is alive, is human nature still. It is the curse of success, the world over, to arouse jealousy; and we all have lived long enough to know that jealousy's evil-browed offspring are named Hate and Competition. Up yonder, beyond the Porte du Roi, rivalry has set up a counter-shrine, with a competing saint, with all the hateful accessories of a pretty face, a younger figure, and a graceful if less skilled aptitude in the making of omelettes in public. The hour of the coming in of the coaches, was, therefore, a tragic hour. On the arrival of the coaches Madame was at her post long before the pilgrims came up to her door. Being entirely without personal vanity--since she felt her beauty, her cleverness, her grace, and her charm to be only a part of the capital of the inn trade--a higher order of the stock in trade, as it were--she made it a point to look handsomer on the arrival of coaches than at any other time. Her cheeks were certain to be rosier; her bird's head was always carried a trifle more takingly, perched coquettishly sideways, that the caressing smile of welcome might be the more personal; and as the woman of business, lining the saint, so to speak, was also present, into the deep pockets of the blue-checked apron, the calculating fingers were thrust, that the quick counting of the incoming guests might not be made too obvious an action. After such a pose, to see a pilgrim escape! To see him pass by, unmoved by that smile, turning his feelingless back on the true shrine! It was enough to melt the stoutest heart. Madame's welcome of the captured, after such an affront, was set in the minor key; and her smile was the smile of a suffering angel. "_Cours, mon enfant_, run, see if he descends or if he pushes on; tell him _I_ am Madame Poulard!" This, a low command murmured between a hundred orders, still in the minor key, would be purred to Clémentine, a peasant in a cap, exceeding fleet of foot, and skilled in the capture of wandering sheep. And Clémentine would follow that stray pilgrim: she would attack him in the open street; would even climb after him, if need be, up the steep rock steps, till, proved to be following strange gods, he would be brought triumphantly back to the kitchen-shrine, by Clémentine, puffing, but exultant. "Ah, monsieur, how could you pass us by?" madame's soft voice would murmur reproachfully in the pilgrim's ear. And the pilgrim, abashed, ashamed, would quickly make answer, if he were born of the right parents: "_Chère_ madame, how was I to believe my eyes? It is ten years since I was here, and you are younger, more beautiful than ever! I was going in search of your mother!" at which needless truism all the kitchen would laugh. Madame Poulard herself would find time for one of her choicest smiles, although this was the great moment of the working of the miracle. She was beginning to cook the omelette. The head-cook was beating the eggs in a great yellow bowl. Madame had already taken her stand at the yawning Louis XV. fireplace; she was beginning gently to balance the huge _casserole_ over the glowing logs. And all the pilgrims were standing about, watching the process. Now, the group circling about the great fireplace was scarcely ever the same; the pilgrims presented a different face and garb day after day--but in point of hunger they were as one man; they were each and all as unvaryingly hungry as only tourists could be, who, clamoring for food, have the smell of it in their nostrils, with the added ache of emptiness gnawing within. But besides hunger, each one of the pilgrims had brought with him a pair of eyes; and what eyes of man can be pure savage before the spectacle of a pretty woman cooking, _for him_, before an open fire? Therefore it was that still another miracle was wrought, that of turning a famished mob into a buzzing swarm of admirers. "_Mais si, monsieur_, in this pan I can cook an omelette large enough for you all; you will see. Ah, madame, you are off already? Célestine! Madame's bill, in the desk yonder. And you, monsieur, you too leave us? _Deux cognacs?_ Victor--_deux cognacs et une demi-tasse pour monsieur!_" These and a hundred other answers and questions and orders, were uttered in a fluted voice or in a tone of sharp command, by the miracle-worker, as the pan was kept gently turning, and the eggs were poured in at just the right moment--not one of the pretty poses of head and wrist being forgotten. Madame Poulard, like all clever women who are also pretty, had two voices: one was dedicated solely to the working of her charms; this one was soft, melodious, caressing, the voice of dove when cooing; the other, used for strictly business purposes, was set in the quick, metallic _staccato_ tones proper for such occasions. The dove's voice was trolling its sweetness, as she went on-- "Eggs, monsieur? How many I use? Ah, it is in the season that counting the dozens becomes difficult--seventy dozen I used one day last year!" "Seventy dozen!" the pilgrim-chorus ejaculated, their eyes growing the wider as their lips moistened. For behold, the eggs were now cooked to a turn; the long-handled pan was being lifted with the effortless skill of long practice, the omelette was rolled out at just the right instant of consistency, and was being as quickly turned into its great flat dish. There was a scurrying and scampering up the wide steps to the dining room, and a hasty settling into the long rows of chairs. Presently madame herself would appear, bearing the huge dish. And the omelette--the omelette, unlike the pilgrims, would be found to be always the same--melting, juicy, golden, luscious, and above all _hot!_ The noon-day table d'hôte was always a sight to see. Many of the pilgrim-tourists came up to the Mont merely to pass the day, or to stop the night; the midday meal was therefore certain to be the liveliest of all the repasts. The cloth was spread in a high, white, sunlit room. It was a trifle bare, this room, in spite of the walls being covered with pictures, the windows with pretty draperies, and the spotless linen that covered the long table. But all temples, however richly adorned, have a more or less unfurnished aspect; and this room served not only as the dining-table, but also as a foreshadowing of the apotheosis of Madame Poulard. Here were grouped together all the trophies and tributes of a grateful world; there were portraits of her charming brunette face signed by famous admirers; there were sonnets to her culinary skill and her charms as hostess, framed; these alternated with gifts of horned beasts that had been slain in her honor, and of stuffed birds who, in life, had beguiled the long winters for her with their songs. About the wide table, the snow of the linen reflected always the same picture; there were rows of little palms in flower-pots, interspersed with fruit dishes, with the butter pats, the almonds, and raisins, in their flat plates. The rows of faces above the cloth were more varied. The four corners of the earth were sometimes to be seen gathered together about the breakfast-table. Frenchmen of the Midi, with the skin of Spaniards and the buzz of Tartarin's _ze ze_ in their speech; priests, lean and fat; Germans who came to see a French stronghold as defenceless as a woman's palm; the Italian, a rarer type, whose shoes, sufficiently pointed to prick, and whose choice for décolleté collars betrayed his nationality before his lisping French accent could place him indisputably beyond the Alps; herds of English--of all types--from the aristocrat, whose open-air life had colored his face with the hues of a butcher, to the pale, ascetic clerk, off on a two weeks' holiday, whose bending at his desk had given him the stoop of a scholar; with all these were mixed hordes of French provincials, chiefly of the _bourgeois type,_ who singly, or in family parties, or in the nuptial train of sons or daughters, came up to the shrine of St. Michel. To listen to the chatter of these tourists was to learn the last word of the world's news. As in the days before men spoke to each other across continents, and the medium of cold type had made the event of to-day the history of to-morrow, so these pilgrims talked through the one medium that alone can give a fact the real essence of freshness--the ever young, the perdurably charming human voice. It was as good as sitting out a play to watch the ever-recurring characteristics, which made certain national traits as marked as the noses on the faces of the tourists. The question, for example, on which side the Channel a pilgrim was born, was settled five seconds after he was seated at table. The way in which the butter was passed was one test; the manner of the eating of the famous omelette was another. If the tourist were a Frenchman, the neat glass butter-dish was turned into a visiting-card--a letter of introduction, a pontoon-bridge, in a word, hastily improvised to throw across the stream of conversation. "_Madame_" (this to the lady at the tourist's left), "_me permet-elle de lui offrir le beurre?_" Whereat madame bowed, smiled, accepted the golden balls as if it were a bouquet, returning the gift, a few seconds later, by the proffer of the gravy dish. Between the little ceremony of the two bows and the smiling _mercis_, a tentative outbreak of speech ensued, which at the end of a half-hour, had spread from _bourgeois_ to countess, from curé to Parisian _boulevardier_, till the entire side of the table was in a buzz of talk. These genial people of a genial land finding themselves all in search of the same adventure, on top of a hill, away from the petty world of conventionality, remembered that speech was given to man to communicate with his fellows. And though neighbors for a brief hour, how charming such an hour can be made when into it are crowded the effervescence of personal experience, the witty exchange of comment and observation, and the agreeable conflict of thought and opinion! On the opposite side of the table, what a contrast! There the English were seated. There was the silence of the grave. All the rigid figures sat as upright as posts. In front of these severe countenances, the butter-plates remained as fixtures; the passing of them to a neighbor would be a frightful breach of good form--besides being dangerous. Such practices, in public places, had been known to lead to things--to unspeakable things--to knowing the wrong people, to walks afterward with cads one couldn't shake off, even to marriages with the impossible! Therefore it was that the butter remained a fixture. Even between those who formed the same tourist-party, there was rarely such an act of self-forgetfulness committed as an indulgence in talk--in public. The eye is the only active organ the Englishman carries abroad with him; his talking is done by staring. What fierce scowls, what dark looks of disapproval, contempt, and dislike were levelled at the chattering Frenchmen opposite. [Illustration: MONT SAINT MICHEL SNAIL-GATHERERS] Across the table, the national hate perpetuated itself. It appears to be a test of patriotism, this hatred between Frenchmen and Englishmen. That strip of linen might easily have been the Channel itself; it could scarcely more effectually have separated the two nations. A whole comedy of bitterness, a drama of rivalry, and a five-act tragedy of scorn were daily played between the Briton who sat facing the south, and the Frenchman who faced north. Both, as they eyed their neighbor over the foam of their napkins, had the Island in their eye!--the Englishman to flaunt its might and glory in the teeth of the hated Gaul, and the Frenchman to return his contempt for a nation of moist barbarians. Meanwhile, the omelette was going its rounds. It was being passed at that moment to Monsieur le Curé. He had been watching its progress with glistening eye and moistening lips. Madame Poulard, as she slipped the melting morsel beneath his elbow, had suddenly assumed the role of the penitent. Her tone was a reminder of the confessional, as of one who passed her masterpiece apologetically. She, forsooth, a sinner, to have the honor of ministering to the carnal needs of a son of the Church! The son of the Church took two heaping spoonfuls. His eye gave her, with his smile, the benediction of his gratitude, even before he had tasted of the luscious compound. "_Ah, chère madame! il n'y a que vous_--it is only you who can make the ideal omelette! I have tried, but Suzette has no art in her fingers; your receipt doesn't work away from the Mont!" And the good man sighed as he chuckled forth his praises. He had come up to the hill in company with the two excellent ladies beside him, of his flock, to make a little visit to his brethren yonder, to the priests who were still here, wrecks of the once former flourishing monastery. He had come to see them, and also to gaze on La Merveille. It was a good five years since he had looked upon its dungeons and its lace-work. But after all, in his secret soul of souls, he had longed to eat of the omelette. _Dieu!_ how often during those slow, quiet years in the little hamlet yonder on the plain, had its sweetness and lightness mocked his tongue with illusive tasting! Little wonder, therefore, that the good curé's praises were sweet in madame's ear, for they had the ring of truth--and of envy! And madame herself was only mortal, for what woman lives but feels herself uplifted by the sense of having found favor in the eyes of her priest? The omelette next came to a halt between the two ladies of the curé's flock. These were two _bourgeoises_ with the deprecating, mistrustful air peculiar to commonplace the world over. The walk up the steep stairs was still quickening their breath their compressed bosoms were straining the hooks of their holiday woollen bodices--cut when they were of slenderer build. Their bonnets proclaimed the antique fashions of a past decade; but the edge of their tongues had the keenness that comes with daily practice--than which none has been found surer than adoration of one's pastor, and the invigorating gossip of small towns. These ladies eyed the omelette with a chilled glance. Naturally, they could not see as much to admire in Madame Poulard or in her dish as did their curé. There was nothing so wonderful after all in the turning of eggs over a hot fire. The omelette!--after all, an omelette is an omelette! Some are better--some are worse; one has one's luck in cooking as in anything else. They had come up to the Mont with their good curé to see its wonders and for a day's outing; admiration of other women had not been anticipated as a part of the programme. _Tiens_--who was he talking to now? To that tall blonde--a foreigner, a young girl--_tiens_--who knows?--possibly an American--those Americans are terrible, they say--bold, immodest, irreverent. And the two ladies' necks were screwed about their over-tight collars, to give Charm the verdict of their disapproval. "Monsieur le Curé, they are passing you the fish!" cried the stouter, more aggressive parishioner, who boasted a truculent mustache. "Monsieur le Curé, the roast is at your elbow!" interpolated the second, with the more timid voice of a second in action; this protector of the good curé had no mustache, but her face was mercifully protected by nature from a too-disturbing combination of attractions, by being plentifully punctuated with moles from which sprouted little tufts of hair. The rain of these ladies' interruption was incessant; but the curé was a man of firm mind; their efforts to recapture his attention were futile. For the music of Charm's foreign voice was in his ear. Worship of the cloth is not a national, it is a more or less universal cult, I take it. It is in the blood of certain women. Opposite the two fussy, jealous _bourgeoises_, were others as importunate and aggressive. They were of fair, lean, lank English build, with the shifting eyes and the persistent courage which come to certain maidens in whose lives there is but one fixed and certain fact--that of having missed the matrimonial market. The shrine of their devotions, and the present citadel of their attack, was seated between them--he also being lean, pale, high-arched of brow, high anglican by choice, and noticeably weak of chin, in whose sable garments there was framed the classical clerical tie. To this curate Madame was now passing her dish. She still wore her fine sweet smile, but there was always a discriminating reserve in its edge when she touched the English elbow. The curate took his spoonful with the indifference of a man who had never known the religion of good eating. He put up his one eye-glass; it swept Madame's bending face, its smile, and the yellow glory floating beneath both. "Ah-h--ya-as--an omelette!" The glass was dropped; he took a meagre spoonful which he cut, presently, with his knife. He turned then to his neighbors--to both his neighbors! They had been talking of the parish church on the hill. "Ah-h-h, ya-as--lovely porch--isn't it?" "Oh, lovely--lovely!" chorussed the two maidens, with assenting fervor. "_Were_ you there this morning?" and they lifted eyes swimming with the rapture of their admiration. "Ya-as." "Only fancy--our missing you! We were _both_ there!" "Dear me! Really, were you?" "_Could_ you go this afternoon? I do want so to hear your criticism of my drawing--I'm working on the arch now." "So sorry--can't--possibly. I promised what's his name to go over to Tombelaine, don't you know!" "Oh-h! We do so want to go to Tombelaine!" "Ah-h--do you, really? One ought to start a little before the tide drops--they tell me!" and the clerical eye, through its correctly adjusted glass, looked into those four pleading eyes with no hint of softening. The dish that was the masterpiece of the house, meanwhile, had been despatched as if it were so much leather. The omelette fared no better with the brides, as a rule, than with the English curates. Such a variety of brides as came up to the Mont! You could have your choice, at the midday meal, of almost any nationality, age, or color. The attempt among these bridal couples to maintain the distant air of a finished indifference only made their secret the more open. The British phlegm, on such a journey, did not always serve as a convenient mask; the flattering, timid glance, the ripple of the tender whispers, and the furtive touching of fingers beneath the table, made even these English couples a part of the great human marrying family; their superiority to their fellows would return, doubtless, when the honey had dried out of their moon. The best of our adventures into this tender country were with the French bridal tourists; they were certain to be delightfully human. As we had had occasion to remark before, they were off, like ourselves, on a little voyage of discovery; they had come to make acquaintance with the being to whom they were mated for life. Various degrees of progress could be read in the air and manner of the hearty young _bourgeoises_ and their paler or even ruddier partners, as they crunched their bread or sipped their thin wine. Some had only entered as yet upon the path of inquiry; others had already passed the mile-stone of criticism; and still others had left the earth and were floating in full azure of intoxication. Of the many wedding parties that sat down to breakfast, we soon made the commonplace discovery that the more plebeian the company, the more certain-orbed appeared to be the promise of happiness. Some of the peasant weddings were noisy, boisterous performances; but how gay were the brides, and how bloated with joy the hardy, knotty-handied grooms! These peasant wedding guests all bore a striking family likeness; they might easily all have been brothers and sisters, whether they had come from the fields near Pontorson, or Cancale, or Dol, or St. Malo. The older the women, the prettier and the more gossamer were the caps; but the younger maidens were always delightful to look upon, such was the ripe vigor of their frames, and the liquid softness of eyes that, like animals, were used to wide sunlit fields and to great skies full of light. The bride, in her brand-new stuff gown, with a bonnet that recalled the bridal wreath only just laid aside, was also certain to be of a general universal type with the broad hips, wide waist, muscular limbs, and the melting sweetness of lips and eyes that only abundant health and a rich animalism of nature bring to maidenhood. Madame Poulard's air with this, her world, was as full of tact as with the tourists. Many of the older women would give her the Norman kiss, solemnly, as if the salute were a part of the ceremony attendant on the eating of a wedding breakfast at Mont St. Michel. There would be a three times' clapping of the wrinkled or the ruddy peasant cheeks against the sides of Madame Poulard's daintier, more delicately modelled face. Then all would take their seats noisily at table. It was Madame Poulard who then would bring us news of the party; at the end of a fortnight, Charm and I felt ourselves to be in possession of the hidden and secret reasons for all the marrying that had been done along the coast, that year. "_Tiens, ce n'est pas gai, la noce!_ I must learn the reason!" Madame would then flutter over the bridal breakfasters as a delicate plumaged bird hovers over a mass of stuff out of which it hopes to make a respectable meal. She presently would return to murmur in a whisper, "it is a _mariage de raison_. They, the bride and groom, love elsewhere, but they are marrying to make a good partnership; they are both hair-dressers at Caen. They have bought a new and fine shop with their earnings." Or it would be, "Look, madame, at that _jolie personne_; see how sad she looks. She is in love with her cousin who sits opposite, but the groom is the old one. He has a large farm and a hundred cows." To look on such a trio would only be to make the acquaintance anew of Sidonie and Risler and of Froment Jeune. Such brides always had the wandering gaze of those in search of fresh horizons, or of those looking already for the chance of escape. For such "unhappies," _ces malheureuses_, Madame's manner had an added softness and tenderness; she passed the frosted bridal cake as if it were a propitiatory offering to the God of Hymen. However melancholy the bride, the cake and Madame's caressing smiles wrought ever the same spell; for an instant, at least, the newly-made wife was in love with matrimony and with the cake, accepting the latter with the pleased surprise of one who realizes that, at least, on one's wedding day, one is a person of importance; that even so far as Mont St. Michel the news of their marriage had turned the ovens into a baking of wedding-cakes. This was destined to be the first among the deceptions that greeted such brides; for there were hundreds of such cakes, alas! kept constantly on hand. They were the same--a glory of sugar-mouldings and devices covering a mountain of richness--that were sent up yearly at Christmas time to certain mansard studios in the Latin quarter, where the artist recipients, like the brides, eat of the cake as did Adam when partaking of the apple, believing all the woman told them! There were other visitors who came up to the Mont, not as welcome as were these tourist parties. One morning, as we looked toward Pontorson, a small black cloud appeared to be advancing across the bay. The day was windy; the sky was crowded with huge white mountains--round, luminous clouds that moved in stately sweeps. And the sea was the color one loves to see in an earnest woman's eye, the dark-blue sapphire that turns to blue-gray. This was a setting that made that particular cloud, making such slow progress across from the shore, all the more conspicuous. Gradually, as the black mass neared the dike, it began to break and separate; and we saw plainly enough that the scattering particles were human beings. It was, in point of fact, a band of pilgrims; a peasant pilgrimage was coming up to the Mont. In wagons, in market carts, in _char-à-bancs_, in donkey-carts, on the backs of monster Percherons--the pilgrimage moved in slow processional dignity across the dike. Some of the younger black gowns and blue blouses attempted to walk across over the sands; we could see the girls sitting down on the edge of the shore, to take off their shoes and stockings and to tuck up their thick skirts. When they finally started they were like unto so many huge cheeses hoisted on stilts. The bare legs plunged boldly forward, keeping ahead of the slower-moving peasant-lads; the girls' bravery served them till they reached the fringe of the incoming tide; not until their knees went under water did they forego their venture. A higher wave came in, deluging the ones farthest out; and then ensued a scampering toward the dike and a climbing up of the stone embankment. The old route across the sands, that had been the only one known to kings and barons, was not good enough for a modern Norman peasant. The religion of personal comfort has spread even as far as the fields. At the entrance gate a tremendous hubbub and noise announced the arrival of the pilgrimage. Wagons, carts, horses, and peasants were crowded together as only such a throng is mixed in pilgrimages, wars, and fairs. Women were taking down hoods, unharnessing the horses, fitting slats into outsides of wagons, rolling up blankets, unpacking from the _char-à-bancs_ cooking utensils, children, grain-bags, long columns of bread, and hard-boiled eggs. For the women, darting hither and thither in their blue petticoats, their pink and red kerchiefs, and the stiff white Norman caps, were doing all the work. The men appeared to be decorative adjuncts, plying the Norman's gift of tongue across wagon-wheels and over the back of their vigorous wives and daughters. For them the battle of the day was over; the hour of relaxation had come. The bargains they had made along the route were now to be rehearsed, seasoned with a joke. "_Allons, toi, on ne fait pas de la monnaie blanche comme ca!_" "_Je t'ai offert huit sous, tu sais, lapin!_" "_Farceur, va-t'en--_" "Come, are you never going to have done fooling?" cried a tan-colored, wide-hipped peasant to her husband, who was lounging against the wagon pole, sporting a sprig of gentian pinned to his blouse. He was fat and handsome; and his eye proclaimed, as he was making it do heavy work at long range at a cluster of girls descending from an antique gig, that the knowledge of the same was known unto him. "That's right, growl ahead, thou, _tes beaux jours sont passés_, but for me _l'amour, l'amour--que c'est gai, que c'est frais!_" he half sung, half shouted. The moving mass of color, the Breton caps, and the Norman faces, the gold crosses that fell from dented bead necklaces, the worn hooped earrings, the clean bodices and home-spun skirts, streamed out past our windows as we looked down upon them. How pretty were some of the faces, of the younger women particularly! and with what gay spirits they were beginning their day! It had begun the night before, almost; many of the carts had been driven in from the forests beyond Avranches; some of the Brittany groups had started the day before. But what can quench the fountain of French vivacity? To see one's world, surely, there is nothing in that to tire one; it only excites and exhilarates; and so a fair or market day, and above all a pilgrimage, are better than balls, since they come more regularly; they are the peasant's opera, his Piccadilly and Broadway, club, drawing-room, Exchange, and parade, all in one. A half-hour after a landing of the pilgrims at the outer gates of the fortifications, the hill was swarming with them. The single street of the town was choked with the black gowns and the cobalt-blue blouses. Before these latter took a turn at their devotions they did homage to Bacchus. Crowds of peasants were to be seen seated about the long, narrow inn-tables, lifting huge pewter tankards to bristling beards. Some of these taverns were the same that had fed and sheltered bands of pilgrims that are now mere handfuls of dust in country churchyards. Those sixteenth century pilgrims, how many of them, had found this same arched doorway of La Licorne as cool as the shade of great trees after the long hot climb up to the hill! What a pleasant face has the timbered facade of the Tête d'Or, and the Mouton Blanc, been to the weary-limbed: and how sweet to the dead lips has been the first taste of the acid cider! Other aspects of the hill, on this day of the pilgrimage, made those older dead-and-gone bands of pilgrims astonishingly real. On the tops of bastions, in the clefts of the rocks, beneath the glorious walls of La Merveille, or perilously lodged on the crumbling cornice of a tourelle, numerous rude altars had been hastily erected. The crude blues and scarlets of banners were fluttering, like so many pennants, in the light breeze. Beneath the improvised altar-roofs--strips of gay cloth stretched across poles stuck into the ground--were groups not often seen in these less fervent centuries. High up, mounted on the natural pulpit formed of a bit of rock, with the rude altar before him, with its bit of scarlet cloth covered with cheap lace, stood or knelt the priest. Against the wide blue of the open heaven his figure took on an imposing splendor of mien and an unmodern impressiveness of action. Beneath him knelt, with bowed heads, the groups of the peasant-pilgrims; the women, with murmuring lips and clasped hands, their strong, deeply-seamed faces outlined, with the precision of a Francesco painting, against the gray background of a giant mass of wall, or the amazing breadth of a vast sea-view; children, squat and chubby, with bulging cheeks starting from the close-fitting French _bonnet_; and the peasant-farmers, mostly of the older varieties, whose stiffened or rheumatic knees and knotty hands made their kneeling real acts of devotional zeal. There were a dozen such altars and groups scattered over the perpendicular slant of the hill. The singing of the choir-boys, rising like skylark notes into the clear space of heaven, would be floating from one rocky-nested chapel, while below, in the one beneath which we, for a moment, were resting, there would be the groaning murmur of the peasant groups in prayer. All day little processions were going up and down the steep stone steps that lead from fortified rock to parish church, and from the town to the abbatial gateway. The banners and the choir-boys, the priests in their embroideries and lace, the peasants in cap and blouse, were incessantly mounting and descending, standing on rock edges, caught for an instant between a medley of perpendicular roofs, of giant gateways, and a long perspective of fortified walls, only to be lost in the curve of a bastion, or a flying buttress, that, in their turn, would be found melting into a distant sea-view. All the hours of a pilgrimage, we discovered, were not given to prayer; nor yet is an incessant bowing at the shrine of St. Michel the sole other diversion in a true pilgrim's round of pious devotions. Later on in this eventful day, we stumbled on a somewhat startling variation to the penitential order of the performances. In a side alley, beneath a friendly overhanging rock and two protecting roof-eaves, an acrobat was making her professional toilet. When she emerged to lay a worn strip of carpet on the rough cobbles of the street, she presented a pathetic figure in the gold of the afternoon sun. She was old and wrinkled; the rouge would no longer stick to the sunken cheeks; the wrinkles were become clefts; the shrunken but still muscular legs were clad in a pair of tights, a very caricature of the silken webs that must once have encased the poor old creature's limbs, for these were knitted of the coarse thread the commonest peasant uses for the rough field stocking. Over these obviously home-made coverings was a single skirt of azure tarlatan, plentifully besprinkled with golden stars. The gossamer skirt and its spangles turned, for their _début_, a somersault in the air, and the knitted tights took strange leaps from the bars of a rude trapeze. The groups of peasants were soon thicker about this spectacle than they had gathered about the improvised altars. All the men who had passed the day in the taverns came out at the sound of the hoarse cracked voice of the aged acrobat. As she hurled her poor old twisted shape from swinging bar to pole, she cried aloud, "_Ah, messieurs, essayez ça seulement!_" The men's hands, when she had landed on her feet after an uncommonly venturous whirl of the blue skirts in mid-air, came out of their deep pockets; but they seasoned their applause with coarse jokes which they flung, with a cruel relish, into the pitifully-aged face. A cracked accordion and a jingling tambourine were played by two hardened-looking ruffians, seated on their heels beneath a window--a discordant music that could not drown the noise of the peasants' derisive laughter. But the latter's pennies rattled a louder jingle into the ancient acrobat's tin cup than it had into the priest's green netted contribution box. "No, madame, as for us, we do not care for pilgrimages," was Madame Poulard's verdict on such survivals of past religious enthusiasms. And she seasoned her comments with an enlightening shrug. "We see too well how they end. The men go home dead drunk, the women are dropping with fatigue, _et les enfants même se grisent de cidre!_ No; pilgrimages are bad for everyone. The priests should not allow them." This was at the end of the day, after the black and blue swarm had passed, a weary, uncertain-footed throng, down the long street, to take its departure along the dike. At the very end of the straggling procession came the three acrobats; they had begged, or bought, a drive across the dike from some of the pilgrims. The lady of the knitted tights, in her conventional skirts and womanly fichu, was scarcely distinguishable from the peasant women who eyed her askance; though decently garbed now, they looked at her as if she were some plague or vice walking in their midst. The verdict of Madame Poulard seemed to be the verdict of all Mont St. Michel. The whole town was abroad that evening, on its doorsteps and in its garden beds, repairing the ravages committed by the band of the pilgrims. Never had the town, as a town, been so dirty; never had the street presented so shocking a collection of abominations; never had flowers and shrubs been so mercilessly robbed and plundered--these were the comments that flowed as freely as the water that was rained over the dusty cobbles, thick with refuse of luncheon and the shreds of torn skirts and of children's socks. At any hour of the day, of even an ordinary, uneventful day, to take a walk in the town is to encounter a surprise at every turning. Would you call it a town--this one straggling street that begins in a King's gateway and ends--ah, that is the point, just where does it end? I, for one, was never once quite certain at just what precise point this one single Mont St. Michel street stopped--lost itself, in a word, and became something else. That was also true of so many other things on the hill; all objects had such an astonishing way of suddenly becoming something else. A house, for example, that you had passed on your upward walk, had a beguiling air of sincerity. It had its cellar beneath the street front like any other properly built house; it continued its growth upward, showing the commonplace features of a door, of so many windows--queerly spaced, and of an amazing variety of shapes, but still unmistakably windows. Then, assured of so much integrity of character, you looked to see the roof covering the house, and instead-like the eggs in a Chinese juggler's fingers, that are turned in a jiffy into a growing plant--behold the roof miraculously transformed into a garden, or lost in a rampart, or, with quite shameless effrontery, playing deserter, and serving as the basement of another and still fairer dwelling. That was a sample of the way all things played you the trick of surprise on this hill. Stairways began on the cobbles of the streets, only to lose themselves in a side wall; a turn on the ramparts would land you straight into the privacy of a St. Michelese interior, with an entire household, perchance, at the mercy of your eye, taken at the mean disadvantage of morning dishabille. As for doors that flew open where you looked to find a bastion; or a school--house that flung all the Michelese _voyous_ over the tops of the ramparts at play-time; or of fishwives that sprung, as full-armed in their kit as Minerva from her sire's brows, from the very forehead of fortified places; or of beds and settees and wardrobes (surely no Michelese has ever been able, successfully, to maintain in secret the ghost of a family skeleton!) into which you were innocently precipitated on your way to discover the minutest of all cemeteries--these were all commonplace occurrences once your foot was set on this Hill of Surprises. There are two roads that lead one to the noble mass of buildings crowning the hill. One may choose the narrow street with its moss-grown steps, its curves, and turns; or one may have the broader path along the ramparts, with its glorious outlook over land and sea. Whichever approach one chooses, one passes at last beneath the great doors of the Barbican. Three times did the vision of St. Michel appear to Saint Aubert, in his dream, commanding the latter to erect a church on the heights of Mont St. Michel to his honor. How many a time must the modern pilgrim traverse the stupendous mass that has grown out of that command before he is quite certain that the splendor of Mont St. Michel is real, and not a part of a dream! Whether one enters through the dark magnificence of the great portals of the Châtelet; whether one mounts the fortified stairway, passing into the Salle des Gardes, passing onward from dungeon to fortified bridge, to gain the abbatial residence; whether one leaves the vaulted splendor of oratories for aerial passage-ways, only to emerge beneath the majestic roof of the Cathedral--that marvel of the early Norman, ending in the Gothic choir of the fifteenth century; or, as one penetrates into the gloom of the mighty dungeons where heroes and the brothers of kings, and saints and scientists have died their long death--as one gropes through the black night of the Crypt, where a faint, mysterious glint of light falls aslant the mystical face of the Black Virgin; as one climbs to the light beneath the ogive arches of the Aumônerie, through the wide-lit aisles of the Salle des Chevaliers, past the slender Gothic columns of the Refectory, up at last to the crowning glory of all the glories of La Merveille, to the exquisitely beautiful colonnades of the open Cloister the impressions and emotions excited by these ecclesiastical and military masterpieces are ever the same, however many times one may pass them in review. A charm, indefinable, but replete with subtle attractions, lurks in every one of these dungeons. The great halls have a power to make one retraverse their space, I have yet to find under other vaulted chambers. The grass that is set, like a green jewel, in the arabesques of the Cloister, is a bit of greensward the feet press with a different tread to that which skips lightly over other strips of turf. And the world, that one looks out upon through prison bars, that is so gloriously arched in the arm of a flying buttress, or that lies prone at your feet from the dizzy heights of the rock clefts, is not the world in which you, daily, do your petty stretch of toil, in which you laugh and ache, sorrow, sigh, and go down to your grave in. The secret of this deep attraction may lie in the fact of one's being in a world that is built on a height. Much, doubtless, of the charm lies, also, in the reminders of all the human life that, since the early dawn of history, has peopled this hill. One has the sense of living at tremendously high mental pressure; of impressions, emotions, sensations crowding upon the mind; of one's whole meagre outfit of memory, of poetic equipment, and of imaginative furnishing, being unequal to the demand made by even the most hurried tour of the great buildings, or the most flitting review of the noble massing of the clouds and the hilly seas. The very emptiness and desolation of all the buildings on the hill help to accentuate their splendor. The stage is magnificently set; the curtain, even, is lifted. One waits for the coming on of kingly shapes, for the pomp of trumpets, for the pattering of a mighty host. But, behold, all is still. And one sits and sees only a shadowy company pass and repass across that glorious _mise-en-scène._ For, in a certain sense, I know no other mediaeval mass of buildings as peopled as are these. The dead shapes seem to fill the vast halls. The Salle des Chevaliers is crowded, daily, with a brilliant gathering of knights, who sweep the trains of their white damask mantles, edged with ermine, over the dulled marble of the floor; two by two they enter the hall; the golden shells on their mantles make the eyes blink, as the groups gather about the great chimneys, or wander through the column-broken space. Behind this dazzling _cortège_, up the steep steps of the narrow street, swarm other groups--the mediaeval pilgrim host that rushes into the cathedral aisles, and that climbs the ramparts to watch the stately procession as it makes its way toward the church portals. There are still other figures that fill every empty niche and deserted watch-tower. Through the lancet windows of the abbatial gateways the yeomanry of the vassal villages are peering; it is the weary time of the Hundred Years' War, and all France is watching, through sentry windows, for the approach of her dread enemy. On the shifting sands below, as on brass, how indelibly fixed are the names of the hundred and twenty-nine knights whose courage drove, step by step, over that treacherous surface, the English invaders back to their island strongholds. Will you have a less stormy and belligerent company to people the hill? In the quieter days of the fourteenth century, on any bright afternoon, you could have sat beside some friendly artist-monk, and watched him color and embellish those wondrous missals that made the manuscripts of the Brothers famous throughout France. Earlier yet, in those naive centuries, Robert de Torigny, that "bouche des Papes," would doubtless have discoursed to you on any subject dear to this "counsellor of kings"--on books, or architecture, or the science of fortifications, or on the theology of Lanfranc; from the helmeted locks of Rollon to the veiled tresses of the lovely Tiphaine Raguenel, Duguesclin's wife; from the ghastly rat-eaten body of the Dutch journalist, who offended that tyrant King, Louis XIV., to the Revolutionary heroes, as pitilessly doomed to an odious death under the gentle Louis Philippe--there is no shape or figure in French history which cannot be summoned at will to refill either a dungeon or a palace chamber at Mont St. Michel. Even in these, our modern days, one finds strange relics of past fashions in thought and opinion. The various political, religious, and ethical forms of belief to be met with in a fortnight's sojourn on the hill, give one a sense of having passed in review a very complete gallery of ancient and modern portraits of men's minds. In time one learns to traverse even a dozen or more centuries with ease. To be in the dawn of the eleventh century in the morning; at high noon to be in the flood-tide of the fifteenth; and, as the sun dipped, to hear the last word of our own dying century--such were the flights across the abysmal depths of time Charm and I took again and again. One of our chosen haunts was in a certain watch-tower. From its top wall, the loveliest prospect of Mont St. Michel was to be enjoyed. Day after day and sunset after sunset, we sat out the hours there. Again and again the world, as it passed, came and took its seat beside us. Pilgrims of the devout and ardent type would stop, perchance, would proffer a preliminary greeting, would next take their seat along the parapet, and, quite unconsciously, would end by sitting for their portrait. One such sitter, I remember, was clad in carmine crepe shawl; she was bonneted in the shape of a long-ago decade. She had climbed the hill in the morning before dawn, she said; she had knelt in prayer as the sun rose. For hers was a pilgrimage made in fulfilment of a vow. St. Michel had granted her wish, and she in return had brought her prayers to his shrine. "Ah, mesdames! how good is God! How greatly He rewards a little self-sacrifice. Figure to yourselves the Mont in the early mists, with the sun rising out of the sea and the hills. I was on my knees, up there. I had eaten nothing since yesterday at noon. I was full of the Holy Ghost. When the sun broke at last, it was God Himself in all His glory come down to earth! The whole earth seemed to be listening--_prêtait l'oreille_--and with the great stillness, and the sea, and the light breaking everywhere, it was as if I were being taken straight up into Paradise. Saint Michel himself must have been supporting me." The carmine crepe shawl covered a poet, you see, as well as a devotee. Up yonder, in the little shops and stalls tucked away within the walls of the Barbican, a lively traffic, for many a century now, has been going on in relics and _plombs de pèlerinage_. Some of these mediaeval impressions have been unearthed in strange localities, in the bed of the Seine, as far away as Paris. Rude and archaic are many of these early essays in the sculptor's art. But they preserve for us, in quaint intensity, the fervor of adoration which possessed that earlier, more devout time and period. On the mind of this nineteenth century pilgrim, the same lovely old forms of belief and superstition were imprinted as are still to be seen in some of those winged figures of St. Michel, with feet securely set on the back of the terrible dragon, staring, with triumphant gaze, through stony or leaden eyes. On the evening of the pilgrimage our friend, the Parisian, joined us on our high perch. The Mont seemed strangely quiet after the noise and confusion the peasants had brought in their train. The Parisian, like ourselves, had been glad to escape into the upper heights of the wide air, after the bustle and hurry of the day at our inn. "You permit me, mesdames?" He had lighted his after-dinner cigar; he went on puffing, having gained our consent. He curled a leg comfortably about the railings of a low bridge connecting a house that sprang out of a rock, with the rampart. Below, there was a clean drop of a few hundred feet, more or less. In spite of the glories of a spectacular sunset, yielding ceaseless changes and transformations of cloud and sea tones, the words of Madame Poulard alone had power to possess our companion. She had uttered her protest against the pilgrimage, as she had swept the Parisian's _pousse-café_ from his elbow. He took up the conversation where it had been dropped. "It is amusing to hear Madame Poulard talk of the priests stopping the pilgrimages! The priests? Why, that's all they have left them to live upon now. These peasants' are the only pockets in which they can fumble nowadays." "All the same, one can't help being grateful to those peasants," retorted Charm. "They are the only creatures who have made these things seem to have any meaning. How dead it all seems! The abbey, the cloisters, the old prisons, the fortifications, it is like wandering through a splendid tomb! "Yes, as the curé said yesterday, '_l'âme n'y est plus_,'--since the priests have been dislodged, it is the house of the dead." "The priests"--the Parisian snorted at the very sound of the word--"they have only themselves to blame. They would have been here still, if they had not so abused their power." "How did they abuse it?" Charm asked. "In every possible way. I am, myself, not of the country. But my brother was stationed here for some years, when the Mont was garrisoned. The priests were in full possession then, and they conducted a lively commerce, mademoiselle. The Mont was turned into a show--to see it or any part of it, everyone had to pay toll. On the great fête-days, when St. Michel wore his crown, the gold ran like water into the monks' treasury. It was still then a fashionable religious fad to have a mass said for one's dead, out here among the clouds and the sea. Well, try to imagine fifty masses all dumped on the altar together; that is, one mass would be scrambled through, no names would be mentioned, no one save _le bon Dieu_ himself knew for whom it was being said; but fifty or more believed they had bought it, since they had paid for it. And the priests laughed in their sleeves, and then sat down, comfortably, to count the gold. Ah, mesdames, those were, literally, the golden days of the priesthood! What with the pilgrimages, and the sale of relics, and _les benefices_--together with the charges for seeing the wonders of the Mont--what a trade they did! It is only the Jews, who, in their turn, now own us, up in Paris, who can equal the priests as commercial geniuses!" And our pessimistic Parisian, during the next half-hour, gave us a prophetic picture of the approaching ruin of France, brought about by the genius for plunder and organization that is given to the sons of Moses. Following the Parisian, a figure, bent and twisted, opened a door in a side-wall, and took his seat beside us. One became used, in time, to these sudden appearances; to vanish down a chimney, or to emerge from the womb of a rock, or to come up from the bowels of what earth there was to be found--all such exits and entrances became as commonplace as all the other extraordinary phases of one's life on the hill. This particular shape had emerged from a hut, carved, literally, out of the side of the rock; but, for a hut, it was amazingly snug--as we could see for ourselves; for the venerable shape hospitably opened the low wooden door, that we might see how much of a home could be made out of the side of a rock. Only, when one had been used to a guard-room, and to great and little dungeons, and to a rattling of keys along dark corridors, a hut, and the blaze of the noon sun, were trying things to endure, as the shape, with a shrug, gave us to understand. "You see, mesdames, I was jailor here, years ago, when all La Merveille was a prison. Ah! those were great days for the Mont! There were soldiers and officers who came up to look at the soldiers, and the soldiers--it was their business to look after the prisoners. The Emperor himself came here once--I saw him. What a sight!--Dieu! all the monks and priests and nuns, and the archbishop himself were out. What banners and crosses and flags! The cannon was like a great thunder--and the grève was red with soldiers. Ah, those were days! Dieu--why couldn't the republic have continued those glories--_ces gloires? Aujourd'hui nous ne sommes que des morts_--instead of prisoners to handle--to watch and work, like so many good machines there is only the dike yonder to keep in repair! What changes--mon Dieu! what changes!" And the shape wrung his hands. It was, in truth, a touching spectacle of grief for a good old past. An old priest, with equally saddened vision, once came to take his seat, quite easily and naturally, beside us, on our favorite perch. He was one of the little band of priests who had remained faithful to the Mont after the government had dispersed his brothers--after the monastery had been broken up. He and his four or five companions had taken refuge in a small house, close by the cemetery; it was they who conducted the services in the little parish church; who had gathered the treasures still grouped together in that little interior--the throne of St. Michel, with its blue draperies and the golden fleur-de-lis, the floating banners and the shields of the Knights of St. Michel, the relics, and wondrous bits of carving rescued from the splendors of the cathedral. "_Ah, mesdames--que voulez-vous?_" was the old priest's broken chant; he was bewailing the woes that had come to his order, to religion, to France. "What will you have? The history of nations repeats itself, as we all know. We, of our day, are fallen on evil times; it is the reign of image-breakers--nothing is sacred, except money." "France has worn herself out. She is like an old man, the hero of many battles, who cares only for his easy chair and his slippers. She does not care about the children who are throwing stones at the windows. She likes to snooze, in the sun, and count her money-bags. France is too old to care about religion, or the future--she is thinking how best to be comfortable--here in this world, when she has rheumatism and a cramp in the stomach!" And the old priest wrapped his own _soutane_ about his lean knees, suiting his gesture to his inward convictions. Was the priest's summary the last word of truth about modern France? On the sands that lay below at our feet, we read a different answer. The skies were still brilliantly lighted. The actual twilight had not come yet, with its long, deep glow, a passion of color that had a longer life up here on the heights than when seen from a lower level. This twilight hour was always a prolonged moment of transfiguration for the Mont. The very last evening of our stay, we chose this as the loveliest light in which to see the last of the hill. On that evening, I remember, the reds and saffrons in the sky were of an astonishing richness. The sea wall, the bastions, the faces of the great rocks, the yellow broom that sprang from the clefts therein, were dyed as in a carmine bath. In that mighty glow of color, all things took on something of their old, their stupendous splendor. The giant walls were paved with brightness. The town, climbing the hill, assumed the proportions of a mighty citadel; the forest tree-tops were prismatic, emerald balls flung beneath the illumined Merveille; and the Cathedral was set in a daffodil frame; its aerial _escalier de dentelle_, like Jacob's ladder, led one easily heavenward. The circling birds, in the lace-work of the spiral finials, sang their night songs, as the glow in the sky changed, softened, deepened. This was the world that was in the west. Toward the east, on the flat surface of the sands, this world cast a strange and wondrous shadow. Jagged rocks, a pyramidal city, a Gothic cathedral in mid-air--behold the rugged outlines of Mont St. Michel carving their giant features on the shifting, sensitive surface of the mirroring sands. In the little pools and the trickling rivers, the fishermen--from this height, Liliputians grappling with Liliputian meshes--were setting their nets for the night. Across the river-beds, peasant women and fishwives, with bared legs and baskets clasped to their bending backs, appeared and disappeared--shapes that emerged into the light only to vanish into the gulf of the night. In was in these pictures that we read our answer. Like Mont St. Michel, so has France carried into the heights of history her glory and her power. On every century, she, like this world in miniature, has also cast her shadow, dwarfing some, illuminating others. And, as on those distant sands the toiling shapes of the fishermen are to be seen, early and late, in summer and winter, so can France point to her people, whose industry and amazing talent for toil have made her, and maintain her, great. Some of these things we have learned, since, in Normandy Inns, we have sat at meat with her peasants, and have grown to be friends with her fishwives. 
8998	----	PARIS AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS; OR A Sketch of the French Capital, ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE EFFECTS OF THE REVOLUTION, WITH RESPECT TO SCIENCES, LITERATURE, ARTS, RELIGION, EDUCATION, MANNERS, AND AMUSEMENTS; COMPRISING ALSO A correct Account of the most remarkable National Establishments and Public Buildings. In a Series of Letters, WRITTEN BY AN ENGLISH TRAVELLER, DURING THE YEARS 1801-2, TO A FRIEND IN LONDON. * * * * * _Ipsâ varietate tentamus efficere, ut alia aliis, quædem fortasse omnibus placeant. PLIN. Epist._ * * * * * VOL. I LONDON 1803 ADVERTISEMENT. In the course of the following production, the Reader will meet with several references to a Plan of Paris, which it had been intended to prefix to the work; but that intention having been frustrated by the rupture between the two countries, in consequence of which the copies for the whole of the Edition have been detained at Calais, it is hoped that this apology will be accepted for the omission. CONTENTS. VOLUME FIRST. New Organization of the National Institute INTRODUCTION LETTER I. On the ratification of the preliminary treaty of peace, the author leaves London for Paris--He arrives at Calais on the 16th of October, 1801--Apparent effect of the peace--After having obtained a passport, he proceeds to Paris, in company with a French naval officer. LETTER II. Journey from Calais to Paris--Improved state of agriculture--None of the French gun-boats off Boulogne moored with chains at the time of the attack--St. Denis--General sweep made, in 1793, among the sepultures in that abbey--Arrival at Paris--Turnpikes now established throughout Prance--Custom-house scrutiny. LETTER III. Objects which first strike the observer on arriving at Paris after an absence of ten or twelve years--Tumult in the streets considerably diminished since the revolution--No liveries seen--Streets less dangerous than formerly to pedestrians--Visits paid to different persons by the author--Price of lodgings nearly doubled since 1789 --The author takes apartments in a private house. LETTER IV. Climate of Paris--_Thermolampes_ or stoves which afford light and heat on an economical plan--Sword whose hilt was adorned with the _Pitt_ diamond, and others of considerable value, presented to the Chief Consul. LETTER V. Plan on which these letters are written. LETTER VI. The _Louvre_ or _National Palace of Arts and Sciences_ described --_Old Louvre_--Horrors of St. Bartholomew's day--From this palace Charles IX fired on his own subjects--Additions successively made to it by different kings--_Bernini_, sent for by Lewis XIV, forwarded the foundation of the _New Louvre_, and returned to Italy--_Perrault_ produced the beautiful colonnade of the _Louvre_, the master-piece of French architecture--Anecdote of the Queen of England, relict of Charles I--Public exhibition of the productions of French Industry. LETTER VII. _Central Museum of the Arts_--_Gallery of Antiques_--Description of the different halls and of the most remarkable statues contained in them, with original observations by the learned connoisseur, _Visconti_. LETTER VIII. Description of the _Gallery of Antiques_, and of its _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of sculpture continued and terminated--Noble example set by the French in throwing open their museums and national establishments to public inspection--Liberal indulgence shewn to foreigners. LETTER IX. General A----y's breakfast--Montmartre--Prospect thence enjoyed --Theatres. LETTER X. Regulations of the Police to be observed by a stranger on his arrival in the French capital--Pieces represented at the _Théâtre Louvois_ --_Palais du gouvernement_ or Palace of the Tuileries described--It was constructed, by Catherine de Medicis, enlarged by Henry IV and Lewis XIII, and finished By Lewis XIV--The tenth of August, 1792, as pourtrayed by an actor in that memorable scene--Number of lives lost on the occasion--Sale of the furniture, the king's wardrobe, and other effects found in the palace--_Place du Carrousel_--Famous horses of gilt bronze brought from Venice and placed here--The fate of France suspended by a thread--Fall of _Robespiere_ and his adherents. LETTER XI. Massacre of the prisoners at Paris in September, 1792--Private ball --The French much improved in dancing--The waltz described--Dress of the women. LETTER XII. _Bonaparte_--Grand monthly parade--Agility of the First Consul in mounting his charger--Consular guards, a remarkably fine body of men --Horses of the French cavalry, sorry in appearance, but capable of enduring fatigue and privations. LETTER XIII. _Jardin des Tuileries_--This garden now kept in better order than under the monarchy--The newly-built house of _Véry_, the _restaurateur_--This quarter calls to mind the most remarkable events in the history of the revolution--_Place de la Concorde_--Its name is a strong contrast to the great number of victims here sacrificed --Execution of the King and Queen, _Philippe Égalité_, _Charlotte Corday_, Madame _Roland_, _Robespiere_, _cum multus aliis_ --Unexampled dispatch introduced in putting persons to death by means of the guillotine--_Guillotin_, the inventor or improver of this instrument, dies of grief--Little impression left on the mind of the spectators of these sanguinary scenes--Lord _Cornwallis_ arrives in Paris. LETTER XIV. National fête, in honour of peace, celebrated in Paris on the 18th of Brumaire, year X (9th of November, 1801)--_Garnerin_ and his wife ascend in a balloon--Brilliancy of the illuminations--Laughable accident. LETTER XV. Description of the fête continued--Apparent apathy of the people --Songs composed in commemoration of this joyful event--Imitation of one of them. LETTER XVI. _Gallery of the Louvre_--_Saloon of the Louvre_--Italian School--The most remarkable pictures in the collection mentioned, with original remarks on the masters by _Visconti_--Lord _Cornwallis's_ reception in Paris. LETTER XVII. _Gallery of the Louvre_ in continuation--French School--Flemish School--The pictures in the _Saloon_ are seen to much greater advantage than those in the _Gallery_--_Gallery of Apollo_--These superb repositories of the finest works of art are indiscriminately open to the public. LETTER XVIII. _Palais Royal_, now called _Palais du Tribunat_--Its construction begun, in 1629, by Cardinal _Richelieu_, who makes a present of it to _Lewis_ XIII--It becomes the property of the Orleans family--Anecdote of the Regent--Considerable alterations made in this palace--_Jardin du Palais du Tribunat_--This garden is surrounded by a range of handsome buildings, erected in 1782 by the duke of Orleans, then duke of Chartres--The _Cirque_ burnt down in 1797--Contrast between the company seen here in 1789 and in 1801--The _Palais Royal_, the theatre of political commotions--Mutual enmity of the queen and the duke of Orleans, which, in the sequel, brought these great personages to the scaffold--Their improper example imitated by the nobility of both sexes--The projects of each defeated--The duke's pusillanimity was a bar to his ambition--He exhausted his immense fortune to gain partisans, and secure the attachment of the people--His imprisonment, trial, and death. LETTER XIX. The _Palais du Tribunat_, an epitome of all the trades in Paris --Prohibited publications--Mock auctions--_Magazins de confiance à prix fixe_--Two speculations, of a somewhat curious nature, established there with success--_The Palais Royal_, a vortex of dissipation --Scheme of _Merlin_ of Douay for cleansing this Augæan stable. LETTER XX. _Thé_, a sort of route--Contrast in the mode of life of the Parisians before and since the revolution--_Petits soupers_ described--An Englishman improves on all the French _bons vivans_ under the old _régime_. LETTER XXI. Public places of various descriptions--Their title and number --Contrast between the interior police now established in the theatres in Paris, and that which existed before the revolution--Admirable regulations at present adopted for the preservation of order at the door of the theatres--Comparatively small number of carriages now seen in waiting at the grand French opera. LETTER XXII. _Palais du Corps Législatif_--Description of the hall of the sittings of that body--Opening of the session--Speech of the President--Lord _Cornwallis_ and suite present at this sitting--_Petits appartemens_ of the _ci-devant Palais Bourbon_ described. LETTER XXIII. _Halle au Blé_--Lightness of the roof of the dome--Annual consumption of bread-corn in _Paris_--Astrologers--In former times, their number in _Paris_ exceeded _30,000_--Fortune-tellers of the present day --Church of _St. Eustache_--_Tourville_, the brave opponent of Admiral _Russel_, had no epitaph--Festivals of reason described. LETTER XXIV. _Museum of French Monuments_--Steps taken by the Constituent Assembly to arrest the progress of Vandalism--Many master-pieces of painting, sculpture, and architecture, destroyed in various parts of France --_Grégoire_, ex-bishop of Blois, publishes three reports, to expose the madness of irreligious barbarism, which claim particular distinction.--They saved from destruction many articles of value in the provinces--Antique monuments found in 1711, in digging among the foundation of the ancient church of Paris--Indefatigable exertions of _Lenoir_, the conservator of this museum--The halls of this museum fitted up according to the precise character peculiar to each century, and the monuments arranged in them in historical and chronological order--Tombs of _Clovis_, _Childebert_, and _Chilperic_--Statues of _Charlemagne_, _Lewis IX_, and of _Charles_, his brother, together with those of the kings that successively appeared in this age down to king _John_--Tombs of _Charles V_, _Du Gueselin_, and _Sancerre_--Mausolea of _Louis d'Orléans_ and of _Valentine de Milan_--Statues of _Charles VI_, _Rénée d'Orléans_, _Philippe de Commines_, _Lewis XI_, _Charles VII_, _Joan_ of _Arc_, _Isabeau de Bavière_--Tomb of _Lewis XII_--Tragical death of _Charles_ the _Bad_. LETTER XXV. _Museum of French Monuments_ continued--Tombs of _Francis I_, of the _Valois_, and of _Diane de Poitiers_--Character of that celebrated woman--Statues of _Turenne_, _Condé_, _Colbert_, _La Fontaine_, _Racine_, and _Lewis XIV_--Mausolea of Cardinals _Richelieu_ and _Mazarin_--Statues of _Montesquieu_, _Fontenelle_, _Voltaire_, _Rousseau_, _Helvetius_, _Crébillon_, and _Piron_--Tombs of _Maupertuis_, _Caylus_, and Marshal _d'Harcourt_--This museum contains a chronology of monuments, both antique and modern, from 2500 years before our era down to the present time, beginning with those of ancient Greece, and following all the gradations of the art from its cradle to its decrepitude--Sepulchre of _Héloïse_ and _Abélard_. LETTER XXVI. Dinner at General _A----y's_--Difference in the duration of such a repast now and before the revolution--The General's ancestor, _François A----y_, planned and completed the famous canal of Languedoc--_Dépôt de la guerre_--Such an establishment much wanted in England--Its acknowledged utility has induced Austria, Spain, and Portugal, to form others of a similar nature--Geographical and topographical riches of this _dépôt_. LETTER XXVII. _Boulevards_--Their extent--Amusements they present--_Porte St. Denis_--Anecdote of Charles VI--_Porte St. Martin_--_La Magdeleine_ --Ambulating conjurers--Means they employ to captivate curiosity. LETTER XXVIII. French funds and national debt--Supposed liquidation of an annuity held by a foreigner before the war, and yet unliquidated--Value of a franc. LETTER XXIX. Grand monthly parade--Etiquette observed on this occasion, in the apartments of the palace of the _Tuileries_--_Bonaparte_--His person --His public character in Paris--Obstruction which the First Consul met with in returning from the parade--_Champs Elysées_--Sports and diversions there practised--Horses, brought from Marly to this spot, the master-pieces of the two celebrated sculptors, _Costou_ --Comparison they afford to politicians. LETTER XXX. _Madonna de Foligno_--Description of the method employed by the French artists to transfer from pannel to canvass this celebrated master-piece of _Raphael_. LETTER XXXI. _Pont Neuf_--Henry IV--His popularity--Historical fact concerning the cause of his assassination brought to light--The Seine swollen by the rains--It presents a dull scene in comparison to the Thames--Great number of washerwomen--_La Samaritaine_--Shoe-blacks on the _Pont Neuf_--Their trade decreased--Recruiting Officers--The allurements they formerly employed are now become unnecessary in consequence of the conscription--Anecdote of a British officer on whom a French recruiter had cast his eye--Disappointment that ensued. LETTER XXXII. Balls now very numerous every evening in Paris--_Bal du Salon des Étrangers_--Description of the women--Comparison between the French and English ladies--Character of Madame _Tallien_--Generosity, fortitude, and greatness of soul displayed by women during the most calamitous periods of the revolution--Anecdote of a young Frenchman smitten by a widow--An attachment, founded on somewhat similar circumstances, recorded by historians of Henry III of France --Sympathy, and its effects. LETTER XXXIII. _Pont National_, formerly called the _Pont Royal_--Anecdote of Henry IV and a waterman--_Coup d'oeil_ from this bridge--Quays of Paris --Galiot of St. Cloud--_Pont de la Concorde_--Paris besieged by the Swedes, Danes, and Normans, in 885--The Seine covered with their vessels for the space of two leagues--A vessel ascends the Seine from Rouen to Paris in four days--Engineers have ever judged it practicable to render the Seine navigable, from its mouth to the capital, for vessels of a certain burden--Riches accruing from commerce pave the way to the ruin of States, as well as the extension of their conquests. LETTER XXXIV. French literature--Effects produced on it by the revolution--The sciences preferred to literature, and for what reason--The French government has flattered the literati and artists; but the solid distinctions have been reserved for men of science--Epic Poetry --Tragedy--Comedy--Novels--Moral Fable--Madrigal and Epigram--Romance --Lyric Poetry--Song--Journals. LETTER XXXV. _Pont au Change_--_Palais de Justice_--Once a royal residence --Banquet given there, in 1313, by Philip the Fair, at which were present Edward II and his queen Isabella--Alterations which this palace has undergone, in consequence of having, at different times, been partly reduced to ashes--Madame _La Motte_ publicly whipped--In 1738, _Lewis XVI_ here held a famous bed of justice, in which _D'Espresmenil_ struck the first blow at royalty--He was exiled to the _Ile de St. Marguerite_--After having stirred up all the parliaments against the royal authority, he again became the humble servant of the crown--After the revolution, the _Palais de Justice_ was the seat of the Revolutionary Tribunal--_Dumas_, its president, proposed to assemble there five or six hundred victims at a time--He was the next day condemned to death by the same tribunal--The _Palais de Justice_, now the seat of different tribunals--The _grande chambre_ newly embellished in the antique style--_La Conciergerie_, the place of confinement of _Lavoisier_, _Malsherbes_, _Cordorcet_, _&c._--Fortitude displayed by the hapless _Marie-Antoinette_ after her condemnation--_Pont St. Michel_--_Pont Notre-Dame_--Cathedral of _Notre-Dame_--Anecdote of _Pepin_ the Short--Devastations committed in this cathedral--Medallions of _Abélard_ and _Héloïse_ to be seen near _Notre-Dame_ in front of the house where _Fulbert_, her supposed uncle, resided--_Petit Pont_--_Pont au Double_--_Pont Marie_--Workmen now employed in the construction of three new bridges--_Pont de la Tournelle_. LETTER XXXVI. Paris a charming abode for a man of fortune--Summary of its advantages--_Idalium_--_Tivoli_--_Frascati_--_Paphos_--_La Phantasmagorie_ of _Robertson_--_Fitzjames_, the famous ventriloquist--Method of converting a galantee-show into an exhibition somewhat similar to that of the phantasmagorists. LETTER XXXVII. Paris the most melancholy abode in the world for a man without money --_Restaurateurs_--In 1765, _Boulanger_ first conceived the idea of _restoring_ the exhausted animal functions of the delibitated Parisians--He found many imitators--The _restaurateurs_, in order to make their business answer, constitute themselves _traiteurs_--_La Barrière_--_Beauvilliers_, _Robert_, _Naudet_, and _Véry_ dispute the palm in the art of Appicius--Description of _Beauvilliers'_ establishment--His bill of fare--Expense of dining at a fashionable _restaurateur's_ in Paris--Contrast between establishments of this kind existing before the revolution, and those in vogue at the present day--Cheap eating-houses--The company now met with at the fashionable rendezvous of good cheer compared with that seen here in former times--_Cabinets particuliers_--Uses to which they are applied--Advantages of a _restaurateur's_--_Beauvilliers_ pays great attention to his guests--Cleanly and alert waiters--This establishment is admirably well managed. VOLUME SECOND. LETTER XXXVIII. National Institution of the Deaf and Dumb--France indebted to the philanthropic _Abbé de l'Épée_ for the discovery of the mode of instructing them--It has been greatly improved by _Sicard_, the present Institutor--Explanation of his system of instruction--The deaf and dumb are taught grammar, metaphysics, logic, religion, the use of the globes, geography, arithmetic, history, natural history, arts and trades--Almost every thing used by them is made by themselves--Lessons of analysis which astonish the spectators. LETTER XXXIX. Public women--Charlemagne endeavours to banish them from Paris--His daughters, though addicted to illicit enjoyments, die universally regretted--_Les Filles Dieu_--_Les Filles pénitentes ou repenties_ --Courtesans--Luxury displayed in their equipages and houses--Kept women--Opera-dancers--Secret police maintained by Lewis XVI, in 1792 --Grisettes--Demireps--A French woman, at thirty, makes an excellent friend--_Rousseau's_ opinion of this particular class of women in Paris. LETTER XL. National Institution of the Industrious Blind--Circumstance which gave rise to this establishment--_Valentin Haüy_, its founder, found his project seconded by the Philanthropic Society--His plan of instruction detailed--Museum of the Blind--After two or three lessons, a blind child here teaches himself to read without the further help of any master. LETTER XLI. _Théâtre des Arts et de la République_, or Grand French opera--Old opera-house burnt down, and a new one built and opened in 72 days --Description of the present house--Operas of _Gluck_; also those of _Piccini_ and _Sacchini_--Gluckists and Piccinists--The singing is the weakest department at the French opera--Merits of the singers of both sexes--Choruses very full--Orchestra famous--The Chief Consul, being very partial to Italian music, sends to that land of harmony to procure the finest musical compositions. LETTER XLII. Dancing improved in France--Effect of some of the ballets--_Noverre_ and _Gardel_ first introduce them on the French stage--Rapid change of scenery--Merits of the dancers of both sexes--The rector of St. Roch refuses to admit into that church the corpse of Mademoiselle _Chameroi_--The dancers in private society now emulate those who make dancing their profession--Receipts of the opera. LETTER XLIII. New year's day still celebrated in Paris on the 1st of January --Customs which prevail there on that occasion--_Denon's_ account of the French expedition to Egypt--That country was the cradle of the arts and sciences--_Fourrier_ confirms the theory of _Dupuis_, respecting the origin, &c. of the figures of the Zodiac. LETTER XLIV. _Hôtel des Invalides_--It was projected by Henry IV and erected by Lewis XIV--Temple of Mars--To its arches are suspended the standards and colours taken from the enemy--Two British flags only are among the number--Monument of _Turenne_--Circumstances of his death--Dome of the _Invalides_--Its refectories and kitchens--Anecdote of Peter the Great--Reflections on establishments of this description--_Champ de Mars_--_École Militaire_--Various scenes of which the _Champ de Mars_ has been the theatre--Death of _Bailly_--Modern national fêtes in France, a humble imitation of the Olympic games. LETTER XLV. Object of the different learned and scientific institutions, which, before the revolution, held their sittings in the _Louvre_--Anecdote of Cardinal Richelieu--National Institute of Arts and Sciences --Organization of that learned body--Description of the apartments of the Institute--Account of its public quarterly meeting of the 15th Nivose, year X, (5th of January, 1802)--Marriage of Mademoiselle _Beauharnois_ to _Louis Bonaparte_. LETTER XLVI. _Opéra Buffa_--The Italian comedians who came to Paris in 1788, had a rapid influence on the musical taste of the French public--Performers of the new Italian company--Productions of _Cimarosa_, _Paësiello_, &c.--Madame _Bolla_. LETTER XLVII. Present state of public worship--Summary of the proceedings of the constitutional clergy--National councils of the Gallican church held at Paris--Conduct of the Pope, _Pius VII_--The Cardinal Legate, _Caprara_, arrives in Paris--The Concordat is signed--Subsequent transactions. LETTER XLVIII. _Pantheon_--Description of this edifice--_Marat_ and _Mirabeau_ pantheonized and dispantheonized--The remains of _Voltaire_ and _Rousseau_ removed hither--The Pantheon in danger of falling--This apprehension no longer exists--_Bonaparte_ leaves Paris for Lyons. LETTER XLIX. Scientific societies of Paris--_Société Philotechnique_--_Société Libre des Sciences, Lettres, et Arts_--_Athénée des Arts_--_Société Philomatique_--_Société Académique des Sciences_--_Société Galvanique_--_Société des Belles-Lettres_--_Académie de Législation_ --_Observateurs de l'Homme_--_Athénée de Paris_. LETTER L. Coffee-houses--Character of the company who frequent them--Contrast between the coffee-houses of the present and former times--Coffee first introduced at Paris, in 1669, by the Turkish ambassador--_Café méchanique_--Subterraneous coffee-houses of the _Palais du Tribunat_. LETTER LI. Public instruction--The ancient colleges and universities are replaced by Primary Schools, Secondary Schools, Lyceums, and Special Schools--National pupils--Annual cost of these establishments --Contrast between the old system of education and the new plan, recently organized. LETTER LII. Milliners--_Montesquieu's_ observation on the commands of the fair sex--Millinery a very extensive branch of trade in Paris--_Bal de l'Opéra_--Dress of the men and women--Adventures are the chief object of those who frequent these masquerades. LETTER LIII. _Théâtre Français de la République_--The house described--List of the stock-pieces--Names of their authors--_Fabre d'Eglantine_--His _Philinte de Molière_ a _chef-d'oeuvre_--Some account of its author --_La Chaussée_ the father of the _drame_, a tragi-comic species of dramatic composition. LETTER LIV. Principal performers in tragedy at the _Théâtre Français_--_Vanhove_, _Monvel_, _St. Prix_, and _Naudet_--_Talma_, and _Lafond_--_St. Fal_, _Damas_, and _Dupont_--Mesdames _Raucourt_ and _Vestris_--Mesdames _Fleury_, _Talma_, _Bourgoin_, and _Volnais_--Mesdames _Suin_ and _Thénard_--_Début_ of Mademoiselle _Duchesnois_; Madame _Xavier_, and Mademoiselle _Georges_--Disorderly conduct of the _Duchesnistes_, who are routed by the _Georgistes_. LETTER LV. Principal performers in comedy at the _Théâtre Français_--_Vanhove_, and _Naudet_--_Molé_, _Fleury_, and _Baptiste_ the elder--_St. Fal_, _Dupont_, _Damas_, and _Armand_--_Grandménil_, and _Caumont_ --_Dugazon_, _Dazincourt_, and _Larochelle_--Mesdemoiselles _Contat_, and _Mézeray_--Madame _Talma_--Mesdemoiselles _Mars, Bourgoin_, and _Gros_--Mesdemoiselles _Lachassaigne_ and _Thénard_--Mesdemoiselles _Devienne_ and _Desbrosses_--Contrast between the state of the French stage before and since the revolution. LETTER LVI. French women fond of appearing in male attire--Costume of the French Ladies--Contrast it now presents to that formerly worn--The change in their dress has tended to strengthen their constitution--The women in Paris extremely cleanly in their persons--Are now very healthy. LETTER LVII. The studies in the colleges and universities interrupted by bands of insurgents--_Collège de France_--It is in this country the only establishment where every branch of human knowledge is taught in its fullest extent--Was founded by Francis I--Disputes between this new College and the University--Its increasing progress--The improvements in the sciences spread by the instruction of this College--Its present state. LETTER LVIII. _Théâtre de l'Opéra Comique_--Authors who have furnished it with stock-pieces, and composers who have set them to music--Principal performers at this theatre--_Elleviou_, _Gavaudan_, _Philippe_, and _Gaveaux_--_Chenard_, _Martin_, _Rézicourt_, _Juliet_, and _Moreau_ --_Solié_, and _St. Aubin_--_Dozainville_, and _Lesage_--Mesdames _St. Aubin_, _Scio_, _Lesage_, _Crétu_, _Philis_ the elder, _Gavaudan_, and _Pingenet_--Mesdames _Dugazon_, _Philippe_, and _Gonthier_. LETTER LIX. France owes her salvation to the _savans_ or men of science --Polytechnic School--Its object--Its formation and subsequent progress--Changes recently introduced into this interesting establishment. LETTER LX. Pickpockets and sharpers--Anecdote of a female swindler--Anecdote of a sharper--Housebreakers--_Chauffeurs_--A new species of assassins --_Place de Grève_--Punishment for thieves re-established--On the continent, ladies flock to the execution of criminals. LETTER LXI. Schools for Public Services--The Polytechnic School, the grand nursery whence the pupils are transplanted into the Schools of Artillery, Military Engineers, Bridges and Highways, Mines, Naval Engineers, and Navigation--Account of these schools--_Prytanée Français_--Special Schools--Special School of Painting and Sculpture --Competitions--National School of Architecture--Conservatory of Music--Present state of Music in France--Music has done wonders in reviving the courage of the French soldiers--The French are no less indebted to _Rouget de Lille_, author of the _Marseillois_, than the Spartans were to _Tyrtæus_--Gratuitous School for Drawing--Veterinary School--New Special Schools to Le established in France. LETTER LXII. Funerals--No medium in them under the old _régime_--Ceremonies formerly observed--Those practised at the present day--Marriages --Contrast they present. LETTER LXIII. Public Libraries--_Bibliothèque Nationale_--Its acquisitions since the revolution--School for Oriental Living Languages. LETTER LXIV. _Bibliothèque Mazarine_--_Bibliothèque du Panthéon_--_Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal_--The Arsenal--Other libraries and literary _dépôts_ in Paris. LETTER LXV. Dancing--Nomenclature of caperers in Paris, from the wealthiest classes down to the poorest--Beggars form the last link of the chain. LETTER LXVI. _Bureau des Longitudes_--Is on a more extensive scale than the Board of Longitude in England--National Observatory--Subterraneous quarries that have furnished the stone with which most of the houses in Paris are constructed--Measures taken to prevent the buildings in Paris from being swallowed up in these extensive labyrinths--Present state of the Observatory--_Lalande_, _Méchain_, and _Bouvard_--_Carroché_, and _Lenoir_--_Lavoisier_, and _Borda_--_Delambre_, _Laplace_, _Burckhardt_, _Vidal_, _Biot_, and _Puisson_--New French weights and measures--Concise account of the operations employed in measuring an arc of the terrestrial meridian--Table of the new French measures and weights--Their correspondence with the old, and also with those of England. LETTER LXVII. _Dépôt de la Marine_--An establishment much wanted in England. LETTER LXVIII. _Théâtre Louvois_--_Picard_, the manager of this theatre, is the _Molière_ of his company--_La Grande Ville, ou les Provinciaux à Paris_--Principal performers at this theatre--_Picard_, _Devigny_, _Dorsan_, and _Clozel_--Mesdemoiselles _Adeline_, _Molière_, _Lescot_, and Madame _Molé_--_Théâtre du Vaudeville_--Authors who write for this theatre--Principal performers--Public malignity, the main support of this theatre. LETTER LXIX. _Hôtel de la Monnaie_--Description of this building--_Musée des Mines_--Formed by M. _Sage_--The arrangement of this cabinet is excellent--_Cabinet du Conseil des Mines_--Principal mineral substances discovered in France since the revolution. LETTER LXX. _Théâtre Montansier_--Principal performers--_Ambigu Comique_--The curiosity of a stranger may be satisfied in a single visit to each of the minor theatres in Paris. LETTER LXXI. Police of Paris--Historical sketch of it--Its perfections and imperfections--Anecdote of a minister of police--_Mouchards_ --Anecdote which shews the detestation in which they are held--The Parisian police extends to foreign countries--This truth exemplified by two remarkable facts--No _habeas corpus_ in France. LETTER LXXII. The _savans_ saved France, when their country was invaded --Astonishing exertions made by the French on that occasion--Anecdote relating to _Robespierre_--Extraordinary resources created by the men of science--Means employed for increasing the manufacture of powder, cannon, and muskets--The produce of these new manufactories contrasted with that of the old ones--Territorial acquisitions of the French--The Carnival revived in Paris. LETTER LXXIII. Public gaming-houses--_Académies de jeu_, which existed in Paris before the revolution--Gaming-houses licensed by the police--The privilege of granting those licences is farmed by a private individual--Description of the _Maisons de jeu_--Anecdote of an old professed gambler--Gaming prevails in all the principal towns of France--The excuse of the old government for promoting gaming, is reproduced at the present day. LETTER LXXIV. Museum of Natural History, or _Jardin des Plantes_--Is much enlarged since the revolution--One of the first establishments of instruction in Europe--Contrast between its former state and that in which it now is--_Fourcroy_, the present director--His eloquence--Collections in this establishment--Curious articles which claim particular notice. LETTER LXXV. The Carnival--That of 1802 described--The Carnival of modern times, an imitation of the Saturnalia of the ancients--Was for some years prohibited, since the revolution--Contrast between the Carnival under the monarchy and under the republican government. LETTER LXXVI. _Palais du Sénat Conservateur_, or _Luxembourg_ Palace--Mary of Medicis, by whom it was erected, died in a garret--It belonged to _Monsieur_, before the revolution--Improvements in the garden of the Senate--National nursery formed in an adjoining piece of ground --_Bastille_--_Le Temple_--Its origin--Lewis XVI and his family confined in this modern state-prison. LETTER LXXVII. Present slate of the French Press--The liberty of the press, the measure of civil liberty--Comparison, between the state of the press in France and in England. LETTER LXXVIII. Hospitals and other charitable institutions--_Hôtel-Dieu_--Extract from the report of the _Academy of Sciences_ on this abode of pestilence--Reforms introduced into it since the revolution--The present method of purifying French hospitals deserves to be adopted in England--Other hospitals in Paris--_Hospice de la Maternité_--_La Salpêtrière_--_Bicêtre_--Faculties and Colleges of Physicians, as will as Colleges and Commonalties of Surgeons, replaced in France by Schools of Health--School of Medicine of Paris--France overrun by quacks--New law for checking the serious mischief they occasion --Society of Medicine--Gratuitous School of Pharmacy--Free Society of Apothecaries--Changes in the teaching and practice of medicine in France. LETTER LXXIX. Private seminaries for youth of both sexes--Female education --Contrast between that formerly received in convents, and that now practised in the modern French boarding-schools. LETTER LXXX. Progressive aggrandisement of Paris--Its origin--Under the name of Lutetia, it was the capital of Gaul--Julian's account of it--The sieges it has sustained--Successively embellished by different kings --Progressive amelioration of the manners of its inhabitants--Rapid view of the causes which improved them, from the reign of Philip Augustus to that of Lewis XIV--Contrast between the number of public buildings before and since the revolution--Population of Paris, from official documents--Ancient division of Paris--Is now divided into twelve mayoralties--_Barrières_ and high wall by which it is surrounded--Anecdote of the _commis des barrières_ seizing an Egyptian mummy. LETTER LXXXI. French Furniture--The events of the revolution have contributed to improve the taste of persons connected with the furnishing line --Contrast between the style of the furniture in the Parisian houses in 1789-90 and 1801-2--_Les Gobelins_, the celebrated national manufactory for tapestry--_La Savonnerie_, a national manufactory for carpeting--National manufactory of plate-glass. LETTER LXXXII. Academy of Fine Arts at the _ci-devant Collège de Navarre_ --Description of the establishment of the _Piranesi_--Three hundred artists of different nations distributed in the seven classes of this academy--Different works executed here in Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Mosaic, and Engraving. LETTER LXXXIII. Conservatory of Arts and Trades--It contains a numerous collection of machines of every description employed in the mechanical arts --_Belier hydraulique_, newly invented by _Montgolfier_--Models of curious buildings--The mechanical arts in France have experienced more or less the impulse given to the sciences--The introduction of the Spanish merinos has greatly improved the French wools--New inventions and discoveries adopted in the French manufactories --Characteristic difference of the present state of French industry, and that in which it was before the revolution. LETTER LXXXIV. Society for the encouragement of national industry--Its origin--Its objects detailed--Free Society of Agriculture--Amidst the storms of the revolution, agriculture has teen improved in France--Causes of that improvement--The present state of agriculture briefly contrasted with that which existed before the revolution--_Didot's_ stereotypic editions of the classics--Advantages attending the use of stereotype --This invention claimed by France, but proved to belong to Britain --Printing-office of the Republic, the most complete typographical establishment in being. LETTER LXXXV. Present State of Society in Paris--In that city are three very distinct kinds of society--Description of each of these--Other societies are no more than a diminutive of the preceding--Philosophy of the French in forgeting their misfortunes and losses--The signature of the definitive treaty announced by the sound of cannon --In the evening a grand illumination is displayed. LETTER LXXXVI. Urbanity of the Parisians towards strangers--The shopkeepers in Paris overcharge their articles--Furnished Lodgings--Their price--The _Milords Anglais_ now eclipsed by the Russian Counts--Expense of board in Paris--Job and Hackney Carriages--Are much improved since the revolution--Fare of the latter--Expense of the former --Cabriolets--Regulations of the police concerning these carriages --The negligence of drivers now meets with due chastisement--French women astonish bespattered foreigners by walking the streets with spotless stockings--Valets-de-place--Their wages augmented--General Observations--An English traveller, on visiting Paris, should provide himself with letters of recommendation--Unless an Englishman acquires a competent knowledge of the manners of the country, he fails in what ought to be the grand object of foreign travel--Situation of one who brings no letters to Paris--The French now make a distinction between individuals only, not between nations--Are still indulgent to the English--Animadversion on the improper conduct of irrational British youths. LETTER LXXXVII. Divorce--The indissolubility of marriage in France, before the revolution, was supposed to promote adultery--No such excuse can now be pleaded--Origin of the present laws on divorce--Comparison on that subject between the French and the Romans--The effect of these laws illustrated by examples--The stage ought to be made to conduce to the amelioration of morals--In France, the men blame the women, with a view of extenuating their own irregularities--To reform women, men ought to begin by reforming themselves. LETTER LXXXVIII. The author is recalled to England--Mendicants--The streets of Paris less infested by them now than before the revolution--Pawnbrokers --Their numbers much increased in Paris, and why--_Mont de Piété_ --Lotteries now established in the principal towns in France--The fatal consequences of this incentive to gaming--Newspapers--Their numbers considerably augmented--Journals the most in request--Baths --_Bains Vigier_ described--School of Natation--Telegraphs--Those in Paris differ from those in use in England--Telegraphic language may be abridged--Private collections most deserving of notice in Paris --_Dépôt d'armes_ of _M. Boutet_--_M. Régnier_, an ingenious mechanic --The author's reason for confining his observations to the capital --Metamorphoses in Paris--The site of the famous Jacobin convent is intended for a market-place--Arts and Sciences are become popular in France, since the revolution--The author makes _amende honorable_, or confesses his inability to accomplish the task imposed on him by his friend--He leaves Paris. NEW ORGANIZATION OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE.[1] On the 3d of Pluviôse, year XI (23d of January, 1803), the French government passed the following decree on this subject. _Art_. I. The National Institute, at present divided into three classes, shall henceforth consist of four; namely: _First Class_--Class of physical and mathematical sciences. _Second Class_--Class of the French language and literature. _Third Class_--Class of history and ancient literature. _Fourth Class_--Class of fine arts. The present members of the Institute and associated foreigners shall be divided into these four classes. A commission of five members of the Institute, appointed by the First Consul, shall present to him the plan of this division, which shall be submitted to the approbation of the government. II. The first class, shall be formed of the ten sections, which at present compose the first class of the Institute, of a new section of geography and navigation, and of eight foreign associates. These sections shall be composed and distinguished as follows: MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES. Geometry six members. Mechanics six ditto. Astronomy six ditto. Geography and Navigation three ditto. General Physics six ditto. PHYSICAL SCIENCES. Chemistry six ditto. Mineralogy six ditto. Botany six ditto. Rural Economy and the Veterinary Art six ditto. Anatomy and Zoology six ditto. Medicine and Surgery six ditto. The first class shall name, with the approbation of the Chief Consul, two perpetual secretaries; the one for the mathematical sciences; the other, for the physical. The perpetual secretaries shall be members of the class, but shall make no part of any section. The first class may elect six of its members from among the other classes of the Institute. It may name a hundred correspondents, taken from among the learned men of the nation, and those of foreign countries. III. The second class shall be composed of forty members. It is particularly charged with the compilation and improvement of the dictionary of the French tongue. With respect to language, it shall examine important works of literature, history, and sciences. The collection of its critical observations shall be published at least four times a year. It shall appoint from its own members, and with the approbation of the First Consul, a perpetual secretary, who shall continue to make one of the sixty members of whom the class is composed. It may elect twelve of its members from among those of the other classes of the Institute. IV. The third class shall be composed of forty members and eight foreign associates. The learned languages, antiquities and ornaments, history, and all the moral and political sciences in as far as they relate to history, shall be the objects of its researches and labours. It shall particularly endeavour to enrich French literature with the works of Greek, Latin, and Oriental authors, which have not yet been translated. It shall employ itself in the continuation of diplomatic collections. With the approbation of the First Consul, it shall name from its own members a perpetual secretary, who shall make one of the forty members of whom the class is composed. It may elect nine of its members from among those of the classes of the Institute. It may name sixty national or foreign correspondents. V. The fourth class shall be composed of twenty-eight members and eight foreign associates. They shall be divided into sections, named and composed as follows: Painting ten members. Sculpture six ditto. Architecture six ditto. Engraving three ditto. Music (composition) three ditto. With the approbation of the First Consul, it shall appoint a perpetual secretary, who shall be a member of the class, but shall not make part of the sections. It may elect six of its members from among the other classes of the Institute. It may name thirty-six national or foreign correspondents. VI. The associated foreign members shall have a deliberative vote only for objects relating to sciences, literature, and arts. They shall not make part of any section, and shall receive no salary. VII. The present associates of the Institute, scattered throughout the Republic, shall make part of the one hundred and ninety-six correspondents, attached to the classes of the sciences, belles-lettres, and fine arts. The correspondents cannot assume the title of members of the Institute. They shall drop that of correspondents, when they take up their constant residence in Paris. VIII. The nominations to the vacancies shall be made by each of the classes in which those vacancies shall happen to occur. The persons elected shall be approved by the First Consul. IX. The members of the four classes shall have a right to attend reciprocally the private sittings of each of them, and to read papers there when they have made the request. They shall assemble four times a year as the body of the Institute, in order to give to each other an account of their transactions. They shall elect in common the librarian and under-librarian, as well as all the agents who belong in common to the Institute. Each class shall present for the approbation of the government the particular statutes and regulations of its interior police. X. Each class shall hold every year a public sitting, at which the other three shall assist. XI. The Institute shall receive annually, from the public treasury, 1500 francs for each of its members, not associates; 6000 francs for each of its perpetual secretaries; and, for its expenses, a sum which shall be determined on, every year, at the request of the Institute, and comprised in the budget of the Minister of the Interior. XII. The Institute shall have an administrative commission, composed of five members, two of the first class, and one of each of the other three, appointed by their respective classes. This commission shall cause to be regulated in the general sittings, prescribed in Art. IX, every thing relative to the administration, to the general purposes of the Institute, and to the division of the funds between the four classes. Each class shall afterwards regulate the employment of the funds which shall have been assigned for its expenses, as well as every thing that concerns the printing and publication of its memoirs. XIII. Every year, each class shall distribute prizes, the number and value of which shall be regulated as follows: The first class, a prize of 3000 francs. The second and third classes, each a prize of 1500 francs. And the fourth class, great prizes of painting, sculpture, architecture, and musical composition. Those who shall have gained one of these four great prizes, shall be sent to Rome, and maintained at the expense of the government. XIV. The Minister of the Interior is charged with the execution of the present decree, which shall be inserted in the Bulletin of the Laws. [Footnote 1: Referred to in Letter XLV, Vol. II of this work.] INTRODUCTION. On ushering into the world a literary production, custom has established that its parent should give some account of his offspring. Indeed, this becomes the more necessary at the present moment, as the short-lived peace, which gave birth to the following sheets, had already ceased before they were entirely printed; and the war in which England and France are now engaged, is of a nature calculated not only to rouse all the energy and ancient spirit of my countrymen, but also to revive their prejudices, and inflame their passions, in a degree proportionate to the enemy's boastful and provoking menace. I therefore premise that those who may be tempted to take up this publication, merely with a view of seeking aliment for their enmity, will, in more respects than one, probably find themselves disappointed. The two nations were not rivals in arms, but in the arts and sciences, at the time these letters were written, and committed to the press; consequently, they have no relation whatever to the present contest. Nevertheless, as they refer to subjects which manifest the indefatigable activity of the French in the accomplishment of any grand object, such parts may, perhaps, furnish hints that may not be altogether unimportant at this momentous crisis. The plan most generally adhered to throughout this work, being detailed in LETTER V, a repetition of it here would be superfluous; and the principal matters to which the work itself relates, are specified in the title. I now come to the point. A long residence in France, and particularly in the capital, having afforded me an opportunity of becoming tolerably well acquainted with its state before the revolution, my curiosity was strongly excited to ascertain the changes which that political phenomenon might have effected. I accordingly availed myself of the earliest dawn of peace to cross the water, and visit Paris. Since I had left that city in 1789-90, a powerful monarchy, established on a possession of fourteen centuries, and on that sort of national prosperity which seemed to challenge the approbation of future ages, had been destroyed by the force of opinion which, like, a subterraneous fire, consumed its very foundations, and plunged the nation into a sea of troubles, in which it was, for several years, tossed about, amid the wreck of its greatness. This is a phenomenon of which antiquity affords no parallel; and it has produced a rapid succession of events so extraordinary as almost to exceed belief. It is not the crimes to which it has given birth that will be thought improbable: the history of revolutions, as well ancient as modern, furnishes but too many examples of them; and few have been committed, the traces of which are not to be found in the countries where the imagination of the multitude has been exalted by strong and new ideas, respecting Liberty and Equality. But what posterity will find difficult to believe, is the agitation of men's minds, and the effervescence of the passions, carried to such a pitch, as to stamp the French revolution with a character bordering on the marvellous --Yes; posterity will have reason to be astonished at the facility with which the human mind can be modified and made to pass from one extreme to another; at the suddenness, in short, with which the ideas and manners of the French were changed; so powerful, on the one hand, is the ascendency of certain imaginations; and, on the other, so great is the weakness of the vulgar! It is in the recollection of most persons, that the agitation of the public mind in France was such, for a while, that, after having overthrown the monarchy and its supports; rendered private property insecure; and destroyed individual freedom; it threatened to invade foreign countries, at the same time pushing before it Liberty, that first blessing of man, when it is founded on laws, and the most dangerous of chimeras, when it is without rule or restraint. The greater part of the causes which excited this general commotion, existed before the assembly of the States-General in 1789. It is therefore important to take a mental view of the moral and political situation of France at that period, and to follow, in imagination at least, the chain of ideas, passions, and errors, which, having dissolved the ties of society, and worn out the springs of government, led the nation by gigantic strides into the most complete anarchy. Without enumerating the different authorities which successively ruled in France after the fall of the throne, it appears no less essential to remind the reader that, in this general disorganization, the inhabitants themselves, though breathing the same air, scarcely knew that they belonged to the same nation. The altars overthrown; all the ancient institutions annihilated; new festivals and ceremonies introduced; factious demagogues honoured with an apotheosis; their busts exposed to public veneration; men and cities changing names; a portion of the people infected with atheism, and disguised in the livery of guilt and folly; all this, and more, exercised the reflection of the well-disposed in a manner the most painful. In a word, though France was peopled with the same individuals, it seemed inhabited by a new nation, entirely different from the old one in its government, its creed, its principles, its manners, and even its customs. War itself assumed a new face. Every thing relating to it became extraordinary: the number of the combatants, the manner of recruiting the armies, and the means of providing supplies for them; the manufacture of powder, cannon, and muskets; the ardour, impetuosity, and forced marches of the troops; their extortions, their successes, and their reverses; the choice of the generals, and the superior talents of some of them, together with the springs, by which these enormous bodies of armed men were moved and directed, were equally new and astonishing. History tells us that in poor countries, where nothing inflames cupidity and ambition, the love alone of the public good causes changes to be tried in the government; and that those changes derange not the ordinary course of society; whereas, among rich nations, corrupted by luxury, revolutions are always effected through secret motives of jealousy and interest; because there are great places to be usurped, and great fortunes to be invaded. In France, the revolution covered the country with ruins, tears, and blood, because means were not to be found to moderate in the people that _revolutionary spirit_ which parches, in the bud, the promised fruits of liberty, when its violence is not repressed. Few persons were capable of keeping pace with the rapid progress of the revolution. Those who remained behind were considered as guilty of desertion. The authors of the first constitution were accused of being _royalists_; the old partisans of republicanism were punished as _moderates_; the land-owners, as _aristocrates_; the monied men, as _corrupters_; the bankers and financiers, as _blood-suckers_; the shop-keepers, as _promoters of famine_; and the newsmongers, as _alarmists_. The factious themselves, in short, were alternately proscribed, as soon as they ceased to belong to the ruling faction. In this state of things, society became a prey to the most baneful passions. Mistrust entered every heart; friendship had no attraction; relationship, no tie; and men's minds, hardened by the habit of misfortune, or overwhelmed by fear, no longer opened to pity. Terror compressed every imagination; and the revolutionary government, exercising it to its fullest extent, struck off a prodigious number of heads, filled the prisons with victims, and continued to corrupt the morals of the nation by staining it with crimes. But all things have an end. The tyrants fell; the dungeons were thrown open; numberless victims emerged from them; and France seemed to recover new life; but still bewildered by the _revolutionary spirit_, wasted by the concealed poison of anarchy, exhausted by her innumerable sacrifices, and almost paralyzed by her own convulsions, she made but impotent efforts for the enjoyment of liberty and justice. Taxes became more burdensome; commerce was annihilated; industry, without aliment; paper-money, without value; and specie, without circulation. However, while the French nation was degraded at home by this series of evils, it was respected abroad through the rare merit of some of its generals, the splendour of its victories, and the bravery of its soldiers. During these transactions, there was formed in the public mind that moral resistance which destroys not governments by violence, but undermines them. The intestine commotions were increasing; the conquests of the French were invaded; their enemies were already on their frontiers; and the division which had broken out between the Directory and the Legislative Body, again threatened France with a total dissolution, when a man of extraordinary character and talents had the boldness to seize the reins of authority, and stop the further progress of the revolution.[1] Taking at the full the tide which leads on to fortune, he at once changed the face of affairs, not only within the limits of the Republic, but throughout Europe. Yet, after all their triumphs, the French have the mortification to have failed in gaining that for which they first took up arms, and for which they have maintained so long and so obstinate a struggle. When a strong mound has been broken down, the waters whose amassed volume it opposed, rush forward, and, in their impetuous course, spread afar terror and devastation. On visiting the scene where this has occurred, we naturally cast our eyes in every direction, to discover the mischief which they have occasioned by their irruption; so, then, on reaching the grand theatre of the French revolution, did I look about for the traces of the havock it had left behind; but, like a river which had regained its level, and flowed again in its natural bed, this political torrent had subsided, and its ravages were repaired in a manner the most surprising. However, at the particular request of an estimable friend, I have endeavoured to draw the contrast which, in 1789-90 and 1801-2, Paris presented to the eye of an impartial observer. In this arduous attempt I have not the vanity to flatter myself that I have been successful, though I have not hesitated to lay under contribution every authority likely to promote my object. The state of the French capital, before the revolution, I have delineated from the notes I had myself collected on the spot, and for which purpose I was, at that time, under the necessity of consulting almost as many books as Don Quixote read on knight-errantry; but the authors from whom I have chiefly borrowed, are St. FOIX, MERCIER, DULAURE, PUJOULX, and BIOT. My invariable aim has been to relate, _sine ira nec studio_, such facts and circumstances as have come to my knowledge, and to render to every one that justice which I should claim for myself. After a revolution which has trenched on so many opposite interests, the reader cannot be surprised, if information, derived from such a variety of sources, should sometimes seem to bear the character of party-spirit. Should this appear _on the face of the record_, I can only say that I have avoided entering into politics, in order that no bias of that sort might lead me to discolour or distort the truths I have had occasion to state; and I have totally rejected those communications which, from their tone of bitterness, personality, and virulence, might be incompatible with the general tenour of an impartial production. Till the joint approbation of some competent judges, who visited the French capital after having perused, in manuscript, several of these letters, had stamped on them a comparative degree of value, no one could think more lightly of them than the author. Urged repeatedly to produce them to the public, I have yielded with reluctance, and in the fullest confidence that, notwithstanding the recent change of circumstances, a liberal construction will be put on my sentiments and motives. I have taken care that my account of the national establishments in France should be perfectly correct; and, in fact, I have been favoured with the principal information it contains by their respective directors. In regard to the other topics on which I have touched, I have not failed to consult the best authorities, even in matters, which, however trifling in themselves, acquire a relative importance, from being illustrative of some of the many-coloured effects of a revolution, which has humbled the pride of many, deranged the calculations of all, disappointed the hopes of not a few, and deceived those even by whom it had been engendered and conducted. Yet, whatever pains I have taken to be strictly impartial, it cannot be denied that, in publishing a work of this description at a time when the self-love of most men is mortified, and their resentment awakened, I run no small risk of displeasing all parties, because I attach myself to none, but find them all more or less deserving of censure. Without descending either to flattery or calumny, I speak both well and ill of the French, because I copy nature, and neither draw an imaginary portrait, nor write a systematic narrative. If I have occasionally given vent to my indignation in glancing at the excesses of the revolution, I have not withheld my tribute of applause from those institutions, which, being calculated to benefit mankind by the gratuitous diffusion of knowledge, would reflect honour on any nation. In other respects, I have not been unmindful of that excellent precept of TACITUS, in which he observes that "The principal duty of the historian is to rescue from oblivion virtuous actions, and to make bad men dread infamy and posterity for what they have said and done."[2] In stating facts, it is frequently necessary to support them by a relation of particular circumstances, which may corroborate them in an unquestionable manner. Feeling this truth, I have some times introduced myself on my canvass, merely to shew that I am not an ideal traveller. I mean one of those pleasant fellows who travel post in their elbow-chair, sail round the world on a map suspended to one side of their room, cross the seas with a pocket-compass lying on their table, experience a shipwreck by their fireside, make their escape when it scorches their shins, and land on a desert island in their _robe de chambre_ and slippers. I have, therefore, here and there mentioned names, time, and place, to prove that, _bonâ fide_, I went to Paris immediately after the ratification of the preliminary treaty. To banish uniformity in my description of that metropolis, I have, as much as possible, varied my subjects. Fashions, sciences, absurdities, anecdotes, education, fêtes, useful arts, places of amusement, music, learned and scientific institutions, inventions, public buildings, industry, agriculture, &c. &c. &c. being all jumbled together in my brain, I have thence drawn them, like tickets from a lottery; and it will not, I trust, be deemed presumptuous in me to indulge a hope that, in proportion to the blanks, there will be found no inadequate number of prizes. I have pointed out the immense advantages which France is likely to derive from her Schools for Public Services, and other establishments of striking utility, such as the _Dépôt de la Guerre_ and the _Dépôt de la Marine_, in order that the British government may be prompted to form institutions, which, if not exactly similar, may at least answer the same purpose. Instead of copying the French in objects of fickleness and frivolity, why not borrow from them what is really deserving of imitation? It remains for me to observe, by way of stimulating the ambition of British genius, that, in France, the arts and sciences are now making a rapid and simultaneous progress; first, because the revolution has made them popular in that country; and, secondly, because they are daily connected by new ties, which, in a great measure, render them inseparable. Facts are there recurred to, less with a view to draw from them immediate applications than to develop the truths resulting from them. The first step is from these facts to their most simple consequences, which are little more than bare assertions. From these the _savans_ proceed to others more minute, till, at length, by imperceptible degrees, they arrive at the most abstracted generalities. With them, method is an induction incessantly verified by experiment. Whence, it gives to human intelligence, not wings which lead it astray, but reins which guide it. United by this common philosophy, the sciences and arts in France advance together; and the progress made by one of them serves to promote that of the rest. There, the men who profess them, considering that their knowledge belongs not to themselves alone, not to their country only, but to all mankind, are continually striving to increase the mass of public knowledge. This they regard as a real duty, which they are proud to discharge; thus treading in the steps of the most memorable men of past ages. Then, while the more unlearned and unskilled among us are emulating the patriotic enthusiasm of the French in volunteering, as they did, to resist invasion, let our men of science and genius exert themselves not to be surpassed by the industrious _savans_ and artists of that nation; but let them act on the principle inculcated by the following sublime idea of our illustrious countryman, the founder of modern philosophy. "It may not be amiss," says BACON, "to point out three different kinds, and, as it were, degrees of ambition. The first, that of those who desire to enhance, in their own country, the power they arrogate to themselves: this kind of ambition is both vulgar and degenerate. The second, that of those who endeavour to extend the power and domination of their country, over the whole of the human race: in this kind there is certainly a greater dignity, though; at the same time, no less a share of cupidity. But should any one strive to restore and extend the power and domination of mankind over the universality of things, unquestionably such an ambition, (if it can be so denominated) would be more reasonable and dignified than the others. Now, the empire of man, over things, has its foundation exclusively in the arts and sciences; for it is only by an obedience to her laws, that Nature can be commanded."[3] LONDON, June 10, 1803. [Footnote 1: Of two things, we are left to believe one. BONAPARTE either was or was not invited to put himself at the head of the government of France. It is not probable that the Directory should send for him from Egypt, in order to say to him: "we are fools and drivelers, unfit to conduct the affairs of the nation; so turn us out of office, and seat yourself in our place." Nevertheless, they might have hoped to preserve their tottering authority through his support. Be this as it may, there it something so singular in the good fortune which has attended BONAPARTE from the period of his quitting Alexandria, that, were it not known for truth, it might well be taken for fiction. Sailing from the road of Aboukir on the 24th of August, 1799, he eludes the vigilance of the English cruisers, and lands at Frejus in France on the 14th of October following, the forty-seventh day after his departure from Egypt. On his arrival in Paris, so far from giving an account of his conduct to the Directory, he turns his back on them; accepts the proposition made to him, from another quarter, to effect a change in the government; on the 9th of November, carries it into execution; and, profiting by the _popularis aura_, fixes himself at the head of the State, at the same time kicking down the ladder by which he climbed to power. To achieve all this with such promptitude and energy, most assuredly required a mind of no common texture; nor can any one deny that ambition would have done but little towards its accomplishment, had it not been seconded by extraordinary firmness.] [Footnote 2: _"Præcipuum munus annalium reor, ne virtutes sileantur, utque praxis dictis factisque ex posteritate et infamiâ metus sit."_] [Footnote 3: "_Præterca non abs refuerit, tria hominum ambitionis genera et quasi gradus distinguere. Primum eorum qui propriam potentiam in patria sua amplificare cupiunt; quod genus vulgare est et degener. Secundum eorum, qui patriæ potentiam et imperium inter humanum genus amplificare nituntur; illud plus certe habet dignitatis, cupiditatis haud minus. Quod si quis humani generis ipsius potentiam et imperium in rerum univertitatem instaurare et amplificare conetur ea procul dubio ambitio (si modo ita cocanda sit) reliquls et sanior est et augustior. Hominis autem imperium in res, in solis artibus et scientiis ponitur: naturæ enim non imperatur, nisi parendo_." Nov. org. scientiarum. Aphor. CXXIX. (Vol. VIII. page 72, new edition of BACON'S works. London, printed 1803.)] A SKETCH OF PARIS, &c. &c. LETTER I. _Calais, October 16, 1801._ MY DEAR FRIEND, Had you not made it a particular request that I would give you the earliest account of my debarkation in France, I should, probably, not have been tempted to write to you till I reached Paris. I well know the great stress which you lay on first impressions; but what little I have now to communicate will poorly gratify your expectation. From the date of this letter, you will perceive that, since we parted yesterday, I have not been dilatory in my motions. No sooner had a messenger from the Alien-Office brought me the promised passport, or rather his Majesty's licence, permitting me to embark for France, than I proceeded on my journey. In nine hours I reached Dover, and, being authorized by a proper introduction, immediately applied to Mr. Mantell, the agent for prisoners of war, cartels, &c. for a passage across the water. An English flag of truce was then in the harbour, waiting only for government dispatches; and I found that, if I could get my baggage visited in time, I might avail myself of the opportunity of crossing the sea in this vessel. On having recourse to the collector of the customs, I succeeded in my wish: the dispatches arriving shortly after, mid my baggage being already shipped, I stepped off the quay into the Nancy, on board of which I was the only passenger. A propitious breeze sprang up at the moment, and, in less than three hours, wafted me to Calais pier. By the person who carried the dispatches to Citizen Mengaud, the commissary for this department (_Pas de Calais_), I sent a card with my name and rank, requesting permission to land and deliver to him a letter from M. Otto. This step was indispensable: the vessel which brought me was, I find, the first British flag of truce that has been suffered to enter the harbour, with the exception of the Prince of Wales packet, now waiting here for the return of a king's messenger from Paris; and her captain even has not yet been permitted to go on shore. It therefore appears that I shall be the first Englishman, not in an official character, who has set foot on French ground since the ratification of the preliminary treaty. The pier was presently crowded with people gazing at our vessel, as if she presented a spectacle perfectly novel: but, except the tri-coloured cockade in the hats of the military, I could not observe the smallest difference in their general appearance. Instead of crops and round wigs, which I expected to see in universal vogue, here were full as many powdered heads and long queues as before the revolution. Frenchmen, in general, will, I am persuaded, ever be Frenchmen in their dress, which, in my opinion, can never be _revolutionized_, either by precept or example. The _citoyens_, as far as I am yet able to judge, most certainly have not fattened by warfare more than JOHN BULL: their visages are as sallow and as thin as formerly, though their persons are not quite so meagre as they are pourtrayed by Hogarth. The prospect of peace, however, seemed to have produced an exhilarating effect on all ranks; satisfaction appeared on every countenance. According to custom, a host of inkeepers' domestics boarded the vessel, each vaunting the superiority of his master's accommodations. My old landlord Ducrocq presenting himself to congratulate me on my arrival, soon freed me from their importunities, and I, of course, decided in favour of the _Lion d'Argent_. Part of the _Boulogne_ flotilla was lying in the harbour. Independently of the decks of the gunboats being full of soldiers, with very few sailors intermixed, playing at different games of chance, not a plank, not a log, or piece of timber, was there on the quay but was also covered with similar parties. This then accounts for that rage for gambling, which has carried to such desperate lengths those among them whom the fate of war has lodged in our prisons. My attention was soon diverted from this scene, by a polite answer from the commissary, inviting me to his house. I instantly disembarked to wait on him; my letter containing nothing more than an introduction, accompanied by a request that I might be furnished with a passport to enable me to proceed to Paris without delay, Citizen Mengaud dispatched a proper person to attend me to the town-hall, where the passports are made out, and signed by the mayor; though they are not delivered till they have also received the commissary's signature. However, to lose no time, while one of the clerks was drawing my picture, or, in other words, taking down a minute description of my person, I sent my keys to the custom-house, in order that my baggage might be examined. By what conveyance I was to proceed to Paris was the next point to be settled; and this has brought me to the _Lion d'Argent_. Among other vehicles, Ducrocq has, in his _remise_, an apparently-good _cabriolet de voyage_, belonging to one of his Paris correspondents; but, on account of the wretched state of the roads, he begs me to allow him time to send for his coachmaker, to examine it scrupulously, that I may not be detained by the way, from any accident happening to the carriage. I was just on the point of concluding my letter, when a French naval officer, who was on the pier when I landed, introduced himself to me, to know whether I would do him the favour to accommodate him with a place in the cabriolet under examination. I liked my new friend's appearance and manner too well not to accede to his proposal. The carriage is reported to be in good condition. I shall therefore send my servant on before as a courier, instead of taking him with me as an inside passenger. As we shall travel night and day, and the post-horses will be in readiness at every stage, we may, I am told, expect to reach Paris in about forty-two hours. Adieu; my next will be from the _great_ city. LETTER II. _Paris, October 19, 1801._ Here I am safe arrived; that is, without any broken bones; though my arms, knees, and head are finely pummelled by the jolting of the carriage. Well might Ducrocq say that the roads were bad! In several places, they are not passable without danger--Indeed, the government is so fully aware of this, that an inspector has been dispatched to direct immediate repairs to be made against the arrival of the English ambassador; and, in some _communes_, the people are at work by torch-light. With this exception, my journey was exceedingly pleasant. At ten o'clock the first night, we reached _Montreuil_, where we supped; the next day we breakfasted at _Abbeville_, dined at _Amiens_, and supped that evening at _Clermont_. The road between _Calais_ and _Paris_ is too well known to interest by description. Most of the abbeys and monasteries, which present themselves to the eye of the traveller, have either been converted into hospitals or manufactories. Few there are, I believe, who will deny that this change is for the better. A receptacle for the relief of suffering indigence conveys a consolatory idea to the mind of the friend of human nature; while the lover of industry cannot but approve of an establishment which, while it enriches a State, affords employ to the needy and diligent. This, unquestionably, is no bad appropriation of these buildings, which, when inhabited by monks, were, for the most part, no more than an asylum of sloth, hypocrisy, pride, and ignorance. The weather was fine, which contributed not a little to display the country to greater advantage; but the improvements recently made in agriculture are too striking to escape the notice of the most inattentive observer. The open plains and rising grounds of _ci-devant Picardy_ which, from ten to fifteen years ago, I have frequently seen, in this season, mostly lying fallow, and presenting the aspect of one wide, neglected waste, are now all well cultivated, and chiefly laid down in corn; and the corn, in general, seems to have been sown with more than common attention. My fellow-traveller, who was a _lieutenant de vaisseau_, belonging to _Latouche Tréville's_ flotilla, proved a very agreeable companion, and extremely well-informed. This officer positively denied the circumstance of any of their gun-boats being moored with chains during our last attack. While he did ample justice to the bravery of our people, he censured the manner in which it had been exerted. The divisions of boats arriving separately, he said, could not afford to each other necessary support, and were thus exposed to certain discomfiture. I made the best defence I possibly could; but truth bears down all before it. The loss on the side of the French, my fellow-traveller declared, was no more than seven men killed and forty-five wounded. Such of the latter as were in a condition to undergo the fatigue of the ceremony, were carried in triumphal procession through the streets of _Boulogne_, where, after being harangued by the mayor, they were rewarded with civic crowns from the hands of their fair fellow-citizens. Early the second morning after our departure from _Calais_, we reached the town of _St. Denis_, which, at one time since the revolution, changed its name for that of _Françiade_. I never pass through this place without calling to mind the persecution which poor Abélard suffered from Adam, the abbot, for having dared to say, that the body of _St. Denis_, first bishop of Paris, in 240, which had been preserved in this abbey among the relics, was not that of the areopagite, who died in 95. The ridiculous stories, imposed on the credulity of the zealous catholics, respecting this wonderful saint, have been exhibited in their proper light by Voltaire, as you may see by consulting the _Questions sur l'Encyclopédie_, at the article _Denis_. It is in every person's recollection that, in consequence of the National Convention having decreed the abolition of royalty in France, it was proposed to annihilate every vestige of it throughout the country. But, probably, you are not aware of the thorough sweep that was made among the sepultures in this abbey of _St. Denis_. The bodies of the kings, queens, princes, princesses, and celebrated personages, who had been interred here for nearly fifteen hundred years, were taken up, and literally reduced to ashes. Not a wreck was left behind to make a relic. The remains of TURENNE alone were respected. All the other bodies, together with the entrails or hearts, enclosed in separate urns, were thrown into large pits, lined with a coat of quick lime: they were then covered with the same substance; and the pits were afterwards filled up with earth. Most of them, as may be supposed, were in a state of complete putrescency; of some, the bones only remained, though a few were in good preservation. The bodies of the consort of Charles I. Henrietta Maria of France, daughter of Henry IV, who died in 1669, aged 60, and of their daughter Henrietta Stuart, first wife of Monsieur, only brother to Lewis XIV, who died in 1670, aged 26, both interred in the vault of the Bourbons, were consumed in the general destruction. The execution of this decree was begun at _St. Denis_ on Saturday the 12th of October 1793, and completed on the 25th of the same month, in presence of the municipality and several other persons. On the 12th of November following, all the treasure of _St. Denis_, (shrines, relics, &c.) was removed: the whole was put into large wooden chests, together with all the rich ornaments of the church, consisting of chalices, pyxes, cups, copes, &c. The same day these valuable articles were sent off, in great state, in waggons, decorated for the purpose, to the National Convention. We left _St. Denis_ after a hasty breakfast; and, on reaching Paris, I determined to drive to the residence of a man whom I had never seen; but from whom I had little doubt of a welcome reception. I accordingly alighted in the _Rue neuve St. Roch_, where I found B----a, who perfectly answered the character given me of him by M. S----i. You already know that, through the interest of my friend, Captain O----y, I was so fortunate as to procure the exchange of B----a's only son, a deserving youth, who had been taken prisoner at sea, and languished two years in confinement in Portchester-Castle. Before I could introduce myself, one of young B----a's sisters proclaimed my name, as if by inspiration; and I was instantly greeted with the cordial embraces of the whole family. This scene made me at once forget the fatigues of my journey; and, though I had not been in bed for three successive nights, the agreeable sensations excited in my mind, by the unaffected expression of gratitude, banished every inclination to sleep. If honest B----a and his family felt themselves obliged to me, I felt myself doubly and trebly obliged to Captain O----y; for, to his kind exertion, was I indebted for the secret enjoyment arising from the performance of a disinterested action. S----i was no sooner informed of my arrival, than he hastened to obey the invitation to meet me at dinner, and, by his presence, enlivened the family party. After spending a most agreeable day, I retired to a temporary lodging, which B----a had procured me in the neighbourhood. I shall remain in it no longer than till I can suit myself with apartments in a private house, where I can be more retired, or at least subject to less noise, than in a public hotel. Of the fifty-eight hours which I employed in performing my journey hither from London, forty-four were spent on my way between Calais and Paris; a distance that I have often travelled with ease in thirty-six, when the roads were in tolerable repair. Considerable delay too is at present occasioned by the erection of _barrières_, or turnpike-bars, which did not exist before the revolution. At this day, they are established throughout all the departments, and are an insuperable impediment to expedition; for, at night, the toll-gatherers are fast asleep, and the bars being secured, you are obliged to wait patiently till these good citizens choose to rise from their pillow. To counterbalance this inconvenience, you are not now plagued, as formerly, by custom-house officers on the frontiers of _every_ department. My baggage being once searched at _Calais_, experienced no other visit; but, at the upper town of _Boulogne_, a sight of my travelling passport was required; by mistake in the dark, I gave the _commis_ a scrawl, put into my hands by Ducrocq, containing an account of the best inns on the road. Would you believe that this inadvertency detained us a considerable time, so extremely inquisitive are they, at the present moment, respecting all papers? At _Calais_, the custom-house officers even examined every piece of paper used in the packing of my baggage. This scrutiny is not particularly adopted towards Englishmen; but must, I understand, be undergone by travellers of every country, on entering the territory of the Republic. _P. S._ Lord Cornwallis is expected with impatience; and, at _St. Denis_, an escort of dragoons of the 19th demi-brigade is in waiting to attend him into Paris. LETTER III. _Paris, October 21, 1801._ On approaching this capital, my curiosity was excited in the highest degree; and, as the carriage passed rapidly along from the _Barrière_, through the _Porte St. Denis_, to the _Rue neuve St. Roch_, my eyes wandered in all directions, anxiously seeking every shade of distinction between _monarchical_ and _republican_ Paris. The first thing that attracted my attention, on entering the _faubourg_, was the vast number of inscriptions placed, during the revolution, on many of the principal houses; but more especially on public buildings of every description. They are painted in large, conspicuous letters; and the following is the most general style in which they have been originally worded: "RÉPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE, UNE ET INDIVISIBLE." "LIBERTÉ, ÉGALITÉ, FRATERNITÉ, OU LA MORT." Since the exit of the French Nero, the last three words "_ou la mort_" have been obliterated, but in few places are so completely effaced as not to be still legible. In front of all the public offices and national establishments, the tri-coloured flag is triumphantly displayed; and almost every person you meet wears in his hat the national cockade. The tumult which, ten or twelve years ago, rendered the streets of Paris so noisy, so dirty, and at the same time so dangerous, is now most sensibly diminished. Boileau's picture of them is no longer just. No longer are seen those scenes of confusion occasioned by the frequent stoppages of coaches and carts, and the contentions of the vociferating drivers. You may now pass the longest and most crowded thoroughfares, either on foot or otherwise, without obstacle or inconvenience. The contrast is striking. Indeed, from what I have observed, I should presume that there is not, at the present day, one tenth part of the number of carriages which were in use here in 1780-90. Except on the domestics of foreign ambassadors and foreigners, I have as yet noticed nothing like a livery; and, in lieu of armorial bearings, every carriage, without distinction, has a number painted on the pannel. However, if private equipages are scarce, thence ensues more than one advantage; the public are indemnified by an increased number of good hackney coaches, chariots, and cabriolets; and, besides, as I have just hinted, pedestrians are not only far less exposed to being bespattered, but also to having their limbs fractured. Formerly, a _seigneur de la cour_ conceived himself justified in suffering his coachman to drive at a mischievous rate; and in narrow, crowded streets, where there is no foot-pavement, it was extremely difficult for persons walking to escape the wheels of a great number of carriages rattling along in this shameful manner. But he who guided the chariot of a _ministre d'état_, considered it as a necessary and distinctive mark of his master's pre-eminence to _brûler le pavé_. This is so strictly true, that, before the revolution, I have here witnessed repeated accidents of the most serious nature, resulting from the exercise of this sort of ministerial privilege: on one occasion particularly, I myself narrowly escaped unhurt, when a decent, elderly woman was thrown down, close by my feet, and had both her thighs broken through the unfeeling wantonness of the coachman of the Baron de Breteuil, at that time minister for the department of Paris. Owing to the salutary regulations of the police, the recurrence of these accidents is now, in a great measure, prevented; and, as the empirics say in their hand-bills: "_Prevention is better than cure._" But for these differences, a person who had not seen Paris for some years, might, unless he were to direct his visits to particular quarters, cross it from one extremity to the other, without remarking any change to inform his mind, that here had been a revolution, or rather that, for the last ten years, this city had been almost one continual scene of revolutions. Bossnet, once preaching before Lewis XIV, exclaimed: "Kings die, and so do kingdoms!" Could that great preacher rise from his grave into the pulpit, and behold France without a king, and that kingdom, not crumbled away, but enlarged, almost with the rapid accumulation of a snow-ball, into an enormous mass of territory, under the title of French Republic, what would he not have to say in a sermon? _Rien de nouveau sous le ciel_, though an old proverb, would not now suit as a maxim. This, in fact, seems the age of wonders. The league of monarchs has ended by producing republics; while a republic has raised a dukedom into a monarchy, and, by its vast preponderance, completely overturned the balance of power. Not knowing when I may have an opportunity of sending this letter, I shall defer to close it for the present, as I may possibly lengthen it. But you must not expect much order in my narrations. I throw my thoughts on paper just as they happen to present themselves, without any studied arrangement. _October 21, in continuation_. When we have been for some time in the habit of corresponding with strangers, we are apt to draw such inferences from their language and style, as furnish us with the means of sketching an ideal portrait of their person. This was the case with myself. Through the concurrence of the two governments, I had, as you know, participated, in common with others, in the indulgence of being permitted to correspond, occasionally, on subjects of literature with several of the _savans_ and literati of France. Indeed, the principal motive of my journey to Paris was to improve that sort of acquaintance, by personal intercourse, so as to render it more interesting to both parties. In my imagination, I had drawn a full-length picture of most of my literary correspondents. I was now anxious to see the originals, and compare the resemblance. Yesterday, having first paid my respects to Mr. M----y, the successor to Captain C----s, as commissary for the maintenance and exchange of British prisoners of war, and at present _Chargé d'affaires_ from our court to the French Republic, I called on M. F----u, formerly minister of the naval department, and at present counsellor of state, and member of the National Institute, as well as of the board of longitude. I then visited M. O----r, and afterwards M. L------re, also members of the Institute, and both well known to our proficients in natural history, by the works which each has published in the different branches of that interesting science. In one only of my ideal portraits had I been very wide of the likeness. However, without pretending to be a Lavater, I may affirm that I should not have risked falling into a mistake like that committed, on a somewhat similar occasion, by Voltaire. This colossus of French literature, having been for a long time in correspondence with the great Frederic, became particularly anxious to see that monarch. On his arrival in a village where the head-quarters of the Prussian army were then established, Voltaire inquired for the king's lodging: thither he paced with redoubled speed; and, being directed to the upper part of the house, he hastily crossed a large garret; he then found himself in a second, and was just on the point of entering the third, when, on turning round, he perceived in one of the comers of the room, a soldier, not overclean in appearance, lying on a sorry bedstead. He went up and said to him with eagerness: "Where's the king?"--"I am Frederic," replied the soldier; and, sure enough, it was the monarch himself. I am now settled in my new apartments, which are situated in the most centrical part of Paris. When you visit this capital, I would by all means, recommend to you, should you intend to remain here a few weeks, to get into private lodgings. I know of no article here so much augmented in price, within the last ten years, as the apartments in all the hotels. After looking at several of them in the _Rue de la Loi_, accompanied by a French friend, who was so obliging as to take on himself all the trouble of inquiry, while I remained a silent bystander, I had the curiosity to go to the _Hôtel d'Angleterre_, in the _Rue des Filles St. Thomas_, hot far from the _ci-devant Palais Royal_. The same apartments on the first floor of this hotel which I occupied in 1789, happened to be vacant. At that time I paid for them twelve louis d'or a month; the furniture was then new; it is now much the worse for nearly eleven years' wear; and the present landlord asked twenty-five louis a month, and even refused twenty-two, if taken for three months certain. The fact is, that all the landlords of ready-furnished hotels in Paris seem to be buoyed up with an idea that, on the peace, the English and foreigners of other nations will flock hither in such numbers as to enable them to reap a certain and plentiful harvest. Not but all lodgings are considerably increased in price, which is ascribed to the increase of taxes. To find private lodgings, you have only to cast your eye on the daily advertiser of Paris, called _Les Petites Affiches_. There I read a description of my present quarters, which are newly fitted up in every particular, and, I assure you, with no small degree of tasteful fancy. My landlady, who is a milliner, and, for aught I know, a very fashionable one, left not the smallest convenience to my conjecture, but explained the particular use of every hole and corner in the most significant manner, not even excepting the _boudoir_. This would be a most excellent situation for any one whose principal object was to practise speaking French; for, on the right hand of the _porte-cochère_ or gateway, (which, by the bye, is here reckoned an indispensable appendage to a proper lodging), is the _magazin des modes_, where my landlady presides over twenty damsels, many of whom, though assiduously occupied in making caps and bonnets, would, I am persuaded, find repartee for the most witty gallant. LETTER IV. _Paris, October 23, 1801._ Since my arrival, I have been so much engaged in paying and receiving visits, that I really have not yet been able to take even a hasty view of any of the grand sights introduced here since the revolution, On Wednesday I dined with M. S----i, whose new 8vo edition of Buffon proceeds, I find, with becoming spirit. It is quite a journey to his residence; for he lives in one of the most retired quarters of Paris, However, I had no reason to repine at the distance, as the party was exceedingly cheerful. Naturalists and literati were not wanting. Egypt was a subject that engrossed much of the conversation: it was mentioned as a matter of regret that, during the dominion of the French in that country, curiosity had not prompted the Institute, established at Cairo, to open one of the pyramids, with a view of ascertaining the object of the erection of those vast masses. At the desert, we had luscious grapes as large as damsons, in bunches of from three to five pounds in weight. They were of the species of the famous _chasselas de Fontainebleau_, which are said to have sprung from a stock of vine-plants, imported by Francis I. from the island of Cyprus. These did not come from that town, but grew against the naked wall in S----i's garden. From this you may form a judgment of the climate of Paris. The persons with whom I have had any correspondence, respecting literature, vie with each other in shewing me every mark of cordial hospitality; and those to whom I have been introduced, are by no means backward in friendly attention. All the lovers of science here seem to rejoice that the communication, which has been so long interrupted between the two countries, promises to be shortly re-opened. After dining yesterday with Mr. M----y, the British minister, in company with Mr. D----n, the member for Ilchester, we all three went to an exhibition almost facing Mr. M----y's residence in the _Rue St. Dominique_. This was the third time of its being open to the public. As it is of a novel kind, some account of it may not be uninteresting. In French, it is denominated THERMOLAMPES, _or stoves which afford heat and light on an economical plan_. The author of this invention, for which a patent has been obtained, is M. LEBON, an engineer of bridges and highways. The place of exhibition was the ground floor of one of the large hotels in the _Faubourg St. Germain_, on which was a suite of rooms, extremely favourable for displaying the effect of this new method of lighting and warming apartments. In lieu of fire or candle, on the chimney stood a large crystal globe, in which appeared a bright and clear flame diffusing a very agreeable heat; and on different pieces of furniture were placed candlesticks with metal candles, from the top of each of which issued a steady light, like that of a lamp burning with spirits of wine. These different receptacles were supplied with inflammable gas by means of tubes communicating with an apparatus underneath. By this contrivance, in short, all the apartments were warmed very comfortably, and illuminated in a brilliant manner. On consulting M. LEBON, he communicated to me the following observations: "You may have remarked," said he, "in sitting before a fire, that wood sometimes burns without flame, but with much smoke, and then you experience little heat, sometimes with flame, but with little smoke, and then you find much warmth. You may have remarked too, that ill-made charcoal emits smoke; it is, on that account, susceptible of flaming again; and the characteristic difference between wood and charcoal is, that the latter has lost, together with its smoke, the principle and aliment of flame, without which you obtain but little heat. Experience next informs us, that this portion of smoke, the aliment of flame, is not an oily vapour condensable by cooling, but a gas, a permanent air, which may be washed, purified, conducted, distributed, and afterwards turned into flame at any distance from the hearth. "It is almost needless," continued he, "to point out the formation of verdigrise, white lead, and a quantity of other operations, in which acetous acid is employed. I shall only remark that it is this pyroligneous acid which penetrates smoked meat and fish, that it has an effect on leather which it hardens, and that _thermolampes_ are likely to render tanning-mills unnecessary, by furnishing the tan without further trouble. But to return to the aëriform principle. "This aliment of flame is deprived of those humid vapours, so perceptible and so disagreeable to the organs of sight and smell. Purified to a perfect transparency, it floats in the state of cold air, and suffers itself to be directed by the smallest and most fragil pipes. Chimnies of an inch square, made in the thickness of the plaster of ceilings or walls, tubes even of gummed silk would answer this purpose. The end alone of the tube, which, by bringing the inflammable gas into contact with the atmospheric air, allows it to catch fire, and on which the flame reposes, ought to be of metal. "By a distribution so easy to be established, a single stove may supply the place of all the chimnies of a house. Every where inflammable air is ready to diffuse immediately heat and light of the most glowing or most mild nature, simultaneously or separately, according to your wishes. In the twinkling of an eye, you may conduct the flame from one room to another; an advantage equally convenient and economical, and which can never be obtained with our common stoves and chimnies. No sparks, no charcoal, no soot, to trouble you; no ashes, no wood, to soil your apartments. By night, as well as by day, you can have a fire in your room, without a servant being obliged to look after it. Nothing in the _thermolampes_, not even the smallest portion of inflammable air, can escape combustion; while in our chimnies, torrents evaporate, and even carry off with them the greater part of the heat produced. "The advantage of being able to purify and proportion, in some measure, the principles of the gas which feeds the flame is," said M. LEBON, "set forth in the clearest manner. But this flame is so subjected to our caprice, that even to tranquilize the imagination, it suffers itself to be confined in a crystal globe, which is never tarnished, and thus presents a filter pervious to light and heat. A part of the tube that conducts the inflammable air, carries off, out of doors, the produce of this combustion, which, nevertheless, according to the experiments of modern chymists, can scarcely be any thing more than an aqueous vapour. "Who cannot but be fond of having recourse to a flame so subservient? It will dress your victuals, which, as well as your cooks, will not be exposed to the vapour of charcoal; it will warm again those dishes on your table; dry your linen; heat your oven, and the water for your baths or your washing, with every economical advantage that can be wished. No moist or black vapours; no ashes, no breaze, to make a dirt, or oppose the communication of heat; no useless loss of caloric; you may, by shutting an opening, which is no longer necessary for placing the wood in your oven, compress and coerce the torrents of heat that were escaping from it. "It may easily be conceived, that an inflammable principle so docile and so active may be made to yield the most magnificent illuminations. Streams of fire finely drawn out, the duration, colour, and form of which may be varied at pleasure, the motion of suns and turning-columns, must produce an effect no less agreeable than brilliant." Indeed, this effect was exhibited on the garden façade of M. LEBON'S residence. "Wood," concluded he, "yields in condensable vapours two thirds of its weight; those vapours may therefore be employed to produce the effects of our steam-engines, and it is needless to borrow this succour from foreign water." _P. S._. On the 1st of last Vendémiaire, (23rd of September), the government presented to the Chief Consul a sword, whose hilt was adorned with fourteen diamonds, the largest of which, called the _Regent_, from its having been purchased by the Duke of Orleans, when Regent, weighs 184 carats. This is the celebrated _Pitt_ diamond, of which we have heard so much: but its weight is exceeded by that of the diamond purchased by the late empress of Russia, which weighs 194 carats; not to speak of the more famous diamond, in possession of the Great Mogul, which is said to weigh 280 carats. LETTER V. _Paris, October 24, 1801._ Last night I received yours of the 20th ult. and as Mr. M----y purposes to send off a dispatch this morning, and will do me the favour to forward this, with my former letters, I hasten to write you a few lines. I scarcely need assure you, my dear friend, that I will, with pleasure, communicate to you my remarks on this great city and its inhabitants, and describe to you, as far as I am able, the principal curiosities which it contains, particularizing, as you desire, those recently placed here by the chance of war; and giving you a succinct, historical account of the most remarkable national establishments and public buildings. But to pass in review the present state of the _arts, sciences, literature, manners, &c. &c._ in this capital, and contrast it with that which existed before the revolution, is a task indeed; and far more, I fear, than it will be in my power to accomplish. However, if you will be content to gather my observations as they occur; to listen to my reflections, while the impression of the different scenes which produced them, is still warm in my mind; in short, to take a faithful sketch, in lieu of a finished picture, I will do the best I can for your satisfaction. Relying on your indulgence, you shall know the life I lead: I will, as it were, take you by the arm, and, wherever I go, you shall be my companion. Perhaps, by pursuing this plan, you will not, at the expiration of three or four months, think your time unprofitably spent. Aided by the experience acquired by having occasionally resided here, for several months together, before the revolution, it will be my endeavour to make you as well acquainted with Paris, as I shall then hope to be myself. For this purpose, I will lay under contribution every authority, both written and oral, worthy of being consulted. LETTER VI _Paris, October 26, 1801._ From particular passages in your letter, I clearly perceive your anxiety to be introduced among those valuable antiques which now adorn the banks of the Seine. On that account, I determined to postpone all other matters, and pay my first visit to the CENTRAL MUSEUM OF THE ARTS, established in the LOUVRE. But, before, we enter the interior of this building, it may not be amiss to give you some account of its construction, and describe to you its exterior beauties. The origin of this palace, as well as the etymology of its name, is lost in the darkness of time. It is certain, however, that it existed, under the appellation of _Louvre_, in the reign of Philip Augustus, who surrounded it with ditches and towers, and made it a fortress. The great tower of the _Louvre_, celebrated in history, was insulated, and built in the middle of the court. All the great feudatories of the crown derived their tenure from this tower, and came hither to swear allegiance and pay homage. "It was," says St. Foix, "a prison previously prepared for them, if they violated their oaths."[1] Three Counts of Flanders were confined in it at different periods. The _Louvre_, far from being cheerful from its construction, received also from this enormous tower a melancholy and terrifying aspect which rendered it unworthy of being a royal residence. Charles V. endeavoured to enliven and embellish this gloomy abode, and made it tolerably commodious for those times. Several foreign monarchs successively lodged in it; such as Manuel, emperor of Constantinople; Sigismund, emperor of Germany; and the emperor Charles the Fifth. This large tower of the _Louvre_, which had, at different periods, served as a palace to the kings of France, as a prison to the great lords, and as a treasury to the state, was at length taken down in 1528. The _Tower of the Library_ was famous, among several others, because it contained that of Charles V. the most considerable one of the time, and in which the number of volumes amounted to nine hundred. OLD LOUVRE The part of this palace which, at the present day, is called the _Old Louvre_, was begun under Francis I. from the plan of PIERRE LESCOT, abbot of Clugny; and the sculpture was executed by JEAN GOUGEON, whose minute correctness is particularly remarkable in the festoons of the frieze of the second order, and in the devices emblematic of the amours of Henry II. This edifice, though finished, was not inhabited during the reign of that king, but it was by his son Charles IX. Under him, the _Louvre_ became the bloody theatre of treacheries and massacres which time will never efface from the memory of mankind, and which, till the merciless reign of Robespierre, were unexampled in the history of this country. I mean the horrors of St. Bartholemew's day. While the alarmed citizens were swimming across the river to escape from death, Charles IX. from a window of this palace, was firing at them with his arquebuse. During that period of the revolution, when all means were employed to excite and strengthen the enmity of the people against their kings, this act of atrocity was called to their mind by an inscription placed under the very window, which looks on the _Quai du Louvre_. Indeed, this instance of Charles's barbarity is fully corroborated by historians. "When it was day-light," says Brantome, "the king peeped out of his chamber-window, and seeing some people in the _Faubourg St. Germain_ moving about and running away, he took a large arquebuse which he had ready at hand, and, calling out incessantly: _Kill, kill!_ fired a great many shots at them, but in vain; for the piece did not carry so far."--This prince, according to Masson, piqued himself on his dexterity in cutting off at a single blow the head of the asses and pigs which he met with on his way. Lansac, one of his favourites, having found him one day with his sword drawn and ready to strike his mule, asked him seriously: "What quarrel has then happened between His Most Christian Majesty and my mule?" Murad Bey far surpassed this blood-thirsty monarch in address and strength. The former, we are told by travellers in Egypt, has been known, when riding past an ox, to cut off its head with one stroke of his scimitar. The capital was dyed with the blood of Charles's murdered subjects. Into this very _Louvre_, into the chamber of Marguerite de Valois, the king's sister, and even to her bed, in which she was then lying, did the fanatics pursue the officers belonging to the court itself, as is circumstantially related by that princess in her Memoirs. Let us draw the curtain on these scenes of horror, and pass rapidly from this period of fanaticism and cruelty, when the _Louvre_ was stained by so many crimes to times more happy, when this palace became the quiet cradle of the arts and sciences, the school for talents, the _arena_ for genius, and the asylum of artists and literati. The centre pavilion over the principal gate of the _Old Louvre_, was erected under the reign of Lewis XIII. from the designs of LE MERCIER, as well as the angle of the left part of the building, parallel to that built by Henry II. The eight gigantic cariatides which are there seen, were sculptured by SARRASIN. The façade towards the _Jardin de l'Infante_, (as it is called), that towards the _Place du Louvre_, and that over the little gate, towards the river, which were constructed under the reigns of Charles IX. and Henry III. in the midst of the civil wars of the League, partake of the taste of the time, in regard to the multiplicity of the ornaments; but the interior announces, by the majesty of its decorations, the refined taste of Lewis XIV. NEW LOUVRE. The part of the _Louvre_, which, with the two sides of the old building, forms the perfect square, three hundred and seventy-eight feet[2] in extent, called the _New Louvre_, consists in two double façades, which are still unfinished. LE VEAU, and after him D'ORBAY, were the architects under whose direction this augmentation was made by order of Lewis XIV. That king at first resolved to continue the _Louvre_ on the plan begun by Francis I.: for some time he caused it to be pursued, but having conceived a more grand and magnificent design, he ordered the foundation of the superb edifice now standing, to be laid on the 17th of October 1665, under the administration of COLBERT. Through a natural prejudice, Lewis XIV. thought that he could find no where but in Italy an artist sufficiently skilful to execute his projects of magnificence. He sent for the Cavaliere BERNINI from Rome. This artist, whose reputation was established, was received in France with all the pomp due to princes of the blood. The king ordered that, in the towns through which he might pass, he should be complimented and receive presents from the corporations, &c. BERNINI was loaded with wealth and honours: notwithstanding the prepossession of the court in favour of this Italian architect, notwithstanding his talents, he did not succeed in his enterprise. After having forwarded the foundation of this edifice, he made a pretext of the impossibility of spending the winter in a climate colder than that of Italy. "He was promised," says St. Foix, "three thousand louis a year if he would stay; but," he said, "he would positively go and die in his _own_ country." On the eve of his departure, the king sent him three thousand louis, with the grant of a pension of five hundred. He received the whole with great coolness. Several celebrated architects now entered the lists to complete this grand undertaking.--MANSARD presented his plans, with which COLBERT was extremely pleased: the king also approved of them, and absolutely insisted on their being executed without any alteration. MANSARD replied that he would rather renounce the glory of building this edifice than the liberty of correcting himself, and changing his design when he thought he could improve it. Among the competitors was CLAUDE PERRAULT, that physician so defamed by Boileau, the poet. His plans were preferred, and merited the preference. Many pleasantries were circulated at the expense of the new medical architect; and PERRAULT replied to those sarcasms by producing the beautiful colonnade of the _Louvre_, the master-piece of French architecture, and the admiration of all Europe. The façade of this colonnade, which is of the Corinthian order; is five hundred and twenty-five feet in length: it is divided into two peristyles and three avant-corps. The principal gate is in the centre avant-corps, which is decorated with eight double columns, crowned by a pediment, whose raking cornices are composed of two stones only, each fifty-four feet in length by eight in breadth, though no more than eighteen inches in thickness. They were taken from the quarries of Meudon, and formed but one single block, which was sawed into two. The other two avant-corps are ornamented by six pilasters, and two columns of the same order, and disposed in the same manner. On the top, in lieu of a ridged roof, is a terrace, bordered by a stone balustrade, the pedestals of which are intended to bear trophies intermixed with vases. PERRAULT'S enemies disputed with him the invention of this master-piece. They maintained that it belonged to LE VEAU, the architect; but, since the discovery of the original manuscript and drawings of PERRAULT, there no longer remains a doubt respecting the real author of this beautiful production. In front of this magnificent colonnade, a multitude of salesmen erect their stalls, and there display quantities of old clothes, rags, &c. This contrast, as Mercier justly remarks, still speaks to the eye of the attentive observer. It is the image of all the rest, grandeur and beggary, side by side. However, it is not on the _outside_ of these walls only, that beggary has been so nearly allied to grandeur. At least we have a solitary instance of this truth of a very sinking nature. Cardinal de Retz tells us, that going one morning to the _Louvre_ to see the Queen of England, he found her in the chamber of her daughter, aftenwards Dutchess of Orleans, and that she said to him: "You see, I come to keep Henriette company: the poor girl could not leave her bed to-day, for want of fuel."--It is true, he adds, that, for six months past Cardinal Mazarin had not paid her pension; the tradesmen, would no longer give her credit, and she had not a piece of wood to warm her. Like St. Paul's in London, the façade of the _Louvre_ cannot be seen to the best advantage, on account of the proximity of the surrounding buildings; and, like many other great undertakings too, will, probably, never be completed, but remain a monument of the fickleness of the nation. Lewis XIV, after having for a long time made the _Louvre_ his residence; abandoned it for _Versailles_: "Sire," said Dufreny once to that prince, "I never look at the _New Louvre_, without exclaiming, superb monument of the magnificence of our greatest kings, you would have been finished, had you been given to one of the begging orders of friars!" From that period, the _Louvre_ was wholly consecrated to the sittings of different academies, and to the accommodation of several men of science and artists, to whom free apartments were allotted. I much regret having, for this year at least, lost a sight here, which I should have viewed with no inconsiderable degree of attention. This is the PUBLIC EXHIBITION OF THE PRODUCTIONS OF FRENCH INDUSTRY. Under the directorial government, this exhibition was opened in the _Champ de Mars_; but it now takes place, annually, in the square of the _Louvre_, during the five complementary days of the republican calendar; namely, from the 18th to the 22d of September, both inclusive. The exhibition not only includes manufactures of every sort, but also every new discovery, invention, and improvement. For the purpose of displaying these objects to advantage, temporary buildings are erected along the four interior walls of this square, each of which are subdivided into twenty-five porticoes; so that the whole square of the _Louvre_, during that period, represents a fair with a hundred booths. The resemblance, I am told, is rendered still more perfect by the prodigious crowd; persons of all ranks being indiscriminately admitted to view these productions. Precautions, however, are taken to prevent the indiscreet part of the public from rushing into the porticoes, and sentinels are posted at certain intervals to preserve order. This, undoubtedly, is a very laudable institution, and extremely well calculated to excite emulation in the national manufactures, specimens of which being sent from all the principal manufacturing towns, the hundred porticoes may be said to comprise an epitome of the present state of all the flourishing manufactures of France. Indeed, none but new inventions and articles of finished workmanship, the fabrication of which is known, are suffered to make part of the exhibition. Even these are not admitted till after a previous examination, and on the certificate of a private jury of five members, appointed for that purpose by the prefect of each department. A new jury, composed of fifteen members, nominated by the Minister of the Interior, again examine the different articles admitted; and agreeably to their decision, the government award premiums and medals to those persons who have made the greatest improvement in any particular fabric or branch of industry, or produced any new discovery or invention. The successful candidates are presented to the Chief Consul by the Minister of the Interior, and have the honour of dining with him at his public monthly dinner. From all that I can learn concerning this interesting exhibition, it appears, that, though the useful arts, in general, cannot at present be put in competition here with those of a similar description among us, the object of the French government is to keep up a spirit of rivalship, and encourage, by every possible means, the improvement of those manufactures in which England is acknowledged to surpass other countries. I am reminded that it is time to prepare for going out to dinner. I must therefore not leave this letter, like the _Louvre_, unfinished. Fortunately, my good friend, the prevailing fashion here is to dine very late, which leaves me a long morning; but for this, I know not when I should have an opportunity of writing long letters. Restrain then your impatience, and I promise that you shall very shortly be ushered into the GALLERY OF ANTIQUES, "Where the smooth chisel all its force has shewn, And soften'd into flesh the rugged stone." [Footnote 1: _Essais historiques sur Paris_.] [Footnote 2: It may be necessary to observe that, throughout these letters, we always speak of French feet. The English foot is to the French as 12 to 12.789, or as 4 to 4.263.] LETTER VII. _Paris, October 28, 1801._ Having, in my last letter, described to you the outside of the _Louvre_, (with the exception of the Great Gallery, of which I shall speak more at length in another place), I shall now proceed to give you an account of some of the principal national establishments contained within its walls. Before the revolution, the _Louvre_ was, as I have said, the seat of different academies, such as the _French Academy_, the _Academy of Sciences_, the _Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres_, the _Academy of Painting and Sculpture_, and the _Academy of Architecture_. All these are replaced by the _National Institute of Arts and Sciences_, of which, however, I shall postpone further mention till I conduct you to one of its public sittings. At the period to which I revert, there existed in the _Louvre_ a hall, called the _Salle des Antiques_, where, besides, some original statues by French artists, were assembled models in plaster of the most celebrated master-pieces of sculpture in Italy, together with a small number of antiques. In another apartment, forming part of those assigned to the Academy of Painting, and called the _Galérie d'Apollon_, were seen several pictures, chiefly of the French school; and it was intended that the Great Gallery should be formed into a Museum, containing a collection of the finest pictures and statues at the disposal of the crown. This plan, which had partly been carried into execution under the old _régime_, is now completed, but in a manner infinitely more magnificent than could possibly have been effected without the advantages of conquest. The _Great Gallery_ and _Saloon_ of the _Louvre_ are solely appropriated to the exhibition of pictures of the old masters of the Italian, Flemish, and French schools; and the _Gallery of Apollo_ to that of their drawings; while a suite of lofty apartments has been purposely fitted up in this palace for the reception of original antiques, in lieu of those copies of them before-mentioned. In other rooms, adjoining to the Great Gallery, are exhibited, as formerly, that is during one month every year, the productions of living painters, sculptors, architects, and draughtsmen. These different exhibitions are placed under the superintendance of a board of management, or an administration, (as the French term it), composed of a number of antiquaries, artists, and men of science, inferior to none in Europe in skill, judgment, taste, or erudition. The whole of this grand establishment bears the general title of CENTRAL MUSEUM OF THE ARTS. The treasures of painting and sculpture which the French nation have acquired by the success of their arms, or by express conditions in treaties of alliance or neutrality, are so immense as to enable them, not only to render this CENTRAL MUSEUM the grandest collection of master-pieces in the world, but also to establish fifteen departmental Museums in fifteen of the principal towns of France. This measure, evidently intended to favour the progress of the fine arts, will case Paris of a great number of the pictures, statues, &c. amassed here from different parts of France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Piedmont, Savoy, and the States of. Venice. If you cast your eye on the annexed _Plan of Paris_, and suppose yourself near the exterior south-west angle of the _Louvre_, or, as it is more emphatically styled, the NATIONAL PALACE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, you will be in the right-hand corner of the _Place du Vieux Louvre_, in which quarter is the present entrance to the CENTRAL MUSEUM OF THE ARTS. Here, after passing through a court, you enter a vestibule, on the left of which is the Hall of the Administration of the Museum. On the ground-floor, facing the door of this vestibule, is the entrance to the GALLERY OF ANTIQUES. In this gallery, which was, for the first time, opened to the public on the 18th of Brumaire, year ix. of the French republic, (9th of November 1800), are now distributed no less than one hundred and forty-six statues, busts, and bas-reliefs. It consists of several handsome apartments, bearing appropriate denominations, according to the principal subjects which each contains. Six only are at present completely arranged for public inspection: but many others are in a state of preparation. The greater part of the statues here exhibited, are the fruit of the conquests of the army of Italy. Conformably to the treaty of Tolentino, they were selected at Rome, from the Capitol and the Vatican, by BARTHÉLEMY, BERTHOLET, MOITTE, MONGE, THOUIN, and TINET, who were appointed, by the French government, commissioners for the research of objects appertaining to the Arts and Sciences. In the vestibule, for the moderate price of fifteen _sous_, is sold a catalogue, which is not merely a barren index, but a perspicuous and satisfactory explanation of the different objects that strike the eye of the admiring spectator as he traverses the GALLERY OF ANTIQUES. It is by no means my intention to transcribe this catalogue, or to mention every statue; but, assisted by the valuable observations with which I was favoured by the learned antiquary, VISCONTI, long distinguished for his profound knowledge of the fine arts, I shall describe the most remarkable only, and such as would fix the attention of the connoisseur. On entering the gallery, you might, perhaps, be tempted to stop in the first hall; but we will visit them all in regular succession, and proceed to that which is now the furthest on the left hand. The ceiling of this apartment, painted by ROMANELLI, represents the four seasons; whence it is called the HALL OF THE SEASONS. In consequence, among other antiques, here are placed the statues of the rustic divinities, and those relating to the Seasons. Of the whole, I shall distinguish the following: N° 210. DIANA. Diana, habited as a huntress, in a short tunic without sleeves, is holding her bow in one hand; while, with the other, she is drawing an arrow from her quiver, which is suspended at her shoulder. Her legs are bare, and her feet are adorned with rich sandals. The goddess, with a look expressive of indignation, appears to be defending the fabulous hind from the pursuit of Hercules, who, in obedience to the oracle of Apollo, was pursuing it, in order to carry it alive to Eurystheus; a task imposed on him by the latter as one of his twelve labours. To say that, in the opinion of the first-rate connoisseurs, this statue might serve as a companion to the _Apollo of Belvedere_, is sufficient to convey an idea of its perfection; and, in fact, it is reckoned the finest representation of Diana in existence. It is of Parian marble, and, according to historians, has been in France ever since the reign of Henry IV. It was the most perfect of the antiques which adorned the Gallery of Versailles. The parts wanting have been recently restored with such skill as to claim particular admiration. 214. ROME. In this bust, the city of Rome is personified as an Amazon. The helmet of the female warrior is adorned with a representation of the she-wolf, suckling the children of Mars. This antique, of Parian marble, is of a perfect Greek style, and in admirable preservation. It formerly belonged to the Gallery of Richelieu-Castle. 51. ADOLESCENS SPINAM AVELLENS. This bronze figure represents a young man seated, who seems employed in extracting a thorn from his left foot. It is a production of the flourishing period of the art, but, according to appearance, anterior to the reign of Alexander the Great. It partakes a little of the meagre style of the old Greek school; but, at the same time, is finished with astonishing truth, and exhibits a graceful simplicity of expression. In what place it was originally discovered is not known. It was taken from the Capitol, where it was seen in the _Palazzo dei Conservatori_. 50. A FAUN, _in a resting posture_. This young faun, with no other covering than a deer's skin thrown over his shoulders, is standing with his legs crossed, and leaning on the trunk of a tree, as if resting himself. The grace and finished execution that reign throughout this figure, as well as the immense number of copies still existing of it, and all antiques, occasion it to be considered as the copy of the Faun in bronze, (or Satyr as it is termed by the Greeks), of Praxiteles. That statue was so celebrated, that the epithet of [Greek: perizoætos], or the famous, became its distinctive appellation throughout Greece. This Faun is of Pentelic marble: it was found in 1701, near _Civita Lavinia_, and placed in the Capitol by Benedict XIV. 59. ARIADNE, _known by the name of_ CLEOPATRA. In this beautiful figure, Ariadne is represented asleep on a rock in the Isle of Naxos, abandoned by the faithless Theseus, and at the moment when Bacchus became enamoured of her, as described by several ancient poets. It is astonishing how the expression of sleep could be mistaken for that of death, and cause this figure to be called _Cleopatra_. The serpent on the upper part of the left arm is evidently a bracelet, of that figure which the Greek women called [Greek: opidion], or the little serpent. For three successive centuries, this statue of Parian marble constituted one of the principal ornaments of the Belvedere of the Vatican, where it was placed by Julius II. 190. AUGUSTUS. This head of Augustus, adorned with the civic crown of oak leaves, is one of the fine portraits of that emperor. It is executed in Parian marble, and comes from Verona, where it was admired in the _Bevilacqua_ cabinet. * * * * * On quitting the HALL OF THE SEASONS, we return to that through which we first passed to reach it. This apartment, from being ornamented with the statues of ZENO, TRAJAN, DEMOSTHENES, and PHOCION, is denominated the HALL OF ILLUSTRIOUS MEN. It is decorated with eight antique granite pillars brought from _Aix-la-Chapelle_, where they stood in the nave of the church, which contained the tomb of Charlemagne. Among the antiques placed in it, I shall particularize N° 75. MENANDER. This figure represents the poet, honoured by the Greeks with the title of _Prince of the New Comedy_, sitting on a hemi-cycle, or semicircular seat, and resting after his literary labours. He is clad in the Grecian tunic and _pallium_. 76. POSIDIPPUS. The dress of Posidippus, who was reckoned among the Greeks one of the best authors of what was called the _New Comedy_, is nearly that of Menander, the poet. Like him, he is represented sitting on a hemi-cycle. These two statues, which are companions, are admirable for the noble simplicity of their execution. They are both of Pentelic marble, and were found in the XVIth century at Rome, in the gardens of the convent of _San Lorenzo_, on Mount Viminal. After making part of the baths of Olympius, they were placed by Sixtus V. at _Negroni_, whence they were removed to the Vatican by Pius VI. * * * * * Continuing our examination, after leaving the HALL OF ILLUSTRIOUS MEN, we next come to the HALL OF THE ROMANS. The ceiling of this hall is ornamented with subjects taken from the Roman history, painted by ROMANELLI; and in it are chiefly assembled such works of sculpture as have a relation to that people. Among several busts and statues, representing ADRIAN, PUBLIUS CORNELIUS SCIPIO, MARCUS JUNIUS BRUTUS, LUCIUS JUNIUS BRUTUS, CICERO, &c. I shall point out to your notice, 209. _The_ TORSO _of_ BELVEDERE. This admirable remnant of a figure seated, though the head, arms, and legs are wanting, represents the apotheosis of Hercules. The lion's skin spread on the rock, and the enormous size of the limbs, leave no doubt as to the subject of the statue. Notwithstanding the muscles are strongly marked, the veins in the body of the hero are suppressed, whence antiquaries have inferred, that the intention of the author was to indicate the very moment of his deification. According to this idea, our countryman FLAXMAN has immortalized himself by restoring a copy of the _Torso_, and placing Hebe on the left of Hercules, in the act of presenting to him the cup of immortality. On the rock, where the figure is seated, is the following Greek inscription: [Greek: APOLLONIOS] [Greek: NESTOROS] [Greek: ATÆNAIOS] [Greek: EPOIEI.] By which we are informed, that it is the production of APOLLONIUS, _the Athenian, the son of Nestor_, who, probably, flourished in the time of Pompey the Great. This valuable antique is of Pentelic marble, and sculptured in a most masterly style. It was found at Rome, near Pompey's theatre, now _Campo di Fiore_. Julius II. placed it in the garden of the Vatican, where it was long the object of the studies of MICHAEL ANGELO, RAPHAEL, &c. those illustrious geniuses, to whom we are indebted for the improvement of the fine arts. Among artists, it has always been distinguished by the appellation of the _Torso of Belvedere_. 94. _A wounded warrior, commonly called the_ GLADIATOR MORIENS. This figure, represents a barbarian soldier, dying on the field of battle, without surrendering. It is remarkable for truth of imitation, of a choice nature, though not sublime, (because the subject would not admit of it,) and for nobleness of expression, which is evident without affectation. This statue formerly belonged to the _Villa-Ludovisi_, whence it was removed to the Museum of the Capitol by Clement XII. It is from the chisel of AGASIAS, a sculptor of Ephesus, who lived 450 years before the Christian era. 82. CERES. This charming figure is rather that of a Muse than of the goddess of agriculture. It is admirable for the _ideal_ beauty of the drapery. She is clad in a tunic; over this is thrown a mantle, the execution of which is so perfect, that, through it, are perceived the knots of the strings which fasten the tunic below the bosom. It formerly belonged to the _Villa-Mattei_, on Mount Esquiline; but was taken from the Museum of the Vatican, where it had been placed by Clement XIV. 80. _A Roman orator, called_ GERMANICUS. Hitherto this admirable figure of a Roman orator, with the attributes of Mercury, the god of eloquence, has passed for that of Germanicus, though it is manifestly too old for him. Here we have another model of beautiful elegance of form, though not of an _ideal_ sublimity. On the shell of a tortoise, at tide foot of the statue, is inscribed in beautiful Greek characters: [Greek: KLEOMENÆS] [Greek: KLEOMENOYS] [Greek: ATÆNIOSE] [Greek: POIÆSEN.] Whence we learn that it is the production of CLEOMENES, an Athenian artist, mentioned by Pliny, and who flourished towards the end of the Roman republic, about 500 years before Christ. This statue was taken from the Gallery of Versailles, where it had been placed in the reign of Lewis XIV. It formerly belonged to the garden of Sixtus V. at _Villa-Montalto_, in Rome. 97. ANTINOÜS, _called the_ ANTINOÜS OF THE CAPITOL. In this monument, Adrian's favourite is represented as having scarcely attained the age of puberty. He is naked, and his attitude has some affinity to that of Mercury. However, his countenance seems to be impressed with that cast of melancholy, by which all his portraits are distinguished: Hence has been applied to him that verse of Virgil on Marcellus; _"Sed frons læta parum, et dejecto lumina vultu"_ This beautiful figure, of Carrara marble, is sculptured in a masterly manner. It comes from the Museum of the Capitol, and previously belonged to the collection of Cardinal Alessandro Albani. The fore-arm and left leg are modern. 200. ANTINOÜS. In this colossal bust of the Bithynian youth, are some peculiarities which call to mind the images of the Egyptian god _Harpocrates_. It is finely executed in hard Greek marble, and comes from the Museum of the Vatican. As recently as the year 1790, it was dug from the ruins of the _Villa-Fede_ at Tivoli. But enough for to-day--to-morrow I will resume my pen, and we will complete our survey of the GALLERY OF ANTIQUES. LETTER VIII. _Paris, October 29, 1801._ If the culture of the arts, by promoting industry and increasing commerce, improves civilization, and refines manners, what modern people can boast of such advantages as are now enjoyed by the French nation? While the sciences keep pace with the arts, good taste bids fair to spread, in time, from the capital throughout the country, and to become universal among them. In antiquity, Athens attests the truth of this proposition, by rising, through the same means, above all the cities of Greece; and, in modern times, have we not seen in Florence, become opulent, the darkness of ignorance vanish, like a fog, before the bright rays of knowledge, diffused by the flourishing progress of the arts and sciences? When I closed my letter yesterday, we had just terminated our examination of the HALL OF THE ROMANS. On the same line with it, the next apartment we reach, taking its name from the celebrated group here placed, is styled the HALL OF THE LAOCOON. Here are to be admired four pillars of _verde antico_, a species of green marble, obtained by the ancients, from the environs of Thessalonica. They were taken from the church of _Montmorency_, where they decorated the tomb of Anne, the constable of that name. The first three apartments are floored with inlaid oak; but this is paved with beautiful marble. Of the _chefs d'oeuvre_ exhibited in this hall, every person of taste cannot but feel particular gratification in examining the undermentioned; N° 108. LAOCOON. The pathetic story which forms the subject of this admirable group is known to every classic reader. It is considered as one of the most perfect works that ever came from the chisel; being at once a master-piece of composition, design, and feeling. Any sort of commentary could but weaken the impression which it makes on the beholder. It was found in 1506, under the pontificate of Julius II, at Rome, on Mount Esquiline, in the ruins of the palace of Titus. The three Rhodian artists, AGESANDER, POLYDORUS, and ATHENOPORUS, mentioned by Pliny, as the sculptors of this _chef d'oeuvre_ flourished during the time of the Emperors, in the first century of the Christian era. The group is composed of five blocks, but joined in so skilful a manner, that Pliny thought them of one single piece. The right arm of the father and two arms of the children are wanting. 111. AMAZON. This uncommonly beautiful figure of Parian marble represents a woman, whose feminine features and form seem to have contracted the impression of the masculine habits of warfare. Clad in a very fine tunic, which, leaving the left breast exposed, is tucked up on the hips, she is in the act of bending a large bow. No attitude could be better calculated for exhibiting to advantage the finely-modelled person of this heroine. For two centuries, this statue was at the _Villa-Mattei_, on Mount Coelius at Rome, whence it was removed to the Museum of the Vatican by Clement XIV. 118. MELEAGER. The son of OEneus, king of Calydon, with nothing but a _chlamis_ fastened on his shoulders, and winding round his left arm, is here represented resting himself, after having killed the formidable wild boar, which was ravaging his dominions; at his side is the head of the animal, and near him sits his faithful dog. The beauty of this group is sublime, and yet it is of a different cast, from either that of the _Apollo of Belvedere_, or that of the _Mercury_, called Antinoüs, of which we shall presently have occasion to speak. This group is of Greek marble of a cinereous colour: there are two different traditions respecting the place where it was found; but the preference is given to that of Aldroandi, who affirms that it was discovered in a vineyard bordering on the Tiber. It belonged to Fusconi, physician to Paul III, and was for a long time in the _Pighini_ palace at Rome, whence Clement XIV had it conveyed to the Vatican. 103 and 104. _Two busts, called_ TRAGEDY and COMEDY. These colossal heads of Bacchantes adorned the entrance of the theatre of the _Villa-Adriana_ at Tivoli. Though the execution of them is highly finished, it is no detriment to the grandeur of the style. The one is of Pentelic marble; and the other, of Parian. Having been purchased of Count Fede by Pius VI, they were placed in the Museum of the Vatican. 105. ANTINOÜS. This bust is particularly deserving of attention, on account of its beauty, its excellent preservation, and perfect resemblance to the medals which remain of Adrian's favourite. It is of Parian marble of the finest quality, and had been in France long before the revolution. 112. ARIADNE, _called_ (in the catalogue) BACCHUS. Some sculptors have determined to call this beautiful head that of BACCHUS; while the celebrated VISCONTI, and other distinguished antiquaries, persist in preserving to it its ancient name of ARIADNE, by which it was known in the Museum of the Capitol. Whichever it may be, it is of Pentelic marble, and unquestionably one of the most sublime productions of the chisel, in point of _ideal_ beauty. * * * * * From the HALL OF THE LAOCOON, we pass into the apartment, which, from the famous statue, here erected, and embellished in the most splendid manner, takes the appellation of the HALL OF THE APOLLO. This hall is ornamented with four pillars of red oriental granite of the finest quality: those which decorate the niche of the Apollo were taken from the church that contained the tomb of Charlemagne at _Aix-la-Chapelle_. The floor is paved with different species of scarce and valuable marble, in large compartments, and, in its centre, is placed a large octagonal table of the same substance. In proportion to the dimensions of this apartment, which is considerably larger than any of the others, a greater number of antiques are here placed, of which the following are the most pre-eminent. N° 145. APOLLO PYTHIUS, _commonly called the_ APOLLO OF BELVEDERE. The name alone of this _chef d'oeuvre_ might be said to contain its eulogium. But as you may, probably, expect from me some remarks on it, I shall candidly acknowledge that I can do no better than communicate to you the able and interesting description given of it by the Administration of the Museum, of which the following is a fair abridgment. "Apollo has just discharged the mortal arrow which has struck the serpent Python, while ravaging Delphi. In his left hand is held his formidable bow; his right has but an instant quitted it: all his members still preserve the impression given them by this action. Indignation is seated on his lips; but in his looks is the assurance of success. His hair, slightly curled, floats in long ringlets round his neck, or is gracefully turned up on the crown of his head, which is encircled by the _strophium_, or fillet, characteristic of kings and gods. His quiver is suspended by a belt to the right shoulder: his feet are adorned with rich sandals. His _chlamis_ fastened on the shoulder, and tucked up only on the left arm, is thrown back, as if to display the majesty of his divine form to greater advantage. "An eternal youth is spread over all his beautiful figure, a sublime mixture of nobleness and agility, of vigour and elegance, and which holds a happy medium between the delicate form of Bacchus, and the more manly one of Mercury." This inimitable master-piece is of Carrara marble, and, consequently, was executed by some Greek artist who lived in the time of the Romans; but the name of its author is entirely unknown. The fore-arm and the left hand, which were wanting, were restored by GIOVANNI ANGELO DE MONTORSOLI, a sculptor, who was a pupil of Michael Angelo. Towards the end of the fifteenth century, it was discovered at _Capo d'Anzo_, twelve leagues from Rome, on the sea-shore, near the ruins of the ancient _Antium_. Julius II, when cardinal, purchased this statue, and placed it in his palace; but shortly after, having arrived at the pontificate, he had it conveyed to the Belvedere of the Vatican, where, for three centuries, it was the admiration of the world. On the 16th of Brumaire, year IX, (7th of November, 1801) BONAPARTE, as First Consul, celebrated, in great pomp, the inauguration of the Apollo; on which occasion he placed between the plinth of the statue, and its pedestal, a brass tablet bearing a suitable inscription. The Apollo stands facing the entrance-door of the apartment, in an elevated recess, decorated, as I have before observed, with beautiful granite pillars. The flight of steps, leading to this recess, is paved with the rarest marble, inlaid with squares of curious antique mosaic, and on them are placed two Egyptian sphynxes of red oriental granite, taken from the Museum of the Vatican. 142. VENUS OF THE CAPITOL. This figure of Parian marble represents the goddess of beauty issuing from the bath. Her charms are not concealed by any veil or garment. She is slightly turning her head to the left, as if to smile on the Graces, who are supposed to be preparing to attire her. In point of execution, this is allowed to be the most beautiful of all the statues of Venus which we have remaining. The _Venus of Medicis_ surpasses it in sublimity of form, approaching nearer to _ideal_ beauty. Bupalus, a sculptor of the Isle of Scio, is said to have produced this master-piece. He lived 600 years before Christ, so that it has now been in existence upwards of two thousand four hundred years. It was found about the middle of the eighteenth century, near _San-Vitale_, at Rome. Benedict XIV having purchased it of the _Stati_ family, placed it in the Capitol. 125. MERCURY, _commonly called the_ ANTINOÜS OF BELVEDERE. This statue, also of the finest Parian marble, is one of the most beautiful that can be imagined. More robust in form than either that of the _Apollo_ or of the _Meleager_, it loses nothing by being contemplated after the former. In short, the harmony which reigns between its parts is such, that the celebrated POUSSIN, in preference to every other, always took from it the _proportions of the human figure_. It was found at Rome, on Mount Esquiline, under the pontificate of Paul III, who placed it in the Belvedere of the Vatican, near the Apollo and the Laocoon. 151. _The Egyptian_ ANTINOÜS. In this statue, Antinoüs is represented as a divinity of Egypt. He is standing in the usual attitude of the Egyptian gods, and is naked, with the exception of his head and wrist, which are covered with a species of drapery in imitation of the sacred garments. This beautiful figure is wrought with superior excellence. It is of white marble, which leads to a conjecture that it might have been intended to represent Orus, the god of light, it having been the custom of the Egyptians to represent all their other divinities in coloured marble. It was discovered in 1738, at Tivoli, in the _Villa-Adriana_, and taken from the Museum of the Capitol. To judge from the great number of figures of Antinoüs, sculptured by order of Adrian to perpetuate the memory of that favourite, the emperor's gratitude for him must have been unbounded. Under the form of different divinities, or at different periods of life, there are at present in the GALLERY OF ANTIQUES no less than five portraits of him, besides three statues and two busts. Three other statues of Antinoüs, together with a bust, and an excellent bass-relief, in which he is represented, yet remain to be placed. 156. BACCHUS. The god of wine is here represented standing, and entirely naked. He is leaning carelessly with his left arm on the trunk of an elm, round which winds a grape-vine. This statue, of the marble called at Rome _Greco duro_, is reckoned one of the finest extant of the mirth-inspiring deity. * * * * * Having surveyed every object deserving of notice in the HALL OF THE APOLLO, we proceed, on the right hand, towards its extremity, and reach the last apartment of the gallery, which, from being consecrated to the tuneful Nine, is called the HALL OF THE MUSES. It is paved with curious marble, and independently of the Muses, and their leader, Apollo, here are also assembled the antique portraits of poets and philosophers who have rendered themselves famous by cultivating them. Among these we may perceive HOMER and VIRGIL; but the most remarkable specimen of the art is N° 177. EURIPIDES. In this hermes we have a capital representation of the features of the rival of Sophocles. The countenance is at once noble, serious, and expressive. It bears the stamp of the genius of that celebrated tragic poet, which was naturally sublime and profound, though inclined to the pathetic. This hermes is executed in Pentelic marble, and was taken from the academy of _Mantua_. Since the revival of the arts, the lovers of antiquity have made repeated attempts to form a collection of antique statues of the Muses; but none was ever so complete as that assembled in the Museum of the Vatican by Pius VI, and which the chance of war has now transferred to the banks of the Seine. Here the bard may offer up to them a solemn invocation, and compose his lay, as it were, under their very eyes. The statues of CLIO, THALIA, TERPSICHORE, ERATO, POLYHYMNIA, and CALLIOPE, together with the APOLLO MUSAGETES, were discovered in 1774, at _Tivoli_, among the ruins of the villa of Cassius. To complete the number, Pius VI obtained the EUTERPE and the URANIA from the _Lancellotti_ palace at _Veletri_. They are supposed to be antique copies of the statues of the Nine Muses by Philiscus, which, according to Pliny, graced the portico of Octavia. * * * * * The air of grandeur that reigns in the general arrangement of the gallery is very striking: and the tasteful and judicious distribution of this matchless assemblage of antiques does great honour to the Council of the CENTRAL MUSEUM. Among the riches which Rome possessed, the French commissioners also, by their choice selection, have manifested the depth of their knowledge, and the justness of their discrimination. The alterations and embellishments made in the different apartments of the GALLERY OF ANTIQUES have been executed under the immediate direction of their author, M. RAYMOND, member of the National Institute, and architect to the NATIONAL PALACE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. In winter, the apartments are kept warm by means of flues, which diffuse a genial vapour. Here, without the expense of a single _liard_, the young draughtsman may form his taste by studying the true antique models of Grecian sculpture; the more experienced artist may consult them as he finds occasion in the composition of his subjects; while the connoisseur, the amateur, or the simple observer may spend many an agreeable hour in contemplating these master-pieces which, for centuries, have inspired universal admiration. These are the materials on which Genius ought to work, and without which the most promising talent may be greatly misapplied, if not entirely lost. It was by studying closely these correct models, that the great MICHAEL ANGELO, the, sublime RAPHAEL, and other eminent masters, acquired that idea of excellence which is the result of the accumulated experience of successive ages. Here, in one visit, the student may imbibe those principles to ascertain which many artists have consumed the best part of their days; and penetrated by their effect, he is spared the laborious investigation by which they came to be known and established. It is unnecessary to expatiate on the advantages which the fine arts may expect to derive from such a repository of antiques in a capital so centrical as Paris. The contemplation of them cannot fail to fire the genius of any artist of taste, and prompt his efforts towards the attainment of that grand style, which, disdaining the minute accidental particularities of individual objects, improves partial representation by the general and invariable ideas of nature. A vast collection of antiquities of every description is still expected from Italy, among which are the _Venus of Medicis_ and the _Pallas of Veletri_, a finely-preserved statue, classed by artists among those of the first rank, dug up at _Veletri_ in 1799, in consequence of the researches made there by order of the French commissioners. Upwards of five hundred cases were lying on the banks of the Tiber, at Rome, ready to be sent off to France, when the Neapolitans entered that city. They carried them all away: but by the last article of the treaty of peace with the king of Naples, the whole of them are to be restored to the French Republic. For the purpose of verifying their condition, and taking measures for their conveyance to Paris, two commissioners have been dispatched to Italy: one is the son of CHAPTAL, Minister of the Interior, and the other is DUFOURNY, the architect. On the arrival of these cases, even after the fifteen departmental Museums have been supplied, it is asserted that there will yet remain in the French capital, antiquities in sufficient number to form a museum almost from Paris to Versailles. The CENTRAL MUSEUM OF THE ARTS is open to the public in general on the 8th, 9th, and 10th of each decade;[1] the other days are appropriated to the study of young pupils; but a foreigner has only to produce his _permis de séjour_ to gain admission _gratis_ every day from the hour of ten o'clock to four. To the credit of the nation, I must observe that this exception in favour of foreigners excites no jealousy whatever. It is no more than a justice due to the liberality of the French republican government to add, that they set a noble example which is worthy of being followed, not only in England, but in every other country, where the arts and sciences are honoured, or the general interests of mankind held in estimation. From persons visiting any national establishment, whether museum, library, cabinet, or garden, in this capital, no sort of fee or perquisite is now expected, or allowed to be taken. Although it was not a public day when I paid my first visit to the CENTRAL MUSEUM, no sooner did I shew my _permis de séjour_, than the doors were thrown open; and from M. VISCONTI, and other members of the Council, who happened to be present, I experienced the most polite and obliging attention. As an Englishman, I confess that I felt a degree of shame on reflecting to what pitiful exaction a foreigner would be subject, who might casually visit any public object of curiosity in our metropolis. [Footnote 1: By a subsequent regulation, Saturday and Sunday are the days on which the CENTRAL MUSEUM is open to public inspection.] LETTER IX. _Paris, October 31, 1801._ In answer to your question, I shall begin by informing you that I have not set eyes on the _petit caporal_, as some affect to style the Chief Consul. He spends much of his time, I am told, at _Malmaison_, his country-seat; and seldom appears in public, except in his box at the Opera, or at the French theatre; but at the grand monthly parade, I shall be certain to behold him, on the 15th of the present month of Brumaire, according to the republican calendar, which day answers to the 6th of November. I have therefore to check my impatience for a week longer. However, if I have not yet seen BONAPARTE himself, I have at least seen a person who has seen him, and will take care that I shall have an opportunity of seeing him too: this person is no less than a general--who accompanied him in his expedition to Egypt--who was among the chosen few that returned with him from that country--who there surveyed the mouths of the Nile--who served under him in the famous campaign of Syria; and who at this day is one of the first military engineers in Europe. In a word, it is General A----y, of the artillery, at present Director of that scientific establishment, called the DÉPÔT DE LA GUERRE. He invited me the day before yesterday to breakfast, with a view of meeting some of his friends whom he had purposely assembled. I am not fond of breakfasting from home; _mais il faut vivre à Rome comme à Rome_. Between ten and eleven o'clock I reached the _Dépôt_, which is situated in the _Rue de l'Université_, _Faubourg St, Germain_, at the _ci-devant Hôtel d'Harcourt_, formerly belonging to the duke of that name. Passing through the gate-way, I was proceeding boldly to the principal entrance of the hotel, when a sentinel stopped me short by charging his bayonet. "Citizen," said he fiercely, at the same time pointing to the lodge on the right, "you must speak to the porter." I accordingly obeyed the mandate. "What's your business, citizen?" inquired the porter gruffly.--"My business, citizen," replied I, "is only to breakfast with the general."--"Be so good, citizen," rejoined he in a milder tone, "as to take the trouble to ascend the grand stair-case, and ring the bell on the first-floor." Being introduced into the general's apartments, I there found eight or ten persons of very intelligent aspect, seated at a round table, loaded with all sorts of good things, but, in my mind, better calculated for dinner than breakfast. Among a great variety of delicacies, were beef-steaks, or, as they are here termed, _bif-ticks à l'Anglaise_. Oysters too were not forgotten: indeed, they compose an essential part of a French breakfast; and the ladies seem particularly partial to them, I suppose, because they are esteemed strengthening to a delicate constitution. Nothing could be more pleasant than this party. Most of the guests were distinguished literati, or military men of no ordinary stamp. One of the latter, a _chef de brigade_ of engineers, near whom I considered myself fortunate in being placed, spoke to me in the highest terms of Mr. SPENCER SMITH, Sir Sidney's brother, to whose interference at _Constantinople_, he was indebted for his release from a Turkish prison. Notwithstanding the continual clatter of knives and forks, and the occasional gingle of glasses, the conversation, which suffered no interruption, was to me extremely interesting: I never heard any men express opinions more liberal on every subject that was started. It was particularly gratifying to my feelings, as an Englishman, to hear a set of French gentlemen, some of whom had participated in the sort of disgrace attached to the raising of the siege of _St. Jean d'Acre_, generously bestow just encomiums on my brother-officer, to whose heroism they owed their failure. Addison, I think, says, somewhere in the Spectator, that national prejudice is a laudable partiality; but, however laudable it may be to indulge such a partiality, it ought not to render us blind to the merit of individuals of a rival nation. General A----y, being one of those whose talents have been found too useful to the State to be suffered to remain in inaction, was obliged to attend at the _Conseil des Mines_ soon after twelve o'clock, when the party separated. Just as I was taking leave, he did me the favour to put into my hand a copy of his _Histoire du Canal du Midi_, of which I shall say more when I have had leisure to peruse it. I do not know that a man in good health, who takes regular exercise, is the worse for breakfasting on a beef-steak, in the long-exploded style of Queen Bess; but I am no advocate for all the accessories of a French _déjeûner à la fourchette_. The strong Mocha coffee which I swallowed, could not check the more powerful effect of the Madeira and _crème de rose_. I therefore determined on taking a long walk, which, when saddle-horses are not to be procured, I have always found the best remedy for the kind of restlessness created by such a breakfast. I accordingly directed my steps across the _Pont & Place de la Concorde_, traversed the street of the same name; and, following the _Boulevard_ for a certain distance, struck off to the left, that is, towards the north, in order to gain the summit of MONTMARTRE. In ancient times, there stood on this hill a temple dedicated to Mars, whence the name _Mons Martis_, of which has been made _Montmartre_. At the foot of it, was the _Campus Martius_, or _Champ de Mars_, where the French kings of the first race caused their throne to be erected every year on the first of May. They came hither in a car, decorated with green boughs and flowers, and drawn by four oxen. Such, indeed, was the town-equipage of king DAGOBERT. "Quatre boeufs attelés, d'un pas tranquil et lent, Promenaient dans Paris le monarque indolent." Having seated themselves on the throne, they gave a public audience to the people, at the same time giving and receiving presents, which were called _estrennes_. Hence annual presents were afterwards termed _étrennes_, and this gave rise to the custom of making them. On this hill too fell the head of [Greek: Dionusios] or _St. Denis_; and in latter times, this was the spot chosen by the Marshal DE BROGLIE, who commanded the thirty-five thousand troops by which the French capital was surrounded in May 1789, for checking the spirit of the turbulent Parisians, by battering their houses' about their ears, and burying them under the ruins. On the summit of _Montmartre_, is a circular terrace, in the centre of which stands a windmill, and not far from it, are several others. Round its brow are several _maisonettes_, or little country boxes, and also some public gardens with bowers, where lovers often regale their mistresses. Hence you command a full view of the city of Paris. You behold roof rising above roof; and the churches towering above the houses have, at this distance, somewhat the appearance of lofty chimnies. You look down on the capital as far as the Seine, by which it is intersected: beyond that river, the surface of the land rises again in the form of an amphitheatre. On all sides, the prospect is bounded by eminences of various degrees of elevation, over which, as well as over the plains, and along the banks of the river, are scattered villas, windmills, country-seats, hamlets, villages, and coppices; but, from want of enclosures, the circumjacent country has not that rich and variegated aspect which delights the eye in our English rural scenery. This was always one of my favourite walks during my residence in Paris before the revolution; and I doubt not, when you visit the French capital, that you will have the curiosity to scale the heights of _Montmartre_. As to the theatres, concerning which you interrogate me, I shall defer entering into any particular detail of them, till I have made myself fully acquainted with the attractions of each: this mode of proceeding will not occasion any material delay, as I generally visit one of them every evening, but always endeavour to go to that house where the _best_ performers are to be seen, in their _best_ characters, and in the _best_ pieces. I mention this, in order that you may not think me inattentive to your request, by having hitherto omitted to point out to you the difference between the theatrical amusements here under the monarchy, and those of the republic. The _thèâtre des arts_ or grand French opera, the _opera buffa_ or Italian comic opera, the _théâtre Feydeau_ or French comic opera, and the _théâtre Français_, chiefly engage my attention. Yesterday evening I went to the last-mentioned theatre purposely to see Mademoiselle CONTAT, who played in both pieces. The first was _Les Femmes Savantes_, a comedy, in which Molière, wishing to aim a blow at female pedantry, has, perhaps, checked, in some French women, a desire for improvement; the second was _La fausse Agnès_, a laughable afterpiece. Notwithstanding the enormous _embonpoint_ which this celebrated comic actress has acquired since I saw her last on the Parisian stage upwards of ten years ago, she acquitted herself with her accustomed excellence. I happened to sit next to a very warm admirer of her superior talents, who told me that, bulky as she was become, he had been highly gratified in seeing her perform at _Rouen_ not long since, in her favourite character of _Roxalane_, in _Les Trois Sultanes_. "She was much applauded, no doubt." observed I. --"Not at all," replied he, "for the crowd was so great, that in no part of the house was it possible for a man to use his hands." LETTER X. _Paris, November 2, 1801._ On reaching Paris, every person, whether Jew or Gentile, foreigner or not, coming from any department of the republic, except that of _La Seine_, in which the capital is situated, is now bound to make his appearance at the _Préfecture de Police_. The new-comer, accompanied by two housekeepers, first repairs to the Police-office of the _arrondissement_, or district, in which he has taken up his residence, where he delivers his travelling passport; in lieu of which he receives a sort of certificate, and then he shews himself at the _Préfecture de Police_, or General Police-office, at present established in the _Cité_. Here, his name and quality, together with a minute description of his person and his place of abode, are inserted in a register kept for that purpose, to which he puts his signature; and a printed paper, commonly called a _permis de séjour_, is given to him, containing a duplicate of all these matters, filled up in the blanks, which he also signs himself. It is intended that he should always carry this paper about him, in order that he may produce it when called on, or, in case of necessity, for verifying his person, on any particular occasion, such as passing by a guard-house on foot after eleven o'clock at night, or being unexpectedly involved in any affray. In a word, it answers to a stranger the same end as a _carte de sureté_, or ticket of safety, does to an inhabitant of Paris. I accordingly went through this indispensable ceremony in due form on my arrival here; but, having neglected to read a _nota bene_ in the margin of the _permis de séjour_, I had not been ten hours in my new apartments before I received a visit from an Inspector of Police of the _arrondissement_, who, very civilly reminding me of the omission, told me that I need not give myself the trouble of going to the Central Police-office, as he would report my removal. However, being determined to be strictly _en règle_, I went thither myself to cause my new residence to be inserted in the paper. I should not have dwelt on the circumstance, were it not to shew you the precision observed in the administration of the police of this great city. Under the old _régime_, every master of a ready-furnished hotel was obliged to keep a register, in which he inserted the name and quality of his lodgers for the inspection of the police-officers whenever they came: this regulation is not only strictly adhered to at present; but every person in Paris, who receives a stranger under his roof as an inmate, is bound, under penalty of a fine, to report him to the police, which is most vigilantly administered by Citizen FOUCHÉ. Last night, not being in time to find good places at the _Théâtre des Arts_, or Grand French Opera, I went to the _Théâtre Louvois_, which is within a few paces of it, in hopes of being more successful. I shall not at present attempt to describe the house, as, from my arriving late, I was too ill accommodated to be able to view it to advantage. However, I was well seated for seeing the performance. It consisted of three _petites pièces_: namely, _Une heure d'absence_, _La petite ville_, and _Le café d'une petite ville_. The first was entertaining; but the second much more so; and though the third cannot claim the merit of being well put together, I shall say a few words of it, as it is a production _in honour of peace_, and on that score alone, would, at this juncture, deserve notice. After a few scenes somewhat languid, interspersed with common-place, and speeches of no great humour, a _dénouement_, by no means interesting, promised not to compensate the audience for their patience. But the author of the _Café d'une petite ville_, having eased himself of this burden, revealed his motive, and took them on their weak side, by making a strong appeal to French enthusiasm. This cord being adroitly struck, his warmth became communicative, and animating the actors, good humor did the rest. The accessories were infinitely more interesting than the main subject. An allemande, gracefully danced by two damsels and a hero, in the character of a French hussar, returned home from the fatigues of war and battle, was much applauded; and a Gascoon poet, who declares that, for once in his life, he is resolved to speak truth, was loudly encored in the following couplets, adapted to the well-known air of _"Gai, le coeur à la danse."_ "Celui qui nous donne la paix, Comme il fit bien la guerre! Sur lui déjà force conplets.... Mai il en reste à faire: Au diable nous nous donnions, Il revient, nous respirons.... Il fait changer la danse; Par lui chez nous plus de discord; Il regle la cadence, Et nous voilà d'accord." True it is, that BONAPARTE, as principal ballet-master, has changed the dance of the whole nation; he regulates their step to the measure of his own music, and _discord_ is mute at the moment: but the question is, whether the French are bona-fide _d'accord_, (as the Gascoon affirms,) that is, perfectly reconciled to the new tune and figure? Let us, however, keep out of this maze; were we to enter it, we might remain bewildered there, perhaps, till old Father Time came to extricate us. The morning is inviting: suppose we take a turn in the _Tuileries_, not with a view of surveying this garden, but merely to breathe the fresh air, and examine the PALAIS DU GOUVERNEMENT. Since the Chief Consul has made it his town-residence, this is the new denomination given to the _Palais des Tuileries_, thus called, because a tile-kiln formerly stood on the site where it is erected. At that time, this part of Paris was not comprised within its walls, nothing was to be seen here, in the vicinity of the tile-kiln, but a few coppices and scattered habitations. Catherine de Medicis, wishing to enlarge the capital on this side, visited the spot, and liking the situation, directed PHILIBERT DE L'ORME and JEAN BULLAN, two celebrated French architects, to present her with a plan, from which the construction of this palace was begun in May 1564. At first, it consisted only of the large square pavilion in the centre of the two piles of building, which have each a terrace towards the garden, and of the two pavilions by which they are terminated. Henry IV enlarged the original building, and, in 1600, began the grand gallery which joins it to the _Louvre_, from the plan of DU CERCEAU. Lewis XIII made some alterations in the palace; and in 1664, exactly a century from the date of its construction being begun, Lewis XIV directed LOUIS DE VEAU to finish it, by making the additions and embellishments which have brought it to its present state. These deviations from the first plan have destroyed the proportions required by the strict rules of art; but this defect would, probably, be overlooked by those who are not connoisseurs, as the architecture, though variously blended, presents, at first sight, an _ensemble_ which is magnificent and striking. The whole front of the palace of the _Tuileries_ consists of five pavilions, connected by four piles of building, standing on the same line, and extending for the space of one thousand and eleven feet. The first order of the three middle piles is Ionic, with encircled columns. The two adjoining pavilions are also ornamented with Ionic pillars; but fluted, and embellished with foliage, from the third of their height to the summit. The second order of these two pavilions is Corinthian. The two piles of building, which come next, as well as the two pavilions of the wings, are of a Composite order with fluted pillars. From a tall iron spindle, placed on the pinnacle of each of the three principal pavilions is now seen floating a horizontal tri-coloured streamer. Till the improvements made by Lewis XIV, the large centre pavilion had been decorated with the Ionic and Corinthian orders only, to these was added the Composite. On the façade towards the _Place du Carrousel_, the pillars of all these orders are of brown and red marble. Here may be observed the marks of several cannon-balls, beneath each of which is inscribed, in black, 10 AOÛT. This tenth of August 1792, a day ever memorable in the history of France, has furnished many an able writer with the subject of an episode; but, I believe, few of them were, any more than myself, actors in that dreadful scene. While I was intently remarking the particular impression of a shot which struck the edge of one of the casements of the first floor of the palace, my _valet de place_ came up to know at which door I would have the carriage remain in waiting. On turning round, I fancied I beheld the man who "drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night." That messenger, I am sure, could not have presented a visage more pale, more spiritless than my Helvetian. Recollecting that he had served in the Swiss guards, I was the less at a loss to account for his extreme agitation. "In what part of the _château_ were you, Jean," said I, "when these balls were aimed at the windows?"----"There was my post," replied he, recovering himself, and pointing to one of the centre casements.--"Is it true," continued I, "that, by way of feigning a reconciliation, you threw down cartridges by handfuls to the Marseillese below, and called out; _vive la nation?"_----"It is but too true," answered Jean; "we then availed ourselves of the moment when they advanced under the persuasion that they were to become our friends, and opened on them a tremendous fire, by which we covered the place with dead and dying. But we became victims of our own treachery: for our ammunition being, by this _ruse de guerre_, the sooner expended, we presently had no resource left but the bayonet, by which we could not prevent the mob from closing on us."--"And how did you contrive to escape," said I? --"Having thrown away my Swiss uniform," replied he, "in the general confusion, I fortunately possessed myself of the coat of a national volunteer, which he had taken off on account of the hot weather. This garment, bespattered with blood, I instantly put on, as well as his hat with a tri-coloured cockade."--"This disguise saved your life," interrupted I.--"Yes, indeed;" rejoined he. "Having got down to the vestibule, I could not find a passage into the garden; and, to prevent suspicion, I at once mixed with the mob on the place where we are now standing."--"How did you get off at last," said I?--"I was obliged," answered he, "to shout and swear with the _poissardes_, while the heads of many of my comrades were thrown out of the windows."--"The _poissardes_," added I, "set no bounds to their cruelty?"--"No," replied he, "I expected every moment to feel its effects; my disguise alone favoured my escape: on the dead bodies of my countrymen they practised every species of mutilation." Here Jean drew a picture of a nature too horrid to be committed to paper. My pen could not trace it.----In a word, nothing could exceed the ferocity of the infuriate populace; and the sacking of the palace of the Trojan king presents but a faint image of what passed here on the day which overset the throne of the Bourbons. According to a calculation, founded as well on the reports of the police as on the returns of the military corps, it appears that the number of men killed in the attack of the palace of the _Tuileries_ on the 10th of August 1792, amounted in the whole to very near six thousand, of whom eight hundred and fifty-two were on the side of the besieged, and three thousand seven hundred and forty on the side of the besiegers. The interior of this palace is not distinguished by any particular style of architecture, the kings who have resided here having made such frequent alterations, that the distribution throughout is very different from that which was at first intended. Here it was that Catherine de Medicis shut herself up with the Guises, the Gondis, and Birague, the chancellor, in order to plan the horrible massacre of that portion of the French nation whose religious tenets trenched on papal power, and whose spirit of independence alarmed regal jealousy. Among the series of entertainments, given on the marriage of the king of Navarre with Marguerite de Valois, was introduced a ballet, in which the papists, commanded by Charles IX and his brothers, defended paradise against the huguenots, who, with Navarre at their head, were all repulsed and driven into hell. Although this pantomime, solely invented by Catherine, was evidently meant as a prelude to the dreadful proscription which awaited the protestants, they had no suspicion of it; and four days after, was consummated the massacre, where that monster to whom nature had given the form of a woman, feasted her eyes on the mangled corpses of thousands of bleeding victims! No sooner was the Pope informed of the horrors of St. Bartholemew's day; by the receipt of Admiral de Coligny's head which Catherine embalmed and sent to him, than he ordered a solemn procession, by way of returning thanks to heaven for the _happy event_. The account of this procession so exasperated a gentlemen of Anjou, a protestant of the name of Bressaut de la Rouvraye, that he swore he would make eunuchs of all the monks who should fall into his hands; and he rendered himself famous by keeping his word, and wearing the trophies of his victory. The _Louvre_ and the palace of the _Tuileries_ were alternately the residence of the kings of France, till Lewis XIV built that of Versailles, after which it was deserted till the minority of Lewis XV, who, when a little boy, was visited here by Peter the Great, but, in 1722, the court quitted Paris altogether for Versailles, where it continued fixed till the 5th of October 1789. During this long interval, the palace was left under the direction of a governor, and inhabited only by himself, and persons of various ranks dependent on the bounty of the crown. When Lewis XVI and his family were brought hither at that period, the two wings alone were in proper order; the remainder consisted of spacious apartments appointed for the king's reception when he came occasionally to Paris, and ornamented with stately, old-fashioned furniture, which had not been deranged for years. The first night of their arrival, they slept in temporary beds, and on the king being solicited the next day to choose his apartments, he replied: "Let everyone shift for himself; for my part, I am very well where I am." But this fit of ill-humor being over, the king and queen visited every part of the palace, assigning particular rooms to each person of their suite, and giving directions for sundry repairs and alterations. Versailles was unfurnished, and the vast quantity of furniture collected in that palace, during three successive reigns, was transported to the _Tuileries_ for their majesties' accommodation. The king chose for himself three rooms on the ground-floor, on the side of the gallery to the right as you enter the vestibule from the garden; on the entresol, he established his geographical study; and on the first floor, his bed-chamber: the apartments of the queen and royal family were adjoining to those of the king; and the attendants were distributed over the palace to the number of between six and seven hundred persons. The greater part of the furniture, &c. in the palace of the _Tuileries_ was sold in the spring of 1793. The sale lasted six months, and, had it not been stopped, would have continued six months longer. Some of the king's dress-suits which had cost twelve hundred louis fetched no more than five. By the inventory taken immediately after the 10th of August 1792, and laid before the Legislative Assembly, it appears that the moveables of every description contained in this palace were valued at 12,540,158 livres (_circa_ £522,560 sterling,) in which was included the amount of the thefts, committed on that day, estimated at 1,000,000 livres, and that of the dilapidations, at the like sum, making together about £84,000 sterling. When Catherine de Medicis inhabited the palace of the _Tuileries_, it was connected to the _Louvre_ by a garden, in the middle of which was a large pond, always well stocked with fish for the supply of the royal table. Lewis XIV transformed this garden into a spacious square or _place_, where in the year 1662, he gave to the queen dowager and his royal consort a magnificent fête, at which, were assembled princes, lords, and knights, with their ladies, from every part of Europe. Hence the square was named PLACE DU CARROUSEL. Previously to the revolution, the palace of the _Tuileries_, on this side, was defended by a wall, pierced by three gates opening into as many courts, separated by little buildings, which, in part, served for lodging a few troops and their horses. All these buildings are taken down; the _Place du Carrousel_ is considerably enlarged by the demolition of various circumjacent edifices; and the wall is replaced by a handsome iron railing, fixed on a parapet about four feet high. In this railing are three gates, the centre one of which is surmounted by cocks, holding in their beak a civic crown over the letters R. F. the initials of the words _République Française_. On each side of it are small lodges, built of stone; and at the entrance are constantly posted two _vedettes_, belonging to the horse-grenadiers of the consular guard. On the piers of the other two gates are placed the four famous horses of gilt bronze, brought from St. Mark's place at Venice, whither they had been carried after the capture of Byzantium. These productions are generally ascribed to the celebrated Lysippus, who flourished in the reign of Alexander the Great, about 325 years before the christian era; though this opinion is questioned by some distguished antiquaries and artists. Whoever may be the sculptor, their destiny is of a nature to fix attention, as their removal has always been the consequence of a political revolution. After, the conquest of Greece by the Romans, they were transported from Corinth to Rome, for the purpose of adorning the triumphal arch of Septimius Severus. Hence they were removed to Byzantium, when that city became the seat of the eastern empire. From Byzantium, they were conveyed to Venice, and from Venice they have at last reached Paris. As on the plain of Pharsalia the fate of Rome was decided by Cæsar's triumph over Pompey, so on the _Place du Carrousel_ the fate of France by the triumph of the Convention over Robespierre and his satellites. Here, Henriot, one of his most devoted creatures, whom he had raised to the situation of commandant general of the Parisian guard, after having been carried prisoner before the Committee of Public Safety, then sitting in the palace of the _Tuileries_, was released by Coffinhal, the President of the Revolutionary Tribunal, who suddenly made his appearance at the head of a large body of horse and foot, supported by four pieces of cannon served by gunners the most devoted to Robespierre. It was half past seven o'clock in the evening, where Coffinhal, decorated with his municipal scarf, presented himself before the Committee: all the members thought themselves lost, and their fright communicating to the very bosom of the Convention, there spread confusion and terror. But Coffinhal's presence of mind was not equal to his courage: he availed himself only in part of his advantage. After having, without the slightest resistance, disarmed the guards attached to the Convention, he loosened the fettered hands of Henriot and his aides-de-camp, and conducted them straight to the _Maison Commune_. It is an incontestable fact that had either Coffinhal or Henriot imitated the conduct of Cromwell in regard to the Levellers, and marched at the head of their troops into the hall of the Convention, he might have carried all before him, and Robespierre's tyranny would have been henceforth established on a basis not to be shaken. But, when Henriot soon after appeared on the _Place du Carrousel_, with his staff and a number of followers, he in vain endeavoured by haranguing the people to stir them up to act against the Convention; his voice was drowned in tumultuous clamours, and he was deserted by his hitherto-faithful gunners. The Convention had had time to recover from their panic, and to enlighten the Sections. Henriot was outlawed by that assembly, and, totally disconcerted by this news, he fled for refuge to the _Maison Commune_, where Robespierre and all his accomplices were soon surrounded, and fell into the hands of those whom but an instant before, they had proscribed as conspirators deserving of the most exemplary punishment. Henriot, confused and terrified, sought his safety in flight, and was stealing along one of the galleries of the _Maison Commune_ when he met Coffinhal, who was also flying. At the sight of Henriot, who on coming from the Committee, had pledged his life on the success of his measures, Coffinhal was unable to check his rage. "Coward!" said he to him, "to this then has led your certain means of defence! Scoundrel! you shall not escape the death you are endeavouring to avoid!" Saying these words, he seized Henriot by the middle, and threw him out of a window of the second story of the _Maison Commune_. Henriot falling on the roof of a building in a narrow street adjoining, was not killed; but he had scarcely recovered himself before he was recognized by some soldiers in quest of him: he then crawled into a sewer, close to the spot where he had fallen; when a soldier thrusting his bayonet into the sewer, put out one of his eyes, and forced him to surrender. Thus, the destiny of France, as is seen, hung by the thread of the moment. It will be recollected that Henriot had the arsenal at his disposal; he commanded the Parisian guard, and six thousand men encamped on the _Plaine des Sablons_, close to the capital: in a word, all the springs of the public force were in his hands. Had he seized the critical minute, and attacked the Convention at the instant of his release, the scene of the 10th of August would have been renewed, and the _Place du Carrousel_ again stained with the blood of thousands. LETTER XI. _Paris, November 5, 1801._ I rise much later to-day than usual, in consequence of not having gone to bed till near seven o'clock this morning. Happening to call yesterday on a French lady of my acquaintance, I perceived some preparations which announced that she expected company. She did not leave me long in suspense, but invited me to her party for that evening. This good lady, who is no longer in the flower of her age, was still in bed, though it was four o'clock when I paid my visit. On expressing my fears that she was indisposed, she assured me of the contrary, at the same time adding that she seldom rose till five in the afternoon, on account of her being under the necessity of keeping late hours. I was so struck by the expression, that I did not hesitate to ask her what was the _necessity_ which compelled her to make a practice of turning day into night? She very courteously gave me a complete solution of this enigma, of which the following is the substance. "During the reign of terror," said she, "several of us _ci-devant noblesse_ lost our nearest relatives, and with them our property, which was either confiscated, or put under sequestration, so that we were absolutely threatened by famine. When the prisoners were massacred in September 1792, I left nothing unattempted to save the life of my uncle and grandfather, who were both in confinement in the _Abbaye_. All my efforts were unavailing. My interference served only to exasperate their murderers and contributed, I fear, to accelerate their death, which it was my misfortune to witness. Their inhuman butchers, from whom I had patiently borne every species of insult, went so far as to present to me, on the end of a pike, a human heart, which had the appearance of having been broiled on the embers, assuring me that, as it was the heart of my uncle, I might eat it with safety."--Here an ejaculation, involuntarily escaping me, interrupted her for a moment. "For my part," continued she, "I was so overwhelmed by a conflict of rage, despair, and grief, that I scarcely retained the use of my senses. The excess of my horror deprived me of utterance.--What little I was able to save from the wreck of my fortune, not affording me sufficient means of subsistence, I was, however reluctantly, at length compelled to adopt a plan of life, by which I saw other women, in my forlorn situation, support a decent appearance. I therefore hired suitable apartments, and twice in each decade, I receive company. On one of these two nights I give a ball and supper, and on the other, under the name of _société_, I have cards only. "Having a numerous circle of female acquaintance," concluded she, "my balls are generally well attended: those who are not fond of dancing, play at the _bouillotte_; and the card-money defrays the expenses of the entertainment, leaving me a handsome profit. In short, these six parties, during the month, enable me to pay my rent, and produce me a tolerable pittance." This meloncholy recital affected me so much, that, on its being terminated, I was unable to speak; but I have reason to think that a favourable construction was put on my silence. A volume, of the size of a family bible, would not be sufficient to display half the contrasts engendered by the revolution. Many a _Marquise_ has been obliged to turn sempstress, in order to gain a livelihood; but my friend the _Comtesse_ had much ready wit, though no talents of that description. Having soothed her mind by venting a few imprecations against the murderers of her departed relatives, she informed me that her company began to assemble between the hours of eleven and twelve, and begged that I would not fail to come to her PRIVATE BALL. About twelve o'clock, I accordingly went thither, as I had promised, when I found the rooms perfectly crowded. Among a number of very agreeable ladies, several were to be distinguished for the elegance of their figure, though there were no more than three remarkable for beauty. These terrestrial divinities would not only have embarrassed the Grand Signior for a preference, but even have distracted the choice of the Idalian shepherd himself. The dancing was already begun to an excellent band of music, led by Citizen JULIEN, a mulatto, esteemed the first player of country-dances in Paris. Of the dancers, some of the women really astonished me by the ease and gracefulness of their movements: steps, which are known to be the most difficult, seemed to cost them not the smallest exertion. Famous as they have ever been for dancing, they seem now, in Cibber's words, "to outdo their usual outdoings." In former times, an extraordinary degree of curiosity was excited by any female who excelled in this pleasing accomplishment. I remember to have read that Don Juan of Austria, governor of the Low Countries, set out post from Brussels, and came to Paris _incog._ on purpose to see Marguerite de Valois dance at a dress-ball, this princess being reckoned, at that time, the best dancer in Europe. What then would be the admiration of such an _amateur_, could he now behold the perfection attained here by some of the beauties of the present day? The men, doubtless, determined to vie with the women, seemed to pride themselves more on agility than grace, and, by attempting whatever required extraordinary effort, reminded me of _figurans_ on the stage, so much have the Parisian youth adopted a truly theatrical style of dancing. The French country-dances (or cotilions, as we term them in England) and waltzes, which are as much in vogue here as in Germany, were regularly interchanged. However, the Parisians, in my opinion, cannot come up to the Germans in this, their native dance. I should have wished to have had Lavater by my side, and heard his opinion of the characters of the different female waltzers. It is a very curious and interesting spectacle to see one woman assume a languishing air, another a vacant smile, a third an aspect of stoical indifference; while a fourth seems lost in a voluptuous trance, a fifth captivates by an amiable modesty, a sixth affects the cold insensibility of a statue, and so on in ever-varying succession, though all turning to the animating changes of the same lively waltz. In short I observed that, in this species of dance, the eyes and feet of almost every woman appeared to be constantly at variance. Without assuming the part of a moralist, I cannot help thinking that Werter was not altogether in the wrong when he swore, that, were it to cost him his life, no woman on whom he had set his affections, should ever waltz with any one but himself. I am not singular in this opinion; for I recollect to have met with the same ideas in a book written by M. JACOBI, I think, a German author. Speaking of the waltz, "We either ought," says he, "not to boast so much of the propriety of our manners, or else not suffer that our wives and daughters, in a complete delirium, softly pressed in the arms of men, bosom to bosom, should thus be hurried away by the sound of intoxicating music. In this _whirligig_ dance, every one seems to forget the rules of decorum; and though an innocent, young creature, exposed in this manner, were to remain pure and spotless, can she, without horror, reflect that she becomes, the sport of the imagination of the licentious youths to whom she so abandons herself? It were to be wished," adds he, "that our damsels (I mean those who preserve any vestige of bashfulness), might, concealed in a private corner, hear sometimes the conversation of those very men to whom they yield themselves with so little reserve and caution." To the best of my recollection, these are the sentiments of M. JACOBI, expressed twelve or fourteen years ago; yet I do not find that the waltz is discontinued, or even less practised, in Germany, than it was at the time when his work first appeared. This dance, like every other French fashion, has now found its way into England, and is introduced between the acts, by way of interlude I presume, at some of our grand private balls and assemblies. But, however I may be amused by the waltzing of the Parisian belles, I feel too much regard for my fair country-women to wish to see them adopt a dance, which, by throwing them off their guard, lays them completely open to the shafts of ridicule and malice. Leaving this point to be settled by the worthy part of our British matrons, let us return to the Parisian ball, from which I have been led into a little digression. The dancing continued in this manner, that is, French country-dances and waltzes alternately, till four o'clock, when soup was brought round to all the company. This was dispatched _sans façon_, as fast as it could be procured. It was a prelude to the cold supper, which was presently served in another spacious apartment. No sooner were the folding-doors of an adjoining room thrown open, than I observed that, large as it was, it could not possibly afford accommodation to more than half of the number present. I therefore remained in the back-ground, naturally supposing that places would first be provided for all the women. Not so, my friend; several men seated themselves, and, in the twinkling of an eye, deranged the economy of the whole table; while the female bystanders were necessitated to seek seats at some temporary tables placed in the ballroom. Here too were they in luck if they obtained a few fragments from the grand board; for, such determined voracity was there exhibited, that so many vultures or cormorants could not have been more expeditious in clearing the dishes. For instance, an enormous salmon, which would have done honour to the Tweed or the Severn, graced the middle of the principal table. In less than five minutes after the company were seated, I turned round, and missing the fish, inquired whether it had proved tainted. No: but it is all devoured, was the reply of a young man, who, pointing to the bone, offered me a pear and a piece of bread, which he shrewdly observed was all that I might probably get to recruit my strength at this entertainment. I took the hint, and, with the addition of a glass of common wine, at once made my supper. In half an hour, the tables being removed, the ball was resumed, and apparently with renewed spirit. The card-room had never been deserted. _Mind the main chance_ is a wholesome maxim, which the good lady of the house seemed not to have forgotten. Assisted by a sort of _croupier_, she did the honours of the _bouillotte_ with that admirable sang-froid which you and I have often witnessed in some of our hostesses of fashion; and, had she not communicated to me the secret, I should have been the last to suspect, while she appeared so indifferent, that she, like those ladies, had so great an interest in the card-party being continued till morning. As an old acquaintance, she took an opportunity of saying to, me, with joy in her eyes: "_Le jeu va bien_;" but, at the same time, expressed her regret that the supper was such a scramble. While we were in conversation, I inquired the name and character of the most striking women in the room, and found that, though a few of them might be reckoned substantial in fortune, as well as in reputation, the female part of the company was chiefly composed of ladies who, like herself, had suffered by the revolution; several were divorced from their husbands, but as incompatibility of temper was the general plea for such a disunion, that alone could not operate as a blemish. To judge of the political predilection of these belles from their exterior, a stranger would, nine times out of ten, be led into a palpable error. He might naturally conclude them to be attached to a republican system, since they have, in general, adopted the Athenian form of attire as their model; though they have not, in the smallest degree, adopted the simple manners of that people. Their arms are bare almost to the very shoulder; their bosom is, in a great measure, uncovered; their ankles are encircled by narrow ribbands in imitation of the fastenings of sandals; and their hair, turned up close behind, is confined on the crown of the head in a large knot, as we see it in the antique busts of Grecian beauties. The rest of their dress is more calculated to display, than to veil the contours of their person. It was thus explained to me by my friend, the _ci-devant Comtesse_, who at the same time assured me that young French women, clad in this airy manner, brave all the rigour of winter. "A simple piece of linen, slightly laced before," said she, "while it leaves the waist uncompressed, answers the purpose of a corset. If they put on a robe, which is not open in front, they dispense with petticoats altogether; their cambric _chemise_ having the semblance of one, from its skirt being trimmed with lace. When attired for a ball, those who dance, as you may observe, commonly put on a tunic, and then a petticoat becomes a matter of necessity, rather than of choice. Pockets being deemed an incumbrance, they wear none: what money they carry, is contained in a little morocco leather purse; this is concealed in the centre of the bosom, whose form, in our well-shaped women, being that of the Medicean Venus, the receptacle occasionally serves for a little gold watch, or some other trinket, which is suspended to the neck by a collar of hair, decorated with various ornaments. When they dance, the fan is introduced within the zone or girdle; and the handkerchief is kept in the pocket of some sedulous swain, to whom the fair one has recourse when she has occasion for it. Some of the elderly ladies, like myself," added she, "carry these appendages in a sort of work-bag, denominated a _ridicule_. Not long since, this was the universal fashion first adopted as a substitute for pockets; but, at present, it is totally laid aside by the younger classes." The men at this ball, were, for the most part, of the military class, thinly interspersed with returned emigrants. Some of the generals and colonels were in their hussar dress-uniform, which is not only exceedingly becoming to a well-formed man, but also extremely splendid and costly. All the seams of the jacket and pantaloons of the generals are covered with rich and tasteful embroidery, as well as their sabre-tash, and those of the colonels with gold or silver lace: a few even wore boots of red morocco leather. Most of the Gallic youths, having served in the armies, either a few years ago under the requisition, or more recently under the conscription, have acquired a martial air, which is very discernible, in spite of their _habit bourgeois_. The brown coat cannot disguise the soldier. I have met with several young merchants of the first respectability in Paris, who had served, some two, others four years in the ranks, and constantly refused every sort of advancement. Not wishing to remain in the army, and relinquish the mercantile profession in which they had been educated, they cheerfully passed through their military servitude as privates, and, in that station, like true soldiers, gallantly fought their country's battles. The hour of six being arrived, I was assailed, on all sides, by applications to set down this or that lady, as the morning was very rainy, and, independently of the long rank of hackney-coaches, which had been drawn up at the door, every vehicle that could be procured, had long been in requisition. The mistress of the house had informed two of her particular female friends that I had a carriage in waiting; and as I could accommodate only a certain number at a time, after having consented to take those ladies home first; I conceived myself at liberty, on my return, to select the rest of my convoy. To relieve beauty in distress was one of the first laws of ancient chivalry; and no knight ever accomplished that vow with greater ardour than I did on this occasion. LETTER XII. _Paris, November 7, 1801._ My impatience is at length gratified. I have seen BONAPARTE. Yesterday, the 6th, as I mentioned in a former letter, was the day of the grand parade, which now takes place on the fifteenth only of every month of the Republican Calendar. The spot where this military spectacle is exhibited, is the court-yard of the palace of the _Tuileries_, which, as I have before observed, is enclosed by a low parapet wall, surmounted by a handsome iron railing. From the kind attention of friend, I had the option of being admitted into the palace, or introduced into the hotel of Cn. MARET, the Secretary of State, which adjoins to the palace, and standing at right angles with it, commands a full view of the court where the troops are assembled. In the former place, I was told, I should not, on account of the crowd, have an opportunity to see the parade, unless I took my station at a window two or three hours before it began; while from the latter, I should enjoy the sight without any annoyance or interruption. Considering that an interval of a month, by producing a material change in the weather, might render the parade far less brilliant and attractive, and also that such an offer might not occur a second time, I made no hesitation in preferring Cn. MARET'S hotel. Accompanied by my introducer, I repaired thither about half past eleven o'clock, and certainly I had every reason to congratulate myself on my election. I was ushered into a handsome room on the first-floor, where I found the windows partly occupied by some lovely women. Having paid my devoirs to the ladies, I entered into conversation with an officer of rank of my acquaintance, who had introduced me to them; and from him I gathered the following particulars respecting the GRAND MONTHLY PARADE. On the fifteenth of every month, the First Consul in person reviews all the troops of the consular guard, as well as those quartered in Paris, as a garrison, or those which may happen to be passing through this city. The consular guard is composed of two battalions of foot-grenadiers, two battalions of light infantry, a regiment of horse-grenadiers, a regiment of mounted chasseurs or guides, and two companies of flying artillery. All this force may comprise between six and seven thousand men; but it is in contemplation to increase it by a squadron of Mamalûks, intermixed with Greeks and Syrians, mounted on Arabian horses. This guard exclusively does duty at the palace of the _Tuileries_, and at _Malmaison_, BONAPARTE's country-seat: it also forms the military escort of the Consuls. At present it is commanded by General LASNES; but, according to rumour, another arrangement is on the point of being made. The consular guard is soon to have no other chief than the First Consul, and under him are to command, alternately, four generals; namely, one of infantry, one of cavalry, one of artillery, and one of engineers; the selection is said to have fallen on the following officers, BESSIÈRES, DAVOUST, SOULT, and SONGIS. The garrison (as it is termed) of Paris is not constantly of the same strength. At this moment it consists of three demi-brigades of the line, a demi-brigade of light infantry, a regiment of dragoons, two demi-brigades of veterans, the horse _gendarmerie_, and a new corps of choice _gendarmerie_, comprising both horse and foot, and commanded by the _Chef de brigade_ SAVABY, aide-de-camp to the First Consul. This garrison may amount to about 15,000 effective men. The consular guard and all these different corps, equipped in their best manner, repair to the parade, and, deducting the troops on duty, the number of men assembled there may, in general be from twelve to fifteen thousand. By a late regulation, no one, during the time of the parade, can remain within the railing of the court, either on foot or horseback, except the field and staff officers on duty; but persons enter the apartments of the _Tuileries_, by means of tickets, which are distributed to a certain number by the governor of the palace. While my obliging friend was communicating to me the above information, the troops continued marching into the court below, till it was so crowded that, at first sight, it appeared impracticable for them to move, much less to manoeuvre. The morning was extremely fine; the sun shone in full splendour, and the gold and silver lace and embroidery on the uniforms of the officers and on the trappings of their chargers, together with their naked sabres, glittered with uncommon lustre. The concourse of people without the iron railing was immense: in short, every spot or building, even to the walls and rafters of houses under demolition, whence a transient view of the parade could be obtained, was thronged with spectators. By twelve o'clock, all the troops were drawn up in excellent order, and, as you may suppose, presented a grand _coup d'oeil._ I never beheld a finer set of men than the grenadiers of the consular guard; but owing, perhaps, to my being accustomed to see our troops with short skirts, I thought that the extreme length of their coats detracted from their military air. The horses mostly of Norman breed, could not be compared to our English steeds, either for make or figure; but, sorry and rough as is their general appearance, they are, I am informed, capable of bearing much fatigue, and resisting such privations as would soon render our more sleek cavalry unfit for service. That they are active, and surefooted, I can vouch; for, in all their sudden wheelings and evolutions in this confined space, not one of them stumbled. They formed, indeed, a striking contrast to the beautiful white charger that was led about in waiting for the Chief Consul. The band of the consular guard, which is both numerous and select, continued playing martial airs, till the colours having been brought down from the palace, under the escort of an officer and a small detachment, the drums beat _aux champs_, and the troops presented arms, when they were carried to their respective stations. Shortly after, the impatient steed, just mentioned, was conducted to the foot of the steps of the grand vestibule of the palace. I kept my eye stedfastly fixed on that spot; and such was the agility displayed by BONAPARTE in mounting his horse, that, to borrow the words of Shakspeare, he seemed to "Rise from the ground like feather'd Mercury, And vaulted with such ease into his seat, As if an angel dropp'd down from the clouds To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus, And witch the world with noble horsemanship." Off he went at a hand canter, preceded by his aides-de-camp, and attended, on his right, by General LASNES and followed by other superior officers, particularly the general commanding the garrison of Paris, and him at the head of the district. BONAPARTE was habited in the consular dress, scarlet velvet embroidered with gold, and wore a plain cocked hat with the national cockade. As I purpose to obtain a nearer view of him, by placing myself in the apartments of the palace on the next parade day, I shall say nothing of his person till that opportunity offers, but confine myself to the military show in question. Having rid rapidly along the several lines of infantry and cavalry, and saluted the colours as he passed, BONAPARTE (attended by all his retinue, including a favourite Mamalûk whom he brought from Egypt), took a central position, when the different corps successively filed off before him with most extraordinary briskness; the corps composing the consular guard preceded those of the garrison and all the others: on inquiry, however, I find, that this order is not always observed. It is no less extraordinary than true, that the news of the establishment of this grand parade produced on the mind of the late emperor of Russia the first impression in favour of the Chief Consul. No sooner did Paul I. hear of the circumstance, than he exclaimed: "BONAPARTE is, however, a great man." Although the day was so favourable, the parade was soon over, as there was no distribution of arms of honour, such as muskets, pistols, swords, battle-axes, &c. which the First Consul presents with his own hand to those officers and soldiers who have distinguished themselves by deeds of valour or other meritorious service. The whole ceremony did not occupy more than half an hour, when BONAPARTE alighted at the place where he had taken horse, and returned to his audience-room in the palace, for the purpose of holding his levee. I shall embrace a future opportunity to speak of the interior etiquette observed on this occasion in the apartments, and close this letter with an assurance that you shall have an early account of the approaching _fête_. LETTER XIII. _Paris, November 8, 1801._ Great preparations for the _fête_ of to-morrow have, for several days, employed considerable numbers of people: it therefore becomes necessary that I should no longer delay to give you an idea of the principal scene of action. For that purpose, we must direct our steps to the JARDIN DES TUILERIES. This garden, which is the most magnificent in Paris, was laid out by the celebrated LE NOTRE in the reign of Lewis XIV. It covers a space of three hundred and sixty toises[1] long by one hundred and sixty-eight broad. To the north and south, it is bordered, throughout its length, by two terraces, one on each side, which, with admirable art, conceal the irregularity of the ground, and join at the farther end in the form of a horse-shoe. To the east, it is limited by the palace of the _Tuileries_; and to the west, by the _Place de la Concorde_. From the vestibule of the palace, the perspective produces a most striking effect: the eye first wanders for a moment over the extensive parterre, which is divided into compartments, planted with shrubs and flowers, and decorated with basins, _jets-d'eau_, vases, and statues in marble and bronze; it then penetrates through a venerable grove which forms a beautiful vista; and, following the same line, it afterwards discovers a fine road, bordered with trees, leading by a gentle ascent to _Pont de Neuilly_, through the _Barrière de Chaillot_, where the prospect closes. The portico of the palace has been recently decorated with several statues. On each side of the principal door is a lion in marble. The following is the order in which the copies of antique statues, lately placed in this garden, are at present disposed. On the terrace towards the river, are: 1. Venus _Anadyomene_. 2. An Apollo of Belvedere. 3. The group of Laocoon. 4. Diana, called by antiquaries, _Succincta_. 5. Hercules carrying Ajax. In front of the palace: 1. A dying gladiator. 2. A fighting gladiator. 3. The flayer of Marsyas. 4. VENUS, styled _à la coquille_, crouched and issuing from the bath. N. B. All these figures are in bronze. In the alley in front of the parterre, in coming from the terrace next the river: 1. Flora Farnese. 2. Castor and Pollux. 3. Bacchus instructing young Hercules. 4. Diana. On the grass-plot, towards the _manège_ or riding-house, Hippomenes and Atalanta. At the further end is an Apollo, in front of the horse-shoe walk, decorated with a sphynx at each extremity. In the corresponding gras-plot towards the river, Apollo and Daphne; and at the further end, a Venus _Callypyga_, or (according to the French term) _aux belles fesses_. In the compartment by the horse-chesnut trees, towards the riding-house, the Centaur. On the opposite side, the Wrestlers. Farther on, though on the same side, an Antinoüs. In the niche, under the steps in the middle of the terrace towards the river, a Cleopatra. In the alley of orange-trees, near the _Place de la Concorde_, Meleager; and on the terrace, next to the riding-house, Hercules Farnese. In the niche to the right, in front of the octagonal basin, a Faun carrying a kid. In the one to the left, Mercury Farnese. Independently of these copies after the antique, the garden is decorated with several other modern statues, by COYZEVOX, REGNAUDIN, COSTOU, LE GROS, LE PAUTRE, &c. which attest the degree of perfection that had been attained, in the course of the last century, by French sculptors. For a historical account of them, I refer you to a work, which I shall send you by the first opportunity, written by the learned MILLIN. Here, in summer, the wide-spreading foliage of the lofty horse-chesnut trees afford a most agreeable shade; the air is cooled by the continual play of the _jets-d'eau_; while upwards of two hundred orange-trees, which are then set out, impregnate it with a delightful perfume. The garden is now kept in much better order than it was under the monarchy. The flower-beds are carefully cultivated; the walks are well gravelled, rolled, and occasionally watered; in a word, proper attention is paid to the convenience of the public. But, notwithstanding these attractions, as long as it was necessary for every person entering this garden to exhibit to the sentinels the national cockade, several fair royalists chose to relinquish its charming walks, shaded by trees of a hundred years' growth, rather than comply with the republican mandate. Those anti-revolutionary _élégantes_ resorted to other promenades; but, since the accession of the consular government, the wearing of this doubtful emblem of patriotism has been dispensed with, and the garden of the _Tuileries_ is said to be now as much frequented in the fine season as at any period of the old _régime_. The most constant visiters are the _quidnuncs_, who, according to the difference of the seasons, occupy alternately three walks; the _Terrasse des Feuillans_ in winter; that which is immediately underneath in spring; and the centre or grand alley during the summer or autumn. Before the revolution, this garden was not open to the populace, except on the festival of St. Lewis, and the eve preceding, when there was always a public concert, given under a temporary amphitheatre erected against the west façade of the palace: at present no person whatever is refused admittance. There are six entrances, at each of which sentinels are regularly mounted from the grenadiers of the consular guard; and, independently of the grand guard-room over the vestibule of the palace, there is one at the end of the garden which opens on the _Place de la Concorde_, and another on the _Terrasse des Feuillans_. But what is infinitely more interesting, on this terrace, is a new and elegant building, somewhat resembling a _casino_, which at once unites every accommodation that can be wished for in a coffee-house, a tavern, or a confectioner's. Here you may breakfast _à l'Anglaise_ or _à la fourchette_, that is in the most substantial manner, in the French fashion, read the papers, dine, or sup sumptuously in any style you choose, or drink coffee and liqueurs, or merely eat ices. While thus engaged, you enjoy a full view of the company passing and repassing, and what adds beyond measure to the beauty of the scene, is the presence of the ladies, who not unfrequently come hither with their admirers to indulge in a _téte-à-téte_, or make larger parties to dine or sup at these fashionable rendezvous of good cheer. According to the scandalous chronicle, Véry, the master of the house, is indebted to the charms of his wife for the occupation of this tasteful edifice, which had been erected by the government on a spot of ground that was national property, and, of course, at its disposal. Several candidates were desirous to be tenants of a building at once so elegant and so centrical. Véry himself had been unsuccessful, though he had offered a _pot de vin_ (that is the Parisian term for _good-will_) of five hundred louis, and six thousand francs a year rent. His handsome wife even began to apprehend that her mission would be attended with no better fortune. She presented herself, however, to the then Minister of the Interior, who, unrelenting as he had hitherto been to all the competitors, did not happen to be a Scipio. On the contrary, he is said to have been so struck by the person of the fair supplicant, that he at once declared his readiness to accede to her request, on condition that she would favour him with her company to supper, and not forget to put her night-cap in her pocket. _Relata refero_. Be this as it may, I assure you that Madame Véry, without being a perfect beauty, is what the French call a _beau corps de femme_, or, in plain English, a very desirable woman, and such as few ministers of L'n. B--------te's years would choose to dismiss unsatisfied. This is not the age of continence, and I am persuaded that any man who sees and converses with the amiable Madame Véry, if he do not envy the Minister the nocturnal sacrifice, will, on contemplating the elegance of her arrangements, at least allow that this spot of ground has not been disposed of to disadvantage. Every step we take, in this quarter of Paris, calls to mind some remarkable circumstance of the history of the revolution. As the classic reader, in visiting _Troas_, would endeavour to trace the site of those interesting scenes described in the sublime numbers of the prince of poets; so the calm observer, in perambulating this garden, cannot but reflect on the great political events of which it has been the theatre. In front of the west façade of the palace, the unfortunate Lewis XVI, reviewed the Swiss, and some of the national guards, very early in the morning of the 10th of August 1792. On the right, close to the _Terrasse des Feuillans_, still stands the _manège_ or riding-house, where the National Assembly at that time held their sittings, and whither the king, with his family, was conducted by ROEDERER, the deputy. That building, after having since served for various purposes, is at present shut up, and will, probably, be taken down, in consequence of projected improvements in this quarter. In the centre of the west end of the garden, was the famous _Pont tournant_, by which, on the 11th of July 1789, the Prince de Lambesc entered it at the head of his regiment of cavalry, and, by maltreating some peaceable saunterers, gave the Parisians a specimen of what they were to expect from the disposition of the court. This inconsiderate _galopade_, as the French term it, was the first signal of the general insurrection. The _Pont tournant_ is destroyed, and the ditch filled up. Leaving the garden of the _Tuileries_ by this issue, we enter the PLACE DE LA CONCORDE. This is the new name given to the _Place de Louis XV_. After the abolition of royalty in France, it was called the _Place de la Révolution_. When the reign of terror ceased, by the fall of Robespierre, it obtained its present appellation, which forms a strong contrast to the number of victims that have here been sacrificed to the demon of faction. This square, which is seven hundred and eighty feet in length by six hundred and thirty in breadth, was planned after the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, and finished in 1763. It forms a parallelogram with its angles cut off, which are surrounded by ditches, guarded by balustrades, breast high. To repair from the _Tuileries_ to the _Champs Elysées_, you cross it in a straight line from east to west, and from north to south, to proceed from the _Rue de la Concorde (ci-devant Rue Royale)_ to the _Pont de la Concorde (ci-devant Pont de Louis XVI.)_ Near the intersection of these roads stood the equestrian statue in bronze of Lewis XV, which caught the eye in a direct line with the centre of the grand alley of the garden of the _Tuileries_. It has since been replaced by a statue of Liberty. This colossal figure was removed a few days ago, and, by all accounts, will not be re-erected. The north part of this square, the only one that is occupied by buildings, presents, on each side of the _Rue de la Concorde_, two edifices, each two hundred and forty-eight feet in front, decorated with insulated columns of the Corinthian order, to the number of twelve, and terminated by two pavilions, with six columns, crowned by a pediment. On the ground-floor of these edifices, one of which, that next the _Tuileries_, was formerly the _Garde-Meuble de la Couronne_, are arcades that form a gallery, in like manner as the colonnade above, the cornice of which is surmounted by a balustrade. I have been thus particular in describing this façade, in order to enable you to judge of the charming effect which it must produce, when illuminated with thousands of lamps on the occasion of the grand _fête_ in honour of peace, which takes place to-morrow. It was in the right hand corner of this square, as you come out of the garden of the _Tuileries_ by the centre issue, that the terrible guillotine was erected. From the window of a friend's room, where I am now writing, I behold the very spot which has so often been drenched with the mixed blood of princes, poets, legislators, philosophers, and plebeians. On that spot too fell the head of one of the most powerful monarchs in Europe. I have heard much regret expressed respecting this execution; I have witnessed much lamentation excited by it both in England and France; but I question whether any of those loyal subjects, who deserted their king when they saw him in danger, will ever manifest the sincere affection, the poignant sensibility of DOMINIQUE SARRÈDE. To follow Henry IV to the battle of Ivry in 1533, SARRÈDE had his wounded leg cut off, in order that he might be enabled to sit on horseback. This was not all. His attachment to his royal master was so great, that, in passing through the _Rue de la Ferronnerie_ two days after the assassination of that prince, and surveying the fatal place where it had been committed, he was so overcome by grief, that he fell almost dead on the spot, and actually expired the next morning. I question, I say, whether any one of those emigrants, who made so officious a display of their zeal, when they knew it to be unavailing, will ever moisten with a single tear the small space of earth stained with the blood of their unfortunate monarch. Since I have been in Paris, I have met with a person of great respectability, totally unconnected with politics, who was present at several of those executions: at first he attended them from curiosity, which soon degenerated into habit, and at last became an occupation. He successively beheld the death of Charlotte Corday, Madame Roland, Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Madame Elizabeth, Philippe Egalité, Madame du Barry, Danton, Robespierre, Couthon, St. Just, Henriot, Fouquier-Tinville, _cum mullis aliis_, too numerous to mention. Among other particulars, this person informed me that Lewis XVI struggled much, by which the fatal instrument cut through the back of his head, and severed his jaw: the queen was more resigned; on the scaffold, she even apologized to Samson, the executioner in chief, for treading accidentally on his toe. Madame Roland met her fate with the calm heroism of a Roman matron. Charlotte Corday died with a serene and dignified countenance; one of the executioners having seized her head when it fell, and given it several slaps, this base act of cowardice raised a general murmur among the people. As to Robespierre, no sooner had he ascended the scaffold, amid the vociferous acclamations of the joyful multitude, than the executioner tore off the dirty bandage in which his wounded head was enveloped and which partlv concealed his pale and ferocious visage. This made the wretch roar like a wild beast. His under jaw then falling from the upper, and streams of blood gushing from the wound, gave him the most ghastly appearance that can be imagined. When the national razor, as the guillotine was called by his partisans, severed Robespierre's head from his body; and the executioner, taking it by the hair, held it up to the view of the spectators, the plaudits lasted for twenty minutes. Couthon, St. Just, and Henriot, his heralds of murder, who were placed in the same cart with himself, next paid the debt of their crimes. They were much disfigured, and the last had lost an eye. Twenty-two persons were guillotined at the same time with Robespierre, all of them his satellites. The next day, seventy members of the commune, and the day following twelve others, shared the fate of their atrocious leader, who, not many hours before, was styled the virtuous and incorruptible patriot. You may, probably, imagine that, whatever dispatch might be employed, the execution of seventy persons, would demand a rather considerable portion of time, an hour and a half, or two hours, for instance. But, how wide of the mark! Samson, the executioner of Paris, worked the guillotine with such astonishing quickness, that, including the preparatives of the punishment, he has been known to cut off no less than forty-five heads, the one after the other, in the short space of fifteen minutes; consequently, at this expeditious rate of three heads in one minute it required no more than twenty-three minutes and twenty seconds to decapitate seventy persons. Guillotin, the physician, who invented or rather improved this machine, which is called after his name with a feminine termination, is said to have been a man of humanity; and, on that principle alone, he recommended the use of it, from the idea of saving from painful sensations criminals condemned to die. Seeing the abuse made of it, from the facility which it afforded of dispatching several persons in a few minutes, he took the circumstance so much to heart that grief speedily shortened his existence. According to Robespierre, however, the axe of the guillotine did not do sufficient execution. One of his satellites announced to him the invention of an instrument which struck off nine heads at once: the discovery pleased him, and he caused several trials of this new machine to be made at _Bicêtre_. It did not answer; but human nature gained nothing by its failure. Instead of half a dozen victims a day, Robespierre wished to have daily fifty or sixty, or more; and he was but too well obeyed. Not only had he his own private lists of proscription; but all his creatures, from the president of the revolutionary tribunal down to the under-jailers, had similar lists; and the _almanac royal_, or French court calendar, was converted into one by himself. The inhabitants of the streets through which the unfortunate sufferers were carried, wearied at length by the daily sight of so melancholy a spectacle, ventured to utter complaints. Robespierre, no less suspicious than cruel, was alarmed, and, dreading an insurrection, removed the scene of slaughter. The scaffold was erected on the _Place de la Bastille_: but the inhabitants of this quarter also murmured, and the guillotine was transferred to the _Barrière St. Antoine_. Had not this modern Nero been cut off in the midst of his cruelties, it is impossible to say where he would have stopped. Being one day asked the question, he coolly answered: "The generation which has witnessed the old _règime_, will always regret it. Every individual who was more than fifteen in 1789, must be put to death: this is the only way to consolidate the revolution." It was the same in the departments as in Paris. Every where blood ran in streams. In all the principal towns the guillotine was rendered permanent, in order, as Robespierre expressed himself, to _regenerate the nation_. If this sanguinary monster did not intend to "wade through slaughter to a throne," it is certain at least that he "shut the gates of mercy on mankind." But what cannot fail to excite your astonishment and that of every thinking person, is, that, in the midst of these executions, in the midst of these convulsions of the state, in the midst of these struggles for power, in the midst of these outcries against the despots of the day, in the midst of famine even, not artificial, but real; in short, in the midst of an accumulation of horrors almost unexampled, the fiddle and tambourin never ceased. Galas, concerts, and balls were given daily in incredible numbers; and no less than from fifteen to twenty theatres, besides several, other places of public entertainment, were constantly open, and almost as constantly filled. P. S. I am this moment informed of the arrival of Lord Cornwallis. [Footnote 1: The ratio between the English fathom and the French toise, as determined between the first astronomers of both countries, is as 72 to 76.734.] LETTER XIV. _Paris, November 10, 1801._ On the evening of the 8th, there was a representation _gratis_ at all the theatres, it being the eve of the great day, of the occurrences of which I shall now, agreeably to my promise, endeavour to give you a narrative. I mean the NATIONAL FÉTE, IN HONOUR OF PEACE, _Celebrated on the 18th of Brumaire, year X_, _the anniversary of_ BONAPARTE'S _accession to the consulate_. Notwithstanding the prayers which the Parisians had addressed to the sun for the preceding twenty-four hours, "----_Nocte pluit totà, redeunt spectacula mane_," it rained all night, and was still raining yesterday morning, when the day was ushered in by discharges of artillery from the saluting battery at the _Hôtel des Invalides_. This did not disturb me; I slept soundly till, about eight o'clock, a tintamarre of trumpets, kettle-drums, &c. almost directly under my window, roused me from my peaceful slumber. For fear of losing the sight, I immediately presented myself at the casement, just as I rose, in my shirt and night-cap. The officers of the police, headed by the Prefect, and escorted by a party of dragoons, came to the _Place des Victoires_, as the third station, to give publicity, by word of mouth, to the Proclamation of the Consuls, of which I inclose you a printed copy. The civil officers were habited in their dresses of parade, and decorated with tricoloured sashes; the heads of their steeds, which, by the bye, were not of a fiery, mettlesome race, being adorned in like manner. This ceremony being over, I returned not to bed, but sat down to a substantial breakfast, which I considered necessary for preparing my strength for the great fatigues of so busy a day. Presently the streets were crowded with people moving towards the river-side, though small, but heavy rain continued falling all the forenoon. I therefore remained at home, knowing that there was nothing yet to be seen for which it was worth while to expose myself to a good wetting. At two o'clock the sun appeared, as if to satisfy the eager desire of the Parisians; the mist ceased, and the weather assumed a promising aspect. In a moment the crowd in the streets was augmented by a number of persons who had till now kept within doors, in readiness to go out, like the Jews keeping Easter, _cincti renibus & comedentes festinantur_. I also sallied forth, but alone, having previously refused every invitation from my friends and acquaintance to place myself at any window, or join any party, conceiving that the best mode to follow the bent of my humour was to go unaccompanied, and, not confining myself to any particular spot or person, stroll about wherever the most interesting objects presented themselves. With this view, I directed my steps towards the _Tuileries_, which, in spite of the immense crowd, I reached without the smallest inconvenience. The appearance of carriages of every kind had been strictly prohibited, with the exception of those belonging to the British ambassador; a compliment well intended, no doubt, and very gratifying when the streets were so extremely dirty. For some time I amused myself with surveying the different countenances of the groups within immediate reach of my observation, and which to me was by no means the least diverting part of the scene; but on few of them could I discover any other impression than that of curiosity: I then took my station in the garden of the _Tuileries_, on the terrace next the river. Hence was a view of the _Temple of Commerce_ rising above the water, on that part of the Seine comprised between the _Pont National_ and the _Pont Neuf_. The quays on each side were full of people; and the windows, as well as the roofs of all the neighbouring houses, were crowded beyond conception. In the newspapers, the sum of 500 francs, or £20 sterling, was asked for the hire of a single window of a house in that quarter. Previously to my arrival, a flotilla of boats, decked with streamers and flags of different colours, had ascended the river from _Chaillot_ to this temple, and were executing divers evolutions around it, for the entertainment of the Parisians, who quite drowned the music by their more noisy acclamations. About half after three, the First Consul appeared at one of the windows of the apartments of the Third Consul, LEBRUN, which, being situated in the _Pavillon de Flore_, as it is called, at the south end of the palace of the _Tuileries_, command a complete view of the river. He and LEBRUN were both dressed in their consular uniform. In a few minutes, a balloon, previously prepared at this floating _Temple of Commerce_, and adorned with the flags of different nations, ascended thence with majestic slowness, and presently took an almost horizontal direction to the south-west. In the car attached to it were Garnerin, the celebrated aëronaut, his wife, and two other persons, who kept waving their tricoloured flags, but were soon under the necessity of putting them away for a moment, and getting rid of some of their ballast, in order to clear the steeples and other lofty objects which appeared to lie in their route. The balloon, thus lightened, rose above the grosser part of the atmosphere, but with such little velocity as to afford the most gratifying spectacle to an immense number of spectators. While following it with my eyes, I began to draw comparisons in my mind, and reflect on the rapid improvement made in these machines, since I had seen Blanchard and his friend, Dr. Jefferies, leave Dover Cliff in January 1785. They landed safely within a short distance of Calais, as every one knows: yet few persons then conceived it possible, or at least probable, that balloons could ever be applied to any useful purpose, still less to the art of war. We find, however, that at the battle of Fleurus, where the Austrians were defeated, Jourdan, the French General, was not a little indebted for his victory to the intelligence given him of the enemy's dispositions by his aëronautic reconnoitring-party. The sagacious Franklin seems to have had a presentiment of the future utility of this invention. On the first experiments being made of it, some one asked him: "Of what use are balloons?"--"Of what use is a new-born child!" was the philosopher's answer. Garnerin and his fellow-travellers being now at such a distance as not to interest an observer unprovided with a telespope, I thought it most prudent to gratify that ever-returning desire, which, according to Dr. Johnson, excites once a day a serious idea in the mind even of the most thoughtless. I accordingly retired to my own apartments, where I had taken care that dinner should be provided for myself and a friend, who, assenting to the propriety of allowing every man the indulgence of his own caprice, had, like me, been taking a stroll alone among the innumerable multitude of Paris. After dinner, my friend and I sat chatting over our dessert, in order that we might not arrive too soon at the scene of action. At six, however, we rose from table, and separated. I immediately proceeded to the _Tuileries_, which I entered by the centre gate of the _Place du Carrousel_. The whole facade of the palace, from the base of the lowest pillars up to the very turrets of the pavilions, comprising the entablatures, &c. was decorated with thousands of _lampions_, whence issued a steady, glaring light. By way of parenthesis, I must inform you that these _lampions_ are nothing more than little circular earthen pans, somewhat resembling those which are used in England as receptacles for small flower-pots. They are not filled with oil, but with a substance prepared from the offals of oxen and in which a thick wick is previously placed. Although the body of light proceeding from _lampions_ of this description braves the weather, yet the smoke which they produce, is no inconsiderable drawback on the effect of their splendour. Nothing could exceed the brilliancy of the _coup d'oeil_ from the vestibule of the palace of the _Tuileries_. The grand alley, as well as the end of the parterre on each side and the edges of the basins, was illuminated in a style equally tasteful and splendid. The frame-work on which the lamps were disposed by millions, represented lofty arcades of elegant proportion, with their several pillars, cornices, and other suitable ornaments. The eye, astonished, though not dazzled, penetrated through the garden, and, directed by this avenue of light, embraced a view of the temporary obelisk erected on the ridge of the gradual ascent, where stands the _Barrière de Chaillot_; the road on each side of the _Champs Elysées_ presenting an illuminated perspective, whose vanishing point was the obelisk before-mentioned. After loitering a short time to contemplate the west façade of the palace, which, excelling that of the east in the richness of its architecture, also excelled it in the splendour of its illuminations, I advanced along the centre or grand alley to the _Place de la Concorde_. Here, rose three _Temples_ of correct design and beautiful symmetry, the most spacious of which, placed in the centre, was dedicated to _Peace_, that on the right hand to the _Arts_, and that on the left to _Industry_. In front of these temples, was erected an extensive platform, about five feet above the level of the ground, on which was exhibited a pantomime, representing, as I was informed, the horrors of war succeeded by the blessings of peace. Though I arrived in time to have seen at least a part of it, I saw nothing, except the back of the spectators immediately before me, and others, mounted on chairs and benches, some of whom seemed to consider themselves fortunate if they recovered their legs, when they came now and then to the ground, by losing their equilibrium. These little accidents diverted me for the moment; but a misadventure of a truly-comic nature afforded me more entertainment than any pantomime I ever beheld, and amply consoled me for being thus confined to the back-ground. A lusty young Frenchman, who, from his head-dress _à la Titus_, I shall distinguish by that name, escorting a lady whom, on account of her beautiful hair, I shall style _Berenice_, stood on one of the hindmost benches. The belle, habited in a tunic _à la Grecque_, with a species of sandals which displayed the elegant form of her leg, was unfortunately not of a stature sufficiently commanding to see over the heads of the other spectators. It was to no purpose that the gentleman called out "_à bas les chapeaux!_" When the hats were off, the lady still saw no better. What will not gallantry suggest to a man of fashionable education? Our considerate youth perceived, at no great distance, some persons standing on a plank supported by a couple of casks. Confiding the fair _Berenice_ to my care, he vanished: but, almost in an, instant, he reappeared, followed by two men, bearing an empty hogshead, which, it seems, he procured from the tavern at the west entrance of the _Tuileries_. To place the cask near the feet of the lady, pay for it, and fix her on it, was the business of a moment. Here then she was, like a statue on its pedestal, enjoying the double gratification of seeing and being seen. But, for enjoyment to be complete, we must share it with those we love. On examining the space where she stood, the lady saw there was room for two, and accordingly invited the gentleman to place himself beside her. In vain he resisted her entreaties; in vain he feared to incommode her. She commanded; he could do no less than obey. Stepping up on the bench, he thence nimbly sprang to the cask; but, O! fatal catastrophe! while, by the light of the neighbouring clusters of lamps, every one around was admiring the mutual attention of this sympathizing pair, in went the head of the hogshead. Our till-then-envied couple fell suddenly up to the middle of the leg in the wine-lees left in the cask, by which they were bespattered up to their very eyes. Nor was this all: being too eager to extricate themselves, they overset the cask, and came to the ground, rolling in it and its offensive contents. It would be no easy matter to picture the ludicrous situation of Citizen _Titus_ and Madame _Berenice_. This being the only mischief resulting from their fall, a universal burst of laughter seized the surrounding spectators, in which I took so considerable a share, that I could not immediately afford my assistance. LETTER XV. _Paris, November 11, 1801._ What fortunate people are the Parisians! Yesterday evening so thick a fog came on, all at once, that it was almost impossible to discern the lamps in the streets, even when they were directly over-head. Had the fog occurred twenty-four hours earlier, the effect of the illuminations would have been entirely lost; and the blind would have had the advantage over the clear-sighted. This assertion experience has proved: for, some years ago, when there was, for several successive days, a duration of such fogs in Paris, it was found necessary, by persons who had business to transact out of doors, to hire the blind men belonging to the hospital of the _Quinze-Vingts_, to lead them about the streets. These guides, who were well acquainted with the topography of the capital, were paid by the hour, and sometimes, in the course of the day, each of them cleared five louis. Last night, persons in carriages, were compelled to alight, and grope their way home as they could: in this manner, after first carefully ascertaining where I was, and keeping quite close to the wall, I reached my lodgings in safety, in spite of numberless interrogations put to me by people who had, or pretended to have, lost themselves. When I was interrupted in my account of the _fète_, we were, if I mistake not, on the _Place de la Concorde_. Notwithstanding the many loads of small gravel scattered here, with a view of keeping the place clean, the quantity of mud collected in the space of a few hours was really astonishing. _N'importe_ was the word. No fine lady, by whatever motive she was attracted hither, regretted at the moment being up to her ankles in dirt, or having the skirt of her dress bemired. All was busy curiosity, governed by peaceable order. For my part, I never experienced the smallest uncomfortable squeeze, except, indeed, at the conclusion of the pantomime, when the impatient crowd rushed forward, and, regardless of the fixed bayonets of the guards in possession of the platform, carried it by storm. Impelled by the torrent, I fortunately happened to be nearly in front of the steps, and, in a few seconds, I found, myself safely landed on the platform. The guard now receiving a seasonable reinforcement, order was presently restored without bloodshed; and, though several persons were under the necessity of making a retrograde movement, on my declaring that I was an Englishman, I was suffered to retain my elevated position, till the musicians composing the orchestras, appropriated to each of the three temples, had taken their stations. Admittance then became general, and the temples were presently so crowded that the dancers had much difficulty to find room to perform the figures. Good-humour and decorum, however, prevailed to such a degree that, during the number, of hours I mixed in the crowd, I witnessed not the smallest disturbance. Between nine and ten o'clock, I went to the _Pont de la Concorde_ to view the fireworks played off from the _Temple of Commerce_ on the river; but these were, as I understand, of a description far inferior to those exhibited at the last National Fête of the 14th of July, the anniversary of the taking of the Bastille. This inferiority is attributed to the precaution dictated, by the higher authorities, to the authors of the fireworks to limit their ingenuity; as, on the former occasion, some accidents occurred of a rather serious nature. The spectators, in general, appeared to me to be disappointed by the mediocrity of the present exhibition. I was compensated for the disappointment by the effect of the illumination of the quays, which, being faced with stone, form a lofty rampart on each embankment of the river. These were decorated with several tiers of lamps from the top of the parapet to the water's edge; the parapets and cornices of the bridges, together with the circumference of the arches, were likewise illuminated, as well as the gallery of the _Louvre_, and the stately buildings adjoining the quays. The palace of the Legislative Body, which faces the south end of the _Pont de la Concorde_, formed a striking object, being adorned, in a magnificent style, with variegated lamps and transparencies. No less splendid, and in some respects more so, from the extent that it presented, was the façade of the _ci-devant Garde-Meuble_, and the corresponding buildings, which form the north side of the _Place de la Concorde_, whither I now returned. The effect of the latter was beautiful, as you may judge from the description which I have already given you of this façade, in one of my preceding letters. Let it suffice then to say, that, from the base of the lower pillars to the upper cornice, it was covered with lamps so arranged as to exhibit, in the most brilliant manner, the style and richness of its architecture. The crowd, having now been attracted in various directions, became more penetrable; and, in regaining the platform on the _Place de la Concorde_, I had a full view of the turrets, battlements, &c. erected behind the three temples, in which the skilful machinist had so combined his plan, by introducing into it a sight of the famous horses brought from _Marly_, and now occupying the entrance of the _Champs Elysées_, that these beautiful marble representations of that noble animal seemed placed here on purpose to embellish his scenery. Finding myself chilled by standing so many hours exposed to the dampness of a November night, I returned to the warmer atmosphere of the temples, in order to take a farewell view of the dancers. The scene was truly picturesque, the male part of the groups being chiefly composed of journeymen of various trades, and the females consisting of a ludicrous medley of all classes; but it required no extraordinary penetration to perceive, that, with the exception of a few particular attachments, the military bore the bell, and, all things considered, this was no more than justice. Independently of being the best dancers, after gaining the laurels of victory in the hard-fought field, who can deny that they deserved the prize of beauty? The dancing was kept up with the never-flagging vivacity peculiar to this nation, and, as I conclude, so continued till a very late hour in the morning. At half past eleven I withdrew, with a friend whom I chanced to meet, to Véry's, the famous _restaurateur's_ in the _Tuileries_, where we supped. On comparing notes, I found that I had been more fortunate than he, in beholding to advantage all the sights of the day: though it was meant to be a day of jubilee, yet it was far from being productive of that mirth or gaiety which I expected. The excessive dearness of a few articles of the first necessity may, probably, be one cause of this gloom among the people. Bread, the staff of life, (as it may be justly termed in France, where a much greater proportion is, in general, consumed than in any other country,) is now at the enormous price of eighteen _sous_ (nine-pence sterling) for the loaf of four pounds. Besides, the Parisians have gone through so much during the revolution, that I apprehend they are, to a certain degree, become callous to the spontaneous sensations of joy and pleasure. Be the cause what it may, I am positively assured that the people expressed not so much hilarity at this fête as at the last, I mean that of the 14th of July. In my way home, I remarked that few houses were illuminated, except those of the rich in the streets which are great thorough-fares. People here, in general, I suppose, consider themselves dispensed from lighting up their private residence from the consideration that they collectively contribute to the public illumination, the expenses of which are defrayed by the government out of the national coffers. Several songs have been composed and published in commemoration of this joyful event. Among those that have fallen under my notice, I have selected the following, of which our friend M---s, with his usual facility and taste, will, I dare say, furnish you an imitation. CHANT D'ALLÉGRESSE, _Pour la paix._ Air: _de la Marche Triomphante_. _"Reviens pour consoler la terre, Aimable Paix, descends des cieux, Depuis assez long-tems la guerre Afflige un peuple généreux, Ah! quell' aurore pure & calme S'offre à nos regards satisfaits! Nous obtenons la double paline De la victoire & de la paix._ bis. _"Disparaissez tristes images, D'un tems malheureux qui n'est plus, Nous réparerons nos dommages Par la sagesse & les vertus. Que la paix enfin nous rallie! Plus d'ingrats ni de mécontens, O triomphe de la patrie! Plus de Français indifférens._ bis. _"Revenez phalanges guerrières, Héros vengeurs de mon pays, Au sein d'une épouse, d'un père, De vos parens, de vos amis, Revenez dans votre patrie Après tant d'effrayans hazards, Trouver ce qui charme la vie, L'amitié, l'amour, et les arts._ bis. _"Oh! vous qui, sous des catacombes, Etes couchés au champ d'honneur, Nos yeux sont fixés sur vos tombes, En chantant l'hymne du vainqueur, Nous transmettrons votre mémoire Jusqu' aux siécles à venir, Avec le burin de l'histoire, Et les larmes du souvenir."_ bis. SONG OF JOY, _In honor of peace._ Imitated from the French. To the same tune: _de la Marche Triomphante._ Come, lovely Peace, from heav'n descending, Thy presence earth at length shall grace; Those terrible afflictions ending, That long have griev'd a gen'rous race: We see Aurora rise refulgent; Serene she comes to bless our sight; While Fortune to our hopes indulgent, Bids victory and peace unite. Be gone, ye dark imaginations, Remembrances of horrors past: Virtue's and Wisdom's reparations Shall soon be made, and ever last. Now peace to happiness invites us; The bliss of peace is understood: With love fraternal peace delights us, Our private ease, and country's good. Re-enter, sons of war, your houses; Heroic deeds for peace resign: Embrace your parents and your spouses, And all to whom your hearts incline: Behold your countrymen invite you, With open, arms, with open hearts; Here find whatever can delight you; Here friendship, love, and lib'ral arts. Departed heroes, crown'd with glory, While you are laid in Honour's bed, Sad o'er your tombs we'll sing the story, How Gallia's warriors fought and bled: And, proud to shew to future ages The claims to patriot valour due, We'll vaunt, in our historic pages, The debt immense we owe to you. LETTER XVI. _Paris, November 13, 1801._ Enriched, as this capital now is, with the spoils of Greece and Italy, it may literally be termed the repository of the greatest curiosities existing. In the CENTRAL MUSEUM are collected all the prodigies of the fine arts, and, day after day, you may enjoy the sight of these wonders. I know not whether you are satisfied with the abridged account I gave you of the GALLERY OF ANTIQUES; but, on the presumption that you did not expect from me a description of every work of sculpture contained in it, I called your attention to the most pre-eminent only; and I shall now pursue the same plan, respecting the master-pieces of painting exhibited in the great GALLERY OF THE LOUVRE This gallery, which is thirteen hundred and sixty-five feet in length by thirty in breadth, runs north and south all along the quays of the river Seine, and joins the _Louvre_ to the palace of the _Tuileries_. It was begun by Charles IX, carried as far as the first wicket by Henry IV, to the second by Lewis XIII, and terminated by Lewis XIV. One half, beginning from a narrow strip of ground, called the _Jardin de l'Infante_, is decorated externally with large pilasters of the Composite order, which run from top to bottom, and with pediments alternately triangular and elliptical, the tympanums of which, both on the side of the _Louvre_, and towards the river, are charged with emblems of the Arts and Sciences. The other part is ornamented with coupled pilasters, charged with vermiculated rustics, and other embellishments of highly-finished workmanship. In the inside of this gallery are disposed the _chefs d'oeuvre_ of all the great masters of the Italian, Flemish, and French schools. The pictures, particularly the historical ones, are hung according to the chronological order of the painters' birth, in different compartments, the number of which, at the present period, amounts to fifty-seven; and the productions of each school and of each master are as much as possible assembled; a method which affords the advantage of easily comparing one school to another, one master to another, and a master to himself. If the chronology of past ages be considered as a book from which instruction is to be imbibed, the propriety of such a classification requires no eulogium. From the pictures being arranged chronologically, the GALLERY OF THE LOUVRE becomes a sort of dictionary, in which may be traced every degree of improvement or decline that the art of painting has successively experienced. The entrance to the great GALLERY OF PAINTINGS is precisely the same as that to the GALLERY OF ANTIQUES. After ascending a noble stone stair-case, and turning to the left, you reach the SALOON OF THE LOUVRE. This apartment, which serves as a sort of antichamber to the great Gallery, is, at the present moment, appropriated to the annual monthly exhibition of the productions of living painters, sculptors, architects, engravers, and draughtsmen. Of these modern works, I shall, perhaps, speak on a future occasion. But, in the course of a few days, they will give place to several master-pieces of the Italian School, some of which were under indispensable repair, when the others were arranged in the great Gallery. It would be no easy task to express the various sentiments which take possession of the mind of the lover of the arts, when, for the first time, he enters this splendid repository. By frequent visits, however, the imagination becomes somewhat less distracted, and the judgment, by degrees, begins to collect itself. Although I am not, like you, conversant in the Fine Arts, would you tax me with arrogance, were I to presume to pass an opinion on some of the pictures comprised in this matchless collection? Painting being a representation of nature, every spectator, according to the justness of his ideas, may form an opinion how far the representation is happily pourtrayed, and in beholding it, experience a proportionate degree of pleasure: but how different the sensations of him who, combining all the requisites of a connoisseur, contemplates the composition of a masterly genius! In tracing the merits of such a production, his admiration gradually becomes inflamed, as his eye strays from beauty to beauty. In painting or sculpture, beauty, as you well know, is either natural, or generally admitted: the latter depends on the perfection of the performance, on certain rules established, and principles settled. This is what is termed _ideal_ beauty, which is frequently not within the reach of the vulgar; and the merit of which may be lost on him who has not learned to know and appreciate it. Thus, one of the finest pictures, ever conceived and executed by man, might not, perhaps, make an impression on many spectators. Natural beauty, on the contrary, is a true imitation of nature: its effect is striking and general, so that it stands not in need of being pointed out, but is felt and admired by all. Notwithstanding this truth, be assured that I should never, of my own accord, have ventured to pronounce on the various degrees of merit of so many _chefs d'oeuvre_, which all at once solicit attention. This would require a depth of knowledge, a superiority of judgment, a nicety of discrimination, a fund of taste, a maturity of experience, to none of which have I any pretension. The greatest masters, who have excelled in a particular branch, have sometimes given to the world indifferent productions; while artists of moderate abilities have sometimes produced master-pieces far above their general standard. In a picture, which may, on the whole, merit the appellation of a _chef d'oeuvre_, are sometimes to be found beauties which render it superior, negligences which border on the indifferent, and defects which constitute the bad. Genius has its flights and deviations; talent, its successes, attempts, and faults; and mediocrity even, its flashes and chances. Whatever some persons may affect, a true knowledge of the art of painting is by no means an easy acquirement; it is not a natural gift, but demands much reading and study. Many there are, no doubt, who may be able to descant speciously enough, perhaps, on the perfections and defects of a picture; but, on that account alone, they are not to be regarded as real judges of its intrinsic merit. Know then, that, in selecting the most remarkable productions among the vast number exhibited in the CENTRAL MUSEUM, I have had the good fortune to be directed by the same first-rate connoisseur who was so obliging as to fix my choice in the GALLERY OF ANTIQUES. I mean M. VISCONTI. Not confining myself either to alphabetical or chronological order, I shall proceed to point out to you such pictures of each school as claim particular notice. ITALIAN SCHOOL. N. B. _Those pictures to which no number is prefixed, are not yet publicly exhibited_. RAFFAELLO. N° 55. (Saloon.) _The Virgin and Child, &c._ commonly known by the name of the _Madonna di Foligno_. This is one of the master-pieces of RAPHAEL for vigour of colouring, and for the beauty of the heads and of the child. It is in his second manner; although his third is more perfect, seldom are the pictures of this last period entirely executed by himself. This picture was originally painted on pannel, and was in such a lamentable state of decay, that doubts arose whether it could safely be conveyed from Italy. It has been recently transferred to canvass, and now appears as fresh and as vivid, as if, instead of a lapse of three centuries, three years only had passed since it was painted. Never was an operation of the like nature performed in so masterly a manner. The process was attended by a Committee of the National Institute, appointed at the particular request of the Administration of the Museum. The _Madonna di Foligno_ is to be engraved from a drawing taken by that able draughtsman DU TERTRE. N° ( ) _The Holy Family_. This valuable picture of RAPHAEL'S third manner is one of the most perfect that ever came from his pencil. It belonged to the old collection of the crown, and is engraved by EDELINCK. Although superior to the _Madonna di Foligno_ as to style and composition, it is inferior in the representation of the child, and in vigour of colouring. N° ( ) _The Transfiguration of Christ on Mount Tabor._ This is the last production of RAPHAEL, and his most admirable _chef d'oeuvre_ as to composition and grace of the contours in all its figures. It is not yet exhibited, but will be shortly. This picture is in perfect preservation, and requires only to be cleaned from a coat of dust and smoke which has been accumulating on it for three centuries, during which it graced the great altar of St. Peter's church at Rome. Among the portraits by RAPHAEL, the most surprising are: N° 58. (Saloon.) _Baltazzare Castiglione_, a celebrated writer in Italian and Latin. N° ( ) _Leo X._ Every thing that RAPHAEL'S pencil has produced is in the first order. That master has something greatly superior in his manner: he really appears as a god among painters. Addison seems to have been impressed with the truth of this sentiment, when he thus expresses himself: "Fain would I RAPHAEL'S godlike art rehearse, And shew th' immortal labours in my verse, When from the mingled strength of shade and light, A new creation rises, to my sight: Such heav'nly figures from his pencil flow, So warm with life his blended colours glow, From theme to theme with secret pleasure lost, Amidst the soft variety I'm lost." LEONARDO DA VINCI. There are several pictures by this master in the present exhibition; but you may look here in vain for the portrait of _La Gioconda_, which he employed four years in painting, and in which he has imitated nature so closely, that, as a well-known author has observed, "the eyes have all the lustre of life, the hairs of the eye brows and lids seem real, and even the pores of the skin are perceptible." This celebrated picture is now removed to the palace of the _Tuileries_; but the following one, which remains, is an admirable performance. N° ( ) _Portrait of Charles VIII._ FRA BARTOLOMEO. N° 28. (Saloon.) _St. Mark the Evangelist_. N° 29. (Saloon.) _The Saviour of the world_. These two pictures, which were in the _Pitti_ palace at Florence, give the idea of the most noble simplicity, and of no common taste in the distribution of the lights and shades. GIULIO ROMANO. N° 35. (Saloon.) _The Circumcision_. This picture belonged to the old collection of the crown. The figures in it are about a foot and a half in height. It is a real _chef d'oeuvre_, and has all the grace of the antique bas-reliefs. TIZIANO. N° 69. (Saloon.) _The Martyrdom of St. Peter_. This large picture, which presents a grand composition in colossal figures, with a country of extraordinary beauty in the back-ground, is considered as the _chef d'oeuvre_ of TITIAN. It was painted on pannel; but, having undergone the same operation as the _Madonna di Foligno_, is now placed on canvass, and is in such a state as to claim the admiration of succeeding ages. N° 74. (Saloon.) _The Portraits of Titian and his mistress._ 70. (Saloon.) _Portrait of the Marquis del Guasto with some ladies_. Both these pictures belonged to the old collection of the crown, and are to be admired for grace and beauty. N° 940. (Gallery.) _Christ crowned with thorns_. 941. (Gallery.) _Christ carried to the grave_. There is a wonderful vigour of colouring in these two capital pictures. The preceding are the most admirable of the productions which are at present exhibited of this inimitable master, the first of painters for truth of colouring. CORREGGIO. N° 753. (Gallery.) _The Virgin, the infant Jesus, Mary Magdalen, and St. Jerome._ This picture, commonly distinguished by the appellation of the _St. Jerome_ of CORREGGIO, is undoubtedly his _chef d'oeuvre_. In the year 1749, the king of Portugal is said to have offered for it a sum equal in value to £18,000 sterling. N° 756. (Gallery.) _The Marriage of St. Catherine_. 757. (Gallery.) _Christ taken down from the cross_. This last-mentioned picture has just been engraved in an excellent manner by an Italian artist, M. ROSA-SPINA. The grace of his pencil and his _chiaro oscuro_ place CORREGGIO in the first class of painters, where he ranks the third after RAPHAEL and TITIAN. He is inferior to them in design and composition; however the scarceness of his pictures frequently gives them a superior value. Poor CORREGGIO! It grieves one to recollect that he lost his life, in consequence of the fatigue of staggering home under a load of _copper_ coin, which avaricious monks had given him for pictures now become so valuable that they are not to be purchased for their weight, even in _gold_. No collection is so rich in pictures of CORREGGIO as that of the CENTRAL MUSEUM. PAOLO VERONESE. N° 44. (Saloon.) _The Wedding at Cana_. 45. (Saloon.) _The Repast at the house of Levi_. 51. (Saloon.) _The Pilgrims of Emmaüs_. These are astonishing compositions for their vast extent, the number and beauty of the figures and portraits, and the variety and truth of the colouring. Nothing in painting can be richer. ANDREA DEL SARTO. N° 4. (Saloon.) _Christ taken down from the cross_. ANDREA SQUAZZELLI (his pupil.) N° ( ) _Christ laid in the tomb_. This capital picture is not in the catalogue. GIORGIONE DEL CASTEL-FRANCO. N° 32. (Saloon.) _A Concert containing three portraits_. This master-piece is worthy of TITIAN. GUERCINO. N° 33 (Saloon.) _St. Petronilla_. This large picture was executed for St. Peter's church in the Vatican, where it was replaced by a copy in Mosaic, on being removed to the pontificate palace of Monte Cavallo, at Rome. In the great Gallery are exhibited no less than twenty-three pictures by GUERCINO: but to speak the truth, though, in looking at some of his productions, he appears an extremely agreeable painter, as soon as you see a number of them, you can no longer bear him. This is what happens to _mannerists_. The dark shades at first astonish you, afterwards they disgust you. ANDREA SACCHI. N° 65. (Saloon.) _St. Remuald_. This picture was always one of the most esteemed of those in the churches at Rome. It was the altar-piece of the church of St. Remuald in that city. ALBANO. N° 676. (Gallery.) _Fire._ 677. _Air._ 678. _Water._ 679. _Earth._ In the Gallery are twenty-nine pictures of this master, and all of them graceful; but the preceding four, representing the elements, which were taken from the royal Cabinet of Turin, are the most remarkable. BAROCCIO. N° 686. (Gallery.) _The Virgin, St Anthony, and St. Lucia._ 688. _St. Michaelina._ These are the best pictures of BAROCCIO already exhibited. His colouring is enchanting. It is entirely transparent and seems as if impregnated with light: however, his forms, and every thing else, bespeak the _mannerist_. ANNIBALE CARRACCI. N° 721. (Gallery.) _Christ dead on the knees of the Virgin._ 723. _The Resurrection of Christ._ 728. _The Nativity of Christ._ 730. _Christ laid in the tomb._ Of the CARRACCI, ANNIBALE is the most perfect. He is also remarkable for the different manners which he has displayed in his works. They appear to be by two or three different painters. Of more than twenty in the Gallery, the above are the best of his productions. MICHAEL ANGELO DA CARAVAGGIO. N° 744. (Gallery.) _Christ laid in the tomb._ This wonderful picture, which was brought from Rome, is, for vigour of execution and truth of colouring, superior to all the others by the same master. Every one of his works bears the stamp of a great genius. DOMENICHINO. N° 763. (Gallery.) _The Communion of St. Jerome._ This picture, the master-piece of DOMENICHICO, comes from the great altar of the church of _San Geronimo della Carità_, at Rome. It will appear incredible that for a work of such importance, which cost him so much time, study, and labour, he received no more than the sum of about £10 sterling. N° 769. (Gallery.) _St. Cecilia_. This capital performance is now removed to the drawing-room of the First Consul, in the palace of the _Tuileries_. After RAPHAEL, DOMENICHINO is one of the most perfect masters; and his _St. Jerome_, together with RAPHAEL'S Transfiguration, are reckoned among the most famous _chefs d'oeuvre_ of the art of painting. GUIDO. N° 797. (Gallery.) _The Crucifixion of St. Peter_. 800. _Fortune_. These are the finest of the twenty pictures by that master, now exhibited in the CENTRAL MUSEUM. They both came from Rome; the former, from the Vatican; the latter, from the Capitol. GUIDO is a noble and graceful painter; but, in general, he betrays a certain negligence in the execution of several parts. LUINI. N° 860. (Gallery.) _The Holy Family_. In this picture, LUINI has fallen little short of his master, LEONARDO DA VINCI. ANDREA SOLARIO. N° 896. (Gallery.) _The Daughter of Herodias receiving the head of St. John_. SOLARIO is another worthy pupil of LEONARDO. This very capital picture belonged to the collection of the crown, and was purchased by Lewis XIV. PIERUNO DEL VAGA. N° 928. (Gallery.) _The Muses challenged by the Piërides_. An excellent picture from Versailles. BALTASSARE PERUZZI. N° 929. (Gallery.) _The Virgin discovering the infant Jesus asleep_. A remarkably fine production. SEBASTIANO DEL PIOMBO. N° ( ) _Portrait of the young sculptor, Baccio Bomdinelli_. This picture is worthy of the pencil of RAPHAEL. It is not yet exhibited. PIETRO DA CORTONA. N° 52. (Saloon.) _The Birth of the Virgin_. 53. _Remus and Romulus_. These are the finest pictures in the collection by this master. We have now noticed the best productions of the Italian School: in our next visit to the CENTRAL MUSEUM, I shall point out the most distinguished pictures of the French and Flemish Schools. P. S. Lord Cornwallis is sumptuously entertained here, all the ministers giving him a grand dinner, each in rotation. After having viewed the curiosities of Paris, he will, in about a fortnight, proceed to the congress at Amiens. On his Lordship's arrival, I thought it my duty to leave my name at his hotel, and was most agreeably surprised to meet with a very old acquaintance in his military Secretary, Lieut. Col. L--------s. For any of the ambassador's further proceedings, I refer you to the English newspapers, which seem to anticipate all his movements. LETTER XVII. _Paris, November 15, 1801._ The more frequently I visit the CENTRAL MUSEUM OF THE ARTS, the more am I inclined to think that such a vast number of pictures, suspended together, lessen each other's effect. This is the first idea which now presents itself to me, whenever I enter the GALLERY OF THE LOUVRE. Were this collection rendered apparently less numerous by being subdivided into different apartments, the eye would certainly be less dazzled than it is, at present, by an assemblage of so many various objects, which, though arranged as judiciously as possible, somehow convey to the mind an image of confusion. The consequence is that attention flags, and no single picture is seen to advantage, because so many are seen together. In proportion as the lover of the arts becomes more familiarized with the choicest productions of the pencil, he perceives that there are few pictures, if any, really faultless. In some, he finds beauties, which are general, or forming, as it were, a whole, and producing a general effect; in others, he meets with particular or detached beauties, whose effect is partial: assembled, they constitute the beautiful: insulated, they have a merit which the amateur appreciates, and the artist ought to study. General or congregated beauties always arise from genius and talent: particular or detached beauties belong to study, to labour, that is, to the _nulla die sine lineâ_ and sometimes solely to chance, as is exemplified in the old story of Protogenes, the celebrated Rhodian painter. To discover some of these beauties, requires no extraordinary discernment; a person of common observation might decide whether the froth at the mouth of an animal, panting for breath, was naturally represented: but a spectator, possessing a cultivated and refined taste, minutely surveys every part of a picture, examines the grandeur of the composition, the elevation of the ideas, the nobleness of the expression, the truth and correctness of the design, the grace scattered over the different objects, the imitation of nature in the colouring, and the masterly strokes of the pencil. Our last visit to the CENTRAL MUSEUM terminated with the Italian School; let us now continue our examination, beginning with the FRENCH SCHOOL. LE BRUN. N° 17. _(Gallery) The Defeat of Porus._ 18. _The Family of Darius at the feet of Alexander._ 19. _The Entrance of Alexander into Babylon. The Passage of the Granicus._ 14. _Jesus asleep, or Silence._ 16. _The Crucifix surrounded by angels._ The compositions of LE BRUN are grand and rich; his costume well-chosen, and tolerably scientific; the tone of his pictures well-suited to the subject. But, in this master, we must not look for purity and correctness of drawing, in an eminent degree. He much resembles PIETRO DA CORTONA. LE BRUN, however, has a taste more in the style of RAPHAEL and the antique, though it is a distant imitation. The colouring of PIETRO DA CORTONA is far more agreeable and more captivating. Among the small pictures by LE BRUN, N°s. 14 and 16 deserve to be distinguished; but his _chefs d'oeuvre_ are the achievements of Alexander. When the plates from these historical paintings, engraved by AUDRAN, reached Rome, it is related that the Italians, astonished, exclaimed: "_Povero Raffaello! non sei più il primo_." But, when they afterwards saw the originals, they restored, to RAPHAEL his former pre-eminence. CLAUDE LORRAIN. N° 43. (Gallery.) _View of a sea-port at sun-set_. 45. _A Sea-piece on a fine morning_. 46. _A Landscape enlivened by the setting sun_. The superior merit of CLAUDE in landscape-painting is too well known to need any eulogium, The three preceding are the finest of his pictures in this collection. However, at Rome, and in England, there are some more perfect than those in the CENTRAL MUSEUM. One of his _chefs d'oeuvre_, formerly at Rome, is now at Naples, in the Gallery of Prince Colonna. JOUVENET. N° 54. (Gallery.) _Christ taken down from the cross._ The above is the most remarkable picture here by this master. MIGNARD. N° 57. (Gallery.) _The Virgin_, called _La Vièrge à la grappe_, because she is taking from a basket of fruit a bunch of grapes to present to her son. NICOLAS POUSSIN. N° 70. (Gallery.) _The Fall of the manna in the desert._ 75. _Rebecca and Eleazar._ 77. _The Judgment of Solomon._ 78. _The blind Men of Jericho._ 82. _Winter or the Deluge._ In this collection, the above are the finest historical paintings of POUSSIN; and of his landscapes, the following deserve to be admired. N° 76. (Gallery.) _Diogenes throwing away his porringer._ 83. _The Death of Eurydice._ POUSSIN is the greatest painter of the French school. His compositions bear much resemblance to those of RAPHAEL, and to the antique: though they have not the same _naïveté_ and truth. His back-grounds are incomparable; his landscapes, in point of composition, superior even to those of CLAUDE. His large altar-pieces are the least beautiful of his productions. His feeble colouring cannot support proportions of the natural size: in these pictures, the charms of the background are also wanting. LE SUEUR. N° 98. (Gallery.) _St. Paul preaching at Ephesus._ This is the _chef d'oeuvre_ of LE SUEUR, who is to be admired for the simplicity of his pencil, as well as for the beauty of his compositions. VALENTINO. N° 111. (Gallery.) _The Martyrdom of St. Processa and St. Martinian._ 112. _Cæsar's Tribute._ These are the finest productions of this master, who was a worthy rival of CARAVAGGIO. VERNET. N° 121. (Gallery.) _A Sea-port at sun-set_. This painter's style is generally correct and agreeable. In the above picture he rivals CLAUDE. * * * * * We now come to the school which, of all others, is best known in England. This exempts me from making any observations on the comparative merits of the masters who compose it. I shall therefore confine myself to a bare mention of the best of their performances, at present exhibited in the CENTRAL MUSEUM. FLEMISH SCHOOL. RUBENS. N° 485. (Gallery.) _St. Francis, dying, receives the sacrament._ 503. _Christ taken down from the cross_, a celebrated picture from the cathedral of Antwerp. 507. _Nicholas Rochox, a burgomaster of the city of Antwerp, and a friend of_ RUBENS. 509. _The Crucifixion of St. Peter_. 513. _St. Roch interceding for the people attacked by the plague._ 526. _The Village-Festival_. In this repository, the above are the most remarkable productions of RUBENS. VANDYCK. N° 255. (Gallery.) _The Mother of pity._ 264. _The portraits of Charles I, elector palatine, and his brother, prince Robert._ 265. _A full-length portrait of a man holding his daughter by the hand._ 266. _A full-length portrait of a lady with her son._ These are superior to the other pictures by VANDYCK in this collection. CHAMPAGNE. N° 216. (Gallery.) _The Nuns._ The history of this piece is interesting. The eldest daughter of CHAMPAGNE was a nun in the convent of _Port-Royal_ at Paris. Being reduced to extremity by a fever of fourteen months' duration, and given over by her physicians, she falls to prayers with another nun, and recovers her health. CRAYER. N° 227. (Gallery.) _The Triumph of St. Catherine._ GERHARD DOUW. N° 234. (Gallery.) _The dropsical Woman._ HANS HOLBEIN. N° 319. (Gallery.) _A young woman, dressed in a yellow veil, and with her hands crossed on her knees._ JORDAENS. N° 351. (Gallery.) _Twelfth-Day_. 352. _The Family-Concert_. ADRIAN VAN OSTADE. N° 428. (Gallery.) _The family of Ostade, painted by himself._ 430. _A smoking Club_. 431. _The Schoolmaster, with the ferula in his hand, surrounded by his scholars_. PAUL POTTER. N° 446. (Gallery.) _An extensive pasture, with cattle._ This most remarkable picture represents, on the fore-ground, near an oak, a bull, a ewe with its lamb, and a herdsman, all as large as life. REMBRANDT. N° 457. (Gallery.) _The head of a woman with ear-rings, and dressed in a fur-cloak._ 458. _The good Samaritan_. 465. _The Cabinet-maker's family._ 466. _Tobias and his family kneeling before the angel Raphael, who disappears from his sight, after having made himself known._ 469. _The Presentation of Jesus in the temple._ The pictures, exhibited in the _Saloon_ of the _Louvre_, have infinitely the advantage of those in the _Great Gallery_; the former apartment being lighted from the top; while in the latter, the light is admitted through large windows, placed on both sides, those on the one side facing the compartments between those on the other; so that, in this respect, the master-pieces in the _Gallery_ are viewed under very unfavourable circumstances. The _Gallery_ of the _Louvre_ is still capable of containing more pictures, one eighth part of it (that next to the _Tuileries_), being under repair for the purpose.[1] It has long been a question with the French republican government, whether the palace of the _Tuileries_ should not be connected to the _Louvre_, by a gallery parallel to that which borders the Seine. Six years ago, I understand, the subject was agitated, and dropped again, on consideration of the state of the country in general, and particularly the finances. It is now revived; and I was told the other day, that a plan of construction had absolutely been adopted. This, no doubt, is more easy than to find the sums of money necessary for carrying on so expensive an undertaking. If the fact were true, it is of a nature to produce a great sensation in modern art, since it is affirmed that the object of this work is to give a vast display to every article appropriated to general instruction; for, according to report, it is intended that these united buildings, should, in addition to the National Library, contain the collections of statues, pictures, &c. &c. still remaining at the disposal of the government. I would not undertake to vouch for the precise nature of the object proposed; but it cannot be denied that, in this project, there is a boldness well calculated to flatter the ambition of the Chief Consul. However, I think it more probable that nothing, in this respect, will be positively determined in the present state of affairs. The expedition to St. Domingo will cost an immense sum, not to speak of the restoration of the French navy, which must occasion great and immediate calls for money. Whence I conclude that the erection of the new Gallery, like that of the National Column, will be much talked of, but remain among other projects in embryo, and the discussion be adjourned _sine die_. Leaving the _Great Gallery_, we return to the _Saloon_ of the _Louvre_, which, being an intermediate apartment, serves as a point of communication between it and the GALLERY OF APOLLO. The old gallery of this name, first called _La petite galérie du Louvre_, was constructed under the reign of Henry IV, and, from its origin, ornamented with paintings. This gallery having been consumed by fire in 1661, owing to the negligence of a workman employed in preparing a theatre for a grand ballet, in which the king was to dance with all his court, Lewis XIV immediately ordered it to be rebuilt and magnificently decorated. LE BRUN, who then directed works of this description in France, furnished the designs of all the paintings, sculpture, and ornaments, which are partly executed. He divided the vault of the roof into eleven principal compartments; in that which is in the centre, he intended to represent _Apollo_ in his car, with all the attributes peculiar to the Sun, which was the king's device. The _Seasons_ were to have occupied the four nearest compartments; in the others, were to have been _Evening_ and _Morning_, _Night_ and _Day-break_, the _Waking of the Waters_, and that of the _Earth at Sun-rise_. Unfortunately for his fame, this vast project of LE BRUN was never completed. Lewis XIV, captivated by Versailles, soon turned all his thoughts towards the embellishment of that palace. The works of the GALLERY OF APOLLO were entirely abandoned, and, of all this grand composition, LE BRUN was enabled to execute no more than the following subjects: 1. _Evening_, represented by Morpheus, lying on a bed of poppies, and buried in a profound sleep. 2. _Night_ succeeding to day, and lighted by the silvery disk of the Moon, which, under the figure of Diana, appears in a car drawn by hinds. 3. _The Waking of the Waters_. Neptune and Amphitrite on a car drawn by sea-horses, and accompanied by Tritons, Nereïds, and other divinities of the waters, seem to be paying homage to the rising sun, whose first rays dispel the Winds and Tempests, figured by a group to the left; while, to the right, Polyphemus, seated on a rock, is calling with his loud instrument to his Galatea. The other compartments, which LE BRUN could not paint, on account of the cessation of the works, remained a long time vacant, and would have been so at this day, had not the _ci-devant_ Academy of Painting, to whom the king, in 1764, granted the use of the GALLERY OF APOLLO, resolved that, in future, the historical painters who might be admitted members, should be bound to paint for their reception one of the subjects which were still wanting for the completion of the ceiling. In this manner, five of the compartments, which remained to be filled, were successively decorated, namely: 1. _Summer_, by DURAMEAU. 2. _Autumn_, by TARAVAL. 3. _Spring_, by CALLET. 4. _Winter_, by LAGRENÉE the younger, 5. _Morning_, or day-break, by RENOU. The GALLERY OF APOLLO now making part of the CENTRAL MUSEUM, it would be worthy of the government to cause its ceiling to be completed, by having the three vacant compartments painted by skillful French artists. Under the compartments, and immediately above the cornice, are twelve medallions, which were to represent the _twelve months of the year_, characterized by the different occupations peculiar to them: eight only are executed, and these are the months of summer, autumn, and winter. The rich borders in gilt stucco, which serve as frames to all these paintings, the caryatides which support them, as well as the groups of Muses, Rivers, and Children, that are distributed over the great cornice, are worthy of remark. Not only were the most celebrated sculptors then in France, GASPAR and BALTHAZAR MARSY, REGNAUDIN, and GIRARDON, chosen to execute them; but their emulation was also excited by a premium of three hundred louis, which was promised to him who should excel. GIRARDON obtained it by the execution of the following pieces of sculpture: 1. The figure representing a river which is under the _Waking of the Waters_; at the south extremity of the gallery. 2. The two trophies of arms which are near that river. 3. The caryatides that support one of the octagonal compartments towards the quay, at the foot of which are seen two children; the one armed with a sickle, the other leaning on a lion. 4. The group of caryatides that supports the great compartment where _Summer_ is represented, and below which is a child holding a balance. 5. The two grouped figures of Tragedy and Comedy, which rest on the great cornice. In the GALLERY OF APOLLO will be exhibited in succession, about twelve thousand original drawings of the Italian, Flemish, and French schools, the greater part of which formerly belonged to the crown. This valuable collection had been successively enriched by the choice of those of JABAK, LANQUE, MONTARSIS, LE BRUN, CROZAT, MARIETTE, &c. yet never rendered public. Private and partial admission to it had, indeed, been granted; but artists and amateurs, in general, were precluded from so rich a source of study. By inconceivable neglect, it seemed almost to have escaped the attention of the old government, having been for a hundred years shut up in a confined place, instead of being exhibited to public view. The variety of the forms and dimensions of these drawings having opposed the more preferable mode of arranging them by schools, and in chronological order, the most capital drawings of each master have been selected (for, in so extensive a collection, it could not be supposed that they were all equally interesting); and these even are sufficiently numerous to furnish several successive exhibitions. The present exhibition consists of upwards of two hundred drawings by the most distinguished masters of the Italian school, about one hundred by those of the Flemish, and as many, or rather more, by those of the French. They are placed in glazed frames, so contrived as to admit of the subjects being changed at pleasure. Among the drawings by RAPHAEL, is the great cartoon of the Athenian School, a valuable fragment which served for the execution of the grand _fresco_ painting in the Vatican, the largest and finest of all his productions. It was brought from the Ambrosian library at Milan, and is one of the most instructive works extant for a study. Besides the drawings, is a frame containing a series of portraits of illustrious personages who made a figure in the reign of Lewis XIV. They are miniatures in enamel, painted chiefly by the celebrated PETITOT of Geneva. Here are also to be seen some busts and antique vases. The most remarkable of the latter is one of Parian marble, about twenty-one inches in height by twelve in diameter. It is of an oval form; the handles, cut out of the solid stone, are ornamented with four swans' heads, and the neck with branches of ivy. On the swell is a bas-relief, sculptured in the old Greek style, and in the centre is an altar on which these words may be decyphered. [Greek: SOSIBIOS ATÆNAIOS EPOIEI.] _Sosibios of Athens fecit._ This beautiful vase[2] is placed on a table of violet African breccia, remarkable for its size, being twelve feet in length, three feet ten inches in breadth, and upwards of three inches in thickness. It might, at first, be supposed that the indiscriminate admission of persons of all ranks to a Museum, which presents so many attractive objects, would create confusion, and occasion breaches of decorum. But this is by no means the case. _Savoyards_, _poissardes_, and the whole motley assemblage of the lower classes of both sexes in Paris, behave themselves with as much propriety as the more refined visiters; though their remarks, perhaps, may be expressed in language less polished. In conspicuous places of the various apartments, boards are affixed, on which is inscribed the following significant appeal to the uncultivated mind, "_Citoyens, ne touchez à rien; mais respectez la Propriété Nationale_." Proper persons are stationed here and there to caution such as, through thoughtlessness or ignorance, might not attend to the admonition. On the days appropriated to the accommodation of students, great numbers are to be seen in different parts of the Museum, some mounted on little stages, others standing or sitting, all sedulously employed in copying the favourite object of their studies. Indeed, the epithet CENTRAL has been applied to this establishment, in order to designate a MUSEUM, which is to contain the choicest productions of art, and, of course, become the _centre_ of study. Here, nothing has been neglected that could render such an institution useful, either in a political light, or in regard to public instruction. Its magnificence and splendour speak to every eye, and are calculated to attract the attention of foreigners from the four quarters of the globe; while, as a source of improvement, it presents to students the finest models that the arts and sciences could assemble. In a philosophical point of view, such a Museum may be compared to a torch, whose light will not only dispel the remnant of that bad taste which, for a century, has predominated in the arts dependent on design, but also serve to guide the future progress of the rising generation. [Footnote 1: In the great _Gallery_ of the _Louvre_ are suspended about nine hundred and fifty pictures; which, with ninety in the _Saloon_, extend the number of the present exhibition to one thousand and forty.] [Footnote 2: Whatever may be the beauty of this vase, two others are to be seen in Paris, which surpass it, according to the opinion of one of the most celebrated antiquaries of the age, M. VISCONTI. They are now in the possession of M. AUBRI, doctor of Physic, residing at N°. 272, _Rue St. Thomas du Louvre_, but they formerly graced the cabinet of the _Villa-Albani_ at Rome. In this apartment, Cardinal Alessandro had assembled some of the most valuable ornaments of antiquity. Here were to be seen the Apollo _Sauroctonos_ in bronze, the Diana in alabaster, and the _unique_ bas-relief of the apothesis of Hercules. By the side of such rare objects of art, these vases attracted no less attention. To describe them as they deserve, would lead me too far; they need only to be seen to be admired. Although their form is antique, the execution of them is modern, and ascribed to the celebrated sculptor, SILVIO DA VELETRI, who lived in the beginning of the seventeenth century. Indeed, M. VISCONTI affirms that antiquity affords not their equal; assigning as a reason that porphyry was introduced into Rome at a period when the fine arts were tending to their decline. Notwithstanding the hardness of the substance, they are executed with such taste and perfection, that the porphyry is reduced to the thinness of china.] LETTER XVIII. _Paris, November 17, 1801._ The _Louvre_, the _Tuileries_, together with the _National Fête_ in honour of Peace, and a crowd of interesting objects, have so engrossed our attention, that we seem to have overlooked the _ci-devant Palais Royal_. Let us then examine that noted edifice, which now bears the name of PALAIS DU TRIBUNAT. In 1629, Cardinal Richelieu began the construction of this palace. When finished, in 1636, he called it the _Palais Cardinal_, a denomination which was much criticized, as being unworthy of the founder of the French Academy. Like the politic Wolsey, who gave Hampton-Court to Henry VIII, the crafty Richelieu, in 1639, thought proper to make a present of this palace to Lewis XIII. After the death of that king, Anne of Austria, queen of France and regent of the kingdom, quitted the _Louvre_ to inhabit the _Palais Cardinal_, with her sons Lewis XIV and the Duke of Anjou. The first inscription was then removed, and this palace was called _le Palais Royal_, a name which it preserved till the revolution, when, after the new title assumed by its then owner, it was denominated _la Maison Égalité_, till, under the consular government, since the Tribunate have here established their sittings, it has obtained its present appellation of _Palais du Tribunat_. In the sequel, Lewis XIV granted to Monsieur, his only brother, married to Henrietta Stuart, daughter of Charles I, the enjoyment of the _Palais Royal_, and afterwards vested the property of it in his grandson, the Duke of Chartres. That prince, become Duke of Orleans, and regent of France, during the minority of Lewis XV, resided in this palace, and (to use Voltaire's expression) hence gave the signal of voluptuousness to the whole kingdom. Here too, he ruled it with principles the most daring; holding men, in general, in great contempt, and conceiving them to be all as insidious, as servile, and as covetous as those by whom he was surrounded. With the superiority of his character, he made a sport of governing this mass of individuals, as if the task was unworthy of his genius. The fact is illustrated by the following anecdote. At the commencement of his regency, the debts of the State were immense, and the finances exhausted: such great evils required extraordinary remedies; he wished to persuade the people that paper-money was better than specie. Thousands became the dupes of their avarice, and too soon awoke from their dream only to curse the authors of a project which ended in their total ruin. It is almost needless to mention that I here allude to the Mississippi bubble. In circumstances so critical, the Parliament of Paris thought it their duty to make remonstrances. They accordingly sent deputies to the regent, who was persuaded that they wished to stir up the Parisians against him. After having listened to their harangue with much phelgm, he gave them his answer in four words: "Go and be d----n'd." The deputy, who had addressed him, nothing disconcerted, instantly replied: "Sir, it is the custom of the Parliament to enter in their registers the answers which they receive from the throne: shall they insert this?" The principles of the regent's administration, which succeeded those of Lewis XIV, form in history, a very striking shade. The French nation, which, plastic as wax, yields to every impression, was new-modelled in a single instant. As a rotten speck, by spreading, contaminates the finest fruit, so was the _Palais Royal_ the corrupt spot, whence the contagion of debauchery was propagated, even to the remotest parts of the kingdom. This period, infinitely curious and interesting, paved the way to the present manners. If the basis of morality be at this day overthrown in France, the regency of Philip of Orleans, by completing what the dissolute court of Lewis XIV had begun, has occasioned that rapid change, whose influence was felt long before the revolution, and will, in all probability, last for ages. At least, I think that such a conclusion is exemplified by what has occurred in England since the profligate reign of Charles II, the effects of whose example have never been done away. Different circumstances have produced considerable alterations in this palace, so that, at the present day, its numerous buildings preserve of the first architect, LE MERCIER, no more than a small part of the second court. The principal entrance of the _Palais du Tribunat_ is from the _Rue St. Honoré_. The façade, on this side, which was constructed in 1763, consists of two pavilions, ornamented by Doric and Ionic pillars, and connected by a lofty stone-wall, perforated with arches, to three grand gates, by which you enter the first court. Here, two elegant wings present themselves, decorated with pilasters, also of the Doric and Ionic orders, which are likewise employed for the pillars of the avant-corps in the centre. This avant-corps is pierced with three arches, which serve as a passage into the second court, and correspond with the three gates before-mentioned. Having reached the vestibule, between the two courts, where large Doric pillars rise, though partly concealed by a number of little shops and stalls, you see, on the right, the handsome elliptical stair-case, which leads to the apartments. It branches off into two divisions at the third step, and is lighted by a lofty dome. The balustrade of polished iron is beautiful, and is said to have cost thirty-two workmen two years' labour. Before the revolution, strangers repaired hither to admire the cabinet of gems and engraved stones, the cabinet of natural history, the collection of models of arts, trades, and manufactures, and the famous collection of pictures, belonging to the _last_ duke of Orleans, and chiefly assembled, at a vast expense, by his grandfather, the regent. This second court is larger than the first; but it still remains in an incomplete state. The right-hand wing only is finished, and is merely a continuation of that which we have seen in the other court. On the left hand, is the site of the new hall intended for the sittings of the Tribunate. Workmen are now employed in its construction; heaps of stones and mortar are lying about, and, the building seems to proceed with tolerable expedition. Here, in the back-ground, is a crowd of little stalls for the sale of various articles, such as prints, plays, fruit, and pastry. In front stand such carriages as remain in waiting for those who may have been set down at this end of the palace. Proceeding onward, you pass through two parallel wooden galleries, lined on each side with shops, and enter the formerly-enchanting regions of the JARDIN DU PALAIS DU TRIBUNAT. The old garden of the _Palais Royal_, long famous for its shady walks, and for being the most fashionable public promenade in Paris, had, from its centrical situation, gradually attracted to its vicinity a considerable number of speculators, who there opened ready-furnished hotels, coffee-houses, and shops of various descriptions. The success of these different establishments awakened the cupidity of its wealthy proprietor, then Duke, of Chartres, who, conceiving that the ground might be made to yield a capital augmentation to his income, fixed on a plan for enclosing it by a magnificent range of buildings. Notwithstanding the clamours of the Parisian public, who, from long habit, considered that they had a sort of prescriptive right to this favourite promenade, the axe was laid to the celebrated _arbre de Cracovie_ and other venerable trees, and their stately heads were soon levelled to the ground. Every one murmured as if these trees had been his own private property, and cut down against his will and pleasure. This will not appear extraordinary, when it is considered that, under their wide-spreading branches, which afforded a shelter impervious to the sun and rain, politicians by day, adjusted the balance of power, and arbiters of taste discussed the fashions of the moment; while, by night, they presented a canopy, beneath which were often arranged the clandestine bargains of opera-girls and other votaries of Venus. After venting their spleen in vague conjectures, witty epigrams, and lampoons, the Parisians were silent. They presently found that they were, in general, not likely to be losers by this devastation. In 1782, the execution of the new plan was begun: in less than three years, the present inclosure was nearly completed, and the modern garden thrown open to the public, uniting to the advantages of the ancient one, a thousand others more refined and concentrated. The form of this garden is a parallelogram, whose length is seven hundred and two feet by three hundred in breadth, taken at its greatest dimensions. It is bordered, on three of its sides, by new, uniform buildings, of light and elegant architecture. Rising to an elevation of forty-two feet, these buildings present two regular stories, exclusively of the _mansarde_, or attic story, decorated by festoons, bas-reliefs, and large Composite fluted pillars, bearing an entablature in whose frieze windows are pierced. Throughout its extent, the whole edifice is crowned by a balustrade, on the pedestals of which vases are placed at equal distances. In the middle of the garden stood a most singular building, partly subterraneous, called a _Cirque_. This circus, which was first opened in 1789, with concerts, balls, &c. was also appropriated to more useful objects, and, in 1792, a _Lyceum of Arts_ was here established; but in 1797, it was consumed by fire, and its site is now occupied by a grass-plot. On the two long sides of the garden are planted three rows of horse-chesnut trees, not yet of sufficient growth to afford any shade; and what is new, is a few shrubs and flowers in inclosed compartments. The walks are of gravel, and kept in good order. On the ground-floor, a covered gallery runs entirely round the garden. The shops, &c. on this floor, as well as the apartments of the _entresol_ above them, receive light by one hundred and eighty porticoes, which are open towards the garden, and used to have each a glass lantern, with reflectors, suspended in the middle of their arch. In lieu of these, some of a less brilliant description are now distributed on a more economical plan under the piazzas; but, at the close of day, the rivalship of the shopkeepers, in displaying their various commodities, creates a blaze of light which would strike a stranger as the effect of an illumination. The fourth side of the garden towards the _Rue St. Honoré_ is still occupied by a double gallery, constructed, as I have already mentioned, of wood, which has subsisted nearly in its present state ever since I first visited Paris in 1784. It was to have been replaced by a colonnade for the inclosure of the two courts. This colonnade was to have consisted of six rows of Doric pillars, supporting a spacious picture-gallery, (intended for the whole of the Orleans collection), which was to have constituted the fourth façade to the garden, and have formed a covered walk, communicating with the galleries of the other three sides. These galleries, whose whole circumference measures upwards of a third of a mile, afford to the public, even in bad weather, a walk equally agreeable and convenient, embellished, on the one side, by the aspect of the garden, and, on the other, by the studied display of every thing that taste and fashion can invent to captivate the attention of passengers. No place in Paris, however, exhibits such a contrast to its former attractions as this once-fashionable rendezvous. The change of its name from _Palais Royal_ to _Maison Égalité_ conveys not to the imagination a dissimilitude more glaring than is observable between the present frequenters of this favourite promenade, and those who were in the habit of flocking hither before the revolution. At that period, the scene was enlivened by the most brilliant and most captivating company in the capital, both in point of exterior and manners. At this day, the medal is exactly reversed. In lieu of well-dressed or well-behaved persons of both sexes, this garden, including its purlieus, presents, morning and evening, nothing but hordes of stock-jobbers, money-brokers, gamblers, and adventurers of every description. The females who frequent it, correspond nearly to the character of the men; they are, for the greater part, of the most debauched and abandoned class: for a Laïs of _bon ton_ seldom ventures to shew herself among this medley of miscreants. In the crowd, may be occasionally remarked a few strangers attracted by curiosity, and other individuals of respectable appearance called hither on business, as well as some inoffensive newsmongers, resorting to the coffee-houses to read the papers. But, in general, the great majority, of the company, now seen here, is of a cast so extremely low, that no decent woman, whether married or single, thinks of appearing in a place where she would run a risk of being put out of countenance in passing alone, even in the daytime. In the evening, the company is of a still worse complexion; and the concourse becomes so great under the piazzas, particularly when the inclemency of the weather drives people out of the garden, that it is sometimes difficult to cross through the motley assemblage. At the conclusion of the performances in the neighbouring theatres, there is a vast accession of the inferior order of nymphs of the Cyprian corps; and then, amorous conversation and dalliance reach the summit of licentious freedom. The greater part of the political commotions which have, at different times, convulsed Paris, took their rise in the _ci-devant Palais Royal_, or it has, in some shape, been their theatre. In this palace too originated the dreadful reverse of fortune which the queen experienced; and, indeed, when the cart in which her majesty was carried to the scaffold, passed before the gates of this edifice, she was unable to repress a sign of indignation. All writers who have spoken of the inveterate hatred, which existed between the queen and M. d'Orléans, have ascribed it to despised love, whose pangs, as Shakspeare tells, us, are not patiently endured. Some insist that the duke, enamoured of the charms of the queen, hazarded a declaration, which her majesty not only received with disdain, but threatened to inform the king of in case of a renewal of his addresses. Others affirm that the queen, at one time, shewed that the duke was not indifferent to her, and that, on a hint being given to him to that effect, he replied: "Every one may be ambitious to please the queen, except myself. Our interests are too opposite for Love ever to unite them." On this foundation is built the origin of the animosity which, in the end, brought both these great personages to the scaffold. Whatever may have been the motive which gave rise to it, certain it is that they never omitted any opportunity of persecuting each other. The queen had no difficulty in pourtraying the duke as a man addicted to the most profligate excesses, and in alienating from him the mind of the king: he, on his side, found it as easy, by means of surreptitious publications, to represent her as a woman given to illicit enjoyments; so that, long before the revolution, the character both of the queen and the duke were well known to the public; and their example tended not a little to increase the general dissoluteness of morals. The debaucheries of the one served as a model to all the young rakes of fashion; while the levity of the other, was imitated by what were termed the _amiable_ women of the capital. After his exile in 1788, the hatred of M. d'Orléans towards the queen roused that ambition which he inherited from his ancestors. In watching her private conduct, in order to expose her criminal weaknesses, he discovered a certain political project, which gave birth to the idea of his forming a plan of a widely-different nature. Hitherto he had given himself little trouble about State affairs; but, in conjunction with his confidential friends, he now began to calculate the means of profiting by the distress of his country. The first shocks of the revolution had so electrified the greater part of the Parisians, that, in regard to the Duke of Orleans, they imperceptibly passed from profound contempt to blind infatuation. His palace became the rendezvous of all the malcontents of the court, and his garden the place of assembly of all the demagogues. His exile appeared a public calamity, and his recall was celebrated as a triumph. Had he possessed a vigour of intellect, and a daring equal to the situation of leader of a party, there is little doubt that he might have succeeded in his plan, and been declared regent. His immense income, amounting to upwards of three hundred thousand pounds sterling, was employed to gain partisans, and secure the attachment of the people. After the taking of the Bastille, it is admitted that his party was sufficiently powerful to effect a revolution in his favour; but his pusillanimity prevailed over his ambition. The active vigilance of the queen thwarting his projects, he resolved to get rid of her; and in that intention was the irruption of the populace directed to Versailles. This fact seems proved: for, on some one complaining before him in 1792, that the revolution proceeded too slowly. "It would have been terminated long ago," replied he, "had the queen been sacrificed on the 5th of October 1789." Two months before the fall of the throne, M. d'Orléans still reckoned to be able to attain his wishes; but he soon found himself egregiously mistaken. The factions, after mutually accusing each other of having him for their chief, ended by deserting him; and, after the death of the king, he became a stranger to repose, and, for the second time, an object of contempt. The necessity of keeping up the exaltation of the people, had exhausted his fortune, great as it was; and want of money daily detached different agents from his party. His plate, his pictures, his furniture, his books, his trinkets, his gems, all went to purchase the favour, and at length the protection, of the Maratists. Not having it in his power to satisfy their cupidity, he opened loans on all sides, and granted illusory mortgages. Having nothing more left to dispose of, he was reduced, as a last resource, to sell his body-linen. In this very bargain was he engaged, when he was apprehended and sent to Marseilles. Although acquitted by the criminal tribunal, before which he was tried in the south of France, he was still detained there in prison. At first, he had shed tears, and given himself up to despair, but now hope once more revived his spirits, and he availed himself of the indulgence granted him, by giving way to his old habits of debauchery. On being brought to Paris after six months' confinement, he flattered himself that he should experience the same lenity in the capital. The jailer of the _Conciergerie,_ not knowing whether M. d'Orléans would leave that prison to ascend the throne or the scaffold, treated him with particular respect; and he himself was impressed with the idea that he would soon resume an ascendency in public affairs. But, on his second trial, he was unanimously declared guilty of conspiring against the unity and indivisibility of the Republic, and condemned to die, though no proof whatever of his guilt was produced to the jury. One interrogatory put to him is deserving of notice. It was this: "Did you not one day say to a deputy: _What will you ask of me when I am king?_ And did not the deputy reply: _I will ask you for a pistol to blow out your brains?_" Every one who was present at the condemnation of M. d'Orléans, and saw him led to the guillotine affirms that if he never shewed courage before, he did at least on that day. On hearing the sentence, he called out: "Let it be executed directly." From the revolutionary tribunal he was conducted straight to the scaffold, where, notwithstanding the reproaches and imprecations which accompanied him all the way, he met his fate with unshaken firmness. LETTER XIX. _Paris, November 18, 1801._ But if the _ci-devant Palais Royal_ has been the mine of political explosions, so it still continues to be the epitome of all the trades in Paris. Under the arcades, on the ground-floor, here are, as formerly, shops of jewellers, haberdashers, artificial florists, milliners, perfumers, print-sellers, engravers, tailors, shoemakers, hatters, furriers, glovers, confectioners, provision-merchants, woollen-drapers, mercers, cutlers, toymen, money-changers, and booksellers, together with several coffee-houses, and lottery-offices, all in miscellaneous succession. Among this enumeration, the jewellers' shops are the most attractive in point of splendour. The name of the proprietor is displayed in large letters of artificial diamonds, in a conspicuous compartment facing the door. This is a sort of signature, whose brilliancy eclipses all other names, and really dazzles the eyes of the spectators. But at the same time it draws the attention both of the learned and the illiterate: I will venture to affirm that the name of one of these jewellers is more frequently spelt and pronounced than that of any great man recorded in history, either ancient or modern. With respect to the price of the commodities exposed for sale in the _Palais du Tribunat_, it is much the same as in _Bond Street_, you pay one third at least for the idea of fashion annexed to the name of the place where you make the purchase, though the quality of the article may be nowise superior to what you might procure elsewhere. As in Bond Street too, the rents in this building are high, on which account the shopkeepers are, in some measure, obliged to charge higher than those in other parts of the town. Not but I must do them the justice to acknowledge that they make no scruple to avail themselves of every prejudice formerly entertained in favour of this grand emporium, in regard to taste, novelty, &c. by a still further increase of their prices. No small advantage to the shopkeepers established here is the chance custom, arising from such a variety of trades being collected together so conveniently, all within the same inclosure. A person resorting hither to procure one thing, is sure to be reminded of some other want, which, had not the article presented itself to his eye, would probably have escaped his recollection; and, indeed, such is the thirst of gain, that several tradesmen keep a small shop under these piazzas, independently of a large warehouse in another quarter of Paris. Pamphlets and other ephemeral productions usually make their first appearance in the _Palais du Tribunat_; and strangers may rely on being plagued by a set of fellows who here hawk about prohibited publications, of the most immoral tendency, embellished with correspondent engravings; such as _Justine, ou les malheurs de la vertu, Les quarante manières, &c._ They seldom, I am told, carry the publication about them, for fear of being unexpectedly apprehended, but keep it at some secret repository hard by, whence they fetch it in an instant. It is curious to see with what adroitness these vagrants elude the vigilance of the police, I had scarcely set my foot in this building before a Jew-looking fellow, coming close to me, whispered in my ear: "_Monsieur veut-il la vie polissonne de Madame--------?_" Madame who do you think? You will stare when I tell you to fill up the blank with the name of her who is now become the first female personage in France? I turned round with astonishment; but the ambulating book-vender had vanished, in consequence, as I conclude, of being observed by some _mouchard._ Thus, what little virtue may remain in the mind of youth is contaminated by precept, as well as example; and the rising generation is in a fair way of being even more corrupted than that which has preceded it. "_Ætas parentum, pejor avis, tulit Nos nequiores, mox daturos Progeniem vitiosiorem._" Besides the shops, are some auction-rooms, where you may find any article of wearing apparel or household furniture, from a lady's wig _à la Caraculla_ to a bed _à la Grecque:_ here are as many puffers as in a mock auction in London; and should you be tempted to bid, by the apparent cheapness of the object put up for sale, it is fifty to one that you soon repent of your bargain. Not so with the _magazins de confiance à prix fixé_, where are displayed a variety of articles, marked at a fixed price, from which there is no abatement. These establishments are extremely convenient, not only to ingenious mechanics, who have invented or improved a particular production of art, of which they wish to dispose, but also to purchasers. You walk in, and if any article strikes your fancy, you examine it at your ease; you consider the materials, the workmanship, and lastly the price, without being hurried by a loquacious shopkeeper into a purchase which you may shortly regret. A commission of from five to one half per cent, in graduated proportions, according to the value of the article, is charged to the seller, for warehouse-room and all other expenses. Such is the arrangement of the ground-floor; the apartments on the first floor are at present occupied by _restaurateurs_, exhibitions of various kinds, billiard-tables, and _académies de jeu_, or public gaming-tables, where all the passions are let loose, and all the torments of hell assembled. The second story is let out in lodgings, furnished or unfurnished, to persons of different descriptions, particularly to the priestesses of Venus. The rooms above, termed _mansardes_, in the French architectural dialect, are mostly inhabited by old batchelors, who prefer economy to show; or by artists, who subsist by the employment of their talents. These chambers are spacious, and though the ceilings are low, they receive a more uninterrupted circulation of fresh air, than the less exalted regions. Over the _mansardes_, in the very roof, are nests of little rooms, or cock-lofts, resembling, I am told, the cells of a beehive. Journeymen shopkeepers, domestics, and distressed females are said to be the principal occupiers of these aërial abodes. I had nearly forgot to mention a species of apartment little known in England: I mean the _entresol_, which is what we should denominate a low story, (though here not so considered), immediately above the ground-floor, and directly under the first-floor. In this building, some of the _entresols_ are inhabited by the shopkeepers below; some, by women of no equivocal calling, who throw out their lures to the idle youths sauntering under the arcades; and others again are now become _maisons de pret_, where pawnbrokers exercise their usurious dealings. In the _Palais du Tribunat_, as you may remark, not an inch of space is lost; every hole and corner being turned to account: here and there, the cellars even: are converted into scenes of gaiety and diversion, where the master of the house entertains his customers with a succession of vocal and instrumental music, while they are taking such refreshments as he furnishes. This speculation, which has, by all accounts, proved extremely profitable, was introduced in the early part of the revolution. Since that period, other speculations, engendered by the luxury of the times, have been set on foot within the precincts of this palace. Of two of these, now in full vigour and exercise, I must say a few words, as they are of a nature somewhat curious. The one is a _cabinet de décrotteur_, where the art of blacking shoes is carried to a pitch of perfection hitherto unknown in this country. Not many years ago, it was common, in Paris, to see counsellors, abbés, and military officers, as well as _petits-maîtres_ of every denomination, full dressed, that is, with their hat under their arm, their sword by their side, and their hair in a bag, standing in the open street, with one leg cocked up on a stool, while a rough Savoyard or Auvergnat hastily cleaned their shoes with a coarse mixture of lamp-black and rancid oil. At the present day, the _décrotteurs_ or shoe-blacks still exercise their profession on the _Pont Neuf_ and in other quarters; but, as a refinement of the art, there is also opened, at each of the principal entrances of the _Palais du Tribunat_, a _cabinet de décrotteur_, or small apartment, where you are invited to take a chair, and presented with the daily papers. The artist, with due care and expedition, first removes the dirt from your shoes or boots with a sponge occasionally moistened in water, and by means of several pencils, of different sizes, not unlike those of a limner, he then covers them with a jetty varnish, rivaling even japan in lustre. This operation he performs with a gravity and consequence that can scarcely fail to excite laughter. Yet, according to the trite proverb, it is not the customer who ought to indulge in mirth, but the _artist_. Although his price is much dearer than that demanded by the other professors of this art, his cabinet is seldom empty from morning to night; and, by a simple calculation, his pencil is found to produce more than that of some good painters of the modern French school. At the first view of the matter, it should appear that the other speculation might have been hit on by any man with a nose to his face; but, on more mature consideration, one is induced to think that its author was a person of some learning, and well read in ancient history. He, no doubt, took the hint from VESPASIAN. As that emperor blushed not to make the urine of the citizens of Rome a source of revenue, so the learned projector in question rightly judged that, in a place of such resort as the _Palais du Tribunat_, he might, without shame or reproach, levy a small tax on the Parisians, by providing for their convenience in a way somewhat analogous. His penetration is not unhandsomely rewarded; for he derives an income of 12,000 francs, or £500 sterling, from his _cabinets d'aisance_. Since political causes first occasioned the shuting up of the old _Théâtre Français_ in the _Faubourg St. Germain_, now reduced to a shell by fire, Melpomene and Thalia have taken up their abode in the south-west angle of the _Palais du Tribunat_, and in its north-west corner is another theatre, on a smaller scale, where Momus holds his court; so that be you seriously, sentimentally, or humorously disposed, you may, without quitting the shelter of the piazzas, satisfy your inclination. Tragedy, Comedy, and Farce all lie before you within the purlieus of this extraordinary edifice. To sum up all the conveniences of the _Palais du Tribunat_, suffice it to say, that almost every want, natural or artificial, almost every appetite, gross or refined, might be gratified without passing its limits; for, while the extravagant voluptuary is indulging in all the splendour of Asiatic luxury, the parsimonious sensualist need not depart unsatisfied. Placed in the middle of Paris, the _Palais du Tribunat_ has been aptly compared to a sink of vice, whose contagious effects would threaten society with the greatest evils, were not the scandalous scenes of the capital here concentrated into one focus. It has also been mentioned, by the same writer, Mercier, as particularly worthy of remark, that, since this building is become a grand theatre, where cupidity, gluttony, and licentiousness shew themselves under every form and excess, several other quarters of Paris are, in a manner, purified by the accumulation of vices which flourish in its centre. Whether or not this assertion be strictly correct, I will not pretend to determine: but, certain it is that the _Palais du Tribunat_ is a vortex of dissipation where many a youth is ingulfed. The natural manner in which this may happen I shall endeavour briefly to explain, by way of conclusion to this letter. A young Frenchman, a perfect stranger in Paris, arrives there from the country, and, wishing to equip himself in the fashion, hastens to the _Palais du Tribunat_, where he finds wearing apparel of every description on the _ground-floor_: prompted by a keen appetite, he dines at a _restaurateur's_ on the _first-floor_: after dinner, urged by mere curiosity, perhaps, if not decoyed by some sharper on the look-out for novices, he visits a public gaming-table on the same story. Fortune not smiling on him, he retires; but, at that very moment, he meets, on the landing-place, a captivating damsel, who, like Virgil's Galatea, flies to be pursued; and the inexperienced youth, after ascending another flight of stairs, is, on the _second-floor_, ushered into a brothel. Cloyed or disgusted there, he is again induced to try the humour of the fickle goddess, and repairs once more to the gaming-table, till, having lost all his money, he is under the necessity of descending to the _entresol_ to pawn his watch, before he can even procure a lodging in a _garret_ above. What other city in Europe can boast of such an assemblage of accommodation? Here, under the same roof, a man is, in the space of a few minutes, as perfectly equipped from top to toe, as if he had all the first tradesmen in London at his command; and shortly after, without setting his foot into the street, he is as completely stripped, as if he had fallen into the hands of a gang of robbers. To cleanse this Augæan stable, would, no doubt, be a Herculean labour. For that purpose, Merlin (of Douay), when Minister of the police, proposed to the Directory to convert the whole of the buildings of the _ci-devant Palais Royal_ into barracks. This was certainly striking at the root of the evil; but, probably, so bold a project was rejected, lest its execution, in those critical times, should excite the profligate Parisians to insurrection. LETTER XX. _Paris, November 20, 1801._ One of the private entertainments here in great vogue, and which is understood to mark a certain pre-eminence in the _savoir-vivre_ of the present day, is a nocturnal repast distinguished by the insignificant denomination of a THÉ. A stranger might, in all probability, be led to suppose that he was invited to a tea-drinking party, when he receives a note couched in the following terms: _"Madame R------ prie Monsieur B--------- de lui faire l'honneur de venir au thé quelle doit donner le 5 de ce mois."_ Considering in that light a similar invitation which I received, I was just on the point of sending an apology, when I was informed that a _thé_ was nothing more or less than a sort of rout, followed by substantial refreshments, and generally commencing after the evening's performance was ended at the principal theatres. On coming out of the opera-house then the other night, I repaired to the lady's residence in question, and arriving there about twelve o'clock, found that I had stumbled on the proper hour. As usual, there were cards, but for those only disposed to play; for, as this lady happened not to be under the necessity of recurring to the _bouillotte_ as a financial resource, she gave herself little or no concern about the card-tables. Being herself a very agreeable, sprightly woman, she had invited a number of persons of both sexes of her own character, so that the conversation was kept up with infinite vivacity till past one o'clock, when tea and coffee were introduced. These were immediately followed by jellies, sandwiches, pâtés, and a variety of savoury viands, in the style of a cold supper, together with different sorts of wines and liqueurs. In the opinion of some of the Parisian sybarites, however, no _thé_ can be complete without the addition of an article, which is here conceived to be a perfect imitation of fashionable English cheer. This is hot punch. It was impossible for me to refuse the cheerful and engaging _dame du logis_ to taste her _ponche_, and, in compliment to me as an Englishman, she presented me with a glass containing at least a treble allowance. Not being overfond of punch, I would willingly have relinquished the honour of drinking her health in so large a portion, apprehending that this beverage might, in quality, resemble that of the same name which I had tasted here a few evenings ago in one of the principal coffeehouses. The latter, in fact, was a composition of new rum, which reminded me of the trash of that kind distilled in New England, acidulated with rotten lemons, sweetened with capillaire, and increased by a _quantum sufficit_ of warm water. My hostess's punch, on the contrary, was made of the best ingredients, agreeably to the true standard; in a word, it was proper lady's punch, that is, hot, sweet, sour, and strong. It was distributed in tea-pots, of beautiful porcelaine, which, independently of keeping it longer warm, were extremely convenient for pouring it out without spilling. Thus concluded the entertainment. About half past two o'clock the party broke up, and I returned home, sincerely regretting the change in the mode of life of the Parisians. Before the revolution, the fashionable hour of dinner in Paris was three o'clock, or at latest four: public places then began early; the curtain at the grand French opera drew up at a quarter past five. At the present day, the workman dines at two; the tradesman, at three; the clerk in a public office, at four; the rich upstart, the money-broker, the stock-jobber, the contractor, at five; the banker, the legislator, the counsellor of state, at six; and the ministers, in general, at seven, nay not unfrequently at eight. Formerly, when the performance at the opera, and the other principal theatres, was ended at nine o'clock, or a quarter past, people of fashion supped at ten or half after; and a man who went much into public, and kept good company, might retire peaceably to rest by midnight. In three-fourths of the houses in Paris, there is now no such meal as supper, except on the occasion of a ball, when it is generally a mere scramble. This, I presume, is one reason why substantial breakfasts are so much in fashion. "_Déjeûners froids et chauds_," is an inscription which now generally figures on the exterior of a Parisian coffeehouse, beside that of "_Thé à l'Anglaise, Café à la crême, Limonade, &c_." Solids are here the taste of the times. Two ladies, who very gallantly invited themselves to breakfast at my apartments the other morning, were ready to turn the house out of the window, when they found that I presented to them nothing more than tea, coffee, and chocolate. I was instantly obliged to provide cold fowl, ham, oysters, white wine, &c. I marvel not at the strength and vigour of these French belles. In appetite, they would cope with an English ploughman, who had just turned up an acre of wholesome land on an empty stomach. Now, though a _thé_ may be considered as a substitute for a supper, it cannot, in point of agreeableness, be compared to a _petit souper_. If a man must sup, and I am no advocate for regular suppers, these were the suppers to my fancy. A select number of persons, well assorted, assembled at ten o'clock, after the opera was concluded, and spent a couple of hours in a rational manner. Sometimes a _petit souper_ consisted of a simple _tête-à-tête_, sometimes of a _partie quarrée_, or the number was varied at pleasure. But still, in a _petit souper_, not only much gaiety commonly prevailed, but also a certain _épanchement de coeur_, which animated the conversation to such a degree as to render a party of this description the _acme_ of social intercourse, "the feast of reason and the flow of soul." Under the old _régime_, not a man was there in office, from the _ministre d'état_ to the _commis_, who did not think of making himself amends for the fatigues of the morning by a _petit souper_: these _petits soupers_, however, were, in latter times, carried to an excessive pitch of luxurious extravagance. But for refinements attempted in luxury, though, I confess, of a somewhat dissolute nature, our countryman eclipsed all the French _bons vivans_ in originality of conception. Being in possession of an ample fortune, and willing to enjoy it according to his fancy, he purchased in Paris a magnificent house, but constructed on a small scale, where every thing that the most refined luxury could suggest was assembled. The following is the account given by one of his friends, who had been an eye-witness to his manner of living. "Mr. B---- had made it a rule to gratify his five senses to the highest degree of enjoyment of which they were susceptible. An exquisite table, perfumed apartments, the charms of music and painting; in a word, every thing most enchanting that nature, assisted by art, could produce, successively flattered his sight, his taste, his smell, his hearing, and his feeling. "In a superb saloon, whither he conducted me," says this gentleman, "were six young beauties, dressed in an extraordinary manner, whose persons, at first sight, did not appear unknown to me: it struck me that I had seen their faces more than once, and I was accordingly going to address them, when Mr. B----, smiling at my mistake, explained to me the cause of it." "I have, in my amours," said he, "a particular fancy. The choicest beauty of Circassia would have ho merit in my eyes, did she not resemble the portrait of some woman, celebrated in past ages: and while lovers set great value on a miniature which faithfully exhibits the features of their mistress, I esteem mine only in proportion to their resemblance to ancient portraits. "Conformably to this idea," continued Mr. B----, "I have caused the intendant of my pleasures to travel all over Europe, with select portraits, or engravings, copied from the originals. He has succeeded in his researches, as you see, since you have conceived that you recognized these ladies on whom you have never before set your eyes; but whose likenesses you may, undoubtedly, have met with. Their dress must have contributed to your mistake: they all wear the attire of the personage they represent; for I wish their whole person to be picturesque. By these means, I have travelled back several centuries, and am in possession of beauties whom time had placed at a great distance." "Supper was served up. Mr. B---- seated himself between Mary, queen of Scots, and Anne Bullein. I placed myself opposite to him," concludes the gentleman, "having beside me Ninon de l'Enclos, and Gabrielle d'Estrées. We also had the company of the fair Rosamond and Nell Gwynn; but at the head of the table was a vacant elbow-chair, surmounted by a canopy, and destined for Cleopatra, who was coming from Egypt, and of whose arrival Mr. B---- was in hourly expectation." LETTER XXI. _Paris, November 21, 1801._ Often as we have heard of the extraordinary number of places of public entertainment in Paris, few, if any, persons in England have an idea of its being so considerable as it is, even at the present moment. But, in 1799, at the very time when we were told over and over again in Parliament, that France was unable to raise the necessary supplies for carrying on the war, and would, as a matter of course, be compelled not only to relinquish her further projects of aggrandisement, but to return to her ancient territorial limits; at that critical period, there existed in Paris, and its environs, no less than seventy PUBLIC PLACES OF VARIOUS DESCRIPTIONS. Under the old _régime_, nothing like this number was ever known. Such an almost incredible variety of amusements is really a phenomenon, in the midst of a war, unexampled in its consumption of blood and treasure, It proves that, whatever may have been the public distress, there was at least a great _show_ of private opulence. Indeed I have been informed that, at the period alluded to, a spirit of indifference, prodigality, and dissipation, seemed to pervade every class of society. Whether placed at the bottom or the top of Fortune's wheel, a thirst of gain and want of economy were alike conspicuous among all ranks of people. Those who strained every nerve to obtain riches, squandered them with equal profusion. No human beings on earth can be more fond of diversion than the Parisians. Like the Romans of old, they are content if they have but _panem et circenses_, which a Frenchman would render by _spectacles et de quoi manger_. However divided its inhabitants may be on political subjects, on the score of amusement at least the Republic is one and indivisible. In times of the greatest scarcity, many a person went dinnerless to the theatre, eating whatever scrap he could procure, and consoling himself by the idea of being amused for the evening, and at the same time saving at home the expense of fire and candle. The following list of public places, which I have transcribed for your satisfaction, was communicated to me by a person of veracity; and, as far as it goes, its correctness has been confirmed by my own observation. Although it falls short of the number existing here two years ago, it will enable you to judge of the ardour still prevalent among the Parisians, for "running at the ring of pleasure." Few of these places are shut up, except for the winter; and new ones succeed almost daily to those which are finally closed. However, for the sake of perspicuity, I shall annex the letter S to such as are intended chiefly for summer amusement. 1. _Théâtre des Arts, Rue de la Loi_. 2. _------- Français, Rue de la Loi._ 3. _------- Feydeau, Rue Feydeau._ 4. _------- Louvois, Rue de Louvois._ 5. _------- Favart,_ now _Opéra Buffa._ 6. _------- de la Porte St. Martin._ 7. _------- de la Société Olympique_ (late _Opéra Buffa.)_ 8. _------- du Vaudeville, Rue de Chartres._ 9. _------- Montansier, Palais du Tribunat._ 10. _------- de l'Ambigu Comique, Boulevard du Temple._ 11. _------- de la Gaiété, Boulevard du Temple._ 12. _------- des Jeunes Artistes, Boulevard St. Martin._ 13. _------- des Jeunes Elèves, Rue de Thionville._ 14. _------- des Délassemens Comiques, Boulevard du Temple._ 15. _------- sans Prétension, Boulevard du Temple._ 16. _------- du Marais, Rue Culture Ste. Catherine._ 17. _------- de la Cité, vis-à-vis le Palais de Justice._ 18. _------- des Victoires, Rue du Bacq._ 19. _------- de Molière, Rue St. Martin._ 20. _------- de l'Estrapade._ 21. _------- de Mareux, Rue St. Antoine._ 22. _------- des Aveugles, Rue St. Denis._ 23. _------- de la Rue St. Jean de Beauvais._ 24. _Bal masqué de l'Opéra, Rue de la Loi._ 25. _---------- de l'Opéra Buffa, Rue de la Victoire._ 26. _Bal du Sallon des Étrangers, Rue Grange Batelière._ 27. _--- de l'Hôtel de Salm, Rue de Lille, Faubourg St. Germain._ 28. _--- de la Rue Michaudière._ 29. _Soirées amusantes de l'Hôtel Longueville, Place du Carrousel._ 30. _Veillées de la Cité, vis-à-vis le Palais de Justice._ 31. _Phantasmagorie de Robertson, Cour des Capucines._ 32. _Concert de Feydeau._ 33. _Ranelagh au bois de Boulogne._ 34. _Tivoli, Rue de Clichy_, S. 35. _Frascati, Rue de la Loi_, S. 36. _Idalie_, S. 37. _Hameau de Chantilly, aux Champs Élysées._ 38. _Paphos, Boulevard du Temple._ 39. _Vauxhall d'hiver._ 40. _-------- d'été_, S. 41. _-------- à Mousseaux_, S. 42. _-------- à St. Cloud_, S. 43. _-------- au Petit Trianon_, S. 44. _Jardin de l'hôtel Biron, Rue de Varenne_, S. 45. _------ Thélusson, Chaussée d'Antin_, S. 40. _------ Marboeuf, Grille de Chaillot_, S. 47. _------ de l'hôtel d'Orsay_, S. 48. _Fêtes champêtres de Bagatelle_, S. 49. _La Muette, à l'entrée du Bois de Boulogne_, S. 50. _Colisée, au Parc des Sablons_, S. 51. _Amphithéâtre d'équitation de Franconi, aux Capucines._ 52. _Panorama, même lieu._ 53. _Exhibition de Curtius, Boulevard du Temple._ 54. _Expériences Physiques, au Palais du Tribunat._ 55. _La Chaumière, aux Nouveaux Boulevards._ 56. _Cabinet de démonstration de Physiologie et de Pathologie, au Palais du Tribunat, No. 38, au premier._ Although, previously to the revolution, the taste for dramatic amusements had imperceptibly spread, Paris could then boast of no more than three principal theatres, exclusively of _l'Opéra Buffa_ introduced in 1788. These were _l'Opéra les Français_, and _les Italiens_, which, with six inferior ones, called _petits spectacles_, brought the whole of the theatres to ten in number. The subaltern houses were incessantly checked in their career by the privileges granted to the _Comédie Française_, which company alone enjoyed the right to play first-rate productions: it also possessed that of censorship, and sometimes exercised it in the most despotic manner. Authors, ever in dispute with the comedians, who dictated the law to them, solicited, but in vain, the opening of a second French theatre. The revolution took place, and the unlimited number of theatres was presently decreed. A great many new ones were opened; but the attraction of novelty dispersing the amateurs, the number of spectators did not always equal the expectation of the managers; and the profits, divided among so many competitors, ceased to be sufficiently productive for the support of every establishment of this description. The consequence was, that several of them were soon reduced to a state of bankruptcy. Three theatres of the first and second rank have been destroyed by fire within these two years, yet upwards of twenty are at present open, almost every night, exclusively of several associations of self-denominated _artistes-amateurs._ Amidst this false glare of dramatic wealth, theatres of the first rank have imperceptibly declined, and at last fallen. It comes not within my province or intention to seek the causes of this in the defects of their management; but the fact is notorious. The _Théâtres Favart_ and _Feydeau_, at each of which French comic operas were chiefly represented, have at length been obliged to unite the strength of their talents, and the disgrace which they have experienced, has not affected any of those inferior playhouses where subaltern performers establish their success on an assemblage of scenes more coarse, and language more unpolished. At the present moment, the government appear to have taken this decline of the principal theatres into serious consideration. It is, I understand, alike to be apprehended, that they may concern themselves too little or too much in their welfare. Hitherto the persons charged with the difficult task of upholding the falling theatres of the first rank, have had the good sense to confine their measures to conciliation; but, of late, it has been rumoured that the stage is to be subjected to its former restrictions. The benefit resulting to the art itself and to the public, from a rivalship of theatres, is once more called in question: and some people even go so far as to assert that, with the exception of a few abuses, the direction of the _Gentils-hommes de la chambre_ was extremely good: thence it should seem that the only difficulty is to find these lords of the bed-chamber, if there be any still in being, in order to restore to them their dramatic sceptre.[1] Doubtless, the liberty introduced by the revolution has been, in many respects, abused, and in too many, perhaps, relative to places of public amusement. But must it, on that account, be entirely lost to the stage, and falling into a contrary excess, must recourse be had to arbitrary measures, which might also be abused by those to whose execution they were intrusted? The unlimited number of theatres may be a proper subject for the interference of the government: but as to the liberty of the theatres, included in the number that may be fixed on to represent pieces of every description, such only excepted as may be hurtful to morals, seems to be a salutary and incontestable principle. This it is that, by disengaging the French comic opera from the narrow sphere to which it was confined, has, in a great measure, effected a musical revolution, at which all persons of taste must rejoice, by introducing on that stage the harmonic riches of Italy. This too it is that has produced, on theatres of the second and third rank, pieces which are neither deficient in regularity, connexion, representation, nor decoration. The effect of such a principle was long wanted here before the revolution, when the independent spirit of dramatic authors was fettered by the procrastinations of a set of privileged comedians, who discouraged them by ungracious refusals, or disgusted them by unjust preferences. Hence, the old adage in France that, when an author had composed a good piece, he had performed but half his task; this was true, as the more difficult half, namely, the getting it read and represented, still remained to be accomplished. As for the multiplicity of playhouses, it certainly belongs to the government to limit their number, not by privileges which might be granted through favour, or obtained, perhaps, for money. The taste of the public for theatrical diversions being known, the population should first be considered, as it is that which furnishes both money and spectators. It would be easy to ascertain the proportion between the population of the capital and the number of theatres which it ought to comprise. Public places should be free as to the species of amusement, but limited in their number, so as not to exceed the proportion which the population can bear. The houses would then be constantly well attended, and the proprietors, actors, authors, and all those concerned in their success, secure against the consequences of failure, and the true interest of the art be likewise promoted. In a word, neither absolute independence, nor exclusive privilege should prevail; but a middle course be adopted, in order to fix the fate of those great scenic establishments, which, by forming so essential a part of public diversion, have a proportionate influence on the morals of the nation. I have been led, by degrees, into these observations, not only from a review of the decline of some of the principal playhouses here, but also from a conviction that their general principle is applicable to every other capital in Europe. What, for example, can be more absurd than, in the dog-days, when room and air are particularly requisite, that the lovers of dramatic amusement in the British metropolis are to be crammed into a little theatre in the Haymarket, and stewed year after year, as in a sweating-room at a bagnio, because half a century ago an exclusive privilege was inconsiderately granted? The playhouses here, in general, have been well attended this winter, particularly the principal ones; but, in Paris, every rank has not exactly its theatre as at a ball. From the _spectacles_ on the _Boulevards_ to those of the first and second rank, there is a mixture of company. Formerly, the lower classes confined themselves solely to the former; at present, they visit the latter. An increase of wages has enabled the workman to gratify his inclination for the indulgence of a species of luxury; and, by a sort of instinct, he now and then takes a peep at those scenes of which he before entertained, from hearsay, but an imperfect idea. If you wish to see a new or favourite piece, you must not neglect to secure a seat in proper time; for, on such occasions, the house is full long before the rising of the curtain. As to taking places in the manner we do in England, there is no such arrangement to be made, except, indeed, you choose to take a whole box, which is expensive. In that case you pay for it at the time you engage it, and it is kept locked the whole evening, or till you and your party, make your appearance.[2] At all the _spectacles_ in Paris, you are literally kept on the outside of the house till you have received a ticket, in exchange for your money, through an aperture in the exterior wall. Within a few paces of the door of the principal theatres are two receiver's offices, which are no sooner open, than candidates for admission begin to form long ranks, extending from the portico into the very street, and advance to them two abreast in regular succession. A steady sentinel, posted at the aperture, repeats your wishes to the receiver, and in a mild, conciliating manner, facilitates their accomplishment. Other sentinels are stationed for the preservation of order, under the immediate eye of the officer, who sees that every one takes his turn to obtain tickets: however, it is not uncommon, for forestallers to procure a certain number of them, especially at the representation of a new or favourite piece, and offer them privately at a usurious price which many persons are glad to pay rather than fall into the rear of the ranks. The method I always take to avoid this unpleasant necessity, I will recommend to you as a very simple one, which may, perhaps, prevent you from many a theatrical disappointment. Having previously informed myself what _spectacle_ is best worth seeing, while I am at dinner I send my _valet de place_, or if I cannot conveniently spare him, I desire him to dispatch a _commissionnaire_ for the number of tickets wanted, so that when I arrive at the theatre, I have only to walk in, and place myself to the best advantage. It is very wisely imagined not to establish the receiver's offices in the inside of the house, as in our theatres. By this plan, however great may be the crowd, the entrance is always unobstructed, and those violent struggles and pressures, which among us have cost the lives of many, are effectually prevented. You will observe that no half-price is taken at any theatre in Paris; but in different parts of the house, there are offices, called _bureaux de supplément_, where, if you want to pass from one part of it to another, you exchange your counter-mark on paying the difference. Nothing can be better regulated than the present police, both interior and exterior, of the theatres in Paris. The eye is not shocked, as was formerly the case, by the presence of black-whiskered grenadiers, occupying different parts of the house, and, by the inflexible sternness of their countenance, awing the spectators into a suppression of their feelings. No fusileer, with a fixed bayonet and piece loaded with ball, now dictates to the auditors of the pit that such a seat must hold so many persons, though several among them might, probably, be as broad-bottomed as Dutchmen. If you find yourself incommoded by heat or pressure, you are at liberty to declare it without fear of giving offence. The criticism of a man of taste is no longer silenced by the arbitrary control of a military despot, who, for an exclamation or gesture, not exactly coinciding with his own prepossessions, pointed him out to his myrmidons, and transferred him at once to prison. You may now laugh with Molèire, or weep with Racine, without having your mirth or sensibility thus unseasonably checked in its expansion. The existence of this despotism has been denied; but facts are stubborn things, and I will relate to you an instance in which I saw it most wantonly exercised. Some years ago I was present at the _Théâtre Français_, when, in one of Corneille's pieces, Mademoiselle Raucourt, the tragic actress, was particularly negligent in the delivery of a passage, which, to do justice to the author, required the nicest discrimination. An amateur in the _parterre_ reproved her, in a very gentle manner, for a wrong emphasis. Being at this time a favourite of the queen, she was, it seems, superior to admonition, and persisted in her misplaced shrieks, till it became evident that she set the audience at defiance: other persons then joined the former in expressing their disapprobation. Instantly the _major_ singled out the leading critic: two grenadiers forced their way to the place where he was seated, and conveyed him to prison for having had the audacity to reprove an actress in favour at court. From such improper exercise of authority, the following verse had become a proverb: _"II est bien des sifflets, mais nous avons la garde."_ Many there are, I know, who approved of this manner of bridling the fickle Parisians, on the ground that they were so used to the curb that they could no longer dispense with it. A guard on the outside of a theatre is unquestionably necessary, and proper for the preservation of order; but that the public should not be at liberty to approve or condemn such a passage, or such an actor, is at once to stifle the expression of that general opinion which alone can produce good performers. The interior police of the theatre being at present almost entirely in the hands of the public themselves, it is, on that account, more justly observed and duly respected. Considering the natural impetuosity of their character, one is surprised at the patient tranquillity with which the French range themselves in their places. Seldom do they interrupt the performance by loud conversation, but exchange their thoughts in a whisper. When one sees them applaud with rapture a tender scene, which breathes sentiments of humanity or compassion, speaks home to every feeling heart, and inspires the most agreeable sensations, one is tempted to question whether the Parisians of the present day belong to the identical race that could, at one time, display the ferocity of tigers, and, at another, the tameness of lambs, while their nearest relations and best friends were daily bleeding on the scaffold? By the existing regulations, many of which are worthy of being adopted in London, no theatre can be opened in Paris without the permission of the police, who depute proper persons to ascertain that the house is solidly built, the passages and outlets unincumbered and commodious, and that it is provided with reservoirs of water, and an adequate number of fire-engines. Every public place that may be open, is to be shut up immediately, if, for one single day, the proprietors neglect to keep the reservoirs full of water, the engines in proper order, and the firemen ready. No persons can be admitted behind the scenes, except those employed in the service of the theatre. Nor is the number of tickets distributed to exceed that of the persons the house can conveniently hold. No coachman, under any pretext whatever, can quit the reins of his horses, while the persons he has driven, are getting out of or into their carriage. Indeed, the necessity of his doing so is obviated by porters stationed at the door of the theatres, and appointed by the police. They are distinguished by a brass plate, on which their permission and the name of the theatre are engraved. At all the theatres in Paris, there is an exterior guard, which is at the disposal of the _civil_ officer, stationed there for the preservation of order. This guard cannot enter the inside of the theatre but in case of the safety of the public being exposed, and at the express requisition of the said officer, who can never introduce the armed force into the house, till after he has, in a loud voice, apprized the audience of his intention. Every citizen is bound to obey, _provisionally_, the officer of police. In consequence, every person invited by the officer of police, or summoned by him, to quit the house, is immediately to repair to the police-office of the theatre, in order to give such explanations as may be required of him. The said officer may either transfer him to the competent tribunal, or set him at liberty, according to circumstances. Proper places are appointed for carriages to wait at. When the play is ended, no carriage in waiting can move till the first crowd coming out of the house has disappeared. The commanding officer of the guard on duty decides the moment when carriages may be called. No carriage can move quicker than a foot-pace, and but on a single rank, till it has got clear of the streets in the vicinity of the theatre. Nor can it arrive thither but by the streets appointed for that purpose. Two hours before the rising of the curtain, sentinels are placed in sufficient number to facilitate the execution of these orders, and to prevent any obstruction in the different avenues of the theatre. Indeed, obstruction is now seldom seen; I have more than once had the curiosity to count, and cause to be counted, all the _private_ carriages in waiting at the grand French opera, on a night when the boxes were filled with the most fashionable company. Neither I nor my _valet de place_ could ever reckon more than from forty to fifty; whereas, formerly, it was not uncommon to see here between two and three hundred; and the noise of so many equipages rattling through the streets, from each of the principal theatres, sufficiently indicated that the performance was ended. By the number of advertisements in the _petites affiches_ or daily advertiser of Paris, offering a reward for articles lost, no doubt can exist of there being a vast number of pickpockets in this gay capital; and a stranger must naturally draw such an inference from observing where the pockets are placed in men's clothes: in the coat, it is in the inside of the facing, parallel to the breast: in the waistcoat, it is also in the inside, but lower down, so that when a Frenchman wants to take out his money, he must go through the ceremony of unbuttoning first his surtout, if he wears one in winter, then his coat, and lastly his waistcoat. In this respect, the ladies have the advantage; for, as I have already mentioned, they wear no pockets. [Footnote 1: During the old _régime_, the theatres were under the control of the _Gentils-hommes de la chambre_, but at the establishment of the directorial government, they were placed in the power of the Minister of the Interior, in whose department they have since continued. Of late, however, it is asserted, that they are each to be under the direction of a Prefect of the Palace.] [Footnote 2: Independently of the boxes reserved for the officers of the staff of the city of Paris, and those at the head of the police, who have individually free admission to all the _spectacles_ on producing their ivory ticket, there is also a box at each theatre appropriated to the Minister of Public Instruction.] LETTER XXII. _Paris, November 23, 1801._ Yesterday being the day appointed for the opening of the session of the Legislative Body, I was invited by a member to accompany him thither, in order to witness their proceedings. No one can be admitted without a ticket; and by the last constitution it is decreed, that not more than two hundred strangers are to be present at the sittings. The gallery allotted for the accommodation of the public, is small, even in proportion to that number, and, in general, extremely crowded. My friend, aware of this circumstance, did me the favour to introduce me into the body of the hall, where I was seated very conveniently, both for seeing and hearing, near the _tribune_, to the left of the President. This hall was built for the Council of Five Hundred, on the site of the grand apartments of the _Palais Bourbon_. Since the accession of the consular government, it has been appropriated to the sittings of the Legislative Body, on which account the palace has taken their name, and over the principal entrance is inscribed, in embossed characters of gilt bronze: PALAIS DU CORPS LÉGISLATIF. The palace stands on the south bank of the Seine, facing the _Pont de la Concorde_. It was begun, in 1722, for Louise-Françoise de Bourbon, a legitimated daughter of Lewis XIV. GIRARDINI, an Italian architect, planned the original building, the construction of which was afterwards superintended by LASSURANCE and GABRIEL. The Prince de Condé having acquired it by purchase, he caused it to be considerably augmented and embellished, at different times, under the direction of BARRAU, CARPENTIER and BÉLISARD. Had the _Pont de la Concorde_ subsisted previously to the erection of the _Palais Bourbon_, the principal entrance would, probably, have been placed towards the river; but it faces the north, and is preceded by a paltry square, now called _Place du Corps Législatif_. In the centre of a peristyle, of the Corinthian order, is the grand gateway, crowned by a sort of triumphal arch, which is connected, by a double colonnade, to two handsome pavilions. The lateral buildings of the outer court, which is two hundred and eighty feet in length, are decorated with the same order, and a second court of two hundred and forty feet, includes part of the original palace, which is constructed in the Italian style. The principal entrances to the right and left lead to two halls; the one dedicated to _Peace_; the other, to _Victory_. On the one side, is a communication to the apartments of the old palace; on the other, are two spacious rooms. The room to the left, inscribed to _Liberty_, is intended for petitioners, &c.; that to the right, inscribed to _Equality_, is appropriated to conferences. Between the halls of Liberty and Equality, is the hall of the sittings of the Legislative Body. The form of this hall is semicircular; the benches, rising gradually one above the other, as in a Roman amphitheatre, are provided with backs, and well adapted both for ease and convenience. They are intersected by passages, which afford to the members the facility of reaching or quitting their places, without disturbance or confusion. Every seat is distinguished by a number, so that a deputy can never be at a loss to find his place. In the centre, is an elevated rostrum, with a seat for the President, directly under which is the _tribune_, also elevated, for the orator addressing the assembly. The tribune is decorated by a bas-relief, in white marble, representing France writing her constitution, and Fame proclaiming it. The table for the four secretaries is placed facing the tribune, beneath which the _huissiers_ take their station. The desk and seat of the President, formed of solid mahogany, are ornamented with _or moulu_. The folding doors, which open into the hall, to the right and left of the President's chair, are also of solid mahogany, embellished in the same manner. Their frames are of white marble, richly sculptured. Independently of these doors, there are others, serving as a communication to the upper-seats, by means of two elegant stone stair-cases. In six niches, three on each side of the tribune, are so many statues of Greek and Roman legislators. On the right, are Lycurgus, Solon, and Demosthenes: on the left, Brutus, Cato, and Cicero. The inside of the hall is in stucco, and the upper part is decorated by a colonnade of the Ionic order. The light proceeds from a cupola, glazed in the centre, and the remainder of which is divided into small compartments, each ornamented by an emblematical figure. The floor is paved with marble, also in compartments, embellished with allegorical attributes. Having made you acquainted with the hall of the sittings, I think it may not be uninteresting to give you an account of the forms observed in opening the session. When I arrived, with my friend, at the Palace of the Legislative Body, most of the members were already assembled in the apartments of their library. At noon, they thence repaired to the hall, preceded by the _huissiers_, messengers of state, and secretaries. The opening of the session was announced by the report of artillery. The oldest member, in point of years, took the President's chair, provisionally. The four youngest members of the assembly were called to the table to discharge the office of secretaries, also provisionally. The provisional President then declared, that the members of the Legislative Body were assembled by virtue of Article XXXIII of the constitution, for the session of the year X; that, being provisionally organized, the sitting was opened; and that their names were going to be called over, for the purpose of ascertaining the number of members present, and for forming definitive arrangements, by the nomination of a president and four secretaries. The names were then called over alphabetically, and, after they were all gone through, they were recalled. This ceremony being terminated, four committees, each composed of four members, whose names were drawn by lot by the President, proceeded, in presence of the assembly, to scrutinize the ballot. It thence resulted, that the number of members present was two hundred and twenty-eight; That Citizen DUPUIS was elected President by a majority of votes; That Citizens DUBOSC, BORD, ESTAQUE, and CLAVIER were individually elected, by a similar majority, to officiate as secretaries. In consequence. Citizen DUPUIS was proclaimed President, and took the chair. He then moved the following resolution, which was agreed to: "The Legislative Body declares, that it is definitely constituted, and decrees that the present declaration shall be carried to the Conservative Senate, to the Tribunate, and to the Consuls of the Republic, by a messenger of State." The President next addressed the assembly in these words: "Citizens Legislators, "After twelve years of a painful and glorious struggle against all Europe, in order to insure the triumph of the liberty of man and that of nations, the moment is at length arrived when Peace is on the point of crowning the efforts of the French people, and securing the Republic on a foundation never to be shaken. For this peace, which will unite by the bonds of friendship two great nations, already connected by esteem, we are indebted to the valour and wisdom of the heroic pacificator, to the wise administration of the government, to the bravery of our invincible armies, to the good understanding subsisting between all the constituted authorities, and, above all, to that spirit of moderation which has known how to fix limits to victory itself. The name of peace, so dear to the friend of human nature, ought to impose silence on all malignant passions, cordially unite all the children of the same country, and be the signal of happiness to the present generation, as well as to our posterity. "How gratifying is it to us, Citizens Legislators, after having passed through the storms of a long revolution, to have at length brought safely into port the sacred bark of the Republic, and to begin this session by the proclamation of peace to the world, as those who preceded us opened theirs by the proclamation of the Rights of Man and that of the Republic! To crown this great work, nothing more remains for us but to make those laws so long expected, which are to complete social organization, and regulate the interests of citizens. This code, already prepared by men of consummate prudence, will, I hope, be soon submitted to your examination and sanction; and the present session will be the most glorious epoch of our Republic: for there is nothing more glorious to man than to insure the happiness of his fellow-creatures, and scatter beforehand the first seeds of the liberty of the world." "_L'impression! L'impression!_" was the cry that instantly proceeded from bench to bench on the close of this speech, which was delivered in a manner that did honour to the President's feelings. But, though you have it, as it were, at second-hand, and cannot be struck by Citizen DUPUIS' manner, I hope you will deem the matter sufficiently interesting to justify its insertion in this letter. Three orators, deputed by the government, were next announced, and introduced in form. They were habited in their dress of Counsellors of State, that is, a scarlet coat, richly embroidered in shaded silks of the same colour, over which they wore a tricoloured silk sash. One of them, having ascended the tribune, and obtained leave to speak, read an extract from the registers of the Council of State, dated the 24th of Brumaire, purporting that the First Consul had nominated the Counsellors of State, REGNIER, BÉRENGER, and DUMAS to repair to the present sitting. Citizen REGNIER then addressed the assembly in the name of the government. He read his speech from a paper which he held in his hand. It began by announcing the signature of the preliminaries of peace with England, and informed the Legislative Body that measures had been taken by the government for regulating the various branches of the interior administration and of its intention to submit to them the civil code. It was replete with language of a conciliating nature, and concluded with a wish that the most unalterable harmony might subsist between the first authorities of the State, and strengthen in the mind of the people the confidence which they already testified. From the tenour of this speech, I think it may be inferred that the government is apprehensive of a difference of opinion respecting the civil code; not so much in this place, for, by the constitution, the lips of the deputies are sealed, but in the Tribunate, where a warm discussion may be expected. The President made a short and apt reply to the orators of the government, who then retired with the same ceremony with which they had entered. Both these speeches were ordered to be printed. The Conservative Senate addressed to the Legislative Body, by a message read by the President, the different acts emanated from its authority since the last session. Ordered to be inserted in the Journals. A few letters were also read by the President from different members, excusing themselves for non-attendance on account of indisposition. Several authors having addressed a copy of their works to the Legislative Body, these presents were accepted, and ordered to be placed in their library. The administrative commission of the Legislative Body announced that the ambassador of the Cisalpine Republic had sent a present of three hundred medals, struck on occasion of the peace and of the _forum Bonaparte_, which medals were distributed to the members. The assembly the broke up, the next sitting being appointed for the following day at noon. Lord Cornwallis and suite sat in the box allotted to Foreign Ministers, facing the President, as did the Marquis de Lucchesini, the Prussian ambassador, and some others. A small box is likewise appropriated to reporters, who take down the proceedings. The members were all habited in their appointed dress, which consists of a dark blue coat embroidered with gold, blue pantaloons and white waistcoat, also embroidered, a tricoloured silk sash, worn above the coat, and ornamented with a rich gold fringe. They wore a plain cocked hat, with the national cockade, and short boots. This meeting of legislators, all in the same dress, undoubtedly presents a more imposing spectacle than such a variegated assemblage as is sometimes to be seen in our House of Commons. By the present constitution, you will see that no new law can be promulgated, unless decreed by the Legislative Body. The votes in this assembly being taken by ballot, and the laws being enacted without any discussion, on the part of its members, on the plans debated before it by the orators of the Tribunate and of the government, it necessarily follows that the sittings present far less interest to strangers, than would result from an animated delivery of the opinion of a few leading orators. Before I take leave of this palace, I must introduce you into the suite of rooms formerly distinguished by the appellation of _petits appartemens du Palais Bourbon_, and which, before the revolution, constituted one of the curiosities of Paris. In the distribution of these, BÉLISARD assembled all the charms of modern elegance. The vestibule, coloured in French gray, contains, in the intervals between the doors, figures of Bacchantes, and, in the ceiling, wreaths of roses and other ornaments painted in imitation of relief. The eating-room, which comes next, is decorated so as to represent a verdant bower, the paintings are under mirrors, and tin-plate, cut out in the Chinese manner, seems to shew light through the foliage. In two niches, made in the arbour-work, in the form of porticoes, which Cupids are crowning with garlands, are placed two statues from the antique, the one representing Venus _pudica_, and the other, Venus _callypyga_, or _aux belles fesses_: mirrors, placed in the niches, reflect beauties which the eye could not discover. The drawing room, another enchanting place, is of a circular form, surrounded with Ionic pillars. In the intercolumniations, are arches lined with mirrors, and ornamented with the most tasteful hangings. Under each arch is a sopha. The ceiling represents caryatides supporting a circular gallery, between which are different subjects, such as the Toilet of Venus, the Departure of Adonis, &c. Every thing here is gallant and rich; but mark the secret wonder. You pull a string; the ceiling rises like a cloud, and exhibits to view an extensive sky, with which it becomes confounded. The music of an invisible orchestra, placed above the ceiling, used to be heard through the opening, and produced a charming effect, when entertainments were given in these apartments. This is not all. You pull another string; and, by means of concealed machinery, the aperture of the three casements suddenly becomes occupied by pannels of mirrors, so that you may here instantly turn day into night. The bed-chamber, the _boudoir_, the study, &c., are all decorated in a style equally elegant and tasteful. LETTER XXIII. _Paris, November 25, 1801._ Of all the public edifices in this capital, I know of none whose interior astonishes so much, at first sight, and so justly claims admiration, especially from those who have a knowledge of architecture or mechanics, as the HALLE AU BLÉ. This building is destined for the reception of corn and flour: it was begun in 1762, on the site of the ancient _Hôtel de Soissons_, which was purchased by the city of Paris. In the space of three years, the hall and the circumjacent houses were finished, under the direction of the architect, CAMUS DE MEZIÈRE. The circular form of this hall, the solidity of its construction, its insulated position, together with the noble simplicity of its decoration, perfectly accord with the intention and character of the object proposed. Twenty-five arches, all of equal size, serve each as an entrance. On the ground-floor are pillars of the Tuscan order, supporting vast granaries, the communication to which is by two stair-cases of well-executed design. The court is covered by a cupola of one hundred and twenty feet in diameter, forming a perfect semicircle, whose centre, taken on a level with the cornice, is forty-four feet from the ground. The dome of the Pantheon at Rome, which is the largest known, exceeds that of the _Halle au Blé_ by thirteen feet only. This cupola is entirely composed of deal boards, a foot in breadth, an inch in thickness, and about four feet in length. It is divided into twenty-five lateral openings, which give as many rays of light diverging from the centre-opening, whose diameter is twenty-four feet. These openings are all glazed, and the wood-work of the dome is covered with sheets of tinned copper. PHILIBERT DE L'ORME, architect to Henry II, was the original author of this new method of covering domes, though he never carried it into execution. As a homage for the discovery, MOLINOS and LEGRAND, the architects of the cupola, have there placed a medallion with his portrait. It is said that this experiment was deemed so hazardous, that the builder could find no person bold enough to strike away the shores, and was under the necessity of performing that task in person. To him it was not a fearful one; but the workmen, unacquainted with the principles of this manner of roofing buildings, were astonished at the stability of the dome, when the shores were removed. No place in Paris could well be more convenient for giving a banquet than the _Halle au Blé_; twelve or fourteen hundred persons might here be accommodated at table; and little expense would be required for decoration, as nothing can be more elegant than the cupola itself. Several periodical publications give a statement, more or less exact, of the quantity of flour lodged in this spacious repository, which is filled and emptied regularly every four or five days. But these statements present not the real consumption of Paris, since several bakers draw their supply directly from the farmers of the environs; and, besides, a great quantity of loaves are brought into the capital from some villages, famous for making bread, whose inhabitants come and retail them to the Parisians. The annual consumption of bread-corn in this capital has, on an average, been computed at twenty-four millions of bushels. But it is not the consumption only that it is useful to know: the most material point to be ascertained, is the method of providing effectually for it; so that, from a succession of unfavourable harvests, or any other cause, the regular supplies may not experience even a momentary interruption. When it is considered that Paris contains eight or nine hundred thousand of the human race, it is evident that this branch of administration requires all the vigilance of the government. Bread is now reckoned enormously dear, nineteen _sous_ for the loaf of four pounds; but, during the winter of 1794, the Parisians felt all the horrors of a real famine. Among other articles of the first necessity, bread was then so scarce, that long ranks of people were formed at the doors of the bakers' shops, each waiting in turn to receive a scanty portion of two ounces. The consumption of flour here is considerably increased by the immense number of dogs, cats, monkies, parrots, and other birds, kept by persons of every class, and fed chiefly on bread and biscuit. No poor devil that has not in his miserable lodging a dog to keep him company: not being able to find a friend among his own species, he seeks one in the brute creation. A pauper of this description, who shared his daily bread with his faithful companion, being urged to part with an animal that cost him so much to maintain: "Part with him!" rejoined he; "who then shall I get to love me?" Near the _Halle au Blé_, stands a large fluted pillar of the Doric order, which formerly belonged to the _Hôtel de Soissons_, and served as an observatory to Catherine de Medicis. In the inside, is a winding stair-case, leading to the top, whither that diabolical woman used frequently to ascend, accompanied by astrologers, and there perform several mysterious ceremonies, in order to discover futurity in the stars. She wore on her stomach a skin of parchment, strewn with figures, letters, and characters of different colours; which skin she was persuaded had the virtue of insuring her from any attempt against her person. Much about that period, 1572, there were reckoned, in Paris alone, no less than thirty thousand astrologers. At the present day, the ambulating magicians frequent the _Old Boulevards_, and there tell fortunes for three or four _sous_; while those persons that value science according to the price set on it, disdaining these two-penny conjurers, repair to fortune-tellers of a superior class, who take from three to six francs, and more, when the opportunity offers. The TROPHONIUS of Paris is Citizen Martin, who lives at N° 1773 _Rue d'Anjou_: the PHEMONOË is Madame Villeneuve, _Rue de l'Antechrist_. Formerly, none but courtesans here drew the cards; now, almost every female, without exception, has recourse to them. Many a fine lady even conceives herself to be sufficiently mistress of the art to tell her own fortune; and some think they are so skilled in reading futurity in the cards, that they dare not venture to draw them for themselves, for fear of discovering some untoward event. This rage of astrology and fortune-telling is a disease which peculiarly affects weak intellects, ruled by ignorance, or afflicted by adversity. In the future, such persons seek a mitigation of the present; and the illusive enjoyments of the mind make them almost forget the real sufferings of the body. According to Pope, "Hope springs eternal in the human breast, Man never _is_, but always _to be_ blest." At the foot of the above pillar, the only one of the sort in Paris, is erected a handsome fountain, which furnishes water from the Seine. At two-thirds of its height is a dial of a singular kind, which marks the precise hour at every period of the day, and in all seasons. It is the invention of Father Pingré, who was a regular canon of St. Geneviève, and member of the _ci-devant_ Academy of Sciences. While we are in this quarter, let us avail ourselves of the moment; and, proceeding from the _Halle au Blé_ along the _Rue Oblin_, examine the CHURCH OF SAINT EUSTACHE. This church, which is one of the most spacious in Paris, is situated at the north extremity of the _Rue des Prouvaires_, facing the _Rue du Jour_. It was begun in 1532, but not finished till the year 1642. Notwithstanding the richness of its architecture, it presents not an appearance uniformly handsome, on account of the ill-combined mixture of the Greek and Gothic styles: besides, the pillars are so numerous in it, that it is necessary to be placed in the nave to view it to the best advantage. The new portal of _St. Eustache_, which was constructed in 1754, is formed of two orders, the Doric and the Ionic, the one above the other. At each extremity of this portal, rise two insulated towers, receding from all the projection of the inferior order, and decorated by Corinthian columns with pilasters, on an attic serving as a socle. These two towers were to have been crowned by a balustrade; one alone has been finished. Several celebrated personages have been interred in this church. Among them, I shall particularize one only; but that one will long live in the memory of every convivial British seaman. Who has not heard the lay which records the defeat of Tourville? Yes-- He who "on the main triumphant rode To meet the gallant Russel in combat o'er the deep;" Who "led his noble troops of heroes bold To sink the English admiral and his fleet." Though considered by his countrymen, as one of the most eminent seamen that France ever produced, and enjoying at the time of his death the dignity of Marshal, together with that of Vice-admiral of the kingdom, Tourville never had an epitaph. He died on the 28th of May 1701, aged 59. Some of the monuments which existed here have been transferred to the Museum in the _Rue des Petits Augustins_, where may be seen the sarcophagus of Colbert, Minister to Lewis XIV, and the medallion of Cureau de la Chambre, physician to that king, and also his physiognomist, whom he is said to have constantly consulted in the selection of his ministers. Among the papers of that physician there still exists, in an unpublished correspondence with Lewis XIV, this curious memorandum: "Should I die before his majesty, he would run a great risk of making, in future, many a bad choice." It is impossible to enter one of these sanctuaries without reflecting on the rapid progress of irreligion among a people who, six months before, were, on their knees, adoring the effigies which, at that period, they were eager to mutilate and destroy. Iron crows and sledge-hammers were almost in a state of requisition. In the beginning, it was a contest who should first aim a blow at the nose of the Virgin Mary, or break the leg of her son. In one day, contracts were entered into with masons for defacing images which for centuries, had been partly concealed under the dusty webs of generations of spiders. As for the statues within reach of swords and pikes, it was a continual scene of amusement to the licentious to knock off the ear of one angel, and scratch the face of another. Not an epitaph was left to retrace the patriotic deeds of an upright statesman, or the more brilliant exploits of a heroic warrior; not a memento, to record conjugal affection, filial piety, or grateful friendship. The iconoclasts proceeded not with the impetuous fury of fanatics, but with the extravagant foolery of atheistical buffoons. All the gold and silver ornaments disappeared: a great part of them were dissolved in the crucibles of the mint, after having been presented as a homage to the Convention, some of whose members danced the _carmagnole_ with those who presented them at their bar, loaded on the back of mules and asses, bedecked with all the emblems of catholic worship; while several of the rubies, emeralds, &c. which had formerly decorated the glory, beaming round the head of a Christ, were afterwards seen glittering on the finger of the revolutionary committee-men. Chaumette, an attorney, was the man who proclaimed atheism, and his example had many imitators. It seemed the wish of that impious being to exile God himself from nature. He it was who imagined those orgies, termed the festivals of reason. One of the most remarkable of these festivals was celebrated in this very church of _St. Eustache_. Although Mademoiselle Maillard, the singing heroine of the French opera, figured more than once as the goddess of reason, that divinity was generally personified by some shameless female, who, if not a notorious prostitute, was frequently little better. Her throne occupied the place of the altar; her supporters were chiefly drunken soldiers, smoking their pipe; and before her, were a set of half-naked vagabonds, singing and dancing the _carmagnole_. "In this church," says an eye-witness, "the interior of the choir represented a landscape, decorated with cottages and clumps of trees. In the distance were mysterious bowers, to which narrow paths led, through declivities formed of masses of artificial rock. "The inside of the church presented the spectacle of a large public-house. Round the choir were arranged tables, loaded with bottles, sausages, pies, pâtés, and other viands. On the altars of the lateral chapels, sacrifices were made to luxury and gluttony; and the consecrated stones bore the disgusting marks of beastly intemperance. "Guests crowded in at all doors: whoever came partook of this festival: children thrust their hands into the dishes, and helped themselves out of the bottles, as a sign of liberty; while the speedy consequences of this freedom became a matter of amusement to grown persons in a similar state of ebriety. What a deplorable picture of the people, who blindly obeyed the will of a few factious leaders! "In other churches, balls were given; and, by way of shutting the door in the face of modesty, these were continued during the night, in order that, amidst the confusion of nocturnal revelry, those desires which had been kindled during the day, might be freely gratified under the veil of darkness. "The processions which accompanied these orgies, were no less attended with every species of atheistical frenzy. After feasting their eyes with the sacrifice of human victims, the Jacobin faction, or their satellites, followed the car of their impure goddess: next came, in another car, a moving orchestra, composed of blind musicians, a too faithful image of that Reason which was the object of their adoration." The state of France, at that period, proves that religion being detached from social order, there remained a frightful void, Which nothing could have filled up but its subsequent restoration. Without religion, men become enemies to each other, criminals by principle, and bold violators of the laws; force is the only curb that can restrain them. The inevitable consequence is, that anarchy and rapine desolate the face of the earth, and reduce it to a heap of misfortune and ruin. LETTER XXIV. _Paris, November 27, 1801._ When we travel back in idea for the last ten years, and pass in review the internal commotions which have distracted France during that period, and the external struggle she has had to maintain for the security of her independence, we cannot refuse our admiration to the constancy which the French have manifested in forming institutions for the diffusion of knowledge, and repositories of objects tending to the advancement of the arts and sciences. In this respect, if we except the blood-thirsty reign of Robespierre, no clash of political interests, no change in the form or administration of the government, has relaxed their ardour, or slackened their perseverance. Whatever set of men have been in power, the arts and sciences have experienced almost uninterrupted protection. In the opinion of the French themselves, the GALLERY OF ANTIQUES, in the CENTRAL MUSEUM OF THE ARTS, may claim pre-eminence over every other repository of sculpture; but many persons may, probably, feel a satisfaction more pure and unadulterated in viewing the MUSEUM OF FRENCH MONUMENTS. Here, neither do insignia of triumph call to mind the afflicting scenes of war, nor do emblems of conquest strike the eye of the travelled visiter, and damp his enjoyment by blending with it bitter recollections. Vandalism is the only enemy from whose attacks the monuments, here assembled, have been rescued. This Museum, which has, in fact, been formed out of the wrecks of the revolutionary storm, merits particular attention. Although it was not open to the public, for the first time, till the 15th of Fructidor, year III (2nd of September 1795), its origin may be dated from 1790, when the Constituent Assembly, having decreed the possessions of the Clergy to be national property, charged the _Committee of Alienation_ to exert their vigilance for the preservation of all the monuments of the arts, spread throughout the wide extent of the ecclesiastical domains. The philanthropic LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, (the last Duke of the family), as President of that committee, fixed on a number of artists and literati to select such monuments as the committee were anxious to preserve. The municipality of Paris, being specially entrusted, by the National Assembly, with the execution of this decree, also nominated several literati and artists of acknowledged merit to co-operate with the former in their researches and labours. Of this association was formed a commission, called _Commission des Monumens_. From that epoch, proper places were sought for the reception of the treasures which it was wished to save from destruction. The _Committee of Alienation_ appointed the _ci-devant_ monastery of the _Petits Augustins_ for the monuments of sculpture and pictures, and those of the _Capucins, Grands Jesuites,_ and _Cordeliers_, for the books and manuscripts. By these means, the monuments in the suppressed convents and churches were, by degrees, collected in this monastery, which is situated in the _Rue des Petits Augustins_, so named after that order of monks, whose church here was founded, in 1613, by Marguerite de Valois, first wife of Henry IV. At the same period, ALEXANDRE LENOIR was appointed, by the Constituent Assembly, director of this establishment. As I shall have frequent occasion to mention the name of that estimable artist, I shall here content myself with observing, that the choice did honour to their judgment. In the mean time, under pretext of destroying every emblem of feudality, the most celebrated master-pieces were consigned to ruin; but the commission before-mentioned opportunely published instructions respecting the means of preserving the valuable articles which they purposed to assemble. The National Convention also gave indisputable proof of its regard for the arts, by issuing several decrees in their favour. Its _Committee of Public Instruction_ created a commission, composed of distinguished literati and artists of every class, for the purpose of keeping a watchful eye over the preservation of the monuments of the arts. The considerable number of memoirs, reports, and addresses, diffused through the departments by this learned and scientific association, enlightened the people, and arrested the arm of those modern Vandals who took a pleasure in mutilating the most admired statues, tearing or defacing the most valuable pictures, and melting casts of bronze of the most exquisite beauty. Among the numerous reports to which these acts of blind ignorance gave birth, three published by GRÉGOIRE, ex-bishop of Blois, claim particular distinction no less on account of the taste and zeal which they exhibit for the advancement of literature and the fine arts, than for the invective with which they abound against the madness of irreligious barbarism. This last stroke, aptly applied, was the means of recovering many articles of value, and of preserving the monuments still remaining in the provinces. In these eventful times, LENOIR, the Conservator of the rising museum, collected, through his own indefatigable exertions, a considerable number of mausolea, statues, bas-reliefs, and busts of every age and description. No sooner did a moment of tranquillity appear to be reestablished in this country, than he proposed to the government to place all these monuments in historical and chronological order, by classing them, according to the age in which they had been executed, in particular halls or apartments, and giving to each of these apartments the precise character peculiar to each century. This plan which, in its aggregate, united the history of the art and that of France, by means of her monuments, met with general approbation, and was accordingly adopted by the members of the government. Thus, throughout this Museum, the architectural decorations of the different apartments are of the age to which the monuments of Sculpture, contained in each, belongs; and the light penetrates through windows of stained glass, from the designs of RAPHAEL, PRIMATICCIO, ALBERT DURER, LE SUEUR, &c., the production of the particular century corresponding to that of the sculpture. Come then, let us visit this Museum, and endeavour to discriminate the objects which may be most interesting both to the artist and historian. We first enter the ANTI-CHAMBER. This apartment presents itself to our inquisitive looks, as a Hall of Introduction, which may not be unaptly compared to the preface of a grand work. Here we behold a crowd of monuments, arranged methodically, so as to prepare our eyes for tracing the different ages through which we have to travel. We first remark those altars, worn by the hand of Time, on which the trading Gauls of the ancient _Lutetia_, now Paris, sacrificed to the gods in the time of Tiberius. Jupiter, Mars, Vulcan, Mercury, Venus, Pan, Castor and Pollux, and the religious ceremonies here sculptured, are sufficient to attest that the Parisians were then idolaters, and followed the religion of the Romans, to whom they were become tributary. The Inscriptions on each of these monuments, which are five in number, leave no doubt as to their authenticity, and the epoch of their erection. These altars, five in number, are charged with bas-reliefs, and the first of them is inscribed with the following words in Latin. TIB. CAESARE. AVG. IOVI OPTVMO MAXSVMO (_aram_) M. NAVTAE. PARISIACI PUBLICE POSIERVNT. _Tiberius Cæsar, having accepted or taken the name of Augustus, the navigators (Nautæ) belonging to the city of Paris, publicly consecrated this altar to Jupiter the most great and most good._ In 1711, these monuments were dug up from the choir of the cathedral of _Notre-Dame_, out of the foundations of the ancient church of Paris, constructed by Childebert, on the ruins of a temple, formerly dedicated to Isis, which he caused to be demolished. Near them we see the great goddess of the Germans figure under the name of Nehalennia, in honour of whom that people had erected a great number of monuments, some of which were discovered in the year 1646, when the sea retired from the island of Walcheren. Capitals, charged with bas-reliefs, taken from a subterraneous basilic, built by Pepin, have likewise been collected, and follow those which I have just mentioned. Next comes the tomb of CLOVIS, which exhibits that prince lying at length; he is humbling himself before the Almighty, and seems to be asking him forgiveness for his crimes. We likewise see those of CHILDEBERT and of the cruel CHILPERIC. The intaglio, relieved by inlaid pieces of Mosaic, of queen FREDEGOND, has escaped the accidents of twelve centuries. Just Heaven! what powers have disappeared from the face of the earth since that period! And to what reflections does not this image, still existing of that impious woman, give birth in the mind of the philosopher! CHARLEMAGNE, who was buried at Aix-la-Chapelle, seated on a throne of gold, appears here, in a haughty attitude, with his sword in his hand, still to be giving laws to the world! As might naturally be supposed, most of these figures have suffered much by the rude attacks of Time; but in spite of his indelible impression, the unpolished hand of the sculptor is still distinguishable, and betrays the degraded state of the arts during the darkness of the middle ages. Let us pass into the HALL OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. Here we shall remark arches in the Gothic style, supported by thick pillars, according to the architecture of that period. Ornaments, in the form of _culs-de-lampe_, terminate the centre of the arches, which are painted in azure-blue, and charged with stars. When temples were begun to be sheltered or covered, nations painted the inside of the roof in this manner, in order to keep in view the image of the celestial canopy to which they directed all their affections, and to preserve the memory of the ancient custom of offering up sacrifices to the divinity in the open air. Here the statue of LEWIS IX, surnamed the Saint, is placed near that of PHILIP, one of his sons, and of CHARLES, his brother, king of Sicily, branded in history, by having, through his oppression, driven his subjects into revolt, and caused the massacre of the French in that island in 1277; a massacre well known by the name of the _Sicilian vespers_. It seems that it was the fashion, in those days, for kings themselves to be bearers at funerals. We are told by St. Foix, that the body of LEWIS, another son of the Saint, who died in 1662, aged 26, and whose cenotaph is here, was first carried to St. Denis, and thence to the abbey of Royaumont, where it was interred. "The greatest lords of the kingdom," says he, "alternately bore the coffin on their shoulders, and Henry III; king of England, carried it himself for a considerable time, as feudatory of the crown." PHILIP III, too, above-mentioned, having brought to Paris the remains of his father from Tunis in Africa, carried them barefooted, on his shoulders, to St. Denis. Wherever he rested by the way, towers were erected in commemoration of this act of filial piety; but these have been destroyed since the revolution. The casements of this hall, in the form of ogives, are ornamented with stained glass of the first epoch of the invention of that art. We now come to the HALL OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. This hall shews us the light, yet splendid architecture of the Arabs, introduced into France in consequence of the Crusades. Here are the statues of the kings that successively appeared in this age down to king JOHN, who was taken prisoner by Edward, the black prince, at the battle of Poietiers. They are clad after the manner of their time, and lying at length on a stylobate, strewn with flower-de-luces. Twenty-two knights, each mounted on lions, armed cap-à-pié, represented of the natural size, and coloured, fill ogive niches ornamented with Mosaic designs, relieved with gold, red, and blue. The tombs of CHARLES V, surnamed the _Wise_, and of the worthy constable, DU GUESCLIN, together with that of SANCERRE, his faithful friend, rise in the middle of this apartment; which presents to the eye all the magnificence of a Turkish mosque. After having quitted it, what a striking contrast do we not remark on entering the HALL OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY! Columns, arabesque ceilings charged with gilding, light pieces of sculpture applied on blue and violet grounds, imitating cameo, china, or enamel; every thing excites astonishment, and concurs in calling to mind the first epoch of the regeneration of the arts in this country. The ideas of the amateur are enlivened in this brilliant apartment: they prepare him for the gratification which he is going to experience at the sight of the beautiful monuments produced by the age, so renowned of Francis I. There, architecture predominates over sculpture; here, sculpture over architecture. The genius of RAPHAEL paved the way to this impulse of regeneration: he had recently produced the decorations of the Vatican; and the admirable effect of these master-pieces of art, kindled an enthusiasm in the mind of the artists, who travelled. On their return to France, they endeavoured to imitate them: in this attempt, JEAN JUSTE, a sculptor sent to Rome, at the expense of the Cardinal D'AMBOISE, was the most succcessful. First, we behold the mausoleum of LOUIS D'ORLÉANS, victim of the faction of the Duke of Burgundy, and that of his brother CHARLES, the poet. Near them is that of VALENTINE DE MILAN, the inconsolable wife of the former, who died through grief the year after she lost her husband. As an emblem of her affliction, she took for her device a watering-pot stooped, whence drops kept trickling in the form of tears. Let it not be imagined, however, that it was on account of his constancy that this affectionate woman thus bewailed him till she fell a victim to her sorrow. LOUIS D'ORLÉANS was a great seducer of ladies of the court, and of the highest rank too, says Brantome. Indeed, historians concur in stating that to a brilliant understanding, he joined the most captivating person. We accordingly find that the Dutchess of Burgundy and several others were by no means cruel to him; and he had been supping tête-à-tête with Queen Isabeau de Bavière, when, in returning home, he was assassinated on the twenty-third of November 1407. His amorous intrigues at last proved fatal to the English, as you will learn from the following story, related by the same author. One morning, M. d'Orléans having in bed with him a woman of quality, whose husband came to pay him an early visit, he concealed the lady's head, while he exhibited the rest of her person to the contemplation of the unsuspecting intruder, at the same time forbidding him, as he valued his life, to remove the sheet from her face. Now, the cream of the jest was, that, on the following night, the good soul of a husband, as he lay beside his dear, boasted to her that the Duke of Orleans had shewn him the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen: but that for her face he could not tell what to say of it, as it was concealed under the sheet. "From this little intrigue," adds Brantome, "sprang that brave and valiant bastard of Orleans, Count Dunois, the pillar of France, and the scourge of the English." Here we see the statues of CHARLES VI, and of JANE of Burgundy. The former being struck by a _coup de soleil_, became deranged in his intellects and imbecile, after having displayed great genius; he is represented with a pack of cards in his hand to denote that they were first invented for that prince's diversion. The latter was Dutchess of BEAUFORT, wife to the Duke, who commanded the English army against Charles VII, and as brother to our Henry IV, was appointed regent of France, during the minority of his nephew, Henry V. Next come those of RÉNÉE D'ORLÉANS, grand-daughter of the intrepid Dunois; and of PHILIPPE DE COMMINES, celebrated by his memoirs of the tyrant, LEWIS XI, whose statue faces that of CHARLES VII, his father. The image of JOAN OF ARC, whom that king had the baseness to suffer to perish, after she had maintained him on the throne, also figures in this hall with that of ISABEAU DE BAVIÈRE. The shameful death of the Maid of Orleans, who, as every one knows, was, at the instigation of the English, condemned as a witch, and burnt alive at Rouen on the 30th of May 1430, must inspire with indignation every honest Englishman who reflects on this event, which will ever be a blot in the page of our history. Isabeau affords a striking example of the influence of a queen's morals on the affections of the people. On her first arrival in Paris, she was crowned by angels, and received from the burghers the most magnificent and costly presents. At her death, she was so detested by the nation, that in order to convey her body privately to St. Denis, it was embarked in a little skiff at _Port-Landri_, with directions to the waterman to deliver it to the abbot. The superb tomb of LEWIS XII, placed in the middle of this apartment, displays great magnificence; and his statue, lying at length, which represents him in a state of death, recalls to mind that moment so grievous to the French people, who exclaimed, in following his funeral procession to St. Denis, "Our good king Lewis XII is dead, and we have lost our father." The historian delights to record a noble trait of that prince's character. Lewis XII had been taken prisoner at the battle of St. Aubin by Louis de la Trimouille, who, fearing the resentment of the new king, and wishing to excuse himself for his conduct, received this magnanimous reply: "It is not for the king of France to revenge the quarrels of the duke of Orleans." The statue of PIERRE DE NAVARRE, son of Charles the _Bad_, seems placed here to form in the mind of the spectator a contrast between his father and Lewis XII. The tragical end of Charles is of a nature to fix attention, and affords an excellent subject for a pencil like that of Fuseli. Charles the _Bad_, having fallen into such a state of decay that he could not make use of his limbs, consulted his physician, who ordered him to be wrapped up from head to foot, in a linen cloth impregnated with brandy, so that he might be inclosed in it to the very neck as in a sack. It was night when this remedy was administered. One of the female attendants of the palace, charged to sew up the cloth that contained the patient, having come to the neck, the fixed point where she was to finish her seam, made a knot according to custom; but as there was still remaining an end of thread, instead of cutting it as usual with scissars, she had recourse to the candle, which immediately set fire to the whole cloth. Being terrified, she ran away, and abandoned the king, who was thus burnt alive in his own palace. What a picture for the moralist is this assemblage of persons, celebrated either for their errors, crimes, talents, or virtues! LETTER XXV. _Paris, November 28, 1801_. Conceiving how interested you (who are not only a connoisseur, but an F.A.S.) must feel in contemplating the only repository in the world, I believe, which contains such a chronological history of the art of sculpture, I lose no time in conducting you to complete our survey of the MUSEUM OF FRENCH MONUMENTS in the _Rue des Petits Augustins_. Having examined those of the fifteenth century, during our former visit, we are at length arrived at the age of the Fine Arts in France, and now enter the HALL OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. "But see! each muse in LEO'S golden days, Starts from her trance, and trims her wither'd bays; Rome's ancient Genius, o'er its ruins spread, Shakes off the dust, and rears his reverend head; Then Sculpture and her sister arts revive, Stones leap'd to form, and rocks began to live." These beautiful lines of Pope immediately occur to the mind, on considering that, in Italy, the Great LEO, by the encouragement which he gave to men of talents, had considerably increased the number of master-pieces; when the taste for the Fine Arts, after their previous revival by the Medici, having spread throughout that country, began to dawn in France about the end of the fifteenth century. By progressive steps, the efforts made by the French artists to emulate their masters, attained, towards the middle of the sixteenth century, a perfection which has since fixed the attention of Europe. On entering this hall, which is consecrated to that period, the amateur finds his genius inflamed. What a deep impression does not the perfection of the numerous monuments which it has produced make on his imagination! First, he admires the beautiful tomb erected to the memory of FRANCIS I, the restorer of literature and the arts; who, by inviting to his court LEONARDO DA VINCI and PRIMATICCIO, and establishing schools and manufactories, consolidated the great work of their regeneration. "Curse the monks!" exclaimed I, on surveying this magnificent monument, constructed in 1550, from the designs of the celebrated PHILIBERT DE L'ORME. "Who cannot but regret," continued I to myself, "that so gallant a knight as Francis I. should fall a victim to that baneful disease which strikes at the very sources of generation? Who cannot but feel indignant that so generous a prince, whose first maxim was, that _true magnanimity consisted in the forgiveness of injuries, and pusillanimity in the prosecution of revenge_, should owe his death to the diabolical machinations of a filthy friar?" Yet, so it was; the circumstances are as follows: Francis I. was smitten by the charms of the wife of one Lunel, a dealer in iron. A Spanish chaplain, belonging to the army of the Emperor Charles V, passing through Paris in order to repair to Flayers, threw himself in this man's way, and worked on his mind till he had made him a complete fanatic: "Your king," said the friar, "protects Lutheranism in Germany, and will soon introduce it into France. Be revenged on him and your wife, by serving religion. Communicate to him that disease for which no certain remedy is yet known."--"And how am I to give it to him?" replied Lunel; "neither I nor my wife have it."--"But I have," rejoined the monk: "I hold up my hand and swear it. Introduce me only for one half-hour by night, into your place, by the side of your faithless fair, and I will answer for the rest." The priest having prevailed on Lunel to consent to his scheme, went to a place where he was sure to catch the infection, and, by means of Lunel's wife, he communicated it to the king. Being previously in possession of a secret remedy, the monk cured himself in a short time; the poor woman died at the expiration of a month; and Francis I, after having languished for three or four years, at length, in 1547, sunk under the weight of a disorder then generally considered as incurable. The tomb of the VALOIS, erected in honour of that family, by Catherine de Medicis, soon after the death of Henry II, is one of the masterpieces of GERMAIN PILON. In the execution of this beautiful monument, that famous artist has found means to combine the correctness of style of Michael Angelo with the grace of Primaticcio. To the countenance of HENRY and CATHERINE, who are represented in a state of death, lying as on a bed, he has imparted an expression of sensibility truly affecting. Next comes the tomb of DIANE DE POITIERS, that celebrated beauty, who displayed equal judgment in the management of State affairs and in the delicacy of her attachments; who at the age of 40, captivated king Henry II, when only 18; and, who, though near 60 at the death of that prince, had never ceased to preserve the same empire over his heart. At the age of fourteen, she was married to Louis de Brézé, grand seneschal of Normandy, and died in April 1506, aged 66. Brantome, who saw her not long before her death, when she had just recovered from the confinement of a broken leg, and had experienced troubles sufficient to lessen her charms, thus expresses himself: "Six months ago, when I met her, she was still so beautiful that I know not any heart of adamant which would not have been moved at the sight of her."--To give you a perfect idea of her person, take this laconic description, which is not one of fancy, but collected from the best historians. Her jet black hair formed a striking contrast to her lily complexion. On her cheeks faintly blushed the budding rose. Her teeth vied with ivory itself in whiteness: in a word, her form was as elegant as her deportment was graceful. By way of lesson to the belles of the present day, let them be told that DIANE DE POITIERS was never ill, nor affected indisposition. In the severity of the winter, she daily washed her face with spring-water, and never had recourse to cosmetics.----"What pity," says Brantome, "that earth should cover so beautiful a woman!" No man, indeed, who sympathizes with the foibles of human nature, can contemplate the tomb of DIANE DE POITIERS, and reflect on her numerous virtues and attractions, without adopting the sentiments of Brantome, and feeling his breast glow with admiration. This extraordinary woman afforded the most signal protection to literati and men of genius, and was, in fact, no less distinguished for the qualities of her heart than for the beauty of her person. "She was extremely good-humoured, charitable, and humane," continues Brantome "The people of France ought to pray to God that the female favourite of every chief magistrate of their country may resemble this amiable frail one." As a proof of the elevation of her sentiments, I shall conclude by quoting to you the spirited reply DIANE made to Henry II, who, by dint of royal authority, wished to legitimate a daughter he had by her: "I am of a birth," said she, "to have had lawful children by you. I have been your mistress, because I loved you. I will never suffer a decree to declare me your concubine." The beautiful group of the modest Graces, and that representing Diana, accompanied by her dogs Procion and Syrius, sculptured by Jean Gougeon, to serve as the decoration of a fountain in the park of DIANE DE POITIERS at Anet, attracts the attention of the connoisseur. The tomb of GOUGEON, composed of his own works, and erected to the memory of that great artist, through gratitude, is, undoubtedly, a homage which he justly deserved. This French Phidias was a Calvinist, and one of the numerous victims of St. Bartholomew's day, being shot on his scaffold, as he was at work on the _Louvre_, the 24th of August 1572. Here too we behold the statues of BIRAGUE and of the GONDI, those atrocious wretches who, together with Catherine de Medicis, plotted that infamous massacre; while CHARLES IX, no less criminal, here exhibits on his features the stings of a guilty conscience. The man that has a taste for learning, gladly turns his eye from this horde of miscreants, to fix it on the statue of CLAUDE-CATHERINE DE CLERMONT-TONNERRE, who was so conversant in the dead languages as to bear away the palm from Birague and Chiveray, in a speech which she composed and spoke in Latin, at twenty-four hours' notice, in answer to the ambassadors who tendered the crown of Poland to Charles IX. If the friend of the arts examine the beautiful portico erected by Philibert de l'Orme, on the banks of the Eure, for Diane de Poitiers, composed of the three orders of architecture, placed the one above the other, and forming altogether an elevation of sixty feet, he will be amazed to learn that this superb monument constructed at Anet, twenty leagues distant from Paris, was removed thence, and re-established in this Museum, by the indefatigable conservator, LENOIR. On leaving the apartment containing the master-pieces brought to light by Francis I, the next we reach is the HALL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. What a crowd of celebrated men contained in the temple consecrated to virtue, courage, and talents! There, I behold TURENNE, CONDÉ, MONTAUSIER, COLBERT, MOLIÈRE, CORNEILLE, LA FONTAINE, RACINE, FÉNÉLON, and BOILEAU. The great LEWIS XIV, placed in the middle of this hall, seems to become still greater near those immortal geniuses. Farther on, we see the statue of the implacable RICHELIEU, represented expiring in the arms of Religion, while Science is weeping at his feet. Ye Gods! what a prostitution of talent! This is the master-piece of GIRARDON; but, in point of execution, many connoisseurs prefer the mausoleum of the crafty MAZARIN, whom COYZEVOX has pourtrayed in a supplicating posture. LEWIS XIII, surnamed the _Just_, less great than his illustrious subject, DE THOU, casts down his eyes in the presence of his ministers. The mausolea of LE BRUN, LULLI, and JÉROME BIGNON, the honour, the love, and the example of his age, terminate the series of monuments of that epoch, still more remarkable for its literati than its artists. We at last come to the HALL OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Here we admire the statues of MONTESQUIEU, FONTENELLE, VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, HELVÉTIUS, CRÉBILLON, PIRON, &c. &c. The tombs of the learned MAUPERTUIS and CAYLUS, and also that of Marshal D'HARCOURT, give a perfect idea of the state of degradation into which the art of design had fallen at the beginning of this century; but the new productions which decorate the extremity of this spacious hall are sufficient to prove to what degree the absolute will of a great genius can influence the progress of the arts, as well as of the sciences. VIEN and DAVID appeared, and the art was regenerated. Here, too, we find a statue, as large as life, representing Christ leaning on a pillar, executed by MICHAEL ANGELO STODTZ. I notice this statue merely to observe, that the original, from which it is taken, is to be seen at Rome, in the _Chiesa della Minerva_ where it is held in such extraordinary veneration, that the great toe-nail of the right foot having been entirely worn away by the repeated kisses of the faithful, one of silver had been substituted. At length this second nail having been likewise worn away, a third was placed, of copper, which is already somewhat worn. It was sculptured by MICHAEL ANGELO BUONAROTI. We experience an emotion of regret at the aspect of the handsome monument by MICHALLON, on learning that it was erected to the memory of young DROUAIS, a skilful and amiable artist, stopped by death, in 1788, during his brilliant career, at the early age of 24. He has left behind him three historical pictures, which are so many master-pieces. The beautiful statue of the youthful Cyparissus, by CHAUDET, the most eminent French sculptor, reminds us of the full and elegant form of the fine Greek Bacchus, which decorates the peristyle of the antichamber or Hall of Introduction. Thus the amateur and the student will find, in this Museum, an uninterrupted chronology of monuments, both antique and modern, beginning by those of ancient Greece, whose date goes back to two thousand five hundred years before our era, to examine those of the Romans, of the Lower Empire, of the Gauls, and thence pass to the first epoch of the French monarchy, and at length follow all the gradations through which the art has passed from its cradle to its decrepitude. The whole of this grand establishment is terminated by a spacious garden, which is converted into an ELYSIUM. There, on a verdant lawn, amid firs, cypresses, poplars, and weeping willows, repose the ashes of the illustrious poets, MOLIÈRE, LA FONTAINE, BOILEAU, &c.; of the learned DESCARTES, MABILLON, MONTFAUCON, &c., inclosed in sarcophagi; there, they still receive the homage which mankind owe to talents and virtue. But hold! mark the sepulchre of the learned and tender HÉLOÏSE. Her remains, though formerly conjoined to those of her lover, were subsequently separated, and after a lapse of three hundred years, they are now reassembled. Here one kind grave unites their hapless name, And grafts her love immortal on his fame. With a smile seated on her lips, HÉLOÏSE seems to be sighing for the object of her glowing affection: while the unfortunate ABÉLARD, coldly reclined, is still commenting on the Trinity. The _Paraclete_, having been sold and demolished, LENOIR, with all the sensibility of an admirer of genius, withdrew the bones of ABÉLARD and HÉLOÏSE from that monastery, and placed them here in a sepulchral chapel, partly constructed from the remains of their ancient habitation. Such is the MUSEUM OF FRENCH MONUMENTS. When completed, for some valuable specimens of the arts slill remain to be added, it will be one of the most interesting establishments in Paris, and perhaps in Europe, especially if considered in regard to the improvement of modern sculpture, and, I may add, architecture. No building can be better adapted than a monastery for an establishment of this nature. The solemn gloom of cloisters suits the temper of the mind, when we reflect on the mortality incident to a succession of ages, and the melancholy which it inspires, is in perfect unison with our feelings, when we contemplate the sepulchral monuments that recall to our memory the actions of the illustrious departed. This Museum is very extensive, the three courts and large garden, which at present compose the whole of its premises, occupying a space of three thousand seven hundred and sixty-two toises. LENOIR, however, has recently presented to the First Consul a plan for enlarging it, without any additional expense of building, by adding to it the neighbouring _Hôtel de Bouillon_. He proposes that there should be a new entrance by the quay, exhibiting a spacious court, decorated with statues, erected in regular order; and that the apartments on the ground-floor should be appropriated as follows: 1. To a collection of portraits of all the celebrated men of France. 2. To a chronological series of armour of all ages. 3. To a complete collection of French medals. 4. To a library, solely formed of the books necessary for obtaining a knowledge of the monuments contained in this Museum. When I consider the mutilated state in which most of these monuments were found at the first formation of this interesting establishment, and view the perfection in which they now appear; when I remark the taste and judgment displayed in the distribution and interior arrangement of the different apartments of this rich museum; when I learn, from the printed documents on the subject, the strict economy which has been observed in the acquisition or restoration of a great number of monuments, the more valuable as they illustrate the history of the arts; I confess that I find myself at a loss which most to admire in the Conservator, his courage, zeal, perseverance, or discrimination. Indeed, nothing but an assemblage of those qualities could have overcome the difficulties and obstacles which he has surmounted. I shall add that LENOIR'S obliging disposition and amenity of manners equally entitle him to the gratitude and esteem of the connoisseur, the student, or the inquisitive stranger. LETTER XXVI. _Paris, December 1, 1801_. I was highly gratified the other day on finding myself in company with some of those men whom (to borrow Lord Thurlow's expression, in speaking of Warren Hastings,) I have known only as I know Alexander, by the greatness of their exploits; men whose names will be transmitted to posterity, and shine with distinguished lustre in the military annals of France. General A----y had already invited me to dine with him, in order to meet General B----r; but, on the day fixed, the latter, as minister for the war department, being under the necessity of entertaining Lord Cornwallis, the party was postponed till the 8th of Frimaire, (20th of November), when, in addition to General B----r, General A----y had assembled at his table several men of note. Among others, were General M----rd, who commanded the right wing of the army of Naples under Macdonald, in which he distinguished himself as a brave soldier; and D----ttes, physician in chief to the army of the East. This officer of health, as medical men are here denominated, is lately returned from Egypt, where his skill and attention to his professional duties gained him universal admiration. In society so agreeable, time passed away rapidly till General B----r arrived. It was late, that is about seven o'clock, though the invitation expressed five precisely, as the hour of dinner. But, in Paris, a minister is always supposed to be detained on official business of a nature paramount to every other consideraton. On my being introduced to General B----r, he immediately entered into conversation with me concerning Lord Cornwallis, whom he had known in the American war, having served in the staff of Rochambeau at the siege of Yorktown. As far back as that period B----r signalized himself by his skill in military science. It was impossible to contemplate these distinguished officers without calling to mind how greatly their country was indebted to the exertion of their talents on various important occasions. These recollections led me to admire that wisdom which had placed them in stations for which they had proved themselves so eminently qualified. In England, places are generally sought for men; in France, men are sought for places. At seven, dinner was announced, and an excellent one it was, both in quality and quantity. _Presto_ was the word, and all the guests seemed habituated to expedition. The difference between the duration of such a repast at this day, and what it was before the revolution, shews how constantly men become the slaves of fashion. Had BONAPARTE resembled Lucullus in being addicted to the pleasures of the festive board, I make no doubt that it would have been the height of _ton_ to sit quietly two or three hours after dinner. But the Chief Consul is said to be temperate, almost to abstemiousness; he rises from table in less than half an hour; and that mode is now almost universal in Paris, especially among the great men in office. Two elegant courses and a desert were presently dispatched; the whole time employed in eating I know not how many good dishes, and drinking a variety of choice wines, not exceeding thirty-five minutes. At the end of the repast, coffee was presented to the company in an adjoining room, after which the opera of _Tarare_ was the attraction of the evening. I have already mentioned to you that General A----y had put into my hand _L'Histoire du Canal du Midi_, written by himself. From a perusal of this interesting work, it appears that one of his ancestors[1] was the first who conceived the idea of that canal, which was not only planned by him, but entirely completed under his immediate direction. Having communicated his plan to Riquet, the latter submited it to Colbert, and, on its being approved by Lewis XIV, became _contractor_ for all the works of that celebrated undertaking, which he did not live to see finished. Riquet, however, not content with having derived from the undertaking every advantage of honour and emolument, greedily snatched from the original projector the meed of fame, so dearly earned by the unremitting labour of thirty successive years. These facts are set forth in the clearest light in the above-mentioned work, in which I was carefully examining General A----y's plans for the improvement of this famous canal, when I was most agreeably interrupted. I had expressed to the General a wish to know the nature of the establishment of which he is the director, at the same time apprizing him that this wish did not extend to any thing that could not with propriety be made public. He obligingly promised that I should be gratified, and this morning I received ftom him a very friendly letter, accompanied by the following account of the DÉPÔT DE LA GUERRE. The general _Dépôt_ or repository of maps and plans of war, &c, &c, was established by LOUVOIS, in 1688. This was the celebrated period when France, having attained the highest degree of splendour, secured her glory by the results of an administration enlightened in all its branches. At the beginning of its institution, the _Dépôt de la guerre_ was no more than archives, where were collected, and preserved with order, the memoirs of the generals, their correspondence, the accounts yet imperfect, and the traces of anterior military operations. The numerous resources afforded by this collection alone, the assistance and advantages derived from it on every occasion, when it was necessary to investigate a military system, or determine an important operation, suggested the idea of assembling it under a form and classification more methodical. Greater attention and exactness were exerted in enriching the _Dépôt_ with every thing that might complete the theoretical works and practical elucidations of all the branches of the military art, Marshal DE MAILLEBOIS, who was appointed director of this establishment in 1730, was one of the first authors of the present existing order. The classification at first consisted only in forming registers of the correspondence of the generals, according to date, distinguishing it by _different wars_. It was divided into two parts, the former containing the letters of the generals; and the latter, the minutes or originals of the answers of the king and his ministers. To each volume was added a summary of the contents, and, in regular succession, the journal of the military operations of the year. These volumes, to the number of upwards of two thousand seven hundred, contain documents from the eleventh century to the close of the last American war; but the series is perfect only from the year 1631. This was a valuable mine for a historiographer to explore; and, indeed, it is well known that the _Memoirs of Turenne and of Condé_, the _History of the war of 1741_, and part of the fragments of the _Essay on the Manners and History of Nations_, by Voltaire, were compiled and digested from the original letters and memoirs preserved in the _Dépôt de la guerre_. Geographical engineers did not then exist as a corps. Topography was practised by insulated officers, impelled thereto by the rather superficial study of the mathematics and a taste for drawing; because it was for them a mean of obtaining more advantageous employments in the staffs of the armies: but the want of a central point, the difference of systems and methods, not admitting of directing the operations to one same principle, as well as to one same object, topography, little encouraged, was making but a slow progress, when M. DE CHOISEUIL established, as a particular corps, the officers who had applied themselves to the practice of that science. The _Dépôt_ was charged to direct and assemble the labours of the new corps. This authority doubled the utility of the _Dépôt_: its results had the most powerful influence during the war from 1757 to 1763. Lieutenant-General De VAULT, who had succeeded Marshal De MAILLEBOIS as director of the _Dépôt de la guerre_, conceived, and executed a plan, destined to render still more familiar and secure the numerous documents collected in this establishment. He first retrenched from the _Military Correspondences and Memoirs_ all tedious repetitions and unnecessary details; he then classed the remainder under the head of a different army or operation, without subjecting himself to any other order than a simple chronology; but he caused each volume to be preceded by a very succinct, historical summary, in order to enable the reader to seize the essence of the original memoirs and documents, the text of which was faithfully copied in the body of each volume, In this manner did he arrange all the military events from the German war in 1677 to the peace of 1763. This analysis forms one hundred and twenty five volumes. It is easy to conceive how much more interesting these historical volumes became by the addition, which took place about the same epoch, of the labours of the geographical engineers employed in the armies. The military men having it at the same time in his power to follow the combinations of the generals with the execution of their plans, imbibes, without difficulty, the principles followed by great captains, or improves himself from the exact account of the errors and faults which it is so natural to commit on critical occasions. When all the establishments of the old _régime_ were tottering, or threatened by the revolutionary storm, measures were suggested for preserving the _Dépôt de la guerre_, and, towards the end of 1791, it was transferred from Versailles to Paris. Presently the new system of government, the war declared against the emperor, and the foreseen conflagration of Europe, concurred to give a new importance to this establishment. Alone, amidst the general overthrow, it had preserved a valuable collection of the military and topographical labours of the monarchy, of manuscripts of the greatest importance, and a body of information of every kind respecting the resources, and the country, of the powers already hostile, or on the point of becoming so. All the utility which might result from the _Dépôt_ was then felt, and it was thought necessary to give it a new organization.[2] The _Dépôt de la guerre_, however, would have attained but imperfectly the object of its institution, had there not been added to its topographical treasure, the richest, as well as the finest, collection in Europe of every geographical work held in any estimation. The first epochs of the revolution greatly facilitated the increase of its riches of that description. The general impulse, imprinted on the mind of the French nation, prompted every will towards useful sacrifices. Private cabinets in possession of the scarcest maps, gave them up to the government, The suppression of the monasteries and abbeys caused to flow to the centre the geographical riches which they preserved in an obscurity hurtful to the progress of that important science: and thus the _Dépôt de la guerre_ obtained one of the richest collections in Europe.[3] The government, besides, completed it by the delivery of the great map of France by CASSINI, begun in 1750, together with all the materials forming the elements of that grand work. It is painful to add that not long before that period (in 1791) the corps of geographical engineers, which alone could give utility to such valuable materials had been suppressed.[4] In the mean time, the sudden changes in the administrative system had dispersed the learned societies employed in astronomy, or the mathematical sciences. The _National Observatory_ was disused. The celebrated astronomers attached to it had no rallying point: they could not devote themselves to their labours but amidst the greatest difficulties; the salary allowed to them was not paid; the numerous observations, continued for two centuries, were on the point of being interrupted. The _Dépôt de la guerre_ then became the asylum of those estimable men. This establishment excited and obtained the reverification of the measure of an arc of the meridian, in order to serve as a basis for the uniformity of the weights and measures which the government wished to establish. MÉCHAIN, DELAMBRE, NOUET, TRANCHOT, and PERNY were dispatched to different places from Barcelona to Dunkirk. After having established at each extremity of this line a base, measured with the greatest exactness, they were afterwards to advance their triangles, in order to ascend to the middle point of the line. This operation, which has served for rectifying a few errors that the want of perfection in the instruments had occasioned to be introduced into the measure of the meridian of CASSINI, may be reckoned one of the most celebrated works which have distinguished the close of the eighteenth century. The establishment of the system of administration conformably to the constitution of the year III (1795) separated the various elements which the _Dépôt de la guerre_ had found means to preserve. The _Board of Longitude_ was established; the _National Institute_ was formed to supply the place of the _Academy of Sciences_, &c. The _Dépôt de la guerre_ was restored solely to its ancient prerogatives. Two years before, it had been under the necessity of forming new geographical engineers and it succeeded in carrying the number sufficiently high to suffice for the wants of the fourteen armies which France had afterwards on foot.[5] These officers being employed in the service of the staffs, no important work was undertaken. But, since the 18th of Brumaire, year VIII, (9th of November, 1799) the Consuls of the Republic have bestowed particular attention on geographical and topographical operations. The new limits of the French territory require that the map of it should be continued; and the new political system, resulting from the general pacification, renders necessary the exact knowledge of the states of the allies of the Republic. The _Dépôt de la guerre_ forms various sections of geographers, who are at present employed in constructing accurate maps of the four united departments. Piedmont, Savoy, Helvetia, and the part of Italy comprised between the Adige and the Adda. One section, in conjunction with the Bavarian engineers, is constructing a topographical map of Bavaria: another section is carrying into execution the military surveys, and other topographical labours, ordered by General MOREAU for the purpose of forming a map of Suabia. The _Dépôt_ has just published an excellent map of the Tyrol, reduced from that of PAYSAN, and to which have been added the observations made by Chevaliers DUPAY and LA LUCERNE. It has caused to be resumed the continuation of the superb map of the environs of Versailles, called _La carte des chasses_, a master-piece of topography and execution in all the arts relating to that science. Since the year V (1795), it has also formed a library composed of upwards of eight thousand volumes or manuscripts, the most rare, as well as the most esteemed, respecting every branch of the military art in general. Although, in the preceding account, General A----y, with that modesty which is the characteristic of a superior mind, has been totally silent respecting his own indefatigable exertions, I have learned from the best authority, that France is soon likely to derive very considerable advantages from the activity and talent introduced by him, as director, into every branch of the _Dépôt de la guerre_, and of which he has afforded in his own person an illustrious example. In giving an impulse to the interior labours of the _Dépôt_, the sole object of General A----y is to make this establishment lose its _paralyzing_ destination of archives, in which, from time to time, literati might come to collect information concerning some periods of national or foreign history. He is of opinion that these materials ought to be drawn from oblivion, and brought into action by those very persons who, having the experience of war, are better enabled than any others to arrange its elements. Instruction and method being the foundations of a good administration, of the application of an art and of a science, as well as of their improvement, he has conceived the idea of uniting in a classical work the exposition of the knowledge necessary for the direction of the _Dépôt_, for geographical engineers, staff-officers, military men in general, and historians. This, then, is the object of the _Mémomorial du Dépôt de la guerre_, a periodical work, now in hand, which will become the guide of every establishment of this nature[6], by directing with method the various labours used in the application of mathematical and physical sciences to topography, and to that art which, of all others, has the greatest influence on the destiny of empires: I mean the art military. The improvements of which it is still susceptible will be pointed out in the _Mémorial_, and every new idea proposed on the subject will there be critically investigated. In transcribing General A----y's sketch of this extremely-interesting establishment, I cannot but reflect on the striking contrast that it presents, in point of geographical riches, even half a century ago, to the disgraceful poverty, in that line, which, about the same period, prevailed in England, and was severely felt in the planning of our military expeditions. I remember to have been told by the late Lord Howe, that, when he was captain of the Magnanime at Plymouth, and was sent for express to London, in the year 1757, in order to command the naval part of an expedition to the coast of France, George II, and the whole cabinet council, seemed very much astonished at his requiring the production of a map of that part of the enemy's coast against which the expedition was intended. Neither in the apartment where the council sat, nor in any adjoining one, was any such document; even in the Admiralty-office no other than an indifferent map of the coast could be found: as for the adjacent country, it was so little known in England, that, when the British troops landed, their commander was ignorant of the distance of the neighbouring villages. Of late years, indeed, we have ordered these matters better; but, to judge from circumstances, it should seem that we are still extremely deficient in geographical and topographical knowledge; though we are not quite so ill informed as in the time of a certain duke, who, when First Lord of the Treasury, asked in what part of Germany was the Ohio? P.S. In order to give you, at one view, a complete idea of the collections of the _Dépôt de la guerre_, and of what they have furnished during the war for the service of the government and of the armies, I shall end my letter by stating that, independently of eight thousand chosen volumes, among which is a valuable collection of atlases, of two thousand seven hundred volumes of old archives, and of upwards of nine hundred _cartons_ or pasteboard boxes of modern original documents, the _Dépôt_ possesses one hundred and thirty-one volumes and seventy-eight _cartons_ of descriptive memoirs, composed at least of fifty memoirs each, four thousand seven hundred engraved maps, of each of which there are from two to twenty-five copies, exclusively of those printed at the _Dépôt_, and upwards of seven thousand four hundred valuable manuscript maps, plans, or drawings of marches, battles, sieges, &c. By order of the government, it has furnished, in the course of the war, seven thousand two hundred and seventy-eight engraved maps, two hundred and seven manuscript maps or plans, sixty-one atlases of various parts of the globe, and upwards of six hundred descriptive memoirs. [Footnote 1: FRANÇOIS ANDREOSSY; who was the great great grandfather of the present French ambassador at our court.] [Footnote 2: On the 25th of April, 1792, was published a regulation, decreed by the king, respecting the general direction of the _Dépôt de la guerre_. The annual expense of the establishment, at that time amounted to 68,000 francs, but the geographical and historical departments were not filled. _Note of the Author._] [Footnote 3: An _Agence des cartes_ was appointed, by the National Assembly, to class these materials, and arrange them in useful order.] [Footnote 4: At the juncture alluded to (1793), the want of geographical engineers having been felt as soon as the armies took the field, three brigades were formed, each consisting of twelve persons. The composition of the _Dépôt de la guerre_, was increased in proportion to its importance: intelligent officers were placed there; and no less than thirty-eight persons were employed in the interior labour, that is, in drawing plans of campaigns, sieges, &c. _Note of the Author_.] [Footnote 5: That tempestuous period having dispersed the then director and his assistants, the _Dépôt de la guerre_ remained, for some time, without officers capable of conducting it in a manner useful to the country. In the mean while, wants were increasing, and military operations daily becoming more important, when, in 1793, CARNOT, then a member of the Committee of Public Welfare, formed a private cabinet of topography, the elements of which he drew from the _Dépôt de la guerre_. This was a first impulse given to these valuable collections. _Note of the Author_.] [Footnote 6: Prince Charles is employed at Vienna in forming a collection of books, maps, and military memoirs for the purpose of establishing a _Dépôt_ for the instruction of the staff-officers of the Austrian army. Spain has also begun to organize a system of military topography in imitation of that of France. Portugal follows the example. What are we doing in England?] LETTER XXVII _Paris, December 3, 1801_. In this season, when the blasts of November have entirely stripped the trees of their few remaining leaves, and Winter has assumed his hoary reign, the garden of the _Tuileries_, loses much of the gaiety of its attractions. Besides, to frequent that walk, at present, is like visiting daily one of our theatres, you meet the same faces so often, that the scene soon becomes monotonous. As well for the sake of variety as exercise, I therefore now and then direct my steps along the BOULEVARDS. This is the name given to the promenades with which Paris is, in part, surrounded for an extent of six thousand and eighty-four toises. They are distinguished by the names of the _Old_ and the _New_. The _Old_, or _North Boulevards_, commonly called the _Grands Boulevards_, were begun in 1536, and, when faced with ditches, which were to have been dug, they were intended to serve as fortifications against the English who were ravaging Picardy, and threatening the capital. Thence, probably, the etymology of their name; _Boulevard_ signifying, as every one knows, a bulwark. However this may be, the extent of these _Old_ Boulevards is two thousand four hundred toises from the _Rue de la Concorde_ to the _Place de la Liberté_, formerly the site of the Bastille. They were first planted in 1660, and are formed into three alleys by four rows of trees: the middle alley is appropriated to carriages and persons on horseback, and the two lateral ones are for foot-passengers. Here, on each side, is assembled every thing that ingenuity can imagine for the diversion of the idle stroller, or the recreation of the man of business. Places of public entertainment, ambulating musicians, exhibitions of different kinds, temples consecrated to love or pleasure, Vauxhalls, ball-rooms, magnificent hotels, and other tasteful buildings, &c. Even the coffee-houses and taverns here have their shady bowers, and an agreeable orchestra. Thus, you may always dine in Paris with a band of music to entertain you, without additional expense. The _New_ Boulevards, situated to the south, were finished in 1761. They are three thousand six hundred and eighty-three toises in extent from the _Observatoire_ to the _Hôtel des Invalides_. Although laid out much in the same manner as the _Old_, there is little resemblance between them; each having a very distinct appearance. On the _New Boulevards_, the alleys are both longer and wider, and the trees are likewise of better growth. There, the prospect is rural; and the air pure; while cultivated fields, with growing corn, present themselves to the eye. Towards the town, however, stand several pretty houses; little theatres even were built, but did not succeed. This was not their latitude. But some skittle-grounds and tea-gardens, lately opened, and provided with swings, &c. have attracted much company of a certain class in the summer. In this quarter, you seldom meet with a carriage, scarcely ever with persons sprucely dressed, but frequently with honest citizens, accompanied by their whole family, as plain in their garb as in their manners. Lovers too with their mistresses, who seek solitude, visit this retired walk; and now and then a poor poet comes hither, not to sharpen his appetite, but to arrange his numbers. Before, the revolution, the _Old_ Boulevards, from the _Porte St. Martin_ to the _Théâtre Favart_, was the rendezvous of the _élegantes_, who, on Sundays and Thursdays, used to parade there slowly, backward and forward, in their carriages, as our belles do in Hyde Park; with this difference, that, if their admirers did not accompany them, they generally followed them to interchange significant glances, or indulge in amorous parley. I understand that the summer lounge of the modern _élegantes_ has, of late years, been from the corner of the _Rue Grange Batelière_ to that of the _Rue Mont-Blanc_, where the ladies took their seats. This attracting the _muscadins_ in great numbers, not long since obtained for that part of the Boulevard the appellation of _Petit Coblentz_. Nearly about the middle of the North Boulevard stand two edifices, which owe their erection to the vanity of Lewis XIV. In the gratification of that passion did the _Grand Monarque_ console himself for his numerous defeats and disappointments; and the age in which he lived being fertile in great men, owing, undoubtedly, to the encouragement he afforded them, his display of it was well seconded by their superior talents. Previously to his reign, Paris had several gates, but some of these being taken down, arcs of triumph, in imitation of those of the Romans, were erected in their stead by _Louis le Grand_, in commemoration of his exploits. And this too, at a time when the allies might, in good earnest, have marched to Paris, had they not, by delay, given Marshal Villars an opportunity of turning the tide of their victories on the plain of Denain. Such was the origin of the PORTE SAINT DENIS. The magnificence of its architecture classes it among the first public monuments in Paris. It consists of a triumphal arch, insulated in the manner of those of the ancients: it is seventy-two feet in diameter as well as in elevation, and was executed in 1672, by BULLET from the designs of BLONDEL. On each side of the principal entrance rise two sculptured pyramids, charged with trophies of arms, both towards the faubourg, and towards the city. Underneath each of these pyramids is a small collateral passage for persons on foot. The arch is ornamented with two bas-reliefs: the one facing the city represents the passage of the Rhine; and the other, the capture of Maestricht. On the frieze on both sides LUDOVICO MAGNO was formerly to be read, in large characters of gilt bronze. This inscription is removed, and to it are substituted the word _Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité_. On arriving from Calais, you enter Paris by the _Porte St. Denis_. It was also by the _Porte St. Denis_ that kings and queens made their public entry. On these occasions, the houses in all the streets through which they passed, were decorated with silk hangings and tapestry, as far as the cathedral of _Notre-Dame_. Scented waters perfumed the air in the form of _jets d'eau_; while wine and milk flowed from the different public fountains. Froissard relates that, on the entrance of Isabeau de Bavière, there was in the _Rue St. Denis_ a representation of a clouded heaven, thickly sown with stars, whence descended two angels who gently placed on her head a very rich crown of gold, set with precious stones, at the same time singing verses in her praise. It was on this occasion that Charles VI, anxious for a sight of his intended bride, took a fancy to mix in the crowd, mounted on horseback behind Savoisi, his favourite. Pushing forward in order to approach her, he received from the serjeants posted to keep off the populace several sharp blows on the shoulders, which occasioned great mirth in the evening, when the circumstance was related before the queen and her ladies. Proceeding along the Boulevard towards the east, at a short distance from the _Porte St. Denis_, you arrive at the PORTE SAINT MARTIN. Although this triumphal arch cannot be compared to the preceding in magnificence, it was nevertheless executed by the same artists, having been erected in 1674. It is pierced with three openings, the centre one of which is eighteen feet wide, and the two others nine. The whole structure, which is fifty-four feet both in height and breadth, is rusticated, and in the spandles of the arch are four bas-reliefs; the two towards the city represent the capture of Besançon, and the rupture of the triple alliance; and those towards the faubourg, the capture of Lomberg, and the defeat of the Germans under the emblem of an eagle repulsed by the god of war. These bas-reliefs are crowned by an entablature of the Doric order, surmounted by an attic. The _Porte St. Martin_ is the grand entrance into Paris from all parts of Flanders. At the west extremity of this _North_ Boulevard, facing the _Rue de la Concorde_, stands an unfinished church, called _La Magdeleine_, whose cemetery received not only the bodies of Lewis XVI, his consort, and his sister, but of the greater part of the victims that perished by guillotine. In the space comprised between _La Magdeleine_ and the _Vieille Rue du Temple_, I speak within compass when I say that there are sometimes to be seen fifty ambulating conjurers of both sexes. They all vary the form of their art. Some have tables, surmounted by flags, bearing mysterious devices; some have wheels, with compartments adapted to every age and profession--One has a robe charged with hieroglyphics, and tells you your fortune through a long tube which conveys the sound to your ear; the other makes you choose in a parcel, a square piece of white paper, which becomes covered with characters at the moment when it is thrown into a jug that appears empty. The secret of this is as follows: The jug contains a little sulphuret of potash, and the words are written with acetite of lead. The action of the exterior air, on, the sulphuret of potash, disengages from it sulphurated hydrogen gas, which, acting on the oxyd of lead, brings to view the characters that before were invislble. Here, the philosophic Parisians stop before the movable stall of an astrologer, who has surmounted it with an owl, as an emblem of his magic wisdom. Many of them take this animal for a curiosity imported from foreign countries; for they are seldom able to distinguish a bat from a swallow. "Does that bird come from China, my dear?" says a lusty dame to her elderly husband, a shopkeeper of the _Rue St. Denis_.--"I don't know, my love," replies the other.--"What eyes it has got," continues she; "it must see a great deal better than we." "No;" cries a countryman standing by; "though its eyes are so big, it can't, in broad day, tell a cow from a calf." The lady continues her survey of the scientific repository; and the conjurer, with an air of importance, proposes to her to draw, for two _sous_, a motto from Merlin's wheel. "Take one, my dear," says the husband; "I wish to know whether you love me." The wife blushes and hesitates; the husband insists; she refuses, and is desirous of continuing her walk, saying that it is all foolishness.--"What if it is?" rejoins the husband, "I've paid, so take a motto to please me." For this once, the lady is quite at a nonplus; she at last consents, and, with a trembling hand, draws a card from the magic wheel: the husband unrolls it with eagerness and confidence, and reads these words: "_My young lover is and will be constant_."--"What the devil does this mean?" exclaims the old husband; quite disconcerted. --"'Tis a mistake," says the conjurer; "the lady put her hand into the wrong box; she drew the motto from the wheel for _young girls_, instead of that for _married women_. Let _Madame_ draw again, she shall pay nothing more."--"No, Mr. Conjurer," replies the shopkeeper, "that's enough. I've no faith in such nonsense; but another time, madam, take care that you don't put your hand into the wrong box." The fat lady, with her face as red as fire, follows her husband, who walks off grumbling, and it is easy to see, by their gestures, that the fatal motto has sown discord in the family, and confirmed the shopkeeper's suspicions. Independently of these divers into futurity, the corners of streets and walls of public squares, are covered with hand-bills announcing books containing secrets, sympathetic calculations of numbers in the lottery, the explanation of dreams in regard to those numbers, together with the different manners of telling fortunes, and interpreting prognostics. At all times, the marvellous has prevailed over simple truth, and the Cumæan Sibyl attracted the inquisitive in greater crowds than Socrates, Plato, or any philosopher, had pupils in the whole course of their existence. In Paris, the sciences are really making a rapid progress, notwithstanding the fooleries of the pseudo-philosophers, who parade the streets, and here, on the _Boulevards_, as well as in other parts of the town, exhibit lessons of physics. One has an electrifying machine, and phials filled with phosphorus: for two _sous_, he gives you a slight shock, and makes you a present of a small phial. Farther on, you meet with a _camera obscura_, whose effect surprises the spectators the more, as the objects represented within it have the motion which they do not find in common optics. There, you see a double refracting telescope: for two _sous_, you enjoy its effect. At either end, you place any object whatever, and though a hat, a board, or a child be introduced between the two glasses, the object placed appears not, on that account, the less clear and distinct to the eye of the person looking through the opposite glass. _Pierre_ has seen, and cannot believe his eyes: _Jacques_ wishes to see, and, on seeing, is in ecstacy: next comes _Fanchon_, who remains stupified. Enthusiasm becomes general, and the witnesses of their delirium are ready to go mad at not having two _sous_ in their pocket. Another fellow, in short, has a microscope, of which he extols the beauty, and, above all, the effects: he will not describe the causes which produce them, because he is unacquainted with them; but, provided he adapts his lessons to the understanding of those who listen to him, this is all he wants. Sometimes he may be heard to say to the people about him: "Gentlemen, give me a creeping insect, and for one _sou_, I will shew it to you as big as my fist." Sometimes too, unfortunately for him, the insect which he requires is more easily found among part of his auditors, than the money. P.S. For the preceding account of the Parisian conjurers I am indebted to M. Pujoulx. LETTER XXVIII. _Paris, December 4, 1802_. In one of your former letters you questioned me on a subject, which, though it had not escaped my notice, I was desirous to avoid, till I should be able to obtain on it some precise information. This I have done; and I hasten to present you with the following sketch, which will afford you a tolerably-correct idea of the FRENCH FUNDS, AND NATIONAL DEBT. The booked or consolidated debt is called TIERS CONSOLIDÉ, from its being the consolidated third of the national debt, of which the remaining two-thirds were reimbursed in _Bons de deux Tiers_ in 1797 and 98. It bears interest at five per Cent. payable half yearly at the _Banque de France_. The payment of the interest is at present six months in arrear. But the intention of the government is, by paying off in specie the interest of one whole year, to pay in future as soon as due. The days of payment are the 1st of Germinal (23d of March) and the 1st of Vendémiaire (23d of September). This stock purchased at the present price of from 55 to 60 would produce from eight to nine per cent. The general opinion is, that it will rise to 80; and as it is the chief stock, and the standard of the national credit, it is the interest, and must be the constant object of the government to keep up its price. There is a _Caisse d'amortissement_ or Sinking Fund, for the special purpose of paying off this stock, the effect of which, though not exactly known, must shortly be very considerable. The _Tiers Consolidé_ is saleable and transferable at a moment's warning, and at a trifling expense. It is not subject to taxation, nor open to attachments, either on the principal or interest. For purchasing, no sort of formality is required; but for receiving interest, or selling, it is necessary to produce a power of attorney. An established rule is, that the seller always retains his right to half a year's interest at the succeeding stated period of payment, so that he who purchases in the interval between March and September, is entitled to the interest commencing from the 23d of the latter month only; and he who buys between September and March, receives not his first dividend till the 23d of the following September. TIERS PROVISOIRE. This is the debt, yet unbooked, which is composed of the provisional claims of the creditors of the emigrants, the contractors, and various other holders of claims on the government. The _Tiers Provisoire_ is to be booked before the 1st of Vendémiaire, year XII of the Republic (23d of September, 1803), and will from that day bear interest of five per cent; so that, setting aside the danger of any retrospect in the interval, and that of any other change, it is at the present price, of from 15 to 50, cheaper than the _Tiers Consolidé_ to which, in about eighteen months, it will, in every respect, be assimilated. BONS DE DEUX TIERS, Is paper issued for the purpose of reimbursing the reduced two-thirds of the National Debt, and in the origin rendered applicable to the purchase of national houses and estates in the French Colonies, since ordered to be funded at five per cent; so that the price of this species of paper is entirely subordinate to that of the _Tiers Consolidé_ and supposing that to be 60 francs per cent, the _Bon de deux Tiers_ would be worth 3 francs. There are no hopes, however distant, that the government will ever restore the _Bons de deux Tiers_ to their original value. BONS DE TROIS QUARTS, So called from having been issued for the purpose of reimbursing the three-fourths of the interest of the fifth and sixth years of the Republic (1797 to 1798). They are, in all respects, assimilated to the preceding stock. COUPONS D'EMPRUNT FORCÉ. These are the receipts given by the government to the persons who contributed to the various forced loans. This paper is likewise assimilated to the two last-mentioned species, with this difference, that it is generally considered as a less sacred claim, and is therefore liquidated with greater difficulty. The holders of these three claims are hastening the liquidation and consolidation of them, and they are evidently right in so doing. QUARTS AU NOM ET QUART NUMÉRAIRE. This paper is thus denominated from its having been issued for the purpose of reimbursing the fourth of the dividend of the fifth and sixth years of the Republic (1797 to 1798). It is generally thought that this very sacred claim on the government will be funded _in toto_. RACHATS DE RENTE, Is the name given to the redemption of perpetual annuities due by individuals to the government, on a privileged mortgage on landed estates; the said annuities having been issued by the government in times of great distress, for the purpose of supplying immediate and urgent events. This paper is not only a mere government security, but is also specially mortgaged on the estates of the person who owes the annuity to the government, and who is, at any time, at liberty to redeem it at from twenty to twenty-five years purchase. Claims of this description, mortgaged on most desirable estates near the metropolis, might be obtained for less than 60 per cent; which, at the interest of five per cent, and with the additional advantage, in some instances, of the arrears of one or two years, would produce between eight and nine per cent. Next to the _Tiers Consolidé_, _Rachats de Rente_ are particularly worthy of attention; indeed, this debt is of so secure and sacred a nature, that the government has appropriated a considerable part of it to the special purpose and service of the hospitals and schools; two species of institutions which ought ever to be sheltered from all vicissitudes, and which, whatever may be the form or character of the government, must be supported and respected. ACTIONS DE LA BANQUE DE FRANCE. These are shares in the National Bank of France, which are limited to the number of thirty thousand, and were originally worth one thousand francs each; they therefore form a capital of 30,000,000 francs, or £1,250,000 sterling, and afford as follows: 1. A dividend which at present, and since the foundation, has averaged from eight to ten per cent, arising from the profits on discount. 2. A profit of from four to five per cent more on the discount of paper, which every holder of an _action_ or share effects at the Bank, at the rate of one-half per cent per month, or six per cent for the whole year. The present price of an _action_ is about twelve hundred francs, which may be considered as producing: 80 francs; dividend paid by the Bank on each share. 30 francs; certain profits according to the present discount of bills. 110 francs; per share 10-10/11 per cent. _Actions de la Banque de France_, though subject, in common with all stocks, to the influence of the government, are, however, far more independent of it than any other, and are the more secure, as the National Bank is not only composed of all the first bankers, but also supported by the principal merchants in the country. This investment is at present very beneficial, and certainly promises great eventual advantages. The dividends are paid in two half-yearly instalments. ACTIONS DE LA CAISSE DE COMMERCE, ET ACTIONS DU COMPTOIR COMMERCIAL. The _Caisse de Commerce_ and the _Comptoir Commercial_ are two establishments on the same plan, and affording, as nearly as possible, the same advantages as the _Banque de France_: the only difference is as follows: 1. These last two are, as far as any commercial establishment can be, independent of the government, and are more so than the _Banque de France_, as the _actions_ or shares are not considered as being a public fund. 2. The _Actions de la Caisse de Commerce_ limited in number to two thousand four hundred, originally cost 5000 francs, and are now worth 6000. The holder of each _action_ moreover, signs circulating notes to the amount of five thousand francs, which form the paper currency of the Bank, and for the payment of which the said holder would be responsible, were the Bank to stop payment. 3. The _Actions du Comptoir Commercial_ are still issued by the administrators of the establishment. The number of _actions_ is not as yet limited: the price of each _action_ is fifteen hundred francs (_circa_ £60 sterling), and the plan and advantages are almost entirely similar to those of the two last-mentioned institutions. The _Banque de France_ the _Caisse de Commerce_, and the _Comptoir Commercial_, discount three times a week. The first, the paper of the banking-houses and the principal commercial houses holding bank-stock; the second, the paper of the wholesale merchants of every class; and the third, the paper of retailers of all descriptions; and in a circulation which amounts to 100 millions of francs (_circa_ 4 millions sterling) per month, there have not, it is said, been seen, in the course of the last month, protests to the amount of 20,000 francs. BONS DE L'AN VII ET DE L'AN VIII. Is a denomination applied to paper, issued for the purpose of paying the dividend of the debt during the seventh and eighth years of the Republic. These _Bons_ are no further deserving of notice than as they still form a part of the floating debt, and are an article of the supposed liquidation at the conclusion of the present summary. It is therefore unnecessary to say more of them. ARRÉRAGES DES ANNÉES V ET VI. These are the arrears due to such holders of stock as, during the fifth and sixth years of the Republic, had not their dividend paid in _Bons de trois Quarts_ and _Quart Numéraire_, mentioned in Art. IV and VI of this sketch. I also notice them as forming an essential part of the above-mentioned supposed liquidation, at the end of the sketch, and shall only add that it is the general opinion that they will be funded. To the preceding principal investments and claims on the government, might be added the following: _Coupes de Bois. Cédules Hypothécaires. Rescriptions de Domaines Nationaux. Actions de la Caisse des Rentiers. Actions des Indes. Bons de Moines et Réligieuses. Obligations de Reçeveur._ However, they are almost entirely unworthy of attention, and afford but occasionally openings for speculation. Of the last, (_Obligations de Reçeveur_) it may be necessary to observe that they are monthy acceptances issued by the Receivers-General of all the departments, which the government has given to the five bankers, charged with supplying money for the current service, as security for their advances, and which are commonly discounted at from 7/8 to one per cent per month. I shall terminate this concise, though accurate sketch of the French funds by a general statement of the National Debt, and by an account of an annuity supposed to be held by a foreigner before the revolution, and which, to become _Tiers Consolidé_, must undergo the regular process of reduction and liquidation. _National Debt_. _Francs._ Consolidated Stock (_Tiers Consolidé_) 38,750,000 Floating Debt, to be consolidated, about 23,000,000 Life Annuities 20,000,000 Ecclesiastical, Military, and other Pensions 19,000,000 ----------- 100,750,000 The value of a _franc_ is something more than 10_d_. English money: according to which calculation, the National Debt of France is in round numbers no more than £4,000,000 Supposed liquidation of an annuity of £100. sterling, or 2,400 _livres tournois_ held by a foreigner before the war and yet unliquidated. _Francs._ Original Annuity 2,400 _Tiers Consolidé Bons de deux Tiers_ 2,400 The actual value of the whole, including the arreared dividends up to the present day is as follows: _Francs._ _Tiers Consolidé_ as above, 800 francs sold at 60 francs 9,600 _Bons de deux Tiers_, ditto 1600 francs sold at 3 francs 48 Arrears from the first year of the Republic to the fifth ditto (23d of September, 1792 to the 23d of September, 1797) are to be paid in Assignats, and are of no value. Arrears of the fifth and sixth years supposed to be liquidated so as to afford 25 per cent of their nominal value, about 600 Arrears in _Bons_ for the year VII, valued at 50 per cent loss 400 Arrears of the year VIII, due in _Bons_, valued at 25 per cent loss 600 Arrears of the year IX, due in specie 600 Arrears of the year X, of which three months are nearly elapsed 200 ----- Total of the principal and interest of an original annuity of 2,400 livres, reduced (according to law) to 800 12,248 Or in sterling, _circa_ £500 ------ I had almost forgot that you have asked me more than once for an explanation of the exact value of a modern franc. The following you may depend on as correct. The _unité monétaire_ is a piece of silver of the weight of five _grammes_, containing a tenth of alloy and nine tenths of pure silver. It is called _Franc_, and is subdivided into _Décimes_, and _Centimes_: its value is to that of the old _livre tournois_ in the proportion of 81 to 80. _Value in livres tournois._ liv. sous. deniers. Franc 1 0 3 Décime 2 0.3 Centime 2.43 LETTER XXIX. _Paris, December 7, 1801_. At the grand monthly parade of the 15th of last Brumaire, I had seen the First Consul chiefly on horseback: on which account, I determined to avail myself of that of the 15th of the present month of Frimaire, in order to obtain a nearer view of his person. On these occasions, none but officers in complete uniform are admitted into the palace of the _Tuileries_, unless provided with tickets, which are distributed to a certain number at the discretion of the governor. General A----y sent me tickets by ten o'clock this morning, and about half after eleven, I repaired to the palace. On reaching the vestibule from the garden of the _Tuileries_, you ascend the grand stair-case to the left, which conducts you to the guard-room above it in the centre pavilion. Hence you enter the apartments of the Chief Consul. On the days of the grand parade, the first room is destined for officers as low as the rank of captain, and persons admitted with tickets; the second, for field-officers; the third, for generals; and the fourth, for councellors of state, and the diplomatic corps. To the east, the windows of these apartments command the court-yard where the troops are assembled; while to the west, they afford a fine view of the garden of the _Tuileries_ and the avenue leading to the _Barrière de Chaillot_. In the first-room, those windows which overlook the parade were occupied by persons standing five or six in depth, some of whom, as I was informed, had been patient enough to retain their places for the space of two or three hours, and among them were a few ladies. Here, a sort of lane was formed from door to door by some grenadiers of the consular guard. I found both sides of this lane so much crowded, that I readily accepted the invitation of a _chef de brigade_ of my acquaintance to accompany him into the second room; this, he observed, was no more than a privilege to which I was entitled. This room was also crowded; but it exhibited a most brilliant _coup d'oeil_ from the great variety and richness of the uniforms of the field-officers here assembled, by which mine was entirely eclipsed. The lace or embroidery is not merely confined to the coats, jackets, and pantaloons, but extends to the sword belts, and even to the boots, which are universally worn by the military. Indeed, all the foreign ambassadors admit that none of the levees of the European courts can vie in splendour with those of the Chief Consul. My first care on entering this room, was to place myself in a situation which might afford me an uninterrupted view of BONAPARTE. About twenty-five minutes past twelve, his sortie was announced by a _huissier_. Immediately after, he came out of the inner apartment, attended by several officers of rank, and, traversing all the other rooms with a quick step, proceeded, uncovered, to the parade, the order of which I have described to you in a former letter. On the present occasion, however, it lasted longer on account of the distribution of arms of honour, which the First Consul presents with his own hand to those heroes who have signalized themselves in fighting their country's battles. This part of the ceremony, which was all that I saw of the parade yesterday, naturally revived in my mind the following question, so often agitated: "Are the military successes of the French the consequences of a new system of operations and new tactics, or merely the effect of the blind courage of a mass of men, led on by chiefs whose resolutions were decided by presence of mind alone and circumstances?" The latter method of explaining their victories has been frequently adopted, and the French generals have been reproached with lavishing the lives of thousands for the sake of gaining unimportant advantages, or repairing inconsiderable faults. Sometimes, indeed, it should seem that a murderous obstinacy has obtained them successes to which prudence had not paved the way; but, certainly, the French can boast, too, of memorable days when talent had traced the road to courage, when vast plans combined with judgment, have been followed with perseverance, when resources have been found in those awful moments in which Victory, hovering over a field of carnage, leaves the issue of the conflict doubtful, till a sudden thought, a ray of genius, inclines her in favour of the general, thus inspired, and then art may be said to triumph over art, and valour over valour. And whence came most of these generals who have shewn this inspiration, if I may so term it? Some, as is well known, emerged from the schools of jurisprudence; some, from the studies of the arts; and others, from the counting-houses of commerce, as well as from the lowest ranks of the army. Previously to the revolution it was not admitted, in this country at least, that such sources could furnish men fit to be one day the arbiters of battles and of the fate of empires. Till that period, all those Frenchmen who had distinguished themselves in the field, had devoted themselves from their infancy to the profession of arms, were born near the throne of which they constituted the lustre, or in that cast who arrogated to themselves the exclusive right of defending their country. The glory of the soldier was not considered; and a private must have been more than a hero to be as much remarked as a second lieutenant. Men of reflection, seeing the old tactics fail against successful essays, against enthusiasm whose effects are incalculable, studied whether new ideas did not direct some new means; for it would have been no less absurd to grant all to valour than to attribute all to art. But to return to the main subject of my letter. In about three quarters of an hour, BONAPARTE came back from the parade, with the same suite as before, that is, preceded by his aides-de-camp, and followed by the generals and field-officers of the consular guard, the governor of the palace, the general commanding the first military division, and him at the head of the garrison of Paris. For my part, I scarcely saw any one but himself; BONAPARTE alone absorbed my whole attention. A circumstance occurred which gave me an opportunity of observing the Chief Consul with critical minuteness. I had left the second room, and taken my station in front of the row of gazers, close to the folding-doors which opened into the first room, in order to see him receive petitions and memorials. There was no occasion for BONAPARTE to cast his eyes from side to side, like the _Grand Monarque_ coming from mass, by way of inviting petitioners to approach him. They presented themselves in such numbers that, after he put his hat under his arm, both his hands were full in a moment. To enable him to receive other petitions, he was under the necessity of delivering the first two handfuls to his aides-de-camp. I should like to learn what becomes of all these papers, and whether he locks them up in a little desk of which he alone has the key, as was the practice of Lewis XIV. When BONAPARTE approached the door of the second room, he was effectually impeded in his progress by a lady, dressed in white, who, throwing herself at his feet, gracefully presented to him a memorial, which he received with much apparent courtesy; but still seemed, by his manner, desirous to pass forward. However, the crowd was so considerable and so intent on viewing this scene, that the grenadiers, posted near the spot where it took place, were obliged to use some degree of violence before they could succeed in clearing a passage. Of all the portraits which you and I have seen of BONAPARTE in England, that painted by Masquerier, and exhibited in Piccadilly, presents the greatest resemblance. But for his side-face, you may, for twelve _sous_, here procure a perfect likeness of it at almost every stall in the street. In short, his features are such as may, in my opinion, be easily copied by any artist of moderate abilities. However incompetent I may be to the task, I shall, as you desire it, attempt to _sketch_ his person; though I doubt not that any French _commis_, in the habit of describing people by words, might do it greater justice. BONAPARTE is rather below the middle size, somewhat inclined to stoop, and thin in person; but, though of a slight make, he appears to be muscular, and capable of fatigue; his forehead is broad, and shaded by dark brown hair, which is cut short behind; his eyes, of the same colour, are full, quick, and prominent; his nose is aquiline; his chin, protuberant and pointed; his complexion, of a yellow hue; and his cheeks, hollow. His countenance, which is of a melancholy cast, expresses much sagacity and reflection: his manner is grave and deliberate, but at the same time open. On the whole, his aspect announces him to be of a temperate and phlegmatic disposition; but warm and tenacious in the pursuit of his object, and impatient of contradiction. Such, at least, is the judgment which I should form of BONAPARTE from his external appearance. While I was surveying this man of universal talent, my fancy was not idle. First, I beheld him, flushed with ardour, directing the assault of the _téte-de-pont_ at _Lodi_; next dictating a proclamation to the Beys at _Cairo_, and styling himself the friend of the faithful; then combating the ebullition of his rage on being foiled in the storming of _Acre_ I afterwards imagined I saw him like another CROMWELL, expelling the Council of Five Hundred at _St. Cloud_, and seizing on the reins of government: when established in power, I viewed him, like HANNIBAL, crossing the _Alps_, and forcing victory to yield to him the hard-contested palm at _Marengo_; lastly, he appeared to my imagination in the act of giving the fraternal embrace to Caprara, the Pope's legate, and at the same time holding out to the see of Rome the re-establishment of catholicism in France. Voltaire says that "no man ever was a hero in the eyes of his _valet-de-chambre_." I am curious to know whether the valet of the First Consul be an exception to this maxim. As to BONAPARTE'S public character, numerous, indeed, are the constructions put on it by the voice of rumour: some ascribe to him one great man of antiquity as a model; some, another; but many compare him, in certain respects, to JULIUS CÆSAR, as imitators generally succeed better in copying the failings than the good qualities of their archetypes, let us hope, supposing this comparison to be a just one, that the Chief Consul will, in one particular, never lose sight of the generous clemency of that illustrious Roman--who, if any spoke bitterly against him, deemed it sufficient to complain of the circumstance publicly, in order to prevent them from persevering in the use of such language. "_Acerbè loquentibus satis habuit pro concione denunciare, ne perseverarent._" "The character of a great man," says a French political writer, who denies the justness of this comparison, "like the celebrated picture of Zeuxis, can be formed only of a multitude of imitations, and it is as little possible for the observer to find for him a single model in history, as it was for the painter of Heraclea to discover in nature that of the ideal beauty he was desirous of representing[1]."--"The French revolution," observes the same author, a little farther on, "has, perhaps, produced more than one CÆSAR, or one CROMWELL; but they have disappeared before they have had it in their power to give full scope to their ambition[2]." Time will decide on the truth and impartiality of these observations of M. HAUTERIVE. As at the last monthly parade, BONAPARTE was habited in the consular dress, that is, a coat of scarlet velvet, embroidered with gold: he wore jockey boots, carelessly drawn over white cotton pantaloons, and held in his hand a cocked hat, with the national cockade only. I say only, because all the generals wear hats trimmed with a splendid lace, and decorated with a large, branching, tricoloured feather. After the parade, the following, I understand, is the _étiquette_ usually observed in the palace. The Chief Consul first gives audience to the general-officers, next to the field-officers, to those belonging to the garrison, and to a few petitioners. He then returns to the fourth apartment, where the counsellors of state assemble. Being arrived there, notice is sent to the diplomatic corps, who meet in a room on the ground-floor of the palace, called _La Salle des Ambassadeurs_. They immediately repair to the levee-room, and, after paying their personal respects to the First Consul, they each introduce to him such persons, belonging to their respective nations, as they may think proper. Several were this day presented by the Imperial, Russian, and Danish ambassadors: the British minister, Mr. Jackson, has not yet presented any of his countrymen nor will he, in all probability, as he is merely a _locum tenens_. After the levee, the Chief Consul generally gives a dinner of from one hundred and fifty to two hundred covers, to which all those who have received arms of honour, are invited. Before I left the palace, I observed the lady above-mentioned, who had presented the memorial, seated in one corner of the room, all in tears, and betraying every mark of anxious grief: she was pale, and with her hair dishevelled; but, though by no means handsome, her distressed situation excited a lively interest in her favour. On inquiry, I was informed that it was Madame Bourmont, the wife of a Vendean chief, condemned to perpetual imprisonment for a breach of the convention into which he had jointly entered with the agents of the French government. Having now accomplished my object, when the crowd was somewhat dispersed, I retired to enjoy the fine weather by a walk in the CHAMPS ELYSÉES. After traversing the garden of the _Tuileries_ and the _Place de la Concorde_, from east to west, you arrive at this fashionable summer promenade. It is planted with trees in quincunx; and although, in particular points of view, this gives it a symmetrical air; yet, in others, the hand of art is sufficiently concealed to deceive the eye by a representation of the irregular beauties of nature. The French, in general, admire the plan of the garden of the _Tuileries_, and think the distribution tasteful; but, when the trees are in leaf, all prefer the _Champs Elysées_, as being more rural and more inviting. This spot, which is very extensive, as you may see by the Plan of Paris, has frequently been chosen for the scene of national fêtes, for which it is, in many respects, better calculated than the _Champ de Mars_. However, from its proximity to the great road, the foliage is imbrowned by the dust, and an idea of aridity intrudes itself on the imagination from the total absence of water. The sight of that refreshing element recreates the mind, and communicates a powerful attraction even to a wilderness. In fact, at this season of the year, the _Champs Elysées_ resemble a desert; but, in summer, they present one of the most agreeable scenes that can be imagined. In temporary buildings, of a tasteful construction, you then find here _restaurateurs_, &c, where all sorts of refreshments may be procured, and rooms where "the merry dance" is kept up with no common spirit. Swings and roundabouts are also erected, as well as different machines for exercising the address of those who are fond of running at a ring, and other sports. Between the road leading to _l'Étoile_, the _Bois de Boulogne_, &c, and that which skirts the Seine, formerly called the _Cours de la Reine_, is a large piece of turf, where, in fine weather, and especially on Sundays, the Parisian youths amuse themselves at foot-ball, prison-bars, and long tennis. Here, too, boys and girls assemble, and improve their growth and vigour by dancing, and a variety of healthful diversions; while their relations and friends, seated on the grass, enjoy this interesting sight, and form around each group a circle which is presently increased by numbers of admiring spectators. Under the shade of the trees, on the right hand, as you face the west, an immense concourse of both sexes and all ages is at the same time collected. Those who prefer sitting to walking occupy three long rows of chairs, set out for hire, three deep on each side, and forming a lane through which the great body of walkers parade. This promenade may then be said to deserve the appellation of _Elysian Fields_, from the number of handsome women who resort hither. The variety of their dresses and figures, the satisfaction which they express in seeing and being seen, their anxious desire to please, which constitutes their happiness and that of our sex, the triumph which animates the countenance of those who eclipse their rivals; all this forms a diversified and amusing picture, which fixes attention, and gives birth to a thousand ideas respecting the art and coquetry of women, as well as what beauty loses or gains by adopting the ever-varying caprices of fashion. Here, on a fine summer's evening, are now to be seen, I am told, females displaying almost as much luxury of dress as used to be exhibited in the days of the monarchy. The essential difference is that the road in the centre is not now, as in those times, covered with brilliant equipages; though every day seems to produce an augmentation of the number of private carriages. At the entrance of the _Champs Elysées_ are placed the famous groups of Numidian horses, held in by their vigorous and masterly conductors, two _chefs d'oeuvre_ of modern art, copied from the group of _Monte-Cavallo_ at Rome. By order of the Directory, these statues were brought from _Marly_, where they ornamented the terrace. They are each of them cut out of a block of the most faultless Carrara marble. On the pedestal on which they stood at that once-royal residence, was engraved the name of COSTOU, 1745, without any Christian name: but, as there were two brothers of that name, Nicolas and Guillaume, natives of Lyons, and both excellent sculptors, it is become a matter of doubt by which of them these master-pieces were executed; though the one died in 1733, and the other in 1746. It is conjectured, however, that fraternal friendship induced them to share the fame arising from these capital productions, and that they worked at them in common till death left the survivor the task of finishing their joint labour. To whichever of the two the merit of the execution may be due, it is certain that the fiery, ungovernable spirit of the horses, as well as the exertion of vigour, and the triumph of strength in their conductors, is very happily expressed. The subject has frequently afforded a comparison to politicians. "These statues," say some observers, "appear to be the emblem of the French people, over whom it is necessary to keep a tight hand."--"It is to be apprehended," add others, "that the reins, which the conductors hold with so powerful an arm, are too weak to check these ungovernable animals." [Footnote 1: _De l'Etat de la France, à la fin de l'an VIII._ page 270.] [Footnote 2: Ibid. page 274.] LETTER XXX. _Paris, Dccemler 8, 1801_. You desire that I will favour you with a particular account of the means employed to transfer from pannel to canvas those celebrated pictures which I mentioned in my letter of the 13th ult°. Like many other, things that appear simple on being known, so is this process; but it is not, on that account, the less ingenious and difficult in execution. Such is the great disadvantage of the art of painting that, while other productions of genius may survive the revolution of ages, the creations of the pencil are intrusted to perishable wood or canvas. From the effect of heat, humidity, various exhalations to which they may be carelessly exposed, and even an unperceived neglect in the priming of the pannel or cloth, master-pieces are in danger of disappearing for ever. Happy, then, is it for the arts that this invaluable discovery has been lately brought to so great a degree of perfection, and that the restoration of several capital pictures having been confided to men no less skilful than enlightened, they have thus succeeded in rescuing them from approaching and inevitable destruction. Of all the fruits of the French conquests, not a painting was brought from Lombardy, Rome, Florence, or Venice, that was not covered with an accumulation of filth, occasioned by the smoke of the wax-tapers and incense used in the ceremonies of the catholic religion. It was therefore necessary to clean and repair them; for to bring them to France, without rendering them fit to be exhibited, would have answered no better purpose than to have left them in Italy. One of those which particularly fixed the attention of the Administration of the CENTRAL MUSEUM OF THE ARTS, was the famous picture by RAPHAEL, taken from the _Chiesa delle Contesse_ at Foligno, and thence distinguished by the appellation of MADONNA DI FOLIGNO. This _chef d'oeuvre_ was in such a lamentable state of decay, that the French commissioners who selected it, wereunder the necessity of pasting paper over it in order to prevent the scales, which curled up on many parts of its surface, from falling off during its conveyance to to Paris. In short, had not the saving hand of art interposed, this, and other monuments of the transcendent powers of the Italian school, marked by the corroding tooth of Time, would soon have entirely perished. As this picture could not be exhibited in its injured state, the Administration of the Museum determined that it should be repaired. They accordingly requested the Minister of the Interior to cause this important operation to be attended by Commissioners chosen from the National Institute. The Class of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of that learned Society appointed to this task, GUYTON and BERTHOLLET, chymists, and the Class of Literature and Fine Arts named VINCENT and TAUNAY, painters. These Commissioners, in concert with the Administration, having ascertained the state of the picture, it was unanimously agreed that the only mean of saving it would be to remove it from the worm-eaten pannel on which it was painted. It was, besides, necessary to ascertain the safety of the process, in order that, without, exciting the apprehensions of the lovers of the arts, it might be applied to other pictures which required it. The Report of the four Commissioners before named, respecting the restoration of the _Madonna di Foligno_, has been adopted by the Classes to which they respectively belong, and is to be made to the National Institute at their next public sitting on the 15th of Nivose (5th of January, 1802). In order to make you perfectly acquainted with the whole of the process, I shall transcribe, for your satisfaction, that part of the Report immediately connected with the art of restoring damaged or decayed paintings. This labour, and the success by which it was attended, are really a memorial of what the genius and industry of the French can achieve. To all those who, like you, possess valuable collections, such information cannot but be particularly interesting. "The desire of repairing the outrages of time has unfortunately accelerated the decay of several pictures by coarse repainting and bad varnish, by which much of the original work has been covered. Other motives, too, have conspired against the purity of the most beautiful compositions: a prelate has been seen to cause a discordant head of hair to conceal the charms of a Magdalen." "Nevertheless, efficacious means of restoration have been discovered: a painting, the convass of which is decayed, or the pannel worm-eaten, is transferred to a fresh cloth; the profane touches of a foreign pencil are made to disappear; the effaced strokes are reinserted with scrupulous nicety; and life is restored to a picture which was disfigured, or drawing near to its end. This art has made great progress, especially in Paris, and experienced recent improvement under the superintendance of the Administration of the Museum; but it is only with a religious respect that any one can venture on an operation which may always give rise to a fear of some change in the drawing or colouring, above all when the question is to restore a picture by RAPHAEL."[1] "The restoration may be divided into two parts; the one, which is composed of mechanical operations, whose object is to detach the painting from the ground on which it is fixed, in order to transfer it to a fresh one; the other, which consists in cleaning the surface of the painting from every thing that can tarnish it, in restoring the true colour of the picture, and in repairing the parts destroyed, by tints skilfully blended with the primitive touches. Thence the distinctive division of the mechanical operations, and of the art of painting, which will be the object of the two parts of this Report. The former particularly engaged the attention of the Commissioners of the _Class of Sciences_; and the latter, which required the habit of handling a scientific pencil, fell to the share of the Commissioners of the _Class of Fine Arts_" FIRST PART. "Although the mechanical labour is subdivided into several operations, it was wholly intrusted to Citizen HACQUINS, on whose intelligence, address, and skill, it is our duty to bestow every commendation." "The picture represents the Virgin Mary, the infant Jesus, St. John, and several other figures of different sizes. It was painted on a pannel of 1-1/2 inches in thickness: a crack extended from its circumference to the left foot of the infant Jesus: it was 4-1/2 lines wide at its upper part, and diminished progressively to the under: from this crack to the right hand border, the surface formed a curve whose greatest bend was 2 inches 5-1/2 lines, and from the crack to the other border, another curve bending 2 inches. The picture was scaling off in several places, and a great number of scales had already detached themselves; the painting was, besides, worm-eaten in many parts." "It was first necessary to render the surface even: to effect this, a gauze was pasted on the painting, and the picture was turned on its face. After that, Citizen HACQUINS made, in the thickness of the wood, several grooves at some distance from each other, and extending from the upper extremity of the bend to the place where the pannel presented a more level surface. Into these grooves he introduced little wooden wedges; he then covered the whole surface with wet cloths, which he took care to remoisten. The action of the wedges, which swelled by the moisture against the softened pannel, compelled the latter to resume its primitive form: both edges of the crack before-mentioned being brought together, the artist had recourse to glue, in order to unite the two separated parts. During the desiccation, he laid oak bars across the picture, for the purpose of keeping the pannel in the form which he wished it to assume." "The desiccation being effected slowly, the artist applied a second gauze on the first, then successively two thicknesses of grey blotting paper." "This preparation (which the French artists call _cartonnage_) being dry, he laid the picture with its face downward on a table, to which he carefully confined it; he next proceeded to the separation of the wood on which the painting was fixed." "The first operation was executed by means of two saws, one of which acted perpendicularly; and the other, horizontally: the work of the two saws being terminated, the pannel was found to be reduced to the thickness of 4-1/2 lines. The artist then made use of a plane of a convex form on its breadth: with this instrument he planed the pannel in an oblique direction, in order to take off very short shavings, and to avoid the grain of the wood: by these means he reduced the pannel to 2/3 of a line in thickness. He then took a flat plane with a toothed iron, whose effect is much like that of a rasp which reduces wood into dust: in this manner he contrived to leave the pannel no thicker than a sheet of paper." "In that state, the wood was successively moistened with clear water, in small compartments, which disposed it to detach itself: then the artist separated it with the rounded point of a knife-blade." "The picture, thus deprived of all the wood, presented to the eye every symptom of the injury which it had sustained. It had formerly been repaired; and, in order to fasten again the parts which threatened to fall off, recourse had been had to oils and varnishes. But those ingredients passing through the intervals left by such parts of the picture as were reduced to curling scales, had been extended in the impression to the paste, on which the painting rested, and had rendered the real restoration more difficult, without producing the advantageous effect which had thence been expected." "The same process would not serve for separating the parts of the impression which had been indurated by varnishes, and those where the paste had remained unmixed: it was necessary to moisten the former for some time in small compartments: when they were become sufficiently softened, the artist separated them with the blade of his knife: the others were more easily separated by moistening them with a flannel, and rubbing them slightly. It required all the address and patience of Citizen HACQUINS to leave nothing foreign to the work of the original painter: at length the outline of RAPHAEL was wholly exposed to view, and left by itself." "In order to restore a little suppleness to the painting, which was too much dried, it was rubbed all over with carded cotton imbibed with oil, and wiped with old muslin: then white lead, ground with oil, was substituted in the room of the impression made by paste, and fixed by means of a soft brush." "After being left to dry for three months, a gauze was glued on the impression made by oil; and on the latter, a fine canvas." "When this canvas was dry, the picture was detached from the table, and turned, in order to remove the _cartonnage_ from it with water; this operation being effected, the next proceeding was to get rid of the appearance of the inequalities of the surface arising from the curling up of its parts: for that purpose, the artist successively applied on the inequalities, flour-paste diluted. Then having put a greasy paper on the moistened part, he laid a hot iron on the parts curled up, which became level: but it was not till after he had employed the most unequivocal signs to ascertan the suitable degree of heat, that he ventured to come near the painting with the iron." "It has been seen that the painting, disengaged from its impression made by paste and from every foreign substance, had been fixed on an impression made by oil, and that a level form had been given to the uneven parts of its surface. This master-piece was still to be solidly applied on a new ground: for that, it was necessary to paste paper over it again, detach it from the temporary gauze which had been put on the impression, add a new coat of oxyde of lead and oil, apply to it a gauze rendered very supple, and on the latter, in like manner done over with a preparation of lead, a raw cloth, woven all in one piece, and impregnated, on its exterior surface, with a resinous substance, which was to confine it to a similar canvass fixed on the stretching-frame. This last operation required that the body of the picture, disengaged from its _cartonnage_, or paper facing, and furnished with a new ground, should be exactly applied to the cloth done over with resinous substances, at the same time avoiding every thing that might hurt it by a too strong or unequal extension, and yet compelling every part of its vast extent to adhere to the cloth strained on the stretching-frame. It is by all these proceedings that the picture has been incorporated with a ground more durable than the original one, and guarded against the accidents which had produced the injuries. It was then subjected to restoration, which is the object of the second part of this Report." "We have been obliged to confine ourselves to pointing out the successive operations, the numerous details of which we have attended; we have endeavoured to give an idea of this interesting art, by which the productions of the pencil may be indefinitely perpetuated, in order only to state the grounds of the confidence that it has appeared to us to merit." SECOND PART. "After having given an account of the mechanical operations, employed with so much success in the first part of the restoration of the picture by RAPHAEL, it remains for us to speak of the second, the restoration of the painting, termed by the French artists _restauration pittoresque_. This part is no less interesting than the former. We are indebted to it for the reparation of the ravages of time and of the ignorance of men, who, from their unskilfulness, had still added to the injury which this master-piece had already suffered. "This essential part of the restoration of works of painting, requires, in those who are charged with it, a very delicate eye, in order to know how to accord the new tints with the old, a profound knowledge of the proceedings employed by masters, and a long experience, in order to foresee, in the choice and use of colours, what changes time may effect in the new tints, and consequently prevent the discordance which would be the result of those changes. "The art of restoring paintings likewise requires the most scrupulous nicety to cover no other than the damaged parts, and an extraordinary address to match the work of the restoration with that of the master, and, as it were, replace the first priming in all its integrity, concealing the work to such a degree that even unexperienced eye cannot distinguish what comes from the hand of the artist from what belongs to that of the master. "It is, above all, in a work of the importance of that of which we are speaking, that the friends of the arts have a right to require, in its restoration, all the care of prudence and the exertion of the first talents. We feel a real satisfaction in acquainting you with the happy result of the discriminating wisdom of the Administration of the CENTRAL MUSEUM OF THE ARTS; who, after having directed and superintended the first part of the restoration, employed in the second, that of the painting (which we call _pittoresque_) Citizen ROESER, whose abilities in this line were long known to them, and whose repeated success had justified their confidence." After having assured the Institute that they consider the _pittoresque_ part of the restoration of the _Madonna di Foligno_ as pure as it was possible to be desired, the Commissioners proceed to call their attention to some discordance in the original design and colouring of this _chef d'oeuvre_, and to make on it some critical observations. This they do in order to prevent any doubts which might arise in the mind of observers, and lead them to imagine that the restoration had, in any manner, impaired the work of RAPHAEL. They next congratulate themselves on having at length seen this masterpiece of the immortal RAPHAEL restored to life, shining in all its lustre, and through such means, that there ought no longer to remain any fear respecting the recurrence of those accidents whose ravages threatened to snatch it for ever from general admiration. They afterwards terminate their Report in the following words: "The Administration of the CENTRAL MUSEUM OF THE ARTS, who have, by their knowledge, improved the art of restoration, will, no doubt, neglect nothing to preserve that art in all its integrity; and, notwithstanding repeated success, they will not permit the application of it but to pictures so injured, that there are more advantages in subjecting them to a few risks inseparable from delicate and numerous operations, than in abandoning them to the destruction by which they are threatened. The invitation which the Administration of the Museum gave to the National Institute to attend the restoration of the _Madonna di Foligno_ by RAPHAEL, is to us a sure pledge that the enlightened men of whom it is composed felt that they owed an account of their vigilance to all the connoisseurs in Europe." [Footnote 1: It may not be amiss to observe that RAPHAEL employed the _impasto_ colour but in few of his pictures, of which the _Transfiguration_ is one wherein it is the most conspicuous: his other productions are painted with great transparency, the colours being laid on a white ground; which rendered still more difficult the operation above-mentioned. _Note of the Author_.] LETTER XXXI. _Paris, December 10, 1801._ "Of all the bridges that were ever built," says Sterne, "the whole world, who have passed over it, must own that the noblest--the grandest--the lightest--the longest--the broadest that ever conjoined land and land together upon the face of the terraqueous globe, is the PONT NEUF." The _Pont Neuf_ is certainly the largest, and, on account of its situation[1], the most conspicuous, and most frequented of any of the bridges in Paris; but, in the environs of the capital, is one which surpasses them all. This is the _Pont de Neuilly._ The first stone of the _Pont Neuf_ was laid by Henry III in 1578, and the foundation of the piles was begun to be formed on the opposite side; when the troubles of the League forced DU CERCEAU, the architect, to withdraw to foreign countries. The work was not resumed till the reign of Henry IV, who ordered it to be continued under the direction of MARCHAND; but, owing to various causes, the _Pont Neuf_ was not finished till 1674. The length of this bridge is one thousand and twenty feet, and its breadth seventy-two; which is sufficient to admit of five carriages passing abreast. It is formed of twelve arches, seven of which are on the side of the _Louvre_, and five on the side of the _Quai des Augustins_, extending over the two channels of the river, which is wider in this place, from their junction. In 1775, the parapets were repaired, and the foot-way lowered and narrowed. SOUFFLOT, the architect of the Pantheon, availed himself of this opportunity to build, on the twenty half-moons which stand immediately above each pile, as many rotundas, in stone, to serve as shops. On the outside, above the arches, is a double cornice, which attracts the eye of the connoisseur in architecture, notwithstanding its mouldering state, on account of the _fleurons_ in the antique style, and the heads of Sylvans, Dryads, and Satyrs, which serve as supports to it, at the distance of two feet from each other. As the mole that forms a projection on this bridge between the fifth and seventh arch, stands facing the _Place Dauphine_, which was built by Henry IV, it was the spot chosen for erecting to him a statue. This was the first public monument of the kind that had been raised in honour of French kings. Under the first, second, and third race, till the reign of Lewis XIII, if the statue of a king was made, it was only for the purpose, of being placed on his tomb, or else at the portal of some church, or royal residence which he had either built or repaired. Parisians and strangers used to admire this equestrian statue of Henry IV, and before the revolution, all agreed in taking him for the model of goodness. In proof of his popularity, we are told, in the _Tableau de Paris_, that a beggar was one day following a passenger along, the foot-way, of the _Pont Neuf_: it was a festival. "In the name of St. Peter," said the mendicant, "in the name of St. Joseph, in the name of the Virgin Mary, in the name of her divine Son, in the name of God?" Being arrived before the statue of the conqueror of the League, "In the name of _Henri quatre_" exclaimed he, "in the name of _Henri quatre?_"--"Here!" said the passenger, and he gave him a louis d'or. Unquestionably, no monarch that ever sat on the throne of France was so popular as _Henri quatre_; and his popularity was never eclipsed by any of his successors. Even amidst the rage of the revolutionary storm, the military still held his memory in veneration. On opening the sepultures at St. Denis in 1793, the coffin of Henry IV was the first that was taken out of the vault of the Bourbons. Though he died in 1610, his body was found in such preservation that the features of his face were not altered. A soldier, who was present at the opening of the coffin, moved by a martial enthusiasm, threw himself on the body of this warlike prince, and, after a considerable pause of admiration, he drew his sabre, and cut off a long lock of Henry's beard, which was still fresh, at the same time exclaiming, in very energetic and truly-military terms: "And I too am a French soldier! In future I will have no other whiskers." Then placing this valuable lock on his upper lip, he withdrew, adding emphatically: "Now I am sure to conquer the enemies of France, and I march to victory." In Paris, all the statues of kings had fallen, while that of Henry IV still remained erect. It was for some time a matter of doubt whether it should be pulled down. "The poem of the _Henriade_ pleaded in its favour;" but, says Mercier, "he was an ancestor of the perjured king," Then, and not till then, this venerated statue underwent the same fate. It has been generally believed that the deed of Ravaillac was dictated by fanaticism, or that he was the instrument employed by the Marchioness of Verneuil and the Duke of Epernon for assassinating that monarch. However, it stands recorded, I am told, in a manuscript found in the National Library, that Ravaillac killed Henry IV because he had seduced his sister, and abandoned her when pregnant. Thus time, that affords a clue to most mysteries, has also solved this historical enigma. This statue of Henry IV was erected on the 23d of August, 1624. To have insulted it, would, not long since, have been considered as a sacrilege; but, after having been mutilated and trodden under foot, this once-revered image found its way to the mint or the cannon-foundry. On its site now stands an elegant coffeehouse, whence you may enjoy a fine view of the stately buildings which adorn the quays that skirt the river. While admiring the magnificence of this _coup d'oeil_, an Englishman cannot avoid being struck by the multitude of washerwomen, striving to expel the dirt from linen, by means of _battoirs_, or wooden battledores. On each side of the Seine are to be seen some hundreds hard at work, ranged in succession, along the sides of low barks, equal in length to our west-country barges. Such is the vigour of their arm that, for the circumference of half-a-mile, the air resounds with the noise of their incessant blows. After beating the linen for some time in this merciless manner, they scrub it with a hard brush, in lieu of soaping it, so that a shirt which has passed through their hands five or six times is fit only for making lint. No wonder then that Frenchmen, in general, wear coarse linen: a hop-sack could not long resist so severe a process. However, it must be confessed, that some good arises from this evil. These washerwomen insensibly contribute to the diffusion of knowledge; for, as they are continually reducing linen into rags, they cannot but considerably increase the supply, of that article for the manufacture of paper. Compared to the Thames, even above bridge, the Seine is far from exhibiting a busy scene; a few rafts of wood for fuel, and some barges occasionally in motion, now and then relieve the monotony of its rarely-ruffled surface. At this moment, its navigation is impeded from its stream being swollen by the late heavy rains. Hence much mischief is apprehended to the country lying contiguous to its banks. Many parts of Paris are overflowed: in some streets where carriages must pass, horses are up to their belly in water; while pedestrians are under the necessity of availing themselves of the temporary bridges, formed with tressels and planks, by the industrious Savoyards. The ill consequences of this inundation are already felt, I assure you; being engaged to dinner yesterday in the _Rue St. Florentin_, I was obliged to step into a punt in order to reach the bottom of the stair-case; and what was infinitely more mortifying to the master of the house, was that, the cellar being rendered inaccessible,--he was deprived of the satisfaction of regaling his guests with his best claret. On the right hand side of the _Pont Neuf_, in crossing that bridge from the _Quai de l'École_ to the _Quai de Conti_, is a building, three stories high, erected on piles, with its front standing between the first and second arches. It is called LA SAMARITAINE. Over the dial is a gilt group, representing Jesus Christ and the Samaritan woman near Jacob's well, pourtrayed by a basin into which falls a sheet of water issuing from a shell above. Under the basin is the following inscription: _Fons Hortorum Puteus aquarum viventium._ These words of the Gospel are here not unaptly applied to the destination of this building, which is to furnish water to the garden of the _Tuileries_, whose basins were not, on that account, the less dry half the year. The water is raised by means of a pump, and afterwards distributed, by several conduits, to the _Louvre_ and the _Palais du Tribunat_, as well as to the _Tuileries_. In the middle, and above the arch, is a superstructure of timber-work faced with gilt lead, where are the bells of the clock and those of chimes, which ought to play every half-hour. This tasteless edifice interrupts the view in every direction and as it is far from being an ornament to the _Pont Neuf_, no one could now regret its entire removal. Under the old _régime_, however, it was nothing less than a government. Among the functions of the governor, were included the care of the clock, which scarcely ever told the hour, and that of the chimes, which were generally out of order. When these chimes used to delight Henry IV, it is to be presumed that they were kept in better tune. It was customary to make them play during all public ceremonies, and especially when the king passed. "The _Pont Neuf_, is in the city of Paris what the heart is in the human body, the centre of motion and circulation: the flux and reflux of inhabitants and strangers crowd this passage in such a manner, that, in order to meet persons one is looking for, it is sufficient to walk here for an hour every day. Here, the _mouchards_, or spies of the police, take their station; and, when at the expiration of a few days, they see not their man, they positively affirm that he is not in Paris." Such was the animated picture of the _Pont Neuf_, as drawn by Mercier in 1788, and such it really was before the revolution. At present, though this bridge is sometimes thronged with passengers, it presents not, according to my observation, that almost continual crowd and bustle for which it was formerly distinguished. No stoppage now from the press of carriages of any description, no difficulty in advancing quickly through the concourse of pedestrians. Fruit-women, hucksters, hawkers, pedlars, indeed, together with ambulating venders of lottery-tickets, and of _tisane_, crying "_à la fraiche! Qui veut boire?_" here take their stand as they used, though not in such numbers. But the most sensible diminution is among the shoe-blacks, who stand in the carriage-way, and, with all their implements before them, range themselves along the edge of the very elevated _trottoir_ or foot-pavement. The _décrotteurs_ of the _Pont Neuf_ were once reputed masters of the art: their foresight was equal to their dexterity and expedition. For the very moderate sum of two _liards_, they enabled an abbé or a poet to present himself in the gilded apartments of a dutchess. If it rained, or the rays of the sun were uncommonly ardent, they put into his hand an umbrella to protect the economy of his head-dress during the operation. Their great patrons have disappeared, and, in lieu of a constant succession of customers, the few _décrotteurs_ who remain at their old-established station, are idle half the day for want of employment. These Savoyards generally practise more than one trade, as is indicated by the _enseigne_ which is affixed, on a short pole, above their tool-box. LA FRANCE tond les chiens coupe les chats proprement et sa femme vat en ville et en campagne Change the name only, and such is, line for line, letter for letter, the most ordinary style of their _annonce_. It is, however, to be presumed, that the republican belles have adopted other favourites instead of dogs and cats; for no longer is seen, as in the days of royalty, the aspiring or favoured lover carrying his mistress's lap-dog in the public promenades. In fact, the business of dog-shearing, &c. seems full as dead in this part of Paris as that of shoe-cleaning. The _artists_ of the _Pont Neuf_ are, consequently, chop-fallen; and hilarity which formerly shone on their countenance, is now succeeded by gloomy sadness. At the foot of the _Pont Neuf_ on the _Quai de la Féraille_ recruiting-officers used to unfurl their inviting banners, and neglect nothing that art and cunning could devise to insnare the ignorant, the idle, and the unwary. The means which they sometimes employed were no less whimsical than various: the lover of wine was invited to a public-house, where he might intoxicate himself; the glutton was tempted by the sight of ready-dressed turkies, fowls, sausages &c. suspended to a long pole; and the youth, inclined to libertinism, was seduced by the meretricious allurements of a well-tutored doxy. To second these manoeuvres, the recruiter followed the object of his prey with a bag of money, which he chinked occasionally, crying out "_Qui en veut?_" and, in this manner, an army of heroes was completed. It is almost superfluous to add, that the necessity of such stratagems is obviated, by the present mode of raising soldiers by conscription. Before we quit the _Pont Neuf_, I must relate to you an adventure which, in the year 1786, happened to our friend P-----, who is now abroad, in a situation of considerable trust and emolument. He was, at that time, a half-pay subaltern in the British army, and visited Paris, as well from motives of economy as from a desire of acquiring the French language. Being a tall, fresh-coloured young man, as he was one day crossing the _Pont Neuf_, he caught the eye of a recruiting-officer, who followed him from the _Quai de la Féraille_ to a coffee-house, in the _Rue St. Honoré_, which our Englishman frequented for the sake of reading the London newspapers. The recruiter, with all the art of a crimp combined with all the politeness of a courtier, made up to him under pretence of having relations in England, and endeavoured, by every means in his power, to insinuate himself into the good graces of his new acquaintance. P----, by way of sport, encouraged the eagerness of the recruiter, who lavished on him every sort of civility; peaches in brandy, together with the choicest refreshments that a Parisian coffee-house could afford, were offered to him and accepted: but not the smallest hint was dropped of the motive of all this more than friendly attention. At length, the recruiter, thinking that he might venture to break the ice, depicted, in the most glowing colours, the pleasures and advantages of a military life, and declared ingenuously that nothing would make him so happy as to have our countryman P---- for his comrade. Without absolutely accepting or rejecting his offer, P---- begged a little delay in order to consider of the matter, at the same time hinting that there was; at that moment, a small obstacle to his inclination. The recruiter, like a pioneer, promised to remove it, grasped his hand with joy and exultation, and departed, singing a song of the same import as that of Serjeant Kite: "Come brave boys, 'tis one to ten, But we return all gentlemen." In a few days, the recruiter again met Mr. P---- at his accustomed rendezvous; when, after treating him with coffee, liqueur, &c. he came directly to the point, but neglected not to introduce into his discourse every persuasive allurement. P----, finding himself pushed home, reminded the recruiter of the obstacle to which he had before alluded, and, to convince him of its existence, put into his hand His Britannic Majesty's commission. The astonishment and confusion of the French recruiter were so great that he was unable to make any reply; but instantly retired, venting a tremendous ejaculation. [Footnote 1: By the Plan of Paris, it will be seen that the _Pont Neuf_ lies at the west point of the Island called _L'Ile du Palais_, and is, as it were, in the very centre of the capital.] LETTER XXXII. _Paris, December 13, 1801._ In this gay capital, balls succeed to balls in an almost incredible variety. There are actually an immense number every evening; so that persons fond of the amusement of dancing have full scope for the exercise of their talents in Paris. It is no longer a matter of surprise to me that the French women dance so well, since I find that they take frequent lessons from their master, and, almost every night, they are at a dance of one kind or another. Added to this, the same set of dances lasts the whole season, and go where you will, you have a repetition of the same. However, this detracts not in the smallest degree; from the merit of those Parisian belles who shine as first-rate dancers. The mechanical part of the business, as Mr. C----g would call it, they may thus, acquire by constant practice; but the decorative part, if I may so term the fascinating grace which, they display in all their movements, is that the result of study, or do they hold it from the bounteous hand of Nature? While I am speaking of balls, I must inform you that, since the private ball of which I gave you so circumstantial an account, I have been at several others, also private, but of a different complexion; inasmuch as pleasure, not profit, was the motive for which they were given, and the company was more select; but, in point of general arrangement, I found them so like the former, that I did not think it worth while to make any one of them the subject of a distinct letter. In this line Madame Recamier takes the lead, but though her balls are more splendid, those of Madame Soubiran are more agreeable. On the 21st of Frimaire, which was yesterday, I was at a public ball of the most brilliant kind now known in Paris. It was the first of the subscription given this season, and, from the name of the apartment where it is held, it is styled the BAL DU SALON DES ÉTRANGERS. Midnight is the general hour for the commencement of such diversions; but, owing to the long train of carriages setting down company at this ball, it was near two o'clock before I could arrive at the scene of action, in the _Rue Grange Batelière_, near the Boulevards. After I alighted and presented my ticket, some time elapsed before I could squeeze into the room where the dancing was going forward. The spectators were here so intermixed with the dancers, that they formed around them a border as complete as a frame to a picture. It is astonishing that, under such circumstances, a Parisian Terpsichore, far from being embarrassed, lays fresh claim to your applause. With mathematical precision, she measures with her eye the space to which she is restricted by the curiosity of the by-standers. Rapid as lightning, she springs forward till the measure recalling her to the place she left, she traces her orbit, like a planet, at the same time revolving on her axis. Sometimes her "light, fantastic toe" will approach within half an inch of your foot; nay, you shall almost feel her breath on your cheek, and still she will not touch you, except, perhaps, with the skirt of her floating tunic. Among the female part of the company, I observed several lovely women; some, who might have been taken for Asiatic sultanas, irradiating the space around them by the dazzling brilliancy of their ornaments; others, without jewels, but calling in every other aid of dress for the embellishment of their person; and a few, rich in their native charms alone, verifying the expression of the poet. Truth compels me to acknowledge that six or eight English ladies here were totally eclipsed. For the honour of my country, I could have wished for a better specimen of our excellence in female beauty. No women in the world, or at least none that ever I have met with in the different quarters I have visited, are handsomer than the English, in point of complexion and features. This is a fact which Frenchmen themselves admit; but for grace, say they, our countrywomen stand unrivalled, I am rather inclined to subscribe to this opinion. In a well-educated French woman, there is an ease, an affability, a desire to please and be pleased, which not only render her manners peculiarly engaging, but also influence her gait, her gestures, her whole deportment in short, and captivate admiration. Her natural cheerfulness and vivacity spread over her features an animation seldom to be found in our English fair, whose general characteristics are reserve and coldness. Hence that striking expression which exhibits the grace of the French belles to superior advantage. Although my memory frequently disappoints me when I wish to retain names, I have contrived to recollect those of three of the most remarkable women in the ball-room. I shall therefore commit them to paper before I forget them. Madame la Princesse de Santa-Croce displayed more diamonds than any of her competitors; Mademoiselle Lescot was the best dancer among several ladies renowned for dancing; and Madame Tallien was, on the whole, the handsomest female that I saw in the room. There might possibly be women more beautiful than she at this ball, but they did not come under my observation. I had previously seen Madame Tallien at the _Opera Buffa_, and was struck by her appearance before, I knew who she was. On seeing her again at the _Salon des Étrangers_, I inquired of a French lady of my acquaintance, whose understanding and discernment are pre-eminent, if Madame T------ had nothing to recommend her but her personal attractions? The lady's answer is too remarkable for me not to repeat it, which I will do _verbatim_. "In Madame T------," said she, "beauty, wit, goodness of heart, grace, talents, all are united. In a gay world, where malice subsists in all its force, her inconsistencies alone have been talked of, without any mention being made of the numerous acts of beneficence which have balanced, if they have not effaced, her weakness. Would you believe," continued she, "that, in Paris, the grand theatre of misconduct, where moral obligations are so much disregarded, where we daily commit actions which we condemn in others; would you believe, that Madame T------ experiences again and again the mortification of being deprived of the society of this, or that woman who has nothing to boast of but her depravity, and cannot plead one act of kindness, or even indulgence? This picture is very dark," added she, "but the colouring is true."--"What you tell me," observed I, "proves that, notwithstanding the irruption of immorality, attributed to the revolution, it is still necessary for a woman to preserve appearances at least, in order to be received here in what is termed the best company."--"Yes, indeed," replied she; "if a woman neglects that main point in Paris, she will soon find herself lowered in the opinion of the fashionable world, and be at last excluded from even the secondary circles. In London, your people of fashion are not quite so rigid."--"If a husband chooses to wink at his wife's incontinence," rejoined I, "the world on our side of the water is sufficiently complaisant to follow his example. Now with you, character is made to depend more on the observance of etiquette; and, certainly, hypocrisy, when detected, is of more prejudice to society than barefaced profligacy."--The lady then resumed thus concerning the subject of my inquiry. "Were some people to hear me," said she, "they might think that I had drawn you a flattering portrait of Madame T------ and say, by way of contrast, when the devil became old, he turned hermit; but I should answer that, for some years, no twenty-four hours have elapsed without persons, whom I could name on occasion, having begun their daily career by going to see her, who saved their life, when, to accomplish that object, she hazarded her own." Here then is an additional instance of the noble energy manifested by women during the most calamitous periods of the revolution. Unappalled by the terrors of captivity or of death, their sensibility impelled them to brave the ferocity of sanguinary tyrants, in order to administer hope or comfort to a parent, a husband, a relation, or a friend. Some of these heroines, though in the bloom of youth, not content with sympathizing in the misfortunes of others, gave themselves up as a voluntary sacrifice, rather than survive those whose preservation they valued more than their own existence. Rome may vaunt her Porcia, or her Cornelia; but the page of her history can produce no such exaltation of the female character as has been exhibited within the last ten years by French women. Examples, like these, of generosity, fortitude, and greatness of soul, deserve to be recorded to the end of time, as they do honour to the sex, and to human nature. If, according to the scale of Parisian enjoyment, a ball or rout is dull and insipid, _à moins qu'on ne manque d'y être étouffé_, how supreme must have been the satisfaction of the company at the _Salon des Étrangers!_ The number present, estimated at seven or eight hundred, occasioned so great a crowd that it was by no means an easy enterprise to pass from one room to another. Of course, there was no opportunity of viewing the apartments to advantage; however, I saw enough of them to remark that they formed a suite elegantly decorated. Some persons amused themselves with cards, though the great majority neither played nor danced, but were occupied in conversing with their acquaintance, There was no regular supper, but substantial refreshments of every kind were to be procured on paying; and other smaller ones, _gratis_. From the tickets not being transferable, and the bearer's name being inserted in each of them, the company was far more select than it could have been without such a restriction. Most of the foreign ambassadors, envoys, &c. were present, and many of the most distinguished persons of both sexes in Paris. More regard was paid to the etiquette of dress at this ball than, I have ever witnessed here on similar occasions, The ladies, as I have before said, were all _en grande toilette_; and the men with cocked hats, and in shoes and stockings, which is a novelty here, I assure you, as they mostly appear in boots. But what surprised me not a little, was to observe several inconsiderate French youths wear black cockades. Should they persist in such an absurdity, I shall be still more surprised, if they escape admonition from the police. This fashion seemed to be the _ignis fatuus_ of the moment; it was never before exhibited in public, and probably will be but of ephemeral duration. I cannot take leave of this ball without communicating to you a circumstance which occurred there, and which, from the extravagant credulity it exhibits in regard to the effects of sympathy, may possibly amuse you for a moment. A widow, about twenty years of age, more to be admired for the symmetry of her person, than for the beauty of her features, had, according to the prevailing custom, intrusted her pocket-handkerchief to the care of a male friend, a gentlemanlike young Frenchman of my acquaintance. After dancing, the lady finding herself rather warm, applied for her handkerchief, with which she wiped her forehead, and returned it to the gentleman, who again put it into his pocket. He then danced, but not with her; and, being also heated, he, by mistake, took out the lady's handkerchief, which, when applied to his face, produced, as he fancied, such an effect on him, that, though he had previously regarded her with a sort of indifference, from that moment she engaged all his attention, and he was unable to direct his eyes, or even his thoughts, to any other object. Some philosophers, as is well known, have maintained that from all bodies there is an emanation of corpuscles, which, coming into contact with our organs, make on the brain an impression, either more or less sympathetic, or of a directly-opposite nature. They tell you, for instance, that of two women whom you behold for the first time, the one the least handsome will sometimes please you most, because there exists a greater _sympathy_ between you and her, than between you and the more beautiful woman. Without attempting to refute this absurd doctrine of corpuscles, I shall only observe that this young Frenchman is completely smitten, and declares that no woman in the world can be compared to the widow. This circumstance reminds me of a still more remarkable effect, ascribed to a similar cause, experienced by Henry III of France. The marriage of the king of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV, with Marguerite de Valois, and that of the Prince de Condé with Marie de Cleves, was celebrated at the Louvre on the 10th of August, 1572. Marie de Cleves, then a most lovely creature only sixteen, after dancing much, finding herself incommoded by the heat of the ball-room, retired to a private apartment, where one of the waiting-women of the queen-dowager, seeing her in a profuse perspiration, persuaded her to make an entire change of dress. She had scarcely left the room when the Duke of Anjou, afterwards Henry III, who had also danced a great deal, entered it to adjust his hair, and, being overheated, wiped his face with the first thing that he found, which happened to be the shift she had just taken off. Returning to the ball, he fixed his eyes on her, and contemplated her with as much surprise as if he had never before beheld her. His emotion, his transports, and the attention which he began to pay her, were the more extraordinary, as during the preceding week, which she had passed at court, he appeared indifferent to those very charms which now made on his heart an impression so warm and so lasting. In short, he became insensible to every thing that did not relate to his passion. His election to the crown of Poland, say historians, far from flattering him, appeared to him an exile, and when he was in that kingdom, absence, far from diminishing his love, seemed to increase it. Whenever he addressed the princess, he pricked his finger, and never wrote to her but with his blood. No sooner was he informed of the death of Charles IX, than he dispatched a courier to assure her that she should soon be queen of France; and, on his return, his thoughts were solely bent on dissolving her marriage with the Prince de Condé, which, on account of the latter being a protestant, he expected to accomplish. But this determination proved fatal to the princess; for, shortly after, she was attacked by a violent illness, attributed to poison, which carried her off in the flower of her age. No words can paint Henry's despair at this event: he passed several days in tears and groans; and when he was at length obliged to shew himself in public, he appeared in deep mourning, and entirely covered with emblems of death, even to his very shoe-strings. The Princess de Condé had been dead upwards of four months, and buried in the abbey-church of _St. Germain-des-Prés_, when Henry, on entering the abbey, whither he was invited to a grand entertainment given there by Cardinal de Bourbon, felt such violent tremblings at his heart, that not being able to endure their continuance, he was going away; but they ceased all at once, on the body of the princess being removed from its tomb, and conveyed elsewhere for that evening. His mother, Catherine de Medicis, by prevailing on him to marry Louise de Vaudemont, one of the most beautiful women in Europe, hoped that she would make him forget her whom death had snatched from him, and he himself perhaps indulged a similar hope, but the memoirs of those times concur in asserting that the image of the Princess de Condé was never effaced from his heart, and that, to the day of his assassination, which did not happen till seventeen years after, whatever efforts he made to subdue his passion, were wholly unavailing. Sympathy is a sentiment to which few persons attach the same ideas. It may be classed in three distinct species. The first seems to have an immediate connexion with the senses; the second, with the heart; and the third, with the mind. Although it cannot be denied that the preference we bestow on this or that woman is the result of the one or the other of these, or even of all three together; yet the analysis of our attachments is, in some cases, so difficult as to defy the investigation of reason. For, as the old song says, some lovers Will "whimper and whine For lilies and roses, For eyes, lips, and noses, Or a _tip of an ear_." To cut the matter short, I think it fully proved, by the example of some of the wisest men, that the affections are often captivated by something indefinable, or, in the words of Corneille, _"Par un je ne sais quoi--qu'on ne peut exprimer."_ LETTER XXXIII. _Paris, December 14, 1801._ I have already spoken to you of the _Pont Neuf_. To the east of it, as you will see by the Plan of Paris, the small islands in the middle of the Seine are connected to its banks by several bridges; while to the west, there are two only, though a third is projected, and, previously to the late rise of the river, workmen were employed in driving piles for the foundation. I shall now describe to you these two bridges, beginning with the PONT NATIONAL. Before the revolution, this bridge bore the appellation of _Pont Royal_, from its having been built by Lewis XIV, and the expenses defrayed but of his privy purse, to supply the place of one of wood, situated opposite to the _Louvre_, which was carried away by the ice in 1684. It is reckoned one of the most solid bridges in Paris, and, till the existence of the _Pont de la Concorde_, was the only one built across the river, without taking advantage of the islands above-mentioned. It stands on four piles, forming with the two abutments five elliptical arches of a handsome sweep. The span of the centre arch is seventy-two feet, that of the two adjoining sixty-six, and that of the two outer ones sixty. On each side is a raised pavement for foot-passengers, in the middle of which I should imagine that there is breadth sufficient to admit of four carriages passing abreast. GABRIEL had undertaken this bridge from the designs of MANSARD. The work was already in a state of forwardness, when, at a pile on the side of the _Faubourg St. Germain_, the former could not succeed in excluding the water. A Jacobin, not a clubist, but a Jacobin friar, one FRANÇOIS ROMAIN, who had just finished the bridge of Strasburg, was sent for by the king to the assistance of the French architects, and had the honour of completing the rest of the work. In the time of Henry IV, there was no bridge over this part of the river, which he used frequently to cross in the first boat that presented itself. Returning one day from the chace, in a plain hunting dress, and having with him only two or three gentlemen, he stepped into a skiff to be carried over from the _Faubourg St. Germain_ to the _Tuileries_. Perceiving that he was not known by the waterman, he asked him what people said of the peace, meaning the peace of Vervins, which was just concluded. "Faith! I don't understand this sort of peace," answered the waterman; "there are taxes on every thing, and even, on this miserable boat, with which I have a hard matter to earn my bread."--"And does not the king," continued Henry, "intend to lighten these taxes?"--"The king is a good kind of man enough," replied the waterman; "but he has a lady who must needs have so many fine gowns and gewgaws; and 'tis we who pay for all that. One would not think so much of it either, if she kept to him only; but, they say, she suffers herself to be kissed by many others." Henry IV was so amused by this conversation, that, the next morning, he sent for the waterman, and made him repeat, word for word, before the Dutchess of Beaufort, all that he had said the preceding evening. The Dutchess, much irritated, was for having him hanged. "You are a foolish woman," said Henry; "this is a poor devil whom poverty has put out of humour. In future, he shall pay no tax for his boat, and I am convinced that he will then sing every day, _Vive Henri! Vive Gabrielle!_" The north end of the _Pont National_ faces the wing of the palace of the _Tuileries_ distinguished by the name of the _Pavillon de Flore_. From the middle of this bridge, you see the city in a striking point of view. Here, the celebrated Marshal de Catinat used frequently to make it part of his morning's amusement to take his stand, and, while he enjoyed the beauty of the prospect, he opened his purse to the indigent as they passed. That philosophic warrior often declared that he never beheld any thing equal to the _coup d'oeil_ from this station. In fact, on the one side, you discover the superb gallery of the _Louvre_, extending from that palace to the _Tuileries_; and, on the other, the _Palais du Corps Législatif_, and a long range of other magnificent buildings, skirting the quays on each bank of the river. These quays, nearly to the number of thirty, are faced with stone, and crowned with parapets breast high, which, in eighteen or twenty different spots, open to form watering-places. The Seine, being thus confined within its bed, the eye is never displeased here by the sight of muddy banks like those of the Thames, or the nose offended by the smell arising from the filth which the common sewers convey to the river. The galiot of _St. Cloud_ regularly takes its departure from the _Pont National_. Formerly, on Sundays and holidays, it used to be a very entertaining sight to contemplate the Paris cocknies crowding into this vessel. Those who arrived too late, jumped into the first empty boat, which frequently overset, either through the unskilfulness of the waterman, or from being overloaded. In consequence of such accidents, the boats of the Seine are prohibited from taking more than sixteen passengers. Not many years ago, an excursion to _St. Cloud_ by water, was an important voyage to some of the Parisians, as you may see by referring to the picture which has been drawn of it, under the title of "_Voyage de Paris à Saint Cloud par mer, et le retour de Saint Cloud à Paris par terre_." Following the banks of the Seine, towards the west, we next come to the PONT DE LA CONCORDE. This bridge, which had long been wished for and projected, was begun in 1787, and finished in 1790. Its southern extremity stands opposite to the _Palais du Corps Législatif_; while that of the north faces the _Place de la Concorde_, whence it not only derives its present appellation, but has always experienced every change of name to which the former has been subject. The lightness of its apearance is less striking to those who have seen the _Pont de Neuilly_, in which PERRONET, Engineer of bridges and highways, has, by the construction of arches nearly flat, so eminently distinguished himself. He is likewise the architect of this bridge, which is four hundred and sixty-two feet in length by forty-eight in breadth. Like the _Pont National_, it consists of five elliptical arches. The span of the centre arch is ninety-six feet; that of the collateral ones, eighty-seven; and that of the two others near the abutments, sixty-eight. Under one of the latter is a tracking-path for the facility of navigation. The piles, which are each nine feet in thickness, have, on their starlings, a species of pillars that support a cornice five feet and a half high. Perpendicularly to these pillars are to rise as many pyramids, which are to be crowned by a parapet with a balustrade: in all these, it is intended to display no less elegance of workmanship than the arches present boldness of design and correctness of execution. On crossing these bridges, it has often occurred to me, how much the Parisians must envy us the situation of our metropolis. If the Seine, like the Thames, presented the advantage of braving the moderate winds, and of conveying, by regular tides, the productions of the four quarters of the globe to the quays which skirt its banks, what an acquisition would it not be to their puny commerce! What a gratification to their pride to see ships discharging their rich cargoes at the foot of the _Pont de la Concorde_! The project of the canal of Languedoc must, at first, have apparently presented greater obstacles; yet, by talents and perseverance, these were overcome at a time when the science of machinery of every description was far less understood than it is at the present moment. It appears from the account of Abbon, a monk of the abbey of St. Germain-des-Prés, that, in the year 885, the Swedes, Danes, and Normans, to the number of forty-five thousand men, came to lay siege to Paris, with seven hundred sail of ships, exclusively of the smaller craft, so that, according to this historian, who was an eye-witness of the fact, the river Seine was covered with their vessels for the space of two leagues. Julius Cæsar tells us, in the third book of his Commentaries, that, at the time of his conquest of the Gauls, in the course of one winter, he constructed six hundred vessels of the wood which then grew in the environs of Paris; and that, in the following spring, he embarked his army, horse and foot, provisions and baggage, in these vessels, descended the Seine, reached Dieppe, and thence crossed over to England, of which, he says, he made a conquest. About forty years ago, the scheme engaged much attention. In 1759, the Academy of Sciences, Belles-Lettres, and Arts of Rouen, proposed the following as a prize-question: "Was not the Seine formerly navigable for vessels of greater burden than those which are now employed on it; and are there not means to restore to it, or to procure it, that advantage?" In 1760, the prize was adjourned; the memoirs presented not being to the satisfaction of the Academy. In 1761, the new candidates having no better success, the subject was changed. However, notwithstanding this discouragement, we find that, on the 1st of August, 1766, Captain Berthelot actually reached the _Pont Royal_ in a vessel of one hundred and sixty tons burden. When, on the 22d of the same month, he departed thence, loaded with merchandise, the depth of the water in the Seine was twenty-five feet, and it was nearly the same when he ascended the river. This vessel was seven days on her passage from Rouen to Paris: but a year or two ago, four days only were employed in performing the same voyage by another vessel, named the _Saumon_. Engineers have ever judged the scheme practicable, and the estimate of the necessary works, signed by several skilful surveyors, was submitted to the ministry of that day. The amount was forty-six millions of livres (circa £1,916,600 sterling). But what can compensate for the absence of the tide? This is an advantage, which, in a commercial point of view, must ever insure to London a decided superiority over Paris. Were the Seine to-morrow rendered navigable for vessels of large burden, they must, for a considerable distance, be tracked against the stream, or wait till a succession of favourable winds had enabled them to stem it through its various windings; whereas nothing can be more favourable to navigation than the position of London. It has every advantage of a sea-port without its dangers. Had it been placed lower down, that is, nearer to the mouth of the Thames, it would have been more exposed to the insults of a foreign enemy, and also to the insalubrious exhalations of the swampy marshes. Had it been situated higher up the river, it would have been inaccessible to ships of large burden. Thus, by no effort of human invention or industry can Paris rival London in commerce, even on the supposition that France could produce as many men possessed of the capital and spirit of enterprise, for which our British merchants are at present unrivalled. Yet, may not this pre-eminence in commercial prosperity lead to our destruction, as the gigantic conquests of France may also pave the way to her ruin? Alas! the experience of ages proves this melancholy truth, which has also been repeated by Raynal: "Commerce," says that celebrated writer, "in the end finds its ruin in the riches which it accumulates, as every powerful state lays the foundation of its own destruction in extending its conquests." LETTER XXXIV. _Paris, December 16, 1801._ No part of the engagement into which I have entered with you, so fully convinces me of my want of reflection, and shews that my zeal, at the time, got the better of my judgment, as my promising you some ideas on FRENCH LITERATURE. It would, I now perceive, be necessary to have inhabited France for several years past, with the determined intention of observing this great empire solely in that single point of view, to be able to keep my word in a manner worthy of you and of the subject. It would be necessary to write a large volume of rational things; and, in a letter, I ought to relate them with conciseness and truth; draw sketches with rapidity, but clearness; in short, express positive results, without deviating from abstractions and generalities, since you require from me, on this subject, no more than a letter, and not a book. I come to the point. I shall consider literature in a double sense. First, the thing in itself; then, its connexions with the sciences, and the men who govern. In England, it has been thought, or at least insinuated in some of the papers and periodical publications, that literature had been totally annihilated in France within the last twelve years. This is a mistake: its aberrations have been taken for eclipses. It has followed the revolution through all its phases. Under the Constituent Assembly, the literary genius of the French was turned towards politics and eloquence. There remain valuable monuments of the fleeting existence of that assembly. MIRABEAU, BARNAVE, CAZALÈS, MAURY, and thirty other capital writers, attest this truth. Nothing fell from their lips or their pen that did not hear at the same time the stamp of philosophy and literature. Under the Legislative Assembly and the Convention, the establishments of the empire of letters were little respected. Literati themselves became victims of the political collisions of their country; but literature was constantly cultivated under several forms. Those who shewed themselves its oppressors, were obliged to assume the refined language which it alone can supply, and that, at the very time when they declared war against it. Under the Directorial government, France, overwhelmed by the weight of her long misfortunes, first cast her eye on the construction of a new edifice, dedicated to human knowledge in general, under the name of _National Institute_. Literature there collected its remains, and those who cultivate it, as members of this establishment, are not unworthy of their office. Such as are not admitted into this society, notwithstanding all the claims the most generally acknowledged, owe this omission to moral or political causes only, on which I could not touch, without occupying myself about persons rather than the thing itself. The French revolution, which has levelled so many gigantic fortunes, is said (by its advocates) to have really spread a degree of comfort among the inferior classes. Indeed, if there are in France, as may be supposed, much fewer persons rolling in riches, there are, I am informed, much fewer pining in indigence. This observation, admitting it to be strictly true, may, with great propriety, be applied to French literature. France no longer has a VOLTAIRE or a ROUSSEAU, to wield the sceptre of the literary world; but she has a number of literary degrees of public interest or simple amusement, which are perfectly well filled. Few literati are without employ, and still fewer are beneath their functions. The place of member of the Institute is a real public function remunerated by the State. It is to this cause, and to a few others, which will occur to you beforehand, that we must attribute the character of gravity which literature begins to assume in this country. The prudery of the school of DORAT would here be hissed. Here, people will not quarrel with the Graces; but they will no longer make any sacrifice to them at the expense of common sense. In this literary republic still exist, as you may well conceive, the same passions, the same littleness, the same intrigues as formerly for arriving at celebrity, and keeping in that envied sphere; but all this makes much less noise at the present juncture. It is this which has induced the belief that literature had diminished its intensity, both in form and object: that is another mistake. The French literati are mostly a noisy class, who love to make themselves conspicuous, even by the clashing of their pretensions; but, to the great regret of several among them, people in this country now attach a rational importance only to their quarrels, which formerly attracted universal attention. The revolution has been so great an event; it has overthrown such great interests; that no one here can any longer flatter himself with exciting a personal interest, except by performing the greatest actions. I must also make a decisive confession on this matter, and acknowledge that literature, which formerly held the first degree in the scale of the moral riches of this nation, is likely to decline in priority and influence. The sciences have claimed and obtained in the public mind a superiority resulting from the very nature of their object; I mean utility. The title of _savant_ is not more brilliant than formerly; but it is more imposing; it leads to consequence, to superior employments, and, above all, to riches. The sciences have done so much for this people during their revolution, that, whether through instinct, or premeditated gratitude, they have declared their partiality towards the _savans_, or men of science, to the detriment of the mere literati. The sciences are nearly allied both to pride and national interest; while literature concerns only the vanity and interest of a few individuals. This difference must have been felt, and of itself alone have fixed the esteem of the public, and graduated their suffrages according to the merit of the objects. Regard being had to their specific importance, I foresee that this natural classification will be attended with happy consequences, both for sciences and literature. I have been enabled to observe that very few men of science are unacquainted with the literature of their country, whether for seeking in it pleasing relaxation, or for borrowing from it a magic style, a fluent elocution, a harmony, a pomp of expression, with which the most abstract meditations can no longer dispense to be received favourably by philosophers and men of taste. Very few literati, on the other hand, are unacquainted with philosophy and the sciences, and, above all, with natural knowledge; whether not to be too much in arrear with the age in which they live, and which evidently inclines to the study of Nature, or to give more colour and consistence to their thoughts, by multiplying their degrees of comparison with the eternal type of all that is great and fertile. It has been so often repeated that HOMER, OSSIAN, and MILTON, knew every thing known in their times; that they were at once the greatest natural philosophers and the best moralists of their age, that this truth has made an impression on most of the adepts in literature; and as the impulse is given, and the education of the present day by the retrenchment of several unnecessary pursuits, has left, in the mind of the rising generation, vacancies fit to be filled by a great variety of useful acquirements, it appears to me demonstrated, on following analogy, and the gradations of human improvement, that the sciences, philosophy, and literature will some day have in France but one common domain, as they there have at present, with the arts, only one central point of junction. The French government has flattered the literati and artists, by calling them in great numbers round it and its ministers, either to give their advice in matters of taste, or to serve as a decoration to its power, and an additional lustre to the crown of glory with which it is endeavouring to encircle itself; but, in general, the palpable, substantial, and solid distinctions have been reserved for men of science, chymists, naturalists, and mathematicians: they have seats in the Senate, in the Tribunate, in the Council of State, and in all the Administrations; while LAHARPE, the veteran of French literature, is not even a member of the Institute, and is reduced to give lessons, which are, undoubtedly, not only very interesting to the public, but also very profitable to himself, and produce him as much money, at least, as his knowledge has acquired him reputation. It results from what I have said, that French literature has not experienced any apparent injury from the revolutionary storm: it has only changed its direction and means: it has still remaining talents which have served their time, talents in their maturity, and talents in a state of probation, and of much promise. Persons of reflection entertain great hopes from the violent shock given to men's minds by the revolution; from that silent inquietude still working in their hearts; from that sap, full of life, circulating with rapidity through this body politic. "The factions are muzzled," say they; "but the factious spirit still ferments under the curb of power; if means can be found to force it to evaporate on objects which belong to the domain of illusion and sensibility, the result will prove a great blessing to France, by carrying back to the arts and to literature, and even to commerce, that exuberance of heat and activity which can no longer be employed without danger on political subjects." The same men, whom I have just pointed out, affirm that England herself will feel, in her literary and scientific system, a salutary concussion from the direction given here to the public mind. They expect with impatience that the British government will engage in some great measure of public utility, in order that the rivalship subsisting between the two nations on political and military points, which have no longer any object, may soon become, in France, the most active and most powerful vehicle for different parts of her interior improvement. Of all kinds of literature, _Epic Poetry_ is the only one in which France has not obtained such success as to place her on a level with TASSO and MILTON. To make amends, her poets have followed with advantage the steps of ARIOSTO, without being able to surpass him. From this school have issued two modern epic poems: _La guerre des dieux payens contre les dieux chretiens_, by PARNY and _La conquête de Naples_, by GUDIN. The former is distinguished by an easy versification, and an imagination jocose and fertile, though, certainly, far too licentious. Educated in the school of DORAT, he possesses his redundance and grace, without his fatuity. His elegies are worthy of TIBULLUS; and his fugitive pieces are at once dictated by wit and sentiment: thus it was that CHAULIEU wrote, but with more negligence. The latter has thought to compensate for the energy and grace that should give life to his subject (which he considers only in a playful and satirical light), by a truly tiresome multitude of incidents. Conceive three huge volumes in octavo, for a poem which required but one of a moderate size, and, in them, a versification frequently negligent. These are two serious faults, which the French will not readily overlook. No where are critics more severe, on the one hand, against redundance that is steril, and on the other, respecting the essential composition of verse, which ought always to flow with grace, even when under restraint. Catholicism, however, has no more reason to be pleased with the loose scenes presented in this work, than christianity, in general, has with the licentious pictures of PARNY; but GUDIN is far less dangerous to Rome, because he will be less read. Several authors have devoted their labours to _Tragedy_, during the course of the revolution. CHÉNIER has produced a whole theatre, which will remain to posterity, notwithstanding his faults, as he has contrived to cover them with beauties. ARNAULT and MERCIER of Compiegne are two young authors that seem to have been educated in the school of DUCIS, who is at this day the father of all the present tragic writers. The pieces which they have produced have met with some success, and are of considerable promise. _Comedy_ lost a vigorous supporter under the tyranny of ROBESPIERRE. This was FABRE D'EGLANTINE. That poet seldom failed of success, drew none but bold characters, and placed himself, by his own merit, between MOLIÈRE and DESTOUCHES. COLIN D'HARLEVILLE and LEGOUVÉ produce agreeable pieces which succeed. They paint, with an easy and graceful pencil, the absurdities and humours of society; but their pieces are deficient in plot and action. FABRÉ D'EGLANTINE pourtrayed, in striking colours, those frightful vices which are beyond the reach of the law. His pieces are strongly woven and easily unravelled. PICARD seems to have taken GOLDONI, the celebrated Venetian comic writer, for his model. Like him, an excellent painter, a writer by impulse, he produces, with wonderful fecundity, a number of interesting comedies, which make the audience laugh till they shed tears, and how and then give great lessons. PALISSOT, CAILHAVA, and MERCIER are still living; but no longer produce any thing striking. I shall say little of French eloquence. Under the new form of government, orators have less opportunity and less scope for displaying transscendant talents than during the first years of the revolution. Two members of the government, CAMBACÉRÈS and LEBRUN, have distinguished themselves in this career by close, logical argument, bright conceptions, and discriminating genius. BENJAMIN CONSTANT and GUINGUÉNÉ, members of the Tribunate, shewed themselves to advantage last year, as I understand, in some productions full of energy and wisdom. DEMEUNIER and BOISSI D'ANGLAS are already, in the Tribunate, veterans of eloquence; but the man who unites, in this respect, all the approbation of that body, and even of France, is DAUNOU. In exterior means he is deficient; but his thoughts proceed at once from a warm heart and an open mind, guided by a superior genius; and his expressions manifest the source from which they flow. Several capital works of the historic kind have made their appearance in France within the last ten years; but, with the exception of those of celebrated voyagers or travellers, such as LA PÉROUSE, BAUDIN, SONNINI, LABILLARDIÈRE, OLIVIER, ANDRÉ MICHAUD, &c. those whose object has been to treat of the arts, sciences, and manners of Greece, such as the travels of Anacharsis, of Pythagoras, or of Antenor; those whose subject has not been confined to France, such as the _Précis de l'histoire générale_, by ANQUETIL; people ought to be on their guard against the merit even of productions written mediately or immediately on the revolution, its causes, and consequences. The passions are not yet sufficiently calmed for us not to suspect the spirit of party to interpose itself between men and truth. The most splendid talents are frequently in this line only the most faithless guide. It is affirmed, however, that there are a few works which recommend themselves, by the most philosophic impartiality; but none of these have as yet fallen under my observation. A striking production is expected from the pen of the celebrated VOLNEY. This is a _Tableau Physique des États Unis_; but it is with regret I hear that its appearance is delayed by the author's indisposition. _Novels_ are born and die here, as among us, with astonishing abundance. The rage for evocations and magic spectres begins to diminish. The French assert that they have borrowed it from us, and from the school of MRS. RADCLIFF, &c. &c. They also assert, that the policy of the royalist-party was not unconnected with this propagation of cavernous, cadaverous adventures, ideas, and illusions, intended, they say, by the impression of a new moral terror to infatuate their countrymen again with the dull and soporific prestiges of popery. They see with joy that the taste for pleasure has assumed the ascendency, at least in Paris, and that novels in the English style no longer make any one tremble, at night by the fireside, but the old beldams of the provincial departments. The less important kinds of literature, such as the _Apologue_ or _Moral Fable_, which is not at this day much in fashion; the _Eclogue_ or _Idyl_, whose culture particularly belongs to agrestical and picturesque regions; _Political Satire_, which is never more refined than under the influence of arbitrary power; these kinds, to which I might add the _Madrigal_ and _Epigram_, without being altogether abandoned, are not generally enough cultivated here to obtain special mention. I shall make an exception only in favour of the pastoral poems of LECLERC (of Marne and Loire) of which I have heard a very favourable account. At the end of a revolution which has had periods so ensanguined, _Romance_, (romantic poetry) must have been cultivated and held in request. It has been so, especially by sentimental minds, and not a little too through the spirit of party; this was likely to be the case, since its most affecting characteristic is to mourn over tombs. _Lyric poetry_ has been carried by LEBRUN, CHÉNIER, &c. to a height worthy of JEAN BAPTISTE ROUSSEAU. The former, above all, will stand his ground, by his weight, to the latest posterity; while hitherto the lyric productions of CHÉNIER have not been able to dispense with the charm of musical harmony. FONTANES, CUBIÈRES, PONS DE VERDUN, BAOUR-LORNIAN, and DESPAZE are secondary geniuses, who do not make us forget that DELISLE and the Chevalier BERTIN are still living; but whose fugitive pieces sometimes display many charms. When you shall be made acquainted that Paris, of all the cities in the world, is that where the rage for dancing is the most _nationalized_, where, from the gilded apartments of the most fashionable quarters to the smoky chambers of the most obscure suburbs, there are executed more capers in cadence, than in any other place on earth, you will not be surprised if I reserve a special article for one of the kinds of literature that bears the most affinity to this distinctive diversion of the Parisian belles, which has led MERCIER to say, that their city was the _guingette_ of Europe; I mean _Song_. Perhaps, a subject new and curious to treat on, would be the influence of vocal music on the French revolution. Every one knows that this people marched to battle singing; but, independently of the subject being above my abilities, it would carry me too far beyond the limited plan which I have prescribed to myself. Let it suffice for you to know, that there has existed in Paris a sort of lyric manufactory, which, under the name of "_Diners du vaudeville_" scrupulously performed, for several years, an engagement to furnish, every month, a collection of songs very agreeable and very captivating. These productions are pretty often full of allusions, more or less veiled, to the political events of the moment; seldom, however, have they been handled as very offensive weapons against persons or institutions. The friends of mirth and wine are seldom dark and dangerous politicians. This country possesses a great number of them, who combine the talents required by the gravest magistracy with all the levity of the most witty and most cheerful _bon vivant_. I shall quote at random FRANÇOIS DE NEUFCHÂTEAU, the two SÉGURS, PIIS, &c. &c. Others, such as BARRÉ, DESFONTAINES, and RADET, confine themselves to their exclusive functions of professed song-makers, and write only for the little musical theatres, or for the leisure of their countrymen and their evening-amusements. It is impossible to terminate a sketch of the literature of France, without saying a word of such of the _Journals_ as I have yet perused, which are specially devoted to it. The _Mercure de France_ is one of those held in most esteem; and habit, as well as the spirit of party, concurs in making the fortune of this journal. There exists another, conducted by a member of the Institute, named POUGENS, under the title of _Bibliothèque Française_, which is spoken of very favourably. But that which appears every ten days, under the name of _Décade Philosophique_, is the best production of the sort. A society of literary men, prudent, well-informed, and warmly attached to their country, are its authors, and deposit in it a well-digested analysis of every thing new that appears in the arts, sciences, or literature. Nevertheless, a labour so carefully performed, is perfectly disinterested. This is the only enterprise of the kind that does not afford a livelihood to its associates, and is supported by a zeal altogether gratuitous. Without seeking to blame or approve the title of this last-mentioned journal, I shall only remark that the word _Décade_, coupled with the word _Philosophique_, becomes in the eyes of many persons a double cause of reprobation; and that, at this day, more than ever, those two words are, in the opinion the most in fashion, marked by a proscription that is reflected on every thing which belongs to the science of philosophy. This would be the moment to inquire into the secret or ostensible causes which have led to the retrograde course that is to be remarked in France in the ideas which have been hitherto reckoned as conducive to the advancement of reason. This would be the moment to observe the new government of France endeavouring to balance, the one by the other, the opinions sprung from the Republic, and those daily conjured up from the Monarchy; holding in _equilibrio_ two colours of doctrines so diametrically opposite, and consequently two parties equally dissatisfied at not being able to crush each other, _neutralizing_ them, in short, by its immense influence in the employment of their strength, when they bewilder or exhaust themselves uselessly for its interests; but I could not touch on these matters, without travelling out of the domain of literature, which is the only one that is at present familiar to me, in order to enter into yours, where you have not leisure to direct me; and you may conceive with what an ill grace I should appear, in making before you, in politics, excursions, which, probably, would have for me the inconvenience of commanding great efforts, without leaving me the hope of adding any thing to your stock of information. LETTER XXXV. _Paris, December 18, 1801._ Divided as Paris is by the Seine, it seldom happens that one has not occasion to cross it more than once in the course of the day. I shall therefore make you acquainted with the bridges which connect to its banks the islands situated in that part of the river I have not yet described. Being out of my general track, I might otherwise forget to make any further mention of them, which would be a manifest omission, now you have before you the Plan of Paris. We will also embrace the opportunity of visiting the _Palais de Justice_ and the Cathedral of _Notre-Dame_. East of the _Pont-Neuf_, we first arrive at the PONT AU CHANGE. This bridge, which leads from the north bank of the Seine to the _Ile du Palais_, is one of the most ancient in Paris. Though, like all those of which I have now to speak, it crosses but one channel of the river, it was called the _Grand Pont_, till the year 1141, when it acquired its present name on Lewis VII establishing here all the money-changers of Paris. It was also called _Pont aux Oiseaux_, because bird-sellers were permitted to carry on their business here, on condition of letting loose two hundred dozen of birds, at the moment when kings and queens passed, in their way to the cathedral, on the day of their public entry. By this custom, it was intended to signify that, if the people had been oppressed in the preceding reign, their rights, privileges, and liberties would be fully re-established under the new monarch. On the public entry of Isabeau de Bavière, wife of Charles VI, a Genoese stretched a rope from the top of the towers of _Notre-Dame_ to one of the houses on this bridge: he thence descended, dancing on this rope, with a lighted torch in each hand. Habited as an angel, he placed a crown on the head of the new queen, and reascending his rope, he appeared again in the air. The chronicle adds that, as it was already dark, he was seen by all Paris and the environs. This bridge was then of wood, and covered with houses also of wood. Two fires, one of which happened in 1621, and the other in 1639, occasioned it to be rebuilt of stone in 1647. The _Pont au Change_ consists of seven arches. Previously to the demolition of the houses, which, till 1786, stood on each side of this bridge, the passage was sufficiently wide for three carriages. Traversing the _Ile du Palais_ from north to south, in order to proceed from the _Pont au Change_ to the _Pont St. Michel_, we pass in front of the PALAIS DE JUSTICE. Towards the end of the ninth century, this palace was begun by Eudes. It was successively enlarged by Robert, son of Hugh Capet, by St. Lewis, and by Philip the Fair. Under Charles V, who abandoned it to occupy the _Hôtel St. Paul_, which he had built, it was nothing more than an assemblage of large towers, communicating with each other by galleries. In 1383, Charles VI made it his residence. In 1431, Charles VII relinquished it to the Parliament of Paris. However, Francis I. took up his abode here for some time. It was in the great hall of this palace that the kings of France formerly received ambassadors, and gave public entertainments. On Whitsunday, 1313, Philip the Fair here knighted his three sons, with all the ceremonies of ancient chivalry. The king of England, our unfortunate Edward II, and his abominable queen Isabella, who were invited, crossed the sea on purpose, and were present at this entertainment, together with a great number of English barons. It lasted eight days, and is spoken of, by historians, as a most sumptuous banquet. This magnificent hall, as well as great part of the palace, being reduced to ashes in 1618, it was rebuilt, in its present state, under the direction of that skilful architect, JACQUES DE BROSSES. It is both spacious and majestic, and is the only hall of the kind in France: the arches and arcades which support it are of hewn stone. Another fire, which happened in 1776, consumed all the part extending from the gallery of prisoners to the _Sainte Chapelle_, founded by St. Lewis, and where, before the revolution, were shewn a number of costly relics. The ravages occasioned by this fire, were repaired in 1787, and the space in front laid open by the erection of uniform buildings in the form of a crescent. To two gloomy gothic gates has been substituted an iron railing, of one hundred and twenty feet in extent, through which is seen a spacious court formed by two wings of new edifices, and a majestic façade that affords an entrance to the interior of the palace. In this court Madame La Motte, who, in 1786, made so conspicuous a figure in the noted affair of the diamond necklace, was publicly whipped. I was in Paris at the time, though not present at the execution of the sentence. In the railing, are three gates, the centre one of which is charged with garlands and other gilt ornaments. At the two ends are pavilions decorated with four Doric pillars. Towards the _Pont St. Michel_ is a continuation of the building ornamented with a bas-relief, at present denominated _Le serment civique_. At the top of a flight of steps, is an avant-corps, with four Doric columns, a balustrade above the entablature, four statues standing on a level with the base of the pillars, and behind, a square dome. These steps lead you to the _Mercière_ gallery, having on the one side, the _Sainte Chapelle_, and on the other, the great hall, called the _Salle des Procureurs_. In this extensive hall are shops, for the sale of eatables and pamphlets, which, since the suppression of the Parliament, seem to have little custom, as well as those of the milliners, &c. in the other galleries. In what was formerly called the _grande chambre_, where the Parliament of Paris used to sit, the ill-fated Lewis XVI, in 1788, held the famous bed of justice, in which D'ESPRESMENIL, one of the members of that body, struck the first blow at royalty; a blow that was revenged by a _lettre de cachet_, which exiled him to the _Ile de St. Marguerite_, famous for being the place of confinement of the great personage who was always compelled to wear an _iron mask_. The courage of this counsellor, who was a noble and deputy of the _noblesse_, may be considered as the _primum mobile_ of the revolution. Under the despotism of the court, he braved all its vengeance; but, in the sequel, he afforded a singular proof of the instability of the human mind. After haying stirred up all the parliaments against the royal authority, he again became the humble servant of the crown. After the revolution, the _Palais de Justice_ became the seat of the Revolutionary Tribunal, where the satellites of Robespierre, not content with sending to the scaffold sixty victims at a time, complained of the insufficiency of their means for bringing to trial all the enemies of liberty. Dumas, at one time president of this sanguinary tribunal, proposed to his colleagues to join to the hall, where the tribunal sat, part of the great hall of the palace, in order to assemble there five or six hundred victims at a time; and on its being observed to him that such a sight might in the end disgust the people; "Well," said he, "there's but one method of accomplishing our object, without any obstacle, that is to erect a guillotine in the court-yard of every prison, and cause the prisoners to be executed there during the night." Had not Robespierre's downfall involved that of all his blood-thirsty dependents, there seems no doubt that this plan would have been carried into speedy execution. Nothing can paint the vicissitude of human events in colours more striking than the transitions of this critical period. Dumas who made this proposal, and had partially satisfied his merciless disposition by signing, a few hours before, the death-warrant of sixty victims, was the very next day brought before the same tribunal, composed of his accomplices, or rather his creatures, and by them condemned to die. Thus did experience confirm the general observation, that the multiplicity and enormity of punishments announces an approaching revolution. The torrents of blood which tyrants shed, are, in the end, swelled by their own. In lieu of a tribunal of blood, the _Palais de Justice_ is now appropriated to the sittings of the three tribunals, designated by the following titles: _Tribunal de cassation_, _Tribunal d'appel_, and _Tribunal de première instance_. The first of these, the _Tribunal de cassation_, occupies the audience-chambers of the late parliament; while the _grande chambre_ is appointed for the meetings of its united Sections. The decoration of this spacious apartment is entirely changed: it is embellished in the antique style; and a person in contemplating it might fancy himself at Athens. Adjoining to the _Palais de Justice_, is the famous prison, so dreaded in the early periods of the revolution, called LA CONCIERGERIE. From this fatal abode, neither talent, virtue, nor patriotism could, at one time, secure those who possessed such enviable qualities. Lavoisier, Malsherbes, Condorcet, &c. were here successively immured, previously to being sent to the guillotine. Here too the unfortunate Marie-Antoinette lived in a comfortless manner, from the 2nd of July, 1793, to the 13th of October following, the period of her condemnation. On being reconducted to the prison, at four o'clock in the morning, after hearing her sentence read, the hapless queen displayed a fortitude worthy of the daughter of the high-minded Maria Theresa. She requested a few hours' respite, to compose her mind, and entreated to be left to herself in the room which she had till then occupied. The moment she was alone, she first cut off her hair, and then laying aside her widow's weeds, which she had always worn since the death of the king, put on a white dress, and threw herself on her bed, where she slept till eleven o'clock the same morning, when she was awakened, in order to be taken to the scaffold. Continuing to cross the _Ile du Palais_ in a direction towards the south, we presently reach the PONT ST. MICHEL. This bridge stands in a direct line with the _Pont au Change_, and is situated on the south channel of the river. It was formerly of wood: but having been frequently destroyed, it was rebuilt with stone in 1618, and covered on both sides with houses. From the _Pont Neuf_, the back of these buildings has a most disagreeable and filthy appearance. It is said that they are to be taken down, as those have been which stood on the other bridges. In severe winters, when there is much ice in the river, it is curious, on the breaking up of the frost, to behold families deserting their habitations, like so many rats, and carrying with them their valuables, from the apprehension that these crazy tenements might fall into the river. This wise precaution is suggested by the knowledge of these bridges, when built of wood, having been often swept away by ice or great inundations. The _Pont St. Michel_ consists of four arches. Its length is two hundred and sixty-eight feet, by sixty in breadth, including the houses, between which is a passage for three carriages. If, to avoid being entangled in narrow, dirty streets, we return, by the same route, to the north bank of the Seine, and proceed to the westward, along the _Quai de Gévres_, which is partly built on piles, driven into the bed of the river, we shall come to the PONT NOTRE-DAME. A wooden bridge, which previously existed here, having been frequently carried away by inundations, Lewis XII ordered the construction of the present one of stone, which was begun in 1499, and completed in 1507. It was built from the plan of one JOCONDE, a Cordelier, and native of Verona, and is generally admired for the solidity, as well as beauty of its architecture. It consists of six arches, and is two hundred and seventy-six feet in length. Formerly it was bordered by houses, which were taken down in 1786: this has rendered the quarter more airy, and consequently more salubrious. It was on this bridge that the Pope's Legate reviewed the ecclesiastical infantry of the League, on the the 3d of June, 1590. Capuchins, Minimes, Cordeliers, Jacobins or Dominicans, Feuillans, &c. all with their robe tucked up, their cowl thrown behind, a helmet on their head, a coat of mail on their body, a sword by their side, and a musquet on their shoulder, marched four by four, headed by the reverend bishop of Senlis, bearing a spontoon. But some of this holy soldiery, forgetting that their pieces were loaded with ball, wished to salute the Legate, and killed by his side one of his chaplains. His Eminence finding that it began to grow hot at this review, hastened to give his benediction, and vanished. _December 18, in continuation_. Traversing once more two-thirds of the _Ile du Palais_ in a direction from north to south, and then striking off to the east, up the _Rue de Callandre_, we reach the CATHEDRAL OF NOTRE-DAME. This church, the first ever built in Paris, was begun about the year 375, under the reign of the emperor Valentinian I. It was then called _St. Etienne_ or _St. Stephen's_, and there was as yet no other within the walls of this city in 1522, when Childebert, son of Clovis, repaired and enlarged it, adding to it a new basilic, which was dedicated to _Notre Dame_ or Our Lady. More anciently, under Tiberius, there had been, on the same spot, an altar in the open air, dedicated to Jupiter and other pagan gods, part of which is still in being at the MUSEUM OF FRENCH MONUMENTS, in the _Rue des Petits Augustins_. These two churches existed till about the year 1160, under the reign of Lewis the Young, when the construction of the present cathedral was begun partly on their foundations. It was not finished till 1185, during the reign of Philip Augustus. This Gothic Church is one of the handsomest and most spacious in France. It has a majestic and venerable appearance, and is supported by one hundred and twenty clustered columns. Its length is three hundred and ninety feet by one hundred and forty-four in breadth, and one hundred and two in height. We must not expect to find standing here the twenty-six kings, benefactors of this church, from Childeric I to Philip Augustus, fourteen feet high, who figured on the same line, above the three doors of the principal façade. They have all fallen under the blows of the iconoclasts, and are now piled up behind the church. There lie round-bellied Charlemagne, with his pipe in his mouth, and Pepin the Short, with his sword in his hand, and a lion, the emblem of courage, under his feet. The latter, like Tydeus, mentioned in the Iliad, though small in stature, was stout in heart, as appears from the following anecdote related of him by the monk of St. Gal. In former times, as is well known, kings took a delight in setting wild beasts and ferocious animals to fight against each other. At one of thege fights, between a lion and a bull, in the abbey of Ferrières, Pepin the Short, who knew that some noblemen were daily exercising their pleasantry on his small stature, addressed to them this question: "Which of you feels himself bold enough to kill or separate those terrible animals?" Seeing that not one of them stepped forward, and that the proposal alone made them shudder: "Well," added he, "'tis I then who will perform the feat." He accordingly descended from his place, drew his sword, killed the lion, at another stroke cut off the head of the bull, and then looking fiercely at the railers: "Know," said he to them, "that stature adds nothing to courage, and that I shall find means to bring to the ground the proud persons who shall dare to despise me, as little David laid low the great giant Goliah." Hence the attribute given to the statue of king Pepin, which not long since adorned the façade of _Notre-Dame_. The groups of angels, saints, and patriarchs, which, no doubt, owe their present existence only to their great number, still present to the eye of the observer that burlesque mixture of the profane and religious, so common in the symbolical representations of the twelfth century. These figures adorn the triple row of indented borders of the arches of the three doors. Two enormous square towers, each two hundred and two feet in height, and terminated by a platform, decorate each end of the cathedral. The ascent to them is by a winding staircase of three hundred and eighty-nine steps, and their communication is by a gallery which has no support but Gothic pillars of a lightness that excites admiration. Independently of the six bells, which have disappeared with the little belfry that contained them, in the two towers were ten, one of which weighed forty-four thousand pounds. At the foot of the north tower is the rural calendar or zodiac, which has been described by M. Le Gentil, member of the Academy of Sciences. The Goths had borrowed from the Indians this custom of thus representing rustic labours at the entrance of their temples. Another Gothic bas-relief, which is seen on the left, in entering by the great door, undoubtedly represents that condemned soul who, tradition says, rose from his bier, during divine service, in order to pronounce his own damnation. None of the forty-five chapels have preserved the smallest vestige of their ornaments. Those which escaped the destructive rage of the modern Vandals, have been transported to the MUSEUM OF FRENCH MONUMENTS. The most remarkable are the statue of Pierre de Gondi, archbishop of Paris, the mausoleum of the Conte d'Harcourt, designed by his widow, the modern Artemisia, and executed by Pigalle, together with the group representing the vow of St. Lewis, by Costou the elder. Six angels in bronze, which were seen at the further end of the choir, have also been removed thither. The stalls present, in square and oval compartments, bas-reliefs very delicately sculptured, representing subjects taken from the life of the Holy Virgin and from the New Testament. Of the two episcopal pulpits, which are at the further end, the one, that of the archbishop, represents the martyrdom of St. Denis; the other, opposite, the cure of king Childebert, by the intercession of St. Germain. Some old tapestry, hung scantily round the choir, makes one regret the handsome iron railing, so richly wrought, by which it was inclosed, and some valuable pictures, which now figure in the grand Gallery of the CENTRAL MUSEUM OF THE ARTS. The nave, quite as naked as the choir and the sanctuary, had been enriched, as far as the space would admit, with pictures, twelve feet high, given for a long time, on every first of May, by the Goldsmiths' company and the fraternity of St. Anne and St. Marcel. On the last pillar of the nave, on the right, was the equestrian statue of Philip of Valois. That king was here represented on horseback, with his vizor down, sword in hand, and armed cap-à-pié, in the very manner in which he rode into the cathedral of _Notre-Dame_, in 1328, after the battle of Cassel. At the foot of the altar he left his horse, together with his armour, which he had worn in the battle, as an offering to the Holy Virgin, after having returned thanks to God and to her, say historians, for the victory he had obtained through her intercession. Above the lateral alleys, as well of the choir as of the nave, are large galleries, separated by little pillars of a single piece, and bordered by iron balustrades. Here spectators place themselves to see grand ceremonies. From their balconies were formerly suspended the colours taken from the enemy: these are now displayed in the _Temple of Mars_ at the HÔTEL DES INVALIDES. The organ, which appears to have suffered no injury, is reckoned one of the loudest and most complete in France. It is related that Daquin, an incomparable organist, who died in 1781, once imitated the nightingale on it so perfectly, that the beadle was sent on the roof of the church, to endeavour to discover the musical bird. Some of the stained glass is beautiful. Two roses, restored to their original state, the one on the side of the archipiscopal palace in 1726, and the other above the organ, in 1780, prove by their lustre, that the moderns are not so inferior to the ancients, in the art of painting on glass, as is commonly imagined. Should your curiosity lead you to contemplate the house of Fulbert, the canon, the supposed uncle to the tender Héloïse, where that celebrated woman passed her youthful days, you must enter, by the cloister of _Notre-Dame_, into the street that leads to the _Pont Rouge_, since removed. It is the last house on the right under the arcade, and is easily distinguished by two medallions in stone, preserved on the façade, though it has been several times rebuilt during the space of six hundred years. All the authors who have written on the antiquities of Paris, speak of these medallions as being real portraits of Abélard and Héloïse. It is presumable that they were so originally; but, without being a connoisseur, any one may discover that the dresses of these figures are far more modern than those peculiar to the twelfth century; whence it may be concluded that the original portraits having been destroyed by time, or by the alterations which the house has undergone, these busts have been executed by some more modern sculptor of no great talents. Leaving the cathedral, by the _Rue Notre-Dame_, and turning to the left, on reaching the _Marché Palu_, we come to the PETIT PONT. Like the _Pont St. Michel_, this bridge is situated on the south channel of the river, and stands in a direct line with the _Pont Notre-Dame_. It originally owed its construction to the following circumstance. Four Jews, accused of having killed one of their converted brethren, were condemned to be publicly whipped through all the streets of the city, on four successive Sundays. After having suffered the half of their sentence, to redeem themselves from the other half, they paid 18,000 francs of gold. This sum was appropriated to the erection of the _Petit Pont_, the first stone of which was laid by Charles VI, in 1395. In 1718, two barges, loaded with hay, caught fire, and being cut loose, drifted under the arches of this bridge, which, in the space of four hours, was consumed, together with the houses standing on it. The following year it was rebuilt, but without houses. Proceeding to the east, along the quays of the _Ile du Palais_, you will find the PONT AU DOUBLE. This little bridge, situated behind the _Hôtel-Dieu_, of which I shall speak hereafter, is destined for foot-passengers only, as was the _Pont Rouge_. The latter was the point of communication between the _Cité_ and the _Ile St. Louis_; but the frequent reparations which it required, occasioned it to be removed in 1791, though, by the Plan of Paris, it still appears to be in existence. However, it is in contemplation to replace it by another of stone.[1] Supposing that you have regained the north bank of the Seine, by means of the _Pont Notre-Dame_, you follow the quays, which skirt that shore, till you reach the PONT MARIE. This bridge forms a communication between the _Port St. Paul_ and the _Ile St. Louis_. The _Pont Marie_ was named after the engineer who engaged with Henry IV to build it; but that prince having been assassinated; the young king, Lewis XIII, and the queen dowager, laid the first stone in 1614: it was finished, and bordered with houses, in 1635. It consists of five arches. Its length is three hundred feet by sixty-two in breadth. An inundation having carried away two of the arches, in 1658, they were repaired without the addition of houses, and in 1789, the others were removed. Passing through the _Rue des Deux Ponts_, which lies in a direct line with the _Pont Marie_, we arrive at the PONT DE LA TOURNELLE. This bridge takes its name from the _Château de la Tournelle_, contiguous to the _Porte St. Bernard_, where the galley-slaves used formerly to be lodged, till they were sent off to the different public works. It consists of six arches of solid construction, and is bordered on each side by a foot-pavement. You are now acquainted with all the bridges in Paris; but should you prefer crossing the Seine in a boat, there are several ferries between the bridges, and at other convenient places. Here, you may always meet with a waterman, who, for the sum of one _sou_, will carry you over, whether master or lackey. Like the old ferryman Charon, he makes no distinction of persons. [Footnote 1: Workmen are, at this moment, employed in the construction of three new bridges. The first, already mentioned, will form a communication between the _ci-devant Collège des Quatre Nations_ and the _Louvre_; the second, between the _Ile du Palais_ and the _Ile St. Louis_; and the third, between the _Jardin des Plantes_ and the Arsenal.] LETTER XXXVI. _Paris, December 20, 1801._ What a charming abode is Paris, for a man who can afford to live at the rate of a thousand or fifteen hundred pounds a year! Pleasures wait not for him to go in quest of them; they come to him of their own accord; they spring up, in a manner, under his very feet, and form around him an officious retinue. Every moment of the day can present a new gratification to him who knows how to enjoy it; and, with prudent management, the longest life even would not easily exhaust so ample a stock. Paris has long been termed an epitome of the world. But, perhaps, never could this denomination be applied to it with so much propriety as at the present moment. The chances of war have not only rendered it the centre of the fine arts, the museum of the most celebrated masterpieces in existence, the emporium where the luxury of Europe comes to procure its superfluities; but the taste for pleasure has also found means to assemble here all the enjoyments which Nature seemed to have exclusively appropriated to other climates. Every country has its charms and advantages. Paris alone appears to combine them all. Every region, every corner of the globe seems to vie in hastening to forward hither the tribute of its productions. Are you an epicure? No delicacy of the table but may be eaten in Paris.--Are you a toper? No delicious wine but may be drunk, in Paris.--Are you fond of frequenting places of public entertainment? No sort of spectacle but may be seen in Paris.--Are you desirous of improving your mind? No kind of instruction but may be acquired in Paris.--Are you an admirer of the fair sex? No description of female beauty but may be obtained in Paris.--Are you partial to the society of men of extraordinary talents? No great genius but comes to display his knowledge in Paris.--Are you inclined to discuss military topics? No hero but brings his laurels to Paris.--In a word, every person, favoured by Nature or Fortune, flies to enjoy the gifts of either in Paris. Even every place celebrated in the annals of voluptuousness, is, as it were, reproduced in Paris, which, in some shape or another, presents its name or image. Without going out of this capital, you may, in the season when Nature puts on her verdant livery, visit _Idalium_, present your incense to the Graces, and adore, in her temple, the queen of love; while at _Tivoli_, you may, perhaps, find as many beauties and charms as were formerly admired at the enchanting spot on the banks of the Anio, which, under its ancient name of _Tibur_, was so extolled by the Latin poets; and close to the Boulevard, at _Frascati_, you may, in that gay season, eat ices as good as those with which Cardinal de Bernis used to regale his visiters, at his charming villa in the _Campagna di Roma_. Who therefore need travel farther than Paris to enjoy every gratification? If then, towards the close of a war, the most frightful and destructive that ever was waged, the useful and agreeable seem to have proceeded here hand in hand in improvement, what may not be expected in the tranquillity of a few years' peace? Who knows but the emperor Julian's "_dear Lutetia_" may one day vie in splendour with Thebes and its hundred gates, or ancient Rome covering its seven mountains? However, if _Tivoli_ and _Frascati_ throw open their delightful recesses to the votaries of pleasure only in spring and summer, even now, during the fogs of December, you may repair to PAPHOS. It might almost be said that you enter this place of amusement gratis, for, though a slight tribute of seventy-five _centimes_ (_circa_ seven-pence halfpenny sterling) is required for the admission of every person, yet you may take refreshment to the amount of that sum, without again putting your hand into your pocket; because the counter mark, given at the door, is received at the bar as ready-money. This speculation, the first of the kind in France, and one of the most specious, is, by all accounts, also one of the most productive. It would be too rigorous, no doubt, to compare the frequenters of the modern PAPHOS to the inhabitants of the ancient. Here, indeed, you must neither look for _élégantes_, nor _muscadins_; but you may view belles, less gifted by Fortune, indulging in innocent recreation; and for a while dispelling their cares, by dancing to the exhilarating music of an orchestra not ill composed. Here, the grisette banishes the _ennui_ of six days' application to the labours of her industry, by footing it away on Sunday. Hither, in short, the less refined sons and daughters of mirth repair to see and be seen, and to partake of the general diversion. PAPHOS is situated on that part of the Boulevard, called the _Boulevard du Temple_, whither I was led the other evening by that sort of curiosity, which can be satisfied only when the objects that afford it aliment are exhausted. I had just come out of another place of public amusement, at no great distance, called LA PHANTASMAGORIE. This is an exhibition in the _Cour des Capucines_, adjoining to the Boulevard, where ROBERTSON, a skilful professor of physics, amuses or terrifies his audience by the appearance of spectres, phantoms, &c. In the piece which I saw, called _Le Tombeau de Robespierre_, he carries illusion to an extraordinary degree of refinement. His cabinet of physics is rich, and his effects of optics are managed in the true style of French gallantry. His experiments of galvanism excite admiration. He repeats the difficult ones of M. VOLTA, and clearly demonstrates the electrical phenomena presented by the metallic pile. A hundred disks of silver and a hundred pieces of zinc are sufficient for him to produce attractions, sparks, the divergency of the electrometer, and electric hail. He charges a hundred Leyden bottles by the simple contact of the metallic pile. ROBERTSON, I understand, is the first who has made these experiments in Paris, and has succeeded in discharging VOLTA's pistol by the galvanic spark. FITZJAMES, a famous ventriloquist, entertains and astonishes the company by a display of his powers, which are truly surprising. You may, perhaps, be desirous to procure your family circle the satisfaction of enjoying the _Phantasmagoria_, though not on the grand scale on which it is exhibited by ROBERTSON. By the communication of a friend, I am happy in being enabled to make you master of the secret, as nothing can be more useful in the education of children than to banish from their mind the deceitful illusion of ghosts and hobgoblins, which they are so apt to imbibe from their nurses. But to the point--"You have," says my author, "only to call in the first itinerant foreigner, who perambulates the streets with a _galantee-show_ (as it is commonly termed in London), and by imparting to him your wish, if he is not deficient in intelligence and skill, he will soon be able to give you a rehearsal of the apparition of phantoms: for, by approaching or withdrawing the stand of his show, and finding the focus of his glasses, you will see the objects diminish or enlarge either on the white wall, or the sheet that is extended. "The illusion which leads us to imagine that an object which increases in all its parts, is advancing towards us, is the basis of the _Phantasmagoria_, and, in order to produce it with the _galantee-show_, you have only to withdraw slowly the lantern from the place on which the image is represented, by approaching the outer lens to that on which the object is traced: this is easily done, that glass being fixed in a moveable tube like that of an opera-glass. As for approaching the lantern gradually, it may be effected with the same facility, by placing it on a little table with castors, and, by means of a very simple mechanism, it is evident that both these movements may be executed together in suitable progression. "The deception recurred to by phantasmagorists is further increased by the mystery that conceals, from the eyes of the public, their operations and optical instruments: but it is easy for the showman to snatch from them this superiority, and to strengthen the illusion for the children whom you choose to amuse with this sight. For that purpose, he has only to change the arrangement of the sheet, by requiring it to be suspended from the ceiling, between him and the spectators, much in the same manner as the curtain of a playhouse, which separates the stage from the public. The transparency of the cloth shews through it the coloured rays, and, provided it be not of too thick and too close a texture, the image presents itself as clear on the one side as on the other. "If to these easy means you could unite those employed by ROBERTSON, such as the black hangings, which absorb the coloured rays, the little musical preparations, and others, you might transform all the _galantee-shows_ into as many _phantasmagorias_, in spite of the priority of invention, which belongs, conscientiously, to Father KIRCHER, a German Jesuit, who first found means to apply his knowledge respecting light to the construction of the magic lantern. "The coloured figures, exhibited by the phatasmagorists, have no relation to these effects of light: they are effigies covered with gold-beater's skin, or any other transparent substance, in which is placed a dark lantern. The light of this lantern is extinguished or concealed by pulling a string, or touching a spring, at the moment when any one wishes to seize on the figure, which, by this contrivance, seems to disappear. "The proprietors of the grand exhibitions of _phantasmagoria_ join to these simple means a combination of different effects, which they partly derive from the phenomena, presented by the _camera obscura_. Some faint idea of that part of physics, called optics, which NEWTON illuminated, by his genius and experience, are sufficient for conceiving the manner in which these appearances are produced, though they require instruments and particular care to give them proper effect." Such is the elucidation given of the _phantasmagoria_ by an intelligent observer, whose friend favoured me with this communication. LETTER XXXVII. _Paris, December 21, 1801._ If Paris affords a thousand enjoyments to the man of fortune, it may truly be said that, without money, Paris is the most melancholy abode in the world. Privations are then the more painful, because desires and even wants are rendered more poignant by the ostentatious display of every object which might satisfy them. What more cruel for an unfortunate fellow, with an empty purse, than to pass by the kitchen of a _restaurateur_, when, pinched by hunger, he has not the means of procuring himself a dinner? His olfactory nerves being still more readily affected when his stomach is empty, far from affording him a pleasing sensation, then serve only to sharpen the torment which he suffers. It is worse than the punishment of Tantalus, who, dying with thirst, could not drink, though up to his chin in water. Really, my dear friend, I would advise every rich epicure to fix his residence in this city. Without being plagued by the details of housekeeping, or even at the trouble of looking at a bill of fare, he might feast his eye, and his appetite too, on the inviting plumpness of a turkey, stuffed with truffles. A boar's head set before him, with a Seville orange between its tusks, might make him fancy that he was discussing the greatest interests of mankind at the table of an Austrian Prime Minister, or British Secretary of State; while _pâtés_ of _Chartres_ or of _Périgord_ hold out to his discriminating palate all the refinements of French seasoning. These, and an endless variety of other dainties, no less tempting, might he contemplate here, in walking past a _magazin de comestibles_ or provision-warehouse. Among the changes introduced here, within these few years, I had heard much of the improvements in the culinary art, or rather in the manner of serving up its productions; but, on my first arrival in Paris, I was so constantly engaged in a succession of dinner-parties, that some time elapsed before I could avail myself of an opportunity of dining at the house of any of the fashionable RESTAURATEURS. This is a title of no very ancient date in Paris. _Traiteurs_ have long existed here: independently of furnishing repasts at home, these _traiteurs_, like Birch in Cornhill, or any other famous London cook, sent out dinners and suppers. But, in 1765, one BOULANGER conceived the idea of _restoring_ the exhausted animal functions of the debilitated Parisians by rich soups of various denominations. Not being a _traiteur_, it appears that he was not authorized to serve ragouts; he therefore, in addition to his _restorative_ soups, set before his customers new-laid eggs and boiled fowl with strong gravy sauce: those articles were served up without a cloth, on little marble tables. Over his door he placed the following inscription, borrowed from Scripture: "_Venite ad me omnes qui stomacho laboratis, et ego restaurabo vos._" Such was the origin of the word and profession of _restaurateur_. Other cooks, in imitation of BOULANGER, set up as _restorers_, on a similar plan, in all the places of public entertainment where such establishments were admissible. Novelty, fashion, and, above all, dearness, brought them into vogue. Many a person who would have been ashamed to be seen going into a _traiteur's_, made no hesitation of entering a _restaurateur's_, where he paid nearly double the price for a dinner of the same description. However, as, in all trades, it is the great number of customers that enrich the trader, rather than the select few, the _restaurateurs_, in order to make their business answer, were soon under the necessity of constituting themselves _traiteurs_; so that, in lieu of one title, they now possess two; and this is the grand result of the primitive establishment. At the head of the most noted _restaurateurs_ in Paris, previously to the revolution, was LA BARRIÈRE in the _ci-devant Palais Royal_; but, though his larder was always provided with choice food, his cellar furnished with good wines, his bill of fare long, and the number of his customers considerable, yet his profits, he said, were not sufficiently great to allow him to cover his tables with linen. This omission was supplied by green wax cloth; a piece of economy which, he declared, produced him a saving of near 10,000 livres (_circa_ 400£ sterling) per annum in the single article of washing. Hence you may form an idea of the extent of such an undertaking. I have often dined at LA BARRIÈRE'S was always well served, at a moderate charge, and with remarkable expedition. Much about that time, BEAUVILLIERS, who had opened, within the same precincts, a similar establishment, but on a more refined plan, proved a most formidable rival to LA BARRIÈRE, and at length eclipsed him. After a lapse of almost eleven years, I again find this identical BEAUVILLIERS still in the full enjoyment of the greatest celebrity. ROBERT and NAUDET in the _Palais du Tribunat_, and VÉRY on the _Terrace des Feuillant_ dispute with him the palm in the art of Apicius. All these, it is true, furnish excellent repasts, and their wines are not inferior to their cooking: but, after more than one impartial trial, I think I am justified in giving the preference to BEAUVILLIERS. Let us then take a view of his arrangements: this, with a few variations in price or quality, will serve as a general picture of the _ars coquinaria_ in Paris. On the first floor of a large hotel, formerly occupied, perhaps, by a farmer-general, you enter a suite of apartments, decorated with arabesques, and mirrors of large dimensions, in a style no less elegant than splendid, where tables are completely arranged for large or small parties. In winter, these rooms are warmed by ornamental stoves, and lighted by _quinquets_, a species of Argand's lamps. They are capable of accommodating from two hundred and fifty to three hundred persons, and, at this time of the year, the average number that dine here daily is about two hundred; in summer, it is considerably decreased by the attractions of the country, and the parties of pleasure made, in consequence, to the environs of the capital. On the left hand, as you pass into the first room, rises a sort of throne, not unlike the _estrado_ in the grand audience-chamber of a Spanish viceroy. This throne is encircled by a barrier to keep intruders at a respectful distance. Here sits a lady, who, from her majestic gravity and dignified bulk, you might very naturally suppose to be an empress, revolving in her comprehensive mind the affairs of her vast dominions. This respectable personage is Madame BEAUVILLIERS, whose most interesting concern is to collect from the gentlemen in waiting the cash which they receive at the different tables. In this important branch, she has the assistance of a lady, somewhat younger than herself, who, seated by her side, in stately silence, has every appearance of a maid of honour. A person in waiting near the throne, from his vacant look and obsequious carriage, might, at first sight, be taken for a chamberlain; whereas his real office, by no means an unimportant one, is to distribute into deserts the fruit and other _et ceteras_, piled up within his reach in tempting profusion. We will take our seats in this corner, whence, without laying down our knife and fork, we can enjoy a full view of the company as they enter. We are rather early: by the clock, I perceive that it is no more than five: at six, however, there will scarcely be a vacant seat at any of the tables. "_Garçon, la carte_!"--"_La voilà devant vous, Monsieur._" Good heaven! the bill of fare is a printed sheet of double _folio_, of the size of an English newspaper. It will require half an hour at least to con over this important catalogue. Let us see; Soups, thirteen sorts.--_Hors-d'oeuvres_, twenty-two species.--Beef, dressed in eleven different ways.--Pastry, containing fish, flesh and fowl, in eleven shapes. Poultry and game, under thirty-two various forms. --Veal, amplified into twenty-two distinct articles.--Mutton, confined to seventeen only.--Fish, twenty-three varieties.--Roast meat, game, and poultry, of fifteen kinds.--Entremets, or side-dishes, to the number of forty-one articles.--Desert, thirty-nine.--Wines, including those of the liqueur kind, of fifty-two denominations, besides ale and porter.--Liqueurs, twelve species, together with coffee and ices. Fudge! fudge! you cry--Pardon me, my good friend, 'tis no fudge. Take the tremendous bill of fare into your own hand. _Vide et lege_. As we are in no particular hurry, travel article by article through the whole enumeration. This will afford you the most complete notion of the expense of dining at a fashionable _restaurateur's_ in Paris. BEAUVILLIERS, RESTAURATEUR _Anciennement à la grande Tavernede la République, Palais-Egalité, No. 142, Présentement Rue de la LOI, No. 1243._ PRIX DES METS POUR UNE PERSONNE.--LES ARTICLES DONT LES PRIX NE SONT POINT FIXES, MANQUENT. POTAGES. fr. s. Potage aux laitues et petits pois 0 15 Potage aux croûtons à la purée 0 15 Potage aux choux 0 15 Potage au consommé 0 12 Potage au pain 0 12 Potage de santé 0 12 Potage au vermicel 0 12 Potage au ris 0 12 Potage à la julienne 0 12 Potage printanier 0 15 Potage à la purée 0 15 Potage au lait d'amandes 0 15 Potage en tortue 1 10 HORS-D'OEUVRES. Tranche de melon 1 0 Artichaud à la poivrade 0 15 Raves et Radis 0 6 Salade de concombres 1 10 Thon mariné 1 10 Anchois à l'huile 1 5 Olives 0 15 Pied de cochon à la Sainte-Mènéhould 0 12 Cornichons 0 8 Petit salé aux choux 1 5 Saucisses aux choux 0 18 1 Petit Pain de Beurre 0 4 2 OEufs frais 0 12 1 Citron 0 8 Rissole à la Choisy 1 0 Croquette de volaille 1 4 3 Rognons à la brochette 1 0 Tête de veau en tortue 2 5 Tête de veau au naturel 1 0 1 Côtelette de porc frais, sauce robert 1 0 Chou-Croûte garni 1 10 Jambon de Mayence aux épinards 1 5 ENTRÉES DE BOEUF. fr. s. Boeuf au naturel ou à la sauce 0 15 Boeuf aux choux ou aux légumes 0 18 Carnebif 1 10 Rosbif 1 5 Filet de Boeuf sauté dans sa glace 1 5 Bifteck 1 5 Entre-côte, sauce aux cornichons 1 5 Palais de Boeuf au gratin 1 4 Palais de Boeuf à la poulette ou à l'Italienne 1 0 Langue de Boeuf glacée aux épinards 1 0 Jarrets de veau 0 15 ENTRÉES DE PATISSERIE. Pâté chaud de légumes 1 5 2 petits Pâtés à la Béchamel 1 4 2 petits Pâtés au jus 0 16 1 Pâté chaud d'anguille 1 10 1 Pâté chaud de crêtes et de rognons de coqs 2 0 Tourte de godiveau 1 0 Tourte aux confitures 1 5 Vol-au-Vent de filets de volailles 2 0 Vol-au-Vent de Saumon frais 1 10 Vol-au-Vent de morue à la Béchamel 1 5 Vol-au-Vent de cervelle de veau à l'Allemande 1 5 ENTRÉES DE VOLAILLES. (_Toutes les entrées aux Truffes sont de 15 de plus_). fr. s. Caille aux petits pois 2 10 Pigeon à la crapaudine 2 10 Chapon au riz, le quart 2 15 Chapon au gros sel, le quart 2 10 Demi-poulet aux Truffes ou aux Huitres 4 0 Fricassée de poulets garnie, la moitié 3 10 Fricassée de poulets, la moitié 3 0 Salade de volaille 3 0 Friteau de poulet, la moitié 3 0 Demi-poulet à la ravigotte ou à la tartare 3 0 Marinade de poulet, la moitié 3 0 Le quart d'un poulet à l'estragon ou à la crème ou aux laitues 1 10 Blanquette de poularde 2 10 1 cuisse de poulet aux petits pois 2 0 1 cuisse de volaille au jambon 2 0 2 côtelettes de poulet 3 0 1 cuisse ou aile de poulet en papillote 1 10 1 cuisse de poulet à la Provençale 1 10 Ragoût mêlé de crêtes et de rognons de coqs 3 0 Capilotade de volaille 3 0 Filet de poularde au suprême 3 0 Mayonaise de volaille 3 0 Cuisses de Dindon grillées, sauce robert 3 0 Le quart d'un Canard aux petits pois ou aux navets 1 10 Foie gras en caisses ou en matelote Perdrix aux choux, la moitié Salmi de perdreau au vin de Champagne Pigeons en compote ou aux petits pois 2 10 Béchamel de blanc de volaille 2 10 2 cuisses de poulet en hochepot 1 10 Ailerons de dinde aux navets 1 10 Blanc de volaille aux concombres 3 0 ENTRÉES DE VEAU. fr. s. Riz de veau piqué, à l'oseille ou à la chicorée 2 0 Riz de veau à la poulette 2 0 Fricandeau aux petits pois 1 5 Fricandeau à la chicorée 1 4 Fricandeau à la ravigotte 1 4 Fricandeau à l'oseille 1 4 Fricandeau à l'Espagnole 1 4 Côtelette de veau au jambon 1 4 Côtelette de veau aux petits pois 1 10 Côtelette de veau en papillotte 1 5 Côtelette de veau panée, sauce piquante 1 0 Côtelette de veau, sauce tomate 1 5 Blanquette de veau 1 0 Oreille de veau à la ravigotte 1 4 Oreille de veau farcie, frite 1 4 Oreille de veau frite ou en marinade 1 4 Cervelle de veau en matelote 1 4 Cervelle de veau à la purée 1 4 Tendons de veau panés, grillés, sauce piquante 1 4 Tendons de veau à la poulette 1 4 Tendons de veauen macédoine 1 5 Tendons de veau aux petits pois 1 5 ENTRÉES DE MOUTON. Gigot de mouton braisé, aux légumes 1 0 Tendons de mouton grillés 0 18 Tendons de mouton aux petits pois 1 5 Hachi de mouton à la Portugaise 1 0 2 Côtelettes de mouton à la minute 1 5 2 Côtelettes de mouton aux racines 1 5 2 Côtelettes de mouton au naturel 0 18 2 Côtelettes de pré 1 0 Epigramme d'agneau 2 Côtelettes d'agneau au naturel Tendons d'agneau aux pointes d'asperges Tendons d'agneau aux petits pois Blanquette d'agneau Filet de chevreuil 1 5 Côtelette de chevreuil Queue de mouton à la purée 1 5 Queue de mouton à l'oseille ou à la chicorée 1 5 ENTRÉES DE POISSONS. fr. s. Merlan frit Maquereau à la maître d'hôtel Saumon frais, sauce aux câpres 2 10 Raie, sauce aux câpres ou au beurre noir 1 10 Turbot, sauce aux câpres 2 10 Cabillaud Morue fraîche au beurre fondu Morue d'Hol. à la maître-d'hôtel ou à la Provençale 1 10 Sole frite Sole sur le plat 5 0 Eperlans frits Barbue Turbotin Matelote de carpe et d'anguille 2 0 Tronçon d'anguille à la tartare 1 10 Carpe frite, la moitié 2 0 Perche du Rhin à la Vallesfiche Goujons frits 1 5 Truite au bleu Laitance de carpe Moules à la poulette 1 5 Homard 3 0 Esturgeon 2 10 RÔTS. fr. s. Bécasse 3 Mauviettes Poularde fine 9fr. la moitié 4 10 Poulet Normand, 7fr. la moitié 3 10 Poulet gras, 6fr. la moitié 3 0 1 Pigeon de volière 2 10 Perdreau rouge Perdreau gris 3 10 Caneton de Rouen Caille 2 0 Agneau Veau 1 0 Mouton Levreau Grive Obergine 1 10 ENTREMETS. Gelée de citron 1 10 Concombres à la Béchamel 1 10 Laitues a jus 1 10 Petits pois à la Française ou à l'Anglaise 1 10 Haricots verts à la poulette ou à l'Anglaise 1 10 Haricots blancs à la maître-d'hôtel 0 18 Fèves de marais 1 10 Artichaud à la sauce 1 10 Artichaud à la barigoul 1 10 Artichaud frit 1 5 Truffes au vin de Champagne Truffes à l'Italienne Croûte aux truffes Navets Carottes 0 18 Epinards au jus 0 18 Chicorée au jus 1 5 Céleri au jus Choux-fleurs à la sauce ou au parmesan 1 10 Macédoine de légumes 1 5 Pommes de terre à la maître-d'hôtel 0 18 Champignons à la Bordelaise 1 4 Croûtes aux champignons 1 10 OEufs brouillés au jus 0 15 OEufs au beurre noir 1 0 Omelette aux fines herbes 0 15 Omelette aux rognons ou au jambon 1 0 Omelette au sucre ou aux confitures 1 5 Omelette soufflée 1 10 Beignets de pommes 1 10 Charlotte de pommes 1 10 Charlotte aux confitures 2 0 Riz soufflé 1 10 Soufflé aux pommes de terre 1 10 Le petit pôt de crème 0 10 Macaroni d'Italie au parmesan 1 5 Fondu 1 4 Plumpuding 1 10 Eorevisses 2 0 Salade 1 0 DESSERT. fr. s. Cerneaux 0 15 Raisins 1 5 Fraises Cerises Groseilles Framboises Abricot 0 8 Pêche 0 12 Prunes 0 3 Figue 0 5 Amandes 0 15 Noisettes 0 12 Pommes à la Portugaise Poires 0 8 Pomme Compote de verjus épépine Compote d'épine-vinette Compote de poires 1 4 Compote de pommes Compote de cerises 1 4 Nix Vert 0 10 Meringue 0 8 Compote de groseilles 1 4 Compote d'abricot 1 4 Compote de pêche 1 4 Confitures 1 4 Cerises liquides 1 4 Marmelade d'abricots 1 10 Gelée de groseilles 1 4 Biscuit à la crème 1 8 Fromage à la crème 1 10 Fromage de Roquefort 0 10 Fromage de Viry 0 15 Fromage de Gruyère 0 8 Fromage de Neufehâtel 0 5 Fromage de Clochestre ou Chester 0 10 Cerises à l'eau-de-vie 0 12 Prunes à l'eau-de-vie 0 12 Abricots à l'eau-de-vie Pêches à l'eau-de-vie VINS. fr. s. Clarette 6 0 Vin de Bourgogne 1 15 Vin de Chablis 2 0 Vin de Beaune 2 5 Vin de Mulsaux 3 0 Vin de Montrachet 3 10 Vin de Pomard 3 10 Vin de Volnay 3 10 Vin de Nuits 3 10 Vin de Grave 5 0 Vin de Soterne 5 0 Vin de Champagne mousseux 5 0 Vin de champagne, mousseux 4 0 Tisane de Champagne 3 10 Vin de Rosé 5 0 Vin de Silery rouge 6 0 Vin de Silery blanc 6 0 Vin de Pierri 5 0 Vin d'Aï 5 0 Vin de Porto 6 0 Latour 6 0 Vin de Côte-Rôtie 5 0 Vin du Clos Vougeot de 88 7 4 Clos St. Georges 6 0 Vin de Pomarel 6 0 Vin du Rhin 8 0 Vin de Chambertin 5 0 Vin de l'Hermitage rouge 5 0 Vin de l'Hermitage blanc 6 0 Vin delà Romanée 5 0 Ronflante Conti 8 0 Vin de Richebourg 5 0 Chevalier montrachet 6 0 Vin de Vône 5 0 Vîn de Bordeaux de Ségur 5 0 Vin de Bordeaux Lafite 5 0 Vin de Saint Emilion 5 0 Bierre forte ou porter 2 0 Bierre 0 10 VINS DE LIQUEURS. fr. s. Vin de Chereste, demi-bouteille 4 0 Vin de Malvoisie, _idem_ 4 0 Madère sec _id._ 4 0 Malaga 3 0 Alicante _id._ 3 0 Muscat 3 0 Le petit verre 0 10 Vermouth Chipre Calabre Paille Palme Constance Tokai Le petit verre 1 0 LIQUEURS. Anisette d'Hollande 0 15 Anisette de Bordeaux 0 12 Eau-de-vie d'Andaye 0 10 Fleur d'Orange 0 10 Cuirasseau 0 10 Rhum 0 10 Kirschewaser 0 10 Eau Cordiale de Coradon 0 15 Liqueurs des Isles 0 15 Marasquin 0 15 Eau-de-vie de Dantzick 0 15 Eau-de-vie de Coignac 0 8 Casé, la tasse 12s. la demie 0 8 Glace 0 15 One advantage, well deserving of notice, of this bill of fare with the price annexed to each article, is, that, when you have made up your mind as to what you wish to have for dinner, you have it in your power, before you give the order, to ascertain the expense. But, though you see the price of each dish, you see not the dish itself; and when it comes on the table, you may, perhaps, be astonished to find that a pompous, big-sounding name sometimes produces only a scrap of scarcely three mouthfuls. It is the mountain in labour delivered of a mouse. However, if you are not a man of extraordinary appetite, you may, for the sum of nine or ten francs, appease your hunger, drink your bottle of Champagne or Burgundy, and, besides, assist digestion by a dish of coffee and a glass of liqueur. Should you like to partake of two different sorts of wine, you may order them, and drink at pleasure of both; if you do not reduce the contents below the moiety, you pay only for the half bottle. A necessary piece of advice to you as a stranger, is, that, while you are dispatching your first dish, you should take care to order your second, and so on in progression to the end of the chapter: otherwise, for want of this precaution, when the company is very numerous, you may, probably, have to wait some little time between the acts, before you are served. This is no trifling consideration, if you purpose, after dinner, to visit one of the principal theatres: for, if a new or favourite piece be announced, the house is full, long before the raising of the curtain; and you not only find no room at the theatre to which you first repair; but, in all probability, this disappointment will follow you to every other for that evening. Nevertheless, ten or fifteen minutes are sufficient for the most dainty or troublesome dish to undergo its final preparation, and in that time you will have it smoking on the table. Those which admit of being completely prepared beforehand, are in a constant state of readiness, and require only to be set over the fire to be warmed. Each cook has a distinct branch to attend to in the kitchen, and the call of a particular waiter to answer, as each waiter has a distinct number of tables, and the orders of particular guests to obey in the dining-rooms. In spite of the confused noise arising from the gabble of so many tongues, there being probably eighty or a hundred persons calling for different articles, many of whom are hasty and impatient, such is the habitual good order observed, that seldom does any mistake occur; the louder the vociferations of the hungry guests, the greater the diligence of the alert waiters. Should any article, when served, happen not to suit your taste, it is taken back and changed without the slightest murmur. The difference between the establishments of the fashionable _restaurateurs_ before the revolution, and those in vogue at the present day, is, that their profession presenting many candidates for public favour, they are under the continual necessity of employing every resource of art to attract customers, and secure a continuance of them. The commodiousness and elegance of their rooms, the savouriness of their cooking, the quality of their wines, the promptitude of their attendants, all are minutely criticized; and, if they study their own interest, they must neglect nothing to flatter the eyes and palate. In fact, how do they know that some of their epicurean guests may not have been of their own fraternity, and once figured in a great French family as _chef de cuisine_? Of course, with all this increase of luxury, you must expect an increase of expense: but if you do not now dine here at so reasonable a rate as formerly, at least you are sumptuously served for your money. If you wish to dine frugally, there are numbers of _restaurateurs_, where you may be decently served with _potage_, _bouilli_, an _entrée_, an _entremet_, bread and desert, for the moderate sum of from twenty-six to thirty _sous_. The addresses of these cheap eating-houses, if they are not put into your hand in the street, will present themselves to your eye, at the corner of almost every wall in Paris. Indeed, all things considered, I am of opinion that the difference in the expense of a dinner at a _restaurateur's_ at present, and what it was ten or eleven years ago, is not more than in the due proportion of the increased price of provisions, house-rent, and taxes. The difference the most worthy of remark in these rendezvous of good cheer, unquestionably consists in the company who frequent them. In former times, the dining-rooms of the fashionable _restaurateurs_ were chiefly resorted to by young men of good character and connexions, just entering into life, superannuated officers and batchelors in easy circumstances, foreigners on their travels, &c. At this day, these are, in a great measure, succeeded by stock-jobbers, contractors, fortunate speculators, and professed gamblers. In defiance of the old proverb, "_le ventre est le plus grand de tous nos ennemis,_" guttling and guzzling is the rage of these upstarts. It is by no means uncommon to see many of them begin their dinner by swallowing six or seven dozen of oysters and a bottle of white wine, by way of laying a foundation for a _potage en tortue_ and eight or ten other rich dishes. Such are the modern parvenus, whose craving appetites, in eating and drinking, as in every thing else, are not easily satiated. It would be almost superfluous to mention, that where rich rogues abound, luxurious courtesans are at no great distance, were it not for the sake of remarking that the former often regale the latter at the _restaurateurs_, especially at those houses which afford the convenience of snug, little rooms, called _cabinets particuliers_. Here, two persons, who have any secret affairs to settle, enjoy all possible privacy; for even the waiter never has the imprudence to enter without being called. In these asylums, Love arranges under his laws many individuals not suspected of sacrificing at the shrine of that wonder-working deity. Prudes, whose virtue is the universal boast, and whose austerity drives thousands of beaux to despair, sometimes make themselves amends for the reserve which they are obliged to affect in public, by indulging in a private _tête-à-tête_ in these mysterious recesses. In them too, young lovers frequently interchange the first declarations of eternal affection; to them many a husband owes the happiness of paternity; and without them the gay wife might, perhaps, be at a loss to deceive her jealous Argus, and find an opportunity of lending an attentive ear to the rapturous addresses of her aspiring gallant. What establishment then can be more convenient than that of a _restaurateur_? But you would be mistaken, were you to look for _cabinets particuliers_ at every house of this denomination, Here, at BEAUVILLIERS', for instance, you will find no such accommodation, though if you dislike dining in public, you may have a private room proportioned to the number of a respectable party: or, should you be sitting at home, and just before the hour of dinner, two or three friends call in unexpectedly, if you wish to enjoy their company in a quiet, sociable manner, you have only to dispatch your _valet de place_ to BEAUVILLIERS' or to the nearest _restaurateur_ of repute for the bill of fare, and at the same time desire him to bring table-linen, knives, silver forks, spoons, and all other necessary appurtenances. While he is laying the cloth, you fix on your dinner, and, in little more than a quarter of an hour, you have one or two elegant courses, dressed in a capital style, set out on the table. As for wine, if you find it cheaper, you can procure that article from some respectable wine-merchant in the neighbourhood. In order to save trouble, many single persons, and even small families now scarcely ever cook at home; but either dine at a _restaurateur's_, or have their dinners constantly furnished from one of these sources of culinary perfection. But, while I am relating to you the advantages of these establishments, time flies apace: 'tis six o'clock.--If you are not disposed to drink more wine, let us have some coffee and our bill. When you want to pay, you say: "_Garçon, la carte payante!_" The waiter instantly flies to a person, appointed for that purpose, to whom he dictates your reckoning. On consulting your stomach, should you doubt what you have consumed, you have only to call in the aid of your memory, and you will be perfectly satisfied that you have not been charged with a single article too much or too little. Remark that portly man, so respectful in his demeanour. It is BEAUVILLIERS, the master of the house: this is his most busy hour, and he will now make a tour to inquire at the different tables, if his guests are all served according to their wishes. He will then, like an able general, take a central station, whence he can command a view of all his dispositions. The person, apparently next in consequence to himself, and who seems to have his mind absorbed in other objects, is the butler: his thoughts are, with the wine under his care, in the cellar. Observe the cleanly attention of the waiters, neatly habited in close-bodied vests, with white aprons before them: watch the quickness of their motions, and you will be convinced that no scouts of a camp could be more _on the alert_. An establishment, so extremely well conducted, excites admiration. Every spring of the machine duly performs its office; and the regularity of the whole might serve as a model for the administration of an extensive State. Repair then, ye modern Machiavels, to N° 1243, _Rue de la Loi_; and, while you are gratifying your palate, imbibe instruction from BEAUVILLIERS. END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. * * * * * * * * * * PARIS AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS; OR A Sketch of the French Capital, ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE EFFECTS OF THE REVOLUTION, WITH RESPECT TO SCIENCES, LITERATURE, ARTS, RELIGION, EDUCATION, MANNERS, AND AMUSEMENTS; COMPRISING ALSO A correct Account of the most remarkable National Establishments and Public Buildings. In a Series of Letters, WRITTEN BY AN ENGLISH TRAVELLER, DURING THE YEARS 1801-2, TO A FRIEND IN LONDON. * * * * * Ipsâ varietate tentamus efficere, ut alia aliis, quædem fortasse omnibus placeant. PLIN. Epist. * * * * * VOL. II LONDON A SKETCH OF PARIS, &c. &c. LETTER XXXVIII. _Paris, December 23, 1801._ An establishment at once deserving of the attention of men of feeling, particularly of those who, in cultivating literature, apply themselves to the science of metaphysics and grammar; an establishment extremely interesting to every one, the great difficulties of which mankind had, repeatedly, in the course of ages, endeavoured to encounter, and which had driven to despair all those who had ventured to engage in the undertaking; an establishment, in a word, which produces the happiest effects, and in a most wonderful manner, is the NATIONAL INSTITUTION OF THE DEAF AND DUMB. To the most religious of philanthropists is France indebted for this sublime discovery, and the Abbé SICARD, a pupil of the inventor; the Abbé de l'Epée, has carried it to such a degree of perfection, that it scarcely appears possible to make any further progress in so useful an undertaking. And, in fact, what can be wanting to a species of instruction the object of which is to establish between the deaf and dumb, and the man who hears and speaks, a communication like that established between all men by the knowledge and practice of the same idiom; when the deaf and dumb man, by the help of the education given him, succeeds in decomposing into phrases the longest period; into simple propositions, the most complex phrase; into words, each proposition; into simple words, words the most complex: and when he distinguishes perfectly words derived from primitives; figurative words from proper ones; and when, after having thus decomposed the longest discourse, he recomposes it; when, in short, the deaf and dumb man expresses all his ideas, all his thoughts, and all his affections; when he answers, like men the best-informed, all questions put to him, respecting what he knows through the nature of his intelligence, and respecting what he has learned, either from himself or from him who has enlightened his understanding? What wish remains to be formed, when the deaf and dumb man is enabled to learn by himself a foreign language, when he translates it, and writes it, as well as those of whom it is the mother-tongue? Such is the phenomenon which the Institution of the deaf and dumb presents to the astonishment of Europe, under the direction, or rather under the regeneration of the successor of the celebrated Abbé de l'Epée. His pupils realize every thing that I have just mentioned. They write English and Italian as well as they do French. Nothing equals the justness and precision of their definitions. Nor let it be imagined that they resemble birds repeating the tunes they have learned. Never have they been taught the answer to a question. Their answers are always the effect of their good logic, and of the ideas of objects and of qualities of beings, acquired by a mind which the Institutor has formed from the great art of observation. This institution was far short of its present state of perfection at the death of the celebrated inventor, which happened on the 23d of December 1789. During the long career of their first father, the deaf and dumb had been able to find means only to write, under the dictation of signs, words whose import was scarcely known to them. When endeavours were made to make them emerge from the confined sphere of the first wants, not one of them knew how to express in writing any thing but ideas of sense and wants of the first necessity. The nature of the verb, the relations of tenses, that of other words comprehended in the phrase, and which form the syntax of languages, were utterly unknown to them. And, indeed, how could they answer the most trifling question? Every thing in the construction of a period was to them an enigma. It was not long before the successor of the inventor discovered the defect of this instruction, which was purely mechanical and acquired by rote. He thought he perceived this defect in the _concrete_ verb, in which the deaf and dumb, seeing only a single word, were unable to distinguish two ideas which are comprehended in it, that of affirmation and that of quality. He thought he perceived also that defect in the expression of the qualities, always presented, in all languages, out of the subjects, and never in the noun which they modify; and, by the help of a process no less simple than ingenious and profound, he has made the deaf and dumb comprehend the most arduous difficulty, the nature of abstraction; he has initiated them in the art of generalizing ideas by presenting to them the adjective in the noun, as the quality is in the object, and the quality subsisting alone and out of the object, having no support but in the mind, for him who considers it, and but in the abstract noun for him who reads the expression of it. He has, in like manner, separated the verb from the quality in concrete verbs, and communicated to the deaf and dumb the knowledge of the true verb, which he has pointed out to them in the termination of all the French verbs, by reattaching to the subject, by a line agreed on, its verbal quality. This line he has translated by the verb _to be_, the only verb recognized by philosophic grammarians. These are the two foundations of this very extraordinary source of instruction, and on which all the rest depend. The pronouns are learned by nouns; the tenses of conjugation, by the three absolute tenses of conjugation of all languages; and these, by this line, so happily imagined, which is a sign of the present when it connects the verbal quality and the subject, a sign of the past when it is intersected, a sign of the future when it is only begun. All the conjugations are reduced to a single one, as are all the verbs. The adverbs considered as adjectives, when they express the manner, and as substitutes for a preposition and its government, when they express time or place, &c. The preposition represented as a mean of transmitting the influence of the word which precedes it to that which follows it; the articles serving, as in the English language, to determine the extent of a common noun. Such is a summary of the grammatical system of the Institutor of the deaf and dumb. It is the metaphysical part, above all, which, in this institution, is carried to such a degree of simplicity and clearness, that it is within reach of understandings the most limited. And, indeed, one ought not to be astonished at the rapid progress of the deaf and dumb in the art of expressing their ideas and of communicating in writing with every speaker, as persons absent communicate with each other by similar means. In the space of eighteen months, a pupil begins to give an account in writing of the actions of which he is rendered a witness, and, in the space of five years, his education is complete. The objects in which the deaf and dumb are instructed, are Grammar, the notions of Metaphysics and Logic, which the former renders necessary, Religion, the Use of the Globes, Geography, Arithmetic, general notions of History, ancient and modern, of Natural History, of Arts and Trades, &c. These unfortunates, restored by communication to society, from which Nature seemed to have intended to exclude them, are usefully employed. One of their principal occupations is a knowledge of a mechanical art. Masters in the most ordinary arts are established in the house of the deaf and dumb, and every one there finds employment in the art which best suits his inclination, his strength, and his natural disposition. In this school, which is established at the extremity of the _Faubourg St. Jacques_, is a printing-office, where some are employed as compositors; others, as pressmen. In a preparatory drawing-school they are taught the rudiments of painting, engraving, and Mosaic, for the last of which there are two workshops. There is also a person to teach engraving on fine grained stones, as well as a joiner, a tailor, and a shoemaker. The garden, which is large, is cultivated by the deaf and dumb. Almost every thing that is used by them is made by themselves. They make their own bedsteads, chairs, tables, benches, and clothes. The deaf and dumb females too make their shirts, and the rest of their linen. Thus their time is so taken up that, with the exception of three hours devoted to moral instruction, all the rest is employed in manual labour. Such is this establishment, where the heart is agreeably affected at the admirable spectacle which presents at once every thing that does the most honour to human intelligence, in the efforts which it has been necessary to make in order to overcome the obstacles opposed to its development by the privation of the sense the most useful, and that of the faculty the most essential to the communication of men with one another, and the sight of the physical power employed in seeking, in arts and trades, resources which render men independent. But to what degree are these unfortunates deaf, and why are they dumb? It is well known that they are dumb because they are deaf, and they are more or less deaf, when they are so only by accident, in proportion as the auditory nerve is more or less braced, or more or less relaxed. In various experiments made on sound, some have heard sharp sounds, and not grave ones; others, on the contrary, have heard grave sounds, and not sharp ones. All would learn, were it deemed expedient to teach them, the mechanism of speech. But, besides that the sounds which they would utter, would never be heard by themselves, and they would never be conscious of having uttered them, those, sounds would be to those who might listen to them infinitely disagreeable. Never could they be of use, to them in conversing with us, and they would serve only to counteract their instruction. Woe be to the deaf and dumb whom it should be proposed to instruct by teaching them to speak! How, in fact, can, the development of the understanding be assisted by teaching them a mechanism which has no object or destination, when the thought already formed in the mind, by the help of signs which fix the ideas, restores not the mechanism of speech? Of this the Institutor has been fully sensible, and, although in his public lessons, he explains all the efforts of the vocal instrument or organ of the voice, and proves that he could, as well as any other man, teach the deaf and dumb to make use of it, all his labour is confined to exercising the instrument of thought, persuaded that every thing will be obtained, when the deaf and dumb shall have learned to arrange their ideas, and to think. It is then only that the Institutor gives lessons of analysis. But, how brilliant are they! You think yourself transported into a class of logic. The deaf and dumb man has ceased to be so. A contest begins between him and his master. All the spectators are astonished; every one wishes to retain what is written on both sides. It is a lesson given to all present. Every one is invited to interrogate the deaf and dumb man, and he answers to any person whatsoever, with a pen or pencil in his hand, and in the same manner puts a question. He is asked, "What is Time?" --"Time," says the dumb pupil, "is a portion of duration, the nature of which is to be successive, to have commenced, and consequently to have passed, and to be no more; to be present, and to be so through necessity. Time," adds he, "is the fleeting or the future." As if in the eyes of the dumb there was nothing real in Time but the future. --"What is eternity?" says another to him--"It is a day without yesterday, or to-morrow," replies the pupil.--"What is a sense?"--"It is a vehicle for ideas."--"What is duration?"--"It is a line which has no end, or a circle."--"What is happiness?"--"It is a pleasure which never ceases."--"What is God?"--"The author of nature, the sun of eternity."--"What is friendship?"--"The affection of the mind." --"What is gratitude?"--"The memory of the heart." There are a thousand answers of this description, daily collected at the lessons of the deaf and dumb by those who attend them, and which attest the superiority of this kind of instruction over the common methods. Thus, this institution is not only, in regard to beneficence and humanity, deserving of the admiration of men of feeling, it merits also the observation of men of superior understanding and true philosophers, on account of the ingenious process employed here to supply the place of the sense of seeing by that of hearing, and speech by gesture and writing. I must not conceal from my countrymen, above all, that the Institutor, in his public lessons, formally declares, that it is by giving to the French language the simple form of ours, and accommodating to it our syntax, he has been chiefly successful in making the deaf and dumb understand that of their own country. I must also add, that it is no more than a justice due to the Institutor to say that, in the midst of the concourse of auditors, who press round him, and who offer him the homage due to his genius and philanthropy, he shews for all the English an honourable preference, acknowledging to them, publicly, that this attention is a debt which he discharges in return for the asylum that we granted to the unfortunate persons of his profession, who, emigrating from their native land, came among us to seek consolation, and found another home. Should ever this feeble sketch of so interesting an institution reach SICARD, that religious philosopher, who belongs as much to every country in the world as to France, the land which gave him birth, he will find in it nothing more than the expression of the gratitude of one Englishman; but he may promise himself that as soon as the definitive treaty of peace shall have reopened a free intercourse between the two nations, the sentiments contained in it will be adopted by all the English who shall witness the extraordinary success of his profoundly-meditated labours. They will all hasten to pay their tribute of admiration to a man, whose most gratifying reward consists in the benefits which he has had the happiness to confer on that part of his fellow-creatures from whom Nature has withheld her usual indulgence. LETTER XXXIX. _Paris, December 25, 1801._ Much has been said of the general tone of immorality now prevailing in this capital, and so much, that it becomes necessary to look beyond the surface, and examine whether morals be really more corrupt here at the present day than before the revolution. To investigate the subject through all its various branches and ramifications, would lead me far beyond the limits of a letter. I shall therefore, as a criterion, take a comparative view of the increase or decrease of the different classes of women, who, either publicly or privately, deviate from the paths of virtue. If we begin with the lowest rank, and ascend, step by step, to the highest, we first meet with those unfortunate creatures, known in France by the general designation of PUBLIC WOMEN. Their number in Paris, twelve years ago, was estimated at thirty thousand; and if this should appear comparatively small, it must be considered how many amorous connexions here occupy the attention of thousands of men, and consequently tend to diminish the number of _public_ women. The question is not to ascertain whether it be necessary, for the tranquillity of private families, that there should be public women. Who can fairly estimate the extent of the mischief which they produce, or of that which they obviate? Who can accurately determine the best means for bringing the good to overbalance the evil? But, supposing the necessity of the measure, would it not be proper to prevent, as much as possible, that complete mixture by which virtuous females are often confounded with impures? Charlemagne, though himself a great admirer of the sex, was of that opinion. He had, in vain, endeavoured to banish entirely from Paris women of this description; by ordering that they should be condemned to be publicly whipped, and that those who harboured them, should carry them on their shoulders to the place where the sentence was put in execution. But it was not a little singular that, while the emperor was bent on reforming the morals of the frail fair, his two daughters, the princesses Gifla and Rotrude, were indulging in all the vicious foibles of their nature. Charlemagne, who then resided in the _Palais des Thermes_, situated in the _Rue de la Harpe_, happened to rise one winter's morning much earlier than usual. After walking for some time about his room, he went to a window which looked into a little court belonging to the palace. How great was his astonishment, when, by the twilight, he perceived his second daughter, Rotrude, with Eginhard, his prime minister, on her back, whom she was carrying through the deep snow which had fallen in the night in order that the foot-steps of a man might not be traced. When Lewis the _débonnaire_, his successor, ascended the throne, he undertook to reform these two princesses, whose father's fondness had prevented him from suffering them to marry. The new king began by putting to death two noblemen who passed for their lovers, thinking that this example would intimidate, and that they would find no more: but it appears that he was mistaken, for they were never at a loss. Nor is this to be wondered at, as these princesses to a taste for literature joined a very lively imagination, and were extremely affable, generous, and beneficent; on which account, says Father Daniel, they died universally regretted. Experience having soon proved that public women are a necessary evil in great cities, it was resolved to tolerate them. They therefore began to form a separate body, became subject to taxes, and had their statutes and judges. They were called _femmes amoureuses_, _filles folles de leur corps_, and, on St. Magdalen's day, they were accustomed to form annually a solemn procession. Particular streets were assigned to them for their abode; and a house in each street, for their commerce. A penitentiary asylum, called _les Filles Dieu_, was founded at Paris in 1226, and continued for some years open for the reception of _female sinners who had gone astray, and were reduced to beggary_. In the time of St. Lewis, their number amounted to two hundred; but becoming rich, they became dissolute, and in 1483, they were succeeded by the reformed nuns of Fontevrault. When I was here in the year 1784, a great concourse of people daily visited this convent in order to view the body of an ancient virgin and martyr, said to be that of St. Victoria, which, having been lately dug up near Rome, had just been sent to these nuns by the Pope. This relic being exposed for some time to the veneration and curiosity of the Parisian public, the devout wondered to see the fair saint with a complexion quite fresh and rosy, after having been dead for several centuries, and, in their opinion, this was a miracle which incontestably proved her sanctity. The incredulous, who did not see things in the same light, thought that the face was artificial, and that it presented one of those holy frauds which have so frequently furnished weapons to impiety. But they were partly mistaken: the nuns had thought proper to cover the face of the saint with a mask, and to clothe her from head to foot, in order to skreen from the eyes of the public the hideous spectacle of a skeleton. In 1420, Lewis VIII, with a view of distinguishing impures from modest women, forbade the former to wear golden girdles, then in fashion. This prohibition was vain, and the virtuous part of the sex consoled themselves by the testimony of their conscience, whence the old proverb: "_Bonne rénommée vaut mieux que ceinture dorée_." Another establishment, first called _Les Filles pénitentes ou repenties_, and afterwards _Filles de St. Magloire_, was instituted in 1497 by a Cordelier, and had the same destination. He preached against libertinism, and with such success, that two hundred dissolute women were converted by his fervent eloquence. The friar admitted them into his congregation, which was sanctioned by the Pope. Its statutes, which were drawn up by the Bishop of Paris, are not a little curious. Among other things, it was established, that "none should be received but women who had led a dissolute life, and that, in order to ascertain the fact, they should be examined by matrons, who should swear on the Holy Evangelists to make a faithful report." There can be no doubt that women were well taken care of in this house, since it was supposed that virtue even might assume the mask of vice to obtain admission. The fact is singular. "To prevent girls from prostituting themselves in order to be received, those who shall have been once examined and refused, shall be excluded for ever. "Besides, the candidates shall be obliged to swear, under penalty of their eternal damnation, in presence of their confessor and six nuns, that they did not prostitute themselves with a view of entering into this congregation; and in order that women of bad character may not wait too long before they become converted, in the hope that the door will always be open to them, none will be received above the age of thirty." This community, for some years, continued tolerably numerous; but its destination had been changed long before the suppression of convents, which took place in the early part of the revolution. All the places of public prostitution in Paris, after having been tolerated upwards of four hundred years, were abolished by a decree of the States General, held at Orleans in 1560. The number of women of the town, however, was far from being diminished, though their profession was no longer considered as a trade; and as they were prohibited from being any where, that is, in any fixed place, they were compelled to spread themselves every where. At the present day, the number of these women in Paris is computed at twenty-five thousand: they are taken up as formerly, in order to be sent into infirmaries, whence they, generally, come out only to return to their former habits. Twelve years ago, those apprehended underwent a public examination once a month, and were commonly sentenced to a confinement, more or less long, according to the pleasure of the minister of the police. The examination of them became a matter of amusement for persons of not over-delicate feelings. The hardened females, neither respecting the judge not the audience, impudently repeated the language and gestures of their traffic. The judge added a fortnight's imprisonment for every insult, and the most abandoned were confined only a few months longer in the _Salpétrière_. Endeavours have since been made to improve the internal regulation of this and similar houses of correction; but, as far as my information goes, with little success. For want of separating, from the beginning of their confinement, the most debauched from those whom a moment of distress or error has thrown into these scenes of depravity, the contamination of bad example rapidly spreads, and those who enter dissolute, frequently come out thievish; while all timidity is banished from the mind of the more diffident. Besides, it is not always the most culpable who fall into the hands of the police, the more cunning and experienced, by contriving to come to terms with its agents, employed on these errands, generally escape; and thus the object in view is entirely defeated. On their arrival at the _Salpétrière_, the healthy are separated from the diseased; and the latter are sent to _Bicêtre_, where they either find a cure or death. Your imagination will supply the finishing strokes of this frightful picture.--These unfortunate victims of indigence or of the seduction of man, are deserving of compassion. With all their vices, they have, after all, one less than many of their sex who pride themselves on chastity, without really possessing it; that is, hypocrisy. As they shew themselves to be what they really are, they cannot make the secret mischief which a detected prude not unfrequently occasions under the deceitful mask of modesty. Degraded in their own eyes, and being no longer able to reign through the graces of virtue, they fall into the opposite extreme, and display all the audaciousness of vice. The next class we come to is that which was almost honoured by the Greeks, and tolerated by the Romans, under the denomination of COURTESANS. By courtesans, I mean those ladies who, decked out in all the luxury of dress, if not covered with diamonds, put up their favours to the highest bidder, without having either more beauty or accomplishments, perhaps, than the distressed female who sells hers at the lowest price. But caprice, good fortune, intrigue, or artifice, sometimes occasions an enormous distance between women who have the same views. If the ancients made great sacrifices for the Phrynes, the Laïses, or the Aspasias of the day, among the moderns, no nation has, in that respect, surpassed the French. Every one has heard of the luxurious extravagance of Mademoiselle Deschamps, the cushion of whose _chaise-percée_, was trimmed with point-lace of very considerable value, and the harness of whose carriage was studded with paste, in imitation of diamonds. This woman, however, lived to repent of her folly; and if she did not literally die in a poorhouse, she at least ended her days in wretchedness. Before the revolution, of all the gay ladies in Paris, Madame Grandval displayed the greatest luxury in her equipage; and Mademoiselle D'Hervieux, in her house. I knew them both. The former I have seen at Longchamp, as well as at the annual review of the king's household troops, in a splendid coach, as fine as that of any Lord Mayor, drawn by a set of eight English grays, which cost a hundred and twenty guineas a horse. She sat, like a queen, adorned with a profusion of jewels; and facing her was a _dame de compagnie_, representing a lady of the bedchamber. Behind the carriage, stood no less than three tall footmen, besides a chasseur, in the style of that of the Duke of Gloucester, in rich liveries, with swords, canes, and bags. As for the house of Mademoiselle D'Hervieux, it was every thing that oriental luxury, combined with French taste, could unite on a small scale. Although of very low origin, and by no means gifted with a handsome person, this lady, after having, rather late in life, obtained an introduction on the opera-stage as a common _figurante_, contrived to insinuate herself into the good graces of some rich protectors. On the _Chaussée d'Antin_, they built for her this palace in miniature, which, twelve years ago, was the object of universal admiration, and, in fact, was visited by strangers as one of the curiosities of Paris. At the present day, one neither sees nor hears of such favourites of fortune; and, for want of subjects to paint under this head, I must proceed to those of the next rank, who are styled KEPT WOMEN. What distinctions, what shades, what different names to express almost one and the same thing! From the haughty fair in a brilliant equipage, figuring, like a favourite Sultana, with "all the pride, pomp, and circumstance" of the toilet, down to the hunger-pinched female, who stands shivering in the evening at the corner of a street, what gradations in the same profession! Before the revolution, there were reckoned in Paris eight or ten thousand women to whom the rich nobility or financiers allowed from a thousand pounds a year upwards to an almost incredible amount. Some of these ladies have ruined a whole family in the short space of six months; and, having nothing left at the year's end, were then under the necessity of parting with their diamonds for a subsistence. Although many of them are far inferior in opulence to the courtesans, they are less depraved, and, consequently, superior to them in estimation. They have a lover, who pays, and from whom they, in general, get all they can, at the same time turning him into ridicule, and another whom, in their turn, they pay, and for whom they commit a thousand follies. These women used to have no medium in their attachments; they were either quite insensible to the soft passion, or loved almost to distraction. On the wane, they had the rage for marrying, and many of them found men who, preferring fortune to honour, disgraced themselves by such alliances. Some of these ladies, if handsome, were not unfrequently taken by a man of fortune, and kept from mere ostentation, just as he would sport a superlatively elegant carriage, or ride a very capital horse; others were maintained from caprice, which, like Achilles's spear, carried with it its own antidote; and then, of course, they passed into the hands of different keepers. It cannot be denied, however that a few of these connexions were founded on attachment; and when the woman, who was the object of it, was possessed of understanding, she assumed the manners and deportment of a wife. Indeed, now and then a keeper adopted the style of oriental gallantry. Beaujon, the banker of the court, who had amassed an immense fortune, indulged himself in his old age, and, till his death, in a society composed of pretty women, some of whom belonged to what was then termed good families, among which he had diffused his presents. In an elegant habitation, called _la Chartreuse_, which he erected in the _Faubourg du Roule_, as a place of occasional retirement, was a most curious apartment, representing a bower, in the midst of which was placed a bedstead in imitation of a basket of flowers: four trees, whose verdant foliage extended over part of the ceiling, which was painted as a sky, seemed to shade this basket, and supported drapery, suspended to their branches. This was M. Beaujon's Temple of Venus. The late Prince of Soubise, for some years, constantly kept ten or a dozen ladies. The only intercourse he had with them, was to breakfast or chat with them twice or thrice a month, and latterly he maintained several old stagers, in this manner, from motives of benevolence. At the end of the month, all these ladies came in their carriages at a fixed hour, in a string, as it were, one after the other. The steward had their money ready; they afterwards, one by one, entered a very spacious room furnished with large closets, filled with silks, muslins, laces, ribbands, &c. The prince distributed presents to each, according to her age and taste: thus ended a visit of mere ceremony, interspersed with a few words of general gallantry. Such was the style in which many women were kept by men of fortune under the old _régime_. At the present day, if we except twenty or thirty perhaps, it would be no easy matter to discover any women supported in a style of elegance in Paris, and the lot of these seems scarcely secured but from month to month. The reason of this mystery is, that the modern Croesuses having mostly acquired their riches in a clandestine manner, they take every possible precaution to prevent the reports in circulation concerning their ill-gotten pelf from being confirmed by a display of luxury in their _chères amies_. On this account, many a matrimonial connexion, I am told, is formed between them and women of equivocal character, on the principle, that a man is better able to check the extravagant excesses of his wife than those of his mistress. We now arrive at that class of females who move in a sphere of life the best calculated for making conquests. I mean OPERA-DANCERS. When a spectator, whose eyes are fascinated by the illusion of scenic decorations, contemplates those beauties whose voluptuous postures, under the form of Calypso, Eucharis, Delphis, &c. awaken desire in the mind of youth, and even of persons of maturer years, he forgets that the divinities before him are women, who not unfrequently lavish their favours on the common herd of mortals. His imagination lends to them a thousand secret charms which they possess not; and he cannot be persuaded that they are not tremblingly alive to a passion which they express with so much apparent feeling. It is in their arms only that he discovers his error. To arrive at this point, many an Englishman has sacrificed thousands of pounds; while his faithless fair has been indulging in all the wantonness of her disposition, perhaps, with some obscure Frenchman among the long train of her humble admirers. Hence the significant appellation of _Milord Pot-au-feu_, given to one who supports a woman whose favours another enjoys _gratis_. Such an opera-dancer used formerly to exhibit herself in a blaze of jewels in the lobby, and according to the style in which she figured, did she obtain respect from her companions. The interval between them was proportioned to the degree of opulence which the one enjoyed over the other, so that the richer scarcely appeared to belong to the same profession as the poorer. To the former, every shopkeeper became a candidate for custom; presents were heaped on presents, and gold was showered on her in such a manner that she might, for the time, almost have fancied herself a second Danaë. In the midst of this good fortune, perhaps, an obscure rival suddenly started into fashion. She then was eclipsed by her whom, a few days before, she disdained. Instead of a succession of visiters, her house was deserted; and, at the expiration of the year, the proud fair, awakened from her golden dream by the clamours of her importunate creditors, found herself without one friend to rescue her valuables from their rapacious gripe. No wonder, then, that this order of things, (excepting the reverse by which it was sometimes followed) was very agreeable to the great majority of these capering beauties, and, doubtless, they wished its duration. For, among the reports of the _secret_ police, maintained by Lewis XVI, in 1792, it appears by a letter addressed to M. de Caylus, and found among the King's papers in the palace of the _Tuileries_, that most of the female opera-dancers were staunch _aristocrates_; but that democracy triumphed among the women who sang at that theatre. This little anecdote shews how far curiosity was then stretched to ascertain what is called public opinion; and I have no doubt that the result confirmed the correctness of the statement. The opera-stage was certainly never so rich as it now is in first-rate female dancers, yet the frail part of these beauties were never so deficient, perhaps, in wealthy admirers. Proceeding to the next order of meretricious fair, we meet with that numerous one denominated GRISETTES. This is the name applied to those young girls who, being obliged to subsist by their labour, chiefly fill the shops of milliners, mantua-makers, and sellers of ready-made linen, &c. The rank which ought to be assigned to them, I think, is between opera-dancers and demireps. You may smile at the distinction; but, as Mr. Tickle justly observes, in the Spectator, we should vary our appellations of these fair criminals, according to circumstances. "Those who offend only against themselves," says he, "and are not a scandal to society; but, out of deference to the sober part of the world, have so much good left in them as to be ashamed, must not be comprehended in the common word due to the worst of women. Regard is to be had to their situation when they fell, to the uneasy perplexity in which they lived under senseless and severe parents, to the importunity of poverty, to the violence of a passion in its beginning well-grounded, to all the alleviations which make unhappy women resign the characteristic of their sex, modesty. To do otherwise than thus," adds he, "would be to act like a pedantic Stoic, who thinks all crimes alike, and not as an impartial spectator, who views them with all the circumstances that diminish or enhance the guilt." If we measure them by this standard, _grisettes_ appear entitled to be classed immediately below demireps; for, as Lear says of his daughter, "-------- Not to be the worst Stands in some rank of praise." Their principal merit consists in their conducting themselves with a certain degree of decorum and reserve, and in being susceptible of attachment. Born in an humble sphere, they are accustomed from their infancy to gain their livelihood by their industry. Like young birds that feel the power of using their wings, they fly from the parent-nest at the age of sixteen; and, hiring a room for themselves, they live according to their means and fancy. More fortunate in their indigence than the daughters of petty tradesmen, they overleap the limits of restraint, while their charms are in full lustre; and sometimes their happiness arises from being born in poverty. In marrying an artisan of their own class, they see nothing but distress and servitude, which are by no means compatible with their spirit of independence. Vanity becomes their guide, and is as bad a guide as distress; for it prompts them to add the resources of their youth and person to those of their needle. This double temptation is too strong for their weak virtue. They therefore seek a friend to console them on Sundays for the _ennui_ of the remainder of the week, which must needs seem long, when they are sitting close at work from morning to night. In general, they are more faithful than any of the other classes of the frail part of the sex, and may be supported at little expense, and without scandal. It would require almost the powers of the inquisition to ascertain whether _grisettes_ have increased or diminished since the revolution; but their number is, and always has been, immense in Paris. An object highly deserving of the attention of the French legislators would be to find a remedy for this evil. A mortal blow should, no doubt, be struck at the luxury of the toilet; as the rage for dress has, I am convinced, undermined the virtue of as many women as the vile stratagems of all the Lotharios in being. Leaving these matters to some modern Lycurgus, I shall end my letter. But, in my eager haste to close it, I must not omit a class, which has increased in a proportion equal to the decrease of kept women. As they have no precise designation in France, I shall take the liberty of applying to them, that of DEMIREPS. Without having the shameless effrontery of vice, these ladies have not the austere rigour of virtue. Seeing that professed courtesans insnared the most promising youths, and snatched them from other women, this description of females sprang up, in a manner, to dispute with them, under the rose, the advantages which the others derived from their traffic. If they have not the same boldness in their carriage, their looks bespeak almost as much complaisance. They declaim loudly against women of all the classes before-mentioned, for the best possible reason; because these are their more dangerous rivals. It is certain that a virtuous woman cannot hold the breach of chastity too much in abhorrence, but every Lucretia ought to have "a tear for pity," especially towards the fallen part of her sex. Nothing can be more disgusting than to hear women, who are known to have transgressed, forget their own frailties, and rail against the more unguarded, and, consequently, more artless part of womankind, without mercy or justice. Demireps, in general, profess the greatest disinterestedness in their connexions; but if they receive no money at the moment of granting their favours, they accept trinkets and other presents which have some value. It is not at all uncommon for a man to think that he has a _bonne fortune_, when he finds himself on terms of intimacy with such a woman. Enraptured at his success, he repeats his visits, till one day he surprises his belle, overwhelmed by despair. He eagerly inquires the cause. After much entreaty, she informs him that she has had ill luck at play, and, with anguish in her looks, laments that she is ruined beyond redemption. The too credulous admirer can do no less than accommodate her secretly with a sufficient sum to prevent her from being taken to task by her husband; and thus the disinterested lady proves, in the end, a greater drain to the gallant's pocket than the most mercenary courtesan. The man who would wish to recommend himself to their favour, scarcely need take any further trouble than to change some of their trinkets, which are no longer in fashion. Sometimes he may meet with a husband, who, conniving at his wife's infidelity, will shew him every mark of attention. In that case, the lover is quite at home, and his presence being equally agreeable to the obliging husband as to the kind wife, when they are all three assembled, they seem to fit their several places like the three sides of an equilateral triangle. Since the revolution, the increase of demireps is said to have diminished most sensibly the class of what are termed kept women. Indeed, it is affirmed by some, that the number of the former has, within these few years, multiplied in a tenfold proportion. Others again maintain that it is no greater than it was formerly; because, say they, the state of society in Paris is not near so favourable to amorous intrigue as that which existed under the old _régime_. Riches being more equally divided, few persons, comparatively speaking, are now sufficiently affluent to entertain large parties, and give routs, balls, and suppers, where a numerous assemblage afforded, to those inclined to dissipation, every opportunity of cultivating an intimate acquaintance. I must confess that these reasons, assigned by some worthy Frenchmen whose opinions I respect, do not altogether accord with the result of my observation; and, without taking on myself to controvert them, I am persuaded that truth will bear me out in asserting, that, if the morals of that class of society in which I have chiefly mixed during the different periods of my stay in France, are not deteriorated, they are certainly not improved since I last visited Paris. After having painted, in regular succession, and with colours occasionally borrowed, the general portrait of all those classes of females whose likeness every English traveller has, no doubt, met with, I must find a little corner of my canvass for a small number of women who might, probably, be sought in vain out of Paris. However great a recommendation their rarity may be in the eyes of some, still it is not the only quality that points them out to the notice of the impartial observer. When a man has come to his senses respecting the sex, or, according to the vulgar adage, sown his wild oats, he naturally seeks a sincere friend to whom he can unbosom himself with confidence. Experience warns him that few men are to be trusted; and unless he has had the good fortune to meet with a virtuous wife, blessed with an engaging temper and a good understanding, he must even, like Junius, be the depository of his own secret. In Paris, however, he may find one of those scarce females, who, being accustomed early in life to reflection, possess the firm mind of a man, combined with the quick sensibility of a woman. When the illusion of the first passions is dissipated, their reason becomes unclouded. Renouncing every narrow thought, they raise themselves to the knowledge of the most weighty affairs, and, by an active observation of mankind, are accustomed to discriminate every shade of character. Hence their penetration is great; and they are capable of giving good advice on important occasions. In short, a French woman at thirty makes an excellent friend, and, attaching herself to the man she esteems, thinks no sacrifice too great for the advancement of his interest, or the security of his happiness or reputation. The friendship between man and woman is a thousand times more sweet than that between one man and another. A woman's friendship is active, vigilant, and at the same time tender. French women cherish more sincerely their old friends than their young lovers. They may perchance deceive the lover, but never the friend; the latter they consider as a sacred being. Whence, no doubt, Rousseau (who has not spared the Parisian ladies) has been led to say: "I would never have sought in Paris a wife, still less a mistress; but I would willingly have made there a female friend; and this treasure would, perhaps, have consoled me for not finding the other two." LETTER XL. _Paris, December 27, 1801._ About thirty years ago, a public insult offered to human nature, in the person of some unfortunate blind men belonging to the Hospital of the _Quinze-vingts_, and repeated daily for the space of two months, suggested to a spectator the idea of avenging it in a manner worthy of a true philanthropist. In a coffeehouse of the _Foire St. Ovide_, in Paris, were placed ten blind beggars, muffled up in grotesque dresses and long pointed caps, with large paste-board spectacles on their nose, without glass: music and lights were set before them; and one of them was characterized as Midas, with the ears of an ass, and the addition of a peacock's tail, spread behind him. He sang, while all the others played the same parts of a monotonous tune, without either taste or measure; and the unfeeling public turned into derision the unfortunate actors in this infamous scene. This happened in September 1771. From that moment, M. VALENTIN HAÜY, brother to the celebrated mineralogist of that name, animated by a noble enthusiasm, conceived the project of teaching the blind to write and read, and of placing in their hands books and music, printed by themselves. After employing twelve years in maturing it, at length, in 1784, he ventured to carry it into execution. To so laudable and benevolent a purpose, he devoted all his fortune; and hence originated the establishment known in Paris, since the year 1791, by the title of NATIONAL INSTITUTION OF THE INDUSTRIOUS BLIND. Presently M. HAÜY found his plan seconded by the Philanthropic Society, and the benefactions and advice of several persons, no less distinguished for understanding than benevolence, contributed not a little to encourage his zeal in its prosecution. The following were the primary objects of the establishment. 1. To withdraw the blind from the dangerous paths of idleness. 2. To procure them certain means of subsistence by the execution of pleasant and easy labours. 3. To restore them to society. 4. To console them for their misfortune. To rescue the blind from idleness is, unquestionably, of itself a great blessing, as it preserves them from an infinite number of vices, and consequently must be approved by the moralist. But another advantage, equally deserving of approbation, is to cause them to find, in their labour, an infallible resource against indigence. Previously to the execution of this beneficent plan, a young blind child, born of poor parents, was reduced to the melancholy and humiliating necessity of standing in a public thoroughfare, exposed to all the inclemency of the weather, to beg its bread, and, at present, it has no occasion to owe its livelihood but to its own labour. The children that M. HAÜY had to educate were, in general, of the class of artisans, though a few belonged to that of artists and men of science. Some were born with a little aptitude for mechanical labours, others with a great disposition for the arts and sciences. These considerations naturally pointed out to him his plan of instruction, which is divided into four branches. I. Handicraft work, viz. Spinning, knitting, making of cord, fringe, trimming, ribband, pasteboard, &c. Task-masters direct the execution of these works, which are as easy to the blind as to the clear-sighted. II. Education, viz. Reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, literature, history, foreign languages, arts and sciences. This education of blind children is carried on by means of raised-work or relief, and is intrusted to other blind people whose education is completed. The latter not only instruct their unfortunate fellow-sufferers, but also the clear-sighted. The sense of feeling is so refined in blind children, that a pupil, a little informed, becomes perfectly acquainted with maps by handling them: he points out with his finger countries and towns; if a map is presented to him upside down, he places it in a proper manner, and if one map is substituted to another, he instantly discovers the deception. III. Printing, viz. In black characters, for the public. In relief, for themselves. In black, they have printed no inconsiderable number of voluminous works, for the use of the public. In relief, they have printed for themselves a catechism, a grammar, and a great quantity of music. No where but at this institution, and at the MUSEUM OF THE BLIND, of which I shall presently speak, is there to be found an office for printing in relief. IV. Music, viz. Vocal and instrumental, and composition. The music of the blind pupils has always been employed with the greatest success in public festivals, playhouses, balls, coffeehouses, and many public and private assemblies. It is impossible to form an adequate idea of the decided taste of the blind for music, and of the consolation which it affords them. Deprived of their eyes, they seem to become all ears. No sooner had M. HAÜY rendered public his first essays, than the learned, and especially the members of the _ci-devant_ Academy of Sciences, stamped them with their approbation, as appears by a Report signed by some of the most distinguished of that body, such as DESMARETS, LA ROCHEFOUCAULT, CONDORCET, &c. Professors of the arts, cultivated by his pupils, such as printing, music, &c. were equally eager to acknowledge to what an astonishing degree the blind had succeeded in appropriating to themselves the enjoyment of those arts. Three of the first master-printers in Paris certified the intelligence and skill of the blind pupils; and a concert was executed by them to the no small satisfaction of the _ci-devant_ Academy of Music. Persons of every degree now wished to be spectators of the result of these essays. Lewis XVI sent for the Industrious Blind, their machinery, &c. to Versailles; he visited them when at work, and inspected their several performances, attended by all the royal family, princes of the blood, ministers, ambassadors, &c. After having procured the inhabitants of that town this interesting sight for several successive days, he rewarded the blind with marks of his favour and encouragement. The government, which succeeded to the monarchy, shewed no less interest in the progress of M. HAÜY'S undertaking. The different legislatures, which have successively governed France, promoted it by various decrees. In proportion as the number of the pupils increased, so did the resources of their industrious activity. By a law which was solicited by M. HAÜY, and which excited and kept up a singular emulation among his pupils, the blind, in preference to the clear-sighted of equal merit, were admitted to the various secondary employments of the establishment. From that period, the first blind pupils, formed by M. HAÜY, being promoted to the functions of teachers, transmitted with success to young blind children, sent for instruction, from different parts of the Republic, the first elements of education given them by himself and assistants. By virtue of this law, the office of house-steward was intrusted to LESUEUR, a blind pupil who had already discharged it with credit at a banker's. It will scarcely be believed, no doubt, that a blind man can be a cashier, receive money coming in, either from the public treasury, or from the industry of his brothers in misfortune; make of it a suitable division; buy commodities necessary for life and clothing; introduce the strictest economy into his disbursements; by means of his savings, procure the establishment the implements and machinery of the Industrious Blind; in times of real scarcity, make use of the productions of the labour of the grown blind, to maintain the young blind pupils, and that, with all these concerns on his hands, his accounts should always be ready for inspection. M. HAÜY informs me that out of fifteen or twenty of his old pupils, whom he has connected by the ties of marriage, ten or twelve are fathers; and that they have children more fortunate than the authors of their days, since the enjoy the benefit of sight. But the most interesting part of these connexions is, that the blind father (on the principle of the plan before-stated) teaches his clear-sighted son reading, arithmetic, music, and every thing that it is possible to teach without the help of the eyes. Raised work, or relief, is the simple and general process by means of which M. HAÜY forms his pupils, and there are a great number of them whose abilities would excite the pride of many a clear-sighted person. For instance, in addition to the before-mentioned LESUEUR, who is an excellent geographer and a good mathematician, might be quoted HUARD, a man of erudition and a correct printer; likewise CAILLAT, a capital performer on the violin, and a celebrated composer. For vocal and instrumental music, printing, and handicraft work, there might be noticed thirty or forty, as well as ten or twelve for knowledge relating to the sciences. It may not be improper to observe, that M. HAÜY always first puts a frame into the hands of his pupils, and that he has made a law, to which he scrupulously adheres, not to lean too much towards the _agreeable_ arts, unless the pupil manifest for them a peculiar disposition. Hence you may form an idea of the proficiency which these unfortunates attain under the auspices of the benevolent M. HAÜY. In the compass of a letter, or even of several letters, it is impossible to develope proceedings which it is more easy to put into execution than to describe. The process alone of printing in relief would require a vast number of pages, and some plates, in order to make it perfectly intelligible; but the greater part of what composes these branches of instruction is amply detailed in a work, which I shall communicate to you, entitled "_Essai sur l'Éducation des Aveugles_, _par_ Valentin Haüy, _auteur de la manière de les instruire_," printed under the sanction of the _ci-devant_ Academy of Sciences. By a law on public education, passed in July 1796, several establishments were to be founded in favour of blind children, in the principal towns of the Republic; but, in consequence of the political changes which have since occurred in the government, it has never been carried into execution. In October, 1800, the Consuls decreed that the _National Institution of the Industrious Blind_ should be united to the Hospital of the _Quinze-vingts_, together with the soldiers who had lost their sight in Egypt. M. HAÜY is shortly to be honoured by a pension, as a reward for the services which he has bestowed on those afflicted with blindness. At the present moment, he is engaged in founding a second establishment, of a similar nature, which is to take the name of MUSEUM OF THE BLIND. On my asking M. HAÜY, whether he would not retire, as it was intended he should, on his pension? "This favour of the government," replied he, "I consider as a fresh obligation, silently imposed on me, to continue to be of service to the blind. The first establishment, supported and paid by the nation, belonged to the poor. In forming the second," added he, "I have yielded to the wishes of parents in easy circumstances, who were desirous of giving to their blind children a liberal education." I have already mentioned, that, agreeably to M. HAÜY'S plan, the blind instruct the clear-sighted; and in this Museum, which is situated _Rue Sainte Avoie, Hôtel de Mêsme, No. 19_, the former are to be seen directing a class of fifty youths, whom they instruct in every branch before-mentioned, writing excepted. It is also in contemplation to teach a blind pupil _pasigraphy_, or universal language, invented by DEMAIMIEUX. M. HAÜY details to strangers every part of his plan with the most patient and obliging attention. When he had concluded, I could not avoid expressing a wish that the art of instructing the blind in the fullest extent might be speedily introduced among all nations. "After having paid to my country," rejoined M. HAÜY, "the merited homage of my invention, my anxiety to contribute to the relief of the afflicted, wherever they may be found, gives birth to the desire of propagating, as much as possible, an institution which enlightened men and philanthropists have been pleased to recommend to the attention of foreigners and to the esteem of my countrymen, as may be seen by consulting different literary publications from the year 1785 down to the present time, particularly the new French Encyclopædia, at the article _Aveugle_." "I should," added he, "perform a task very agreeable to my feelings in concurring, by my advice and knowledge, to lay in England the foundation of an establishment of a description similar to either of those which I have founded in Paris. One of my pupils in the art of instructing the blind, M. GRANCHER, a member of several learned societies in France, and possessed of my means and method, would voluntarily devote his talents and experience to the success of such an undertaking, to which he is himself strongly attached through philanthropy and zeal for my reputation."--"I am persuaded," interrupted I, "that were the advantages of such an establishment made public in England, it would receive the countenance and support of every friend of human nature."--"It is an unquestionable fact," concluded M. Haüy, "that an institution of fifty blind, well conducted, ought, by their labour, to produce more than would defray its expenses. I have already even tried with success to apply to the English tongue my method of reading, which is so contrived for the French language, that I need not give more than two or three lessons to a blind child, in order to enable him to teach himself to read, without the further help of any master." LETTER XLI. _Paris, December 29, 1801._ Such a crowd of different objects present themselves to my mind, whenever I sit down to write to you, that, frequently as I have visited the Grand French Opera since my arrival here, I have been hesitating whether I should make it the subject of this letter. However, as it is one of the first objects of attraction to a stranger, and the first in a theatrical point of view, I think you cannot be too soon introduced to a knowledge of its allurements. Let us then pass in review the THÉÂTRE DES ARTS ET DE LA REPUBLIQUE.[1] Previously to the revolution, the French opera-house, under the name of _Académie Royale de Musique_, was situated on the Boulevard, near the _Porte St. Martin_. Except the façade, which has been admired, there was nothing very remarkable in the construction of this theatre, but the dispatch with which it was executed. The old opera-house in the _Palais Royal_ having been burnt down on the 8th of June 1781, M. LENOIR, the architect, built a new one in the short space of sixty days, and, within a fortnight after, it was decorated and opened. Had an hospital been reduced to ashes, observes an able writer, it would have required four years at least to determine on the eligibility of new plans.--But a theatre, constructed with such expedition, excited apprehensions respecting its stability: it was necessary to remove them, and, by way of _trying the house_, the first representation was given _gratis_. This had the desired effect: after having sustained the weight of between two and three thousand market-women, oyster-wenches, shoe-blacks, chimney-sweepers, porters, &c, it was deemed sufficiently solid to receive a more refined audience. At the beginning of the year 1793, the interior of this quickly-built theatre was also destroyed by fire. But the opera experienced no interruption: such an event would be regarded as a public calamity in the capital. In fact, this expensive establishment affords employ to a vast number of persons. The singers, dancers, musicians, machinists, painters, tailors, dress-makers, scene-shifters, &c. attached to it, would constitute a little nation. The richness and variety of the dresses give activity to several branches of trade, and its representations involve all the agreeable arts. These united attractions captivate foreigners, and induce them to squander considerable sums of money in the country. Hence, were the opera-house shut up, commerce would suffer; there would be an absolute void in the pleasures of the Parisians; and, as experience proves, these volatile people would sooner resign every thing most valuable than any portion of their amusements. Besides, without such an establishment, the talents of singers and dancers could not be maintained in their present perfection. It holds out to them constant encouragement and remuneration; while, compared to any other theatre, it excites in the spectators a greater number of pleasing sensations. How then could it be dispensed with? Accordingly, when the disaster befell the theatre of the _Porte St. Martin_, it was considered as a fortunate circumstance that the present opera-house was just finished. The performers of the _ci-devant Académie de Musique_ immediately established themselves in this new asylum, which is situated in the _Rue de la Loi_, facing the National Library, and opened it to the public under the name of _Théâtre des Arts_. I must observe, by the way, that, in France, all players, dancers, musicians, and every one who exercises an art, are now styled _artistes_. The form of this house is nearly a parallelogram: one of the shorter sides is occupied by the stage, and the other three are slightly curved. In general, one is ill placed here, except in the boxes in front of the stage, and in the pit, the seats of which rise abruptly, in the manner of an amphitheatre, from the orchestra to the first tier of boxes. The Chief Consul has chosen for himself the stage-box, as I believe we term it in England, on the right hand of the actors. It is elegantly decorated with scarlet velvet, embroidered in gold. The ornaments (I am not speaking of the scenery) are neither of superlative elegance, nor do they display extraordinary taste. The curtain, however, is majestic and beautiful, as well as the ceiling. "Here," says a French author, "arts, graces, genius, and taste conspire to produce a most magnificent, a most brilliant, and most enchanting spectacle. Here heroes come to life again to sing their love and their despair; here many a goddess is seen to mix with mortals, many a Venus to descend from the radiant Olympus in order to throw herself into the arms of more than one Anchises."--Certainly, if splendid decorations, rich and appropriate dresses, the most skilful machinists, the most distinguished composers, a numerous and most select orchestra, some excellent actors, together with the most celebrated dancers in Europe, of both sexes, constitute a brilliant spectacle, this justly deserves that title. In these magnificent arrangements, we see again the Grand French Opera, as it appeared in the most splendid days of the monarchy. With the exception of the singing, every other department at this theatre is much improved; the only drawback that I can discover at the representation of the same pieces, which I have often seen here before the revolution, consists in the exterior of the spectators. Between the acts, when I transport myself in idea to the former period, and, looking round the house, form a comparison, I find the republican audience far less brilliant, owing, no doubt, to the absence of that glare of diamonds, embroidery, lace, and other finery, which distinguished the frequenters of the opera under the old government. The performances at the opera being, in general, more calculated for charming the eyes and ears, than gratifying the understanding, it is, consequently, the most frequented of any of the capital. "-------- With the many Action is eloquence, and th' eyes of th' ignorant More learned than their ears." There is, however, no piece represented at this theatre that a stranger ought not to see, either on account of the music, or of the spectacle and its decorations. The operas, or lyric tragedies, which, from the number of times they have been performed, appear to have obtained the greatest success, are those of GLUCK. The originality, the energy, the force and truth of declamation of this great musician were likely to render him successful, especially among the French, who applauded the two last-mentioned qualities on their other national theatre. With the exception of one only, all the works of GLUCK have remained as stock-pieces, and are played from time to time. They are five in number; namely, _Iphigénie en Aulide_, _Iphigénie en Tauride_, _Orphée et Euridice_, _Armide_, and _Alceste_. That which could not maintain its ground, and consequently fell, was _Narcisse_. The flimsiness of the poem was the cause; for the music, I am assured, is the finest that GLUCK ever composed, and several pieces of it have been repeatedly performed in the Parisian concerts. The _Didon_ of PICCINI and the _OEdipe à Colonne_ of SACCHINI have had no less success than the operas of GLUCK. They are very frequently represented. It may not, perhaps, be unseasonable to remind you that, from twenty to twenty-five years ago, when the old operas of LULLI and RAMEAU were laid aside, and replaced by modern works, two parties were formed, which, from the name of the musician that each adopted, were called, the one, _Gluckists_; and the other, _Piccinists_. Their inveteracy was great, somewhat like that which, forty years before, existed between the _Molinists_ and _Jansenists_: and few persons, if any, I believe, remained neuter. Victory seems to have crowned the former party. Indeed the music of GLUCK possesses a melody which is wonderfully energetic and striking. PICCINI is skilful and brilliant in his harmony, as well as sweet and varied in his composition; but this style of beauty has been thought to be deficient in expression. Truth obliges me to say, that, of PICCINI'S works, no opera is now played but his _Didon_, and that his other productions, which, to the best of my recollection, are _Alys_, an opera called _Iphigénie en Tauride_, and _Pénélope_, have fallen. This was ascribed to the mediocrity of the language; a part of an opera somewhat essential, though no great attention seems to be bestowed on it. But if people here are not very difficult as to the style of the language, they require at least an action well conducted and interesting. When the piece is of itself cold, it is not in the power of the finest music to give it warmth. The _OEdipe à Colonne_ of SACCHINI is reckoned by many persons the _chef-d'oeuvre_ of operas. That able musician has there excelled in all that is graceful, noble, and pathetic; but it exhibits not the tragic fire that is to be found in the works of GLUCK. SACCHINI has left behind him another composition, called _Arvire et Evéline_, which, though a cold subject, taken from the history of England, is held in estimation. At this theatre are also performed what the French term _opéras de genre_. These are a species of comic opera, in which is introduced a great deal of show and bustle. _Panurge_, _La Caravanne_, _Anacréon_, _Tarare_, _Les Prétendus_, _Les Mystères d'Isis_, &c. are of this description. The music of the first three is by GRÉTRY. It is considered as replete with grace, charm, and truth of expression. The poem of _Panurge_ is an _estravaganza_. Those of the _Caravanne_ and of _Anacréon_ are but indifferent. It required no small share of talent to put words into the mouth of the charming poet, whose name is given to the last-mentioned piece; but M. GUY appears not to have thought of this. _Tarare_ is a tissue of improbabilities and absurdities. The poem is frequently nothing but an assemblage of words which present no meaning. It is a production of the celebrated BEAUMARCHAIS, who has contrived to introduce into it a sort of impious metaphysics, much in fashion here before the revolution. The music is by SALIERI; it is very agreeable. The decorations are brilliant and diversified. The piece is preceded by a prologue (which no other opera has) representing the confusion and separation of the elements; and at the time of its first appearance, I remember it was said that chaos was the image of the author's head. _Les Prétendus_ is a piece in one act, the plot of which is weak, though of a gay cast. The music is charming. It is by LE MOYNE, who died a few years ago, at an early period of life. _Les Mystères d'Isis_, which is now the rage, is an incoherent parody from a German opera, called _the Enchanted Flute_. To say that the music is by MOZART, dispenses me from any eulogium. The decorations are extremely beautiful and varied: a scene representing paradise is really enchanting. After speaking of lyric tragedies, I should have mentioned those which are either in rehearsal, or intended to be brought forward at this theatre. They consist of _Hécube_, _Andromaque_, _Sémiramis_, and _Tamerlan_. Although none of them are spoken of very highly, they will, in all probability, succeed in a certain degree; for a piece scarcely ever has a complete fall at the opera. This theatre has so many resources in the decorations, music, and dancing, that a new piece is seldom destitute of something worth seeing. What, at the present day, proves the greatest attraction to the opera, is the dancing. How bad soever may be a piece, when it is interspersed with fine ballets, it is sure of having a certain run. Of these I shall say no more till I come to speak of that department. The weakest part of the performances at the opera is the singing. All are agreed as to the mediocrity of the singers at this theatre, called _lyric_. No one can say that, within the last ten or twelve years, they are improved. To any person fond of the Italian style, it would be a sort of punishment to attend while some of the singers here go through a scene. On the stage of the French comic opera, it has been adopted, and here also a similar change is required; but with the will to accomplish it, say its partisans, the means, perhaps, might still be wanting. The greater part of the old performers have lost their voice, and those who have not, do not appear to have sufficiently followed the progress of modern taste to be able all at once to embrace a new manner. The first singer at the opera, in point of talent, is LAÏS. He even leaves all the others far behind him, if we consider him only as a singer. He is a _tenore_, according to the expression of the Italians, and a _taille_, according to that of the French: in the _cantabile_ or graceful style, he is perfect; but he ought to avoid tragic pieces requiring exertion, in which his voice, though flexible, is sometimes disagreeable, and even harsh. Besides, he is absolutely deficient in nobleness of manner; and his stature and countenance are better suited to low character. Indeed, he chiefly performs in the operas termed here _opéras de genre_, such as _Panurge_, _La Caravanne_, _Anacréon_, and _Les Prétendus_. In these, his acting is correct, and his delivery judicious. LAÏS is no less famous for the violence of his political opinions than for his talents as a singer. At the period when the abettors of the reign of terror were, in their turn, hunted down, for a long time he durst not appear on the stage. He was accused by his brother performers of having said that the opera would never go on well till a guillotine should be placed on the stage. This stroke was levelled against the greater part of the actors and the musicians belonging to the orchestra. However, as LAÏS could not be reproached with any culpable _actions_, he found zealous defenders, and the public sacrificed their resentment to their pleasure. This lenity appears not to have had on him the effect which one would imagine. He still possesses every requisite for singing well, but seems indifferent as to the means of pleasing, and exerts himself but little. If singers were esteemed by seniority, and perhaps by employment, LAINEZ would be reckoned the first at this theatre. He is a counter-tenor, and performs the parts of a lover. His voice is very strong, and, besides singing through his nose, he screams loud enough to split one's ears. I have already observed that the ears of a tasteful amateur would sometimes be shocked at this theatre. The same remark, no doubt, was equally just some time ago; for J. J. ROUSSEAU, when he was told that it was intended to restore to him the free admission which he had enjoyed at the opera, replied that this was unnecessary, because he had at the door of his country-residence the screech owls of the forest of Montmorency. Those who are partial to LAINEZ think him an excellent actor. This means that he has some warmth, and bestirs himself like a demoniac. When the heroes of the opera wore hair-powder, nothing was more comic than to see him shake his head, which was instantly enveloped in a cloud of dust. At this signal the plaudits burst forth with great violence, and the would-be singer, screaming with still greater loudness, seemed on the point of bursting a blood-vessel. It is reported that, not long since, a great personage having sent for the _artists_ belonging to the opera, said to them, addressing himself to LAINEZ, "Gentlemen, do you intend to keep long your old singers?"[2] The same personage then turning round to the dancers added, "As for you, gentlemen of the dance, none but compliments can be paid to you." LAFORÊT who (as the French express it), _doubles_ LAINEZ, that is, performs the same characters in his absence, has little more to recommend him than his zeal. His voice is tolerably agreeable, but not strong enough for so large a house. As an actor he is cold and aukward. Next comes CHÉRON: he sings bass. His voice is strong, and the tone of it sonorous and clear. However, it is thought to be weakened, and although this singer sometimes throws out fine tones, he is reproached with a want of taste and method. He is a sorry actor. Indeed, he very seldom makes his appearance, which some attribute to idleness; and others, to his state of health. The latter is likely to be occasionally deranged, as in point of epicurism, he has as great a reputation as our celebrated Quin. ADRIEN, who _doubles_ CHÉRON, is an excellent actor; but his means do not equal his intelligence. He presents himself wonderfully well; all his movements, all his gestures have dignity, grace, and ease. There are, for the same employment, other secondary singers, some of whom are by no means backward in exertion, particularly DUFRESNE; but an impartial observer can say nothing more in their commendation. Let us now examine the qualifications of _Mesdames les cantatrices_. The first female singer at the opera is Mademoiselle MAILLARD. By means of a rather pretty face, a clear voice, and a cabal of malcontents (for there are some every where and in every line), she obtained loud applause, when she first appeared some years ago as the rival of the charming ST. HUBERTI. Since the revolution, France has lost this celebrated actress, and probably for ever. She emigrated, and has since married the _ci-devant_ Comte d'Antraigues. Although she had not a powerful voice, she sang with the greatest perfection; and her impressive and dignified style of acting was at least equal to her singing. At the present day, Mademoiselle MAILLARD has succeeded Madame ST. HUBERTI, and is, as I have said, the first singer, in point of rank. She is become enormous in bulk, and as the Italians express it, _canta a salti_. Her powerful voice fills the house, but she is not unfrequently out of tune: her declamation is noisy; while her masculine person gives her in all her motions the air of a Bacchante. These qualities, no doubt, recommended her to the notice of CHAUMETTE, the proclaimer of atheism, under whose auspices she more than once figured as the goddess of reason. She has, nevertheless, occasionally distinguished herself as an actress; and those who love noise, admire the effect of her transitions. But I give the preference to Mademoiselle LATOUR, who has a melodious pipe, which you will probably hear, as it is said that she has not retired from the stage, where she frequently reminded the public of the fascinating ST. HUBERTI, particularly in the character of _Didon_. Since the prolonged absence of Mademoiselle LATOUR, Madame BRANCHU _doubles_ Mademoiselle MAILLARD. She is of much promise both as a singer and actress. Her voice is agreeable, but not extensive. Mademoiselle ARMAND is another most promising singer, who has a more powerful organ than Madame BRANCHU, and when she has perfectly acquired the art of modulating it, will, doubtless, prove a very valuable acquisition to this theatre. Her voice has much sweetness, and sometimes conveys to the ear the most flattering sounds, as its low tones are grave without being harsh, and its high ones sonorous without being sharp. She seems to execute the most difficult pieces of music with considerable ease; but she is deficient in action. Mademoiselle HENRY is strong as to method, but weak as to means, in singing. There are several other female singers; but, in my opinion, their merits do not entitle them to particular mention. Twelve or fourteen years ago, the opera was much better provided with singers than it is at the present moment. Their voices, in every line of this department, were well-toned and powerful. They easily reached the highest notes according to the tone given by the diapason. Since then, the powers of most of the singers who still remain on the stage have diminished, and those called in to supply the place of such as are dead or have retired, are not near so rich in voice as their predecessors. The diapason, however, has remained the same: to this, in a great measure, may be attributed those shrieks and efforts which disgust foreigners, unaccustomed to the French method. At the Parisian comic opera, in consequence of a remonstrance from the principal singers, their diapason has been lowered half a tone; and it seems necessary to examine whether the same rule be not applicable to this theatre. The choruses, notwithstanding, are now given here with more effect and precision than I ever remember at any former period. In these, the ear is no longer offended by exaggerated extensions of the voice, and, on the whole, they are sung in a grand and graceful style. The orchestra, which is ably led by REY, has also experienced a manifest improvement. The principal musicians, I understand, have been recently changed; and the first artists are engaged for the execution of the solos, and nothing can now be wished for, either as to the spirit and correctness of the overtures, or to the melody and taste of the accompaniments. The Chief Consul is said to be particularly partial to Italian music. In consequence, KREUTZER, a capital violin, and also a celebrated composer, has been dispatched to Italy by the French government, for the express purpose of selecting and purchasing the finest musical compositions which can be procured in that land of harmony. Thus, the advice given by ROUSSEAU, in his _Dictionnaire de Musique_, has at length been followed. So much for the singing department of the opera, which, as you see, with some exceptions, is but indifferent: in my next, I shall speak of the dancing. [Footnote 1: Since the above letter was written, this Lyric theatre has changed its name for that of _Théâtre de l'Opéra_. This seems like one of the minor modifications, announcing the general retrograde current setting towards the readoption of old habits; for the denomination of _Théâtre des Arts_ was certainly unobjectionable, as poetry, music, dancing, painting, and mechanics, concurred in rendering more pompous and more surprising the effects which a fertile genius, when governed by reason, might assemble here for the gratification of the public. The addition of the words _et de la République_ was probably given to it from patriotic zeal, at the time when the _Royal Academy of Music_ was abolished by the decree which annihilated all similar monarchical institutions.] [Footnote 2: It appears that, from pique, this old opera-singer refused to sing on Easter-Sunday last, (1802) at the cathedral of _Notre-Dame_.] LETTER XLII _Paris, December 30, 1801_. Dancing, like the other arts in France, has, during the revolution, experienced the vicissitudes of this new order of things; but also, like the other arts, it has made a progress equally astonishing and rapid. However, it must not thence be inferred that dancing, particularly theatrical, had not attained a certain degree of superiority long before the revolution; yet a most evident improvement has been made in it, not only by the old-established dancers, who then seemed almost to have done their best, but by the numerous competitors who have since made their appearance. It is not in the power of words to convey an adequate idea of the effect produced on the senses by some of the ballets. In lieu of those whimsical capers, forced attitudes, vague and undefined gestures of a set of dancers whose movements had no signification, dancing now forms an animated, graceful, and diversified picture, in which all the human passions are feelingly pourtrayed. Their language is the more expressive from its being more refined and concentrated. In the silence of pantomime, recourse is had to every ingenious gesture, in order to impart to them greater force and energy; and, in this mute play, restraint seems to kindle eloquence. Every motion has its meaning; the foot speaks as well as the eye, and the sensations of the mind are expressed by the attitudes of the body. A delicate sentiment is rendered with the rapidity of lightning. Love, fear, hope, and despair, change countenances, and say every thing that they wish to say, void of deceit, as if falsehood no longer existed as soon as the mouth ceased to open. It should not be forgotten that it was NOVERRE who first brought about in France this reform in what were till then called ballets, without deserving the title. He banished wigs, hoop-petticoats, and other preposterous habiliments, and, by dint of superior genius, seconded by taste and perseverance, introduced those historical pictures, replete with grace, expression, and sentiment, in the room of the flat, insipid, and lifeless caricatures, which had hitherto usurped admiration. But, though NOVERRE, and, after him, the GARDELS, introduced on the Parisian stage the pantomimic art in all the lustre in which it flourished on the theatres of Greece and Rome, yet they had been anticipated by HILWERDING in Germany, and ANGIOLINI in Italy, two celebrated men, who, in a distinguished manner, laid the foundations of a species of modern entertainment, before known only by the annals of ancient history. Those who have trod in their steps have infinitely surpassed them in attractions, and, by their scientific compositions, acquired a justly-merited reputation. GARDEL, who, for the last fifteen years, has been the first dancer at the opera, shews himself but seldom. After having, during that long period, received the warmest and best deserved applause, either in the execution of the noble style of dancing, or in the composition of ballets, he seems now to have devoted himself almost exclusively to the last-mentioned branch of his art, and the perfection to which he daily carries it, may well compensate the public for the privation of his talents in the line of execution. The most famous pantomimical ballets or _ballets d'action_ (as they are styled) now represented here, are _Psyché_, _Télémaque_, _Le Jugement de Paris_, _Mirza_, and _la Dansomanie_. The impression to which I have before alluded, is particularly observable during the representation of the first three (composed by GARDEL), the charm of which would be weakened by any attempt at description. No spectator, be his disposition ever so cold and indifferent, can behold them unmoved. Every effort of human skill and invention is exerted to excite astonishment and admiration. The _ensemble_ of the _spectacle_ and decorations correspond to the fertile genius of the author. It is the triumph of the art, and there may be fixed the limits of pantomime, embellished by dancing. Nothing more perfect than the rapid change of scenery. Meteors, apparitions, divinities borne on clusters of clouds or in cars, appear and disappear, as if by enchantment, exhibiting situations the most picturesque and striking. BOULAY, the principal machinist, is, perhaps, the first in his line in Europe. In the opera of _Armide_, I have seen him raise into the air nearly one half of the theatre. He executes whatever is proposed to him, no matter how difficult, and he is well seconded by the painters and draughtsmen. The new decorations display much taste, and produce an effect truly wonderful. Had I not already made the remark, you might have concluded from the general tenour of my observations, that the dancing forms the most brilliant part, of the _spectacle_ at this theatre, or, in other words, that the accessory prevails over the main subject. It is no longer, as heretofore, a few capital dancers of both sexes who form the ornament of the opera. Almost all the competitors in this line are so many _virtuosi_ who deserve and equally participate the plaudits of the public. There is not among them any mediocrity. The establishment of the _école de la danse_ is for this theatre a nursery, where Terpsichore finds, in great numbers, the most promising plants for the decoration of her temple. It is saying little to affirm that nothing equals the superiority of talents of this description which the opera comprehends at the present moment. These advantages, I understand, are chiefly due to GARDEL. He has given the example and the precept, and, through his guidance, the art of dancing is become doubly captivating. After having supplied most of the principal cities in Europe with capital dancers, this theatre, far from being impoverished, is still in possession of a numerous train of first-rate _artists_ of both sexes in every style of dancing. The men are GARDEL, MILON, ST. AMAND, DESHAIES, GOYON, BEAUPRÉ, BRANCHU, BEAULIEU, AUMER, LÉON, TAGLIONI, DUPORT, and VESTRIS. It is unnecessary to speak of the talents of VESTRIS, as they are as well known in London as in Paris. I shall therefore content myself with remarking that he delights in exhibiting feats of agility; but as his age increases, connoisseurs think that he declines a little. Nevertheless, he is still, in reality, the first dancer at the opera. It is said that his son, ARMAND VESTRIS, will, in time, be able to supply his place; in the mean while, DUPORT bids fair to fill it, in case the "_Dieu de la danse_" should retire; not to mention DESHAIES, who has lately met with an accident which has disabled him for the present; but who, when on the stage in the presence of Vestris, has shewn that he could also astonish and delight the spectators. Without having the boldness of his rival, he exhibits more certainty and _à-plomb_. In the character of _Télémaque_, he appears with all the grace of Apollo. If excellence in dancing be allowed to consist less in the efforts of the dancer, than in the ease and gracefulness of his attitudes, and the lightness and precision of his steps, DESHAIES may he classed in the first rank of his profession. In this exercise, as in every thing else, there is a just medium, and this is more particularly observed by the principal female dancers. The names of these are GARDEL, CLOTILDE, CHEVIGNY, PÉRIGNON, COLLOMB, CHAMEROI,[1] SAULNIER, VESTRIS, DELISLE, MILLIÈRE, LOUISE, FÉLICITÉ, DUPORT, TAGLIONI, ALINE, ÉTIENNE, JACOTOT, FLORINE, ADÈLE, to whom may be added two most promising _débutantes_, LA NEUVILLE and BIGOTINI, whose first appearance I witnessed. Though Madame GARDEL, wife of the principal ballet-master, shines in _demi-caractère_, her talents, in the different parts in which she is placed, are above all panegyric. As NOVERRE has said somewhere of a famous dancer, "she is always tender, always graceful, sometimes a butterfly, sometimes a zephyr, at one moment inconstant, at another faithful; always animated by a new sentiment, she represents with voluptuousness all the shades of love." To sum up her merits, she is really in her art the female Proteus of the lyric scene. Mademoiselle CLOTILDE is a tall, elegant woman, who dances in the serious style. All her movements, made with precision, exhibit the beautiful proportion of her finely-modelled figure; but, owing to her stature, she appears to most advantage in pantomime, particularly in the character of _Calypso_ in the ballet of _Télémaque_. In the same ballet, MILLIÈRE, in the part of _Eucharis_, displays her playful graces and engaging mien. CHEVIGNY is full of expression in pantomime, and dances in great perfection, notwithstanding her _embonpoint_. PÉRIGNON and COLLOMB are superior in the comic style, and all the others are not without some peculiar exellence.[2] I should never finish, were I to attempt to particularize the merits of all these fascinating women, who, as well as the men, have, of late, alternately interchanged the characters they performed in the ballets of action. Even those introduced occasionally in the fêtes given and received by the heroes in the different operas, present a real contest, in which the first-rate dancers of both sexes exert themselves to snatch the palm from their rivals. When a theatre possesses such a richness, variety, and assemblage of talents in the same art, it may boldly stylo itself the first in Europe. But I must confess that an innovation has been introduced here which detracts much from what has always been considered as fine dancing. I mean the mania of _pirouettes_. This, however, seems less to be attributed to a decided _penchant_ of the dancers than to that of a new public, not yet familiarized to what constitutes true taste. During a revolution, every thing changes, every thing assumes a new face. What was entitled to please yesterday in times of tranquillity, is to-day, during the jar of public opinion, and will be to-morrow subject to all the variations of caprice. The marvellous and gigantic usurp the place of the natural, and claim alone the right to entertain. True it is that the dancers have found means to render this new manner interesting, while they have enjoyed the sweets of it. The pleasure of being applauded is so great, that it is no easy matter to withstand the powerful allurement of the plaudits of a numerous audience. Boileau has said, "_Aimez-vous la muscade? On en a mis par tout_." The French dancers, following his example, have said, "_Aimez-vous les pirouettes?_" The public have answered _oui_; and _pirouettes_ are all the rage. When a certain king of Bisnagar sneezes, the court, the town, the provinces, all the subjects of his empire, in short, sneeze in imitation of their monarch. Without departing from my subject, I shall only observe that _pirouettes_, like this sneezing, have found their way from the opera-stage into the circles of every class of society in Paris. There lies the absurdity. The young Frenchmen have been emulous to dance like dancers by profession; the women have had the same ambition; and both men and women have, above all, been desirous to shine like them in _pirouettes_. Thence most of the dances, formerly practised in society, in which simple and natural grace was combined with a certain facility and nobleness of execution, have been entirely laid aside. It must be acknowledged, that, among the dancers in private company, there are many, indeed, who, by dint of imitation and study, have attained a great degree of perfection. But I now perceive that people here no longer dance for their amusement; they dance to gratify their vanity, and many a person who has not practised some hours in the morning under the tuition of his master, excuses himself in the evening, pretends to be lame, and declines dancing. The taste and elegance of the dresses of the opera-dancers, like those of the heroes and heroines of the sock and buskin, leave nothing to be wished for. In lieu of drawers, which all women, without exception, were formerly obliged to wear on the stage[3], those who dance have now substituted silk pantaloons, woven with feet, in order to serve also as stockings. In some particular characters, they wear these of flesh colour, and it is not then easy, at first sight, to distinguish whether it be or be not the clothing of nature. The French opera having been long considered as the grand national theatre, it has ever been the pride of the government, whether monarchical or republican, to support it in a manner worthy of the nation. In fact, the disbursements are so great, that it would be impossible for the receipts to cover them, though the performances are seldom suspended for more than two days in the week, and the house is generally crowded. This theatre is managed by the government, and on its account. The Minister of the Interior appoints a commissioner to superintend its operations, and managers to conduct them. During the old _régime_, the opera cost the crown annually from one hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand livres. What the extraordinary expenses of this house are, under the present government, is not so easily ascertained; but, from the best information that I have been able to procure, their amount is from three to four hundred thousand francs a year. Here is a considerable increase; but it must be remembered that the price of several articles is now greatly augmented, if not doubled. The receipt of the opera, on an average, used to be from twelve to fifteen thousand livres a night; what it is at this day, is not positively known. Formerly, the produce of the boxes, let by the year, was such, that nine thousand livres were paid, in a manner, before the doors were thrown open. That resource is almost void at present; nevertheless, this house being more spacious than the old one, the prices of admission higher, and the performance, perhaps, more constantly attended, the money taken at the door cannot well be less than it was formerly. It then cost much less than it does now to bring out a new piece. Thirty or forty thousand livres were sufficient for the production of the most magnificent opera; while the disbursements to be made for _Tamerlan_ will, it is thought, amount to upwards of eighty thousand francs. At this rate, the first representation of the _Mystères d'Isis_, of which so much has been said, must have been attended with an expense of more than a hundred thousand. Scandal whispers, that the managers of the opera are rather partial to expensive pieces; but as they are accountable for their conduct to the Minister of the Interior, I should presume that they must act as honourable men. The salaries are not considerable at this theatre. The first performers have not more than twelve thousand francs a year, exclusively of the _feux_, which is the sum given to each of them, when they perform. This, I understand, does not exceed a louis a night. Those who have a name, indemnify themselves by going, from time to time, to play in the great commercial towns of the departments, such as Bordeaux, Lyons, Marseilles, &c. where they generally collect a rich harvest. It is said that VESTRIS has received from the government a gratification to prevent him from visiting the British metropolis; and it is also reported that DIDELOT and LABORIE have made vain efforts to return to the Parisian opera; but that the managers, faithful to their instructions, refuse to readmit such of the old performers as have voluntarily quitted it. What attaches performers to the opera-house is the _pension de retraite._ They all eventually obtain it, even the chorus-singers. The remuneration of authors, that is, of the poet and composer of the music, is to each three hundred francs for every representation, when the piece is not less than three acts. This is the most common division. I know of no operas in one act; those in two are paid in the above proportion.[4] [Footnote 1: GARDEL has lately added another sprig of laurel to his brow, by the production of a new pantomimical ballet, called _Daphnis et Pandrose, ou la vengeance de l'amour_. He has borrowed the subject from a story of Madame DE GENLIS, who took it from fable. Every resource of his inexhaustible genius has been employed to give the happiest effect to this charming work, to enumerate the beauties of which is, by general report, beyond the powers of language. All the first-rate dancers of both sexes are placed in the most advantageous point of view throughout this ballet. Madame GARDEL performs in it the part of Cupid, with all the charms, wiles, and graces which poets ascribe to the roguish deity. The other characters are represented in a manner no less interesting. In short, music, dancing, pantomime, dress, decoration, every thing in this piece, concurs to stamp it as one of the most wonderful productions of the kind ever exhibited to the admiration of the public.] [Footnote 2: In a preceding note, VESTRIS has been mentioned as the reputed lover of Mademoiselle CHAMEROI, and from this instance of illicit intercourse, it might, perhaps, be erroneously inferred that most of the Parisian female opera-dancers had overleaped the pale of virtue. Without pretending to enter the lists as the champion of their character, though I admire their talents as warmly as any amateur, truth induces me to observe that many of these ladies enjoy an unblemished reputation. Madame VESTRIS, in particular, is universally represented as a young and pretty woman, much attached to her faithless husband, and, notwithstanding his improper example, a constant observer of the most exemplary conduct.] [Footnote 3: Many years ago, a Parisian actress, coming on the stage in the part of _Mérope_, in the tragedy of that name, her petticoats somehow happened to catch in the side-scene, and, in her hasty endeavours to disentangle them, she exhibited to the audience the hind part of her person. In consequence of this accident, a _sentence de police_ enjoined every woman, whether actress or dancer, not to appear on the boards of any theatre, without drawers.] [Footnote 4: The refusal made by the Rector of St. Roch to admit into that church the corpse of Mademoiselle CHAMEROI, has informed us in England of the loss which this theatre has sustained in that young and accomplished dancer. She died, generally regretted, in consequence of being delivered of a child of which VESTRIS considered himself as the real father. However, M. DE MARKOFF, the Russian ambassador at Paris, stood sponsor to the infant, and, according to the scandalous chronicle, was not contented with being only a spiritual father. The Parisian public have consoled themselves for this loss by talking a great deal about the scene to which it gave rise. It seems that the Rector was decidedly in the wrong, the dancers of the opera never having been comprised in the papal excommunication which involved players. The persons composing the funeral procession were also in the wrong to go to St. Roch, since the Rector had positively declared that the corpse of Mademoiselle CHAMEROI should not enter the church.] LETTER XLIII. _Paris, January 1, 1802._ Fast locked in the arms of Morpheus, and not dreaming of what was to happen, as Lord North said, when the king caused him to be awakened, in the dead of the night, to deliver up the seals, so was I roused this morning by a message from an amiable French lady of my acquaintance, requesting me to send her some _bonbons_. "_Bonbons_!" exclaimed I, "in the name of wonder, Rosalie, is your mistress so childishly impatient as to send you trailing through the snow, on purpose to remind me that I promised to replenish her _bonbonnière_?"--"Not exactly so, Monsieur," replied the _femme de chambre_, "Madame was willing to be the first to wish you a happy new year."--"A new year!" said I, "by the republican calendar, I thought that the new year began on the 1st of Vendémiaire."--"Very true," answered she; "but, in spite of new laws, people adhere to old customs; wherefore we celebrate the first of January."--"As to celebrating the first of January, _à la bonne heure_, Rosalie," rejoined I, "I have no sort of objection; but I wish you had adhered to some of your other old customs, and, above all, to your old hours. I was not in bed till past six o'clock this morning, and now, you wake me at eight with your congratulations."--"Never mind, Monsieur," said she, "you will soon drop asleep again; but my mistress hopes that you will not fail to make one of her party on the _Fête des Rois_."--"Good heaven!" exclaimed I again, "what, is a counterrevolution at hand, that the _Fête des Rois_ must also be celebrated?"--"'Tis," interrupted Rosalie, "only for the pleasure of drawing for king and queen."--"Tell Madame," added I, "that I will accept her invitation."--Dismissing the _soubrette_ with this assurance, at the same time not forgetting to present her with a new year's gift, she at once revealed the secret of her early visit, by hinting to me that, among intimate friends, it was customary to give _étrennes_. This, in plain English, implies nothing more nor less than that I must likewise make her mistress a present, on the principle, I suppose, that _les petits cadeaux entretiennent l'amitié_. My reflection then turned on the instability of this people. After establishing a new division of time, they return to the old one, and celebrate, as formerly, the first of January. Now, it is evident that the former accords better with the order of nature, and that autumn was the first season which followed the creation. Why else should apples of irresistible ripeness and beauty have presented themselves to the eye of our first parents in the garden of Eden? This would not have been the case, had the world commenced in winter. Besides, a multitude of advantages would accrue to the French from an adherence to the 1st of Vendémiaire, or 23d of September of the Gregorian calendar, as the first day of the year. The weather, after the autumnal equinox, is generally settled, in consequence of the air having been purified by the pre-existing gales, the ordinary forerunners of that period: and the Parisians would not be obliged to brave the rain, the wind, the cold, the frost, the snow, &c. in going to wish a happy new year to their fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts, cousins, and other relations. For to all this are they now exposed, unless they choose to ruin themselves in coach-hire. The consequence is that they are wet, cold, and dirty for two or three successive days, and are sure to suffer by a sore throat, rheumatism, or fever, all which entail the expensive attendance of the faculty; whereas, did they celebrate the 23d of September as new year's day, they might, in a quiet, unassuming manner, pay all their visits on foot, and, in that season, this exercise would neither be prejudicial to their purse nor their health. I do not immediately recollect whether I have spoken to you of the long-expected account of the French expedition to Egypt, by DENON: yet I ought not to have omitted to inform you that, upwards of two months ago, I set down your name for a copy of this splendid work. It will cost you 360 francs; but you will have one of the proof impressions. I have seen a specimen of the letter-press, which is to consist of a folio volume, printed by Didot. The plates, amounting to upwards of one hundred and forty in number, are entirely engraved from DENON'S original drawings, without any reduction or enlargement, with the exception of that representing the Battle of the Pyramids, the size of which has been increased at the express desire of BONAPARTE. I have often amused myself on a morning in contemplating these drawings; but the crowd of curious persons being generally great, I determined to seize the opportunity of examining them more at leisure to-day, when the French are entirely engaged in interchanging the compliments of the season. I found DENON himself diligently employed on some of the engravings; and so anxious is he for the publication of the work, that he toils early and late to forward its appearance. Notwithstanding the anxiety he feels on that account, this estimable artist takes a real pleasure in explaining the subject of his drawings; and, by means of his obliging communications, I am now become tolerably well acquainted with Egypt. What country, in fact, has a better claim to fix attention than that which served as a cradle to human knowledge, and the history of which goes back to the first ages of the world; a country, where every thing seems to have commenced? Laws, arts, sciences, and even fables, which derive their origin from nature, whose attributes they immortalize, and which, at a subsequent period, formed the ground-work of the ingenious fictions of mythology. What idea must we not conceive of the industry and civilization of a people who erected those celebrated monuments, anterior to the annals of history, to the accounts even of tradition, those pyramids which have unalterably withstood all the ravages of time? When we look back on the ancients, the Greeks and Romans almost exclusively divide our attention. The former, it is true, carried farther the love and the culture of the fine arts; while the latter are more remarkable for the great traits of their character; though both acquired that renown which mankind have so improperly attached to the success of arms. But, in allowing to Greece all the interest which she claims, in so many respects, we cannot forget that she was originally peopled by Egyptian colonies; that it was Egyptians who, in later times, carried thither the knowledge of the arts, the most necessary and the most indispensable to society; and that, at the epoch which preceded the splendid days of Greece, it was also into Egypt that the sages went to acquire that knowledge of a superior kind, which constituted their glory, and rendered their country illustrious. What keeps up a sort of rivalship between Greece and Egypt is that, independently of the priority of knowledge, the former had the eminent advantage of opening her arms to philosophy and the sciences, which, forsaking their adoptive country, and not being able to survive the loss of liberty, fled back to their natal soil, and found, in the Museum of Alexandria, an asylum, which neither the Lyceum, the Portico, nor the Academy, could longer afford them at Athens. Thus, to the reign of the Ptolemies are we, unquestionably, indebted for the preservation of the knowledge acquired by the ancients. Apropos, I forgot to mention to you that BERTHOLET, a Senator and Member of the Institute, communicated to that society, in one of its sittings last month, a letter from FOURIER, the geometrician, and member of the late Institute of Egypt. This _savant_, in the researches he made in Upper Egypt, discovered and delineated several zodiacs, which, he says, fully confirm the theory of DUPUIS, respecting the origin and antiquity of the figures of the zodiac. As far back as the year 1781, DUPUIS published a memoir, since reprinted in his large work, entitled _De l'Origine des Cultes_, in which he presumes that the zodiac, such as it has been transmitted to us by the Greeks, is of Egyptian origin, and that it goes back to fifteen thousand years, at least, before the era of the French revolution. LETTER XLIV. _Paris, January 3, 1802._ An almost uninterrupted succession of wet weather has, of late, precluded me from the regular enjoyment of a morning walk. But, with the new year, we had a heavy fall of snow, which has since been succeeded by a severe frost. I gladly availed myself of this opportunity of taking exercise, and yesterday, after viewing the skaiters in that part of the _Champs Elysées_ which had been inundated, and is now frozen, I immediately proceeded to the HÔTEL DES INVALIDES. This majestic edifice was projected by Henry IV, and executed, by order of Lewis XIV, after the designs of BRUANT, who laid the foundation on the 30th of November, 1671. It is composed of five courts, surrounded by buildings. The middle court is as large as all the other four. A spacious esplanade planted with trees, an outer court surrounded by a wall newly-built, form the view towards the river, and lead to the principal façade, which is twelve hundred feet in extent. This façade has, within these few years, been entirely polished anew: the details of sculpture have, perhaps, gained by the operation; but the architecture has certainly lost that gloomy tint which gave to this building a manly and respectable character. In the middle of this façade, in the arched part above the great gate, was a bas-relief of Lewis XIV on horseback. This gate leads to the great court, which is decorated by two rows of arcades, the one above the other, forming, on the two stories, uniform galleries which give light to the apartments of the circumference. The windows, which serve to light the upper apartments of the façade, are remarkable from their being placed in cuirasses, as those of the great court are in trophies of arms. From this court, you enter the church, now called the _Temple of Mars_. It is ornamented with the Corinthian order, and has the form of a Greek cross. The pulpit no longer exists. The altar, which was magnificently decorated, is likewise destroyed. The chapels, to the number of six, were each ornamented by a cupola painted in fresco, and statues in marble by the greatest masters, which, after being left for some time exposed to the injuries of the air in the court looking towards the country, are at length deposited in the MUSEUM OF FRENCH MONUMENTS. To the arches of this temple are suspended the standards and colours taken from the enemy. Two British flags only contribute to augment the number. The oldest of these trophies have been removed from _Notre-Dame_. When they were formerly displayed in that cathedral, a general, who was constantly victorious, was called by the people the _upholsterer of Notre-Dame_; an energetic appellation which spoke home to the feelings. But, however calculated these emblems of victory may be to foster heroism in the mind of youth, and rekindle valour in the heart of old age, what a subject of reflection do they not afford to the philanthropist! How can he, in fact, contemplate these different flags, without regretting the torrents of blood which they have cost his fellow-creatures? In this _Temple of Mars_ is erected the monument of TURENNE, whose body, after various removals, was conveyed hither, in great pomp, on the 1st of Vendémiaire, year IX (23d of September, 1800) conformably to a decree of the Consuls, and immediately deposited in the inside of this tomb. The present government of France seems to have taken the hint from St. Foix, who expresses his astonishment that Lewis XIV never conceived the idea of erecting, in the _Hôtel des Invalides_, mausolea, with the statues of the generals who had led with the greatest glory the armies of the nation. "Where could they be more honourably interred," says he, "than amidst those old soldiers, the companions of their fatigues, who, like themselves, had lavished their blood for their country?"[1] At the age of sixty-four, TURENNE was killed by a cannon-ball, while reconnoitring the enemy's batteries near the village of Salzbach in Germany, on the 27th of July, 1675. No less esteemed for his virtues as a man, than honoured for his talents as a general, he at last fell a victim to his courage. His soldiers looked up to him as to a father, and in his life-time always gave him that title. After his death, when they saw the embarrassment in which it left the generals who succeeded him in the command of the army: "_Let loose old Piebald_," said they, "_he will guide us_."[2] The same ball which (to borrow a line from Pope) laid "The _god-like_ TURENNE prostrate in the dust," likewise took off the arm of ST. HILAIRE, Lieutenant-general of artillery: his son, who was beside him at the moment, uttered a cry of grief. "_'Tis not me, my son, that you must bewail_," said ST. HILAIRE; "_'tis that great man._" The Marshal was as much lamented by the enemy as he was by his own countrymen; and MONTECUCULLI, the general opposed to him, when he learned the loss which France had sustained in the person of TURENNE, exclaimed: "Then a man is dead who was an honour to human nature!" The Germans, for several years, left untilled the field where he was killed; and the inhabitants shewed it as a sacred spot. They respected the old tree under which, he reposed a little time before his death, and would not suffer it to be cut down. The tree perished only, because soldiers of all nations carried away pieces of it out of respect to his memory. TURENNE had been interred in the abbey of St. Denis, and at the time of the royal vaults being opened in 1793, by order of the National Convention, the remains of that great captain were respected amid the general destruction which ensued. From the eagerness of the workmen to behold them, his tomb was the very first that was opened. When the lid of the coffin was removed, the Marshal was found in such a state of preservation that he was not at all disfigured: the features of his face, far from being changed, were perfectly conformable to the portraits and medallions of TURENNE in our possession. This monument, now placed in the _Temple of Mars_, had been erected to that warrior in the abbey of St. Denis, and was preserved through the care of M. LENOIR; after being seen for five years in the MUSEUM OF FRENCH MONUMENTS, of which he is the director, it was removed hither by the before-mentioned decree of the Consuls. LE BRUN furnished the designs from which it was executed. The group, composed of TURENNE in the arms of Immortality, is by TUBY; the accessory figures, the one representing Wisdom, and the other, Valour, are by MARSY. The bas-relief in bronze in the middle of the cenotaph is likewise by TURY, and represents TURENNE charging the enemy at the battle of Turckheim, in 1675. The dome forms a second church behind the large one, to which it communicates. Its exterior, entirely covered with lead, is surrounded by forty pillars of the Composite order, and ornamented with twelve large gilt coats of mail, crowned with helmets, which serve as skylights, and with a small lantern with pillars which support a pyramid, surmounted by a large ball and a cross. All the architecture of the dome, which is called the new church, is from the design of MANSARD. Its elevation, from the ground-floor, is three hundred feet; and its diameter, fifty. It has the character of elegance. The beauty of its proportion, its decoration, and especially all the parts which concur in forming the pyramid, render it a master-piece of architecture. But nothing commands admiration like the interior, though it may be said to be three-fourths damaged. The twelve windows, by which it is lighted, but which the observer below cannot perceive, are ornamented with coupled piasters, resting on a continued pedestal. On the broad band, which was formerly adorned with flower-de-luces, and at this day with emblems of liberty, were the medallions of twelve of the most famous kings of France: namely, Clovis, Dagobert, Childebert, Charlemagne, Lewis the Debonair, Charles the Bald, Philip Augustus, St. Lewis, Lewis XII, Henry IV, Lewis XIII, and Lewis XIV. The first arch, distributed into twelve equal parts, presented the twelve apostles, painted in fresco by JOUVENET. The second arch, painted by LA FOSSE, represented the apotheosis of St. Lewis, offering to God his sword and crown. The pavement, which alone has not suffered, is in compartments of different marbles of great value. The portal, which looks towards the country, is thirty toises in extent. Of all the figures which decorated this façade, those of the Four Virtues; namely, Justice, Temperance, Fortitude, and Prudence, are the only ones that have been suffered to remain in their places. They are by COYZEVOX. The other objects most worthy of notice in this spacious, building, which, together with its precincts, occupies seventeen _arpens_, are the refectories and kitchens, which are very extensive. Formerly, neither of these were kept in such high order as they are at present. The tables of the private soldiers are now better supplied; sirloins of beef and legs of mutton being no longer roasted for the officers only. In the four refectories, where the soldiers dine, twelve in a mess, they are regularly served with soup, bouilli, a plate of vegetables, and a pint of unadulterated wine. When Peter the Great visited this establishment, the Invalids happened to be at dinner, the czar, on entering the first refectory, poured out a bumper of wine, and drank it off in a military style to the health of the veterans, whom he termed his comrades. The halls are ornamented with paintings representing the conquests of Lewis XIV. During the reign of terror the features of the _Grand Monarque_, who made a conspicuous figure in these pictures, were concealed by a coat of dark paint, which answered the purpose of a mask. BONAPARTE has ordered this mask to be removed, so that the ambitious monarch now reappears in all his former glory. Whatever may be said in praise of establishments of this description, for my part, I see nothing in them but the gratification of national pride. The old soldiers, are, in a manner, without a comrade, though living in the midst of their brother warriors. The good fellowship which they have witnessed in camps no longer subsists. The danger of battles, the weight of fatigues, and the participation of privations and hardships, no longer form the tie of common interest, by which they were once united. This, being dissolved, they seek in vain that reciprocity of little kindnesses which they used to find in their own regiments and armies. All hope of promotion or change being at an end, their only consolation is to enjoy the present by indulging in reveries concerning the past. Instead of being doomed to end their days in this sort of stately confinement, subject to restrictions which render life so dull and monotonous, how different would these veterans feel, could they retire to the bosom of their families and friends! Then, indeed, would they dwell with delight on the battles and sieges in which they had served, enumerating their many hair-breadth escapes, and detailing the particulars of the fight in which they lost their deficient leg or arm. After a pause, the sense of their country's gratitude operating powerfully on their mind, would soothe every painful recollection. Their auditors, impressed with admiration, would listen in silence to the recital of the well-fought day, and, roused by the call of national honour, cheerfully step forth to emulate these mutilated heroes, provided they were sure of a _free_ asylum, when reduced to their helpless condition. Whether I enter the _Hôtel des Invalides_, or _Chelsea Hospital_, such are the reflections which never fail to occur to me, when I visit either of those establishments, and contemplate the dejected countenances of the maimed beings that inhabit them. Experience tells us that men dislike enjoyments, regularly prepared for them, if under restraint, and prefer smaller gratifications, of which they can partake without control. Policy, as well as prudence, therefore dictates a departure from the present system of providing for those maimed in fighting the battles of their nation. In a word, I am fully persuaded that the sums expended in the purchase of the ground and construction of this magnificent edifice, together with the charges of maintaining the establishment, would have formed a fund that might have enabled the government to allow every wounded soldier a competent pension for life, in proportion to the length of his services, and the injuries which he might have suffered in defence of his country. From the _Hôtel des Invalides_ are avenues, planted with trees, which, on one side, communicate to the _New Boulevards_, and, on the other, to the CHAMP DE MARS. This extensive inclosure was originally intended for the exercises of the _École Militaire_, in front of which it is situated, as you will perceive by referring to the Plan of Paris. Its form is a parallelogram of four hundred and fifty toises in length by one hundred and fifty in breadth. It is surrounded by ditches, faced with masonry, which are bordered on each side by a double row of trees, extending from the façade of the _ci-devant École Militaire_ to the banks of the Seine. That building, I shall observe _en passant_, was founded in 1751, by Lewis XV, for the military education of five hundred young gentlemen, destitute of fortune, whose fathers had died in the service. It stands on the south side of the _Champ de Mars_, and serves at present as barracks for the horse-grenadiers of the consular guard. On the third story of one of the wings is a national observatory, which was constructed at the instigation of Lalande, the celebrated astronomer. The various scenes of which the _Champ de Mars_ has successively been the theatre, are too interesting to be passed over in silence. Indeed, they exhibit the character of the nation in such striking colours, that to omit them, would be like omitting some of the principal features in the drawing of a portrait. Often have they been mentioned, it is true; but subsequent events have so weakened the remembrance of them, that they now present themselves to the mind more like dreams than realities. However, I shall touch on the most remarkable only. In 1790, a spacious arena, encompassed by a mound of earth, divided into seats so as to accommodate three hundred thousand spectators, was formed within this inclosure. To complete it speedily for the ceremony of the first federation, required immense labour. The slow progress of twenty-five thousand hired workmen could not keep pace with the ardent wishes of the friends of liberty. But those were the days of enthusiasm: concord and harmony then subsisted among the great majority of the French people. What other sentiments, in fact, could daily bring together, in the _Champ de Mars_, two hundred and fifty thousand persons of every class, without distinction of age or sex, to work at the necessary excavation? Thus, at the end of a week, the amphitheatre was completed as if by enchantment. Never, perhaps, since the time of the Spartans, was seen among any people such an example of cordial union. It would be difficult for the warmest imagination to conceive a picture so varied, so original, so animated. Every corporation, every society was ambitious of the honour of assisting in the erection of the altar of the country: all wished to contribute, by individual labour, to the arrangement of the place where they were to swear to defend the constitution. Not a man, woman, or child remained an idle spectator. On this occasion, the aged seemed to have recovered the vigour of youth, and women and children to have acquired the strength of manhood. In a word, men of all trades and professions were confounded, and cheerfully handled the pickaxe and shovel: delicate females, sprucely dressed, were seen here and there wheeling along barrows filled with earth; while long strings of stout fellows dragged heavy loads in carts and waggons. As the electric matter runs along the several links of an extensive chain, so patriotism seemed to have electrified this whole mass of people. The shock was universal, and every heart vibrated in unison. The general good order which prevailed among this vast assemblage, composed indiscriminately of persons of every rank and condition, was truly surprising. No sort of improper discourse, no dispute of any kind occurred. But what is still more singular and more worthy of remark is, that the mutual confidence shewn by so many people, strangers to each other, was in no one instance abused. Those who threw off their coats and waistcoats, leaving them to the fate of chance, during the time they were at work elsewhere, on their return to the same spot found them untouched. Hence, as Paris is known to abound with _filoux_, it may be inferred that the _amor patriæ_ had deadened in them the impulse of their ordinary vocation. Franklin, when promoting the emancipation of America, during his residence in Paris, probably did not foresee that the French would soon borrow his favourite expression, and that it would become the burden of a popular air. Yet so it happened; and even Lewis XVI himself participated in the patriotic labours of the _Champ de Mars_, while different bands of military music made the whole inclosure resound with _ça ira_. To these exhilarating scenes succeeded others of the most opposite nature. Hither the guillotine was transported for the execution of the greatest astronomer of the age, and this with no other view than to prolong his punishment. Bailly, as every one knows, was the first mayor of Paris after the revolution. Launched into the vortex of politics, he became involved in the proscriptions which ensued during the reign of terror, and was dragged from prison to the _Champ de Mars_, where, though exposed to the most trying insults, he died, like a philosopher, with Socratic calmness. In no one of the numerous victims of the revolution was the instability of popular favour more fully exemplified than in Bailly. In this _Champ de Mars_, where he had published martial law in consequence of a decree of the Convention, in the very place where he had been directed by the representatives of the people to repel the factions, he expired under the guillotine, loaded with the execration of that same people of whom he had been the most venerated idol. Since those sanguinary times, the _Champ de Mars_ has chiefly been the site chosen for the celebration of national fêtes, which, within these few years, have assumed a character more distinguished than any ever seen under the old _régime_. These modern Olympics consist of chariot-races and wrestling, horse and foot races, ascensions of balloons, carrying three or four persons, descents from them by means of a parachute, mock-fights and aquatic tilting. After the sports of the day, come splendid illuminations, grand fire-works, pantomimes represented by two or three hundred performers, and concerts, which, aided by splendid decorations, are not deficient in point of effect: the evening concludes with dancing. During the existence of the directorial government, the number of national fêtes had been considerably increased by the celebration of party triumphs. They are at present reduced to the two great epochs of the revolution, the taking of the Bastille on the 14th of July, 1789, and the foundation of the Republic on the 23d of September, 1792. On the anniversary of those days, the variety of the exhibitions always attracted an immense concourse. The whole of this mound, whose greatest diameter is upwards of eight hundred yards, was then covered with spectators; but were the _Champ de Mars_ now used on such occasions, they would be compelled to stand, there being no longer any seats for their accommodation. The subject of national fêtes has, in this country, employed many pens, and excited much discussion. Some say that they might be rendered more interesting from the general arrangement; while others affirm that they might be made to harmonize more with the affections and habits of the people. In truth, this modern imitation of the Greek festivals has fallen far short of those animating, mirth-inspiring scenes, so ably described by the learned author of Anacharsis, where, to use his own words, "every heart, eagerly bent on pleasure, endeavoured to expand itself in a thousand different ways, and communicated to others the impression which rendered it happy." Whatever exertions have hitherto been made to augment the splendour of these days of festivity, it seems not to admit of a doubt that they are still susceptible of great improvement. If the French have not the wine of _Naxos_, their goblets may at least sparkle with _vin de Surenne_; the _Champs Elysées_ may supply the place of the shady bowers of _Delos_; and, in lieu of the name of the ill-fated NICIAS, the first promoter of the sports formerly celebrated in that once-happy island, the air may be made to ring with the name of the more fortunate BONAPARTE. [Footnote 1: _Essais historiques sur Paris_.] [Footnote 2: This was the name given by the soldiers to the Marshal's favourite charger.] LETTER XLV. _Paris, January 6, 1802._ In speaking of the interior of the _Louvre_, in one of my former letters, I think I mentioned the various learned and scientific societies, which, under the name of Academies, formerly held their sittings in that palace. For the sake of facilitating a comparison between the past and the present, it may be necessary to state the professed object of those different institutions. _French Academy_. The preservation of the purity of the French language, its embellishment and augmentation. _Academy of Sciences_. The progress of the sciences, the encouragement of researches and discoveries, as well in physics, geometry, and astronomy, as in those sciences which are applicable to the daily wants of society. _Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres_. The composition of inscriptions, of the subjects of medals, and their mottos, the research of the manners, habits, customs, and monuments of antiquity, as well as all literature relating to history. _Academy of Painting and Sculpture_. _Academy of Architecture_. The titles of these are a sufficient explanation. All these academies were founded by Lewis XIV, at the instigation of his minister Colbert; with the exception of the French Academy, which owed its origin to Cardinal Richelieu. This was a misfortune for that society; for custom had established it as a law that every new member, on the day of his reception, should not only pronounce a panegyric on him whom he succeeded, but also on the founder of the institution. It certainly was not very philosophical for men of enlightened understanding, and possessing even a common portion of sensibility, to make an eulogium on a minister so cruel, a man of a spirit so diabolically vindictive, that he even punished the innocent to revenge himself on the guilty. De Thou, the celebrated author of the _History of his own time_, had told some truths not very favourable to the memory of the Cardinal's great uncle. In consequence, the implacable minister, under false pretences, caused the philosophic historian's eldest son to be condemned and decapitated, saying: "De Thou, the father, has put my name into his history, I will put the son into mine." It is well known, from their memoirs, that these academies included among their members men of eminent talents. The Academy of Sciences, in particular, could boast of several first-rate geniuses in the different branches which they respectively cultivated, and the unremitting labours of some of them have, no doubt, greatly contributed to enlarge the sphere of human knowledge. During the early part of the revolution, all these monarchical institutions were overthrown, and on their ruins rose the NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES.[1] This establishment was formed, agreeably to a decree of the National Assembly passed on the 3d of Brumaire, year IV (25th of October, 1796). By that decree, it appears that the Institute belongs to the whole Republic, though its point of union is fixed in Paris. Its object is to extend the limits of the arts and sciences in general, by an uninterrupted series of researches, by the publication of discoveries, by a correspondence with the learned societies of foreign countries, and by such scientific and literary labours as tend to general utility and the glory of the Republic. It is composed of one hundred and forty-four members, resident in Paris, and of an equal number scattered over the departments. The number of its foreign associates is twenty-four. It is divided into three classes, and each class into several sections, namely: Mathematical and Physical Sciences. Moral and Political Sciences. Literature and the Fine Arts. The Mathematical Class is divided into ten sections; each of which consists of six members. Of this class, there are sixty members in Paris, and as many in the departments, where they are divided, in the same manner, into ten sections, each of six members. The first section comprehends Mathematics. The second, Mechanical Arts. The third, Astronomy. The fourth, Experimental Physics. The fifth, Chemistry. The sixth, Natural History and Mineralogy. The seventh, Botany and vegetable Physics. The eighth, Anatomy and Zoology. The ninth, Medicine and Surgery. The tenth, Rural Economy and the Veterinary Art. The Moral and Political Class is divided into six sections, each consisting of six members, making in all thirty-six members in Paris, and an equal number in the departments. The first section comprises the Analysis of Sensations and Ideas. The second, Morals. The third, Social Science and Legislation. The fourth, Political Economy. The fifth, History. The sixth, Geography. The Class of Literature and Fine Arts is divided into eight sections, each of six members, forty-eight of whom reside in Paris, and as many in the departments. The first section includes Grammar. The second, Ancient Languages. The third, Poetry. The fourth, Antiquities and Monuments. The fifth, Painting. The sixth, Sculpture. The seventh, Architecture. The eighth, Music and Declamation. Twice in every decade, each class holds a meeting: that of the first class takes place on the first and sixth days; that of the second, on the second and seventh days; and that of the third, on the third and eighth days. Every six months each class elects its president and two secretaries, who continue in office during that interval. On the fifth day of the first decade of every month is held a general meeting of the three classes, the purpose of which is to deliberate on affairs, relating to the general interests of the Institute. The chair is then taken by the oldest of the three presidents, who, at these meetings, presides over the whole society. The National Institute has four public quarterly meetings, on the 15th of the months of Vendémiaire, Nivôse, Germinal, and Messidor. Each class annually proposes two prize questions, and in the general meetings, the answers are made public, and the premiums distributed. The united sections of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture nominate the pupils who are to visit Rome, and reside there in the national palace, at the expense of the Republic, in order to study the Fine Arts. Conformably to the decree by which the Institute was organised, six of its members were to travel at the public charge, with a view of collecting information, and acquiring experience in the different sciences; and twenty young men too were to visit foreign countries for the purpose of studying rural economy: but the expenses of the war and other matters have occasioned such a scarcity of money as, hitherto, to impede these undertakings. The apartments of the Institute are on the first floor of the _Louvre_, or, as it is now styled, the _Palais Nationial des Sciences et des Arts_. These apartments, which were once inhabited by Henry IV, are situated on the west side of that building. Before you arrive at the hall of the Institute, you pass through a handsome antichamber, in which are the statues of Molière, Racine, Corneille, La Fontaine, and Montesquieu. This hall, which is oblong and spacious, formerly served for the meetings of the Academy of Sciences. Its sides are adorned with colonnades, and the ceiling is richly painted and decorated. In the intercolumniations are fourteen marble statues (seven on each side) of some of the most celebrated men that France has produced: namely, Condé, Tourville, Descartes, Bayard, Sully, Turenne, Daguessau, Luxembourg, L'Hôpital, Bossuet, Duquesne, Catinat, Vauban, and Fenelon. Parallel to the walls, tables are set, covered with green cloth, at which the members take their places. At the upper end of the hall is the chair of the President, and on each side below him are seated the two Secretaries. A little on one side again is the tribune, from which the members who speak address the assembly, after having asked leave of the President, who never quits the chair during the whole meeting. The space appropriated to the members is inclosed by a railing, between which and the walls, the hall is surrounded by benches for the spectators, among whom there are generally many of the fair sex. The library of the Institute consists of three spacious apartments, which are said to contain about sixteen thousand volumes. On one side of the hall is an apartment, destined for the communications of correspondents. There is also an apartment for the secretary and his deputies, and a large room containing a collection of machines and models, (among which are several of shipping), as well as every apparatus necessary for chemical and physical experiments. Although I have several times attended the private meetings of the three classes, I have thought that the printed accounts of their proceedings, which I subjoin, would be more satisfactory than a hasty sketch from my pen. However, as I promised to describe to you one of the public sittings of the Institute, I shall now inform you of what passed at that held yesterday, the 15th of Nivôse, year X, (5th of January, 1802), at which I was present. On this occasion, BIGOT-PRÉAMENEU, one of the members of the class of Moral and Political Sciences, was the President. The sitting was opened by proclaiming the nomination of three foreign associates, elected by the Institute in its general sitting of the 5th of Nivôse; namely, Mr. JEFFERSON, Sir JOSEPH BANKS, and HAYDN, the celebrated musical composer. A prize was then awarded to Citizen Framery, a literary character residing in Paris, for having solved the following question proposed by the class of Literature and Fine Arts. "To analyze the relations existing between music and declamation, and determine the means of applying declamation to music, without detracting from the charms of melody." DELAMBRE read an account of the life and works of Cousin. DÉGÉRANDO, an account of the education which the young savage of Aveyron receives from Itard, physician to the Institution of the Deaf and Dumb. PRONY, the result of observations made with a French instrument and an English one, for the purpose of determining the relation between the French metre and the English foot. Next were heard notes, by CAMUS, on the public exhibitions of the productions of French Industry, which took place in the years VI and IX of the Republic. Then, the report of the restoration of the famous picture known by the name of the _Madonna di Foligno_, which I have already communicated to you. BUACHE, the celebrated geographer, read some observations on the ancient map of the Romans, commonly called Peutinger's map, as well as on the geography of the anonymous writer of Ravenna. The sitting was terminated by an account of the life and works of Dumoustier, read by COLIN D'HARLEVILLE. The members of the Institute have a full-dress and a half-dress. The former consists of a suit of black, embroidered in dark green silk, with a cocked hat. The latter is the same, but the embroidery is confined to the collar and cuffs of the coat, which is trimmed with a cord edging, P.S. Yesterday evening was married Mademoiselle Beauharnois, daughter-in-law of the First Consul, to Louis Bonaparte, one of his younger brothers. [Footnote 1: At the end of this volume will be found the new organization of the Institute, conformably to a decree of the government, dated the 3d of Pluviôse, year XI.] LETTER XLVI. _Paris, January 7, 1802._ Knowing you to be an amateur of Italian music, I am persuaded that you will wish to be made acquainted with the theatre where you may enjoy it in full perfection. It is distinguished by the appellation of OPÉRA BUFFA. This establishment is not new in the French metropolis. In 1788, Paris was in possession of an excellent company of Italian comedians, who then performed in the _Théâtre de Monsieur_, in the palace of the _Tuileries_, which is now converted into a hall for the sittings of the Council of State. The success of this company had a rapid influence on the taste of the discerning part of the French public. This was the less extraordinary as, perhaps, no Italian sovereign had ever assembled one composed of so many capital performers. In Italy, there are seldom more than two of that degree of merit in a company; the rest are not attended to, because they are not worth the trouble: but here every department was complete, and filled by persons deservedly enjoying a high reputation in their own country; such as MANDINI, RAFFANELLI, SIMONI, MENGOZZI, VIGANONI, ROVEDINO, and Signoras MORICHELLI and BALETTI. The events of 1792 banished from Paris this admired assemblage. A new company of Italian comedians has been formed here within these few months: they at first occupied a charming little theatre constructed for the use of a society, called _La Loge Olympique_; but are lately removed to the _Théâtre Favart_, on the Boulevard. Before the revolution, this was called _le Théâtre Italien_. The façade is decorated with eight very large Ionic pillars. The house is of an oval form, and the interior distribution deserving of praise, in as much as it is far more commodious than that of any other theatre in Paris. The audience here too is generally of a more select description. Among the female amateurs, Madame Tallien is one of its most constant visiters, and, in point of grace and beauty, one of its greatest ornaments. At the head of this new company, may be placed RAFFANELLI, the same whom I have just mentioned. He is a consummate comedian, and more to be commended in that point of view than as a singer. RAFFANELLI has a countenance to which he gives any cast he pleases: his features, from their wonderful pliability, receive every impression: his eye is quick; his delivery, natural and correct; and his action, easy. Sometimes he carries his buffooneries too far, merely to excite laughter; but as he never fails in his object, this defect may be overlooked. His best characters are _Taddeo_ in _Il Rè Theodora_, _il Governatore_ in _La Molinara_, the Father in _Furberia e Puntiglio_, and the Deaf Man in _Il Matrimonio Secreto_. It is necessary to see him in these different operas to form a just idea of the truth and humour with which he represents them. Although he is but an indifferent singer, his method is good, and he seizes the spirit of the composer with perfect discrimination. In _morceaux d'ensemble_, he is quite at home, and when he dialogues with the orchestra, he shews much energy and feeling. Independently of these gifts, Nature has granted to RAFFANELLI another most valuable privilege. She seems to have exempted him from the impression of time. In 1788 and 89, I saw him frequently, both on and off the stage; after a lapse of upwards of twelve years, he appears again to my eyes exactly the same man. I cannot perceive in him the smallest change. The tenor of the new company is LAZZARINI. His method too is very good; he sings with taste, expression, and feeling; but his voice is extremely weak: his powers appear exhausted; and it is only by dint of painful efforts that he succeeds in giving to his singing those embellishments which his taste suggests, but which lose their grace and charm when they are laboured. In short, LAZZARINI communicates to the audience an unpleasant sensation in proving that he has real talents. Neither the same reproaches nor the same praises can be bestowed on PARLAMAGNI. He is a good counter-tenor, but has a harshness in the high tones, which he does not always reach with perfect justness. He is also deficient in ease and grace. PARLAMAGNI, however, having an advantageous person, and the air of a Frenchman, is a great favourite with the Parisian _dilettanti_. He is a tolerably good comedian, and in some scenes of buffoonery, his acting is natural, and his manner free and unaffected. The _prima donna_ of the Italian company is Signora STRINA-SACCHI. She possesses a fine voice, and no small share of taste, joined to great confidence and a perfect acquaintance with the stage. Sometimes she is rather apt to fatigue the ear by sounds too shrill, and thus breaks the charm produced by her singing. As for her acting, it is as extraordinary as can well be imagined; for her vivacity knows no bounds; and her passion, no restraint. She appears to conceive justly, to feel very warmly, and she plays in the same manner. In her, Nature commands every thing; Art, nothing. The parts in which she shines most, are _La Molinara_ and _Gianina_; in these, she literally follows the impulse given her by her situation, without concerning herself in the least, whether it is _secundum artem_; but certain that it is natural and conformable to the character and habits of the personage she represents. _Anima in voce_ is the characteristic of her singing: the same epithet may be applied to her recitative and her acting: in these she displays no less spirit and animation. After Signora SACCHI, comes Signora PARLAMAGNI. She is a young, and rather pretty woman, not unlike a French actress in her manner. Her voice is free and clear, and her method by no means to be disdained. She wants habit and confidence. This is evident in her performance of a part new to her; for it is only after a few representations that she feels herself at her ease. Then the public appreciate her powers, which she exhibits to advantage; and her exertions are rewarded by reiterated marks of their satisfaction. Unfortunately it is the nature of an Italian opera-house to have its shelf poorly furnished. It cannot, however, be denied that the managers of the _Opera Buffa_ take every pains to vary and increase their stock. The following are the pieces which I have seen at this theatre. _Furberia e Puntiglio_, which is a second-hand imitation of GOLDONI. The music, by Signor MARCELLO DI CAPUA, is agreeable, particularly a quartetto and a cavatina. RAFFANELLI shines in this piece as a first-rate actor. _Il Matrimonio Secreto_, the chef-d'oeuvre of CIMAROSA, and of its kind, perhaps, the most charming opera extant. Throughout it, the composer has lavished beauties; there is not to be found in it an air of inferior merit, or which, of itself alone, would not sustain the reputation of a piece. What then can be said of a work in which they are all united? Nothing can surpass the variety, spirit, grace, and originality of the duos, terzettos, quartettos, &c. with which this opera abounds. CIMAROSA has here combined the strength of German harmony with the grace which constitutes the charm of Italian melody. He is particularly famous for the brilliancy of his ideas, the fecundity of his genius, the richness of his style, and, above all, for the finish of his pictures. The certain effect of such a production is to eclipse every thing put in competition with it. This effect is particularly conspicuous at the representation of other pieces, the music of which is by the same composer. _Gianina e Bernadone_, another of CIMAROSA'S productions, makes less impression, though it is in the graceful style, what _Il Matrimonio Secreto_ is in the serio-comic. _La Molinara_, however, upholds the reputation of that celebrated composer, PAËSIELLO. This opera requires no eulogium. Selections from it are daily repeated in the public and private concerts in Paris. _Il Matrimonio Secreto_ is a masterpiece of spirit and originality, while _La Molinara_ is a model of grace, melody, and simplicity. To the great regret of the lovers of Italian music, CIMAROSA died not long since, just as he was preparing to visit Paris. But his fame will long survive, as his works bear the stamp of true genius, combined with taste and judgment. His _Italiana in Londra_ is just announced for representation. _Il Matrimonio Inaspettato_, a composition of PAËSIELLO, is likewise in rehearsal, as well as _Le Nozze di Dorina_, by SARTI, and _La Vilanella Rapita_, by BIANCHI. MOZART too will soon enter the lists; his _Dom Giovanni_ is to be speedily brought forward. The orchestra of the _Opéra Buffa_, though far from numerous, is extremely well-composed. It accompanies the singers with an _ensemble_, a grace, and precision deserving of the highest encomium. BRUNI, a distinguished Italian composer, is the leader of the band, and PARENTI, a professor, known also by several admired productions, presides at the piano-forte. NEUVILLE, the manager of this theatre, is gone to Italy for the purpose of completing the company by the addition of some eminent performers.[1] In its present state, the _Opéra Buffa_ maintains its ground. It is thought that the French government will assist it in case of necessity, and even make it a national establishment; a commissary or agent having been appointed to superintend its proceedings. [Footnote 1: The _Opéra Buffa_, the constant object of the jealousy of the other lyric theatres, because it constitutes the delight of real amateurs of music, has, during the year 1802, acquired several new performers. Two of these only, Madame BOLLA and MARTINELLI, deserve particular mention. Madame BOLLA is a good figure on the stage, and though her features are not regular, yet they are susceptible of the most varied expression. Her voice, which is a species of feminine _tenore_, astonishes by the purity and firmness of its grave tones; while her brilliant and sure method easily conceals its small extent in the higher notes. MARTINELLI is a species of counter-tenor. His voice has already lost much of its strength, and has not that clearness which serves as an excuse for every thing; but connoisseurs find that he takes care to calculate its effects so as to make amends, by the art of transitions, for that firmness in which it is deficient. He is much applauded in the _cantabile_, which he sings with uncommon precision, and he particularly shines in the counter-parts which charm in the Italian _finales_. As an actor, MARTINELLI, though inferior to RAFFANELLI, is also remarkable. His manner is easy and natural, and his countenance capable of assuming the most comic expression.] LETTER XLVII. _Paris, January 9, 1802._ The exaggerated accounts of the interior state of France which have reached us, through various channels, during the late obstinate struggle, have diffused so many contradictions, that it is by no means surprising we still continue so ill-informed in England on many points most intimately connected with the morals of the French nation. Respecting none of these, have we been more essentially mistaken than the PRESENT STATE OF PUBLIC WORSHIP. I am given to understand, from unquestionable authority, that there are at this moment, and have been for the last four years, no less than from thirty-five to forty thousand churches where divine service has been regularly performed throughout the different departments of the Republic. It is therefore a gross error to suppose that the christian religion was extinguished in France. The recent arrangements made between the French government and the See of Rome will consolidate that religion, which was, in a great measure, re-established long before his Holiness occupied the papal chair. I shall illustrate this truth by a summary of the proceedings of the constitutional clergy. The last general assembly of the clergy of France, held in 1789, the account of which has never been printed, already presented facts which announced that the necessity of reforming abuses was felt, and the epoch when that reform would take place was foreseen. In this assembly several bishops spoke with much force on the subject. The disastrous state of the finances, brought about by the shameful dilapidations of the court, occasioned a deficit which it was necessary to make good. This consideration, joined to the spirit of cupidity, jealous of the estates of the clergy, immediately caused every eye to turn towards that mortmain property, in order to employ it in the liquidation of the national debt. In the _Moniteur_, and other journals of the time, may be seen what successive steps gradually led to the abolition of tythes, and the decision which placed the estates of the clergy at the disposal of the nation. The civil constitution of the clergy was a severe check given to the many existing abuses. It really brought back the Gallican church to the discipline of the first ages. It snatched from the Pope the power of giving the canonical institution to bishops. Those who have thought proper to tax with novelty this constitution, have only to look into history. They will see that, during twelve hundred years, bishops received the canonical institution from the metropolitans, and not from the Pope. Thus to tax with intrusion the constitutional bishops, and condemn them because they have received that institution from the metropolitans, is to condemn the first twelve centuries of christianity. This civil constitution served as a pretext to the dignified clergy, irritated at the loss of their estates, for concerting a combined resistance to the new laws, in the hope that this resistance would lead to a subversion which would restore to them their riches. Thence the refusal of the oath "to be faithful to the nation, to the law, and to the king, to guide faithfully the flock intrusted to their care, and to maintain with all their power the constitution decreed by the assembly, and sanctioned by the king." Thence the line of division between the clergy who had taken the oath and those who had not. The Constituent Assembly, who had decreed the above oath, declared, that the refusal of giving this pledge of fidelity should be considered as a voluntary resignation. The royal sanction had rendered the above decree a law of the State. Almost the whole of the bishops, a great number of rectors, and other ecclesiastics, refused to take this oath, already taken by several among them who were deputies to the assembly. They were, in consequence, declared to have resigned; and measures were taken for supplying their place. The people proceeded to effect this by electors authorized by law. A respectable number of ecclesiastics, who had already submitted to the law, accepted the elections. These priests thought that obedience to the national authority which respected and protected religion, was a catholic dogma. What resistance could be made to legitimate power, which neither attacked the dogma, nor morality, nor the interior and essential discipline of the church? It was, say they, resisting God himself. They thought that the pastor was chosen, and sent solely for the care of the flock intrusted to him; that, when difficult circumstances, flight, for instance, voluntary or forced, the prohibition from all functions, pronounced by the civil power, rendered the holy ministry impossible, or that the pastor could not exericise it, without declaring himself in open insurrection, the pretended unremoveable rights then ceased with the sacred duties which they could not discharge, without being accused of rebellion. The dissentient bishops drew many priests into their party. Most of them spread themselves over Europe, where they calumniated at their ease the patriotic clergy. Those of their adherents who had remained in the interior of this country, kindled a civil war, tormented people's consciences, and disturbed the peace of families, &c. This conduct, which engendered the horrible scenes in La Vendée, provoked repressive measures, emanated from legislative authority. Enemies without and within, say the constitutional clergy, wished to create a disgust to liberty, by substituting to it licentiousness. And, indeed, the partisans of the dissentient clergy were seen to coalesce with the unbelievers, in order to produce the sacrilegious disorders which broke out every where in the year 1793. The clergy who had taken the oath had organized the dioceses; the bishops, in general, had bestowed great pains in spreading in every parish the word of the gospel; for they preached themselves, and this was more than was done by their predecessors, who, engaged only in spending, frequently in a shameful manner, immense revenues, seldom or never visited their dioceses. The constitutional clergy followed a plan more conformable to the gospel, which gained them the affection of the well-disposed part of the nation. These priests were of opinion that the storm which threatened religion, required imperiously the immediate presence of the pastor, and that, in the day of battle, it was necessary to be in person at the breach. They were of opinion that the omission or impossibility of fulfilling minute and empty formalities, imposed by a Concordat, rejected from the beginning by all the public bodies and the church of France, and annihilated at the moment by the will of the representatives of the nation, sanctioned by royal authority, could not exempt them from accepting holy functions presented by all the constituted authorities, and on which evidently depended the preservation of religion, the salvation of the faithful, and the peace of the State. But, when persecution manifested itself, the clergy who had taken the oath, became equally the victims of persecuting rage. Some failed in this conjuncture; but the greater number remained intrepid in their principles. Accordingly several constitutional bishops and priests were dragged to the scaffold. If, on the one hand, the dastardly GOBEL was guillotined, the same fate attended the respectable EXPILLY, bishop of Quimper, AMOURETTE, bishop of Lyons, and GOUTTES, bishop of Autun, &c. The dissentient clergy reproach some constitutional priests with having married, and even with having apostatized; but they say not that, among the dissentient, there are some who; have done the same. If the number of the latter is smaller, it is because the greater part of them were out of France; but what would they have done, if, like the constitutional clergy, they had either had the axe suspended over their head, or the guillotine accompanying all their steps? In England, where the French priests were not thus exposed, there are some who have likewise married, and even some who have apostatized. It is well known that, amidst the terrors of impiety, GRÉGOIRE, bishop of Blois, declared that he braved them, and remained attached to his principles and duties, as a christian and bishop. He firmly believed that, in doing so, he was pronouncing his sentence of death, and, for eighteen months, he was in expectation of ascending the scaffold. The same courage animated the majority of the constitutional bishops and priests. They exercised secretly their ministry, and consoled the faithful. As soon as the rage for persecution began to abate, GRÉGOIRE and some other bishops, who had kept up a private correspondence with the clergy of various dioceses for the purpose of encouraging them, concerted together in order to reorganize worship. In Nivôse year III (January 1795), GRÉGOIRE demanded this liberty of worship of the National Convention. He was very sure of meeting with outrages, and he experienced some; but to speak in the tribune, was speaking to France and to all Europe, and, in the then state of things, he was almost certain of staggering public opinion, which would force the Convention to grant the free exercise of religion. Accordingly, some time after having refused the liberty of worship on the demand of GRÉGOIRE, that assembly granted it, though with evident reluctance, on a Report of BOISSY D'ANGLAS, which insulted every species of worship. The constitutional bishops had already anticipated this moment by their writings and their pastoral letters, &c. They then compiled two works, entitled _Lettres Encycliques_, to which the bishops and priests of the various dioceses adhered. The object of these works, which are monuments of wisdom, piety, and courage, was to reorganize public worship in all the dioceses, according to the principles of the primitive church. They pronounced a formal exclusion from ecclesiastical functions against all prevaricating priests or married ones, as well as all those who had the cowardice to deliver up their authority for preaching, and abdicate their functions. Some interested persons thought this too severe. Those bishops persisted in their decision, and, by way of answer, they reprinted a translation of the celebrated treatise of St. Cyprian de Lapsis. On all sides, they reanimated religions zeal, caused pastors for the various sees to be elected by the people, and consecrated by the metropolitan bishops. They held synods, the arts of which form a valuable collection, equally honourable to their zeal and knowledge. They did more. For a long time past the custom of holding councils had fallen into disuse. They convoked a national council, notwithstanding the unfavourableness of a silent persecution; and, in spite of the penury which afflicted the pastors, the latter had the courage to expose themselves in order to concur in it. This council was opened with the greatest solemnity on the 15th of August, 1797, the day of the Assumption of the Virgin. It sat for three months. The canons and decrees of this assembly, which have been translated into Italian and German, have been printed in one volume. This council was published in the different dioceses, and its regulations were put into force. During this time, the government, ever hostile to religion, had not abandoned the project of persecuting and perhaps of destroying it. The voice of the public, who called for this religion, and held in esteem the constitutional clergy as religious and patriotic, checked, in some respects, the hatred of the Directory and its agents. Then the spirit of persecution took a circuitous way to gain its end: this was to cry down religion and its ministers, to promote theophilanthropy, and enforce the transferring of Sunday to the _décade_, or tenth day of every republican month. The bishops, assembled at Paris, again caused this project to miscarry, and, in their name, GRÉGOIRE compiled two consultations against the transferring of Sunday to the _décade_. The adhesion of all the clergy was the fruit of his labour; but all this drew on him numerous outrages, the indigence to which he was at that time reduced, and multiplied threats of deportation. The functions which he had discharged, and the esteem of the friends of religion, formed around him a shelter of opinion that saved him from deportation, to which were condemned so many unfortunate and virtuous constitutional priests, who were crowded, with the refractory among others, into vessels lying in the road of Rochefort. GRÉGOIRE remonstrated against this grievance, and obtained an alleviation for his brethren; but it is to be remarked that, in giving an account of their enlargement, the dissentient priests have taken good care not to mention to whom they were indebted for having provoked in their behalf this act of humanity and justice. The constitutional clergy continued their labours, struggling incessantly against calumny and libels, either from their dissentient brethren or from the agents of the directorial government. This clergy convoked a second national council for the year 1801. It was preceded by a vast number of synods, and by eight metropolitan councils. This second national council was opened at Paris on St. Peter's day of the same year. Several decrees had already been carried, one of which renewed, in the face of the whole church, the example of the bishops of Africa, by a solemn invitation of the dissentients to conferences for the grand affair which separated them from the constitutional clergy. The different congregations were on the point of presenting to the general meeting their labours on the dogma, morality, and discipline. A report on the liturgy by GRÉGOIRE, bishop of Blois and vice-president of the council; and a similar report on the plan of education for ecclesiastics, occupied the members of this assembly, when all at once the government manifested its wish to see the council closed, on account of the Concordat which it had just arranged with the Pope. Notwithstanding this proceeding, which trenched on the rights of a national church, the fathers of the council suspended their remonstrances, in order not to afford any pretext to those who might have wished to perpetuate religious troubles. Wherefore, after having sat six weeks and pronounced the suspension of the national council, &c. they separated quietly without quitting Paris. Their presence was necessary for the execution of the decree of the conferences. The eighteen members destined for that purpose by the council, after having held several meetings, presented themselves at the Cathedral of _Notre-Dame_, the place appointed and proclaimed by the council throughout all the extent of France. For three successive days, morning and evening, they there assembled. At the expiration of that time, on seeing that the dissentient kept themselves concealed, the members of the constitutional clergy took for witnesses of this generous and open proceeding the vast body of people who had repaired to _Notre-Dame_, and by two energetic and moving discourses, delivered by BELMAY, bishop of Carcassonne, and GRÉGOIRE, bishop of Blois, terminated the council after the accustomed prayers. M. SPINA, archbishop of Corinth, charged by the court of Rome with part of the affairs to be transacted with the First Consul, about the middle of September, sent to the constitutional bishops a brief which he announced to come from Pius VII, in order to induce them on the part of the Pope to give up the episcopal sees they had occupied, and return to unity. An invitation so insulting, received by all these bishops, drew on M. SPINA energetic answers, which made the Pope and himself sensible how wrong they were to accuse of intrusion and schism bishops, whose canonical institution was conformable to that of the bishops of the first twelve centuries, and who had always professed the warmest love for catholic unity. But as there was little good to be expected from M. SPINA, some bishops made their complaints to the government in a spirited and well-composed memorial, denouncing the Pope's brief as an attack on the liberties of the Gallican church and the rights of the Republic. This measure had its effect. The government passed a decree for prohibiting the publication of the Rescripts of Rome, if they should not be found conformable to the rules and usages observed in France. During these transactions, the Cardinal Legate, CAPRARA, arrived in Paris. The Concordat had just been signed. The constitutional bishops, without remonstrating against it, no sooner learnt that the government wished them to resign, than they hastened to do so, the more willingly, as they had a thousand times made the promise whenever the good of religion and of the country should require it. A similar generosity was expected on the part of the emigrated bishops. Have they been to blame in refusing? This question may, in a great measure, depend on the arrangement of the Concordat, and the imperious and menacing tone of the court of Rome which demanded of them the resignation of their former sees.[1] [Footnote 1: For the gratification of the reader is here annexed an account of the Pope's conduct in regard to the constitutional clergy, since the promulgation of the Concordat. At length the nominations took place. A small number of those appointed to the sixty new dioceses, were taken from the constitutional clergy. The others were taken from the mass of the refractory and those who had retracted, and the greater number formed the most eloquent apology of the constitutional bishops. They all received the institution from the Pope, who announced it with an air of triumph to the college of Cardinals, in his collocution of the 24th of May, 1802. He had good reason to congratulate himself at this epoch, the more so as he had been made to believe that the re-elected constitutional clergy had made a retraction, and received penitence and absolution. The author of this calumny was BERNIER, who had been charged by the Cardinal Legate with a step so worthy of his former military exploits. It was solemnly contradicted. After the decree of absolution which BERNIER had ventured to present to these bishops was thrown with indignation into the fire of PORTALIS, the counsellor of state charged by the government with religious affairs, who was witness to the transaction. Indeed, he had in this encouraged the bishops to imitate his own example in getting rid, by the same means, of a brief which the Legate had transmitted to him in order to absolve him from the guilt he might have incurred by taking part in the revolution. The government wished to pacify religious troubles; but the majority of the dissentient bishops began to foment new disputes, by requiring retractations from the constitutional clergy, who, for the most part, have stood firm amidst privations of every description. However, the mischief made not the progress which there was every reason to apprehend: the government pronounced its opinion thereon by prohibiting bishops from requiring any thing more than submission to the Concordat, and obedience to the new bishops. Notwithstanding the wise intentions of the government, sincerely desirous of peace and concord, it is only in the dioceses fallen to the constitutional bishops that a good understanding prevails. Most of the disentient clergy continue to promote discord, and torment their constitutional brethren. BOISCHOLLET, bishop of Séez, MONTAULT, bishop of Angers, and some others, have been sent for to Paris, in order to be reprimanded and cautioned to behave better. It is proper to mention the documents which Cardinal CAPRARA has distributed to all the bishops. They form a collection of thirteen papers, which might not improperly be called an analysis of the decretals of Isidorus. On these, no doubt, good canonists will debate at some future day, in order to shame the court of Rome, by pointing out its absurdities and blunders; and certainly the respect which catholics owe to the Holy See ought not to prevent then from resisting the pretensions of the Pope.] LETTER XLVIII. _Paris, January 10, 1802._ Going the other day to call on M. S----i, I stopped by the way, to examine an edifice which, when I first visited Paris in 1784, engaged no small share of public attention. It was, at that time, one of the principal objects pointed out to the curiosity of strangers. At one period of the revolution, you will, doubtless, recollect the frequent mention made of the PANTHEON. Conceive my surprise, on learning that this stately building, after having employed the hands of so many men, for the best part of half a century, was not only still unfinished; but had threatened approaching ruin. Yes--like the Gothic abbey at Fonthill, it would, by all accounts, have fallen to the ground, without the aid of vandalism, had not prompt and efficacious measures been adopted, to avert the impending mischief. This monument, originally intended for the reception of the shrine of St. Geneviève, once the patroness of the Parisians, is situated on an eminence, formerly called _Mont St. Étienne_, to the left of the top of the _Rue St. Jacques_, near the _Place de l'Estrapade_. It was begun under the reign of Lewis XV, who laid the first stone on the 6th of September, 1764. During the American war, the works were suspended; but, early in the year 1784, they were resumed with increasing activity. The sculpture of this church already presented many attributes analogous to its object, when, in 1793, it was converted into a Pantheon. The late M. SOUFFLOT furnished the plan for the church, which, in point of magnificence, does honour both to the architect and to the nation. Its form is a Greek cross, three hundred and forty feet in length by two hundred and fifty in breadth. The porch, which is an imitation of that of the Pantheon at Rome, consists of a peristyle of twenty-two pillars of the Corinthian order. Eighteen of these are insulated, and are each five feet and a half in diameter by fifty-eight in height, including their base and capital. They support a pediment, which combines the boldness of the Gothic with the beauty of the Greek style. This pediment bears the following inscription: "AUX GRANDS HOMMES, LA PATRIE RECONNAISSANTE." In the delirium of the revolutionary fever, when great crimes constituted great men, this sanctuary of national gratitude was polluted. MARAT, that man of blood, was, to use the modern phraseology, _pantheonized_, that is, interred in the Pantheon. When the delirium had, in some measure, subsided, and reason began to resume her empire, he was _dispantheonized_; and, by means of quick-lime, his canonized bones were confounded with the dust. This apotheosis will ever be a blot in the page of the history of the revolution. However, it operated as a check on the inconsiderate zeal of hot-brained patriots in bestowing the honours of the Pantheon on the undeserving. MIRABEAU was, consequently, _dispantheonized_; and, in all probability, this temple will, in future, be reserved for the ashes of men truly great; legislators whose eminent talents and virtues have benefited their fellow-citizens, or warriors, who, by distinguishing themselves in their country's cause, have really merited that country's gratitude. The interior of this temple consists of four naves, in whose centre rises an elegant dome, which, it is said, is to be painted in fresco by DAVID. The naves are decorated by one hundred and thirty fluted pillars, also of the Corinthian order, supporting an entablature, which serves as a base for lofty _tribunes_, bordered by stone balustrades. These pillars are three feet and a half in diameter by nearly twenty-eight feet in height. The inside of the dome is incircled by sixteen Corinthian pillars, standing at an equal distance, and lighted by glazed apertures in part of the intercolumniations. They support a cupola, in the centre of which is an opening, crowned by another cupola of much more considerable elevation. To survey the interior of the Pantheon, in its present state, is rather a matter of eager curiosity than of pleasing enjoyment. The precautions taken to prevent the fall of the whole building, which was apprehended from the almost tottering state of the dome, have necessitated the erection of such a quantity of scaffolding, that it is no easy task to gain an uninterrupted view of its majestic pillars, of the delicate and light foliage of its capitals, and of its proud and triple canopy. I mounted the ladders, and braved the dust of stone and plaster, amidst the echoing sound of saws, chisels, and mallets, at work in different directions. Mercier is said to have offended several of the partisans of Voltaire by observing that, through a strange inconsistency, the constant flatterer not only of royalty in general, but of kings in particular, and of all the great men and vices of the age in which he lived, here shares the gratitude of a republic with the _man of nature and truth_, as Jean-Jacques is styled on his sepulchral monument. Thus, in the first instance, says he, a temple, consecrated to stern republican virtue, contains the remains of a great poet who could not strike superstition, without wounding morals.--Unquestionably, the _Pucelle_ is a work, which, like a blight on a promising crop, has committed incalculable ravage among the rising generation. Notwithstanding the numerous inscriptions which now adorn the tomb of Voltaire, perhaps, at some future distant period, he may experience the fate of Mirabeau, and be _dispantheonized_. But why meddle with the cold remains of any great genius? Would it not have been more rational to inscribe the name of Rousseau in this national temple, and leave his corpse to rot undisturbed, in the _Ile des Peupliers_, at Ermenonville. Though circumstances prevented me from ascending to the dome, you will, no doubt, expect me to say something of its exterior architecture. It represents a circular temple, formed by thirty-four pillars, like those of the interior, of the Corinthian order, and each, base and capital included, thirty-four feet in height by three feet and one third in diameter. This colonnade is supported by a circular stylobate, which rests on an octagon base, and is surrounded by a gallery, bordered by an iron balustrade. The cupola, rising above the attic, would appear crushed, were not a stranger apprised that the pedestal on the top is to be surmounted by a bronze figure of Fame, twenty-eight feet in height, and weighing fifty-two thousand pounds. The pedestal is encircled by a second gallery at an elevation of one hundred and sixty-six feet, to reach which you ascend a flight of four hundred and sixty stone steps. As the Pantheon itself stands on a considerable eminence, the prospect from this gallery is extensive and commanding. This sumptuous edifice may truly be said to exhibit a monument of the weakness of man. Like him, before arrived at maturity, it is attacked by indisposition. The architects, like so many physicians, were not for some time agreed as to the seat of the evil. Each proposed his means of cure as the most infallible; But all coincided in one opinion, that the danger was imminent. Their skill has been exerted, and, no doubt, with effect; for all apprehension of further mischief is now removed. When I was taking a last look at this proud temple, I could not help regretting that one half of the money already expended on it, had not been appropriated to the erection of airy hospitals in the different quarters of this populous city. Any one who had formerly visited the _Hôtel-Dieu_ in Paris would, I am confident, have participated in this sentiment. What strange fatality impels men to persevere in such unprofitable erections? This was the first question which suggested itself to me, on getting fairly out of the Pantheon. Is it to gratify an excess of national vanity, or create a superior degree of admiration in the mind of foreigners? If so, the aim is missed: for, as majesty, fallen from the pinnacle of power, becomes more interesting, so do ruins inspire greater veneration than the most pompous structure, towering in the splendour of its perfection. Experience tells us that every truncated pillar, every remnant, in short, of past grandeur, rouses attention, and speaks home to the contemplative mind; while these modern edifices, however firmly erect on their base, excite, comparatively speaking, but a feeble interest. In future ages, perhaps, when the Pantheon of Paris shall be prostrate on the ground, and the wreck of its stately dome be overrun with moss and ivy, it may, probably, attract as much notice as the far-tamed temple of Jupiter-Ammon. P.S. On the evening of the 8th, BONAPARTE left Paris for Lyons, where TALLEYRAND, Minister for foreign affairs, has been for some days preparing for the great event which is expected to take place. When a public measure is in agitation, the result is generally anticipated by the eagerness of mankind; and whispers the least audible are magnified into authentic information. Those even who may be presumed to derive their intelligence from the best sources, not unfrequently misconceive what they have heard, and consequently mislead others. I will not, however, mislead you, by repeating any of the rumours in circulation here: in a short time, the _Moniteur_ will, no doubt, explain the real object of this journey. LETTER XLIX. _Paris, January 12,1802._ As no city in Europe presents so many advantages as this for the cultivation of literature, arts, and sciences, it is not surprising that it should contain great numbers of literati, artists, and men of science, who form themselves into different associations. Independently of the National Institute, Paris can boast of several other SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES. The following are the names of those held in most esteem. SOCIÉTÉ PHILOTECHNIQUE. SOCIÉTÉ LIBRE DES SCIENCES, LETTRES, ET ARTS. ATHÉNÉE (_ci-devant_ LYCÉE) DES ARTS. SOCIÉTÉ PHILOMATIQUE. SOCIÉTÉ ACADÉMIQUE DES SCIENCES. SOCIÉTÉ GALVANIQUE. SOCIÉTÉ DES BELLES-LETTRES. ACADÉMIE DE LÉGISLATION. OBSERVATEURS DE L'HOMME. ATHÉNÉE DE PARIS, _ci-devant_ LYCÉE RÉPUBLICAIN. Though, in all these societies, you may meet with a great number of estimable men, many of whose names may be found in the major part of them, yet that which holds the first rank in the public esteem, as well from the respectability of the members of whom it is composed, as from the proofs of talents which are necessary in order to be admitted into it, is the SOCIÉTÉ PHILOTECHNIQUE. Indeed, almost all its members are men whose works hove rendered them celebrated throughout Europe. Hitherto, with the exception of the National Institute, this is the only society to which the government has granted the honour of receiving it as a body, or by deputation, on solemn occasions; and by that alone, it has _nationalized_, at least tacitly, its institution. It is also the only one which, to the present moment, has preserved the right of holding its public and private sittings in the _Louvre_, since that palace has been ordered to be wholly evacuated. A report has been spread that the hall of the _ci-devant_ French Academy is destined for it; but as yet nothing is determined in this respect. Its number is confined to sixty resident members, and twenty free associates or veterans. It is necessary to have been ten years among the resident members, in order to have a right to be admitted into the number of the twenty free associates, who enjoy prerogatives, without being bound to take a part in the labours of the society. This favour, however, may be granted to those who are for a time called from Paris by public functions, such as embassies, prefectures, &c. This society meets on the 2nd, 12th and 22nd of every month at seven o'clock in the evening. Its various committees have their particular days for assembling. Its officers consist of a President, a Vice-President, a general and perpetual Secretary, a temporary Secretary, a Treasurer, and a Keeper of the records. It holds its public sittings at noon on the last Sunday of the second month of every _trimestre_, or quarter of the republican year, namely, Brumaire, Pluviôse, Floréal, and Thermidor. It is composed of men of science, literati, and artists; but, resembling a family rather than a society, its principles of friendship admit of no classes. On the 19th of every month, it celebrates its foundation by an entertainment, at which its members have the liberty of introducing their friends. It reckons among its members, in the Sciences, LACÉPÈDE, FOURCROY, CUVIER, GEOFFROY, ROTROU, RUEL, LE CLERC, GAUTHEROT, GINGEMBRE, &c. In Literature, BOUFFLERS, LEGOUVÉ, ANDRIEUX, JOSEPH LAVALLÉE, MARIUS ARNAUD, SICARD, GUILLARD, GUICHARD, FRANÇOIS DE NEUFCHÂTEAU, MARGOURIT, RENAUD DE ST. JEAN-D'ANGELY, AMAURY and ALEXANDRE DUVAL, SAY, DESPRÉS, MARSOLIER, BROUSSE, DES FAUCHERETS, PIGAULT LE BRUN, POUGENS, FRAMERY, COLIN D'HARLEVILLE, LA CHABEAUSSIÈRE, &c. In the Arts, viz. Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Music, Declamation, and Dancing, REGNAULT, VALENCIENNES, SILVESTRE the Father, BARBIER the elder, BARTHELEMY, SAUVAGE, LETHIERS, PAJOU, CHAUDET, NORRY, LEGRAND, BIENAIMÉ, DECOTTE, director of the medals, FOUBERT, honorary administrator of the Central Museum, LA RIVE the tragedian, GOSSEC, MARTINI, LE SUEUR, GAVAUX, KALKBRUMER, ADRIEN the elder, GARDEL, &c. The general and perpetual Secretary is JOSEPH LAVALLÉE. SOCIÉTÉ, LIBRE DES. SCIENCES, LETTRES, ET ARTS. It is composed of the junction of the old _Museum of Paris_ and of the Society called that of the _Nine Sisters_. It is divided into classes, is unlimited in the number of its members, admits associated correspondents and foreigners, holds its private sittings at the _Oratoire_ in the _Rue St. Honoré_, every Thursday, and its public ones at six o'clock in the evening on the 9th of the first months of the _trimestre_; namely, Vendémiaire, Nivôse, Germinal, and Messidor. Its officers consist of a President, taken alternately from the three classes, of two temporary Secretaries, a Treasurer, and a Keeper of the records. This Society is modelled a little too much after the Institute, and it is easy to see that the former aims at rivaling the latter. This _esprit de corps_, which cannot well be perceived but by nice observers, has this advantage; it inspires a sort of emulation. But the society having neglected to limit the number of its members, and having thereby deprived itself of the means of appearing difficult as to admission, it thence results that its labours are not equally stamped with the impression of real talent; and if, in fact, it be ambitious, that is a great obstacle to its views. ATHENÉE (_ci-devant_ LYCÉE) DES ARTS.[1] In imitation of our Royal Society, it comprises not only the sciences, literature, and the arts, but also arts and trades, mechanics, inventions, &c. Its members are not idle, and they are a useful body, as they excite emulation by medals, civic crowns, premiums, and rewards. Their number is considerable and unlimited; a condition which is an evil in the last-mentioned society, and a good in this, whose nature is not so much to shine as to encourage industry. It was for a while in disrepute, because DESAUDRAY, the director who founded it, exercised over it a tyrannic sway; it has succeeded in getting rid of him, and, since then, several persons of merit, who had before kept aloof, aspire to the honour of being admitted into it. For some time past it has adopted a custom, too obsequious and absurd, of choosing none but ministers for its Presidents. By this, it exposes its liberty and its opinion, and gives itself chains, the weight of which it will feel some day, when too late to shake them off. It holds its general sittings at the _Oratoire_ every Monday, when it hears the reports of its numerous committees, who have their particular days for meeting. Its public sittings are held at the same place, but at no fixed periods. Its officers consist of a President, a Vice-President, two Secretaries, three Conservators, a Treasurer, and a Keeper of the records. It has associated correspondents throughout Europe. SOCIÉTÉ PHILOMATIQUE. It is wholly devoted to natural, physical, and mathematical sciences. It assembles on Fridays, in the _Rue d'Anjou_, _Faubourg St. Germain_. It has no public sittings; but is merely a private meeting of men of learning, who publish once a month a _bulletin_ very important to the sciences, and to be commended, besides, for its composition, perspicuity, and conciseness. This publication is of a 4to size, consists of a single sheet of print, and has for its title _Bulletin des Sciences par la Société Philomatique_. SOCIÉTÉ ACADÉMIQUE DES SCIENCES. This Society is recently formed: It employs itself on the Sciences only; has not yet held any public sittings, nor published any memoirs. Consequently, nothing can yet be said of its labours, or interior regulation. SOCIÉTÉ GALVANIQUE. Its name indicates the sole object of its labours. It is newly formed, and composed of men eminently distinguished in Medicine and Physics. It has called in a few literati. Its officers are the same in the other Societies. It holds its sittings at the _Oratoire_ every Tuesday at eleven o'clock in the morning. Its labours are pursued with ardour and it has already made several important experiments. It announces zeal, and talents, as well as-great defects, and aspires to fame, perhaps, a little too much; but it may still maintain its ground. SOCIÉTÉ DES BELLES-LETTRES. It is somewhat frivolous. Public sittings every month. Half poetry, half music. It meets at the _Oratoire_ every Wednesday at seven o'clock in the evening. It arose from a small emigration of the _Lycée des Arts_, at this day _l'Athénée_, during the tyranny of DESAUDRAY, and originally bore the title of _Rosati_. A few men of merit, a great number of youths, and some useless members. Too many futile readings, too many fugitive verses, too many little rivalships. It is faulty on account of its regulations, the basis of which is weak, and it exhibits too much parsimony in its expenses. It has not enough of that public consideration which perpetuates establishments of this description. Under such circumstances, it is to be apprehended that it will not support itself. ACADÉMIE DE LÉGISLATION. This is a fine institution, recently founded. It is composed of the most celebrated lawyers, and a few distinguished literati. It meets on the first of every month, gives every day courses of lectures on all the branches of jurisprudence to a great number of pupils; has established conferences, where these pupils form themselves to the art of speaking, by pleading on given points of law. It publishes two periodical works every month, the one entitled, _Bulletin de Jurisprudence_ and the other, _Annales de Jurisprudence._ The preliminary discourse of the first volume of the latter is by JOSEPH LAVALLÉE, and has done him considerable credit. He is, however, a literary character, and not a lawyer. This academy has officers of the same description as those of the other Societies. Senator LANJUINAIS is the President at this moment. It occupies the _Hôtel de la Briffe_, _Quai Voltaire_. SOCIÉTÉ DES OBSERVATEURS DE L'HOMME. It assembles at the _Hôtel de la Rochefoucauld_, _Rue de Seine_, _Faubourg St. Germain,_ and is composed of very estimable men. Its labours, readings, and discussions are too metaphysical. In point of officers, it is formed like the other Societies. Citizen JUAFFRET is perpetual Secretary. ATHÉNÉE DE PARIS, _ci-devant_ LYCÉE RÉPUBLICAIN. This society has survived the revolutionary storm, having been established as far back as the year 1787. According to the _programme_ published for the present year 1802, its object is to propagate the culture of the sciences and literature; to make known the useful improvements in the arts; to afford pleasure to persons of all ages, by presenting to every one such attractions as may suit his taste, and to unite in literary conferences the charms of the mildest of human occupations. To strangers, the _Athénée_ holds out many advantages. On being presented by one of the founders or a subscriber, and paying the annual subscription of 96 francs, you receive an admission-ticket, which, however, is not transferrable. This entitles you to attend several courses of lectures by some of the most eminent professors, such as FOURCROY, CUVIER, LA HARPE, DÉGÉRANDO, SUË, HASSENFRATZ, LEGRAND, &c. The subjects for the year are as follows: Experimental Physics, Chymistry, Natural History, Anatomy and Physiology, Botany, Technology or the application of sciences to arts and trades, Literature, Moral Philosophy, Architecture, together with the English, Italian, and German languages. The lectures are always delivered twice, and not unfrequently thrice a day, in a commodious room, provided with all the apparatus necessary for experiments. On a Sunday, an account of the order in which they are to be given in the course of the following week, is sent to every subscriber. There is no half-subscription, nor any admission _gratis_; but ladies pay no more than 48 francs for their annual ticket. Independently of so many sources of instruction, the _Athénée_, as is expressed in the _programme_, really affords to subscribers the resources and charms of a numerous and select society. The apartments, which are situated near the _Palais du Tribunat_, in the _Rue du Lycée_, are open to them from nine o'clock in the morning to eleven at night. Several rooms are appropriated to conversation; one of which, provided with a piano-forte and music, serves as a rendezvous for the ladies. The subscribers have free access to the library, where they find the principal literary and political journals and papers, both French and others, as well as every new publication of importance. A particular room, in which silence is duly observed, is set apart for reading. [Footnote 1: This Society has laid aside the title of _Lyceum_ since the decree of the government, which declares that this denomination is to be applied only to the establishments for public instruction.] LETTER L. _Paris, January 13, 1802._ I have spoken to you of palaces, museum, churches, bridges, public gardens, playhouses, &c. as they have chanced to fall under my observation; but there still remain houses of more than one description which I have not yet noticed, though they are certainly more numerous here than in any other city in Europe. I shall now speak of COFFEEHOUSES. Their number in Paris has been reckoned to exceed seven hundred; but they are very far from enjoying a comparative degree of reputation. Celebrity is said to be confined to about a dozen only, which have risen into superior consequence from various causes. Except a few resorted to by the literati or wits of the day, or by military officers, they are, in general, the rendezvous of the idle, and the refuge of the needy. This is so true, that a frequenter of a coffeehouse scarcely ever lights a fire in his own lodging during the whole winter. No sooner has he quitted his bed, and equipped himself for the day, than he repairs to his accustomed haunt, where he arrives about ten o'clock in the morning, and remains till eleven at night, the hour at which coffeehouses are shut up, according to the regulation of the police. Not unfrequently persons of this description make a cup of coffee, mixed with milk, with the addition of a penny-roll, serve for dinner; and, be their merit what it may, they are seldom so fortunate as to be consoled by the offer of a rich man's table. Here, no person who wishes to be respected, thinks of lounging in a coffeehouse, because it not only shews him to be at a loss to spend his time, which may fairly be construed into a deficiency of education or knowledge, but also implies an absolute want of acquaintance with what is termed good company. Certain it is that, with the exceptions before-mentioned, a stranger must not look for good company in a coffee-house in Paris; if he does, he will find himself egregiously disappointed. Having occasion to see an advertisement in an English newspaper, I went a few evenings ago to one of the most distinguished places of this sort in the _Palais du Tribunat_: the room was extremely crowded. In five minutes, one of the company whom I had seen taking out his watch on my entrance, missed it; and though many of the by-standers afterwards said they had no doubt that a person of gentlemanly exterior, who stood near him, had taken it, still it would have been useless to charge that person with the fact, as the watch had instantly gone through many hands, and the supposed accomplices had been observed to decamp with uncommon expedition. What diverted me not a little, was that the person suspected coolly descanted on the imprudence of taking out a valuable watch in a crowd of strangers; and, after declaiming the most virulent terms against the dishonesty of mankind; he walked away very quietly. Notwithstanding his appearance and manner were so much in his favour, he had no sooner affected his retreat than some subalterns of the police, not thief-takers, but _mouchards_ or spies, some of whom are to be met with in every principal coffeehouse, cautioned the master of the house against suffering his presence in future, as he was a notorious adventurer. You must not, however, imagine from this incident, that a man cannot enter a coffeehouse in Paris, without being a sufferer from the depredations of the nimble-fingered gentry. Such instances are not, I believe, very frequent here; and though it is universally allowed that this capital abounds with adventurers and pickpockets of every description, I am of opinion that there is far less danger to be apprehended from them than from their archetypes in London. Everyone knows that, in our refined metropolis, a lady of fashion cannot give a ball or a rout, without engaging Mr. Townsend, or some other Bow street officer, to attend in her ball, in order that his presence may operate as a check on the audacity of knavish intruders. The principle coffeehouses here are fitted up with taste and elegance. Large mirrors form no inconsiderable part of their decoration. There are no partitions to divide them into boxes. The tables are of marble; the benches and stools are covered with Utrecht velvet. In winter, an equal degree of warmth is preserved in them by means of a large stove in the centre, which, from its figure, is an ornamental piece of furniture; while, in summer, the draught of air which it maintains, contributes not a little to cool the room. In the evening, they are lighted by _quinquets_ in a brilliant manner. Formerly, every coffeehouse in Paris used to have its chief orator; in those of the more remote part of the suburbs you might, I am informed, hear a journeyman tailor or shoemaker hold forth on various topics. With the revolution, politics were introduced; but, at the present day, that is a subject which seems to be entirely out of the question. In some coffeehouses, where literati and critics assemble, authors and their works are passed in review, and to each is assigned his rank and estimation. When one of these happens to have been checked in his dramatic career by an _undiscerning_ public, he becomes, in his turn, the most merciless of critics. In many of these places, the "busy hum" is extremely tiresome; German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Danish, Russ, together with English and French, all spoken at the same time and in the same room, make a confusion of tongues as great almost as that which reigned at Babel. In addition to the French newspapers, those of England and Germany may be read; but as they are often bespoke by half a dozen persons in succession, it requires no small degree of patience to wait while these quidnuncs are conning over every paragraph. Independently of coffee, tea, and chocolate, ices, punch and liqueurs may be had in the principal coffeehouses; but nothing in the way of dinner or supper, except at the subterraneous ones in the _Palais du Tribunat_, though there are many of a rather inferior order where substantial breakfasts in the French style are provided. Whether Voltaire's idea be just, that coffee clears the brain, and stimulates the genius, I will not pretend to determine: but if this be really the case, it is no wonder that the French are so lively and full of invention; for coffee is an article of which they make an uncommon consumption. Indeed, if Fame may be credited, the prior of a monastery in Arabia, on the word of a shepherd who had remarked that his goats were particularly frisky when they had eaten the berries of the coffee-tree, first made a trial of their virtue on the monks of his convent, in order to prevent them from sleeping during divine service. Be this as it may, Soliman Aga, ambassador of the Porte to Lewis XIV, in 1669, was the first who introduced the use of coffee in Paris. During a residence of ten years in the French capital, he had conciliated the friendship of many persons of distinction, and the ladies in particular took a pleasure in visiting him. According to the custom of his country, he presented them with coffee; and this beverage, however disgusting from its colour and bitterness, was well received, because it was offered by a foreigner, in beautiful china cups, on napkins ornamented with gold fringe. On leaving the ambassador's parties, each of the guests, in the enthusiasm of novelty, cried up coffee, and took means to procure it. A few years after, (in 1672) one Paschal, an Armenian, first opened, at the _Foire St. Germain_, and, afterwards on the _Quai de l'École_, a shop similar to those which he had seen in the Levant, and called his new establishment _café_. Other Levantines followed his example; but, to fix the fickle Parisian, required a coffeeroom handsomely decorated. PROCOPE acted on this plan, and his house was successively frequented by Voltaire, Piron, Fontenelle, and St. Foix. As drinking, which was then in vogue, was pursued less on account of the pleasure which it afforded, than for the sake of society, the French made no hesitation in deserting the tavern for the coffeehouse. But, in making this exchange, it has been remarked, by the observers of the day, that they have not only lost their taste for conviviality, but are become more reserved and insincere than their forefathers, whose hearts expanded by the free use of the generous juice of the grape; thus verifying the old maxim, _in vino veritas._ No small attraction to a Parisian coffeehouse is a pretty female to preside in the bar, and in a few I have seen very handsome women; though this post is commonly assigned to the mistress or some confidential female relation. Beset as they are from morn to night by an endless variety of flatterers, the virtue of a Lucretia could scarcely resist such incessant temptation. In general, they are coquetish; but, without coquetry, would they be deemed qualified for their employment? Before the revolution, I remember, in the _ci-devant Palais Royal_, a coffeehouse called _Le café mécanique_. The mechanical contrivance, whence it derived its name, was of the most simple nature. The tables stood on hollow cylinders, the tops of which, resembling a salver with its border, were level with the plane of the table, but connected with the kitchen underneath. In the bar sat a fine, showy lady, who repeated your order to the attendants below, by means of a speaking-trumpet. Presently the superficial part of the salver, descended through the cylinder, and reascending immediately, the article called for made its appearance. This _café méchanique_ did not long remain in being, as it was not found to answer the expectation of the projector. But besides six or seven coffeehouses on the ground-floor of the _Palais du Tribunat_, there are also several subterraneous ones now open. In one of these, near the _Théâtre Français,_ is a little stage, on which farces, composed for the purpose, are represented _gratis_. In another, is an orchestra consisting entirely of performers belonging to the National Institution of the Blind. In a third, on the north side of the garden, are a set of musicians, both vocal and instrumental, who apparently never tire; for I am told they never cease to play and sing, except to retune their instruments. Here a female now and then entertains the company with a solo on the French horn. To complete the sweet melody, a merry-andrew habited _à la sauvage_, "struts his hour" on a place about six feet in length, and performs a thousand ridiculous antics, at the same time flogging and beating alternately a large drum, the thunder-like sound of which is almost loud enough to give every auditor's brain a momentary concussion. A fourth subterraneous coffeehouse in the _Palais du Tribunat_ is kept by a ventriloquist, and here many a party are amused by one of their number being repeatedly led into a mistake, in consequence of being ignorant of the faculty possessed by the master of the house. This man seems to have no small share of humour, and exercises it apparently much to his advantage. In three visits which I paid to his cellar, the crowd was so great that it was extremely difficult to approach the scene of action, so as to be able to enjoy the effect of his ludicrous deceptions. A friend of mine, well acquainted with the proper time for visiting every place of public resort in Paris, conducted me to all these subterraneous coffeehouses on a Sunday evening, when they were so full that we had some difficulty to find room to stand, for to find a seat was quite impossible. Such a diversity of character I never before witnessed in the compass of so small a space. However, all was mirth and good-humour. I know not how they contrive to keep these places cool in summer; for, in the depth of winter, a more than genial warmth prevails in them, arising from the confined breath of such a concourse. On approaching the stair-case, if the orchestra be silent, the entrance of these regions of harmony is announced by a heat which can be compared only to the true Sirocco blast such as you have experienced at Naples. LETTER LI. _Paris, January 15, 1802._ As after one of those awful and violent convulsions of nature which rend the bosom of the earth, and overthrow the edifices standing on its surface, men gradually repair the mischief it has occasioned, so the French, on the ruins of the ancient colleges and universities, which fell in the shock of the revolution, have from time to time reared new seminaries of learning, and endeavoured to organize, on a more liberal and patriotic scale, institutions for PUBLIC INSTRUCTION. The vast field which the organization of public instruction presents to the imagination has, as may be, supposed, given birth to a great number of systems more or less practicable; but, hitherto, it should seem that political oscillations have imprinted on all the new institutions a character of weakness which, if it did not absolutely threaten speedy ruin, announced at least that they would not be lasting. When the germs of discord prevailed, it was not likely that men's minds should be in that tranquil state necessary for the reestablishment of public seminaries, to lay the foundations of which, in a solid and durable manner, required the calm of peace and the forgetfulness of misfortune. After the suppression of the colleges and universities existing under the monarchy, and to which the _Collège de France_ in Paris is the sole exception, the National Convention, by a decree of the 24th of Nivôse, year III (14th of January 1795) established _Normal_ Schools throughout the Republic. Professors and teachers were appointed to them; and it was intended that, in these nurseries, youth should be prepared for the higher schools, according to the new plan of instruction. However, in less than a year, these _Normal_ Schools were shut up; and, by a law of the 3d of Brumaire, year IV (25th of October, 1796) Primary, Secondary, and Central Schools were ordered to be established in every department. In the Primary Schools, reading, writing, and arithmetic formed the chief part of the instruction. Owing to various causes, the Secondary Schools, I understand, were never established. In the Central Schools, the internal regulation was to be as follows. The whole of the instruction was divided into three classes or sections. In the first, were taught drawing, natural history, and ancient and modern languages. In the second, mathematics, physics, and chymistry. In the third, universal grammar, the fine arts, history, and legislation. Into the first class the pupils were to be received at the age of twelve; into the second, at fourteen; and into the third, at sixteen. In each Central School were to be a public library, a botanic garden, and an apparatus of chymical and physical instruments. The professors were to be examined and chosen by a _Jury of Instruction_, and that choice confirmed by the administration of the department. The government, in turning its attention to the present state of the public schools, and comparing them with the wants and wishes of the inhabitants of the Republic, has found that the Primary Schools have been greatly neglected, and that the Central Schools have not been of so much utility as was expected. Alarmed at the consequences likely to be produced by a state of things which leaves a great part of the present generation destitute of the first rudiments of knowledge, the government has felt that the reorganization of these schools is become an urgent duty, and that it is impossible to delay longer to carry it into execution. The _Special_ Schools of Arts and Sciences are mostly confined to Paris. The other rich and populous cities of the Republic have undoubtedly a claim to similar institutions. There is at present no School of Jurisprudence, and but one of Medicine. The celebrated FOURCROY[1] has been some time engaged in drawing up a plan for the improvement of public instruction. In seeking a new mode of teaching appropriate to the present state of knowledge and to the genius of the French nation, he has thought it necessary to depart from the beaten track. Enlightened by the past, he has rejected the ancient forms of the universities, whose philosophy and acquirements, for half a century past, called for reformation, and no longer kept pace with the progress of reason. In the Central Schools he saw institutions few in number, and too uniformly organized for departments varying in population, resources, and means. He has, nevertheless, taken what was good in each of these two systems successively adopted, and removed their abuses. Without losing sight of the success due to good masters and skilful professors, he has, above all, thought of the means of insuring the success of the new schools by the competition of the scholars. He is of opinion that to found literary and scientific institutions on a solid basis, it is necessary to begin by attaching to them pupils, and filling the classes with students, in order not to run the risk of filling them with professors. Such is the object which FOURCROY wishes to attain, by creating a number of national pensions, so considerable that their funds, when distributed in the Lyceums, may be sufficient for their support. Agreeably to these ideas, the following is said to be the outline of the new organization of public instruction. It is to be divided into four classes; viz. Primary Schools, Secondary Schools, Lyceums, and Special Schools. PRIMARY SCHOOLS. A Primary School may belong to several _communes_ at a time, according to the population and the locality of these _communes_. The teachers are to be chosen by the mayors and municipal councils. The under-prefects are to be specially charged with the organization of these schools, and give an account of their state, once a month, to the prefects. SECONDARY SCHOOLS. Every school established in the _commune_ or kept by private individuals, in which are taught the Latin and French languages, the first principles of geography, history and mathematics, is to be considered as a Secondary School. The government promises to encourage the establishment of Secondary Schools, and reward the good instruction that shall be given in them, either by granting a spot for keeping them, or by the distribution of gratuitous places in the Lyceums, to such of the pupils as shall have distinguished themselves most, and by gratifications to the fifty masters who shall have qualified most pupils for the Lyceums. No Secondary School is to be established without the authority of the government. The Secondary Schools and private schools, whose instruction is found superior to that of the Primary Schools, are to be placed under the superintendance and particular inspection of the prefects. LYCEUMS. There is to be one Lyceum at least in the district of every tribunal of appeal. Here are to be taught ancient languages, rhetoric, logic, morality, and the elements of the mathematical and physical sciences. To these are to be added drawing, military exercises and the agreeable arts. Instruction is to be given to the pupils placed here by the government, to those of the Secondary Schools admitted through competition, to those whose parents may put them here as boarders, and also to day-scholars. In each Lyceum is to be a director, who is to have immediately under him a censor of studies, and an administrator who are all to be nominated by the First Consul. In the former institutions, which are to be replaced by these new ones, a vigilant eye was not constantly kept on the state of the schools themselves, nor on that of the studies pursued in them. According to the new plan, three inspectors-general, appointed by the First Consul, are to visit them carefully, and report to the government their situation, success, and defects. This new supervisorship is to be, as it were, the key-stone of the arch, and to keep all the parts connected. The fourth and highest degree of public instruction is to be acquired in the SPECIAL SCHOOLS. This is the name to be applied to those of the upper schools, where are particularly taught, and in the most profound manner, the useful sciences, jurisprudence, medicine, natural history, &c. But schools of this kind must not be confounded with the Schools for Engineers, Artillery, Bridges and Highways, Hydrography, &c. which, _special_ as they are essentially, in proportion to the sciences particularly taught in them, are better described, however, by the name of _Schools for Public Services_, on account of the immediate utility derived from them by the government. In addition to the _Special_ Schools now in existence, which are to be kept up, new ones are to be established in the following proportion: Ten Schools of Jurisprudence. These useful institutions, which have been abolished during the last ten years, are, by a new organization, to resume the importance that they had lost long before the revolution. The pupils are to be examined in a manner more certain for determining their capacity, and better calculated for securing the degree of confidence to be reposed in those men to whose knowledge and integrity individuals are sometimes forced to intrust their character and fortune. Three new Schools of Medicine, in addition to the three at present in being. These also are to be newly organized in the most perfect manner. The mathematical and physical sciences have made too great a progress in France, their application to the useful arts, to the public service, and to the general prosperity, has been too direct, says FOURCROY, for it not to be necessary to diffuse the taste for them, and to open new asylums where the advantages resulting from them may be extended, and their progress promoted. There are therefore to be four new _Special_ Schools of Natural History, Physics, and Chymistry, and also a _Special_ School devoted to transcendent Mathematics. The mechanical and chymical arts, so long taught in several universities in Germany under the name of _technology_, are to have two _Special_ Schools, placed in the cities most rich in industry and manufactures. These schools, generally wished for, are intended to contribute to the national prosperity by the new methods which they will make known, the new instruments and processes which they will bring into use, the good models of machines which they will introduce, in a word, by every means that mechanics and chymistry can furnish to the arts. A School of Public Economy, enlightened by Geography and History, is to be opened for those who may be desirous to investigate the principles of governments, and the art of ascertaining their respective interests. In this school it is proposed to unite such an assemblage of knowledge as has not yet existed in France. To the three principal schools of the arts dependent on design, which are at present open, is to be added a fourth, become necessary since those arts bring back to France the pure taste of the beautiful forms, of which Greece has left such perfect models. In each of the observatories now in use is to be a professor of astronomy, and the art of navigation is expected to derive new succour from these schools, most of which are placed in the principal sea-ports. A knowledge of the heavens and the study of the movements of the celestial bodies, which every year receives very remarkable augmentations from the united efforts of the most renowned geometricians and the most indefatigable observers, may have a great influence on the progress of civilization. On which account the French government is extremely eager to promote the science of astronomy. The language of neighbouring nations, with whom the French have such frequent intercourse, is to be taught in several Lyceums, as being a useful introduction to commerce. The art of war, of which modern times have given such great examples and such brilliant lessons, is to have its _special_ school, and this school, on the plan which it is intended to be established by receiving as soldiers youths from the Lyceums, will form for the French armies officers equally skilful in theory as in practice. This new Military School must not be confounded with the old _école militaire_. Independently of its not being destined for a particular class, which no longer exists in this country, the mode of instruction to be introduced there will render it totally different from the establishment which bore the same name. It is to be composed of five hundred pupils, forming a battalion, and who are to be accustomed to military duty and discipline; it is to have at least ten professors, charged to teach all the theoretical, practical, and administrative parts of the art of war, as well as the history of wars and of great captains. Of the five hundred pupils of the Special Military School, two hundred are to be taken from among the national pupils of the Lyceums, in proportion to their number in each of those schools, and three hundred from among the boarders and day-scholars, according to the examination which they must undergo at the end of their studies. Every year one hundred of the former are to be admitted, and two hundred of the latter. They are to be maintained two years in the Special Military School, at the expense of the Republic. These two years are to be considered as part of their military service. According to the report made of the behaviour and talents of the pupils of the Military School, the government is to provide them with appointments in the army. NATIONAL PUPILS. There are to be maintained at the expense of the Republic six thousand four hundred pupils, as boarders in the Lyceums and Special Schools. Out of these six thousand four hundred boarders, two thousand four hundred are to be chosen by the government from among the sons of officers and public functionaries of the judicial, administrative, or municipal order, who shall have served the Republic with fidelity, and for ten years only from among the children of citizens belonging to the departments united to France, although they have neither been military men nor public functionaries. These two thousand four hundred pupils are to be at least nine years of age, and able to read and write. The other four thousand are to be taken from double the number of pupils of the Secondary Schools, who, according to an examination where their talents are put in competition, are to be presented to the government. The pupils, maintained in the Lyceums, are not to remain there more than six years at the expense of the nation. At the end of their studies, they are to undergo an examination, after which a fifth of them are to be placed in the different Special Schools according to their disposition, in order to be maintained there from two to four years at the expense of the Republic. The annual cost of all these establishments is estimated at near eight millions of francs, (_circa_ £336,000 sterling) which exceeds by at least two millions the amount of the charges of the public instruction for the few preceding years; but this augmentation, which will only take place by degrees, and at soonest in eighteen months, appears trifling, compared to the advantages likely to result from the new system. Whenever this plan is carried into execution, what hopes may not France conceive from the youth of the rising generation, who, chosen from among those inclined to study, will, in all probability, rise to every degree of fame! The surest pledge of the success of the measure seems to consist in the spirit of emulation which is to be maintained, not only among the pupils, but even among the professors in the different schools; for emulation, in the career of literature, arts and sciences, leads to fame, and never fails to turn to the benefit of society; whereas jealousy, in the road of ambition and fortune, produces nothing but hatred and discord. "Envy, to which th' ignoble mind's a slave, Is emulation in the learn'd and brave." So much for the plan.[2] In your last letter, you desire that I will afford you some means of appreciating the essential difference between the old system of education pursued in France, and the basis on which public instruction is now on the point of being reorganised and established. You must be sensible that the comparison of the two modes, were I to enter deeply into the question, would far exceed the limits of a letter. But, though I have already extended this to a certain length, I can, in a few more lines, enable you to compare and judge, by informing you, from the best authority, what has been the spirit which has dictated the new organization. There are very few men who know how to confine themselves within just bounds. Some yield to the mania of innovation, and imagine that they create only because they destroy and change. Others bend under the yoke of old habits. Some, solely because they have remained strangers to the sciences, would wish that youth should be employed only in the study of languages and literature. Others who, no doubt, forget that every learned man, who aims at a solid reputation, ought to sacrifice to the Muses, before he penetrates into the sanctuary of science, would wish education to be confined to the study of the exact sciences, and that youth should be occupied on things, before they are acquainted with words. For the sole reason that the old system of instruction bore too exclusively on the study of the learned languages, it was to be feared that the new one, through a contrary excess, would proscribe the Greek and Latin. The study of these two languages, as FOURCROY has observed to me, is not merely useful to those who wish to acquire a thorough knowledge of the French, which has borrowed from them no small number of words, but it is only from the perusal of the great writers of antiquity, on whom the best among the moderns have formed themselves, that we can imbibe the sentiment of the beautiful, the taste, and the rectitude of mind equally necessary, whether we feel ourselves attracted towards eloquence or poetry, or raise ourselves to the highest conceptions of the physical or mathematical sciences. At no time can the instruction given to a youth be otherwise considered than as a preparatory mean, whose object is to anticipate his taste and disposition, and enable him to enter with more firmness into the career which he is intended to follow. From an attentive perusal of the plan, of which I have traced you the leading features, you will be convinced that the study of the sciences will gain by the new system, without that of literature being in danger of losing. The number of professors is increased, and yet the period of education is not prolonged. A pupil will always be at liberty to apply himself more intensely to the branch to which he is impelled by his particular inclination. He may confine himself to one course of lectures, or attend to several, according to his intellectual means. He will not be compelled to stop in his career, merely because the pupils of his class do not advance. In short, neither limits nor check have been put to the progress that may be made by talent. I here give you only a principal idea, but the application of it, improved by your sagacity and knowledge, will be sufficient to answer all the objections which may be started against the new plan of instruction, and which, when carefully investigated, may be reduced to a single one; namely, that literature is sacrificed to the sciences. [Footnote 1: Counsellor of State, now charged with the direction and superintendance of public instruction.] [Footnote 2: The new organization of public instruction was decreed by the government on the 11th of Floréal, year X.] LETTER LII. _Paris, January 18, 1802._ Of all the private lodgings in Paris, none certainly can be more convenient for the residence of a single man than those of MILLINERS. I have already said that such is the profession of my landlady. Whenever I am disposed for a little lively chitchat, I have only to step to the next door but one into her _magazin de modes_, where, like a favourite courtier, under the old _régime_, I have both _les grandes et les petites entrées_, or, in plain English, I may either introduce myself by the public front entrance, or slip in by the private back-door. Here, twenty damsels are employed in making up head-dresses which are hourly produced and varied by fashion. Closely confined to the counter, with a needle in their hand, they are continually throwing their eyes towards the street. Not a passenger escapes their notice. The place the nearest to the window is in the greatest request, as being most favourable for catching the transient homages of the crowds of men continually passing and repassing. It is generally occupied by the beauty of the _magazin_ or warehouse; for it would be resented as an almost unpardonable offence to term this emporium of taste a _boutique_ or shop. Before each of them is a block, on which they form and adjust the gallant trophy destined to heighten the loveliness of some ambitious fair who has set her heart on surpassing all her rivals at an approaching ball. Montesquieu observes, in his Persian letters, that "if a lady has taken it into her head to appear at an assembly in a particular dress, from that moment fifty persons of the working class must no longer sleep, or have time to eat and drink. She commands, and is obeyed more expeditiously than the king of Persia, because interest has greater sway than the most powerful monarch on earth." In the morning, some of these damsels wait on the ladies with bandboxes of millinery. Obliged by their profession to adorn the heads of other women, they must stifle the secret jealousy of their sex, and contribute to set off the person of those who not unfrequently treat them with hauteur. However, they are now and then amply revenged: sometimes the proud rich lady is eclipsed by the humble little milliner. The unadorned beauty of the latter destroys the made up charms of the coquette: 'tis the triumph of nature over art. If, perchance, the lover drops in, fatal consequences ensue. His belle cannot but lose by the comparison: her complexion appears still more artificial beside the natural bloom of the youthful _marchande_. In a word, the silent admirer all at once becomes faithless. Many a young Parisian milliner has made a jump from behind the counter into a fashionable carriage, even into that of an English peer. Strange revolution of fortune! In the course of a few days, she returns to the same shop to make purchases, holding high her head; and exulting in her success. Her former mistress, sacrificing her rage to her interest, assumes a forced complaisance; while her once-dear companions are ready to burst with envy. Millinery here constitutes a very extensive branch of trade. Nothing short of the creative genius of the French could contrive to give, again and again, a new form to things the most common. In vain do females of other countries attempt to vie with them; in articles of tasteful fancy they still remain unrivaled. From Paris, these studious mistresses of invention give laws to the polished world. After passing to London, Berlin, Hamburg, and Vienna, their models of fashion are disseminated all over Europe. These models alike travel to the banks of the Neva and the shores of the Propontis. At Constantinople, they find their way into the seraglio of the Grand Signior; while, at Petersburg, they are servilely copied to grace the Empress of Russia. Thus, the fold given to a piece of muslin or velvet, the form impressed on a ribband, by the hand of an ingenious French milliner, is repeated among all nations. A fashion here does not last a week, before it is succeeded by another novelty; for a French woman of _bon ton_, instead of wearing what is commonly worn by others, always aims at appearing in something new. It is unfortunately too true, that the changeableness of taste and inconstancy of fashion in France furnish an aliment to the luxury of other countries; but the principle of this communication is in the luxury of this gay and volatile people. You reproach me with being silent respecting the _bals masqués_ or masquerades, mentioned in my enumeration of the amusements of Paris. The fact is that a description of them will scarcely furnish matter for a few lines, still less a subject for a letter. However, in compliance with custom, I have been more than once to the BAL DE L'OPÉRA. This is a masquerade frequently given in the winter, at the theatre of the grand French opera, where the pit is covered over, as that is of our opera-house in the Haymarket. From the powerful draught of air, which, coming from behind the scenes, may well be termed _vent de coulisse_, the room is as cold as the season. Since the revolution, masquerades were strictly forbidden, and this prohibition continued under the directorial government. It is only since BONAPARTE'S accession to the post of Chief Magistrate, that the Parisians have been indulged with the liberty of wearing disguises during the carnival. Of all the amusements in Paris, I have ever thought this the most tiresome and insipid. But it is the same at the _Bal de l'Opéra_ as at _Frascati_, _Longchamp_, and other points of attraction here; every one is soon tired of them, and yet every one flocks thither. In fact, what can well be more tiresome than a place where you find persons masked, without wit or humour? Though, according to the old French saying, "_I faut avoir bien peu d'esprit pour ne pas en avoir sous le masque?_" The men, who at a masquerade here generally go unmasked, think it not worth while to be even complaisant to the women, who are elbowed, squeezed, and carried by the tide from one end of the room to the other, before they are well aware of it. Dominos are the general dress. The music is excellent; but it is not the fashion to dance; and _les femmes de bonne compagnie_, that is, well-bred women, are condemned to content themselves with the dust they inhale; for they dare not quit their mask to take any refreshment. But, notwithstanding these inconveniences, it is here reckoned a fine thing to have been at a _bal masqué_ when the crowd was great, and the pressure violent; as the more the ladies have shared in it, the more they congratulate themselves on the occasion. Before the revolution, the _grand ton_ was for gentlemen to go to the _Bal de l'Opéra_ in a full-dress suit of black, and unmasked. Swords were here prohibited, as at Bath. This etiquette of dress, however, rendered not the company more select. I remember well that at a masked ball at the Parisian opera, in the year 1785, the very first beau I recognized in the room, parading in a _habit de cour_, was my own _perruquier_. As at present, the amusement of the women then consisted in teazing the men; and those who had a disposition for intrigue, gave full scope to the impulse of their nature. The _fille entretenue_, the _duchesse_, and the _bourgeoise_, disguised under a similar domino, were not always distinguishable; and I have heard of a certain French marquis, who was here laid under heavy contribution for the momentary gratification of his caprice, though the object of it proved to be no other than his own _cara sposa_. LETTER LIII. _Paris, January 19, 1802._ When you expressed your impatience to be informed of the dramatic amusements in Paris, I promised to satisfy you as soon as I was able; for I knew that you would not be contented with a superficial examination. Therefore, in reviewing the principal scenic establishments, I shall, as I have done before, exert my endeavours not only to make you acquainted with the _best_ performers in every department, but also with the _best_ stock-pieces, in order that, by casting your eye on the _Affiches des Spectacles_, when you visit this capital, you may at once form a judgment of the quality and quantity of the entertainment you are likely to enjoy at the representation of a particular piece, in which certain performers make their appearance. Since the revolution, the custom of printing the names of the actors and dancers in each piece, has been introduced. Formerly, amateurs often paid their money only to experience a disappointment; for, instead of seeing the hero or heroine that excited their curiosity, they had a bad duplicate, or, as the French term it, a _double_, imposed on them, more frequently through caprice than any other motive. This is now obviated; and, except in cases of sudden and unforeseen indisposition, you may be certain of seeing the best performers whenever their name is announced. In speaking of the theatres, the pieces represented, and the merits of the performers, I cannot be supposed to be actuated by any prejudice or partiality whatever. I have, it is true, been favoured with the oral criticism of a man of taste, who, as a very old acquaintance, has generally accompanied me to the different _spectacles_; but still I have never adopted his sentiments, unless the truth of them had been confirmed by my own observation. From him I have been favoured with a communication of such circumstances respecting them as occurred during the revolution, when I was absent from Paris. You may therefore confidently rely on the candour and impartiality of my general sketch of the theatres; and if the stage be considered as a mirror which reflects the public mind, you will thence be enabled to appreciate the taste of the Parisians. Without forgetting that "_La critique est aisée, mais l'art est difficile_," I shall indulge the hope that you will be persuaded that truth alone has guided my pen in this attempt to trace the attractions of the THÉÂTRE FRANÇAIS DE LA RÉPUBLIQUE. The house, now occupied by the performers of this theatre, was built at the beginning of the revolution by the late duke of Orleans, who, according to the opinion of those best acquainted with his schemes of profit, intended it for the representation of the grand French opera, for which, nevertheless, it is not sufficiently spacious. It stands adjoining to the south-west angle of the _Palais du Tribunat_, with its front entrance in the _Rue de la Loi_. Its façade presents a row of twelve Doric columns, surmounted by as many Corinthian pilasters, crowned by their entablature. On the first story is an exterior gallery; ornamented by an iron balustrade, which runs the whole length of the façade, and communicates with the lobby. On the north side, and at the back of the theatre, on the ground-floor, are several covered galleries, bordered by shops, which communicate with the _Rue St. Honoré_ and the _Palais du Tribunat_. The vestibule, where four stair-cases terminate, is of an elliptic form, surrounded by three rows of Doric pillars. Above the vestibule, which is on the ground-floor, are the pit and lobby. The inside of the house, which is immoderately lofty, presents seven tiers of boxes, and, in the circumference, six Corinthian pillars. The ornaments, numerously scattered, are in relief. At a certain elevation, the plan of the house is changed by a recess made facing the stage. Two angels, above the stage-boxes, shock the eye by their enormous size. The boxes to the number of two hundred and twenty-two, are said to contain thirteen hundred persons; and the pit, including the _orchestre_,[1] seven hundred and twenty-four, making in all two thousand and twenty persons. The construction of this house is remarkable for iron only being employed in lieu of wood. The architect was LOUIS. This theatre, which was begun in 1787, was finished in 1790, when, all privileges having been done away, it was first opened by a company of French comedians, who played tragedy and comedy. It then took the name of _Théâtre Français de la Rue de Richelieu_, which street was afterwards and is now called _Rue de la Loi_. Being opened at the commencement of the revolution, it naturally adopted its principles; and, when the National Convention had proclaimed the Republic, it assumed the pompous name of _Théâtre de la République_. The greater part of the actors who performed here, rendered themselves remarkable for their _revolutionary_ ardour, and, during the reign of terror, it became a privileged theatre. The _Comédie Française_ in the _Faubourg St. Germain_, which, in its interior, presented the handsomest playhouse in Paris, was called _l'Odéon_ a few years ago, and, since then, has been reduced by fire to a mere shell, the walls only being left standing. In 1789, this theatre appeared to follow the torrent of the revolution, and changed its name for that of _Théâtre de la Nation_. Nevertheless, the actors did not, on that account, relinquish the title of _Comédiens ordinaires du Roi_. Shortly after, they even became, in general, the declared partisans of the old _régime_, or at least of the court. Their house was frequently an _arena_ where the two parties came to blows, particularly on the occasion of the tragedy of _Charles Neuf_, by CHÉNIER, and of the comedy of _L'Ami des Loix_. The former of these pieces, represented in the first ebullition of the revolution, was directed against the court; and the comedians refused to bring it on the stage, at the time of the assemblage of the national guards in Paris, on the 14th of July, 1790, known by the title of _Federation_. The latter was played after the massacres of September 1792, and had been composed with the laudable view of bringing back the public mind to sentiments of humanity, justice, and moderation. The maxims which it contained, being diametrically opposite to those of the plunderers who then reigned, that is, the members of the _commune_ of Paris, the minority of the National Convention, the Jacobins, Cordeliers, &c. they interrupted the representation, and, after a great uproar, the piece was prohibited. This minority of which I have just spoken, having succeeded in subduing the majority, nothing now stopped the rage of the revolutionary party. All those who gave them umbrage were imprisoned, and put to death with the forms of law. The comedians of the French theatre were thrown into prison; it appears that they were, both men and women, partly destined for the scaffold, and that if they escaped, it was through the address of a clerk of one of the Committees of Public Welfare or of Public Safety, who repeatedly concealed the documents containing the charges brought against them. It is said that the comedians purpose to prove their gratitude, so long delayed, to this young man, without putting themselves to any expense, by giving for his benefit an extraordinary representation.[2] At length the happy 9th of Thermidor arrived; the prisons were thrown open; and, as you may well imagine in such a nation as this, the French comedians were not the last to be set at liberty. However, their theatre was not immediately restored to them. It was occupied by a sort of bastard _spectacle_, with the actors of which they were then obliged to form an association. This did not last long. The French comedians were received by the manager of the lyric theatre of the _Rue Feydeau_, whom they afterwards ruined. The actors of comedy, properly so called, contrived to expel those of tragedy, with whom they thought they could dispense; and, shortly, they themselves, notwithstanding their reputation, were deserted by the public. The heroes and heroines, with Mademoiselle RAUCOURT at their head, took possession of the theatre of the _Rue de Louvois_, and there prospered. But, after the 18th of Fructidor, (5th of September, 1797) the Directory caused this house to be shut up: the reason assigned was the representation given here of a little comedy, of ancient date however, and of no great importance, in which a knavish valet is called MERLIN, as was the Minister of Justice of that day, who since became director, not of the theatre, but of the republic. Mademoiselle RAUCOURT, who was directress of this theatre, returned with her company to the old theatre of the _Faubourg St. Germain_, which then took the name of _l'Odéon_. In the mean time, the theatre of the _Rue de Richelieu_ had perceptibly declined, after the fall of Robespierre, and the public appeared to have come to a positive determination to frequent it no longer. The manager of the _Théâtre Feydeau_, M. SARGENT, formerly a banker, who was rich, and enjoyed a good reputation, succeeded in uniting all the actors of the _Comédie Française_ and those of the _Théâtre de la République_. This effected his own ruin. When he had relinquished the management of the undertaking, the government took it in hand, and definitively organized this tragic and comic association, to superintend which it appointed a special commissioner. The _repertoire_ (or list of pieces which are here played habitually, or have been acted with applause) is amazingly well furnished, and does infinite honour to French literature. It may be divided into two parts, the ancient and the modern. It is the former that deserves the encomium which I have just bestowed. In the line of Tragedy, it is composed of the greater part of the pieces of the four principal pillars of the temple of the French Melpomene: namely CORNEILLE[3], RACINE, CRÉBILLON, and VOLTAIRE, to whom may be added DU BELLOY, as well as of some detached pieces, such as _Iphigénie en Tauride_ by GUIMOND DE LA TOUCHE, _Le Comte de Warwick_ and _Philoctète_ by LA HARPE. The modern _repertoire_, or list of stock-pieces, is formed of the tragedies of M. M. DUCIS, CHÉNIER, ARNAULT, LEGOUVÉ, and LE MERCIER. In the line of Comedy, it is also very rich. You know that, at the head of the French comic authors, stands MOLIÈRE, who, in this country at least, has no equal, either among the ancients or the moderns. Several of his pieces are still represented, though they are not numerously attended; as well because manners are changed, as because the actors are no longer able to perform them. Next to MOLIÈRE, but at a great interval, comes REGNARD, whom the French comedians have deserted, for much the same reason: they no longer give any plays from the pen of this author, who possessed the _vis comica_, except _Les Folies Amoureuses_, a pretty little comedy in three acts. We no longer hear of his _Joueur_ and his _Légataire Universel_, which are _chefs d'oeuvre_. There are likewise the works of DESTOUCHES, who has written _Le Glorieux, Le Dissipateur_, and _La Fausse Agnès_, which are always played with applause. _Le Méchant_, by GRESSET, is a masterpiece in point of style, and _La Métromanie_, by PIRON, the best of French comedies, next to those of MOLIÈRE and REGNARD. Then come the works of LA CHAUSSÉE, who is the father of the _drame_, and whose pieces are no longer represented, though he has composed several, such as _La Gouvernante_, _L'École des Mères_, _Le Préjugé à la Mode_, which, notwithstanding, their whining style, are not destitute of merit, and those of DANCOURT, who has written several little comedies, of a very lively cast, which are still played, and those of MARIVAUX, whose old metaphysical jargon still pleases such persons as have their head full of love. I might augment this list by the name of several other old authors, whose productions have more or less merit. The number of modern French comic authors is very limited; for it is not even worthwhile to speak of a few little comedies in one act, the title of which the public scarcely remember. According to this calculation, there is but one single comic author now living. That is COLIN D'HARLEVILLE, who has written _L'Inconstant_, _Les Châteaux en Espagne_, _Le Vieux Célibataire_, and _Les Moeurs du Jour_, which are still represented. _Le Vieux Célibataire_ is always received with much applause. In general, the pieces of M. COLIN are cold, but his style is frequently graceful: he writes in verse; and the whole part of _L'Inconstant_ is very agreeably written. Indeed, that piece is the best of this author. FABRE D'EGLANTINE is celebrated as an actor in the revolution (I mean on the political stage), and as the author who has produced the best piece that has appeared since _La Métromanie_. It is the _Philinte de Molière_, which, in some measure, forms a sequel to the comedy of the _Misanthrope_. Nevertheless, this title is ill chosen; for the character of the _Philinte_ in the piece of MOLIÈRE, and that of FABRE'S piece scarcely bear any resemblance. We might rather call it the _Égoiste_. Although the comic part of it is weak, the piece is strongly conceived, the fable very well managed, the style nervous but harsh, and the third act is a _chef-d'oeuvre_. Since the death of FABRE, another piece of his has been acted, entitled _Le Précepteur_. In this piece are to be recognized both his manner and his affected philosophical opinions. His object is to vaunt the excellence of the education recommended by J. J. ROUSSEAU, though the revolution has, in a great measure, proved the fallacy of the principles which it inculcates. As these, however, are presented with art, the piece had some success, and still maintains its ground on the stage. It was played for the first time about two years ago. The surname of EGLANTINE, which FABRE assumed, arose from his having won the prize at the Floral games at Toulouse. The prize consisted of an _eglantine_ or wild rose in gold. Before he became a dramatic author, he was an actor and a very bad actor. Being nominated member of the National Convention, he distinguished himself in that assembly, not by oratorical talents, but by a great deal of villainy. He did not think as he acted or spoke. When the _montagnards_[4] or mountaineers, that is, those monsters who were always thirsting for blood, divided, he appeared for some time to belong to the party of DANTON, who, however, denied him when they were both in presence of each other at the bar of the revolutionary tribunal. DANTON insisted that he who had been brought to trial for a just cause, if not a just motive, ought not to be confounded with stealers of port-folios.[5] They were both sentenced to die, and accordingly executed. Among the comic authors of our age, some people would reckon DUMOUSTIER, whose person was held in esteem, but whose works are below mediocrity. They are _Le Conciliateur_, a comedy in five acts, and _Les Femmes_, a comedy in three acts. The latter appears to be the picture of a brothel. They are both still played, and both have much vogue, which announces the total decline of the art. There is a third species of dramatic composition, proscribed by the rules of good taste, and which is neither tragedy nor comedy, but participates of both. It is here termed _drame_. Although LA CHAUSSÉE is the father of this tragi-comic species of writing, he had not, however, written any _tragédies bourgeoises_, and the French declare that we have communicated to them this contagion; for their first _drame_, _Beverley, ou le Joueur Anglais_ is a translation in verse from the piece of that name of our theatre. The celebrated LEKAIN[6] opposed its being acted, and affirmed with reason that this mixture of the two species of drama hurt them both. MOLÉ, who was fond of applause easily obtained, was the protector of the piece, and played the part of _Beverley_ with success; but this _drame_ is no longer performed on the Parisian stage. Next to this, comes _Le Père de Famille_, by DIDEROT. It is a long sermon. However, it presents characters well drawn. This species of composition is so easy that the number of _drames_ is considerable; but scarcely any of them are now performed, except _Eugénie_ and _La Mère Coupable_, by BEAUMARCHAIS,[7] which are frequently represented. I shall not finish this article without reminding you that MERCIER has written so many _drames_ that he has been called _Le Dramaturge_. All his are become the prey of the little theatres and the aliment of the provincial departments. This circumstance alone would suffice to prove the mediocrity of the _drame_. MONVEL, of whom I shall soon have occasion to speak, would well deserve the same title. [Footnote 1: This is a place, so called in French theatres, comprising four or five rows of benches, parted off, between the place where the musicians are seated and the front of the pit.] [Footnote 2: It is not mentioned whether these sons and daughters of Thespis, who have since gained a great deal of money, have offered any _private_ remuneration to their benefactor, rather to their guardian-angel.] [TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: The scan of this footnote was imperfect. Some of the text was interpolated.] [Footnote 3: Of course, PIERRE CORNEILLE is here meant. THOMAS CORNEILLE, who was surnamed the Great, must not, however be forgotten. THOMAS is the author of _Ariane_ and _le Comte d'Essex_, a tragedy much esteemed, and which is deserving of estimation.] [Footnote 4: Thus called, because they formed a very close and very elevated group at one of the extremities of the hall of the National Convention.] [Footnote 5: FABRE D'EGLANTINE was tried for having, in concert with certain stock-jobbers, proposed and caused the adoption of decrees concerning the finances.] [Footnote 6: LEKAIN said humourously that to play the _drame_ well, it was sufficient to know how to make a summerset.] [Footnote 7: Every one is acquainted with the two comedies written by this author, _Le Barbier de Seville_ and _Le Mariage de Figaro_. The astonishing run of the latter, which was acted one hundred and fifty succeeding nights, was greatly owing to BEAUMARCHAIS having there turned into ridicule several persons of note in the ministry and the parliament: _La Mère Coupable_, which is often given, is the sequel to _Le Mariage de Figaro_, as that piece is to _Le Barbier de Seville_.] LETTER LIV. _Paris, January 20, 1802._ Let us now examine the merits of the principal performers belonging to the _Théâtre Français_. TRAGEDY. _Noble Fathers, or characters of Kings_. VANHOVE, MONVEL, ST. PRIX, and NAUDET. VANHOVE. This king of the _Théâtre Français_ neither has majesty nor nobleness of manner. His countenance is mean, and his make common. His monotonous and heavy utterance is sometimes intermingled with yelping sounds. He possesses no sensibility, and substitutes noise for expression. His mediocrity caused him to be received at the old _Comédie Française_; for the first or principal actors of that theatre were rather fond of receiving persons of weak talents, merely that they might be set off. He _doubled_ BRIZARD, whom nature had endowed with the happiest gifts for tragedy. VANHOVE was the first player ever called for by a Parisian audience after the representation, in order to express to him their satisfaction. However, it may be proper to observe that, in such cases, it is always some friend of the author who takes the lead. VANHOVE no longer obtains this favour at present, and is seldom applauded. He also plays the parts of fathers in comedy. MONVEL. This actor is not near so old as VANHOVE; but the decay of his person is such that, when he plays, he seems a skeleton bestirring itself, or that is set in motion. It is a misfortune for him that his physical means betray his talents. MONVEL is a man of genius. Thus gifted, it is not astonishing that he has a just diction, and is not deficient in intelligence. Some persons doubt whether he has real sensibility; but he at least presents the appearance of it. He, in some measure, breaks his voice, and vents mournful accents which produce much effect. With a constitution extremely weak, it is impossible that he should perform characters which require energy and pride. He therefore confines himself to those in which the pathetic is predominant, or which do not imperiously demand great efforts, such as _Auguste_ in _Cinna_, _Burrhus_ in _Britannicus_, _Brutus_ in the tragedy of that name (now no longer played), _Lusignan_ in _Zaire_, _Zopire_ in _Mahomet_, _Fénélon_[1] and _l'Abbé de l'Epée_ in the two pieces of that name. His stock of characters then is by no means extensive. We may also add to it the part of _Ésope à la cour_, in the comedy of that name by BOURSAULT, which he plays or recites in great perfection, because it is composed of fables only. MONVEL delivers them with neatness and simplicity. For this part he has no equal in France.[2] MONVEL is author as well as actor. He has composed several comic operas and _drames_; and his pieces, without being good, have always obtained great applause. His _drames_ are _l'Amant Bourru_, _Clémentine et Désormes_, _Les Amours de Bayard_, _Les Victimes Cloitrées_, &c. You will find in them forced situations, but set off by sentiment. He is lavish of stage-effect and that always pleases the multitude. _L'Amant Bourru_ has alone remained as a stock-piece. By his zeal for the revolution, he alienated from him a great part of the public. When every principle of religion was trodden under foot, and, under the name of festivals of reason or of the goddess of reason, orgies of the most scandalous nature were celebrated in the churches, MONVEL ascended the pulpit of the parish of St. Roch, and preached _atheism_ before an immense congregation. Shortly after, Robespierre caused the National Convention to proclaim the following declaration: "_The French people acknowledge the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul." MONVEL trembled; and it is probable that, had not that sanguinary tyrant been overthrown, the atheistical preacher would have descended from the pulpit only to ascend the scaffold.[3] ST. PRIX. He has no fixed employment. Sometimes he plays the parts of kings, sometimes those of lovers; but excels in none. He would be a very handsome man, were it possible to be so with a face void of expression. Nature has given him a strong but hollow voice; and he recites so coldly, that he makes the public yawn, and seems sometimes to yawn himself. When he means to display warmth, he screams and fatigues the ear without mercy. NAUDET. This man, who is great only in stature, quitted the rank of serjeant in the _Gardes Françaises_ to become a bad player. In the character of kings, he scarcely now appears but to personate tyrants. He is very cold, and speaks through his nose like a Capuchin friar, which has gained him the appellation of the Reverend Father NAUDET. _First parts or principal lovers, in Tragedy_. TALMA, and LAFOND. TALMA. The great reputation which circumstances and his friends[4] have given to this actor has, probably, rendered him celebrated in England. His stature and his voice (which, in theatrical language, is called _organ_), should seem to qualify him for the parts of _jeunes premiers_ only, of which I shall say more hereafter. Accordingly he made his _début_ in that line about fifteen or sixteen years ago. Without being brilliant, his first appearances were successful, and he was received on trial. He soon caused himself to be remarked by the correctness of his dress.[5] But what fixed attention on TALMA, was the part of _Charles Neuf_, which he plays in the tragedy of that name.[6] In the riots to which this piece gave rise in 1790, TALMA figured as a patriot. Having fallen out with the comedians who had behaved ill to him, and no longer placed him in any other parts than those of confidants, he was engaged at the new _Théâtre Français_ of the _Rue de Richelieu_, where it was proposed to him to perform the characters which pleased him best, that is, the best in each piece. Thus he was seen alternately personating young princes, heroes, and tyrants. TALMA is now reduced to those of the old stock. The characters he at present represents are _Cinna_ in the tragedy of that name by CORNEILLE, _Oreste_ in the _Andromaque_ of RACINE, _Néron_ in the _Britannicus_ of the same, _OEdipe_ in the tragedy of that name by VOLTAIRE, and _Faïel_ in _Gabrielle du Vergy_ by DU BELLOY, _Oreste_ in _Iphigénie en Tauride_ by GUIMOND DE LA TOUCHE, and _Ægisthe_ in the _Agamemnon_ of LE MERCIER. TALMA also plays many other parts, but, in these, he makes no great figure. He had a great aversion to old pieces, and as long as he preserved his sway at the theatre, very few, if any were performed. In fact, there are many in which he is below mediocrity. You will certainly expect that I should tell you what constitutes the talent of this performer. He is small in stature, thin in person, and rather ill-made; his arms and legs being bowed, which he takes care to conceal by the fulness of his garments. He has a fine eye, and his features are regular, but too delicate for the perspective of the theatre. He has long since adopted the antique head-dress,[7] and has contributed to bring it into fashion. He distinguished himself formerly in Paris by wearing clothes of a strange form. As an actor, he has no nobleness of manner, and not unfrequently his gestures are aukward. His deportment is always ungraceful, though he often endeavours to imitate the posture of the antique statues; but even then he presents only a caricature. His countenance has little or no expression, except in moments of rage or terror. In pourtraying the latter sentiment, all the faculties of his soul appear absorbed; yet, though his distraction seems complete, there is a sort of silliness blended with his stupor, which certain persons take for truth, and which is much more perceptible in the rest of his characters. In rage, he is a tiger mangling his prey, and sometimes you might believe that you heard that animal drawing his breath. TALMA has never expressed well a tender, generous, or noble sentiment. His soul is neither to be softened nor elevated; and, to produce effect, he must be in a terror or in a rage; but then he makes a great impression on the majority of the public. His utterance is slow, minced, and split into syllables. His voice is hollow; but, in moments of rage, it is strong, yet without being of a considerable volume. He is generally reproached with being deficient in sensibility: I think, however, that, by dint of labour, he might paint feeling; for I have heard him render delicate passages happily enough. He is accused here of having adopted the English style of acting, though, as far as my opinion goes, with little or no foundation. Be this as it may, he passed the early part of his youth in London, where his father resides, and follows the profession of a dentist. The son may now be about thirty-eight years of age. TALMA preserves the reputation of being a zealous partisan of the revolution; but I am confidently assured that he never injured any one, and held in horror the assassinations which have left an indelible stain on that event. He was intimately connected with the deputies, styled _Girondists_ or _Brisotins_, who perished on the scaffold, after their party was overcome, on the 31st of May, 1793, by that of the ferocious mountaineers. The latter warmly reproached TALMA with having, in the year 1792, after the retreat of the Prussians, given a _fête_ or grand supper to the famous DUMOURIEZ, with whom they were beginning to fall out, and whom they accused of treason for not having taken the king of Prussia prisoner. The hideous MARAT, I am told, went to call on that general at TALMA'S, where the company received him very cavalierly, and when he was gone, DUGAZON the actor, hot-headed revolutionist as he was, by way of pleasantry, pretended to purify the room by burning sugar in a chaffing-dish. All this amounted to more than was necessary for being condemned by the revolutionary tribunal; and TALMA, being detested by ROBESPIERRE, would, in all probability, have been delivered over to that tribunal, but for the protection of DAVID, the celebrated painter, who was concerting with him about changing the form of dress of the French people. During all the reign of terror, TALMA and his wife were in continual fear of the scaffold. LAFOND. TALMA reigned, and was in possession of the first cast of parts. Of these, he played whatever suited him, and rejected what he disliked, when about a year ago, there appeared in the same line a young actor of a rather tall and well-proportioned stature, and whom Nature had, besides, gifted with an agreeable countenance and a tolerably good voice. He had played in the provincial theatres; but, in order to overcome every obstacle which might be opposed to his _début_, he became a pupil of DUGAZON, an actor of comedy, and what is more singular, of one more frequently a buffoon than a comedian. The latter, however, is said to possess a knowledge of the style of playing of the actors who, thirty years ago, graced the French stage, and consequently may be capable of giving good advice. By means of this powerful protection, LAFOND got the better of every difficulty. This actor made his first appearance in the character of _Achille_ in the tragedy of _Iphigénie en Aulide_ by RACINE. He was not the Achilles of Homer, nor even that of the piece, or at best he represented him in miniature. However, his diction generally just, his acting, some grace, and, above all, the fatigue and _ennui_ which TALMA impressed on many of the spectators, procured this rival a decisive success. As is customary in such cases, the newspapers were divided in opinion. The majority declared for LAFOND, and none of the opposite side spoke unfavourably of him. It was not so with TALMA. Some judged him harshly, calling him a detestable actor, while others bestowed on him the epithet of _sublime_, which, at the present day, has scarcely any signification; so much is it lavished on the most indifferent performers. This instance proves the fact; for if TALMA has reached the _sublime_, it is _le sublime de la Halle_. These two rivals might live in peace; the parts which suit the one, being absolutely unfit for the talents of the other. TALMA requires only concentered rage, sentiments of hatred and vengeance, which certainly belong to tragedy, but which ought not to be expressed as if they came from the mouth of a low fellow, unworthy of figuring in an action of this kind; and LAFOND is little qualified for any other than graceful parts, bordering on knight-errantry or romance. His best character is _Achille_. I have also seen him perform, if not in a manner truly tragic, at least highly satisfactory, _Rodrigue_ in _Le Cid_ of CORNEILLE, and the part of _Tancrède_ in VOLTAIRE'S tragedy of that name. LAFOND obtains the preference over TALMA in the character of _Orosmane_ in the tragedy of _Zaïre_; a character which is the touchstone of an actor. Not that he excels in it. He has not a marked countenance, the dignity, the tone of authority, the energy, and the extreme sensibility which characterize this part. He is not the Sultan who commands. He is, if you please, a young _commis_ very amorous, a little jealous, who gets angry, and becomes good-humoured again; but at least he is not a ferocious being, as TALMA represents _Orosmane_, in moments of rage and passion, or an unfeeling one in those which require sensibility. LAFOND is reproached sometimes with a bombastic and inflated tone. Feeling that he is deficient in the necessary powers, he swells his voice, which is prejudicial to truth, and without truth, there is no theatrical illusion. Nature had intended him for the parts of young lovers, of which I shall presently speak. His features are too delicate, his countenance not sufficiently flexible, and his person bespeaks too little of the hero, for great characters. But when he first appeared, there was a vacancy in this cast of parts, and none in the other. Jeunes Premiers, _or parts of young Lovers_. ST. FAL, DAMAS, and DUPONT. ST. FAL. This performer, who is upwards of forty-five, has never had an exterior sufficiently striking to turn the brain of young princesses. Every thing in his person is common, and his acting is really grotesque. However, not long since he frequently obtained applause by a great affectation of sensibility and a stage-trick, which consists in uttering loud, harsh, and hoarse sounds after others faint and scarcely articulated. He has, besides, but a trivial or burlesque delivery, and no dignity, no grace in his deportment or gestures. DAMAS. He is much younger than ST. FAL, but his gait and carriage are vulgar. He is not deficient in warmth; but all this is spoiled by a manner the most common. He first played at the theatres on the _Boulevard_, and will never be able to forget the lessons he imbibed in that school. It is with him as with the rabbits of which BOILEAU makes mention, in one of his Satires where he describes a bad dinner, "-------- et qui, nés dans Paris, Sentaient encore le chou dont ils furent nourris." The _drame_ is the style in which DAMAS best succeeds. There is one in particular, _Le Lovelace Français_, where he personates an upholsterer of the _Rue St. Antoine_, who has just been cornuted by the young Duke of Richelieu. This part he performs with much truth, and _avec rondeur_, as the critics here express it, to signify plain-dealing. But DAMAS is no less ignoble in comedy than in tragedy. DUPONT. This young actor, who is of a very delicate constitution, has never had what we call great powers on the stage; and a complaint in his tongue has occasioned a great difficulty in his articulation. Without having a noble air, he has something distinguishing in his manner. His delivery is correct; but the defect of which I have spoken has rendered him disagreeable to the public, who manifest it to him rather rudely, though he has sometimes snatched from them great applause. After all the actors I have mentioned, come the confidants, a dull and stupid set, of whom one only deserves mention, not as an actor, but as an author. This is DUVAL. He has written that pretty comic opera, entitled _Le Prisonnier_, as well as _Maison à vendre_, and several _drames_, among which we must not forget _Le Lovelace Français, ou la Jeunesse du Duc de Richelieu_, the piece before-mentioned. _January 20, in continuation_. Next follow the daughters of Melpomene, or those heroines who make the most conspicuous figure in Tragedy. _Characters of Queens_. Mesdames RAUCOURT and VESTRIS. Mademoiselle RAUCOURT. Never did _début_ make more noise than that of this actress, who appeared for the first time on the French stage about thirty years ago, and might then be sixteen or seventeen years of age. She was a pupil of Mademoiselle CLAIRON, who had a numerous party, composed of Encyclopædists, French academicians, and almost all the literati of Paris. The zeal of her friends, the youth, tall stature, and person of the _débutante_ supplied the place of talent; and her instructress has recorded in her memoirs that all her labour was lost. The success, however, of Mademoiselle RAUCOURT was such, that there were, it is said, several persons squeezed to death at the door of the playhouse. What increased enthusiasm in favour of the young actress was, that a reputation for virtue was granted to her as great and as justly merited as that for talent. Her father declared in the public lobby that he would blow out her brains if he suspected her of having the smallest intrigue. He kept not his word. Besides, it is well known that his daughter always took care to conduct herself in such a manner as to set the foresight even of jealousy at defiance. Her _penchant_ not leaving her the resource to which women of her profession generally recur, and her expenses being considerable, her debts increased; and to avoid the pursuit of her creditors she took refuge in Germany with her tender friend, Mademoiselle SOUK, who has since been mistress to the late king of Prussia. They both travelled over that country, and a thousand reports are circulated to their shame; but the most disgraceful of these are said to be unfounded. The protection of the queen of France, who paid her debts repeatedly, at length restored her to the _Comédie Française_. Such inconsiderate conduct did no small injury to that unfortunate princess, whom I mention with concern on such an occasion. The stature of Mademoiselle RAUCOURT is colossal, and when she presents herself, she has a very imposing look. Her face, however, is not so noble; she has small eyes, and her features have not that flexibility necessary for expressing the movements of the passions. Her voice was formerly very full in the _medium_ of level-speaking; but it seemed like that of a man. When you heard it for the first time, you thought that, in impassioned sentences, she was going to thunder; but, on the contrary, she assumed a very extensive _falsetto_, which formed the most singular contrast with the dull sounds that had preceded it. That defect, perhaps, is somewhat less striking at the present day; but the voice of this actress is become hoarse, like that of persons who make a frequent use of strong liquors. The delivery of Mademoiselle RAUCOURT is, in general, just and correct; for she is allowed to have understanding; yet, as she neither has warmth nor sensibility, she produces scarcely any effect. Plaudits most frequently burst forth when she appears; but, though these are obtained, she never touches the feelings of the spectator, she never reaches his heart, even in the parts, where she has had the most vogue. That of _Médée_, in which she has begun to reestablish her declining reputation, was neither better felt nor better expressed. She was indebted for the success she obtained in it only to the magician's robe, to the wand, and to a stage-trick which consists in stooping and then raising herself to the utmost height at the moment when she apostrophizes the sun. In the scene of Medea with her children, a heart-rending and terrible scene, there was nothing but dryness and a total absence of every maternal feeling. The characters of queens, which Mademoiselle RAUCOURT performs, are the first cast of parts at the theatre. It consists of those of mothers and a few parts of enraged or impassioned lovers. In the works of CORNEILLE, the principal ones are _Cléopatre_ in _Rodogune_, and _Cornélie_ in the _Mort de Pompée_. In RACINE'S, the parts of _Athalie_ and of _Phèdre_ in the tragedies of the same name, of _Agrippine_ in _Britannicus_, of _Clitemnestre_ in _Iphigénie en Aulide_, and of _Roxane_ in _Bajazet_. In VOLTAIRE'S, those of _Mérope_ and _Sémiramis_; and, lastly, that of _Médée_ in the tragedy by LONGEPIERRE. Like all the performers belonging to the _Théâtre Français_, Mademoiselle RAUCOURT was imprisoned during the reign of terror. The patriots of that day bore her much ill-will, and it is asserted that Robespierre had a strong desire to send her to the guillotine. When she reappeared on the stage, the public compensated her sufferings, and to this circumstance she owes the rather equivocal reputation she has since enjoyed. Madame VESTRIS. Although she has been a very long time on the Parisian stage, this actress is celebrated only from the famous quarrel she had twenty years ago with Mademoiselle SAINVAL the elder. Through the powerful protection of the Marshal de DURAS,[8] her lover, she prevailed over her formidable rival, who, however, had on her side the public, and the sublimity of her talent. This quarrel arose from Madame VESTRIS wishing to wrest from Mademoiselle SAINVAL the parts for which she was engaged. A memoir, written by an indiscreet friend, in favour of the latter, which she scorned to disavow, and in which the court was not spared, caused her to be banished from the capital by a _lettre de cachet_. The public, informed of her exile, called loudly for Mademoiselle SAINVAL. No attention was paid to this by the higher powers, and the guard at the theatre was tripled, in order to insure to Madame VESTRIS the possibility of performing her part. Nevertheless, whenever she made her appearance, the public lavished on her hisses, groans, and imprecations. All this she braved with an effrontery, which occasioned them to be redoubled. But, as all commotions subside in time, Madame VESTRIS remained mistress of the stage; while Mademoiselle SAINVAL travelled over the provinces, where the injustice of the court towards her caused no less regret than the superiority of her talent excited admiration. Madame VESTRIS was rather handsome, and this explains the whole mystery. She had, above all, a most beautiful arm, and paid no small attention to her toilet. She delivers her parts with tolerable correctness, but her tone is heavy and common. The little warmth with which she animates her characters, is the production of an effort; for she neither possesses energy nor feeling. Her gestures correspond with her acting, and she has no dignity in her deportment. She seldom appears on the stage at present, which saves her from the mortification of being hissed. She is now old, and the political opinion of those who frequent most the theatres rouses them against her. Although the court had really committed itself to favour her, Madame VESTRIS was the first to betray her noble patrons. At the period of the revolution, she quitted the old _Comédie Française_, taking with her DUGAZON, her father, and TALMA, and founded the present theatre, styled _Théâtre de la République_. She was also followed by several authors; for not being able to conceal from herself the mediocrity of her talents, especially in such parts of the old plays as had been performed by other actresses in a manner far superior, she facilitated the representation of new pieces, in which she had not to fear any humiliating comparison. The principal of these authors were LA HARPE, DUCIS, and CHÉNIER. The last, who, besides, is famous as member of the National Convention and other Legislative Assemblies, composed the tragedy of _Charles Neuf_, in which Madame VESTRIS, playing the part of _Catherine de Médicis_, affected, I am told, to advance her under-lip, _à l'Autrichienne, in order to occasion comparisons injurious to the ill-fated Marie-Antoinette.[9] _Characters of Princesses._ Mesdames FLEURY, TALMA, BOURGOIN, and VOLNAIS. Mademoiselle FLEURY. She has no longer youth nor beauty, and her talents as an actress are much on a par with her personal attractions. She recites with judgment, but almost always with languor, and betrays a want of warmth. Besides, her powers have declined. However, she sometimes displays energetic flashes of a real tragic truth; but they are borrowed, and it is affirmed, not without foundation, that Mademoiselle SAINVAL the elder (who is still living) has been so obliging as to lend them to her. Madame TALMA. For this name she is indebted to a divorce, having snatched TALMA from his first wife, an elderly woman who had ruined herself for him, or whom he had ruined. She quitted her first husband, a dancing-master of the name of PETIT, to live under the more than friendly protection of Mademoiselle RAUCOURT.----Madame TALMA is not handsome, and is now on the wane. She plays tragedy, comedy, and the _drame_; but has no real talent, except in the last-mentioned line. In the first, she wants nobleness and energy. Her delivery is monotonous. It is said in her praise, that she has "_tears in her voice_." I believe that it seldom happens to her to have any in her eyes, and that this sensibility, for which some would give her credit, proceeds not from her heart. In comedy, she wishes to assume a cavalier and bold manner, brought into vogue by Mademoiselle CONTAT. This manner by no means suits Madame TALMA, who neither has elegance in her shape, nor animation in her features. In the _drame_, her defects disappear, and her good qualities remain. She then is really interesting, and her efforts to please are rewarded by the applause of the public. Mademoiselle BOURGOIN. With respect to this young lady, a powerful protection serves her in lieu of talent; for she is handsome. She persists in playing tragedy, which is not her fort. In comedy, she appears to advantage. Mademoiselle VOLNAIS. This is a very young girl. All she says is in a crying tone, and what is worse, she seems not to comprehend what she says. In the characters which she first represented she was very successful, but is no longer so at the present day. _Characters of Confidantes._ Mesdames SUIN and THÉNARD. There are two only who are deserving of notice. The one is Madame SUIN, who certainly justifies the character she bears of a woman of judgment; for she has the most just delivery of all the performers belonging to the _Théâtre Français_; but she is advanced in years, and the public often treat her with rudeness. The other confidante is Mademoiselle THÉNARD, who has played the parts of princesses at this theatre with a partial success. There are also other confidantes, whom it is not worth while to mention. I shall conclude this account of the tragedians belonging to the _Théâtre Français_, by observing that the revolution is said to have given a new turn to the mind and character of the French women; and the success which several actresses, at this day obtain in the dramatic career, in the line of tragedy, is quoted in support of this opinion. For a number of years past, as has been seen, Melpomene seemed to have placed the diadem on the head of Mademoiselle RAUCOURT, and this tragic queen would probably have grown gray under the garments of royalty, had not the revolution imparted to her sex a degree of energy sufficient for them to dispute her empire. Women here have seen so many instances of cruelty, during the last ten or twelve years, they have participated, in a manner more or less direct, in an order of things so replete with tragical events, that those among them who feel a _penchant_ for the stage, find themselves, in consequence, disposed to figure in tragedy.[10] [Footnote 1: _Fénélon_ is no longer performed. It is a very bad tragedy by _Chénier_.] [Footnote 2: There are players members of the National Institute. MONVEL belongs to the Class of Literature and the Fine Arts.] [Footnote 3: Notwithstanding the ill effects likely to result from such doctrine, far more dangerous to society than the poniards of a host of assassins, it appears that, when those actors called terrorists, or partisans of terror, were hunted down, MONVEL was not molested.] [Footnote 4: There are a great many enthusiastic admirers of his talent.] [Footnote 5: It is really to TALMA that the French are indebted for the exact truth of costume which is at this day to be admired on the theatres of Paris, especially in new pieces. An inhabitant of a country the most remote might believe himself in his native land; and were an ancient Greek or Roman to come to life again, he might imagine that the fashion of his day had experienced no alteration.] [Footnote 6: The subject of it is the massacre of St. Bartholomew's day.] [Footnote 7: He wears his hair cut short, and without powder.] [Footnote 8: One evening at the opera, M. DE DURAS authoritatively took possession of a box hired for the night by another person. The latter, dreading his power, but at the same time desirous to stigmatize him, said: "'Tis not he who took Minorca, 'tis not he who took this place nor that, the man of whom I complain, never took any thing in his life but my box at the opera!"] [Footnote 9: All the princes and princesses of the House of Austria have the under-lip very prominent.] [Footnote 10: The example of Mesdemoiselles BOURGOIN and VOLNAIS having proved that first-rate talents were not necessary for being received at the _Théâtre Français_, as a tragic queen or princess, the number of candidates rapidly increased. For several months past, the merit of these _débutantes_ has been the general concern of all Paris. Each had her instructor, and, of course, was carefully tutored for the occasion. M. LEGOUVÉ, the tragic writer, first brought forward on this stage Mademoiselle DUCHESNOIS, a girl about twenty, extremely ill-favoured by nature. DUGAZON, the actor, next introduced Madame XAVIER, a very handsome and elegant woman. Lastly, Mademoiselle RAUCOURT presented her pupil, Mademoiselle GEORGES WEIMER, a young girl of perfect beauty. Mademoiselle DUCHESNOIS played _Phèdre_, in RACINE'S tragedy of that name, seven successive times. She certainly displayed a semblance of sensibility, and, notwithstanding the disadvantages of her person, produced such an effect on the senses of the debauched Parisian youth by the libidinous manner she adopted in the scene where _Phèdre_ declares her unconquerable passion for her son-in-law _Hippolyte_, that her success was complete. What greater proof can be adduced of the vitiated taste of the male part of the audience? She also performed _Sémiramis_, _Didon_, and _Hermione_; but in the first two characters she betrayed her deficiency. The next who entered the lists was Madame XAVIER. On her _début_ in _Sémiramis_, she was favourably received by the public; but, afterwards, choosing to act _Hermione_, the partisans of Mademoiselle DUCHESNOIS assembled in such numbers as to constitute a decided majority in the theatre. Not content with interrupting Madame XAVIER, and hissing her off the stage, they waited for her at the door of the play-house, and loaded her with the grossest abuse and imprecations. Lastly appeared Mademoiselle GEORGES WEIMER. Warned by the disgraceful conduct of the _Duchesnistes_ (as they are called) towards Madame XAVIER, the comedians, by issuing a great number of _orders_, contrived to anticipate them, and obtain a majority, especially in the pit. Mademoiselle GEORGES made her _début_ in the character of _Clitemnestre_, and was well received. Her beauty excited enthusiasm, and effected a wonderful change in public opinion. After playing several parts in which Mademoiselle DUCHESNOIS had either failed, or was afraid to appear, she at last ventured to rival her in that of _Phèdre_. At the first representation of the piece, Mademoiselle GEORGES obtained only a partial success; but, at the second, she was more fortunate. The consequence, however, had well nigh proved truly tragic. The _Duchesnistes_ and _Georgistes_ had each taken their posts, the one on the right side of the pit; the other, on the left. When Mademoiselle GEORGES was called for after the performance, and came forward, in order to be applauded, the former party hissed her, when the latter falling on them, a general battle ensued. The guard was introduced to separate the combatants; but the _Duchesnistes_ were routed; and, being the aggressors, several of them were conducted to prison. The First Consul assisted at this representation; yet his presence had no effect whatever in restraining the violence of these dramatic factions. Since then, Mesdemoiselles DUCHESNOIS and GEORGES have both been received into the company of the _Théâtre Français_. Madame XAVIER has returned to the provinces.] LETTER LV. _Paris, January 22, 1802._ The observation with which I concluded my last letter, might explain why the votaries of Thalia gain so little augmentation to their number; while those of Melpomene are daily increasing. I shall now proceed to investigate the merits of the former, at the _Théâtre Français_. COMEDY. _Parts of noble Fathers._ VANHOVE and NAUDET. VANHOVE. This actor is rather more sufferable in comedy than tragedy; but in both he is very monotonous, and justifies the lines applied to him by a modern satirist, M. DESPAZE: "VANHOVE, _plus heureux, psalmodie à mon gré; Quel succès l'attendait, s'il eût été Curé!_" NAUDET. I have already said that the Reverend Father NAUDET, as he is called, played the parts of tyrants in tragedy. Never did tyrant appear so inoffensive. As well as VANHOVE, in comedy, he neither meets with censure nor applause from the public. _First parts, or principal lovers, in Comedy._ MOLÉ, FLEURY, and BAPTISTE the elder. MOLÉ. At this name I breathe. Perhaps you have imagined that ill-humour or caprice had till now guided my pen; but, could I praise the talent of MOLÉ as he deserves, you would renounce that opinion. MOLÉ made his _début_ at the _Comédie Française_ about forty-five years ago. He had some success; but as the Parisian public did not then become enthusiasts in favour of mere beginners, he was sent into the provinces to acquire practice. At the expiration of two or three years, he returned, and was received to play the parts of young lovers in tragedy and comedy. He had not all the nobleness requisite for the first-mentioned line of acting; but he had warmth and an exquisite sensibility. In a word, he maintained his ground by the side of Mademoiselle DUMESNIL and LEKAIN, two of the greatest tragedians that ever adorned the French stage. For a long time he was famous in the parts of _petits-maîtres_, in which he shone by his vivacity, levity, and grace. This actor was ambitious in his profession. Although applauded, and perhaps more so than LEKAIN, he was perfectly sensible that he produced not such great, such terrible effects; and he favoured the introduction of the _drame_, which is a mixture of tragedy and comedy. But those who most detest the whining style of this species of composition are compelled to acknowledge that MOLÉ was fascinating in the part of _St. Albin_, in DIDEROT'S _Père de Famille_. BELLECOURT being dead, MOLÉ took the first parts in comedy, with the exception of a few of those in which his predecessor excelled, whose greatest merit, I understand, was an air noble and imposing in the highest degree. As this was MOLÉ's greatest deficiency, he endeavoured to make amends for it by some perfection. He had no occasion to have recourse to art. It was sufficient for him to employ well the gifts lavished on him by nature. Though now verging on seventy, no one expresses love with more eloquence (for sounds too have theirs), or with more charm and fire than MOLÉ. In the fourth act of the _Misanthrope_, he ravishes and subdues the audience, when, after having overwhelmed _Célimène_ with reproaches, he paints to her the love with which he is inflamed. But this sentiment is not the only one in the expression of which MOLÉ is pre-eminently successful. In the _Philinte de Molière_, which also bears the title of _La Suite du Misanthrope_, and in which FABRE D'EGLANTINE has presented the contrast between an egotist and a man who sacrifices his interest to that of his fellow-creatures, MOLÉ vents all the indignation of virtue with a warmth, a truth, and even a nobleness which at this day belong only to himself. In short, he performs this part, in which the word _love_ is not once mentioned, with a perfection that he maintains from the first line to the last. In the fifth act of _Le Dissipateur_ (a comedy by DESTOUCHES), when he sees himself forsaken by his companions of pleasure, and thinks he is so by his mistress too, the expression of his grief is so natural, that you imagine you see the tears trickling from his eyes. In moments when he pictures love, his voice, which at times is somewhat harsh, is softened, lowers its key, and (if I may so express myself) goes in search of his heart, in order to draw from it greater flexibility and feeling. The effect which he produces is irresistible and universal. Throughout the house the most profound silence is rigidly, but sympathetically enforced; so great is the apprehension of losing a single monosyllable in these interesting moments, which always appear too short. To this silence succeed shouts of acclamation and bursts of applause. I never knew any performer command the like but Mademoiselle SAINVAL the elder. In no character which MOLÉ performs, does he ever fail to deserve applause; but there is one, above all, which has infinitely added to his reputation. It is that of the _Vieux Célibataire_ in the comedy of the same name by COLIN D'HARLEVILLE, which he personates with a good humoured frankness, an air of indolence and apathy, and at the same time a grace that will drive to despair any one who shall venture to take up this part after him. On seeing him in it, one can scarcely believe that he is the same man who renders with such warmth and feeling the part of _Alceste_ in the _Misanthrope_, and in the _Suite de Molière_; but MOLÉ, imbibing his talent from nature, is diversified like her. Caressed by the women, associating with the most amiable persons both of the court and the town, and, in short, idolized by the public, till the revolution, no performer led a more agreeable life than MOLÉ. However, he was not proscribed through it, and this was his fault. Not having been imprisoned like the other actors of the old _Comédie Française_, he had no share in their triumph on their reappearance, and it even required all his talent to maintain his ground; but, as it appears that no serious error could be laid to his charge, and as every thing is forgotten in the progress of events, he resumed part of his ascendency. I shall terminate this article or panegyric, call it which you please, by observing that whenever MOLÉ shall retire from the _Théâtre Français_, and his age precludes a contrary hope, the best stock-pieces can no longer be acted.[1] FLEURY. A man can no more be a comedian in spite of Thalia than a poet in spite of Minerva. Of this FLEURY affords a proof. This actor is indebted to the revolution for the reputation he now enjoys; but what is singular, it is not for having shewn himself the friend of that great political convulsion. Nature has done little for him. His appearance is common; his countenance, stern; his voice, hoarse; and his delivery, embarrassed; so much so that he speaks only by splitting his syllables. A stammering lover! MOLÉ, it is true, sometimes indulged in a sort of stammer, but it was suited to the moment, and not when he had to express the ardour of love. A lover, such as is represented to us in all French comedies, is a being highly favoured by Nature, and FLEURY shews him only as much neglected by her. A great deal of assurance and a habit of the stage, a warmth which proceeds from the head only, and a sort of art to disguise his defects, with him supply the place of talent. Although naturally very heavy, he strives to appear light and airy in the parts of _petits-maîtres_, and his great means of success consist in turning round on his heel. He was calculated for playing _grims_ (which I shall soon explain), and he proves this truth in the little comedy of _Les Deux Pages_, taken from the life of the king of Prussia, the great Frederic, of whose caricature he is the living model. He wished to play capital parts, the parts of MOLÉ, and he completely failed. He ventured to appear in the _Inconstant_, in which MOLÉ is captivating, and it was only to his disgrace. Being compelled to relinquish this absurd pretension, he now confines himself to new or secondary parts, in the former of which he has to dread no humiliating comparison, and the latter are not worthy to be mentioned. Friends within and without the theatre, and the spirit of party, have, however, brought FLEURY into fashion. He will, doubtless, preserve his vogue; for, in Paris, when a man has once got a name, he may dispense with talent: "_Des réputations; on ne sait pourquoi!" says GRESSET, the poet, in his comedy of _Le Méchant_, speaking of those which are acquired in the capital of France. BAPTISTE the elder. But for the revolution, he too would, in all probability, never have figured on the _Théâtre Français_. When all privileges were abolished, a theatre was opened in the _Rue Culture St. Catherine_ in Paris, and BAPTISTE was sent for from Rouen to perform the first parts. In _Robert Chef des Brigands_ and _La Mère Coupable_, two _drames_, the one almost as full of improbabilities as the other, he had great success; but in _Le Glorieux_ he acquired a reputation almost as gigantic as his stature, and as brilliant as his coat covered with spangles. This was the part in which BELLECOURT excelled, and which had been respected even by MOLÉ. The latter at length appeared in it; but irony, which is the basis of this character, was not his talent: yet MOLÉ having seen the court, and knowing in what manner noblemen conducted themselves, BAPTISTE had an opportunity of correcting himself by him in the part of _Le Glorieux_. The _Théâtre Français_ being in want of a performer for such characters, BAPTISTE was called in. Figure to yourself the person of Don Quixote, and you will have an idea of that of this actor, whose countenance, however, is unmeaning, and whose voice seems to issue from the mouth of a speaking-trumpet. Jeunes premiers, _or young lovers, in Comedy_. ST. FAL, DUPONT, DAMAS, and ARMAND. One might assemble what is best in these four actors, without making one perfect _lover_. I have already spoken of the first three, who, in comedy, have nearly the same defects as in tragedy. As for the fourth, he is young; but unfortunately for him, he has no other recommendation. _Characters of_ Grims, _or_ Rôles à manteau.[2] GRANDMÉNIL and CAUMONT. GRANDMÉNIL. This performer is, perhaps, the only one who has preserved what the French critics call _la tradition_, that is, a traditionary knowledge of the old school, or of the style in which players formerly acted, and especially in the time of MOLIÈRE. This would be an advantage for him, but for a defect which it is not in his power to remedy; for what avails justness of diction when a speaker can no longer make himself heard? And this is the case with GRANDMÉNIL. However, I would advise you to see him in the character of the _Avare_ (in MOLIÈRE'S comedy of that name) which suits him perfectly. By placing yourself near the stage, you might lose nothing of the truth and variety of his delivery, as well as of the play of his countenance, which is facilitated by his excessive meagreness, and to which his sharp black eyes give much vivacity. GRANDMÉNIL is member of the National Institute. CAUMONT. He possesses that in which his principal in this cast of parts is deficient, and little more. One continually sees the efforts he makes to be comic, which sufficiently announces that he is not naturally so. However, he has a sort of art, which consists in straining his acting a little without overcharging it. _Parts of Valets_. DUGAZON, DAZINCOURT, and LAROCHELLE. DUGAZON. One may say much good and much ill of this actor, and yet be perfectly correct. He has no small share of warmth and comic humour. He plays sometimes as if by inspiration; but more frequently too he charges his parts immoderately. PRÉVILLE, who is no common authority, said of DUGAZON: "How well he can play, if he is in the humour!" He is but seldom in the humour, and when he is requested not to overcharge his parts, 'tis then that he charges them most. Not that he is a spoiled child of the public; for they even treat him sometimes with severity. True it is that he is reproached for his conduct during the storms of the revolution. Although advanced in years, he became Aide-de-camp to SANTERRE.----SANTERRE! An execrable name, and almost generally execrated! Is then a mixture of horror and ridicule one of the characteristics of the revolution? And must a painful remembrance come to interrupt a recital which ought to recall cheerful ideas only? In his quality of Aide-de-camp to the Commandant of the national guard of Paris, DUGAZON was directed to superintend the interment of the unfortunate Lewis XVI, and in order to consume in an instant the body of that prince, whose pensioner he had been, he caused it to be placed in a bed of quick lime. No doubt, DUGAZON did no more than execute the orders he received; but he was to blame in putting himself in a situation to receive them. Not to return too abruptly to the tone which suits an article wherein I am speaking of actors playing comic parts, I shall relate a circumstance which had well nigh become tragic, in regard to DUGAZON, and which paints the temper of the time when it took place. Being an author as well as an actor, DUGAZON had written a little comedy, entitled _Le Modéré_. It was his intention to depress the quality indicated by the title. However, he was thought to have treated his subject ill, and, after all, to have made his _modéré_ an honest man. In consequence of this opinion, at the very moment when he was coming off the stage, after having personated that character in his piece, he was apprehended and taken to prison. DAZINCOURT. In no respect can the same reproaches be addressed to him as to DUGAZON; but as to what concerns the art, it may be said that if DUGAZON goes beyond the mark, DAZINCOURT falls short of it. PRÉVILLE said of the latter as a comedian: "Leaving pleasantry out of the question, DAZINCOURT is well enough." Nothing can be added to the opinion of that great master. LAROCHELLE. He has warmth, truth, and much comic humour; but is sometimes a little inclined to charge his parts. He has a good stage face. It appears that he can only perform parts not overlong, as his voice easily becomes hoarse. This is a misfortune both for himself and the public; for he really might make a good comedian. There are a few secondary actors in the comic line, such as BAPTISTE the younger, who performs in much too silly a manner his parts of simpletons, and one DUBLIN, who is the ostensible courier; not to speak of some others, whose parts are of little importance. _January 22, in continuation,_ _Principal female Characters, in Comedy._ Mesdemoiselles CONTAT, and MÉZERAY.--Madame TALMA. Mademoiselle CONTAT. This actress has really brought about a revolution in the theatre. Before her time, the essential requisites for the parts which she performs, were sensibility, decorum, nobleness, and dignity, even in diction, as well as in gestures, and deportment. Those qualities are not incompatible with the grace, the elegance of manners, and the playfulness also required by those characters, the principal object of which is to interest and please, which ought only to touch lightly on comic humour, and not be assimilated to that of chambermaids, as is done by Mademoiselle CONTAT. A great coquette, for instance, like _Célimène_ in the _Misanthrope_, ought not to be represented as a girl of the town, nor _Madame de Clainville_, in the pretty little comedy of _La Gageure_, as a shopkeeper's wife. The innovation made by Mademoiselle CONTAT was not passed over without remonstrance. Those strict judges, those conservators of rules, those arbiters of taste, in short, who had been long in the habit of frequenting the theatre, protested loudly against this new manner of playing the principal characters. "That is not becoming!" exclaimed they incessantly: which signified "that is not the truth!" But what could the feeble remonstrances of the old against the warm applause of the young? Mademoiselle CONTAT had a charming person, of which you may still be convinced. She was not then, as she is now, overloaded with _embonpoint_, and, though rather inclined to stoop, could avail herself of the advantages of an elevated stature. None of the resources of the toilet were neglected by her, and for a long time the most elegant women in Paris took the _ton_ for dress from Mademoiselle CONTAT. Besides, she always had a delicacy of discrimination in her delivery, and a varied sprightliness in the _minutiæ_ of her acting. Her voice, though sometimes rather shrill, is not deficient in agreeableness, but is easily modulated, except when it is necessary for her to express feeling. The inferiority of Mademoiselle CONTAT on this head is particularly remarkable when she plays with MOLÉ. In a very indifferent comedy, called _Le Jaloux sans amour_, at the conclusion of which the husband entreats his wife to pardon his faults, MOLÉ contrives to find accents so tender, so affecting; he envelops his voice, as it were, with sounds so soft, so mellow, and at the same time so delicate, that the audience, fearing to lose the most trifling intonation, dare not draw their breath. Mademoiselle CONTAT replies, and, although she has to express the same degree of feeling, the charm is broken. Being aware that the want of nobleness and sensibility was a great obstacle to her success, this actress endeavoured to insure it by performing characters which require not those two qualities. The first she selected for her purpose was _Susanne_ in the _Mariage de Figaro_. _Susanne_ is an elegant and artful chambermaid; and Mademoiselle CONTAT possessed every requisite for representing well the part. She had resigned the principal character in the piece to Mademoiselle SAINVAL the younger, an actress who was celebrated in tragedy, but had never before appeared in comedy. On this occasion, I saw Mademoiselle SAINVAL play that ungracious part with a truth, a grace, a nobleness, a dignity, a perfection in short, of which no idea had yet been entertained in Paris. Another part in which Mademoiselle CONTAT also rendered herself famous, is that of _Madame Evrard_, in the _Vieux Célibataire_. --_Madame Evrard_ is an imperious, cunning, and roguish housekeeper; and this actress has no difficulty in seizing the _ton_ suitable to such a character. This could not be done by one habituated to a more noble manner. Mademoiselle CONTAT has not followed the impulse of Nature, who intended her for the characters of _soubrettes_; but, when she made her _début_, there were in that cast of parts three or four women not deficient in merit, and it would have taken her a long time to make her way through them. The parts which Mademoiselle CONTAT plays at present with the greatest success are those in the pieces of MARIVAUX, which all bear a strong resemblance, and the nature of which she alters; for it is also one of her defects to change always the character drawn by the author. The reputation enjoyed by this actress is prodigious; and such a _critique_ as the one I am now writing would raise in Paris a general clamour. Her defects, it is true, are less prominent at this day, when hereditary rank is annihilated; and merit, more than manners, raises men to the highest stations. Besides, it is a presumption inherent in the Parisians to believe that they never can be mistaken. To reason with them on taste is useless; it is impossible to compel them to retract when they have once said "_Cela est charmant_." Before I take leave of Mademoiselle CONTAT, I shall observe that there exists in the _Théâtre Français_ a little league, of which she is the head. Besides herself, it is composed of Mademoiselle DEVIENNE, DAZINCOURT, and FLEURY. I am confidently assured that the choice and reception of pieces, and the _début_ of performers depend entirely on them. As none of them possess all the requisites for their several casts of parts, they take care to play no other than pieces of an equivocal kind, in which neither _bon ton_, nor _vis comica_ is to be found. They avoid, above all, those of MOLIÈRE and REGNARD, and are extremely fond of the comedies of MARIVAUX, in which masters and lackies express themselves and act much alike. The unison is then perfect, and some people call this _de l'ensemble_, as if any could result from such a confusion of parts of an opposite nature. As for new pieces, the members of the league must have nothing but _papillotage_ (as the French call it), interspersed with allusions to their own talent, which the public never fail to applaud. When an author has inserted such compliments in his piece, he is sure of its being received, but not always of its being successful; for when the ground is bad, the tissue is good for nothing. Mademoiselle MÉZERAY. She is of the school of Mademoiselle CONTAT, whence have issued only feeble pupils. But she is very pretty, and has the finest eyes imaginable. She plays the parts of young coquettes, in which her principal dares no longer appear. Without being vulgar in her manner, one cannot say that she has dignity. As for sensibility, she expresses it still less than Mademoiselle CONTAT. However, the absence of this sentiment is a defect which is said to be now common among the French. Indeed, if it be true that they are fickle, and this few will deny, the feeling they possess cannot be lasting. Madame TALMA. I have already spoken of her merits as a comic actress, when I mentioned her as a tragedian. _Parts of young Lovers._ Mesdemoiselles MARS, BOURGOIN, and GROS. Mademoiselle MARS. She delivers in an ingenuous manner innocent parts, and those of lovers. She has modest graces, an interesting countenance, and appears exceedingly handsome on the stage. But she will never be a true actress. Mademoiselle BOURGOIN. She has some disposition for comedy, which she neglects, and has none for tragedy, in which she is ambitious to figure. I have already alluded to her beauty, which is that of a pretty _grisette_. Mademoiselle GROS. She is the pupil of DUGAZON, and made her _début_ in tragedy. The newspaper-writers transformed her into Melpomene, yet so rapid was her decline, that presently she was scarcely more than a waiting woman to Thalia. Characters, _or foolish Mothers_. Mesdemoiselles LACHAISSAIGNE and THÉNARD. The latter of these titles explains the former. In fact, this cast of parts consists of _characters_, that is, foolish or crabbed old women, antiquated dowagers in love, &c. Commonly, these parts are taken up by actresses grown too old for playing _soubrettes_; but to perform them well, requires no trifling share of comic humour; for, in general, they are charged with it. At the present day, this department may be considered as vacant. Mademoiselle LACHAISSAIGNE, who is at the head of it, is very old, and never had the requisites for performing in it to advantage. Mademoiselle THÉNARD begins to _double_ her in this line of acting, but in a manner neither more sprightly nor more captivating. _Parts of_ Soubrettes _or Chambermaids_. Mesdemoiselles DEVIENNE and DESBROSSES. Mademoiselle DEVIENNE. If Mademoiselle CONTAT changes the principal characters in comedy into those of chambermaids, Mademoiselle DEVIENNE does the contrary, and from the same motive, namely, because she is deficient in the requisites for her cast of parts, such as warmth, comic truth, and vivacity. Yet, while she assumes the airs of a fine lady, she takes care to dwell on the slightest _équivoque_; so that what would be no more than gay in the mouth of another woman, in hers becomes indecent. As she is a mannerist in her acting, some think it perfect, and they say too that she is charming. However, she must have been very handsome. Mademoiselle DESBROSSES. The public say nothing of her, and I think this is all she can wish for. * * * * * I have now passed in review before you those who are charged to display to advantage the dramatic riches bequeathed to the French nation by CORNEILLE, RACINE, MOLIÈRE, CRÉBILLON, VOLTAIRE, REGNARD, &c. &c. &c. If it be impossible to squander them, at least they may at present be considered as no more than a buried treasure. Although the _chefs d'oeuvre_ of those masters of the stage are still frequently represented, and the public even appear to see them with greater pleasure than new pieces, they no longer communicate that electric fire which inflames genius, and (if I may use the expression) renders it productive. A great man can, it is true, create every thing himself; but there are minds which require an impulse to be set in motion. Without a CORNEILLE, perhaps the French nation would not have had a RACINE. Formerly, people went to the _Théâtre Français_ in order to hear, as it were, a continual course of eloquence, elocution, and pronunciation. It even had the advantage over the pulpit and the bar, where vivacity of expression was prohibited or restricted. Many a sacred or profane orator came hither, either privately or publicly, to study the art by which great actors, at pleasure, worked on the feelings of the audience, and charmed their very soul. It was, above all, at the _Théâtre Français_ that foreigners might have learned to pronounce well the French language. The audience shuddered at the smallest fault of pronunciation committed by a performer, and a thousand voices instantly corrected him. At the present day, the comedians insist that it belongs to them alone to form rules on this point, and they now and then seem to vie with each other in despising those already established. The audience being perhaps too indulgent, they stand uncorrected. Whether or not the _Théâtre Français_ will recover its former fame, is a question which Time alone can determine. Undoubtedly, many persons of a true taste and an experienced ear have disappeared, and no one now seems inclined to say to the performers: "That is the point which you must attain, and at which you must stop, if you wish not to appear deficient, or to overact your part." But the fact is, they are without a good model, and the spectators, in general, are strangers to the _minutiæ/i> of dramatic excellence. In tragedy, indeed, I am inclined to think that there never existed at the _Théâtre Français_ such a deficiency of superior talents. When LEKAIN rose into fame, there were not, I have been told, any male performers who went as far as himself, though several possessed separately the qualifications necessary for that line. However, there was Mademoiselle DUMESNIL, a pupil of nature, from whom he might learn to express all the passions; while from Mademoiselle CLAIRON he might snatch all the secrets of art. As for Comedy, it is almost in as desperate a situation. The _ton_ of society and that of comedians may have a reciprocal influence, and the revolution having tended to degrade the performance of the latter, the consequences may recoil on the former. But here I must stop.--I shall only add that it is not to the revolution that the decline of the art, either in tragedy or comedy, is to be imputed. It is, I understand, owing to intrigue, which has, for a long time past, introduced pitiful performers on the stage of the _Théâtre Français_, and to a multiplicity of other causes which it would be too tedious to discuss, or even to mention. Notwithstanding the encomiums daily lavished on the performers by the venal pen of newspaper writers, the truth is well known here on this subject. Endeavours are made by the government to repair the mischief by forming pupils; but how are they to be formed without good masters or good models? [Footnote 1: It must grieve every admirer of worth and talent to hear that MOLÉ is now no more. Not long since he paid the debt of nature. As an actor, it is more than probable that "we ne'er shall look on his like again."] [Footnote 2: The word _Grim_, in French theatrical language, is probably derived from _grimace_, and the expression of _Rôles à manteau_ arises from the personages which they represent being old men, who generally appear on the stage with a cloak.] LETTER LVI. _Paris, January 24, 1802._ Among the customs introduced here since the revolution, that of women appearing in public in male attire is very prevalent. The more the Police endeavours to put a stop to this extravagant whim, the more some females seek excuses for persisting in it: the one makes a pretext of business which obliges her to travel frequently, and thinks she is authorized to wear men's clothes as being more convenient on a journey; another, of truly-elegant form, dresses herself in this manner, because she wishes to attract more notice by singularity, without reflecting that, in laying aside her proper garb, she loses those feminine graces, the all-seductive accompaniments of beauty. Formerly, indeed, nothing could tend more to disguise the real shape of a woman than the COSTUME OF THE FRENCH LADIES. A head-dress, rising upwards of half a yard in height, seemed to place her face near the middle of her body; her stomach was compressed into a stiff case of whalebone, which checked respiration, and deprived her almost of the power of eating; while a pair of cumbersome hoops, placed on her hips, gave to her petticoats the amplitude of a small elliptical, inflated balloon. Under these strange accoutrements, it would, at first sight, almost have puzzled BUFFON himself to decide in what species such a female animal should be classed. However, this is no longer an enigma. With the parade of a court, all etiquette of dress disappeared. Divested of their uncouth and unbecoming habiliments, the women presently adopted a style of toilet not only more advantageous to the display of their charms, but also more analogous to modern manners. No sooner was France proclaimed a republic, than the annals of republican antiquity were ransacked for models of female attire: the Roman tunic and Greek _cothurnus_ soon adorned the shoulders of the Parisian _élégantes_; and every antique statue or picture, relating to those periods of history, was, in some shape or another, rendered tributary to the ornament of their person. This revolution in their dress has evidently tended to strengthen their constitution, and give them a pectoral _embonpoint_, very agreeable, no doubt, to the amateur of female proportion, but the too open exposure of which cannot, in a moral point of view, be altogether approved. These treasures are, in consequence, now as plentiful as they were before uncommon. You can scarcely move a step in Paris without seeing something of this kind to exercise your admiration. Many of those domains of love, which, under the old-fashioned dress, would have been considered as a flat country, now present, through a transparent crape, the perfect rotundity of two sweetly-rising hillocks. As prisoners, wan and disfigured by confinement, recover their health and fulness on being restored to liberty, so has the bosom of the Parisian belles, released from the busk and corset, experienced a salutary expansion. In a political light, this must afford no small satisfaction to him who takes an interest in the physical improvement of the human species, as it tends to qualify them better for that maternal office, dictated by Nature, and which, in this country, has too long and too frequently been intrusted to the uncertain discharge of a mercenary hireling. Another advantage too arises from the established fashion. Thanks to the ease of their dress, the French ladies can now satisfy all the capacity of their appetite. Nothing prevents the stomach from performing its functions; nothing paralyzes the spring of that essential organ. Nor, indeed, can they be reproached with fastidiousness on that score. From the soup to the desert, they are not one moment idle: they eat of every thing on the table, and drink in due proportion. Not that I would by any means insinuate that they drink more than is necessary or proper. On the contrary, no women on earth are more temperate, in this respect, than the French; they, for the most part, mix water even with their weakest wine; but they also swallow two or three glasses of _vin de dessert_, without making an affected grimace, and what is better, they eat at this rate without any ill consequence, Now, a good appetite and good digestion must strengthen health, and, in general, tend to produce pectoral _embonpoint_. In this capital, you no longer find among the fair sex those over-delicate constitutions, whose artificial existence could be maintained only by salts, essences, and distilled waters. Charms as fresh as those of Hebe, beauties which might rival the feminine softness of those of Venus, while they bespeak the vigour of Diana, and the bloom of Hygëia, are the advantages which distinguish many of the Parisian belles of the present day, and for which they are, in a great measure, indebted to the freedom they enjoy under the antique costume. In no part of the world, perhaps, do women pay a more rigid attention to cleanliness in their person than in Paris. The frequent use of the tepid bath, and of every thing tending to preserve the beauty of their fine forms, employ their constant solicitude. So much care is not thrown away. No where, I believe, are women now to be seen more uniformly healthy, no where do they possess more the art of assisting nature; no where, in a word, are they better skilled in concealing and repairing the ravages of Time, not so much by the use of cosmetics, as by the tasteful manner in which they vary the decoration of their person. LETTER LVII. _Paris, January 25, 1802._ I have already observed that the general effervescence to which the revolution gave birth, soon extended to the seminaries of learning. The alarm-bell resounded even in the most silent of those retreats. Bands of insurgents, intermixed with women, children, and men of every condition, came each moment to interrupt the studies, and, forcing the students to range themselves under their filthy banner, presented to them the spectacle of every excess. It required not all this violence to disorganize institutions already become antiquated,[1] and few of which any longer enjoyed much consideration in the public opinion. The colleges and universities were deserted, and their exercises ceased. Not long after, they were suppressed. The only establishment of this description which has survived the storms of the revolution, and which is no less important from its utility than extensive in its object, is the COLLÈGE DE FRANCE. It neither owed this exemption to its ancient celebrity, nor to the talents of its professors; but having no rich collections which could attract notice, no particular estates which could tempt cupidity, it was merely forgotten by the revolutionists, and their ignorance insured its preservation. The _Collège de France_ is, at the present day, in this country, and perhaps in the rest of Europe, the only establishment where every branch of human knowledge is taught in its fullest extent. The object of this institution is to spread the most elevated notions of the sciences, to maintain and pave the way to the progress of literature, either by preserving the taste and purity of the ancient authors, or by exhibiting the order, lustre, and richness of the modern. Its duty is to be continually at the head of all the establishments of public instruction, in order to guide them, lead them on, and, as it were, light them with the torch of knowledge. This college, which is situated in the _Place de Cambray_, _Rue St. Jacques_, was founded by Francis I. That monarch, distinguished from all cotemporaries by his genius, amiableness, and magnificence, saw in literature the source of the glory of princes, and of the civilization of the people. He loved and honoured it, not only in the writings of the learned, but in the learned themselves, whom he called about his person, at the same time loading them with encouragement and favours. It is singular that those times, so rude in many respects, were, nevertheless, productive of sentiments the most delicate and noble. Truth never shuns princes who welcome it. Francis I was not suffered to remain ignorant of the deplorable state in which literature then was in France, and, though very young, he disdained not this information. Nothing, in fact, could approach nearer to barbarism. The impulse Charlemagne had given to study was checked. The torches he had lighted were on the point of being extinguished. That famous university which he had created had fallen into decline. A prey to all the cavils of pedantry, it substituted dispute and quibble to true philosophy. Nothing was any longer talked of but the _five universals_, _substance_, and _accident_. All the fury of argument was manifested to know whether those were simple figures, or beings really existing, all things equally useful to the revival of knowledge and the happiness of mankind. The Hebrew and Greek tongues were scarcely, if at all, known; the living languages, little cultivated; Latin itself, then almost common, was taught in the most rude and imperfect manner. In short, the most learned body of the State had fallen into the most profound ignorance: a striking example of the necessity of renewing continually and maintaining the life of those bodies employed in instruction. I am not speaking of the sciences, then entirely unknown. The languages were every thing at this period, on account of their connexion with religion. The small number of men of merit whom the bad taste of the age had not reached, were striving to restore to literature its lustre, and to men's minds their true direction; but, in order to revive the taste for good studies, it was necessary to create a new establishment for public instruction, which should be sufficiently extensive for acquiring a great influence. It was necessary to assemble men the most celebrated for their talent and reputation, in order that, being thus placed in full view, and presented to public attention, they might rectify the minds of men by their authority, as well as enlighten them by their knowledge. This undertaking, difficult in itself, became much less so through the circumstances which then existed. Taste seemed to have taken refuge at the court, and the king easily yielded to the reasons of the learned who approached him; but no one took a greater share in this project than the celebrated Erasmus. Remote from it as he was, he accelerated its execution by the disinterested praises which he lavished on it. The king sent to invite him, in the most flattering terms, to take the direction of it and to settle in France; but Erasmus, jealous of liberty, retained besides by the gratitude he owed to Charles V, and by the care he bestowed on the College of Louvain which he had founded, refused this task, equally honourable and useful. He manifested not the less, in his letters, the joy he felt to see studies re-established by the only means which could reanimate them. It is pleasing to the true friends of the sciences to find among those who cultivate them similar traits of generosity and nobleness. At length peace having restored to France repose and the means of repairing her losses, the king gave himself up without reserve to the desire he had of making the sciences flourish, and realized the grand project of public instruction which had for a long time occupied his mind. The new college took the name of _Collège Royal_. It had professors for the Hebrew and Greek tongues, and some even for the mathematics, philosophy, medicine, and the living languages. The formation of the _Collège Royal_ gave great displeasure to the University. After having held so long without a rival the sceptre of the sciences and literature, it was grating to its members to relinquish it. They could ill bear to see set above it an establishment evidently intended to direct and guide it. Self-love offended seldom forgives, especially when it is animated by the _esprit de corps_. The University depreciated the new college, and endeavoured to fetter it in a thousand ways. At last, those dark intrigues being constantly smothered by the applause which the professors received, the University finished by bringing them before a court of justice. From, envy to persecution there is but one step, and that step was soon taken. Religion served as a pretext and a cloak for this accusation. It was affirmed that the new professors could not, without danger to the faith, explain the Hebrew and Greek tongues, if they had not been presented to the University to be examined by it, and received from it their mission. To this it was answered, that if the theologians of the University understood Greek and Hebrew, it must be easy for them to denounce the passages in which the new professors had erred, and that if, on the contrary, they did not understand those languages, they ought not to pretend to judge those who taught them. After long debates, things were left in the state in which they were before the trial. Each party continued quietly its lessons, and, as it almost always happens in such cases, reason ended by having its due weight: true it is that it was then supported by royal authority. The _Collège de France_ has not since ceased to make an increasing progress. It even had the valuable advantage of reforming itself successively, and of following new ideas, the necessary result of its constitution and of the lustre that has always surrounded it; two causes which have occasioned its chairs to be sought by the most celebrated men of every description. It is this successive reform which constitutes the distinctive character of the _Collège de France_, and which has always enabled it to fulfil its real object. Thus, to quote but one example. The chair of Greek philosophy was, in the beginning, intended to make known the writings of the ancient philosophers on the nature of things and the organization of the universe. These were, at that time, the only repositories of human knowledge for mathematics and physics; but, in proportion as the sciences, more advanced, substituted rational theories for hazardous conjectures, the modern discoveries of astronomy were taught, together with the writings of the ancients. The object of this chair, which at the present day bears the name of general physics and mathematics, is to disseminate the most elevated notions of mechanics and the theory of the system of the world. The works taught by its occupier are analytical mechanics and celestial mechanics, that is, those works which form the limits of our knowledge for mathematical analysis, and consequently those of which it is most important to increase the very small number of readers. By a consequence of that spirit of amelioration which animates this College, some time before the revolution, a chair and a cabinet of experimental physics were added to it. As for the natural sciences, which are taught here with much depth and detail in several establishments, they have, in the _Collège de France_, a sort of regulator which directs them, as it were, by their generalities. It is, in fact, to this only that an establishment which, by its nature, contains no collection, ought to attach itself, and the philosophy of the sciences, the result and completion of their study, here constitutes the object of all the lectures. Thus the improvements which the sciences have successively experienced, have always been spread by the instruction of the _Collège Royal_; and among the professors who have occupied its chairs, none can be quoted who have been strangers to their progress. The revolution, which overthrew in France the ancient universities, suspended for some time the exercises of this establishment; but, under the name of _Collège de France_, it has since resumed a new lustre. It then found itself compelled to new efforts, in order to maintain its place among the scientific institutions, which have emulously risen in every branch of human knowledge. Nevertheless, those different sciences, even natural history, and the curative art, taught with so much perfection in private establishments, have hence derived great advantages, and here it is that public instruction comes at once to be resumed, investigated, and extended. The present government appears to be perfectly sensible of the importance of such an establishment. The enlightened men, the celebrated _savans_, who approach it, have pointed out in the _Collège de France_ a _normal_ school, completely formed, and which unites to the extent of its object the ever-powerful ascendant of seniority. The similarity between the circumstances in which this institution is at the present day and those when it was founded, affords the most certain hope of its progress being maintained and accelerated. This is what appears to me the most interesting in the history of this ancient college. I say nothing of its present professors; their zeal is proved by their assiduous and uninterrupted lessons; their merit is before the judgment of the public; and as for their names, these are indifferent to the results of their labours. If any other motive than that of the interest of the sciences were blended with the information I now communicate, I should not think that, in this letter, I was fulfilling the object of your wishes. P.S. It may not be useless to mention that no students are attached to the _Collège de France_. The lectures are public; and every one who is desirous of improving his mind in any branch of science, may attend them free of expense or trouble. It is impossible for the friend of learning to withhold his admiration from so noble an institution. What, in fact, can be more liberal than this gratuitous diffusion of knowledge? [Footnote 1: Whatever sentiment may have been preserved respecting the ancient University of Paris, every impartial person must acknowledge that it was several centuries in arrear in regard to every thing which concerns the Arts and Sciences. Peripatetic, when the learned had, with Descartes, renounced the philosophy of Aristotle, it became Cartesian, when they were Newtonians. Such is the too general custom of bodies, engaged in instruction, who make no discoveries. Invested at their formation with great influence over scientific opinions, because they are composed of the best informed men of the day, they wish constantly to preserve those advantages. They with reluctance suffer that there should be formed, elsewhere than in their own bosom, new opinions which might balance theirs; and if the progress of the sciences at last obliges them to abandon their doctrine, they never adopt the most modern theories, were they, in other respects, preferable; but embrace those which existed for some time anterior to them, and which they themselves had before combated. This inertness of bodies, employed in instruction, is an unavoidable evil; because it is the effect of self-love, the most invariable of passions.] LETTER LVIII. _Paris, January 17, 1802._ If we do not consider the _Opera Buffa_ as a national theatre, then the next in rank, after the Grand French Opera and the _Théâtre Français_, is the THÉÂTRE DE L'OPÉRA COMIQUE. This house, which is situated in the _Rue Feydeau_, near the _Rue de la Loi_, was opened for the first time in January 1791. The entrance to it is by a circular vestibule, externally decorated with caryatides, and sufficiently spacious for one carriage to enter while another drives off by an adjoining outlet. At the end of this vestibule is a long gallery, bordered by shops on both sides, which forms a second entrance by the _Rue Filles St. Thomas_. The interior form of this theatre is a semi-circle, extended in a right line at its extremities, which places the orchestra in a central position, and renders the house one of the fittest in Paris for a concert. Two rows of Gothic pillars, one above the other, occupy nearly all its height; and though it contains eight tiers of boxes, five only are in sight. The same distribution repeated in regard to the stage-boxes, presents a very projecting pavilion, which seems to support a large triumphal arch. However grand this style of architecture may be in appearance, in effect it renders the seats very inconvenient to two-thirds of the spectators. The ornaments consist of a strange mixture of the Greek, Gothic, and Oriental. The house is said to contain two thousand persons. In the beginning, this theatre united the performers of the original _Opéra Buffa_ and some of those belonging to the old French Comic Opera, who played alternately. The former retiring from Paris in 1792, the latter for some time attracted full houses by the excellence of their style of singing, tasteful decorations, and one of the best composed orchestras in the capital. Since then, it has experienced the changes and vicissitudes attendant on the revolution. At present, the company is composed of a selection from the performers of the _Opéra Comique_ of the _Théâtre Favart_ (formerly known by the name of _Théâtre Italien_), and those of the lyric theatre of which I am now speaking. This junction has not long been effected. Previously to its taking place, the _Comédie Italienne_, where French comic operas only were represented, was still constituted as it was under the old _régime_, of which it was remarked as being the sole remnant. Formerly, the French Comic Opera was very rich in stock-pieces, chiefly written by FAVART, SÉDAINE, MARMONTEL, HÈLE,[1] MONVEL, MARSOLIER, HOFFMAN, and others. Their productions were set to music by GRÉTRY, MONSIGNY, PHILIDOR, DÉSAÏDES, DALEYRAC, &c. These pieces are now seldom played, the music of them being antiquated; though for energy and truth of expression some of it surpasses that of many of the more modern compositions. The new authors are little known. The composers of the music are MÉHUL, DALEYRAC before-mentioned, BOYELDIEU, TARCHI, &c. The modern pieces the most in vogue and most attractive are _Le Prisonnier_, _l'Opéra Comique_, a piece so called, _Le Calife de Bagdad_, _Maison à vendre_, _D'Auberge en Auberge_, and a few others of the same description. All these are really pleasing comedies. The _Théâtre Feydeau_ itself was also in possession of a great number of stock-pieces, among which were some in the style of the Grand French Opera. A considerable change seems to have taken place, as the latter are now no longer represented. In surveying the _Opéra Comique_, one would imagine that, in lieu of one company, two separate ones had been formed to play in the same theatre. The former is the weaker in number, but the stronger in talent. The latter, though weaker, has some good performers, in the long list of those of whom it is composed; but, in general, they are either no longer in their pristine lustre, or have not yet attained a competent degree of perfection. Seldom are the two companies mixed. Pieces in the style of the modern _Opéra Comique_, in which easy mirth is replaced by quaint jests, are played exclusively by the former. They draw crowded houses, as the public are extremely partial to them. Lyric _drames_ are abandoned to the latter, and the old stock-pieces to such of the performers as choose to act in them for a small number of spectators who are so obliging as to enter the house with _orders_ or _free_ admission. OF all the repositories of old pieces that of the _Comédie Italienne_ is the one which is the most entirely neglected. This is rather the fault of the actors than that of the public. There are many old productions which would attract a crowd, were the best performers to play them; but who likes to pay for seeing a master-piece murdered? --We now come to speak of the qualifications of these performers. _Principal Characters and parts of Lovers._ Counter-Tenors. ELLEVIOU, GAVAUDAN, PHILIPPE, and GAVEAUX. ELLEVIOU. He is the first singer at the _Opéra Comique_. Nor will this opinion be contradicted by any of the elegant and pretty women who, slaves to the custom of shewing themselves at the first representation of a new piece, never begin to applaud till ELLEVIOU makes his appearance. This performer is, in fact, gifted with a handsome person, an easy manner, an expressive countenance, and a voice, which, when he modulates it, is charming. His delivery is tolerably good, and in some parts, he is not deficient in warmth and feeling. As a singer, ELLEVIOU leaves behind all those destined to second him. After having begun by singing bass, he has taken the parts of counter-tenor, for which, however, his voice is not suited, but he makes up for this deficiency by a very flexible tenor. He displays much art and a very modern taste. His method too is good; he makes no improper use of his facility by lavishing graces, but his manner is too uniform. This is the greatest objection that can be made to him, in the double capacity of singer and comedian. GAVAUDAN. This young actor, with a well-proportioned stature and a very agreeable countenance, ranks, at the _Opéra Comique_, next in merit to ELLEVIOU. His voice, as a counter-tenor, is not very brilliant, nor his means extensive; but his taste is good, and his method that of the modern school. As a player, he has a certain repution in lyric _drames_, and especially in those melancholy parts, the characteristic of which is a concentrated passion. He imitates TALMA, and, like him, "outsteps the modesty of Nature." PHILIPPE. His reputation was begun by the advantages of his person, and he consolidated it by his performance in the line of knight-errantry. _Richard, coeur de lion_, was the part which secured him the public favour. His voice is still an agreeable counter-tenor; but he declines through age. As an actor, he is deficient in nobleness, and his gestures are not dignified; but, being used to the stage, and possessing some feeling, he often produces happy effects. GAVEAUX. He has been a good singer in his youth, and is a very agreeable composer. He always acquits himself of any part he undertakes, if not in a brilliant manner, at least with credit. Two of his musical productions are stock-pieces, and well worth seeing. _L'Amour Filial_ is a happy imitation of the Italian school, and _Sophie et Moncars_ is always heard with pleasure. _Characters of Fathers, Valets, or Comic Parts_. Bass-voices. CHENARD, MARTIN, RÉZICOURT, JULIET, and MOREAU. CHENARD. Owing to an advantageous person, this actor once stood as high in the favour of the ladies as ELLEVIOU does at present. He still possesses a fine voice, as a bass, but it is not very flexible. In the part of _Monsieur de la France_, in _l'Épreuve Villageoise_, he established his fame as a singer; yet his style is not sufficiently modelled after the modern taste, which is the Italian. As an actor, he is very useful; but, having always been treated by the public like a spoiled child, he is too apt to introduce his own sallies into his parts, which he sometimes charges with vulgarisms of the lowest description. MARTIN. In the parts of valets, MARTIN cannot be better placed than near ELLEVIOU, whom he seconds with skill and taste. This has led the composers here to an innovation. Formerly, duets in the graceful style between men were seldom heard; but the voices of ELLEVIOU and MARTIN being perfectly adapted to each other, almost all the composers have written for them duets in which the _cantabile_ prevails, and concerted cadences are very conspicuous. This, I understand, is unprecedented in Paris. MARTIN made his _début_ in 1783 at the _Théâtre de Monsieur_ in the company of Italian buffoons. In this school he acquired that taste which he has since propagated with zeal, if not with success. At the present day, he is accused of loading his singing with superfluous embellishments, or of placing them without judgment in passages or situations where they are ill-suited. However, in _morceaux d'ensemble_ he is quite at home, and, of course, shews himself to great advantage. As an actor, he is by no means remarkable, though he sometimes displays intelligence. RÉZICOURT. He may justly be called a good comedian, without examining his merits as a singer. JULIET. In the newspapers, this performer is called _inimitable_. His manner is his own; yet, perhaps, it would be very dangerous to advise any one to imitate it. He is not deficient in intelligence, and has the habit of the stage; but his first quality is to be extremely natural, particularly in the parts of Peasants, which he performs with much truth. He seems to be born a player, and though he is not a musician, he always sings in tune and in time. MOREAU. An agreeable person, open countenance, animation, an ingenuous manner, and an unerring memory. He is very well placed in young Peasants, such as _Le Bon André_ and _Lubin_ of FAVART, as well as in the parts of Valets. _Mixed characters of every sort_.--Tenors. SOLIÉ, and ST. AUBIN. SOLIÉ. He first appeared in the parts of young lovers with a tall stature and a handsome face, but neither of them being fashioned for such characters, he met with no applause. His voice was not very brilliant, but his method of singing was replete with grace and taste. For this, however, he obtained no credit; the Parisian public not being yet accustomed to the modern or Italian style. CLAIRVAL, the first singer at the old _Opéra Comique_, happening to be taken suddenly ill one night, SOLIÉ undertook his part at a moment's warning. Success crowned his temerity, and from that moment his merit was appreciated. His best character is _Micheli_ in _Les deux Savoyards_, in which he established his reputation. In the pieces of which MÉHUL has composed the music, he shines by the finished manner in which he executes it; the _cantabile_ is his fort. As an actor, his declamation is not natural, and his deportment is too much that of a mannerist. However, these defects are compensated by his singing. To the music of others, he does every justice, and that which he composes himself is extremely agreeable. ST. AUBIN. This performer once had a good voice as a counter-tenor; but as he now plays no other than secondary parts, one might imagine that he is retained at the theatre only in consideration of his wife's talents. _Caricatures and Simpletons_. DOZAINVILLE, and LESAGE. DOZAINVILLE. The person of this actor is very favourable for caricatures and the characters of simpletons, which he fills. The meagreness of his countenance renders it very flexible; but not unfrequently he carries this flexibility to grimace. As a singer, he must not be mentioned. LESAGE. He is a musician, but has little voice. He performs the parts of simple peasants in a natural manner, but with too much uniformity. This is is a general defect attached to those characters.--Let me next introduce the female performers. _First female Singers and Parts of Lovers_. Mesdames ST. AUBIN, SCIO, LESAGE, CRÉTU, PHILIS the elder, GAVAUDAN, and PINGENET. Madame ST. AUBIN. She is a capital actress, though chiefly in the parts of young girls; yet she is the main pillar of the _Opéra Comique_. She never has been handsome, at least when closely viewed, and is now on the wane, being turned of forty-five; but her graceful little figure and delicate features make her appear pretty on the stage. Neatness and _naïveté_ characterise her acting. She has scarcely any voice, but no other songs than romances or ballads are assigned to her. She formerly played at the Grand French Opera, where she was applauded in noble and impassioned parts, though they are not, in general, suited to her manner. But an actress, high in favour with the public, is always applauded in whatever character she appears. The pieces in which Madame ST. AUBIN excels are _Le Prisonnier, Adolphe et Clara_, and _L'Opéra Comique_, which is the title of a piece, as I have already mentioned. Madame SCIO. Although she is said not to be well versed in music, she has a very extensive and powerful voice, but its tones have little variety. As an actress, she is very indifferent. Without being mean, she has no nobleness of manner. Like almost all the performers belonging to the _Opéra Comique_, she delivers ill the dialogue, or such sentences as are not set to music. As she frequently strains her acting, persons deficient in taste are pleased to bestow on her the epithet of _great_ as an actress. However, she played _Médée_ in a lyric tragedy of that name; but such a Medea was never seen! As a singer, Madame Scio is a valuable acquisition to this theatre. In point of person, she is neither ordinary nor handsome. Mademoiselle LESAGE. Her singing is chaste, but destitute of that musical energy which distinguishes great singers. She plays _les ingénuités_ or innocent characters; but is rather a mannerist, instead of being childish. She then employs a false voice, not at all suited to this line of acting, in which every thing should be natural. Madame CRÉTU. This actress came to Paris from Bourdeaux, preceded by a great reputation. She has been handsome: a clear voice, a good method of singing, a becoming manner of acting, insured her success. She is very useful at this theatre, in pieces where the _vis comica_ does not predominate. Mademoiselle PHILIS the elder. This is a pretty pupil of the famous GARAT. She has a clear pipe, a charming countenance, a quick eye, an agreeable person, and some taste. She possesses as much merit as an actress as a singer.[2] Madame GAVAUDAN. She is admired for her pretty person, pretty voice, and pretty carriage. No wonder then that she has greatly contributed to the success of the little pieces in the style of _Vaudeville_, which have been performed at this theatre. Mesdemoiselles PINGENET. These two sisters are nothing as actresses; but seem to aspire to the title of singers, especially the elder, who begins to distinguish herself. _Noble Mothers and Duennas_. Mesdames DUGAZON, PHILIPPE, and GONTHIER. Madame DUGAZON. Twenty years ago she enjoyed a great name, for which she was indebted to the bad taste that then prevailed. With large prominent eyes, and a broad flat nose, she could not be really handsome; but she had a very animated countenance. In lyric _drames_, she personated country-girls, chambermaids, and princesses. In the first-named cast of parts, she had an ingenuous, open, but rustic manner. She played chambermaids in a style bordering on effrontery. Lastly, she represented princesses, but without any dignity, and also women bereft of their reason. The part in which she had the most vogue was that of _Nina_ in _La Folle par amour_. Her madness, however, appeared not to be occasioned by the sensibility of her heart. It was too much inclined to the sentimental cast of Sterne's Maria. Madame DUGAZON, who ought to have been in possession of a considerable fortune, from the vast sums of money lavished on her by Englishmen, is at this day reduced to perform the parts of mothers, in which she acquits herself so as to deserve neither praise nor censure. Madame PHILIPPE. Under the name of DESFORGES, she shone formerly in the part of _Marguerite_ in _Richard, coeur de lion_. Without being a superior singer, she executes her songs with feeling. Madame GONTHIER. This actress still enjoys the benefit of her former reputation. She is excellent in a cast of parts become hacknied on the stage; namely, gossips and nurses. I have said nothing of the _doubles_ or duplicates of all these ladies, as they are, in general, bad copies of the originals. The choruses of the _Opéra Comique_ are not very numerous, and have not the strength and correctness which distinguish those of the Grand French Opera. Nor could this be expected. The orchestra has been lately recomposed, and at present consists of a selection of excellent performers. The scenery, decorations, and dresses are deserving of commendation. [Footnote 1: Or HALE, an Englishman, who wrote _Le Jugement de Midas_, _l'Amant Jaloux_, and _Les Évenemens Imprevus_, pretty lyric comedies, especially the last. Notwithstanding the success of his pieces, this author is said to have died in the greatest distress.] [Footnote 2: Not long since she set off for Russia, without apprizing any one of her intention.] [Footnote 3: The commissioner, appointed by the government to superintend the proceedings of this theatre, has since been replaced by a _Prefect of the Palace_, whose authority is much the same as that exercised when each of the principal theatres in Paris was under the inspection of a _Lord of the Bedchamber_.] LETTER LIX. _Paris, January 29, 1802._ Whenever the pen of an impartial writer shall trace the history of the French revolution, through all its accompanying vicissitudes, it will be seen that this country owed its salvation to the _savans_ or men of science. The arts and sciences, which were revived by their zeal and courage, united with unceasing activity to pave the way to victories abroad, and repair mischiefs at home. Nor can it be denied, that every thing which genius, labour, and perseverance could create, in point of resources, was employed in such a manner that France was enabled, by land, to make head against almost all Europe, and supply her own wants, as long as the war lasted. The _savans_ who had effected such great things, for some time enjoyed unlimited influence. It was well known that to them the Republic was indebted for its safety and very existence. They availed themselves of this favourable moment for insuring to France that superiority of knowledge which had caused her to triumph over her enemies. Such was the origin of the POLYTECHNIC SCHOOL. This establishment had a triple object; namely, to form engineers for the different services; to spread in civil society enlightened men, and to excite talents which might promote the sciences. Nothing was neglected that could tend to the accomplishment of a destination so important. It was, in fact, time to reorganize the instruction of corps destined for public services, the greater part of which were wholly deficient in this respect. Some of them, it is true, had particular schools; but instruction there was feeble and incomplete. That for military engineers at _Mézieres_, the best conducted of all, and which admitted twenty pupils only, had suspended its exercises, in consequence of the revolution. Necessity had occasioned the formation of a provisionary school, where the pupils received rapidly the first notions of the attack and defence of places, after which they were sent to the armies. Such institutions neither answered the exigencies of the State, nor conduced to its glory. Their weakness was, above all, likely to be felt by men habituated to general ideas, and whose minds were still more exalted, and views enlarged, by the revolution. Those men wished that the new _School for Public Works_ should be worthy of the nation. Their plan was extensive in its object, but simple in its execution, and certain in its results. The first law concerning the _Central School for Public Works_, since called the _Polytechnic School_, was made on the 20th of Ventôse year II. (10th of March 1794). From that moment, much zeal was manifested in making the necessary arrangements for its formation. On the report made to the National Convention respecting the measures taken on this subject, on the 7th of Vendémiaire year III (28th of September 1794) a decree was passed, directing a competition to be opened for the admission of four hundred pupils into this school. The examination was appointed to take place in twenty-two of the principal towns. The candidates were to answer in arithmetic and the elements of algebra and geometry. Those admitted received the allowance of military officers for their travelling expenses to Paris. They were to have annually twelve hundred francs, and to remain in the school three years, after which they were to be called to the different Public Services, when they were judged capable of performing them; and priority was to depend on merit. These services were the duty of military engineers, naval engineers, or ship-builders, artillerists, both military and naval, engineers of bridges and highways, geographical engineers, and engineers of mines, and to them were added the service of the pupils of the school of aërostation, which GUYTON MORVEAU had caused to be established at Meudon, for the purpose of forming the aërostatic company destined for manoeuvring air-balloons, applied to the art of war, as was seen at _Maubeuge_, _Fleurus_, _Aix-la-Chapelle_, &c. However, the conception of this project was far more easy than its execution. It was doing little to choose professors from among the first men of science in Europe, if their lessons were not fixed in the mind of the pupils. Being unable to communicate them to each pupil in private, they stood in need of agents who should transmit them to this numerous assemblage of youth, and be, as it were, the nerves of the body. To form these was the first object. Among the young men who had presented themselves at the competition, twenty of the most distinguished were selected. Philosophical instruments and a chemical laboratory were provided for them, and they were unremittingly exercised in every part of the plan which it was resolved to execute. These pupils, the greater part of whom had come from the schools for Public Service, felt the insufficiency of the instruction which they had there received. Eager to learn, their mind became inflamed by the presence of the celebrated men who were incessantly with them. The days sufficed not for their zeal; and in three months they were capable of discharging the functions for which they were intended. Nor was this all. At a time when opinion and power might change from one moment to another, much risk was incurred if a definitive form was not at once given to the _Polytechnic School_. The authors of this vast project had seen the revolution too near not to be sensible of that truth. But they wished first, by a trial made on a grand scale, to insure their method, class the pupils, and shew what might be expected from them. They therefore developed to them, in rapid lectures, the general plan of instruction. This plan had been drawn up agreeably to the views of men the best informed, amongst whom MONGE must be particularly mentioned. He had been professor at _Mezières_, and had there given the first lessons of descriptive geometry, that science so useful to the engineer. The enumeration of the various parts of instruction was reduced to a table, printed by order of the Committee of Public Safety. It comprehends mathematics, analysis applied to descriptive geometry and to the mechanism of solids and fluids, stereotomy, drawing, civil architecture, fortification, general physics, chymistry, mineralogy, and their application to the arts. In three months, the work of three years was explained. A real enthusiasm was excited in these youths on finding themselves occupied by the sublimest ideas which had employed the mind of man. Amidst the divisions and animosities of political party, it was an interesting sight, to behold four hundred young men, full of confidence and friendship, listening with profound attention to the lectures of the celebrated _savans_ who had been spared by the guillotine. The results of so great an experiment surpassed the most sanguine expectations. After this preliminary instruction, the pupils were divided into brigades, and education took the course it was intended should follow. What particularly distinguishes this establishment, is that the pupils not only receive oral lessons, but they must give in written solutions, present drawings, models, or plans for the different parts, and themselves operate in the laboratories. On the 1st of Germinal year III (22d of March 1795) the annual courses were commenced. They were then distributed for three years, but at this day they last two only. At the same time a decree was passed, regulating the number of professors, adjuncts, ushers, the holding of the meetings of the council of instruction and administration, the functions of the director, administrator, inspector of the studies, secretary of the council, librarian, keepers of the collection of drawings, models, &c. Since that epoch, the _Polytechnic School_, often attacked, even in the discussions of the _Legislative Body_, has maintained its ground by the impression of the reputation of the men who act there as professors, of the depth of the knowledge which makes the object of their lessons, and of the youths of superior talent who issue from it every year. The law which after many adjournments, has fixed its existence is dated the 25th of Frimaire year VIII (16th of December 1799.) The most important changes introduced, are the determination of the age to be received into this school, which is from sixteen to twenty, the reduction of the pupils to the number of three hundred, the rank which is given them of serjeant of artillery of the first class, their pay fixed on the same footing, together with a fund of assistance for those labouring under difficulties, the obligation to wear a uniform, the establishment of a council of improvement, composed of three members of the National Institute, of examiners, of a general-officer or superior agent of each of the branches of the Public Service, of the director, and four commissioners taken from the council of instruction. This council assembles every year, inquires into the state of the school, proposes its views of amelioration, respecting every department, and makes a report to the government. One of its principal functions is to harmonise the instruction with that of the Schools of Engineers, Artillery, &c. into which the pupils enter after the final examination they undergo previously to their departure. After this, to judge of the advantages of the _Polytechnic School_, it is sufficient to cast an eye on the printed reports, which present an account of the persons it furnishes to the different services, of those who have been taken from it for the expedition to Egypt, for the corps of _aspirans de la marine_ or midshipmen, for entering into the line vith the rank of officers, or into the department of commissaries of war, (into which they are admitted after their examination if no places are vacant in the Schools for Public Service), of those who have been called on to profess the sciences in the central schools (Lyceums) of the departments, some to fill the first professors' chairs in Paris, such as at the _Collège de France_ and the _École Polytechnique_, of those, in short, who have quitted this school to introduce into the manufactories the knowledge which they had acquired. The last-mentioned circumstance has always been a consideration for carrying the number of pupils beyond the presumable wants of the different Public Services. You see that this is no more than a summary of what might be said and collected from the journals of the _Polytechnic School_, (which already form four volumes in 4to. independently of the classic works published by the professors), for giving a complete history of this interesting establishment, which attracts the notice of foreigners of all nations. BONAPARTE takes no small interest in the labours of the _Polytechnic School_, and has often said that it would be difficult to calculate the effects of the impulse which it has given towards the mathematical sciences, and of the aggregate of the knowledge imparted to the pupils. The _Polytechnic School_, which is under the authority of the Minister of the Interior, occupies an extensive range of building, formerly known by the name of _Le petit Palais Bourbon, contiguous to the _Palais du Corps Legislatif_. The different apartments contain every thing necessary for the elucidation of the arts and sciences here taught; but the pupils reside not at the school: they lodge and board with their friends, on the salary allowed them by the nation, and repair thither only for the prosecution of their studies. LETTER LX. _Paris, January 30, 1802._ To judge from the records of the Old Bailey, one would conclude that, in proportion to the number of its inhabitants, London must contain a greater number of dishonest persons of both sexes than any metropolis in Europe. But, though more notorious thieves and daring robbers may perhaps, be found in London than in many other great cities, yet I will venture to affirm that Paris contains more PICKPOCKETS AND SHARPERS. However superior too our rogues may be in boldness, I apprehend that, in dexterity, they are far inferior to those to be met with among our neighbours. To elude a more vigilant inspection, the latter are compelled to exert more art and cunning. In this dissipated capital, which is a grand theatre where they can display all their talent, and find a greater number of dupes, adventurers and swindlers of every description have long been famous; but it should seem that the females here of that stamp deserve to be no less celebrated. Not many years ago, I heard of an English lady of quality being detected in the very act of secreting a quantity of valuable lace, to which she had taken a particular fancy at a great haberdasher's in Pall-Mall. It was said that she endeavoured to exculpate herself for this inadvertency on the ground of being in a pregnant state, which had produced an irrisistible longing. However this may be, she might here have got a lesson, as will appear from the following instance of ingenuity very lately practised by one of her own sex. In the _ci-devant Palais Royal_, a haberdasher of note keeps a shop where the highest-priced articles of female wear are exhibited, immediately on coming from the hands of the manufacturer or inventor. The other day, a lady somewhat turned of thirty, of genteel appearance and engaging address, entered this shop, and asked to see some white lace veils. Several were shewn to her at the price of from twenty-five to fifty louis each. These not being sufficiently rich to please her taste, others more costly were produced, and she fixed on one of eighty louis in value. Standing before a glass, she immediately put on this veil _à la réligieuse_, that is, in the form of the hood of a nun's dress. Then taking from her bosom her little purse, she found it to contain no more than twenty louis in bankpaper, which she paid to the haberdasher as a deposit for the veil, at the same time desiring him to send one of his men with her to her _homme d'affaires_ or agent, in order that he might bring back the other sixty. As a Parisian tradesman is always extremely glad to get rid of his goods, she had no difficulty in carrying her point; and, having selected from among the shopmen a shamefaced youth of eighteen, took him with her in the hackney-coach which she had kept in waiting. She gave the coachman her orders, and away he drove to a famous apothecary's, in the _Rue St. Honoré_. "This," said she to the shopman, "is the residence of my _homme d'affaires_: follow me, and you shall have your money." She accordingly alighted, and, after saying a few words in the ear of the doctor, on whose credulity she had already exercised her genius, desired him to take the young man to his private room, and settle the business, while she remained to chat with his wife. The unsuspecting youth, seeing the lady on such terms of intimacy in the family, made no hesitation to follow the doctor to a back-parlour, where, to his extreme surprise, he was closely questioned as to his present state of health, and the rise and progress of the disorder which he had caught through his own imprudence. The more he denied the circumstance, the more the doctor persisted in his endeavours to procure ocular demonstration. The latter had previously locked the door, having been apprized by the lady that her son was exceedingly bashful, and that stratagem, and even a certain degree of violence, perhaps, must be employed to obtain evidence of a complaint, which, as it injured her _dear boy's_ constitution, disturbed her own happiness and peace of mind. The doctor was proceeding to act on this information, when the young shopman, finding his retreat cut off, vociferously demanded the sixty louis which he was come to receive in payment for the veil. "Sixty louis in payment for a veil!" re-echoed the doctor. "Your mother begged me to examine you for a complaint which you have inconsiderately contracted in the pursuit of pleasure." The _dénouement_ now taking place, the two dupes hastened back to the shop, when they found that the lady had decamped, having previously discharged the coach, in order that she might not be traced by the number. The art of purloining a watch, a snuff-box, or a purse, unperceived by the owner, may, no doubt, be acquired by constant practice, till the novice becomes expert in his profession: but the admirable presence of mind displayed by Parisian sharpers must, in a great measure, be inherited from nature. What can well surpass an example of this kind mentioned by a celebrated French writer? A certain person who had been to receive a sum of money at a banker's, was returning home with it in a hired carriage. The coachman, not remembering the name of the street whither he had been ordered to drive, got off his box, and opened the coach-door to ask it. He found the person dead and cold. At his first exclamation, several people collected. A sharper who was passing by, suddenly forced his way through the crowd, and, in a lamentable and pathetic voice, called out: "'Tis my father! What a miserable wretch am I!" Then, exhibiting every mark of the most poignant grief, he got into the coach, and, crying and sobbing, kissed the dead man's face. The bystanders were affected, and dispersed, saying, one to another, "What an affectionate son!" The sharper drove on in the coach, where he found the bags of money, which were an unexpected booty, and, stopping it at a door, told the coachman that he wished to apprize his sister of the melancholy accident that had just happened. He alighted, and shut the coach-door, leaving the corpse as naked as it came into the world. The coachman, having waited a long time, inquired in vain at the house for the young man and his sister; no one had any knowledge of her, him, or the deceased. I remember when I was last in Paris, at the beginning of the revolution, being shewn a silversmith's shop, whence a few articles having been stolen, the master was induced to examine in what manner the thieves gained admittance. Discovering an aperture where he conjectured that a man's hand might be introduced, he prepared a noose with a proper cord, and remained in waiting the following night to see if they would repeat their visit. At a late hour, when all was quiet, he perceived a man's hand thrust through the aperture; instantly he drew tight the noose, and thought he had effectually secured the culprit; but he was mistaken. The fellow's accomplices, fearing that the apprehension of one of them would lead to the discovery of all, on finding it impossible to extricate him by any other means, cut off his wrist. When the patrole arrived at the spot, on the call of the silversmith, he was not a little astonished to find that his prisoner had escaped, though with the loss of a hand, which remained fast in the noose. With respect to these more daring classes of rogues, every year almost produces some new race of them. Since the revolution, the criminal code having condemned to death none but those guilty of murder, housebreakers, to avoid the penalty of the law, had recourse to a practice, which put the persons whom they subjected to it to the most severe pain. This was to hold their feet to the fire till they declared where all their moveable property was to be found. Hence these villains obtained the name of _chauffeurs_. Notwithstanding the vigilance of the Police, they still occasionally exercise their cruelties in some of the departments, as may be seen by the proceedings of the criminal tribunals. I have also heard of another species of assassins, who trained blood-hounds to seize a man by the throat in certain solitary places, and then came afterwards, and plundered him at their ease. When apprehended, they coolly said: "We did not kill the man, but found him dead." As in former times, all sentences passed on criminals, tried in Paris, whether condemned to die or not, are put into execution on the PLACE DE GRÈVE. The first sentence executed here was that passed on _Marguerite Porette_, a female heretic, who was burnt alive in the year 1310. Among the punishments which it has been found necessary to re-establish is that of marking with a hot iron. Criminals, condemned to imprisonment in irons, are exposed for two hours on a scaffold in the middle of this square. They are seated and tied to a post, having above them a label with the words of their sentence. They are clad in woollen pantaloons and a waistcoat with sleeves, one half of each of which is white; the other, brown. After being exposed two hours, they are stripped, and to their shoulder is applied a hot iron, which there leaves the impression of the letter V, for _voleur_, thief. Women, not being condemned to imprisonment in irons; are exempt from the penalty of being marked. This punishment is said to produce considerable effect on the culprits, as well as on the spectators. Previously to its being revived, persons convicted of thieving were insolent beyond all endurance. The _Place de Grève_ is a parallelogram, one of the long sides of which is occupied by the _ci-devant Hôtel de Ville_, a tasteless edifice, begun in 1533, but not finished till 1605. Before the revolution, the _Place de Grève_ was alternately the theatre of punishments and rejoicings. On the same pavement, where scaffolds were erected for the execution of criminals, rose superb edifices for public festivals. Here, when any criminal of note was to suffer, the occupiers of the adjoining houses made a rich harvest by letting their apartments. Every window that commanded a view of the horrid scene, was then hired at a most exorbitant price. Women of the first rank and fashion, decked in all the luxury of dress, graced even the uppermost stories. These weak-nerved females, who would have fainted at the sight of a spider mangling a fly, stood crowded together, calmly viewing the agonies of an expiring malefactor, who, after having been racked on the wheel, was, perhaps, denied the _coup de grace_ which would, in an instant, have rid him of his miserable existence. The death of a regicide was a sort of gala to these belles; while the lead was melting over the furnace, the iron pinchers heating in the fire, and the horses disposed for tearing asunder the four quarters of the victim of the laws, some of them amused themselves with an innocent game at cards, in sight of all these terrible preparations, from which a man of ordinary feeling would avert his looks with horror. How happens it that, in all countries on the continent, ladies flock to these odious spectacles? Every where, I believe, the populace run to behold them; but that a female of superior birth and breeding can deliberately seek so inhuman a gratification is a mystery which I cannot explain, unless, indeed, on the principle of shewing themselves, as well as that of seeing the show. "_Spectatum veniunt, veniunt spectentur ut ipsæ_." LETTER LXI. _Paris, February 2, 1802._ Independently of the general organization of Public Instruction, according to the new plan, of which I have before traced you the leading features, there exist several schools appropriate to different professions, solely devoted to the Public Service, and which require particular knowledge in the arts and sciences. Hence they bear the generic name of SCHOOLS FOR PUBLIC SERVICES. They are comprised under the following denominations. POLYTECHNIC SCHOOL. SCHOOL OF ARTILLERY. MILITARY ENGINEERS. BRIDGES AND HIGHWAYS. MINES. NAVAL ENGINEERS. NAVIGATION. In order to be admitted into any of the above schools, the candidates must prove themselves qualified by the preliminary instruction required the examinations at the competition prescribed for each of them. The pupils of these schools receive a salary from the nation. At the head of them is the _Polytechnic School_, of which I have already spoken. This is the grand nursery, whence the pupils, when they have attained a sufficient degree of perfection, are transplanted into the other _Schools for Public Services_. Next come the SCHOOLS OF ARTILLERY. There are eight of these in the places where the regiments of artillery are garrisoned. The pupils who are sent thither as officers, after having been examined, apply their knowledge to the arts, to the construction of works, and to the manoeuvres of war dependent on artillery. Each school, in which the pupils must remain two years longer, is under the superintendance of a general of brigade of the corps. SCHOOL OF MILITARY ENGINEERS. This school, united to that of Miners, is established at Metz. Its labours relate to the application of the theoretical knowledge which the pupils have imbibed at the _Polytechnic School_. The objects of these labours is the construction of all sorts of works of fortification, mines and counter-mines, mock-representations of sieges, attack, and defence, the drawing of plans and military surveys, in a word, all the details of the duty of engineers in fortified places and in the field. The number of pupils is limited to twenty. They have the rank and pay of second lieutenant. The School of Engineers, as well as the Schools of Artillery, is under the authority of the Minister at War. Much as I wish to compress my subject, I must observe that, previously to leaving the school, the pupils undergo a strict examination respecting the objects of instruction before-enumerated. This examination is intrusted to a _jury_ (as the French term it) composed of the commander in chief of the school, a general or field-officer of the corps, appointed every year by the Minister at War, and one of the permanent examiners of the Polytechnic School. _This jury forms the list of merit, which regulates the order of promotion._ Can we then wonder that the French have the first military engineers in Europe? SCHOOL OF BRIDGES AND HIGHWAYS. It was founded in 1787, by TRUDAINE, and continued under the direction of PERRONET, chief engineer of this corps, till his death, which happened in 1794. He was then 86 years of age. By his will, he bequeathed to this school, for the instruction of the pupils whom he loved as his children, his library, his models, his manuscripts, and his portfolios; articles which at this day form an invaluable collection. This school, which is at present established in the _Hôtel de Chatelet_ (formerly belonging to the duke of that name) _Rue de Grenelle_, _St. Germain_, unites the _dépôt_ or repository of plans and models to the labours relating to roads, canals, and harbours for trade. The number of pupils admitted is fifty. They are taken from the _Polytechnic School_, and retain the salary which they there received. The instruction given to them chiefly consists in the application of the principles of physics and mathematics to the art of planning and constructing works relative to roads, canals, and sea-ports, and the buildings belonging thereto; the means of execution, and the mode of forming plans and estimates of the works to be executed, and the order to be observed in keeping the accounts. The _School of Bridges and Highways_ is under the authority of the Minister of the Interior, PRACTICAL SCHOOLS OF MINES. One of these schools is established at Geislautern, in the department of La Sarre; and the other, at Pesay, in the department of Mont-Blanc. The Director and Professors form a committee for the working of the mines of Pesay, as well as for the instruction of the pupils. In consequence of the report of this committee the _Council of Mines_ established in Paris, proposes to the government the measures necessary to be adopted. Twenty pupils, who have passed their examination at the _Polytechnic School_, are attached to the practical schools, for the purpose of applying the theoretical part of their instruction. Extra-scholars, with testimonials of good behaviour and capacity, are admitted to be educated at their own expense. These schools are also under the authority of the Minister of the Interior. SCHOOL OF NAVAL ENGINEERS. The _School of Naval Architects_, which existed in Paris, has been removed to Brest, under the name of _École des Ingénieurs des Vaisseaux_. No pupils are admitted but such as have been students, at least two years, in the _Polytechnic School_. The examination of the candidates takes place every year, and the preference is given to those who excel in descriptive geometry, mechanics, and the other branches of knowledge appropriated to the first year's study at that school. When the pupils have proved, in the repeated examinations which they must undergo, that they are sufficiently qualified, they are sent to Brest (as vacancies occur), in order to apply the theory they have acquired to the different works carried on in that port, where they find both the example and the precept, and are taught every thing relative to the construction of ships of war and merchant-vessels. This school is under the authority of the Minister of the naval department. The pupils admitted into it, receive a salary of 1800 francs (_circa_ £. 75 sterling) a year. SCHOOLS OF NAVIGATION. The Schools of Mathematics and Hydrography, established for the navy of the State, and the Schools of Hydrography destined for the merchant-service, bear the name of _Écoles de Navigation_. Every year, there is a competition for the admission of candidates for naval employment. The Hydrographical Examiner makes a general tour to the different ports, where he interrogates the pupils in arithmetic, algebra, geometry, statics, and navigation. According to these examinations, they are admitted to the rank of _aspirons de marine_ or midshipmen, captains of merchant-ships for long voyages, masters of coasting-vessels, pilots, &c, By a late decree of the Consuls, no one can be admitted to the examination prescribed for being received as master in the coasting-trade, unless he is twenty-four years of age, and has served five years on board the ships of war belonging to the Republic. * * * * * In my letter of the 15th of January, I have shewn you that Public Instruction is to be divided into four classes: 1. In Primary Schools, established by the _Communes_. 2. In Secondary Schools, established by the _Communes_, and kept by private masters. 3. In Lyceums. 4. In _Special Schools_. In the two last-mentioned establishments, the pupils are to be maintained at the expense of the nation. Before I particularize the _Special Schools_, I must mention a national institution, distinguished by the appellation of PRYTANÉE FRANÇAIS. It is divided into four colleges, established at Paris, St. Cyr, St. Germain-en-Laye, and Compiegne. It was destined for the gratuitous education of the children of the military killed in the field of honour, and of public functionaries who might happen to die in the discharge of their office. By a decree of the Consuls, dated the 1st of Germinal year VIII (22nd of March 1800) the number of pupils, in each of the Colleges of Paris, St. Cyr, and St. Germain-en-Laye, is limited to two hundred, and to three hundred, in that of Compiegne. An augmentation, however, is to be made in favour of the new departments. The pupils are named by the First Consul. On entering the College, they bring a stated proportion of necessaries, after which they are wholly maintained at the expense of the nation till they have finished their studies. The government provides for the advancement of those who give the greatest proof of good conduct and talent. The pupils cannot remain in either of these four colleges beyond the age of eighteen. As I have before observed, the Central Schools are, in future, to bear the name of Lyceums, and the highest degree of public instruction is to be acquired in the SPECIAL SCHOOLS. In these upper schools are to be particularly taught, in the most profound manner, the useful sciences, together with jurisprudence, medicine, natural history, &c. The Special Schools now in existence are to be continued, subject to such modifications as the government may think fit to introduce for the benefit of the Public Service. They are still under the immediate superintendance of the Minister of the Interior. The _Collège de France_ I have before described: the Museum of Natural History, the Special School of docimastic Mineralogy and Chemistry, and that for Oriental languages, I shall speak of elsewhere; but I shall now proceed to give you a rapid sketch of the others which I have not yet noticed, beginning with the SPECIAL SCHOOL OF PAINTING AND SCULPTURE. This institution was founded in 1648, at the instigation of LE BRUN. It was formerly held in the _Place du Louvre_, but is now removed to the _ci-devant Collège des Quatre-Nations_, which has taken the name of _Palais des Beaux Arts_. This is the only school in Paris that has never indulged in any vacation. Each professor is on duty for two months. During the first month, he gives his lessons in the school of living models; during the other, in the school of the antique, called, _la bosse_. It may not be uninteresting to give you an idea of the COMPETITIONS. Every year there is a competition in Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, which is to be called _National Prize_. Its object is to confer on those who have gained the first prize, at present proposed by the Institute, the advantage of an allowance of 1200 francs for five years, which is insured to them at the French School of Fine Arts at Rome. During their stay there, they are lodged, boarded, and taken care of, in case of illness, at the expense of the Republic. A competition takes place every six months for the rank of places in the schools; and another, every three months for the distribution of medals. There is also a prize, of 100 francs, founded by M. DE CAYLUS, for a head expressive of character, painted or drawn from nature; and another prize of 300 francs, founded by LATOUR, for a half-length, painted after a model, and of the natural size. Independently of the competition of the school, there is every year a general competition followed by a distribution of the works of encouragement, granted to the artists who have distinguished themselves most in the annual exhibition of the _Salon du Louvre_. A jury, named by the competitors themselves, examines the different pictures, classes them according to the degree of merit which it finds they possess, and the Minister of the Interior allots to each of the artists _crowned_ a sum in payment of a new work which they are bound to furnish to the government. NATIONAL SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE. In this school, which is held in the _Louvre_, the Professor of Architecture delivers lectures on the history of that art, and the theory of its different branches, on the orders, and edifices erected by the ancients, and on the works of Vitruvius, Palladio, Scamozzi, and Vignole. He takes no small pains to make known the bold style of Grecian architecture, which the Athenians chiefly employed during the ages when they prided themselves on being a free people. The Professor of Mathematics explains the principles of arithmetic and elementary geometry, which he applies to the different branches of civil and military architecture, such as levelling, the art of constructing plans, and perspective. The Professor of Stereotomy, in his lectures, chiefly comprises masonry and carpentry; he points out the best methods of employing those arts in civil and military buildings. His demonstrations relate to the theoretical and practical part of both branches. All the pupils, and students of architecture are indiscriminately admitted to the competition for the great prize of architecture, provided they are not foreigners. CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC. This establishment, situated in the _Rue du Faubourg Poissonnière_, was founded on the 16th of Thermidor year III, (4th of August 1795) for the preservation and reproduction of music in all its branches. It is composed of a director, three inspectors of teaching, a secretary, a librarian, and thirty-five professors. The director presides over the whole establishment; the inspectors superintend the teaching, examine the pupils, and teach the branches of study attributed to them by the regulation. In the Conservatory, the instruction is divided as follows: composition, harmony, solfaing, singing, violin, violincello, harpsicord, organ, flute, hautboy, clarinette, French-horn, bassoon, trumpet, trombonne, serpent, preparation for singing, and declamation applicable to the lyric stage. The completion of the study is effected by a series of lectures, treating specially of the relations between the sciences and the art of music. Three hundred pupils of both sexes, taken in equal number from each department, are instructed gratuitously in the Conservatory. The principal points towards which their studies are directed, are, to keep up music in society, to form artists for the execution of public _fêtes_, for the armies, and for the theatres. These pupils are admitted after an examination, which takes place four times a year. Prizes are distributed annually, in a public meeting of the Conservatory, to the pupils who distinguish themselves in each branch of study. * * * * * _February 2, in continuation._ To the preceding brief account of the Conservatory, I shall subjoin a few observations on the PRESENT STATE OF MUSIC IN FRANCE. Till the year 1789, this was the country where the greatest expense was incurred in cultivating music; yet the means which were employed, though very numerous, produced but little effect, and contributed not to the improvement of that art. Every thing even announces that its progress would have been still more retarded, but for the introduction of the Italian Opera, in 1645, by Cardinal Mazarin. The brilliant success of _Orfeo e Euridice_, in 1647, determined the national taste in favour of this sort of _spectacle_, and gave birth to the wish of transplanting it to the French stage. It was in 1659 that the first opera, with music adapted to a French poem, was performed at Issy. Since the epoch of the establishment of the French opera, every department belonging to it, with the sole exception of the singing, has been so much improved, that it is become the most brilliant _spectacle_ in Europe. But, as the lyric theatres in France were always obliged to seek recruits among the pupils formed in the schools maintained by the clergy for the service of public worship, the influence of the clerical mode of instruction was felt; and this was, in fact, the source of the bad taste which for a long time characterized French singing. Had the grand opera in France been continued an Italian one, as it was first established, (like those subsequently introduced in the principal cities of Europe) it would have been supported by performers formed by the Conservatories of Italy; and the good taste of those schools would have balanced or proscribed the bad taste of the French cathedrals; but the genius of the seventeenth century chose that the French language, purified and fixed by the writers who rendered it illustrious, should also become the language of the lyric theatre. Musical instruction, remaining entirely subservient to the customs of religion, was unable to keep pace with the rapid progress of the arts and sciences during that brilliant period. Among the defects of the old system of teaching music, must be placed that of confining it to men; nevertheless, the utility of women in concerts and plays was as incontestable then as it is at the present day. Public instruction was therefore due to them in that point of view; but, had no such consideration existed, they should have been admitted to participate in this instruction, in order to propagate the art in society. The success of this method would have been infallible: as soon as women should have cultivated the musical art with success, its naturalization would have been effected in France, as it has been in Germany and Italy. The expense of the musical instruction pursued in the schools belonging to the cathedrals was immense, compared with its results in every branch of the art. As to composers, they produced but a very small number, and few of these distinguished themselves; no instrumental performer of eminence ever issued from them; and, with few exceptions, the singers they formed were very indifferent. The necessity of introducing a better method of singing induced the government, in 1783, to establish a _Special School of Singing and Declamation._ This institution continued in full exercise for ten years; but, though the celebrated PICCINI was appointed to preside over the vocal department, the habits of the old school obstructed its progress, and prevented it from producing the good which was expected from it. At the epoch of the dissolution of the monarchical institutions, there remained in France only the School of Music of the Parisian national guard, and that of Singing and Declamation just mentioned. The republican government ordered them to be united, and thus was formed the _Conservatory of Music_. Nor let it be imagined that policy has had no share in establishing this institution. It has furnished the numerous bands of musicians rendered necessary by the levy of fourteen armies which France had, at one and the same time, in the field. It is well known that music has done almost wonders in reviving the courage of the French soldiers, who, when Victory seemed adverse to them, inclined her in their favour, by rallying to the tune of the _Marseillois_. In the heat of action, joining their voice to the instruments, and raising themselves to a pitch of enthusiasm, they received or dealt out death, while they kept singing this hymn. The French then are no less indebted to ROUGET DE LILLE than the Spartans were to TYRTÆUS. At the beginning of the revolution, they had no songs of the warlike kind, except a few paltry ballads sung about the streets. ROUGET, who was then an officer of engineers at Strasburg, was requested to compose a martial hymn. Full of poetic fire, he shut himself up in his chamber, and, in the course of one night, wrote the words of the _Marseillois_, adapting to them music, also of his own composition. Notwithstanding this patriotic production, and the courage which the author is said to have displayed during the war, he was twice imprisoned, at one time on suspicion of royalism; at another, of terrorism. Independently of the great number of musicians with which the Conservatory has supplied the armies, it has furnished between two and three hundred to the theatres, as well in Paris as in the departments.[1] The band of the Consular guard was formed from the pupils of the Conservatory, and sixty of them at present compose the orchestra, known in Paris by the name of _Concert Français_, and the execution of which has been much applauded by many celebrated composers. Its members meet to discuss the theories which may improve and extend the different branches of the musical art. They have already laid the principal foundations of a body of elementary works for teaching them in perfection. _Les Principes élementaires de Musique_, and a _Traité d'Harmonie_, which is said to have gained the universal approbation of the composers of the three schools, assembled to discuss its merits, are already published. A method of singing, established on the best principles of the Italian school, applied to French declamation, is now in the press; and these publications are to be successively followed by other didactic works relative to the history of the art. A principal cause of the present scarcity of fine voices in France, is the war which she has had to maintain for ten years, by armies continually recruited by young men put in requisition at the period when the voice is forming, and needs to be cultivated in order to acquire the qualities which constitute a good singer. Formerly, French commerce derived but very little advantage from articles relating to music; but the means employed by the Conservatory may probably turn the scale in favour of this country, as well as render it, in that respect, independent of foreign nations. Before the revolution, England furnished France with _piano-fortes_, the common price of which was from three to five hundred francs. Germany mostly supplied her with wind and string instruments. German French-horns, though coarsely-made instruments, cost seventy-two francs, and the good violins of the Tyrol were paid for as high as one hundred and twenty. The consumption of these instruments was considerable. Nor will this appear surprising, as previously to the foundation of the Conservatory, the instrumental musicians, employed in the French regiments and places of public amusement, were mostly Germans. The French _piano-fortes_ are now in request in most parts of Europe, and their price has, in consequence, increased from one thousand to two thousand four hundred francs. The price of French-horns, made in Paris, which, from being better finished, are preferable to those of Germany, has, in like manner, risen from three to five hundred francs. Parisian violins have increased in proportion. With respect to printed music, the French import none; but, on the contrary, export a great deal; and the advantages resulting from these two branches of commerce, together with the stamp-duty attached to the latter, are said to be sufficient to defray the expenses of the musical establishments now existing, or those proposed to be created. Before I close this letter, I must not omit to mention a very useful institution, for the promotion of the mechanical arts, established in the _Rue de l'École de Médecine_, and called the GRATUITOUS SCHOOL FOR DRAWING. It was founded in the year 1766, for the instruction of fifteen hundred children intended for mechanical professions, and was the first beneficent establishment opened in favour of the common people. Literature, sciences, and liberal arts had every where public schools; mechanical arts alone were neglected. The lower orders, by whom they were exercised, had no other means of learning them, and of developing the faculties of their mind, than the blind routine of apprenticeship. The success of this school had progressively caused similar ones to be instituted in a great number of towns of France, but most of them are buried under the ruins of the revolution; that of Paris has escaped the general overthrow; and, though it has lost a considerable portion of its revenue, it still admits about six hundred pupils. They are taught every thing relative to the mechanical arts, such as drawing in all its various branches, military, civil, and naval architecture, hydraulics, arithmetic, land-surveying, mensuration, perspective, stone-cutting, and in short such parts of mathematics and practical geometry as relate to those different objects. The Gratuitous School for Drawing must not be assimilated to establishments intended for improving the taste of those who follow the career of the liberal arts. It presents immediately to the children of the lower orders of the people the instruction that suits them best. Here, every thing is useful. Not only are the pupils instructed _gratis_, but the school furnishes to the indigent, recommended by one of the founders, the paper, pencils, and instruments necessary for their studies in the classes, and also models for exercising their talents at home. * * * * * I shall speak elsewhere of the _Special School of Medicine_ of Paris; there are two others, one at Montpellier, and one at Strasburg. At Alfort, near Paris, is established, on a grand scale, a VETERINARY SCHOOL. It would lead me too far to particularize every department of this extensive establishment; but one of these is too useful to be passed over in silence. Here are spacious hospitals where animals are classed, not only according to their species, but also according to the species of disorder by which they are affected. Every person may bring hither sick animals, on paying for their food and medicaments only, the operations and dressings being performed and applied _gratis_. There are also Veterinary Schools at Lyons, Turin, and Rodez. In addition to all these schools are to be established, in different parts of the Republic, the following new _Special Schools_. Ten of Jurisprudence. Three of Medicine. Four of Natural History, Physics, and Chymistry. One of Transcendent Mathematics. Two of Technology. One of Public Economy, enlightened by Geography and History. One of the Arts dependent on design, and, lastly, A new Military School. From the foregoing enumeration, it is evident that the government can never be at a loss for persons duly qualified to perform the duties of every branch of the Public Service. True it is that the nation is at a considerable expense in giving to them the instruction which fits them for the employment; but, in return, what advantages does not the nation derive from the exertion of their talent? [Footnote 1: In France are reckoned seventy-fire lyric theatres, exclusively of those in the newly-united departments.] LETTER LXII. _Paris, February 5, 1802_. In one of your recent letters, you interrogated me respecting the changes which the revolution had produced in the ceremonies immediately connected with the increase and decrease of population. While the subject is fresh in my mind, I shall present the contrast which I have observed, in the years 1789-90 and 1801-2, in the ceremony of FUNERALS. Under the old _régime_, there was no medium in them; they were either very indecorous or very expensive. I have been positively assured that eighteen francs were paid for what was called a parish-funeral, and not unfrequently a quarrel arose between the agent of the rector and the relations of the deceased. However, as it was necessary to bury every one, the _Commissaire de police_ declared the fact, if the relations were unable to pay. Those for whom eighteen francs were paid, had a coffin in which they were buried; the others were laid in a common coffin or shell, from which they were taken to be put into the ground. In a parish-funeral, whether paid or not, several dead bodies were assembled, that is, they were carried one after the other, but at the same time to the same ground. They were conducted by a single priest, reciting by the way the accustomed prayers. Other funerals were varied without end, according to the fortune or pleasure of the relations. For persons of the richest class, a flaming chapel was constructed at the entrance of the house. This chapel was hung with black cloth, and in it was placed the corpse, surrounded by lighted torches. The apartments were also hung with black for the reception of the persons who were to attend the funeral procession. The priests came to conduct the corpse from the house of the deceased. They were more or less numerous, had or had not wax tapers, according to the will of those who defrayed the expenses. If the presentation of the corpse at the parish-church took place in the morning, a mass was sung; if in the evening, obsequies only were chaunted, and the former service was deferred till the next morning. The relations and friends, in mourning, followed the corpse. These persons walked in the procession, according to their degree of relationship to the deceased, and besides their complete mourning-suit, wore a black cloak, more or less long, according to the quality of the persons (or the price paid for it), and a flapped hat, from which was suspended a very long crape band. Their hair, unpowdered, fell loose on their back. In lieu of a cloak, lawyers, whether presidents, counsellors, attornies, or tipstaffs, wore their black gown. On the cuff of their coat, men wore weepers, consisting of a band of cambric. Every one wore black gloves, and likewise a long pendent white cravat. People of the highest rank wore _cottés crépés_, that is, a sort of crape petticoat, which fell from the waist to the feet. This was meant to represent the ancient coat of arms. Servants in mourning, or pages for princes, supported the train of the cloak or gown of persons above the common rank. Other servants, also in mourning, surrounded the relations and friends of the deceased, holding torches with his armorial bearings, if he was a _noble_. Persons extremely rich or very elevated in rank, hired a certain number of poor (from fifty to three hundred), over whom were thrown several ells of coarse iron gray cloth, to which no particular form was given. They walked before the corpse, holding large lighted torches. The procession was closed by the carriages of persons belonging to it; and their owners did not get into them till their return from the funeral. Sometimes on coming out of the parish-church, where the presentation of the corpse was indispensable, the rector performing the office of magistrate in regard to the delivery of the certificate of presentation, the corpse was carried into a particular church to be buried. This was become uncommon before the revolution, as to do this it was necessary to possess a vault, or pay extremely dear, it being prohibited by law, except in such cases, to bury the dead in churches. When the deceased belonged to a society or corporation, they sent a deputation to attend him to the grave, or followed in a body, if he was their chief. At the funeral of a prince of the blood, all his household, civil and military, marched in the procession. The _corbillard_, or sort of hearse, in which his highness was carried to _St. Denis_, was almost as large as the moveable theatre which Mr. Flockton transports from fair to fair in England. Calculated in appearance for carrying the body of a giant, it was decorated with escutcheons, and drawn by eight horses, also caparisoned to correspond with the hearse. These, however, were but the trappings of woe. While this funereal car moved slowly forward amidst a concourse of mourners, its three-fold hangings concealed from the eye of the observer the journeymen coach and harness makers, drinking, and playing at dice on the lid of his highness's coffin, by way of dispelling the _ennui_ of the journey. These careless fellows were placed there to be at hand to repair any accident that might happen on the road; so, while, on the outside of the hearse, all wore the appearance of sadness; within, all was mirth; no bad image of the reverse of grandeur and the emptiness of human ostentation. Such were the ceremonies observed in funerals before the revolution. Passing over the interval, from its commencement in 1789 to the end of the year 1801, I shall describe those practised at the present day. It now depends on the relations to have the corpse presented at the parish-church; but there are many persons who dispense with this ceremony. The priests receive the corpse at the door of the church. It is carried thither in a _corbillard_. Each municipality has its own, and there are twelve municipalities in Paris. Some of them have adopted the Egyptian style; some, the Greek; and others, the Roman, for the fashion of their _corbillard_, according to the taste of the municipality who ordered its construction. It is drawn by two horses abreast, caparisoned somewhat like those of our hearses. The coachman and the four bearers are clothed in iron gray or black. An officer of the police, also clothed in black, and holding a cane with an ivory head, walks before the _corbillard_ or hearse. Each corpse has its particular coffin furnished by the municipality. Arrangements have been so made that the rich are made to pay for the poor. The coffin is covered with a black cloth, without a cross, for fear of scaring philosophers and protestants. The relations follow on foot, or in carriages, even in town. Few of them are in mourning, and still fewer wear a cloak. At the _Sainte Chapelle_, near the _Palais de Justice_, is a private establishment where, mourning is let out for hire. Here are to be had _corbillards_ on a more elegant plan. These are carriages hung on springs, and bearing much resemblance to our most fashionable sociables with a standing awning; so much so, that the first of them I saw I mistook for a _mourning_ sociable. Some are ornamented with black feathers. Caparisons, hangings, every thing is in black, as well as the coachman. This speculator also lets out mourning coaches, black without and within, like those in use in London. At a few funerals, these are hired for the mourners, and at a recent one, fifteen of these carriages were counted in the procession. However, this luxury of burials is not entirely come again into fashion. In the inside of the church, every thing passes as formerly. I shall now proceed from the _grave_ to the _gay_, and conclude this letter with a concise observation on MARRIAGES. The _civil_ act of marriage is entered into at the office of the municipality. But this civil act must not be coufounded with the contract, drawn up by the notary, and containing the stipulations, clauses, and conditions. The former signifies merely that such a man and such a woman take each other for man and wife. There are few, if any, persons married, who, from the municipality, do not repair to the parish-church, or go thither the next morning; the civil act being considered by individuals only as the ceremony of the betrothing, and till the priest has given the nuptial benediction, the relations take care that the intended bride and bridegroom shall have no opportunity of anticipating the duties of marriage. Political opinions, therefore, prevent but few persons from going to church. Mass is said in a low voice, during which the priest, or the rector, receives the promise of the wedded pair. With little exception, the ceremony is the same for all. Those who pay well are married at the high altar; the rector addresses to them a speech in which he exhorts them to live happily together; the beadles perform their duty; and the organist strikes up a voluntary. In regard to marriages, the present and former times presenting no other contrast, I have nothing more to add on the subject. LETTER LXIII. _Paris, February 6, 1803._ The mode of life of the persons with whom I chiefly associate here, precludes me from reading as much as I could wish, either for instruction or amusement. This, you will say, I ought not to regret; for a traveller visits foreign countries to study mankind, not books. Unquestionably, the men who, like splendid folios in a library, make at present the most conspicuous figure in this metropolis, are worth studying; and, could we lay them open to our inspection, as we do books of a common description, it would be extremely entertaining to turn them over every morning, till we had them, in a manner, by heart. But I rather apprehend that they partake, more or less, of the qualities of a book just come out of the hands of the binder, which it is difficult to open. Let us therefore content ourselves with viewing them as we would volumes of a superbly-bound edition, not to be examined by the general observer, and direct our eyes to such objects as are fully exposed to investigation. In Paris, there are several public libraries, the greater part of them open every day; but that which eclipses all the others, is the BIBLIOTHÈQUE NATIONALE. Charles V, justly surnamed the _Wise_, from the encouragement he gave to learning, may be considered as the first founder of this library. According to the President Henault, that king had collected nine hundred volumes; whereas king John, his father, possessed not twenty. This collection was placed in a tower of the _Louvre_, called _La Tour de la Librairie_, which was lighted up every night, in order that the learned might pursue their studies there at all hours. After the death of Charles VI, in 1423, the inventory amounted to no more than one hundred and twenty volumes, though several works had been added, because on the other hand, a great number had been lost. When Paris fell into the power of the English, in 1429, the Duke of Bedford, then regent of France, purchased these books, for which he paid 1200 livres, and the library was entirely dispersed. Charles VII, being continually engaged in war, could not concern himself in its re-estahlishment. Lewis XI collected the remains scattered in different royal residences, and availed himself of the resources afforded by the invention of printing, which was discovered at Strasburg or Mentz in 1440. Printers, however, were not established in Paris till 1470, and in that same year, they dedicated to Lewis XI one of the first books which they printed. Books were, at this time, very scarce and dear, and continued so for several years, both before and after the discovery of that invention. Twenty thousand persons then subsisted in France by the sale of the books which they transcribed. This was the reason why printing was not at first more encouraged. Charles VIII added to this literary establishment such works as he was able to obtain in his conquest of Naples. Lewis XII increased it by the library of Potrarch. Francis I enriched it with Greek manuscripts; but what most contributed to augment the collection was the ordinance of Henry II, issued in 1556, which enjoined booksellers to furnish the royal libraries with a copy on vellum of all the works printed by privilege; and, under the subsequent reigns, it gradually acquired that richness and abundance which, before the revolution, had caused it to be considered as one of the first libraries in Europe. In 1789, the _Bibliothèque du Roi_, as it was till then called, was reckoned to contain one hundred and eighty thousand printed volumes, eighty thousand manuscripts, a prodigious numbcr of medals, antiques, and engraved stones, six thousand port-folios of prints, and two thousand engraved plates. But, under its present denomination of _Bibliothèque Nationale_, it has been considerably augmented. Agreeably to your desire, I shall point out whatever is most remarkable in these augmentations. The buildings, which, since the year 1721, contain this vast collection, formally made part of the _Hôtel Mazarin_. The entrance is by the _Rue de la Loi_. It is at present divided into four departments, and is managed by a conservatory, composed of eight members, namely: 1. Two conservators for the printed books, M. M. CAPPERONNIER and VAN-PRAET. 2. Three for the manuscripts, M. M. LANGLÈS, LAPORTE DUTHEIL, and DACIER. 3. Two for the antiques, medals, and engraved stones, M. M. MILLIN and GOSSELIN. 4. One for the prints and engraved plates, M. JOLY. The first department, containing the printed books, occupies, on the first floor of the three sides of the court, an extent of about nine hundred feet by twenty-four in breadth. The rooms, which receive light on one side only, are equal in height. In the second room to the right is the _Parnasse Français_, a little mountain, in bronze, covered with figures a foot high, and with medals, representing French poets. Lewis XIV here occupies a distinguished place under the figure of Apollo. It was a present made by TITON DU TILLET. In another of these rooms, built on purpose, are a pair of globes of an extraordinary size, constructed, in 1683, by Father CORONELLI, a Jesuit, for Cardinal D'ESTRÉES, who presented them to Lewis XIV. The feet of these globes rest in a lower apartment; while their hemispheres project by two apertures made in the floor of fhe first story, and are thus placed within reach of the observer. Their diameter is eleven feet, eleven inches. The celebrated BUTTERFIELD made for them two brass circles, (the one for the meridian, the other for the horizon), each eighteen feet in diameter. Since the year 1789, the department of printed books has received an augmentation of one hundred and forty thousand volumes, either arising from private acquisitions, or collected in France, Italy, Holland, Germany, or Belgium. Among these is a valuable series of works, some more scarce than others, executed in the XVth century, which has rendered this department one of the most complete in Europe. I shall abstain from entering into a detail of the articles assembled in it, several of which deserve particular notice. A great many ancient specimens of the typographical art are on vellum, and give to this collection a value which it would be no easy matter to appreciate. All the classes of it present a great number, the enumeration of which would far exceed my limits. The department of manuscripts, which is placed in a gallery one hundred and forty feet in length, by twenty-two in breadth, has been increased in proportion to that of the printed books. The library of Versailles, that of several emigrants, the chapters of various cathedrals, the Sorbonne, the _Collège de Navarre_ in Paris, and the different suppressed religious corporations, have enriched it with upwards of twenty thousand volumes; eight thousand of these belonged to the library of _St. Germain-des-Prês_, which was burnt in 1793-4, and was immensely rich in manuscripts and old printed hooks. About fifteen hundred volumes have been taken from Italy, Holland, and Germany. Among those arrived from Italy, we must distinguish the original manuscript of RUFFIN, a priest of Aquilea, who lived in the IVth century, containing, on papyrus or Egyptian paper, the Latin tranlation of the Jewish antiquities of FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS; the grammar of PROBUS or PALÆMON, a manuscript of the Vth century, on vellum, in uncial characters; a very beautiful volume in Syriac, containing the Four Evangelists, a manuscript on vellum of the VIth century; the two celebrated manuscripts of Virgil of the VIIth century, the one from the Vatican, the other from Florence, both on vellum. A roll, in good preservation, composed of several skins, sewed together, containing the Pentateuch in Hebrew, a manuscript of the IXth century. A Terence, with figures of the time and a representation of the masks introduced on the stage by the ancients, together with the various poetical works of PRUDENTIUS; manuscripts on vellum of the IXth century. The Terence is that of the Vatican, in praise of which Madame DACIER speaks in her translation. The manuscripts of the ancient Dukes of Burgundy, which had so long constituted the ornament of the library of Brussels, now increase the fame of those which the _Bibliothèque Nationale_ already possessed of this description. Their number is about five hundred volumes; the greater part of them are remarkable for the beauty and richness of the miniatures by which they are embellished, and one scarcely inferior in magnificence to the primer of Anne de Bretagne, wife of Lewis XII, to that of Cardinal Richelieu, to the primer and battles of Lewis XIV, and to a heap of other manuscripts which rendered this _ci-devant Bibliothèque du Roi_ so celebrated in foreign countries. Five large apartments on the second floor are occupied by titles and genealogies, which are still preserved here, in about five thousand portfolios or boxes, for the purpose of verifying the claims to property, and assisting the historian in his researches. The department of medals, antiques and engraved stones has, since 1789, also experienced an abundant augmentation. The medals are in a cabinet at the end of the Library; the antiques are in another, above it, on the second floor. In 1790, the engraved stones which had been previously locked up in the drawers of the council-chamber at Versailles, were conveyed hither, to the number of eight hundred. It would be too tedious to dwell on the beauty, merit, and scarceness of these stones, as well as on their finished workmanship and degree of antiquity. Among them, the beautiful ring, called the _seal of Michael Angelo_, claims admiration. In 1791, some antiquities which constituted part of the treasure of _St. Denis_, were brought hither from that abbey. Among these valuable articles, we must particularly distinguish the chalice of the Abbot SUGER; a vase of sardonyx, with two handles formed of raised snakes, on which are represented, with admirable art, ceremonies relating to the worship of Bacchus; a large gold cup, ornamented with enamel of various colours; a very large urn of porphyry, which formerly served as a sepulchral monument; several baptismal fonts; the arm-chair of King Dagobert, a piece of very extraordinary workmanship for the time in which it was executed. Among the valuable articles removed hither from _La Sainte Chapelle_ in Paris, in the same year, are to be particularly remarked a sardonyx, representing the apotheosis of Augustus, and commonly called _l'agathe de la Sainte Chapelle_. This stone is the largest and rarest known of that species. It was brought to France in the year 1383 by king Charles V. At the end of 1792 the cabinet of medals of _St. Geneviève_, forming in the whole seventeen thousand articles, and its fine collection of antique monuments, increased the new riches accumulated in the _Bibliothèque Nationale_. In 1794, a beautiful series of antiquities, consisting of a great number of imperial medals, of nations, cities, and kings, of all sizes, in gold, silver, and bronze, together with little painted figures, busts, instruments of sacrifices, &c. arrived here from Holland. In 1796, the department of medals was also enriched by several articles from the _Garde-Meuble_ or Jewel-Office. Among them were some suits of armour belonging to several of the kings of France, particularly that of Francis I, that of Henry IV, and that of Lewis XIV. These were accompanied by a quantity of arms, helmets, shields, breast-plates, and weapons used in the ancient tournaments, as well as quivers, bows, arrows, swords, &c. Towards the end of the year 1798 and in 1799, several valuable articles arrived here from Italy, among which are two crowns of gold, enriched with precious stones, worn by the ancient kings of Lombardy, at the time of their coronation; the engraved stones and medals of the Pope's cabinet; a head of Jupiter Ægiochus, on a ground of sardonyx, a master-piece of art, which is above all eulogium; the celebrated Isiac table, in copper incrustated with silver, a valuable table of Egyptian mythology, which is presumed to have been executed, either at Alexandria or at Rome, in the first or second century of the christian era; some oriental weapons; a _fetfa_ or diploma of the Grand Signior contained in a silk purse, &c. The department of prints and engraved plates, formed of the celebrated cabinets of MAHOLLES, BERINGHEN, GAIGNIÈRES, UXELLES, BEGON, GAYLUS, FONTETTE, MARIETTE, &c. contained, before the revolution the most ample, rich, and valuable collection in Europe. It is placed in the _entresol_, and is divided into twelve classes. The first class comprehends sculptors, architectural engineers, and engravers, from the origin of the French nation to the present day, arranged in schools. The second, prints, emblems, and devices of piety. The third, every thing relative to fables and Greek and Roman antiquities. The fourth, medals, coins, and heraldry. The fifth, public festivals, cavalcades, and tournaments. The sixth, arts and mathematics. The seventh, prints relating to novels and books of entertainment. The eighth, natural history in all its branches. The ninth, geography. The tenth, plans and elevations of ancient and modern buildings. The eleventh, portraits of all professions, to the number of upwards of fifty thousand. The twelfth, a collection of the fashions and dresses of almost every country in the world. Since 1789, the augmentations made to it are considerable. Among these must be distinguished four hundred and thirty-five volumes brought from the library of Versailles, and fifty-two others, infinitely valuable, respecting China, found at the residence of M. BERTIN, Minister, about eight thousand prints brought from Holland, the greater part of them, very fine impressions; and about twelve thousand collected by different emigrants, almost all modern, indeed, but one half of which are select, and remarkable for their fine preservation. Among five hundred volumes, obtained from the suppressed religious corporations, are to be remarked one hundred and nine port-folios from the abbey of _St. Victor_, in Paris, containing a beautiful series of mythological, historical, and typographical subjects. This forms a valuable addition to the collection of the same kind of which the department of prints was already in possession. In one hundred and forty-four volumes brought from Cologne, there are several scarce and singular engravings. As for sixty articles sent from Italy, they are, with the exception of the _Museum Pio-Clementinum_, in such a state of degradation that they are scarcely fit for any thing but to mark the place which each composition has to occupy. Since 1789, the department of prints has made several acquisitions deserving of notice, such as the works of LEBAS, MARCENAY, and RODE, all extremely difficult to find complete, and three hundred and seventeen plates sent from Germany by FHAUENHOTZ; most of them executed by foreign engravers, and some are very capital. A few well-known distinguished artists and amateurs, among whom I must not omit to name DENON, ST. AUBIN, and LAMOTTE, a merchant at Havre, have generously enriched the department of prints with a great number of very valuable ones. The library is open every day, Sundays, and days of national fêtes excepted, from ten o'clock till two, to persons who wish to read, study, or take notes; and for whom every accommodation is provided; but to such as are attracted by curiosity alone, on the Wednesdays and Fridays of each week, at the same hours. On those days, you may perambulate in the different rooms of this magnificent establishment; on the other days, walking is here prohibited, in order that students may not be interrupted. However, JOHN BULL seems to pay little regard to this prohibition. Englishmen are frequently seen stalking about the rooms at the forbidden time, as if they meant to shew that they disdained the rules of propriety and decorum.[1] Under the government which succeeded the monarchy, was established, within the precincts of the _Bibliothèque Nationale_, a SCHOOL FOR ORIENTAL LIVING LANGUAGES. The design of this school, _which is of acknowledged utility in politics and commerce_, is to qualify persons to supply the place of the French droguemans in the East, who, at the beginning of the troubles which distracted France, abandoned the interests of their country, and deserted their stations. LANGLÈS, president of this school, here teaches the Persian and Malay languages. SILVESTRE DE SACY, literal and vulgar Arabic. JAUBERT, Turkish and the Tartarian of the Crimea. DANSE DE VILLOISON, modern Greek. In general, very few pupils are instructed here, and the greater part of those who begin the courses of lectures, do not follow them three months. This fact I gathered from the professors themselves. When FRANÇOIS DE NEUFCHÂTEAU was Minister, he had attached to this school an Armenian, named CIREIED, who gave lessons in his native language, which are now discontinued. A course of archæology is also delivered here by the learned MILLIN. The object of this course is to explain antique monuments, and compare them with passages of the classics. The professor indicates respecting each monument the opinions of the different learned men who have spoken of it: he also discusses those opinions, and endeavours to establish that which deserves to be adopted. Every year he treats on different subjects. The courses which he has already delivered, related to the study of medals, and that of engraved stones; the explanation of the ancient monuments still existing in Spain, France, and England; the history of ancient and modern Egypt; sacred and heroic mythology, under which head he introduced an explanation of almost every monument of literature and art deserving to be known. [Footnote 1: It is the intention of the government to remove the _Bibliothèque Nationale_ to the _Louvre_, or _Palais National des Sciences & des Arts_, as soon as apartments can be prepared for its reception.] LETTER LXIV. _Paris, February 8, 1803._ Having complied with your desire in regard to the _Bibliothèque Nationale_, I shall confine myself to a hasty sketch of the other principal public libraries, beginning with the BIBLIOTHÈQUE MAZARINE. By his will, dated the 6th of March 1662, Cardinal MAZARIN bequeathed this library for the convenience of the literati. It was formed by GABRIEL NAUDÉ of every thing that could be found most rare and curious, as well in France as in foreign countries. It occupies one of the pavilions and other apartments of the _ci-devant Collège Mazarin ou des Quatre Nations_, at present called _Palais des Beaux Arts_. No valuable additions have been made to this library since the revolution; but it is kept in excellent order. The Conservators, LE BLOND, COQUILLE, and PALISSOT, whose complaisance is never tired, are well known in the Republic of Letters. It is open to the public every day, from ten o'clock to two, Sundays, Thursdays, and the days of national fêtes excepted. BIBLIOTHÈQUE DU PANTHÉON. Next to the _Bibliothèque Nationale_, this library is said to contain the most printed books and manuscripts, which are valuable on account of their antiquity, scarceness, and preservation. It formerly bore the title of _Bibliothèque de St. Geneviève_, and belonged to the Canons of that order, who had enriched it in a particular manner. The acquisitions it has made since the revolution are not sufficiently important to deserve to be mentioned. With the exception of the _Bibliothèque Nationale_, not one of the public libraries in Paris has enjoyed the advantage of making improvements and additions. The library of the _Pantheon_ is open to the public on the same days as the _Bibliothèque Mazarine_. The present Conservators are DAUNOU, VENTENAT, and VIALLON. The first two are members of the National Institute. BIBLIOTHÈQUE DE L'ARSENAL. This library, one of the richest in Paris, formerly belonged to the Count d'Artois. It is destined for the _Conservative Senate_, in whose palace a place is preparing for its reception. However, it is thought that this removal cannot take place in less than a year and a half or two years. It has acquired little since the revolution, and is frequented less than the other libraries, because it is rather remote from the fashionable quarters of the town. There are few inquisitive persons in the vicinity of the Arsenal; and indeed, this library is open only on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays of every week from ten o'clock till two. AMEILHON, of the Institute, is Administrator; and SAUGRAIN, Conservator. Before I quit this library, you will, doubtless expect me to say something of the place from which it derives its appellation; namely, THE ARSENAL. It is a pile of building, forming several courts between the _Quai des Célestins_ and the _Place de la Liberté_, formerly the _Place de la Bastille_. Charles V had here erected some storehouses for artillery, which were lent very unwillingly by the Provost of Paris to Francis I, who wanted them for the purpose of casting cannon. As was foreseen, the king kept possession of them, and converted them into a royal residence. On the 28th of January 1562, lightning fell on one of the towers, then used as a magazine, and set fire to fifteen or twenty thousand barrels of powder. Several lives were lost, and another effect of this explosion was that it killed all the fishes in the river. Charles IX, Henry III, and Henry IV rebuilt the Arsenal, and augmented it considerably. Before the revolution, the founderies served for casting bronze figures for the embellishment of the royal gardens. The Arsenal then contained only a few rusty muskets and some mortars unfit for service, notwithstanding the energetic inscription which decorated the gate on the _Quai des Célestins_: "Ætnæ hæc Henrico Vulcania tela ministrat, Tela gigantæos debellatura furores." NICOLAS BOURBON was the author of these harmonious lines, which so much excited the jealousy of the famous poet, SANTEUIL, that he exclaimed in his enthusiasm, "I would have wished to have made them, and been hanged." During the course of the revolution, the buildings of the Arsenal have been appropriated to various purposes: at present even they seem to have no fixed destination. Here is a garden, advantageously situated, which affords to the inhabitants of this quarter an agreeable promenade. The before-mentioned libraries are the most considerable in Paris; but the _National Institute_, the _Conservative Senate_, the _Legislative Body_, and the _Tribunate_, have each their respective library, as well as the _Polytechnic School_, the _Council of the School of Mines_, the _Tribunal of Cassation_, the _Conservatory of Music_, the _Museum of Natural History_, &c. Independently of these libraries, here are also three literary _dépôts_ or repositories, which were destined to supply the public libraries already formed or to be formed, particularly those appropriated to public instruction. When the Constituent Assembly decreed the possessions of the clergy to be national property, the _Committee of Alienation_ fixed on the monasteries of the _Capucins_, _Grands Jésuites_, and _Cordeliers_, in Paris, as _dépôts_, for the books and manuscripts, which they were desirous to save from revolutionary destruction. LETTER LXV. _Paris, February 9, 1802._ _Vive la danse!_ _Vive la danse!_ seems now to prevail here universally over _"Vive l'amour!_ _Vive la bagatelle!_" which was the rage in the time of LA FLEUR. I have already informed you that, in moments the most eventful, the inhabitants of this capital spent the greater part of their time in DANCING. However extraordinary the fact may appear, it is no less true. When the Prussians were at Châlons, the Austrians at Valenciennes, and Robespierre in the Convention, they danced. When the young conscripts were in momentary expectation of quitting their parents, their friends, and their mistresses to join the armies, they danced. Can we then wonder that, at the present hour, when the din of arms is no longer heard, and the toils of war are on the point of being succeeded by the mercantile speculations of peace, dancing should still be the favourite pursuit of the Parisians? This is so much the case, that the walls of the metropolis are constantly covered by advertisements in various colours, blue, red, green, and yellow, announcing balls of different descriptions. The silence of streets the least frequented is interrupted by the shrill scraping of the itinerant fiddler; while by-corners, which might vie with Erebus itself in darkness, are lighted by transparencies, exhibiting, in large characters, the words "_Bal de Société_." --"Happy people!" says Sterne, "who can lay down all your cares together, and dance and sing and sport away the weights of grievance, which bow down the spirit of other nations to the earth!" In summer, people dance here in rural gardens, or delightful bowers, or under marquees, or in temporary buildings, representing picturesque cottages, constructed within the limits of the capital: these establishments, which are rather of recent date, are open only in that gay season. In winter, the upper classes assemble in magnificent apartments, where subscription-balls are given; and taste and luxury conspire to produce elegant entertainments. However, it is not to the upper circles alone that this amusement is confined; it is here pursued, and with truer ardour too, by citizens of every class and description. An Englishman might probably be at a loss to conceive this truth; I shall therefore enumerate the different gradations of the scale from the report of an impartial eye-witness, partly corroborated by my own observation. Tradesmen dance with their neighbours, at the residence of those who have the best apartments: and the expense of catgut, rosin, &c. is paid by the profits of the card-table. Young clerks in office and others, go to public balls, where the _cavalier_ pays thirty _sous_ for admission; thither they escort milliners and mantua-makers of the elegant class, and, in general, the first-rate order of those engaging belles, known here by the generic name of _grisettes_. Jewellers' apprentices, ladies' hair-dressers, journeymen tailors and upholsterers dance, at twenty _sous_ a head, with sempstresses and ladies' maids. Journeymen shoemakers, cabinet-makers, and workmen of other trades, not very laborious, assemble in _guingettes_, where they dance French country-dances at three _sous_ a ticket, with _grisettes_ of an inferior order. Locksmiths, carpenters, and joiners dance at two _sous_ a ticket, with women who constantly frequent the _guinguettes_, a species of dancing-girls, whom the tavern-keepers hire for the day, as they do the fiddlers. Water-carriers, porters, and, in general, the Swiss and Auvergnats have their private balls, where they execute the dances peculiar to their country, with fruit-girls, stocking-menders, &c. The porters of the corn-market form assemblies in their own neighbourhood; but the youngest only go thither, with a few _bons vivans_, whose profession it would be no easy matter to determine. Bucksome damsels, proof against every thing, keep them in countenance, either in drinking brandy or in fighting, and not unfrequently at the same _bal de société_, all this goes on at the same time, and, as it were, in unison. Those among the porters of the corn-market and charcoal carriers, who have a little _manners_, assemble on holidays, in public-houses of a more decent description, with good, plain-spoken market-women, and nosegay-girls. They drink unmixed liquor, and the conversation is somewhat more than _free_; but, in public, they get tipsy, and nothing farther! Masons, paviours in wooden shoes, tipped with iron, and other hard-working men, in short, repair to _guingettes_, and make the very earth tremble with their heavy, but picturesque capers, forming groups worthy of the pencil of Teniers. Lastly, one more link completes the chain of this nomenclature of caperers. Beggars, sturdy, or decrepit, dance, as well as their credulous betters: they not only dance, but drink to excess; and their orgies are more noisy, more prolonged, and even more expensive. The mendicant, who was apparently lame in the day, at night lays aside his crutch, and resumes his natural activity; the idle vagabond, who concealed one arm, now produces both; while the wretch whose wound excited both horror and pity, covers for a tune the large blister by which he makes a very comfortable living. LETTER LXVI. _Paris, February 11, 1802._ In order to confer handsome pensions on the men of science who had benefited mankind by their labours, and who, under the old _régime_, were poorly rewarded, in 1795, LAKANAL solicited and obtained the establishment of the BUREAU DES LONGITUDES. As members of this Board of Longitude, the first institution of the kind in France, LAGRANGE, LAPLACE, LALANDE, CASSINI,[1] MÉCHAIN, BORDA,[1] BOUGAINVILLE, FLEURIEU, MESSIER, BUACHE, and CARROCHÉ, the optician, had each 8,000 francs (_circa_ £. 330 sterling) a year, and the assistant astronomers, 4,000. Indeed, the professors of that science were in want of pecuniary assistance for the purpose of forming pupils. The _Bureau des Longitudes_ is on a more extensive scale, and possesses greater authority than the Board of Longitude in England. It is charged with the administration of all the Observatories belonging to the Republic, as well as with the correspondence with the astronomers of foreign countries. The government refers to it the examination of memoirs relative to navigation. Such of its members as more specially cultivate practical astronomy in the National Observatories of the capital, are charged to make all Observations which may contribute to the progress of that science, and procure new means for rectifying the tables of the Sun, as well as those which make known the position of the stars, and particularly the tables of the Moon, the improvement of which so essentially concerns the safety of navigation. The great importance of the last-mentioned tables induced this Board, about three years ago, to propose a premium of 6,000 francs (_circa_ £. 250 sterling) for tables of the Moon. LALANDE recommended to BONAPARTE to double it. The First Consul took his advice: and the French now have tables that greatly surpass those which are used in England.[2] A copy of these have, I understand, been sent to Mr. MASKELYNE, our Astronomer-Royal at Greenwich. The Board of Longitude of France, like that of England, calculates for every year Tables or _Ephemerides_, known in Europe under the title of _Connaissance des Tems_. The French having at length procured able calculators, are now able to dispense with the English _Ephemeris_. Their observations follow each other in such a manner as to render it unnecessary for them to recur to those of Greenwich, of which they have hitherto made continual use. Since the year 1795, the _Connaissance des Tems_ has been compiled by JÉROME LALANDE. At the end of the tables and their explanation, it contains a collection of observations, memoirs, and important calculations. The French astronomers are not a little surprised that we publish no similar work in London; while Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Gotha, and Milan set us the example. It is in the last volumes of the _Connaissance des Tems_ that JÉROME LALANDE gives the history of astronomy, where you will find every thing that has been done in this science. The _Bureau des Longitudes_ also publishes for every year, in advance, the _Annuaire de la République_, which serves as a rule for all the almanacks compiled in France. The meetings of the Board are held at the NATIONAL OBSERVATORY. This edifice, which is situated at the farther end of the _Faubourg St. Jacques_, was constructed in 1664, by order of COLBERT, and under the direction of PERRAULT, the medical architect, who planned the celebrated façade of the _Louvre_. The form of the building is rectangular. Neither wood nor iron have been employed in its construction. It is arched throughout, and its four sides stand exactly in the direction of the four cardinal points of the horizon. Although its elevation is eighty-five feet, it comprises but two stories, terminated by a flat roof, whence you command a fine view of Paris. You ascend thither by a winding staircase which has a hollow newel. This staircase, consisting of three hundred and sixty steps, extends downward to a similar depth of eighty-five feet, and forms a sort of well, at the bottom of which you can perceive the light. From this well have been observed the different degrees of acceleration in the descent of bodies. The subterraneous vaults have served for meteorological experiments. In one of them water is seen to petrify on filtering through the rock above. They lead to near fifty streets or passages, formed by quarries excavated in procuring the stones with which great part of the city of Paris is constructed. Previously to the year 1777, churches, palaces, whole streets of houses, and the public highway of several quarters of Paris and its environs, were on the point of being swallowed up in gulfs no less vast in depth than in extent. Since then, considerable works have been undertaken to consolidate these subterraneous caverns, and fill up the void, equally dangerous, occasioned by the working of the plaster-quarries. An accident of a very alarming nature, which happened in the _Rue d'Enfer_ in the year 1774; and another, at Montmenil, in 1778, shewed the necessity of expediting these operations, which were followed up with great activity from 1777 to 1789, when their progress was relaxed from the circumstances of the times. These quarries are far more extensive than is commonly imagined. In the department of the Seine alone, they extend under all the south part of Paris, and the roads, plains, and _communes_, to the distance of several leagues round the circumference of this city. Their roof, with the edifices standing on the soil that covers it, is either supported by walls recently built under the foundation of those edifices, or by pillars constructed at different periods in several places. The government is at the expense of providing for the safety of the streets, highways, and public buildings, but that of propping under-ground all private habitations must be defrayed by the proprietor. These ancient quarries had been much neglected, and the means of visiting them was equally dangerous and inconvenient. At present, every precaution is taken to insure the safety of the persons employed in them, as well as the stability of their roof; and for the better superintendance of all the subterraneous constructions of Paris, galleries of communication have been formed of sufficient width to admit the free passage of materials necessary for keeping them in repair. Let us now find our way out of these labyrinths, and reascending to the surface of the soil, pursue our examination of the Observatory. In a large room on the first floor is traced the meridian line, which divides this building into two parts. Thence, being extended to the south and north, it crosses France from Colieure to Dunkirk. On the pavement of one of the rooms is engraved a universal circular map, by CHAZELLES and SÉDILLAN. Another room is called the _Salle aux secrets_, because on applying the mouth to the groove of a pilaster, and whispering, a person placed at the opposite pilaster hears what is said, while those in the middle of the room, hear nothing. This phenomenon, the cause of which has been so often explained, must be common to all buildings constructed in this manner. In speaking of the _Champ de Mars_, I mentioned that LALANDE obtained the construction of an Observatory at the _ci-devant École Militaire_. Since 1789, he and his nephew have discovered fifty thousand stars; an immense labour, the greater part of them being telescopic and invisible to the naked eye. Of this number, he has already classed thirty thousand. The CASSINIS had neglected the Observatory in Paris; but when LALANDE was director of this establishment, he obtained from BONAPARTE good instruments of every description and of the largest dimensions. These have been executed by the first artists, who, with the greatest intelligence, have put in practice all the means of improvement which we owe to the fortunate discoveries of the eighteenth century. Of course, it is now as well provided as that of Greenwich. MÉCHAIN, the present director, and BOUVARD, his associate, are extremely assiduous in their astronomical labours. CARROCHÉ has made for this Observatory a twenty-two feet telescope, which rivals those of HERSCHEL of the same length; and the use of reflecting circles, imagined by MAYER, and brought into use by BORDA, which LENOIR executes in a superior manner, and which we have not yet chosen to adopt in England, has introduced into the observations of the French an accuracy hitherto unknown. The meridian from Dunkirk to Barcelona, measured between the years 1792 and 1798, by DELAMERE and MÉCHAIN, is of an astonishing exactness. It has brought to light the irregularity of the degrees, which was not suspected. The rules, composed of platina and copper, which LAVOISIER and BORDA imagined for measuring bases, without having occasion to calculate the effect of dilatation, are a singular invention, and greatly surpass what RAMSDEN made for the bases measured in England. LAPLACE has discovered in the Moon inequalities with which we were not acquainted. The work he has published, under the title of _Mécanique Céleste_, contains the most astonishing discoveries of physical theory, the great inequality of Jupiter and Saturn, the acceleration of the Moon, the equation of the third Satellite of Jupiter, and the flux and reflux of the sea. BURCKHARDT, one of the associated members of the _Bureau des Longitudes_, is a first-rate astronomer and a man of superior talent. He is at present employed on the difficult task of calculating the very considerable derangements of the planet discovered by OLBERS at Bremen, on the 28th of March 1801. VIDAL has made, at Mirepoix, more observations of Mercury than all the astronomers for two thousand years past, and these are the most difficult and uncommon. DELAMBRE has computed tables of the Sun, of Jupiter, of Saturn, and of Herschel; LALANDE, the nephew, has composed tables of Mars; and his uncle, of Mercury, which never deviate more than a few seconds from the observations. Even during the reign of terror, astronomy was not neglected. Through the interest of CARNOT, CALON, LAKANAL, and FOURCROY, the _Bureau de Consultation des Arts_ gave annually the sum of 300,000 francs (_circa_ £12,000 sterling) in gratifications to artists. Afterwards, in 1796, the National Institute, richly endowed, proposed considerable premiums. LALANDE, the uncle, founded one for astronomy; BONAPARTE, another for physics; and the First Consul has promised 60,000 francs (_circa_ £2,800 sterling) to any one who shall make a discovery of importance. France can now boast of two young geometricians, BIOT and PUISSON, who, for analytical genius, surpass all that exist in Europe. It is rather extraordinary that, with the exception of Mr. CAVENDISH and Dr. WARING, England has produced no great geometricians since the death of MACLAURIN, STERLING, and SIMPSON. The French tables of Logarithms, printed stereotypically, are cleared of all the errors which afflicted calculators of every country. Those of other nations will owe this obligation to Frenchmen. HERSCHEL no longer looks for comets; but the French astronomers, MESSIER, MÉCHAIN, BOUVARD, and PONS find some. Last year, JÉROME LALANDE deposited 600 francs in the hands of his notary, as a premium to stimulate the efforts of young observers. * * * * * _February 11, in continuation._ In the spring of 1803, MÉCHAIN will leave Paris for the purpose of extending his meridian to the Balearic Islands. He will measure the length of the pendulum in several places, in order to ascertain the inequality of the earth which the measure of the degrees had indicated. This circumstance reminds me of my neglect in not having yet satisfied your desire to have a short account of the means employed for fixing the standard of the NEW FRENCH WEIGHTS AND MEASURES. Among the great ideas realized during the first period of the revolution, must be reckoned that of a uniform system of weights and measures. From all parts of France remonstrances were sent against the great variety of those in use. Several kings had endeavoured to remedy this evil, which was so hurtful to lawful trade, and favourable only to fraud and double-dealing. Yet what even _they_ had not been able to effect, was undertaken by the Constituent Assembly. It declared that there ought to be but one standard of weights and measures, in a country subject to the same laws. The _Academy of Sciences_ was charged to seek and present the best mode of carrying this decree into execution. That society proposed the adoption of the decimal division, by taking for a fundamental unit the ten-millionth part of the quarter of the terrestrial meridian. The motives which determined this choice were the extreme simplicity of decimal calculation, and the advantage of having a measure taken from nature. The latter condition would, in truth, have been accomplished, had there been taken, as a fundamental unit, the length of the pendulum marking seconds for a given latitude; but the measure of an arc of the meridian, executed with the precision to be obtained by the methods and instruments of the present day, was extremely interesting in regard to the theory of the figure of the earth. This influenced the decision of the Academy, and if the motives which it presented to the Constituent Assembly were not exactly the real ones, it is because the sciences have also their policy: it sometimes happens that to serve mankind, one must resolve to deceive them. All the measures of the metrical system, adopted by the Republic, are deduced from a base taken from nature, the fourth part of the terrestrial meridian; and the divisions of those measures are all subjected to the decimal order employed in arithmetic. In order to establish this base, the grand and important work of taking a new measure of the terrestrial meridian, from Dunkirk to Barcelona, was begun in 1792. At the expiration of seven years, it was terminated; and the Institute presented the result to the Legislative Body with the original table of the new measures. MÉCHAIN and DELAMBRE measured the angles of ninety triangles with the new reflecting circles; imagined by MAYER, and which BORDA had caused to be constructed. With these instruments, they made four observations of latitude at Dunkirk, Paris, Évaux, Carcassonne, and Barcelona; two bases measured near Melun and Perpignan, with rules of platina and copper, forming metallic thermometers, were connected with the triangles of the meridian line: the total interval, which was 9°.6738, was found to be 551584.72 toises. As the degrees progressively diminished towards the south, but much more towards the middle than towards the extremities, the middle of the whole arc was taken; and, on comparing it with the degrees measured at Peru, between the years 1737 and 1741, the ellipticity of the earth was concluded to be 1/334 the mean degree, 57008 toises; and the MÈTRE, which is the ten-millionth part of the quarter of the meridian, 443.296 lines of the old French toise which had been used at Peru. The Commissioners, sent from foreign countries, verified all the calculations, and sanctioned the results. The experiments of the pendulum made at the observatory, with extreme care, by BORDA, MÉCHAIN, and CASSINI, with a new apparatus, constructed by LENOIR, shewed the pendulum to be 0.99385 of the _mètre_, on reducing it to the freezing point, and in _vacuo_: this would be sufficient for finding again the _mètre_, though all the standards were changed or lost. Exact experiments, made by LEFÈVRE-GINEAU, with instruments constructed by FORTIN, shewed the weight of the cubic decimetre of distilled water, at the point of the greatest condensation to be 18827.15 grains of the pile of 50 marcs, which is preserved here in the _Hôtel de la Monnaie_, and is called _Le poids de Charlemagne_; the toise being supposed at 13 degrees of the thermometer of 80 degrees. The scales of FORTIN might give a millionth part and more; and LEFÈVRE-GINEAU employed in all these experiments and calculations the most scrupulous degree of exactness. Thus the MÈTRE or principal unit of the French linear measures has furnished those of the weights; and all this grand system, taken from nature, is connected with the base the most invariable, the size of the earth itself. The unit of the measures of capacity is a cube whose side is the tenth part of the _mètre_, to which has been given the name of LITRE; the unit of measures of solidity, relative to wood, a cube whose side is the _mètre_, which is called STÈRE. In short, the thousandth part of a _litre_ of distilled water, weighed in _vacuo_ and at the temperature of melting ice, has been chosen for the unit of weights, which is called GRAMME. The following TABLE presents the nomenclature of these different Measures, their divisions, and multiples, together with the new Weights, as decreed by the Legislative Body, and to it is annexed their correspondence both with the old French Measures and Weights, and those of England. * * * * * LINEAR MEASURES. FRENCH ENGLISH T F I L M F Y Ft I[A] Myriamètre (or League) 10,000 Mètres 5,130 4 5 3.360 6 1 156 0 6 Kilomètre (or Mile) 1,000 Mètres 513 0 5 3.936 - 4 213 1 10.2 Hectomètre 100 Mètres 51 1 10 1.583 - - 109 1 1 Décamètre (or Perch) 10 Mètres 5 0 9 4.959 - - 10 2 9.7 MÈTRE - 3 0 11.296 - - --- 3 3.371 Décimètre (or Palm) 10th of a Mètre - - 3 8.330 - - --- - 3.937 Centimètre (or Digit) 100th of a Mètre - - -- 4.433 - - --- - 0.393 Millimètre (or Trait) 1,000th of a Mètre - - -- 0.443 - - --- - 0.039 [Footnote A: French measurements in Toises (T), Feet (F), Inches (I), and Lines (L). English mesurements in Miles (M), Furlongs (F), Yards (Y), Feet (Ft), and Inches (I).] AGRARIAN MEASURES. A R P[B] Myriare, square Kilomètre 263244.93 ST 247 0 20 Milare 26324.49 ST 24 2 34 Hectare, (or _Arpent_) square Hectomètre 2632.45 ST 2 1 35.4 Décare 263.24 ST --- - 39.54 ARE, (or square _Perch_) square Decamètre 26.32 ST --- - 3.954 Déciare 2.63 ST --- - 0.395 Centiare, (or 100th part of a square Perch) square _Mètre_ 0.26 ST --- - 0.039 [Footnote B: French measurements in Square Toises (ST). English measurements in Acres (A), Roods (R) and Perches (P).] MEASURES OF CAPACITY. Cubic Inches Kilolitre, (or Hogshead) cubic Mètre 29.1739 cubic feet 61028 Hectolitre, (or Setier) 2.9174 cubic feet 6102.8 Decalitre, (or Bushel) 0.2917 cubic feet 610.28 LITRE; (or Pinte) cubic Décimètre 50.4124 cubic inches 61.028 Décilitre, (or Glass) 5.0412 cubic inches 6.1028 Centilitre 0.5041 cubic inches 0.6102 Millitre, cubic Centimèter 0.0504 cubic inches 0.061 N. B. A Litre is nearly equal to 2-7/8 Pints, English Wine Measure. MEASURES FOR WOOD. Cubic Feet. Stère, cubical Mètre 29.1739 cubic feet 35.3171 Décistère, (or Solive) 2.9174 cubic feet 3.5317 Centistère 0.2917 cubic feet 0.3531 Millistère, cubic Décimètre 0.0291 cubic feet 0.0353 WEIGHTS. TROY lbs. oz. d. gr. lbs. oz. dw. gr.[C] Myriagramme 20 6 6 63.5 26 9 15 0.23 Kilogramme, (or Pound) weight of the cubic Décimètre of water at 4° which is the maximum of density 2 0 5 35.15 2 8 3 12.02 Hectogramme, (or Ounce) -- 3 2 10.72 -- 3 4 8.40 Décagramme, (or Drachm) -- - 2 44.27 -- - 6 10.44 GRAMME, (or Denier) weight of the cubic Centimètreat the freezing point -- - - 18.827 -- - -- 15.444 Déciegramme, (or Grain) -- - - 1.883 -- - -- 1.544 Centigramme -- - - 0.188 -- - -- 0.154 Milligramme, weight of the cubic Millemètre of water -- - - 0.019 -- - -- 0.015 [Footnote C: The labels on first set of columns are lbs., oz., drms., and grains; and on the second, lbs. oz. dwts. and grains.] [Footnote 1: Since dead. The former is replaced by DELAMBRE. CHABERT and PRONY are elected supernumerary members, and LEFRANÇAIS LALANDE, BOUVARD, and BURCKHARDT, appointed assistant astronomers.] [Footnote 2: The Prize has been awarded to M. BURG, an astronomer at Vienna.] LETTER LXVII. _Paris, February 14, 1802._ After speaking of the _Board of Longitude_ and the _National Observatory_, I must not omit to say a few words of an establishment much wanted in England. I mean the DÉPÔT DE LA MARINE. This general repository of maps, charts, plans, journals, and archives of the Navy and the Colonies, is under the direction of a flag-officer. It is situated in the _Rue de la Place Vendôme_; but the archives are still kept in an office at Versailles. To this _Dépôt_ are attached the Hydrographer and Astronomer of the Navy, both members of the National Institute and of the Board of Longitude, and also a number of engineers and draughtsmen proportioned to the works which the government orders to be executed. The title of this _Dépôt_ sufficiently indicates what it contains. To it has been lately added a library, composed of all the works relative to navigation, hydrography, naval architecture, and to the navy in general, as well as of all the voyages published in the different dead or living languages. The collection of maps, charts, plans, &c. belonging to it, is composed of originals in manuscript, ancient and modern, of French or foreign sea-charts, published at different times, and of maps of the possessions beyond the seas belonging to the maritime states of Europe and to the United-States of America. All the commanders of vessels belonging to the State are bound, on their return to port, to address to the Minister of the Naval Department, in order to be deposited in the archives, the journals of their voyage, and the astronomical or other observations which they have been enabled to make, and the charts and plans which they have had an opportunity of constructing. One of the apartments of the _Dépôt_ contains models of ships of war and other vessels, the series of which shews the progress of naval architecture for two centuries past, and the models of the different machines employed in the ports for the various operations relative to building, equipping, repairing, and keeping in order ships and vessels of war. The _Dépôt de la Marine_ publishes new sea-charts in proportion as new observations or discoveries indicate the necessity of suppressing or rectifying the old ones. When the service requires it, the engineers belonging to the _Dépôt_ are detached to verify parts of the coasts of the French territory in Europe, or in any other part of the world, where experience has proved that time has introduced changes with which it is important to be acquainted, or to rectify the charts of other parts that had not yet been surveyed with the degree of exactness of which the methods now known and practised have rendered such works susceptible. In the French navy, commanders of ships and vessels are supplied with useful charts and atlases of every description, at the expense of the nation. These are delivered into their care previously to the ship leaving port. When a captain is superseded in his command, he transfers them to his successor; and when the ship is put out of commission, they are returned to the proper office. Why does not the British government follow an example so justly deserving of imitation? LETTER LXVIII. _Paris, February 15, 1802._ After the beautiful theatre of the old _Comédie Française_, under its new title of _l'Odéon_, became a prey to flames, as I have before mentioned, the comedians belonging it were dispersed on all sides. At length, PICARD assembled a part of them in a house, built at the beginning of the revolution, which, from the name of the street where it is situated, is called the THÉÂTRE LOUVOIS. No colonnade, no exterior decoration announces it as a place of public amusement, and any one might pass it at noon-day without suspecting the circumstance, but for the prices of admission being painted in large characters over the apertures in the wall, where the public deposit their money. This house, which is of a circular form, is divided, into four tiers of boxes. The ornaments in front of them, not being in glaring colours, give, by their pale tint, a striking brilliancy to the dress of the women. PICARD, the manager of this theatre, is the MOLIÈRE of his company; that is, he is at once author and actor, and, in both lines, indefatigable. Undoubtedly, the most striking, and, some say, the only resemblance he bears to the mirror of French comedy, is to be compelled to bring on the stage pieces in so unfinished a state as to be little more than sketches, or, in other words, he is forced to write in order to subsist his company. Thus then, the stock-pieces of this theatre are all of them of his own composition. The greater part are _imbroglios_ bordering on farce. The _vis comica_ to be found in them is not easily understood by foreigners, since it chiefly consists in allusions to local circumstances and sayings of the day. However, they sometimes produce laughter in a surprising degree, but more frequently make those laugh who never blush to laugh at any thing. The most lively of his pieces are _Le Collatéral_ and _la Petite Ville_. In the course of last month, he produced one under the name of _La Grande Ville, ou les Provinciaux à Paris_, which occasioned a violent uproar. The characters of this pseudo-comedy are swindlers or fools; and the spectators insisted that the portraits were either too exact a copy of the originals, or not at all like them. By means of much insolence, by means of the guard which was incautiously introduced into the pit, and which put to flight the majority of the audience, and, lastly, by means of several alterations, PICARD contrived to get his piece endured. But this triumph may probably be the signal of his ruin,[1] as the favour of the Parisian public, once lost, is never to be regained. This histrionic author and manager has written some pieces of a serious cast. The principal are, _Médiocre et Rampant_, and _L'Entrée dans le Monde_. As in _La Grande Ville_, the characters in these are also cheats or fools. Consequently, it was not difficult to conduct the plot, it would have been much more so to render it interesting. These two comedies are written in verse which might almost pass for prose. The _Théâtre Louvois_ is open to all young authors who have the ambition to write for the stage, before they have well stored their mind with the requisites. Novelties here succeed each other with astonishing rapidity. Hence, whatever success PICARD may have met with as an author, he has not been without competitors for his laurels. Out of no less than one hundred and sixty-seven pieces presented for rehearsal and read at this house, one hundred and sixty-five are said to have been refused. Of the two accepted, the one, though written forty years ago, was brought out as a new piece, and damned. However, the ill success of a piece represented here is not remarked; the fall not being great. The friends of this theatre call it _La petite Maison de Thalie_. They take the part for the whole. It is, in fact, no more than her anti-chamber. As for the drawing-room of the goddess, it is no longer to be found any where in Paris. The performers who compose PICARD'S company do no injustice to his pieces. It is affirmed that this company has what is called, on the French stage, _de l'ensemble_. With few exceptions, there is an _ensemble_, as it is very indifferent. For such an interpretation to be correct, it would be necessary for all the comedians of the _Théâtre Louvois_ to have great talents, and none can be quoted. PICARD, though not unfrequently applauded, is but a sorry actor. His cast of parts is that of valets and comic characters. DEVIGNY performs the parts of noble fathers and foolish ones, here termed _dindons_, and grooms, called by the French _jockeis_. The remark, that he who plays every thing plays nothing, has not been unaptly applied to him. He has a defect of pronunciation which shocks even the ear of a foreigner. DORSAN is naturally cold and stiff, and when he endeavours to repair the former of these defects, the weakness of his powers betrays him. If he speaks correctly, it is without _finesse_, and he never adds by expression to the thought of the author. CLOZEL is a very handsome young man. He performs the characters of _petits-maîtres_ and those of valets, which he confounds incessantly. The other actors of the _Théâtre Louvois_ exempt me from naming them. As for the actresses at this theatre, those only worthy to be mentioned are, Mademoiselle ADELINE, who has a rather pretty face, and plays not ill innocent parts; Mademoiselle BEFFROI, who is handsome, especially in male attire; and Mademoiselle MOLIÈRE, who is a very good _soubrette_. Mademoiselle LESCOT, tired of obtaining applause at the _Théâtre du Vaudeville_, wished to do the same on a larger theatre. Here, she has not even the consolation of saying "_Tel brille au second rang, qui s'éclipse au premier._" Madame MOLÉ, who is enormous in bulk, is a coarse caricature, whether she performs the parts of noble mothers, or what the French call _caractères_, that is, singular characters. * * * * * The _ci-devant Comédie Italienne_ in Paris partly owed its prosperity to the _Vaudeville_, which might be considered as the parent of the _Opéra-Comique_. They were united, when the _drame_ being introduced with songs, had like to have annihilated them both. The _Vaudeville_ was sacrificed and banished. Several years elapsed before it reappeared. This offspring of French gaiety was thought to be lost for ever; but a few authors had prepared for it an asylum under the name of THÉÂTRE DU VAUDEVILLE. This little theatre is situated in the _Rue de Chartres_, which faces the principal entrance of the _Palais du Tribunat_. The interior is of a circular form, and divided into four tiers of boxes. In general, the decorations are not of the first class, but in the dresses the strictest propriety is observed. The pieces performed at the _Vaudeville_ are little comedies of the sentimental cast, a very extensive collection of portraits of French authors and of a few foreigners,[2] some pastoral pieces, parodies closely bordering on the last new piece represented at one of the principal theatres, charming _harlequinades_, together with a few pieces, in some of which parade and show are introduced; in others, scenes of low life and vulgarity; but the latter species is now almost abandoned. These pieces are almost always composed in conjunction. It is by no means uncommon to see in the play-bills the names of five or six authors to a piece, in which the public applaud, perhaps, no more than three verses of a song. This association of names, however, has the advantage of saving many of them from ridicule. The authors who chiefly devote themselves to the species of composition from which this theatre derives its name, are BARRÉ, RADET, and DESFONTAINES, who may be considered as its founders. BOURGEUIL, DESCHAMPS, DESPREZ, and the two SÉGURS, also contribute to the success of the _Vaudeville_, together with CHAZET, JOUY, LONGCHAMPS, and some others. In the exercise of their talents, these writers suffer no striking adventure, no interesting anecdote to escape their satirical humour; but aim the shafts of ridicule at every subject likely to afford amusement. It may therefore be conceived that this house is much frequented. No people on earth can be more fickle than the French in general, and the Parisians in particular, in the choice of their diversions. Like children, they are soon tired of the same toy, and novelty is for them the greatest attraction. Hence, the _Vaudeville_, as has been seen, presents a great variety of pieces. In general, these are by no means remarkable for the just conception of their plan. The circumstance of the moment adroitly seized, and related in some well-turned stanzas, interspersed with dialogue, is sufficient to insure the success of a new piece, especially if adapted to the abilities of the respective performers. Among them, HENRY would shine in the parts of lovers, were he less of a _mannerist_. JULIEN may be quoted as an excellent imitator of the beaux of the day. VERTPRÉ excels in personating a striking character. CARPENTIER is no bad representative of a simpleton. CHAPELLE displays much comic talent and warmth in the character of dotards, who talk themselves out of their reason. LAPORTE, as a speaking Harlequin, has no equal in Paris. So much for the men: I shall now speak of the women deserving of notice. Madame HENRY, in the parts of lovers, is to be preferred for her fine eyes, engaging countenance, elegant shape, and clear voice. Mesdemoiselles COLOMBE and LAPORTE, who follow her in the same line of acting, are both young, and capable of improvement. Mademoiselle DESMARES is far from being pretty; neither is she much of an actress, but she treads the stage well, and sings not amiss. Mademoiselle BLOSSEVILLE plays chambermaids and characters of parody with tolerable success. Mademoiselle DELILLE, however, who performs caricatures and characters where frequent disguises are assumed, is a still greater favourite with the public. So much has been said of the glibness of a female tongue that many of the comparisons made on the subject are become proverbial; but nothing that I ever heard in that way can be compared to the volubility of utterance of Mademoiselle DELILLE, except the clearness of her articulation. A quick and attentive ear may catch every syllable as distinctly as if she spoke with the utmost gravity and slowness. The piece in which she exhibits this talent to great advantage, and under a rapid succession of disguises, is called _Frosine ou la dernière venue_. Mademoiselle FLEURY makes an intelligent Columbine, not unworthy of LAPORTE. Madame DUCHAUME represents not ill characters of duennas, country-women, &c. Nothing can be said of the voice of the different performers of this theatre, on which acccount, perhaps, the orchestra is rather feeble; but still it might be better composed. During my present visit to Paris, the _Vaudeville_, as it is commonly called, has, I think, insensibly declined. It has, however, been said that its destiny seems insured by the character of the French, and that being the first theatre to bend to the caprices of the day, it can never be out of fashion. Certainly, if satire be a good foundation, it ought to be the most substantial dramatic establishment in Paris. It rests on public malignity, which is its main support. Hence, one might conclude that it will last as long as there is evil doing or evil saying, an absurdity to catch at, an author to parody, a tale of scandal to relate, a rogue to abuse, and, in short, as long as the chapter of accidents shall endure. At this rate, the _Vaudeville_ must stand to all eternity. Whatever may be its defects, it unquestionably exemplifies the character of the nation, so faithfully pourtrayed by Beaumarchais, in the following lines of the _vaudeville_ which concludes the _Mariage de Figaro_: _"Si l'on opprime, il peste, il crie, Il s'agite en cent façons, Tout finit par des chansons." bis._ [Footnote 1: The _Théâtre Louvois_ is rapidly on the decline.] [Footnote 2: These are pieces the hero of which is a celebrated personage, such as RABELAIS, SCARRON, VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, MALESHERBES, FREDERIC, king of Prussia, &c. &c.] LETTER LXIX. _Paris, February 17, 1802._ After having traversed the _Pont Neuf_, from the north side of the Seine, you cannot avoid noticing a handsome building to the right, situated on the _Quai de Conti_, facing the river. This is the Mint, or HÔTEL DE LA MONNAIE. The construction of this edifice was suggested by M. LAVERDY, Minister of State, and executed under the direction of M. ANTOINE, architect. I do not recollect any building of the kind in Europe that can be compared to it, since it far surpasses the _Zecca_ at Venice. The Abbé Terray (whose name will not be readily forgotten by the State-annuitants of his time, and for whom Voltaire, as one, said that he preserved his only tooth) when Comptroller-general of the Finances, laid the first stone of the _Hôtél de la Monnaie_, in April 1771. An avant-corps, decorated with six Ionic pillars, and supported by two wings, from the division of the façade, which is three hundred and thirty-six feet in breadth by eighty-four in elevation. It is distributed into two stories above the ground-floor. Perpendicularly to the six pillars, rise six statues, representing Peace, Commerce, Prudence, Law, Strength, and Plenty. In this avant-corps are three arches, the centre one of which is the principal entrance of the building. The vestibule is decorated with twenty-four fluted Doric pillars, and on the right hand, is a stair-case, leading to the apartments intended for the use of the officers belonging to the Mint, and in which they hold their meetings. This stair-case is lighted by a dome supported by sixteen fluted pillars of the Ionic order. The whole building contains six courts: the principal court is one hundred and ten feet in depth by ninety-two in breadth. All round it are covered galleries, terminated by a circular wall alternately pierced with arches and gates. The entrance of the hall for the money-presses is ornamented by four Doric pillars. This hall is sixty-two feet long by about forty broad, and contains nine money-presses. Above it is the hall of the sizers or persons who prepare the blank pieces for stamping. Next come the flatting-mills. Here, in a word, are all the apartments necessary for the different operations, and aptly arranged for the labours of coinage. In the principal apartment of the avant-corps of the _Hôtel de la Monnaie_, towards the _Quai de Conti_, is the cabinet known in Paris by the name of the MUSÉE DES MINES. This cabinet or Museum was formed in 1778 by M. SAGE, who had then spent eighteen years in collecting minerals. When he began to employ himself on that science forty-five years ago, there existed in this country no collection which could facilitate the study of mineralogy. Docimacy vas scarcely known here by name. France was tributary to foreign countries thirty-seven millions of livres (_circa_ £1,541,666 sterling) a year for the mineral and metallic substances which she drew from them, although she possesses them within herself. M. SAGE directed his studies and labours to the research and analysis of minerals. For twenty years he has delivered _gratis_ public courses of chymistry and mineralogy. For the advancement of those sciences, he also availed himself of the favour he enjoyed with some persons at court and in the ministry, and this was certainly making a very meritorious use of it. To his care and interest is wholly due the collection of minerals placed in this building. The apartment containing it has, by some, been thought to deviate from the simple and severe style suitable to its destination, and to resemble too much the drawing-room of a fine lady. But those who have hazarded such a reproach do not consider that, at the period when this cabinet was formed, it was not useless, in order to bring the sciences into fashion, to surround them with the show of luxury and the elegance of accessory decoration. Who knows even whether that very circumstance, trifling as it may appear, has not somewhat contributed to spread a taste for the two sciences in question among the great, and in the fashionable world? However this may be, the arrangement of this cabinet is excellent, and, in that respect, it is worthy to serve as a model. The productions of nature are so disposed that the glazed closets and cases containing them present, as it were, an open book in which the curious and attentive observer instructs himself with the greater facility and expedition, as he can without effort examine and study perfectly every individual specimen. The inside of the Museum is about forty-five feet in length, thirty-eight in breadth, and forty in elevation. In the middle is an amphitheatre capable of holding two hundred persons. In the circumference are glazed cabinets or closets, in which are arranged methodically and analytically almost all the substances known in mineralogy. The octagonal gallery, above the elliptical amphitheatre, contains large specimens of different minerals. To each specimen is annexed an explanatory ticket. One of the large lateral galleries presents part of the productions of the mines of France, classed according to the order of the departments where they are found. The new transversal gallery contains models of furnaces and machines employed in the working of mines. The third gallery is also destined to contain the minerals of France, the essays and results of which are deposited in a private cabinet. The galleries are decorated with tables and vases of different species of marble, porphyry, and granite, also from the mines of France, collected by SAGE. The cupola which rises above, is elegantly ornamented from the designs of ANTOINE, the architect of the building. This Museum is open to the public every day from nine o'clock in the morning till two, and, though it has been so many years an object of curiosity, such is the care exerted in superintending it, that it has all the freshness of novelty. In a niche, on the first landing-place of the stair-case, is the bust of M. SAGE, a tribute of gratitude paid to him by his pupils. SAGE'S principal object being to naturalize in France mineralogy, docimacy, and metallurgy, he first obtained the establishment of a _Special School of Mines_, in which pupils were maintained by the State. Here, he directed their studies, and enjoyed the happiness of forming intelligent men, capable of improving the science of metallurgy, and promoting the search of ores, &c. For a number of years past, as I have already observed, SAGE has delivered _gratis_, in this Museum; public courses of chymistry and mineralogy. He attracts hither many auditors by the ease of his elocution, and the address, the grace even which he displays in his experiments. If all those who have attended his lectures are to be reckoned his pupils, there will be found in the number names illustrious among the _savans_ of France. Unfortunately, this veteran of science has created for himself a particular system in chymistry, and this system differs from that of LAVOISIER, FOURCROY, GUYTON-MORVEAU, BERTHOLLET, CHAPTAL, &c. The sciences have also their schisms; but the real _savans_ are not persecutors. Although SAGE was not of their opinion on many essential points, his adversaries always respected him as the man who had first drawn the attention of the government towards the art of mines, instigated the establishment of the first school which had existed for this important object, and been the author of several good analyses. On coming out of prison, into which he had been thrown during the reign of terror, he found this cabinet of mineralogy untouched. It would then have been easy, from motives of public utility, to unite it to the new School of Mines. But the heads of this new school had, for the most part, issued from the old one, and SAGE was dear to them from every consideration. It was from a consequence of this sentiment that SAGE, who had been a member of the _Academy of Sciences_, not having been comprised in the list of the members of the National Institute at the time of its formation, has since been admitted into that learned body, not as a chymist indeed, but as a professor of mineralogy, a science which owes to him much of its improvement. The new School of Mines is now abolished, and practical ones are established in the mountains, as I have before mentioned. While I am speaking of mineralogy, I shall take you to view the CABINET DU CONSEIL DES MINES. This cabinet of mineralogy, formed at the _Hôtel des Mines_, _Rue de l'Université_, _No. 293_, is principally intended to present a complete collection of all the riches of the soil of the French Republic, arranged in local order. A succession of glazed closets, contiguous and similar to each other, that is about six feet and a half in height by sixteen inches in depth, affords every facility of observing them with ease and convenience. On these cases the names of the departments are inscribed in alphabetical order, and the vacancies which still exist in this geographical collection, are daily filled up by specimens sent by the engineers of mines, who, being spread over the different districts they are charged to visit, employ themselves in recognizing carefully the mineral substances peculiar to each country, in order to submit their views to the government respecting the means of rendering them useful to commerce and to the arts. The departmental collection, being thus arranged on the sides of the gallery, leaves vacant the middle of the apartments, which is furnished with tables covered with large glazed cases, intended for receiving systematic collections, and the most remarkable mineral substances from foreign countries, distributed in geographical order. An apartment is specially appropriated to the systematic order adopted by HAÜY in his new treatise on mineralogy; another is reserved for the method of WERNER. In both these oryctognostic collections, minerals of all countries are indiscriminately admitted. They are arranged by _classes_, _orders_, _genera_, _species_, and _varieties_, with the denominations adopted by the author of the method, and consequently designated by specific names in French for HAÜY'S method, and in German for that of WERNER. The proximity of the two apartments where they are exhibited, affords every advantage for comparing both methods, and acquiring an exact knowledge of mineralogical synonymy. Each of the two methods contains also a geological collection of rocks and various aggregates, classed and named after the principles which their respective authors have thought fit to adopt. The other apartments are likewise furnished with tables covered with glazed cases, where are exhibited, in a manner very advantageous for study, the most remarkable minerals of every description from foreign countries, among which are: 1. A numerous series of minerals from Russia, such as red chromate of lead, white carbonate of lead, green phosphate of lead; native copper, green and blue carbonate of copper; gold ore from Berezof; iron ore, granitical rocks, fossil shells, in good preservation, from the banks of the Moscorika, and others in the siliceous state, jaspers, crystals of quartz, beril, &c. 2. A collection from the iron and copper mines of Sweden, as well as various crystals and rocks from the same country. 3. A very complete and diversified collection of minerals from the country of Saltzburg. 4. Another of substances procured in England, such as fluates and carbonates of lime from Derbyshire; pyrites, copper and lead ore, zinc, and tin from Cornwall. 5. A collection of tin ore, cobalt, uranite, &c. from Saxony. 6. A series of minerals from Simplon, St. Gothard, the Tyrol, Transylvania, as well as from Egypt and America. All these articles, without being striking from their size, and other accessory qualities to be remarked in costly specimens, incontestably present a rich fund of instruction to persons delirous of fathoming science, by multiplying the points of view under which mineral productions may be observed. Such is the present state of the mineralogical collection of the _Conseil des Mines_, which the superintendants will, no doubt, with time and attention, bring to the highest degree of perfection. It is open to the public every Monday and Thursday: but, on the other days of the week, amateurs and students have access to it. A few years before the revolution, France was still considered as destitute of an infinite number of mineral riches, which were thought to belong exclusively to several of the surrounding countries. Germany was quoted as a country particularly favoured, in this respect, by Nature. Yet France is crossed by mountains similar to those met with in Germany, and these mountains contain rocks of the same species as those of that country which is so rich in minerals. What has happened might therefore have been foreseen; namely, that, when intelligent men, with an experienced eye, should examine the soil of the various departments of the Republic, they would find in it not only substances hitherto considered as scarce, but even several of those whose existence there had not yet been suspected. Since the revolution, the following are the _Principal Mineral Substances discovered in France._ _Dolomite_ in the mountains of Vosges and in the Pyrenees. _Carburet of iron_ or _plumbago_, in the south peak of Bigorre. The same variety has been been found near Argentière, and the valley of Chamouny, department of Mont-Blanc. A rock of the appearance of _porphyry_, with a _calcareous_ base, in the same valley of Chamouny. _Tremolite_ or _grammatite_ of HAÜY, in the same place. These two last-mentioned substances were in terminated crystals. _Red oxyd of titanium_, in the same place. _New violet schorl_, or _sphene_ of HAÜY, (_rayonnante en goutière_ of SAUSSURE) in the same place. _Crystallized sulphate of strontia_, in the mines of Villefort in La Lozère, in the environs of Paris, at Bartelemont, near the _Salterns_ in the department of La Meurthe. _Fibrous and crystallized sulphate of strontia_, at Bouvron, near Toul. _Earthy sulphate of strontia_, in the vicinity of Paris, near the forest of Montmorency, and to the north-east of it. _Onyx-agate-quartz_, at Champigny, in the department of La Seine. _Avanturine-quartz_, in the Deux-Sevres. _Marine bodies_, imbedded in the soil, a little above the _Oule de Gavernie_. _Anthracite_, and its direction determined in several departments. _Other marine bodies_, at the height of upwards of 3400 _mètres_ or 3683 yards, on the summit of Mont-Perdu, in the Upper Pyrenées. _Wolfram_, near St. Yriex, in Upper Vienne. _Oxyd of antimony_, at Allemont, in the department of L'Isère. _Chromate of iron_, near Gassin, in the department of _Le Var_, at the _bastide_ of the cascade. _Oxyd of uranite_, at St. Simphorien de Marmagne, in the department of La Côte d'Or. _Acicular arsenical lead ore_, at St. Prix, in the department of Saone and Loire. This substance was found among some piles of rubbish, near old works made for exploring a vein of lead ore, which lies at the foot of a mountain to the north-east, and at three quarters of a league from the _commune_ of St. Prix. In this country have likewise been found several varieties of new interesting forms relative to substances already known; several important geological facts have been ascertained; and, lastly, the emerald has here been recently discovered. France already possesses eighteen of the twenty-one metallic substances known. Few countries inherit from Nature the like advantages. With respect to the administration of the mines of France, the under-mentioned are the regulations now in force. A council composed of three members, is charged to give to the Minister of the Interior ideas, together with their motives, respecting every thing that relates to mines. It corresponds, in the terms of the law, with all the grantees and with all persons who explore mines, salterns, and quarries. It superintends the research and extraction of all substances drawn from the bosom of the earth, and their various management. It proposes the grants, permissions, and advances to be made, and the encouragements to be given. Under its direction are the two practical schools, and twenty-five engineers of mines, nine of whom are spread over different parts of the French territory. General information relative to statistics, every thing that can concur in the formation of the mineralogical map of France and complete the collection of her minerals, and all observations and memoirs relative to the art of mines or of the different branches of metallurgy, are addressed by the engineers to the _Conseil des Mines_ at Paris. LETTER LXX. _Paris, February 20, 1802_. Having fully described to you all the theatres here of the first and second rank, I shall confine myself to a rapid sketch of those which may be classed in the third order.[1] THÉÂTRE MONTANSIER. This house stands at the north-west angle of the _Palais du Tribunat_. It is of an oval form, and contains three tiers of boxes, exclusively of a large amphitheatre. Before the revolution, it bore the name of _Théâtre des Petits Comédiens du Comte de Beaujolais_, and was famous for the novelty of the spectacle here given. Young girls and boys represented little comedies and comic operas in the following manner. Some gesticulated on the stage; while others, placed in the side-scenes, spoke or sang their parts without being seen. It was impossible to withhold one's admiration from the perfect harmony between the motions of the one and the speaking and singing of the other. In short, this double acting was executed with such precision that few strangers detected the deception. To these actors succeeded full-grown performers, who have since continued to play interludes of almost every description. Indeed, this theatre is the receptacle of all the nonsense imaginable; nothing is too absurd or too low for its stage. Here are collected all the trivial expressions to be met with in this great city, whether made use of in the markets, gaming-houses, taverns, or dancing-rooms. CAROLINE and BRUNET, or BRUNET and CAROLINE. They are like two planets, round which move a great number of satellites, some more imperceptible than others. If to these we add TIERCELIN, an actor of the grotesque species, little more is to be said. Were it not for BRUNET, who makes the most of his comic humour, in playing all sorts of low characters, and sometimes in a manner truly original, and Mademoiselle CAROLINE, whose clear, flexible, and sonorous voice insures the success of several little operas, the _Théâtre Montansier_ would not be able to maintain its ground, notwithstanding the advantages of its centrical situation, and the attractions of its lobby, where the impures of the environs exhibit themselves to no small advantage, and literally carry all before them. We now come to the theatres on the _Boulevard_, at the head of which is to be placed L'AMBIGU COMIQUE. This little theatre is situated on the _Boulevard du Temple_, and, of all those of the third order, has most constantly enjoyed the favour of the public. Previously to the revolution, AUDINOT drew hither crowded houses by the representation of comic operas and bad _drames_ of a gigantic nature, called here _pantomimes dialoguées_. The effects of decoration and show were carried farther at this little theatre than at any other. Ghosts, hobgoblins, and devils were, in the sequel, introduced. All Paris ran to see them, till the women were terrified, and the men disgusted. CORSE, the present manager, has of late added considerably to the attraction of the _Ambigu Comique_, by not only restoring it to what it was in the most brilliant days of AUDINOT, but by collecting all the best actors and dancers of the _Boulevard_, and improving on the plan adopted by his predecessor. He has neglected nothing necessary for the advantageous execution of the new pieces which he has produced. The most attractive of these are _Victor_, _le Pélerin blanc_, _L'Homme à trois visages_, _Le Jugement de Salomon_, &c. The best performers at this theatre are CORSE, the manager, TAUTIN, and Mademoiselle LEVESQUE. * * * * * In regard to all the other minor theatres, the enumeration of which I have detailed to you in a preceding letter,[2] I shall briefly, observe that the curiosity of a stranger may be satisfied in paying each of them a single visit. Some of these _petits spectacles_ are open one day, shut the next, and soon after reopened with performances of a different species. Therefore, to attempt a description of their attractions would probably be superfluous; and, indeed, the style of the pieces produced is varied according to the ideas of the speculators, the taste of the managers, or the abilities of the performers, who, if not "the best actors in the world," are ready to play either "tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited." [Footnote 1: The Theatre of the _Porte St. Martin_ not having been open, when this letter was written, it is not here noticed. It may be considered as of the second rank. Its representations include almost every line of acting; but those for which the greatest expense is incurred are melo-drames and pieces connected with pantomime and parade. The house is the same in which the grand French opera was performed before the revolution.] [Footnote 2: See Vol. i. Letter XXI.] LETTER LXXI. _Paris, February 22, 1802._ The variety of matter which crowds itself on the mind of a man who attempts to describe this immense capital, forms such a chaos, that you will, I trust, give me credit for the assertion, when I assure you that it is not from neglect or inattention I sometimes take more time than may appear strictly necessary to comply with your wishes. Considering how deeply it involves the peace and comfort of strangers, as well as inhabitants, I am not at all surprised at the anxiety which you express to acquire some knowledge of the POLICE OF PARIS. In the present existing circumstances, it might be imprudent, if not dangerous, to discuss, freely openly, so delicate a question. I shall take a middle course. Silence would imply fear; while boldness of expression might give offence; and though I certainly am not afraid to mention the subject, yet to offend, is by no means my wish or intention. In this country, the Post-Office has often been the channel through which the opinion of individuals has been collected. What has been, may again occur; and in such critical times, who knows, but the government may conceive itself justified in not considering as absolutely sacred the letters intrusted to that mode of conveyance? Under these considerations, I shall beg leave to refer you to a work which has gone through the hands of every inquisitive reader; that is the _Tableau de Paris_, published in 1788: but, on recollection, as this letter will, probably, find you in the country, where you may not have an immediate opportunity of gratifying your curiosity, and as the book is become scarce, I shall select from it for your satisfaction a few extracts concerning the Police. This establishment is necessary and useful for maintaining order and tranquillity in a city like Paris, where the very extremes of luxury and wretchedness are continually in collision. I mean _useful_, when no abuse is made of its power; and it is to be hoped that the present government of France is too wise and too just to convert an institution of public utility into an instrument of private oppression. Since the machinery of the police was first put in order by M. D'ARGENSON, in 1697, its wheels and springs have been continually multiplied by the thirteen ministers who succeeded him in that department. The last of these was the celebrated M. LENOIR. The present Minister of the Police, M. FOUCHÉ, has, it seems, adopted, in a great measure, the means put in practice before the revolution. His administration, according to general report, bears most resemblance to that of M. LENOIR: he is said, however, to have improved on that vigilant magistrate: but he surpasses him, I am told, more in augmentation of expenses and agents, than in real changes.[1] In selecting from the before-mentioned work the following _widely scattered_ passages, and assembling them as a _piece of Mosaic_, it has been my endeavour to enable you to form an impartial judgment of the police of Paris, by exhibiting it with all its perfections and imperfections. Borrowing the language of MERCIER, I shall trace the institution through all its ramifications, and, in pointing out its effects, I shall "nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice." If we take it for granted, that the police of Paris is now exercised on the same plan as that pursued towards the close of the old _régime_, this sketch will be the more interesting, as its resemblance to the original will exempt me from adding a single stroke from my own pencil. "D'ARGENSON was severe," says MERCIER, "perhaps because he felt, in first setting the machine in motion, a resistance which his successors have less experienced. For a long time it was imagined that a Minister of Police ought to be harsh; he ought to be firm only. Several of these magistrates have laid on too heavy a hand, because they were not acquainted with the people of Paris; a people of quick feeling, but not ferocious[2], whose motions are to be divined, and consequently easy to be led. Whoever should be void of pity in that post, would be a monster." MERCIER then gives the fragment by FONTENELLE, on the police of Paris and on M. D'ARGENSON, of which I shall select only what may be necessary for elucidating the main subject. "The inhabitants of a well-governed city," says FONTENELLE, "enjoy the good order which is there established, without considering what trouble it costs those who establish or preserve it, much in the same manner as all mankind enjoy the regularity of the motions of celestial bodies, without having any knowledge of them, and even the more the good order of a police resembles by its uniformity that of the celestial bodies, the more is it imperceptible, and, consequently, the more it is unknown, the greater is its perfection. But he who would wish to know it and fathom it, would be terrified. To keep up perpetually in a city, like Paris, an immense consumption, some sources of which may always be dried up by a variety of accidents; to repress the tyranny of shop-keepers in regard to the public, and at the same time animate their commerce; to prevent the mutual usurpations of the one over the other, often difficult to discriminate; to distinguish in a vast crowd all those who may easily conceal there a hurtful industry; to purge society of them, or tolerate them only as far as they can be useful to it by employments which no others but themselves would undertake, or discharge so well; to keep necessary abuses within the precise limits of necessity which they are always ready to over-leap; to envelop them in the obscurity to which they ought to be condemned, and not even draw them from it by chastisement too notorious; to be ignorant of what it is better to be ignorant of than to punish, and to punish but seldom and usefully; to penetrate by subterraneous avenues into the bosom of families, and keep for them the secrets which they have not confided, as long as it is not necessary to make use of them; to be present every where without being seen; in short, to move or stop at pleasure an immense multitude, and be the soul ever-acting, and almost unknown, of this great body: these are, in general, the functions of the chief magistrate of the police. It should seem that one man alone could not be equal to them, either on account of the quantity of things of which he must be informed, or of that of the views which he must follow, or of the application which he must exert, or of the variety of conduct which he most observe, and of the characters which he must assume: but the public voice will answer whether M. D'ARGENSON has been equal to them. "Under him, cleanliness, tranquillity, plenty, and safety were brought to the highest degree of perfection in this city. And, indeed, the late king (Lewis XIV) relied entirely on his care respecting Paris. He could have given an account of a person unknown who should have stolen into it in the dark; this person, whatever ingenuity he exerted in concealing himself, was always under his eye; and if, at last, any one escaped him, at least what produced almost the same effect, no one would have dared to think himself well-concealed. "Surrounded and overwhelmed in his audiences by a crowd of people chiefly of the lower class, little informed themselves of what brought them, warmly agitated by interests very trifling, and frequently very ill understood, accustomed to supply the place of discourse by senseless clamour, he neither betrayed the inattention nor the disdain which such persons or such subjects might have occasioned." "FONTENELLE has not," continues MERCIER, "spoken of the severity of M. D'ARGENSON, of his inclination to punish, which was rather a sign of weakness than of strength. Alas! human laws, imperfect and rude, cannot dive to the bottom of the human heart, and there discover the causes of the delinquencies which they have to punish! They judge only from the surface: they would acquit, perhaps, those whom they condemn; they would strike him whom they suffer to escape. But they cannot, I confess, do otherwise. Nevertheless, they ought to neglect nothing that serves to disclose the heart of man. They ought to estimate the strength of natural and indestructible passions, not in their effects, but in their principles; to pay attention to the age, the sex, the time, the day; these are nice rules, which could not be found in the brain of the legislator, but which ought to be met with in that of a Minister of the Police." "There are also epidemical errors in which the multitude of those who go astray, seems to lessen the fault; in which a sort of circumspection is necessary, in order that punishment may not be in opposition to public interest, because punishment would then appear absurd or barbarous, and indignation might recoil on the law, as well as on the magistrate." "What a life has a Minister of Police! He has not a moment that he can call his own; he is every day obliged to punish; he is afraid to give way to indulgence, because he does not know that he may not one day have to reproach himself with it. He is under the necessity of being severe, and of acting contrary to the inclination of his heart; not a crime is committed but he receives the shameful or cruel account: he hears of nothing but vicious men and vices; every instant he is told: 'there's a murder! a suicide! a rape!' Not an accident happens but he must prescribe the remedy, and hastily; he has but a moment to deliberate and act, and he must be equally fearful to abuse the power intrusted to him, and not to use it opportunely. Popular rumours, flighty conversations, theatrical factions, false alarms, every thing concerns him. "Is he gone to rest? A fire rouses him from his bed. He must be answerable for every thing; he must trace the robber, and the lurking assassin who has committed a crime; for the magistrate appears blameable, if he has not found means to deliver him up quickly to justice. The time that his agents have employed in this capture will be calculated, and his honour requires that the interval between the crime and the imprisonment should be the shortest possible. What dreadful duties! What a laborious life! And yet this place is coveted! "On some occasions, it is necessary for the Minister of Police to demean himself like a true _Greek_, as was the case in the following instance: "A person, being on the point of making a journey, had in his possession a sum of twenty thousand livres which embarrassed him; he had only one servant, whom he mistrusted, and the sum was tempting. He accordingly requested a friend to be so obliging as to take care of it for him till his return. "A fortnight after, the friend denied the circumstance. As there was no proof, the civil law could not pronounce in this affair. Recourse was had to the Minister of Police, who pondered a moment, and sent for the receiver, making the accuser retire into an adjoining room: "The friend arrives, and maintains that he has not received the twenty thousand livres. 'Well,' said the magistrate, 'I believe you; and as you are innocent you run no, risk in writing to your wife the note that I am going to dictate. Write. "'"My dear wife, all is discovered. I shall be punished if I do not restore you know what. Bring the sum: your coming quickly to my relief is the only way for me to get out of trouble and obtain my pardon." "'This note,' added the magistrate, 'will fully justify you. Your wife can bring nothing since you have received nothing, and your accuser will be foiled.' "The note was dispatched; the wife, terrified, ran with the twenty thousand livres. "Thus the Minister of Police can daily make up for the imperfection and tardiness of our civil laws; but he ought to use this rare and splendid privilege with extreme circumspection. "The chief magistrate of the police is become a minister of importance; he has a secret and prodigious influence; he knows so many things, that he can do much mischief or much good, because he has in hand a multitude of threads which he can entangle or disentangle at his pleasure; he strikes or he saves; he spreads darkness or light: his authority is as delicate as it is extensive. "The Minister of Police exercises a despotic sway over the _mouchards_ who are found disobedient, or who make false reports: as for these fellows, they are of a class so vile and so base, that the authority to which they have sold themselves, has necessarily an absolute right over their persons. "This is not the case with those who are apprehended in the name of the police; they may have committed trifling faults: they may have enemies in that crowd of _exempts_, spies, and satellites, who are believed on their word. The eye of the magistrate may be incessantly deceived, and the punishment of these crimes ought to be submitted to a more deliberate investigation; but the house of correction ingulfs a vast number of men who there become still more perverted, and who, on coming out, are still more wicked than when they went in. Being degraded in their own eyes, they afterwards plunge themselves headlong into all sorts of irregularities. "These different imprisonments are sometimes rendered necessary by imperious circumstances; yet it were always to be wished that the detention of a citizen should not depend on a single magistrate, but that there should be a sort of tribunal to examine when this great act of authority, withdrawn from the eye of the law, ceases to be illegal. "A few real advantages compensate for these irregular forms, and there are, in fact, an infinite number of irregularities which the slow and grave process of our tribunals can neither take cognizance of, nor put a stop to, nor foresee, nor punish. The audacious or subtle delinquent would triumph in the winding labyrinth of our civil laws. The laws of the police, more direct, watch him, press him, and surround him mose closely. The abuse, is contiguous to the benefit, I admit; but a great many private acts of violence, base and shameful crimes, are repressed by this vigilant and active force which ought, nevertheless, to publish its code and submit it to the inspection of enlightened citizens." "Could the Minister of Police communicate to the philosopher all he knows, all he learns, all he sees, and likewise impart to him certain secret things, of which he alone is well-informed, there would be nothing so curious and so instructive under the pen of the philosopher; for he would astonish all his brethren. But this magistrate is like the great penitentiary; he hears every thing, relates nothing, and is not astonished at certain delinquencies in the same degree as another man. By dint of seeing the tricks of roguery, the crimes of vice, secret treachery, and all the filth of human actions, he has necessarily a little difficulty in giving credit to the integrity and virtue of honest people. He is in a perpetual state of mistrust; and, in the main, he ought to possess such a character; for, he ought to think nothing impossible, after the extraordinary lessons which he receives from men and from things. In a word, his place commands a continual, and scrutinizing suspicion." * * * * * _February 22, in continuation._ "Even should not the Parisian have the levity with which he is reproached, reason would justify him in its adoption. He walks surrounded by spies. No sooner do two citizens whisper to each other, than up comes a third, who prowls about in order to listen to what they are saying. The spies of the police are a regiment of inquisitive fellows; with this difference, that each individual belonging to this regiment has a distinct dress, which he changes frequently every day; and nothing so quick or so astonishing, as these sorts of metamorphoses. "The same spy who figures as a private gentleman in the morning, in the evening represents a priest: at one time, he is a peaceable limb of the law; at another, a swaggering bully. The next day, with a gold-headed cane in his hand, he will assume the deportment of a monied man buried in calculations; the most singular disguises are quite familiar to him. In the course of the twenty-four hours, he is an officer of distinction and a journeyman hair-dresser, a shorn apostle and a scullion. He visits the dress-ball and the lowest sink of vice. At one time with a diamond ring on his finger, at another with the most filthy wig on his head, he almost changes his countenance as he does his apparel; and more than one of these _mouchards_ would teach the French _Roscius_ the art of _decomposing_ himself; he is all eyes, all ears, all legs; for he trots, I know not how, over the pavement of every quarter of the town. Squatted sometimes in the corner of a coffee-room, you would take him for a dull, stupid, tiresome fellow, snoring till supper is ready: he has seen and heard all that has passed. At another time, he is an orator, and been the first to make a bold speech; he courts you to open your mind; he interprets even your silence, and whether you speak to him or not, he knows what you think of this or that proceeding. "Such is the universal instrument employed in Paris for diving into secrets; and this is what determines the actions of persons in power more willingly than any thing that could be imagined in reasoning or politics. "The employment of spies has destroyed the ties of confidence and friendship. None but frivolous questions are agitated, and the government dictates, as it were, to citizens the subject on which they shall speak in the evening in coffee-houses, as well as in private circles. "The people have absolutely lost every idea of civil or political administration; and if any thing could excite laughter in the midst of an ignorance so deplorable, it would be the conversation of such a silly fellow who constantly imagines that Paris must give the law and the _ton_ to all Europe, and thence to all the world. "The men belonging to the police are a mass of corruption which the Minister of that department divides into two parts: of the one, he makes spies or _mouchards_; of the other, satellites, _exempts_, that is, officers, whom he afterwards lets loose against pickpockets, swindlers, thieves, &c., much in the same manner as a huntsman sets hounds on wolves and foxes. "The spies have other spies at their heels, who watch over them, and see that they do their duty. They all accuse each other reciprocally, and worry one another for the vilest gain." I cannot here avoid interrupting my copious but laboriously-gathered selection from MERCIER, to relate an anecdote which shews in what a detestable light _mouchards_ are considered in Paris. A man who appeared to be in tolerably good circumstances, fell in love, and married a girl whom the death of her parents and accumulated distress had driven to a life of dissipation. At the end of a few months, she learnt that her husband was a spy of the police. "Probably," said, she to him, "you did not take up this trade till after you had reflected that in following that of a thief or a murderer, you would have risked your life." On saying this, she ran out of the house, and precipitated herself from the _Pont Royal_ into the Seine, where she was drowned.--But to resume the observations of MERCIER. "It is from these odious dregs," continues our author, "that public order arises. "When the _mouchards_ of the police have acted contrary to their instructions, they are confined in the house of correction; but they are separated from the other prisoners, because they would be torn to pieces by those whom they have caused to be imprisoned, and who would recognize them. They inspire less pity on account of the vile trade which they follow. One sees with surprise, and with still more pain, that these fellows are very young. Spies, informers at sixteen!--O! what a shocking life does this announce!" exclaims MERCIER. "No; nothing ever distressed me more than to see boys act such a part.... And those who form them into squads, who drill them, who corrupt such inexperienced youth!" Such is the admirable order which reigns in Paris, that a man suspected or described is watched so closely, that his smallest steps are known, till the very moment when it is expedient to apprehend him. "The description taken of the man is a real portrait, which it is impossible to mistake; and the art of thus describing the person by words, is carried to so great a nicety, that the best writer, after much reflection on the matter, could add nothing to it, nor make use of other expressions. "The Theseuses of the police are on foot every night to purge the city of robbers, and it might be said that the lions, bears, and tigers are chained by political order. "There are also the court-spies, the town-spies, the bed-spies, the street-spies, the spies of impures, and the spies of wits: they are all called by the name of _mouchards_, the family name of the first spy employed by the court of France. "Men of fashion at this day follow the trade of _mouchards_; most of them style themselves _Monsieur le Baron_, _Monsieur le Comte_, _Monsieur le Marquis_. There was a time, under Lewis XV, when spies were so numerous, that it was impossible for friends, who assembled together, to open their heart to each other concerning matters which deeply affected their interest. The ministerial inquisition had posted its sentinels at the door of every room, and listeners in every closet. Ingenuous confidences, made from friends to friends, and intended to die in the very bosom where they had been deposited, were punished as dangerous conspiracies. "These odious researches poisoned social life, deprived men of pleasures the most innocent, and transformed citizens into enemies who trembled to unbosom themselves to each other. "One fourth of the servants in Paris serve as spies; and the secrets of families, which are thought the most concealed, come to the knowledge of those interested in being acquainted with them. "Independently of the spies of the police, ministers have spies belonging to themselves, and keep them in pay: these are the most dangerous of all, because they are less suspected than others, and it is more difficult to know them. By these means, ministers know what is said of them; yet, of this they avail themselves but little. They are more intent to ruin their enemies, and thwart their adversaries, than to derive a prudent advantage from the free and ingenuous hints given them by the multitude. "It is entertaining enough to consider that, in proper time and place, spies are watching him who, at his pleasure, sets spies to watch other citizens. Thus, the links which connect mankind in political order are really incomprehensible. He who does not admire the manner in which society exists, and is supported by the simultaneous reaction of its members, and who sees not the serpent's _tail_ entering its _mouth_, is not born for reflection. "But the secrets of courts are not revealed through spies; they get wind by means of certain people who are not in the least mistrusted; in like manner the best built ships leak through an imperceptible chink, which cannot be discovered. "What is interesting in courts, and particularly so in ours," says MERCIER, "is that there is a degree of obscurity spread over all its proceedings. We wish to penetrate what is concealed, we endeavour to know till we learn; thus it is that the most ingenious machine preserves its highest value only till we have seen the springs which set it in motion. "After having considered the different parts which form the police of the capital, we still perceive all the radii reaching from the centre to the circumference. How many ramifications issue from the same stem! How far the branches extend! What an impulse does not Paris give to other neighbouring cities! "The police of Paris has an intimate correspondence with that of Lyons and other provincial cities: for it is evident that it would be imperfect, if it could not follow the disturber of public order, and if the distance of a few leagues skreened him from researches. "The correspondence of the Parisian police is not therefore limited to its walls; it extends much farther; and it is in towns where imprudent or rash persons would imagine that they might give their tongue greater freedom, that the vigilant magistrate pries into conversation, and keeps a watchful eye over those who would measure their audacity by the degree of distance from the capital. "Thus the police of Paris, after having embraced France, penetrates also into Switzerland, Italy, Holland, and Germany;[3] and when occasion requires, its eye is open on all sides to what can interest the government. When it wishes to know any fact, it is informed of it to a certainty; when it wishes to strike a serious blow, it seldom misses its aim. "It may easily be conceived that the machine would be incomplete, and that its play would fail in the desired effect, did it not embrace a certain extent. It costs but little to give to the lever the necessary length. Whether the spy be kept in pay at Paris, or a hundred leagues off, the expense is the same, and the utility becomes greater. "Experience has shewn that these observations admit of essential differences in the branches of the police. Weights and measures must be changed, according to time, place, persons, and circumstances. There are no fixed rules; they must be created at the instant, and the most versatile actions are not destitute of wisdom and reason. "Of this wholesale legislators are not aware: it is reserved for practitioners to seize these shades of distinction. There must be a customary, and, as it were, every-day policy, in order to decide well without precipitation, without weakness, and without rigour. What would be a serious fault at Paris, would be a simple imprudence at Lyons, an indifferent thing elsewhere, and so on reciprocally. "Now this science has not only its details and its niceties, it has also its variations, and sometimes even its oppositions. Ministers must have a steady eye and great local experience, in order to be able to strike true, and strike opportunely, without espousing imaginary terrors; which, in matters of police, is the greatest fault that can be committed.[4] "LYCURGUS, SOLON, LOCKE, and PENN! you have made very fine and majestic laws; but would you have divined these? Although secret, they exist; they have their wisdom, and even their depth. The distance of a few leagues gives to matters of police two colours, which bear to each other no resemblance; and there is no principal town which is not obliged, in modeling its police on that of Paris, to introduce into it the greatest modifications. The motto of every Minister of Police ought to be this: _The letter of the law kills, its spirit gives life._ "The safety of Paris, during the night, is owing to the guard[5] and two or three hundred _mouchards_, who trot about the streets, and recognize and follow suspected persons. It is chiefly by night that the police makes its captions." The manner in which these captions are made is humorously, gravely, feelingly, and philosophically described by the ingenious MERCIER. Long as this letter already is, I am confident that you will not regret its being still lengthened by another extract or two relative to this interesting point; thus I shall terminate the only elucidation that you are likely to obtain on a subject which has so strongly excited your curiosity. "The comic," says our lively author, "is here blended with the serious. The fulminating order, which is going to crush you, is in the pocket of the _exempt_, who feels a degree of pleasure in the exercise of his dreadful functions. He enjoys a secret pride in being bearer of the thunder; he fancies himself the eagle of Jove: but his motion is like that of a serpent. He glides along, dodges you, crouches before you, approaches your ear, and with down-cast eyes and a soft-toned voice, says to you, at the same time shrugging his shoulders: '_Je suis au désespoir, Monsieur; mais j'ai un ordre, Monsieur, qui vous arrête, Monsieur; de la part de la police, Monsieur_.'----'_Moi, Monsieur_?'----'_Vous-même, Monsieur_.'----You waver an instant between anger and indignation, ready to vent all sorts of imprecations. You see only a polite, respectful, well-bred man, bowing to you, mild in his speech, and civil in his manners. Were you the most furious of mankind, your wrath would be instantly disarmed. Had you pistols, you would discharge them in the air, and never against the affable _exempt_. Presently you return him his bows: there even arises between you a contest of politeness and good breeding. It is a reciprocity of obliging words and compliments, till the moment when the resounding bolts separate you from the polite man, who goes to make a report of his mission, and whose employment, by no means an unprofitable one, is to imprison people with all possible gentleness, urbanity, and grace. "I am walking quietly in the street; before me is a young man decently dressed. All at once four fellows seize on him, collar him, push him against the wall, and drag him away. Natural instinct commands me to go to his assistance; a tranquil witness says to me coolly: 'Don't interfere; 'tis nothing, sir, but a caption made by the police.' The young man is handcuffed, and he disappears. "I wish to enter a narrow street, a man belonging to the guard is posted there as a sentinel: I perceive several of the populace looking out of the windows. 'What's the matter, sir?' say I.---- 'Nothing,' replies he; 'they are only taking up thirty girls of the town at one cast of the net.' Presently the girls, with top-knots of all colours, file off, led by the soldiers of the guard, who lead them gallantly by the hand, with their muskets clubbed. "It is eleven o'clock at night, or five in the morning, there is a knock at your door; your servant opens it; in a moment your room is filled with a squad of satellites. The order is precise, resistance is vain; every thing that might serve as a weapon is put out of your reach; and the _exempt_, who will not, on that account, boast the less of his bravery even takes your brass pocket-inkstand for a pistol. "The next day, a neighbour, who has heard a noise in the house, asks what it might be: 'Nothing, 'tis only a man taken up by the police.' ----'What has he done?'----'No one can tell; he has, perhaps, committed a murder, or sold a suspicious pamphlet.'----'But, sir, there's some difference between those two crimes.'----'May be so; but he is carried off.' "You have been apprehended; but you have not been shewn the order; you have been put into a carriage closely shut up; you know not whither you are going to be taken; but you may be certain that you will visit the wards or dungeons of some prison. "Whence proceeds the decree of proscription? You cannot rightly guess. "It is not necessary to write a thick volume against arbitrary arrests. When one has said, _it is an arbitrary act_, one may, without any difficulty, infer every possible consequence. But all captions are not equally unjust: there are a multitude of secret and dangerous crimes which it would be impossible for the ordinary course of the law to take cognizance of, to put a stop to, and punish. When the minister is neither seduced nor deceived, when he yields not to private passion, to blind prepossession, to misplaced severity, his object is frequently to get rid of a disturber of the public peace; and the police, in the manner in which the machine is set up, could not proceed, at the present day, without this quick, active, and repressive power. "It were only to be wished that there should be afterwards a particular tribunal, which should weigh in an exact scale the motives of each caption, in order that imprudence and guilt, the pen and the poniard, the book and the libel, might not be confounded. "The inspectors of police determine on their part a great many subaltern captions; as they are generally believed on their word, and as they strike only the lowest class of the people, the chief readily concedes to them the details of this authority. "Some yield to their peevishness; others, to their caprice: but who knows whether avarice has not also a share in their proceedings, and whether they do not often favour him who pays at the expense of him who does not pay? Thus the liberty of the distressed and lowest citizens would have a tarif; and this strange tax would bear hard on the very numerous portion of _prostitutes_, _professed gamblers_, _quacks_, _hawkers_, _swindlers_, and _adventurers_, all people who do mischief, and whom it is necessary to punish; but who do more mischief when they are obliged to pay, and purchase, during a certain time, the privilege of their irregularities. "We have imitated from the English their Vauxhall, their Ranelagh, their whist, their punch, their hats, their horse-races, their jockies, their betting; but," concludes MERCIER, "when shall we copy from them something more important, for instance, that bulwark of liberty, the law of _habeas corpus_?" [Footnote 1: The office of Minister of the Police has since been abolished. M. FOUCHÉ is now a Senator, and the machine of which he was said to be so expert a manager, is confided to the direction of the Prefect of Police, who exercises his functions under the immediate authority of the Ministers, and corresponds with them concerning matters which relate to their respective departments. The higher duties of the Police are at present vested in the _Grand Juge_, who is also Minister of Justice. The former office is of recent creation.] [Footnote 2: Voltaire thought otherwise; and he was not mistaken.] [Footnote 3: I shall exemplify this truth by two remarkable facts. About the year 1775, when M. DE SARTINE was Minister of the Police, several forgeries were committed on the Bank of Vienna; Count DE MERCY, then Austrian ambassador at Paris, was directed to make a formal application for the delinquent to be delivered up to justice. What was his astonishment on receiving, a few hours after, a note from M. DE SARTINE, informing him that the author of the said forgeries had never been in Paris; but resided in Vienna, at the same time mentioning the street, the number of the house, and other interesting particulars! A circumstance which occurred in 1796, proves that, since the revolution, the system of the Parisian police continues to extend to foreign countries. The English Commissary for prisoners of war was requested by a friend to make inquiry, on his arrival in Paris, whether a French lady of the name of BEAUFORT was living, and in what part of France she resided. He did so; and the following day, the card, on which he had written the lady's name, was returned to him, with this addition: "She lives at No. 47, East-street, Manchester-square, London."] [Footnote 4: The same principle holds good in politics.] [Footnote 5: The municipal guard of Paris at present consists of 2334 men. The privates must be above 30 and under 45 years of age.] LETTER LXXII. _Paris, February 26, 1802._ Referring to an expression made use of in my letter of the 16th of December last,[1] you ask me "What the sciences, or rather the _savans_ or men of science, have done for this people?" With the assistance of a young Professor in the _Collège de France_, who bids fair to eclipse all his competitors, it will not be difficult for me to answer your question. Let me premise, however, that the _savans_ to whom I allude, must not be confounded with the philosophers, called _Encyclopædists_, from their having been the first to conceive and execute the plan of the _Encyclopædia_. These _savans_ were DIDEROT, D'ALEMBERT, and VOLTAIRE, all professed atheists, who, by the dissemination of their pernicious doctrine, introduced into France an absolute contempt for all religion. This infidelity, dissolving every social tie, every principle between man and man, between the governing and the governed, in the sequel, produced anarchy, rapine, and all their attendant horrors. At the beginning of the revolution, every mind being turned towards politics, the Sciences were suddenly abandoned: they could have no weight in the struggle which then occupied every imagination. Presently their existence was completely forgotten. Liberty formed the subject of every writing and every discourse: it seemed that orators alone possessed the power of serving her; and this error was partly the cause of the calamities which afterwards overwhelmed France. The greater part of the _savans_ remained simple spectators of the events which were preparing: not one of them openly took part against the revolution. Some involved themselves in it. Those men were urged by great views, and hoped to find, in the renewal of social organization, a mean of applying and realizing their theories. They thought to master the revolution, and were carried away by its torrent; but at that time the most sanguine hopes were indulged. If the love of liberty be no more than a phantom of the brain, if the wish to render men better and happier be no more than a matter of doubt, such errors may be pardoned in those who have paid for them with their life. It is in the recollection of every one that the National Convention consisted of two parties, which, under the same exterior, were hastening to contrary ends: the one, composed of ignorant and ferocious men, ruled by force; the other, more enlightened, maintained its ground by address. The former, restless possessors of absolute power, and determined to grasp at every thing for preserving it, strove to annihilate the talents and knowledge which made them sensible of their humiliating inferiority. The others, holding the same language, acted in an opposite direction. But being obliged, in order to preserve their influence, never to shew themselves openly, they employed their means with an extreme reserve, and this similarity at once explains the good they did, the evil they prevented, and the calamities which they were unable to avert. At that time, France was on the very brink of ruin. _Landrecies_, _Le Quesnoy_, _Condé_ and _Valenciennes_ were in the power of her enemies. _Toulon_ had been given up to the English, whose numerous fleets held the dominion of the seas, and occasionally effected debarkations. This country was a prey to famine and terror; _La Vendée_, _Lyons_, and _Marseilles_ were in a state of insurrection. No arms, no powder; no ally that could or would furnish any; and its only resource lay in an anarchical government without either plan or means of defence, and skilful only in persecution. In a word, every thing announced that the Republic would perish, before it could enjoy a year's existence. In this extremity, two new members were called to the Committee of Public Welfare. These two men organized the armies, conceived plans of campaign, and prepared supplies. It was necessary to arm nine hundred thousand men; and what was most difficult, it was necessary to persuade a mistrustful people, ever ready to cry out "treason!" of the possibility of such a prodigy. For this purpose, the old manufactories were comparatively nothing; several of them, situated on the frontiers, were invaded by the enemy. They were revived every where with an activity till then unexampled. _Savans_ or men of science were charged to describe and simplify the necessary proceedings. The melting of the church-bells yielded all the necessary metal.[2] Steel was wanting; none could be obtained from abroad, the art of making it was unknown. The _Savans_ were asked to create it; they succeeded, and this part of the public defence thus became independent of foreign countries. The exigencies of the war had rendered more glaring the urgent necessity of having good topographical maps, and the insufficiency of those in use became every day more evident. The geographical engineers, which corps had been suppressed by the Constituent Assembly, were recalled to the armies, and although they could not, in these first moments, give to their labours the necessary extent and detail, they nevertheless paved the way to the great results since obtained in this branch of the art military. Nothing is more easy than to destroy; nothing is so difficult, and, above all, so tedious as to reconstruct. The persons then in power had likewise had the prudence to preserve in their functions such pupils and engineers in the civil line as were of an age to come under the requisition. Whatever might be the want of defenders, it was felt that it requires ten years' study to form an engineer; while health and courage suffice for making a soldier. This disastrous period affords instances of foresight and skill which have not always been imitated in times more tranquil. The Sciences had just rendered great services to the country. They were calumniated; those who had made use of them were compelled to defend them, and did so with courage. A circumstance, equally singular and unforeseen, occasioned complete recourse to be had to their assistance. An officer arrived at the Committee of Public Welfare: he announced that the republican armies were in presence of the enemy; but that the French generals durst not march their soldiers to battle, because the brandies were poisoned, and that the sick in the hospitals, having drunk some, had died. He requested the Committee to cause them to be examined, asked for orders on this subject, and wished to set off again immediately. The most skilful chymists were instantly assembled: they were ordered to analyze the brandies, and to indicate, in the course of the day, the poison and the remedy. These _savans_ laboured without intermission, trusting only to themselves for the most minute details. Scarcely was time allowed them to finish their operations, when they were summoned to appear before the Committee of Public Welfare, over which ROBESPIERRE presided. They announced that the brandies were not poisoned, and that water only had been added to them, in which was slate in suspension, so that it was sufficient to filter them, in order to deprive them of their hurtful quality. ROBESPIERRE, who hoped to discover a treason, asked the Commissioners if they were perfectly sure of what they had just advanced. As a satisfactory answer to the question, one of them took a strainer, poured the liquor through it, and drank it without hesitation. All the others followed his example. "What!" said ROBESPIERRE to him, "do you dare to drink these poisoned brandies?"----"I durst do much more," answered he, "when I put my name to the Report." This service, though in itself of little importance, impressed the public mind with a conception of the utility of the _savans_, a greater number of whom were called into the Committee of Public Welfare. There they were secure from subaltern informers, with which France abounded. Having concerns only with the members charged with the military department, who were endeavouring to save them, they might, by keeping silence, escape the suspicious looks of the tyrants of the day. There was then but one resource for men of merit and virtue, namely, to conceal their existence, and cause themselves to be forgotten. In the midst of this sanguinary persecution, all the means of defence employed by France, issued from the obscure retreat where the genius of the Sciences had taken refuge. Powder was the article for which there was the most urgent occasion. The soldiers were on the point of wanting it. The magazines were empty. The administrators of the powder-mills were assembled to know what they could do. They declared that the annual produce amounted to three millions of pounds only, that the basis of it was saltpetre drawn from India, that extraordinary encouragements might raise them to five millions; but that no hopes ought to be entertained of exceeding that quantity. When the members of the Committee of Public Welfare announced to the administrators that they must manufacture seventeen millions of pounds of powder in the space of a few months, the latter remained stupified. "If you succeed in doing this," said they, "you must have a method of making powder of which we are ignorant." This, however, was the only mean of saving the country. As the French were almost excluded from the sea, it was impossible to think of procuring saltpetre from India. The _savans_ offered to extract all from the soil of the Republic. A general requisition called to this labour the whole mass of the people. Short and simple directions, spread with inconceivable activity, made, of a difficult art, a common process. All the abodes of men and animals were explored. Saltpetre was sought for even in the ruins of Lyons; and soda, collected from among the ashes of the forests of La Vendée. The results of this grand movement would have been useless, had not the Sciences been seconded by new efforts. Native saltpetre is not fit for making powder; it is mixed with salts and earths which render it moist, and diminish its activity. The process employed for purifying it demanded considerable time. The construction of powder-mills alone would have required several months, and before that period, France might have been subjugated. Chymistry invented new methods for refining and drying saltpetre in a few days. As a substitute for mills, pulverized charcoal, sulphur, and saltpetre were mixed, with copper balls, in casks which were turned round by hand. By these means, powder was made in twelve hours; and thus was verified that bold assertion of a member of the Committee of Public Welfare: "Earth impregnated with saltpetre shall be produced," said he, "and, in five days after, your cannon shall be loaded." Circumstances were favourable for fixing, in all their perfection, the only arts which occupied France. Persons from all the departments were sent to Paris, in order to be instructed in the manufacture of arms and saltpetre. Rapid courses of lectures were given on this subject. They contributed little to the general movement, which had saved the Republic, but they had an effect no less important, that of bringing to light the astonishing facility of the French for acquiring the arts and sciences; a happy gift which forms one of the finest features in the character of the nation. Notwithstanding so many services rendered by the Sciences, the learned were not less persecuted; the most celebrated among them were the most exposed. The venerable DAUBENTON, the co-operator in the labours of BUFFON, escaped persecution only because he had written a work on the improvement of sheep, and was taken for a simple shepherd. COUSIN was not so fortunate; yet, in his confinement, he had the stoicism to compose works of geometry, and give lessons of physics to his companions of misfortune. LAVOISIER, that immortal character, whose generosity in promoting the progress of science could be equalled only by his own enlightened example in cultivating it, was also apprehended. As one of the Commissioners for fixing the standard of weights and measures, great hopes were entertained that he might be restored to liberty. Measures were taken with that intention; but these were not suited to the spirit of the moment. The commission was dissolved, and LAVOISIER left in prison. Shortly after, this ever to be lamented _savant_ was taken to the scaffold. He would still be living, had his friends acted on the cupidity of the tyrants who then governed, instead of appealing to their justice. About this period, some members of the Convention having introduced a discussion in favour of public instruction, it was strongly opposed by the revolutionary party, who saw in the Sciences nothing but a poison which enervated republics. According to them, the finest schools were the popular societies. To do good was then impossible, and to shew an inclination to do it, exposed to the greatest danger the small number of enlightened men France still possessed. In this point of view, every thing was done that circumstances permitted. A military school was created, where young men from all the departments were habituated to the exercise of arms and the life of a camp. It was called _L'École de Mars_. Its object was not to form officers, but intelligent soldiers, who, spread in the French armies, should soon render them the most enlightened of Europe, as they were already the most inured to the hardships of war. Thus, a small number of men, whose conduct has been too ill appreciated, alone retarded, by constant efforts, the progress of barbarism and struggled in a thousand ways against the oppression which others contented themselves with supporting. At length, the bloody throne, raised by ROBESPIERRE, was overthrown: hope succeeded to terror; and victory, to defeat. Then, the Sciences, issuing from the focus in which they had been concentered and concealed, reappeared in all their lustre. The services they had rendered, the dangers which had threatened them, were felt and acknowledged. The plan of campaign, formed by the scientific men, called to the Committee of Public Welfare, had completely succeeded. The French armies had advanced on the rear of those of the allies, and, threatening to cut off their retreat, not only forced them to abandon the places they had taken, but also marched from conquest to conquest on their territory. The means of having iron, steel, saltpetre, powder, and arms, had been created during the reign of terror. The following were the results of this grand movement at the beginning of the third year of the Republic. Twelve millions of pounds of saltpetre extracted from the soil of France in the space of nine months. Formerly, scarcely one million was drawn from it. Fifteen founderies at work for the casting of brass cannon. Their annual produce increased to 7000 pieces. There existed in France but two establishments of this description before the revolution. Thirty founderies for iron ordnance, yielding 13,000 pieces per year. At the breaking out of the war, there were but four, which yielded annually 900 pieces of cannon. The buildings for the manufacture of shells, shot, and all the implements of artillery, multiplied in the same proportion. Twenty new manufactories for side-arms, directed by a new process. Before the war, there existed but one. An immense manufactory of fire-arms established all at once in Paris, and yielding 140,000 muskets per year, that is, more than all the old manufactories together. Several establishments of this nature formed on the same plan in the different departments of the Republic. One hundred and eighty-eight workshops for repairing arms of every description. Before the war, there existed but six. The establishment of a manufactory of carbines, the making of which was till then unknown in France. The art of renewing the touch-hole of cannon discovered, and carried immediately to a perfection which admits of its being exercised in the midst of camps. A description of the means by which tar, necessary for the navy, may be speedily extracted from the pine-tree. Balloons and telegraphs converted into machines of war. All the process of the arts relative to war simplified and improved by the application of the most learned theories. A secret establishment formed at Meudon for that purpose. Experiments there made on the oxy-muriate of potash, on fire-balls, on hollow-balls, on ring-balls, &c. Great works begun for extracting from the soil of France every thing that serves for the construction, equipment, and supplies of ships of war. Several researches for replacing or reproducing the principal materials which the exigencies of the war had consumed, and for increasing impure potash, which the making of powder had snatched from the other manufactories. Simple and luminous directions for fixing the art of making soap, and bringing it within reach of the meanest capacity. The invention of the composition of which pencils are now made in France, the black lead for which was previously drawn from England; and what was inappreciable in those critical circumstances, the discovery of a method for tanning, in a few days, leather which generally required several years' preparation. In a word, if we speak of the territorial acquisitions, which were the result of the victories obtained by means of the extraordinary resources created by the men of science, France has acquired an extent of 1,498 square leagues, and a population of 4,381,266 individuals; namely, Savoy, containing 411,700 inhabitants; the County of Nice, 93,166; Avignon, the _Comtat Venaissin_, and Dutch Flanders, 200,500; Maëstricht and Venloo, 90,000; Belgium, 1,880,000; the left bank of the Rhine, 1,658,500; Geneva and its territory, 40,000; and Mulhausen, 7,200. P.S. Paris is now all mirth and gaiety; in consequence of the revived pleasures of the Carnival. I shall not give you my opinion of it till its conclusion. [Footnote 1: See Vol. I. Letter XXXIV.] [Footnote 2: The bells produced 27,442,852 pounds of metal. This article, valued at 10 _sous_ per pound, represents 15 millions of francs (_circa_ £625,000 sterling). A part served for the fabrication of copper coin, the remainder furnished pieces of ordnance.] LETTER LXXIII _Paris, February 28, 1802._ In all great cities, one may naturally expect to find great vices; but in regard to gaming, this capital presents a scene which, I will venture to affirm, is not to be matched in any part of the world. No where is the passion, the rage for play so prevalent, so universal: no where does it cause so much havock and ruin. In every class of society here, gamesters abound. From men revelling in wealth to those scarcely above beggary, every one flies to the gaming-table; so that it follows, as a matter of course, that Paris must contain a great number of _Maisons de jeu_, or PUBLIC GAMING-HOUSES. They are to be met with in all parts of the town, though the head-quarters are in the _Palais du Tribunat_, or, as it is most commonly called, the _Palais Royal_. Whenever you come to Paris, and see, on the first story, a suite of rooms ostentatiously illuminated, and a blazing reverberator at the door, you may be certain that it is a house of this description. Before the revolution, gaming was not only tolerated in Paris, but public gaming-houses were then licensed by the government, under the agreeable name of _Académies de jeu_. There, any one might ruin himself under the immediate superintendance of the police, an officer belonging to which was always present. Besides these academies, women of fashion and impures of the first class were allowed to keep a gaming-table or _tripot de jeu_, as it was termed, in their own house. This was a privilege granted to them in order that they might thereby recover their shattered fortune. When all the necessary expenses were paid, these ladies commonly shared the profits with their protectors, that is, with their friends in power, through whose protection the _tripot_ was sanctioned. Every one has heard of the fatal propensity to gaming indulged in by the unfortunate Marie Antoinette. The French women of quality followed her pernicious example, as the young male nobility did that of the Count d'Artois and the Duke of Orleans; so that, however decided might be the personal aversion of Lewis XVI to gaming, it never was more in fashion at the court of France than during his reign. This is a fact, which can be confirmed by General S---th and other Englishmen who have played deep at the queen's parties. At the present day, play is, as I have before stated, much recurred to as a financial resource, by many of the _ci-devant_ female _noblesse_ in Paris. In their parties, _bouillotte_ is the prevailing game; and the speculation is productive, if the company will sit and play. Consequently, the longer the sitting, the greater the profits. The same lady who moralizes in the morning, and will read you a lecture on the mischievous consequences of gaming, makes not the smallest hesitation to press you to sit down at her _bouillotte_ in the evening, where she knows you will almost infallibly be a loser. No protection, I believe, is now necessary for a lady who chooses to have a little private gaming at her residence, under the specious names of _société_, _bal_, _thé_, or _concert_. But this is not the case with the _Maisons de jeu_, where the gaming-tables are public; or even with private houses, where the object of the speculation is publicly known. These purchase a license in the following manner. A person, who is said to have several _sleeping_ partners, engages to pay to the government the sum of 3,600,000 francs (_circa_ £150,000 sterling) a year for the power of licensing all gaming-houses in this capital, and also to account for a tenth part of the profits, which enter the coffer of the minister at the head of the department of the police. This contribution serves to defray part of the expense of greasing the wheels of that intricate machine. Without such a license, no gaming-house can be opened in Paris. Sometimes it is paid for by a share in the profits, sometimes by a certain sum per sitting. These _Maisons de jeu_, where dupes are pitted against cheats, are filled from morning to night with those restless beings, who, in their eager pursuit after fortune, almost all meet with disappointment, wretchedness, ruin, and every mischief produced by gaming. This vice, however, carries with it its own punishment; but it is unconquerable in the heart which it ravages. It lays a man prostrate before those fantastic idols, distinguished by the synonymous names of fate, chance, and destiny. It banishes from his mind the idea of enriching himself, or acquiring a competence by slow and industrious means. It feeds, it inflames his cupidity, and deceives him in order to abandon him afterwards to remorse and despair. From the mere impulse of curiosity, I have been led to visit some of the principal _Maisons de jeu_. I shall therefore represent what I have seen. In a spacious suite of apartments, where different games of chance are played, is a table of almost immeasurable length, covered with a green cloth, with a red piece at one end, and a black, one at the other. It is surrounded by a crowd of persons of both sexes, squeezed together, who, all suspended between fear and hope, are waiting, with eager eyes and open mouth, for the favourable or luckless chance. I will suppose that the banker or person who deals the cards, announces "_rouge perd, couleur gagne_." The oracle has spoken. At these words of fate, on one side of the table, you see countenances smiling, but with a smile of inquietude, and on the other, long faces, on which is imprinted the palid hue of death. However, the losers recover from their stupor: they hope that the next chance will be more fortunate. If that happens, and the banker calls out "_rouge gagne, couleur perd_;" then the scene changes, and the same persons whom you have just seen so gay, make a sudden transition from joy to sadness, and _vice versa_. This contrast no language can paint, and you must see it, in order to conceive how the most headstrong gamblers can spend hour after hour in such a continual state of agitation, in which they are alternately overwhelmed by rage, anguish, and despair. Some are seen plucking out their hair by the roots, scratching their face, and tearing their clothes to pieces, when, after having lost considerable sums, frequently they have not enough left to pay for a breakfast or dinner. What an instructive lesaon for the novice! What a subject of reflection for the philosophic spectator! At these scenes of folly and rapacity it is that the demon of suicide exults in the triumphs he is on the point of gaining over the weakness, avarice, and false pride of mortals. If the wretched victim has not recourse to a pistol, he probably seeks a grave at the bottom of the river. Among these professed gamblers, it often happens that some of them, in order to create what they term _resources_, imagine tricks and impostures scarcely credible. I shall relate an anecdote which I picked up in the course of my inquiries respecting the garning-houses in Paris. It may be necessary to premise that the counterfeit louis, which are in circulation in this country, and have nearly the appearance of the real coin, are employed by these knaves; they commonly produce them at night, because they then run less risk of being detected in passing them; but these means are very common and almost out of date. In the great gaming-houses in Paris, it is customary to have on the table several _rouleaux_ of louis d'or. An old, experienced gambler came one day to a house of this class, with his pockets full of leaden _rouleaux_ of the exact form and size of those containing fifty louis d'or. He placed at one of the ends of the table (either black or red) one of his leaden _rouleaux_: he lost. The master of the bank took up his _rouleau_, and, without opening it, put it with the good _rouleaux_ in the middle of the table, where the bank is kept. The old gambler, without being disconcerted, staked another. He won, and withdrew the good _rouleau_ given him, leaving the counterfeit one on the table, at the same time calling out, "I stake ten louis out of the _rouleau_." The cards were drawn; he won: the banker, to pay him the ten louis, took a _rouleau_ from the bank. Chance willed that he lighted on the leaden _rouleau_. He endeavoured to break it open by striking it on the table: the _rouleau_ withstood his efforts. The gambler, without deranging his features, then said to the banker; "Mind you don't break it." The banker, disconcerted, tore the paper, and, on opening it, found it to contain nothing but lead. There being no positive proof against the gambler, he was permitted to retire, and his only punishment was to be in future excluded from this gaming-house. But he had the consolation of knowing that ninety-nine others would be open to him. However, this and other impostures have led to a regulation, that, in all these houses, the value of every stake should be apparent to the eye, and openly exposed on the table. From what I have said you might infer that _trente-et-un_ (or _rouge et noir_) is the most fashionable game played here; but, though this is the case, it is not the only one in high vogue. Many others, equally pernicious, are pursued at the same time, such as _la roulette_, _passe-dix_, and _biribi_, at which cheats and sharpers can, more at their ease, execute their feats of dexterity and schemes of plunder. Women frequent the gaming-tables as well as the men, and often pledge their last shift to make up a stake. It is shocking to contemplate a young female gamester, the natural beauty of whose countenance is distorted into deformity by a succession of agonizing passions. Yet so distressing an object is no uncommon thing in Paris. You may, perhaps, be curious to know what are these games, of _trente-et-un_, _biribi_, _passe-dix,_ and _la roulette_. Never having played at any of them, such a description as I might pretend to give, could at best be but imperfect. For which, reason I shall not engage in the attempt. It is confidently affirmed that in the principal towns of France, namely, Bordeaux, Lyons, Marseilles, Rouen, &c. the rage for play is no less prevalent than in the capital, where gaming-houses daily increase in number.[1] They are now established in every quarter in Paris, even the poorest, and there are some where the lowest of the populace can indulge in a _penchant_ for gaming, as the stake is proportioned to their means. This is the ruin of every class of inhabitants and of foreigners; so much so, that suicides here increase in exact proportion to the increase of gaming-houses. Is it not astonishing that the government should suffer, still more promote the existence of an evil so pernicious in every point of view? From the present state of the French finances, it would, notwithstanding, appear that every consideration, however powerful, must yield to the want of money required for defraying the expenses of the department of the Police. _Minima de malis_ was the excuse of the old government of France for promoting gaming. "From the crowd of dissipated characters of every description, accumulated in great cities," said its partisans, "governments find themselves compelled to tolerate certain abuses, in order to avoid evils of greater magnitude. They are forced to compound with the passions which they are unable to destroy; and it is better that men should be professed gamblers than usurers, swindlers, and thieves." Such was the reasoning employed in behalf of the establishment of the _Académies de jeu_, which existed prior to the revolution. Such is the reasoning reproduced, at the present day, in favour of the _Maisons de jeu_; but, when I reflect on all the horrors occasioned by gaming, I most ardently wish that every argument in favour of so destructive a vice, may be combated by a pen like that of Rousseau, which, Sir William Jones says, "had the property of spreading light before it on the darkest objects, as if he had written with phosphorus on the walls of a cavern." [Footnote 1: During the Carnival of the present year (1803) the masked balls at the grand French Opera were quite deserted, in consequence of a new gaming-house, established solely for foreigners, having, by the payment of considerable sums to the government, obtained permission to give masked balls. These balls were all the rage. There was one every Tuesday, and the employment of the whole week was to procure cards of invitation; for persons were admitted by _invitation_ only, no money being taken. The rooms, though spacious, were warm and comfortable; the company, tolerably good, and extremely numerous, but chiefly composed of foreigners. _Treute-et-un_, _biribi_, _pharaon_, _creps_, and other fashionable games were played, so that the _speculators_ could very well afford to give all sorts of refreshments, and an elegant supper _gratis_.] LETTER LXXIV. _Paris, March 1, 1802_. Of all the institutions subsisting here before the revolution, that which has experienced the greatest enlargement is the MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY. This establishment, formerly called _Le Jardin du Roi_, and now more commonly known by the name of _Le Jardin des Plantes_, received its present denomination by a decree of the National Convention, dated the 10th of June 1793. It is situated on the south bank of the Seine, nearly facing the Arsenal, and consists of a botanical garden, a collection of natural history, a library of works relating to that science, an amphitheatre for the lectures, and a _ménagerie_ of living animals. Originally, it was nothing more than a garden for medicinal plants, formed under that title, in 1626, by GUY DE LA BROSSE, principal physician to Lewis XIII, who sanctioned the establishment by letters patent. The king's physicians were almost always intendants of this garden till the year 1739, when it was placed under the direction of BUFFON. Before his time, the cabinet was trifling. It consisted only of some curiosities collected by GEOFFROY, and a few shells which had belonged to TOURNEFORT; but, through the zeal of BUFFON, and the care of his co-operator DAUBENTON, it became a general _dépôt_ of natural history, and its riches had increased still more than its utility. On the breaking out of the revolution, it had been protected through that sort of respect which the rudest men have for the productions of nature, whence they either receive or expect relief for their sufferings. It had even been constantly defended by the revolutionary administration, under whose control and dependence it was placed. Regarding it, in some measure, as their private property, their pride was interested in its preservation; and had any attempt been made to injure it, they would infallibly have caused an insurrection among the inhabitants of the surrounding _faubourg_. These singular circumstances, joined to the good understanding prevailing among the professors, had maintained this fine establishment in a state, if not increasing, at least stationary. On the revival of order, ideas were entertained of giving to it an extension which had already been projected and decreed, even during the reign of terror. The botanical garden was enlarged; the extent of the ground intended for the establishment was doubled; a _ménagerie_ was formed; new hot-houses and new galleries were constructed; the addition of new professors was confirmed, and all the necessary disbursements were made with magnificence. Thus, in the same place where every production of nature was assembled, natural history was for the first time taught in its aggregate; and these courses of lectures, become celebrated by the brilliancy of the facts illustrated in them, the number of pupils who frequent them, and the great works of which they have been the cause or the motive, have rendered the MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY one of the first establishments of instruction existing in Europe. Formerly, there were but three professors attached to this establishment. At present, there are no less than thirteen, who each give a course of forty lectures. The courses of zoology and mineralogy take place in the halls of the cabinet containing the collections corresponding to each of those sciences. The courses of botany, anatomy, and chemistry are delivered in the great amphitheatre, and that of natural iconography in the library. The days and hours of the lectures are announced every year by particular advertisements. The establishment is administered, under the authority of the Minister of the Interior, by the professors, who choose, annually, from among themselves, a director. At present, that situation is held by FOURCROY. Although this celebrated professor, in his lectures on chemistry, must principally attach himself to minerals, the particular object of chemical inquiry, he is far from neglecting vegetable and animal substances, the analysis of which will, in time, spread great light on organic bodies. The most recent discoveries on the exact constitution of bodies are made known in the course of these lectures, and a series of experiments, calculated for elucidating the demonstrations, takes place under the eyes of the auditors. No one possesses more than FOURCROY the rare talent of classing well his subjects, of presenting facts in a striking point of view, and of connecting them by a succession of ideas extremely rapid, and expressed in a voice whose melody gives an additional charm to eloquence. The pleasure of hearing him is peculiarly gratifying; and, indeed, when he delivers a lecture, the amphitheatre, spacious as it is, is much too small to contain the crowd of auditors. Then, the young pupils are seen with their eyes stedfastly fixed on their master, catching his word with avidity, and fearing to lose one of them; thus paying by their attention the most flattering tribute to the astonishing facility of this orator of science, from whose lips naturally flow, as from a spring, the most just and most select expressions. Frequently too, carried away by the torrent of his eloquence, they forget what they have just heard, to think only of what he is saying. FOURCROY speaks in this manner for upwards of two hours, without any interruption, and, what is more, without tiring either his auditors or himself. He writes with no less facility than he speaks. This is proved by the great number of works which he has published. But in his writings, his style is more calm, more smooth than that of his lectures. Each professor superintends and arranges the part of the collections corresponding to the science which he is charged to teach. For this purpose, there are also assistant naturalists, whose employment is to prepare the various articles of natural history. The keeper of the cabinet, under the authority of the director, takes all the measures necessary for the preservation of the collections. The principal ones are: 1. The cabinet of natural history, containing the animal kingdom, divided into its classes; the mineral kingdom; the fossils, woods, fruits, and other vegetable productions, together with the herbals. This cabinet, which occupies the buildings on the right, on entering from the street, is open to students on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, from eleven o'clock till two, and to the public in general every Tuesday and Friday in the afternoon. 2. The library, chiefly composed of works relating to natural history, contains, among other valuable articles, an immense collection of animals and plants, painted on vellum. Three painters are charged to continue this collection under the superintendance of the professors. The library is open to the public every day from eleven o'clock to two. 3. The cabinet of anatomy, containing the preparations relative to the human race and to animals. It is situated in a separate building, and for the present open to students only. 4. The botanical school, containing the plants growing in the open ground, and the numerous hot-houses in which are cultivated those peculiar to warm countries. 5. The _ménagerie_ of foreign animals. At the present moment, they are dispersed in various parts of the garden; but they are shortly to be assembled in a spacious and agreeable place. 6. The chemical laboratory and the collection of chemical productions. To these may be added a laboratory for the preparation of objects of natural history, and another for that of objects of anatomy. Notwithstanding the improved state to which BUFFON had brought this establishment, yet, through the united care of the several scientific men who have since had the direction of it, the constant attention bestowed on it by the government, and even by the conquests of the French armies, its riches have been so much increased, that its collection of natural history may at this day be considered as the finest in being. The department of the minerals and that of the quadrupeds are nearly complete; that of the birds is one of the most considerable and the handsomest known; and the other classes, without answering yet the idea which a naturalist might conceive of thenm, are, nevertheless, superior to what other countries have to offer. Among the curious or scarce articles in this Museum, the following claim particular notice: In the class of quadrupeds, adult individuals, stuffed, such as the camelopard, the hippopotamus, the single-horned rhinoceros, the Madagascar squirrel, the Senegal lemur, two varieties of the oran-outang, the proboscis-monkey, different specimens of the indri, some new species of bats and opossums, the Batavian kangaroo, and several antelopes, ant-eaters, &c. In the class of birds, a great number of new or rare species, and among those remarkable either for size or beauty, are the golden vulture, the great American eagle, the Impey peacock, the Ju[<blot>] pheasant or argus, the plantain-eater, &c. Among the reptiles, the crocodile of the Ganges, the fimbriated tortoise of Cayenne, &c. Among the shells, the glass patella, and a number of valuable, scarce, or new species. The collection of insects has just been completed through the assiduity of the estimable LAMARCK, the professor who has charge of that department. In the mineral kingdom, independently of the numerous and select choice of all the specimens, are to be remarked as objects of particular curiosity, the petrifactions of crocodiles' bones found in the mountain of St. Pierre at Maëstricht, and the collection of impressions of fishes from Mount Bolca, near Verona. At the present moment, the _ménagerie_ contains a female elephant only, the male having died since my arrival in Paris, three dromedaries, two camels, five lions, male and female, a white bear, a brown bear, a mangousta, a civet, an alligator, an ostrich, and several other scarce and curious animals, the number and variety of which receive frequent additions. In other parts of the garden are inclosures for land and sea fowls, as well as ponds for fishes. The denomination of _Jardin des Plantes_ is very appropriate to this garden, as it furnishes to all the botanical establishments throughout France seeds of trees and plants useful to the p[<blot>]ess of agriculture and of the arts; and hence the indigent poor are supplied with such medicinal plants as are proper for the cure or relief of their complaints. LETTER LXXV. _Paris, March 3, 1802._ It has been repeatedly observed that civilized nations adhere to their ancient customs for no other reason than because they are ancient. The French have, above all, a most decided partiality for those which afford them opportunities of amusement. It must therefore have been a subject of no small regret to them, on the annual return of those periods, to find the government taking every measure for the suppression of old habits. For some years since the revolution, all disguises and masquerades were strictly prohibited; but, though the executive power forbade pasteboard masks, its authority could not extend to those mental disguises which have been occasionally worn by many leading political characters in this country. No sooner was the prohibition against masquerading removed, than the Parisians gave full scope to the indulgence of their inclination; and this year was revived, in all its glory, the celebration of THE CARNIVAL. Yesterday was the conclusion of that mirthful period, during which Folly seemed to have taken possession of all the inhabitants of this populous city. Every thing that gaiety, whim, humour, and eccentricity could invent, was put in practice to render it a sort of continued jubilee. From morn to night, the concourse of masks of every description was great beyond any former example; but still greater was the concourse of spectators. All the principal streets and public gardens were thronged by singular characters, in appropriate dresses, moving about in small detached parties or in numerous close bodies, on foot, on horseback, or in carriages. The _Boulevards_, the _Rue de la Loi_, and the _Rue St. Honoré_, exhibited long processions of masks and grotesque figures, crowded both in the inside and on the outside of vehicles of all sorts, from a _fiacre_ to a German waggon, drawn by two, four, six, and eight horses; while the _Palais Royal_, the _Tuileries_, the _Place de la Concorde_, and the _Champs Elysées_ were filled with pedestrian wits, amusing the surrounding multitude by the liveliness of their sallies and the smartness of their repartee. Here S[<blot>]pins, Scaramouches, Punchinellos, Pierrots, Harlequins, and Columbines, together with nuns, friars, abbés, bishops, and _marquis_ in caricature, enlivened the scene: there, sultans, sultanas, janissaries, mamlûks, Turks, Spaniards, and Indians, in stately pride, attracted attention. On one side, a Mars and Venus, an Apollo and Daphne, figured under the attributes of heathen mythology: on another, more than one Adam and Eve recalled to mind the origin of the creation. To the eye of an untravelled Englishman, the novelty of this sight must have been a source of no small entertainment. If he was of a reflecting mind, however, it must have given rise to a variety of observations, and some of them of a rather serious nature. In admiring the order and decency which reigned amidst so much mirth and humour, he must have been desirous to appreciate the influence of political events on the character of this people. In a word, he must have been anxious to ascertain how far the return of our Gallic neighbours to their ancient habits, announces a return to their ancient institutions. It is well known that the Carnival of modern times is an imitation of the Saturnalia of the ancients, and that the celebration of those festivals was remarkable for the liberty which universally prevailed; slaves being, at that period, permitted to ridicule their masters, and speak with freedom on every subject. During the last years of the French monarchy, the Parisians neglected not to avail themselves of this privilege. When all classes were confounded, at the time of the Carnival, the most elevated became exposed to the lash of the lowest; and, under the mask of satire, the abuses which had crept into religious societies, and the corruption which prevailed in every department of the State, escaped not their bold censure. From a consciousness, no doubt, of their own weakness, the different governments that have ruled over France since the revolution, dreaded the renewal of scenes in which their tottering authority might be overthrown; but such an apprehension cannot have been entertained by the present government, as manifestly appears from the almost unlimited license which has reigned during the late Carnival. Notwithstanding which, it is worthy of remark that no satirical disguises were met with, no shafts of ridicule were aimed at the constituted authorities, no invective was uttered against such and such an opinion, no abuse was levelled against this or that party. Censure and malice either slept or durst not shew themselves, though freedom of expression seemed to be under no restraint. Formerly, when the people appeared indifferent to the motley amusements of the Carnival, and little disposed to mix in them, either as actors or spectators, it was not uncommon for the government to pay for some masquerading. The _mouchards_ and underlings of the police were habited as grotesque characters, calculated to excite curiosity, and promote mirth. They then spread themselves, to the number of two or three thousand, over different parts of the town, and gave to the streets of Paris a false colouring of joy and gladness; for the greater the misery of the people, the more was it thought necessary to exhibit an outward representation of public felicity. But these political impostures, having been seen through, at length failed in their effect, and were nearly relinquished before the revolution. At that time, nothing diverted the populace so much as _attrapes_ or bites; and every thing that engendered gross and filthy ideas was sure to please. Pieces of money, heated purposely, were scattered on the pavement, in order that persons, who attempted to pick them up, might burn their fingers. Every sort of bite was practised; but the greatest attraction and acme of delight consisted of _chianlits_, that is, persons masked, walking about, apparently, in their shirt, the tail of which was besmeared with mustard. At the present day, these coarse and disgusting jokes are evidently laid aside, as some of a more rational kind are exhibited; such as the nun, partly concealed in a truss of straw, and strapped on the catering friar's back; the effect of the galvanic fluid; and many others too numerous to mention. No factitious mirth was this year displayed; it was all natural; and if it did not add to the small sum of happiness of the distressed part of the Parisian community, it must, for a while at least, have made them forget their wretchedness. With few exceptions, every one seemed employed in laughing or in exciting laughter. Many of the characters assumed were such as afforded an opportunity of displaying a particular species of wit or humour; but the dress of some of the masquerading parties, being an excellent imitation of the rich costumes of Asia, must have been extremely expensive. To conclude, the masked balls at the Opera, on the last days of the Carnival, were numerously attended. Very few characters were here attempted, and those were but faintly supported. Adventures are the principal object of the frequenters of these balls, and I have reason to think that the persons who went in quest of them were not disappointed. In short, though I have often passed the Carnival in Paris, I never witnessed one that went off with greater _éclat_. As the Turkish Spy observes, a small quantity of ashes, dropped, the day after its conclusion, on the head of these people in disguise, cools their frenzy. From being mad and foolish, they become calm and rational. LETTER LXXVI. _Paris, March 5, 1802._ As I foresee that my private affairs will, probably, require my presence in England sooner than I expected, I hasten to give you an idea of the principal public edifices which I have not, yet noticed. One of these is the _Luxembourg_ Palace, now called the PALAIS DU SÉNAT CONSERVATEUR. Mary of Medicis, relict of Henry IV, having purchased of the Duke of Luxembourg his hotel and its dependencies, erected on their site this palace. It was built in 1616, under the direction of JACQUES DE BROSSE, on the plan of the _Pitti_ palace at Florence. Next to the _Louvre_, the _Luxembourg_ is the most spacious palace in Paris. It is particularly distinguished for its bold character, its regularity, and the beauty of its proportions. The whole façade is ornamented with coupled pilasters: on the ground-floor, the Tuscan order is employed, and above, the Doric, with alternate rustics. In the four pavilions, placed at the angles of the principal pile, the Ionic has been added to the other two orders, because they are more elevated than the rest of the buildings. Towards the _Rue de Tournon_, the two pavilions communicate by a handsome terrace, in the middle of which is a circular saloon, surmounted by a dome of the most elegant proportion. Beneath this dome is the principal entrance. The court is spacious, and on each side of it are covered arches which form galleries on the ground-floor and in front of the upper story. The twenty-four pictures which Mary of Medicis had caused to be painted by the celebrated RUBENS, for the gallery of the _Luxembourg_, had been removed from it some years before the revolution. At that time even, they were intended for enriching the Museum of the _Louvre_. Four of them are now exhibited there in the Great Gallery. They are allegorical; with the other twenty, they represent the prosperous part of the history of that queen, and form a striking contrast to the adversity she afterwards experienced through the persecution of Cardinal Richelieu. To gratify his revenge, he ordered all the furniture, &c. belonging to Mary of Medicis to be sold, together with the statues which then decorated the courts and garden of the _Luxembourg_, and pursued with inveteracy the unfortunate queen who had erected this magnificent edifice. Being exiled from France in 1631, she wandered for a long time in Flanders, and also in England, till the implacable cardinal prevailed on Charles I, to command her to quit the kingdom. In 1642, she took refuge at Cologne, and, at the age of 68, there died in a garret, almost through hunger and distress. Before the revolution, this palace belonged to MONSIEUR, next brother to Lewis XVI. It has since been occupied by the Directory, each of whose members here had apartments. No material change has yet been made in it; nor does any thing announce that the partial alterations intended, either in its exterior or interior, will speedily be completed. "----_Pendent opera interrupta minæque, &c._" At the present day, the _Luxembourg_ is appropriated to the Conservative Senate, whose name it has taken, and who here hold their sittings in a hall, fitted up in a style of magnificence still superior to that of the Legislative Body. But the sittings of the former are not public like those of the latter; and as I had no more than a peep at their fine hall, I cannot enter into a description of its beauties. However, I took a view of their garden, in which I had formerly passed many a pleasant hour. Here, workmen are employed in making considerable improvements. It was before very irregular, particularly towards the south, where the view from the palace was partly concealed by the buildings of the monastery of the Carthusians. By degrees, these irregularities are made to disappear, and this garden will shortly be laid out in such a manner as to correspond better with the majesty of the palace, and display its architecture to greater advantage. Alleys of trees, which were decayed from age, have been cut down, and replaced by young plants of thriving growth. In front of the south façade is to be a tasteful parterre, with an oblong piece of water in its centre. Beyond the garden is a large piece of ground formerly belonging to the Carthusian monastery, which is now nearly demolished; this ground is to be converted into a national nursery for all sorts of valuable fruit-trees. Being contiguous to the garden of the Senate, with which it communicates, it will furnish a very extensive promenade, and consequently add to the agreeableness of the place. The present Minister of the Interior, CHAPTAL, who cultivates the arts and sciences with no less zeal than success, purposes to make here essays on the culture of vine-plants of every species, in order to obtain comparative results, which will throw a new light on that branch of rural economy. A great number of vases and statues are placed in the garden of the Senate. Many of these works are indifferently executed, though a few of them are in a good style. Certainly, a more judicious and more decorous choice ought to have been made. It was not necessary to excite regret in the mind of the moralist, by placing under the eyes of the public figures of both sexes which are repugnant to modesty. If it be really meant to attempt to mend the loose morals of the nation, why are nudities, which may be considered as the leaven of corruption, exposed thus in this and other national gardens in Paris? * * * * * _March 5, in continuation_. St. Foix, in his "_Essais historiques sur Paris_" speaking of the Bastille, says, "it is a castle, which, without being strong, is one of the most formidable in Europe." In their arduous struggle for liberty, the French have scarcely left a vestige of this dread abode, in which have been immured so many victims of political vengeance. I will not pretend to affirm that such is the description of prisoners now confined in LE TEMPLE. But when the liberty of individuals lies at the mercy of arbitrary power, every one has a right to draw his own inference. This edifice takes its name from the Templars, whose chief residence it was till they were annihilated in 1313. Philip the Fair and Clement V contrived, under various absurd pretences, to massacre and burn the greater part of the knights of this order. The knights of St. John of Jerusalem were put in possession of all the property of the Templars, except such part as the king of France and the Pope thought fit to share between them. The _Temple_ then became the provincial house of the Grand Priory of France. The Grand Priory consisted of the inclosure within the walls of the _Temple_, where stood a palace for the Grand Prior, a church, and several houses inhabited by shopkeepers and mechanics; but, with the considerable domains annexed to it, this post, before the revolution, yielded to the eldest son of the Count d'Artois, as Grand Prior, an annual revenue of 200,000 livres. The inclosure was at that time a place of refuge for debtors, where they enjoyed the privilege of freedom from arrest. The palace was erected by JACQUES SOUVRÉ, Grand Prior of France. Near it, is a large Gothic tower of a square form, flanked by four round turrets of great elevation, built by HUBERT, treasurer to the Templars, who died in 1222. It was in this building, which was considered as one of the most solid in France, that Lewis XVI was confined from the middle of September 1792 to the day of his execution. From the 13th of August till that period, the royal family had occupied the part of the palace which has been preserved. This tower, when it had been entirely insulated and surrounded by a ditch, was inclosed by a high wall, which also included part of the garden. The casements were provided with strong iron bars, and masked by those shutters, called, I believe, _trunk-lights_. As for the life which the unhappy monarch led in this prison, a detailed narrative of it has been published in England, by Cléry, his faithful _valet-de-chambre_. I have not been very anxious to approach the _Temple_, because I concluded that, if fame was not a liar, there was no probability of my having an opportunity of seeing any part of it, except the outer wall. The result was a confirmation of my opinion. Who are its occupiers? What is their number? What are their crimes? These are questions which naturally intrude themselves on the mind, when one surveys the turrets of this new Bastille--for, whether a place of confinement for state-prisoners be called _La Bastille_ or _Le Temple_, nevertheless it is a state-prison, and reminds one of slavery, which, as Sterne says, is, in any disguise, a bitter draught; and though thousands, in all ages, have been made to drink of it, still it is not, on that account, less bitter. LETTER LXXVII _Paris, March 8, 1802_. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to be always able to answer your inquiries without hesitation. Considering the round of amusements in which I live, I flatter myself you will readily admit that it requires no small share of good-will and perseverance to devote so much time to scribbling for your entertainment. As for information, you will, on your arrival in Paris, know how much or how little you have derived from the perusal of my letters. You will then have it in your power to compare and judge. With the originals before you, you cannot be at a loss to determine how far the sketches resemble them. Some of your inquiries have been already answered in my former letters. Among the number, however, you will find no reply on the subject of the PRESENT STATE OF THE FRENCH PRESS. This question being of a nature no less delicate than that concerning the police, you cannot but commend my discretion in adopting a similar method to gratify your curiosity; that is, to refer you to the intelligent author whom I quoted on the former occasion. If common report speaks the truth--_Sit mihi fas audita loqui?_--the press here is now in much the same state in which it was before the revolution. I shall therefore borrow again the language of MERCIER, who is a famous dreamer, inasmuch as many of his dreams have been realized: yet, with all his foresight and penetration, I question whether he ever dreamt that his picture of the French press, drawn in the interval between the years 1781 and 1788, would still be, in some respects, a true one at the beginning of the year 1802. But, as Boileau shrewdly remarks, "_Le vrai peut quelquefois n'être pas vraisemblable._" "The enemies of books," says our author, "are the enemies of, knowledge, and consequently of mankind. The shackles with which the press is loaded, are an incitement for setting them at defiance. If we were to enjoy a decent liberty, we should no longer have recourse to licentiousness. There are political evils which the liberty of the press prevents, and this is already a great benefit. The interior police of States requires to be enlightened by disinterested writings. There is no one but the philosopher, satisfied with the esteem alone of his fellow-citizens, that can raise himself above the clouds formed by personal interest, and set forth the abuses of insidious custom. In short, the liberty of the press will always be the measure of civil liberty; and it is a species of thermometer, which shews, at one glance, what a people have lost or gained. "If we adopt this maxim, we are every day losing; for every day the press is more restricted. "Suffer people to think and speak; the public will judge: they will even find means to correct authors. The surest method to purify the press, is to render it free: obstacles irritate it: prohibitions and difficulties engender the pamphlets complained of. "Could despotism kill thought in its sanctuary, and prevent us from communicating the essence of our ideas to the mind of our fellow-creatures, it would do so. But not being able quite to pluck out the philosopher's tongue, and cut off his hands, it establishes an inquisition, peoples the frontiers with searchers, spreads satellites, and opens every package, in order to interrupt the infallible progress of morality and truth. Useless and puerile effort! Vain attack on the natural right of general society, and on the patriotic rights of a particular one! Reason, from day to day, strikes nations with a greater lustre, and will at last shine unclouded. It answers no purpose to fear or persecute genius: nothing will extinguish in its hands the torch of truth: the decree which its mouth pronounces, will be repeated by all posterity against the unjust man. He wished to snatch from his fellow-creatures the most noble of all privileges, that of thinking, which is inseparable from that of existing: he will have manifested his weakness and folly; and he will merit the twofold reproach of tyranny and impotence. "When a very flat, very atrocious, and very calumniating libel appears under a fellow's coat, 'tis a contest who shall have it first. People pay an exorbitant price for it; the hawker who cannot read, and who wishes only to get bread for his poor family, is apprehended, and sent to prison, where he shifts for himself as well as he can. "The more the libel is prohibited, the more eager we are for it. When we have read it, and we see that nothing compensates for its mean temerity, we are ashamed to have sought after it. We scarcely dare say, _we have read it_: 'tis the scum of low literature, and what is there without its scum? "Contempt would be the surest weapon against those miserable productions which are equally destitute of truth and talent. "When will men in power know how to disdain equally the interested encomiums of intriguing flatterers and the satires produced by hunger? "Besides, those who sit in the first boxes must always expect some shafts levelled at them by those who are in the pit; this becomes almost inevitable. They must needs pay for their more commodious place: at least we attribute to those who rule over us more enjoyments: they have some which they will avow, solely with a view to raise themselves above the multitude. The human heart is naturally envious. Let men in power then forgive or dissemble seasonably: satire will fall to the ground; it is by shewing themselves impassible, that they will disarm ardent malignity. "Nevertheless, there is a kind of odious libel, which, having every characteristic of calumny, ought to be repressed. This is commonly nothing more than the fruit of anonymous and envenomed revenge: for what are the secret intrigues of courts to any man of letters? He will know time enough that which will suit the pen of history. "A libeller should be punished, as every thing violent ought to be. But the parties interested should abstain from pronouncing; for where then would be the proportion between the punishment and the crime? "I apply not the name of libels to those atrocious and gratuitous accusations against the private life of persons in power or individuals unconnected with the government. Such injurious and unmeaning shafts are an attack on honour: their authors should be punished. "The police detected and apprehended one of its inspectors, who, being charged to discover those libels, proposed the composition of similar ones to some half-starved authors. After having laid for them this infernal snare for the gain of a little money, he informed against them, and sold them to the government. "These miscreants, blinded by the eager thirst of a little gold, divert themselves with the uneasiness of the government, and the more they see it in the trances of apprehension, the more they delight in magnifying the danger, and doubling its alarms. "Liberty has rendered the English government insensible to libels. Disdain is certain, before the work is commenced. If the satire is ingenious, people laugh at it, without believing it; if it is flat, they despise it. "Why cannot the French government partly adopt this indifference? A contempt, more marked, for those vile and unknown pens that endeavour to wound the sensibility of pride, would disgust the readers of the flat and lying satires after which they are so eager, only because they imagine that the government is really offended by them. "It is to be observed that the productions that flatter more or less public malignity, spread in fugitive sparks a central fire, which, if compressed, would, perhaps, produce an explosion. "Magistrates have not yet been seen disdaining those obscure shafts, rendering themselves invulnerable from the openness of their proceedings, and considering that praise will be mute, as long as criticism cannot freely raise its voice. "Let them then punish the flattery by which they are assailed, since they are so much afraid of the libel that always contains some good truths: besides, the public are there to judge the detractor; and no unjust satire ever circulated a fort-night, without being branded with contempt. "Ministers reciprocally deceive each other when they are attacked in this manner; the one laughs at the storm which has just burst on the other, and promotes secretly what he appears to prosecute openly and with warmth. It would be a curious thing if one could bring to light the good tricks which the votaries of ambition play each other in the road to power and fortune. "There is nothing now printed in Paris, in the line of politics and history, but satires and falsehoods. Foreigners look down with pity on every thing that emanates from the capital on these matters. Other subjects begin to feel the consequences of this, because the restraint laid on the mind is manifested even in books of simple amusement. The presses of Paris are no longer to serve but for posting-bills, and invitations to funerals and weddings. Almanacks are already a subject too elevated, and the inquisition examines and garbles them. "When I see a book," says MERCIER, "sanctioned by the government, I would lay a wager, without opening it, that this book contains political falsehoods. The chief magistrate may well say: 'This piece of paper shall be worth a thousand francs;' but he cannot say: 'Let this error become truth,' or, 'let this truth no longer be anything but an error.' He may say it, but he can never compel men's minds to adopt it. "What is admirable in printing, is that these fine works, which do honour to human genius, are not to be commanded or paid for; on the contrary, it is the natural liberty of a generous mind, which unfolds itself in spite of dangers, and makes a present to human nature, in spite of tyrants. This is what renders the man of letters so commendable, and insures to him the gratitude of future ages. "O! worthy Englishmen! generous people, strangers to our shameful servitude, carefully preserve among you the liberty of the press: it is the pledge of your freedom. At this day, you alone are the representatives of nearly all mankind; you uphold the dignity of the name of man. The thunderbolts, which strike the pride and insolence of arbitrary power, issue from your happy island. Human reason has found among you an asylum whence she may instruct the world. Your books are not subject to an inquisition; and it would require a long comment to explain to you in what manner permission is at length obtained for a flimsy pamphlet, which no one will read, to be exposed for sale, and remain unsold, on the _Quai de Gévres_. "We are so absurd and so little in comparison to you," adds MERCIER, "that you would be at a loss to conceive the excess of our weakness and humiliation." LETTER LXXVIII _Paris, March 9, 1802._ Among the national establishments in this metropolis, I know of none that have experienced so great an amelioration, since the revolution, as the HOSPITALS AND OTHER CHARITABLE INSTITUTIONS; The civil hospitals in Paris now form two distinct classes. The one comprehends the hospitals for the sick: the other, those for the indigent. The former are devoted to the relief of suffering human nature; the latter serve as an asylum to children, to the infirm, and to the aged indigent. All persons who are not ill enough to be admitted of necessity into the hospital the nearest to their residence, are obliged to present themselves to the _Bureau Central d'Admissions_. Here they are examined, and if there be occasion, they receive a ticket of admission for the hospital where their particular disorder is treated. At the head of the hospitals for the sick stands that so long known by the appellation of the HÔTEL-DIEU. Formerly, nothing more horrid could be conceived than the spectacle presented in this asylum for the afflicted. It was rather a charnel-house than an hospital; and the name of the Creator, over the gate, which recalled to mind the principle of all existence, served only to decorate the entrance of the tomb of the living. The _Hôtel-Dieu_, which is situated in the _Parvis Notre-Dame_, _Ile du Palais_, was founded as far back as the year 660 by St. Landry, for the reception of the sick and maimed of both sexes, without any exception of persons. Jews, Turks, infidels, pagans, protestants, and catholics were alike admitted, without form or recommendation. Yet, though it contained but 1200 beds, and the number of patients very often exceeded 5000, and, on an average, was never less than 2500, till the year 1786, no steps were taken for enlarging the hospital, or providing elsewhere for those who could not be conveniently accommodated in it. The dead were removed from the wards only on visits made at a fixed time; so that it happened not unfrequently that a poor helpless patient was compelled to remain for hours wedged in between two corpses. The air or the neighbourhood was contaminated by the noisome exhalations continually arising from this abode of pestilence, and that which was breathed within the walls of the hospital was so contagious, as to turn a trifling complaint into a dangerous disorder, and a simple wound into a mortification. In 1785, the attention of the government being called to this serious evil by various memoirs, the _Academy of Sciences_ was directed to investigate the truth of the bold assertions made in these publications. A commission was appointed; but as the revenues of the _Hôtel-Dieu_ were immense, for a long time it was impossible to obtain from the Governors any account of their application. However, the Commissioners, directing their attention to the principal object, reported as follows: "We first compared the _Hôtel-Dieu_ and the _Hôpital de la Charité_ relative to their mortality. In 52 years, the _Hôtel-Dieu_, out of 1,108,741 patients lost 244,720, which is one out of four and a half. _La Charité_, where but one dies out of seven and a half, would have lost only 168,700, whence results the frightful picture that the _Hôtel-Dieu_, in 52 years, has snatched from France 99,044 persons, whose lives would have been saved, had the _Hôtel-Dieu_ been as spacious, in proportion, as _La Charité_. The loss in these 52 years answers to 1906 deaths per year, and that is nearly the tenth part of the total and annual loss of Paris. The preservation of this hospital in the site it now occupies, and on its present plan, therefore produces the same effect as a sort of plague which constantly desolates the capital." In consequence of this report, the hospital was enlarged so as to contain about 2000 beds. Since the revolution, the improvements introduced into the interior government of the _Hotel-Dieu_ have been great and rapid. Each patient now has a bed to himself. Those attacked by contagious disorders are transferred to the _Hospice St. Louis_. Insane persons are no longer admitted; men, thus afflicted, are sent to a special hospital established at _Charenton_; and women, to the _Salpétrière_. Nor are any females longer received into the _Hôtel-Dieu_ to lie-in; an hospital having been established for the reception of pregnant women. At the _Hôtel-Dieu_, every method has been put in practice to promote the circulation of air, and expel the insalubrious miasmata. One of these, I think, well deserves to be adopted in England. In the French hospitals, one ward at least is now always kept empty. The moment it becomes so by the removal of the patients into another, the walls are whitewashed, and the air is purified by the fumigation with muriatic acid, according to the plan first proposed by GUYTON-MORVEAU. This operation is alternately performed in each ward in succession; that which has been the longest occupied being purified the first, and left empty till it is again wanted. The number of hospitals in Paris has been considerably augmented. They are all supported by the government, and not, like those in England, by private benefactions. Sick children of both sexes, from the time of suckling to the age of sixteen, are no longer admitted into the different hospitals; but are received into a special hospital, extremely well arranged, and in a fine, airy situation, beyond the _Barrière de Sèvres_. Two institutions have been formed for the aged, infirm and indigent, who pay, on entrance, a moderate sum. One of these charities is without the _Barrière d'Enfer_; the other, in the _Faubourg St. Martin_. In the same _faubourg_, a _Maison de Santé_ is established, where the sick are treated on paying thirty _sous_ a day. An hospital for gratuitous vaccination, founded by the Prefect of the department of La Seine, is now open for the continual treatment of the cow-pox, and the distribution of the matter to all parts of France. In general, the charitable institutions in Paris have also undergone very considerable improvements since the revolution; for instance, the male orphans, admitted, to the number of two thousand, into the asylum formerly called _La Pitié_, in the _Faubourg St. Victor_, used to remain idle. They were employed only to follow funeral processions. At present, they are kept at work, and instructed in some useful trade. A new institution for female orphans has been established in the _Faubourg St. Antoine_; for, here, the two sexes are not at present received into the same house, whether hospital or other charitable institution. In consequence of which, Paris now contains two receptacles for _Incurables_, in lieu of the one which formerly existed. The place of the _Hôpital des Enfans-Trouvés_ is also supplied by an establishment, on a large scale, called the HOSPICE DE LA MATERNITÉ. It is divided into two branches, each of which occupies a separate house. The one for foundlings, in the _Rue de la Bourbe_, is intended for the reception of children abandoned by their parents. Here they are reared, if not sent into the country to be suckled. The other, in the _Rue d'Enfer_, which may be considered as the General Lying-in Hospital of Paris, is destined for the reception of pregnant women. Upwards of 1500 are here delivered every year. As formerly, no formality is now required for the admission of new-born infants. In the old Foundling-Hospital, the number annually received exceeded 8000. It is not near so great at present. To those who reflect on the ravages made among the human race by war, during which disease sweeps off many more than are killed in battle, it is a most interesting sight to behold fifty or sixty little foundlings assembled in one ward, where they are carefully fed till they are provided with wet nurses. I must here correct a mistake into which I have been betrayed, in my letter of the 26th of December, respecting the present destination of LA SALPÊTRIÈRE. It is no longer used as a house of correction for dissolute women. Prostitutes, taken up by the police, are now carried to St. Lazare, in the _Rue St. Denis_. Those in want of medical aid, for disorders incident to their course of life, are not sent to _Bicêtre, but to the _ci-devant_ monastery of the Capucins, in the _Rue Caumartin_. At present, the _Salpêtrière forms an _hospice_ for the reception of indigent or infirm old women, and young girls, brought up in the Foundling-Hospital, are placed here to be instructed in needle-work and making lace. Female idiots and mad women are also taken care of in a particular part of this very extensive building. The Salpêtrière was erected by Lewis XIII, and founded as an hospital, by Lewis XIV, in 1656. The facade has a majestic appearance. Before the revolution, this edifice was said to lodge 6000 souls, and even now, it cannot contain less than 4000. By the _Plan of Paris_, you will see its situation, to the south-east of the _Jardin des Plantes_. I shall also avail myself of the opportunity of correcting another mistake concerning BICÊTRE. This place has now the same destination for men that the Salpétrière has for women. There is a particular hospital, lately established, for male venereal patients, in the _Rue du Faubourg St. Jacques_. * * * * * _March 9, in continuation._ Previously to the decree of the 19th of August 1792, which suppressed the universities and other scientific institutions, there existed in France Faculties and Colleges of Physicians, as well as Colleges and Commonalities of Surgeons. From one of those unaccountable contradictions of which the revolution affords so many instances, these were also suppressed at a time when they were becoming most necessary for supplying the French armies with medical men. But as soon as the fury of the revolutionary storm began to abate, the re-establishment of Schools of Medicine was one of the first objects that engaged attention. Till these latter times, Medicine and Surgery, separated from each other, mutually contended for pre-eminence. Each had its forms and particular schools. They seemed to have divided between them suffering human nature, instead of uniting for its relief. On both sides, men of merit despised such useless distinctions; they felt that the curative art ought to comprehend all the knowledge and all the means that can conduce to its success; but these elevated ideas were combated by narrow minds, which, not being capable of embracing general considerations, always attach to details a great importance. The revolution terminated these disputes, by involving both parties in the same misfortunes. At the time of the re-establishment of Public Instruction, the _Schools of Health_, founded at Paris, Montpelier, and Strasburg, on plans digested by men the most enlightened, presented a complete body of instruction relative to every branch of the curative art. Physics and chemistry, which form the basis of that art, were naturally included, and nothing that could contribute to its perfection, in the present state of the sciences, was forgotten. The plan of instruction is fundamentally the same in all these schools; but is more extensive in the principal one, that is, in the SCHOOL OF MEDICINE OF PARIS. This very striking monument of modern architecture, situated in the _Faubourg St. Germain_, owes its erection to the partiality which Lewis XV entertained for the art of surgery. That monarch preferred it to every science; he was fond of conversing on it, and took such an interest in it, that, in order to promote its improvement, he built this handsome edifice for the _ci-devant Académie et Écoles de Chirurgie_. The architect was GONDOUIN. The façade, extending nearly two hundred feet, presents a peristyle of the Ionic order. The interior distribution of this building corresponds with the elegance of its exterior. It contains a valuable library, a cabinet of anatomical preparations (among which is a skeleton that presents a rare instance of a general _anchilosis_) and imitations in wax, a chemical laboratory, a vast collection of chirurgical and philosophical instruments, and a magnificent amphitheatre, the first stone of which was laid by Lewis XVI in December 1774. This lecture-room will conveniently hold twelve hundred persons, and its form and arrangement are such, that a pupil seated the farthest from the subject under dissection, can see all the demonstrations of the Professor as well as if placed near the marble table. In one wing of the building is an _Hospice de Perfectionnement_, formerly instituted for the reception of rare chirurgical cases only; but into which other patients, labouring under internal disorders of an extraordinary nature, are now likewise admitted. To this school are attached from twenty to thirty Professors, who lecture on anatomy and physiology; medical chemistry and pharmacy; medical physics; pathology, internal and external; natural history, as connected with medicine, and botany; operative medicine; external and internal clinical cases, and the modern improvements in treating them; midwifery, and all disorders incident to women; the physical education of children; the history of medicine, and its legitimate practice; the doctrine of Hippocrates, and history of rare cases; medical bibliography, and the demonstration of the use of drugs and chirurgical instruments. There are also a chief anatomist, a painter, and a modeller in wax. The lectures are open to the public as well as to the students, who are said to exceed a thousand. Besides this part of instruction, the pupils practise anatomical, chirurgical, and chemical operations. To the number of one hundred and twenty, they form a practical school, divided into three classes, and are successively distributed into three of the clinical hospitals in Paris. At an annual competition, prizes are awarded to the greatest proficients. Although this school is so numerously attended, and has produced several skilful professors, celebrated anatomists, and a multitude of distinguished pupils, yet it appears that, since there has been no regular admission for physicians and surgeons, the most complete anarchy has prevailed in the medical line. The towns and villages in France are overrun by quacks, who deal out poison and death with an audacity which the existing laws are unable to check. Under the title of _Officiers de Santé_, they impose on the credulity of the public, in the most dangerous manner, by the distribution of nostrums for every disorder. To put a stop to this alarming evil, it is in contemplation to promulgate a law, enacting that no one shall in future practise in France as a physician or surgeon, without having been examined and received into one of the six Special Schools of Medicine, or as an officer of health, without having studied a certain number of years, walked the hospitals, and also passed a regular examination.[1] At the medical school of Paris are held the meetings of the SOCIETY OF MEDICINE. It was instituted for the purpose of continuing the labours of the _ci-devant_ Royal Society of Medicine and the old Academy of Surgery. With this view, it is charged to keep up a correspondence, not only with the medical men resident within the limits of the Republic, but also with those of foreign countries, respecting every object that can tend to the progress of the art of healing. * * * * * As far back as the year 1777, there existed in Paris a college of Pharmacy. The apothecaries, composing this college, had formed, at their own expense, an establishment for instruction relative to the curative art, in their laboratory and garden in the _Rue de l'Arbalêtre_. Since the revolution, the acknowledged utility of this institution has caused it to be maintained under the title of the GRATUITOUS SCHOOL OF PHARMACY. Here are delivered _gratis_, by two professors in each department, public lectures on pharmaceutic chemistry, pharmaceutic natural history, and botany. When the courses are finished, prizes are annually distributed to the pupils who distinguish themselves most by their talents and knowledge. In the year 1796, the apothecaries of Paris, animated by a desire to render this establishment still more useful, formed themselves into a society, by the name of the FREE SOCIETY OF APOTHECARIES. Its object is to contribute to the progress of the arts and sciences, particularly pharmacy, chemistry, botany, and natural history. This society admits, as free and corresponding associates, _savans_ of all the other departments of France and of foreign countries, who cultivate those sciences and others analogous to them. Some of the most enlightened men in France are to be found among its members. The advantageous changes made in the teaching of medicine, since the revolution, appear to consist chiefly in the establishment of clinical lectures. The teaching of the sciences, accessory to medicine, partakes more or less advantageously of the great progress made in that of chemistry. It seems that, in general, the students in medicine grant but a very limited confidence to accredited opinions, and that they recur to observation and experience much more than they did formerly. As for the changes which have occurred in the practice of medicine, I think it would be no easy matter to appreciate them with any degree of exactness. Besides, sufficient time has not yet elapsed since the establishment of the new mode of teaching, for them to assume a marked complexion. It is, however, to be observed that, by the death of the celebrated DÉSAULT, Surgery has sustained a loss which is not yet repaired, nor will be perhaps for ages. [Footnote 1: A law to this effect is now made.] LETTER LXXIX. _Paris, March 12, 1802._ From the account I have given you of the Public Schools here, you will have perceived that, since the revolution, nothing has been neglected which could contribute to the mental improvement of the male part of the rising generation. But as some parents are averse to sending their children to these National Schools, there are now established in Paris a great number of PRIVATE SEMINARIES FOR YOUTH OF BOTH SEXES. Several of these are far superior to any that previously existed in France, and are really of a nature to excite admiration, when we consider the cruel divisions which have distracted this country. But it seems that if, for a time, instruction, both public and private, was suspended, no sooner were the French permitted to breathe than a sudden and salutary emulation arose among those who devoted themselves to the important task of conducting these private schools. The great advantage which they appear to me to have over establishments of a similar description in England, is that the scholars are perfectly grounded in whatever they are taught; the want of which, among us, occasions many a youth to forget the greater part of what he has learned long before he has attained the years of manhood. If several of the schools for boys here are extremely well conducted, some of those for girls appear to be governed with no less care and judgment. In order to be enabled to form an opinion on the present mode of bringing up young girls in France, I have made a point of investigating the subject. I shall, in consequence, endeavour to shew you the contrast which strikes me to have occurred here in FEMALE EDUCATION. In France, convents had, at all times, prior to the revolution, enjoyed the exclusive privilege of bringing up young women; and some families had, for a century past, preserved the habit of sending all their daughters to be St. Ursulas, in order to enter afterwards into the world as virtuous wives and tender mothers. The natural result was, that, if the principles of excessive piety which had been communicated to them remained deeply engraved in their heart, they employed the whole day in the duties required by the catholic religion; and the confessor who dictated all these habitual practices, not unfrequently became the director of the temporal concerns of the family, as well as the spiritual. If the young girls, in emerging from the cells of a convent, were disposed to lay aside their religious practices, in order to adopt the customs and pleasures of the world, this sudden transition, from one extreme to the other, made them at once abandon, not only the puerile minutiæ, but also the sacred principles of religion. There was no medium. They either became outrageous devotees, and, neglecting the respectable duties of housewives and mistresses of a family, wrapped themselves up in a great hood, and were incessantly on their knees before the altars of the churches, or, on the other hand, rushed into extravagance and dissipation, and, likewise, deserting a family which claimed their care, dishonoured themselves by the licentiousness of their manners. At the present time, many women of good abilities and character, deprived of their property by the vicissitudes of the revolution, have established, in Paris and its environs, seminaries, where young girls receive such advice as is most useful to females who are destined to live in the world, and acquirements, which, by employing them agreeably several hours in the day, contribute to the interior happiness of their family, and make them find charms in a domestic life. In short, the superiority of female education in France is decidedly in favour of the present system, whether considered in regard to mental improvement, health, or beauty. With respect to the morals inculcated in these modern French boarding schools, the best answer to all the prejudices might be entertained against them, is that the men, who have married women there educated, find that they prove excellent wives, and that their accomplishments serve only to embellish their virtues. LETTER LXXX. _Paris, March 14, 1802_. I plead guilty to your censure in not having yet furnished you with any remarks on the origin of this capital; but you will recollect that I engaged only to give you a mere sketch; indeed, it would require more time and talent than I can command to present you with a finished picture. I speak of things just as they happen to occur to my mind; and provided my letters bring you acquainted with such objects here as are most deserving of attention, my purpose will be fully accomplished. However, in compliance with your pressing request, I shall now briefly retrace the PROGRESSIVE AGGRANDISEMENT OF PARIS. Without hazarding any vague conjectures, I may, I think, safely affirm that Cæsar is the first historian who makes mention of this city. In the seventh book of his Commentaries, that conqueror relates that he sent his lieutenant Labienus towards Lutetia; this was the name given by the Gauls to the capital of the Parisii. It was then entirely contained within that island on the Seine, which, at the present day, is called _l'Ile du Palais_. In comparison to the capitals of the other provinces of Gaul, _Lutetia_ was but a sorry village; its houses were small, of a round form, built of wood and earth, and covered with straw and reeds. After having conquered _Lutetia_, the Romans embellished it with a palace, surrounded it by walls, and erected, at the head of each of the two bridges leading to it, a fortress, one of which stood on the site of the prison called _Le Grand Châtelet_; and the other, on that of _Le Petit Châtelet_. The Yonne, the Marne, and the Oise, being rivers which join the Seine, suggested the idea of establishing a trading company by water, in order to facilitate, by those channels, the circulation of warlike stores and provisions. These merchants were called _Nautæ Parisiaci_. The Romans also erected, near the left bank of the Seine, a magnificent palace and an aqueduct. This palace was called _Thermæ_, on account of its tepid baths. Julian, being charged to defend Gaul against the irruptions of the barbarians, took up his residence in these _Thermæ_ in 360, two years before he was proclaimed emperor, in the square which was in front of this palace. "I was in winter-quarters in my dear _Lutetia_," says he in his _Misopogon_. "Thus is named, in Gaul, the little capital of the Parisii."--"It occupies," observes Abbon, "an inconsiderable island, surrounded by walls, the foot of which is bathed by the river. The entrance to it, on each side, is by a wooden bridge." Towards the middle of the fifth century, this city passed from the dominion of the Romans to that of the Francs. It was besieged by Childeric I. In 508, Clovis declared it the capital of his kingdom. The long stay which that prince made in it, contributed to its embellishment. Charlemagne founded in it a celebrated school. A little time after, another was established in the abbey of _St. Germain-des-Prés_. In the course of the ninth century, it was besieged and pillaged three times by the Normans. Philip Augustus surrounded Paris with walls, and comprised in that inclosure a great number of small towns and hamlets in its vicinity. This undertaking occupied twenty years, having been begun in 1190, and finished in 1211. The same king was also the first who caused the streets of this city to be paved. The wars of the English required new fortifications; and, under king John, ditches were dug round the city; and the _Bastille_, erected. These works were continued during the reigns of Charles V and Charles VI. Francis I, the restorer of literature and of the arts, neglected nothing that might conduce to the farther embellishment of this capital. He caused several new streets to be made, many Gothic edifices to be pulled down, and was, in France, the first who revived Greek architecture, the remains of which, buried by the hand of time, or mutilated by that of barbarians, being collected and compared at Rome, began to improve the genius of celebrated artists, and, in the sequel, led to the production of masterpieces. The kings, his successors, executed a part of the projects of that prince, and this extensive city imperceptibly lost its irregular and Gothic aspect. The removal of the houses, which, not long since, encumbered the bridges, and intercepted the current of air, has diffused cheerfulness and salubrity. You will pardon me, I trust, if I here make a retrograde movement, not to recapitulate the aggrandisement of Paris, but to retrace rapidly the progressive amelioration of the manners of its inhabitants. The latter paved the way to the former. Under the first kings of France of the third race, justice was administered in a summary way; the king, the count, and the viscount heard the parties, and gave a prompt sentence, or else left the controversy to be decided by a pitched battle, if it was of too intricate a nature. No colleges then existed here; the clergy only keeping schools near the Cathedral of _Notre-Dame_ for those who were intended for holy orders. The nobles piqued themselves on extreme ignorance, and as many of them could not even sign their own name, they dipped their glove in ink, and stamped it on the parchment as their signature. They lived on their estates, and if they were obliged to pass three or four days in town, they affected to appear always in boots, in order that they might not be taken for _vassals_. Ten men were sufficient for the collection of all the taxes. There were no more than two gates to the city; and under Lewis surnamed _le Gros_, from his corpulency, the duties at the north gate produced no more than twelve francs a year. Philip Augustus, being fond of literature, welcomed and protected men of learning. It had appeared to revive under Charlemagne; but the ravages of the Normans occasioned it to sink again into oblivion till the reign of Lewis the Young, father of Philip Augustus. Under the latter, the schools of Paris became celebrated; they were resorted to, not only from the distant provinces, but from foreign countries. The quarter, till lately called _l'Université_, became peopled; and, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, was covered by colleges and monasteries. Philip the Fair rendered the Parliament sedentary. He prohibited duelling in civil contentions; and a person might have recourse to a court of justice, without being under the necessity of fighting. Anne de Bretagne, great and majestic in every thing, was desirous of having a court. Ladies who, till then, were born in one castle only to marry and die in another, came to Paris. They were unwilling to leave it, and men followed them thither. All these circumstances increased its inhabitants to a thirtieth part beyond their former number. The wars of religion under Charles IX and Henry III rendered gold and silver a little more common, by the profanations of the Calvinists, who pillaged the churches, and converted into specie the sacred vases, as well as the shrines and statues of saints. The vast sums of money which the court of Spain lavished in Paris, to support the League, had also diffused a certain degree of affluence among no inconsiderable number of citizens; and it is to be remarked that, under Henry IV, several handsome streets were finished in less than a year. Henry IV was the first of the kings of France who embellished Paris with regular squares, or open spaces, decorated with the different orders of architecture. After having nearly finished the _Pont Neuf_, he built the _Place Royale_, now called _Place des Fédérés_, and also the _Place Dauphine_. Towards the end of the administration of Cardinal Richelieu, there no longer existed in France more than one master; and the petty tyrants in the provinces, who had fortified themselves so long in their castles against the royal authority, were seen to come to court, to solicit the most paltry lodging with all the servility of courtiers, and at the same time erect mansions in town with all the splendour of men inflated by pride and power. At last came the reign of Lewis XIV, and presently Paris knew no limits. Its gates were converted into arcs of triumph, and its ditches, being filled up and planted with trees, became public walks. When one considers the character of that monarch, it should seem that Paris ought to have been more embellished under his reign. In fact, had Lewis XIV expended on Paris one-fourth part of the money which he lavished on Versailles,[1] it would have become the most astonishing city in Europe. However, its great extent and population, magnificent edifices, celebrated national establishments of learning and science, rich libraries, curious cabinets, where lessons of knowledge and genius present themselves to those who have a taste for them, together with its theatres and other places of public entertainment, have long rendered Paris deserving of the admiration of enlightened nations. Before the revolution, Paris contained 46 parish churches, and 20 others answering the same purpose, 11 abbeys, and 133 monasteries or convents of men and women, 13 colleges, 15 public seminaries, and 26 hospitals. To these must be added the three royal habitations, the _Louvre_, the _Tuileries_, and the _Luxembourg_, also the _Hôtel des Invalides_, the _Palais Royal_, the _Palais Bourbon_, and a great number of magnificent hotels, inhabited by titled or wealthy persons. Since the revolution, several of these buildings have been destroyed; almost all the monasteries and convents, together with the churches belonging to them, have been sold as national property, and either demolished for the sake of the materials, or converted to different uses. Fifteen principal churches, besides the _Pantheon_, the _Invalides_, _Val-de-Grace_, the _Sorbonne_, and a few others, were preserved as national temples, intended for the celebration of _decadary fétes_, and for a time rendered common to every sort of worship. Most of the old churches were of Gothic architecture, and not much to be commended with respect to art; but several of them were models of boldness, from the lightness of their construction. The colleges, as I have before observed, are replaced by public schools and private seminaries of every description. The number of the houses in Paris, many of which are from five to eight stories in height, has been estimated at upwards of 80,000. The number of its inhabitants appears to have been over-rated. By an official statement, in which foreigners are not included, it contains no more than 630,000 souls. During the last year of the republican era, the number of males born in Paris was 9296; and that of females, 9177; making the general total of births 18,473, of which the males, born out of wedlock, amounted to 1792; and the females, to 1852. The number of persons deceased, within the same period, was 10,446 males, and 10,301 females; making together 20,747. The annual decrease in population was consequently 2274 souls. The number of marriages was 3826; and that of divorces, 720; which is nearly 2 out of 11. The ancient division of Paris consisted of three parts; namely, _La Cité_, _l'Université_, and _La Ville_. _La Cite_ comprised all the _Ile du Palais_. This is the parent-stock of the capital, whence have extended, like so many branches, the numerous quarters by which it is surrounded. _L'Université_ was bordered by the Seine, the _Faubourg St. Bernard_, _St. Victor_, _St. Marcel_, _St. Jacques_, and the _Faubourg St. Germain_. The number of colleges in this quarter, had obtained it the name of _Le Pays Latin_. _La Ville_ comprehended all the rest of the capital, not included in the suburbs. At present, Paris is divided into twelve mayoralties (as you will see by the _Plan_), each of which is presided by a central office of municipal police. The _Faubourgs_ retain their ancient names; but those of many of the streets have been changed in the course of the revolution. The _Chaussée d'Antin_, which comprises the new streets north of the _Boulevard Italien_, is now the most fashionable part of the town. The houses here are chiefly inhabited by bankers and persons living in affluence; and apartments in this neighbourhood are considerably dearer than in the _Faubourg St. Germain_, which, comparatively speaking, is deserted. I have already described the _Porte St. Denis_ and the _Porte St. Martin_, which are nothing more than arcs of triumph. In proportion as the limits of the capital became extended, the real gates were removed, but reappeared under the name of _barrières_. These costly edifices were constructed during the ministry of CALONNE, under the direction of LEDOUX, the architect, who has taken a pleasure in varying their form and character. One represents an observatory; another, a chapel; some have the appearance of rusticated buildings; others, that of temples. Under the old _régime_ too, the farmers-general had inclosed Paris with a high wall, the extent of which has been estimated at upwards of 10,000 toises. This wall displeased the eye of the Parisians, and, when they were out of humour, induced them to murmur loudly. Whence the following _jeu de mots_: _"Le mur, murant Paris, rend Paris murmurout."_ During the revolution, it was by no means uncommon to shut the _barrières_, in order to serve the purposes of party, and favour the arrest of particular persons. To the number of sixty, they are placed at the principal outlets of the suburbs, and occupied by custom-house officers, whose business is to collect duties, and watch that no contraband goods find their way into the city. Formerly, when every carriage entering Paris was stopped and examined (which is not the case at present), the self-importance of these _commis des barrières_ could be equalled only by their ignorance. A traveller arriving from Egypt brought with him a mummy. The case being long, he chose not to fasten it on to his post-chaise, but sent it to Paris by water. When it was landed at the _barrière_, the custom-house officers opened it, and, finding it to contain a black-looking body, decided that this was a man who had been baked in an oven. They took the linen bandages for his burnt shirt, and, after drawing up a _procès-verbal_ in due form, sent the mummy to the _Morne_, where dead bodies are exposed in order to be owned. When the proprietor reached Paris, he went to the _barrière_ to claim his mummy. The _commis_ listened to him and stared at him with astonishment. He grew angry, and at length broke out into a violent passion; when one of the searchers, in a whisper, advised him to decamp, if he wished to avoid the gallows. The traveller, stupified, was obliged to apply to the Minister of the Police, and, with some difficulty, recovered from the _Morne_ his Egyptian prince or princess, who, after having been preserved 2000 years, was on the point of being buried in a catholic cemetery, instead of figuring in a cabinet of curiosities. [Footnote 1: The article of lead alone for the water-pipes cost thirty-two millions of livres or £1,333,333 sterling; but "Rich in her weeping country's spoils, Versailles! May boast a thousand fountains, that can cast The tortur'd waters to the distant heav'ns"--] LETTER LXXXI. _Paris, March 17, 1802._ An object which must infallibly strike the eye of the attentive observer, who has not visited this capital within the last ten years,g is the change in the style of FRENCH FURNITURE. This remark may, at first sight, appear trivial; but a second view of the subject will produce reflections on the frivolity of this people, even amidst their intestine commotions, and at the same time shew that they are, in no small degree, indebted to the influence of those events for the taste which is to be distinguished in the new productions of their industry, and, in general, for the progress they have made, not only in the mechanical arts, but also in the sciences of every description. This will appear the more extraordinary, as it should seem natural to presume that the persecution which the protectors of the arts and sciences experienced, in the course of the revolution, was likely to produce quite a contrary effect. But the man of science and the artist, each abandoned to himself, acquired, in that forlorn situation, a knowledge and a taste which very frequently are the result of long study only, seconded by encouragement from the wealthy. The apartments of the fine ladies, of the rich, of the bankers, and merchants in Paris, and generally speaking, of all those who, from their business and connexions, have most intercourse with the public and with foreigners, are furnished in the modern mode, that is, in the antique taste. Many of the French artists, being destitute of employment, were compelled through necessity to seek it; some entered into the warehouse of the upholsterer to direct the shape and disposition of his hangings; some, into the manufactory of the paper-maker to furnish him with new patterns; and others, into the shop of the cabinet-maker to sell him sketches of antique forms. Had the easels of these artists been occupied by pictures no sooner finished than paid for, the Grecian bed would not have expelled the _lit à la Polonaise_, in vogue here before the revolution; the Etruscan designs would not have succeeded to the Chinese paper; nor would the curtains with Persian borders have been replaced by that elegant drapery which retraces the pure and simple taste of the people of Attica. The elegant forms of the modern French _secrétaires_, commodes, chairs, &c. have also been copied from the Greeks and Romans. The ornaments of these are either bronzed or gilt, and are uncommonly well finished. In general, they represent heads of men, women, and animals, designed after the antique. Caryatides are sometimes introduced, as well as Egyptian attributes; the arms of the chairs being frequently decorated with sphinxes. In short, on entering the residence of a _parvenu_, you would fancy yourself suddenly transported into the house of a wealthy Athenian; and these new favourites of Fortune can, without crossing the threshold of their own door, study chaste antiquity, and imbibe a taste for other knowledge, connected with it, in which they are but little versed. Mahogany is the wood employed for making these modern articles of furniture, whose forms are no less varied than elegant; advantages which cause them to be preferred to the ancient. But the latter, though heavy in their construction, are, nevertheless, thought, by some persons, superior to the former in point of solidity and convenience. The old-fashioned bedsteads and chairs are generally of oak, painted or gilt, and are covered with silk or tapestry of different patterns. The _ci-devant_ nobles appear to be greatly attached to them, and preserve them as monuments, which supply the place of the titles and parchments they were forced to burn during the sanguinary periods of the revolution. But this taste is not exclusive; several of the Parisian _bourgeois_, either from economy, or from a wish to appear to have belonged to that class, shew no less eagerness to possess these spoils of the _noblesse_, as furniture for their apartments. While I am speaking of furniture, it naturally occurs to me that I have not yet taken you to visit LES GOBELINS. This national manufactory, which is situated in the _Faubourg St. Marcel_, takes its name from two famous Flemish dyers, who settled in Paris under Francis I. In 1662, COLBERT purchased part of the old premises where the _Gobelins_ had carried on their business, and there opened an establishment under the direction of LE BRUN. It was not confined to the manufacture of tapestry only, but was composed of painters, sculptors, engravers, goldsmiths, watch-makers, lapidaries, and other artists and workmen of almost every description, whose pupils and apprentices here acquired their freedom. Since the revolution, tapestry alone is manufactured here, on two sorts of looms, distinguished by the denominations of _haute_ and _basso lisse_, which are fully explained in an interesting _Notice_, published by the intelligent director, GUILLAUMOT, who, it seems, has introduced into each of these branches several recent improvements. The art of making tapestry originated in England and Flanders, where the cartoons of RAPHAEL and JULIO ROMANO were coarsely copied. It was gradually improved in France, and is now brought here to the greatest perfection. Indeed, a piece of _Gobelin_ tapestry may be called a picture painted with wool and silk; but its admirable execution produces an illusion so complete, that skilful painters have been seen to lay their hands on this tapestry, to convince themselves that it was not a real painting. Tapestry is now entirely out of fashion; and, with the exception of a few small fancy-pieces, the productions of this manufactory are intended solely for the decoration of the national palaces and other public buildings. In 1790 the blood-thirsty MARAT strove hard to annihilate this establishment, by exaggerating the expenses of its maintenance. In 1789, their real amount was 144,000 francs; 116 journeymen and 18 apprentices were then employed, and paid in proportion to their merit and to the quantity of work they performed. In 1791, they were divided into classes, and paid by the day. This regulation produces less work, but its execution is more perfect, since no motive of interest induces the workman to neglect his performance. At present, its expenses cannot be so great, as the number of persons employed is less than 100. Should the penury of the finances not allow the means of re-establishing pupils, this manufactory will be extinguished like a lamp for want of oil. Twenty years are necessary to make a good manufacturer of tapestry; those of the first abilities are now nearly 70 years of age, and therefore it seems high time to prepare for them competent successors. At _Chaillot_, we shall find another national manufactory, somewhat analogous to the former, and which also claims the attention of the curious observer. From having been fixed in a place originally occupied by a soap-house, it is called LA SAVONNERIE. It was established, as far back as 1615, at the instigation of PIERRE DUPONT, who, being forced to quit his native land by the civil commotions arising from the League, went to the Levant. Having seen carpets made without taste or design in that country, he conceived the idea of introducing a manufactory of this kind into France, where it would be susceptible of considerable improvement from the exercise of the arts unknown in Turkey. The project was approved by Henry IV, who first gave DUPONT an establishment in the _Louvre_, which was afterwards transferred to its present situation. Like the _Gobelins_, the national manufactory of the _Savonnerie_ is, and has been, constantly supported by the government, and like it too, contributes to the decoration of the national palaces, &c. Nothing, in the shape of carpets, can answer this purpose better than those manufactured here, the colours of which are extremely brilliant. The close, velvety texture of the manufacture gives a peculiar expression to objects which are copied from nature, such as the hair of animals, the down of fruit, and the lustre of flowers. From its foundation till the year 1789, this manufactory continued to be under the direction of a contractor, who delivered the carpeting to the government at the rate of 220 francs per square ell. At the revolution, new regulations were established; the workmen were paid by the day, and classed according to their merit. In consequence, though less work is performed, it is executed with greater perfection. The present government has lately ordered the old patterns, which were overloaded with ornaments and flowers, to be suppressed, and replaced by compositions more simple, more elegant, and infinitely more tasteful. I understand that the workmen are to be put to task-work, under the superintendance of the respectable administrator DUVIVIER, who informs me that the present price of this carpeting amounts to 300 francs per square _mètre_ (_circa_ 3 ft. 3 inc. English measure). In 1789, thirty persons were employed here, at from 30 to 50 _sous_ a day. At present, there are no more than twenty, who daily earn, on an average, 3 francs, and are lodged in the buildings of the manufactory. Before I lay down my pen, I shall notice a national establishment, equally connected with the subject of this letter; I mean the MANUFACTORY OF PLATE-GLASS. Like all the other French manufactories, this has suffered from the revolution and the war; but it has now nearly resumed its former activity, owing to the effects of the peace and the laudable exertions of the government to revive commerce. At this time, it gives employment to about 600 persons. Before COLBERT founded the present establishment, which is situated in the _Rue de Reuilli_, _Faubourg St. Antoine_, the French drew their plate-glass from Venice; but they have left their masters in this branch very far behind them, and now make mirrors of dimensions of which the Venetians had no idea. These plates are cast at St. Gobin, near La Fère, in the department of L'Aisne, and sent to Paris to be polished and silvered. Here you may witness the process employed in each of these different operations. A method of joining together two small plates of glass in such a manner that no mark appears, has, I am informed, been lately discovered in Paris. It is said, however, not to be applicable to those of large dimensions. After the operation of this species of soldering, the plates are silvered. LETTER LXXXII. _Paris, March 19, 1802._ As the period of my stay here is drawing rapidly towards a conclusion, I find much less leisure for writing; otherwise I should, in my last letter, have made you acquainted with an establishment not irrelevant to the leading subject of it, and which, when completed, cannot fail to attract general notice and admiration. Every one has heard of the PIRANESI. In the year 1800, PIETRO and FRANCESCO, the surviving sons of the celebrated GIOVANNI-BATTISTA, transported to France their immense collection of drawings, with all their plates and engravings. They were welcomed, protected, and encouraged by the French government. Anxious to give to these ingenious artists every facility for the success of an undertaking that they had conceived, it has granted to them the spacious and handsome premises of the _ci-devant Collège de Navarre_, in the _Rue de la Montagne St. Geneviève_, which the PIRANESI will shortly open as an ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS. That ancient college is extremely well calculated for such a destination, from the extent of its buildings, its remoteness from noise, and the airiness of its situation. By this liberal conduct to the PIRANESI, the French government has shewn the warm interest it takes in the progress of those arts. The establishment of these Romans is to be divided into three branches. The first is placed in the _Collège de Navarre_; the second is to be in the _Palais du Tribunat_; and the third, at _Morfontaine_. Three hundred artists of different nations, some of whom are known by master-pieces, while others announce the genius necessary for producing them, are to be distributed in the seven classes of this academy, which include the fine arts of every description. Each artist being at liberty to follow the branch to which he is most partial, it may easily be conceived how noble an emulation will be roused by such an assemblage of talents. Several are now employed here in the workshops of Painting, Sculpture, Mosaic, and Engraving. Let us see in what manner. The ground-floor is devoted to Sculpture. Here are made, in plaster and terra cotta, models of the finest monuments of Greece and Italy, which are executed in stone of the richest species, such as porphyry, granite, red antique, Parian and Carrara marble. From the hands of the two CARDELLI, and other eminent artists, are seen to issue copies of the most magnificent bas-reliefs of ancient Rome, and the most beautiful friezes of RAPHAEL, MICHAEL ANGELO, JULIO ROMANO, and other great masters of the Italian school; tripods, obelisks, antique vases, articles of furniture in the Egyptian and Chinese taste, together with objects taken from nature, such as the most curious animals in the national _ménagerie_, likewise occupy their talents. All these subjects are executed in different sizes, and form, together or separately, decorations for apartments or tables, particularly pilasters, and plateaux, in which the richness of the materials is surpassed by that of the workmanship. On the same floor is the workshop of Mosaic. It is under the direction of BELLONI, who has invented methods, by means of which he has introduced Mosaic into articles of furniture, and for the pavement of rich apartments, at prices far inferior to what might be imagined. The principal articles here exhibited, as specimens, are: --1. Superb marble tables and stands, in which are inserted ornaments and pictures in Mosaic, or incrustated in the Florentine manner--2. A large pavement, where the beauty and variety of the marbles are relieved by embellished incrustations--3. Small pictures, in which the painting, in very fine Mosaic, is raised on an even ground of one piece of black marble--4. Large tables, composed of specimens of fine-grained stones, such as jasper, agate, carnelion, lapis lazuli, &c. and also of valuable marbles, distributed into compartments and after a design imitated from the antique, and enriched with a few incrustated pictures, representing animals and flowers. Besides these, here are to be seen other essays of a kind entirely new. These are marbles, intended for furniture, coloured in an indelible manner. Sometimes the figures and ornaments in them are coloured in the ground; sometimes they are in colour, but raised on a ground of white marble. On the first story is the workshop for Engraving. Here the artists are employed in engraving the seven hills of Rome, ancient circuses of that celebrated city, plans of the _forum_, obelisks of Rome and Egypt, ruins of Pompeia, drawn on the spot by the late J. B. PIRANESI, together with modern subjects, such as the splendid edifices of Paris, the beautiful views of the environs, the national fêtes, and every thing that can deservedly interest artists and persons of taste. On the same story are the plates of the PIRANESI calcography, the place where they are printed, and the warehouse where they are deposited. The engravings, now nearly executed, will form upwards of twenty volumes; and those begun will equal that number. The second story is occupied by painters in oil-colours; the third, by those in water-colours; the fourth, by draughtsmen in Indian ink and bistre; and the fifth serves for the lodging of the artists, particularly the most skilful among them, who direct the different branches of this establishment. The principal pile of building is crowned by a _Belvedere_, which commands an extensive view of Paris, and seems calculated for promoting the inspirations of genius. Here are copied, in oil, water-colours, Indian ink and bistre, the fresco paintings of RAPHAEL, MICHAEL ANGELO, and JULIO ROMANO; the Vatican, the Farnesian palace, the Villa Altoviti, and the Villa Lante alternately furnishing models no less happily chosen than carefully executed. The antiquities of Herculaneum, so interesting from the knowledge they afford us of the customs of the ancient Romans, and from the elegant decorations of which they have procured us the models, the ruins of Palmyra and Balbeck, those of Greece and Sicily, together with views of Constantinople and of the country in which it is situated, are here rendered with the most exact truth, joined to the most harmonious colouring. Here too are represented; in the three manners before-mentioned, views and sites of Egypt, Greece, Italy, France, and all other countries; cascades, such as those of TERNI, NARNI, and TIVOLI; sea-pieces; landscapes, parks; and gardens; arabesques after RAPHAEL; new and picturesque plants; in a word, decorations formed of an assemblage of every thing most perfect in art and nature. On the first and second stories are also two exhibition-rooms, for such pictures and works of sculpture as are finished, where the eye wanders agreeably amidst a crowd of objects of an enlivening or serious nature. Here it is that the amateur, after having seen the artists at work in the classes of this academy, fixes his choice on the kind of production which most takes his fancy. These two rooms contain the different articles which are afterwards to be displayed in the two porticos of the _Palais du Tribunat_. Those elegant and spacious porticos, situated in the most centrical part of Paris, facing the _Rue St. Honoré_, have likewise been granted to the PRIANESI through the special favour of the government. Not only all the productions of their establishment, but also the principal master-pieces in painting, sculpture, and architecture, produced by artists of all nations, will there be exhibited; so that those porticos will present, as it were, an Encyclopædia of the Fine Arts.[1] [Footnote 1: The principal protector of the undertaking of the PIRANESI is JOSEPH BONAPARTE, who has not confined himself to assisting them in the capital. Being desirous to introduce the arts into the country where he passes the finest season of the year, and to promote the discovery of the PIRANESI, relative to the properties of the argill found at _Morfontaine_, he has given to them for several years the use of a large building and a very extensive piece of ground, ornamented with bowers, where all the subjects modelled at the _Collège de Navarre_, in _terra cotta_ or in porcelain of _Morfontaine_, undergo the process of baking. In the last-mentioned place, the PIRANESI purpose to establish a foundery for sculpture in bronze and other metals. The government daily affords to them encouragement and resources which insure the success of their establishment. To its other advantages are added a library, and a printing-office.] LETTER LXXXIII. _Paris, March 22, 1802._ As to the mechanical arts, if you are desirous to view some of the modern improvements and inventions in that line, you must accompany me to the _Rue St. Martin_, where, in the _ci-devant_ priory, is an establishment of recent date, entitled the CONSERVATORY OF ARTS AND TRADES. Here is a numerous collection of machines of every description employed in the mechanical arts. Among these is the _belier hydraulique_, newly invented by MONTGOLFIER, by means of which a stream of water, having a few feet of declivity, can be raised to the top of a house by a single valve or sucker, so disposed as to open, to admit the water, and shut, when it is to be raised by compression. By increasing the compression, it can be raised to 1000 feet, and may be carried to a much greater elevation. The commissioners appointed by the Institute to examine this machine, reported that it was new, very simple, very ingenious, and might be extremely useful in turning to account little streams of water for the purposes of agriculture, manufactories, &c. This reminds me of another singular hydraulic machine, of which I have been informed by a person who attended a trial made of it not long since in Paris. A basin placed at the height of twenty feet, was filled with water, the fall of which set in motion several wheels and pumps that raised the water again into the basin. The machine was fixed in a place, glazed on all sides, and locked by three different keys. It kept in play for thirty-two days, without the smallest interruption; but the air, the heat, and the wood of the machine, having undoubtedly diminished the water, it no longer ascended into the basin. Till the thirty-second day, many persons imagined that the perpetual motion had been discovered. However, this machine was extremely light, well combined, and very simple in its construction. I ought to observe that it neither acted by springs nor counterpoise; all its powers proceeding from the fall of the water. The conservatory also contains several models of curious buildings, too numerous to mention. The mechanical arts in France appear to have experienced more or less the impulse given to the sciences towards the close of the eighteenth century. While calamities oppressed this country, and commerce was suspended, the inventive and fertile genius of the French was not dormant. The clothiers have introduced woollen articles manufactured on a new plan; and their fine broad cloths and kerseymeres have attained great perfection. The introduction of the Spanish merinos into France has already produced in her wools a considerable amelioration. Like a phoenix, Lyons is reviving from its ashes, and its silks now surpass, if possible, their former magnificence. Brocaded silk is at present made in a loom worked by one man only, in lieu of two, which the manufacture of that article hitherto demanded. Another new invention is a knitting-loom, by means of which 400 threads are interwoven with the greatest exactness, by merely turning a winch. The cotton manufactures are much improved, and the manufactories in that line are daily increasing in number and perfection. A new spinning-machine has produced here, I am told, 160,000 ells in length out of a pound of cotton. The fly-shuttle is now introduced into most of the manufactories in this country, and 25 pieces of narrow goods are thus made at once by a single workman. In adopting ARKWRIGHT'S system, the French have applied it to small machines, which occupy no more room than a common spinning-wheel. Among other branches in which the French mechanics have particularly distinguished themselves, since the revolution, is the making of astronomical and philosophical instruments. All the machines used here in coining have also been modified and improved. By one of these, the piece is struck at the same time on the edge and on the flat side in so perfect a manner, that the money thus coined cannot he counterfeited. I have already mentioned the invention of a composition which supplies the place of black lead for pencils, and the discovery of a new and very expeditious method of tanning leather. New species of earthen-ware have been invented, and those already known have received considerable improvement. Chemists have put the manufacturers in possession of new means of decomposing and recomposing substances. Muriat of tin is now made here with such economy, that it is reduced to one-eighth of its former price. This salt is daily used in dying and in the manufacture of printed calicoes. Carbonates of strontia and of baryt, obtained by a new process, will shortly be sold in Paris at 3 francs the _kilogramme_. This discovery is expected to have a great influence on several important arts, such as the manufacture of glass, of soap, &c. Articles of furniture, jewellery, and every branch dependent on design, are now remarkable for a purer taste than that which they formerly exhibited. Indeed, the characteristic difference of the present state of French industry, and that in which it was before the revolution, is that most of the proprietors of the manufactories have received a scientific education. At that time, many of them were strangers to the principles applicable to the processes of their art; and, in this respect, they lay at the mercy of the routine, ignorance, and caprice of their workmen. At present, the happy effects of instruction, more widely-diffused, begin to be felt, and, in proportion as it is extended, it excites a spirit of emulation which promises no small advantage to French commerce. LETTER LXXXIV. _Paris, March 23, 1802._ In the richness of her territory, the abundance of her population, the activity of her inhabitants, and the knowledge comprised in her bosom, France possesses great natural advantages; but the effect which they might have produced on her industry, has been counteracted by the errors of her old government, and the calamities attendant on the revolution. Some public-spirited men, thinking the moment favourable for restoring to them all their influence, have lately met; and from this union has sprung the SOCIETY FOR THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF NATIONAL INDUSTRY. It is formed on a scale still more extensive than the _Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce_, instituted at London. Its meetings are held in the _Louvre_; but, though fixed in the metropolis, it embraces the whole extent of the Republic, and every department will participate in the benefits which it proffers. The chief objects of this society are: To collect, from all quarters, discoveries and inventions useful to the progress of the arts; to bestow annually premiums and gratuitous encouragements; to propagate instruction, by disseminating manuals on different objects relative to the arts, by combining the lights of theory with the results of practice, and by constructing at its own expense, and disseminating among the public in general, and particularly in the manufactories, such machines, instruments, and apparatus as deserve to be more generally known and brought into use; to make essays and experiments for ascertaining the utility which may be expected from new discoveries; to make advances to artists who may be in distress, or deficient in the means to put in practice the processes of their inventions; to unite by new ties all such persons as from their situation in life, their taste, or their talents, feel an interest in the progress of the arts; to become the centre of similar institutions, which are called for in all the principal manufacturing-towns of the Republic; in a word, to _excite emulation, diffuse knowledge, and assist talents_. To attain these objects, various committees, consisting of men the most conversant in knowledge relative to the arts, are already appointed, and divide among them _gratuitously_ the whole of the labour. This society, founded, on principles so purely patriotic, will, no doubt, essentially second the strenuous efforts of the government to reanimate the different branches of national industry. The free and spontaneous concurrence of the men of whom it is composed, may unite the power of opinion to that of other means; and public opinion produces naturally that which power and authority obtain only by a slow and difficult progress. But, while those branches of industry, more immediately connected with the arts, are stimulated by these simultaneous encouragements, that science, on the practice of which depends the welfare of States, is not neglected. Independently of the Council of Agriculture, Commerce and Arts, established under the presidency of the Minister of the Interior, here is a FREE SOCIETY OF AGRICULTURE. Its object is to improve agriculture, not only in the department of La Seine, but throughout France. For this purpose, it maintains a regular correspondence with all the agricultural societies of the other departments. It publishes memoirs, in which are inserted the results of its labours, as well as the notices and observations read at the meetings by any one of its members, and the decision which has followed. Every year it proposes prizes for the solution of some question important to the amelioration of agriculture. What, at first view, appears extraordinary, is not, on that account, less founded on truth. Amidst the storms of the revolution, agriculture has been improved in France. At a period of happiness and tranquillity, the soil was not so well cultivated as in times of terror and mourning; because, during the latter, the lands enjoyed the franchises so long wanted. Hands never failed; for, when the men marched to the armies, women supplied their place; and no one was ashamed to handle the spade or the plough. However, if, in 1789, agriculture in France was far from a state of prosperity, it was beginning to receive new light from the labours of the agricultural societies. That of Paris had given a great impulse to the culture of artificial meadows, potatoes, hemp, flax, and fruit-trees. Practical directions, spread with profusion in the country, had diverted the inhabitants from the routine which they had blindly followed from generation to generation. Before the revolution, the French began to imitate us in gelding their horses, and giving to their lackies, their coachmen, and their equipages an English appearance; instead of copying us in the cultivation of our land, and adopting the principles of our rural economy. This want of foresight they are now anxious to repair, by increasing their pastures, and enriching them by an extensive variety of plants, augmenting the number of their cattle, whether intended for subsistence or reproduction, and improving the breed by a mixture of races well assorted, procuring a greater quantity of manure, varying their culture so as not to impoverish the soil, and separating their lands by inclosures, which obviate the necessity of constantly employing herdsmen to tend their cattle. Agriculture has, unquestionably, suffered much, and is still suffering in the western departments. Notwithstanding the succour afforded by the government to rebuild and repair the deserted cottages and barns, to supply them with men and cattle, to set the ploughs to work, and revive industry, it is still evident that the want of confidence which maintains the value of money at an exorbitant rate, the love of stock-jobbing, the impossibility of opening small loans, the excessive price of manual labour, contributions exacted in advance, and the distress of most of the land-owners, who are not in a condition to shew favour to their tenants, are scourges which still overwhelm the country. But I am credibly informed that, in general, the rural inhabitants now lend a more attentive ear to instruction, and that prejudices have less empire over their reason. The great landed proprietors, whom terror had induced to fly their country, have, on recovering possession of their patrimony, converted their parks into arable land. Others, who are not fond of living in town, are daily repairing to their estates, in order to superintend the cultivation of them. No one disdains the simple title of farmer. Old publications relative to agriculture are reprinted in a form more within reach of the capacity of the people; though treatises on domestic animals are still much wanted. At Rambouillet, formerly the country-seat of the duke of Penthièvre, is an experimental national farm. Fine cattle are now held in high estimation. Flocks of sheep of the Spanish breed are daily increasing; and the number of those of a pure race, already imported, or since bred in France, exceeds 8000.[1] Wide roads, which led to one solitary castle only, have been ploughed, and sown. The rage for ornamental gardens and pleasure-grounds is dying away. The breeding of horses, a branch of industry which the war and the requisition had caused to be abandoned, is on the point of being resumed with increased activity. It is in contemplation to establish studs, on plans better combined and much more favourable to the object than those which formerly existed. In short, the ardent wish of the thinking part of the nation seems to be, that the order which the government is endeavouring to introduce into every branch of its administration, may determine the labourer to proportion his hire to the current price of corn; but all these truths assembled form not such a sketch as you may, perhaps, expect. The state of French agriculture has never yet been delineated on a comprehensive scale, except by Arthur Young. You must persuade him to repeat his tour, if you wish for a perfect picture.[2] * * * * * _March 22, in continuation._ Most persons are acquainted with DIDOT'S stereotypic editions of the classics, &c. which are sold here for 15 _sous_ per copy. Nothing more simple than the plan of this mode of printing. A page is first set up in moveable types; a mould or impression is then taken of the page with any suitable plastic substance, and a solid page is cast from it. The expense of a solid page exceeds not that of resetting it in moveable types; so that, by this invention, the price of books will be considerably reduced, and standard works will never be out of print. Nor are these the only advantages attending the use of stereotype; I must mention another of still greater importance. By the common method of printing, it is impossible ever to have correct books. They are in the market before all their errors are discovered; and the latest edition of a work, which ought to be the most correct, is necessarily the most faulty; for it presents not only the errors of that from which it was copied, but also those peculiar to itself. Stereotypic books are printed only to answer the extent of the demand; and errors, when discovered, being corrected in the metal, they must, through time and attention, become immaculate; a circumstance of infinite importance in astronomical and mathematical tables of every description.[3] For elegance of printing, DIDOT is the BENSLEY of Paris; but to see a grand establishment in this line, you must go to the _Rue de la Vrillière_, near the _Place des Victoires_, and visit the PRINTING-OFFICE OF THE REPUBLIC. Under the title of _Imprimerie Royale_, this establishment vas formerly placed in the galleries of the _Louvre_. Instituted by Francis I in 1531, it was greatly enlarged and improved under Lewis XIII and Lewis XIV. It has also been considerably augmented since its removal, in 1791, to the hotel belonging to the late Duke of Penthièvre, which it now occupies. In its present state, it may be considered as the most extensive and most complete typographical establishment in being. Every branch relating to typography, from the casting of the type to the article of binding, is here united. The _dépôt_ of punches contains upwards of 30,000 characters of all languages. Among others, here are to be remarked, in all their primitive purity, the beautiful Greek ones of Garamon, engraved by order of Francis I, and which served for the editions of the Stephen, the Byzantine, &c, the oriental characters of the Polyglot of Vitræus, and the collection of exotic characters from the printing-office of the Propaganda. The government business alone constantly employs one hundred presses. A much greater number can be set to work, if wanted. Independently of the works concerning administration and the sciences, which are executed here at the public cost, the government allows authors to cause to be printed at this office, at their own private expense, such works as, on account of their importance, the difficulty of execution, and the particular types which they require, are entitled to that favour. On applying to the director, the amateurs of typography are instantly admitted to view this establishment, and shewn every thing interesting in it, with that spirit of liberality which is extended to every public institution here, and which reflects the highest honour on the French nation. [Footnote 1: At the last annual sale at Rambouillet, the average price of a good Spanish ram was no more than 412 francs or £17 sterling. The dearest sold for 620 francs.] [Footnote 2: The statistical accounts of the different departments, which are to be compiled by order of the Minister of the Interior, will specify all the agricultural improvements. The few already published, shew that if the population of France is somewhat diminished in the large towns, it is considerably increased in the country-places.] [Footnote 3: It is, however, to be remarked that the merit of this invaluable invention is not due to France, but to Britain. As far back as the year 1725, a Mr. GED, of Edinburgh, turned his thoughts to the formation of cast letter-press plates, and, in 1736, printed a stereotype edition of Sallust. Being opposed by a combination of printers and booksellers, whose ignorance and prejudices he was unable to overcome, he relinquished the prosecution of his discovery; and thus the stereotypic art was lost to the world, till rediscovered, in 1780, by Mr. ALEXANDER TILLOCH. In the year 1783, Mr. TILLOCH took out a patent for it, in conjunction with Mr. FOULIS, then printer to the University of Glasgow. They printed several books in this manner; but it seems that they also experienced an opposition from the booksellers, and, owing to different circumstances, have not since availed themselves of their patent. Notwithstanding this evidence of priority, the French dispute the invention; and the learned CAMUS, in his "_Historical Sketch of Polytypage and Stereotypage_," affirms, on the authority of LOTTIN, that, towards the end of the seventeenth century, the stereotypic process was put in practice in France, for printing the calendars prefixed to the missals. Hence it is seen that the claim of the English is supported by positive proof; while that of the French rests on bare assertion.] LETTER LXXXV. _Paris, March_ 26, 1802. In visiting a foreign country, and more especially its capital, the traveller, whose object is instruction, enters into the most minute details, in order to obtain a complete knowledge of the various classes of its inhabitants. As Seneca justly observes, in his epistles, what benefit can a person reap from his travels, who spends all his time in examining the beauty and magnificence of public buildings? Will the contemplation of them render him more wise, more temperate, more liberal in his ideas? Will it remove his prejudices and errors? It may amuse him for a time, as a child, by the novelty and variety of objects, which excite an unmeaning admiration. To act thus, adds the learned stoic, is not to travel, it is to wander, and lose both one's time and labour. "_Non est hoc peregrinari, sed erraie_." Wherefore Horace, in imitation of Homer, says, in praise of Ulysses, "_Qui mores hominum multorum vidit, et urbes_." I have, I hope, given you enough of sights and shows; let us then, my good friend, follow the wise example of the ancients, and take a view of men and manners. Owing, in some measure, to the levity of French character, and the freedom which now prevails generally enough in all society here, this sort of study, sometimes so tedious, is greatly facilitated. In the Parisian assemblies of the present day, by an almost continual collision, self-love discovers the weak side of an individual whose whole merit consists in a little small-talk, and a rotation of those _jolis petits riens_, which, seconded by a well-favoured countenance and an agreeable carriage, have given him in the world the reputation of an amiable man; while, from another, we see a thousand essential qualities, concealed under a coarse exterior, force themselves into notice, and which his modesty, or more frequently his timidity, prevented him from displaying. From the preceding preamble, you will naturally conclude that I purpose to appropriate this letter to a few remarks on the PRESENT STATE OF SOCIETY IN PARIS. In this city are three very distinct kinds of society. But the order I shall adopt in the description of each of them must not, in any way, lead you to prejudge my opinion respecting the rank which they hold among the French themselves. In this respect, I shall abstain from every sort of reflection, and, confining myself to the simple character of a faithful narrator, shall leave to your sagacity to decide the question. I shall begin by the society, chiefly composed of the _ci-devant noblesse_, several of whom, never having quitted France, have preserved some of their property; and of emigrants, lately returned to their own country, and who have enough remaining to allow them to have a household establishment, but in a very modest style indeed, compared to that which their rank and fortune enabled them to support before the revolution. You present yourself at the residence of _Madame la Marquise de C----_. In the anti-room, you declare your name and quality to the groom of the chambers. Then, the opening of one or two folding-doors announces to the mistress of the house, and to the company, the _quantum_ of the ceremonies which are to be paid to the newcomer. Keep your eye constantly on the _Marquise_, her behaviour will regulate yours in regard to the individuals who compose her party. In the course of conversation, take special care not to omit the title of the person to whom you address yourself. Such an instance of forgetfulness savours of a man of the new _régime_. Never pronounce the new denominations respecting the divisions of the French territory, the months, the weights, measures, &c. Those words would draw on you an unfavourable interpretation. If you are inclined to hear a discussion on the arts and sciences, or on any new discovery whatever, you seldom find, in these parties, persons who can gratify your taste; though you may meet with many who, as Locke says, "know a little, presume a great deal, and so jump to a conclusion." From the plebeians, whose presence the _ci-devant_ nobles are so condescending as to endure, much obsequiousness and servility are required; and it is expected that the distance of rank should never be forgotten. But the learned or scientific French revolutionist, who admits no other distance than that between knowledge and ignorance, not choosing to submit to such conditions, seldom presents himself at the house of _Madame la Marquise de C----_. However, you will hear her company speak of the court of France, of the interest which each individual had there, and also a few anecdotes not uninteresting, and which will furnish you with some ideas of the brilliant parties there formed. After this discussion, one will talk to you of his regiment; another, of his hunting establishment, of his _châteaux_, of his estates, &c. _Chez Madame la Marquise de C----_, you will find no inconsiderable prepossession against every thing that is not of the old order of things, and even some exclusive pretensions to manners which belong to those only who are real gentlemen. Yet, through all these absurdities, you will always see good-breeding prevail in this society, and the disposition which distinguishes a Frenchman from other polished nations, will here break forth and present itself to you in a striking manner. While speaking of the _ci-devant noblesse_, I cannot forbear to mention the loss which those who had the happiness of her acquaintance, have sustained by the recent death of Madame DE CHOISEUL, the relict of the duke of that name, minister to Lewis XV. Her virtues shed such a lustre round her, that it reached even the monarch himself, who, when he banished her husband to Chanteloup, wrote to him: "I should have sent you much further, but for the particular esteem I have for Madame DE CHOISEUL, in whose health I take no small interest." This uncommonly-respectable woman will long be quoted and deservedly regretted, because she was modest in greatness, beneficent in prosperity, courageous in misfortune, pure in the vortex of corruption, solid in the midst of frivolity, as simple in her language as she was brilliant in her understanding, and as indulgent to others as she was superior to them in grace and virtue. I shall next lead you to the house of a _parvenu_, that is, one of those, who, from having made some successful speculations, and possessing a conscience not overnice as to the means of fixing Fortune, is enabled to live in the expensive style of the _ci-devant_ court-lords and farmers-general. A letter changed in the person's name, not unfrequently a _de_ or a _St._ added, (sometimes both) puzzles the curious, who endeavour to discover what was formerly M. _de St. H------_, now in the enjoyment of an annual income of a hundred thousand francs, or £4000 sterling. At his house, more than any where else, etiquette is kept up with an extraordinary minuteness; and evil tongues will tell you that it is natural for M. _de St. H------_ to remember and avail himself of the observations which he had it in his power to make in the place he formerly occupied. Under his roof, you will find little of that ease and amiableness which are to be remarked in the other societies of Paris. Each individual is on his guard, and afraid of betraying himself by certain expressions, which the force of habit has not yet allowed him to forget. But if you are fond of good music, if you take a pleasure in balls, and in the company of _femmes galantes_ or demireps; and even if first-rate jugglers, ventriloquists, and mimics amuse you by their skilful performances, frequent the house of M. _de St. H------_, and every day, or at least every day that he is at home, you will have a new entertainment. Between the acts, the company make their remarks, each in his own way, on what they have just seen or heard. Afterwards, the conversation turns on the public funds. Little is said, however, on affairs of State, the bankruptcies of the day, and the profit which such or such a speculation might produce. The ladies, after having exhausted the subject of the toilet, finish by giving, as an apology for their own conduct, the charitable enumeration of the peccadilloes which they fancy they have remarked in other women. So little am I disposed for gaming, that I forgot to mention _bouillotte_, _quinze_, and also whist and reversi, which are introduced at all these parties. But the two last-mentioned games are reserved for those only who seek in cards nothing more than a recreation from the occupations of the day. At the others, gain is the sole object of the player; and many persons sit at the gaming-table the whole night, and, in the depth of winter even, never leave it till the "garish sun" warns them that it is time to withdraw. I have now only to introduce you at M. _B------'s_, Counsellor of State. Here you will find the completion of the other two societies, and a very numerous party, which affords to every one a conversation analogous to his taste or his means. Refrain, however, from touching on politics; the French government, still in its infancy, resembles a young plant exposed to the inclemency of the air, and whose growth is directed by skilful hands. This government must remove, and even sometimes destroy every obstacle it meets with, and which may be prejudicial to the form and direction that it thinks proper to give to its branches and various ramifications. Beware, above all, of speaking of the revolution. That string is too delicate to be touched in regard to certain individuals of M. _B------'s_ party, perhaps also in regard to himself: for the periods of the calamities which the French have undergone are still quite recent, and the parts that many of these persons may have acted, call to mind recollections too painful, which, for their tranquillity, ought ever to be buried in oblivion. And, in fact, you will always perceive, in the meetings of this class, a harmony, apparent indeed, but which, surprises a stranger the more, as, of all the societies in Paris, it presents to him the greatest medley in point of the persons who compose it. In this society you will hear very instructive dissertations on the sciences, sound literature, the fine arts, mechanics, and the means of rendering useful the new discoveries, by applying them with economy to the French manufactories, either public or private: for M. _B------_ considers it as his duty to receive with distinction all the _savans_, and generally all those called men of talent. In this line of conduct, he follows the example set him by the government; and every one is desirous to appear a Mæcenas in the eyes of Augustus. In other respects, the house of M. _B------_ will afford you the agreeble pastimes which you have found at M. _de St. H------'s_. In Paris, however, are several other societies which, to consider them rightly, are no more than a diminutive of those you have just left; but which, nevertheless, are of a character sufficiently distinct in their composition to justify their pretensions to be classed as well as the others. This difference proceeding chiefly from that of political opinions alone, an acquaintance with the great societies here will enable you to select those of the middle class which you may think proper to frequent, according to your taste, or your manner of seeing and judging of the events of the French revolution. Yet, you must not hence conclude that the conversation turns chiefly on that subject in this particular class of the Parisian societies. They concern themselves less about it perhaps than the others, whether from the little share they have had in it, or because they have but very indirect connexions with the government, or lastly, and this final reason is, I believe, the most conclusive, because a Frenchman, from the nature of his character, ends by forgetting his misfortunes and losses, cares little for the future, and appears desirous to enjoy the present only; following, in that respect, the precept of La Fontaine: _"Jouis dès aujourd'hui, tu n'as pas tant à vivre; Je te rebàts ce mot--car il vaut tout un livre."_ In truth, although, among this people, vexations and enjoyments are almost always the result of imagination, they have preserved the remembrance of their misfortunes only to turn to account the terrible lessons which they have received from them, by adopting, in regard to the present and to the future, that happy philosophy which knows how to yield to the circumstances of the moment. This it is (you may rely on the fact) that has contributed, more than any other cause, to re-establish, in so short a period, the order and tranquillity which France presents to the eyes of astonished foreigners. This it is too that has, in a great measure, obviated the fatal consequences which their past troubles must have made them fear for a long time to come, and for which few remedies could be expected, especially when we reflect on the divisions which the revolution has sown in almost every family in this country. P. S. The sound of cannon, which strikes my ear at this moment, announces the signature of the definitve treaty. In the evening, a grand illumination will take place to celebrate the return of the most desirable of all blessings. "------------O beauteous Peace! Sweet union of a State! What else but thou Giv'st safety, strength, and glory to a people?" LETTER LXXXVI. _Paris, March 28, 1802._ Whatever changes may have been introduced by the revolution, in one respect at least, the Parisians still preserve towards foreigners that urbanity for which they were remarkable half a century ago, when Sterne paid them a visit. If you ask a shopkeeper here, of either sex, the way to a place, perhaps at some distance, he or she neglects the occupation of the moment to direct you, with as much solicitude and attention as though a considerable advantage was to be the result of the given information. It is the small sweet courtesies of life, as that sentimental traveller remarks, which render the road of it less rugged. Sometimes, indeed, a foreigner pays dearly for the civility shewn him in Paris; but, in laying out his money, he must ever bear in mind that the shopkeepers make no scruple to overcharge their articles to their own countrymen, and some will not blush to take, even from them, a third less than the price demanded. Soon after my arrival here, I think I mentioned to you the excessive dearness of FURNISHED LODGINGS. Since the revolution, their price is nearly doubled, and is extremely high in the most fashionable parts of the town, such as the _Chaussée d'Antin_, the _Rue de la Loi_, the _Rue de la Concorde_, &c. For strangers that know not in Paris any friend who will take the trouble to seek for them suitable apartments, the only way to procure good accommodation is to alight at a ready-furnished hotel, and there hire rooms by the day till they can look about them, and please themselves. For my own part, I prefer the quiet of a private lodging to the bustle of a public hotel, and, as I have before mentioned, my constant resource, on such occasions, has been the _Petites Affiches_. If you go to the office where this Daily Advertiser is published, and inspect the file, it is ten to one that you immediately find apartments to your wishes. A single man may now be comfortably lodged here, in a private house with a _porte-cochère_, at from 5 to 8 louis per month; and a small family may be well accommodated, in that respect, at from 12 to 16 louis. A larger party, requiring more room, may obtain excellent apartments at from 20 louis a month upwards, according to the situation, the conveniences, the taste and condition of the furniture, and other contingencies. To prevent subsequent misunderstanding, I would always recommend a written agreement. The English have hitherto paid dearer than other foreigners for whatever they want in Paris, because they generally trust to their servants, and think it beneath them to look into those matters connected with their own comfort. But the _Milords Anglais_ are now entirely eclipsed by the Russian Counts, who give two louis where the English offer one. A person's expenses here, as every where else, materially depend on good management, without which a thoughtless man squanders twice as much as a more considerate one; and while the former obtains no more than the common comforts of life, the latter enjoys all its indulgences. With respect to the gratifications of the table, I have little to add to what I have already said on that subject, in speaking of the _restaurateurs_. If you choose to become a boarder, you may subscribe at the _Hôtel du Cirque_, _Rue de la Loi_, and sit down every day in good company for about seven louis a month; and there are very respectable private houses, where you may, when once introduced, dine very well for five livres a time; but, at all these places, you are sure to meet either English or Americans; and the consequence is, that you are eternally speaking your mother-tongue, which is a material objection with those who are anxious to improve themselves in the French language. For a man who brings his family to Paris, and resides in private apartments, it might, perhaps, be more advisable to hire a cook, and live _à l'Anglaise_ or _à la Française_, according to his fancy. No conveniences have been so much improved in Paris, since the revolution, as JOB AND HACKNEY CARRIAGES. Formerly, the _remises_ or job-carriages were far inferior to those in use at the present day; and the old _fiacres_ or hackney-coaches were infamous. The carriages themselves were filthy; the horses, wretched; and the coachmen, in tatters, had more the look of beggars than that of drivers. Now, not only good hackney-coaches, but chariots and cabriolets likewise, figure here on the stands; and many of them have an appearance so creditable that they might even be taken for private French equipages. The regular stipulated fare of all these vehicles is at present 30 _sous_ a _course_, and the same for every hour after the first, which is fixed at 40 _sous_.[1] In 1789, it used to be no more than 24. For the 30 _sous_, you may drive from one extremity of Paris to the other, provided you do not stop by the way; for every voluntary stoppage is reckoned a _course_. However, if you have far to go, it is better to agree to pay 40 _sous_ per hour, and then you meet with no contradiction. From midnight to six o'clock in the morning, the fare is double. The present expense of a job-carriage, with a good pair of horses, (including the coachman, who is always paid by the jobman) varies from 22 to 24 louis a month, according to the price of forage. If you use your own carriage, the hire of horses and coachman will cost you from 12 to 15 louis, which, in 1789, was the price of a job-carriage, all expenses included. Under the old _régime_, there were no stands of cabriolets.[2] These carriages are very convenient to persons pressed for time; but it must be confessed that they are no small annoyance to pedestrians. Of this Lewis XV was so convinced, that he declared if he were Minister of the Police, he would suffer no cabriolets in Paris. He thought this prohibition beneath his own greatness. To obviate, in some measure, the danger arising both from the want of foot-pavement, and from the inconsiderate rapidity with which these carriages are not unfrequently driven, it is now a law that the neck of every horse in a cabriolet must be provided with bells, and the carriage with two lamps, lighted after dark; yet, in spite of these precautions, and the severity which the police exercises against those who transgress the decree, serious accidents sometimes happen. Before the revolution, "_gare! gare!_" was the only warning given here to foot-passengers. The master, in his cabriolet, first drove over a person, the servant behind then bawled out "_gare!_" and the maimed pedestrian was left to get up again as he was able. Such brutal negligence now meets with due chastisement. At a trial which took place here the other day in a court of justice, the driver of a cabriolet was condemned to three months imprisonment in a house of correction, and to pay a fine of 100 francs for maiming a carter. The horse had no bells, as prescribed by law; and the owner of the cabriolet was, besides, condemned, in conjunction with the driver, to pay an indemnification of 3000 francs to the wounded carter, as being civilly responsible for the conduct of his servant. Notwithstanding the danger of walking in the streets of Paris, such French women as are accustomed to go on foot, traverse the most frequented thoroughfares in the dirtiest weather, at the same time displaying, to the astonished sight of bespattered foreigners, a well-turned leg, a graceful step, and spotless stockings. If you arrive in Paris without a servant, or (what amounts almost to the same thing) should you bring with you a man ignorant of the French language, you may be instantly accommodated with one or several domestics, under the name of VALETS-DE-PLACE. Like every thing else here, the wages of these job-servants are augmented. Formerly, their salary was 30 or 40 _sous_ a day: they now ask 4 francs; but, if you purpose to spend a few weeks here, will be glad to serve you for 3. Some are very intelligent; others, very stupid. Most of them are spies of the police; but, as an Englishman in Paris has nothing to conceal, of what consequence is it whether his steps are watched by his own _valet-de-place_ or any other _mouchard_? It is usual for them to lay under contribution all the tradesmen you employ; and thus the traiteur, the jobman, &c. contribute to augment their profits. However, if they pilfer you a little themselves, they take care that you are not subjected to too much imposition from others.--To proceed to a few GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. In visiting the French capital, many Englishmen are led into an error. They imagine that a few letters of recommendation will be the means of procuring them admission into other houses besides those of the persons to whom these letters are addressed. But, on their arrival in Paris, they will find themselves mistaken. The houses of the _great_ are difficult of access, and those of the secondary class scarcely open with more ease than they did before the revolution. If proper attention be paid to all the letters which a stranger brings, he may be satisfied; though the persons to whom he is recommended, seldom think of taking him to the residence of any of their friends. Therefore, an English traveller, who wishes to mix much in French society, should provide himself with as many letters of recommendation as he can possibly obtain; unless, indeed, he has a celebrated name, which, in all countries, is the best introduction; for curiosity prompts the higher classes to see and examine the man who bears it. The doors of every house will be open to him, when they are shut against other strangers, and he may soon establish an intimacy in the first circles. To those who possess not that advantage, a Frenchman may be induced to offer a dinner, or two, perhaps, and return them a few formal visits. He will profess more than he performs. In a word, he will be polite, but not familiar and friendly. An Englishman, thus circumstanced, finding that he gains no ground, and is treated with a sort of ceremony, will probably seek other company, dine at the _restaurateurs'_, frequent the _spectacles_, and visit the impures: for such was the life our countrymen, in general, led in Paris before the revolution. Public amusements may, perhaps, make him amends for the want of private society. As, from their astonishing number, they may be varied without end, he may contrive to pass away his evenings. His mornings will, at first, be employed, no doubt, in visiting public curiosities; but, after he has repeatedly surveyed these scenes of attraction, he will fail in what ought to be the grand object of foreign travel, and return home without having acquired a competent knowledge of the manners of the country. He ought therefore to husband proper French acquaintances, and keep up a constant intercourse with them, or he will run a risk of finding himself insulated. Should indisposition confine him to the house for a few days, every one to whom he has been recommended, will suppose him gone, he will no longer be thought of; _ennui_ will take possession of him, and, cursing France, he will wish himself safely landed on the shore of Old England. If this is the case with an Englishman who brings letters to Paris, what must be the situation of one who visits this capital entirely unprovided in that respect? The banker on whom he has a letter of credit, may invite him to a dinner, at which are assembled twenty persons, to all of whom he is a perfect stranger. Without friends, without acquaintances, he will find himself like a man dropped from the clouds, amidst six or seven hundred thousand persons, driving or walking about in pursuit of their affairs or pleasures. For want of a proper clue to direct him, he is continually in danger of falling into the most detestable company; and the temptations to pleasure are so numerous and so inviting in this gay city, that it requires more fortitude than falls to the lot of many to resist them. Consequently, an untravelled foreigner cannot be too much on his guard in Paris; for it will require every exertion of his prudence and discrimination to avoid being duped and cheated. Above all, he should shun those insinuating and subtle characters who, dexterous in administering that delicious essence which mixes so sweetly with the blood, are ever ready to shew him the curiosities, and introduce him into coteries, which they will represent as respectable, and in which the mistress of the house and her daughters will, probably, conspire to lighten his pocket, and afterwards laugh at his credulity. As to the reception which the English are likely to meet with here after the ratification of the definitive treaty, (if I may be permitted to judge from personal experience and observation) I think it will, in a great measure, depend on themselves. Therefore, should any of our countrymen complain of being treated here with less attention now than before the revolution, it will, on candid investigation, prove to be their own fault. The essential difference will be found to consist in the respect paid to the man, not, as formerly, in proportion to his money, but to his social worth. The French seem now to make a distinction between individuals only, not between nations. Whence it results that, _cæteris paribus_, the foreigner who possesses most the talent of making himself agreeable in society, will here be the most welcome. Not but, in general, they will shew greater indulgence to an Englishman, and be inclined to overlook in him that which they would consider as highly unpardonable in a stranger of any other country. On such occasions, their most usual exclamation is "_Les Anglais sont des gens bien extraordinaires! Ma foi! ils sont inconcevables!_" And, indeed, many Englishmen appear to glory in justifying the idea, and _astonishing the natives_ by the eccentricity of their behaviour. But these _originals_ should recollect that what may be tolerated in a man of superior talent, is ridiculous, if not contemptible, in one undistinguished by such a pretension; and that, by thus _posting_ their absurdities to the eyes of a foreign nation, they leave behind them an impression which operates as a real injury in regard to their more rational countrymen. Another circumstance deserves no less animadversion. In their first essay of foreign travel, our British youths generally carry with them too ample a share of national prepossession and presumption. Accustomed at home to bear down all before them by the weight of their purse, they are too apt to imagine that, by means of a plentiful provision of gold, they may lord it over the continent, from Naples to Petersburg; and that a profuse expenditure of money supersedes the necessity of a compliance with established forms and regulations. Instead of making their applications and inquiries in a proper manner, so as to claim due attention, they more frequently demand as a right what they should rather receive as a favour. Finding themselves disappointed in their vain conclusions, their temper is soured; and, being too proud to retract their error, or even observe a prudent silence, they deal out their impertinence and abuse in proportion to the number of guineas which they may be able to squander. Of course, they cannot but view the peculiar habits and customs of all foreign nations with a jaundiced eye, never reflecting that in most countries are to be found, either in a moral or a physical sense, advantages and disadvantages in which others are deficient. _Le_ POUR _et le_ CONTRE, as a well-known traveller observes, _se trouvent en chaque nation_. The grand desideratum is to acquire by travel a knowledge of this POUR _et/i> CONTRE, which, by emancipating us from our prejudices, teaches us mutual toleration --for, of every species of tyranny, that which is exercised on things indifferent in themselves, is the most intolerable. Hence it is less difficult to deprive a nation of its laws than to change its habits. [Footnote 1: When assignats were in circulation, a single _course en fiacre_ sometimes cost 600 livres, which was at the rate of 10 livres per minute. But this will not appear extraordinary, when it is known that the depreciation of that paper-currency was such that, at one time, 18,000 livres in assignats could be procured for a single _louis d'or_.] [Footnote 2: A cabriolet is a kind of one-horse chaise, with a standing head, and inclosed in front by a wooden flap, in lieu of one of leather. Behind, there is a place for a footman.] LETTER LXXXVII _Paris, March 31, 1802._ If I mistake not, I have answered most of the questions contained in your letters; I shall now reply to you on the subject of DIVORCE. The number of divorced women to be met with here, especially among the more affluent classes, exceeds any moderate calculation. Nothing can more clearly manifest the necessity of erecting some dike against the torrent of immorality, which has almost inundated this capital, and threatens to spread over all the departments. Before the revolution, the indissolubility of marriage in France was supposed to promote adultery in a very great degree: the vow was broken because the knot could not be untied. At present, divorces are so easily obtained, that a man or woman, tired of each other, have only to plead _incompatibility of temper_, in order to slip their necks out of the matrimonial noose. In short, some persons here change their wedded partner with as much unconcern as they do their linen. Thus, the two extremes touch each other; and either of them has proved equally pernicious to morals. Formerly, if a Frenchman kept a watchful eye on his wife, he was reckoned jealous, and was blamed. If he adopted a contrary conduct, and she was faithless, he was ridiculed. Not unfrequently, a young miss, emerged from the cloisters of a convent, where she had, perhaps, been sequestered, in order that her bloom might not eclipse the declining charms of her mother, and who appeared timid, bashful, and diffident, was no sooner married to a man in a certain rank in life, than she shone as a meteor of extravagance and dissipation. Such a wife thought of nothing but the gratification of her own desires; because she considered it as a matter of course that all the cares of the family ought to devolve by right on the husband. Provided she could procure the means of satisfying her taste for dress, and of making a figure in the _beau monde_, no other concerns ever disturbed her imagination. If, at first, she had sufficient resolution to resist the contagion of example, and not take a male friend to her bosom, by way of lightening the weight of her connubial chains, she seldom failed, in the end, to follow the fashion of the day, and frequent the gaming-table, where her virtue was sacrificed to discharge her debts of honour. But what have these _would-be_ republicans to allege as an excuse in their favour? They have no convents to initiate young girls in the arts of dissimulation; no debauched court to contaminate, by its example, the wavering principles of the weak part of the sex, or sap the more determined ones of those whose mind is of a firmer texture; nor have they any friendly, sympathizing confessors to draw a spunge, as it were, over the trespasses hid in a snug corner of their heart. No: every one is left to settle his own account with heaven. Yet the libertinism which at present reigns in Paris is sufficient to make a deep impression on persons the least given to reflection. _Il matrimonio_, says the Italian proverb, _è un paradiso o un inferno_. In fact, nothing can be compared to the happiness of a married couple, united by sympathy. To them, marriage is really a terrestrial paradise. But what more horrid than the reverse, that is, two beings cursing the fatal hour which brought them together in wedlock? It is a very hell on earth; for surely no punishment can exceed that of being condemned to pass our days with the object of our detestation. If the indissolubility of marriage in France was formerly productive of such bad consequences; now that the nuptial knot can be loosened with so much facility, there can no longer exist the same plea for adultery. Is then this accumulation of vice less the effect of the institution of divorce in itself, than that of the undigested law by which it was first introduced? The law of divorce was, I find, projected in 1790, under the auspices of the last Duke of Orleans, who, utterly regardless of the welfare of the State, wished to revolutionize every thing, solely with a view to his own individual interest. His object was to get rid of his wife, who was a woman of strict virtue. This law was decreed on the 20th of September 1792, without any discussion whatever. On the 8th of Nivôse and 4th of Floréal, year II, (29th of December 1794 and 24th of April 1795) the Convention decreed additional laws, all tending to favour the impetuosity of the passions. Thus the door was opened still wider to licentiousness and debauchery. By these laws, an absence of six months is sufficient for procuring a divorce, and, after the observance of certain forms, either of the parties may contract a fresh marriage. It is not difficult to conceive how many hot-headed, profligate, unprincipled persons, of both sexes, have availed themselves of such laws to gratify their unruly passions, their resentment, their avarice, or their ambition. Oaths, persons, or property, are, in these cases, little respected. If a libertine finds that he cannot possess the object of his desires on any other terms, like Sir John Brute, in the play, he marries her, in order to go to bed to her, and in a few days sues for a divorce. I have been shewn here a Lothario of this description, who, in the course of a short space of time had been married to no less than six different women. "Divorce," says a judicious French writer, "is a separation, the necessity for which ought to be supported by unquestionable proofs; otherwise, it is nothing more than a legitimate scandal." The French often wish to assimilate themselves to the Romans, and the Roman laws sanctioned divorce. Let us then examine how far the comparison can, in this respect, be supported. "Among the Romans," continues he, "the first who availed himself of this privilege was Spurius Corbilius, because his wife was steril. The second divorce was that of C. Sulpicius, because his wife had gone abroad with her hair uncovered, and without a veil over her head. Q. Anstitius divorced on account of having seen his wife speak to a person of her own sex, who was reckoned loose in her conduct; and Sempronius, because his had been to see the public entertainments without having informed him. These different divorces took place about a hundred years after the foundation of Rome. The Romans, after that, were upwards of five hundred years without affording an instance of any divorce. They then were moral and virtuous. But, at length, luxury, that scourge of societies, corrupted their hearts; and divorces became so frequent, that many women reckoned their age by the number of their husbands." To this he might have added, that several Roman ladies of rank were so lost to all sense of shame, that they publicly entered their names among the licensed prostitutes. "Marriage," concludes he, "presently became nothing more than an object of commerce and speculation; and divorce, a tacit permission for libertinism. Can divorce among the French, be considered otherwise, when we reflect that this institution, which seemed likely to draw closer the conjugal tie, by restoring it to its state of natural liberty, is, through the abuse made of it, now only a mean of shameful traffic, in which the more cunning of the two ruins the ether, in short, a mound the less against the irruptions of immorality?" So much for the opinion of a French writer of estimation on the effect of these laws: let us at present endeavour to illustrate it by some examples. A young lady, seduced by a married man, found herself pregnant. She was of a respectable family: he was rich, and felt the consequences of this event. What was to be done? He goes to one of his friends, whom he knew not to be overburdened with delicacy, and proposes to him to marry this young person, in consideration of a certain sum of money. The friend consents, and the only question is to settle the conditions. They bargain for some time: at last they agree for 10,000 francs (_circa_ £410 sterling). The marriage is concluded, the lady is brought to bed, the child dies, and the gentleman sues for a divorce. All this was accomplished in six months. As such opportunities are by no means scarce, he may, in the course of the year, probably, meet with another of the same nature: thus the office of bridegroom is converted into a lucrative situation. The following is another instance of this melancholy truth, but of a different description. A man about thirty-two years of age, well-made, and of a very agreeable countenance, had been married three months to a young woman of uncommon beauty. He was loved, nay almost adored by her. Every one might have concluded that they were the happiest couple in Paris; and, in fact, no cloud had hitherto overshadowed the serenity of their union. One day when the young bride was at table with her husband, indulging herself in expressing the happiness which she enjoyed, a tipstaff entered, and delivered to her a paper. She read it. What should it be but a subpoena for a divorce? At first she took the thing for a pleasantry: but the husband soon convinced her that nothing was more serious. He assured her that this step would make her fortune, and his own too, if she would consent to the arrangement which he had to propose to her. "You know," said he, "the rich and ugly Madame C----: she has 30,000 francs a year (circa £1250 sterling); she will secure to me the half of her property, provided I will marry her. I offer you a third, if, after having willingly consented to our divorce, you will permit me to see you as my female friend." Such a proposal shocked her at the moment; but a week's reflection effected a change in her sentiments; and the business was completed. _O tempora! O mores!_ But though many married individuals still continue to break their chains, it appears that divorces are gradually decreasing in number; and should the government succeed in introducing into the law on this subject the necessary modifications, of course they will become far less frequent. Every legislature must be aware to what a degree plays are capable of influencing the opinions of a nation, and what a powerful spring they are for moving the affections. Why then are not theatrical representations here so regulated, that the stage may conduce to the amelioration of morals? Instead of this, in most French comedies, the husband is generally made the butt of ridicule, and the whole plot often lies in his being outwitted by some conceited spark. Marriage, in short, is incessantly railed at in such a lively, satirical manner as to delight nine-tenths of the audience. This custom was also introduced on our stage under the reign of Charles II; and, not many years ago, it was, I am told, as usual to play _The London Cuckolds_ on Lord Mayor's day, as it is now to give a representation of _George Barnwell_ during the Easter holidays. Yet, what is this practice of exhibiting a cuckold in a ridiculous point of view, but an apology for adultery, as if it was intended to teach women that their charms are not formed for the possession of one man only? Alas! it is but too true that some of the French belles need no encouragement to infidelity: too soon all scruple is stifled in their bosom; and then, they not only set modesty, but decency too at defiance. _Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute_; or, as the same idea is more fully expressed by our great moral poet: "Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, As, to be hated, needs but to be seen; Yet, seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace." However, in both the instances which I have adduced, the fault was entirely on the side of the men; and, in general, I believe this will prove to be the case. Recrimination, indeed, is loudly urged by our sex in Paris; they blame the women, with a view of extenuating their own irregularities, which scarcely know any limits. On a question of a divorce-bill brought on, not long since, in the House of Commons, you may recollect that a member was laughed at, for asserting that if men expected women to reform, they ought to begin by reforming themselves. For my part, I conceive the idea to be perfectly just. Infidelity on the woman's side is, unquestionably, more hurtful to society than a failure of the same sort on the man's; yet, is it reasonable to suppose women to be so exempt from human frailty, as to preserve their chastity inviolate, when men set them so bad an example? LETTER LXXXVIII. _Paris, April 3, 1802_. Circumstances have at length occurred to recall me to England, and as this will, probably, be the last letter that you will receive from me before I have the pleasure of taking you by the hand, I shall devote it to miscellaneous subjects, and, without studying any particular arrangement, speak of them at random, just as they chance to present themselves. A fellow-creature, whose care-worn countenance and emaciated body claimed a mite from any one who had a mite to bestow, had taken his stand at the gate-way just now as I entered. The recollection of his tale of woe being uppermost in my mind, I begin with MENDICANTS. In spite of the calamities which all great political convulsions never fail to engender, the streets of Paris present not at this day that vast crowd of beggars, covered with rags and vermin, by which they were formerly infested. This is to be attributed to the partial adoption of measures for employing the poor; and, doubtless, when receptacles come to be established here, according to the salutary plans introduced into Bavaria by Count Rumford, mendicity will be gradually annihilated. But, if beggars have decreased in Paris, this is not the case with PAWNBROKERS. They seem to have multiplied in proportion to the increase of the number of opportunities afforded for gambling in the lottery, that is, in the ratio of 21 to 2.[1] Formerly, in addition to the public establishment called the _Mont de Piété_, commissioners were appointed, in different parts of the town, to take in pledges, and make advances on them previously to their being lodged in that grand repository. There, money was lent on them at an interest of 10 per cent; and if the article pledged was not redeemed by a certain time, it was sold by public auction, and, the principal and interest being deducted, the surplus was paid to the holder of the duplicate. Thus the iniquitous projects of usury were defeated; and the rich, as well as the poor, went to borrow at the _Mont de Piété_. To obtain a sum for the discharge of a debt of honour, a dutchess here deposited her diamond ear-rings; while a washerwoman slipped off her petticoat, and pawned it to satisfy the cravings of hunger. At the present moment, the _Mont de Piété_ still exists; but, doubtless, on a different plan; for Paris abounds with _Maisons de prêt_. On the eve of particular days in each month when the shopkeepers' promissory notes become due, they here pledge articles in order to procure the means of making good their payments. But the crowd of borrowers is the greatest on the days immediately preceding those on which the Paris lottery is drawn; the hucksters, marketwomen, porters, retailers of fruit, and unfortunate females, then deposit their wearing apparel at these dens of rapacity, that they may acquire a share of a ticket, the price of which is fixed so low as to be within the purchase of the poorest classes. The lottery being over, till the next drawing, those persons think no more of their effects, provided they are within two or three of the winning numbers; and thus they gamble away almost every thing belonging to them, even to the very clothes on their back. This is so true that it is not, I understand, at all uncommon in Paris, for a Cyprian nymph to send her last robe to the nearest pawnbroker's, in order to have the chance of a prize in the lottery, and to lie in bed till she obtains the means of purchasing another. Nor is this by far the worst part of the story. The too credulous followers of Fortune, on finding all their hopes of success blasted, frequently seek a termination of their misery by suicide: and a person of veracity, who made a point of visiting the _Morne_ almost daily, assured me that he always knew when the lottery had just been drawn, by the increased number of dead bodies, there exposed, of persons who had put an end to their existence. These are facts shocking to relate; but, if legislators will promote gaming, either by lotteries, or in any other manner, such are the consequences to be expected. Another article which has multiplied prodigiously in Paris, since the revolution, consists of NEWSPAPERS. In 1789, the only daily papers in circulation here were the _Journal de Paris_ and the _Petites Affiches_; for the _Gazette de France_ appeared only twice a week. From that period, these ephemeral productions increased so rapidly, that, under the generic name of _Journaux_, upwards of six thousand, bearing different titles, have appeared in France, five hundred of which were published in Paris. At this time, here is a great variety of daily papers. The most eminent of these are well known in England; such as the _Moniteur_, the only official paper, the sale of which is said to be 20,000 per day; that of the _Journal de Paris_, 16,000; of the _Publiciste_, 14,000; of the _Journal des Débats_, 12,000; of the _Journal des Défenseurs de la Patrie_, 10,000; and of the _Clé du Cabinet_, 6,000. The sale of the others is comparatively trifling, with the exception of the _Petites Affiches_, of which the number daily sold exceeds 30,000. In addition to the _Journals_, which I mentioned in my letter of the 16th of December last, the most esteemed are the _Magazin Encyclopédique_, edited by MILLIN, the _Annales de Chimie_, the _Journal des Arts_, the _Journal Polytechnique_, the _Journal des Mines_, the _Journal général des Inventions et des Découvertes_, &c. I stop here, because it would be useless to attempt to send you a complete list of all the French periodical publications, as, in the flux and reflux of this literary ocean, such a list cannot long be expected to preserve its exactness. Among the conveniences which this city affords in an enviable degree and in great abundance, are BATHS. Those of Paris, of every description, still retain their former pre-eminence. The most elegant are the _Bains Chinois_ on the north Boulevards, where, for three francs, you may enjoy the pleasure of bathing in almost as much luxury as an Asiatic monarch. Near the _Temple_ and at the _Vauxhall d'Été_, also on the old Boulevards, are baths, where you have the advantage of a garden to saunter in after bathing. On the Seine are several floating baths, the most remarkable of which are the _Bains Vigier_, at the foot of the _Pont National_. The vessel containing them is upwards of 200 feet in length by about 60 in breadth, and presents two tiers of baths, making, on both decks, 140 in number. It is divided in the middle by a large transparent plate of glass, which permits the eye to embrace its whole extent; one half of which is appropriated to men; the other, to women. On each deck are galleries, nine feet wide, ornamented with much architectural taste. On the exterior part of the vessel is a promenade, decorated with evergreens, orange and rose trees, jasmines, and other odoriferous plants. By means of a hydraulic machine, worked by two horses, in an adjoining barge, the reservoirs can be emptied and filled again in less than an hour. The _Bains Vigier_ are much frequented, as you may suppose from their daily consumption of two cords of wood for fuel. Tepid baths, at blood-heat, are, at present, universally used by the French ladies, and, apparently, with no small advantage. The price of one of these is no more than 30 _sous_, linen, &c. included. If you want to learn to swim, you may be instructed here in that necessary art, or merely take a look at those acquiring it, at the SCHOOL OF NATATION. The Seine is the school where the lessons are given, and the police takes care that the pupils infringe not the laws of decency. * * * * * It is certain that, as far back as the year 1684, means were proposed in London to transmit signs to a great distance in a very short space of time, and that, towards the close of the seventeenth century, a member of the Academy of Sciences made, near Paris, several minute experiments on the same subject. The paper read at the Royal Society of London, and the detail of the experiments made in France, seem to suggest nearly the same means as those now put in practice, by the two nations, with respect to TELEGRAPHS. The construction of those in France differs from ours in consisting of one principal pole, and two arms, moveable at the ends. There are four in Paris; one, on the _Louvre_, which corresponds with Lille; another, on the _Place de la Concorde_, with Brest; a third, on one of the towers of the church of _St. Sulpice_, with Strasburg; and the fourth, on the other tower of the said church, which is meant to extend to Nice, but is as yet carried no farther than Dijon. To and from Lille, which is 120 leagues distant from Paris, intelligence is conveyed and received in six minutes, three for the question, and three for the answer. Yet, however expeditious this intercourse may seem, it is certain that the telegraphic language may be abridged, by preserving these machines in their present state, but at the same time allotting to each of the signs a greater portion of idea, without introducing any thing vague into the signification. Independently of the public curiosities, which I have described, Paris contains several PRIVATE COLLECTIONS. Among them, those most deserving of attention are: ADANSON'S cabinet of Natural History, _Rue de la Victoire_. CASAS' cabinet of Models and Drawings, _Rue de Seine, Faubourg St. Germain_. CHARLES'S cabinet of Physics, _Palais National des Sciences et des Arts._ DENON'S cabinet of Drawings, &c. _Hôtel de Bouillon_, _Rue J. J. Rousseau_. FOUQUET'S cabinet of Models of Antique Monuments, _Rue de Lille_, _F. S. G._ HAUPOIS' cabinet of Mechanics. SUË'S cabinet of Anatomy, _Rue du Luxembourg_. TERSAN'S cabinet of Antiquities, _Cloître St. Honoré_. VAILLANT'S cabinet of Birds, &c. _Rue du Sépulchre_, _F. S. G._ VAN-HORREN'S cabinet of Curiosities, _Rue St. Dominique_, _F. S. G._ I must observe that, to visit these men of science, without putting them to inconvenience, it is expedient either to procure an introduction, or to address them a note, requesting permission to view their cabinet. This observation holds good with respect to every thing that is not public. If you are fond of inspecting curious fire-arms, you should examine the _dépôt d'armes_ of M. BOUTET in the _Rue de la Loi_, whose manufactory is at Versailles, and also pay a visit to M. REGNIER, at the _Dépôt Central de l'Artillerie_, _Rue de l'Université_, who is a very ingenious mechanic, and will shew you several curious articles of his own invention, such as a _dynamomètre_, by means of which you can ascertain and compare the relative strength of men, as well as that of horses and draught-cattle, and also judge of the resistance of machines, and estimate the moving power you wish to apply to them; a _potamomètre_, by which you can tell the force of running streams, and measure the currents of rivers. M. REGNIER has also invented different kinds of locks and padlocks, which cannot be picked; as well as some curious pistols, &c. I have, as you will perceive, strictly confined myself to the limits of the capital, because I expect that my absence from it will not be long; and, in my next trip to France, I intend, not only to point out such objects as I may now have neglected, but also to describe those most worthy of notice in the environs of Paris. If I have not spoken to you of all the metamorphoses occasioned here by the revolution, it is because several of them bear not the stamp of novelty. If the exchange in Paris is now held in the _ci-devant Eglise des Petits Pères_, did we not at Boston, in New England, convert the meeting-houses and churches into riding-schools and barracks? As the _Charnier des Innocens_, which had subsisted in the centre of Paris for upwards of eight centuries, and received the remains of at least ten millions of human beings, was, before the revolution, turned into a market-place; so is the famous spot where the Jacobin convent stood in the _Rue St. Honoré_, and whence issued laws more bloody than those of Draco, now on the point of being appropriated to a similar destination. The cemetery of St. Sulpice is transformed into a Ranelagh. Over the entrance is written, in large letters, encircled by roses, "BAL DES ZÉPHYRS," and, underneath, you read: _"Has ultra metas requiescunt Beatam spem expectantes."_ And on the door itself: _"Expectances misericordiam Dei."_ I was just going to conclude with _Adieu, till we meet_, when I was most agreeably surprised by the receipt of your letter. I am happy to find that, through the kind attention of Mr. Mantell of Dover, whose good offices on this and other simllar occasions claim my most grateful acknowledgments, you have received all the packets and books which I have addressed to you during my present visit to Paris. It is likewise no small gratification to me to learn that my correspondence has afforded to you a few subjects of deep reflection. As I told you at the time, the task which you imposed on me was more than I could accomplish; and you must now be but too well convinced that the apprehension of my inability was not unfounded. It may not, perhaps, be difficult for a man of sound judgment to seize and delineate the general progress of the human mind during a determined period; but to follow successively, through all their details, the ramifications of the arts and sciences, is a labour which requires much more knowledge and experience than I can pretend to: nor did self-love ever blind me so far as to lead me to presume, for a moment, that success would crown my efforts. However, I think I have said enough to shew that one of the striking effects of the revolution has been to make the arts and sciences popular in France. It has rendered common those doctrines which had till then been reserved for first-rate _savans_ and genuises. The arsenals of the sciences (if I may use the expression) were filled; but soldiers were wanting. The revolution has produced them in considerable numbers; and, in spite of all the disasters and evils which it has occasioned, it cannot be denied that the minds of Frenchmen, susceptible of the least energy, have here received a powerful impulse which has urged them towards great and useful ideas. This impulse has been kept alive and continued by the grand establishments of public instruction, founded during the course of that memorable period. Thus, in a few words, you are at once in possession both of the causes and the result of the progress of the human mind in this country. You may, probably, be surprised that I could have written so much, in so short a space of time, amid all the allurements of the French capital, and the variety of pursuits which must necessarily have diverted my attention. Perhaps too, you may think that I might have dwelt less on some of my least interesting details. I must confess that I have, in some measure, subjected myself to such an opinion; but, knowing your wish to acquire every sort of information, I have exerted myself to obtain it from all quarters. To collect this budget has been no easy task; to compress it would have been still more difficult, and, alas! to have transmitted it, in an epistolary form, would have been totally out of my power, but for the assistance of two very ingenious artists, who have not a little contributed to lighten my labour. Introducing themselves to me, very shortly after my arrival, the one furnished me with an everlasting pen; and the other, with an inexhaustible inkstand. Farewell, my good friend. I have obtained a passport for England. My baggage is already packed up. To-morrow I shall devote to the ceremony of making visits _p. p. c._ that is, _pour prendre congé_ of my Parisian friends; and, on the day after, (_Deo volente_) I shall bid adieu to the "paradise of women, the purgatory of men, and the hell of horses." [Footnote 1: Since the revolution, the Paris lottery is drawn three times in each month, in lieu of twice; and lotteries have also been established in the principal towns of the Republic, namely; Bordeaux, Lyons, Marseilles, Rouen, Strasburg, and Brussels. The offices in the capital present the facility of gambling in all these different lotteries as often every month as in that of Paris.] THE END. _The new organisation of the National Institute, referred to in Letter XLV of this volume, will be found among the prefaratory matter in Vol. I, immediately preceding the Introduction._